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+Project Gutenberg’s Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski
+
+Author: Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+
+Release Date: November 6, 2007 [EBook #23362]
+Last Updated: September 20, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABRISKI ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABRISKI
+
+By Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+
+Boston And New York Houghton Mifflin Company
+
+Copyright, 1873, 1885, and 1901
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+We are accustomed to speak with a certain light irony of the tendency
+which women have to gossip, as if the sin itself, if it is a sin, were
+of the gentler sex, and could by no chance be a masculine peccadillo.
+So far as my observation goes, men are as much given to small talk as
+women, and it is undeniable that we have produced the highest type of
+gossiper extant. Where will you find, in or out of literature, such
+another droll, delightful, chatty busybody as Samuel Pepys, Esq.,
+Secretary to the Admiralty in the reigns of those fortunate gentlemen
+Charles II. and James II. of England? He is the king of tattlers as
+Shakespeare is the king of poets.
+
+If it came to a matter of pure gossip, I would back Our Club against
+the Sorosis or any women’s club in existence. Whenever you see in our
+drawing-room four or five young fellows lounging in easy-chairs, cigar
+in hand, and now and then bringing their heads together over the small
+round Japanese table which is always the pivot of these social circles,
+you may be sure that they are discussing Tom’s engagement, or Dick’s
+extravagance, or Harry’s hopeless passion for the younger Miss
+Fleurdelys. It is here old Tippleton gets execrated for that everlasting
+_bon mot_ of his which was quite a success at dinner-parties forty years
+ago; it is here the belle of the season passes under the scalpels of
+merciless young surgeons; it is here B’s financial condition is handled
+in a way that would make B’s hair stand on end; it is here, in short,
+that everything is canvassed--everything that happens in our set, I
+mean, much that never happens, and a great deal that could not possibly
+happen. It was at Our Club that I learned the particulars of the Van
+Twiller affair.
+
+It was great entertainment to Our Club, the Van Twiller affair, though
+it was rather a joyless thing, I fancy, for Van Twiller. To understand
+the case fully, it should be understood that Ralph Van Twiller is one of
+the proudest and most sensitive men living. He is a lineal descendant
+of Wouter Van Twiller, the famous old Dutch governor of New York--Nieuw
+Amsterdam, as it was then; his ancestors have always been burgomasters
+or admirals or generals, and his mother is the Mrs. Vanrensselaer
+Van-zandt Van Twiller whose magnificent place will be pointed out to
+you on the right bank of the Hudson, as you pass up the historic river
+towards Idlewild. Ralph is about twenty-five years old. Birth made him
+a gentleman, and the rise of real estate--some of it in the family since
+the old governor’s time--made him a millionaire. It was a kindly fairy
+that stepped in and made him a good fellow also. Fortune, I take it, was
+in her most jocund mood when she heaped her gifts in this fashion on
+Van Twiller, who was, and will be again, when this cloud blows over, the
+flower of Our Club.
+
+About a year ago there came a whisper--if the word “whisper” is not
+too harsh a term to apply to what seemed a mere breath floating gently
+through the atmosphere of the billiard-room--imparting the intelligence
+that Van Twiller was in some kind of trouble. Just as everybody suddenly
+takes to wearing square-toed boots, or to drawing his neckscarf through
+a ring, so it became all at once the fashion, without any preconcerted
+agreement, for everybody to speak of Van Twilier as a man in some way
+under a cloud. But what the cloud was, and how he got under it, and why
+he did not get away from it, were points that lifted themselves into
+the realm of pure conjecture. There was no man in the club with strong
+enough wing to his imagination to soar to the supposition that Van
+Twiller was embarrassed in money matters. Was he in love? That appeared
+nearly as improbable; for if he had been in love all the world--that
+is, perhaps a hundred first families--would have known all about it
+instantly.
+
+“He has the symptoms,” said Delaney, laughing. “I remember once when
+Jack Hemming “--
+
+“Ned!” cried Hemming, “I protest against any allusion to that business.”
+
+This was one night when Van Twiller had wandered into the club, turned
+over the magazines absently in the reading-room, and wandered out again
+without speaking ten words. The most careless eye would have remarked
+the great change that had come over Van Twiller. Now and then he would
+play a game of billiards with De Peyster or Haseltine, or stop to chat a
+moment in the vestibule with old Duane; but he was an altered man.
+When at the club, he was usually to be found in the small smoking-room
+up-stairs, seated on a fauteuil fast asleep, with the last number of
+The Nation in his hand. Once, if you went to two or three places of an
+evening, you were certain to meet Van Twiller at them all. You seldom
+met him in society now.
+
+By and by came whisper number two--a whisper more emphatic than number
+one, but still untraceable to any tangible mouthpiece. This time the
+whisper said that Van Twiller _was_ in love. But with whom? The list of
+possible Mrs. Van Twillers was carefully examined by experienced hands,
+and a check placed against a fine old Knickerbocker name here and there,
+but nothing satisfactory arrived at. Then that same still small voice
+of rumor, but now with an easily detected staccato sharpness to it, said
+that Van Twiller was in love--with an actress! Van Twiller, whom it had
+taken all these years and all this waste of raw material in the way of
+ancestors to bring to perfection--Ralph Van Twiller, the net result
+and flower of his race, the descendant of Wouter, the son of Mrs.
+Van-rensselaer Vanzandt Van Twiller--in love with an actress! That was
+too ridiculous to be believed--and so everybody believed it. Six
+or seven members of the club abruptly discovered in themselves an
+unsuspected latent passion for the histrionic art. In squads of two
+or three they stormed successively all the theatres in town--Booth’s,
+Wallack’s, Daly’s Fifth Avenue (not burnt down then), and the Grand
+Opera House. Even the shabby homes of the drama over in the Bowery,
+where the Germanic Thespis has not taken out his naturalization papers,
+underwent rigid exploration. But no clue was found to Van Twiller’s
+mysterious attachment. The _opéra bouffe_, which promised the widest
+field for investigation, produced absolutely nothing, not even a crop
+of suspicions. One night, after several weeks of this, Delaney and I
+fancied that we caught sight of Van Twiller in the private box of an
+up-town theatre, where some thrilling trapeze performance was going on,
+which we did not care to sit through; but we concluded afterwards that
+it was only somebody who looked like him. Delaney, by the way, was
+unusually active in this search. I dare say he never quite forgave Van
+Twiller for calling him Muslin Delaney. Ned is fond of ladies’ society,
+and that’s a fact.
+
+The Cimmerian darkness which surrounded Van Twiller’s inamorata left
+us free to indulge in the wildest conjectures. Whether she was
+black-tressed Melpomene, with bowl and dagger, or Thalia, with the fair
+hair and the laughing face, was only to be guessed at. It was popularly
+conceded, however, that Van Twiller was on the point of forming a
+dreadful _mésalliance_.
+
+Up to this period he had visited the club regularly. Suddenly he ceased
+to appear. He was not to be seen on Fifth Avenue, or in the Central
+Park, or at the houses he generally frequented. His chambers--and mighty
+comfortable chambers they were--on Thirty-fourth Street were deserted.
+He had dropped out of the world, shot like a bright particular star from
+his orbit in the heaven of the best society.
+
+The following conversation took place one night in the smoking-room:--
+
+“Where’s Van Twiller?”
+
+“Who’s seen Van Twiller?”
+
+“What has become of Van Twiller?”
+
+Delaney picked up the Evening Post, and read--with a solemnity that
+betrayed young Firkins into exclaiming, “By Jove, now!”--
+
+“Married, on the 10th instant, by the Rev. Friar Laurence, at the
+residence of the bride’s uncle, Montague Capulet, Esq., Miss Adrienne Le
+Couvreur to Mr. Ralph Van Twiller, both of this city. No cards.”
+
+“Free List suspended,” murmured De Peyster.
+
+“It strikes me,” said Frank Livingstone, who had been ruffling the
+leaves of a magazine at the other end of the table, “that you fellows
+are in a great fever about Van Twiller.”
+
+“So we are.”
+
+“Well, he has simply gone out of town.”
+
+“Where?”
+
+“Up to the old homestead on the Hudson.”
+
+“It’s an odd time of year for a fellow to go into the country.”
+
+“He has gone to visit his mother,” said Livingstone.
+
+“In February?”
+
+“I did n’t know, Delaney, that there was any statute in force
+prohibiting a man from visiting his mother in February if he wants to.”
+
+Delaney made some light remark about the pleasure of communing with
+Nature with a cold in her head, and the topic was dropped.
+
+Livingstone was hand in glove with Van Twilier, and if any man shared
+his confidence it was Livingstone. He was aware of the gossip and
+speculation that had been rife in the club, but he either was not at
+liberty or did not think it worth while to relieve our curiosity. In the
+course of a week or two it was reported that Van Twiller was going to
+Europe; and go he did. A dozen of us went down to the Scythia to see him
+off. It was refreshing to have something as positive as the fact that
+Van Twiller had sailed.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Shortly after Van Twiller’s departure the whole thing came out.
+Whether Livingstone found the secret too heavy a burden, or whether it
+transpired through some indiscretion on the part of Mrs. Vanrensselaer
+Vanzandt Van Twiller, I cannot say; but one evening the entire story was
+in the possession of the club.
+
+Van Twiller had actually been very deeply interested--not in an actress,
+for the legitimate drama was not her humble walk in life, but--in
+Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski, whose really perilous feats on the trapeze
+had astonished New York the year before, though they had failed to
+attract Delaney and me the night we wandered into the up-town theatre on
+the trail of Van Twiller’s mystery.
+
+That a man like Van Twiller should be fascinated even for an instant by
+a common circus-girl seems incredible; but it is always the incredible
+thing that happens. Besides, Mademoiselle Olympe was not a common
+circus-girl; she was a most daring and startling gymnaste, with a beauty
+and a grace of movement that gave to her audacious performance almost
+an air of prudery. Watching her wondrous dexterity and pliant strength,
+both exercised without apparent effort, it seemed the most natural
+proceeding in the world that she should do those unpardonable things.
+She had a way of melting from one graceful posture into another, like
+the dissolving figures thrown from a stereopticon. She was a lithe,
+radiant shape out of the Grecian mythology, now poised up there above
+the gaslights, and now gleaming through the air like a slender gilt
+arrow.
+
+I am describing Mademoiselle Olympe as she appeared to Van Twiller
+on the first occasion when he strolled into the theatre where she was
+performing. To me she was a girl of eighteen or twenty years of age
+(maybe she was much older, for pearl-powder and distance keep these
+people perpetually young), slightly but exquisitely built, with sinews
+of silver wire; rather pretty, perhaps, after a manner, but showing
+plainly the effects of the exhaustive drafts she was making on her
+physical vitality. Now, Van Twiller was an enthusiast on the subject of
+calisthenics. “If I had a daughter,” Van Twiller used to say, “I would
+n’t send her to a boarding-school, or a nunnery; I ‘d send her to a
+gymnasium for the first five years. Our American women have no physique.
+They are lilies, pallid, pretty--and perishable. You marry an American
+woman, and what do you marry? A headache. Look at English girls. They
+are at least roses, and last the season through.” Walking home from the
+theatre that first night, it flitted through Van Twiller’s mind that if
+he could give this girl’s set of nerves and muscles to any one of the
+two hundred high-bred women he knew, he would marry her on the spot and
+worship her forever.
+
+The following evening he went to see Mademoiselle Olympe again. “Olympe
+Zabriski,” he soliloquized, as he sauntered through the lobby--“what a
+queer name! Olympe is French, and Zabriski is Polish. It is her _nom de
+guerre_, of course; her real name is probably Sarah Jones. What kind of
+creature can she be in private life, I wonder? I wonder if she wears
+that costume all the time, and if she springs to her meals from a
+horizontal bar. Of course she rocks the baby to sleep on the trapeze.”
+ And Van Twiller went on making comical domestic tableaux of Mademoiselle
+Zabriski, like the clever, satirical dog he was, until the curtain rose.
+
+This was on a Friday. There was a matinée the next day, and he attended
+that, though he had secured a seat for the usual evening entertainment.
+Then it became a habit of Van Twiller’s to drop into the theatre for
+half an hour or so every night, to assist at the interlude, in which
+she appeared. He cared only for her part of the programme, and timed his
+visits accordingly. It was a surprise to himself when he reflected, one
+morning, that he had not missed a single performance of Mademoiselle
+Olympe for nearly two weeks.
+
+“This will never do,” said Van Twiller. “Olympe”--he called her
+Olympe, as if she were an old acquaintance, and so she might have been
+considered by that time--“is a wonderful creature; but this will never
+do. Van, my boy, you must reform this altogether.”
+
+But half past nine that night saw him in his accustomed orchestra
+chair, and so on for another week. A habit leads a man so gently in the
+beginning that he does not perceive he is led--with what silken threads
+and down what pleasant avenues it leads him! By and by the soft silk
+threads become iron chains, and the pleasant avenues Avernus!
+
+Quite a new element had lately entered into Van Twiller’s enjoyment of
+Mademoiselle Olympe’s ingenious feats--a vaguely born apprehension
+that she might slip from that swinging bar; that one of the thin cords
+supporting it might snap, and let her go headlong from the dizzy height.
+Now and then, for a terrible instant, he would imagine her lying a
+glittering, palpitating heap at the foot-lights, with no color in her
+lips! Sometimes it seemed as if the girl were tempting this kind of
+fate. It was a hard, bitter life, and nothing but poverty and sordid
+misery at home could have driven her to it. What if she should end it
+all some night, by just unclasping that little hand? It looked so small
+and white from where Van Twiller sat!
+
+This frightful idea fascinated while it chilled him, and helped to
+make it nearly impossible for him to keep away from the theatre. In the
+beginning his attendance had not interfered with his social duties or
+pleasures; but now he came to find it distasteful after dinner to do
+anything but read, or walk the streets aimlessly, until it was time to
+go to the play. When that was over, he was in no mood to go anywhere but
+to his rooms. So he dropped away by insensible degrees from his habitual
+haunts, was missed, and began to be talked about at the club. Catching
+some intimation of this, he ventured no more in the orchestra stalls,
+but shrouded himself behind the draperies of the private box in which
+Delaney and I thought we saw him on one occasion.
+
+Now, I find it very perplexing to explain what Van Twiller was wholly
+unable to explain to himself. He was not in love with Mademoiselle
+Olympe. He had no wish to speak to her, or to hear her speak. Nothing
+could have been easier, and nothing further from his desire, than
+to know her personally. A Van Twiller personally acquainted with a
+strolling female acrobat! Good heavens I That was something possible
+only with the discovery of perpetual motion. Taken from her theatrical
+setting, from her lofty perch, so to say, on the trapeze-bar, Olympe
+Zabriski would have shocked every aristocratic fibre in Van Twiller’s
+body. He was simply fascinated by her marvellous grace and _élan_, and
+the magnetic recklessness of the girl. It was very young in him and very
+weak, and no member of the Sorosis, or all the Sorosisters together,
+could have been more severe on Van Twiller than he was on himself. To be
+weak, and to know it, is something of a punishment for a proud man. Van
+Twiller took his punishment, and went to the theatre, regularly.
+
+“When her engagement comes to an end,” he meditated, “that will finish
+the business.”
+
+Mademoiselle Olympe’s engagement finally did come to an end, and
+she departed. But her engagement had been highly beneficial to the
+treasury-chest of the up-town theatre, and before Van Twiller could get
+over missing her she had returned from a short Western tour, and her
+immediate reappearance was underlined on the play-bills.
+
+On a dead-wall opposite the windows of Van Twiller’s sleeping-room there
+appeared, as if by necromancy, an aggressive poster with Mademoiselle
+Olympe Zabriski on it in letters at least a foot high. This thing stared
+him in the face when he woke up, one morning. It gave him a sensation as
+if she had called on him overnight, and left her card.
+
+From time to time through the day he regarded that poster with a
+sardonic eye. He had pitilessly resolved not to repeat the folly of the
+previous month. To say that this moral victory cost him nothing would
+be to deprive it of merit. It cost him many internal struggles. It is
+a fine thing to see a man seizing his temptation by the throat, and
+wrestling with it, and trampling it under foot like St. Anthony. This
+was the spectacle Van Twiller was exhibiting to the angels.
+
+The evening Mademoiselle Olympe was to make her reappearance, Van
+Twiller, having dined at the club, and feeling more like himself than
+he had felt for weeks, returned to his chamber, and, putting on
+dressing-gown and slippers, piled up the greater portion of his library
+about him, and fell to reading assiduously. There is nothing like a
+quiet evening at home with some slight intellectual occupation, after
+one’s feathers have been stroked the wrong way.
+
+When the lively French clock on the mantel-piece--a base of malachite
+surmounted by a flying bronze Mercury with its arms spread gracefully on
+the air, and not remotely suggestive of Mademoiselle Olympe in the
+act of executing her grand flight from the trapeze--when the clock,
+I repeat, struck nine, Van Twilier paid no attention to it. That was
+certainly a triumph. I am anxious to render Van Twiller all the justice
+I can, at this point of the narrative, inasmuch as when the half hour
+sounded musically, like a crystal ball dropping into a silver bowl,
+he rose from the chair automatically, thrust his feet into his
+walking-shoes, threw his overcoat across his arm, and strode out of the
+room.
+
+To be weak and to scorn your weakness, and not to be able to conquer
+it, is, as has been said, a hard thing; and I suspect it was not with
+unalloyed satisfaction that Van Twiller found himself taking his seat
+in the back part of the private box night after night during the second
+engagement of Mademoiselle Olympe. It was so easy not to stay away!
+
+In this second edition of Van Twiller’s fatuity, his case was even
+worse than before. He not only thought of Olympo quite a number of
+times between breakfast and dinner, he not only attended the interlude
+regularly, but he began, in spite of himself, to occupy his leisure
+hours at night by dreaming of her. This was too much of a good thing,
+and Van Twiller regarded it so. Besides, the dream was always the
+same--a harrowing dream, a dream singularly adapted to shattering the
+nerves of a man like Van Twiller. He would imagine himself seated at the
+theatre (with all the members of Our Club in the parquette), watching
+Mademoiselle Olympe as usual, when suddenly that young lady would launch
+herself desperately from the trapeze, and come flying through the air
+like a firebrand hurled at his private box. Then the unfortunate man
+would wake up with cold drops standing on his forehead.
+
+There is one redeeming feature in this infatuation of Van Twiller’s
+which the sober moralist will love to look upon--the serene
+unconsciousness of the person who caused it. She went through her _rôle_
+with admirable aplomb, drew her salary, it may be assumed, punctually,
+and appears from first to last to have been ignorant that there was
+a miserable slave wearing her chains nightly in the left-hand
+proscenium-box.
+
+That Van Twiller, haunting the theatre with the persistency of an
+ex-actor, conducted himself so discreetly as not to draw the fire of
+Mademoiselle Olympe’s blue eyes shows that Van Twiller, however deeply
+under a spell, was not in love. I say this, though I think if Van
+Twiller had not been Van Twiller, if he had been a man of no family and
+no position and no money, if New York had been Paris and Thirty-fourth
+Street a street in the Latin Quarter--but it is useless to speculate on
+what might have happened. What did happen is sufficient.
+
+It happened, then, in the second week of Queen Olympe’s second
+unconscious reign, that an appalling Whisper floated up the Hudson,
+effected a landing at a point between Spuyten Duyvel Creek and Cold
+Spring, and sought out a stately mansion of Dutch architecture standing
+on the bank of the river. The Whisper straightway informed the lady
+dwelling in this mansion that all was not well with the last of the Van
+Twillers; that he was gradually estranging himself from his peers, and
+wasting his nights in a play-house watching a misguided young woman
+turning unmaidenly somersaults on a piece of wood attached to two ropes.
+
+Mrs. Vanrensselaer Vanzandt Van Twiller came down to town by the next
+train to look into this little matter.
+
+She found the flower of the family taking an early breakfast, at 11 a.m.,
+in his cosey apartments on Thirty-fourth Street. With the least
+possible circumlocution she confronted him with what rumor had reported
+of his pursuits, and was pleased, but not too much pleased, when he
+gave her an exact account of his relations with Mademoiselle Zabriski,
+neither concealing nor qualifying anything. As a confession, it was
+unique, and might have been a great deal less entertaining. Two or three
+times in the course of the narrative, the matron had some difficulty
+in preserving the gravity of her countenance. After meditating a few
+minutes, she tapped Van Twiller softly on the arm with the tip of her
+parasol, and invited him to return with her the next day up the Hudson
+and make a brief visit at the home of his ancestors. He accepted the
+invitation with outward alacrity and inward disgust.
+
+When this was settled, and the worthy lady had withdrawn, Van Twiller
+went directly to the establishment of Messrs Ball, Black, and Company,
+and selected, with unerring taste, the finest diamond bracelet
+procurable. For his mother? Dear me, no! She had the family jewels.
+
+I would not like to state the enormous sum Van Twiller paid for this
+bracelet. It was such a clasp of diamonds as would have hastened
+the pulsation of a patrician wrist. It was such a bracelet as Prince
+Camaralzaman might have sent to the Princess Badoura, and the Princess
+Badoura--might have been very glad to get.
+
+In the fragrant Levant morocco case, where these happy jewels lived when
+they were at home, Van Twiller thoughtfully placed his card, on the back
+of which he had written a line begging Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski to
+accept the accompanying trifle from one who had witnessed her
+graceful performances with interest and pleasure. This was not done
+inconsiderately. “Of course I must enclose my card, as I would to any
+lady,” Van Twiller had said to himself. “A Van Twiller can neither write
+an anonymous letter nor make an anonymous present.” Blood entails its
+duties as well As its privileges.
+
+The casket despatched to its destination, Van Twiller felt easier in his
+mind. He was under obligations to the girl for many an agreeable hour
+that might otherwise have passed heavily. He had paid the debt, and he
+had paid it _en prince_, as became a Van Twiller. He spent the rest of
+the day in looking at some pictures at Goupil’s, and at the club, and in
+making a few purchases for his trip up the Hudson. A consciousness
+that this trip up the Hudson was a disorderly retreat came over him
+unpleasantly at intervals.
+
+When he returned to his rooms late at night, he found a note lying
+on the writing-table. He started as his eye caught the words “------
+Theatre” stamped in carmine letters on one corner of the envelope. Van
+Twiller broke the seal with trembling fingers.
+
+Now, this note some time afterwards fell into the hands of Livingstone,
+who showed it to Stuyvesant, who showed it to Delaney, who showed it to
+me, and I copied it as a literary curiosity. The note ran as follows:--
+
+     Mr. Van Twiller,
+
+     Dear SiR--i am verry greatfull to you for that Bracelett. it
+     come just in the nic of time for me. The Mademoiselle
+     Zabriski dodg is about Plaid out. my beard is getting to
+     much for me. i shall have to grow a mustash and take to some
+     other line of busyness, I dont no what now, but will let you
+     no. You wont feel bad if i sell that Bracelett. i have seen
+     Abrahams Moss and he says he will do the square thing. Pleas
+     accep my thanks for youre Beautifull and Unexpected present.
+
+     Youre respectfull servent,
+
+     Charles Montmorenci Walters.
+
+The next day Van Twiller neither expressed nor felt any unwillingness to
+spend a few weeks with his mother at the old homestead.
+
+And then he went abroad.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski, by
+Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABRISKI ***
+
+***** This file should be named 23362-0.txt or 23362-0.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/2/3/3/6/23362/
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
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diff --git a/23362-0.zip b/23362-0.zip
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+Project Gutenberg's Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski
+
+Author: Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+
+Release Date: November 6, 2007 [EBook #23362]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABRISKI ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABRISKI
+
+By Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+
+Boston And New York Houghton Mifflin Company
+
+Copyright, 1873, 1885, and 1901
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+We are accustomed to speak with a certain light irony of the tendency
+which women have to gossip, as if the sin itself, if it is a sin, were
+of the gentler sex, and could by no chance be a masculine peccadillo.
+So far as my observation goes, men are as much given to small talk as
+women, and it is undeniable that we have produced the highest type of
+gossiper extant. Where will you find, in or out of literature, such
+another droll, delightful, chatty busybody as Samuel Pepys, Esq.,
+Secretary to the Admiralty in the reigns of those fortunate gentlemen
+Charles II. and James II. of England? He is the king of tattlers as
+Shakespeare is the king of poets.
+
+If it came to a matter of pure gossip, I would back Our Club against
+the Sorosis or any women's club in existence. Whenever you see in our
+drawing-room four or five young fellows lounging in easy-chairs, cigar
+in hand, and now and then bringing their heads together over the small
+round Japanese table which is always the pivot of these social circles,
+you may be sure that they are discussing Tom's engagement, or Dick's
+extravagance, or Harry's hopeless passion for the younger Miss
+Fleurdelys. It is here old Tippleton gets execrated for that everlasting
+_bon mot_ of his which was quite a success at dinner-parties forty years
+ago; it is here the belle of the season passes under the scalpels of
+merciless young surgeons; it is here B's financial condition is handled
+in a way that would make B's hair stand on end; it is here, in short,
+that everything is canvassed--everything that happens in our set, I
+mean, much that never happens, and a great deal that could not possibly
+happen. It was at Our Club that I learned the particulars of the Van
+Twiller affair.
+
+It was great entertainment to Our Club, the Van Twiller affair, though
+it was rather a joyless thing, I fancy, for Van Twiller. To understand
+the case fully, it should be understood that Ralph Van Twiller is one of
+the proudest and most sensitive men living. He is a lineal descendant
+of Wouter Van Twiller, the famous old Dutch governor of New York--Nieuw
+Amsterdam, as it was then; his ancestors have always been burgomasters
+or admirals or generals, and his mother is the Mrs. Vanrensselaer
+Van-zandt Van Twiller whose magnificent place will be pointed out to
+you on the right bank of the Hudson, as you pass up the historic river
+towards Idlewild. Ralph is about twenty-five years old. Birth made him
+a gentleman, and the rise of real estate--some of it in the family since
+the old governor's time--made him a millionaire. It was a kindly fairy
+that stepped in and made him a good fellow also. Fortune, I take it, was
+in her most jocund mood when she heaped her gifts in this fashion on
+Van Twiller, who was, and will be again, when this cloud blows over, the
+flower of Our Club.
+
+About a year ago there came a whisper--if the word "whisper" is not
+too harsh a term to apply to what seemed a mere breath floating gently
+through the atmosphere of the billiard-room--imparting the intelligence
+that Van Twiller was in some kind of trouble. Just as everybody suddenly
+takes to wearing square-toed boots, or to drawing his neckscarf through
+a ring, so it became all at once the fashion, without any preconcerted
+agreement, for everybody to speak of Van Twilier as a man in some way
+under a cloud. But what the cloud was, and how he got under it, and why
+he did not get away from it, were points that lifted themselves into
+the realm of pure conjecture. There was no man in the club with strong
+enough wing to his imagination to soar to the supposition that Van
+Twiller was embarrassed in money matters. Was he in love? That appeared
+nearly as improbable; for if he had been in love all the world--that
+is, perhaps a hundred first families--would have known all about it
+instantly.
+
+"He has the symptoms," said Delaney, laughing. "I remember once when
+Jack Hemming "--
+
+"Ned!" cried Hemming, "I protest against any allusion to that business."
+
+This was one night when Van Twiller had wandered into the club, turned
+over the magazines absently in the reading-room, and wandered out again
+without speaking ten words. The most careless eye would have remarked
+the great change that had come over Van Twiller. Now and then he would
+play a game of billiards with De Peyster or Haseltine, or stop to chat a
+moment in the vestibule with old Duane; but he was an altered man.
+When at the club, he was usually to be found in the small smoking-room
+up-stairs, seated on a fauteuil fast asleep, with the last number of
+The Nation in his hand. Once, if you went to two or three places of an
+evening, you were certain to meet Van Twiller at them all. You seldom
+met him in society now.
+
+By and by came whisper number two--a whisper more emphatic than number
+one, but still untraceable to any tangible mouthpiece. This time the
+whisper said that Van Twiller _was_ in love. But with whom? The list of
+possible Mrs. Van Twillers was carefully examined by experienced hands,
+and a check placed against a fine old Knickerbocker name here and there,
+but nothing satisfactory arrived at. Then that same still small voice
+of rumor, but now with an easily detected staccato sharpness to it, said
+that Van Twiller was in love--with an actress! Van Twiller, whom it had
+taken all these years and all this waste of raw material in the way of
+ancestors to bring to perfection--Ralph Van Twiller, the net result
+and flower of his race, the descendant of Wouter, the son of Mrs.
+Van-rensselaer Vanzandt Van Twiller--in love with an actress! That was
+too ridiculous to be believed--and so everybody believed it. Six
+or seven members of the club abruptly discovered in themselves an
+unsuspected latent passion for the histrionic art. In squads of two
+or three they stormed successively all the theatres in town--Booth's,
+Wallack's, Daly's Fifth Avenue (not burnt down then), and the Grand
+Opera House. Even the shabby homes of the drama over in the Bowery,
+where the Germanic Thespis has not taken out his naturalization papers,
+underwent rigid exploration. But no clue was found to Van Twiller's
+mysterious attachment. The _op�ra bouffe_, which promised the widest
+field for investigation, produced absolutely nothing, not even a crop
+of suspicions. One night, after several weeks of this, Delaney and I
+fancied that we caught sight of Van Twiller in the private box of an
+up-town theatre, where some thrilling trapeze performance was going on,
+which we did not care to sit through; but we concluded afterwards that
+it was only somebody who looked like him. Delaney, by the way, was
+unusually active in this search. I dare say he never quite forgave Van
+Twiller for calling him Muslin Delaney. Ned is fond of ladies' society,
+and that's a fact.
+
+The Cimmerian darkness which surrounded Van Twiller's inamorata left
+us free to indulge in the wildest conjectures. Whether she was
+black-tressed Melpomene, with bowl and dagger, or Thalia, with the fair
+hair and the laughing face, was only to be guessed at. It was popularly
+conceded, however, that Van Twiller was on the point of forming a
+dreadful _m�salliance_.
+
+Up to this period he had visited the club regularly. Suddenly he ceased
+to appear. He was not to be seen on Fifth Avenue, or in the Central
+Park, or at the houses he generally frequented. His chambers--and mighty
+comfortable chambers they were--on Thirty-fourth Street were deserted.
+He had dropped out of the world, shot like a bright particular star from
+his orbit in the heaven of the best society.
+
+The following conversation took place one night in the smoking-room:--
+
+"Where's Van Twiller?"
+
+"Who's seen Van Twiller?"
+
+"What has become of Van Twiller?"
+
+Delaney picked up the Evening Post, and read--with a solemnity that
+betrayed young Firkins into exclaiming, "By Jove, now!"--
+
+"Married, on the 10th instant, by the Rev. Friar Laurence, at the
+residence of the bride's uncle, Montague Capulet, Esq., Miss Adrienne Le
+Couvreur to Mr. Ralph Van Twiller, both of this city. No cards."
+
+"Free List suspended," murmured De Peyster.
+
+"It strikes me," said Frank Livingstone, who had been ruffling the
+leaves of a magazine at the other end of the table, "that you fellows
+are in a great fever about Van Twiller."
+
+"So we are."
+
+"Well, he has simply gone out of town."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Up to the old homestead on the Hudson."
+
+"It's an odd time of year for a fellow to go into the country."
+
+"He has gone to visit his mother," said Livingstone.
+
+"In February?"
+
+"I did n't know, Delaney, that there was any statute in force
+prohibiting a man from visiting his mother in February if he wants to."
+
+Delaney made some light remark about the pleasure of communing with
+Nature with a cold in her head, and the topic was dropped.
+
+Livingstone was hand in glove with Van Twilier, and if any man shared
+his confidence it was Livingstone. He was aware of the gossip and
+speculation that had been rife in the club, but he either was not at
+liberty or did not think it worth while to relieve our curiosity. In the
+course of a week or two it was reported that Van Twiller was going to
+Europe; and go he did. A dozen of us went down to the Scythia to see him
+off. It was refreshing to have something as positive as the fact that
+Van Twiller had sailed.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Shortly after Van Twiller's departure the whole thing came out.
+Whether Livingstone found the secret too heavy a burden, or whether it
+transpired through some indiscretion on the part of Mrs. Vanrensselaer
+Vanzandt Van Twiller, I cannot say; but one evening the entire story was
+in the possession of the club.
+
+Van Twiller had actually been very deeply interested--not in an actress,
+for the legitimate drama was not her humble walk in life, but--in
+Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski, whose really perilous feats on the trapeze
+had astonished New York the year before, though they had failed to
+attract Delaney and me the night we wandered into the up-town theatre on
+the trail of Van Twiller's mystery.
+
+That a man like Van Twiller should be fascinated even for an instant by
+a common circus-girl seems incredible; but it is always the incredible
+thing that happens. Besides, Mademoiselle Olympe was not a common
+circus-girl; she was a most daring and startling gymnaste, with a beauty
+and a grace of movement that gave to her audacious performance almost
+an air of prudery. Watching her wondrous dexterity and pliant strength,
+both exercised without apparent effort, it seemed the most natural
+proceeding in the world that she should do those unpardonable things.
+She had a way of melting from one graceful posture into another, like
+the dissolving figures thrown from a stereopticon. She was a lithe,
+radiant shape out of the Grecian mythology, now poised up there above
+the gaslights, and now gleaming through the air like a slender gilt
+arrow.
+
+I am describing Mademoiselle Olympe as she appeared to Van Twiller
+on the first occasion when he strolled into the theatre where she was
+performing. To me she was a girl of eighteen or twenty years of age
+(maybe she was much older, for pearl-powder and distance keep these
+people perpetually young), slightly but exquisitely built, with sinews
+of silver wire; rather pretty, perhaps, after a manner, but showing
+plainly the effects of the exhaustive drafts she was making on her
+physical vitality. Now, Van Twiller was an enthusiast on the subject of
+calisthenics. "If I had a daughter," Van Twiller used to say, "I would
+n't send her to a boarding-school, or a nunnery; I 'd send her to a
+gymnasium for the first five years. Our American women have no physique.
+They are lilies, pallid, pretty--and perishable. You marry an American
+woman, and what do you marry? A headache. Look at English girls. They
+are at least roses, and last the season through." Walking home from the
+theatre that first night, it flitted through Van Twiller's mind that if
+he could give this girl's set of nerves and muscles to any one of the
+two hundred high-bred women he knew, he would marry her on the spot and
+worship her forever.
+
+The following evening he went to see Mademoiselle Olympe again. "Olympe
+Zabriski," he soliloquized, as he sauntered through the lobby--"what a
+queer name! Olympe is French, and Zabriski is Polish. It is her _nom de
+guerre_, of course; her real name is probably Sarah Jones. What kind of
+creature can she be in private life, I wonder? I wonder if she wears
+that costume all the time, and if she springs to her meals from a
+horizontal bar. Of course she rocks the baby to sleep on the trapeze."
+And Van Twiller went on making comical domestic tableaux of Mademoiselle
+Zabriski, like the clever, satirical dog he was, until the curtain rose.
+
+This was on a Friday. There was a matin�e the next day, and he attended
+that, though he had secured a seat for the usual evening entertainment.
+Then it became a habit of Van Twiller's to drop into the theatre for
+half an hour or so every night, to assist at the interlude, in which
+she appeared. He cared only for her part of the programme, and timed his
+visits accordingly. It was a surprise to himself when he reflected, one
+morning, that he had not missed a single performance of Mademoiselle
+Olympe for nearly two weeks.
+
+"This will never do," said Van Twiller. "Olympe"--he called her
+Olympe, as if she were an old acquaintance, and so she might have been
+considered by that time--"is a wonderful creature; but this will never
+do. Van, my boy, you must reform this altogether."
+
+But half past nine that night saw him in his accustomed orchestra
+chair, and so on for another week. A habit leads a man so gently in the
+beginning that he does not perceive he is led--with what silken threads
+and down what pleasant avenues it leads him! By and by the soft silk
+threads become iron chains, and the pleasant avenues Avernus!
+
+Quite a new element had lately entered into Van Twiller's enjoyment of
+Mademoiselle Olympe's ingenious feats--a vaguely born apprehension
+that she might slip from that swinging bar; that one of the thin cords
+supporting it might snap, and let her go headlong from the dizzy height.
+Now and then, for a terrible instant, he would imagine her lying a
+glittering, palpitating heap at the foot-lights, with no color in her
+lips! Sometimes it seemed as if the girl were tempting this kind of
+fate. It was a hard, bitter life, and nothing but poverty and sordid
+misery at home could have driven her to it. What if she should end it
+all some night, by just unclasping that little hand? It looked so small
+and white from where Van Twiller sat!
+
+This frightful idea fascinated while it chilled him, and helped to
+make it nearly impossible for him to keep away from the theatre. In the
+beginning his attendance had not interfered with his social duties or
+pleasures; but now he came to find it distasteful after dinner to do
+anything but read, or walk the streets aimlessly, until it was time to
+go to the play. When that was over, he was in no mood to go anywhere but
+to his rooms. So he dropped away by insensible degrees from his habitual
+haunts, was missed, and began to be talked about at the club. Catching
+some intimation of this, he ventured no more in the orchestra stalls,
+but shrouded himself behind the draperies of the private box in which
+Delaney and I thought we saw him on one occasion.
+
+Now, I find it very perplexing to explain what Van Twiller was wholly
+unable to explain to himself. He was not in love with Mademoiselle
+Olympe. He had no wish to speak to her, or to hear her speak. Nothing
+could have been easier, and nothing further from his desire, than
+to know her personally. A Van Twiller personally acquainted with a
+strolling female acrobat! Good heavens I That was something possible
+only with the discovery of perpetual motion. Taken from her theatrical
+setting, from her lofty perch, so to say, on the trapeze-bar, Olympe
+Zabriski would have shocked every aristocratic fibre in Van Twiller's
+body. He was simply fascinated by her marvellous grace and _�lan_, and
+the magnetic recklessness of the girl. It was very young in him and very
+weak, and no member of the Sorosis, or all the Sorosisters together,
+could have been more severe on Van Twiller than he was on himself. To be
+weak, and to know it, is something of a punishment for a proud man. Van
+Twiller took his punishment, and went to the theatre, regularly.
+
+"When her engagement comes to an end," he meditated, "that will finish
+the business."
+
+Mademoiselle Olympe's engagement finally did come to an end, and
+she departed. But her engagement had been highly beneficial to the
+treasury-chest of the up-town theatre, and before Van Twiller could get
+over missing her she had returned from a short Western tour, and her
+immediate reappearance was underlined on the play-bills.
+
+On a dead-wall opposite the windows of Van Twiller's sleeping-room there
+appeared, as if by necromancy, an aggressive poster with Mademoiselle
+Olympe Zabriski on it in letters at least a foot high. This thing stared
+him in the face when he woke up, one morning. It gave him a sensation as
+if she had called on him overnight, and left her card.
+
+From time to time through the day he regarded that poster with a
+sardonic eye. He had pitilessly resolved not to repeat the folly of the
+previous month. To say that this moral victory cost him nothing would
+be to deprive it of merit. It cost him many internal struggles. It is
+a fine thing to see a man seizing his temptation by the throat, and
+wrestling with it, and trampling it under foot like St. Anthony. This
+was the spectacle Van Twiller was exhibiting to the angels.
+
+The evening Mademoiselle Olympe was to make her reappearance, Van
+Twiller, having dined at the club, and feeling more like himself than
+he had felt for weeks, returned to his chamber, and, putting on
+dressing-gown and slippers, piled up the greater portion of his library
+about him, and fell to reading assiduously. There is nothing like a
+quiet evening at home with some slight intellectual occupation, after
+one's feathers have been stroked the wrong way.
+
+When the lively French clock on the mantel-piece--a base of malachite
+surmounted by a flying bronze Mercury with its arms spread gracefully on
+the air, and not remotely suggestive of Mademoiselle Olympe in the
+act of executing her grand flight from the trapeze--when the clock,
+I repeat, struck nine, Van Twilier paid no attention to it. That was
+certainly a triumph. I am anxious to render Van Twiller all the justice
+I can, at this point of the narrative, inasmuch as when the half hour
+sounded musically, like a crystal ball dropping into a silver bowl,
+he rose from the chair automatically, thrust his feet into his
+walking-shoes, threw his overcoat across his arm, and strode out of the
+room.
+
+To be weak and to scorn your weakness, and not to be able to conquer
+it, is, as has been said, a hard thing; and I suspect it was not with
+unalloyed satisfaction that Van Twiller found himself taking his seat
+in the back part of the private box night after night during the second
+engagement of Mademoiselle Olympe. It was so easy not to stay away!
+
+In this second edition of Van Twiller's fatuity, his case was even
+worse than before. He not only thought of Olympo quite a number of
+times between breakfast and dinner, he not only attended the interlude
+regularly, but he began, in spite of himself, to occupy his leisure
+hours at night by dreaming of her. This was too much of a good thing,
+and Van Twiller regarded it so. Besides, the dream was always the
+same--a harrowing dream, a dream singularly adapted to shattering the
+nerves of a man like Van Twiller. He would imagine himself seated at the
+theatre (with all the members of Our Club in the parquette), watching
+Mademoiselle Olympe as usual, when suddenly that young lady would launch
+herself desperately from the trapeze, and come flying through the air
+like a firebrand hurled at his private box. Then the unfortunate man
+would wake up with cold drops standing on his forehead.
+
+There is one redeeming feature in this infatuation of Van Twiller's
+which the sober moralist will love to look upon--the serene
+unconsciousness of the person who caused it. She went through her _r�le_
+with admirable aplomb, drew her salary, it may be assumed, punctually,
+and appears from first to last to have been ignorant that there was
+a miserable slave wearing her chains nightly in the left-hand
+proscenium-box.
+
+That Van Twiller, haunting the theatre with the persistency of an
+ex-actor, conducted himself so discreetly as not to draw the fire of
+Mademoiselle Olympe's blue eyes shows that Van Twiller, however deeply
+under a spell, was not in love. I say this, though I think if Van
+Twiller had not been Van Twiller, if he had been a man of no family and
+no position and no money, if New York had been Paris and Thirty-fourth
+Street a street in the Latin Quarter--but it is useless to speculate on
+what might have happened. What did happen is sufficient.
+
+It happened, then, in the second week of Queen Olympe's second
+unconscious reign, that an appalling Whisper floated up the Hudson,
+effected a landing at a point between Spuyten Duyvel Creek and Cold
+Spring, and sought out a stately mansion of Dutch architecture standing
+on the bank of the river. The Whisper straightway informed the lady
+dwelling in this mansion that all was not well with the last of the Van
+Twillers; that he was gradually estranging himself from his peers, and
+wasting his nights in a play-house watching a misguided young woman
+turning unmaidenly somersaults on a piece of wood attached to two ropes.
+
+Mrs. Vanrensselaer Vanzandt Van Twiller came down to town by the next
+train to look into this little matter.
+
+She found the flower of the family taking an early breakfast, at 11 a.m.,
+in his cosey apartments on Thirty-fourth Street. With the least
+possible circumlocution she confronted him with what rumor had reported
+of his pursuits, and was pleased, but not too much pleased, when he
+gave her an exact account of his relations with Mademoiselle Zabriski,
+neither concealing nor qualifying anything. As a confession, it was
+unique, and might have been a great deal less entertaining. Two or three
+times in the course of the narrative, the matron had some difficulty
+in preserving the gravity of her countenance. After meditating a few
+minutes, she tapped Van Twiller softly on the arm with the tip of her
+parasol, and invited him to return with her the next day up the Hudson
+and make a brief visit at the home of his ancestors. He accepted the
+invitation with outward alacrity and inward disgust.
+
+When this was settled, and the worthy lady had withdrawn, Van Twiller
+went directly to the establishment of Messrs Ball, Black, and Company,
+and selected, with unerring taste, the finest diamond bracelet
+procurable. For his mother? Dear me, no! She had the family jewels.
+
+I would not like to state the enormous sum Van Twiller paid for this
+bracelet. It was such a clasp of diamonds as would have hastened
+the pulsation of a patrician wrist. It was such a bracelet as Prince
+Camaralzaman might have sent to the Princess Badoura, and the Princess
+Badoura--might have been very glad to get.
+
+In the fragrant Levant morocco case, where these happy jewels lived when
+they were at home, Van Twiller thoughtfully placed his card, on the back
+of which he had written a line begging Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski to
+accept the accompanying trifle from one who had witnessed her
+graceful performances with interest and pleasure. This was not done
+inconsiderately. "Of course I must enclose my card, as I would to any
+lady," Van Twiller had said to himself. "A Van Twiller can neither write
+an anonymous letter nor make an anonymous present." Blood entails its
+duties as well As its privileges.
+
+The casket despatched to its destination, Van Twiller felt easier in his
+mind. He was under obligations to the girl for many an agreeable hour
+that might otherwise have passed heavily. He had paid the debt, and he
+had paid it _en prince_, as became a Van Twiller. He spent the rest of
+the day in looking at some pictures at Goupil's, and at the club, and in
+making a few purchases for his trip up the Hudson. A consciousness
+that this trip up the Hudson was a disorderly retreat came over him
+unpleasantly at intervals.
+
+When he returned to his rooms late at night, he found a note lying
+on the writing-table. He started as his eye caught the words "------
+Theatre" stamped in carmine letters on one corner of the envelope. Van
+Twiller broke the seal with trembling fingers.
+
+Now, this note some time afterwards fell into the hands of Livingstone,
+who showed it to Stuyvesant, who showed it to Delaney, who showed it to
+me, and I copied it as a literary curiosity. The note ran as follows:--
+
+     Mr. Van Twiller,
+
+     Dear SiR--i am verry greatfull to you for that Bracelett. it
+     come just in the nic of time for me. The Mademoiselle
+     Zabriski dodg is about Plaid out. my beard is getting to
+     much for me. i shall have to grow a mustash and take to some
+     other line of busyness, I dont no what now, but will let you
+     no. You wont feel bad if i sell that Bracelett. i have seen
+     Abrahams Moss and he says he will do the square thing. Pleas
+     accep my thanks for youre Beautifull and Unexpected present.
+
+     Youre respectfull servent,
+
+     Charles Montmorenci Walters.
+
+The next day Van Twiller neither expressed nor felt any unwillingness to
+spend a few weeks with his mother at the old homestead.
+
+And then he went abroad.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski, by 
+Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
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+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" />
+    <title>
+      Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
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+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+Project Gutenberg's Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski
+
+Author: Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+
+Release Date: November 6, 2007 [EBook #23362]
+Last Updated: September 20, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABRISKI ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABRISKI
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Boston And New York Houghton Mifflin Company
+    </h3>
+    <h4>
+      Copyright, 1873, 1885, and 1901
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      Contents
+    </h2>
+     <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> I. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> II. </a>
+          </p>
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+    </table>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      I.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      We are accustomed to speak with a certain light irony of the tendency
+      which women have to gossip, as if the sin itself, if it is a sin, were of
+      the gentler sex, and could by no chance be a masculine peccadillo. So far
+      as my observation goes, men are as much given to small talk as women, and
+      it is undeniable that we have produced the highest type of gossiper
+      extant. Where will you find, in or out of literature, such another droll,
+      delightful, chatty busybody as Samuel Pepys, Esq., Secretary to the
+      Admiralty in the reigns of those fortunate gentlemen Charles II. and James
+      II. of England? He is the king of tattlers as Shakespeare is the king of
+      poets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If it came to a matter of pure gossip, I would back Our Club against the
+      Sorosis or any women&rsquo;s club in existence. Whenever you see in our
+      drawing-room four or five young fellows lounging in easy-chairs, cigar in
+      hand, and now and then bringing their heads together over the small round
+      Japanese table which is always the pivot of these social circles, you may
+      be sure that they are discussing Tom&rsquo;s engagement, or Dick&rsquo;s extravagance,
+      or Harry&rsquo;s hopeless passion for the younger Miss Fleurdelys. It is here
+      old Tippleton gets execrated for that everlasting <i>bon mot</i> of his
+      which was quite a success at dinner-parties forty years ago; it is here
+      the belle of the season passes under the scalpels of merciless young
+      surgeons; it is here B&rsquo;s financial condition is handled in a way that
+      would make B&rsquo;s hair stand on end; it is here, in short, that everything is
+      canvassed&mdash;everything that happens in our set, I mean, much that
+      never happens, and a great deal that could not possibly happen. It was at
+      Our Club that I learned the particulars of the Van Twiller affair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was great entertainment to Our Club, the Van Twiller affair, though it
+      was rather a joyless thing, I fancy, for Van Twiller. To understand the
+      case fully, it should be understood that Ralph Van Twiller is one of the
+      proudest and most sensitive men living. He is a lineal descendant of
+      Wouter Van Twiller, the famous old Dutch governor of New York&mdash;Nieuw
+      Amsterdam, as it was then; his ancestors have always been burgomasters or
+      admirals or generals, and his mother is the Mrs. Vanrensselaer Van-zandt
+      Van Twiller whose magnificent place will be pointed out to you on the
+      right bank of the Hudson, as you pass up the historic river towards
+      Idlewild. Ralph is about twenty-five years old. Birth made him a
+      gentleman, and the rise of real estate&mdash;some of it in the family
+      since the old governor&rsquo;s time&mdash;made him a millionaire. It was a
+      kindly fairy that stepped in and made him a good fellow also. Fortune, I
+      take it, was in her most jocund mood when she heaped her gifts in this
+      fashion on Van Twiller, who was, and will be again, when this cloud blows
+      over, the flower of Our Club.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About a year ago there came a whisper&mdash;if the word &ldquo;whisper&rdquo; is not
+      too harsh a term to apply to what seemed a mere breath floating gently
+      through the atmosphere of the billiard-room&mdash;imparting the
+      intelligence that Van Twiller was in some kind of trouble. Just as
+      everybody suddenly takes to wearing square-toed boots, or to drawing his
+      neckscarf through a ring, so it became all at once the fashion, without
+      any preconcerted agreement, for everybody to speak of Van Twilier as a man
+      in some way under a cloud. But what the cloud was, and how he got under
+      it, and why he did not get away from it, were points that lifted
+      themselves into the realm of pure conjecture. There was no man in the club
+      with strong enough wing to his imagination to soar to the supposition that
+      Van Twiller was embarrassed in money matters. Was he in love? That
+      appeared nearly as improbable; for if he had been in love all the world&mdash;that
+      is, perhaps a hundred first families&mdash;would have known all about it
+      instantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has the symptoms,&rdquo; said Delaney, laughing. &ldquo;I remember once when Jack
+      Hemming &ldquo;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ned!&rdquo; cried Hemming, &ldquo;I protest against any allusion to that business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was one night when Van Twiller had wandered into the club, turned
+      over the magazines absently in the reading-room, and wandered out again
+      without speaking ten words. The most careless eye would have remarked the
+      great change that had come over Van Twiller. Now and then he would play a
+      game of billiards with De Peyster or Haseltine, or stop to chat a moment
+      in the vestibule with old Duane; but he was an altered man. When at the
+      club, he was usually to be found in the small smoking-room up-stairs,
+      seated on a fauteuil fast asleep, with the last number of The Nation in
+      his hand. Once, if you went to two or three places of an evening, you were
+      certain to meet Van Twiller at them all. You seldom met him in society
+      now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By and by came whisper number two&mdash;a whisper more emphatic than
+      number one, but still untraceable to any tangible mouthpiece. This time
+      the whisper said that Van Twiller <i>was</i> in love. But with whom? The
+      list of possible Mrs. Van Twillers was carefully examined by experienced
+      hands, and a check placed against a fine old Knickerbocker name here and
+      there, but nothing satisfactory arrived at. Then that same still small
+      voice of rumor, but now with an easily detected staccato sharpness to it,
+      said that Van Twiller was in love&mdash;with an actress! Van Twiller, whom
+      it had taken all these years and all this waste of raw material in the way
+      of ancestors to bring to perfection&mdash;Ralph Van Twiller, the net
+      result and flower of his race, the descendant of Wouter, the son of Mrs.
+      Van-rensselaer Vanzandt Van Twiller&mdash;in love with an actress! That
+      was too ridiculous to be believed&mdash;and so everybody believed it. Six
+      or seven members of the club abruptly discovered in themselves an
+      unsuspected latent passion for the histrionic art. In squads of two or
+      three they stormed successively all the theatres in town&mdash;Booth&rsquo;s,
+      Wallack&rsquo;s, Daly&rsquo;s Fifth Avenue (not burnt down then), and the Grand Opera
+      House. Even the shabby homes of the drama over in the Bowery, where the
+      Germanic Thespis has not taken out his naturalization papers, underwent
+      rigid exploration. But no clue was found to Van Twiller&rsquo;s mysterious
+      attachment. The <i>opéra bouffe</i>, which promised the widest field for
+      investigation, produced absolutely nothing, not even a crop of suspicions.
+      One night, after several weeks of this, Delaney and I fancied that we
+      caught sight of Van Twiller in the private box of an up-town theatre,
+      where some thrilling trapeze performance was going on, which we did not
+      care to sit through; but we concluded afterwards that it was only somebody
+      who looked like him. Delaney, by the way, was unusually active in this
+      search. I dare say he never quite forgave Van Twiller for calling him
+      Muslin Delaney. Ned is fond of ladies&rsquo; society, and that&rsquo;s a fact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Cimmerian darkness which surrounded Van Twiller&rsquo;s inamorata left us
+      free to indulge in the wildest conjectures. Whether she was black-tressed
+      Melpomene, with bowl and dagger, or Thalia, with the fair hair and the
+      laughing face, was only to be guessed at. It was popularly conceded,
+      however, that Van Twiller was on the point of forming a dreadful <i>mésalliance</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Up to this period he had visited the club regularly. Suddenly he ceased to
+      appear. He was not to be seen on Fifth Avenue, or in the Central Park, or
+      at the houses he generally frequented. His chambers&mdash;and mighty
+      comfortable chambers they were&mdash;on Thirty-fourth Street were
+      deserted. He had dropped out of the world, shot like a bright particular
+      star from his orbit in the heaven of the best society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The following conversation took place one night in the smoking-room:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where&rsquo;s Van Twiller?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who&rsquo;s seen Van Twiller?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has become of Van Twiller?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Delaney picked up the Evening Post, and read&mdash;with a solemnity that
+      betrayed young Firkins into exclaiming, &ldquo;By Jove, now!&rdquo;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Married, on the 10th instant, by the Rev. Friar Laurence, at the
+      residence of the bride&rsquo;s uncle, Montague Capulet, Esq., Miss Adrienne Le
+      Couvreur to Mr. Ralph Van Twiller, both of this city. No cards.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Free List suspended,&rdquo; murmured De Peyster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It strikes me,&rdquo; said Frank Livingstone, who had been ruffling the leaves
+      of a magazine at the other end of the table, &ldquo;that you fellows are in a
+      great fever about Van Twiller.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So we are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, he has simply gone out of town.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Up to the old homestead on the Hudson.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s an odd time of year for a fellow to go into the country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has gone to visit his mother,&rdquo; said Livingstone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In February?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did n&rsquo;t know, Delaney, that there was any statute in force prohibiting
+      a man from visiting his mother in February if he wants to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Delaney made some light remark about the pleasure of communing with Nature
+      with a cold in her head, and the topic was dropped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Livingstone was hand in glove with Van Twilier, and if any man shared his
+      confidence it was Livingstone. He was aware of the gossip and speculation
+      that had been rife in the club, but he either was not at liberty or did
+      not think it worth while to relieve our curiosity. In the course of a week
+      or two it was reported that Van Twiller was going to Europe; and go he
+      did. A dozen of us went down to the Scythia to see him off. It was
+      refreshing to have something as positive as the fact that Van Twiller had
+      sailed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      II.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Shortly after Van Twiller&rsquo;s departure the whole thing came out. Whether
+      Livingstone found the secret too heavy a burden, or whether it transpired
+      through some indiscretion on the part of Mrs. Vanrensselaer Vanzandt Van
+      Twiller, I cannot say; but one evening the entire story was in the
+      possession of the club.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Van Twiller had actually been very deeply interested&mdash;not in an
+      actress, for the legitimate drama was not her humble walk in life, but&mdash;in
+      Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski, whose really perilous feats on the trapeze
+      had astonished New York the year before, though they had failed to attract
+      Delaney and me the night we wandered into the up-town theatre on the trail
+      of Van Twiller&rsquo;s mystery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That a man like Van Twiller should be fascinated even for an instant by a
+      common circus-girl seems incredible; but it is always the incredible thing
+      that happens. Besides, Mademoiselle Olympe was not a common circus-girl;
+      she was a most daring and startling gymnaste, with a beauty and a grace of
+      movement that gave to her audacious performance almost an air of prudery.
+      Watching her wondrous dexterity and pliant strength, both exercised
+      without apparent effort, it seemed the most natural proceeding in the
+      world that she should do those unpardonable things. She had a way of
+      melting from one graceful posture into another, like the dissolving
+      figures thrown from a stereopticon. She was a lithe, radiant shape out of
+      the Grecian mythology, now poised up there above the gaslights, and now
+      gleaming through the air like a slender gilt arrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am describing Mademoiselle Olympe as she appeared to Van Twiller on the
+      first occasion when he strolled into the theatre where she was performing.
+      To me she was a girl of eighteen or twenty years of age (maybe she was
+      much older, for pearl-powder and distance keep these people perpetually
+      young), slightly but exquisitely built, with sinews of silver wire; rather
+      pretty, perhaps, after a manner, but showing plainly the effects of the
+      exhaustive drafts she was making on her physical vitality. Now, Van
+      Twiller was an enthusiast on the subject of calisthenics. &ldquo;If I had a
+      daughter,&rdquo; Van Twiller used to say, &ldquo;I would n&rsquo;t send her to a
+      boarding-school, or a nunnery; I &lsquo;d send her to a gymnasium for the first
+      five years. Our American women have no physique. They are lilies, pallid,
+      pretty&mdash;and perishable. You marry an American woman, and what do you
+      marry? A headache. Look at English girls. They are at least roses, and
+      last the season through.&rdquo; Walking home from the theatre that first night,
+      it flitted through Van Twiller&rsquo;s mind that if he could give this girl&rsquo;s
+      set of nerves and muscles to any one of the two hundred high-bred women he
+      knew, he would marry her on the spot and worship her forever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The following evening he went to see Mademoiselle Olympe again. &ldquo;Olympe
+      Zabriski,&rdquo; he soliloquized, as he sauntered through the lobby&mdash;&ldquo;what
+      a queer name! Olympe is French, and Zabriski is Polish. It is her <i>nom
+      de guerre</i>, of course; her real name is probably Sarah Jones. What kind
+      of creature can she be in private life, I wonder? I wonder if she wears
+      that costume all the time, and if she springs to her meals from a
+      horizontal bar. Of course she rocks the baby to sleep on the trapeze.&rdquo; And
+      Van Twiller went on making comical domestic tableaux of Mademoiselle
+      Zabriski, like the clever, satirical dog he was, until the curtain rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was on a Friday. There was a matinée the next day, and he attended
+      that, though he had secured a seat for the usual evening entertainment.
+      Then it became a habit of Van Twiller&rsquo;s to drop into the theatre for half
+      an hour or so every night, to assist at the interlude, in which she
+      appeared. He cared only for her part of the programme, and timed his
+      visits accordingly. It was a surprise to himself when he reflected, one
+      morning, that he had not missed a single performance of Mademoiselle
+      Olympe for nearly two weeks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This will never do,&rdquo; said Van Twiller. &ldquo;Olympe&rdquo;&mdash;he called her
+      Olympe, as if she were an old acquaintance, and so she might have been
+      considered by that time&mdash;&ldquo;is a wonderful creature; but this will
+      never do. Van, my boy, you must reform this altogether.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But half past nine that night saw him in his accustomed orchestra chair,
+      and so on for another week. A habit leads a man so gently in the beginning
+      that he does not perceive he is led&mdash;with what silken threads and
+      down what pleasant avenues it leads him! By and by the soft silk threads
+      become iron chains, and the pleasant avenues Avernus!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Quite a new element had lately entered into Van Twiller&rsquo;s enjoyment of
+      Mademoiselle Olympe&rsquo;s ingenious feats&mdash;a vaguely born apprehension
+      that she might slip from that swinging bar; that one of the thin cords
+      supporting it might snap, and let her go headlong from the dizzy height.
+      Now and then, for a terrible instant, he would imagine her lying a
+      glittering, palpitating heap at the foot-lights, with no color in her
+      lips! Sometimes it seemed as if the girl were tempting this kind of fate.
+      It was a hard, bitter life, and nothing but poverty and sordid misery at
+      home could have driven her to it. What if she should end it all some
+      night, by just unclasping that little hand? It looked so small and white
+      from where Van Twiller sat!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This frightful idea fascinated while it chilled him, and helped to make it
+      nearly impossible for him to keep away from the theatre. In the beginning
+      his attendance had not interfered with his social duties or pleasures; but
+      now he came to find it distasteful after dinner to do anything but read,
+      or walk the streets aimlessly, until it was time to go to the play. When
+      that was over, he was in no mood to go anywhere but to his rooms. So he
+      dropped away by insensible degrees from his habitual haunts, was missed,
+      and began to be talked about at the club. Catching some intimation of
+      this, he ventured no more in the orchestra stalls, but shrouded himself
+      behind the draperies of the private box in which Delaney and I thought we
+      saw him on one occasion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, I find it very perplexing to explain what Van Twiller was wholly
+      unable to explain to himself. He was not in love with Mademoiselle Olympe.
+      He had no wish to speak to her, or to hear her speak. Nothing could have
+      been easier, and nothing further from his desire, than to know her
+      personally. A Van Twiller personally acquainted with a strolling female
+      acrobat! Good heavens I That was something possible only with the
+      discovery of perpetual motion. Taken from her theatrical setting, from her
+      lofty perch, so to say, on the trapeze-bar, Olympe Zabriski would have
+      shocked every aristocratic fibre in Van Twiller&rsquo;s body. He was simply
+      fascinated by her marvellous grace and <i>élan</i>, and the magnetic
+      recklessness of the girl. It was very young in him and very weak, and no
+      member of the Sorosis, or all the Sorosisters together, could have been
+      more severe on Van Twiller than he was on himself. To be weak, and to know
+      it, is something of a punishment for a proud man. Van Twiller took his
+      punishment, and went to the theatre, regularly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When her engagement comes to an end,&rdquo; he meditated, &ldquo;that will finish the
+      business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mademoiselle Olympe&rsquo;s engagement finally did come to an end, and she
+      departed. But her engagement had been highly beneficial to the
+      treasury-chest of the up-town theatre, and before Van Twiller could get
+      over missing her she had returned from a short Western tour, and her
+      immediate reappearance was underlined on the play-bills.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On a dead-wall opposite the windows of Van Twiller&rsquo;s sleeping-room there
+      appeared, as if by necromancy, an aggressive poster with Mademoiselle
+      Olympe Zabriski on it in letters at least a foot high. This thing stared
+      him in the face when he woke up, one morning. It gave him a sensation as
+      if she had called on him overnight, and left her card.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From time to time through the day he regarded that poster with a sardonic
+      eye. He had pitilessly resolved not to repeat the folly of the previous
+      month. To say that this moral victory cost him nothing would be to deprive
+      it of merit. It cost him many internal struggles. It is a fine thing to
+      see a man seizing his temptation by the throat, and wrestling with it, and
+      trampling it under foot like St. Anthony. This was the spectacle Van
+      Twiller was exhibiting to the angels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The evening Mademoiselle Olympe was to make her reappearance, Van Twiller,
+      having dined at the club, and feeling more like himself than he had felt
+      for weeks, returned to his chamber, and, putting on dressing-gown and
+      slippers, piled up the greater portion of his library about him, and fell
+      to reading assiduously. There is nothing like a quiet evening at home with
+      some slight intellectual occupation, after one&rsquo;s feathers have been
+      stroked the wrong way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the lively French clock on the mantel-piece&mdash;a base of malachite
+      surmounted by a flying bronze Mercury with its arms spread gracefully on
+      the air, and not remotely suggestive of Mademoiselle Olympe in the act of
+      executing her grand flight from the trapeze&mdash;when the clock, I
+      repeat, struck nine, Van Twilier paid no attention to it. That was
+      certainly a triumph. I am anxious to render Van Twiller all the justice I
+      can, at this point of the narrative, inasmuch as when the half hour
+      sounded musically, like a crystal ball dropping into a silver bowl, he
+      rose from the chair automatically, thrust his feet into his walking-shoes,
+      threw his overcoat across his arm, and strode out of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To be weak and to scorn your weakness, and not to be able to conquer it,
+      is, as has been said, a hard thing; and I suspect it was not with
+      unalloyed satisfaction that Van Twiller found himself taking his seat in
+      the back part of the private box night after night during the second
+      engagement of Mademoiselle Olympe. It was so easy not to stay away!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this second edition of Van Twiller&rsquo;s fatuity, his case was even worse
+      than before. He not only thought of Olympo quite a number of times between
+      breakfast and dinner, he not only attended the interlude regularly, but he
+      began, in spite of himself, to occupy his leisure hours at night by
+      dreaming of her. This was too much of a good thing, and Van Twiller
+      regarded it so. Besides, the dream was always the same&mdash;a harrowing
+      dream, a dream singularly adapted to shattering the nerves of a man like
+      Van Twiller. He would imagine himself seated at the theatre (with all the
+      members of Our Club in the parquette), watching Mademoiselle Olympe as
+      usual, when suddenly that young lady would launch herself desperately from
+      the trapeze, and come flying through the air like a firebrand hurled at
+      his private box. Then the unfortunate man would wake up with cold drops
+      standing on his forehead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is one redeeming feature in this infatuation of Van Twiller&rsquo;s which
+      the sober moralist will love to look upon&mdash;the serene unconsciousness
+      of the person who caused it. She went through her <i>rôle</i> with
+      admirable aplomb, drew her salary, it may be assumed, punctually, and
+      appears from first to last to have been ignorant that there was a
+      miserable slave wearing her chains nightly in the left-hand
+      proscenium-box.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That Van Twiller, haunting the theatre with the persistency of an
+      ex-actor, conducted himself so discreetly as not to draw the fire of
+      Mademoiselle Olympe&rsquo;s blue eyes shows that Van Twiller, however deeply
+      under a spell, was not in love. I say this, though I think if Van Twiller
+      had not been Van Twiller, if he had been a man of no family and no
+      position and no money, if New York had been Paris and Thirty-fourth Street
+      a street in the Latin Quarter&mdash;but it is useless to speculate on what
+      might have happened. What did happen is sufficient.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It happened, then, in the second week of Queen Olympe&rsquo;s second unconscious
+      reign, that an appalling Whisper floated up the Hudson, effected a landing
+      at a point between Spuyten Duyvel Creek and Cold Spring, and sought out a
+      stately mansion of Dutch architecture standing on the bank of the river.
+      The Whisper straightway informed the lady dwelling in this mansion that
+      all was not well with the last of the Van Twillers; that he was gradually
+      estranging himself from his peers, and wasting his nights in a play-house
+      watching a misguided young woman turning unmaidenly somersaults on a piece
+      of wood attached to two ropes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Vanrensselaer Vanzandt Van Twiller came down to town by the next
+      train to look into this little matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She found the flower of the family taking an early breakfast, at 11 a.m.,
+      in his cosey apartments on Thirty-fourth Street. With the least possible
+      circumlocution she confronted him with what rumor had reported of his
+      pursuits, and was pleased, but not too much pleased, when he gave her an
+      exact account of his relations with Mademoiselle Zabriski, neither
+      concealing nor qualifying anything. As a confession, it was unique, and
+      might have been a great deal less entertaining. Two or three times in the
+      course of the narrative, the matron had some difficulty in preserving the
+      gravity of her countenance. After meditating a few minutes, she tapped Van
+      Twiller softly on the arm with the tip of her parasol, and invited him to
+      return with her the next day up the Hudson and make a brief visit at the
+      home of his ancestors. He accepted the invitation with outward alacrity
+      and inward disgust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When this was settled, and the worthy lady had withdrawn, Van Twiller went
+      directly to the establishment of Messrs Ball, Black, and Company, and
+      selected, with unerring taste, the finest diamond bracelet procurable. For
+      his mother? Dear me, no! She had the family jewels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I would not like to state the enormous sum Van Twiller paid for this
+      bracelet. It was such a clasp of diamonds as would have hastened the
+      pulsation of a patrician wrist. It was such a bracelet as Prince
+      Camaralzaman might have sent to the Princess Badoura, and the Princess
+      Badoura&mdash;might have been very glad to get.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the fragrant Levant morocco case, where these happy jewels lived when
+      they were at home, Van Twiller thoughtfully placed his card, on the back
+      of which he had written a line begging Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski to
+      accept the accompanying trifle from one who had witnessed her graceful
+      performances with interest and pleasure. This was not done
+      inconsiderately. &ldquo;Of course I must enclose my card, as I would to any
+      lady,&rdquo; Van Twiller had said to himself. &ldquo;A Van Twiller can neither write
+      an anonymous letter nor make an anonymous present.&rdquo; Blood entails its
+      duties as well As its privileges.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The casket despatched to its destination, Van Twiller felt easier in his
+      mind. He was under obligations to the girl for many an agreeable hour that
+      might otherwise have passed heavily. He had paid the debt, and he had paid
+      it <i>en prince</i>, as became a Van Twiller. He spent the rest of the day
+      in looking at some pictures at Goupil&rsquo;s, and at the club, and in making a
+      few purchases for his trip up the Hudson. A consciousness that this trip
+      up the Hudson was a disorderly retreat came over him unpleasantly at
+      intervals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he returned to his rooms late at night, he found a note lying on the
+      writing-table. He started as his eye caught the words &ldquo;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;
+      Theatre&rdquo; stamped in carmine letters on one corner of the envelope. Van
+      Twiller broke the seal with trembling fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, this note some time afterwards fell into the hands of Livingstone,
+      who showed it to Stuyvesant, who showed it to Delaney, who showed it to
+      me, and I copied it as a literary curiosity. The note ran as follows:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Mr. Van Twiller,
+
+     Dear SiR&mdash;i am verry greatfull to you for that Bracelett. it
+     come just in the nic of time for me. The Mademoiselle
+     Zabriski dodg is about Plaid out. my beard is getting to
+     much for me. i shall have to grow a mustash and take to some
+     other line of busyness, I dont no what now, but will let you
+     no. You wont feel bad if i sell that Bracelett. i have seen
+     Abrahams Moss and he says he will do the square thing. Pleas
+     accep my thanks for youre Beautifull and Unexpected present.
+
+     Youre respectfull servent,
+
+     Charles Montmorenci Walters.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The next day Van Twiller neither expressed nor felt any unwillingness to
+      spend a few weeks with his mother at the old homestead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then he went abroad.
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
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+</pre>
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+Project Gutenberg's Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski
+
+Author: Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+
+Release Date: November 6, 2007 [EBook #23362]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABRISKI ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABRISKI
+
+By Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+
+Boston And New York Houghton Mifflin Company
+
+Copyright, 1873, 1885, and 1901
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+We are accustomed to speak with a certain light irony of the tendency
+which women have to gossip, as if the sin itself, if it is a sin, were
+of the gentler sex, and could by no chance be a masculine peccadillo.
+So far as my observation goes, men are as much given to small talk as
+women, and it is undeniable that we have produced the highest type of
+gossiper extant. Where will you find, in or out of literature, such
+another droll, delightful, chatty busybody as Samuel Pepys, Esq.,
+Secretary to the Admiralty in the reigns of those fortunate gentlemen
+Charles II. and James II. of England? He is the king of tattlers as
+Shakespeare is the king of poets.
+
+If it came to a matter of pure gossip, I would back Our Club against
+the Sorosis or any women's club in existence. Whenever you see in our
+drawing-room four or five young fellows lounging in easy-chairs, cigar
+in hand, and now and then bringing their heads together over the small
+round Japanese table which is always the pivot of these social circles,
+you may be sure that they are discussing Tom's engagement, or Dick's
+extravagance, or Harry's hopeless passion for the younger Miss
+Fleurdelys. It is here old Tippleton gets execrated for that everlasting
+_bon mot_ of his which was quite a success at dinner-parties forty years
+ago; it is here the belle of the season passes under the scalpels of
+merciless young surgeons; it is here B's financial condition is handled
+in a way that would make B's hair stand on end; it is here, in short,
+that everything is canvassed--everything that happens in our set, I
+mean, much that never happens, and a great deal that could not possibly
+happen. It was at Our Club that I learned the particulars of the Van
+Twiller affair.
+
+It was great entertainment to Our Club, the Van Twiller affair, though
+it was rather a joyless thing, I fancy, for Van Twiller. To understand
+the case fully, it should be understood that Ralph Van Twiller is one of
+the proudest and most sensitive men living. He is a lineal descendant
+of Wouter Van Twiller, the famous old Dutch governor of New York--Nieuw
+Amsterdam, as it was then; his ancestors have always been burgomasters
+or admirals or generals, and his mother is the Mrs. Vanrensselaer
+Van-zandt Van Twiller whose magnificent place will be pointed out to
+you on the right bank of the Hudson, as you pass up the historic river
+towards Idlewild. Ralph is about twenty-five years old. Birth made him
+a gentleman, and the rise of real estate--some of it in the family since
+the old governor's time--made him a millionaire. It was a kindly fairy
+that stepped in and made him a good fellow also. Fortune, I take it, was
+in her most jocund mood when she heaped her gifts in this fashion on
+Van Twiller, who was, and will be again, when this cloud blows over, the
+flower of Our Club.
+
+About a year ago there came a whisper--if the word "whisper" is not
+too harsh a term to apply to what seemed a mere breath floating gently
+through the atmosphere of the billiard-room--imparting the intelligence
+that Van Twiller was in some kind of trouble. Just as everybody suddenly
+takes to wearing square-toed boots, or to drawing his neckscarf through
+a ring, so it became all at once the fashion, without any preconcerted
+agreement, for everybody to speak of Van Twilier as a man in some way
+under a cloud. But what the cloud was, and how he got under it, and why
+he did not get away from it, were points that lifted themselves into
+the realm of pure conjecture. There was no man in the club with strong
+enough wing to his imagination to soar to the supposition that Van
+Twiller was embarrassed in money matters. Was he in love? That appeared
+nearly as improbable; for if he had been in love all the world--that
+is, perhaps a hundred first families--would have known all about it
+instantly.
+
+"He has the symptoms," said Delaney, laughing. "I remember once when
+Jack Hemming "--
+
+"Ned!" cried Hemming, "I protest against any allusion to that business."
+
+This was one night when Van Twiller had wandered into the club, turned
+over the magazines absently in the reading-room, and wandered out again
+without speaking ten words. The most careless eye would have remarked
+the great change that had come over Van Twiller. Now and then he would
+play a game of billiards with De Peyster or Haseltine, or stop to chat a
+moment in the vestibule with old Duane; but he was an altered man.
+When at the club, he was usually to be found in the small smoking-room
+up-stairs, seated on a fauteuil fast asleep, with the last number of
+The Nation in his hand. Once, if you went to two or three places of an
+evening, you were certain to meet Van Twiller at them all. You seldom
+met him in society now.
+
+By and by came whisper number two--a whisper more emphatic than number
+one, but still untraceable to any tangible mouthpiece. This time the
+whisper said that Van Twiller _was_ in love. But with whom? The list of
+possible Mrs. Van Twillers was carefully examined by experienced hands,
+and a check placed against a fine old Knickerbocker name here and there,
+but nothing satisfactory arrived at. Then that same still small voice
+of rumor, but now with an easily detected staccato sharpness to it, said
+that Van Twiller was in love--with an actress! Van Twiller, whom it had
+taken all these years and all this waste of raw material in the way of
+ancestors to bring to perfection--Ralph Van Twiller, the net result
+and flower of his race, the descendant of Wouter, the son of Mrs.
+Van-rensselaer Vanzandt Van Twiller--in love with an actress! That was
+too ridiculous to be believed--and so everybody believed it. Six
+or seven members of the club abruptly discovered in themselves an
+unsuspected latent passion for the histrionic art. In squads of two
+or three they stormed successively all the theatres in town--Booth's,
+Wallack's, Daly's Fifth Avenue (not burnt down then), and the Grand
+Opera House. Even the shabby homes of the drama over in the Bowery,
+where the Germanic Thespis has not taken out his naturalization papers,
+underwent rigid exploration. But no clue was found to Van Twiller's
+mysterious attachment. The _opera bouffe_, which promised the widest
+field for investigation, produced absolutely nothing, not even a crop
+of suspicions. One night, after several weeks of this, Delaney and I
+fancied that we caught sight of Van Twiller in the private box of an
+up-town theatre, where some thrilling trapeze performance was going on,
+which we did not care to sit through; but we concluded afterwards that
+it was only somebody who looked like him. Delaney, by the way, was
+unusually active in this search. I dare say he never quite forgave Van
+Twiller for calling him Muslin Delaney. Ned is fond of ladies' society,
+and that's a fact.
+
+The Cimmerian darkness which surrounded Van Twiller's inamorata left
+us free to indulge in the wildest conjectures. Whether she was
+black-tressed Melpomene, with bowl and dagger, or Thalia, with the fair
+hair and the laughing face, was only to be guessed at. It was popularly
+conceded, however, that Van Twiller was on the point of forming a
+dreadful _mesalliance_.
+
+Up to this period he had visited the club regularly. Suddenly he ceased
+to appear. He was not to be seen on Fifth Avenue, or in the Central
+Park, or at the houses he generally frequented. His chambers--and mighty
+comfortable chambers they were--on Thirty-fourth Street were deserted.
+He had dropped out of the world, shot like a bright particular star from
+his orbit in the heaven of the best society.
+
+The following conversation took place one night in the smoking-room:--
+
+"Where's Van Twiller?"
+
+"Who's seen Van Twiller?"
+
+"What has become of Van Twiller?"
+
+Delaney picked up the Evening Post, and read--with a solemnity that
+betrayed young Firkins into exclaiming, "By Jove, now!"--
+
+"Married, on the 10th instant, by the Rev. Friar Laurence, at the
+residence of the bride's uncle, Montague Capulet, Esq., Miss Adrienne Le
+Couvreur to Mr. Ralph Van Twiller, both of this city. No cards."
+
+"Free List suspended," murmured De Peyster.
+
+"It strikes me," said Frank Livingstone, who had been ruffling the
+leaves of a magazine at the other end of the table, "that you fellows
+are in a great fever about Van Twiller."
+
+"So we are."
+
+"Well, he has simply gone out of town."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Up to the old homestead on the Hudson."
+
+"It's an odd time of year for a fellow to go into the country."
+
+"He has gone to visit his mother," said Livingstone.
+
+"In February?"
+
+"I did n't know, Delaney, that there was any statute in force
+prohibiting a man from visiting his mother in February if he wants to."
+
+Delaney made some light remark about the pleasure of communing with
+Nature with a cold in her head, and the topic was dropped.
+
+Livingstone was hand in glove with Van Twilier, and if any man shared
+his confidence it was Livingstone. He was aware of the gossip and
+speculation that had been rife in the club, but he either was not at
+liberty or did not think it worth while to relieve our curiosity. In the
+course of a week or two it was reported that Van Twiller was going to
+Europe; and go he did. A dozen of us went down to the Scythia to see him
+off. It was refreshing to have something as positive as the fact that
+Van Twiller had sailed.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Shortly after Van Twiller's departure the whole thing came out.
+Whether Livingstone found the secret too heavy a burden, or whether it
+transpired through some indiscretion on the part of Mrs. Vanrensselaer
+Vanzandt Van Twiller, I cannot say; but one evening the entire story was
+in the possession of the club.
+
+Van Twiller had actually been very deeply interested--not in an actress,
+for the legitimate drama was not her humble walk in life, but--in
+Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski, whose really perilous feats on the trapeze
+had astonished New York the year before, though they had failed to
+attract Delaney and me the night we wandered into the up-town theatre on
+the trail of Van Twiller's mystery.
+
+That a man like Van Twiller should be fascinated even for an instant by
+a common circus-girl seems incredible; but it is always the incredible
+thing that happens. Besides, Mademoiselle Olympe was not a common
+circus-girl; she was a most daring and startling gymnaste, with a beauty
+and a grace of movement that gave to her audacious performance almost
+an air of prudery. Watching her wondrous dexterity and pliant strength,
+both exercised without apparent effort, it seemed the most natural
+proceeding in the world that she should do those unpardonable things.
+She had a way of melting from one graceful posture into another, like
+the dissolving figures thrown from a stereopticon. She was a lithe,
+radiant shape out of the Grecian mythology, now poised up there above
+the gaslights, and now gleaming through the air like a slender gilt
+arrow.
+
+I am describing Mademoiselle Olympe as she appeared to Van Twiller
+on the first occasion when he strolled into the theatre where she was
+performing. To me she was a girl of eighteen or twenty years of age
+(maybe she was much older, for pearl-powder and distance keep these
+people perpetually young), slightly but exquisitely built, with sinews
+of silver wire; rather pretty, perhaps, after a manner, but showing
+plainly the effects of the exhaustive drafts she was making on her
+physical vitality. Now, Van Twiller was an enthusiast on the subject of
+calisthenics. "If I had a daughter," Van Twiller used to say, "I would
+n't send her to a boarding-school, or a nunnery; I 'd send her to a
+gymnasium for the first five years. Our American women have no physique.
+They are lilies, pallid, pretty--and perishable. You marry an American
+woman, and what do you marry? A headache. Look at English girls. They
+are at least roses, and last the season through." Walking home from the
+theatre that first night, it flitted through Van Twiller's mind that if
+he could give this girl's set of nerves and muscles to any one of the
+two hundred high-bred women he knew, he would marry her on the spot and
+worship her forever.
+
+The following evening he went to see Mademoiselle Olympe again. "Olympe
+Zabriski," he soliloquized, as he sauntered through the lobby--"what a
+queer name! Olympe is French, and Zabriski is Polish. It is her _nom de
+guerre_, of course; her real name is probably Sarah Jones. What kind of
+creature can she be in private life, I wonder? I wonder if she wears
+that costume all the time, and if she springs to her meals from a
+horizontal bar. Of course she rocks the baby to sleep on the trapeze."
+And Van Twiller went on making comical domestic tableaux of Mademoiselle
+Zabriski, like the clever, satirical dog he was, until the curtain rose.
+
+This was on a Friday. There was a matinee the next day, and he attended
+that, though he had secured a seat for the usual evening entertainment.
+Then it became a habit of Van Twiller's to drop into the theatre for
+half an hour or so every night, to assist at the interlude, in which
+she appeared. He cared only for her part of the programme, and timed his
+visits accordingly. It was a surprise to himself when he reflected, one
+morning, that he had not missed a single performance of Mademoiselle
+Olympe for nearly two weeks.
+
+"This will never do," said Van Twiller. "Olympe"--he called her
+Olympe, as if she were an old acquaintance, and so she might have been
+considered by that time--"is a wonderful creature; but this will never
+do. Van, my boy, you must reform this altogether."
+
+But half past nine that night saw him in his accustomed orchestra
+chair, and so on for another week. A habit leads a man so gently in the
+beginning that he does not perceive he is led--with what silken threads
+and down what pleasant avenues it leads him! By and by the soft silk
+threads become iron chains, and the pleasant avenues Avernus!
+
+Quite a new element had lately entered into Van Twiller's enjoyment of
+Mademoiselle Olympe's ingenious feats--a vaguely born apprehension
+that she might slip from that swinging bar; that one of the thin cords
+supporting it might snap, and let her go headlong from the dizzy height.
+Now and then, for a terrible instant, he would imagine her lying a
+glittering, palpitating heap at the foot-lights, with no color in her
+lips! Sometimes it seemed as if the girl were tempting this kind of
+fate. It was a hard, bitter life, and nothing but poverty and sordid
+misery at home could have driven her to it. What if she should end it
+all some night, by just unclasping that little hand? It looked so small
+and white from where Van Twiller sat!
+
+This frightful idea fascinated while it chilled him, and helped to
+make it nearly impossible for him to keep away from the theatre. In the
+beginning his attendance had not interfered with his social duties or
+pleasures; but now he came to find it distasteful after dinner to do
+anything but read, or walk the streets aimlessly, until it was time to
+go to the play. When that was over, he was in no mood to go anywhere but
+to his rooms. So he dropped away by insensible degrees from his habitual
+haunts, was missed, and began to be talked about at the club. Catching
+some intimation of this, he ventured no more in the orchestra stalls,
+but shrouded himself behind the draperies of the private box in which
+Delaney and I thought we saw him on one occasion.
+
+Now, I find it very perplexing to explain what Van Twiller was wholly
+unable to explain to himself. He was not in love with Mademoiselle
+Olympe. He had no wish to speak to her, or to hear her speak. Nothing
+could have been easier, and nothing further from his desire, than
+to know her personally. A Van Twiller personally acquainted with a
+strolling female acrobat! Good heavens I That was something possible
+only with the discovery of perpetual motion. Taken from her theatrical
+setting, from her lofty perch, so to say, on the trapeze-bar, Olympe
+Zabriski would have shocked every aristocratic fibre in Van Twiller's
+body. He was simply fascinated by her marvellous grace and _elan_, and
+the magnetic recklessness of the girl. It was very young in him and very
+weak, and no member of the Sorosis, or all the Sorosisters together,
+could have been more severe on Van Twiller than he was on himself. To be
+weak, and to know it, is something of a punishment for a proud man. Van
+Twiller took his punishment, and went to the theatre, regularly.
+
+"When her engagement comes to an end," he meditated, "that will finish
+the business."
+
+Mademoiselle Olympe's engagement finally did come to an end, and
+she departed. But her engagement had been highly beneficial to the
+treasury-chest of the up-town theatre, and before Van Twiller could get
+over missing her she had returned from a short Western tour, and her
+immediate reappearance was underlined on the play-bills.
+
+On a dead-wall opposite the windows of Van Twiller's sleeping-room there
+appeared, as if by necromancy, an aggressive poster with Mademoiselle
+Olympe Zabriski on it in letters at least a foot high. This thing stared
+him in the face when he woke up, one morning. It gave him a sensation as
+if she had called on him overnight, and left her card.
+
+From time to time through the day he regarded that poster with a
+sardonic eye. He had pitilessly resolved not to repeat the folly of the
+previous month. To say that this moral victory cost him nothing would
+be to deprive it of merit. It cost him many internal struggles. It is
+a fine thing to see a man seizing his temptation by the throat, and
+wrestling with it, and trampling it under foot like St. Anthony. This
+was the spectacle Van Twiller was exhibiting to the angels.
+
+The evening Mademoiselle Olympe was to make her reappearance, Van
+Twiller, having dined at the club, and feeling more like himself than
+he had felt for weeks, returned to his chamber, and, putting on
+dressing-gown and slippers, piled up the greater portion of his library
+about him, and fell to reading assiduously. There is nothing like a
+quiet evening at home with some slight intellectual occupation, after
+one's feathers have been stroked the wrong way.
+
+When the lively French clock on the mantel-piece--a base of malachite
+surmounted by a flying bronze Mercury with its arms spread gracefully on
+the air, and not remotely suggestive of Mademoiselle Olympe in the
+act of executing her grand flight from the trapeze--when the clock,
+I repeat, struck nine, Van Twilier paid no attention to it. That was
+certainly a triumph. I am anxious to render Van Twiller all the justice
+I can, at this point of the narrative, inasmuch as when the half hour
+sounded musically, like a crystal ball dropping into a silver bowl,
+he rose from the chair automatically, thrust his feet into his
+walking-shoes, threw his overcoat across his arm, and strode out of the
+room.
+
+To be weak and to scorn your weakness, and not to be able to conquer
+it, is, as has been said, a hard thing; and I suspect it was not with
+unalloyed satisfaction that Van Twiller found himself taking his seat
+in the back part of the private box night after night during the second
+engagement of Mademoiselle Olympe. It was so easy not to stay away!
+
+In this second edition of Van Twiller's fatuity, his case was even
+worse than before. He not only thought of Olympo quite a number of
+times between breakfast and dinner, he not only attended the interlude
+regularly, but he began, in spite of himself, to occupy his leisure
+hours at night by dreaming of her. This was too much of a good thing,
+and Van Twiller regarded it so. Besides, the dream was always the
+same--a harrowing dream, a dream singularly adapted to shattering the
+nerves of a man like Van Twiller. He would imagine himself seated at the
+theatre (with all the members of Our Club in the parquette), watching
+Mademoiselle Olympe as usual, when suddenly that young lady would launch
+herself desperately from the trapeze, and come flying through the air
+like a firebrand hurled at his private box. Then the unfortunate man
+would wake up with cold drops standing on his forehead.
+
+There is one redeeming feature in this infatuation of Van Twiller's
+which the sober moralist will love to look upon--the serene
+unconsciousness of the person who caused it. She went through her _role_
+with admirable aplomb, drew her salary, it may be assumed, punctually,
+and appears from first to last to have been ignorant that there was
+a miserable slave wearing her chains nightly in the left-hand
+proscenium-box.
+
+That Van Twiller, haunting the theatre with the persistency of an
+ex-actor, conducted himself so discreetly as not to draw the fire of
+Mademoiselle Olympe's blue eyes shows that Van Twiller, however deeply
+under a spell, was not in love. I say this, though I think if Van
+Twiller had not been Van Twiller, if he had been a man of no family and
+no position and no money, if New York had been Paris and Thirty-fourth
+Street a street in the Latin Quarter--but it is useless to speculate on
+what might have happened. What did happen is sufficient.
+
+It happened, then, in the second week of Queen Olympe's second
+unconscious reign, that an appalling Whisper floated up the Hudson,
+effected a landing at a point between Spuyten Duyvel Creek and Cold
+Spring, and sought out a stately mansion of Dutch architecture standing
+on the bank of the river. The Whisper straightway informed the lady
+dwelling in this mansion that all was not well with the last of the Van
+Twillers; that he was gradually estranging himself from his peers, and
+wasting his nights in a play-house watching a misguided young woman
+turning unmaidenly somersaults on a piece of wood attached to two ropes.
+
+Mrs. Vanrensselaer Vanzandt Van Twiller came down to town by the next
+train to look into this little matter.
+
+She found the flower of the family taking an early breakfast, at 11 a.m.,
+in his cosey apartments on Thirty-fourth Street. With the least
+possible circumlocution she confronted him with what rumor had reported
+of his pursuits, and was pleased, but not too much pleased, when he
+gave her an exact account of his relations with Mademoiselle Zabriski,
+neither concealing nor qualifying anything. As a confession, it was
+unique, and might have been a great deal less entertaining. Two or three
+times in the course of the narrative, the matron had some difficulty
+in preserving the gravity of her countenance. After meditating a few
+minutes, she tapped Van Twiller softly on the arm with the tip of her
+parasol, and invited him to return with her the next day up the Hudson
+and make a brief visit at the home of his ancestors. He accepted the
+invitation with outward alacrity and inward disgust.
+
+When this was settled, and the worthy lady had withdrawn, Van Twiller
+went directly to the establishment of Messrs Ball, Black, and Company,
+and selected, with unerring taste, the finest diamond bracelet
+procurable. For his mother? Dear me, no! She had the family jewels.
+
+I would not like to state the enormous sum Van Twiller paid for this
+bracelet. It was such a clasp of diamonds as would have hastened
+the pulsation of a patrician wrist. It was such a bracelet as Prince
+Camaralzaman might have sent to the Princess Badoura, and the Princess
+Badoura--might have been very glad to get.
+
+In the fragrant Levant morocco case, where these happy jewels lived when
+they were at home, Van Twiller thoughtfully placed his card, on the back
+of which he had written a line begging Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski to
+accept the accompanying trifle from one who had witnessed her
+graceful performances with interest and pleasure. This was not done
+inconsiderately. "Of course I must enclose my card, as I would to any
+lady," Van Twiller had said to himself. "A Van Twiller can neither write
+an anonymous letter nor make an anonymous present." Blood entails its
+duties as well As its privileges.
+
+The casket despatched to its destination, Van Twiller felt easier in his
+mind. He was under obligations to the girl for many an agreeable hour
+that might otherwise have passed heavily. He had paid the debt, and he
+had paid it _en prince_, as became a Van Twiller. He spent the rest of
+the day in looking at some pictures at Goupil's, and at the club, and in
+making a few purchases for his trip up the Hudson. A consciousness
+that this trip up the Hudson was a disorderly retreat came over him
+unpleasantly at intervals.
+
+When he returned to his rooms late at night, he found a note lying
+on the writing-table. He started as his eye caught the words "------
+Theatre" stamped in carmine letters on one corner of the envelope. Van
+Twiller broke the seal with trembling fingers.
+
+Now, this note some time afterwards fell into the hands of Livingstone,
+who showed it to Stuyvesant, who showed it to Delaney, who showed it to
+me, and I copied it as a literary curiosity. The note ran as follows:--
+
+     Mr. Van Twiller,
+
+     Dear SiR--i am verry greatfull to you for that Bracelett. it
+     come just in the nic of time for me. The Mademoiselle
+     Zabriski dodg is about Plaid out. my beard is getting to
+     much for me. i shall have to grow a mustash and take to some
+     other line of busyness, I dont no what now, but will let you
+     no. You wont feel bad if i sell that Bracelett. i have seen
+     Abrahams Moss and he says he will do the square thing. Pleas
+     accep my thanks for youre Beautifull and Unexpected present.
+
+     Youre respectfull servent,
+
+     Charles Montmorenci Walters.
+
+The next day Van Twiller neither expressed nor felt any unwillingness to
+spend a few weeks with his mother at the old homestead.
+
+And then he went abroad.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski, by
+Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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+  <head>
+    <title>
+      Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+    </title>
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+
+Project Gutenberg's Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
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+Title: Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski
+
+Author: Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+
+Release Date: November 6, 2007 [EBook #23362]
+Last Updated: September 20, 2016
+
+Language: English
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+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABRISKI ***
+
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+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABRISKI
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Boston And New York Houghton Mifflin Company
+    </h3>
+    <h4>
+      Copyright, 1873, 1885, and 1901
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      Contents
+    </h2>
+     <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> I. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> II. </a>
+          </p>
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+    </table>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      I.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      We are accustomed to speak with a certain light irony of the tendency
+      which women have to gossip, as if the sin itself, if it is a sin, were of
+      the gentler sex, and could by no chance be a masculine peccadillo. So far
+      as my observation goes, men are as much given to small talk as women, and
+      it is undeniable that we have produced the highest type of gossiper
+      extant. Where will you find, in or out of literature, such another droll,
+      delightful, chatty busybody as Samuel Pepys, Esq., Secretary to the
+      Admiralty in the reigns of those fortunate gentlemen Charles II. and James
+      II. of England? He is the king of tattlers as Shakespeare is the king of
+      poets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If it came to a matter of pure gossip, I would back Our Club against the
+      Sorosis or any women&rsquo;s club in existence. Whenever you see in our
+      drawing-room four or five young fellows lounging in easy-chairs, cigar in
+      hand, and now and then bringing their heads together over the small round
+      Japanese table which is always the pivot of these social circles, you may
+      be sure that they are discussing Tom&rsquo;s engagement, or Dick&rsquo;s extravagance,
+      or Harry&rsquo;s hopeless passion for the younger Miss Fleurdelys. It is here
+      old Tippleton gets execrated for that everlasting <i>bon mot</i> of his
+      which was quite a success at dinner-parties forty years ago; it is here
+      the belle of the season passes under the scalpels of merciless young
+      surgeons; it is here B&rsquo;s financial condition is handled in a way that
+      would make B&rsquo;s hair stand on end; it is here, in short, that everything is
+      canvassed&mdash;everything that happens in our set, I mean, much that
+      never happens, and a great deal that could not possibly happen. It was at
+      Our Club that I learned the particulars of the Van Twiller affair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was great entertainment to Our Club, the Van Twiller affair, though it
+      was rather a joyless thing, I fancy, for Van Twiller. To understand the
+      case fully, it should be understood that Ralph Van Twiller is one of the
+      proudest and most sensitive men living. He is a lineal descendant of
+      Wouter Van Twiller, the famous old Dutch governor of New York&mdash;Nieuw
+      Amsterdam, as it was then; his ancestors have always been burgomasters or
+      admirals or generals, and his mother is the Mrs. Vanrensselaer Van-zandt
+      Van Twiller whose magnificent place will be pointed out to you on the
+      right bank of the Hudson, as you pass up the historic river towards
+      Idlewild. Ralph is about twenty-five years old. Birth made him a
+      gentleman, and the rise of real estate&mdash;some of it in the family
+      since the old governor&rsquo;s time&mdash;made him a millionaire. It was a
+      kindly fairy that stepped in and made him a good fellow also. Fortune, I
+      take it, was in her most jocund mood when she heaped her gifts in this
+      fashion on Van Twiller, who was, and will be again, when this cloud blows
+      over, the flower of Our Club.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About a year ago there came a whisper&mdash;if the word &ldquo;whisper&rdquo; is not
+      too harsh a term to apply to what seemed a mere breath floating gently
+      through the atmosphere of the billiard-room&mdash;imparting the
+      intelligence that Van Twiller was in some kind of trouble. Just as
+      everybody suddenly takes to wearing square-toed boots, or to drawing his
+      neckscarf through a ring, so it became all at once the fashion, without
+      any preconcerted agreement, for everybody to speak of Van Twilier as a man
+      in some way under a cloud. But what the cloud was, and how he got under
+      it, and why he did not get away from it, were points that lifted
+      themselves into the realm of pure conjecture. There was no man in the club
+      with strong enough wing to his imagination to soar to the supposition that
+      Van Twiller was embarrassed in money matters. Was he in love? That
+      appeared nearly as improbable; for if he had been in love all the world&mdash;that
+      is, perhaps a hundred first families&mdash;would have known all about it
+      instantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has the symptoms,&rdquo; said Delaney, laughing. &ldquo;I remember once when Jack
+      Hemming &ldquo;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ned!&rdquo; cried Hemming, &ldquo;I protest against any allusion to that business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was one night when Van Twiller had wandered into the club, turned
+      over the magazines absently in the reading-room, and wandered out again
+      without speaking ten words. The most careless eye would have remarked the
+      great change that had come over Van Twiller. Now and then he would play a
+      game of billiards with De Peyster or Haseltine, or stop to chat a moment
+      in the vestibule with old Duane; but he was an altered man. When at the
+      club, he was usually to be found in the small smoking-room up-stairs,
+      seated on a fauteuil fast asleep, with the last number of The Nation in
+      his hand. Once, if you went to two or three places of an evening, you were
+      certain to meet Van Twiller at them all. You seldom met him in society
+      now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By and by came whisper number two&mdash;a whisper more emphatic than
+      number one, but still untraceable to any tangible mouthpiece. This time
+      the whisper said that Van Twiller <i>was</i> in love. But with whom? The
+      list of possible Mrs. Van Twillers was carefully examined by experienced
+      hands, and a check placed against a fine old Knickerbocker name here and
+      there, but nothing satisfactory arrived at. Then that same still small
+      voice of rumor, but now with an easily detected staccato sharpness to it,
+      said that Van Twiller was in love&mdash;with an actress! Van Twiller, whom
+      it had taken all these years and all this waste of raw material in the way
+      of ancestors to bring to perfection&mdash;Ralph Van Twiller, the net
+      result and flower of his race, the descendant of Wouter, the son of Mrs.
+      Van-rensselaer Vanzandt Van Twiller&mdash;in love with an actress! That
+      was too ridiculous to be believed&mdash;and so everybody believed it. Six
+      or seven members of the club abruptly discovered in themselves an
+      unsuspected latent passion for the histrionic art. In squads of two or
+      three they stormed successively all the theatres in town&mdash;Booth&rsquo;s,
+      Wallack&rsquo;s, Daly&rsquo;s Fifth Avenue (not burnt down then), and the Grand Opera
+      House. Even the shabby homes of the drama over in the Bowery, where the
+      Germanic Thespis has not taken out his naturalization papers, underwent
+      rigid exploration. But no clue was found to Van Twiller&rsquo;s mysterious
+      attachment. The <i>opéra bouffe</i>, which promised the widest field for
+      investigation, produced absolutely nothing, not even a crop of suspicions.
+      One night, after several weeks of this, Delaney and I fancied that we
+      caught sight of Van Twiller in the private box of an up-town theatre,
+      where some thrilling trapeze performance was going on, which we did not
+      care to sit through; but we concluded afterwards that it was only somebody
+      who looked like him. Delaney, by the way, was unusually active in this
+      search. I dare say he never quite forgave Van Twiller for calling him
+      Muslin Delaney. Ned is fond of ladies&rsquo; society, and that&rsquo;s a fact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Cimmerian darkness which surrounded Van Twiller&rsquo;s inamorata left us
+      free to indulge in the wildest conjectures. Whether she was black-tressed
+      Melpomene, with bowl and dagger, or Thalia, with the fair hair and the
+      laughing face, was only to be guessed at. It was popularly conceded,
+      however, that Van Twiller was on the point of forming a dreadful <i>mésalliance</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Up to this period he had visited the club regularly. Suddenly he ceased to
+      appear. He was not to be seen on Fifth Avenue, or in the Central Park, or
+      at the houses he generally frequented. His chambers&mdash;and mighty
+      comfortable chambers they were&mdash;on Thirty-fourth Street were
+      deserted. He had dropped out of the world, shot like a bright particular
+      star from his orbit in the heaven of the best society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The following conversation took place one night in the smoking-room:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where&rsquo;s Van Twiller?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who&rsquo;s seen Van Twiller?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has become of Van Twiller?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Delaney picked up the Evening Post, and read&mdash;with a solemnity that
+      betrayed young Firkins into exclaiming, &ldquo;By Jove, now!&rdquo;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Married, on the 10th instant, by the Rev. Friar Laurence, at the
+      residence of the bride&rsquo;s uncle, Montague Capulet, Esq., Miss Adrienne Le
+      Couvreur to Mr. Ralph Van Twiller, both of this city. No cards.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Free List suspended,&rdquo; murmured De Peyster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It strikes me,&rdquo; said Frank Livingstone, who had been ruffling the leaves
+      of a magazine at the other end of the table, &ldquo;that you fellows are in a
+      great fever about Van Twiller.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So we are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, he has simply gone out of town.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Up to the old homestead on the Hudson.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s an odd time of year for a fellow to go into the country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has gone to visit his mother,&rdquo; said Livingstone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In February?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did n&rsquo;t know, Delaney, that there was any statute in force prohibiting
+      a man from visiting his mother in February if he wants to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Delaney made some light remark about the pleasure of communing with Nature
+      with a cold in her head, and the topic was dropped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Livingstone was hand in glove with Van Twilier, and if any man shared his
+      confidence it was Livingstone. He was aware of the gossip and speculation
+      that had been rife in the club, but he either was not at liberty or did
+      not think it worth while to relieve our curiosity. In the course of a week
+      or two it was reported that Van Twiller was going to Europe; and go he
+      did. A dozen of us went down to the Scythia to see him off. It was
+      refreshing to have something as positive as the fact that Van Twiller had
+      sailed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      II.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Shortly after Van Twiller&rsquo;s departure the whole thing came out. Whether
+      Livingstone found the secret too heavy a burden, or whether it transpired
+      through some indiscretion on the part of Mrs. Vanrensselaer Vanzandt Van
+      Twiller, I cannot say; but one evening the entire story was in the
+      possession of the club.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Van Twiller had actually been very deeply interested&mdash;not in an
+      actress, for the legitimate drama was not her humble walk in life, but&mdash;in
+      Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski, whose really perilous feats on the trapeze
+      had astonished New York the year before, though they had failed to attract
+      Delaney and me the night we wandered into the up-town theatre on the trail
+      of Van Twiller&rsquo;s mystery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That a man like Van Twiller should be fascinated even for an instant by a
+      common circus-girl seems incredible; but it is always the incredible thing
+      that happens. Besides, Mademoiselle Olympe was not a common circus-girl;
+      she was a most daring and startling gymnaste, with a beauty and a grace of
+      movement that gave to her audacious performance almost an air of prudery.
+      Watching her wondrous dexterity and pliant strength, both exercised
+      without apparent effort, it seemed the most natural proceeding in the
+      world that she should do those unpardonable things. She had a way of
+      melting from one graceful posture into another, like the dissolving
+      figures thrown from a stereopticon. She was a lithe, radiant shape out of
+      the Grecian mythology, now poised up there above the gaslights, and now
+      gleaming through the air like a slender gilt arrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am describing Mademoiselle Olympe as she appeared to Van Twiller on the
+      first occasion when he strolled into the theatre where she was performing.
+      To me she was a girl of eighteen or twenty years of age (maybe she was
+      much older, for pearl-powder and distance keep these people perpetually
+      young), slightly but exquisitely built, with sinews of silver wire; rather
+      pretty, perhaps, after a manner, but showing plainly the effects of the
+      exhaustive drafts she was making on her physical vitality. Now, Van
+      Twiller was an enthusiast on the subject of calisthenics. &ldquo;If I had a
+      daughter,&rdquo; Van Twiller used to say, &ldquo;I would n&rsquo;t send her to a
+      boarding-school, or a nunnery; I &lsquo;d send her to a gymnasium for the first
+      five years. Our American women have no physique. They are lilies, pallid,
+      pretty&mdash;and perishable. You marry an American woman, and what do you
+      marry? A headache. Look at English girls. They are at least roses, and
+      last the season through.&rdquo; Walking home from the theatre that first night,
+      it flitted through Van Twiller&rsquo;s mind that if he could give this girl&rsquo;s
+      set of nerves and muscles to any one of the two hundred high-bred women he
+      knew, he would marry her on the spot and worship her forever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The following evening he went to see Mademoiselle Olympe again. &ldquo;Olympe
+      Zabriski,&rdquo; he soliloquized, as he sauntered through the lobby&mdash;&ldquo;what
+      a queer name! Olympe is French, and Zabriski is Polish. It is her <i>nom
+      de guerre</i>, of course; her real name is probably Sarah Jones. What kind
+      of creature can she be in private life, I wonder? I wonder if she wears
+      that costume all the time, and if she springs to her meals from a
+      horizontal bar. Of course she rocks the baby to sleep on the trapeze.&rdquo; And
+      Van Twiller went on making comical domestic tableaux of Mademoiselle
+      Zabriski, like the clever, satirical dog he was, until the curtain rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was on a Friday. There was a matinée the next day, and he attended
+      that, though he had secured a seat for the usual evening entertainment.
+      Then it became a habit of Van Twiller&rsquo;s to drop into the theatre for half
+      an hour or so every night, to assist at the interlude, in which she
+      appeared. He cared only for her part of the programme, and timed his
+      visits accordingly. It was a surprise to himself when he reflected, one
+      morning, that he had not missed a single performance of Mademoiselle
+      Olympe for nearly two weeks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This will never do,&rdquo; said Van Twiller. &ldquo;Olympe&rdquo;&mdash;he called her
+      Olympe, as if she were an old acquaintance, and so she might have been
+      considered by that time&mdash;&ldquo;is a wonderful creature; but this will
+      never do. Van, my boy, you must reform this altogether.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But half past nine that night saw him in his accustomed orchestra chair,
+      and so on for another week. A habit leads a man so gently in the beginning
+      that he does not perceive he is led&mdash;with what silken threads and
+      down what pleasant avenues it leads him! By and by the soft silk threads
+      become iron chains, and the pleasant avenues Avernus!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Quite a new element had lately entered into Van Twiller&rsquo;s enjoyment of
+      Mademoiselle Olympe&rsquo;s ingenious feats&mdash;a vaguely born apprehension
+      that she might slip from that swinging bar; that one of the thin cords
+      supporting it might snap, and let her go headlong from the dizzy height.
+      Now and then, for a terrible instant, he would imagine her lying a
+      glittering, palpitating heap at the foot-lights, with no color in her
+      lips! Sometimes it seemed as if the girl were tempting this kind of fate.
+      It was a hard, bitter life, and nothing but poverty and sordid misery at
+      home could have driven her to it. What if she should end it all some
+      night, by just unclasping that little hand? It looked so small and white
+      from where Van Twiller sat!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This frightful idea fascinated while it chilled him, and helped to make it
+      nearly impossible for him to keep away from the theatre. In the beginning
+      his attendance had not interfered with his social duties or pleasures; but
+      now he came to find it distasteful after dinner to do anything but read,
+      or walk the streets aimlessly, until it was time to go to the play. When
+      that was over, he was in no mood to go anywhere but to his rooms. So he
+      dropped away by insensible degrees from his habitual haunts, was missed,
+      and began to be talked about at the club. Catching some intimation of
+      this, he ventured no more in the orchestra stalls, but shrouded himself
+      behind the draperies of the private box in which Delaney and I thought we
+      saw him on one occasion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, I find it very perplexing to explain what Van Twiller was wholly
+      unable to explain to himself. He was not in love with Mademoiselle Olympe.
+      He had no wish to speak to her, or to hear her speak. Nothing could have
+      been easier, and nothing further from his desire, than to know her
+      personally. A Van Twiller personally acquainted with a strolling female
+      acrobat! Good heavens I That was something possible only with the
+      discovery of perpetual motion. Taken from her theatrical setting, from her
+      lofty perch, so to say, on the trapeze-bar, Olympe Zabriski would have
+      shocked every aristocratic fibre in Van Twiller&rsquo;s body. He was simply
+      fascinated by her marvellous grace and <i>élan</i>, and the magnetic
+      recklessness of the girl. It was very young in him and very weak, and no
+      member of the Sorosis, or all the Sorosisters together, could have been
+      more severe on Van Twiller than he was on himself. To be weak, and to know
+      it, is something of a punishment for a proud man. Van Twiller took his
+      punishment, and went to the theatre, regularly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When her engagement comes to an end,&rdquo; he meditated, &ldquo;that will finish the
+      business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mademoiselle Olympe&rsquo;s engagement finally did come to an end, and she
+      departed. But her engagement had been highly beneficial to the
+      treasury-chest of the up-town theatre, and before Van Twiller could get
+      over missing her she had returned from a short Western tour, and her
+      immediate reappearance was underlined on the play-bills.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On a dead-wall opposite the windows of Van Twiller&rsquo;s sleeping-room there
+      appeared, as if by necromancy, an aggressive poster with Mademoiselle
+      Olympe Zabriski on it in letters at least a foot high. This thing stared
+      him in the face when he woke up, one morning. It gave him a sensation as
+      if she had called on him overnight, and left her card.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From time to time through the day he regarded that poster with a sardonic
+      eye. He had pitilessly resolved not to repeat the folly of the previous
+      month. To say that this moral victory cost him nothing would be to deprive
+      it of merit. It cost him many internal struggles. It is a fine thing to
+      see a man seizing his temptation by the throat, and wrestling with it, and
+      trampling it under foot like St. Anthony. This was the spectacle Van
+      Twiller was exhibiting to the angels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The evening Mademoiselle Olympe was to make her reappearance, Van Twiller,
+      having dined at the club, and feeling more like himself than he had felt
+      for weeks, returned to his chamber, and, putting on dressing-gown and
+      slippers, piled up the greater portion of his library about him, and fell
+      to reading assiduously. There is nothing like a quiet evening at home with
+      some slight intellectual occupation, after one&rsquo;s feathers have been
+      stroked the wrong way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the lively French clock on the mantel-piece&mdash;a base of malachite
+      surmounted by a flying bronze Mercury with its arms spread gracefully on
+      the air, and not remotely suggestive of Mademoiselle Olympe in the act of
+      executing her grand flight from the trapeze&mdash;when the clock, I
+      repeat, struck nine, Van Twilier paid no attention to it. That was
+      certainly a triumph. I am anxious to render Van Twiller all the justice I
+      can, at this point of the narrative, inasmuch as when the half hour
+      sounded musically, like a crystal ball dropping into a silver bowl, he
+      rose from the chair automatically, thrust his feet into his walking-shoes,
+      threw his overcoat across his arm, and strode out of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To be weak and to scorn your weakness, and not to be able to conquer it,
+      is, as has been said, a hard thing; and I suspect it was not with
+      unalloyed satisfaction that Van Twiller found himself taking his seat in
+      the back part of the private box night after night during the second
+      engagement of Mademoiselle Olympe. It was so easy not to stay away!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this second edition of Van Twiller&rsquo;s fatuity, his case was even worse
+      than before. He not only thought of Olympo quite a number of times between
+      breakfast and dinner, he not only attended the interlude regularly, but he
+      began, in spite of himself, to occupy his leisure hours at night by
+      dreaming of her. This was too much of a good thing, and Van Twiller
+      regarded it so. Besides, the dream was always the same&mdash;a harrowing
+      dream, a dream singularly adapted to shattering the nerves of a man like
+      Van Twiller. He would imagine himself seated at the theatre (with all the
+      members of Our Club in the parquette), watching Mademoiselle Olympe as
+      usual, when suddenly that young lady would launch herself desperately from
+      the trapeze, and come flying through the air like a firebrand hurled at
+      his private box. Then the unfortunate man would wake up with cold drops
+      standing on his forehead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is one redeeming feature in this infatuation of Van Twiller&rsquo;s which
+      the sober moralist will love to look upon&mdash;the serene unconsciousness
+      of the person who caused it. She went through her <i>rôle</i> with
+      admirable aplomb, drew her salary, it may be assumed, punctually, and
+      appears from first to last to have been ignorant that there was a
+      miserable slave wearing her chains nightly in the left-hand
+      proscenium-box.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That Van Twiller, haunting the theatre with the persistency of an
+      ex-actor, conducted himself so discreetly as not to draw the fire of
+      Mademoiselle Olympe&rsquo;s blue eyes shows that Van Twiller, however deeply
+      under a spell, was not in love. I say this, though I think if Van Twiller
+      had not been Van Twiller, if he had been a man of no family and no
+      position and no money, if New York had been Paris and Thirty-fourth Street
+      a street in the Latin Quarter&mdash;but it is useless to speculate on what
+      might have happened. What did happen is sufficient.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It happened, then, in the second week of Queen Olympe&rsquo;s second unconscious
+      reign, that an appalling Whisper floated up the Hudson, effected a landing
+      at a point between Spuyten Duyvel Creek and Cold Spring, and sought out a
+      stately mansion of Dutch architecture standing on the bank of the river.
+      The Whisper straightway informed the lady dwelling in this mansion that
+      all was not well with the last of the Van Twillers; that he was gradually
+      estranging himself from his peers, and wasting his nights in a play-house
+      watching a misguided young woman turning unmaidenly somersaults on a piece
+      of wood attached to two ropes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Vanrensselaer Vanzandt Van Twiller came down to town by the next
+      train to look into this little matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She found the flower of the family taking an early breakfast, at 11 a.m.,
+      in his cosey apartments on Thirty-fourth Street. With the least possible
+      circumlocution she confronted him with what rumor had reported of his
+      pursuits, and was pleased, but not too much pleased, when he gave her an
+      exact account of his relations with Mademoiselle Zabriski, neither
+      concealing nor qualifying anything. As a confession, it was unique, and
+      might have been a great deal less entertaining. Two or three times in the
+      course of the narrative, the matron had some difficulty in preserving the
+      gravity of her countenance. After meditating a few minutes, she tapped Van
+      Twiller softly on the arm with the tip of her parasol, and invited him to
+      return with her the next day up the Hudson and make a brief visit at the
+      home of his ancestors. He accepted the invitation with outward alacrity
+      and inward disgust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When this was settled, and the worthy lady had withdrawn, Van Twiller went
+      directly to the establishment of Messrs Ball, Black, and Company, and
+      selected, with unerring taste, the finest diamond bracelet procurable. For
+      his mother? Dear me, no! She had the family jewels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I would not like to state the enormous sum Van Twiller paid for this
+      bracelet. It was such a clasp of diamonds as would have hastened the
+      pulsation of a patrician wrist. It was such a bracelet as Prince
+      Camaralzaman might have sent to the Princess Badoura, and the Princess
+      Badoura&mdash;might have been very glad to get.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the fragrant Levant morocco case, where these happy jewels lived when
+      they were at home, Van Twiller thoughtfully placed his card, on the back
+      of which he had written a line begging Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski to
+      accept the accompanying trifle from one who had witnessed her graceful
+      performances with interest and pleasure. This was not done
+      inconsiderately. &ldquo;Of course I must enclose my card, as I would to any
+      lady,&rdquo; Van Twiller had said to himself. &ldquo;A Van Twiller can neither write
+      an anonymous letter nor make an anonymous present.&rdquo; Blood entails its
+      duties as well As its privileges.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The casket despatched to its destination, Van Twiller felt easier in his
+      mind. He was under obligations to the girl for many an agreeable hour that
+      might otherwise have passed heavily. He had paid the debt, and he had paid
+      it <i>en prince</i>, as became a Van Twiller. He spent the rest of the day
+      in looking at some pictures at Goupil&rsquo;s, and at the club, and in making a
+      few purchases for his trip up the Hudson. A consciousness that this trip
+      up the Hudson was a disorderly retreat came over him unpleasantly at
+      intervals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he returned to his rooms late at night, he found a note lying on the
+      writing-table. He started as his eye caught the words &ldquo;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;
+      Theatre&rdquo; stamped in carmine letters on one corner of the envelope. Van
+      Twiller broke the seal with trembling fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, this note some time afterwards fell into the hands of Livingstone,
+      who showed it to Stuyvesant, who showed it to Delaney, who showed it to
+      me, and I copied it as a literary curiosity. The note ran as follows:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Mr. Van Twiller,
+
+     Dear SiR&mdash;i am verry greatfull to you for that Bracelett. it
+     come just in the nic of time for me. The Mademoiselle
+     Zabriski dodg is about Plaid out. my beard is getting to
+     much for me. i shall have to grow a mustash and take to some
+     other line of busyness, I dont no what now, but will let you
+     no. You wont feel bad if i sell that Bracelett. i have seen
+     Abrahams Moss and he says he will do the square thing. Pleas
+     accep my thanks for youre Beautifull and Unexpected present.
+
+     Youre respectfull servent,
+
+     Charles Montmorenci Walters.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The next day Van Twiller neither expressed nor felt any unwillingness to
+      spend a few weeks with his mother at the old homestead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then he went abroad.
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
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