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 The secret of Narcisse, a romance. 
 
 3 1924 013 459 122 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013459122 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE 
 
other Works by Mr. Edmund Gosse 
 
 IN VERSE 
 On Viol and Flute. New edition. iSgo 
 Firdausi in Exile, and other Poems. Second edition. l88'J 
 
 IN PROSE 
 Northern Studies. l8yg. Popular edition. iSgo 
 Life of Gray. 1882. Revised edition. l88g 
 Seventeenth-Century Studies. 1883. Second edition. 18 
 Life of Congreve. 1888 
 
 A History of Eighteenth-Century Literature. l88g 
 Life of Philip Henry Gosse, F.R.S. l8gO 
 Gossip in a Library. r8gi. Second edition. l8g2 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 A ROMANCE 
 
 BY 
 
 EDMUND GOSSE 
 
 LONDON 
 
 WILLIAM HEINEMANN 
 
 1892 
 
 [All rights reserved] 
 
DE SCELETO 
 DOMINAM AMICISSIMAM 
 
 DOROTHEAM NEVILL 
 
 VT CVI 
 
 CRANIA SINT CORDI 
 
 LIBENTBR AVDITVRAM CONFISVS 
 
 SCRIPSI 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE 
 I 
 
 It was Monday before Pentecost in the year 
 1548. There had been rain and wind, but the 
 gusts had fallen, and it was a yellow soundless 
 afternoon that was now drawing to a close. 
 From the whitewashed steps at their doorway, 
 women and children of four generations could 
 see, down the steep and tortuous street, the 
 vineyard opposite the town, the long, smooth, 
 round hill-side, as brown as a bear-skin in the 
 warm flood of sunlight. All these Mercillats 
 were talking at once — all, except the silent 
 extremities of the family — the bald and tooth- 
 less grandmother, bowed upon her staff, and 
 
 A 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 the baby, wrapped up and stiffly set, like an 
 image, along the arm of its young mother, 
 Lucie. One other member of the group said 
 but little, Rosalie Mercillat, of whom her father, 
 the gunsmith, was heard to swear, a little too 
 frequently and too loudly, that she was the 
 prettiest maid in Bar-le-Duc, or, for that matter, 
 in the whole Duchy of the Barrois. Handsome 
 she was, with dark blue eyes beneath her masses 
 of black hair ; large of limb, but tall and grace- 
 ful, carrying an even flow of healthy blood 
 under the creamy pallor of her complexion. 
 For Rosalie the loud discussion of market 
 prices, of the reproof given by the cure to the 
 daughter of their neighbour, the flesher, of the 
 propriety of feeding the low fire of charcoal on 
 the hearth, seemed to have less fascination than 
 for the rest. Hence it was she who, gazing 
 down the street, gave the expected signal. 
 
 " She is coming," said Rosalie, and the 
 family rose languidly to their feet, while a 
 few knots of persons gathered, in a similar 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 position, at one or two other doorways. Below 
 them in the narrow street, a singular procession 
 made its appearance. At the head of it, a 
 tall figure, entirely shrouded by black flowing 
 garments, embroidered in white with death's- 
 heads and pierced hearts, advanced laboriously, 
 its train supported by two indifferent pages, the 
 one of whom yawned so often that he set the 
 other's jaws agape in sympathy. The Ducal 
 chamberlain, stiff with sumptuous mourning, 
 strode beside, and a little careless bevy of 
 servants attended. Slowly, slowly the pro- 
 cession climbed the Rue Chavee, ascended the 
 Place, and disappeared within the great portals 
 of the church. As it did so, the chatter about 
 the price of pigs' feet broke forth as exuberantly 
 as ever at the doorway of the Mercillats. 
 
 It had been on a Monday, at an hour before 
 sunset, that, six years earlier, the dying body 
 of Ren^ de Chalons, Prince of Orange, had 
 been carried into the castle of Bar-le-Duc, to 
 the arms of his distracted Duchess. Over the 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 hills at the back of the town it had been 
 brought, through the southern gate, and down 
 the beautiful new Rue des Dues de Bar, where 
 all the noble ladies clustered at their carved 
 windows, pale with horror at the sight. Every 
 Monday since then, at an hour before sunset, 
 the unhappy Duchess reversed the order of her 
 terrible pilgrimage. Leaving the castle by the 
 private door, at which the dead body of her 
 husband had entered, she walked on foot up the 
 track of his magnificent funeral to the church 
 of St. Maze, and, after weeping at his grave, 
 she returned by the Rue des Dues de Bar. 
 
 Always on foot — always, in frost or rain, 
 sunlight or mist, arrayed in the same excessive 
 pomp of woe — this weekly apparition of the 
 shrouded Princess had long ago ceased to 
 interest the inhabitants of the town. Her 
 Monday procession had become a natural 
 phenomenon, a meaningless ceremony which 
 no onger impressed or excited the spectators 
 or even the actors, with one exception. The 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 5 
 
 agony which shook the stately frame of the 
 Duchess, the sobs which were audible under 
 those depths of veil upon veil, showed that 
 with her, at least, grief, wilfully nurtured and 
 cultivated Hke a delicate plant, had taken entire 
 possession of the morbid spirit in which it grew. 
 
 When the train of the Duchess, conducted 
 inward from the gates of St. Maze by the priests 
 in attendance, had entered the church and had 
 vanished behind the closing doors, the street 
 recovered from its momentary disturbance. 
 Well knowing that their lady would leave 
 the building, as she always did, by the other 
 exit, the Mercillats strolled up the pear-shaped 
 Place which descended from St. Maze, and seated 
 themselves gaily on the broad steps of the 
 church. Rosalie still seemed distracted and 
 inattentive. 
 
 " You listen no more than a radish," said her 
 mother, Eudoxie; "you make no decent face 
 of listening, though I speak of what I know 
 and have seen with my eyes." The buxom 
 
6 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 woman had just recounted an incident of her 
 youth to which her daughter had not paid even 
 the compliment of that smile we spare for the 
 twelfth-told tales of relatives. 
 
 "Rosalie is listening for the ting of the 
 pincers round the corner," said her young sister 
 Bibianne. 
 
 " Be not a fool, Bibi," replied the person so 
 pointedly addressed ; and settled her plump 
 hands on her lap. 
 
 " Nay," said Lucie, as she bobbed her infant, 
 a swathed wave-offering, at one of the carven 
 apostles on the porch-front, for the babe had 
 wakened and might probably howl, " nay, Narcisse 
 is not pinching and hammering at so late an 
 hour as this, and why you must all torment 
 Rosalie, I know not." 
 
 "Where is your Narcisse?" said her mother. 
 But, without waiting for a reply, she went on : 
 " The new grille he has made for the window of 
 the Chevalier's mother is warped out so far that 
 you see it if you look up from the street." 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 " Who told you so, mother ? " asked Rosalie, 
 fiercely. 
 
 " Nay, one sees it for oneself — one glances 
 up along the wall and it sticks out like a 
 'gargoyle. Well," she continued, abandoning 
 at once the pretence of personal inspection, 
 " the robe-maker's daughter to my lady told 
 me so." 
 
 " Much she knows of warpings or of hammered 
 work, or you either, mother," rejoined Rosalie ; 
 " why do you hawk such foolish tales about ? 
 Narcisse is good enough craftsman, I hope, for 
 such a town as Bar." 
 
 "What do you know, Rosalie, of what 
 manner of craftsman he is ? " 
 
 " Can I not see with my eyes ? Do I not 
 know what all say of him ? Do they not come 
 hanging round his booth with 'Pray, Master 
 Narcisse!' and 'Good Master Narcisse, the 
 medal in my cap ' ? " 
 
 "What do you know of him? He is not 
 one of us. Where did he come from ? " 
 
8 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 "Who knows, Rosalie, what good or bad 
 work is in a town like this ? " said Bibianne. 
 
 Rosalie stood up, lazy and angry, and leaned 
 against a stone saint. 
 
 "You have not heard, silly Bibi, of the great 
 Ligier Richier ? Eh ? Of the greatest artist 
 who ever lived in Barrois or in Lorraine, who 
 has been heard of to the ends of the earth, and 
 as far away as — as Rome ? " 
 
 " What has Master Richier to do with our 
 Narcisse ? " asked the mother. 
 
 " You, mother, do at least know that when 
 Master Richier came here years ago, when we 
 were children, to make the images in the church, 
 he brought Narcisse with him as a 'prentice, and 
 did nothing without him." 
 
 "And why, if Narcisse be so great a crafts- 
 man, did he leave him behind him in Bar when he 
 went away again ? " continued Madame Mercillat, 
 with a nagging air of triumph. 
 
 To this Rosalie had no definite answer ready, 
 and she was already tired of the dispute. The 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 family, though civil to her artist-lover, had no 
 fondness for him. He was not of their class or 
 race. They had the provincial dislike of a new 
 personality, brought into their circle from the 
 unknown and therefore unloved world outside, 
 the world which, if only you went far enough, 
 became the haunt of savages, and monsters, and 
 hairy creatures that did not worship God. 
 Narcisse was not savage, perhaps, but he came 
 from a distance, from some place on the high 
 road to Heathenesse. He was not Barrois, and 
 why should the Barrois love him ? 
 
 The cause of Narcisse Gerbillon's settlement 
 in Bar had nothing mysterious about it, though 
 Mother Eudoxie might choose to forget the 
 reason. Seven years before the time of which 
 we are writing, the Duke Francis had succeeded, 
 after much blustering and wheedling, in persuad- 
 ing the great sculptor of Lorraine, Ligier Richier 
 to quit for a while the palace he had adorned for 
 himself in St. Mihiel, and all the works he was 
 finishing in that town, in order to come across 
 
lo The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 the vineyards to Bar, and enrich the new city 
 that the Sovereign Prince was building. Richier 
 had come at last, like a travelling cardinal in 
 state, with his suite of servants and 'prentices. 
 His square jaw and arrogant eye had been seen 
 in profile by a few astonished peasants as he 
 crossed the hills in a sort of Persian sedan-chair, 
 designed by himself, with the flag of that guild 
 of which he was the master waving from the 
 silvered roof of it. An old but spacious house 
 close to the wall, lately abandoned by a noble 
 family for whom a residence had been built in 
 the new renaissance Rue des Dues de Bar, was 
 placed at the sculptor's service by the gratified 
 Duke, who laid all his reserve aside in his 
 anxiety to please the magic-working master whom 
 he had captured. 
 
 Once settled in Bar, Ligier Richier was in no 
 hurry to leave it, though his own cities of 
 Lorraine were sighing for him ; and when a 
 deputation from Toul waited upon him for the 
 decoration of that ancient cathedral, he bid them 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 1 1 
 
 wait three years, or be satisfied with a pupil. 
 The churches of Bar and its castle were already 
 full of his statues, the nobles strutted with his 
 medals in their hats and his coins in their 
 pockets, when the fatal field of St. Dizier called 
 upon him for fresh exertions of his griesly 
 imagination and adroit hand as a modeller. At 
 last, having tapped a fortune from the still- 
 brimming coffers of the Duke, a sudden whim of 
 fancy, or the promise of an interesting com- 
 mission, carried him away to Chalons, and the 
 palace that had been so noisy a workshop was 
 left to the bats and mice. 
 
 This was two years ago, and already the visit 
 of the great artist began to be a myth. One 
 living memorial of it remained by the side of so 
 much that was in stone and metal. Of all his 
 pupils, the one whom he had at first loved and 
 trusted best was a pale young man from the 
 south, of whose antecedents no one knew any- 
 thing, Narcisse Gerbillon. Richier apparently 
 did not cease to trust him, but the master's 
 
12 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 arrogance had cooled the warmer relations 
 which had existed between himself and his 
 'prentice before the former resolved to leave Bar. 
 It was this decline in cordiality, no doubt, which 
 had changed to Narcisse the prospect of his life. 
 Adoring the genius of Ligier Richier, to which 
 his talent owed its own graces, he had deter- 
 mined to follow him through all his pilgrimages, 
 never seeking to be himself a master, since he 
 could serve the best of masters. But, if 
 tempestuous gestures and scornful suspicions 
 were to be the order of their day, better to 
 break the bond before it became too irksome. 
 Warmly recommended by Richier to the Duke, 
 Narcisse Gerbillon had stayed behind when the 
 Persian carriage and all its convoy had taken 
 their noisy farewell of the streets of Bar. 
 
 He was amply employed, and his work, 
 though without originality, was carefully and 
 skilfully done. He rented for himself a booth 
 under the shadow of the great church, and fitted 
 that up as a workshop for the daytime, still 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 1 3 
 
 living in one room of the empty house, near the 
 southern wall, which had been Richier's palace. 
 His business soon brought him into close 
 relations with Mercillat, the gunsmith, for 
 whom he wrought ornamental pieces in which 
 his art showed to advantage. Mercillat, a 
 subtle man, who concealed great acuteness 
 under a noisy demeanour, knew how to appre- 
 ciate a workman so adroit and punctual — one, 
 moreover, who gave the gunsmith no trouble 
 by demanding for his designs any personal 
 credit with the nobles, content that Mercillat 
 should hear the praise if he himself got ready 
 money. When it appeared that the second 
 daughter, Rosalie, had fallen in love with Nar- 
 cisse, her father alone of the family, but with an 
 authority which overbore all resistance from the 
 women of the house, smiled upon the match. 
 
 As the colour grew fuller in the west, where 
 the light grew less, the Mercillats rose to their 
 feet, and prepared leisurely to descend the Place. 
 Rosalie moved in the opposite direction, and as 
 
14 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 she discreetly turned the flank of the great 
 church, she glanced at the booth that clung to 
 the corner of it, like a limpet to the base of 
 some vast rock. This was the workshop which 
 Narcisse rented from the town, and the spot 
 where all day long he was to be seen busy with 
 his tools, or gazing out in a melancholy reverie. 
 It was now shuttered and locked up, as she 
 expected it to be. He was beforehand with 
 her, no doubt, in their innocent rendezvous. 
 
 She went out of the town at the upper gate, 
 passing but a few belated hinds returning from the 
 fields, herself the only person to pass outwards 
 at so late an hour of the afternoon. Directly 
 beyond the gate, the broad brow of the hill on 
 the edge of which Bar is built was covered in 
 all directions by what had once been woods. 
 At the last threat of invasion, before bolting 
 their doors against the world, the Duke's towns- 
 men had cut down all the timber, partly to 
 supply themselves, in case of siege, with fire- 
 wood, partly to deprive their enemies of the 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 15 
 
 same useful stores. Some years had passed since 
 then, and along each side of the road brushwood 
 had sprung up in the neglected coppices, making 
 a thin shadow from the sun and a delusive 
 shelter from the rain. The floor of this unim- 
 pressive woodland, in which there grew but 
 little grass or moss, was gemmed at that season 
 of the year with a lank profusion of spring 
 flowers. Rosahe stepped out of the deserted 
 road, and gathered a great bunch of grape 
 hyacinths and lilies of the valley; it was a new 
 thing for her to care for flowers, for which 
 Narcisse, on his part, had a veritable passion. 
 She had learned to gather them, at first, for his 
 sake, and had grown to love them for their 
 own. 
 
 It was not a common thing for women to 
 venture outside the walls of the town so near 
 to nightfall, and if the family of Rosalie had 
 not been wearied of restraining her, she would 
 have been forbidden to do so. There was little 
 danger, perhaps, yet wandering soldiers or 
 
1 6 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 vagabonds might have annoyed her, if Narcisse 
 had not always conducted or preceded her on 
 these occasions. The spot was so close to the 
 town that a louder turmoil than usual on the 
 rough pavement would come in diffused murmur 
 to their ears as they stood there. For Rosalie's 
 part, she would have been well content to have 
 leaned, in full publicity, over the stall at which 
 Narcisse was working, and to have counted that 
 enough of a lover's meeting. But his romantic 
 and more imaginative temperament had insisted 
 upon greater solitude than this. 
 
 Here the solitude was indeed absolute ; so near 
 as the town was, it yet seemed as distant as those 
 mystical cities of God which a man may seek 
 for ever and not have sight of. The point at 
 which the lovers stayed or met was just where 
 the road from the town crossed the path from 
 Sermaize to Nan5ois-le-Petit, a path little 
 trodden, except, in high noon, by a few pedlars 
 or friars. At this spot a huge crucifix was 
 raised, the post of which had sunken a little 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 17 
 
 in the loose soil and now leaned forward, as 
 though its heavy arms and the terrible load they 
 bore would descend upon the passer-by. The 
 image was of colossal size, rudely painted, with 
 lamentable dripping clusters of red hair, and a 
 crimson trickle of blood drawn like a thread 
 from the wounds in the crossed feet. It had 
 been carved, before the Italian taste came into 
 the country, by some rough carpenter of 
 Lorraine, who designed no more than to imitate, 
 as well as he might, some horror of the wars 
 that continued to haunt his memory. 
 
 It was strange that these lovers should choose 
 the shadow of this awful symbol for their tryst- 
 ing-place, yet, so complete is the indifference 
 born of habit, the phantasmal or even the 
 religious horror of this cross never affected 
 either of them. To each it was merely a 
 landmark, unless when Narcisse, unwontedly 
 professional, might chance to remark on the 
 clumsy workmanship of the limbs or speculate 
 on the probability that, after some heavy night 
 
 B 
 
1 8 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 of rain, the whole structure might be discovered 
 sprawhng across the roadway. 
 
 Out of the brushwood Rosalie emerged, at 
 the well-known spot, to find the solitude 
 absolutely unbroken. Narcisse had not come. 
 Where then could he be ? She perceived at 
 once that he had failed to keep his appointment. 
 After shutting up his workshop, he had gone— 
 whither ? Certainly not to the feet of the cross 
 at the high meeting of the roads. Rosalie felt 
 her whole body invaded by that physical sense 
 of distress which comes in youth only, and 
 solely to those who love not wisely, when they 
 are suddenly prevented from seeing the one 
 they have been expecting to see. It is a 
 disappointment so transitory, a grief so puerile 
 and unreasonable, so inconceivable to all who 
 are not suffering from the very malady of love, 
 that we are apt to think of it as trifling. But to 
 the sufferer it is absurdly poignant, and as 
 overwhelming as the irrational despair of a little 
 child. In this town of Bar, with all the quiet 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 19 
 
 world so close about them, occasions for such 
 disappointment were rare. RosaHe stood, stark 
 and cold, under the coarse painted feet of the 
 huge image, and her brain refused to act. But, 
 all around her, the evening murmur of the wind 
 began to rise in the broad woodland, whispering, 
 sighing, grumbling. The light grew less in the 
 west. She was alone, she was in despair, and 
 she fled from her solitude. 
 
 That brief flight was an agony. Down all 
 the open alleys of the wood came chuckling 
 sounds, rapid advance of unseen feet, shock of 
 muffled wings, the infinite trembling and gasping 
 of beings without form or substance. Devils 
 probed the thin foliage of the lime-trees to reach 
 her, devils leaned on one hand and laughed at 
 her from the entrance of rabbit-holes. It grew 
 and grew, till the whole air and earth became a 
 vast imbroglio of annoyance and temptation, and 
 at length, as she fled, she heard behind her the 
 great crucified figure from the cross itself 
 pursuing her, limping after her on its pierced 
 
20 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 and naked feet, stretching to seize her with 
 those coarse arms from which the blood was 
 trickling. In vain she tried to console herself, 
 to murmur a prayer. All she could feel was 
 that God and Narcisse had alike forsaken her, 
 that she was given up to devils, abandoned 
 within that spiritual riot of the night to which 
 no girl in her senses should ever venture to 
 resign herself. 
 
 It was all over in three minutes. Once in 
 sight of the open doorway in the southern gate, 
 her supernatural fears gave way to a mere 
 paroxysm of anger and of jealousy. Where 
 could Narcisse be ? With what other girl ? 
 Crudely and stupidly enough, but irresistibly, 
 that question rose for the first time in her spirit, 
 and settled itself to stay there. Who her rival 
 could be, whether there were not a dozen 
 reasons of a natural sort to account for the 
 disappearance of Narcisse, she scarcely asked 
 herself. The corroding acid of jealousy, a 
 hquid fire, began to steal through her veins. 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 21 
 
 With it came the determination to punish him. 
 She would not look for him ; she would not 
 even take the street which would bring her 
 close to his house ; she would go home, and 
 wait for his explanations. That he would 
 explain, and that she would promptly forgive 
 him, were not matters of doubt. 
 
 She paused at the door of the church, and 
 went in, to compose herself a little before pre- 
 senting herself to the women of her household. 
 Inside the church it was almost dark. A young 
 priest was moving in front of the altar, instruct- 
 ing two acolytes in the lighting of the tall 
 candles. One by one the faint yellow stars of 
 light appeared, waking still fainter silvery reflec- 
 tions among the holy vessels. Around the 
 aisles, stopping at each of the sacred stations, 
 a little girl was wandering, belated and inatten- 
 tive, doing her enforced round of prayers after 
 tardy confession. Rosalie sat and smelt the 
 light odour of incense, while her heart sank 
 more and more to its normal motion, and her 
 
22 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 eyes grew clear after her dizzy racing. Round 
 her, behind new stone screens of Renaissance 
 design, httle in keeping with the Gothic splendour 
 of the church, were half seen and half divined 
 the gorgeous tombs of all the Dukes of Bar. 
 In the furthest chapel, only the eastern wall of 
 which was within sight, she could just perceive 
 the corner of the entablature of the most 
 magnificent of these monuments, that raised 
 by the widowed Duchess to Rene de Chalons. 
 As she was inattentively gazing in this direction, 
 a slight shadow seemed to flutter across the 
 chapel, to subside, to move again ; and at length 
 the hand and arm of Narcisse, raised with a 
 wide gesture familiar in him, appeared for a 
 moment in the chapel. 
 
 To whom was he gesticulating ? Who was 
 his companion ? In the happiness of finding 
 him thus unexpectedly these questions scarcely 
 troubled her serenity. The priest and the boys 
 were gone now, leaving the altar flashing as 
 with a pendant curtain of stars. RosaHe rose 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 23 
 
 discreetly, and crept ^towards the chapel of Rend. 
 She would, at least, satisfy herself whose com- 
 pany it was that her lover preferred to hers. 
 When she reached the doorway, Narcisse was 
 standing motionless, in a reverie, and he was 
 alone. 
 
 In the centre of the chapel rose the amazing 
 monument which Ligier Richier had made at 
 the command of Anne of Lorraine. Of the 
 florid accessories which supported the central 
 figure, little could be seen in the fading light ; 
 that and that alone arrested the eye. Carefully 
 carved out of two blocks of the creamy white 
 stone of St. Mihiel, and relieved against an 
 ermine-dotted shroud of black basalt, a statue 
 of the skeleton of the soldier-prince, whose 
 actual bones were growing green within the 
 tomb below, leaped into the Hght. At his own 
 special desire, the prince was represented not 
 as he was when he died, but as he would be 
 three years after his decease — that is to say, with 
 the osseous structure still lightly covered, here 
 
24 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 and there, as by veils of gauze and webs of 
 gossamer, by the last filaments of skin and flesh. 
 The attitude which the sculptor had chosen was 
 so singular and so imaginative that the design 
 was preserved from much of what would else 
 have been grotesque and hideous in its com- 
 position. With the legs close together, the 
 body drawn up and the left hand outstretched 
 above the head to its full length, the whole 
 figure seemed vitalised and elastic. It was 
 Death itself, but in an ecstasy of life. In the 
 uplifted hand was held a small box of chased 
 silver, empty at present, but destined to receive 
 the heart of Anne of Lorraine upon the decease 
 of that princess ; the empty right hand was 
 pressed hard to the ribs of the skeleton, to the 
 spot where that other faithful heart had beaten 
 so loudly. 
 
 Familiar as Rosalie was with this statue, it 
 seemed to her this evening possessed of unusual 
 distinction and beauty. The silence of Narcisse 
 intimidated her; she dared not speak so loudly 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 25 
 
 as to attract his attention. Through all her 
 flight and agony, she had preserved her posy 
 of lilies of the valley and grape hyacinths, and 
 she held them still, hot and flagged, in her 
 strong hand. She now ventured forward, and 
 laid them in a heap between the feet of the 
 skeleton. At this, Narcisse finally looked round, 
 and gazed at her with a gentle glance of surprise. 
 She had expected excuses, a hurried series of 
 explanations and exculpations. Instead of this, 
 with his wide gesture, he captured her shoulders 
 in his arm, and drawing her softly to him, con- 
 tinued his rapt examination of the articulations 
 of the statue. 
 
 Totally pacified, all her troubles, as it were, 
 washed away by a warm tide of satisfaction, 
 she let her head lean on his neck in silence. 
 At last, as if delicately to draw him down 
 from heights unattainable to her ignorance, she 
 pulled a curling lock of his reddish hair with 
 her lips. For only answer, he lifted one lily 
 and one grape hyacinth from the heap at the 
 
26 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 skeleton's feet, and stuck them in his shirt. 
 This broke the spell, and still leaning there, in 
 the growing darkness, she asked : 
 
 " Why did you not come ? " 
 
 " Come whither ? " he asked again. 
 
 " Nay," she pouted, " you know well enough — 
 to our meeting-place under our Lord of the 
 cross ways." 
 
 " It was never in my mind," he answered, 
 with a simplicit}'- so perfect that she was finally 
 disarmed. " I worked on late to-night, and 
 when I locked up the booth, I turned in here." 
 
 " To pray ? " she asked. 
 
 " No," he said ; " to look again at some of 
 Master Richier's work. I wanted to be sure " 
 
 " What did you want to be sure about ? " 
 
 But again Narcisse, though her arms were 
 round his body, had passed from her in thought. 
 He was curiously observing, with a knit brow, 
 how the ribs were joined to the sides of the 
 statue, in a series of bold hoops or notches, not 
 indeed closely studied from Nature, but full of 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 27 
 
 practical cleverness. It was some time before 
 they spoke again. Rosalie was not very skilful 
 in understanding what she felt. Yet she could 
 not but be dimly conscious that the broken 
 appointment under the cross was so small a thing 
 to Narcisse that he could not comprehend its 
 importance to her. To her the remainder of the 
 day was nothing ; to him the meeting was but 
 an agreeable episode with which art or business 
 might have to interfere. 
 
 After their rendezvous, it was never she, but 
 always he, who noted the passing of the hour, 
 and suggested, in a placid way, that they ought 
 to return. But, on this occasion, it was RosaUe 
 who made the first movement to be gone. Out- 
 side, upon the steps of the church, the twihght 
 was still surprisingly strong ; and Rosahe, who 
 had counted on a parting kiss in the darkness, 
 drew back, a Httle abashed, from her own thought. 
 They parted, smiUng, with complete decorum. 
 
II 
 
 NARCISSE went back in the fading light to his 
 house, turned the key in the lock, ascended the 
 echoing staircase, and let himself into the large 
 chamber which had now for two years been his 
 home. He hghted a small fire on the hearth, and 
 crouched beside it till the place was quite dark 
 save where the flame flickered. He brought out 
 his food, and at first left it on the floor, uncooked ; 
 then at length returned to it, and prepared it, 
 making a hasty and uncomfortable meal. Thrown 
 across the bed, there lay a rude sort of southern 
 zither, a small instrument, shaped like a heart 
 and strung with eight strings. Nothing of this 
 kind had ever been seen at Bar until Narcisse 
 brought it with him, and he was shy of producing 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 29 
 
 it, as it seemed in some sort the token of his 
 alien fortunes. Now, as he rose from before the 
 fire, and paced to and fro in the great empty 
 room, he snatched the zither from his bed, and 
 ever and anon struck upon it a certain air of his 
 own country, always the same. There would 
 have been something mysterious to a stranger in 
 this huge, four-square apartment, dimly lighted 
 from the hearth, in which a single gigantic 
 shadow leaped and danced about the walls, and a 
 single fitful tune wailed from an unknown 
 instrument. If the movement and the sound 
 seemed singular, they only the more fitly illus- 
 trated the curious agitation that fluttered in the 
 veins of Narcisse. 
 
 At last his restlessness took him to the 
 window. The night was chilly and obscure. 
 No stars were visible; only, after long staring 
 out, he saw the dead, high line of the wall 
 beyond the garden, and a few vague masses of a 
 blacker blackness which were plane-trees shiver- 
 ing in the wind. As he gazed, a crazy wish 
 
3o The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 came into his head, a desire to throw his window 
 open, to strike upon his zither, and as he struck 
 to wallc out upon the black night air, to skip, 
 playing all the while, from roof to roof across the 
 dim and twinkling streets, to enjoy a kind of 
 solitary sabbath dancing a little way above the 
 nocturnal town ; not precisely to soar or fly, but 
 to float, like a loose bladder in the wind, bumping 
 from roof to roof ; or like the little painted angels, 
 with trumpets and long robes, that play on 
 rebecks hung round their necks, and float about 
 at martyrdoms just out of the executioner's reach. 
 None of these images, all of which passed through 
 his mind, exactly interpreted the wish of Narcisse, 
 which had in it a sort of lawlessness as well, a 
 kind of revolt against the restrictions of civic 
 manners, a desire to be out in the darkness 
 on some innocent devil's errand. And then 
 he thought of the stories current of eccentric 
 men and women to whom in their solitude the 
 devil had come and bidden them fly with 
 him, to explore all the secret provinces of the 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 31 
 
 night. He shuddered, and turned from the 
 window. 
 
 But as he stood before the fire — his legs 
 strangely brilliant in the light, the polished edge 
 of the zither flashing like silver, the veins in 
 relief on his long white hands, yet his face in 
 complete darkness as though still under the 
 shadow of that satanic suggestion — a whole- 
 some thought occurred to him, and a memory 
 rushed back to his mind. He laid the zither 
 gently down upon the table, and prepared in haste 
 for a ceremony which had recalled itself to him. 
 He lighted a candle, and opened a clamped box 
 in which he kept his treasures. He changed 
 his working clothes for a blue cloth jacket which 
 revealed a white doublet underneath, and for the 
 close-fitting hosen which were then in fashion. 
 His graceful figure was well shown off by this 
 distinguished and modest dress. He had re- 
 collected that his friend, the Duke's trumpeter, 
 had a gala supper at his house that night, and 
 that he himself was expressly bidden to it. 
 
32 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 Out in the narrow dark lane the wind blew 
 cold. He wrapped his mantle closer round his 
 shoulders. The trumpeter lived in the lower 
 part of the town, but Narcisse made his way 
 first to his own booth under St. Maze. It was 
 all silent and doubly dark beneath the shadow of 
 the enormous minster. Not a sound vibrated 
 from the huge hollow shell that hummed so 
 often, with such a choral pulse, through the 
 long working hours of the day, murmuring 
 above and around him with the various services 
 of the church, and cheering him in his workshop 
 with a whisper of protection. Now the vast 
 building, looming through the night, seemed 
 dead and awful, the abode of unconsidered 
 terrors. Narcisse unlocked the booth, and 
 groped his way in. Sitting down at his work- 
 table, he felt about until he found some steel 
 springs and other mechanism ; without a candle, 
 gradually growing used to the darkness, he sat 
 in silence there for a long time, testing some 
 arrangement of these materials with his fingers. 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 33 
 
 He seemed to become absorbed in this odd 
 labour, and to forget that time was passing. 
 
 At last he rose suddenly, and put his work 
 away. Stealthily, as he had come, he left the 
 booth, crossed the dim Place on which rain was 
 by this time falling, and descended the rough 
 and twinkling street. The Trumpeter lived in 
 the house of his ancestors, an old construction, 
 built round a courtyard, and set close under the 
 wall of the Ducal palace, up into which, indeed, 
 a staircase led from the back of it. For genera- 
 tions past the same family had enjoyed this 
 same office at the little Court. Father had 
 taught son the mysterious art of blowing music 
 through tubes of brass and silver, and each 
 had handed down to his successor a richer 
 collection of instruments and a fuller code of 
 traditions. The present man had come young 
 to the honours of the trumpet, and he was 
 still unmarried, the very type of a jolly bachelor, 
 the most sociable of all the rich burgesses of 
 Bar. 
 
 c 
 
34 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 Narcisse was hesitating by which of the inner 
 doors to enter, since both seemed reverberating 
 with joUity, when that on the right hand burst 
 open, and a great dog, carrying half a fowl in 
 his mouth, rushed between the legs of the fresh 
 visitor, followed by a man's cap and a volley of 
 humorous abuse. Narcisse stood in the door- 
 way dazzled with the lights, bewildered with the 
 noise. 
 
 " Hah ! here he is at last ! Scoundrel, to be 
 so late ! The very dog has been anxious about 
 thee, and was carrying thee a bone when we all 
 thought, poor wretch, that he was stealing ! " 
 cried a hearty voice from the interior of the 
 room. 
 
 The scene that Narcisse had so suddenly 
 broken in upon was a lively one. Twelve or 
 thirteen persons of both sexes were seated on 
 benches round a narrow table, which was laden 
 with good things. A copper chandelier above 
 the door at which he was standing threw down 
 a yellow light over the group, and lent its aid 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 35 
 
 to two or three tall wax candles in bronze 
 candlesticks, which guttered in the night air 
 upon the table. 
 
 " Come in, come in, and shut the door ! " 
 shouted the host ; " come in, before the wax 
 drops down on your fine blue coat, and before 
 we have all caught a fever from the cold wind. 
 Come in, and sit you down here by me." 
 
 The room was richly furnished, and, as a 
 peculiarity of the house, the eye instantly sought 
 out the variety of curious tubes that hung by 
 leathern bandaliers from nails upon the walls. 
 The light, which was not strong anywhere, was 
 all concentrated upon the tablecloth and on the 
 faces that gathered around it, yet the brown 
 gleam of the walls was lit up with golden flashes 
 and sparkles on the strange instruments that 
 hung fantastically there. The young trumpeter 
 was exceedingly proud of this collection. Here 
 were not only the trumps and clarions of the 
 day, but grotesque and battered instruments of 
 a bygone time, the presence of which upon 
 
36 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 his walls testified to the antiquity of his family 
 in their profession. Here was a whole row of 
 bucines, those long, straight trumpets of bell- 
 metal, slowly opening to the end, which had 
 once been used for signals in camp, and even 
 now were occasionally blown in processions of 
 Ducal etiquette. Here were the curled and 
 slender horns of brass, with their bell over the 
 man's shoulder, sweet in tone as those on which 
 the minstrels of the Prince of Antioch blew 
 their swan-songs before the gates of Jerusalem. 
 
 At the moment that Narcisse entered, the 
 trumpeter had launched upon his favourite topic. 
 He started ever and anon from his chair to 
 exemplify the various sounds, the sharp and 
 resonant note of the graille, the solemn organ- 
 harmony of the araine, the piercing cry of the 
 clairon. He had just succeeded in persuading 
 Mercillat, the gunsmith, who did not love to be 
 made ridiculous, to put to his lips the ivory 
 mouthpiece of that huge leathern worm, with 
 its thin pipe of metal, which was called the 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 37 
 
 serpent, and in those late days had come to be 
 only blown in church. Mercillat puffed and 
 strained, but the tube hung inert, and not a 
 sound proceeded from it. When the gunsmith, 
 between blowing and fuming, was at the purple 
 verge of apoplexy, the trumpeter snatched the 
 instrument from him, touched it with his mouth, 
 and called forth a succession of notes so clear, 
 so piercingly sweet, that they seemed rather the 
 music of some mysterious bird in the forest than 
 of this uncouth coil of leather. 
 
 Delighted with his triumph, the glowing young 
 trumpeter hurried back to his seat at the top of 
 the table, and was descanting on the mysterious 
 virtues of the central piece in his collection, a 
 stained and beaten oliphant, or hunting-horn of 
 elephant's tusk, bound with bands of thin gold, 
 such a horn as Roland blew at Roncevaux, and 
 the very one, so he declared with an oath, from 
 which his sainted grandfather, long since with 
 God, sent such a blast at the battle of Vaudemont 
 that all the vanguard of the Emperor broke up 
 
38 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 and fled. As he sat and talked in his eager 
 way, Narcisse glanced sideways at him with 
 great content. He had long been strangely 
 drawn to this red-blooded, braggart child of the 
 Barrois, this genial and generous fellow, with 
 his handsome face and rich muscular frame that 
 seemed to burn with vitality. A very tender 
 comradeship had sprung up between these two 
 young men, so utterly unlike in temperament, 
 in nationality, in physique. The coarse jollity 
 of the people of the town commonly jarred upon 
 Narcisse, who could give them no change in this 
 their own currency; but as he sat here at the 
 feast to-night, the trumpeter's large hand, 
 brought emphatically, half caressingly, down 
 upon the knee of Narcisse, filled him with a 
 vague contentment of spirit, and seemed the 
 homely circumstance in all this alien drama. 
 
 But the inner door was flung open, and 
 another familiar face appeared. Carrying a large 
 open-work gridiron in her two hands, and laugh- 
 ing loudly, Rosalie hastened to the table, and 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 39 
 
 deposited the savoury results of her cookery on 
 a silver platter before their host. Famous for 
 her art in broiling meat after the favourite fashion 
 of the time, Rosalie had volunteered to prepare 
 for this laughing Esau and his friends the food 
 that their soul loved. She was greeted with a 
 cheer of applause, but as she rushed forwards, 
 she saw that Narcisse was there, and her good- 
 humour was complete. She took, as by right, 
 her place on the other side of him. The Trum- 
 peter was now magnificent indeed. With his 
 feathered hat upon his head, he carved the meat, 
 and as he pressed the finest bits upon guest 
 after guest, he dexterously handed the platter 
 with one hand, while he bowed with his hat in 
 the other, as he had seen the Duke do at cere- 
 monious dinners. The air was perfumed with 
 the delicate scent of the meat, and Rosalie's 
 masterpiece was divided amid a shower of com- 
 pliments and pleasantries. 
 
 With this savoury resumption of the feast, 
 the spirits of the company, which had been 
 
40 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 excellent before, rose to a very animated pitch. 
 The flushed serving-boy, who made rather a 
 rough but an exceedingly conscientious substitute 
 for the pages at supper in the castle overhead, 
 had enough to do in keeping every one supplied 
 with wine. His boots clapping hither and 
 thither on the floor, he seized the tall, narrow 
 glasses as the drink grew low in them, tossed 
 their heel-taps into a basin, and refilled the 
 glasses from jugs standing in a silver cooler on 
 the floor. Such a spirit of good-humour pre- 
 vailed that the flesher's wife forebore to scold 
 the lad when, in his excess of zeal, he sprinkled 
 her sleeve with wine-drops. It was a special 
 vintage, at least three years old, a pink wine 
 with an odour of the grape-flower hanging about 
 it, delicious and innocent-seeming, but headier 
 than an inexperienced tongue might have con- 
 ceived. 
 
 The air grew hot, the candles guttered their wax 
 down the flutings of the tall candlesticks. The 
 manners of the company became a little relaxed. 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 41 
 
 Lucie was seen to hold a glass of wine to the 
 lips of a young metal-caster, in whom she was 
 believed to take a more than sisterly interest, and 
 whose hands seemed at the moment to be engaged 
 elsewhere. Her husband's back was turned to 
 her, for he was burning a nut at the end of a fork 
 for the delectation of two girls, who laughed over- 
 rosily, with louder merriment than the jest 
 demanded. The jokes began to grow less 
 pointed, the allusions more embarrassing. The 
 trumpeter, as a watchful host, saw that the 
 moment had arrived for a division. 
 
 " Bring in the hanap," he called to the serving- 
 boy, and every one turned with interest in the 
 direction of the door. The boy came back, his 
 eyes starting out of his head, overwhelmed with 
 the weight of the goblet and the dignity of 
 his office. The hanap proved to be a barbaric 
 cup of silver- gilt, ornamented with old-fashioned 
 enamel-work in red and white, filled with spiced 
 ale. It was put down before the trumpeter. 
 
 "There has been blood in here," said the 
 
42 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 trumpeter solemnly, as he took off the cover ; 
 and although almost every one at table knew the 
 familiar tale, the refreshing shudder that he 
 wished to awaken ran round. There was silence 
 at once where all had been so boisterously 
 noisy. 
 
 " This hanap," he went on, specially address- 
 ing Narcisse and Rosalie, who had not, perhaps, 
 heard the story before, " has had blood in it. 
 It belonged to my great-uncle Remi, who was 
 trumpeter to the Duke's great-grandfather. He 
 was a mad fellow, it seems, and one night when 
 he was following the Duke with all his baggage 
 at the siege of Toul, he filled this goblet with 
 wine and threw in a gold piece. Any one who 
 could drain off that at a draught and come down 
 to the gold should have the coin. Several young 
 men tried, and failed ; there was still wine over 
 the gold piece. At last a boy took up the hanap 
 full and drank, drank, drank till there was only 
 a little red drop around the piece of money. 
 The other fellows were so mad, that one of them 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 43 
 
 struck him on the head as he was grinning, and 
 his blood trickled so deep into the hanap that the 
 gold piece was covered again, and he died after- 
 wards of the blow. It used to make my grand- 
 uncle laugh till the tears came into his eyes to 
 tell that tale." 
 
 As they had so often done before, the guests 
 laughed aloud, some of them a little obsequiously, 
 at this rough old jest. Rosalie smiled, as in 
 courtesy bound, though the story scarcely added 
 to her gusto as the hanap went round from 
 mouth to mouth, and each guest, standing up, 
 drank the trumpeter's health in it, with success 
 to the noble art of trumpeting. When Narcisse's 
 turn came, he alone could neither laugh nor smile. 
 " There has been blood in it ! " rang still in his 
 ears, and he scarcely touched the drink. Though 
 he sat between his friend and his sweetheart, he 
 was ill attuned for the evening's mirth ; never- 
 theless, he tried to answer with civil animation 
 such few remarks as were directed to him. But 
 the feast was now ended, and the serving-boy 
 
44 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 ran round the table with his jug and basin, 
 pouring water over the fingers of each guest in 
 turn. It was the sign for rising from table, and 
 when this ceremony was concluded, all stood up 
 and gathered into knots. 
 
 " What shall we do ? " said every one to his 
 neighbour. One man suggested a game of bowls 
 in the alley, and shouted to the trumpeter to 
 have his torches lighted. But one of the girls 
 went to the door, and the night seemed cold and 
 windy. "What shall we do?" and the host 
 began to grow anxious lest his guests should lose 
 their gust of cheerfulness. 
 
 " Let us dance," cried Lucie, and the metal- 
 caster echoed her wish, his arm already stealing 
 round her waist. But no one had prepared the 
 floor, nor even sprinkled sweet herbs upon it. 
 The table was cleared to the side of the room, 
 and a desultory couple or two spun round. But 
 the general wish did not seem to incline to this 
 informal dancing. 
 
 " What shall we do ? " said the flesher's 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 45 
 
 wife. " Let us play at the king who cannot 
 lie." 
 
 " Yes ! yes ! " cried all the girls ; " but then 
 the king may be a queen ? " 
 
 This was agreed to, and the lots were drawn. 
 Whoever drew the marked stick should be 
 king or queen, as the case might be. To 
 his manifest vexation, the trumpeter drew the 
 stick. He could not be king in his own 
 house, and he begged leave to nominate another 
 monarch. 
 
 " Yes ! yes ! " they shouted ; and then, to 
 almost every one's disappointment, it was Nar- 
 cisse whom he named. 
 
 " What must I do ? " said the sculptor, who 
 alone of those present had never seen the game 
 played. 
 
 "You must wear a cloth crown on your 
 head, carry a long spoon for a sceptre, and go 
 stalking round the room. When you tap any 
 one on the shoulder, he or she must ask you 
 a question before you can count ten. If the 
 
4-6 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 question is asked in time, you must answer it 
 openly and truly." 
 
 A sort of turban was rapidly wound up to 
 serve for crown, and Narcisse stepped forth on 
 his comic travels with a very dignified air. There 
 were squeaks of hope and dread when he 
 approached a group of girls ; as he passed the 
 men they had the most stolid air of indifference. 
 Every one, however, was preparing a question, 
 and not unfrequently with so much care, that 
 when the sudden tap of spoon to shoulder came 
 the elaborate sentence would not out. For this 
 failure there was a forfeit. Such questions as 
 were delivered in season were mostly of a very 
 trivial and obvious kind. A few were crudely 
 coarse, giving occasion to the more decorous of 
 the party to glance upon the ground, and merely 
 echo the roar of mirth with a titter. Good- 
 nature reigned, and there was no real intention 
 of offence. 
 
 Narcisse had skilfully nonplussed several of 
 the would-be wits, and had answered adroitly 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 47 
 
 when he had to answer. But Eudoxie's question 
 was : 
 
 " Of whom art thou thinking ? " 
 
 Rosalie looked self-conscious, and then puzzled 
 and slightlj' vexed, for the answer was : 
 
 " Of the most silent of her sex." 
 
 It was impossible so to describe the talkative 
 Rosalie, and half a dozen frank voices at once 
 assured her that she was not in the sculptor's 
 thoughts. She was ready to be angry, but he 
 looked across to her with such an open counte- 
 nance of friendly merriment, that she joined in 
 the laugh against herself. 
 
 " Thou art sworn on thy sceptre to speak 
 the truth, Narcisse," was all she said in repro- 
 bation. 
 
 The metal-caster was tapped next, and had 
 his question ready. 
 
 " I see the future in my mind's eye. What is 
 it ? " he asked. 
 
 " There is blood in it," said Narcisse mechani- 
 cally, before he had time to think. < 
 
48 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 The trumpeter was understood to be exempt, 
 but while he peered into a cupboard to bring 
 forth some bottle as thick as himself, his broad 
 back was smartly handled with the bowl of the 
 spoon. 
 
 Busy as he was and distracted, his wits were 
 ready. Before the ten numbers had left the lips 
 of Narcisse he had blurted out : 
 
 " Foul play ! But — in what company dost 
 thou best like to be ? " 
 
 " With no man's maid who shall be all men's 
 mistress," replied Narcisse, and then blushed 
 very red with anxiety, for he thought — as we 
 always do if we speak in riddles of our secrets 
 — that all must guess what he meant. The 
 company stared blankly, but the old cordwainer 
 in the corner, with many noddings of his long 
 grey beard, gave it to be understood that he saw 
 the jest, and that in faith it was a mighty true 
 and pregnant saying. 
 
 The only other question and reply that will bear 
 to be repeated were given a little later on in the 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 49 
 
 game. At length, when almost all were tapped, 
 Narcisse succeeded in suddenly capturing Rosalie. 
 She had her challenge ready. 
 
 " Where hast thou been most happy ? " 
 " There where I have followed my fancy," he 
 replied. 
 
 The company had enough of these enigmas 
 and of the game. The king took off the crown, 
 which hampered his overheated forehead, and 
 with his broad gesture he laid his sceptre aside. 
 There was a general feeling that another man, 
 one more truly of their kin, would have made a 
 merrier monarch, and have played in a lustier 
 fashion, with more whim and farce. But no 
 one spoke rudely, because of Rosalie and of 
 their host, and because Mercillat did not ap- 
 prove of any disrespect to his best craftsman. 
 There was fresh discussion now as to what was 
 to be done, and the young fellows clamoured for 
 music. The fiddles were pulled out of their 
 cases, a ring formed round the performers, and 
 the master of the house was persuaded to take 
 
 D 
 
50 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 part with one of his resonant curled tubes of metal 
 in the concert. But something seemed missing. 
 
 " You miss a shrill kind of note in the har- 
 mony," said the gunsmith; "'tis too loud and 
 brassy. What you lack is the part of some- 
 thing tingling. I know not what you call it, in 
 the art of music, but I would fain have a cricket 
 in the corner." 
 
 "The cricket would be Gerbillard's lute — 
 what do you call it ? That is gay and light, 
 with a twang like a wire." 
 
 " Where is your — your ? " said Rosalie, 
 
 for no one in Bar was easy with the name of 
 the strange southern instrument. " Where is 
 it, Narcisse ? " 
 
 " I will fetch it," he said, and started to do 
 so. At the door he glanced back for a moment 
 into the room. The candles, still but half 
 burned, were crumbling with the heat, and 
 giving the serving-lad work enough to do in 
 snuffing them. Ranged behind the players, 
 they threw odd shadows on the wall, profiles of 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 51 
 
 instruments between the knees and in the arms 
 of young men, gigantic phantom elbows that 
 sped up and down as the possessors of these 
 lutes tuned the strings. There was a babble of 
 loud voices, treble and bass, the shuffle of feet, 
 the squeak of the fiddle-bows, the full tide of 
 noise in a company that is at its ease and has 
 lost all traces of restraint. The candle-light 
 made warmer the hues of all those flushed faces, 
 drew out the colours of the Barrois gala-dresses. 
 Narcisse glanced once more. The trumpeter 
 had passed about some hospitable duty into an 
 inner room. Rosalie's back was turned from 
 the door, and she was in dispute with her sister 
 Lucie upon some local matter. It rushed upon 
 Narcisse as with a flood that this was Bar, 
 his lodging, not his home — the life in which he 
 was a pilgrim and a stranger. His absence 
 would not make any difference to any one. He 
 opened the door stealthily, and turned his back 
 to the riot and the light, the shriek of the music 
 and the perfumes in the girls' hair. In a 
 
§2 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 moment he was alone in the darkness, in the 
 cold air of the courtyard, under a dim vault of 
 colourless immensity. 
 
 Something rubbed against his legs. It was 
 the dog, long ago tired of its enforced exile from 
 the warmth and food, but still slightly conscious 
 of an evil reputation. As clearly as it could, it 
 explained to Narcisse that it was all a mis- 
 understanding about that fowl, and glanced 
 around, as dogs will do, as if inviting a personal 
 inspection of its innocence. Drizzling rain was 
 falling, but when Narcisse was out in the 
 dull, blank street, he was still conscious of the 
 dog, a whitish mass, moving just in front of his 
 steps. He went back to the house, and let the 
 dog in, opening for a moment a door which let 
 out a tide of light and noise. He glanced back 
 as he left a second time, and saw the window 
 hastily unshuttered. Rosalie's face appeared 
 dark and flat, with an aureole of candle-light in 
 the edges of her hair. She had heard the door 
 reopen, and had fancied that already Narcisse 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 53 
 
 might be returning with the zither. Although 
 she had been so undemonstrative while he was 
 there, she had no sooner turned to find him 
 gone, than her heart began to beat out in wave 
 upon wave of longing for his presence. She 
 was already fretting at his delay, though he had 
 scarcely left her a moment before. But she 
 saw nothing in the darkness, not even the smile 
 he gave her as he fled away into the wetness of 
 the night, and she turned back to bear as well 
 as she could the tedium of waiting for him. 
 
 She waited and waited, but he did not come. 
 His absence was unnoticed by the rest of the 
 company, for the trumpeter had discovered 
 among his treasures a little old stringed instru- 
 ment easily tuned, which completely fulfilled the 
 purpose for which Narcisse's zither was required. 
 An hour went by, with a succession of those 
 short pieces, so sweet and positive, all gurglings 
 and silver prattle, of which the chamber music 
 of the day consisted. Once the door had opened 
 and Rosalie had half risen from her seat in her 
 
54 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 impatience, but it was only the Abbe, bringing 
 his viola to swell the concert. He came in 
 smiling, and was greeted with respectful warmth; 
 he had judiciously waited until the turmoil of the 
 feast had declined, and until music had some- 
 what etherealised the boisterousness of his flock. 
 
 " Where is your Narcisse ? " said one of the 
 girls to her, insolently. 
 
 Rosalie scarcely glanced in her direction, and 
 then, with admirable coolness, murmured : 
 
 " Eh ? Oh ! he went more than an hour 
 ago. 
 
 " But why does he not come back ? " 
 
 " He did not mean to come back," Rosalie 
 coldly replied. " He said good-night to me 
 under his voice, not to disturb the company." 
 
 In her heart she was asking herself what it 
 was that had happened to Narcisse, and who 
 could thus have enchanted him. 
 
Ill 
 
 Next morning the sunlight was brightly suf- 
 fused through a pearly firmament of broken 
 cloud. Rosalie, pausing in the course of her 
 household work, stopped for a moment at the 
 doorway to gaze up the street in the clear air. 
 There was no excuse for her to meddle with 
 Narcisse at his business thus early in the day, 
 yet she could not resist glancing in his direction. 
 The shop was out of sight, hidden by a buttress 
 of the church, but her attention was attracted by 
 a point of intense vermilion colour against the 
 grey church wall in front of her lover's booth; 
 this red object was absolutely motionless, and 
 below it the sunlight fell on a stripe of golden 
 hue. Her curiosity was excited, and she could 
 
§6 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 not resist stepping out into the Place, and 
 wandering a few paces upwards towards the 
 church. 
 
 The mystery was easily explained. The 
 trumpeter, with a scarlet feather in his dark 
 green velvet cap, had been chatting with Narcisse 
 at his workshop, and was now being induced to 
 stand at a little distance in profile, to serve as a 
 model. Drawn onwards by her inquisitive mood, 
 Rosalie passed the steps of St. Maze, and turn- 
 ing the corner found herself in front of the little 
 booth where Narcisse was seated, his brows 
 somewhat bent, sketching from his friend the 
 trumpeter. A rough lump of red wax was piled 
 on the board at his side, and with his long supple 
 fingers, by aid of the little boxwood spatula that 
 modellers use, he was making a profile head for 
 the clasp of a belt. There was not a word said. 
 The trumpeter nodded as he saw the girl 
 approach, but did not disturb a single muscle of 
 his face. Narcisse greeted her, out of his full 
 grey eyes, with a look of discreet affection, and 
 
The Secret of Narcisse ^j 
 
 motioned that she should lean, out of eye-shot, 
 on the other side of his table. The sketching 
 went on in silence, until Narcisse, swinging 
 backwards a moment, came up out of his trance 
 of composition, like a diver out of the depths of 
 the sea, and regained consciousness of the con- 
 dition of things. 
 
 He glanced at Rosalie, who was watching 
 him, and then at the trumpeter, who was still 
 admirably rigid, gazing away at right angles, in 
 an attitude of studied and exaggerated grace, 
 perfectly immovable. A very strange notion 
 passed through the sculptor's brain. He con- 
 templated his two visitors with a sort of critical 
 attention. The trumpeter, a good fellow if ever 
 a good fellow breathed, was a handsome specimen 
 of the Barrois race. His copious dark brown 
 hair stood out in curly clouds under his close 
 cap ; his countenance was perfectly handsome, 
 except that the muscles of his cheeks were 
 already slightly relaxed with the exercise of his 
 profession. His thick neck, hairy to the nape, 
 
58 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 with its very white skin, already showed signs of 
 the coarseness which would presently invade the 
 whole of his comely person. But in this, the 
 close of his youth, he was still a magnificent 
 specimen of his kind. So, Narcisse reflected 
 in a moment, was Rosalie — alike in colour, in 
 texture, in temperament^Barrois both of them, 
 of the purest water. Would it not have been 
 better, more seemly, he said to himself, in this 
 flash of odd emotion, that these two should 
 belong to one another than that he should come 
 between them, he with his foreign nature, his 
 totally distinct physical characteristics ? As this 
 idea passed through his brain, he glanced at each 
 of them, and he smiled. 
 
 He smiled — to see how little either of them 
 seemed desirous of any rearrangement of their 
 relations. The trumpeter, who had borne the 
 constrained position and monumental stillness of 
 a model for so long a time without a murmur, 
 supported by the glorious sedative of vanity, had 
 now discovered that the sitting was over, and 
 
The Secret o( Narcisse 59 
 
 edging closer to the booth, was awkwardly 
 endeavouring to catch sight of the result, the 
 waxen sketch half concealed by the hand of 
 Narcisse. In an ecstasy of self-study, he had 
 not found a glance to spare for Rosalie ; it was 
 obvious that for him she and her large beauty did 
 not so much as exist. Nor was she more 
 conscious of the trumpeter. As Narcisse glanced 
 in her direction, he caught, thrown full at him- 
 self, that fiery, tender gaze of hers which often 
 troubled him, so little did he feel able to respond 
 to the self-abandonment it hinted at. At least, 
 he smiled to acknowledge, he had no cause to lie 
 awake at night tortured by jealousy of his good 
 friend, the trumpeter. And now, gaily rising 
 to fetch some other tools from the back of the 
 shop, he drove both his visitors away, threaten- 
 ing that they should feel the weight of his 
 hammer if they loitered there wasting his time 
 any longer. Rosalie fled down the Place, as if 
 for her life, laughing aloud. The trumpeter 
 made a lunge at the sketch of himself, caught it, 
 
6o The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 lovingly contemplated it, and returned it, with 
 the prints of his finger-tips deeply set in the 
 edges of the red wax. 
 
 " Devil that thou art," he said, " thou hast 
 given me the snout of a swine." 
 
 " Pray to St. Maze thou mayst never see thy 
 ugly muzzle from the side," answered Narcisse. 
 
 Whereupon there followed hot horse-play, to 
 and fro, across the booth table, and then the 
 trumpeter strode off, his vermilion feather 
 dancing a saraband in the breeze. Left alone, 
 Narcisse settled to fresh work, adroitly twisting 
 the iron wire before him into coils and tendrils, 
 the sharp rap of his hammer ever and anon 
 ringing out in the silence of the morning, as he 
 flattened the surface of a form he had secured. 
 But there was no other sound from the work- 
 shop. The townspeople were as well accustomed 
 to hearing trills of only half-intelhgible southern 
 song proceed from behind the buttress of the 
 church, as to hear, from his ivory cage, the 
 piping of the Abbe's famous greenfinch. Nar- 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 6i 
 
 cisse had a trained and effective tenor voice, not 
 strong, but held well under control, and it was 
 his habit to sing continuously as he sat at work. 
 To-day, however, he was silent. It was not 
 that he was unhappy. On the contrary, his face 
 expressed a species of eagerness and even ela- 
 tion, but he was restless. So preoccupied did 
 he become, that he was convinced at length that 
 to stay longer in the workshop was useless. 
 
 From the inner wall he took down a gun that 
 Mercillat had given him, and threw his brown 
 cloak across his shoulders. As was his custom 
 when his head became too hot to guide his 
 hands, he locked up the booth and went down 
 to the river-meadows to see what luck he might 
 have in shooting. There was little to be seen 
 at first, but presently, in an alder-swamp close 
 to the stream, he bagged a brace of snipe. He 
 missed another cock-bird, and it rose, squeaking 
 and zigzagging, in the air, before taking its 
 straight course out of all possible gunshot. He 
 followed it, aimlessly, his mind all the time 
 
62 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 reverting mechanically to something which lay 
 heavily upon it. By degrees, though he found 
 no more snipe, his sharp walk along the oozing 
 edges of the water-meadows cleared the current 
 of his thoughts. It was not the habit of that 
 age to observe in any very conscious way the 
 features of landscape, but perhaps those at the 
 feet of the traveller were more real to his atten- 
 tion than the stars and mountain-tops which 
 engage our restless modern thought. Four 
 hundred years earlier St. Bernard of Clairvaux 
 had been able to ride all day along the shores 
 of the Lake of Geneva, without noticing that 
 there was a lake. This was no longer possible, 
 perhaps, yet Narcisse would scarcely have been 
 able to say why the glowing fields, laced with 
 little grey streams and edged with water-flowers, 
 affected him as they did. It was really a result 
 of association, it was the sentiment of youth 
 revived. 
 
 He began to think of those southern fields 
 where he had wandered years ago with boys 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 63 
 
 of his own age. Giles, with the mole on his 
 lip ; Aribert ; the boy with the large ears — 
 what was his name ? It was he, the fellow with 
 the ears, who had such a clever way of getting 
 barbel out of the river-pools. Narcisse wondered 
 if there were barbel in this river that flowed 
 down under the citadel of Bar, And Aribert — 
 whom he beat for stealing the big knife, Nar- 
 cisse's father's hunting-knife. Did he ever make 
 that up to Aribert ? No doubt he did ; if not, 
 what matter? How long ago it all seemed, 
 how vague, with intense clear spots, like a 
 picture that has been smudged all over, and 
 carefully filled in here and there. Giles — yes ! 
 he was one of the spaces that was most highly 
 finished. With Giles he had never quarrelled ; 
 even when they fought together with fists, it 
 was all in the way of comradeship. And what 
 had become of Giles ? Gone to be a soldier in 
 somebody's wars, no doubt ; shot down, perhaps, 
 some rainy evening, by an arquebuse from 
 behind a stack of wheat, when he was so tired 
 
64 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 with the day's long march that he had no power 
 left to struggle for his life. Some story of that 
 kind, commonplace and likely enough in those 
 days, Narcisse seemed to remember. 
 
 The days of his later youth, down there in 
 the flat south country, where the broad river 
 sank so shallow in the summer that one could 
 ford it, of them he remembered less. Nothing 
 seemed very clear, until the magical hour when 
 the great and mysterious artist, Ligier Richier, 
 had come riding through the village, and, stop- 
 ping to ask the lad a question, had noticed the 
 mechanical toy he was framing on his knees. 
 Suddenly, imperiously almost, he had carried Nar- 
 cisse off with him, seating him on the saddle-bow 
 in front of one of his own servants, capturing this 
 native talent for his own purposes, as the pirates 
 of the Bey of Tunis steal good Christian 'prentices 
 while they stroll on the sea-shore. Patiently 
 and gently, bending his arrogant will to train 
 this bewildered southerner, the Lorraine sculptor 
 had developed to its highest pitch the skilful 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 65 
 
 hands and clear imitative brain, producing at last 
 a replica of one side of himself which just fell 
 short of genius. Then had come, on Richier's 
 part, the sense of vexation at the limitations of 
 the pupil. Doing so much, why would he never 
 do more ? Excellent as a mechanic, as a carver, 
 as a modeller, as a musician, why could he never, 
 in any one of these directions, proceed beyond 
 mere excellence into genius ? 
 
 Narcisse thought of the adored master, and of 
 the little cloud that had risen up and spread 
 itself between them. Vaguely he understood 
 that Richier had believed in him and had been dis- 
 appointed. Narcisse was still too much under 
 the spell of his old idolatry to question the 
 master's right of finding fault. But he mourned 
 his absence, and not without a touch of resent- 
 ment. Now, if he, Narcisse, should perform 
 the miracle of originality, the master would never 
 know. Was it barely possible that if such a 
 portent of a thing were made that men all over 
 the world met to wonder at it, some whisper of 
 
 E 
 
66 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 it might not be conveyed over to St. Mihiel ? If 
 a certain adventure went bravely through, vs^ould 
 not Ligier Richier hear before he died that he 
 had not been vk^rong when he snatched the 
 village-boy away from being a gooseherd on the 
 long white road ? And Narcisse smiled a little, 
 in the covert of his beard, as he strode along 
 from one streaming tussock to another. 
 
 From the battlement of the mill, which was 
 crenelated like a little fortress on the side that 
 faced the meadow, a lean scarecrow of a miller 
 called down to him. This lonely dwelhng 
 became, in times of sudden war, a haven of 
 refuge for those who could not escape up into 
 the town. 
 
 " What luck. Master Narcisse ? " shouted the 
 miller. 
 
 Narcisse held up a brace of birds by way of 
 answer. 
 
 " Ah ! 'tis too late for snipe. After an April 
 frost, I've seen those running ditches full of 
 them. But they hate the smell of my old 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 67 
 
 woman's cows, and off they go up stream to the 
 empty pastures. Come in and rest a while, 
 Master Narcisse." 
 
 " No, thank ye, miller, I must be climbing back. 
 That falconet in your wall looks out of repair." 
 
 The miller patted the little rusty cannon with 
 an indulgent air, and said, " Ay, she's out of 
 gear somewhere; she's fallen forward off the 
 tressels. She wants a touch of your skill. 
 Master Narcisse. Why, 'tis four years since 
 'twas used. She killed her man that day, 
 though she nearly killed me into the bargain 
 with her fizzling and her jump back into my 
 legs." The miller gazed lovingly sideways at 
 his rusty protector. 
 
 " Any more sycamore-trees for sale, miller ? " 
 asked Narcisse carelessly. 
 
 " Why, there be two left on the point of the 
 ait, and 'tis so hollowed away with the stream 
 that one of them must go for certain. What a 
 power of sycamore-wood you use. Master Nar- 
 cisse ! " 
 
68 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 " Sell me one straight bough off your tree, 
 and I shall want no more." 
 
 It was agreed that in exchange for setting the 
 infirm falconet on its legs again Narcisse should 
 carry away as much of the best part of the 
 sycamore as he wanted. He was impatient to 
 secure the wood, so he was presently admitted 
 into the mill and ascended the wall inside, to 
 examine the little cannon, while the miller and 
 his man sawed down the sycamoi"e, and brought 
 it across the stream. The falconet was not 
 seriously out of order, and so, taking a note of 
 what it wanted, aijd promising to come down 
 with his tools soon — since, as the miller said, 
 " times of peace are the times for mending, 
 ready for war, which the saints forfend " — 
 Narcisse shouldered his straight sycamore-pole, 
 and, wrapped in the flying folds of his cloak, 
 ascended the hill. 
 
 In passing through the town, Mercillat was 
 standing at his door and challenged him. 
 
 " Where have you been with that gun and 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 69 
 
 pole ? You will have his Reverence at your 
 heels if you go fowling in the Abbey waters. 
 What sport ? " 
 
 Mercillat eyed the snipe and felt them. The 
 birds were in excellent condition. 
 
 " Ah ! lucky that you are ! The hen, what 
 plumpness ! Feel with your thumb here, the 
 fat under the wing ! Ah ! the cock too ! Pity 
 there's but one brace, yet that is much." 
 
 He persisted so loudly in praising the birds, 
 that Narcisse, who had not thought of it until 
 then, felt obhged to offer them to his future 
 father-in-law, and did so with the best grace in 
 the world. Mercillat was offended. He thrust 
 the snipe back upon Narcisse, and folded his 
 own hands behind his back. 
 
 "Nay, nay! What do you take me for? 
 You go down to these horrible water-meadows, 
 you toil all day, and I, forsooth, must rob you 
 of your little spoil. You will cook them for 
 yourself, and relish them. Ah ! the pity of it 
 that you do not know the true, the Barrois art 
 
JO The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 of cookery. You will ruin those sweet birds. 
 Take them away, my friend, cook them and 
 destroy them. If I accept them, 'tis but that 
 they may not be defiled in the ashes or soaked 
 in too much oil. It is not to rob you, but to 
 save the birds. They shall hang from our 
 rafters, Rosalie shall cook them divinely after 
 tne true Barrois manner, and you shall come in 
 on Sunday and eat them with us. Nay, nay, 
 freely given — I grudge not the labour of watch- 
 ing them being prepared. They shall be, on 
 Sunday next, a morsel for a bishop's nephew." 
 
 Narcisse went home, and up to his solitary 
 room. Here he deposited his bough of syca- 
 more-wood, and presently descended. The 
 arched courtway next to the door of his house 
 led to a vast herb-garden, belonging to the 
 guild of physicians of the town, and the key of 
 this garden, which was seldom used, was in the 
 custody of Narcisse. On this warm afternoon 
 of May he descended from his room, and let 
 himself into the physic garden, which spread 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 under the hinder windows of his house. He 
 had sometimes thought of constructing a flight 
 of steps which should drop from his own 
 window into the solitude of the garden, but this 
 still remained a dream of the future. 
 
 Long, long he walked on this especial day, up 
 and down the sombre aisles of the green, over- 
 grown enclosure, his feet treading one perfume 
 after another from the lush and tufted herbs, 
 shoots of which trailed out upon the path — rose- 
 mary and basil, germander and calamine — all 
 planted there by the physicians of the town, for 
 health and not for beauty. His reverie grew 
 upon him. At length he stopped short, sawed the 
 air with the wide gesture of his arm, and sallied 
 vehemently indoors, wholly forgetting, in his 
 absorption, to lock the gate of the enclosure 
 behind him.- 
 
 The physic garden was a favourite place of 
 meeting for Rosalie and Narcisse. Often, for 
 an hour before sundown, the two lovers would 
 wander there, leaving the gate unlocked. The 
 
72 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 local conventions saw nothing unbecoming in 
 this, if the couple restrained themselves from 
 sitting down or even standing still. While the 
 air was yet a little chilly, they might often be 
 seen slowly, regularly threading the paths of 
 the garden, she wrapped from head to foot 
 within the folds of his great brown mantle, 
 sauntering, sauntering ever, with their heads 
 bowed towards each other and almost touching. 
 
 On this particular afternoon, Rosalie, puzzled at 
 the disappearance of Narcisse the night before, 
 and again throughout the day, and still slightly 
 piqued at his repeated neglect of her, could not 
 prevail upon her feet to take her elsewhere than 
 to the empty street in which he lived. She 
 thought to stand there, and gain a glimpse of 
 him, or even perhaps, by a discreet call, to win 
 his attention. Without any distinct plan of 
 campaign, and as if against her will, she started 
 in that direction. When she arrived at the 
 courtway leading to the physic garden, she 
 passed down it, thinking it possible Narcisse 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 73 
 
 might be within. She leaned against the grille, 
 looking through it hither and thither. As she 
 did so, it yielded to her weight, and, with a rusty 
 scream, gave way. To her surprise, she found 
 herself inside the garden, and she was now sure 
 that Narcisse must be there. 
 
 Hemmed in by its high walls, the enclosure 
 seemed cold and gloomy in the fading light. She 
 looked for the tall figure of Narcisse on this side 
 and on that, but in vain. At the further end there 
 was a bower of ragged eglantine which might con- 
 ceal him, but he was not there. The garden pos- 
 sessed so little shelter that it was not by any 
 means needful to examine it so closely for the 
 body of a full-grown man, which could scarcely 
 have been buried in it even by the piety of 
 robins ; but Rosalie hastened hither and thither, 
 glancing under bushes where Narcisse might 
 possibly be seated, or behind buttresses which 
 might conceivably shelter him. At last she sat 
 down on a soft mat of thyme, which exhaled 
 its sweetness round her. She rested there. 
 
74 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 and tried to command the tumult of her 
 pulses. 
 
 It would have been difficult for her to explain 
 why it moved her so much to find Narcisse 
 absent from a place where she had not the 
 least reason to suppose him present. But 
 Rosalie was in uneasy spirits. The suspicions 
 which had seemed to prove vain the evening 
 before, were they truly so groundless ? She 
 had expected from Narcisse some expression 
 of penitence. It is true that in the chapel 
 he had seemed absolutely incapable of per- 
 ceiving that he was in fault, yet in that state 
 of mind he could hardly continue. Thinking 
 over the events of the twenty-four hours, he 
 must have admitted to himself that he had 
 given Rosalie more than one just cause of 
 offence. Yet all day long she had waited, and 
 waited in vain, for any word from him. What 
 did it all mean ? What had come between his 
 thoughts and her ? When she considered her 
 own inner being, the image of Narcisse seemed 
 
The Secret of Narcisse y^ 
 
 to fill it to the uttermost corners ; there was 
 no room in her for any idea that did not, in 
 some way or other, refer to him. But with 
 him it was not so : as she now reminded her- 
 self, it never had been so. She began to hate 
 all his other interests. What did he want 
 with other interests, when he had her ? All 
 things became an offence to her as she sat 
 there on the odorous cushion of the thyme ; 
 she reflected with anger upon the metal-work 
 because it absorbed his fingers, on the trumpeter 
 because he permitted his head to be sketched, 
 on the very birds because they took her lover 
 away from her to those water-meadows whither 
 she might not follow him. 
 
 Suddenly, from where she sat, she heard 
 in the atmosphere a clear note of music. Some 
 one was playing a well-known air on a flute. 
 Rosalie knew it by heart. It was a favourite 
 tune with Narcisse, and it was from his window 
 that the bright notes were now descending into 
 the garden. A tide of happiness flowed through 
 
76 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 her veins ; she smiled as she hstened. The 
 air shrilling down in the deep silence seemed a 
 direct and intimate message from her lover. 
 She would let him go on for a while before 
 she answered him. When the tune was finished 
 she would rise, and stand just below the window, 
 and noiselessly would throw a great bunch of 
 sweet herbs into the room. How delightful to 
 see his grave white face peer out in amazement, 
 and then wrinkle into smiles ! She would wait 
 now, keeping very still, until the flute had piped 
 that southern air right through. 
 
 But the tune came abruptly to an end, as 
 though it had only been started as a test or to 
 set some other music going. There were steps, 
 and a murmur like some one speaking, and then 
 the fluting began again. Not alone this time, 
 but, to Rosalie's infinite surprise, accompanied 
 on a zither. After a few notes the zither- 
 player stopped ; not a very accomphshed prac- 
 titioner this, evidently. There was an exclama- 
 tion, as the flute stopped also, more shuffling 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 77 
 
 steps, and then the same performance over 
 again. 
 
 There could be no doubt about the matter. 
 Narcisse, in his great chamber, was teaching 
 some one to play in accompaniment to his own 
 music on the flute, and the pupil was the object 
 of his most assiduous patience. Who could 
 this pupil be ? If it was some boy or man, 
 why had Rosalie never heard of him ? 
 What could there be to conceal in such a 
 matter ? How could it possibly be that he 
 had neglected to tell her of the arrangement ? 
 Of course it must be some youth. But who ? 
 No doubt it was of no importance, yet why 
 hide it from her ? He had not found so many 
 things to talk about during their long walks 
 together that he should fail to tell her that he 
 was teaching some man to play the zither. 
 He was perfectly at liberty to do so, of course ; 
 she wondered a little that he should have the 
 patience to do it. What could be the reason 
 of it ? Who could it be, once more ? In the 
 
78 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 innermost centre of her soul the conviction was 
 already settled that it was a girl whom Narcisse 
 was instructing. 
 
 Beneath the window, and a little at one side, 
 an aged vine-trunk rose out of the ground, its 
 tough and gnarled mass projecting a few inches 
 from the wall. Six feet up, close below the 
 window-sill, it took a twist to the left, and soon 
 divided into boughs and tendrilled shoots that 
 flung a canopy of pale green leaves over the grey- 
 ness of the upper wall. Rosalie perceived that 
 the turn of the vine, underneath the window, gave 
 a coign of vantage from which a nimble climber 
 could stretch upwards and peer into the room. 
 At this moment the fluting and zithering began 
 again. She sprang up the vine-trunk with the 
 skill of a cat, and arriving at the shoulder of the 
 tree, settled her foot upon it firmly, and clung there 
 pendant. The harmony proceeded better than 
 before ; the pupil was evidently advancing in skill. 
 A curious feature of the performance was that he 
 (or she) made no false notes, but either struck the 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 79 
 
 instrument with absolute precision, or ceased to 
 play altogether. As Rosalie hung in air, the 
 zither stopped abruptly. There was a moment's 
 continuance of the flute, and then it also was 
 silent. An exclamation of impatience followed in 
 the voice of Narcisse, and then a quick and heavy 
 step across the floor. The curiosity of Rosalie 
 could endure this torture no longer, and she 
 threw herself silently forward, clutching the vine 
 in one hand and the window-sill in the other. 
 She found herself further off than she had 
 imagined, yet she could just peep in. 
 
 What she saw, made the blood run scarlet 
 behind her eyes. Narcisse was there, with his 
 back turned to her. She could scarcely see 
 him, because of the dimness of the light in the 
 room, and because of the distance. But she 
 could observe that he was close to his pupil, that 
 his arm was round her, and that he bent his face 
 down with a gesture which was not to be mis- 
 understood. Who the zither-player was, and 
 what she was like, it was absolutely impossible 
 
8o The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 to ascertain. She seemed very pale, and was 
 apparently dressed in white, but that was all 
 that Rosalie could discover. The figure of 
 Narcisse completely veiled his companion, and as 
 he was about to turn towards the window, 
 Rosalie swang herself violently back. She hung 
 there in the vine, with her eyes closed, for a few 
 moments ; then she descended, leaping without 
 a sound into a deep bed of tansy. She walked 
 across the herbs — so as to make no noise — as 
 far as the gate, which, on a sudden impulse, she 
 viciously slammed, so that all the echoes of the 
 street were awakened by its clangour. Then 
 she ran as fast as she could to the church of St. 
 Maze, pushed her way in, sank beside a pillar, 
 and, with her hands pressed to her face, knelt 
 for a long time gazing through her fingers at the 
 pale lights twinkling on the altar. She proposed 
 to herself to weep, but tears, like slumber, will 
 not always come when the weary call for them. 
 
IV 
 
 lyATER on that evening the Mercillats were 
 gathered in their general dwelling-room, around 
 the hearth. During the wars the family had 
 grown impoverished, and now that the master- 
 smith was wealthy again, he made no change in 
 his ways, preparing for that great house in the 
 new Italian manner which it was his dream to 
 build and furnish. The fat coarse candle had 
 burned itself down to its stick and had gone out 
 in a splutter. As it was not worth while to 
 fetch another candle, the fire was stirred and fed 
 so as to give enough light for the women who 
 still spun or knitted. The men lounged, lazy, 
 stretched to the flat of the blaze, like dogs. 
 Eudoxie sat upright in an old-fashioned fixed 
 
 F 
 
82 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 chair, over which a sumptuous brocaded hanging, 
 somewhat faded with use, was thrown, the stuff 
 running out so far that her feet rested on it. 
 She occasionally stopped the soft clatter of her 
 spinning-wheel, and gazed into the fire. Lucie 
 kept up without a moment's intermission the 
 rattle of her knitting-pins, on which the firelight 
 flashed and died away, much to the satisfaction 
 of the wakeful baby in Bibi's arms. Rosalie, 
 plunged in a lethargy, sat heaped together in the 
 corner of the settle, silent. Indeed, very little 
 was said in the warmth and repletion of the hour. 
 
 But presently Eudoxie addressed her daughter : 
 " Were you in the physic garden to-day, 
 Rosalie ? " 
 
 "Yes — a moment." 
 
 " I forgot to tell you to bring me a bunch of 
 archangel for the liquor. Is it out yet ? " 
 
 " I don't know. I didn't notice." 
 
 " Look to-morrow, and if only the yellow is 
 out, wait a while. It is the white flowers I 
 want." 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 83 
 
 " What is archangel good for, mother ? " asked 
 Bibianne. 
 
 " Stamped into vinegar, and made up as a 
 poultice, it is sovereign for blains and swellings ; 
 my grandmother made a conserve of white 
 archangel that saved a lady's life." 
 
 "And, sister, bring a little rosemary for the 
 pot," said Lucie ; " your fresh rosemary is as 
 tasty as allspice." 
 
 " She will put it in our wine to make us 
 drunk," said one of the young men, alluding to 
 the properties then popularly attributed to this 
 herb. 
 
 " Why do you not fetch your own green-stuff," 
 said Rosalie crossly ; " what else am I to get ? 
 Chevril for the hotch-pot, and tamarisk for your 
 toothache, and bindweed root to dye your hair? 
 Go and get your herbs yourselves ? Why 
 should I wait on you all ? " 
 
 At this outburst, every one looked up. This 
 petulance was unlike Rosalie. 
 
 " But it is you alone of us, as you know, who 
 
84 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 can enter the physic garden. What so irksome 
 in stopping to pick a few herbs in your lap when 
 you are wandering there with Narcisse ? " said 
 her mother meekly. 
 
 The subject might have been dropped, but 
 that Bibi with tactless curiosity pushed on her 
 inquiries. 
 
 " Did Narcisse speak to you of those birds ? " 
 
 There was no answer. With her fists press- 
 ing her cheeks, her eyes glowing through her 
 hair into the fire, her bare elbows on her knees, 
 Rosalie seemed in no mood for conversation. 
 
 " Was Narcisse ? " Bibi began again ; but 
 
 was crushed by the violence with which her 
 sister checked her. 
 
 " Never speak to me of Narcisse again," she 
 said, and vouchsafed no more. 
 
 The family were not given to reticence, how- 
 ever, and Rosalie's outburst was taken to mean 
 that Narcisse might be freely discussed. He 
 was no favourite, as we know, with any of the 
 household, except with Mercillat himself. Not 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 85 
 
 much was said, but the old charges were dwelt 
 upon : that no one knew whence he came, that 
 he was an alien in the town where all else were 
 friends of old standing, that he held aloof from 
 the townspeople. 
 
 " I should like to know what he does in that 
 vast house all by himself," said Eudoxie. 
 
 " Why does he not come and live down here, 
 hke a Christian, with all the blessed smells and 
 noises to make him comfortable ? " remarked 
 Mercillat. 
 
 " They say," remarked one of the sons, " that 
 he walks for hours at night in the physic garden." 
 
 "By himself?" asked Bibi. 
 
 " Well, could he walk with any one at that 
 time ? " was the reply ; and Lucie crossed herself, 
 for a little chill seemed to strike across the floor. 
 
 " How do we know with whom he walks ? " 
 
 " Perhaps he gathers poisons there." 
 
 The fire was getting low, and when a hollow 
 log fell inwards, rousing a cloud of sparks, the 
 women started. Rosalie, who had been sitting 
 
86 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 perfectly still, with fixed eyes, now said : 
 " Mother, have you still any of your angelica- 
 root left ? " 
 
 " Why, yes," replied Eudoxie, with a house- 
 wife's eagerness, " a little. Why ? " 
 
 " What is it good for ? " asked Rosalie. 
 
 "You know," said her mother; "it is a 
 strange remedy against poison, and against the 
 plague. If you do but chew a piece between 
 your teeth, you may walk through a dead city ; 
 it will most certainly drive away the air of pesti- 
 lence, even though that corrupt air shall have 
 gripped your heart." 
 
 " Has it no other virtue, mother ? " Her 
 face was so impassioned as she said this, and 
 the malignity of her expression balanced so ill 
 with the indifference of her words, that they all 
 gazed at her with apprehension. 
 
 "Yes," said Eudoxie, trj'ing to speak calmly, 
 " if you carry angelica-root about with you, you 
 may even consort with those who walk with the 
 devil, and may take no hurt." 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 87 
 
 " Then give me a piece of it, mother," said 
 Rosalie, rising to her feet and looking in that 
 angry flicker of the logs like the very Witch of 
 Endor ; " give me a piece of it, that I may carry 
 with me when I go next to visit Narcisse ! " 
 
 There was no further word spoken. It 
 seemed as though the doors had fallen open 
 and an icy wind was sweeping through the house. 
 One by one the Mercillats crept off to bed, while 
 Rosalie, a motionless heap in the settle, waited 
 there glaring at the embers, till the last of the 
 redness had died away into white ash. When 
 she awoke next morning, a vague pain woke with 
 he?. She could not, for a few seconds, recollect 
 what it was. Then her resentment swept back 
 upon her, and she repeated to herself that she 
 was not sorry that she had punished him. No 
 one, she decided, would take any notice of what 
 she had said, and, if they did, Narcisse deserved 
 the worst that might be whispered about him. 
 It would go no further, and, if it did, it would 
 only serve him right. She thought again of the 
 
88 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 twilit room, of Narcisse with his arm round the 
 zither-player, of the white hands she had just 
 dimly seen in the darkness. She closed her eyes, 
 pressed the lids tightly together, and told her 
 heart that it had done well to be angry, and her 
 tongue well to be spiteful. 
 
 She was, none the less, aware that it was a 
 very serious thing to allow a fellow-citizen to be 
 accused of magic. She was known to be the 
 most intimate companion of Narcisse in Bar, and 
 she, in the full circle of her family, had broadly 
 hinted that he walked with the devil. At that 
 time there was no charge so terrible as this. It 
 meant complete social degradation as well as 
 judicial condemnation if it was proved, and the 
 mere accusation was a stain. The bare sugges- 
 tion of black-magic brought so strong a wind of 
 terror in its train that all the human affections 
 were blown away before it ; fathers would de- 
 nounce their children, sister accuse sister, friend 
 desert friend. This v/as the terrible engine 
 which Rosalie, in the concentration of her rage. 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 89 
 
 had not been able to deny herself the little 
 pleasure of wielding ; she had started it, in the 
 vain belief that she could call it back with as 
 much ease as she let it go. But that could not be. 
 Before the day was hot, the most terrible insinua- 
 tions were beginning to stir in all quarters of the 
 town, and Httle knots of people crossed them- 
 selves as they mentioned the name of Narcisse. 
 
 He, perfectly innocent of what was going on, 
 and of the tempest in the mind of Rosalie, 
 appeared at the usual hour in his booth. He 
 had seen little of the girl for two days, and was 
 beginning to realise that she would regard his 
 interest in other matters as neglect of her. He 
 presently strolled down the Place to the house, 
 where Bibianne was sitting in the doorway. 
 The child rose when she saw him coming, with 
 fear and disgust in her eyes, and was about to 
 disappear, when he called to her, and begged 
 her to send Rosalie out to him. 
 
 " Your sorcerer is asking for you," said Bibi 
 spitefully. 
 
90 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 Rosalie went slowly out, and met him. Nar- 
 cisse could but notice her changed look. 
 
 " Are you ill ? " he asked. And then, as she 
 said nothing : " Forgive me for not seeing you 
 yesterday," he said; "my work was heavy, 
 and my head was troubled with it. I must go 
 back now to the workshop, but will you come 
 this afternoon and walk in the physic garden ? " 
 
 Rosalie had said nothing, and her whole 
 mind was bent on a scornful refusal. But with 
 his ingenuous eyes fixed upon her, and the 
 accents of his low, placid voice in her ears, she 
 was no longer mistress of her resentment. She 
 melted to him, and, moreover, unless she walked 
 with him, she could never find out the secret of 
 the zither-player. 
 
 " Yes, I will come," she answered. 
 
 And Bibianne, hidden behind the doorpost, 
 giggling, cried out : " Take your piece of 
 angelica in your pocket, then 1 " and ran noisily 
 into the back part of the house. 
 
 Rosalie, gazing at the utterly bewildered face 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 of Narcisse, blushed burning red. " I will 
 come," she repeated in a softer tone of voice, 
 and then she vanished. 
 
 In the shop where Mercillat worked, with his 
 son and two apprentices, no other subject but 
 the scandal could occupy conversation. Young 
 Mercillat had already, in confidence, told Droz, 
 the younger 'prentice, what his sister had 
 revealed, and these two were now whispering 
 together on the subject. The gunsmith himself 
 was much disturbed this morning. Nothing 
 could be further from his convenience than any 
 slander of this sort, and yet if the good fame of 
 Narcisse was to be tarnished, it was not Mer- 
 cillat who would make a martyr of himself by 
 defending him. He was angry that the ques- 
 tion had been raised at all, and the whispering 
 of the lads completed his ill-temper. " What 
 are you two chattering about ? " he asked. 
 
 "About sorcerers," the son replied. And then, 
 after a pause, " Droz saw a real witch once." 
 
 "Pooh! "said Mercillat. "Go on with your 
 
92 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 work, or I'll whip you both. What witch was 
 that, Droz ? " he added sullenly, his curiosity 
 getting the better of him. 
 
 " It was in our village," said the lad, 
 delighted to have an audience ; " the Abbe 
 caught her by the sleeve when she was flying 
 over a cornfield. Her mother was just as bad 
 as she was ; she used to make some ointment in 
 a pot and rub it over their two heads, all but 
 the face, and wait, with their window open, for 
 the devil to come and fetch them. And they 
 had their sabbath in a little wood, just behind 
 our farm. She confirmed it all, and they burned 
 them both, thank God ! I thought I should 
 never get over the fright it gave us." 
 
 Mercillat wiped his fingers on his apron, and 
 hurriedly crossed himself, moved in spite of his 
 scepticism. No doubt such things did take 
 place, though not so frequently as silly people 
 imagined. 
 
 " Was she hard-featured, this girl ? " asked 
 the other apprentice. 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 93 
 
 " No, just like any ordinary maid. You 
 would not have noticed any difference. She 
 used to come and fetch the milk from my sister's 
 every evening ; we never guessed that anything 
 was wrong." 
 
 " What crimes do sorcerers commit ? " asked 
 young Mercillat in a rather subdued voice. 
 
 " They swear by the name of Satan, for one 
 thing," said Droz ; "and they blaspheme God." 
 
 "They dedicate children to the devil," con- 
 tinued the older man, " and often they kill and 
 eat them." 
 
 There was a long pause, and deep silence 
 broken only by the ringing sound of the smiths' 
 tools. 
 
 " How can one tell a sorcerer by sight ? " 
 asked young Mercillat presently. 
 
 " Oh ! there are marks," said Droz signifi- 
 cantly, nodding his head. " If a man has a 
 little blue crescent, like a coriander-seed, in the 
 soft of the flesh under his arm, or in the flank, 
 that is a certain sign." 
 
94 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 "What is that little crescent ? " asked the lad 
 again, drawn on by an intolerable curiosity, yet 
 stammering with confusion and discomfort. 
 
 "Oh ! that is the stamp of the devil's nail in 
 his body," said Droz, almost in a whisper. 
 
 " Stop this talk ! " shouted Mercillat, with an 
 oath. " Lazy vagabonds, go on with your work, 
 or down comes the whip from the wall in one 
 twinkhng, and across your shoulders in another. 
 Not a word more, or the largest piece left of any 
 one of you shall be his right eyelid." 
 
 Who shall say how a report which deeply and 
 universally excites the interest of a community 
 passes from ear to ear ? No one can be accused 
 of cUmbing to the house-tops to shout it, and yet 
 if the town bell were rung, and the story told to 
 an assembled crowd by the crier at the top of 
 his voice, it could hardly become more widely 
 known than when floated from whispering lip to 
 shuddering ear. It permeates the town, like oil. 
 The mice seem to carry it in the shape of 
 crumbs ; it is ground to dust, and blown against 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 95 
 
 every window ; the rain sighs, and is full of it, and 
 flushes every gutter and every sewer with it ; the 
 sun comes out, and the steaming town is steeped 
 in the vapour of scandal. In the midst of all 
 this electrical excitement, Narcisse Gerbillard sat 
 in his workshop, absolutely unconscious, singing 
 at intervals in his clear bird-like voice, hammer- 
 ing his iron coils and tendrils, in perfect ease of 
 spirit and with goodwill in his heart to all the 
 world. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that the accusation, 
 so lightly thrown up into the air, had suddenly 
 produced a crop of conviction. At first, people 
 accepted it provisionally without further comment 
 than an exclamation of horror, and passed it on 
 in the same way. Rosalie Mercillat was quoted 
 as the authority, and her intimacy with the 
 accused man was matter of common notoriety. 
 Bibianne had sustained a rather severe disap- 
 pointment in telling the story to a group of girls. 
 It was long since there had been a trial for 
 witchcraft in Bar, and the accusation had not so 
 
96 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 horrid a significance to these children as to their 
 elders. Some of Bibi's audience laughed, the 
 rest were apathetic. One girl ventured to ask 
 what that meant, to " walk with the devil ? " 
 Bibianne could not very clearly say what it 
 meant, but the cure had preached about it at 
 Easter, she knew that. It was the worst thing 
 you could possibly do — -oh ! much the worst. 
 " What ! worse than stealing the holy vessels 
 from the altar ? " asked one little maiden, this 
 being a crime lately punished in Bar with 
 extreme severity. Yes, Bibianne thought, on 
 the whole, even worse than that. Much worse, 
 at all events, than murdering your mother, 
 because Martin Blaize who did that got off 
 altogether, after confession, by grace of the 
 Church. Bibianne was practically certain that 
 there was no grace if you walked with the 
 devil. 
 
 "Where did Master Narcisse walk with the 
 devil, Bibi ? " asked one tender creature of 
 thirteen. 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 97 
 
 " In the physic garden," whispered Bibianne, 
 delighted to have awakened a real interest at 
 last. " Rosalie went up there, and found the 
 gate unlocked, and walked in, and oh ! — she saw 
 sights." 
 
 " What did she see, Bibi ? Tell us what she 
 saw ? " said the pale cluster of flaxen heads, in 
 chorus. 
 
 " No, you will repeat it if I tell you." 
 
 " Oh ! we will not, my Bibi, we will not." 
 
 " Swear you will not, Zoe, and you, Bertha, 
 and you, Pulcherie,. and all of you ! Swear you 
 will not tell ! " 
 
 " Oh ! my Bibi ! " sighed the whole company, 
 excited beyond power of further affirmation by 
 the secret which now seemed to hang imminently 
 over them. 
 
 "Well, then, come closer to me." The 
 children stirred a little, but closer they could 
 not come. " She peeped in, and then she saw 
 Narcisse walking, walking, and what do you think 
 was with him ? " No one ventured upon a 
 
 G 
 
98 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 suggestion, and so she went on : " It was the 
 devil." 
 
 " Ah ! what was he h'ke ? " one girl con- 
 strained her tongue to ask. But Bibianne's 
 imagination was limited. 
 
 " Well, just like the devil. He had a tail, 
 and — and horns. Oh ! and he mowed off the 
 tops of the flowers by swinging his tail to and 
 fro as he walked." 
 
 This was said with great confidence, and was 
 received as being, in its way, circumstantial. 
 But nothing more could be extracted from 
 Bibianne, who became duly conscious that she 
 had gone rather beyond her text in this little 
 narration. She hurried the girls away, with a 
 fresh charge that, whatever happened, they 
 should not repeat a word she had said, and 
 that, if they did repeat it, they must not say she 
 told them. 
 
 Rain came rattling down upon the streets 
 during the middle of the day, making the pear- 
 shaped Place gleam to the very steps of St. 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 99 
 
 Maze. Narcisse stayed longer than usual at 
 his booth, for he had a piece of work that 
 demanded all his attention. It was a chain of 
 small steel rings, for the Duke's chamberlain, 
 and the clasp of it was to be a mask held be- 
 tween two naked figures of children. He 
 doubted whether to design a tragic mask or a 
 comic one. The latter suited with his sprightly 
 mood, but at length he decided that the necessary 
 mechanism could be more conveniently concealed 
 under the symbol of tragedy. He rejoiced in 
 the rain, for he supposed that he owed to it 
 the circumstance that no one came near his 
 booth all day to disturb him. He was not very 
 fond of company at any time, and when he was 
 designing, the presence of idlers specially dis- 
 tressed him. But when the hour came for him 
 to leave, the sky was blue again, with great 
 rolling clouds, tinged with pink, tumbling over 
 one another down in the south-west. 
 
 His thoughts turned to Rosalie, and he felt 
 that he must make her amends for his self- 
 
loo The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 absorption. He smiled when he thought of 
 that — a cunning, innocent smile. He walked 
 home, smiling, and as he strode along he 
 thought of many things, so happily, so dreamily, 
 that it never once occurred to him that the 
 people in the streets stared at him or avoided 
 him. Yet it is a fact that two or three persons 
 did so, and that two burgesses nodded their 
 beards at one another with an air of extraordi- 
 nary mystery as he passed them. 
 
 The testimony of the little girls — each of whom 
 had been allowed to speak at home in the presence 
 of her betters, because of the importance of the 
 news she carried — was beginning to tell on the 
 population. A boy, too, had been discovered, 
 who asserted that, very early one Thursday 
 morning in Lent, he had seen Narcisse descend 
 the tower of St. Maze, head foremost, crawling 
 on all-fours, like a lizard. The little wretch 
 had invented this incident, or had adapted it 
 from some story of a witch, and then, finding 
 that it gained credence and made of himself a 
 
The Secret of Narcisse loi 
 
 youth of importance, without any great difficulty 
 succeeded in believing it. Ultimately, indeed, 
 after sleeping a night on the anecdote, the boy 
 became so firmly convinced that he had really 
 seen this reptile descent, that he shuddered in 
 private when he thought of it, and would have 
 endured a very smart chastisement before deny- 
 ing it. His evidence was held to be of great 
 importance. 
 
 Although as yet Rosalie had no conception 
 of the rapidity and completeness with which 
 her wanton piece of revenge had taken hold of 
 the town's conscience, she nevertheless became 
 more and more uncomfortable as the day went 
 on. It was not her nature to retain any 
 impression long, and although she sedulously 
 nursed the image of the zither-player seen 
 through the open lattice, yet her conception of 
 what she had seen grew steadily vaguer. This 
 was inconvenient, because her only excuse for 
 the monstrous accusation she had made was 
 the firm assurance that Narcisse had done her 
 
I02 The Secret of Narc 
 
 isse 
 
 this great wrong. Without a fresh vision of 
 the interloper, she could not retain her resent- 
 ment, and with the cooling of her rage, as she 
 felt, would come a return of love for Narcisse, 
 and of shame for herself. Already she began 
 to reflect with extreme vexation on the step she 
 had taken ; she must reassure her jealousy, or 
 the tide of her feehngs would ebb to the uncom- 
 fortable degree of positive compunction. To wind 
 her anger up to the proper pitch again, it was 
 imperative that she should see Narcisse, and 
 in this frame of mind she made her way to the 
 physic garden. 
 
 Narcisse was just inside ; he unlocked the 
 gate, and she went in. But when he prepared 
 to throw the brown wing of his cloak over her 
 shoulders, she evaded it. She would walk alone, 
 she said ; it was not chilly. 
 
 " You are angry with me still, Rosalie ? " he 
 said. 
 
 " Am I not right to be angry ? " she replied. 
 
 ' ' Ah ! yes, perhaps ! yes, yes ! " he mur- 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 103 
 
 mured ; " I ought to think of you only, and my 
 mind is full of other things." 
 
 " What other things ? " she asked eagerly. 
 "My secret!" he said, smiling ; "this little 
 girl wants to betray my secret ! " 
 
 " How can I betray what I do not know ? " 
 asked Rosalie, flushing deep red, for her con- 
 science upbraided her. How could he be so 
 cool and light, she wondered ? Why did he 
 not show an embarrassment proper to his part ? 
 She would force him to confess. 
 
 " What have you done with your zither ? " 
 she asked. 
 
 " Eh ! " he said, surprised, " my zither ? " 
 " Oh, do not feign not to know what zither I 
 mean ! The one that used to stand in the 
 corner of your workshop — the one I put a new 
 string into when the old one snapped with the 
 heat ! What have you done with it ? " 
 
 " How do you know it is not still in the back 
 part of the shop ? Come, child, let us not 
 talk about these foolish things. Come here. 
 
104 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 closer to me ; give me your head here on my 
 shoulder, and let us walk along as we are used 
 to do — swing, swing, swing — so that we seem 
 to make one person and not two in our walking. 
 I am tired, Rosalie ; come in here under my 
 great cloak, and let us march, march. Do you 
 not smell how sweet the basil is after the rain ? 
 Stick this piece of it in my jacket, and lean 
 your head just over it. Come, child." 
 
 His quiet force overcame her. Feeling like 
 a traitress to his simplicity of faith, a coward 
 to her own unshaken purpose, she yet could 
 not escape from the serenity of his unconscious- 
 ness. She took refuge in silence, and silence 
 was what he desired. No one who saw these 
 two persons oscillating along the garden, with 
 their balanced swing, drawn together so lover- 
 like under one ample cloak, would have dreamed 
 what diversity of thoughts occupied them in the 
 silence. He, once released from the necessity 
 of answering Rosalie's questions, and permitted 
 to be dumb without being upbraided for his 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 105 
 
 coldness, passed back immediately in spirit to 
 
 that secret thing which occupied all his energies, 
 
 while she, in the dark chamber of her narrower 
 
 mind, was balancing each of the slight phrases 
 
 he had uttered, and was trying to wring from 
 
 them an admission of that infidelity of which 
 
 now she almost wished to be persuaded. It 
 
 was a mocking phantom of the marriage of true 
 
 minds which these two beings carried up and 
 
 down the odorous alleys of the garden, under 
 
 the shelter of that hypocritic mantle. Yet even 
 
 in Paradise itself it was only the innocent beasts 
 
 that supposed the thoughts of Adam to tally 
 
 with the thoughts of Eve ; the angels who read 
 
 the secrets of all hearts, gazed but once, and 
 
 covered their eyes to hide the tears that gathered 
 
 in their eyelids. 
 
V 
 
 NARCISSE tossed long upon his bed that night, 
 listening first to the hard rustle of the heavy 
 rain, then to the delicate whisper of the wet 
 trees in the windy moonlight. The moon had 
 sunk very low, and it was near the middle of 
 the night, when the problem that was tormenting 
 him resolved itself. He tried the formula over 
 once again ; there could be no question that it 
 settled the difficulty ; he turned his face away 
 from the moonlight and slept at once. Next 
 morning, he determined not to go to the work- 
 shop. He rose and went about his simple 
 household duties as if in a dream ; he cooked 
 himself some food and ate it slowly. The day 
 was before him, the long day that was to crown 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 107 
 
 his life and make him famous, the day that was 
 to reconcile him to his master. It was perfectly 
 needless to hurry. For once, time was too long, 
 and the residue of art was short. 
 
 The large double room in which Narcisse 
 lived stretched across the first story of the 
 house, and was raked with light from the street 
 on one side and from the physic garden on the 
 other. It was scarcely furnished, but it bore 
 some traces of having been the scene of wealth 
 and even of ostentation. The walls were naked 
 stone, the tapestry having been pulled down 
 from them everywhere ; but there was a gaudily 
 coloured Gothic fireplace, in a corner of which, 
 among the ashes, Narcisse prepared his meals. 
 The sculptor's effects were contained in a large 
 coffer bound with belts of brass, which stood 
 against one of the walls, close to his bed. The 
 floor was strewn with chips and curls of white 
 wood, carelessly swept hither and thither into 
 heaps and drifts. A few benches of the roughest 
 carpentry, and a rude deal table, contrasted with 
 
io8 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 an elaborately gilded and painted chair, orna- 
 mented with angels in scarlet and blue, which 
 Ligier Richier had left behind him, much the 
 worse for wear. 
 
 The only ornament to be seen was a large 
 design pinned on one of the walls. It was a 
 drawing in sanguine, with some details added 
 by the pen in Indian ink. This also was a relic 
 of Richier's tenancy, and had been given by him 
 to his pupil, because of the impassioned interest 
 the latter had always shown in it. It was a 
 spirited rather than an accomplished piece of 
 work, curious chiefly because of its sympathy 
 with the odd instincts of that particular genera- 
 tion. It represented two soldiers, in Florentine 
 dress, lying dead, side by side, in what seemed 
 to be heather or fern, since their bodies were 
 sunken in it. They had, apparently, just been 
 slain suddenly by a skeleton which had come 
 behind them, and which was even now dancing 
 with rage above them, and brandishing in its 
 fingers a small dagger. The skeleton was female. 
 
The Secret of Narclsse 109 
 
 for its hair was flowing in the wind, still up- 
 lifted by the speed with which its owner had 
 descended the long brae-side which sank from a 
 little turretted city far away up in the back- 
 ground, against the sky. The cere-cloths, which 
 had enfolded the bones, were now flapping 
 elegantly and conventionally around the skeleton, 
 like narrow banners or like strap-work in a 
 decorated ceiling. Underneath the drawing were 
 scrawled some Italian verses — 
 
 Era miracol novo a veder quivi 
 %otte I'arme d^ Amor — 
 
 the rest illegible. What it all meant might have 
 puzzled the most learned emblematist at Venice 
 or Lyons. To Narcisse it had a meaning which 
 he kept to himself, and in the melancholy re- 
 finement of which he found the satisfaction of 
 his temperament. 
 
 One other object there was in the room which 
 might attract the eye of a stranger. This was 
 a light but tall screen in one corner, that divided 
 
1 1 o The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 off a space as a sort of pen, within which, 
 indeed, it might not be unnaturally supposed 
 that some animal was confined. Narcisse, his 
 morning duties over, sat down at the table with 
 some atoms of steel and his tools in front of 
 him, and completed what appeared to be a 
 spring. Every now and then he would go 
 behind the screen, remove some cloths, and 
 adjust the object which he took with him. A 
 long note of music, or a succession of notes, 
 would result from his movements. He would 
 reappear and return with his mechanism to the 
 table, bending over the delicate apparatus in 
 the deep morning stillness. At last the result 
 seemed to give him complete satisfaction. He 
 returned with empty hands, and began to gather 
 up and carefully to wipe the various tools upon 
 the table. 
 
 To an unseen spectator, ignorant of what was 
 passing there, the conduct of the mechanic 
 himself might well have caused profoundest 
 amazement. He strode up and down the room, 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 1 1 1 
 
 loosening his girdle and unfastening the points 
 of his jacket, as though the pressure of his 
 garments suffocated him. His shirt was tied 
 low in the throat, but he pulled the loop of it, 
 and threw it open. His face was lighted up by 
 an odd smile, flickering and fugitive, while a 
 bright colour, like the hectic crimson in a con- 
 sumptive girl, burned out in his cheeks that 
 were commonly so pale. His grey eyes seemed 
 larger and more blue. His reddish hair escaped 
 from the close cloth cap he wore, as he pushed 
 it off his forehead with an impatient gesture. 
 He looked as though he was addressing a crowd, 
 for his lips moved, although there was no sound 
 from them. All his customary placidity had 
 left him, and was exchanged for a curious ex- 
 citement. Up and down the room he went, in 
 his cloth shoes, noiselessly, restlessly, too elate 
 to sing or whistle, too happy to speak or to be 
 still. 
 
 Suddenly this electric storm of vitality died 
 away. He seemed to grow very tired, very old. 
 
1 1 2 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 He pulled one of the stools to the window that 
 overlooked the physic garden, threw open the 
 lattice and stretched out his arms, resting the 
 flattened elbows on the window-sill. He kept 
 them there, outspread, while the spent rain-drops 
 pattered down from the vine-leaves into the 
 palms of his hands. He stretched out his arms, 
 as though exhausted with a long and critical 
 exertion, which was now over, altogether done 
 with and completed. He could relax all the 
 muscles, let them lie open to the heavens in that 
 awkward, helpless posture, for their work was 
 done. And the perfumes from the fresh garden, 
 all moistened with the night's rain, came steam- 
 ing up to him through the vapour of sunlight. 
 He could distinguish them, he thought, as he 
 could notes of music. There was the sweet, 
 light scent of herb frankincense, so gay and 
 wholesome to the senses. That coarser, heavier 
 perfume, mingling with it, yet easily distinguish- 
 able, came — he knew well — from the great clump 
 of hairy growth, with umbels of rough yellowish 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 1 1 3 
 
 blossoms, out of which wise women, like Rosahe's 
 mother, distil the precious gum opoponax. There 
 was the high note of the rosemary, the pungent 
 bass of the cat-mint. One after another, too 
 numerous for Narcisse to name or to distinguish 
 to himself, arose and interpenetrated, making 
 one great altar-mist of perfume, the various in- 
 visible clouds of wholesome odour. He bathed 
 his tired hands and eyes in this exhalation. It 
 seemed a morning sacrifice in honour of his toil 
 accomplished, his victory won. 
 
 Suddenly in the deep silence of the garden, 
 he heard a sound he knew. Some one was 
 rattling the broad iron padlock on the gate of 
 the enclosure. He listened again to be sure, 
 and again he heard that furtive and discordant 
 sound. This was the signal Rosalie made 
 when she came, but why should she come in the 
 morning ? A third time it sounded, and then 
 Narcisse sprang to his feet, fearing to be too 
 late to detain her, snatched up the vast key, 
 darted down the stairs and turned, in a moment, 
 
 H 
 
1 1 4 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 into the arched way. Yes, there was Rosahe, 
 weeping, and shaking the lock of the gate in her 
 distress. 
 
 When she saw him she tossed her tears 
 aside, and leaned, facing him, against the iron 
 grille. There was something tentative in her 
 attitude, which gave her the look of an animal at 
 bay, half fierce, half frightened. She had found 
 it impossible to keep away from Narcisse. The 
 night before, she had gone to bed intending to 
 lie awake and think the whole matter over, but 
 her punctual eyelids, in despite of herself, had 
 refused to be held apart for five minutes. This 
 morning her mood was hopelessly confused, the 
 sore of jealousy still open, but the visionary 
 cause of it more vague than ever, while the 
 memory of the placid, undulating walk of the 
 previous night, with the tall presence of her 
 lover overshadowing and hushing her troubled 
 heart with his own quietness, was uppermost in 
 her sensation, as her latest experience always 
 was. She had reached the point when the 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 1 1 5 
 
 quarrel which she had made was grown to be an 
 intolerable burden to herself, a burden which 
 she would give a great deal to throw off. Her 
 conscience, too, that provoking and tactless 
 companion that it is impossible to get rid of, 
 was recalling to her, much more frequently than 
 she appreciated, the cruel wrong which she had 
 done to Narcisse in her blind fury. To this 
 tiresome monitor she replied that nothing was 
 cleared up, that she had herself seen the 
 interloper, and that Narcisse confessed that he 
 had " a secret." To discover that secret, and to 
 know the worst, had now become objects so 
 acutely desirable that she lost, for the time 
 being, all instinct of safety and decorum in the 
 search for them. 
 
 Neither Rosalie nor Narcisse spoke at first, 
 but gazed at each other. Then Rosalie adven- 
 tured in a sulky tone of voice : "I want to pick 
 some allspice for my mother." 
 
 "Child," he answered, "it is not your 
 mother — it is the holy Mother of God who has 
 
1 1 6 The Secret of Narc 
 
 isse 
 
 sent you to me. This is a blessed hour for us 
 — for me and you." 
 
 She gazed at him astonished. 
 
 " Last night," he went on, " you asked me 
 about my secret. How my heart leaped when 
 you said that ! Tell me, Rosalie, my friend, 
 tell me — how did you come to know I had a 
 secret ? " 
 
 She blushed with shame ; she could not tell 
 him how. He misunderstood the colour in her 
 cheeks. 
 
 " You do not know. But I know. It was 
 our Mother, to whom I pray every night and 
 noon. Our Mother, to whom I have vowed a 
 gift for her chapel in St. Maze — a httle ivory 
 casket with the Passion of our Lord upon it. I 
 shall begin it to-night, at the time of vespers. 
 It is Our Lady who has told you of my secret." 
 
 It flashed across her mind that he must be 
 impious to talk in this way, or else mad. 
 PerhaDS it was true ; perhaps he did walk with 
 the devil. She said nothing, but clung to the 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 1 1 7 
 
 iron network. He did not seem aware of her 
 silence, but went on speaking, as though she 
 had answered him. 
 
 "Yes," he said; "this is the blessed hour 
 which makes all things golden. Come up with 
 me, up to my own room, and see what awaits 
 you there. Come, it is dull and wet down 
 here," And he waved his arm in welcome, with 
 that gracious gesture of his. His face was 
 radiant, without excitement. He looked like an 
 angel in a missal, like the messenger of Annun- 
 ciation, solemn and blissful. RosaUe was torn 
 with doubts and hesitations. It was utterly in 
 defiance of every code of manners for her to go 
 up, even for a moment in midday, to the 
 dwelling-room of this man. On the other hand, 
 he was so grave and, she believed, so honest, 
 and her own curiosity was so extreme, that she 
 risked it. She would make a pretence of re- 
 fusal, however : 
 
 " That is impossible. How can you ask it ? " 
 It rose to his lips to say, " We are betrothed, 
 
1 1 8 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 we shall shortly be married — what matters it 
 what people say ? " but he refrained, through a 
 strange delicacy which he could scarcely have 
 put into words. He saw the burning eyes of 
 this girl fixed upon him, full of love, and he was 
 conscious that his own mood leaned much more 
 to comradeship. He would not suggest any- 
 thing that should place them, at that moment, on 
 an amorous footing. The occasion was solemn, 
 almost sacrificial ; he wanted her sympathy, her 
 tender friendship, but not the profanity of an 
 earthly love. Life would stretch away in years 
 long enough to be absorbed in that ; this was 
 the spiritual moment that might never come 
 again. 
 
 By no arguments, therefore, but by a sweep- 
 ing insistence, graceful and irresistible, which 
 bore her before it, he overcame such scruples as 
 remained with her, and they entered the house. 
 The clammy desolation of the ground-floor, with 
 its damp and naked walls, struck cold upon 
 Rosalie, and awed her ; it was like going into 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 1 1 9 
 
 church on a hot summer morning. On the 
 staircase she paused, and would even now have 
 beaten a retreat. 
 
 " Hush ! " she said ; " what was that noise ? 
 Who is up there ? " 
 
 " No one," he answered, but he smiled as he 
 said it, and she flew to a conclusion. 
 
 " Very well," she thought in her heart, " if 
 she is there, and dares to face me, I will try 
 which of us is the stronger. Narcisse may look 
 on, and take his choice." 
 
 She was absolutely determined to go through 
 with the adventure now, and when Narcisse pushed 
 his way into his own room, she followed him 
 directly. She glanced round and saw in a moment 
 that in that place, at all events, was no interloper. 
 Her eye flashed about in search of signs of a female 
 presence ; there were none, she was obliged to 
 admit that. She refused to be seated on a stool, 
 from a cautious instinct, but sat, as it were pro- 
 visionally, on a corner of the table from which 
 she swept Narcisse's tools. And then she caught 
 
I20 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 sight of the screen, and the little den it made ; 
 and suspiciously rose to her feet again, gazing 
 at it. 
 
 " Rosahe, Rosalie ! " said Narcisse, taking her 
 two hands in his, and forcing her attention to 
 him. " Listen to me, and be at rest for a 
 moment. I am going to tell you — to show you 
 my secret. You are to see it first, then all the 
 town and all the world. You first, Rosalie ! " 
 
 He went to the screen and folded it back 
 against the wall, revealing something, about five 
 feet high, wrapped in cloths. One by one those 
 swathmgs were removed, and there was found 
 beneath them a finished skeleton, in polished 
 white sycamore -wood. The posture of it 
 imitated, in some degree, the statue of stone in 
 the church, but not in the case of the arms, 
 which hung at its side. As a piece of mechanism 
 it was very ingenious, for each of the principal 
 bones was made separately and fixed to its 
 neighbours with springs, but the labour had 
 been lessened by the conventional treatment of 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 121 
 
 the framework. The figure in its brilliant 
 whiteness was unmistakably intended for a 
 skeleton, and in the dusk might have startled an 
 unwitting guest, but no one who examined it, 
 even cursorily and ignorantly, would take it for 
 a genuine relic of humanity. The skull was 
 very cunningly carved, but in the rest of the 
 figure art was sacrificed to mechanics. In the 
 hollow of the chest was arranged a sort of clock- 
 work, which was not seen except on close 
 examination. The feet were firmly planted 
 upon a wooden base. It was very cleverly 
 made, but rude and childish, the masterpiece of 
 a provincial craftsman. 
 
 Rosalie gazed at it in wonder and admiration, 
 not unmixed with apprehension. 
 
 " Was this your secret ? " she said. 
 
 "Yes. I could not speak of it, even to you, 
 until it was done. It has been a long, long 
 business to finish it." 
 
 Her curiosity in the image began to flag. It 
 was very clever, but — ! This could not be the 
 
122 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 real secret of Narcisse. This did not explain 
 the girl who played the zither with him that 
 evening. 
 
 " That is not your secret, Narcisse ! " she 
 cried, and she turned away as if to go. 
 
 " Ah ! you gipsy," he exclaimed, in an ecstasy 
 of delight ; " she knows everything by divination, 
 she reads the stars ! No one can deceive her, 
 the cunning jade ! No, no, that is not my 
 secret — not all my secret." 
 
 He stooped behind the skeleton, and drew 
 forth the zither. She started as she saw it. 
 Narcisse was more excited than ever. 
 
 " Ah ! " he cried " did she not ask about the 
 zither, too, when we were walking in the garden ? 
 She knows everything, she reads the stars ! " 
 
 He set a spring in motion between the ribs of 
 his skeleton, and a buzzing sound was heard ; 
 then he bent one of the pendant arms upwards 
 and confined it below the neck, settling the zither 
 firmly within its grasp. He then bent the other 
 arm lower down, so that its fingers touched, or 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 123 
 
 nearly touched, the strings of the zither. Then 
 he retreated to a distance of eight or nine feet, 
 and put a flute to his Hps. As he blew the first 
 note, the fingers of the skeleton struck the same 
 note on the strings of the zither, and continued 
 to the end of the tune to accompany the flute 
 with a surprising exactitude. It was a very fair 
 duet on the two simple instruments. 
 
 Rosalie listened, standing in the middle of the 
 room, and staring. With a growing horror in 
 her eyes, she retreated backward, till she touched 
 the further wall, and in that position she met the 
 gaze of Narcisse when the tune was over, and 
 he looked over his shoulder to her radiantly, for 
 congratulation. 
 
 " Then it is true," she said, in an awe-struck 
 whisper ; " it is true that you have sold yourself 
 to Satan ? " 
 
 " To Satan ? " he cried, and his laughter rang 
 out and echoed in the rafters overhead, " No, 
 indeed, to my own good head and brain, and to 
 the memory of my master, Ligier Richier, and to 
 
124 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 the service of our Lady, the Mother of God. 
 What are you afraid of, foolish child ? See ! 
 It is not even made of bone : it is all white wood 
 of the sycamore-tree, grown down by the river, 
 in the miller's ait. Every piece of it was 
 fashioned in this room, by these hands of mine, 
 with these tools of mine." 
 
 " The skull is a dead woman's skull," she said 
 dubiously, still half afraid. 
 
 " No, no ! " he exclaimed, and laughed in pride 
 and merriment ; " it is all carved out of the good 
 white wood, parqueted together, piece upon 
 piece : and what a labour it was, I warrant you ! 
 Come and see, come and feel, for yourself." 
 And he laughed again, that soft, contented laugh 
 of his. But still she would not come. 
 
 " I tried to make her dance as well as play, 
 like those skeletons that are painted on the rood- 
 screen at St. Mihiel, that take their rebecks and 
 fifes, and foot it, foot it, so merrily in a country 
 galliard. But I could not contrive it. She was 
 too stubborn. I could not teach her feet to 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 125 
 
 learn the saraband, and so, to punish her, I 
 fixed them down so tightly to this board that 
 they will never stir, however madly she rattles 
 on her zither. Ah ! she has been an obstinate 
 wench ! " 
 
 Rosalie did not much approve of this form of 
 address. Was she already, or again, a little 
 jealous of a skeleton of sycamore, all joints and 
 springs ? Partly this feeling, and partly a 
 curious confidence born in her by the familiar 
 way in which Narcisse spoke of and to his inven- 
 tion, overcame her scruples. She gave way to 
 her intense instinct of curiosity, and was per- 
 suaded not merely to look closely at, but even 
 timidly to touch, the skeleton. 
 
 This, then, was the secret of Narcisse ! This 
 it was which had occupied his thoughts so com- 
 pletely and taken him so often from her company. 
 This was the white-handed maiden whom she 
 had seen him embrace from her vantage point on 
 the shoulder of the vine-tree. When she supposed 
 that he was bending to kiss a rival sweetheart. 
 
126 The Secret of Narc 
 
 isse 
 
 he was arranging the swivel of a recalcitrant 
 link, or twisting a wire in a fresh direction. 
 She was ashamed of her jealousy, but she re- 
 joiced to think that Narcisse, absorbed in his 
 invention, had been wholly unconscious of it. 
 There was no cloud on the laughing blue of his 
 eyes when he gazed at her. She had never 
 seen him so eager, so radiant ; it added a new 
 charm to his serene and unaffected comeliness. 
 She felt that she had never loved him so much. 
 She forgot all her own mistrust, all her faithless- 
 ness of temper, and rushed into his arms. In 
 another instant she had set the old empty stair- 
 case ringing with her sudden descent, had swept 
 through the house like a south-westerly gale, 
 and was flying down the street. 
 
 Left alone once more, a great peace descended 
 upon the spirit of Narcisse Gerbillard. After so 
 long anxiety, after such an ecstasy of triumph, 
 a happy weariness stole over him. He sat for 
 a long time on his bed, leaning his head against 
 the wall, travelling over in his mind the diffi- 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 127 
 
 culties which he had overcome, the disappoint- 
 ments which his art had conquered. He was 
 profoundly happy, at peace with all the world. 
 He did not attempt to look far forward. No 
 doubt large fame and profit would accrue to the 
 inventor of such a wonderful image. He would 
 be pointed out as the maker of the Musical 
 Skeleton. The Duke would send for him and 
 make him perform in his presence. The dow- 
 ager Duchess, who had to excess the fashionable 
 taste for skeletons, would wish to buy it. No ! 
 he would never sell it. His maiden should 
 never play with any one else than with himself. 
 Except, perhaps, with his dear friend the trum- 
 peter ; and he smiled to think of the figure with 
 its docile white bones accompanying the brazen 
 notes of the trumpet, while Narcisse stood by, 
 anxiously superintending and applauding. 
 
 But all this was looking forward, and he had 
 said that he would not do that. He was content 
 with the present, with the exquisitely still and 
 complete and sufficient sense of accomplishment. 
 
128 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 From the garden there poured in upon him the 
 soporific sweetness exhaled by the hot clusters 
 of balm in the sunlight. He dozed in happy 
 dreams on the border-land of consciousness, 
 dreams in which his white lady seemed to 
 dance before him with the black eyes of Rosalie 
 in her sockets, and the trumpeter's scarlet 
 feather nodding over her temples. 
 
 Presently he roused himself and cooked some 
 food. It had never tasted better, and he had 
 never been more hungry. Then he remembered 
 his vow, and determined to set his hand to his 
 work at once, to the design of that ivory casket 
 which should stand in the chapel of the holy 
 Virgin in St. Maze. It would be small because 
 he was poor, and ivory was so rare and dear, 
 but he knew a man in the castle who had a 
 piece of walrus-tooth. He would get it from 
 him as cheaply as he could. Then — it should 
 be a long box, with the Passion in rehef along 
 the front of it. Or else — the story of the 
 Fountain of Youth, with naked figures in the 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 129 
 
 fountain ? No, perhaps the Passion would be 
 best, because the head of Our Lady herself could 
 be introduced, with soft, pouting lips, and little 
 plump hands lifted to the cross in the French 
 mode. Yes ! that it should be. And he sat 
 down, with a small board in front of him, to 
 make a sketch of the relief in wax. When the 
 wax study was finished it would be time enough 
 to buy the walrus tusk. He would take the 
 waxen sketch to church, and dedicate it to Our 
 Lady there. If she knew it was being done 
 she would help him to buy the ivory cheaply. 
 Ah ! what a happy world it was ! 
 
 And the consequence was that Narcisse, amply 
 occupied at home, never left his house at all 
 that day, and in his radiant peace and satisfac- 
 tion never guessed that a storm of popular 
 insanity was gathering in the town of Bar, or 
 that his good name, his art, and his life were 
 threatened by a monstrous prejudice. The 
 evening sank slowly and delicately over the 
 green garden of herbs, the stars came out in 
 
 I 
 
130 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 clusters overhead, the moon showed a broad 
 golden face in which there seemed nothing 
 sinister, and Narcisse went to bed at last, sleep- 
 ing suddenly and restfully, like a tired and happy 
 child. 
 
VI 
 
 Early the following moming, Rosalie went 
 down to the well under the castle wall, with her 
 yoke on her shoulders and the two swinging 
 buckets at her side. When she reached the 
 water no one else was there, and she began her 
 task. The first bucket had but splashed the 
 surface of the well, when a little door in the 
 wall above her opened, and the Duke's trum- 
 peter hurriedly descended a flight of stone steps 
 to her side. He had evidently been watching 
 for her from the battlements. He looked 
 anxiously up and down the street, but there was 
 no one to disturb them, and after a hurried greet- 
 ing, he said : " Does Narcisse wear a shirt of 
 mail ? " 
 
132 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 " No ! I do not think so," said Rosalie ; 
 " why should he ? " 
 
 " Why should he ? He will get off well if 
 he does not need one to-day. You must know 
 what I mean ? " 
 
 " What do you mean ? " asked Rosalie, in 
 astonishment. 
 
 " It is all your doing," answered the trum- 
 peter sulkily. " Why could you not leave it 
 undone ? " 
 
 " Leave what undone ? I swear to you, trum- 
 peter, I know no more what you mean by all 
 this than the innocent bird there in the cage." 
 
 " Did you not accuse Narcisse of witch- 
 craft ? " 
 
 " No 1 " said she indignantly, but waxing 
 very red. " No, indeed ! " 
 
 " Well, then, the town has gone mad — stark, 
 staring mad — of its own accord. Did you not 
 say anything to set this story going ? " 
 
 " It is not for you to put me through my 
 questions," she said, with an attempt at dignity. 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 133 
 
 " Did not you let them accuse Narcisse of 
 witchcraft without denying it ? " 
 
 " I was angry with him," she said, in a low 
 tone, after a pause, 
 
 "You were angry with him," the trumpeter 
 repeated, in a mocking voice, " and so you let 
 the foulest thing that man can say of man pass 
 uncontradicted ? You were angry with him, and 
 so you were willing to damn him body and 
 soul ? And are you still — angry ? " 
 
 " Oh, no, no ! " 
 
 " Then why are you so cool and quiet this 
 morning ? " 
 
 "Why should I not be?" said Rosalie. 
 " You know something. What is it ? What 
 is it ? " 
 
 " If you are true in what you say, and it is 
 not you who have set this thing going, borrow a 
 shirt and sleeves of mail from your father and 
 hasten with them to Narcisse. Tell him that 
 all the rabble of the town is after him, and bid 
 him fly out of Bar as quickly as possible and as 
 
134 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 secretly as he may, till this thing blow over. 
 If he gets down to the miller's house on the 
 river, he will be safe, and he can stay there till 
 we have cleared up this matter. But many 
 friends in Bar, as you know, he has not. 
 What you do, do instantly." And the trum- 
 peter leaped up the steps again and vanished 
 within the castle. 
 
 Rosalie filled the other bucket, and took the 
 water home, working out her ideas as clearly as 
 she could. Then she hastily pressed round to 
 her father's workshop. She thought to ask 
 him to lend Narcisse the armour, but concluded 
 not to risk the chance of his refusal. She stole 
 in, and went to the back-shop, where she knew 
 a suit was kept. For some time she could not 
 find it, but at last, in a coffer, she came on the 
 chain-mail jacket, with the sleeves folded above 
 it. She took them all out, threw a cloth around 
 them, brought them unchallenged through the 
 front shop, and hastened to the courtyard of the 
 physic garden, where she made her usual signal. 
 
The Secret of Narclsse 135 
 
 As she passed near the church, she saw that the 
 booth which Narcisse rented was empty, and 
 she also noticed a httle crowd of the worst 
 ruffians of the town clustered at the entrance of 
 one of the narrow courts which led into the 
 Place. 
 
 Narcisse descended at the sound of the 
 rattling lock, with the large key in his hand, 
 but, to his surprise, Rosalie hastened into the 
 house itself, ascended the staircase in front of 
 him, and rushed into the room. 
 
 " Do you wear a shirt of mail ? " she asked 
 him. 
 
 " No, of course not," he answered, smiling. 
 
 " Then you must put this on at once," she 
 exclaimed, showing what she had brought. 
 
 " I could not breathe in those things," he 
 replied. " I have not worn mail since I came 
 here with Master Richier, and he made us all 
 carry chain shirts as we crossed the hill- 
 country. He found out that I was carrying 
 mine in my coffer instead of on my back, and 
 
136 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 flew into a rage with me. Why should I wear 
 that stifling armour ? " 
 
 " Narcisse, you must ; you must put it on 
 and fly. Go down to the miller's house on the 
 ait, and ask him to give you shelter. It is not 
 safe for you to stay in Bar. Put on this 
 armour, and go at once." 
 
 " Why is it not safe ? I have not an enemy 
 in Bar. What has happened ? " 
 
 " There is a sort of rabble making trouble in 
 the town. They will come here and insult you." 
 
 " Why should they insult me ? The Duke 
 will protect me. I will appeal to him if the 
 worst comes to the worst. And your father 
 with his 'prentices would be enough to drive 
 back an army of rabble." 
 
 " They will not dare to do anything. Father 
 will do nothing, the Duke will do nothing." 
 
 " What is all this, Rosalie ? You speak as 
 though I had become an outcast. Are there no 
 laws in Bar ? Is not a God-fearing citizen safe 
 in this Christian town ? " 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 137 
 
 " Not," she said slowly and hesitatingly, " if 
 he has been accused of witchcraft." 
 
 " Of witchcraft ! " he gasped, growing very 
 pale ; " who has dared to accuse me of witch- 
 craft ? " 
 
 She longed to tell him that it was she, that 
 she had lighted this dreadful, inextinguishable 
 match in a paroxysm of jealous rage — to tell him 
 all, and to gain his absolution by her utter devo- 
 tion, flying with him into the dark world out- 
 side, accepting the heaviest punishment, which 
 would for her be sweetened, she felt dimly, by 
 the ecstatic pleasure of his continual presence. 
 But she lacked the courage to make this con- 
 fession. 
 
 He had no suspicion of the truth. " It must 
 be the Cure," he said, " for he has never loved 
 me nor my works. He hates the Italian taste, 
 and they say 'tis he who scratched the carvings 
 on the chapel gates that Master Richier put up ; 
 he hates those little sea-goddesses with their 
 marble breasts, and would turn them out of the 
 
138 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 church if he were not afraid of the Duke. It 
 must be he." 
 
 " Yes," said RosaHe, in a low voice, " it must 
 be he." 
 
 But when he pressed her for further particu- 
 lars, he found that she knew nothing specific. 
 As she was ashamed to confess that she had 
 started a rumour of his walking with the devil, 
 it really did appear that she knew nothing. 
 She said that the trumpeter had sent a mes- 
 sage ; but Narcisse laughed and said that the 
 trumpeter only wanted to get him away, and 
 down at the mill, that they might go shooting 
 together. She told him of the rough fellows 
 clustered in the court, but she had no proof that 
 they threatened Narcisse. He did not want to 
 go, and he made hght of the affair. No one, he 
 said, could accuse him of anything evil without 
 being made to bring proof, and there could be 
 no proof. 
 
 "You shall listen to the White Maiden," he 
 replied ; " before I think of stirring anywhere, 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 139 
 
 she shall play to you ; " and Rosalie allowed 
 herself to be persuaded. The cloths were taken 
 off the Musical Skeleton, and her mechanism 
 was set going. The machinery acted perfectly, 
 and the strangely fascinating duet of flute and 
 zither proceeded in the silence. As the figure 
 and Narcisse played, however, Rosalie became 
 conscious of gathering steps in the street below, 
 and walking quietly to the window, without 
 disturbing Narcisse, she glanced out. There 
 she saw below her a grotesque assemblage of 
 people, most of them roughs and idle persons, 
 with a scattering of boys. The head of the 
 procession appeared to be the sacristan of St. 
 Maze, who held a pair of brazen tongs in his 
 hand, with which he gesticulated, swaying his 
 instrument to and fro at the crowd, to invoke 
 silence, like a conductor leading a band. By his 
 side an acolyte stood, carrying a pot of holy 
 water, and another young man was armed with 
 a pan of burning coals. It was evident that 
 this reconnoitring party had been quite unpre- 
 
140 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 pared to hear the music which proceeded from 
 Narcisse's room, and that they were pausing in 
 astonishment to Hsten to it. 
 
 At length the sacristan called out, in a shrill 
 squeaky voice : 
 
 " I conjure thee, Lucifer, by the living 
 God ," and sprinkled holy water nerv- 
 ously to right and left. 
 
 Still Rosalie watched, unseen, and still the 
 duet continued inside the room. 
 
 " I conjure thee, Satan ! I conjure thee, 
 Beelzebub ! Come out, come out ! " shrieked 
 the sacristan ; and taking a coal in his tongs, he 
 waved it in front of the door. The smoke dis- 
 concerted a small bird whose nest was under the 
 eaves, and she flew out with a rustle of her 
 wings. 
 
 " There he comes," cried one of the boys, 
 "like a little monkey with wings and a black 
 face." But the rest of the company felt that it 
 was a common sparrow, and the boy was 
 snubbed. So far as the matter had yet pro- 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 141 
 
 ceeded, it seemed absurd and almost comic. 
 But the crowd was gathering, and it did not 
 seem to be at all a friendly crowd. 
 
 " Come out, Nambroth, I conjure thee ! " 
 screamed the sacristan, louder than before. 
 
 " Fly, Narcisse," whispered Rosalie, " fly now 
 while it is not too late. Climb down into the 
 physic garden, with the key, and hide in the 
 bower until all this- is overpast. Then slip 
 down and take shelter with the miller." 
 
 " And leave you here ! " he said. 
 
 " No, no, I will come with you." 
 
 " You could not leap down from this window, 
 or climb by the vine," he objected. 
 
 " Oh, yes, yes ! I could," she urged, blushing 
 to recollect how well she knew the roadway up 
 and down the vine. 
 
 " But, Rosalie," he said slowly, " even if you 
 come with me, I could not leave her behind, and 
 we could not carry her" — he pointed to the 
 Musical Skeleton. 
 
 " Oh ! " cried the girl, stung anew by his 
 
142 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 devotion, " what of that thing ? You made it, 
 could you not make another ? Hide it in your 
 coffer." 
 
 " She is much too large." 
 " In your bed — under cloths upon the floor 
 — in one of the empty rooms ! Let us drag 
 it up the stairs ! Come, Narcisse, come ! I 
 will take its head, and you shall take its 
 feet." 
 
 " No," he replied, " I cannot. She is part 
 of my life. I should never make an image 
 like that again. Where she is, I must stay ; 
 you do not understand. I have done nothing 
 wrong. There is not a word of sorcery in 
 all my head. I can prove my innocence. If 
 I ran away, how could I ever come back again ? 
 After being accused, and not clearing myself, 
 could I ever see Bar again, or you, or — or — 
 her ? " He turned from his sweetheart to touch 
 the wrist of the skeleton. 
 
 Rosalie left him, and rushed to the window 
 overlooking the street. The crowd was growing 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 143 
 
 more excited, and was shouting. The sacristan, 
 like a madman, was rushing hither and thither, 
 brandishing his tongs. When the girl appeared, 
 leaning out upon the balustrade, the shouting 
 ceased. 
 
 " Rosalie ! Rosalie Mercillat ! " one or two 
 voices called out. 
 
 " Come forth from that accursed house," 
 shrieked the sacristan. " Satan is there. You 
 will be carried off upon his shoulders, through 
 the window. What is that sorcerer's music ? 
 If that is the hymn before the Black Mass, 
 beware, wretched girl, that you be not scorched 
 into a coal." 
 
 "What is that music?" shouted two or three 
 men in the ci-owd. Rosalie was so well known, 
 and was so generally supposed to have de- 
 nounced her companion, that the public, though 
 amazed, were not exactly scandalised to find 
 her in the house. 
 
 " That is Master Narcisse playing the flute," 
 she said, " as you all have heard him do dozens 
 
144 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 of times in his workshop below the church," she 
 continued. 
 
 " And the other music, that which accom- 
 panies him, Rosahe ? " 
 
 " That is the viol of Beelzebub, steeped in 
 the blood of he-goats, stringed with the hair 
 of women who have cursed God," yelled the 
 sacristan, waving his nauseous smoking coal 
 under the window. 
 
 " Fool, that is a zither ! Did you never hear 
 a zither ? " But, as a matter of fact, that being 
 a southern instrument, very few people in the 
 town were familiar with the sound of it. 
 
 " Who is playing that — that — whatever it is 
 you call it ? Tell us who is playing it, since 
 iVIaster Narcisse is blowing the flute. 
 
 " No zither," squeaked the sacristan ; " the 
 sackbut of Satan, and he plays it with strokes 
 of his tail. Come out of this house, Lucifer, I 
 conjure thee ! " 
 
 " Who is the other player ? " shouted two or 
 three persons in the crowd. 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 145 
 
 Rosalie leaned over the bar, and quietly 
 stroked threads of hair back from her eyes. 
 She smiled before she spoke, a contemptuous 
 smile. " I am the other player," she said. 
 " And now go home, you noisy, idle people, 
 before the Duke hears of it and sends his 
 halberdiers to fetch you." 
 
 " It was you who was playing that zither, 
 Rosalie?" said Bibianne, just under the window. 
 
 " Yes, I," replied her sister, rather shyly. 
 She had not noticed Bibianne's presence till that 
 moment. 
 
 " You cannot play two notes on any instru- 
 ment in the world, you, Rosalie ! " 
 
 Narcisse appeared at the window, behind the 
 girl, and she made way for him to stand beside 
 her. He looked even paler than usual, but quite 
 calm and resolved. The crowd hissed and 
 yelled at him. 
 
 " Go away, Rosalie," some shouted, " that 
 we may pelt him." 
 
 Narcisse, too, urged her to go in ; for all 
 
 K 
 
146 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 answer she took his hand in hers and held it 
 openly, gazing down at the crowd. 
 
 Waving his arm for silence, Narcisse waited 
 till the shrieks and cat-calls were over. The 
 people listened. In a few words, he told them 
 that there was no sorcery in the case ; that he 
 had made an image with his own hands, since, 
 as they all knew, it was his business to make 
 images for the glory of God, and for the plea- 
 sure of the Duke and his other honourable 
 patrons ; that this figure was just now com- 
 pleted ; and that it was so made that it played 
 music of itself. He went on to say that as 
 the sacristan seemed to be the leader of the 
 mob, he might come up and inspect the figure 
 for himself, and tell the rest of them about it. 
 
 Accordingly, Narcisse went down and unbolted 
 the door; after a little hesitation, urged on by 
 the others, the sacristan ventured in, and the 
 door was rebolted. The sacristan was a grim 
 and unsavoury creature, very thin and leathery, 
 with eyes out of which all the colour seemed 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 147 
 
 to have been soaked. From the long habit of 
 wandering about in the gloom of the church, he 
 had become unaccustomed to strong daylight, and 
 peered and winked like an owl in the sunshine. 
 He came up sulkily and circumspectly after 
 Narcisse, with a face committed to nothing. 
 This man was famous for his superstitious 
 zeal and his hatred of the black magic. He 
 was no lover of Narcisse, whose presence in 
 the Uttle workshop under St, Maze was a 
 constant source of offence to him, since he 
 wished for that Naboth's vineyard for the use 
 of his own daughter's husband, who was a 
 blacksmith. He was exceedingly cruel and 
 credulous, and would have been constantly 
 embroiling the town with his accusations if 
 the priests had not kept him in some sort of 
 check, 
 
 Narcisse could not but feel the absurdity of 
 his own disappointment. He had planned to 
 keep his skeleton closely within the bounds of 
 distinguished society, to play it first in public 
 
148 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 before the Duchess and her son, and only 
 gradually to admit to his circle of auditors the 
 wealthy burgesses and the nobles in the Rue des 
 Dues. And now, by a tiresome accident, the 
 cause of which he could not divine, his earliest 
 public performance had to be made for the benefit 
 of this horrible scarecrow, who had no civil 
 word for man or beast, and who was scarcely 
 tolerated in the street. He did not speak to the 
 sacristan on the stairs, and he silentl}' motioned 
 him to follow him into the room. Rosalie still 
 stood near the window which overlooked the 
 street. Narcisse had thrown a sheet over the main 
 part of his skeleton, and he saw no need to disrobe 
 her for the sake of the new visitor, who kept 
 close to the door, furtively crossing himself, in 
 visible perturbation. Narcisse removed the cloth 
 from the hands and zither, and was about to 
 begin. 
 
 " Saint Ignatius and Saint Hippolytus, preserve 
 me ! holy saints of my dedication, hold me in 
 your hands 1 " murmured the sacristan ; and then, 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 149 
 
 in a snappish tone of voice, to Narcisse, " What 
 is under that sheet ? Unveil ! disrobe ! expose !" 
 Narcisse bit his lip with annoyance at being 
 ordered, in his own house, by such a loathsome 
 being, to carry out what seemed a profanation of 
 his Maiden. Rosalie, at her window, stamped 
 with rage. But the sacristan, after his kind, 
 represented the town itself, the superstitious 
 town wakened to suspicion and demanding a full 
 disclosure. The sacristan had been invited in 
 as an ambassador, and must receive the honours 
 and privileges of an envoy. Narcisse removed 
 the sheet, and exposed the delicate white bones 
 of sycamore-wood. He set the apparatus in 
 order, and, turning his back to the sacristan, 
 began his duet with the skeleton. Rosalie, how- 
 ever, kept her eye on the visitor, and watched, 
 with astonishment and alarm the horror that 
 grew upon his features. When he perceived 
 that the figure was a skeleton, he started and 
 crossed himself hurriedly, but when he further 
 saw the fluttering movement in the bosom, the 
 
150 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 unfamiliar instrument held in the bony arms, the 
 white fingers moving in cadence, his whole frame 
 was convulsed with agitation, and he grew 
 sickly pale, steadying himself with his hand 
 against the post of the door. 
 
 Rosalie, seeing this effect upon their unwelcome 
 and unlovely guest, would have stopped Narcisse, 
 but it was too late. At the earliest shrill note of 
 the flute between the lips of Narcisse, the slender 
 finger-ends of the skeleton touched the strings of 
 the zither in absolute unison, and the tune began. 
 Beads of anguish stood on the brows of the 
 sacristan, he trembled so exceedingly that he 
 could scarcely stand, and, before a single bar 
 was concluded, feeling his way with his hands 
 like a blind man, he had tottered from the room, 
 and was heard rolling, rather than running, down 
 the resounding staircase. He had scarcely power 
 to open the door, but, after a long fumbling, 
 he flung himself at last into the street. 
 
 The situation was now very serious. 
 Narcisse's first act was to dart downstairs, and 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 151 
 
 push back the heavy iron bolt. Outside, the 
 crowd was gathering close about the sacristan, 
 who had recovered all his volubility, and who, 
 with arms thrown up to heaven and appeals to 
 all his patron saints, was giving an excited 
 and a highly embroidered account of the scene 
 he had just survived. For a while, absorbed in 
 the relation of this old man, the crowd ceased 
 from all their noises. Neither Narcisse nor 
 Rosalie, hidden in the embrasure of the window, 
 could hear what he said, but presently they 
 perceived that he had finished his story and was 
 urging his audience on to action. Several of 
 the youths rushed to the door, but were foiled 
 by finding it barred. Wooden shutters, nailed 
 across the lower windows of the house, made 
 those entrances also impossible, and a regular 
 siege began. As stones and rubbish were flung 
 at the upper window, Narcisse quickly closed 
 the lattices and barred them. The raging crowd, 
 now perfectly crazed with superstition and alarm, 
 was, at all events for a few moments, kept at bay. 
 
152 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 When Narcisse turned from the street, 
 Rosalie had disappeared. He flew to the other 
 window, and saw her deftly descending the 
 great vine, which swang and started with her 
 weight, but made a perfectly safe ladder. 
 Arriving noiselessly on a bed of herbs, she 
 paused and looked up. His pale face bent 
 towards her, and she made a final dumb appeal 
 to him to fly with her. She held the key of the 
 physic garden in her hand, and she motioned to 
 him to join her. But it was impossible to 
 induce him to leave his image, and, besides, he 
 could not have escaped unseen. He gesticu- 
 lated to her to hide herself in the bower, not to 
 attempt to leave the garden, and, to satisfy him, 
 she pretended to do so, while he turned back 
 into the room. But in reality she stole to the 
 gate as noiselessly as possible, turned the key 
 in the lock, and stood in the archway. The 
 crowd's attention was concentrated in thundering 
 upon the stout door of Narcisse's house, and, 
 without being seen, Rosalie darted out of the 
 
The Secret of Narclsse 153 
 
 court, and round a corner. Narcisse might have 
 escaped, after all, she reflected. 
 
 Meanwhile, beleaguered in his castle, Narcisse 
 was alone with his White Maiden. He lost 
 none of his serenity at this fatal moment. In a 
 corner of the room lay the armour which Rosalie 
 had brought, and had thrown upon the floor. 
 The crowd was yelling and hammering in the 
 street below, the old empty house throbbing 
 with the violence of the shocks. Narcisse 
 stripped off his doublet, and the close jerkin 
 underneath it ; then he carefully fitted the 
 chain-mail over his shirt and put the doublet on 
 again, flinging the jerkin on to his bed. The 
 sleeves were cumbersome, and he could not pull 
 the arms of his tight doublet over them, so he 
 plucked them off, and discarded them. The mail- 
 shirt alone was discommoding enough to him. 
 
 Outside, the howling and the clattering 
 continued. The sacristan was now supported 
 by his son-in-law, the blacksmith, who had 
 brought his hammer with him, and another man 
 
154 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 had armed himself with a bar of iron. Several 
 of the youths had bludgeons, and the rest 
 shouted to keep up the others' courage. Blow 
 upon blow fell on the old tough oak of the door. 
 That was the smith's work, Narcisse was sure, 
 from the steady and workmanlike sound of it. 
 At last there was a horrid crash, a scream of 
 splitting wood, and the door had partly given 
 way. It was now possible to push a hand in 
 and pull the bolt back, and after a httle delay, 
 caused by the fact that the violent blows had 
 twisted the bolt, this was achieved, and the 
 foremost members of the crowd, who were 
 pressing upon the door, were precipitated for- 
 wards by its opening inward. 
 
 But, having accomphshed their purpose, the 
 invaders were in no haste to make use of their 
 victory. They gathered on the ground-floor, 
 and Narcisse could hear them, suddenly subdued 
 in spirits, discuss what should next be at- 
 tempted. The sacristan, in a high moaning 
 whisper, proposed this course and the other, but 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 155 
 
 they all were conscious that in forcing their way 
 with violence into a man's house, they had acted 
 with more zeal than wisdom. Nothing but the 
 detention of an indubitable wizard would justify 
 such a tampering with the rights of property, 
 and how were they, having gone so far, to go 
 further and prove Satanic possession ? Into 
 those who, scared to find themlselves in this 
 quandary, were proposing to slink home again, 
 the sacristan was pouring courage by describing 
 the horrors of the scene upstairs, yet instead of 
 this being an incentive, it was rather a deter- 
 rent. At last, five or six men — with the 
 hideous old sacristan, armed with a drawn 
 knife, at their head — ventured, in a compact and 
 silent phalanx, up the stairs. 
 
 Narcisse heard them coming and threw his 
 body against the door of the room, bringing the 
 onset to a temporary pause. Outside the door 
 the half-dozen were breathing heavily ; inside it 
 one desperate man, with the moisture beaded on 
 his pale forehead, and his lips tightly pressed 
 
156 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 together, stood with his strong shoulder forming 
 a buttress of vain defence. The invaders sum- 
 moned their spirits to their help again, and 
 rushed upon the door. Narcisse, flung down on 
 the ground at full-length, made the rafters ring 
 with the shock of his weight, while the sacristan, 
 at the head of the little army, burst in confu- 
 sion into the middle of the room. 
 
 A scene of the most senseless riot then ensued. 
 Stricken with panic, and no longer recognising 
 one another in their horrible dread of the Satanic 
 forces supposed to be in action in this place, the 
 invaders fell upon one another with shrieks and 
 groans, giving Narcisse time to roll to the wall 
 and recover himself. The sacristan, with a yell 
 of fury, rushed at him, holding his knife ready 
 to stab. He struck a violent blow directed at 
 the heart of Narcisse, whose doublet was ripped 
 open with a hissing noise, but the weapon 
 turned on the chain-mail, and left the old man 
 in the power of Narcisse. Taking him by the 
 ribs in the grip of his two strong hands, the 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 157 
 
 sculptor lifted his assailant and flung him to the 
 opposite corner of the room. The sacristan, 
 descending on his flank and elbow, stretched his 
 length on the floor, and bumped his bald head 
 against the wall. The trampling and struggling 
 had, by this time, raised a dust so thick that it 
 half concealed the combatants from one another. 
 The sacristan coughed as though his end were 
 near, until his son-in-law, with the help of a 
 lad, lifted him on to his feet again and shook 
 him into life. 
 
 Dazed still and sore with his fall, Narcisse 
 looked round at the rest of the attacking party. 
 He saw that they had discovered the Musical 
 Skeleton. 
 
 " Here is the devil's dam ! " said one ; " here 
 is the wickedness the beast hath cut out by 
 Satan's aid ! " 
 
 " Say rather," cried another, " the shameful 
 thing Beelzebub has brought out of hell to seal 
 his pact in blood. Take care ! Its arm 
 moved ! It is, without doubt, Satan himself." 
 
158 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 The poor Musical Skeleton, fair and glossy in 
 its bones of sycamore-wood, had dropped one 
 of its arms to its side, the ruffian who tore off 
 its covering having touched a spring unwittingly. 
 The men all darted back and observed it. It 
 stood there, waiting patiently for its master, with 
 its other hand still bent over the chords of the 
 zither. The sacristan at this moment rushed 
 forward, and commanded the lads to drag the 
 unholy thing out, and into the street, but none 
 of them was willing to touch it again. In a 
 blind fury, the old man made a rush at it, and 
 plucked the hand of the skeleton. This gave to 
 the mechanism the start which it required, and 
 the white fingers began to descend rhythmically 
 on the strings, producing the familiar tune in 
 stately cadence. Yelling with terror, the men 
 flung themselves to the further extremity of the 
 room, several of them falling on their knees, and 
 crossing themselves with fervour. Narcisse 
 advanced to his beloved and outraged creation. 
 Pressing the spring which regulated the music. 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 159 
 
 he stopped the tune, and threw the cloths again 
 over the skeleton. He then turned and faced 
 the cowardly group of his assailants. 
 
 The concealment of the skeleton and the 
 cessation of the music restored to the invaders 
 their courage. If Narcisse had been willing to 
 allow the docile figure to continue the tune, in 
 open day, it would have been long before those 
 trembling lads and their fanatical leader would 
 have called up heart enough to come forward. 
 But the sculptor preferred depriving himself of 
 protection to witnessing and permitting the 
 degradation of his White Maiden. He felt a 
 burning anger at the notion of his sacred and 
 divine figure being made a spectacle for the 
 passions of a handful of brutes and clowns. 
 He declined her protection. It was for him to 
 guard her, not for her to bewitch these swine 
 into abandoning him. He stood by the side of 
 his draped companion, and with a howl of rage 
 the sacristan and his lads leaped upon her and 
 upon him. Narcisse struck out gallantly to right 
 
i6o The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 and left, but they overpowered him, and dragged 
 him down into the street, the poor skeleton, 
 huddled in its sheet, being drawn ignominiously 
 in a clattering bundle from stair to stair behind 
 him. 
 
 Rosahe, in escaping, had fled towards the 
 castle, and, happening to meet the trumpeter, 
 had told him, in a few words, the position of 
 events. Consequently, by the time that the 
 unequal struggle was completed, and Narcisse 
 and the skeleton were captured, the trumpeter, 
 with a handful of halberdiers, was at the door. 
 The soldiers roughly hustled the sacristan and 
 his man aside, and took Narcisse under their 
 protection. In vain, however, did the trumpeter 
 urge that his friend should be restored to his 
 house, and permitted to bring his suit against 
 the impudent destroyers of his peace. The hal- 
 berdiers had heard the story of the witchcraft, and 
 realised only too clearly the awful nature of the 
 accusation. Their captain raised Narcisse to his 
 feet, and civilly enough corrected the disorder 
 
The Secret of Narcisse i6i 
 
 of his clothing, but he would not allow him to 
 re-enter his house. He left two of his men to 
 guard the deserted room, secured the skeleton in 
 a sack, and then marched the sculptor, in com- 
 pany with his figure, off to the town jail, in the 
 name of the sovereign Duke. 
 
VII 
 
 On the third day afterwards a miserable morn- 
 ing broke in flying sheets of rain. The soft 
 moisture gathered on the rusty bars of the cold 
 den in which Narcisse was imprisoned, and, 
 gathering in httle oozy pools, dropped inwards, 
 plap, plap, plap. He wakened, stiff with damp- 
 ness, and from his bed of reeds watched the 
 smoke-like puffs of rain flying across the narrow 
 gridiron of his window. Poor Narcisse ! It 
 was a new thing to him to suffer thus. The 
 vague sense of anxiety and discomfort was 
 presently transformed into a positive feeling 
 of rage and despair — rage against the fools and 
 bigots who had accused him of the most shame- 
 ful of offences, who had broken down the barrier 
 
The Secret of Narclsse 163 
 
 of artistic satisfaction, who had outraged his 
 hearth and his worlc ; despair of ever regain- 
 ing the position so suddenly lost, of making 
 himself intelligible to a people so savage and 
 so densely prejudiced, of restoring to his soul 
 that placidity which it needed for its labours. 
 He knew not, except from the shrieks of the 
 crowd, of what he was accused. He had been 
 dragged away and thrown into prison, without 
 further communication with the world. His 
 window looked out upon a bye-street, and it 
 would not be impossible for a person outside 
 to communicate with him, deep as his cell was, 
 since the pavement was on a much higher I'evel 
 than the floor. No one had come, however, ex- 
 cept to throw a little coarse food into the cell. 
 Not even a boy had given him the distraction 
 of a curious glance. He was forgotten. 
 
 At this moment, in the grey light, a sort of 
 shadow seemed to cross his bars, and in another 
 instant a face and shoulders, closely muffled up, 
 appeared at the window, peering in, but saying 
 
164 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 nothing. Narcisse sat up, and was silent also, 
 waiting to see if this was friend or foe. 
 
 " Master Gerbillard ! " said the hooded figure 
 dubiously. 
 
 " Ah, trumpeter, it is you ! " cried the 
 prisoner in a paroxysm of joy. 
 
 But as lie rose to greet him, the apparition 
 at the window vanished. There was a silence 
 once more, and the grey puffs of rain went 
 wandering by. Suddenly the hooded face 
 returned. 
 
 " Hush ! " it said, " I must not be seen talk- 
 ing here. I have been searching for you since 
 daybreak : all that I could discover was that 
 your cell was on the street somewhere. It was 
 by chance at last that I found you." 
 
 " How much longer am I to be here ? " asked 
 Narcisse. 
 
 " You will be tried to-day. The priests have 
 been seeking to get you transferred to their 
 custody. Perhaps it would be better for you 
 in their hands. But it would be slower. All 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 165 
 
 I know is, the parliament will not let you go, 
 and will try you this forenoon." 
 
 It was a relief. Better a sharp end, than 
 many more days of this solitude and darkness, 
 this wet and musty cell, with its foul corners 
 and its horrible inhabitants. He looked up 
 again to ask the trumpeter another question, 
 but he had gone. Narcisse settled down once 
 more, brooding, but now less utterly miserable, 
 on his reed-bed. A few minutes passed and 
 the apparition was at the bars again, with bread 
 and meat, and a small flask of wine ; this last 
 was cracked as it passed through, and added 
 a red tributary to the cold stream from the 
 window. The prisoner amused himself with 
 what was left, and found several draughts of 
 the wine in broken fragments of the bottle. 
 
 " Where is Rosalie ? " he said, his mouth full 
 of meat, and his veins already glowing with 
 a sprightlier flood. But the trumpeter was 
 gone. 
 
 Three hours later, marching between halber- 
 
1 66 The Secret of Narclsse 
 
 diers through the dense rain, Narcisse trudged 
 up the shining wet Place to the court of the 
 parhament. A few people gathered to see him 
 go by ; the Mercillats were at their door, all 
 save Rosalie. The gunsmith turned away, 
 shamefaced, as the soldiers passed, but Bibi- 
 anne, with her bold eyes and cheeks, stood out 
 in the rain on tip-toe to see the prisoner go by. 
 Narcisse could but turn a look of anger on her, 
 and she rewarded him by putting out her tongue. 
 His latest impression of the town into which 
 three years before, a stranger, he had come to 
 claim hospitality, was this childish figure of 
 Bibianne, with black hair untied, hands on hips, 
 gibbering at him with the gesture which was 
 at once an outrage and a curse. 
 
 He let his head sink on his breast, and through 
 the soaking rain, splashing up the mud as they 
 went, they ascended the street to the doors of 
 the parliament court. Once there, the degree in 
 which he had suddenly sunken in popular esteem 
 was patent to him at once. Men were passing 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 167 
 
 in and out who had never crossed in front of 
 his booth without a courteous greeting. To- 
 day they took no notice of him, or, for very 
 shame of their incivihty, nodded and gave him 
 a wide berth. Inside the doors there was a 
 lawyer who owed Narcisse money for work 
 done long ago in his new house in the Rue des 
 Dues, and the sculptor, rejoicing to see there 
 one on whom he had a claim, called out to him. 
 The lawyer came slowly, awkwardly, conscious 
 that all eyes were upon him, but when Narcisse 
 explained that he desired him to undertake his 
 defence, he roughly refused. 
 
 " The presumption of sorcery," he said, " is 
 in itself enough to exclude you from the protec- 
 tion of the law. I cannot help you ; " and he 
 passed away into the court. 
 
 A sort of panic had taken the town. All 
 business was to be put aside until this terrible 
 case had been settled. Those who had accom- 
 panied the sacristan into the house of Narcisse 
 had circulated everywhere an account of what 
 
1 68 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 they had seen, or thought they saw. Em- 
 broidered with abominable exaggerations, these 
 narratives had sufficed to send the whole town 
 mad with apprehension. The devil, with his 
 hoof and claw, had closed the door against the 
 invaders, and it was not until the sacristan had 
 sprinkled holy water on the lock that it had 
 given way. Inside the room a most horrible 
 skeleton had been found, dancing with Narcisse 
 Gerbillard, and through the ribs of it the devil 
 had been seen, in the guise of a black monkey, 
 carrying a heathenish instrument, and playing 
 upon it with his paws. When Narcisse had 
 caught up the sacristan, which he did with 
 superhuman power, his fingers had singed the 
 old man's clothes wherever they touched them, 
 and had filled the room with a smell of burning. 
 When Narcisse was finally overpowered, the 
 devil, changed into a large red bird, had been 
 seen to fly out over the physic garden. Such 
 were a few of the fables, founded on very simple 
 facts, which were repeated in the taverns, and 
 
The Secret of Narclsse 169 
 
 afterwards sworn to in the courts. And there 
 was the horrible instrument of satanic power, the 
 wicked Musical Skeleton itself, safe in the guard- 
 room of the court, to witness whether all these 
 credible housebreakers were telling the truth 
 or no. 
 
 All this and more had been sworn to by wit- 
 nesses in court. On Saturday and Sunday, the 
 throng had been so dense that the judge was 
 with difficulty conducted through the people up 
 to his seat. The boy who thought he had seen 
 Narcisse crawl down the steeple of St. Maze on 
 all-fours like a lizard, was almost certain of that 
 experience on Saturday, and on Sunday, at his 
 own earnest request, was brought back into 
 court to swear to it. The dwellers in the gaunt, 
 grey houses whose narrow windows looked 
 down upon the physic garden, gave evidence 
 that often, in the dusk of the evening, they had 
 seen Narcisse walking with the devil between 
 the beds of thyme and basil. This testimony 
 was weakened at first by the explanation of 
 
I JO The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 those who knew that Rosalie was wont to stroll 
 there under the wing of the mantle of Narcisse. 
 But many of these neighbours, even when that 
 was said, continued to assert that though this 
 might explain much, it did not account for all. 
 
 Finally, Rosalie was examined, and this was 
 the most captivating moment of the whole trial, in 
 the sense of the general public. But, although 
 she was wheedled and harangued, and though 
 the judge himself undertook to browbeat her, 
 very little of any importance was obtained from 
 Rosalie. She insisted that she had never heard 
 Narcisse blaspheme, and that he had certainly 
 never tried to teach her to adore Satan. As to 
 his creeping down the steeple like a lizard, she 
 declared that she knew that boy well, and that 
 he was a little liar. Finally, the judge asked 
 her whether she had heard the Musical Skeleton 
 play, and whether she could explain that. At 
 this Rosahe, after having bravely endured the 
 long cross-examination, broke down and was led 
 out of court violently sobbing. 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 171 
 
 It was around the Musical Skeleton, in fact, 
 that the really important evidence centred. The 
 other stories were of no positive value, except as 
 supporting the general thesis of sorcery. Even 
 at Bar, in the middle of the sixteenth century, no 
 decent citizen would be condemned because a 
 wretched boy said that he had seen him crawl 
 down a church tower, or because a parcel of 
 gossips thought that he walked in a garden with 
 the devil. But all this sensational testimony 
 had its cumulative value when it supported a 
 charge originally based on evidence so damning 
 as that of a skeleton which had, at noonday, 
 been seen and heard to play music though no 
 one was touching it. The judge ordered the 
 partial clearing of the court, it being very 
 dangerous to expose these matters in the 
 presence of unknown persons, who might be 
 sorcerers themselves, and might confuse the 
 course of justice. In the midst of a slender circle 
 of gowned lawyers and servants of the court, the 
 skeleton was dragged in to be examined. 
 
172 The Secret of Narclsse 
 
 It was well for Narcisse that he was spared 
 the extreme mortification of seeing his precious 
 creature maltreated. The poor white skeleton 
 was hauled out of a sack, into which it had been 
 hastily thrust. The delicate sycamore-wood 
 was unprepared for such violence, and several 
 joints of it were broken. The left arm was split 
 across, and several of the tapering cylindrical 
 fingers over which Narcisse had expended his 
 most exquisite labour, were found to have been 
 snapped off, and fell about the floor when the 
 sack was turned inside out. One of the feet 
 was half wrenched away from the basis, and, in 
 dragging the poor figure over the stones, the 
 nice parqueting of the skull had become dis- 
 jointed, and a fracture yawned in it. Neverthe- 
 less, infinitely dejected in its air of patient suffer- 
 ing, comic and tragic at once, it was propped 
 up against a tall chair facing the judge. 
 
 A heart of stone might have been moved to 
 hysterical laughter and tears to see the miserable 
 thing so pitiful, so ridiculous, so deserted. In 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 173 
 
 spite of all its injuries, the mechanical part of the 
 invention remained on the whole intact, and after 
 long and vain fumbling at the machinery, the 
 right spring was at length touched by accident. 
 The zither, held tightly between the breastbone 
 of the figure and its right wrist, had not been 
 dislodged, and the fingers descended upon such 
 of the strings as were not broken. A plaintive 
 discord rose in the silence of the court-room, as 
 pathetic and as blood-curdling as the broken 
 singing of an idiot — a meaningless noise, pierc- 
 ing even to the division of the bones and marrow. 
 Without any notion of sorcery, it would have 
 been poignant to listen to that crazy music ; with 
 the notion that it was Satan in person who was 
 vivifying the strange white mystery, it was 
 terrible enough to make one mad. The judge 
 sank back in his chair, and covered his eyes 
 with one hand while he motioned with the other 
 that the horrible thing should be destroyed. 
 Conquering their extreme terror and revulsion, 
 two or three of the servants thrust the ruined 
 
174 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 skeleton back into its sack. In doing so, the 
 fingers of its right hand caught in the folds of 
 the sacking, and the strain broke the central 
 spring of the machinery. There was one loud 
 ringing note from the corner where the sack was 
 ignominiously thrown, and the heart of the 
 Musical Skeleton was broken. 
 
 The court had by this time made up its mind. 
 It was expressly laid down in the code that a 
 magician could be condemned on conjectures and 
 presumptions alone. It was not needful to go 
 further, and indeed the behaviour of the skeleton 
 had offered a great deal more than mere presump- 
 tion. Still, for form's sake and judicial decency, 
 the prisoner himself should be examined. If he 
 could be brought to confess, so much the more 
 salutary the example. An order was issued 
 that the accused man should be confronted with 
 the judge alone, the clerk being concealed behind 
 a screen to take down the questions and replies. 
 The judge, a harsh old pedant, stuffed Hke an 
 intellectual ortolan with useless and misleading 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 175 
 
 knowledge, yet underneath it all as superstitious 
 as the most ignorant peasant of the Barrois, 
 drew the folds of his rich cloak of vair more 
 closely about him, as the dreadful wizard was 
 introduced. In a manuscript note-book at his 
 side were jotted down headings of procedure in 
 cases of sorcery, and the judge glanced at these 
 as he directed his inquiry. His code told him 
 to attend sharply to the demeanour of the 
 accused, to observe whether he shed tears, 
 whether he looked upon the ground, whether he 
 shuddered, whether he blasphemed. 
 
 None of these indications were able to help 
 him in the case of the prisoner, Narcisse 
 Gerbillard. The poor sculptor was weary even 
 to apathy ; his hair, in which he took so much 
 pride, was matted and unkempt ; his cheeks, 
 always pale, were almost green with cold and 
 privation ; and his serene eyes had lost their 
 limpid self-possession. When the judge stormed 
 at him and scolded him, however, he neither 
 wept nor hung his head. He endeavoured to 
 
176 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 show a courteous attention, but his ideas were 
 growing confused, and he hardly knew what the 
 grotesque old lawyer was saying. He gazed at 
 the window, at the broad delicious light, the soft 
 blue sky that had now succeeded the rain, and 
 as he looked the blue was reflected once more 
 in his bloodshot eyes. He felt like some 
 winged creature that has been stunned within a 
 room ; if he could only collect his thoughts, it 
 seemed to him that he could lift his arms and 
 soar out of that distressful place into the light. 
 Alas ! that was, of all adventures, the one most 
 frequently laid to the charge of sorcerers. 
 Could it be that he was really in Satan's service, 
 after all, without knowing it ? He shuddered 
 slightly, pulled himself together, and gave a 
 closer attention to the gesticulations of the old 
 man upon the dais. 
 
 The shudder had not escaped the notice of the 
 judge, and he redoubled his efforts. Shame 
 alone, he assured Narcisse, prevented the 
 sorcerer from making a full avowal. But no 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 177 
 
 other person was now present to embarrass him ; 
 let him make a clear breast of the matter. 
 When had he first received the visits of the 
 devil ? Had he originally repulsed them, and 
 had he been over-persuaded ? By what promises 
 of reward, by what aid given at a moment of 
 despair, had he been drawn into the snare of the 
 Evil One ? In his prison Narcisse had been 
 subjected to the outrageous insult of an enforced 
 examination of his body by the judge's surgeon, 
 who searched him narrowly for signs of diabolic 
 possession, the scars of red-hot needles, the 
 peculiar marks which were supposed to follow 
 from the abhorred touch. As a matter of fact 
 the surgeon had examined the young and healthy 
 frame of Narcisse without finding anything, even 
 a birth-stain, which could be interpreted as being 
 a mark of the devil. In the criminal practice of 
 the lawyers of that age, however, all means were 
 justified by a godly end, and the judge, finding 
 the prisoner getting obdurate, thought to force 
 him into confession by telling him that the 
 
 M 
 
178 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 surgeon had found all that was necessary for his 
 condemnation — namely, the little blue moon- 
 shaped scar of Satan's claw-mark. Under this 
 mode of terrorising, Narcisse began to grow 
 nerveless and apathetic. His brain could not 
 cope with these suggestions. He did not know 
 what the judge meant. 
 
 But when his tormentor passed from this 
 order of ideas, which, as he perceived, were 
 leading him towards no valuable results, and 
 began to speak of the Musical Skeleton, a sudden 
 change came over the prisoner's demeanour. 
 Narcisse, who had hitherto been desultory in 
 his replies and vacant in his expression, wander- 
 ing about wearily and vaguely in uncertainty 
 and bewilderment, woke up with a sudden start. 
 He realised, as one sees clearly under a starlit 
 sky when all has seemed to the dazed eyesight 
 a mere wilderness of obscurity, what the real 
 meaning of this dreadful inquiry was. He 
 understood at last that his very existence was at 
 stake, and he pulled his spirits together to fight 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 179 
 
 for his life. He became voluble, and almost 
 eloquent, in explaining the mechanism of the 
 skeleton to the impassive judge, who seemed to 
 shrink slowly in bulk as he crouched before him 
 in his chair of state. Narcisse exhausted his 
 ingenuity of language, enforced his southern 
 tongue to an extreme simplicity and reserve, in 
 describing with what innocent rivalry of his 
 master, Ligier Richier, he had determined to 
 make this figure, how long he had been occupied 
 in carving it out of pieces of white wood, what 
 had led him to select sycamore instead of any 
 other timber, and what difficulties he had met 
 with in his adventure. He dwelt with adroit- 
 ness on the mechanical side of the whole matter, 
 carefully eschewing all figurative reference to 
 the skeleton as a living being, cunningly insisting 
 on the fact that he had chosen certain motives 
 and rejected others, for reasons wholly connected 
 with his convenience as a workman. 
 
 At last he stopped abruptly, or he saw that 
 he was gaining nothing by his repetitions. A 
 
i8o The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 cold stream passed through his veins, as though 
 they had been stricken by the frost of the 
 unyielding eyes that gazed on him, eyes in 
 which intelligence, sympathy, rectitude were 
 ahke subordinated to superstitious horror. 
 The judge waited till Narcisse was silent, 
 and then, summoning the warders, bid them 
 take the prisoner back to his cell. When 
 Narcisse had disappeared, the judge turned 
 to the clerk who had been concealed at his 
 side, and bid him write in the judicial record 
 these words : 
 
 " Found guilty of black magic. The same day, 
 strangled and burned." 
 
 No thought of hope, no glimmer of relief, 
 lightened the innocent and unhappy mechanic 
 back to his prison. What his sentence was he 
 did not know, nor was he aware that the Duke, 
 anxious, if it were possible without scandal, to 
 save the life of a creditable craftsman, had sought 
 in vain to protect him. But he gathered accu- 
 rately enough what was the general tendency of 
 
The Secret of Narcisse i8i 
 
 the trial, and the eyes of the judge left him no 
 illusion regarding his fate. 
 
 During these three dreadful days Rosalie had 
 kept herself well informed of all that had been 
 going on. Across her ill-trained mind strange 
 successive tempests of passion had been raging. 
 She could but recollect the extreme terror with 
 which she had herself listened to the Musical 
 Skeleton, and in spite of the explanation of its 
 structure which Narcisse had given to her, the 
 conviction that there was something supernatural 
 and Satanic about the figure would force itself in 
 upon her thoughts. At these moments, in the 
 fevered tension of her nerves, she was ready to 
 wish that she had never seen Narcisse. And 
 then, through these tumultuous imaginations, 
 would rise into her spiritual view the vision of 
 those lucid eyes, that broad and serene forehead, 
 that beautiful mouth with the fair lines round it, 
 the mouth that could not have made any foul 
 pact with Satan. So driven up and down, like 
 3 straw in an eddy, by revolving currents of fear 
 
1 82 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 and love and shame, she became so weary in her 
 soul that she could almost have killed herself, to 
 be at rest. If she could have been sure of any- 
 thing, sure that she had been right in her anger, 
 sure that her anger had not directly and singly 
 led to these terrific results, sure that Narcisse 
 was a sorcerer, sure that he was not — she could 
 have suffered firmly, based on that conviction. 
 But she was sure of nothing, and she tossed in 
 an agony of indecision. 
 
 She heard, however, of his conviction, for she 
 was waiting near the door. She saw her bruised 
 and shaken lover, degraded by three days of 
 prison — dirty, dishevelled and ragged, yet still 
 dignified in the serenity of his patience — led back 
 to his cell by the halberdiers, and she was told 
 that he had but three hours more to live. She 
 was conscious of a cowardly wish that she did 
 not know this fact. It was terrible, the idea 
 of the necessity of a last meeting with him, and 
 yet to fail in this supreme duty also was im- 
 possible. By her rough code of honour, it would 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 183 
 
 have been an act unpardonably shameful to have let 
 him die without a word of farewell. She longed 
 and yet feared to see him. She wished that he 
 could suddenly pass out of the world, and her 
 duty be dispensed with ; she dreaded to discover 
 that his cell had been changed, and at the same 
 moment hoped that it had been, and that she 
 would not succeed in finding him. The trumpeter 
 had told her into what court the blind barred 
 window of the prison opened. She waited till 
 his warders must certainly have turned the key 
 upon him, and then she warily betook herself to 
 that quarter of the town. As she turned up the 
 street, she dreaded to find a crowd of idlers 
 peering down through the bars. She held 
 herself back for a moment, and a tumultuous 
 longing seized her to be with Narcisse once more 
 alone. She turned the corner, and her heart 
 leaped to her mouth, for the street was empty. 
 Yet she could scarcely drag her feet to the 
 window. 
 
 She clung to the bars, and looked in. Her 
 
184 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 eyes, accustomed to the light outside, saw 
 nothing but a vague grey gloom. " Narcisse ! " 
 she whispered. There was a rustle of straw, 
 and out of the greyness there appeared the 
 white oval of her lover's face, peering up at her 
 with blinking eyes. He said nothing, and she 
 said nothing ; an intolerable burden seemed to 
 weigh upon the tongue of each, which neither 
 had the power to throw off. However, time 
 was short, and something must be spoken. 
 
 " Can I do anything for you, Narcisse ? " she 
 asked. 
 
 " No," he said ; " no, you can do nothing." 
 
 She could not bring herself to ask for his 
 forgiveness, because that would have been to 
 confess her fault. Yet she longed to possess his 
 pardon, and she would filch it from him against 
 his will. 
 
 " Why are you angry with me ? " she asked. 
 
 " Angry, child ? " he repeated. " How 
 could I be angry with you ? " And they were 
 silent again. 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 185 
 
 "Is my booth broken up yet ? " he asked at 
 last. 
 
 " The house by the physic garden is stripped 
 of everything," she answered, " but they have 
 not yet thought of opening the booth. It 
 stands there locked up. The sacristan was 
 outside this morning, tapping the shutters with 
 his knuckles." 
 
 "His daughter's husband can have it now," 
 said Narcisse. " But here is the key of it. 
 Would you like to give it to the sacristan, 
 Rosalie ? " 
 
 " No," she said vehemently, " I would gladly 
 crack his skull with it." 
 
 "Take the key, child ;" and he stretched up 
 on tip-toe till she secured it. " On the ledge 
 under the table where I sat, if you go in at 
 night and feel with your hand, you will find the 
 wax sketch I made of the trumpeter's head. If 
 you are not afraid to do that, get it out and give 
 it to him. He liked it." 
 
 Neither of them could approach the subject 
 
1 86 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 uppermost in their minds. At length Narcisse 
 said : " Do you know all ? " 
 
 " All what ? " she asked evasively. 
 
 " All about me." 
 
 "Yes, I suppose so," she said; "is there 
 anything you do not know ? " 
 
 " It is to be, is it not, Rosalie ? " 
 
 " Yes, Narcisse, it is to be." 
 
 " When ? " he asked. 
 
 " To-day." 
 
 There was a long pause, during which the 
 white face seemed to grow very old and wasted, 
 and the hollow eyes to be gazing past and 
 through Rosalie into the blank sky. 
 
 " Do you believe it ? " he said. 
 
 " Believe what ? " 
 
 " That I am a — that this accursed thing is 
 true ? " 
 
 "No!" she said, "I do not believe it. But 
 is it not partly true ? True without your 
 knowing it ? Oh, Narcisse ! " she ran on in a 
 terrified whisper, " cannot a man be possessed 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 187 
 
 by Satan without his wishing to be? Cannot 
 the devil have been in your fingers though he 
 was not in your heart ? " 
 
 " Yes," he said, " I suppose so. As I have 
 Iain here night after night pondering it ail, I 
 have come to think that I may have been — 
 what they say I am. But, oh ! Rosalie, I 
 never knew it, never would have lent myself to 
 it. If I am — that, it is best that I should die. 
 Yet, after I think such thoughts, here in my 
 loneliness, I remember the figure that I made 
 out of the sycamore-wood. Rosalie, it was no 
 wizard that carved the White Maiden. It was 
 a workman who knew. his craft, who was trained 
 by the great Ligier Richier. What was it that 
 the old Earl down in Italy said — Qualis artifex 
 pereo ! The devil may do his worst and his 
 best, he cannot make a man a better craftsman 
 than his fellows. Rosalie, I have one request 
 to you before I die. By bribe or by trick, buy 
 or steal away the sack that holds the Musical 
 Skeleton ? " 
 
1 88 The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 " Yes ! " she said falteringly, " I will." 
 
 " And send a trusty man with it over the 
 hills to Master Richier in his house at St. Mihiel, 
 and tell him my story. He will know and under- 
 stand, and he will put up my maiden in a 
 chamber of his palace, and honour her, and 
 speak well of his dead pupil at last. Will 
 you, Rosalie ? " he said eagerly. 
 
 " Yes ! " she answered, almost inaudibly. 
 
 " Lean very close to the bars that I may try 
 to touch your mouth with my fingers," he said. 
 
 She pressed her lips as far as she could 
 through the perpendicular bars, but his fingers 
 could not quite reach her. She was glad 
 inwardly, for though she loved the man, she 
 did not wish the sorcerer to touch her. 
 
 " Ah ! well," he said, " no matter. You will 
 save the Musical Skeleton, at least, as you have 
 said ? Swear it, Rosalie, that I may have 
 comfort in my death ! " 
 
 The tears rained down her cheeks in a 
 tempest. She could scarcely speak. 
 
The Secret of Narcisse 189 
 
 " Good-bye, Narcisse, good-bye ! " 
 
 " Ah ! but swear first, dear child. Swear 
 that you will save my White Maiden, and send 
 her away to St. Mihiel." 
 
 "Oh! Narcisse," she blurted out, "I cannot. 
 It has been broken up and burned." 
 
 The white face disappeared ; the prisoner had 
 sunken on his straw without a word. Rosalie, 
 in a passion of distress, shook the bars and 
 called on him by name, over and over again. 
 There was no answer, but presently the loud 
 grating of the lock told her that the warder was 
 opening the cell. She fled from the window, 
 blind with terror and sorrow, and sought to 
 gain her house. But a procession filled the 
 Rue Chavee. It was Monday evening once 
 more, and up the steep and narrow street the 
 dowager Duchess was performing her weekly 
 pilgrimage, her tall figure shrouded in the long 
 and flowing robes of black, on which were 
 embroidered white death's-heads and hearts 
 pierced through by arrows. The Ducal 
 
I go The Secret of Narcisse 
 
 chamberlain strode beside her, the indifferent 
 pages followed, as she passed on her self- 
 inflicted mission to weep and pray at the tomb 
 of her husband. At length the portals of St. 
 Maze were flung open, the procession was 
 received within the church, and the street once 
 more left desolate. 
 
 Rosalie paused for a moment to see whether 
 her father's doorway was empty, and then dis- 
 appeared within it. 
 
 Printed hy Ballantyne, Hanson & Co. 
 London and Edinburgh. 
 
GOSSIP IN A LIBRARY 
 
 Second Edition, Crown Zvo., price 7/6, 
 
 Some ©pinions of tbe ©ress. 
 
 Athenmum. — " There is atouch of Leigh Hunt in this picture of 
 the book-lover among his books, and the volume is one that Leigh 
 
 Hunt would have delighted in Mr. Gosse has the uncommon 
 
 merit of stojiping so soon that his readers are left with the agree- 
 able desire for more But how cleverly and amusingly Mr. 
 
 Gosse revives for us, on a momentary stage, that brilliant, exquisite, 
 artificial period of the beaux, and the wits, when George Farquhar 
 took his coft'ee at White's and heard the nightingales in Spring 
 Gardens ! " 
 
 Saturday Review. — " A book as pleasant as it is pretty. Mr. 
 Gosse has shown himself competent to write bibliophily in an ex- 
 cellent manner." 
 
 National Observer. — " A charming book, wherein is scarce a dull 
 page from beginning to end," 
 
 Spectator. — " Mr. Gosse's lively style gives a piquant flavour to his 
 pages." 
 
 St. James's Gazette. — "An exquisitely pretty book." 
 
 Notes and Queries. — " Mr. Gosse's new volume belongs to a class 
 of which the genuine book-lover has always shown himself specially 
 fond. He writes sympathetically and well, his estimates will be 
 generally accepted, and the task of reading his volume is one of the 
 pleasantest conceivable." 
 
 Literary Opinion.— "'^x. Gosse is one of those happy mortals 
 who possess the gift of expressing themselves pleasantly in speech 
 and in writing. It would be a great delight to us to let our readers 
 share in detail the pleasure we have gained from the perusal of this 
 book." 
 
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 of succeeding in this task as Mr. Gosse, and succeed he does to the 
 full." 
 
 Anti-Jacobin.—" Mr. Gos.";e has a strong sense of the strength of 
 U'er^iture. Beni'ath the exterior graces of style lies a sound structure 
 0; iiotie and .sinew, the substantial force of thought." 
 
Some ©plnfons of Vbe ^teSS— Continued. 
 
 Daily Chronicle. — "Book lovers will find much to charm them 
 in Mr. Gosse's pleasant volume. It reveals competent knowledge 
 and breadth of sympathy ; it is moreover, alert and graceful in style, 
 and it is attractively got up. " 
 
 yohn Bull. — " Mr. Gosse is a collector as well as a critic, and in 
 the introductory note prefixeQ to the present volume discourses lov- 
 ingly and tenderly about books from the collsctor's point of view 
 .... We must content ourselves with recording our high opinion of 
 the results of his first voyage autour de sa bibliothiq-ue and commend- 
 ing it to that popular approval to which it cannot be doubted that 
 the admirable manner in which his publisher has reproduced those 
 results will not a little contribute. , , - . All true lovers of books 
 win be sure to add this one to their collection, alike from its external 
 arid internal recommendations." 
 
 Literary World. — " It is in a book of this kind that Mr. Gosse is 
 to be seen at his best. He has a real love for literature, especially 
 for old authors and old books. He has explored paths that turn 
 aside from the beaten track. He is sympathetic." 
 
 The Queen, — ' ' The plan of this book is easy. Mr. Gosse scans 
 his shelf and takes down some old book, not at random, I expect, 
 for his shelves have been filled with care. He gives to each a few 
 pages of easy and delightful talk." 
 
 The Star. — " Mr. Gosse's book rather invites one to chat with 
 him than review. One by one, he lifts down his treasures for 
 his sympathetic visitor, and that is the whole scheme of his delight- 
 ful book." 
 
 Liverpool Mercury. — " An exceptionally delightful volume of chatty 
 talk about rare books and quaint authors." 
 
 Manchester Courier. — " Those whose literary palate is delicate 
 will find a dainty feast in the pages of Mr. Gosse — a graceful com- 
 bination of thorough knowledge and perfect good taste, not often to 
 be met with now-a-days." 
 
 Galignani's Messenger. — " The reader can spend many a pleasant 
 and profitable half-hour with Mr. Gosse in his ' Gossip in a Library.' " 
 
 Glasgow Herald. — " It is in his own library that Mr. Gosse 
 gossips with us ; and very pleasant gossip it is, made up, as he him- 
 self says, of a httle criticism, a little anecdote, and a little biblio- 
 graphy." 
 
UeUgvapbic Bbbtess: 
 
 21 Bedford Street, w.c. 
 October iSgs. 
 
 A LIST OF 
 
 Mr WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S 
 
 Publications 
 
 AND 
 
 Forthcoming Works 
 
 The Boohs mentioned in this List can 
 be obtained to order by any Book- 
 seller if not in stocky or will he sent 
 by ike Publisher post free on receipt 
 of price. 
 
MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S LIST. 
 
 jnDcs of autbora. 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Alexander . 
 
 13 
 
 Jag" 
 
 7. IS 
 
 Arbuthnot . 
 
 8 
 
 Jeaffreson . 
 
 16 
 
 Atherton 
 
 13 
 
 Kimball . . • ■ 
 
 Balestier . 
 
 9 
 
 Kipling and Balestier . 
 
 9 
 
 Barrett 
 
 9 
 
 Lanza 
 
 13 
 
 Behrs . 
 
 3 
 
 Le Caron ... 
 
 3 
 
 Bendall 
 
 ^ 16 
 
 Lee ... . 
 
 10 
 16 
 12 
 6 
 
 BjSrnson 
 Bowen 
 
 9, II, 12, 15 
 
 5 
 
 Leland 
 
 Lie ... • 
 
 Brown and 
 
 Griffiths . 16 
 
 Lowe .... 
 
 Buchanan 
 
 . 8, 9, 10, 14 
 
 Lynch 
 
 13 
 
 Butler 
 
 5 
 
 Maartens 
 
 lO 
 
 Caine . 
 
 . 8, 12 
 
 Maeterlinck . . . • 
 
 'I 
 
 Cambridge 
 
 . 9, 12 
 
 Maude 
 
 Chester 
 
 7 
 
 Maupassant 
 
 II 
 6 
 
 Clarke 
 
 9 
 
 Maurice 
 
 Colomb 
 
 6 
 
 Mitford 
 
 13 
 6 
 
 9 
 
 Compayre 
 
 5 
 
 Murray 
 
 Couperus 
 
 II 
 
 Norris 
 
 Davidson 
 
 5 
 
 Ouida ... ■ ■ 
 
 9 
 
 Dawson 
 
 16 
 
 Palacio-Valdc5s 
 
 II 
 
 De Quince> 
 Dilke . 
 
 • 4> 7 
 6 
 
 Pearce 
 Pennell 
 
 10 
 6 
 
 Eeden 
 
 6 
 
 Philips 
 
 14 
 
 EUwanger 
 
 7 
 
 Phelps 
 
 13 
 
 Ely . 
 Farrar . 
 
 8 
 
 Pinero 
 
 14 
 8 
 
 7 
 
 Rawnsley . 
 
 Fitch . 
 
 5 
 
 Richter 
 
 7 
 
 Forbes 
 
 6 
 
 Riddell 
 
 9 
 
 Fothergill 
 
 9 
 
 Rives . 
 
 10 
 3 
 
 Franzos 
 
 II 
 
 Roberts 
 
 Frederic 
 
 «, 13 
 
 Roberts (V ) 
 
 12 
 
 Garner 
 
 6 
 
 Robinson . 
 
 14 
 
 Garnett 
 
 6 
 
 Salaman 
 
 7 
 6 
 
 Gilchrist 
 
 9 
 
 Scudamore . 
 
 Gore . 
 
 16 
 
 Serao . 
 
 II 
 
 Gosse . 
 
 .' . ■ 7, 9 
 
 Sienkiewicz 
 
 12 
 
 Gray . 
 
 Gray (Max 
 
 7 
 n-cU) ... 9 
 
 Tasma . 9 
 Terry . 
 
 , 10, 13 
 6 
 16 
 
 Griffiths 
 
 16 
 
 Thurston . 
 
 Hall . 
 
 16 
 
 Tolstoy 
 
 „ II, 15 
 
 Harland 
 
 9 
 
 Tree ... 
 
 15 
 
 Hardy 
 
 Heine , 
 
 12 
 
 Valera 
 
 12 
 
 4 
 
 Warden 
 
 13 
 3 
 
 Hender.son 
 
 6 
 
 Weitemeyer 
 
 Henderson 
 
 14 
 
 West .... 
 
 : I 
 
 ■ 3.8 
 
 Howard 
 
 10 
 
 Whistler 
 
 Hughes 
 
 5 
 
 Whitman . 
 
 Hiingerfor 
 Ibsen 
 
 d . . . ■ 10, 13 
 
 Williams . 
 
 7 
 
 15 
 
 Zangwlll . 
 
 • 6.9 
 
 Irving . 
 
 6 
 
 Zola 
 
 9 
 
 Ingersoll 
 
 8 
 
 
 
MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S LIST. 3 
 
 VICTORIA: 
 
 QUEEN AND EMPRESS. 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN CORDY JEAFFRESON, 
 
 Author of "The Real Lord Byron," etc. 
 In Two Volumes, 8vo. With Portraits. \In October. 
 
 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS IN THE 
 SECRET SERVICE. 
 
 THE RECOLLECTIONS OF A SPY. 
 
 BY 
 
 MAJOR LE CARON. 
 
 In One Volume, 8vo. With Portraits and Facsimiles. 
 
 [/ra October. 
 
 REMINISCENCES OF 
 
 COUNT LEO NICHOLAEVITCH 
 
 TOLSTOI. 
 
 BY 
 
 C. A. BEHRS, 
 
 TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN BY 
 
 PROFESSOR C. E. TURNER. 
 
 In One Volume, Crown 8vo. \In October. 
 
 THE REALM OF THE HABSBURGS 
 
 BY 
 
 SIDNEY WHITMAN, 
 
 Author of '* Imperial Germany.'' 
 In One Volume. Crown 8vo. \Jn November, 
 
MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S LIST. 
 
 THE WORKS OF HEINRICH HEINE. Translated 
 by Charles Godfrey Leland, M.A., F.R.L.S. (Hans Breitmann). 
 Crown 8vo, cloth, 5^. per Volume. 
 
 I. FLORENTINE NIGHTS, SCIINABELEWOPSKI, 
 THE RABBI OF BACHARCAH, and SHAKE- 
 SPEARE'S MAIDENS AND WOMEN. [Ready. 
 
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 at first hand with * the German Aristophanes' than the works of Heinrich 
 Heine, translated by Charles Godfrey Leland. Mr. Leland manages pretty 
 successfully to preserve the easy grace of the original." 
 
 II., III. PICTURES OF TRAVEL. 1823-1828. In Two 
 Volumes. \Ready. 
 
 Daily Chronicle. — ''Mr. Leland's translation of ' The Pictures of Travel ' 
 is one of the acknowledged literary feats of the age. As a traveller Heine is 
 delicious beyond description, and a volume which includes the magnificent 
 L ucca series, the North Sea, the memorable Hartz wanderings, must needs 
 possess an everlasting charm." 
 
 IV. THE BOOK OF SONGS. \In the Press, 
 
 v., VI. GERMANY. In Two Volumes. IReady, 
 
 Daily Telegraph, — " Mr. Leland has done his translation in able and 
 scholarly fashion." 
 
 VII., VIII. FRENCH AFFAIRS. In Two Volumes. 
 
 [/;; the Press. 
 IX. THE SALON. [In prepar a/ion. 
 
 *^^* Large Paper Edition, limited to 100 Numbered Copies. Particulars on 
 
 application. 
 
 THE POSTHUMOUS WORKS OF THOMAS DE 
 
 QUINCEY. Edited with IntioJuction and Notes from the Author's 
 Original MSS., by Alexander H. Japp, LL D, F.R.S.E., &c. Crown 
 8vo, cloth, 6s. each. 
 
 I. SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS. With Other E'^says. 
 
 Times. ~^' Yi^xQ. we have De Qnincey at his best. Will be welcome to 
 lovers of De Qnincey and good literature." 
 
 II. CONVERSATION AND COLERIDGE, With other 
 
 ^*^^y^- \_In preparation. 
 
MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S LIST. 
 
 TTbe ©reat iSbucators. 
 
 A Series ofVolmnes by Eminent Writers^ presenting in their 
 entirety '"''A Biographical History of Education^ 
 
 The Times. — " A Series of Monographs on * The Great Educators ' should 
 prove of service to all who concern themselves with the history, theory, and 
 practice of education." 
 
 The Speaker. — " There is a promising sound about the title of Mr. Heine- 
 mann's new series, * The Great Educators.' It should help to allay the hunger 
 and thirst for knowledge and culture of the vast multitude of young men and 
 maidens which our educational system turns out yearly, provided at least with 
 an appetite for instruction." 
 
 Each subject will form a complete volume, crown 8vo, gj. 
 
 Now ready. 
 
 ARISTOTLE, and the Ancient Educational Ideals. By 
 
 Thomas Davidson, M.A., LL.D. 
 The Times. — "A very readable sketch of a very interesting subject." 
 
 LOYOLA, and the Educational System of the Jesuits. By 
 
 Rev. Thomas Hughes, S.J. 
 Saturday Review, — " Full of valuable information If a school- 
 master would learn how the education of the young can be carried on so as to 
 confer real dignity on those engaged in it, we recommend him to read Mr. 
 Hughes' book." 
 
 ALCUIN, and the Rise of the Christian Schools. By 
 Professor Andrew F. West, Ph.D. [/« October. 
 
 In Preparation. 
 ABELARD, and the Origin and Early History of Uni- 
 versities. By Jules Gabriel Compavre, Professor in the Faculty of 
 Toulouse. 
 
 ROUSSEAU ; or, Education according to Nature. 
 HERB ART; or, Modern German Education. 
 PESTALOZZI ; or, the Friend and Student of Children. 
 FROEBEL. By H, Courthope Bowen, M.A. 
 
 HORACE MANN, and Public Education in the United 
 
 States. By Nicholas Murray Butler, Ph.D. 
 
 BELL, LANCASTER, and ARNOLD; or, the English 
 Education of To-Day. By J. G. Fitch, LL.D., Her Majesty's In- 
 spector of Schools, 
 
 Others to follow. 
 
MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S LIST. 
 
 THE GREAT WAR OF 189-. A Forecast. By Rear- 
 Admiral Colomb, Col. Maurice, R.A., Major Henderson, Staff 
 College, Captain Maude, Archibald Forbes, Charles Lowe, 
 D. Christie Murray, F. Scudamore, and Sir Charles Dilke- In 
 One Volume, 410, Illustrated. 
 In this narrative, which is reprinted from the pages of Black and IVhite^ 
 an attempt is made to forecast the course of events preliminary and incidental 
 to the Great War which, in the opinion of military and political experts, will 
 probably occur in the immediate future. 
 
 The writers, who are well-known authorities on international politics and 
 strategy, have striven to derive the conflict from its most likely source, to 
 conceive the most probable campaigns and acts of policy, and generally to give 
 to their work the verisimilitude and actuality of real warfare. The work has 
 been profusely illustrated from sketches by Mr. Frederic Villiers, the well- 
 known war artist. [Nearly ready. 
 
 THE GENTLE ART OF MAKING ENEMIES. As 
 
 pleasingly exemplified in many instances, wherein the serious ones of this 
 earth, carefully exasperated, have been prettily spurred on to indiscretions 
 and unseemliness, while overcome by an undue sense of right. By 
 J. M'Neil Whistler. A New Edition. Pott 4to, half cloth, tos. 6d. 
 
 {Just ready. 
 Punch. — "The book in itself, in its binding, print and arrangement, is a 
 
 work of art A work of rare humour, a thmg of beauty and a joy for now 
 
 and ever." 
 
 THE JEW AT HOME. Impressions of a Summer and 
 Autumn Spent with Him in Austria and Russia. By Joseph Pennell. 
 With Illustrations by the Author. 4to, cloth, 5J. C/w-r^ ready. 
 
 THE NEW EXODUS. A Study of Israel in Russia. By 
 Harold Frederic. Demy 8vo, Illustrated. 16s. \Just ready. 
 
 PRINCE BISMARCK. An Historical Biography. By 
 
 Charles Lowe, M.A. With, Portraits. Crown 8vo, ds. [Just ready. 
 
 The Times. — "Is unquestionably the first important work which deals, 
 
 fully and with some approach to exhaustiveness, with the career of Bismarck 
 
 from both the personal and the historical points of view." 
 
 ADDRESSES. By Henry Irving. Small crown 8vo. 
 
 With Portrait by J. M'N. Whistler. [/« the Press. 
 
 STRAY MEMORIES. By Ellen Terry. 4to. With 
 
 Portraits. [In preparation. 
 
 LITTLE JOHANNES. By Frederick van Eeden. Trans- 
 lated from the Dutch by Clara Bell. With an Introduction by 
 Andrew Lang. Illustrated. [1 71 preparation. 
 
 *#* Also a Large Paper Edition. 
 
 LIFE OF HEINRICH HEINE. By Richabd Garnett, 
 LL.D. With Portrait. Crown 8vo (uniform with the translation of Heine's 
 Works). [In Preparation. 
 
 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. By Professor R. L. 
 Garner. Crown 8vo, qs. 6d. {Just ready. 
 
 Daily Chronicle, — " A real, a remarkable, contribution to our commun 
 knowledge." 
 
 Daily Telegraph.— ** kn entertaining book." 
 
 THE OLD MAIDS' CLUB. By I. Zangwill, Author of 
 
 "The Bachelors' Club." Illustrated by F, H. Townsend. Crown 8vo, 
 
 cloth, 3^. 6d. 
 
 National Review. — '* Mr. Zangwill has a very bright and a very original 
 
 humour, and every page of this closely printed book is full of point and go, and 
 
 full, too, of a healthy satire that is really humorously applied common-sense." 
 
 Athenaum.—*' Most strongly to be recommended to all classes of readers. *■ 
 
MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S LIST. 
 
 WOMAN— THROUGH A MAN'S EYEGLASS. By 
 
 Malcolm C. Salaman. With Illustrations by Dudley Hardy. Crown 
 8vo, cloth, 3J. 6d. 
 Daily Graphic. — "A most amusing book." 
 
 Dedly Telegraph. — "Written with brightness and elegance, and with 
 touches of bot' caustic satire and kindly humour." 
 
 Daily Chronicle. — "It is the very thing for a punt cushion or a garden 
 hammock." 
 
 GIRLS AND WOMEN. By E. Chester. Polt 8vo, cloth, 
 
 •zs. 6d. , or gilt extra, ss. 6d. 
 Literary World. — " We gladly commend this delightful little work to the 
 thoughtful girls of our own country. We hope that many parents and daughters 
 will read and ponder over the little volume." 
 
 GOSSIP IN A LIBRARY. By Edmund Gosse, Author of 
 
 '* Northern Studies," &c. Second Edition. Crown 8vo, buckram, gilt top, 
 7*. 6d, ^ _ ... 
 
 Atheficeum, — "There is a touch of Leigh Hunt in this picture of the book- 
 lover among his books, and the volume is one that Leigh Hunt would have 
 delighted in." 
 
 *#* Large Paper Edition^ limited to loo Nunibered Copies^ 25J, 7iet. 
 
 THE LIFE OF HENRIK IBSEN. By Henrik J^ger. 
 Translated by Clara Bell. With the Verse done into English from the 
 Norwegian Original by Edmund Gosse. Crown 8vo, cloth, ts. 
 Academy. — "We welcome it heartily. An unqualified boon to the many 
 
 English students of Ibsen." 
 
 DE QUINCEY MEMORIALS. Being Letters and other 
 
 Records here first Published, with Communications from Coleridge, The 
 
 WoRDSWORTHS, Hannah More, Prqfessor Wilson andothers. Edited, 
 
 with Introduction, Notes, and Narrative, by Alexander H. Japp, LL.D. 
 
 F.R.S.E. In two volumes, demy 8vo, cloth, with portraits, 30J. net. 
 
 Daily Telegraph. — "Few works of greater literary interest have of late years 
 
 issued from the press than the two volumes of ' De Quincey Memorials.' They 
 
 comprise most valuable materials for the historian of literary and social England 
 
 at the beginning of the century ; but they are not on that account less calculated 
 
 to amuse, enlighten, and absorb the general reader of biographical memoirs," 
 
 THE WORD OF THE LORD UPON THE WATERS. 
 
 Sermons read by His Imperial Majesty the Emperor of Germany, while 
 at Sea on his Voyages to the Land of the Midnight Sun. Composed by 
 Dr. RiCHTEE, Army Chaplain, and Translated from the German by John 
 R. McIlraith. 4to, cloth, 2^. 6rf. 
 Times. — "The Sermons are vigorous, simple, and vivid in themselves, and 
 well adapted to the circumstances in which they were delivered." 
 
 THE HOURS OF RAPHAEL, IN OUTLINE. 
 
 Together with the Ceiling of the Hall where they were originally painted. 
 By Mary E. Williams. Folio, cloth, £-z 2s. net. 
 
 THE PASSION PLAY AT OBERAMMERGAU, i8go. 
 
 By F. W. Farrar, D.D., F.R.S., Archdeacon and Canon of Westminster 
 &c. &c. 4to, cloth, 2s. 6d. 
 6'^^cifa^or.—" This little book will be read with delight by those who have, 
 and by those who have not, visited Oberammergau." 
 
 THE GARDEN'S STORY; or, Pleasures and Trials of an 
 Amateur Gardener. By G. H. Ellwanger. With an Introduction by the 
 Rev. C. WoLLEY DoD. i2mo, cloth, with Illustrations, 5^. 
 Scotsman.— *' It deals with a charming subject in a charming manner." 
 
 IDLE MUSINGS: Essays in Social Mosaic. By E. Conder 
 Gray, Author of "Wise Words and Loving Deeds," &c. &c Crown Bvo, 
 cloth, 6s. _ . ij 
 
 Saturday Review.—" Light, brief, and bnght. 
 
8 MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S LIST. 
 
 THE COMING TERROR. And other Essays and Letters. 
 By Robert Buchanan. Second Edition. Demy 8vo, cloth, iis. 6d. 
 Daily Ckro7iicle.—'^'ih\s amusing, wrong-headed, audacious, 'cranky' 
 book should be widely read, for there is not a dull line in it." 
 
 ARABIC AUTHORS: A Manual of Arabian History and 
 Literature. By F. F. Arbuthnot, M.R.A.S., Author of " Early Ideas," 
 "Persian Portraits," &c. 8vo, cloth, los. 
 Manchester Exainincr.—'^ The whole work has been carefully indexed, and 
 
 will prove a handbook of the highest value to the student who wishes to gain a 
 
 better acquaintance with Arabian letters " 
 
 THE LABOUR MOVEMENT IN AMERICA. By 
 
 Richard T. Ely, Ph.D., Associate in Political Economy, Johns Hopkins 
 University. Crown 8vo, cloth, Si". 
 Saturday Review. — " Both Interesting and valuable. 
 
 THE LITTLE MANX NATION. (Lectures delivered at 
 the Royal Institution, 1891,) By Hall Caine, Author of "The Bond- 
 man," '*The Scapegoat," &c. Crown 8vo, cloth, 3^. 6d.\ paper, -zs. 6d. 
 JVorld.—"Mt. Hall Caine takes us back to the days of old romance, and, 
 
 treating tradition and history in the pictorial style of which he is a master, he 
 
 gives us a monograph of Man especially acceptable." 
 
 NOTES FOR THE NILE. Together with a Metrical 
 Rendering of the Hymns of Ancient Egypt and of the Precepts of Ptah- 
 hotep (the oldest book in the world). By Hardwicke D. Rawnsley, M. A. 
 i6mo, cloth, $s. 
 The Times.— " All visitors to Egypt will find much instruction and enter- 
 tainment pleasantly conveyed." 
 
 Saturday Review.—^* A pleasant and useful little companion for the culti- 
 vated traveller." 
 
 DENMARK: Its History, Topography, Language, Literature, 
 Fine Arts, Social Life, and i'inance. Edited by H. Weitemever. Demy 
 8vo, cloth, with Map, 12^. td. 
 
 *** Dedicated, by perjnission, toH.R.H. the Princess nf Wales. 
 Morning Post. — " An excellent account ofeverythingrelating to this Northern 
 
 country." 
 
 IMPERIAL GERMANY. A Critical Study of Fact and 
 Character. By Sidney Whitman. New Edition, Revised and Enlarged. 
 Crown 8vo, cloth is. td.\ paper, -zs. 
 Prince Bismarck, — " I consider the different chapters of this book masterly.*' 
 
 THE CANADIAN GUIDE-BOOK. Parti. The Tourist's 
 andSportsman'sGuideto Eastern Canadaand Newfoundland, including full 
 descriptions of Routes, Cities, Points of Interest, Summer Resorts, Fishing 
 Places, &c., in Eastern Ontario, The Muskoka District, The St. Lawrence 
 Region, The Lake St. John Country, The Maritime Provinces, Prince 
 Edward Island, and Newfoundland. With an Appendix giving Fish and 
 Game Laws, and Official Lists of Trout and Salmon Rivers and their 
 Lessees. By Charles G. D. Roberts, Professor of English Literature in 
 King's College, Windsor, N.S. With Maps and many Illustrations. 
 Crown 8vo, limp cloth, 6^'. 
 
 Part II. WESTERN CANADA. Including the Peninsula 
 and Northern Regions of Ontario, the Canadian Shores of the Great 
 Lakes, the Lake of the Woods Region, Manitoba and " The Great 
 North-West," The Canadian Rocky Mountains and National Park, 
 British Columbia, and Vancouver Island. By Ernest Ingersoll. With 
 Maps and many Illustrations, Crown 8vo, limp cloth, \In preparation. 
 
MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S LIST. 
 
 Jfiction. 
 
 In Three Volumes. 
 THE HEAD OF THE FIRM. By Mrs. Riddell, Author 
 of " George Geilh," " Maxwell Drewett," &c. [/"^^ ready. 
 
 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. By I. Zangwill, 
 
 Author of " The Old Maids' Club," &c. U''^t ready. 
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO. A Novel. By OuiDA, 
 Author of " Two Little Wooden Shoe'-," &c. [/« October. 
 
 KITTY'S FATHER. By Fb ank Barrett. Author of 
 "Lieutenant Barnabas," &c. [/« November. 
 
 THE COUNTESS RADNA. By W. E. Norris, Author of 
 " Matrimony," &c. [/» January. 
 
 ORIOLE'S DAUGHTER. ANovel. By Jessie Fothergill, 
 
 Author of " The First Violin," &c. [/» February. 
 
 THE LAST SENTENCE. By Maxwell Gray, Author of 
 " The Silence of Dean Maitland," &c. [/» March. 
 
 In Two Volumes. 
 
 WOMAN AND THE MAN. A Love Story. By Robert 
 Buchanan, Author of "Come Live with Me and be My Love," "The 
 Moment After," "The Coming Terror," &c. \In preparation. 
 
 A KNIGHT OF THE WHITE FEATHER. By " Tasma," 
 Author of "The Penance of Portia James," "Uncle Piper of Piper's 
 Hill," &c. \,Jitst ready, 
 
 A LITTLE MINX. By Ada Cambridge, Author of "A 
 
 Marked Man," " The Three Miss Kings," &c. 
 In One Volume. 
 THE NAULAHKA. A Tale of West and East. ByRuDYARD 
 Kipling and Wolcott Balestier. Crown 8vo, cloth, ts. Second 
 Edition. [/w< ready. 
 
 THE AVERAGE WOMAN. By Wolcott Balestier. 
 
 With an Introduction by Henry James. Small crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 
 
 [Just ready. 
 
 THE ATTACK ON THE MILL and Other Sketches 
 
 of War. By Emile Zola. With an essay on the short stories of M. 
 Zola by Edmund Gosse. Small crown 8vo, 31. 6d. {Just ready. 
 
 DUST. By Bjornstjerne Bjornson. Translated from the 
 
 Norwegian. Small crown 8vo. 
 
 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. By Edmund Gosse. 
 
 Crown 8vo. U" October. 
 
 MADEMOISELLE MISS and Other Stories. By Henry 
 
 Haeland, Author of " Mea Culpa," &c. Small crown 8vo. \In the Press. 
 THE DOMINANT SEVENTH. A Musical Story. By 
 Kate Elizabeth Clarke. Crown 8vo, cloth, 5*. 
 Speaker. — " A very romantic story." 
 
 PASSION THE PLAYTHING. ANovel. By R. Murray 
 Gilchrist. Crown 8vo, cloth, ts. 
 A thenaum,~~" This well-written story must be read to be appreciated." 
 
MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S LIST. 
 
 Ube Crown Copgrigbt Sevfes. 
 
 Mr. Heinemann has made arrangements with a number of the First and 
 Most Popular English, American, and Colonial Authors which will 
 enable him in is-iue a series of New and Original Works, to be known as 
 The Crown Coivhight Series, complete in One Volume, at a uniform 
 price of Five Shillings each. These Novels will not pass through an Ex- 
 pensive Two or Three Volume Edition, but they will be obtainable at the 
 Circulating Libraries, as well as at all Booksellers' and Bookstalls. 
 
 ACCORDING TO ST. JOHN. By Am^lie Rives, Author 
 
 of ' ' The Quick or the Dead." 
 
 Scotsman. — "The literary work is highly artistic It has beauty and 
 
 brightness, and a kind of fascination which carries the reader on till he has read 
 to the last page." 
 
 THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. By Tasma, 
 Author of "Uncle Piper of Piper's Hill," &c. 
 
 Athenaum. — "A powerful novel." 
 
 Daily Chronicle. — "Captivatmg and yet tantalising, this story is far above 
 the average." 
 
 Vattity Fair, — "A very interesting story, morally sound, and flavoured 
 throughout with ease of diction and lack of strain." 
 
 INCONSEQUENT LIVES. A Village Chronicle, shewing 
 how certain folk set out for El Dorado ; what they attempted ; and what 
 they attained. By J. H. Pearce, Author of "Esther Pentreath," &c. 
 
 Saturday Review. — "A vivid picture of the life of Cornish fisher-folk. It 
 is unquestionably interesting." 
 
 Literary World. — " Powerful and pathetic .... from first to last it is 
 profoundly interesting. It is long since we read a story revealin;^ power of so 
 high an order, marked by such evident carefulness of workmanship, tuch skill in 
 the powerful and yet temperate presentation of passion, and in the sternly 
 realistic yet delicate treatment of difficult situations." 
 
 A QUESTION OF TASTE. By Maarten Maartens, 
 
 Author of " An Old Maid's Love," &c. 
 
 National 0&ser7.'er. — "There is more than cleverness; there is original 
 talent, and a good deal of humanity besides." 
 
 COME LIVE WITH ME AND BE MY LOVE. By 
 
 Robert Buchanan, Author of "The Moment After/' "The Coming 
 Terror," &c. 
 Globe.— ^' Will be found eminently readable." 
 
 Daily Telep'aph. — "We will conclude this brief notice by evpreb^ing our 
 cordial admiration of the skill displayed in its construction, and the genial 
 humanity that has in.spired its author in the sh:iping and vitalising of tht: indi- 
 viduals created by his fertile imaginatioa," 
 
 THE O'CONNORS OF BALLINAHINCH. By Mrs. 
 HuNGERFORD, Author of " Molly Bawn," &c. [/« tlie Press. 
 
 A BATTLE AND A BOY. By Blanche Willis Howard, 
 
 Author of "Guenn," &c. \^[n preparation. 
 
 VANITAS. By Vernon Lee, Author of " Hauntings," &c. 
 
 [/« preparation. 
 
MR. WILL/AM HEINEMANN'S LIST. 
 
 Ibetnemann's international Xibrar^. 
 
 Edited by EDMUND GOSSE. 
 
 New -/?ff:Vw.— "If you have any pernicious remnants of literary chauvinism 
 I hope It will not survive the series of foreign classics of which Mr. William 
 Heinemann, aided by Mr. Edmund Gosse, is publishing translations to the great 
 contentment of all lovers of literature." 
 
 Times. — "A venture which deserves encouragement." 
 Each. Volume has a7i Introduction specially written by the Editor. 
 Price, in paper covers, is. td. each, or cloth, 3J. 6d. 
 IN GOD*S WAY. From the Norwegian of Bjornstjerne 
 
 BjORNSON. 
 
 Athe?iixum. — "Without doubt the most important and the most interesting 
 
 work published during the twelve months There are descriptions which 
 
 certainly belong to the best and cleverest things our literature has ever produced. 
 Amongst the many characters, the doctor's wife is unquestionably the first. It 
 would be difficult to find anything more tender, soft, and refined than this 
 charming personage." 
 
 PIERRE AND JEAN. From the French of Guy de Mau- 
 passant, 
 
 Pall Mall Gazette. — "So fine and faultless, so perfectly balanced, so 
 steadily progressive, so clear and simple and satisfying. It is admirable from 
 beginning to end." 
 
 A thenaum. — " Ranks amongst the best gems of modern French fiction.'' 
 
 THE CHIEF JUSTICE. From the German of Karl Emil 
 Franzos, Author of " For the Right," &c. 
 
 New Review.—'^ Few novels of recent times have a more sustained and 
 vivid human interest." 
 
 Christian World. — "A story of wonderful power .... as free from any- 
 thing objectionable as ' The Heart of Midlothian.' " 
 
 WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. From the 
 Russian of Count Lyof Tolstoy, 
 
 Livcf^ool Mercury. — "Marked by all the old power of the great Russian 
 novelist." 
 
 Manchester Guardian.—** Readable and well translated ; full of high and 
 noble feeling." 
 
 FANTASY. From the Italian of Matilde Serao. 
 
 National Observer, — " The strongest work from tlie hand of a woman that 
 has been published for many a day." 
 
 Scottish Leader. — " The book is full of a glowing and living realism 
 
 There is nothing like * Fantasy ' in modern literature It is a work of elfish 
 
 art, a mosaic of light and love, of right and wrong, of human weakness and 
 Strength, and purity and wantonness, pieced together in deft and witching 
 precision." 
 
 FROTH. From the Spanish of Don Armando Palacio- 
 Valdes. 
 Daily Telegraph. — '* Vigorous and powerful in the highest degree. It 
 abounds in forcible delineation of character, and describes scenes with rare and 
 graphic strength." 
 
 FOOTSTEPS OF FATE. From the Dutch of Louis 
 
 COUPERUS. 
 
 Daily Chronicle, — "A powerfully realistic story which has been excellently 
 translated." 
 
 Gentlewoman. — "The consummate art of the writer prevents this tragedy 
 from sinking to melodrama. Not a single situation is forced or a circumstance 
 exaggerated." 
 
12 MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S LIST. 
 
 Ibeinemann's Jnternatfonal Xibrarp, 
 
 PEPITA JIMENEZ. From tlie Spanish of Juan Valera. 
 
 New Review (Mr. George Saintsbury) : — "There is no doubt at all that 
 it is one of the best stories that have appeared in any country in Europe for the 
 last twenty years." 
 
 THE COMMODORE'S DAUGHTERS. From the Nor- 
 wegian of Jonas Lie. 
 
 Athen^um. — " Everything that Jonas Lie writes is attractive ai\d pleasant ; 
 the plot of deeply human interest, and the art noble." 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE KURTS. From the Norvvegiar 
 
 of BjORNSTJERNE BjORNSON. 
 
 Pall Mall Gazette, — *' A most fascinating as well as a powerful book." 
 National Observer. — " It is a book to read and a book to think about, for, 
 incontestably, it is the work of a man of genius." 
 
 Iti. the Press. 
 
 LOU. From the German of Baron v. Roberts. 
 DONA LUZ. From the Spanish of Juan Valera. 
 WITHOUT DOGMA. From the PoUsh of H. SlENKlEWlcz. 
 
 popular 3s. Q'b. IKlovels. 
 
 CAPT'N DAVY'S HONEYMOON, The Blind Mother, 
 and The Last Confession. By Hall Caine, Author of " The Bondman," 
 "The Scapegoat," &c. 
 
 THE SCAPEGOAT. By Hall Caine, Author of "The 
 
 Bondman," &c. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone writes: — "I congratulate you upon 'The Scapegoat' as a 
 work of art, and e pecially upon the noble and skilfully drawn character of 
 Israel." 
 
 Tunes. — " In our judgment it excels in dramatic force all his previous efforts. 
 For grace and touching pathos Naomi is a character which any romancist in the 
 world mizl t be proud to have creabed." 
 
 THE BONDMAN. A New Saga. By Hall Caine. 
 
 Twentieth Thousand. 
 Mr. Gladstone. — '"The Bondman' is a work of which I recognise the 
 freshness, vigour, and sustained interest no less than its integrity of aim." 
 
 Staiidard. — " Its argument is grand, and it is sustained with a power that is 
 
 almost marvellous." 
 
 DESPERATE REMEDIES. By Thomas Hardy, Author 
 
 of "Tess of the D'Urbervilles," &c. 
 Saturday Review. — '* A remarkable story worked out with abundant skill." 
 
 A MARKED MAN: Some Episodes in his Life. By Ada 
 Cambridge, Author of "Two Years' Time," "A Mere Chance," &c. 
 MorniJii^ Post. — " A depth of feelmg, a knowledge of the human heart, and 
 an amount of tai t that one rarely finds. Should take a prominent place among 
 the novels of tht season." 
 
 THE THREE MISS KINGS. By Ada Cambridge, Author 
 
 of "A Marked Wan." 
 Athe7t(V!cin. — "A charming study of character. The love stories are ex- 
 cellent, and the author is happy in tender situations." 
 
 NOT ALL IN VAIN. By Ada Cambridge, Author of *'A 
 
 Marked Man," " The Three Miss Kings," &c. 
 Guardian. — "A clever and absorbing story." 
 Queen.—** All that remains to be said is ' read the book.' " 
 
MR. WILLIAM IIEINEMANN'S LIST. 13 
 
 HJopular 3s. 6b. iRovels. 
 
 UNCLE PIPER OF PIPER'S HILL. By Tasma. New 
 
 Popular Edition. 
 Guardicn, — " Every page ofit contains good wholesome food, which demands 
 and repays digestion. The tale itself is thoroughly charming, and all the 
 characters are delightfully drawn. We strongly recommend all lovers of whole- 
 some novels to make acquaintance with it themselves, and are much mistaken if 
 they do not heartily thank us for the introduction." 
 
 IN THE VALLEY. By Harold Frederic, Author of 
 
 " The Lawton Girl," " Seth's Brother's Wife," &c. With Illustrations. 
 Times. — "The literary value of the book is high; the author's studies of 
 bygone life presenting a life-like picture." 
 
 PRETTY MISS SMITH. By Florence Warden, Author 
 
 of "The House on the Marsh," "A Witch of the Hills," &c. 
 Punch. — "Since Miss Florence Warden's 'House on the Marsh/ I have 
 not read a more excituig tale." 
 
 NOR WIFE, NOR MAID. By Mrs. Hungerford, Author 
 of " Molly Bawn," &c. 
 
 Queen. — " It has all the characteristics of the writer's work, and greater 
 emotional depth than most of its predecessors." 
 
 Scotsman. — " Delightful reading, supremely interesting." 
 
 MAMMON. A Novel. By Mrs. Alexander, Author of " The 
 
 Wooing O't," &c. 
 Scotsman.— *^ 1\ifL present work is not behind any of its predecessors. 
 'Mammon ' is a healthy story, and as it has been thoughtfully written it has the 
 merit of creating thought in its readers." 
 
 DAUGHTERS OF MEN. By Hannah Lynch, Author of 
 
 " The Prince of the Glades," &c. 
 Daily Telegraph. — "Singularly clever and fascinating." 
 Aiadefny. — *' One of the cleverest, if not also the pleasantest, stories that 
 have appeared for a long time." 
 
 A ROMANCE OF THE CAPE FRONTIER. By Bertram 
 
 MiTFORD, Author of " Through the Zulu Country," &c. 
 Observer. — " This is a rattling tale, genial, healthy, and spirited." 
 
 'TWEEN SNOW AND FIRE. A Tale of the Kafir War of 
 1877. By Bertram Mitfoed. 
 
 THE MASTER OF THE MAGICIANS. By Elizabkth 
 Stuart Phelps and Herbert D. Ward. 
 Athen^mn. — "A thrilling story." 
 
 LOS CERRITOS. A Romance of the Modern Time. By 
 Gertrude Franklin Atherton, Author of '*Hermia Suydam," and 
 " What Dreams may Come." 
 Athenceum.—^'YxHHi of fresh fancies and suggestions. Told with strength 
 
 and delicacy. A decidedly charming romance." 
 
 A MODERN MARRIAGE. By the Marquise Clara Lanza 
 Queen. — "A powerful stoi-y, dramatically and consistently carried out." 
 Black and White.—" A decidedly clever book." 
 
14 i^/iV. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S LIST. 
 
 popular SbtlUng JSoohs, 
 
 MADAME VALERIE. By F. C. Philips, Author of "As 
 
 in a Looking-Glass/* &c. 
 
 THE MOMENT AFTER: A Tale of the Unseen. By 
 Robert Buchanan. 
 
 Athen^um. — "Should be read— in daylight." 
 
 Observer.—'* A clever tour deforce." 
 
 Guardian. — " Particularly impressive, graphic, and powerful." 
 
 CLUES ; or, Leaves from a Chief Constable's Note-Book. 
 
 By William Henderson, Chief Constable of Edinburgh. 
 Mr. Gladstone.— '^' I found the book full of interest." 
 
 A VERY STRANGE FAMILY. By F. W. Robinson, 
 Author of "Grandmother's Money," " Lazarus in London," &c. 
 
 Glasgow Herald. — "An ingeniously devised plot, of which the interest is 
 kept up to the very last page. A judicious blending of humour and pathos 
 further helps to make the book delightful reading from start to finish." 
 
 Dramatic ^Literature* 
 
 THE PLAYS OF ARTHUR W. PINERO. 
 
 With Introductory Notes by Malcolm C. Salaman. i6mo, Paper Covers, 
 i^. (id. ; or Cloth, zf. dd. each. 
 
 THE TIMES : A Comedy in Four Acts. With a Preface by 
 the Author. (Vol. I.) 
 
 Daily Telegra^h.— *^ * The. Times' is the best example yet given of Mr. 
 Pinero's power as a satirist. So clever is his work that it beats down opposition. 
 So fascinating is his style that we cannot help listening to him." 
 
 Morning Post. — "Mr. Pinero's latest belongs to a high order of dramatic 
 literature, and the piece will be witnessed again with all the greater zest after the 
 perusal of such admirable dialogue." 
 
 THE PROFLIGATE : A Play in Four Acts. With Portrait 
 of the Author, after J. Mordecai. (Vol. II.) 
 
 Pall Mall Gazette. — " Will be welcomed by all who have the true interests 
 of the stage at heart." 
 
 THE CABINET MINISTER: A Farce in Four Acts. 
 (Vol. III.) 
 Obsen'er. — " It is as amusing to read as it was when played." 
 
 THE HOBBY HORSE: A Comedy in Three Acts 
 
 (Vol. IV.) 
 
 St. James s Gazette. — "Mr. Pinero has seldom produced better or more 
 interesting work than in ' The Hobby Horse.* " 
 
 LADY BOUNTIFUL. A Play in Four Acts. (Vol. V.) 
 
 THE MAGISTRATE. A Farce in Three Acts. (Vol. VI.) 
 
 To be followed by B.indy Dick, The Schoolmistress, The Weaker Sex, Lords and 
 Commons, The Squire, and Sweet Lavender, 
 
MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S LIST. IS 
 
 Dramatic Xtterature. 
 
 A NEW PLAY. By Henrik Ibsen. Translated from the 
 Norwegian. Small 4to. \In preparation. 
 
 A NEW PLAY. By Bj5rnstjerne BjOrnson. Translated 
 
 from the Norwegian. \_In preparation. 
 
 THE PRINCESSE MALEINE: A Drama in Five Acts 
 (Translated by Gerard Harry), and THE INTRUDER : A Drama in 
 One Act. By Maurice Maeterlinck. With an Introduction by Hall 
 Caine, and a Portrait of the Author. Small 4to, cloth, 5^. 
 
 AtJuwEum. — "In the creation of the 'atmosphere' of the play M. Maeter- 
 linck shows his skill. It is here that he communicates to us the nouveau frisson, 
 here that he does what no one else has done. In ' The Intruder ' the art 
 consists of the subtle gradations of terror, the slow, creeping progress of the 
 nightmare of apprehension. Nothing quite like it has been done before — not 
 even by Poe — not even by Villiers." 
 
 THE FRUITS OF ENLIGHTENMENT: A Comedy in 
 
 Four Acts. By Count Lyof Tolstoy. Translated from the Russian by 
 E. J. Dillon. With Introduction by A. W. Pinero. Small 4to, with 
 Portrait, 5^. 
 Pall Mall Gazette.— " The whole effect of the play is distinctly Moli^resque; 
 
 it has something of the large humanity of the master. Its satire is genial, almost 
 
 gay-" 
 
 HEDDA GABLER : A Drama in Four Acts. By Henrik 
 
 Ibsen. Translated from the Norwegian by Edmund Gosse. Small 4to, 
 cloth, with Portrait, 51. Vaudeville Edition, paper, is. Also a Limited 
 Large Paper Edition, 21s. net. 
 Times. — "The language in which this play is couched is a model of brevity, 
 
 decision, and pointedness Every line tells, and there is not an incident 
 
 that does not bear on the action immediate or remote. As a corrective to the 
 vapid and foohsh writing with which the stage is deluged ' Hedda Gabler ' is 
 perhaps entitled to the place of honour." 
 
 STRAY MEMORIES. By Ellen Terry. In one volume. 
 
 Illustrated. [In preparation. 
 
 SOME INTERESTING FALLACIES OF THE 
 
 Modem Stage. An Address delivered to the Playgoers' Club at St. 
 James's Hall, on Sunday, 6th December, 1891. By Herbert Beerbohm 
 Tree. Crown 8vo, sewed, 6d. 
 
 THE LIFE OF HENRIK IBSEN. By Henrik J^ger. 
 
 Translated by Clara Bell. With the Verse done into English from the 
 Norwegian Original by Edmund Gosse. Crown 8vo, cloth, 6^. 
 St. James's GazeWf.—" Admirably translated. Deserves a cordial and 
 omphatic welcome." 
 
 Guardian. — " Ibsen's dramas at present enjoy a considerable vogue, and 
 their admirers will rejoice to find full descriptions and criticisms in Mr. Jaeger's 
 book." 
 
1 6 MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S LIST. 
 
 poetry. 
 
 IVY AND PASSION FLOWER: Poems. By Gerard 
 
 Bend \ ll, Author of " Estelle," &c. &c. i2ino, cloth, 3^. (>d. 
 
 Scotsinnn. — "Will be read with pleasure." 
 
 Afiishal 11 'arid.— " The poems are delicate specimens of art, graceful and 
 polished." 
 
 VERSES. By Gertrude Hall. i2mo, cloth, 35. 6d. 
 
 Manchester Gnardian.~^^'^')W. be welcome to every lover of poetry who 
 takes it up. " 
 
 MAGONIA: A Poem. By Charles Godfrey Leland (Hans 
 
 Breitmann). Fcap. 8vo. [/« the Press, 
 
 IDYLLS OF WOMANHOOD. By C. Amy Dawson. 
 Fcap. 8vo, gilt top, 5?. 
 
 Ibeinemann's Scientific "Ibanbboofts. 
 
 MANUAL OF BACTERIOLOGY. By A. B. Griffiths, 
 
 Ph.D., F.R.S. (Edin.), F.C.S. Cro%vn 8vo, cloth, Illustrated. 
 
 [/« ilie Press. 
 MANUAL OF ASSAYING GOLD, SILVER, COPPER, 
 
 and Lead Ores. By Walter Lee Brown, B.Sc. Revised, Corrected, 
 and considerably Enlarged, with a chapter on the Assaying of Fuel, S:c. 
 By A. B. Griffiths. Ph.D., F.R.S. (Edin.), F.C.S. Crown 8vo, cloth, 
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 Colliery Guardian. — "A delightful and fascinating book.'' 
 Fina?icial World. — " The most complete and practical manual on everything 
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 GEODESY. By J. Howard Gore. Crown 8vo, cloth, Illus- 
 trated, 5J. 
 
 St. lameis Gazette. — "The book may be safely recommended to those who 
 desire to acquire an accurate knowledge of Geodesy." 
 
 Science Gossip. — " It is the best we could recommend to all geodetic students. 
 It is full and clear, thoroughly accurate, and up to date in all matters of earth- 
 measurements." 
 
 THE PHYSICAL PROPERTIES OF GASES. By 
 
 Arthur L. Kimball, of the Johns Hopkins University. Crown 8vo, 
 cloth. Illustrated, 5.?. 
 
 Cheiuicnl News. — "The man of culture who wishes for a general and accurate 
 acquaintance with the physical properties of gases, wilt find in Mr. Kimball's 
 
 work just what he requires," 
 
 HEAT AS A FORM OF ENERGY. By Professor R. H. 
 Thurston, of Cornell University. Crown 8vo, cloth, Illustrated, 55. 
 
 Maiichester Examiner. — "Bears out the character of its predecessors for 
 careful and correct statement and deduction under the light of the most recent 
 discoveries." 
 
 LONDON : 
 \V I L L I A M H E I N E M A N N, 
 
 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C. 
 
* '."',.' / . I'M.'- •■>''.yA-, '■."■'