TT 
 
 THE LIBRARY OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 
 NORTH CAROLINA 
 
 AT CHAPEL HILL 
 
 ENDOWED BY THE 
 
 DIALECTIC AND PHILANTHROPIC 
 
 SOCIETIES 
 
 PQ2163 
 
 .01^13 
 1901 
 
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 my 3 i^'^ 
 
 
 a 00000 42171 5 
 
 This book is due at the LOUIS R. WILSON LIBRARY on the 
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 Form No 513 
 

Digitized by tine Internet Arcliive 
 
 in 2011 witli funding from 
 
 University of Nortli Carolina at Chapel Hill 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/unknownmasterpieOObalz 
 
THE TEMPLE EDITION 
 
 OF THE 
 
 COMÉDIE HUMAINE 
 
 Edited by 
 GEORGE SAINTSBURY 
 
THE'UNKNOWN 
 MASTERPIECE 
 
 (LE'CHEF-D'ŒUVRE'INCONNU) 
 
 OTHER^STORIES 
 
 H^DE'^BALZAC 
 
 * ELLEN MARRIAGE ' 
 
 Wiih'a'Frontispiece 
 etched vby 
 
 Wj^BOUCHER 
 
 * ig oi ' 
 THE^^MACMIli-'AN 
 ,^ * COMPANY - 
 
 06 FIFTH /7-N V ^->^ AVENUE 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE— 
 I. GILLETTE . 
 II. CATHERINE LESCAULT 
 
 CHRIST IN FLANDERS . 
 MELMOTH RECONCILED 
 THE MARANAS . 
 EL VERDUGO 
 FAREWELL . 
 THE CONSCRIPT . 
 A SEASIDE TRAGEDY 
 THE RED HOUSE . 
 
 I. THE IDEA AND THE DEED 
 II. A DOUBLE RETRIBUTION 
 
 THE ELIXIR OF LIFE 
 O 
 
 X 
 22 
 
 33 
 
 54 
 no 
 
 184 
 
 197 
 248 
 
 267 
 291 
 
 295 
 
 320 
 334 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The volume of short stories which, in the first complete 
 edition of the Comédie^ opens with Les Marana^ contains, 
 with that in which La Recherche de t Absolu leads off, 
 the very finest productions of the author on a small 
 scale ; and they now appear together, La Recherche ex- 
 cepted. Almost all the pieces herein contained were 
 early work, written when Balzac was under the com- 
 bined excitement of his emergence from the valley of the 
 shadow in which he had toiled so long, and of the heat 
 and stress of the political and literary Revolution of 1830. 
 All of them show his very freshest matured power, not 
 as yet in the slightest degree sicklied o'er by any exces- 
 sive attempt to codify or systematise. It is true that 
 they are called Etudes Philosophiques^ and that it 
 puzzles the adroitest advocate to make out any very 
 particular claim that they have to the title. But ' philo- 
 sophy,' a term pretty freely abused in all languages, had 
 in French been treated during the eighteenth century 
 and earlier as a sort of * blessed word,' which might mean 
 anything, from the misbeliefs and disbeliefs of those who 
 did not believe in the devil to the pursuits of those who 
 meddled with test-tubes and retorts. Balzac seems gener- 
 ally to have meant by it something that was not mere 
 surface-literature — that was intended to make the 
 
X Preface 
 
 reader think and feel. In this sense very little of his 
 own work is unworthy of the title, and we certainly 
 need not refuse it to Les Marana and its companions. 
 
 The only objection that I can think of to the title- 
 tale is a kind of uncertainty in the plan of the character 
 of Juana. It is perfectly proper that she should fall an 
 unsophisticated victim to the inherited tendencies (let it 
 be remembered that Balzac worked this vein with dis- 
 cretion long before it was tediously overworked by 
 literary Darwinians), to her own genuine affection, and 
 to the wiles of Montefiore. It is quite right, as well as 
 satisfactory, that she should refuse her seducer when she 
 discovers the baseness of his motives. It is natural 
 enough, especially in a southern damsel, that she should 
 submit to the convenient cloak of marriage with Diard, 
 and even make him a good and affectionate wife after- 
 wards. But Balzac seems to me — perhaps I am wrong 
 — to have left us in undue doubt whether she killed 
 Diard purely out of Castilian honour, or partly as a sort 
 of revenge for the sufferings she had undergone in endur- 
 ing his love. A mixture of the two would be the finer 
 and the truer touch, and therefore it is probable that 
 Balzac meant it ; but I think he should have indicated 
 it, not by any clumsy labelling or explanation, but by 
 something * leading up.' It may, however, seem that 
 this is a hypercriticism, and certainly the tale is fine 
 enough. 
 
 The fantastic horror of Adieu may seem even finer to 
 some, but a trifle overwrought to others. Balzac, who 
 had very little literary jealousy in his own way and 
 school, made a confession of enthusiastic regret after- 
 wards that he, Balzac, could not attain to the perfection 
 
Preface 
 
 XI 
 
 of description of the Russian retreat which Beyle had 
 achieved. Both were observer-idealists, and required 
 some touch of actual experience to set their imaginations 
 working, an advantage which, in this case, Balzac did 
 not possess, and Beyle did. But I do not think that 
 any one can reasonably find fault with the scenes on the 
 Beresina here. The induction (to use Sackville's good 
 old word) of the story is excellent : and there is no part 
 of a short story, hardly even the end, which is so im- 
 portant as the beginning ; for if it fails to lay a grip on 
 the reader, it is two to one that he will not go on with 
 it. The character of Philippe de Sucy is finely touched, 
 and the contrast of the unconscious selfishness of his 
 love with the uncle's affection is excellent, and not in the 
 least (as it might be) obtrusive. But the point of danger, 
 of course, is in the representation of the pure animalised 
 condition of the unhappy Countess, and her monkey-like 
 tricks. It is never quite certain that a thing of this kind 
 will not strike the reader, in some variable mood, with a 
 sense of the disgusting, of the childish, of the merely 
 fantastic, and any such sense in a tale appealing so strongly 
 to the sense of ' the pity of it ' is fatal. I can only say 
 that I have read Adieu at long intervals of time and in 
 very different circumstances, and have not felt anything 
 of the kind, or anything but the due pity and terror. 
 The style, perhaps, is not entirely Balzac's own j the 
 interest is a Httle simple and elementary for him ; but 
 he shows that he can handle it as well as things more 
 complicated and subtler. 
 
 Le Réquîsitionnaire^ El Verdugo^ and Un Drame au bord 
 de la Mer may be called, assuredly in no uncomplimentary 
 or slighting sense, anecdotes rather than stories. The 
 
XII 
 
 Preface 
 
 hinge, the centre, the climax, or the catastrophe (as 
 from different points of view we may call it), is in all 
 cases more important than the details and the thread of 
 narrative. They are all good, but El Verdugo is far the 
 best : the great incident of the father blessing his son 
 and executioner in the words * Marquis [his own title] 
 frappe sans peur, tu es sans reproche,' being worthy of 
 Hugo himself. 
 
 I do not know that I admire V Auberge Rouge quite so 
 much as some of the other contents of the volume. It 
 has interest j and it may be observed that, as indicating 
 the origin of Tailiefer's wealth, it connects itself with 
 the general scheme of the Comédie^ as few of the others 
 do. But it is an attempt, hke one or two others of 
 Balzac's, at a style very popular in 1830, a sort of 
 combination of humour and terror, of Sterne and Monk 
 Lewis, which is a little doubtful in itself, which has very 
 rarely been done well, and for which he himself was not 
 quite completely equipped. UElixir de longue Vie^ in 
 which Balzac acknowledges (I do not know whether by 
 trick or not) indebtedness to Hoffmann or somebody 
 else, is also 'style 1830,' and, to speak with perfect 
 frankness, would have been done much better by Mérimée 
 or Gautier than by Balzac. But it is done well. Maître 
 Cornélius^ which, by the way, is interesting in its dedica- 
 tion to Count Georges Mniszech, partakes of the char- 
 acter of a ' Conte drolatique ' thrown out of the scheme 
 of those Contes. But it very worthily completes in its 
 own way one of the most remarkable volumes of the 
 old collection. 
 
 The tales now added take equal rank. The Chef- 
 d''œuvre inconnu^ a masterpiece in two senses, has been 
 
Preface xiii 
 
 noticed in connection with La Recherche. fesus-Christ 
 en Flandre is good, and Melmoth réconcilié, inferior in 
 itself, has a special and adventitious interest. Maturin, 
 whose most famous book (quite recently reprinted after 
 long forgetfulness, but one of European interest in its 
 time, and of special influence on Balzac) can hardly be 
 said to receive here a continuation which is exactly en 
 suite, and the odd thing is that nothing was further from 
 Balzac's mind than to parody his original. The thing, 
 therefore, is a curious example of the difference of point 
 of view, of the way in which an English conception 
 travesties itself when it gets into French hands. Maturin 
 was an infinitely smaller man than Shakespeare, and 
 Balzac was an infinitely greater man than Ducis ; but 
 * equals aquals,' as they say, or used to say, in Maturin's 
 country, I do not know that Maturin fared much better 
 at the hands of Balzac than Shakespeare has fared at 
 the hands of Ducis and a long succession of adapters 
 down to the present day in France. 
 
 All the Marana group of stories appeared together in 
 the fourth edition of the Etudes 'Philosophiques, 1835- 
 1837, and have not since been separated, with one 
 exception (see below), either before or after their entry 
 into the Comédie. Most of them, however, had earlier 
 appearances in periodicals and in the Romans et Contes 
 Philosophiques, which preceded the Etudes. And in these 
 various appearances they were subjected to their author's 
 usual processes of division and unification, of sub-titling 
 and cancelling sub-titles. JLes Marana appeared first in 
 the Revue de Paris for the last month of 1832 and the 
 first of 1833 ; while it next made a show, oddly enough, 
 as a Scene de la vie Parisienne. Adieu appeared in 
 
xiv Preface 
 
 the Mode during June 1830, and was afterwards for a 
 time a Scene de la vie privée. Le Réquisitionnaire 
 was issued by the Revue de Paris of February 23, 
 1831 ; El Verdugo by the Mode for January 29, 1830 ; 
 V Auberge Rouge in the Revue de Paris, August 1831 j 
 UElixir de longue Vie, by the same periodical for 
 October 1830 ; Maître Cornélius, again by the same for 
 December 1831. Un Drame au bord de la Mer alone 
 appeared nowhere except in book form with its com- 
 panions; but in 1843 '^ ^^^' them for a time (afterwards 
 to return), and as La "Justice Paternelle accompanied La 
 Muse du Département, Albert Savarus, and Facino Cane 
 in a separate publication. 
 
 Of those here added, Jésus-Christ en Flandre was one 
 of the Ro?nans et Contes Philosophiques, which Gosselin 
 published in 1831, and remained as such till the con- 
 stitution of the Comédie, It is a sort of Aaron's rod 
 among Balzac's stories, and swallowed up a minor one 
 called U Eglise. Melmoth réconcilié, dating from 1835, 
 first appeared in a miscellany. Le Livre des Contes ; then 
 it was an Etude Philosophique ; and in 1845 it received its 
 class in the Comédie. Le Chef-d'œuvre inconnu appeared in 
 the Artiste of 1831, before its present date, as a * Conte 
 fantastique,' in two parts. It almost immediately became 
 one of the Romans et Contes Philosophiques, passed in 
 1837 to the Études Philosophiques, was most unequally 
 yoked for a time with Les Comédiens sans le savoir, and 
 took definite rank in 1845 as usual. 
 
 G.S. 
 
 Note, — Maître Cornelius has been omitted, and post- 
 poned to a future volume, owing to exigencies of space 
 
THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 
 
 To a Lord 
 
 1845 
 L GILLETTE 
 
 On a cold December morning in the year 161 2, a young 
 man, whose clothing was somewhat of the thinnest, was 
 walking to and fro before a gateway in the Rue des 
 Grands-Augustins in Paris. He went up and down the 
 street before this house with the irresolution of a gallant 
 who dares not venture into the presence of the mistress 
 whom he loves for the first time, easy of access though 
 she may be ; but after a sufficiently long interval of hesita- 
 tion, he at last crossed the threshold and inquired of an 
 old woman, who was sweeping out a large room on the 
 ground floor, whether Master Porbus was within. Re- 
 ceiving a reply in the affirmative, the young man went 
 slowly up the staircase, like a gentleman but newly come 
 to court, and doubtful as to his reception by the king. 
 He came to a stand once more on the landing at the 
 head of the stairs, and again he hesitated before raising 
 his hand to the grotesque knocker on the door of the 
 studio, where doubtless the painter was at work — Master 
 Porbus, sometime painter in ordinary to Henri iv. till 
 Mary de' Medici took Rubens into favour. 
 
 The young man felt deeply stirred by an emotion that 
 must thrill the hearts of all great artists when, in the 
 
 A 
 
2 The Unknown Masterpiece 
 
 pride of their youth and their first love of art, they come 
 into the presence of a master or stand before a master- 
 piece. For all human sentiments there is a time of 
 early blossoming, a day of generous enthusiasm that 
 gradually fades until nothing is left of happiness but a 
 memory, and glory is known for a delusion. Of all 
 these delicate and short-lived emotions, none so resemble 
 love as the passion of a young artist for his art, as he is 
 about to enter on the blissful martyrdom of his career 
 of glory and disaster, of vague expectations and real 
 disappointments. 
 
 Those v/ho have missed this experience in the early 
 days of light purses ; who have not, in the dawn of their 
 genius, stood in the presence of a master and felt the 
 throbbing of their hearts, will always carry in their in- 
 most souls a chord that has never been touched, and in 
 their work an indefinable quality will be lacking, a some- 
 thing in the stroke of the brush, a mysterious element 
 that we call poetry. The swaggerers, so puffed up by self- 
 conceit that they are confident oversoon of their success, 
 can never be taken for men of talent save by fools. 
 From this point of view, if youthful modesty is the measure 
 of youthful genius, the stranger on the staircase might 
 be allowed to have something in him ; for he seemed to 
 possess the indescribable diffidence, the early timidity 
 that artists are bound to lose in the course of a great 
 career, even as pretty women lose it as they make 
 progress in the arts of coquetry. Self-distrust vanishes 
 as triumph succeeds to triumph, and modesty is, perhaps, 
 distrust of self. 
 
 The poor neophyte was so overcome by the conscious- 
 ness of his own presumption and insignificance, that it 
 began to look as if he was hardly likely to penetrate into 
 the studio of the painter, to whom we owe the wonder- 
 ful portrait of Henri iv. But fate was propitious; an 
 old man came up the staircase. From the quaint 
 costume of this new-comer, his collar of magnificent lace, 
 
The Unknown Masterpiece 3 
 
 and a certain serene gravity in his bearing, the first 
 arrival thought that this personage must be either a 
 patron or a friend of the court painter. He stood aside 
 therefore upon the landing to allow the visitor to pass, 
 scrutinising him curiously the while. Perhaps he might 
 hope to find the good nature of an artist or to receive 
 the good offices of an amateur not unfriendly to the 
 arts ; but besides an almost diabolical expression in the 
 face that met his gaze, there was that indescribable some- 
 thing which has an irresistible attraction for artists. 
 
 Picture that face. A bald high forehead and rugged 
 jutting brows above a small flat nose turned up at the 
 end, as in the portraits of Socrates and Rabelais, deep 
 lines about the mocking mouth ; a short chin, carried 
 proudly, covered with a grizzled pointed beard ; sea-green 
 eyes that age might seem to have dimmed were it not 
 for the contrast between the iris and the surrounding 
 mother-of-pearl tints, so that it seemed as if under the 
 stress of anger or enthusiasm there would be a magnetic 
 power to quell or kindle in their glances. The face 
 was withered beyond wont by the fatigue of years, 
 yet it seemed aged still more by the thoughts that had 
 worn away both soul and body. There were no lashes 
 to the deep-set eyes, and scarcely a trace of the arching 
 lines of the eyebrows above them. Set this head on a 
 spare and feeble frame, place it in a frame of lace 
 wrought Hke an engraved silver fish-slice, imagine a 
 heavy gold chain over the old man's black doublet, and 
 you will have some dim idea of this strange personage, 
 who seemed still more fantastic in the sombre twilight 
 of the staircase. One of Rembrandt's portraits might 
 have stepped down from its frame to walk in an appro- 
 priate atmosphere of gloom, such as the great painter 
 loved. The older man gave the younger a shrewd 
 glance, and knocked thrice at the door. It was opened 
 by a man of forty or thereabouts, who seemed to be an 
 invalid. 
 
4 The Unknown Masterpiece 
 
 * Good-day, Master.' 
 
 Porbus bowed respectfully, and held the door open for 
 the younger man to enter, thinking that the latter 
 accompanied his visitor ; and when he saw that the 
 neophyte stood awhile as if spellbound, feeling, as every 
 artist-nature must feel, the fascinating influence of the 
 first sight of a studio in which the material processes of 
 art are revealed, Porbus troubled himself no more about 
 this second comer. 
 
 All the light in the studio came from a window in the 
 roof, and was concentrated upon an easel, where a canvas 
 stood untouched as yet save for three or four outlines in 
 chalk. The daylight scarcely reached the remoter 
 angles and corners of the vast room ; they were as dark 
 as night, but the silver ornamented breastplate of a 
 Reiter's corselet, that hung upon the wall, attracted a stray 
 gleam to its dim abiding-place among the brown shadows ; 
 or a shaft of light shot across the carved and glistening 
 surface of an antique sideboard covered with curious 
 silver-plate, or struck out a line of glittering dots among 
 the raised threads of the golden warp of some old 
 brocaded curtains, where the lines of the stiff heavy folds 
 were broken, as the stufF had been flung carelessly down 
 to serve as a model. 
 
 Plaster ècorchés stood about the room ; and here and 
 there, on shelves and tables, lay fragments of classical 
 sculpture — torsos of antique goddesses, worn smooth 
 as though all the years of the centuries that had passed 
 over them had been lovers' kisses. The walls were 
 covered, from floor to ceiling, with countless sketches 
 in charcoal, red chalk, or pen and ink. Amid the litter 
 and confusion of colour boxes, overturned stools, flasks 
 of oil, and essences, there was just room to move so as to 
 reach the illuminated circular space where the easel stood. 
 The light from the window in the roof fell full upon 
 Porbus's pale face and on the ivory-tinted forehead of 
 his strange visitor. But in another moment the younger 
 
The Unknown Masterpiece 5 
 
 man heeded nothing but a picture that had akeady 
 become famous even in those stormy days of poHtical 
 and rehgious revolution, a picture that a few of the 
 zealous worshippers, who have so often kept the sacred 
 fire of art alive in evil days, were wont to go on 
 pilgrimage to see. The beautiful panel represented a 
 Saint Mary of Egypt about to pay her passage across 
 the seas. It was a masterpiece destined for Mary de' 
 Medici, who sold it in later years of poverty. 
 
 ' I like your saint,' the old man remarked, addressing 
 Porbus. * I would give you ten golden crowns for her 
 over and above the price the Queen is paying ; but as for 
 putting a spoke in that wheel . . . the devil take it ! ' 
 
 * It is good then ? ' 
 
 ' Hey ! hey ! ' said the old man ; * good, say you ? — 
 Yes and no. Your good woman is not badly done, but 
 she is not alive. You artists fancy that when a figure is 
 correctly drawn, and everything in its place according to 
 the rules of anatomy, there is nothing more to be done. 
 You make up the flesh tints beforehand on your palettes 
 according to your formulae, and fill in the outlines with 
 due care that one side of the face shall be darker than 
 the other ; and because you look from time to time at 
 a naked woman who stands on the platform before you, 
 you fondly imagine that you have copied nature, think 
 yourselves to be painters, believe that you have wrested 
 His secret from God. Pshaw ! You may know your 
 syntax thoroughly and make no blunders in your gram- 
 mar, but it takes that and something more to make a 
 great poet. Look at your saint, Porbus ! At a first 
 glance she is admirable j look at her again, and you see 
 at once that she is glued to the background, and that 
 you could not walk round her. She is a silhouette that 
 turns but one side of her face to all beholders, a figure 
 cut out of canvas, an image with no power to move nor 
 change her position. I feel as if there were no air 
 between that arm and the background, no space, no 
 
6 The Unknown Masterpiece 
 
 sense of distance in your canvas. The perspective is 
 perfectly correct, the strength of the colouring is 
 accurately diminished with the distance ; but, in spite of 
 these praiseworthy efforts, I could never bring myself to 
 believe that the warm breath of life comes and goes in 
 that beautiful body. It seems to me that if I laid my 
 hand on the firm rounded throat, it would be cold as 
 marble to the touch. No, my friend, the blood does not 
 flow beneath that ivory skin, the tide of life does not 
 flush those delicate fibres, the purple veins that trace a 
 network beneath the transparent amber of her brow and 
 breast. Here the pulse seems to beat, there it is motion- 
 less, life and death are at strife in every detail ; here you 
 see a woman, there a statue, there again a corpse. Your 
 creation is incomplete. You had only power to breathe 
 a portion of your soul into your beloved work. The fire 
 of Prometheus died out again and again in your hands; 
 many a spot in your picture has not been touched by the 
 divine flame.' 
 
 * But how is it, dear master ? ' Porbus asked respect- 
 fully, while the young man with difficulty repressed his 
 strong desire to beat the critic. 
 
 ' Ah ! ' said the old man, ' it is this ! You have 
 halted between two manners. You have hesitated 
 between drawing and colour, between the dogged atten- 
 tion to detail, the stiff precision of the German masters 
 and the dazzlirig glow, the joyous exuberance of Italian 
 painters. You have set yourself to imitate Hans Holbein 
 and Titian, Albrecht Durer and Paul Veronese in a single 
 picture. A magnificent ambition truly, but what has 
 come of it ? Your work has neither the severe charm 
 of a dry execution nor the magical illusion of Italian 
 chiaroscuro. Titian's rich golden colouring poured into 
 Albrecht Diirer's austere outlines has shattered them, 
 like molten bronze bursting through the mould that is 
 not strong enough to hold it. In other places the out- 
 lines have held firm, imprisoning and obscuring the 
 
The Unknown Masterpiece 7 
 
 magnificent glowing flood of Venetian colour. The 
 drawing of the face is not perfect, the colouring is not 
 perfect ; traces of that unlucky indecision are to be seen 
 everywhere. Unless you felt strong enough to fuse the 
 two opposed manners in the fire of your own genius, you 
 should have cast in your lot boldly with the one or the 
 other, and so have obtained the unity which simulates one 
 of the conditions of life itself. Your work is only true 
 in the centres ; your outlines are false, they project no- 
 thing, there is no hint of anything behind them. There 
 is truth here,' said the old man, pointing to the breast of 
 the Saint, ' and again here,' he went on, indicating the 
 rounded shoulder. ' But there,' once more returning 
 to the column of the throat, ' everything is false. Let 
 us go no farther into detail; you would be disheartened.' 
 
 The old man sat down on a stool, and remained a 
 while without speaking, with his face buried in his hands. 
 
 ' Yet I studied that throat from the life, dear master,' 
 Porbus began ; ' it happens sometimes, for our misfor- 
 tune, that real effects in nature look improbable when 
 transferred to canvas ' 
 
 ' The aim of art is not to copy nature, but to express 
 it. You are not a servile copyist, but a poet ! ' cried the 
 old man sharply, cutting Porbus short with an imperious 
 gesture. ' Otherwise a sculptor might make a plaster 
 cast of a living woman and save himself all further 
 trouble. Well^ try to make a cast of your mistress's 
 hand, and set up the thing before you. You will see a 
 monstrosity, a dead mass, bearing no resemblance to the 
 living hand ; you would be compelled to have recourse 
 to the chisel of a sculptor who, without making an exact 
 copy, would represent for you its movement and its life. 
 We must detect the spirit, the informing soul in the 
 appearances of things and beings. Effects ! What are 
 effects but the accidents of life, not life itself? A hand, 
 since I have taken that example, is not only a part of a 
 body, it is the expression and extension of a thought thai 
 
8 The Unknown Masterpiece 
 
 must be grasped and rendered. Neither painter nor 
 poet nor sculptor may separate the effect from the cause, 
 which are inevitably contained the one in the other. 
 There begins the real struggle ! Many a painter 
 achieves success instinctively, unconscious of the task 
 that is set before art. You draw a woman, yet you do 
 not see her! Not so do you succeed in wresting nature's 
 secrets from her ! You are reproducing mechanically 
 the model that you copied in your master's studio. You 
 do not penetrate far enough into the ini?iost secrets of 
 the mystery of form ; you do not seek w:th love enough 
 and perseverance enough after the form that baffles 
 and eludes you. Beauty is a thing severe and un- 
 approachable, never to be won by a langu'd lover. You 
 must lie in wait for her coming and take her unawares, 
 press her hard and clasp her in a tight embrace, and force 
 her to yield. Form is a Proteus more intangible and 
 more manifold than the Proteus of the legend ; com- 
 pelled, only after long wrestling, to stand forth manifest 
 in his true aspect. Some of you are satisied with the first 
 shape, or at most by the second or the third that appears. 
 Not thus wrestle the victors, the unvinquished painters 
 who never suffer themselves to be deluded by all those 
 treacherous shadow-shapes; they persevere till nature at 
 the last stands bare to their gaze, end her very soul is 
 revealed. 
 
 * In this manner worked Rafael,' said the old man, 
 taking off his cap to express his reverence for the King 
 of Art. ' His transcendent greatness came of the inti- 
 mate sense that, in him, seems as if it would shatter 
 external form. Form in his figures (as with us) is a 
 symbol, a means of communicating sensations, ideas, 
 the vast imaginings of a poet. Every face is a whole 
 world. The subject of the portrait appeared for him 
 bathed in the light of a divine vision ; it was revealed by 
 an inner voice, the finger of God laid bare the sources 
 of expression in the past of a whole life. 
 
The Unknown Masterpiece 9 
 
 * You clothe your women in fair raiment of flesh, in 
 gracious veiling of hair; but where is the blood, the 
 source of passion and of calm, the cause of the particular 
 effect ? Why, this brown Egyptian of yours, my good 
 Porbus, is a colourless creature ! These figures that you 
 set before us are painted bloodless phantoms ; and you 
 call that painting, you call that art ! 
 
 * Because you have made something more like a woman 
 than a house, you think that you have set your fingers 
 on the goal ; you are quite proud that you need not to 
 write currus venustus or pulcher homo beside your figures, 
 as early painters were wont to do, and you fancy that you 
 have done wonders. Ah ! my good friend, there is still 
 something more to learn, and you will use up a great 
 deal of chalk and cover many a canvas before you will 
 learn it. Yes, truly, a woman carries her head in just 
 such a way, so she holds her garments gathered into her 
 hand ; her eyes grow dreamy and soft with that expres- 
 sion of meek sweetness, and even so the quivering shadow 
 of the lashes hovers upon her cheeks. It is all there, 
 and yet it is not there. What is lacking ? A nothing, 
 but that nothing is everything. 
 
 ' There you have the semblance of life, but you do not 
 express its fulness and eiBuence, that indescribable some- 
 thing, perhaps the soul itself, that envelopes the outlines 
 of the body like a haze ; that flower of life, in short, that 
 Titian and Rafael caught. Your utmost achievement 
 hitherto has only brought you to the starting-point. 
 You might now perhaps begin to do excellent work, but 
 you grow weary all too soon ; and the crowd admires, 
 and those who know smile. 
 
 ' Oh, Mabuse ! oh, my master ! ' cried the strange 
 speaker, *• thou art a thief! Thou hast carried away the 
 secret of life with thee ! 
 
 ' Nevertheless,' he began again, ' this picture of yours 
 is worth more than all the paintings of that rascal 
 Rubens, with his mountains of Flemish flesh raddled 
 
lO The Unknown Masterpiece 
 
 with vermilion, his torrents of red hair, his riot of colour. 
 You, at least, have colour there, and feeling and drawing 
 — the three essentials in art.' 
 
 The young man roused himself from his deep musings. 
 
 ' Why, my good man, the Saint is sublime ! ' he cried. 
 * There is a subtlety of imagination about those two 
 figures, the Saint Mary and the Shipman, that cannot be 
 found among Italian masters ; I do not know a single 
 one of them capable of imaging the Shipman's hesitation.' 
 
 ' Did that little malapert come with you ? ' asked 
 Porbus of the older man. 
 
 'Alas ! master, pardon my boldness,' cried the neophyte, 
 and the colour mounted to his face. ' I am unknown — 
 a dauber by instinct, and but lately come to this city — 
 the fountainhead of all learning.' 
 
 'Set to work,' said Porbus, handing him a bit of red 
 chalk and a sheet of paper. 
 
 The new-comer quickly sketched the Saint Mary line 
 for line. 
 
 'Aha!' exclaimed the old man. 'Your name?' he 
 added. 
 
 The young man wrote ' Nicolas Poussin ' below the 
 sketch. 
 
 ' Not bad that for a beginning,' said the strange 
 speaker, who had discoursed so wildly. ' I see that we 
 can talk of art in your presence. I do not blame you for 
 admiring Porbus's saint. In the eyes of the world she is 
 a masterpiece, and those alone who have been initiated into 
 the inmost mysteries of art can discover her short- 
 comings. But it is worth while to give you the lesson, 
 for you are able to understand it, so I will show you how 
 little it needs to complete this picture. You must be all 
 eyes, all attention, for it may be that such a chance of 
 learning will never come in your way again. — Porbus ! 
 your palette.' 
 
 Porbus went in search of palette and brushes. The 
 little old man turned back his sleeves with impatient 
 
The Unknown Masterpiece 1 1 
 
 energy, seized the palette, covered with many hues, that 
 Porbus handed to him, and snatched rather than took a 
 handful of brushes of various sizes from the hands of his 
 acquaintance. His pointed beard suddenly bristled — a 
 menacing movement that expressed the prick of a lover's 
 fancy. As he loaded his brush, he muttered between his 
 teeth, 'These paints are only fit to fling out of the 
 window, together with the fellow who ground them, 
 their crudeness and falseness are disgusting ! How can 
 one paint with this ? ' 
 
 He dipped the tip of the brush with feverish eagerness 
 in the different pigments, making the circuit of the 
 palette several times more quickly than the organist of a 
 cathedral sweeps the octaves on the keyboard of his clavier 
 for the O Filii at Easter. 
 
 Porbus and Poussin, on either side of the easel, stood 
 stock-still, watching with intense interest. 
 
 * Look, young man,' he began again, ' see how three or 
 four strokes of the brush and a thin glaze of blue let in 
 the free air to play about the head of the poor Saint, who 
 must have felt stifled and oppressed by the close atmo- 
 sphere! See how the drapery begins to flutter; you feel 
 that it is lifted by the breeze ! A moment ago it hung as 
 heavily and stiffly as if it were held out by pins. Do you 
 see how the satin sheen that I have just given to the 
 breast rends the pliant, silken softness of a young girl's 
 skin, and how the brown red, blended with burnt ochre, 
 brings warmth into the cold grey of the deep shadow 
 where the blood lay congealed instead of coursing through 
 the veins ? Young man, young man, no master could 
 teach you how to do this that I am doing before your 
 eyes. Mabuse alone possessed the secret of giving life to 
 his figures ; Mabuse had but one pupil — that was I. I 
 have had none, and I am old. You have suiSeient intel- 
 ligence to imagine the rest from the glimp^^cb that I am 
 giving you.' 
 
 While the old man was speaking, he gave a touch here 
 
12 The Unknown Masterpiece 
 
 and there ; sometimes two strokes of the brush, sometimes 
 a single one ; but every stroke told so well, that the 
 whole picture seemed transfigured — the painting was 
 flooded with light. He worked with such passionate 
 fervour, that beads of sweat gathered upon his bare fore- 
 head ; he worked so quickly, in brief, impatient jerks, that 
 it seemed to young Poussin as if some familiar spirit 
 inhabiting the body of this strange being took a grotesque 
 pleasure in making use of the man's hands against his ow^n 
 will. The unearthly glitter of his eyes, the convulsive 
 movements that seemed like struggles, gave to this fancy 
 a semblance of truth which could not but stir a young 
 imagination. The old man continued, saying as he 
 did so — 
 
 * Paf ! paf ! that is how to lay it on, young man ! — 
 Little touches ! come and bring a glow into those icy 
 cold tones for me ! Just so ! Pon ! pon ! pon ! ' and 
 those parts of the picture that he had pointed out as cold 
 and lifeless flushed with warmer hues, a few bold strokes 
 of colour brought all the tones of the pictures into the 
 required harmony with the glowing tints of the Egyptian, 
 and the differences in temperament vanished. 
 
 'Look you, youngster, the last touches make the 
 picture. Porbus has given it a hundred strokes for every 
 one of mine. No one thanks us for what lies beneath. 
 Bear that in mind.' 
 
 At last the restless spirit stopped, and turning to Porbus 
 and Poussin, who were speechless with admiration, he 
 spoke — 
 
 ' This is not as good as my Belle Noiseuse ; still one 
 might put one's name to such a thing as this. — Yes, I 
 would put my name to it,' he added, rising to reach for a 
 mirror, in which he looked at the picture. — ' And now,' 
 he said, ' will you both come and breakfast with me. I 
 have a smoked ham and some very fair wine ! . . . Eh ! 
 eh ! the times may be bad, but we can still have some 
 talk about art ! VVe can talk like equals. . . . Here is a 
 
The Unknown Masterpiece 13 
 
 little fellow who has aptitude,' he added, laying a hand on 
 Nicolas Poussin's shoulder. 
 
 In this way the stranger became aware of the thread- 
 bare condition of the Norman's doublet. He drew a 
 leather purse from his girdle, felt in it, found two gold 
 coins, and held them out. 
 
 * I will buy your sketch,' he said. 
 
 * Take it,' said Porbus, as he saw the other start and 
 flush with embarrassment, for Poussin had the pride of 
 poverty. 'Pray take iti he has a couple of king's ransoms 
 in his pouch ! ' 
 
 The three came down together from the studio, and, 
 talking of art by the way, reached a picturesque wooden 
 house hard by the Pont Saint-Michel. Poussin wondered 
 a moment at its ornament, at the knocker, at the frames of 
 the casements, at the scroll-work designs, and in the next 
 he stood in a vast low-ceiled room. A table, covered 
 with tempting dishes, stood near the blazing fire, and 
 (luck unhoped for) he was in the company of two great 
 artists full of genial good humour. 
 
 'Do not look too long at that canvas, young man,' 
 said Porbus, when he saw that Poussin was standing, 
 struck with wonder, before a painting. * You would fall 
 a victim to despair.' 
 
 It was the Adam painted by Mabuse to purchase his 
 release from the prison where his creditors had so long 
 kept him. And as a matter of fact, the figure stood out 
 so boldly and convincingly, that Nicolas Poussin began 
 to understand the real meaning of the words poured out 
 by the old artist, who was himself looking at the picture 
 with apparent satisfaction, but without enthusiasm. 'I 
 have done better than that ! ' he seemed to be saying to 
 himself. 
 
 ' There is life in it,' he said aloud ; ' in that respect my 
 poor master here surpassed himself, but there is some 
 lack of truth in the background. The man lives indeed ; 
 he is rising, and will come towards us j but the atmo- 
 
14 The Unknown Masterpiece 
 
 sphere, the sky, the air, the breath of the breeze — you 
 look and feel for them, but they are not there. And 
 then the man himself is, after all, only a man ! Ah ! 
 hut the one man in the world who came direct from the 
 hands of God must have had a something divine about 
 him that is wanting here. Mabuse himself would grind 
 his teeth and say so when he was not drunk.' 
 
 Poussin looked from the speaker to Porbus, and from 
 Porbus to the speaker, with restless curiosity. He 
 went up to the latter to ask for the name of their host ; 
 but the painter laid a finger on his lips with an air of 
 mystery. The young man's interest was excited ; he 
 kept silence, but hoped that sooner or later some word 
 might be let fall that would reveal the name of his 
 entertainer. It was evident that he was a man of talent 
 and very wealthy, for Porbus listened to him respectfully, 
 and the vast room was crowded with marvels of art. 
 
 A magnificent portrait of a woman, hung against the 
 dark oak panels of the wall, next caught Poussin's 
 attention. 
 
 ' What a glorious Giorgione ! ' he cried. 
 
 * No,' said his host, *■ it is an early daub of mine ' 
 
 * Giamercy ! I am in the abode of the god of 
 painting, it seems ! ' cried Poussin ingenuously. 
 
 The old man smiled as if he had long grown familiar 
 with such praise. 
 
 ' Master Frenhofer ! ' said Porbus, ' do you think you 
 could send me à little of your capital Rhine wine ? 
 
 * A couple of pipes ! ' answered his host ; ' one to 
 discharge a debt, for the pleasure of seeing your pretty 
 sinner, the other as a present from a friend.' 
 
 * Ah ! if I had my health,' returned Porbus, * and if 
 you would but let me see your Belle Noiseuse^ I would 
 paint some great picture, with breadth in it and depth ; 
 the figures should be life-size.' 
 
 ' Let you see my work ! ' cried the painter in agitation. 
 * No, no ! it is not perfect yet ; something still remains 
 
The Unknown Masterpiece 15 
 
 for me to do. Yesterday, in the dusk,' he said, 'I 
 thought I had reached the end. Her eyes seemed moist, 
 the flesh quivered, something stirred the tresses of her 
 hair. She breathed ! But though I have succeeded in 
 reproducing Nature's roundness and relief on the flat 
 surface of the canvas, this morning, by daylight, I 
 found out my mistake. Ah ! to achieve that glorious 
 result I have studied the works of the great masters of 
 colour, stripping off coat after coat of colour from 
 Titian's canvas, analysing the pigments of the king of 
 light. Like that sovereign painter, I began the face in 
 a slight tone with a supple and fat paste — for shadow 
 is but an accident ; bear that in mind, youngster ! 
 — Then I began afresh, and by half-tones and thin 
 glazes of colour less and less transparent, I gradually 
 deepened the tints to the deepest black of the strongest 
 shadows. An ordinary painter makes his shadows some- 
 thing entirely different in nature from the high lights ; 
 they are wood or brass, or what you will, anything but 
 flesh in shadow. You feel that even if those figures 
 were to alter their position, those shadow stains would 
 never be cleansed away, those parts of the picture would 
 never glow with light. 
 
 ' I have escaped one mistake, into which the most 
 famous painters have sometimes fallen ; in my canvas the 
 whiteness shines through the densest and most persistent 
 shadow. I have not marked out the limits of my figure in 
 hard, dry outlines, and brought every least anatomical detail 
 into prominence (like a host of dunces, who fancy that they 
 can draw because they can trace a line elaborately smooth 
 and clean), for the human body is not contained within 
 the limits of line. In this the sculptor can approach the 
 truth more nearly than we painters. Nature's way is a 
 complicated succession of curve within curve. Strictly 
 speaking, there is no such thing as drawing. — Do not 
 laugh, young man ; strange as that speech may seem to 
 you, you will understand the truth in it some day. — A 
 
1 6 The Unknown Masterpiece 
 
 line is a method of expressing the effect of light upon an 
 object ; but there are no lines in nature, everything is 
 solid. We draw by modelling, that is to say, that we 
 disengage an object from its setting ; the distribution of 
 the light alone gives to a body the appearance by which 
 we know it. So I have not defined the outlines ; I have 
 suffused them with a haze of half-tints warm or golden, 
 in such a sort that you cannot lay your finger on the 
 exact spot vi^here background and contours meet. Seen 
 from near, the picture looks a blur ; it seems to lack 
 definition ; but step back two paces, and the whole thing 
 becomes clear, distinct, and solid ; the body stands out, 
 the rounded form comes into relief; you feel that the air 
 plays round it. And yet — I am not satisfied ; I have 
 misgivings. Perhaps one ought not to draw a single 
 line ; perhaps it would be better to attack the face from 
 the centre, taking the highest prominences first, proceed- 
 ing from them through the whole range of shadows to the 
 heaviest of all. Is not this the method of the sun, the 
 divine painter of the world ? Oh, Nature, Nature ! who 
 has surprised thee, fugitive ? But, after all, too much 
 knowledge, like ignorance, brings you to a negation. I 
 have doubts about my work.' 
 
 There was a pause. Then the old man spoke again. 
 ' I have been at work upon it for ten years, young man j 
 but what are ten short years in a struggle v^^ith Nature ? 
 Do we know how long Sir Pygmalion wrought at the 
 one statue that came to life ? ' 
 
 The old man fell into deep musings, and gazed before 
 him with wide unseeing eyes, while he played unheed- 
 ingly with his knife. 
 
 ' Look, he is in converse with his damon ! ' murmured 
 Porbus. 
 
 At the word, Nicolas Poussin felt himself carried 
 away by an unaccountable accession of artist's curiosity. 
 For him the old man, at once intent and inert, the seer 
 with the unseeing eyes, became something more than a 
 
The Unknown Masterpiece 17 
 
 man — a fantastic spirit living in a mysterious world, and 
 countless vague thoughts awoke within his soul. The 
 effect of this species of fascination upon his mind can no 
 more be described in words than the passionate longing 
 awakened in an exile's heart by the song that recalls his 
 home. He thought of the scorn that the old man 
 affected to display for the noblest efforts of art, of his 
 wealth, his manners, of the deference paid to him by Por- 
 bus. The mysterious picture, the work of patience on 
 which he had wrought so long in secret, was doubtless a 
 work of genius, for the head of the Virgin which young 
 Poussin had admired so frankly was beautiful even beside 
 Mabuse's Adam — there was no mistaking the imperial 
 manner of one of the princes of art. Everything com- 
 bined to set the old man beyond the limits of human 
 nature. 
 
 Out of the wealth of fancies in Nicolas Poussin's 
 brain an idea grew, and gathered shape and clearness. 
 He saw in this supernatural being a complete type of the 
 artist nature, a nature mocking and kindly, barren and 
 prolific, an erratic spirit intrusted with great and manifold 
 powers which she too often abuses, leading sober reason, 
 the Philistine, and sometimes even the amateur forth into 
 a stony wilderness where they see nothing ; but the white- 
 winged maiden herself, wild as her fancies may be, finds 
 epics there and castles and works of art. For Poussin, 
 the enthusiast, the old man, was suddenly transfigured, 
 and became Art incarnate. Art with its mysteries, its 
 vehement passion and its dreams. 
 
 ' Yes, my dear Porbus,' Frenhofer continued, * hitherto 
 I have never found a flawless model, a body with outlines 
 of perfect beauty, the carnations — Ah ! where does she 
 live ? ' he cried, breaking in upon himself, * the undiscover- 
 able Venus of the older time, for whom we have sought 
 so often, only to find the scattered gleams of her beauty 
 here and there ? Oh ! to behold once and for one 
 moment, Nature grown perfect and divine, the Ideal at 
 
 fi 
 
1 8 The Unknov/n Masterpiece 
 
 last, I would give all that I possess. . . . Nay, Beauty 
 divine, I would go to seek thee in the dim land of the 
 dead ; like Orpheus, I would go down into the Hades of 
 Art to bring back the life of art from among the shadows 
 of death.' 
 
 ' We can go now,' said Porbus to Poussin. ' He 
 neither hears nor sees us any longer.' 
 
 ' Let us go to his studio,' said young Poussin, wonder- 
 ing greatly. 
 
 * Oh ! the old fox takes care that no one shall enter 
 it. His treasures are so carefully guarded that it is 
 impossible for us to come at them. I have not waited 
 for your suggestion and your fancy to attempt to lay 
 hands on this mystery by force.' 
 
 ' So there is a mystery ? ' 
 
 *Yes,' answered Porbus. * Old Frenhofer is the only 
 pupil Mabuse would take. Frenhofer became the 
 painter's friend, deliverer, and father ; he sacrificed the 
 greater part of his fortune to enable Mabuse to indulge in 
 riotous extravagance, and in return Mabuse bequeathed to 
 him the secret of relief, the power of giving to his figures 
 the wonderful life, the flower of Nature, the eternal 
 despair of art, the secret which Mabuse knew so well that 
 one day when he had sold the flowered brocade suit in 
 which he should have appeared at the Entry of Charles v., 
 he accompanied his master in a suit of paper painted to 
 resemble the brocade. The peculiar richness and splen- 
 dour of the stuff struck the Emperor ; he complimented 
 the old drunkard's patron on the artist's appearance, and 
 so the trick was brought to light. Frenhofer is a 
 passionate enthusiast, who sees above and beyond other 
 painters. He has meditated profoundly on colour, and 
 the absolute truth of line ; but by the way of much 
 research he has come to doubt the very existence of the 
 objects of his search. He says, in moments of despon- 
 dency, that there is no such thing as drawing, and that 
 by means of lines we can only reproduce geometrical 
 
The Unknown Masterpiece 19 
 
 figures ; but that is overshooting the mark, for by 
 outline and shadow you can reproduce form without 
 any colour at all, which shows that our art, like Nature, 
 is composed of an infinite number of elements. Drawing 
 gives you the skeleton, the anatomical framework, and 
 colour puts the life into it ; but life without the skeleton 
 is even more incomplete than a skeleton without life. 
 But there is something else truer still, and it is this — 
 for painters, practice and observation are everything ; and 
 when theories and poetical ideas begin to quarrel with 
 the brushes, the end is doubt, as has happened with our 
 good friend, who is half crack-brained enthusiast, half 
 painter. A sublime painter ! but, unluckily for him, he 
 was born to riches, and so he has leisure to follow his fancies. 
 Do not you follow his example ! Work ! painters have 
 no business to think, except brush in hand.' 
 
 ' We will find a way into his studio ! ' cried Poussin 
 confidently. He had ceased to heed Porbus's remarks. 
 The other smiled at the young painter's enthusiasm, 
 asked him to come to see him again, and they parted. 
 
 Nicolas Poussin went slowly back to the Rue de la 
 Harpe, and passed the modest hostelry where he was 
 lodging without noticing it. A feeling of uneasiness 
 prompted him to hurry up the crazy staircase till he 
 reached a room at the top, a quaint, airy recess under the 
 steep, high-pitched roof common among houses in old 
 Paris. In the one dingy window of the place sat a 
 young girl, who sprang up at once when she heard some 
 one at the door ; it was the prompting of love ; she had 
 recognised the painter's touch on the latch. 
 
 * What is the matter with you ? ' she asked. 
 
 * The matter is . . . is . . . Oh ! I have felt that I 
 am a painter ! Until to-day I have had doubts, but now 
 I believe in myself! There is the making of a great 
 man in me ! Never mind, Gillette, we shall be rich and 
 happy ! There is gold at the tips of those brushes ' 
 
 He broke off suddenly. The joy faded from his 
 
20 The Unknown Masterpiece 
 
 powerful and earnest face as he compared his vast hopes 
 with his slender resources. The walls were covered 
 with sketches in chalk on sheets of common paper. 
 There were but four canvases in the room. Colours 
 were very costly, and the young painter's palette was 
 almost bare. Yet in the midst of his poverty he possessed 
 and was conscious of the possession of inexhaustible 
 treasures of the heart, of a devouring genius equal to all 
 the tasks that lay before him. 
 
 He had been brought to Paris by a nobleman among 
 his friends, or perchance by the consciousness of his 
 powers ; and in Paris he had found a mistress, one of 
 those noble and generous souls who choose to suffer by 
 a great man's side, who share his struggles and strive to 
 understand his fancies, accepting their lot of poverty and 
 love as bravely and dauntlessly as other women will set 
 themselves to bear the burden of riches and make a 
 parade of their insensibility. The smile that stole over 
 Gillette's lips filled the garret with golden light, and 
 rivalled the brightness of the sun in heaven. The sun, 
 moreover, does not always shine in heaven, whereas 
 Gillette was always in the garret, absorbed in her 
 passion, occupied by Poussin's happiness and sorrow, con- 
 soling the genius which found an outlet in love before art 
 engrossed it. 
 
 ' Listen, Gillette. Come here.' 
 
 The girl obeyed joyously, and sprang upon the 
 painter's knev°. Hers was perfect grace and beauty, 
 and the loveliness of spring ; she was adorned with all 
 luxuriant fairness of outward form, lighted up by the 
 glow of a fair soul within. 
 
 * Oh ! God,' he cried ; * I shall never dare to tell 
 her ' 
 
 * A secret ? ' she cried ; * I must know it ! ' 
 Poussin was absorbed in his dreams. 
 
 * Do tell it me ! ' 
 
 * Gillette, . . . poor beloved heart ! , . .* 
 
The Unknown Masterpiece 21 
 
 ' Oh ! do you want something of me ? ' 
 
 * Yes.' 
 
 * If you wish me to sit once more for you as I did the 
 other day,' she continued with playful petulance, ' I will 
 never consent to do such a thing again, for your eyes say 
 nothing all the while. You do not think of me at all, 
 and yet you look at me ' 
 
 * Would you rather have me draw another woman ? ' 
 
 * Perhaps — if she were very ugly,' she said. 
 
 * Well,' said Poussin gravely, ' and if, for the sake of 
 my fame to come, if to make me a great painter, you 
 must sit to some one else ? ' 
 
 ' You may try me,' she said ; * you know quite well 
 that I would not.' 
 
 Poussin's head sank on her breast ; he seemed to be 
 overpowered by some intolerable joy or sorrow. 
 
 ' Listen,' she cried, plucking at the sleeve of Poussin's 
 threadbare doublet. ' I told you, Nick, that I would lay 
 down my life for you ; but I never promised you that I 
 in my lifetime would lay down my love.' 
 
 * Your love ? ' cried the young artist. 
 
 * If I showed myself thus to another, you would love 
 me no longer, and I should feel myself unworthy of you. 
 Obedience to your fancies was a natural and simple 
 thing, was it not ? Even against my own will, I am 
 glad and even proud to do thy dear will. But for 
 another, out upon it ! ' 
 
 ' Forgive me, my Gillette,' said the painter, falling 
 upon his knees ; ' I would rather be beloved than 
 famous. You are fairer than success and honours. There; 
 fling the pencils away, and burn these sketches ! I have 
 made a mistake. I was meant to love and not to paint. 
 Perish art and all its secrets ! ' 
 
 Gillette looked admiringly at him, in an ecstasy of 
 happiness ! She was triumphant ; she felt instinctively 
 that art was laid aside for her sake, and flung like a grain 
 of incense at her feet. 
 
22 The Unknown Masterpiece 
 
 ' Yet he is only an old man,' Poussin continued ; * for 
 him you would be a woman, and nothing more. You — 
 so perfect ! ' 
 
 ' I must love you indeed ! ' she cried, ready to sacrifice 
 even love's scruples to the lover who had given up so 
 much for her sake ; * but I should bring about my own 
 ruin. Ah ! to ruin myself, to lose everything for 
 you ! ... It is a very glorious thought ! Ah ! but 
 you will forget me. Oh ! what evil thought is this 
 that has come to you ? ' 
 
 ' I love you, and yet I thought of it,' he said, with 
 something like remorse. * Am I so base a wretch ? ' 
 
 ' Let us consult Père Hardouin,' she said. 
 
 * No, no ! let it be a secret between us.' 
 
 ' Very well ; I will do it. But you must not be there,* 
 she said. * Stay at the door with your dagger in your 
 hand ; and if I call, rush in and kill the painter.' 
 
 Poussin forgot everything but art. He held Gillette 
 tightly in his arms. 
 
 'He loves me no longer ! ' thought Gillette when she 
 was alone. She repented of her resolution already. 
 
 But to these misgivings there soon succeeded a sharper 
 pain, and she strove to banish a hideous thought that 
 arose in her own heart. It seemed to her that her own 
 love had grown less already, with a vague suspicion that 
 the painter had fallen somewhat in her eyes. 
 
 II. CATHERINE LESCAULT 
 
 Three months after Poussin and Porbus met, the 
 latter went to see Master Frenhofer. The old man had 
 fallen a victim to one of those profound and spontaneous 
 fits of discouragement that are caused, according to 
 medical logicians, by indigestion, flatulence, fever, or 
 enlargement of the spleen j or, if you take the opinion 
 
The Unknown Masterpiece 23 
 
 of the Spiritualists, by the imperfections of our moral 
 nature. The good man had simply overworked himself 
 in putting the finishing touches to his mysterious picture. 
 He was lounging in a huge carved oak chair, covered 
 with black leather, and did not change his listless atti- 
 tude, but glanced at Porbus like a man who has settled 
 down into low spirits. 
 
 ' Well, master,' said Porbus, ' was the ultramarine 
 bad that you sent for to Bruges ? Is the new white 
 difficult to grind ? Is the oil poor, or are the brushes 
 recalcitrant ? ' 
 
 ' Alas ! ' cried the old man, * for a moment I thought 
 that my work was finished j but I am sure that I am 
 mistaken in certain details, and I cannot rest until I have 
 cleared my doubts. I am thinking of travelling. I am 
 going to Turkey, to Greece, to Asia, in quest of a model, 
 so as to compare my picture with the different living 
 forms of Nature. Perhaps,' and a smile of contentment 
 stole over his face, 'perhaps I have Nature herself up 
 there. At times I am half afraid that a breath may waken 
 her, and that she will escape me.' 
 
 He rose to his feet as if to set out at once. 
 
 * Aha ! ' said Porbus, ' I have come just in time to 
 save you the trouble and expense of a journey.' 
 
 'What ? ' asked Frenhofer in amazement. 
 
 ' Young Poussin is loved by a woman of incomparable 
 and flawless beauty. But, dear master, if he consents to 
 lend her to you, at the least you ought to let us see your 
 work.' 
 
 The old man stood motionless and completely dazed. 
 
 ' What ! ' he cried piteously at last, ' show you my 
 creation, my bride ? Rend the veil that has kept my 
 happiness sacred ? It would be an infamous profanation. 
 For ten years I have lived with her ; she is mine, mine 
 alone ; she loves me. Has she not smiled at me, at each 
 stroke of the brush upon the canvas ? She has a soul — 
 the soul that I have given her. She would blush if any 
 
24 The Unknown Masterpiece 
 
 eyes but mine should rest on her. To exhibit her ! 
 Where is the husband, the lover so vile as to bring the 
 woman he loves to dishonour ? When you paint a 
 picture for the court, you do not put your whole soul 
 into it ; to courtiers you sell lay figures duly coloured. 
 My painting is no painting, it is a sentiment, a passion. 
 She was born in my studio, there she must dw^ell in 
 maiden solitude, and only when clad can she issue thence. 
 Poetry and women only lay the last veil aside for their 
 lovers. Have we Rafael's model, Ariosto's Angelica, 
 Dante's Beatrice ? Nay, only their form and semblance. 
 But this picture, locked away above in my studio, is an 
 exception in our art. It is not a canvas, it is a woman — 
 a woman with whom I talk. I share her thoughts, her 
 tears, her laughter. Would you have me fling aside 
 these ten years of happiness like a cloak ? Would you 
 have me cease at once to be father, lover, and creator ? 
 She is not a creature, but a creation. 
 
 ' Bring your young painter here. I will give him my 
 treasures ; I will give him pictures by Correggio and 
 Michel Angelo and Titian ; I will kiss his footprints in 
 the dust ; but — make him my rival ! Shame on me. Ah ! 
 ah ! I am a lover first, and then a painter. Yes, with 
 my latest sigh I could find strength to burn my Belle 
 Noiseuse ; but — compel her to endure the gaze of a stranger, 
 a young man and a painter ! — Ah ! no, no ! I would 
 kill him on the morrow who should sully her with a 
 glance ! Nay, you, my friend, I would kill you with 
 my own hands in a moment if you did not kneel in 
 reverence before her ! Now, will you have me sub- 
 mit my idol to the careless eyes and senseless criticisms 
 of fools ? Ah ! love is a mystery ; it can only live 
 hidden in the depths of the heart. You say, even to 
 your friend, " Behold her whom I love," and there is 
 an end of love.' 
 
 The old man seemed to have grown young again ; 
 there was light and life in his eyes, and a faint flush of 
 
The Unknown Masterpiece 25 
 
 red in his pale face. His hands shook. Porbus was so 
 amazed by the passionate vehemence of Frenhofer's 
 words that he knew not what to reply to this utterance 
 of an emotion as strange as it was profound. Was 
 Frenhofer sane or mad ? Had he fallen a victim to 
 some freak of the artist's fancy ? or were these ideas of 
 his produced by that strange lightheadedness which 
 comes over us during the long travail of a work of art. 
 Would it be possible to come to terms with this singular 
 passion ? 
 
 Harassed by all these doubts, Porbus spoke — * Is it not 
 woman for woman ? ' he said. ' Does not Poussin submit 
 his mistress to your gaze ? ' 
 
 ' What is she ? ' retorted the other. * A mistress who 
 will be false to him sooner or later. Mine will be faith- 
 ful to me for ever.' 
 
 ' Well, well,' said Porbus, * let us say no more about it. 
 But you may die before you will find such flawless 
 beauty as hers, even in Asia, and then your picture will 
 be left unfinished. 
 
 ' Oh ! it is finished,' said Frenhofer. * Standing before 
 it you would think that it was a living woman lying on 
 the velvet couch beneath the shadow of the curtains. 
 Perfumes are burning on a golden tripod by her side. 
 You would be tempted to lay your hand upon the tassel 
 of the cord that holds back the curtains ; it would seem 
 to you that you saw her breast rise and fall as she 
 breathed ; that you beheld the living Catherine Lescault, 
 the beautiful courtesan whom men called La Belle 
 Notseuse. And yet — if I could but be sure ' 
 
 ' Then go to Asia,' returned Porbus, noticing a certain 
 indecision in Frenhofer's face. And with that Porbus 
 made a few steps towards the door. 
 
 By that time Gillette and Nicolas Poussin had reached 
 Frenhofer's house. The girl drew away her arm from 
 her lover's as she stood on the threshold, and shrank back 
 as if some presentiment flashed through her mind. 
 
20 The Unknown Masterpiece 
 
 * Oh ! what have I come to do here ? ' she asked of her 
 lover in low vibrating tones, with her eyes fixed on 
 his. 
 
 * Gillette, I have left you to decide ; I am ready to 
 obey you in everything. You are my conscience and my 
 glory. Go home again ; I shall be happier, perhaps, if 
 you do not ' 
 
 ' Am I my own when you speak to me like that ? 
 No, no ; I am like a child. — Come,' she added, seemingly 
 with a violent effort ; ' if our love dies, if I plant a long 
 regret in my heart, your fame will be the reward of my 
 obedience to your wishes, will it not ? Let us go in. I 
 shall still live on as a memory on your palette ; that shall 
 be life for me afterwards.' 
 
 The door opened, and the two lovers encountered 
 Porbus, who was surprised by the beauty of Gillette, 
 whose eyes were full of tears. He hurried her, trembling 
 from head to foot, into the presence of the old painter. 
 
 * Here ! ' he cried, ' is she not worth all the master- 
 pieces in the world ! ' 
 
 Frenhofer trembled. There stood Gillette in the 
 artless and childlike attitude of some timid and innocent 
 Georgian, carried off by brigands, and confronted with 
 a slave merchant. A shame-fast red flushed her face, her 
 eyes drooped, her hands hung by her side, her strength 
 seemed to have failed her, her tears protested against this 
 outrage. Poussin cursed himself in despair that he should 
 have brought his fair treasure from its hiding-place. The 
 lover overcame the artist, and countless doubts assailed 
 Poussin's heart when he saw youth dawn in the old 
 man's eyes, as, like a painter, he discerned every line of 
 the form hidden beneath the young girl's vesture. Then 
 the lover's savage jealousy awoke. 
 
 ' Gillette ! ' he cried, ' let us go.' 
 
 The girl turned joyously at the cry and the tone in 
 which it was uttered, raised her eyes to his, looked at 
 him, and fled to his arms. 
 
The Unknown Masterpiece 27 
 
 'Ah ! then you love me,' she cried ; * you love me ! ' 
 and she burst into tears. 
 
 She had spirit enough to suffer in silence, but she had 
 no strength to hide her joy. 
 
 * Oh ! leave her with me for one moment,' said the old 
 painter, *and you shall compare her with my Catherine . . . 
 yes — I consent.' 
 
 Frenhofer's words likewise came from him like a lover's 
 cry. His vanity seemed to be engaged for his semblance 
 of womanhood ; he anticipated the triumph of the beauty 
 of his own creation over the beauty of the living girl. 
 
 ' Do not give him time to change his mind ! ' cried 
 Porbus, striking Poussin on the shoulder. *The flower 
 of love soon fades, but the flower of art is immortal.' 
 
 * Then am I only a woman now for him ? ' said 
 Gillette. She was watching Poussin and Porbus closely. 
 
 She raised her head proudly ; she glanced at Frenhofer, 
 and her eyes flashed ; then as she saw how her lover had 
 fallen again to gazing at the portrait which he had taken 
 at first for a Giorgione — 
 
 ' Ah ! ' she cried ; * let us go up to the studio. He 
 never gave me such a look.' 
 
 The sound of her voice recalled Poussin from his 
 dreams. 
 
 * Old man,' he said, ' do you see this blade ? I will 
 plunge it into your heart at the first cry from this young 
 girl ; I will set fire to your house, and no one shall leave 
 it alive. Do you understand ? ' 
 
 Nicolas Poussin scowled, every word was a menace. 
 Gillette took comfort from the young painter's bearing, 
 and yet more from that gesture, and almost forgave him 
 for sacrificing her to his art and his glorious future. 
 
 Porbus and Poussin stood at the door of the studio and 
 looked at each other in silence. At first the painter of 
 the Saint Mary of Egypt hazarded some exclamations : 
 * Ah ! she has taken off her clothes ; he told her to come 
 into the light— he is comparing the two ! ' but the sight 
 
28 The Unknown Masterpiece 
 
 of the deep distress in Poussin's face suddenly silenced 
 him J and though old painters no longer feel these 
 scruples, so petty in the presence of art, he admired them 
 because they were so natural and gracious in the lover. 
 The young man kept his hand on the hilt of his dagger, 
 and his ear was almost glued to the door. The two men 
 standing in the shadow might have been conspirators 
 waiting for the hour when they might strike down a 
 tyrant. 
 
 ' Come in, come in,' cried the old man. He was 
 radiant with delight. 'My work is perfect. I can 
 show her now with pride. Never shall painter, brushes, 
 colours, light, and canvas produce a rival for Catherine 
 Lescault^ the beautiful courtesan ! ' 
 
 Porbus and Poussin, burning vi^ith eager curiosity, 
 hurried into a vast studio. Everything was in disorder 
 and covered with dust, but they saw a few pictures here 
 and there upon the wall. They stopped first of all in 
 admiration before the life-sized figure of a woman partially 
 draped. 
 
 * Oh ! never mind that,' said Frenhofer j * that is a 
 rough daub that I made, a study, a pose, it is nothing. 
 These are my failures,' he went on, indicating the 
 enchanting compositions upon the walls of the studio. 
 
 This scorn for such works of art struck Porbus and 
 Poussin dumb with amazement. They looked round 
 for the picture of which he had spoken, and could not 
 discover it. 
 
 ' Look here ! ' said the old man. His hair was dis- 
 ordered, his face aglow with a more than human 
 exaltation, his eyes glittered, he breathed hard like a 
 young lover fi^enzied by love. 
 
 ' Aha ! ' he cried, ' you did not expect to see such 
 perfection ! You are looking for a picture, and you see 
 a woman before you. There is such depth in that 
 canvas, the atmosphere is so true that you cannot dis- 
 tinguish it from the air that surrounds us. Where is 
 
The Unknown Masterpiece 29 
 
 art ? Art has vanished, it is invisible ! It is the form 
 of a living girl that you see before you. Have I not 
 caught the very hues of life, the spirit of the living line that 
 defines the figure. Is there not the effect produced there 
 like that which all natural objects present in the atmo- 
 sphere about them, or fishes in the water ? Do you see how 
 the figure stands out against the background ? Does it 
 not seem to you that you could pass your hand along the 
 back ? But then for seven years I studied and watched 
 how the daylight blends with the objects on which it falls. 
 And the hair, the light pours over it like a flood, does it 
 not ? . . . Ah ! she breathed, I am sure that she breathed ! 
 Her breast — ah, see ! Who would not fall on his knees 
 before her ? Her pulses throb. She will rise to her 
 feet. Wait ! ' 
 
 * Do you see anything ? ' Poussin asked of Porbus. 
 
 * No ... do you ? ' 
 
 * I see nothing.' 
 
 The two painters left the old man to his ecstasy, and 
 tried to ascertain whether the light that fell full upon 
 the canvas had in some way neutrafised all the effect for 
 them. They moved to the right and left of the picture j 
 then they came in front, bending down and standing 
 upright by turns. 
 
 * Yes, yes, it is really canvas,' said Frenhofer, who 
 mistook the nature of this minute investigation. 
 
 ' Look ! the canvas is on a stretcher, here is the easel j 
 indeed, here are my colours, my brushes,' and he took up 
 a brush and held it out to them, all unsuspicious of their 
 thought. 
 
 * The old lansquenet is laughing at us,' said Poussin, 
 coming once more towards the supposed picture. 'I 
 can see nothing there but confused masses of colour 
 and a multitude of fantastical lines that go to make a 
 dead wall of paint.' 
 
 ' We are mistaken, look ! ' said Porbus. 
 
 In a corner of the canvas as they came nearer, they 
 
3© The Unknown Masterpiece 
 
 distinguished a bare foot emerging from the chaos of 
 colour, half-tints and vague shadows that made up a dim 
 formless fog. Its living delicate beauty held them spell- 
 bound. This fragment that had escaped an incompre- 
 hensible, slow, and gradual destruction seemed to them 
 like the Parian marble torso of some Venus emerging 
 from the ashes of a ruined town. 
 
 ' There is a woman beneath,' exclaimed Porbus, calling 
 Poussin's attention to the coats of paint with which the 
 old artist had overlaid and concealed his work in the 
 quest of perfection. 
 
 Both artists turned involuntarily to Frenhofer. They 
 began to have some understanding, vague though it was, 
 of the ecstasy in which he lived. 
 
 * He believes it in all good faith,' said Porbus. 
 
 *Yes, my friend,' said the old man, rousing himself 
 from his dreams, 'it needs faith, faith in art, and you 
 must live for long with your work to produce such a 
 creation. What toil some of those shadows have cost 
 me. Look ! there is a faint shadow there upon the 
 cheek beneath the eyes — if you saw that on a human 
 face, it would seem to you that you could never render it 
 with paint. Do you think that that effect has not cost 
 unheard-of toil ? 
 
 ' But not only so, dear Porbus. Look closely at my 
 work, and you will understand more clearly what I was 
 saying as to methods of modelling and outline. Look at 
 the high lights on the bosom, and see how by touch on 
 touch, thickly laid on, I have raised the surface so that 
 it catches the light itself and blends it with the lustrous 
 whiteness of the high lights, and how by an opposite 
 process, by flattening the surface of the paint, and leaving 
 no trace of the passage of the brush, I have succeeded in 
 softening the contours of my figure and enveloping 
 them in half-tints until the very idea of drawing, of the 
 means by which the effect is produced, fades away, 
 and the picture has the roundness and relief of nature. 
 
The Unknown Masterpiece 31 
 
 Come closer. You will see the manner of working 
 better ; at a little distance it cannot be seen. There ! 
 Just there, it is, I think, very plainly to be seen,' and 
 with the tip of his brush he pointed out a patch of 
 transparent colour to the two painters. 
 
 Porbus, laying a hand on the old artist's shoulder, 
 turned to Poussin with a ' Do you know that in him we 
 see a very great painter ? ' 
 
 ' He is even more of a poet than a painter,' Poussin 
 answered gravely. 
 
 ' There,' Porbus continued, as he touched the canvas, 
 ' lies the utmost limit of our art on earth.' 
 
 * Beyond that point it loses itself in the skies,' said 
 Poussin. 
 
 ' What joys lie there on that piece of canvas ! ' 
 exclaimed Porbus. 
 
 The old man, deep in his own musings, smiled at the 
 woman he alone beheld, and did not hear. 
 
 'But sooner or later he will find out that there is 
 nothing there ! ' cried Poussin. 
 
 ' Nothing on my canvas ! ' said Frenhofer, looking in 
 turn at either painter and at his picture. 
 
 ' What have you done ? ' muttered Porbus, turning to 
 Poussin. 
 
 The old man clutched the young painter's arm and 
 said, 'Do you see nothing? clod pate ! Huguenot! var- 
 let ! cullion ! What brought you here into my studio ? 
 — My good Porbus,' he went on, as he turned to the 
 painter, ' are you also making a fool of me ? Answer ! 
 I am your friend. Tell me, have I ruined my picture 
 after all ? ' 
 
 Porbus hesitated and said nothing, but there was 
 such intolerable anxiety in the old man's white face that 
 he pointed to the easel. 
 
 'Look ! ' he said. 
 
 Frenhofer looked for a moment at his picture, and 
 staggered back. 
 
32 The Unknown Masterpiece 
 
 * Nothing ! nothing ! After ten years of work . . .' 
 He sat down and wept. 
 
 ' So I am a dotard, a madman, I have neither talent 
 nor power ! I am only a rich man, who works for his 
 own pleasure, and makes no progress. I have done 
 nothing after all ! ' 
 
 He looked through his tears at his picture. Suddenly 
 he rose and stood proudly before the two painters. 
 
 ' By the body and blood of Christ,' he cried with 
 flashing eyes, 'you are jealous ! You would have me 
 think that my picture is a failure because you want to 
 steal her from me ! Ah ! I see her, I see her,' he cried, 
 *she is marvellously beautiful . . .' 
 
 At that moment Poussin heard the sound of weeping j 
 Gillette was crouching forgotten in a corner. All at 
 once the painter once more became the lover. * What 
 is it, my angel ? ' he asked her. 
 
 * Kill me ! ' she sobbed. ' I must be a vile thing if I 
 love you still, for I despise you. ... I admire you, and 
 I loathe you ! I love you, and I feel that I hate you 
 even now.' 
 
 While Gillette's words sounded in Poussin's ears, 
 Frenhofer drew a green serge covering over his Catherine 
 with the sober deliberation of a jeweller who locks his 
 drawers when he suspects his visitors to be expert thieves. 
 He gave the two painters a profoundly astute glance 
 that expressed to the full his suspicions and his contempt 
 for them, saw them out of his studio with impetuous 
 haste and in silence, until from the threshold of his 
 house he bade them ' Good-bye, my young friends ! ' 
 
 That farewell struck a chill of dread into the two 
 painters. Porbus, in anxiety, went again on the morrow 
 to see Frenhofer, and learned that he had died in the 
 night after burning his canvases. 
 
 Paris, February 1832. 
 
CHRIST IN FLANDERS 
 
 To Marcelline Deshordes-Valmore^ a daughter of 
 Flanders^ of whom thesi modern days may well be 
 proud^ I dedicate this quaint legend of old Flanders. 
 
 De Balzac. 
 
 At a dirriiy remote period in the history of Brabant, 
 communication between the Island of Cadzand and the 
 Flemish coast was kept up by a boat which carried 
 passengers from one shore to the other. Middelburg, 
 the chief town in the island, destined to become so 
 famous in the annals of Protestantism, at that time only 
 numbered some two or three hundred hearths j and the 
 prosperous town of Ostend was an obscure haven, a 
 straggling village where pirates dwelt in security among 
 the fishermen and the few poor merchants who lived in 
 the place. 
 
 But though the town of Ostend consisted altogether 
 of some score of houses and three hundred cottages, huts 
 or hovels built of the driftwood of wrecked vessels, it 
 nevertheless rejoiced in the possession of a governor, a 
 garrison, a forked gibbet, a convent, and a burgomaster, 
 in short, in all the institutions of an advanced civilisation. 
 
 Who reigned over Brabant and Flanders in those days ? 
 On this point tradition is mute. Let us confess at once 
 that this tale savours strongly of the marvellous, the 
 mysterious, and the vague ; elements which Flemish 
 narrators have infused into a story retailed so often to 
 gatherings of workers on winter evenings, that the 
 versions vary widely in poetic merit and incongruity of 
 
 c 
 
34 Christ in Flanders 
 
 detail. It has been told by every generation, handed 
 down by grandames at the fireside, narrated night and 
 day, and the chronicle has changed its complexion some- 
 what in every age. Like some great building that has 
 suffered many modifications of successive generations of 
 architects, some sombre weather-beaten pile, the delight 
 of a poet, the story would drive the commentator 
 and the industrious winnower of words, facts, and dates 
 to despair. The narrator believes in it, as all superstitious 
 minds in Flanders likewise believe ; and is not a whit 
 wiser nor more credulous than his audience. But as it 
 would be impossible to make a harmony of all the 
 different renderings, here are the outlines of the story j 
 stripped, it may be, of its picturesque quaintness, but with 
 all its bold disregard of historical truth, and its moral 
 teaching approved by religion — a myth, the blossom of 
 imaginative fancy ; an allegory that the wise may in- 
 terpret to suit themselves. To each his own pasturage, 
 and the task of separating the tares from the wheat. 
 
 The boat that served to carry passengers from the 
 Island of Cadzand to Ostend was upon the point of 
 departure ; but before the skipper loosed the chain that 
 secured the shallop to the little jetty, where people 
 embarked, he blew a horn several times, to warn late 
 lingerers, this being his last journey that day. Night 
 was falling. It -was scarcely possible to see the coast of 
 Flanders by the dying fires of the sunset, or to make out 
 upon the hither shore any forms of belated passengers 
 hurrying along the wall of the dykes that surrounded the 
 open country, or among the tall reeds of the marshes. 
 The boat was full. 
 
 * What are you waiting for ? Let us put off ! ' they 
 cried. 
 
 Just at that moment a man appeared a few paces from 
 the jetty, to the surprise of the skipper, who had heard 
 no sound of footsteps. The traveller seemed to have 
 
Christ in Flanders 35 
 
 sprung up from the earth, like a peasant who had laid 
 himself down on the ground to wait till the boat should 
 start, and had slept till the sound of the horn awakened 
 him. Was he a thief? or some one belonging to the 
 custom-house or the police ? 
 
 As soon as the man appeared on the jetty to which 
 the boat was moored, seven persons who were standing 
 in the stern of the shallop hastened to sit down on the 
 benches, so as to leave no room for the new-comer. It 
 was the swift and instinctive working of the aristocratic 
 spirit, an impulse of exclusiveness that comes from the 
 rich man's heart. Four of the seven personages belonged 
 to the most aristocratic families in Flanders. First 
 among them was a young knight with two beautiful 
 greyhounds ; his long hair flowed from beneath a jewelled 
 cap ; he clanked his gilded spurs, curled the ends of his 
 moustache from time to time with a swaggering grace, 
 and looked round disdainfully on the rest of the crew. 
 A high-born damsel, with a falcon on her wrist, only 
 spoke with her mother or with a churchman of high 
 rank, who was evidently a relation. All these persons 
 made a great deal of noise, and talked among themselves 
 as though there were no one else in the boat ; yet close 
 beside them sat a man of great importance in the district, 
 a stout burgher of Bruges, wrapped about with a vast 
 cloak. His servant, armed to the teeth, had set down a 
 couple of bags filled with gold at his side. Next to the 
 burgher came a man of learning, a doctor of the Univer- 
 sity of Louvain, who was travelling with his clerk. This 
 little group of folk, who looked contemptuously at each 
 other, was separated from the passengers in the forward 
 part of the boat by the bench of rowers. 
 
 The belated traveller glanced about him as he stepped 
 on board, saw that there was no room for him in the 
 stern, and went to the bows in quest of a seat. They 
 were all poor people there. At first sight of the bare- 
 headed man in the brown camlet coat and trunk-hose, 
 
^6 Christ in Flanders 
 
 and plain stiff linen collar, they noticed that he wore 
 no ornaments, carried no cap nor bonnet in his hand, 
 and had neither sword nor purse at his girdle, and one 
 and all took him for a burgomaster sure of his autho- 
 rity, a worthy and kindly burgomaster like so many 
 a Fleming of old times, whose homely features and 
 characters have been immortalised by Flemish painters. 
 The poorer passengers, therefore, received him with 
 demonstrations of respect that provoked scornful titter- 
 ing at the other end of the boat. An old soldier, inured 
 to toil and hardship, gave up his place on the bench to 
 the new-comer, and seated himself on the edge of the 
 vessel, keeping his balance by planting his feet against 
 one of those transverse beams, like the backbone of a 
 fish, that hold the planks of a boat together. A young 
 mother, who bore her baby in her arms, and seemed to 
 belong to the working class in Ostend, moved aside to 
 make room for the stranger. There was neither servility 
 nor scorn in her manner of doing this ; it was a simple 
 sign of the goodwill by which the poor, who know by 
 long experience the value of a service and the warmth 
 that fellowship brings, give expression to the openhearted- 
 ness and the natural impulses of their souls ; so artlessly do 
 they reveal their good qualities and their defects. The 
 stranger thanked her by a gesture full of gracious dignity, 
 and took his place between the young mother and the old 
 soldier. Immediately behind him sat a peasant and his 
 son, a boy ten years of age. A beggar woman, old, 
 wrinkled, and clad in rags, was crouching, with her 
 almost empty wallet, on a great coil of rope that lay in 
 the prow. One of the rowers, an old sailor, who had 
 known her in th^ days of her beauty and prosperity, had 
 let her come in ' for the love of God,' in the beautiful 
 phrase that the common people use. 
 
 * Thank you kindly, Thomas,' the old woman had said. 
 * I will say two Paters and two Jves for you in my 
 prayers to-night.' 
 
Christ in Flanders 37 
 
 The skipper blew his horn for the last time, looked 
 along the silent shore, flung ofF the chain, ran along 
 the side of the boat, and took up his position at the 
 helm. He looked at the sky, and as soon as they 
 were out in the open sea, he shouted to the men : * Pull 
 away, pull with all your might ! The sea is smiling 
 at a squall, the witch ! I can feel the swell by 
 the way the rudder works, and the storm in my 
 wounds.' 
 
 The nautical phrases, unintelligible to ears unused to 
 the sound of the sea, seemed to put fresh energy into the 
 oars ; they kept time together, the rhythm of the move- 
 ment was still even and steady, but quite unlike the 
 previous manner of rowing ; it was as if a cantering 
 horse had broken into a gallop. The gay company 
 seated in the stern amused themselves by watching the 
 brawny arms, the tanned faces, and sparkling eyes of 
 the rowers, the play of the tense muscles, the physical 
 and mental forces that were being exerted to bring them 
 for a trifling toll across the channel. So far from pitying 
 the rowers' distress, they pointed out the men's faces to 
 each other, and laughed at the grotesque expressions on 
 the faces of the crew who were straining every muscle ; 
 but in the fore part of the boat the soldier, the peasant, 
 and the old beggar woman watched the sailors with the 
 sympathy naturally felt by toilers who live by the sweat 
 of their brow and know the rough struggle, the strenuous 
 excitement of effort. These folk, moreover, whose lives 
 were spent in the open air, had all seen the warnings of 
 danger in the sky, and their faces were grave. The 
 young mother rocked her child, singing an old hymn of 
 the Church for a lullaby. 
 
 * If we ever get there at all,' the soldier remarked to 
 the peasant, ' it will be because the Almighty is bent on 
 keeping us alive.' 
 
 ' Ah ! He is the Master,' said the old woman, ' but I 
 think it will be His good pleasure to take us to Himself. 
 
38 Christ in Flanders 
 
 Just look at that light down there . . .' and she nodded 
 her head as she spoke towards the sunset. 
 
 Streaks of fiery red glared from behind the masses of 
 crimson-flushed brown cloud that seemed about to un- 
 loose a furious gale. There was a smothered murmur of 
 the sea, a moaning sound that seemed to come from the 
 depths, a low warning growl, such as a dog gives when 
 he only means mischief as yet. After all, Ostend was 
 not far away. Perhaps painting, like poetry, could not 
 prolong the existence of the picture presented by sea and 
 sky at that moment beyond the time of its actual dura- 
 tion. Art demands vehement contrasts, wherefore artists 
 usually seek out Nature's most striking effects, doubtless 
 because they despair of rendering the great and glorious 
 charm of her daily moods ; yet the human soul is often 
 stirred as deeply by her calm as by her emotion, and by 
 silence as by storm. 
 
 For a moment no one spoke on board the boat. Every 
 one watched that sea and sky, either with some presenti- 
 ment of danger, or because they felt the influence of the 
 religious melancholy that takes possession of nearly all of 
 us at the close of the day, the hour of prayer, when all 
 nature is hushed save for the voices of the bells. The 
 sea gleamed pale and wan, but its hues changed, and the 
 surface took all the colours of steel. The sky was almost 
 overspread with livid grey, but down in the west there 
 were long narrow bars like streaks of blood ; while lines 
 of bright light in the eastern sky, sharp and clean as if 
 drawn by the tip of a brush, were separated by folds of 
 cloud, like the wrinkles on an old man's brow. The 
 whole scene made a background of ashen greys and half- 
 tints, in strong contrast to the bale-fires of the sunset. 
 If written language might borrow of spoken language 
 some of the bold figures of speech invented by the people, 
 il might be said with the soldier that * the weather had 
 been routed,' or, as the peasant would say, * the sky 
 glowered like an executioner.' Suddenly a wind arose 
 
Christ in FJanders ^9 
 
 from the quarter of the sunset, and the skipper, who 
 never took his eyes off the sea, saw the swell on the 
 horizon line, and cried — 
 
 ' Stop rowing ! ' 
 
 The sailors stopped immediately, and let their oars lie 
 on the water. 
 
 ' The skipper is right,' said Thomas coolly. A great 
 wave caught up the boat, carried it high on its crest, 
 only to plunge it, as it were, into the trough of the sea 
 that seemed to yawn for them. At this mighty upheaval, 
 this sudden outbreak of the wrath of the sea, the company 
 in the stern turned pale, and sent up a terrible cry, 
 
 ' We are lost ! ' 
 
 ' Oh, not yet ! ' said the skipper calmly. 
 
 As he spoke, the clouds immediately above their heads 
 were torn asunder by the vehemence of the wind. The 
 grey mass was rent and scattered east and west with 
 ominous speed, a dim uncertain light from the rift in 
 the sky fell full upon the boat, and the travellers beheld 
 each other's faces. All of them, the noble and the wealthy, 
 the sailors and the poor passengers alike, were amazed 
 for a moment by the appearance of the last comer. His 
 golden hair, parted upon his calm, serene forehead, fell 
 in thick curls about his shoulders ; and his face, sublime 
 in its sweetness and radiant with divine love, stood out 
 against the surrounding gloom. He had no contempt for 
 death ; he knew that he should not die. But if at the 
 first the company in the stern forgot for a moment the 
 implacable fury of the storm that threatened their lives, 
 selfishness and their habits of life soon prevailed again. 
 
 ' How lucky that stupid burgomaster is, not to see the 
 risks we are all running ! He is just like a dog, he will 
 die without a struggle,' said the doctor. 
 
 He had scarcely pronounced this highly judicious 
 dictum when the storm unloosed all its legions. The 
 wind blew from every quarter of the heavens, the boat 
 span round Hke a top, and the sea broke in. 
 
40 Christ in Flanders 
 
 ' Oh ! my poor child ! My poor child ! . . . Who 
 will save my baby ? ' the mother cried in a heartrending 
 voice, 
 
 * You yourself will save it,' the stranger said. 
 
 The thrilling tones of that voice went to the young 
 mother's heart and brought hope with them ; she heard 
 the gracious v^ords through all the whistling of the wind 
 and the shrieks of the passengers. 
 
 * Holy Virgin of Good Help, who art at Antwerp, I 
 promise thee a thousand pounds of wax and a statue, if 
 thou v^^ilt rescue me from this!' cried the burgher, kneel- 
 ing upon his bags of gold. 
 
 ' The Virgin is no more at Antwerp than she is here,' 
 was the doctor's comment on this appeal. 
 
 ' She is in heaven,' said a voice that seemed to come 
 from the sea.' 
 
 * Who said that ? ' 
 
 ' 'Tis the devil ! ' exclaimed the servant. * He is 
 scoffing at the Virgin of Antwerp.' 
 
 ' Let us have no more of your Holy Virgin at present,' 
 the skipper cried to the passengers. * Put your hands to 
 the scoops and bale the water out of the boat. — And the 
 rest of you,' he w^ent on, addressing the sailors, * pull 
 with all your might ! Now is the time ; in the name of 
 the devil who is leaving you in this world, be your own 
 Providence ! Every one knows that the channel is fear- 
 fully dangerous ; I have been to and fro across it these 
 thirty years. Am I facing a storm for the first time 
 to-night ? ' 
 
 He stood at the helm, and looked, as before, at his boat 
 and at the sea and sky in turn. 
 
 * The skipper always laughs at everything,' muttered 
 Thomas. 
 
 ' Will God leave us to perish along with those wretched 
 creatures ? ' asked the haughty damsel of the handsome 
 cavalier. 
 
 * No, no, noble maiden. . . . Listen ! ' and he caught 
 
Christ in Flanders 41 
 
 her by the waist and said in her ear, * I can swim ; say 
 nothing about it ! I will hold you by your fair hair and 
 bring you safely to the shore ; but I can only save you.' 
 
 The girl looked at her aged mother. The lady was 
 on her knees entreating absolution of the Bishop, who did 
 not heed her. In the beautiful eyes the knight read a 
 vague feeling of filial piety, and spoke in a smothered 
 voice. 
 
 ' Submit yourself to the will of God. If it is His 
 pleasure to take your mother to Himself, it will doubtless 
 be for her happiness — in the other world,' he added, and 
 his voice dropped still lower. ' And for ours in this,' he 
 thought within himself. 
 
 The Dame of Rupelmonde was lady of seven fiefs 
 beside the barony of Gavres. 
 
 The girl felt the longing for life in her heart, and for 
 love that spoke through the handsome adventurer, a 
 young miscreant who haunted churches in search of a 
 prize, an heiress to marry, or ready money. The Bishop 
 bestowed his benison on the waves, and bade them 
 be calm ; it was all that he could do. He thought of 
 his concubine, and of the delicate feast with which she 
 would welcome him ; perhaps at that very moment she 
 was bathing, perfuming herself, robing herself in velvet, 
 fastening her necklace and her jewelled clasps, and the 
 perverse Bishop so far from thinking of the power of 
 Holy Church, of his duty to comfort Christians and 
 exhort them to trust in God, that worldly regrets and 
 lover's sighs mingled with the holy words of the breviary. 
 By the dim light that shone on the pale faces of the 
 company, it was possible to see their differing expres- 
 sions as the boat was lifted high in air by a wave, to be 
 cast back into the dark depths; the shallop quivered like 
 a fragile leaf, the plaything of the north wind in the 
 autumn; the hull creaked, it seemed ready to go to pieces. 
 Fearful shrieks went up, followed by an awful silence. 
 
 There was a strange difference between the behaviour 
 
42 Christ in Flanders 
 
 of the folk in the bows and that of the rich or great 
 people at the other end of the boat. The young mother 
 clasped her infant tightly to her breast every time that a 
 great wave threatened to engulf the fragile vessel ; but 
 she clung to the hope that the stranger's words had set in 
 her heart. Each time that her eyes turned to his face she 
 drew fresh faith at the sight, the strong faith of a helpless 
 woman, a mother's faith. She lived by that divine 
 promise, the loving words from his lips ; the simple crea- 
 ture waited trustingly for them to be fulfilled, and scarcely 
 feared the danger any longer. 
 
 The soldier, holding fast to the vessel's side, never took 
 his eyes off the strange visitor. He copied on his own 
 rough and swarthy features the imperturbability of the 
 other's face, applying to this task the whole strength of a 
 will and intelligence but little corrupted in the course of 
 a life of mechanical and passive obedience. So emulous 
 was he of a calm and tranquil courage greater than his 
 own, that at last, perhaps unconsciously, something of that 
 mysterious nature passed into his own soul. His admira- 
 tion became an instinctive zeal for this man, a boundless 
 love for and belief in him, such a love as soldiers feel for 
 their leader when he has the power of swaying other men, 
 when the halo of victories surrounds him, and the magical 
 fascination of genius is felt in all that he does. The poor 
 outcast was murmuring to herself — 
 
 ' Ah ! miserable wretch that I am ! Have I not 
 suffered enough to expiate the sins of my youth ? Ah ! 
 wretched woman, why did you lead the gay life of a 
 frivolous Frenchwoman ? why did you devour the goods 
 of God with churchmen, the substance of the poor with 
 extortioners and fleecers of the poor ? Oh ! I have 
 sinned indeed ! — Oh my God ! my God ! let me finish 
 my time in hell here in this world of misery.' 
 
 And again she cried, ' Holy Virgin, Mother of God, 
 have pity upon me ! ' 
 
 ' Be comforted, mother. God is not a Lombard 
 
Christ in Flanders 43 
 
 usurer. I may have killed people good and bad at ran- 
 dom in my time, but I am not afraid of the resurrection.* 
 
 ' Ah ! master lancepesade, how happy those fair ladies 
 are, to be so near to a bishop, a holy man ! They will 
 get absolution for their sins,' said the old woman. * Oh ! 
 if I could only hear a priest say to me, " Thy sins are 
 forgiven ! " I should believe it then.' 
 
 The stranger turned towards her, and the goodness in 
 his face made her tremble. 
 
 ' Have faith,' he said, ' and you will be saved.' 
 
 * May God reward you, good sir,' she answered. * If 
 what you say is true, I will go on pilgrimage bare- 
 footed to Our Lady of Loretto to pray to her for you and 
 for me.' 
 
 The two peasants, father and son, were silent, patient, and 
 submissive to the will of God, like folk whose wont it is 
 to fall in instinctively with the ways of Nature like cattle. 
 At the one end of the boat stood riches, pride, learning, 
 debauchery, and crime — human society, such as art and 
 thought and education and worldly interests and laws have 
 made it ; and at this end there was terror and wailing, 
 innumerable different impulses all repressed by hideous 
 doubts — at this end, and at this only, the agony of fear. 
 
 Above all these human lives stood a strong man, the 
 skipper ; no doubts assailed him, the chief, the king, the 
 fatalist among them. He was trusting in himself rather 
 than in Providence, crying, ' Bale away ! ' instead of 
 ' Holy Virgin,' defying the storm, in fact, and struggling 
 with the sea like a wrestler. 
 
 But the helpless poor at the other end of the wherry ! 
 The mother rocking on her bosom the little one who 
 smiled at the storm, the woman once so frivolous and 
 gay, and now tormented with bitter remorse ; the old 
 soldier covered with scars, a mutilated life the sole 
 reward of his unflagging loyalty and faithfulness. This 
 veteran could scarcely count on the morsel of bread 
 soaked in tears to keep the life in him, yet he was always 
 
44 Christ in Flanders 
 
 ready to laugh, and went his way merrily, happy when 
 he could drown his glory in the depths of a pot of beer, 
 or could tell tales of the wars to the children who 
 admired him, leaving his future with a light heart in the 
 hands of God. Lastly, there were the two peasants, used 
 to hardships and toil, labour incarnate, the labour by 
 which the world lives. These simple folk were indifferent 
 to thought and its treasures, ready to sink them all in a 
 belief; and their faith was but so much the more vig- 
 orous because they had never disputed about it nor 
 analysed it. Such a nature is a virgin soil, conscience 
 has not been tampered with, feeling is deep and strong ; 
 repentance, trouble, love, and work have developed, 
 purified, concentrated, and increased their force of will a 
 hundred times, the will — the one thing in man that 
 resembles what learned doctors call the Soul. 
 
 The boat, guided by the well-nigh miraculous skill of 
 the steersman, came almost within sight of Ostend, when, 
 not fifty paces from the shore, she was suddenly struck by 
 a heavy sea and capsized. The stranger with the light 
 about his head spoke to this little world of drowning 
 creatures — 
 
 ' Those who have faith shall be saved ; let them follow 
 me!' 
 
 He stood upright, and walked with a firm step upon 
 the waves. The young mother at once took her child 
 in her arms, and followed at his side across the sea. The 
 soldier too sprang up, saying in his homely fashion, ' Ah ! 
 nom d ^un pipe ! I would follow you to the devil ' ; and 
 without seeming astonished by it, he walked on the 
 water. The old worn-out sinner, believing in the 
 omnipotence of God, also followed the stranger. 
 
 The two peasants said to each other, ' If they are 
 walking on the sea, why should we not do as they do ? ' 
 and they also arose and hastened after the others. Thomas 
 tried to follow, but his faith tottered ; he sank in the sea 
 more than once, and rose again, but the third time he 
 
Christ in Flanders 45 
 
 also walked on the sea. The bold steersman clung like a 
 rémora to the wreck of his boat. The miser had had 
 faith, and had risen to go, but he tried to take his gold 
 with him, and it was his gold that dragged him down to 
 the bottom. The learned man had scoffed at the char- 
 latan and at the fools who listened to him ; and when he 
 heard the mysterious stranger propose to the passengers 
 that they should walk on the waves, he began to laugh, 
 and the ocean swallowed him. The girl was dragged 
 down into the depths by her lover. The Bishop and the 
 older lady went to the bottom, heavily laden with sins, it 
 may be, but still more heavily laden with incredulity and 
 confidence in idols, weighted down by devotion, into which 
 alms-deeds and true religion entered but little. 
 
 The faithful flock, who walked with a firm step high 
 and dry above the surge, heard all about them the dread- 
 ful whistling of the blast ; great billows broke across 
 their path, but an irresistible force cleft a way for them 
 through the sea. These believing ones saw through the 
 spray a dim speck of light flickering in the window of 
 a fisherman's hut on the shore, and each one, as he 
 pushed on bravely towards the light, seemed to hear the 
 voice of his fellow crying, ' Courage ! ' through all the 
 roaring of the surf; yet no one had spoken a word — so 
 absorbed was each by his own peril. In this way they 
 reached the shore. 
 
 When they were all seated near the fisherman's fire, 
 they looked round in vain for their guide with the light 
 about him. The sea washed up the steersman at the 
 base of the cliff on which the cottage stood ; he was 
 clinging with might and main to the plank as a sailor can 
 cling when death stares him in the face ; the Man went 
 down and rescued the almost exhausted seaman ; then he 
 said, as he held out a succouring hand above the man's 
 head — 
 
 ' Good, for this once ; but do not try it again j the 
 example would be too bad.' 
 
46 Christ in Flanders 
 
 He took the skipper on his shoulders, and carried him 
 to the fisherman's door, knocked for admittance for the 
 exhausted man ; then, when the door of the humble 
 refuge opened, the Saviour disappeared. 
 
 The Convent of Mercy was built for sailors on this 
 spot, where for long afterwards (so it was said) the foot- 
 prints of Jesus Christ could be seen in the sand ; but in 
 1793, at the time of the French invasion, the monks 
 carried away this precious relic, that bore witness to the 
 Saviour's last visit to earth. 
 
 There at the convent I found myself shortly after the 
 Revolution of 1830. I was weary of life. If you had 
 asked me the reason of my despair, I should have found 
 it almost impossible to give it, so languid had grown the 
 soul that was melted within me. The west wind had 
 slackened the springs of my intelligence. A cold, grey 
 light poured down from the heavens, and the murky 
 clouds that passed overhead gave a boding look to the 
 land ; all these things, together with the immensity of 
 the sea, said to me, * Die to-day or die to-morrow, still 
 
 must we not die ? * And then . I wandered on, 
 
 musing on the doubtful future, on my blighted hopes. 
 Gnawed by these gloomy thoughts, I turned mechanically 
 into the convent church, with the grey towers that 
 loomed like ghosts through the sea mists. I looked 
 round with no kindling of the imagination at the forest 
 of columns, àt the slender arches set aloft upon the 
 leafy capitals, a delicate labyrinth of sculpture. I walked 
 with careless eyes along the side aisles that opened out 
 before me like vast portals, ever turning upon their 
 hinges. It was scarcely possible to see, by the dim light 
 of the autumn day, the sculptured groinings of the roof, 
 the delicate and clean-cut lines of the mouldings of the 
 graceful pointed arches. The organ pipes were mute. 
 There was no sound save the noise of my own footsteps 
 to awaken the mournful echoes lurking in the dark 
 
Christ in Flanders 47 
 
 chapels. I sat down at the base of one of the four 
 pillars that supported the tower, near the choir. Thence 
 I could see the whole of the building. I gazed, and no 
 ideas connected with it arose in my mind. I saw with- 
 out seeing the mighty maze of pillars, the great rose 
 windows that hung like a network suspended as by a 
 miracle in air above the vast doorways. I saw the 
 doors at the end of the side aisles, the aerial galleries, the 
 stained glass windows framed in archways, divided by 
 slender columns, fretted into flower forms and trefoil by 
 fine filigree work of carved stone. A dome of glass at 
 the end of the choir sparkled as if it had been built of 
 precious stones set cunningly. In contrast to the roof 
 with its alternating spaces of whiteness and colour, the 
 two aisles lay to right and left in shadow so deep that the 
 faint grey outlines of their hundred shafts were scarcely 
 visible in the gloom. I gazed at the marvellous arcades, 
 the scroll-work, the garlands, the curving lines, and arab- 
 esques interwoven and interlaced, and strangely lighted, 
 until by sheer dint of gazing my perceptions became con- 
 fused, and I stood upon the borderland between illusion 
 and reality, taken in the snare set for the eyes, and almost 
 light-headed by reason of the multitudinous changes of 
 the shapes about me. 
 
 Imperceptibly a mist gathered about the carven stone- 
 work, and I only beheld it through a haze of fine golden 
 dust, like the motes that hover in the bars of sunHght 
 slanting through the air of a chamber. Suddenly the 
 stone lacework of the rose windows gleamed through 
 this vapour that had made all forms so shadowy. Every 
 moulding, the edges of every carving, the least detail of 
 the sculpture was dipped in silver. The sunlight kindled 
 fires in the stained wmdows, their rich colours sent out 
 glowing sparks of light. The shafts began to tremble, 
 the capitals were gently shaken. A light shudder as of 
 delight ran through the building, the stones were loosened 
 in their setting, the wall-spaces swayed with graceful 
 
48 Christ in Flanders 
 
 caution. Here and there a ponderous pier moved as 
 solemnly as a dowager when she condescends to complete 
 a quadrille at the close of a ball. A few slender and 
 graceful columns, their heads adorned with wreaths of 
 trefoil, began to laugh and dance here and there. Some 
 of the pointed arches dashed at the tall lancet windows, 
 who, like ladies of the Middle Ages, wore the armorial 
 bearings of their houses emblazoned on their golden 
 robes. The dance of the mitred arcades with the slender 
 windows became like a fray at a tourney. 
 
 In another moment every stone in the church vibrated, 
 without leaving its place ; for the organ-pipes spoke, and 
 I heard divine music mingling with the songs of angels, 
 an unearthly harmony, accompanied by the deep notes of 
 the bellsj that boomed as the giant towers rocked and 
 swayed on their square bases. This strange sabbath 
 seemed to me the most natural thing in the world ; and 
 I, who had seen Charles x. hurled from his throne, was 
 no longer amazed by anything. Nay, I myself was 
 gently swaying with a see-saw movement that influenced 
 my nerves pleasurably in a manner of which it is impos- 
 sible to give any idea. Yet in the midst of this heated 
 riot, the cathedral choir felt cold as if it were a winter 
 day, and I became aware of a multitude of women, robed 
 in white, silent, and impassive, sitting there. The sweet 
 incense smoke that arose from the censers was grateful 
 to my soul. The tall wax candles flickered. The 
 lectern, gay as a chanter undone by the treachery of 
 wine, was skipping about like a peal of Chinese bells. 
 
 Then I knew that the whole cathedral was whirling 
 round so fast that everything appeared to be undisturbed. 
 The colossal Figure on the crucifix above the altar smiled 
 upon me with a mingled malice and benevolence that 
 frightened me ; I turned my eyes away, and marvelled 
 at the bluish vapour that slid across the pillars, lendmg 
 to them an indescribable charm. Then some graceful 
 women's forms began to stir on the friezes. The cherubs 
 
Christ in Flanders 49 
 
 who upheld the heavy columns shook out their wings. I 
 felt myself uplifted by some divine power that steeped 
 me in infinite joy, in a sweet and languid rapture. I 
 would have given my life, I think, to have prolonged 
 these phantasmagoria for a little, but suddenly a shrill 
 voice clamoured in my ears — 
 
 ' Awake and follow me ! ' 
 
 A withered woman took my hand in hers ; its icy cold- 
 ness crept through every nerve. The bones of her face 
 showed plainly through the sallow, almost olive-tinted 
 wrinkles of the skin. The shrunken, ice-cold, old woman 
 wore a black robe, which she trailed in the dust, and 
 at her throat there was something white, which I 
 dared not examine. I could scarcely see her wan and 
 colourless eyes, for they were fixed in a stare upon the 
 heavens. She drew me after her along the aisles, leaving 
 a trace of her presence in the ashes that she shook from 
 her dress. Her bones rattled as she vi^alked, like the 
 bones of a skeleton ; and as we went I heard behind me 
 the tinkling of a little bell, a thin, sharp sound that rang 
 through my head like the notes of a harmonica. 
 
 ' Suffer ! ' she cried, ' suiFer ! So it must be ! ' 
 
 We came out of the church j we went through the 
 dirtiest streets of the town, till we came at last to a 
 dingy dwelling, and she bade me enter in. She dragged 
 me with her, calling to me in a harsh, tuneless voice like 
 a cracked bell — 
 
 ' Defend me ! defend me ! ' 
 
 Together we went up a winding staircase. She 
 knocked at a door in the darkness, and a mute, like some 
 familiar of the Inquisition, opened to her. In another 
 moment we stood in a room hung with ancient, ragged 
 tapestry, amid piles of old linen, crumpled muslin, and 
 gilded brass. 
 
 * Behold the wealth that shall endure for ever ! ' said 
 she. 
 
 I shuddered with horror j for just then, by the light of 
 
50 Christ in Flanders 
 
 à tall torch and two altar candles, I saw distinctly that 
 this woman was fresh from the graveyard. She had no 
 hair. I turned to fly. She raised her fleshless arm and 
 encircled me with a band of iron set with spikes, and as 
 she raised it a cry went up all about us, the cry of milHons 
 of voices — the shouting of the dead ! 
 
 'It is my purpose to make thee happy for ever,' she 
 said. 'Thou art my son.' 
 
 We were sitting before the hearth, the ashes lay cold 
 upon it ; the old shrunken woman grasped my hand so 
 tightly in hers that 1 could not choose but stay. I looked 
 fixedly at her, striving to read the story of her life from 
 the things among which she was crouching. Had she 
 indeed any life in her ? It was a mystery. Yet I saw 
 plainly that once she must have been young and beauti- 
 ful ; fair, with all the charm of simplicity, perfect as some 
 Greek statue, with the brow of a vestal. 
 
 ' Ah ! ah ! ' I cried, ' now I know thee ! Miserable 
 woman, why hast thou prostituted thyself ? In the age of 
 thy passions, in the time of thy prosperity, the grace and 
 purity of thy youth were forgotten. Forgetful of thy 
 heroic devotion, thy pure life, thy abundant faith, thou 
 didst resign thy primitive power and thy spiritual 
 supremacy for fleshly power. Thy Hnen vestments, thy 
 couch of moss, the cell in the rock, bright with rays of 
 the Light Divine, was forsaken ; thou hast sparkled with 
 diamonds, and shone with the glitter of luxury and pride. 
 Then, grown bold and insolent, seizing and overturning 
 all things in thy course like a courtesan eager for pleasure 
 in her days of splendour, thou hast steeped thyself in 
 blood like some queen stupefied by empery. Dost thou 
 not remember to have been dull and heavy at times, and 
 the sudden marvellous lucidity of other moments ; as 
 when Art emerges from an orgy ? Oh ! poet, painter, 
 and singer, lover of splendid ceremonies and protector of 
 the arts, was thy friendship for art perchance a caprice, 
 that so thou shouldst sleep beneath magnificent canopies ? 
 
Christ in Flanders 51 
 
 Was there not a day when, in thy fantastic pride, though 
 chastity and humility were prescribed to thee, thou hadst 
 brought all things beneath thy feet, and set thy foot on 
 the necks of princes ; when earthly dominion, and wealth, 
 and the mind of man bore thy yoke ? Exulting in the 
 abasement of humanity, joying to witness the uttermost 
 lengths to which man's folly would go, thou hast bidden 
 thy lovers walk on all fours, and required of them their 
 lands and wealth, nay, even their wives if they were 
 worth aught to thee. Thou hast devoured millions of 
 men without a cause ; thou hast flung away lives like 
 sand blown by the wind from West to East. Thou hast 
 come down from the heights of thought to sit among the 
 kings of men. Woman ! instead of comforting men, 
 thou hast tormented and afflicted them ! Knowing that 
 thou couldst ask and have, thou hast demanded — blood ! 
 A little flour surely should have contented thee, accus- 
 tomed as thou hadst been to live on bread and to mingle 
 water with thy wine. Unlike all others in all things, 
 formerly thou wouldst bid thy lovers fast, and they obeyed. 
 Why should thy fancies have led thee to require things 
 impossible ? Why, like a courtesan spoiled by her lovers, 
 hast thou doted on follies, and left those undeceived who 
 sought to explain and justify all thy errors ? Then 
 came the days of thy later passions, terrible like the love 
 of a woman of forty years, with a fierce cry thou hast 
 sought to clasp the whole universe in one last embrace — 
 and thy universe recoiled from thee ! 
 
 * Then old men succeeded to thy young lovers ; 
 decrepitude came to thy feet and made thee hideous. 
 Yet, even then, men with the eagle power of vision said to 
 thee in a glance, " Thou shalt perish ingloriously, because 
 thou hast fallen away, because thou hast broken the vows 
 of thy maidenhood. The angel with peace written on 
 her forehead, who should have shed light and joy along 
 her path, has been a Messalina, delighting in the circus, 
 in debauchery, and abuse of power. The days of thy 
 
52 Christ in Flanders 
 
 virginity cannot return ; henceforward thou shalt be 
 subject to a master. Thy hour has come ; the hand of 
 death is upon thee. Thy heirs believe that thou art rich ; 
 they will kill thee and find nothing. Yet try at least to 
 fling away this raiment no longer in fashion ; be once 
 more as in the days of old ! — Nay, thou art dead, and by 
 thy own deed ! " 
 
 * Is not this thy story ? ' so I ended. * Decrepit, 
 toothless, shivering crone, now forgotten, going thy ways 
 without so much as a glance from passers-by ! Why art 
 thou still alive ? What doest thou in that beggar's garb, 
 uncomely and desired of none ? Where are thy riches ? 
 — for what were they spent ? Where are thy treasures ? 
 — what great deeds hast thou done ? ' 
 
 At this demand, the shrivelled woman raised her bony 
 form, flung ofF her rags, and grew tall and radiant, smiling 
 as she broke forth from the dark chrysaHd sheath. Then 
 like a butterfly, this diaphanous creature emerged, fair and 
 youthful, clothed in white linen, an Indian from creation 
 issuing her palms. Her golden hair rippled over her 
 shoulders, her eyes glowed, a bright mist clung about her, 
 a ring of gold hovered above her head, she shook the 
 flaming blade of a sword towards the spaces of heaven. 
 
 ' See and believe ! ' she cried. 
 
 And suddenly I saw, afar off, many thousands of 
 cathedrals like the one that I had just quitted ; but these 
 were covered with pictures and with frescoes, and I heard 
 them echo with entrancing music. Myriads of human 
 creatures flocked to these great buildings, swarming 
 about them like ants on an ant-heap. Some were eager 
 to rescue books from oblivion or to copy manuscripts, 
 others were helping the poor, but nearly all were studying. 
 Up above this countless multitude rose giant statues that 
 they had erected in their midst, and by the gleams of a 
 strange light from some luminary as powerful as the sun, 
 I read the inscriptions on the bases of the statues — 
 Science, History, Literature. 
 
Christ in Flanders ^^ 
 
 The light died out. Again I faced the young girl. 
 Gradually she slipped into the dreary sheath, into the 
 ragged cere-cloths, and became an aged woman again. 
 Her familiar brought her a little dust, and she stirred it 
 into the ashes of her chafing-dish, for the weather was 
 cold and stormy ; and then he lighted for her, whose 
 palaces had been lit with thousands of wax-tapers, a little 
 cresset, that she might see to read her prayers through 
 the hours of night. 
 
 ' There is no faith left in the earth ! . . .' she said. 
 
 In such a perilous plight did I behold the fairest and 
 the greatest, the truest and most life-giving of all Powers. 
 
 *Wake up, sir, the doors are just about to be shut,' 
 said a hoarse voice. I turned and beheld the beadle's 
 ugly countenance ; the man was shaking me by the arm, 
 and the cathedral lay wrapped in shadows as a man is 
 wrapped in his cloak. 
 
 'Belief,' I said to myself, Ms Life! I have just 
 witnessed the funeral of a monarchy, now we must 
 defend the Church,' 
 
 Paris, February 1831. 
 
MELMOTH RECONCILED 
 
 To Monsieur le General Baron de Pommereul, a 
 token of the friendship between our fathers^ which 
 survives in their sons. 
 
 De Balzac. 
 
 There is a special variety of human nature obtained in 
 the Social Kingdom by a process analogous to that of the 
 gardener's craft in the Vegetable Kingdom, to wit, by 
 the forcing-house — a species of hybrid which can be 
 raised neither from seed nor from slips. This product 
 is known as the Cashier, an anthropomorphous growth, 
 watered by religious doctrine, trained up in fear of the 
 guillotine, pruned by vice, to flourish on a third floor 
 with an estimable wife by his side and an uninteresting 
 family. The number of cashiers in Paris must always 
 be a problem for the physiologist. Has any one as ytt 
 been able to state correctly the terms of the proportion 
 sum wherein the cashier figures as the unknown *■ ? 
 Where will you find the man who shall live with wealth, 
 like a cat with a caged mouse ? This man, for further 
 qualification, shall be capable of sitting boxed in behind 
 an iron grating for seven or eight hours a day during seven- 
 eighths of the year, perched upon a cane-seated chair in a 
 space as narrow as a lieutenant's cabin on board a man- 
 of-war. Such a man must be able to defy anchylosis of 
 the knee and thigh joints ; he must have a soul above 
 meanness, in order to live meanly ; must lose all relish 
 for money by dint of handling it. Demand this peculiar 
 
 64 
 
Meimoth Reconciled 55 
 
 specimen of any creed, educational system, school, or 
 institution you please, and select Paris, that city of fiery 
 ordeals and branch establishment of hell, as the soil in 
 which to plant the said cashier. So be it. Creeds, 
 schools, institutions, and moral systems, all human rules 
 and regulations, great and small, will, one after another, 
 present much the same face that an intimate friend turns 
 upon you when you ask him to lend you a thousand 
 francs. With a dolorous dropping of the jaw, they 
 indicate the guillotine, much as your friend aforesaid will 
 furnish you with the address of the money-lender, point- 
 ing you to one of the hundred gates by which a man 
 comes to the last refuge of the destitute. 
 
 Yet nature has her freaks in the making of a man's 
 mind ; she indulges herself and makes a few honest folk 
 now and again, and now and then a cashier. 
 
 Wherefore, that race of corsairs whom we dignify 
 with the title of bankers, the gentry who take out a 
 license for which they pay a thousand crowns, as the 
 privateer takes out his letters of marque, hold these rare 
 products of the incubations of virtue in such esteem that 
 they confine them in cages in their counting-houses, 
 much as governments procure and maintain specimens of 
 strange beasts at their own charges. 
 
 If the cashier is possessed of an imagination or of a 
 fervid temperament ; if, as will sometimes happen to the 
 most complete cashier, he loves his wife, and that wife 
 grows tired of her lot, has ambitions, or merely some 
 vanity in her composition, the cashier is undone. Search 
 the chronicles of the counting-house. You will not find 
 a single instance of a cashier attaining a position^ as it is 
 called. They are sent to the hulks ; they go to foreign 
 parts ; they vegetate on a second floor in the Rue Saint- 
 Louis among the market gardens of the Marais. Some 
 day, when the cashiers of Paris come to a sense of their 
 real value, a cashier will be hardly obtainable for money. 
 Still, certain it is that there are people who are fit for 
 
56 Melmoth Reconciled 
 
 nothing but to be cashiers, just as the bent of a certain 
 order of mind inevitably makes for rascality. But, oh 
 marvel of our civilisation ! Society rew^ards virtue with an 
 income of a hundred louis in old age, a dwelling on a 
 second floor, bread sufficient, occasional new bandana 
 handkerchiefs, an elderly wife and her offspring. 
 
 So much for virtue. But for the opposite course, a 
 little boldness, a faculty for keeping on the windward 
 side of the law, as Turenne outflanked Montecuculli, 
 and Society will sanction the theft of millions, shower 
 ribands upon the thief, cram him with honours, and 
 smother him with consideration. 
 
 Government, moreover, works harmoniously with this 
 profoundly illogical reasoner — Society. Government levies 
 a conscription on the young intelligence of the kingdom 
 at the age of seventeen or eighteen, a conscription of pre- 
 cocious power. Great ability is prematurely exhausted 
 by excessive brain-work before it is sent up to be submitted 
 to a process of selection. Nurserymen sort and select 
 seeds in much the same way. To this process the 
 Government brings professional appraisers of talent, men 
 who can assay brains as experts assay gold at the Mint. 
 Five hundred such heads, set afire with hope, are sent up 
 annually by the most progressive portion of the popu- 
 lation ; and of these the Government takes one-third, puts 
 them in sacks called the Ecoles, and shakes them up 
 together for three years. Though every one of these 
 young plants represents vast productive power, they are 
 made, as one may say, into cashiers. They receive 
 appointments ; the rank and file of engineers is made up 
 of them; they are employed as captains of artillery; there 
 is no (subaltern) grade to which they may not aspire. 
 Finally, when these men, the pick of the youth of the 
 nation, fattened on mathematics and stuffed with know- 
 ledge, have attained the age of fifty years, they have their 
 reward, and receive as the price of their services the third- 
 floor lodging, the wife and family, and all the comforts 
 
Melmoth Reconciled 57 
 
 that sweeten life for mediocrity. If from among this 
 race of dupes there should escape some five or six men 
 of genius who climb the highest heights, is it not 
 miraculous ? 
 
 This is an exact statement of the relations between 
 Talent and Probity on the one hand, and Government 
 and Society on the other, in an age that considers itself 
 to be progressive. Without this prefatory explanation a 
 recent occurrence in Paris would seem improbable ; but 
 preceded by this summing up of the situation, it will 
 perhaps receive some thoughtful attention from minds 
 capable of recognising the real plague-spots of our 
 civilisation, a civilisation which since 18 15 has been 
 moved by the spirit of gain rather than by principles of 
 honour. 
 
 About five o'clock, on a dull autumn afternoon, the 
 cashier of one of the largest banks in Paris was still at 
 his desk, working by the light of a lamp that had been 
 lit for some time. In accordance with the use and 
 wont of commerce, the counting-house was in the darkest 
 corner of the low-ceiled and far from spacious mezzanine 
 floor, and at the very end of a passage lighted only by 
 borrowed lights. The office doors along this corridor, 
 each with its label, gave the place the look of a bath- 
 house. At four o'clock the stolid porter had proclaimed, 
 according to his orders, ' The bank is closed.' And by 
 this time the departments were deserted, the letters 
 despatched, the clerks had taken their leave. The wives 
 of the partners in the firm were expecting their lovers ; 
 the two bankers dining with their mistresses. Everything 
 was in order. 
 
 The place where the strong boxes had been bedded in 
 sheet-iron was just behind the little sanctum, where the 
 cashier was busy. Doubtless he was balancing his books. 
 The open front gave a glimpse of a safe of hammered 
 iron, so enormously heavy (thanks to the science of the 
 
58 Melmoth Reconciled 
 
 modern inventor) that burglars could not carry it away. 
 The door only opened at the pleasure of those who knew 
 its password. The letter-lock was a warden who kept 
 its own secret and could not be bribed; the mysterious 
 word was an ingenious realisation of the ' Open sesame ! ' 
 in the Arabian Nights. But even this was as nothing. 
 A man might discover the password; but unless he knew 
 the lock's final secret, the ultima ratio of this gold-guarding 
 dragon of mechanical science, it discharged a blunderbuss 
 at his head. 
 
 The door of the room, the walls of the room, the 
 shutters of the windows in the room, the whole place, in 
 fact, was lined with sheet-iron a third of an inch in 
 thickness, concealed behind the thin wooden panelling. 
 The shutters had been closed, the door had been shut. 
 If ever man could feel confident that he was absolutely 
 alone, and that there was no remote possibility of being 
 watched by prying eyes, that man was the cashier of 
 the house of Nucingen and Company, in the Rue Saint- 
 Lazare. 
 
 Accordingly the deepest silence prevailed in that iron 
 cave. The fire had died out in the stove, but the room 
 was full of that tepid warmth which produces the dull 
 heavy-headedness and nauseous queasiness of a morning 
 after an orgy. The stove is a mesmerist that plays no 
 small part in the reduction of bank clerks and porters to 
 a state of idiocy. 
 
 A room with a stove in it is a retort in which the 
 power of strong men is evaporated, where their vitality 
 is exhausted, and their wills enfeebled. Government 
 offices are part of a great scheme for the manufacture 
 of the mediocrity necessary for the maintenance of a 
 Feudal System on a pecuniary basis — and money is the 
 foundation of the Social Contract. (See Les Employés.) 
 The mephitic vapours in the atmosphere of a crowded 
 room contribute in no small degree to bring about a 
 gradual deterioration of intelligences, the brain that 
 
Melmoth Reconciled 59 
 
 gives off the largest quantity of nitrogen asphyxiates the 
 others, in the long run. 
 
 The cashier was a man of five-and-forty or there- 
 abouts. As he sat at the table, the light from a modera- 
 tor lamp shining full on his bald head and glistening 
 fringe of iron-grey hair that surrounded it — this baldness 
 and the round outlines of his face made his head look 
 very like a ball. His complexion was brick-red, a few 
 wrinkles had gathered about his eyes, but he had the 
 smooth, plump hands of a stout man. His blue cloth 
 coat, a little rubbed and worn, and the creases and 
 shininess of his trousers, traces of hard wear that the 
 clothes-brush fails to remove, would impress a superficial 
 observer with the idea that here was a thrifty and 
 upright human being, sufficient of the philosopher or of 
 the aristocrat to wear shabby clothes. But, unluckily, it is 
 easy to find penny-wise people who will prove weak, 
 wasteful, or incompetent in the capital things of life. 
 
 The cashier wore the ribbon of the Legion of Honour 
 at his button-hole, for he had been a major of dragoons in 
 the time of the Emperor. M. de Nucingen, who had been 
 a contractor before he became a banker, had had reason 
 in those days to know the honourable disposition of his 
 cashier, who then occupied a high position. Reverses of 
 fortune had befallen the major, and the banker out of 
 regard for him paid him five hundred francs a month. 
 The soldier had become a cashier in the year 18 13, after 
 his recovery from a wound received at Studzianka during 
 the Retreat from Moscow, followed by six months of 
 enforced idleness at Strasbourg, whither several officers 
 had been transported by order of the Emperor, that they 
 might receive skilled attention. This particular officer, 
 Castanier by name, retired with the honorary grade of 
 colonel, and a pension of two thousand four hundred 
 francs. 
 
 In ten years' time the cashier had completely effaced 
 the soldier, and Castanier inspired the banker with such 
 
6o Melmoth Reconciled 
 
 trust in him, that he was associated in the transactions 
 that went on in the private office behind his little 
 counting-house. The baron himself had access to it 
 by means of a secret staircase. There, matters of 
 business were decided. It was the bolting-room where 
 proposals were sifted ; the privy council chamber where 
 the reports of the money market were analysed ; circular 
 notes issued thence ; and finally, the private ledger and 
 the journal which summarised the work of all the depart- 
 ments were kept there. 
 
 Castanier had gone himself to shut the door which 
 opened on to a staircase that led to the parlour occupied 
 by the two bankers on the first floor of their hôtel. This 
 done, he had sat down at his desk again, and for a moment 
 he gazed at a little collection of letters of credit drawn 
 on the firm of Watschildine of London. Then he had 
 taken up the pen and imitated the banker's signature 
 upon each. Nucingen he wrote, and eyed the forged signa- 
 tures critically to see which seemed the most perfect 
 copy. 
 
 Suddenly he looked up as if a needle had pricked him. 
 ' You are not alone ! ' a boding voice seemed to cry in 
 his heart ; and indeed the forger saw a man standing at 
 the little grated window of the counting-house, a man 
 whose breathing was so noiseless that he did not seem to 
 breathe at all. Castanier looked, and saw that the door 
 at the end of the passage was wide open j the stranger 
 must have entered by that way. 
 
 For the first time in his life the old soldier felt a 
 sensation of dread that made him stare open-mouthed 
 and wide-eyed at the man before him; and for that 
 matter, the appearance of the apparition was sufficiently 
 alarming even if unaccompanied by the mysterious 
 circumstances of so sudden an entry. The rounded 
 forehead, the harsh colouring of the long oval face, 
 indicated quite as plainly as the cut of his clothes that 
 the man was an Englishman, reeking of his native isle? 
 
Melmoth Reconciled 6i 
 
 You had only to look at the collar of his overcoat, at the 
 voluminous cravat which smothered the crushed frills of 
 a shirt front so white that it brought out the changeless 
 leaden hue of an impassive face, and the thin red line 
 of the lips that seemed made to suck the blood of 
 corpses ; and you could guess at once at the black 
 gaiters buttoned up to the knee, and the half-puri- 
 tanical costume of a wealthy Englishman dressed for a 
 walking excursion. The intolerable glitter of the 
 stranger's eyes produced a vivid and unpleasant impres- 
 sion, which was only deepened by the rigid outlines of 
 his features. The dried-up, emaciated creature seemed 
 to carry within him some gnawing thought that con- 
 sumed him and could not be appeased. 
 
 He must have digested his food so rapidly that he 
 could doubtless eat continually without bringing any 
 trace of colour into his face or features. A tun of 
 Tokay vin de succession would not have caused any 
 faltering in that piercing glance that read men's inmost 
 thoughts, nor dethroned the merciless reasoning faculty 
 that always seemed to go to the bottom of things. There 
 was something of the fell and tranquil majesty of a tiger 
 about him. 
 
 ' I have come to cash this bill of exchange, sir,' he 
 said. Castanier felt the tones of his voice thrill through 
 every nerve v/ith a violent shock similar to that given by 
 a discharge of electricity. 
 
 ' The safe is closed,' said Castanier. 
 
 * It is open,' said the Englishman, looking round the 
 counting-house. ' To-morrow is Sunday, and I cannot 
 wait. The amount is for five hundred thousand francs. 
 You have the money there, and I must have it.' 
 
 ' But how did you come in, sir ? ' 
 
 The Englishman smiled. That smile frightened 
 Castanier. No words could have replied more fully nor 
 more peremptorily than that scornful and imperial curl of 
 the stranger's lips. Castanier turned away, took up fifty 
 
62 Melmoth Reconciled 
 
 packets, each containing ten thousand francs in bank- 
 notes, and held them out to the stranger, receiving 
 in exchange for them a bill accepted by the Baron de 
 Nucingen. A sort of convulsive tremor ran through him 
 as he saw a red gleam in the stranger's eyes when they 
 fell on the forged signature on the letter of credit. 
 
 ' It ... it wants your signature . . .' stammered 
 Castanier, handing back the bill. 
 
 * Hand me your pen,' answered the Englishman. 
 
 Castanier handed him the pen with which he had 
 just committed forgery. The stranger wrote John 
 Melmoth^ then he returned the slip of paper and the pen 
 to the cashier. Castanier looked at the handwriting, 
 noticing that it sloped from right to left in the Eastern ' 
 fashion, and Melmoth disappeared so noiselessly that 
 when Castanier looked up again an exclamation broke 
 from him, partly because the man was no longer there, 
 partly because he felt a strange painful sensation such as 
 our imagination might take for an effect of poison. 
 
 The pen that Melmoth had handled sent the same 
 sickening heat through him that an emetic produces. 
 But it seemed impossible to Castanier that the English- 
 man should have guessed his crime. His inward 
 qualms he attributed to the palpitation of the heart that, 
 according to received ideas, was sure to follow at once 
 on such a * turn ' as the stranger had given him. 
 
 ' The devil take it j I am very stupid. Providence is 
 watching over me ; for if that brute had come round to 
 see my gentlemen to-morrow, my goose would have been 
 cooked ! ' said Castanier, and he burned the unsuccessful 
 attempts at forgery in the stove. 
 
 He put the bill that he meant to take with him in an 
 envelope, and helped himself to five hundred thousand 
 francs in French and English bank-notes from the safe, 
 which he locked. Then he put everything in order, lit 
 a candle, blew out the lamp, took up his hat and umbrella, 
 and went out sedately, as usual, to leave one of the two 
 
Melmoth Reconciled 63 
 
 keys of the strong room with Madame de Nucingen, in 
 the absence of her husband the Baron. 
 
 ' You are in luck, M. Castanier/ said the banker's 
 wife as he entered her room; 'we have a holiday on 
 Monday ; you can go into the country, or to Soizy.' 
 
 * Madame, will you be so good as to tell your husband 
 that the bill of exchange on Watschildine, which was 
 behind time, has just been presented ? The five hundred 
 thousand francs have been paid ; so I shall not come back 
 till noon on Tuesday.' 
 
 ' Good-bye, Monsieur j I hope you will have a pleasant 
 time.' 
 
 'The same to you, Madame,' replied the old dragoon 
 as he went out. He glanced as he spoke at a young man 
 well known in fashionable society at that time, a M. de 
 Rastignac, who was regarded as Madame de Nucingen's 
 lover. 
 
 ' Madame,' remarked this latter, ' the old boy looks to 
 me as if he meant to play you some ill turn.' 
 
 ' Pshaw ! impossible j he is too stupid.' 
 
 ' Piquoizeau,' said the cashier, walking into the porter's 
 room, ' what made you let anybody come up after four 
 o'clock ? ' 
 
 ' I have been smoking a pipe here in the doorway ever 
 since four o'clock,' said the man, ' and nobody has gone 
 into the bank. Nobody has come out either except the 
 gentlemen ' 
 
 ' Are you quite sure ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, upon my word and honour. Stay, though, at 
 four o'clock M. Werbrust's friend came, a young fellow . 
 from Messrs. du Tillet & Co., in the Rue Joubert.' 
 
 ' All right,' said Castanier, and he hurried away. 
 
 The sickening sensation of heat that he had felt when 
 he took back the pen returned in greater intensity. 
 ' Mille diables ! ' thought he, as he threaded his way 
 along the Boulevard de Gand, ' haven't I taken proper 
 
64 
 
 Melmoth Reconciled 
 
 precautions ? Let me think ! Two clea| 
 and Monday, then a day of uncertainty be 
 to look for me ; altogether, three days ani 
 respite. I have a couple of passports and 
 disguises ; is not that enough to throw 
 detective off the scent ? On Tuesday m^ 
 draw a million francs in London before th 
 picion has been aroused. My debts I am 
 for the benefit of my creditors, who will p 
 the bills, and I shall live comfortably in Ita 
 of my days as the Conte Ferraro. I was a 
 when he died, poor fellow, in the marsh of 
 I shall slip into his skin. . . . Mille diables 
 who is to follow after me might give t| 
 Think of an old campaigner like me infat 
 to tie myself to a petticoat tail ! . . . Wh 
 must leave her behind. Yes, I could makel 
 to it J but — I know myself — I should be ai 
 go back for her. Still, nobody knows Aqui 
 take her or leave her ? ' 
 
 ' You will not take her ! ' cried a voi 
 Castanier with sickening dread. He turned 
 saw the Englishman. 
 
 ' The devil is in it ! * cried the cashier alo 
 Melmoth had passed his victim by this 
 Castanier's first impulse had been to fasten 
 a man who read his own thoughts, he was 
 by opposing feelings that the immediate 
 temporary paralysis. When he resumed his 
 once more into that fever of irresolution 
 those who are so carried away by passion t 
 ready to commit a crime, but have not suffici 
 of character to keep it to themselves witho 
 terribly in the process. So, although Castani 
 up his mind to reap the fruits of a crime 
 already half executed, he hesitated to carry out 
 1 Protested, 
 
 ,ys,Saliiin,asto 
 ' jiess and 
 
 gkestsicalcoun 
 
 ir àe te 1 
 
 uaiTttis 
 
 ttevft 
 
Melmoth Reconciled 65 
 
 ^s, Su him, as for many men of mixed character in whom 
 
 they Ijcness and strength are equally blended, the least 
 
 ™ ur ning consideration determines whether they shall con- 
 
 difF<e to lead blameless lives or become actively criminal. 
 
 clevhe vast masses of men enrolled in Napoleon's armies 
 
 ig I e were many who, like Castanier, possessed the purely 
 
 ;htest;ical courage demanded on the battlefield, yet lacked 
 
 fig b€moral courage which makes a man as great in crime 
 
 ' f* " e could have been in virtue. 
 
 tal)|§r the'he letter of credit was drafted in such terms that 
 
 withiediately on his arrival he might dr;'w twenty- five 
 
 nbin,asand pounds on the firmofWatschildine, the London 
 
 e woespondents of the house of Nucingen. The London 
 
 a cse had been already advised of the draft about to be 
 
 atu 1 en >2 upon them ; he had written to them himself. He 
 
 m :e he/instructed an agent (chosen at random) to take his 
 
 ike my rage in a vessel which was to leave Portsmouth with a 
 
 as! lougllthy English family on board, who were going to 
 
 |iiili Shy^ and the passage-money had been paid in the name of 
 
 Conte Ferraro. The smallest details of the scheme 
 
 oic( lat f been thought out. He had arranged matters so as 
 
 d "plyjlivert the search that would be made for him into 
 
 gium and Switzerland, while he himself was at sea in 
 
 slou English vessel. Then, by the time that Nucingen 
 
 isti j a^it flatter himself that he was on the track of his 
 
 :eni larre fcashier, the said cashier, as the Conte Ferraro, hoped 
 
 isso ich be safe in Naples. He had determined to disfigure 
 
 ter( t wïface in order to disguise himself the more completely, 
 
 hisi z he by means of an acid to imitate the scars of smallpox. 
 
 n w|§i be:, in spite of all these precautions, which surely seemed 
 
 heyf they must secure him complete immunity, his con- 
 
 Scie^trennce tormented him ; he was afraid. The even and 
 
 ffeceful life that he had led for so long had modified the 
 
 ie id rrrality of the camp. His life was stainless as yet ; he 
 
 ch Id not sully it without a pang. So for the last time 
 
 lesigbandoned himself to all the influences of the better 
 
 that strenuously resisted. 
 
 £ 
 
66 Melmoth Reconciled 
 
 * Pshaw ! ' he said at last, at the corner of the Boulevard 
 and the Rue Montmartre, 'I will take a cab after the 
 play this evening and go out to Versailles. A post- 
 chaise will be ready for me at my old quartermaster's 
 place. He would keep my secret even if a dozen men 
 were standing ready to shoot him down. The chances 
 are all in my favour, so far as I see j so I shall take my 
 little Naqui with me, and I will go.* 
 
 * You will not go ! ' exclaimed the Englishman, and 
 the strange tones of his voice drove all the cashier's blood 
 back to his heart. 
 
 Melmoth stepped into a tilbury which was waiting for 
 him, and was whirled away so quickly, that when Castanier 
 looked up he saw his foe some hundred paces away from 
 him, and before it even crossed his mind to cut off the 
 man's retreat the tilbury was far on its way up the 
 Boulevard Montmartre. 
 
 * Well, upon my word, there is something supernatural 
 about this ! ' said he to himself. ' If I were fool enough 
 to believe in God, I should think that He had set Saint 
 Michael on my tracks. Suppose that the devil and the 
 police should let me go on as I please, so as to nab me 
 in the nick of time ? Did any one ever see the like ! 
 But there, this is folly. . . .' 
 
 Castanier went along the Rue du Faubourg-Mont- 
 martre, slackening his pace as he neared the Rue Richer. 
 There, on the second floor of a block of buildings which 
 looked out upon some gardens, lived the unconscious 
 cause of Castanier's crime — a young woman known in 
 the quarter as Mme. de la Garde. A concise history 
 of certain events in the cashier's past life must be given 
 in order to explain these facts, and to give a complete 
 presentment of the crisis when he yielded to temptation. 
 
 Mme. de la Garde said that she was a Piedmontese. 
 No one, not even Castanier, knew her real name. She 
 was one of those young girls who are driven by dire 
 misery, by inability to earn a living, or by fear of starva- 
 
Melmoth Reconciled 67 
 
 tion, to have recourse to a trade which most of them 
 loathe, many regard with indifference, and some few 
 follow in obedience to the laws of their constitution. 
 But on the brink of the gulf of prostitution in Paris, the 
 young girl of sixteen, beautiful and pure as the Madonna, 
 had met with Castanier. The old dragoon was too 
 rough and homely to make his way in society, and he 
 was tired of tramping the boulevard at night and of 
 the kind of conquests made there by gold. For some 
 time past he had desired to bring a certain regularity into 
 an irregular life. He was struck by the beauty of the 
 poor child who had drifted by chance into his arms, and 
 his determination to rescue her from the life of the streets 
 was half benevolent, half selfish, as some of the thoughts 
 of the best of men are apt to be. Social conditions 
 mingle elements of evil with the promptings of natural 
 goodness of heart, and the mixture of motives underlying 
 a man's intentions should be leniently judged. Castanier 
 had just cleverness enough to be very shrewd where his 
 own interests were concerned. So he concluded to be 
 a philanthropist on either count, and at first made her his 
 mistress. 
 
 * Hey ! hey ! ' he said to himself, in his soldierly 
 fashion, * I am an old wolf, and a sheep shall not make 
 a fool of me. Castanier, old man, before you set up 
 housekeeping, reconnoitre the girl's character for a bit, 
 and see if she is a steady sort.' 
 
 This irregular union gave the Piedmontese a status 
 the most nearly approaching respectability among those 
 which the world declines to recognise. During the first 
 year she took the nom de guerre of Aquilina, one of the 
 characters in Venice Preserved which she had chanced to 
 read. She fancied that she resembled the courtesan in 
 face and general appearance, and in a certain precocity 
 of heart and brain of which she was conscious. When 
 Castanier found that her life was as well regulated and 
 virtuous as was possible for a social outlaw, he manifested 
 
6S Melmoth Reconciled 
 
 a desire that they should live as husband and wife. So 
 she took the name of Mme. de la Garde, in order to 
 approach, as closely as Parisian usages permit, the con- 
 ditions of a real marriage. As a matter of fact, many 
 of these unfortunate girls have one fixed idea, to be 
 looked upon as respectable middle-class women, who lead 
 humdrum lives of faithfulness to their husbands ; women 
 who would make excellent mothers, keepers of household 
 accounts, and menders of household linen. This longing 
 springs from a sentiment so laudable, that society should 
 take it into consideration. But society, incorrigible as 
 ever, will assuredly persist in regarding the married 
 woman as a corvette duly auchorised by her flag and 
 papers to go on her own course, while the woman who 
 is a wife in all but name is a pirate and an outlaw for 
 lack of a document. A day came when Mme. de la 
 Garde would fain have signed herself * Mme. Castanier.' 
 The cashier was put out by this. 
 
 * So you do not love me well enough to marry me ? ' 
 she said. 
 
 Castanier did not answer ; he was absorbed by his 
 thoughts. The poor girl resigned herself to her fate. 
 The ex-dragoon was in despair. Naqui's heart softened 
 towards him at the sight of his trouble ; she tried to 
 soothe him, but what could she do when she did not 
 know what ailed him ? When Naqui made up her 
 mind to knovi^ the secret, although she never asked him 
 a question, the cashier dolefully confessed to the exist- 
 ence of a A4me. Castanier. This lawful wife, a thousand 
 times accursed, was living in a humble way in Stras- 
 bourg on a small property there ; he wrote to her twice 
 a year, and kept the secret of her existence so well, that 
 no one suspected that he was married. The reason of this 
 reticence ? If it is familiar to many military men who 
 may chance to be in a like predicament, it is perhaps 
 worth while to give the story. 
 
 Your genuine trooper (if it is allowable here to 
 
Melmoth Reconciled 69 
 
 employ the word which in the army signifies a man who 
 is destined to die as a captain) is a sort of serf, a part 
 and parcel of his regiment, an essentially simple creature, 
 and Castanier was marked out by nature as a victim to 
 the wiles of mothers with grown-up daughters left too 
 long on their hands. It was at Nancy, during one of 
 those brief intervals of repose when the Imperial armies 
 were not on active service abroad, that Castanier was so 
 unlucky as to pay some attention to a young lady with 
 whom he danced at a ridotto, the provincial name for the 
 entertainments often given by the military to the towns- 
 folk, or vice versa^ in garrison towns. A scheme for 
 inveigling the gallant captain into matrimony was im- 
 mediately set on foot, one of those schemes by which 
 mothers secure accomplices in a human heart by touching 
 all its motive springs, while they convert all their friends 
 into fellow-conspirators. Like all people possessed by 
 one idea, these ladies press everything into the service 
 of their great project, slowly elaborating their toils, 
 much as the ant-lion excavates its funnel in the sand and 
 lies in wait at the bottom for its victim. Suppose that 
 no one strays, after all, into that carefully constructed 
 labyrinth ? Suppose that the ant-lion dies of hunger and 
 thirst in her pit ? Such things may be, but if any heed- 
 less creature once enters in, it never comes out. All 
 the wires which could be pulled to induce action on the 
 captain's part were tried ; appeals were made to the secret 
 interested motives that always come into play in such cases; 
 they worked on Castanier's hopes and on the weaknesses and 
 vanity of human nature. Unluckily, he had praised the 
 daughter to her mother when he brought her back after 
 a waltz, a little chat followed, and then an invitation in 
 the most natural way in the world. Once introduced 
 into the house, the dragoon was dazzled by the hospitality 
 of a family who appeared to conceal their real wealth 
 beneath a show of careful economy. He was skilfully 
 flattered on all sides, and every one extolled for his benefit 
 
7© Melmoth Reconciled 
 
 the various treasures there displayed. A neatly timed 
 dinner, served on plate lent by an uncle, the attention 
 shown to him by the only daughter of the house, the 
 gossip of the town, a well-to-do sub-lieutenant who 
 seemed likely to cut the ground from under his feet — 
 all the innumerable snares, in short, of the provincial 
 ant-lion were set for him, and to such good purpose, that 
 Castanier said five years later, * To this day I do not 
 know how it came about ! ' 
 
 The dragoon received fifteen thousand francs with the 
 lady, who, after two years of marriage, became the 
 ugliest and consequently the most peevish woman on 
 earth. Luckily they had no children. The fair com- 
 plexion (maintained by a Spartan regimen), the fresh, 
 bright colour in her face, which spoke of an engaging 
 modesty, became overspread with blotches and pimples ; 
 her figure, which had seemed so straight, grew crooked, 
 the angel became a suspicious and shrewish creature who 
 drove Castanier frantic. Then the fortune took to itself 
 wings. At length the dragoon, no longer recognising 
 the woman whom he had wedded, left her to live on a 
 little property at Strasbourg, until the time when it 
 should please God to remove her to adorn Paradise. She 
 was one of those virtuous women who, for want of other 
 occupation, would weary the life out of an angel with 
 complainings, who pray till (if their prayers are heard in 
 heaven) they must exhaust the patience of the Almighty, 
 and say everything that is bad of their husbands in dove- 
 like murmurs over a game of boston with their neigh- 
 bours. When Aquilina learned all these troubles she 
 clung still more affectionately to Castanier, and made 
 him so happy, varying with woman's ingenuity the 
 pleasures with which she filled his life, that all un- 
 wittingly she was the cause of the cashier's downfall. 
 
 Like many women who seem by nature destined to 
 sound all the depths of love, Mme. de la Garde was 
 disinterested. She asked neither for gold nor for jewel- 
 
Melmoth Reconciled 71 
 
 lery, gave no thought to the future, lived entirely for the 
 present and for the pleasures of the present. She accepted 
 expensive ornaments and dresses, the carriage so eagerly 
 coveted by women of her class, as one harmony the more 
 in the picture of life. There w^s absolutely no vanity in 
 her desire not to appear at a better advantage but to look 
 the fairer, and, moreover, no v^roman could live v<rith- 
 out luxuries more cheerfully. When a man of generous 
 nature (and military men are mostly of this stamp) meets 
 with such a woman, he feels a sort of exasperation at 
 finding himself her debtor in generosity. He feels that 
 he could stop a mail coach to obtain money for her if he 
 has not sufficient for her whims. He will commit a 
 crime if so he may be great and noble in the eyes of 
 some woman or of his special public ; such is the nature 
 of the man. Such a lover is like a gambler who would be 
 dishonoured in his own eyes if he did not repay the sum 
 he borrowed from a waiter in a gaming-house j but will 
 shrink from no crime, will leave his wife and children 
 without a penny, and rob and murder, if so he may come 
 to the gaming table with a full purse, and his honour 
 remain untarnished among the frequenters of that fatal 
 abode. So it was with Castanier. 
 
 He had begun by installing Aquilina in a modest 
 fourth-floor dwelling, the furniture being of the simplest 
 kind. But when he saw the girl's beauty and great 
 qualities, when he had known inexpressible and unlooked- 
 for happiness with her, he began to dote upon her, and 
 longed to adorn his idol. Then Aquilina's toilette was 
 so comically out of keeping with her poor abode, that for 
 both their sakes it was clearly incumbent on him to 
 move. The change swallowed up almost all Castanier's 
 savings, for he furnished his domestic paradise with all 
 the prodigality that is lavished on a kept mistress. A 
 pretty woman must have everything pretty about her ; 
 the unity of charm in the woman and her surround- 
 ings singles her out from among her sex. This senti- 
 
72 Melmoth ReconciJed 
 
 ment of homogeneity indeed, though it has frequently 
 escaped the attention of observers, is instinctive in human 
 nature ; and the same prompting leads elderly spinsters 
 to surround themselves vnih dreary relics of the past. 
 But the lovely Piedmontese must have the nevv^est and 
 latest fashions, and all that was daintiest and prettiest in 
 stuffs for hangings, in silks or jewellery, in fine china and 
 other brittle and fragile wares. She asked for nothing ; 
 but when she was called upon to make a choice, when 
 Castanier asked her, ' Which do you like ? ' she would 
 answer, ' Why, this is the nicest ! ' Love never counts 
 the cost, and Castanier therefore always took the 
 ' nicest.' 
 
 When once the standard had been set up, there was 
 nothing for it but everything in the household must be 
 in conformity, from the linen plate and crystal through 
 a thousand and one items of expenditure down to the 
 pots and pans in the kitchen. Castanier had meant to 
 ' do things simply,' as the saying goes, but he gradually 
 found himself more and more in debt. One expense 
 entailed another. The clock called for candle sconces. 
 Fires must be lighted in the ornamental grates, but the 
 curtains and hangings were too fresh and delicate to be 
 soiled by smuts, so they must be replaced by patent and 
 elaborate fireplaces, warranted to give out no smoke, 
 recent inventions of the people who are clever at drawing 
 up a prospectus.- Then Aquilina found it so nice to run 
 about barefooted on the carpet in her room, that Castanier 
 must have soft carpets laid everywhere for the pleasure 
 of playing with Naqui. A bathroom, too, was built for 
 her, everything to the end that she might be more com- 
 fortable. 
 
 Shopkeepers, workmen, and manufacturers in Paris 
 have a mysterious knack of enlarging a hole in a man's 
 purse. They cannot give the price of anything upon 
 inquiry ; and as the paroxysm of longing cannot abide 
 delay, orders are given by the feeble light of an 
 
Melmoth Reconciled 73 
 
 approximate estimate of cost. The same people never 
 send in the bills at once, but ply the purchaser with 
 furniture till his head spins. Everything is so pretty, so 
 charming ; and every one is satisfied. 
 
 A few months later the obliging furniture dealers are 
 metamorphosed, and reappear in the shape of alarming 
 totals on invoices that fill the soul with their horrid 
 clamour ; they are in urgent want of the money j they 
 are, as you may say, on the brink of bankruptcy, their 
 tears flow, it is heartrending to hear them ! And then 
 
 the gulf yawns, and gives up serried columns of 
 
 figures marching four deep, when as a matter of fact 
 they should have issued innocently three by three. 
 
 Before Castanier had any idea of how much he had 
 spent, he had arranged for Aquilina to have a carriage 
 from a livery stable when she went out, instead of a cab. 
 Castanier was a gourmand ; he engaged an excellent cook ; 
 and Aquilina, to please him, had herself made the pur- 
 chases of early fruit and vegetables, rare delicacies, and 
 exquisite wines. But, as Aquilina had nothing of her 
 own, these gifts of hers, so precious by reason of the 
 thought and tact and graciousness that prompted them, 
 were no less a drain upon Castanier's purse ; he did not 
 Hke his Naqui to be without money, and Naqui could not 
 keep money in her pocket. So the table was a heavy 
 item of expenditure for a man with Castanier's income. 
 The ex-dragoon was compelled to resort to various shifts 
 for obtaining money, for he could not bring himself to 
 renounce this delightful life. He loved the woman too 
 well to cross the freaks of the mistress. He was one of 
 those men who, through self-love or through weakness of 
 character, can refuse nothing to a woman ; false shame 
 overpowers them, and they rather face ruin than make 
 
 the admissions : * I cannot ' ' My means will not 
 
 permit ' * I cannot attord ' 
 
 When, therefore, Castanier saw that if he meant to 
 emerge from the abyss of debt into which he had 
 
74 Melmoth Reconciled 
 
 plunged, he must part with Aquilina and live upon 
 bread and water, he was so unable to do without her or 
 to change his habits of life, that daily he put off his plans 
 of reform until the morrow. The debts were pressing, 
 and he began by borrowing money. His position and 
 previous character inspired confidence, and of this he 
 took advantage to devise a system of borrowing money 
 as he required it. Then, as the total amount of debt 
 rapidly increased, he had recourse to those commercial 
 inventions known as accommodation bills. This form of 
 bill does not represent goods or other value received, and 
 the first endorser pays the amount named for the obliging 
 person who accepts it. This species of fraud is tolerated 
 because it is impossible to detect it, and, moreover, it is 
 an imaginary fraud which only becomes real if payment 
 is ultimately refused. 
 
 When at length it was evidently impossible to borrow 
 any longer, whether because the amount of the debt was 
 now so greatly increased, or because Castanier was unable 
 to pay the large amount of interest on the aforesaid sums 
 of money, the cashier saw bankruptcy before him. On 
 making this discovery, he decided for a fraudulent bank- 
 ruptcy rather than an ordinary failure, and preferred a 
 crime to a misdemeanour. He determined, after the 
 fashion of the celebrated cashier of the Royal Treasury, 
 to abuse the trust deservedly won, and to increase the 
 number of his creditors by making a final loan of the 
 sum sufficient to keep him in comfort in a foreign 
 country for the rest of his days. All this, as has been 
 seen, he hnd prepared to do. 
 
 Aquilina knew nothing of the irksome cares of this 
 life Î she enjoyed her existence, as many a woman does, 
 making no inquiry as to where the money came from, 
 even as sundry other folk will eat their buttered rolls 
 untroubled by any restless spirit of curiosity as to the 
 culture and growth of wheat ; but as the labour and mis- 
 calculations of agriculture lie on the other side of the 
 
Melmoth Reconciled 75 
 
 baker's oven, so, beneath the unappreciated luxury of 
 many a Parisian household lie intolerable anxieties and 
 exorbitant toil. 
 
 While Castanier was enduring the torture of the 
 strain, and his thoughts were full of the deed that 
 should change his whole life, Aquilina was lying 
 luxuriously back in a great armchair by the fireside, 
 beguiling the time by chatting with her waiting-maid. 
 As frequently happens in such cases, the maid had 
 become the mistress's confidante, Jenny having first 
 assured herself that her mistress's ascendency over 
 Castanier was complete. 
 
 * What are we to do this evening ? Léon seems 
 determined to come,' Mme. de la Garde was saying, as 
 she read a passionate epistle indited upon a faint grey 
 notepaper. 
 
 * Here is the master ! ' said Jenny. 
 
 Castanier came in. Aquilina, nowise disconcerted, 
 crumpled up the letter, took it with the tongs, and held 
 it in the flames. 
 
 * So that is what you do with your love-letters, is it ? ' 
 asked Castanier. 
 
 ' Oh goodness, yes,' said Aquilina ; * is it not the best 
 way of keeping them safe ? Besides, fire should go to 
 the fire, as water makes for the river.' 
 
 'You are talking as if it were a real love-letter, 
 Naqui ' 
 
 *■ Well, am I not handsome enough to receive them ? ' 
 she said, holding up her forehead for a kiss. There was 
 a carelessness in her manner that would have told any 
 man less blind than Castanier that it was only a piece of 
 conjugal duty, as it were, to give this joy to the cashier ; 
 but use and wont had brought Castanier to the point 
 where clear-sightedness is no longer possible for love. 
 
 * I have taken a box at the Gymnase this evening,' he 
 said i *■ let us have dinner early, and then we need not 
 dine in a hurry.' 
 
76 Melmoth Reconciled 
 
 * Go and take Jenny. I am tired of plays. I do not 
 know what is the matter with me this evening ; I would 
 rather stay here by the fire.' 
 
 'Come, all the same though, Naqui ; I shall not be 
 here to bore you much longer. Yes, Quiqui, I am 
 going to start to-night, and it will be some time before I 
 come back again. I am leaving everything in your 
 charge. Will you keep your heart for me too ? ' 
 
 ' Neither my heart nor anything else,' she said ; ' but 
 when you come back again, Naqui will still be Naqui for 
 you.' 
 
 'Well, this is frankness. So you would not follow 
 me?' 
 
 'No.' 
 
 'Why not?' 
 
 'Eh ! why, how can I leave the lover who writes me 
 such sweet little notes ? ' she asked, pointing to the 
 blackened scrap of paper with a mocking smile. 
 
 ' Is there any truth in it ? ' asked Castanier. * Have 
 you really a lover ? ' 
 
 ' Really ! ' cried Aquilina ; ' and have you never given 
 it a serious thought, dear ? To begin with, you are fifty 
 years old. Then you have just the sort of face to put 
 on a fruit stall ; if the woman tried to sell you for a 
 pumpkin, no one would contradict her. You pufF and 
 blow like a seal when you come upstairs ; your paunch 
 rises and falls like the diamond on a woman's forehead ! 
 It is pretty plain that you served in the dragoons ; you 
 are a very ugly-looking old man. Fiddle-de-dee. If 
 you have any mind to keep my respect, I recommend 
 you not to add imbecility to these qualities by imagining 
 that such a girl as I am will be content with your 
 asthmatic love, and not look for youth and good looks 
 and pleasure by way of a variety ' 
 
 * Aquilina ! you are laughing, of course ? ' 
 
 ' Oh, very well ; and are you not laughing too ? Do 
 you take me for a fool, telling me that you are going 
 
Melmoth Reconciled 77 
 
 away ? ** I am going to start to-night ! " she said, 
 mimicking his tones. Stuff and nonsense ! Would you 
 talk like that if you were really going away from your 
 Naqui ? You would cry, like the booby that you 
 are ! ' 
 
 * After all, if I go, will you follow ? ' he asked. 
 
 * Tell me first whether this journey of yours is a bad 
 joke or not.' 
 
 * Yes, seriously, I am going.' 
 
 ' Well, then, seriously, I shall stay. A pleasant journey 
 to you, my boy ! I will wait till you come back. I 
 would sooner take leave of life than take leave of my 
 dear, cosy Paris ' 
 
 ' Will you not come to Italy, to Naples, and lead a 
 pleasant life there — a delicious, luxurious life, with this 
 stout old fogey of yours, who puffs and blows like a 
 seal ? ' 
 
 'No.' 
 
 ' Ungrateful girl ! ' 
 
 ^ Ungrateful ? ' she cried, rising to her feet. * I might 
 leave this house this moment and take nothing out of it 
 but myself. I shall have given you all the treasures a 
 young girl can give, and something that not every drop 
 in your veins and mine can ever give me back. If, by 
 any means whatever, by selling my hopes of eternity, 
 for instance, I could recover my past self, body as soul 
 (for I have, perhaps, redeemed my soul), and be pure as 
 a lily for my lover, I would not hesitate a moment ! 
 What sort of devotion has rewarded mine ? You have 
 housed and ffed me, just as you give a dog food and a 
 kennel because he is a protection to the house, and he 
 may take kicks when we are out of humour, and lick 
 our hands as soon as we are pleased to call to him. And 
 vv^hich of us two will have been the more generous ? ' 
 
 * Oh ! dear child, do you not see that I am joking ? ' 
 returned Castanier. ' I am going on a short journey ; I 
 shall not be away for very long. But come with me to 
 
7 8 Melmoth Reconciled 
 
 the Gymnase ; I shall start just before midnight, after I 
 have had time to say good-bye to you.' 
 
 * Poor pet ! so you are really going, are you ? ' she 
 said. She put her arms round his neck, and drew down 
 his head against her bodice. 
 
 * You are smothering me ! ' cried Castanier, with his 
 face buried in Aquilina's breast. That damsel turned to 
 say in Jenny's ear, ' Go to Léon, and tell him not to 
 come till one o'clock. If you do not find him, and he 
 comes here during the leave-taking, keep him in your 
 room. — Well,' she went on, setting free Castanier, and 
 giving a tweak to the tip of his nose, * never mind, 
 handsomest of seals that you are. I will go to the 
 theatre with you this evening. But all in good time j 
 let us have dinner ! There is a nice little dinner for you 
 — just what you like.' 
 
 * It is very hard to part from such a woman as you ! ' 
 exclaimed Castanier. 
 
 ' Very well then, why do you go ? ' asked she. 
 
 ' Ah ! why ? why ? If I were to begin to explain the 
 reasons why, I must tell you things that would prove to 
 you that I love you almost to madness. Ah ! if you 
 have sacrificed your honour for me, I have sold mine for 
 you ; we are quits. Is that love ? ' 
 
 * What is all this about ? ' said she. * Come, now, 
 promise me that if I had a lover you would still love me 
 as a father ; that would be love ! Come, now, promise 
 it at once, and give us your fist upon it.' 
 
 ' I should kill you,' and Castanier smiled as he spoke. 
 
 They sat down to the dinner table, and went thence 
 to the Gymnase. When the first part of the perform- 
 ance was over, it occurred to Castanier to show himself 
 to some of his acquaintances in the house, so as to turn 
 away any suspicion of his departure. He left Mme. de 
 la Garde in the corner box where she was seated, 
 according to her modest wont, and went to walk up 
 and down in the lobby. He had not gone many paces 
 
Melmoth Reconciled 79 
 
 before he saw the Englishman, and with a sudden return 
 of the sickening sensation of heat that once before had 
 vibrated through him, and of the terror that he had felt 
 already, he stood face to face with Melmoth. 
 
 * Forger ! ' 
 
 At the word, Castanier glanced round at the people 
 who were moving about them. He fancied that he could 
 see astonishment and curiosity in their eyes, and wishing 
 to be rid of this Englishman at once, he raised his hand 
 to strike him — and felt his arm paralysed by some in- 
 visible power that sapped his strength and nailed him to 
 the spot. He allowed the stranger to take him by the 
 arm, and they walked together to the green-room like 
 two friends. 
 
 * Who is strong enough to resist me ? ' said the English- 
 man, addressing him. * Do you not know that everything 
 here on earth must obey me, that it is in my power to 
 do everything. I read men's thoughts, I see the future, 
 and I know the past. I am here, and I can be elsewhere 
 also. Time and space and distance are nothing to me. 
 The whole world is at my beck and call. I have the power 
 of continual enjoyment and of giving joy. I can see 
 through walls, discover hidden treasures, and fill my hands 
 with them. Palaces arise at my nod, and my architect 
 makes no mistakes. I can make all lands break forth 
 into blossom, heap up their gold and precious stones, and 
 surround myself with fair women and ever new faces ; 
 everything is yielded up to my will. I could gamble on 
 the Stock Exchange, and my speculations would be 
 infallible j but a man who can find the hoards that 
 misers have hidden in the earth need not trouble himself 
 about stocks. Feel the strength of the hand that grasps 
 you ; poor wretch, doomed to shame ! Try to bend the 
 arm of iron ! try to soften the adamantine heart ! Fly 
 from me if you dare ! You would hear my voice in the 
 depths of the caves that lie under the Seine ; you might 
 hide in the Catacombs, but would you not see me there? 
 
8o Melmoth Reconciled 
 
 My voice could be heard through the sound of the 
 thunder, my eyes shine as brightly as the sun, for I am 
 the peer of Lucifer ! ' 
 
 Castanier heard the terrible words, and felt no protest 
 nor contradiction within himself. He walked side by 
 side with the Englishman, and had no power to leave 
 him. 
 
 'You are mine ; you have just committed a crime. I 
 have found at last the mate whom I have sought. Have 
 you a mind to learn your destiny ? Aha ! you came 
 here to see a play, and you shall see a play — nay, two. 
 Come. Present me to Mme. de la Garde as one 
 of your best friends. Am I not your last hope of 
 escape ? ' 
 
 Castanier, followed by the stranger, returned to his 
 box ; and in accordance with the order he had just 
 received, he hastened to introduce Melmoth to Mme. de 
 la Garde. Aquilina seemed to be not in the least sur- 
 prised. The Englishman declined to take a seat in front, 
 and Castanier was once more beside his mistress ; the 
 man's slightest wish must be obeyed. The last piece 
 was about to begin, for, at that time, small theatres only 
 gave three pieces. One of the actors had made the 
 Gymnase the fashion, and that evening Perlet (the 
 actor in question) was to play in a vaudeville called 
 the Le Comédien (V Etampes^ in which he filled four 
 different parts.' 
 
 When the curtain rose, the stranger stretched out his 
 hand over the crowded house. Castanier's cry of terror 
 died away, for the walls of his throat seemed glued 
 together as Melmoth pointed to the stage, and the 
 cashier knew that the play had been changed at the 
 Englishman's desire. 
 
 He saw the strong-room at the bank ; he saw the Baron 
 de Nucingen in conference with a police-officer from 
 the Prefecture, who was informing him of Castanier's 
 conduct, explaining that the cashier had absconded with 
 
Melmoth Reconciled 8i 
 
 money taken from the safe, giving the history of the 
 forged signature. The information was put in writing ; 
 the document signed and duly despatched to the Public 
 Prosecutor. 
 
 ' Are we in time, do you think ? ' asked Nucingen. 
 
 * Yes,' said the agent of police j ' he is at the Gymnase, 
 and has no suspicion of anything.' 
 
 Castanier fidgeted on his chair, and made as if he would 
 leave the theatre, but Melmoth's hand lay on his shoulder, 
 and he was obliged to sit and watch ; the hideous power 
 of the man produced an effect Hke that of nightmare, and 
 he could not move a limb. Nay, the man himself was the 
 nightmare ; his presence weighed heavily on his victim 
 like a poisoned atmosphere. When the wretched cashier 
 turned to implore the Englishman's mercy, he met those 
 blazing eyes that discharged electric currents, which 
 pierced through him and transfixed him like darts of 
 steel. 
 
 ' What have I done to you ? ' he said, in his prostrate 
 helplessness, and he breathed hard like a stag at the 
 water's edge. ' What do you want of me ? ' 
 
 * Look ! ' cried Melmoth. 
 
 Castanier looked at the stage. The scene had been 
 changed. The play seemed to be over, and Castanier 
 beheld himself stepping from the carriage with Aquilina; 
 but as he entered the courtyard of the house in the Rue 
 Richer, the scene again was suddenly changed, and he 
 saw his own house. Jenny was chatting by the fire in 
 her mistress's room with a subaltern officer of a line 
 regiment then stationed at Paris. 
 
 ' He is going, is he ? ' said the sergeant, who seemed 
 to belong to a family in easy circumstances ; * I can be 
 happy at my ease ! I love Aquilina too well to allow 
 her to belong to that old toad ! I, myself, am going to 
 marry Mme. de la Garde ! ' cried the sergeanr. 
 
 * Old toad ! ' Castanier murmured piteously. 
 
 ' Here come the master and mistress ; hide yourself ! 
 
 F 
 
82 Mel moth Reconciled 
 
 Stay, get in here, Monsieur Léon,' said Jenny. 'The 
 master won't stay here for very long.' 
 
 Castanier watched the sergeant hide himself among 
 Aquilina's gowns in her dressing-room. Almost im- 
 mediately he himself appeared upon the scene, and took 
 leave of his mistress, who made fun of him in ' asides ' to 
 Jenny, while she uttered the sweetest and tenderest words 
 in his ears. She wept with one side of her face, and 
 laughed with the other. The audience called for an 
 encore. 
 
 ' Accursed creature ! ' cried Castanier from his box. 
 
 Aquilina was laughing till the tears came into her eyes. 
 
 ' Goodness ! ' she cried, ' how funny Perlet is as the 
 Englishwoman ! . . . Why don't you laugh ? Every 
 one else in the house is laughing. Laugh, dear ! ' she 
 said to Castanier. 
 
 Melmoth burst out laughing, and the unhappy cashier 
 shuddered. The Englishman's laughter wrung his heart 
 and tortured his brain ; it was as if a surgeon had bored 
 his skull with a red-hot iron. 
 
 'Laughing! are they laughing!' stammered Castanier. 
 
 He did not see the prim English lady whom Perlet 
 was acting with such ludicrous effect, nor hear the 
 English-French that had filled the house with roars of 
 laughter ; instead of all this, he beheld himself hurrying 
 from the Rue Richer, hailing a cab on the Boulevard, 
 bargaining with the man to take him to Versailles. 
 Then once more the scene changed. He recognised the 
 sorry inn at the corner of the Rue de l'Orangerie and the 
 Rue des Récollets, which was kept by his old quarter- 
 master. It was two o'clock in the morning, the most 
 perfect stillness prevailed, no one was there to watch 
 his movements. The post-horses were put into the 
 carriage (it came from a house in the Avenue de Paris 
 in which an Englishman lived, and had been ordered 
 in the foreigner's name to avoid raising suspicion). 
 Castanier saw that he had his bills and his passports, 
 
Melmoth Reconciled 83 
 
 stepped into the carriage, and set out. But at the 
 barrier he saw two gendarmes lying in wait for the 
 carriage. A cry of horror burst from him, but Mel- 
 moth gave him a glance, and again the sound died in 
 his throat. 
 
 'Keep your eyes on the stage, and be quiet !* said the 
 Englishman. 
 
 In another moment Castanier saw himself flung into 
 prison at the Conciergerie ; and in the fifth act of the 
 drama, entitled The Cashier^ he saw himself, in three 
 months'" time, condemned to twenty years of penal 
 servitude. Again a cry broke from him. He was ex- 
 posed upon the Place du Palais-de-Justice, and the execu- 
 tioner branded him with a red-hot iron. Then came the 
 last scene of all ; among some sixty convicts in the prison 
 yard of the Bicètre, he was awaiting his turn to have the 
 irons riveted on his limbs. 
 
 * Dear me ! I cannot laugh any more ! , . .' said 
 Aquilina. ' You are very solemn, dear boy ; what can 
 be the matter ? The gentleman has gone.' 
 
 'A word with you, Castanier,' said Melmoth when 
 the piece was at an end, and the attendant was fastening 
 Mme. de la Garde's cloak. 
 
 The corridor was crowded, and escape impossible. 
 
 ' Very well, what is it ? ' 
 
 *No human power can hinder you from taking 
 Aquilina home, and going next to Versailles, there, to 
 be arrested.' ' 
 
 'How so?» 
 
 ' Because you are in a hand that will never relax its 
 grasp,' returned the Englishman. 
 
 Castanier longed for the power to utter some word 
 that should blot him out from among living men and 
 hide him in the lowest depths of hell. 
 
 * Suppose that the Devil were to make a bid for your 
 soul, would you not give it to him now in exchange for 
 the power of God ? One single word, and those five 
 
84- Melmoth Reconciled 
 
 hundred thousand francs shall be back in the Baron de 
 Nucingen's safe ; then you can tear up your letter of 
 credit, and all traces of your crime will be obliterated. 
 Moreover, you would have gold in torrents. You hardly 
 believe in anything perhaps ? Well, if all this comes to 
 pass, you will believe at least in the JDevil.' 
 
 ' If it were only possible ! ' said Castanier joyfully. 
 
 * The man who can do it all gives you his word that 
 it is possible,' answered the Englishman. 
 
 Melmoth, Castanier, and Mme. de la Garde were 
 standing out in the Boulevard when Melmoth raised his 
 arm. A drizzling rain was falling, the streets were 
 muddy, the air was close, there was thick darkness over- 
 head ; but in a moment, as the arm was outstretched, 
 Paris was filled with sunlight j it was high noon on a 
 bright July day. The trees were covered with leaves ; 
 a double stream of joyous holiday makers strolled beneath 
 them. Sellers of liquorice water shouted their cool drinks. 
 Splendid carriages rolled past along the streets. A cry 
 of terror broke from the cashier, and at that cry rain and 
 darkness once more settled down uj)on the Boulevard. 
 
 Mme. de la Garde had stepped into the carriage. ' Do 
 be quick, dear ! ' she cried ; * either come in or stay out. 
 Really, you are as dull as ditch-water this evening ' 
 
 * What must I do ? ' Castanier asked of Melmoth. 
 
 * Would you like to take my place ? ' inquired the 
 Englishman. 
 
 « Yes.' 
 
 * Very well, then ; I will be at your house in a few 
 moments.' 
 
 * By the by, Castanier, you are rather ofF your balance,* 
 Aquilina remarked. ' There is some mischief brewing ; 
 you were quite melancholy and thoughtful all through the 
 play. Do you want anything that I can give you, dear ? 
 Tell me.' 
 
 * I am waiting till we are at home to know whether 
 you love me.' 
 
Melmoth Reconciled 85 
 
 *You need not wait till then,' she said, throwing her 
 arms round his neck. ' There ! ' she said, as she embraced 
 him, passionately to all appearance, and plied him with 
 the coaxing caresses that are part of the business of such 
 a life as hers, like stage action for an actress. 
 
 ' Where is the music ? ' asked Castanier. 
 
 * What next ? Only think of your hearing music 
 now ! ' 
 
 * Heavenly music ! ' he went on. * The sounds seem 
 to come from above.* 
 
 * What ? You have always refused to give me a box at 
 the Italiens because you could not abide music, and are 
 you turning music-mad at this time of day ? Mad — 
 that you are ! The music is inside your own noddle, 
 old addle-pate ! * she went on, as she took his head in 
 her hands and rocked it to and fro on her shoulder. 
 * Tell me now, old man ; isn't it the creaking of the 
 wheels that sings in your ears ? * 
 
 *Just listen, Naqui ! If the angels make music for 
 God Almighty, it must be such music as this that I am 
 drinking in at every pore, rather than hearing. I do 
 not know how to tell you about it j it is as sweet as 
 honey-water ! ' 
 
 * Why, of course, they have music in heaven, for the 
 angels in all the pictures have harps in their hands. He 
 is mad, upon my word ! ' she said to herself, as she saw 
 Castanier's attitude j he looked like an opium-eater in a 
 blissful trance. 
 
 They reached the house. Castanier, absorbed by the 
 thought of all that he had just heard and seen, knew not 
 whether to believe it or no ; he was like a drunken man, 
 and utterly unable to think connectedly. He came to 
 himself in Aquilina's room, whither he had been sup- 
 ported by the united efforts of his mistress, the porter, 
 and Jenny ; for he had fainted as he stepped from the 
 carriage. 
 
 * He will be here directly ! Oh, my friends, my 
 
86 Melmoth Reconciled 
 
 friends ! * he cried, and he flurtg himself despairingly into 
 the depths of a low chair beside the fire. 
 
 Jenny heard the bell as he spoke, and admitted the 
 Englishman. She announced that *a gentleman had 
 come who had made an appointment with the master,' 
 when Melmoth suddenly appeared, and deep silence fol- 
 lowed. He looked at the porter — the porter went ; he 
 looked at Jenny — and Jenny went likewise. 
 
 * Madame,' said Melmoth, turning to Aquilina, * with 
 your permission, we will conclude a piece of urgent 
 business.' 
 
 He took Castanier's hand, and Castanier rose, and the 
 two men went into the drawing-room. There was no 
 light in the room, but Melmoth's eyes lit up the thickest 
 darkness. The gaze of those strange eyes had left 
 Aquilina like one spellbound ; she was helpless, unable 
 to take any thought for her lover ; moreover, she 
 believed him to be safe in Jenny's room, whereas their 
 early return had taken the waiting- woman by surprise, 
 and she had hidden the officer in the dressing-room. It 
 had all happened exactly as in the drama that Melmoth 
 had displayed for his victim. Presently the house-door 
 was slammed violently, and Castanier reappeared. 
 
 * What ails you ? ' cried the horror-struck Aqui- 
 Hna. 
 
 There was a change in the cashier's appearance. A 
 strange pallor overspread his once rubicund countenance ; 
 it wore the peculiarly sinister and stony look of the mys- 
 terious visitor. The sullen glare of his eyes was intoler- 
 able, the fierce light in them seemed to scorch. The 
 man who had looked so good-humoured and good-natured 
 had suddenly grown tyrannical and proud. The courtesan 
 thought that Castanier had grown thinner ; there was a 
 terrible majesty in his brow ; it was as if a dragon 
 breathed forth a malignant influence that weighed upon 
 the others like a close, heavy atmosphere. For a moment 
 Aquilina knew not what to do. 
 
Melmoth Reconciled 87 
 
 * What passed between you and that diabolical-looking 
 man in those few minutes ? * she asked at length. 
 
 ' I have sold my soul to him. I feel it ; I am no 
 longer the same. He has taken my self^ and given me 
 his soul in exchange.' 
 
 * What ? ' 
 
 * You would not understand it at all. . . . Ah ! he 
 was right,' Castanier went on, ' the fiend was right ! I 
 see everything and know all things. — You have been 
 deceiving me ! ' 
 
 Aquilina turned cold with terror. Castanier lighted a 
 candle and went into the dressing-room. The unhappy 
 girl followed him in dazed bewilderment, and great was 
 her astonishment when Castanier drew the dresses that 
 hung there aside and disclosed the sergeant. 
 
 ' Come out, my boy,' said the cashier j and, taking 
 Léon by a button of his overcoat, he drew the officer 
 into his room. 
 
 The Piedmontese, haggard and desperate, had flung her- 
 self into her easy-chair. Castanier seated himself on a sofa 
 by the fire, and left Aquilina's lover in a standing position. 
 
 * You have been in the army,' said Léon ; * I am ready 
 to give you satisfaction.' 
 
 'You are a fool,' said Castanier drily. *I have no 
 occasion to fight. I could kill you by a look if I had 
 any mind to do it. 1 will tell you what it is, youngster ; 
 why should I kill you ? I can see a red line round your 
 neck — the guillotine is waiting for you. Yes, you will 
 end in the Place de Grève. You are the headsman's 
 property ! there is no escape for you. You belong to a 
 vendita of the Carbonari. You are plotting against the 
 Government.' 
 
 'You did not tell me that,' cried the Piedmontese, 
 turning to Léon. 
 
 'So you do not know that the Minister decided this 
 morning to put down your Society ? ' the cashier con- 
 tinued. The Procureur-Général has a list of your names. 
 
88 Melmoth Reconciled 
 
 You have been betrayed. They are busy drawing up the 
 indictment at this moment.' 
 
 * Then was it you who betrayed him ? ' cried Aquilina, 
 and with a hoarse sound in her throat like the growl 
 of a tigress she rose to her feet ; she seemed as if she 
 would tear Castanier in pieces. 
 
 *You know me too well to believe it,' Castanier 
 retorted. Aquilina was benumbed by his coolness. 
 
 * Then how did you know it ? ' she murmured. 
 
 *I did not know it until I went into the drawing- 
 room ; now I know it — now I see and know all things, 
 and can do all things.' 
 
 The sergeant was overcome with amazement. 
 
 * Very well then, save him, save him, dear ! ' cried the 
 girl, flinging herself at Castanier's feet. ' If nothing is 
 impossible to you, save him ! 1 will love you, I will 
 adore you, I will be your slave and not your mistress. I 
 will obey your wildest whims ; you shall do as you will 
 with me. Yes, yes, I will give you more than love ; 
 you shall have a daughter's devotion as well as . . . 
 Rodolphe ! why will you not understand ! After all, 
 however violent my passions may be, I shall be yours 
 for ever ! What should I say to persuade you ? I will 
 invent pleasures . . . I . . . Great heavens ! one moment ! 
 whatever you shall ask of me — to fling myself from the 
 window, for instance — you will need to say but one 
 word, " Léon ! " and I will plunge down into hell. I 
 would bear any torture, any pain of body or soul, any- 
 thing you might inflict upon me ! ' 
 
 Castanier heard her with indifference. For all answer, 
 he indicated Léon to her with a fiendish laugh. 
 *The guillotine is waiting for him,' he repeated. 
 
 * No, no, no ! He shall not leave this house. I will 
 save him ! ' she cried. * Yes ; I will kill any one who 
 lays a finger upon him ! Why will you not save him ? ' 
 she shrieked aloud ; her eyes were blazmg, her hair 
 unbound. * Can you save him i ' 
 
Melmoth Reconciled 89 
 
 * I can do everything.' 
 
 * Why do you not save him ? ' 
 
 * Why ? ' shouted Castanier, and his voice made the 
 ceiling ring. — * Eh ! it is my revenge ! Doing evil is 
 my trade ! ' 
 
 * Die ? ' said Aquilina ; * must he die, my lover ? Is it 
 possible ? ' 
 
 She sprang up and snatched a stiletto from a basket 
 that stood on the chest of drawers and went to Castanier, 
 who began to laugh. 
 
 *You know very well that steel cannot hurt me 
 now ' 
 
 Aquilina's arm suddenly dropped like a snapped harp 
 string, 
 
 *Out with you, my good friend,' said the cashier, 
 turning to the sergeant, 'and go about your business.' 
 
 He held out his hand ; the other felt Castanier's 
 superior power, and could not choose but obey. 
 
 * This house is mine ; I could send for the commissary 
 of police if I chose, and give you up as a man who has 
 hidden himself on my premises, but I would rather let 
 you go ; I am a fiend, I am not a spy.' 
 
 ' I shall follow him ! ' said Aquilina. 
 
 *Then follow him,' returned Castanier. — 'Here, 
 Jenny ' 
 
 Jenny appeared. 
 
 'Tell the porter to hail a cab for them. — Here, 
 Naqui,' said Castanier, drawing a bundle of bank-notes 
 from his pocket ; ' you shall not go away like a pauper 
 from a man who loves you still.' 
 
 He held out three hundred thousand francs. Aquilina 
 took the notes, flung them on the floor, spat on them, 
 and trampled upon them in a frenzy of despair. 
 
 ' We will leave this house on foot,' she cried, ' without 
 a farthing of your money. — ^Jenny, stay where you 
 are.' 
 
 * Good evening ! ' answered the cashier, as he gathered 
 
po Mel moth Reconciled 
 
 up the notes again. * I have come back from my 
 journey. — Jenny,' he added, looking at the bewildered 
 waiting-maid, 'you seem to me to be a good sort of 
 girl. You have no mistress now. Come here. This 
 evening you shall have a master.' 
 
 Aquilina, who felt safe nowhere, went at once with 
 the sergeant to the house of one of her friends. But all 
 Leon's movements were suspiciously watched by the 
 police, and after a time he and three of his friends were 
 arrested. The whole story may be found in the news- 
 papers of that day. 
 
 Castanier felt that he had undergone a mental as well 
 as a physical transformation. The Castanier of old no 
 longer existed — the boy, the young Lothario, the 
 soldier who had proved his courage, who had been 
 tricked into a marriage and disillusioned, the cashier, 
 the passionate lover who had committed a crime for 
 Aquilina's sake. His inmost nature had suddenly asserted 
 itself. His brain had expanded, his senses had developed. 
 His thoughts comprehended the whole world ; he saw all 
 the things of earth as if he had been raised to some high 
 pinnacle above the world. 
 
 Until that evening at the play he had loved Aquilina 
 to distraction. Rather than give her up he would have 
 shut his eyes to her infidelities ; and now all that blind 
 passion had passed away as a cloud vanishes in the sun- 
 light. 
 
 Jenny was delighted to succeed to her mistress's 
 position and fortune, and did tl. . cashier's will in all 
 things ; but Castanier, who could read the inmost 
 thoughts of the soul, discovered the real motive under- 
 lying this purely physical devotion. He amused himself 
 with her, however, like a mischievous child who greedily 
 sucks the juice of the cherry and flings away the stone. 
 The next morning at breakfast- time, when she was fullv 
 convinced that she was a lady and the mistress of the 
 
Mel moth Reconciled 91 
 
 house, Castanier uttered one by one the thoughts that 
 filled her mind as she drank her coffee. 
 
 * Do you know what you are thinking, child ? ' he said, 
 smiling. 'I will tell you : " So all that lovely rosewood fur- 
 niture that I coveted so much, and the pretty dresses that I 
 used to try on, are mine now ! All on easy terms that 
 Madame refused, I do not know why. My word ! if 
 I might drive about in a carriage, have jewels and 
 pretty things, a box at the theatre, and put something 
 by ! with me he should lead a life of pleasure fit to 
 kill him if he were not as strong as a Turk ! I never 
 saw such a man ! " — Was not that just what you were 
 thinking,' he went on, and something in his voice made 
 Jenny turn pale. * Well, yes, child ; you could not 
 stand it, and I am sending you away for your own good ; 
 you would perish in the attempt. Come, let us part 
 good friends,' and he coolly dismissed her with a very 
 small sum of money. 
 
 The first use that Castanier had promised himself that 
 he would make of the terrible power bought at the price 
 of his eternal happiness, was the full and complete indul- 
 gence of all his tastes. 
 
 He first put his affairs in order, readily settled his 
 account with M. de Nucingen, who found a worthy 
 German to succeed him, and then determined on a 
 carouse worthy of the palmiest days of the Roman 
 Empire. He plunged into dissipation as recklessly as 
 Belshazzar of old went to that last feast in Babylon. 
 Like Belshazzar, he saw clearly through his revels a 
 gleaming hand that traced his doom in letters of flame, 
 not on the narfow walls of the banqueting-chamber, but 
 over the vast spaces of heaven that the rainbow spans. 
 His feast was not, indeed, an orgy confined within the 
 limits of a banquet, for he squandered all the powers of 
 soul and body in exhausting all the pleasures of earth. 
 The table was in some sort earth itself, the earth that 
 trembled beneath his feet. His was the last festival of 
 
99 Melmoth Reconciled 
 
 the reckless spendthrift who has thrown all prudence to 
 the winds. The devil had given him the key of the 
 storehouse of human pleasures j he had filled and refilled 
 his hands, and he was fast nearing the bottom. In a 
 moment he had felt all that that enormous power could 
 accomplish ; in a moment he had exercised it, proved it, 
 wearied of it. What had hitherto been the sum of 
 human desires became as nothing. So often it happens 
 that with possession the vast poetry of desire must end, 
 and the thing possessed is seldom the thing that we 
 dreamed of. 
 
 Beneath Melmoth's omnipotence lurked this tragical 
 anti-climax of so many a passion, and now the inanity of 
 human nature was revealed to his successor, to whom 
 infinite power brought Nothingness as a dowry. 
 
 To come to a clear understanding of Castanier's 
 strange position, it must be borne in mind how sud- 
 denly these revolutions of thought and feeling had been 
 wrought ; how quickly they had succeeded each other j 
 and of these things it is hard to give any idea to those 
 who have never broken the prison bonds of time, and 
 space, and distance. His relation to the world without 
 had been entirely changed with the expansion of his 
 faculties. 
 
 Like Melmoth himself, Castanier could travel in a 
 few moments over the fertile plains of India, could soar 
 on the wings of demons above African desert spaces, or 
 skim the surface of the seas. The same insight that 
 could read the inmost thoughts of others, could apprehend 
 at a glance the nature of any material object, just as he 
 caught as it were all flavours at once upon his tongue. 
 He took his pleasure like a despot ; a blow of the axe 
 felled the tree that he might eat its fruits. The trans- 
 itions, the alternations that measure joy and pain, and 
 diversify human happiness, no longer existed for him. 
 He had so completely glutted his appetites that pleasure 
 must overpass the limits of pleasure to tickle a palate 
 
Melmoth Reconciled 93 
 
 cloyed with satiety, and suddenly grown fastidious beyond 
 all measure, so that ordinary pleasures became distasteful. 
 Conscious that at will he was the master of all the 
 women that he could desire, knowing that his power 
 was irresistible, he did not care to exercise it ; they were 
 pliant to his unexpressed wishes, to his most extravagant 
 caprices, until he felt a horrible thirst for love, and 
 would have love beyond their power to give. 
 
 The world refused him nothing save faith and prayer, 
 the soothing and consoling love that is not of this 
 world. He was obeyed — it was a horrible position. 
 
 The torrents of pain, and pleasure, and thought that 
 shook his soul and his bodily frame would have over- 
 whelmed the strongest human being ; but in him there 
 was a power of vitality proportioned to the power of the 
 sensations that assailed him. He felt within him a vague 
 immensity of longing that earth could not satisfy. He 
 spent his days on outspread wings, longing to traverse 
 the luminous fields of space to other spheres that he 
 knew afar by intuitive perception, a clear and hopeless 
 knowledge. His soul dried up within him, for he 
 hungered and thirsted after things that can neither be 
 drunk nor eaten, but for which he could not choose but 
 crave. His lips, like Melmoth's, burned with desire ; he 
 panted for the unknown, for he knew all things. 
 
 The mechanism and the scheme of the world 
 was apparent to him, and its working interested 
 him no longer; he did not long disguise the profound 
 scorn that makes of a man of extraordinary powers a 
 sphinx who knows everything and says nothing, and 
 sees all things with an unmoved countenance. He 
 felt not the slightest wish to communicate his know- 
 ledge to other men. He was rich with all the 
 wealth of the world, with one effort he could make the 
 circle of the globe, and riches and power were meaning- 
 less for him. He felt the awful melancholy of omnipo- 
 tence, a melancholy which Satan and God relieve by 
 
94 Melmoth Reconciled 
 
 the exercise of infinite power in mysterious ways known 
 to them alone. Castanier had not, like his Master, the 
 inextinguishable energy of hate and malice ; he felt that 
 he was a devil, but a devil whose time was not yet 
 come, while Satan is a devil through all eternity, and 
 being damned beyond redemption, delights to stir up the 
 world, like a dung heap, with his triple fork and to thwart 
 therein the designs of God. But Castanier, for his mis- 
 fortune, had one hope left. 
 
 If in a moment he could move from one pole to the 
 other as a bird springs restlessly from side to side in its 
 cage, when, like the bird, he had crossed his prison, he 
 saw the vast immensity of space beyond it. That vision 
 of the Infinite left him for ever unable to see humanity 
 and its affairs as other men saw them. The insensate 
 fools who long for the power of the Devil gauge its 
 desirability from a human standpoint ; they do not see 
 that with the Devil's power they will likewise assume his 
 thoughts, and that they will be doomed to remain as 
 men among creatures who will no longer understand 
 them. The Nero unknown to history who dreams of 
 setting Paris on fire for his private entertainment, like an 
 exhibition of a burning house on the boards of a theatre, 
 does not suspect that if he had that power, Paris would 
 become for him as little interesting as an ant-heap by 
 the roadside to a hurrying passer-by. The circle of the 
 sciences was for Castanier something like a logogriph 
 for a man who does not know the key to it. Kings and 
 Governments were despicable in his eyes. His great 
 debauch had been in some sort a deplorable farewell 
 to his life as a man. The earth had grown too 
 narrow for him, for the infernal gifts laid bare for him 
 the secrets of creation — he saw the cause and foresaw its 
 end. He was shut out from all that men call ' heaven ' 
 in all languages under the sun j he could no longer think 
 of heaven. 
 
 Then he came to understand the look on his pre- 
 
Melmoth Reconciled 95 
 
 decessor's face and the drying up of the life within ; then 
 he knew all that was meant by the baffled hope that 
 gleamed in Melmoth's eyes ; he, too, knew the thirst 
 that burned those red lips, and the agony of a continual 
 struggle between two natures grown to giant size. 
 Even yet he might be an angel, and he knew himself to 
 be a fiend. His was the fate of a sweet and gentle 
 creature that a wizard's malice has imprisoned in a mis- 
 shapen form, entrapping it by a pact, so that another's 
 will must set it free from its detested envelope. 
 
 As a deception only increases the ardour with which a 
 man of really great nature explores the infinite of senti- 
 ment in a woman's heart, so Castanier awoke to find 
 that one idea lay like a weight upon his soul, an idea 
 which was perhaps the key to loftier spheres. The very 
 fact that he had bartered away his eternal happiness led 
 him to dwell in thought upon the future of those who 
 pray and believe. On the morrow of his debauch, when 
 he entered into the sober possession of his power, this 
 idea made him feel himself a prisoner ; he knew the 
 burden of the woe that poets, and prophets, and 
 great oracles of faith have set forth for us in such 
 mighty words ; he felt the point of the Flaming Sword 
 plunged into his side, and hurried in search of Melmoth. 
 What had become of his predecessor ? 
 
 The Englishman was living in a mansion in the Rue 
 Pérou, near Saint-Sulpice — a glooaiy, dark, damp, and 
 cold abode. The Rue Férou itself is one of the most 
 dismal streets in Paris ; it has a north aspect like all the 
 streets that lie at light angles to the left bank of the 
 Seine, and the houses are in keeping with the site. As 
 Castanier stood on the threshold he found that the door 
 itself, like the vaulted roof, was hung with black i rows 
 of lighted tapers shone brilliantly as though some king 
 were lying in state ; and a priest stood on either side of 
 a catafalque that had been raised there. 
 
 * Ther*" is no need to ask why you have come, sir,' the 
 
g6 Melmoth Reconciled 
 
 old hall porter said to Castanier j * you are so like our poor 
 dear master that is gone. But if you are his brother, you 
 have come too late to bid him good-bye. The good gentle- 
 man died the night before last.' 
 
 * How did he die ? ' Castanier asked of one of the 
 priests. 
 
 ' Set your mind at rest,' said an old priest ; he partly 
 raised as he spoke the black pall that covered the catafalque. 
 
 Castanier, looking at him, saw one of those faces that 
 faith has made sublime ; the soul seemed to shine forth 
 from every line of it, bringing light and warmth for 
 other men, kindled by the unfailing charity within. 
 This was Sir John Melmoth's confessor. 
 
 * Your brother made an end that men may envy, and 
 that must rejoice the angels. Do you know what joy 
 there is in heaven over a sinner that repents ? His tears 
 of penitence, excited by grace, flowed without ceasing j 
 death alone checked them. The Holy Spirit dwelt in 
 him. His burning words, full of lively faith, were 
 worthy of the Prophet-King. If, in the course of my 
 life, I have never heard a more dreadful confession than 
 from the lips of this Irish gentleman, I have likewise 
 never heard such fervent and passionate prayers. How- 
 ever great the measures of his sins may have been, his 
 repentance has filled the abyss to overflowing. The 
 hand of God was visibly stretched out above him, for he 
 was completely changed, there was such heavenly 
 beauty in his face. The hard eyes were softened by 
 tears ; the resonant voice that struck terror into those 
 who heard it took the tender and compassionate tones of 
 those who themselves have passed through deep humilia- 
 tion. He so edified those who heard his words, that 
 some who had felt drawn to see the spectacle of a 
 Christian's death fell on their knees as he spoke of 
 heavenly things, and of the infinite glory of God, and gave 
 thanks and praise to Him. If he is leaving no worldly 
 wealth to his family, no family can possess a greater 
 
Melmoth Reconciled 97 
 
 blessing than this that he surely gained for them, a soul 
 among the blessed, who will watch over you all and 
 direct you in the path to heaven.' 
 
 These words made such a vivid impression upon 
 Castanier that he instantly hurried from the house 
 to the Church of Saint-Sulpice, obeying what might be 
 called a decree of fate. Melmoth's repentance had 
 stupefied him. 
 
 At that time, on certain mornings in the week, a 
 preacher, famed for his eloquence, was wont to hold con- 
 ferences, in the course of which he demonstrated the 
 truths of the Catholic faith for the youth of a genera- 
 tion proclaimed to be indifferent in matters of belief by 
 another voice no less eloquent than his own. The con- 
 ference had been put off to a later hour on account of 
 Melmoth's funeral, so Castanier arrived just as the great 
 preacher was epitomising the proofs of a future existence 
 of happiness with all the charm of eloquence and force of 
 expression which have made him famous. The seeds of 
 divine doctrine fell into a soil prepared for them in the 
 old dragoon, into whom the Devil had glided. Indeed, 
 if there is a phenomenon well attested by experience, is 
 it not the spiritual phenomenon commonly called 'the 
 faith of the peasant ' ? The strength of belief varies 
 inversely with the amount of use that a man has made 
 of his reasoning faculties. Simple people and soldiers 
 belong to the unreasoning class. Those who have 
 marched through life beneath the banner of instinct are 
 far more ready to receive the light than minds and 
 hearts overwearied with the world's sophistries. 
 
 Castanier had the southern temperament ; he had 
 joined the army as a lad of sixteen, and had followed the 
 French flag till he was nearly forty years old. As a 
 common trooper, he had fought day and night, and day 
 after day, and, as in duty bound, had thought of his 
 horse first, and of himself afterwards. While he served his 
 military apprenticeship, therefore, he had but little leisure 
 
98 Melmoth Reconciled 
 
 in which to reflect on the destiny of man, and when he 
 became an officer he had his men to think of. He had 
 been swept from battlefield to battlefield, but he had 
 never thought of what comes after death. A soldier's 
 life does not demand much thinking. Those who 
 cannot understand the lofty political ends involved and the 
 interests of nation and nation ; who cannot grasp poHtical 
 schemes as well as plans of campaign, and combine the 
 science of the tactician with that of the administrator, 
 are bound to live in a state of ignorance ; the most boorish 
 peasant in the most backward district in France is scarcely 
 in a worse case. Such men as these bear the brunt of 
 war, yield passive obedience to the brain that directs 
 them, and strike down the men opposed to them as the 
 woodcutter fells timber in the forest. Violent physical 
 exertion is succeeded by times of inertia, when they 
 repair the waste. They fight and drink, fight and eat, 
 fight and sleep, that they may the better deal hard 
 blows ; the powers of the mind are not greatly exercised 
 in this turbulent round of existence, and the character is 
 as simple as heretofore. 
 
 When the men who have shown such energy on the 
 battlefield return to ordinary civilisation, most of those 
 who have not risen to high rank seem to have acquired 
 no ideas, and to have no aptitude, no capacity, for grasping 
 new ideas. .To the utter amazement of a younger 
 generation, those who made our armies so glorious and 
 so terrible are as simple as children, and as slow-witted 
 as a clerk at his worst, and the captain of a thunder- 
 ing squadron is scarcely fit to keep a merchant's 
 day-book. Old soldiers of this stamp, therefore, being 
 innocent of any attempt to use their reasoning faculties, 
 act upon their strongest impulses. Castanier's crime 
 was one of those matters that raise so many questions, 
 that, in order to debate about it, a moralist might call for 
 its ' discussion by clauses,' to make use of a parliamentary 
 expression. 
 
Melmoth Reconciled 99 
 
 Passion had counselled the crime ; the cruelly irresistible 
 power of feminine witchery had driven him to commit 
 it ; no man can say of himself, * I will never do that,' 
 when a siren joins in the combat and throws her spells 
 over him. 
 
 So the word of life fell upon a conscience newly 
 awakened to the truths of religion which the French 
 Revolution and a soldier's career had forced Castanier to 
 neglect. The solemn words, ' You will be happy or 
 miserable for all eternity ! ' made but the more terrible 
 impression upon him, because he had exhausted earth and 
 shaken it like a barren tree ; because his desires could 
 effect all things, so that it was enough that any spot in 
 earth or heaven should be forbidden him, and he forth- 
 with thought of nothing else. If it were allowable to 
 compare such great things with social follies, Castanier's 
 position was not unlike that of a banker who, finding 
 that his all-powerful millions cannot obtain for him an 
 entrance into the society of the noblesse, must set 
 his heart upon entering that circle, and all the social 
 privileges that he has already acquired are as nothing in 
 his eyes from the moment when he discovers that a 
 smgle one is lacking. 
 
 Here was a man more powerful than all the kings on 
 earth put together ; a man who, like Satan, could wrestle 
 with God Himself; leaning against one of the pillars 
 in the Church of Saint-Sulpice, weighed down by the 
 feelings and thoughts that oppressed him, and absorbed 
 in the thought of a Future, the same thought that had 
 engulfed Melmoth. 
 
 ' He was very happy, was Melmoth ! ' cried Castanier. 
 * He died in the certain knowledge that he would go to 
 heaven.' 
 
 In a moment the greatest possible change had been 
 wrought in the cashier's ideas. For several days he had 
 been a devil, now he was nothing but a man ; an image 
 of the fallen Adam, of the sacred tradition embodied in 
 
loo Melmoth Reconciled 
 
 all cosmogonies. But while he had thus shrunk to man's 
 he retained a germ of greatness, he had been steeped in 
 the Infinite. The power of hell had revealed the 
 divine power. He thirsted for heaven as he had never 
 thirsted after the pleasures of earth, that are so soon 
 exhausted. The enjoyments which the fiend promises 
 are but the enjoyments of earth on a larger scale, but to 
 the joys of heaven there is no limit. He believed in 
 God, and the spell that gave him the treasures of the 
 world was as nothing to him now ; the treasures them- 
 selves seemed to him as contemptible as pebbles to an 
 admirer of diamonds ; they were but gewgaws compared 
 with the eternal glories of the other life. A curse lay, he 
 thought, on all things that came to him from this source. 
 He sounded dark depths of painful thought as he listened 
 to the service performed for Melmoth. The Dies ira 
 filled him with awe ; he felt all the grandeur of that cry 
 of a repentant soul trembling before the Throne of God. 
 The Holy Spirit, like a devouring flame, passed through 
 him as fire consumes straw. 
 
 The tears were falling from his eyes when — ' Are you 
 a relation of the dead ? ' the beadle asked him. 
 
 * I am his heir,' Castanier answered. 
 
 * Give something for the expenses of the services ! * 
 cried the man. 
 
 * No,* said the cashier. (The Devil's money should not 
 go to the Church.) 
 
 ' For the poor ! ' 
 
 *No.' 
 
 *For repairing the Church !' 
 
 *No.' 
 
 *The Lady Chapel!' 
 
 'No.' 
 
 * For the schools ! ' 
 <No.' 
 
 Castanier went, not caring to expose himself to the 
 sour looks that the irritated functionaries gave him. 
 
Melmoth Reconciled loi 
 
 Outside, in the street, he looked up at the Church of 
 Saint-Sulpice. ' What made people build the giant 
 cathedrals I have seen in every country ? ' he asked him- 
 self. ' The feeling shared so widely throughout all time 
 must surely be based upon something.' 
 
 ' Something ! Do you call God something ? ' cried his 
 conscience. 'God ! God ! God ! . . .' 
 
 The word was echoed and re-echoed by an inner 
 voice, till it overwhelmed him ; but his feeling of 
 terror subsided as he heard sweet distant sounds of 
 music that he had caught faintly before. They were 
 singing in the church, he thought, and his eyes 
 scanned the great doorway. But as he listened more 
 closely, the sounds poured upon him from all sides; he 
 looked round the square, but there was no sign of any 
 musicians. The melody brought visions of a distant 
 heaven and far-off gleams of hope ; but it also quickened 
 the remorse that had set the lost soul in a ferment. He 
 went on his way through Paris, walking as men walk 
 who are crushed beneath the burden of their sorrow, 
 seeing everything with unseeing eyes, loitering like an 
 idler, stopping without cause, muttering to himself, care- 
 less of the traffic, making no effort to avoid a blow from 
 a plank of timber. 
 
 Imperceptibly repentance brought him under the in- 
 fluence of the divine grace that soothes while it bruises 
 the heart so terribly. His face came to wear a look of 
 Melmoth, something great, with a trace of madness in 
 the greatness. A look of dull and hopeless distress, mingled 
 with the excited eagerness of hope, and, beneath it all, a 
 gnawing sense of loathing for all that the world can give. 
 The humblest of prayers lurked in the eyes that saw with 
 such dreadful clearness. His power was the measure of 
 his anguish. His body was bowed down by the fearful 
 storm that shook his soul, as the tall pines bend before 
 the blast. Like his predecessor, he could not refuse to 
 bear the burden of life j he was afraid to die while he 
 
I02 Melmoth Reconciled 
 
 bore the yoke of hell. The torment grew intoler- 
 able. 
 
 At last, one morning, he bethought himself how that 
 Melmoth (now among the blessed) had made the proposal 
 of an exchange, and how that he had accepted it^ others, 
 doubtless, would follow his example ; for in an age 
 proclaimed, by the inheritors of the eloquence of the 
 Fathers of the Church, to be fatally indifferent to 
 religion, it should be easy to find a man who would 
 accept the conditions of the contract in order to prove 
 its advantages. 
 
 * There is one place where you can learn what kings 
 will fetch in the market ; where nations are weighed in 
 the balance and systems appraised; where the value of a 
 government is stated in terms of the five-franc piece; 
 where ideas and beliefs have their price, and everything 
 is discounted; where God Himself, in a manner, borrows 
 on the security of His revenue of souls, for the Pope has 
 a running account there. Is it not there that I should 
 go to traffick in souls ? ' 
 
 Castanier went quite joyously on 'Change, thinking 
 that it would be as easy to buy a soul as to invest money 
 in the Funds. Any ordinary person would have feared 
 ridicule, but Castanier knew by experience that a des- 
 perate man takes everything seriously. A prisoner lying 
 under sentence of death would listen to the madman who 
 should tell him that by pronouncing some gibberish he 
 could escape through the keyhole ; for suffering is credu- 
 lous, and clings to an idea until it fails, as the swimmer 
 borne along by the current clings to the branch that 
 snaps in his hand. 
 
 Towards four o'clock that afternoon Castanier appeared 
 among the little knots of men who were transacting 
 private business after 'Change. He was personally known 
 to some of the brokers; and while affecting to be in search 
 of an acquaintance, he managed to pick up the current 
 gossip and rumours of failure. 
 
Melmoth Reconciled 103 
 
 * Catch me negotiating bills for Claparon & Co., my 
 Doy. The bank collector went round to return their 
 acceptances to them this morning,' said a fat banker in 
 his outspoken way. * If you have any of their paper, 
 look out.' 
 
 Claparon was in the building, in deep consultation with 
 a man well known for the ruinous rate at which he lent 
 money. Castanier went forthwith in search of the said 
 Claparon, a merchant who had a reputation for taking 
 heavy risks that meant wealth or utter ruin. The 
 money-lender walked away as Castanier came up. A 
 gesture betrayed the speculator's despair. 
 
 ' Well, Claparon, the Bank wants a hundred thousand 
 francs of you, and it is four o'clock ; the thing is known, 
 and it is too late to arrange your little failure comfortably,' 
 said Castanier. 
 
 'Sir!' 
 
 ' Speak lower,' the cashier went on. * How if I were 
 to propose a piece of business that would bring you in as 
 much money as you require ?' 
 
 ' It would not discharge my liabilities ; every business 
 that I ever heard of wants a little time to simmer in.' 
 
 'I know of something that will set you straight in 
 a moment,' answered Castanier ; ' but first you would 
 have to ' 
 
 ' Do what ? ' 
 
 ' Sell your share of paradise. It is a matter of business 
 like anything else, isn't it ? We all hold shares in the 
 great Speculation of Eternity.' 
 
 ' I tell you this,' said Claparon angrily, * that I am 
 just the man to lend you a slap in the face. When a 
 man is in trouble, it is no time to play silly jokes on him.' 
 
 ' I am talking seriously,' said Castanier, and he drew a 
 bundle of notes from his pocket. 
 
 ' In the first place,' said Claparon, ' I am not going to 
 sell my soul to the Devil for a trifle. I want five hundred 
 thousand francs before I strike ' 
 
Î04 Melmoth Reconciled 
 
 ' Who talks of stinting you ?' asked Castanier, cutting 
 him short. ' You should have more gold than you could 
 stow in the cellars of the Bank of France.' 
 
 He held out a handful of notes. That decided Claparon. 
 
 * Done,' he cried ; ' but how is the bargain to be 
 made ? ' 
 
 ' Let us go over yonder, no one is standing there,' said 
 Castanier, pointing to a corner of the court. 
 
 Claparon and his tempter exchanged a few words, with 
 their faces turned to the wall. None of the onlookers 
 guessed the nature of this by-play, though their curiosity 
 was keenly excited by the strange gestures of the two 
 contracting parties. When Castanier returned, there was 
 a sudden outburst of amazed exclamation. As in the 
 Assembly where the least event immediately attracts 
 attention, all faces were turned to the two men who had 
 caused the sensation, and a shiver passed through all 
 beholders at the change that had taken place in them. 
 
 The men who form the moving crowd that fills the 
 Stock Exchange are soon known to each other by sight. 
 They watch each other like players round a card-table. 
 Some shrewd observers can tell how a man will play 
 and the condition of his exchequer from a survey of 
 his face ; and the Stock Exchange is simply a vast 
 card-table. Every one, therefore, had noticed Claparon 
 and Castanier. . The latter (like the Irishman before him) 
 had been muscular and powerful, his eyes were full of 
 light, his colour high. The dignity and power in his 
 face had struck awe into them all; they wondered how 
 old Castanier had come by it ; and now they beheld 
 Castanier divested of his power, shrunken, wrinkled, 
 aged, and feeble. He had drawn Claparon out of the 
 crowd with the energy of a sick man in a fever fit ; he 
 had looked like an opium-eater during the brief period 
 of excitement that the drug can give; now, on his return, 
 he seemed to be in the condition of utter exhaustion in 
 which the patient dies after the fever departs, or to be 
 
Melmoth Reconciled 105 
 
 suffering from the horrible prostration that follows on 
 excessive indulgence in the delights of narcotics. The 
 infernal power that had upheld him through his debauches 
 had left him, and the body was left unaided and alone to 
 endure the agony of remorse and the heavy burden of 
 sincere repentance. Claparon's troubles every one could 
 guess ; but Claparon reappeared, on the other hand, with 
 sparkling eyes, holding his head high with the pride of 
 Lucifer. The crisis had passed from the one man to the 
 other. 
 
 * Now you can drop off with an easy mind, old man,' 
 said Claparon to Castanier. 
 
 ' For pity's sake, send for a cab and for a priest ; send 
 for the curate of Saint-Sulpice ! ' answered the old dragoon, 
 sinking down upon the kerbstone. 
 
 The words * a priest ' reached the ears of several people, 
 and produced uproarious jeering among the stockbrokers, 
 for faith with these gentlemen means a belief that a scrap 
 of paper called a mortgage represents an estate, and the 
 List of Fundholders is their Bible. 
 
 ' Shall I have time to repent ? ' said Castanier to himself, 
 in a piteous voice, that impressed Claparon. 
 
 A cab carried away the dying man ; the speculator 
 went to the bank at once to meet his bills ; and the 
 momentary sensation produced upon the throng of busi- 
 ness men by the sudden change on the two faces, vanished 
 like the furrow cut by a ship's keel in the sea. News of 
 the greatest importance kept the attention of the world 
 of commerce on the alert ; and when commercial interests 
 are at stake, Moses might appear with his two luminous 
 horns, and his coming would scarcely receive the honours 
 of a pun j the gentlemen whose business it is to write the 
 Market Reports would ignore his existence. 
 
 When Claparon had made his payments, fear seized 
 upon him. There was no mistake about his power. He 
 went on 'Change again, and offered his bargain to other 
 men in embarrassed circumstances. The Devil's bond. 
 
ïo6 Melmoth Reconciled 
 
 * together with the rights, easements, and privileges apper- 
 taining thereunto,' — to use the expression of the notary 
 who succeeded Claparon, changed hands for the sum of 
 seven hundred thousand francs. The notary in his turn 
 parted with the agreement with the Devil for five hundred 
 thousand francs to a building contractor in difficulties, 
 who likewise was rid of it to an iron merchant in con- 
 sideration of a hundred thousand crowns. In fact, by 
 five o'clock people had ceased to believe in the strange 
 contract, and purchasers v/ere lacking for want of con- 
 fidence. 
 
 At half-past five the holder of the bond was a house- 
 painter, who was lounging by the door of the building in 
 the Rue Feydeau, where at that time stockbrokers tem- 
 porarily congregated. The house-painter, simple fellow, 
 could not think what was the matter with him. He 
 ' felt all anyhow ' j so he told his wife when he went 
 home. 
 
 The Rue Feydeau, as idlers about town are aware, is 
 a place of pilgrimage for youths who for lack of a mistress 
 bestow their ardent affection upon the whole sex. On 
 the first floor of the most rigidly respectable domicile 
 therein dwelt one of those exquisite creatures whom it has 
 pleased heaven to endow with the rarest and most sur- 
 passing beauty. As it is impossible that they should all 
 be duchesses or queens (since there are many more pretty 
 women in the world than titles and thrones for them to 
 adorn), they are content to make a stockbroker or a 
 banker happy at a fixed price. To this good-natured 
 beauty, Euphrasia by name, an unbounded ambition had 
 led a notary's clerk to aspire. In short, the second clerk 
 in the office of Maître Crottat, notary, had fallen in love 
 with her, as youth at two-and-twenty can fall in love. 
 The scrivener would have murdered the Pope and 
 run amuck through the whole sacred college to procure 
 the miserable sum of a hundred louis to pay for a shawl 
 which had turned Euphrasia's head, at which price her 
 
Melmoth Reconciled 107 
 
 waiting- woman had promised that Euphrasia should be 
 his, 'I'he infatuated youth walked to and fro under 
 Madam Euphrasia's windows, like the polar bears in their 
 cage at the Jardin des Plantes, with his right hand thrust 
 beneath his waistcoat in the region of the heart, which 
 he was fit to tear from his bosom, but as yet he had only 
 wrenched at the elastic of his braces. 
 
 * What can one do to raise ten thousand francs ? ' he 
 asked himself. 'Shall I make off with the money that I 
 must pay on the registration of that conveyance ? Good 
 heavens ! my loan would not ruin the purchaser, a man 
 with seven millions ! And then next day I would fling 
 myself at his feet and say, " I have taken ten thousand 
 francs belonging to you, sir ; I am twenty-two years of 
 age, and I am in love with Euphrasia — that is my story. 
 My father is rich, he will pay you back ; do not ruin 
 me ! Have not you yourself been twenty-two years old 
 and madly in love ? " But these beggarly landowners 
 have no souls ! He would be quite likely to give me up 
 to the public prosecutor, instead of taking pity upon 
 me. Good God ! if it were only possible to sell your 
 soul to the Devil ! But there is neither a God nor a 
 Devil ; it is all nonsense out of nursery tales and old wives' 
 talk. What shall I do ? ' 
 
 ' If you have a mind to sell your soul to the Devil, sir,' 
 said the house-painter, who had overheard something 
 that the clerk let fall, ' you can have the ten thousand 
 francs.' 
 
 ' And Euphrasia ! ' cried the clerk, as he struck a 
 bargain with the devil that inhabited the house-painter. 
 
 The pact concluded, the frantic clerk went to find the 
 shawl, and mounted Madam Euphrasia's staircase ; and 
 as (literally) the devil was in him, he did not come 
 down for twelve days, drowning the thought of hell 
 and of his privileges in twelve days of love and riot and 
 forgetfulness, for which he had bartered away all his 
 hopes of a paradise to come. 
 
io8 Melmoth Reconciled 
 
 And in this way the secret of the vast power discovered 
 and acquired by the Irishman, the offspring of Mathurin's 
 brain, was lost to mankind ; and the various OrientaHsts, 
 Mystics, and Archaeologists who take an interest in these 
 matters were unable to hand down to posterity the proper 
 method of invoking the Devil, for the following sufficient 
 reasons: — 
 
 On the thirteenth day after these frenzied nuptials 
 the wretched clerk lay on a pallet bed in a garret in his 
 master's house in the Rue Saint-Honore. Shame, the 
 stupid goddess who dares not behold herself, had taken 
 possession of the young man. He had fallen ill; he 
 would nurse himself j misjudged the quantity of a 
 remedy devised by the skill of a practitioner well known 
 on the walls of Paris, and succumbed to the effects of an 
 overdose of mercury. His corpse was as black as a 
 mole's back. A devil had left unmistakable traces of 
 its passage there j could it have been Ashtaroth ? 
 
 ' The estimable youth to whom you refer has been 
 carried away to the planet Mercury,' said the head clerk 
 to a German demonologist who came to investigate the 
 matter at first hand. 
 
 *I am quite prepared to believe it,' answered the 
 Teuton. 
 
 * Oh ! ' 
 
 'Yes, sir,' returned the other. 'The opinion you 
 advance coincides with the very words of Jacob Boehme. 
 In the forty-eighth proposition of The Threefold Life 
 of Man he says that " if God hath brought all things 
 to pass with a let there be, the fiat is the secret 
 matrix which comprehends and apprehends the nature 
 which is formed by the spirit born of Mercury and of 
 God." ' 
 
 ' What do you say, sir ? ' 
 
 The German delivered his quotation afresh. 
 
 ' We do not know it,' said the clerks. 
 
Melmoth Reconciled 109 
 
 * Fiat ? . . : said a clerk. * Fiat lux ! ' 
 
 *You can verify the citation for yourselves,' said the 
 German. ' You w'xW find the passage in the Treatise of 
 the Threefold Life of Man, page 75 ; the edition was 
 published by M. Migneret in 1809. It was translated 
 into French by a philosopher who had a great admiration 
 for the famous shoemaker.' 
 
 ' Oh ! he was a shoemaker, was he ? ' said the head 
 clerk. 
 
 * In Prussia,' said the German. 
 
 * Did he work for the King of Prussia ? ' inquired a 
 Boeotian of a second clerk. 
 
 ' He must have vamped up his prose,' said a third. 
 
 * That man is colossal ! ' cried the fourth, pointing to 
 the Teuton. 
 
 That gentleman, though a demonologist of the first 
 rank, did not know the amount of devilry to be found in 
 a notary's clerk. He went away without the least idea 
 that they were making game of him, and fully under the 
 impression that the young fellows regarded Boehme as a 
 colossal genius. 
 
 'Education is making strides in France,' said he to 
 himself. 
 
 Paris, May 6, 1835. 
 
THE MARANAS 
 
 To Madame la Cofntesse Merlin 
 
 In spite of the discipline enforced by Marshal Suchet \v 
 the division he commanded in the Peninsular War, all 
 his efforts could not restrain an outbreak of license and 
 tumult at the talcing of Taragona. Indeed, according 
 to trustworthy military authorities, the intoxication of 
 victory resulted in something very hke a sack of the 
 town. Pillage was promptly put down by the Marshal ; 
 and as soon as order was restored, a commandant ap- 
 pointed, the military administrators appeared upon the 
 scene, and the town began to wear a nondescript aspect 
 — the organisation was French, but the Spanish popula- 
 tion was left free to follow in petto its own national 
 customs. It would be a task of no little difficulty to 
 determine the exact duration of the pillage, but its cause 
 (like that of most sublunary events) is sufficiently easy 
 to discover. 
 
 In the Marshal's division of the army there was a 
 regiment composed almost entirely of Italians, commanded 
 by a certain Colonel Eugène, a man of extraordinary 
 valour, a second Murat, who, having come to the trade 
 of war too late, had gained no Grand Duchy of Berg, 
 no Kingdom of Naples, nor a ball through the heart 
 at Pizzo. But if he had received no crown, his chances 
 of receiving bullets were admirably good ; and it would 
 have been in no wise astonishing if he had had more than 
 
 one of them. This regiment was made up from the 
 xio 
 
The Maranas m 
 
 wrecks of the Italian Legion, which is in Italy very 
 much what the colonial battalions are in France. 
 Stationed in the isle of Elba, it had provided an honour- 
 able way out of the difficulty experienced by families 
 with regard to the future of unmanageable sons, as well 
 as a career for those great men spoiled in the making, 
 whom society is too ready to brand as mauvais sujets. 
 All of them were men misunderstood, for the most part — 
 men who may become heroes if a woman's smile raises 
 them out of the beaten track of glory j or terrible after 
 an orgy, when some ugly suggestion, dropped by a boon 
 companion, has gained possession of their minds. 
 
 Napoleon had enrolled these men of energy in theSixtt 
 Regiment of the line, hoping to metamorphose them into 
 generals, with due allowance for the gaps to be made in 
 their ranks by bullets ; but the Emperor's estimate of the 
 ravages of death proved more correct than the rest of his 
 calculations. It was often decimated, but its character 
 remained the same ; and the Sixth acquired a name for 
 splendid bravery in the field, and the very worst reputation 
 in private life. 
 
 These Italians had lost their captain during the siege 
 of Taragona. He was the famous Bianchi who laid a 
 wager during the campaign that he would eat a Spanish 
 sentinel's heart — and won his bet. The story of this 
 pleasantry of the camp is told elsewhere in the Scenes de la 
 Vie Parisienne \ therein will be found certain details which 
 corroborate what has been said here concerning the 
 legion. Bianchi, the prince of those fiends incarnate who 
 had earned the double reputation of the regiment, pos- 
 sessed the chivalrous sense of honour which, in the army, 
 covers a multitude of the wildest excesses. In a word, 
 had he lived a few centuries earlier, he would have made a 
 gallant buccaneer. Only a {&^ days before he fell, he 
 had distinguished himself by such conspicuous courage in 
 action, that the Marshal sought to recognise it. Bianchi 
 had refused tjromotion, pension, or a fresh decoration, 
 
112 The Maranas 
 
 and asked as a favour to be allowed to mount the first 
 scaling-ladder at the assault of Taragona as his sole 
 reward. The Marshal granted the request, and forgot 
 his promise ; but Bianchi himself put him in mind of it 
 and of Bianchi, for the berserker Captain was the first to 
 plant the flag of France upon the wall ; and there he fell, 
 killed by a monk. 
 
 This historical digression is necessary to explain how 
 it came to pass that the Sixth Regiment of the line was the 
 first to enter Taragona, and how the tumult, sufficiently 
 natural after a town has been carried by storm, degene- 
 rated so quickly into an attempt to sack it. Moreover, 
 among these men of iron, there were two officers, other- 
 wise but little remarkable, who were destined by force of 
 circumstances to play an important part in this story. 
 
 The first of these, a captain on the clothing establish- 
 ment — half-civilian, half-officer — was generally said, in 
 soldierly language, to ' take good care of number one.' 
 
 Outside his regiment he was wont to swagger and 
 brag of his connection with it ; he would curl his 
 moustache and look a terrible fellow, but his mess had 
 no great opinion of him. His money was the secret 
 of his valorous discretion. For a double reason, more- 
 over, he had been nicknamed Captain of the Ravens ; 
 because, in the first place, he scented the powder a league 
 away ; and, in the second, scurried out of range like a 
 bird on the wing ; the nickname was likewise a harmless 
 soldier's joke, a personality of which another might have 
 been proud. Captain Montefiore, of the illustrious 
 family of the Montefiori of Milan (though by the law of 
 the kingdom of Italy he might not bear his title), was 
 one of the prettiest fellows in the army. Possibly his 
 beauty may secretly have been an additional cause of his 
 prudence on the field of battle. A wound in the face by 
 spoiling his profile, scarring his forehead, or seaming his 
 cheeks, would have spoiled one of the finest heads in 
 Italy, and destroyed the delicate proportions of a coun- 
 
The Maranas 113 
 
 tenance such as no woman ever pictured in dreams. In 
 Girodet's picture of the Revolt of Cairo there is a young 
 dying Turk who has the same type of face, the same 
 melancholy expression, of which women are nearly 
 always the dupes. The Marchese di Montefiore had 
 property of his own, but it was entailed, and he had 
 anticipated his income for several years in order to pay 
 for escapades peculiarly Italian and inconceivable in Paris. 
 He had ruined himself by running a theatre in Milan for 
 the special purpose of foisting upon the public a cantatrice 
 who could not sing, but who loved him (so he said) to 
 distraction. 
 
 So Montefiore the captain had good prospects, and 
 was in no hurry to risk them for a paltry scrap of red 
 ribbon. If he was no hero, he was at any rate a philo- 
 sopher ; besides, precedents (if it is allowable to make use 
 of parliamentary expressions in this connection), pre- 
 cedents are forthcoming. Did not Philip 11. swear 
 during the battle of Saint-Quentin that he would never 
 go under fire again, nor near it, save the faggots of the 
 Inquisition ? Did not the Duke of Alva approve the 
 notion that the involuntary exchange of a crown for 
 a cannon-ball was the worst kind of trade in the 
 world ? Montefiore, therefore, as a Marquis, was of 
 Philip ii.'s way of thinking; he was a Philippist in his 
 quality of gay young bachelor, and in other respects 
 quite as astute a politician as Philip 11. himself He 
 comforted himself for his nickname, and for the slight 
 esteem in which he was held by his regiment, with the 
 thought that his comrades were sorry scamps ; and even 
 if they should survive this war of extermination, their 
 opinion of him was not likely to gain much credence 
 hereafter. Was not his face as good as a certificate of 
 merit ? He saw himself a colonel through some 
 accident of feminine favour ; or, by a skilfully eiFected 
 transition, the captain on the clothing establishment 
 would become an orderly, and the orderly would in turn 
 
 H 
 
114 The Maranas 
 
 become the aide-de-camp of some good-natured marshal. 
 The bravery of the uniform and the bravery of the man 
 w^ere all as one to the captain on the clothing establish- 
 ment. So some broad sheet or other vv^ould one day call 
 him ' the brave Colonel Montefiore,' and so forth. 
 Then he w^ould have a hundred thousand scudi a year, 
 he w^ould marry the daughter of a noble house, and no 
 one w^ould dare to breathe a word against his courage 
 nor to seek to verify his wounds. Finally, it should be 
 stated that Captain Montefiore had a friend in the person 
 of the quartermaster, a Provençal, born in the Nice 
 district, Diard by name. 
 
 A friend, be it in the convict's prison or in an artist's 
 garret, is a compensation for many troubles ; and Monte- 
 fiore and Diard, being a pair of philosophers, found com- 
 pensations for their hard life in companionship in vice, 
 much as two artists will lull the consciousness of their 
 hardships to sleep by hopes of future fame. Both looked 
 at war as a means to an end, and not as an end in itself, 
 and frankly called those who fell, fools for their pains. 
 Chance had made soldiers of both, when they should 
 have been by rights deliberating in a congress round a 
 table covered with a green cloth. Nature had cast 
 Montefiore in the mould of Rizzio, and Diard in the 
 crucible whence she turns out diplomatists. Both possessed 
 the excitable, nervous, half-feminine temperament, which 
 is always energetic, be it in good or evil ; always at the 
 mercy of the caprices of the moment, and swayed by an 
 impulse equally unaccountable to commit a crime or to 
 do a generous deed, to act as a hero or as a craven 
 coward. The fate of such natures as these depends at 
 every moment of their lives upon the intensity of the 
 impressions produced upon the nervous system by vehe- 
 ment and short-lived passions. 
 
 Diard was a very fair accountant, but not one of the 
 men would have trusted him with his purse, or made 
 him his executor, possibly by reason of the suspicion 
 
The Maranas 115 
 
 that the soldier feels of officialdom. The quarter- 
 master's character was not wanting in dash, nor in a 
 certain boyish enthusiasm, which is apt to wear off as 
 a man grows older and reasons and makes forecasts. 
 And for the rest, his humour was variable as the beauty 
 of a blonde can sometimes be. He was a great talker on 
 every subject. He called himself an artist ; and, in imita- 
 tion of two celebrated generals, collected works of art, 
 simply, he asserted, to secure them for posterity. His 
 comrades would have been hard put to it to say what 
 they really thought of him. Many of them, who were 
 wont to borrow of him at need, fancied that he was 
 rich ; but he was a gambler, and a gambler's property 
 cannot be called his own. He played heavily, so did 
 Montefiore, and all the officers played with them ; for 
 to man's shame, be it said, plenty of men will meet on 
 terms of equality round a gaming table with others whom 
 they do not respect and will not recognise if they meet 
 them elsewhere. It was Montefiore who had made that 
 bet with Bianchi about the Spaniard's heart. 
 
 Montefiore and Diard were among the last to advance 
 to the assault of the place, but they were the first to go 
 forward into the town itself when it was taken. Such 
 things happen in a mêlée^ and the two friends were old 
 hands. Mutually supported, therefore, they plunged boldly 
 into a labyrinth of narrow dark little streets, each bent upon 
 his own private affairs ; the one in search of Madonnas 
 on canvas, and the other of living originals. 
 
 In some quarter of Taragona, Diard espied a piece of 
 ecclesiastical architecture, saw that it was the porch of a 
 convent, and that the doors had been forced, and rushed in 
 to restrain the fury of the soldiery. He was not a 
 moment too soon. Two Parisians were about to riddle 
 one of Albani's Virgins with shot, and of these light 
 infantrymen he bought the picture, undismayed by the 
 moustaches with which the zealous iconoclasts had 
 adorned it. 
 
1 1 6 The Maranas 
 
 Montefiore, left outside, contemplated the front of a 
 cloth merchant's house opposite the convent. He was 
 looking it up and down, when a corner of a blind was 
 raised, a girl's head peered forth, a glance like a lightning 
 flash answered his, and — a shot was fired at him from the 
 building. Taragona carried by assault, Taragona roused 
 to fury, firing from every window, Taragona outraged, 
 dishevelled, and half-naked, with French soldiers pouring 
 through her blazing streets, slaying there and being 
 slain, was surely worth a glance from fearless Spanish 
 eyes. What was it but a bull-fight on a grander scale ? 
 Montefiore forgot the pillaging soldiers, and for a moment 
 heard neither the shrieks, nor the rattle of musketry, nor 
 the dull thunder of the cannon. He, the Italian libertine, 
 tired of Italian beauties, weary of all women, dreaming 
 of an impossible woman because the possible had ceased 
 to have any attraction for him, had never beheld so 
 exquisitely lovely a profile as that of this Spanish girl. 
 The jaded voluptuary, who had squandered his fortune on 
 follies innumerable and on the gratification of a young 
 man's endless desires; the most abominable monstrosity 
 that our society can produce, could still tremble. The 
 bright idea of setting fire to the house instantly flashed 
 through his mind, suggested, doubtless, by the shot from 
 the patriotic cloth merchant's window ; but he was alone, 
 and the means of doing it were to seek, fighting was 
 going forward in the market-place, where a few desperate 
 men still defended themselves. 
 
 He thought better of it. Diard came out of the 
 convent, Montefiore kept his discovery to himself, and 
 the pair made several excursions through the town to- 
 gether ; but on the morrow the Italian was quartered in 
 the cloth merchant's house, a very appropriate arrange- 
 ment for a captain on the clothing establishment. 
 
 The first floor of the worthy Spaniard's abode con- 
 sisted of a vast dimly-Hghted shop ; protected in front, 
 as the old houses in the Rue des Lombards in Paris used 
 
The Maranas 117 
 
 to be, by heavy iron bars. Behind the shop lay the 
 parlour, lighted by windows that looked out into an 
 inner yard. It was a large room, redolent of the spirit 
 of the Middle Ages, with its old dark pictures, old 
 tapestry, and antique bra%ero. A broad-plumed hat 
 hung from a nail upon the wall above a matchlock used 
 in guerilla warfare, and a heavy brigand's cloak. The 
 kitchen lay immediately beyond this parlour, or living- 
 room, where meals were served and cigars smoked ; and 
 Spaniards, talking round the smouldering brazier, would 
 nurse hot wrath and hatred of the French in their hearts. 
 
 Silver jugs and valuable plate stood on the antique 
 buffet, but the room was fitfully and scantily illumi- 
 nated, so that the daylight scarcely did more than bring 
 out faint sparkles from the brightest objects in the 
 room ; all the rest of it, and even the faces of its 
 occupants, were as dark as a Dutch interior. Between 
 the shop itself and this apartment, with its rich subdued 
 tones and old-world aspect, a sufficiently ill-lit staircase 
 led to a warehouse, where it was possible to examine the 
 stuffs by the light from some ingeniously contrived 
 windows. The merchant and his wife occupied the 
 floor above this warehouse, and the apprentice and the 
 maid-servant were lodged still higher in the attics im- 
 mediately beneath the roof. This highest story over- 
 hung the street, and was supported by brackets, which 
 gave a quaint look to the house front. On the coming 
 of the officer, the merchant and his wife resigned their 
 rooms to him and went up to these attics, doubtless to 
 avoid friction. 
 
 Montefiore gave himself out to be a Spanish subject 
 by birth, a victim to the tyranny of Napoleon, whom he 
 was forced to serve against his will. These half-lies 
 produced the intended effect. He was asked to join 
 the family at meals, as befitted his birth and rank and 
 the name he bore. He had his private reasons for 
 wishing to conciliate the merchant's family. He felt 
 
ii8 The Maranas 
 
 the presence of his Madonna, much as the Ogre in the 
 fairy tale smelt the tender flesh of little Thumbkin and 
 his brothers ; but though he succeeded in winning his 
 host's confidence, the latter kept the secret of the 
 Madonna so well that the captain not only saw no 
 sign of the girl's existence during the first day spent 
 oeneath the honest Spaniard's roof, but heard no sound 
 that could betray her presence in any part of the 
 dwelling. The old house was, however, almost entirely 
 built of wood ; every noise above or below could be heard 
 through the walls and ceilings, and Montefiore hoped 
 during the silence of the early hours of night to guess 
 the young girl's whereabouts. She was the only daughter 
 of his host and hostess, he thought ; probably they had 
 shut her up in the attics, whither they themselves had 
 retired during the military occupation of the town. No 
 indications, however, betrayed the hiding-place of the 
 treasure. The officer might stand with his face glued 
 to the small leaded diamond-shaped panes of the window, 
 looking out into the darkness of the yard below and the 
 grim walls that rose up around it, but no light gleamed 
 from any window save from those of the room overhead, 
 where he could hear the old merchant and his wife 
 talking, coughing, coming, and going. There was not 
 so much as a shadow of a girl to be seen. 
 
 Montefiore was too cunning to risk the future of his 
 passion by prowling about the house of a night, by 
 knocking softly at all the doors, or by other hazardous 
 expedients. His host was a hot patriot, a Spanish father, 
 and an owner of bales of cloth ; bound, therefore, in each 
 character to be suspicious. Discovery would be utter 
 ruin, so Montefiore resolved to bide his time patiently, 
 hoping everything from the carelessness of human nature ; 
 for if rogues, with the best of reasons for being cautious, 
 will forget themselves in the long run, so still more will 
 honest men. 
 
 Next day he discovered a kind of hammock slung in the 
 
The Maranas 119 
 
 kitchen — evidently the servant slept there. The appren- 
 tice, it seemed, spent the night on the counter in the shop. 
 
 At supper-time, on the second day, Montefiore cursed 
 Napoleon till he saw his host's sombre face relax some- 
 what. The man was a typical, swarthy Spaniard, with 
 a head such as used to be carved on the head of a rebeck. 
 A smile of gleeful hatred lurked among the wrinkles 
 about his wife's mouth. The lamplight and fitful gleams 
 from the brazier filled the stately room with capricious 
 answering reflections. The hostess was just ofi^^ering a 
 cigarette to their semi-compatriot, when Montefiore 
 heard the rustle of a dress, and a chair was overturned 
 behind the tapestry hangings. 
 
 ' There ! ' cried the merchant's wife, turning pale, 
 ' may all the saints send that no misfortune has befallen 
 us!' 
 
 ' So you have some one in there, have you ? ' asked the 
 Italian, who betrayed no sign of emotion. 
 
 The merchant let fall some injurious remarks as to 
 girls. His wife, in alarm, opened a secret door, and 
 brought in the Italian's Madonna, half dead with fear. 
 The delighted lover scarcely seemed to notice the girl ; 
 but, lest he might overdo the affectation of indiiïerence, 
 he glanced at her, and turning to his host, asked in his 
 mother tongue — 
 
 ' Is she your daughter, senor ? ' 
 
 Perez de Lagounia (for that was the merchant's name) 
 had had extensive business connections in Genoa, Flor- 
 ence, and Leghorn ; he knew Italian, and replied in that 
 language. 
 
 ' No. If she had been my own daughter, I should 
 have taken fewer precautions, but the child was put into 
 our charge, and I would die sooner than allow the 
 slightest harm to befall her. But what sense can you 
 expect of a girl of eighteen ? ' 
 
 *She is very beautiful,' Montefiore said carelessly. He 
 did not look at her again. 
 
I20 The Maranas 
 
 *The mother is sufficiently famous for her beauty, 
 answered the merchant. And they continued to smoke 
 and to watch each other. 
 
 Montefiore had imposed upon himself the hard task of 
 avoiding the least look that might compromise his 
 attitude of indifference ; but as Perez turned his head 
 aside to spit, the Italian stole a glance at the girl, and 
 again those sparkling eyes met his. In that one glance, 
 with the experienced vision that gives to a voluptuary or 
 a sculptor the power of discerning the outlines of the 
 form beneath the draperies, he beheld a masterpiece 
 created to know all the happiness of love. He saw a 
 delicately fair face, which the sun of Spain had slightly 
 tinged with a warm brown, that added to a seraphically 
 calm expression a flush of pride, a suffused glow beneath 
 the translucent fairness, due, perhaps, to the pure 
 Moorish blood that brought animation and colour into 
 it. Her hair, knotted on the crown of her head, fell in 
 thick curls about transparent ears like a child's, surround- 
 ing them with dark shadows that made a framework for 
 the vi^hite throat with its faint blue veins, in strong 
 contrast with the fiery eyes and the red finely-curved 
 mouth. The basquina of her country displayed the 
 curving outlines of a figure as pliant as a branch of 
 willow. This was no Madonna of Italian painters, but 
 the Madonna of Spanish art, the Virgin of Murillo, the 
 only artist daring enough to depict the rapture of the 
 Conception, a delirious flight of the fervid imagination of 
 the boldest and most sensuous of painters. Three 
 qualities were blended in this young girl ; any one of 
 them would have sufficed to exalt a woman into a 
 divinity — the purity of the pearl in the depths of the 
 sea, the sublime exaltation of a Saint Theresa, and a 
 voluptuous charm of which she was herself unconscious. 
 Her presence had the power of a talisman. Everything 
 in the ancient room seemed to have grown young to 
 Montefiore's eyes since she entered it. But if the 
 
The Maranas m 
 
 apparition was exquisite, the stay was brief; she was 
 taken back to her mysterious abiding-place, and thither, 
 shortly afterwards, the servant took a light and her supper, 
 without any attempt at concealment. 
 
 ' You do very wisely to keep her out of sight,' said 
 Montefiore in Italian. * I will keep your secret. The 
 deuce ! some of our generals would be quite capable of 
 carrying her off by force.' 
 
 Montefiore, in his intoxication, went so far as to think 
 of marrying the fair unknown. With this idea in hi? 
 mind, he put some questions to his host. Perez willingly 
 told him the strange chance that had given him his 
 ward ; indeed, the prudent Spaniard, knowing Monte- 
 fiore's rank and name, of which he had heard in Italy, 
 was anxious to confide the story to his guest, to show 
 how strong were the barriers raised between the young 
 girl and seduction. Although in the good man's talk 
 there was a certain homely eloquence and force in keeping 
 with his simple manner of life, and with that carbine 
 shot at Montefiore from the window, his story will be 
 better given in an abbreviated form. 
 
 When the French Republic revolutionised the manners 
 of the inhabitants of the countries which served as the 
 theatre of its wars, a fille- de-jote^ driven from Venice 
 after the fall of Venice, came to Taragona. Her life 
 had been a tissue of romantic adventure and strange 
 vicissitudes. On no woman belonging to her class had 
 gold been showered so often ; so often the caprice of 
 some great lord, struck with her extraordinary beauty, had 
 heaped jewels upon her, and all the luxuries of wealth, 
 for a time. For her this meant flowers and carriages, 
 pages and tire-women, palaces and pictures, insolent 
 pride, journeys like a progress of Catherine ii., the life 
 of an absolute queen, in fact, whose caprices were law, 
 and whose whims were more than obeyed ; and then — 
 suddenly the gold would utterly vanish — how, neither 
 she nor any one else, man of science, physicist, or 
 
122 The Maranas 
 
 chemist could tell, and she was returned again to the 
 streets and to poverty, with nothing in the world save 
 her all-powerful beauty. Yet through it all she lived 
 without taking any thought for the past, the present, or 
 the future. Thrown upon the world, and maintained in 
 her extremity by some poor officer, a gambler, adored 
 for his moustache, she would attach herself to him like a 
 dog to his master, and console him for the hardships of a 
 soldier's life, in all of which she shared, sleeping as 
 lightly under the roof of a garret as beneath the richest 
 of silk canopies. Whether she was in Spain or Italy, she 
 punctually adhered to religious observances. More than 
 once she had bidden love ' return to-morrow, to-day I 
 am God's.' 
 
 But this clay in which gold and spices were mingled, 
 this utter recklessness, these storms of passion, the 
 reHgious faith lying in the heart like a diamond in the 
 mud, the life begun and ended in the hospital, the 
 continual game of hazard played with the soul and body 
 as its stake ; this Alchemy of Life, in short, with vice 
 fanning the flame beneath the crucible in which great 
 careers and fair inheritances and fortune and the honour 
 of illustrious names were melted away ; all these were 
 the products of a peculiar genius, faithfully transmitted 
 from mother to daughter from the times of the Middle 
 Ages. The woman was called La Marana. In her 
 family, whose descent since the thirteenth century was 
 reckoned exclusively on the spindle side — the idea, 
 person, authority, nay, the very name of a father, had 
 been absolutely unknown. The name of Marana was 
 for her what the dignity of Stuart was to the illustrious 
 race of kings of Scotland, a title of honour substituted 
 for the patronymic, when the office became hereditary 
 in their family. 
 
 In former times, when France, Spain, and Italy 
 possessed common interests, which at times bound them 
 closely together, and at least as frequently embroiled all 
 
The Maranas 123 
 
 three in wars, the word Marana, in its widest acceptation, 
 meant a courtesan. In those ages these women had a 
 definite status of which no memory now exists. In 
 France, Ninon de Lenclos and Marion Delorme alone 
 played such a part as the Imperias, the Catalinas, and 
 Maranas who in the preceding centuries exercised the 
 powers of the cassock, the robe, and the sword. There 
 is a church somewhere in Rome built by an Imperia in 
 a fit of penitence, as Rhodope of old once built a 
 pyramid in Egypt. The epithet by which this family 
 of outcasts once was branded became at last their name 
 in earnest, and even something like a patent of nobility 
 for vice, by establishing its antiquity beyond cavil. 
 
 But for the La Marana of the nineteenth century 
 there came a day, whether it was a day of splendour or 
 of miserv, no man knows, for the problem is a secret 
 between her soul and God ; but it was surely in an hour 
 of melancholy, when religion made its voice heard, that 
 with her head in the skies she became conscious of the 
 slough in which her feet were set. Then she cursed the 
 blood in her veins ; she cursed herself ; she trembled to 
 think that she should bear a daughter ; and vowed, as 
 these women vow, with the honour and resolution of the 
 convict, that is to say, with the strongest resolution, the 
 most scrupulous honour to be found under the sun ; 
 making her vow, therefore, before an altar, and consecrat- 
 ing it thereby, that her daughter should lead a virtuous 
 and holy Hfe, that of this long race of lost and sinful 
 women there should come at last one angel who should 
 appear for them in heaven. That vow made, the blood 
 of the Marana regained its sway, and again the courtesan 
 plunged into her life of adventure, with one more thought 
 in her heart. At length she loved, with the violent love 
 of the prostitute, as Henrietta Wilson loved Lord Pon- 
 sonby, as Mademoiselle Dupuis loved Bolingbroke, as 
 the Marchesa di Pescara loved her husband ; nay, she 
 did not love, she adored a fair-haired half-feminine 
 
124 The Maranas 
 
 creature, investing him with all the virtues that she had 
 not, and taking all his vices upon herself. Of this mad 
 union with a weakHng, a union blessed neither of God 
 nor man, only to be excused by the happiness it brings, 
 but never absolved by happiness ; a union for which the 
 most brazen front must one day blush, a daughter was 
 born, a daughter to be saved, a daughter for whom La 
 Marana desired a stainless life, and, above all things, the 
 instincts of womanliness which she herself had not. 
 Thenceforward, in poverty or prosperity. La Marana 
 bore within her heart a pure affection, the fairest of all 
 human sentiments, because it is the least selfish. Love 
 has its own tinge of egoism, but there is no trace of it in 
 a mother's affection. 
 
 And La Marana's motherhood meant more to her than 
 to other women. It was perhaps her hope of salvation, 
 a plank to cling to in the shipwreck of her eternity. 
 Was she not accomplishing part of her sacred task on 
 earth by sending one more angel to heaven ? Was not 
 this a better thing than a tardy repentance ? Was there 
 any other way now left to her of sending up prayers from 
 a pure heart to God ? 
 
 When her daughter was given to her, her Maria-Juana- 
 Pepita (the little one should have had the whole calendar 
 for patron saints if the mother could have had her will), 
 then La Marana set before herself so high an ideal of the 
 dignity of motherhood that she sought a truce from her 
 life of sin. She would live virtuously and alone. There 
 should be no more midnight revels nor wanton days. 
 All her fortunes, all her happiness lay in the child's 
 fragile cradle. The sound of the little voice made an 
 oasis for her amid the burning sands of her life. How 
 should this love be compared with any other ? Were 
 not all human affections blended in it with every hope 
 of heaven ? 
 
 La Marana determined that no stain should rest upon 
 her daughter's Hfe, save that of the original sin of her 
 
The Maranas 125 
 
 birth, which she strove to cleanse by a baptism in all 
 social virtues ; so she asked of the child's young father a 
 sufficient fortune, and the name he bore. The child was 
 no longer Juana Marana, but Juana dei Mancini. 
 
 At last, after seven years of joy and kisses, of rapture 
 and bliss, the poor Marana must part with her darling, 
 lest she also should be branded with her hereditary shame. 
 The mother had force of soul sufficient to give up her 
 child for her child's sake ; and sought out, not without 
 dreadful pangs, another mother for her, a family whose 
 manners she might learn, where good examples would be 
 set before her. A mother's abdication is an act either 
 itrocious or sublime ; in this case, was it not sublime ? 
 
 At Taragona, therefore, a lucky accident brought the 
 Lagounias in her way, and in a manner that brought out 
 all the honourable integrity of the Spaniard and the 
 nobleness of his wife. For these two. La Marana 
 appeared like an angel that unlocks the doors of a prison. 
 The merchant's fortune and honour were in peril at the 
 moment, and he needed prompt and secret help ; La 
 Marana handed over to him the sum of money intended 
 for Juana's dowry, asking neither for gratitude nor for 
 interest. According to her peculiar notions of juris- 
 prudence, a contract was a matter of the heart, a stiletto 
 the remedy in the hands of the weak, and God the 
 supreme Court of Appeal. 
 
 She told Doîîa Lagounia the story of her miserable 
 situation, and confided her child and her child's fortune 
 to the honour of old Spain, and the untarnished integrity 
 that pervaded the old house. Dofia Lagounia had 
 no children of her own, and was delighted to have an 
 adopted daughter to bring up. The courtesan took leave 
 of her darling, feeling that the child's future was secure, 
 and that she had found a mother for Juana, a mother 
 who would train her up to be a Mancini, and not a 
 Marana. 
 
 Poor Marana, poor bereaved mother, she went away 
 
120 The Maranas 
 
 from the merchant's quiet and humble home, the abode 
 of domestic and family virtue ; and felt comforted in her 
 grief as she pictured Juana growing up in that atmosphere 
 of religion, piety, and honour, a maiden, a wife, and a 
 mother, a happy mother, not for a few brief years, but all 
 through a long lifetime. The tears that fell upon the 
 threshold were tears that angels bear to heaven. Since 
 that day of mourning and of hope La Marana had thrice 
 returned to see her daughter, an irresistible presentiment 
 each time bringing her back. The first time Juana had 
 fallen dangerously ill. 
 
 * I knew it ! ' she said to Perez, as she entered his 
 house. 
 
 Far away, and as she slept, she had dreamed that 
 Juana was dying. 
 
 She watched over her daughter and tended her, and 
 then one morning, when the danger was over, she kissed 
 the sleeping girl's forehead, and went without revealing 
 herself. The mother within her bade the courtesan 
 depart. 
 
 A second time La Marana came, — this time to the 
 church where Juana dei Mancini made her first Com- 
 munion. The exiled mother, very plainly dressed, stood 
 in the shadow behind a pillar, and saw her past self in her 
 daughter, saw a divinely fair face like an angel's, pure as 
 the newly fallen snow on the heights of the hills. Even 
 in La Marana's love for her child there was a trace of 
 the courtesan ; a feeling of jealousy stronger than all love 
 that she had known awoke in her heart, and she left the 
 church ; she could no longer control a wild desire to 
 stab Dona Lagounia, who stood there with that look of 
 happiness upon her face, too really a mother to her 
 child. 
 
 The last meeting between the two had taken place at 
 Milan, whither the merchant and his wife had gone. La 
 Marana, sweeping along the Corso in almost queenly 
 state, flashed like lightniiig upon her daughter's sight. 
 
The Maranas 127 
 
 and was not recognised. Her anguish was terrible. 
 This Marana on whom kisses were showered must 
 hunger for one kiss in vain, one for which she would 
 have given all the others, the girlish glad caress a 
 daughter gives her mother, her honoured mother, her 
 mother in whom all womanly virtues shine. Juana as 
 long as she Hved was dead for her. 
 
 ' What is it, love ? ' asked the Due de Lina, and at the 
 words a thought revived the courtesan's failing heart, a 
 thought that gave her delicious happiness — ^Juana was safe 
 henceforward ! She might perhaps be one of the humblest 
 of women, but not a shameless courtesan to whom any 
 man might say, ' What is it, love ? ' 
 
 Indeed, the merchant and his wife had done their duty 
 with scrupulous fidelity. Juana's fortune in their hands 
 had been doubled. Perez de Lagounia had become the 
 richest merchant in the province, and in his feeling 
 towards the young girl there was a trace of superstition. 
 Her coming had saved the old house from ruin and dis- 
 honour, and had not the presence of this angel brought 
 unlooked-for prosperity .? His wife, a soul of gold, a 
 refined and gentle nature, had brought up her charge 
 devoutly ; the girl was as pure as she was beautiful. 
 Juana was equally fitted to be the wife of a rich merchant 
 or of a noble; she had every qualification for a brilliant 
 destiny. But for the war that had broken out, Perez, 
 who dreamed of living in Madrid, would ere now have 
 given her in marriage to some Spanish grandee. 
 
 ' I do not know where La Marana is at this moment,' 
 he concluded ; ' but wherever she may be, if she hears 
 that our province is occupied by your armies, and that 
 Taragona has been besieged, she is sure to be on her 
 way hither to watch over her daughter.' 
 
 This story wrought a change in the captain's inten- 
 tions ; he no longer thought of making a Marchesa di 
 Montefiore of Juana dei Mancini. He recognised 
 the Marana blood in that Svvift glance the girl had 
 
128 The Maranas 
 
 exchanged with him from her shelter behind the blind, 
 in the stratagem by which she had satisfied her curiosity, 
 in that last look she had given him ; and the libertine 
 meant to marry a virtuous wife. 
 
 This would be a dangerous escapade, no doubt, but 
 the perils were of the kind that never sinks the courage 
 of the most pusillanimous, for love and its pleasures 
 would reward them. There were obstacles everywhere : 
 there was the apprentice who slept on the counter, and 
 the servant-maid on the makeshift couch in the kitchen ; 
 Perez and his wife, who kept a dragon's watch by day, 
 were old, and doubtless slept lightly ; every sound echoed 
 through the house, everything seemed to put the adven- 
 ture beyond the range of possibilities. But as a set-ofF 
 against these things, Montefiore had an ally — the blood 
 of the Marana, which throbbed feverishly in the heart 
 of the lovely Italian girl brought up as a Spaniard, the 
 maiden athirst for love. Passion, the girl's nature, and 
 Montefiore was a combination that might defy the 
 whole world. 
 
 Prompted quite as strongly by the instincts of a char- 
 tered libertine as by the vague inexplicable hopes to which 
 we give the name of presentiments, a word that describes 
 them with such startling aptness — Montefiore took up 
 his stand at his window, and spent the early hours of the 
 night there, looking down in the presumed direction of 
 the secret hiding-place, where the old couple had 
 enshrined their darling, the joy of their old age. 
 
 The warehouse on the entresol [to make use of a French 
 word that will perhaps make the disposition of the house 
 clearer to the reader) separated the two young people, so 
 it was idle for the captain to try to convey a message by 
 means of tapping upon the floor, a shift for speech that 
 all lovers can devise under such circumstances. Chance, 
 however, came to his assistance, or was it the young girl 
 herself? Just as he took his stand at the window he saw 
 a circle of light that fell upon the grim opposite wall of 
 
The Maranas 129 
 
 the yard, and in the midst of it a dark silhouette, the 
 form of Juana. Everything that she did was shadowed 
 there ; from her attitude and the movement of her arms, 
 she seemed to be arranging her hair for the night. 
 
 * Is she alone ? ' Montefiore asked himself. ' If I 
 weight a letter with a few coins, will it be safe to dangle 
 it by a thread against the round window that no doubt 
 lights her cell ? ' 
 
 He wrote a note forthwith, a note characteristic of 
 the officer, of the soldier sent for reasons of family 
 expediency to the isle of Elba, of the former dilettante 
 Marquis, fallen from his high estate, and become a 
 captain on the clothing establishment. He wrapped 
 some coins in the note, devised a string out of various 
 odds and ends, tied up the packet and let it down, 
 without a sound, into the very centre of that round 
 brightness. 
 
 ' If her mother or the servant is with her,' Montefiore 
 thought, * I shall see the shadows on the wall ; and if she 
 is not alone, I will draw up the cord at once.' 
 
 But when, after pains innumerable, which can readily 
 be imagined, the weighted packet tapped at the glass, 
 only one shadow appeared, and it was the slender figure 
 of Juana that flitted across the wall. Noiselessly the 
 young girl opened the circular window, saw the packet, 
 took it in, and stood for a while reading it. 
 
 Montefiore had written in his own name and en- 
 treated an interview. He offered, in the style of old 
 romances, his heart and hand to Juana dei Mancini — a base 
 and commonplace stratagem that nearly always succeeds ! 
 At Juana's age, is not nobiHty of soul an added 
 danger ? A poet of our own days has gracefully said 
 that 'only in her strength does woman yield.' Let 
 a lover, when he is most beloved, feign doubts of the 
 love that he inspires, and in her pride and her trust in 
 him, a girl would invent sacrifices for his sake, knowing 
 neither the world nor man's nature well enough to 
 
 I 
 
1 3© The Maranas 
 
 retain her self-command when passion stirs within her, 
 and to overwhelm with her scorn the lover who can 
 accept a whole life offered to him to turn away a ground- 
 less reproach. 
 
 In our sublimely constituted society a young girl 
 is placed in a painful dilemma between the forecasts 
 of prudent virtue on the one hand, and the conse- 
 quences of error upon the other. If she resists, it not 
 seldom happens that she loses a lover and the first 
 love, that is the most attractive of all ; and if she is 
 imprudent, she loses a marriage. Cast an eye over the 
 vicissitudes of social life in Paris, and it is impossible to 
 doubt the necessity of a religion that shall ensure that there 
 are no more young girls seduced daily. And Paris is 
 situated in the forty-eighth degree of latitude, while 
 Taragona lies below the forty-first. The old question of 
 climate is still useful to the novelist seeking an excuse for 
 the suddenness of his catastrophe, and is made to explain 
 the imprudence or the dilatoriness of a pair of lovers. 
 
 Montefiore's eyes were fixed meanwhile on the charm- 
 ing silhouette in the midst of the bright circle. Neither 
 he nor Juana could see each other j an unlucky archway 
 above her casement, with perverse malignity, cut off all 
 chances of communication by signs, such as two lovers 
 can contrive by leaning out of their windows. So the 
 captain concentrated his whole mind and attention upon 
 the round patch on the wall. Perhaps all unwittingly 
 the girl's movements might betray her thoughts. Here 
 again he was foiled. Juana's strange proceedings gave 
 Montefiore no room for the faintest hope ; she was 
 amusing herself by cutting up the billet. 
 
 It often happens that virtue and discretion, in dis- 
 trust, adopt shifts familiar to the jealous Bartholos of 
 comedy. Juana, having neither paper, pen, nor ink, was 
 scratching an answer with the point of a pair of scissors. 
 In another moment she tied the scrap of paper to the 
 string, the officer drew it in, opened it, held it up against 
 
The Maranas 131 
 
 the lamp, and read the perforated characters — * Come,' it 
 said. 
 
 *"Come ? '"said he to himself. 'Poison, and carbine, and 
 Perez' dagger ! And how about the apprentice hardly 
 asleep on the counter by this time, and the servant in 
 her hammock, and the house booming like a bass viol 
 with every sound ? why, I can hear old Perez snoring 
 away upstairs ! *' Come ! " . . . Then, has she nothing 
 to lose ? ' 
 
 Acute reflection ! Libertines alone can reason thus 
 logically, and punish a woman for her devotion. The 
 imagination of man has created Satan and Lovelace, but 
 a maiden is an angelic being to whom he can lend 
 nothing but his vices ; so lofty, so fair is she, that he 
 cannot set her higher nor add to her beauty ; he has but 
 the fatal power of blighting this creation by dragging it 
 down to his miry level. 
 
 Montefiore waited till the drowsiest hour of the night, 
 then in spite of his sober second thoughts, he crept down- 
 stairs. He had taken ofF his shoes, and carried his pistols 
 with him, and now he groped his way step by step, 
 stopping to listen in the silence; trying each separate 
 Etair, straining his eyes till he almost saw in the darkness, 
 and ready to turn back at any moment if the least thing 
 befell him. He wore his handsomest uniform ; he had 
 perfumed his dark hair, and taken pains with the toilette 
 that set off his natural good looks. On occasions like 
 these, most men are as much a woman as any woman. 
 
 Montefiore managed to reach the door of the girl's 
 secret hiding-place without difficulty. It was a little 
 cabinet contrived in a corner which projected into 
 another dwelling, a not unusual freak of the builder 
 where ground -rents are high, and houses in conse- 
 quence packed very tightly together. Here Juana lived 
 alone, day and night, out of sight of all eyes. Hitherto 
 she had slept near her adopted mother ; but when Perez 
 and his wife removed to the top of the house, the 
 
Ï32 The Maranas 
 
 arrangements of the attics did not permit of their taking 
 their ward thither also. So Doîîa Lagounia had left the 
 girl to the guardianship of the lock of the secret door, 
 to the protection of religious ideas, but so much the 
 more powerful because they had become superstitions ; 
 and with the further safeguards of a natural pride, and 
 the shrinking delicacy of the sensitive plant, which made 
 Juana an exception among her sex, for to the most 
 pathetic innocence Juana Mancini united no less the 
 most passionate aspirations. It had needed a retired 
 life and devout training to quiet and to cool the hot 
 blood of the Maranas that glowed in her veins, the 
 impulses that her adopted mother called temptations of 
 the Evil One. 
 
 A faint gleam of light beneath the door in the panels 
 discovered its whereabouts for Montefiore. He tapped 
 softly with the tips of his finger-nails, and Juana let him 
 in. Quivering from head to foot with excitement, he 
 met the young girl's look of naïve curiosity, and read 
 the most complete ignorance of her peril, and a sort of 
 childlike admiration in her eyes. He stood, awed for a 
 moment by the picture of the sanctuary before him. 
 
 The walls were hung with grey tapestry, covered with 
 violet flowers. A small ebony chest, an antique mirror, 
 a huge old-fashioned armchair, also made of ebony, and 
 covered with tapestry ; another chair beside the spindle- 
 legged table, a pretty carpet on the floor — that was all. 
 But there were flowers on the table beside some em- 
 broidery work, and at the other end of the room stood 
 the little narrow bed on which Juana dreamed ; three 
 pictures hung on the wall above it, and at the head stood 
 a crucifix above a little holy water stoup, and a prayer 
 framed and illuminated in gold. The room was full of 
 the faint perfume of the flowers, of the soft light of the 
 tapers ; it all seemed so quiet, pure, and sacred. The 
 subtle charm of Juana's dreamy fancies, nay, of Juana 
 herself, seemed to pervade everything ; her soul was 
 
The Maranas 133 
 
 revealed by her surroundings ; the pearl lay there in its 
 shell. 
 
 Juana, clad in white, with no ornament save her own 
 loveliness, letting fall her rosary to call on the name of 
 Love, would have inspired even Montefiore with reverence 
 if it had not been for the night about them and the silence, 
 if Juana had welcomed love less eagerly, if the little white 
 bed had not displayed the turned-down coverlet — the 
 pillow, confidante of innumerable vague longings. Monte- 
 fiore stood there for long, intoxicated by joy hitherto 
 unknown ; such joy as Satan, it may be, would know 
 at a glimpse of paradise if the cloud-veil that envelopes 
 heaven was rent away for a moment. 
 
 'I loved you the first moment that I saw you,' he 
 said, speaking pure Tuscan in the tones of his musical 
 Italian voice. * In you my soul and my life are set ; if 
 you so will it, they shall be yours for ever.' 
 
 To Juana listening, the air she breathed seemed to 
 vibrate with the words grown magical upon her lover's 
 tongue. 
 
 * Poor little girl ! how have you breathed the atmo- 
 sphere of this gloomy place so long, and lived ? You, 
 meant to reign like a queen in the world, to dwell in the 
 palace of a prince, to pass from festival to festival, to 
 feel in your own heart the joys that you create, to see 
 the world at your feet, to make the fairest splendours 
 pale before the glorious beauty that shall never be 
 rivalled, — you have lived here in seclusion with this old 
 tradesman and his wife ! ' 
 
 There was a purpose in his exclamation ; he wanted 
 Ito find out whether or no Juana had ever had a 
 llover. 
 
 ' Yes,' she answered. * But who can have told you my 
 ^nmost thoughts? For these twelve months past 
 
 have been weary to death of it. Yes, I would die 
 rather than stay any longer in this house. Do you 
 bee this embroidery ? I have set countless dreadful 
 
134 The Maranas 
 
 thoughts into every stitch of it. How often I have 
 longed to run away and fling myself into the sea ! 
 Do you ask why ? I have forgotten already. . . . 
 Childish troubles, but very keenly felt in spite of their 
 childishness. . . . Often at night when I kissed my 
 mother, I have given her such a kiss as one gives for a 
 last ferewell, saying in my heart, "I will kill myself to- 
 morrow." After all, I did not die. Suicides go to hell, 
 and I was so much afraid of that, that I made up my 
 mind to endure my life, to get up and go to bed, and do 
 the same things hour after hour of every day. My life 
 was not irksome, it was painful. — And yet, my father and 
 mother worship me. Oh ! I am wicked ! indeed, I tell 
 my confessor so.' 
 
 * Then have you always lived here without amuse- 
 ments, without pleasures ? ' 
 
 * Oh ! I have not always felt like this. Until I was 
 fifteen years old, I enjoyed seeing the festivals of the 
 Church ; I loved the singing and the music. I was so 
 happy, because I felt that, like the angels, I was sinless, 
 so glad that I might take the sacrament every week, in 
 short, I loved God then. But in these three years I 
 have changed utterly, day by day. It began when I 
 wanted flowers here in the house, and they gave me 
 very beautiful ones ; then I wanted. . . . But now I 
 want nothing any longer,' she added, after a pause, and 
 she smiled at Montefiore. 
 
 ' Did you not tell me just now in your letter that you 
 would love me for ever ? ' 
 
 * Yes, my Juana,' murmured Montefiore. He put his 
 arm round the waist of this adorable girl, and pressed her 
 closely to his heart. ' Yes. But let me speak to you as 
 you pray to God. Are you not fairer than Our Lady in 
 heaven ? Hear me,' and he set a kiss in her hair, ' for 
 me that forehead of yours is the fairest altar on earth ; 
 I swear to worship you, my idol, to pour out all the 
 wealth of the world upon you. My carriages are yours, 
 
The Maranas 135 
 
 my palace in Milan is yours, yours all the jewels and the 
 diamonds, the heirlooms of my ancient house ; new 
 ornaments and dresses every day, and all the countless 
 pleasures and delights of the world.' 
 
 ' Yes,' she said, ' I should like it all very much j but 
 in my soul I feel that I should love my dear husband 
 more than all things else in the world.' 
 
 Mio caro sposo ! Italian was Juana's native speech, and 
 it is impossible to put into two words of another language 
 the wonderful tenderness, the winning grace with which 
 that brief delicious phrase is invested by the accents of 
 an Italian tongue. *• I shall find,' she said, and the 
 purity of a seraph shone in her eyes, ' I shall find my 
 beloved religion again in him. His and God's, God's 
 and his ! . . . But you are he, are you not ? ' she cried 
 after a pause. 'Surely, surely you are he ! Ah ! come 
 and see the picture that my father brought me from Italy.' 
 
 She took up a candle, beckoned to Montefiore, and 
 showed him a picture that hung at the foot of the bed — 
 Saint Michael trampling Satan underfoot. 
 
 * Look ! ' she cried, ' has he not your eyes ? That 
 made me think, as soon as I saw you in the street, that 
 in the meeting I saw the finger of heaven. So often 
 I have lain awake in the morning before my mother 
 came to call me to prayer, thinking about that picture, 
 looking at the angel, until at last I came to think that he 
 was my husband. Mon Dieu ! I am talking as I think 
 to myself. What wild nonsense it must seem to you ! 
 but if you only knew how a poor recluse longs to pour 
 out the thoughts that oppress her ! I used to talk to 
 these flowers and the woven garlands on the tapestry 
 when I was alone ; they understood me better, I think, 
 than my father and mother — always so serious ' 
 
 * Juana,' said Montefiore, and as he took her hands and 
 kissed them, passion shone in his eyes and overflowed in 
 his gestures and in the sound of his voice, ' talk to me as 
 if I were your husband, talk to me as you talk to yourself. 
 
1 36 The Maranas 
 
 I have suffered all that you have suffered. Few words 
 will be needed, when we talk together, to bring back the 
 whole past of either life before we met ; but there are 
 not words enough in language to tell of the bliss that 
 lies before us. Lay your hand on my heart. Do you 
 feel how it beats ? Let us vow, before God, who sees 
 and hears us, to be faithful to each other all our lives. 
 Stay, take this ring. — Give me yours.' 
 
 ' Give away my ring ? ' she cried, startled. 
 
 ' Why not ? ' asked Monteiiore, dismayed by so much 
 simplicity. 
 
 ' Why, it came to me from our Holy Father the Pope. 
 When I was a little girl a beautiful lady set it on my 
 finger ; she took care of me, and brought me here, and 
 she told me to keep it always.' 
 
 * Then you do not love me, Juana ? ' 
 
 *Ah! here it is,' she cried. 'Are you not more 
 myself than I ? ' 
 
 She held out the ring, trembling as she did so, keeping 
 her fingers tightly clasped upon it as she looked at 
 Montefrore with clear, questioning eyes. That ring 
 meant her whole self: she gave it to him. 
 
 ' Oh ! my Juana ! ' said Montefiore as he held her 
 closely in his arms, ' only a monster could be false to you. 
 ... I will love you for ever . . .' 
 
 Juana grew dreamy. Montefiore, thinking within 
 himself that, in his first interview, he must not run the 
 slightest risk of startling a girl so innocent, whose im- 
 prudence sprang rather from virtue than from desire, was 
 fain to content himself with thinking of the future, of 
 her beauty now that he had known its power, and of the 
 innocent marriage of the ring, that most sublime of 
 betrothals, the simplest and most binding of all cere- 
 monies, the betrothal of the heart. 
 
 For the rest of the night, and all day long on the 
 morrow, Juana's imagination would surely become the 
 accomplice of his desires. So he put constraint upon 
 
The Maranas 137 
 
 himself, and tried to be as respectful as he was tender. 
 With these thoughts present in his mind, prompted by 
 his passion, and yet more by the desires that Juana inspired 
 in him, his words were insinuating and fervent. He 
 led the innocent child to plan out the new life before 
 them, painted the world for her in the most glow- 
 ing colours, dwelt on the household details that 
 possess such a delightful interest for young girls, and 
 made with her the compacts over which lovers dispute, 
 the agreements that give rights and reality to love. 
 Then, when they had decided the hour for their nightly 
 tryst, he went, leaving a happy but a changed Juana. 
 The simple and innocent Juana no longer existed, already 
 there was more passion than a girl should reveal in the 
 last glance that she gave him, in the charming way that 
 she held up her forehead for the touch of her lover's lips. 
 It was all the result of solitude and irksome tasks upon 
 this nature ; if she was to be prudent and virtuous, the 
 knowledge of the world should either have come to her 
 gradually, or have been hidden from her for ever. 
 
 * How slowly the day will go to-morrow ! ' she said, as 
 another kiss, still respectfully given, was pressed upon her 
 forehead. 
 
 * But you will sit in the dining-room, will you not ? 
 and raise your voice a little when you talk, so that I may 
 hear you, and the sound may fill my heart.' 
 
 Montefiore, beginning to understand the life that 
 Juana led, was but the better pleased that he had managed 
 to restrain his desires that he might the better secure his 
 end. He returned to his room without mishap. 
 
 Ten days went by, and nothing occurred to disturb 
 the peace and quiet of the house. Montefiore, with the 
 persuasive manners of an Italian, had gained the good 
 graces of old Perez and Dona Lagounia ; indeed, he was 
 popular with the whole household — with the apprentice 
 and the maid-servant ; but in spite of the confidence that 
 he had succeeded in inspiring in them, he never attempted 
 
138 The Maranas 
 
 to take advantage of it to ask to see Juana, or to open 
 the door of that Httle sealed paradise. The ItaHan girl, 
 in her longing to see her lover, had often besought him 
 to do this, but from motives of prudence he had always 
 refused. On the contrary, he had used the character 
 he had gained and all his skill to lull the suspicions of 
 the old couple ; he had accustomed them to his habit of 
 never rising till mid-day, soldier as he w^as. The captain 
 gave out that his health was bad. So the two lovers 
 only lived at night when all the household was 
 asleep. 
 
 If Montefiore had not been a libertine to whom a long 
 experience of pleasure had given presence of mind under 
 all conditions, they would have been lost half a score of 
 times in those ten days. A young lover, with the single- 
 heartedness of first love, would have been tempted in his 
 rapture into imprudences that were very hard to resist ; but 
 the Italian was proof even against Juana, against her 
 pouting lips, her wild spirits, against a Juana who wound 
 the long plaits of her hair about his throat to keep him 
 by her side. The keenest observer would have been 
 sorely puzzled to detect those midnight meetings. It 
 may well be believed that the Italian, sure of his ulti- 
 mate success, enjoyed prolonging the ineffable pleasure 
 of this intrigue in which he made progress step by step, 
 in fanning the flame that gradually waxed hotter, till 
 everything must yield to it at last. 
 
 On the eleventh day, as they sat at dinner, he deemed 
 it expedient to confide to Perez (under the seal of secrecy) 
 the history of the disgrace into which he had fallen 
 among his family. It was a mésalliance, he said. 
 
 There was something revolting in this lie, told as a 
 confidence, while that midnight drama was in progress 
 beneath the old man's roof. Montefiore, an experienced 
 actor, was leading up to a catastrophe planned by himself; 
 and, Hke an artist who loves his art, he enjoyed the 
 thought of it. He meant very shortly to take leave of 
 
The Maranas 139 
 
 the house and of his lady-love without regret. And 
 when Juana, risking her life it might be to ask the 
 question, should inquire of Perez what had become of 
 their guest, Perez would tell her, all unwittingly, that 
 'the Marchese di Montefiore has been reconciled with 
 his family ; they have consented to receive his wife, and 
 he has taken her to them.' 
 
 And Juana ? . . . The ItaHan never inquired of him- 
 self what would become of her; he had had ample 
 opportunity of knowing her nobleness, her innocence, 
 and her goodness, and felt sure that Juana would keep 
 silence. 
 
 He obtained a message to carry for some general or 
 other. Three days afterwards, on the night before he 
 must start, Montefiore went straight to Juana's room 
 instead of going first to his own. The same instinct 
 that bids the tiger leave no morsel of his prey, prompted 
 the Italian to lengthen the night of farewells. Juana, 
 the true daughter of two southern lands, with the passion 
 of Spain and of Italy in her heart, was enraptured by the 
 boldness that brought her lover to her and revealed the 
 ardour of his love. To know the deUcious torment of an 
 illicit passion under the sanction of marriage, to conceal 
 her husband behind the bed-curtains, half deceiving the 
 adopted father and mother, to whom she could say in 
 case of discovery, ' I am the Marchesa di Montefiore,' 
 was not this a festival for the young and romantic girl 
 who, for three years past, had dreamed of love — love always 
 beset with perils ? The curtains of the door fell, drawing 
 about their madness and their happiness a veil which it is 
 useless to raise. 
 
 It was nearly nine o'clock, the merchant and his wife 
 were reading the evening prayer, when suddenly the 
 sound of a carriage, drawn by several horses, came from 
 the narrow street without. Some one knocked hastily 
 and loudly at the door of the shop. The servant ran to 
 open it, and in a moment a woman sprang into the 
 
140 The Maranas 
 
 quaint old room — a woman magnificently dressed, though 
 her travelling carriage was besplashed by the mire of 
 many roads, for she had crossed Italy and France and 
 Spain. It was La Marana ! La Marana, in spite of her 
 thirty-six years and her riotous life, in the full pride of 
 her belta folgorante^ to record the superb epithet invented 
 for her in Milan by her enraptured adorers. La Marana, 
 the openly avowed mistress of a King, had left Naples 
 and its festivals and sunny skies, at the very height and 
 summit of her strange career — had left gold and madrigals 
 and silk and perfumes, and her royal lover, when she 
 learned from him what was passing in Spain, and how 
 that Taragona was besieged. 
 
 * Taragona ! ' she cried, ' and before the city is taken ! 
 I must be in Taragona in ten days ! ' And without 
 another thought for courts or crowned heads, she had 
 reached Taragona, provided with a passport that gave 
 her something like the powers of an empress, and 
 with gold that enabled her to cross the French empire 
 with the speed and splendour of a rocket. There is no 
 such thing as distance for a mother ; she who is a mother, 
 indeed, sees her child, and knows by instinct how he 
 fares though they are as far as the poles apart. 
 
 ' My daughter ? my daughter ? ' cried La Marana. 
 
 At that cry, at this swift invasion of their house, 
 and apparition , of a queen travelling incognito^ Perez 
 and his wife let the prayer-book fall j that voice rang in 
 their ears like a thunder-clap, and La Marana's eyes 
 flashed lightnings. 
 
 * She is in there,' the merchant answered quietly, after 
 a brief pause, during which they recovered from the 
 shock of surprise caused by La Marana's sudden appear- 
 ance, and by her look and tone. *She is in there,' he 
 said again, indicating the little hiding-place. 
 
 ' Yes, but has she not been ill ? Is she quite ' 
 
 * Perfectly well,' said Dona Lagounia. 
 
 * Oh, God ! ' cried La Marana, ' plunge me now in 
 
The Maranas 141 
 
 hell for all eternity, if it be Thy pleasure,' and she sank 
 down utterly exhausted into a chair. 
 
 The flush that anxiety had brought to her face faded 
 suddenly ; her cheeks grew white ; she who had borne 
 up bravely under the strain, had no strength left when it 
 was over. The joy was too intolerable, a joy more 
 intense than her previous distress, for she was still 
 vibrating with dread, when bliss keen as anguish came 
 upon her. 
 
 'But how have you done?' she asked. *Taragona 
 was taken by assault.' 
 
 * Yes,' answered Perez. ' But when you saw that I was 
 alive, how could you ask such a question ? How should 
 any one reach Juana but over my dead body.' 
 
 The courtesan grasped Perez' horny hand on receiving 
 this answer j tears gathered in her eyes and fell upon his 
 fingers as she kissed them — the costliest of all things 
 under the sun for her, who never wept. 
 
 * Brave Perez ! ' she said at last ; ' but surely there are 
 soldiers billeted upon you, are there not ? ' 
 
 * Only one,' answered the Spaniard. ' Luckily, we 
 have one of the most honourable of men, an Italian by 
 nationality, a Spaniard by birth, a hater of Bonaparte, a 
 married man, a steady character. He rises late, and goes 
 to bed early. He is in bad health, too, just now.' 
 
 * An Italian ! What is his name ? ' 
 
 ' Captain Montefiore, he ' 
 
 ' Why, he is not the Marchese di Montefiore, is he ? ' 
 
 * Yes, seîiora, the very same.' 
 ' Has he seen Juana ? ' 
 ' No,' said Doiia Lagounia. 
 
 * You are mistaken, wife,' said Perez. 'The Marquis 
 must have seen Juana once, only for a moment, it is true, 
 but I think he must have seen her that day when she 
 came in at supper-time.' 
 
 * Ah ! — I should like to see my daughter.' 
 ' Nothing is easier,' said Perez. 'She is asleep. Though 
 
14.2 The Maranas 
 
 if she has left the key in the lock, we shall have to wake 
 her. 
 
 As the merchant rose to take down the duplicate key 
 from its place, he happened to glance up through the tall 
 window. The light from the large round pane-opening 
 of Juana's cell fell upon the dark wall on the opposite 
 side of the yard, tracing a gleaming circle there, and 
 in the midst of the lighted space he saw two shadowy 
 figures such as no sculptor till the time of the gifted 
 Canova could have dreamed of. The Spaniard turned 
 to the room again. 
 
 * I do not know,' he said to La Marana, ' where we 
 have put the key ' 
 
 ' You look very pale ! ' she exclaimed. 
 
 ' I will soon tell you why,' he answered, as he sprang 
 towards his dagger, caught it up, and beat violently on 
 the door in the panelling. * Open the door ! ' he shouted. 
 * Juana ! open the door ! ' 
 
 There was an appalling despair in his tones that struck 
 terror into the two women who heard him. 
 
 Juana did not open, because there was some delay in 
 hiding Montefiore. She knew nothing of what had 
 passed in the room without. The tapestry hangings on 
 either side of the door deadened all sounds. 
 
 * Madame,' said Perez, turning to La Marana, ' I told 
 you just now that I did not know where the key was. 
 That was a lie. Here it is,' and he took it from the 
 sideboard, ' but it is useless. * Juana's key is in the lock, 
 and her door is barricaded. — We are deceived, wife ! 
 There is a man in Juana's room.' 
 
 * By my hopes of salvation, the thing is impossible ! * 
 said Dona Lagounia. 
 
 * Do not perjure yourself, Dofia Lagounia. Our 
 honour is slain ; and she^ (he turned to La Marana, who 
 had risen to her feet, and stood motionless as if thunder- 
 struck by his words), * she may well scorn us. She saved 
 our lives, our fortune, and our honour, and we have 
 
The Maranas 143 
 
 barely guarded her money for her. — ^Juana, open the 
 door ! ' he shouted, ' or I will break it down ! ' 
 
 The whole house rang with the cry ; his voice grew 
 louder and angrier ; but he was cool and self-possessed. 
 He held Montefiore's life in his hands, in another moment 
 he would wash away his remorse in every drop of the 
 Italian's blood. 
 
 ' Go out ! go out ! go out ! all of you I ' cried La Marana, 
 and springing upon the dagger like a tigress, she snatched 
 it from the hands of the astonished Perez. ' Go out of 
 this room, Perez,' she went on, speaking quite quietly 
 now. ' Go out, you and your wife, and the maid and 
 the apprentice. There will be a murder here directly, 
 and you might all be shot down by the French for it. 
 Do not you mix yourself up in it, it is my affair entirely. 
 When my daughter and I meet, God alone should be 
 present. As for the man, he is mine. The whole world 
 should not snatch him out of my hands. There, there, 
 go! I forgive you. I see it all. The girl is a Marana. 
 My blood flows in her veins, and you, your religion, and 
 your honour have been powerless against it.' 
 
 Her groan was dreadful to hear. She turned dry eyes 
 upon them. She had lost everything, but she was 
 accustomed to suffering ; she was a courtesan. The door 
 opened. La Marana henceforth heeded nothing else, 
 and Perez, making a sign to his wife, could remain at 
 his post. The old Spaniard, implacable where honour 
 was concerned, determined to assist the wronged mother's 
 vengeance. Juana, in her white draperies, stood quietly 
 there in her room in the soft lamplight. ' What do you 
 want with me ? ' she asked. 
 
 In spite of herself, a light shudder ran through La 
 Marana. 
 
 ' Perez,' she asked, * is there any other way out of this 
 
 1 closet ? ' 
 
 Perez shook his head ; and on that the courtesan went 
 into the room. 
 
144 The Maranas 
 
 * Juana,' she said, * I am your mother, youi judge — 
 you have put yourself in the one situation in which I can 
 reveal myself to you. You have come to my level, you 
 whom I had thought to raise to heaven. Oh ! you have 
 fallen very low ! . . . You have a lover in your room.' 
 
 * Madame, no one but my husband should or could be 
 there,' she answered. ' I am the Marchesa di Montefiore.' 
 
 * Then are there two of them ? ' asked old Perez 
 sternly. ' He told me that he was married.' 
 
 * Montefiore ! my love ! ' cried the girl, rending the 
 curtains, and discovering the officer ; ' come forward, 
 these people are slandering you.' 
 
 The Italian's face was haggard and pale ; he saw the 
 dagger in La Marana's hand, and he knew La Marana. 
 At one bound he sprang out of the chamber, and with a 
 voice of thunder shouted, * Help ! help ! murder ! they 
 are killing a Frenchman ! — Soldiers of the Sixth of the 
 line, run for Captain Diard ! . . . Help ! ' 
 
 Perez had secured the Marquis, and was about to gag 
 him by putting his large hand over the soldier's mouth, 
 when the courtesan stopped him. 
 
 * Hold him fast,' she said, 'but let him call. Throw open 
 the doors, and leave them open ; and now go out, all of 
 you, I tell you ! — As for you,' she continued, addressing 
 Montefiore, ' shout, and call for help. ... As soon as 
 there is a sound of your men's footsteps, this blade will be 
 in your heart. . . . Are you married ? Answer me.' 
 
 Montefiore, lying across the threshold of the door, two 
 paces from Juana, heard nothing, and saw nothing, for the 
 blinding gleam of the dagger blade. 
 
 ' Then he meant to deceive me ; * the words came 
 slowly from Juana. ' He told me that he was free.' 
 
 ' He told me that he was a married man,' said Perez, 
 in the same stern tones as before. 
 
 * Holy Virgin ! ' exclaimed Doria Lagounia. La 
 Marana stooped to mutter in the ear of the Marquis, 
 ' Answer me, will you, soul of mud ? ' 
 
The Maranas 145 
 
 * Your daughter . . .' Montefiore began. 
 
 * The daughter I once had is dead, or she soon will be,' 
 said La Marana. ' I have no daughter now. Do not 
 use that word again. Answer me, are you married ? ' 
 
 ' No, Madame,' Montefiore said at last (he wished to 
 gain time) ; ' I mean to marry your daughter.' 
 
 * My noble Montefiore ! ' cried Juana, with a deep 
 breath. 
 
 * Then what made you fly and call for help ? ' demanded 
 Perez. 
 
 Terrible perspicacity ! 
 
 Juana said nothing, but she wrung her hands, went 
 over to her armchair, and sat down. Even at that 
 moment there was an uproar in the street, and in the 
 deep silence that fell upon the parlour it was sufficiently 
 easy to catch the sounds. A private soldier of the Sixth, 
 who had chanced to pass along the street when Monte- 
 fiore cried out for help, had gone to call up Diard. 
 Luckily, the quartermaster was in his lodging, and came 
 at once with several comrades. 
 
 * Why did I fly ? ' repeated Montefiore, who heard 
 the sound of his friend's voice. ' Because I had told you 
 the truth, — Diard ! Diard ! ' he shrieked aloud. 
 
 But at a word from Perez, who meant that all in his 
 house should share in the murder, the apprentice made 
 the door fast, and the men were obliged to force it open. 
 La Marana, therefore, could stab the guilty creature at 
 her feet before they made an entrance ; but her hand 
 shook with pent-up wrath, and the blade slipped aside 
 upon Montefiore's epaulette. Yet so heavy had been the 
 blow, that the Italian rolled over almost at Juana's feet. 
 The girl did not see him, but La Marana sprang upon 
 her prey, and, lest she should fail this time, she held his 
 throat in an iron grasp, and pointed the dagger at his 
 I heart. 
 
 * I am free ! ' he gasped. * I will marry her ! I swear 
 |it by God ! by my mother ! by all that is most sacred in 
 
 K 
 
146 The Maranas 
 
 this world. ... I am not married ! I will marry her ! 
 Upon my word of honour, I will ! ' and he set his teeth 
 in the courtesan's arm. 
 
 * That is enough, mother,' said Juana ; ' kill him ! I 
 would not have such a coward for my husband if he 
 were ten times more beautiful.' 
 
 ' Ah ! that is my daughter ! ' cried La Marana. 
 
 ' What is going on here ? ' asked the quartermaster, 
 looking about him. 
 
 ' This,' shouted Montefiore ; ' they are murdering me 
 on that girl's account ; she says that I am her lover ; she 
 trapped me, and now they want to force me to marry 
 her against my will ' 
 
 'Against your will?' cried Diard, struck with the 
 subhme beauty that indignation, scorn, and hate had 
 lent to Juana's face, already so fair. ' You are very hard 
 to please ! If she must have a husband, here am I. 
 Put up your dagger.' 
 
 La Marana grasped the Italian, pulled him to his feet, 
 brought him to the bedside, and said in his ear — 
 
 ' If I spare your life, you may thank that last speech 
 of yours for it. But keep it in mind. If you say a 
 word against my daughter, we shall see each other again. 
 — What will her dowry amount to ? ' she asked of Perez. 
 
 ' Two hundred thousand piastres down ' 
 
 'That will- not be all. Monsieur,' said the courtesan, 
 addressing Diard. 'Who are you? — You can go,' she 
 added, turning to Montefiore. 
 
 But when the Marquis heard mention of two hundred 
 thousand piastres down, he came forward, saying, ' I am 
 really quite free ' 
 
 ' You are really quite free to go,' said La Marana, and 
 the Italian went. 
 
 ' Alas ! Monsieur,' the girl spoke, addressing Diard ; 
 ' I thank you, and I admire you. But my bridegroom is 
 in heaven ; I shall be the bride of Christ. To-morrow 
 I shall enter the convent of ' 
 
The Maranas 147 
 
 *Oh, hush! hush! Juana, my Juana ! ' cried her 
 mother, holding the girl tightly in her arms. Then she 
 whispered, ' You must take another bridegroom.' 
 
 Juana turned pale. 
 
 ' Who are you, monsieur ? ' asked the mother of the 
 Provençal. 
 
 ' I am nothing as yet but a quartermaster in the Sixth 
 Regiment of the line,' said he ; ' but for such a wife, a 
 man would feel that it lay in him to be a Marshal of 
 France some day. My name is Pierre-François Diard. 
 My father was a guild magistrate, so I am not a ' 
 
 ' Eh ! you are an honest man, are you not ? ' cried La 
 Marana. * If the Signorina Juana dei Mancini cares for 
 you, you may both be happy. — Juana,' she went on 
 gravely, ' when you are the wife of a good and worthy 
 man, remember that you will be a mother. I have 
 sworn that you shall set a kiss upon your child's fore- 
 head without a blush . . . (Here her tone changed some- 
 what. ) I have sworn that you shall be a virtuous wife. 
 So in this life, though many troubles await you, whatever 
 happens to you, be a chaste and faithful wife to your 
 husband ; sacrifice everything to him ; he will be the 
 father of your children. ... A father to your children ! 
 . . . Stay, between you and a lover your mother always 
 will stand ; I shall be your mother only when danger 
 threatens. . . . Do you see Perez's dagger ? That is 
 part of your dower,' and she flung the weapon down on 
 the bed. ' There I leave it as a guarantee of your 
 honour, so long as I have eyes to see and hands that can 
 strike a blow. — Farewell,' she said, keeping back the 
 tears ; ' heaven send that we never meet again,' and at 
 that her tears flowed fast. 
 
 * Poor child ! you have been very happy in this little 
 cell, happier than you know. — Act in such a sort that 
 she may never look back on it with regret,' she added, 
 looking at her future son-in-law. 
 
 The story, which has been given simply by way of 
 
148 The Maranas 
 
 introduction, is not bv :u\v means the subject of the 
 following study ; it has been told to expkiin, in the first 
 place, how Alontefiore and Diard became acquainted, how 
 Captain Diard came to marrv Juana dei Mancini, and to 
 make known what passions tilled Mme. Diard's heart, 
 what blood flowed in her veins, 
 
 Bv the time that the quartermaster had been 
 through the slow and tedious formalities indispensable 
 for a French soldier who is obtaining leave to marrv, 
 he had follen passionately in love with Juana dei Man- 
 cini, and Juana dei Mancini had had time to reflect 
 on her fate. An appalling fate ! Juana, who neither 
 loved nor esteemed this Diard, was none the less bound 
 to him bv a promise, a rash promise no doubt, but there 
 had been no help for it. The Provençtil was neither 
 handsome nor well made. His manners were totally 
 lacking in distinction, and savoured of the camp, of his 
 provincial bringing up and imperfect education. How 
 should the voung girl love Diard r With her perfect 
 elegance and grace, her unconquerable instinct for luxury 
 and refinement, her natural drawings were towards the 
 higher spheres of society ; and as for esteem, she could 
 not bring herself to feel so much as esteem for this Diard 
 who was to marry her, and precisely for that very 
 reason. 
 
 The repugnance was very natural. Woman is a 
 sacred and gracious being, almost always misunderstood ; 
 the judgments passed upon her are almost always unjust, 
 because she is not understood. If Juana had loved 
 Diard, she would have esteemed him. Love creates a 
 new self within a woman ; the old self passes away with 
 the dawn of love, and in the wedding-robe of a passion 
 that shall last as long as life itself, her life is invested 
 with whiteness and purity. After this new birth, this 
 revival of modestv and virtue, she has no longer a past; 
 it is utterly forgotten ; she turns wholly to the future 
 
The Maranas 149 
 
 that she may learn all things afresh. In this sense, the 
 words of the famous line that a modern poet has put into 
 the mouth of Marion Delorme, a line moreover that 
 Corneille might well have written, are steeped in truth — 
 
 ' ^d Lcnje gives back my maidenhood to me.^ 
 
 Does it not read like a reminiscence of some tragedy of 
 Corneille's ? The style of the father of French drama, 
 so forceful, owing so little to epithet, seems to be revived 
 again in the words. And yet the writer, the poet of our 
 own day, has been compelled to sacrifice it to the taste 
 of a public only capable of appreciating vaudevilles. 
 
 So Juana, loveless, was still the same Juana, betrayed, 
 humiliated, brought very low. How should this Juana 
 respect a man who could take her thus? With the 
 high-minded purity of youth, she felt the force of a 
 distinction, subtle in appearance, but real and immutable, 
 a binding law upon the heart, which even the least 
 thoughtful women instinctively apply to all their senti- 
 ments. Life had opened out before Juana, and the 
 prospect saddened her inmost soul. 
 
 Often she looked at Perez and Dona Lagounia, her 
 eyes full of the tears she was too proud to let fall j they 
 understood the bitter thoughts contained in those tears, 
 but they said no word. Were not reproaches useless ? 
 And why should they seek to comfort her ? The keener 
 the sympathy, the wider the pent-up sorrow would spread. 
 
 One evening, as Juana sat in her little cell in a dull 
 stupor of wretchedness, she heard the husband and wife 
 talking together. They thought that the door was shut, 
 and a wail broke from her adopted mother. 
 
 ' The poor child will die of grief ! ' 
 
 ' Yes,' answered Perez in a faltering voice j ' but what 
 can we do ? Can I go now to boast of my ward's 
 I chaste beauty to the Comte d'Arcos, to whom I hoped 
 j to marry her ? ' 
 
 * There is a difference between one slip and vice,' said 
 
150 The Maranas 
 
 the old woman, indulgent as an angel could have 
 been. 
 
 * Her mother gave her to him,' objected Perez. 
 
 ' All in a minute, and without consulting her ! ' cried 
 Doiia Lagounia. 
 
 * She knew quite well what she was doing ' 
 
 ' Into what hands our pearl will pass ! ' 
 
 * Not a word more, or I will go and pick a quarrel with 
 that Diard ! ' 
 
 * And then there would be one more misfortune.' 
 Juana, listening to these terrible words, knew at last 
 
 the value of the happy life that had flowed on untroubled 
 until her error ended it. So the innocent hours in her 
 peaceful retreat were to have been crowned by a brilliant 
 and splendid existence ; the delights so often dreamed of 
 would have been hers. Those dreams had caused her 
 ruin. She had fallen from the heights of social greatness 
 to the feet of Monsieur Diard ! Juana wept ; her 
 thoughts almost drove her mad. For several seconds she 
 hesitated between a life of vice and religion. Vice 
 offered a prompt solution ; religion, a life made up of 
 suffering. The inward debate was stormy and solemn. 
 To-morrow was the fatal day, the day fixed for this 
 marriage. It was not too late ; Juana might be Juana 
 still. If she remained free, she knew the utmost extent 
 of her calamities ; but when married, she could not tell 
 what might lie in store for her. Religion gained the 
 day. Doiia Lagounia came to watch and pray by her 
 daughter's side, as she might have done by a dying 
 woman's bed. 
 
 * It is the will of God,' she said to Juana. Nature 
 gives to a woman a power peculiarly her own, that 
 enables her to endure suffering, a power succeeded in turn 
 by weakness that counsels resignation. Juana submitted 
 without an after-thought. She determined to fulfil her 
 mother's vow, to cross the desert of life, and bO reach 
 heaven, knowing that no flowers could spring in the 
 
The Maranas 151 
 
 thorny paths that lay before her. She married 
 Diard. 
 
 As for the quartermaster, though Juana judged him 
 pitilessly, who else would not have forgiven him ? He 
 was intoxicated with love. La Marana, with the quick 
 instinct natural to her, had felt passion in the tones of 
 his voice, and seen in him the abrupt temper, the im- 
 pulsive generosity of the South. In the paroxysm of her 
 great anger, she had seen Diard's good qualities, and these 
 only, and thought that these were sufficient guarantees 
 for her daughter's happiness. 
 
 And to all appearance the early days of this marriage 
 were happy. But to lay bare the underlying facts of the 
 case, the miserable secrets that women bury in the depths 
 of their souls, Juana had determined that she would not 
 overcloud her husband's joy. All women who are victims 
 of an ill-assorted marriage, come sooner or later to play 
 a double part — a part terrible to play, and Juana had 
 already taken up her rôle. Of such a life, a man can 
 only record the facts ; and women's hearts alone can divine 
 the inner life of sentiments. Is it not a story impossible 
 to relate in all its truth ? Juana, struggling every hour 
 against her own nature, half Spanish, half Italian ; Juana, 
 shedding tears in secret till she had no tears left to shed, 
 was a typical creation, a living symbol, destined to repre- 
 sent the uttermost extent of woman's misfortunes. The 
 minute detail required to depict that life of restless pain 
 would be without interest for those who crave melo- 
 dramatic sensation. And would not an analysis, in which 
 every wife would discover some of her own experience, 
 require an entire volume if it were to be given in full ? 
 Such a book, by its very nature, would be impossible to 
 write, for its merits must consist in half-tones and in 
 subtle shades of colour that critics would consider vague 
 and indistinct. And besides, who that does not bear 
 another heart within his heart can touch on the pathetic, 
 deeply-hidden tragedies that some women take with them 
 
15* The Maranas 
 
 to their graves ; the heartache, understood of none — n 
 even of those who cause it ; the sighs in vain ; tl 
 devotion that, here on earth at least, meets with 
 return j unappreciated magnanimities of silence ar 
 scorn of vengeance ; unfailing generosity, lavished 
 vain ; longings for happiness destined to be unfulfille 
 angelic charity that blesses in secret ; all the belie 
 held sacred, all the inextinguishable love ? This li 
 Juana knew ; fate spared her in nothing. Hers was to 1 
 in all things the lot of a wronged and unhappy wif 
 always forgiving her wrongs ; a woman pure as a flawle 
 diamond, though through her beauty, as flawless and ; 
 dazzling as the diamond, a way of revenge lay open t 
 her. Of a truth, she need not dread the dagger in h( 
 dower. 
 
 But at first, under the influence of love, of a passio 
 that for a while at least can work a change in the moi 
 depraved nature, and bring to light all that is noblest i 
 a human soul, Diard behaved like a man of honour. H 
 compelled Montefiore to go out of the regiment, an 
 even out of that division of the army, that his wife migl 
 not be compelled to meet the Marquis during the sho 
 time that she was to remain in Spain. Then the quarte 
 master asked to change his regiment, and managed 
 exchange into the Imperial Guard. He meant at a 
 costs to gain a title j he would have honours and a gre 
 position to match his great fortune. With this t^-ougl 
 in his mind, he displayed great courage in one of ou 
 bloodiest battles in Germany, and was so badly wounde 
 that he could no longer stay in the service. For a tim 
 it was feared that he might have to lose his leg, and 
 was forced to retire, with his pension indeed, but withou 
 the title of baron or any of the rewards which he hai 
 hoped for, and very likely would have won, if his nam 
 had not been Diard. 
 
 These events, together with his wound and his dis 
 appointed hopes, made a changed man of the late quarter 
 
The Maranas 153 
 
 master. The Provencal's energy, wrought for a time to 
 a fever pitch, suddenly deserted him. At first, however, 
 his wife sustained his courage ; his efforts, his bravery, 
 and his ambition had given her some belief in her hus- 
 band ; and surely it behoved her, of all women, to play a 
 woman's part, to be a tender consoler for the troubles 
 of life. 
 
 Juana's words put fresh heart into the Major. He 
 went to live in Paris, determined to make a high 
 position for himself in the Administration ; the quarter- 
 master of the Sixth Line Regiment should be for- 
 gotten, and some day Madame Diard should wear a 
 splendid title. His passion for his charming wife had 
 made him quick to guess her inmost wishes. Juana did 
 not speak of them, but he understood her ; he was not 
 oved as a man dreams of being loved — he knew it, and 
 onged to be looked up to and loved and caressed. The 
 uckless man anticipated happiness with a wife who was 
 t all times so submissive and so gentle ; but her gentle- 
 ess and her submission meant nothing but that resig- 
 ation to her fate which had given Juana to him. 
 esignation and religion, were these love ? Diard could 
 ften have wished for a refusal instead of that wifely 
 bedience ; often he would have given his soul if Juana 
 ould but have deigned to weep upon his breast, and 
 eased to conceal her feelings with the smile that she 
 vore proudly as a mask upon her face. 
 Many a man in his youth (for after a certain time we 
 ve up struggling) strives to triumph over an evil destiny 
 hat brings the thunder-clouds from time to time above 
 he horizon of his life ; and when he falls into the depths 
 f misfortune, those unrequited struggles should be taken 
 to account. Like many another, Diard tried all ways, 
 nd found all ways barred against him. His wealth 
 nabled him to surround his wife with all the luxuries 
 lat can be enjoyed in Paris. She had a great mansion 
 ad vast drawing-rooms, and presided over one of those 
 
154 The Maranas 
 
 houses frequented by some few artists who are uncritical 
 by nature, by a great many schemers, by the frivolous 
 folk who are ready to go anywhere to be amused, and by 
 certain men of fashion, attracted by Juana's beauty. 
 Those who make themselves conspicuous in Paris must 
 either conquer Paris or fall victims. Diard's character 
 was not strong enough, nor compact enough, nor per- 
 sistent enough, to impress itself upon the society of a 
 time when every one else was likewise bent upon 
 reaching a high position. Ready-made social classifica- 
 tions are not improbably a great blessing, even for the 
 people. Napoleon's Memoirs have informed us of the 
 pains he was at to impose social conventions upon a 
 Court composed for the most part of subjects who had 
 once been his equals. But Napoleon was a Corsican, 
 Diard was a Provençal. 
 
 If the two men had been mentally equal — an islander 
 is always a more complete human being than a man born 
 and bred on the mainland ; and though Provence and 
 Corsica lie between the same degrees of latitude, the 
 narrow stretch of sea that keeps them apart is, in spite of 
 man's inventions, a whole ocean that makes two different 
 countries of them both. 
 
 From this false position, which Diard falsified yet 
 further, grave misfortunes arose. Perhaps there is a 
 useful lesson to be learned by tracing the chain of inter- 
 dependent facts that imperceptibly brought about the 
 catastrophe of the story. 
 
 In the first place, Parisian scoffers could not see the 
 pictures that adorned the late quartermaster's mansion 
 without a significant smile. The recently purchased 
 masterpieces were all condemned by the unspoken slur 
 cast upon the pictures that had been the spoils of war 
 in Spain j by this slur, self-love avenged itself for the 
 involuntary offence of Diard's wealth. Juana understood 
 the meaning of some of the ambiguous compliments in 
 which the French excel. Acting upon her advice, there- 
 
The Maranas 155 
 
 fore, her husband sent the Spanish pictures back to 
 Taragona. But the world of Paris, determined to put 
 the worst construction on the matter, said, * That fellow 
 Diard is shrewd ; he has sold his pictures,' and the good 
 folk continued to believe that the paintings which still 
 hung on the walls had not been honestly come by. 
 Then some ill-natured women inquired how a Diard 
 had come to marry a young wife so rich and so beautiful. 
 Comments followed, endless absurdities were retailed, 
 after the manner of Paris. If Juana rose above it all, 
 even above the scandal, and met with nothing but the 
 respect due to her pure and devout life, that respect 
 nded with her, and was not accorded to her husband. 
 Her shining eyes glanced over her rooms, and her 
 woman's clear-sightedness brought her nothing but 
 pain. And yet — the disparagement was quite explic- 
 ible. Military men, for all the virtues with which 
 ■omance endows them, could not forgive the quondam 
 ijuartermaster for his wealth and his determination to 
 :ut a figure in Paris, and for that very reason. 
 
 There is a world in Paris that lies between the furthest 
 louse in the Faubourg Saint-Germain on the one hand, 
 nd the last mansion in the Rue Saint-Lazare on the 
 )ther ; between the rising ground of the Luxembourg 
 md the heights of Montmartre ; a world that dresses 
 ind gossips, dresses to go out, and goes out to gossip ; a 
 vorld of petty and great airs ; a world of mean and poor 
 mbitions, masquerading in insolence ; a world of envy 
 nd of fawning arts. It is made up of gilded rank, and 
 ank that has lost its gilding, of young and old, of 
 lobility of the fourth century and titles of yesterday, of 
 hose who laugh at the expense of a parvenu^ and others 
 vho fear to be contaminated by him, of men eager for 
 he downfall of a power, though none the less they will 
 ow the knee to it if it holds its own ; and all these ears 
 ear, and all these tongues repeat, and all these minds 
 re informed in the course of an evening of the birth- 
 
156 The Maranas 
 
 place, education, and previous history of each new 
 aspirant for its high places. If there is no High Court 
 of Justice in this exalted sphere, it boasts the most ruth- 
 less of procureurs-généraux, an intangible public opinion 
 that dooms the victim and carries out the sentence, that 
 accuses and brands the delinquent. Do not hope to 
 hide anything from this tribunal, tell everything at once 
 yourself, for it is determined to go to the bottom of 
 everything, and knows everything. Do not seek to 
 understand the mysterious operation by which intelli- 
 gence is flashed from place to place, so that a story, a 
 scandal, or a piece of news is known everywhere simul- 
 taneously in the twinkling of an eye. Do not ask who 
 set the machinery in motion ; it is a social mystery, no 
 observer can do more than watch its phenomena, and 
 its working is rapid beyond belief. A single example 
 shall suffice. The murder of the Due de Berri, at the 
 Opéra, was known in the furthest part of the He Saint- 
 Louis ten minutes after the crime was committed. 
 The opinion of the Sixth Regiment of the Line 
 concerning Diard permeated this world of Paris on 
 the very evening of his first ball. 
 
 So Diard himself could accomplish nothing. Hence- 
 forward his wife, and his wife alone, might make a way 
 for him. Strange portent of a strange civilisation ! If 
 a man can do nothing by himself in Paris, he has still 
 some chance of rising in the world if his wife is young 
 and clever. There are women, weak to all appearance, 
 invalids who, without rising from their sofas or leaving 
 their rooms, make their influence felt in society ; and by 
 bringing countless secret springs into play, gain for 
 their husbands the position which their own vanity 
 desires. But Juana, whose girlhood had been spent in 
 the quaint simplicity of the narrow house in Taragona, 
 knew nothing of the corruption, the baseness, or the 
 opportunities afforded by life in Paris ; she looked out 
 upon it with girlish curiosity, and learned from it no 
 
The Maranas 157 
 
 worldly wisdom save the lessons taught her by her 
 wounded pride and susceptibilities. Juana, moreover, 
 possessed the quick instinct of a maiden heart, and was 
 as swift to anticipate an impression as a sensitive plant. 
 The lonely girl had become a woman all at once. She 
 saw that if she endeavoured to compel society to honour 
 her husband, it must be after the Spanish fashion, of 
 telling a He, carbine in hand. Did not her own constant 
 watchfulness tell her how necessary her manifold precau- 
 tions were ? A gulf yawned for Diard between the 
 failure to make himself respected and the opposite 
 danger of being respected but too much. Then as 
 suddenly as before, when she had foreseen her life, there 
 :ame a revelation of the world to her ; she beheld on all 
 iides the vast extent of an irreparable misfortune. Then 
 :ame the tardy recognition of her husband's peculiar 
 veaknesses, his total unfitness to play the parts he had 
 issigned to himself, the incoherency of his ideas, the 
 nental incapacity to grasp this society as a whole, or to 
 ;omprehend the subtleties that are all-important there. 
 A^'ould not tact effect more for a man in his position 
 han force of character ? But the tact that never fails 
 5 perhaps the greatest of all forces. 
 
 So far from effacing the blot upon the Diard scutcheon, 
 he Major was at no httle pains to make matters worse, 
 "or instance, as it had not occurred to him that the 
 empire was passing through a phase that required care- 
 ul study, he tried, though he was only a major, to 
 btain an appointment as prefect. At that time almost 
 very one believed in Napoleon ; his favour had increased 
 tie importance of every post. The prefectures, those 
 mpires on a small scale, could only be filled by men 
 Mth great names, by the gentlemen of the household of 
 is Majesty the Emperor and King. The prefects by 
 lis time were Grand Viziers. These minions of the 
 reat man laughed at Major Diard's artless ambitions, 
 id he was fain to solicit a sub-prefecture. His modest 
 
158 The Maranas 
 
 pretensions were ludicrously disproportioned to his vast 
 wealth. After this ostentatious display of luxury, how 
 could the millionaire leave the royal splendours of his 
 house in Paris for Issoudun or Savenay ? Would it not 
 be a descent unworthy of his fortunes ? Juana, who all 
 too late had come to understand our laws, and the 
 manners and customs of our administration, too late 
 enUghtened her husband. Diard, in his desperation, 
 went begging to all the powers that be ; but Diard met 
 with nothing but rebuffs, no way was open to him. 
 Then people judged him as the Government had judged 
 him, and passed his own verdict upon himself. Diard 
 had been badly wounded on the field of battle, and Diard 
 had not been decorated. The quartermaster, who had 
 gained wealth, but no esteem, found no place under the 
 government, and society quite logically refused him the 
 social position to which he had aspired. In short, in his 
 own house the unfortunate man continually felt that his 
 wife was his superior. He had come to feel it in spite 
 of the ' velvet glove ' (if the metaphor is not too bold) 
 that disguised from her husband the supremacy that 
 astonished her herself, while she felt humiliated by it. It 
 produced its effect upon Diard at last. 
 
 A man who plays a losing game like this is bound to 
 lose heart, and to grow either a greater or a worse man 
 for it ; Diard's courage, or his passion, was sure to 
 diminish, after repeated blows dealt to his self-love, and he 
 made mistake upon mistake. From the first everything 
 had been against him, even his own habits and his own 
 character. The vices and virtues of the impulsive Pro- 
 vençal were equally patent. The fibres of his nature 
 were like harp strings, and every old friend had a place 
 in his heart. He was as prompt to relieve a comrade in 
 abject poverty as the distress of another of high rank j 
 in short, he never forgot a friend, and filled his gilded 
 rooms with poor wretches down on their luck. Behold 
 ing which things, the general of the old stamp (a species 
 
The Maranas 159 
 
 that will soon be extinct) was apt to greet Diard in an 
 ofFhand fashion, and address him with a patronising, 
 ' Well, my dear fellow ! ' when they met. If the 
 generals of the Empire concealed their insolence beneath 
 an assumption of a soldier's bluff familiarity, the few 
 people of fashion whom Diard met showed him the 
 polite and well-bred contempt against which a self-made 
 man is nearly always powerless. Diard's behaviour and 
 speech, like his half-Italian accent, his dress, and every- 
 thing about him, combined to lower him in the eyes of 
 ordinary minds ; for the unwritten code of good manners 
 and good taste is a binding tradition that only the 
 greatest power can shake off. Such is the way of the 
 world. 
 
 These details give a very imperfect idea of Juana's 
 martyrdom. The pangs were endured one by one. Every 
 social species contributed its pin-prick, and hers was a 
 soul that would have welcomed dagger-thrusts in pre- 
 ference. It was intolerably painful to watch Diard 
 receiving insults that he did not feel, insults that Juana 
 must feel though they were not meant for her. A final 
 and dreadful illumination came at last for her j it cast a 
 light upon the future, and she knew all the sorrows that 
 it held in store. She had seen already that her husband 
 was quite incapable of mounting to the highest rungs of 
 the social ladder, but now she saw the inevitable depths 
 to which he must fall when he should lose heart ; and 
 then a feeling of pity for Diard came over her. 
 
 The future that lay before her was very dark, Juana 
 had never ceased to feel an overhanging dread of some 
 evil, though whence it should come she knew not. 
 This presentiment haunted her inmost soul, as contagion 
 hovers in the air ; but she was able to hide her anguish 
 with smiles. She had reached the point when she no 
 longer thought of herself. 
 
 Juana used her influence to persuade Diard to renounce 
 his social ambitions, pointing out to him as a refuge the 
 
i6o The Maranas 
 
 peaceful and gracious life of the domestic hearth. All 
 their troubles came from without j why should they not 
 shut out the world ? In his own home Diard would 
 find peace and respect ; he should reign there. She felt 
 that she had courage enough to undertake the trying 
 task of making him happy, this man dissatisfied with 
 himself. Her energy had increased with the difli- 
 culties of her fife ; she had within her the heroic spirit 
 needed by a woman in her position, and felt the stirrings 
 of those religious aspirations which are cherished by the 
 guardian angel appointed to watch over a Christian soul, 
 for this poetic superstitious fancy is an allegory that 
 expresses the idea of the two natures within us. 
 
 Diard renounced his ambitions, closed his house, and 
 literally shut himself up in it, if it is allowable to make 
 use of so familiar a phrase. But therein lay the danger. 
 Diard was one of those centrifugal souls who must 
 always be moving about. The luckless soldier's turn of 
 mind was such that no sooner had he arrived in a place 
 than this restless instinct forthwith drove him to depart. 
 Natures of this kind have but one end in life ; they must 
 come and go unceasingly like the wheels spoken of in 
 the Scriptures. It may have been that Diard would fain 
 have escaped from himself. He was not weary of Juanaj 
 she had given him no cause to blame her, but with 
 possession his passion for her had grown less absorbing, 
 and his character asserted itself again. 
 
 Thenceforward his moments of despondency came 
 more frequently j he gave way more often to his quick 
 southern temper. The more virtuous and irreproachable 
 a woman is, the more a man delights to find her in 
 fault, if only to demonstrate his titular superiority ; but 
 if by chance she compels his respect, he must needs 
 fabricate faults, and so between the husband and wife 
 nothings are exaggerated, and trifles become mountains. 
 But Juana's meek patience and gentleness, untinged with 
 the bitterness that women can infuse into their sub- 
 
The Maranas i6i 
 
 mission, gave no handle to this fault-finding of set 
 purpose, the most unkind of all. Hers was, moreover, 
 one of those noble natures for whom it is impossible to 
 fail in duty ; her pure and holy life shone in those eyes 
 with the martyr's expression in them that haunted the 
 imagination. Diard first grew weary, then he chafed, 
 and ended by finding this lofty virtue an intolerable yoke. 
 His wife's discretion left him no room for violent sensa- 
 tions, and he craved excitement. Thousands of such 
 dramas lie hidden away in the souls of men and women, 
 beneath the uninteresting surface of apparently simple 
 and commonplace lives. It is difficult to choose an 
 example from among the many scenes that last for so 
 short a time, and leave such ineffaceable traces in a life; 
 scenes that are almost always precursors of the calamity 
 that is written in the destiny of most marriages. Still 
 one scene may be described, because it sharply marks the 
 first beginnings of a misunderstanding between these 
 two, and may in some degree explain the catastrophe 
 of the story. 
 
 Juana had two children ; luckily for her, they were 
 both boys. The oldest was born seven months after her 
 marriage ; he was named Juan, and was like his mother. 
 Two years after they came to Paris her second son 
 was born ; he resembled Diard and Juana, but he was 
 more like Diard, whose names he bore. Juana had 
 given the most tender care to little Francisco. For the 
 five years of his life, his mother was absorbed in this 
 child ; he had more than his share of kisses and caresses 
 and playthings ; and besides and beyond all this, his 
 mother's penetrating eyes watched him continually. 
 Juana studied his character even in the cradle, noticing 
 heedfuUy his cries and movements, that she might direct 
 his education. Juana seemed to have but that one 
 child. The Provençal, seeing that Juan was almost 
 neglected, began to take notice of the older boy. He 
 would not ask himself whether the little one was the 
 
1 62 The Maranas 
 
 offspring of the short-lived love affair to which he owed 
 Juana, and by a piece of rare flattery made of Juan his 
 Benjamin. Of all the race inheritance of passions which 
 preyed upon her, Mme. Diard gave way but to one — a 
 mother's love ; she loved her children with the same 
 vehemence and intensity that La Marana had shown for 
 her child in the first part of this story ; but to this love 
 she added a gracious delicacy of feeling, a quick and 
 keen comprehension of the social virtues that it had been 
 her pride to practise, in which she had found her re- 
 compense. The secret thought of the conscientious ful- 
 filment of the duties of motherhood had been a crude 
 element of poetry that left its impress on La Marana's 
 life ; but Juana could be a mother openly, it was her hourly 
 consolation. Her own mother had been virtuous as other 
 women are criminal, by stealth ; she had stolen her illicit 
 happiness, she had not known all the sweetness of secure 
 possession. But Juana, whose life of virtue was as dreary 
 as her mother's life of sin, knew every hour the ineffable 
 joys for which that mother had longed in vain. For her, 
 as for La Marana, motherhood summed up all earthly 
 affection, and both the Maranas from opposite causes had 
 but this one comfort in their desolation. Perhaps 
 Juana's love was the stronger, because, shut out from all 
 other love, her children became all in all to her, and 
 because a noble passion has this in common with vice : 
 it grows by what it feeds upon. The mother and the 
 gambler are aHke insatiable. 
 
 Juana was touched by the generous pardon extended 
 over Juan's head by Diard's fatherly affection, and 
 thenceforward the relations between husband and wife 
 were changed ; the interest which Diard's Spanish wife 
 had taken in him from a sense of duty only, became a 
 deep and sincere feeHng. Had he been less inconsequent 
 in his life, if fickleness and spasmodic changes of feeling 
 on his part had not quenched that flicker of timid but 
 real sympathy, Juana must surely have loved him ; but. 
 
The Maranas 163 
 
 unluckily, Diard's character belonged to the quick-witted 
 southern type, that has no continuity in its ideas ; such 
 men will be capable of heroic actions over night, and 
 sink into nonentities on the morrow ; often they are 
 made to suffer for their virtues, often their worst defects 
 contribute to their success ; and for the rest, they are 
 great when their good qualities are pressed into the 
 service of an unflagging will. For two years Diard had 
 been a prisoner in his home, a prisoner bound by the 
 sweetest of all chains. He lived, almost against his will, 
 beneath the influence of a wife who kept him amused, 
 and was always bright and cheerful for him, a wife who 
 devoted all her powers of coquetry to beguiling him into 
 the ways of virtue ; and yet all her ingenuity could not 
 deceive him, and he knew this was not love. 
 
 Just about that time a murder caused a great sensation 
 in Paris. A captain of the armies of the Republic had 
 killed a woman in a paroxysm of debauchery. Diard 
 told the story to Juana when he came home to dine. 
 The officer, he said, had taken his own life to avoid the 
 ignominy of a trial and the infamous death of a criminal. 
 At first Juana could not understand the reason for his 
 conduct, and her husband was obliged to explain to her 
 the admirable provision of the French law, which takes 
 no proceedings against the dead. 
 
 ' But, papa, didn't you tell us the other day that the 
 King can pardon anybody ? ' asked Francisco. 
 
 * The King can only grant lije^ said Juan, nettled. 
 
 Diard and Juana watched this little scene with very 
 diff^erent feelings. The tears of happiness in Juana's 
 eyes as she glanced at her oldest boy let her husband see 
 with fatal clearness into the real secrets of that hitherto 
 inscrutable heart. Her older boy was Juana's own child ; 
 Juana knew his nature ; she was sure of him and of his 
 future ; she worshipped him, and her great love was a 
 secret known only to her child and to God. Juan, in 
 his secret heart, gladly endured his mother's sharp speeches. 
 
i64 The Maranas 
 
 What if she seemed to frown upon him in the presence 
 of his father and brother, when she showered passionate 
 kisses upon him when they were alone ? Francisco 
 was Diard's child, and Juana's care meant that she wished 
 to check the growth of his father's faults in him, and to 
 develop his good qualities. 
 
 Juana, unconscious that she had spoken too plainly in 
 that glance, took little Francisco on her knee ; and, her 
 sweet voice faltering somewhat with the gladness that 
 Juan's answer had caused her, gave the younger boy the 
 teaching suited to his childish mind. 
 
 * His training requires great care,' the father said, 
 speaking to Juana. 
 
 'Yes,' she answered simply. 
 
 *But7«fl«/' 
 
 The tone in which the two words were uttered startled 
 Mme. Diard. She looked up at her husband. 
 
 *Juan was born perfection,' he added, and having thus 
 delivered himself, he sat down, and looked gloomily at 
 his wife. She was silent, so he went on, ' You love one 
 OÎ your children more than the other.' 
 
 * You know it quite well,' she said. 
 
 * No ! ' returned Diard. ' Until this moment I did 
 not know which of them you loved the most.' 
 
 ' But neither of them has as yet caused ma any 
 sorrow,' she answered quickly. 
 
 * No, but which of them has given you more joys i* ' 
 he asked still more quickly. 
 
 ' I have not kept any reckoning of them.' 
 
 ' Women are very deceitful ! ' cried Diard. ' Do you 
 
 dare to tell me that Juan is not the darling of your 
 
 heart ? ' 
 
 ' And if he were,' she said, with gentle dignity, * do 
 
 you mean that it would be a misfortune ? ' 
 
 * You have never loved me ! If you had chosen, I 
 might have won kingdoms for you with my sword. 
 You know all that I have tried to do, sustained by one 
 
Ttie Maranas 165 
 
 thought — a longing that you might care for me. Ah ! 
 
 if you had but loved me ' 
 
 'A woman who loves,' said Juana, 'lives in solitude far 
 from the world. Is not that what we are doing ? ' 
 
 * Oh ! I know, Juana, that you are never in the 
 wrong.' 
 
 The words, spoken with such intense bitterness, 
 brought about a coolness between them that lasted the 
 rest of their lives. 
 
 On the morrow of that fatal day, Diard sought out 
 one of his old cronies, and with him sought distraction at 
 the gaming-table. Unluckily, he won a great deal ot 
 money, and he began to play regularly. Little by little 
 he slipped back into his old dissipated life. After a short 
 time he no longer dined at home. A few months were 
 spent in the enjoyment of the first pleasures of freedom ; 
 he made up his mind that he would not part with it, left 
 the large apartments of the house to his wife, and took 
 up his abode separately on the entresol. By the end of 
 the year Diard and Juana only met once a day — at 
 I breakfast time. 
 
 In a few words, like all gamblers, he had runs of good 
 land bad luck; but as he was reluctant to touch his 
 capital, he wished to have entire control of their income, 
 land his wife accordingly ceased to take any part in the 
 Imanagement of the household economy. Mistrust had 
 Isucceeded to the boundless confidence that he had once 
 [placed in her. As to money matters, which had formerly 
 Ibeen arranged by both husband and wife, he adopted the 
 )lan of a monthly allowance for her own expenses ; they 
 settled the amount of it together in the last of the con- 
 fidential talks that form one of the most attractive charms 
 )f marriage. 
 
 The barrier of silence between two hearts is a real 
 livorce, accomplished on the day when husband and wife 
 [ay we no longer. When that day came, Juana knew 
 Ihat she was no longer a wife, but a mother j she was 
 
1 66 The Maranas 
 
 not unhappy, and did not seek to guess the reason of the 
 misfortune. It was a great pity. Children consolidate, 
 as it were, the lives of their parents, and the life that her 
 husband led apart was to weave sadness and anguish for 
 others as well as for Juana. Diard lost no time in making 
 use of his newly regained liberty ; he played high, and 
 lost and won enormous sums. He was a good and bold 
 player, and gained a great reputation. The respect which 
 he had failed to win in society in the days of the Empire 
 was accorded now to the wealth that was risked upon a 
 green table, to a talent for all and any of the games of 
 chance of that period. Ambassadors, financiers, men 
 with large fortunes, jaded pleasure-seekers in quest of 
 excitement and extreme sensations, admired Diard's play 
 at their clubs ; they rarely asked him to their houses, but 
 they all played with him. Diard became the fashion. 
 Once or twice during the winter his independent spirit 
 led him to give a fête to return the courtesies that he 
 had received, and by glimpses Juana saw something of 
 society again ; there was a brief return of balls and 
 banquets, of luxury and brilliantly-lighted rooms; but 
 all these things she regarded as a sort of duty levied upon 
 her happiness and solitude. 
 
 The queen of these high festivals appeared in them 
 like some creature fallen from an unknown world. Her 
 simplicity that nothing had spoiled, a certain maidenliness 
 of soul with which the changed conditions of her life had 
 invested her, her beauty, her unaffected modesty, won 
 sincere admiration. But Juana saw few women among 
 her guests ; and it was plain to her mind that if her 
 husband had ordered his life differently without taking 
 her into his confidence, he had not risen in the esteem of 
 the world. 
 
 Diard was not always lucky. In three years he had 
 squandered three-fourths of his fortune ; but he drew 
 from his passion for gambling sufficient energy to satisfy 
 it. He had a large circle of acquaintance, and was hand 
 
The Maranas 1 67 
 
 and glove with certain swindlers on the Stock Exchange 
 — gentry who, since the Revolution, have established the 
 principle that robbery on a large scale is a mere peccadillo^ 
 transferring to the language of the counting-house the 
 brazen epithets of the license of the eighteenth century. 
 
 Diard became a speculator, engaged in the peculiar 
 kinds of business described as ' shady ' in the slang of the 
 Palais. He managed to get hold of poor wretches 
 ignorant of commercial red-tape, and weary of everlasting 
 proceedings in liquidation ; he would buy up their claims 
 on the debtor's estate for a small sum, arrange the matter 
 with the assignees in the course of an evening, and 
 divide the spoil with the latter. When liquéfiable debts 
 were not to be found, he looked out for floating debts ; 
 he unearthed and revived claims in abeyance in Europe 
 and America and uncivilised countries. When at the 
 Restoration the debts incurred by the princes, the 
 Republic, and the Empire were all paid, he took com- 
 missions on loans, on contracts for public works and 
 [enterprises of all kinds. In short, he committed legal 
 robbery, like many another carefully masked delinquent 
 behind the scenes in the theatre of politics. Such thefts, 
 if perpetrated by the light of a street lamp, would send 
 I the luckless offender to the hulks ; but there is a virtue 
 lin the glitter of chandeliers and gilded ceilings that 
 labsolves the crimes committed beneath them. 
 
 Diard forestalled and regrated sugars ; he sold places ; 
 Ito him belongs the credit of the invention of the 
 
 jarmtng-pan ; he installed lay-figures in lucrative posts 
 that must be held for a time to secure still better positions. 
 
 'hen he fell to meditating on bounties ; he studied the 
 |oop-holes of the law, and carried on contraband trades 
 igainst which no provision had been made. This traffic 
 In high places may be briefly described as a sort of com- 
 
 lission agency ; he received ' so much per cent.' on the 
 )urchase of fifteen votes which passed in a single night 
 From the benches on the left to the benches on the right 
 
1 68 The Maranas 
 
 of the legislative chamber. In these days such things are 
 neither misdemeanours nor felony ; exploiting industry, 
 the art of government, financial genius — these are the 
 names by which they are called. 
 
 Public opinion put Diard in the pillory, where more 
 than one clever man stood already to keep him company ; 
 there, indeed, you will find the aristocracy of this kind of 
 talent — the Upper Chamber of civilised rascality. 
 
 Diard, therefore, was no commonplace gambler, no 
 vulgar spendthrift who ends his career, in melodramas, as 
 a beggar. Above a certain social altitude that kind of 
 gambler is not to be found. In these days a bold 
 scoundrel of this kind will die gloriously in the harness 
 of vice in all the trappings of success ; he will blow out 
 his brains in a coach and six, and all that has been intrusted 
 to him vanishes with him. Diard's talent determined him 
 not to buy remorse too cheaply, and he joined this privileged 
 class. He learned all the springs of government, made 
 himself acquainted with all the secrets and the weak- 
 nesses of men in office, and held his own in the fiery 
 furnace into which he had cast himself. 
 
 Mme. Diard knew nothing of the infernal life that her 
 husband led. She was well content to be neglected, and 
 did not ponder overmuch the reasons for his neglect. 
 Her time was too well filled. She devoted all the money 
 that she had to the education of her children j a very 
 clever tutor was engaged for them, besides various 
 masters. She meant to make men of her boys, to develop 
 in them the faculty of reasoning clearly, but not at the 
 expense of their imaginative powers. Nothing affected 
 her now save through her children, and her own colour- 
 less life depressed her no longer. Juan and Francisco 
 were for her what children are for a time for many 
 mothers — a sort of expansion of her own existence. Diard 
 had come to be a mere accident in her life. Since Diard 
 had ceased to be a father and the head of the family, 
 nothing bound Juana to her husband any longer, save a 
 

 The Maranas 169 
 
 regard for appearances demanded by social conventions } 
 yet she brought up her children to respect their father, 
 shadowy and unreal as that fatherhood had become ; 
 indeed, her husband's continual absence from home 
 helped her to maintain the fiction of his high character. 
 If Diard had lived in the house, all Juana's efforts must 
 have been in vain. Her children were too quick and 
 bright not to judge their father, and this process is a 
 moral parricide. 
 
 At length, however, Juana's indifference changed to a 
 feeUng of dread. She felt that sooner or later her hus- 
 band's manner of life must affect the children's future. 
 Day by day that old presentiment of coming evil gathered 
 definiteness and strength. On the rare occasions when 
 Juana saw her husband, she would glance at his hollow 
 cheeks, at his face grown haggard with the vigils he kept, 
 and wrinkled with violent emotions ; and Diard almost 
 trembled before the clear, penetrating eyes. At such 
 times her husband's assumed gaiety alarmed her even 
 more than the dark look that his face wore in repose, 
 when for a moment he happened to forget the part that 
 he was playing. He feared his wife as the criminal 
 fears the headsman. Juana saw in him a disgrace on her 
 children's name ; and Diard dreaded her, she was like 
 some passionless Vengeance, a Justice with unchanging 
 brows, with the arm that should one day strike always 
 suspended above him. 
 
 One day, about fifteen years after his marriage, Diard 
 found himself without resources. He owed a hundred 
 thousand crowns, and was possessed of a bare hundred 
 thousand francs. His mansion (all that he possessed 
 beside ready money) was mortgaged beyond its value. 
 A few more days, and the prestige of enormous wealth 
 [must fade j and when those days of grace had expired, 
 o helping hand would be stretched out, no purse would 
 e open for him. Nothing but unlooked-for luck could 
 ave him now from the slough into which he must fall ; 
 
170 The Maranas 
 
 and he would but sink the deeper in it, men would scorn 
 him the more because for a while they had estimated him 
 at more than his just value. 
 
 Very opportunely, therefore, he learned that with the 
 beginning of the season diplomatists and foreigners of 
 distinction flocked to watering-places in the Pyrenees, 
 that play ran high at these resorts, and that the visitors 
 were doubtless well able to pay their losings. So he 
 determined to set out at once for the Pyrenees. He had 
 no mind to leave his wife in Paris ; some of his creditors 
 might enlighten her as to his awkward position, and he 
 wished to keep it secret, so he took Juana and the two 
 children. He would not allow the tutor to go with 
 them, and made some difficulties about Juana's maid, 
 who, with a single man-servant, composed their travel- 
 ling suite. His tone was curt and peremptory ; his energy 
 seemed to have returned to him. This hasty journey 
 sent a shiver of dread to Juana's soul ; her penetration was 
 at fault, she could not imagine the why and wherefore of 
 their leaving Paris. Her husband seemed to be in high 
 spirits on the way ; and during the time spent together 
 perforce in the travelling carriage, he took more and 
 more notice of the children, and was more kindly to the 
 children's mother. And yet — every day brought new 
 and dark forebodings for Juana, the forebodings of a 
 mother's heart These inward warnings, even when 
 there is no apparent reason for them, are seldom vain, 
 and the veil that hides the future grows thin for a mother's 
 eyes. 
 
 Diard took a house, not large, but very nicely furnished, 
 situated in one of the quietest parts of Bordeaux. It 
 happened to be a corner house with a large garden, 
 surrounded on three sides by streets, and on the fourth by 
 the wall of a neighbouring dwelling. Diard paid the 
 rent in advance, and installed his wife and family, leaving 
 Juana fifty louis, a sum barely sufficient to meet the 
 housekeeping expenses for three months. Mme. Diard 
 
The Maranas 171 
 
 made no comment on this unwonted niggardliness. 
 When her husband told her that he was about to go to 
 the Baths, and that she was to remain in Bordeaux, she 
 made up her mind that the children should learn the 
 Spanish and Italian languages thoroughly, and that they 
 should read with her the great masterpieces of either 
 tongue. 
 
 With this object in view, Juana's Kfe should be 
 retired and simple, and in consequence her expenses 
 would be few. Her own woman waited upon them ; 
 and, to simplify the housekeeping, she arranged on the 
 morrow of Diard's departure to have their meals sent in 
 from a restaurant. Everything was provided for until 
 her husband's return, and she had no money left. Her 
 amusements must consist in occasional walks with the 
 children. She was now a woman of thirty-three ; her 
 beauty had developed to its fullest extent, she was in the 
 full splendour of her maturity. Scarcely had she appeared 
 in Bordeaux before people talked of nothing but the 
 lovely Spanish lady. She received a first love-letter, and 
 thenceforth confined her walks to her own garden. 
 
 At first Diard had a run of luck at the Baths. He 
 won three hundred thousand francs in two months ; but 
 it never occurred to him to send any money to his wife, 
 he meant to keep as large a sum as possible by him, and 
 to play for yet higher stakes. Towards the end of the 
 last month a Marchese di Montefiore came to the Baths, 
 preceded by a reputation for a fine figure, and great 
 wealth, for the match that he had made with an English 
 lady of family, and most of all for a passion for gaming. 
 Diard waited for his old comrade in arms, to add the spoils 
 to his winnings. A gambler with something like four 
 hundred thousand francs at his back can command most 
 things ; Diard felt confident in his luck, and renewed 
 his acquaintance with Montefiore. That gentleman 
 received him coldly, but they played together, and Diard 
 lost everything. 
 
17* The Maranas 
 
 * Montefiore, my dear fellow,' said the sometime 
 quartermaster, after a turn round the room in which 
 he had ruined himself, ' I owe you a hundred thousand 
 francs ; but I have left my money at Bordeaux, where 
 my wife is staying.' 
 
 As a matter of fact, Diard had notes for the amount in 
 his pockets at that moment, but, with the self-possession 
 of a man accustomed to take in all the possibilities of a 
 situation at a glance, he still hoped something from the 
 incalculable chances of the gaming-table. Montefiore 
 had expressed a desire to see something of Bordeaux ; 
 and if Diard were to settle at once with him, he would 
 have nothing left, and could not have his ' revenge.' A 
 'revenge' will sometimes more than make good all 
 previous losses. All these burning hopes depended on 
 the answer that the Marquis might give. 
 
 * Let it stand, my dear fellow,' said Montefiore ; * we 
 will go to Bordeaux together. I am rich enough now 
 in all conscience j why should I take an old comrade's 
 
 money 
 
 Three days later, Diard and the Italian were at Bor- 
 deaux. Montefiore oiFered the Provençal his revenge. 
 In the course of an evening, which Diard began by 
 paying down the hundred thousand francs, he lost two 
 hundred thousand more upon parole. He was as light- 
 hearted over his losses as if he could swim in gold. It 
 was eleven o'clock, and a glorious night, surely Monte- 
 fiore must wish to breathe the fresh air under the open 
 sky, and to take a walk to cool down a little after the 
 excitement of play } Diard suggested that the Italian 
 should accompany him to his house and take a cup of tea 
 there when the money was paid over. 
 
 * But Mme. Diard ! ' queried Montefiore. 
 
 * Pshaw ! ' answered the Provençal. 
 
 They went downstairs together; hut before leaving 
 the house, Diard went into the dining-room, asked for a 
 glass of water, and walked about the room as he waited 
 
The Maranas 173 
 
 for it. In thîs way he managed to secrete a tiny steel 
 knife with a handle of mother-of-pearl, such as is used 
 at dessert for fruit ; the thing had not yet been put away 
 in its place. 
 
 * Where do you live ? ' asked Montefiore, as they 
 crossed the court ; * I must leave word, so as to have the 
 carriage sent round for me.' 
 
 Diard gave minute directions. 
 
 * Of course, I am perfectly safe as long as I am with 
 you, you see,' said Montefiore in a low voice, as he took 
 Diard's arm ; * but if I came back by myself, and some 
 scamp were to follow me, I should be worth killing.' 
 
 * Then have you money about you ? ' 
 
 * Oh ! next to nothing,' said the cautious Italian, 
 'only my winnings. But they would make a pretty 
 fortune for a penniless rascal ; he might take brevet rank 
 as an honest man afterwards for the rest of his life, that 
 I know.' 
 
 Diard took the Italian into a deserted street. He had 
 noticed the gateway of a single house in it at the end 
 of a sort of avenue of trees, and that there were high 
 dark walls on either side. Just as they reached the end 
 of this road he had the audacity to ask his friend, in 
 soldierly fashion, to walk on. Montefiore understood 
 Diard's meaning, and turned to go with him. Scarcely 
 had they set foot in the shadow, when Diard sprang like 
 a tiger upon the Marquis, tripped him up, boldly set 
 his foot on his victim's throat, and plunged the knife 
 again and again into his heart, till the blade snapped oft' 
 short in his body. Then he searched Montefiore, took 
 his money, his pocket-book, and everything that the 
 Marquis had. 
 
 But though Diard had set about his work in a frenzy 
 that left him perfectly clear-headed, and completed it 
 with the deftness of a pickpocket ; though he had 
 taken his victim adroitly by surprise, Montefiore had 
 had time to shriek ' Murder ! ' once or twice, a shrill, far- 
 
174 The Maranas 
 
 reaching cry that must have sent a thrill of horror through 
 many sleepers, and his dying groans were fearful to 
 hear. 
 
 Diard did not know that even as they turned into 
 the avenue a crowd of people returning home from the 
 theatre had reached the upper end of the street. They 
 had heard Montefiore's dying cries, though the Provençal 
 had tried to stifle the sounds, never relaxing the pressure 
 of his foot upon the murdered man's throat, until at last 
 they ceased. 
 
 The high walls still echoed with dying groans which 
 guided the crowd to the spot whence they came. The 
 sound of many feet filled the avenue and rang through 
 Diard's brain. The murderer did not lose his head j he 
 came out from under the trees, and walked very quietly 
 along the street, as if he had been drawn thither by 
 curiosity, and saw that he had come too late to be of 
 any use. He even turned to make sure of the distance 
 that separated him from the new-comers, and saw them 
 all rush into the avenue, save one man, who not unnatur- 
 ally stood still to watch Diard's movements. 
 
 * There he lies ! There he lies ! ' shouted voices from 
 the avenue. They had caught sight of Montefiore's 
 dead body in front of the great house. The gateway 
 was shut fast, and after diligent search they could not 
 find the murderer in the alley. 
 
 As soon as he heard the shout, Diard knew that he 
 had got the start ; he seemed to have the strength of a 
 lion in him and the fleetness of a stag ; he began to run, 
 nay, he flew. He saw, or fancied that he saw, a second 
 crowd at the other end of the road, and darted down 
 a side street. But even as he fled, windows were opened, 
 and rows of heads were thrust out, lights and shouting 
 issued from every door ; to Diard, running for dear 
 life, it seemed as if he were rushing through a tumult l 
 of cries and swaying lights. Ashe fled straight along 
 the road before him, his legs stood him in such good 
 
The Maranas 1 75 
 
 stead that he left the crowd behind ; but he could not 
 keep out of sight of the windows, nor avoid the watchful 
 eyes that traversed the length and breadth of a street 
 faster than he could fly. 
 
 In the twinkling of an eye, soldiers, gendarmes, and 
 householders were all astir. Some in their zeal had 
 gone to wake up Commissaries of Police, others stood 
 by the dead body. The alarm spread out into the 
 suburbs in the direction of the fugitive (whom it followed 
 like a conflagration from street to street) and into the 
 heart of the town, where it reached the authorities. 
 Diard heard as in a dream the hurrying feet, the yells of 
 a whole horror-stricken city. But his ideas were still 
 clear ; he still preserved his presence of mind, and he 
 rubbed his hands against the walls as he ran. 
 
 At last he reached the garden wall of his own house. 
 He thought that he had thrown his pursuers ofi^ the 
 scent. The place was perfectly silent save for the 
 far-off^ murmur of the city, scarcely louder there than the 
 sound of the sea. He dipped his hands into a runnel of 
 clear water and drank. Then, looking about him, he 
 saw a heap of loose stones by the roadside, and hastened 
 to bury his spoils beneath it, acting on some dim notion 
 such as crosses a criminal's mind when he has not yet 
 found a consistent tale to account for his actions, and 
 hopes to establish his innocence by lack of proofs against 
 him. When this was accomplished, he tried to look 
 serene and calm, forced a smile, and knocked gently at 
 his own door, hoping that no one had seen him. He 
 looked up at the house front and saw a light in his wife's 
 windows. And then in his agitation of spirit visions of 
 Juana's peaceful life rose before him j he saw her sitting 
 there in the candlelight with her children on either 
 side of her, and the vision smote his brain like a blow 
 from a hammer. The waiting-woman opened the door, 
 Diard entered, and hastily shut it to again. He dared 
 to breathe more freely, but he remembered that he 
 
176 The Maranas 
 
 was covered with perspiration, and sent the maid up to 
 Juana, while he stayed below in the darkness. He wiped 
 his face with a handicerchief and set his clothes in order, as 
 a coxcomb smooths his coat before calling upon a pretty 
 woman ; then for a moment he stood in the moonlight 
 examining his hands ; he passed them over his face, 
 and with unspeakable joy found that there was no trace 
 of blood upon him, doubtless his victim's wounds had 
 bled internally. 
 
 He went up to Juana's room, and his manner was as 
 quiet and composed as if he had come home after the 
 theatre, to sleep. As he climbed the stairs, he could 
 think over his position, and summed it up in a phrase — 
 he must leave the house and reach the harbour. These 
 ideas did not cross his brain in words ; he saw them 
 written in letters of fire upon the darkness. Once down 
 at the harbour, he could lie in hiding during the day, 
 and return at night for his treasure ; then he would 
 creep with it like a rat into the hold of some vessel, and 
 leave the port, no one suspecting that he was on board. 
 For all these things money was wanted in the first 
 place. And he had nothing. The waiting-woman 
 came with a light. 
 
 ' Felicie,' he said, * do you not hear that noise ? people 
 are shouting in the street. Go and find out what it is 
 and let me know •' 
 
 His wife in her white dressing-gown was sitting at 
 a table, reading Cervantes in Spanish with Francisco and 
 Juan ; the two children's eyes followed the text while 
 their mother read aloud. All three of them stopped and 
 looked up at Diard, who stood with his hands in his 
 pockets, surprised perhaps by the surroundings, the peace- 
 ful scene, the fair faces of the woman and the children 
 in the softly lit room. It was like a living picture of a 
 Madonna with her son and the little Saint John on either 
 side. 
 
 * Juana, I have something to say to you.' 
 
The Maranas 177 
 
 * What is it ? ' she asked. In her husband's wan and 
 sallow face she read the news of this calamity that she 
 had expected daily ; it had come at last. 
 
 Nothing, but I should like to speak to you — to you, 
 quite alone,' and he fixed his eyes on the two little boys. 
 
 ' Go to your room, my darlings, and go to bed,' said 
 Juana. ' Say your prayers without me.' 
 
 The two boys went away in silence, with the unin- 
 quisitive obedience of children who have been well 
 brought up. 
 
 'Dear Juana,' Diard began in coaxing tones, *I left 
 you very little money, and I am very sorry for it now 
 Listen, since I relieved you of the cares of your house- 
 hold by giving you an allowance, perhaps you may have 
 saved a little money, as all women do ? ' 
 
 ' No,' answered Juana, * I have nothing. You did not 
 allow anything for the expenses of the children's educa- 
 tion. I am not reproaching you at all, dear ; I only 
 remind you that you forgot about it, to explain how it 
 is that I have no money. All that you gave me I 
 spent on lessons and masters ' 
 
 ' That will do ! ' Diard broke in. * Sacré tonnerre ! 
 time is precious. Have you no jewels ? ' 
 
 * You know quite well that I never wear them.' 
 
 * Then there is not a sou in the house ! ' cried Diard, 
 like a man bereft of his senses. 
 
 ' Why do you cry out ? ' she asked. 
 'Juana,' he began, ' I have just killed a man !* 
 Juana rushed to the children's room, and returned, 
 ^hutting all the doors after her. 
 
 ' Your sons must not hear a word of this,' she said ; 
 but whom can you have fought with ? ' 
 Montefiore,' he answered. 
 
 * Ah ! ' she said, and a sigh broke from her ; * he is the 
 |)ne man whom you had a right to kill ' 
 
 ' There were plenty of reasons why he should die by 
 ly hand. But let us lose no time. Money, I want 
 M 
 
lyS The Maranas 
 
 money, in God's name ! They may be on my track. 
 
 We did not fight, Juana, I — I killed him.' 
 
 ' Killed him ! ' she cried. 'But how ? ' 
 
 ' Why, how does one kill a man ? He had robbed me 
 
 of all I had at play ; and I have taken it back again. 
 
 Juana, since we have no money, you might go now, 
 
 while everything is quiet, and look for my money under 
 
 the heap of stones at the end of the road ; you know the 
 
 place.' 
 
 ' Then,' said Juana, * you have robbed him.' 
 
 * What business is it of yours ? Fly I must, mustn't 
 I ? Have you any money ? . . . They are after 
 me !' 
 
 * Who ? ' 
 
 ' The authorities.* 
 
 Juana left the room, and came back suddenly. 
 
 * Here,' she cried, holding out a trinket, but standing 
 at a distance from him ; * this is Dofia Lagounia's cross. 
 There are four rubies in it, and the stones are very 
 
 valuable j so I have been told. Be quick, fly, fly 
 
 why don't you go ? ' 
 
 * Félicie has not come back,* he said, in dull amazement. 
 ' Can they have arrested her ? ' 
 
 Juana dropped the cross on the edge of the table, and 
 sprang towards the windows that looked out upon the 
 street. Outside in the moonlight she saw a row of 
 soldiers taking their places in absolute silence along the 
 walls. She came back again j to all appearance she was 
 perfectly calm. 
 
 ' You have not a minute to lose,' she said to her hus- 
 band ; ' you must escape through the garden. Here is 
 the key of the little door.' 
 
 A last counsel of prudence led her, however, to give 
 a glance over the garden. In the shadows under the 
 trees she saw the silvery gleam of the metal rims of the 
 gendarmes' caps. She even heard a vague murmur of 
 a not far-distant crowd ; sentinels were keeping back the 
 
The Maranas 179 
 
 people gathered together by curiosity at the further ends 
 of the streets by which the house was approached. 
 
 As a matter of fact, Diard had been seen from the 
 windows of the houses j the maid-servant had been 
 frightened, and afterwards arrested j and, acting on this 
 information, the military and the crowd had soon blocked 
 the ends of the streets that lay on two sides of the house. 
 A dozen gendarmes, coming off duty at the theatres, were 
 posted outside ; others had climbed the wall, and were 
 searching the garden, a proceeding authorised by the 
 serious nature of the crime. 
 
 * Monsieur,' said Juana, 'it is too late. The whole 
 town is aroused.' 
 
 Diard rushed from window to window with the wild 
 recklessness of a bird that dashes frantically against every 
 pane. Juana stood absorbed in her thoughts. 
 
 * Where can I hide ? ' he asked. 
 
 He looked at the chimney, and Juana stared at the 
 two empty chairs. To her it seemed only a moment 
 since her children were sitting there. Just at that 
 moment the gate opened, and the courtyard echoed with 
 the sound of many footsteps. 
 
 * Juana, dear Juana, for pity's sake, tell me what 
 to do.' 
 
 ' I will tell you,' she said ; ' I will save you.' 
 
 * Ah ! you will be my good angel ! ' 
 
 Again Juana returned with one of Diard's pistols ; 
 she held it out to him, and turned her head away. Diard 
 did not take it. Juana heard sounds from the courtyard j 
 they had brought in the dead body of the Marquis to 
 confront the murderer. She came away from the window 
 and looked at Diard ; he was white and haggard ; his 
 strength failed him ; he made as if he would sink into a 
 chair. 
 
 * For your children's sake,' she said, thrusting the 
 weapon into his hands. 
 
 ' But, my dear Juana, my little Juana, do you realljr 
 
i8o The Maranas 
 
 believe that ... ? Juana, is there such need of haste ? . . . 
 I would like to kiss you before . . ,' 
 
 The gendarmes were on the stairs. Then Juana took 
 up the pistol, held it at Diard's head ; with a firm grasp 
 on his throat she held him tightly in spite of his cries, 
 fired, and let the weapon fall to the ground. 
 
 The door was suddenly flung open at that moment. 
 The public prosecutor, followed by a magistrate and his 
 clerk, a doctor, and the gendarmes, all the instruments of 
 man's justice, appeared upon the scene. 
 
 ' What do you want ? ' she asked. 
 
 ' Is that M. Diard î ' answered the public prosecutor, 
 pointing to the body lying bent double upon the floor. 
 
 * Yes, monsieur.' 
 
 ' Your dress is covered with blood, madame ' 
 
 ' Do you not understand how it is ? ' asked Juana. 
 She went over to the little table and sat down there, 
 and took up the volume of Cervantes ; her face was 
 colourless ; she strove to control her inward nervous 
 agitation. 
 
 * Leave the room,' said the public prosecutor to the 
 gendarmes. He made a sign to the magistrate and the 
 doctor, and they remained. 
 
 * Madame, under the circumstances, we can only con- 
 gratulate you on your husband's death. If he was 
 carried away by passion, at any rate he has died like 
 a soldier, and it is vain for justice to pursue him now. 
 Yet little as we may desire to intrude upon you at such 
 a time, the law obliges us to inquire into a death by 
 violence. Permit us to do our duty,' 
 
 * May I change my dress ? ' she asked, laying down 
 ihe volume. 
 
 ' Yes, madame, but you must bring it here. The 
 doctor will doubtless require it ' 
 
 * It would be too painful to Mme. Diard to be present 
 while I go through my task,' said the doctor, under- 
 standing the public prosecutor's suspicions. * Will you 
 
The Maranas 981 
 
 permit her, gentlemen, to remain in the adjoining 
 room ? ' 
 
 The two functionaries approved the kindly doctor's 
 suggestion, and Félicie went to her mistress. Then the 
 magistrate and the public prosecutor spoke together for 
 a while in a low voice. It is the unhappy lot of adminis- 
 trators of justice to be in duty bound to suspect every- 
 body and everything. By dint of imagining evil motives, 
 and every possible combination that they may bring 
 about, so as to discover the truth that lurks beneath the 
 most inconsistent actions, it is impossible but that their 
 dreadful office should in course of time dry up the source 
 of the generous impulses to which they may never yield. 
 If the sensibilities of the surgeon who explores the 
 mysteries of the body are blunted by degrees, what 
 becomes of the inner sensibility of the judge who is 
 compelled to probe the intricate recesses of the human 
 conscience ? Magistrates are the first victims of their 
 profession ; their progress is one perpetual mourning for 
 their lost illusions, and the crimes that hang so heavily 
 about the necks of criminals weigh no less upon their 
 judges. An old man seated in the tribunal of justice is 
 sublime ; but do we not shudder to see a young face 
 there ? In this case the magistrate was a young man, 
 and it was his duty to say to the public prosecutor, 
 ' Was the woman her husband's accomplice, do you 
 think ? Must we take proceedings ? Ought she, in 
 your opinion, to be examined ? ' 
 
 By way of reply, the public prosecutor shrugged his 
 shoulders ; apparently it was a matter of indifference. 
 
 * Montefiore and Diard,' he remarked, ' were a pair 
 of notorious scamps. The servant-girl knew nothing 
 about the crime. We need not go any further.' 
 
 The doctor was making his examination of Diard's 
 body, and dictating his report to the clerk. Suddenly 
 he rushed into Juana's room. 
 
 * Madame ' 
 
1 8a The Maranas 
 
 Juana, who had changed her blood-stained dress, con- 
 fronted the doctor. 
 
 * You shot your husband, did you not ? ' he asked, 
 bending to say the words in her ear. 
 
 * Yes, monsieur,' the Spaniard answered. 
 
 * t^nd from circumstantial evidence ' (the doctor went 
 on dictating) ' we conclude that the said Diard has taken 
 his life by his own act. — Have you finished ? ' he asked 
 the clerk after a pause. 
 
 * Yes,' answered the scribe. 
 
 The doctor put his signature to the document. Juana 
 glanced at him, and could scarcely keep back the tears 
 that, for a moment, filled her eyes. 
 
 * Gentlemen,' she said, and she turned to the public 
 prosecutor, ' I am a stranger, a Spaniard. I do not 
 know the law. I know no one in Bordeaux. I entreat 
 you to do me this kindness, will you procure me a 
 passport for Spain ? ' 
 
 * One moment !' exclaimed the magistrate. * Madame, 
 what has become of the sum of money that was stolen 
 from the Marquis di Montefiore ? ' 
 
 *M. Diard said something about a heap of stones 
 beneath which he had hidden it,' she answered. 
 
 * Where ? ' 
 
 * In the street.* 
 
 The two functionaries exchanged glances. Juana's 
 involuntary start was sublime. She appealed to the 
 doctor. 
 
 ' Can they suspect me ? ' she said in his ear ; * suspect 
 me of some villainy ? The heap of stones is sure to be 
 somewhere at the end of the garden. Go yourself, I beg 
 of you, and look for it and find the money. 
 
 The doctor went, accompanied by the magistrate, and 
 found Montefiore's pocket-book. 
 
 Two days later Juana sold her golden cross to meet 
 the expenses of the journey. As she went with her two 
 children to the diligence in which they were about to 
 
The Mar anas 183 
 
 travel to the Spanish frontier, some one called her name 
 in the street. It was her dying mother, who was being 
 taken to the hospital ; she had caught a glimpse of her 
 daughter through a slit in the curtains of the stretcher 
 on which she lay. Juana bade them carry the stretcher 
 into a gateway, and there for the last time the mother 
 and daughter met. Low as their voices were while they 
 spoke together, Juan overheard these words of farewell — 
 * Mother, die in peace i I have suffered for you all.' 
 
 Pasis, Novembtr 1 8^2, 
 
 
EL VER D V GO 
 
 To Martinex de la Rosa 
 
 Midnight had just sounded from the belfry tower of 
 the little town of Menda. A young French officer, 
 leaning over the parapet of the long terrace at the further 
 end of the castle gardens, seemed to be unusually 
 absorbed in deep thought for one who led the reckless 
 life of a soldier ; but it must be admitted that never was 
 the hour, the scene, and the night more favourable to 
 meditation. 
 
 The blue dome of the cloudless sky of Spain was over- 
 head; he was looking out over the coy windings of a 
 lovely valley lit by the uncertain starlight and the soft 
 radiance of the moon. The officer, leaning against an 
 orange tree in blossom, could also see, a hundred feet 
 below him, the town of Menda, which seemed to nestle 
 for shelter from the north wind at the foot of the crags 
 on which the castle itself was built. He turned his head 
 and caught sight of the sea ; the moonlit waves made a 
 broad frame of silver for the landscape. 
 
 There were lights in the castle windows. The mirth 
 and movement of a ball, the sounds of the violins, the 
 laughter of the officers and their partners in the dance 
 was borne towards him, and blended with the far-off 
 murmur of the waves. The cool night had a certain 
 bracing effect upon his frame, wearied as he had been 
 by the heat of the day. He seemed to bathe in the 
 air, made fragrant by the strong, sweet scent of flowers 
 and of aromatic trees in the gardens. 
 
El Verdugo 185 
 
 The castle of Menda belonged to a Spanish grandee, 
 who was living in it at that time with his family. All 
 through the evening the oldest daughter of the house 
 had watched the officer with such a wistful interest that 
 the Spanish lady's compassionate eyes might well have 
 set the young Frenchman dreaming. Clara was beauti- 
 ful; and although she had three brothers and a sister, the 
 broad lands of the Marqués de Léganès appeared to be 
 sufficient warrant for Victor Marchand's belief that the 
 young lady would have a splendid dowry. But how 
 could he dare to imagine that the most fanatical believer 
 in blue blood in all Spain would give his daughter to the 
 son of a grocer in Paris ? Moreover, the French were 
 hated. It was because the Marquis had been suspected 
 of an attempt to raise the country in favour of Ferdinand 
 
 VII. that General G , who governed the province, 
 
 had stationed Victor Marchand's battalion in the Httle 
 town of Menda to overawe the neighbouring districts 
 which received the Marqués de Légariès' word as law. A 
 recent despatch from Marshaj Ney had given ground 
 for fear that the English might ere long eiFect a landing 
 on the coast, and had indicated the Marquis as being in 
 correspondence with the Cabinet in London. 
 
 In spite, therefore, of the welcome with which the 
 Spaniards had received Victor Marchand and his soldiers, 
 that officer was always on his guard. As he went 
 towards the terrace, where he had just surveyed the 
 town and the districts confided to his charge, he had 
 been asking himself what construction he ought to put 
 upon the friendliness which the Marquis had invariably 
 shown him, and how to reconcile the apparent tranquillity 
 of the country with his General's uneasiness. But a 
 moment later these thoughts were driven from his mind 
 by the instinct of caution and very legitimate curiosity. 
 It had just struck him that there was a very fair number 
 of lights in the town below. Although it was the Feast 
 of Saint James, he himself had issued orders that very 
 
1 86 El Verdugo 
 
 morning that all lights must be put out in the town at 
 the hour prescribed by military regulations. The castle 
 alone had been excepted in this order. Plainly here and 
 there he saw the gleam of bayonets, where his own men 
 were at their accustomed posts ; but in the town there 
 was a solemn silence, and not a sign that the Spaniards 
 had given themselves up to the intoxication of a festival. 
 He tried vainly for a while to explain this breach of the 
 regulations on the part of the inhabitants; the mystery 
 seemed but so much the more obscure because he had 
 left instructions with some of his officers to do police 
 duty that night, and make the rounds of the town. 
 
 With the impetuosity of youth, he was about to spring 
 through a gap in the wall preparatory to a rapid scramble 
 down the rocks, thinking to reach a small guard-house 
 at the nearest entrance into the town more quickly than 
 by the beaten track, when a faint sound stopped him. 
 He fancied that he could hear the light footstep of a 
 woman along the gravelled garden walk. He turned his 
 head and saw no one ; for one moment his eyes were 
 dazzled by the wonderful brightness of the sea, the next 
 he saw a sight so ominous that he stood stock-still with 
 amazement, thinking that his senses must be deceiving 
 him. The white moonbeams lighted the horizon, so 
 that he could distinguish the sails of ships still a consider- 
 able distance out at sea. A shudder ran through him ; 
 he tried to persuade himself that this was some optical 
 delusion brought about by chance effects of moonlight 
 on the waves ; and even as he made the attempt, a hoarse 
 voice called to him by name. The officer glanced at 
 the gap in the wall ; saw a soldier's head slowly emerge 
 from it, and knew the grenadier whom he had ordered to 
 accompany him to the castle. ^s 
 
 * Is that you. Commandant ? ' 
 
 * Yes. What is it ? ' returned the young officer in a 
 low voice. A kind of presentiment warned him to act 
 cautiously. 
 
El Verdugo 187 
 
 * Those beggars down there are creeping about like 
 worms ; and, by your leave, I came as quickly as I could 
 to report my little reconnoitring expedition.' 
 
 ' Go on,' answered Victor Marchand. 
 
 *I have just been following a man from the castle who 
 came round this way with a lantern in his hand. A 
 lantern is a suspicious matter with a vengeance ! I 
 don't imagine that there was any need for that good 
 Christian to be lighting tapers at this time of night. 
 Says I to myself, " They mean to gobble us up ! " and I 
 set myself to dogging his heels ; and that is how I found 
 out that there is a pile of faggots, sir, two or three steps 
 away from here.' 
 
 Suddenly a dreadful shriek rang through the town 
 below, and cut the man short. A light flashed in the 
 Commandant's face, and the poor grenadier dropped 
 down with a bullet through his head. Ten paces away 
 a bonfire flared up like a conflagration. The sounds of 
 music and laughter ceased all at once in the ballroom ; 
 the silence of death, broken only by groans, succeeded 
 to the rhythmical murmur of the festival. Then the 
 roar of cannon sounded from across the white plain of 
 the sea. 
 
 A cold sweat broke out on the young officer's fore- 
 head. He had left his sword behind. He knew that 
 his men had been murdered, and that the English were 
 about to land. He knew that if he lived he would be 
 dishonoured ; he saw himself summoned before a court- 
 martial. For a moment his eyes measured the depth of 
 the valley; the next, just as he was about to spring down, 
 Clara's hand caught his. 
 
 * Fly ! ' she cried. ' My brothers are coming after 
 me to kill you. Down yonder at the foot of the clifF 
 you will find Juanito's Andalusian. Go ! ' 
 
 She thrust him away. The young man gazed at her 
 in dull bewilderment ; but obeying the instinct of self- 
 preservation, which never deserts even the bravest, he 
 
1 88 El Verdugo 
 
 rushed across the park in the direction pointed out to 
 him, springing from rock to rock in places unknown to 
 any save the goats. He heard Clara calling to her 
 brothers to pursue him ; he heard the footsteps of the 
 murderers ; again and again he heard their balls whistling 
 about his ears j but he reached the foot of the clifF, 
 found the horse, mounted, and fled with lightning speed. 
 A few hours later the young ofl&cer reached General 
 
 G 's quarters, and found him at dinner with the 
 
 staff. 
 
 * I put my life in your hands ! ' cried the haggard and 
 exhausted Commandant of Menda. 
 
 He sank into a seat, and told his horrible story. It 
 was received with an appalling silence. 
 
 * It seems to me that you are more to be pitied than to 
 blame,' the terrible General said at last. ' You are not 
 answerable for the Spaniard's crimes, and unless the 
 Marshal decides otherwise, I acquit you.' 
 
 These words brought but cold comfort to the unfoi- 
 tunate officer. 
 
 * When the Emperor comes to hear about it ! ' he 
 cried. 
 
 * Oh, he will be for having you shot,' said the General, 
 * but we shall see. Now we will say no more about 
 this,' he added severely, ' except to plan a revenge that 
 shall strike a salutary terror into this country, where they 
 carry on war like savages.' 
 
 An hour later a whole regiment, a detachment of 
 cavalry, and a convoy of artillery were upon the road. 
 The General and Victor marched at the head of the 
 column. The soldiers had been told of the fate of their 
 comrades, and their rage knew no bounds. The distance 
 between headquarters and the town of Menda was 
 crossed at a well-nigh miraculous speed. Whole villages 
 by the way were found to be under arms ; every one of 
 the wretched hamlets was surrounded, and their inhabi- 
 tants decimated. 
 
El Verdugo 189 
 
 It so chanced that the English vessels still lay out 
 at sea, and were no nearer the shore, a fact inex- 
 plicable until it was known afterwards that they were 
 artillery transports which had outsailed the rest of the 
 fleet. So the townsmen of Menda, left without the 
 assistance on which they had reckoned when the sails 
 of the English appeared, were surrounded by French 
 troops almost before they had had time to strike a blow. 
 This struck such terror into them that they offered to 
 surrender at discretion. An impulse of devotion, no 
 isolated instance in the history of the Peninsula, led the 
 actual slayers of the French to offer to give themselves 
 up ; seeking in this way to save the town, for from 
 the General's reputation for cruelty it was feared that he 
 would give Menda over to the flames, and put the whole 
 
 population to the sword. General G took their 
 
 offer, stipulating that every soul in the castle from the 
 lowest servant to the Marquis should likewise be given 
 up to him. These terms being accepted, the General 
 promised to spare the lives of the rest of the townsmen, 
 and to prohibit his soldiers from pillaging or setting fire 
 to the town. A heavy contribution was levied, and the 
 wealthiest inhabitants were taken as hostages to guarantee 
 payment within twenty-four hours. 
 
 The General took every necessary precaution for the 
 safety of his troops, provided for the defence of the place, 
 and refused to billet his men in the houses of the town. 
 After they had bivouacked, he went up to the castle and 
 entered it as a conqueror. The whole family of Léganès 
 and their household were gagged, shut up in the great 
 ballroom, and closely watched. From the windows it 
 was easy to see the whole length of the terrace above the 
 town. 
 
 The staff was established in an adjoining gallery, where 
 the General forthwith held a council as to the best means 
 of preventing the landing of the English. An aide-de- 
 camp was despatched to Marshal Ney, orders were issued 
 
I CO EI Verdugo 
 
 to plant batteries along the coast, and then the General 
 and his staff turned their attention to their prisoners. 
 The two hundred Spaniards given up by the townsfolk 
 were shot down then and there upon the terrace. And 
 after this military execution, the General gave orders to 
 erect gibbets to the number of the prisoners in the ball- 
 room in the same place, and to send for the hangman out 
 of the town. Victor took advantage of the interval 
 before dinner to pay a visit to the prisoners. He soon 
 came back to the General. 
 
 * I am come in haste,' he faltered out, ' to ask a 
 favour.' 
 
 ' JTou ! ' exclaimed the General, with bitter irony in his 
 tones. 
 
 ' Alas ! ' answered Victor, 'it is a sorry favour. The 
 Marquis has seen them erecting the gallows, and hopes 
 that you will commute the punishment for his family i 
 he entreats you to have the nobles beheaded.' 
 
 ' Granted,' said the General. 
 
 * He further asks that they may be allowed the consola- 
 tions of religion, and that they may be unbound ; they 
 give you their word that they will not attempt to 
 escape.' 
 
 *That I permit,' said the General, 'but you are 
 answerable for them.' 
 
 ' The old noble offers you all that he has if you will 
 pardon his youngest son.' 
 
 ' Really ! ' cried the Commander. ' His property is 
 forfeit already to King Joseph.' He paused j a con- 
 temptuous thought set wrinkles in his forehead, as he 
 added, ' I will do better than they ask. I understand 
 what he means by that last request of his. Very good. 
 Let him hand down his name to posterity ; but whenever 
 it is mentioned, all Spain shall remember his treason and 
 its punishment ! I will give the fortune and his Hfe to 
 any one of the sons who will do the executioner's office. 
 . . . There, don't talk any more about them to me.' 
 
El Verdugo 191 
 
 Dinner was ready. The officers sat down to satisfy 
 an appetite whetted by hunger. Only one among them 
 was absent from the table — that one was Victor 
 Marchand. After long hesitation, he went to the ball- 
 room, and heard the last sighs of the proud house of 
 Léganès. He looked sadly at the scene before him. 
 Only last night, in this very room, he had seen their 
 faces whirled past him in the waltz, and he shuddered to 
 think that those girlish heads with those of the three 
 young brothers must fall in a brief space by the execu- 
 tioner's sword. There sat the father and mother, their 
 three sons and two daughters, perfectly motionless, bound 
 to their gilded chairs. Eight serving men stood with 
 their hands tied behind them. These fifteen prisoners, 
 under sentence of death, exchanged grave glances j it was 
 difficult to read the thoughts that filled them from their 
 eyes, but profound resignation and regret that their enter- 
 prise should have failed so completely was written on 
 more than one brow. 
 
 The impassive soldiers who guarded them respected 
 the grief of their bitter enemies. A gleam of curiosity 
 lighted up all faces when Victor came in. He gave 
 orders that the condemned prisoners should be unbound, 
 and himself unfastened the cords that held Clara a 
 prisoner. She smiled mournfully at him. The officer 
 could not refrain from lightly touching the young girl's 
 arm ; he could not help admiring her dark hair, her 
 slender waist. She was a true daughter of Spain, with a 
 [Spanish complexion, a Spaniard's eyes, blacker than the 
 aven's wing beneath their long curving lashes. 
 
 ' Did you succeed ? ' she asked, with a mournful smile, 
 in which a certain girlish charm still lingered. 
 
 Victor could not repress a groan. He looked from 
 the faces of the three brothers to Clara, and again at the 
 :hree young Spaniards. The first, the oldest of the 
 amily, was a man of thirty. He was short, and some- 
 vhat ill made ; he looked haughty and proud, but a 
 
192 El Verdugo 
 
 certain distinction was not lacking in his bearing, and he 
 was apparently no stranger to the delicacy of feeling for 
 which in olden times the chivalry of Spain was famous. 
 His name was Juanito. The second son, Felipe, was 
 about twenty years of age ; he was like his sister Clara ; 
 and the youngest was a child of eight. In the features of 
 the little Manuel a painter would have discerned some- 
 thing of that Roman steadfastness which David has 
 given to the children's faces in his Republican genre 
 pictures. The old Marquis, with his white hair, might 
 have come down from some canvas of Murillo's. Victor 
 threw back his head in despair after this survey ; how 
 should one of these accept the General's oiFer ! neverthe- 
 less he ventured to intrust it to Clara. A shudder ran 
 through the Spanish girl, but she recovered herself 
 almost instantly, and knelt before her father. 
 
 ' Father,' she said, ' bid Juanito swear to obey the com- 
 mands that you shall give him, and we shall be content.' 
 
 The Marquesa trembled with hope, but as she leant 
 towards her husband and learned Clara's hideous secret, 
 the mother fainted away. Juanito understood it all, and 
 leapt up like a caged lion. Victor took it upon himself 
 to dismiss the soldiers, after receiving an assurance of 
 entire submission from the Marquis. The servants were 
 led away and given over to the hangman and their fate. 
 When only Victor remained on guard in the room, the 
 old Marqués de Léganès rose to his feet. 
 
 * Juanito,' he said. For all answer Juanito bowed his 
 head in a way that meant refusal ; he sank down into his 
 chair, and fixed tearless eyes upon his father and mother 
 in an intolerable gaze. Clara went over to him and sat 
 on his knee ; she put her arms about him, and pressed 
 kisses on his eyelids, saying gaily — 
 
 ' Dear Juanito, if you but knew how sweet death at 
 your hands will be to me ! I shall not be compelled to 
 submit to the hateful touch of the hangman's fingers. 
 You will snatch me away from the evils to come and . . . 
 
El Verdugo 193 
 
 )ear, kind Jiianito, you could not bear the thought of 
 ny belonging to any one — well, then ? ' 
 
 The velvet eyes gave Victor a burning glance ; she 
 eemed to try to aw^aken in Juanito's heart his hatred for 
 he French. 
 
 * Take courage,' said his brother Felipe, *or our well- 
 ligh royal line will be extinct.' 
 
 Suddenly Clara sprang to her feet. The group round 
 
 uanito fell back, and the son who had rebelled with 
 
 ch good reason was confronted with his aged father, 
 
 ' Juanito, I command you ! ' said the Marquis 
 
 lemnly. 
 
 The young Count gave no sign, and his father fell 
 
 his knees ; Clara, Manuel, and Felipe unconsciously 
 llowed his example, stretching out suppliant hands to 
 m who must save their family from oblivion, and 
 eming to echo their father's words. 
 ' Can it be that you lack the fortitude of a Spaniard 
 d true sensibility, my .son ? Do you mean to keep 
 on my kn^es? "" W.'iàt light hdv^'you to think 
 
 your own life and of your own sufferings ? — Is this 
 
 son, madam?' the old Marquis added, turning to 
 
 wife. • ' ' ■ - 
 
 * He will consent to it,' rned the mother in agony of 
 1. She had seen asHght "coritractïon of Juanito's 
 ws which she, his moihér,' alone' understood. 
 
 Mariquita, the second daughter, knelt, with her slender 
 
 nging arms about her mother ; the hot tears fell from 
 
 r eyes, and her little brother Manuel upbraided her 
 
 weeping. Just at that moment the castle chaplain 
 
 e in ; the whole family surrounded him and led him 
 
 to Juanito. Victor felt that he could endure the 
 
 ht no longer, and with a sign to Clara he hurried 
 
 m the room to make one last effort for them. He 
 
 nd the General in boisterous spirits ; the officers were 
 
 1 sitting over their dinner and drinking together ; the 
 
 e had loosened their tongues. 
 
 N 
 
194 El Verdugo 
 
 An hour later, a hundred of the principal citizens of 
 Menda were summoned to the terrace by the General's 
 orders to witness the execution of the family of Légaiïès. 
 A detachment had been told off to keep order among 
 the Spanish townsfolk, who were marshalled beneath 
 the gallows whereon the Marquis's servants hung ; the 
 feet of those martyrs of their cause all but touched the 
 citizens' heads. Thirty paces away stood the block ; the 
 blade of a scimitar glittered upon it, and the executioner 
 stood by in case Juanito should refuse at the last. 
 
 The deepest silence prevailed, but before long it was 
 broken by the sound of many footsteps, the measured 
 tramp of a picket of soldiers, and the jingling of their 
 weapons. Mingled with these came other noises — loud 
 talk and laughter from the dinner-table where the officers 
 were sitting ; just as the music and the sound of the 
 dancers' feet had drowned the preparations for last night's 
 treacherous butchery. 
 
 All eyes turned to the castle, and beheld the family of 
 nobles coming forth with incredible composure to their 
 death. Every brow was serene and calm. One alone 
 among them, haggard and overcome, leant on the arm 
 of the priest, who poured forth all the consolations of re- 
 ligion for the one man who was condemned to live. Then 
 the executioner, like the spectators, knew that Juanito 
 had consented to perform his office for a day. The old 
 Marquis and his wife, Clara and Mariquita, and their 
 two brothers knelt a few paces from the fatal spot. 
 Juanito reached it, guided by the priest. As he stood 
 at the block the executioner plucked him by the sleeve, 
 and took him aside, probably to give him certain instruc- 
 tions. The confessor so placed the victims that they 
 could not witness the executions, but one and all stood 
 upright and fearless, like Spaniards, as they were. 
 
 Clara sprang to her brother's side before the others. 
 
 * Juanito,' she said to him, ' be merciful to my lack of 
 courage. Take me first ! ' 
 
El Verdugo 195 
 
 As she spoke, the footsteps of a man running at full 
 speed echoed from the walls, and Victor appeared upon 
 the scene, Clara was kneeling before the block ; her 
 white neck seemed to appeal to the blade to fall. The 
 officer turned faint, but he found strength to rush to 
 her side. 
 
 'The General grants you your life if you will consent 
 to marry me,' he murmured. 
 
 The Spanish girl gave the officer a glance full of 
 proud disdain. 
 
 * Now, Juanito ! ' she said in her deep-toned voice. 
 Her head fell at Victor's feet. A shudder ran through 
 
 the Marquesa de Léganès, a convulsive tremor that she 
 could not control, but she gave no other sign of her 
 anguish. 
 
 ' Is this where I ought to be, dear Juanito ? Is it all 
 right ? ' little Manuel asked his brother. 
 
 ' Oh, Mariquita, you are weeping ! ' Juanito said when 
 his sister came. 
 
 * Yes,* said the girl ; * I am thinking of you, poor 
 Juanito ; how unhappy you will be when we are 
 gone.' 
 
 Then the Marquis's tall figure approached. He 
 looked at the block where his children's blood had been 
 shed, turned to the mute and motionless crowd, and 
 said in a loud voice as he stretched out his hands to 
 Juanito — 
 
 ' Spaniards ! I give my son a father's blessing. — 
 Now, Marquis^ strike " without fear " ; thou art " with- 
 out reproach." ' 
 
 But when his mother came near, leaning on the con- 
 fessor's arm — * She fed me from her breast ! ' Juanito 
 cried, in tones that drew a cry of horror from the 
 crowd. The uproarious mirth of the officers over their 
 wine died away before that terrible cry. The Marquesa 
 knew that Juanito's courage was exhausted ; at one 
 bound she sprang to the balustrade, leapt forth, and was 
 
196 El Verdugo 
 
 dashed to pieces on the rocks below. A cry of admira- 
 tion broke from the spectators. Juanito swooned. 
 
 * General,' said an officer, half drunk by this time, 
 ' Marchand has just been telling me something about 
 this execution ; I will wager that it was not by your 
 orders ' 
 
 ' Are you forgetting, gentlemen, that in a month's 
 time five hundred families in France will be in mourn- 
 ing, and that we are still in Spain ? ' cried General G . 
 
 * Do you want us to leave our bones here ? ' 
 
 But not a man at the table, not even a subaltern, dared 
 to empty his glass after that speech. 
 
 In spite of the respect in which all men hold the Mar- 
 ques de Légafiès, in spite of the title of El Verdugo (the 
 executioner) conferred upon him as a patent of nobility 
 by the King of Spain, the great noble is consumed by 
 a gnawing grief. He lives a retired life, and seldom 
 appears in public. The burden of his heroic crime 
 weighs heavily upon him, and he seems to wait im- 
 patiently till the birth of a second son shall release him, 
 and he may go to join the Shades that never cease to 
 haunt him. 
 
 Paris, October 1820. 
 
FAREWELL 
 
 To Prince Friedrich von Schwarzenberg 
 
 *CoME, Deputy of the Centre, come along ! We shall 
 have to mend our pace if we mean to sit down to dinner 
 when every one else does, and that's a fact ! Hurry up ! 
 Jump, Marquis ! That 's it ! Well done ! You are 
 bounding over the furrows just like a stag ! ' 
 
 These words were uttered by a sportsman seated much 
 at his ease on the outskirts of the Forêt de I'lsle-Adam ; 
 he had just finished a Havannah cigar, which he had 
 smoked while he waited for his companion, who had 
 evidently been straying about for some time among the 
 forest undergrowth. Four panting dogs by the speaker's 
 side likewise watched the progress of the personage for 
 whose benefit the remarks were made. To make their 
 sarcastic import fully clear, it should be added that the 
 second sportsman was both short and stout ; his ample 
 girth indicated a truly magisterial corpulence, and in 
 consequence his progress across the furrows was by no 
 means easy. He was striding over a vast field of stubble ; 
 the dried corn-stalks underfoot added not a little to the 
 difficulties of his passage, and to add to his discomforts, 
 the genial influence of the sun that slanted into his eyes 
 brought great drops of perspiration into his face. The 
 uppermost thought in his mind being a strong desire to 
 keep his balance, he lurched to and fro much like a coach 
 jolted over an atrocious road, 
 
 197 
 
198 Farewell 
 
 It was one of those September days of almost tropical 
 heat that finishes the work of summer and ripens the 
 grapes. Such heat forebodes a coming storm ; and 
 though as yet there were wide patches of blue between 
 the dark rain-clouds low down on the horizon, pale 
 golden masses were rising and scattering with ominous 
 swiftness from west to east, and drawing a shadowy veil 
 across the sky. The wind was still, save in the upper 
 regions of the air, so that the weight of the atmosphere 
 seemed to compress the steamy heat of the earth into the 
 forest glades. The tall forest trees shut out every breath 
 of air so completely that the little valley across which 
 the sportsman was making his way was as hot as a 
 furnace ; the silent forest seemed parched with the fiery 
 heat. Birds and insects were mute ; the topmost twigs 
 of the trees swayed with scarcely perceptible motion. 
 Any one who retains some recollection of the summer 
 of 1 8 19 must surely compassionate the plight of the 
 hapless supporter of the ministry who toiled and sweated 
 over the stubble to rejoin his satirical comrade. That 
 gentleman, as he smoked his cigar, had arrived, by a 
 process of calculation based on the altitude of the sun, to 
 the conclusion that it must be about five o'clock. 
 
 ' Where the devil are we ? ' asked the stout sportsman. 
 He wiped his brow as he spoke, and propped himself 
 against a tree in the field opposite his companion, feel- 
 ing quite unequal to clearing the broad ditch that lay 
 between them. 
 
 * And you ask that question of me ! ' retorted the other, 
 laughing fr^om his bed of tall brown grasses on the top of 
 the bank. He flung the end of his cigar into the ditch, 
 exclaiming, * I swear by Saint Hubert that no one shall 
 catch me risking myself again in a country that I don't 
 know with a magistrate, even if, like you, my dear 
 d'Albon, he happens to be an old schoolfellow.' 
 
 ' Why, Philip, have you really forgotten your own 
 language ? You surely must have left your wits behind 
 
Farewell 
 
 99 
 
 you in Siberia,' said the stouter of the two, with a glance 
 half-comic, half-pathetic at a guide-post distant about a 
 hundred paces from them. 
 
 ' I understand,' replied the one addressed as Philip. 
 He snatched up his rifle, suddenly sprang to his feet, 
 made but one jump of it into the field, and rushed off to 
 the guide-post. ' This way, d'Albon, here you are ! 
 left about ! ' he shouted, gesticulating in the direction of 
 the high-road. * To Baillet and T Isle-Adam ! ' he went 
 on ; ' so if we go along here, we shall be sure to come 
 upon the cross-road to Cassan.' 
 
 * Quite right, Colonel,' said M. d'Albon, putting the 
 cap with which he had been fanning himself back on his 
 head. 
 
 ' lihtn forward ! highly respected Councillor,' returned 
 Colonel Philip, whistling to the dogs, that seemed already 
 to obey him rather than the magistrate their master. 
 
 * Are you aware, my lord Marquis, that two leagues 
 yet remain before us ? ' inquired the malicious soldier. 
 * That village down yonder must be Baillet.' 
 
 ' Great heavens ! ' cried the Marquis d'Albon. ' Go 
 on to Cassan by all means, if you like ; but if you do, you 
 will go alone. I prefer to wait here, storm or no storm ; 
 you can send a horse for me from the chateau. You 
 have been making game of me, Sucy. We were to have 
 a nice day's sport by ourselves ; we were not to go very 
 far from Cassan, and go over ground that I knew. 
 Pooh ! Instead of a day's fun, you have kept me run- 
 ning like a greyhound since four o'clock this morning, 
 and nothing but a cup or two of milk by way of break- 
 fast. Oh ! if ever you find yourself in a court of law, I 
 will take care that the day goes against you if you were 
 in the right a hundred times over.' 
 
 The dejected sportsman sat himself down on one of 
 the stumps at the foot of the guide-post, disencumbered 
 himself of his rifle and empty game-bag, and heaved a 
 prolonged sigh. 
 
200 Farewell 
 
 ' Oh, France, behold thy Deputies ! * laughed Colonel 
 de Sucy. ' Poor old d'Albon ; if you had spent six 
 months at the other end of Siberia as I did . . .' 
 
 He broke off, and his eyes sought the sky, as if the 
 story of his troubles was a secret between himself and 
 God. 
 
 ' Come, march ! ' he added. ' If you once sit down, it 
 is all over with you.' 
 
 * I can't help it, Philip ! It is such an old habit in a 
 magistrate ! I am dead beat, upon my honour. If I 
 had only bagged one hare though ! ' 
 
 Two men more different are seldom seen together. 
 The civilian, a man of forty-two, seemed scarcely more 
 than thirty ; while the soldier, at thirty years of age, 
 looked to be forty at the least. Both wore the red 
 rosette that proclaimed them to be officers of the Legion 
 of Honour. A few locks of hair, mingled white and 
 black, like a magpie's wing, had strayed from beneath the 
 Colonel's cap ; while thick, fair curls clustered about the 
 magistrate's temples. The Colonel was tall, spare, dried 
 up, but muscular ; the lines in his pale face told a tale of 
 vehement passions or of terrible sorrows j but his com- 
 rade's jolly countenance beamed with health, and would 
 have done credit to an Epicurean. Both men were 
 deeply sunburnt. Their high gaiters of brown leather 
 carried souvenirs of every ditch and swamp that they 
 crossed that day. 
 
 ' Come, come,' cried M. de Sucy, ' forward ! One 
 short hour's march, and we shall be at Cassan with a 
 good dinner before us.' 
 
 ' You never were in love, that is positive,' returned the 
 Councillor, with a comically piteous expression. *You 
 are as inexorable as Article 304 of the Penal Code ! ' 
 
 Philip de Sucy shuddered violently. Deep lines 
 appeared in his broad forehead, his face was overcast like 
 the sky above rhem ; but though his features seemed to 
 contract with the pain of an intolerably bitter memory, 
 
Farewell 20 1 
 
 no tears came to his eyes. Like all men of strong 
 character, he possessed the power of forcing his emotions 
 down into some inner depth, and, perhaps, like many 
 reserved natures, he shrank from laying bare a wound 
 too deep for any words of human speech, and winced at 
 the thought of ridicule from those who do not care to 
 understand. M. d'Albon wag one of those who are 
 keenly sensitive by nature to the distress of others, who 
 feel at once the pain they have unwittingly given by 
 some blunder. He respected his friend's mood, rose to 
 his feet, forgot his weariness, and followed in silence, 
 thoroughly annoyed with himself for having touched on 
 a wound that seemed not yet healed. 
 
 ' Some day I will tell you my story,' Philip said at 
 last, wringing his friend's hand, while he acknowledged 
 his dumb repentance with a heartrending glance. ' To- 
 day, I cannot.' 
 
 They walked on in silence. As the Colonel's distress 
 passed ofF the Councillor's fatigue returned. Instinctively, 
 or rather urged by weariness, his eyes explored the depths 
 of the forest around them ; he looked high and low 
 among the trees, and gazed along the avenues, hoping to 
 discover some dwelling where he might ask for hospi- 
 tality. They reached a place where several roads met ; 
 and the Councillor, fancying that he saw a thin film of 
 smoke rising through the trees, made a stand and looked 
 sharply about him. He caught a glimpse of the dark 
 green branches of some firs among the other forest trees, 
 and finally, ' A house ! a house ! ' he shouted. No 
 sailor could have raised the cry of ' Land a-head ! ' more 
 joyfully than he. 
 
 He plunged at once into undergrowth, somewhat of 
 the thickest ; and the Colonel, who had fallen into deep 
 musings, followed him unheedingly. 
 
 * I would rather have an omelette here and home-made 
 bread, and a chair to sit down in, than go further for a 
 sofa, truffles, and Bordeaux wine at Cassan.' 
 
202 Farewell 
 
 This outburst of enthusiasm on the Councillor's part 
 was caused by the sight of the whitened wall of a house 
 in the distance, standing out in strong contrast against 
 the brown masses of knotted tree-trunks in the forest. 
 
 ' Aha ! This used to be a priory, I should say,' the 
 Marquis d'Albon cried once more, as they stood before a 
 grim old gateway. Through the grating they could see 
 the house itself standing in the midst of some consider- 
 able extent of park land ; from the style of the architec- 
 ture it appeared to have been a monastery once upon a 
 time. 
 
 * Those knowing rascals of monks knew how to choose 
 a site ! ' 
 
 This last exclamation was caused by the magistrate's 
 amazement at the romantic hermitage before his eyes. 
 The house had been built on a spot half-way up the hill- 
 side on the slope below the village of Nerville, which 
 crowned the summit. A huge circle of great oak-trees, 
 hundreds of years old, guarded the solitary place from 
 intrusion. There appeared to be about forty acres of 
 the park. The main building of the monastery faced the 
 south, and stood in a space of green meadow, picturesquely 
 intersected by several tiny clear streams, and by larger 
 sheets of water so disposed as to have a natural effect. 
 Shapely trees with contrasting foliage grew here and 
 there. Grottos had been ingeniously contrived ; and 
 broad terraced walks, now in ruin, though the steps 
 were broken and the balustrades eaten through with 
 rust, gave to this sylvan Thebaïd a certain character of 
 its own. The art of man and the picturesqueness of 
 nature had wrought together to produce a charming 
 effect. Human passions surely could not cross that 
 boundary of tall oak-trees which shut out the sounds of 
 the outer world, and screened the fierce heat of the sun 
 from this forest sanctuary. 
 
 * What neglect ! ' said M. d'Albon to himself, after 
 the first sense of delight in the melancholy aspect of 
 
Farewell 203 
 
 the ruins in the landscape, which seemed blighted by a 
 curse. 
 
 It was like some haunted spot, shunned of men. The 
 twisted ivy stems clambered everywhere, hiding every- 
 thing away beneath a luxuriant green mantle. Moss 
 and lichens, brown and grey, yellow and red, covered 
 the trees with fantastic patches of colour, grew upon the 
 benches in the garden, overran the roof and the walls of 
 the house. The window-sashes were weather-worn and 
 warped with age, the balconies were dropping to pieces, 
 the terraces in ruins. Here and there the folding shutters 
 hung by a single hinge. The crazy doors would have 
 given way at the first attempt to force an entrance. 
 
 Out in the orchard the neglected fruit-trees were 
 running to wood, the rambling branches bore no fruit 
 save the glistening mistletoe berries, and tall plants 
 were growing in the garden walks. All this forlorn- 
 ness shed a charm across the picture that wrought on 
 the spectator's mind with an influence like that of some 
 enchanting poem, filling his soul with dreamy fancies 
 A poet must have lingered there in deep and melancholy 
 musings, marvelling at the harmony of this wilderness, 
 where decay had a certain grace of its own. 
 
 In a moment a few gleams of sunlight struggled 
 through a rift in the clouds, and a shower of coloured 
 light fell over the wild garden. The brown tiles of the 
 roof glowed in the light, the mosses took bright hues, 
 strange shadows played over the grass beneath the trees ; 
 the dead autumn tints grew vivid, bright unexpected 
 contrasts were evoked by the light, every leaf stood out 
 sharply in the clear, thin air. Then all at once the sun- 
 light died away, and the landscape that seemed to have 
 spoken grew silent and gloomy again, or rather, it took 
 grey soft tones like the tenderest hues of autumn dusk. 
 
 * It is the palace of the Sleeping Beauty,' the Councillor 
 said to himself (he had already begun to look at the place 
 from the point of view of an owner of property). ' Whom 
 
204 Farewell 
 
 can the place belong to, I wonder. He must be a great 
 fool not to live on such a charming little estate ! ' 
 
 Just at that moment, a woman sprang out from under 
 a walnut tree on the right-hand side of the gateway, and 
 passed before the Councillor as noiselessly and swiftly as 
 the shadow of a cloud. This apparition struck him dumb 
 with amazement. 
 
 * Hallo, d'Albon, what is the matter ? ' asked the 
 Colonel. 
 
 ' I am rubbing my eyes to find out whether I am 
 awake or asleep,' answered the magistrate, whose coun- 
 tenance was pressed against the grating in the hope of 
 catching a second glimpse of the ghost. 
 
 * In all probabihty she is under that fig-tree,' he went 
 on, indicating, for Philip's benefit, some branches that 
 over-topped the wall on the left-hand side of the gate- 
 way. 
 
 ' She ? Who ? ' 
 
 * Eh ! how should I know ? ' answered M. d'Albon. 
 ' A strange-looking woman sprang up there under my 
 very eyes just now,' he added, in a low voice ; ' she looked 
 to me more like a ghost than a living being. She was 
 so slender, light, and shadowy that she might be trans- 
 parent. Her face was as white as milk, her hair, her eyes, 
 and her dress were black. She gave me a glance as she 
 flitted by. I' am not easily frightened, but that cold 
 stony stare of hers froze the blood in my veins.' 
 
 * Was she pretty ? ' inquired Philip. 
 
 ' I don't know. I saw nothing but those eyes in her 
 head.' 
 
 * The devil take dinner at Cassan ! * exclaimed the 
 Colonel y * let us stay here. I am as eager as a boy to 
 see the inside of this queer place. The window-sashes 
 are painted red, do you see ? There is a red line round 
 the panels of the doors and the edges of the shutters. 
 It might be the devil's own dwelling ; perhaps he took 
 it over when the monks went out. Now, then, let us 
 
Farewell 205 
 
 give chase to the black and white lady ; come along ! ' 
 cried Philip, with forced gaiety. 
 
 He had scarcely finished speaking when the two 
 sportsmen heard a cry as if some bird had been taken 
 in a snare. They listened. There was a sound like 
 the murmur of rippling water, as something forced its 
 way through the bushes ; but diligently as they lent 
 their ears, there was no footfall on the path, the earth 
 kept the secret of the mysterious woman's passage, if 
 indeed she had moved from her hiding-place. 
 
 ' This is very strange ! ' cried Philip. 
 
 Following the wall of the park, the two friends reached 
 before long a forest road leading to the village of Chauvry ; 
 they went along this track in the direction of the high- 
 way to Paris, and reached another large gateway. 
 Through the railings they had a complete view of the 
 façade of the mysterious house. From this point of 
 view, the dilapidation was still more apparent. Huge 
 cracks had riven the walls of the main body of the 
 house built round three sides of a square. Evidently 
 the place was allowed to fall to ruin ; there were holes 
 in the roof, broken slates and tiles lay about below. 
 Fallen fruit from the orchard trees was left to rot on 
 the ground j a cow was grazing over the bowling-green 
 and trampling the flowers in the garden beds ; a goat 
 browsed on the green grapes and young vine-shoots on 
 the trellis. 
 
 * It is all of a piece,' remarked the Colonel. * The 
 neglect is in a fashion systematic' He laid his hand 
 on the chain of the bell-pull, but the bell had lost its 
 clapper. The two friends heard no sound save the 
 peculiar grating creak of the rusty spring. A little 
 door in the wall beside the gateway, though ruin- 
 ous, held good against all their efforts to force it 
 open. 
 
 * Oho ! all this is growing very interesting,' Philip said 
 to his companion. 
 
2o6 Farewell 
 
 * If I were not a magistrate,' returned M. d'Albon, * I 
 should think that the woman in black is a witch.' 
 
 The words were scarcely out of his mouth when the 
 cow came up to the railings and held out her warm 
 damp nose, as if she were glad of human society. Then 
 a woman, if so indescribable a being could be called a 
 woman, sprang up from the bushes, and pulled at the 
 cord about the cow's neck. From beneath the crimson 
 handkerchief about the woman's head, fair matted hair 
 escaped, something as tow hangs about a spindle. She 
 wore no kerchief at the throat. A coarse black-and-grey 
 striped woollen petticoat, too short by several inches, left 
 her legs bare. She might have belonged to some tribe 
 of Redskins in Fenimore Cooper's novels ; for her neck, 
 arms, and ankles looked as if they had been painted brick- 
 red. There was no spark of intelligence in her featureless 
 face ; her pale, bluish eyes looked out dull and expression- 
 less from beneath the eyebrows with one or two straggling 
 white hairs on them. Her teeth were prominent and 
 uneven, but white as a dog's. 
 
 * Hallo, good woman,' called M. de Sucy. 
 
 She came slowly up to the railing, and stared at the 
 two sportsmen with a contorted smile painful to see. 
 
 * Where are we ? What is the name of the house 
 yonder ? Whom does it belong to ? Who are you ? 
 Do you come from hereabouts ? ' 
 
 To these questions, and to a host of others poured out 
 in succession upon her by the two friends, she made no 
 answer save gurgling noises in the throat, more like 
 animal sounds than anything uttered by a human voice. 
 
 * Don't you see that she is deaf and dumb ? ' said M. 
 d'AIbon. 
 
 * Minorites ! ' the peasant woman said at last. 
 
 * Ah ! she is right. The house looks as though it 
 might once have been a Minorite convent,' he went on. 
 
 Again they plied the peasant woman with questions, 
 but, like a wayward child, she coloured up, fidgeted with 
 
Farewell 207 
 
 her sabot.^ twisted the rope by which she held the cow 
 that had fallen to grazing again, stared at the sportsmen, 
 and scrutinised every article of clothing upon them ; she 
 gibbered, grunted, and clucked, but no articulate word 
 did she utter. 
 
 Your name ? ' asked Philip, fixing her with his eyes 
 as if he were trying to bewitch the woman. 
 
 * Geneviève,' she answered, with an empty laugh. 
 
 * The cow is the most intelligent creature we have 
 seen so far,' exclaimed the magistrate. ' I shall fire a 
 shot, that ought to bring somebody out.' 
 
 D'Albon had just taken up his rifle when the Colonel 
 
 put out a hand to stop him, and pointed out the 
 
 mysterious woman who had aroused such lively curiosity 
 
 in them. She seemed to be absorbed in deep thought, 
 
 as she went along a green alley some little distance 
 
 away, so slowly that the friends had time to take a good 
 
 look at her. She wore a threadbare black satin gown, 
 
 her long hair curled thickly over her forehead, and fell 
 
 ike a shawl about her shoulders below her waist. 
 
 oubtless she was accustomed to the dishevelment of her 
 
 ocks, for she seldom put back the hair on either side of 
 
 er brows ; but when she did so, she shook her head with 
 
 sudden jerk that had not to be repeated to shake away 
 
 he thick veil from her eyes or forehead. In every- 
 
 hing that she did, moreover, there was a wonderful 
 
 ertainty in the working of the mechanism, an unerring 
 
 iwiftness and precision, like that of an animal, well nigh 
 
 arvellous in a woman. 
 
 The two sportsmen were amazed to see her spring up 
 nto an apple-tree and cling to a bough lightly as a bird, 
 he snatched at the fruit, ate it, and dropped to the 
 rround with the same supple grace that charms us in a 
 quirrel. The elasticity of her limbs took all appear- 
 nce of awkwardness or effort from her movements. 
 Ihe played about upon the grass, rolling in it as a young 
 hild might have done ; then, on a sudden, she lay still 
 
2o8 Farewell 
 
 and stretched out her feet and hands, with the languid 
 natural grace of a kitten dozing in the sun. 
 
 There was a threatening growl of thunder far away, 
 and at this she started up on all fours and listened, like 
 a dog who hears a strange footstep. One result of this 
 strange attitude was to separate her thick black hair into 
 two masses, that fell away on either side of her face and 
 left her shoulders bare; the two witnesses of this singular 
 scene wondered at the whiteness of the skin that shone 
 like a meadow daisy, and at the neck that indicated the 
 perfection of the rest of her form. 
 
 A wailing cry broke from her ; she rose to her feet, 
 and stood upright. Every successive movement was 
 made so lightly, so gracefully, so easily, that she seemed 
 to be no human being, but one of Ossian's maids of the 
 mist. She went across the grass to one of the pools of 
 water, deftly shook off her shoe, and seemed to enjoy 
 dipping her foot, white as marble, in the spring ; doubt- 
 less it pleased her to make the circling ripples, and 
 watch them glitter like gems. She knelt down by the 
 brink, and played there like a child, dabbling her long 
 tresses in the water, and flinging them loose again to see 
 the water drip from the ends, like a string of pearls in 
 the sunless light. 
 
 ' She is mad ! ' cried the Councillor. 
 
 A hoarse cry rang through the air ; it came from 
 Geneviève, and seemed to be meant for the mysterious 
 woman. She rose to her feet in a moment, flinging 
 back the hair from her face, and then the Colonel and 
 d'Albon could see her features distinctly. As soon as 
 she saw the two friends she bounded to the railings with 
 the swiftness of a fawn. 
 
 ^ Farewell ! ^ she said in low, musical tones, but they 
 could not discover the least trace of feeling, the least idea 
 in the sweet sounds that they had awaited impatiently. 
 
 M. d'Albon admired the long lashes, the thick, dark 
 eyebrows, the dazzling fairness of a skin untinged by any 
 
Farewell 209 
 
 trace of red. Only the delicate blue veins contrasted 
 with that uniform whiteness. 
 
 But when the Marquis turned to communicate his 
 surprise at the sight of so strange an apparition, he saw 
 the Colonel stretched on the grass like one dead. M. 
 d'Albon fired his gun into the air, shouted for help, and 
 tried to raise his friend. At the sound of the shot, the 
 strange lady, who had stood motionless by the gate, fled 
 away, crying out like a wounded wild creature, circling 
 round and round in the meadow, with every sign of 
 unspeakable terror. 
 
 M. d'Albon heard a carriage rolling along the road to 
 I'Isle Adam, and waved his handkerchief to implore help. 
 The carriage immediately came towards the Minorite 
 convent, and M. d'Albon recognised neighbours, M. de 
 and Mme. de Grandville, who hastened to alight and put 
 their carriage at his disposal. Colonel de Sucy inhaled 
 the salts which Mme. de Grandville happened to have 
 with her ; he opened his eyes, looked towards the 
 mysterious figure that still fled wailing through the 
 meadow, and a faint cry of horror broke from him ; he 
 closed his eyes again, with a dumb gesture of entreaty 
 to his friends to take him away from this scene. M. and 
 Mme. de Grandville begged the Councillor to make use 
 of their carriage, adding very obligingly that they them- 
 selves would walk. 
 
 ' Who can the lady be ? ' inquired the magistrate, 
 looking towards the strange figure. 
 
 ' People think that she comes from Moulins,' answered 
 M. de Grandville. 'She is a Comtesse de Vandières; 
 she is said to be mad ; but as she has only been here for 
 two months, I cannot vouch for the truth of all this 
 hearsay talk.' 
 
 M. d'Albon thanked M. and Mme. de Grandville, and 
 hey set out for Cassan. 
 
 ' It is she ! ' cried Philip, coming to himself. 
 
 'She? who? 'asked d'Albon. 
 
2 1 o Farewell 
 
 * Stéphanie. . . . Ah! dead and yet living stiil ; still 
 alive, but her mind is gone ! I thought the sight would 
 kill me.' 
 
 The prudent magistrate, recognising the gravity of the 
 crisis through which his friend was passing, refrained 
 from asking questions or exciting him further, and grew 
 impatient of the length of the way to the château, for 
 the change wrought in the Colonel's face alarmed him. 
 He feared lest the Countess's terrible disease had communi- 
 cated itself to Philip's brain. When they reached the 
 avenue at I'lsle-Adam, d'Albon sent the servant for the 
 local doctor, so that the Colonel had scarcely been laid 
 in bed before the surgeon was beside him. 
 
 'If Monsieur le Colonel had not been fasting, the 
 shock must have killed him,' pronounced the leech. ' He 
 was overtired, and that saved him,' and with a few direc- 
 tions as to the patient's treatment, he went to prepare a 
 composing draught himself. M. de Sucy was better the 
 next morning, but the doctor had insisted on sitting up 
 all night with him. 
 
 * I confess. Monsieur le Marquis,' the surgeon said, 
 * that I feared for the brain. M. de Sucy has had some 
 very violent shock j he is a man of strong passions, but, 
 with his temperament, the first shock decides everything. 
 He will very likely be out of danger to-morrow.' 
 
 The doctor was perfectly right. The next day the 
 patient was allowed to see his friend. 
 
 * I want you to do something for me, dear d'Albon,' 
 Philip said, grasping his friend's hand. ' Hasten at once 
 to the Minorite convent, find out everything about the 
 lady whom we saw there, and come back as soon as 
 you can j I shall count the minutes till I see you 
 again.' 
 
 M. d'Albon called for his horse, and galloped over to 
 the old monastery. When he reached the gateway he 
 found some one standing there, a tall, spare man with a 
 kindly face, who answered in the affirmative when he 
 
Farewell 211 
 
 was asked if he lived in the ruined house. M. d'Albon 
 explained his errand. 
 
 ' Why, then, it must have been you, sir, who fired that 
 unlucky shot ! You all but killed my poor invalid.' 
 
 * Eh ! I fired into the air ! ' 
 ^If you had actually hit Madame la Comtesse, you 
 
 would have done less harm to her.' 
 
 * Well, well, then, we can neither of us complain, for 
 the sight of the Countess all but killed my friend, M. de 
 Sucy.' 
 
 ' The Baron de Sucy, is it possible ? ' cried the doctor, 
 clasping his hands. * Has he been in Russia ? was he in 
 the Beresina ? ' 
 
 ' Yes,' answered d'Albon. * He was taken prisoner by 
 :he Cossacks and sent to Siberia. He has not been back 
 n this country a twelvemonth.' 
 
 ' Come in. Monsieur,' said the other, and he led the way 
 to a drawing-room on the ground-floor. Everything in 
 the room showed signs of capricious destruction. 
 
 Valuable china jars lay in fragments on either side of 
 I clock beneath a glass shade, which had escaped. The 
 ilk hangings about the windows were torn to rags, while 
 :he muslin curtains were untouched. 
 
 * You see about you the havoc wrought by a charming 
 )eing to whom I have dedicated my life. She is my 
 liece ; and though medical science is powerless in her 
 ase, I hope to restore her to reason, though the method 
 ^^hich I am trying is, unluckily, only possible to the 
 v^ealthy.' 
 
 Then, like all who live much alone and daily bear the 
 urden of a heavy trouble, he fell to talk with the 
 lagistrater. This is the story that he told, set in order, 
 iid with the many digressions made by both teller and 
 earer omitted. 
 
 When, at nine o'clock at night, on the 28th of 
 November 181 2, Marshal Victor abandoned the heights 
 
212 Farewell 
 
 of Studzianka, which he had held through the day, he left 
 a thousand men behind with instructions to protect, till 
 the last possible moment, the two pontoon bridges over 
 the Beresina that still held good. This rearguard was 
 to save if possible an appalling number of stragglers, so 
 numbed with the cold, that they obstinately refused 
 to leave the baggage- waggons. The heroism of the 
 generous band was doomed to fail ; for, unluckily, the 
 men who poured down to the eastern bank of the 
 Beresina found carriages, caissons, and all kinds of pro- 
 perty which the Army had been forced to abandon during 
 its passage on the 27th and 28th days of November. 
 The poor, half-frozen wretches, sunk almost to the level 
 of brutes, finding such unhoped-for riches, bivouacked in 
 the deserted space, laid hands on the military stores, 
 improvised huts out of the material, lighted fires with 
 anything that would burn, cut up the carcases of the 
 horses for food, tore out the linings of the carriages, 
 wrapped themselves in them, and lay down to sleep, 
 instead of crossing the Beresina in peace under cover of 
 night — the Beresina that even then had proved, by an 
 incredible fatality, so disastrous to the Army. Such 
 apathy on the part of the poor fellows can only be under- 
 stood by those who remember tramping across those 
 vast deserts of snow, with nothing to quench their thirst 
 but snow, snow for their bed, snow as far as the horizon 
 on every side, and no food but snow, a little frozen 
 beetroot, horseflesh, or a handful of meal. 
 
 The miserable creatures were dropping down, over- 
 come by hunger, thirst, weariness, and sleep, when they 
 reached the shores of the Beresina and found fuel and fire 
 and victuals, countless waggons and tents, a whole im- 
 provised town, in short. The whole village of Stud- 
 zianka had been removed piecemeal from the heights to 
 the plain, and the very perils and miseries of this 
 dangerous and doleful habitation smiled invitingly to the 
 wayfarers, who beheld no prospect beyond it but the 
 
Farewell 2 1 j 
 
 awful Russian deserts. A huge hospice, in short, was 
 rected for twenty hours of existence. Only one thought 
 — the thought of rest — appealed to men weary of life or 
 rejoicing in unlooked-for comfort. 
 
 They lay right in the line of fire from the cannon of 
 
 he Russian left; but to that vast mass of human creatures, 
 
 patch upon the snow, sometimes dark, sometimes 
 
 creaking into flame, the indefatigable grape-shot was but 
 
 Dne discomfort the more. For them it was only a storm, 
 
 md they paid the less attention to the bolts that fell 
 
 imong them because there were none to strike down 
 
 here save dying men, the wounded, or perhaps the dead. 
 
 tragglers came up in little bands at every moment. 
 
 These walking corpses instantly separated, and wandered 
 
 jegging from fire to fire ; and meeting, for the most 
 
 lart, with refusals, banded themselves together again, 
 
 nd took by force what they could not otherwise obtain. 
 
 They were deaf to the voices of their officers prophesy- 
 
 ng death on the morrow, and spent the energy required 
 
 o cross the swamp in building shelters for the night and 
 
 reparing a meal that often proved fatal. The coming 
 
 eath no longer seemed an evil, for it gave them an hour 
 
 f slumber before it came. Hunger and thirst and cold 
 
 —these were evils, but not death. 
 
 At last wood and fuel and canvas and shelters failed, 
 nd hideous brawls began between destitute late comers 
 nd the rich already in possession of a lodging. The 
 eaker were driven away, until a few last fugitives before 
 le Russian advance were obliged to make their bed in 
 le snow, and lay down to rise no more. 
 Little by little the mass of half-dead humanity became 
 dense, so deaf, so torpid, — or perhaps it should be said 
 happy — that Marshal Victor, their heroic defender 
 ainst twenty thousand Russians under Wittgenstein, 
 as actually compelled to cut his way by force through 
 is forest of men, so as to cross the Beresina with the five 
 ousand heroes whom he was leading to the Emperor. 
 
214 Farewell 
 
 The miserable creatures preferred to be trampled and 
 crushed to death rather than stir from their places, and died 
 without a sound, smiling at the dead ashes of their fires, 
 forgetful of P ranee. 
 
 Not before ten o'clock that night did the Due de 
 Belluno reach the other side of the river. Before com- 
 mitting his men to the pontoon bridges that led to 
 Zembin, he left the fate of the rearguard at Studzianka in 
 Eblé's hands, and to Eblé the survivors of the calamities 
 of the Beresina ovi^ed their lives. 
 
 About midnight, the great General, followed by a 
 courageous officer, came out of his little hut by the 
 bridge, and gazed at the spectacle of this camp between the 
 bank of the Beresina and the Borizof road to Studzianka. 
 The thunder of the Russian cannonade had ceased. 
 Here and there faces that had nothing human about them 
 were lighted up by countless fires that seemed to grow 
 pale in the glare of the snowfields, and to give no light. 
 Nearly thirty thousand wretches, belonging to every 
 nation that Napoleon had hurled upon Russia, lay there 
 hazarding their lives with the indifference of brute 
 beasts. 
 
 ' We have all these to save,' the General said to his 
 subordinate. * To-morrow morning the Russians will 
 be in Studzianka. The moment they come up we shall 
 have to set fire to the bridge ; so pluck up heart, my 
 boy ! Make your way out and up yonder through them 
 and tell General Fourni er that he has barely time to 
 evacuate his post and cut his way through to the bridge. 
 As soon as you have seen him set out, follow him down, 
 take some able-bodied men, and set fire to the tents, 
 waggons, caissons, carriages, anything and everything, 
 without pity, and drive these fellows on to the bridge. 
 Compel everything that walks on two legs to take 
 refuge on the other bank. We must set fire to the 
 camp ; it is our last resource. If Berthier had let me 
 burn those d d waggons sooner, no lives need have 
 
Farewell 215 
 
 been lost in the river except my poor pontooners, my 
 fifty heroes, who saved the Army, and will be for- 
 gotten.' 
 
 The General passed his hand over his forehead and 
 said no more. He felt that Poland would be his tomb, 
 and foresaw that afterwards no voice would be raised to 
 speak for the noble fellows who had plunged into the 
 stream— into the waters of the Beresina! — to drive in 
 the piles for the bridges. And, indeed, only one of them 
 is living now, or, to be more accurate, starving, utterly 
 forgotten in a country village ! The brave officer had 
 scarcely gone a hundred paces towards Studzianka, when 
 General Eblé roused some of his patient pontooners, 
 and began his work of mercy by setting fire to the 
 camp on the side nearest the bridge, so compelling the 
 sleepers to rise and cross the Beresina. Meanwhile the 
 young aide-de-camp, not without difficulty, reached the 
 one wooden house yet left standing in Studzianka. 
 
 * So the box is pretty full, is it, messmate ? ' he said to 
 a man whom he found outside. 
 
 ' You will be a knowing fellow if you manage to get 
 inside,' the officer returned, without turning round or 
 stopping his occupation of hacking at the woodwork of 
 the house with his sabre. 
 
 * Philip, is that you ? ' cried the aide-de-camp, recog- 
 nising the voice of one of his friends. 
 
 'Yes. Aha ! is it you, old fellow ?' returned M. de 
 Sucy, looking round at the aide-de-camp, who like him- 
 self was not more than twenty-three years old. ' I 
 fancied you were on the other side of this confounded 
 river. Do you come to bring us sweetmeats for 
 dessert ? You will get a warm welcome,' he added, as 
 he tore away a strip of bark from the wood and gave it 
 to his horse by way of fodder. 
 
 ' I am looking for your Commandant. General Eblé 
 has sent me to tell him to file off to Zembin. You 
 have only just time to cut your way through that mass 
 
2 1 6 Farewell 
 
 of dead men ; as soon as you get through, I am going to 
 
 set fire to the place to make them move ' 
 
 ' You almost make me feel warm ! Your news has 
 put me in a fever ; I have two friends to bring through. 
 Ah ! but for those marmots, I should have been dead 
 before now, old fellow. On their account I am taking 
 care of my horse instead of eating him. But have you 
 a crust about you, for pity's sake ? It is thirty hours 
 since I have stowed any victuals. I have been fighting 
 like a madman to keep up a little warmth in my body 
 and what courage I have left.' 
 
 * Poor Philip ! I have nothing — not a scrap ! — But is 
 your General in there ? ' 
 
 * Don't attempt to go in. The barn is full of our 
 wounded. Go up a bit higher, and you will see a sort 
 of pigsty to the right — that is where the General is. 
 Good-bye, my dear fellow. If ever we meet again in a 
 quadrille in a ballroom in Paris ' 
 
 He did not finish the sentence, for the treachery of 
 the north-east wind that whistled about them froze 
 Major Philip's lips, and the aide-de-camp kept moving 
 for fear of being frost-bitten. Silence soon prevailed, 
 scarcely broken by the groans of the wounded in the 
 barn, or the stifled sounds made by M. de Sucy's horse 
 crunching the frozen bark with famished eagerness. 
 Philip thrust ' his sabre into the sheath, caught at the 
 bridle of the precious animal that he had managed to 
 keep for so long, and drew her away from the miserable 
 fodder that she was bolting with apparent relish. 
 
 ' Come along, Bichette ! come along ! It hes with 
 you now, my beauty, to save Stephanie's life. There, 
 wait a little longer, and they will let us lie down and die, 
 no doubt ;' and Philip, wrapped in a pelisse, to which 
 doubtless he owed his life and energies, began to run, 
 stamping his feet on the frozen snow to keep them 
 warm. He was scarce five hundred paces away before 
 he saw a great fire blazing on the spot where he had left 
 
Farewell 217 
 
 his carnage that morning with an old soldier to guard 
 it, A dreadful misgiving seized upon him. Many a 
 man under the influence of a powerful feeling during the 
 Retreat summoned up energy for his friend's sake when 
 he would not have exerted himself to save his own life ; 
 so it was with Philip. He soon neared a hollow, where 
 he had left a carriage sheltered from the cannonade, a 
 carriage that held a young woman, his playmate in child- 
 hood, dearer to him than any one else on earth. 
 
 Some thirty stragglers were sitting round a tremen- 
 dous blaze, which they kept up with logs of wood, planks 
 wrenched from the floors of the caissons, and wheels, 
 and panels from carriage bodies. These had been, 
 doubtless, among the last to join the sea of fires, huts, 
 and human faces that filled the great furrow in the land 
 between Studzianka and the fatal river, a restless living 
 sea of almost imperceptibly moving figures, that sent up 
 a smothered hum of sound blended with frightful shrieks. 
 It seemed that hunger and despair had driven these for- 
 lorn creatures to take forcible possession of the carriage, 
 for the old General and his young wife, whom they had 
 found warmly wrapped in pelisses and travelling cloaks, 
 were now crouching on the earth beside the fire, and 
 one of the carriage doors was broken. 
 
 As soon as the group of stragglers round the fire 
 heard the footfall of the Major's horse, a frenzied yell 
 of hunger went up from them. ' A horse ! ' they cried. 
 ' A horse ! ' 
 
 All the voices went up as one voice. 
 
 ' Back ! back ! Look out ! ' shouted two or three of 
 them, levelling their muskets at the animal. 
 
 ' I will pitch you neck and crop into your fire, you 
 blackguards ! ' cried Philip, springing in front of the 
 mare. ' There are dead horses lying up yonder j go 
 and look for them ! ' 
 
 ' What a rum customer the officer is ! — Once, twice, 
 will you get out of the way ? ' returned a giant 
 
2 1 8 Farewell 
 
 grenadier. * You won't ? All right then, just as you 
 please.' 
 
 A woman's shriek rang out above the report. Luckily, 
 none of the bullets hit Philip ; but poor Bichette lay in 
 the agony of death. Three of the men came up and put 
 an end to her with thrusts of the bayonet. 
 
 * Cannibals ! leave me the rug and my pistols,' cried 
 Philip in desperation. 
 
 ' Oh ! the pistols if you Hke ; but as for the rug, there 
 is a fellow yonder who has had nothing to wet his 
 whistle these two days, and is shivering in his coat of 
 cobwebs, and that 's our General.' 
 
 Philip looked up and saw a man with worn-out shoes 
 and a dozen rents in his trousers j the only covering for 
 his head was a ragged foraging cap, white with rime. 
 He said no more after that, but snatched up his pistols. 
 
 Five of the men dragged the mare to the fire, and 
 began to cut up the carcase as dexterously as any 
 journeymen butchers in Paris. The scraps of meat 
 were distributed and flung upon the coals, and the whole 
 process was magically swift. Philip went over to the 
 woman who had given the cry of terror when she recog- 
 nised his danger, and sat down by her side. She sat 
 motionless upon a cushion taken from the carriage, 
 warming herself at the blaze } she said no word, and 
 gazed at him without a smile. He saw beside her the 
 soldier whom he had left mounting guard over the car- 
 riage ; the poor fellow had been wounded ; he had been 
 overpowered by numbers, and forced to surrender to the 
 stragglers who had set upon him, and, Hke a dog who 
 defends his master's dinner till the last moment, he had 
 taken his share of the spoil, and had made a sort of cloak 
 for himself out of a sheet. At that particular moment 
 he was busy toasting a piece of horseflesh, and in his 
 face the major saw a gleeful anticipation of the coming 
 feast. 
 
 The Comte de Vandières, who seemed to have grown 
 
Farewell 219 
 
 quite childish in the last few days, sat on a cushion close 
 to his wife, and stared into the fire. He was only just 
 beginning to shake off his torpor under the influence of 
 the warmth. He had been no more affected by Philip's 
 arrival and danger than by the fight and subsequent 
 pillage of his travelling carriage. 
 
 At first Sucy caught the young Countess's hand in his, 
 trying to express his affection for her, and the pain that 
 it gave him to see her reduced like this to the last 
 extremity of misery ; but he said nothing as he sat by 
 her side on the thawing heap of snow, he gave himself 
 up to the pleasure of the sensation of warmth, forgetful 
 of danger, forgetful of all things else in the world. In 
 spite of himself his face expanded with an almost fatuous 
 expression of satisfaction, and he waited impatiently till 
 the scrap of horseflesh that had fallen to his soldier's 
 share should be cooked. The smell of the charred 
 flesh stimulated his hunger. Hunger clamoured within 
 him and silenced his heart, his courage, and his love. 
 He coolly looked round on the results of the spolia- 
 tion of his carriage. Not a man seated round the fire 
 but had shared the booty, the rugs, cushions, pelisses, 
 dresses, — articles of clothing that belonged to the Count 
 and Countess or to himself. Philip turned to see 
 if anything worth taking was left in the berline. He 
 saw by the light of the flames, gold, and diamonds, and 
 silver lying scattered about ; no one had cared to 
 appropriate the least particle. There was something 
 hideous in the silence among those human creatures 
 round the fire ; none of them spoke, none of them 
 stirred, save to do such things as each considered 
 necessary for his own comfort. 
 
 It was a grotesque misery. The men's faces were 
 warped and disfigured with the cold, and plastered over 
 with a layer of mud ; you could see the thickness of the 
 mask by the channel traced down their cheeks by the 
 tears that ran from their eyes, and their long slovenly 
 
220 Farewell 
 
 kept beards added to the hideousness of their appearance. 
 Some were wrapped round in women's shawls, others in 
 horse-cloths, dirty blankets, rags stiffened with melting 
 hoar-frost ; here and there a man wore a boot on one 
 foot and a shoe on the other, in fact, there was not one 
 of them but wore some ludicrously odd costume. But 
 the men themselves with such matter for jest about them 
 were gloomy and taciturn. 
 
 The silence was unbroken save by the crackling of 
 the wood, the roaring of the flames, the far-off hum of 
 the camp, and the sound of sabres hacking at the carcass 
 of the mare. Some of the hungriest of the men were 
 still cutting tit-bits for themselves. A few miserable 
 creatures, more weary than the others, slept outright ; 
 and if they happened to roll into the fire, no one pulled 
 them back. With cut-and-dried logic their fellows 
 argued that if they were not dead, a scorching ought 
 to be sufficient warning to quit and seek out more 
 comfortable quarters. If the poor wretch woke to find 
 himself on fire, he was burned to death, and nobody pitied 
 him. Here and there the men exchanged glances, as if 
 to excuse their indifference by the carelessness of the 
 rest ; the thing happened twice under the young 
 Countess's eyes, and she uttered no sound. When all 
 the scraps of horse-flesh had been broiled upon the coals, 
 they were devoured with a ravenous greediness that 
 would have been disgusting in wild beasts. 
 
 ' And now we have seen thirty infantry-men on one 
 horse for the first time in our lives ! ' cried the grenadier 
 who had shot the mare, the one solitary joke that 
 sustained, the Frenchmen's reputation for wit. 
 
 Before long the poor fellows huddled themselves up 
 in their clothes, and lay down on planks of timber, on 
 anything but the bare snow, and slept — heedless of the 
 morrow. Major de Sucy having warmed himself and 
 satisfied his hunger, fought in vain against the drowsi- 
 ness that weighed upon his eyes. During this brief 
 
Farewell 22 1 
 
 struggle he gazed at the sleeping girl who had turned 
 her face to the fire, so that he could see her closed eye- 
 lids and part of her forehead. She was wrapped round 
 in a furred pelisse and a coarse horseman's cloak, her 
 head lay on a blood-stained cushion ; a tall astrakhan cap 
 tied over her head by a handkerchief knotted under the 
 chin protected her face as much as possible from the 
 cold, and she had tucked up her feet in the cloak. As 
 she lay curled up in this fashion, she bore no likeness to 
 any creature. 
 
 Was this the lowest of camp-followers ? Was this the 
 charming woman, the pride of her lover's heart, the 
 queen of many a Parisian ballroom ? Alas ! even for 
 the eyes of this most devoted friend, there was no dis- 
 cernible trace of womanhood in that bundle of rags and 
 linen, and the cold was mightier than the love in a 
 woman's heart. 
 
 Then for the major the husband and wife came 
 to be like two distant dots seen through the thick veil 
 that the most irresistible kind of slumber spread over his 
 eyes. It all seemed to be part of a dream — the leaping 
 flames, the recumbent figures, the awful cold that lay in 
 wait for them three paces away from the warmth of the 
 fire that glowed for a Httle while. One thought that 
 could not be stifled haunted Philip — *If I go to sleep, 
 we shall all die ; I will not sleep,' he said to himself. 
 
 He slept. After an hour's slumber M. de Sucy was 
 awakened by a hideous uproar and the sound of an 
 explosion. The remembrance of his duty, of the danger 
 of his beloved, rushed upon his mind with a sudden shock. 
 He uttered a cry like the growl of a wild beast. He and 
 his servant stood upright above the rest. They saw a 
 sea of fire in the darkness, and against it moving masses 
 of human figures. Flames were devouring the huts and 
 tents. Despairing shrieks and yelling cries reached their 
 ears ; they saw thousands upon thousands of wild and 
 desperate faces ; and through this inferno a column of 
 
222 Farewell 
 
 soldiers was cutting its way to the bridge, between two 
 hedges of dead bodies. 
 
 * Our rearguard is in full retreat,' cried the major. 
 * There is no hope left ! ' 
 
 ' I have spared your travelling carriage, Philip,' said a 
 friendly voice. 
 
 Sucy turned and saw the young aide-de-camp by the 
 light of the flames. 
 
 * Oh, it is all over with us,' he answered. * They 
 have eaten my horse. And how am I to make this 
 sleepy general and his wife stir a step ? ' 
 
 ' Take a brand, Philip, and threaten them.' 
 
 * Threaten the Countess ? . . .' 
 
 * Good-bye,' cried the aide-de-camp ; ' I have only just 
 time to get across that unlucky river, and go I must, 
 there is my mother in France ! . . . What a night ! 
 This herd of wretches would rather lie here in the snovv^, 
 and most of them would sooner be burned alive than get 
 up. ... It is four o'clock, Philip ! In two hours the 
 Russians will begin to move, and you will see the 
 Beresina covered with corpses a second time, I can tell 
 you. You haven't a horse, and you cannot carry the 
 Countess, so come along with me,' he went on, taking 
 his friend by the arm. 
 
 * My dear fellow, how am I to leave Stéphanie ! * 
 Major de Sùcy grasped the Countess, set her on her 
 
 feet, and shook her roughly ; he was in despair. He 
 compelled her to w^ake, and she stared at him with dull 
 fixed eyes. 
 
 ' Stephanie, we must go, or we shall die here ! ' 
 For all answer the Countess tried to sink dovi^n again 
 and sleep on the earth. The aide-de-camp snatched a 
 brand from the fire and shook it in her face. 
 
 * We must save her in spite of herself,' cried Philip, 
 and he carried her in his arms to the carriage. He came 
 back to entreat his friend to help him, and the two 
 young men took the old general and put him beside his 
 
Farewell 223 
 
 wife, without knowing whether he were alive or dead. 
 The major rolled the men over as they crouched on the 
 earth, took away the plundered clothing, and heaped it 
 upon the husband and wife, then he flung some of the 
 broiled fragments of horse-flesh into a corner of the 
 carriage. 
 
 ' Now, what do you mean to do ? ' asked the aide-de- 
 camp. 
 
 ' Drag them along ! ' answered Sucy. 
 
 * You are mad ! ' 
 ' You are right ! ' exclaimed Philip, folding his arms 
 
 on his breast. 
 
 Suddenly a desperate plan occurred to him. 
 
 * Look you here ! ' he said, grasping his sentinel by the 
 unwounded arm, * I leave her in your care for one hour. 
 Bear in mind that you must die sooner than let any one, 
 no matter whom, come near the carriage ! ' 
 
 The major seized a handful of the lady's diamonds, 
 drew his sabre, and violently battered those who seemed 
 to him to be the bravest among the sleepers. By this 
 means he succeeded in rousing the gigantic grenadier 
 and a couple of men whose rank and regiment were 
 undiscoverable. 
 
 *It is all up with us ! ' he cried. 
 
 * Of course it is,' returned the grenadier; *but that is 
 ill one to me.' 
 
 *Very well then, if die you must, isn't it better 
 o sell your life for a pretty woman, and stand a chance 
 )f going back to France again ?' 
 
 * I would rather go to sleep,' said one of the men, 
 Iropping down into the snow ; * and if you worry me 
 
 ain, major, I shall stick my toasting-iron into your 
 belly ! ' 
 
 'What is it all about, sir?' asked the grenadier. 
 The man's drunk. He is a Parisian, and Hkes to lie in 
 :he lap of luxury.' 
 
 *You shall have these, good fellow,' said the major, 
 
y 
 
 224 Farewell 
 
 holding out a rivière of diamonds, 'if you will follow 
 me and fight like a madman. The Russians are not 
 ten minutes away ; they have horses ; we will march 
 up to the nearest battery and carry off two stout 
 ones.' 
 
 ' How about the sentinels, major ? ' 
 
 * One of us three ' he began ; then he turned from 
 
 the soldier and looked at the aide-de-camp. — * You are 
 coming, aren't you, Hippolyte ? ' 
 
 Hippolyte nodded assent. 
 
 ' One of us,' the major went on, * will look after the 
 sentry. Besides, perhaps those blessed Russians are also 
 fast asleep.' 
 
 ' All right, major ; you are a good sort ! But will 
 you take me in your carriage ? ' asked the grenadier. 
 
 * Yes, if you don't leave your bones up yonder. — If I 
 come to grief, promise me, you two, that you will do 
 everything in your power to save the Countess.' 
 
 ' All right,' said the grenadier. 
 
 They set out for the Russian lines, taking the direc- 
 tion of the batteries that had so cruelly raked the mass 
 of miserable creatures huddled together by the river bank. 
 A few minutes later the hoofs of two galloping horses rang 
 on the frozen snow, and the awakened battery fired a 
 volley that passed over the heads of the sleepers ; the 
 hoof-beats rattled so fast on the iron ground that they 
 sounded like the hammering in a smithy. The generous 
 aide-de-camp had fallen ; the stalwart grenadier had come 
 off safe and sound ; and PhiUp himself had received a 
 bayonet thrust in the shoulder while defending his friend. 
 Notwithstanding his wound, he clung to his horse's 
 mane, and gripped him with his knees so tightly that 
 the animal was held as in a vice. 
 
 ' God be praised ! ' cried the major, when he saw his 
 soldier still on the spot, and the carriage standing v^rhere 
 he had left it. 
 
 * If you do the right thing by me, sir, you will get me 
 
Farewell 225 
 
 the cross for this. We have treated them to a sword 
 dance to a pretty tune from the rifle, eh ? ' 
 
 ' We have done nothing yet ! Let us put the horses 
 in. Take hold of these cords.' 
 
 * They are not long enough.' 
 
 * All right, grenadier, just go and overhaul those 
 fellows sleeping there ; take their shawls, sheets, any- 
 thing ' 
 
 ' I say ! the rascal is dead,' cried the grenadier, as he 
 plundered the first man who came to hand. * Why, they 
 are all dead ! how queer ! ' 
 
 'All of them?' 
 
 ' Yes, every one. It looks as though horseflesh à la 
 ncige was indigestible.' 
 
 Philip shuddered at the words. The night had grown 
 twice as cold as before. 
 
 'Great heaven ! to lose her when I have saved her 
 life a score of times already.' 
 
 He shook the countess, ' Stéphanie ! Stéphanie ! ' he 
 cried. 
 
 She opened her eyes. 
 
 ' We are saved, madame ! * 
 
 'Saved ! ' she echoed, and fell back again. 
 
 The horses were harnessed after a fashion at last. 
 The major held his sabre in his unwounded hand, took 
 the reins in the other, saw to his pistols, and sprang on 
 one of the horses, while the grenadier mounted the other. 
 The old sentinel had been pushed into the carriage, and 
 lay across the knees of the general and the Countess ; his 
 feet were frozen. Urged on by blows from the flat of 
 the sabre, the horses dragged the carriage at a mad 
 gallop down to the plain, where endless difficulties awaited 
 them. Before long it became almost impossible to 
 advance without crushing sleeping men, women, and 
 even children at every step, all of whom declined to stir 
 when the grenadier awakened them. In vain M. de 
 Sucy looked for the track that the rearguard had cut 
 
226 Farewell 
 
 through this dense crowd of human beings ; there was 
 no more sign of their passage than of the wake of a 
 ship in the sea. The horses could only move at a foot 
 pace, and were stopped most frequently by soldiers, who 
 threatened to kill them. 
 
 * Do you mean to get there ? ' asked the grenadier. 
 
 * Yes, if it costs every drop of blood in my body ! if 
 it costs the whole world ! ' the major answered. 
 
 * Forward, then ! . . . You can't have the omelette 
 without breaking eggs.' And the grenadier of the Garde 
 urged on the horses over the prostrate bodies, and upset 
 the bivouacs ; the blood-stained wheels ploughing that 
 field of faces left a double furrow of dead. But in justice 
 it should be said that he never ceased to thunder out his 
 warning cry, * Carrion ! look out ! ' 
 
 ' Poor wretches ! ' exclaimed the major. 
 
 * Bah ! That way, or the cold, or the cannon ! ' 
 said the grenadier, goading on the horses with the point 
 of his sword. 
 
 Then came the catastrophe, which must have happened 
 sooner but for miraculous good fortune ; the carriage 
 was overturned, and all further progress was stopped at 
 once. 
 
 *I expected as much!' exclaimed the imperturbable 
 grenadier. ' Oho ! he is dead ! ' he added, looking at 
 his comrade. 
 
 ' Poor Laurent ! ' said the major. 
 
 ' Laurent ! Wasn't he in the Fifth Chasseurs ? * 
 
 *Yes.' 
 
 ' My own cousin. — Pshaw ! this beastly life is not so 
 pleasant that one need be sorry for him as things go.' 
 
 But all this time the carriage lay overturned, and the 
 horses were only released after great and irreparable loss 
 of time. The shock had been so violent that the 
 Countess had been awakened by it, and the subsequent 
 commotion aroused her from her stupor. She shook off 
 the rugs and rose. 
 
Farewell 217 
 
 * Where are we, Philip ? ' she asked in musical tones, 
 as she looked about her. 
 
 ' About five hundred paces from the bridge. We are 
 just about to cross the Beresina. When we are on the 
 other side, Stéphanie, I will not tease you any more ; I 
 will let you go to sleep ; we shall be in safety, we can 
 go on to Wilna in peace. God grant that you may 
 never know what your life has cost ! ' 
 
 * You are wounded ! ' 
 
 * A mere trifle.' 
 The hour of doom had come. The Russian cannon 
 
 announced the day. The Russians were in possession of 
 Studzianka, and thence were raking the plain with grape- 
 hot ; and by the first dim light of the dawn the major 
 aw two columns moving and forming above on the 
 heights. Then a cry of horror went up from the crowd, 
 and in a moment every one sprang to his feet. Each 
 instinctively felt his danger, and all made a rush for the 
 bridge, surging towards it hke a wave. 
 
 Then the Russians came down upon them, swift as a 
 conflagration. Men, women, children, and horses all 
 crowded towards the river. Luckily for the major and the 
 Countess, they were still at some distance from the bank. 
 General Eblé had just set fire to the bridge on the other 
 side ; but in spite of all the warnings given to those who 
 ushed towards the chance of salvation, not one among 
 hem could or would draw back. The overladen bridge 
 gave way, and not only so, the impetus of the frantic 
 iving wave towards that fatal bank was such that a dense 
 rowd of human beings was thrust into the water as if by 
 m avalanche. The sound of a single human cry could 
 lot be distinguished ; there was a dull crash as if an 
 normous stone had fallen into the water — and the 
 Beresina was covered with corpses. 
 
 The violent recoil of those in front, striving to escape 
 this death, brought them into hideous collision with 
 hose behind them, who were pressing towards the bank. 
 
2a8 Farewell 
 
 and many were suffocated and crushed. The Comte 
 and Comtesse de Vandières owed their lives to the 
 carriage. The horses that had trampled and crushed 
 so many dying men were crushed and trampled to death 
 in their turn by the human maelstrom which eddied 
 from the bank. Sheer physical strength saved the 
 major and the grenadier. They killed others in self- 
 defence. That wild sea of human faces and living 
 bodies, surging to and fro as by one impulse, left the bank 
 of the Beresina clear for a few moments. The multitude 
 had hurled themselves back on the plain. Some few 
 men sprang down from the banks toward the river, not 
 so much with any hope of reaching the opposite shore, 
 which for them meant France, as from dread of the 
 wastes of Siberia. For some bold spirits despair became 
 a panoply. An officer leapt from hummock to hum- 
 mock of ice, and reached the other shore ; one of the 
 soldiers scrambled over miraculously on the piles of dead 
 bodies and drift ice. But the immense multitude left 
 behind saw at last that the Russians would not slaughter 
 twenty thousand unarmed men, too numb with the cold 
 to attempt to resist them, and each awaited his fate with 
 dreadful apathy. By this time the major and his grena- 
 dier, the old general and his wife, were left to them- 
 selves not very far from the place where the bridge had 
 been. All four stood dry-eyed and silent among the 
 heaps of dead. A few able-bodied men and one or two 
 officers, who had recovered all their energy at this crisis, 
 gathered about them. The group was sufficiently 
 large ; there were about fifty men all told. A couple of 
 hundred paces from them stood the wreck of the artillery 
 bridge, which had broken down the day before ; the 
 major saw this, and ' Let us make a raft ! ' he cried. 
 
 The words were scarcely out of his mouth before the 
 whole group hurried to the ruins of the bridge. A crowd 
 of men began to pick up iron clamps and to hunt for 
 planks and ropes — for all the materials for a raft, in short. 
 
Farewell 2-25 
 
 A score of armed men and officers, under command of 
 the major, stood on guard to protect the workers from 
 any desperate attempt on the part of the multitude if 
 they should guess their design. The longing for free- 
 dom, which inspires prisoners to accomplish impossi- 
 bilities, cannot be compared with the hope which lent 
 energy at that moment to these forlorn Frenchmen. 
 
 ' The Russians are upon us ! Here are the Russians ! ' 
 the guard shouted to the workers. 
 
 The timbers creaked, the raft grew larger, stronger, 
 and more substantial. Generals, colonels, and common 
 soldiers all alike bent beneath the weight of waggon- 
 wheels, chains, coils of rope, and planks of timber ; it 
 was a modern realisation of the building of Noah's ark. 
 The young Countess, sitting by her husband's side, 
 looked on, regretful that she could do nothing to aid 
 the workers, though she helped to knot the lengths of 
 rope together. 
 
 At last the raft was finished. Forty men launched it 
 out into the river, while ten of the soldiers held the 
 ropes that must keep it moored to the shore. The 
 moment that they saw their handiwork floating on the 
 Beresina, they sprang down on to it from the bank with 
 callous selfishness. The major, dreading the frenzy of 
 the first rush, held back Stéphanie and the general; but a 
 shudder ran through him when he saw the landing place 
 black with people, and men crowding down like play- 
 goers into the pit of a theatre. 
 
 * It was I who thought of the raft, you savages ! ' he 
 cried. * I have saved your lives, and you will not make 
 00m for me ! ' 
 
 A confused murmur was the only answer. The men 
 It the edge took up stout poles, thrust them against the 
 3ank with all their might, so as to shove the raft out and 
 yain an impetus at its starting upon a journey across a 
 iea of floating ice and dead bodies towards the other 
 hore. 
 
230 Farewell 
 
 * Tonnerre de Dieu ! I will knock some of you off 
 into the water if you don't make room for the major and 
 his two companions/ shouted the grenadier. He raised 
 his sabre threateningly, delayed the departure, and made 
 the men stand closer together, in spite of threatening 
 yells. 
 
 * I shall fall in ! ... I shall go overboard ! . . . ' his 
 fellows shouted. 
 
 ' Let us start ! Put off ! ' 
 
 The major gazed with tearless eyes at the woman he 
 loved i an impulse of sublime resignation raised her eyes 
 to heaven. 
 
 * To die with you ! ' she said. 
 
 In the situation of the folk upon the raft there was a 
 certain comic element. They might utter hideous yells, 
 but not one of them dared to oppose the grenadier, for 
 they were packed together so tightly that if one man 
 were knocked down, the whole raft might capsize. At 
 this delicate crisis, a captain tried to rid himself of one of 
 his neighbours ; the man saw the hostile intention of 
 his officer, collared him, and pitched him overboard. 
 * Aha ! The duck has a mind to drink. . . . Over with 
 you ! — There is room for two now ! ' he shouted. 
 ' Quick, major ! throw your little woman over, and 
 come ! Never mind that old dotard j he will drop ofF 
 to-morrow ! ' 
 
 ' Be quick ! ' cried a voice, made up of a hundred 
 voices. 
 
 ' Come, major ! Those fellows are making a fuss, and 
 well they may ! ' 
 
 The Comte de Vandières flung off his ragged blankets, 
 and stood before them in his general's uniform. 
 
 *Let us save the Count,' said Philip. 
 
 Stéphanie grasped his hand tightly in hers, flung her 
 arms about, and clasped him close in an agonised embrace. 
 
 * Farewell,' she said. 
 
 Then each knew the other's thoughts. The Comte 
 
FarewelJ 23 1 
 
 de Vandières recovered his energies and presence of 
 mind sufficiently to jump on to the raft, whither 
 Stéphanie followed him after one last look at Philip. 
 
 ' Major, won't you take my place ? I do not care a 
 straw for life j I have neither wife, nor child, nor mother 
 belonging to me ' 
 
 ' I give them into your charge,' cried the major, indi- 
 cating the Count and his wife. 
 
 * Be easy ; I will take as much care of them as of the 
 apple of my eye.' 
 
 Philip stood stock-still on the bank. The raft sped so 
 violently towards the opposite shore that it ran aground 
 with a violent shock to all on board. The count, 
 standing on the very edge, was shaken into the stream ; 
 and as he fell, a mass of ice swept by and struck off his 
 head, and sent it flying like a ball. 
 
 * Hey ! major ! ' shouted the grenadier. 
 
 * Farewell ! ' a woman's voice called aloud. 
 
 An icy shiver of dread ran through Philip de Sucy, 
 and he dropped down where he stood, overcome with 
 cold and sorrow and weariness. 
 
 * My poor niece went out of her mind,' the doctor 
 added after a brief pause. * Ah ! monsieur,' he went on, 
 grasping M. d'Albon's hand, * what a fearful life for the 
 poor little thing, so young, so delicate ! An unheard-of 
 misfortune separated her from that grenadier of the 
 Garde (Fleuriot by name), and for two years she was 
 dragged on after the army, the laughing-stock of a 
 rabble of outcasts. She went barefoot, I heard, ill-clad, 
 neglected, and starved for months at a time ; sometimes 
 confined in a hospital, sometimes living like a hunted 
 animal. God alone knows all the misery which she 
 endured, and yet she lives. She was shut up in a mad- 
 house in a little German town, while her relations, 
 believing her to be dead, were dividing her property here 
 in France. 
 
232 Farewell 
 
 'In 18 16 the grenadier Fleuriot recognised her in an 
 inn in Strasbourg. She had just managed to escape from 
 captivity. Some peasants told him that the Countess 
 had lived for a w^hole month in a forest, and how that 
 they had tracked her and tried to catch her w^ithout 
 success. 
 
 ' I w^as at that time not many leagues from Strasbourg; 
 and hearing the talk about this girl in the wood, I wished 
 to verify the strange facts that had given rise to absurd 
 stories. What was my feeling when I beheld the 
 Countess ? Fleuriot told me all that he knew of the 
 piteous story. I took the poor fellow with my niece 
 into Auvergne, and there I had the misfortune to lose 
 him. He had some ascendency over Mme. de Vandières. 
 He alone succeeded in persuading her to wear clothes ; and 
 in those days her one word of human speech — Farewell — 
 she seldom uttered. Fleuriot set himself to the task of 
 awakening certain associations ; but there he failed com- 
 pletely ; he drew that one sorrowful word from her a 
 little more frequently, that was all. But the old grena- 
 dier could amuse her, and devoted himself to playing with 
 
 her, and through him I hoped ; but ' here Stephanie's 
 
 uncle broke off. After a moment he went on again. 
 
 * Here she has found another creature with whom she 
 seems to have an understanding — an idiot peasant girl, 
 who once, in spite of her plainness and imbecility, fell in 
 love with a mason. The mason thought of marrying 
 her because she had a little bit of land, and for a whole 
 year poor Geneviève was the happiest of living creatures. 
 She dressed in her best, and danced on Sundays with 
 Dallot ; she understood love ; there was room for love in 
 her heart and brain. But Dallot thought better of it. 
 He found another girl who had all her senses and rather 
 more land than Geneviève, and he forsook Geneviève for 
 her. Then the poor thing lost the little intelligence 
 that love had developed in her ; she can do nothing now 
 but cut grass and look after the cattle. Mv niece and 
 
Farewell 7.^3 
 
 the poor girl are in some sort bound to each other by the 
 invisible chain of their common destiny, and by their 
 madness due to the same cause. Just come here a 
 moment ; look ! ' and Stephanie's uncle led the Marquis 
 d'Albon to the window. 
 
 There, in fact, the magistrate beheld the pretty Countess 
 sitting on the ground at Genevieve's knee, while the 
 peasant girl was wholly absorbed in combing out 
 Stephanie's long, black hair with a huge comb. The 
 Countess submitted herself to this, uttering low smothered 
 cries that expressed her enjoyment of the sensation of 
 physical comfort. A shudder ran through M. d'Albon 
 as he saw her attitude of languid abandonment, the 
 animal supineness that revealed an utter lack of intelli- 
 gence. 
 
 ' Oh ! Philip, Philip ! ' he cried, * past troubles are as 
 nothing. Is it quite hopeless ? ' he asked. 
 
 The doctor raised his eyes to heaven. 
 
 * Good-bye, monsieur,' said M. d'Albon, pressing the 
 old man's hand. ' My friend is expecting me ; you will 
 see him here before very long.' 
 
 'Then it is Stéphanie herself?' cried Sucy when the 
 Marquis had spoken the first few words. ' Ah ! until 
 now I did not feel sure ! ' he added. Tears filled the 
 dark eyes that were wont to wear a stern expression. 
 
 ' Yes ; she is the Comtesse de Vandières,' his friend 
 replied. 
 
 The colonel started up, and hurriedly began to dress. 
 
 'Why, Philip!' cried the horrified magistrate. 'Are 
 you going mad ? ' 
 
 ' I am quite well now,' said the colonel simply. 
 'This news has soothed all my bitterest grief; what 
 pain could hurt me while I think of Stéphanie ? I 
 am going over to the Minorite convent, to see her and 
 speak to her, to restore her to health again. She is free; 
 ah, surely, surely, happiness will smile on us, or there is 
 
234 Farewell 
 
 no Providence above. How can you think that she 
 could hear my voice, poor Stéphanie, and not recover her 
 reason ? ' 
 
 * She has seen you once already, and she did not 
 recognise you,' the magistrate answered gently, trying to 
 suggest some wholesome fears to this friend, whose hopes 
 were visibly too high. 
 
 The colonel shuddered, but he began to smile again, 
 with a slight involuntary gesture of incredulity. Nobody 
 ventured to oppose his plans, and a few hours later he 
 had taken up his abode in the old priory, to be near the 
 doctor and the Comtesse de Vandières. 
 
 * Where is she ? ' he cried at once. 
 
 * Hush ! ' answered M. Fanjat, Stephanie's uncle. ' She 
 is sleeping. Stay ; here she is.' 
 
 Philip saw the poor distraught sleeper crouching on a 
 stone bench in the sun. Her thick hair, straggling over 
 her face, screened it from the glare and heat j her arms 
 dropped languidly to the earth ; she lay at ease as grace- 
 fully as a fawn, her feet tucked up beneath her ; her 
 bosom rose and fell with her even breathing ; there 
 was the same transparent whiteness as of porcelain in 
 her skin and complexion that we so often admire in 
 children's faces. Geneviève sat there motionless, hold- 
 ing a spray that Stéphanie doubtless had brought down 
 from the top of one of the tallest poplars ; the idiot 
 girl was waving the green branch above her, driving 
 away the flies from her sleeping companion, and gently 
 fanning her. 
 
 She stared at M. Fanjat and the colonel as they came 
 up ; then, like a dumb animal that recognises its master, 
 she slowly turned her face towards the countess, and 
 watched over her as before, showing not the slightest 
 sign of intelligence or of astonishment. The air was 
 scorching. The glittering particles of the stone bench 
 shone like sparks of fire ; the meadow sent up the 
 quivering vapours that hover above the grass and gleam 
 
Farewell 235 
 
 like golden dust when they catch the light, but Geneviève 
 did not seem to feel the raging heat. 
 
 The colonel wrung M. Fanjat's hands ; the tears that 
 gathered in the soldier's eyes stole down his cheeks, and 
 fell on the grass at Stephanie's feet. 
 
 * Sir,' said her uncle, ' for these two years my heart has 
 been broken daily. Before very long you will be as I 
 am ; if you do not weep, you will not feel your anguish 
 the less.' 
 
 * You have taken care of her ! ' said the colonel, and 
 jealousy no less than gratitude could be read in his eyes. 
 
 The two men understood one other. They grasped 
 each other by the hand again, and stood motionless, 
 gazing in admiration at the serenity that slumber had 
 brought into the lovely face before them. Stéphanie 
 heaved a sigh from time to time, and this sigh, that 
 had all the appearance of sensibility, made the unhappy 
 colonel tremble with gladness. 
 
 * Alas ! ' M. Fanjat said gently, * do not deceive 
 yourself, monsieur ; as you see her now, she is in full 
 possession of such reason as she has.' 
 
 Those who have sat for whole hours absorbed in the 
 delight of watching over the slumber of some tenderly- 
 beloved one, whose waking eyes will smile for them, 
 will doubtless understand the bliss and anguish that 
 shook the colonel. For him this slumber was an illu- 
 sion, the waking must be a kind of death, the most 
 dreadful of all deaths. 
 
 Suddenly a kid frisked in two or three bounds towards 
 the bench, and snufFed at Stéphanie. The sound 
 awakened her ; she sprang lightly to her feet without 
 scaring away the capricious creature ; but as soon as she 
 saw Philip she fled, followed by her four-footed playmate, 
 to a thicket of elder-trees ; then she uttered a little cry 
 like the note of a startled wild-bird, the same sound that 
 the colonel had heard once before near the grating, 
 when the Countess appeared to M. d'AIbon for the first 
 
236 Farewell 
 
 time. At length she climbed into a laburnum-tree, 
 ensconced herself in the feathery greenery, and peered out 
 at the strange man with as much interest as the most 
 inquisitive nightingale in the forest. 
 
 ' Farewell, farewell, farewell,' she said, but the soul 
 sent no trace of expression of feeling through the words, 
 spoken with the careless intonation of a bird's notes. 
 
 * She does not know me ! ' the colonel exclaimed in 
 despair. * Stéphanie ! Here is Philip, your Philip ! . . . 
 Philip ! ' and the poor soldier went towards the laburnum- 
 tree j but when he stood three paces away, the Countess 
 eyed him almost defiantly, though there was timidity in 
 her eyes ; then at a bound she sprang from the laburnum 
 to an acacia, and thence to a spruce-fir, swinging from 
 bough to bough with marvellous dexterity. 
 
 ' Do not follow her,' said M. Fanjat, addressing the 
 colonel. ' You would arouse a feeling of aversion in her 
 which might become insurmountable; I will help you to 
 make her acquaintance and to tame her. Sit down on 
 the bench. If you pay no heed whatever to her, poor 
 child, it will not be long before you will see her come 
 nearer by degrees to look at you.' 
 
 ' That she should not know me ! that she should fly 
 from me ! ' the colonel repeated, sitting down on a 
 rustic bench .and leaning his back against a tree that 
 overshadowed it. 
 
 He bowed his head. The doctor remained silent. 
 Before very long the Countess stole softly down from 
 her high refuge in the spruce fir, flitting like a will-of- 
 the-wisp ; for as the wind stirred the boughs, she lent 
 herself at times to the swaying movements of the trees. 
 At each branch she stopped and peered at the stranger ; 
 but as she saw him sitting motionless, she at length 
 jumped down to the grass, stood a while, and came 
 slowly across the meadow. When she took up her 
 position by a tree about ten paces from the bench, M. 
 Fanjat spoke to the colonel in a low voice. 
 
Farewell 237 
 
 • Feel in my pocket for some lumps of sugar,' he said, 
 * and let her see them, she will come j I willingly give 
 up to you the pleasure of giving her sweetmeats. She 
 is passionately fond of sugar, and by that means you will 
 accustom her to come to you and to know you.' 
 
 *She never cared for sweet things when she was a 
 woman,' Philip answered sadly. 
 
 When he held out the lump of sugar between his 
 thumb and finger, and shook it, Stéphanie uttered the 
 wild note again, and sprang quickly towards him ; then 
 she stopped short, there was a conflict between longing 
 for the sweet morsel and instinctive fear of him ; she 
 looked at the sugar, turned her head away, and looked 
 again like an unfortunate dog forbidden to touch some 
 scrap of food, while his master slowly recites the greater 
 part of the alphabet until he reaches the letter that 
 gives permission. At length animal appetite conquered 
 fear j Stéphanie rushed to Philip, held out a dainty 
 brown hand to pounce upon the coveted morsel, touched 
 her lover's fingers, snatched the piece of sugar, and 
 vanished with it into a thicket. This painful scene was 
 too much for the colonel ; he burst into tears, and took 
 refuge in the drawing-room. 
 
 ' Then has love less courage than affection ? ' M. Fanjat 
 asked him. * I have hope. Monsieur le Baron. My poor 
 niece was once in a far more pitiable state than at 
 present/ 
 
 ' Is it possible ? ' cried Philip. 
 
 ' She would not wear clothes,' answered the doctor. 
 
 The colonel shuddered, and his face grew pale. To 
 the doctor's mind this pallor was an unhealthy symptom; 
 he went over to him and felt his pulse, M. de Sucy was 
 in a high fever ; by dint of persuasion, he succeeded in 
 putting the patient in bed, and gave him a few drops of 
 laudanum to gain repose and sleep. 
 
 J The Baron de Sucy spent nearly a week, in a constant 
 
238 Farewell 
 
 no tears left to shed. He was often well nigh heart- 
 broken ; he could not grow accustomed to the sight of 
 the Countess's madness ; but he made terms for himself, 
 as it were, in this cruel position, and sought alleviations 
 in his pain. His heroism was boundless. He found 
 courage to overcome Stephanie's wild shyness by choosing 
 sweetmeats for her, and devoted all his thoughts to this, 
 bringing these dainties, and following up the little 
 victories that he set himself to gain over Stephanie's 
 instincts (the last gleam of intelligence in her), until he 
 succeeded to some extent — she grew tamer than ever 
 before. Every morning the colonel went into the park ; 
 and if, after a long search for the Countess, he could not 
 discover the tree in which she was rocking herself 
 gently, nor the nook where she lay crouching at play 
 with some bird, nor the roof where she had perched her- 
 self, he would whistle the well-known air Partant pour la 
 Syrie, which recalled old memories of their love, and 
 Stéphanie would run towards him lightly as a fawn. 
 She saw the colonel so often that she was no longer 
 afraid of him ; before very long she would sit on his 
 knee with her thin, lithe arms about him. And while 
 thus they sat as lovers love to do, Philip doled out 
 sweetmeats one by one to the eager Countess. When 
 they were all. finished, the fancy often took Stéphanie to 
 search through her lover's pockets with a monkey's quick 
 instinctive dexterity, till she had assured herself that there 
 was nothing left, and then she gazed at Philip with vacant 
 eyes ; there was no thought, no gratitude in their clear 
 depths. Then she would play with him. She tried to 
 take off his boots to see his foot ; she tore his gloves to 
 shreds, and put on his hat ; and she would let him pass 
 his hands through her hair, and take her in his arms, 
 and submit passively to his passionate kisses, and at last, 
 if he shed tears, she would gaze silently at him. 
 
 She quite understood the signal when he whistled 
 Partant pour la Syrie, but he could never succeed in 
 
Farewell 239 
 
 inducing her to pronounce her own name — Stéphanie. 
 Philip persevered in his heartrending task, sustained by 
 a hope that never left him. If on some bright autumn 
 morning he saw her sitting quietly on a bench under a 
 poplar tree, grown brown now as the season wore, the 
 unhappy lover would lie at her feet and gaze into her 
 eyes as long as she would let him gaze, hoping that some 
 spark of intelligence might gleam from them. At times 
 he lent himself to an illusion ; he would imagine that he 
 saw the hard, changeless light in them falter, that there 
 was a new life and softness in them, and he would cry, 
 * Stéphanie ! oh, Stéphanie ! you hear me, you see me, 
 do you not ? ' 
 
 But for her the sound of his voice was Hke any other 
 sound, the stirring of the wind in the trees, or the lowing 
 of the cow on which she scrambled; and the colonel wrung 
 his hands in a despair that lost none of its bitterness ; nay, 
 time and these vain efforts only added to his anguish. 
 
 One evening, under the quiet sky, in the midst of the 
 silence and peace of the forest hermitage, M. Fanjat saw 
 from a distance that the Baron was busy loading a pistol, 
 and knew that the lover had given up all hope. The 
 blood surged to the old doctor's heart ; and if he over- 
 came the dizzy sensation that seized on him, it was be- 
 cause he would rather see his niece live with a disordered 
 brain than lose her for ever. He hurried to the place. 
 
 * What are you doing ? ' he cried. 
 
 * That is for me,' the colonel answered, pointing to a 
 oaded pistol on the bench, * and this is for her ! ' he 
 idded, as he rammed down the wad into the pistol that 
 le held in his hands. 
 
 The Countess lay stretched out on the ground, play- 
 ng with the balls. 
 
 * Then you do not know that last night, as she slept, 
 »he murmured " Philip " ' ? said the doctor quietly, dis- 
 embling his alarm. 
 
 She called my name ? ' cried the Baron, letting his 
 
240 Farewell 
 
 weapon fall. Stéphanie picked it up, but he snatched it 
 out of her hands, caught the other pistol from the bench, 
 and fled. 
 
 *Poor Httle one!' exclaimed the doctor, rejoicing 
 that his stratagem had succeeded so well. He held her 
 tightly to his heart as he went on. ' He would have 
 killed you, selfish that he is ! He wants you to die 
 because he is unhappy. He cannot learn to love you for 
 your own sake, little one ! We forgive him, do we not ? 
 He is senseless ; you are only mad. Never mind ; God 
 alone shall take you to Himself. We look upon you as 
 unhappy because you no longer share our miseries, fools 
 that we are ! . . . Why, she is happy,' he said, taking 
 her on his knee ; * nothing troubles her j she lives like 
 the birds, like the deer ' 
 
 Stéphanie sprang upon a young blackbird that was 
 hopping about, caught it with a little shriek of glee, 
 twisted its neck, looked at the dead bird, and dropped it 
 at the foot of a tree without giving it another thought. 
 
 The next morning at daybreak the colonel went out 
 into the garden to look for Stephanie ; hope was very 
 strong in him. He did not see her, and whistled j and 
 when she came, he took her arm, and for the first time 
 they walked together along an alley beneath the trees, 
 while the fresh morning wind shook down the dead 
 leaves about them. The colonel sat down, and Sté- 
 phanie, of her own accord, lit upon his knee. Philip 
 trembled with gladness. 
 
 ' Love ! ' he cried, covering her hands with passionate 
 kisses, ' I am Philip . . .' 
 
 She looked curiously at him. 
 
 * Come close,' he added, as he held her tightly. * Do 
 you reel the beating of my heart ? It has beat for you, 
 for you only. I love you always. Philip is not dead. 
 He is here. You are sitting on his knee. You are my 
 Stéphanie, I am your Philip ! ' 
 
 * Farewell ! ' she said, * farewell ! ' 
 
Farewell 241 
 
 The colonel shivered. He thought that some vibra- 
 tion of his highly wrought feeling had surely reached his 
 beloved ; that the heartrending cry, draw^n from him by 
 hope, the utmost effort of a love that must last for ever, 
 of passion in its ecstasy, striving to reach the soul of the 
 woman he loved, must awaken her. 
 
 ' Oh, Stéphanie ! we shall be happy yet ! ' 
 A cry of satisfaction broke from her, a dim light of 
 intelligence gleamed in her eyes. 
 
 * She knows me ! . . . Stéphanie ! . . .' 
 
 The colonel felt his heart swell, and tears gathered under 
 his eyelids. But all at once the Countess held up a bit of 
 sugar for him to see ; she had discovered it by searching 
 diligently for it while he spoke. What he had mistaken 
 for a human thought was a degree of reason required for 
 a monkey's mischievous trick ! 
 
 Philip fainted. M. Fanjat found the Countess sitting 
 on his prostrate body. She was nibbling her bit of sugar, 
 giving expression to her enjoyment by little grimaces 
 and gestures that would have been thought clever in a 
 woman in full possession of her senses if she tried to 
 mimic her paroquet or her cat. 
 
 * Oh, my friend ! ' cried Philip, when he came to 
 himself. *■ This is like death every moment of the day ! 
 I love her too much ! I could bear anything if only 
 through her madness she had kept some little trace of 
 womanhood. But, day after day, to see her like a wild 
 animal, not even a sense of modesty left, to see her ' 
 
 ' So you must have a theatrical madness, must you ? * 
 said the doctor sharply, *and your prejudices are stronger 
 than your lover's devotion ? What, monsieur ! I resign 
 to you the sad pleasure of giving my niece her food, and 
 the enjoyment of her playtime ; I have kept for myself 
 nothing but the most burdensome cares. I watch over 
 
 her while you are asleep, I Go, Monsieur, and give 
 
 up the task. Leave this dreary hermitage ; I can Hve 
 with my little darling j I understand her disease; I study 
 
 Q 
 
242 Farewell 
 
 her movements; I know her secrets. Some day you shall 
 thank me.' 
 
 The colonel left the Minorite convent, that he w^as 
 destined to see only once again. The doctor was alarmed 
 by the effect that his words made upon his guest; his 
 niece's lover became as dear to him as his niece. If either 
 of them deserved to be pitied, that one was certainly 
 Philip ; did he not bear alone the burden of an appalling 
 sorrow ? 
 
 The doctor made inquiries, and learned that the hapless 
 colonel had retired to a country house of his near Saint- 
 Germain. A dream had suggested to him a plan for 
 restoring the Countess to reason, and the doctor did 
 not know that he was spending the rest of the autumn 
 in carrying out a vast scheme. A small stream ran 
 through his park, and in winter time flooded a low-lying 
 land, something like the plain on the eastern side of the 
 Beresina. The village of Satout, on the slope of a ridge 
 above it, bounded the horizon of a picture of desolation, 
 something as Studzianka lay on the heights that shut in 
 the swamp of the Beresina. The colonel set labourers 
 to work to make a channel to resemble the greedy river 
 that had swallowed up the treasures of France and 
 Napoleon's army. By the help of his memories, Philip 
 reconstructed on his own lands the bank where General 
 Eble had built his bridges. He drove in piles, and then set 
 fire to them, so as to reproduce the charred and blackened 
 balks of timber that on either side of the river told the 
 stragglers that their retreat to France had been cut off. 
 He had materials collected like the fragments out of 
 which his comrades in misfortune had made the raft ; his 
 park was laid waste to complete the illusion on which his 
 last hopes were founded. He ordered ragged uniforms 
 and clothing for several hundred peasants. Huts and 
 bivouacs and batteries were raised and burned down. In 
 short, he omitted no device that could reproduce that 
 most hideous of all scenes. He succeeded. When, in the 
 
Farewell 243 
 
 earliest days of December, snow covered the earth with a 
 thick white mantle, it seemed to him that he saw the 
 Beresina itself. The mimic Russia was so startlingly 
 real, that several of his old comrades recognised the scene 
 of their past sufferings. M. de Sucy kept the secret of 
 the drama to be enacted with this tragical backgroimd, 
 but it was looked upon as a mad freak in several circles of 
 society in Paris. 
 
 In the early days of the month of January 1 820, the 
 colonel drove over to the Forest of I'Isle-Adam in a 
 carriage like the one in which M. and Mme. de Vandières 
 had driven from Moscow to Studzianka. The horses 
 closely resembled that other pair that he had risked his 
 life to bring from the Russian lines. He himself wore 
 the grotesque and soiled clothes, accoutrements, and cap 
 that he had worn on the 29th of November 181 2. He 
 had even allowed his hair and beard to grow, and 
 neglected his appearance, that no detail might be lacking 
 to recall the scene in all its horror. 
 
 ' I guessed what you meant to do,' cried M. Fanjat, 
 when he saw the colonel dismount. * If you mean your 
 plan to succeed, do not let her see you in that carriage. 
 This evening I will give my niece a little laudanum, and 
 while she sleeps, we will dress her in such clothes as she 
 wore at Studzianka, and put her in your travelling- 
 carriage. I will follow you in a berline.' 
 
 Soon after two o'clock in the morning, the young 
 Countess was lifted into the carriage, laid on the cushions, 
 and wrapped in a coarse blanket. A few peasants held 
 torches while this strange elopement was arranged. 
 
 A sudden cry rang through the silence of night, and 
 Philip and the doctor, turning, saw Geneviève. She had 
 come out half-dressed from the low room where she 
 slept. 
 
 *■ Farewell, farewell ; it is all over, farewell ! ' she called, 
 crying bitterly. 
 
 ' Why, Geneviève, what is it ? ' asked M. Fanjat, 
 
244 Farewell 
 
 Geneviève shook her head despairingly, raised her arm 
 to heaven, looked at the carriage, uttered a long snarling 
 sound, and with evident signs of profound terror, slunk 
 in again. 
 
 * 'Tis a good omen,' cried the colonel. * The girl is 
 sorry to lose her companion. Very likely she sees that 
 Stéphanie is about to recover her reason.' 
 
 ' God grant it may be so ! ' answered M. Fanjat, who 
 seemed to be afFected by this incident. Since insanity 
 had interested him, he had known several cases in which 
 a spirit of prophecy and the gift of second sight had been 
 accorded to a disordered brain — two faculties which 
 many travellers tell us are also found among savage tribes. 
 
 So it happened that, as the colonel had foreseen and 
 arranged, Stéphanie travelled across the mimic Beresina 
 about nine o'clock in the morning, and was awakened by an 
 explosion of rockets about a hundred paces from the scene 
 of action. It was a signal. Hundreds of peasants raised 
 a terrible clamour, like the despairing shouts that startled 
 the Russians when twenty thousand stragglers learned 
 that by their own fault they were delivered over to 
 death or to slavery. 
 
 When the Countess heard the report and the cries that 
 followed, she sprang out of the carriage, and rushed in 
 frenzied anguish over the snow-covered plain ; she saw 
 the burned bivouacs and the fatal raft about to be 
 launched on a frozen Beresina. She saw Major Philip 
 brandishing his sabre among the crowd. The cry that 
 broke from Mme. de Vandières made the blood run 
 cold in the veins of all who heard it. She stood face to 
 face with the colonel, who watched her with a beating 
 heart. At first she stared blankly at the strange scene 
 about her, then she reflected. For an instant, brief as a 
 lightning flash, there was the same quick gaze and total 
 lack of comprehension that we see in the bright eyes of a 
 bird ; then she passed her hand across her forehead with 
 the intelligent expression of a thinking being j she looked 
 
Farewell 245 
 
 round on the memories that had taken substantial form, 
 into the past life that had been transported into her 
 present ; she turned her face to Philip — and saw him ! 
 An awed silence fell upon the crowd. The colonel 
 breathed hard, but dared not speak ; tears filled the 
 doctor's eyes. A faint colour overspread Stephanie's 
 beautiful face, deepening slowly, till at last she glowed 
 Hke a girl radiant with youth. Still the bright flush 
 grew. Life and joy, kindled within her at the blaze of 
 intelligence, swept through her like leaping flames. A 
 convulsive tremor ran from her feet to her heart. But 
 all these tokens, which flashed on the sight in a moment, 
 gathered and gained consistence, as it were, when 
 Stephanie's eyes gleamed with heavenly radiance, the 
 light of a soul within. She lived, she thought ! She 
 shuddered — was it with fear ? God Himself unloosed a 
 second time the tongue that had been bound by death, 
 and set His fire anew in the extinguished soul. The 
 electric torrent of the human will vivified the body 
 whence it had so long been absent. 
 ' Stéphanie ! ' the colonel cried. 
 
 * Oh ! it is Philip ! ' said the poor Countess. 
 
 She fled to the trembling arms held out towards her, 
 and the embrace of the two lovers frightened those who 
 beheld it. Stéphanie burst into tears. 
 
 Suddenly the tears ceased to flow ; she lay in his arms 
 a dead weight, as if stricken by a thunderbolt, and said 
 faintly — 
 
 * Farewell, Philip ! ... I love you . . . ferewell ! ' 
 ' She is dead ! ' cried the colonel, unclasping his arms. 
 The old doctor received the lifeless body of his niece 
 
 in his arms as a young man might have done ; he carried 
 her to a stack of wood and set her down. He looked at 
 her face, and laid a feeble hand, tremulous with agitation, 
 upon her heart — it beat no longer. 
 
 * Can it really be so ? ' he said, looking from the 
 colonel, who stood there motionless, to Stephanie's face. 
 
246 Farewell 
 
 Death had invested it with a radiant beauty, a transient 
 aureole, the pledge, it may be, of a glorious life to come. 
 
 * Yes, she is dead.' 
 
 ' Oh, but that smile ! ' cried Philip ; * only see that 
 smile. Is it possible ? ' 
 
 ' She has grown cold already,' answered M. Fanjat. 
 
 M. de Sucy made a few strides to tear himself from 
 the sight ; then he stopped, and whistled the air that 
 the mad Stéphanie had understood ; and when he saw 
 that she did not rise and hasten to him, he walked away, 
 staggering like a drunken man, still whistling, but he 
 did not turn again. 
 
 In society General de Sucy is looked upon as very 
 agreeable, and above all things, as very lively and amus- 
 ing. Not very long ago a lady complimented him upon 
 his good humour and equable temper. 
 
 ' Ah ! madame,' he answered, ' I pay very dearly for 
 my merriment in the evening if I am alone.' 
 
 * Then, you are never alone, I suppose.' 
 
 * No,' he answered, smiling. 
 
 If a keen observer of human nature could have seen 
 the look that Sucy's face wore at that moment, he would, 
 without doubt, have shuddered. 
 
 * Why do you not marry ? ' the lady asked (she had 
 several daughters of her own at a boarding-school). 
 * You are wealthy ; you belong to an old and noble 
 house ; you are clever ; you have a future before you j 
 everything smiles upon you.' 
 
 * Yes,' he answered ; * one smile is killing me ' 
 
 On the morrow the lady heard with amazement that 
 
 M. de Sucy had shot himself through the head that 
 night. 
 
 The fashionable world discussed the extraordinary 
 news in divers ways, and each had a theory to account 
 for it ; play, love, ambition, irregularities in private life, 
 according to the taste of the speaker, explained the last 
 
Farewell 247 
 
 act of the tragedy begun in 1812. Two men alone, a 
 magistrate and an old doctor, knew that Monsieur le 
 Comte de Sucy was one of those souls unhappy in the 
 strength God gives to them to enable them to triumph 
 daily in a ghastly struggle with a mysterious horror. If 
 for a moment God withdraws His sustaining hand, 
 they succumb. 
 
 Paris, March 1850. 
 
THE CONSCRIPT 
 
 [ The inner selfl . . . by a phenomenon of vision 
 or of locomotion has been known at times to abolish 
 Space in its two modes of Time and Distance — 
 the one intellectual^ the other physical. 
 
 — History of Louis Lambert, 
 
 On a November evening in the year 1793 the principal 
 citizens of Carentan w^ere assembled in Mme. de Dey's 
 draw^ing-room. Mme. de Dey held this reception every 
 night of the w^eek, but an unwonted interest attached 
 to this evening's gathering, ovi'ing to certain circum- 
 stances v^^hich w^ould have passed altogether unnoticed in 
 a great city, though in a small country town they ex- 
 cited the greatest curiosity. For two days before Mme. 
 de Dey had not been at home to her visitors, and on the 
 previous evening her door had been shut, on the ground 
 of indisposition. Two such events at any ordinary time 
 would have produced in Carentan the same sensation 
 that Paris knows on nights when there is no performance 
 at the theatres — existence is in some sort incomplete j 
 but in those times when the least indiscretion on the 
 part of an aristocrat might be a matter of life and death, 
 this conduct of Mme. de Dey's was likely to bring about 
 the most disastrous consequences for her. Her position 
 in Carentan ought to be made clear, if the reader is to 
 appreciate the expression of keen curiosity and cunning 
 fanaticism on the countenances of these Norman citizens, 
 and, what is of most importance, the part that the lady 
 
 248 
 
The Conscript 249 
 
 played among them. Many a one during the days of 
 the Revolution has doubtless passed through a crisis as 
 difficult as hers at that moment, and the sympathies of 
 more than one reader will fill in all the colouring of the 
 picture. 
 
 Mme. de Dey was the widow of a Lieutenant-General, 
 a Knight of the Orders of Saint Michael and of the 
 Holy Ghost. She had left the Court when the Emigra- 
 tion began, and taken refuge in the neighbourhood of 
 Carentan, where she had large estates, hoping that the 
 influence of the Reign of Terror would be but little felt 
 there. Her calculations, based on a thorough know- 
 ledge of the district, proved correct. The Revolution 
 made little disturbance in Lower Normandy. Formerly, 
 when Mme. de Dey had spent any time in the country, 
 her circle of acquaintance had been confined to the noble 
 families of the district ; but now, from politic motives, 
 she opened her house to the principal citizens and to the 
 Revolutionary authorities of the town, endeavouring to 
 touch and gratify their social pride without arousing 
 either hatred or jealousy. Gracious and kindly, pos- 
 sessed of the indescribable charm that wins goodwill 
 without loss of dignity or effort to pay court to any, she 
 had succeeded in gaining universal esteem ; the discreet 
 warnings of exquisite tact enabled her to steer a difficult 
 course among the exacting claims of this mixed society, 
 without wounding the overweening self-love of par- 
 venus on the one hand, or the susceptibilities of her old 
 friends on the other. 
 
 She was about thirty-eight years of age, and still pre- 
 served, not the fresh, high-coloured beauty of the Basse- 
 Normandes, but a fragile loveliness of what may be called 
 an aristocratic type. Her figure was lissome and slender, 
 her features delicate and clearly cut ; the pale face seemed 
 to light up and live when she spoke ; but there was a 
 quiet and devout look in the great dark eyes, for all 
 their graciousness of expression — a look that seemed to 
 
250 The Conscript 
 
 say that the springs of her life lay without her own 
 existence. 
 
 In her early girlhood she had been married to an 
 elderly and jealous soldier. Her false position in the 
 midst of a gay Court had doubtless done something to 
 bring a veil of sadness over a face that must once have 
 been bright with the charms of quick-pulsed life and 
 love. She had been compelled to set constant restraint 
 upon her frank impulses and emotions at an age when a 
 woman feels rather than thinks, and the depths of passion 
 in her heart had never been stirred. In this lay the 
 secret of her greatest charm, a youthfulness of the inmost 
 soul, betrayed at times by her face, and a certain tinge 
 of innocent wistfulness in her ideas. She was reserved 
 in her demeanour, but in her bearing and in the tones 
 of her voice there was still something that told of girlish 
 longings directed toward a vague future. Before very 
 long the least susceptible fell in love with her, and yet 
 stood somewhat in awe of her dignity and high-bred 
 manner. Her great soul, strengthened by the cruel 
 ordeals through which she had passed, seemed to set her 
 too far above the ordinary level, and these men weighed 
 themselves, and instinctively felt that they were found 
 wanting. Such a nature demanded an exalted pas- 
 sion. 
 
 Moreover, Mme. de Dey's affections were concentrated 
 in one sentiment — a mother's love for her son. All the 
 happiness and joy that she had not known as a wife, she 
 had found later in her boundless love for him. The 
 coquetry of a mistress, the jealousy of a wife mingled 
 with the pure and deep affection of a mother. She was 
 miserable when they were apart, and nervous about him 
 while he was away ; she could never see enough of him, 
 and lived through and for him alone. Some idea of the 
 strength of this tie may be conveyed to the masculine 
 understanding by adding that this was not only Mme. 
 de Dey's only son, but all she had of kith or kin in the 
 
The Conscript 251 
 
 world, the one human being on earth bound to her by 
 all the fears and hopes and joys of her life. 
 
 The late Comte de Dey was the last of his race, and 
 she, his wife, was the sole heiress and descendant of her 
 house. So worldly ambitions and family considerations, 
 as well as the noblest cravings of the soul, combined to 
 heighten in the Countess a sentiment that is strong in 
 every woman's heart. The child was all the dearer, 
 because only with infinite care had she succeeded in 
 rearing him to man's estate ; medical science had pre- 
 dicted his death a score of times, but she had held fast to 
 her presentiments and her hopes, and had known the 
 inexpressible joy of watching him pass safely through the 
 perils of infancy, of seeing his constitution strengthen in 
 spite of the decrees of the Faculty. 
 
 Thanks to her constant care, the boy had grown up 
 and developed so favourably, that at twenty years of age 
 he was regarded as one of the most accomplished gentle- 
 men at the Court of Versailles. One final happiness that 
 does not always crown a mother's efforts was hers — her 
 son worshipped her j and between these two there was 
 the deep sympathy of kindred souls. If they had not 
 been bound to each other already by a natural and sacred 
 tie, they would instinctively have felt for each other a 
 friendship that is rarely met with between two men. 
 
 At the age of eighteen, the young Count had received 
 an appointment as sub-lieutenant in a regiment of 
 dragoons, and had made it a point of honour to follow 
 the emigrant Princes into exile. 
 
 Then Mme. de Dey faced the dangers of her cruel 
 position. She was rich, noble, and the mother of an 
 Emigrant. With the one desire to look after her son's 
 great fortune, she had denied herself the happiness of 
 being with him ; and when she read the rigorous laws in 
 virtue of which the Republic was daily confiscating the 
 property of Emigrants at Carentan, she congratulated 
 herself on the courageous course that she had taken. 
 
252 The Conscript 
 
 Was she not keeping watch over the wealth of her son 
 at the risk of her life ? Later, when news came of the 
 horrible executions ordered by the Convention, she slept, 
 happy in the knowledge that her own treasure was in 
 safety, out of reach of peril, far from the scaffolds of the 
 Revolution. She loved to think that she had followed 
 the best course, that she had saved her darling and her 
 darling's fortunes j and to this secret thought she made 
 such concessions as the misfortunes of the times 
 demanded, without compromising her dignity or her 
 aristocratic tenets, and enveloped her sorrows in reserve 
 and mystery. She had foreseen the difficulties that would 
 beset her at Carentan. Did she not tempt the scaffold by 
 the very fact of going thither to take a prominent place? 
 Yet, sustained by a mother's courage, she succeeded in 
 winning the affection of the poor, ministering without 
 distinction to every one in trouble ; and made herself 
 necessary to the well-to-do, by providing amusements 
 for them. 
 
 The procureur of the commune might be seen at her 
 house, the mayor, the president of the ' district,' and the 
 public prosecutor, and even the judges of the Revolu- 
 tionary tribunals went there. The four first named 
 gentlemen were none of them married, and each paid 
 court to her, in the hope that Mme. de Dey would take 
 him for her husband, eicher from fear of making an 
 enemy or from a desire to find a protector. 
 
 The public prosecutor, once an attorney at Caen, and 
 the Countess's man of business, did what he could to in- 
 spire love by a system of devotion and generosity, a 
 dangerous game of cunning ! He was the most formid- 
 able of all her suitors. He alone knew the amount of the 
 large fortune of his sometime client, and his fervour was 
 inevitably increased by the cupidity of greed, and by the 
 consciousness that he wielded an enormous power, the 
 power of life and death in the district. He was still a 
 young man, and, owing to the generosity of his behaviour. 
 
The Conscript 253 
 
 IVÎme. de Dey was unable as yet to estimate him truly. 
 But, in despite of the danger of matching herself against 
 Korman cunning, she used all the craft and inventiveness 
 that Nature has bestovi^ed on women to play off the rival 
 suitors one against another. She hoped, by gaining time, 
 to emerge safe and sound from her difficulties at last ; 
 for at that time Royalists in the provinces flattered 
 themselves with a hope, daily renewed, that the morrow 
 would see the end of the Revolution — a conviction that 
 proved fatal to many of them. 
 
 In spite of difficulties, the Countess had maintained 
 her independence with considerable skill until the day, 
 when, by an inexplicable want of prudence, she took 
 occasion to close her salon. So deep and sincere was the 
 interest that she inspired, that those who usually filled 
 her drawing-room felt a lively anxiety when the news 
 was spread ; then, with the frank curiosity characteristic 
 of provincial manners, they went to inquire into the 
 rrJsfortune, grief, or illness that had befallen Mme. de 
 Dey. 
 
 To all these questions, Brigitte, the housekeeper, 
 answered with the same formula : her mistress was keep- 
 ing her room, and would see no one, not even her 
 own servants. The almost claustral lives of dwellers in 
 small towns fosters a habit of analysis and conjectural 
 explanation of the business of everybody else j so strong 
 is it, that when every one had exclaimed over poor Mme. 
 de Dey (without knowing whether the lady was over- 
 come by joy or sorrow), each one began to inquire into 
 the causes of her sudden seclusion. 
 
 ' If she were ill, she would have sent for the doctor,' 
 said gossip number one ; ' now the doctor has been play- 
 ing chess in my house all day. He said to me, laughing, 
 that in these days there is only one disease, and that, 
 unluckily, it is incurable.' 
 
 The joke was hazarded discreetly. Women and men, 
 elderly folk and young girls, forthwith betook themselves 
 
2,54 The Conscript 
 
 to the vast fields of conjecture. Every one imagined that 
 there was some secret in it, and every head was busy with 
 the secret. Next day the suspicions became malignant. 
 Every one lives in public in a small town, and the women- 
 kind were the first to find out that Brigitte had laid in 
 an extra stock of provisions. The thing could not be 
 disputed. Brigitte had been seen in the market-place 
 betimes that morning, and, wonderful to relate, she had 
 bought the one hare to be had. The whole town knew 
 that Mme. de Dey did not care for game. The hare 
 became a starting-point for endless conjectures. 
 
 Elderly gentlemen, taking their constitutional, noticed 
 a sort of suppressed bustle in the Countess's house ; the 
 symptoms were the more apparent becaus£_tiie_^ servants 
 were at evident pains to conceal themr^;^he man-servant 
 was beating a carpet in the garden^ Only yesterday no 
 one would have remarked the fact, but to-day everybody 
 began to build romances upon that harmless piece of 
 household stuff. Every one had a version. 
 
 On the following day, that on which Mme. de Dey 
 gave out that she was not well, the magnates of Carentan 
 went to spend the evening at the mayor's brother's house. 
 He was a retired merchant, a married man, a strictly 
 honourable soul ; every one resp ected hi m, and the 
 Countess held, him i n hip:h regard.. ' There all the rich 
 widow's suitors were tarn to invent more or less probable 
 fictions, each one thinking the while how to turn to his 
 own advantage the secret that compelled her to com- 
 promise herself in such a manner. 
 
 The public prosecutor spun out a whole drama to 
 bring Mme. de Dey's son to her house of a night. The 
 mayor had a belief in a priest who had refused the oath, 
 a refugee from La Vendée ; but this left him not a little 
 embarrassed how to account for the purchase of a hare 
 on a Friday. The president of the district had strong 
 leanings towards a Chouan chief, or a Vendean leader 
 hotly pursued. Others voted for a noble escaped from 
 
The Conscript 255 
 
 the prisons of Paris. In short, one and all suspected 
 that the Countess had been guilty of some piece of 
 generosity that the law of those days defined as a crime, 
 an offence that was like to bring her to the scaffold. 
 The public prosecutor, moreover, said, in a low voice, 
 that they must hush the matter up, and try to save the 
 unfortunate lady from the abyss towards which she was 
 nasteniijg.-- — -— — 
 
 "Hf you spread reports about,' he added, 'I shall be 
 obliged to take cognisance of the matter, and to search 
 the house, and then ! . . .' 
 
 He said no more, but every one understood what was 
 left unsaid. 
 
 The Countess's real friends were so much alarmed for 
 her, that on the morning of the third day the 'Procureur 
 Syndic of the commune made his wife write a few lines 
 to persuade Mme. de Dey to hold her reception as usual 
 that evening. The old merchant took a bolder step. 
 He called that morning upon the lady. Strong in the 
 thought of the service he meant to do her, he insisted 
 that he must see Mme. de Dey, and was amazed beyond 
 expression to find her out in the garden, busy gathering 
 the last autumn flowers in her borders to fill the vases. 
 
 * She has given refuge to her lover, no doubt,' thought 
 the old man, struck with pity for the charming woman 
 before him. 
 
 The Countess's face wore a strange look, that con- 
 firmed his suspicions. Deeply moved by the devotion so 
 natural to women, but that always touches us, because 
 all men are flattered by the sacrifices that any woman 
 makes for any one of them, the merchant told the 
 Countess of the gossip that was circulating in the town, 
 and showed her the danger that she was running. He 
 wound up at last with saying that ' if there are some of 
 our public functionaries who are sufficiently ready to 
 pardon a piece of heroism on your part so long as it is 
 a priest that you wish to save, no one will show you any 
 
256 The Conscript 
 
 mercy if it is discovered that you are sacrificing yourself 
 to the dictates of your heart.' 
 
 At these words Mme. de Dey gazed at her visitor 
 with a wild excitement in her manner that made him 
 
 t remble, ol d though he was.^ 
 
 ' "^ * Uome m^' oKe saie ^alghTg nim by the hand to bring 
 him to her room, and as soon as she had assured herself 
 that they were alone, she drew a soiled, torn letter from 
 her bodice. — ' Read it ! ' she cried, with a violent effort 
 to pronounce the words. 
 
 She dropped as if exhausted into her armchair. While 
 the old merchant looked for his spectacles and wiped 
 them, she raised her eyes, and for the first time looked 
 at him with curiosity ; then, in an uncertain voice, ' I 
 trust in you,' she said softly. 
 
 *Why did I come but to share in your crime?' the 
 old merchant said simply. 
 
 She trembled. For the first time since she had come 
 to the little town her soul found sympathy in another 
 soul. A sudden light dawned meantime on the old 
 merchant ; he understood the Countess's joy and her 
 prosu atkm. 
 
 Her son had taken part in the Granville expedition 5 
 he wrote to his mother from his prison, and the letter 
 brought her a sad, sweet hope. Feeling no doubts as to 
 his means of escape, he wrote that within three days he 
 was sure to reach her, disguised. The same letter that 
 brought these weighty tidings was full of heartrending 
 farewells in case the writer should not be in Carentan by 
 the evening of the third day, and he implored his mother 
 to send a considerable sum of money by the bearer, who 
 had gone through dangers innumerable to deliver it. 
 The paper shook in the old man's hands. 
 
 * And to-day is the third day ! ' cried Mme. de Dey. 
 She sprang to her feet, took back the letter, and walked 
 up and down. 
 
 *You have set to work imprudently,' the merchant 
 
The Conscript 257 
 
 remarked, addressing her. ' Why did you buy pro- 
 
 visions f 
 
 'Why, he may come in dying of hunger, worn out 
 with fatigue, and ' She broke off. 
 
 ' I am sure of my brother,' the old merchant went on j 
 *I will engage him in your interests.' 
 
 The merchant in this crisis recovered his old business 
 shrewdness, and the advice that he gave Mme. de Dey 
 v/as full of prudence and wisdom. After the two had 
 agreed together as to what they were to do and say, the 
 old merchant went on various ingenious pretexts to pay 
 visits to the principal houses of Carentan, announcing 
 wherever he went that he had just been to see Mme. de 
 Dey, and that, in spite of her indisposition, she would 
 receive that evening. Matching his shrewdness against 
 Norman wits in the cross-examination he under- 
 went in every family as to the Countess's complaint, 
 he succeeded in putting almost every one who took 
 an interest in the mysterious affair upon the wrong 
 scent. 
 
 His very first call worked wonders. He told, in the 
 hearing of a gouty old lady, how that Mme. de Dey had 
 all but died of an attack of gout in the stomach ; how 
 that the illustrious Tronchin had recommended her in 
 such a case to put the skin from a live hare on her chest, 
 to stop in bed, and keep perfectly still. The Countess, 
 he said, had lain in danger of her life for the past two 
 days ; but after carefully following out Tronchin's singular 
 prescription, she was now sufficiently recovered to receive 
 visitors that evening. 
 
 This tale had an immense success in Carentan. The 
 local doctor, a Royalist in petto^ added to its effect by 
 gravely discussing the specific. Suspicion, nevertheless, 
 had taken too deep root in a few perverse or philosophical 
 minds to be entirely dissipated ; so it fell out that those 
 who had the right of entry into Mme. de Dey's drawing- 
 room hurried thither at an early hour, some to watch 
 
 R 
 
258 The Conscript 
 
 her face, some out of friendship, but the more part 
 attracted by the fame of the marvellous cure. 
 
 They found the Countess seated in a corner of the 
 great chimneypiece in her room, which was almost as 
 modestly furnished as similar apartments in Carentan j 
 for she had given up the enjoyment of luxuries to which 
 she had formerly been accustomed, for fear of offending 
 the narrow prejudices of her guests, and she had made 
 no changes in her house. The floor was not even 
 polished. She had left the old sombre hangings on the 
 walls, had kept the old-fashioned country furniture, 
 burned tallow candles, had fallen in with the ways of the 
 place and adopted provincial life without flinching before 
 its cast-iron narrowness, its most disagreeable hardships ; 
 but knowing that her guests would forgive her for any 
 Drodigality_jhâl„,rnn durpH lû^jjieir comfort, she left 
 notÏÏing undone where their personal enjoyment was 
 concerned j her dinners, for instance, were excellent. 
 She even went so far as to affect avarice to recommend 
 herself to these sordid natures j and had the ingenuity to 
 make it appear that certain concessions to luxury had 
 been made at the instance of others, to whom she had 
 graciously yielded. 
 
 Towards seven o'clock that evening, therefore, the 
 nearest approach to polite society that Carentan could 
 boast was assembled in Mme. de Dey's drawing-room, in 
 a wide circle, about the fire. The old merchant's 
 sympathetic glances sustained the mistress of the house 
 through this ordeal ; with wonderful strength of mind, 
 she underwent the curious scrutiny of her guests, and 
 bore with their trivial prosings. Every time there was 
 a knock at the door, at every sound of footsteps in the 
 street, she hid her agitation by raising questions of 
 absorbing interest to the countryside. She led the con- 
 versation on to the burning topic of the quality of various 
 ciders, and was so well seconded by her friend who 
 shared her secret, that her guests almost forgot to watch 
 
The Conscript 259 
 
 her, and her face wore its wonted look ; her self-possession 
 was unshaken. The public prosecutor and one of the 
 judges of the Revolutionary Tribunal kept silence, how- 
 ever ; noting the slightest change that flickered over her 
 features, listening through the noisy talk to every sound 
 in the house. Several times they put awkward questions, 
 which the Countess answered with wonderful presence 
 of mind. So brave is a mother's heart ! 
 
 Mme. de Dey had drawn her visitors into little groups, 
 had made parties of whist, boston, or reversis, and sat 
 talking with some of the young people ; she seemed to 
 be living completely in the present moment, and played 
 her part like a consummate actress. She elicited a sug- 
 gestion of loto, and saying that no one else knew wherr 
 to find the game, she left the room. 
 
 ' My good Brigitte, I cannot breathe down there ! ' she 
 cried, brushing away the tears that sprang to her eyes 
 that glittered with fever, sorrow, and impatience. — She 
 had gone up to her son's room, and was looking round 
 it. ' He does not come,' she said. ' Here I can breathe 
 and live. A few minutes more, and he will be here, for 
 he is alive, I am sure that he is alive ! my heart tells me 
 so. Do you hear nothing, Brigitte ? Oh ! I would give 
 the rest of my life to know whether he is still in prison 
 or tramping across the country. I would rather not 
 think.' 
 
 Once more she looked to see that everything was in 
 order. A bright fire blazed on the hearth, the shutters 
 were carefully closed, the furniture shone with cleanli- 
 ness, the bed had been made after a fashion that showed 
 that Brigitte and the Countess had given their minds to 
 every trifling detail. It was impossible not to read her 
 hopes in the dainty and thoughtful preparations about 
 the room ; love and a mother's tenderest caresses seemed 
 to pervade the air in the scent of flowers. None but a 
 mother could have foreseen the requirements of a soldier 
 and arranged so completely for their satisfaction. A 
 
260 The Conscript 
 
 dainty meal, the best of wine, clean linen, slippers — no 
 necessary, no comfort, was lacking for the weary traveller, 
 and all the delights of home heaped upon him should 
 reveal his mother's love. 
 
 *Oh, Brigitte ! . . .' cried the Countess, with a heart- 
 rending inflexion in her voice. She drew a chair to the 
 table as if to strengthen her illusions and realise her 
 longings. 
 
 ' Ah ! madame, he is coming. He is not far otF. . . . 
 I haven't a doubt that he is living and on his way,' 
 Brigitte answered. 'I put a key in the Bible and held 
 it on my fingers while Cottin read the Gospel of St. 
 John, and the key did not turn, madame,' 
 
 ' Is that a certain sign ? ' the Countess asked. 
 
 ' Why, yes, madame ! everybody knows that. He is 
 still alive ; I would stake my salvation on it ; God 
 cannot be mistaken.' 
 
 * If only I could see him here in the house, in spite of 
 the danger.' 
 
 ' Poor Monsieur Auguste ! ' cried Brigitte j * I expect 
 he is tramping along the lanes ! ' 
 
 ' And that is eight o'clock striking now ! ' cried the 
 Countess in terror. 
 
 She was afraid that she had been too long in the room 
 where she felt sure that her son was alive ; all those pre- 
 parations made for him meant that he was ahve. She 
 went down, but she lingered a moment in the peristyle 
 for any sound that might waken the sleeping echoes ot 
 the town. She smiled at Brigitte's husband, who was 
 standing there on guard j the man's eyes looked stupid 
 with the strain of listening to the faint sounds of the 
 night. She stared into the darkness, seeing her son in 
 every shadow everywhere ; but it was only for a moment. 
 Then she went back to the drawing-room with an 
 assumption of high spirits, and began to play at loto with 
 the little girls. But from time to time she complained 
 of feeling unwell, and went to sit in her great chair by 
 
The Conscript 261 
 
 the fireside. So things went in Mme. de Dey's house 
 and in the minds of those beneath her roof. 
 
 Meanwhile, on the road from Paris to Cherbourg, a 
 young man, dressed in the inevitable brown carmagnole 
 of those days, was plodding his way towards Carentan. 
 When the first levies were made, there was little or no 
 discipline kept up. The exigencies of the moment 
 scarcely admitted of soldiers being equipped at once, and 
 it was no uncommon thing to see the roads thronged 
 with conscripts in their ordinary clothes. The young 
 fellows went ahead of their company to the next halting- 
 place, or lagged behind it ; it depended upon their fitness 
 to bear the fatigues of a long march. This particular 
 wayfarer was some considerable way in advance of a 
 company of conscripts on the way to Cherbourg, whom 
 the mayor was expecting to arrive every hour, for it was 
 his duty to distribute their billets. The young man's foot- 
 steps were still firm as he trudged along, and his bearing 
 seemed to indicate that he was no stranger to the rough 
 life of a soldier. The moon shone on the pasture-land 
 about Carentan, but he had noticed great masses of white 
 cloud that were about to scatter showers of snow over 
 the country, and doubtless the fear of being overtaken 
 by a storm had quickened his pace in spite of his weari- 
 ness. 
 
 The wallet on his back was almost empty, and he 
 carried a stick in his hand, cut from one of the high, 
 thick box-hedges that surround most of the farms in 
 Lower Normandy. As the solitary wayfarer came into 
 Carentan, the gleaming moonlit outlines of its towers 
 stood out for a moment with ghostly effect against the 
 sky. He met no one in the silent streets that rang with 
 the echoes of his own footsteps, and was obliged to ask 
 the way to the mayor's house of a weaver who was 
 working late. The magistrate was not far to seek, and 
 in a few minutes the conscript was sitting on a stone 
 bench in the mayor's porch waiting for his billet. He 
 
262 The Conscript 
 
 was sent for, however, and confronted with that fiinc» 
 tionary, who scrutinised him closely. The foot-soldier 
 was a good-looking young man, who appeared to be of 
 gentle birth. There was something aristocratic in his 
 bearing, and signs in his face of intelligence developed 
 by a good education. 
 
 ' What is your name ? ' asked the mayor, eyeing him 
 shrewdly. 
 
 'Julien Jussieu,' answered the conscript. 
 
 * From ? ' queried the official, and an incredulous 
 
 smile stole over his features. 
 
 'From Paris.' 
 
 ' Your comrades must be a good way behind ? ' 
 remarked the Norman in sarcastic tones. 
 
 ' I am three leagues ahead of the battalion.' 
 
 ' Some sentiment attracts you to Carentan, of course, 
 citizen-conscript,' said the mayor astutely. ' All right, 
 all right ! ' he added, with a wave of the hand, seeing 
 that the young man was about to speak. ' We know 
 where to send you. There, off with you. Citizen "Jussieu^ 
 and he handed over the billet. 
 
 There was a tinge of irony in the stress the magistrate 
 laid on the two last words while he held out a billet 
 on Mme. de Dey. The conscript read the direction 
 curiously. 
 
 ' He knows quite well that he has not far to go, and 
 when he gets outside he will very soon cross the market- 
 place,' said the mayor to himself, as the other went out. 
 ' He is uncommonly baJ4.-' God guide him ! . . . He 
 has an answer ready for everything. Yes, but if some- 
 body else had asked to see his papers it would have been 
 all up with himj ' 
 
 The clocks in Carentan struck half-past nine as he 
 spoke. Lanterns were being lit in Mine, de Dey's 
 ante-chamber, servants were helping their masters and 
 Tiistresses into sabots, greatcoats, and calashes. The 
 card-players settled their accounts, and everybody went 
 
The Conscript 263 
 
 out together, after the fashion of all little country 
 towns. 
 
 ' It looks as if the prosecutor meant to stop,' said a 
 lady, who noticed that that important personage was not 
 in the group in the market-place, where they all took 
 leave of one another before going their separate ways 
 home. And, as a matter of fact, that redoubtable 
 functionary was alone with the Countess, who waited 
 trembling till he should go. There was something 
 appaUing in their long silence. 
 
 'Citoyenne,' said he at last, 'I am here to see that the 
 laws of the Republic are carried out ' 
 
 Mme. de Dey shuddered. 
 
 ' Have you nothing to tell me ? ' 
 
 * Nothing ! ' she answered, in amazem.ent. 
 
 ' Ah ! madame,' cried the prosecutor, sitting down 
 beside her and changing his tone. ' At this moment, for 
 lack of a word, one of us — you or I — may carry our 
 heads to the scaffold. I have watched your character, 
 your soul, your manner, too closely to share the error 
 into which you have managed to lead your visitors 
 to-night. You are expecting your son, I could not 
 doubt it.' 
 
 The Countess made an involuntary sign of denial, 
 but her face had grown white and drawn with the 
 struggle to maintain the composure that she did not feel, 
 and no tremor was lost on the merciless prosecutor. 
 
 ' Very well,' the Revolutionary official went on, 
 'receive him j but do not let him stay under your roof 
 after seven o'clock to-morrow morning ; for to-morrow, 
 as soon as it is light, I shall come with a denunciation 
 that I will have made out, and ' 
 
 She looked at him, and the dull misery in her eyes 
 v/ould have softened a tiger. 
 
 ' I will make it clear that the denunciation was false 
 by making a thorough search,' he went on in a gentle 
 voice i ' my report shall be such that you will be safe 
 
264 The Conscript 
 
 from any subsequent suspicion. I shall make mention of 
 your patriotic gifts, your civism, and all of us will be 
 safe.' 
 
 Mme. de Dey, fearful of a trap, sat motionless, her face 
 afire, her tongue frozen. A knock at the door rang 
 through the house. 
 
 ' Oh ! . . .' cried the terrified mother, falling upon 
 her knees; 'save him ! save him ! ' 
 
 'Yes, let us save him !' returned the public prosecutor, 
 and his eyes grew bright as he looked at her, ' if it costs 
 us our lives ! ' 
 
 ' Lost ! ' she wailed. The prosecutor raised her 
 politely. 
 
 ' Madam,' said he with a flourish of eloquence, ' to 
 your own free will alone would I owe ' 
 
 ' Madame, he is ' cried Brigitte, thinking that her 
 
 mistress was alone. At the sight of the public prosecutor, 
 the old servant's joy-flushed countenance became haggard 
 and impassive. 
 
 'Who is it, Brigitte ? ' the prosecutor asked kindly, as 
 if he too were in the secret of the household. 
 
 'A conscript that the mayor has sent here for a night's 
 lodging,' the woman replied, holding out the billet. 
 
 ' So it is,' said the prosecutor, when he had read the 
 slip of paper. •' A battalion is coming here to-night.' 
 
 And he went. 
 
 The Countess's need to believe in the faith of her 
 sometime attorney was so great, that she dared not 
 entertain any suspicion of htîn. She fled upstairs j she 
 felt scarcely strength enough to stand ; she opened the 
 door, and sprang, half-dead with fear, into her son's arms. 
 
 ' Oh ! my child ! my child ! ' she sobbed, covering 
 him with almost frenzied kisses. 
 
 'Madame ! . . .' saia a stranger's voice. 
 
 ' Oh ! it is not he ! ' she cried, shrinking away in 
 terror, and she stood face to face with the conscript, 
 gazing at him with haggard eyes. 
 
The Conscript 265 
 
 ' saint bon Dieu ! how like he is ! ' cried Brigitte. 
 
 There was silence for a moment ; even the stranger 
 trembled at the sight of Mme. de Dey's face. 
 
 ' Ah ! monsieur,' she said, leaning on the arm of 
 Brigitte's husband, feeling for the first time the full 
 extent of a sorrow that had all but killed her at its first 
 threatening; *ah ! monsieur, I cannot stay to see you 
 any longer . . . permit my servants to supply my place, 
 and to see that you have all that you want.' 
 
 She went down to her own room, Brigitte and the 
 old serving-man half carrying her between them. The 
 housekeeper set her mistress in a chair, and broke 
 out — 
 
 'What, madame! is that man to sleep in Monsieur 
 Auguste's bed, and wear Monsieur Auguste*'s slippers, 
 and eat the pasty that I made for Monsieur Auguste ? 
 Why, if they were to guillotine me for it, I ' 
 
 ' Brigitte ! ' cried Mme. de Dty. 
 
 Brigitte said no more. 
 
 ' Hold your tongue, chatterbox,' said her husband, in a 
 low voice ; ' do you want to kill Madame ? ' 
 
 A sound came from the conscript's room as he drew 
 his chair to the table. 
 
 ' I shall not stay here,' cried Mme. de Dey ; ' I shall go 
 into the conservatory 3 I shall hear better there if anyone 
 passes in the night.' 
 
 She still wavered between the fear that she had lost 
 her son and the hope of seeing him once more. That 
 night was hideously silent. Once, for the Countess, 
 there was an awful interval, when the battalion of con- 
 scripts entered the town, and the men went by, one by 
 one, to their lodgings. Every footfall, every sound in 
 the street, raised hopes to be disappointed ; but it was 
 not for long, the dreadful quiet succeeded again. 
 Towards morning the Countess was forced to return 
 to her room. Brigitte, ever keeping watch over her 
 mistress's movements, did not see her come out again j 
 
266 The Conscript 
 
 and when she went, she found the Countess lying there 
 dead. 
 
 ' I expect she heard that conscript,' cried Brigitte, 
 ' walking about Monsieur Auguste's room, whistling that 
 accursed Marseillaise of theirs while he dressed, as if he 
 had been in a stable ! That must have killed her.' 
 
 But it was a deeper and a more solemn emotion, and 
 doubtless some dreadful vision, that had caused Mme. de 
 Dey's death ; for at the very hour when she died at 
 Carentan, her son was shot in le Morbihan. 
 
 This tragical story may be added to all the instances 
 on record of the workings of sympathies uncontrolled by 
 the laws of time and space. These observations, collected 
 with scientific curiosity by a few isolated individuals, 
 will one day serve as documents on which to base the 
 foundations of a new science which hitherto has lacked 
 its man of genius. 
 
 Paris, February iS^l. 
 
A SEASIDE TRAGEDY» 
 
 To Âfadame la Princesse Caroline Galitzin de 
 Genthodj née Comtesse Walewska^ this souvenir 
 of the Author is respectfully dedicated. 
 
 The young for the most part delight to measure the 
 future with a pair of compasses of their own ; when the 
 strength of the will equals the boldness of the angle that 
 they thus project, the whole world is theirs. 
 
 This phenomenon of mental existence takes place, 
 however, only at a certain age, and that age, without 
 exception, lies in the years between twenty-two and 
 eight-and-twenty. It is an age of first conceptions, be- 
 cause it is an age of vast longings, an age which is 
 doubtful of nothing ; doubt at that time is a confession 
 of weakness ; it passes as swiftly as the sowing time, and 
 is followed by the age of execution. There are in some 
 sort two periods of youth in every life — the youth of 
 confident hopes, and the youth of action ; sometimes in 
 those whom Nature has favoured, the two ages coincide, 
 and then we have a Caesar, a Newton, or a Bonaparte — 
 the greatest among great men. 
 
 I was measuring the space of time that a single 
 thought needs for its development, and (compass in 
 hand) stood on a crag a hundred fathoms above the sea, 
 surveying my future, and filling it with great works, like 
 an engineer who should survey an empty land, and cover 
 it with fortresses and palaces. The sea was calm, the 
 
 ^ A letter written by Louis Lambert. 
 
 267 
 
268 A Seaside Tragedy 
 
 waves toyed with the reefs of rock. I had just dressed 
 after a swim, and was waiting for Pauline, my guardian 
 angel, who was bathing in a granite basin floored with 
 fine sand, the daintiest bathing-place of Nature's fashion- 
 ing for the sea-fairies. 
 
 We were at the utmost extremity of Croisic-point, a 
 tiny peninsula in Brittany ; we were far from the haven 
 itself, and in a part of the coast so inaccessible that the 
 inland revenue department ignored it, and a coastguard 
 scarcely ever passed that way. Ah ! to dip in the 
 winds of space, after a plunge in the sea ! Who would 
 not have launched forth into the future ? Why did I 
 think ? Why does a trouble invade us ? — Who knows ? 
 Ideas drift across heart and brain by no will of yours. 
 No courtesan is more capricious, more imperious, than 
 an artist's inspiration ; you must seize her like Fortune, 
 and grasp her by the hair — when she comes. Borne 
 aloft by my thought, like Astolpho upon his hippogriff, 
 I rode across my world, and arranged it all to my liking. 
 Then when I was fain to find some augury in the things 
 about me for these daring castles that a wild imagination 
 bade me build, I heard a sweet cry above the murmur of 
 the restless sea-fringe that marks the ebb and flow of the 
 tide upon the shore, the sound of a woman's voice calling 
 to me through the loneliness and silence, the glad cry of 
 a woman fresh from the sea. It was as if a soul leapt 
 forth in that cry, and it seemed to me as if I had seen 
 the footprints of an angel on the bare rocks, an angel 
 with outspread wings, who cried, ' You will succeed ! ' 
 I came down, radiant and light of foot, by bounds, like a 
 pebble flung down some steep slope. ' What is it ? ' she 
 asked as soon as she saw me, and I did not answer ; my 
 eyes were full of tears. 
 
 Yesterday Pauline had felt my sorrow, as to-day she 
 felt my joy, with the magical responsiveness of a harp 
 that is sensitive to every change in the atmosphere. — 
 Life has exquisite moments. We went in silence along 
 
A Seaside Tragedy 269 
 
 the beach. The sky was cloudless ; there was not a 
 ripple on the sea j others might have seen nothing there 
 but two vast blue steppes above and below ; but as for 
 us, who had no need of words to understand each other, 
 who could conjure up illusions to feast the eyes of youth 
 and fill the space between the zones of sea and sky — - 
 those swaddling-bands of the Infinite — we pressed each 
 other's hands at the slightest change that passed over the 
 fields of water or the fields of air, for in those fleeting 
 signs we read the interpretation of our double thought. 
 Who has not known, in the midst of pleasure, the moment 
 of infinite joy when the soul slips its fetters of flesh, as 
 it were, and returns to the world whence it came ? And 
 pleasure is not our only guide to those regions ; are there 
 not hours when feeling and thought intertwine with 
 thought and feeling, and fare forth together as two chil- 
 dren who take each other by the hand and run, without 
 knowing why ? We went thus. 
 
 The roofs of the town had come to be a faint grey 
 line on the horizon by the time that we came upon a 
 poor fisherman on his way back to Croisic. He was 
 barefooted ; his trousers, of linen cloth, were botched, 
 and tattered, and fringed with rags ; he wore a shirt of 
 sailcloth, and a mere rag of a jacket. This wretchedness 
 jarred upon us, as if it had been a discordant note in the 
 midst of our harmony. We both looked at each other, 
 regretting that we had not Abul Kasim's treasury to 
 draw upon at that moment. The fisherman was swing- 
 ing a splendid lobster and an adder-pike on a string in 
 his right hand, while in the left he carried his fishing 
 tackle. We called to him, with a view to buying his 
 fish. The same idea that occurred to us both found 
 expression in a smile, to which I replied by a light 
 pressure of the arm that lay in mine as I drew it closer 
 to my heart. 
 
 It was one of those nothings that memory afterwards 
 Iweaves into poems, when by the fireside our thoughts 
 
270 A Seaside Tragedy 
 
 turn to the hour when that nothing so moved us, and 
 the place rises before us seen through a mirage which 
 as yet has not been investigated, a magical illusion that 
 often invests material things about us during those 
 moments when life flows swiftly and our hearts are 
 full. The most beautiful places are only what we make 
 them. 
 
 What man is there, with something of a poet in him, 
 who does not find that some fragment of rock holds a 
 larger place in his memories than famous views in many 
 lands which he has made costly journeyings to see ? 
 Beside that rock what thoughts surged through him ! 
 There he lived through a whole life ; there fears were 
 dissipated, and gleams of hope shone into the depths of 
 his soul. At that moment the sun, as if sympathising 
 with those thoughts of love or of the future, cast a glow 
 of light and warmth over the tawny sides of the rock ; 
 his eyes were drawn to a mountain flower here and 
 there on its sides, and the crannies and rifts grew larger 
 in the silence and peace ; the mass, so dark in reality, 
 took the hue of his dreams j and then how beautiful 
 it was with its scanty plant life, its pungent-scented 
 camomile flowers, its velvet fronds of maiden-hair fern ! 
 How splendidly decked for a prolonged festival of human 
 powers exultant in their strength ! Once already the 
 Lake of Bienne, seen from the island of Saint-Pierre, 
 had so spoken to me ; perhaps the rock at Croisic will 
 be the last of these joys. But, then, what will become 
 of Pauline ? 
 
 * You have had a fine catch this morning, good man,' 
 I said to the fisherman. 
 
 'Yes, sir,' he answered, coming to a stand ; and we 
 saw his face, swarthy with exposure to the sun's rays 
 that beat down on the surface of the sea. The expres- 
 sion of his face told of the patient resignation and the 
 simple manners of fisher folk. There was no roughness 
 in the man's voice j he had a kindly mouth, and there 
 
A Seaside Tragedy 271 
 
 was an indefinable something about him — ambitionless, 
 starved, and stunted. We should have been disappointed 
 if he had looked otherwise. 
 
 ' Where will you sell the fish ? ' 
 
 * In the town.' 
 
 * What will they give you for the lobster ? ' 
 
 * Fifteen sous.' 
 
 * And for the adder-pike ? ' 
 
 * Twenty sous.' 
 
 * Why does it cost so much more than the lobster ? ' 
 
 * Oh ! the adder-pike ' (he called it an etter-p'ike) ' is 
 much more delicate, sir ! And then they are as spiteful 
 as monkeys, and very hard to catch.' 
 
 Will you let us have them both for five francs ? ' 
 asked Pauline. The man stood stock-still with astonish- 
 ment. 
 
 * You shall not have them ! ' I cried, laughing. * I 
 bid ten francs for them. Emotions should be paid for at 
 a proper rate.' 
 
 Quite right,' returned she ; * but I mean to have them. 
 I bid ten francs two sous for them.' 
 ' Ten sous.' 
 
 * Twelve francs.' 
 ' Fifteen francs.' 
 
 * Fifteen francs fifty centimes,' said she. 
 
 * A hundred francs.' 
 
 * A hundred and fifty.' 
 I bowed. We were not rich enough just then to bid 
 
 gainst each other any longer. Our poor fisherman was 
 nystified, not knowing whether to be annoyed or to give 
 limself up to joy; but we helped him out of his difficulty 
 y telling him where we lodged, and bidding him take 
 he lobster and the adder-pike to our landlady. 
 
 * Is that how you make a living ? ' I asked, wondering 
 ow he came to be so poor. 
 
 ' It is about all I can do, and it is a very hard Hfe,' he 
 id. * Shore fishing is a chancy trade when you have 
 
272 A Seaside Tragedy 
 
 neither boat nor nets and must do it with hooks and 
 tackle. You have to wait for the tide, you see, 
 for the fish or the shell-fish, while those who do 
 things on a large scale put out to sea. It is so hard to 
 make a living at it, that I am the only shore-fisher in 
 these parts. For whole days together I get nothing at 
 all. For if you are to catch anything, an adder-pike 
 must fall asleep and get left by the tide, like this one 
 here, or a lobster must be fool enough to stick to the 
 rocks. Sometimes some basse come up with a high tide, 
 and then I get hold of them.' 
 
 ' And, after all, taking one thing with another, what 
 do you make each day ? ' 
 
 ' Eleven or twelve sous. I could get on if I had no 
 one but myself, but I have my father to keep, and the 
 old man can't help me ; he is blind.' 
 
 The words came from him quite simply j Pauline and 
 I looked at each other in silence. 
 
 * Have you a wife or a sweetheart ? * 
 
 He glanced at us with one of the most piteous 
 expressions that I have ever seen on a human face, and 
 answered, * If I had a wife, I should have to turn my old 
 father adrift j I could not keep him and keep a wife and 
 children too.' 
 
 * B ut, my good fellow, why don't you try to earn more 
 by carrying salt in the haven, or by working in the salt 
 pits ? ' 
 
 ' Ah ! sir, I could not stand the work for three months. 
 I am not strong enough, and if anything happened to me 
 my father would have to beg. The only sort of work 
 for me is something that wants a little skill and a lot of 
 patience.' 
 
 * But how can two people live on twelve sous a-day ?* 
 
 * Oh, sir, we live on buckwheat bannocks and the 
 barnacles I break off the rocks.' 
 
 * How old are you ? ' 
 
 * Thirty-seven.' 
 
A Seaside Tragedy 273 
 
 ' Have you always stopped here ? ' 
 
 * I once went to Guérande to be drawn for the army, 
 and once to Savenay to be examined by some gentle- 
 men who measured me. If I had been an inch taller, 
 they would have made me into a soldier. The first long 
 march would have put an end to me, and my poor father 
 would have been begging his bread this day.' 
 
 I have imagined many tragedies, and Pauline, who 
 passes her life by the side of a man who sufi^ers as I do, is 
 used to strong emotion, yet neither of us had ever heard 
 words so touching as these of the fisherman. We walked 
 on for several steps in silence, fathoming the dumb depths 
 of this stranger's life, admiring the nobleness of a sacrifice 
 made unconsciously ; the strength of his weakness made 
 us marvel, his reckless generosity humbled us. A vision 
 of the life of this poor creature rose before me, a life of 
 pure instinct, a being chained to his rock like a convict 
 fettered to a cannon ball, seeking for shell-fish to gain a 
 livelihood, and upheld in that long patience of twenty years 
 by a single feeling ! How many hopes disappointed by 
 ^ squall, or a change in the weather ! And while he was 
 hanging over the edge of a block of granite with arms out- 
 stretched like a Hindoo fakir, his old father, crouching on his' 
 stool in the dark, silent hut, was waiting for the coarsest 
 of the shell-fish, and bread, if the sea should please. 
 
 ' Do you drink wine now and then ? ' I asked. 
 
 * Three or four times a year.' 
 ' Very well, you shall drink wine to-day, you and your 
 
 father ; and we will send you a white loaf.' 
 ' You are very kind, sir.' 
 
 * We will give you the wherewithal for dinner, if you 
 care to show us the way along the shore to Batz, where 
 we shall see the tower that gives you a view of the 
 harbour and the shore between Batz and Croisic' 
 
 'With pleasure,' said he. ' Go straight on, follow the 
 road you are in ; 1 will overtake you again when I have 
 got rid of my tackle.' 
 
 S 
 
274 ^ Seaside Tragedy 
 
 We both made the same sign of assent, and he rushed 
 off towards the town in great spirits. We were still 
 as we had been before, but the meeting had dimmed our 
 joyousness. 
 
 * Poor man ! ' Pauline exclaimed, in the tone that takes 
 from a woman's compassion any trace of the something 
 that wounds us in pity, ' it makes one ashamed to feel 
 happy when he is so miserable, doesn't it ? ' 
 
 ' There is nothing more bitter than helpless wishing,' 
 I answered. * The two poor creatures, this father and 
 son, could no more understand how keen our sympathy 
 has been than the world could understand the beauty in 
 that life of theirs, for they are laying up treasures in 
 heaven.' 
 
 ' Poor country ! ' she said, pointing out to me the 
 heaps of cow-dung spread along a field under a wall of 
 unhewn stones. ' I asked why they did that, and a 
 peasant woman who was spreading it said that she was 
 "making firewood." Just imagine, dear, that when the 
 cow-dung is dry, the poor people heap it up and light 
 fires with it. During the winter they sell it, like blocks 
 of bark fuel. And, finally, how much do you think the 
 best-paid sempstresses earn ? — Five sous a day and their 
 board,' she went on after a pause. 
 
 ' Look,' I said, ' the sea-winds blight or uproot every- 
 thing ; there are no trees. Those who can afford it 
 burn the drift-wood and broken-up boats ; it costs too 
 dear, I expect, to bring firewood from other parts of 
 Brittany where there is so much timber. It is a country 
 without beauty, save for great souls, and those who have 
 no hearts could not live here — it is a land for poets and 
 barnacles, and nothing between. It was only v/hen the 
 salt warehouses were built on the cliff that people came 
 to live here. There is nothing here but the sand, the sea 
 beyond it, and above us — space.' 
 
 Wc had already passed the town, and were crossing 
 the waste between Croisic and the market town of Batz, 
 
A Seaside Tragedy 275 
 
 Imagine, dear uncle, two leagues of waste covered with 
 gleaming sand. Here and there a few rocks raised their 
 heads ; you might almost think that extinct monsters 
 were crouching among the dunes. The waves broke 
 over the low ridges along the margin of the sea, till they 
 looked like large white roses floating on the surface of 
 the water and drifted up upon the beach. I looked across 
 this savanna that lay between the ocean on the right and 
 the great lagoon on the left, made by the encroaching sea 
 between Croisic and the sandy heights of Guérande, with 
 the barren salt marshes at their feet ; then I looked at 
 Pauline, and asked if she felt able to walk across the 
 sands in the burning sun. 
 
 ' I have laced boots on ; let us go over there,' she 
 said, looking towards the Tower of Batz, which caught 
 the eye by its great mass, erected there like a pyramid in 
 the desert, a slender spindle-shaped pyramid however, a 
 pyramid so picturesquely ornate that one could imagine 
 it to be an outlying sentinel ruin of some great Eastern 
 town laid desolate. 
 
 We went a few paces further to reach a fragment of 
 rock to sit in the shade that it still cast, but it was eleven 
 o'clock in the morning, and the shadows which crept 
 closer and closer to our feet swiftly disappeared altogether. 
 
 ' How beautiful the silence is,' she said ; ' and how the 
 murmur of the sea beating steadily against the beach 
 deepens it ! ' 
 
 * If you surrender your mind to the three immensities 
 around us — the air, the sea, and the sands,' I answered, 
 *and heed nothing but the monotonous sound of the ebb 
 and flow, you would find its speech intolerable, for you 
 would think that it bore the burden of a thought that 
 would overwhelm you. Yesterday, at sunset, I felt that 
 sensation ; it crushed me.' 
 
 ' Oh yes, let us talk,' she said after a long pause. 
 * No speaker is more terrible. I imagine that I am dis- 
 covering the causes of the harmonies about us,' she went 
 
276 A Seaside Tragedy 
 
 on. ' This landscape that has but three contrasting 
 colours — the gleaming yellow of the sand, the blue 
 heaven, and the changeless green of the sea — is great 
 without anything savage in its grandeur, vast but not 
 desolate, monotonous but not dreary j it is made up of 
 three elements ; it has variety.' 
 
 'Women alone can render their impressions like that,' 
 I said ; ' you would be the despair of a poet, dear soul 
 that I have read so well.' 
 
 'These three expressions of the Infinite glow like a 
 burning flame in the noonday heat,' Pauline said, laugh- 
 ing. ' Here I can imagine the poetry and passions of 
 the East.' 
 
 ' And I, a vision of Despair.' 
 
 ' Yes,' she said ; ' the dune is a sublime cloister.' 
 
 We heard our guide hurrying after us ; he wore his 
 hohday clothes. We asked him a few insignificant 
 questions ; he thought he saw that our mood had 
 changed, and, with the self-repression that misfortune 
 teaches, he was silent ; and we also — though from time 
 to time each pressed the hand of the other to communi- 
 cate thoughts and impressions — walked for half an hour 
 In silence, either because the shimmering heat above 
 the sands lay heavily upon us, or because the difficulty" 
 of walking absorbed our attention. We walked hand in 
 hand like two children ; we should not have gone a dozen 
 paces if we had walked arm in arm. 
 
 The way that led to Batz was little more than a track ; 
 the first high wind effaced the ruts or the dints left by 
 horses' hoofs ; but the experienced eyes of our guide dis- 
 cerned traces of cattle and sheep dung on this way, which 
 sometimes wound towards the sea, sometimes towards 
 the land, to avoid the cliffs on the one hand and the 
 rocks on the other. It was noon, and we were only 
 half-way. 
 
 ' We will rest there,' I said, pointing to a headland 
 where the rocks rose high enough to make it probable 
 
A Seaside Tragedy 277 
 
 that we might find a cave among them. The fisherman, 
 following the direction of my finger, jerked his head. 
 
 ' There is some one there ! Any one coming from 
 market at Batz to Croisic, or from Croisic to Batz, 
 always goes round some way so as not to pass near the 
 place.' 
 
 He spoke in a low voice that suggested a mystery.)^: 
 
 * Then is there a robber there, a murderer ? ' 
 Our guide's only answer was a deep breath that left 
 
 us twice as curious as before. 
 
 ' [f we go past, will any harm come to us ? ' 
 
 ' Oh no ! ' 
 
 ' Will you go with us ? ' 
 
 *No, sir!' 
 
 * Then we shall go, if you will assure us that there is 
 no danger for us.' 
 
 * I do not say that,' the fisherman answered quickly ; 
 * I only say that the one who is there will say nothing 
 to you, and will do you no harm. Oh, good heavens ! 
 he will not so much as stir from his place.' 
 
 ' Then who is it.' 
 
 * A man ! ' 
 Never were two syllables uttered in such a tragical 
 
 fashion. 
 
 At that moment we were some twenty paces away 
 from the ridge about which the sea was lapping. Our 
 guide took the way that avoided the rocks, and we held 
 straight on for them, but Pauline took my arm. Our 
 guide quickened his pace so as to reach the spot where 
 the two ways met again at the sam.e time as ourselves. 
 He thought, no doubt, that when we had seen ' the 
 man,' we should hurry from the place. This kindled 
 our. curiosity ; it became so strong that our hearts beat 
 fast, as if a feeling of terror possessed us both. In spite 
 of the heat of the day and a certain weariness after our 
 walk over the sands, our souls were steeped in the in- 
 n effable languid calm of an ecstasy that possessed us both, 
 
278 A Seaside Tragedy 
 
 brimming with pure joy, that can only be compared with 
 the delight of hearing exquisite music — music like the 
 Andiamo mio hen of Mozart. When two souls are 
 blended in one pure thought, are they not like two 
 sweet voices singing together ? Before you can appre- 
 ciate the emotion that thrilled us both, you must likewise 
 share in the half-voluptuous mood in which the morning's 
 experiences had steeped us. 
 
 If you had watched for a while some daintily coloured 
 wood-dove on a swaying branch, above a spring, you 
 would utter a cry of distress if you saw a hawk pounce 
 down, bury claws of steel in its heart, and bear it away 
 with the murderous speed with which powder wings a 
 bullet. We had scarcely set foot in the space before the 
 cavern, a sort of esplanade some hundred feet above the 
 sea, protected from the surge by the steep rocks that 
 sloped to the water's edge, when we were conscious of 
 an electric thrill, something like the shock of a sudden 
 awakening by some noise in a silent night. Both of us 
 had seen a man sitting there on a block of granite, and 
 he had looked at us. 
 
 That glance, from two bloodshot eyes, was like the 
 flash of fire from a cannon, and his stoical immobility 
 could only be compared to the changeless aspect of the 
 granite slabs that lay about him. Slowly his eyes turned 
 towards us j his body as rigid and motionless as if he 
 had been turned to stone ; then after that glance, that 
 made such a powerful impression upon our minds, his eyes 
 turned to gaze steadily over the vast stretch of sea, in spite 
 of the glare reflected from it, as the eagle, it is said, 
 gazes at the sun without lowering his eyelids, nor did he 
 look up again from the waves. 
 
 Try to call up before you, dear uncle, some gnarled 
 oak stump, with all its branches lately lopped away, 
 rearing its head, like a strange apparition, by the side of 
 a lonely road, and you will have a clear idea of this man 
 that we saw. The form of an age-worn Hercules 
 
A Seaside Tragedy 279 
 
 :he face of Olympian Jove bearing marks of the ravages 
 )f time, of a life of rough toil upon the sea, of sorrow 
 A^ithin, of coarse food, and darkened as if blasted by 
 ightning. I saw the muscles, like a framework of iron, 
 ;tanding out upon his hard shaggy hands, and all things 
 Ise about him indicated a vigorous constitution. In a 
 orner of the cavern I noticed a fairly large heap of moss, 
 md on a rough slab of granite, that did duty as a table, 
 1 piece of ia round loaf lay over the mouth of a stone- 
 A^are pitcher. 
 
 Never among my visions of the life led in the desert 
 3y early Christian anchorites had I pictured a face more 
 iwe-inspiring, more grand and terrible in repentance 
 han this. And even you, dear uncle, in your experi- 
 :nce of the confessional, have, perhaps, never seen a 
 Dcnitence so grand ; for this remorse seemed to be 
 h'owned in a sea of prayers, of prayers that flowed for 
 îver from a dumb despair. This fisherman, this rough 
 Breton sailor, was sublime through a thought hidden 
 ivithin him. Had those eyes shed tears ? Had the hand 
 )f that rough-hewn statue ever struck a blow ? A fierce 
 lonesty was stamped upon a rugged forehead where 
 •orce of character had still left some traces of the gentle- 
 less that is the prerogative of all true strength. Was 
 :hat brow, so scored and furrowed with wrinkles, com- 
 aatible with a great heart ? How came this man to 
 ibide with the granite ? How had the granite entered 
 nto him ? Where did the granite end and the man 
 Degin ? A whole crowd of thoughts passed through our 
 Tiinds ; and, as our guide had expected, we went by 
 quickly and in silence. When he saw us again, we 
 were either perturbed with a sense of dread, or overcome 
 by the strangeness of this thing, but he did not remind 
 us that his prediction had come true. 
 
 '■ Did you see him ? ' he asked. 
 
 ' What is the man ? ' 
 
 ' They call him the *'man under a vow.'" 
 
28o A Seaside Tragedy 
 
 You can readily imagine how we both turned to our 
 fisherman at these words. He was a simple-minded 
 fellow ; he understood our mute inquiry ; and this is the 
 story which I have tried to tell, as far as possible, in the 
 homely language in which he told it, 
 
 ' The Croisic folk and the people at Batz think that 
 he has been guilty of something, madame, and that he is 
 doing a penance laid upon him by a famous recteur ^ to 
 whom he went to confess, beyond Nantes. There are 
 some who think that Cambremer (that is his name) is 
 unlucky, and that it brings bad luck to pass through the 
 air he breathes, so a good many of them before going 
 round the rocks will stop to see which way the wind 
 blows. If it blows from the nor'-west,' he said, pointing 
 in that direction with his finger, * they would not go on 
 if they had set out to seek a bit of the True Cross ; they 
 turn back again ; they are afraid. Other folk, rich people 
 in Croisic, say that Cambremer once made a vow, and 
 that is why he is called "the man under a vow." He 
 never leaves the place ; he is there night and day. 
 
 ' There is some show of reason for these tales,' he 
 added, turning round to point out to us something that had 
 escaped our notice. ' You see that wooden cross that he 
 has set up there on the left ; that is to show that he has 
 put himself under the protection of God and the Holy 
 Virgin and the Saints. He would not be respected as 
 he is, if it were not that the terror people have of him 
 makes him as safe as if he had a guard of soldiers. 
 
 ' He has not said a word since he went into prison in 
 the open air. He lives on bread and water that his 
 brother's Httle girl brings him every morning, a little 
 slip of a thing twelve years old ; he has left all he has to 
 her, and a pretty child she is, as gentle as a lamb, and full 
 of fun, a dear little pet. She has blue eyes as long as 
 that^ he went on, holding out his thumb, 'and hair like 
 a cherub's. When you begin — " I say, Perotte " — (that 
 is what we say for Pierrette^ he said, interrupting him- 
 
A Seaside Tragedy 281 
 
 self; * Saint Pierre is her patron saint, Cambremer's. 
 name is Pierre, and he was her godfather) — " I say, 
 Perotte, what does your uncle say to you ? " — " He says 
 nothing," says she, " nothing whatever, nothing at all." 
 — " Well, then, what does he do when you go ? " — " He 
 kisses me on the forehead of a Sunday." — " Aren't you 
 afraid of him ? " — " Not a bit," says she ; " he is my god- 
 father." — He will not have any one else bring his food. 
 Perotte says that he smiles when she comes ; but you 
 might as well say that the sun shone in a fog, for he is 
 as gloorny as a sea mist, they say.' 
 
 'But you are exciting our curiosity without satisfying 
 it,' I broke in. ' Do you know what brought him there ? 
 Was it trouble, or remorse, or crime, or is he mad, or 
 what ? ' 
 
 ' Eh ! sir, there is hardly a soul save my father and 
 me that knows the rights of the matter. My mother 
 that 's gone was in service in the house of the justice that 
 Cambremer went to. The priest told him to go to a 
 justice, and only gave him absolution on that condition, 
 if the tale is true that they tell in the haven. My poor 
 mother overheard Cambremer without meaning to do so, 
 because the kitchen was alongside the sitting-room in 
 the justice's house. So she heard. She is dead, and the 
 justice has gone too. Aly mother made us promise, my 
 father and me, never to let on to the people round about ; 
 and I can tell you this, every hair bristled up on my head 
 that night when my mother told us the story ' 
 
 ' Well, then, tell it to us ; we will not repeat it.' 
 
 The fisherman looked at us both — then he went on, 
 something after this fashion — 
 
 ' Pierre Cambremer, whom you saw yonder, is the 
 oldest of the family. The Cambremers have been sea- 
 men from father to son ; you see, their name means that 
 the sea has always bent under them. The one you saw 
 had a fishing-boat, several fishing-boats, and the sardine-*- 
 fishery was his trade, though he did deep-sea fishing as 
 
28l A Seaside Tragedy 
 
 well for the dealers. He would have fitted out a bigger 
 vessel, ajid gone to the cod-fishing, if he had not been so 
 fond of his wife ; a fine woman she was, a Brouin from 
 Guérande, a strapping girl with a warm heart. She was 
 so fond of Cambremer that she would never let her man 
 go away from her for longer than for the sardine-fishing. 
 They lived down yonder, there ! ' said our fisherman, 
 standing on a hillock to point out to us an islet in the 
 little inland sea between the dunes where we were walk- 
 ing and the salt marshes at Guérande. ' Do you see the 
 house ? It belonged to him. 
 
 *Jacquette Brouin and Cambremer had but one child, 
 a boy, whom they loved like — what shall I say? — like an 
 only child ; they were crazy over him. Their little 
 Jacques might have done something (asking your pardon) 
 into the soup, and they would have thought it sweetened 
 it. Times and times again we used to see them, buy- 
 ing the finest toys at the fair for him ! There was 
 no sense in it — everybody told them so. Little Cam- 
 bremer found out that he could do as he liked with them, 
 and he grew as wilful as a red donkey. If any one told 
 his father, " Your boy has all but killed little So-and-so,' 
 Cambremer used to laugh and say, " Bah ! he will be a 
 mettlesome sailor ! He will command the king's ships." 
 Another would say, "Pierre Cambremer, do you know 
 that your lad put out Pougaud's little girl's eye ? " — " He 
 will be one for the girls," Pierre would say. It was all 
 right in his eyes. By the time the little rascal was ten 
 years old he knocked everybody about, and twisted the 
 fowls' necks for fun, and ripped open the pigs ; he was 
 as bloodthirsty as a weasel. " He will make a famous 
 soldier !" said Cambremer j "he has a liking for blood- 
 shed." 
 
 ' You see, I myself remember all this,' said our fisher- 
 man ; 'and so does Cambremer,' he added, after a 
 pause. 
 
 * Jacques Cambremer grew up to be fifteen or sixteen, 
 
A Seaside Tragedy 283 
 
 and he was — well, a bully. He would go ofF and amuse 
 himself at Guerande, and cut a figure at Savenay. He 
 must have money for that. So he began robbing his 
 mother, and she did not dare to tell her husband. Cam- 
 bremer was so honest that if any one had overpaid him 
 twopence on an account, he would have gone twenty 
 leagues to pay it back. At last one day the mother had 
 nothing left. While the father was away at the fishing, 
 Jacques made off with the dresser, the plenishing, and the 
 sheets and the linen, and left nothing but the four walls ; 
 he had sold all the things in the house to pay for his 
 carryings-on at Nantes. The poor woman cried about 
 it day and night. She would have to tell his father 
 when he came back, and she was afraid of the father ; 
 not for herself though, not she ! So when Pierre Cam- 
 bremer came back and saw his house furnished with 
 things the neighbours had lent her, he asked — 
 
 ' " What does this mean ? " 
 
 ' And the poor thing, more dead than alive, answered, 
 *' We have been robbed." 
 
 ' " What has become of Jacques ? " 
 
 * "Jacques is away on a spree ! " 
 
 * Nobody knew where the rogue had gone. 
 
 * " He is too fond of his fun," said Pierre. 
 
 *Six months afterwards the poor father heard that 
 Jacques had got into trouble at Nantes. He goes over 
 on foot — it is quicker than going by sea — puts his hand 
 on his son's shoulder, and fetches him home. He did not 
 ask him, "What have you been doing ? " 
 
 * " If you don't keep steady here for a couple of years 
 with your mother and me," he said, "and help with the 
 fishing, and behave yourself like a decent fellow, you will 
 have me to reckon with ! " 
 
 * The harebrained youngster, counting on the weak- 
 ness his father and mother had for him, made a grimace 
 at his father, and thereupon Pierre fetched him a slap in 
 the face that laid up Jacques for six months afterwards. 
 
284 A Seaside Tragedy 
 
 * The poor mother was breaking her heart all the time. 
 One night she was lying quietly asleep by her husband's / 
 side, when she heard a noise and sat up, and got a stab in 
 the arm from a knife. She shrieked ; and when they 
 had struck a light, Pierre Cambremer found that his wife 
 was wounded. He thought it was a robber, as if there 
 were any robbers in our part of the world, when you can 
 carry ten thousand francs in gold from Croisic to Saint 
 Nazaire, and no one would so much as ask you what you 
 had under your arm. Pierre looked about for Jacques, 
 and could not find him anywhere. In the morning the 
 unnatural wretch had the face to come back and say that., 
 he had been at Batz. 
 
 * I should tell you that the mother did not know 
 where to hide her money. Cambremer himself used to 
 leave his with M. Dupotet at Croisic. Their son's wild 
 ways had eaten up crowns and francs and gold louis ; 
 they were ruined, as you may say, and it was hard on 
 folk who had about twelve thousand livres, including 
 their little island. Nobody knew how much Cambremer 
 had paid down at Nantes to hax^e his son back. Their 
 luck went from bad to worse. One of Cambremer's 
 brothërs^wSsTInîortunâtè, and wanted help. Pierre told 
 him, to comfort him, that Jacques and Perotte (the 
 younger brother's girl) should be married some day. 
 Then, to put him in the way of earning his bread, he 
 took him to help in the fishing ; for Joseph Cambremer 
 was obliged to work with his own hands. His wife had 
 died of the fever, and he had to pay some one else to 
 nurse Perotte till she was weaned. Pierre Cambremer's 
 wife owed as much as a hundred francs to difFerent people 
 on the baby's account for linen and things, and two or 
 three months to big Frelu, who had a child by Simon 
 Gaudry, and nursed Perotte. La Cambremer, too, had 
 sewn a Spanish doubloon into the flock of her mattress, 
 and written on it " For Perotte." You see, she had had 
 a good education, and could write like a clerk ; she 
 
A Seaside Tragedy 285 
 
 had taught her son to read too — that was the ruin of 
 him. 
 
 ' Nobody knew how it came about, but that scoundrel 
 Jacques got wind of the gold and took it, and went ofF 
 to get drunk at Croisic. Old Cambremer, just as if it 
 had happened on purpose, came in with his boat ; and as 
 he came up to the house he saw a scrap of paper floating 
 about. He picked it up and took it in to his wife ; and 
 she dropped down, for she knew her own handwriting. 
 Cambremer said not a word. He went over to Croisic, 
 and heard there that his son was in the billiard-room. 
 Then he sent for the good woman who kept the café, 
 and said to her — 
 
 ' " I told Jacques not to change a piece of gold that he 
 will pay his score with : let me have it ; I will wait at 
 the door, and you shall have silver for it." 
 
 'The woman of the house brought him out the gold 
 piece. Cambremer took it. 
 
 '"Good ! " said he, and he went away home. 
 
 ' All the town knew that. But this I know, and the 
 rest of them have only a sort of general guess at how it 
 was. He told his wife to set their room to rights ; it is 
 on the ground floor. He kindled a fire on the hearth, 
 he lighted two candles, and put two chairs on one side 
 of the fireplace, and a three-legged stool on the other. 
 Then he bade his wife put out the suit he was married in, 
 and to put on her wedding gown. He dressed himself; 
 and then when he was dressed, he went out for his 
 brother, and told him to keep watch outside the house, 
 and give warning if he heard any sound on either beach, 
 here by the sea or yonder on the salt marshes at 
 Guerande. When he thought his wife must be dressed, 
 he went in again ; he loaded a gun, and hid it in the 
 chimney corner. 
 
 ' Back comes Jacques to the house. It was late when 
 he came ; he had been drinking and gambling up to ten 
 o'clock i he had got some one to ferry him over at 
 
286 A Seaside Tragedy 
 
 Carnouf point. His uncle heard him hail the boat, and 
 went to look for him along the side of the salt marshes, 
 and passed him without saying anything. 
 
 ' When Jacques came in, his father spoke. 
 
 *"Sit you down there," he said, pointing to the stool. 
 " You are before your father and mother ; you have ^ 
 sinned against them, and they are your judges." .^■ 
 
 'Jacques began to bellow, for Cambremer's face 
 twitched strangely. The mother sat there, stiff as an oar. 
 
 * " If you make any noise, if you stir, if you don't sit 
 straight up like a mast on your stool," said Pierre, pointing 
 his gun at him, " I will shoot you like a dog." 
 
 'Cambremer's son grew mute as a fish, and all this 
 time the mother said not a word. 
 
 ' " Here is a bit of paper that wrapped up a Spanish 
 gold coin. That coin was in your mother's mattress. 
 No one knew where it was except your mother. I found 
 the bit of paper floating on the water when I came in. 
 Only this evening you changed the piece of Spanish gold 
 at Mother Fleurant's, and your mother cannot find the 
 coin in her mattress. — Explain yourself." 
 
 'Jacques said that he had not taken his mother's money, 
 and that he had had the coin at Nantes. 
 
 '"So much the better," said Pierre. 'How can you 
 prove it ? " 
 
 '«I did have it." 
 
 ' " You did not take your mother's coin ? " 
 
 '"No." 
 
 ' " Can you swear it on your salvation ? " 
 
 * He was just going to swear, when his mother looked 
 up and said — 
 
 '"Jacques, my child, take care; do not swear if it is 
 not true. . . . You can repent and mend ; there is still 
 time," and she cried at that. 
 
 '"You are a So-and-so," said he; "you have always 
 tried to ruin me." 
 
 'Cambremer turned white, and said, "What you have 
 
A Seaside Tragedy 287 
 
 just said to your mother goes to swell your account. 
 Now, come to the point ! Will you swear ? " 
 
 '"Yes." 
 
 '"Stop a bit," said Pierre, "was there a cross on your 
 coin like the mark the sardine merchant put on the coin 
 he paid me ? " 
 
 'Jacques grew sober at that, and began to cry. 
 
 '"That is enough talk," said Pierre. "I say nothing 
 of what you have done before — I have no mind that a 
 Cambremer should die in the market-place at Croisic. 
 Say your prayers, and let us be quick ! A priest is 
 coming to hear your confession." 
 
 ' The mother had gone out of the room that she might 
 not hear her son's doom. As soon as she went out, 
 Joseph Cambremer, the uncle, came in with the recteur 
 from Piriac. To him Jacques would not open his 
 mouth. He was shrewd ; he knew his father well 
 enough to feel sure that he would not kill him till he had 
 confessed. 
 
 '"Thanks. Pardon us, sir," Cambremer said to the 
 priest when Jacques continued obstinate. " I meant to 
 give my son a lesson, and I beg you to say nothing about 
 it. — As for you," he went on, turning to Jacques, "if you 
 do not mend your ways, next time you go wrong shall 
 be the last, and shrift or no shrift, I will make an end 
 of it." 
 
 ' He sent him off to bed. The young fellow believed 
 him, and fancied that he could make things right with 
 his father. He slept. His father sat up. When he saw 
 his son fast asleep, he covered the young fellow's mouth 
 with hemp, bound it tightly round with a strip of sail- 
 cloth ; then he tied him hand and foot. He writhed, he 
 "shed tears of blood," so Cambremer told the justice. 
 What would you have ! His mother flung herself at the 
 father's feet. 
 
 '"He is doomed," said Cambremer j "you will help 
 me to put him into the boat." 
 
288 A Seaside Tragedy * 
 
 *She would not help him, and Cambremer did it • 
 alone ; he fastened him down in the bottom of the boat, 
 and tied a stone round his neck, put out of the bay, 
 reached the sea, and came out as far as the rock where 
 he sits now. Then the poor mother, who had made her 
 brother-in-law take her over, cried out in vain for mercy; 
 it was like throwing a stone at a wolf. By the moon- 
 light she saw the father take the son, towards whom her - 
 heart still yearned, and fling him into the water ; and as ' 
 there was not a breath of air stirring, she heard the 
 gurgling sound, and then nothing — not an eddy, not a 
 ripple ; the sea is a famous keeper of secrets, that it is ! 
 When Cambremer reached the place to silence her 
 moans, he found her lying like one dead. The two 
 brothers could not carry her, so they had to put her in 
 the boat that had carried her son, and they took her 
 round home by way of the Croisic channel. 
 
 * Ah, well ! la belle Brouin^ as they called her, did not ^ 
 live the week out. She died, asking her husband to burn 
 the accursed boat. Oh ! he did it ; yes, he did it. He 
 himself was queer after that; he did not know what ailed 
 him ; he reeled about like a man who cannot carry his 
 wine. Then he went off somewhere for ten days, and . 
 came back again to put himself where you saw him ; and 
 since he has been there, he has not said a word.' 
 
 The fisherman told us the story in a few minutes, in 
 words even more simple than those that I have used. 
 Working people make little comment on what they tell ; 
 they give you the facts that strike them, and interpret 
 them by their own feelings. His language was as keenly 
 incisive as the stroke of a hatchet. 
 
 * I shall not go to Batz,' said Pauline, when we reached 
 the outer rim of the lake. 
 
 We went back to Croisic by way of the salt marshes, 
 the fisherman guiding us through the labyrinth. He 
 also had grown silent. Our mood had changed. Both 
 
A Seaside Tragedy 289 
 
 of us were deep in melancholy musings, and saddened by 
 the mournful story which explained the swift presenti- 
 ment that we had felt at the sight of Cambremer. We 
 had each of us sufficient knowledge of human nature to 
 fill in the outlines of the three lives that our guide had 
 sketched for us. The tragedy of these three human 
 beings rose up before us as if we saw scene after scene of a 
 drama crowned by the father's expiation of an inevitable 
 crime. We did not dare to look at the rocks where he 
 sat, the fate-bound soul who struck terror into a whole 
 country-side. A few clouds overcast the sky. The mist 
 rose on the horizon of the sea. We were walking 
 through the most acrid dreariness that I have ever seen ; 
 the earth beneath our feet seemed sick and unwholesome 
 in these salt marshes which, with good reason, might be 
 called a cutaneous eruption on the face of the earth. 
 The ground is scored over in rough squares, with high 
 banks of grey earth about them ; each is full of brackish 
 water ; the salt rises to the surface. These artificial 
 hollows are intersected by raised pathways, on which 
 the workmen stand to skim the surface of the pools 
 with long scrapers j and the salt, when collected, is 
 deposited to drain on circular platforms set at even 
 distances, till it is fit to lay up in heaps. For two hours 
 we skirted this dreary chessboard, where the salt stops 
 the growth of any green thing ; occasionally, at long 
 intervals, we came upon one or two paludiers^ so they call 
 the men who work among the salt marshes. These 
 workers, or it should rather be said, this race apart among 
 the Bretons, wears a special costume, a white jacket 
 rather like those that brewers wear. They marry only 
 among themselves ; a girl belonging to this tribe has 
 never been known to marry any one but a paludier. 
 The hideous desolation of those swamps where the boggy 
 soil is scraped up into symmetrical heaps, the greyness of 
 the soil, from which every Breton flower shrinks in 
 disgust, was in keeping with the sadness within us. 
 
 T 
 
290 A Seaside Tragedy 
 
 We reached the spot where you cross an arm of the sea, 
 the channel doubtless through which the salt water 
 breaks in upon the low-lying land and leaves its deposits 
 on the soil, and we were glad to see the scanty plant-life 
 growing along the edge of the sand. As we crossed it, 
 we saw the island in the lagoon where the Cambremers 
 once lived, and turned our heads away. 
 
 When we reached our inn we noticed a billiard-table 
 in the room on the ground floor, and when we learned 
 that it was the only public billiard-table in Croisic, we 
 made our preparations for departure that night, and on 
 the morrow we went to Guérande. 
 
 Pauline was still depressed, and I myself felt a return 
 of the burning sensation that scorches my brain. I was 
 so grievously haunted by the visions of those three lives 
 that I had conjured up, that Pauline said, ' Write the 
 story, Louis, and the fever may take a turn.' 
 
 So, dear uncle, I have written the story for you ; but 
 our adventure has already undone the good eflfects of 
 repose, the result of our stay here and at the Baths. 
 
 Paris, November 10, 1834, 
 
THE RED HOUSE 
 
 To Monsieur le Marquis de Custine. 
 
 Once upon a time (I forget the exact year) a Parisian 
 banker, who had very extensive business relations with 
 Germany, gave a dinner party in honour of one of the 
 friends that merchants make in this place and that by 
 correspondence, a sort of friendship that subsists for a 
 long while between men who have never met. The 
 friend, the senior partner of some considerable firm 
 in Nuremberg, was a stout, good-natured German, a 
 man of learning and of taste, more particularly in the 
 matter of tobacco pipes. He was a typical Nurem- 
 berger, with a pleasant, broad countenance and a massive, 
 square forehead, with a few stray fair hairs here and 
 there ; a typical German, a son of the stainless and noble 
 Fatherland, so fertile in honourable characters, preserv- 
 ing its manners uncorrupted even after seven invasions. 
 The stranger laughed simply, listened attentively, and 
 drank with marked enjoyment, seeming to like cham- 
 pagne perhaps as well as the pale red wines of the 
 Johannisberg. Like nearly every German in nearly 
 every book, he was named Hermann ; and in the 
 quality of a man who does nothing with levity, he was 
 comfortably seated at the banker's table, eating his 
 way through the dinner with the Teutonic appetite 
 renowned all over Europe, and thorough indeed was 
 his manner of bidding adieu to all the works of the 
 great Carême. 
 
 291 
 
292 The Red House 
 
 The master of the house had invited several intimate 
 friends to do honour to his guest. These were for the 
 most part capitalists or merchants, interspersed with a 
 few pretty and agreeable women, whose light, graceful 
 talk and frank manner harmonised with German open- 
 heartedness. And, indeed, if you could have seen, as I 
 had the pleasure of seeing, this blithe gathering of folk 
 who had sheathed the active claws employed in raking- 
 in wealth, that they might make the best of an oppor- 
 tunity of enjoying the pleasures of life, you would scarcely 
 have found it in your heart to grudge high rates of interest 
 or to revile defaulters. A man cannot always be in 
 mischief. Even in the society of pirates, for instance, 
 there must surely be a pleasant hour now and then when 
 you may feel at your ease beneath the black flag. 
 
 * Oh, I do hope that before M. Hermann goes he will 
 tell us another dreadful, thrilling German story ! ' 
 
 The words were uttered over the dessert by a pale, 
 fair-haired young lady, who had doubtless been reading 
 Hoffmann's tales and Sir Walter Scott's novels. She 
 was the banker's only daughter, an irresistibly charming 
 girl, whose education was being finished at the Gymnase ; 
 she was wild about the plays given there. The dinner 
 party had just reached the period of lazy content and 
 serene disinclination to talk that succeeds an excellent 
 dinner in the course of which somewhat heavy demands 
 have been made upon the digestion ; when the guests 
 lean back in their chairs and play idly with the gilded 
 knife-blades, while their wrists repose lightly on the 
 table edge; the period of decline when some torment 
 apple pips, or knead a crumb of bread between thumb 
 and finger, when the sentimental write illegible initials 
 among the débris of the dessert, and the penurious count 
 the stones on their plates, and arrange them round the 
 edge, as a playwright marshals the supernumeraries at 
 the back of the stage. These are minor gastronomical 
 pleasures which Brillat-Savarin has passed over unnoticed. 
 
The Red House 293 
 
 exhaustively as he has treated his subject in other 
 respects. 
 
 The servants had disappeared. The dessert, like a 
 squadron after an action, was quite disorganised, dis- 
 arrayed, forlorn. In spite of persistent efforts on the 
 part of the mistress of the house, the various dishes 
 strayed about the table. People fixed their eyes on the 
 Swiss views that adorned the grey walls of the dining- 
 room. No one felt it tedious. The man has yet to be 
 found who can mope while he digests a good dinner. 
 At that time we like to sit steeped in an indescribable 
 calm, a sort of golden mean between the two extremes 
 of the thinker's musings and the sleek content of the 
 ruminating brute, which should be termed the physical 
 melancholy of gastronomy. 
 
 So the party turned spontaneously towards the worthy 
 German, all of them delighted to listen to a tale, even if 
 it should be a dull one. During this beatific pause, the 
 mere sound of the voice of the one who tells the story is 
 soothing to our languid senses; it is one more aid to 
 passive enjoyment. As an amateur of pictures, I watched 
 the faces, bright with smiles, lit up by the light of the 
 tapers and flushed with good cheer ; the different ex- 
 pressions produced piquant effects among the sconces, 
 the porcelain baskets of fruit, and the crystal glasses. 
 
 One face, exactly opposite, particularly struck my 
 imagination. It belonged to a middle-sized man, toler- 
 ably stout and jovial-looking ; who from his manner 
 and appearance seemed to be a stockbroker, and, so 
 far as one could see, gifted with no extraordinary 
 amount of brains. Hitherto I had not noticed him, but 
 at that moment his face, obscured, to be sure, by a bad 
 light, seemed to me to undergo a total change ; it 
 took a cadaverous hue, veined with purple streaks. You 
 might have taken it for the ghastly countenance of a 
 man in the death agony. Impassive as a painted figure 
 in a diorama, he was staring stupidly at the facets of a 
 
294 The Red House 
 
 crystal decanter-stopper, but he certainly took no heed 
 of them ; he seemed to be deep in some visionary con- 
 templation of the future or of the past. A long scrutiny 
 of this dubious-looking face made me think. 
 
 ' Is he ill ? ' I asked myself. ' Has he taken too much 
 wine ? Is he ruined by the fall of the funds ? Is he 
 thinking how to cheat his creditors ? — Look ! ' I said to 
 the lady who sat next to me, calling her attention to 
 the stranger's face, ' that is a budding bankruptcy, is 
 it not ? ' 
 
 ' Oh ! ' she answered, * if it were, he would be in 
 better spirits.' Then, with a graceful toss of her head, 
 she added : 'If that individual ever ruins himself, I will 
 take the news to Pekin myself. He is a rather eccentric 
 old gentleman worth a million in real estate j he used 
 to be a contractor to the Imperial armies. He married 
 again, as a business speculation, but he makes his wife 
 very happy for all that. He has a pretty daughter, whom 
 for a very long time he would not recognise ; but when 
 his son died by a sad accident in a duel, he was obliged 
 to take her home, for he was not likely to have any more 
 children. So all at once the poor girl became one of the 
 richest heiresses in Paris. The loss of his only son threw 
 the poor dear man into great grief, and he still shows 
 signs of it at times.' 
 
 As she spoke the army contractor looked up, and our 
 eyes met ; his expression made me shudder, it was so 
 gloomy and so sad. Assuredly a whole life was summed 
 up in that glance. Then in a moment he looked cheer- 
 ful. He took up the glass stopper, put it unthinkingly 
 into the mouth of the water decanter that stood on the 
 table in front of him, and turned smiHngly towards M. 
 Hermann. The man was positively beaming with full- 
 fed content, and had, no doubt, not two ideas in his 
 head ; he had been thinking of nothing ! I was in some 
 sort ashamed to have thrown away my powers of divina- 
 tion in anima vili, to have taken this thick-skulled 
 
The Red House 295 
 
 capitalist as a subject. But while I was making my 
 phrenological observations in pure waste, the good- 
 aatured German had flicked a few grains of snufF off his 
 face and begun his story. 
 
 It would be a passably difficult matter to give it in 
 the same words, with his not infrequent interruptions 
 and wordy digressions ; so I have writ^ien it after my 
 own fashion, omitting these defects of the Nuremberger's 
 narrative, and helping myself to such elements of poetry 
 and interest as it may possess, emulating the modesty of 
 other writers who omit the formula translated from the 
 German from their title-pages. 
 
 THE IDEA AND THE DEED 
 
 'Towards the end of Vendémiaire, in the year vu. of 
 the Republican era (a date that corresponds to the 20th 
 of October, present style), two young men were making 
 their way towards Andernach, a little town on the left 
 bank of the Rhine, a few leagues from Coblentz. The 
 travellers had set out from Bonn that morning, and now 
 the day was drawing to a close. At that particular time 
 a French army under command of General Augereau 
 was keeping in check the Austrians on the right bank of 
 the river. The headquarters of the Republican division 
 were at Coblentz, and one of the demi-brigades belong- 
 ing to Augereau's corps was quartered in Andernach. 
 
 ' The two wayfarers were Frenchmen. At first sight 
 of their blue and white uniforms, with red velvet facings, 
 their sabres, and, above all, their caps covered with 
 green oilcloth and adorned with a tricolour cockade, the 
 German peasants themselves might have known them for 
 
296 The Red House 
 
 a pair of army surgeons, men of science and of sterling 
 worth, popular for the most part not only in the army, 
 but also in the countries occupied by French troops. 
 At that time many young men of good family, torn from 
 their medical studies by General Jourdan's conscription 
 law, not unnaturally preferred to continue their studies 
 on the battlefield to compulsory service in the ranks, a 
 life ill suited to their antecedents and unwarlike ambi- 
 tions. Men of this stamp, studious, serviceable, peace- 
 ably inclined, did some good among so many evils, and 
 found congenial spirits among the learned of the various 
 countries invaded by the ruthless affranchisement of the 
 Republic. 
 
 ' These two, provided with a route of the road, and 
 with assistant-surgeons' commissions signed by La Coste 
 and Bernadotte, were on their way to join the demi- 
 brigade to which they were attached. Both belonged 
 to well-to-do middle families in Beauvais, and traditions 
 of gentle breeding and of provincial integrity had been a 
 part of their inheritance. A curiosity quite natural in 
 youth had brought them to the seat of war before the 
 time fixed for entrance on active service, and they had 
 come by the diligence as far as Strasbourg. Maternal 
 prudence had suffered them to leave home with a very 
 scanty supply of monev, but they felt rich in the posses- 
 sion of a few louis ; and, indeed, at a time when assignats 
 had reached the lowest point of depreciation, those few 
 louis meant wealth, for gold was at a high premium. 
 
 *The two assistant-surgeons, aged twenty years at most, 
 gave themselves up to the romance of their situation with 
 all the enthusiasm of youth. They had traversed the 
 Palatinate from Strasbourg to Bonn in the quality of 
 artists, philosophers, and observers. When we have a 
 scientific career before us, there are, in truth, at that 
 age many natures within us ; and even while making 
 love or travelling about, an assistant-surgeon should be 
 laying the foundations of his future fame and fortune. 
 
The Red House 297 
 
 accordingly, the pair had been carried away by the 
 Tofound admiration that every well-read man must feel 
 t the sight of the scenery of Swabia and the banks of 
 he Rhine between Mayence and Cologne. They saw 
 vigorous and fertile country, an undulating green land- 
 cape full of strong contrasts and of memories of feudal 
 imes, and everywhere scarred by fire and sword. 
 ' ouis XIV. and Turenne once before laid that fair land 
 n ashes ; heaps of ruins bear witness to the pride, or, 
 t may be, to the prudence of the monarch of Versailles, 
 ^ho rased the wonderful castles which once were the 
 ^lory of this part of Germany. You arrive at some 
 ;onception of the German mind ; you understand its 
 dreaminess and its mysticism from this wonderful forest- 
 and of theirs, full of remains of the Middle Ages, 
 Dicturesque, albeit in ruins. 
 
 * The two friends had made some stay in Bonn with 
 two objects in view — scientific knowledge and pleasure. 
 The grand hospital of the Gallo-Batavian army and of 
 Augereau's division had been established in the Electoral 
 palace itself, and thither the two novices had gone to see 
 their comrades, to deliver letters of recommendation to 
 their chiefs, and to make their first acquaintance with 
 the life of army surgeons. But with the new impres- 
 sions, there as elsewhere, they parted with some of their 
 national prejudices, and discovered that France had no 
 monopoly of beautiful public buildings and landscapes. 
 The marble columns that adorn the Electoral palace 
 took them by surprise ; they admired the magnificence 
 of German architecture and found fresh treasures of 
 ancient and modern art at every step. 
 
 'Now and again in the course of their wanderings 
 toward Andernach their way led them over some higher 
 peak among the granite hills. Through a clear space 
 in the forest, or a chasm in the rocks, they caught a 
 glimpse of the Rhine, a picture framed in the grey stone, 
 or in some setting of luxuriant trails of green leaves. 
 
298 The Red House 
 
 Every valley, field-path, and forest was filled with autumn 
 scents that conduce to musings and with signs of the 
 aging of the year ; the tree-tops were turning golden, 
 taking warmer hues and shades of brown ; the leaves were 
 falling, but the sky was blue and cloudless overhead ; the 
 roads were dry, and shone like threads of gold across the 
 country in the late afternoon sunlight. 
 
 ' Half a league from Andernach the country through 
 which the two friends were travelling lay in a silence as 
 deep as if there were no war laying waste the beautiful 
 land. They were following a goat track among the 
 steep crags of bluish granite that rise like walls above the 
 eddying Rhine, and before very long were descending 
 the sloping sides of the ravine above the little town, 
 nestlirïg coyly at its foot on the river bank, its pic- 
 turesque quay for the Rhine boatmen. 
 
 * " Germany is a very beautiful country ! " cried one 
 of the two, Prosper Magnan by name, as he caught 
 sight of the painted houses of Andernach lying close 
 together like eggs in a basket, among the trees and 
 flower-gardens. 
 
 'For a few minutes they looked at the high-pitched 
 roofs with their projecting beams, at the balconies and 
 wooden staircases of all those peaceful dwellings, and at 
 the boats swaying in the current by the quay.' 
 
 When M. Hermann mentioned the name of Prosper 
 Magnan, my opposite neighbour, the army contractor, 
 snatched up the decanter, poured himself out a glass of 
 water, and drank it down at a gulp. This proceeding 
 recalled my attention to him ; I thought I saw a shght 
 quiver in his hands and a trace of perspiration on his 
 forehead. 
 
 ' What is the army contractor's name ? ' I inquired of 
 my gracious neighbour. 
 
 ' His name is Taillefer,' said she. 
 
 ' Are you feeling unwell ? ' 1 exclaimed, as this un- 
 accountable being turned pale. 
 
The Red House 299 
 
 ' Not at all, not at all,' he said, with a courteous 
 I gesture of acknowledgment. ' I am listening,' he said, 
 with a nod to the rest of the party, for all eyes were 
 turned at once upon him. 
 
 * I forget the other young man's name,' said M. 
 Hermann. ' But, at any rate, from Prosper Magnan's 
 confidences I learned that his friend was dark, lively, and 
 rather thin. If you have no objection, I will call him 
 Wilhelm for the sake of clearness in the story.' And the 
 good German took up his tale again, after baptizing a 
 French assistant surgeon with a German name, totally 
 regardless of local colour and of the demands of Ro- 
 manticism. 
 
 'So by the time these two young fellows reached 
 Andernach night had fallen j and they, fancying that it 
 was too late to report themselves to their chiefs, make 
 themselves known and obtain billets in a place already 
 full of soldiers, made up their minds to spend their last 
 night of freedom in an inn, about a hundred paces out- 
 side the town. They had seen it from the crags above, 
 and had admired the warm colours of the house, height- 
 ened by the glow of the sunset. The whole building 
 was painted red, and produced a piquant effect in the 
 landscape, whether it was seen against the crowd of 
 houses in the town, or as a mass of bright colour against 
 a background of forest trees, or a patch of scarlet by 
 the grey water's edge. Doubtless the inn owed its 
 external decoration, and consequently its name, to the 
 whim of the builder in some forgotten time. The 
 colour had come to be literally a matter of custom to 
 successive owners, for the inn had a name among the 
 Rhine boatmen who frequented it. The sound of horses' 
 hoofs brought the landlord of the Red House to the 
 threshold. 
 
 ^'■^ Pardieu ! gentlemen," cried he, "a little later you 
 would have had to sleep out of doors like most of your 
 countrymen bivouacking yonder at the other end of 
 
300 The Red House 
 
 Andernach. The house is full. If you positively must 
 have a bed to sleep in, I have only my own room to 
 offer you. As for the horses, I can lay down some litter 
 in a corner of the yard for them j my stables are full of 
 christened men this day. — The gentlemen will be from 
 France ? " he went on after a brief pause. 
 
 * " From Bonn," cried Prosper, " and we have had 
 nothing to eat since morning." 
 
 ' " Oh ! as to victuals," said the landlord, jerking his 
 head, " people come to the Red House for ten leagues 
 round for wedding feasts. You shall have a banquet fit 
 for a prince, fish from the Rhine ! That tells you 
 everything." 
 
 'When they had given over their tired beasts into the 
 host's care, they left him to shout in vain for the stable 
 folk, and went into the public room of the inn. It was 
 so full of dense white clouds blown from the pipes of a 
 room-full of smokers, that at first they could not make 
 out what kind of company they had fallen among ; but 
 after they had sat for a while at a table, and put in practice 
 the patience of travelled philosophers who know when it 
 is useless to make a fuss, they gradually made out the 
 inevitable accessories of a German inn. The stove, the 
 clock, the tables, pots of beer and long pipes, loomed out 
 through the tobacco smoke ; so did the faces of the 
 motley crew, Jews, Germans, and what not, with one or 
 two rough boatmen thrown in. 
 
 * The epaulettes of a few French officers shone through 
 the thick mist, and spurs and sabres clanked incessantly 
 upon the flagstones. Some were playing at cards, the 
 rest quarrelled among themselves, or were silent, ate, 
 or drank, and came or went. A stout little woman, 
 who wore the black velvet cap, blue stomacher embroid- 
 ered with silver, the pincushion, bunch of keys, silver 
 clasps, and plaited hair of the typical German landlady 
 (a costume made so familiar in all its details by a host of 
 prints that it is too well known to need description), 
 
The Red House 301 
 
 ame to the two friends and soothed their impatience, 
 while she stimulated their interest in their supper with 
 very remarkable skill. 
 
 * Gradually the noise diminished, the travellers went off 
 3ne by one, the clouds of tobacco smoke cleared away. 
 By the time that the table was set for the assistant 
 surgeons, and the classic carp from the Rhine appeared, 
 it was eleven o'clock, and the room was empty. Through 
 the stillness of the night it was possible to hear faint 
 noises of horses stamping or crunching their provender, the 
 ripple of the Rhine, the vague indefinable sounds in an 
 inn full of people when every one has retired to rest. 
 Doors and windows opened or shut ; there was an 
 inarticulate murmur of voices, or a name was called out 
 in some room overhead. During this time of silence and 
 
 f commotion, while the two Frenchmen were eating their 
 supper and the landlord engaged in extolling Andernach, 
 the meal, his Rhine wine, his wife, and the Republican 
 army, for the benefit of his guests, the three heard, with a 
 certain degree of interest, the hoarse shouts of boatmen 
 and the rattling sound of a boat being moored alongside 
 the quay. The innkeeper, doubtless accustomed to be 
 hailed by the guttural cries of the boatmen, hurried out, 
 and soon came in again with a short, stout man, a couple 
 of the boat's crew following them with a heavy valise and 
 several packages. As soon as the baggage was deposited 
 in the room, the short man picked up his valise and 
 seated himself without ceremony at the table opposite 
 the two surgeons. 
 
 ' " You can sleep on board," said he to the boatmen, "as 
 the inn is full. All things considered, that will be the 
 best way." 
 
 * " All the provisions I have in the house are here before 
 you, sir," said the landlord, and he indicated the French- 
 men's supper. ** I have not a crust of bread, and not so 
 much as a bone " 
 
 '" And no sauerkraut ? " 
 
302 The Red House 
 
 ' " Not so much as would fill my wife's thimble ! As 1 
 had the honour of telling you just now, you can have no 
 bed but the chair you are sitting on, and this is the only 
 unoccupied room." 
 
 ' At these words the short personage glanced at the 
 landlord, at the room, and at the two Frenchmen, caution 
 and alarm equally visible in the expression of his coun- 
 tenance. 
 
 * At this point,' said M. Hermann, interrupting him- 
 self, ' I should tell you that we never knew this stranger's 
 real name, nor his history ; we found out from his papers 
 that he came from Aix-la-Chapelle, that he had assumed 
 the name of Walhenfer, and owned a rather large pin- 
 factory somewhere near Neuwied — that was all. 
 
 * He wore, like other manufacturers in that part of 
 the world, an ordinary cloth overcoat, waistcoat and 
 breeches of dark-green velvet, high boots, and a broad 
 leather belt. His face was perfectly round, his manners 
 frank and hearty, and during the evening he found it 
 very difficult to disguise some inward apprehensions, or, it 
 may be, cruel anxieties. The innkeeper always said 
 that the German merchant was flying the country, and I 
 lear.ied later on that his factory had been burned down 
 through one of the unlucky accidents so frequent in 
 time of war. But in spite of the uneasy look that his face 
 generally wore, its natural expression denoted good- 
 humour and good-nature. He had good features, and 
 a particularly noticeable personal trait was a thick neck, 
 so white in contrast with a black cravat, that Wilhelm 
 jokingly pointed it out to Prosper ' 
 
 Here M. Taillefer drank another glass of water. 
 
 * Prosper courteously invited the merchant to share 
 their supper, and Walhenfer fell to without more ado, 
 like a man who is conscious that he can repay a piece of 
 civility. He set down his valise on the floor, put his 
 feet upon it, took off his hat, drew his chair to the table, 
 and laid down his gloves beside him, together with a pair 
 
The Red House 303 
 
 pistols, which he carried in his belt. The landlord 
 xickly laid a cover for him, and the three began to 
 tisfy their hunger silently enough. 
 ' The room was so close and the flies so troublesome, 
 at Prosper besought the landlord to open the window 
 lat looked out upon the quay to let in fresh air. This 
 indow was fastened by an iron bar that dropped into a 
 cket on either side of the window frame, and for 
 eater security, a nut fastened to each of the shutters 
 ceived a bolt. It so happened that Prosper watched 
 e landlord unfasten the window. 
 
 'But since I am going into these particulars,' M. 
 ermann remarked, ' I ought to describe the internal 
 rangements of the house ; for the whole interest of the 
 ory depends on an accurate knowledge of the place. 
 * There were two entrance doors in the room where 
 lese three personages were sitting. One opened on to 
 le road that followed the river bank to Andernach, and, 
 might be expected, just opposite the inn, there was a 
 :tle jetty where the boat which the merchant had hired 
 
 his voyage was moored at that moment. The other 
 )or gave admittance to the inn-yard, a court shut in by 
 ;ry high walls, and at the moment full of horses and 
 ittle, for human beings occupied the stables. 
 
 The house door had been so carefully bolted and 
 irred that, to save time, the landlord had opened the 
 reet door of the sitting-room to admit the merchant 
 id the boatmen, and now, when he had opened the 
 indow at Prosper Magnan's instance, he set to work 
 » shut this door, slipping the bolts and screwing the 
 
 [Its. 
 
 'The landlord's bedroom, where the friends were to 
 eep, was next to the public room of the inn, and only 
 ;parated from the kitchen, where the host and hostess 
 ere probably to pass the night, by a sufficiently thin 
 irtition wall. The maid-servant had just gone out to 
 nd a nook in some manger, or in the corner of a hay 
 
304 The Red House 
 
 loft somewhere or other. It will be readily understood 
 that the public room, the landlord's bedroom, and the 
 kitchen were in a manner apart from the rest of the 
 inn. The deep barking of two great dogs in the yard 
 indicated that the house had vigilant and wakeful 
 guardians. 
 
 * " How quiet it is, and what a glorious night ! " said 
 Wilhelm, looking out at the sky when the landlord had 
 bolted the door. There was not a sound to be heard at 
 the moment save the rippling of the water. 
 
 ' " Gentlemen," said the merchant, addressing the 
 Frenchmen, " allow me to offer you a bottle or two of 
 wine to wash down your carp. A glass will refresh us 
 after a tiring day. By the look of you and the condition 
 of your clothes, I can see that, like myself, you have come 
 a good way." 
 
 ' The two friends accepted the proposal, and the landlord 
 went out through the kitchen to the cellar, doubtless 
 situated beneath that part of the establishment. About 
 the time that five venerable bottles appeared upon the 
 table, the landlord's wife had finished serving the supper. 
 She gave a housewife's glance over the dishes and round 
 the room, assured herself that the travellers had every- 
 thing they were likely to want, and went back to the 
 kitchen. The four boon companions, for the host was 
 asked to join the party, did not hear her go off to bed j 
 but before long, in the pauses of the chat over the wine, 
 there came an occasional very distinct sound of snoring 
 from the loft above the kitchen where she was sleeping, 
 a sound rendered still more resonant by reason of the 
 thin plank floor. This made the guests smile, and the 
 landlord smiled still more. 
 
 * Towards midnight, when there was nothing left on 
 the table but cheese and biscuits, dried fruit, and good 
 wine, the whole party, and the young Frenchmen more 
 particularly, grew communicative. They talked about 
 their country, their studies, and the war. After a while 
 
The Red House 305 
 
 he conversation grew lively. Prosper Magnan drew 
 ears to the merchant's eyes when, with a Picard's frank- 
 less and the simplicity of a kindly and affectionate 
 lature, he began to imagine what his mother would be 
 loing while he, her son, was here on the bank of the 
 Ihine. 
 
 '"It is just as if I can see her," he said ; " she is reading 
 he evening prayer, the last thing at night ! She will 
 lot forget me I know ; she is sure to say, ' Where is 
 ny poor Prosper, I wonder ? ' Then if she has won a 
 ew sous at cards — of your mother perhaps," he added, 
 ogging Wilhelm's elbow — " she will be putting them in 
 :he big red jar, where she keeps the money she is saving 
 ip to buy those thirty acres that lie within her own 
 ittle bit of land at Lescheville. The thirty acres will 
 DC worth something like sixty thousand francs. Good 
 neadow land it is ! Ah ! if I were to have it some day, 
 I would live all the rest of my life at Lescheville, and 
 want nothing better ! How often my father wanted 
 those thirty acres and the nice little stream that winds 
 ilong through the fields ! And, after all, he died and could 
 not buy the land. ... I have played there many and 
 many a time ! " 
 
 ■ " M. Walhenfer, haven't you also your hoc erat in 
 votis ? " asked Wilhelm. 
 
 " Yes, sir, yes ! But it all came to me as it was, 
 and now ..." the good man stopped short and said no 
 more. 
 
 ' " For my own part," said the landlord, whose counte- 
 nance was slightly flushed, " I bought a bit of meadow 
 last year that I had set my mind on these ten years past." 
 
 ' So they chatted on, as folk will talk when wine has 
 unloosed their tongues, and struck up one of those 
 travellers' friendships that we are little chary of making 
 on a journey, in such a sort that when they rose to go to 
 their room Wilhelm offered his bed to the merchant. 
 " You can take the offer without hesitation," he said, 
 u 
 
3o6 The Red House 
 
 "for Prosper and I can sleep together. It will not be 
 the first time nor the last either, I expect. You are the 
 oldest among us, and we ought to honour old age." 
 
 * " Pooh ! " said the landlord, " there are several mat- 
 tresses on our bed, one can be laid on the floor for you," 
 and he went to shut the window with the usual clatter 
 caused by this precaution. 
 
 '"I accept your offer," said the merchant, addressing 
 Wilhelm. " I confess," he added, lowering his voice, 
 and looking at the friends, " that I wanted you to make 
 it. I feel that I cannot trust my boatmen ; and I am 
 not sorry to find myself in the company of two decent 
 young fellows, two French military men, moreover, for 
 the night. I have a hundred thousand francs in gold 
 and diamonds in that valise." 
 
 ' The two younger men received this incautious com- 
 munication with a discreet friendliness that reassured the 
 worthy German. The landlord helped his guests to 
 shift one of the mattresses, and, when things had been 
 arranged as comfortably as possible, wished them a good 
 night and went off to bed. The merchant and the 
 surgeons joked each other about their pillows. Prosper 
 put Wilhelm's case of surgical instruments, as well 
 as his own, under the mattress, to raise the end and 
 supply the place of a bolster, just as Walhenfer, in an 
 access of extreme caution, bestowed his valise under his 
 bolster. 
 
 ' " We are both going to sleep on our fortunes — you 
 on your money, and I on my case of instruments ! It 
 remains to be seen whether my case will bring me in as 
 much money as you have made." 
 
 ' " You may hope so," said the merchant. ** Honest 
 work will accomplish most things, but you must have 
 patience." 
 
 ' Before very long Walhenfer and Wilhelm fell asleep. 
 But whether it was because his bed was too hard, or he 
 himself was over-tired and wakeful, or through some 
 
The Red House 307 
 
 nlucky mood of mind, Prosper Magnan lay broad 
 wake. Imperceptibly his thoughts took an ill turn, 
 ie could think of nothing but that hundred thousand 
 rancs beneath the merchant's pillow. For him a 
 undred thousand francs was a vast fortune ready 
 nade. He began by laying out the money in endless 
 i^ays, building castles in the air, as we are all apt to do 
 viih so much enjoyment just before we drop off to 
 leep, when indistinct and hazy ideas arise in our minds, 
 nd not seldom night and silence give a magical vivid- 
 less to our thoughts. 
 
 * In these visions Prosper Magnan overtopped his 
 nother's ambitions; he bought the thirty acres of 
 neadow, and married a young lady in Beauvais, to 
 vhose hand he could not aspire at present owing to 
 nequality of fortune. With this wealth he planned 
 )ut a whole pleasant lifetime, saw himself the prosperous 
 "ather of a family, rich, looked up to in the neighbour- 
 lood, possibly even Mayor of Beauvais. The Picard head 
 vas on fire j he cast about for the means of realising 
 hese dreams of his. With extraordinary warmth of 
 magination he set himself to plan out a crime, and gold 
 md diamonds were the most vivid and distinct portion 
 f a vision of the merchant's death ; the glitter dazzled 
 tiim. His heart beat fast. He had committed a crime, 
 10 doubt, by harbouring such thoughts as these. The 
 pell of the gold was upon him ; his moral nature was 
 ntoxicated by insidious reasonings. He asked himself 
 whether there was any reason why the poor German 
 hould live, and imagined how it would have been if he 
 had never existed. To put it briefly, he plotted out a 
 way to do the deed with complete impunity. 
 
 ' The Austrians held the other bank of the Rhine ; a 
 boat lay there under the windows ; there were boatmen 
 there ; he could cut the man's throat, fling him into the 
 Rhine, escape with the valise through a casement, bribe 
 the boatmen, and go over to the Austrian side. He even 
 
3o8 The Red House 
 
 went so far as to count upon his surgeon's dexterity with 
 the knife ; he knew of a way of decapitating his victim 
 before the sleeper could utter a single shriek . . .' 
 
 M. Taillefer wiped his forehead at this point, and 
 again he drank a little water» 
 
 * Then Prosper Magnan rose — slowly and noiselessly. 
 He assured himself that he had awakened nobody, dressed 
 and went into the public room. Then, with the fatal 
 lucidity of mind that suddenly comes at certain crises, 
 with the heightened power of intuition and strength ot 
 will that is never lacking to criminals or to prisoners in 
 the execution of their designs, he unscrewed the iron 
 bars, and drew them from their sockets, and set them 
 against the wall without the slightest sound, hanging 
 with all his weight on to the shutters lest they should 
 creak as they turned on their hinges. In the pale moon- 
 light he could dimly see the objects in the room where 
 Wilhelm and Walhenfer were sleeping. 
 
 ' Then, he told me, he stopped short for a moment. 
 His heart beat so hard and so heavily, that the sound 
 seemed to ring through the room, and he stood like one 
 dismayed as he heard it. He began to fear for his cool 
 ness ; his hands shook, he felt as if he were standing on 
 burning coals. But so fair a prospect depended upon the 
 execution of his design, that he saw something like a 
 providence in this dispensation of fate that had brought 
 the merchant thither. He opened the window, went 
 back to his room, took up his case, and looked through it 
 for an instrument best adapted to his purpose. 
 
 ' " And when I stood by the bed " (he told me this), 
 " I asked God for His protection, unthinkingly." 
 
 ' He had just raised his arm, and was summoning all 
 his strength for the blow, when somr''hing like a voice 
 cried within him, and he thought he saw a light. He 
 flung down the surgical instrument on his bed, fled into 
 the next room, and stood at the window. A profound 
 horror of himself came over him, and feeling how 
 
The Red House 309 
 
 ittle he could trust himself, fearing to yield to the 
 "ascination that held him, he sprang quickly out of 
 he window and walked along by the Rhine, acting as 
 lentinel, as it were, before the inn. Again and again 
 le walked restlessly to and from Andernach, often also 
 lis wanderings led him to the slope of the ravine which 
 :hey had descended that afternoon to reach the inn j but so 
 leep was the silence of the night, and so strong his dread 
 jf arousing the watch-dogs, that he kept away from the 
 Red House, and lost sight altogether more than once of 
 :he window that he had left open. He tried to weary 
 limself out, and so to induce sleep. Yet, as he walked 
 o and fro under the cloudless sky, watching the brilliant 
 itars, it may be that the pure night air and the melancholy 
 apping of the water wrought upon him, and restored him 
 by degrees to moral sanity. Sober reason completed the 
 work and dispelled that short-lived madness. His educa- 
 tion, the precepts of religion, and, above all things (so he 
 told me), visions of the homely life that he had led beneath 
 his father's roof, got the better of his evil thoughts. He 
 thought and pondered for long, his elbow resting on a 
 boulder by the side of the Rhine; and when he turned to 
 go in again, he could not only have slept, so he said, but 
 have watched over millions of gold. 
 
 'When his honesty emerged strengthened and trium- 
 phant from that ordeal, he knelt in joy and ecstasy to 
 thank God ; he felt as happy, light-hearted, and content 
 as on the day when he took the sacrament for the first 
 time, and felt not unworthy of the angels because he had 
 spent the day without sin in word, or thought, or deed. 
 
 ' He went back again to the inn, shut the window 
 without care to move noiselessly, and went to bed at 
 once. Mind and body were utterly exhausted, and sleep 
 overcame him. He had scarcely laid his head on the 
 mattress before the dreamy drowsiness that precedes sound 
 slumber crept over him ; when the senses grow torpid, 
 conscious life ebbs away, thought grows fragmentary. 
 
3IO The Red House 
 
 and the last communications of sense to the brain are Hke 
 the impressions of a dream. 
 
 * " How close the air is ! " said Prosper to himself. 
 " It is just as if I were breathing a damp mist . . ." 
 
 ' Dimly he sought to account for this state of things 
 by attributing it to the difference between the outside 
 temperature in the pure country air and the closed room ; 
 but before long he heard a constantly recurring sound, 
 very much like the slow drip of water from a leaking tap. 
 On an impulse of panic terror, he thought of rising and 
 calling the landlord, or the merchant, or Wilhelm ; but, 
 for his misfortune, he bethought himself of the wooden 
 clock in the next room, fancied that the sound was the 
 beat of the pendulum, and dropped off to sleep with this 
 dim and confused idea in his head.' 
 
 * Do you want some water, M. Taillefer ? ' asked the 
 master of the house, seeing the banker take up the 
 empty decanter mechanically. 
 
 M. Hermann went on with his story after the slight 
 interruption of the banker's reply. 
 
 ' The next morning,' he went on, * Prosper Magnan 
 was awakened by a great noise. It seemed to him that 
 he had heard shrill cries, and he felt that violent nervous 
 tremor which we experience when we wake to a painful 
 sensation that began during slumber. The thing that 
 takes place in us when we " wake with a start," to use 
 the common expression, has been insufficiently investi 
 gated, though it presents interesting problems to physio 
 logical science. The terrible shock, caused it may be by 
 the too sudden reunion of the two natures in us that are 
 almost always apart while we sleep, is usually momentary, 
 but it was not so for the unlucky young surgeon. The 
 horror grew, and his hair bristled hideously all at once, 
 when he saw a pool of blood between his own mattress and 
 Walhenfer's bedstead. The unfortunate German's head 
 was lying on the fioor, the body was still on the bed, all 
 this blood had drained from the neck. Prosper Magnan 
 
The Red House 311 
 
 aw Walhenfer's eyes unclosed and staring, saw red on 
 he sheets that he had slept in, and even on his own 
 lands, saw his own surgeon's knife on the bed, and 
 ainted away on the blood-stained floor. 
 
 ' " I was punished already for my thoughts," he said to 
 ne afterwards. 
 
 ' When he came to himself again, he was sitting in a 
 :hair in the public room of the inn, a group of French 
 ioldiers round about him, and an inquisitive and interested 
 rowd. He stared in dull bewilderment at a Republican 
 jfficer who was busy taking down the depositions of 
 everal witnesses and drawing up an official report ; he 
 •ecognised the landlord and his wife, the two boatmen, 
 and the maid-servant. The surgical instrument used by 
 the murderer ' 
 
 Here M. Taillefer coughed, drew out his pocket-hand- 
 kerchief, and wiped his forehead. His movements were 
 so natural, that I alone noticed them ; indeed, all eyes 
 were fixed on M. Hermann with a kind of greedy 
 interest. The army-contractor leant his elbow on the 
 table, propped his head on his right hand, and looked 
 fixedly at Hermann. From that time forward I saw no 
 involuntary signs of agitation nor of interest in the tale, 
 but his face was grave and corpse-like; he looked just 
 as he had done while he was playing with the decanter- 
 stopper. 
 
 ' The surgical instrument used by the murderer lay on 
 the table, beside the case with Prosper's pocket-book 
 and papers. The crowd looked by turns at the young 
 surgeon and at these convincing proofs of his guilt ; he 
 himself appeared to be dying; his dull eyes seemed to 
 have no power of sight in them. A confused murmur 
 outside made it evident that a crowd had gathered about 
 the inn, attracted bv the news of the murder, and perhaps 
 by a wish to catch a sight of the criminal. The tramp 
 of the sentries posted under the windows and the clanking 
 of their weapons rose over the whispered talk of the 
 
312 The Red House 
 
 populace. The inn itself was shut up, the courtyard was 
 silent and deserted. 
 
 * The gaze of the officer who was drawing up the report 
 was intolerable ; Prosper Magnan felt some one grasp his 
 hand; looked up to see who it was that stood by him 
 among that unfriendly crowd, and recognised, by the 
 uniform that he wore, the senior surgeon of the demi- 
 brigade quartered in Andernach. So keen and merciless 
 were those eyes, that the poor young fellow shuddered, 
 and his head dropped on to the back of the chair. One 
 of the men held vinegar for him to inhale, and Prosper 
 regained consciousness at once; but his haggard "^yes were 
 so destitute of life and intelligence, that the senior surgeon 
 felt his pulse, and spoke to the officer. 
 
 *" Captain," he s^iJ, " it is impossible to examine the 
 man just now " 
 
 ' " Very well. Take him away," returned the captain, 
 cutting the surgeon short, and speaking to a corporal 
 who stood behind the junior's chair, 
 
 ' " Confounded scoundrel ! " the man muttered ; " try 
 at least to hold up your head before these German 
 beggars, to save the honour of the Republic." 
 
 ' Thus adjured, Prosper Magnan came to his senses, 
 rose, and went forward a few paces ; but when the door 
 opened, when he felt the outer air, and saw the people 
 crowding up, all his strength failed him, his knees bent 
 under him, he tottered. 
 
 * " The confounded sawbones deserves to be put an 
 end to twice over ! — March, can't you ! " said the two 
 men on either side of him, on whom he leant. 
 
 * " Oh, the coward ! the coward ! Here he comes ! 
 here he comes ! . . . There he is ! " 
 
 'The words were uttered as by one voice, the 
 clamorous voice of the mob who hemmed him in, insult- 
 ing and reviling him at every step. During the time that 
 it took to go from the inn to the prison, the trampling 
 feet of the crowd and the soldiers who guarded him, the 
 
The Red House 313 
 
 luttered talk of those about him, the sky above, the 
 lorning air, the streets of Andernach, the rippling 
 lurniur of the current of the Rhine, all reached him as 
 ull, vague impressions, confused and dim, like all his 
 xperiences since his awakening. At times he thought 
 liat he had ceased to exist, so he told me afterwards. 
 
 'I myself was in prison just then,' said M. Hermann, 
 iterrupting himself. ' We are ail enthusiasts at twenty. 
 
 was on fire to defend my country, and commanded 
 
 volunteer troop raised in and about Andernach. A 
 hort time previously, I managed to fell in one night with 
 
 French detachment of eight hundred men. There 
 vere two hundred of us at the most ; my scouts had 
 (etrayed me. I was thrown into the prison at Ander- 
 lach while they debated whether or no to have me shot 
 )y way of a warning to the country. The French, 
 noreover, talked of reprisals, but the murder for which 
 hey had a mind to avenge themselves on me turned out 
 
 have been committed outside the Electorate. My 
 "ather had obtained a reprieve of three days, to make 
 pplication for my pardon to General Augereau, who 
 jranted it. 
 
 ' So I saw Prosper Magnan as soon as he came into the 
 jrison at Andernach, and the first sight of him filled me 
 ivith the deepest pity for him. Haggard, exhausted, and 
 jlood-stained though he was, there was a certain frankness 
 n his face that convinced me of his innocence, and made 
 
 1 deep impression upon me. It was as if Germany stood 
 there visibly before me — the prisoner with the long, fair hair 
 and blue eyes, was for my imagination the very personifi- 
 cation of the prostrate Fatherland, — this was no murderer, 
 
 ut a victim. As he went past my window, a sad, bitter 
 smile lit up his face for a moment, as if a transitory 
 gleam of sanity crossed a disordered brain. Such a smile 
 would surely not be seen on a murderer's lips. When I 
 next saw the turnkey, I asked him about his new 
 prisoner. 
 
314 The Red House 
 
 * " He hasn't said a word since he went into his cell. 
 He sits there with his head on his hands, and sleeps or 
 thinks about his trouble. From what I hear the French- 
 men saying, they will settle his case to-morrow, and he 
 will be shot within twenty-four hours." 
 
 ' That evening I lingered a little under his windows 
 during the short time allowed for exercise in the prison 
 yard. We talked together, and he told me very simply 
 the story of his ill-luck, giving sufficiently straightforward 
 answers to my different questions. After that conversa- 
 tion I no longer doubted his innocence. I asked and 
 obtained the favour of spending a few hours in his com- 
 pany, and saw him in this way several times. The poor 
 boy let me into the secret of his thoughts without 
 reserve. In his own opinion, he was at once innocent 
 and guilty. He remembered the hideous temptation 
 which he had found strength to resist, and was afraid 
 that he had committed the murder planned while he was 
 awake in an access of somnambulism. 
 
 ' *' But how about your companion ? " said I. 
 
 *"Oh, Wilhelm is incapable ! " he cried vehemently. 
 
 He did not even finish the sentence. I grasped his hand 
 at the warm-hearted outburst, so fraught with youth and 
 virtue. 
 
 * " I expect he was frightened when he woke," he said ; 
 " he must have lost his presence of mind and fled " 
 
 * *' Without waking you ? " I asked. " Why, in that 
 case your defence is soon made, for Walhenfer's valise 
 will not have been stolen." 
 
 ' All at once he burst into tears. 
 
 * " Oh, yes, yes ! " he cried ; " I am not guilty. I can- 
 not have killed him. I remember the dreams I had. I was 
 at school, playing at prisoners-base. I could not have cut 
 his throat while I was dreaming of running about." 
 
 ' But in spite of the gleams of hope that quieted his 
 mind somewhat at times, he still felt crushed by the 
 weight of remorse. There was no blinking the fact he 
 
 ki 
 
The Red House 315 
 
 ad raised his arm to strike the blow. He condemned 
 imself, and considered that he was morally guilty after 
 ommitting the crime in imagination. 
 
 * " And yet, I am not a bad fellow," he cried. *' Oh, 
 oor mother ! Perhaps just now she is happily play- 
 at cards with her friends in the little tapestried 
 oom at home. If she knew that I had so much as raised 
 tiy hand to take another man's life — Oh ! it would kill 
 ler ! And I arn in prison, and accused of murder ! If 
 did not kill the man, I shall certainly be the death of 
 ny mother ! " 
 
 He shed no tears as he spoke. In a wild fit of 
 renzy, not uncommon among Picards, he sprang up, and 
 f I had not forcibly restrained him, would have dashed 
 lis head against the wall. 
 
 "Wait until you have been tried," I said. "You will 
 
 je acquitted ; you are innocent. And your mother " 
 
 ' " My mother," he cried wildly ; " my mother will 
 lear that I have been accused of murder, that is the main 
 joint. You always hear things like that in little places, 
 md my poor mother will die of grief. Besides, I am not 
 nnocent. Do you care to know the whole truth ! I 
 feel that I have lost the virginity of my conscience." 
 
 *With those terrible words, he sat down, folded his 
 arms across his chest, bowed his head, and fixed his eyes 
 gloomily on the floor. Just then the turnkey came to 
 bid me return to my cell ; but loth to leave my com- 
 panion when his discouragement seemed at its blackest, 
 I clasped him in a friendly embrace. " Be patient," I 
 said, " perhaps it wi'l all come right. If an honest man's 
 opinion can silence your doubts, I tell you this — that I 
 esteem you and love you. Accept my friendship, and 
 repose on my heart, if you cannot feel at peace with 
 your own." 
 
 'On the following day, about nine o'clock, a corporal and 
 four fusiliers came for the assistant surgeon. I heard the 
 sound of the soldiers' footsteps, and went to the window; 
 
21 6 The Red House 
 
 our eyes met as he crossed the court. Never shall I 
 forget the glance fraught with so many thoughts and 
 forebodings, nor the resignation and indescribably sad 
 and melancholy sweetness in his expression. In that 
 dumb swift transference of thought, my friend conveyed 
 his testament to me ; he left his lost life to the one friend 
 who was beside him at the last. 
 
 * That night must have been very hard to live through, 
 a very lonely night for him j but perhaps the pallor that 
 overspread his face was a sign of a newly acquired 
 stoicism, based on a new view of himself. Perhaps he 
 felt purified by remorse, and thought to expiate his sin 
 in this anguish and shame. He walked with a firm step; 
 and I noticed that he had removed the accidental stains 
 of blood that soiled his clothing the night before. 
 
 * " Unluckily I stained my hands while I was asleep ; 
 I always was an uneasy sleeper," he had said, a dreadful 
 despair in the tones of his voice. 
 
 * I was told that he was about to be tried by a court- 
 martial. The division was to go forward in two days' 
 time, and the commandant of the demi-brigade meant to 
 try the criminal on the spot before leaving Andernach. 
 
 ' While that court-martial was sitting, I was in an 
 agony of suspense. It was noon before they brought 
 Prosper Magnan back to prison. I was taking my pre- 
 scribed exercise when he came ; he saw me, and rushed 
 into my arms. 
 
 ' " I am lost ! " he said. " Lost beyond hope ! Every 
 one here must look on me as a murderer " 
 
 Then he raised his head proudly. " This injustice 
 has completely given me back my innocence," he said. 
 " If I had lived, my life must always have been troubled, 
 but my death shall be without reproach. But is there 
 anything beyond ? " 
 
 ' The whole eighteenth century spoke in that sudden 
 questioning. He was absorbed in thought. 
 
 ' " But what did you tell them ? What did they ask 
 
The Red House 317 
 
 ou ? " I cried. " Did you not tell them the simple truth 
 s you told it to me ? " 
 
 * He gazed at me for a minute, then after the brief, 
 readful pause, he answered with a feverish readiness of 
 peech — 
 
 ' *' First of all they asked me — ' Did you go out of the 
 nn during the night?' — 'Yes,' I told them. — 'How 
 id you get out ? ' — I turned red, and answered, * Through 
 he window.' — ' Then you must have opened it ? ' — 
 Yes,' I said. — ' You set about it very cautiously ; the 
 andlord heard nothing ! ' — I was like one stupefied all 
 he time. The boatmen swore that they had seen 
 ne walking, sometimes towards Andernach, sometimes 
 owards the forest. I went to and fro many times, 
 hey said. I had buried the gold and diamonds. As a 
 natter of fact the valise has not been found. Then, 
 :he whole time, I myself was struggling against remorse. 
 Whenever I opened my mouth to speak, a merciless 
 /oice seemed to cry, ' Tou meant to do it ! ' Everything 
 was against me, even myself! . . . They wanted to 
 enow about my comrade, and I completely exonerated 
 hbn. Then they said, ' One of you four must be guilty — 
 you or your comrade, the innkeeper or his wife. All the 
 doors and windows were shut fast this morning ! ' 
 When they said that," he went on, " I had no voice, no 
 strength, no spirit left in me. I was more sure of my 
 friend than of myself ; I saw very well that they thought 
 us both equally guilty of the murder, and I was the 
 clumsier one of the two. I tried to explain the thing by 
 somnambulism ; I tried to clear my friend j then I got 
 muddled, and it was all over with me. I read my 
 sentence in the judges' eyes. Incredulous smiles stole 
 across their faces. That is all. The suspense is over. 
 
 I am to be shot to-morrow I do not think of myself 
 
 now," he said, "but of my poor mother." 
 
 *• He stopped short and looked up to heaven. He shed 
 no tears ; his eyes were dry and contracted with pain. 
 
jiS The Red House 
 
 'Frédéric ! . . . 
 
 'Ah! I remember now! The other one was called 
 Frédéric . . . Frédéric ! Yes, I am sure that was the 
 name,' M. Hermann exclaimed triumphantly. 
 
 I felt the pressure of my fair neighbour's foot ; she 
 made a sign to me, and looked across at M. Taillefer 
 The sometime army-contractor's hand drooped carelessly 
 over his eyes, but through the fingers we thought we 
 saw a smouldering blaze in them. 
 
 ' Eh ?' she said in my ear, ' and now suppose that his 
 name is Frédéric ? ' 
 
 I gave the lady a side glance of entreaty to be silent. 
 Hermann went on with his tale. 
 
 ' " It is cowardly of Frédéric to leave me to my fate 
 He must have been afraid. Perhaps he is hiding in the 
 inn, for both our horses were there in the yard that 
 morning. — What an inexplicable mystery it is ! " he 
 added, after a pause. *' Somnambulism, somnambulism ! 
 I never walked in my sleep but once in my life, and then 
 I was not six years old. And I am to go out of this,' 
 he went on, striking his foot against the earth, "and 
 take with me all the friendship that there is in th( 
 world ! Must I die twice over, doubting the friend 
 ship that began when we were five years old, and lasted 
 through our school life and our student days ! Where 
 is Frédéric ? " 
 
 ' The tears filled his eyes. We cling more closely to a 
 sentiment than to our life, it seems ! 
 
 * " Let us go in again," he said j " I would rather be in 
 my cell. I don't mean them to see me crying. I shall 
 go bravely to my death, but I cannot play the hero in 
 season and out of season, and I confess that I am sorry to 
 leave my life, my fair life, and my youth. I did not 
 sleep last night ; I remembered places about my hom 
 when I was a child ; I saw myself running about in thi 
 meadows, perhaps it was the memories of those fields that 
 led to my ruin. — I had a future before me " (he inter- 
 
The Red House 319 
 
 ipted himself). " A dozen men, a sub-lieutenant who 
 'ill cry, ' Ready ! present I fire ! ' a roll of drums, 
 id disgrace ! that is my future now ! Ah ! there 
 
 a God, there is a God, or all this would be too non- 
 msical." 
 
 ' Then he grasped my arm, put his arms about me, 
 id held me tightly to him. 
 
 * " Ah ! you are the last human soul to whom I can 
 our out my soul. Tou will be free again ! You will see 
 our mother ! I do not know whether you are rich or 
 oor, but no matter for that, you are all the world 
 jr me. . . . They cannot keep the fighting up for 
 ver. Well and good then, when they make peace, 
 o to Beauvais. If my mother survives the disastrous 
 ews of my death, you will find her out and tell her 
 He was innocent,' to comfort her. " She will believe 
 ou," he went on. " I shall write to her as well, but 
 ou will carry my last look to her ; you shall tell her how 
 hat you were the last friend whom I embraced before I 
 ied. Ah ! how she will love you, my poor mother, you 
 i^ho have stood my friend at the last ! He was silent for 
 
 moment or two, the burden of his memories seemed 
 00 heavy for him to bear. " Here they are all strangers 
 o me," he said, " the other surgeons and the men, and 
 hey all shrink from me in horror. But for you, my 
 nnocence must remain a secret between me and 
 Jeaven." 
 
 * I vowed to fulfil his last wishes as a sacred charge, 
 ^e felt that my heart went out to him, and was touched 
 
 y my words. A little later the soldiers came back to 
 ake him before the court-martial again. He was 
 loomed. 
 
 '■ i know nothing of the formalities or circumstances 
 :hat attend a sentence of this kind ; I do not know 
 A^hether there is any appeal, nor whether the young 
 urgeon's defence was made according to rule and 
 jrecedent, but he prepared to go to his death early on 
 
320 The Red House 
 
 the morrow, and spent that night in writing to his 
 mother. 
 
 * " We shall both be set free to-day," he said, smiling 
 when I went the next day to see him. " The genera 
 has signed your pardon, I hear." 
 
 'I said nothing, and gazed at him to engrave hii 
 features on my memory. 
 
 ' A look of loathing crossed his face, and he said, 
 have been a miserable coward ! All night long I hav( 
 been praying the very walls for mercy," and he looke 
 round his cell. " Yes, yes," he went on, " I howle( 
 with despair, I rebelled against this, I have been througl 
 the most fearful inward conflict. ... I was alone ! . 
 Now I am thinking of what others will say of me— 
 Courage is like a garment that we put on. I must g 
 decently to my death. . . . And so . . ." * 
 
 II. 
 
 A DOUBLE RETRIBUTION 
 
 * Oh ! do not tell us any more ! ' cried the girl wh 
 had asked for the story, cutting short the Nurembergei 
 ' I want to live in suspense, and to believe that he w< 
 saved. If I were to know to-night that they shot him, 
 should not sleep. You must tell me the rest to-morrow 
 
 We rose. M. Hermann offered his arm to my fa 
 neighbour, who asked as she took it, 'They shot hin 
 did they not ? ' 
 
 ■ Yes. I was there.* 
 
 * What, Monsieur, you could ' 
 
 ' He wished it, Madame, it is something very ghasti 
 
 to attend the funeral of a living man, your own frien 
 who is not guilty of the crime laid to his charge. Tf 
 poor young fellow never took his eyes ofF me. h 
 
 Jl 
 
The Red House 321 
 
 ;emed to have no life but mine left. " He wished," he 
 lid, " that I should bear his last sigh to his mother." ' 
 
 * Well, and did you see her ? ' 
 
 * After the Peace of Amiens I went to France to take 
 le glad tidings " He was innocent ! " That pilgrimage 
 ^as like a sacred duty laid upon me. But Mme. 
 lagnan was dead, I found ; she had died of consumption. 
 
 burned the letter I had brought for her, not without 
 eep emotion. Perhaps you will laugh at my German 
 igh-flown sentimentality ; but for me there was a tragedy 
 lost sublimely sad in the eternal silence which was 
 bout to swallow up those farewells uttered in vain from 
 ne grave to another grave, and heard by none, like the 
 ry of some traveller in the desert surprised by a beast 
 fprey.' 
 
 Here I broke in with a ' How if some one were to bring 
 ou face to face with one of the men in this drawing- 
 oom, and say, " There is the murderer ! " would not 
 hat be another tragedy ? And what would you do ? ' 
 
 M. Hermann took up his hat and went. 
 
 * You are acting like a young man, and very thought- 
 essly,' said the lady. * Just look at Taillefer ; there he 
 its in a low chair by the fire, Mademoiselle Fanny is 
 landing him a cup of coffee ; he is smiling. How could 
 
 murderer display such quiet self-possession as that, 
 fter a story that must have been torture to him. He 
 ooks quite patriarchal, does he not ? ' 
 
 Yes ; but just ask him if he has been with the army 
 n Germany ! ' I exclaimed. 
 
 Why not?' and with the audacity rarelv lacking in 
 vomankind when occasion tempts, or curiosity gets the 
 jetterof her, my fair neighbour went across to the army- 
 ontractor. 
 
 ' Have you been in Germany, M. Taillefer ? ' quoth 
 he. 
 
 Taillefer all but dropped his saucer. 
 
 ' I, Madame ? — No, never.' 
 
 X 
 
322 The Red House 
 
 * Why, what is that you are saying, Taillefer ? ' pro- 
 tested the banker, chiming in. * You were in the 
 Wagram campaign, were you not — on the victualling 
 establishment ? ' 
 
 ' Oh yes ! ' answered Taillefer ; * I was there, that 
 once,' 
 
 ' You are wrong about him ; he is a good sort of 
 man,' decided the lady when she came back to me. 
 
 * Very well,' said I to myself, ' before this evening 
 is over I will drive the murderer out of the mire in 
 which he is hiding.' 
 
 There is a phenomenon of consciousness that takes 
 place daily beneath our eyes, so commonplace that no 
 one notices it, and yet there are astounding depths 
 beneath it. Two men meet in a drawing-room who 
 have some cause to disdain or to hate each other ; per- 
 haps one of them knows something which is not to the 
 credit of the other ; perhaps it is a condition of things 
 that is kept a secret ; perhaps one of them is meditating 
 a revenge ; but both of them are conscious of the gulf 
 that divides them, or that ought to divide them. Before 
 they know it, they are watching each other and absorbed 
 in each other ; some subtle emanation of their thought 
 seems to distil from every look and gesture ; they have 
 a magnetic influence. Nor can I tell which has the 
 more power of attraction — revenge or crime, hatred 
 or contempt. Like some priest who cannot consecrate 
 the house where an evil spirit abides, the two are 
 ill at ease and suspicious ; one of them, it is hard to 
 say which, is polite, and the other sullen ; one of them 
 turns pale or red, and the other trembles, and it often 
 happens that the avenger is quite as cowardly as the 
 victim. For very few of us have the nerve to cause 
 pain, even if it is necessary pain, and many a man 
 passes over a matter or forgives from sheer hatred of fuss 
 or dread of making a tragical scene. 
 
The Red House 323 
 
 With this inter-susceptibility of minds, and apprehen- 
 veness of thought and feeling, there began a mys- 
 :rious struggle between the army-contractor and me. 
 ^ver since my interruption of M. Hermann's story he 
 ad shunned my eyes. Perhaps in like manner he looked 
 one of the party in the face. He was chatting now 
 i^ith the inexperienced Fanny, the banker's daughter ; 
 irobably, like all criminals, he felt a longing to take 
 belter with innocence, as if the mere proximity of 
 nnocence might bring him peace for a little. But 
 hough I stood on the other side of the room, I still 
 istened to all that he said ; my direct gaze fascinated 
 I. When he thought he could glance at me in turn, 
 mnoticed, our eyes met, and his eyelids fell directly. 
 Paillefer found this torture intolerable, and hastened to 
 )ut a stop to it by betaking himself to a card-table. I 
 )acked his opponent, hoping to lose my money. It fell 
 >ut as I had wished. The other player left the table, I 
 ut in, and the guilty man and I were now face to 
 ace. 
 
 ' Monsieur,' I said, as he dealt the cards, 'will you be 
 o good as to begin a fresh score ? ' He swept his 
 counters from right to left somewhat hastily. The lady, 
 ny neighbour at dinner, passed by ; I gave her a sig- 
 lificant glance. 
 
 ' M. Frédéric Taillefer,' I asked, addressing my 
 pponent, * are you related to a family in Beauvais with 
 ivhom I am well acquainted ? ' 
 
 * Yes, sir.' He let the cards fall, turned pale, hid his 
 "ace in his hands, begged one of his backers to finish the 
 
 ame for him, and rose. 
 
 * It is too warm here,' he gasped ; ' I am afraid . . .' 
 He did not finish his sentence. An expression of 
 
 horrible anguish suddenly crossed his face, and he hur- 
 ried out of the room ; the master of the house following 
 him with what appeared to be keen anxiety. My 
 neighbour and I looked at each other, but her face was 
 
324 The Red House 
 
 overcast by indescribable sadness ; there was a tinge 
 of bitterness in it. 
 
 ' Is your behaviour very merciful ? * she asked, as I 
 rose from the card-table, where I had been playing and 
 losing. She drew me into the embrasure of the window 
 as she spoke. * Would you be willing to accept the 
 power of reading all hearts if you could have it ? Why 
 interfere with man's justice or God's ? We may 
 escape the one ; we shall never escape the other. Is 
 the prerogative of a President of a Court of Assize so 
 enviable ? And you have all but done the executioner's 
 office as well ' 
 
 ' After sharing and stimulating my curiosity,' I said, 
 ' you are lecturing me ! ' 
 
 ' You have made me think,' she answered. 
 
 'So it is to be peace to scoundrels, and woe to the 
 unfortunate, is it ? Let us down on our knees and 
 worship gold ! But shall we change the subject ? ' I 
 said with a laugh. * Please look at the young lady who 
 is just coming into the room.' 
 
 * Well ? ' 
 
 * I met her three days ago at a ball at the Neapolitan 
 embassy, and fell desperately in love. For pity's sake, 
 tell me who she is. No one could tell me ' 
 
 * That is Mile. Victorine Taillefer ! ' 
 Everything swam before my eyes ; I could scarcely 
 
 hear the tones of the speaker's voice. 
 
 * Her stepmother brought her home only a while ago 
 from the convent where she has been finishing her edu- 
 cation somewhat late. . . . For a long time her father 
 would not recognise her. She comes here to-day for the 
 first time. She is very handsome — and very rich ! ' 
 
 A sardonic smile went with the words. Just as she 
 spoke, we heard loud cries that seemed to come from an 
 adjoining room ; stifled though they were, they echoed 
 faintly through the garden. 
 
 ' Is not that M. Taillefer's voice ? ' I asked. Wd 
 
The Red House 325 
 
 oth listened intently to the sounds, and fearful groans 
 ached our ears. Just then our hostess hurried tovtrards 
 s and closed the window. 
 
 'Let us avoid scenes,' she said to us. 'If Mile. 
 
 aillefer were to hear her father, it would be quite 
 nough to send her into a fit of hysterics.' 
 
 The banker came back to the drawing-room, looked 
 or Victorine, and spoke a few low words in her ear. 
 
 I The girl sprang at once towards the door with an 
 :xclamation, and vanished. This produced a great sen- 
 ation. The card-parties broke up j every one asked his 
 leighbour what had happened. The buzz of talk grew 
 ouder, and groups were formed. 
 ' Has M. Taillefer ? ' I began. 
 ' Killed himself ? ' put in my sarcastic friend. ' You 
 ivould wear mourning for him with a light heart, I 
 can see.' 
 
 ' But what can have happened to him ? ' 
 ' Poor man ! ' (it was the lady of the house who 
 spoke) ' he suffers from a complaint — I cannot recollect 
 the name of it, though M. Brousson has told me about 
 it often enough — and he has just had a seizure.' 
 
 * What kind of complaint is it ? ' asked an examining 
 magistrate suddenly. 
 
 'Oh, it is something dreadful,* she answered} 'and 
 the doctors can do nothing for him. The agony must 
 be terrible. Taillefer had a seizure, I remember, once, 
 poor man, when he was staying with us in the 
 country ; I was obliged to go to a neighbour's house so 
 as not to hear him j his shrieks are fearful ; he tries to 
 kill himself; his daughter had to have him put into a 
 strait waistcoat and tied down to his bed. Poor man ! 
 he says there are live creatures in his head gnawing his 
 brain ; it is a horrible, sawing, shooting pain that throbs 
 through every nerve. He suffers so fearfully with his 
 head that he did not feel the blisters that they used to 
 apply at one time to draw the inflammation j but M. 
 
326 The Red House 
 
 Brousson, his present doctor, forbade this ; he says that 
 it is nervous inflammation, and puts leeches on the 
 throat, and applies laudanum to the head ; and, indeed, 
 since they began this treatment the attacks have been 
 less frequent j he seldom has them oftener than once 
 a year, in the late autumn. When he gets over one 
 of these seizures, Taillefer always says that he would 
 rather be broken on the wheel than endure such agony 
 again.' 
 
 ' That looks as if he suffered considerably ! * said a 
 stockbroker, the wit of the party. 
 
 ' Oh ! last year he very nearly died,' the lady went 
 on. * He went alone to his country-house on some 
 urgent business ; there was no one at hand perhaps, for 
 he lay stiff and stark, like one dead, for twenty-two 
 hours. They only saved his life by a scalding hot 
 bath.' 
 
 * Then is it some kind of tetanus ? ' asked the stock- 
 broker. 
 
 ' I do not know,' returned she. * He has had the 
 complaint nearly thirty years ; it began while he was 
 with the army. He says that he had a fall on a boat, 
 and a splinter got into his head, but Brousson hopes to 
 cure him. People say that in England they have found 
 out a way of treating it with prussic acid, and that you 
 run no risks ' 
 
 A shrill cry, louder than any of the preceding ones, 
 rang through the house. The blood ran cold in our 
 veins. 
 
 * There ! ' the banker's wife went on, ' that is just 
 what I was expecting every moment. It makes me 
 start on my chair and creep through every nerve. But — 
 it is an extraordinary thing ! — poor Taillefer, suffering 
 such unspeakable pain as he does, never runs any risk of 
 his life ! He eats and drinks as usual whenever he has 
 a little respite from that ghastly torture. . . . Nature 
 has such strange freaks. Some German doctor once told 
 
The Red House 327 
 
 him that it was a kind of gout in the head ; and Brousson's 
 opinion was pretty much the same.' 
 
 I left the little group about our hostess and went out 
 with Mile. Taillefer. A servant had come for her. She 
 was crying. 
 
 ' Oh^ mon Dieu, mon Dieu ! ' she sobbed ; ' how can my 
 father have offended heaven to deserve such suffering as 
 this ? ... So kind as he is.' 
 
 I went downstairs with her, and saw her into the 
 carriage ; her father was lying doubled up inside it. 
 Mile. Taillefer tried to smother the sound of her father's 
 moaning by covering his mouth with a handkerchief. 
 Unluckily, he saw me, and his drawn face seemed further 
 distorted, a scream of agony rent the air, he gave me a 
 dreadful look, and the carriage started. 
 
 That dinner party and the evening that followed it 
 was to exercise a painful influence on my life and on my 
 views. Honour and my own scruples forbade me to 
 connect myself with a murderer, no matter how good 
 a husband and father he might be, and so I must needs 
 fall in love with Mile. Taillefer. It was well-nigh 
 incredible how often chance drew me to visit at houses 
 where I knew I might meet Victorine. Again and 
 again, when I had pledged myself to renounce her 
 society, the evening would find me hovering about her. 
 The pleasures of this life were immense. It gave the 
 colour of an illicit passion to this unforbidden love, and 
 a chimerical remorse filled up the measure of my bliss. 
 I scorned myself when I greeted Taillefer, if by accident 
 he was with his daughter j but, after all, I bowed to 
 him. 
 
 Unluckily, in fact, Victorine, being something more 
 than a pretty girl, was well read, charming, and gifted 
 in no small degree, without being in the least a blue 
 stocking, without the slightest taint of affectation. 
 There is a certain reserve in her hght talk, and a pensive 
 
328 The Red House 
 
 graciousness about her that no one could resist. She 
 liked me, or, at any rate, she allowed me to think so j 
 there was a certain smile that she kept for me ; for me the 
 tones of her voice grew sweeter still. Oh ! she cared 
 about me, but she worshipped her father ; she would 
 praise his kindness to me, his gentleness, his various 
 perfections, and all her praises were like so many daggers 
 thrust into my heart. 
 
 At length I all but became an accessory after the 
 fact, an accomplice in the crime which had laid the 
 foundation of the wealth of the Taillefers. I was fain 
 to ask for Victorine's hand. I fled. I travelled abroad. 
 I went to Germany and to Andernach. But I came 
 back again, and Victorine was looking thinner and paler 
 than her wont. If she had been well and in good spirits, 
 I should have been safe ; but now the old feeling for her 
 was rekindled with extraordinary violence. 
 
 Fearing lest my scruples were degenerating into 
 monomania, I resolved to convene a Sanhedrim of 
 consciences that should not have been tampered with, 
 and so to obtain some light on this problem of the 
 higher morality and philosophy. The question had only 
 become more complex since my return. 
 
 So the day before yesterday I assembled those among 
 my friends whom I looked upon as notably honest, 
 scrupulous, and honourable. I asked two Englishmen, 
 a secretary to the Embassy and a Puritan ; a retired 
 Minister, in the character of matured worldly wisdom ; 
 a few young men still under the illusions of inexperiences ; 
 a priest, an elderly man ; my old guardian, a simple- 
 hearted being, who gave me the best account of his 
 management of my property that ever trustee has been 
 known to give in the annals of the Palais ; an advocate, a 
 notary, and a judge, — in short, all social opinions were 
 represented, and all practical wisdom. We had begun by 
 a good dinner, good talk, and a deal of mirth ; and over 
 the dessert I told my story plainly and simply (suppress- 
 
The Red House 329 
 
 !ng the name of my lady-love), and asked for sound 
 counsel. 
 
 * Give me your advice,' I said to my friends as I came 
 to an end. *Go thoroughly into the question as if it 
 svere a point of law. I will have an urn and billiard- 
 balls brought round, and you shall vote for or against my 
 marriage, the secrecy of the ballot shall be scrupulously 
 observed.' 
 
 Deep silence prevailed all at once. Then the notary 
 declined to act. 
 
 ' There is a contract to draw up,' he alleged. 
 
 Wine had had a quietening effect on my guardian j 
 indeed, it clearly behoved me to find a guardian for him 
 if he was to reach his home in safety. 
 
 ' I see how it is ! ' I said to myself. * A man who 
 does not give me an opinion is telling me pretty forcibly 
 what I ought to do.' 
 
 There was a general movement round the table. A 
 landowner, who had subscribed to a fund for putting a 
 headstone to General Foy's grave and providing for his 
 family, exclaimed — 
 
 ' " Even, as virtue, crime hath its degrees." ' 
 
 ' The babbler,' said the Minister in a low voice, as he 
 nudged my elbow. 
 
 'Where is the difficulty?' asked a duke, whose 
 property consisted of lands confiscated from Protestants 
 after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. 
 
 The advocate rose to his feet. 
 
 ' In law,' opined the mouthpiece of Justice, * the case 
 before us presents no difficulty whatever. Monsieur le 
 Duc is right ! Is there not a statute of limitations ? 
 Begin to inquire into the origins of a fortune, and where 
 should we all of us be ? This is a matter of conscience, 
 and not of law. If you must drag the case before some 
 tribunal, the confessional is the proper place in which to 
 hear it.' 
 
 And the Code incarnate, having said his say, sat down 
 
330 The Red House 
 
 and drank a glass of champagne. The man intrusted 
 with the interpretation of the Gospel, the good priest, 
 spoke next. 
 
 ' God has made us weak,' he said with decision. * If 
 you love the criminal's heiress, marry her ; but content 
 yourself with her mother's property, and give her father's 
 money to the poor.' 
 
 ' Why, in all likelihood the father only made a great 
 match because he had made money first,' cried one of 
 the pitiless quibblers that you meet with everywhere. 
 * And it is just the same with every little bit of good 
 fortune — it all came of his crime ! ' 
 
 ' The fact that the matter can be discussed is enough 
 to decide it ! There are some things which a man can- 
 not weigh and ponder,' cried my guardian, thinking to 
 enlighten the assembly by this piece of drunken gravity. 
 
 ' True ! ' said the secretary to the Embassy. 
 
 * True ! ' exclaimed the priest, each meaning quite 
 differently. 
 
 A doctrinaire, who escaped being elected by a bare 
 hundred and fifty votes out of a hundred and fifty-five, 
 rose next. 
 
 'Gentlemen,' said he, *this phenomenal manifestation 
 of the intellectual nature is one of the most strongly 
 marked instances of an exception to the normal condition 
 of things, the rules which society obeys. The decision, 
 therefore, on an abnormal case should be an extempor- 
 aneous effort of the conscience, a sudden conception, a 
 delicate discrimination of the inner consciousness, not 
 unlike the flashes of insight that constitute perception 
 in matters of taste. . . . Let us put it to the vote.' 
 
 * Yes, let us put it to the vote,' cried the rest of the 
 party. 
 
 Each was provided with two billiard-balls — one white, 
 the other red. White, the colour of virginity, was to 
 proscribe marriage ; red to count in favour of it. My 
 scruples prevented me from voting. My friends being 
 
The Red House 331 
 
 eventeen in number, nine made a decisive majority. 
 Ve grew excited and curious as each dropped his ball 
 nto the narrow-mouthed wicker basket, which holds 
 he numbered balls when players draw for their places at 
 )ool, for there was a certain novelty in this process of 
 noting by ballot on a nice point of conduct. When the 
 )asket was turned out there were nine white balls. 
 To me this did not come as a surprise ; but it occurred 
 me to count up the young men of my own age 
 imong this Court of Appeal. There were exactly nine of 
 :hese casuists ; one thought had been in all their minds. 
 ' Aha ! ' I said to myself, ' there was a unanimous 
 eeling against the marriage in their minds, and a no 
 ess unanimous verdict in favour of it among the rest ! 
 Here is a fix, and how am I to get out of it ? ' 
 
 * Where does the father-in-law live ? ' one of my school- 
 "ellows, less crafty than the rest, asked carelessly. 
 
 There is no longer a father-in-law in the case ! ' I 
 exclaimed. * A while ago my conscience spoke suffi- 
 ciently plainly to make your verdict superfluous. And if 
 t speaks more uncertainly to-day, here are the induce- 
 ments that led me to waver. Here is the tempter — this 
 letter that I received two months ago ; and 1 drew a card 
 from my pocket-book and held it up. 
 
 * Tou are requested to he present^ so it ran, * at the 
 funeral and burial service of 
 
 M. Jean-Frédéric Taillefer 
 
 of the firm of Taillefer and Company^ sometime contracter 
 of provisions to the Ariny^ late Chevalier of the Legion of 
 Honour and of the Order of the Golden Spur^ Captain of the 
 First Company of Grenadiers of the National Guard^ Paris: 
 ivho died on May ist^ at his house in the Rue foubert. 
 The interment will take place^ and so forth, and so forth. 
 
 * On behalf of y and so forth. 
 
23^ The Red House 
 
 * What am I to do now ? ' I continued. * I will just put 
 the question roughly before you. There is unquestion- 
 ably a pool of blood on Mile. Taillefer's estates. Her 
 father's property is one vast Aceldama. . . . Granted ! 
 But, then, Prosper Magnan has no representatives, and I 
 could not find any traces of the family of the pin-maker 
 who was murdered that night at Andernach. To whom 
 should the fortune be returned ? And ought it all to be 
 returned ? Have I any right to betray a secret discovered 
 by accident, to add a severed human head to an innocent 
 girl's marriage portion, to give her ugly dreams, to destroy 
 her pleasant illusions, to kill the father she loved a second 
 time, by telling her that there is a dark stain on all her 
 wealth ? 
 
 * I have borrowed a Dictionary of Cases of Conscience from 
 an old ecclesiastic, and found therein no solution whatever 
 of my doubts. Can you make a religious foundation for 
 the souls of Prosper Magnan and Walhenfer and Taillefer 
 now midway through this nineteenth century of ours ? 
 And as for endowing a charitable institution or awarding 
 periodic prizes to virtue — most of our charitable institu- 
 tions appear to me to be harbouring scoundrels, and the 
 prize of virtue would fell to the greatest rogues. 
 
 * And not only so. Would these investments, more or 
 less gratifying to vanity, be any reparation ? And is it 
 my place to make any? Then I am in love, passionately 
 in love. My love has come to be my life. If^ with- 
 out any apparent reason, I propose that a young girl, 
 accustomed to splendour and elegance, and a life abundant 
 in all the luxuries art can devise, a girl who indolently 
 enjoys Rossini's music at the Bouffons, — if to her I should 
 propose that she should rob herself of fifteen hundred 
 thousand francs for the benefit of aged imbeciles and 
 problematical scrofula patients, she would laugh and turn 
 her back upon me, or her confidante would take me for a 
 wag who makes jokes in poor taste. If in an ecstasy of 
 love I extol the charms of humble life in a cottage by 
 
The Red House ^33 
 
 le Loire, if I ask her to give up, for my sake, her life in 
 is, it would be a virtuous lie to begin with, and 
 robably would end in a sad experience for me, for I 
 lould lose the girl's heart ; she is passionately fond of 
 ancing and of pretty dresses, and, for the time being, of 
 ie. Enter some smart stripling of an officer with a 
 icely curled moustache, who shall play the piano, rave 
 bout Byron, and mount a horse gracefully, and I shall 
 le supplanted. What is to be done ? Gentlemen, advise 
 ne, for pity's sake ? ' 
 Then one of the party, who hitherto had not breathed 
 word, the Englishman with a Puritanical cast of face, 
 lot unlike the father of Jeanie Deans, shrugged his 
 ihoulders. 
 
 * Idiot that you were,' he said. ' What made you ask 
 lim if he came from Beauvais ? ' 
 
 Paris, May iSgi. 
 
THE ELIXIR OF LIFE 
 
 To THE Reader 
 
 At the very outset of the writer's literary career, a friend, 
 long since dead, gave him the subject of this Study. Later 
 on he found the same story in a collection published about 
 the beginning of the present century. To the best of his 
 belief, it is some stray fancy of the brain of Hoffmann of 
 Berlin ; probably it appeared in some German almanack, and 
 was omitted in the published editions of his collected works. 
 The Comédie Humaine is sufficiently rich in original creations 
 for the author to own to this innocent piece of plagiarism ; 
 when, like the worthy La Fontaine, he has told unwittingly, 
 and after his own fashion, a tale already related by another. 
 This is not one of the hoaxes in vogue in the year 1830, 
 when every author wrote his ' tale of horror' for the amuse- 
 ment of young ladies. When you have read the account of 
 Don Juan's decorous parricide, try to picture to yourself the 
 part which would be played under very similar circumstances 
 by honest folk who, in this nineteenth century, will take a 
 man's money and undertake to pay him a life annuity on the 
 faith of a chill, or let a house to an ancient lady for the term 
 of her natural life ? Would they be for resuscitating their 
 clients ? I should dearly like a connoisseur in consciences to 
 consider how far there is a resemblance between a Don Juan 
 and fathers who marry their children to great expectations. 
 Does humanity, which, according to certain philosophers, is 
 making progress, look on the art of waiting for dead men's 
 shoes as a step in the right direction ? To this art we owe 
 several honourable professions, which open up ways of living 
 on death. There are people who rely entirely on an expected 
 
 334 
 
The Elixir of Life 335 
 
 demise ; who brood over it, crouching each morning upon a 
 corpse, that serves again for their pillow at night. To this 
 class belong bishops' coadjutors, cardinals' supernumeraries, 
 tontiniers, and the like. Add to the list many delicately 
 scrupulous persons eager to buy landed property beyond their 
 means, who calculate with dry logic and in cold blood the 
 probable duration of the life of a father or of a stepmother, 
 some old man or woman of eighty or ninety, saying to them- 
 selves, ' I shall be sure to come in for it in three years' time, 
 
 and then ' A murderer is less loathsome to us than a 
 
 spy. The murderer may have acted on a sudden mad impulse ; 
 he may be penitent and amend ; but a spy is always a spy, 
 night and day, in bed, at table, as he walks abroad ; his vile- 
 ness pervades every moment of his life. Then what must it 
 be to live when every moment of your life is tainted with 
 murder ? And have we not just admitted that a host of 
 human creatures in our midst are led by our laws, customs, 
 and usages to dwell without ceasing on a fellow-creature's 
 death. There are men who put the weight of a coffin into 
 their deliberations as they bargain for Cashmere shawls for 
 their wives, as they go up the staircase of a theatre, or think 
 of going to the Bouffons, or of setting up a carriage ; who 
 are murderers in thought when dear ones, with the irresistible 
 charm of innocence, hold up childish foreheads to be kissed 
 with a ' Good-night, father ! ' Hourly they meet the gaze of 
 eyes that they would fain close for ever, eyes that still open 
 each morning to the light, like Belvidero's in this Study. 
 God alone knows the number of those who are parricides 
 in thought. Picture to yourself the state of mind of a man 
 who must pay a life annuity to some old woman whom 
 he scarcely knows ; both live in the country with a brook 
 between them, both sides are free to hate cordially, without 
 offending against the social conventions that require two 
 brothers to wear a mask if the older will succeed to the entail, 
 and the other to the fortune of a younger son. The whole 
 civilisation of Europe turns upon the principle of hereditary 
 succession as upon a pivot ; it would be madness to subvert the 
 principle ; but could we not, in an age that prides itself upon 
 its mechanical inventions, perfect this essential portion of the 
 social machinery ? 
 
336 The Elixir of Life 
 
 If the author has preserved the old-fashioned style of 
 address To the Reader before a work wherein he endeavours 
 to represent all literary forms, it is for the purpose of making 
 a remark that applies to several of the Studies, and very 
 specially to this. Every one of his compositions has been 
 based upon ideas more or less novel, which, as it seemed to him, 
 needed literary expression ; he can claim priority for certain 
 forms and for certain ideas which have since passed into the 
 domain of literature, and have there, in some instances, become 
 common property; so that the date of the first publication of 
 each Study cannot be a matter of indifference to those of his 
 readers who would fain do him justice. 
 
 Reading brings us unknown friends, and what friend is like 
 a reader ! We have friends in our own circle who read 
 nothing of ours. The author hopes to pay his debt, by 
 dedicating this work Dits ignotis. 
 
 One winter evening, in a princely palace at Ferrara, 
 Don Juan Belvidero was giving a banquet to a prince of 
 the house of Este. A banquet in those times was a mar- 
 vellous spectacle which only royal wealth or the power 
 of a mighty lord could furnish forth. Seated about a 
 table lit up with perfumed tapers, seven laughter-loving 
 women were interchanging sweet talk. The white 
 marble of the noble works of art about them stood out 
 against the red stucco walls, and made strong contrasts 
 with the rich Turkey carpets. Clad in satin, glittering 
 with gold, and covered with gems less brilliant than 
 their eyes, each told a tale of energetic passions as diverse 
 as their styles of beauty. They differed neither in their 
 ideas nor in their language ; but the expression of their 
 eyes, their glances, occasional gestures, or the tones of 
 their voices supplied a commentary, dissolute, wanton, 
 melancholy, or satirical, to their words. 
 
 One seemed to be saying — *The frozen heart of age 
 might kindle at my beauty.' 
 
 Another — * I love to lounge upon cushions, and think 
 with rapture of my adorers.' 
 
The Elixir of Life 337 
 
 A third, a neophyte at these banquets, was inclined to 
 blush. ' I feel remorse in the depths of my heart ! I 
 am a Catholic, and afraid of hell. But I love you, I love 
 you so that I can sacrifice my hereafter to you.' 
 
 The fourth drained a cup of Chian wine. ' Give me 
 a joyous life ! ' she cried ; * I begin life afresh each day 
 with the dawn. Forgetful of the past, with the intoxi- 
 cation of yesterday's rapture still upon me, I drink deep 
 of life — a whole lifetime of pleasure and of love ! ' 
 
 The woman who sat next to Juan Belvidero looked 
 at him with a feverish glitter in her eyes. She was 
 silent. Then — * I should need no hired bravo to kill 
 my lover if he forsook me ! ' she cried at last, and 
 laughed, but the marvellously wrought gold comfit box 
 in her fingers was crushed by her convulsive clutch. 
 
 ' When are you to be Grand Duke ? ' asked the sixth. 
 There was the frenzy of a Bacchante in her eyes, and 
 her teeth gleamed between the lips parted with a smile 
 of cruel glee. 
 
 * Yes, when is that father of yours going to die ? ' 
 asked the seventh, throwing her bouquet at Don Juan 
 with bewitching playfulness. It was a childish girl who 
 spoke, and the speaker was wont to make sport of sacred 
 things. 
 
 * Oh ! don't talk about it,' cried Don Juan, the young 
 and handsome giver of the banquet. * There is but one 
 eternal father, and, as ill luck will have it, he is mine.' 
 
 The seven Ferrarese, Don Juan's friends, the Prince 
 himself, gave a cry of horror. Two hundred years later, 
 in the days of Louis xv., people of taste would have 
 laughed at this witticism. Or was it, perhaps, that at 
 the outset of an orgy there is a certain unwonted lucidity 
 of mind ? Despite the taper light, the clamour of the 
 senses, the gleam of gold and silver, the fumes of wine, 
 and the exquisite beauty of the women, there may per- 
 haps have been in the depths of the revellers' hearts some 
 struggling glimmer of reverence for things divine and 
 
 y 
 
338 The Elixir of Life 
 
 human, until it was drowned in glowing floods of wine ? 
 Yet even then the flowers had been crushed, eyes were 
 growing dull, and drunkenness, in Rabelais' phrase, had 
 * taken possession of them down to their sandals.' 
 
 During that brief pause a door opened ; and as once 
 the Divine presence was revealed at Belshazzar's feast, 
 so now it seemed to be manifest in the apparition of an 
 old white-haired servant, who tottered in, and looked 
 sadly from under knitted brows at the revellers. He 
 gave a withering glance at the garlands, the golden 
 cups, the pyramids of fruit, the dazzling lights of the 
 banquet, the flushed scared faces, the hues of the cushions 
 pressed by the white arms of the women. 
 
 ' My Lord, your father is dying ! ' he said ; and at 
 those solemn words, uttered in hollow tones, a veil of 
 crape seemed to be drawn over the wild mirth. 
 
 Don Juan rose to his feet with a gesture to his guests 
 that might be rendered by, ' Excuse me j this kind of 
 thing does not happen every day.' 
 
 Does it so seldom happen that a father's death sur- 
 prises youth in the full-blown splendour of life, in the 
 midst of the mad riot of an orgy ? Death is as unex- 
 pected in his caprice as a courtesan in her disdain ; but 
 Death is truer — Death has never forsaken any man. 
 
 Don Juan closed the door of the banqueting-hall ; 
 and as he went down the long gallery, through the cold 
 and darkness, he strove to assume an expression in keep- 
 ing with the part he had to play ; he had thrown off his 
 mirthful mood, as he had thrown down his table napkin, 
 at the first thought of this rôle. The night was dark. 
 The mute servitor, his guide to the chamber where the 
 dying man lay, lighted the way so dimly, that Death, 
 aided by cold, silence, and darkness, and it may be by a 
 reaction of drunkenness, could send some sober thoughts 
 through the spendthrift's soul. He examined his life, 
 and became thoughtful, like a man involved in a lawsuit 
 on his way to the Court. 
 
The Elixir of Life 339 
 
 Bartolommeo Belvidero, Don Juan's father, was an 
 old man of ninety, who had devoted the greatest part 
 of his life to business pursuits. He had acquired vast 
 wealth in many a journey in magical Eastern lands, and 
 knowledge, so it was said, more valuable than the gold 
 and diamonds, which had almost ceased to have any 
 value for him. 
 
 * I would give more to have a tooth in my head than 
 for a ruby,' he would say at times with a smile. The 
 indulgent father loved to hear Don Juan's story of this 
 and that wild freak of youth. ' So long as these follies 
 amuse you, dear boy — ' he would say laughingly, as he 
 lavished money on his son. Age never took such 
 pleasure in the sight of youth ; the fond father did not 
 remember his own decaying powers while he looked on 
 that brilliant young life. 
 
 Bartolommeo Belvidero, at the age of sixty, had fallen 
 in love with an angel of peace and beauty. Don Juan 
 had been the sole fruit of this late and short-lived love. 
 For fifteen years the widower had mourned the loss of 
 his beloved Juana; and to this sorrow of age, his son 
 and his numerous household had attributed the strange 
 habits that he had contracted. He had shut himself up 
 in the least comfortable wing of his palace, and very 
 seldom left his apartments j even Don Juan himself 
 must first ask permission before seeing his father. If 
 this hermit, unbound by vows, came or went in his 
 palace or in the streets of Ferrara, he walked as if he 
 were in a dream, wholly engrossed, like a man at strife 
 with a memory, or a wrestler with some thought. 
 
 The young Don Juan might give princely banquets, 
 the palace might echo with clamorous mirth, horses 
 pawed the ground in the courtyards, pages quarrelled 
 and flung dice upon the stairs, but Bartolommeo ate 
 his seven ounces of bread daily and drank water. A 
 fowl was occasionally dressed for him, simply that the 
 black poodle, his faithful companion, might have the 
 
340 The Elixir of Life 
 
 bones. Bartolommeo never complained of the noise. 
 If huntsmen's horns and baying dogs disturbed his sleep 
 during his illness, he only said, ' Ah ! Don Juan has 
 come back again.' Never on earth has there been a 
 father so little exacting and so indulgent ; and, in con- 
 sequence, young Belvidero, accustomed to treat his 
 father unceremoniously, had all the faults of a spoiled 
 child. He treated old Bartolommeo as a wilful courtesan 
 treats an elderly adorer j buying indemnity for insolence 
 with a smile, selling good-humour, submitting to be 
 loved. 
 
 Don Juan, beholding scene after scene of his younger 
 years, saw that it would be a difficult task to find his 
 father's indulgence at fault. Some new-born remorse 
 stirred the depths of his heart j he felt almost ready to 
 forgive this father now about to die for having lived so 
 long. He had an accession of filial piety, like a thiePs 
 return in thought to honesty at the prospect of a million 
 adroitly stolen. 
 
 Before long Don Juan had crossed the lofty chilly 
 suite of rooms in which his father lived ; the penetrating 
 influences of the damp close air, the mustiness diffused 
 by old tapestries and presses thickly covered with dust 
 had passed into him, and now he stood in the old man's 
 antiquated room, in the repulsive presence of the death- 
 bed, beside a dying fire. A flickering lamp on a Gothic 
 table sent broad uncertain shafts of light, fainter or 
 brighter, across the bed, so that the dying man's face 
 seemed to wear a different look at every moment. The 
 bitter wind whistled through the crannies of the ill- 
 fitting casements j there was a smothered sound of snow 
 lashing the windows. The harsh contrast of these sights 
 and sounds with the scenes which Don Juan had just 
 quitted was so sudden, that he could not help shudder- 
 ing. He turned cold as he came towards the bed j 
 the lamp flared in a sudden vehement gust of wind and 
 lighted up his father's face i the features were wasted 
 
The Elixir of Life J4i 
 
 and distorted ; the skin that cleaved to their bony outlines 
 had taken wan livid hues, all the more ghastly by force 
 of contrast with the white pillows on which he lay. 
 The muscles about the toothless mouth had contracted 
 with pain and drawn apart the lips ; the moans that issued 
 between them with appalling energy found an accom- 
 paniment in the howling of the storm without. 
 
 In spite of every sign of coming dissolution, the most 
 striking thing about the dying face was its incredible 
 power. It was no ordinary spirit that wrestled there 
 with Death. The eyes glared with strange fixity of 
 gaze from the cavernous sockets hollowed by disease. 
 It seemed as if Bartolommeo sought to kill some enemy 
 sitting at the foot of his bed by the intent gaze of 
 dying eyes. That steady remorseless look was the more 
 appalling because the head that lay upon the pillow was 
 passive and motionless as a skull upon a doctor's table. 
 The outlines of the body, revealed by the coverlet, were 
 no less rigid and stiff; he lay there as one dead, save for 
 those eyes. There was something automatic about the 
 moaning sounds that came from the mouth. Don Juan 
 felt something like shame that he must be brought thus 
 to his father's bedside, wearing a courtesan's bouquet, 
 redolent of the fragrance of the banqueting-chamber and 
 the fumes of wine. 
 
 * You were enjoying yourself!' the old man cried as 
 he saw his son. 
 
 Even as he spoke the pure high notes of a woman's 
 voice, sustained by the sound of the viol on which she 
 accompanied her song, rose above the rattle of the storm 
 against the casements, and floated up to the chamber of 
 death. Don Juan stopped his ears against the barbarous 
 answer to his father's speech. 
 
 * I bear you no grudge, my child,' Bartolommeo went on. 
 The words were full of kindness, but they hurt Don 
 
 Juan ; he could not pardon this heart-searching goodness 
 on his father's part. 
 
34* The Elixir of Life 
 
 * What a remorseful memory for me ! ' he cried, hypo- 
 critically. 
 
 * Poor Juanino,' the dying man went on, in a smothered 
 voice, * I have always been so kind to you, that you could 
 not surely desire my death ? ' 
 
 ' Oh, if it were only possible to keep you here by 
 giving up a part of my own life ! ' cried Don Juan. 
 
 (* We can always say this sort of thing,' the spendthrift 
 thought ; 'it is as if I laid the whole world at my 
 mistress's feet.') 
 
 The thought had scarcely crossed his mind when the 
 old poodle barked. Don Juan shivered ; the response was 
 so intelligent that he fancied the dog must have under- 
 stood him. 
 
 * I was sure that I could count upon you, my son ! ' 
 cried the dying man. * I shall live. So be it ; you shall 
 be satisfied. I shall live, but without depriving you of a 
 single day of your life.' 
 
 * He is raving,' thought Don Juan. Aloud he added, 
 ' Yes, dearest father, yes ; you shall live, of course, as long 
 as I live, for your image will be for ever in my heart.' 
 
 * It is not that kind of life that I mean,' said the old 
 noble, summoning all his strength to sit up in bed ; for 
 a thrill of doubt ran through him, one of those suspicions 
 that come into being under a dying man's pillow. 
 
 * Listen, my son,' he went on, in a voice grown weak 
 with that last effort, * I have no more wish to give up 
 life than you to give up wine and mistresses, horses and 
 hounds, and hawks and gold ' 
 
 * I can well believe it,' thought the son ; and he knelt 
 down by the bed and kissed Bartolommeo's cold hands. 
 
 * But, father, my dear father,' he added aloud, ' we must 
 submit to the will of God.' 
 
 * I am God ! ' muttered the dying man. 
 
 * Do not blaspheme ! ' cried the other, as he saw the 
 menacing expression on his father's face. ' Beware what 
 you say ; you have received extreme unction, and J should 
 
The Elixir of Life 343 
 
 36 inconsolable if you were to die before my eyes in 
 nortal sin.' 
 
 * Will you listen to me ? ' cried Bartolommeo, and his 
 nouth twitched. 
 
 Don Juan held his peace ; an ugly silence prevailed. 
 Yet above the muffled sound of the beating of the snow 
 against the windows rose the sounds of the beautiful 
 voice and the viol in unison, far off and faint as the 
 dawn. The dying man smiled. 
 
 * Thank you,' he said, ' for bringing those singing 
 voices and the music, a banquet, young and lovely 
 women with fair faces and dark tresses, all the pleasures 
 of life ! Bid them wait for me ; for I am about to begin 
 life anew.' 
 
 'The delirium is at its height,' said Don Juan to 
 himself. 
 
 * I have found out a way of coming to life again,' the 
 speaker went on. * There, just look in that table drawer, 
 press the spring hidden by the griffin, and it will fly 
 open.' 
 
 * I have found it, father.' 
 
 *Well, then, now take out a little phial of rock 
 crystal.' 
 ' I have it.* 
 
 * I have spent twenty years in ' but even as he spoke 
 
 the old man felt how very near the end had come, and 
 summoned all his dying strength to say, *■ As soon as the 
 breath is out of me, rub me all over with that hquid, 
 and I shall come to life again.' 
 
 * There is very little of it,' his son remarked. 
 Though Bartolommeo could no longer speak, he could 
 
 still hear and see. When those words dropped from 
 Don Juan, his head turned with appalling quickness, 
 his neck was twisted like the throat of some marble 
 statue which the sculptor has condemned to remain 
 stretched out for ever, the wide eyes had come to have a 
 ghastly fixity. 
 
344 The Elixir of Life 
 
 He was dead, and in death he lost his last and sole 
 illusion. 
 
 He had sought a shelter in his son's heart, and it had 
 proved to be a sepulchre, a pit deeper than men dig for 
 their dead. The hair on his head had risen and stiffened 
 with horror, his agonised glance still spoke. He was a 
 father rising in just anger from his tomb, to demand 
 vengeance at the throne of God. 
 
 * There ! it is all over with the old man ! cried Don 
 Juan. 
 
 He had been so interested in holding the mysterious 
 phial to the lamp, as a drinker holds up the wine-bottle at 
 the end of a meal, that he had not seen his father's eyes 
 fade. The cowering poodle looked from his master to 
 the elixir, just as Don Juan himself glanced again and 
 again from his father to the flask. The lamplight 
 flickered. There was a deep silence ; the viol was 
 mute. Juan Belvidero thought that he saw his father 
 stir, and trembled. The changeless gaze of those accus- 
 ing eyes frightened him ; he closed them hastily, as he 
 would have closed a loose shutter swayed by the wind 
 of an autumn night. He stood there motionless, lost 
 in a world of thought. 
 
 Suddenly thé silence was broken by a shrill sound like 
 the creaking of a rusty spring. It startled Don Juan ; he 
 all but dropped the phial. A sweat, colder than the 
 blade of a dagger, issued through every pore. It was 
 only a piece of clockwork, a wooden cock that sprang 
 out and crowed three times, an ingenious contrivance 
 by which the learned of that epoch were wont to be 
 awakened at the appointed hour to begin the labours of 
 the day. Through the windows there came already a 
 flush of dawn. The thing, composed of wood, and 
 cords, and wheels, and pulleys, was more faithful in its 
 service than ht- in his duty to Bartolommeo — he, a man 
 with that peculiar piece of human mechanism within 
 him that we call a heart. 
 
The Elixir of Life 345 
 
 Don Juan the sceptic shut the flask again in the 
 ecret drawer in the Gothic table — he meant to run no 
 nore risks of losing the mysterious liquid. 
 
 Even at that solemn moment he heard the murmur ot 
 
 crowd in the gallery, a confused sound of voices, of 
 tifled laughter and light footfalls, and the rustling of 
 ilks — the sounds of a band of revellers struggling for 
 ravity. The door opened, and in came the Prince and 
 
 on Juan's friends, the seven courtesans, and the singers, 
 ishevelled and wild like dancers surprised by the dawn, 
 hen the tapers that have burned through the night 
 truggle with the sunlight. 
 
 They had come to offer the customary condolence to 
 the young heir. 
 
 ' Oho ! is poor Don Juan really taking this seriously.? ' 
 said the Prince in Brambilla's ear. 
 
 * Well, his father was very good,' she returned. 
 
 But Don Juan's night-thoughts had left such unmis- 
 takable traces on his features, that the crew was awed 
 into silence. The men stood motionless. The women, 
 with wine-parched lips and cheeks marbled with kisses, 
 knelt down and began a prayer. Don Juan could scarce 
 help trembling when he saw splendour and mirth and 
 laughter and song and youth and beauty and power 
 bowed in reverence before Death. But in those times, 
 in that adorable Italy of the sixteenth century, religion and 
 revelry went hand in hand ; and religious excess became 
 a sort of debauch, and a debauch a religious rite ! 
 
 The Prince grasped Don Juan's hand affectionately, 
 then when all faces had simultaneously put on the same 
 grimace — half-gloomy, half-indifferent — the whole 
 masque disappeared, and left the chamber of death empty. 
 It was like an allegory of life. 
 
 As they went down the staircase, the Prince spoke to 
 Rivabarella : ' Now, who would have taken Don Juan's 
 impiety for a boast ? He loves his father.' 
 
 ' Did vou see that black dog } ' asked La Brambilla. 
 
34^ The Elixir of Life 
 
 * He is enormously rich now,' sighed Bianca Cavatoh'no. 
 
 * What is that to me ? ' cried the proud Veronese (she 
 who had crushed the comfit-box). 
 
 * What does it matter to you, forsooth ? ' cried the 
 Duke. *With his money he is as much a prince as 
 lam.' 
 
 At first Don Juan was swayed hither and thither by 
 countless thoughts, and wavered between two decisions. 
 He took counsel with the gold heaped up by his father, 
 and returned in the evening to the chamber of death, his 
 whole soul brimming over with hideous selfishness. He 
 found all his household busy there. ' His lordship ' was 
 to lie in state to-morrow ; all Ferrara would flock to 
 behold the wonderful spectacle ; and the servants were 
 busy decking the room and the couch on which the dead 
 man lay. At a sign from Don Juan all his people 
 stopped, dumbfounded and trembling. 
 
 * Leave me alone here,' he said, and his voice was 
 changed, *and do not return until I leave the room.' 
 
 When the footsteps of the old servitor, who was the last 
 to go, echoed but faintly along the paved gallery, Don 
 Juan hastily locked the door, and, sure that he was quite 
 alone, * Let us try,' he said to himself. 
 
 Bartolommeô's body was stretched on a long table. The 
 embalmers had laid a sheet over it, to hide from all eyes 
 the dreadful spectacle of a corpse so wasted and shrunken 
 that it seemed like a skeleton, and only the face was 
 uncovered. This mummy-like form lay in the middle 
 of the room. The limp clinging linen lent itself to the 
 outlines it shrouded — so sharp, bony, and thin. Large 
 violet patches had already begun to spread over the 
 face ; the embalmer's work had not been finished too 
 soon. 
 
 Don Juan, strong as he was in his scepticism, felt a 
 tremor as he opened the magic crystal flask. When he 
 stood over that face, he was trembling so violently, that 
 he was actually obliged to wait for a moment. But Don 
 
The Elixir of Life ^47 
 
 uan had acquired an early familiarity with evil ; his 
 orals had been corrupted by a licentious court, a reflec- 
 lion worthy of the Duke of Urbino crossed his mind, 
 nd it was a keen sense of curiosity that goaded him 
 nto boldness. The devil himself might have whispered 
 he words that were echoing through his brain. Moisten 
 ne of the eyes with the liquid ! He took up a linen cloth, 
 oistened it sparingly with the precious fluid, and passed 
 t lightly over the right eyelid of the corpse. The eye 
 nclosed. . . . 
 
 * Aha ! ' said Don Juan. He gripped the flask tightly, 
 s we clutch in dreams the branch from which we hang 
 uspended over a precipice. 
 
 For the eye was full of life. It was a young child's eye 
 set in a death's head ; the light quivered in the depths of 
 its youthful hquid brightness. Shaded by the long dark 
 lashes, it sparkled like the strange lights that travellers 
 see in lonely places in winter nights. That eye seemed 
 as if it would fain dart fire at Don Juan ; he saw it 
 thinking, upbraiding, condemning, uttering accusations, 
 threatening doom ; it cried aloud, and gnashed upon 
 him. All anguish that shakes human souls was gathered 
 there ; supplications the most tender, the wrath of kings, 
 the love in a girl's heart pleading with the headsman ; 
 then, and after all these, the deeply searching glance a 
 man turns on his fellows as he mounts the last step of the 
 scaff'old. Life so dilated in this fragment of life that 
 Don Juan shrank back; he walked up and down the 
 room, he dared not meet that gaze, but he saw nothing 
 else. The ceiling and the hangings, the whole room was 
 sown with living points of fire and intelligence. Every- 
 where those gleaming eyes haunted him. 
 
 ' He might very likely have lived another hundred 
 years!' he cried involuntarily. Some diabolical influence 
 had drawn him to his father, and again he gazed at that 
 luminous spark. The eyelid closed and opened again 
 abruptly ; it was like a woman's sign of assent. It was an 
 
J48 The Elixir of Life 
 
 intelligent movement. If a voice had cried ' Yes ! ' Don 
 Juan could not have been more startled. 
 
 ' What is to be done ? ' he thought. 
 
 He nerved himself to try to close the white eyelid. 
 In vain. 
 
 * Kill it ? That would perhaps be parricide,' he 
 debated with himself. 
 
 ' Yes,' the eye said, with a strange sardonic quiver of 
 the lid. 
 
 * Aha ! ' said Don Juan to himself, ' here is witchcraft 
 at work ! ' And he went closer to crush the thing. A 
 great tear trickled over the hollow cheeks, and fell on 
 Don Juan's hand. 
 
 * It is scalding ! ' he cried. He sat down. This 
 struggle exhausted him ; it was as if, like Jacob of old, 
 he was wrestling with an angel. 
 
 At last he rose. 'So long as there is no blood ' 
 
 he muttered. 
 
 Then, summoning all the courage needed for a coward's 
 crime, he extinguished the eye, pressing it with the 
 Hnen cloth, turning his head away, A terrible groan 
 startled him. It was the poor poodle, who died with a 
 long-drawn howl. 
 
 ' Could the brute have been in the secret ? ' thought 
 Don Juan, looking down at the faithful creature. 
 
 Don Juan Belvidero was looked upon as a dutiful son. 
 He reared a white marble monument on his father's 
 tomb, and employed the greatest sculptors of the time 
 upon it. He did not recover perfect ease of mind till 
 the day when his father knelt in marble before Religion, 
 and the heavy weight of the stone had sealed the mouth 
 of the grave in which he had laid the one feeling of 
 remorse that sometimes flitted through his soul in 
 moments of physical weariness. 
 
 He had drawn up a list of the wealth heaped up by the 
 old merchant in the East, and he became a miser : had 
 
The Elixir of Life 349 
 
 le not to provide for a second lifetime ? His views of 
 ife were the more profound and penetrating ; he grasped 
 ts significance, as a whole, the better, because he saw it 
 icross a grave. All men, all things, he analysed once and 
 "or all; he summed up the Past, represented by its records; 
 he Present in the law, its crystallised form ; the Future, 
 evealed by religion. He took spirit and matter, and 
 lung them into his crucible, and found — Nothing. 
 Thenceforward he became Don Juan. 
 
 At the outset of his life, in the prime of youth and the 
 Deauty of youth, he knew the illusions of life for what 
 they were ; he despised the world, and made the utmost 
 Df the world. His felicity could not have been of the 
 bourgeois kind, rejoicing in periodically recurrent bouilli^ 
 n the comforts of a warming-pan, a lamp of a night, 
 and a new pair of slippers once a quarter. Nay, rather 
 he seized upon existence as a monkey snatches a nut, 
 and after no long toying with it, proceeds deftly to strip 
 off the mere husks to reach the savoury kernel within. 
 
 Poetry and the sublime transports of passion scarcely 
 reached ankle-depth with him now. He in nowise fell into 
 the error of strong natures who flatter themselves now and 
 again that little souls will believe in a great soul, and are 
 willing to barter their own lofty thoughts of the future 
 for the small change of our life-annuity ideas. He, even 
 as they, had he chosen, might well have walked with his 
 feet on the earth and his head in the skies ; but he liked 
 better to sit on earth, to wither the soft, fresh, fragrant 
 lips of a woman with kisses, for, like Death, he devoured 
 everything without scruple as he passed ; he would have 
 full fruition ; he was an Oriental lover, seeking pro- 
 longed pleasures easily obtained. He sought nothing 
 but a woman in women, and cultivated cynicism, until 
 it became with him a habit of mind. When his mistress, 
 from the couch on which she lay, soared and was lost in 
 regions of ecstatic bliss, Don Juan followed suit, earnest, 
 expansive, serious as any German student But he said 
 
350 The Elixir of Life 
 
 I, while she, in the transports of intoxication, said We. 
 He understood to admiration the art of abandoning him- 
 self to the influence of a woman j he was always clever 
 enough to make her believe that he trembled like some 
 boy fresh from college before his first partner at a dance, 
 when he asks her, ' Do you like dancing ? ' But, no 
 less, he could be terrible at need, could unsheath a 
 formidable sword and make short work of Commandants. 
 Banter lurked beneath his simplicity, mocking laughter 
 behind his tears — for he had tears at need, like any 
 woman nowadays who says to her husband, *Give me 
 a carriage, or I shall go into a consumption.' 
 
 For a merchant the world is a bale of goods or a mass 
 of circulating bills ; for most young men it is a woman, 
 and for a woman here and there it is a man ; for a 
 certain order of mind it is a salon, a coterie, a quarter of 
 the town, or some single city i but Don Juan found his 
 world in himself. 
 
 This model of grace and dignity, this captivating wit, 
 moored his bark by every shore ; but wherever he was 
 led he was never carried away, and was only steered in a 
 course of his own choosing. The more he saw, the 
 more he doubted. He watched men narrowly, and saw 
 how, beneath the surface, courage was often rashness; 
 and prudence, cowardice ; generosity, a clever piece ot 
 calculation; justice, a wrong; delicacy, pusillanimity; 
 honesty, a modus vivendi ; and by some strange dispensa- 
 tion of fate, he must see that those who at heart were 
 really honest, scrupulous, just, generous, prudent, or 
 brave were held cheaply by their fellow-men. 
 
 * What a cold-blooded jest ! ' said he to himself. * It 
 was not devised by a God.' 
 
 From that time forth he renounced a better world, 
 and never uncovered himself when a Name was pro- 
 nounced, and for him the carven saints in the churches 
 became works of art. He understood the mechanism 
 of society too well to clash wantonly with its prejudices; 
 
The Elixir of Life 351 
 
 tor, after all, he was not as powerful as the executioner, 
 but he evaded social laws with the wit and grace so well 
 rendered in the scene with M. Dimanche. He was, in 
 fact, MoHère's Don Juan, Goethe's Faust, Byron's 
 Manfred, Mathurin's Melmoth — great allegorical figures 
 drawn by the greatest men of genius in Europe, to 
 which Mozart's harmonies, perhaps, do no more justice 
 than Rossini's lyre. Terrible allegorical figures that 
 shall endure as long as the principle of evil existing in 
 the heart of man shall produce a few copies from century 
 to century. Sometimes the type becomes half-human 
 when incarnate as a Mirabeau, sometimes it is an inarticu- 
 late force in a Bonaparte, sometimes it overwhelms the 
 universe with irony as a Rabelais ; or, yet again, it appears 
 when a Maréchal de Richelieu elects to laugh at human 
 beings instead of scoffing at things, or when one of the 
 most famous of our ambassadors goes a step further and 
 scoffs at both men and things. But the profound genius 
 of Juan Belvidero anticipated and resumed all tliese. All 
 things were a jest to him. His was the life of a mocking 
 spirit. All men, all institutions, all realities, all ideas 
 were within its scope. As for eternity, after half an 
 hour of familiar conversation with Pope Julius ii. he had 
 said, laughing — 
 
 * If it is absolutely necessary to make a choice, I would 
 rather believe in God than in the Devil , power com- 
 bined with goodness always offers more resources than 
 the spirit of Evil can boast.' 
 
 * Yes ; still God requires repentance in this present 
 world-^ ' 
 
 'So you always think of your indulgences,' returned 
 Don Juan Belvidero. * Well, well, I have another life 
 in reserve in which to repent of the sins of my previous 
 existence.' 
 
 ' Oh, if you regard old age in that light,' cried the 
 Pope, ' you are in danger of canonisation ' 
 
 * After your elevation to the Papacy nothing is 
 
2S2 The Elixir of Life 
 
 incredible.* And they went to watch the workmen who 
 were building the huge basilica dedicated to Saint Peter. 
 
 ' Saint Peter, as the man of genius who laid the 
 foundation of our double power,' the Pope said to Don 
 Juan, * deserves this monument. Sometimes, though, at 
 night, I think that a deluge will wipe all this out as with 
 a sponge, and it will be all to begin over again.' 
 
 Don Juan and the Pope began to laugh; they under- 
 stood each other. A fool would have gone on the 
 morrow to amuse himself with Julius ii. in Raphael's 
 studio or at the delicious Villa Madama ; not so Bel- 
 videro. He went to see the Pope as pontiff, to be con- 
 vinced of any doubts that he (Don Juan) entertained. 
 Over his cups the Rovere would have been capable of 
 denying his own infallibility and of commenting on the 
 Apocalypse. 
 
 Nevertheless, this legend has not been undertaken to 
 furnish materials for future biographies of Don Juan j it 
 is intended to prove to honest folk that Belvidero did 
 not die in a duel with stone, as some lithographers would 
 have us believe. 
 
 When Don Juan Belvidero reached the age of sixty 
 he settled in Spain, and there in his old age he married a 
 young and charming Andalusian wife. But of set 
 purpose he was neither a good husband nor a good father. 
 He had observed that we are never so tenderly loved as 
 by women to whom we scarcely give a thought. Dona 
 Elvira had been devoutly brought up by an old aunt in 
 a castle a few leagues from San Lucar in a remote part 
 of Andalusia. She was a model of devotion and grace. 
 Don Juan foresaw that this would be a woman who 
 would struggle long against a passion before yielding, 
 and therefore hoped to keep her virtuous until his death. 
 It was a jest undertaken in earnest, a game of chess 
 which he meant to reserve till his old age. Don Juan 
 had learned wisdom from the mistakes made by his 
 
The Elixir of Life 353 
 
 father Bartolommeo ; he determined that the least 
 details of his life in old age should be subordinated to 
 one object — the success of the drama which was to be 
 played out upon his deathbed. 
 
 For the same reason the largest part of his wealth was 
 buried in the cellars of his palace at Ferrara, whither he 
 seldom went. As for the rest of his fortune, it was 
 invested in a life annuity, with a view to give his wife 
 and children an interest in keeping him alive ; but this 
 Machiavellian piece of foresight was scarcely necessary. 
 His son, young Felipe Belvidero, grew up as a Spaniard 
 as religiously conscientious as his father was irreligious, 
 in virtue, perhaps, of the old rule, ' A miser has a spend- 
 thrift son.' The Abbot of San-Lucar was chosen by 
 Don Juan to be the director of the consciences of the 
 Duchess of Belvidero and her son Felipe. The ecclesi- 
 astic was a holy man, well shaped, and admirably well 
 proportioned. He had fine dark eyes, a head like that 
 of Tiberius, worn with fasting, bleached by an ascetic 
 life, and, like all dwellers in the wilderness, was daily 
 tempted. The noble lord had hopes, it may be, of de- 
 spatching yet another monk before his term of life was 
 out. 
 
 But whether because the Abbot was every whit as 
 clever as Don Juan himself, or Doiïa Elvira possessed 
 more discretion or more virtue than Spanish wives are 
 usually credited with, Don Juan was compelled to spend 
 his declining years beneath his own roof, with no more 
 scandal under it than if he had been an ancient country 
 parson. Occasionally he would take wife and son to 
 task for negligence in the duties of religion, peremptorily 
 insisting that they should carry out to the letter the 
 obligations imposed upon the flock by the Court of 
 Rome. Indeed, he was never so well pleased as when 
 he had set the courtly Abbot discussing some case of 
 conscience with Dona Elvira and Felipe. 
 
 At length, however, despite the prodigious care that 
 
354 The Elixir of Life 
 
 the great magnifico, Don Juan Belvidero, took of him- 
 self, the days of decrepitude came upon him, and with 
 those days the constant importunity of physical feeble- 
 ness, an importunity all the more distressing by contrast 
 with the wealth of memories of his impetuous youth and 
 the sensual pleasures of middle age. The unbeliever 
 who in the height of his cynical humour had been 
 wont to persuade others to believe in laws and prin- 
 ciples at which he scoffed, must repose nightly upon a 
 perhaps. The great Duke, the pattern of good breeding, 
 the champion of many a carouse, the proud ornament of 
 Courts, the man of genius, the graceful winner of hearts 
 that he had wrung as carelessly as a peasant twists an 
 osier withe, was now the victim of a cough, of a ruthless 
 sciatica, of an unmannerly gout. His teeth gradually 
 deserted him, as at the end of an evening the fairest and 
 best-dressed women take their leave one by one till the 
 room is left empty and desolate. The active hands 
 became palsy-stricken, the shapely legs tottered as he 
 walked. At last, one night, a stroke of apoplexy caught 
 him by the throat in its icy clutch. After that fatal day 
 he grew morose and stern. 
 
 He would reproach his wife and son with their 
 devotion, casting it in their teeth that the affecting and 
 thoughtftil care that they lavished so tenderly upon him 
 was bestowed because they knew that his money was 
 invested in a life annuity. Then Elvira and Felipe 
 would shed bitter tears and redouble their caresses, and 
 the wicked old man's insinuating voice would take an 
 affectionate tone — 'Ah, you will forgive me, will you 
 not, dear friends, dear wife ? I am rather a nuisance. 
 Alas, Lord in heaven, how canst Thou use me as the 
 instrument by which Thou provest these two angelic 
 creatures ? I who should be the joy of their lives am 
 become their scourge . . .' 
 
 In this manner he kept them tethered to his pillow, 
 blotting out the memory of whole months of fretfulness 
 
The Elixir of Life 355 
 
 and unkindness in one short hour when he chose to dis- 
 play for them the ever-new treasures of his pinchbeck 
 tenderness and charm of manner — a system of paternity 
 that yielded him an infinitely better return than his own 
 father's indulgence had formerly gained. At length his 
 bodily infirmities reached a point when the task of laying 
 him in bed became as difficult as the navigation of a 
 felucca in the perils of an intricate channel. Then 
 came the day of his death ; and this brilliant sceptic, 
 whose mental faculties alone had survived the most 
 dreadful of all destructions, found himself between his 
 two special antipathies — the doctor and the confessor. 
 But he was jovial with them. Did he not see a light 
 gleaming in the future beyond the veil ? The pall that 
 is like lead for other men was thin and translucent for 
 him ; the light-footed, irresistible delights of youth 
 danced beyond it like shadows. 
 
 It was on a beautiful summer evening that Don Juan 
 felt the near approach of death. The sky of Spain was 
 serene and cloudless ; the air was full of the scent of 
 orange-blossom ; the stars shed clear, pure gleams of 
 light ; nature without seemed to give the dying man 
 assurance of resurrection ; a dutiful and obedient son sat 
 there watching him with loving and respectful eyes. 
 Towards eleven o'clock he desired to be left alone with 
 this single-hearted being. 
 
 * Felipe,' said the father, in tones so soft and aifec- 
 tionate that the young man trembled, and tears of glad- 
 ness came to his eyes ; never had that stern father spoken 
 his name in such a tone. ' Listen, my son,' the dying 
 man went on. * I am a great sinner. All my life long, 
 however, I have thought of my death. I was once the 
 friend of the great Pope Julius 11.; and that illustrious 
 Pontiff, fearing lest the excessive excitability of my 
 senses should entangle me in mortal sin between the 
 moment of my death and the time of my anointing with 
 
35^ The Elixir of Life 
 
 the holy oil, gave me a flask that contains a little of the 
 holy water that once issued from the rock in the wilder- 
 ness. I have kept the secret of this squandering of 
 a treasure belonging to Holy Church, but I am per- 
 mitted to reveal the mystery in articula mortis to my son. 
 You will find the flask in a drawer in that Gothic table 
 that always stands by the head of the bed. . . . The 
 precious little crystal flask may be of use yet again for 
 you, dearest Felipe. Will you swear to me, by your 
 salvation, to carry out my instructions faithfully ? ' 
 
 Felipe looked at his father, and Don Juan was too 
 deeply learned in the lore of the human countenance 
 not to die in peace with that look as his warrant, as his 
 own father had died in despair at meeting the expression 
 in his son's eyes. 
 
 ' You deserved to have a better father,* Don Juan 
 went on. * I dare to confess, my child, that while the 
 reverend Abbot of San-Lucar was administering the 
 Viaticum I was thinking of the incompatibility of the 
 co-existence of two powers so infinite as God and the 
 Devil ' 
 
 ' Oh, father ! ' 
 
 * And I said to myself, when Satan makes his peace 
 he ought surely to stipulate for the pardon of his fol- 
 lowers, or he will be the veriest scoundrel. The thought 
 haunted me ; so I shall go to hell, my son, unless you 
 carry out my wishes.' 
 
 ' Oh, quick ; tell me quickly, father.' 
 
 ' As soon as I have closed my eyes,' Don Juan went 
 on, * and that may be in a few minutes, you must take 
 my body before it grows cold and lay it on a table in 
 this room. Then put out the lamp ; the light of the 
 stars should be sufiicient. Take off my clothes, reciting 
 Jves and Paters the while, raising your soul to God in 
 prayer, and carefully anoint my lips and eyes with this 
 holy water ; begin with the face, and proceed suc- 
 cessively to my limbs and the rest of my body j my 
 
The Elixir of Life 357 
 
 dear son, the power of God is so great that you must be 
 astonished at nothing.' 
 
 Don Juan felt death so near, that he added in a terrible 
 voice, ' Be careful not to drop the flask.' 
 
 Then he breathed his last gently in the arms of his 
 son, and his son's tears fell fast over his sardonic, haggard 
 features. 
 
 It was almost midnight when Don Felipe Belvidero 
 laid his father's body upon the table. He kissed the 
 sinister brow and the grey hair ; then he put out the 
 lamp. 
 
 By the soft moonlight that lit strange gleams across 
 the country without, Felipe could dimly see his father's 
 body, a vague white thing among the shadows. The 
 dutiful son moistened a linen cloth with the liquid, and, 
 absorbed in prayer, he anointed the revered face. A 
 deep silence reigned. Felipe heard faint, indescribable 
 rustlings ; it was the breeze in the tree-tops, he thought. 
 But when he had moistened the right arm, he felt him- 
 self caught by the throat, a young strong hand held 
 him in a tight grip — it was his father's hand ! He 
 shrieked aloud ; the flask dropped from his hand and 
 broke in pieces. The liquid evaporated ; the whole 
 household hurried into the room, holding torches aloft. 
 That shriek had startled them, and filled them with as 
 much terror as if the Trumpet of the Angel sounding 
 on the Last Day had rung through earth and sky. The 
 room was full of people, and a horror-stricken crowd 
 beheld the fainting Felipe upheld by the strong arm of 
 his father, who clutched him by the throat. They saw 
 another thing, an unearthly spectacle — Don Juan's face 
 grown young and beautiful as Antinous, with its dark 
 hair and brilliant eyes and red Hps, a head that made 
 horrible efforts, but could not move the dead, wasted 
 body. 
 
 An old servitor cried, * A miracle ! a miracle ! ' and all 
 the Spaniards echoed, * A miracle ! a miracle ! ' 
 
 z 2 
 
358 The Elixir of Life 
 
 Dona Elvira, too pious to attribute this to magic, sent 
 for the Abbot of San-Lucar ; and the Prior beholding the 
 miracle with his own eyes, being a clever man, and 
 withal an Abbot desirous of augmenting his revenues, 
 determined to turn the occasion to profit. He im- 
 mediately gave out that Don Juan would certainly be 
 canonised j he appointed a day for the celebration of the 
 apotheosis in his convent, which thenceforward, he said, 
 should be called the convent of San Juan of Lucar. At 
 these words a sufficiently facetious grimace passed over 
 the features of the late Duke. 
 
 The taste of the Spanish people for ecclesiastical 
 solemnities is so well known, that it should not be diffi- 
 cult to imagine the religious pantomime by which the 
 Convent of San-Lucar celebrated the translation of the 
 blessed Don yuan Belvidero to the abbey-church. The 
 tale of the partial resurrection had spread so quickly from 
 village to village, that a day or two after the death of the 
 illustrious nobleman the report had reached every place 
 within fifty miles of San-Lucar, and it was as good as a 
 play to see the roads covered already with crowds flock- 
 ing in on all sides, their curiosity whetted still further by 
 the prospect of a Te Deum sung by torchlight. The old 
 abbey-church of San-Lucar, a marvellous building erected 
 by the Moors, a mosque of Allah, which for three cen- 
 turies had heard the name of Christ, could not hold the 
 throng that poured in to see the ceremony. Hidalgos in 
 their velvet mantles, with their good swords at their sides, 
 swarmed like ants, and were so tightly packed in among 
 the pillars that they had not room to bend the knees, 
 which never bent save to God. Charming peasant girls, 
 in the basquina that defines the luxuriant outlines of their 
 figures, lent an arm to white-haired old men. Young 
 men, with eyes of fire, walked beside aged crones in 
 holiday array. Then came couples tremulous with joy, 
 voung lovers led thither by curiosity, newly wedded folk ; 
 children timidly clasping each other by the hand. This 
 
The Elixir of Life 359 
 
 throng, so rich in colouring, in vivid contrasts, laden with 
 flowers, enamelled Hke a meadow, sent up a soft murmur 
 through the quiet night. Then the great doors of the 
 church opened. 
 
 Late comers who remained without saw afar, through 
 the three great open doorways, a scene of which the 
 theatrical illusions of modern opera can give but a faint 
 idea. The vast church was lighted up by thousands of 
 candles, offered by saints and sinners alike eager to win 
 the favour of this new candidate for canonisation, and 
 these self-commending illuminations turned the great 
 building into an enchanted fairyland. The black arch- 
 ways, the shafts and capitals, the recessed chapels with gold 
 and silver gleaming in their depths, the galleries, the Arab 
 traceries, all the most delicate outlines of that delicate 
 sculpture, burned in the excess of light like the fantastic 
 figures in the red heart of a brazier. At the further end 
 of the church, above that blazing sea, rose the high altar 
 like a splendid dawn. All the glories of the golden 
 lamps and silver candlesticks, of banners and tassels, of 
 the shrines of the saints and votive offerings, paled before 
 the gorgeous brightness of the reliquary in which Don 
 Juan lay. The blasphemer's body sparkled with gems, 
 and flowers, and crystal, with diamonds and gold, and 
 plumes white as the wings of seraphim ; they had set it 
 up on the altar, where the picture of Christ had stood. 
 All about him blazed a host of tall candles j the air 
 quivered in the radiant light. The worthy Abbot of San- 
 Lucar, in pontifical robes, with his mitre set with precious 
 stones, his rochet and golden crosier, sat enthroned in 
 imperial state among his clergy in the choir. Rows of 
 impassive aged faces, silver-haired old men clad in fine 
 linen albs, were grouped about him, as the saints who 
 confessed Christ on earth are set by painters, each in his 
 place, about the throne of God in heaven. The precentor 
 and the dignitaries of the chapter, adorned with the 
 gorgeous insignia of ecclesiastical vanity, came and went 
 
360 The Elixir of Life 
 
 through the clouds of incense, like stars upon their 
 courses in the firmament. 
 
 When the hour of triumph arrived, the bells awoke the 
 echoes far and wide, and the whole vast crowd raised to 
 God the first cry of praise that begins the Te Deum. A 
 sublime cry ! High, pure notes, the voices of women in 
 ecstasy, mingled in it with the sterner and deeper voices 
 of men ; thousands of voices sent up a volume of sound 
 so mighty, that the straining, groaning organ-pipes could 
 not dominate that harmony. But the shrill sound of 
 children's singing among the choristers, the reverberation 
 of deep bass notes, awakened gracious associations, visions 
 of childhood, and of man in his strength, and rose above 
 that entrancing harmony of human voices blended in one 
 sentiment of love. 
 
 Te Deum laudamus ! 
 
 The chant went up from the black masses of men and 
 women kneeling in the cathedral, like a sudden breaking 
 out of light in darkness, and the silence was shattered as by 
 a peal of thunder. The voices floated up with the clouds 
 of incense that had begun to cast thin bluish veils over the 
 fanciful marvels of the architecture, and the aisles were 
 filled with splendour and perfume and light and melody. 
 Even at the moment when that music of love and thanks- 
 giving soared up to the altar, Don Juan, too well bred 
 not to express his acknowledgments, too witty not to 
 understand how to take a jest, bridled up in his reliquary, 
 and responded with an appalling burst of laughter. Then 
 the Devil having put him in mind of the risk he was 
 running of being taken for an ordinary man, a saint, a 
 Boniface, a Pantaleone, he interrupted the melody of love 
 by a yell; the thousand voices of hell joined in it. Earth 
 blessed. Heaven banned. The church was shaken to its 
 ancient foundations. 
 
 Te Deum laudamus ! cried the many voices. 
 
 ' Go to the devil, brute beasts that you are ! Dm ! 
 Dios ! Carajos demonios ! Idiots ! What fools you are 
 
The Elixir of Life 361 
 
 with your dotard-God ! ' and a torrent of imprecations 
 poured forth like a stream of red-hot lava from the mouth 
 of Vesuvius. 
 
 * Deus Sabaoth / . . . Sabaoth ! ' cried the believers. 
 
 ' You are insulting the majesty of Hell,' shouted Don 
 Juan, gnashing his teeth. In another moment the living 
 arm struggled out of the reliquary, and was brandished 
 over the assembly in mockery and despair. 
 
 * The saint is blessing us,' cried the old women, 
 children, lovers, and the credulous among the crowd. 
 
 And note how often we are deceived in the homage 
 we pay ; the great man scoffs at those who praise him, 
 and pays compliments now and again to those whom he 
 laughs at in the depths of his heart. 
 
 Just as the Abbot, prostrate before the altar, was chant- 
 ing * Sancte fohannes^ ora pro nobis ! ' he heard a voice 
 exclaim sufficiently distinctly : ' O coglione ! ' 
 
 * What can be going on up there ? ' cried the Sub-prior, 
 as he saw the reliquary move. 
 
 * The saint is playing the devil,' replied the Abbot. 
 Even as he spoke, the living head tore itself away from 
 
 the lifeless body, and dropped upon the sallow cranium 
 of the officiating priest. 
 
 * Remember Doîïa Elvira ! ' cried the thing, with its 
 teeth set fast in the Abbot's head. 
 
 The Abbot's horror-stricken shriek disturbed the 
 ceremony ; all the ecclesiastics hurried up and crowded 
 about their chief. 
 
 * Idiot, tell us now if there is a God ! ' the voice cried, 
 as the Abbot, bitten through the brain, drew his last 
 breath. 
 
 Paris, Octeher 183a 
 
Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty 
 at the Edinburgh University Press 
 
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