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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Mathieu Ropars: et cetera, by William Young
+
+
+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: Mathieu Ropars: et cetera
+
+
+Author: William Young
+
+
+
+Release Date: March 13, 2012  [eBook #39132]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MATHIEU ROPARS: ET CETERA***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Charlene Taylor, Katie Hernandez, Marilynda
+Fraser-Cunliffe, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+(http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by the
+Wright American Fiction Project
+(http://www.letrs.indiana.edu/web/w/wright2/)
+
+
+
+Note: Images of the original pages are available through the
+      Wright American Fiction Project. See
+      http://www.letrs.indiana.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?idno=Wright2-2831<;view=toc;sid=075f68e4235f00ec8548d9f9e813ee33;c=wright2
+
+
+
+
+
+MATHIEU ROPARS: ET CETERA.
+
+by
+
+AN EX-EDITOR.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+New York:
+G. P. Putnam & Son, 661 Broadway.
+1868.
+
+Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by
+William Young,
+In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the
+Southern District of New York.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+                                                 Page.
+      I.--MATHIEU ROPARS                             7
+     II.--THRICE ONLY                               76
+    III.--TOSSING UP FOR A HUSBAND                  97
+     IV.--MISSING MARINERS                         117
+      V.--MANDRAGORA--BY THE DOZEN                 140
+     VI.--DR. PABLO'S PREDICTION                   157
+    VII.--THE NEW HAMPSHIRE ALPS                   163
+   VIII.--SLIDING SCALE OF THE INCONSOLABLES       173
+     IX.--RAMBLING RECORDS:
+            The Gentle Arlesians                   179
+            At Nuremburg                           183
+            Roman Nomenclature                     189
+            Brigands, Beggars, and Souvenirs       192
+            Livres des Voyageurs                   197
+      X.--A SINGULAR ANAGRAM                       199
+     XI.--A WELL KNOWN DOCUMENT                    201
+    XII.--BEL PIEDE                                208
+   XIII.--WHO IS HE?                               210
+    XIV.--TO NINON                                 212
+     XV.--THE LAST OF THE ROMAN GLADIATORS         215
+    XVI.--THE PRUDENT BRIDE                        218
+   XVII.--THE TRAMPER'S BED AND THE KING'S         220
+  XVIII.--OCCASION                                 221
+    XIX.--THE MOURNFUL BALLAD OF THE ALABAMA       222
+     XX.--LINES FOR THE GUITAR                     224
+    XXI.--THREE MEN AND A WOMAN                    225
+   XXII.--ANOTHER MARBLE FAUN                      227
+  XXIII.--CHARADES                                 232
+
+
+     These literary chips from the workshop of an arduous profession
+     were, with few exceptions, contributed to the "_Albion_" newspaper,
+     between the years 1848 and 1866.
+
+         New York, May 25, 1868.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                        MATHIEU ROPARS.
+
+              _From the French of Emile Souvestre._
+
+                               I.
+
+
+At the extremity of the roadstead of Brest, in the open space that lies
+stretched out between the Ile Longue and Point Kelerne, may be seen two
+rocks crowned with massive granite buildings, and standing boldly up. On
+the former, the lazaretto of Trébéron has been established; the latter,
+which in other days was used as a burial-ground and thence took its name
+of the Ile des Morts, now contains the principal powder-magazine of the
+naval arsenal. The two rocks separated by an arm of the sea, are about
+six miles distant from Brest. In appearance these little islands are not
+unlike. Beyond the ground occupied by the buildings upon them, they
+offer nothing to the eye save a succession of stony slopes, dotted here
+and there with coarse moss and prickly thorn-broom. Vainly there might
+you look for any other shelter than that afforded by the fissures of the
+rocks, for any other shade than that of the walls, for any other walk
+than the short terrace contrived in front of the buildings. Naked and
+sterile, the two isles remind you of a couple of immense sentry-boxes
+in stone, placed there for the purpose of keeping guard over the sea,
+which is roaring beneath them. But if the foot that treads them remains
+imprisoned within a narrow circle, the view from their summit extends
+over an infinite space. Here, you have the bay of Lanvoc, bordered by a
+dull-looking and stunted vegetation; there, Roscanvel with its shadows
+crossed by the graceful spire of its church; there, Spanish Point
+bristling with batteries; and lastly, close upon the horizon lies Brest,
+with its dock-yards, its forts, and the hundred masts of its ships,
+visible through a veil of mist. Midway opens out the Goulet, the harbour
+of this marvellous lake, through which arrive and depart unceasingly
+those wandering sails, that issue forth to flaunt the ensign of France
+upon the waters, or to bring it home again from far-away lands.
+
+A cannon-shot, the echo of which was still booming along the shores, had
+just announced one of these arrivals, and a frigate, with a light
+breeze, was doubling the Point under a cloud of canvas. From the
+esplanade of Trébéron a man, wrapped in a pilot-cloth cape and wearing a
+narrow-brimmed glazed hat, under which it might be seen that his locks
+were turning grey, was looking at the noble vessel as she glided along
+in the distance, between the azure of the sea and of the sky. It was
+obvious that the keeper of the lazaretto (for he it was) gave but casual
+attention to the sight, with which his long residence at Trébéron had
+familiarized him. His look, for a moment resting carelessly upon the
+frigate which had begun to brail up her upper sails, soon reverted to
+his more immediate neighbourhood, and settled itself at the foot of the
+pathway, that led from the esplanade to the sea, upon a group which
+appeared more decidedly to interest him. And in truth the object of this
+rivetted gaze was of that sort which might have attracted the least
+attentive eye. A pupil of Phidias would have traced in it the germ of
+one of those antique bas-reliefs, of which the marble has become more
+precious than gold.
+
+Two little girls and a goat were coming up the winding path together.
+The elder of the two, who might be eleven years old, was holding the
+freakish animal by one of those long pieces of sea-weed that resemble
+strips of Spanish leather. Her black hair fell down upon a neck
+embrowned like a raven's wing, and threw something of a wild hardihood
+into her expression, tempered however by the velvety softness of her
+eye. The younger, seated on the goat as though it were her customary
+place, was of such rosy-white complexion as you see in the flower of the
+eglantine. A tuft of broom, mingling with her golden hair, fell down
+upon her shoulder, and gave her an indescribably coquettish grace. The
+two sisters compelled the goat, which submitted most unwillingly, to
+moderate its pace; but still, as they proceeded, they were obliged to
+double the slender reins by which they kept it within bounds, and anon
+to catch hold of the wreath of sea-flowers twisted about its horns.
+Then what joyous shouts and peals of laughter were there without end,
+broken in upon by the gentle bleatings of _Brunette_ as she pawed the
+ground with her foot, and shook her saucy little head! Any other hands
+but those of Josèphe and Francine would have tried in vain to make her
+even so far submissive; but for the latter the goat had been a
+foster-mother, a circumstance evidently not forgotten.
+
+Mathieu Ropars had been watching for some time this pleasant little
+contest between the fantastic _Brunette_ and his daughters, when he felt
+a hand laid upon his arm; he turned round and encountered, so to say,
+close against his shoulder the bronzed and smiling face of their mother.
+
+--"Just look at those children," said he, nodding his head in the
+direction of the merry group.
+
+--"Heavens! Francine will fall," exclaimed the mother, stepping towards
+the path. He drew her back.
+
+--"Let them be," said he; "don't you know that there is nothing to fear
+when Josèphe has her eye upon them? Besides, _Brunette_ loves them
+better than her own kids; nor are they behind-hand in returning it.
+Heaven forgive me, if that creature isn't what they think most of--after
+us!"
+
+--"And after Monsieur Gabriel," chimed in their mother--"at least so far
+as Josèphe is concerned; for although he scarcely stayed more than a
+week in the lazaretto, and that's three years ago, the child never lets
+a day pass by without speaking of him."
+
+--"To tell the truth, the Lieutenant is a sort of man not easily to be
+forgotten," replied Ropars, "especially by the little one yonder, to
+whom he was so kind and made so many promises. Why, wasn't he to bring
+her all manner of wonderful things from the East? And by the bye, if
+nothing has happened to him, I believe that we shall pretty soon see him
+again, as well as the _Thetis_."
+
+--"In the meantime I must tell the children of another visit, which will
+also be no small treat for them."
+
+--"Whose?"
+
+--"Cousin's, and little Michael's."
+
+--"Dorot's coming?" inquired Mathieu, looking towards the platform of
+the Ile des Morts. "How do you know?"
+
+--"Can't we talk by signal just as well as his Majesty's ships?" said
+Geneviève laughing. "Look, he has hung out of his window three small red
+handkerchiefs; that's to tell us that he's coming over. Besides, I saw
+Michael going down to the Superintendent's."
+
+--"Bravo!" cried Ropars, his face lighting up; "your cousin and the boy
+must sup with us--that is to say, if your pantry is not quite so empty
+as your hospital."
+
+Geneviève protested, and then enumerated with an air of complacency all
+her culinary resources, which had fortunately been replenished, two
+days before, by the Superintendent, who supplied at the same time the
+powder-magazine and the lazaretto. Mathieu promised to complete the
+feast by broaching for the artillery-man an old bottle of Rousillon
+wine, stowed away for a long time under the sand of his cellar.
+
+The two little girls at this moment came up on to the terrace.
+
+--"Quick, here!" cried Geneviève, "quick; there's somebody coming."
+
+--"Monsieur Gabriel?" asked Josèphe, springing forward with this
+exclamation.
+
+--"No, no, goose-cap--cousin Dorot and little Michael."
+
+An involuntary gesture of disappointment escaped from the child; but
+Francine clapped her hands and broke out into shouts of joy. The goat,
+left to herself, bounded along the precipitous slopes of the rocks,
+where she set to work browsing on the tufts of brackish herbage; the
+sisters took each other's hand to go down towards the little
+landing-place; whilst their mother went into the house with a view of
+getting everything in readiness.
+
+As had been remarked by the last-named, the special affection of Josèphe
+for Monsieur Gabriel was already of several years standing. It dated
+from a quarantine performed at Trébéron by the Lieutenant, who, charmed
+by her grace, bordering though it was upon the savage, had exhibited
+towards her a marked regard, to which the child had responded with what
+amounted almost to a passion. Having entered the navy against his
+inclination, Monsieur Gabriel had adopted little of it but its uniform.
+In the midst of a life of change, hardship, and adventure, he dreamed
+unceasingly of the unchangeableness of the domestic hearth, and of
+peaceful family enjoyments. He was one of those lovers of solitude, who
+are born to live amongst labourers, and women, and children. Confined to
+the lazaretto of Trébéron, he had brought thither a few favourite books,
+and his violin, on which he played for hours at a time, with no other
+end than the listening to its melodious vibrations. When he went out,
+Josèphe ran to meet him, acted as his guide along the rocks, and
+escorted him to their most secluded recesses, in which, day by day, he
+discovered some unknown plant, or moss that was new to him. In the
+evening, be paid a visit to the old quarter-master whose quiet enjoyment
+of life had attracted his notice. Geneviève talked to him of her
+children; Josèphe begged of him a story or a song; and when it was time
+for him to retire for the night, he went back to his cell, light hearted
+and with tranquil mind. A fortnight thus slipped away as if it had been
+an hour; so that when his quarantine was at length performed, and it was
+necessary for him to leave Trébéron, his deliverance did but awaken in
+him a feeling of regret. He came back several times to pass whole days
+upon the lonely islet; and when finally he was embarking for a distant
+voyage of discovery, he promised the solitary family that he would
+occasionally write to them. Ropars had in fact received some letters
+from him; and, as we have seen, was expecting his speedy return. For the
+moment, the visit announced by Geneviève exclusively occupied the keeper
+of the lazaretto. He remained alone upon the esplanade, whence he
+continued to look towards the Ile des Morts. The distance rendered
+visible everything done there; it was easy to recognize persons and to
+distinguish their movements. He could therefore see Dorot take his way
+towards the skiff, set up the mast, and hoist the sail; and the little
+Michael catching hold, with some difficulty, of the tiller.
+
+Previously to the two families becoming allied by marriage, the keepers
+of the powder-magazine and of the lazaretto had known each other in the
+navy, wherein one was a quarter-master and the other a sergeant of
+artillery. Appointed to Trébéron, Mathieu Ropars had rejoiced at the
+idea of meeting his old ship-mate Dorot, already several years
+established at the Ile des Morts, with his wife, his son, and a female
+orphan relative. The lazaretto being almost always deserted, he was left
+with ample leisure for frequent visits to the powder-magazine, and for
+becoming well known there and thoroughly appreciated. Geneviève, Dorot's
+cousin, was particularly taken with such a character, so
+straight-forward and yet so gentle. She had been tried, until she was
+sixteen, by all the pains and penalties of misery. Taken then, from
+charitable motives, into the house of her cousin whose wife occasionally
+made her pay dearly enough for his hospitality, the poor orphan had
+accustomed herself to expecting nothing at any one's hands, and to
+receiving as a favour whatever was accorded her. Thus the frank
+cordiality of Mathieu was more touching in her eyes than it would have
+been in those of another. She welcomed it with a gratitude half filial,
+to which insensibly became added that shade of a more tender feeling,
+always blended into the attachments of a woman whose heart is
+disengaged. An intimacy between herself and Ropars went on,
+strengthening from day to day, whilst neither of them took account of
+their predilections. As he marked the young girl in the bloom of her
+expanding beauty, Mathieu, who already felt the weight of years upon
+him, would never have dreamed of asking her to share his existence;
+whilst Geneviève, happy in seeing him daily and in the consciousness of
+his immediate neighbourhood, thought not of desiring anything further.
+It needed the offer of a situation for her at Brest, and the consequent
+prospect of a separation, to enlighten them as to their mutual
+dependence on each other. Perceiving that Geneviève shed tears, Ropars,
+who could not shut his eyes to his own distress of mind, took courage
+and brought matters to a point. He told her that she might dispense with
+this separation, if the isle of Trébéron were no more irksome to her
+than the Ile des Morts, and if his society were as agreeable to her as
+that of her cousin. The poor girl, weeping, blushing and overjoyed,
+could only reply by letting herself fall into his arms. The old
+quarter-master forthwith opened his mind to Dorot. The marriage took
+place; and he carried off Geneviève to his islet, of which henceforth
+he mistrusted not the solitude.
+
+The difference in their respective ages did not seem to mar the
+happiness of the keeper and the orphan girl. Both were possessed of that
+which renders marriage a blessing--the simple mind and the heart of
+kindly impulse. Children came, to draw still closer these ties, and to
+enliven their hearth. The younger was just born, when Dorot lost his
+wife, and was left alone with his son Michael, thirteen years of age.
+This premature widowerhood had revived the friendship of the two old
+shipmates. Their intercourse became more frequent. The skiff that served
+both establishments was stationed at the little haven of the Ile des
+Morts, and was thus at the disposition of the artillery-man, who missed
+no opportunity of coming to pass a few hours with his neighbours. But
+notwithstanding their proximity, and the ease with which the passage was
+made, these visits could not be of daily occurrence. Dorot was obliged
+to be constantly on the watch; his official orders were equally sudden
+and unforeseen; nor could he expose himself to the risk of too frequent
+absence. His appearance therefore at the lazaretto had not ceased to be
+a happy exception to the rule. Father, mother, and children alike found
+in it a festal occasion; and it was never without great rejoicing that
+the signal was observed announcing the agreeable visit, and the boat
+seen putting out from the little landing-place and stretching over
+towards Trébéron.
+
+This time, so soon as Ropars saw her on the way, he went down to meet
+her. Scarcely had she touched the ground, when Michael jumped ashore,
+threw his arms about the keeper, then about the two little girls, and
+then ran off with the latter towards the house. Dorot stepping out in
+turn, shook hands heartily with Mathieu; and the pair, chatting, slowly
+began the ascent. Having reached the summit of the cliff, they faced
+about by force of habit, to take a look out to sea. The artillery-man
+remarked that the frigate had just clewed up her lower sails.
+
+--"God help us! she's going to anchor," said he; "did you ever see,
+Mathieu, a homeward-bound ship let go so far from land?"
+
+--"That depends," replied the old quarter-master; "we hold off when we
+mistrust a fort, or are afraid of reefs."
+
+--"But there's nothing of that sort here," remarked Dorot; "the frigate
+has no need to fear the guns of the Castle which are her very good
+friends, or the roadstead which is as safe an anchorage as if she were
+fast in the dry-dock. There must be something extraordinary."
+
+--"Perhaps the ship has to perform quarantine," suggested Ropars; "the
+_Thetis_ is expected."
+
+--"That's it; you've named her," cried the artillery-man, winking his
+eye and shading his forehead with one hand so as to look more fixedly at
+the distant vessel; "it is the _Thetis_, or I'm a heathen. I had her
+down yonder for a week, when she took her powder on board; I know her
+by the set of her masts and by her bearing on the water."
+
+--"The _Thetis_!" echoed Mathieu; "then we shall soon see Monsieur
+Gabriel. What delight for Josèphe! Quick; let's tell her."
+
+He was hurrying off, but Dorot kept him back. "No hurry," said he;
+"never reckon too surely on what a ship brings home. Pick people out,
+and they're just those that are missing when the roll's called. Better
+wait till the Lieutenant brings his own news."
+
+--"You're right," replied the quarter-master; "the more so since the
+frigate comes, if I don't mistake, from the Havannah."
+
+--"Who knows whether she won't bring you some lodgers for your
+lazaretto?"
+
+--"So be it; they'll be welcome. With Geneviève and the children, one
+can't be dull; but once in a while there's no harm in a little company.
+You fellows at the Ile des Morts, you have the artillery
+despatch-carrier, who keeps you up to all that goes on, to say nothing
+of inspections and your convoys of powder; whilst here--never a thing!
+Not one visitor in a twelvemonth! At least, if you have to put people
+sometimes into quarantine, you hear what's done on land there, and that
+leaves you some thing to talk about for months."
+
+The artillery-man shrugged his shoulders--"That's all very well, when
+they don't bring disease with them; but the old coasters still talk of a
+quarantine in which the lazaretto ran short of both earth and rock for
+burying the dead, and when the bodies were of necessity thrown into the
+sea with a shot attached to their necks, as in vessels out on a voyage."
+
+--"Now may Christ spare us such a trial!" exclaimed Ropars, respectfully
+touching his hat, as he was used to do whenever he pronounced the
+Saviour's name. "But you're speaking of a long time ago, Dorot; please
+Heaven, we won't see such again. There are no heathen here now; and I
+believe that God's good will will take care of us."
+
+Dorot nodded his acquiescence. In fact this confidence, springing from a
+simple faith, had up to that time been justified by experience. During
+the thirteen years that the keeper had spent at Trébéron, he had only
+received healthy persons into quarantine, who were complying with a
+formal regulation, and were obliged to make proof of their good health
+by undergoing this preventive sequestration. There were indeed rare
+exceptions. Like all lazarettos, that of Trébéron remained generally
+unoccupied; and the keeper kept watch there alone, like an ever-living
+sentinel posted in advance of the continent, for the purpose of warding
+off contagion.
+
+As they chatted, Dorot and he had reached the house. Geneviève was
+waiting for them at the doorway, surrounded by the three children who
+laid hold of and talked to her all at once. After an exchange of their
+accustomed friendly greetings, she went in, with the two keepers, whilst
+Michael drew off Francine and Josèphe towards _Brunette_, who was
+waiting for them on a pinnacle of rock, eyeing them and bleating at
+them. The youngster, accustomed to chase his father's sheep upon the
+declivities of the Ile des Morts, endeavored to get at her; but the
+capricious creature sprung from point to point along the precipices,
+letting herself at every moment almost be caught, and at every moment
+bounding away from the hand that just could touch her.
+
+Whilst the children kept up this chase, with a thousand calls to one
+another and a thousand peals of laughter, Ropars and Dorot entered the
+eating-room in which Geneviève was already laying the cloth. It was a
+room of middling size, furnished by the keeper himself at the period of
+his marriage, and ornamented with a few marine engravings. Amongst these
+was particularly distinguished a portrait of Jean Bart, that nautical
+Hercules on whom, as all the world knows, his traditional celebrity has
+fastened all manner of superhuman exploits and impossible adventures.
+
+Having made his guest sit down, Mathieu went off to disinter his bottle
+of Rousillon wine; and brought it back all whitened with the sand, and
+capped with a green-waxed cork that bespoke its noble birth-place. Dorot
+good-temperedly complained of such extravagance, and hinted that he
+could not make his visit a long one, inasmuch as the officer commanding
+the post of the Ile des Morts had charged him to bring the skiff back
+before sunset. Geneviève therefore hurried herself to serve up the
+dinner, and called the children to take their places at table.
+
+With persons whose entire life was contracted within the narrow limits
+of two small islands, the conversation could not be much varied. Mathieu
+talked of his still-lines set between the headlands of Trébéron, and
+Dorot of his small cherry-tree. The latter might be regarded as the one
+stumbling block of pride, over which the habitual modesty of the worthy
+sergeant was sure to trip. No other keeper before his time had succeeded
+in securing what he planted, from the sea wind; this was the only tree
+that had ever been seen in the two islands; and Lucullus might well have
+been less proud of the first cherry-tree that he brought from Persia,
+for the purpose of gracing his triumph. Humble as regards everything
+else, Dorot drew himself up proudly when there was any question of his
+poor wild-stock; he only let it be seen by his friends and his
+superiors, and then at their urgent solicitation. Objects resemble human
+kind, and very often assume the importance that is given them, in place
+of that to which they are entitled. Thus overcharged and carefully
+tended, the fame of the cherry-tree of the Ile des Morts went abroad
+from Plougastel to Camaret; it was everywhere talked of as a prodigy.
+The pride of Dorot had increased in a corresponding degree, and was just
+now swollen to the highest pitch by an event no less extraordinary than
+unforseen. He brought the news of it to Trébéron, but would not make it
+known too abruptly. All supposable things were first to be run over, as
+in the famous letter of Madame de Sevigné on the marriage of
+Mademoiselle. Finally, when every one had given it up, he determined to
+enlighten them, and announced ... that the cherry-tree was in blossom!
+
+Unanimous was the cry of astonishment and delight. Prisoners in their
+island, it was several years since Ropars and Geneviève had seen a tree
+in blossom; and the two little girls could not recall to mind that they
+had ever seen one. Loudly and both at once, they beset Michael with
+questions. Was the cherry-tree flowering in gold-colour like the
+thorn-broom, or in the colour of blood like the sea-furze? How could the
+blossoms ever become fruit? Must they wait a long time? Would the tree
+bear the red cherries of the coast, or the black-hearts of the upper
+country? Dorot cut all these inquiries short, by declaring that he would
+come over next day, for the whole of the family, that they might see the
+wondrous tree and dine at the Ile des Morts. The ecstacies of the
+sisters may be imagined. Their mother could not check their laughing and
+their clapping of hands. They continued their cry of "to-morrow,
+to-morrow!" just as Æneas' look-out men kept up their cry of "Italy,
+Italy!" when they saw through the empurpled vapours that goal of so many
+efforts and such longings.
+
+Remarking their impatience, the sergeant proposed to carry them over,
+that very evening, with Michael. There would be still day-light enough
+on their arrival, for them to see the cherry-tree covered with its coat
+of summer-snow, and their parents could fetch them, next day. The
+children backed this offer with their entreaties; Ropars smiled,
+without replying; but Geneviève entered her protest against it. What
+would she do, if Francine and Josèphe were away? Many a time ere this,
+on waking in the middle of the night, she had fretted herself at not
+hearing their gentle breathings; she had jumped up in agony, and had
+crept on tip-toe to their bed, to touch them and to listen to them; how
+would it be then, if they were not there; how could she herself sleep
+quietly without fancying some danger? She would dream that the
+powder-magazine was on fire, or that the Ile des Morts was going down
+like a vessel foundering--and all this was said betwixt a laugh and a
+tear. The little maidens, bent at first on setting off, were soon
+hanging on their mother's shoulders, touched by her contagious
+tenderness, and declaring that they preferred to remain. The
+artillery-man insisted no longer. He took with Mathieu the path that led
+down to the sandy shore, and was followed by Geneviève and the children,
+all silent for the moment.
+
+The sun declining to the horizon lit up the promontory of Kelerne, and
+painted in the passage of Goulet a stream of purple and gold. A breeze
+began to play over the bay, and chequered it with undulating ripples.
+The perfume exhaled from the saps was wafted in puffs of wind from the
+main land, as were the tinklings of the Angelus, and the lowing of the
+cattle driven home. A consciousness of strength in repose was
+perceivable, together with an indescribable air of serenity, that stole
+from surrounding objects upon the senses, and found its way to the very
+depths of the soul. The sky, the earth, and the water seemed by mutual
+consent to have subdued their voices, in order to mingle them in one
+harmonious murmur. Without analyzing the soft but not enervating
+influence that surrounded them, the two keepers with their families were
+alive to its effects. Silently they went down the foot-path, pausing
+upon their steps, as though to lengthen out the sense of enjoyment, or
+to taste of it drop by drop. Having, however, reached the boat, it
+became necessary to part. Josèphe made the sergeant promise to come for
+them early in the morning. The sail at last was hoisted; and the skiff,
+launched out upon the yielding waves, sped her way towards the
+powder-magazine.
+
+At the moment when she reached the middle of the channel that separates
+the two islands, a ship's long-boat, unobserved hitherto in the
+excitement of leave-taking, appeared to leeward of Trébéron. Her
+peculiar build, her black color traversed only by a single white ribbon
+at the water-line, and the perfect condition of her spars and sails,
+would have sufficed to show what she was, even if the costume of the
+double row of sailors ranged along the thwarts had not betrayed the
+man-of-war's men. On crossing the skiff steered by the sergeant, she was
+sheered suddenly off; and by the last glimpse of day-light might be
+discerned the yellow flag of the Health Office.
+
+At this sight, Geneviève and the children uttered an involuntary cry.
+All three at once comprehended that these were occupants coming to the
+lazaretto; that they would put the island into quarantine, and prevent
+all external intercourse. The next day's visit must be indefinitely
+postponed, and the cherry-tree would have finished blossoming before
+they could have regained their liberty. This dashing down of a
+newly-raised anticipation had in it something so abrupt and so
+unexpected, that Francine and Josèphe could by no means resign
+themselves to it. Desolate was the look that they exchanged, and
+silently did they begin to weep, as their mother took one of them in
+either hand, and sorrowfully remounted the path. Geneviève herself felt
+her heart oppressed; on reaching the platform, she could not but pause
+for a moment. The skiff with rose-coloured sail, that bore away the
+promise of another meeting and of a festival, had disappeared; the black
+long-boat was there at her feet--and with it had come to shore,
+seclusion, melancholy, and disease. Geneviève kissed her children; but
+scarcely could she keep back a tear that had gathered beneath her
+eyelids, as without the inclination to prolong her look she hastily
+entered the house.
+
+Mathieu in the meantime had gone to receive the persons placed in
+quarantine, and to open the lazaretto for them. On returning, he looked
+somewhat pale, and his face wore an expression with which Geneviève was
+struck; but at the first question she asked him, he abruptly interrupted
+her, to inquire where Francine and Josèphe were.
+
+--"Don't you see them?" she replied, pointing to the two little girls
+sitting down in a dark corner, still sobbing, and with eyes still moist;
+"did you think that they had gone with their cousin?"
+
+"Would to God, they had!" murmured Mathieu in an agonized voice, but not
+overheard by the children.
+
+Geneviève looked at him, stupefied. "Why so?" she asked; "what has
+happened? Tell me, Mathieu, in the name of the Holy Trinity! what is the
+matter?"
+
+--"Well, then," answered the keeper, "there is ... there is ... death
+upon the island."
+
+--"How do you mean?"
+
+--"I mean, my poor wife, just what I have seen! The _Thetis's_ long-boat
+has landed her hospital-mates and doctors, with eight sick men; not one
+of whom will ever touch the main-land again."
+
+--"Holy Virgin! what is it?"
+
+--"The yellow fever!"
+
+
+                                 II.
+
+
+For him who dwells in-land, the yellow fever is but a disease similar to
+a thousand others, of which he knows nothing save the name. Family
+tradition and personal experience can attach to it, for him, neither
+terror or regret. But amongst our maritime population, the word sounds
+like a knell; not only bringing to mind a risk to be encountered, but
+reviving affliction, of recent or of ancient date. There, where every
+family has one at least of its loved members absent in foreign
+countries, the terrible scourge is all too well identified with the
+number of widows and orphans that it has made. It ranks with the storm
+and the reef of rocks, as a deadly foe. Its name, let fall, produces the
+same effect as the wind that whistles, or the surf that roars. Looks are
+interchanged on hearing it; and thought recurs to the absent, if not to
+the dead.
+
+Ropars, on this occasion, dwelt mainly on those about him; and in truth,
+no one could have better right than he to be ill at ease. Thrown in
+former days upon a station where the yellow fever was epidemic, he had
+seen the seamen of the fleet decimated around him, and had himself
+barely escaped, as if by miracle. The remembrance of that butchery, as
+he termed it, was too vivid, and he had too often described it to
+Geneviève, for their firmness not now to be shaken. They troubled not
+themselves on their own account, but on account of those whose existence
+was so dear to them. Mathieu's first thought was of his wife and of his
+children; the first impulse of Geneviève was to fold them in her arms,
+and to declare that they must all go away. Some trouble had the old
+sailor in making her comprehend that, even if retreating were not
+dishonorable for him, it had become impossible. The long-boat had made
+sail for the frigate, and the yellow flag was hoisted at the lazaretto.
+Quarantine had begun for all who happened to be at Trébéron. Not a soul
+could henceforth pass beyond its limits: and Ropars pointed out to
+Geneviève the gun-boat sent by the health officer, which had been
+brought to bear at half cable's-length distance from the island, and cut
+off from it all intercourse by boats. They were in fact definitively
+penned in with the epidemic, and condemned to run its risk to the end.
+
+But the agitation of Mathieu, in which surprise had worked its part, did
+not last long. The quarter-master soon regained his original strength of
+mind, which had been slightly unhinged in the tendernesses of his
+domestic life; and, regardless of his own previous words, he set himself
+seriously to soothing the terror of Geneviève by underrating the danger
+that they incurred. After all, they were not here in a state of things
+that favoured the disease; they had not to contend against the
+enervating sun of the Havannah or Brazil; this was not one of those
+awful contagions that spread from house to house like a fire, leaving
+behind it the dead alone--it was a disorder partly spent, and from
+which, with certain precautions, escape was easy. The chief and the most
+indispensable of these precautions was to avoid going near the
+apartments occupied by those who had been brought into quarantine, and
+never to stay to leeward of the lazaretto. Josèphe and Francine were at
+once informed of this. Geneviève explained to them every thing that they
+were to do, with a minuteness of detail, that savoured alternately of
+threatening and of endearment. At first, as the punishment for any
+failure of obedience, she pointed out to them the disease, or even death
+itself; then seeing them turn pale with fear, she drew them within her
+caressing arms and re-assured them by her kisses. Mathieu added to her
+exhortations something more definite and more secure. Next morning, he
+marked out a space enclosed with stakes joined together by a cord, as
+the children's permitted bounds. By way of increased precaution, the
+goat herself was brought within this enclosure, picketted to a stake,
+and fed upon winter fodder. The keeper, on his part, held aloof from
+habitual intercourse with the infirmary-men and the doctors of the
+lazaretto. He would even have been ignorant of the fate of those who
+were in quarantine if, every evening, the descent of a few men towards
+the sandy shore of the little isle, and the tinkling of a bell that
+warned him to stand out of their way, had not made it obvious that their
+errand was to dig a grave. The vacancies, besides, were rapidly filled
+by fresh invalids brought on shore by the frigate's long-boat, for the
+epidemic did not seem as yet to decrease or to relax its severity. No
+convalescent inmate had yet appeared upon the terrace of the lazaretto.
+The skiff belonging to the gun-boat, that enforced the sanitary
+regulations, came near the landing place every morning; but no one
+landed. Provisions and medicines were put ashore by means of a
+travelling pass-rope, set up in the creek; the Surgeon's report was
+received at the end of a boat-hook; and then the skiff sailed away in an
+apparent hurry, that bespoke the fear of contagion.
+
+However, after the first few days were past, Ropars and Geneviève felt
+somewhat re-assured. The blows that death dealt around them were mute
+and hidden; the edge of inquietude became insensibly blunted. Seeing
+that it was possible to live in contact with the formidable malady, they
+half forgot, both of them, that is was also possible to die. It was with
+them as with the inhabitants of a besieged city, who no longer tremble
+at the roar of cannon. In vain did the bell tinkle every evening, and
+the long-boat bring ashore every morning a fresh batch of the
+death-stricken; the continuance of the danger made it seem to be a
+matter of course, and this feeling soon merged into a sense of security.
+Once in a while even, Geneviève forgot every thing and recommenced her
+singing; but abruptly it was suspended at sight of the yellow flag, or
+as a sudden recollection crossed her mind. Then the song was stifled
+into a sigh.
+
+Ropars had made inquiries for Monsieur Gabriel, on the first arrival of
+the sick. The epidemic had not then attacked him; but his own breaking
+off from all intercourse with the hospital-mates, and with the crew, had
+prevented his seeking further information. Several boat-loads had been
+brought ashore, without any opportunity for his hearing of the
+Lieutenant, when he received a note, cut through with scissors and
+steeped in vinegar. It contained only these few words, written in
+pencil:
+
+     "I am come here.... If I live, we shall meet.... If I die ...
+     present this letter to the captain of the _Thetis_ ... and claim
+     for Josèphe ... my large mahogany chest.
+                                                          GABRIEL."
+
+The writing, scarcely legible, betrayed a hand that shook with fever.
+Mathieu, grievously taken by surprise, forgot this time all his
+precautions, and ran to the lazaretto. But the Surgeon would not let him
+see the Lieutenant, whose condition seemed to give him grave concern. In
+the evening it was still worse, and left little room for hope; on the
+following day there was none at all.
+
+Josèphe, from whom they had concealed the name of the frigate that was
+ravaged by the epidemic, had no suspicion of the danger of her friend;
+still, her sister and herself had none the less lost all their gaiety.
+Prisoners within the narrow bounds marked out by their father, they were
+both moodily seated near the stake to which the goat was picketted; and
+she, lying down at their feet, seemed to disdain the fodder that was
+scattered before her. Josèphe, holding Francine propped against her,
+proposed to her, one after another, all the little games to which they
+were accustomed; but the child shook her head, her eyes fixed upon the
+sea.
+
+--"What will you do, then, Zine?" asked she, saddened by her sister's
+sadness.
+
+There was no reply. The elder had one hand upon the younger's head, and
+played for an instant with the ringlets of her golden hair.
+
+--"You're longing to go across there to see Michael? isn't that it?" she
+resumed, bending down over the little one; "but it's too late; the
+cherry-tree has shed its blossoms."
+
+--"Then you believe that the cherries are already ripe?" interrupted
+Francine, turning up to Josèphe her face that listlessness had robbed of
+a portion of its roses, but with her large eyes full of curiosity.
+
+--"I don't know," said the elder "mother will tell us. But let's think
+about something else; you know that we cannot go to the
+powder-magazine."
+
+--"No, nor to the end of the island, nor any where," added Francine,
+letting herself sink down again upon Josèphe's knees.
+
+The latter, bent at all events on amusing the child, then called her
+attention to the goat, that had just got up. Starting suddenly from her
+doze, _Brunette_ was describing round her stake a series of such droll
+evolutions, that the child's sadness could not hold out against them,
+and she soon broke out into a laugh. Josèphe, who at first had chimed in
+with her merriment, was afraid that the mutinous creature's gambols
+would end by her breaking the cord; she put her hand out to prevent it.
+
+--"Let her be, let her be!" cried Francine in high glee; "look how she
+rears up! see how she dances! Well done, _Brunette_; higher, little one,
+higher!"
+
+The child, kneeling down upon the sand, clapped her hands, with shouts
+of delight; and the goat, that seemed excited by her voice and by the
+noise, redoubled its capricious boundings. All at once, the stake,
+loosened by such continued tuggings, was drawn out of the ground: the
+animal jumped to one side; and finding itself no longer held back,
+started off for the further extremity of the island.
+
+The two sisters gave utterance to a cry, and then, from an irresistable
+impulse, sprang away together in pursuit. The corded limits were passed,
+and they were soon led off along the declivities, calling to _Brunette_,
+who according to her old tricks would wait, bleating, for them, and then
+caper away at their approach. In the eagerness of their chase they thus
+reached the summit of the island, followed the slopes that went down to
+the sea, and finally arrived at the foot of the ravine that was farthest
+removed from their dwelling. It was there only that Josèphe bethought
+her of their disobedience. She stopped, out of breath, and held back her
+sister with her arms.
+
+--"Not a step further, Zine!" cried she; "we ought not to have come so
+far; mother forbid it."
+
+The little one looked round about her, and remarked in turn the spot in
+which they were. It was a large fissure hollowed out in the stony soil
+of the island, and, at the bottom of which broad ferns and flowering
+brooms had sprung up in tufts. Right and left, through the
+partition-walls of rock, peeped up the stone-break, and the sea turf
+with its purple cats-tails, and the fox glove that thrust its long stalk
+from the crevices, loaded with rose-coloured bell flowers.
+
+At such a sight, Francine could not restrain a cry of admiration. Here
+was the first verdure, here were the first flowers she had seen, since
+strict orders had confined her to the barren platform occupied by the
+keeper's house. Neither could she resist the temptation; slipping away
+from the hands of her sister, and unwilling to hear a word, she
+disappeared in the thickest of the flowering tufts.
+
+Having vainly called to her, Josèphe followed to bring her back; but the
+child went on from shrub to shrub, without any inclination to stop. At
+every fresh handful of gathered flowers, uselessly did Josèphe cry,
+"enough!" "More, more!" was Francine's answer, as she piled up within
+her apron, upheld by the two corners, all on which she could lay her
+hands. Want of place alone could make her consent to suspend her
+harvesting. Loaded with herbs and wild flowers, falling in garlands down
+to her very feet, she at length was disposed to take hold again of
+Josèphe's hand, who set to work to find their way back, and cautiously
+removed the prickly-broom from their path.
+
+The children were on the point of reaching a ridge made up of heath and
+broom, when the warning bell was heard above their heads. They stopped,
+and raised their eyes. Four of the infirmary-men were coming down
+towards the ravine, bearing their funereal burden. They were following
+the only foot-path practicable on the slope, and the little girls could
+not proceed on their way, without meeting them. Terrified, they drew
+back amongst the bushes that still concealed them, and paused, leaning
+one against the other. The bell tinkled by fits and starts, drawing
+nearer at every sound. At length they could distinguish the heavy
+footstep of the bearers ringing upon the rock, and could see their
+darkening outlines marked out in the twilight. They were advancing
+precisely to the little oasis wherein the children had taken refuge.
+Arrived at the entrance, they seemed to consult together for an instant;
+then resumed their way through the thorny tufts, rounded the mass of
+rock behind which the sisters had crouched, and stopped, with the words,
+"Here it is."
+
+Francine, in dire alarm, had hidden her head upon Josèphe's knees; she,
+less timid, gently put aside the branches, and could then see a grave
+already dug in a gravelly portion of the soil. The infirmary-men had
+laid down the corpse upon the ground, wrapped-up in a coarse linen
+cloth. Then they took a sack, hidden under a projecting bit of rock, and
+emptied its contents into the grave. The white dust, that rose up from
+it as a cloud, was wafted to the children in a sour odour of lime. This
+was carefully spread over the bottom of the hole, so as to form a bed
+for the dead body, and was then sprinkled with water drawn from the sea.
+These preparatory measures had all been taken in gloomy silence. Nought
+was heard but the scraping of the spade upon the rocky soil, and the
+monotonous bubbling of the tiny waves that rippled with the evening
+breeze upon the shore. Josèphe, her neck out-stretched, her large eyes
+dilated, and with a painful sense of tightening at her heart-strings,
+continued on the watch.
+
+At this moment, two of the bearers took up the body, and brought it
+close to the hole dug for its reception. They were separated from the
+children only by a tuft of bushes. As they lightly grazed it with their
+burden, a gust of wind unrolled one of the corners of the covering
+cloth; a livid head was visible by the last glimmering of light; and
+Josèphe uttered a stifled cry. The fall of the body into the pit
+prevented her being heard; but the moment's glance had sufficed--the
+child thought she recognized the face of Monsieur Gabriel. She threw
+herself back, in inexpressible horror. It was the first time that death
+had come before her eyes, and it appeared to her in a guise that filled
+her with grief and terror. Clinging to Francine, she began to tremble in
+every limb. The noise of the earth and flint-stones, that were shovelled
+into the grave, held her as one petrified. It was only when the four
+grave-diggers had left the ravine and disappeared in the pathway, that
+her agony found vent. Francine raised her head and asked what had
+happened; but receiving no reply, threw herself into Josèphe's arms, and
+began in turn to sob.
+
+The distress of her little sister seemed to counteract that of Josèphe,
+who forced herself to stifle her own anguish, and began embracing and
+consoling Francine.
+
+--"Don't cry" stammered she, choking in spite of herself; "you mustn't
+be afraid, ... you mustn't cry...."
+
+--"What is the matter with you, Josey; what is it?" inquired the little
+one again, holding her sister's head between her own two hands, and
+kissing her moistened cheeks.
+
+--"It's ... nothing, ..." returned Josèphe, her accent belying her
+words, ... "I was taken by surprise...."
+
+--"Have the men gone?" asked Francine, looking with frightened glance
+towards the grave.
+
+--"You see they have," answered Josèphe shuddering.
+
+--"What did they come here to do? They were carrying something. It was a
+dead body, wasn't it?"
+
+Her sister put her hand upon her lips.
+
+--"Don't talk of that, Zine!" murmured she, her sobs again overpowering
+her.
+
+--"You saw it?" asked the child, frightened, yet curious.
+
+--"Yes, O God!" faltered forth her sister in reply; "... and ... I knew
+it again ... it was Monsieur Gabriel!"
+
+--"Your good friend, Josey?" cried Francine; "are you sure? And he's
+there ... there, under the ground? ... Oh! let's go, let's go; I'm
+afraid ... I'm afraid!"
+
+And again she threw herself into her sister's arms, who exerted herself
+to the utmost to re-assure her, and at the same time to control her own
+tears.
+
+--"There, stop, Zine!" said she, with broken voice; "... we must be calm
+... we must dry up our eyes ... or mother will be uneasy." Then raising
+herself suddenly, "Hark," she added, "I fancied I heard some one calling
+us; quick, quick, let's go up!"
+
+With these words the two little maidens rose from the ground; quitting
+the ravine, they hastily regained the platform, trembling and out of
+breath when they reached it.
+
+Geneviève was waiting there for them; but it was already dark, and this
+prevented her noticing their trouble. She took them by the hand, to lead
+them in, and made them repeat their joint prayers; both went to bed,
+without speaking of the adventure at the ravine.
+
+
+                                 III
+
+
+Josèphe slept badly; and the next morning, when she got up, was pale and
+drooping. Geneviève, who did not fail to notice it, questioned her with
+nervous solicitude; but the child answered that nothing was the matter.
+Only, at every inquiry, her eyes filled with tears, and her voice
+trembled. Thus languidly for her did the day wear away. In the evening
+she was still more depressed, but still not suffering pain. She passed a
+restless night; and on the following morning Ropars went for the Surgeon
+of the lazaretto. He examined the child, and put several questions that
+darkened the brow of Mathieu. Geneviève, whose looks went direct from
+the Surgeon to her husband, perceived this; and she felt a blow stricken
+upon her heart. At the moment when the two crossed the thresh-hold, she
+followed, shut the door abruptly, and stopped them.
+
+--"It is the ... disease, ... is it not?" she asked in anguish. She had
+not dared to name the yellow fever; the Surgeon seemed to hesitate in
+his reply.
+
+--"Ah! I'm certain of it," she exclaimed, confirmed by this very
+hesitation; "so, our precautions have all been useless! The blow has
+come, and all is over!"
+
+She could not avoid sinking down upon the stone bench, placed beside the
+door; and she covered her face with her apron. The Surgeon taxed himself
+to console her with vague assurances; but it was evident that he himself
+had no longer confidence in his efforts. Overcome by the implacable
+power of the contagion, he persevered in struggling against it, without
+hope and from a sense of duty, as soldiers, for the honour of their
+flag, defend silently a post that has been abandoned. So, perceiving
+that his words, far from soothing the grief of Geneviève, did but
+redouble it, he turned towards the keeper, and, having briefly repeated
+to him some directions already given for the child, he went his way.
+
+Ropars remained some moments on one spot, with his arms crossed and his
+head upon his breast; but a still deeper groan from Geneviève caused him
+to raise his eyes. He took her hand.
+
+--"It isn't time for despair yet," said he, with gentle firmness; "when
+God shall have decided against us, your whole life-time will be left for
+grief. At present, let us devote ourselves to our duty, and follow
+strictly the injunctions of the doctor."
+
+--"And he has told us nothing at all!" said the mother, who at heart
+felt half-incensed against the Surgeon, for not having more vigorously
+combatted her fears; "he has not given us any hope!"
+
+--"God is the master," replied Mathieu, in all simplicity, "and so long
+as he has not declared his pleasure, we may believe that all will work
+well; but if the darling creature must be taken from our hands, let us
+at least to the last moment show him, how keen is our desire to keep
+her."
+
+Hereupon the feverish voice of the child reached their ears.
+
+--"Hark, she's calling me!" cried Geneviève, rising in urgent haste to
+go in. Ropars stopped her.
+
+--"Dry your eyes first," said he, passing his own hand with fond
+compassion over the poor mother's moistened eyelids; "Josèphe mustn't
+think that you are anxious. Don't you know that her life may depend on
+this?"
+
+--"Yes, yes," she answered, "fear not, Mathieu, I will not cry any
+more;" and she forcibly restrained the tears that were filling her eyes
+afresh... "Look, no one would notice it now... And the doctors, besides,
+may be mistaken, mayn't they?... And after all, God will have pity on
+us."
+
+--"We must hope so," replied the keeper, much moved; "but if it is his
+part to have pity, it is ours to show resignation. Bear up, then, good
+heart; go to the child with a smile; it will do her good; and first of
+all ... kiss me ... that we may keep up each other's resolution."
+
+Josèphe's mother threw her arms around her husband's neck, and gave way
+to a new flood of tears. But she checked them at the sound of the sick
+one's voice calling her for the second time, and, by a supreme effort
+thrusting down her despair into the very depths of her heart, she rushed
+into the house with calm brow and a smile upon her lips.
+
+Josèphe, nevertheless, grew rapidly worse. In the evening the fever was
+doubly hot upon her. One after another, she spoke of sister Francine, of
+Michael, of the cherry-tree in blossom, and of her good friend Monsieur
+Gabriel. At one moment she fancied that she heard the last-named; she
+called him; she wished to know if he had brought her the promised
+presents. At another time, the scene in the ravine appeared to be
+vividly in her recollection; she cried out that Monsieur Gabriel was
+dead; and she heard the earth grating over him in the pit. The Surgeon
+came to see her repeatedly, and multiplied his prescriptions, without
+power to arrest the onward march of the disease. That night was an awful
+one for the hapless mother; she kept her child clasped in her arms, the
+little one's mind wandering more and more. At sunrise the turbulent
+delirium was over, to give place to the torpor that precedes death. At
+length, towards the middle of the day, Josèphe opened her eyes, and
+uttered one sigh--it was the last.
+
+The blow had been so decidedly expected, that the despair of Ropars and
+of Geneviève could scarcely be violent. The bitterness of their loss
+had, so to say, preceded it; both had tasted it, drop by drop, during
+the protracted agony. And yet the mother's calmness had in it a
+something haggard, that would have startled a looker-on less troubled
+than Mathieu himself. Bent upon rendering the last offices to her
+daughter, she was long occupied in combing out her beautiful black hair;
+she dressed the body in her best clothes, and laid it out with the hands
+crossed over the breast, as Josèphe had been used to carry them when
+asleep. All this was done slowly, tranquilly, with a sort of complacency
+even, and often intermingled with kisses. It was but at intervals that a
+tear trickled over her cheeks, that were marbled with glowing spots; it
+was but a slight trembling that shook the hand, as it performed its
+sorrowful duty. At length, when she who had brought this child into the
+world, and who had nourished it with her milk and with her affection,
+had herself sewed it up in its shroud, she went to the window, broke the
+stalk of a gilly-flower--the only one that the sea-winds had
+spared--pulled off its leaves, and scattered them over the winding
+sheet.
+
+In the meantime, night had fallen. Deposited at the head of the darkened
+alcove, the dead form might indistinctly be traced through its covering
+of linen, as though it were sketched in marble. Higher up hung a Christ,
+in ivory, the head bent forward, and the arms extended. Geneviève knelt
+down near the bed, and remained there for a long time, with her head
+leaning upon her joined hands. Half-aloud she murmured a prayer; but
+whilst her lips repeated faithfully every word, their meaning was not
+taken in by her mind. When she had finished it, she raised herself up
+mechanically, and looked about her; her brain was a gloomy chaos.
+Putting up both hands to her forehead, she pressed it, with a stifled
+cry, as though she sought to stay that whirlwind of confused and
+lacerating thoughts. There was, for some few moments, a struggle between
+her will and her despair; finally the former gained the ascendant; she
+stepped towards the door and opened it.
+
+Her husband had taken refuge on the platform with Francine, to remove
+her from the harrowing sight of placing the body in its shroud.
+Geneviève could see him standing near the parapet; the little girl was
+at his feet, with her head resting on his knees. Since the death of her
+sister, she had not spoken a word. Fixed in one place, with eyes dilated
+and lips compressed, she seemed to be endeavouring to comprehend what
+had occurred. Her two small hands hung down inactive, and her naked feet
+appeared to be glued to the ground. Seeing her thus, under the early
+rays of the moon that were playing in her light-coloured tresses,
+Geneviève was, as it were, brought back to herself. A flash passed
+across the blankness of her expression; her nostrils dilated; a flood of
+tears gushed from her eyes. Springing towards the child, she seized it
+in her arms with a sort of doleful passionateness, to which Francine at
+once and amply responded, by an outburst of sobs and caresses. For a
+long time there was nothing but an interchange of broken appeals and
+unfinished phrases. The little girl would go on asking for her sister,
+while the mother, whose despair was revived by such demands, compelled
+herself to smother them beneath her kisses. At last, her strength
+exhausted, she let her arms, that upheld Francine, drop down, and felt
+that she was gently withdrawn from her. It was Mathieu, who placed the
+child upon the ground. He then led the mother a little further apart,
+and obliged her to sit down upon the stone-bench, leaning her back
+against the parapet. She tried to raise herself up, as she stretched out
+her hands.
+
+--"My child!" she stammered through her sobbings; "I want my child!"
+
+--"In good time thou shalt see her," said Ropars, who according to the
+custom of the Bretagne peasantry only _thee'd_ and _thou'd_ Geneviève,
+when under the influence of strong emotion; "but first thou must listen
+with all attention, for what I have to tell thee is of the deepest
+consequence."
+
+--"Ah! I would, I would!" was her reply, putting both hands up to her
+head; "but don't be hurt, Mathieu, if it be impossible. I hear yonder,
+look you, something that hushes up all the rest; it is her death-rattle,
+my good man!... And ... do you know?... I like the anguish that it
+causes me, to hear it; I can fancy that there still is breath in her.
+Oh! Jesus! who would have told me, that I should yearn after the dying
+breath of my child?" Ropars laid a hand upon the head of the miserable
+woman, whose sobbings had recommenced.
+
+--"Be soothed at heart," he said to her with touching firmness; "the
+good God wills that we should submit, and not thus give way. The dead
+one is now in her Paradise, where she has no more need of us; but she
+leaves behind her a sister, whose life is in our charge."
+
+--"How do you mean?" asked Geneviève, raising towards him her eyes, in
+which alarm had arrested the tears.
+
+--"Don't you understand?" returned the keeper, lowering his voice; "the
+breath of the disease is like the sea-wind; it spares no one; and it may
+send, at any instant, the living to rejoin the dead."
+
+--"Heavenly Saviour! is this a warning?" demanded Geneviève, clasping
+her hands. "Must this child too, be struck down?... Have you remarked
+any thing?... Ah! tell the truth, Mathieu, tell it at once; I would
+rather be killed at one blow."
+
+--"So far, the child suffers from nothing but her distress," rejoined
+Ropars; "but if she remains in this deadly air, who can guarantee us
+that she will escape?"
+
+--"Evil upon us!" cried Geneviève, raising her joined hands over her
+head; "why did you remind me of it, Mathieu? I did not wish to think of
+it; and now I shall see her dying, every hour. God forgive you for thus
+turning the blade that is within my heart!"
+
+--"If I touch it, it is but to withdraw it," was the quarter-master's
+answer. "It won't do now to shut one's eyes and let the squall overtake
+us; we must work ship with all our might for the little one's safety....
+If she remains on the island, you have too many chances of sewing up her
+winding-sheet, Geneviève; she must leave it forthwith."
+
+--"But how?"
+
+Ropars threw his eyes around him, to satisfy himself that he was not
+overheard.
+
+--"There is a way," he replied cautiously.
+
+--"The powder-magazine skiff?"
+
+--"No!"
+
+--"The gun-boat?"
+
+--"She's there, you know, to keep guard over the island."
+
+--"But who then can help us?"
+
+--"The tide."
+
+Geneviève looked at her husband, but without understanding what he
+meant.
+
+--"It is now high-water," continued Mathieu; "in less than an hour the
+sea will have gone down enough to leave only four feet of water upon the
+line of reefs that runs from Trébéron to the Ile des Morts. With
+courage, and by the help of God, the passage may be tried. I am going to
+carry the child over to Dorot."
+
+And as the mother could not restrain a cry of terror;--"Speak lower,
+unhappy one!" he added vehemently; "are you desirous of betraying me?
+Except the Superintendent of the powder-magazine and myself, no one
+knows the way. We have often passed along it when we were fishing
+together, and always passed it safely."
+
+--"But not at night," interrupted Geneviève; "not burdened with a
+child."
+
+--"The child weighs scarcely anything, and the moon is full," replied
+Ropars somewhat impatiently. "Besides, I have been thinking of it all
+the evening; and there is no other means. My mind is made up, and I
+shall do what must be done, happen what may. Your remarks may lessen my
+confidence, but cannot hold me back. Try rather, then, to brace up my
+nerves, as is the duty of a brave wife, and to prepare the child to go.
+When the outer point of the high rock is bare, it will be time for me to
+make the attempt, and for you to pray God that he may open us a way of
+safety in the sea."
+
+The quarter-master's tone was so determined, that Geneviève saw at once
+the uselessness of resistance. With little will of his own in the
+ordinary transactions of life, Mathieu rarely formed a resolution; but,
+once decided on, he maintained it immovably. Moreover, when the first
+shock was passed, his explanations and assurances somewhat tranquillized
+Francine's mother, and indeed half convinced her. There remained the
+child, whose opposition or fright was apprehended by Ropars. Geneviève
+went and raised her up from the ground, and the father and the mother
+seated her upon their knees, which they purposely placed close
+together.
+
+--"You want to see the cherry-tree in blossom, don't you?" said the
+former, embracing her.
+
+--"Not any more, now," was the low-toned reply.
+
+--"Nay, nay, it is just the time," added the poor mother with an effort;
+"over there, you will be more at liberty ... happier ... you'll have
+Michael for a play-fellow."
+
+--"No," said the child with changing voice, "I would rather stay with
+Josèphe."
+
+Geneviève clasped her hands and closed her eyes; speech failed her. It
+was Ropars' turn. Drawing Francine close up to his breast, and
+whispering in her ear,
+
+--"Listen," said he; "we are in trouble. You would not wish to make it
+worse, would you? You love us too well for that."
+
+In place of answer, the child threw both her arms about her father's
+neck, and pressed her little rosy cheek against the wrinkled cheek of
+the mariner.
+
+--"Yes, yes, I was certain of it," continued Mathieu; "and you will do
+whatever we ask you?"
+
+Francine made an affirmative sign.
+
+--"Well, then," Ropars went on, "you must go and pass a few days with
+Uncle Dorot; and as we have no boat, I am going to carry you over the
+passage. Won't you be quiet in the middle of the sea, when you have
+papa's shoulders for a skiff?"
+
+The child shuddered.--"I would rather stay," said she, in hurried
+accents.
+
+--"But that's impossible," rejoined the father; "I want to carry you to
+the powder-magazine. It must be so, and we are to set out directly. But
+if you are not brave, if you think of calling out, the way will be
+harder, and perhaps something serious may happen to me. Do you
+understand?"
+
+--"Yes ... yes ... I won't go," replied the little girl, beginning to
+tremble.
+
+Geneviève drew her once more into her arms. "Hush, hush!" said she,
+laying her lips upon Francine's hair, and rocking her upon her breast,
+"children ought to obey.... God has ordained it ... do what you are
+bidden ... for your papa, ... for me ... for Josèphe.... If she could
+speak she would tell you to be good and obedient.... Would you make her
+sorrowful in Heaven?"
+
+--"Oh! no," cried the child, throwing herself again into Mathieu's arms.
+
+--"Then you will come?" asked he.
+
+--"Yes," murmured the little girl.
+
+--"And you won't be afraid; you won't say a word?"
+
+--"No."
+
+--"Let's be going then!" exclaimed the keeper, who had got up and was
+looking over the parapet. "The high rock is out of water; we mustn't
+wait any longer."
+
+He took Francine in his arms and went rapidly down one of the foot-paths
+leading to the shore of the islet. Geneviève followed, in inexpressible
+anguish. All three reached a rocky point that stretched far out into
+the waters. It was the extremity of the line of reefs that connected the
+powder-magazine with Trébéron. Ropars placed the child on the ground, in
+order to take note of his direction. The passage, under the rays of the
+moon, was tinged with pale green, varied by small lines of white that
+were made by the light fringe of foam upon the waves. So gentle were
+their undulations, that one might have fancied a field of green wheat
+chequered with white camomile flowers. Beyond, the Ile des Morts in all
+its breadth was illumined by the moonlight, with its yellowish
+buildings, its long slated roofs, and its lightning-rods, standing out
+against the sky. So calm was the night that the sentry's step was heard,
+as he paced up and down before the watch-box of granite, built at the
+corner of the esplanade. At the forked head of the two islands, and
+partially in shadow, lay the silent gun-boat, balancing at anchor.
+
+Ropars examined every thing with scrupulous attention. He pointed out to
+Geneviève the direction of the submarine causeway, indicated by a faint
+shadow on the surface of the water, as he threw aside his waistcoat and
+hat; then taking both of his wife's hands, who looked at him with
+haggard eyes,--"the time is come, Geneviève," said he; "kiss me, and
+pray the good God to be with us."
+
+The poor woman responded at first to his embrace, without power to utter
+a word; but when she felt that he had disengaged himself and was
+returning towards the child, a cry escaped her; she was not mistress of
+herself. She forgot all that Mathieu had said to her, all that she
+herself had promised, and encircled him with her arms in all the
+desperation of terror.
+
+--"You shall not go," she stammered out, "you shall not go!... It is
+rushing on to death ... in the name of your marriage-vow, remain to be
+my succour, my companion!... Would you then leave me here alone with
+Josèphe?... Look, how broad the sea is, and how deep! You and Francine,
+you will be lost in it!... Ah! if it be God's will, let us all die here;
+but at least let us die together! Mathieu, I will not have you quit me;
+you shall not carry off my child; you shall not go!"
+
+Ropars endeavoured to calm her, and struggled to release himself from
+her hold; but she clung to him, and refused to hear a word. And as he
+recalled to her that she had, a minute before, induced Francine's
+consent,
+
+--"I was wrong," she wildly interrupted him; "I will no longer have it
+so. If you leave me, I will follow; and you will be responsible before
+God for what may happen. Mathieu, do not tempt me! Mathieu, have pity on
+me!... What have I done to you, that you should thus go voluntarily to
+destruction? Do you no longer care for life with me?... Ah! if I have
+failed in my duty, be not angry with me, dear soul! If my too great
+anguish has offended you, forgive me! I will not cry any more; I will be
+every thing that you desire. Hold; look on me rather; forgive me; but
+say that you will stay."
+
+She had sunk down upon her knees, and held Ropars' hands pressed firmly
+against her lips. He exerted himself to raise her up.
+
+--"Enough, Geneviève," said he, in a tone wherein commiseration disputed
+with impatience; "I thought that you were braver.... This is not what
+you promised me. Think, think, unhappy woman, that the time is passing
+away!"
+
+Geneviève groaned, and recommenced the same entreaties. He cast an
+anxious look towards the sea, and saw that the farthest jags of the high
+rock were dry. Longer delay would increase the danger, and might render
+the passage impossible. Mathieu seized Geneviève sharply by the elbows,
+and raised her upon her feet, with her face opposite his own.
+
+--"On your salvation, listen!" said he, in accent so decided that she
+trembled at it; "this is the first time that I have reminded you that I
+am your master, and, if you be not wiser, it will perhaps be the last;
+but by the God who saved us, you shall obey, and that without further
+discussion! The child's life is to be preserved; nothing can stay me
+now. Remain there, I solemnly command you, and make not one step, nor
+utter one single cry, or, so surely as I am my mother's son, I will
+never forgive you, even until the day of Judgment!"
+
+At these words, he seated Geneviève, petrified by the shock, ran to his
+little daughter, whom he took upon his shoulders, and dashed with her
+into the waves.
+
+When Geneviève turned round, at the noise made by his plunge into the
+water, Ropars was on the causeway of the submerged reefs, and the waves
+were rolling against his breast. She tried to get up; but her strength
+failed her, and she could but utter a feeble cry. Mathieu heard it and
+looked back. He could see through the moonlight the indistinct form of
+Geneviève who, half-lying down upon the rock, was wringing her joined
+hands as though towards him. He found his heart, which he had steeled by
+an effort of will, sinking within him in pity for her. Taking note of
+the waters, green and deep, whose abysses were opening around him,
+hearing over his head the breathings of the child who panted with
+terror, and thinking that the hapless creature from whom they had just
+parted violently might perchance never see them more, there came across
+him a feeling of commiseration so tender, that tears almost filled his
+eyes; he paused, in spite of himself, in the midst of the murmuring
+waves, turned his head backwards towards the shore, and called to her in
+a voice, restrained but full of gentleness--"Don't cry Geneviève; and
+God bless you! all will go well."
+
+Then, without waiting for an answer, which he feared might unman him, he
+went on his way, his eyes fixed upon the line along the water that
+marked the direction of the reef. Soon, however, he ceased to
+distinguish that particular appearance of the waves which rendered it
+easy to trace this line from the shore. Immersed in the sea, he no
+longer saw anything beyond him, but a surface uniform and agitated,
+without any distinctive movement or colour. He was therefore compelled
+to shape his course direct for the rock on the Ile des Morts whereon the
+causeway abutted, and which with its pointed ridges was visible,
+far-away in the obscurity.
+
+Armed with a broken boat-hook, Mathieu sounded at each step that he
+took; but notwithstanding all his care, the difficulty of his course
+increased at every moment. The unevenness of the rocks exposed him to
+incessant stumbling. Lifted off his feet by the waves, half-stunned by
+the deep rumbling noise that was around him, groping along a path
+irregular and strange to him and bounded on either side by an abyss, he
+advanced with the greatest deliberation, his strong will controlling his
+impatience, and his whole soul rivetted upon his every movement. His
+fixed gaze sought to pierce the liquid veil of the waters; his hands
+glued to the boat-hook seemed to long to solder it to the reef; his
+feet, in an agony of search, seemed to force themselves to guess at
+their path, before they would select it. Thus he reached the middle of
+the passage, where he came into the neighbourhood of the gun-boat. All
+there was silent; nothing stirred. The cries of "Watch, Watch!" uttered
+at intervals by the look-out at each cat-head, had for some time ceased
+to be heard; their two shadows even were not perceptible, for they had
+long been immovable at their post. Certain that their look-out was
+altogether needless, the sailors on watch were without doubt asleep.
+
+Mathieu, who was afraid that they might awake, was anxious to avoid this
+danger by hurrying on; but at the very moment when he came within the
+shadow thrown, abaft the gun-boat, over the glittering waters, his
+footing of rock failed him by suddenly shelving downwards. Francine felt
+him sinking, as a vessel that founders, and the waves washed up over her
+hair. She could not restrain a piercing shriek.
+
+Her father, in extreme alarm, lowered her down against his breast, and
+pressed one hand upon her lips. But it was too late; the cry had
+undoubtedly been overheard, for a shadow immediately rose up, forward,
+and the noise of footsteps echoed along the deck. Ropars had but time to
+throw himself under the taffrail of the stationary vessel, and to grasp
+a boom, whereto he remained suspended.
+
+One of the sailors on watch came aft, and was immediately joined by his
+comrade.
+
+--"The devil take me, if I didn't hear a cry," said the former.
+
+--"Pardieu! it half-woke me up," added the second.
+
+--"But I've looked about, and it's no use; I don't see any thing."
+
+--"Nor I."
+
+The couple were leaning over the sea, which kept up its gentle
+murmurings, and on which only light undulations were visible, fringed
+with half-phosphorescent foam. The second man of the watch seemed all at
+once to be seized with inquietude, that caused his voice to tremble.
+
+--"I say, Morvan," he cautiously began, "those Roscanvel and Lanvoc
+barks haven't passed by, without leaving some christian soul under water
+here--don't you think so?"
+
+--"Why so?" asked Morvan.
+
+--"Why so?" returned the sailor, who seemed half-afraid and
+half-ashamed; "why, parbleu! ... you know what they say ... I didn't
+invent it ... there are some people who tell you that shipwrecked men,
+dying in mortal sin, leave their souls upon the waves that drowned them:
+and that every year, on the day and at the exact time of the accident,
+they utter a cry of anguish, just by way of asking prayers for
+themselves."
+
+--"And you believe that, you, Lascar?" said Morvan with a laugh more
+blustering than assured.
+
+--"It isn't I," rejoined the sailor, "it's our mess-mates.... But, none
+the less, the voice wasn't like any body else's; it was sharp and thin,
+as one might say that of a child."
+
+--"Get out, nonsense!" interrupted the first seaman, evidently
+disquieted by his comrade's explanation; "you see there's nothing more
+to be heard, and there is nothing afloat but the moonlight, and the
+night-chill that will make us sneeze. It's well that we both kept our
+allowance of wine. Come on, let's go and drink it; that'll put your
+morality into trim again."
+
+The two sailors went off. After waiting a moment, Mathieu replaced the
+child on his shoulders, enjoined strict silence, at the same time
+cheering her up, and let go the boom for the purpose of regaining the
+causeway; but he had lost the direction, and his feet encountered only
+empty space. Forced to swim with his precious burden, he hoped that a
+few fathoms' distance would bring him back to his pathway on the reefs;
+he had already gone beyond it. Fresh attempts were not more successful;
+and twenty times did he renew his search, finding only, at each, deep
+water.
+
+Frightened and panting for breath, he swam about without aim,
+endeavouring to touch ground, and no longer able to distinguish the Ile
+des Morts from Trébéron. After having long shifted his course, struggled
+against the tide in which every moment he plunged still deeper, been a
+thousand times brought back from despair to hope, and run the full
+length of his endurance and his courage, he felt at last that he was
+overcome. His respiration grew painful, his eyes were covered with a
+film; all things were to him but as a revolving chaos; his mind
+wandered. A moment more, and he and Francine had disappeared beneath the
+waters. The gun-boat, which he had wished to avoid, but which he could
+no longer perceive, was his sole means of safety. He summoned all his
+remaining strength to utter a cry for help; a surge, more powerful,
+stifled it on his lips. Half-fainting and having nothing left him but
+that instinctive self-defence which survives the will, he struggled
+still an instant, buffeted from wave to wave; then felt that he was
+going down. But all at once, he was arrested; his feet had fallen on to
+the reef; they were fastened on it, and steadied themselves thereon;
+his body straightened up; the water that blinded him seemed to lower
+itself. He took breath and looked before him, and could see at the
+distance of a hundred steps the cleft rock of the Ile des Morts. A few
+minutes sufficed for reaching it. Touching the shore he fell down upon
+it, and called Francine with expiring voice. The child, terrified, could
+only reply by throwing herself upon his breast, where he held her for
+some time in his embrace. His first thought had been for her; his second
+carried him back to Geneviève who was expecting his return, to know that
+they were safe. Still tottering, he raised himself up, took his little
+daughter by the hand, and set himself to climbing the steep slope that
+led to the terrace.
+
+It was necessary to make the tour of the powder magazine, to avoid the
+sentinel placed at the angle which commanded the main roadside; and
+also, on reaching the magazine keeper's door, to knock gently, for fear
+of being heard from without. Dorot fortunately had the light sleep of
+old soldiers; he awoke at the first knocking, and appeared at the
+window.
+
+--"Open the door!" said Mathieu to him in a low voice.
+
+--"Ropars!" cried the sergeant, thunderstruck.
+
+--"Lower! and be quick!" returned the seaman "our lives' safety is at
+stake."
+
+Dorot went down rapidly, drew back the bolt, and made them enter the
+house. Mathieu paused, when across the thresh-hold, with the child
+pressed against his knees.
+
+--"Heaven protect us! whence come you, Ropars?" inquired the sergeant.
+
+--"You see," replied the sailor, "we have come out of the sea, and we
+have crossed over it, to come hither."
+
+Dorot drew back, exclaiming, "Can it be? in God's name, what has
+happened, that you should thus expose your life?"
+
+--"It has happened," rejoined Mathieu, "that Josèphe died this morning
+of the contagion! ... that"--
+
+--"What's that you say?"
+
+--"'Tis just so, Dorot; and as Geneviève and I were anxious to save the
+other one, I have brought her to you."
+
+--"And Heaven reward you for the thought!" said the sergeant; "the child
+is dearly welcome."
+
+He had offered his hand to Mathieu; but the latter did not take it.
+
+--"Think well what it is I am asking you," said he; "perhaps the child
+may be bringing here disease and desolation upon you!"
+
+"I hope there will be nothing of the kind," returned Dorot; "but God's
+will be done!"
+
+--"Bear in mind also," continued the quarter-master, insisting, "that if
+the thing gets wind, you run a risk of punishment for having violated
+the quarantine."
+
+--"Then the will of man be done!" was the sergeant's simple observation.
+
+--"But still think."
+
+--"Of nothing further, Ropars," interrupted the sergeant; "there! enough
+said--too much. No words about the matter; you have brought me the
+little one; I accept her."
+
+He had stooped down to Francine, whom he then took up in his arms, and
+with her remounted to the small chamber formerly occupied by Geneviève.
+He, himself, stripped off from the child her dripping clothes, and put
+her to sleep in an old cot of Michael's.
+
+The father, who had followed them, remained at the door with his arms
+hanging down at his side, the very picture of gratitude deeply felt, but
+unable to vent itself in words. Only, when Dorot turned round towards
+him, he seized one of his hands and held it silently grasped. Dorot, who
+desired to avoid a scene, began at once to talk of the means of
+concealing the little girl's change of abode. It was sufficient that her
+absence from Trébéron would not be remarked; as for her being at the Ile
+des Morts, it could not give rise to any suspicion, since the guard of
+artillery that did duty at the magazine, and that might have been
+surprised at this increase in the keeper's family, was to be changed on
+the following day. Ropars arranged certain signals for transmitting
+mutually the news between the neighbour islands. These were to be
+renewed several times a day, and thus relieve them at least from the
+anguish of uncertainty. At length, when all had been agreed upon,
+Mathieu drew near the window and looked out. The breeze had freshened,
+the sky appeared less starry, and a transparent vapour was beginning to
+creep over the sea.
+
+--"It is time to start," said he, returning towards the sergeant; "may
+God pay you for what you do, Dorot! As for Geneviève and myself, we
+shall remain your debtors to all eternity."
+
+--"We'll talk of that, by and by," replied the keeper; "just now, the
+main thing, and that which troubles me, is the passage over."
+
+--"Don't be uneasy about that," answered Ropars; "now that the child is
+in safety, I shall cross the channel just as easily as one goes to
+church. The limbs are firm when the heart doesn't tremble. But I wish I
+were already on the other side; I've stayed here too long for Geneviève,
+who is looking for me."
+
+--"Away, then! if it must be," cried the sergeant; "but for God's sake,
+Ropars, be careful, and don't forget that you have two lives to save
+with your own."
+
+--"I'll do all that a man can do," returned the quarter-master; "and
+believe me, cousin, I've no desire to die this night!... But too much
+talk; the time is slipping away; I mustn't wait for the change of tide."
+
+He went up to Francine's cot, to take leave of her; but the child,
+wearied out by so many emotions, had dropped off to sleep. One of her
+arms was doubled beneath her head, and lost in the loosened tresses of
+her golden hair; the other, folded on her breast, pressed to it a little
+relic formerly given to Geneviève who, in her superstitious motherly
+devotedness, had deprived herself of it that it might be a safe-guard
+for her child. Although her breathing was equal and easy, still was it
+broken at intervals by a long drawn sigh; whilst her cheeks, that in her
+sleep were beginning to re-assume their rosy tint, still showed some
+traces of tears. Mathieu looked at her for some moments in touching
+silence; then bending himself slowly down, imprinted a light kiss upon
+Francine's tiny hand, then one upon her hair, then one upon her cheek.
+Without opening her eyes, the child made a gesture of annoyance; he
+stood up.
+
+--"Yes, yes, there, sleep, poor creature of a merciful God!" he
+half-muttered; "I will not wake you."
+
+Once more he seemed to enwrap her in a look overflowing with tenderness;
+then returned to Dorot, and took his hand.
+
+--"I bequeath her to you, cousin," said he, moved in the extreme; "no
+one knows what may happen. Only ... I can trust in your kindly heart,
+and if ever the child should become an orphan...."
+
+--"Now God preserve her from it!" the sergeant took him up; "but if such
+misfortune should occur to her, Mathieu, you know well that she would
+become Michael's sister."
+
+--"Thanks!" abruptly broke in the seaman; "that's exactly what I was
+longing to hear.... And now I set out calmly. I am prepared for every
+thing."
+
+--"But you shan't set out thus, shivering and pulled down," objected the
+sergeant; "you must take something to cheer up your spirits."
+
+--"Nothing," said Ropars, eagerly; "you have given me all that can give
+me strength, in giving me the assurance that the child will not remain
+unaided. Providence will do the rest. Your hand! and good-bye till we
+meet--here, or elsewhere!"
+
+They heartily embraced; then Mathieu went down to the shore, and
+committed himself again to the waters. Although the tide had begun to
+rise, the passage was effected without overmuch danger. He reached,
+unharmed, the high rock of Trébéron which the floodtide had already
+encroached upon, and he ran to the place where he had left Geneviève.
+She was there no longer.
+
+Astonished that she should not have awaited his return, he rapidly
+mounted the foot-path, reached his door, and called aloud. There was no
+reply. The darkness did not allow him to distinguish any thing. He
+groped his way to the hearth, and threw around him the trembling light
+of a lamp hurriedly lighted. Attracted to the alcove, his glance soon
+made out, beside the white form of the dead sewed up in its shroud, the
+outline of another and a larger form, extended without moving. Mathieu
+approached in agony. It was Geneviève in a swoon.
+
+
+                              IV.
+
+
+Thanks to the Surgeon's skill, Ropars' wife at length regained her
+senses; but it was to fall into convulsive spasms, followed by the
+annihilation of all her faculties. The whole day passed without her
+shaking off the torpor that belonged at once to sleep and to death. One
+might have said that so many shocks had snapped asunder her existence,
+and that the quiverings of life, still flitting across her state of
+languor, were but the movements of a machine on the point of stopping.
+However, towards evening, the fever declared itself. The patient passed
+insensibly from lethargy to delirious agitation; she did but recognize
+Mathieu at intervals; and falling back, with her senses, upon her
+sorrows, she soon fell again into wandering.
+
+None of these symptoms seemed to belong to the malady that ravaged the
+lazaretto; and the Surgeon, disconcerted, let Mathieu divine his
+inability to make it out. Accustomed to the coarse medicines required by
+the robust patients of our ships, he was perforce a stranger, as are all
+like him, to the ailments of more delicate natures. Thus did he stand
+baffled before this woman, dying of a disorder such as he vainly sought
+to trace in his experiences. He could not conceal his doubts, and his
+need of more enlightened advice. Science, to which these mysterious and
+redoubtable symptoms were familiarized, might find there an index, where
+he perceived only confusion, and point out a remedy, which he dared but
+essay at hap-hazard.
+
+This avowal, wrung from his loyal truth, was for Mathieu a new source of
+torture. Shut up within prescribed limits which forbid strangers to
+approach Trébéron, he could not invoke that experience to which
+Geneviève might perchance owe her safety. In vain did he see, at his
+feet, boats for transporting him across the sea, and on the horizon a
+town whence aid might be brought to him; an obstacle invincible and
+insurmountable linked him to his source of trouble.
+
+Two whole days passed away for him, as one long agony, in alternations
+of mute dejection and of furious despair. After sitting for several
+hours at the bedside of the dying woman, when he saw the fever that had
+been lulled for an instant now returning with increased force, he ran
+down to the edge of the reefs, gazed upon the waters in the midst of
+which he found himself imprisoned, upon the armed vessel that guarded
+the passage, upon the ravines of the island dotted with graves recently
+dug, and pressing his closed fists against his forehead he cursed the
+day on which he had accepted this voluntary imprisonment. Angrily did he
+call God to account for the blows with which he was stricken; then,
+restored to his religious faith, he joined his hands, and with tears
+besought the Almighty to spare Geneviève.
+
+Towards the morning of the third day, he had cause for believing that
+his prayers had been heard. The fever abated, and the patient recovered
+all her clearness of mind. But this change did not induce her to share
+the delight or the hopes of Mathieu.
+
+--"Never believe that this is a cure, dear soul," said she in tones
+scarcely audible, and alternating every phrase with periods of silence;
+"the disease is going ... but it carries all with it.... That evening,
+when you went across the channel ... when I heard the child's cry from
+out of the sea itself ... I thought it was all over with you both ...
+and then ... I can't say what took place ... but it seemed to me ...
+that within me ... the main string of life was snapped.... So I feel
+now, that it's all over."
+
+Ropars combatted these fears, repeating that the Surgeon was encouraged,
+and that all would go well. Geneviève, whose eyes were closed, raised
+the lids with difficulty and threw a glance upon him that was full of
+melancholy sweetness.
+
+--"God is the master, Mathieu," said she; "he knows whether I am happy
+in living with you.... Only, ... believe me, poor husband, and don't
+rejoice too much ... it were wiser to expect the worst."
+
+--"It were wiser," interrupted the quarter-master, "to take rest, and
+have confidence. I, too, trust in what I feel. This very night, I had a
+weight of lead upon my heart; it is light now; I can breathe in one
+single breath. In God's name, let your health be restored to you, and be
+anxious for a continuance of life, if it were but for my sake."
+
+Geneviève made an effort to lay her cold and moistened hand upon that of
+Ropars.
+
+--"You are good, Mathieu," said she, letting fall two little tears, the
+last that emotion could drain from eyes already exhausted with weeping.
+"Ah me! my chief regret now is at not having always thought of this ...
+at not having shown myself sufficiently grateful.... Heavens! how much
+worthier we should be of those we love, if we did but remember that some
+day we must leave them.... Since my mind has returned, this idea has
+haunted me; I now perceive all my faults; ... I feel remorse for
+them.... Oh! tell me in mercy, Mathieu, do you forgive me now ... for
+never having been what I ought to have been?"
+
+--"Talk not so, Geneviève," said the seaman quickly, and with deep
+feeling; "you know well that I could not have asked from God a better
+wife. Since you have been mine, I have wanted for nothing; it is I who
+should be grateful to you."
+
+--"No, no," replied the sick woman with increasing animation; "many a
+time have I lacked courage and patience.... Not with you alone ... but
+with Francine ... with Josèphe! ... poor child of my heart, who had so
+few years to live!... And to think, Mathieu, that I have often made her
+cry! ... her, who is now beneath the ground!... Ah! it is the tears of
+the dead that weigh heavily here.... And other persons, whom I may have
+injured ... and God against whom I have sinned!... Cannot I then hope
+for mercy?"
+
+Then, as if this idea had awakened in her a sort of terror:
+
+--"Ah! it is impossible!" added she, sitting up; "Mathieu, Mathieu, I
+must see a confessor!"
+
+--"But how to get him here?" said the quarter-master sorrowfully; "have
+you forgotten that the island is in quarantine?"
+
+--"What! not to be able to save even one's soul?" returned Geneviève,
+clasping her hands. "Alas! am I then doomed to die without
+reconciliation? My God! what is to be done? The most miserable sinner is
+allowed to confess his sins, and to ask absolution for them; my God!
+must I alone remain without help?"
+
+She stopped abruptly, putting up both hands to her forehead.
+
+--"Ah! I remember now," she resumed; "have you not told me that on board
+your ships, when at the moment of death no priest was to be had, any
+Christian might take his place? ... that God looked to the intention?"
+
+--"I have said so," replied Ropars, "and all the seamen hereabouts will
+tell you the same thing, upon the assurance of their pastors."
+
+--"Then," replied the dying woman, turning towards the seaman her eye
+lustrous with the fever, "I desire to confess myself to you!"
+
+She raised herself upon her elbow, and crossed herself. Mathieu seemed
+overwhelmed, but could make no objection to her will. As we have
+remarked, he belonged to that race almost extinct, even in Brittany, in
+whom still existed the earnest and the simple faith of other days.
+Often, on occasion of shipwreck, men such as he might have been seen,
+after exhausting all means of saving themselves, to kneel down in the
+expectation of death, and confess themselves one to another, as did the
+ancient cavaliers on the eve of combat. Therefore was he more troubled
+than surprised at the request of Geneviève; and when he heard her murmur
+the prayer that precedes confession, he took off his hat and made the
+sign of the cross, ready to fulfill the holy office that necessity had
+entrusted to him.
+
+And something mournful and touching was it. The early dawn of day light
+doubtfully illumined the alcove; the dishevelled head of Geneviève was
+bent towards the grizzled head of Mathieu; and one might have heard the
+murmur of that supremest confidence carried on in lowered voice, often
+interrupted by the failure of the dying woman's strength, or by the
+seaman's entreaties that she would curtail it. But she persisted in
+resuming it, with the determination peculiar to those severe consciences
+which are never satisfied with their self-accusations. At length, when
+she had concluded, Ropars detached the ivory crucifix from the head of
+the bed; he approached it to the lips of Geneviève, and placing his hand
+upon her brow with mournful solemnity,
+
+--"May God pardon thee as I do to the utmost of my power," said he; "and
+if it be not his will that thou shouldst live for my happiness, may he
+provide for thee a place in his Paradise!"
+
+Her face assumed an expression of ineffable serenity.
+
+--"Thanks," murmured she; "your absolution shall prevail before the
+Trinity, Mathieu; now I feel at peace."
+
+A ray of sunlight creeping in through the window-curtain reached her
+bed; she turned round.
+
+--"It is day," continued she; "I did not hope to see another.... God has
+given me a respite!... He is willing that I should taste of the latest
+joy that I looked for upon earth ... nor will you refuse it to me,
+Mathieu?"
+
+--"Ask it, Geneviève," said the mariner; "what man can do, I will do."
+
+She took his hand and looked at him.
+
+--"You have told me, haven't you, that cousin could see and make out
+your signals?"
+
+--"Yes, and it is true."
+
+--"Then by all the affection you bear me, Mathieu, I beseech you to
+signalize him at once to bring Francine out upon his terrace; when she
+is there, you will take me in your arms, you will carry me to the high
+rock, and if God grant me grace, I shall reach it with still life enough
+left to see my child once more, and to embrace her in spirit."
+
+--"It shall be done so as you desire, Geneviève," said the
+quarter-master, who, impressed by the presentiments of the dying one,
+had abandoned hope, and had not strength to refuse her anything.
+
+--"Quickly, then, very quickly!... for I feel that God is calling me."
+
+Ropars rushed out, as though he feared there would scarcely be time; but
+he came in again almost in a moment, exclaiming that Francine was
+already on the terrace of the magazine with Dorot. Stretching out her
+hands to him, the dying woman uttered a feeble cry of joy. He wrapped
+her up in his winter-cape, and carried her gently in his arms as far as
+the parapet of their platform.
+
+--"Where is she?" inquired Geneviève, her eyes blinded by the light of
+day, and trying in vain to look steadily; "I can't make out anything,
+Mathieu! where is the child: show me the child!"
+
+--"Look down there at our feet," replied the seaman; "can you see the
+high rock?"
+
+--"Yes."
+
+--"Can you follow the bubbling of the sea along the reef?"
+
+--"Yes, yes."
+
+--"And away, yonder, over the reefs, can you distinguish the stone-work
+of the terrace?"
+
+--"Down there? ... no ... there's only a cloud! I can see nothing....
+Oh! if it be too late!... if she be there under my very eyes, and I can
+no longer see her!... My God, my God, once more, only once, let me see
+my child!"
+
+These words, or rather these mother's cries, had been so full of
+sadness, that Ropars could not restrain his tears. He seated his sinking
+wife upon the parapet, and himself kneeled down to support her.
+
+--"Courage, Geneviève!" he stammered out; "look well to this side ...
+between the line of the sea and the sky."
+
+--"I am looking," said Geneviève, appearing in the effort to rally all
+the life left in her ".... Raise my head, Mathieu ... screen me from the
+sun...."
+
+She checked herself with a stifled exclamation.
+
+--"Ah! there she is! there she is!... She sees me ... she is lifting up
+her arms.... Francine ... my daughter ... my child!"
+
+So impulsively did she lean forward, that but for Ropars, she would
+have thrown herself upon the rocks that sloped down to the sea. A
+flitting ray of life had lighted up her features; she sent kisses on her
+fingers to the child, and talked to it as though it could hear her; she
+raised her hands to Heaven, with rapid and broken ejaculations; she
+smiled and wept at once. Finally, her strength failed to endure so great
+emotion, and her head fell upon the quarter-master's shoulder. In alarm,
+he took her again in his arms, to carry her back into the house; but she
+made signs to him that she wished to remain out of-doors. He laid her
+down upon the bench, whereon the family had been used to sit together in
+the evening, in front of the sea, which was now lighted up by the rising
+sun. After a swoon that lasted some time, she opened her eyes, and asked
+for her daughter. Mathieu looked towards the powder magazine and said
+that Dorot had taken her away. She bowed her head with sorrowing
+resignation.
+
+--"He has done right," she went on, in feeble accents; ... "besides, I
+feel ... that my sight grows thick.... I couldn't see her any more ...
+and ... I still have something to say to you.... Come closer, Mathieu
+... closer ... my voice is failing.... Give me your hand.... I want to
+be sure that you hear me."
+
+Ropars knelt upon the sand, with one hand in that of his dying wife, and
+the other placed behind her, to support her.
+
+--"You are going to stay alone," she continued. "Elsewhere, you could
+perhaps endure it; but here, in the midst of the ocean, it is not the
+life of a man, or of a Christian.... You are used to having some one
+keep you company ... some one to love you.... When I am gone ... another
+one must take my place."
+
+--"Never!" broke in Ropars.
+
+With her hand she silenced him.
+
+--"Hush!" said she gently; "you must needs think this, so long as I am
+before your eyes ... but when I am laid in the grave, you will then feel
+your want.... Believe not that I would reproach you, my poor husband....
+I do not wish to carry away your happiness with me in my winding
+sheet.... No ... no ... wherever I may be, I shall need to know that you
+are well cared for."
+
+--"Enough, Geneviève!" murmured the seaman, choking with emotion.
+
+--"Let me go on to the end," she resumed; "I have still one plea to
+urge.... When you take off the crape from your arm, Mathieu ... promise
+me to think of the dear creature who is our child ... the child of both
+... and who will remain with you, to remind you of me ... choose a wife
+who may fill my place towards her."
+
+--"What is it that you are asking me, and whom could I give her for a
+mother, after yourself?" rejoined Ropars.
+
+--"Some one" ... Geneviève went on ... "who would not grudge me the
+having been chosen first ... some honest heart that would take kindly to
+an orphan ... who would talk to her of me ... who would teach her to
+love God ... and to obey you!... If you promise me that this shall be
+so, Mathieu ... if you promise it on your honour ... and on your
+salvation, I shall fall asleep, at peace, and blessing you."
+
+Ropars made the promise, amidst sighs and groans; but this was the dying
+woman's last effort. After having thanked him by an embrace, she let
+herself sink into her husband's arms. It almost seemed as though the
+power of her will had slackened the steps of Death, for the sake of this
+final compact. Scarcely was it completed, when her sufferings
+recommenced. Carried back to the alcove, she died there towards the
+close of the day. Her last words were a prayer, in which her husband's
+and her daughter's names were intermingled.
+
+On the ensuing day, the grave in which Josèphe already reposed was
+re-opened to receive Geneviève, for, during the past month, Death had
+reaped so abundantly that the barren island lacked space for his doleful
+harvest. Informed of what had happened, by means of the signals agreed
+upon, the keeper of the powder-magazine brought Francine to the edge of
+his rock, and the child, on her knees, uttered a prayer for her mother's
+spirit, at the moment the funeral ceremony was ended, across the water.
+
+This death was the last. Like those expiatory victims who, in
+sacrificing themselves, were wont to appease the anger of the Gods,
+Geneviève seemed, in going down to the tomb, as though she closed its
+doors behind her. A fortnight later, and the yellow flag slid down the
+flag staff that over-topped the lazaretto, and those who had been
+quarantined, now cured, went away in the frigate's long-boat. They only
+left behind them, on the dreary island, a man whose hair had become
+perfectly white, and a child in mourning clothes.
+
+
+
+
+                           THRICE ONLY.
+
+                                I
+
+
+Do not imagine that this is to be a love-story. Very few experiences
+furnish material for such. Rarer still is the ability to use the
+material, when it falls in one's way. At any rate, I make no pretension
+thereto.
+
+But it sometimes happens during the earlier and more tumultuous period
+of a man's life, that casual occurrences take place, which do not indeed
+at the time immediately influence his actions or his fortunes, but which
+in later days may be recalled with interest. Of this sort--if I mistake
+not, or if I do not mar them in the telling--were my three meetings with
+Mary Verner. I only met her thrice.
+
+The first time--many a year has sped away since; but it seems, if I shut
+my mental eye to events and feelings with which the interval has been
+crowded, and my bodily eye to the library table before me, as if the
+little scene were being enacted here, now, to-day.
+
+Whence this power of summoning up the ghosts of long ago? Why should the
+comparatively recent refuse to be stamped upon the memory, and the old
+impressions refuse to fade? Let philosophers answer; I have no more
+inclination to write an essay than to tell a love-tale. My purpose I
+have already stated; though I omitted to mention that I write my own
+veritable experience--with a change of names, a studied obscurity of
+dates, and a very slight change otherwise.
+
+The precise year I do not remember, nor, consequently, my own exact age;
+but I must have been about fourteen. George Verner, Mary's brother--poor
+fellow! I saw his death registered, the other day, in that odious corner
+of the _Times_--was my class-mate and play-mate at a school some few
+miles from London. He was a good-looking and good-tempered fellow, if
+not remarkable for his abilities. It chanced that I was--in the choice
+language of the time and place--"a dab at Latin verses." I helped George
+once in a while with his exercises; and once in a while with the
+mince-pies, that his mother's a cook used to send him on the sly. The
+first time that I saw her--Mary Verner I mean, not the cook--was on a
+whole holiday; George, who lived in the neighbourhood, had invited me to
+pass it with him. The old family coach came for us at ten o'clock, with
+the fat old horses and the fat old family coachman, just for all the
+world as you may often meet them in the story-books that are called
+"exceedingly natural," and as you now-a-days rarely find them in real
+life. Pony-phaetons, britzkas, coupés, "Croydon-baskets," and
+nondescript vehicles that, being neither close carriages nor open, are
+palmed off as both--these have superseded the full-bodied of my early
+recollections.
+
+I fancy that I see her now.... You perceive that though I note the
+modern change in the carriage department, I recognize none such in the
+phraseology of our tongue. I fancy I see her now. You may, if you
+please, alter the wording; but that's the plain English of it.
+
+As we drove up the sweep that led from the lodge to the front entrance
+of a very beautiful suburban villa, I leaned out of the window, with the
+curiosity natural to a boy of fourteen, on strange ground.
+
+Mary Verner--I knew, by the family likeness, that she was George's elder
+sister, the moment my eye lighted on her--was trimming or watering her
+geraniums, in one of the recesses on either side of the porch.
+
+"Here, Mary, here's Cuthbert _tertius_," said George, running up the
+steps, and pushing me before him.
+
+"I know him; how d'ye do? I'm glad to see you," was the frank reception,
+spoken in a clear, round-toned, springy voice, that seemed to drop
+without effort out of a rose-lipped mouth well-filled with well-knit
+teeth. And as she spoke smilingly, she opened a pair of large brown eyes
+that I have since thought--for boys don't know much about the law of
+colours--were designed to harmonize with what we call a clear brunette
+complexion. Certainly, if the ballad of "The Nut Brown Mayde" be a model
+imitation of the antique, Mary Verner might have sat for the portrait.
+
+But it was not so much her eyes that took hold of me, open though they
+did by degrees, wider and wider, until I wondered when they would cease
+opening; nor her coal-black hair, dressed as you may see it in the
+likenesses by Sir Thomas Lawrence; nor her rosy mouth; nor her even
+teeth; nor her figure full of grace, _svelte_ as the French call it, for
+which we have no answering word. It was not these, or any of them. It
+was the carolling of her few words, so free and unconcerned in tone. If
+I had not met her subsequently, I might have forgotten her looks; I
+doubt whether her voice could have passed from me.
+
+I need not tax my memory or my invention about the trifling though happy
+events of that day. It was pretty evident who was mistress of the house,
+though the fond and proud mother of Mary Verner had the air of a
+dignified and well-bred woman. Silent or talking, it was Mary who
+dispensed the honours, at least so far as the stranger was concerned.
+Probably it was the same with all comers; but this is only a surmise.
+
+Well; the whole holiday came to an end, and we were driven back to the
+old school by the old coachman, our pockets full of chestnuts, and our
+boyish hearts full of a sense of supreme enjoyment, such we believe as,
+in later life, women feel after the best ball of the season, and men
+after a splendid whitebait dinner at Blackwall. I recollect telling the
+fellows in the dormitory what a jolly time we had been having, and how
+capitally George's pony leaped the fence on the common, round the
+corner, out of sight of the house. By the way, it was partly owing to
+that pony having engrossed so much of our time, that I had not regularly
+fallen in love with Mary Verner. Partly, I say, because I was further
+saved from this predicament by a standing devotion to my pretty cousin
+Rose, which the temptation had been strong enough, but not long enough
+to disturb. I never went to George's house again; and ere long the image
+of his sister was stowed away on one of the upper shelves of my memory.
+There it might have been smothered in dust, or even converted into it,
+if chance had not taken it down and given it an airing.
+
+
+                                II
+
+
+Twenty-one--what a change from fourteen! How the pulse of life beats and
+bounds! I was running a tilt at the pastimes, and doffing aside the
+cares of early manhood, when for the second time, I came across Mary
+Verner. Plump upon her, I would say, if I thought you would pardon the
+coarseness of the expression. At any rate--and to be genteel--it was
+unexpectedly. Twenty-one gives very few thoughts to fourteen. It may be
+a much longer distance thither, when one starts at seventy to go back;
+but it is surprising how much more quickly you get over the intermediate
+ground. Let that be; only I don't believe I had given a thought to Mary
+Verner, since the week or two that followed my first interview with her.
+
+"Do come and dine with us on Monday," said my friend Mrs. F.; "there
+will be a very charming girl here, whom you would like to see."
+
+"Positively?"
+
+"_Sans faute!_"
+
+"Then keep a place for me; I'll come."
+
+I went. It was a formal dinner-party. In the drawing-room, before going
+to table, Mrs. F. came across to me.
+
+"Now I'll introduce you to our belle of the evening. You may escort her
+down to dinner. There she is, half-hidden behind that drapery. You can't
+have noticed her."
+
+"Miss Verner, let me present Mr. Cuthbert."
+
+I should have recognized Mary Verner, as she looked up, with those
+widely-opening brown eyes of hers, if her name had not been mentioned.
+As it was, it was quite natural for me to remark that I believed I had
+had the pleasure of seeing Miss Verner before.
+
+And so in a few moments we were gossipping cosily about "old times," as
+we, not very old people, called them.
+
+The beautiful child had expanded into a very lovely woman, preserving
+still the same characteristics of person and expression. The charm of
+her voice was the same. You may be sure that when seated by her side,
+with the becoming glow of lamp-light overhead heightening, if possible,
+those attractions which I rather hint than attempt to describe--you may
+be sure, I say, that I found her very captivating.
+
+We talked of her brother George; of the pleasant house wherein I first
+met her, and which was still her home; of her amiable and lady-like
+mother who was still living; of the old pony now gathered to his sires;
+of the old chestnut-trees even--in short, of all those unimportant
+associations, out of which, under such circumstances, one endeavours to
+establish a trivial and flitting but very pleasant little bond of
+sympathy.
+
+I declare I was half ready to fall head over ears in love with her. And
+she took it all with a simple unaffected grace, that seemed to be her
+very nature.
+
+But we did not have all the talk to ourselves. I had not the presumption
+to engross her entirely. Nor would it have been possible. She was--there
+is no need to go over it all again--she was Mary Verner.
+
+Nearly opposite to us at table sat a Mr. Easton, a young
+barrister--young, that is professionally, for he was apparently a man of
+thirty or thereabouts. He would not have been singled out as a
+lady-killer, for he was none of your regular Adonises, such as hang by
+dozens, in portraiture, upon the walls of our Royal Academy Exhibitions,
+and lounge complacently in our Fop's Alley at the Opera. When, however,
+the excitement of conversation--in which he took an active and most
+intelligent part--developed the fine play of his features, you would
+have pronounced him a man who added, to a cultivated and superior mind,
+a look that bespoke such gift. In fact there was a manly air about him,
+that claimed respect, if it did not challenge attention.
+
+About the time when I made this notable discovery, I recollected that at
+the moment of my introduction to Miss Verner, Mr. Easton was gossipping
+with her in the secluded corner half-hidden by the drapery, though he
+moved away, with perfect good breeding, to give place to the new-comer.
+
+About this time, too, there began--at which end of the table, I
+forget--an occasional play of badinage, whereof Mr. Easton was the
+subject. For a grave and earnest man, he seemed to receive it all in
+exceedingly good part. To my surprise also--to say nothing of
+annoyance--my fair neighbour was brought, after a while, within its
+scope. Neither did she--I was forced to acknowledge within
+myself--evince either _mauvaise honte_ or sensitiveness. The truth was
+plain. They were engaged.
+
+As a child's card-built house tumbles down when the table is shaken, so
+down went one of the prettiest little castles-in-the-air, that ever
+simpleton built out of cards of his own shaping.
+
+Down it went; though I flatter myself I was too much a man of the world,
+to let a glimpse of its dislocated plan be apparent. Indeed, in a few
+seconds, I had rallied myself on my own absurdity; gulped down my
+disappointment; and resigned myself again to the charm that Mary Verner
+still shed around her, if its tint was somewhat changed. Besides, I
+availed myself of the sudden opportunity thus afforded, for testing the
+practical value of one of my favourite theories, when I was a young
+fellow and affected to bask in the sunshine of human nature: to wit,
+that, apart from serious love-making, when a woman in either married or
+betrothed, she has therefrom an additional feather in her social cap. So
+have I found it through life--always provided that the attractive and
+companionable qualities were otherwise in abundance. And this theory has
+at least given heartiness to my good wishes for my fairer acquaintances
+and friends. Is it not better to come to such a philosophical
+conclusion, than to be always envying other people's good fortune?
+
+Shifting, therefore, my ground, I was rapidly possessed by a strong
+interest in Miss Verner's future welfare--much of which was undoubtedly
+genuine.
+
+Delicately, and by gently leading her on, I gathered something of the
+story of her courtship, though I must needs confess that I cannot now
+call to mind a word of it. It may be of more interest to state that she
+was to make Mr. Easton the happiest of men, within six weeks or so of
+that time; and that the honey-moon was to be spent in a ramble on the
+Continent. Very emphatically and very sincerely did I wish her a
+pleasant time of it.
+
+But the most agreeable evenings will come to a close. This one--with its
+revival of a boy's casual acquaintance, with its momentary
+castle-building, and its subsequent benevolence of feeling--this one,
+like all others, passed away. It did not die out, as the fag-end of a
+dinner-party sometimes will; it was cut short to me by the "good night!"
+of Mary Verner, as she took her departure, leaning on Mr. Easton's arm,
+in the train of an elderly female relative.
+
+When the drawing-room door closed upon her graceful figure, I felt for a
+moment as though the gas had been suddenly turned off. I recollect,
+however, the hostess's observation, dropped to the accompaniment of a
+playfully malicious smile:
+
+"Didn't I tell you, you would like my friend Mary Verner?"
+
+"Yes," was the reply, "and I have passed a most delightful evening; but
+I don't think it quite fair, Mrs. F."--here there was a terrible smash
+of the theory--"to open the gates of Paradise, and then slam them in a
+poor fellow's face?"
+
+I was to have gone, that night, to a ball in Devonshire Place, expressly
+to meet--Never mind; I was not in the humour for dancing or flirting. I
+went straight home, and to bed. I tossed about a good deal, and finally
+dreamed about George and the pony, and that I was climbing the old
+chestnut-trees. As for Mary Verner, I couldn't in my sleep conjure up
+her image. When I thought I had it--as is the way in dreams, you know,
+if you ever studied them--I couldn't get nearer to her than the plaguy
+old family coachman. It was only when broad awake, the next morning,
+that I found myself strongly impressed by this, my second meeting. But
+again--such is life and such is youth--the impression was soon stowed
+away on an upper shelf in memory's garret.
+
+
+                                III.
+
+
+Two years later; two years and two months.
+
+Did you ever notice the marked difference between youth and old
+age--aye, and middle age, too--in the matter of reading newspapers?
+We--I speak of myself now as the writer--who are in the vanguard of the
+march through life, must have our _Times_ or our _Chronicle_, as
+regularly as our morning meal. Is it, as some spitefully assert, that we
+grow more self-complacent as we pore over the misfortunes or the errors
+of our fellows; or is it, that we seek refuge from the cares and
+disappointments of our own lot, in a close scrutiny of that of all the
+world beside, with the minutiæ of which the diligent, prying, gossipping
+press so unceasingly plies our curiosity? It is folly, perhaps, to raise
+the question, since this is not the place to discuss it; though it were
+not far from the truth to attribute much of the pettiness of our race,
+in these days, to this habit of abandoning our thoughts and impulses to
+the guidance of journalists who trade in them.
+
+I only mean to say that being still youthful at twenty-three, I "cared
+for none of these things," As for heeding who was born, or buried, or
+married, beyond the circle of one's own intimate connections--I should
+as soon have set to work to trace the pedigree of a New Zealander.
+Probably, I heard in due time that Mary Verner had become Mrs. Easton.
+Certainly I did not learn it from the usual printed record. In short, I
+then very seldom read newspapers at all; and this I beg you to bear in
+mind. What a shocking ignoramus I should be voted, if I were to say so
+of this present time.
+
+That, too, was the season of darkness, ere Albert Smith was the Lecturer
+_par excellence_; ere Oxford and Cambridge men, returning from their
+"long-vacation" rambles, disputed in the daily papers their respective
+prowess in scaling the precipices of Monte Rosa, or discovering new
+pathways up Mont Blanc. How changed are we to-day! Save for the
+voluminous records of the Crimean war, what Mamelons and Malakoffs would
+the pedestrians, Smith and Jones, be now fighting over, in the _Times_!
+
+Nevertheless, though they made less fuss about it, Englishmen were then,
+as now, prone to scurrying off to Switzerland in the Autumn--some in the
+true cockney spirit--some because they found there the most sublime of
+all spectacles, together with the most exhilarating exercise for the
+body, and relaxation of mind in its fullest sense. With myself it
+amounted to a passion; "Cuthbert's hobby" it was dubbed by
+acquaintances, who could eke out delight from Leamington and Cheltenham.
+
+Profiting by the leisure afforded me during successive seasons, I had
+become tolerably familiar with the Alps; with what exquisite and
+inexhaustible enjoyment I am not going here to trouble you. But August
+had come round again. The knapsack was stitched, where it wanted
+mending. The Alpenstock was dragged to light, from the lumber-room. The
+thick-soled gaiter-boots were freshly studded with hobnails. The
+well-worn Swiss map was conned over once more, and a new route, leading
+over yet untrodden passes, was set down in the Autumnal programme.
+
+Suddenly I changed my mind--under the influence of an hour's talk with
+an enthusiastic mountaineer--who had, during the previous season,
+explored the Pyrenees. "You may not find," said he, "quite so much
+grandeur; but the valleys are decidedly more picturesque, the foliage
+more varied, the very tints of the mountains glowing with warmer
+colours." Thereupon, a change of plan and passport. Behold me at
+Cauterets in France, instead of at Grindelwald in Switzerland!
+
+Were my object merely to fill a certain number of pages, I might here
+descant at length upon the comparative beauties of the Alps and the
+Pyrenees--the latter having, at present, the advantage of not being done
+to death by tourists. But I will abstain. I will speak only of one day's
+adventure; the day whereon, for the third and last time, I found myself
+associated with Mary Verner.
+
+Cauterets may be a pleasant place enough to those who bathe in, or
+imbibe for medicinal purposes, the mineral waters that have made its
+fame. It is finely placed too, pitched in, as it were, into a nook, with
+lofty peaks and fringes of fir forests over-topping its somewhat formal
+streets. It does not, however, offer much attraction to the connoisseur
+in fine scenery. One excursion alone is to be made. Its objects are the
+Pont d'Espagne and the Lac de Gaube. The former is a group of pine
+trunks bridging a cascade. The latter is a tarn at the foot of the
+glaciers of the Vignemale, which, you know, is one of the
+mountain-monarchs hereabouts.
+
+Before proceeding further, I may mention that I am enabled to set down
+my reminiscences of this particular time and place, by reference to my
+rough notes penned on the spot, journal-wise. The little memorandum book
+lies under my hand, with its pages written in ink of various tints, as
+hotel, or cabaret, or hut furnished the material at the moment. I like
+to preserve these records. Such _souvenirs_ are the _bonnes fortunes_ of
+those whose travels are ended. You see that I incline to be sentimental
+as I draw towards the _dénouement_ of my story.
+
+Heavens and earth, how it rains in the Pyrenees! What a young deluge
+swept down the steep stone-guttered pavements, on the morning of the
+29th of August! Still, I did not choose to devote more than one day to
+the neighbourhood of Cauterets; and so, having made, from my window, a
+few such profound observations as the one just set down, I ordered a
+horse and guide. The polite waiter was astonished, and protested, to the
+extent of two or three "_Mais Monsieur!_" The guide thought the storm
+would expend itself in twenty-four hours; but on my hinting that the
+path would not be difficult to find, without his aid, nor
+impracticable, on foot, he subsided, with an air of conviction, into
+the accustomed "_Bien, Monsieur!_"
+
+And so we started. I had borrowed one of the long, thick, hooded Spanish
+cloaks, commonly used in that region which borders on Spain; and a very
+effectual protection it was against the steady down-pouring of the rain.
+But what is perfect in this world? A German counterpane, on a summer's
+night, is not more oppressive than was this excellent protection from
+the wet.
+
+Handing, then, the heavy encumbrance to the guide, I was drenched to the
+skin in about two minutes. This was a comfort. It settled the point. I
+dislike uncertainty. I could be at my ease, and look about. Remember it
+was yet August.
+
+And the Val de Jéret, up which I was riding, was so grandly gloomy; the
+state of the weather excluding all but close views! My note-book thus
+speaks of it, the writer never dreaming that his impressions would be
+told to the readers of a newspaper, with many of whom Niagara and
+Montmorenci are familiar sights: "The valley presents a succession of
+splendid waterfalls; and, singularly enough, as your route lies upwards,
+they increase in size and beauty, from the Mahourat, the first, to the
+Pont d'Espagne, the last and most celebrated. The three intervening,
+that are dignified with names, are the Cérizet, the Boussé, and the Pas
+de l'Ours. Besides these, there are an infinity of smaller falls, the
+whole course of the Gave (or torrent) de Marcadaou--along which the path
+lies--boiling over broken masses of rock. The eye is charmed by endless
+variety, amid perpetual repetition. The deluge of rain, which covered
+the lofty rocks on each side of the defile with clouds, had gloriously
+swollen the turbulent waters. I know of nothing in natural scenery--thus
+the manuscript rather enthusiastically proceeds--that impresses one so
+forcibly as a cascade of large dimensions. By large I mean broad, not
+lofty. The effect is apt to diminish, with vast height. These, in the
+Val de Jéret, I found absolutely bewitching; for is it not a sort of
+infatuation, by which we are beguiled into drawing nearer and nearer,
+until you almost touch the foaming sheets as they flurry past, and are
+yourself driven back, for your pains, half blind and breathless? One
+fine waterfall would be enough to digest in a day. During these two or
+three hours, I had a very feast of them."
+
+If I extract this somewhat rhapsodical passage, it is to show that my
+inward man was not dampened, by the dampening process externally
+applied. On the contrary, I am disposed to be jubilant, almost defiant,
+in proportion to the fury of the storm; that is to say when no serious
+personal inconvenience is caused by stress of weather. In a mountain
+region too, above all others, clouds play so great a part in the
+combination of fine effects, that I have many times fairly welcomed a
+tempestuous spell.
+
+Thus from the Pont d'Espagne I continued my ride an hour or so further,
+in order to reach the Lac de Gaube, knowing perfectly well that the
+chances were a hundred to one against my getting a glimpse of the
+glaciers of the Vignemale, at whose feet this small sheet of water is
+imbedded. Small it may well be termed, for it is not quite three miles
+in circumference, though the largest lake in the Pyrenees.
+
+On the rocky shore where the rough pathway terminates, stands, or stood
+at the period of which I write, a solitary hut. There, during the short
+summer season, might be found a family who earned a scanty subsistence,
+by catching the lake trout and serving them up to chance travellers; by
+rowing, in the solitary punt, any one who cared to paddle about the dark
+waters; or by escorting any still more adventurous stranger desirous of
+exploring the glaciers above-named, or ascending the lower heights of
+the Vignemale.
+
+Stepping up to the door of this cabin, I entered into conversation with
+its chief occupant, who probably combined in his own person the various
+offices of restaurateur, fisherman, muleteer, guide, and smuggler.
+Possibly I libel him in the last respect; but along that frontier of
+France and Spain, it is rare to find a mountaineer guiltless of the
+contraband trade.
+
+A visitor on such a day was a welcome sight to the poor fellow, who was
+eloquent in regrets that _his_ mountain and _his_ glaciers and _his_
+other local points of interest were all wrapped in the impenetrable
+mist. He seemed, I remember now, to care more about it than I did; for I
+had revelled in the exhibition of cascades, and was rather tickled at
+the notion of having come up to this lone and savage spot, where nothing
+whatever was to be seen.
+
+If a spirit had whispered me, that the moment of my third _rencontre_
+was close at hand, I should have smiled incredulously.
+
+The fog lifted. I could see to a distance of half a dozen yards.
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"If Monsieur will give himself the trouble of walking up to it, he will
+see."
+
+It was on a jutting promontory of rock, close at hand. A small enclosure
+was railed in. It held what was obviously a monumental tablet, in white
+marble, but discoloured by exposure.
+
+"A favourite poodle, perhaps, of the Duchesse de Berri--or one of our
+eccentric Englishmen doing honour to a Pyrenean bear!" Such I thought it
+might be, as I carelessly lounged up to it, and stooped to read the
+inscription.
+
+It was in French and English. I took no copy of the words. But it was
+placed there in memory of Mr. and Mrs. Easton, drowned in the lake,
+within one month of their marriage, on the 20th of September, 18--! The
+facts were simply stated. I wish the record of them had been placed a
+little further off from the rendezvous of the thoughtless and
+light-hearted.
+
+This was the last of my associations with her. But it would not interest
+the reader, to be told with what feelings of surprise and sorrow I thus
+learned the close of a career, which bid so fair for happiness and
+usefulness. Poor Mary Verner!
+
+Before setting-off on my return to Cauterets, I heard, from the lips of
+the man with whom I had been conversing, the sad particulars of this
+harrowing event. Never could the common phrase, that speaks of "painful
+curiosity," have been more applicable than it was in my case, as I stood
+and listened to him. Poor fellow; he had been an eye-witness. He saw my
+emotion. "Monsieur knew the young couple?"--thus did he break the thread
+of his little narrative, more than once.
+
+I cannot pretend to set down his words. This is the substance of what he
+told me.
+
+The season was nearly over. The weather was splendidly fine, but very
+cold. Travellers were scarcely expected; when on that brilliant
+September morning, up rode the bride and bridegroom. After resting
+awhile, they took the single skiff that was there, Mr. Easton offering
+to row his wife across the lake, to which she very reluctantly assented.
+I recollect the narrator dwelling on this fact.
+
+The shore shelves off very rapidly. The water, in some parts, reaches to
+the depth of three or four hundred feet. At all times it is of
+marvellous clearness--as I observed myself--and, except during the heats
+of summer, so piercingly cold, as to be altogether unbearable to the
+swimmer.
+
+My informant helped them into the boat. Mr. Easton was evidently used to
+the handling of oars. The tragedy was immediately--perhaps one should
+say, ostensibly--caused by those two qualities of the water of the Lac
+de Gaube, to which I have just alluded--its clearness and its coldness.
+
+The boat was at some considerable distance from the shore. The boatman
+was watching them. Suddenly, Mr. Easton paused in his rowing. He and his
+wife looked over the side, as though guessing at the depth. Mr. Easton
+then stood up, and plunged one oar downwards into the water, with the
+confident action of a man who is certain that he shall touch the bottom.
+The transparency had deceived him. His oar met no resistance; and he
+himself plunged heavily overboard. Such at least was the impression of
+the boatman on land; and he could scarcely be mistaken.
+
+So far as he could see, Mr. Easton did not rise to the surface. The cold
+numbed him, and he sunk, not to rise again. The bereaved wife stood
+upright for a moment in the boat, gazing on the water that had swallowed
+up her husband before her eyes. Then she too was seen to be in it; but
+not one of the two or three, who witnessed the fearful sight, could tell
+whether she threw herself in, or whether she fell in, senseless. That
+secret will never be solved; and what matters it to us, though the
+manner of the widowed wife's death was so remarkable, that I cannot
+refrain from mentioning it? In talking it over, they agreed that she did
+not sink at all. As she fell, the water inflated her dress, and she was
+buoyed-up, floating; though there was no sign of life or movement on her
+part, observable to the agonized spectators. After a time--I forget
+whether it was half an hour, or half a day--the remains of what once was
+loved as Mary Verner were wafted tranquilly to the shore. Assistance
+also having been procured, Mr. Easton's body was dragged-up from the
+bottom of the lake. One grave in a church-yard in Essex now holds the
+coffins of the ill-fated pair.
+
+And was there no effort at rescue? Could nothing be done? This idea will
+have crossed the reader's mind. It suggested many questions to me, with
+which I plied the boatman, who seemed to feel keenly in them the
+bitterness of unintended reproach. But his explanation--grievous as it
+was--was satisfactory. There was no boat, no raft, no means of reaching
+the spot. "Two of us," said he, "plunged up to our necks into the water,
+in the irrepressible desire to swim out to them; though we knew that it
+was certain death to go beyond our depth. Besides, Monsieur," he added
+with touching simplicity, "I can't help fancying that the poor lady was
+dead before she fell out of the boat. Monsieur knew her; doesn't he
+think that her heart was already broken?"
+
+"God help her, and all of us, my brave friend; I have not the smallest
+doubt of it!"
+
+
+
+
+                     TOSSING UP FOR A HUSBAND.
+
+         _From the French of Vicomte Ponson de Terrail._
+
+                                I.
+
+
+The Marchioness was at her toilet. Florine and Aspasia, her two
+ladies'-maids, were busy powdering, as it were with hoar-frost, the
+bewitching widow.
+
+She was a widow, this Marchioness, a widow of twenty-three; and wealthy,
+as very few persons were any longer at the court of Louis XV., her
+godfather.
+
+Three-and-twenty years earlier, his Majesty had held her at the
+baptismal font of the chapel at Marly, and had settled upon her an
+income of a hundred thousand livres, by way of proving to her father,
+the Baron Fontevrault, who had saved his life in the battle of Fontenoy,
+that kings can be grateful, whatever people choose to say to the
+contrary.
+
+The Marchioness then was a widow. She resided during the summer, in a
+charming little chateau, situated half-way up the slope overhanging the
+water, on the road from Bougival to Saint Germain. Madame Dubarry's
+estate adjoined hers; and on opening her eyes she could see, without
+rising, the white gableends and the white-spreading chestnut-trees of
+Luciennes, perched upon the heights. On this particular day--it was
+noon--the Marchioness, whilst her attendants dressed her hair and
+arranged her head-dress with the most exquisite taste, gravely employed
+herself in tossing up, alternately, a couple of fine oranges, which
+crossed each other in the air, and then dropped into the white and
+delicate hand that caught them in their fall.
+
+This sleight-of-hand--which the Marchioness interrupted at times whilst
+she adjusted a beauty-spot on her lip, or cast an impatient glance on
+the crystal clock that told how time was running away with the fair
+widow's precious moments--had lasted for ten minutes, when the
+folding-doors were thrown open, and a valet, such as one sees now only
+on the stage announced with pompous voice--"The King!"
+
+Apparently, the Marchioness was accustomed to such visits, for she but
+half rose from her seat, as she saluted with her most gracious smile the
+personage who entered.
+
+It was indeed Louis XV. himself--Louis XV. at sixty-five; but robust,
+upright, with smiling lip and beaming eye, and jauntily clad in a
+close-fitting, pearl-grey hunting-suit, that became him to perfection.
+He carried under his arm a handsome fowling-piece, inlaid with
+mother-of-pearl; a small pouch, intended for ammunition alone, hung over
+his shoulder.
+
+The King had come from Luciennes, almost alone, that is but with a
+Captain of the Guard, the old Marshal de Richelieu, and a single
+Equerry on foot. He had been amusing himself with quail-shooting,
+loading his own gun, as was the fashion with his ancestors, the later
+Valois and the earlier Bourbons. His grandsire, Henry IV., could not
+have been less ceremonious.
+
+But a shower of hail had surprised him; and his Majesty had no relish
+for it. He pretended that the fire of an enemy's battery was less
+disagreeable than those drops of water, so small and so hard, that wet
+him through, and reminded him of his twinges of rheumatism.
+
+Fortunately, he was but a few steps from the gateway of the chateau,
+when the shower commenced. He had come therefore to take shelter with
+his god-daughter, having dismissed his suite, and only keeping with him
+a magnificent pointer, whose genealogy was fully established by the Duc
+de Richelieu, and traced back, with a few slips in orthography, directly
+to Nisus, that celebrated greyhound, given by Charles IX. to his friend
+Ronsard, the poet.
+
+"Good morning, Marchioness," said the King, as he entered, putting down
+his fowling-piece in a corner. "I have come to ask your hospitality. We
+were caught in a shower at your gate--Richelieu and I. I have packed off
+Richelieu."
+
+"Ah, Sire, that wasn't very kind of you."
+
+"Hush!" replied the King, in a good-humored tone. "It's only mid-day;
+and if the Marshal had forced his way in here at so early an hour, he
+would have bragged of it every where, this very evening. He is very apt
+to compromise one, and he is a great coxcomb too, the old Duke. But
+don't put yourself out of the way, Marchioness. Let Aspasia finish this
+becoming pile of your head-dress, and Florine spread out with her silver
+knife the scented powder that blends so well with the lilies and the
+roses of your bewitching face.... Why, Marchioness, you are so pretty,
+one could eat you up!"
+
+"You think me so, Sire?"
+
+"I tell you so every day. Oh, what fine oranges!"
+
+And the King seated himself upon the roomy sofa, by the side of the
+Marchioness, whose rosy finger-tips he kissed with an infinity of grace.
+Then taking up one of the oranges that he had admired, he proceeded
+leisurely to examine it.
+
+"But," said he at length, "what are oranges doing by the side of your
+Chinese powder-box and your scent bottles? Is there any connection
+between this fruit and the maintenance--easy as it is, Marchioness--of
+your charms?"
+
+"These oranges," replied the lady, gravely, "fulfilled just now, Sire,
+the functions of destiny."
+
+The King opened wide his eyes, and stroked the long ears of his dog, by
+way of giving the Marchioness time to explain her meaning.
+
+"It was the Countess who gave them to me," she continued.
+
+"Madame Dubarry?"
+
+"Exactly so, Sire."
+
+"A trumpery gift, it seems to me, Marchioness."
+
+"I hold it, on the contrary, to be an important one; since I repeat to
+your Majesty, that these oranges decide my fate."
+
+"I give it up," said the King.
+
+"Imagine, Sire; yesterday I found the Countess occupied in tossing her
+oranges up and down, in this way." And the Marchioness recommenced her
+game with a skill that cannot be described.
+
+"I see," said the King; "she accompanied this singular amusement with
+the words, 'Up, Choiseul! up, Praslin!' and, on my word, I can fancy how
+the pair jumped."
+
+"Precisely so, Sire."
+
+"And do you dabble in politics, Marchioness? Have you a fancy for
+uniting with the Countess, just to mortify my poor ministers?"
+
+"By no means, Sire; for, in place of Monsieur de Choiseul and the Duc de
+Praslin, I was saying to myself, just now, 'Up, Menneval! up,
+Beaugency!'"
+
+"Ay, ay," returned the King; "and why the deuce would you have them
+jumping, those two good-looking gentlemen--Monsieur de Menneval, who is
+a Croesus, and Monsieur de Beaugency, who is a statesman, and dances the
+minuet to perfection?"
+
+"I'll tell you," said the dame. "You know, Sire, that Monsieur de
+Menneval is an accomplished gentleman, a handsome man, a gallant
+cavalier, an indefatigable dancer, witty as Monsieur Arouet, and longing
+for nothing so much as to live in the country, on his estate in
+Touraine, on the banks of the Loire, with the woman whom he loves or
+will love, far from the court, from grandeur, and from turmoil."
+
+"And, on my life, he's in the right of it," quoth the King. "One does
+become so wearied at court."
+
+"Aye, and no," rejoined the widow as she put on her last beauty-spot....
+"Nor are you unaware, Sire, that Monsieur de Beaugency is one of the
+most brilliant courtiers of Marly and Versailles; ambitious, burning
+with zeal for the service of your Majesty; as brave as Monsieur de
+Menneval, and capable of going to the end of the earth ... with the
+title of Ambassador of the King of France."
+
+"I know that," chimed in Louis XV., with a laugh. "But, alas, I have
+more ambassadors than embassies. My ante-chambers overflow every
+morning."
+
+"Now," continued the Marchioness, "I have been a widow ... these two
+years past."
+
+"A long time, there's no denying."
+
+"Ah," sighed she, "there's no need to tell me so, Sire. But Monsieur de
+Menneval loves me ... at least he says so, and I am easily persuaded."
+
+"Very well; then marry Monsieur de Menneval."
+
+"I have thought of it, Sire; and, in truth, I might do much worse. I
+should like well enough to live in the country, under the willow-trees,
+on the borders of the river, with a husband, fond, yielding, loving, who
+would detest the philosophers and set some little value on the poets.
+When no external noises disturb the honey-moon, that month, Sire, may be
+indefinitely prolonged. In the country, you know, one never hears a
+noise."
+
+"Unless it be the north-wind moaning in the corridor, and the rain
+pattering on the window-panes." And the King shivered slightly on his
+sofa.
+
+"But," added the dame, "Monsieur de Beaugency loves me equally well."
+
+"Ah, ah! the ambitious man!"
+
+"Ambition does not shut out love, Sire. Monsieur de Beaugency is a
+Marquis; he is twenty-five; he is ambitious--I should like a husband
+vastly who was longing to reach high offices of state. Greatness has its
+own particular merit."
+
+"Then marry Monsieur de Beaugency."
+
+"I have thought of that, also; but this poor Monsieur de Menneval."...
+
+"Very good," exclaimed the King, laughing: "now I see to what purpose
+the oranges are destined. Monsieur de Menneval pleases you; Monsieur de
+Beaugency would suit you just as well; and since one can't have more
+than one husband, you make them each jump in turn."
+
+"Just so, Sire. But observe what happens."
+
+"Ah, what does happen?"
+
+"That, unwilling and unable to play unfairly, I take equal pains to
+catch the two oranges as they come down; and that I catch them both,
+each time."
+
+"Well, are you willing that I should take part in your game?"
+
+"You, Sire? Ah, what a joke that would be!"
+
+"I am very clumsy, Marchioness. To a certainty, in less than three
+minutes Beaugency and Menneval, will be rolling on the floor."
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed the lady; "and if you have any preference for one or the
+other?"
+
+"No; we'll do better. Look, I take the two oranges ... you mark them
+carefully--or, better still, you stick into one of them one of these
+toilet pins, making up your own mind which of the two is to represent
+Monsieur de Beaugency, and leaving me, on that point, entirely in the
+dark. If Monsieur de Beaugency touches the floor, you shall marry his
+rival; if it happen just otherwise, you shall resign yourself to become
+an ambassadress."
+
+"Excellent! Now, Sire, let's see the result."
+
+The King took the two oranges and plied shuttle with them above his
+head. But at the third pass, the two rolled down upon the embroidered
+carpet, and the Marchioness broke out into a merry fit of laughter.
+
+"I foresaw as much," exclaimed his Majesty. "What a clumsy fellow I am!"
+
+"And we more puzzled than ever, Sire?"
+
+"So we are, Marchioness; but the best thing we can do, is to slice the
+oranges, sugar them well, and season them with a dash of West India rum.
+Then you can beg me to taste them, and offer me some of those preserved
+cherries and peaches that you put up just as nicely as my daughter
+Adelaide."
+
+"And Monsieur de Menneval? and Monsieur de Beaugency?" said the
+Marchioness, in piteous accents. "How is the question to be settled?"
+
+Louis XV. began to cogitate.
+
+"Are you quite sure," said he, "that both of them are in love with you?"
+
+"Probably so," returned she, with a little coquettish smile, sent back
+to her from the mirror opposite.
+
+"And their love is equally strong?"
+
+"I trust so, Sire."
+
+"And I don't believe a word of it."
+
+"Ah!" said the Marchioness, "but that is, in truth, a most terrible
+supposition. Besides, Sire, they are on their way hither."
+
+"Both of them?"
+
+"One after the other: the Marquis at one o'clock precisely; the Baron at
+two. I promised them my decision to-morrow, on condition that they would
+pay me a final visit to-day."
+
+As the Marchioness finished, the valet, who had announced the King, came
+to inform his mistress, that Monsieur de Beaugency was in the
+drawing-room, and solicited the favour of admission to pay his respects.
+
+"Capital!" said Louis XV., smiling as though he were eighteen; "show
+Monsieur de Beaugency in. Marchioness, you will receive him, and tell
+him the price that you set upon your hand."
+
+"And what is the price, Sire?"
+
+"You must give him the choice--either to renounce you, or to consent to
+send in to me his resignation of his appointments, in order that he may
+go and bury himself with his wife on his estate of Courlac, in Poitou,
+there to live the life of a country gentleman."
+
+"And then, Sire?"
+
+"You will allow him a couple of hours for reflection, and so dismiss
+him."
+
+"And in the end?"
+
+"The rest is my concern." And the King got up, taking his dog and his
+gun, and concealed himself behind a screen, drawing also a curtain, that
+he might be completely hidden.
+
+"What is your intention, Sire?" asked the Marchioness.
+
+"I conceal myself like the kings of Persia, from the eyes of my
+subjects," replied Louis XV. "Hush, Marchioness."
+
+A few moments later, and Monsieur de Beaugency entered the room.
+
+
+                              II.
+
+
+The Marquis was a charming cavalier; tall, slight, with a moustache
+black and curling upwards, an eye sparkling and intelligent, a Roman
+nose, an Austrian lip, a firm step, a noble and imposing presence.
+
+The Marchioness blushed slightly, at sight of him, but offered him her
+hand to kiss; and as she begged him by a gesture to be seated, thus
+inwardly took counsel with herself.
+
+"Decidedly, I believe that the test is useless; it is Monsieur de
+Beaugency whom I love. How proud shall I be to lean upon his arm at the
+court-fêtes! With what delight shall I keep long watches in the cabinet
+of his Excellency the Ambassador, whilst he is busy with his Majesty's
+affairs!"
+
+But after this "aside," the Marchioness resumed her gracious and
+coquettish air; as though the woman comprehended the mission of refined
+gallantry which was reserved for her seductive and delicate epoch by an
+indulgent Providence, that laid by its anger and its evil days for the
+subsequent reign.
+
+"Marchioness," said Monsieur de Beaugency, as he held in his hands the
+rosy fingers of the lovely widow, "it is fully a week since you received
+me!"
+
+"A week? why, you were here yesterday!"
+
+"Then I must have counted the hours for ages."
+
+"A compliment which may be found in one of the younger Crebillon's
+books!"
+
+"You are hard upon me, Marchioness."
+
+"Perhaps so, ... it comes naturally ... I am tired."
+
+"Ah, Marchioness! Heaven knows that I would make of your existence one
+never-ending fête!"
+
+"That would, at least, be wearisome."
+
+"Say a word, Madam, one single word, and my fortune, my future
+prospects, my ambition!"--
+
+"You are still then as ambitious as ever?"
+
+"More than ever, since I have been in love with you."
+
+"Is that necessary?"
+
+"Beyond a doubt. Ambition--what is it but honours, wealth, the envious
+looks of impotent rivals, the admiration of the crowd, the favour of
+monarchs?... And is not one's love unanswerably and most triumphantly
+proved, in laying all this at the feet of the woman whom one adores?"
+
+"You may be right."
+
+"I may be right, Marchioness! Listen to me, my fair lady-love."
+
+"I am all attention, sir."
+
+"Between us, who are well-born, and consort not with plebeians, that
+vulgar and sentimental sort of love, which is painted by those who write
+books for your mantuamakers and chambermaids, would be in exceedingly
+bad taste. It would be but slighting love and making no account of its
+enjoyments, were we to go and bury it in some obscure corner of the
+Provinces, or of Paris--we, who belong to Versailles--living away there
+with it, in monotonous solitude and unchanging contemplation!"
+
+"Ah!" said the Marchioness, "you think so?"
+
+"Tell me, rather, of fêtes that dazzle one with lights, with noise, with
+smiles, with wit, through which one glides intoxicated, with the fair
+conquest in triumph on one's arm ... why hide one's happiness, in place
+of parading it? The jealousy of the world does but increase, and cannot
+diminish it. My uncle, the Cardinal, stands well at court. He has the
+King's ear, and better still, the Countess's. He will, ere long, procure
+me one of the Northern embassies. Cannot you fancy yourself Madame the
+Ambassadress, treading the platform of a drawing-room, as royalty with
+royalty, with the highest nobility of a kingdom--having the men at your
+feet, and the women on lower seats around you, whilst you yourself are
+occupant of a throne, and wield a sceptre?"
+
+And as Monsieur de Beaugency warmed with his own eloquence, he gently
+slid from his seat to the knees of the Marchioness, whose hand he
+covered with kisses.
+
+She listened to him, with a smile on her lips, and then abruptly said to
+him:
+
+"Rise, sir, and hear me in turn. Are you in truth sincerely attached to
+me?"
+
+"With my whole soul, Marchioness!"
+
+"Are you prepared to make every sacrifice?"
+
+"Every one, Madam."
+
+"That is fortunate indeed; for to be prepared for all, is to accomplish
+one, without the slightest difficulty; and it is but a single one that I
+require."
+
+"Oh, speak! Must a throne be conquered?"
+
+"By no means, sir. You must only call to mind that you own a fine
+chateau in Poitou."
+
+"Pooh!" said Monsieur de Beaugency, "a shed."
+
+"Every man's house is his castle," replied the widow. "And having called
+it to mind, you need only order post-horses."
+
+"For what purpose?"
+
+"To carry me off to Courlac. It is there that your almoner shall unite
+us, in the chapel, in presence of your domestics and your vassals, our
+only witnesses."
+
+"A singular whim, Marchioness; but I submit to it."
+
+"Very well. We will set out this evening.... Ah! I forgot."
+
+"What, further?"
+
+"Before starting, you will send in your resignation to the King."
+
+Monsieur de Beaugency almost bounded from his seat.
+
+"Do you dream of that, Marchioness?"
+
+"Assuredly. You will not, at Courlac, be able to perform your duties at
+court."
+
+"And on returning?"
+
+"We will not return."
+
+"We will--not--return!" slowly ejaculated Monsieur de Beaugency. "Where
+then shall we proceed?"
+
+"Nowhere. We will remain at Courlac."
+
+"All the winter?"
+
+"And all the summer. I count upon settling myself there, after our
+marriage. I have a horror of the court. I do not like the turmoil.
+Grandeur wearies me.... I look forward only to a simple and charming
+country life, to the tranquil and happy existence of the forgotten lady
+of the castle.... What matters it to you? You were ambitious for my
+love's sake. I care but little for ambition; you ought to care for it
+still less, since you are in love with me."
+
+"But, Marchioness--"
+
+"Hush! it's a bargain.... Still, for form's sake, I give you one hour to
+reflect. There, pass out that way; go into the winter drawing-room that
+you will find at the end of the gallery, and send me your answer upon a
+leaf of your tablets. I am about to complete my toilet, which I left
+unfinished, to receive you."
+
+And the Marchioness opened a door, bowed Monsieur de Beaugency into the
+corridor, and closed the door upon him.
+
+"Marchioness," cried the King, from his hiding place and through the
+screen, "you will offer Monsieur de Menneval the embassy to Prussia,
+which I promise you for him."
+
+"And you will not emerge from your retreat?"
+
+"Certainly not, Madame; it is far more amusing to remain behind the
+scenes. One hears all, laughs at one's ease, and is not troubled with
+saying any thing."
+
+It struck two. Monsieur de Menneval was announced. His Majesty remained
+snug, and shammed dead.
+
+
+                                   III.
+
+
+Monsieur de Menneval was, at all points, a cavalier who yielded nothing
+to his rival, Monsieur de Beaugency. He was fair. He had a blue eye, a
+broad forehead, a mouth that wore a dreamy expression, and that somewhat
+pensive air which became so well the Troubadours of France in the olden
+time.
+
+We cannot say whether Monsieur de Menneval had perpetrated verse; but he
+loved the poets, the arts, the quiet of the fields, the sunsets, the
+rosy dawn, the breeze sighing through the foliage, the low and
+mysterious tones of a harp, sounding at eve from the light bark
+shooting over the blue waters of the Loire--all things in short that
+harmonize with that melodious concert of the heart, which passes by the
+name of love.
+
+He was timid, but he passionately loved the beautiful widow; and his
+dearest dream was of passing his whole life at her feet, in well chosen
+retirement, far from those envious lookers-on who are ever ready to
+fling their sarcasms on quiet happiness, and who dissemble their envy
+under cloak of a philosophic scepticism.
+
+He trembled, as he entered the Marchioness's boudoir. He remained
+standing before her, and blushed as he kissed her hand. At length,
+encouraged by a smile, emboldened by the solemnity of this coveted
+interview, he spoke to her of his love, with a poetic simplicity and an
+unpremeditated warmth of heart--the genuine enthusiasm of a priest, who
+has faith in the object of his adoration.
+
+And as he spoke, the Marchioness sighed, and said within herself:
+
+"He is right. Love is happiness. Love is to be two indeed, but one at
+the same time; and to be free from those importunate intermeddlers, the
+indifference or the mocking attention of the world."
+
+She remembered, however, the advice of the King, and thus addressed the
+Baron:
+
+"What will you indeed do, in order to convince me of your affection?"
+
+"All that man can do."
+
+The Baron was less bold than Monsieur de Beaugency, who had talked of
+conquering a throne. He was probably more sincere.
+
+"I am ambitious," said the widow.
+
+"Ah!" replied Monsieur de Menneval, sorrowfully.
+
+"And I would that the man, whom I marry, should aspire to every thing,
+and achieve every thing."
+
+"I will try so to do, if you wish it."
+
+"Listen; I give you an hour to reflect. I am, you know, the King's
+god-daughter. I have begged of him an embassy for you."
+
+"Ah!" said Monsieur de Menneval, with indifference.
+
+"He has granted my request. If you love me, you will accept the offer.
+We will be married this evening, and your Excellency the Ambassador to
+Prussia will set off for Berlin immediately after the nuptials. Reflect;
+I grant you an hour."
+
+"It is useless," answered Monsieur de Menneval; "I have no need of
+reflection, for I love you. Your wishes are my orders: to obey you is my
+only desire. I accept the embassy."
+
+"Never mind!" said she, trembling with joy and blushing deeply. "Pass
+into the room, wherein you were just now waiting. I must complete my
+toilet, and I shall then be at your service. I will summon you."
+
+The Marchioness handed out the Baron by the right-hand door, as she had
+handed out the Marquis by the left; and then said to herself:
+
+"I shall be prettily embarrassed, if Monsieur de Beaugency should
+consent to end his days at Courlac!"
+
+Thereupon, the King removed the screen and reappeared.
+
+His Majesty stepped quietly to the round table, whereupon he had
+replaced the oranges, and took up one of them.
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed the Marchioness, "I perceive, Sire, that you foresee the
+difficulty that is about to spring up, and go back accordingly to the
+oranges, in order to settle it."
+
+As his sole reply, Louis XV. took a small ivory handled pen-knife from
+his waistcoat pocket, made an incision in the rind of the orange, peeled
+it off very neatly, divided the fruit into two parts, and offered one to
+the astonished Marchioness.
+
+"But, Sire, what are you doing?" was her eager inquiry.
+
+"You see that I am eating the orange."
+
+"But--"
+
+"It was of no manner of use to us."
+
+"You have decided then?"
+
+"Unquestionably. Monsieur de Menneval loves you better than Monsieur de
+Beaugency."
+
+"That is not quite certain yet; let us wait."
+
+"Look," said the King, pointing to the valet, who entered with a note
+from the Marquis, "You'll soon see."
+
+The widow opened the note, and read:
+
+"Madam, I love you--Heaven is my witness; and to give you up is the
+most cruel of sacrifices. But I am a gentleman. A gentleman belongs to
+the King. My life, my blood are his. I cannot, without forfeit of my
+loyalty, abandon his service----."
+
+"Et cetera," chimed in the King, "as was observed by the Abbé Fleury, my
+tutor. Marchioness, call in Monsieur de Menneval."
+
+Monsieur de Menneval entered, and was greatly troubled to see the King
+in the widow's boudoir.
+
+"Baron," said his Majesty, "Monsieur de Beaugency was deeply in love
+with the Marchioness; but he was more deeply still in love--since he
+would not renounce it, to please her--with the embassy to Prussia. And
+you, you love the Marchioness so much better than you love me, that you
+would only enter my service for her sake. This leads me to believe that
+you would be but a lukewarm public servant, and that Monsieur de
+Beaugency will make an excellent ambassador. He will start for Berlin
+this evening; and you shall marry the Marchioness. I will be present at
+the ceremony."
+
+"Marchioness," whispered Louis XV. in the ear of his god-daughter, "true
+love is that which does not shrink from a sacrifice."
+
+And the King peeled the second orange and eat it, as he placed the hand
+of the widow in that of the Baron.
+
+"I have been making three persons happy: the Marchioness, whose
+indecision I have relieved; the Baron, who shall marry her; and Monsieur
+do Beaugency, who will perchance prove a sorry ambassador. In all this,
+I have only neglected my own interests, for I have been eating the
+oranges without sugar.... And yet they pretend to say that I am a
+selfish Monarch?"
+
+
+
+
+                       THE MISSING MARINERS,
+
+                    A DREAM OF THE ARCTIC SEAS.
+
+     This fanciful sketch was written and published, before the fate of
+     Sir John Franklin and his Discovery Ships was known.
+
+
+There was not a curtain of any kind over the window.
+
+Now, there are few things that I dislike more than this total want of
+privacy in a bed-room. Opposite to a dead wall at a foot's distance, so
+that none but bogies could peer within, or looking out through a
+port-hole over the lonely sea, I confess to an almost old-maidenish
+particularity in this respect. Failing, therefore, in sundry efforts to
+substitute a great coat for a curtain, or even to delude myself into a
+sense of seclusion, by planting an open umbrella upon a chair before the
+window, I finally abandoned my efforts, determined to brazen it out,
+blew out my light, and tumbled into bed, not in the best of humours.
+
+You remember, perhaps, the bitter cold night and the flurry of a snow
+storm, that came abruptly upon us, a few weeks since. That was the time
+of which I write--the place was a country village. And what a freezing
+night it was! The east wind blew gustily and drearily. It was
+moonlight, but dull and grey; and as I lay in bed, without raising my
+head from the starveling bolster vainly eked out by a meagre carpet bag,
+I could see a single pine tree, on a steep bank right opposite my
+window, nodding, and bowing at me by fits and by starts, as though the
+capricious spirit of the night wind had bid it mock me. How I longed for
+the sight of a chimney-pot!
+
+There was no snow yet; but I listened to the rush of each driving blast,
+and shrunk, huddling under the clothes, from the chill it sent through
+me, as its keen edges forced their way through the crevices of the roof
+over my head. At length, and after much tumbling and tossing, I fell
+asleep--or believed that I did so; and presently I awoke again--or so it
+seemed to me. What was sleeping, and what was waking, I scarcely knew,
+that night.
+
+Suddenly, there, between us--between myself, I mean, and the white,
+shining hill-side--came an object, undefined in form but palpable in
+substance, waving gently to and fro, passing and repassing before the
+window, and at last appearing almost to touch it. Finally it became
+stationary there, yet still undulating with that soft tremulous motion
+which you may have noticed in the humming-bird, when, poised upon his
+delicate wings, he darts his slender tongue into the petals of a
+favourite flower. "What in the world is it?" I exclaimed; and had just
+fancied that I could see a few slight cords reaching from it upwards,
+above the upper edge of the window, when I distinctly heard a rap upon
+the pane, and sprung from my bed, in wonderment, but not in fear. The
+glass melted away--frame-work to the casement there was none--I passed
+outwards, unconscious how or wherefore. I was seated, warmly and
+comfortably seated, springing aloft into the moonlit and starry sky.
+
+Then I knew that it was a balloon. It rose at the instant, and sped
+rapidly through the air. The wind was strong, but blowing a steady gale;
+not in gusts now, as it had been. And I felt that it was from the south,
+for it was soft and balmy; and I knew that I was driving towards the
+Polar star, for I saw it; and saw it growing larger and more luminous.
+
+Then my spirit yearned after the missing Mariners; and I prayed Heaven
+that I might be on my way to find them.
+
+On we sped; but I was conscious, though the southerly gales were wafting
+me to the frozen regions of the North, that there was a spirit beneath
+or behind me, guiding the tiny car in which I was borne. I felt that he
+was there, though I strove in vain to detect his presence. Slily did I
+glance over my shoulder, abruptly did I turn my head, cautiously did I
+crane over the edge--I could not see him. I felt him directing my looks
+to what I beheld, shaping my thoughts whitherward they went; but it
+pleased him to remain invisible.
+
+It was yet night. Many rivers did we cross in our progress, some looking
+inky-black as they flowed between snowy banks, others dimly made out,
+and lost in the one unvaried tone. Lakes were there, too, and cities
+sparcely scattered. The latter were mostly slumbering in the same quiet
+as the former; but ascending from one I heard the alarm of a bell, and
+glanced downwards at a herd of figures who seemed to be fussing and
+fuming around a fire.
+
+And now, for a moment, I knew that I was dreaming; and oh, grievous
+disappointment, I half awoke to a consciousness that the vision was
+slipping away from me. How I clutched at it! how I hugged it, and
+refused to have a word to say to my senses! Did you never try this plan
+and succeed in it? If not, I would not give a fig for your dreams.
+
+But I caught up the thread of mine. Bravo! It was a narrow escape,
+though. They told me, next day, that there had been a false alarm of
+fire in the village, during the night. I would have been roasted alive,
+rather than not have dreamed out my dream.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Day-light, and early summer, and we were hovering over the icy land and
+icy sea, scarcely now distinguishable, one from other. Nor can I,
+indeed, describe much of what I saw; for methought, that we were driving
+hither and thither, not only in the dreary realm of the Frost-king, but
+up, and down, and athwart the ordinary current of times and seasons. So
+was there much confusion. Anon it was that awful Winter, whose cold will
+eat, like red-hot iron, into the unguarded flesh, or more fatal still,
+will palm off Death upon his victim under the alluring disguise of
+Slumber--Winter, with his terrible silence, more fearful than the roar
+of his fiercest hurricanes--Winter, with his blinding mantle of unbroken
+white, and his snowdrifts wherein cities might be engulphed--Winter,
+with his one redeeming beauty, one attendant goddess, one Aurora, the
+Borealis, whose coruscations were so marvellous to behold, so changeful,
+so grand, so brilliant, that I smiled in looking on them, to think that
+ever human skill had fabricated fire-works, and that their display could
+throw spectators into ecstacies.
+
+And anon it was the Arctic summer--and the blue waters peeped at
+intervals between giant pyramids of ice--pyramids, and pinnacles, and
+turrets, and all shapely and all shapeless masses. And these were
+floating in the sunlight--some majestically sailing through the ever
+opening spaces, coming never in contact with their fellows--others
+jarring, and crashing, and splintering into a thousand fragments, as the
+upheaving waves compelled them perilously to embrace each other; and
+their greeting was as the roar of thunder-storms. And uncouth walrusses
+were playing their clumsy antics on detached fragments of the ice, and
+the seal was basking in the sun, and the huge whale was spouting, and
+the seagull was skimming the surface of the loosened deep, dipping
+therein the tips of his wings, as though to assure himself that it was
+indeed liquid. Landward, too--for there was land, also, beneath us--I
+seemed to see the scanty blades of a dwarfish vegetation thrusting
+themselves pertinaciously through the snow; and anon the garb of the
+earth seemed changing from one universal white, to varied hues of brown
+and green.
+
+Those things and other such, rare and beautiful, were visible to the
+bodily eye; but the eye of my mind was not therewith content. It
+strained its utmost, but saw not what it longed for; and my voice broke
+out in bitterness, "Oh, the ships and the men, the men and the ships,
+the good Sir John and his daring crews!"
+
+Then I was conscious that my attendant spirit impelled the balloon in a
+direction hitherto unexplored, and lo! there beneath us was a ship--a
+ship, one of the objects of my search!
+
+A ship! and my heart bounded within me at the first glimpse I caught of
+it. But ah! how the blood curdled in my veins, when, at the next moment,
+I saw that the ship had not, and could not have occupants. Poor,
+ill-fated, ill-treated vessel; never surely did typhoon or whirlwind so
+displace thee from thy proper bearings. The troubled waters of the
+Atlantic or the Caribbean Sea might indeed have reared thee upwards, and
+plunged thee downwards, and made thee reel to and fro, like a drunkard;
+but it was alone the frozen waters of the Arctic, that could have forced
+thee into this unnatural position, and then cruelly nailed thee there,
+to rot into decay.
+
+Ay, stout ship _Erebus_ or _Terror_--I wot not which--there wert thou
+lying, or rather there didst thou stand upright, thy bows grovelling in
+the ice, thy stern uplifted high in air, thy keel propped up against a
+sheer precipice of ice, thy bowsprit shivered into splinters, thy masts
+and yards, and tackle, fallen all, and tangled in most inextricable
+confusion. One stick alone remained set out horizontally from the deck.
+From it drooped the tattered remnant of a flag; it was the blood-red
+standard of England!
+
+As the balloon glided downwards towards the wreck, I could have peered
+into the after-cabin windows; but a single glance had already satisfied
+me that no living being would be found on board. I have said that my
+blood curdled in my veins. Turning hastily with a sudden movement of
+indignation, I obtained a moment's glance at my guide--his form was
+shadowy; but by his hideous features I recognized him as Despair, and
+felt that he and I were one.
+
+But ho, a pleasant change! Down we floated, till my tiny car was almost
+on a level with the vessel's bows; and there--oh, joy of joys--were
+signs, palpable and undoubted, that the crew had fared better than their
+ship--that they had escaped, and were gone, and had carried what they
+pleased away with them. At one view I comprehended this--I read it in
+the aperture sawn through the doubled planking, and in the fragments of
+casks and cases with which the ice was bestrewn around. There was a
+board, too, with writing upon it, nailed up conspicuously; but I tried
+in vain to decipher it. Under the impulse of strong excitement, I again
+turned abruptly toward my guide; this time, I could not obtain a glimpse
+of him. Methought, however, that I heard a rustle like the sound of
+wings, and that the inflated silk over my head became suddenly tinted
+with the hues of the rainbow. And so I knew that I was under the
+guidance of Hope; and that Despair would trouble me no more. Whither my
+countrymen were gone I could not conjecture; but, at least, I deemed
+them safe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Away, and away, we soared upwards and sped onwards; how far, and how
+long, I marked not. And lo, another object! not a ship--it is a house,
+this time; yes, a house in the lonely wilderness of that frozen ocean, a
+hut upon the waves of that boundless _mer de glace_. And it was
+fashioned in rude form; and the material was rough blocks of ice; and
+snow seemed to have been used as their cement. The roof was formed by
+poles and spars; and across them yet hung a sailcloth covering.
+Roundabout the hut was a lofty wall, built apparently to shelter it from
+storms, and snowdrifts; and the wall was built with the same material as
+the house, for Nature's plentiful quarry fails not in those Polar
+regions, if man's hand and man's axe be brought there, to hew and shape.
+But for whom the shelter, and whither had they gone, who tenanted it? I
+knew well that the long lost had been here. None but they--no miserable,
+wandering tribe of Esquimaux--could have left such unmistakable marks of
+forethought, and skill, and energy. Near by, too, was plainly visible
+the icy cradle wherein a vessel had been lying, and on an even keel. But
+ships and men were gone--gone, but how gone, and whither? Earnestly did
+I gaze for some solution of this mystery; and at length I solved it, ay,
+plain enough; a line along the surface of the ice became distinctly
+visible, rugged and indented indeed, but straight, and stretching far
+away to the Westward. Then was I assured that Sir John and his brave
+comrades had been here, that they had cut out a channel for their
+barque, and that the ice had closed in behind them, so soon as they had
+passed on their way. Yes, I was on their track. And again I heard the
+soft rustling of the wings of Hope; and the rainbow-tinted hues of the
+balloon were three-fold more brilliant than before.
+
+One other circumstance only could I note, ere we sped away again upon
+the search--all who came hither had not departed hence. Side by side, in
+a sheltered nook, beneath a towering pinnacle of ice, two wooden
+crosses, peering above the snow, told plainly that beneath it two of the
+Mariners were sleeping in death. And their names were rudely carved upon
+the crosses; but again my sight, though in some respects preternaturally
+sharpened, refused to satisfy my curiosity. Never mind, thought I, 'tis
+a small proportion in so large a company. We must all die once; and
+those who rest here, rest as well as though they were laid beneath the
+"long-drawn aisle;" and their bodies are more enduringly embalmed by the
+servants of the great Frost-King, than in olden days they could have
+been by the hand of the cunning men of Egypt.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Upwards, and onwards, and steering ever a Westwardly course. And lo, at
+length--oh, God be praised--yes I found the men I sought! Yes--no more
+doubt--there I saw them below me, although, with the caprice incident to
+dreams, I was prevented from dropping down in the midst of them, or
+rendering myself either visible or audible.
+
+A strange scene it was, independent of its surpassing interest. Rocky
+islands--vast packs and floes of ice--a lone ship beset, impeded,
+entangled--a hundred pairs of lusty arms at work with ice-saws and axes,
+striving to extricate her, by cutting a channel in the direction where
+open water was visible. A little apart from the busy groups stood one
+whom I instantly recognised as the Chief. Care had furrowed his brow,
+and somewhat whitened his locks, and bowed his vigorous form; but manly
+resolution was stamped upon his features, and command was in every
+gesture. Bethink you how I strove to shout--how I struggled even to
+throw myself down into their arms; but the dream-spell was on me; I was
+invisible, perforce, and my tongue refused to give utterance.
+
+How I watched them! and look, the burly seaman who is a few steps ahead
+of his comrades, tracking out the pathway to be dug--look, he starts as
+though a rattlesnake were issuing from the snow under his feet. What is
+it? He stoops, and I see his big brown hand tremble, as it assuredly
+would not have done, if picking up a burning grenade. What is it, bold
+tar, that moves thee thus? Ay, I see now, and know the cause, 'tis
+yonder little slip of gay coloured silk on which are printed a few short
+words. Jack could not read, it was evident enough; but he held up his
+prize, and called out something which I could not hear, and his
+mess-mates bounded to the spot. Foremost in the race was an athletic
+young man, in the threadbare uniform of a Midshipman, who had left his
+father's halls, five years ago, a beardless boy. Nor was the Chieftain
+himself the last. How did it pass rapidly from hand to hand, that little
+silken slip! How did its fall amongst them seem to change the whole
+spirit of the scene! But look again, a gesture from the Chief, not as
+one of authority this time, but rather as one of suggestion. It is
+obeyed, however, and a hundred heads are bared; and by the movements of
+their lips, I could see that every living man amongst them ejaculated a
+hearty "amen" to the Chieftain's short but earnest thanksgiving to
+Heaven, for the assistance now known to be at hand. Then I remembered
+that the brave Sir John was a pious and a God-fearing man; and that the
+veriest infidel sneers not at religion in the mouth of him, whose heart
+is fearless and true.
+
+Visible to me, if not audible, what extravagant demonstrations of joy
+ensued! I felt my little car vibrating to their force, as cheers, peal
+upon peal, came rolling up into the welkin. Singular was it, too, that
+though in my dream my ears were stopped, I could read in the expressive
+features of those rejoicing Mariners their varied emotions, as they
+vociferated their glee. I could see in their honest countenances, which
+cheer was for Old England--which for their Queen--which for their
+homes--which for their wives and little ones. Then they burst forth into
+grotesque dancing, and slapping of each others' hands, and jumping on to
+each others' backs, and a thousand merry antics, as though they were
+children just let loose from school. And anon, in their mirth, running
+races hither and thither, one, an officer amongst them, picked up
+another printed silken slip, in general aspect like the former, but
+addressed, it seemed, to the Chieftain by name. A second look would have
+been sufficient to master its contents, but the young man looked not the
+second time, he hurried with it straightway to Sir John. Rare instance
+this, methought, of the working of a high sense of honour!
+
+And the veteran, what did it convey to him? I saw not; but I saw a tear
+course down his furrowed cheek; and for the moment my ears were opened
+to hear his half-smothered ejaculation, "Jane, Jane, God bless
+thee--true wife, noble woman--we shall meet, thank God, we shall meet!"
+
+So I watched the merry throng, and strove in vain to catch portions of
+their earnest talk. Suddenly, all eyes were turned upon the Captain; he
+was speaking, and pointing to the West. A few words only seemed to come
+from his lips; but those surely were words of command. In a moment,
+every man, though half delirious with delight, seized upon his axe or
+his saw. Work recommenced; labour was distributed in gangs. Every arm
+was vigorously plied. The watch, descended from the mast-head to hear
+the wondrous tidings, mounted lustily again to his look-out station.
+Each man was busy at his post; and though there was perchance some
+display of increased energy and activity, you would not have surmised
+that these patient labourers had just exchanged the gathering gloom of
+Despair for the radiant smiles of Hope. O gallant hearts of oak, thought
+I--resolute, unflinching, enduring, in the prospect of the dreariest of
+fates--orderly, obedient, loyal, in the thrill of unexpected
+deliverance.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The remainder of my dream came upon me in snatches.
+
+Midway in a narrow strait, between lofty and sterile banks, a battered
+and crippled barque was steering South. I knew the place to be Behring's
+Straits, the vessel the Discovery Ship that I had just left amidst the
+ice. So bruised, however, was she, so rent, and strained, and
+maltreated, that but for the friendly aid of a consort's tow-rope, she
+could scarcely have adventured even on this comparatively easy
+navigation. At her peak floated the standard of England; but I strove in
+vain to make out the colours of her welcome escort. Once, I thought I
+saw plainly the Stars and Stripes of America; but these either faded
+away, or assumed the appearance of the double-headed eagle of Russia. Be
+that as it may, my sense of hearing was restored; and I could both hear
+and see signs of continuous rejoicing and festivity. Sounds of mirth,
+and song, and music, came upwards to me from those pleasant waters.
+Many a canoe, too, filled with outlandish people, visited the ships; all
+was wonder, and delight, and congratulation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hitherto there had been some consistency in my dream; for if my mode of
+seeing were dream-like and fantastical, what I saw had the
+verisimilitude of reality. But this was over, or at least was changed.
+In place of being seated in the car of a balloon, I was now in the
+maintop of Sir John's battered and leaky ship, a witness to what could
+only have existence in the wild imaginings of a vision. For, methought
+we were still steering to the South, when on our larboard hand uprose a
+range of lofty hills, upon which it seemed to me that I could almost
+have jumped. Down their sides rolled hundreds of little streams; and in
+the waters, waist-deep, were myriads of human beings, delving, and
+scraping, and washing, and picking up what seemed to me to be gold. But
+they paused in their busy occupations, when they saw the approach of the
+ships; and, holding up shining masses of the golden ore, shouted to the
+long missing mariners to come to the mines, and gather a plentiful
+harvest after their toils. Yardarm were we to the glittering hill-sides,
+and the miners wore the air of men who rarely tempted in vain; but the
+crew of the worn-out ship gaily shook their heads, laughed a pleasant
+little laugh of defiance, and the words, "home, home," came floating up
+to me from her deck.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another trial. The men had theirs, and were staunch. It was the master's
+turn. Heading still to the southwards, but almost becalmed, I saw a
+swift steamer ranging fast up with us from astern. This time the Stars
+and Stripes were plainly evident. She came alongside. Her captain was on
+our deck in a moment, and engaged in earnest conversation with the good
+Sir John. By the wave of his hand and a word caught here and there, I
+knew that the kindly American was pressing the veteran to take passage
+in his steamer. He drew a little almanac from his pocket, and there
+seemed to be some comparison as to dates; but Sir John finally, with a
+moistened eye, touched the other on the shoulder, pointed upwards to the
+British ensign, and firmly shook his head. Away rushed the friendly
+steamer, and the crowding passengers on her deck took leave of us with
+reiterated cheers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My dream was drawing to a close; but I yet was housed snugly in my new
+position, when the look-out at the mast-head announced a sail. It might
+have been the same day, or the next, or a week later. But he announced a
+sail--then another--and another--and lastly a steamer under canvas. The
+squadron bore down upon us. It consisted of two line-of-battle-ships, a
+frigate, and a screw-propeller, under command of the British Admiral in
+the Pacific. The greetings and salutes were over, and official etiquette
+was somewhat relaxed under the intense excitement of the moment, when I
+heard in my dream, on the quarter-deck of the flag ship, the Admiral
+thus addressed the carpenter, with a certain meaning twinkle in his eye.
+"That leaky old tub can never swim round Cape Horn, Carpenter." "I think
+not, your Honour," discreetly replied Mr. Chips. "Youngster," continued
+the Admiral turning quickly to a little middy, "go to Captain B. with my
+compliments, and tell him to call an immediate survey on the Discovery
+Ship." The little middy touched his cap respectfully, and off he jumped
+with his message. "Mr. C.," cried the Admiral to the other midshipman
+who stood by the signal-locker, "signalize the propeller to light her
+fires, and get up all steam." In thirty seconds four bits of bunting
+flew out from the mizen royal-mast head.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The last object that I saw in my vision was the figure of a woman,
+walking the ramparts of an old Spanish city on the Pacific coast of
+Central America. Matronly, and dignified in her air and bearing, her
+featured bore the impress of past anxiety, but across them flitted at
+times the consciousness of approaching joy. She gazed wistfully ever and
+anon seaward; and my heart yearned to tell her all that I had so lately
+seen. The herd of vulgar gold-hunters, who thronged the battlements,
+respected her, for her long-continued sorrows, her abiding faith, her
+matchless perseverance. They pressed not on her steps.
+
+I, too, who knew more than they did, how I longed to see the
+meeting--but no, no, 'twere better that it should be sacred.
+
+I had not the choice; at this moment, forced upon my unwilling ears,
+through the key-hole came a tiny voice, "Please, Sir, mother says won't
+you get up; the stage will be here in ten minutes."
+
+
+
+
+                       WOMAN NEVER AT A LOSS.
+
+              _An Eastern Apologue--From the French._
+
+
+----I read her my manuscript; I had been abusing woman I must confess.
+Not a single good word could I say for the sex; and long did my
+companion and I battle the point. Many truisms, much that was strictly
+veritable had I brought forward, and she had been obliged to yield to
+the justice of almost all my remarks, though disclaiming against my
+slander at the same time. Finally--"You intend to marry, yourself?" she
+asked.
+
+"Certainly," I replied; "to find a woman bold enough to take me, after
+having convinced her that I knew all the duplicity of the sex, will
+henceforward be the dearest of my hopes."
+
+"Is this resignation or fatuity?"
+
+"That is my secret."
+
+"Well, then," she said, "most learned doctor of conjugal arts and
+sciences, permit me to relate to you a little Eastern apologue, that I
+read long ago in a small volume that was offered to us every year in the
+shape of an almanac." I bowed my delighted attention. The pretty
+creature threw herself back in her _chaise longue_, rested her little
+feet upon the fender, and fixed her arch dark eyes upon me.
+
+"At the commencement of the Empire," she began, "the ladies brought into
+fashion a game which consisted in accepting nothing from the person with
+whom one agreed to play, without saying the word 'Iadeste.' An affair of
+this kind lasted, as you may suppose, whole weeks, and the height of
+cleverness was to surprise one another into receiving a trifle without
+uttering the magic word."
+
+"Even a kiss?"
+
+"Oh! I have twenty times gained 'Iadeste' in that way," said she,
+laughing. "It was, I believe, about this time, apropos of this game of
+which the origin is either Arabian or Chinese, that my apologue obtained
+the honours of print."
+
+"But if I tell it to you," she interrupted, looking doubtfully at me,
+and passing her taper finger slowly across her lips, with a charmingly
+coquettish gesture, "promise me to insert it at the end of your book!"
+
+"Will you not be bestowing a treasure? I owe you already so many
+obligations, I do not hesitate to add this; therefore, I accept it at
+once." She smiled maliciously, and went on in these words.
+
+"A philosopher had compiled a very large collection of all the tricks
+our sex can play; and so, to guard himself against our wiles, he carried
+this constantly about him. One day, in travelling, he found himself near
+an Arabian encampment. A young woman, sitting under the shade of a
+palm-tree, got up suddenly, on the approach of the stranger, and invited
+him so obligingly to repose under her tent that he could not resist
+accepting. The husband of this lady was then absent. The philosopher had
+scarcely established himself upon the soft carpets, when his graceful
+hostess presented him with fresh dates and a vessel full of milk; he
+could not help seeing the rare perfection of the hands which offered the
+beverage and the fruit. But to recover from the confusion into which the
+charms of the young Arabian had thrown him, and whose snares he began to
+dread, the wise man drew out his book and read! The enchanting creature,
+piqued at this disdain, said to him in the sweetest voice, 'That book
+must be very interesting, since it seems to be the only thing you
+consider worthy of notice. Would it be an indiscretion to ask the name
+of the science of which it treats!' The philosopher replied without
+raising his eyes, 'The subject of this book is beyond the comprehension
+of woman.' This refusal excited more and more the curiosity of the young
+Arabian. She put forward the prettiest little foot that ever left its
+transient trace upon the fleeting sands of the desert. The sage began to
+waver; his truant looks would wander toward those dainty feet till his
+eyes, too powerfully tempted, finally mingled the flame of their
+admiration with the fire that darted from the ardent and black orbs of
+the young Asiatic. Again, then, she asked in her soft low tones, 'what
+is the book?' and the charmed philosopher replied, 'I am the author of
+this work. It contains a record of all the tricks that woman ever
+invented!'
+
+"'What! all--absolutely all?' inquired the daughter of the desert.
+
+"'Yes--all! And it is only in studying woman constantly, that I have
+been able to overcome my fear of them.'
+
+"'Ah!' said the Arabian, dropping the long lashes of her snowy eyelids;
+and then throwing suddenly upon the pretended sage the full lustre of
+her Eastern eyes she made him forget in one instant his valuable book
+and its invaluable contents. Behold my philosopher the most impassioned
+of men!
+
+"Thinking that he perceived in the manner of his young hostess a slight
+touch of coquetry, the stranger hazarded an avowal of his adoration. How
+could he have resisted? The sky was so blue, the sand shone in the
+distance like a blade of gold; the wind brought love upon its wings, and
+the wife of the absent Arab seemed to reflect all the brilliancy with
+which she was surrounded. Her bright eyes, too, became liquid; and she
+seemed, by a slight movement of her graceful head, to consent to listen
+to the honeyed words of the quondam philosopher.
+
+"The wise man was in a full tide of eloquence when the distant gallop of
+a horse was heard rapidly approaching.
+
+"'We are lost!' cried the alarmed Fatima; 'my husband is coming. He is
+jealous as a tiger, and still more fierce. In the name of the Prophet,
+and if you love your life, hide yourself in this chest!' The frightened
+author, seeing nothing else to do, rushed into the chest; his hostess
+shut it down, locked it, and took the key. She went to meet her spouse,
+and after several caresses, which put him into the best of humour, 'I
+must tell you,' said she, 'a very singular adventure.'
+
+"'I listen, my gazelle,' said the Arabian, seating himself upon a
+cushion and crossing big legs after the Oriental fashion.
+
+"'There came here to-day a kind of philosopher; he pretended to have
+collected in a book all the treacheries of which my sex is capable; and
+this false sage--spoke--to--me of love!'
+
+"'Well?'
+
+"'I listened to him!' At these words the Arab bounded like a lion, and
+drew his kangiar. The philosopher, from the bottom of the chest, heard
+all, and sent to the devil his book, woman, and all the men of Arabia
+Petrea.
+
+"'Fatima!' cried the husband, if you wish to live, answer! 'Where is the
+traitor?'
+
+"Horrified at the storm she had raised, Fatima threw herself at the feet
+of her lord, and trembling under the menacing steel of the poniard, she
+pointed out the coffer, with a single look, as prompt as it was timid.
+Then rising, ashamed, she drew the key from her girdle and gave it to
+her jealous lord. But--as he turned furiously from her, the malicious
+beauty burst into a shout of laughter, and laying her white hand upon
+his shoulder, 'Iadeste!' she exclaimed; 'at last, I shall have my
+beautiful gold chain! Give it to me; you have lost. Another time, Fazom,
+have a little better memory!' The husband stupefied, let fall the key,
+and presenting the golden chain, on his knees, offered his dear Fatima
+to bring her all the jewels of all the caravans that passed that year,
+if she would only give up such cruel methods of gaining the 'Iadeste.'
+Then, as he was an Arabian and did not like to lose his gold chain,
+though it was to his wife, he remounted his steed and went off,
+grumbling at his ease in the desert--for he loved Fatima too much to
+show her his regrets.
+
+"At last, the young woman released the philosopher more dead than alive
+from his prison, and said to him, gravely,
+
+"'Mr. Philosopher, don't forgot to insert this trick in your
+collection.'"
+
+
+
+
+                   MANDRAGORA--BY THE DOZEN.
+
+
+And so you cannot coax yourself off to sleep? Why? Were you beguiled by
+their exquisite flavour into rashly smoking three or four of those
+potent Regalias, with which your friend, the rich stock-broker,
+professes to aid the digestion of his guests, after a lengthened sitting
+at his luxurious table? Or did the rounded arm and taper fingers of his
+fair wife, presiding over the mysteries of the silver urn, tempt you to
+indulgence in too frequent cups of Souchong? Perhaps you are
+endeavouring, in spite of yourself, to solve some knotty problem in
+politics, or love, or chess, or mathematics. Perhaps you have a
+considerable bill to take up to-morrow, with a very slim balance at your
+banker's. Perhaps you have a heart-ache; perhaps a head-ache. At any
+rate, your nerves and senses are painfully strained; and you feel as
+though you would give the world and all, for a lullaby that would serve
+its purpose. My good Sir, compose your mind. If you can't sleep and
+dream, as you desire--dream and sleep. Reverse, I say, the common order.
+And do not sneer at the suggestion, unless you prefer tossing about all
+night in vain. The process is not only not impossible; it is not half
+so difficult as you might suppose, presuming--as I have a right to
+presume, in regard to my reader--that your imagination is not hopelessly
+inert.
+
+Some persons recommend to the restless and wide-awake the repetition of
+scraps from books, in prose or verse, just as though every one had a
+plenteous store of "elegant extracts" garnered up in his memory, and as
+though authors specially aimed at being somniferous. There are indeed
+not a few among them, who unavoidably achieve this distinction; and the
+advice might not really be bad, if you could con over--once would be
+sufficient--Mr. A.'s last pamphlet on political economy, or the Rev. Mr.
+B.'s last sermon. On the whole however, inasmuch as your favourite
+passages--should you know any of them by heart--may be the very opposite
+of soothing in their tendencies, this mode of wooing slumber can
+scarcely be pronounced successful.
+
+You must commence, I say, by dreaming, if you would compel yourself
+gently to sleep; but before I proceed to introduce to you my list of
+available prescriptions in this line, I note one with which my readers
+may possibly be familiar, having learned it in their school-boy days.
+You will not now be told for the first time, that a drowsy sensation may
+be induced by musing upon--or dreaming of, which is the same thing--a
+field of tall and ripe barley, swept by fresh autumnal gales. The rise
+and fall of each bowed head, with its feathery and graceful spikes,
+combines well with the undulating motion of the whole and the varied
+play of light and shade. The idea is otherwise expressed by the British
+Laureate in "The Poet's Song," one of his minor pieces; "and waves of
+shadow," says he, "went over the wheat." Nevertheless it is clear that
+he missed the proper application of the thought, for, in place of
+lulling the beholder to forgetful repose, the sight seems to have made
+him break out into a song so loud that wild swans paused to listen in
+their flight, larks fluttered down to earth, swallows gave up hunting
+bees, snakes slipped under sprays, wild hawks stared over sparrows
+stricken under their claws, and the very nightingales were set
+a-thinking. Truly a sad perversion this of a golden opportunity! But
+your rhymsters were ever a crazy race. When they deal with their fellows
+generally, we all know how they botch poor human nature. What, then, can
+be expected, when poets undertake to figure out one of themselves?
+Still, let us improve the occasion. Barley-fields or wheat-fields are
+well enough in their way; only, if you conjure up this image, I would
+advise you to season it with an abundance of red poppies intermingled
+with the legitimate crop, and a very careful attempt on your part to
+number these interlopers one by one, preparatory, if so it please you,
+to flipping off their heads. With due allowance, therefore, for its lack
+of novelty, this dream may be admitted into our collection.
+
+And it may be proper to remark at the outset that, though the dreams
+whereof I propose to treat are sufficiently distinct in their kind, it
+is desirable, in the practical use of them, to run them one into
+another--to fuse them unconsciously as it were, without being over-nice
+as to the point at which one ends and another begins. It is not
+requisite, however, for this reason, that they should all be packed into
+one paragraph, like a daily paper's report of one of Mr. Morrill's
+speeches on the Tariff, or a Secretary of the Treasury's Report. You
+shall have each dainty conceit served up in its own dish, so that,
+furthermore by the way, you can take them in such order as suits your
+own good pleasure. This view of the matter relieves me also from the
+necessity of formal arrangement. It is altogether unimportant which
+fancy comes uppermost. The main thing is to shut off all thought
+concerning the actualities of life, eschewing reference to your loves,
+your hates, your wrestlings with circumstance, your mental cares, your
+bodily ailments. I repeat it: you must dream, if you would sleep.
+Counting the breezy barley-field above mentioned as one, I believe I can
+supply you with a dozen subjects.
+
+Your physical eye is closed, of course--your mind's eye being, on that
+account, all the more keenly alive to impression, and the better able to
+compass an unembarrassed range. Set it, then, upon a spiral stairway
+endless so far as I can imagine it, though you may perchance by looking
+earnestly upward discover whereto it leads, or by peering intently
+downward find out its base. But did I say a stairway? That was not what
+I meant; and dreamers, of all men, are at liberty to change or modify
+their views. I should have said an inclined plane. Let it be steep,
+smooth, slippery, broad enough to admit the passage of several figures
+simultaneously, and guarded by bannisters on either side. When, fatigued
+with the vain attempt to satisfy your doubts as to the safety of this
+strange structure, your curiosity craves enlightenment as to its uses, I
+pray you to observe how I would have it peopled. Sliding tumultuously
+adown the balustrades, lo and behold an innumerable throng of Cherubs in
+unbroken succession, coming whence and going whither you know not, but
+each the counterpart of his predecessors, and each flapping his little
+wings to maintain his balance, rendered precarious as it is by his
+inability to sit a-straddle. As for the inclined plane itself thus
+fantastically flanked, you soon perceive that it is the _via sacra_ of
+many an Ethardo, whom you have known in the flesh or in the
+spirit--Ethardo, the marvellous gymnast, who mounted and descended steep
+slopes at the Sydenham Crystal Palace, by trundling inflated balls
+beneath his feet. Up and down, down and up, some painfully and some
+skilfully pediculating, your Ethardi pass and repass each other,
+disorderly yet in order. Name them and salute them as they go by. You
+have probably more acquaintances among them than I; but I recognise
+Robinson Crusoe and Count Bismarck, Tarquinius Priscus and Horace
+Greeley, John Ruskin and Lucrezia Borgia, Mrs. Fry and Edgar Poe, Mr.
+Gladstone and Dion Boucicault, John Bright and Mrs. Grundy, Ben. Wade
+and Victor Hugo, Pio Nono and the Great Mogul. Note, too, the various
+material moulded into circular form, and blown up by way of ambulant
+footstool; now it is a crown, now a crozier, now a bag of gold, now a
+wind-bag, now a woman's heart, now a man's fame done up in a newspaper
+and properly puffed. Ring the changes upon these Ethardi and the motive
+power that each applies, O my wakeful friend; and at least you may lose
+sight of your own individuality. Or, take a slide down the banisters
+with the young Cherubs, and perchance you may touch bottom--in Lethe.
+
+Not so? Let us proceed. There's a man at our Club, whose reputation is
+so solidly built up, though on an ethereal basis, that I never knew any
+one presume to question it. He is an absolute master of one
+accomplishment; unrivalled, and--to the best of my belief, though I
+can't vouch for the fact--unenvied. Admiring spectators gather round him
+and applaud; but, if he have ambitious imitators, they rehearse in
+secret. So far, he does well--ay, with consummate tact and unfailing
+certainty--what few men can do at all, unless once in a while at dreary
+intervals, and then by accident. Not to keep you in suspense, which is
+antagonistic to repose and slumber, this young paragon contrives to
+throw off his cigar-smoke from his lips, at will, in an unerring series
+of the most lovely rings or wreaths, which, as they float and rise in
+tremulous succession, strangely fascinate the looker-on. It may be that
+this feat is not much of an achievement, morally or physically or
+intellectually considered. It may be also that the Club does not do
+itself much honour, in setting so high a value on this performance. But
+what will you? In the palmy days of Greece, a man acquired a certain
+celebrity by his precision and address in throwing peas through a
+needle's eye--the peas being, I presume, much smaller or the needles
+much larger, than any with which we sow or make soup in these degenerate
+days. Still, so highly do I appreciate perseverance in the acquirement
+of any difficult art, that I purpose doing much more for my proficient
+in smoke, than was done for his man of peas by Philip of Macedon. That
+bushel of ammunition was a scurvy reward. I confer immortality, by thus
+registering a fact and hinting a name. And I do this from a sense of
+gratitude, wherein I trust that you will participate, so soon as you
+perceive the connection that may surely be traced, between the smoke
+thus artistically and gracefully jetted into air, and the drowsiness by
+which you would fain be possessed. Do but imagine a score of your
+acquaintances round a table, each an adept in this way, and each filling
+the atmosphere with coronet after coronet of vapour thrown up from
+meerschaum or cheroot. Whose are the most frequent, whose the most
+perfect, whose retain their form the longest? Watch the little circlets
+as they wave and tremble; and award the palm of merit fairly. Nay, even
+if you tell me that you are innocent of the weed and nauseated by its
+odour, none the less shall this fantasy be available. I saw once a
+ship-of-war firing a salute; and lo, from one of the guns went up to the
+pure sky, in magnified proportions, just such a wreath as those I have
+described, as delicate yet as clearly defined, and touched withal with a
+suspicion of prismatic colours as it caught the rays of the sun. An
+enthusiastic painter might have deemed it an invisible Fairy's aureole;
+a sentimental milliner would have set it down as the flounce of her
+unseen robe. Whether the gunner of this occasion had taken a lesson from
+my friend at the Club, I cannot pretend to decide; I only assure you
+that I witnessed the phenomenon. You have, therefore, but to multiply as
+well as magnify. Think of a squadron, a fleet, all the navies of the
+world, sailing slowly and majestically in unending circuit, as the
+custom is when they bombard some hapless fort. The saluting is
+continuous; the movement never ceases; but the big cannon are noiseless
+now and harmless. Space is joyous with the innumerable wreaths of bluish
+vapour; but the red slaughter and the accursed tumult of the sea-fight
+are not heard or seen. Ponder long and lazily, I counsel you, over the
+evolutions of the ships and the convolutions of the smoke. Those may
+lure you, possibly, into the Waters of Oblivion; these may spirit you
+away to the land of the Lotos-Eaters.
+
+Another dream invites you; but it must be sketched with more reticence,
+and this for two reasons. In the first place, the subject has become
+identified with that portion of theatrical entertainments usually found
+to be the least soporific. In the second place, if your imagination were
+encouraged to free range hereupon, you might be foolish enough to
+connect its poetic motion and its charm with certain souvenirs of a
+certain fair friend of yours, whom it were wiser to forget if you desire
+to profit by this Mandragorean system. Briefly, then, I commend a
+Ballet, as not altogether unworthy of trial--but not, be it observed,
+that thing of gas lamps, and pink tights, and leers, and _poses
+plastiques_, over which young America goes into raptures. By no means.
+Picture to yourself a smooth sward beneath clustered pines, a tender
+moonlight, and Nymphs--not semi-nude as is the fashion of our day,
+neither affecting the contortions of the gymnast as in our modern
+caricature of dancing--but robed in swansdown, with nodding plumes and
+tasseled fuschias pendent, tripping it, if you will, on "light fantastic
+toe," yet through stately and solemn measures. You remember Giulio
+Romano's dance of Apollo and the Muses in the Pitti at Florence? Take
+that for your model; then place the figures to your liking. Nor forget
+to add an orchestra of Æolian harps. Let them hang among the
+pine-branches, and sigh forth Weber's Last Waltz, just to set the groups
+in motion. Then fail not in your breathings, O soft night-wind; foot it
+daintily, ye wildwood Nymphs--so may sleep steal gently upon the
+restless one, while yet his ear and eye are unsated!
+
+Another dream: blue water again, though, this time, with a golden beach.
+It is calm; but the surf rolls in languidly, with low murmurous sound,
+as it will roll, be the sea's surface never so smooth, beyond the
+involuntary breakers. What graceful bends and curves are marked, for an
+instant, with frothy pencil, upon the shining sands! How they sparkle
+with evanescent light! How soon the tiny bubbles disappear! But you have
+watched all this, many and many a time; and stale indeed hereon were
+description and moralizing! Why, then, this present allusion? What is
+there in it, tending to lull the acuter sensibilities? What offers it of
+gently-soothing exercise to the overwrought and throbbing brain? This is
+the reply. Popular belief gives to every ninth or tenth wave, tumbling
+in upon the shore, supremacy over its fellows. It swells up into fuller
+volume. It sweeps landward with a more majestic force. This is the
+story; but I would have you test its correctness. Is it the ninth, or
+the tenth? So, lie down yonder upon the mass of dry sea-weed piled
+against the rocks, and count patiently a dozen, a score, a hundred, a
+thousand waves as they come in. You shall tell me, to-morrow morning,
+whether the ninth have it, or the tenth--whether there be any regularity
+at all.
+
+Again: if we do not, like the Roman Augurs, watch and interpret the
+flight of birds as of good or evil omen, some of them--I mean some of
+the birds, not of the Augurs--may help us to become, for a while,
+independent of fate and fortune. Did you ever, for instance, sit at a
+window on a summer's evening, and take note how a flight of swallows
+skims the air? They are not very numerous, perhaps; but as they dart to
+and fro, and cross and recross before you, their number appears
+indefinite, and the zigzag peculiarity of their movements can only be
+verified by the closest possible scrutiny. I have satisfied myself that
+the motion is regular, and that it describes an elongated figure of 8,
+traced as I am sure you have often traced it upon ice with the outer
+edge of your skates. Now, though I tell you this on the faith of my own
+personal observation, you are not bound to accept my word for it. Dream
+therefore that, while you are blending two ovals into one figure upon
+the frozen pond, swallows overhead are keeping time to your gyrations.
+The winter sport and the summer bird may be made to harmonize, as it is
+only in a dream; and close watching will enable you hereafter to support
+or disavow my theory.
+
+Again: return, if you please, from air to water, for you have by no
+means exhausted the resources of this latter element, in the way of
+material for dreams. Are you an angler? Did you never drowse and doze
+over your rod, when "sitting in a pleasant shade," on a sultry
+afternoon, not a nibble disturbed the equanimity of your float? The mere
+thought were suggestive of a nap--suggestive, that is, to the indolently
+disposed, with whom however you may not be classed, seeing that your
+mind is in a state of unwholesome excitement, the which it is my
+business to allay. And so, I pray you, look deeper into this matter; pry
+down into the blue transparent depths, and mark the fish that swarm
+about your hook. Is it paste thereon, or a wriggling worm? Never mind;
+the bait is singularly attractive. To say nothing of the float gently
+bobbing ever and anon, and of the tell-tale ripples rising to the
+surface, you can see with your own eyes how victims dally with
+temptation; how they course to and fro, and round and round; how one
+eyes the bait, and another smells it, and another mumbles it; how one
+swims away, and presently returns, and with him his mate in size and
+colour. Are they over-fed or over-cautious, that they thus play round,
+but will not gorge? Does one egg on his brother to try the suspicious
+morsel, hoping himself to profit by his brother's experience? Is there
+so much resemblance to human foibles discernible down there, among these
+poor little inhabitants of the waters under the Earth? The question is
+worth studying out--especially by a sleepless man, who, while
+contemplating the forms, the motions, the manners, and the minds of
+fish, may unconsciously swallow the bait that is thus dropped before
+him.
+
+It was my intention to devote a long and distinct paragraph to each of
+four other subjects, that appear to me no less adapted for the
+consideration of waking dreamers. These are, respectively, Ghosts,
+Labyrinths, Regattas, and the Eleven Thousand Virgins of Cologne. But it
+is well to leave something to the reader's perspicacity and inventive
+powers. Indeed, why should he not fancy--dream is the more appropriate
+term--that he himself has undertaken to complete these special
+paragraphs? Let his imaginary pen glide, swift and effortless, over his
+imaginary foolscap. Ten to one, he will fill in and elaborate my
+outlines, far better than I could work them out myself. For instance, I
+do but mention Ghosts; he might summon to his presence, and bid troop
+before him, hosts upon hosts of his friends or relatives, or of his
+chosen heroes and heroines in romance and history. He might clothe them
+in white or in grey; he might attire them in their ordinary habiliments;
+in short, he might parade them according to his own taste, without
+reference to mine, which whould be a clear point in his favour.
+Accidentally, I might call up some spirit that had vexed and thwarted
+him through life, for no man whose experience is worth remembering hath
+not had his enemies, hidden or revealed, and very few are the men, fewer
+the women, who have never disposed of a rival. My reader of the moment,
+invested with my functions, will of course evoke none but his familiars,
+the well-bred and well-behaved. Let me be grateful accordingly that, by
+transferring the responsibility to him, I escape the chance of bringing
+forward, innocently and inopportunely, some social Banquo. And so I pass
+on, with one single word of caution to my substitute in completing this
+paragraph: let him not convert his pen into a Pre-Raphaelitish
+paint-brush. Airy beings must be rather hinted than described. The
+realism of anatomical plates, applied to them, would spoil the reader's
+dream _in toto_, and wake him up perhaps more hopelessly than ever.--As
+to Labyrinths, the course is obvious. Take a dozen of these quaint
+contrivances, and place them side by side, as Paulsen or Paul Morphy may
+place the sundry chess-boards whereat he is to play, simultaneously and
+blindfolded, an equivalent number of games. Pop, over the hedges and
+into the very core of each one, any personage against whom you have a
+grudge, or any one of the Ghosts just convened that may have been
+troublesome; and then challenge the incarcerated individuals to find
+their way out of limbo, by the gravelled pathways. Should one of the
+whole number emerge, through extraordinary good luck, quietly tip him
+back again over the hedge, or defy him to retrace his steps and regain
+the centre. You may enlarge this suggestion, I think, into a paragraph
+reasonably long.--The same with Regattas. I am almost sorry that I gave
+up to you so felicitous a topic; for all ages and all waters may be laid
+under contribution. From Noah's Ark shall float the commodore's broad
+pendant. The ocean shall be covered, so far as eye can range, with
+countless craft of every build and rig. And all shall glide about in
+quiet, inasmuch as oars shall be muffled, and steamers, having learned
+to consume their own smoke, shall be taught equally to swallow their
+hideous noises. The marshalling of the competitors and the order of the
+racing are left to your discretion; but there need be no lack of
+interest. Caiques from Stamboul and gondolas from Venice shall be
+frequent; and pirogues from the Malayan peninsula shall over-haul the
+three trim yacht-schooners that raced across the Atlantic from New-York.
+Here Cleopatra's barge shall be matched against an Esquimaux kayak;
+there a catamaran from Coringa shall bump the Yale College eight. If
+you cannot make something out of all this picturesque confusion, and if
+you cannot contrive to lose therein both yourself and the reader of your
+paragraph, the fault will be yours, not mine.--There remain the Eleven
+Thousand Virgins of Cologne. What are you to do with them? Simply this.
+Endow each one of them with personal attributes; let each have form and
+features, distinct from the others of her sisterhood. Is the task
+difficult? So much the better. After a cool thousand or so of these
+individual portraitures, you may begin to fumble in vain for separate
+identities. In fact, who knows whether you may not be compelled to take
+refuge hopelessly in sleep, the very mark at which both of us are
+aiming?
+
+And now, the foregoing long and subdivided paragraph being brought at
+last to an end, it were disingenuous to shirk an admission, that the
+"who's who" is not so plainly discernible therein as it might be. You
+and I, and the reader and the writer, and the giver and recipient of
+advice, will be accused by the critic of being somewhat queerly mixed
+up. What, then? Are not vagueness and uncertainty of style specially
+appropriate to the circumstances? Who would thank us for precision? No,
+no; carry clearness, if you like, into your mathematical definitions;
+but leave us our mistiness when we treat of the mysterious. Nor, on the
+whole, am I otherwise than content with my suggested assumption of
+temporary and imaginary authorship, as one of the methods for quieting
+a fevered brain. How pleasant to dream that rival Publishers are
+contending for your manuscript poems; that rival Managers are waylaying
+you for a sight of your unwritten comedy! Besides, by adding authorship
+to the list that closed with the damsels of Cologne, the number is
+brought up to eleven, so that, when I wind up with my trump card, the
+promised dozen of dreams will be complete, and I shall be enabled to
+dispense with the "waves of shadow" on the wheat-field, which I
+acknowledged were not my original conception.
+
+But am I too late in bringing forward my last and happiest idea?--though
+for that matter, when the tale of Mazeppa was concluded, "the King had
+been an hour asleep," and yet Mazeppa's story was told out ne'ertheless.
+For your immediate purpose therefore, or for use on your next sleepless
+night, I entrust you with the crowning opiate. Recollect that you are
+dreaming; and dream that all your intimates and relatives, all of whom
+you have ever heard or read with interest, men and women and children,
+people of every age and clime--imagine them, I say, all seated before
+you at a round table. How any table is to accommodate so vast a
+multitude, is their affair, and yours; the dreamer is never baulked by
+technical impediments. Have your eye upon them all at once--another
+little difficulty, to be overcome only by mortals in the incipient stage
+of somnolency. Or, if your mind's eye obstinately refuses to enlarge its
+orbit in this direction, so as to embrace such a vast and heterogeneous
+assemblage, gather, I beseech you, into one focus any such crowd as you
+habitually see. The Sunday audience of the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher
+will answer the purpose; or you may fancy yourself at one of the old
+Tammany Hall Meetings; or at the Opera, on a fashionable night; or in
+the Senate at Washington during the impeachment of Mr. Johnson. It
+matters not when and where; but the proceedings strike you as
+insufferably dull, and you give vent to your feelings in a yawn that may
+neither be suppressed nor concealed. Suddenly, moved by the same impulse
+and unable also to control or hide its effect, the jaw of every soul
+present is dropped to the lowermost, and all mouths are open in a
+universal yawn. It is not catching; it is caught. Beecher gapes, and the
+elect are gaping round him. Isaiah Rynders the same, and the same with
+his "unterrified" hearers. Parepa-Rosa stands open-mouthed in dumb show
+of singing, while humming-birds perched on chignons vibrate, as they
+vainly try to resist the irresistible. Gape the Republicans, and gape
+the Democrats, in response to the gaping Butler on his legs. There is,
+in Shakespeare's words--though his ignorant editors have transformed it
+into a "gap"--there is, I say, "a gape in Nature." Will you alone hold
+out: I can't believe it. You have yawned in concert, I am morally
+certain. Indeed, if, as these long-drawn prescriptions come to an end,
+you be not far on the road to forgetfulness, I can give you but one
+parting counsel. Nothing else can serve and save you--you must
+incontinently take morphine.
+
+
+
+
+                    DOCTOR PABLO'S PREDICTION.
+
+     Doctor Pablo went back a lonely man, to his old mother, in France,
+     after having passed twenty years in the  Philippines.--
+
+
+He did so. We can vouch thus much for the correctness of _Household
+Words_ of the 6th inst., whence the above-named quotation is copied. And
+as the subject of it is a remarkable personage, and this unexpected
+meeting with him in print has revived in us not a few pleasant
+recollections, we will take the liberty of informing our readers how we
+came to have personal knowledge of Don Pablo--for this, and not Doctor
+Pablo, was his cognomen, at least amongst his friends.
+
+Embarking at Bombay, many a long year since, in the East India Company's
+steamer _Atalanta_, for passage up the Red Sea, we soon fell into
+acquaintance with a party of foreigners, partially isolated as they were
+from the crowd of Anglo-Indians--men, women, and children--returning by
+the over-land route to their native country. They (the foreigners) were
+five in number, two Frenchmen, two Dutchmen, and a Spaniard. Of the
+three last-mentioned we have small recollection. Of the Frenchmen, one
+was Don Pablo.
+
+The other, who headed the whole party, was Monsieur Adolphe Barrot, a
+brother of Odilon and Ferdinand Barrot, whose names are familiar to
+those conversant with recent French history. He was at the time bound to
+Paris, on leave, from his post of Consul-General at Manilla. At an early
+period of his career he had been attached to the French Legation at
+Washington, or at least had travelled through this country.
+Subsequently, when Consul at Carthagena, he distinguished himself by his
+resolute and humane interposition on occasion of a certain revolutionary
+outbreak. After his return from the East, he served as French Minister
+to Naples and to Lisbon, and now, we believe, holds the same appointment
+at Brussels. Between this man of cultivated mind, polished manners, and
+companionable qualities, and Don Pablo, whose exterior smacked but
+little of intercourse with "the world," there was evidently a bond of no
+common sort. Blunt, earnest, truthful, with quick perceptions and
+impulses of the kindest nature, there was something very fresh and
+irresistibly attractive in the character of Don Pablo. We did not wonder
+at the intimacy. Opposites are drawn together. In friendly and social
+intercourse the time sped away.
+
+At that period, the steamers bound from Bombay to Suez touched at
+Cosseir, a port two days' sail South of Suez, and about 150 miles East
+of Thebes on the Nile. The object was to land passengers who cared to
+cross the intervening Desert, as the quickest mode of gaining Upper
+Egypt. To Cosseir we were ourselves destined; our new friends being on
+their way direct to France, _viâ_ Suez, Cairo, and the Mediterranean,
+and having made none of the ordinary provision for the less-frequented
+route. But we plied them strongly with argument and entreaty, to divert
+them from their intended limited course; not forgetting the threat of
+ridicule in a Parisian drawing-room, where a man who had missed such a
+chance would never be able to hold up his head. Finally, they consented.
+After a voyage of sixteen days, the coaling process at Aden included,
+three groups of travellers landed at Cosseir. We had dealings with two
+of them.
+
+For although we had persuaded Mr. Barrot, Don Pablo and their
+associates, to take our route, we could not precisely undertake to
+accompany them. We were to travel over the same ground, but not
+together; for we had engaged, ere we left Bombay, to join fortunes with
+a small party of veterans and valetudinarians who had made elaborate
+preparations for the journey, and were not sorry to have the aid of one
+who did not belong to either class, but who was perhaps for that very
+reason more competent than they themselves to take charge of their
+caravan. And then there was a lady, and a lady's maid, and a valet, and
+the thousand and one encumbrances that are incidental to such
+appendages. What scenes we had with the camel-drivers! What tons of
+baggage to be loaded! what irritations! what drollery! what delay!
+Landing early in the morning, the preparations for a start occupied us
+till a late hour in the afternoon; nor had we ever a more laboursome
+time of it. Lightly cumbered, and with only a twentieth part of the
+fuss, Don Pablo and the others had preceded us; but as the same
+camping-places in this five days' journey are generally frequented, we
+hoped to see them from time to time. Fortune kindly ordained that we
+should join them permanently.
+
+It was on a Saturday afternoon that we started from Cosseir, with a
+train "too numerous to mention." Night had fallen, ere we pitched our
+tents--the writer sharing that of Sir C. M. At day-light on the
+following morning, we strolled off to the French encampment; were again
+pressed to join its occupants; were again compelled reluctantly to
+refuse. Away they went. We returned to our own quarters, where to our
+horror, in place of hearing "boot and saddle" sounded, the edict was
+issued from my lady's tent, that there was to be no marching that day.
+Bah! how provoking! we could not ask for an honourable discharge; but
+how we longed to desert! Matters fell out, however, more pleasantly then
+we had a right to expect. Breakfast was served, with the elaborateness
+of a _fête champêtre_, at eleven o'clock; and as the hostess gracefully
+poured out the coffee, the talk turned upon those who had sped onward.
+Presently, by a lucky chance, it occured to her, or to the nominal head
+of the party, that dawdling away a Sunday on a barren speck of
+Mahommedan sand was not in itself the essential duty of a plain
+Christian, nor specially agreeable to a man whose thoughts were keenly
+set upon the marvels of Luxor and Karnac. In short, it was mildly
+suggested to us that, as the organization and first move of the
+caravan--the real and only difficulties--were accomplished, there would
+be nothing ungallant in leaving the party to its more orthodox or more
+leisurely progress. Our coyness may be imagined; but we consented at
+length to take this view of the matter, and at noon called up our
+camels. Soon were our trunks and slender stock of kettles and sauce-pans
+slung upon one; ourselves astride of a second; and on a third, the Arab
+driver, with whom there was no communicating but by signs. A twelve
+hours' ride brought us at midnight to the tent of our friends--they
+having luckily found one available at Cosseir. We raised the canvas from
+the pegs, and saluted Don Pablo with a "Here I am!" Many years have
+elapsed since that night, but we can fancy now that we hear his genial
+rejoinder, "I knew you'd come!" In less time than it takes to tell it,
+we had edged in our bedding upon the sand, and were one of the
+Seven--no, six--Sleepers.
+
+Had not a _Howadji_ of this Western hemisphere made the Desert and the
+Nile so peculiarly his own, that it is presumption for a common pen to
+follow in his track, we might be tempted still further to ransack our
+memory for pleasant recollections of Don Pablo. Let it suffice to say,
+that with these pleasant companions we roughed it across the
+camel-track, in a style of discomfort and good humour rarely surpassed;
+explored the wonders of Thebes and the Tombs of the Kings; floated down
+to Cairo; clambered the Great Pyramid; smoked pipes with Pashas; and
+finally embarked at Alexandria, on the blue waters of the
+Mediterranean. The farewell was said at Syra, one of the islands of the
+Ægean. The "five we supped with yesternight" were bound to Malta and
+Marseilles--we to Athens and Constantinople. As we shook hands at
+parting with Don Pablo, he quietly remarked, with that cheerful gravity
+that so well became him, and in allusion to a young lady who had been
+our three days' acquaintance on board the steamer--"_Adieu, mon cher;
+vous épouserez Mademoiselle._"
+
+We never saw Don Pablo, but once afterwards. Several months had elapsed.
+His prophecy had been fulfilled. The lady in question was on our arm, as
+in sauntering under the arcades of the Palais Royale in Paris, we met
+our old associate. There was a hearty greeting; but when we reminded him
+of his prediction and formally introduced him, we remember that he cut
+the colloquy abruptly short (as it then seemed to us), and turned away
+with an expression of face for which we were at a loss to account, being
+ignorant of all the details of his history. Did the memory of the
+Peninsula of Iala-Iala, and of the loving wife whom he had buried there,
+fall too suddenly and too sadly upon his sensitive and affectionate
+spirit?--We cannot say; but this was the beginning and the ending of our
+knowledge of Doctor Pablo, until we unexpectedly met him in print.
+
+
+
+
+                    THE NEW HAMPSHIRE ALPS.
+
+
+It is not very much of a walk from the Glen House up the Eastern face of
+Mount Washington--less than three hours at a leisurely pace will
+accomplish it; and on a fine day it would be next to impossible to lose
+one's-self, if alone. Half the distance or thereabouts, your track lies
+through a wood, acceptable enough as offering shelter from a July sun,
+but curtailing your views annoyingly. However, all things end; and if
+your range of sight be somewhat "cabined, cribbed, confined," at the
+start, you have no cause for complaint on that score after once emerging
+from covert, for the rocks, bleak, bare, and irregular, that are
+scattered all around, though large enough to compel a careful picking of
+the way between them by no means limit the vision. But the approach has
+been a hundred times described, and I will only say of it, at the risk
+of repetition, that he who comes up from the Glen House, and fails to
+turn his eye continually over his right shoulder, to dwell lovingly upon
+the near and noble outlines of Mounts Jefferson, Adams, and Madison, has
+no appreciation of this sort of scenery.
+
+The morning had been superlatively fine, and troops of mounted dames
+and damsels and cavaliers made the various pathways lively with their
+glee. But caprice is the rule of these high regions; and when I was
+within ten minutes of the summit, clouds of misty vapour came suddenly
+scudding up, whence I knew not, but shutting out a peep here and a vista
+there, as they caracolled in fantastic evolutions. Presently, to these
+kaleidoscopic effects succeeded a slight hailstorm--it was rain visibly
+beneath us, attended with thunder and lightning--but anon all was
+comparatively clear again, and from the congregated spectators went up
+many a genuine burst of enthusiastic admiration, as point after point
+opened out or was shut in by the scud.
+
+The two rough stone buildings upon the small plateau that crowns the
+mountain, built for the accommodation of travellers, are called
+respectively the "Summit" and the "Tip-top" House. Once rivals, they now
+form a single establishment--one being used as a restaurant, the other
+as a dormitory. On this particular day, nearly a hundred persons must
+have refreshed themselves in the former--a dozen or fifteen in the
+latter; and I must own, it was not without a sense of relief that I saw
+the last of the descending parties set forth about 2 P. M., being myself
+of the select few about to take the chance of sunset and sunrise.
+
+For the afternoon, then--for the interval of time was to be occupied--a
+guide was summoned, to show half-a-dozen of us the wonders of
+Tuckerman's Ravine, a _cul-de-sac_ between two great buttresses of
+Mount Washington, that prop it up towards the South and West. The sides
+of this ravine are very precipitous the head of it being formed of
+layers of rock, at an angle of about ninety-five degrees, over which a
+cascade precipitates itself, fed by the springs and melted snows above.
+In the bed of this hollow, to which the descent is sufficiently sharp to
+gratify the keenest amateur pedestrian, the accumulated snow of the
+winter, blown over from the impending heights, lies packed in such
+enormous masses that it seldom entirely disappears until the latter part
+of August. At the period of my visit, on Friday, the 29th of July, a
+huge portion thereof remained, and the famous "Snow-Arch" was not only
+visible but practicable. This natural curiosity is a cave channelled out
+from the vast snow bank as a passage for the descending waters, the roof
+of which, gradually melting away, leaves height and space for walking
+along this gallery as it were in the very bed of the torrent. You enter
+perforce, be it observed, where the stream emerges. The length was
+certainly not less than two hundred feet, the breadth of the tunnel
+perhaps forty or fifty. Of the thickness of the roof I cannot speak, not
+having essayed it; but the little knot of adventurers trusted that it
+would not cave-in whilst they were groping their difficult way, one
+after the other, wet-footed and in semi-obscurity, up-stream, from end
+to end of the arched way. The object of the exploration it would be
+difficult to define. It certainly was not scientific; it offered no
+rare beauties; it might have been very well imagined, without the
+trouble and subsequent risk--but it was an adventure, and it had its
+charm. Day-light appeared as we neared the waterfall--luckily not very
+full--which, as I have already said, comes down the head of the ravine
+and is the origin of the "Arch" itself. What next? The snow had
+separated bodily from the face of the rocks to the width of two or three
+feet, as you see ice fields in a thaw detach themselves from the land
+whereto they have been joined. We could therefore emerge, and clamber up
+the abrupt face of the rocks, though the first start was not inviting,
+inasmuch as we had to hoist ourselves up by unequal pressure upon soft
+snow on one side and hard rock on the other. The alternative was a
+return. This would have been inglorious; up we went. It was a rough
+business. The guide had been over the ground once before, this
+season--so he said, at least--but he "harked back" occasionally, as
+though not quite certain of his way. It seemed impossible to diverge
+either to the right or left, and so gain the comparatively easier slope.
+We were doomed to mount, in the hope of finding successive steps,
+inasmuch as a retracing of those taken was not for a moment to be
+thought of; descent in such cases is always far more dangerous and
+troublesome. It was fortunate that in crossing twice or thrice the
+waterfall itself, we were not pumped on to any serious extent. I was
+moistened only, being garnished with a Macintosh; and I have only two
+scars now left on my shins, the result of scraping too close an
+acquaintance with sundry rocks. The whole affair lasted between three
+and four hours. I cannot recommend it, save to very enthusiastic
+mountaineers, or to _ci-devant jeunes hommes_ anxious to test the
+effects of Time upon their powers of walking and of endurance.
+
+Regaining the hurricane-deck of the Tip-top House--for the roof is the
+principal promenade, and often times assuredly deserves the name I give
+it, how gratefully, as the sun went down, stole the sense of ineffable
+grandeur over the somewhat wearied frame! It was a superb evening; and
+though it would not suit me to cull a leaf from the Guide-book, and tell
+all that is therein narrated, I must mention one particular wherein this
+locality is notable, if not quite unique. I think I remember something
+of the kind, but not so marked, at sunrise as seen from the summit of
+Etna; but not thus, on the Righi and Faulhorn in Switzerland, on the Pic
+du Midi de Bigorre in the Pyrenees, or on other peaks that I have
+climbed in the days of long ago, to salute the coming or speed the
+parting day. The nearest approach to it that I have seen, was at the
+Great Pyramid of Ghizeh. I allude to the wonderful distinctness and
+regularity with which the shadow of the great cone itself is traced, at
+sunset, striding over heights and lowlands, mound and lake--all the
+intervening surface, in fact, between the spectator and the far distant
+horizon--until it contracts almost to a point where earth and sky merge
+into one. The sharpness of these converging parallel lines of shadow in
+that luminous atmosphere absolutely astounded me. They were as crisp, as
+clearly defined, as those that you may see in antique pictures of
+Jacob's Dream, leading ladder-wise from Heaven to the head of the
+slumbering Patriarch. Sunrise, next morning--for I was again favoured
+with clear weather and only sufficient frost to render the roof of the
+restaurant slightly slippery--sunrise, I say, reserved all this. The
+narrow lines, now on the Western horizon, broadened out and came upwards
+and forwards, as in the evening they had elongated and gone down. It was
+in truth a rare spectacle, not to be forgotten, and individualizes this
+natural observatory.
+
+As for the view itself, it has been described _ad nauseam_, and I have
+only a few words to say about it. It happened, as it often does happen,
+that I fell in with an untravelled admirer of the prospect spread out
+before us, not charmed however with it more than I was myself. But he
+would persist in drawing from me an answer to the common question--"how
+does this compare with some of the famous points of view in the Swiss
+Alps?" Such tests I hold to be absurd, thanking my stars that I can
+unreservedly enjoy all fair things that are good of their kind. And so I
+told the inquirer this simple fact. If, in a mountainous country,
+varied, broken, studded with lakes, and rife with all the elements of
+the picturesque, you ascend some such superior elevation as this, you
+have, _looking down__wards_, a striking panoramic scene, like this in
+its general features--more striking perhaps than beautiful, though this
+is all matter of taste. The difference lies herein. Here, you plunge
+your look downward, or sweep it over surrounding objects--and that's the
+end of it. In those other Alps, you add to the four or five or six
+thousand feet, below you, as much above--and it is that _upward_ glance
+which takes in the marvels of glacier and snow-field and inaccessible
+peaks. My new acquaintance asked for no more comparisons, but let me
+enjoy myself in my own quiet way.
+
+The walk down Mount Washington to Crawford's at the Great Notch, as I
+believe it is called, is rather a long affair. It must be ten miles, and
+parts of it are of the roughest. It took me four hours, in company with
+two intelligent and companionable young students of Harvard College,
+travelling (in the true way) a-foot, with knapsacks on their backs. But
+we hurried it too much, especially as the ridge over and along Mount
+Pleasant, and some of its fellows bearing Presidential names, abound in
+points of view worth dwelling on. Moreover I was foot-galled; and this
+reminds me that, inasmuch as I cannot to-day conclude my rambling
+reminiscences, I may as well wind up with a touch of information and of
+advice. The one is intended for the benefit of pedestrians who make
+excursions of this sort; the other for stay-at-homes in flat countries,
+who have no definite notion whatever of the ups and downs of hilly
+regions.
+
+In the first place, then, you who walk are painfully aware that a sore
+foot is almost a calamity, if it befall you whilst _en route_. Remedy
+there is none; be thankful that there is an infallible preventive, of
+whose unfailing excellence I can speak with unreserved commendation. On
+its simple merits I once averaged in Switzerland twenty-five miles a
+day, for thirty successive days; and this without gall or blister. Fool
+that I was, to neglect it, two or three weeks ago. Nothing is easier.
+Ere you start in the morning, soap or grease the naked foot thoroughly,
+and then draw the stocking over it. Wash off, with a dash of brandy in
+the water, on finishing your day's work. The play of the foot is the
+preservative against abrasion--a certain one, I assure you.
+
+In the second place, if--passing your life amid prairies or
+savannahs--you are sometimes puzzled to comprehend allusions to
+buttresses, shoulders, ridges, peaks, cones, ravines, and the various
+terms in use among enthusiastic mountaineers, I think I can put you on a
+very simple explanatory track. Next time you lie in bed, with a few
+spare moments for reflection upon this grave topic, just turn on to your
+back and elevate one knee or both knees. The coverlid or sheet will
+immediately assume--I am serious in saying--a curiously correct
+semblance, I might almost term it a model in relief, of the face of any
+mountainous country. Laugh not, but try it. A slight movement on your
+part varies the form and outline and relative bearing of hill and vale,
+raises a pinnacle here, or there sinks a gorge precipitously steep. If I
+had the misfortune to be confined to bed by sickness--excluding gout,
+which might render the process impossible--I could thus, with the aid of
+a map and some tables of distances, design a passable fac-simile of the
+leading White Mountains themselves. Why Yankee ingenuity should not long
+ago have manufactured _papier-maché_ plans thereof, in relief,
+altogether passes my comprehension. They would sell well as souvenirs of
+travel.
+
+
+
+
+                 SLIDING SCALE OF THE INCONSOLABLES.
+
+                         _From the French._
+
+
+How rapid is the progress of oblivion, with respect to those who are no
+more! How many a quadrille shall we see, this winter, exclusively made
+up from the ranks of inconsolable widows! Widows of this order exist
+only in the literature of the tombstone. In the world, and after the
+lapse of a certain period, there is but one sort of widows
+inconsolable--those who refuse to be comforted, because they can't get
+married again!
+
+One of our most distinguished sculptors was summoned, a short time
+since, to the house of a young lady, connected by birth with a family of
+the highest grade in the aristocracy of wealth, and united in marriage
+to the heir of a title illustrious in the military annals of the Empire.
+
+The union, formed under the happiest auspices, had been, alas! of short
+duration. Death, unpitying death, had ruptured it, by prematurely
+carrying off the young husband. The sculptor was summoned by the widow.
+
+He traversed apartments silent and deserted, until he was introduced
+into a bed-room, and found himself in presence of a lady, young and
+beautiful, but habited in the deepest mourning, and with a face furrowed
+by tears.
+
+"You are aware," said she, with a painful effort and a voice half choked
+by sobs, "You are aware of the blow which I have received?"
+
+The artist bowed, with an air of respectful condolence.
+
+"Sir," continued the widow, "I am anxious to have a funeral monument
+erected, in honour of the husband whom I have lost."
+
+The artist bowed again.
+
+"I wish that the monument should be superb, worthy of the man whose loss
+I weep, proportioned to the unending grief into which his loss has
+plunged me. I care not what it costs. I am rich, and I will willingly
+sacrifice all my fortune to do honour to the memory of an adored
+husband. I must have a temple--with columns--in marble--and in the
+middle--on a pedestal--his statue."
+
+"I will do my best to fulfill your wishes, Madam," replied the artist;
+"but I had not the honour of acquaintance with the deceased, and a
+likeness of him is indispensable for the due execution of my work.
+Without doubt, you have his portrait?"
+
+The widow raised her arm, and pointed despairingly to a splendid
+likeness by Amaury Duval.
+
+"A most admirable picture!" observed the artist; "and the painter's
+name is sufficient guarantee for its striking resemblance to the
+original."
+
+"Those are his very features, Sir; it is himself. It wants but life. Ah!
+Would that I could restore it to him at the cost of all my blood!"
+
+"I will have this portrait carried to my studio, Madam, and I promise
+you that the marble shall reproduce it exactly."
+
+The widow, at these words, sprung up, and at a single bound throwing
+herself towards the picture, with arms stretched out as though to defend
+it, exclaimed:
+
+"Take away this portrait! carry off my only consolation! my sole
+remaining comfort! never! never!"
+
+"But Madam, you will only be deprived of it for a short time, and--"
+
+"Not an hour! not a minute! could I exist without his beloved image!
+Look you, Sir, I have had it placed here, in my own room, that my eyes
+might be fastened upon it, without ceasing, and through my tears. His
+portrait shall never leave this spot one single instant, and in
+contemplating that will I pass the remainder of a miserable and
+sorrowful existence."
+
+"In that case, Madam, you will be compelled to permit me to take a copy
+of it. But do not be uneasy--I shall not have occasion to trouble your
+solitude for any length of time; one sketch--one sitting will suffice."
+
+The widow agreed to this arrangement; she only insisted that the artist
+should come back the following day. She wanted him to set to work on the
+instant, so great was her longing to see the mausoleum erected. The
+sculptor, however, remarked that he had another work to finish first.
+This difficulty she sought to overcome by means of money.
+
+"Impossible," replied the artist, "I have given my word; but do not
+distress yourself; I will apply to it so diligently, that the monument
+shall be finished in as short a time as any other sculptor would
+require, who could apply himself to it forthwith."
+
+"You see my distress," said the widow; "you can make allowance for my
+impatience. Be speedy, then, and above all, be lavish of magnificence.
+Spare no expense; only let me have a masterpiece."
+
+Several letters echoed these injunctions, during the few days
+immediately following the interview.
+
+At the expiration of three months the artist called again. He found the
+widow still in weeds, but a little less pallid, and a little more
+coquettishly dressed in her mourning garb.
+
+"Madam," said he, "I am entirely at your service."
+
+"Ah! at last; this is fortunate," replied the widow, with a gracious
+smile.
+
+"I have made my design, but I still want one sitting, for the likeness.
+Will you permit me to go into your bed-room?"
+
+"Into my bed-room? For what?"
+
+"To look at the portrait again."
+
+"Oh! yes; have the goodness to walk into the drawing-room; you will find
+it there now."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"Yes; it hangs better there; it is better lighted in the drawing-room,
+than in my own room."
+
+"Would you like, Madam, to look at the design for the monument?"
+
+"With pleasure. Oh! what a size! What profusion of decorations! Why, it
+is a palace, Sir, this tomb!"
+
+"Did you not tell me, Madam, that nothing could be too magnificent? I
+have not considered the expense; and by the way, here is a memorandum of
+what the monument will cost you."
+
+"Oh, Heavens!" exclaimed the widow, after having cast an eye over the
+total adding-up. "Why, this is enormous!"
+
+"You begged me to spare no expense."
+
+"Yes, no doubt, I desire to do things properly, but not exactly to make
+a fool of myself."
+
+"This, at present, you see, is only a design; and there is time yet to
+cut it down."
+
+"Well, then, suppose we were to leave out the temple, and the columns,
+and all the architectural part, and content ourselves with the statue?
+It seems to me that would be very appropriate."
+
+"Certainly it would."
+
+"So let it be, then--just the statue alone."
+
+Shortly after this second visit, the sculptor fell desperately ill. He
+was compelled to give up work; but, on returning from a tour in Italy,
+prescribed by his physician, he presented himself once more before the
+widow, who was then in the tenth month of her mourning. He found, this
+time, a few roses among the cypress, and some smiling colours playing
+over half-shaded grounds.
+
+The artist brought with him a little model of his statue, done in
+plaster, and offering in miniature the idea of what his work was to be.
+
+"What do you think of the likeness?" he inquired of the widow.
+
+"It seems to me a little flattered; my husband was all very well, no
+doubt; but you are making him an Apollo!"
+
+"Really? well, then, I can correct my work by the portrait."
+
+"Don't take the trouble--a little more, or less like, what does it
+matter?"
+
+"Excuse me, but I am particular about likenesses."
+
+"If you absolutely must--"
+
+"It is in the drawing-room, yonder, is it not? I'll go in there."
+
+"It is not there any longer," replied the widow, ringing the bell.
+
+"Baptiste," said she to the servant who came in, "bring down the
+portrait of your master."
+
+"The portrait that you sent up to the garret, last week, Madam?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+At this moment the door opened, and a young man of distinguished air
+entered; his manners were easy and familiar, he kissed the fair widow's
+hand, and tenderly inquired after her health.
+
+"Who in the world is this good man in plaster?" asked he, pointing with
+his finger to the statuette, which the artist had placed upon the
+mantel-piece.
+
+"It is the model of a statue for my husband's tomb."
+
+"You are having a statue of him made? The devil! it's very majestic!"
+
+"Do you think so?"
+
+"It is only great men who are thus cut out of marble, and at full
+length; it seems to me, too, that the deceased was a very ordinary
+personage."
+
+"In fact, his bust would be sufficient."
+
+"Just as you please, Madam," said the sculptor.
+
+"Well, let it be a bust, that's--determined!"
+
+Two months later, the artist, carrying the bust, encountered on the
+stairs a merry party. The widow, giving her hand to the elegant dandy
+who had caused the statue of the deceased to be cut down, was on his way
+to the Mayor's office, where she was about to take a second oath of
+conjugal fidelity.
+
+If the bust had not been completed, it would willingly have been
+dispensed with. When, some time later, the artist called for his money,
+there was an outcry about the price; and it required very little less
+than a threat of legal proceedings, before the widow, consoled and
+remarried, concluded by resigning herself to pay for this funeral
+homage, reduced as it was, to the memory of her departed husband.
+
+
+
+
+                       RAMBLING RECORDS.
+
+                     THE GENTLE ARLESIANS.
+
+
+**With one exception, however, I gleaned nothing of information that is
+not already chronicled in the guide-books; and that one piece of
+information I only set down, because I think it contains a hint that may
+be made practically useful in certain enterprising circles of New York.
+
+We were in the Arena at Arles. It was a splendid day--barring the
+Mistral, that windy nuisance, which, as it eddied through the antique
+and ample Roman corridors, brought to my recollection certain
+North-Westers experienced on a fine March day in Union Square. In fact,
+it was far too cold for sentimentalizing or tracing measurements. But
+the guardian, it seemed, had not latterly had much chance of exercising
+his vocation, and his tongue was too nimble to be frozen. And so at it
+he went. Only, being himself more interested in certain proceedings that
+had lately taken place within a boarded fence that now encloses the
+arena, than in historical or legendary lore, his subject was by many
+centuries more fresh than the ruins whereon we stood, sunning ourselves
+and crouching out of the wind's way. Arles, it appeared, had been
+favoured with a bull fight, real Spanish matadors doing the beastly
+honours; but to the credit of the city, be it said, the spectacle was
+received with intense disapprobation. The gentle Provencals, whose
+tastes are more Italian than Spanish, could not brook the sport dear to
+their fair Empress who sets fashions in Paris. Indeed, the beauteous
+Eugénie, I fear, will hold them to be the merest milk-sops, for when the
+grand climax of a disembowelled horse was exhibited before them, the
+Arlesians, male and female--in place of shouts of triumphant
+approval--gave vent to loud cries of shame and execration, and in short
+hissed the Spanish heroes incontinently from the scene of their
+performance.
+
+But what has all this to do with the future of New York, it may be asked
+by any reader of these rambling reminiscences. Stay, a moment; I am only
+at the commencement. I, too inquired if this were all. "By no means,
+Sir," was the reply. "We had then the real _courses aux taureaux_, and
+excellent they were." Now I must own that my notions of this branch of
+the tauromachia were somewhat indistinct. I knew it was not precisely
+the same thing as buffalo-hunting on the prairies, or as a steeple-chase
+in Warwickshire or Yorkshire; but I could not have defined it to save my
+life. "Perhaps, Monsieur, has never seen one" was the next appropriate
+suggestion, and it led very naturally to my enlightenment. Briefly,
+then, after the torture of the quadrupeds, and the indignant dismissal
+of the Spanish matadors, the young gentlemen of the town took the place
+of the latter, and began a diversion, which must have been infinitely
+amusing, and which, I humbly submit, might be adopted on a different
+soil. A lively young bull was turned into the arena, and was followed by
+a number of lively youths, armed only with light staves whereon
+fluttered blood-red pennons. The fun consists in provoking the excitable
+animal by the red flags thrust before his face, and eluding the
+consequences by a run, a dodge, or a jump. The fence, which was a
+barrier for the bull, could easily be vaulted by a nimble-footed
+youth--and none but such would venture upon the field. There was just
+enough danger to make the game piquant; scarcely enough to make it
+objectionable. One indiscreet young fellow did indeed narrowly escape a
+catastrophe on the occasion described to me; but the fault was entirely
+his own. He had been breakfasting at some Arlesian Delmonico's, and had
+partially lost his wits before coming to the encounter, while retaining
+all his courage. Therefore it happened--and I only tell the story as it
+was told me--that the youth, when pursued by the bull, tripped and fell,
+and the horns of the brute were immediately thrust into the fullest part
+of his peg-top trousers. A great sensation among the spectators! The
+bull succeeded in raising and throwing over his head the object of his
+attack, but by no means in disentangling himself therefrom. His frantic
+efforts to bring about a summary toss were for some minutes
+unsuccessful; and the reader may conceive the mingled sense of the
+ludicrous and the fearful, that pervaded the assembly. Finally--for even
+French cassimere will give way in the end--he, the bull that is,
+achieved his aim, and threw his unconscious tormentor a summerset, being
+diverted from ulterior measures of vengeance by fresh attacks made upon
+him, while the crest-fallen hero of the adventure was promptly bundled
+over the paling. To sum up this sketch of the sport, in the humane and
+pithy words of the guardian of the Amphitheatre--"it does no harm
+whatever to the bull, and very little to the young gentleman."
+
+Now then, Mr. Niblo; why should you not establish a Tauro-drome in the
+centre of civilization? The leaning of the day is toward athletic
+exercise. In England, at present, there is a run upon rifle-corps; and
+the boldest riders are all bent upon becoming the crackest shots. In New
+York, I have read since my absence in Europe, that the great English
+Eleven have begotten a very rage for cricket. An excellent move this;
+but then the climate is against it, and the summer is short, and the
+game is utterly incomprehensible to the gentler sex, who are always
+prompt to encourage the manly prowess of their admirers. Besides, for
+lack of a permanent Bude light of adequate strength, we have not yet
+achieved the desideratum of playing cricket during those special hours
+when the youth of a commercial community finds itself prone to
+relaxation. The _courses aux taureaux_ might just as well take place by
+gas-light and in a New York circus, as amid Roman ruins and under the
+blaze of sunshine. The dandies of Broadway have the two main requisites
+for brilliant success in this suggested entertainment. Their pluck may
+not be doubted; and who that has seen them, agile and unwearied in the
+German or the _valse à deux temps_, could question their ability to
+outfoot the fleetest bull that Andalusia itself could supply? I commend
+the matter then to the serious consideration of Managers in search of
+novelties, and to belles who would discover what stuff their beaux are
+made of.
+
+
+                           AT NUREMBURG.
+
+
+For these thirty-eight years past, the _Albion_ hath been protesting
+once a week, in the Latin tongue, that they who skip over the water
+change only their sky, not their mental existence. Nor did I ever
+doubt--indeed I ought to have faith therein--the truth of this motto,
+until I found myself yesterday in one of the streets of this old city of
+Nuremburg, with no promenaders at the moment save myself. There was not
+a man in sight, tiled with a black beaver chimney-pot; nor a woman
+redolent of the Rue de la Paix or Regent Street. Then it was that I
+incontinently asked myself if I were truly a Briton by birth and an
+Anglo-American by local ties; or whether I were not in fact a German
+burgher of the middle ages. I should scarcely have been surprised at
+sight of grave Albert Durer himself coming round the corner, or at
+hearing Hans Sachs, the cobbler poet, trolling one of his six thousand
+ditties.
+
+To say this, is simply to add the testimony of another witness to that
+which has set down Nuremburg as the city of all Europe least changed
+with changing times. The very little that has been done of late years in
+the way of repairing and rebuilding, within the walls, has been done in
+strict accordance with the prevalent mediæval style. The result is
+that--whereas elsewhere, when you stumble upon a private dwelling of
+moderate proportions showing plainly that it was built some two or three
+or four or five centuries ago, you congratulate yourself upon having
+discovered a curiosity (as such a one really would be in Paris, for
+instance)--here the difficult search would be for a house, modern and
+spruce. Not that a rectangularly-ornamented gable-end is the
+quintessence of architectural beauty, or that a basement front of low
+iron-barred windows suggests an agreeable or hospitable interior. By no
+means. If this were all, there would be considerable quaintness, and
+nought beyond. But it is otherwise. Some of the decorative bits that
+catch the eye right and left, are absolute gems in their way--whether
+oriel windows, or fantastic turrets, or figures and devices embossed and
+sculptured. Taste, generally for the Gothic, but diverging at a later
+date into the Renaissance style, seems to have run riot here in wilful
+playfulness.
+
+Of the regular sights set down in the hand-books, and explored by
+conscientious Englishmen with their Murrays under their arms, it would
+not be appropriate to speak at length. I may however indulge in an
+allusion to the different material, whereof are constructed two of the
+most highly-laboured marvels, here exhibited. Now the city itself is
+divided into two nearly equal parts by the small river Pegnitz, these
+parts bearing the names respectively of the principal church that stands
+in either. The one is dedicated to St. Sebald, the other to St.
+Lawrence. The former, as its chief curiosity, contains the shrine of its
+patron Saint, an elaborate and most exquisitely wrought fretwork canopy,
+about fifteen feet in height, beneath which repose his remains. The
+design is in a measure architectural, and Gothic of course; but the
+ornamentation is its great glory, though one is staggered somewhat at
+the irreverent juxtaposition of the twelve Apostles with Cupids and
+Mermaids, and at sundry Fathers of the Church disporting themselves amid
+clusters of fruit and bouquets of flowers. This monument of artistic
+skill was the work of Peter Vischer, one of the worthies of Nuremburg,
+and has been completed three hundred and forty years. The able worker,
+having dispensed with consistency in the admixture of Christian and
+Pagan accessories, as I have mentioned, was at least justified in
+introducing a figure of himself as one of the human animals; and a very
+fine statuette he makes, with chisel in hand and his working apron about
+him. Now mark, if you please, O attentive reader, this shrine of St.
+Sebald is entirely cast in bronze. To say that the effect is beautiful,
+is too limited praise. It is harmonious; thoroughly satisfying to the
+eye; perfect.
+
+Cross with me now, if you be not weary, one of the dozen picturesque
+bridges over the Pegnitz, and let us see what Adam Krafft, another great
+Nuremburger of that same age, has done in the same line of Gothic
+decoration for the Church of St. Lawrence. His work is a shrine, or I
+should rather say a repository for the sacramental wafer of the Roman
+Catholic rite. It is an open-work spire, tapering to the height of sixty
+feet, with an infinity of graceful detail, and rare sculptures in high
+and low relief. One fantasy is, I think, unique of its kind. The roof is
+a little too low to admit the crowning summit fairly; and the top,
+therefore, has been made to bend over. The effect--purposely designed, I
+cannot doubt--is odd; nor can I agree with the fantastic remark of
+Murray's Handbook, that it "has the air of a plant which is chocked in
+its further growth." Spires and plants are not endowed with equal
+pliability, and the idea of one of the former waving about, or nodding
+gracefully, suggests an immediate "stand from under." And this all the
+more in this instance, because--which brings me thus round-aboutedly to
+my main point--the material hereon employed is stone, a clean and
+white-toned stone, that looks as though its excellent carvings and
+mouldings had been completed only for the last Crystal Palace
+Exhibition. The apparent newness is downright provoking; and if Adam
+Krafft could peep at it from his honoured grave, he would never dream
+that he has lain therein three centuries and a half. Let me say
+further--having thus stumbled upon personalities--that he too made
+himself as durable as his work. And with more modesty than Master Peter
+Vischer above named, who moulded for himself a niche in his monument
+corresponding, in size and position, to the one assigned to the patron
+Saint, though being at the opposite end of the shrine, the glorifier and
+the glorified could not be taken into one glance and a comparison
+forced. There was more modesty, I say, in Adam Krafft's mode of
+travelling down the stream of Time as showman of his show, though he was
+not methinks without a dash of _craft_, as befits the bearer of his
+name. Down upon their marrow-bones (as the school boys have it) with
+rounded backs grope Adam and his two apprentices, the three backs
+forming a base of operations, or in plainer words upholding the
+sixty-feet structure, and doing for it that which is done beneath his
+rival's shrine by a snail at each of the four corners. Perhaps, after
+all, the sculptor-architect was wiser than the bronze-caster, in his
+mode of identifying himself with his work. Amid a multitude of figures
+and emblems, Peter Vischer, as well as St. Sebald, may be overlooked,
+for they are small in size; but you can scarcely avoid asking "who are
+these three?" when you note how lofty is the edifice that the large
+quasi-Atlases bear.
+
+Enough, touching these minor differences. The essential one, whereof I
+intended to speak, is the material in which the pair wrought
+respectively. I have said that the bronze entirely satisfied my
+critical eye, which is tantamount to saying that it charmed me. Not so
+with the stone. It is obviously ill-adapted for detached ornamentation,
+needing the solid adjunct of buttress, window, wall, or pillar, just as
+ivy needs the oak, or (may I utter such a term?) lace the woman. Indeed,
+with all my admiration for sundry mediæval specimens of Gothic
+architecture, wherein I scarcely yield to John Ruskin himself, I confess
+that the famous Eleanor's Crosses in England never quite pleased me,
+because therein the tracery and dainty delicacies of the design are not
+backed by anything massive. The greater part of my readers will not
+agree with me. I am sorry, but can't help it. Only, I don't want to see
+any more open-work baskets in stone. Give me the most fantastical of
+Gothic devices, as many as you please, so long as they have something to
+cling to.
+
+Finally, I have fallen quite in love with this quaint, irregular old
+place. Nor do I know how long I might have loitered, had not the
+inevitable disillusion come, as come it will over so many promising
+things and fair. Otherwise I might have gone back--in imagination--to
+those honest old times of Durer, Vischer, Krafft, and Company, and
+imagined myself a free burgher of a free city. But the spell was doubly
+broken. At the old castle--whereof some small apartments are
+unpretendingly fitted up for the King and Queen of Bavaria--there comes
+upon one, in another part thereof, a vision of certain instruments of
+torture, used undoubtedly in those good old times to keep the burghers
+submissive to their oligarchy of merchant princes. And again at the
+Rath-haus, or Hotel de Ville; the maidenly show-woman lighted us by
+lanthorn-light through a set of subterranean dungeons, too numerous to
+have been destined for offenders only against the criminal laws, too
+horrible to be sanctioned under our creed of comparative gentleness. And
+so, on the whole, I returned back to actual existence, and to all the
+boredom of Parliamentary conflicts and Presidential elections, with a
+certain sense of relief.
+
+
+                        ROMAN NOMENCLATURE.
+
+
+By dint of many rambles I am become fairly versed in the topography of
+Rome; but its history, as elucidated by monuments or relics, is a
+perpetual riddle to the beholder. The Republic, the Empire, the
+Barbarian Invasions, Free Lances, Barons, Kings, and Popes--all are
+suggested; all come before you in confused array; not unfrequently,
+three or four at once. You shall go into a church to hear mass amid
+modern tawdriness, entering through a mediæval porch, taking your place
+between walls that were put up long before the Christian era, and under
+a roof supported by pillars whereon the sun of Phrygia has shone. Pagan
+and Christian--all is jumbled; until finally, unless you have the
+patience of Job and the zeal of an antiquarian, you begin to doubt all
+legendary and historic lore, and to measure what you see by its
+external attractiveness alone. One thing, however, is clearly marked.
+You are groping about, in a state of vexed uncertainty; suddenly you
+come upon an inscription, conspicuous, in large legible letters, often
+gilded. Now you are grateful. You stride up; and lo, there stands,
+emblazoned before you the interesting fact that such or such a Pontifex
+Maximus, some Benedict, or Clemens, or Pius, or Leo, or Gregory,
+restored, excavated, ornamented, or built, as the case may have been,
+the object upon which you have been pondering. Neither, in the dearth of
+desirable information, are you compensated by the opportunity of picking
+up chronological knowledge in regard to the Papacy. These fulsome
+records omit, not only all description that might be useful; they fail
+to mention the year of the World, or the year of Grace, altogether. In
+place thereof, you learn that the digging or decoration in question took
+place in a certain year of the reign of a certain Pope; but as the chair
+of St. Peter has had one hundred and sixteen occupants, between A.D.
+1000 and A.D. 1860, "Anno VI. of Innocent VI." or "Anno II. of Julius
+II." does not materially aid the memory as to dates. This petty craving
+after chiselled or painted immortality is nowhere more contemptibly
+exhibited than in Raphael's famous Loggie at the Vatican, where, over
+each separate window, one reads in staring type, "Leo X., Pontifex
+Maximus." Surely there is something strangely inconsistent, in a power
+that boasts its remote origin and its endowment in perpetuity, thus
+taking infinite pains to isolate its historical fragments.
+
+A smile only--not a grunt of indignation--is elicited by another
+peculiarity of Rome, which comes under the lounger's notice. Something
+of the same sort is perhaps also observable in all large cities; but it
+never struck me so strongly. I allude to the names of the streets and
+squares and public places, which names by the way are carefully and
+prominently labelled. The jumble is curious, though one starts a little
+at times from what to Protestant eyes seems irreverent. Take a sample,
+dispensing with the titles in Italian. You may stroll through the street
+of the Three Virgins, of the Three Robbers, of Jesus, of the Tarpeian
+Rock, of the Two Butchers' Shops, of the Baboon, of Divine Love, of the
+New Benches, of the Prefects, of the House-tops, of Jesus and Mary, of
+the Greeks, of the Tower of Blood, of the Triton, of the Guardian Angel,
+of the Strumpet, of the Soul, of the Scrofula, of the Eagle, of the
+Lion's Mouth, of the Five Moons, of Minerva, of the Incurables, of the
+Wind, of the Wolf, of St. John Beheaded. You may halt in the square of
+the Mouth of Truth, in that of the Field of Flowers, in that of the
+Satyrs, in that of Consolation, in that of the Goose. It is evident that
+no ruling mind or principle has regulated this public nomenclature. _Tot
+homines, quot sententiæ._
+
+And is it not the same thing in private affairs? What variety of tastes!
+Here is a specimen. Two young men of my acquaintance, who have been
+campaigning in India, arrived here, the other day, on their first
+visit. One of them had a relative here, of a scholastic turn of mind,
+who was bringing a protracted sojourn to a close; and to him the cavalry
+officers were in a measure consigned. "Can you tell me what's to be seen
+at Ostia and Veii?" said one of them to me, forty-eight hours after
+their arrival. "Our friend, B., is going to take us a day's excursion to
+each place, to-morrow and the following day." I could scarcely keep my
+countenance. The poor innocents were sold to an antiquarian. Ostia is
+destitute of any objects that would repay a half-hour's walk. As for
+Veii, the learned have only agreed of late whereabouts that ancient city
+stood.
+
+
+              BRIGANDS, BEGGARS, AND SOUVENIRS.
+
+
+My last communication was from Rome. It was piquant, on the day of
+departure thence from Naples, to dine at Terracina with a Prussian
+family, who had been stopped and robbed by brigands, at eight o'clock
+the previous morning, at a spot between Velletri and Cisterna. There was
+however no _Fra Diavolo_ in the case. The respectable _père de famille_,
+who with his sons and daughters had been laid under contribution,
+informed us that the fellows were evidently peasants unused to the
+trade; that they presented guns, in exacting their demand for money; but
+that they were nervous in their brief operation, and that they did not
+ransack the trunks, nor even carry off the watches and rings of the
+party. The chief sufferer was the vetturino, whom fright and the loss of
+thirty-six dollars had thrown into a fever, causing the detention which
+brought us into contact with the narrators. We passed on our way,
+without adventure; the safest period, there as elsewhere, being that
+which immediately follows one. I incline to think that extreme
+destitution induced this recourse to a practice almost obsolete, as it
+probably gave rise to the personal robberies, unattended with violence,
+which have been recently rife in Rome itself.
+
+And in connection with this point, I may swell the laments of late
+travellers as to the chronic prevalence, throughout Southern Italy, of
+those other unceasing robberies of extortion and mendicancy, which are
+so much more difficult of toleration. I declare that of all the mythical
+personages of classic lore brought back to one's memory by local
+association, whether in the Elysian Fields or on the borders of Lake
+Avernus, the Harpies are those who alone survive, and who obtrude
+themselves always and everywhere, in season and out of season. The foul
+brood have assumed human semblance, and haunt you in all varieties. The
+unbidden cicerone, or the sturdy beggar--it is hard to say which is the
+worse.
+
+How I anathematized them both at Sorrento, where there are certain
+souvenirs of Tasso, not so direct and tangible as those preserved in the
+Convent of San Onofrio at Rome, but which are worth the tracing. You
+will remember that the hapless poet found a resting place here in the
+house of his sister, after he escaped from his seven years' imprisonment
+at Ferrara. To be adjured, for charity, in the name of the Virgin and
+every Saint in the calendar--to have a jackass and a guide, or a jackass
+of a guide, thrust upon you, _nolens volens_ for an excursion that you
+have no mind to take, or to be importuned to "put out, put out, put out
+to sea," when you know that March winds and waves make the azure grotto
+of Capri totally inaccessible--these diversions, I say, do not assist
+one in gathering up one's reminiscences of Tasso, however much they may
+chasten and so improve the temper.
+
+And here I may observe also upon a peculiarity that marks the research
+of certain travellers, somewhat akin perhaps to the taste which induces
+certain readers to trace history through personal memoirs, in place of
+studying broader narrations. If truth were told, there are a hundred who
+commune with Pepys and Horace Walpole, to ten who find delight in Hume.
+So is it--though by no means in the same proportion--with sight-seers on
+ground that is rich in historical associations. All their sympathies, or
+the larger portion of them at least, are with individuals, as though
+there were no grappling with a race, a nation, an age that is past.
+Stories, wholly or in part fictitious, are their hand-books. To them the
+Capitol of Rome is the scene of Rienzi's rise and fall, as interpreted
+by Bulwer Lytton. At Pompeii their chief care is to find out the abode
+of Glaucus and Ione. Nor can it be denied that there is an additional
+charm in this mode of viewing localities that are new to us, if it be
+not the most philosophical. In my own case, without needless parading of
+the degree in which I share this gentle weakness or disapprove it, I
+must own that its exercise gives at times an unexpected zest to a
+ramble. Whilst in Rome, for instance, I do not think that one's serious
+views of history or art are in any manner jarred upon, because here and
+there one stumbles upon relics that savour of individuality. At any rate
+I should not like to have missed the old mansion of the Anviti family,
+near the bridge of St. Angelo, mentioned by that old gossip, Benvenuto
+Cellini, as the frequent rendezvous of Michael Angelo, Raffaele,
+Cardinal Bembo, and other choice spirits of his day. I should have been
+sorry to have omitted a visit to the boudoir of Lucrezia Borgia, in the
+Convent close beside the church of St. Pietro in Vincolo, once the
+residence of Pope Alexander VI., and now mainly converted into a barrack
+for the troops of "the elder son of the Church." The part however in
+which is placed this small apartment, decorated with frescoes of the
+period, is still applied to conventual purposes. There is no legend
+about the matter, at least so far as regards the possession of the
+Borgia family; and the room being small in size, and unique in situation
+and style of ornament within and without, it is not difficult to believe
+that it was the chosen resort of a young lady in days when there was
+less gadding about than now. Still, to be candid, I must own that in
+musing here, as in looking at the lock of the same amiable woman's hair
+preserved in the Ambrosian Library of Milan, one is apt to have one's
+recollections of mediæval depravity not slightly tinctured by visions of
+Giulia Grisi in the prime of her voice and beauty, to say nothing of
+Victor Hugo's grand drama, and old Mademoiselle Georges' unrivalled
+performance therein.
+
+Again, and lastly--lest the reader imagine that when once I get back to
+Rome, I am spell-bound and cannot leave it--what traveller has not cast
+a pleased eye upwards towards the window whence the baker's daughter, A.
+D. 1515, or thereabouts, ogled the young prince of painters as he passed
+by on his way to, or from his work, at the Farnesina Palace? You know
+the precise spot, O Viator, in a small piazza very near the Ponte Sisto?
+The house is white-washed or yellow-washed now; but there is the old
+Ionic pilaster, yet embedded in the wall, and the ornamental
+architectural mouldings yet shut in the Fornarina's window. And here it
+occurs to me to make one more digression, for the purpose of suggesting
+a theory of my own touching one of the many portraits of La Fornarina
+that have come down to us, and that vary so much in expression though
+all evidently intended for the same person. Between the fine one in the
+Tribune at Florence, and the filthy one in the Sciarra Palace at Rome,
+there is the widest possible difference. The former is evidently enough
+a woman unrefined, though beautiful; but there is neither coarseness nor
+indelicacy in the portraiture. The latter has both these
+characteristics, pushed to an extreme that is repulsive. It is said to
+be a copy from Raffaele by Giulio Romano. Now my belief is, that it was
+painted as a quiz upon his master's grace and delicacy, by the
+scapegrace pupil who ran counter to those special attributes.
+Meretricious, ugly, and vulgar, this wretched creature bears emblasoned
+in large letters on the bracelet upon her arm the name of Raffaele
+Sanzio d'Urbino. This piece of impudence seems to me the crowning touch.
+I can't credit that such a Fornarina ever came from Raffaele's easel. I
+do think that a coarse-minded and coarse-handed young artist may have
+made fun of his superior in oil--as modern literary wags have sometimes
+done in ink--and that Raffaele therefore is in no way answerable for
+that caricature in the Sciarra, which affects to be a reproduction from
+himself.
+
+
+                       LIVRES DES VOYAGEURS.
+
+
+Verily there is no lack of the plainer symbols of humanity, to remind
+the wanderer that Childe Harold was bitterly truthful, when he appended
+to his inimitable descriptions of the Alps the assertion that they
+
+                                      "serve to show,
+How Earth may pierce to Heaven, yet leave vain man below."
+
+The impertinences and follies that are penned by men and women in the
+various Livres des Voyageurs, wherein they record their names, were
+alone sufficient proof of this. It is true that enthusiasm and fine
+feeling cannot endure for an indefinite period; and that he would be a
+sorry companion who always brought his stilts to the dinner-table.
+Still, one must regret that a certain craving for notoriety seems to
+impel so many a tourist to write himself down an ass, whilst no sense of
+fairness restrains others from commenting, appropriately or
+inappropriately, upon the names or remarks of predecessors. There is a
+cowardice and cruelty herein which has, I confess, sometimes made me
+angry, when the identity, characters, and conduct of the individuals
+concerned were alike unknown or indifferent to me. In place, however, of
+prolonging this digression, and without the least notion of proving
+anything whatever by the citation, I beg to offer the reader a brace of
+extracts from the visitors' record book at the Montanvert.
+
+The first tickled me exceedingly, as a genuine specimen of the so-called
+Irish Bull. Mr. Somebody had entered his name, and added thereto this
+valuable bit of information: "Walked up from Chamouni in four hours and
+a-half, _having lost the greater part of his way_?" The italics are
+mine, of course; but is not the _mot_ worth its space in print?
+
+My other extract concerns some of my young countrywomen, and I trust
+that their countrywomen who may read it will forgive me for putting it
+into circulation. They are very poor laughers, who never laugh when the
+joke tells against themselves; in this instance it is we who pay the
+piper. A party of English school girls had been lately at Montanvert
+with their governess, and had set down their names one after another in
+the big book, as is the custom there. A waggish Frenchman, waiting of
+course until their backs were turned, had bracketted the list, and
+written against the conclave this pithy and caustic criticism: "_Teint
+rouge; appétit géant; langage embarrassé._" What an ungallant scamp! Yet
+it must be owned that the same absurd album is rich in provocatives. A
+running fire of sarcasm, exchanged between English and French tourists,
+marks almost every page.
+
+
+                       A SINGULAR ANAGRAM.
+
+
+Among the curiosities--not of literature--but of letters, the Anagram
+was wont to be a favourite in the days of a by-gone generation. Who, for
+instance, has not smiled blandly over that famous transposition, which
+aptly converts "Horatio Nelson" into _Honor est à Nilo_?
+
+The taste, however, for this sort of laborious trifling has almost
+passed away; nor do we propose to re-open the subject of cabalistic
+lettering. Our only purport is to offer a new specimen of its
+eccentricities, which came upon us recently during a vain attempt to
+solve certain mysteries, that occupy just now many serious minds. It is
+commended alike to snappers-up of unconsidered trifles, and to readers
+who chance to be imbued with a little tinge of superstitious
+sensitiveness. We strive to hope that, though almost as curious, it is
+not so unimpeachably appropriate as the one quoted above. The name, so
+much in men's mouths, "Louis Napoleon Bonaparte," may by this method be
+converted into, _An open plot--arouse, Albion_!
+
+
+
+
+                    A WELL KNOWN DOCUMENT,
+
+                 _Very Slightly Paraphrased_.
+
+     A comparison of the following lines, with the original American
+     Declaration of Independence, will show that the earnest and
+     impassioned language of real life is sometimes closely assimilated
+     to blank verse.
+
+
+When, in their course, human events compel
+One people to dissolve the social bands
+That linked them with another, and to take
+Among the powers of the Earth that station,
+Equal and separate, to which the laws
+Of Nature and of Nature's God, by right,
+Entitle them--respect to the opinions
+Of fellow men calls on them to declare
+The causes, which have rendered necessary
+Such separation.
+                We, then, hold these truths
+To be self-evident: That all mankind
+Are equal, and endowed by their Creator
+With certain unalienable rights:
+That amongst these are Life, and Liberty,
+And the Pursuit of Happiness: That men,
+To make these rights available and safe,
+Have instituted Governments, deriving
+Their lawful power from the free consent
+
+Of those they govern: That when any form
+Of Government is proved to be destructive
+Of these their ends, it is the People's right
+To alter, or abolish it, and found
+A Government anew, with principles
+So laid for its foundation, and with powers
+In such form organized, as shall to them
+Seem most conducive to their happiness
+And safety.
+              Prudence will, indeed, dictate
+That long-established Governments should not
+Be changed for any light or transient cause:
+And all experience, accordingly,
+Hath shown that men are more disposed to suffer,
+So long as evils are endurable,
+Than to assert their rights, and throw aside
+Their customary forms. But when abuses
+And usurpations, in a lengthened train,
+Pursue an object steadfastly, evincing
+A firm design to bow them down beneath
+Absolute despotism, it is their right,
+It is their bounden duty, to throw off
+Such Government, and to provide new guards
+For their security in future.
+                                    Such
+Has been the patient sufferance of these
+Our Colonies, and such is now the need,
+That forces them to change their present systems
+Of Government. Great Britain's present King
+Hath made his history the history
+Of usurpation, and of injuries
+Often repeated, and directly tending
+To the establishment of Tyranny
+
+Over these States: to prove this, let the World
+In candour listen to undoubted facts.
+  He has refused to give assent to laws,
+Wholesome, and needful for the public good.
+He has denied his Governors the power
+To sanction laws of pressing urgency,
+Unless suspended in their operation,
+Till his assent should be obtained; and when
+Suspended thus, he has failed wilfully
+To give them further thought. He has refused
+To sanction other laws, deemed advantageous
+To districts thickly peopled, unless they,
+Who dwelt therein, would basely throw away
+Their right to representatives--a right
+Inestimable, to themselves and only
+To Tyrants formidable. In the hope
+To weary them into a weak compliance
+With his obnoxious measures, he has summoned
+The Legislative Bodies to assemble
+At places inconvenient, and unusual,
+And whence their public records were remote.
+He has repeatedly dissolved the Houses
+Of Representatives for interfering
+With manly firmness, when he has invaded
+The People's rights. Long time he has refused,
+After such dissolutions, to convene
+Others in lieu of them; whereby, the powers
+Of Legislation, since they might not be
+Annihilated, have for exercise
+Been forced upon the body of the people;
+Leaving, meanwhile, the unprotected State
+To dangers of invasion from without,
+And inward anarchy. He has endeavoured
+
+To check the population of these States,
+Thwarting the laws for naturalization
+Of foreigners, withholding his assent
+From other laws, that might encourage them
+In immigrating hither, and enhancing
+The price of new allotments of the soil.
+  He has obstructed the administration
+Of Justice, by his veto on the laws
+Establishing judiciary powers
+He has made Judges on his will alone
+Dependent, for the tenure of their office,
+For the amount, and for the proper payment
+Of their emoluments. He has erected
+New offices in multitudes, and sent
+Swarms of his officers to harass us,
+And to eat out our substance. He has kept,
+In times of peace, among us, standing armies,
+Without the sanction of our Legislatures.
+His aim has been to place the military
+Above the civil power, and beyond
+Its just control. He has combined with others
+To make us subject to a jurisdiction,
+In spirit foreign to our Constitution,
+And unacknowledged by our laws; assenting
+To acts, that they have passed with semblance only
+Of legislation: Acts for quartering
+Among us bodies of armed troops: For shielding,
+By a mock trial, those their instruments
+From punishment for any murders done
+On our inhabitants: For cutting off
+Our trade with every quarter of the world--
+For laying on us taxes not approved
+By our consent: For oft-times robbing us
+
+Of any benefit that might attend
+Trial by jury: For transporting us
+Beyond the seas, to answer for offences,
+Imputed to us: For abolishing,
+Within a neighbouring province, the free system
+Of English laws; establishing therein
+An arbitrary power; and enlarging
+Its boundaries, to render it at once
+The fit example, and the instrument
+For bringing into these our Colonies
+The same despotic rule: For taking from us
+Our Charters; and abolishing our laws
+Most valued; changing thus, in principle,
+Our forms of Government: And for suspending
+Our Legislatures, with the declaration
+That they, themselves, in each and every case,
+Were vested with supreme authority
+To legislate for us.
+                    He has laid down
+His sway, by holding us without the pale
+Of his protection, and by waging war
+Against us. He has plundered on our seas;
+Ravaged our coasts; our cities burnt; and taken
+Our people's lives. He is transporting hither
+Armies composed of foreign mercenaries,
+To end the works of death, and desolation,
+And tyranny, begun with circumstances
+Of cruelty and perfidy unequalled
+In the most barbarous ages, and unworthy
+The Ruler of a nation civilized.
+He has constrained our fellow-citizens,
+On the high seas made captive, to bear arms
+Against their country, and of friends and brothers
+
+To be the executioners, or fall
+Beneath his creatures' hands. He has excited
+Amongst ourselves domestic insurrection;
+And sought to bring on the inhabitants
+Of our frontier the savage Indian,
+Whose code of warfare, merciless and sure,
+Spares not, in undistinguished massacre,
+Age, sex, condition.
+                      We, in every stage
+Of these oppressions, have in humblest terms
+Petitioned for redress. To our petitions,
+Though oft repeated, there has been _one_ answer--
+Repeated injury.
+                      A prince, whose life
+And conduct thus are marked by every act
+That may define a Tyrant, is unfit
+To rule o'er Freemen.
+                        Neither have we failed
+In due attention to our British brethren.
+From time to time, we have admonished them
+Of efforts, by their Legislature made,
+Unwarrantably to extend to us
+Their jurisdiction. How we emigrated,
+And settled here, we have reminded them.
+We to their native justice have appealed
+And magnanimity; and have conjured them,
+By common kindred ties, to disavow
+These usurpations, which, inevitably,
+Would mar our intercourse and friendship. They
+Have also turned a deaf ear to the voice
+Of Justice and of Consanguinity.
+So must we yield to the necessity
+Which forces us to separate, and hold them--
+
+As we do hold the rest of human kind--
+Our enemies in War, in Peace our friends.
+  We, therefore, who are here to represent
+The States United of America,
+In General Congress met, for rectitude
+Of our intentions to the Judge Supreme
+Of all things here in confidence appealing,
+Do, in the name, and by authority
+Of the good people of these Colonies,
+Solemnly publish and declare, that these
+United Colonies are, and of right
+Ought to be, Free and Independent States:
+That from allegiance to the British Crown
+They are absolved: That all connecting ties
+Of policy between them and Great Britain
+Are, as they should be, totally dissolved:
+And that, as Free and Independent States,
+They have full power to levy war, conclude
+Peace, and contract alliances, establish
+Commerce, and do all other acts and things
+Which Independent States of right may do.
+  This is our Declaration: to support it,
+With firm reliance on Divine protection,
+We to each other mutually pledge
+Our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honour.
+
+
+
+
+          BEL PIEDE.
+
+
+Browning, whose household gods were planted
+  Beside the banks of classic Arno,
+Once, in a dainty ballad, chanted
+  The lady of the _bella mano_.
+
+Pass from the Arno to the Tiber,
+  From Tuscan to a Roman lady;
+And let a humbler bard describe her--
+  This fair one of the _bel piede_.
+
+To Roman dame, as I and you know,
+  Is rarely given a foot symmetrical;
+No Cinderellas--many a Juno--
+  Upon the Pincian we can yet recall.
+
+Those were the days when bonnets did not
+  Expose the face to every starer;
+When skirts, worn short and airy, hid not
+  The foot and ankle of the wearer.
+
+With high arched instep, narrow, tapering,
+  Divinely booted--none could beat hers--
+The foot, that set my young heart capering,
+  Came down the broad steps of St. Peter's.
+
+Her long black veil, the crowd around me,
+  Her swift landau, my swift emotion--
+She came: her fairy foot spell-bound me;
+  She went: which way, I had no notion.
+
+Haunting all public haunts was fruitless,
+  Mid solemn pomps, on festal hey-day;
+Search for those glorious boots was bootless:
+  Rome showed no more my _bel piede_.
+
+In Paris next enchained it held me,
+  Through redowa, waltz, all sorts of dances;
+But mask and domino repelled me--
+  She moved, but I made no advances.
+
+Again she passed--no trace behind her--
+  I sought, enquired, left nothing undone;
+But all was vain: I could not find her,
+  And, in despair, set off for London.
+
+The sea between Boulogne and Dover
+  Was, as it always is, terrific;
+Against that awful passage over,
+  Why not invent some smooth specific?
+
+Cloaked, muffled, shawled, a form was leaning
+  Across the gunwale, keeping shady;
+I recked not what might be its meaning--
+  I thought not, then, of _bel piede_.
+
+Sudden, a lurch, a shriek, a splashing!
+  I knew the shriek was from a lady;
+But horror through my brain went crashing--
+  I saw, heels up, my _bel piede_!
+
+She sank. No more! But O ye mermaids,
+  Of whose long tails we've had a surfeit,
+If ye were worthy to be her maids,
+  You'd cut your tails, and copy her feet!
+
+
+
+
+                                  WHO IS HE?
+
+                             _A Reply to Quevedo_.
+
+     These lines were suggested by some sprightly verses, entitled "Who
+     is She?" that had recently appeared in _Fraser's Magazine_.
+
+
+A Spanish writer once decided,
+    In flippant song,
+That woman's lip, or tongue, or eye did
+    All that went wrong.
+Nay, that the true mode of unmasking
+    Her wiles would be,
+On all occasions simply asking--
+    Pray, who is she?
+
+Now, why must woman's petticoats
+    Aye be the blamables?
+How is't Quevedo never quotes
+    Mankind's unnamables?
+He rates the sex, and certès for it he
+    Makes a good plea;
+But can't I, on as good authority,
+    Ask, who is he?
+
+Quevedo swears that Eve and Helen
+    Wrought dire mishaps:
+That Adam and the Trojans fell in
+    Their deep-laid traps.
+Eve?--why Diabolus beguiled her;
+    You know't, Quevedo!
+Helen?--that rascal Paris wiled her:
+    That's Homer's _credo_!
+
+Trust me, man causes woman's failing;
+    And, on my life,
+He's always wantonly assailing
+    Maid, widow, wife.
+Beneath the surface let the gazer
+    Look deep--he'll see
+Some stronger vessel that betrays her:
+    Just ask--who's he?
+
+Is it a milk-maid drops her pailful?--
+    Lubin's love-making:
+Is her fate scandalous or baleful?--
+    Lubin's been raking!
+The school-girl loaths her bread and butter,
+    Pouts o'er her tea,
+Mumbles her lessons in a flutter--
+    Ask, who is he?
+
+Despite experience, what can set
+    The widow hoping?
+Why are wives sometimes gadding met,
+    And sometimes moping?
+Don't talk of widows' amorous bump,
+    Of wives too free;
+But pop the question to them, plump--
+    Pray, who is he?
+
+We're mighty prompt to throw the blame on
+    The weaker fair sex;
+When justice ought to fix the shame on
+    Ours--not on their sex.
+Ours the seduction and the fooling,
+    If such there be:
+Come; your exception to this ruling--
+    Pray, who is he?
+
+The old and hump-backed ply their battery
+    Of gold and jewels;
+Well-knit young fellows deal in flattery,
+    Dance, song, oaths, duels.
+So, to conclude, I'll take my oath, sir,
+    Upon the Bible,
+That to blame one--in place of both, sir,--
+    Is a gross libel!
+
+
+
+
+                          TO NINON.
+
+            _From the French of Alfred de Musset._
+
+
+Were I to tell thee, ne'ertheless, that, troth, I love thee well,
+Blue-eyed brunette, blue-eyed brunette, thine answer who could tell?
+Love is the cause of many a pang--their source thou well can'st guess;
+No pity in him dwells, as thou must needs thyself confess:
+And yet, ah! me, thou would'st perchance chastise me ne'ertheless!
+
+Were I to tell thee that, beneath six months of silence crushed,
+Long-hidden torments I have borne, and vows insensate hushed;
+Ninon, despite thy careless air, thou hast a searching eye,
+That, like a Fairy's, ere it come, what's coming can espy:
+"I know it all, I know it all," thou would'st perchance reply.
+
+Were I to tell thee that I roam in sweet, delirious dream,
+Haunting thy footsteps so that I thy very shadow seem;
+A tinge of sadness on thy cheek, a quick, mistrustful glance,--
+Ninon, thou knowest well that these thy loveliness enhance:
+And thus, that thou believest not, thou would'st reply perchance.
+
+Were I to tell thee that my soul hoards up the lightest word,
+That falling from thy lips at eve in our discourse I've heard;
+Lady, thou know'st that, when aroused to anger or disdain,
+Eyes, though of azure they may be, can still their lightnings rain:
+And thine perchance would flashing say, "We must not meet again!"
+
+Were I to tell thee that by night I wake and think of thee,
+And that by day for thee I pray, and weep on bended knee,
+Ah! Ninon, when thou laugh'st, the bee, as well thou art aware,
+In hovering round thy rosy mouth, that 'twas a flower might swear:
+Were I to tell thee all, perchance the laugh would still be there
+
+But nothing shalt thou know of this. I venture, all untold,
+Calmly to sit beneath thy lamp, and converse with thee hold.
+I hear the murmur of thy voice, thy balmy breath inhale;
+And thou may'st doubt me, or surmise, or laugh, I shall not quail;
+Thine eyes shall see no cause in me, their kindly look to veil.
+
+By stealth at times, in secret joy, mysterious flowers I glean,
+When o'er thy harpsichord at eve enraptured I can lean,
+And list from thy harmonious hands what fairy accents flow;
+Or in voluptuous waltz, as round with flying feet we go,
+I feel thee in mine arms, a reed, that's waving to and fro.
+
+When from thy side I have been kept by thronged saloons at night,
+And in my chamber draw my bolt that shuts the world from sight,
+A thousand reminiscences I seize upon, and hold
+In jealous grasp; and there, alone, like miser o'er his gold,
+To Heaven my heart, all full of thee, with greedy joy unfold.
+
+I love; and I have learned to speak in cool and careless tone.
+I love; nought tells of it. I love; who knows it?--I alone!
+Dear is my secret, dear the pain with which I am oppressed;
+And I have sworn to love, without a hope on which to rest;
+But not without a taste of joy--I see thee, and am blest.
+
+No! not for me! I was not born such bliss supreme to meet:
+To die within thy arms, or live contented at thy feet.
+Alas! all proves it--e'en the grief that fain I would dispel.
+Were I to tell thee, ne'ertheless, that, troth, I love thee well:
+Blue-eyed brunette, blue-eyed brunette, thine answer who could tell?
+
+
+
+
+                  THE LAST OF THE ROMAN GLADIATORS.
+
+     The incident, which the following stanzas attempt to describe, is
+     historical. It is related by Gibbon in his "Decline and Fall of the
+     Roman Empire."
+
+
+Ye, who have the ruins seen
+  Of the Coliseum's walls,
+Think ye, what the sight hath been
+  Of Rome's highest festivals!
+If your fancy can restore
+Crumbled arch and corridor,
+          Call forth the dead;
+Bid them fill again the seats,
+Where now Echo only greets
+          The stranger's tread.
+
+Fourteen hundred years are past,
+  Rome hath fallen in her pride,
+Since the gladiator last
+  In the Coliseum died.
+Fourteen hundred years ago,
+Tens of thousands thronged the show,
+          In joyous guise,
+On the struggle and the strife,
+And the pangs of parting life,
+          Feasting their eyes.
+
+Then ye might have heard the roar
+  Of the noble beasts of prey,
+As they fought and bled, before
+  Men less noble far than they.
+Strength is useless, courage vain,
+Beauty saves not--they are slain,
+          The forest race;
+Whilst the still unsated crowd
+For new victims shout aloud,
+          To fill their place.
+
+Hark! the Prætor's stern command
+  Costlier sacrifice proclaims;
+Lo! the gladiatorial band,
+  Glory of the Roman Games!
+As they enter, man by man,
+Shape and size the people scan
+          With eager glance;
+And of each ill-fated pair,
+That await the signal there,
+          Foretell the chance.
+
+Hark! the trumpet's sudden sound;
+  Lo! the work of death begun:
+Seas of blood shall drench the ground,
+  Ere that deadly work be done.
+Ha! a moment of delay?
+What the lifted hand can stay?
+          Is there a fear
+Of Pompeii's fiery shower?
+Or, doth Earthquake's giant power
+          Make havoc here?
+
+No--for Nature with a smile
+  Looks upon her outraged laws,
+Man's indignant voice the while
+  Bidding man in pity pause.
+See!--a monk, obscure, unknown,
+Christ's disciple, treads alone
+          The arena's sand,
+Foe from foe intent to part,
+Striving with a zealous heart,
+          But feeble hand.
+
+Would ye seek to know his fate?
+  Listen to that savage yell!
+Scorn, derision, fury, hate,
+  Doomed his death--the martyr fell.
+Record there is none to show,
+Whose the hand that dealt the blow
+          That laid him there;
+Men who gazed, and men who fought,
+All alike to madness wrought,
+          The guilt must share.
+
+Whether stoned to death, or slain
+  By the sword, or by the spear,
+Little recks it--it were vain
+  Through the mists of time to peer.
+This we know--the martyr died;
+Nor without success had plied
+          His work of peace,
+Since, to expiate that deed,
+Rome's Imperial Lord decreed,
+          The Games should cease.
+
+Rome obeyed her Lord's commands;
+  Never were those Games renewed:
+Now the priest of Jesus stands
+  Where the gladiator stood.
+Thanks, Telemachus, to thee,
+Sainted martyr, now we see
+          Altars around;
+And the spot, where thou of yore
+Did'st thy life-blood nobly pour,
+          Is hallowed ground.
+
+
+
+
+       THE PRUDENT BRIDE.
+
+
+At Salem Meeting-House, one summer day,
+Two lovers, Abby Purkis and John Cole,
+Were joined in holy wedlock. Off they started
+To spend the honey-moon, gregarious,
+At Trenton, Saratoga, and the Falls.
+  Reaching this last-named wonder of the world,
+They went the usual round; mounted the tower
+That overlooks the cataract; stood and watched
+The eddying Rapids, and the whirling Pool;
+Nor on thy deck, O daring "_Maid of the Mist_,"
+Failed they to buffet the tumultuous roar,
+The drenching spray, the seeming perilous plunge
+Beneath the Horse-Shoe. Every where, throughout,
+Abby was brave; nay, on John's stalwart arm
+Leaning, was confident.
+                    At last they reached
+The Cavern of the Winds. Then changed her bearing.
+Trembling, she paused. In truth, the howling blasts,
+And gusty moans as of imprisoned spirits,
+Struck the bride's soul with terror. All aghast,
+She stood before the entrance, and refused,
+Firmly refused to trust herself within.
+John urged--she would not; coaxed--'twas all in vain;
+Laughed at, and called her "little fool"--she would not.
+Nay more, she prayed him by the love he bore her
+Not to set foot himself within a place
+So fraught with peril. John was ungallant,
+And only laughed the more. Not he the man
+To flinch from fisticuffs with Æolus!
+Had he not harpooned whales in Arctic seas?
+Were not typhoon, white squall, and hurricane
+His some time playmates? It was her turn now
+To coax, and urge, and crave--and be denied.
+  Chafed that her will was not a law to John,
+Abby was woman still, and sorely grieved
+That he should run such risks. She kissed him fondly,
+And bade him tread with care, and hasten back.
+Her voice was choked with sobs. Her latest words
+Were scarcely audible, though through them breathed
+Salem's sound training. "John," she faltered forth,
+"We know not what may happen: dear, dear John,
+"Were it not well that you--should--leave--with--me--
+"Your--watch--and--pocket-book?"
+
+
+
+
+  THE TRAMPER'S BED--AND THE KING'S.
+
+
+Down by the side of a sweet clover-stack,
+On a summer night, I lie on my back.
+Clear space is above me; and there, as I lie,
+I look straight up to the stars in the sky.
+  Once, when the King was dethroned by the mob,
+They swarmed to his palace, to stare or to rob,
+And the frightened lackies flung open the doors,
+And clouted shoes scraped along polished floors.
+Then it was I caught sight of his Majesty's bed,
+With its canopy, gilded and carved, overhead;--
+If his Majesty wishes the stars to behold,
+And looks up, he can see but the carving and gold!
+  Some night, should my soul be unbound as I sleep,
+And downward an Angel in search of it sweep,
+No bar, no obstruction, would hinder his flight;--
+With a wave of his wings, by my corpse he would light.
+  But what, if the soul to be loosed were the King's?
+Could an Angel reach that by the poise of his wings?
+Could he easily cleave through a palace his way?
+Through ceilings bedizened, through floors in decay--
+Through gorgeous apartments and bare attic rooms,
+For lords and for ladies, for valets and grooms--
+Through a quaint peakèd roof rising high o'er the whole--
+Could he enter, and tenderly waft off the soul?
+  Better, then, is the bed by the sweet clover-stack,
+With the stars full in view, and the clear Angel's track!
+And though much be not mine of this world's pleasant things,
+I should care not to barter my couch for the King's!
+
+
+
+
+                     OCCASION.
+
+           _From the Italian of Ternaré_
+
+
+"Say, who art thou, with more than mortal air,
+Endowed by Heaven with gifts and graces rare,
+Whom restless, wingèd feet for ever onward bear?"--
+
+"I am Occasion--known to few, at best;
+And since one foot upon a wheel I rest,
+Constant my movements are--they cannot be repressed.
+
+"Not the swift eagle in his swiftest flight
+Can equal me in speed. My wings are bright;
+And man, who sees them waved, is dazzled by the sight.
+
+"My thick and flowing locks, before me thrown,
+Conceal my form--nor face, nor breast is shown,
+That thus, as I approach, my coming be not known.
+
+"Behind my head, no single lock of hair
+Invites the hand, that fain would it grasp there;
+But he, who lets me pass, to seize me may despair."
+
+"Whom, then, so close behind thee do I see?"--
+"Her name is Penitence; and Heaven's decree
+Hath made all those her prey, who profit not by me.
+
+"And thou, O mortal, who dost vainly ply
+These curious questions, thou dost not descry,
+That now thy time is lost--for I am passing by."
+
+
+
+
+THE MOURNFUL BALLAD OF THE "ALABAMA."
+
+
+Captain Semmes is on a cruise
+O'er the track that skippers use;
+From the Western Isles, to those
+Near Nantucket shoals, he goes.
+                Woe is me, Alabama!
+
+Letters to the merchants tell
+Who into his clutches fell;
+'Tis the talk of all the town;
+News-boys call it up and down
+                Woe is me, Alabama!
+
+Straight the sons of Commerce came
+To their Chamber, crying shame
+For the tidings they had learned,
+For their ships and cargoes burned.
+                Woe is me, Alabama!
+
+Up and spake a merchant prince:
+"Friends, our city well may wince,
+For you have, alas! to know
+Of a most disastrous blow!
+                Woe is me, Alabama!
+
+"All is sunk beneath the waves,
+Breadstuffs, lard, tobacco, staves;
+Chained have been our Captains bold
+In the 'Alabama's' hold!
+                Woe is me, Alabama!
+
+"Lawless, too, is Captain Semmes;
+Neutral shipments he condemns.
+Useless is it to appeal
+To Consul's signature and seal.
+                Woe is me, Alabama!
+
+"But there's worse than this behind;
+Treacherous friends this blow designed.
+Great as is the corsair's guilt,
+Greater theirs his ship who built!
+                Woe is me, Alabama!
+
+"Neutral money, neutral skill,
+Wrought us this outrageous ill;
+Neutral engines, neutral guns,
+Aid him as he fights or runs.
+                Woe is me, Alabama!
+
+"Sons of Commerce, men of worth,
+Let these words of mine go forth!
+Let the British monarch know
+That to her all this we owe!"
+                Woe is me, Alabama!
+
+So the warning words went forth
+To England, from the angered North,
+Passed along from mouth to mouth,
+"No more dealings with the South!"
+                Woe is me, Alabama!
+
+"You may sell to this our land
+All we want of contraband;
+But have a care that nothing goes,
+From you, a neutral, to our foes!"
+                Woe is me, Alabama!
+
+Now Heaven preserve us all in peace,
+And let these ugly squabbles cease!
+So fighters all, and standers-by,
+Shall nevermore have cause to cry,
+                "Woe is me, Alabama!"
+
+November, 1862.
+
+
+
+
+    LINES FOR THE GUITAR.
+
+_From the French of Victor Hugo._
+
+
+ Man was saying: "How can we,
+ In our little boats at sea,
+ Pass the guarda-costas by?"--
+"Row!" said Woman in reply.
+
+ Man was saying: "How forget
+ Perils that our lives beset,
+ Strife, and Poverty's low cry?"--
+"Sleep!" said Woman in reply.
+
+ Man was saying: "How be sure
+ Beauty's favour to secure,
+ Nor the subtle philtre try?"--
+"Love!" said Woman in reply.
+
+
+
+
+     THREE MEN AND A WOMAN.
+
+
+A Summer's dawn and a tranquil sea;
+  But lurid all with smoke:
+For a bark was burning furiously,
+  What time the morning broke.
+
+Terrible? ay, but risk there was none,
+  For stern the Captain's sway;
+And when he spoke, each mother's son
+  Could not but choose obey.
+
+"Man the boats!"--the boats were manned,
+  In order, one by one;
+To pull a hundred miles to land,
+  All under the Summer's sun.
+
+Four stalwart rowers bend to their oars:
+  Four sitters at the stern--
+Three men and a woman--silent sit,
+  Watching the vessel burn.
+
+They were no tremblers: each had known
+  Perils by land and deep;
+But the woman alone would gently moan,
+  And at times, perforce, would weep.
+
+Yet soon the sun was high in heaven,
+  And the sea was a-glow: and then
+The temper of those men peered out--
+  Of those three fearless men.
+
+One thought his white hand by the sun would be tanned;
+  One felt they were wrong to risk it,
+In sweltering heat, with nothing to eat
+  But a bit of dry ship-biscuit.
+
+The third brooded over his handful of freight
+  Going down, uninsured, to the deep:
+But the woman alone would gently moan,
+  And at times, perforce, would weep;
+
+Till a sense of shame the three o'ercame,
+  And a curious wish to know
+Why, still unfearing, she gave way
+  To her uncomplaining woe.
+
+"Ah, Sirs!"--she faltered in reply--
+  "The danger is easily braved:
+But my husband may hear that the ship is burnt--
+  And not that we are saved!"
+
+
+
+
+               ANOTHER MARBLE FAUN.
+
+  _A Translation of La Statue, by Victor Hugo._
+
+
+  He seemed to shiver, for the wind was keen.
+'Twas a poor statue underneath a mass
+Of leafless branches, with a blackened back
+And green foot--an old isolated Faun
+In old deserted park, who, bending forward,
+Half merged himself in the entangled boughs,
+Half in his marble settings. He was there,
+Pensive, and bound to the earth; and, as all things,
+Devoid of movement, he was there--forgotten.
+
+  Trees were around him, whipped by the icy blasts--
+Gigantic chestnuts, without leaf or bird,
+And, like himself, grown old in that same place.
+Through the dark network of their undergrowth,
+Pallid his aspect; and the earth was brown.
+Starless and moonless, a rough winter's night
+Was letting down her lappets o'er the mist.
+Trees more remote, with sombre shafts upreared,
+Each other crossed; and trees remoter still,
+By distance blurred, threw up to the grey sky
+Their thousand twigs sharp-pointed, intricate;
+And posed themselves around; and through the fog
+Took, on the horizon's verge, the shadowy form
+Of mighty porcupines in countless herd.
+
+  This--nothing more: old Faun, dull sky, dark wood.
+
+Piercing the mist, perchance there might be seen
+A distant terrace--its long layers of stone
+Tinted with slimy green; or group of Nymphs,
+Dimly defined beside a wide-spread basin,
+And shrinking--fitly in this desolate park--
+As once from gazers, from neglect to-day.
+The old Faun was laughing. In their dubious haze
+Leaving the shamed Nymphs and their dreary basin--
+The old Faun was laughing--'twas to him I came
+Moved to compassion, for these sculptors all
+Are pitiless ever, and, content with praise,
+Doom Nymphs to shame, condemn the Fauns to laughter.
+
+  Poor helpless marble, how I've pitied it
+Less often man--the harder of the two.
+  So then, without a word that might offend
+His ear difformed--for well the marble hears
+The voice of thought--I said to him: "You hail
+From the gay amorous age; O Faun, what saw you,
+When you were happy? Were you of the Court?
+Did you take part in fêtes?--For your diversion
+These Nymphs were fashioned. In this wood, for you,
+Capable hands mingled the gods of Greece
+With Roman Cæsars; made rare vases peer
+Into clear waters; and this garden vext
+With tortuous labyrinths. When you were happy,
+O Faun, what saw you? All the secrets tell
+Of that too vain yet captivating past,
+Thick set with prudent love-makers, a past
+In which great poets jostled mighty Kings.
+How fresh your memory--you are laughing still!
+
+  Speak to me, comely Faun, as you would speak
+To tree, or zephyr, or untrodden grass.
+From end to end of this well-shaded alley,
+When near you, with the handsome Lautrec, passed
+The soft-eyed Marguerite, the Bearnaise Queen,
+Have you, O Greek, O mocker of old days,
+Have you not sometimes with that oblique eye
+Winked at the Farnese Hercules?--Alone,
+In cave as it were of foliage green and moist,
+Have you, O Faun, considerately turned
+From side to side when counsel-seekers came,
+And now advised as shepherd; now as satyr?
+Have you sometimes upon this very bench
+Seen at mid-day, Vincent de Paul instilling
+Grace into Gondi?--Have you ever thrown
+That searching glance on Louis with Fontange,
+On Anne with Buckingham; and did they not
+Start, with flushed cheeks, to hear your laugh ring forth
+From corner of the wood?--Was your advice
+As to the thyrsis or the ivy asked,
+When, the grand ballet of fantastic form,
+God Phoebus, or god Pan, and all his court
+Turned the fair head of the fair Montespan,
+Calling her Amaryllis?--La Fontaine,
+Flying the courtiers' ears of stone, came he,
+Tears in his eyelids, to reveal to you
+The sorrows of his Nymphs of Vaux?--What said
+Boileau to you, to you, O lettered Faun,
+Who once with Virgil, in the Eclogue, held
+That charming dialogue, and deftly made--
+Couched on the turf--the heavy spondee dance
+To the light dactyl's step?--Say, have you seen
+Young beauties sporting on the sward: Chevreuse
+Of the swimming eyes, Thiange of airs superb?
+Have they sometimes, in rosy-tinted group,
+Girt you so fondly round, that all at once
+A straggling sunbeam on a fluttering bosom
+Marked your lascivious profile?--Has your tree
+Received beneath the quiet of its shade
+Pale Mazarin's scarlet winding sheet?--Have you
+Been honoured with a sight of Molière
+In dreamy mood? Has he perchance at times,
+Dropping at random a melodious verse,
+In tone familiar--as is the wont
+'Twixt demi-gods--addressed you?--When at eve
+Homeward hereby the thinker went, has he
+Who--seeing souls all naked--could not fear
+Your nudity, in his enquiring mind
+Confronted you with Man? And did he deem
+You, spectral cynic, the less sad, less cold,
+Less wicked, less ironical--comparing
+Your laugh in marble with our human laugh?"
+
+  Under the thickly tangled branches, thus
+Did I speak to him; he no answer gave--
+Not even a murmur. On the pedestal
+Leaning, I listened; but the past stirred not.
+Dumb to my words and to my pity deaf,
+The Satyr, motionless, was vaguely blanched
+By the wan glimmer of the dying day.
+To see him there, sinister, half drawn out
+From his dark framing, and by damp discoloured,
+Brought to one's mind the handle of a sword
+In torso chiselled--an old rusty sword,
+Left for long years neglected in its sheath.
+
+  I shook my head, and moved myself away.
+Then, from the copses, from the dried up boughs
+Pendent above him, from secret caves
+Hid in the wood, methought a ghostly voice
+Came forth and woke an echo in my soul,
+As in the hollow of an amphora.
+
+  "Imprudent poet," thus it seemed to say,
+"What dost thou here? Leave the forsaken Fauns
+In peace beneath their trees! Dost thou not know,
+Poet, that ever it is impious deemed,
+In desert spots where drowsy shades repose--
+Though love itself might prompt thee--to shake down
+The moss that hangs from ruined centuries,
+And, with the vain noise of thine ill-timed words,
+To mar the recollections of the dead?"
+
+  Then to the gardens all enwrapped in mist
+I hurried, dreaming of the vanished days.
+And still the tree-tops were with mystery rife;
+And still, behind me--hieroglyph obscure
+Of antique alphabet--the lonely Faun
+Held to his laughter, through the falling night.
+
+  I went my way; but yet--in saddened spirit
+Pondering on all that had my vision crossed,
+Floating in air or scattered under foot,
+Confused and blent, beauty and spring and morn,
+Leaves of old summers, fair ones of old time--
+Through all, at distance would my fancy see,
+In the woods, statues; shadows in the past!
+
+
+
+
+                CHARADES.
+
+                   I.
+
+
+Look from the prow of thine anchored bark--
+Anchored by classic shore--and mark,
+Down fathoms-deep in the purple sea,
+How Time and the waters have dealt on me
+
+Art lost in the moonless and starless night?
+Far-away looming, a light! a light!
+Fearlessly steer, for on me 'tis placed,
+To guide thy bark o'er the trackless waste
+
+Earth knows me, too; and will heave and quake
+Where my subterranean course I take:
+And none so aghast at my ravages then,
+As they whose type was the Sire of men.
+
+But not ever thus; at times I'm seen
+On the cheek or the neck of Beauty's queen;
+Or (to favoured mortal alone confest)
+Tinging the snow upon Beauty's breast.
+
+So, whether above the waves, or below,
+Or beneath the Earth, or on breast of snow,
+Linked with the past, or alive to-day,
+Tell who I am--if tell ye may.
+
+
+               II.
+
+
+My lady calls; my First obeys--
+  Nor less his lord's behest:
+In bower and hall, in olden days,
+  My First was in request.
+
+Yet 'tis my First that tells us now
+  What then my First was doing;
+How he went forth to war, and how
+  He prospered in his wooing.
+
+A wise King bade the lazy fool
+  Observe my Second's ways,
+And notice--as it were in school--
+  The wisdom she displays.
+
+Yet hers is a devouring race,
+  And might--though strange it be--
+Eat up, in given time and place,
+  My First, or you, or me.
+
+As for my whole--in every age
+  Mankind must have its show;
+In actual life, on mimic stage,
+  In peace, war, joy, or woe.
+
+Now 'tis a wedding, now a death,
+  A gathering, or a play;
+It comes, but, like a passing breath,
+  Full soon 'tis swept away.
+
+
+            III.
+
+
+When Richard of the Lion Heart
+  In arms the Paynim sought,
+I of his panoply was part,
+  And, wielding me, he fought.
+
+When ladies on a different field
+  With men their skill essay,
+I am the weapon that they wield
+  If they would gain the day.
+
+When cooks in certain dishes show
+  Their culinary art,
+I am on hand--the masters know
+  What flavour I impart.
+
+
+                IV.
+
+
+I'm a word of one syllable. Look you for me
+Mid Niagara's roar; in the turbulent sea;
+Where the winds and the waters are wildest at play,
+And fling off their laughter in volumes of spray.
+
+I'm a noun of five letters; but throw one aside--
+I'm a verb; with the noun I'm no longer allied.
+I'm a grave, solemn verb; nay, I truly might say,
+Those who follow my precept do nothing but pray.
+
+But again; let two letters be dropped--there's a change;
+As a noun--and by no means a grave one--I range.
+Now I'm here; now I'm there; seen by night and by day,
+For in short, I'm a beam, or a flash, or a ray.
+
+Thus a verb and two nouns packed together you see,
+In a word of one syllable.--What can it be?
+
+
+                   V.
+
+
+There are some words, that in a double sense
+Must be interpreted; of these am I.
+Your housemaid, thus, wilt know me literally
+Better than you do; but, with all respect
+For Betty's carefulness, she scarce can catch
+My finer meaning. I'm, with her, a thing
+For brush and duster; in me, you behold
+A symbol. So much for me as I stand.
+Now cut my head off--I'm another word
+Of narrow and of wide significance,
+Handful of dust, the very world itself.
+Cut off my tail--the effect is still the same;
+I'm yet another of those duplex words:
+Mental and bodily, an essential part
+Of all mankind, without which no one lives,
+Nay, not an animal, though you may swear,
+And truly too, that I have no existence,
+And never had, in certain men and women.
+    Enough: it is not difficult to find
+Three words, six meanings, in one syllable.
+
+
+                 VI.
+
+
+Well may I call myself cosmopolite,
+Being of all lands and times. Barbaric tribes
+Know me, and honour. In the gentler world,
+Scholars have studied me, and poets sung,
+And painters painted, and musicians hymned.
+Nor from Religion have I held myself
+Apart. In Pagan and in savage rites
+Largely I mingle; and some Saints at least,
+Worshipped among us, owe me much. In short,
+Theme, inspiration, puzzle--I am all.
+As to my form, it may not be defined;
+Yet this is certain: were I rent in twain
+And of one half bereft, I should not have
+A leg to stand on--of the other half
+Equally mulcted, I should endless be.
+
+
+                 VII.
+
+
+In me, as the scholar saith,
+Is exhaustion, wasting, death.
+But--so close do grave and gay
+Touch, in this our world--you may,
+By a change of accent made,
+Change the meaning I conveyed;
+Change me so that I proclaim
+Victory won, and spoils, and fame!
+
+
+                       VIII.
+
+
+My first's a French noun; and, without it, stands not
+Church, palace, or hospital, villa, or cot.
+My Second no feature distinctive can claim;
+It but echoes my First--'t is precisely the same.
+  Yet my Whole to French parentage makes no pretence;
+It is plain Anglo-Saxon, in sound as in sense;
+Nor more widely asunder does pole lie from pole,
+Than my Gallican parts and my Anglican whole.
+Impalpable, it--solid, tangible, they;
+They may last, for long ages--it passes away!
+Now a sign of approval, a token of scorn;
+Sometimes of the wind or the waves it is born;
+Though its presence at intervals surely you'll trace
+Where my First and my Second have stablished their place;
+Where King hath his dwelling or Trade hath her marts--
+A whole evanescent, material parts!
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+The words "irresistible" and "irresistable" were left as they
+were printed in the original.
+
+
+
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+<body>
+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, Mathieu Ropars: et cetera, by William Young</h1>
+<pre>
+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 <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: Mathieu Ropars: et cetera</p>
+<p>Author: William Young</p>
+<p>Release Date: March 13, 2012  [eBook #39132]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MATHIEU ROPARS: ET CETERA***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h4>E-text prepared by<br />
+    Charlene Taylor, Katie Hernandez, Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe,<br />
+    and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (<a href="http://www.pgdp.net">http://www.pgdp.net</a>)<br />
+    from page images generously made available by the<br />
+    Wright American Fiction Project<br />
+    (<a href="http://www.letrs.indiana.edu/web/w/wright2/">http://www.letrs.indiana.edu/web/w/wright2/</a>)</h4>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<table border="0" style="background-color: #ccccff;margin: 0 auto;" cellpadding="10">
+  <tr>
+    <td valign="top">
+      Note:
+    </td>
+    <td>
+      Images of the original pages are available through the
+      Wright American Fiction Project. See
+      <a href="http://www.letrs.indiana.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?idno=Wright2-2831&lt;;view=toc;sid=075f68e4235f00ec8548d9f9e813ee33;c=wright2">
+      http://www.letrs.indiana.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?idno=Wright2-2831&lt;;view=toc;sid=075f68e4235f00ec8548d9f9e813ee33;c=wright2</a>
+	</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h1><span class="smcap">Mathieu Ropars:</span></h1>
+
+<h3>ET CETERA.</h3>
+
+<h2><i>BY AN EX-EDITOR.</i></h2>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center">NEW YORK: <br />
+<span class="smcap">G. P. Putnam &amp; Son, 661 Broadway.</span><br />
+1868.
+</p>
+<br />
+<p class="center">1868.<br />
+Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by<br />
+<br />
+WILLIAM YOUNG,<br />
+<br />
+In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the<br />
+Southern District of New York.<br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align="left">&nbsp;</td><td align="left">&nbsp;</td><td align="right">Page.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">I.</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Mathieu Ropars</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_7">7</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">II.</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Thrice Only</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_76">76</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">III.</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Tossing up for a Husband</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_97">97</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">IV.</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Missing Mariners</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_117">117</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">V.</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Mandragora&mdash;by the Dozen</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_140">140</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">VI.</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Dr. Pablo's Prediction</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_157">157</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">VII.</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The New Hampshire Alps</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_163">163</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">VIII.</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Sliding Scale of the Inconsolables</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_173">173</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">IX.</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Rambling Records:</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">&nbsp;</td><td align="left">The Gentle Arlesians</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_179">179</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">&nbsp;</td><td align="left">At Nuremburg</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_183">183</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">&nbsp;</td><td align="left">Roman Nomenclature</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_189">189</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">&nbsp;</td><td align="left">Brigands, Beggars, and Souvenirs</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_192">192</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">&nbsp;</td><td align="left">Livres des Voyageurs</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_197">197</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">X.</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">A Singular Anagram</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_199">199</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XI.</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">A Well Known Document</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_201">201</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XII.</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Bel Piede</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_208">208</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XIII.</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Who is He?</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_210">210</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XIV.</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">To Ninon</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_212">212</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XV.</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Last of the Roman Gladiators</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_215">215</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XVI.</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Prudent Bride</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_218">218</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XVII.</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Tramper's Bed and the King's</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_220">220</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XVIII.</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Occasion</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_221">221</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XIX.</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Mournful Ballad of the Alabama</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_222">222</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XX.</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Lines for the Guitar</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_224">224</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XXI.</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Three Men and a Woman</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_225">225</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XXII.</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Another Marble Faun</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_227">227</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XXIII.</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Charades</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_232">232</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<blockquote><p>These literary chips from the workshop of
+an arduous profession were, with few exceptions,
+contributed to the "<i>Albion</i>" newspaper,
+between the years 1848 and 1866.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p class="center">
+New York, May 25, 1868.<br />
+</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>MATHIEU ROPARS.</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><i>From the French of Emile Souvestre.</i></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>I.</h3>
+
+
+<p>At the extremity of the roadstead of Brest, in the
+open space that lies stretched out between the Ile Longue
+and Point Kelerne, may be seen two rocks crowned
+with massive granite buildings, and standing boldly
+up. On the former, the lazaretto of Trébéron has
+been established; the latter, which in other days was
+used as a burial-ground and thence took its name of
+the Ile des Morts, now contains the principal powder-magazine
+of the naval arsenal. The two rocks separated
+by an arm of the sea, are about six miles distant
+from Brest. In appearance these little islands are not
+unlike. Beyond the ground occupied by the buildings
+upon them, they offer nothing to the eye save a succession
+of stony slopes, dotted here and there with
+coarse moss and prickly thorn-broom. Vainly there
+might you look for any other shelter than that afforded
+by the fissures of the rocks, for any other shade
+than that of the walls, for any other walk than the
+short terrace contrived in front of the buildings. Naked
+and sterile, the two isles remind you of a couple of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span>
+immense sentry-boxes in stone, placed there for the
+purpose of keeping guard over the sea, which is roaring
+beneath them. But if the foot that treads them
+remains imprisoned within a narrow circle, the view
+from their summit extends over an infinite space.
+Here, you have the bay of Lanvoc, bordered by a dull-looking
+and stunted vegetation; there, Roscanvel
+with its shadows crossed by the graceful spire of its
+church; there, Spanish Point bristling with batteries;
+and lastly, close upon the horizon lies Brest, with its
+dock-yards, its forts, and the hundred masts of its ships,
+visible through a veil of mist. Midway opens out the
+Goulet, the harbour of this marvellous lake, through
+which arrive and depart unceasingly those wandering
+sails, that issue forth to flaunt the ensign of France
+upon the waters, or to bring it home again from far-away
+lands.</p>
+
+<p>A cannon-shot, the echo of which was still booming
+along the shores, had just announced one of these arrivals,
+and a frigate, with a light breeze, was doubling
+the Point under a cloud of canvas. From the esplanade
+of Trébéron a man, wrapped in a pilot-cloth cape
+and wearing a narrow-brimmed glazed hat, under
+which it might be seen that his locks were turning
+grey, was looking at the noble vessel as she glided
+along in the distance, between the azure of the sea and
+of the sky. It was obvious that the keeper of the
+lazaretto (for he it was) gave but casual attention to
+the sight, with which his long residence at Trébéron<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>
+had familiarized him. His look, for a moment resting
+carelessly upon the frigate which had begun to brail
+up her upper sails, soon reverted to his more immediate
+neighbourhood, and settled itself at the foot of
+the pathway, that led from the esplanade to the sea,
+upon a group which appeared more decidedly to interest
+him. And in truth the object of this rivetted
+gaze was of that sort which might have attracted the
+least attentive eye. A pupil of Phidias would have
+traced in it the germ of one of those antique bas-reliefs,
+of which the marble has become more precious
+than gold.</p>
+
+<p>Two little girls and a goat were coming up the
+winding path together. The elder of the two, who
+might be eleven years old, was holding the freakish
+animal by one of those long pieces of sea-weed that
+resemble strips of Spanish leather. Her black hair
+fell down upon a neck embrowned like a raven's wing,
+and threw something of a wild hardihood into her expression,
+tempered however by the velvety softness of
+her eye. The younger, seated on the goat as though
+it were her customary place, was of such rosy-white
+complexion as you see in the flower of the eglantine.
+A tuft of broom, mingling with her golden hair, fell
+down upon her shoulder, and gave her an indescribably
+coquettish grace. The two sisters compelled the
+goat, which submitted most unwillingly, to moderate
+its pace; but still, as they proceeded, they were obliged
+to double the slender reins by which they kept it
+within bounds, and anon to catch hold of the wreath<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>
+of sea-flowers twisted about its horns. Then what
+joyous shouts and peals of laughter were there without
+end, broken in upon by the gentle bleatings of <i>Brunette</i>
+as she pawed the ground with her foot, and shook
+her saucy little head! Any other hands but those of
+Josèphe and Francine would have tried in vain to
+make her even so far submissive; but for the latter
+the goat had been a foster-mother, a circumstance
+evidently not forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>Mathieu Ropars had been watching for some time
+this pleasant little contest between the fantastic <i>Brunette</i>
+and his daughters, when he felt a hand laid upon
+his arm; he turned round and encountered, so to say,
+close against his shoulder the bronzed and smiling face
+of their mother.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Just look at those children," said he, nodding
+his head in the direction of the merry group.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Heavens! Francine will fall," exclaimed the
+mother, stepping towards the path. He drew her
+back.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Let them be," said he; "don't you know that
+there is nothing to fear when Josèphe has her eye
+upon them? Besides, <i>Brunette</i> loves them better than
+her own kids; nor are they behind-hand in returning
+it. Heaven forgive me, if that creature isn't what
+they think most of&mdash;after us!"</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"And after Monsieur Gabriel," chimed in their
+mother&mdash;"at least so far as Josèphe is concerned; for
+although he scarcely stayed more than a week in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>
+lazaretto, and that's three years ago, the child never
+lets a day pass by without speaking of him."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"To tell the truth, the Lieutenant is a sort of
+man not easily to be forgotten," replied Ropars, "especially
+by the little one yonder, to whom he was so
+kind and made so many promises. Why, wasn't he to
+bring her all manner of wonderful things from the
+East? And by the bye, if nothing has happened to
+him, I believe that we shall pretty soon see him again,
+as well as the <i>Thetis</i>."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"In the meantime I must tell the children of
+another visit, which will also be no small treat for
+them."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Whose?"</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Cousin's, and little Michael's."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Dorot's coming?" inquired Mathieu, looking
+towards the platform of the Ile des Morts. "How do
+you know?"</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Can't we talk by signal just as well as his Majesty's
+ships?" said Geneviève laughing. "Look, he
+has hung out of his window three small red handkerchiefs;
+that's to tell us that he's coming over. Besides,
+I saw Michael going down to the Superintendent's."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Bravo!" cried Ropars, his face lighting up;
+"your cousin and the boy must sup with us&mdash;that is
+to say, if your pantry is not quite so empty as your
+hospital."</p>
+
+<p>Geneviève protested, and then enumerated with an
+air of complacency all her culinary resources, which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>
+had fortunately been replenished, two days before, by
+the Superintendent, who supplied at the same time
+the powder-magazine and the lazaretto. Mathieu promised
+to complete the feast by broaching for the artillery-man
+an old bottle of Rousillon wine, stowed
+away for a long time under the sand of his cellar.</p>
+
+<p>The two little girls at this moment came up on to
+the terrace.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Quick, here!" cried Geneviève, "quick; there's
+somebody coming."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Monsieur Gabriel?" asked Josèphe, springing
+forward with this exclamation.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"No, no, goose-cap&mdash;cousin Dorot and little
+Michael."</p>
+
+<p>An involuntary gesture of disappointment escaped
+from the child; but Francine clapped her hands and
+broke out into shouts of joy. The goat, left to herself,
+bounded along the precipitous slopes of the rocks,
+where she set to work browsing on the tufts of brackish
+herbage; the sisters took each other's hand to go
+down towards the little landing-place; whilst their
+mother went into the house with a view of getting
+everything in readiness.</p>
+
+<p>As had been remarked by the last-named, the special
+affection of Josèphe for Monsieur Gabriel was already
+of several years standing. It dated from a quarantine
+performed at Trébéron by the Lieutenant,
+who, charmed by her grace, bordering though it was
+upon the savage, had exhibited towards her a marked
+regard, to which the child had responded with what<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>
+amounted almost to a passion. Having entered the
+navy against his inclination, Monsieur Gabriel had
+adopted little of it but its uniform. In the midst of
+a life of change, hardship, and adventure, he dreamed
+unceasingly of the unchangeableness of the domestic
+hearth, and of peaceful family enjoyments. He was
+one of those lovers of solitude, who are born to live
+amongst labourers, and women, and children. Confined
+to the lazaretto of Trébéron, he had brought thither
+a few favourite books, and his violin, on which he
+played for hours at a time, with no other end than the
+listening to its melodious vibrations. When he went
+out, Josèphe ran to meet him, acted as his guide along
+the rocks, and escorted him to their most secluded
+recesses, in which, day by day, he discovered some unknown
+plant, or moss that was new to him. In the
+evening, be paid a visit to the old quarter-master
+whose quiet enjoyment of life had attracted his notice.
+Geneviève talked to him of her children; Josèphe
+begged of him a story or a song; and when it was
+time for him to retire for the night, he went back to
+his cell, light hearted and with tranquil mind. A
+fortnight thus slipped away as if it had been an hour; so
+that when his quarantine was at length performed, and
+it was necessary for him to leave Trébéron, his deliverance
+did but awaken in him a feeling of regret. He
+came back several times to pass whole days upon the
+lonely islet; and when finally he was embarking for a
+distant voyage of discovery, he promised the solitary
+family that he would occasionally write to them. Ro<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>pars
+had in fact received some letters from him; and,
+as we have seen, was expecting his speedy return.
+For the moment, the visit announced by Geneviève exclusively
+occupied the keeper of the lazaretto. He
+remained alone upon the esplanade, whence he continued
+to look towards the Ile des Morts. The distance
+rendered visible everything done there; it was easy
+to recognize persons and to distinguish their movements.
+He could therefore see Dorot take his way
+towards the skiff, set up the mast, and hoist the sail;
+and the little Michael catching hold, with some difficulty,
+of the tiller.</p>
+
+<p>Previously to the two families becoming allied by
+marriage, the keepers of the powder-magazine and of
+the lazaretto had known each other in the navy, wherein
+one was a quarter-master and the other a sergeant
+of artillery. Appointed to Trébéron, Mathieu Ropars
+had rejoiced at the idea of meeting his old ship-mate
+Dorot, already several years established at the Ile des
+Morts, with his wife, his son, and a female orphan relative.
+The lazaretto being almost always deserted, he
+was left with ample leisure for frequent visits to the
+powder-magazine, and for becoming well known there
+and thoroughly appreciated. Geneviève, Dorot's cousin,
+was particularly taken with such a character, so
+straight-forward and yet so gentle. She had been
+tried, until she was sixteen, by all the pains and penalties
+of misery. Taken then, from charitable motives,
+into the house of her cousin whose wife occasionally
+made her pay dearly enough for his hospitality, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>
+poor orphan had accustomed herself to expecting nothing
+at any one's hands, and to receiving as a favour
+whatever was accorded her. Thus the frank cordiality
+of Mathieu was more touching in her eyes than it
+would have been in those of another. She welcomed
+it with a gratitude half filial, to which insensibly became
+added that shade of a more tender feeling, always
+blended into the attachments of a woman whose heart
+is disengaged. An intimacy between herself and Ropars
+went on, strengthening from day to day, whilst
+neither of them took account of their predilections.
+As he marked the young girl in the bloom of her expanding
+beauty, Mathieu, who already felt the weight
+of years upon him, would never have dreamed of asking
+her to share his existence; whilst Geneviève, happy
+in seeing him daily and in the consciousness of his immediate
+neighbourhood, thought not of desiring anything
+further. It needed the offer of a situation for her at
+Brest, and the consequent prospect of a separation, to
+enlighten them as to their mutual dependence on each
+other. Perceiving that Geneviève shed tears, Ropars,
+who could not shut his eyes to his own distress of mind,
+took courage and brought matters to a point. He told
+her that she might dispense with this separation, if the
+isle of Trébéron were no more irksome to her than the Ile
+des Morts, and if his society were as agreeable to her
+as that of her cousin. The poor girl, weeping, blushing
+and overjoyed, could only reply by letting herself
+fall into his arms. The old quarter-master forthwith
+opened his mind to Dorot. The marriage took place;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>
+and he carried off Geneviève to his islet, of which
+henceforth he mistrusted not the solitude.</p>
+
+<p>The difference in their respective ages did not seem
+to mar the happiness of the keeper and the orphan girl.
+Both were possessed of that which renders marriage a
+blessing&mdash;the simple mind and the heart of kindly
+impulse. Children came, to draw still closer these
+ties, and to enliven their hearth. The younger was
+just born, when Dorot lost his wife, and was left alone
+with his son Michael, thirteen years of age. This
+premature widowerhood had revived the friendship of
+the two old shipmates. Their intercourse became more
+frequent. The skiff that served both establishments
+was stationed at the little haven of the Ile des Morts,
+and was thus at the disposition of the artillery-man,
+who missed no opportunity of coming to pass a few
+hours with his neighbours. But notwithstanding their
+proximity, and the ease with which the passage was
+made, these visits could not be of daily occurrence.
+Dorot was obliged to be constantly on the watch; his
+official orders were equally sudden and unforeseen;
+nor could he expose himself to the risk of too frequent
+absence. His appearance therefore at the lazaretto
+had not ceased to be a happy exception to the rule.
+Father, mother, and children alike found in it a festal
+occasion; and it was never without great rejoicing that
+the signal was observed announcing the agreeable visit,
+and the boat seen putting out from the little landing-place
+and stretching over towards Trébéron.</p>
+
+<p>This time, so soon as Ropars saw her on the way,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>
+he went down to meet her. Scarcely had she touched
+the ground, when Michael jumped ashore, threw his
+arms about the keeper, then about the two little girls,
+and then ran off with the latter towards the house.
+Dorot stepping out in turn, shook hands heartily with
+Mathieu; and the pair, chatting, slowly began the ascent.
+Having reached the summit of the cliff, they
+faced about by force of habit, to take a look out to
+sea. The artillery-man remarked that the frigate
+had just clewed up her lower sails.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"God help us! she's going to anchor," said he;
+"did you ever see, Mathieu, a homeward-bound ship
+let go so far from land?"</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"That depends," replied the old quarter-master;
+"we hold off when we mistrust a fort, or are afraid of
+reefs."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"But there's nothing of that sort here," remarked
+Dorot; "the frigate has no need to fear the guns of
+the Castle which are her very good friends, or the
+roadstead which is as safe an anchorage as if she were
+fast in the dry-dock. There must be something extraordinary."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Perhaps the ship has to perform quarantine,"
+suggested Ropars; "the <i>Thetis</i> is expected."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"That's it; you've named her," cried the artillery-man,
+winking his eye and shading his forehead
+with one hand so as to look more fixedly at the distant
+vessel; "it is the <i>Thetis</i>, or I'm a heathen. I had
+her down yonder for a week, when she took her pow<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>der
+on board; I know her by the set of her masts and
+by her bearing on the water."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"The <i>Thetis</i>!" echoed Mathieu; "then we
+shall soon see Monsieur Gabriel. What delight for
+Josèphe! Quick; let's tell her."</p>
+
+<p>He was hurrying off, but Dorot kept him back.
+"No hurry," said he; "never reckon too surely on
+what a ship brings home. Pick people out, and they're
+just those that are missing when the roll's called.
+Better wait till the Lieutenant brings his own news."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"You're right," replied the quarter-master;
+"the more so since the frigate comes, if I don't mistake,
+from the Havannah."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Who knows whether she won't bring you some
+lodgers for your lazaretto?"</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"So be it; they'll be welcome. With Geneviève
+and the children, one can't be dull; but once in a
+while there's no harm in a little company. You fellows
+at the Ile des Morts, you have the artillery despatch-carrier,
+who keeps you up to all that goes on,
+to say nothing of inspections and your convoys of powder;
+whilst here&mdash;never a thing! Not one visitor in
+a twelvemonth! At least, if you have to put people
+sometimes into quarantine, you hear what's done on
+land there, and that leaves you some thing to talk about
+for months."</p>
+
+<p>The artillery-man shrugged his shoulders&mdash;"That's
+all very well, when they don't bring disease with them;
+but the old coasters still talk of a quarantine in which
+the lazaretto ran short of both earth and rock for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>
+burying the dead, and when the bodies were of necessity
+thrown into the sea with a shot attached to their
+necks, as in vessels out on a voyage."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Now may Christ spare us such a trial!" exclaimed
+Ropars, respectfully touching his hat, as he
+was used to do whenever he pronounced the Saviour's
+name. "But you're speaking of a long time ago,
+Dorot; please Heaven, we won't see such again.
+There are no heathen here now; and I believe that
+God's good will will take care of us."</p>
+
+<p>Dorot nodded his acquiescence. In fact this confidence,
+springing from a simple faith, had up to that
+time been justified by experience. During the thirteen
+years that the keeper had spent at Trébéron, he had
+only received healthy persons into quarantine, who
+were complying with a formal regulation, and were
+obliged to make proof of their good health by undergoing
+this preventive sequestration. There were indeed
+rare exceptions. Like all lazarettos, that of
+Trébéron remained generally unoccupied; and the
+keeper kept watch there alone, like an ever-living sentinel
+posted in advance of the continent, for the purpose
+of warding off contagion.</p>
+
+<p>As they chatted, Dorot and he had reached the
+house. Geneviève was waiting for them at the doorway,
+surrounded by the three children who laid hold
+of and talked to her all at once. After an exchange
+of their accustomed friendly greetings, she went in,
+with the two keepers, whilst Michael drew off Francine
+and Josèphe towards <i>Brunette</i>, who was waiting<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>
+for them on a pinnacle of rock, eyeing them and bleating
+at them. The youngster, accustomed to chase his
+father's sheep upon the declivities of the Ile des Morts,
+endeavored to get at her; but the capricious creature
+sprung from point to point along the precipices, letting
+herself at every moment almost be caught, and
+at every moment bounding away from the hand that
+just could touch her.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst the children kept up this chase, with a thousand
+calls to one another and a thousand peals of
+laughter, Ropars and Dorot entered the eating-room
+in which Geneviève was already laying the cloth. It
+was a room of middling size, furnished by the keeper
+himself at the period of his marriage, and ornamented
+with a few marine engravings. Amongst these was
+particularly distinguished a portrait of Jean Bart,
+that nautical Hercules on whom, as all the world
+knows, his traditional celebrity has fastened all manner
+of superhuman exploits and impossible adventures.</p>
+
+<p>Having made his guest sit down, Mathieu went off
+to disinter his bottle of Rousillon wine; and brought
+it back all whitened with the sand, and capped with a
+green-waxed cork that bespoke its noble birth-place.
+Dorot good-temperedly complained of such extravagance,
+and hinted that he could not make his visit a
+long one, inasmuch as the officer commanding the post
+of the Ile des Morts had charged him to bring the skiff
+back before sunset. Geneviève therefore hurried herself
+to serve up the dinner, and called the children to
+take their places at table.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>With persons whose entire life was contracted within
+the narrow limits of two small islands, the conversation
+could not be much varied. Mathieu talked of
+his still-lines set between the headlands of Trébéron,
+and Dorot of his small cherry-tree. The latter might
+be regarded as the one stumbling block of pride, over
+which the habitual modesty of the worthy sergeant
+was sure to trip. No other keeper before his time had
+succeeded in securing what he planted, from the
+sea wind; this was the only tree that had ever been
+seen in the two islands; and Lucullus might well have
+been less proud of the first cherry-tree that he brought
+from Persia, for the purpose of gracing his triumph.
+Humble as regards everything else, Dorot drew himself
+up proudly when there was any question of his
+poor wild-stock; he only let it be seen by his friends
+and his superiors, and then at their urgent solicitation.
+Objects resemble human kind, and very often
+assume the importance that is given them, in place of
+that to which they are entitled. Thus overcharged
+and carefully tended, the fame of the cherry-tree of
+the Ile des Morts went abroad from Plougastel to
+Camaret; it was everywhere talked of as a prodigy.
+The pride of Dorot had increased in a corresponding
+degree, and was just now swollen to the highest pitch
+by an event no less extraordinary than unforseen. He
+brought the news of it to Trébéron, but would not
+make it known too abruptly. All supposable things
+were first to be run over, as in the famous letter of
+Madame de Sevigné on the marriage of Mademoi<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>selle.
+Finally, when every one had given it up, he
+determined to enlighten them, and announced ...
+that the cherry-tree was in blossom!</p>
+
+<p>Unanimous was the cry of astonishment and delight.
+Prisoners in their island, it was several years since
+Ropars and Geneviève had seen a tree in blossom; and
+the two little girls could not recall to mind that they had
+ever seen one. Loudly and both at once, they beset
+Michael with questions. Was the cherry-tree flowering
+in gold-colour like the thorn-broom, or in the colour
+of blood like the sea-furze? How could the blossoms
+ever become fruit? Must they wait a long time?
+Would the tree bear the red cherries of the coast, or
+the black-hearts of the upper country? Dorot cut all
+these inquiries short, by declaring that he would come
+over next day, for the whole of the family, that they
+might see the wondrous tree and dine at the Ile des
+Morts. The ecstacies of the sisters may be imagined.
+Their mother could not check their laughing and their
+clapping of hands. They continued their cry of "to-morrow,
+to-morrow!" just as Æneas' look-out men
+kept up their cry of "Italy, Italy!" when they saw
+through the empurpled vapours that goal of so many
+efforts and such longings.</p>
+
+<p>Remarking their impatience, the sergeant proposed
+to carry them over, that very evening, with Michael.
+There would be still day-light enough on their arrival,
+for them to see the cherry-tree covered with its coat
+of summer-snow, and their parents could fetch them,
+next day. The children backed this offer with their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>
+entreaties; Ropars smiled, without replying; but
+Geneviève entered her protest against it. What would
+she do, if Francine and Josèphe were away? Many
+a time ere this, on waking in the middle of the night,
+she had fretted herself at not hearing their gentle
+breathings; she had jumped up in agony, and had
+crept on tip-toe to their bed, to touch them and to
+listen to them; how would it be then, if they were
+not there; how could she herself sleep quietly without
+fancying some danger? She would dream that
+the powder-magazine was on fire, or that the Ile des
+Morts was going down like a vessel foundering&mdash;and
+all this was said betwixt a laugh and a tear. The
+little maidens, bent at first on setting off, were soon
+hanging on their mother's shoulders, touched by her
+contagious tenderness, and declaring that they preferred
+to remain. The artillery-man insisted no longer.
+He took with Mathieu the path that led down to the
+sandy shore, and was followed by Geneviève and the
+children, all silent for the moment.</p>
+
+<p>The sun declining to the horizon lit up the promontory
+of Kelerne, and painted in the passage of Goulet
+a stream of purple and gold. A breeze began to play
+over the bay, and chequered it with undulating ripples.
+The perfume exhaled from the saps was wafted
+in puffs of wind from the main land, as were the tinklings
+of the Angelus, and the lowing of the cattle
+driven home. A consciousness of strength in repose
+was perceivable, together with an indescribable air of
+serenity, that stole from surrounding objects upon the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>
+senses, and found its way to the very depths of the
+soul. The sky, the earth, and the water seemed by
+mutual consent to have subdued their voices, in order
+to mingle them in one harmonious murmur. Without
+analyzing the soft but not enervating influence that
+surrounded them, the two keepers with their families
+were alive to its effects. Silently they went down
+the foot-path, pausing upon their steps, as though to
+lengthen out the sense of enjoyment, or to taste of it
+drop by drop. Having, however, reached the boat, it
+became necessary to part. Josèphe made the sergeant
+promise to come for them early in the morning. The
+sail at last was hoisted; and the skiff, launched out
+upon the yielding waves, sped her way towards the
+powder-magazine.</p>
+
+<p>At the moment when she reached the middle of the
+channel that separates the two islands, a ship's long-boat,
+unobserved hitherto in the excitement of leave-taking,
+appeared to leeward of Trébéron. Her peculiar
+build, her black color traversed only by a single
+white ribbon at the water-line, and the perfect condition
+of her spars and sails, would have sufficed to
+show what she was, even if the costume of the double
+row of sailors ranged along the thwarts had not betrayed
+the man-of-war's men. On crossing the skiff
+steered by the sergeant, she was sheered suddenly
+off; and by the last glimpse of day-light might be discerned
+the yellow flag of the Health Office.</p>
+
+<p>At this sight, Geneviève and the children uttered
+an involuntary cry. All three at once comprehended<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>
+that these were occupants coming to the lazaretto;
+that they would put the island into quarantine, and
+prevent all external intercourse. The next day's visit
+must be indefinitely postponed, and the cherry-tree
+would have finished blossoming before they could have
+regained their liberty. This dashing down of a newly-raised
+anticipation had in it something so abrupt and
+so unexpected, that Francine and Josèphe could by no
+means resign themselves to it. Desolate was the look
+that they exchanged, and silently did they begin to
+weep, as their mother took one of them in either hand,
+and sorrowfully remounted the path. Geneviève herself
+felt her heart oppressed; on reaching the platform,
+she could not but pause for a moment. The skiff with
+rose-coloured sail, that bore away the promise of another
+meeting and of a festival, had disappeared; the
+black long-boat was there at her feet&mdash;and with it had
+come to shore, seclusion, melancholy, and disease.
+Geneviève kissed her children; but scarcely could
+she keep back a tear that had gathered beneath her eyelids,
+as without the inclination to prolong her look she
+hastily entered the house.</p>
+
+<p>Mathieu in the meantime had gone to receive the
+persons placed in quarantine, and to open the lazaretto
+for them. On returning, he looked somewhat pale,
+and his face wore an expression with which Geneviève
+was struck; but at the first question she asked him,
+he abruptly interrupted her, to inquire where Francine
+and Josèphe were.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Don't you see them?" she replied, pointing to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>
+the two little girls sitting down in a dark corner, still
+sobbing, and with eyes still moist; "did you think
+that they had gone with their cousin?"</p>
+
+<p>"Would to God, they had!" murmured Mathieu
+in an agonized voice, but not overheard by the children.</p>
+
+<p>Geneviève looked at him, stupefied. "Why so?"
+she asked; "what has happened? Tell me, Mathieu,
+in the name of the Holy Trinity! what is the matter?"</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Well, then," answered the keeper, "there is
+... there is ... death upon the island."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"How do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"I mean, my poor wife, just what I have seen!
+The <i>Thetis's</i> long-boat has landed her hospital-mates
+and doctors, with eight sick men; not one of whom
+will ever touch the main-land again."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Holy Virgin! what is it?"</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"The yellow fever!"</p>
+
+
+<h3>II.</h3>
+
+
+<p>For him who dwells in-land, the yellow fever is but
+a disease similar to a thousand others, of which he
+knows nothing save the name. Family tradition and
+personal experience can attach to it, for him, neither
+terror or regret. But amongst our maritime population,
+the word sounds like a knell; not only bringing
+to mind a risk to be encountered, but reviving affliction,
+of recent or of ancient date. There, where every
+family has one at least of its loved members absent
+in foreign countries, the terrible scourge is all too well<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>
+identified with the number of widows and orphans that
+it has made. It ranks with the storm and the reef of
+rocks, as a deadly foe. Its name, let fall, produces the
+same effect as the wind that whistles, or the surf that
+roars. Looks are interchanged on hearing it; and
+thought recurs to the absent, if not to the dead.</p>
+
+<p>Ropars, on this occasion, dwelt mainly on those
+about him; and in truth, no one could have better
+right than he to be ill at ease. Thrown in former days
+upon a station where the yellow fever was epidemic,
+he had seen the seamen of the fleet decimated around
+him, and had himself barely escaped, as if by miracle.
+The remembrance of that butchery, as he termed it,
+was too vivid, and he had too often described it to Geneviève,
+for their firmness not now to be shaken.
+They troubled not themselves on their own account,
+but on account of those whose existence was so dear to
+them. Mathieu's first thought was of his wife and of his
+children; the first impulse of Geneviève was to fold them
+in her arms, and to declare that they must all go away.
+Some trouble had the old sailor in making her comprehend
+that, even if retreating were not dishonorable
+for him, it had become impossible. The long-boat
+had made sail for the frigate, and the yellow flag was
+hoisted at the lazaretto. Quarantine had begun for
+all who happened to be at Trébéron. Not a soul
+could henceforth pass beyond its limits: and Ropars
+pointed out to Geneviève the gun-boat sent by the
+health officer, which had been brought to bear at half
+cable's-length distance from the island, and cut off<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>
+from it all intercourse by boats. They were in fact
+definitively penned in with the epidemic, and condemned
+to run its risk to the end.</p>
+
+<p>But the agitation of Mathieu, in which surprise had
+worked its part, did not last long. The quarter-master
+soon regained his original strength of mind, which
+had been slightly unhinged in the tendernesses of his
+domestic life; and, regardless of his own previous
+words, he set himself seriously to soothing the terror of
+Geneviève by underrating the danger that they incurred.
+After all, they were not here in a state of things
+that favoured the disease; they had not to contend
+against the enervating sun of the Havannah or Brazil;
+this was not one of those awful contagions that spread
+from house to house like a fire, leaving behind it the
+dead alone&mdash;it was a disorder partly spent, and from
+which, with certain precautions, escape was easy.
+The chief and the most indispensable of these precautions
+was to avoid going near the apartments occupied
+by those who had been brought into quarantine,
+and never to stay to leeward of the lazaretto. Josèphe
+and Francine were at once informed of this. Geneviève
+explained to them every thing that they were
+to do, with a minuteness of detail, that savoured alternately
+of threatening and of endearment. At first,
+as the punishment for any failure of obedience, she
+pointed out to them the disease, or even death itself;
+then seeing them turn pale with fear, she drew them
+within her caressing arms and re-assured them by
+her kisses. Mathieu added to her exhortations some<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>thing
+more definite and more secure. Next morning,
+he marked out a space enclosed with stakes joined together
+by a cord, as the children's permitted bounds.
+By way of increased precaution, the goat herself was
+brought within this enclosure, picketted to a stake, and
+fed upon winter fodder. The keeper, on his part, held
+aloof from habitual intercourse with the infirmary-men
+and the doctors of the lazaretto. He would even have
+been ignorant of the fate of those who were in quarantine
+if, every evening, the descent of a few men towards
+the sandy shore of the little isle, and the tinkling
+of a bell that warned him to stand out of their
+way, had not made it obvious that their errand was to
+dig a grave. The vacancies, besides, were rapidly
+filled by fresh invalids brought on shore by the frigate's
+long-boat, for the epidemic did not seem as yet
+to decrease or to relax its severity. No convalescent
+inmate had yet appeared upon the terrace of the lazaretto.
+The skiff belonging to the gun-boat, that enforced
+the sanitary regulations, came near the landing place
+every morning; but no one landed. Provisions and
+medicines were put ashore by means of a travelling
+pass-rope, set up in the creek; the Surgeon's report
+was received at the end of a boat-hook; and then the
+skiff sailed away in an apparent hurry, that bespoke
+the fear of contagion.</p>
+
+<p>However, after the first few days were past, Ropars
+and Geneviève felt somewhat re-assured. The blows
+that death dealt around them were mute and hidden;
+the edge of inquietude became insensibly blunted.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>
+Seeing that it was possible to live in contact with the
+formidable malady, they half forgot, both of them,
+that is was also possible to die. It was with them as
+with the inhabitants of a besieged city, who no longer
+tremble at the roar of cannon. In vain did the bell
+tinkle every evening, and the long-boat bring ashore
+every morning a fresh batch of the death-stricken; the
+continuance of the danger made it seem to be a matter
+of course, and this feeling soon merged into a sense
+of security. Once in a while even, Geneviève forgot
+every thing and recommenced her singing; but abruptly
+it was suspended at sight of the yellow flag, or as a
+sudden recollection crossed her mind. Then the song
+was stifled into a sigh.</p>
+
+<p>Ropars had made inquiries for Monsieur Gabriel,
+on the first arrival of the sick. The epidemic had
+not then attacked him; but his own breaking off from
+all intercourse with the hospital-mates, and with the
+crew, had prevented his seeking further information.
+Several boat-loads had been brought ashore, without
+any opportunity for his hearing of the Lieutenant,
+when he received a note, cut through with scissors and
+steeped in vinegar. It contained only these few
+words, written in pencil:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"I am come here.... If I live, we shall meet....
+If I die ... present this letter to the captain of the
+<i>Thetis</i> ... and claim for Josèphe ... my large mahogany
+chest.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="smcap">Gabriel</span>."<br />
+</p></blockquote><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The writing, scarcely legible, betrayed a hand that
+shook with fever. Mathieu, grievously taken by surprise,
+forgot this time all his precautions, and ran to
+the lazaretto. But the Surgeon would not let him
+see the Lieutenant, whose condition seemed to give
+him grave concern. In the evening it was still worse,
+and left little room for hope; on the following day
+there was none at all.</p>
+
+<p>Josèphe, from whom they had concealed the name
+of the frigate that was ravaged by the epidemic, had
+no suspicion of the danger of her friend; still, her sister
+and herself had none the less lost all their gaiety.
+Prisoners within the narrow bounds marked out by
+their father, they were both moodily seated near the
+stake to which the goat was picketted; and she, lying
+down at their feet, seemed to disdain the fodder that
+was scattered before her. Josèphe, holding Francine
+propped against her, proposed to her, one after
+another, all the little games to which they were accustomed;
+but the child shook her head, her eyes
+fixed upon the sea.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"What will you do, then, Zine?" asked she, saddened
+by her sister's sadness.</p>
+
+<p>There was no reply. The elder had one hand upon
+the younger's head, and played for an instant with
+the ringlets of her golden hair.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"You're longing to go across there to see Michael?
+isn't that it?" she resumed, bending down over
+the little one; "but it's too late; the cherry-tree has
+shed its blossoms."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Then you believe that the cherries are already
+ripe?" interrupted Francine, turning up to Josèphe
+her face that listlessness had robbed of a portion of
+its roses, but with her large eyes full of curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"I don't know," said the elder "mother will
+tell us. But let's think about something else; you
+know that we cannot go to the powder-magazine."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"No, nor to the end of the island, nor any where,"
+added Francine, letting herself sink down again upon
+Josèphe's knees.</p>
+
+<p>The latter, bent at all events on amusing the child,
+then called her attention to the goat, that had just got
+up. Starting suddenly from her doze, <i>Brunette</i> was
+describing round her stake a series of such droll evolutions,
+that the child's sadness could not hold out against
+them, and she soon broke out into a laugh. Josèphe,
+who at first had chimed in with her merriment, was
+afraid that the mutinous creature's gambols would end
+by her breaking the cord; she put her hand out to prevent
+it.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Let her be, let her be!" cried Francine in high
+glee; "look how she rears up! see how she dances!
+Well done, <i>Brunette</i>; higher, little one, higher!"</p>
+
+<p>The child, kneeling down upon the sand, clapped
+her hands, with shouts of delight; and the goat, that
+seemed excited by her voice and by the noise, redoubled
+its capricious boundings. All at once, the
+stake, loosened by such continued tuggings, was drawn
+out of the ground: the animal jumped to one side;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>
+and finding itself no longer held back, started off for
+the further extremity of the island.</p>
+
+<p>The two sisters gave utterance to a cry, and then,
+from an irresistable impulse, sprang away together in
+pursuit. The corded limits were passed, and they
+were soon led off along the declivities, calling to <i>Brunette</i>,
+who according to her old tricks would wait,
+bleating, for them, and then caper away at their approach.
+In the eagerness of their chase they thus
+reached the summit of the island, followed the slopes
+that went down to the sea, and finally arrived at the
+foot of the ravine that was farthest removed from their
+dwelling. It was there only that Josèphe bethought
+her of their disobedience. She stopped, out of breath,
+and held back her sister with her arms.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Not a step further, Zine!" cried she; "we
+ought not to have come so far; mother forbid it."</p>
+
+<p>The little one looked round about her, and remarked
+in turn the spot in which they were. It was a large
+fissure hollowed out in the stony soil of the island, and,
+at the bottom of which broad ferns and flowering
+brooms had sprung up in tufts. Right and left,
+through the partition-walls of rock, peeped up the
+stone-break, and the sea turf with its purple cats-tails,
+and the fox glove that thrust its long stalk from the
+crevices, loaded with rose-coloured bell flowers.</p>
+
+<p>At such a sight, Francine could not restrain a cry
+of admiration. Here was the first verdure, here were
+the first flowers she had seen, since strict orders had
+confined her to the barren platform occupied by the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>
+keeper's house. Neither could she resist the temptation;
+slipping away from the hands of her sister, and
+unwilling to hear a word, she disappeared in the thickest
+of the flowering tufts.</p>
+
+<p>Having vainly called to her, Josèphe followed to
+bring her back; but the child went on from shrub to
+shrub, without any inclination to stop. At every fresh
+handful of gathered flowers, uselessly did Josèphe cry,
+"enough!" "More, more!" was Francine's answer,
+as she piled up within her apron, upheld by the two
+corners, all on which she could lay her hands. Want
+of place alone could make her consent to suspend her
+harvesting. Loaded with herbs and wild flowers, falling
+in garlands down to her very feet, she at length
+was disposed to take hold again of Josèphe's hand,
+who set to work to find their way back, and cautiously
+removed the prickly-broom from their path.</p>
+
+<p>The children were on the point of reaching a ridge
+made up of heath and broom, when the warning bell
+was heard above their heads. They stopped, and raised
+their eyes. Four of the infirmary-men were coming
+down towards the ravine, bearing their funereal burden.
+They were following the only foot-path practicable on
+the slope, and the little girls could not proceed on their
+way, without meeting them. Terrified, they drew back
+amongst the bushes that still concealed them, and
+paused, leaning one against the other. The bell tinkled
+by fits and starts, drawing nearer at every sound. At
+length they could distinguish the heavy footstep of the
+bearers ringing upon the rock, and could see their dark<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>ening
+outlines marked out in the twilight. They were
+advancing precisely to the little oasis wherein the children
+had taken refuge. Arrived at the entrance, they
+seemed to consult together for an instant; then resumed
+their way through the thorny tufts, rounded the
+mass of rock behind which the sisters had crouched,
+and stopped, with the words, "Here it is."</p>
+
+<p>Francine, in dire alarm, had hidden her head upon
+Josèphe's knees; she, less timid, gently put aside the
+branches, and could then see a grave already dug in a
+gravelly portion of the soil. The infirmary-men had
+laid down the corpse upon the ground, wrapped-up in
+a coarse linen cloth. Then they took a sack, hidden
+under a projecting bit of rock, and emptied its contents
+into the grave. The white dust, that rose up
+from it as a cloud, was wafted to the children in a
+sour odour of lime. This was carefully spread over
+the bottom of the hole, so as to form a bed for the dead
+body, and was then sprinkled with water drawn from
+the sea. These preparatory measures had all been taken
+in gloomy silence. Nought was heard but the scraping
+of the spade upon the rocky soil, and the monotonous
+bubbling of the tiny waves that rippled with the evening
+breeze upon the shore. Josèphe, her neck out-stretched,
+her large eyes dilated, and with a painful
+sense of tightening at her heart-strings, continued on
+the watch.</p>
+
+<p>At this moment, two of the bearers took up the body,
+and brought it close to the hole dug for its reception.
+They were separated from the children only by a tuft<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>
+of bushes. As they lightly grazed it with their burden,
+a gust of wind unrolled one of the corners of the
+covering cloth; a livid head was visible by the last
+glimmering of light; and Josèphe uttered a stifled
+cry. The fall of the body into the pit prevented her
+being heard; but the moment's glance had sufficed&mdash;the
+child thought she recognized the face of Monsieur
+Gabriel. She threw herself back, in inexpressible
+horror. It was the first time that death had come
+before her eyes, and it appeared to her in a guise that
+filled her with grief and terror. Clinging to Francine,
+she began to tremble in every limb. The noise
+of the earth and flint-stones, that were shovelled into
+the grave, held her as one petrified. It was only
+when the four grave-diggers had left the ravine and
+disappeared in the pathway, that her agony found vent.
+Francine raised her head and asked what had happened;
+but receiving no reply, threw herself into Josèphe's
+arms, and began in turn to sob.</p>
+
+<p>The distress of her little sister seemed to counteract
+that of Josèphe, who forced herself to stifle her
+own anguish, and began embracing and consoling
+Francine.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Don't cry" stammered she, choking in spite of
+herself; "you mustn't be afraid, ... you mustn't
+cry...."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"What is the matter with you, Josey; what is
+it?" inquired the little one again, holding her sister's
+head between her own two hands, and kissing her
+moistened cheeks.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"It's ... nothing, ... "returned Josèphe, her
+accent belying her words, ... "I was taken by surprise...."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Have the men gone?" asked Francine, looking
+with frightened glance towards the grave.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"You see they have," answered Josèphe shuddering.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"What did they come here to do? They were
+carrying something. It was a dead body, wasn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>Her sister put her hand upon her lips.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Don't talk of that, Zine!" murmured she, her
+sobs again overpowering her.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"You saw it?" asked the child, frightened, yet
+curious.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Yes, O God!" faltered forth her sister in reply;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">"... and ... I knew it again ... it was Monsieur</span><br />
+Gabriel!"</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Your good friend, Josey?" cried Francine;
+"are you sure? And he's there ... there, under the
+ground? ... Oh! let's go, let's go; I'm afraid ... I'm
+afraid!"</p>
+
+<p>And again she threw herself into her sister's arms,
+who exerted herself to the utmost to re-assure her,
+and at the same time to control her own tears.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"There, stop, Zine!" said she, with broken voice;
+"... we must be calm ... we must dry up our eyes ...
+or mother will be uneasy." Then raising herself suddenly,
+"Hark," she added, "I fancied I heard some
+one calling us; quick, quick, let's go up!"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>With these words the two little maidens rose from
+the ground; quitting the ravine, they hastily regained
+the platform, trembling and out of breath when they
+reached it.</p>
+
+<p>Geneviève was waiting there for them; but it was
+already dark, and this prevented her noticing their
+trouble. She took them by the hand, to lead them in,
+and made them repeat their joint prayers; both went
+to bed, without speaking of the adventure at the ravine.</p>
+
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+
+<p>Josèphe slept badly; and the next morning, when
+she got up, was pale and drooping. Geneviève, who
+did not fail to notice it, questioned her with nervous
+solicitude; but the child answered that nothing was
+the matter. Only, at every inquiry, her eyes filled
+with tears, and her voice trembled. Thus languidly
+for her did the day wear away. In the evening she
+was still more depressed, but still not suffering pain.
+She passed a restless night; and on the following
+morning Ropars went for the Surgeon of the lazaretto.
+He examined the child, and put several questions that
+darkened the brow of Mathieu. Geneviève, whose
+looks went direct from the Surgeon to her husband,
+perceived this; and she felt a blow stricken upon her
+heart. At the moment when the two crossed the
+thresh-hold, she followed, shut the door abruptly, and
+stopped them.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"It is the ... disease, ... is it not?" she asked
+in anguish. She had not dared to name the yellow
+fever; the Surgeon seemed to hesitate in his reply.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Ah! I'm certain of it," she exclaimed, confirmed
+by this very hesitation; "so, our precautions have all
+been useless! The blow has come, and all is over!"</p>
+
+<p>She could not avoid sinking down upon the stone
+bench, placed beside the door; and she covered her
+face with her apron. The Surgeon taxed himself to
+console her with vague assurances; but it was evident
+that he himself had no longer confidence in his efforts.
+Overcome by the implacable power of the contagion,
+he persevered in struggling against it, without hope
+and from a sense of duty, as soldiers, for the honour of
+their flag, defend silently a post that has been abandoned.
+So, perceiving that his words, far from soothing
+the grief of Geneviève, did but redouble it, he turned
+towards the keeper, and, having briefly repeated to
+him some directions already given for the child, he went
+his way.</p>
+
+<p>Ropars remained some moments on one spot, with
+his arms crossed and his head upon his breast; but a
+still deeper groan from Geneviève caused him to raise
+his eyes. He took her hand.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"It isn't time for despair yet," said he, with
+gentle firmness; "when God shall have decided against
+us, your whole life-time will be left for grief. At
+present, let us devote ourselves to our duty, and follow
+strictly the injunctions of the doctor."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"And he has told us nothing at all!" said the
+mother, who at heart felt half-incensed against the
+Surgeon, for not having more vigorously combatted
+her fears; "he has not given us any hope!"</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"God is the master," replied Mathieu, in all simplicity,
+"and so long as he has not declared his pleasure,
+we may believe that all will work well; but if
+the darling creature must be taken from our hands,
+let us at least to the last moment show him, how keen
+is our desire to keep her."</p>
+
+<p>Hereupon the feverish voice of the child reached
+their ears.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Hark, she's calling me!" cried Geneviève, rising
+in urgent haste to go in. Ropars stopped her.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Dry your eyes first," said he, passing his own
+hand with fond compassion over the poor mother's
+moistened eyelids; "Josèphe mustn't think that you
+are anxious. Don't you know that her life may depend
+on this?"</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Yes, yes," she answered, "fear not, Mathieu,
+I will not cry any more;" and she forcibly restrained
+the tears that were filling her eyes afresh... "Look,
+no one would notice it now... And the doctors, besides,
+may be mistaken, mayn't they?... And after
+all, God will have pity on us."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"We must hope so," replied the keeper, much
+moved; "but if it is his part to have pity, it is ours
+to show resignation. Bear up, then, good heart; go
+to the child with a smile; it will do her good; and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>
+first of all ... kiss me ... that we may keep up each
+other's resolution."</p>
+
+<p>Josèphe's mother threw her arms around her husband's
+neck, and gave way to a new flood of tears.
+But she checked them at the sound of the sick one's
+voice calling her for the second time, and, by a supreme
+effort thrusting down her despair into the very
+depths of her heart, she rushed into the house with
+calm brow and a smile upon her lips.</p>
+
+<p>Josèphe, nevertheless, grew rapidly worse. In the
+evening the fever was doubly hot upon her. One after
+another, she spoke of sister Francine, of Michael, of
+the cherry-tree in blossom, and of her good friend
+Monsieur Gabriel. At one moment she fancied that
+she heard the last-named; she called him; she wished
+to know if he had brought her the promised presents.
+At another time, the scene in the ravine appeared to
+be vividly in her recollection; she cried out that Monsieur
+Gabriel was dead; and she heard the earth
+grating over him in the pit. The Surgeon came to see
+her repeatedly, and multiplied his prescriptions, without
+power to arrest the onward march of the disease.
+That night was an awful one for the hapless mother;
+she kept her child clasped in her arms, the little one's
+mind wandering more and more. At sunrise the turbulent
+delirium was over, to give place to the torpor
+that precedes death. At length, towards the middle
+of the day, Josèphe opened her eyes, and uttered one
+sigh&mdash;it was the last.</p>
+
+<p>The blow had been so decidedly expected, that the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>
+despair of Ropars and of Geneviève could scarcely be
+violent. The bitterness of their loss had, so to say,
+preceded it; both had tasted it, drop by drop, during
+the protracted agony. And yet the mother's calmness
+had in it a something haggard, that would have startled
+a looker-on less troubled than Mathieu himself.
+Bent upon rendering the last offices to her daughter,
+she was long occupied in combing out her beautiful
+black hair; she dressed the body in her best clothes,
+and laid it out with the hands crossed over the breast,
+as Josèphe had been used to carry them when asleep.
+All this was done slowly, tranquilly, with a sort of
+complacency even, and often intermingled with kisses.
+It was but at intervals that a tear trickled over her
+cheeks, that were marbled with glowing spots; it was
+but a slight trembling that shook the hand, as it performed
+its sorrowful duty. At length, when she who
+had brought this child into the world, and who had
+nourished it with her milk and with her affection, had
+herself sewed it up in its shroud, she went to the window,
+broke the stalk of a gilly-flower&mdash;the only one
+that the sea-winds had spared&mdash;pulled off its leaves,
+and scattered them over the winding sheet.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime, night had fallen. Deposited at
+the head of the darkened alcove, the dead form might
+indistinctly be traced through its covering of linen, as
+though it were sketched in marble. Higher up hung a
+Christ, in ivory, the head bent forward, and the arms
+extended. Geneviève knelt down near the bed, and
+remained there for a long time, with her head leaning<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>
+upon her joined hands. Half-aloud she murmured a
+prayer; but whilst her lips repeated faithfully every
+word, their meaning was not taken in by her mind.
+When she had finished it, she raised herself up
+mechanically, and looked about her; her brain was a
+gloomy chaos. Putting up both hands to her forehead,
+she pressed it, with a stifled cry, as though she
+sought to stay that whirlwind of confused and lacerating
+thoughts. There was, for some few moments, a
+struggle between her will and her despair; finally the
+former gained the ascendant; she stepped towards the
+door and opened it.</p>
+
+<p>Her husband had taken refuge on the platform with
+Francine, to remove her from the harrowing sight of
+placing the body in its shroud. Geneviève could see
+him standing near the parapet; the little girl was at his
+feet, with her head resting on his knees. Since the
+death of her sister, she had not spoken a word. Fixed
+in one place, with eyes dilated and lips compressed, she
+seemed to be endeavouring to comprehend what had occurred.
+Her two small hands hung down inactive, and
+her naked feet appeared to be glued to the ground.
+Seeing her thus, under the early rays of the moon that
+were playing in her light-coloured tresses, Geneviève
+was, as it were, brought back to herself. A flash passed
+across the blankness of her expression; her nostrils
+dilated; a flood of tears gushed from her eyes. Springing
+towards the child, she seized it in her arms with a
+sort of doleful passionateness, to which Francine at
+once and amply responded, by an outburst of sobs and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>
+caresses. For a long time there was nothing but an
+interchange of broken appeals and unfinished phrases.
+The little girl would go on asking for her sister, while
+the mother, whose despair was revived by such demands,
+compelled herself to smother them beneath her
+kisses. At last, her strength exhausted, she let her
+arms, that upheld Francine, drop down, and felt that
+she was gently withdrawn from her. It was Mathieu,
+who placed the child upon the ground. He then led
+the mother a little further apart, and obliged her to sit
+down upon the stone-bench, leaning her back against
+the parapet. She tried to raise herself up, as she
+stretched out her hands.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"My child!" she stammered through her sobbings;
+"I want my child!"</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"In good time thou shalt see her," said Ropars,
+who according to the custom of the Bretagne peasantry
+only <i>thee'd</i> and <i>thou'd</i> Geneviève, when under the influence
+of strong emotion; "but first thou must listen with
+all attention, for what I have to tell thee is of the
+deepest consequence."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Ah! I would, I would!" was her reply, putting
+both hands up to her head; "but don't be hurt, Mathieu,
+if it be impossible. I hear yonder, look you,
+something that hushes up all the rest; it is her death-rattle,
+my good man!... And ... do you know?...
+I like the anguish that it causes me, to hear it;
+I can fancy that there still is breath in her. Oh! Jesus!
+who would have told me, that I should yearn
+after the dying breath of my child?" Ropars laid a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>
+hand upon the head of the miserable woman, whose
+sobbings had recommenced.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Be soothed at heart," he said to her with touching
+firmness; "the good God wills that we should submit,
+and not thus give way. The dead one is now in her
+Paradise, where she has no more need of us; but
+she leaves behind her a sister, whose life is in our
+charge."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"How do you mean?" asked Geneviève, raising
+towards him her eyes, in which alarm had arrested the
+tears.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Don't you understand?" returned the keeper,
+lowering his voice; "the breath of the disease is like
+the sea-wind; it spares no one; and it may send, at
+any instant, the living to rejoin the dead."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Heavenly Saviour! is this a warning?" demanded
+Geneviève, clasping her hands. "Must this child
+too, be struck down?... Have you remarked any
+thing?... Ah! tell the truth, Mathieu, tell it at
+once; I would rather be killed at one blow."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"So far, the child suffers from nothing but her
+distress," rejoined Ropars; "but if she remains in this
+deadly air, who can guarantee us that she will escape?"</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Evil upon us!" cried Geneviève, raising her joined
+hands over her head; "why did you remind me of it,
+Mathieu? I did not wish to think of it; and now I
+shall see her dying, every hour. God forgive you for
+thus turning the blade that is within my heart!"</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"If I touch it, it is but to withdraw it," was the
+quarter-master's answer. "It won't do now to shut<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>
+one's eyes and let the squall overtake us; we must work
+ship with all our might for the little one's safety....
+If she remains on the island, you have too many chances
+of sewing up her winding-sheet, Geneviève; she
+must leave it forthwith."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"But how?"</p>
+
+<p>Ropars threw his eyes around him, to satisfy himself
+that he was not overheard.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"There is a way," he replied cautiously.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"The powder-magazine skiff?"</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"No!"</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"The gun-boat?"</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"She's there, you know, to keep guard over the
+island."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"But who then can help us?"</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"The tide."</p>
+
+<p>Geneviève looked at her husband, but without understanding
+what he meant.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"It is now high-water," continued Mathieu; "in
+less than an hour the sea will have gone down enough
+to leave only four feet of water upon the line of reefs
+that runs from Trébéron to the Ile des Morts. With
+courage, and by the help of God, the passage may be
+tried. I am going to carry the child over to Dorot."</p>
+
+<p>And as the mother could not restrain a cry of terror;&mdash;"Speak
+lower, unhappy one!" he added vehemently;
+"are you desirous of betraying me? Except the
+Superintendent of the powder-magazine and myself, no
+one knows the way. We have often passed along it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>
+when we were fishing together, and always passed it
+safely."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"But not at night," interrupted Geneviève; "not
+burdened with a child."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"The child weighs scarcely anything, and the
+moon is full," replied Ropars somewhat impatiently.
+"Besides, I have been thinking of it all the evening;
+and there is no other means. My mind is made up,
+and I shall do what must be done, happen what may.
+Your remarks may lessen my confidence, but cannot
+hold me back. Try rather, then, to brace up my
+nerves, as is the duty of a brave wife, and to prepare
+the child to go. When the outer point of the high
+rock is bare, it will be time for me to make the attempt,
+and for you to pray God that he may open us a way of
+safety in the sea."</p>
+
+<p>The quarter-master's tone was so determined, that
+Geneviève saw at once the uselessness of resistance.
+With little will of his own in the ordinary transactions
+of life, Mathieu rarely formed a resolution; but, once
+decided on, he maintained it immovably. Moreover,
+when the first shock was passed, his explanations and
+assurances somewhat tranquillized Francine's mother,
+and indeed half convinced her. There remained the
+child, whose opposition or fright was apprehended by
+Ropars. Geneviève went and raised her up from the
+ground, and the father and the mother seated her
+upon their knees, which they purposely placed close
+together.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"You want to see the cherry-tree in blossom,
+don't you?" said the former, embracing her.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Not any more, now," was the low-toned reply.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Nay, nay, it is just the time," added the poor
+mother with an effort; "over there, you will be more
+at liberty ... happier ... you'll have Michael for
+a play-fellow."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"No," said the child with changing voice, "I
+would rather stay with Josèphe."</p>
+
+<p>Geneviève clasped her hands and closed her eyes;
+speech failed her. It was Ropars' turn. Drawing
+Francine close up to his breast, and whispering in her
+ear,</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Listen," said he; "we are in trouble. You
+would not wish to make it worse, would you? You
+love us too well for that."</p>
+
+<p>In place of answer, the child threw both her arms
+about her father's neck, and pressed her little rosy
+cheek against the wrinkled cheek of the mariner.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Yes, yes, I was certain of it," continued Mathieu;
+"and you will do whatever we ask you?"</p>
+
+<p>Francine made an affirmative sign.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Well, then," Ropars went on, "you must go and
+pass a few days with Uncle Dorot; and as we have
+no boat, I am going to carry you over the passage.
+Won't you be quiet in the middle of the sea, when
+you have papa's shoulders for a skiff?"</p>
+
+<p>The child shuddered.&mdash;"I would rather stay," said
+she, in hurried accents.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"But that's impossible," rejoined the father; "I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>
+want to carry you to the powder-magazine. It must
+be so, and we are to set out directly. But if you are
+not brave, if you think of calling out, the way will be
+harder, and perhaps something serious may happen to
+me. Do you understand?"</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Yes ... yes ... I won't go," replied the
+little girl, beginning to tremble.</p>
+
+<p>Geneviève drew her once more into her arms.
+"Hush, hush!" said she, laying her lips upon Francine's
+hair, and rocking her upon her breast, "children
+ought to obey.... God has ordained it ... do
+what you are bidden ... for your papa, ... for me
+... for Josèphe.... If she could speak she would
+tell you to be good and obedient.... Would you
+make her sorrowful in Heaven?"</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Oh! no," cried the child, throwing herself again
+into Mathieu's arms.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Then you will come?" asked he.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Yes," murmured the little girl.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"And you won't be afraid; you won't say a
+word?"</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"No."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Let's be going then!" exclaimed the keeper, who
+had got up and was looking over the parapet. "The
+high rock is out of water; we mustn't wait any
+longer."</p>
+
+<p>He took Francine in his arms and went rapidly
+down one of the foot-paths leading to the shore of the
+islet. Geneviève followed, in inexpressible anguish.
+All three reached a rocky point that stretched far out<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>
+into the waters. It was the extremity of the line of
+reefs that connected the powder-magazine with Trébéron.
+Ropars placed the child on the ground, in
+order to take note of his direction. The passage,
+under the rays of the moon, was tinged with pale
+green, varied by small lines of white that were made
+by the light fringe of foam upon the waves. So gentle
+were their undulations, that one might have fancied a
+field of green wheat chequered with white camomile
+flowers. Beyond, the Ile des Morts in all its breadth
+was illumined by the moonlight, with its yellowish
+buildings, its long slated roofs, and its lightning-rods,
+standing out against the sky. So calm was the night
+that the sentry's step was heard, as he paced up and
+down before the watch-box of granite, built at the
+corner of the esplanade. At the forked head of the
+two islands, and partially in shadow, lay the silent
+gun-boat, balancing at anchor.</p>
+
+<p>Ropars examined every thing with scrupulous attention.
+He pointed out to Geneviève the direction of
+the submarine causeway, indicated by a faint shadow
+on the surface of the water, as he threw aside his waistcoat
+and hat; then taking both of his wife's hands, who
+looked at him with haggard eyes,&mdash;"the time is come,
+Geneviève," said he; "kiss me, and pray the good God
+to be with us."</p>
+
+<p>The poor woman responded at first to his embrace,
+without power to utter a word; but when she felt that
+he had disengaged himself and was returning towards
+the child, a cry escaped her; she was not mistress of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>
+herself. She forgot all that Mathieu had said to her,
+all that she herself had promised, and encircled him
+with her arms in all the desperation of terror.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"You shall not go," she stammered out, "you
+shall not go!... It is rushing on to death ... in
+the name of your marriage-vow, remain to be my succour,
+my companion!... Would you then leave me
+here alone with Josèphe?... Look, how broad the
+sea is, and how deep! You and Francine, you will
+be lost in it!... Ah! if it be God's will, let us all
+die here; but at least let us die together! Mathieu, I
+will not have you quit me; you shall not carry off my
+child; you shall not go!"</p>
+
+<p>Ropars endeavoured to calm her, and struggled to
+release himself from her hold; but she clung to him,
+and refused to hear a word. And as he recalled to her
+that she had, a minute before, induced Francine's
+consent,</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"I was wrong," she wildly interrupted him; "I
+will no longer have it so. If you leave me, I will follow;
+and you will be responsible before God for what
+may happen. Mathieu, do not tempt me! Mathieu,
+have pity on me!... What have I done to you, that
+you should thus go voluntarily to destruction? Do
+you no longer care for life with me?... Ah! if I
+have failed in my duty, be not angry with me, dear
+soul! If my too great anguish has offended you, forgive
+me! I will not cry any more; I will be every thing
+that you desire. Hold; look on me rather; forgive
+me; but say that you will stay."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She had sunk down upon her knees, and held Ropars'
+hands pressed firmly against her lips. He exerted
+himself to raise her up.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Enough, Geneviève," said he, in a tone wherein
+commiseration disputed with impatience; "I thought
+that you were braver.... This is not what you promised
+me. Think, think, unhappy woman, that the
+time is passing away!"</p>
+
+<p>Geneviève groaned, and recommenced the same
+entreaties. He cast an anxious look towards the sea,
+and saw that the farthest jags of the high rock were
+dry. Longer delay would increase the danger, and
+might render the passage impossible. Mathieu seized
+Geneviève sharply by the elbows, and raised her upon
+her feet, with her face opposite his own.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"On your salvation, listen!" said he, in accent so
+decided that she trembled at it; "this is the first time
+that I have reminded you that I am your master, and,
+if you be not wiser, it will perhaps be the last; but by
+the God who saved us, you shall obey, and that without
+further discussion! The child's life is to be preserved;
+nothing can stay me now. Remain there, I
+solemnly command you, and make not one step, nor
+utter one single cry, or, so surely as I am my mother's
+son, I will never forgive you, even until the day of
+Judgment!"</p>
+
+<p>At these words, he seated Geneviève, petrified by
+the shock, ran to his little daughter, whom he took
+upon his shoulders, and dashed with her into the
+waves.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When Geneviève turned round, at the noise made
+by his plunge into the water, Ropars was on the causeway
+of the submerged reefs, and the waves were rolling
+against his breast. She tried to get up; but her
+strength failed her, and she could but utter a feeble
+cry. Mathieu heard it and looked back. He could
+see through the moonlight the indistinct form of Geneviève
+who, half-lying down upon the rock, was wringing
+her joined hands as though towards him. He
+found his heart, which he had steeled by an effort of
+will, sinking within him in pity for her. Taking note
+of the waters, green and deep, whose abysses were opening
+around him, hearing over his head the breathings
+of the child who panted with terror, and thinking that
+the hapless creature from whom they had just parted
+violently might perchance never see them more, there
+came across him a feeling of commiseration so tender,
+that tears almost filled his eyes; he paused, in spite of
+himself, in the midst of the murmuring waves, turned
+his head backwards towards the shore, and called to
+her in a voice, restrained but full of gentleness&mdash;"Don't
+cry Geneviève; and God bless you! all will
+go well."</p>
+
+<p>Then, without waiting for an answer, which he feared
+might unman him, he went on his way, his eyes fixed
+upon the line along the water that marked the direction
+of the reef. Soon, however, he ceased to distinguish
+that particular appearance of the waves which
+rendered it easy to trace this line from the shore. Immersed
+in the sea, he no longer saw anything beyond<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>
+him, but a surface uniform and agitated, without any
+distinctive movement or colour. He was therefore
+compelled to shape his course direct for the rock on the
+Ile des Morts whereon the causeway abutted, and which
+with its pointed ridges was visible, far-away in the obscurity.</p>
+
+<p>Armed with a broken boat-hook, Mathieu sounded
+at each step that he took; but notwithstanding all his
+care, the difficulty of his course increased at every
+moment. The unevenness of the rocks exposed him
+to incessant stumbling. Lifted off his feet by the
+waves, half-stunned by the deep rumbling noise that
+was around him, groping along a path irregular and
+strange to him and bounded on either side by an abyss,
+he advanced with the greatest deliberation, his strong
+will controlling his impatience, and his whole soul
+rivetted upon his every movement. His fixed gaze
+sought to pierce the liquid veil of the waters; his hands
+glued to the boat-hook seemed to long to solder it to
+the reef; his feet, in an agony of search, seemed to
+force themselves to guess at their path, before they
+would select it. Thus he reached the middle of the
+passage, where he came into the neighbourhood of the
+gun-boat. All there was silent; nothing stirred. The
+cries of "Watch, Watch!" uttered at intervals by the
+look-out at each cat-head, had for some time ceased to
+be heard; their two shadows even were not perceptible,
+for they had long been immovable at their post.
+Certain that their look-out was altogether needless,
+the sailors on watch were without doubt asleep.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mathieu, who was afraid that they might awake, was
+anxious to avoid this danger by hurrying on; but
+at the very moment when he came within the shadow
+thrown, abaft the gun-boat, over the glittering waters,
+his footing of rock failed him by suddenly shelving
+downwards. Francine felt him sinking, as a vessel
+that founders, and the waves washed up over her hair.
+She could not restrain a piercing shriek.</p>
+
+<p>Her father, in extreme alarm, lowered her down against
+his breast, and pressed one hand upon her lips. But
+it was too late; the cry had undoubtedly been overheard,
+for a shadow immediately rose up, forward, and
+the noise of footsteps echoed along the deck. Ropars
+had but time to throw himself under the taffrail of the
+stationary vessel, and to grasp a boom, whereto he
+remained suspended.</p>
+
+<p>One of the sailors on watch came aft, and was immediately
+joined by his comrade.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"The devil take me, if I didn't hear a cry," said
+the former.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Pardieu! it half-woke me up," added the second.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"But I've looked about, and it's no use; I don't
+see any thing."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Nor I."</p>
+
+<p>The couple were leaning over the sea, which kept up
+its gentle murmurings, and on which only light undulations
+were visible, fringed with half-phosphorescent
+foam. The second man of the watch seemed all at once
+to be seized with inquietude, that caused his voice to
+tremble.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"I say, Morvan," he cautiously began, "those
+Roscanvel and Lanvoc barks haven't passed by, without
+leaving some christian soul under water here&mdash;don't
+you think so?"</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Why so?" asked Morvan.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Why so?" returned the sailor, who seemed half-afraid
+and half-ashamed; "why, parbleu! ... you
+know what they say ... I didn't invent it ... there
+are some people who tell you that shipwrecked men,
+dying in mortal sin, leave their souls upon the waves
+that drowned them: and that every year, on the day
+and at the exact time of the accident, they utter a cry
+of anguish, just by way of asking prayers for themselves."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"And you believe that, you, Lascar?" said Morvan
+with a laugh more blustering than assured.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"It isn't I," rejoined the sailor, "it's our mess-mates....
+But, none the less, the voice wasn't like any
+body else's; it was sharp and thin, as one might say
+that of a child."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Get out, nonsense!" interrupted the first seaman,
+evidently disquieted by his comrade's explanation;
+"you see there's nothing more to be heard, and there
+is nothing afloat but the moonlight, and the night-chill
+that will make us sneeze. It's well that we both kept
+our allowance of wine. Come on, let's go and drink
+it; that'll put your morality into trim again."</p>
+
+<p>The two sailors went off. After waiting a moment,
+Mathieu replaced the child on his shoulders, enjoined
+strict silence, at the same time cheering her up, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>
+let go the boom for the purpose of regaining the causeway;
+but he had lost the direction, and his feet encountered
+only empty space. Forced to swim with his
+precious burden, he hoped that a few fathoms' distance
+would bring him back to his pathway on the reefs; he
+had already gone beyond it. Fresh attempts were not
+more successful; and twenty times did he renew his
+search, finding only, at each, deep water.</p>
+
+<p>Frightened and panting for breath, he swam about
+without aim, endeavouring to touch ground, and no
+longer able to distinguish the Ile des Morts from Trébéron.
+After having long shifted his course, struggled
+against the tide in which every moment he plunged
+still deeper, been a thousand times brought back from
+despair to hope, and run the full length of his endurance
+and his courage, he felt at last that he was overcome.
+His respiration grew painful, his eyes were
+covered with a film; all things were to him but as a
+revolving chaos; his mind wandered. A moment more,
+and he and Francine had disappeared beneath the
+waters. The gun-boat, which he had wished to avoid,
+but which he could no longer perceive, was his sole
+means of safety. He summoned all his remaining
+strength to utter a cry for help; a surge, more powerful,
+stifled it on his lips. Half-fainting and having
+nothing left him but that instinctive self-defence which
+survives the will, he struggled still an instant, buffeted
+from wave to wave; then felt that he was going down.
+But all at once, he was arrested; his feet had fallen
+on to the reef; they were fastened on it, and steadied<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>
+themselves thereon; his body straightened up; the
+water that blinded him seemed to lower itself. He
+took breath and looked before him, and could see at
+the distance of a hundred steps the cleft rock of the
+Ile des Morts. A few minutes sufficed for reaching it.
+Touching the shore he fell down upon it, and called
+Francine with expiring voice. The child, terrified,
+could only reply by throwing herself upon his breast,
+where he held her for some time in his embrace. His
+first thought had been for her; his second carried him
+back to Geneviève who was expecting his return, to
+know that they were safe. Still tottering, he raised
+himself up, took his little daughter by the hand, and
+set himself to climbing the steep slope that led to the
+terrace.</p>
+
+<p>It was necessary to make the tour of the powder
+magazine, to avoid the sentinel placed at the angle
+which commanded the main roadside; and also, on
+reaching the magazine keeper's door, to knock gently,
+for fear of being heard from without. Dorot fortunately
+had the light sleep of old soldiers; he awoke at
+the first knocking, and appeared at the window.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Open the door!" said Mathieu to him in a low
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Ropars!" cried the sergeant, thunderstruck.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Lower! and be quick!" returned the seaman
+"our lives' safety is at stake."</p>
+
+<p>Dorot went down rapidly, drew back the bolt, and
+made them enter the house. Mathieu paused, when<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>
+across the thresh-hold, with the child pressed against
+his knees.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Heaven protect us! whence come you, Ropars?"
+inquired the sergeant.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"You see," replied the sailor, "we have come out
+of the sea, and we have crossed over it, to come hither."</p>
+
+<p>Dorot drew back, exclaiming, "Can it be? in God's
+name, what has happened, that you should thus expose
+your life?"</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"It has happened," rejoined Mathieu, "that Josèphe
+died this morning of the contagion! ... that"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"What's that you say?"</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"'Tis just so, Dorot; and as Geneviève and I were
+anxious to save the other one, I have brought her to
+you."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"And Heaven reward you for the thought!" said
+the sergeant; "the child is dearly welcome."</p>
+
+<p>He had offered his hand to Mathieu; but the latter
+did not take it.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Think well what it is I am asking you," said
+he; "perhaps the child may be bringing here disease
+and desolation upon you!"</p>
+
+<p>"I hope there will be nothing of the kind," returned
+Dorot; "but God's will be done!"</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Bear in mind also," continued the quarter-master,
+insisting, "that if the thing gets wind, you run a
+risk of punishment for having violated the quarantine."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Then the will of man be done!" was the sergeant's
+simple observation.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"But still think."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Of nothing further, Ropars," interrupted the
+sergeant; "there! enough said&mdash;too much. No words
+about the matter; you have brought me the little one;
+I accept her."</p>
+
+<p>He had stooped down to Francine, whom he then
+took up in his arms, and with her remounted to the
+small chamber formerly occupied by Geneviève. He,
+himself, stripped off from the child her dripping clothes,
+and put her to sleep in an old cot of Michael's.</p>
+
+<p>The father, who had followed them, remained at the
+door with his arms hanging down at his side, the very
+picture of gratitude deeply felt, but unable to vent itself
+in words. Only, when Dorot turned round towards
+him, he seized one of his hands and held it silently
+grasped. Dorot, who desired to avoid a scene, began
+at once to talk of the means of concealing the little
+girl's change of abode. It was sufficient that her absence
+from Trébéron would not be remarked; as for
+her being at the Ile des Morts, it could not give rise
+to any suspicion, since the guard of artillery that did
+duty at the magazine, and that might have been surprised
+at this increase in the keeper's family, was to
+be changed on the following day. Ropars arranged
+certain signals for transmitting mutually the news between
+the neighbour islands. These were to be renewed
+several times a day, and thus relieve them
+at least from the anguish of uncertainty. At length,
+when all had been agreed upon, Mathieu drew near
+the window and looked out. The breeze had freshened,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>
+the sky appeared less starry, and a transparent vapour
+was beginning to creep over the sea.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"It is time to start," said he, returning towards
+the sergeant; "may God pay you for what you do,
+Dorot! As for Geneviève and myself, we shall remain
+your debtors to all eternity."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"We'll talk of that, by and by," replied the keeper;
+"just now, the main thing, and that which troubles
+me, is the passage over."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Don't be uneasy about that," answered Ropars;
+"now that the child is in safety, I shall cross the channel
+just as easily as one goes to church. The limbs are
+firm when the heart doesn't tremble. But I wish I
+were already on the other side; I've stayed here too
+long for Geneviève, who is looking for me."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Away, then! if it must be," cried the sergeant;
+"but for God's sake, Ropars, be careful, and don't
+forget that you have two lives to save with your own."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"I'll do all that a man can do," returned the quarter-master;
+"and believe me, cousin, I've no desire
+to die this night!... But too much talk; the time
+is slipping away; I mustn't wait for the change of tide."</p>
+
+<p>He went up to Francine's cot, to take leave of her;
+but the child, wearied out by so many emotions, had
+dropped off to sleep. One of her arms was doubled
+beneath her head, and lost in the loosened tresses of
+her golden hair; the other, folded on her breast,
+pressed to it a little relic formerly given to Geneviève
+who, in her superstitious motherly devotedness, had
+deprived herself of it that it might be a safe-guard for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>
+her child. Although her breathing was equal and
+easy, still was it broken at intervals by a long drawn
+sigh; whilst her cheeks, that in her sleep were beginning
+to re-assume their rosy tint, still showed some
+traces of tears. Mathieu looked at her for some moments
+in touching silence; then bending himself slowly
+down, imprinted a light kiss upon Francine's tiny hand,
+then one upon her hair, then one upon her cheek.
+Without opening her eyes, the child made a gesture
+of annoyance; he stood up.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Yes, yes, there, sleep, poor creature of a merciful
+God!" he half-muttered; "I will not wake you."</p>
+
+<p>Once more he seemed to enwrap her in a look overflowing
+with tenderness; then returned to Dorot, and
+took his hand.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"I bequeath her to you, cousin," said he, moved
+in the extreme; "no one knows what may happen.
+Only ... I can trust in your kindly heart, and if ever
+the child should become an orphan...."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Now God preserve her from it!" the sergeant
+took him up; "but if such misfortune should occur to
+her, Mathieu, you know well that she would become
+Michael's sister."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Thanks!" abruptly broke in the seaman; "that's
+exactly what I was longing to hear.... And now I
+set out calmly. I am prepared for every thing."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"But you shan't set out thus, shivering and pulled
+down," objected the sergeant; "you must take something
+to cheer up your spirits."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Nothing," said Ropars, eagerly; "you have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>
+given me all that can give me strength, in giving me
+the assurance that the child will not remain unaided.
+Providence will do the rest. Your hand! and good-bye
+till we meet&mdash;here, or elsewhere!"</p>
+
+<p>They heartily embraced; then Mathieu went down
+to the shore, and committed himself again to the waters.
+Although the tide had begun to rise, the passage was
+effected without overmuch danger. He reached, unharmed,
+the high rock of Trébéron which the floodtide
+had already encroached upon, and he ran to the
+place where he had left Geneviève. She was there no
+longer.</p>
+
+<p>Astonished that she should not have awaited his return,
+he rapidly mounted the foot-path, reached his
+door, and called aloud. There was no reply. The
+darkness did not allow him to distinguish any thing.
+He groped his way to the hearth, and threw around
+him the trembling light of a lamp hurriedly lighted.
+Attracted to the alcove, his glance soon made out, beside
+the white form of the dead sewed up in its shroud,
+the outline of another and a larger form, extended
+without moving. Mathieu approached in agony. It
+was Geneviève in a swoon.</p>
+
+
+<h3>IV.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Thanks to the Surgeon's skill, Ropars' wife at length
+regained her senses; but it was to fall into convulsive
+spasms, followed by the annihilation of all her faculties.
+The whole day passed without her shaking off the tor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>por
+that belonged at once to sleep and to death. One
+might have said that so many shocks had snapped asunder
+her existence, and that the quiverings of life, still
+flitting across her state of languor, were but the movements
+of a machine on the point of stopping. However,
+towards evening, the fever declared itself. The
+patient passed insensibly from lethargy to delirious
+agitation; she did but recognize Mathieu at intervals;
+and falling back, with her senses, upon her sorrows,
+she soon fell again into wandering.</p>
+
+<p>None of these symptoms seemed to belong to the
+malady that ravaged the lazaretto; and the Surgeon,
+disconcerted, let Mathieu divine his inability to make
+it out. Accustomed to the coarse medicines required
+by the robust patients of our ships, he was perforce a
+stranger, as are all like him, to the ailments of more
+delicate natures. Thus did he stand baffled before this
+woman, dying of a disorder such as he vainly sought
+to trace in his experiences. He could not conceal his
+doubts, and his need of more enlightened advice.
+Science, to which these mysterious and redoubtable
+symptoms were familiarized, might find there an index,
+where he perceived only confusion, and point out a
+remedy, which he dared but essay at hap-hazard.</p>
+
+<p>This avowal, wrung from his loyal truth, was for
+Mathieu a new source of torture. Shut up within
+prescribed limits which forbid strangers to approach
+Trébéron, he could not invoke that experience to which
+Geneviève might perchance owe her safety. In vain
+did he see, at his feet, boats for transporting him across<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>
+the sea, and on the horizon a town whence aid might
+be brought to him; an obstacle invincible and insurmountable
+linked him to his source of trouble.</p>
+
+<p>Two whole days passed away for him, as one long
+agony, in alternations of mute dejection and of furious
+despair. After sitting for several hours at the bedside
+of the dying woman, when he saw the fever that had
+been lulled for an instant now returning with increased
+force, he ran down to the edge of the reefs, gazed upon
+the waters in the midst of which he found himself imprisoned,
+upon the armed vessel that guarded the passage,
+upon the ravines of the island dotted with graves recently
+dug, and pressing his closed fists against his forehead
+he cursed the day on which he had accepted this voluntary
+imprisonment. Angrily did he call God to account
+for the blows with which he was stricken; then, restored
+to his religious faith, he joined his hands, and
+with tears besought the Almighty to spare Geneviève.</p>
+
+<p>Towards the morning of the third day, he had cause
+for believing that his prayers had been heard. The
+fever abated, and the patient recovered all her clearness
+of mind. But this change did not induce her to
+share the delight or the hopes of Mathieu.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Never believe that this is a cure, dear soul,"
+said she in tones scarcely audible, and alternating
+every phrase with periods of silence; "the disease is
+going ... but it carries all with it.... That evening,
+when you went across the channel ... when I heard
+the child's cry from out of the sea itself ... I thought
+it was all over with you both ... and then ... I can't<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>
+say what took place ... but it seemed to me ... that
+within me ... the main string of life was snapped....
+So I feel now, that it's all over."</p>
+
+<p>Ropars combatted these fears, repeating that the
+Surgeon was encouraged, and that all would go well.
+Geneviève, whose eyes were closed, raised the lids with
+difficulty and threw a glance upon him that was full of
+melancholy sweetness.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"God is the master, Mathieu," said she; "he
+knows whether I am happy in living with you....
+Only, ... believe me, poor husband, and don't rejoice
+too much ... it were wiser to expect the worst."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"It were wiser," interrupted the quarter-master,
+"to take rest, and have confidence. I, too, trust in
+what I feel. This very night, I had a weight of lead
+upon my heart; it is light now; I can breathe in one
+single breath. In God's name, let your health be restored
+to you, and be anxious for a continuance of life,
+if it were but for my sake."</p>
+
+<p>Geneviève made an effort to lay her cold and moistened
+hand upon that of Ropars.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"You are good, Mathieu," said she, letting fall
+two little tears, the last that emotion could drain from
+eyes already exhausted with weeping. "Ah me! my
+chief regret now is at not having always thought of
+this ... at not having shown myself sufficiently grateful....
+Heavens! how much worthier we should be
+of those we love, if we did but remember that some
+day we must leave them.... Since my mind has returned,
+this idea has haunted me; I now perceive all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>
+my faults; ... I feel remorse for them.... Oh! tell
+me in mercy, Mathieu, do you forgive me now ...
+for never having been what I ought to have been?"</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Talk not so, Geneviève," said the seaman quickly,
+and with deep feeling; "you know well that I
+could not have asked from God a better wife. Since
+you have been mine, I have wanted for nothing; it is
+I who should be grateful to you."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"No, no," replied the sick woman with increasing
+animation; "many a time have I lacked courage and
+patience.... Not with you alone ... but with Francine
+... with Josèphe! ... poor child of my heart, who
+had so few years to live!... And to think, Mathieu,
+that I have often made her cry! ... her, who is now
+beneath the ground!... Ah! it is the tears of the
+dead that weigh heavily here.... And other persons,
+whom I may have injured ... and God against whom
+I have sinned!... Cannot I then hope for mercy?"</p>
+
+<p>Then, as if this idea had awakened in her a sort of
+terror:</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Ah! it is impossible!" added she, sitting up;
+"Mathieu, Mathieu, I must see a confessor!"</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"But how to get him here?" said the quarter-master
+sorrowfully; "have you forgotten that the island
+is in quarantine?"</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"What! not to be able to save even one's soul?"
+returned Geneviève, clasping her hands. "Alas! am
+I then doomed to die without reconciliation? My God!
+what is to be done? The most miserable sinner is
+allowed to confess his sins, and to ask absolution for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>
+them; my God! must I alone remain without help?"</p>
+
+<p>She stopped abruptly, putting up both hands to her
+forehead.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Ah! I remember now," she resumed; "have
+you not told me that on board your ships, when at the
+moment of death no priest was to be had, any Christian
+might take his place? ... that God looked to the
+intention?"</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"I have said so," replied Ropars, "and all the
+seamen hereabouts will tell you the same thing, upon
+the assurance of their pastors."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Then," replied the dying woman, turning towards
+the seaman her eye lustrous with the fever, "I
+desire to confess myself to you!"</p>
+
+<p>She raised herself upon her elbow, and crossed herself.
+Mathieu seemed overwhelmed, but could make
+no objection to her will. As we have remarked, he
+belonged to that race almost extinct, even in Brittany,
+in whom still existed the earnest and the simple faith
+of other days. Often, on occasion of shipwreck, men
+such as he might have been seen, after exhausting all
+means of saving themselves, to kneel down in the expectation
+of death, and confess themselves one to another,
+as did the ancient cavaliers on the eve of combat.
+Therefore was he more troubled than surprised
+at the request of Geneviève; and when he heard her
+murmur the prayer that precedes confession, he took
+off his hat and made the sign of the cross, ready to
+fulfill the holy office that necessity had entrusted to
+him.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And something mournful and touching was it. The
+early dawn of day light doubtfully illumined the alcove;
+the dishevelled head of Geneviève was bent towards
+the grizzled head of Mathieu; and one might have heard
+the murmur of that supremest confidence carried on
+in lowered voice, often interrupted by the failure of
+the dying woman's strength, or by the seaman's entreaties
+that she would curtail it. But she persisted
+in resuming it, with the determination peculiar to those
+severe consciences which are never satisfied with their
+self-accusations. At length, when she had concluded,
+Ropars detached the ivory crucifix from the head of
+the bed; he approached it to the lips of Geneviève,
+and placing his hand upon her brow with mournful
+solemnity,</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"May God pardon thee as I do to the utmost of my
+power," said he; "and if it be not his will that thou
+shouldst live for my happiness, may he provide for thee
+a place in his Paradise!"</p>
+
+<p>Her face assumed an expression of ineffable serenity.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Thanks," murmured she; "your absolution shall
+prevail before the Trinity, Mathieu; now I feel at
+peace."</p>
+
+<p>A ray of sunlight creeping in through the window-curtain
+reached her bed; she turned round.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"It is day," continued she; "I did not hope to
+see another.... God has given me a respite!... He
+is willing that I should taste of the latest joy that I
+looked for upon earth ... nor will you refuse it to
+me, Mathieu?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Ask it, Geneviève," said the mariner; "what
+man can do, I will do."</p>
+
+<p>She took his hand and looked at him.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"You have told me, haven't you, that cousin
+could see and make out your signals?"</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Yes, and it is true."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Then by all the affection you bear me, Mathieu,
+I beseech you to signalize him at once to bring
+Francine out upon his terrace; when she is there, you
+will take me in your arms, you will carry me to the
+high rock, and if God grant me grace, I shall reach
+it with still life enough left to see my child once more,
+and to embrace her in spirit."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"It shall be done so as you desire, Geneviève,"
+said the quarter-master, who, impressed by the presentiments
+of the dying one, had abandoned hope, and
+had not strength to refuse her anything.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Quickly, then, very quickly!... for I feel that
+God is calling me."</p>
+
+<p>Ropars rushed out, as though he feared there would
+scarcely be time; but he came in again almost in a
+moment, exclaiming that Francine was already on the
+terrace of the magazine with Dorot. Stretching out
+her hands to him, the dying woman uttered a feeble
+cry of joy. He wrapped her up in his winter-cape,
+and carried her gently in his arms as far as the parapet
+of their platform.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Where is she?" inquired Geneviève, her eyes
+blinded by the light of day, and trying in vain to look<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>
+steadily; "I can't make out anything, Mathieu! where
+is the child: show me the child!"</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Look down there at our feet," replied the seaman;
+"can you see the high rock?"</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Can you follow the bubbling of the sea along
+the reef?"</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Yes, yes."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"And away, yonder, over the reefs, can you distinguish
+the stone-work of the terrace?"</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Down there? ... no ... there's only a cloud!
+I can see nothing.... Oh! if it be too late!... if she
+be there under my very eyes, and I can no longer see
+her!... My God, my God, once more, only once, let
+me see my child!"</p>
+
+<p>These words, or rather these mother's cries, had been
+so full of sadness, that Ropars could not restrain his
+tears. He seated his sinking wife upon the parapet,
+and himself kneeled down to support her.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Courage, Geneviève!" he stammered out;
+"look well to this side ... between the line of the sea
+and the sky."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"I am looking," said Geneviève, appearing in the
+effort to rally all the life left in her ".... Raise my
+head, Mathieu ... screen me from the sun...."</p>
+
+<p>She checked herself with a stifled exclamation.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Ah! there she is! there she is!... She sees
+me ... she is lifting up her arms.... Francine ...
+my daughter ... my child!"</p>
+
+<p>So impulsively did she lean forward, that but for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>
+Ropars, she would have thrown herself upon the rocks
+that sloped down to the sea. A flitting ray of life had
+lighted up her features; she sent kisses on her fingers
+to the child, and talked to it as though it could hear
+her; she raised her hands to Heaven, with rapid and
+broken ejaculations; she smiled and wept at once.
+Finally, her strength failed to endure so great emotion,
+and her head fell upon the quarter-master's shoulder.
+In alarm, he took her again in his arms, to carry
+her back into the house; but she made signs to him
+that she wished to remain out of-doors. He laid her
+down upon the bench, whereon the family had been
+used to sit together in the evening, in front of the sea,
+which was now lighted up by the rising sun. After a
+swoon that lasted some time, she opened her eyes, and
+asked for her daughter. Mathieu looked towards the
+powder magazine and said that Dorot had taken her
+away. She bowed her head with sorrowing resignation.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"He has done right," she went on, in feeble accents;
+... "besides, I feel ... that my sight grows
+thick.... I couldn't see her any more ... and ...
+I still have something to say to you.... Come closer,
+Mathieu ... closer ... my voice is failing.... Give
+me your hand.... I want to be sure that you hear
+me."</p>
+
+<p>Ropars knelt upon the sand, with one hand in that
+of his dying wife, and the other placed behind her, to
+support her.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"You are going to stay alone," she continued.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>
+"Elsewhere, you could perhaps endure it; but here,
+in the midst of the ocean, it is not the life of a man,
+or of a Christian.... You are used to having some one
+keep you company ... some one to love you.... When
+I am gone ... another one must take my place."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Never!" broke in Ropars.</p>
+
+<p>With her hand she silenced him.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Hush!" said she gently; "you must needs think
+this, so long as I am before your eyes ... but when
+I am laid in the grave, you will then feel your want....
+Believe not that I would reproach you, my poor husband....
+I do not wish to carry away your happiness
+with me in my winding sheet.... No ... no ... wherever
+I may be, I shall need to know that you are well
+cared for."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Enough, Geneviève!" murmured the seaman,
+choking with emotion.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Let me go on to the end," she resumed; "I
+have still one plea to urge.... When you take off the
+crape from your arm, Mathieu ... promise me to
+think of the dear creature who is our child ... the
+child of both ... and who will remain with you, to
+remind you of me ... choose a wife who may fill my
+place towards her."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"What is it that you are asking me, and whom
+could I give her for a mother, after yourself?" rejoined
+Ropars.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Some one" ... Geneviève went on ... "who would
+not grudge me the having been chosen first ... some honest
+heart that would take kindly to an orphan ... who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>
+would talk to her of me ... who would teach her to
+love God ... and to obey you!... If you promise
+me that this shall be so, Mathieu ... if you promise
+it on your honour ... and on your salvation, I shall
+fall asleep, at peace, and blessing you."</p>
+
+<p>Ropars made the promise, amidst sighs and groans;
+but this was the dying woman's last effort. After
+having thanked him by an embrace, she let herself
+sink into her husband's arms. It almost seemed as
+though the power of her will had slackened the steps
+of Death, for the sake of this final compact. Scarcely
+was it completed, when her sufferings recommenced.
+Carried back to the alcove, she died there towards the
+close of the day. Her last words were a prayer, in
+which her husband's and her daughter's names were
+intermingled.</p>
+
+<p>On the ensuing day, the grave in which Josèphe
+already reposed was re-opened to receive Geneviève,
+for, during the past month, Death had reaped so
+abundantly that the barren island lacked space for his
+doleful harvest. Informed of what had happened, by
+means of the signals agreed upon, the keeper of the
+powder-magazine brought Francine to the edge of his
+rock, and the child, on her knees, uttered a prayer for
+her mother's spirit, at the moment the funeral ceremony
+was ended, across the water.</p>
+
+<p>This death was the last. Like those expiatory victims
+who, in sacrificing themselves, were wont to appease
+the anger of the Gods, Geneviève seemed, in
+going down to the tomb, as though she closed its doors<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>
+behind her. A fortnight later, and the yellow flag slid
+down the flag staff that over-topped the lazaretto, and
+those who had been quarantined, now cured, went away
+in the frigate's long-boat. They only left behind them,
+on the dreary island, a man whose hair had become
+perfectly white, and a child in mourning clothes.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THRICE_ONLY" id="THRICE_ONLY"></a>THRICE ONLY.</h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+
+<p>Do not imagine that this is to be a love-story. Very
+few experiences furnish material for such. Rarer still
+is the ability to use the material, when it falls in one's
+way. At any rate, I make no pretension thereto.</p>
+
+<p>But it sometimes happens during the earlier and more
+tumultuous period of a man's life, that casual occurrences
+take place, which do not indeed at the time immediately
+influence his actions or his fortunes, but which
+in later days may be recalled with interest. Of this
+sort&mdash;if I mistake not, or if I do not mar them in the
+telling&mdash;were my three meetings with Mary Verner.
+I only met her thrice.</p>
+
+<p>The first time&mdash;many a year has sped away since;
+but it seems, if I shut my mental eye to events and
+feelings with which the interval has been crowded, and
+my bodily eye to the library table before me, as if the
+little scene were being enacted here, now, to-day.</p>
+
+<p>Whence this power of summoning up the ghosts of
+long ago? Why should the comparatively recent refuse
+to be stamped upon the memory, and the old impressions
+refuse to fade? Let philosophers answer; I have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>
+no more inclination to write an essay than to tell a
+love-tale. My purpose I have already stated; though
+I omitted to mention that I write my own veritable
+experience&mdash;with a change of names, a studied obscurity
+of dates, and a very slight change otherwise.</p>
+
+<p>The precise year I do not remember, nor, consequently,
+my own exact age; but I must have been
+about fourteen. George Verner, Mary's brother&mdash;poor
+fellow! I saw his death registered, the other day, in
+that odious corner of the <i>Times</i>&mdash;was my class-mate
+and play-mate at a school some few miles from London.
+He was a good-looking and good-tempered fellow, if
+not remarkable for his abilities. It chanced that I
+was&mdash;in the choice language of the time and place&mdash;"a
+dab at Latin verses." I helped George once in a
+while with his exercises; and once in a while with the
+mince-pies, that his mother's a cook used to send him
+on the sly. The first time that I saw her&mdash;Mary Verner
+I mean, not the cook&mdash;was on a whole holiday;
+George, who lived in the neighbourhood, had invited
+me to pass it with him. The old family coach came
+for us at ten o'clock, with the fat old horses and the
+fat old family coachman, just for all the world as you
+may often meet them in the story-books that are called
+"exceedingly natural," and as you now-a-days
+rarely find them in real life. Pony-phaetons, britzkas,
+coupés, "Croydon-baskets," and nondescript vehicles
+that, being neither close carriages nor open, are palmed
+off as both&mdash;these have superseded the full-bodied of
+my early recollections.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I fancy that I see her now.... You perceive that
+though I note the modern change in the carriage department,
+I recognize none such in the phraseology of our
+tongue. I fancy I see her now. You may, if you please,
+alter the wording; but that's the plain English of it.</p>
+
+<p>As we drove up the sweep that led from the lodge
+to the front entrance of a very beautiful suburban villa,
+I leaned out of the window, with the curiosity natural
+to a boy of fourteen, on strange ground.</p>
+
+<p>Mary Verner&mdash;I knew, by the family likeness, that
+she was George's elder sister, the moment my eye lighted
+on her&mdash;was trimming or watering her geraniums,
+in one of the recesses on either side of the porch.</p>
+
+<p>"Here, Mary, here's Cuthbert <i>tertius</i>," said George,
+running up the steps, and pushing me before him.</p>
+
+<p>"I know him; how d'ye do? I'm glad to see you,"
+was the frank reception, spoken in a clear, round-toned,
+springy voice, that seemed to drop without effort out
+of a rose-lipped mouth well-filled with well-knit teeth.
+And as she spoke smilingly, she opened a pair of large
+brown eyes that I have since thought&mdash;for boys don't
+know much about the law of colours&mdash;were designed
+to harmonize with what we call a clear brunette complexion.
+Certainly, if the ballad of "The Nut Brown
+Mayde" be a model imitation of the antique, Mary Verner
+might have sat for the portrait.</p>
+
+<p>But it was not so much her eyes that took hold of
+me, open though they did by degrees, wider and wider,
+until I wondered when they would cease opening; nor
+her coal-black hair, dressed as you may see it in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>
+likenesses by Sir Thomas Lawrence; nor her rosy
+mouth; nor her even teeth; nor her figure full of grace,
+<i>svelte</i> as the French call it, for which we have no answering
+word. It was not these, or any of them. It
+was the carolling of her few words, so free and unconcerned
+in tone. If I had not met her subsequently,
+I might have forgotten her looks; I doubt whether
+her voice could have passed from me.</p>
+
+<p>I need not tax my memory or my invention about
+the trifling though happy events of that day. It was
+pretty evident who was mistress of the house, though
+the fond and proud mother of Mary Verner had the
+air of a dignified and well-bred woman. Silent or talking,
+it was Mary who dispensed the honours, at least
+so far as the stranger was concerned. Probably it was
+the same with all comers; but this is only a surmise.</p>
+
+<p>Well; the whole holiday came to an end, and we
+were driven back to the old school by the old coachman,
+our pockets full of chestnuts, and our boyish
+hearts full of a sense of supreme enjoyment, such we
+believe as, in later life, women feel after the best ball
+of the season, and men after a splendid whitebait dinner
+at Blackwall. I recollect telling the fellows in
+the dormitory what a jolly time we had been having,
+and how capitally George's pony leaped the fence on the
+common, round the corner, out of sight of the house. By
+the way, it was partly owing to that pony having engrossed
+so much of our time, that I had not regularly fallen
+in love with Mary Verner. Partly, I say, because I
+was further saved from this predicament by a standing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>
+devotion to my pretty cousin Rose, which the temptation
+had been strong enough, but not long enough to
+disturb. I never went to George's house again; and
+ere long the image of his sister was stowed away on
+one of the upper shelves of my memory. There it
+might have been smothered in dust, or even converted
+into it, if chance had not taken it down and given it
+an airing.</p>
+
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+
+<p>Twenty-one&mdash;what a change from fourteen! How
+the pulse of life beats and bounds! I was running a
+tilt at the pastimes, and doffing aside the cares of early
+manhood, when for the second time, I came across Mary
+Verner. Plump upon her, I would say, if I thought
+you would pardon the coarseness of the expression.
+At any rate&mdash;and to be genteel&mdash;it was unexpectedly.
+Twenty-one gives very few thoughts to fourteen. It
+may be a much longer distance thither, when one starts
+at seventy to go back; but it is surprising how much
+more quickly you get over the intermediate ground.
+Let that be; only I don't believe I had given a thought
+to Mary Verner, since the week or two that followed
+my first interview with her.</p>
+
+<p>"Do come and dine with us on Monday," said my
+friend Mrs. F.; "there will be a very charming girl
+here, whom you would like to see."</p>
+
+<p>"Positively?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Sans faute!</i>"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Then keep a place for me; I'll come."</p>
+
+<p>I went. It was a formal dinner-party. In the
+drawing-room, before going to table, Mrs. F. came
+across to me.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I'll introduce you to our belle of the evening.
+You may escort her down to dinner. There she is,
+half-hidden behind that drapery. You can't have noticed
+her."</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Verner, let me present Mr. Cuthbert."</p>
+
+<p>I should have recognized Mary Verner, as she looked
+up, with those widely-opening brown eyes of hers,
+if her name had not been mentioned. As it was, it
+was quite natural for me to remark that I believed I
+had had the pleasure of seeing Miss Verner before.</p>
+
+<p>And so in a few moments we were gossipping cosily
+about "old times," as we, not very old people, called
+them.</p>
+
+<p>The beautiful child had expanded into a very lovely
+woman, preserving still the same characteristics of
+person and expression. The charm of her voice was
+the same. You may be sure that when seated by her
+side, with the becoming glow of lamp-light overhead
+heightening, if possible, those attractions which I
+rather hint than attempt to describe&mdash;you may be sure,
+I say, that I found her very captivating.</p>
+
+<p>We talked of her brother George; of the pleasant
+house wherein I first met her, and which was still her
+home; of her amiable and lady-like mother who was
+still living; of the old pony now gathered to his sires;
+of the old chestnut-trees even&mdash;in short, of all those<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>
+unimportant associations, out of which, under such
+circumstances, one endeavours to establish a trivial
+and flitting but very pleasant little bond of sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>I declare I was half ready to fall head over ears in
+love with her. And she took it all with a simple unaffected
+grace, that seemed to be her very nature.</p>
+
+<p>But we did not have all the talk to ourselves. I
+had not the presumption to engross her entirely. Nor
+would it have been possible. She was&mdash;there is no
+need to go over it all again&mdash;she was Mary Verner.</p>
+
+<p>Nearly opposite to us at table sat a Mr. Easton, a
+young barrister&mdash;young, that is professionally, for he
+was apparently a man of thirty or thereabouts. He
+would not have been singled out as a lady-killer, for
+he was none of your regular Adonises, such as hang
+by dozens, in portraiture, upon the walls of our Royal
+Academy Exhibitions, and lounge complacently in our
+Fop's Alley at the Opera. When, however, the excitement
+of conversation&mdash;in which he took an active
+and most intelligent part&mdash;developed the fine play of his
+features, you would have pronounced him a man who
+added, to a cultivated and superior mind, a look that
+bespoke such gift. In fact there was a manly air about
+him, that claimed respect, if it did not challenge attention.</p>
+
+<p>About the time when I made this notable discovery,
+I recollected that at the moment of my introduction
+to Miss Verner, Mr. Easton was gossipping with her
+in the secluded corner half-hidden by the drapery,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>
+though he moved away, with perfect good breeding, to
+give place to the new-comer.</p>
+
+<p>About this time, too, there began&mdash;at which end of
+the table, I forget&mdash;an occasional play of badinage,
+whereof Mr. Easton was the subject. For a grave
+and earnest man, he seemed to receive it all in exceedingly
+good part. To my surprise also&mdash;to say
+nothing of annoyance&mdash;my fair neighbour was brought,
+after a while, within its scope. Neither did she&mdash;I
+was forced to acknowledge within myself&mdash;evince either
+<i>mauvaise honte</i> or sensitiveness. The truth was
+plain. They were engaged.</p>
+
+<p>As a child's card-built house tumbles down when
+the table is shaken, so down went one of the prettiest
+little castles-in-the-air, that ever simpleton built out
+of cards of his own shaping.</p>
+
+<p>Down it went; though I flatter myself I was too
+much a man of the world, to let a glimpse of its dislocated
+plan be apparent. Indeed, in a few seconds,
+I had rallied myself on my own absurdity; gulped
+down my disappointment; and resigned myself again
+to the charm that Mary Verner still shed around her,
+if its tint was somewhat changed. Besides, I availed
+myself of the sudden opportunity thus afforded, for
+testing the practical value of one of my favourite theories,
+when I was a young fellow and affected to bask
+in the sunshine of human nature: to wit, that, apart
+from serious love-making, when a woman in either married
+or betrothed, she has therefrom an additional
+feather in her social cap. So have I found it through<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>
+life&mdash;always provided that the attractive and companionable
+qualities were otherwise in abundance. And
+this theory has at least given heartiness to my good
+wishes for my fairer acquaintances and friends. Is it
+not better to come to such a philosophical conclusion,
+than to be always envying other people's good fortune?</p>
+
+<p>Shifting, therefore, my ground, I was rapidly possessed
+by a strong interest in Miss Verner's future
+welfare&mdash;much of which was undoubtedly genuine.</p>
+
+<p>Delicately, and by gently leading her on, I gathered
+something of the story of her courtship, though I
+must needs confess that I cannot now call to mind a
+word of it. It may be of more interest to state that
+she was to make Mr. Easton the happiest of men,
+within six weeks or so of that time; and that the honey-moon
+was to be spent in a ramble on the Continent.
+Very emphatically and very sincerely did I wish her
+a pleasant time of it.</p>
+
+<p>But the most agreeable evenings will come to a
+close. This one&mdash;with its revival of a boy's casual
+acquaintance, with its momentary castle-building, and
+its subsequent benevolence of feeling&mdash;this one, like
+all others, passed away. It did not die out, as the
+fag-end of a dinner-party sometimes will; it was cut
+short to me by the "good night!" of Mary Verner,
+as she took her departure, leaning on Mr. Easton's
+arm, in the train of an elderly female relative.</p>
+
+<p>When the drawing-room door closed upon her graceful
+figure, I felt for a moment as though the gas had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>
+been suddenly turned off. I recollect, however, the
+hostess's observation, dropped to the accompaniment
+of a playfully malicious smile:</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't I tell you, you would like my friend Mary
+Verner?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," was the reply, "and I have passed a most
+delightful evening; but I don't think it quite fair,
+Mrs. F."&mdash;here there was a terrible smash of the theory&mdash;"to
+open the gates of Paradise, and then slam
+them in a poor fellow's face?"</p>
+
+<p>I was to have gone, that night, to a ball in Devonshire
+Place, expressly to meet&mdash;Never mind; I was
+not in the humour for dancing or flirting. I went
+straight home, and to bed. I tossed about a good
+deal, and finally dreamed about George and the pony,
+and that I was climbing the old chestnut-trees. As
+for Mary Verner, I couldn't in my sleep conjure up
+her image. When I thought I had it&mdash;as is the way
+in dreams, you know, if you ever studied them&mdash;I
+couldn't get nearer to her than the plaguy old family
+coachman. It was only when broad awake, the next
+morning, that I found myself strongly impressed by
+this, my second meeting. But again&mdash;such is life
+and such is youth&mdash;the impression was soon stowed
+away on an upper shelf in memory's garret.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>III.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Two years later; two years and two months.</p>
+
+<p>Did you ever notice the marked difference between
+youth and old age&mdash;aye, and middle age, too&mdash;in the
+matter of reading newspapers? We&mdash;I speak of myself
+now as the writer&mdash;who are in the vanguard of
+the march through life, must have our <i>Times</i> or our
+<i>Chronicle</i>, as regularly as our morning meal. Is it, as
+some spitefully assert, that we grow more self-complacent
+as we pore over the misfortunes or the errors of
+our fellows; or is it, that we seek refuge from the
+cares and disappointments of our own lot, in a close
+scrutiny of that of all the world beside, with the minutiæ
+of which the diligent, prying, gossipping press
+so unceasingly plies our curiosity? It is folly, perhaps,
+to raise the question, since this is not the place
+to discuss it; though it were not far from the truth to
+attribute much of the pettiness of our race, in these
+days, to this habit of abandoning our thoughts and
+impulses to the guidance of journalists who trade in
+them.</p>
+
+<p>I only mean to say that being still youthful at
+twenty-three, I "cared for none of these things,"
+As for heeding who was born, or buried, or married,
+beyond the circle of one's own intimate connections&mdash;I
+should as soon have set to work to trace the pedigree
+of a New Zealander. Probably, I heard in due time
+that Mary Verner had become Mrs. Easton. Certainly
+I did not learn it from the usual printed record.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>
+In short, I then very seldom read newspapers at all;
+and this I beg you to bear in mind. What a shocking
+ignoramus I should be voted, if I were to say so of
+this present time.</p>
+
+<p>That, too, was the season of darkness, ere Albert
+Smith was the Lecturer <i>par excellence</i>; ere Oxford
+and Cambridge men, returning from their "long-vacation"
+rambles, disputed in the daily papers their respective
+prowess in scaling the precipices of Monte
+Rosa, or discovering new pathways up Mont Blanc.
+How changed are we to-day! Save for the voluminous
+records of the Crimean war, what Mamelons and
+Malakoffs would the pedestrians, Smith and Jones,
+be now fighting over, in the <i>Times</i>!</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, though they made less fuss about it,
+Englishmen were then, as now, prone to scurrying off
+to Switzerland in the Autumn&mdash;some in the true cockney
+spirit&mdash;some because they found there the most
+sublime of all spectacles, together with the most exhilarating
+exercise for the body, and relaxation of
+mind in its fullest sense. With myself it amounted
+to a passion; "Cuthbert's hobby" it was dubbed by
+acquaintances, who could eke out delight from Leamington
+and Cheltenham.</p>
+
+<p>Profiting by the leisure afforded me during successive
+seasons, I had become tolerably familiar with the
+Alps; with what exquisite and inexhaustible enjoyment
+I am not going here to trouble you. But August
+had come round again. The knapsack was stitched,
+where it wanted mending. The Alpenstock was drag<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>ged
+to light, from the lumber-room. The thick-soled
+gaiter-boots were freshly studded with hobnails. The
+well-worn Swiss map was conned over once more, and
+a new route, leading over yet untrodden passes, was
+set down in the Autumnal programme.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly I changed my mind&mdash;under the influence
+of an hour's talk with an enthusiastic mountaineer&mdash;who
+had, during the previous season, explored the Pyrenees.
+"You may not find," said he, "quite so much
+grandeur; but the valleys are decidedly more picturesque,
+the foliage more varied, the very tints of the
+mountains glowing with warmer colours." Thereupon,
+a change of plan and passport. Behold me at Cauterets
+in France, instead of at Grindelwald in Switzerland!</p>
+
+<p>Were my object merely to fill a certain number of
+pages, I might here descant at length upon the comparative
+beauties of the Alps and the Pyrenees&mdash;the latter
+having, at present, the advantage of not being done
+to death by tourists. But I will abstain. I will speak
+only of one day's adventure; the day whereon, for the
+third and last time, I found myself associated with
+Mary Verner.</p>
+
+<p>Cauterets may be a pleasant place enough to those
+who bathe in, or imbibe for medicinal purposes, the
+mineral waters that have made its fame. It is finely
+placed too, pitched in, as it were, into a nook, with
+lofty peaks and fringes of fir forests over-topping its
+somewhat formal streets. It does not, however, offer
+much attraction to the connoisseur in fine scenery.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>
+One excursion alone is to be made. Its objects are
+the Pont d'Espagne and the Lac de Gaube. The former
+is a group of pine trunks bridging a cascade. The
+latter is a tarn at the foot of the glaciers of the Vignemale,
+which, you know, is one of the mountain-monarchs
+hereabouts.</p>
+
+<p>Before proceeding further, I may mention that I
+am enabled to set down my reminiscences of this particular
+time and place, by reference to my rough notes
+penned on the spot, journal-wise. The little memorandum
+book lies under my hand, with its pages written
+in ink of various tints, as hotel, or cabaret, or hut
+furnished the material at the moment. I like to preserve
+these records. Such <i>souvenirs</i> are the <i>bonnes
+fortunes</i> of those whose travels are ended. You see
+that I incline to be sentimental as I draw towards the
+<i>dénouement</i> of my story.</p>
+
+<p>Heavens and earth, how it rains in the Pyrenees!
+What a young deluge swept down the steep stone-guttered
+pavements, on the morning of the 29th of August!
+Still, I did not choose to devote more than one day to
+the neighbourhood of Cauterets; and so, having made,
+from my window, a few such profound observations as
+the one just set down, I ordered a horse and guide.
+The polite waiter was astonished, and protested, to the
+extent of two or three "<i>Mais Monsieur!</i>" The guide
+thought the storm would expend itself in twenty-four
+hours; but on my hinting that the path would not be
+difficult to find, without his aid, nor impracticable,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>
+on foot, he subsided, with an air of conviction, into the
+accustomed "<i>Bien, Monsieur!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>And so we started. I had borrowed one of the long,
+thick, hooded Spanish cloaks, commonly used in that
+region which borders on Spain; and a very effectual
+protection it was against the steady down-pouring of the
+rain. But what is perfect in this world? A German
+counterpane, on a summer's night, is not more oppressive
+than was this excellent protection from the wet.</p>
+
+<p>Handing, then, the heavy encumbrance to the guide,
+I was drenched to the skin in about two minutes. This
+was a comfort. It settled the point. I dislike uncertainty.
+I could be at my ease, and look about. Remember
+it was yet August.</p>
+
+<p>And the Val de Jéret, up which I was riding, was so
+grandly gloomy; the state of the weather excluding
+all but close views! My note-book thus speaks of it, the
+writer never dreaming that his impressions would be
+told to the readers of a newspaper, with many of whom
+Niagara and Montmorenci are familiar sights: "The
+valley presents a succession of splendid waterfalls; and,
+singularly enough, as your route lies upwards, they increase
+in size and beauty, from the Mahourat, the first,
+to the Pont d'Espagne, the last and most celebrated.
+The three intervening, that are dignified with names,
+are the Cérizet, the Boussé, and the Pas de l'Ours.
+Besides these, there are an infinity of smaller falls, the
+whole course of the Gave (or torrent) de Marcadaou&mdash;along
+which the path lies&mdash;boiling over broken masses
+of rock. The eye is charmed by endless variety, amid<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span>
+perpetual repetition. The deluge of rain, which covered
+the lofty rocks on each side of the defile with clouds,
+had gloriously swollen the turbulent waters. I know
+of nothing in natural scenery&mdash;thus the manuscript
+rather enthusiastically proceeds&mdash;that impresses one so
+forcibly as a cascade of large dimensions. By large I
+mean broad, not lofty. The effect is apt to diminish,
+with vast height. These, in the Val de Jéret, I found
+absolutely bewitching; for is it not a sort of infatuation,
+by which we are beguiled into drawing nearer and nearer,
+until you almost touch the foaming sheets as they
+flurry past, and are yourself driven back, for your pains,
+half blind and breathless? One fine waterfall would
+be enough to digest in a day. During these two or
+three hours, I had a very feast of them."</p>
+
+<p>If I extract this somewhat rhapsodical passage, it is
+to show that my inward man was not dampened, by the
+dampening process externally applied. On the contrary,
+I am disposed to be jubilant, almost defiant, in
+proportion to the fury of the storm; that is to say
+when no serious personal inconvenience is caused by
+stress of weather. In a mountain region too, above all
+others, clouds play so great a part in the combination
+of fine effects, that I have many times fairly welcomed
+a tempestuous spell.</p>
+
+<p>Thus from the Pont d'Espagne I continued my ride
+an hour or so further, in order to reach the Lac de
+Gaube, knowing perfectly well that the chances were
+a hundred to one against my getting a glimpse of the
+glaciers of the Vignemale, at whose feet this small<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>
+sheet of water is imbedded. Small it may well be
+termed, for it is not quite three miles in circumference,
+though the largest lake in the Pyrenees.</p>
+
+<p>On the rocky shore where the rough pathway terminates,
+stands, or stood at the period of which I write,
+a solitary hut. There, during the short summer season,
+might be found a family who earned a scanty
+subsistence, by catching the lake trout and serving them
+up to chance travellers; by rowing, in the solitary
+punt, any one who cared to paddle about the dark
+waters; or by escorting any still more adventurous
+stranger desirous of exploring the glaciers above-named,
+or ascending the lower heights of the Vignemale.</p>
+
+<p>Stepping up to the door of this cabin, I entered into
+conversation with its chief occupant, who probably
+combined in his own person the various offices of restaurateur,
+fisherman, muleteer, guide, and smuggler.
+Possibly I libel him in the last respect; but along that
+frontier of France and Spain, it is rare to find a mountaineer
+guiltless of the contraband trade.</p>
+
+<p>A visitor on such a day was a welcome sight to the
+poor fellow, who was eloquent in regrets that <i>his</i> mountain
+and <i>his</i> glaciers and <i>his</i> other local points of interest
+were all wrapped in the impenetrable mist. He
+seemed, I remember now, to care more about it than
+I did; for I had revelled in the exhibition of cascades,
+and was rather tickled at the notion of having come
+up to this lone and savage spot, where nothing whatever
+was to be seen.</p>
+
+<p>If a spirit had whispered me, that the moment of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>
+my third <i>rencontre</i> was close at hand, I should have
+smiled incredulously.</p>
+
+<p>The fog lifted. I could see to a distance of half a
+dozen yards.</p>
+
+<p>"What's that?"</p>
+
+<p>"If Monsieur will give himself the trouble of walking
+up to it, he will see."</p>
+
+<p>It was on a jutting promontory of rock, close at
+hand. A small enclosure was railed in. It held what
+was obviously a monumental tablet, in white marble,
+but discoloured by exposure.</p>
+
+<p>"A favourite poodle, perhaps, of the Duchesse de
+Berri&mdash;or one of our eccentric Englishmen doing honour
+to a Pyrenean bear!" Such I thought it might
+be, as I carelessly lounged up to it, and stooped to
+read the inscription.</p>
+
+<p>It was in French and English. I took no copy of
+the words. But it was placed there in memory of Mr.
+and Mrs. Easton, drowned in the lake, within one
+month of their marriage, on the 20th of September,
+18&mdash;! The facts were simply stated. I wish the record
+of them had been placed a little further off from
+the rendezvous of the thoughtless and light-hearted.</p>
+
+<p>This was the last of my associations with her. But
+it would not interest the reader, to be told with
+what feelings of surprise and sorrow I thus learned the
+close of a career, which bid so fair for happiness and
+usefulness. Poor Mary Verner!</p>
+
+<p>Before setting-off on my return to Cauterets, I
+heard, from the lips of the man with whom I had been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>
+conversing, the sad particulars of this harrowing event.
+Never could the common phrase, that speaks of "painful
+curiosity," have been more applicable than it was
+in my case, as I stood and listened to him. Poor
+fellow; he had been an eye-witness. He saw my
+emotion. "Monsieur knew the young couple?"&mdash;thus
+did he break the thread of his little narrative, more
+than once.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot pretend to set down his words. This is
+the substance of what he told me.</p>
+
+<p>The season was nearly over. The weather was
+splendidly fine, but very cold. Travellers were scarcely
+expected; when on that brilliant September morning,
+up rode the bride and bridegroom. After resting
+awhile, they took the single skiff that was there, Mr.
+Easton offering to row his wife across the lake, to
+which she very reluctantly assented. I recollect the
+narrator dwelling on this fact.</p>
+
+<p>The shore shelves off very rapidly. The water, in
+some parts, reaches to the depth of three or four hundred
+feet. At all times it is of marvellous clearness&mdash;as
+I observed myself&mdash;and, except during the heats
+of summer, so piercingly cold, as to be altogether unbearable
+to the swimmer.</p>
+
+<p>My informant helped them into the boat. Mr.
+Easton was evidently used to the handling of oars.
+The tragedy was immediately&mdash;perhaps one should
+say, ostensibly&mdash;caused by those two qualities of the
+water of the Lac de Gaube, to which I have just alluded&mdash;its
+clearness and its coldness.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The boat was at some considerable distance from
+the shore. The boatman was watching them. Suddenly,
+Mr. Easton paused in his rowing. He and his
+wife looked over the side, as though guessing at the
+depth. Mr. Easton then stood up, and plunged one
+oar downwards into the water, with the confident action
+of a man who is certain that he shall touch the
+bottom. The transparency had deceived him. His
+oar met no resistance; and he himself plunged heavily
+overboard. Such at least was the impression of the
+boatman on land; and he could scarcely be mistaken.</p>
+
+<p>So far as he could see, Mr. Easton did not rise to
+the surface. The cold numbed him, and he sunk, not
+to rise again. The bereaved wife stood upright for a
+moment in the boat, gazing on the water that had
+swallowed up her husband before her eyes. Then she
+too was seen to be in it; but not one of the two or
+three, who witnessed the fearful sight, could tell whether
+she threw herself in, or whether she fell in, senseless.
+That secret will never be solved; and what
+matters it to us, though the manner of the widowed
+wife's death was so remarkable, that I cannot refrain
+from mentioning it? In talking it over, they agreed
+that she did not sink at all. As she fell, the water
+inflated her dress, and she was buoyed-up, floating;
+though there was no sign of life or movement on her
+part, observable to the agonized spectators. After a
+time&mdash;I forget whether it was half an hour, or half a
+day&mdash;the remains of what once was loved as Mary
+Verner were wafted tranquilly to the shore. Assis<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>tance
+also having been procured, Mr. Easton's body
+was dragged-up from the bottom of the lake. One
+grave in a church-yard in Essex now holds the coffins
+of the ill-fated pair.</p>
+
+<p>And was there no effort at rescue? Could nothing
+be done? This idea will have crossed the reader's
+mind. It suggested many questions to me, with which
+I plied the boatman, who seemed to feel keenly in
+them the bitterness of unintended reproach. But his
+explanation&mdash;grievous as it was&mdash;was satisfactory.
+There was no boat, no raft, no means of reaching the
+spot. "Two of us," said he, "plunged up to our
+necks into the water, in the irrepressible desire to
+swim out to them; though we knew that it was certain
+death to go beyond our depth. Besides, Monsieur,"
+he added with touching simplicity, "I can't
+help fancying that the poor lady was dead before she
+fell out of the boat. Monsieur knew her; doesn't he
+think that her heart was already broken?"</p>
+
+<p>"God help her, and all of us, my brave friend; I
+have not the smallest doubt of it!"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>TOSSING UP FOR A HUSBAND.</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><i>From the French of Vicomte Ponson de Terrail.</i></p>
+
+<h3>I.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The Marchioness was at her toilet. Florine and
+Aspasia, her two ladies'-maids, were busy powdering,
+as it were with hoar-frost, the bewitching widow.</p>
+
+<p>She was a widow, this Marchioness, a widow of
+twenty-three; and wealthy, as very few persons were
+any longer at the court of Louis XV., her godfather.</p>
+
+<p>Three-and-twenty years earlier, his Majesty had
+held her at the baptismal font of the chapel at Marly,
+and had settled upon her an income of a hundred thousand
+livres, by way of proving to her father, the Baron
+Fontevrault, who had saved his life in the battle of
+Fontenoy, that kings can be grateful, whatever
+people choose to say to the contrary.</p>
+
+<p>The Marchioness then was a widow. She resided
+during the summer, in a charming little chateau, situated
+half-way up the slope overhanging the water, on
+the road from Bougival to Saint Germain. Madame
+Dubarry's estate adjoined hers; and on opening her
+eyes she could see, without rising, the white gable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>ends
+and the white-spreading chestnut-trees of Luciennes,
+perched upon the heights. On this particular
+day&mdash;it was noon&mdash;the Marchioness, whilst her attendants
+dressed her hair and arranged her head-dress
+with the most exquisite taste, gravely employed herself
+in tossing up, alternately, a couple of fine oranges,
+which crossed each other in the air, and then dropped
+into the white and delicate hand that caught them in
+their fall.</p>
+
+<p>This sleight-of-hand&mdash;which the Marchioness interrupted
+at times whilst she adjusted a beauty-spot on
+her lip, or cast an impatient glance on the crystal
+clock that told how time was running away with the
+fair widow's precious moments&mdash;had lasted for ten
+minutes, when the folding-doors were thrown open,
+and a valet, such as one sees now only on the stage
+announced with pompous voice&mdash;"The King!"</p>
+
+<p>Apparently, the Marchioness was accustomed to
+such visits, for she but half rose from her seat, as she
+saluted with her most gracious smile the personage
+who entered.</p>
+
+<p>It was indeed Louis XV. himself&mdash;Louis XV. at
+sixty-five; but robust, upright, with smiling lip and
+beaming eye, and jauntily clad in a close-fitting, pearl-grey
+hunting-suit, that became him to perfection. He
+carried under his arm a handsome fowling-piece, inlaid
+with mother-of-pearl; a small pouch, intended for
+ammunition alone, hung over his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>The King had come from Luciennes, almost alone,
+that is but with a Captain of the Guard, the old Mar<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>shal
+de Richelieu, and a single Equerry on foot. He
+had been amusing himself with quail-shooting, loading
+his own gun, as was the fashion with his ancestors, the
+later Valois and the earlier Bourbons. His grandsire,
+Henry IV., could not have been less ceremonious.</p>
+
+<p>But a shower of hail had surprised him; and his
+Majesty had no relish for it. He pretended that the
+fire of an enemy's battery was less disagreeable than
+those drops of water, so small and so hard, that wet
+him through, and reminded him of his twinges of rheumatism.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately, he was but a few steps from the gateway
+of the chateau, when the shower commenced. He
+had come therefore to take shelter with his god-daughter,
+having dismissed his suite, and only keeping with
+him a magnificent pointer, whose genealogy was fully
+established by the Duc de Richelieu, and traced
+back, with a few slips in orthography, directly to Nisus,
+that celebrated greyhound, given by Charles IX. to
+his friend Ronsard, the poet.</p>
+
+<p>"Good morning, Marchioness," said the King, as
+he entered, putting down his fowling-piece in a corner.
+"I have come to ask your hospitality. We were
+caught in a shower at your gate&mdash;Richelieu and I.
+I have packed off Richelieu."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, Sire, that wasn't very kind of you."</p>
+
+<p>"Hush!" replied the King, in a good-humored tone.
+"It's only mid-day; and if the Marshal had forced his
+way in here at so early an hour, he would have bragged
+of it every where, this very evening. He is very apt<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>
+to compromise one, and he is a great coxcomb too,
+the old Duke. But don't put yourself out of the way,
+Marchioness. Let Aspasia finish this becoming pile
+of your head-dress, and Florine spread out with her
+silver knife the scented powder that blends so well
+with the lilies and the roses of your bewitching face....
+Why, Marchioness, you are so pretty, one could eat
+you up!"</p>
+
+<p>"You think me so, Sire?"</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you so every day. Oh, what fine oranges!"</p>
+
+<p>And the King seated himself upon the roomy sofa,
+by the side of the Marchioness, whose rosy finger-tips
+he kissed with an infinity of grace. Then taking up
+one of the oranges that he had admired, he proceeded
+leisurely to examine it.</p>
+
+<p>"But," said he at length, "what are oranges doing
+by the side of your Chinese powder-box and your scent
+bottles? Is there any connection between this fruit
+and the maintenance&mdash;easy as it is, Marchioness&mdash;of
+your charms?"</p>
+
+<p>"These oranges," replied the lady, gravely, "fulfilled
+just now, Sire, the functions of destiny."</p>
+
+<p>The King opened wide his eyes, and stroked the
+long ears of his dog, by way of giving the Marchioness
+time to explain her meaning.</p>
+
+<p>"It was the Countess who gave them to me," she
+continued.</p>
+
+<p>"Madame Dubarry?"</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly so, Sire."</p>
+
+<p>"A trumpery gift, it seems to me, Marchioness."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I hold it, on the contrary, to be an important one;
+since I repeat to your Majesty, that these oranges
+decide my fate."</p>
+
+<p>"I give it up," said the King.</p>
+
+<p>"Imagine, Sire; yesterday I found the Countess
+occupied in tossing her oranges up and down, in this
+way." And the Marchioness recommenced her game
+with a skill that cannot be described.</p>
+
+<p>"I see," said the King; "she accompanied this
+singular amusement with the words, 'Up, Choiseul!
+up, Praslin!' and, on my word, I can fancy how the
+pair jumped."</p>
+
+<p>"Precisely so, Sire."</p>
+
+<p>"And do you dabble in politics, Marchioness? Have
+you a fancy for uniting with the Countess, just to mortify
+my poor ministers?"</p>
+
+<p>"By no means, Sire; for, in place of Monsieur de
+Choiseul and the Duc de Praslin, I was saying to
+myself, just now, 'Up, Menneval! up, Beaugency!'"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, ay," returned the King; "and why the deuce
+would you have them jumping, those two good-looking
+gentlemen&mdash;Monsieur de Menneval, who is a Croesus,
+and Monsieur de Beaugency, who is a statesman, and
+dances the minuet to perfection?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell you," said the dame. "You know, Sire,
+that Monsieur de Menneval is an accomplished gentleman,
+a handsome man, a gallant cavalier, an indefatigable
+dancer, witty as Monsieur Arouet, and longing
+for nothing so much as to live in the country, on his
+estate in Touraine, on the banks of the Loire, with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span>
+the woman whom he loves or will love, far from the
+court, from grandeur, and from turmoil."</p>
+
+<p>"And, on my life, he's in the right of it," quoth
+the King. "One does become so wearied at court."</p>
+
+<p>"Aye, and no," rejoined the widow as she put on
+her last beauty-spot.... "Nor are you unaware,
+Sire, that Monsieur de Beaugency is one of the most
+brilliant courtiers of Marly and Versailles; ambitious,
+burning with zeal for the service of your Majesty; as
+brave as Monsieur de Menneval, and capable of going
+to the end of the earth ... with the title of Ambassador
+of the King of France."</p>
+
+<p>"I know that," chimed in Louis XV., with a laugh.
+"But, alas, I have more ambassadors than embassies.
+My ante-chambers overflow every morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Now," continued the Marchioness, "I have been
+a widow ... these two years past."</p>
+
+<p>"A long time, there's no denying."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah," sighed she, "there's no need to tell me so,
+Sire. But Monsieur de Menneval loves me ... at
+least he says so, and I am easily persuaded."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well; then marry Monsieur de Menneval."</p>
+
+<p>"I have thought of it, Sire; and, in truth, I might
+do much worse. I should like well enough to live in
+the country, under the willow-trees, on the borders of
+the river, with a husband, fond, yielding, loving, who
+would detest the philosophers and set some little value
+on the poets. When no external noises disturb the
+honey-moon, that month, Sire, may be indefinitely pro<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>longed.
+In the country, you know, one never hears a
+noise."</p>
+
+<p>"Unless it be the north-wind moaning in the corridor,
+and the rain pattering on the window-panes."
+And the King shivered slightly on his sofa.</p>
+
+<p>"But," added the dame, "Monsieur de Beaugency
+loves me equally well."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, ah! the ambitious man!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ambition does not shut out love, Sire. Monsieur
+de Beaugency is a Marquis; he is twenty-five; he is
+ambitious&mdash;I should like a husband vastly who was
+longing to reach high offices of state. Greatness has
+its own particular merit."</p>
+
+<p>"Then marry Monsieur de Beaugency."</p>
+
+<p>"I have thought of that, also; but this poor Monsieur
+de Menneval."...</p>
+
+<p>"Very good," exclaimed the King, laughing: "now
+I see to what purpose the oranges are destined. Monsieur
+de Menneval pleases you; Monsieur de Beaugency
+would suit you just as well; and since one can't
+have more than one husband, you make them each jump
+in turn."</p>
+
+<p>"Just so, Sire. But observe what happens."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, what does happen?"</p>
+
+<p>"That, unwilling and unable to play unfairly, I take
+equal pains to catch the two oranges as they come
+down; and that I catch them both, each time."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, are you willing that I should take part in
+your game?"</p>
+
+<p>"You, Sire? Ah, what a joke that would be!"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I am very clumsy, Marchioness. To a certainty,
+in less than three minutes Beaugency and Menneval,
+will be rolling on the floor."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" exclaimed the lady; "and if you have any
+preference for one or the other?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; we'll do better. Look, I take the two oranges ... you
+mark them carefully&mdash;or, better still,
+you stick into one of them one of these toilet pins,
+making up your own mind which of the two is to represent
+Monsieur de Beaugency, and leaving me, on that
+point, entirely in the dark. If Monsieur de Beaugency
+touches the floor, you shall marry his rival; if it
+happen just otherwise, you shall resign yourself to become
+an ambassadress."</p>
+
+<p>"Excellent! Now, Sire, let's see the result."</p>
+
+<p>The King took the two oranges and plied shuttle
+with them above his head. But at the third pass, the
+two rolled down upon the embroidered carpet, and the
+Marchioness broke out into a merry fit of laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"I foresaw as much," exclaimed his Majesty.
+"What a clumsy fellow I am!"</p>
+
+<p>"And we more puzzled than ever, Sire?"</p>
+
+<p>"So we are, Marchioness; but the best thing we
+can do, is to slice the oranges, sugar them well, and
+season them with a dash of West India rum. Then
+you can beg me to taste them, and offer me some of
+those preserved cherries and peaches that you put up
+just as nicely as my daughter Adelaide."</p>
+
+<p>"And Monsieur de Menneval? and Monsieur de<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>
+Beaugency?" said the Marchioness, in piteous accents.
+"How is the question to be settled?"</p>
+
+<p>Louis XV. began to cogitate.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you quite sure," said he, "that both of them
+are in love with you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Probably so," returned she, with a little coquettish
+smile, sent back to her from the mirror opposite.</p>
+
+<p>"And their love is equally strong?"</p>
+
+<p>"I trust so, Sire."</p>
+
+<p>"And I don't believe a word of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" said the Marchioness, "but that is, in truth,
+a most terrible supposition. Besides, Sire, they are
+on their way hither."</p>
+
+<p>"Both of them?"</p>
+
+<p>"One after the other: the Marquis at one o'clock
+precisely; the Baron at two. I promised them my
+decision to-morrow, on condition that they would pay
+me a final visit to-day."</p>
+
+<p>As the Marchioness finished, the valet, who had
+announced the King, came to inform his mistress,
+that Monsieur de Beaugency was in the drawing-room,
+and solicited the favour of admission to pay his respects.</p>
+
+<p>"Capital!" said Louis XV., smiling as though he
+were eighteen; "show Monsieur de Beaugency in.
+Marchioness, you will receive him, and tell him the
+price that you set upon your hand."</p>
+
+<p>"And what is the price, Sire?"</p>
+
+<p>"You must give him the choice&mdash;either to renounce
+you, or to consent to send in to me his resignation of
+his appointments, in order that he may go and bury<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>
+himself with his wife on his estate of Courlac, in Poitou,
+there to live the life of a country gentleman."</p>
+
+<p>"And then, Sire?"</p>
+
+<p>"You will allow him a couple of hours for reflection,
+and so dismiss him."</p>
+
+<p>"And in the end?"</p>
+
+<p>"The rest is my concern." And the King got up,
+taking his dog and his gun, and concealed himself behind
+a screen, drawing also a curtain, that he might
+be completely hidden.</p>
+
+<p>"What is your intention, Sire?" asked the Marchioness.</p>
+
+<p>"I conceal myself like the kings of Persia, from the
+eyes of my subjects," replied Louis XV. "Hush,
+Marchioness."</p>
+
+<p>A few moments later, and Monsieur de Beaugency
+entered the room.</p>
+
+
+<h3>II.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The Marquis was a charming cavalier; tall, slight,
+with a moustache black and curling upwards, an eye
+sparkling and intelligent, a Roman nose, an Austrian
+lip, a firm step, a noble and imposing presence.</p>
+
+<p>The Marchioness blushed slightly, at sight of him,
+but offered him her hand to kiss; and as she begged
+him by a gesture to be seated, thus inwardly took
+counsel with herself.</p>
+
+<p>"Decidedly, I believe that the test is useless; it is
+Monsieur de Beaugency whom I love. How proud<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>
+shall I be to lean upon his arm at the court-fêtes!
+With what delight shall I keep long watches in the
+cabinet of his Excellency the Ambassador, whilst he
+is busy with his Majesty's affairs!"</p>
+
+<p>But after this "aside," the Marchioness resumed
+her gracious and coquettish air; as though the woman
+comprehended the mission of refined gallantry which
+was reserved for her seductive and delicate epoch by
+an indulgent Providence, that laid by its anger and
+its evil days for the subsequent reign.</p>
+
+<p>"Marchioness," said Monsieur de Beaugency, as he
+held in his hands the rosy fingers of the lovely widow,
+"it is fully a week since you received me!"</p>
+
+<p>"A week? why, you were here yesterday!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then I must have counted the hours for ages."</p>
+
+<p>"A compliment which may be found in one of the
+younger Crebillon's books!"</p>
+
+<p>"You are hard upon me, Marchioness."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps so, ... it comes naturally ... I am
+tired."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, Marchioness! Heaven knows that I would
+make of your existence one never-ending fête!"</p>
+
+<p>"That would, at least, be wearisome."</p>
+
+<p>"Say a word, Madam, one single word, and my
+fortune, my future prospects, my ambition!"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"You are still then as ambitious as ever?"</p>
+
+<p>"More than ever, since I have been in love with
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"Is that necessary?"</p>
+
+<p>"Beyond a doubt. Ambition&mdash;what is it but hon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>ours,
+wealth, the envious looks of impotent rivals, the
+admiration of the crowd, the favour of monarchs?...
+And is not one's love unanswerably and most triumphantly
+proved, in laying all this at the feet of the
+woman whom one adores?"</p>
+
+<p>"You may be right."</p>
+
+<p>"I may be right, Marchioness! Listen to me, my
+fair lady-love."</p>
+
+<p>"I am all attention, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Between us, who are well-born, and consort not
+with plebeians, that vulgar and sentimental sort of
+love, which is painted by those who write books for
+your mantuamakers and chambermaids, would be in
+exceedingly bad taste. It would be but slighting love
+and making no account of its enjoyments, were we to
+go and bury it in some obscure corner of the Provinces,
+or of Paris&mdash;we, who belong to Versailles&mdash;living
+away there with it, in monotonous solitude and unchanging
+contemplation!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" said the Marchioness, "you think so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me, rather, of fêtes that dazzle one with
+lights, with noise, with smiles, with wit, through
+which one glides intoxicated, with the fair conquest
+in triumph on one's arm ... why hide one's happiness,
+in place of parading it? The jealousy of the world
+does but increase, and cannot diminish it. My uncle,
+the Cardinal, stands well at court. He has the King's
+ear, and better still, the Countess's. He will, ere
+long, procure me one of the Northern embassies.
+Cannot you fancy yourself Madame the Ambassadress,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>
+treading the platform of a drawing-room, as royalty
+with royalty, with the highest nobility of a kingdom&mdash;having
+the men at your feet, and the women on lower
+seats around you, whilst you yourself are occupant of
+a throne, and wield a sceptre?"</p>
+
+<p>And as Monsieur de Beaugency warmed with his
+own eloquence, he gently slid from his seat to the
+knees of the Marchioness, whose hand he covered with
+kisses.</p>
+
+<p>She listened to him, with a smile on her lips, and
+then abruptly said to him:</p>
+
+<p>"Rise, sir, and hear me in turn. Are you in truth
+sincerely attached to me?"</p>
+
+<p>"With my whole soul, Marchioness!"</p>
+
+<p>"Are you prepared to make every sacrifice?"</p>
+
+<p>"Every one, Madam."</p>
+
+<p>"That is fortunate indeed; for to be prepared for
+all, is to accomplish one, without the slightest difficulty;
+and it is but a single one that I require."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, speak! Must a throne be conquered?"</p>
+
+<p>"By no means, sir. You must only call to mind
+that you own a fine chateau in Poitou."</p>
+
+<p>"Pooh!" said Monsieur de Beaugency, "a shed."</p>
+
+<p>"Every man's house is his castle," replied the widow.
+"And having called it to mind, you need only order
+post-horses."</p>
+
+<p>"For what purpose?"</p>
+
+<p>"To carry me off to Courlac. It is there that your
+almoner shall unite us, in the chapel, in presence of
+your domestics and your vassals, our only witnesses."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"A singular whim, Marchioness; but I submit to it."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well. We will set out this evening.... Ah!
+I forgot."</p>
+
+<p>"What, further?"</p>
+
+<p>"Before starting, you will send in your resignation
+to the King."</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur de Beaugency almost bounded from his
+seat.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you dream of that, Marchioness?"</p>
+
+<p>"Assuredly. You will not, at Courlac, be able to
+perform your duties at court."</p>
+
+<p>"And on returning?"</p>
+
+<p>"We will not return."</p>
+
+<p>"We will&mdash;not&mdash;return!" slowly ejaculated Monsieur
+de Beaugency. "Where then shall we proceed?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nowhere. We will remain at Courlac."</p>
+
+<p>"All the winter?"</p>
+
+<p>"And all the summer. I count upon settling myself
+there, after our marriage. I have a horror of the
+court. I do not like the turmoil. Grandeur wearies
+me.... I look forward only to a simple and charming
+country life, to the tranquil and happy existence of the
+forgotten lady of the castle.... What matters it to you?
+You were ambitious for my love's sake. I care but
+little for ambition; you ought to care for it still less,
+since you are in love with me."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Marchioness&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Hush! it's a bargain.... Still, for form's sake, I
+give you one hour to reflect. There, pass out that way;
+go into the winter drawing-room that you will find at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>
+the end of the gallery, and send me your answer upon
+a leaf of your tablets. I am about to complete my
+toilet, which I left unfinished, to receive you."</p>
+
+<p>And the Marchioness opened a door, bowed Monsieur
+de Beaugency into the corridor, and closed the door
+upon him.</p>
+
+<p>"Marchioness," cried the King, from his hiding place
+and through the screen, "you will offer Monsieur
+de Menneval the embassy to Prussia, which I promise
+you for him."</p>
+
+<p>"And you will not emerge from your retreat?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly not, Madame; it is far more amusing to
+remain behind the scenes. One hears all, laughs at
+one's ease, and is not troubled with saying any thing."</p>
+
+<p>It struck two. Monsieur de Menneval was announced.
+His Majesty remained snug, and shammed dead.</p>
+
+
+<h3>III.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Monsieur de Menneval was, at all points, a cavalier
+who yielded nothing to his rival, Monsieur de Beaugency.
+He was fair. He had a blue eye, a broad forehead,
+a mouth that wore a dreamy expression, and that
+somewhat pensive air which became so well the Troubadours
+of France in the olden time.</p>
+
+<p>We cannot say whether Monsieur de Menneval had
+perpetrated verse; but he loved the poets, the arts, the
+quiet of the fields, the sunsets, the rosy dawn, the breeze
+sighing through the foliage, the low and mysterious
+tones of a harp, sounding at eve from the light bark<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span>
+shooting over the blue waters of the Loire&mdash;all things
+in short that harmonize with that melodious concert of
+the heart, which passes by the name of love.</p>
+
+<p>He was timid, but he passionately loved the beautiful
+widow; and his dearest dream was of passing his
+whole life at her feet, in well chosen retirement, far
+from those envious lookers-on who are ever ready to
+fling their sarcasms on quiet happiness, and who dissemble
+their envy under cloak of a philosophic scepticism.</p>
+
+<p>He trembled, as he entered the Marchioness's boudoir.
+He remained standing before her, and blushed as
+he kissed her hand. At length, encouraged by a smile,
+emboldened by the solemnity of this coveted interview,
+he spoke to her of his love, with a poetic simplicity and
+an unpremeditated warmth of heart&mdash;the genuine enthusiasm
+of a priest, who has faith in the object of his
+adoration.</p>
+
+<p>And as he spoke, the Marchioness sighed, and said
+within herself:</p>
+
+<p>"He is right. Love is happiness. Love is to be
+two indeed, but one at the same time; and to be free
+from those importunate intermeddlers, the indifference
+or the mocking attention of the world."</p>
+
+<p>She remembered, however, the advice of the King,
+and thus addressed the Baron:</p>
+
+<p>"What will you indeed do, in order to convince me
+of your affection?"</p>
+
+<p>"All that man can do."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Baron was less bold than Monsieur de Beaugency,
+who had talked of conquering a throne. He
+was probably more sincere.</p>
+
+<p>"I am ambitious," said the widow.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" replied Monsieur de Menneval, sorrowfully.</p>
+
+<p>"And I would that the man, whom I marry, should
+aspire to every thing, and achieve every thing."</p>
+
+<p>"I will try so to do, if you wish it."</p>
+
+<p>"Listen; I give you an hour to reflect. I am, you
+know, the King's god-daughter. I have begged of him
+an embassy for you."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" said Monsieur de Menneval, with indifference.</p>
+
+<p>"He has granted my request. If you love me, you
+will accept the offer. We will be married this evening,
+and your Excellency the Ambassador to Prussia will
+set off for Berlin immediately after the nuptials. Reflect;
+I grant you an hour."</p>
+
+<p>"It is useless," answered Monsieur de Menneval;
+"I have no need of reflection, for I love you. Your
+wishes are my orders: to obey you is my only desire.
+I accept the embassy."</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind!" said she, trembling with joy and
+blushing deeply. "Pass into the room, wherein you
+were just now waiting. I must complete my toilet,
+and I shall then be at your service. I will summon
+you."</p>
+
+<p>The Marchioness handed out the Baron by the right-hand
+door, as she had handed out the Marquis by the
+left; and then said to herself:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I shall be prettily embarrassed, if Monsieur de
+Beaugency should consent to end his days at Courlac!"</p>
+
+<p>Thereupon, the King removed the screen and reappeared.</p>
+
+<p>His Majesty stepped quietly to the round table,
+whereupon he had replaced the oranges, and took up
+one of them.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" exclaimed the Marchioness, "I perceive,
+Sire, that you foresee the difficulty that is about to
+spring up, and go back accordingly to the oranges, in
+order to settle it."</p>
+
+<p>As his sole reply, Louis XV. took a small ivory handled
+pen-knife from his waistcoat pocket, made an
+incision in the rind of the orange, peeled it off very
+neatly, divided the fruit into two parts, and offered
+one to the astonished Marchioness.</p>
+
+<p>"But, Sire, what are you doing?" was her eager
+inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>"You see that I am eating the orange."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It was of no manner of use to us."</p>
+
+<p>"You have decided then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Unquestionably. Monsieur de Menneval loves
+you better than Monsieur de Beaugency."</p>
+
+<p>"That is not quite certain yet; let us wait."</p>
+
+<p>"Look," said the King, pointing to the valet, who
+entered with a note from the Marquis, "You'll soon
+see."</p>
+
+<p>The widow opened the note, and read:</p>
+
+<p>"Madam, I love you&mdash;Heaven is my witness; and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>
+to give you up is the most cruel of sacrifices. But I
+am a gentleman. A gentleman belongs to the King.
+My life, my blood are his. I cannot, without forfeit
+of my loyalty, abandon his service&mdash;&mdash;."</p>
+
+<p>"Et cetera," chimed in the King, "as was observed
+by the Abbé Fleury, my tutor. Marchioness, call in
+Monsieur de Menneval."</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur de Menneval entered, and was greatly
+troubled to see the King in the widow's boudoir.</p>
+
+<p>"Baron," said his Majesty, "Monsieur de Beaugency
+was deeply in love with the Marchioness; but
+he was more deeply still in love&mdash;since he would not
+renounce it, to please her&mdash;with the embassy to Prussia.
+And you, you love the Marchioness so much better
+than you love me, that you would only enter my service
+for her sake. This leads me to believe that you
+would be but a lukewarm public servant, and that
+Monsieur de Beaugency will make an excellent ambassador.
+He will start for Berlin this evening; and
+you shall marry the Marchioness. I will be present
+at the ceremony."</p>
+
+<p>"Marchioness," whispered Louis XV. in the ear of
+his god-daughter, "true love is that which does not
+shrink from a sacrifice."</p>
+
+<p>And the King peeled the second orange and eat
+it, as he placed the hand of the widow in that of the
+Baron.</p>
+
+<p>"I have been making three persons happy: the
+Marchioness, whose indecision I have relieved; the
+Baron, who shall marry her; and Monsieur do Beau<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span>gency,
+who will perchance prove a sorry ambassador.
+In all this, I have only neglected my own interests,
+for I have been eating the oranges without sugar....
+And yet they pretend to say that I am a selfish Monarch?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE MISSING MARINERS,</h2>
+
+<p class="center">A DREAM OF THE ARCTIC SEAS.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p class="center">This fanciful sketch was written and published, before the fate of Sir John
+Franklin and his Discovery Ships was known.</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<p>There was not a curtain of any kind over the window.</p>
+
+<p>Now, there are few things that I dislike more than
+this total want of privacy in a bed-room. Opposite to
+a dead wall at a foot's distance, so that none but bogies
+could peer within, or looking out through a port-hole
+over the lonely sea, I confess to an almost old-maidenish
+particularity in this respect. Failing, therefore, in
+sundry efforts to substitute a great coat for a curtain,
+or even to delude myself into a sense of seclusion, by
+planting an open umbrella upon a chair before the
+window, I finally abandoned my efforts, determined to
+brazen it out, blew out my light, and tumbled into
+bed, not in the best of humours.</p>
+
+<p>You remember, perhaps, the bitter cold night and
+the flurry of a snow storm, that came abruptly upon us,
+a few weeks since. That was the time of which I
+write&mdash;the place was a country village. And what
+a freezing night it was! The east wind blew gustily<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>
+and drearily. It was moonlight, but dull and grey;
+and as I lay in bed, without raising my head from the
+starveling bolster vainly eked out by a meagre carpet
+bag, I could see a single pine tree, on a steep bank
+right opposite my window, nodding, and bowing at me
+by fits and by starts, as though the capricious spirit
+of the night wind had bid it mock me. How I longed
+for the sight of a chimney-pot!</p>
+
+<p>There was no snow yet; but I listened to the rush
+of each driving blast, and shrunk, huddling under the
+clothes, from the chill it sent through me, as its keen
+edges forced their way through the crevices of the
+roof over my head. At length, and after much tumbling
+and tossing, I fell asleep&mdash;or believed that I did
+so; and presently I awoke again&mdash;or so it seemed to
+me. What was sleeping, and what was waking, I
+scarcely knew, that night.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, there, between us&mdash;between myself, I
+mean, and the white, shining hill-side&mdash;came an object,
+undefined in form but palpable in substance, waving
+gently to and fro, passing and repassing before the
+window, and at last appearing almost to touch it.
+Finally it became stationary there, yet still undulating
+with that soft tremulous motion which you may have
+noticed in the humming-bird, when, poised upon his
+delicate wings, he darts his slender tongue into the
+petals of a favourite flower. "What in the world is
+it?" I exclaimed; and had just fancied that I could
+see a few slight cords reaching from it upwards, above
+the upper edge of the window, when I distinctly heard<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>
+a rap upon the pane, and sprung from my bed, in
+wonderment, but not in fear. The glass melted away&mdash;frame-work
+to the casement there was none&mdash;I
+passed outwards, unconscious how or wherefore. I was
+seated, warmly and comfortably seated, springing aloft
+into the moonlit and starry sky.</p>
+
+<p>Then I knew that it was a balloon. It rose at the
+instant, and sped rapidly through the air. The wind
+was strong, but blowing a steady gale; not in gusts
+now, as it had been. And I felt that it was from the
+south, for it was soft and balmy; and I knew that I
+was driving towards the Polar star, for I saw it; and
+saw it growing larger and more luminous.</p>
+
+<p>Then my spirit yearned after the missing Mariners;
+and I prayed Heaven that I might be on my way to
+find them.</p>
+
+<p>On we sped; but I was conscious, though the southerly
+gales were wafting me to the frozen regions of
+the North, that there was a spirit beneath or behind
+me, guiding the tiny car in which I was borne. I
+felt that he was there, though I strove in vain to
+detect his presence. Slily did I glance over my shoulder,
+abruptly did I turn my head, cautiously did I
+crane over the edge&mdash;I could not see him. I felt
+him directing my looks to what I beheld, shaping my
+thoughts whitherward they went; but it pleased him
+to remain invisible.</p>
+
+<p>It was yet night. Many rivers did we cross in our
+progress, some looking inky-black as they flowed between
+snowy banks, others dimly made out, and lost<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span>
+in the one unvaried tone. Lakes were there, too,
+and cities sparcely scattered. The latter were mostly
+slumbering in the same quiet as the former; but
+ascending from one I heard the alarm of a bell, and
+glanced downwards at a herd of figures who seemed
+to be fussing and fuming around a fire.</p>
+
+<p>And now, for a moment, I knew that I was dreaming;
+and oh, grievous disappointment, I half awoke
+to a consciousness that the vision was slipping away
+from me. How I clutched at it! how I hugged it,
+and refused to have a word to say to my senses! Did
+you never try this plan and succeed in it? If not, I
+would not give a fig for your dreams.</p>
+
+<p>But I caught up the thread of mine. Bravo! It
+was a narrow escape, though. They told me, next
+day, that there had been a false alarm of fire in the
+village, during the night. I would have been roasted
+alive, rather than not have dreamed out my dream.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Day-light, and early summer, and we were hovering
+over the icy land and icy sea, scarcely now distinguishable,
+one from other. Nor can I, indeed, describe
+much of what I saw; for methought, that we were
+driving hither and thither, not only in the dreary realm
+of the Frost-king, but up, and down, and athwart
+the ordinary current of times and seasons. So was
+there much confusion. Anon it was that awful
+Winter, whose cold will eat, like red-hot iron, into the
+unguarded flesh, or more fatal still, will palm off Death
+upon his victim under the alluring disguise of Slum<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span>ber&mdash;Winter,
+with his terrible silence, more fearful
+than the roar of his fiercest hurricanes&mdash;Winter, with
+his blinding mantle of unbroken white, and his snowdrifts
+wherein cities might be engulphed&mdash;Winter,
+with his one redeeming beauty, one attendant goddess,
+one Aurora, the Borealis, whose coruscations
+were so marvellous to behold, so changeful, so grand,
+so brilliant, that I smiled in looking on them, to think
+that ever human skill had fabricated fire-works, and
+that their display could throw spectators into ecstacies.</p>
+
+<p>And anon it was the Arctic summer&mdash;and the blue
+waters peeped at intervals between giant pyramids of
+ice&mdash;pyramids, and pinnacles, and turrets, and all
+shapely and all shapeless masses. And these were
+floating in the sunlight&mdash;some majestically sailing
+through the ever opening spaces, coming never in
+contact with their fellows&mdash;others jarring, and crashing,
+and splintering into a thousand fragments, as the
+upheaving waves compelled them perilously to embrace
+each other; and their greeting was as the
+roar of thunder-storms. And uncouth walrusses
+were playing their clumsy antics on detached fragments
+of the ice, and the seal was basking in the
+sun, and the huge whale was spouting, and the seagull
+was skimming the surface of the loosened deep,
+dipping therein the tips of his wings, as though to assure
+himself that it was indeed liquid. Landward,
+too&mdash;for there was land, also, beneath us&mdash;I seemed
+to see the scanty blades of a dwarfish vegetation thrust<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span>ing
+themselves pertinaciously through the snow; and
+anon the garb of the earth seemed changing from one
+universal white, to varied hues of brown and green.</p>
+
+<p>Those things and other such, rare and beautiful,
+were visible to the bodily eye; but the eye of my
+mind was not therewith content. It strained its
+utmost, but saw not what it longed for; and my voice
+broke out in bitterness, "Oh, the ships and the men,
+the men and the ships, the good Sir John and his
+daring crews!"</p>
+
+<p>Then I was conscious that my attendant spirit impelled
+the balloon in a direction hitherto unexplored,
+and lo! there beneath us was a ship&mdash;a ship, one of
+the objects of my search!</p>
+
+<p>A ship! and my heart bounded within me at the first
+glimpse I caught of it. But ah! how the blood curdled
+in my veins, when, at the next moment, I saw that
+the ship had not, and could not have occupants. Poor,
+ill-fated, ill-treated vessel; never surely did typhoon
+or whirlwind so displace thee from thy proper bearings.
+The troubled waters of the Atlantic or the Caribbean
+Sea might indeed have reared thee upwards, and plunged
+thee downwards, and made thee reel to and fro,
+like a drunkard; but it was alone the frozen waters of
+the Arctic, that could have forced thee into this unnatural
+position, and then cruelly nailed thee there, to
+rot into decay.</p>
+
+<p>Ay, stout ship <i>Erebus</i> or <i>Terror</i>&mdash;I wot not which&mdash;there
+wert thou lying, or rather there didst thou
+stand upright, thy bows grovelling in the ice, thy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>
+stern uplifted high in air, thy keel propped up against
+a sheer precipice of ice, thy bowsprit shivered into
+splinters, thy masts and yards, and tackle, fallen all,
+and tangled in most inextricable confusion. One stick
+alone remained set out horizontally from the deck.
+From it drooped the tattered remnant of a flag; it was
+the blood-red standard of England!</p>
+
+<p>As the balloon glided downwards towards the wreck, I
+could have peered into the after-cabin windows; but a
+single glance had already satisfied me that no living
+being would be found on board. I have said that my
+blood curdled in my veins. Turning hastily with a
+sudden movement of indignation, I obtained a moment's
+glance at my guide&mdash;his form was shadowy;
+but by his hideous features I recognized him as Despair,
+and felt that he and I were one.</p>
+
+<p>But ho, a pleasant change! Down we floated, till
+my tiny car was almost on a level with the vessel's
+bows; and there&mdash;oh, joy of joys&mdash;were signs, palpable
+and undoubted, that the crew had fared better
+than their ship&mdash;that they had escaped, and were
+gone, and had carried what they pleased away with
+them. At one view I comprehended this&mdash;I read it
+in the aperture sawn through the doubled planking,
+and in the fragments of casks and cases with which the
+ice was bestrewn around. There was a board, too,
+with writing upon it, nailed up conspicuously; but I
+tried in vain to decipher it. Under the impulse of
+strong excitement, I again turned abruptly toward my
+guide; this time, I could not obtain a glimpse of him.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>
+Methought, however, that I heard a rustle like the
+sound of wings, and that the inflated silk over my
+head became suddenly tinted with the hues of the
+rainbow. And so I knew that I was under the guidance
+of Hope; and that Despair would trouble me no
+more. Whither my countrymen were gone I could
+not conjecture; but, at least, I deemed them safe.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Away, and away, we soared upwards and sped onwards;
+how far, and how long, I marked not. And
+lo, another object! not a ship&mdash;it is a house, this time;
+yes, a house in the lonely wilderness of that frozen
+ocean, a hut upon the waves of that boundless <i>mer de
+glace</i>. And it was fashioned in rude form; and the
+material was rough blocks of ice; and snow seemed to
+have been used as their cement. The roof was formed
+by poles and spars; and across them yet hung a sailcloth
+covering. Roundabout the hut was a lofty wall,
+built apparently to shelter it from storms, and snowdrifts;
+and the wall was built with the same material
+as the house, for Nature's plentiful quarry fails not in
+those Polar regions, if man's hand and man's axe be
+brought there, to hew and shape. But for whom the
+shelter, and whither had they gone, who tenanted it?
+I knew well that the long lost had been here. None
+but they&mdash;no miserable, wandering tribe of Esquimaux&mdash;could
+have left such unmistakable marks of
+forethought, and skill, and energy. Near by, too, was
+plainly visible the icy cradle wherein a vessel had been
+lying, and on an even keel. But ships and men were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span>
+gone&mdash;gone, but how gone, and whither? Earnestly
+did I gaze for some solution of this mystery; and at
+length I solved it, ay, plain enough; a line along the
+surface of the ice became distinctly visible, rugged and
+indented indeed, but straight, and stretching far away
+to the Westward. Then was I assured that Sir John
+and his brave comrades had been here, that they had
+cut out a channel for their barque, and that the ice
+had closed in behind them, so soon as they had passed
+on their way. Yes, I was on their track. And again
+I heard the soft rustling of the wings of Hope; and
+the rainbow-tinted hues of the balloon were three-fold
+more brilliant than before.</p>
+
+<p>One other circumstance only could I note, ere we
+sped away again upon the search&mdash;all who came hither
+had not departed hence. Side by side, in a sheltered
+nook, beneath a towering pinnacle of ice, two wooden
+crosses, peering above the snow, told plainly that beneath
+it two of the Mariners were sleeping in death.
+And their names were rudely carved upon the crosses;
+but again my sight, though in some respects preternaturally
+sharpened, refused to satisfy my curiosity.
+Never mind, thought I, 'tis a small proportion in so
+large a company. We must all die once; and those
+who rest here, rest as well as though they were laid
+beneath the "long-drawn aisle;" and their bodies are
+more enduringly embalmed by the servants of the great
+Frost-King, than in olden days they could have been
+by the hand of the cunning men of Egypt.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span></p><hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Upwards, and onwards, and steering ever a Westwardly
+course. And lo, at length&mdash;oh, God be praised&mdash;yes
+I found the men I sought! Yes&mdash;no more doubt&mdash;there
+I saw them below me, although, with the caprice
+incident to dreams, I was prevented from dropping
+down in the midst of them, or rendering myself
+either visible or audible.</p>
+
+<p>A strange scene it was, independent of its surpassing
+interest. Rocky islands&mdash;vast packs and floes of
+ice&mdash;a lone ship beset, impeded, entangled&mdash;a hundred
+pairs of lusty arms at work with ice-saws and axes,
+striving to extricate her, by cutting a channel in the
+direction where open water was visible. A little apart
+from the busy groups stood one whom I instantly recognised
+as the Chief. Care had furrowed his brow,
+and somewhat whitened his locks, and bowed his vigorous
+form; but manly resolution was stamped upon his
+features, and command was in every gesture. Bethink
+you how I strove to shout&mdash;how I struggled even to
+throw myself down into their arms; but the dream-spell
+was on me; I was invisible, perforce, and my
+tongue refused to give utterance.</p>
+
+<p>How I watched them! and look, the burly seaman
+who is a few steps ahead of his comrades, tracking out
+the pathway to be dug&mdash;look, he starts as though a
+rattlesnake were issuing from the snow under his feet.
+What is it? He stoops, and I see his big brown hand
+tremble, as it assuredly would not have done, if picking
+up a burning grenade. What is it, bold tar, that
+moves thee thus? Ay, I see now, and know the cause,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>
+'tis yonder little slip of gay coloured silk on which are
+printed a few short words. Jack could not read, it
+was evident enough; but he held up his prize, and
+called out something which I could not hear, and his
+mess-mates bounded to the spot. Foremost in the race
+was an athletic young man, in the threadbare uniform
+of a Midshipman, who had left his father's halls, five
+years ago, a beardless boy. Nor was the Chieftain
+himself the last. How did it pass rapidly from hand
+to hand, that little silken slip! How did its fall amongst
+them seem to change the whole spirit of the scene!
+But look again, a gesture from the Chief, not as one
+of authority this time, but rather as one of suggestion.
+It is obeyed, however, and a hundred heads are bared;
+and by the movements of their lips, I could see that
+every living man amongst them ejaculated a hearty
+"amen" to the Chieftain's short but earnest thanksgiving
+to Heaven, for the assistance now known to be
+at hand. Then I remembered that the brave Sir John
+was a pious and a God-fearing man; and that the
+veriest infidel sneers not at religion in the mouth of
+him, whose heart is fearless and true.</p>
+
+<p>Visible to me, if not audible, what extravagant demonstrations
+of joy ensued! I felt my little car vibrating
+to their force, as cheers, peal upon peal, came
+rolling up into the welkin. Singular was it, too, that
+though in my dream my ears were stopped, I could
+read in the expressive features of those rejoicing Mariners
+their varied emotions, as they vociferated their
+glee. I could see in their honest countenances, which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>
+cheer was for Old England&mdash;which for their Queen&mdash;which
+for their homes&mdash;which for their wives and
+little ones. Then they burst forth into grotesque dancing,
+and slapping of each others' hands, and jumping
+on to each others' backs, and a thousand merry antics,
+as though they were children just let loose from school.
+And anon, in their mirth, running races hither and
+thither, one, an officer amongst them, picked up another
+printed silken slip, in general aspect like the
+former, but addressed, it seemed, to the Chieftain by
+name. A second look would have been sufficient to
+master its contents, but the young man looked not the
+second time, he hurried with it straightway to Sir
+John. Rare instance this, methought, of the working
+of a high sense of honour!</p>
+
+<p>And the veteran, what did it convey to him? I
+saw not; but I saw a tear course down his furrowed
+cheek; and for the moment my ears were opened to
+hear his half-smothered ejaculation, "Jane, Jane, God
+bless thee&mdash;true wife, noble woman&mdash;we shall meet,
+thank God, we shall meet!"</p>
+
+<p>So I watched the merry throng, and strove in vain
+to catch portions of their earnest talk. Suddenly, all
+eyes were turned upon the Captain; he was speaking,
+and pointing to the West. A few words only seemed
+to come from his lips; but those surely were words of
+command. In a moment, every man, though half
+delirious with delight, seized upon his axe or his saw.
+Work recommenced; labour was distributed in gangs.
+Every arm was vigorously plied. The watch, des<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>cended
+from the mast-head to hear the wondrous
+tidings, mounted lustily again to his look-out station.
+Each man was busy at his post; and though there was
+perchance some display of increased energy and activity,
+you would not have surmised that these patient
+labourers had just exchanged the gathering gloom of
+Despair for the radiant smiles of Hope. O gallant
+hearts of oak, thought I&mdash;resolute, unflinching, enduring,
+in the prospect of the dreariest of fates&mdash;orderly,
+obedient, loyal, in the thrill of unexpected deliverance.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The remainder of my dream came upon me in
+snatches.</p>
+
+<p>Midway in a narrow strait, between lofty and sterile
+banks, a battered and crippled barque was steering
+South. I knew the place to be Behring's Straits, the
+vessel the Discovery Ship that I had just left amidst
+the ice. So bruised, however, was she, so rent, and
+strained, and maltreated, that but for the friendly aid
+of a consort's tow-rope, she could scarcely have adventured
+even on this comparatively easy navigation.
+At her peak floated the standard of England; but I
+strove in vain to make out the colours of her welcome
+escort. Once, I thought I saw plainly the Stars and
+Stripes of America; but these either faded away, or
+assumed the appearance of the double-headed eagle of
+Russia. Be that as it may, my sense of hearing was
+restored; and I could both hear and see signs of continuous
+rejoicing and festivity. Sounds of mirth, and
+song, and music, came upwards to me from those<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span>
+pleasant waters. Many a canoe, too, filled with outlandish
+people, visited the ships; all was wonder, and
+delight, and congratulation.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Hitherto there had been some consistency in my
+dream; for if my mode of seeing were dream-like and
+fantastical, what I saw had the verisimilitude of reality.
+But this was over, or at least was changed. In place
+of being seated in the car of a balloon, I was now in
+the maintop of Sir John's battered and leaky ship, a
+witness to what could only have existence in the wild
+imaginings of a vision. For, methought we were still
+steering to the South, when on our larboard hand uprose
+a range of lofty hills, upon which it seemed to me
+that I could almost have jumped. Down their sides
+rolled hundreds of little streams; and in the waters,
+waist-deep, were myriads of human beings, delving,
+and scraping, and washing, and picking up what seemed
+to me to be gold. But they paused in their busy occupations,
+when they saw the approach of the ships;
+and, holding up shining masses of the golden ore, shouted
+to the long missing mariners to come to the mines,
+and gather a plentiful harvest after their toils. Yardarm
+were we to the glittering hill-sides, and the miners
+wore the air of men who rarely tempted in vain; but
+the crew of the worn-out ship gaily shook their heads,
+laughed a pleasant little laugh of defiance, and the
+words, "home, home," came floating up to me from
+her deck.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span></p><hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Another trial. The men had theirs, and were
+staunch. It was the master's turn. Heading still to
+the southwards, but almost becalmed, I saw a swift
+steamer ranging fast up with us from astern. This
+time the Stars and Stripes were plainly evident. She
+came alongside. Her captain was on our deck in a
+moment, and engaged in earnest conversation with the
+good Sir John. By the wave of his hand and a word
+caught here and there, I knew that the kindly American
+was pressing the veteran to take passage in his
+steamer. He drew a little almanac from his pocket,
+and there seemed to be some comparison as to dates;
+but Sir John finally, with a moistened eye, touched
+the other on the shoulder, pointed upwards to the
+British ensign, and firmly shook his head. Away
+rushed the friendly steamer, and the crowding passengers
+on her deck took leave of us with reiterated cheers.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>My dream was drawing to a close; but I yet was
+housed snugly in my new position, when the look-out
+at the mast-head announced a sail. It might have
+been the same day, or the next, or a week later. But
+he announced a sail&mdash;then another&mdash;and another&mdash;and
+lastly a steamer under canvas. The squadron bore
+down upon us. It consisted of two line-of-battle-ships,
+a frigate, and a screw-propeller, under command of the
+British Admiral in the Pacific. The greetings and
+salutes were over, and official etiquette was somewhat
+relaxed under the intense excitement of the moment,
+when I heard in my dream, on the quarter-deck of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span>
+flag ship, the Admiral thus addressed the carpenter,
+with a certain meaning twinkle in his eye. "That
+leaky old tub can never swim round Cape Horn,
+Carpenter." "I think not, your Honour," discreetly
+replied Mr. Chips. "Youngster," continued the
+Admiral turning quickly to a little middy, "go to
+Captain B. with my compliments, and tell him to call
+an immediate survey on the Discovery Ship." The
+little middy touched his cap respectfully, and off he
+jumped with his message. "Mr. C.," cried the
+Admiral to the other midshipman who stood by the
+signal-locker, "signalize the propeller to light her
+fires, and get up all steam." In thirty seconds four
+bits of bunting flew out from the mizen royal-mast
+head.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The last object that I saw in my vision was the
+figure of a woman, walking the ramparts of an old
+Spanish city on the Pacific coast of Central America.
+Matronly, and dignified in her air and bearing, her
+featured bore the impress of past anxiety, but across
+them flitted at times the consciousness of approaching
+joy. She gazed wistfully ever and anon seaward;
+and my heart yearned to tell her all that I had so
+lately seen. The herd of vulgar gold-hunters, who
+thronged the battlements, respected her, for her
+long-continued sorrows, her abiding faith, her matchless
+perseverance. They pressed not on her steps.</p>
+
+<p>I, too, who knew more than they did, how I longed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span>
+to see the meeting&mdash;but no, no, 'twere better that it
+should be sacred.</p>
+
+<p>I had not the choice; at this moment, forced upon
+my unwilling ears, through the key-hole came a tiny
+voice, "Please, Sir, mother says won't you get up;
+the stage will be here in ten minutes."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>WOMAN NEVER AT A LOSS.</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><i>An Eastern Apologue&mdash;From the French.</i></p>
+
+
+<p>----I read her my manuscript; I had been abusing
+woman I must confess. Not a single good word could
+I say for the sex; and long did my companion and I
+battle the point. Many truisms, much that was strictly
+veritable had I brought forward, and she had been
+obliged to yield to the justice of almost all my remarks,
+though disclaiming against my slander at the same
+time. Finally&mdash;"You intend to marry, yourself?"
+she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly," I replied; "to find a woman bold
+enough to take me, after having convinced her that I
+knew all the duplicity of the sex, will henceforward be
+the dearest of my hopes."</p>
+
+<p>"Is this resignation or fatuity?"</p>
+
+<p>"That is my secret."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then," she said, "most learned doctor of conjugal
+arts and sciences, permit me to relate to you a
+little Eastern apologue, that I read long ago in a small
+volume that was offered to us every year in the shape
+of an almanac." I bowed my delighted attention.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span>
+The pretty creature threw herself back in her <i>chaise
+longue</i>, rested her little feet upon the fender, and fixed
+her arch dark eyes upon me.</p>
+
+<p>"At the commencement of the Empire," she began,
+"the ladies brought into fashion a game which consisted
+in accepting nothing from the person with whom one
+agreed to play, without saying the word 'Iadeste.'
+An affair of this kind lasted, as you may suppose, whole
+weeks, and the height of cleverness was to surprise one
+another into receiving a trifle without uttering the magic
+word."</p>
+
+<p>"Even a kiss?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! I have twenty times gained 'Iadeste' in that
+way," said she, laughing. "It was, I believe, about
+this time, apropos of this game of which the origin is
+either Arabian or Chinese, that my apologue obtained
+the honours of print."</p>
+
+<p>"But if I tell it to you," she interrupted, looking
+doubtfully at me, and passing her taper finger slowly
+across her lips, with a charmingly coquettish gesture,
+"promise me to insert it at the end of your book!"</p>
+
+<p>"Will you not be bestowing a treasure? I owe you
+already so many obligations, I do not hesitate to add
+this; therefore, I accept it at once." She smiled maliciously,
+and went on in these words.</p>
+
+<p>"A philosopher had compiled a very large collection
+of all the tricks our sex can play; and so, to guard
+himself against our wiles, he carried this constantly
+about him. One day, in travelling, he found himself
+near an Arabian encampment. A young woman, sitting<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span>
+under the shade of a palm-tree, got up suddenly, on the
+approach of the stranger, and invited him so obligingly
+to repose under her tent that he could not resist accepting.
+The husband of this lady was then absent. The
+philosopher had scarcely established himself upon the
+soft carpets, when his graceful hostess presented him
+with fresh dates and a vessel full of milk; he could not
+help seeing the rare perfection of the hands which offered
+the beverage and the fruit. But to recover from
+the confusion into which the charms of the young Arabian
+had thrown him, and whose snares he began to
+dread, the wise man drew out his book and read! The
+enchanting creature, piqued at this disdain, said to him
+in the sweetest voice, 'That book must be very interesting,
+since it seems to be the only thing you consider
+worthy of notice. Would it be an indiscretion to ask
+the name of the science of which it treats!' The philosopher
+replied without raising his eyes,  'The subject
+of this book is beyond the comprehension of woman.'
+This refusal excited more and more the curiosity of
+the young Arabian. She put forward the prettiest
+little foot that ever left its transient trace upon the
+fleeting sands of the desert. The sage began to waver;
+his truant looks would wander toward those dainty feet
+till his eyes, too powerfully tempted, finally mingled
+the flame of their admiration with the fire that darted
+from the ardent and black orbs of the young Asiatic.
+Again, then, she asked in her soft low tones, 'what is
+the book?' and the charmed philosopher replied, 'I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>
+am the author of this work. It contains a record of all
+the tricks that woman ever invented!'</p>
+
+<p>"'What! all&mdash;absolutely all?' inquired the daughter
+of the desert.</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes&mdash;all! And it is only in studying woman constantly,
+that I have been able to overcome my fear of
+them.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Ah!' said the Arabian, dropping the long lashes
+of her snowy eyelids; and then throwing suddenly upon
+the pretended sage the full lustre of her Eastern eyes
+she made him forget in one instant his valuable book
+and its invaluable contents. Behold my philosopher
+the most impassioned of men!</p>
+
+<p>"Thinking that he perceived in the manner of his
+young hostess a slight touch of coquetry, the stranger
+hazarded an avowal of his adoration. How could he
+have resisted? The sky was so blue, the sand shone in
+the distance like a blade of gold; the wind brought
+love upon its wings, and the wife of the absent Arab
+seemed to reflect all the brilliancy with which she was
+surrounded. Her bright eyes, too, became liquid; and
+she seemed, by a slight movement of her graceful head,
+to consent to listen to the honeyed words of the quondam
+philosopher.</p>
+
+<p>"The wise man was in a full tide of eloquence when
+the distant gallop of a horse was heard rapidly approaching.</p>
+
+<p>"'We are lost!' cried the alarmed Fatima; 'my
+husband is coming. He is jealous as a tiger, and still
+more fierce. In the name of the Prophet, and if you<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span>
+love your life, hide yourself in this chest!' The frightened
+author, seeing nothing else to do, rushed into the
+chest; his hostess shut it down, locked it, and took the
+key. She went to meet her spouse, and after several
+caresses, which put him into the best of humour, 'I
+must tell you,' said she, 'a very singular adventure.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I listen, my gazelle,' said the Arabian, seating
+himself upon a cushion and crossing big legs after the
+Oriental fashion.</p>
+
+<p>"'There came here to-day a kind of philosopher;
+he pretended to have collected in a book all the treacheries
+of which my sex is capable; and this false sage&mdash;spoke&mdash;to&mdash;me
+of love!'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I listened to him!' At these words the Arab
+bounded like a lion, and drew his kangiar. The philosopher,
+from the bottom of the chest, heard all, and
+sent to the devil his book, woman, and all the men of
+Arabia Petrea.</p>
+
+<p>"'Fatima!' cried the husband, if you wish to live,
+answer! 'Where is the traitor?'</p>
+
+<p>"Horrified at the storm she had raised, Fatima threw
+herself at the feet of her lord, and trembling under
+the menacing steel of the poniard, she pointed out the
+coffer, with a single look, as prompt as it was timid.
+Then rising, ashamed, she drew the key from her girdle
+and gave it to her jealous lord. But&mdash;as he turned
+furiously from her, the malicious beauty burst into
+a shout of laughter, and laying her white hand upon
+his shoulder, 'Iadeste!' she exclaimed; 'at last, I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span>
+shall have my beautiful gold chain! Give it to me;
+you have lost. Another time, Fazom, have a little better
+memory!' The husband stupefied, let fall the key,
+and presenting the golden chain, on his knees, offered
+his dear Fatima to bring her all the jewels of all the
+caravans that passed that year, if she would only give
+up such cruel methods of gaining the 'Iadeste.' Then,
+as he was an Arabian and did not like to lose his gold
+chain, though it was to his wife, he remounted his steed
+and went off, grumbling at his ease in the desert&mdash;for
+he loved Fatima too much to show her his regrets.</p>
+
+<p>"At last, the young woman released the philosopher
+more dead than alive from his prison, and said to him,
+gravely,</p>
+
+<p>"'Mr. Philosopher, don't forgot to insert this trick
+in your collection.'"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>MANDRAGORA&mdash;BY THE DOZEN.</h2>
+
+
+<p>And so you cannot coax yourself off to sleep? Why?
+Were you beguiled by their exquisite flavour into rashly
+smoking three or four of those potent Regalias, with
+which your friend, the rich stock-broker, professes to
+aid the digestion of his guests, after a lengthened sitting
+at his luxurious table? Or did the rounded arm
+and taper fingers of his fair wife, presiding over the
+mysteries of the silver urn, tempt you to indulgence
+in too frequent cups of Souchong? Perhaps you are
+endeavouring, in spite of yourself, to solve some knotty
+problem in politics, or love, or chess, or mathematics.
+Perhaps you have a considerable bill to take up to-morrow,
+with a very slim balance at your banker's.
+Perhaps you have a heart-ache; perhaps a head-ache.
+At any rate, your nerves and senses are painfully
+strained; and you feel as though you would give the
+world and all, for a lullaby that would serve its purpose.
+My good Sir, compose your mind. If you can't
+sleep and dream, as you desire&mdash;dream and sleep. Reverse,
+I say, the common order. And do not sneer
+at the suggestion, unless you prefer tossing about all
+night in vain. The process is not only not impossible;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span>
+it is not half so difficult as you might suppose, presuming&mdash;as
+I have a right to presume, in regard to my
+reader&mdash;that your imagination is not hopelessly inert.</p>
+
+<p>Some persons recommend to the restless and wide-awake
+the repetition of scraps from books, in prose or
+verse, just as though every one had a plenteous store
+of "elegant extracts" garnered up in his memory, and
+as though authors specially aimed at being somniferous.
+There are indeed not a few among them, who
+unavoidably achieve this distinction; and the advice
+might not really be bad, if you could con over&mdash;once
+would be sufficient&mdash;Mr. A.'s last pamphlet on political
+economy, or the Rev. Mr. B.'s last sermon. On
+the whole however, inasmuch as your favourite passages&mdash;should
+you know any of them by heart&mdash;may
+be the very opposite of soothing in their tendencies,
+this mode of wooing slumber can scarcely be pronounced
+successful.</p>
+
+<p>You must commence, I say, by dreaming, if you
+would compel yourself gently to sleep; but before I
+proceed to introduce to you my list of available prescriptions
+in this line, I note one with which my readers
+may possibly be familiar, having learned it in
+their school-boy days. You will not now be told for
+the first time, that a drowsy sensation may be induced
+by musing upon&mdash;or dreaming of, which is the same
+thing&mdash;a field of tall and ripe barley, swept by fresh
+autumnal gales. The rise and fall of each bowed head,
+with its feathery and graceful spikes, combines well
+with the undulating motion of the whole and the varied<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>
+play of light and shade. The idea is otherwise expressed
+by the British Laureate in "The Poet's Song,"
+one of his minor pieces; "and waves of shadow," says
+he, "went over the wheat." Nevertheless it is clear
+that he missed the proper application of the thought,
+for, in place of lulling the beholder to forgetful repose,
+the sight seems to have made him break out into a
+song so loud that wild swans paused to listen in their
+flight, larks fluttered down to earth, swallows gave up
+hunting bees, snakes slipped under sprays, wild hawks
+stared over sparrows stricken under their claws, and
+the very nightingales were set a-thinking. Truly a
+sad perversion this of a golden opportunity! But
+your rhymsters were ever a crazy race. When they
+deal with their fellows generally, we all know how
+they botch poor human nature. What, then, can be
+expected, when poets undertake to figure out one of
+themselves? Still, let us improve the occasion. Barley-fields
+or wheat-fields are well enough in their way;
+only, if you conjure up this image, I would advise you
+to season it with an abundance of red poppies intermingled
+with the legitimate crop, and a very careful
+attempt on your part to number these interlopers one
+by one, preparatory, if so it please you, to flipping off
+their heads. With due allowance, therefore, for its
+lack of novelty, this dream may be admitted into our
+collection.</p>
+
+<p>And it may be proper to remark at the outset that,
+though the dreams whereof I propose to treat are
+sufficiently distinct in their kind, it is desirable, in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span>
+practical use of them, to run them one into another&mdash;to
+fuse them unconsciously as it were, without being
+over-nice as to the point at which one ends and another
+begins. It is not requisite, however, for this reason,
+that they should all be packed into one paragraph,
+like a daily paper's report of one of Mr. Morrill's
+speeches on the Tariff, or a Secretary of the Treasury's
+Report. You shall have each dainty conceit served
+up in its own dish, so that, furthermore by the way,
+you can take them in such order as suits your own
+good pleasure. This view of the matter relieves me
+also from the necessity of formal arrangement. It is
+altogether unimportant which fancy comes uppermost.
+The main thing is to shut off all thought concerning
+the actualities of life, eschewing reference to your
+loves, your hates, your wrestlings with circumstance,
+your mental cares, your bodily ailments. I repeat it:
+you must dream, if you would sleep. Counting the
+breezy barley-field above mentioned as one, I believe
+I can supply you with a dozen subjects.</p>
+
+<p>Your physical eye is closed, of course&mdash;your mind's
+eye being, on that account, all the more keenly alive
+to impression, and the better able to compass an unembarrassed
+range. Set it, then, upon a spiral stairway
+endless so far as I can imagine it, though you may perchance
+by looking earnestly upward discover whereto
+it leads, or by peering intently downward find out its
+base. But did I say a stairway? That was not what
+I meant; and dreamers, of all men, are at liberty to
+change or modify their views. I should have said an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>
+inclined plane. Let it be steep, smooth, slippery, broad
+enough to admit the passage of several figures simultaneously,
+and guarded by bannisters on either side.
+When, fatigued with the vain attempt to satisfy your
+doubts as to the safety of this strange structure, your
+curiosity craves enlightenment as to its uses, I pray
+you to observe how I would have it peopled. Sliding
+tumultuously adown the balustrades, lo and behold an
+innumerable throng of Cherubs in unbroken succession,
+coming whence and going whither you know not, but
+each the counterpart of his predecessors, and each flapping
+his little wings to maintain his balance, rendered
+precarious as it is by his inability to sit a-straddle. As
+for the inclined plane itself thus fantastically flanked,
+you soon perceive that it is the <i>via sacra</i> of many
+an Ethardo, whom you have known in the flesh or in
+the spirit&mdash;Ethardo, the marvellous gymnast, who
+mounted and descended steep slopes at the Sydenham
+Crystal Palace, by trundling inflated balls beneath
+his feet.  Up and down, down and up, some painfully
+and some skilfully pediculating, your Ethardi pass
+and repass each other, disorderly yet in order. Name
+them and salute them as they go by. You have probably
+more acquaintances among them than I; but I
+recognise Robinson Crusoe and Count Bismarck, Tarquinius
+Priscus and Horace Greeley, John Ruskin
+and Lucrezia Borgia, Mrs. Fry and Edgar Poe, Mr.
+Gladstone and Dion Boucicault, John Bright and Mrs.
+Grundy, Ben. Wade and Victor Hugo, Pio Nono and
+the Great Mogul. Note, too, the various material<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span>
+moulded into circular form, and blown up by way of
+ambulant footstool; now it is a crown, now a crozier,
+now a bag of gold, now a wind-bag, now a woman's
+heart, now a man's fame done up in a newspaper and
+properly puffed. Ring the changes upon these Ethardi
+and the motive power that each applies, O my wakeful
+friend; and at least you may lose sight of your own
+individuality. Or, take a slide down the banisters
+with the young Cherubs, and perchance you may touch
+bottom&mdash;in Lethe.</p>
+
+<p>Not so? Let us proceed. There's a man at our
+Club, whose reputation is so solidly built up, though
+on an ethereal basis, that I never knew any one presume
+to question it. He is an absolute master of
+one accomplishment; unrivalled, and&mdash;to the best of
+my belief, though I can't vouch for the fact&mdash;unenvied.
+Admiring spectators gather round him and applaud;
+but, if he have ambitious imitators, they rehearse in
+secret. So far, he does well&mdash;ay, with consummate
+tact and unfailing certainty&mdash;what few men can do
+at all, unless once in a while at dreary intervals, and
+then by accident. Not to keep you in suspense,
+which is antagonistic to repose and slumber, this young
+paragon contrives to throw off his cigar-smoke from
+his lips, at will, in an unerring series of the most lovely
+rings or wreaths, which, as they float and rise in
+tremulous succession, strangely fascinate the looker-on.
+It may be that this feat is not much of an achievement,
+morally or physically or intellectually considered.
+It may be also that the Club does not do itself much<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>
+honour, in setting so high a value on this performance.
+But what will you? In the palmy days of Greece, a
+man acquired a certain celebrity by his precision and
+address in throwing peas through a needle's eye&mdash;the
+peas being, I presume, much smaller or the needles
+much larger, than any with which we sow or make
+soup in these degenerate days. Still, so highly do I
+appreciate perseverance in the acquirement of any
+difficult art, that I purpose doing much more for my
+proficient in smoke, than was done for his man of peas
+by Philip of Macedon. That bushel of ammunition
+was a scurvy reward. I confer immortality, by thus
+registering a fact and hinting a name. And I do
+this from a sense of gratitude, wherein I trust that
+you will participate, so soon as you perceive the connection
+that may surely be traced, between the smoke
+thus artistically and gracefully jetted into air, and the
+drowsiness by which you would fain be possessed.
+Do but imagine a score of your acquaintances round
+a table, each an adept in this way, and each filling the
+atmosphere with coronet after coronet of vapour thrown
+up from meerschaum or cheroot. Whose are the
+most frequent, whose the most perfect, whose retain
+their form the longest? Watch the little circlets as
+they wave and tremble; and award the palm of merit
+fairly. Nay, even if you tell me that you are innocent
+of the weed and nauseated by its odour, none
+the less shall this fantasy be available. I saw once a
+ship-of-war firing a salute; and lo, from one of the guns
+went up to the pure sky, in magnified proportions,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span>
+just such a wreath as those I have described, as delicate
+yet as clearly defined, and touched withal with a
+suspicion of prismatic colours as it caught the rays of
+the sun. An enthusiastic painter might have deemed
+it an invisible Fairy's aureole; a sentimental milliner
+would have set it down as the flounce of her unseen
+robe. Whether the gunner of this occasion had taken
+a lesson from my friend at the Club, I cannot pretend
+to decide; I only assure you that I witnessed the
+phenomenon. You have, therefore, but to multiply
+as well as magnify. Think of a squadron, a fleet, all
+the navies of the world, sailing slowly and majestically
+in unending circuit, as the custom is when they
+bombard some hapless fort. The saluting is continuous;
+the movement never ceases; but the big cannon
+are noiseless now and harmless. Space is joyous with
+the innumerable wreaths of bluish vapour; but the
+red slaughter and the accursed tumult of the sea-fight
+are not heard or seen. Ponder long and lazily, I
+counsel you, over the evolutions of the ships and the
+convolutions of the smoke. Those may lure you, possibly,
+into the Waters of Oblivion; these may spirit
+you away to the land of the Lotos-Eaters.</p>
+
+<p>Another dream invites you; but it must be sketched
+with more reticence, and this for two reasons. In
+the first place, the subject has become identified with
+that portion of theatrical entertainments usually found
+to be the least soporific. In the second place, if your
+imagination were encouraged to free range hereupon,
+you might be foolish enough to connect its poetic mo<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span>tion
+and its charm with certain souvenirs of a certain
+fair friend of yours, whom it were wiser to forget if
+you desire to profit by this Mandragorean system.
+Briefly, then, I commend a Ballet, as not altogether unworthy
+of trial&mdash;but not, be it observed, that thing of gas
+lamps, and pink tights, and leers, and <i>poses plastiques</i>,
+over which young America goes into raptures. By
+no means. Picture to yourself a smooth sward beneath
+clustered pines, a tender moonlight, and Nymphs&mdash;not
+semi-nude as is the fashion of our day, neither affecting
+the contortions of the gymnast as in our modern
+caricature of dancing&mdash;but robed in swansdown, with
+nodding plumes and tasseled fuschias pendent, tripping
+it, if you will, on "light fantastic toe," yet through
+stately and solemn measures. You remember Giulio
+Romano's dance of Apollo and the Muses in the Pitti
+at Florence? Take that for your model; then place
+the figures to your liking. Nor forget to add an orchestra
+of Æolian harps. Let them hang among the
+pine-branches, and sigh forth Weber's Last Waltz, just
+to set the groups in motion. Then fail not in your
+breathings, O soft night-wind; foot it daintily, ye wildwood
+Nymphs&mdash;so may sleep steal gently upon the
+restless one, while yet his ear and eye are unsated!</p>
+
+<p>Another dream: blue water again, though, this time,
+with a golden beach. It is calm; but the surf rolls
+in languidly, with low murmurous sound, as it will
+roll, be the sea's surface never so smooth, beyond the
+involuntary breakers. What graceful bends and curves
+are marked, for an instant, with frothy pencil, upon the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span>
+shining sands! How they sparkle with evanescent
+light! How soon the tiny bubbles disappear! But
+you have watched all this, many and many a time;
+and stale indeed hereon were description and moralizing!
+Why, then, this present allusion? What is
+there in it, tending to lull the acuter sensibilities?
+What offers it of gently-soothing exercise to the overwrought
+and throbbing brain? This is the reply.
+Popular belief gives to every ninth or tenth wave,
+tumbling in upon the shore, supremacy over its fellows.
+It swells up into fuller volume. It sweeps
+landward with a more majestic force. This is the
+story; but I would have you test its correctness. Is
+it the ninth, or the tenth? So, lie down yonder upon
+the mass of dry sea-weed piled against the rocks, and
+count patiently a dozen, a score, a hundred, a thousand
+waves as they come in. You shall tell me, to-morrow
+morning, whether the ninth have it, or the
+tenth&mdash;whether there be any regularity at all.</p>
+
+<p>Again: if we do not, like the Roman Augurs, watch
+and interpret the flight of birds as of good or evil
+omen, some of them&mdash;I mean some of the birds, not
+of the Augurs&mdash;may help us to become, for a while,
+independent of fate and fortune. Did you ever, for
+instance, sit at a window on a summer's evening, and
+take note how a flight of swallows skims the air?
+They are not very numerous, perhaps; but as they
+dart to and fro, and cross and recross before you, their
+number appears indefinite, and the zigzag peculiarity
+of their movements can only be verified by the closest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span>
+possible scrutiny. I have satisfied myself that the
+motion is regular, and that it describes an elongated
+figure of 8, traced as I am sure you have often traced
+it upon ice with the outer edge of your skates. Now,
+though I tell you this on the faith of my own personal
+observation, you are not bound to accept my word
+for it. Dream therefore that, while you are blending
+two ovals into one figure upon the frozen pond, swallows
+overhead are keeping time to your gyrations.
+The winter sport and the summer bird may be made
+to harmonize, as it is only in a dream; and close
+watching will enable you hereafter to support or disavow
+my theory.</p>
+
+<p>Again: return, if you please, from air to water, for
+you have by no means exhausted the resources of this
+latter element, in the way of material for dreams.
+Are you an angler? Did you never drowse and doze
+over your rod, when "sitting in a pleasant shade," on
+a sultry afternoon, not a nibble disturbed the equanimity
+of your float? The mere thought were suggestive
+of a nap&mdash;suggestive, that is, to the indolently disposed,
+with whom however you may not be classed,
+seeing that your mind is in a state of unwholesome
+excitement, the which it is my business to allay. And
+so, I pray you, look deeper into this matter; pry down
+into the blue transparent depths, and mark the fish
+that swarm about your hook. Is it paste thereon, or
+a wriggling worm? Never mind; the bait is singularly
+attractive. To say nothing of the float gently bobbing
+ever and anon, and of the tell-tale ripples rising<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span>
+to the surface, you can see with your own eyes how
+victims dally with temptation; how they course to
+and fro, and round and round; how one eyes the bait,
+and another smells it, and another mumbles it; how
+one swims away, and presently returns, and with him
+his mate in size and colour. Are they over-fed or
+over-cautious, that they thus play round, but will
+not gorge? Does one egg on his brother to try the
+suspicious morsel, hoping himself to profit by his
+brother's experience? Is there so much resemblance
+to human foibles discernible down there, among these
+poor little inhabitants of the waters under the Earth?
+The question is worth studying out&mdash;especially by a
+sleepless man, who, while contemplating the forms,
+the motions, the manners, and the minds of fish, may
+unconsciously swallow the bait that is thus dropped
+before him.</p>
+
+<p>It was my intention to devote a long and distinct
+paragraph to each of four other subjects, that appear
+to me no less adapted for the consideration of waking
+dreamers. These are, respectively, Ghosts, Labyrinths,
+Regattas, and the Eleven Thousand Virgins
+of Cologne. But it is well to leave something to the
+reader's perspicacity and inventive powers. Indeed,
+why should he not fancy&mdash;dream is the more appropriate
+term&mdash;that he himself has undertaken to complete
+these special paragraphs? Let his imaginary
+pen glide, swift and effortless, over his imaginary
+foolscap. Ten to one, he will fill in and elaborate my
+outlines, far better than I could work them out my<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span>self.
+For instance, I do but mention Ghosts; he
+might summon to his presence, and bid troop before
+him, hosts upon hosts of his friends or relatives, or
+of his chosen heroes and heroines in romance and
+history. He might clothe them in white or in grey;
+he might attire them in their ordinary habiliments;
+in short, he might parade them according to his own
+taste, without reference to mine, which whould be a
+clear point in his favour. Accidentally, I might call
+up some spirit that had vexed and thwarted him
+through life, for no man whose experience is worth
+remembering hath not had his enemies, hidden or
+revealed, and very few are the men, fewer the women,
+who have never disposed of a rival. My reader of
+the moment, invested with my functions, will of course
+evoke none but his familiars, the well-bred and well-behaved.
+Let me be grateful accordingly that, by
+transferring the responsibility to him, I escape the
+chance of bringing forward, innocently and inopportunely,
+some social Banquo. And so I pass on, with
+one single word of caution to my substitute in completing
+this paragraph: let him not convert his pen
+into a Pre-Raphaelitish paint-brush. Airy beings
+must be rather hinted than described. The realism
+of anatomical plates, applied to them, would spoil the
+reader's dream <i>in toto</i>, and wake him up perhaps more
+hopelessly than ever.&mdash;As to Labyrinths, the course
+is obvious. Take a dozen of these quaint contrivances,
+and place them side by side, as Paulsen or Paul Morphy
+may place the sundry chess-boards whereat he is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span>
+to play, simultaneously and blindfolded, an equivalent
+number of games. Pop, over the hedges and into the
+very core of each one, any personage against whom
+you have a grudge, or any one of the Ghosts just convened
+that may have been troublesome; and then
+challenge the incarcerated individuals to find their
+way out of limbo, by the gravelled pathways. Should
+one of the whole number emerge, through extraordinary
+good luck, quietly tip him back again over the
+hedge, or defy him to retrace his steps and regain the
+centre. You may enlarge this suggestion, I think,
+into a paragraph reasonably long.&mdash;The same with
+Regattas. I am almost sorry that I gave up to you
+so felicitous a topic; for all ages and all waters may
+be laid under contribution. From Noah's Ark shall
+float the commodore's broad pendant. The ocean
+shall be covered, so far as eye can range, with countless
+craft of every build and rig. And all shall glide
+about in quiet, inasmuch as oars shall be muffled,
+and steamers, having learned to consume their own
+smoke, shall be taught equally to swallow their hideous
+noises. The marshalling of the competitors and
+the order of the racing are left to your discretion;
+but there need be no lack of interest. Caiques from
+Stamboul and gondolas from Venice shall be frequent;
+and pirogues from the Malayan peninsula shall over-haul
+the three trim yacht-schooners that raced across
+the Atlantic from New-York. Here Cleopatra's
+barge shall be matched against an Esquimaux kayak;
+there a catamaran from Coringa shall bump the Yale<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>
+College eight. If you cannot make something out of
+all this picturesque confusion, and if you cannot contrive
+to lose therein both yourself and the reader of
+your paragraph, the fault will be yours, not mine.&mdash;There
+remain the Eleven Thousand Virgins of Cologne.
+What are you to do with them? Simply this.
+Endow each one of them with personal attributes;
+let each have form and features, distinct from the
+others of her sisterhood. Is the task difficult? So
+much the better. After a cool thousand or so of these
+individual portraitures, you may begin to fumble in
+vain for separate identities. In fact, who knows
+whether you may not be compelled to take refuge
+hopelessly in sleep, the very mark at which both of
+us are aiming?</p>
+
+<p>And now, the foregoing long and subdivided paragraph
+being brought at last to an end, it were disingenuous
+to shirk an admission, that the "who's who"
+is not so plainly discernible therein as it might be.
+You and I, and the reader and the writer, and the
+giver and recipient of advice, will be accused by the
+critic of being somewhat queerly mixed up. What,
+then? Are not vagueness and uncertainty of style
+specially appropriate to the circumstances? Who
+would thank us for precision? No, no; carry clearness,
+if you like, into your mathematical definitions;
+but leave us our mistiness when we treat of the mysterious.
+Nor, on the whole, am I otherwise than
+content with my suggested assumption of temporary
+and imaginary authorship, as one of the methods for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span>
+quieting a fevered brain. How pleasant to dream
+that rival Publishers are contending for your manuscript
+poems; that rival Managers are waylaying you
+for a sight of your unwritten comedy! Besides, by
+adding authorship to the list that closed with the
+damsels of Cologne, the number is brought up to
+eleven, so that, when I wind up with my trump card,
+the promised dozen of dreams will be complete, and I
+shall be enabled to dispense with the "waves of
+shadow" on the wheat-field, which I acknowledged
+were not my original conception.</p>
+
+<p>But am I too late in bringing forward my last and
+happiest idea?&mdash;though for that matter, when the tale
+of Mazeppa was concluded, "the King had been an
+hour asleep," and yet Mazeppa's story was told out
+ne'ertheless. For your immediate purpose therefore,
+or for use on your next sleepless night, I entrust you
+with the crowning opiate. Recollect that you are
+dreaming; and dream that all your intimates and
+relatives, all of whom you have ever heard or read
+with interest, men and women and children, people
+of every age and clime&mdash;imagine them, I say, all seated
+before you at a round table. How any table is to
+accommodate so vast a multitude, is their affair, and
+yours; the dreamer is never baulked by technical impediments.
+Have your eye upon them all at once&mdash;another
+little difficulty, to be overcome only by mortals
+in the incipient stage of somnolency. Or, if
+your mind's eye obstinately refuses to enlarge its
+orbit in this direction, so as to embrace such a vast<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>
+and heterogeneous assemblage, gather, I beseech you,
+into one focus any such crowd as you habitually see.
+The Sunday audience of the Reverend Henry Ward
+Beecher will answer the purpose; or you may fancy
+yourself at one of the old Tammany Hall Meetings; or
+at the Opera, on a fashionable night; or in the Senate
+at Washington during the impeachment of Mr. Johnson.
+It matters not when and where; but the proceedings
+strike you as insufferably dull, and you give
+vent to your feelings in a yawn that may neither be suppressed
+nor concealed. Suddenly, moved by the same
+impulse and unable also to control or hide its effect, the
+jaw of every soul present is dropped to the lowermost,
+and all mouths are open in a universal yawn. It is
+not catching; it is caught. Beecher gapes, and the
+elect are gaping round him. Isaiah Rynders the
+same, and the same with his "unterrified" hearers.
+Parepa-Rosa stands open-mouthed in dumb show
+of singing, while humming-birds perched on chignons
+vibrate, as they vainly try to resist the irresistible.
+Gape the Republicans, and gape the Democrats, in
+response to the gaping Butler on his legs. There is,
+in Shakespeare's words&mdash;though his ignorant editors
+have transformed it into a "gap"&mdash;there is, I say, "a
+gape in Nature." Will you alone hold out: I can't
+believe it. You have yawned in concert, I am morally
+certain. Indeed, if, as these long-drawn prescriptions
+come to an end, you be not far on the road
+to forgetfulness, I can give you but one parting counsel.
+Nothing else can serve and save you&mdash;you must
+incontinently take morphine.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="DOCTOR_PABLOS_PREDICTION" id="DOCTOR_PABLOS_PREDICTION"></a>DOCTOR PABLO'S PREDICTION.</h2>
+
+<blockquote><p class="center">Doctor Pablo went back a lonely man, to his old mother, in France,
+after having passed twenty years in the Philippines.&mdash;<br />
+<i>English magazine.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+
+<p>He did so. We can vouch thus much for the correctness
+of <i>Household Words</i> of the 6th inst., whence
+the above-named quotation is copied. And as the subject
+of it is a remarkable personage, and this unexpected
+meeting with him in print has revived in us not a few
+pleasant recollections, we will take the liberty of informing
+our readers how we came to have personal knowledge
+of Don Pablo&mdash;for this, and not Doctor Pablo,
+was his cognomen, at least amongst his friends.</p>
+
+<p>Embarking at Bombay, many a long year since,
+in the East India Company's steamer <i>Atalanta</i>, for
+passage up the Red Sea, we soon fell into acquaintance
+with a party of foreigners, partially isolated as they
+were from the crowd of Anglo-Indians&mdash;men, women,
+and children&mdash;returning by the over-land route to their
+native country. They (the foreigners) were five in
+number, two Frenchmen, two Dutchmen, and a Spaniard.
+Of the three last-mentioned we have small recollection.
+Of the Frenchmen, one was Don Pablo.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The other, who headed the whole party, was Monsieur
+Adolphe Barrot, a brother of Odilon and Ferdinand
+Barrot, whose names are familiar to those conversant
+with recent French history. He was at the time bound
+to Paris, on leave, from his post of Consul-General at
+Manilla. At an early period of his career he had been
+attached to the French Legation at Washington, or at
+least had travelled through this country. Subsequently,
+when Consul at Carthagena, he distinguished himself
+by his resolute and humane interposition on occasion
+of a certain revolutionary outbreak. After his
+return from the East, he served as French Minister to
+Naples and to Lisbon, and now, we believe, holds the
+same appointment at Brussels. Between this man of
+cultivated mind, polished manners, and companionable
+qualities, and Don Pablo, whose exterior smacked but
+little of intercourse with "the world," there was evidently
+a bond of no common sort. Blunt, earnest,
+truthful, with quick perceptions and impulses of the
+kindest nature, there was something very fresh and irresistibly
+attractive in the character of Don Pablo.
+We did not wonder at the intimacy. Opposites are
+drawn together. In friendly and social intercourse the
+time sped away.</p>
+
+<p>At that period, the steamers bound from Bombay to
+Suez touched at Cosseir, a port two days' sail South of
+Suez, and about 150 miles East of Thebes on the Nile.
+The object was to land passengers who cared to cross
+the intervening Desert, as the quickest mode of gaining
+Upper Egypt. To Cosseir we were ourselves destined;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span>
+our new friends being on their way direct to France,
+<i>viâ</i> Suez, Cairo, and the Mediterranean, and having
+made none of the ordinary provision for the less-frequented
+route. But we plied them strongly with argument
+and entreaty, to divert them from their intended
+limited course; not forgetting the threat of ridicule
+in a Parisian drawing-room, where a man who had
+missed such a chance would never be able to hold up
+his head. Finally, they consented. After a voyage
+of sixteen days, the coaling process at Aden included,
+three groups of travellers landed at Cosseir. We had
+dealings with two of them.</p>
+
+<p>For although we had persuaded Mr. Barrot, Don
+Pablo and their associates, to take our route, we could
+not precisely undertake to accompany them. We were
+to travel over the same ground, but not together; for
+we had engaged, ere we left Bombay, to join fortunes
+with a small party of veterans and valetudinarians who
+had made elaborate preparations for the journey, and
+were not sorry to have the aid of one who did not belong
+to either class, but who was perhaps for that very
+reason more competent than they themselves to take
+charge of their caravan. And then there was a lady,
+and a lady's maid, and a valet, and the thousand and
+one encumbrances that are incidental to such appendages.
+What scenes we had with the camel-drivers!
+What tons of baggage to be loaded! what irritations!
+what drollery! what delay! Landing early in the
+morning, the preparations for a start occupied us till
+a late hour in the afternoon; nor had we ever a more<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span>
+laboursome time of it. Lightly cumbered, and with
+only a twentieth part of the fuss, Don Pablo and the
+others had preceded us; but as the same camping-places
+in this five days' journey are generally frequented,
+we hoped to see them from time to time. Fortune
+kindly ordained that we should join them permanently.</p>
+
+<p>It was on a Saturday afternoon that we started from
+Cosseir, with a train "too numerous to mention."
+Night had fallen, ere we pitched our tents&mdash;the writer
+sharing that of Sir C. M. At day-light on the following
+morning, we strolled off to the French encampment;
+were again pressed to join its occupants; were
+again compelled reluctantly to refuse. Away they
+went. We returned to our own quarters, where to our
+horror, in place of hearing "boot and saddle" sounded,
+the edict was issued from my lady's tent, that there
+was to be no marching that day. Bah! how provoking!
+we could not ask for an honourable discharge; but
+how we longed to desert! Matters fell out, however,
+more pleasantly then we had a right to expect. Breakfast
+was served, with the elaborateness of a <i>fête champêtre</i>,
+at eleven o'clock; and as the hostess gracefully
+poured out the coffee, the talk turned upon those who
+had sped onward. Presently, by a lucky chance, it
+occured to her, or to the nominal head of the party,
+that dawdling away a Sunday on a barren speck of
+Mahommedan sand was not in itself the essential duty
+of a plain Christian, nor specially agreeable to a man
+whose thoughts were keenly set upon the marvels of
+Luxor and Karnac. In short, it was mildly suggested<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span>
+to us that, as the organization and first move of the
+caravan&mdash;the real and only difficulties&mdash;were accomplished,
+there would be nothing ungallant in leaving
+the party to its more orthodox or more leisurely progress.
+Our coyness may be imagined; but we consented
+at length to take this view of the matter, and at noon
+called up our camels. Soon were our trunks and
+slender stock of kettles and sauce-pans slung upon one;
+ourselves astride of a second; and on a third, the Arab
+driver, with whom there was no communicating but by
+signs. A twelve hours' ride brought us at midnight
+to the tent of our friends&mdash;they having luckily found
+one available at Cosseir. We raised the canvas from
+the pegs, and saluted Don Pablo with a "Here I am!"
+Many years have elapsed since that night, but we can
+fancy now that we hear his genial rejoinder, "I knew
+you'd come!" In less time than it takes to tell it, we
+had edged in our bedding upon the sand, and were
+one of the Seven&mdash;no, six&mdash;Sleepers.</p>
+
+<p>Had not a <i>Howadji</i> of this Western hemisphere made
+the Desert and the Nile so peculiarly his own, that it
+is presumption for a common pen to follow in his track,
+we might be tempted still further to ransack our memory
+for pleasant recollections of Don Pablo. Let it
+suffice to say, that with these pleasant companions we
+roughed it across the camel-track, in a style of discomfort
+and good humour rarely surpassed; explored the
+wonders of Thebes and the Tombs of the Kings; floated
+down to Cairo; clambered the Great Pyramid; smoked
+pipes with Pashas; and finally embarked at Alexandria,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span>
+on the blue waters of the Mediterranean. The farewell
+was said at Syra, one of the islands of the Ægean.
+The "five we supped with yesternight" were bound to
+Malta and Marseilles&mdash;we to Athens and Constantinople.
+As we shook hands at parting with Don Pablo,
+he quietly remarked, with that cheerful gravity that
+so well became him, and in allusion to a young lady
+who had been our three days' acquaintance on board
+the steamer&mdash;"<i>Adieu, mon cher; vous épouserez Mademoiselle.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>We never saw Don Pablo, but once afterwards.
+Several months had elapsed. His prophecy had been
+fulfilled. The lady in question was on our arm, as in
+sauntering under the arcades of the Palais Royale
+in Paris, we met our old associate. There was a
+hearty greeting; but when we reminded him of his prediction
+and formally introduced him, we remember that
+he cut the colloquy abruptly short (as it then seemed
+to us), and turned away with an expression of face for
+which we were at a loss to account, being ignorant of
+all the details of his history. Did the memory of the
+Peninsula of Iala-Iala, and of the loving wife whom
+he had buried there, fall too suddenly and too sadly
+upon his sensitive and affectionate spirit?&mdash;We cannot
+say; but this was the beginning and the ending of our
+knowledge of Doctor Pablo, until we unexpectedly met
+him in print.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE NEW HAMPSHIRE ALPS.</h2>
+
+
+<p>It is not very much of a walk from the Glen House
+up the Eastern face of Mount Washington&mdash;less than
+three hours at a leisurely pace will accomplish it; and
+on a fine day it would be next to impossible to lose
+one's-self, if alone. Half the distance or thereabouts,
+your track lies through a wood, acceptable enough as
+offering shelter from a July sun, but curtailing your
+views annoyingly. However, all things end; and if
+your range of sight be somewhat "cabined, cribbed,
+confined," at the start, you have no cause for complaint
+on that score after once emerging from covert,
+for the rocks, bleak, bare, and irregular, that are scattered
+all around, though large enough to compel a
+careful picking of the way between them by no means
+limit the vision. But the approach has been a hundred
+times described, and I will only say of it, at the
+risk of repetition, that he who comes up from the Glen
+House, and fails to turn his eye continually over his
+right shoulder, to dwell lovingly upon the near and
+noble outlines of Mounts Jefferson, Adams, and Madison,
+has no appreciation of this sort of scenery.</p>
+
+<p>The morning had been superlatively fine, and troops<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span>
+of mounted dames and damsels and cavaliers made the
+various pathways lively with their glee. But caprice
+is the rule of these high regions; and when I was
+within ten minutes of the summit, clouds of misty
+vapour came suddenly scudding up, whence I knew
+not, but shutting out a peep here and a vista there, as
+they caracolled in fantastic evolutions. Presently, to
+these kaleidoscopic effects succeeded a slight hailstorm&mdash;it
+was rain visibly beneath us, attended with thunder
+and lightning&mdash;but anon all was comparatively clear
+again, and from the congregated spectators went up
+many a genuine burst of enthusiastic admiration, as
+point after point opened out or was shut in by the
+scud.</p>
+
+<p>The two rough stone buildings upon the small plateau
+that crowns the mountain, built for the accommodation
+of travellers, are called respectively the
+"Summit" and the "Tip-top" House. Once rivals,
+they now form a single establishment&mdash;one being used
+as a restaurant, the other as a dormitory. On this
+particular day, nearly a hundred persons must have
+refreshed themselves in the former&mdash;a dozen or fifteen
+in the latter; and I must own, it was not without a
+sense of relief that I saw the last of the descending
+parties set forth about 2 P. M., being myself of the
+select few about to take the chance of sunset and sunrise.</p>
+
+<p>For the afternoon, then&mdash;for the interval of time
+was to be occupied&mdash;a guide was summoned, to show
+half-a-dozen of us the wonders of Tuckerman's Ravine,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span>
+a <i>cul-de-sac</i> between two great buttresses of Mount
+Washington, that prop it up towards the South and
+West. The sides of this ravine are very precipitous
+the head of it being formed of layers of rock, at an
+angle of about ninety-five degrees, over which a cascade
+precipitates itself, fed by the springs and melted
+snows above. In the bed of this hollow, to which the
+descent is sufficiently sharp to gratify the keenest
+amateur pedestrian, the accumulated snow of the winter,
+blown over from the impending heights, lies packed
+in such enormous masses that it seldom entirely
+disappears until the latter part of August. At the
+period of my visit, on Friday, the 29th of July, a huge
+portion thereof remained, and the famous "Snow-Arch"
+was not only visible but practicable. This natural
+curiosity is a cave channelled out from the vast
+snow bank as a passage for the descending waters, the
+roof of which, gradually melting away, leaves height
+and space for walking along this gallery as it were in
+the very bed of the torrent. You enter perforce, be
+it observed, where the stream emerges. The length
+was certainly not less than two hundred feet, the
+breadth of the tunnel perhaps forty or fifty. Of the
+thickness of the roof I cannot speak, not having
+essayed it; but the little knot of adventurers trusted
+that it would not cave-in whilst they were groping
+their difficult way, one after the other, wet-footed and
+in semi-obscurity, up-stream, from end to end of the
+arched way. The object of the exploration it would
+be difficult to define. It certainly was not scientific;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span>
+it offered no rare beauties; it might have been very
+well imagined, without the trouble and subsequent
+risk&mdash;but it was an adventure, and it had its charm.
+Day-light appeared as we neared the waterfall&mdash;luckily
+not very full&mdash;which, as I have already said,
+comes down the head of the ravine and is the origin
+of the "Arch" itself. What next? The snow had
+separated bodily from the face of the rocks to the
+width of two or three feet, as you see ice fields in a
+thaw detach themselves from the land whereto they
+have been joined. We could therefore emerge, and
+clamber up the abrupt face of the rocks, though the
+first start was not inviting, inasmuch as we had to
+hoist ourselves up by unequal pressure upon soft
+snow on one side and hard rock on the other. The
+alternative was a return. This would have been inglorious;
+up we went. It was a rough business.
+The guide had been over the ground once before, this
+season&mdash;so he said, at least&mdash;but he "harked back"
+occasionally, as though not quite certain of his way.
+It seemed impossible to diverge either to the right
+or left, and so gain the comparatively easier slope.
+We were doomed to mount, in the hope of finding
+successive steps, inasmuch as a retracing of those
+taken was not for a moment to be thought of; descent
+in such cases is always far more dangerous and troublesome.
+It was fortunate that in crossing twice or
+thrice the waterfall itself, we were not pumped on to
+any serious extent. I was moistened only, being garnished
+with a Macintosh; and I have only two scars<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span>
+now left on my shins, the result of scraping too close
+an acquaintance with sundry rocks. The whole affair
+lasted between three and four hours. I cannot recommend
+it, save to very enthusiastic mountaineers,
+or to <i>ci-devant jeunes hommes</i> anxious to test the
+effects of Time upon their powers of walking and of
+endurance.</p>
+
+<p>Regaining the hurricane-deck of the Tip-top House&mdash;for
+the roof is the principal promenade, and often times
+assuredly deserves the name I give it, how
+gratefully, as the sun went down, stole the sense of
+ineffable grandeur over the somewhat wearied frame!
+It was a superb evening; and though it would not
+suit me to cull a leaf from the Guide-book, and tell
+all that is therein narrated, I must mention one particular
+wherein this locality is notable, if not quite
+unique. I think I remember something of the kind,
+but not so marked, at sunrise as seen from the
+summit of Etna; but not thus, on the Righi and
+Faulhorn in Switzerland, on the Pic du Midi de Bigorre
+in the Pyrenees, or on other peaks that I have
+climbed in the days of long ago, to salute the coming
+or speed the parting day. The nearest approach to
+it that I have seen, was at the Great Pyramid of
+Ghizeh. I allude to the wonderful distinctness and
+regularity with which the shadow of the great cone
+itself is traced, at sunset, striding over heights and
+lowlands, mound and lake&mdash;all the intervening surface,
+in fact, between the spectator and the far distant
+horizon&mdash;until it contracts almost to a point where<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span>
+earth and sky merge into one. The sharpness of
+these converging parallel lines of shadow in that
+luminous atmosphere absolutely astounded me. They
+were as crisp, as clearly defined, as those that you
+may see in antique pictures of Jacob's Dream, leading
+ladder-wise from Heaven to the head of the slumbering
+Patriarch. Sunrise, next morning&mdash;for I was
+again favoured with clear weather and only sufficient
+frost to render the roof of the restaurant slightly
+slippery&mdash;sunrise, I say, reserved all this. The
+narrow lines, now on the Western horizon, broadened
+out and came upwards and forwards, as in the evening
+they had elongated and gone down. It was in
+truth a rare spectacle, not to be forgotten, and individualizes
+this natural observatory.</p>
+
+<p>As for the view itself, it has been described <i>ad nauseam</i>,
+and I have only a few words to say about it.
+It happened, as it often does happen, that I fell in
+with an untravelled admirer of the prospect spread
+out before us, not charmed however with it more than
+I was myself. But he would persist in drawing from
+me an answer to the common question&mdash;"how does
+this compare with some of the famous points of view
+in the Swiss Alps?" Such tests I hold to be absurd,
+thanking my stars that I can unreservedly enjoy all fair
+things that are good of their kind. And so I told the
+inquirer this simple fact. If, in a mountainous country,
+varied, broken, studded with lakes, and rife with
+all the elements of the picturesque, you ascend some
+such superior elevation as this, you have, <i>looking down</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span><i>wards</i>,
+a striking panoramic scene, like this in its general
+features&mdash;more striking perhaps than beautiful,
+though this is all matter of taste. The difference lies
+herein. Here, you plunge your look downward, or
+sweep it over surrounding objects&mdash;and that's the end
+of it. In those other Alps, you add to the four or
+five or six thousand feet, below you, as much above&mdash;and
+it is that <i>upward</i> glance which takes in the marvels
+of glacier and snow-field and inaccessible peaks. My
+new acquaintance asked for no more comparisons, but
+let me enjoy myself in my own quiet way.</p>
+
+<p>The walk down Mount Washington to Crawford's
+at the Great Notch, as I believe it is called, is rather
+a long affair. It must be ten miles, and parts of it
+are of the roughest. It took me four hours, in company
+with two intelligent and companionable young
+students of Harvard College, travelling (in the true
+way) a-foot, with knapsacks on their backs. But we
+hurried it too much, especially as the ridge over and
+along Mount Pleasant, and some of its fellows bearing
+Presidential names, abound in points of view
+worth dwelling on. Moreover I was foot-galled; and
+this reminds me that, inasmuch as I cannot to-day
+conclude my rambling reminiscences, I may as well
+wind up with a touch of information and of advice.
+The one is intended for the benefit of pedestrians who
+make excursions of this sort; the other for stay-at-homes
+in flat countries, who have no definite notion
+whatever of the ups and downs of hilly regions.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place, then, you who walk are painfully<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span>
+aware that a sore foot is almost a calamity, if it befall
+you whilst <i>en route</i>. Remedy there is none; be thankful
+that there is an infallible preventive, of whose unfailing
+excellence I can speak with unreserved commendation.
+On its simple merits I once averaged in
+Switzerland twenty-five miles a day, for thirty successive
+days; and this without gall or blister. Fool that
+I was, to neglect it, two or three weeks ago. Nothing
+is easier. Ere you start in the morning, soap or grease
+the naked foot thoroughly, and then draw the stocking
+over it. Wash off, with a dash of brandy in the
+water, on finishing your day's work. The play of the
+foot is the preservative against abrasion&mdash;a certain
+one, I assure you.</p>
+
+<p>In the second place, if&mdash;passing your life amid prairies
+or savannahs&mdash;you are sometimes puzzled to
+comprehend allusions to buttresses, shoulders, ridges,
+peaks, cones, ravines, and the various terms in use
+among enthusiastic mountaineers, I think I can put
+you on a very simple explanatory track. Next time
+you lie in bed, with a few spare moments for reflection
+upon this grave topic, just turn on to your back and
+elevate one knee or both knees. The coverlid or sheet
+will immediately assume&mdash;I am serious in saying&mdash;a
+curiously correct semblance, I might almost term
+it a model in relief, of the face of any mountainous
+country. Laugh not, but try it. A slight movement
+on your part varies the form and outline and relative
+bearing of hill and vale, raises a pinnacle here, or
+there sinks a gorge precipitously steep. If I had the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span>
+misfortune to be confined to bed by sickness&mdash;excluding
+gout, which might render the process impossible&mdash;I
+could thus, with the aid of a map and some tables
+of distances, design a passable fac-simile of the leading
+White Mountains themselves. Why Yankee ingenuity
+should not long ago have manufactured <i>papier-maché</i>
+plans thereof, in relief, altogether passes my
+comprehension. They would sell well as souvenirs
+of travel.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>SLIDING SCALE OF THE INCONSOLABLES.</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><i>From the French.</i></p>
+
+
+<p>How rapid is the progress of oblivion, with respect
+to those who are no more! How many a quadrille
+shall we see, this winter, exclusively made up from
+the ranks of inconsolable widows! Widows of this
+order exist only in the literature of the tombstone.
+In the world, and after the lapse of a certain period,
+there is but one sort of widows inconsolable&mdash;those
+who refuse to be comforted, because they can't get
+married again!</p>
+
+<p>One of our most distinguished sculptors was summoned,
+a short time since, to the house of a young
+lady, connected by birth with a family of the highest
+grade in the aristocracy of wealth, and united in marriage
+to the heir of a title illustrious in the military
+annals of the Empire.</p>
+
+<p>The union, formed under the happiest auspices,
+had been, alas! of short duration. Death, unpitying
+death, had ruptured it, by prematurely carrying off
+the young husband. The sculptor was summoned by
+the widow.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He traversed apartments silent and deserted, until
+he was introduced into a bed-room, and found himself
+in presence of a lady, young and beautiful, but habited
+in the deepest mourning, and with a face furrowed by
+tears.</p>
+
+<p>"You are aware," said she, with a painful effort
+and a voice half choked by sobs, "You are aware of
+the blow which I have received?"</p>
+
+<p>The artist bowed, with an air of respectful condolence.</p>
+
+<p>"Sir," continued the widow, "I am anxious to
+have a funeral monument erected, in honour of the
+husband whom I have lost."</p>
+
+<p>The artist bowed again.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish that the monument should be superb, worthy
+of the man whose loss I weep, proportioned to
+the unending grief into which his loss has plunged
+me. I care not what it costs. I am rich, and I will
+willingly sacrifice all my fortune to do honour to the
+memory of an adored husband. I must have a temple&mdash;with
+columns&mdash;in marble&mdash;and in the middle&mdash;on
+a pedestal&mdash;his statue."</p>
+
+<p>"I will do my best to fulfill your wishes, Madam,"
+replied the artist; "but I had not the honour of acquaintance
+with the deceased, and a likeness of him
+is indispensable for the due execution of my work.
+Without doubt, you have his portrait?"</p>
+
+<p>The widow raised her arm, and pointed despairingly
+to a splendid likeness by Amaury Duval.</p>
+
+<p>"A most admirable picture!" observed the artist;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>
+"and the painter's name is sufficient guarantee for its
+striking resemblance to the original."</p>
+
+<p>"Those are his very features, Sir; it is himself.
+It wants but life. Ah! Would that I could restore it
+to him at the cost of all my blood!"</p>
+
+<p>"I will have this portrait carried to my studio,
+Madam, and I promise you that the marble shall reproduce
+it exactly."</p>
+
+<p>The widow, at these words, sprung up, and at a single
+bound throwing herself towards the picture, with
+arms stretched out as though to defend it, exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"Take away this portrait! carry off my only consolation!
+my sole remaining comfort! never! never!"</p>
+
+<p>"But Madam, you will only be deprived of it for a
+short time, and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Not an hour! not a minute! could I exist without
+his beloved image! Look you, Sir, I have had it
+placed here, in my own room, that my eyes might be
+fastened upon it, without ceasing, and through my
+tears. His portrait shall never leave this spot one
+single instant, and in contemplating that will I pass
+the remainder of a miserable and sorrowful existence."</p>
+
+<p>"In that case, Madam, you will be compelled to
+permit me to take a copy of it. But do not be uneasy&mdash;I
+shall not have occasion to trouble your solitude
+for any length of time; one sketch&mdash;one sitting
+will suffice."</p>
+
+<p>The widow agreed to this arrangement; she only
+insisted that the artist should come back the following
+day. She wanted him to set to work on the in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span>stant,
+so great was her longing to see the mausoleum
+erected. The sculptor, however, remarked that he
+had another work to finish first. This difficulty she
+sought to overcome by means of money.</p>
+
+<p>"Impossible," replied the artist, "I have given
+my word; but do not distress yourself; I will apply
+to it so diligently, that the monument shall be finished
+in as short a time as any other sculptor would require,
+who could apply himself to it forthwith."</p>
+
+<p>"You see my distress," said the widow; "you can
+make allowance for my impatience. Be speedy, then,
+and above all, be lavish of magnificence. Spare no
+expense; only let me have a masterpiece."</p>
+
+<p>Several letters echoed these injunctions, during the
+few days immediately following the interview.</p>
+
+<p>At the expiration of three months the artist called
+again. He found the widow still in weeds, but a little
+less pallid, and a little more coquettishly dressed in
+her mourning garb.</p>
+
+<p>"Madam," said he, "I am entirely at your service."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! at last; this is fortunate," replied the widow,
+with a gracious smile.</p>
+
+<p>"I have made my design, but I still want one sitting,
+for the likeness. Will you permit me to go into
+your bed-room?"</p>
+
+<p>"Into my bed-room? For what?"</p>
+
+<p>"To look at the portrait again."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! yes; have the goodness to walk into the drawing-room;
+you will find it there now."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Ah!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; it hangs better there; it is better lighted in
+the drawing-room, than in my own room."</p>
+
+<p>"Would you like, Madam, to look at the design for
+the monument?"</p>
+
+<p>"With pleasure. Oh! what a size! What profusion
+of decorations! Why, it is a palace, Sir, this
+tomb!"</p>
+
+<p>"Did you not tell me, Madam, that nothing could
+be too magnificent? I have not considered the expense;
+and by the way, here is a memorandum of
+what the monument will cost you."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Heavens!" exclaimed the widow, after having
+cast an eye over the total adding-up. "Why, this is
+enormous!"</p>
+
+<p>"You begged me to spare no expense."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, no doubt, I desire to do things properly, but
+not exactly to make a fool of myself."</p>
+
+<p>"This, at present, you see, is only a design; and
+there is time yet to cut it down."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, suppose we were to leave out the temple,
+and the columns, and all the architectural part,
+and content ourselves with the statue? It seems to
+me that would be very appropriate."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly it would."</p>
+
+<p>"So let it be, then&mdash;just the statue alone."</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after this second visit, the sculptor fell desperately
+ill. He was compelled to give up work; but,
+on returning from a tour in Italy, prescribed by his
+physician, he presented himself once more before the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span>
+widow, who was then in the tenth month of her mourning.
+He found, this time, a few roses among the cypress,
+and some smiling colours playing over half-shaded
+grounds.</p>
+
+<p>The artist brought with him a little model of his
+statue, done in plaster, and offering in miniature the
+idea of what his work was to be.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you think of the likeness?" he inquired
+of the widow.</p>
+
+<p>"It seems to me a little flattered; my husband was
+all very well, no doubt; but you are making him an
+Apollo!"</p>
+
+<p>"Really? well, then, I can correct my work by the
+portrait."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't take the trouble&mdash;a little more, or less like,
+what does it matter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Excuse me, but I am particular about likenesses."</p>
+
+<p>"If you absolutely must&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It is in the drawing-room, yonder, is it not? I'll
+go in there."</p>
+
+<p>"It is not there any longer," replied the widow,
+ringing the bell.</p>
+
+<p>"Baptiste," said she to the servant who came in,
+"bring down the portrait of your master."</p>
+
+<p>"The portrait that you sent up to the garret, last
+week, Madam?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>At this moment the door opened, and a young man
+of distinguished air entered; his manners were easy and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span>
+familiar, he kissed the fair widow's hand, and tenderly
+inquired after her health.</p>
+
+<p>"Who in the world is this good man in plaster?"
+asked he, pointing with his finger to the statuette,
+which the artist had placed upon the mantel-piece.</p>
+
+<p>"It is the model of a statue for my husband's
+tomb."</p>
+
+<p>"You are having a statue of him made? The
+devil! it's very majestic!"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think so?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is only great men who are thus cut out of
+marble, and at full length; it seems to me, too, that
+the deceased was a very ordinary personage."</p>
+
+<p>"In fact, his bust would be sufficient."</p>
+
+<p>"Just as you please, Madam," said the sculptor.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, let it be a bust, that's&mdash;determined!"</p>
+
+<p>Two months later, the artist, carrying the bust, encountered
+on the stairs a merry party. The widow,
+giving her hand to the elegant dandy who had caused
+the statue of the deceased to be cut down, was on his
+way to the Mayor's office, where she was about to take
+a second oath of conjugal fidelity.</p>
+
+<p>If the bust had not been completed, it would willingly
+have been dispensed with. When, some time
+later, the artist called for his money, there was an
+outcry about the price; and it required very little less
+than a threat of legal proceedings, before the widow,
+consoled and remarried, concluded by resigning herself
+to pay for this funeral homage, reduced as it was,
+to the memory of her departed husband.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>RAMBLING RECORDS.</h2>
+
+<p class="center">THE GENTLE ARLESIANS.</p>
+
+
+<p>**With one exception, however, I gleaned nothing of
+information that is not already chronicled in the guide-books;
+and that one piece of information I only set down,
+because I think it contains a hint that may be made
+practically useful in certain enterprising circles of New
+York.</p>
+
+<p>We were in the Arena at Arles. It was a splendid
+day&mdash;barring the Mistral, that windy nuisance,
+which, as it eddied through the antique and ample Roman
+corridors, brought to my recollection certain North-Westers
+experienced on a fine March day in Union
+Square. In fact, it was far too cold for sentimentalizing
+or tracing measurements. But the guardian, it
+seemed, had not latterly had much chance of exercising
+his vocation, and his tongue was too nimble to be frozen.
+And so at it he went. Only, being himself more interested
+in certain proceedings that had lately taken
+place within a boarded fence that now encloses the arena,
+than in historical or legendary lore, his subject was by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span>
+many centuries more fresh than the ruins whereon we
+stood, sunning ourselves and crouching out of the wind's
+way. Arles, it appeared, had been favoured with a
+bull fight, real Spanish matadors doing the beastly
+honours; but to the credit of the city, be it said, the
+spectacle was received with intense disapprobation.
+The gentle Provencals, whose tastes are more Italian
+than Spanish, could not brook the sport dear to their
+fair Empress who sets fashions in Paris. Indeed, the
+beauteous Eugénie, I fear, will hold them to be the
+merest milk-sops, for when the grand climax of a disembowelled
+horse was exhibited before them, the Arlesians,
+male and female&mdash;in place of shouts of triumphant
+approval&mdash;gave vent to loud cries of shame and execration,
+and in short hissed the Spanish heroes incontinently
+from the scene of their performance.</p>
+
+<p>But what has all this to do with the future of New
+York, it may be asked by any reader of these rambling
+reminiscences. Stay, a moment; I am only at the
+commencement. I, too inquired if this were all. "By
+no means, Sir," was the reply. "We had then the
+real <i>courses aux taureaux</i>, and excellent they were."
+Now I must own that my notions of this branch of the
+tauromachia were somewhat indistinct. I knew it was
+not precisely the same thing as buffalo-hunting on the
+prairies, or as a steeple-chase in Warwickshire or Yorkshire;
+but I could not have defined it to save my life.
+"Perhaps, Monsieur, has never seen one" was the next
+appropriate suggestion, and it led very naturally to my
+enlightenment. Briefly, then, after the torture of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span>
+quadrupeds, and the indignant dismissal of the Spanish
+matadors, the young gentlemen of the town took the
+place of the latter, and began a diversion, which must
+have been infinitely amusing, and which, I humbly submit,
+might be adopted on a different soil. A lively
+young bull was turned into the arena, and was followed
+by a number of lively youths, armed only with light
+staves whereon fluttered blood-red pennons. The fun
+consists in provoking the excitable animal by the red
+flags thrust before his face, and eluding the consequences
+by a run, a dodge, or a jump. The fence,
+which was a barrier for the bull, could easily be vaulted
+by a nimble-footed youth&mdash;and none but such would
+venture upon the field. There was just enough danger
+to make the game piquant; scarcely enough to make
+it objectionable. One indiscreet young fellow did indeed
+narrowly escape a catastrophe on the occasion described
+to me; but the fault was entirely his own. He had
+been breakfasting at some Arlesian Delmonico's, and
+had partially lost his wits before coming to the encounter,
+while retaining all his courage. Therefore it
+happened&mdash;and I only tell the story as it was told me&mdash;that
+the youth, when pursued by the bull, tripped
+and fell, and the horns of the brute were immediately
+thrust into the fullest part of his peg-top trousers. A
+great sensation among the spectators! The bull succeeded
+in raising and throwing over his head the object
+of his attack, but by no means in disentangling himself
+therefrom. His frantic efforts to bring about a summary
+toss were for some minutes unsuccessful; and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span>
+reader may conceive the mingled sense of the ludicrous
+and the fearful, that pervaded the assembly. Finally&mdash;for
+even French cassimere will give way in the end&mdash;he,
+the bull that is, achieved his aim, and threw his
+unconscious tormentor a summerset, being diverted
+from ulterior measures of vengeance by fresh attacks
+made upon him, while the crest-fallen hero of the adventure
+was promptly bundled over the paling. To
+sum up this sketch of the sport, in the humane and
+pithy words of the guardian of the Amphitheatre&mdash;"it
+does no harm whatever to the bull, and very little to
+the young gentleman."</p>
+
+<p>Now then, Mr. Niblo; why should you not establish
+a Tauro-drome in the centre of civilization? The leaning
+of the day is toward athletic exercise. In England,
+at present, there is a run upon rifle-corps; and the
+boldest riders are all bent upon becoming the crackest
+shots. In New York, I have read since my absence
+in Europe, that the great English Eleven have begotten
+a very rage for cricket. An excellent move this;
+but then the climate is against it, and the summer is
+short, and the game is utterly incomprehensible to
+the gentler sex, who are always prompt to encourage
+the manly prowess of their admirers. Besides, for lack
+of a permanent Bude light of adequate strength, we
+have not yet achieved the desideratum of playing cricket
+during those special hours when the youth of a commercial
+community finds itself prone to relaxation.
+The <i>courses aux taureaux</i> might just as well take place
+by gas-light and in a New York circus, as amid Roman<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span>
+ruins and under the blaze of sunshine. The dandies
+of Broadway have the two main requisites for brilliant
+success in this suggested entertainment. Their pluck
+may not be doubted; and who that has seen them,
+agile and unwearied in the German or the <i>valse à deux
+temps</i>, could question their ability to outfoot the fleetest
+bull that Andalusia itself could supply? I commend
+the matter then to the serious consideration of
+Managers in search of novelties, and to belles who
+would discover what stuff their beaux are made of.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">AT NUREMBURG.</p>
+
+
+<p>For these thirty-eight years past, the <i>Albion</i> hath
+been protesting once a week, in the Latin tongue,
+that they who skip over the water change only their
+sky, not their mental existence. Nor did I ever doubt&mdash;indeed
+I ought to have faith therein&mdash;the truth of
+this motto, until I found myself yesterday in one of
+the streets of this old city of Nuremburg, with no promenaders
+at the moment save myself. There was not
+a man in sight, tiled with a black beaver chimney-pot;
+nor a woman redolent of the Rue de la Paix or Regent
+Street. Then it was that I incontinently asked myself
+if I were truly a Briton by birth and an Anglo-American
+by local ties; or whether I were not in fact a German
+burgher of the middle ages. I should scarcely
+have been surprised at sight of grave Albert Durer<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span>
+himself coming round the corner, or at hearing Hans
+Sachs, the cobbler poet, trolling one of his six thousand
+ditties.</p>
+
+<p>To say this, is simply to add the testimony of another
+witness to that which has set down Nuremburg as the
+city of all Europe least changed with changing times.
+The very little that has been done of late years in the
+way of repairing and rebuilding, within the walls, has
+been done in strict accordance with the prevalent mediæval
+style. The result is that&mdash;whereas elsewhere,
+when you stumble upon a private dwelling of moderate
+proportions showing plainly that it was built some two
+or three or four or five centuries ago, you congratulate
+yourself upon having discovered a curiosity (as such a
+one really would be in Paris, for instance)&mdash;here the
+difficult search would be for a house, modern and spruce.
+Not that a rectangularly-ornamented gable-end is the
+quintessence of architectural beauty, or that a basement
+front of low iron-barred windows suggests an
+agreeable or hospitable interior. By no means. If
+this were all, there would be considerable quaintness,
+and nought beyond. But it is otherwise. Some of the
+decorative bits that catch the eye right and left, are
+absolute gems in their way&mdash;whether oriel windows,
+or fantastic turrets, or figures and devices embossed
+and sculptured. Taste, generally for the Gothic, but
+diverging at a later date into the Renaissance style,
+seems to have run riot here in wilful playfulness.</p>
+
+<p>Of the regular sights set down in the hand-books,
+and explored by conscientious Englishmen with their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span>
+Murrays under their arms, it would not be appropriate
+to speak at length. I may however indulge in an allusion
+to the different material, whereof are constructed
+two of the most highly-laboured marvels, here exhibited.
+Now the city itself is divided into two nearly
+equal parts by the small river Pegnitz, these parts
+bearing the names respectively of the principal church
+that stands in either. The one is dedicated to St. Sebald,
+the other to St. Lawrence. The former, as its
+chief curiosity, contains the shrine of its patron Saint,
+an elaborate and most exquisitely wrought fretwork
+canopy, about fifteen feet in height, beneath which repose
+his remains. The design is in a measure architectural,
+and Gothic of course; but the ornamentation
+is its great glory, though one is staggered somewhat
+at the irreverent juxtaposition of the twelve Apostles
+with Cupids and Mermaids, and at sundry Fathers of
+the Church disporting themselves amid clusters of fruit
+and bouquets of flowers. This monument of artistic
+skill was the work of Peter Vischer, one of the worthies
+of Nuremburg, and has been completed three hundred
+and forty years. The able worker, having dispensed
+with consistency in the admixture of Christian and
+Pagan accessories, as I have mentioned, was at least
+justified in introducing a figure of himself as one of the
+human animals; and a very fine statuette he makes,
+with chisel in hand and his working apron about him.
+Now mark, if you please, O attentive reader, this shrine
+of St. Sebald is entirely cast in bronze. To say that the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span>
+effect is beautiful, is too limited praise. It is harmonious;
+thoroughly satisfying to the eye; perfect.</p>
+
+<p>Cross with me now, if you be not weary, one of the
+dozen picturesque bridges over the Pegnitz, and let
+us see what Adam Krafft, another great Nuremburger
+of that same age, has done in the same line of Gothic
+decoration for the Church of St. Lawrence. His work
+is a shrine, or I should rather say a repository for the
+sacramental wafer of the Roman Catholic rite. It is
+an open-work spire, tapering to the height of sixty feet,
+with an infinity of graceful detail, and rare sculptures
+in high and low relief. One fantasy is, I think, unique
+of its kind. The roof is a little too low to admit the
+crowning summit fairly; and the top, therefore, has
+been made to bend over. The effect&mdash;purposely designed,
+I cannot doubt&mdash;is odd; nor can I agree with
+the fantastic remark of Murray's Handbook, that it
+"has the air of a plant which is chocked in its further
+growth." Spires and plants are not endowed with
+equal pliability, and the idea of one of the former waving
+about, or nodding gracefully, suggests an immediate
+"stand from under." And this all the more in
+this instance, because&mdash;which brings me thus round-aboutedly
+to my main point&mdash;the material hereon employed
+is stone, a clean and white-toned stone, that
+looks as though its excellent carvings and mouldings
+had been completed only for the last Crystal Palace
+Exhibition. The apparent newness is downright provoking;
+and if Adam Krafft could peep at it from his
+honoured grave, he would never dream that he has<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span>
+lain therein three centuries and a half. Let me say
+further&mdash;having thus stumbled upon personalities&mdash;that
+he too made himself as durable as his work.
+And with more modesty than Master Peter Vischer
+above named, who moulded for himself a niche in his
+monument corresponding, in size and position, to the
+one assigned to the patron Saint, though being at the
+opposite end of the shrine, the glorifier and the glorified
+could not be taken into one glance and a comparison
+forced. There was more modesty, I say, in Adam
+Krafft's mode of travelling down the stream of Time
+as showman of his show, though he was not methinks
+without a dash of <i>craft</i>, as befits the bearer of his name.
+Down upon their marrow-bones (as the school boys
+have it) with rounded backs grope Adam and his two apprentices,
+the three backs forming a base of operations,
+or in plainer words upholding the sixty-feet structure,
+and doing for it that which is done beneath his rival's
+shrine by a snail at each of the four corners. Perhaps,
+after all, the sculptor-architect was wiser than the
+bronze-caster, in his mode of identifying himself with
+his work. Amid a multitude of figures and emblems,
+Peter Vischer, as well as St. Sebald, may be overlooked,
+for they are small in size; but you can scarcely
+avoid asking "who are these three?" when you
+note how lofty is the edifice that the large quasi-Atlases
+bear.</p>
+
+<p>Enough, touching these minor differences. The essential
+one, whereof I intended to speak, is the material
+in which the pair wrought respectively. I have said<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span>
+that the bronze entirely satisfied my critical eye, which
+is tantamount to saying that it charmed me. Not so
+with the stone. It is obviously ill-adapted for detached
+ornamentation, needing the solid adjunct of buttress,
+window, wall, or pillar, just as ivy needs the oak,
+or (may I utter such a term?) lace the woman. Indeed,
+with all my admiration for sundry mediæval specimens
+of Gothic architecture, wherein I scarcely yield
+to John Ruskin himself, I confess that the famous
+Eleanor's Crosses in England never quite pleased me,
+because therein the tracery and dainty delicacies of the
+design are not backed by anything massive. The
+greater part of my readers will not agree with me.
+I am sorry, but can't help it. Only, I don't want to
+see any more open-work baskets in stone. Give me
+the most fantastical of Gothic devices, as many as you
+please, so long as they have something to cling to.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, I have fallen quite in love with this quaint,
+irregular old place. Nor do I know how long I might
+have loitered, had not the inevitable disillusion come,
+as come it will over so many promising things and fair.
+Otherwise I might have gone back&mdash;in imagination&mdash;to
+those honest old times of Durer, Vischer, Krafft, and
+Company, and imagined myself a free burgher of a
+free city. But the spell was doubly broken. At the
+old castle&mdash;whereof some small apartments are unpretendingly
+fitted up for the King and Queen of Bavaria&mdash;there
+comes upon one, in another part thereof, a vision
+of certain instruments of torture, used undoubtedly
+in those good old times to keep the burghers submiss<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span>ive
+to their oligarchy of merchant princes. And
+again at the Rath-haus, or Hotel de Ville; the maidenly
+show-woman lighted us by lanthorn-light through
+a set of subterranean dungeons, too numerous to have
+been destined for offenders only against the criminal
+laws, too horrible to be sanctioned under our creed of
+comparative gentleness. And so, on the whole, I returned
+back to actual existence, and to all the boredom
+of Parliamentary conflicts and Presidential elections,
+with a certain sense of relief.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">ROMAN NOMENCLATURE.</p>
+
+
+<p>By dint of many rambles I am become fairly versed
+in the topography of Rome; but its history, as elucidated
+by monuments or relics, is a perpetual riddle
+to the beholder. The Republic, the Empire, the Barbarian
+Invasions, Free Lances, Barons, Kings, and
+Popes&mdash;all are suggested; all come before you in confused
+array; not unfrequently, three or four at once.
+You shall go into a church to hear mass amid modern
+tawdriness, entering through a mediæval porch, taking
+your place between walls that were put up long before
+the Christian era, and under a roof supported by pillars
+whereon the sun of Phrygia has shone. Pagan and
+Christian&mdash;all is jumbled; until finally, unless you
+have the patience of Job and the zeal of an antiquarian,
+you begin to doubt all legendary and historic lore, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span>
+to measure what you see by its external attractiveness
+alone. One thing, however, is clearly marked. You
+are groping about, in a state of vexed uncertainty;
+suddenly you come upon an inscription, conspicuous,
+in large legible letters, often gilded. Now you are
+grateful. You stride up; and lo, there stands, emblazoned
+before you the interesting fact that such or
+such a Pontifex Maximus, some Benedict, or Clemens,
+or Pius, or Leo, or Gregory, restored, excavated, ornamented,
+or built, as the case may have been, the object
+upon which you have been pondering. Neither,
+in the dearth of desirable information, are you compensated
+by the opportunity of picking up chronological
+knowledge in regard to the Papacy. These fulsome
+records omit, not only all description that might be
+useful; they fail to mention the year of the World, or
+the year of Grace, altogether. In place thereof, you
+learn that the digging or decoration in question took
+place in a certain year of the reign of a certain Pope;
+but as the chair of St. Peter has had one hundred and
+sixteen occupants, between A.D. 1000 and A.D. 1860,
+"Anno VI. of Innocent VI." or "Anno II. of Julius
+II." does not materially aid the memory as to dates.
+This petty craving after chiselled or painted immortality
+is nowhere more contemptibly exhibited than in
+Raphael's famous Loggie at the Vatican, where, over
+each separate window, one reads in staring type, "Leo
+X., Pontifex Maximus." Surely there is something
+strangely inconsistent, in a power that boasts its re<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span>mote
+origin and its endowment in perpetuity, thus taking
+infinite pains to isolate its historical fragments.</p>
+
+<p>A smile only&mdash;not a grunt of indignation&mdash;is elicited
+by another peculiarity of Rome, which comes under
+the lounger's notice. Something of the same sort is
+perhaps also observable in all large cities; but it never
+struck me so strongly. I allude to the names of the
+streets and squares and public places, which names by the
+way are carefully and prominently labelled. The jumble
+is curious, though one starts a little at times from what
+to Protestant eyes seems irreverent. Take a sample,
+dispensing with the titles in Italian. You may stroll
+through the street of the Three Virgins, of the Three
+Robbers, of Jesus, of the Tarpeian Rock, of the Two
+Butchers' Shops, of the Baboon, of Divine Love, of the
+New Benches, of the Prefects, of the House-tops, of
+Jesus and Mary, of the Greeks, of the Tower of Blood,
+of the Triton, of the Guardian Angel, of the Strumpet,
+of the Soul, of the Scrofula, of the Eagle, of the Lion's
+Mouth, of the Five Moons, of Minerva, of the Incurables,
+of the Wind, of the Wolf, of St. John Beheaded.
+You may halt in the square of the Mouth of Truth, in
+that of the Field of Flowers, in that of the Satyrs, in
+that of Consolation, in that of the Goose. It is evident
+that no ruling mind or principle has regulated this public
+nomenclature. <i>Tot homines, quot sententiæ.</i></p>
+
+<p>And is it not the same thing in private affairs?
+What variety of tastes! Here is a specimen. Two
+young men of my acquaintance, who have been campaigning
+in India, arrived here, the other day, on their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span>
+first visit. One of them had a relative here, of a scholastic
+turn of mind, who was bringing a protracted sojourn
+to a close; and to him the cavalry officers were
+in a measure consigned. "Can you tell me what's to
+be seen at Ostia and Veii?" said one of them to me,
+forty-eight hours after their arrival. "Our friend, B.,
+is going to take us a day's excursion to each place, to-morrow
+and the following day." I could scarcely keep
+my countenance. The poor innocents were sold to an
+antiquarian. Ostia is destitute of any objects that
+would repay a half-hour's walk. As for Veii, the
+learned have only agreed of late whereabouts that ancient
+city stood.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">BRIGANDS, BEGGARS, AND SOUVENIRS.</p>
+
+
+<p>My last communication was from Rome. It was
+piquant, on the day of departure thence from Naples,
+to dine at Terracina with a Prussian family, who had
+been stopped and robbed by brigands, at eight o'clock
+the previous morning, at a spot between Velletri and
+Cisterna. There was however no <i>Fra Diavolo</i> in the
+case. The respectable <i>père de famille</i>, who with his
+sons and daughters had been laid under contribution,
+informed us that the fellows were evidently peasants
+unused to the trade; that they presented guns, in exacting
+their demand for money; but that they were
+nervous in their brief operation, and that they did not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span>
+ransack the trunks, nor even carry off the watches and
+rings of the party. The chief sufferer was the vetturino,
+whom fright and the loss of thirty-six dollars
+had thrown into a fever, causing the detention which
+brought us into contact with the narrators. We passed
+on our way, without adventure; the safest period, there
+as elsewhere, being that which immediately follows one.
+I incline to think that extreme destitution induced
+this recourse to a practice almost obsolete, as it probably
+gave rise to the personal robberies, unattended
+with violence, which have been recently rife in Rome
+itself.</p>
+
+<p>And in connection with this point, I may swell the
+laments of late travellers as to the chronic prevalence,
+throughout Southern Italy, of those other unceasing
+robberies of extortion and mendicancy, which are so
+much more difficult of toleration. I declare that of all
+the mythical personages of classic lore brought back
+to one's memory by local association, whether in the
+Elysian Fields or on the borders of Lake Avernus, the
+Harpies are those who alone survive, and who obtrude
+themselves always and everywhere, in season and out
+of season. The foul brood have assumed human semblance,
+and haunt you in all varieties. The unbidden
+cicerone, or the sturdy beggar&mdash;it is hard to say
+which is the worse.</p>
+
+<p>How I anathematized them both at Sorrento, where
+there are certain souvenirs of Tasso, not so direct and
+tangible as those preserved in the Convent of San
+Onofrio at Rome, but which are worth the tracing.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span>
+You will remember that the hapless poet found a resting
+place here in the house of his sister, after he escaped
+from his seven years' imprisonment at Ferrara.
+To be adjured, for charity, in the name of the Virgin
+and every Saint in the calendar&mdash;to have a jackass and
+a guide, or a jackass of a guide, thrust upon you, <i>nolens
+volens</i> for an excursion that you have no mind to
+take, or to be importuned to "put out, put out, put
+out to sea," when you know that March winds and
+waves make the azure grotto of Capri totally inaccessible&mdash;these
+diversions, I say, do not assist one in gathering
+up one's reminiscences of Tasso, however much
+they may chasten and so improve the temper.</p>
+
+<p>And here I may observe also upon a peculiarity that
+marks the research of certain travellers, somewhat
+akin perhaps to the taste which induces certain readers
+to trace history through personal memoirs, in place of
+studying broader narrations. If truth were told, there
+are a hundred who commune with Pepys and Horace
+Walpole, to ten who find delight in Hume. So is it&mdash;though
+by no means in the same proportion&mdash;with
+sight-seers on ground that is rich in historical associations.
+All their sympathies, or the larger portion of
+them at least, are with individuals, as though there
+were no grappling with a race, a nation, an age that
+is past. Stories, wholly or in part fictitious, are their
+hand-books. To them the Capitol of Rome is the scene
+of Rienzi's rise and fall, as interpreted by Bulwer Lytton.
+At Pompeii their chief care is to find out the
+abode of Glaucus and Ione. Nor can it be denied<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span>
+that there is an additional charm in this mode of viewing
+localities that are new to us, if it be not the most
+philosophical. In my own case, without needless parading
+of the degree in which I share this gentle weakness
+or disapprove it, I must own that its exercise gives
+at times an unexpected zest to a ramble. Whilst in
+Rome, for instance, I do not think that one's serious
+views of history or art are in any manner jarred upon,
+because here and there one stumbles upon relics that
+savour of individuality. At any rate I should not
+like to have missed the old mansion of the Anviti family,
+near the bridge of St. Angelo, mentioned by that
+old gossip, Benvenuto Cellini, as the frequent rendezvous
+of Michael Angelo, Raffaele, Cardinal Bembo,
+and other choice spirits of his day. I should have
+been sorry to have omitted a visit to the boudoir of
+Lucrezia Borgia, in the Convent close beside the church
+of St. Pietro in Vincolo, once the residence of Pope
+Alexander VI., and now mainly converted into a barrack
+for the troops of "the elder son of the Church."
+The part however in which is placed this small apartment,
+decorated with frescoes of the period, is still
+applied to conventual purposes. There is no legend
+about the matter, at least so far as regards the possession
+of the Borgia family; and the room being small
+in size, and unique in situation and style of ornament
+within and without, it is not difficult to believe that it
+was the chosen resort of a young lady in days when
+there was less gadding about than now. Still, to be
+candid, I must own that in musing here, as in looking<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span>
+at the lock of the same amiable woman's hair preserved
+in the Ambrosian Library of Milan, one is apt
+to have one's recollections of mediæval depravity not
+slightly tinctured by visions of Giulia Grisi in the prime
+of her voice and beauty, to say nothing of Victor Hugo's
+grand drama, and old Mademoiselle Georges' unrivalled
+performance therein.</p>
+
+<p>Again, and lastly&mdash;lest the reader imagine that
+when once I get back to Rome, I am spell-bound and
+cannot leave it&mdash;what traveller has not cast a pleased
+eye upwards towards the window whence the baker's
+daughter, A. D. 1515, or thereabouts, ogled the young
+prince of painters as he passed by on his way to, or
+from his work, at the Farnesina Palace? You know
+the precise spot, O Viator, in a small piazza very near
+the Ponte Sisto? The house is white-washed or yellow-washed
+now; but there is the old Ionic pilaster, yet
+embedded in the wall, and the ornamental architectural
+mouldings yet shut in the Fornarina's window.
+And here it occurs to me to make one more digression,
+for the purpose of suggesting a theory of my own
+touching one of the many portraits of La Fornarina
+that have come down to us, and that vary so much in
+expression though all evidently intended for the same
+person. Between the fine one in the Tribune at Florence,
+and the filthy one in the Sciarra Palace at Rome,
+there is the widest possible difference. The former is
+evidently enough a woman unrefined, though beautiful;
+but there is neither coarseness nor indelicacy in the
+portraiture. The latter has both these characteristics,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span>
+pushed to an extreme that is repulsive. It is said to
+be a copy from Raffaele by Giulio Romano. Now my
+belief is, that it was painted as a quiz upon his master's
+grace and delicacy, by the scapegrace pupil who
+ran counter to those special attributes. Meretricious,
+ugly, and vulgar, this wretched creature bears emblasoned
+in large letters on the bracelet upon her arm
+the name of Raffaele Sanzio d'Urbino. This piece of
+impudence seems to me the crowning touch. I can't
+credit that such a Fornarina ever came from Raffaele's
+easel. I do think that a coarse-minded and coarse-handed
+young artist may have made fun of his superior
+in oil&mdash;as modern literary wags have sometimes
+done in ink&mdash;and that Raffaele therefore is in no way
+answerable for that caricature in the Sciarra, which
+affects to be a reproduction from himself.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">LIVRES DES VOYAGEURS.</p>
+
+
+<p>Verily there is no lack of the plainer symbols of
+humanity, to remind the wanderer that Childe Harold
+was bitterly truthful, when he appended to his inimitable
+descriptions of the Alps the assertion that they</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 19em;">"serve to show,</span><br />
+How Earth may pierce to Heaven, yet leave vain man below."<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>The impertinences and follies that are penned by
+men and women in the various Livres des Voyageurs,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span>
+wherein they record their names, were alone sufficient
+proof of this. It is true that enthusiasm and fine feeling
+cannot endure for an indefinite period; and that
+he would be a sorry companion who always brought his
+stilts to the dinner-table. Still, one must regret that
+a certain craving for notoriety seems to impel so many
+a tourist to write himself down an ass, whilst no sense
+of fairness restrains others from commenting, appropriately
+or inappropriately, upon the names or remarks
+of predecessors. There is a cowardice and cruelty
+herein which has, I confess, sometimes made me angry,
+when the identity, characters, and conduct of the individuals
+concerned were alike unknown or indifferent to
+me. In place, however, of prolonging this digression,
+and without the least notion of proving anything whatever
+by the citation, I beg to offer the reader a brace
+of extracts from the visitors' record book at the Montanvert.</p>
+
+<p>The first tickled me exceedingly, as a genuine specimen
+of the so-called Irish Bull. Mr. Somebody had
+entered his name, and added thereto this valuable bit
+of information: "Walked up from Chamouni in four
+hours and a-half, <i>having lost the greater part of his
+way</i>?" The italics are mine, of course; but is not
+the <i>mot</i> worth its space in print?</p>
+
+<p>My other extract concerns some of my young countrywomen,
+and I trust that their countrywomen who
+may read it will forgive me for putting it into circulation.
+They are very poor laughers, who never laugh
+when the joke tells against themselves; in this instance<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span>
+it is we who pay the piper. A party of English school
+girls had been lately at Montanvert with their governess,
+and had set down their names one after another
+in the big book, as is the custom there. A waggish
+Frenchman, waiting of course until their backs were
+turned, had bracketted the list, and written against the
+conclave this pithy and caustic criticism: "<i>Teint rouge;
+appétit géant; langage embarrassé.</i>" What an ungallant
+scamp! Yet it must be owned that the same absurd
+album is rich in provocatives. A running fire of
+sarcasm, exchanged between English and French tourists,
+marks almost every page.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">A SINGULAR ANAGRAM.</p>
+
+
+<p>Among the curiosities&mdash;not of literature&mdash;but of letters,
+the Anagram was wont to be a favourite in the
+days of a by-gone generation. Who, for instance, has
+not smiled blandly over that famous transposition,
+which aptly converts "Horatio Nelson" into <i>Honor
+est à Nilo</i>?</p>
+
+<p>The taste, however, for this sort of laborious trifling
+has almost passed away; nor do we propose to re-open
+the subject of cabalistic lettering. Our only purport
+is to offer a new specimen of its eccentricities, which
+came upon us recently during a vain attempt to solve
+certain mysteries, that occupy just now many serious
+minds. It is commended alike to snappers-up of un<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span>considered
+trifles, and to readers who chance to be imbued
+with a little tinge of superstitious sensitiveness.
+We strive to hope that, though almost as curious, it is
+not so unimpeachably appropriate as the one quoted
+above. The name, so much in men's mouths, "Louis
+Napoleon Bonaparte," may by this method be converted
+into, <i>An open plot&mdash;arouse, Albion</i>!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>A WELL KNOWN DOCUMENT,</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Very Slightly Paraphrased</i>.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>A comparison of the following lines, with the original American Declaration
+of Independence, will show that the earnest and impassioned language
+of real life is sometimes closely assimilated to blank verse.</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<p>
+When, in their course, human events compel<br />
+One people to dissolve the social bands<br />
+That linked them with another, and to take<br />
+Among the powers of the Earth that station,<br />
+Equal and separate, to which the laws<br />
+Of Nature and of Nature's God, by right,<br />
+Entitle them&mdash;respect to the opinions<br />
+Of fellow men calls on them to declare<br />
+The causes, which have rendered necessary<br />
+Such separation.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 8em;">We, then, hold these truths</span><br />
+To be self-evident: That all mankind<br />
+Are equal, and endowed by their Creator<br />
+With certain unalienable rights:<br />
+That amongst these are Life, and Liberty,<br />
+And the Pursuit of Happiness: That men,<br />
+To make these rights available and safe,<br />
+Have instituted Governments, deriving<br />
+Their lawful power from the free consent<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span><br />
+Of those they govern: That when any form<br />
+Of Government is proved to be destructive<br />
+Of these their ends, it is the People's right<br />
+To alter, or abolish it, and found<br />
+A Government anew, with principles<br />
+So laid for its foundation, and with powers<br />
+In such form organized, as shall to them<br />
+Seem most conducive to their happiness<br />
+And safety.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 7em;">Prudence will, indeed, dictate</span><br />
+That long-established Governments should not<br />
+Be changed for any light or transient cause:<br />
+And all experience, accordingly,<br />
+Hath shown that men are more disposed to suffer,<br />
+So long as evils are endurable,<br />
+Than to assert their rights, and throw aside<br />
+Their customary forms. But when abuses<br />
+And usurpations, in a lengthened train,<br />
+Pursue an object steadfastly, evincing<br />
+A firm design to bow them down beneath<br />
+Absolute despotism, it is their right,<br />
+It is their bounden duty, to throw off<br />
+Such Government, and to provide new guards<br />
+For their security in future.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 18em;">Such</span><br />
+Has been the patient sufferance of these<br />
+Our Colonies, and such is now the need,<br />
+That forces them to change their present systems<br />
+Of Government. Great Britain's present King<br />
+Hath made his history the history<br />
+Of usurpation, and of injuries<br />
+Often repeated, and directly tending<br />
+To the establishment of Tyranny<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span><br />
+Over these States: to prove this, let the World<br />
+In candour listen to undoubted facts.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">He has refused to give assent to laws,</span><br />
+Wholesome, and needful for the public good.<br />
+He has denied his Governors the power<br />
+To sanction laws of pressing urgency,<br />
+Unless suspended in their operation,<br />
+Till his assent should be obtained; and when<br />
+Suspended thus, he has failed wilfully<br />
+To give them further thought. He has refused<br />
+To sanction other laws, deemed advantageous<br />
+To districts thickly peopled, unless they,<br />
+Who dwelt therein, would basely throw away<br />
+Their right to representatives&mdash;a right<br />
+Inestimable, to themselves and only<br />
+To Tyrants formidable. In the hope<br />
+To weary them into a weak compliance<br />
+With his obnoxious measures, he has summoned<br />
+The Legislative Bodies to assemble<br />
+At places inconvenient, and unusual,<br />
+And whence their public records were remote.<br />
+He has repeatedly dissolved the Houses<br />
+Of Representatives for interfering<br />
+With manly firmness, when he has invaded<br />
+The People's rights. Long time he has refused,<br />
+After such dissolutions, to convene<br />
+Others in lieu of them; whereby, the powers<br />
+Of Legislation, since they might not be<br />
+Annihilated, have for exercise<br />
+Been forced upon the body of the people;<br />
+Leaving, meanwhile, the unprotected State<br />
+To dangers of invasion from without,<br />
+And inward anarchy. He has endeavoured<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span><br />
+To check the population of these States,<br />
+Thwarting the laws for naturalization<br />
+Of foreigners, withholding his assent<br />
+From other laws, that might encourage them<br />
+In immigrating hither, and enhancing<br />
+The price of new allotments of the soil.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">He has obstructed the administration</span><br />
+Of Justice, by his veto on the laws<br />
+Establishing judiciary powers<br />
+He has made Judges on his will alone<br />
+Dependent, for the tenure of their office,<br />
+For the amount, and for the proper payment<br />
+Of their emoluments. He has erected<br />
+New offices in multitudes, and sent<br />
+Swarms of his officers to harass us,<br />
+And to eat out our substance. He has kept,<br />
+In times of peace, among us, standing armies,<br />
+Without the sanction of our Legislatures.<br />
+His aim has been to place the military<br />
+Above the civil power, and beyond<br />
+Its just control. He has combined with others<br />
+To make us subject to a jurisdiction,<br />
+In spirit foreign to our Constitution,<br />
+And unacknowledged by our laws; assenting<br />
+To acts, that they have passed with semblance only<br />
+Of legislation: Acts for quartering<br />
+Among us bodies of armed troops: For shielding,<br />
+By a mock trial, those their instruments<br />
+From punishment for any murders done<br />
+On our inhabitants: For cutting off<br />
+Our trade with every quarter of the world&mdash;<br />
+For laying on us taxes not approved<br />
+By our consent: For oft-times robbing us<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span><br />
+Of any benefit that might attend<br />
+Trial by jury: For transporting us<br />
+Beyond the seas, to answer for offences,<br />
+Imputed to us: For abolishing,<br />
+Within a neighbouring province, the free system<br />
+Of English laws; establishing therein<br />
+An arbitrary power; and enlarging<br />
+Its boundaries, to render it at once<br />
+The fit example, and the instrument<br />
+For bringing into these our Colonies<br />
+The same despotic rule: For taking from us<br />
+Our Charters; and abolishing our laws<br />
+Most valued; changing thus, in principle,<br />
+Our forms of Government: And for suspending<br />
+Our Legislatures, with the declaration<br />
+That they, themselves, in each and every case,<br />
+Were vested with supreme authority<br />
+To legislate for us.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 10em;">He has laid down</span><br />
+His sway, by holding us without the pale<br />
+Of his protection, and by waging war<br />
+Against us. He has plundered on our seas;<br />
+Ravaged our coasts; our cities burnt; and taken<br />
+Our people's lives. He is transporting hither<br />
+Armies composed of foreign mercenaries,<br />
+To end the works of death, and desolation,<br />
+And tyranny, begun with circumstances<br />
+Of cruelty and perfidy unequalled<br />
+In the most barbarous ages, and unworthy<br />
+The Ruler of a nation civilized.<br />
+He has constrained our fellow-citizens,<br />
+On the high seas made captive, to bear arms<br />
+Against their country, and of friends and brothers<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span><br />
+To be the executioners, or fall<br />
+Beneath his creatures' hands. He has excited<br />
+Amongst ourselves domestic insurrection;<br />
+And sought to bring on the inhabitants<br />
+Of our frontier the savage Indian,<br />
+Whose code of warfare, merciless and sure,<br />
+Spares not, in undistinguished massacre,<br />
+Age, sex, condition.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 11em;">We, in every stage</span><br />
+Of these oppressions, have in humblest terms<br />
+Petitioned for redress. To our petitions,<br />
+Though oft repeated, there has been <i>one</i> answer&mdash;<br />
+Repeated injury.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 11em;">A prince, whose life</span><br />
+And conduct thus are marked by every act<br />
+That may define a Tyrant, is unfit<br />
+To rule o'er Freemen.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">Neither have we failed</span><br />
+In due attention to our British brethren.<br />
+From time to time, we have admonished them<br />
+Of efforts, by their Legislature made,<br />
+Unwarrantably to extend to us<br />
+Their jurisdiction. How we emigrated,<br />
+And settled here, we have reminded them.<br />
+We to their native justice have appealed<br />
+And magnanimity; and have conjured them,<br />
+By common kindred ties, to disavow<br />
+These usurpations, which, inevitably,<br />
+Would mar our intercourse and friendship. They<br />
+Have also turned a deaf ear to the voice<br />
+Of Justice and of Consanguinity.<br />
+So must we yield to the necessity<br />
+Which forces us to separate, and hold them&mdash;<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span><br />
+As we do hold the rest of human kind&mdash;<br />
+Our enemies in War, in Peace our friends.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">We, therefore, who are here to represent</span><br />
+The States United of America,<br />
+In General Congress met, for rectitude<br />
+Of our intentions to the Judge Supreme<br />
+Of all things here in confidence appealing,<br />
+Do, in the name, and by authority<br />
+Of the good people of these Colonies,<br />
+Solemnly publish and declare, that these<br />
+United Colonies are, and of right<br />
+Ought to be, Free and Independent States:<br />
+That from allegiance to the British Crown<br />
+They are absolved: That all connecting ties<br />
+Of policy between them and Great Britain<br />
+Are, as they should be, totally dissolved:<br />
+And that, as Free and Independent States,<br />
+They have full power to levy war, conclude<br />
+Peace, and contract alliances, establish<br />
+Commerce, and do all other acts and things<br />
+Which Independent States of right may do.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">This is our Declaration: to support it,</span><br />
+With firm reliance on Divine protection,<br />
+We to each other mutually pledge<br />
+Our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honour.<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>BEL PIEDE.</h2>
+
+
+<p>
+Browning, whose household gods were planted<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Beside the banks of classic Arno,</span><br />
+Once, in a dainty ballad, chanted<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The lady of the <i>bella mano</i>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Pass from the Arno to the Tiber,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">From Tuscan to a Roman lady;</span><br />
+And let a humbler bard describe her&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">This fair one of the <i>bel piede</i>.</span><br />
+<br />
+To Roman dame, as I and you know,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Is rarely given a foot symmetrical;</span><br />
+No Cinderellas&mdash;many a Juno&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Upon the Pincian we can yet recall.</span><br />
+<br />
+Those were the days when bonnets did not<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Expose the face to every starer;</span><br />
+When skirts, worn short and airy, hid not<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The foot and ankle of the wearer.</span><br />
+<br />
+With high arched instep, narrow, tapering,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Divinely booted&mdash;none could beat hers&mdash;</span><br />
+The foot, that set my young heart capering,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Came down the broad steps of St. Peter's.</span><br />
+<br />
+Her long black veil, the crowd around me,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Her swift landau, my swift emotion&mdash;</span><br />
+She came: her fairy foot spell-bound me;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">She went: which way, I had no notion.</span><br />
+<br />
+Haunting all public haunts was fruitless,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mid solemn pomps, on festal hey-day;</span><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span>Search for those glorious boots was bootless:<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Rome showed no more my <i>bel piede</i>.</span><br />
+<br />
+In Paris next enchained it held me,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Through redowa, waltz, all sorts of dances;</span><br />
+But mask and domino repelled me&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">She moved, but I made no advances.</span><br />
+<br />
+Again she passed&mdash;no trace behind her&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I sought, enquired, left nothing undone;</span><br />
+But all was vain: I could not find her,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And, in despair, set off for London.</span><br />
+<br />
+The sea between Boulogne and Dover<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Was, as it always is, terrific;</span><br />
+Against that awful passage over,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Why not invent some smooth specific?</span><br />
+<br />
+Cloaked, muffled, shawled, a form was leaning<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Across the gunwale, keeping shady;</span><br />
+I recked not what might be its meaning&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I thought not, then, of <i>bel piede</i>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Sudden, a lurch, a shriek, a splashing!<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I knew the shriek was from a lady;</span><br />
+But horror through my brain went crashing&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I saw, heels up, my <i>bel piede</i>!</span><br />
+<br />
+She sank. No more! But O ye mermaids,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of whose long tails we've had a surfeit,</span><br />
+If ye were worthy to be her maids,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">You'd cut your tails, and copy her feet!</span><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>WHO IS HE?</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><i>A Reply to Quevedo</i>.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>These lines were suggested by some sprightly verses, entitled "Who is
+She?" that had recently appeared in <i>Fraser's Magazine</i>.</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<p>
+A Spanish writer once decided,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">In flippant song,</span><br />
+That woman's lip, or tongue, or eye did<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">All that went wrong.</span><br />
+Nay, that the true mode of unmasking<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Her wiles would be,</span><br />
+On all occasions simply asking&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Pray, who is she?</span><br />
+<br />
+Now, why must woman's petticoats<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Aye be the blamables?</span><br />
+How is't Quevedo never quotes<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Mankind's unnamables?</span><br />
+He rates the sex, and certès for it he<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Makes a good plea;</span><br />
+But can't I, on as good authority,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Ask, who is he?</span><br />
+<br />
+Quevedo swears that Eve and Helen<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Wrought dire mishaps:</span><br />
+That Adam and the Trojans fell in<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Their deep-laid traps.</span><br />
+Eve?&mdash;why Diabolus beguiled her;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">You know't, Quevedo!</span><br />
+Helen?&mdash;that rascal Paris wiled her:<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">That's Homer's <i>credo</i>!</span><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span><br />
+Trust me, man causes woman's failing;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And, on my life,</span><br />
+He's always wantonly assailing<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Maid, widow, wife.</span><br />
+Beneath the surface let the gazer<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Look deep&mdash;he'll see</span><br />
+Some stronger vessel that betrays her:<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Just ask&mdash;who's he?</span><br />
+<br />
+Is it a milk-maid drops her pailful?&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Lubin's love-making:</span><br />
+Is her fate scandalous or baleful?&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Lubin's been raking!</span><br />
+The school-girl loaths her bread and butter,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Pouts o'er her tea,</span><br />
+Mumbles her lessons in a flutter&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Ask, who is he?</span><br />
+<br />
+Despite experience, what can set<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The widow hoping?</span><br />
+Why are wives sometimes gadding met,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And sometimes moping?</span><br />
+Don't talk of widows' amorous bump,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Of wives too free;</span><br />
+But pop the question to them, plump&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Pray, who is he?</span><br />
+<br />
+We're mighty prompt to throw the blame on<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The weaker fair sex;</span><br />
+When justice ought to fix the shame on<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Ours&mdash;not on their sex.</span><br />
+Ours the seduction and the fooling,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">If such there be:</span><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span>Come; your exception to this ruling&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Pray, who is he?</span><br />
+<br />
+The old and hump-backed ply their battery<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Of gold and jewels;</span><br />
+Well-knit young fellows deal in flattery,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Dance, song, oaths, duels.</span><br />
+So, to conclude, I'll take my oath, sir,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Upon the Bible,</span><br />
+That to blame one&mdash;in place of both, sir,&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Is a gross libel!</span><br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>TO NINON.</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><i>From the French of Alfred de Musset.</i></p>
+
+
+<p>
+Were I to tell thee, ne'ertheless, that, troth, I love thee well,<br />
+Blue-eyed brunette, blue-eyed brunette, thine answer who could tell?<br />
+Love is the cause of many a pang&mdash;their source thou well can'st guess;<br />
+No pity in him dwells, as thou must needs thyself confess:<br />
+And yet, ah! me, thou would'st perchance chastise me ne'ertheless!<br />
+<br />
+Were I to tell thee that, beneath six months of silence crushed,<br />
+Long-hidden torments I have borne, and vows insensate hushed;<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span>Ninon, despite thy careless air, thou hast a searching eye,<br />
+That, like a Fairy's, ere it come, what's coming can espy:<br />
+"I know it all, I know it all," thou would'st perchance reply.<br />
+<br />
+Were I to tell thee that I roam in sweet, delirious dream,<br />
+Haunting thy footsteps so that I thy very shadow seem;<br />
+A tinge of sadness on thy cheek, a quick, mistrustful glance,&mdash;<br />
+Ninon, thou knowest well that these thy loveliness enhance:<br />
+And thus, that thou believest not, thou would'st reply perchance.<br />
+<br />
+Were I to tell thee that my soul hoards up the lightest word,<br />
+That falling from thy lips at eve in our discourse I've heard;<br />
+Lady, thou know'st that, when aroused to anger or disdain,<br />
+Eyes, though of azure they may be, can still their lightnings rain:<br />
+And thine perchance would flashing say, "We must not meet again!"<br />
+<br />
+Were I to tell thee that by night I wake and think of thee,<br />
+And that by day for thee I pray, and weep on bended knee,<br />
+Ah! Ninon, when thou laugh'st, the bee, as well thou art aware,<br />
+In hovering round thy rosy mouth, that 'twas a flower might swear:<br />
+Were I to tell thee all, perchance the laugh would still be there<br />
+<br />
+But nothing shalt thou know of this. I venture, all untold,<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span>Calmly to sit beneath thy lamp, and converse with thee hold.<br />
+I hear the murmur of thy voice, thy balmy breath inhale;<br />
+And thou may'st doubt me, or surmise, or laugh, I shall not quail;<br />
+Thine eyes shall see no cause in me, their kindly look to veil.<br />
+<br />
+By stealth at times, in secret joy, mysterious flowers I glean,<br />
+When o'er thy harpsichord at eve enraptured I can lean,<br />
+And list from thy harmonious hands what fairy accents flow;<br />
+Or in voluptuous waltz, as round with flying feet we go,<br />
+I feel thee in mine arms, a reed, that's waving to and fro.<br />
+<br />
+When from thy side I have been kept by thronged saloons at night,<br />
+And in my chamber draw my bolt that shuts the world from sight,<br />
+A thousand reminiscences I seize upon, and hold<br />
+In jealous grasp; and there, alone, like miser o'er his gold,<br />
+To Heaven my heart, all full of thee, with greedy joy unfold.<br />
+<br />
+I love; and I have learned to speak in cool and careless tone.<br />
+I love; nought tells of it. I love; who knows it?&mdash;I alone!<br />
+Dear is my secret, dear the pain with which I am oppressed;<br />
+And I have sworn to love, without a hope on which to rest;<br />
+But not without a taste of joy&mdash;I see thee, and am blest.<br />
+<br />
+No! not for me! I was not born such bliss supreme to meet:<br />
+To die within thy arms, or live contented at thy feet.<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span>Alas! all proves it&mdash;e'en the grief that fain I would dispel.<br />
+Were I to tell thee, ne'ertheless, that, troth, I love thee well:<br />
+Blue-eyed brunette, blue-eyed brunette, thine answer who could tell?<br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE LAST OF THE ROMAN GLADIATORS.</h2>
+
+<blockquote><p class="center">The incident, which the following stanzas attempt to describe, is historical.
+It is related by Gibbon in his "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire."</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<p>
+Ye, who have the ruins seen<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of the Coliseum's walls,</span><br />
+Think ye, what the sight hath been<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of Rome's highest festivals!</span><br />
+If your fancy can restore<br />
+Crumbled arch and corridor,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Call forth the dead;</span><br />
+Bid them fill again the seats,<br />
+Where now Echo only greets<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">The stranger's tread.</span><br />
+<br />
+Fourteen hundred years are past,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Rome hath fallen in her pride,</span><br />
+Since the gladiator last<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In the Coliseum died.</span><br />
+Fourteen hundred years ago,<br />
+Tens of thousands thronged the show,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">In joyous guise,</span><br />
+On the struggle and the strife,<br />
+And the pangs of parting life,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Feasting their eyes.</span><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span><br />
+Then ye might have heard the roar<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of the noble beasts of prey,</span><br />
+As they fought and bled, before<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Men less noble far than they.</span><br />
+Strength is useless, courage vain,<br />
+Beauty saves not&mdash;they are slain,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">The forest race;</span><br />
+Whilst the still unsated crowd<br />
+For new victims shout aloud,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">To fill their place.</span><br />
+<br />
+Hark! the Prætor's stern command<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Costlier sacrifice proclaims;</span><br />
+Lo! the gladiatorial band,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Glory of the Roman Games!</span><br />
+As they enter, man by man,<br />
+Shape and size the people scan<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">With eager glance;</span><br />
+And of each ill-fated pair,<br />
+That await the signal there,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Foretell the chance.</span><br />
+<br />
+Hark! the trumpet's sudden sound;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Lo! the work of death begun:</span><br />
+Seas of blood shall drench the ground,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ere that deadly work be done.</span><br />
+Ha! a moment of delay?<br />
+What the lifted hand can stay?<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Is there a fear</span><br />
+Of Pompeii's fiery shower?<br />
+Or, doth Earthquake's giant power<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Make havoc here?</span><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span><br />
+No&mdash;for Nature with a smile<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Looks upon her outraged laws,</span><br />
+Man's indignant voice the while<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bidding man in pity pause.</span><br />
+See!&mdash;a monk, obscure, unknown,<br />
+Christ's disciple, treads alone<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">The arena's sand,</span><br />
+Foe from foe intent to part,<br />
+Striving with a zealous heart,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">But feeble hand.</span><br />
+<br />
+Would ye seek to know his fate?<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Listen to that savage yell!</span><br />
+Scorn, derision, fury, hate,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Doomed his death&mdash;the martyr fell.</span><br />
+Record there is none to show,<br />
+Whose the hand that dealt the blow<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">That laid him there;</span><br />
+Men who gazed, and men who fought,<br />
+All alike to madness wrought,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">The guilt must share.</span><br />
+<br />
+Whether stoned to death, or slain<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">By the sword, or by the spear,</span><br />
+Little recks it&mdash;it were vain<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Through the mists of time to peer.</span><br />
+This we know&mdash;the martyr died;<br />
+Nor without success had plied<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">His work of peace,</span><br />
+Since, to expiate that deed,<br />
+Rome's Imperial Lord decreed,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">The Games should cease.</span><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span><br />
+Rome obeyed her Lord's commands;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Never were those Games renewed:</span><br />
+Now the priest of Jesus stands<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where the gladiator stood.</span><br />
+Thanks, Telemachus, to thee,<br />
+Sainted martyr, now we see<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Altars around;</span><br />
+And the spot, where thou of yore<br />
+Did'st thy life-blood nobly pour,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Is hallowed ground.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE PRUDENT BRIDE.</h2>
+
+
+<p>
+At Salem Meeting-House, one summer day,<br />
+Two lovers, Abby Purkis and John Cole,<br />
+Were joined in holy wedlock. Off they started<br />
+To spend the honey-moon, gregarious,<br />
+At Trenton, Saratoga, and the Falls.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Reaching this last-named wonder of the world,</span><br />
+They went the usual round; mounted the tower<br />
+That overlooks the cataract; stood and watched<br />
+The eddying Rapids, and the whirling Pool;<br />
+Nor on thy deck, O daring "<i>Maid of the Mist</i>,"<br />
+Failed they to buffet the tumultuous roar,<br />
+The drenching spray, the seeming perilous plunge<br />
+Beneath the Horse-Shoe. Every where, throughout,<br />
+Abby was brave; nay, on John's stalwart arm<br />
+Leaning, was confident.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 10em;">At last they reached</span><br />
+The Cavern of the Winds. Then changed her bearing.<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span>Trembling, she paused. In truth, the howling blasts,<br />
+And gusty moans as of imprisoned spirits,<br />
+Struck the bride's soul with terror. All aghast,<br />
+She stood before the entrance, and refused,<br />
+Firmly refused to trust herself within.<br />
+John urged&mdash;she would not; coaxed&mdash;'twas all in vain;<br />
+Laughed at, and called her "little fool"&mdash;she would not.<br />
+Nay more, she prayed him by the love he bore her<br />
+Not to set foot himself within a place<br />
+So fraught with peril. John was ungallant,<br />
+And only laughed the more. Not he the man<br />
+To flinch from fisticuffs with Æolus!<br />
+Had he not harpooned whales in Arctic seas?<br />
+Were not typhoon, white squall, and hurricane<br />
+His some time playmates? It was her turn now<br />
+To coax, and urge, and crave&mdash;and be denied.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Chafed that her will was not a law to John,</span><br />
+Abby was woman still, and sorely grieved<br />
+That he should run such risks. She kissed him fondly,<br />
+And bade him tread with care, and hasten back.<br />
+Her voice was choked with sobs. Her latest words<br />
+Were scarcely audible, though through them breathed<br />
+Salem's sound training. "John," she faltered forth,<br />
+"We know not what may happen: dear, dear John,<br />
+"Were it not well that you&mdash;should&mdash;leave&mdash;with&mdash;me&mdash;<br />
+"Your&mdash;watch&mdash;and&mdash;pocket-book?"<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE TRAMPER'S BED&mdash;AND THE KING'S.</h2>
+
+
+<p>
+Down by the side of a sweet clover-stack,<br />
+On a summer night, I lie on my back.<br />
+Clear space is above me; and there, as I lie,<br />
+I look straight up to the stars in the sky.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Once, when the King was dethroned by the mob,</span><br />
+They swarmed to his palace, to stare or to rob,<br />
+And the frightened lackies flung open the doors,<br />
+And clouted shoes scraped along polished floors.<br />
+Then it was I caught sight of his Majesty's bed,<br />
+With its canopy, gilded and carved, overhead;&mdash;<br />
+If his Majesty wishes the stars to behold,<br />
+And looks up, he can see but the carving and gold!<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Some night, should my soul be unbound as I sleep,</span><br />
+And downward an Angel in search of it sweep,<br />
+No bar, no obstruction, would hinder his flight;&mdash;<br />
+With a wave of his wings, by my corpse he would light.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But what, if the soul to be loosed were the King's?</span><br />
+Could an Angel reach that by the poise of his wings?<br />
+Could he easily cleave through a palace his way?<br />
+Through ceilings bedizened, through floors in decay&mdash;<br />
+Through gorgeous apartments and bare attic rooms,<br />
+For lords and for ladies, for valets and grooms&mdash;<br />
+Through a quaint peakèd roof rising high o'er the whole&mdash;<br />
+Could he enter, and tenderly waft off the soul?<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Better, then, is the bed by the sweet clover-stack,</span><br />
+With the stars full in view, and the clear Angel's track!<br />
+And though much be not mine of this world's pleasant things,<br />
+I should care not to barter my couch for the King's!<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>OCCASION.</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><i>From the Italian of Ternaré</i></p>
+
+
+<p>
+"Say, who art thou, with more than mortal air,<br />
+Endowed by Heaven with gifts and graces rare,<br />
+Whom restless, wingèd feet for ever onward bear?"&mdash;<br />
+<br />
+"I am Occasion&mdash;known to few, at best;<br />
+And since one foot upon a wheel I rest,<br />
+Constant my movements are&mdash;they cannot be repressed.<br />
+<br />
+"Not the swift eagle in his swiftest flight<br />
+Can equal me in speed. My wings are bright;<br />
+And man, who sees them waved, is dazzled by the sight.<br />
+<br />
+"My thick and flowing locks, before me thrown,<br />
+Conceal my form&mdash;nor face, nor breast is shown,<br />
+That thus, as I approach, my coming be not known.<br />
+<br />
+"Behind my head, no single lock of hair<br />
+Invites the hand, that fain would it grasp there;<br />
+But he, who lets me pass, to seize me may despair."<br />
+<br />
+"Whom, then, so close behind thee do I see?"&mdash;<br />
+"Her name is Penitence; and Heaven's decree<br />
+Hath made all those her prey, who profit not by me.<br />
+<br />
+"And thou, O mortal, who dost vainly ply<br />
+These curious questions, thou dost not descry,<br />
+That now thy time is lost&mdash;for I am passing by."<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE MOURNFUL BALLAD OF THE "ALABAMA."</h2>
+
+
+<p>
+Captain Semmes is on a cruise<br />
+O'er the track that skippers use;<br />
+From the Western Isles, to those<br />
+Near Nantucket shoals, he goes.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Woe is me, Alabama!</span><br />
+<br />
+Letters to the merchants tell<br />
+Who into his clutches fell;<br />
+'Tis the talk of all the town;<br />
+News-boys call it up and down<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Woe is me, Alabama!</span><br />
+<br />
+Straight the sons of Commerce came<br />
+To their Chamber, crying shame<br />
+For the tidings they had learned,<br />
+For their ships and cargoes burned.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Woe is me, Alabama!</span><br />
+<br />
+Up and spake a merchant prince:<br />
+"Friends, our city well may wince,<br />
+For you have, alas! to know<br />
+Of a most disastrous blow!<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Woe is me, Alabama!</span><br />
+<br />
+"All is sunk beneath the waves,<br />
+Breadstuffs, lard, tobacco, staves;<br />
+Chained have been our Captains bold<br />
+In the 'Alabama's' hold!<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Woe is me, Alabama!</span><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span><br />
+"Lawless, too, is Captain Semmes;<br />
+Neutral shipments he condemns.<br />
+Useless is it to appeal<br />
+To Consul's signature and seal.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Woe is me, Alabama!</span><br />
+<br />
+"But there's worse than this behind;<br />
+Treacherous friends this blow designed.<br />
+Great as is the corsair's guilt,<br />
+Greater theirs his ship who built!<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Woe is me, Alabama!</span><br />
+<br />
+"Neutral money, neutral skill,<br />
+Wrought us this outrageous ill;<br />
+Neutral engines, neutral guns,<br />
+Aid him as he fights or runs.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Woe is me, Alabama!</span><br />
+<br />
+"Sons of Commerce, men of worth,<br />
+Let these words of mine go forth!<br />
+Let the British monarch know<br />
+That to her all this we owe!"<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Woe is me, Alabama!</span><br />
+<br />
+So the warning words went forth<br />
+To England, from the angered North,<br />
+Passed along from mouth to mouth,<br />
+"No more dealings with the South!"<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Woe is me, Alabama!</span><br />
+<br />
+"You may sell to this our land<br />
+All we want of contraband;<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span>But have a care that nothing goes,<br />
+From you, a neutral, to our foes!"<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Woe is me, Alabama!</span><br />
+<br />
+Now Heaven preserve us all in peace,<br />
+And let these ugly squabbles cease!<br />
+So fighters all, and standers-by,<br />
+Shall nevermore have cause to cry,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 8em;">"Woe is me, Alabama!"</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+November, 1862.<br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>LINES FOR THE GUITAR.</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><i>From the French of Victor Hugo.</i></p>
+
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Man was saying: "How can we,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">In our little boats at sea,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Pass the guarda-costas by?"&mdash;</span><br />
+"Row!" said Woman in reply.<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Man was saying: "How forget</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Perils that our lives beset,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Strife, and Poverty's low cry?"&mdash;</span><br />
+"Sleep!" said Woman in reply.<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Man was saying: "How be sure</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Beauty's favour to secure,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Nor the subtle philtre try?"&mdash;</span><br />
+"Love!" said Woman in reply.<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THREE MEN AND A WOMAN.</h2>
+
+
+<p>
+A Summer's dawn and a tranquil sea;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But lurid all with smoke:</span><br />
+For a bark was burning furiously,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">What time the morning broke.</span><br />
+<br />
+Terrible? ay, but risk there was none,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">For stern the Captain's sway;</span><br />
+And when he spoke, each mother's son<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Could not but choose obey.</span><br />
+<br />
+"Man the boats!"&mdash;the boats were manned,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In order, one by one;</span><br />
+To pull a hundred miles to land,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">All under the Summer's sun.</span><br />
+<br />
+Four stalwart rowers bend to their oars:<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Four sitters at the stern&mdash;</span><br />
+Three men and a woman&mdash;silent sit,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Watching the vessel burn.</span><br />
+<br />
+They were no tremblers: each had known<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Perils by land and deep;</span><br />
+But the woman alone would gently moan,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And at times, perforce, would weep.</span><br />
+<br />
+Yet soon the sun was high in heaven,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And the sea was a-glow: and then</span><br />
+The temper of those men peered out&mdash;<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of those three fearless men.</span><br />
+<br />
+One thought his white hand by the sun would be tanned;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">One felt they were wrong to risk it,</span><br />
+In sweltering heat, with nothing to eat<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But a bit of dry ship-biscuit.</span><br />
+<br />
+The third brooded over his handful of freight<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Going down, uninsured, to the deep:</span><br />
+But the woman alone would gently moan,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And at times, perforce, would weep;</span><br />
+<br />
+Till a sense of shame the three o'ercame,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And a curious wish to know</span><br />
+Why, still unfearing, she gave way<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To her uncomplaining woe.</span><br />
+<br />
+"Ah, Sirs!"&mdash;she faltered in reply&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"The danger is easily braved:</span><br />
+But my husband may hear that the ship is burnt&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And not that we are saved!"</span><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>ANOTHER MARBLE FAUN.</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><i>A Translation of La Statue, by Victor Hugo.</i></p>
+
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">He seemed to shiver, for the wind was keen.</span><br />
+'Twas a poor statue underneath a mass<br />
+Of leafless branches, with a blackened back<br />
+And green foot&mdash;an old isolated Faun<br />
+In old deserted park, who, bending forward,<br />
+Half merged himself in the entangled boughs,<br />
+Half in his marble settings. He was there,<br />
+Pensive, and bound to the earth; and, as all things,<br />
+Devoid of movement, he was there&mdash;forgotten.<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Trees were around him, whipped by the icy blasts&mdash;</span><br />
+Gigantic chestnuts, without leaf or bird,<br />
+And, like himself, grown old in that same place.<br />
+Through the dark network of their undergrowth,<br />
+Pallid his aspect; and the earth was brown.<br />
+Starless and moonless, a rough winter's night<br />
+Was letting down her lappets o'er the mist.<br />
+Trees more remote, with sombre shafts upreared,<br />
+Each other crossed; and trees remoter still,<br />
+By distance blurred, threw up to the grey sky<br />
+Their thousand twigs sharp-pointed, intricate;<br />
+And posed themselves around; and through the fog<br />
+Took, on the horizon's verge, the shadowy form<br />
+Of mighty porcupines in countless herd.<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">This&mdash;nothing more: old Faun, dull sky, dark wood.</span><br />
+<br />
+Piercing the mist, perchance there might be seen<br />
+A distant terrace&mdash;its long layers of stone<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span>Tinted with slimy green; or group of Nymphs,<br />
+Dimly defined beside a wide-spread basin,<br />
+And shrinking&mdash;fitly in this desolate park&mdash;<br />
+As once from gazers, from neglect to-day.<br />
+The old Faun was laughing. In their dubious haze<br />
+Leaving the shamed Nymphs and their dreary basin&mdash;<br />
+The old Faun was laughing&mdash;'twas to him I came<br />
+Moved to compassion, for these sculptors all<br />
+Are pitiless ever, and, content with praise,<br />
+Doom Nymphs to shame, condemn the Fauns to laughter.<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Poor helpless marble, how I've pitied it</span><br />
+Less often man&mdash;the harder of the two.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">So then, without a word that might offend</span><br />
+His ear difformed&mdash;for well the marble hears<br />
+The voice of thought&mdash;I said to him: "You hail<br />
+From the gay amorous age; O Faun, what saw you,<br />
+When you were happy? Were you of the Court?<br />
+Did you take part in fêtes?&mdash;For your diversion<br />
+These Nymphs were fashioned. In this wood, for you,<br />
+Capable hands mingled the gods of Greece<br />
+With Roman Cæsars; made rare vases peer<br />
+Into clear waters; and this garden vext<br />
+With tortuous labyrinths. When you were happy,<br />
+O Faun, what saw you? All the secrets tell<br />
+Of that too vain yet captivating past,<br />
+Thick set with prudent love-makers, a past<br />
+In which great poets jostled mighty Kings.<br />
+How fresh your memory&mdash;you are laughing still!<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Speak to me, comely Faun, as you would speak</span><br />
+To tree, or zephyr, or untrodden grass.<br />
+From end to end of this well-shaded alley,<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span>When near you, with the handsome Lautrec, passed<br />
+The soft-eyed Marguerite, the Bearnaise Queen,<br />
+Have you, O Greek, O mocker of old days,<br />
+Have you not sometimes with that oblique eye<br />
+Winked at the Farnese Hercules?&mdash;Alone,<br />
+In cave as it were of foliage green and moist,<br />
+Have you, O Faun, considerately turned<br />
+From side to side when counsel-seekers came,<br />
+And now advised as shepherd; now as satyr?<br />
+Have you sometimes upon this very bench<br />
+Seen at mid-day, Vincent de Paul instilling<br />
+Grace into Gondi?&mdash;Have you ever thrown<br />
+That searching glance on Louis with Fontange,<br />
+On Anne with Buckingham; and did they not<br />
+Start, with flushed cheeks, to hear your laugh ring forth<br />
+From corner of the wood?&mdash;Was your advice<br />
+As to the thyrsis or the ivy asked,<br />
+When, the grand ballet of fantastic form,<br />
+God Ph&oelig;bus, or god Pan, and all his court<br />
+Turned the fair head of the fair Montespan,<br />
+Calling her Amaryllis?&mdash;La Fontaine,<br />
+Flying the courtiers' ears of stone, came he,<br />
+Tears in his eyelids, to reveal to you<br />
+The sorrows of his Nymphs of Vaux?&mdash;What said<br />
+Boileau to you, to you, O lettered Faun,<br />
+Who once with Virgil, in the Eclogue, held<br />
+That charming dialogue, and deftly made&mdash;<br />
+Couched on the turf&mdash;the heavy spondee dance<br />
+To the light dactyl's step?&mdash;Say, have you seen<br />
+Young beauties sporting on the sward: Chevreuse<br />
+Of the swimming eyes, Thiange of airs superb?<br />
+Have they sometimes, in rosy-tinted group,<br />
+Girt you so fondly round, that all at once<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span>A straggling sunbeam on a fluttering bosom<br />
+Marked your lascivious profile?&mdash;Has your tree<br />
+Received beneath the quiet of its shade<br />
+Pale Mazarin's scarlet winding sheet?&mdash;Have you<br />
+Been honoured with a sight of Molière<br />
+In dreamy mood? Has he perchance at times,<br />
+Dropping at random a melodious verse,<br />
+In tone familiar&mdash;as is the wont<br />
+'Twixt demi-gods&mdash;addressed you?&mdash;When at eve<br />
+Homeward hereby the thinker went, has he<br />
+Who&mdash;seeing souls all naked&mdash;could not fear<br />
+Your nudity, in his enquiring mind<br />
+Confronted you with Man? And did he deem<br />
+You, spectral cynic, the less sad, less cold,<br />
+Less wicked, less ironical&mdash;comparing<br />
+Your laugh in marble with our human laugh?"<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Under the thickly tangled branches, thus</span><br />
+Did I speak to him; he no answer gave&mdash;<br />
+Not even a murmur. On the pedestal<br />
+Leaning, I listened; but the past stirred not.<br />
+Dumb to my words and to my pity deaf,<br />
+The Satyr, motionless, was vaguely blanched<br />
+By the wan glimmer of the dying day.<br />
+To see him there, sinister, half drawn out<br />
+From his dark framing, and by damp discoloured,<br />
+Brought to one's mind the handle of a sword<br />
+In torso chiselled&mdash;an old rusty sword,<br />
+Left for long years neglected in its sheath.<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I shook my head, and moved myself away.</span><br />
+Then, from the copses, from the dried up boughs<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span>Pendent above him, from secret caves<br />
+Hid in the wood, methought a ghostly voice<br />
+Came forth and woke an echo in my soul,<br />
+As in the hollow of an amphora.<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Imprudent poet," thus it seemed to say,</span><br />
+"What dost thou here? Leave the forsaken Fauns<br />
+In peace beneath their trees! Dost thou not know,<br />
+Poet, that ever it is impious deemed,<br />
+In desert spots where drowsy shades repose&mdash;<br />
+Though love itself might prompt thee&mdash;to shake down<br />
+The moss that hangs from ruined centuries,<br />
+And, with the vain noise of thine ill-timed words,<br />
+To mar the recollections of the dead?"<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Then to the gardens all enwrapped in mist</span><br />
+I hurried, dreaming of the vanished days.<br />
+And still the tree-tops were with mystery rife;<br />
+And still, behind me&mdash;hieroglyph obscure<br />
+Of antique alphabet&mdash;the lonely Faun<br />
+Held to his laughter, through the falling night.<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I went my way; but yet&mdash;in saddened spirit</span><br />
+Pondering on all that had my vision crossed,<br />
+Floating in air or scattered under foot,<br />
+Confused and blent, beauty and spring and morn,<br />
+Leaves of old summers, fair ones of old time&mdash;<br />
+Through all, at distance would my fancy see,<br />
+In the woods, statues; shadows in the past!<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHARADES.</h2>
+
+<b>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I.</b>
+
+
+<p>
+Look from the prow of thine anchored bark&mdash;<br />
+Anchored by classic shore&mdash;and mark,<br />
+Down fathoms-deep in the purple sea,<br />
+How Time and the waters have dealt on me<br />
+<br />
+Art lost in the moonless and starless night?<br />
+Far-away looming, a light! a light!<br />
+Fearlessly steer, for on me 'tis placed,<br />
+To guide thy bark o'er the trackless waste<br />
+<br />
+Earth knows me, too; and will heave and quake<br />
+Where my subterranean course I take:<br />
+And none so aghast at my ravages then,<br />
+As they whose type was the Sire of men.<br />
+<br />
+But not ever thus; at times I'm seen<br />
+On the cheek or the neck of Beauty's queen;<br />
+Or (to favoured mortal alone confest)<br />
+Tinging the snow upon Beauty's breast.<br />
+<br />
+So, whether above the waves, or below,<br />
+Or beneath the Earth, or on breast of snow,<br />
+Linked with the past, or alive to-day,<br />
+Tell who I am&mdash;if tell ye may.<br />
+</p>
+
+
+<b>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;II.</b>
+
+
+<p>
+My lady calls; my First obeys&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Nor less his lord's behest:</span><br />
+In bower and hall, in olden days,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">My First was in request.</span><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span><br />
+Yet 'tis my First that tells us now<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">What then my First was doing;</span><br />
+How he went forth to war, and how<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">He prospered in his wooing.</span><br />
+<br />
+A wise King bade the lazy fool<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Observe my Second's ways,</span><br />
+And notice&mdash;as it were in school&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The wisdom she displays.</span><br />
+<br />
+Yet hers is a devouring race,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And might&mdash;though strange it be&mdash;</span><br />
+Eat up, in given time and place,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">My First, or you, or me.</span><br />
+<br />
+As for my whole&mdash;in every age<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mankind must have its show;</span><br />
+In actual life, on mimic stage,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In peace, war, joy, or woe.</span><br />
+<br />
+Now 'tis a wedding, now a death,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A gathering, or a play;</span><br />
+It comes, but, like a passing breath,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Full soon 'tis swept away.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+
+<b>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;III.</b>
+
+
+<p>
+When Richard of the Lion Heart<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In arms the Paynim sought,</span><br />
+I of his panoply was part,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And, wielding me, he fought.</span><br />
+<br />
+When ladies on a different field<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With men their skill essay,</span><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span>I am the weapon that they wield<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">If they would gain the day.</span><br />
+<br />
+When cooks in certain dishes show<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Their culinary art,</span><br />
+I am on hand&mdash;the masters know<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">What flavour I impart.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+
+<b>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;IV.</b>
+
+
+<p>
+I'm a word of one syllable. Look you for me<br />
+Mid Niagara's roar; in the turbulent sea;<br />
+Where the winds and the waters are wildest at play,<br />
+And fling off their laughter in volumes of spray.<br />
+<br />
+I'm a noun of five letters; but throw one aside&mdash;<br />
+I'm a verb; with the noun I'm no longer allied.<br />
+I'm a grave, solemn verb; nay, I truly might say,<br />
+Those who follow my precept do nothing but pray.<br />
+<br />
+But again; let two letters be dropped&mdash;there's a change;<br />
+As a noun&mdash;and by no means a grave one&mdash;I range.<br />
+Now I'm here; now I'm there; seen by night and by day,<br />
+For in short, I'm a beam, or a flash, or a ray.<br />
+<br />
+Thus a verb and two nouns packed together you see,<br />
+In a word of one syllable.&mdash;What can it be?<br />
+</p>
+
+
+<b>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;V.</b>
+
+
+<p>
+There are some words, that in a double sense<br />
+Must be interpreted; of these am I.<br />
+Your housemaid, thus, wilt know me literally<br />
+Better than you do; but, with all respect<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span>For Betty's carefulness, she scarce can catch<br />
+My finer meaning. I'm, with her, a thing<br />
+For brush and duster; in me, you behold<br />
+A symbol. So much for me as I stand.<br />
+Now cut my head off&mdash;I'm another word<br />
+Of narrow and of wide significance,<br />
+Handful of dust, the very world itself.<br />
+Cut off my tail&mdash;the effect is still the same;<br />
+I'm yet another of those duplex words:<br />
+Mental and bodily, an essential part<br />
+Of all mankind, without which no one lives,<br />
+Nay, not an animal, though you may swear,<br />
+And truly too, that I have no existence,<br />
+And never had, in certain men and women.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Enough: it is not difficult to find</span><br />
+Three words, six meanings, in one syllable.<br />
+</p>
+
+
+<b>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;VI.</b>
+
+
+<p>
+Well may I call myself cosmopolite,<br />
+Being of all lands and times. Barbaric tribes<br />
+Know me, and honour. In the gentler world,<br />
+Scholars have studied me, and poets sung,<br />
+And painters painted, and musicians hymned.<br />
+Nor from Religion have I held myself<br />
+Apart. In Pagan and in savage rites<br />
+Largely I mingle; and some Saints at least,<br />
+Worshipped among us, owe me much. In short,<br />
+Theme, inspiration, puzzle&mdash;I am all.<br />
+As to my form, it may not be defined;<br />
+Yet this is certain: were I rent in twain<br />
+And of one half bereft, I should not have<br />
+A leg to stand on&mdash;of the other half<br />
+Equally mulcted, I should endless be.<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<b>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;VII.</b>
+
+
+<p>
+In me, as the scholar saith,<br />
+Is exhaustion, wasting, death.<br />
+But&mdash;so close do grave and gay<br />
+Touch, in this our world&mdash;you may,<br />
+By a change of accent made,<br />
+Change the meaning I conveyed;<br />
+Change me so that I proclaim<br />
+Victory won, and spoils, and fame!<br />
+</p>
+
+
+<b>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;VIII.</b>
+
+
+<p>
+My first's a French noun; and, without it, stands not<br />
+Church, palace, or hospital, villa, or cot.<br />
+My Second no feature distinctive can claim;<br />
+It but echoes my First&mdash;'t is precisely the same.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Yet my Whole to French parentage makes no pretence;</span><br />
+It is plain Anglo-Saxon, in sound as in sense;<br />
+Nor more widely asunder does pole lie from pole,<br />
+Than my Gallican parts and my Anglican whole.<br />
+Impalpable, it&mdash;solid, tangible, they;<br />
+They may last, for long ages&mdash;it passes away!<br />
+Now a sign of approval, a token of scorn;<br />
+Sometimes of the wind or the waves it is born;<br />
+Though its presence at intervals surely you'll trace<br />
+Where my First and my Second have stablished their place;<br />
+Where King hath his dwelling or Trade hath her marts&mdash;<br />
+A whole evanescent, material parts!<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<table border="0" style="background-color: #ccccff;margin: 0 auto;" cellpadding="10">
+  <tr>
+    <td>
+      <p class="center">Transcriber's note:</p>
+      The words "irresistible" and "irresistable" were left as they
+      were printed in the original.
+	</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MATHIEU ROPARS: ET CETERA***</p>
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diff --git a/39132.txt b/39132.txt
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/39132.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,6749 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Mathieu Ropars: et cetera, by William Young
+
+
+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: Mathieu Ropars: et cetera
+
+
+Author: William Young
+
+
+
+Release Date: March 13, 2012  [eBook #39132]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MATHIEU ROPARS: ET CETERA***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Charlene Taylor, Katie Hernandez, Marilynda
+Fraser-Cunliffe, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+(http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by the
+Wright American Fiction Project
+(http://www.letrs.indiana.edu/web/w/wright2/)
+
+
+
+Note: Images of the original pages are available through the
+      Wright American Fiction Project. See
+      http://www.letrs.indiana.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?idno=Wright2-2831<;view=toc;sid=075f68e4235f00ec8548d9f9e813ee33;c=wright2
+
+
+
+
+
+MATHIEU ROPARS: ET CETERA.
+
+by
+
+AN EX-EDITOR.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+New York:
+G. P. Putnam & Son, 661 Broadway.
+1868.
+
+Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by
+William Young,
+In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the
+Southern District of New York.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+                                                 Page.
+      I.--MATHIEU ROPARS                             7
+     II.--THRICE ONLY                               76
+    III.--TOSSING UP FOR A HUSBAND                  97
+     IV.--MISSING MARINERS                         117
+      V.--MANDRAGORA--BY THE DOZEN                 140
+     VI.--DR. PABLO'S PREDICTION                   157
+    VII.--THE NEW HAMPSHIRE ALPS                   163
+   VIII.--SLIDING SCALE OF THE INCONSOLABLES       173
+     IX.--RAMBLING RECORDS:
+            The Gentle Arlesians                   179
+            At Nuremburg                           183
+            Roman Nomenclature                     189
+            Brigands, Beggars, and Souvenirs       192
+            Livres des Voyageurs                   197
+      X.--A SINGULAR ANAGRAM                       199
+     XI.--A WELL KNOWN DOCUMENT                    201
+    XII.--BEL PIEDE                                208
+   XIII.--WHO IS HE?                               210
+    XIV.--TO NINON                                 212
+     XV.--THE LAST OF THE ROMAN GLADIATORS         215
+    XVI.--THE PRUDENT BRIDE                        218
+   XVII.--THE TRAMPER'S BED AND THE KING'S         220
+  XVIII.--OCCASION                                 221
+    XIX.--THE MOURNFUL BALLAD OF THE ALABAMA       222
+     XX.--LINES FOR THE GUITAR                     224
+    XXI.--THREE MEN AND A WOMAN                    225
+   XXII.--ANOTHER MARBLE FAUN                      227
+  XXIII.--CHARADES                                 232
+
+
+     These literary chips from the workshop of an arduous profession
+     were, with few exceptions, contributed to the "_Albion_" newspaper,
+     between the years 1848 and 1866.
+
+         New York, May 25, 1868.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                        MATHIEU ROPARS.
+
+              _From the French of Emile Souvestre._
+
+                               I.
+
+
+At the extremity of the roadstead of Brest, in the open space that lies
+stretched out between the Ile Longue and Point Kelerne, may be seen two
+rocks crowned with massive granite buildings, and standing boldly up. On
+the former, the lazaretto of Treberon has been established; the latter,
+which in other days was used as a burial-ground and thence took its name
+of the Ile des Morts, now contains the principal powder-magazine of the
+naval arsenal. The two rocks separated by an arm of the sea, are about
+six miles distant from Brest. In appearance these little islands are not
+unlike. Beyond the ground occupied by the buildings upon them, they
+offer nothing to the eye save a succession of stony slopes, dotted here
+and there with coarse moss and prickly thorn-broom. Vainly there might
+you look for any other shelter than that afforded by the fissures of the
+rocks, for any other shade than that of the walls, for any other walk
+than the short terrace contrived in front of the buildings. Naked and
+sterile, the two isles remind you of a couple of immense sentry-boxes
+in stone, placed there for the purpose of keeping guard over the sea,
+which is roaring beneath them. But if the foot that treads them remains
+imprisoned within a narrow circle, the view from their summit extends
+over an infinite space. Here, you have the bay of Lanvoc, bordered by a
+dull-looking and stunted vegetation; there, Roscanvel with its shadows
+crossed by the graceful spire of its church; there, Spanish Point
+bristling with batteries; and lastly, close upon the horizon lies Brest,
+with its dock-yards, its forts, and the hundred masts of its ships,
+visible through a veil of mist. Midway opens out the Goulet, the harbour
+of this marvellous lake, through which arrive and depart unceasingly
+those wandering sails, that issue forth to flaunt the ensign of France
+upon the waters, or to bring it home again from far-away lands.
+
+A cannon-shot, the echo of which was still booming along the shores, had
+just announced one of these arrivals, and a frigate, with a light
+breeze, was doubling the Point under a cloud of canvas. From the
+esplanade of Treberon a man, wrapped in a pilot-cloth cape and wearing a
+narrow-brimmed glazed hat, under which it might be seen that his locks
+were turning grey, was looking at the noble vessel as she glided along
+in the distance, between the azure of the sea and of the sky. It was
+obvious that the keeper of the lazaretto (for he it was) gave but casual
+attention to the sight, with which his long residence at Treberon had
+familiarized him. His look, for a moment resting carelessly upon the
+frigate which had begun to brail up her upper sails, soon reverted to
+his more immediate neighbourhood, and settled itself at the foot of the
+pathway, that led from the esplanade to the sea, upon a group which
+appeared more decidedly to interest him. And in truth the object of this
+rivetted gaze was of that sort which might have attracted the least
+attentive eye. A pupil of Phidias would have traced in it the germ of
+one of those antique bas-reliefs, of which the marble has become more
+precious than gold.
+
+Two little girls and a goat were coming up the winding path together.
+The elder of the two, who might be eleven years old, was holding the
+freakish animal by one of those long pieces of sea-weed that resemble
+strips of Spanish leather. Her black hair fell down upon a neck
+embrowned like a raven's wing, and threw something of a wild hardihood
+into her expression, tempered however by the velvety softness of her
+eye. The younger, seated on the goat as though it were her customary
+place, was of such rosy-white complexion as you see in the flower of the
+eglantine. A tuft of broom, mingling with her golden hair, fell down
+upon her shoulder, and gave her an indescribably coquettish grace. The
+two sisters compelled the goat, which submitted most unwillingly, to
+moderate its pace; but still, as they proceeded, they were obliged to
+double the slender reins by which they kept it within bounds, and anon
+to catch hold of the wreath of sea-flowers twisted about its horns.
+Then what joyous shouts and peals of laughter were there without end,
+broken in upon by the gentle bleatings of _Brunette_ as she pawed the
+ground with her foot, and shook her saucy little head! Any other hands
+but those of Josephe and Francine would have tried in vain to make her
+even so far submissive; but for the latter the goat had been a
+foster-mother, a circumstance evidently not forgotten.
+
+Mathieu Ropars had been watching for some time this pleasant little
+contest between the fantastic _Brunette_ and his daughters, when he felt
+a hand laid upon his arm; he turned round and encountered, so to say,
+close against his shoulder the bronzed and smiling face of their mother.
+
+--"Just look at those children," said he, nodding his head in the
+direction of the merry group.
+
+--"Heavens! Francine will fall," exclaimed the mother, stepping towards
+the path. He drew her back.
+
+--"Let them be," said he; "don't you know that there is nothing to fear
+when Josephe has her eye upon them? Besides, _Brunette_ loves them
+better than her own kids; nor are they behind-hand in returning it.
+Heaven forgive me, if that creature isn't what they think most of--after
+us!"
+
+--"And after Monsieur Gabriel," chimed in their mother--"at least so far
+as Josephe is concerned; for although he scarcely stayed more than a
+week in the lazaretto, and that's three years ago, the child never lets
+a day pass by without speaking of him."
+
+--"To tell the truth, the Lieutenant is a sort of man not easily to be
+forgotten," replied Ropars, "especially by the little one yonder, to
+whom he was so kind and made so many promises. Why, wasn't he to bring
+her all manner of wonderful things from the East? And by the bye, if
+nothing has happened to him, I believe that we shall pretty soon see him
+again, as well as the _Thetis_."
+
+--"In the meantime I must tell the children of another visit, which will
+also be no small treat for them."
+
+--"Whose?"
+
+--"Cousin's, and little Michael's."
+
+--"Dorot's coming?" inquired Mathieu, looking towards the platform of
+the Ile des Morts. "How do you know?"
+
+--"Can't we talk by signal just as well as his Majesty's ships?" said
+Genevieve laughing. "Look, he has hung out of his window three small red
+handkerchiefs; that's to tell us that he's coming over. Besides, I saw
+Michael going down to the Superintendent's."
+
+--"Bravo!" cried Ropars, his face lighting up; "your cousin and the boy
+must sup with us--that is to say, if your pantry is not quite so empty
+as your hospital."
+
+Genevieve protested, and then enumerated with an air of complacency all
+her culinary resources, which had fortunately been replenished, two
+days before, by the Superintendent, who supplied at the same time the
+powder-magazine and the lazaretto. Mathieu promised to complete the
+feast by broaching for the artillery-man an old bottle of Rousillon
+wine, stowed away for a long time under the sand of his cellar.
+
+The two little girls at this moment came up on to the terrace.
+
+--"Quick, here!" cried Genevieve, "quick; there's somebody coming."
+
+--"Monsieur Gabriel?" asked Josephe, springing forward with this
+exclamation.
+
+--"No, no, goose-cap--cousin Dorot and little Michael."
+
+An involuntary gesture of disappointment escaped from the child; but
+Francine clapped her hands and broke out into shouts of joy. The goat,
+left to herself, bounded along the precipitous slopes of the rocks,
+where she set to work browsing on the tufts of brackish herbage; the
+sisters took each other's hand to go down towards the little
+landing-place; whilst their mother went into the house with a view of
+getting everything in readiness.
+
+As had been remarked by the last-named, the special affection of Josephe
+for Monsieur Gabriel was already of several years standing. It dated
+from a quarantine performed at Treberon by the Lieutenant, who, charmed
+by her grace, bordering though it was upon the savage, had exhibited
+towards her a marked regard, to which the child had responded with what
+amounted almost to a passion. Having entered the navy against his
+inclination, Monsieur Gabriel had adopted little of it but its uniform.
+In the midst of a life of change, hardship, and adventure, he dreamed
+unceasingly of the unchangeableness of the domestic hearth, and of
+peaceful family enjoyments. He was one of those lovers of solitude, who
+are born to live amongst labourers, and women, and children. Confined to
+the lazaretto of Treberon, he had brought thither a few favourite books,
+and his violin, on which he played for hours at a time, with no other
+end than the listening to its melodious vibrations. When he went out,
+Josephe ran to meet him, acted as his guide along the rocks, and
+escorted him to their most secluded recesses, in which, day by day, he
+discovered some unknown plant, or moss that was new to him. In the
+evening, be paid a visit to the old quarter-master whose quiet enjoyment
+of life had attracted his notice. Genevieve talked to him of her
+children; Josephe begged of him a story or a song; and when it was time
+for him to retire for the night, he went back to his cell, light hearted
+and with tranquil mind. A fortnight thus slipped away as if it had been
+an hour; so that when his quarantine was at length performed, and it was
+necessary for him to leave Treberon, his deliverance did but awaken in
+him a feeling of regret. He came back several times to pass whole days
+upon the lonely islet; and when finally he was embarking for a distant
+voyage of discovery, he promised the solitary family that he would
+occasionally write to them. Ropars had in fact received some letters
+from him; and, as we have seen, was expecting his speedy return. For the
+moment, the visit announced by Genevieve exclusively occupied the keeper
+of the lazaretto. He remained alone upon the esplanade, whence he
+continued to look towards the Ile des Morts. The distance rendered
+visible everything done there; it was easy to recognize persons and to
+distinguish their movements. He could therefore see Dorot take his way
+towards the skiff, set up the mast, and hoist the sail; and the little
+Michael catching hold, with some difficulty, of the tiller.
+
+Previously to the two families becoming allied by marriage, the keepers
+of the powder-magazine and of the lazaretto had known each other in the
+navy, wherein one was a quarter-master and the other a sergeant of
+artillery. Appointed to Treberon, Mathieu Ropars had rejoiced at the
+idea of meeting his old ship-mate Dorot, already several years
+established at the Ile des Morts, with his wife, his son, and a female
+orphan relative. The lazaretto being almost always deserted, he was left
+with ample leisure for frequent visits to the powder-magazine, and for
+becoming well known there and thoroughly appreciated. Genevieve, Dorot's
+cousin, was particularly taken with such a character, so
+straight-forward and yet so gentle. She had been tried, until she was
+sixteen, by all the pains and penalties of misery. Taken then, from
+charitable motives, into the house of her cousin whose wife occasionally
+made her pay dearly enough for his hospitality, the poor orphan had
+accustomed herself to expecting nothing at any one's hands, and to
+receiving as a favour whatever was accorded her. Thus the frank
+cordiality of Mathieu was more touching in her eyes than it would have
+been in those of another. She welcomed it with a gratitude half filial,
+to which insensibly became added that shade of a more tender feeling,
+always blended into the attachments of a woman whose heart is
+disengaged. An intimacy between herself and Ropars went on,
+strengthening from day to day, whilst neither of them took account of
+their predilections. As he marked the young girl in the bloom of her
+expanding beauty, Mathieu, who already felt the weight of years upon
+him, would never have dreamed of asking her to share his existence;
+whilst Genevieve, happy in seeing him daily and in the consciousness of
+his immediate neighbourhood, thought not of desiring anything further.
+It needed the offer of a situation for her at Brest, and the consequent
+prospect of a separation, to enlighten them as to their mutual
+dependence on each other. Perceiving that Genevieve shed tears, Ropars,
+who could not shut his eyes to his own distress of mind, took courage
+and brought matters to a point. He told her that she might dispense with
+this separation, if the isle of Treberon were no more irksome to her
+than the Ile des Morts, and if his society were as agreeable to her as
+that of her cousin. The poor girl, weeping, blushing and overjoyed,
+could only reply by letting herself fall into his arms. The old
+quarter-master forthwith opened his mind to Dorot. The marriage took
+place; and he carried off Genevieve to his islet, of which henceforth
+he mistrusted not the solitude.
+
+The difference in their respective ages did not seem to mar the
+happiness of the keeper and the orphan girl. Both were possessed of that
+which renders marriage a blessing--the simple mind and the heart of
+kindly impulse. Children came, to draw still closer these ties, and to
+enliven their hearth. The younger was just born, when Dorot lost his
+wife, and was left alone with his son Michael, thirteen years of age.
+This premature widowerhood had revived the friendship of the two old
+shipmates. Their intercourse became more frequent. The skiff that served
+both establishments was stationed at the little haven of the Ile des
+Morts, and was thus at the disposition of the artillery-man, who missed
+no opportunity of coming to pass a few hours with his neighbours. But
+notwithstanding their proximity, and the ease with which the passage was
+made, these visits could not be of daily occurrence. Dorot was obliged
+to be constantly on the watch; his official orders were equally sudden
+and unforeseen; nor could he expose himself to the risk of too frequent
+absence. His appearance therefore at the lazaretto had not ceased to be
+a happy exception to the rule. Father, mother, and children alike found
+in it a festal occasion; and it was never without great rejoicing that
+the signal was observed announcing the agreeable visit, and the boat
+seen putting out from the little landing-place and stretching over
+towards Treberon.
+
+This time, so soon as Ropars saw her on the way, he went down to meet
+her. Scarcely had she touched the ground, when Michael jumped ashore,
+threw his arms about the keeper, then about the two little girls, and
+then ran off with the latter towards the house. Dorot stepping out in
+turn, shook hands heartily with Mathieu; and the pair, chatting, slowly
+began the ascent. Having reached the summit of the cliff, they faced
+about by force of habit, to take a look out to sea. The artillery-man
+remarked that the frigate had just clewed up her lower sails.
+
+--"God help us! she's going to anchor," said he; "did you ever see,
+Mathieu, a homeward-bound ship let go so far from land?"
+
+--"That depends," replied the old quarter-master; "we hold off when we
+mistrust a fort, or are afraid of reefs."
+
+--"But there's nothing of that sort here," remarked Dorot; "the frigate
+has no need to fear the guns of the Castle which are her very good
+friends, or the roadstead which is as safe an anchorage as if she were
+fast in the dry-dock. There must be something extraordinary."
+
+--"Perhaps the ship has to perform quarantine," suggested Ropars; "the
+_Thetis_ is expected."
+
+--"That's it; you've named her," cried the artillery-man, winking his
+eye and shading his forehead with one hand so as to look more fixedly at
+the distant vessel; "it is the _Thetis_, or I'm a heathen. I had her
+down yonder for a week, when she took her powder on board; I know her
+by the set of her masts and by her bearing on the water."
+
+--"The _Thetis_!" echoed Mathieu; "then we shall soon see Monsieur
+Gabriel. What delight for Josephe! Quick; let's tell her."
+
+He was hurrying off, but Dorot kept him back. "No hurry," said he;
+"never reckon too surely on what a ship brings home. Pick people out,
+and they're just those that are missing when the roll's called. Better
+wait till the Lieutenant brings his own news."
+
+--"You're right," replied the quarter-master; "the more so since the
+frigate comes, if I don't mistake, from the Havannah."
+
+--"Who knows whether she won't bring you some lodgers for your
+lazaretto?"
+
+--"So be it; they'll be welcome. With Genevieve and the children, one
+can't be dull; but once in a while there's no harm in a little company.
+You fellows at the Ile des Morts, you have the artillery
+despatch-carrier, who keeps you up to all that goes on, to say nothing
+of inspections and your convoys of powder; whilst here--never a thing!
+Not one visitor in a twelvemonth! At least, if you have to put people
+sometimes into quarantine, you hear what's done on land there, and that
+leaves you some thing to talk about for months."
+
+The artillery-man shrugged his shoulders--"That's all very well, when
+they don't bring disease with them; but the old coasters still talk of a
+quarantine in which the lazaretto ran short of both earth and rock for
+burying the dead, and when the bodies were of necessity thrown into the
+sea with a shot attached to their necks, as in vessels out on a voyage."
+
+--"Now may Christ spare us such a trial!" exclaimed Ropars, respectfully
+touching his hat, as he was used to do whenever he pronounced the
+Saviour's name. "But you're speaking of a long time ago, Dorot; please
+Heaven, we won't see such again. There are no heathen here now; and I
+believe that God's good will will take care of us."
+
+Dorot nodded his acquiescence. In fact this confidence, springing from a
+simple faith, had up to that time been justified by experience. During
+the thirteen years that the keeper had spent at Treberon, he had only
+received healthy persons into quarantine, who were complying with a
+formal regulation, and were obliged to make proof of their good health
+by undergoing this preventive sequestration. There were indeed rare
+exceptions. Like all lazarettos, that of Treberon remained generally
+unoccupied; and the keeper kept watch there alone, like an ever-living
+sentinel posted in advance of the continent, for the purpose of warding
+off contagion.
+
+As they chatted, Dorot and he had reached the house. Genevieve was
+waiting for them at the doorway, surrounded by the three children who
+laid hold of and talked to her all at once. After an exchange of their
+accustomed friendly greetings, she went in, with the two keepers, whilst
+Michael drew off Francine and Josephe towards _Brunette_, who was
+waiting for them on a pinnacle of rock, eyeing them and bleating at
+them. The youngster, accustomed to chase his father's sheep upon the
+declivities of the Ile des Morts, endeavored to get at her; but the
+capricious creature sprung from point to point along the precipices,
+letting herself at every moment almost be caught, and at every moment
+bounding away from the hand that just could touch her.
+
+Whilst the children kept up this chase, with a thousand calls to one
+another and a thousand peals of laughter, Ropars and Dorot entered the
+eating-room in which Genevieve was already laying the cloth. It was a
+room of middling size, furnished by the keeper himself at the period of
+his marriage, and ornamented with a few marine engravings. Amongst these
+was particularly distinguished a portrait of Jean Bart, that nautical
+Hercules on whom, as all the world knows, his traditional celebrity has
+fastened all manner of superhuman exploits and impossible adventures.
+
+Having made his guest sit down, Mathieu went off to disinter his bottle
+of Rousillon wine; and brought it back all whitened with the sand, and
+capped with a green-waxed cork that bespoke its noble birth-place. Dorot
+good-temperedly complained of such extravagance, and hinted that he
+could not make his visit a long one, inasmuch as the officer commanding
+the post of the Ile des Morts had charged him to bring the skiff back
+before sunset. Genevieve therefore hurried herself to serve up the
+dinner, and called the children to take their places at table.
+
+With persons whose entire life was contracted within the narrow limits
+of two small islands, the conversation could not be much varied. Mathieu
+talked of his still-lines set between the headlands of Treberon, and
+Dorot of his small cherry-tree. The latter might be regarded as the one
+stumbling block of pride, over which the habitual modesty of the worthy
+sergeant was sure to trip. No other keeper before his time had succeeded
+in securing what he planted, from the sea wind; this was the only tree
+that had ever been seen in the two islands; and Lucullus might well have
+been less proud of the first cherry-tree that he brought from Persia,
+for the purpose of gracing his triumph. Humble as regards everything
+else, Dorot drew himself up proudly when there was any question of his
+poor wild-stock; he only let it be seen by his friends and his
+superiors, and then at their urgent solicitation. Objects resemble human
+kind, and very often assume the importance that is given them, in place
+of that to which they are entitled. Thus overcharged and carefully
+tended, the fame of the cherry-tree of the Ile des Morts went abroad
+from Plougastel to Camaret; it was everywhere talked of as a prodigy.
+The pride of Dorot had increased in a corresponding degree, and was just
+now swollen to the highest pitch by an event no less extraordinary than
+unforseen. He brought the news of it to Treberon, but would not make it
+known too abruptly. All supposable things were first to be run over, as
+in the famous letter of Madame de Sevigne on the marriage of
+Mademoiselle. Finally, when every one had given it up, he determined to
+enlighten them, and announced ... that the cherry-tree was in blossom!
+
+Unanimous was the cry of astonishment and delight. Prisoners in their
+island, it was several years since Ropars and Genevieve had seen a tree
+in blossom; and the two little girls could not recall to mind that they
+had ever seen one. Loudly and both at once, they beset Michael with
+questions. Was the cherry-tree flowering in gold-colour like the
+thorn-broom, or in the colour of blood like the sea-furze? How could the
+blossoms ever become fruit? Must they wait a long time? Would the tree
+bear the red cherries of the coast, or the black-hearts of the upper
+country? Dorot cut all these inquiries short, by declaring that he would
+come over next day, for the whole of the family, that they might see the
+wondrous tree and dine at the Ile des Morts. The ecstacies of the
+sisters may be imagined. Their mother could not check their laughing and
+their clapping of hands. They continued their cry of "to-morrow,
+to-morrow!" just as Aeneas' look-out men kept up their cry of "Italy,
+Italy!" when they saw through the empurpled vapours that goal of so many
+efforts and such longings.
+
+Remarking their impatience, the sergeant proposed to carry them over,
+that very evening, with Michael. There would be still day-light enough
+on their arrival, for them to see the cherry-tree covered with its coat
+of summer-snow, and their parents could fetch them, next day. The
+children backed this offer with their entreaties; Ropars smiled,
+without replying; but Genevieve entered her protest against it. What
+would she do, if Francine and Josephe were away? Many a time ere this,
+on waking in the middle of the night, she had fretted herself at not
+hearing their gentle breathings; she had jumped up in agony, and had
+crept on tip-toe to their bed, to touch them and to listen to them; how
+would it be then, if they were not there; how could she herself sleep
+quietly without fancying some danger? She would dream that the
+powder-magazine was on fire, or that the Ile des Morts was going down
+like a vessel foundering--and all this was said betwixt a laugh and a
+tear. The little maidens, bent at first on setting off, were soon
+hanging on their mother's shoulders, touched by her contagious
+tenderness, and declaring that they preferred to remain. The
+artillery-man insisted no longer. He took with Mathieu the path that led
+down to the sandy shore, and was followed by Genevieve and the children,
+all silent for the moment.
+
+The sun declining to the horizon lit up the promontory of Kelerne, and
+painted in the passage of Goulet a stream of purple and gold. A breeze
+began to play over the bay, and chequered it with undulating ripples.
+The perfume exhaled from the saps was wafted in puffs of wind from the
+main land, as were the tinklings of the Angelus, and the lowing of the
+cattle driven home. A consciousness of strength in repose was
+perceivable, together with an indescribable air of serenity, that stole
+from surrounding objects upon the senses, and found its way to the very
+depths of the soul. The sky, the earth, and the water seemed by mutual
+consent to have subdued their voices, in order to mingle them in one
+harmonious murmur. Without analyzing the soft but not enervating
+influence that surrounded them, the two keepers with their families were
+alive to its effects. Silently they went down the foot-path, pausing
+upon their steps, as though to lengthen out the sense of enjoyment, or
+to taste of it drop by drop. Having, however, reached the boat, it
+became necessary to part. Josephe made the sergeant promise to come for
+them early in the morning. The sail at last was hoisted; and the skiff,
+launched out upon the yielding waves, sped her way towards the
+powder-magazine.
+
+At the moment when she reached the middle of the channel that separates
+the two islands, a ship's long-boat, unobserved hitherto in the
+excitement of leave-taking, appeared to leeward of Treberon. Her
+peculiar build, her black color traversed only by a single white ribbon
+at the water-line, and the perfect condition of her spars and sails,
+would have sufficed to show what she was, even if the costume of the
+double row of sailors ranged along the thwarts had not betrayed the
+man-of-war's men. On crossing the skiff steered by the sergeant, she was
+sheered suddenly off; and by the last glimpse of day-light might be
+discerned the yellow flag of the Health Office.
+
+At this sight, Genevieve and the children uttered an involuntary cry.
+All three at once comprehended that these were occupants coming to the
+lazaretto; that they would put the island into quarantine, and prevent
+all external intercourse. The next day's visit must be indefinitely
+postponed, and the cherry-tree would have finished blossoming before
+they could have regained their liberty. This dashing down of a
+newly-raised anticipation had in it something so abrupt and so
+unexpected, that Francine and Josephe could by no means resign
+themselves to it. Desolate was the look that they exchanged, and
+silently did they begin to weep, as their mother took one of them in
+either hand, and sorrowfully remounted the path. Genevieve herself felt
+her heart oppressed; on reaching the platform, she could not but pause
+for a moment. The skiff with rose-coloured sail, that bore away the
+promise of another meeting and of a festival, had disappeared; the black
+long-boat was there at her feet--and with it had come to shore,
+seclusion, melancholy, and disease. Genevieve kissed her children; but
+scarcely could she keep back a tear that had gathered beneath her
+eyelids, as without the inclination to prolong her look she hastily
+entered the house.
+
+Mathieu in the meantime had gone to receive the persons placed in
+quarantine, and to open the lazaretto for them. On returning, he looked
+somewhat pale, and his face wore an expression with which Genevieve was
+struck; but at the first question she asked him, he abruptly interrupted
+her, to inquire where Francine and Josephe were.
+
+--"Don't you see them?" she replied, pointing to the two little girls
+sitting down in a dark corner, still sobbing, and with eyes still moist;
+"did you think that they had gone with their cousin?"
+
+"Would to God, they had!" murmured Mathieu in an agonized voice, but not
+overheard by the children.
+
+Genevieve looked at him, stupefied. "Why so?" she asked; "what has
+happened? Tell me, Mathieu, in the name of the Holy Trinity! what is the
+matter?"
+
+--"Well, then," answered the keeper, "there is ... there is ... death
+upon the island."
+
+--"How do you mean?"
+
+--"I mean, my poor wife, just what I have seen! The _Thetis's_ long-boat
+has landed her hospital-mates and doctors, with eight sick men; not one
+of whom will ever touch the main-land again."
+
+--"Holy Virgin! what is it?"
+
+--"The yellow fever!"
+
+
+                                 II.
+
+
+For him who dwells in-land, the yellow fever is but a disease similar to
+a thousand others, of which he knows nothing save the name. Family
+tradition and personal experience can attach to it, for him, neither
+terror or regret. But amongst our maritime population, the word sounds
+like a knell; not only bringing to mind a risk to be encountered, but
+reviving affliction, of recent or of ancient date. There, where every
+family has one at least of its loved members absent in foreign
+countries, the terrible scourge is all too well identified with the
+number of widows and orphans that it has made. It ranks with the storm
+and the reef of rocks, as a deadly foe. Its name, let fall, produces the
+same effect as the wind that whistles, or the surf that roars. Looks are
+interchanged on hearing it; and thought recurs to the absent, if not to
+the dead.
+
+Ropars, on this occasion, dwelt mainly on those about him; and in truth,
+no one could have better right than he to be ill at ease. Thrown in
+former days upon a station where the yellow fever was epidemic, he had
+seen the seamen of the fleet decimated around him, and had himself
+barely escaped, as if by miracle. The remembrance of that butchery, as
+he termed it, was too vivid, and he had too often described it to
+Genevieve, for their firmness not now to be shaken. They troubled not
+themselves on their own account, but on account of those whose existence
+was so dear to them. Mathieu's first thought was of his wife and of his
+children; the first impulse of Genevieve was to fold them in her arms,
+and to declare that they must all go away. Some trouble had the old
+sailor in making her comprehend that, even if retreating were not
+dishonorable for him, it had become impossible. The long-boat had made
+sail for the frigate, and the yellow flag was hoisted at the lazaretto.
+Quarantine had begun for all who happened to be at Treberon. Not a soul
+could henceforth pass beyond its limits: and Ropars pointed out to
+Genevieve the gun-boat sent by the health officer, which had been
+brought to bear at half cable's-length distance from the island, and cut
+off from it all intercourse by boats. They were in fact definitively
+penned in with the epidemic, and condemned to run its risk to the end.
+
+But the agitation of Mathieu, in which surprise had worked its part, did
+not last long. The quarter-master soon regained his original strength of
+mind, which had been slightly unhinged in the tendernesses of his
+domestic life; and, regardless of his own previous words, he set himself
+seriously to soothing the terror of Genevieve by underrating the danger
+that they incurred. After all, they were not here in a state of things
+that favoured the disease; they had not to contend against the
+enervating sun of the Havannah or Brazil; this was not one of those
+awful contagions that spread from house to house like a fire, leaving
+behind it the dead alone--it was a disorder partly spent, and from
+which, with certain precautions, escape was easy. The chief and the most
+indispensable of these precautions was to avoid going near the
+apartments occupied by those who had been brought into quarantine, and
+never to stay to leeward of the lazaretto. Josephe and Francine were at
+once informed of this. Genevieve explained to them every thing that they
+were to do, with a minuteness of detail, that savoured alternately of
+threatening and of endearment. At first, as the punishment for any
+failure of obedience, she pointed out to them the disease, or even death
+itself; then seeing them turn pale with fear, she drew them within her
+caressing arms and re-assured them by her kisses. Mathieu added to her
+exhortations something more definite and more secure. Next morning, he
+marked out a space enclosed with stakes joined together by a cord, as
+the children's permitted bounds. By way of increased precaution, the
+goat herself was brought within this enclosure, picketted to a stake,
+and fed upon winter fodder. The keeper, on his part, held aloof from
+habitual intercourse with the infirmary-men and the doctors of the
+lazaretto. He would even have been ignorant of the fate of those who
+were in quarantine if, every evening, the descent of a few men towards
+the sandy shore of the little isle, and the tinkling of a bell that
+warned him to stand out of their way, had not made it obvious that their
+errand was to dig a grave. The vacancies, besides, were rapidly filled
+by fresh invalids brought on shore by the frigate's long-boat, for the
+epidemic did not seem as yet to decrease or to relax its severity. No
+convalescent inmate had yet appeared upon the terrace of the lazaretto.
+The skiff belonging to the gun-boat, that enforced the sanitary
+regulations, came near the landing place every morning; but no one
+landed. Provisions and medicines were put ashore by means of a
+travelling pass-rope, set up in the creek; the Surgeon's report was
+received at the end of a boat-hook; and then the skiff sailed away in an
+apparent hurry, that bespoke the fear of contagion.
+
+However, after the first few days were past, Ropars and Genevieve felt
+somewhat re-assured. The blows that death dealt around them were mute
+and hidden; the edge of inquietude became insensibly blunted. Seeing
+that it was possible to live in contact with the formidable malady, they
+half forgot, both of them, that is was also possible to die. It was with
+them as with the inhabitants of a besieged city, who no longer tremble
+at the roar of cannon. In vain did the bell tinkle every evening, and
+the long-boat bring ashore every morning a fresh batch of the
+death-stricken; the continuance of the danger made it seem to be a
+matter of course, and this feeling soon merged into a sense of security.
+Once in a while even, Genevieve forgot every thing and recommenced her
+singing; but abruptly it was suspended at sight of the yellow flag, or
+as a sudden recollection crossed her mind. Then the song was stifled
+into a sigh.
+
+Ropars had made inquiries for Monsieur Gabriel, on the first arrival of
+the sick. The epidemic had not then attacked him; but his own breaking
+off from all intercourse with the hospital-mates, and with the crew, had
+prevented his seeking further information. Several boat-loads had been
+brought ashore, without any opportunity for his hearing of the
+Lieutenant, when he received a note, cut through with scissors and
+steeped in vinegar. It contained only these few words, written in
+pencil:
+
+     "I am come here.... If I live, we shall meet.... If I die ...
+     present this letter to the captain of the _Thetis_ ... and claim
+     for Josephe ... my large mahogany chest.
+                                                          GABRIEL."
+
+The writing, scarcely legible, betrayed a hand that shook with fever.
+Mathieu, grievously taken by surprise, forgot this time all his
+precautions, and ran to the lazaretto. But the Surgeon would not let him
+see the Lieutenant, whose condition seemed to give him grave concern. In
+the evening it was still worse, and left little room for hope; on the
+following day there was none at all.
+
+Josephe, from whom they had concealed the name of the frigate that was
+ravaged by the epidemic, had no suspicion of the danger of her friend;
+still, her sister and herself had none the less lost all their gaiety.
+Prisoners within the narrow bounds marked out by their father, they were
+both moodily seated near the stake to which the goat was picketted; and
+she, lying down at their feet, seemed to disdain the fodder that was
+scattered before her. Josephe, holding Francine propped against her,
+proposed to her, one after another, all the little games to which they
+were accustomed; but the child shook her head, her eyes fixed upon the
+sea.
+
+--"What will you do, then, Zine?" asked she, saddened by her sister's
+sadness.
+
+There was no reply. The elder had one hand upon the younger's head, and
+played for an instant with the ringlets of her golden hair.
+
+--"You're longing to go across there to see Michael? isn't that it?" she
+resumed, bending down over the little one; "but it's too late; the
+cherry-tree has shed its blossoms."
+
+--"Then you believe that the cherries are already ripe?" interrupted
+Francine, turning up to Josephe her face that listlessness had robbed of
+a portion of its roses, but with her large eyes full of curiosity.
+
+--"I don't know," said the elder "mother will tell us. But let's think
+about something else; you know that we cannot go to the
+powder-magazine."
+
+--"No, nor to the end of the island, nor any where," added Francine,
+letting herself sink down again upon Josephe's knees.
+
+The latter, bent at all events on amusing the child, then called her
+attention to the goat, that had just got up. Starting suddenly from her
+doze, _Brunette_ was describing round her stake a series of such droll
+evolutions, that the child's sadness could not hold out against them,
+and she soon broke out into a laugh. Josephe, who at first had chimed in
+with her merriment, was afraid that the mutinous creature's gambols
+would end by her breaking the cord; she put her hand out to prevent it.
+
+--"Let her be, let her be!" cried Francine in high glee; "look how she
+rears up! see how she dances! Well done, _Brunette_; higher, little one,
+higher!"
+
+The child, kneeling down upon the sand, clapped her hands, with shouts
+of delight; and the goat, that seemed excited by her voice and by the
+noise, redoubled its capricious boundings. All at once, the stake,
+loosened by such continued tuggings, was drawn out of the ground: the
+animal jumped to one side; and finding itself no longer held back,
+started off for the further extremity of the island.
+
+The two sisters gave utterance to a cry, and then, from an irresistable
+impulse, sprang away together in pursuit. The corded limits were passed,
+and they were soon led off along the declivities, calling to _Brunette_,
+who according to her old tricks would wait, bleating, for them, and then
+caper away at their approach. In the eagerness of their chase they thus
+reached the summit of the island, followed the slopes that went down to
+the sea, and finally arrived at the foot of the ravine that was farthest
+removed from their dwelling. It was there only that Josephe bethought
+her of their disobedience. She stopped, out of breath, and held back her
+sister with her arms.
+
+--"Not a step further, Zine!" cried she; "we ought not to have come so
+far; mother forbid it."
+
+The little one looked round about her, and remarked in turn the spot in
+which they were. It was a large fissure hollowed out in the stony soil
+of the island, and, at the bottom of which broad ferns and flowering
+brooms had sprung up in tufts. Right and left, through the
+partition-walls of rock, peeped up the stone-break, and the sea turf
+with its purple cats-tails, and the fox glove that thrust its long stalk
+from the crevices, loaded with rose-coloured bell flowers.
+
+At such a sight, Francine could not restrain a cry of admiration. Here
+was the first verdure, here were the first flowers she had seen, since
+strict orders had confined her to the barren platform occupied by the
+keeper's house. Neither could she resist the temptation; slipping away
+from the hands of her sister, and unwilling to hear a word, she
+disappeared in the thickest of the flowering tufts.
+
+Having vainly called to her, Josephe followed to bring her back; but the
+child went on from shrub to shrub, without any inclination to stop. At
+every fresh handful of gathered flowers, uselessly did Josephe cry,
+"enough!" "More, more!" was Francine's answer, as she piled up within
+her apron, upheld by the two corners, all on which she could lay her
+hands. Want of place alone could make her consent to suspend her
+harvesting. Loaded with herbs and wild flowers, falling in garlands down
+to her very feet, she at length was disposed to take hold again of
+Josephe's hand, who set to work to find their way back, and cautiously
+removed the prickly-broom from their path.
+
+The children were on the point of reaching a ridge made up of heath and
+broom, when the warning bell was heard above their heads. They stopped,
+and raised their eyes. Four of the infirmary-men were coming down
+towards the ravine, bearing their funereal burden. They were following
+the only foot-path practicable on the slope, and the little girls could
+not proceed on their way, without meeting them. Terrified, they drew
+back amongst the bushes that still concealed them, and paused, leaning
+one against the other. The bell tinkled by fits and starts, drawing
+nearer at every sound. At length they could distinguish the heavy
+footstep of the bearers ringing upon the rock, and could see their
+darkening outlines marked out in the twilight. They were advancing
+precisely to the little oasis wherein the children had taken refuge.
+Arrived at the entrance, they seemed to consult together for an instant;
+then resumed their way through the thorny tufts, rounded the mass of
+rock behind which the sisters had crouched, and stopped, with the words,
+"Here it is."
+
+Francine, in dire alarm, had hidden her head upon Josephe's knees; she,
+less timid, gently put aside the branches, and could then see a grave
+already dug in a gravelly portion of the soil. The infirmary-men had
+laid down the corpse upon the ground, wrapped-up in a coarse linen
+cloth. Then they took a sack, hidden under a projecting bit of rock, and
+emptied its contents into the grave. The white dust, that rose up from
+it as a cloud, was wafted to the children in a sour odour of lime. This
+was carefully spread over the bottom of the hole, so as to form a bed
+for the dead body, and was then sprinkled with water drawn from the sea.
+These preparatory measures had all been taken in gloomy silence. Nought
+was heard but the scraping of the spade upon the rocky soil, and the
+monotonous bubbling of the tiny waves that rippled with the evening
+breeze upon the shore. Josephe, her neck out-stretched, her large eyes
+dilated, and with a painful sense of tightening at her heart-strings,
+continued on the watch.
+
+At this moment, two of the bearers took up the body, and brought it
+close to the hole dug for its reception. They were separated from the
+children only by a tuft of bushes. As they lightly grazed it with their
+burden, a gust of wind unrolled one of the corners of the covering
+cloth; a livid head was visible by the last glimmering of light; and
+Josephe uttered a stifled cry. The fall of the body into the pit
+prevented her being heard; but the moment's glance had sufficed--the
+child thought she recognized the face of Monsieur Gabriel. She threw
+herself back, in inexpressible horror. It was the first time that death
+had come before her eyes, and it appeared to her in a guise that filled
+her with grief and terror. Clinging to Francine, she began to tremble in
+every limb. The noise of the earth and flint-stones, that were shovelled
+into the grave, held her as one petrified. It was only when the four
+grave-diggers had left the ravine and disappeared in the pathway, that
+her agony found vent. Francine raised her head and asked what had
+happened; but receiving no reply, threw herself into Josephe's arms, and
+began in turn to sob.
+
+The distress of her little sister seemed to counteract that of Josephe,
+who forced herself to stifle her own anguish, and began embracing and
+consoling Francine.
+
+--"Don't cry" stammered she, choking in spite of herself; "you mustn't
+be afraid, ... you mustn't cry...."
+
+--"What is the matter with you, Josey; what is it?" inquired the little
+one again, holding her sister's head between her own two hands, and
+kissing her moistened cheeks.
+
+--"It's ... nothing, ..." returned Josephe, her accent belying her
+words, ... "I was taken by surprise...."
+
+--"Have the men gone?" asked Francine, looking with frightened glance
+towards the grave.
+
+--"You see they have," answered Josephe shuddering.
+
+--"What did they come here to do? They were carrying something. It was a
+dead body, wasn't it?"
+
+Her sister put her hand upon her lips.
+
+--"Don't talk of that, Zine!" murmured she, her sobs again overpowering
+her.
+
+--"You saw it?" asked the child, frightened, yet curious.
+
+--"Yes, O God!" faltered forth her sister in reply; "... and ... I knew
+it again ... it was Monsieur Gabriel!"
+
+--"Your good friend, Josey?" cried Francine; "are you sure? And he's
+there ... there, under the ground? ... Oh! let's go, let's go; I'm
+afraid ... I'm afraid!"
+
+And again she threw herself into her sister's arms, who exerted herself
+to the utmost to re-assure her, and at the same time to control her own
+tears.
+
+--"There, stop, Zine!" said she, with broken voice; "... we must be calm
+... we must dry up our eyes ... or mother will be uneasy." Then raising
+herself suddenly, "Hark," she added, "I fancied I heard some one calling
+us; quick, quick, let's go up!"
+
+With these words the two little maidens rose from the ground; quitting
+the ravine, they hastily regained the platform, trembling and out of
+breath when they reached it.
+
+Genevieve was waiting there for them; but it was already dark, and this
+prevented her noticing their trouble. She took them by the hand, to lead
+them in, and made them repeat their joint prayers; both went to bed,
+without speaking of the adventure at the ravine.
+
+
+                                 III
+
+
+Josephe slept badly; and the next morning, when she got up, was pale and
+drooping. Genevieve, who did not fail to notice it, questioned her with
+nervous solicitude; but the child answered that nothing was the matter.
+Only, at every inquiry, her eyes filled with tears, and her voice
+trembled. Thus languidly for her did the day wear away. In the evening
+she was still more depressed, but still not suffering pain. She passed a
+restless night; and on the following morning Ropars went for the Surgeon
+of the lazaretto. He examined the child, and put several questions that
+darkened the brow of Mathieu. Genevieve, whose looks went direct from
+the Surgeon to her husband, perceived this; and she felt a blow stricken
+upon her heart. At the moment when the two crossed the thresh-hold, she
+followed, shut the door abruptly, and stopped them.
+
+--"It is the ... disease, ... is it not?" she asked in anguish. She had
+not dared to name the yellow fever; the Surgeon seemed to hesitate in
+his reply.
+
+--"Ah! I'm certain of it," she exclaimed, confirmed by this very
+hesitation; "so, our precautions have all been useless! The blow has
+come, and all is over!"
+
+She could not avoid sinking down upon the stone bench, placed beside the
+door; and she covered her face with her apron. The Surgeon taxed himself
+to console her with vague assurances; but it was evident that he himself
+had no longer confidence in his efforts. Overcome by the implacable
+power of the contagion, he persevered in struggling against it, without
+hope and from a sense of duty, as soldiers, for the honour of their
+flag, defend silently a post that has been abandoned. So, perceiving
+that his words, far from soothing the grief of Genevieve, did but
+redouble it, he turned towards the keeper, and, having briefly repeated
+to him some directions already given for the child, he went his way.
+
+Ropars remained some moments on one spot, with his arms crossed and his
+head upon his breast; but a still deeper groan from Genevieve caused him
+to raise his eyes. He took her hand.
+
+--"It isn't time for despair yet," said he, with gentle firmness; "when
+God shall have decided against us, your whole life-time will be left for
+grief. At present, let us devote ourselves to our duty, and follow
+strictly the injunctions of the doctor."
+
+--"And he has told us nothing at all!" said the mother, who at heart
+felt half-incensed against the Surgeon, for not having more vigorously
+combatted her fears; "he has not given us any hope!"
+
+--"God is the master," replied Mathieu, in all simplicity, "and so long
+as he has not declared his pleasure, we may believe that all will work
+well; but if the darling creature must be taken from our hands, let us
+at least to the last moment show him, how keen is our desire to keep
+her."
+
+Hereupon the feverish voice of the child reached their ears.
+
+--"Hark, she's calling me!" cried Genevieve, rising in urgent haste to
+go in. Ropars stopped her.
+
+--"Dry your eyes first," said he, passing his own hand with fond
+compassion over the poor mother's moistened eyelids; "Josephe mustn't
+think that you are anxious. Don't you know that her life may depend on
+this?"
+
+--"Yes, yes," she answered, "fear not, Mathieu, I will not cry any
+more;" and she forcibly restrained the tears that were filling her eyes
+afresh... "Look, no one would notice it now... And the doctors, besides,
+may be mistaken, mayn't they?... And after all, God will have pity on
+us."
+
+--"We must hope so," replied the keeper, much moved; "but if it is his
+part to have pity, it is ours to show resignation. Bear up, then, good
+heart; go to the child with a smile; it will do her good; and first of
+all ... kiss me ... that we may keep up each other's resolution."
+
+Josephe's mother threw her arms around her husband's neck, and gave way
+to a new flood of tears. But she checked them at the sound of the sick
+one's voice calling her for the second time, and, by a supreme effort
+thrusting down her despair into the very depths of her heart, she rushed
+into the house with calm brow and a smile upon her lips.
+
+Josephe, nevertheless, grew rapidly worse. In the evening the fever was
+doubly hot upon her. One after another, she spoke of sister Francine, of
+Michael, of the cherry-tree in blossom, and of her good friend Monsieur
+Gabriel. At one moment she fancied that she heard the last-named; she
+called him; she wished to know if he had brought her the promised
+presents. At another time, the scene in the ravine appeared to be
+vividly in her recollection; she cried out that Monsieur Gabriel was
+dead; and she heard the earth grating over him in the pit. The Surgeon
+came to see her repeatedly, and multiplied his prescriptions, without
+power to arrest the onward march of the disease. That night was an awful
+one for the hapless mother; she kept her child clasped in her arms, the
+little one's mind wandering more and more. At sunrise the turbulent
+delirium was over, to give place to the torpor that precedes death. At
+length, towards the middle of the day, Josephe opened her eyes, and
+uttered one sigh--it was the last.
+
+The blow had been so decidedly expected, that the despair of Ropars and
+of Genevieve could scarcely be violent. The bitterness of their loss
+had, so to say, preceded it; both had tasted it, drop by drop, during
+the protracted agony. And yet the mother's calmness had in it a
+something haggard, that would have startled a looker-on less troubled
+than Mathieu himself. Bent upon rendering the last offices to her
+daughter, she was long occupied in combing out her beautiful black hair;
+she dressed the body in her best clothes, and laid it out with the hands
+crossed over the breast, as Josephe had been used to carry them when
+asleep. All this was done slowly, tranquilly, with a sort of complacency
+even, and often intermingled with kisses. It was but at intervals that a
+tear trickled over her cheeks, that were marbled with glowing spots; it
+was but a slight trembling that shook the hand, as it performed its
+sorrowful duty. At length, when she who had brought this child into the
+world, and who had nourished it with her milk and with her affection,
+had herself sewed it up in its shroud, she went to the window, broke the
+stalk of a gilly-flower--the only one that the sea-winds had
+spared--pulled off its leaves, and scattered them over the winding
+sheet.
+
+In the meantime, night had fallen. Deposited at the head of the darkened
+alcove, the dead form might indistinctly be traced through its covering
+of linen, as though it were sketched in marble. Higher up hung a Christ,
+in ivory, the head bent forward, and the arms extended. Genevieve knelt
+down near the bed, and remained there for a long time, with her head
+leaning upon her joined hands. Half-aloud she murmured a prayer; but
+whilst her lips repeated faithfully every word, their meaning was not
+taken in by her mind. When she had finished it, she raised herself up
+mechanically, and looked about her; her brain was a gloomy chaos.
+Putting up both hands to her forehead, she pressed it, with a stifled
+cry, as though she sought to stay that whirlwind of confused and
+lacerating thoughts. There was, for some few moments, a struggle between
+her will and her despair; finally the former gained the ascendant; she
+stepped towards the door and opened it.
+
+Her husband had taken refuge on the platform with Francine, to remove
+her from the harrowing sight of placing the body in its shroud.
+Genevieve could see him standing near the parapet; the little girl was
+at his feet, with her head resting on his knees. Since the death of her
+sister, she had not spoken a word. Fixed in one place, with eyes dilated
+and lips compressed, she seemed to be endeavouring to comprehend what
+had occurred. Her two small hands hung down inactive, and her naked feet
+appeared to be glued to the ground. Seeing her thus, under the early
+rays of the moon that were playing in her light-coloured tresses,
+Genevieve was, as it were, brought back to herself. A flash passed
+across the blankness of her expression; her nostrils dilated; a flood of
+tears gushed from her eyes. Springing towards the child, she seized it
+in her arms with a sort of doleful passionateness, to which Francine at
+once and amply responded, by an outburst of sobs and caresses. For a
+long time there was nothing but an interchange of broken appeals and
+unfinished phrases. The little girl would go on asking for her sister,
+while the mother, whose despair was revived by such demands, compelled
+herself to smother them beneath her kisses. At last, her strength
+exhausted, she let her arms, that upheld Francine, drop down, and felt
+that she was gently withdrawn from her. It was Mathieu, who placed the
+child upon the ground. He then led the mother a little further apart,
+and obliged her to sit down upon the stone-bench, leaning her back
+against the parapet. She tried to raise herself up, as she stretched out
+her hands.
+
+--"My child!" she stammered through her sobbings; "I want my child!"
+
+--"In good time thou shalt see her," said Ropars, who according to the
+custom of the Bretagne peasantry only _thee'd_ and _thou'd_ Genevieve,
+when under the influence of strong emotion; "but first thou must listen
+with all attention, for what I have to tell thee is of the deepest
+consequence."
+
+--"Ah! I would, I would!" was her reply, putting both hands up to her
+head; "but don't be hurt, Mathieu, if it be impossible. I hear yonder,
+look you, something that hushes up all the rest; it is her death-rattle,
+my good man!... And ... do you know?... I like the anguish that it
+causes me, to hear it; I can fancy that there still is breath in her.
+Oh! Jesus! who would have told me, that I should yearn after the dying
+breath of my child?" Ropars laid a hand upon the head of the miserable
+woman, whose sobbings had recommenced.
+
+--"Be soothed at heart," he said to her with touching firmness; "the
+good God wills that we should submit, and not thus give way. The dead
+one is now in her Paradise, where she has no more need of us; but she
+leaves behind her a sister, whose life is in our charge."
+
+--"How do you mean?" asked Genevieve, raising towards him her eyes, in
+which alarm had arrested the tears.
+
+--"Don't you understand?" returned the keeper, lowering his voice; "the
+breath of the disease is like the sea-wind; it spares no one; and it may
+send, at any instant, the living to rejoin the dead."
+
+--"Heavenly Saviour! is this a warning?" demanded Genevieve, clasping
+her hands. "Must this child too, be struck down?... Have you remarked
+any thing?... Ah! tell the truth, Mathieu, tell it at once; I would
+rather be killed at one blow."
+
+--"So far, the child suffers from nothing but her distress," rejoined
+Ropars; "but if she remains in this deadly air, who can guarantee us
+that she will escape?"
+
+--"Evil upon us!" cried Genevieve, raising her joined hands over her
+head; "why did you remind me of it, Mathieu? I did not wish to think of
+it; and now I shall see her dying, every hour. God forgive you for thus
+turning the blade that is within my heart!"
+
+--"If I touch it, it is but to withdraw it," was the quarter-master's
+answer. "It won't do now to shut one's eyes and let the squall overtake
+us; we must work ship with all our might for the little one's safety....
+If she remains on the island, you have too many chances of sewing up her
+winding-sheet, Genevieve; she must leave it forthwith."
+
+--"But how?"
+
+Ropars threw his eyes around him, to satisfy himself that he was not
+overheard.
+
+--"There is a way," he replied cautiously.
+
+--"The powder-magazine skiff?"
+
+--"No!"
+
+--"The gun-boat?"
+
+--"She's there, you know, to keep guard over the island."
+
+--"But who then can help us?"
+
+--"The tide."
+
+Genevieve looked at her husband, but without understanding what he
+meant.
+
+--"It is now high-water," continued Mathieu; "in less than an hour the
+sea will have gone down enough to leave only four feet of water upon the
+line of reefs that runs from Treberon to the Ile des Morts. With
+courage, and by the help of God, the passage may be tried. I am going to
+carry the child over to Dorot."
+
+And as the mother could not restrain a cry of terror;--"Speak lower,
+unhappy one!" he added vehemently; "are you desirous of betraying me?
+Except the Superintendent of the powder-magazine and myself, no one
+knows the way. We have often passed along it when we were fishing
+together, and always passed it safely."
+
+--"But not at night," interrupted Genevieve; "not burdened with a
+child."
+
+--"The child weighs scarcely anything, and the moon is full," replied
+Ropars somewhat impatiently. "Besides, I have been thinking of it all
+the evening; and there is no other means. My mind is made up, and I
+shall do what must be done, happen what may. Your remarks may lessen my
+confidence, but cannot hold me back. Try rather, then, to brace up my
+nerves, as is the duty of a brave wife, and to prepare the child to go.
+When the outer point of the high rock is bare, it will be time for me to
+make the attempt, and for you to pray God that he may open us a way of
+safety in the sea."
+
+The quarter-master's tone was so determined, that Genevieve saw at once
+the uselessness of resistance. With little will of his own in the
+ordinary transactions of life, Mathieu rarely formed a resolution; but,
+once decided on, he maintained it immovably. Moreover, when the first
+shock was passed, his explanations and assurances somewhat tranquillized
+Francine's mother, and indeed half convinced her. There remained the
+child, whose opposition or fright was apprehended by Ropars. Genevieve
+went and raised her up from the ground, and the father and the mother
+seated her upon their knees, which they purposely placed close
+together.
+
+--"You want to see the cherry-tree in blossom, don't you?" said the
+former, embracing her.
+
+--"Not any more, now," was the low-toned reply.
+
+--"Nay, nay, it is just the time," added the poor mother with an effort;
+"over there, you will be more at liberty ... happier ... you'll have
+Michael for a play-fellow."
+
+--"No," said the child with changing voice, "I would rather stay with
+Josephe."
+
+Genevieve clasped her hands and closed her eyes; speech failed her. It
+was Ropars' turn. Drawing Francine close up to his breast, and
+whispering in her ear,
+
+--"Listen," said he; "we are in trouble. You would not wish to make it
+worse, would you? You love us too well for that."
+
+In place of answer, the child threw both her arms about her father's
+neck, and pressed her little rosy cheek against the wrinkled cheek of
+the mariner.
+
+--"Yes, yes, I was certain of it," continued Mathieu; "and you will do
+whatever we ask you?"
+
+Francine made an affirmative sign.
+
+--"Well, then," Ropars went on, "you must go and pass a few days with
+Uncle Dorot; and as we have no boat, I am going to carry you over the
+passage. Won't you be quiet in the middle of the sea, when you have
+papa's shoulders for a skiff?"
+
+The child shuddered.--"I would rather stay," said she, in hurried
+accents.
+
+--"But that's impossible," rejoined the father; "I want to carry you to
+the powder-magazine. It must be so, and we are to set out directly. But
+if you are not brave, if you think of calling out, the way will be
+harder, and perhaps something serious may happen to me. Do you
+understand?"
+
+--"Yes ... yes ... I won't go," replied the little girl, beginning to
+tremble.
+
+Genevieve drew her once more into her arms. "Hush, hush!" said she,
+laying her lips upon Francine's hair, and rocking her upon her breast,
+"children ought to obey.... God has ordained it ... do what you are
+bidden ... for your papa, ... for me ... for Josephe.... If she could
+speak she would tell you to be good and obedient.... Would you make her
+sorrowful in Heaven?"
+
+--"Oh! no," cried the child, throwing herself again into Mathieu's arms.
+
+--"Then you will come?" asked he.
+
+--"Yes," murmured the little girl.
+
+--"And you won't be afraid; you won't say a word?"
+
+--"No."
+
+--"Let's be going then!" exclaimed the keeper, who had got up and was
+looking over the parapet. "The high rock is out of water; we mustn't
+wait any longer."
+
+He took Francine in his arms and went rapidly down one of the foot-paths
+leading to the shore of the islet. Genevieve followed, in inexpressible
+anguish. All three reached a rocky point that stretched far out into
+the waters. It was the extremity of the line of reefs that connected the
+powder-magazine with Treberon. Ropars placed the child on the ground, in
+order to take note of his direction. The passage, under the rays of the
+moon, was tinged with pale green, varied by small lines of white that
+were made by the light fringe of foam upon the waves. So gentle were
+their undulations, that one might have fancied a field of green wheat
+chequered with white camomile flowers. Beyond, the Ile des Morts in all
+its breadth was illumined by the moonlight, with its yellowish
+buildings, its long slated roofs, and its lightning-rods, standing out
+against the sky. So calm was the night that the sentry's step was heard,
+as he paced up and down before the watch-box of granite, built at the
+corner of the esplanade. At the forked head of the two islands, and
+partially in shadow, lay the silent gun-boat, balancing at anchor.
+
+Ropars examined every thing with scrupulous attention. He pointed out to
+Genevieve the direction of the submarine causeway, indicated by a faint
+shadow on the surface of the water, as he threw aside his waistcoat and
+hat; then taking both of his wife's hands, who looked at him with
+haggard eyes,--"the time is come, Genevieve," said he; "kiss me, and
+pray the good God to be with us."
+
+The poor woman responded at first to his embrace, without power to utter
+a word; but when she felt that he had disengaged himself and was
+returning towards the child, a cry escaped her; she was not mistress of
+herself. She forgot all that Mathieu had said to her, all that she
+herself had promised, and encircled him with her arms in all the
+desperation of terror.
+
+--"You shall not go," she stammered out, "you shall not go!... It is
+rushing on to death ... in the name of your marriage-vow, remain to be
+my succour, my companion!... Would you then leave me here alone with
+Josephe?... Look, how broad the sea is, and how deep! You and Francine,
+you will be lost in it!... Ah! if it be God's will, let us all die here;
+but at least let us die together! Mathieu, I will not have you quit me;
+you shall not carry off my child; you shall not go!"
+
+Ropars endeavoured to calm her, and struggled to release himself from
+her hold; but she clung to him, and refused to hear a word. And as he
+recalled to her that she had, a minute before, induced Francine's
+consent,
+
+--"I was wrong," she wildly interrupted him; "I will no longer have it
+so. If you leave me, I will follow; and you will be responsible before
+God for what may happen. Mathieu, do not tempt me! Mathieu, have pity on
+me!... What have I done to you, that you should thus go voluntarily to
+destruction? Do you no longer care for life with me?... Ah! if I have
+failed in my duty, be not angry with me, dear soul! If my too great
+anguish has offended you, forgive me! I will not cry any more; I will be
+every thing that you desire. Hold; look on me rather; forgive me; but
+say that you will stay."
+
+She had sunk down upon her knees, and held Ropars' hands pressed firmly
+against her lips. He exerted himself to raise her up.
+
+--"Enough, Genevieve," said he, in a tone wherein commiseration disputed
+with impatience; "I thought that you were braver.... This is not what
+you promised me. Think, think, unhappy woman, that the time is passing
+away!"
+
+Genevieve groaned, and recommenced the same entreaties. He cast an
+anxious look towards the sea, and saw that the farthest jags of the high
+rock were dry. Longer delay would increase the danger, and might render
+the passage impossible. Mathieu seized Genevieve sharply by the elbows,
+and raised her upon her feet, with her face opposite his own.
+
+--"On your salvation, listen!" said he, in accent so decided that she
+trembled at it; "this is the first time that I have reminded you that I
+am your master, and, if you be not wiser, it will perhaps be the last;
+but by the God who saved us, you shall obey, and that without further
+discussion! The child's life is to be preserved; nothing can stay me
+now. Remain there, I solemnly command you, and make not one step, nor
+utter one single cry, or, so surely as I am my mother's son, I will
+never forgive you, even until the day of Judgment!"
+
+At these words, he seated Genevieve, petrified by the shock, ran to his
+little daughter, whom he took upon his shoulders, and dashed with her
+into the waves.
+
+When Genevieve turned round, at the noise made by his plunge into the
+water, Ropars was on the causeway of the submerged reefs, and the waves
+were rolling against his breast. She tried to get up; but her strength
+failed her, and she could but utter a feeble cry. Mathieu heard it and
+looked back. He could see through the moonlight the indistinct form of
+Genevieve who, half-lying down upon the rock, was wringing her joined
+hands as though towards him. He found his heart, which he had steeled by
+an effort of will, sinking within him in pity for her. Taking note of
+the waters, green and deep, whose abysses were opening around him,
+hearing over his head the breathings of the child who panted with
+terror, and thinking that the hapless creature from whom they had just
+parted violently might perchance never see them more, there came across
+him a feeling of commiseration so tender, that tears almost filled his
+eyes; he paused, in spite of himself, in the midst of the murmuring
+waves, turned his head backwards towards the shore, and called to her in
+a voice, restrained but full of gentleness--"Don't cry Genevieve; and
+God bless you! all will go well."
+
+Then, without waiting for an answer, which he feared might unman him, he
+went on his way, his eyes fixed upon the line along the water that
+marked the direction of the reef. Soon, however, he ceased to
+distinguish that particular appearance of the waves which rendered it
+easy to trace this line from the shore. Immersed in the sea, he no
+longer saw anything beyond him, but a surface uniform and agitated,
+without any distinctive movement or colour. He was therefore compelled
+to shape his course direct for the rock on the Ile des Morts whereon the
+causeway abutted, and which with its pointed ridges was visible,
+far-away in the obscurity.
+
+Armed with a broken boat-hook, Mathieu sounded at each step that he
+took; but notwithstanding all his care, the difficulty of his course
+increased at every moment. The unevenness of the rocks exposed him to
+incessant stumbling. Lifted off his feet by the waves, half-stunned by
+the deep rumbling noise that was around him, groping along a path
+irregular and strange to him and bounded on either side by an abyss, he
+advanced with the greatest deliberation, his strong will controlling his
+impatience, and his whole soul rivetted upon his every movement. His
+fixed gaze sought to pierce the liquid veil of the waters; his hands
+glued to the boat-hook seemed to long to solder it to the reef; his
+feet, in an agony of search, seemed to force themselves to guess at
+their path, before they would select it. Thus he reached the middle of
+the passage, where he came into the neighbourhood of the gun-boat. All
+there was silent; nothing stirred. The cries of "Watch, Watch!" uttered
+at intervals by the look-out at each cat-head, had for some time ceased
+to be heard; their two shadows even were not perceptible, for they had
+long been immovable at their post. Certain that their look-out was
+altogether needless, the sailors on watch were without doubt asleep.
+
+Mathieu, who was afraid that they might awake, was anxious to avoid this
+danger by hurrying on; but at the very moment when he came within the
+shadow thrown, abaft the gun-boat, over the glittering waters, his
+footing of rock failed him by suddenly shelving downwards. Francine felt
+him sinking, as a vessel that founders, and the waves washed up over her
+hair. She could not restrain a piercing shriek.
+
+Her father, in extreme alarm, lowered her down against his breast, and
+pressed one hand upon her lips. But it was too late; the cry had
+undoubtedly been overheard, for a shadow immediately rose up, forward,
+and the noise of footsteps echoed along the deck. Ropars had but time to
+throw himself under the taffrail of the stationary vessel, and to grasp
+a boom, whereto he remained suspended.
+
+One of the sailors on watch came aft, and was immediately joined by his
+comrade.
+
+--"The devil take me, if I didn't hear a cry," said the former.
+
+--"Pardieu! it half-woke me up," added the second.
+
+--"But I've looked about, and it's no use; I don't see any thing."
+
+--"Nor I."
+
+The couple were leaning over the sea, which kept up its gentle
+murmurings, and on which only light undulations were visible, fringed
+with half-phosphorescent foam. The second man of the watch seemed all at
+once to be seized with inquietude, that caused his voice to tremble.
+
+--"I say, Morvan," he cautiously began, "those Roscanvel and Lanvoc
+barks haven't passed by, without leaving some christian soul under water
+here--don't you think so?"
+
+--"Why so?" asked Morvan.
+
+--"Why so?" returned the sailor, who seemed half-afraid and
+half-ashamed; "why, parbleu! ... you know what they say ... I didn't
+invent it ... there are some people who tell you that shipwrecked men,
+dying in mortal sin, leave their souls upon the waves that drowned them:
+and that every year, on the day and at the exact time of the accident,
+they utter a cry of anguish, just by way of asking prayers for
+themselves."
+
+--"And you believe that, you, Lascar?" said Morvan with a laugh more
+blustering than assured.
+
+--"It isn't I," rejoined the sailor, "it's our mess-mates.... But, none
+the less, the voice wasn't like any body else's; it was sharp and thin,
+as one might say that of a child."
+
+--"Get out, nonsense!" interrupted the first seaman, evidently
+disquieted by his comrade's explanation; "you see there's nothing more
+to be heard, and there is nothing afloat but the moonlight, and the
+night-chill that will make us sneeze. It's well that we both kept our
+allowance of wine. Come on, let's go and drink it; that'll put your
+morality into trim again."
+
+The two sailors went off. After waiting a moment, Mathieu replaced the
+child on his shoulders, enjoined strict silence, at the same time
+cheering her up, and let go the boom for the purpose of regaining the
+causeway; but he had lost the direction, and his feet encountered only
+empty space. Forced to swim with his precious burden, he hoped that a
+few fathoms' distance would bring him back to his pathway on the reefs;
+he had already gone beyond it. Fresh attempts were not more successful;
+and twenty times did he renew his search, finding only, at each, deep
+water.
+
+Frightened and panting for breath, he swam about without aim,
+endeavouring to touch ground, and no longer able to distinguish the Ile
+des Morts from Treberon. After having long shifted his course, struggled
+against the tide in which every moment he plunged still deeper, been a
+thousand times brought back from despair to hope, and run the full
+length of his endurance and his courage, he felt at last that he was
+overcome. His respiration grew painful, his eyes were covered with a
+film; all things were to him but as a revolving chaos; his mind
+wandered. A moment more, and he and Francine had disappeared beneath the
+waters. The gun-boat, which he had wished to avoid, but which he could
+no longer perceive, was his sole means of safety. He summoned all his
+remaining strength to utter a cry for help; a surge, more powerful,
+stifled it on his lips. Half-fainting and having nothing left him but
+that instinctive self-defence which survives the will, he struggled
+still an instant, buffeted from wave to wave; then felt that he was
+going down. But all at once, he was arrested; his feet had fallen on to
+the reef; they were fastened on it, and steadied themselves thereon;
+his body straightened up; the water that blinded him seemed to lower
+itself. He took breath and looked before him, and could see at the
+distance of a hundred steps the cleft rock of the Ile des Morts. A few
+minutes sufficed for reaching it. Touching the shore he fell down upon
+it, and called Francine with expiring voice. The child, terrified, could
+only reply by throwing herself upon his breast, where he held her for
+some time in his embrace. His first thought had been for her; his second
+carried him back to Genevieve who was expecting his return, to know that
+they were safe. Still tottering, he raised himself up, took his little
+daughter by the hand, and set himself to climbing the steep slope that
+led to the terrace.
+
+It was necessary to make the tour of the powder magazine, to avoid the
+sentinel placed at the angle which commanded the main roadside; and
+also, on reaching the magazine keeper's door, to knock gently, for fear
+of being heard from without. Dorot fortunately had the light sleep of
+old soldiers; he awoke at the first knocking, and appeared at the
+window.
+
+--"Open the door!" said Mathieu to him in a low voice.
+
+--"Ropars!" cried the sergeant, thunderstruck.
+
+--"Lower! and be quick!" returned the seaman "our lives' safety is at
+stake."
+
+Dorot went down rapidly, drew back the bolt, and made them enter the
+house. Mathieu paused, when across the thresh-hold, with the child
+pressed against his knees.
+
+--"Heaven protect us! whence come you, Ropars?" inquired the sergeant.
+
+--"You see," replied the sailor, "we have come out of the sea, and we
+have crossed over it, to come hither."
+
+Dorot drew back, exclaiming, "Can it be? in God's name, what has
+happened, that you should thus expose your life?"
+
+--"It has happened," rejoined Mathieu, "that Josephe died this morning
+of the contagion! ... that"--
+
+--"What's that you say?"
+
+--"'Tis just so, Dorot; and as Genevieve and I were anxious to save the
+other one, I have brought her to you."
+
+--"And Heaven reward you for the thought!" said the sergeant; "the child
+is dearly welcome."
+
+He had offered his hand to Mathieu; but the latter did not take it.
+
+--"Think well what it is I am asking you," said he; "perhaps the child
+may be bringing here disease and desolation upon you!"
+
+"I hope there will be nothing of the kind," returned Dorot; "but God's
+will be done!"
+
+--"Bear in mind also," continued the quarter-master, insisting, "that if
+the thing gets wind, you run a risk of punishment for having violated
+the quarantine."
+
+--"Then the will of man be done!" was the sergeant's simple observation.
+
+--"But still think."
+
+--"Of nothing further, Ropars," interrupted the sergeant; "there! enough
+said--too much. No words about the matter; you have brought me the
+little one; I accept her."
+
+He had stooped down to Francine, whom he then took up in his arms, and
+with her remounted to the small chamber formerly occupied by Genevieve.
+He, himself, stripped off from the child her dripping clothes, and put
+her to sleep in an old cot of Michael's.
+
+The father, who had followed them, remained at the door with his arms
+hanging down at his side, the very picture of gratitude deeply felt, but
+unable to vent itself in words. Only, when Dorot turned round towards
+him, he seized one of his hands and held it silently grasped. Dorot, who
+desired to avoid a scene, began at once to talk of the means of
+concealing the little girl's change of abode. It was sufficient that her
+absence from Treberon would not be remarked; as for her being at the Ile
+des Morts, it could not give rise to any suspicion, since the guard of
+artillery that did duty at the magazine, and that might have been
+surprised at this increase in the keeper's family, was to be changed on
+the following day. Ropars arranged certain signals for transmitting
+mutually the news between the neighbour islands. These were to be
+renewed several times a day, and thus relieve them at least from the
+anguish of uncertainty. At length, when all had been agreed upon,
+Mathieu drew near the window and looked out. The breeze had freshened,
+the sky appeared less starry, and a transparent vapour was beginning to
+creep over the sea.
+
+--"It is time to start," said he, returning towards the sergeant; "may
+God pay you for what you do, Dorot! As for Genevieve and myself, we
+shall remain your debtors to all eternity."
+
+--"We'll talk of that, by and by," replied the keeper; "just now, the
+main thing, and that which troubles me, is the passage over."
+
+--"Don't be uneasy about that," answered Ropars; "now that the child is
+in safety, I shall cross the channel just as easily as one goes to
+church. The limbs are firm when the heart doesn't tremble. But I wish I
+were already on the other side; I've stayed here too long for Genevieve,
+who is looking for me."
+
+--"Away, then! if it must be," cried the sergeant; "but for God's sake,
+Ropars, be careful, and don't forget that you have two lives to save
+with your own."
+
+--"I'll do all that a man can do," returned the quarter-master; "and
+believe me, cousin, I've no desire to die this night!... But too much
+talk; the time is slipping away; I mustn't wait for the change of tide."
+
+He went up to Francine's cot, to take leave of her; but the child,
+wearied out by so many emotions, had dropped off to sleep. One of her
+arms was doubled beneath her head, and lost in the loosened tresses of
+her golden hair; the other, folded on her breast, pressed to it a little
+relic formerly given to Genevieve who, in her superstitious motherly
+devotedness, had deprived herself of it that it might be a safe-guard
+for her child. Although her breathing was equal and easy, still was it
+broken at intervals by a long drawn sigh; whilst her cheeks, that in her
+sleep were beginning to re-assume their rosy tint, still showed some
+traces of tears. Mathieu looked at her for some moments in touching
+silence; then bending himself slowly down, imprinted a light kiss upon
+Francine's tiny hand, then one upon her hair, then one upon her cheek.
+Without opening her eyes, the child made a gesture of annoyance; he
+stood up.
+
+--"Yes, yes, there, sleep, poor creature of a merciful God!" he
+half-muttered; "I will not wake you."
+
+Once more he seemed to enwrap her in a look overflowing with tenderness;
+then returned to Dorot, and took his hand.
+
+--"I bequeath her to you, cousin," said he, moved in the extreme; "no
+one knows what may happen. Only ... I can trust in your kindly heart,
+and if ever the child should become an orphan...."
+
+--"Now God preserve her from it!" the sergeant took him up; "but if such
+misfortune should occur to her, Mathieu, you know well that she would
+become Michael's sister."
+
+--"Thanks!" abruptly broke in the seaman; "that's exactly what I was
+longing to hear.... And now I set out calmly. I am prepared for every
+thing."
+
+--"But you shan't set out thus, shivering and pulled down," objected the
+sergeant; "you must take something to cheer up your spirits."
+
+--"Nothing," said Ropars, eagerly; "you have given me all that can give
+me strength, in giving me the assurance that the child will not remain
+unaided. Providence will do the rest. Your hand! and good-bye till we
+meet--here, or elsewhere!"
+
+They heartily embraced; then Mathieu went down to the shore, and
+committed himself again to the waters. Although the tide had begun to
+rise, the passage was effected without overmuch danger. He reached,
+unharmed, the high rock of Treberon which the floodtide had already
+encroached upon, and he ran to the place where he had left Genevieve.
+She was there no longer.
+
+Astonished that she should not have awaited his return, he rapidly
+mounted the foot-path, reached his door, and called aloud. There was no
+reply. The darkness did not allow him to distinguish any thing. He
+groped his way to the hearth, and threw around him the trembling light
+of a lamp hurriedly lighted. Attracted to the alcove, his glance soon
+made out, beside the white form of the dead sewed up in its shroud, the
+outline of another and a larger form, extended without moving. Mathieu
+approached in agony. It was Genevieve in a swoon.
+
+
+                              IV.
+
+
+Thanks to the Surgeon's skill, Ropars' wife at length regained her
+senses; but it was to fall into convulsive spasms, followed by the
+annihilation of all her faculties. The whole day passed without her
+shaking off the torpor that belonged at once to sleep and to death. One
+might have said that so many shocks had snapped asunder her existence,
+and that the quiverings of life, still flitting across her state of
+languor, were but the movements of a machine on the point of stopping.
+However, towards evening, the fever declared itself. The patient passed
+insensibly from lethargy to delirious agitation; she did but recognize
+Mathieu at intervals; and falling back, with her senses, upon her
+sorrows, she soon fell again into wandering.
+
+None of these symptoms seemed to belong to the malady that ravaged the
+lazaretto; and the Surgeon, disconcerted, let Mathieu divine his
+inability to make it out. Accustomed to the coarse medicines required by
+the robust patients of our ships, he was perforce a stranger, as are all
+like him, to the ailments of more delicate natures. Thus did he stand
+baffled before this woman, dying of a disorder such as he vainly sought
+to trace in his experiences. He could not conceal his doubts, and his
+need of more enlightened advice. Science, to which these mysterious and
+redoubtable symptoms were familiarized, might find there an index, where
+he perceived only confusion, and point out a remedy, which he dared but
+essay at hap-hazard.
+
+This avowal, wrung from his loyal truth, was for Mathieu a new source of
+torture. Shut up within prescribed limits which forbid strangers to
+approach Treberon, he could not invoke that experience to which
+Genevieve might perchance owe her safety. In vain did he see, at his
+feet, boats for transporting him across the sea, and on the horizon a
+town whence aid might be brought to him; an obstacle invincible and
+insurmountable linked him to his source of trouble.
+
+Two whole days passed away for him, as one long agony, in alternations
+of mute dejection and of furious despair. After sitting for several
+hours at the bedside of the dying woman, when he saw the fever that had
+been lulled for an instant now returning with increased force, he ran
+down to the edge of the reefs, gazed upon the waters in the midst of
+which he found himself imprisoned, upon the armed vessel that guarded
+the passage, upon the ravines of the island dotted with graves recently
+dug, and pressing his closed fists against his forehead he cursed the
+day on which he had accepted this voluntary imprisonment. Angrily did he
+call God to account for the blows with which he was stricken; then,
+restored to his religious faith, he joined his hands, and with tears
+besought the Almighty to spare Genevieve.
+
+Towards the morning of the third day, he had cause for believing that
+his prayers had been heard. The fever abated, and the patient recovered
+all her clearness of mind. But this change did not induce her to share
+the delight or the hopes of Mathieu.
+
+--"Never believe that this is a cure, dear soul," said she in tones
+scarcely audible, and alternating every phrase with periods of silence;
+"the disease is going ... but it carries all with it.... That evening,
+when you went across the channel ... when I heard the child's cry from
+out of the sea itself ... I thought it was all over with you both ...
+and then ... I can't say what took place ... but it seemed to me ...
+that within me ... the main string of life was snapped.... So I feel
+now, that it's all over."
+
+Ropars combatted these fears, repeating that the Surgeon was encouraged,
+and that all would go well. Genevieve, whose eyes were closed, raised
+the lids with difficulty and threw a glance upon him that was full of
+melancholy sweetness.
+
+--"God is the master, Mathieu," said she; "he knows whether I am happy
+in living with you.... Only, ... believe me, poor husband, and don't
+rejoice too much ... it were wiser to expect the worst."
+
+--"It were wiser," interrupted the quarter-master, "to take rest, and
+have confidence. I, too, trust in what I feel. This very night, I had a
+weight of lead upon my heart; it is light now; I can breathe in one
+single breath. In God's name, let your health be restored to you, and be
+anxious for a continuance of life, if it were but for my sake."
+
+Genevieve made an effort to lay her cold and moistened hand upon that of
+Ropars.
+
+--"You are good, Mathieu," said she, letting fall two little tears, the
+last that emotion could drain from eyes already exhausted with weeping.
+"Ah me! my chief regret now is at not having always thought of this ...
+at not having shown myself sufficiently grateful.... Heavens! how much
+worthier we should be of those we love, if we did but remember that some
+day we must leave them.... Since my mind has returned, this idea has
+haunted me; I now perceive all my faults; ... I feel remorse for
+them.... Oh! tell me in mercy, Mathieu, do you forgive me now ... for
+never having been what I ought to have been?"
+
+--"Talk not so, Genevieve," said the seaman quickly, and with deep
+feeling; "you know well that I could not have asked from God a better
+wife. Since you have been mine, I have wanted for nothing; it is I who
+should be grateful to you."
+
+--"No, no," replied the sick woman with increasing animation; "many a
+time have I lacked courage and patience.... Not with you alone ... but
+with Francine ... with Josephe! ... poor child of my heart, who had so
+few years to live!... And to think, Mathieu, that I have often made her
+cry! ... her, who is now beneath the ground!... Ah! it is the tears of
+the dead that weigh heavily here.... And other persons, whom I may have
+injured ... and God against whom I have sinned!... Cannot I then hope
+for mercy?"
+
+Then, as if this idea had awakened in her a sort of terror:
+
+--"Ah! it is impossible!" added she, sitting up; "Mathieu, Mathieu, I
+must see a confessor!"
+
+--"But how to get him here?" said the quarter-master sorrowfully; "have
+you forgotten that the island is in quarantine?"
+
+--"What! not to be able to save even one's soul?" returned Genevieve,
+clasping her hands. "Alas! am I then doomed to die without
+reconciliation? My God! what is to be done? The most miserable sinner is
+allowed to confess his sins, and to ask absolution for them; my God!
+must I alone remain without help?"
+
+She stopped abruptly, putting up both hands to her forehead.
+
+--"Ah! I remember now," she resumed; "have you not told me that on board
+your ships, when at the moment of death no priest was to be had, any
+Christian might take his place? ... that God looked to the intention?"
+
+--"I have said so," replied Ropars, "and all the seamen hereabouts will
+tell you the same thing, upon the assurance of their pastors."
+
+--"Then," replied the dying woman, turning towards the seaman her eye
+lustrous with the fever, "I desire to confess myself to you!"
+
+She raised herself upon her elbow, and crossed herself. Mathieu seemed
+overwhelmed, but could make no objection to her will. As we have
+remarked, he belonged to that race almost extinct, even in Brittany, in
+whom still existed the earnest and the simple faith of other days.
+Often, on occasion of shipwreck, men such as he might have been seen,
+after exhausting all means of saving themselves, to kneel down in the
+expectation of death, and confess themselves one to another, as did the
+ancient cavaliers on the eve of combat. Therefore was he more troubled
+than surprised at the request of Genevieve; and when he heard her murmur
+the prayer that precedes confession, he took off his hat and made the
+sign of the cross, ready to fulfill the holy office that necessity had
+entrusted to him.
+
+And something mournful and touching was it. The early dawn of day light
+doubtfully illumined the alcove; the dishevelled head of Genevieve was
+bent towards the grizzled head of Mathieu; and one might have heard the
+murmur of that supremest confidence carried on in lowered voice, often
+interrupted by the failure of the dying woman's strength, or by the
+seaman's entreaties that she would curtail it. But she persisted in
+resuming it, with the determination peculiar to those severe consciences
+which are never satisfied with their self-accusations. At length, when
+she had concluded, Ropars detached the ivory crucifix from the head of
+the bed; he approached it to the lips of Genevieve, and placing his hand
+upon her brow with mournful solemnity,
+
+--"May God pardon thee as I do to the utmost of my power," said he; "and
+if it be not his will that thou shouldst live for my happiness, may he
+provide for thee a place in his Paradise!"
+
+Her face assumed an expression of ineffable serenity.
+
+--"Thanks," murmured she; "your absolution shall prevail before the
+Trinity, Mathieu; now I feel at peace."
+
+A ray of sunlight creeping in through the window-curtain reached her
+bed; she turned round.
+
+--"It is day," continued she; "I did not hope to see another.... God has
+given me a respite!... He is willing that I should taste of the latest
+joy that I looked for upon earth ... nor will you refuse it to me,
+Mathieu?"
+
+--"Ask it, Genevieve," said the mariner; "what man can do, I will do."
+
+She took his hand and looked at him.
+
+--"You have told me, haven't you, that cousin could see and make out
+your signals?"
+
+--"Yes, and it is true."
+
+--"Then by all the affection you bear me, Mathieu, I beseech you to
+signalize him at once to bring Francine out upon his terrace; when she
+is there, you will take me in your arms, you will carry me to the high
+rock, and if God grant me grace, I shall reach it with still life enough
+left to see my child once more, and to embrace her in spirit."
+
+--"It shall be done so as you desire, Genevieve," said the
+quarter-master, who, impressed by the presentiments of the dying one,
+had abandoned hope, and had not strength to refuse her anything.
+
+--"Quickly, then, very quickly!... for I feel that God is calling me."
+
+Ropars rushed out, as though he feared there would scarcely be time; but
+he came in again almost in a moment, exclaiming that Francine was
+already on the terrace of the magazine with Dorot. Stretching out her
+hands to him, the dying woman uttered a feeble cry of joy. He wrapped
+her up in his winter-cape, and carried her gently in his arms as far as
+the parapet of their platform.
+
+--"Where is she?" inquired Genevieve, her eyes blinded by the light of
+day, and trying in vain to look steadily; "I can't make out anything,
+Mathieu! where is the child: show me the child!"
+
+--"Look down there at our feet," replied the seaman; "can you see the
+high rock?"
+
+--"Yes."
+
+--"Can you follow the bubbling of the sea along the reef?"
+
+--"Yes, yes."
+
+--"And away, yonder, over the reefs, can you distinguish the stone-work
+of the terrace?"
+
+--"Down there? ... no ... there's only a cloud! I can see nothing....
+Oh! if it be too late!... if she be there under my very eyes, and I can
+no longer see her!... My God, my God, once more, only once, let me see
+my child!"
+
+These words, or rather these mother's cries, had been so full of
+sadness, that Ropars could not restrain his tears. He seated his sinking
+wife upon the parapet, and himself kneeled down to support her.
+
+--"Courage, Genevieve!" he stammered out; "look well to this side ...
+between the line of the sea and the sky."
+
+--"I am looking," said Genevieve, appearing in the effort to rally all
+the life left in her ".... Raise my head, Mathieu ... screen me from the
+sun...."
+
+She checked herself with a stifled exclamation.
+
+--"Ah! there she is! there she is!... She sees me ... she is lifting up
+her arms.... Francine ... my daughter ... my child!"
+
+So impulsively did she lean forward, that but for Ropars, she would
+have thrown herself upon the rocks that sloped down to the sea. A
+flitting ray of life had lighted up her features; she sent kisses on her
+fingers to the child, and talked to it as though it could hear her; she
+raised her hands to Heaven, with rapid and broken ejaculations; she
+smiled and wept at once. Finally, her strength failed to endure so great
+emotion, and her head fell upon the quarter-master's shoulder. In alarm,
+he took her again in his arms, to carry her back into the house; but she
+made signs to him that she wished to remain out of-doors. He laid her
+down upon the bench, whereon the family had been used to sit together in
+the evening, in front of the sea, which was now lighted up by the rising
+sun. After a swoon that lasted some time, she opened her eyes, and asked
+for her daughter. Mathieu looked towards the powder magazine and said
+that Dorot had taken her away. She bowed her head with sorrowing
+resignation.
+
+--"He has done right," she went on, in feeble accents; ... "besides, I
+feel ... that my sight grows thick.... I couldn't see her any more ...
+and ... I still have something to say to you.... Come closer, Mathieu
+... closer ... my voice is failing.... Give me your hand.... I want to
+be sure that you hear me."
+
+Ropars knelt upon the sand, with one hand in that of his dying wife, and
+the other placed behind her, to support her.
+
+--"You are going to stay alone," she continued. "Elsewhere, you could
+perhaps endure it; but here, in the midst of the ocean, it is not the
+life of a man, or of a Christian.... You are used to having some one
+keep you company ... some one to love you.... When I am gone ... another
+one must take my place."
+
+--"Never!" broke in Ropars.
+
+With her hand she silenced him.
+
+--"Hush!" said she gently; "you must needs think this, so long as I am
+before your eyes ... but when I am laid in the grave, you will then feel
+your want.... Believe not that I would reproach you, my poor husband....
+I do not wish to carry away your happiness with me in my winding
+sheet.... No ... no ... wherever I may be, I shall need to know that you
+are well cared for."
+
+--"Enough, Genevieve!" murmured the seaman, choking with emotion.
+
+--"Let me go on to the end," she resumed; "I have still one plea to
+urge.... When you take off the crape from your arm, Mathieu ... promise
+me to think of the dear creature who is our child ... the child of both
+... and who will remain with you, to remind you of me ... choose a wife
+who may fill my place towards her."
+
+--"What is it that you are asking me, and whom could I give her for a
+mother, after yourself?" rejoined Ropars.
+
+--"Some one" ... Genevieve went on ... "who would not grudge me the
+having been chosen first ... some honest heart that would take kindly to
+an orphan ... who would talk to her of me ... who would teach her to
+love God ... and to obey you!... If you promise me that this shall be
+so, Mathieu ... if you promise it on your honour ... and on your
+salvation, I shall fall asleep, at peace, and blessing you."
+
+Ropars made the promise, amidst sighs and groans; but this was the dying
+woman's last effort. After having thanked him by an embrace, she let
+herself sink into her husband's arms. It almost seemed as though the
+power of her will had slackened the steps of Death, for the sake of this
+final compact. Scarcely was it completed, when her sufferings
+recommenced. Carried back to the alcove, she died there towards the
+close of the day. Her last words were a prayer, in which her husband's
+and her daughter's names were intermingled.
+
+On the ensuing day, the grave in which Josephe already reposed was
+re-opened to receive Genevieve, for, during the past month, Death had
+reaped so abundantly that the barren island lacked space for his doleful
+harvest. Informed of what had happened, by means of the signals agreed
+upon, the keeper of the powder-magazine brought Francine to the edge of
+his rock, and the child, on her knees, uttered a prayer for her mother's
+spirit, at the moment the funeral ceremony was ended, across the water.
+
+This death was the last. Like those expiatory victims who, in
+sacrificing themselves, were wont to appease the anger of the Gods,
+Genevieve seemed, in going down to the tomb, as though she closed its
+doors behind her. A fortnight later, and the yellow flag slid down the
+flag staff that over-topped the lazaretto, and those who had been
+quarantined, now cured, went away in the frigate's long-boat. They only
+left behind them, on the dreary island, a man whose hair had become
+perfectly white, and a child in mourning clothes.
+
+
+
+
+                           THRICE ONLY.
+
+                                I
+
+
+Do not imagine that this is to be a love-story. Very few experiences
+furnish material for such. Rarer still is the ability to use the
+material, when it falls in one's way. At any rate, I make no pretension
+thereto.
+
+But it sometimes happens during the earlier and more tumultuous period
+of a man's life, that casual occurrences take place, which do not indeed
+at the time immediately influence his actions or his fortunes, but which
+in later days may be recalled with interest. Of this sort--if I mistake
+not, or if I do not mar them in the telling--were my three meetings with
+Mary Verner. I only met her thrice.
+
+The first time--many a year has sped away since; but it seems, if I shut
+my mental eye to events and feelings with which the interval has been
+crowded, and my bodily eye to the library table before me, as if the
+little scene were being enacted here, now, to-day.
+
+Whence this power of summoning up the ghosts of long ago? Why should the
+comparatively recent refuse to be stamped upon the memory, and the old
+impressions refuse to fade? Let philosophers answer; I have no more
+inclination to write an essay than to tell a love-tale. My purpose I
+have already stated; though I omitted to mention that I write my own
+veritable experience--with a change of names, a studied obscurity of
+dates, and a very slight change otherwise.
+
+The precise year I do not remember, nor, consequently, my own exact age;
+but I must have been about fourteen. George Verner, Mary's brother--poor
+fellow! I saw his death registered, the other day, in that odious corner
+of the _Times_--was my class-mate and play-mate at a school some few
+miles from London. He was a good-looking and good-tempered fellow, if
+not remarkable for his abilities. It chanced that I was--in the choice
+language of the time and place--"a dab at Latin verses." I helped George
+once in a while with his exercises; and once in a while with the
+mince-pies, that his mother's a cook used to send him on the sly. The
+first time that I saw her--Mary Verner I mean, not the cook--was on a
+whole holiday; George, who lived in the neighbourhood, had invited me to
+pass it with him. The old family coach came for us at ten o'clock, with
+the fat old horses and the fat old family coachman, just for all the
+world as you may often meet them in the story-books that are called
+"exceedingly natural," and as you now-a-days rarely find them in real
+life. Pony-phaetons, britzkas, coupes, "Croydon-baskets," and
+nondescript vehicles that, being neither close carriages nor open, are
+palmed off as both--these have superseded the full-bodied of my early
+recollections.
+
+I fancy that I see her now.... You perceive that though I note the
+modern change in the carriage department, I recognize none such in the
+phraseology of our tongue. I fancy I see her now. You may, if you
+please, alter the wording; but that's the plain English of it.
+
+As we drove up the sweep that led from the lodge to the front entrance
+of a very beautiful suburban villa, I leaned out of the window, with the
+curiosity natural to a boy of fourteen, on strange ground.
+
+Mary Verner--I knew, by the family likeness, that she was George's elder
+sister, the moment my eye lighted on her--was trimming or watering her
+geraniums, in one of the recesses on either side of the porch.
+
+"Here, Mary, here's Cuthbert _tertius_," said George, running up the
+steps, and pushing me before him.
+
+"I know him; how d'ye do? I'm glad to see you," was the frank reception,
+spoken in a clear, round-toned, springy voice, that seemed to drop
+without effort out of a rose-lipped mouth well-filled with well-knit
+teeth. And as she spoke smilingly, she opened a pair of large brown eyes
+that I have since thought--for boys don't know much about the law of
+colours--were designed to harmonize with what we call a clear brunette
+complexion. Certainly, if the ballad of "The Nut Brown Mayde" be a model
+imitation of the antique, Mary Verner might have sat for the portrait.
+
+But it was not so much her eyes that took hold of me, open though they
+did by degrees, wider and wider, until I wondered when they would cease
+opening; nor her coal-black hair, dressed as you may see it in the
+likenesses by Sir Thomas Lawrence; nor her rosy mouth; nor her even
+teeth; nor her figure full of grace, _svelte_ as the French call it, for
+which we have no answering word. It was not these, or any of them. It
+was the carolling of her few words, so free and unconcerned in tone. If
+I had not met her subsequently, I might have forgotten her looks; I
+doubt whether her voice could have passed from me.
+
+I need not tax my memory or my invention about the trifling though happy
+events of that day. It was pretty evident who was mistress of the house,
+though the fond and proud mother of Mary Verner had the air of a
+dignified and well-bred woman. Silent or talking, it was Mary who
+dispensed the honours, at least so far as the stranger was concerned.
+Probably it was the same with all comers; but this is only a surmise.
+
+Well; the whole holiday came to an end, and we were driven back to the
+old school by the old coachman, our pockets full of chestnuts, and our
+boyish hearts full of a sense of supreme enjoyment, such we believe as,
+in later life, women feel after the best ball of the season, and men
+after a splendid whitebait dinner at Blackwall. I recollect telling the
+fellows in the dormitory what a jolly time we had been having, and how
+capitally George's pony leaped the fence on the common, round the
+corner, out of sight of the house. By the way, it was partly owing to
+that pony having engrossed so much of our time, that I had not regularly
+fallen in love with Mary Verner. Partly, I say, because I was further
+saved from this predicament by a standing devotion to my pretty cousin
+Rose, which the temptation had been strong enough, but not long enough
+to disturb. I never went to George's house again; and ere long the image
+of his sister was stowed away on one of the upper shelves of my memory.
+There it might have been smothered in dust, or even converted into it,
+if chance had not taken it down and given it an airing.
+
+
+                                II
+
+
+Twenty-one--what a change from fourteen! How the pulse of life beats and
+bounds! I was running a tilt at the pastimes, and doffing aside the
+cares of early manhood, when for the second time, I came across Mary
+Verner. Plump upon her, I would say, if I thought you would pardon the
+coarseness of the expression. At any rate--and to be genteel--it was
+unexpectedly. Twenty-one gives very few thoughts to fourteen. It may be
+a much longer distance thither, when one starts at seventy to go back;
+but it is surprising how much more quickly you get over the intermediate
+ground. Let that be; only I don't believe I had given a thought to Mary
+Verner, since the week or two that followed my first interview with her.
+
+"Do come and dine with us on Monday," said my friend Mrs. F.; "there
+will be a very charming girl here, whom you would like to see."
+
+"Positively?"
+
+"_Sans faute!_"
+
+"Then keep a place for me; I'll come."
+
+I went. It was a formal dinner-party. In the drawing-room, before going
+to table, Mrs. F. came across to me.
+
+"Now I'll introduce you to our belle of the evening. You may escort her
+down to dinner. There she is, half-hidden behind that drapery. You can't
+have noticed her."
+
+"Miss Verner, let me present Mr. Cuthbert."
+
+I should have recognized Mary Verner, as she looked up, with those
+widely-opening brown eyes of hers, if her name had not been mentioned.
+As it was, it was quite natural for me to remark that I believed I had
+had the pleasure of seeing Miss Verner before.
+
+And so in a few moments we were gossipping cosily about "old times," as
+we, not very old people, called them.
+
+The beautiful child had expanded into a very lovely woman, preserving
+still the same characteristics of person and expression. The charm of
+her voice was the same. You may be sure that when seated by her side,
+with the becoming glow of lamp-light overhead heightening, if possible,
+those attractions which I rather hint than attempt to describe--you may
+be sure, I say, that I found her very captivating.
+
+We talked of her brother George; of the pleasant house wherein I first
+met her, and which was still her home; of her amiable and lady-like
+mother who was still living; of the old pony now gathered to his sires;
+of the old chestnut-trees even--in short, of all those unimportant
+associations, out of which, under such circumstances, one endeavours to
+establish a trivial and flitting but very pleasant little bond of
+sympathy.
+
+I declare I was half ready to fall head over ears in love with her. And
+she took it all with a simple unaffected grace, that seemed to be her
+very nature.
+
+But we did not have all the talk to ourselves. I had not the presumption
+to engross her entirely. Nor would it have been possible. She was--there
+is no need to go over it all again--she was Mary Verner.
+
+Nearly opposite to us at table sat a Mr. Easton, a young
+barrister--young, that is professionally, for he was apparently a man of
+thirty or thereabouts. He would not have been singled out as a
+lady-killer, for he was none of your regular Adonises, such as hang by
+dozens, in portraiture, upon the walls of our Royal Academy Exhibitions,
+and lounge complacently in our Fop's Alley at the Opera. When, however,
+the excitement of conversation--in which he took an active and most
+intelligent part--developed the fine play of his features, you would
+have pronounced him a man who added, to a cultivated and superior mind,
+a look that bespoke such gift. In fact there was a manly air about him,
+that claimed respect, if it did not challenge attention.
+
+About the time when I made this notable discovery, I recollected that at
+the moment of my introduction to Miss Verner, Mr. Easton was gossipping
+with her in the secluded corner half-hidden by the drapery, though he
+moved away, with perfect good breeding, to give place to the new-comer.
+
+About this time, too, there began--at which end of the table, I
+forget--an occasional play of badinage, whereof Mr. Easton was the
+subject. For a grave and earnest man, he seemed to receive it all in
+exceedingly good part. To my surprise also--to say nothing of
+annoyance--my fair neighbour was brought, after a while, within its
+scope. Neither did she--I was forced to acknowledge within
+myself--evince either _mauvaise honte_ or sensitiveness. The truth was
+plain. They were engaged.
+
+As a child's card-built house tumbles down when the table is shaken, so
+down went one of the prettiest little castles-in-the-air, that ever
+simpleton built out of cards of his own shaping.
+
+Down it went; though I flatter myself I was too much a man of the world,
+to let a glimpse of its dislocated plan be apparent. Indeed, in a few
+seconds, I had rallied myself on my own absurdity; gulped down my
+disappointment; and resigned myself again to the charm that Mary Verner
+still shed around her, if its tint was somewhat changed. Besides, I
+availed myself of the sudden opportunity thus afforded, for testing the
+practical value of one of my favourite theories, when I was a young
+fellow and affected to bask in the sunshine of human nature: to wit,
+that, apart from serious love-making, when a woman in either married or
+betrothed, she has therefrom an additional feather in her social cap. So
+have I found it through life--always provided that the attractive and
+companionable qualities were otherwise in abundance. And this theory has
+at least given heartiness to my good wishes for my fairer acquaintances
+and friends. Is it not better to come to such a philosophical
+conclusion, than to be always envying other people's good fortune?
+
+Shifting, therefore, my ground, I was rapidly possessed by a strong
+interest in Miss Verner's future welfare--much of which was undoubtedly
+genuine.
+
+Delicately, and by gently leading her on, I gathered something of the
+story of her courtship, though I must needs confess that I cannot now
+call to mind a word of it. It may be of more interest to state that she
+was to make Mr. Easton the happiest of men, within six weeks or so of
+that time; and that the honey-moon was to be spent in a ramble on the
+Continent. Very emphatically and very sincerely did I wish her a
+pleasant time of it.
+
+But the most agreeable evenings will come to a close. This one--with its
+revival of a boy's casual acquaintance, with its momentary
+castle-building, and its subsequent benevolence of feeling--this one,
+like all others, passed away. It did not die out, as the fag-end of a
+dinner-party sometimes will; it was cut short to me by the "good night!"
+of Mary Verner, as she took her departure, leaning on Mr. Easton's arm,
+in the train of an elderly female relative.
+
+When the drawing-room door closed upon her graceful figure, I felt for a
+moment as though the gas had been suddenly turned off. I recollect,
+however, the hostess's observation, dropped to the accompaniment of a
+playfully malicious smile:
+
+"Didn't I tell you, you would like my friend Mary Verner?"
+
+"Yes," was the reply, "and I have passed a most delightful evening; but
+I don't think it quite fair, Mrs. F."--here there was a terrible smash
+of the theory--"to open the gates of Paradise, and then slam them in a
+poor fellow's face?"
+
+I was to have gone, that night, to a ball in Devonshire Place, expressly
+to meet--Never mind; I was not in the humour for dancing or flirting. I
+went straight home, and to bed. I tossed about a good deal, and finally
+dreamed about George and the pony, and that I was climbing the old
+chestnut-trees. As for Mary Verner, I couldn't in my sleep conjure up
+her image. When I thought I had it--as is the way in dreams, you know,
+if you ever studied them--I couldn't get nearer to her than the plaguy
+old family coachman. It was only when broad awake, the next morning,
+that I found myself strongly impressed by this, my second meeting. But
+again--such is life and such is youth--the impression was soon stowed
+away on an upper shelf in memory's garret.
+
+
+                                III.
+
+
+Two years later; two years and two months.
+
+Did you ever notice the marked difference between youth and old
+age--aye, and middle age, too--in the matter of reading newspapers?
+We--I speak of myself now as the writer--who are in the vanguard of the
+march through life, must have our _Times_ or our _Chronicle_, as
+regularly as our morning meal. Is it, as some spitefully assert, that we
+grow more self-complacent as we pore over the misfortunes or the errors
+of our fellows; or is it, that we seek refuge from the cares and
+disappointments of our own lot, in a close scrutiny of that of all the
+world beside, with the minutiae of which the diligent, prying, gossipping
+press so unceasingly plies our curiosity? It is folly, perhaps, to raise
+the question, since this is not the place to discuss it; though it were
+not far from the truth to attribute much of the pettiness of our race,
+in these days, to this habit of abandoning our thoughts and impulses to
+the guidance of journalists who trade in them.
+
+I only mean to say that being still youthful at twenty-three, I "cared
+for none of these things," As for heeding who was born, or buried, or
+married, beyond the circle of one's own intimate connections--I should
+as soon have set to work to trace the pedigree of a New Zealander.
+Probably, I heard in due time that Mary Verner had become Mrs. Easton.
+Certainly I did not learn it from the usual printed record. In short, I
+then very seldom read newspapers at all; and this I beg you to bear in
+mind. What a shocking ignoramus I should be voted, if I were to say so
+of this present time.
+
+That, too, was the season of darkness, ere Albert Smith was the Lecturer
+_par excellence_; ere Oxford and Cambridge men, returning from their
+"long-vacation" rambles, disputed in the daily papers their respective
+prowess in scaling the precipices of Monte Rosa, or discovering new
+pathways up Mont Blanc. How changed are we to-day! Save for the
+voluminous records of the Crimean war, what Mamelons and Malakoffs would
+the pedestrians, Smith and Jones, be now fighting over, in the _Times_!
+
+Nevertheless, though they made less fuss about it, Englishmen were then,
+as now, prone to scurrying off to Switzerland in the Autumn--some in the
+true cockney spirit--some because they found there the most sublime of
+all spectacles, together with the most exhilarating exercise for the
+body, and relaxation of mind in its fullest sense. With myself it
+amounted to a passion; "Cuthbert's hobby" it was dubbed by
+acquaintances, who could eke out delight from Leamington and Cheltenham.
+
+Profiting by the leisure afforded me during successive seasons, I had
+become tolerably familiar with the Alps; with what exquisite and
+inexhaustible enjoyment I am not going here to trouble you. But August
+had come round again. The knapsack was stitched, where it wanted
+mending. The Alpenstock was dragged to light, from the lumber-room. The
+thick-soled gaiter-boots were freshly studded with hobnails. The
+well-worn Swiss map was conned over once more, and a new route, leading
+over yet untrodden passes, was set down in the Autumnal programme.
+
+Suddenly I changed my mind--under the influence of an hour's talk with
+an enthusiastic mountaineer--who had, during the previous season,
+explored the Pyrenees. "You may not find," said he, "quite so much
+grandeur; but the valleys are decidedly more picturesque, the foliage
+more varied, the very tints of the mountains glowing with warmer
+colours." Thereupon, a change of plan and passport. Behold me at
+Cauterets in France, instead of at Grindelwald in Switzerland!
+
+Were my object merely to fill a certain number of pages, I might here
+descant at length upon the comparative beauties of the Alps and the
+Pyrenees--the latter having, at present, the advantage of not being done
+to death by tourists. But I will abstain. I will speak only of one day's
+adventure; the day whereon, for the third and last time, I found myself
+associated with Mary Verner.
+
+Cauterets may be a pleasant place enough to those who bathe in, or
+imbibe for medicinal purposes, the mineral waters that have made its
+fame. It is finely placed too, pitched in, as it were, into a nook, with
+lofty peaks and fringes of fir forests over-topping its somewhat formal
+streets. It does not, however, offer much attraction to the connoisseur
+in fine scenery. One excursion alone is to be made. Its objects are the
+Pont d'Espagne and the Lac de Gaube. The former is a group of pine
+trunks bridging a cascade. The latter is a tarn at the foot of the
+glaciers of the Vignemale, which, you know, is one of the
+mountain-monarchs hereabouts.
+
+Before proceeding further, I may mention that I am enabled to set down
+my reminiscences of this particular time and place, by reference to my
+rough notes penned on the spot, journal-wise. The little memorandum book
+lies under my hand, with its pages written in ink of various tints, as
+hotel, or cabaret, or hut furnished the material at the moment. I like
+to preserve these records. Such _souvenirs_ are the _bonnes fortunes_ of
+those whose travels are ended. You see that I incline to be sentimental
+as I draw towards the _denouement_ of my story.
+
+Heavens and earth, how it rains in the Pyrenees! What a young deluge
+swept down the steep stone-guttered pavements, on the morning of the
+29th of August! Still, I did not choose to devote more than one day to
+the neighbourhood of Cauterets; and so, having made, from my window, a
+few such profound observations as the one just set down, I ordered a
+horse and guide. The polite waiter was astonished, and protested, to the
+extent of two or three "_Mais Monsieur!_" The guide thought the storm
+would expend itself in twenty-four hours; but on my hinting that the
+path would not be difficult to find, without his aid, nor
+impracticable, on foot, he subsided, with an air of conviction, into
+the accustomed "_Bien, Monsieur!_"
+
+And so we started. I had borrowed one of the long, thick, hooded Spanish
+cloaks, commonly used in that region which borders on Spain; and a very
+effectual protection it was against the steady down-pouring of the rain.
+But what is perfect in this world? A German counterpane, on a summer's
+night, is not more oppressive than was this excellent protection from
+the wet.
+
+Handing, then, the heavy encumbrance to the guide, I was drenched to the
+skin in about two minutes. This was a comfort. It settled the point. I
+dislike uncertainty. I could be at my ease, and look about. Remember it
+was yet August.
+
+And the Val de Jeret, up which I was riding, was so grandly gloomy; the
+state of the weather excluding all but close views! My note-book thus
+speaks of it, the writer never dreaming that his impressions would be
+told to the readers of a newspaper, with many of whom Niagara and
+Montmorenci are familiar sights: "The valley presents a succession of
+splendid waterfalls; and, singularly enough, as your route lies upwards,
+they increase in size and beauty, from the Mahourat, the first, to the
+Pont d'Espagne, the last and most celebrated. The three intervening,
+that are dignified with names, are the Cerizet, the Bousse, and the Pas
+de l'Ours. Besides these, there are an infinity of smaller falls, the
+whole course of the Gave (or torrent) de Marcadaou--along which the path
+lies--boiling over broken masses of rock. The eye is charmed by endless
+variety, amid perpetual repetition. The deluge of rain, which covered
+the lofty rocks on each side of the defile with clouds, had gloriously
+swollen the turbulent waters. I know of nothing in natural scenery--thus
+the manuscript rather enthusiastically proceeds--that impresses one so
+forcibly as a cascade of large dimensions. By large I mean broad, not
+lofty. The effect is apt to diminish, with vast height. These, in the
+Val de Jeret, I found absolutely bewitching; for is it not a sort of
+infatuation, by which we are beguiled into drawing nearer and nearer,
+until you almost touch the foaming sheets as they flurry past, and are
+yourself driven back, for your pains, half blind and breathless? One
+fine waterfall would be enough to digest in a day. During these two or
+three hours, I had a very feast of them."
+
+If I extract this somewhat rhapsodical passage, it is to show that my
+inward man was not dampened, by the dampening process externally
+applied. On the contrary, I am disposed to be jubilant, almost defiant,
+in proportion to the fury of the storm; that is to say when no serious
+personal inconvenience is caused by stress of weather. In a mountain
+region too, above all others, clouds play so great a part in the
+combination of fine effects, that I have many times fairly welcomed a
+tempestuous spell.
+
+Thus from the Pont d'Espagne I continued my ride an hour or so further,
+in order to reach the Lac de Gaube, knowing perfectly well that the
+chances were a hundred to one against my getting a glimpse of the
+glaciers of the Vignemale, at whose feet this small sheet of water is
+imbedded. Small it may well be termed, for it is not quite three miles
+in circumference, though the largest lake in the Pyrenees.
+
+On the rocky shore where the rough pathway terminates, stands, or stood
+at the period of which I write, a solitary hut. There, during the short
+summer season, might be found a family who earned a scanty subsistence,
+by catching the lake trout and serving them up to chance travellers; by
+rowing, in the solitary punt, any one who cared to paddle about the dark
+waters; or by escorting any still more adventurous stranger desirous of
+exploring the glaciers above-named, or ascending the lower heights of
+the Vignemale.
+
+Stepping up to the door of this cabin, I entered into conversation with
+its chief occupant, who probably combined in his own person the various
+offices of restaurateur, fisherman, muleteer, guide, and smuggler.
+Possibly I libel him in the last respect; but along that frontier of
+France and Spain, it is rare to find a mountaineer guiltless of the
+contraband trade.
+
+A visitor on such a day was a welcome sight to the poor fellow, who was
+eloquent in regrets that _his_ mountain and _his_ glaciers and _his_
+other local points of interest were all wrapped in the impenetrable
+mist. He seemed, I remember now, to care more about it than I did; for I
+had revelled in the exhibition of cascades, and was rather tickled at
+the notion of having come up to this lone and savage spot, where nothing
+whatever was to be seen.
+
+If a spirit had whispered me, that the moment of my third _rencontre_
+was close at hand, I should have smiled incredulously.
+
+The fog lifted. I could see to a distance of half a dozen yards.
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"If Monsieur will give himself the trouble of walking up to it, he will
+see."
+
+It was on a jutting promontory of rock, close at hand. A small enclosure
+was railed in. It held what was obviously a monumental tablet, in white
+marble, but discoloured by exposure.
+
+"A favourite poodle, perhaps, of the Duchesse de Berri--or one of our
+eccentric Englishmen doing honour to a Pyrenean bear!" Such I thought it
+might be, as I carelessly lounged up to it, and stooped to read the
+inscription.
+
+It was in French and English. I took no copy of the words. But it was
+placed there in memory of Mr. and Mrs. Easton, drowned in the lake,
+within one month of their marriage, on the 20th of September, 18--! The
+facts were simply stated. I wish the record of them had been placed a
+little further off from the rendezvous of the thoughtless and
+light-hearted.
+
+This was the last of my associations with her. But it would not interest
+the reader, to be told with what feelings of surprise and sorrow I thus
+learned the close of a career, which bid so fair for happiness and
+usefulness. Poor Mary Verner!
+
+Before setting-off on my return to Cauterets, I heard, from the lips of
+the man with whom I had been conversing, the sad particulars of this
+harrowing event. Never could the common phrase, that speaks of "painful
+curiosity," have been more applicable than it was in my case, as I stood
+and listened to him. Poor fellow; he had been an eye-witness. He saw my
+emotion. "Monsieur knew the young couple?"--thus did he break the thread
+of his little narrative, more than once.
+
+I cannot pretend to set down his words. This is the substance of what he
+told me.
+
+The season was nearly over. The weather was splendidly fine, but very
+cold. Travellers were scarcely expected; when on that brilliant
+September morning, up rode the bride and bridegroom. After resting
+awhile, they took the single skiff that was there, Mr. Easton offering
+to row his wife across the lake, to which she very reluctantly assented.
+I recollect the narrator dwelling on this fact.
+
+The shore shelves off very rapidly. The water, in some parts, reaches to
+the depth of three or four hundred feet. At all times it is of
+marvellous clearness--as I observed myself--and, except during the heats
+of summer, so piercingly cold, as to be altogether unbearable to the
+swimmer.
+
+My informant helped them into the boat. Mr. Easton was evidently used to
+the handling of oars. The tragedy was immediately--perhaps one should
+say, ostensibly--caused by those two qualities of the water of the Lac
+de Gaube, to which I have just alluded--its clearness and its coldness.
+
+The boat was at some considerable distance from the shore. The boatman
+was watching them. Suddenly, Mr. Easton paused in his rowing. He and his
+wife looked over the side, as though guessing at the depth. Mr. Easton
+then stood up, and plunged one oar downwards into the water, with the
+confident action of a man who is certain that he shall touch the bottom.
+The transparency had deceived him. His oar met no resistance; and he
+himself plunged heavily overboard. Such at least was the impression of
+the boatman on land; and he could scarcely be mistaken.
+
+So far as he could see, Mr. Easton did not rise to the surface. The cold
+numbed him, and he sunk, not to rise again. The bereaved wife stood
+upright for a moment in the boat, gazing on the water that had swallowed
+up her husband before her eyes. Then she too was seen to be in it; but
+not one of the two or three, who witnessed the fearful sight, could tell
+whether she threw herself in, or whether she fell in, senseless. That
+secret will never be solved; and what matters it to us, though the
+manner of the widowed wife's death was so remarkable, that I cannot
+refrain from mentioning it? In talking it over, they agreed that she did
+not sink at all. As she fell, the water inflated her dress, and she was
+buoyed-up, floating; though there was no sign of life or movement on her
+part, observable to the agonized spectators. After a time--I forget
+whether it was half an hour, or half a day--the remains of what once was
+loved as Mary Verner were wafted tranquilly to the shore. Assistance
+also having been procured, Mr. Easton's body was dragged-up from the
+bottom of the lake. One grave in a church-yard in Essex now holds the
+coffins of the ill-fated pair.
+
+And was there no effort at rescue? Could nothing be done? This idea will
+have crossed the reader's mind. It suggested many questions to me, with
+which I plied the boatman, who seemed to feel keenly in them the
+bitterness of unintended reproach. But his explanation--grievous as it
+was--was satisfactory. There was no boat, no raft, no means of reaching
+the spot. "Two of us," said he, "plunged up to our necks into the water,
+in the irrepressible desire to swim out to them; though we knew that it
+was certain death to go beyond our depth. Besides, Monsieur," he added
+with touching simplicity, "I can't help fancying that the poor lady was
+dead before she fell out of the boat. Monsieur knew her; doesn't he
+think that her heart was already broken?"
+
+"God help her, and all of us, my brave friend; I have not the smallest
+doubt of it!"
+
+
+
+
+                     TOSSING UP FOR A HUSBAND.
+
+         _From the French of Vicomte Ponson de Terrail._
+
+                                I.
+
+
+The Marchioness was at her toilet. Florine and Aspasia, her two
+ladies'-maids, were busy powdering, as it were with hoar-frost, the
+bewitching widow.
+
+She was a widow, this Marchioness, a widow of twenty-three; and wealthy,
+as very few persons were any longer at the court of Louis XV., her
+godfather.
+
+Three-and-twenty years earlier, his Majesty had held her at the
+baptismal font of the chapel at Marly, and had settled upon her an
+income of a hundred thousand livres, by way of proving to her father,
+the Baron Fontevrault, who had saved his life in the battle of Fontenoy,
+that kings can be grateful, whatever people choose to say to the
+contrary.
+
+The Marchioness then was a widow. She resided during the summer, in a
+charming little chateau, situated half-way up the slope overhanging the
+water, on the road from Bougival to Saint Germain. Madame Dubarry's
+estate adjoined hers; and on opening her eyes she could see, without
+rising, the white gableends and the white-spreading chestnut-trees of
+Luciennes, perched upon the heights. On this particular day--it was
+noon--the Marchioness, whilst her attendants dressed her hair and
+arranged her head-dress with the most exquisite taste, gravely employed
+herself in tossing up, alternately, a couple of fine oranges, which
+crossed each other in the air, and then dropped into the white and
+delicate hand that caught them in their fall.
+
+This sleight-of-hand--which the Marchioness interrupted at times whilst
+she adjusted a beauty-spot on her lip, or cast an impatient glance on
+the crystal clock that told how time was running away with the fair
+widow's precious moments--had lasted for ten minutes, when the
+folding-doors were thrown open, and a valet, such as one sees now only
+on the stage announced with pompous voice--"The King!"
+
+Apparently, the Marchioness was accustomed to such visits, for she but
+half rose from her seat, as she saluted with her most gracious smile the
+personage who entered.
+
+It was indeed Louis XV. himself--Louis XV. at sixty-five; but robust,
+upright, with smiling lip and beaming eye, and jauntily clad in a
+close-fitting, pearl-grey hunting-suit, that became him to perfection.
+He carried under his arm a handsome fowling-piece, inlaid with
+mother-of-pearl; a small pouch, intended for ammunition alone, hung over
+his shoulder.
+
+The King had come from Luciennes, almost alone, that is but with a
+Captain of the Guard, the old Marshal de Richelieu, and a single
+Equerry on foot. He had been amusing himself with quail-shooting,
+loading his own gun, as was the fashion with his ancestors, the later
+Valois and the earlier Bourbons. His grandsire, Henry IV., could not
+have been less ceremonious.
+
+But a shower of hail had surprised him; and his Majesty had no relish
+for it. He pretended that the fire of an enemy's battery was less
+disagreeable than those drops of water, so small and so hard, that wet
+him through, and reminded him of his twinges of rheumatism.
+
+Fortunately, he was but a few steps from the gateway of the chateau,
+when the shower commenced. He had come therefore to take shelter with
+his god-daughter, having dismissed his suite, and only keeping with him
+a magnificent pointer, whose genealogy was fully established by the Duc
+de Richelieu, and traced back, with a few slips in orthography, directly
+to Nisus, that celebrated greyhound, given by Charles IX. to his friend
+Ronsard, the poet.
+
+"Good morning, Marchioness," said the King, as he entered, putting down
+his fowling-piece in a corner. "I have come to ask your hospitality. We
+were caught in a shower at your gate--Richelieu and I. I have packed off
+Richelieu."
+
+"Ah, Sire, that wasn't very kind of you."
+
+"Hush!" replied the King, in a good-humored tone. "It's only mid-day;
+and if the Marshal had forced his way in here at so early an hour, he
+would have bragged of it every where, this very evening. He is very apt
+to compromise one, and he is a great coxcomb too, the old Duke. But
+don't put yourself out of the way, Marchioness. Let Aspasia finish this
+becoming pile of your head-dress, and Florine spread out with her silver
+knife the scented powder that blends so well with the lilies and the
+roses of your bewitching face.... Why, Marchioness, you are so pretty,
+one could eat you up!"
+
+"You think me so, Sire?"
+
+"I tell you so every day. Oh, what fine oranges!"
+
+And the King seated himself upon the roomy sofa, by the side of the
+Marchioness, whose rosy finger-tips he kissed with an infinity of grace.
+Then taking up one of the oranges that he had admired, he proceeded
+leisurely to examine it.
+
+"But," said he at length, "what are oranges doing by the side of your
+Chinese powder-box and your scent bottles? Is there any connection
+between this fruit and the maintenance--easy as it is, Marchioness--of
+your charms?"
+
+"These oranges," replied the lady, gravely, "fulfilled just now, Sire,
+the functions of destiny."
+
+The King opened wide his eyes, and stroked the long ears of his dog, by
+way of giving the Marchioness time to explain her meaning.
+
+"It was the Countess who gave them to me," she continued.
+
+"Madame Dubarry?"
+
+"Exactly so, Sire."
+
+"A trumpery gift, it seems to me, Marchioness."
+
+"I hold it, on the contrary, to be an important one; since I repeat to
+your Majesty, that these oranges decide my fate."
+
+"I give it up," said the King.
+
+"Imagine, Sire; yesterday I found the Countess occupied in tossing her
+oranges up and down, in this way." And the Marchioness recommenced her
+game with a skill that cannot be described.
+
+"I see," said the King; "she accompanied this singular amusement with
+the words, 'Up, Choiseul! up, Praslin!' and, on my word, I can fancy how
+the pair jumped."
+
+"Precisely so, Sire."
+
+"And do you dabble in politics, Marchioness? Have you a fancy for
+uniting with the Countess, just to mortify my poor ministers?"
+
+"By no means, Sire; for, in place of Monsieur de Choiseul and the Duc de
+Praslin, I was saying to myself, just now, 'Up, Menneval! up,
+Beaugency!'"
+
+"Ay, ay," returned the King; "and why the deuce would you have them
+jumping, those two good-looking gentlemen--Monsieur de Menneval, who is
+a Croesus, and Monsieur de Beaugency, who is a statesman, and dances the
+minuet to perfection?"
+
+"I'll tell you," said the dame. "You know, Sire, that Monsieur de
+Menneval is an accomplished gentleman, a handsome man, a gallant
+cavalier, an indefatigable dancer, witty as Monsieur Arouet, and longing
+for nothing so much as to live in the country, on his estate in
+Touraine, on the banks of the Loire, with the woman whom he loves or
+will love, far from the court, from grandeur, and from turmoil."
+
+"And, on my life, he's in the right of it," quoth the King. "One does
+become so wearied at court."
+
+"Aye, and no," rejoined the widow as she put on her last beauty-spot....
+"Nor are you unaware, Sire, that Monsieur de Beaugency is one of the
+most brilliant courtiers of Marly and Versailles; ambitious, burning
+with zeal for the service of your Majesty; as brave as Monsieur de
+Menneval, and capable of going to the end of the earth ... with the
+title of Ambassador of the King of France."
+
+"I know that," chimed in Louis XV., with a laugh. "But, alas, I have
+more ambassadors than embassies. My ante-chambers overflow every
+morning."
+
+"Now," continued the Marchioness, "I have been a widow ... these two
+years past."
+
+"A long time, there's no denying."
+
+"Ah," sighed she, "there's no need to tell me so, Sire. But Monsieur de
+Menneval loves me ... at least he says so, and I am easily persuaded."
+
+"Very well; then marry Monsieur de Menneval."
+
+"I have thought of it, Sire; and, in truth, I might do much worse. I
+should like well enough to live in the country, under the willow-trees,
+on the borders of the river, with a husband, fond, yielding, loving, who
+would detest the philosophers and set some little value on the poets.
+When no external noises disturb the honey-moon, that month, Sire, may be
+indefinitely prolonged. In the country, you know, one never hears a
+noise."
+
+"Unless it be the north-wind moaning in the corridor, and the rain
+pattering on the window-panes." And the King shivered slightly on his
+sofa.
+
+"But," added the dame, "Monsieur de Beaugency loves me equally well."
+
+"Ah, ah! the ambitious man!"
+
+"Ambition does not shut out love, Sire. Monsieur de Beaugency is a
+Marquis; he is twenty-five; he is ambitious--I should like a husband
+vastly who was longing to reach high offices of state. Greatness has its
+own particular merit."
+
+"Then marry Monsieur de Beaugency."
+
+"I have thought of that, also; but this poor Monsieur de Menneval."...
+
+"Very good," exclaimed the King, laughing: "now I see to what purpose
+the oranges are destined. Monsieur de Menneval pleases you; Monsieur de
+Beaugency would suit you just as well; and since one can't have more
+than one husband, you make them each jump in turn."
+
+"Just so, Sire. But observe what happens."
+
+"Ah, what does happen?"
+
+"That, unwilling and unable to play unfairly, I take equal pains to
+catch the two oranges as they come down; and that I catch them both,
+each time."
+
+"Well, are you willing that I should take part in your game?"
+
+"You, Sire? Ah, what a joke that would be!"
+
+"I am very clumsy, Marchioness. To a certainty, in less than three
+minutes Beaugency and Menneval, will be rolling on the floor."
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed the lady; "and if you have any preference for one or the
+other?"
+
+"No; we'll do better. Look, I take the two oranges ... you mark them
+carefully--or, better still, you stick into one of them one of these
+toilet pins, making up your own mind which of the two is to represent
+Monsieur de Beaugency, and leaving me, on that point, entirely in the
+dark. If Monsieur de Beaugency touches the floor, you shall marry his
+rival; if it happen just otherwise, you shall resign yourself to become
+an ambassadress."
+
+"Excellent! Now, Sire, let's see the result."
+
+The King took the two oranges and plied shuttle with them above his
+head. But at the third pass, the two rolled down upon the embroidered
+carpet, and the Marchioness broke out into a merry fit of laughter.
+
+"I foresaw as much," exclaimed his Majesty. "What a clumsy fellow I am!"
+
+"And we more puzzled than ever, Sire?"
+
+"So we are, Marchioness; but the best thing we can do, is to slice the
+oranges, sugar them well, and season them with a dash of West India rum.
+Then you can beg me to taste them, and offer me some of those preserved
+cherries and peaches that you put up just as nicely as my daughter
+Adelaide."
+
+"And Monsieur de Menneval? and Monsieur de Beaugency?" said the
+Marchioness, in piteous accents. "How is the question to be settled?"
+
+Louis XV. began to cogitate.
+
+"Are you quite sure," said he, "that both of them are in love with you?"
+
+"Probably so," returned she, with a little coquettish smile, sent back
+to her from the mirror opposite.
+
+"And their love is equally strong?"
+
+"I trust so, Sire."
+
+"And I don't believe a word of it."
+
+"Ah!" said the Marchioness, "but that is, in truth, a most terrible
+supposition. Besides, Sire, they are on their way hither."
+
+"Both of them?"
+
+"One after the other: the Marquis at one o'clock precisely; the Baron at
+two. I promised them my decision to-morrow, on condition that they would
+pay me a final visit to-day."
+
+As the Marchioness finished, the valet, who had announced the King, came
+to inform his mistress, that Monsieur de Beaugency was in the
+drawing-room, and solicited the favour of admission to pay his respects.
+
+"Capital!" said Louis XV., smiling as though he were eighteen; "show
+Monsieur de Beaugency in. Marchioness, you will receive him, and tell
+him the price that you set upon your hand."
+
+"And what is the price, Sire?"
+
+"You must give him the choice--either to renounce you, or to consent to
+send in to me his resignation of his appointments, in order that he may
+go and bury himself with his wife on his estate of Courlac, in Poitou,
+there to live the life of a country gentleman."
+
+"And then, Sire?"
+
+"You will allow him a couple of hours for reflection, and so dismiss
+him."
+
+"And in the end?"
+
+"The rest is my concern." And the King got up, taking his dog and his
+gun, and concealed himself behind a screen, drawing also a curtain, that
+he might be completely hidden.
+
+"What is your intention, Sire?" asked the Marchioness.
+
+"I conceal myself like the kings of Persia, from the eyes of my
+subjects," replied Louis XV. "Hush, Marchioness."
+
+A few moments later, and Monsieur de Beaugency entered the room.
+
+
+                              II.
+
+
+The Marquis was a charming cavalier; tall, slight, with a moustache
+black and curling upwards, an eye sparkling and intelligent, a Roman
+nose, an Austrian lip, a firm step, a noble and imposing presence.
+
+The Marchioness blushed slightly, at sight of him, but offered him her
+hand to kiss; and as she begged him by a gesture to be seated, thus
+inwardly took counsel with herself.
+
+"Decidedly, I believe that the test is useless; it is Monsieur de
+Beaugency whom I love. How proud shall I be to lean upon his arm at the
+court-fetes! With what delight shall I keep long watches in the cabinet
+of his Excellency the Ambassador, whilst he is busy with his Majesty's
+affairs!"
+
+But after this "aside," the Marchioness resumed her gracious and
+coquettish air; as though the woman comprehended the mission of refined
+gallantry which was reserved for her seductive and delicate epoch by an
+indulgent Providence, that laid by its anger and its evil days for the
+subsequent reign.
+
+"Marchioness," said Monsieur de Beaugency, as he held in his hands the
+rosy fingers of the lovely widow, "it is fully a week since you received
+me!"
+
+"A week? why, you were here yesterday!"
+
+"Then I must have counted the hours for ages."
+
+"A compliment which may be found in one of the younger Crebillon's
+books!"
+
+"You are hard upon me, Marchioness."
+
+"Perhaps so, ... it comes naturally ... I am tired."
+
+"Ah, Marchioness! Heaven knows that I would make of your existence one
+never-ending fete!"
+
+"That would, at least, be wearisome."
+
+"Say a word, Madam, one single word, and my fortune, my future
+prospects, my ambition!"--
+
+"You are still then as ambitious as ever?"
+
+"More than ever, since I have been in love with you."
+
+"Is that necessary?"
+
+"Beyond a doubt. Ambition--what is it but honours, wealth, the envious
+looks of impotent rivals, the admiration of the crowd, the favour of
+monarchs?... And is not one's love unanswerably and most triumphantly
+proved, in laying all this at the feet of the woman whom one adores?"
+
+"You may be right."
+
+"I may be right, Marchioness! Listen to me, my fair lady-love."
+
+"I am all attention, sir."
+
+"Between us, who are well-born, and consort not with plebeians, that
+vulgar and sentimental sort of love, which is painted by those who write
+books for your mantuamakers and chambermaids, would be in exceedingly
+bad taste. It would be but slighting love and making no account of its
+enjoyments, were we to go and bury it in some obscure corner of the
+Provinces, or of Paris--we, who belong to Versailles--living away there
+with it, in monotonous solitude and unchanging contemplation!"
+
+"Ah!" said the Marchioness, "you think so?"
+
+"Tell me, rather, of fetes that dazzle one with lights, with noise, with
+smiles, with wit, through which one glides intoxicated, with the fair
+conquest in triumph on one's arm ... why hide one's happiness, in place
+of parading it? The jealousy of the world does but increase, and cannot
+diminish it. My uncle, the Cardinal, stands well at court. He has the
+King's ear, and better still, the Countess's. He will, ere long, procure
+me one of the Northern embassies. Cannot you fancy yourself Madame the
+Ambassadress, treading the platform of a drawing-room, as royalty with
+royalty, with the highest nobility of a kingdom--having the men at your
+feet, and the women on lower seats around you, whilst you yourself are
+occupant of a throne, and wield a sceptre?"
+
+And as Monsieur de Beaugency warmed with his own eloquence, he gently
+slid from his seat to the knees of the Marchioness, whose hand he
+covered with kisses.
+
+She listened to him, with a smile on her lips, and then abruptly said to
+him:
+
+"Rise, sir, and hear me in turn. Are you in truth sincerely attached to
+me?"
+
+"With my whole soul, Marchioness!"
+
+"Are you prepared to make every sacrifice?"
+
+"Every one, Madam."
+
+"That is fortunate indeed; for to be prepared for all, is to accomplish
+one, without the slightest difficulty; and it is but a single one that I
+require."
+
+"Oh, speak! Must a throne be conquered?"
+
+"By no means, sir. You must only call to mind that you own a fine
+chateau in Poitou."
+
+"Pooh!" said Monsieur de Beaugency, "a shed."
+
+"Every man's house is his castle," replied the widow. "And having called
+it to mind, you need only order post-horses."
+
+"For what purpose?"
+
+"To carry me off to Courlac. It is there that your almoner shall unite
+us, in the chapel, in presence of your domestics and your vassals, our
+only witnesses."
+
+"A singular whim, Marchioness; but I submit to it."
+
+"Very well. We will set out this evening.... Ah! I forgot."
+
+"What, further?"
+
+"Before starting, you will send in your resignation to the King."
+
+Monsieur de Beaugency almost bounded from his seat.
+
+"Do you dream of that, Marchioness?"
+
+"Assuredly. You will not, at Courlac, be able to perform your duties at
+court."
+
+"And on returning?"
+
+"We will not return."
+
+"We will--not--return!" slowly ejaculated Monsieur de Beaugency. "Where
+then shall we proceed?"
+
+"Nowhere. We will remain at Courlac."
+
+"All the winter?"
+
+"And all the summer. I count upon settling myself there, after our
+marriage. I have a horror of the court. I do not like the turmoil.
+Grandeur wearies me.... I look forward only to a simple and charming
+country life, to the tranquil and happy existence of the forgotten lady
+of the castle.... What matters it to you? You were ambitious for my
+love's sake. I care but little for ambition; you ought to care for it
+still less, since you are in love with me."
+
+"But, Marchioness--"
+
+"Hush! it's a bargain.... Still, for form's sake, I give you one hour to
+reflect. There, pass out that way; go into the winter drawing-room that
+you will find at the end of the gallery, and send me your answer upon a
+leaf of your tablets. I am about to complete my toilet, which I left
+unfinished, to receive you."
+
+And the Marchioness opened a door, bowed Monsieur de Beaugency into the
+corridor, and closed the door upon him.
+
+"Marchioness," cried the King, from his hiding place and through the
+screen, "you will offer Monsieur de Menneval the embassy to Prussia,
+which I promise you for him."
+
+"And you will not emerge from your retreat?"
+
+"Certainly not, Madame; it is far more amusing to remain behind the
+scenes. One hears all, laughs at one's ease, and is not troubled with
+saying any thing."
+
+It struck two. Monsieur de Menneval was announced. His Majesty remained
+snug, and shammed dead.
+
+
+                                   III.
+
+
+Monsieur de Menneval was, at all points, a cavalier who yielded nothing
+to his rival, Monsieur de Beaugency. He was fair. He had a blue eye, a
+broad forehead, a mouth that wore a dreamy expression, and that somewhat
+pensive air which became so well the Troubadours of France in the olden
+time.
+
+We cannot say whether Monsieur de Menneval had perpetrated verse; but he
+loved the poets, the arts, the quiet of the fields, the sunsets, the
+rosy dawn, the breeze sighing through the foliage, the low and
+mysterious tones of a harp, sounding at eve from the light bark
+shooting over the blue waters of the Loire--all things in short that
+harmonize with that melodious concert of the heart, which passes by the
+name of love.
+
+He was timid, but he passionately loved the beautiful widow; and his
+dearest dream was of passing his whole life at her feet, in well chosen
+retirement, far from those envious lookers-on who are ever ready to
+fling their sarcasms on quiet happiness, and who dissemble their envy
+under cloak of a philosophic scepticism.
+
+He trembled, as he entered the Marchioness's boudoir. He remained
+standing before her, and blushed as he kissed her hand. At length,
+encouraged by a smile, emboldened by the solemnity of this coveted
+interview, he spoke to her of his love, with a poetic simplicity and an
+unpremeditated warmth of heart--the genuine enthusiasm of a priest, who
+has faith in the object of his adoration.
+
+And as he spoke, the Marchioness sighed, and said within herself:
+
+"He is right. Love is happiness. Love is to be two indeed, but one at
+the same time; and to be free from those importunate intermeddlers, the
+indifference or the mocking attention of the world."
+
+She remembered, however, the advice of the King, and thus addressed the
+Baron:
+
+"What will you indeed do, in order to convince me of your affection?"
+
+"All that man can do."
+
+The Baron was less bold than Monsieur de Beaugency, who had talked of
+conquering a throne. He was probably more sincere.
+
+"I am ambitious," said the widow.
+
+"Ah!" replied Monsieur de Menneval, sorrowfully.
+
+"And I would that the man, whom I marry, should aspire to every thing,
+and achieve every thing."
+
+"I will try so to do, if you wish it."
+
+"Listen; I give you an hour to reflect. I am, you know, the King's
+god-daughter. I have begged of him an embassy for you."
+
+"Ah!" said Monsieur de Menneval, with indifference.
+
+"He has granted my request. If you love me, you will accept the offer.
+We will be married this evening, and your Excellency the Ambassador to
+Prussia will set off for Berlin immediately after the nuptials. Reflect;
+I grant you an hour."
+
+"It is useless," answered Monsieur de Menneval; "I have no need of
+reflection, for I love you. Your wishes are my orders: to obey you is my
+only desire. I accept the embassy."
+
+"Never mind!" said she, trembling with joy and blushing deeply. "Pass
+into the room, wherein you were just now waiting. I must complete my
+toilet, and I shall then be at your service. I will summon you."
+
+The Marchioness handed out the Baron by the right-hand door, as she had
+handed out the Marquis by the left; and then said to herself:
+
+"I shall be prettily embarrassed, if Monsieur de Beaugency should
+consent to end his days at Courlac!"
+
+Thereupon, the King removed the screen and reappeared.
+
+His Majesty stepped quietly to the round table, whereupon he had
+replaced the oranges, and took up one of them.
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed the Marchioness, "I perceive, Sire, that you foresee the
+difficulty that is about to spring up, and go back accordingly to the
+oranges, in order to settle it."
+
+As his sole reply, Louis XV. took a small ivory handled pen-knife from
+his waistcoat pocket, made an incision in the rind of the orange, peeled
+it off very neatly, divided the fruit into two parts, and offered one to
+the astonished Marchioness.
+
+"But, Sire, what are you doing?" was her eager inquiry.
+
+"You see that I am eating the orange."
+
+"But--"
+
+"It was of no manner of use to us."
+
+"You have decided then?"
+
+"Unquestionably. Monsieur de Menneval loves you better than Monsieur de
+Beaugency."
+
+"That is not quite certain yet; let us wait."
+
+"Look," said the King, pointing to the valet, who entered with a note
+from the Marquis, "You'll soon see."
+
+The widow opened the note, and read:
+
+"Madam, I love you--Heaven is my witness; and to give you up is the
+most cruel of sacrifices. But I am a gentleman. A gentleman belongs to
+the King. My life, my blood are his. I cannot, without forfeit of my
+loyalty, abandon his service----."
+
+"Et cetera," chimed in the King, "as was observed by the Abbe Fleury, my
+tutor. Marchioness, call in Monsieur de Menneval."
+
+Monsieur de Menneval entered, and was greatly troubled to see the King
+in the widow's boudoir.
+
+"Baron," said his Majesty, "Monsieur de Beaugency was deeply in love
+with the Marchioness; but he was more deeply still in love--since he
+would not renounce it, to please her--with the embassy to Prussia. And
+you, you love the Marchioness so much better than you love me, that you
+would only enter my service for her sake. This leads me to believe that
+you would be but a lukewarm public servant, and that Monsieur de
+Beaugency will make an excellent ambassador. He will start for Berlin
+this evening; and you shall marry the Marchioness. I will be present at
+the ceremony."
+
+"Marchioness," whispered Louis XV. in the ear of his god-daughter, "true
+love is that which does not shrink from a sacrifice."
+
+And the King peeled the second orange and eat it, as he placed the hand
+of the widow in that of the Baron.
+
+"I have been making three persons happy: the Marchioness, whose
+indecision I have relieved; the Baron, who shall marry her; and Monsieur
+do Beaugency, who will perchance prove a sorry ambassador. In all this,
+I have only neglected my own interests, for I have been eating the
+oranges without sugar.... And yet they pretend to say that I am a
+selfish Monarch?"
+
+
+
+
+                       THE MISSING MARINERS,
+
+                    A DREAM OF THE ARCTIC SEAS.
+
+     This fanciful sketch was written and published, before the fate of
+     Sir John Franklin and his Discovery Ships was known.
+
+
+There was not a curtain of any kind over the window.
+
+Now, there are few things that I dislike more than this total want of
+privacy in a bed-room. Opposite to a dead wall at a foot's distance, so
+that none but bogies could peer within, or looking out through a
+port-hole over the lonely sea, I confess to an almost old-maidenish
+particularity in this respect. Failing, therefore, in sundry efforts to
+substitute a great coat for a curtain, or even to delude myself into a
+sense of seclusion, by planting an open umbrella upon a chair before the
+window, I finally abandoned my efforts, determined to brazen it out,
+blew out my light, and tumbled into bed, not in the best of humours.
+
+You remember, perhaps, the bitter cold night and the flurry of a snow
+storm, that came abruptly upon us, a few weeks since. That was the time
+of which I write--the place was a country village. And what a freezing
+night it was! The east wind blew gustily and drearily. It was
+moonlight, but dull and grey; and as I lay in bed, without raising my
+head from the starveling bolster vainly eked out by a meagre carpet bag,
+I could see a single pine tree, on a steep bank right opposite my
+window, nodding, and bowing at me by fits and by starts, as though the
+capricious spirit of the night wind had bid it mock me. How I longed for
+the sight of a chimney-pot!
+
+There was no snow yet; but I listened to the rush of each driving blast,
+and shrunk, huddling under the clothes, from the chill it sent through
+me, as its keen edges forced their way through the crevices of the roof
+over my head. At length, and after much tumbling and tossing, I fell
+asleep--or believed that I did so; and presently I awoke again--or so it
+seemed to me. What was sleeping, and what was waking, I scarcely knew,
+that night.
+
+Suddenly, there, between us--between myself, I mean, and the white,
+shining hill-side--came an object, undefined in form but palpable in
+substance, waving gently to and fro, passing and repassing before the
+window, and at last appearing almost to touch it. Finally it became
+stationary there, yet still undulating with that soft tremulous motion
+which you may have noticed in the humming-bird, when, poised upon his
+delicate wings, he darts his slender tongue into the petals of a
+favourite flower. "What in the world is it?" I exclaimed; and had just
+fancied that I could see a few slight cords reaching from it upwards,
+above the upper edge of the window, when I distinctly heard a rap upon
+the pane, and sprung from my bed, in wonderment, but not in fear. The
+glass melted away--frame-work to the casement there was none--I passed
+outwards, unconscious how or wherefore. I was seated, warmly and
+comfortably seated, springing aloft into the moonlit and starry sky.
+
+Then I knew that it was a balloon. It rose at the instant, and sped
+rapidly through the air. The wind was strong, but blowing a steady gale;
+not in gusts now, as it had been. And I felt that it was from the south,
+for it was soft and balmy; and I knew that I was driving towards the
+Polar star, for I saw it; and saw it growing larger and more luminous.
+
+Then my spirit yearned after the missing Mariners; and I prayed Heaven
+that I might be on my way to find them.
+
+On we sped; but I was conscious, though the southerly gales were wafting
+me to the frozen regions of the North, that there was a spirit beneath
+or behind me, guiding the tiny car in which I was borne. I felt that he
+was there, though I strove in vain to detect his presence. Slily did I
+glance over my shoulder, abruptly did I turn my head, cautiously did I
+crane over the edge--I could not see him. I felt him directing my looks
+to what I beheld, shaping my thoughts whitherward they went; but it
+pleased him to remain invisible.
+
+It was yet night. Many rivers did we cross in our progress, some looking
+inky-black as they flowed between snowy banks, others dimly made out,
+and lost in the one unvaried tone. Lakes were there, too, and cities
+sparcely scattered. The latter were mostly slumbering in the same quiet
+as the former; but ascending from one I heard the alarm of a bell, and
+glanced downwards at a herd of figures who seemed to be fussing and
+fuming around a fire.
+
+And now, for a moment, I knew that I was dreaming; and oh, grievous
+disappointment, I half awoke to a consciousness that the vision was
+slipping away from me. How I clutched at it! how I hugged it, and
+refused to have a word to say to my senses! Did you never try this plan
+and succeed in it? If not, I would not give a fig for your dreams.
+
+But I caught up the thread of mine. Bravo! It was a narrow escape,
+though. They told me, next day, that there had been a false alarm of
+fire in the village, during the night. I would have been roasted alive,
+rather than not have dreamed out my dream.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Day-light, and early summer, and we were hovering over the icy land and
+icy sea, scarcely now distinguishable, one from other. Nor can I,
+indeed, describe much of what I saw; for methought, that we were driving
+hither and thither, not only in the dreary realm of the Frost-king, but
+up, and down, and athwart the ordinary current of times and seasons. So
+was there much confusion. Anon it was that awful Winter, whose cold will
+eat, like red-hot iron, into the unguarded flesh, or more fatal still,
+will palm off Death upon his victim under the alluring disguise of
+Slumber--Winter, with his terrible silence, more fearful than the roar
+of his fiercest hurricanes--Winter, with his blinding mantle of unbroken
+white, and his snowdrifts wherein cities might be engulphed--Winter,
+with his one redeeming beauty, one attendant goddess, one Aurora, the
+Borealis, whose coruscations were so marvellous to behold, so changeful,
+so grand, so brilliant, that I smiled in looking on them, to think that
+ever human skill had fabricated fire-works, and that their display could
+throw spectators into ecstacies.
+
+And anon it was the Arctic summer--and the blue waters peeped at
+intervals between giant pyramids of ice--pyramids, and pinnacles, and
+turrets, and all shapely and all shapeless masses. And these were
+floating in the sunlight--some majestically sailing through the ever
+opening spaces, coming never in contact with their fellows--others
+jarring, and crashing, and splintering into a thousand fragments, as the
+upheaving waves compelled them perilously to embrace each other; and
+their greeting was as the roar of thunder-storms. And uncouth walrusses
+were playing their clumsy antics on detached fragments of the ice, and
+the seal was basking in the sun, and the huge whale was spouting, and
+the seagull was skimming the surface of the loosened deep, dipping
+therein the tips of his wings, as though to assure himself that it was
+indeed liquid. Landward, too--for there was land, also, beneath us--I
+seemed to see the scanty blades of a dwarfish vegetation thrusting
+themselves pertinaciously through the snow; and anon the garb of the
+earth seemed changing from one universal white, to varied hues of brown
+and green.
+
+Those things and other such, rare and beautiful, were visible to the
+bodily eye; but the eye of my mind was not therewith content. It
+strained its utmost, but saw not what it longed for; and my voice broke
+out in bitterness, "Oh, the ships and the men, the men and the ships,
+the good Sir John and his daring crews!"
+
+Then I was conscious that my attendant spirit impelled the balloon in a
+direction hitherto unexplored, and lo! there beneath us was a ship--a
+ship, one of the objects of my search!
+
+A ship! and my heart bounded within me at the first glimpse I caught of
+it. But ah! how the blood curdled in my veins, when, at the next moment,
+I saw that the ship had not, and could not have occupants. Poor,
+ill-fated, ill-treated vessel; never surely did typhoon or whirlwind so
+displace thee from thy proper bearings. The troubled waters of the
+Atlantic or the Caribbean Sea might indeed have reared thee upwards, and
+plunged thee downwards, and made thee reel to and fro, like a drunkard;
+but it was alone the frozen waters of the Arctic, that could have forced
+thee into this unnatural position, and then cruelly nailed thee there,
+to rot into decay.
+
+Ay, stout ship _Erebus_ or _Terror_--I wot not which--there wert thou
+lying, or rather there didst thou stand upright, thy bows grovelling in
+the ice, thy stern uplifted high in air, thy keel propped up against a
+sheer precipice of ice, thy bowsprit shivered into splinters, thy masts
+and yards, and tackle, fallen all, and tangled in most inextricable
+confusion. One stick alone remained set out horizontally from the deck.
+From it drooped the tattered remnant of a flag; it was the blood-red
+standard of England!
+
+As the balloon glided downwards towards the wreck, I could have peered
+into the after-cabin windows; but a single glance had already satisfied
+me that no living being would be found on board. I have said that my
+blood curdled in my veins. Turning hastily with a sudden movement of
+indignation, I obtained a moment's glance at my guide--his form was
+shadowy; but by his hideous features I recognized him as Despair, and
+felt that he and I were one.
+
+But ho, a pleasant change! Down we floated, till my tiny car was almost
+on a level with the vessel's bows; and there--oh, joy of joys--were
+signs, palpable and undoubted, that the crew had fared better than their
+ship--that they had escaped, and were gone, and had carried what they
+pleased away with them. At one view I comprehended this--I read it in
+the aperture sawn through the doubled planking, and in the fragments of
+casks and cases with which the ice was bestrewn around. There was a
+board, too, with writing upon it, nailed up conspicuously; but I tried
+in vain to decipher it. Under the impulse of strong excitement, I again
+turned abruptly toward my guide; this time, I could not obtain a glimpse
+of him. Methought, however, that I heard a rustle like the sound of
+wings, and that the inflated silk over my head became suddenly tinted
+with the hues of the rainbow. And so I knew that I was under the
+guidance of Hope; and that Despair would trouble me no more. Whither my
+countrymen were gone I could not conjecture; but, at least, I deemed
+them safe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Away, and away, we soared upwards and sped onwards; how far, and how
+long, I marked not. And lo, another object! not a ship--it is a house,
+this time; yes, a house in the lonely wilderness of that frozen ocean, a
+hut upon the waves of that boundless _mer de glace_. And it was
+fashioned in rude form; and the material was rough blocks of ice; and
+snow seemed to have been used as their cement. The roof was formed by
+poles and spars; and across them yet hung a sailcloth covering.
+Roundabout the hut was a lofty wall, built apparently to shelter it from
+storms, and snowdrifts; and the wall was built with the same material as
+the house, for Nature's plentiful quarry fails not in those Polar
+regions, if man's hand and man's axe be brought there, to hew and shape.
+But for whom the shelter, and whither had they gone, who tenanted it? I
+knew well that the long lost had been here. None but they--no miserable,
+wandering tribe of Esquimaux--could have left such unmistakable marks of
+forethought, and skill, and energy. Near by, too, was plainly visible
+the icy cradle wherein a vessel had been lying, and on an even keel. But
+ships and men were gone--gone, but how gone, and whither? Earnestly did
+I gaze for some solution of this mystery; and at length I solved it, ay,
+plain enough; a line along the surface of the ice became distinctly
+visible, rugged and indented indeed, but straight, and stretching far
+away to the Westward. Then was I assured that Sir John and his brave
+comrades had been here, that they had cut out a channel for their
+barque, and that the ice had closed in behind them, so soon as they had
+passed on their way. Yes, I was on their track. And again I heard the
+soft rustling of the wings of Hope; and the rainbow-tinted hues of the
+balloon were three-fold more brilliant than before.
+
+One other circumstance only could I note, ere we sped away again upon
+the search--all who came hither had not departed hence. Side by side, in
+a sheltered nook, beneath a towering pinnacle of ice, two wooden
+crosses, peering above the snow, told plainly that beneath it two of the
+Mariners were sleeping in death. And their names were rudely carved upon
+the crosses; but again my sight, though in some respects preternaturally
+sharpened, refused to satisfy my curiosity. Never mind, thought I, 'tis
+a small proportion in so large a company. We must all die once; and
+those who rest here, rest as well as though they were laid beneath the
+"long-drawn aisle;" and their bodies are more enduringly embalmed by the
+servants of the great Frost-King, than in olden days they could have
+been by the hand of the cunning men of Egypt.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Upwards, and onwards, and steering ever a Westwardly course. And lo, at
+length--oh, God be praised--yes I found the men I sought! Yes--no more
+doubt--there I saw them below me, although, with the caprice incident to
+dreams, I was prevented from dropping down in the midst of them, or
+rendering myself either visible or audible.
+
+A strange scene it was, independent of its surpassing interest. Rocky
+islands--vast packs and floes of ice--a lone ship beset, impeded,
+entangled--a hundred pairs of lusty arms at work with ice-saws and axes,
+striving to extricate her, by cutting a channel in the direction where
+open water was visible. A little apart from the busy groups stood one
+whom I instantly recognised as the Chief. Care had furrowed his brow,
+and somewhat whitened his locks, and bowed his vigorous form; but manly
+resolution was stamped upon his features, and command was in every
+gesture. Bethink you how I strove to shout--how I struggled even to
+throw myself down into their arms; but the dream-spell was on me; I was
+invisible, perforce, and my tongue refused to give utterance.
+
+How I watched them! and look, the burly seaman who is a few steps ahead
+of his comrades, tracking out the pathway to be dug--look, he starts as
+though a rattlesnake were issuing from the snow under his feet. What is
+it? He stoops, and I see his big brown hand tremble, as it assuredly
+would not have done, if picking up a burning grenade. What is it, bold
+tar, that moves thee thus? Ay, I see now, and know the cause, 'tis
+yonder little slip of gay coloured silk on which are printed a few short
+words. Jack could not read, it was evident enough; but he held up his
+prize, and called out something which I could not hear, and his
+mess-mates bounded to the spot. Foremost in the race was an athletic
+young man, in the threadbare uniform of a Midshipman, who had left his
+father's halls, five years ago, a beardless boy. Nor was the Chieftain
+himself the last. How did it pass rapidly from hand to hand, that little
+silken slip! How did its fall amongst them seem to change the whole
+spirit of the scene! But look again, a gesture from the Chief, not as
+one of authority this time, but rather as one of suggestion. It is
+obeyed, however, and a hundred heads are bared; and by the movements of
+their lips, I could see that every living man amongst them ejaculated a
+hearty "amen" to the Chieftain's short but earnest thanksgiving to
+Heaven, for the assistance now known to be at hand. Then I remembered
+that the brave Sir John was a pious and a God-fearing man; and that the
+veriest infidel sneers not at religion in the mouth of him, whose heart
+is fearless and true.
+
+Visible to me, if not audible, what extravagant demonstrations of joy
+ensued! I felt my little car vibrating to their force, as cheers, peal
+upon peal, came rolling up into the welkin. Singular was it, too, that
+though in my dream my ears were stopped, I could read in the expressive
+features of those rejoicing Mariners their varied emotions, as they
+vociferated their glee. I could see in their honest countenances, which
+cheer was for Old England--which for their Queen--which for their
+homes--which for their wives and little ones. Then they burst forth into
+grotesque dancing, and slapping of each others' hands, and jumping on to
+each others' backs, and a thousand merry antics, as though they were
+children just let loose from school. And anon, in their mirth, running
+races hither and thither, one, an officer amongst them, picked up
+another printed silken slip, in general aspect like the former, but
+addressed, it seemed, to the Chieftain by name. A second look would have
+been sufficient to master its contents, but the young man looked not the
+second time, he hurried with it straightway to Sir John. Rare instance
+this, methought, of the working of a high sense of honour!
+
+And the veteran, what did it convey to him? I saw not; but I saw a tear
+course down his furrowed cheek; and for the moment my ears were opened
+to hear his half-smothered ejaculation, "Jane, Jane, God bless
+thee--true wife, noble woman--we shall meet, thank God, we shall meet!"
+
+So I watched the merry throng, and strove in vain to catch portions of
+their earnest talk. Suddenly, all eyes were turned upon the Captain; he
+was speaking, and pointing to the West. A few words only seemed to come
+from his lips; but those surely were words of command. In a moment,
+every man, though half delirious with delight, seized upon his axe or
+his saw. Work recommenced; labour was distributed in gangs. Every arm
+was vigorously plied. The watch, descended from the mast-head to hear
+the wondrous tidings, mounted lustily again to his look-out station.
+Each man was busy at his post; and though there was perchance some
+display of increased energy and activity, you would not have surmised
+that these patient labourers had just exchanged the gathering gloom of
+Despair for the radiant smiles of Hope. O gallant hearts of oak, thought
+I--resolute, unflinching, enduring, in the prospect of the dreariest of
+fates--orderly, obedient, loyal, in the thrill of unexpected
+deliverance.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The remainder of my dream came upon me in snatches.
+
+Midway in a narrow strait, between lofty and sterile banks, a battered
+and crippled barque was steering South. I knew the place to be Behring's
+Straits, the vessel the Discovery Ship that I had just left amidst the
+ice. So bruised, however, was she, so rent, and strained, and
+maltreated, that but for the friendly aid of a consort's tow-rope, she
+could scarcely have adventured even on this comparatively easy
+navigation. At her peak floated the standard of England; but I strove in
+vain to make out the colours of her welcome escort. Once, I thought I
+saw plainly the Stars and Stripes of America; but these either faded
+away, or assumed the appearance of the double-headed eagle of Russia. Be
+that as it may, my sense of hearing was restored; and I could both hear
+and see signs of continuous rejoicing and festivity. Sounds of mirth,
+and song, and music, came upwards to me from those pleasant waters.
+Many a canoe, too, filled with outlandish people, visited the ships; all
+was wonder, and delight, and congratulation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hitherto there had been some consistency in my dream; for if my mode of
+seeing were dream-like and fantastical, what I saw had the
+verisimilitude of reality. But this was over, or at least was changed.
+In place of being seated in the car of a balloon, I was now in the
+maintop of Sir John's battered and leaky ship, a witness to what could
+only have existence in the wild imaginings of a vision. For, methought
+we were still steering to the South, when on our larboard hand uprose a
+range of lofty hills, upon which it seemed to me that I could almost
+have jumped. Down their sides rolled hundreds of little streams; and in
+the waters, waist-deep, were myriads of human beings, delving, and
+scraping, and washing, and picking up what seemed to me to be gold. But
+they paused in their busy occupations, when they saw the approach of the
+ships; and, holding up shining masses of the golden ore, shouted to the
+long missing mariners to come to the mines, and gather a plentiful
+harvest after their toils. Yardarm were we to the glittering hill-sides,
+and the miners wore the air of men who rarely tempted in vain; but the
+crew of the worn-out ship gaily shook their heads, laughed a pleasant
+little laugh of defiance, and the words, "home, home," came floating up
+to me from her deck.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another trial. The men had theirs, and were staunch. It was the master's
+turn. Heading still to the southwards, but almost becalmed, I saw a
+swift steamer ranging fast up with us from astern. This time the Stars
+and Stripes were plainly evident. She came alongside. Her captain was on
+our deck in a moment, and engaged in earnest conversation with the good
+Sir John. By the wave of his hand and a word caught here and there, I
+knew that the kindly American was pressing the veteran to take passage
+in his steamer. He drew a little almanac from his pocket, and there
+seemed to be some comparison as to dates; but Sir John finally, with a
+moistened eye, touched the other on the shoulder, pointed upwards to the
+British ensign, and firmly shook his head. Away rushed the friendly
+steamer, and the crowding passengers on her deck took leave of us with
+reiterated cheers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My dream was drawing to a close; but I yet was housed snugly in my new
+position, when the look-out at the mast-head announced a sail. It might
+have been the same day, or the next, or a week later. But he announced a
+sail--then another--and another--and lastly a steamer under canvas. The
+squadron bore down upon us. It consisted of two line-of-battle-ships, a
+frigate, and a screw-propeller, under command of the British Admiral in
+the Pacific. The greetings and salutes were over, and official etiquette
+was somewhat relaxed under the intense excitement of the moment, when I
+heard in my dream, on the quarter-deck of the flag ship, the Admiral
+thus addressed the carpenter, with a certain meaning twinkle in his eye.
+"That leaky old tub can never swim round Cape Horn, Carpenter." "I think
+not, your Honour," discreetly replied Mr. Chips. "Youngster," continued
+the Admiral turning quickly to a little middy, "go to Captain B. with my
+compliments, and tell him to call an immediate survey on the Discovery
+Ship." The little middy touched his cap respectfully, and off he jumped
+with his message. "Mr. C.," cried the Admiral to the other midshipman
+who stood by the signal-locker, "signalize the propeller to light her
+fires, and get up all steam." In thirty seconds four bits of bunting
+flew out from the mizen royal-mast head.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The last object that I saw in my vision was the figure of a woman,
+walking the ramparts of an old Spanish city on the Pacific coast of
+Central America. Matronly, and dignified in her air and bearing, her
+featured bore the impress of past anxiety, but across them flitted at
+times the consciousness of approaching joy. She gazed wistfully ever and
+anon seaward; and my heart yearned to tell her all that I had so lately
+seen. The herd of vulgar gold-hunters, who thronged the battlements,
+respected her, for her long-continued sorrows, her abiding faith, her
+matchless perseverance. They pressed not on her steps.
+
+I, too, who knew more than they did, how I longed to see the
+meeting--but no, no, 'twere better that it should be sacred.
+
+I had not the choice; at this moment, forced upon my unwilling ears,
+through the key-hole came a tiny voice, "Please, Sir, mother says won't
+you get up; the stage will be here in ten minutes."
+
+
+
+
+                       WOMAN NEVER AT A LOSS.
+
+              _An Eastern Apologue--From the French._
+
+
+----I read her my manuscript; I had been abusing woman I must confess.
+Not a single good word could I say for the sex; and long did my
+companion and I battle the point. Many truisms, much that was strictly
+veritable had I brought forward, and she had been obliged to yield to
+the justice of almost all my remarks, though disclaiming against my
+slander at the same time. Finally--"You intend to marry, yourself?" she
+asked.
+
+"Certainly," I replied; "to find a woman bold enough to take me, after
+having convinced her that I knew all the duplicity of the sex, will
+henceforward be the dearest of my hopes."
+
+"Is this resignation or fatuity?"
+
+"That is my secret."
+
+"Well, then," she said, "most learned doctor of conjugal arts and
+sciences, permit me to relate to you a little Eastern apologue, that I
+read long ago in a small volume that was offered to us every year in the
+shape of an almanac." I bowed my delighted attention. The pretty
+creature threw herself back in her _chaise longue_, rested her little
+feet upon the fender, and fixed her arch dark eyes upon me.
+
+"At the commencement of the Empire," she began, "the ladies brought into
+fashion a game which consisted in accepting nothing from the person with
+whom one agreed to play, without saying the word 'Iadeste.' An affair of
+this kind lasted, as you may suppose, whole weeks, and the height of
+cleverness was to surprise one another into receiving a trifle without
+uttering the magic word."
+
+"Even a kiss?"
+
+"Oh! I have twenty times gained 'Iadeste' in that way," said she,
+laughing. "It was, I believe, about this time, apropos of this game of
+which the origin is either Arabian or Chinese, that my apologue obtained
+the honours of print."
+
+"But if I tell it to you," she interrupted, looking doubtfully at me,
+and passing her taper finger slowly across her lips, with a charmingly
+coquettish gesture, "promise me to insert it at the end of your book!"
+
+"Will you not be bestowing a treasure? I owe you already so many
+obligations, I do not hesitate to add this; therefore, I accept it at
+once." She smiled maliciously, and went on in these words.
+
+"A philosopher had compiled a very large collection of all the tricks
+our sex can play; and so, to guard himself against our wiles, he carried
+this constantly about him. One day, in travelling, he found himself near
+an Arabian encampment. A young woman, sitting under the shade of a
+palm-tree, got up suddenly, on the approach of the stranger, and invited
+him so obligingly to repose under her tent that he could not resist
+accepting. The husband of this lady was then absent. The philosopher had
+scarcely established himself upon the soft carpets, when his graceful
+hostess presented him with fresh dates and a vessel full of milk; he
+could not help seeing the rare perfection of the hands which offered the
+beverage and the fruit. But to recover from the confusion into which the
+charms of the young Arabian had thrown him, and whose snares he began to
+dread, the wise man drew out his book and read! The enchanting creature,
+piqued at this disdain, said to him in the sweetest voice, 'That book
+must be very interesting, since it seems to be the only thing you
+consider worthy of notice. Would it be an indiscretion to ask the name
+of the science of which it treats!' The philosopher replied without
+raising his eyes, 'The subject of this book is beyond the comprehension
+of woman.' This refusal excited more and more the curiosity of the young
+Arabian. She put forward the prettiest little foot that ever left its
+transient trace upon the fleeting sands of the desert. The sage began to
+waver; his truant looks would wander toward those dainty feet till his
+eyes, too powerfully tempted, finally mingled the flame of their
+admiration with the fire that darted from the ardent and black orbs of
+the young Asiatic. Again, then, she asked in her soft low tones, 'what
+is the book?' and the charmed philosopher replied, 'I am the author of
+this work. It contains a record of all the tricks that woman ever
+invented!'
+
+"'What! all--absolutely all?' inquired the daughter of the desert.
+
+"'Yes--all! And it is only in studying woman constantly, that I have
+been able to overcome my fear of them.'
+
+"'Ah!' said the Arabian, dropping the long lashes of her snowy eyelids;
+and then throwing suddenly upon the pretended sage the full lustre of
+her Eastern eyes she made him forget in one instant his valuable book
+and its invaluable contents. Behold my philosopher the most impassioned
+of men!
+
+"Thinking that he perceived in the manner of his young hostess a slight
+touch of coquetry, the stranger hazarded an avowal of his adoration. How
+could he have resisted? The sky was so blue, the sand shone in the
+distance like a blade of gold; the wind brought love upon its wings, and
+the wife of the absent Arab seemed to reflect all the brilliancy with
+which she was surrounded. Her bright eyes, too, became liquid; and she
+seemed, by a slight movement of her graceful head, to consent to listen
+to the honeyed words of the quondam philosopher.
+
+"The wise man was in a full tide of eloquence when the distant gallop of
+a horse was heard rapidly approaching.
+
+"'We are lost!' cried the alarmed Fatima; 'my husband is coming. He is
+jealous as a tiger, and still more fierce. In the name of the Prophet,
+and if you love your life, hide yourself in this chest!' The frightened
+author, seeing nothing else to do, rushed into the chest; his hostess
+shut it down, locked it, and took the key. She went to meet her spouse,
+and after several caresses, which put him into the best of humour, 'I
+must tell you,' said she, 'a very singular adventure.'
+
+"'I listen, my gazelle,' said the Arabian, seating himself upon a
+cushion and crossing big legs after the Oriental fashion.
+
+"'There came here to-day a kind of philosopher; he pretended to have
+collected in a book all the treacheries of which my sex is capable; and
+this false sage--spoke--to--me of love!'
+
+"'Well?'
+
+"'I listened to him!' At these words the Arab bounded like a lion, and
+drew his kangiar. The philosopher, from the bottom of the chest, heard
+all, and sent to the devil his book, woman, and all the men of Arabia
+Petrea.
+
+"'Fatima!' cried the husband, if you wish to live, answer! 'Where is the
+traitor?'
+
+"Horrified at the storm she had raised, Fatima threw herself at the feet
+of her lord, and trembling under the menacing steel of the poniard, she
+pointed out the coffer, with a single look, as prompt as it was timid.
+Then rising, ashamed, she drew the key from her girdle and gave it to
+her jealous lord. But--as he turned furiously from her, the malicious
+beauty burst into a shout of laughter, and laying her white hand upon
+his shoulder, 'Iadeste!' she exclaimed; 'at last, I shall have my
+beautiful gold chain! Give it to me; you have lost. Another time, Fazom,
+have a little better memory!' The husband stupefied, let fall the key,
+and presenting the golden chain, on his knees, offered his dear Fatima
+to bring her all the jewels of all the caravans that passed that year,
+if she would only give up such cruel methods of gaining the 'Iadeste.'
+Then, as he was an Arabian and did not like to lose his gold chain,
+though it was to his wife, he remounted his steed and went off,
+grumbling at his ease in the desert--for he loved Fatima too much to
+show her his regrets.
+
+"At last, the young woman released the philosopher more dead than alive
+from his prison, and said to him, gravely,
+
+"'Mr. Philosopher, don't forgot to insert this trick in your
+collection.'"
+
+
+
+
+                   MANDRAGORA--BY THE DOZEN.
+
+
+And so you cannot coax yourself off to sleep? Why? Were you beguiled by
+their exquisite flavour into rashly smoking three or four of those
+potent Regalias, with which your friend, the rich stock-broker,
+professes to aid the digestion of his guests, after a lengthened sitting
+at his luxurious table? Or did the rounded arm and taper fingers of his
+fair wife, presiding over the mysteries of the silver urn, tempt you to
+indulgence in too frequent cups of Souchong? Perhaps you are
+endeavouring, in spite of yourself, to solve some knotty problem in
+politics, or love, or chess, or mathematics. Perhaps you have a
+considerable bill to take up to-morrow, with a very slim balance at your
+banker's. Perhaps you have a heart-ache; perhaps a head-ache. At any
+rate, your nerves and senses are painfully strained; and you feel as
+though you would give the world and all, for a lullaby that would serve
+its purpose. My good Sir, compose your mind. If you can't sleep and
+dream, as you desire--dream and sleep. Reverse, I say, the common order.
+And do not sneer at the suggestion, unless you prefer tossing about all
+night in vain. The process is not only not impossible; it is not half
+so difficult as you might suppose, presuming--as I have a right to
+presume, in regard to my reader--that your imagination is not hopelessly
+inert.
+
+Some persons recommend to the restless and wide-awake the repetition of
+scraps from books, in prose or verse, just as though every one had a
+plenteous store of "elegant extracts" garnered up in his memory, and as
+though authors specially aimed at being somniferous. There are indeed
+not a few among them, who unavoidably achieve this distinction; and the
+advice might not really be bad, if you could con over--once would be
+sufficient--Mr. A.'s last pamphlet on political economy, or the Rev. Mr.
+B.'s last sermon. On the whole however, inasmuch as your favourite
+passages--should you know any of them by heart--may be the very opposite
+of soothing in their tendencies, this mode of wooing slumber can
+scarcely be pronounced successful.
+
+You must commence, I say, by dreaming, if you would compel yourself
+gently to sleep; but before I proceed to introduce to you my list of
+available prescriptions in this line, I note one with which my readers
+may possibly be familiar, having learned it in their school-boy days.
+You will not now be told for the first time, that a drowsy sensation may
+be induced by musing upon--or dreaming of, which is the same thing--a
+field of tall and ripe barley, swept by fresh autumnal gales. The rise
+and fall of each bowed head, with its feathery and graceful spikes,
+combines well with the undulating motion of the whole and the varied
+play of light and shade. The idea is otherwise expressed by the British
+Laureate in "The Poet's Song," one of his minor pieces; "and waves of
+shadow," says he, "went over the wheat." Nevertheless it is clear that
+he missed the proper application of the thought, for, in place of
+lulling the beholder to forgetful repose, the sight seems to have made
+him break out into a song so loud that wild swans paused to listen in
+their flight, larks fluttered down to earth, swallows gave up hunting
+bees, snakes slipped under sprays, wild hawks stared over sparrows
+stricken under their claws, and the very nightingales were set
+a-thinking. Truly a sad perversion this of a golden opportunity! But
+your rhymsters were ever a crazy race. When they deal with their fellows
+generally, we all know how they botch poor human nature. What, then, can
+be expected, when poets undertake to figure out one of themselves?
+Still, let us improve the occasion. Barley-fields or wheat-fields are
+well enough in their way; only, if you conjure up this image, I would
+advise you to season it with an abundance of red poppies intermingled
+with the legitimate crop, and a very careful attempt on your part to
+number these interlopers one by one, preparatory, if so it please you,
+to flipping off their heads. With due allowance, therefore, for its lack
+of novelty, this dream may be admitted into our collection.
+
+And it may be proper to remark at the outset that, though the dreams
+whereof I propose to treat are sufficiently distinct in their kind, it
+is desirable, in the practical use of them, to run them one into
+another--to fuse them unconsciously as it were, without being over-nice
+as to the point at which one ends and another begins. It is not
+requisite, however, for this reason, that they should all be packed into
+one paragraph, like a daily paper's report of one of Mr. Morrill's
+speeches on the Tariff, or a Secretary of the Treasury's Report. You
+shall have each dainty conceit served up in its own dish, so that,
+furthermore by the way, you can take them in such order as suits your
+own good pleasure. This view of the matter relieves me also from the
+necessity of formal arrangement. It is altogether unimportant which
+fancy comes uppermost. The main thing is to shut off all thought
+concerning the actualities of life, eschewing reference to your loves,
+your hates, your wrestlings with circumstance, your mental cares, your
+bodily ailments. I repeat it: you must dream, if you would sleep.
+Counting the breezy barley-field above mentioned as one, I believe I can
+supply you with a dozen subjects.
+
+Your physical eye is closed, of course--your mind's eye being, on that
+account, all the more keenly alive to impression, and the better able to
+compass an unembarrassed range. Set it, then, upon a spiral stairway
+endless so far as I can imagine it, though you may perchance by looking
+earnestly upward discover whereto it leads, or by peering intently
+downward find out its base. But did I say a stairway? That was not what
+I meant; and dreamers, of all men, are at liberty to change or modify
+their views. I should have said an inclined plane. Let it be steep,
+smooth, slippery, broad enough to admit the passage of several figures
+simultaneously, and guarded by bannisters on either side. When, fatigued
+with the vain attempt to satisfy your doubts as to the safety of this
+strange structure, your curiosity craves enlightenment as to its uses, I
+pray you to observe how I would have it peopled. Sliding tumultuously
+adown the balustrades, lo and behold an innumerable throng of Cherubs in
+unbroken succession, coming whence and going whither you know not, but
+each the counterpart of his predecessors, and each flapping his little
+wings to maintain his balance, rendered precarious as it is by his
+inability to sit a-straddle. As for the inclined plane itself thus
+fantastically flanked, you soon perceive that it is the _via sacra_ of
+many an Ethardo, whom you have known in the flesh or in the
+spirit--Ethardo, the marvellous gymnast, who mounted and descended steep
+slopes at the Sydenham Crystal Palace, by trundling inflated balls
+beneath his feet. Up and down, down and up, some painfully and some
+skilfully pediculating, your Ethardi pass and repass each other,
+disorderly yet in order. Name them and salute them as they go by. You
+have probably more acquaintances among them than I; but I recognise
+Robinson Crusoe and Count Bismarck, Tarquinius Priscus and Horace
+Greeley, John Ruskin and Lucrezia Borgia, Mrs. Fry and Edgar Poe, Mr.
+Gladstone and Dion Boucicault, John Bright and Mrs. Grundy, Ben. Wade
+and Victor Hugo, Pio Nono and the Great Mogul. Note, too, the various
+material moulded into circular form, and blown up by way of ambulant
+footstool; now it is a crown, now a crozier, now a bag of gold, now a
+wind-bag, now a woman's heart, now a man's fame done up in a newspaper
+and properly puffed. Ring the changes upon these Ethardi and the motive
+power that each applies, O my wakeful friend; and at least you may lose
+sight of your own individuality. Or, take a slide down the banisters
+with the young Cherubs, and perchance you may touch bottom--in Lethe.
+
+Not so? Let us proceed. There's a man at our Club, whose reputation is
+so solidly built up, though on an ethereal basis, that I never knew any
+one presume to question it. He is an absolute master of one
+accomplishment; unrivalled, and--to the best of my belief, though I
+can't vouch for the fact--unenvied. Admiring spectators gather round him
+and applaud; but, if he have ambitious imitators, they rehearse in
+secret. So far, he does well--ay, with consummate tact and unfailing
+certainty--what few men can do at all, unless once in a while at dreary
+intervals, and then by accident. Not to keep you in suspense, which is
+antagonistic to repose and slumber, this young paragon contrives to
+throw off his cigar-smoke from his lips, at will, in an unerring series
+of the most lovely rings or wreaths, which, as they float and rise in
+tremulous succession, strangely fascinate the looker-on. It may be that
+this feat is not much of an achievement, morally or physically or
+intellectually considered. It may be also that the Club does not do
+itself much honour, in setting so high a value on this performance. But
+what will you? In the palmy days of Greece, a man acquired a certain
+celebrity by his precision and address in throwing peas through a
+needle's eye--the peas being, I presume, much smaller or the needles
+much larger, than any with which we sow or make soup in these degenerate
+days. Still, so highly do I appreciate perseverance in the acquirement
+of any difficult art, that I purpose doing much more for my proficient
+in smoke, than was done for his man of peas by Philip of Macedon. That
+bushel of ammunition was a scurvy reward. I confer immortality, by thus
+registering a fact and hinting a name. And I do this from a sense of
+gratitude, wherein I trust that you will participate, so soon as you
+perceive the connection that may surely be traced, between the smoke
+thus artistically and gracefully jetted into air, and the drowsiness by
+which you would fain be possessed. Do but imagine a score of your
+acquaintances round a table, each an adept in this way, and each filling
+the atmosphere with coronet after coronet of vapour thrown up from
+meerschaum or cheroot. Whose are the most frequent, whose the most
+perfect, whose retain their form the longest? Watch the little circlets
+as they wave and tremble; and award the palm of merit fairly. Nay, even
+if you tell me that you are innocent of the weed and nauseated by its
+odour, none the less shall this fantasy be available. I saw once a
+ship-of-war firing a salute; and lo, from one of the guns went up to the
+pure sky, in magnified proportions, just such a wreath as those I have
+described, as delicate yet as clearly defined, and touched withal with a
+suspicion of prismatic colours as it caught the rays of the sun. An
+enthusiastic painter might have deemed it an invisible Fairy's aureole;
+a sentimental milliner would have set it down as the flounce of her
+unseen robe. Whether the gunner of this occasion had taken a lesson from
+my friend at the Club, I cannot pretend to decide; I only assure you
+that I witnessed the phenomenon. You have, therefore, but to multiply as
+well as magnify. Think of a squadron, a fleet, all the navies of the
+world, sailing slowly and majestically in unending circuit, as the
+custom is when they bombard some hapless fort. The saluting is
+continuous; the movement never ceases; but the big cannon are noiseless
+now and harmless. Space is joyous with the innumerable wreaths of bluish
+vapour; but the red slaughter and the accursed tumult of the sea-fight
+are not heard or seen. Ponder long and lazily, I counsel you, over the
+evolutions of the ships and the convolutions of the smoke. Those may
+lure you, possibly, into the Waters of Oblivion; these may spirit you
+away to the land of the Lotos-Eaters.
+
+Another dream invites you; but it must be sketched with more reticence,
+and this for two reasons. In the first place, the subject has become
+identified with that portion of theatrical entertainments usually found
+to be the least soporific. In the second place, if your imagination were
+encouraged to free range hereupon, you might be foolish enough to
+connect its poetic motion and its charm with certain souvenirs of a
+certain fair friend of yours, whom it were wiser to forget if you desire
+to profit by this Mandragorean system. Briefly, then, I commend a
+Ballet, as not altogether unworthy of trial--but not, be it observed,
+that thing of gas lamps, and pink tights, and leers, and _poses
+plastiques_, over which young America goes into raptures. By no means.
+Picture to yourself a smooth sward beneath clustered pines, a tender
+moonlight, and Nymphs--not semi-nude as is the fashion of our day,
+neither affecting the contortions of the gymnast as in our modern
+caricature of dancing--but robed in swansdown, with nodding plumes and
+tasseled fuschias pendent, tripping it, if you will, on "light fantastic
+toe," yet through stately and solemn measures. You remember Giulio
+Romano's dance of Apollo and the Muses in the Pitti at Florence? Take
+that for your model; then place the figures to your liking. Nor forget
+to add an orchestra of Aeolian harps. Let them hang among the
+pine-branches, and sigh forth Weber's Last Waltz, just to set the groups
+in motion. Then fail not in your breathings, O soft night-wind; foot it
+daintily, ye wildwood Nymphs--so may sleep steal gently upon the
+restless one, while yet his ear and eye are unsated!
+
+Another dream: blue water again, though, this time, with a golden beach.
+It is calm; but the surf rolls in languidly, with low murmurous sound,
+as it will roll, be the sea's surface never so smooth, beyond the
+involuntary breakers. What graceful bends and curves are marked, for an
+instant, with frothy pencil, upon the shining sands! How they sparkle
+with evanescent light! How soon the tiny bubbles disappear! But you have
+watched all this, many and many a time; and stale indeed hereon were
+description and moralizing! Why, then, this present allusion? What is
+there in it, tending to lull the acuter sensibilities? What offers it of
+gently-soothing exercise to the overwrought and throbbing brain? This is
+the reply. Popular belief gives to every ninth or tenth wave, tumbling
+in upon the shore, supremacy over its fellows. It swells up into fuller
+volume. It sweeps landward with a more majestic force. This is the
+story; but I would have you test its correctness. Is it the ninth, or
+the tenth? So, lie down yonder upon the mass of dry sea-weed piled
+against the rocks, and count patiently a dozen, a score, a hundred, a
+thousand waves as they come in. You shall tell me, to-morrow morning,
+whether the ninth have it, or the tenth--whether there be any regularity
+at all.
+
+Again: if we do not, like the Roman Augurs, watch and interpret the
+flight of birds as of good or evil omen, some of them--I mean some of
+the birds, not of the Augurs--may help us to become, for a while,
+independent of fate and fortune. Did you ever, for instance, sit at a
+window on a summer's evening, and take note how a flight of swallows
+skims the air? They are not very numerous, perhaps; but as they dart to
+and fro, and cross and recross before you, their number appears
+indefinite, and the zigzag peculiarity of their movements can only be
+verified by the closest possible scrutiny. I have satisfied myself that
+the motion is regular, and that it describes an elongated figure of 8,
+traced as I am sure you have often traced it upon ice with the outer
+edge of your skates. Now, though I tell you this on the faith of my own
+personal observation, you are not bound to accept my word for it. Dream
+therefore that, while you are blending two ovals into one figure upon
+the frozen pond, swallows overhead are keeping time to your gyrations.
+The winter sport and the summer bird may be made to harmonize, as it is
+only in a dream; and close watching will enable you hereafter to support
+or disavow my theory.
+
+Again: return, if you please, from air to water, for you have by no
+means exhausted the resources of this latter element, in the way of
+material for dreams. Are you an angler? Did you never drowse and doze
+over your rod, when "sitting in a pleasant shade," on a sultry
+afternoon, not a nibble disturbed the equanimity of your float? The mere
+thought were suggestive of a nap--suggestive, that is, to the indolently
+disposed, with whom however you may not be classed, seeing that your
+mind is in a state of unwholesome excitement, the which it is my
+business to allay. And so, I pray you, look deeper into this matter; pry
+down into the blue transparent depths, and mark the fish that swarm
+about your hook. Is it paste thereon, or a wriggling worm? Never mind;
+the bait is singularly attractive. To say nothing of the float gently
+bobbing ever and anon, and of the tell-tale ripples rising to the
+surface, you can see with your own eyes how victims dally with
+temptation; how they course to and fro, and round and round; how one
+eyes the bait, and another smells it, and another mumbles it; how one
+swims away, and presently returns, and with him his mate in size and
+colour. Are they over-fed or over-cautious, that they thus play round,
+but will not gorge? Does one egg on his brother to try the suspicious
+morsel, hoping himself to profit by his brother's experience? Is there
+so much resemblance to human foibles discernible down there, among these
+poor little inhabitants of the waters under the Earth? The question is
+worth studying out--especially by a sleepless man, who, while
+contemplating the forms, the motions, the manners, and the minds of
+fish, may unconsciously swallow the bait that is thus dropped before
+him.
+
+It was my intention to devote a long and distinct paragraph to each of
+four other subjects, that appear to me no less adapted for the
+consideration of waking dreamers. These are, respectively, Ghosts,
+Labyrinths, Regattas, and the Eleven Thousand Virgins of Cologne. But it
+is well to leave something to the reader's perspicacity and inventive
+powers. Indeed, why should he not fancy--dream is the more appropriate
+term--that he himself has undertaken to complete these special
+paragraphs? Let his imaginary pen glide, swift and effortless, over his
+imaginary foolscap. Ten to one, he will fill in and elaborate my
+outlines, far better than I could work them out myself. For instance, I
+do but mention Ghosts; he might summon to his presence, and bid troop
+before him, hosts upon hosts of his friends or relatives, or of his
+chosen heroes and heroines in romance and history. He might clothe them
+in white or in grey; he might attire them in their ordinary habiliments;
+in short, he might parade them according to his own taste, without
+reference to mine, which whould be a clear point in his favour.
+Accidentally, I might call up some spirit that had vexed and thwarted
+him through life, for no man whose experience is worth remembering hath
+not had his enemies, hidden or revealed, and very few are the men, fewer
+the women, who have never disposed of a rival. My reader of the moment,
+invested with my functions, will of course evoke none but his familiars,
+the well-bred and well-behaved. Let me be grateful accordingly that, by
+transferring the responsibility to him, I escape the chance of bringing
+forward, innocently and inopportunely, some social Banquo. And so I pass
+on, with one single word of caution to my substitute in completing this
+paragraph: let him not convert his pen into a Pre-Raphaelitish
+paint-brush. Airy beings must be rather hinted than described. The
+realism of anatomical plates, applied to them, would spoil the reader's
+dream _in toto_, and wake him up perhaps more hopelessly than ever.--As
+to Labyrinths, the course is obvious. Take a dozen of these quaint
+contrivances, and place them side by side, as Paulsen or Paul Morphy may
+place the sundry chess-boards whereat he is to play, simultaneously and
+blindfolded, an equivalent number of games. Pop, over the hedges and
+into the very core of each one, any personage against whom you have a
+grudge, or any one of the Ghosts just convened that may have been
+troublesome; and then challenge the incarcerated individuals to find
+their way out of limbo, by the gravelled pathways. Should one of the
+whole number emerge, through extraordinary good luck, quietly tip him
+back again over the hedge, or defy him to retrace his steps and regain
+the centre. You may enlarge this suggestion, I think, into a paragraph
+reasonably long.--The same with Regattas. I am almost sorry that I gave
+up to you so felicitous a topic; for all ages and all waters may be laid
+under contribution. From Noah's Ark shall float the commodore's broad
+pendant. The ocean shall be covered, so far as eye can range, with
+countless craft of every build and rig. And all shall glide about in
+quiet, inasmuch as oars shall be muffled, and steamers, having learned
+to consume their own smoke, shall be taught equally to swallow their
+hideous noises. The marshalling of the competitors and the order of the
+racing are left to your discretion; but there need be no lack of
+interest. Caiques from Stamboul and gondolas from Venice shall be
+frequent; and pirogues from the Malayan peninsula shall over-haul the
+three trim yacht-schooners that raced across the Atlantic from New-York.
+Here Cleopatra's barge shall be matched against an Esquimaux kayak;
+there a catamaran from Coringa shall bump the Yale College eight. If
+you cannot make something out of all this picturesque confusion, and if
+you cannot contrive to lose therein both yourself and the reader of your
+paragraph, the fault will be yours, not mine.--There remain the Eleven
+Thousand Virgins of Cologne. What are you to do with them? Simply this.
+Endow each one of them with personal attributes; let each have form and
+features, distinct from the others of her sisterhood. Is the task
+difficult? So much the better. After a cool thousand or so of these
+individual portraitures, you may begin to fumble in vain for separate
+identities. In fact, who knows whether you may not be compelled to take
+refuge hopelessly in sleep, the very mark at which both of us are
+aiming?
+
+And now, the foregoing long and subdivided paragraph being brought at
+last to an end, it were disingenuous to shirk an admission, that the
+"who's who" is not so plainly discernible therein as it might be. You
+and I, and the reader and the writer, and the giver and recipient of
+advice, will be accused by the critic of being somewhat queerly mixed
+up. What, then? Are not vagueness and uncertainty of style specially
+appropriate to the circumstances? Who would thank us for precision? No,
+no; carry clearness, if you like, into your mathematical definitions;
+but leave us our mistiness when we treat of the mysterious. Nor, on the
+whole, am I otherwise than content with my suggested assumption of
+temporary and imaginary authorship, as one of the methods for quieting
+a fevered brain. How pleasant to dream that rival Publishers are
+contending for your manuscript poems; that rival Managers are waylaying
+you for a sight of your unwritten comedy! Besides, by adding authorship
+to the list that closed with the damsels of Cologne, the number is
+brought up to eleven, so that, when I wind up with my trump card, the
+promised dozen of dreams will be complete, and I shall be enabled to
+dispense with the "waves of shadow" on the wheat-field, which I
+acknowledged were not my original conception.
+
+But am I too late in bringing forward my last and happiest idea?--though
+for that matter, when the tale of Mazeppa was concluded, "the King had
+been an hour asleep," and yet Mazeppa's story was told out ne'ertheless.
+For your immediate purpose therefore, or for use on your next sleepless
+night, I entrust you with the crowning opiate. Recollect that you are
+dreaming; and dream that all your intimates and relatives, all of whom
+you have ever heard or read with interest, men and women and children,
+people of every age and clime--imagine them, I say, all seated before
+you at a round table. How any table is to accommodate so vast a
+multitude, is their affair, and yours; the dreamer is never baulked by
+technical impediments. Have your eye upon them all at once--another
+little difficulty, to be overcome only by mortals in the incipient stage
+of somnolency. Or, if your mind's eye obstinately refuses to enlarge its
+orbit in this direction, so as to embrace such a vast and heterogeneous
+assemblage, gather, I beseech you, into one focus any such crowd as you
+habitually see. The Sunday audience of the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher
+will answer the purpose; or you may fancy yourself at one of the old
+Tammany Hall Meetings; or at the Opera, on a fashionable night; or in
+the Senate at Washington during the impeachment of Mr. Johnson. It
+matters not when and where; but the proceedings strike you as
+insufferably dull, and you give vent to your feelings in a yawn that may
+neither be suppressed nor concealed. Suddenly, moved by the same impulse
+and unable also to control or hide its effect, the jaw of every soul
+present is dropped to the lowermost, and all mouths are open in a
+universal yawn. It is not catching; it is caught. Beecher gapes, and the
+elect are gaping round him. Isaiah Rynders the same, and the same with
+his "unterrified" hearers. Parepa-Rosa stands open-mouthed in dumb show
+of singing, while humming-birds perched on chignons vibrate, as they
+vainly try to resist the irresistible. Gape the Republicans, and gape
+the Democrats, in response to the gaping Butler on his legs. There is,
+in Shakespeare's words--though his ignorant editors have transformed it
+into a "gap"--there is, I say, "a gape in Nature." Will you alone hold
+out: I can't believe it. You have yawned in concert, I am morally
+certain. Indeed, if, as these long-drawn prescriptions come to an end,
+you be not far on the road to forgetfulness, I can give you but one
+parting counsel. Nothing else can serve and save you--you must
+incontinently take morphine.
+
+
+
+
+                    DOCTOR PABLO'S PREDICTION.
+
+     Doctor Pablo went back a lonely man, to his old mother, in France,
+     after having passed twenty years in the  Philippines.--
+
+
+He did so. We can vouch thus much for the correctness of _Household
+Words_ of the 6th inst., whence the above-named quotation is copied. And
+as the subject of it is a remarkable personage, and this unexpected
+meeting with him in print has revived in us not a few pleasant
+recollections, we will take the liberty of informing our readers how we
+came to have personal knowledge of Don Pablo--for this, and not Doctor
+Pablo, was his cognomen, at least amongst his friends.
+
+Embarking at Bombay, many a long year since, in the East India Company's
+steamer _Atalanta_, for passage up the Red Sea, we soon fell into
+acquaintance with a party of foreigners, partially isolated as they were
+from the crowd of Anglo-Indians--men, women, and children--returning by
+the over-land route to their native country. They (the foreigners) were
+five in number, two Frenchmen, two Dutchmen, and a Spaniard. Of the
+three last-mentioned we have small recollection. Of the Frenchmen, one
+was Don Pablo.
+
+The other, who headed the whole party, was Monsieur Adolphe Barrot, a
+brother of Odilon and Ferdinand Barrot, whose names are familiar to
+those conversant with recent French history. He was at the time bound to
+Paris, on leave, from his post of Consul-General at Manilla. At an early
+period of his career he had been attached to the French Legation at
+Washington, or at least had travelled through this country.
+Subsequently, when Consul at Carthagena, he distinguished himself by his
+resolute and humane interposition on occasion of a certain revolutionary
+outbreak. After his return from the East, he served as French Minister
+to Naples and to Lisbon, and now, we believe, holds the same appointment
+at Brussels. Between this man of cultivated mind, polished manners, and
+companionable qualities, and Don Pablo, whose exterior smacked but
+little of intercourse with "the world," there was evidently a bond of no
+common sort. Blunt, earnest, truthful, with quick perceptions and
+impulses of the kindest nature, there was something very fresh and
+irresistibly attractive in the character of Don Pablo. We did not wonder
+at the intimacy. Opposites are drawn together. In friendly and social
+intercourse the time sped away.
+
+At that period, the steamers bound from Bombay to Suez touched at
+Cosseir, a port two days' sail South of Suez, and about 150 miles East
+of Thebes on the Nile. The object was to land passengers who cared to
+cross the intervening Desert, as the quickest mode of gaining Upper
+Egypt. To Cosseir we were ourselves destined; our new friends being on
+their way direct to France, _via_ Suez, Cairo, and the Mediterranean,
+and having made none of the ordinary provision for the less-frequented
+route. But we plied them strongly with argument and entreaty, to divert
+them from their intended limited course; not forgetting the threat of
+ridicule in a Parisian drawing-room, where a man who had missed such a
+chance would never be able to hold up his head. Finally, they consented.
+After a voyage of sixteen days, the coaling process at Aden included,
+three groups of travellers landed at Cosseir. We had dealings with two
+of them.
+
+For although we had persuaded Mr. Barrot, Don Pablo and their
+associates, to take our route, we could not precisely undertake to
+accompany them. We were to travel over the same ground, but not
+together; for we had engaged, ere we left Bombay, to join fortunes with
+a small party of veterans and valetudinarians who had made elaborate
+preparations for the journey, and were not sorry to have the aid of one
+who did not belong to either class, but who was perhaps for that very
+reason more competent than they themselves to take charge of their
+caravan. And then there was a lady, and a lady's maid, and a valet, and
+the thousand and one encumbrances that are incidental to such
+appendages. What scenes we had with the camel-drivers! What tons of
+baggage to be loaded! what irritations! what drollery! what delay!
+Landing early in the morning, the preparations for a start occupied us
+till a late hour in the afternoon; nor had we ever a more laboursome
+time of it. Lightly cumbered, and with only a twentieth part of the
+fuss, Don Pablo and the others had preceded us; but as the same
+camping-places in this five days' journey are generally frequented, we
+hoped to see them from time to time. Fortune kindly ordained that we
+should join them permanently.
+
+It was on a Saturday afternoon that we started from Cosseir, with a
+train "too numerous to mention." Night had fallen, ere we pitched our
+tents--the writer sharing that of Sir C. M. At day-light on the
+following morning, we strolled off to the French encampment; were again
+pressed to join its occupants; were again compelled reluctantly to
+refuse. Away they went. We returned to our own quarters, where to our
+horror, in place of hearing "boot and saddle" sounded, the edict was
+issued from my lady's tent, that there was to be no marching that day.
+Bah! how provoking! we could not ask for an honourable discharge; but
+how we longed to desert! Matters fell out, however, more pleasantly then
+we had a right to expect. Breakfast was served, with the elaborateness
+of a _fete champetre_, at eleven o'clock; and as the hostess gracefully
+poured out the coffee, the talk turned upon those who had sped onward.
+Presently, by a lucky chance, it occured to her, or to the nominal head
+of the party, that dawdling away a Sunday on a barren speck of
+Mahommedan sand was not in itself the essential duty of a plain
+Christian, nor specially agreeable to a man whose thoughts were keenly
+set upon the marvels of Luxor and Karnac. In short, it was mildly
+suggested to us that, as the organization and first move of the
+caravan--the real and only difficulties--were accomplished, there would
+be nothing ungallant in leaving the party to its more orthodox or more
+leisurely progress. Our coyness may be imagined; but we consented at
+length to take this view of the matter, and at noon called up our
+camels. Soon were our trunks and slender stock of kettles and sauce-pans
+slung upon one; ourselves astride of a second; and on a third, the Arab
+driver, with whom there was no communicating but by signs. A twelve
+hours' ride brought us at midnight to the tent of our friends--they
+having luckily found one available at Cosseir. We raised the canvas from
+the pegs, and saluted Don Pablo with a "Here I am!" Many years have
+elapsed since that night, but we can fancy now that we hear his genial
+rejoinder, "I knew you'd come!" In less time than it takes to tell it,
+we had edged in our bedding upon the sand, and were one of the
+Seven--no, six--Sleepers.
+
+Had not a _Howadji_ of this Western hemisphere made the Desert and the
+Nile so peculiarly his own, that it is presumption for a common pen to
+follow in his track, we might be tempted still further to ransack our
+memory for pleasant recollections of Don Pablo. Let it suffice to say,
+that with these pleasant companions we roughed it across the
+camel-track, in a style of discomfort and good humour rarely surpassed;
+explored the wonders of Thebes and the Tombs of the Kings; floated down
+to Cairo; clambered the Great Pyramid; smoked pipes with Pashas; and
+finally embarked at Alexandria, on the blue waters of the
+Mediterranean. The farewell was said at Syra, one of the islands of the
+Aegean. The "five we supped with yesternight" were bound to Malta and
+Marseilles--we to Athens and Constantinople. As we shook hands at
+parting with Don Pablo, he quietly remarked, with that cheerful gravity
+that so well became him, and in allusion to a young lady who had been
+our three days' acquaintance on board the steamer--"_Adieu, mon cher;
+vous epouserez Mademoiselle._"
+
+We never saw Don Pablo, but once afterwards. Several months had elapsed.
+His prophecy had been fulfilled. The lady in question was on our arm, as
+in sauntering under the arcades of the Palais Royale in Paris, we met
+our old associate. There was a hearty greeting; but when we reminded him
+of his prediction and formally introduced him, we remember that he cut
+the colloquy abruptly short (as it then seemed to us), and turned away
+with an expression of face for which we were at a loss to account, being
+ignorant of all the details of his history. Did the memory of the
+Peninsula of Iala-Iala, and of the loving wife whom he had buried there,
+fall too suddenly and too sadly upon his sensitive and affectionate
+spirit?--We cannot say; but this was the beginning and the ending of our
+knowledge of Doctor Pablo, until we unexpectedly met him in print.
+
+
+
+
+                    THE NEW HAMPSHIRE ALPS.
+
+
+It is not very much of a walk from the Glen House up the Eastern face of
+Mount Washington--less than three hours at a leisurely pace will
+accomplish it; and on a fine day it would be next to impossible to lose
+one's-self, if alone. Half the distance or thereabouts, your track lies
+through a wood, acceptable enough as offering shelter from a July sun,
+but curtailing your views annoyingly. However, all things end; and if
+your range of sight be somewhat "cabined, cribbed, confined," at the
+start, you have no cause for complaint on that score after once emerging
+from covert, for the rocks, bleak, bare, and irregular, that are
+scattered all around, though large enough to compel a careful picking of
+the way between them by no means limit the vision. But the approach has
+been a hundred times described, and I will only say of it, at the risk
+of repetition, that he who comes up from the Glen House, and fails to
+turn his eye continually over his right shoulder, to dwell lovingly upon
+the near and noble outlines of Mounts Jefferson, Adams, and Madison, has
+no appreciation of this sort of scenery.
+
+The morning had been superlatively fine, and troops of mounted dames
+and damsels and cavaliers made the various pathways lively with their
+glee. But caprice is the rule of these high regions; and when I was
+within ten minutes of the summit, clouds of misty vapour came suddenly
+scudding up, whence I knew not, but shutting out a peep here and a vista
+there, as they caracolled in fantastic evolutions. Presently, to these
+kaleidoscopic effects succeeded a slight hailstorm--it was rain visibly
+beneath us, attended with thunder and lightning--but anon all was
+comparatively clear again, and from the congregated spectators went up
+many a genuine burst of enthusiastic admiration, as point after point
+opened out or was shut in by the scud.
+
+The two rough stone buildings upon the small plateau that crowns the
+mountain, built for the accommodation of travellers, are called
+respectively the "Summit" and the "Tip-top" House. Once rivals, they now
+form a single establishment--one being used as a restaurant, the other
+as a dormitory. On this particular day, nearly a hundred persons must
+have refreshed themselves in the former--a dozen or fifteen in the
+latter; and I must own, it was not without a sense of relief that I saw
+the last of the descending parties set forth about 2 P. M., being myself
+of the select few about to take the chance of sunset and sunrise.
+
+For the afternoon, then--for the interval of time was to be occupied--a
+guide was summoned, to show half-a-dozen of us the wonders of
+Tuckerman's Ravine, a _cul-de-sac_ between two great buttresses of
+Mount Washington, that prop it up towards the South and West. The sides
+of this ravine are very precipitous the head of it being formed of
+layers of rock, at an angle of about ninety-five degrees, over which a
+cascade precipitates itself, fed by the springs and melted snows above.
+In the bed of this hollow, to which the descent is sufficiently sharp to
+gratify the keenest amateur pedestrian, the accumulated snow of the
+winter, blown over from the impending heights, lies packed in such
+enormous masses that it seldom entirely disappears until the latter part
+of August. At the period of my visit, on Friday, the 29th of July, a
+huge portion thereof remained, and the famous "Snow-Arch" was not only
+visible but practicable. This natural curiosity is a cave channelled out
+from the vast snow bank as a passage for the descending waters, the roof
+of which, gradually melting away, leaves height and space for walking
+along this gallery as it were in the very bed of the torrent. You enter
+perforce, be it observed, where the stream emerges. The length was
+certainly not less than two hundred feet, the breadth of the tunnel
+perhaps forty or fifty. Of the thickness of the roof I cannot speak, not
+having essayed it; but the little knot of adventurers trusted that it
+would not cave-in whilst they were groping their difficult way, one
+after the other, wet-footed and in semi-obscurity, up-stream, from end
+to end of the arched way. The object of the exploration it would be
+difficult to define. It certainly was not scientific; it offered no
+rare beauties; it might have been very well imagined, without the
+trouble and subsequent risk--but it was an adventure, and it had its
+charm. Day-light appeared as we neared the waterfall--luckily not very
+full--which, as I have already said, comes down the head of the ravine
+and is the origin of the "Arch" itself. What next? The snow had
+separated bodily from the face of the rocks to the width of two or three
+feet, as you see ice fields in a thaw detach themselves from the land
+whereto they have been joined. We could therefore emerge, and clamber up
+the abrupt face of the rocks, though the first start was not inviting,
+inasmuch as we had to hoist ourselves up by unequal pressure upon soft
+snow on one side and hard rock on the other. The alternative was a
+return. This would have been inglorious; up we went. It was a rough
+business. The guide had been over the ground once before, this
+season--so he said, at least--but he "harked back" occasionally, as
+though not quite certain of his way. It seemed impossible to diverge
+either to the right or left, and so gain the comparatively easier slope.
+We were doomed to mount, in the hope of finding successive steps,
+inasmuch as a retracing of those taken was not for a moment to be
+thought of; descent in such cases is always far more dangerous and
+troublesome. It was fortunate that in crossing twice or thrice the
+waterfall itself, we were not pumped on to any serious extent. I was
+moistened only, being garnished with a Macintosh; and I have only two
+scars now left on my shins, the result of scraping too close an
+acquaintance with sundry rocks. The whole affair lasted between three
+and four hours. I cannot recommend it, save to very enthusiastic
+mountaineers, or to _ci-devant jeunes hommes_ anxious to test the
+effects of Time upon their powers of walking and of endurance.
+
+Regaining the hurricane-deck of the Tip-top House--for the roof is the
+principal promenade, and often times assuredly deserves the name I give
+it, how gratefully, as the sun went down, stole the sense of ineffable
+grandeur over the somewhat wearied frame! It was a superb evening; and
+though it would not suit me to cull a leaf from the Guide-book, and tell
+all that is therein narrated, I must mention one particular wherein this
+locality is notable, if not quite unique. I think I remember something
+of the kind, but not so marked, at sunrise as seen from the summit of
+Etna; but not thus, on the Righi and Faulhorn in Switzerland, on the Pic
+du Midi de Bigorre in the Pyrenees, or on other peaks that I have
+climbed in the days of long ago, to salute the coming or speed the
+parting day. The nearest approach to it that I have seen, was at the
+Great Pyramid of Ghizeh. I allude to the wonderful distinctness and
+regularity with which the shadow of the great cone itself is traced, at
+sunset, striding over heights and lowlands, mound and lake--all the
+intervening surface, in fact, between the spectator and the far distant
+horizon--until it contracts almost to a point where earth and sky merge
+into one. The sharpness of these converging parallel lines of shadow in
+that luminous atmosphere absolutely astounded me. They were as crisp, as
+clearly defined, as those that you may see in antique pictures of
+Jacob's Dream, leading ladder-wise from Heaven to the head of the
+slumbering Patriarch. Sunrise, next morning--for I was again favoured
+with clear weather and only sufficient frost to render the roof of the
+restaurant slightly slippery--sunrise, I say, reserved all this. The
+narrow lines, now on the Western horizon, broadened out and came upwards
+and forwards, as in the evening they had elongated and gone down. It was
+in truth a rare spectacle, not to be forgotten, and individualizes this
+natural observatory.
+
+As for the view itself, it has been described _ad nauseam_, and I have
+only a few words to say about it. It happened, as it often does happen,
+that I fell in with an untravelled admirer of the prospect spread out
+before us, not charmed however with it more than I was myself. But he
+would persist in drawing from me an answer to the common question--"how
+does this compare with some of the famous points of view in the Swiss
+Alps?" Such tests I hold to be absurd, thanking my stars that I can
+unreservedly enjoy all fair things that are good of their kind. And so I
+told the inquirer this simple fact. If, in a mountainous country,
+varied, broken, studded with lakes, and rife with all the elements of
+the picturesque, you ascend some such superior elevation as this, you
+have, _looking down__wards_, a striking panoramic scene, like this in
+its general features--more striking perhaps than beautiful, though this
+is all matter of taste. The difference lies herein. Here, you plunge
+your look downward, or sweep it over surrounding objects--and that's the
+end of it. In those other Alps, you add to the four or five or six
+thousand feet, below you, as much above--and it is that _upward_ glance
+which takes in the marvels of glacier and snow-field and inaccessible
+peaks. My new acquaintance asked for no more comparisons, but let me
+enjoy myself in my own quiet way.
+
+The walk down Mount Washington to Crawford's at the Great Notch, as I
+believe it is called, is rather a long affair. It must be ten miles, and
+parts of it are of the roughest. It took me four hours, in company with
+two intelligent and companionable young students of Harvard College,
+travelling (in the true way) a-foot, with knapsacks on their backs. But
+we hurried it too much, especially as the ridge over and along Mount
+Pleasant, and some of its fellows bearing Presidential names, abound in
+points of view worth dwelling on. Moreover I was foot-galled; and this
+reminds me that, inasmuch as I cannot to-day conclude my rambling
+reminiscences, I may as well wind up with a touch of information and of
+advice. The one is intended for the benefit of pedestrians who make
+excursions of this sort; the other for stay-at-homes in flat countries,
+who have no definite notion whatever of the ups and downs of hilly
+regions.
+
+In the first place, then, you who walk are painfully aware that a sore
+foot is almost a calamity, if it befall you whilst _en route_. Remedy
+there is none; be thankful that there is an infallible preventive, of
+whose unfailing excellence I can speak with unreserved commendation. On
+its simple merits I once averaged in Switzerland twenty-five miles a
+day, for thirty successive days; and this without gall or blister. Fool
+that I was, to neglect it, two or three weeks ago. Nothing is easier.
+Ere you start in the morning, soap or grease the naked foot thoroughly,
+and then draw the stocking over it. Wash off, with a dash of brandy in
+the water, on finishing your day's work. The play of the foot is the
+preservative against abrasion--a certain one, I assure you.
+
+In the second place, if--passing your life amid prairies or
+savannahs--you are sometimes puzzled to comprehend allusions to
+buttresses, shoulders, ridges, peaks, cones, ravines, and the various
+terms in use among enthusiastic mountaineers, I think I can put you on a
+very simple explanatory track. Next time you lie in bed, with a few
+spare moments for reflection upon this grave topic, just turn on to your
+back and elevate one knee or both knees. The coverlid or sheet will
+immediately assume--I am serious in saying--a curiously correct
+semblance, I might almost term it a model in relief, of the face of any
+mountainous country. Laugh not, but try it. A slight movement on your
+part varies the form and outline and relative bearing of hill and vale,
+raises a pinnacle here, or there sinks a gorge precipitously steep. If I
+had the misfortune to be confined to bed by sickness--excluding gout,
+which might render the process impossible--I could thus, with the aid of
+a map and some tables of distances, design a passable fac-simile of the
+leading White Mountains themselves. Why Yankee ingenuity should not long
+ago have manufactured _papier-mache_ plans thereof, in relief,
+altogether passes my comprehension. They would sell well as souvenirs of
+travel.
+
+
+
+
+                 SLIDING SCALE OF THE INCONSOLABLES.
+
+                         _From the French._
+
+
+How rapid is the progress of oblivion, with respect to those who are no
+more! How many a quadrille shall we see, this winter, exclusively made
+up from the ranks of inconsolable widows! Widows of this order exist
+only in the literature of the tombstone. In the world, and after the
+lapse of a certain period, there is but one sort of widows
+inconsolable--those who refuse to be comforted, because they can't get
+married again!
+
+One of our most distinguished sculptors was summoned, a short time
+since, to the house of a young lady, connected by birth with a family of
+the highest grade in the aristocracy of wealth, and united in marriage
+to the heir of a title illustrious in the military annals of the Empire.
+
+The union, formed under the happiest auspices, had been, alas! of short
+duration. Death, unpitying death, had ruptured it, by prematurely
+carrying off the young husband. The sculptor was summoned by the widow.
+
+He traversed apartments silent and deserted, until he was introduced
+into a bed-room, and found himself in presence of a lady, young and
+beautiful, but habited in the deepest mourning, and with a face furrowed
+by tears.
+
+"You are aware," said she, with a painful effort and a voice half choked
+by sobs, "You are aware of the blow which I have received?"
+
+The artist bowed, with an air of respectful condolence.
+
+"Sir," continued the widow, "I am anxious to have a funeral monument
+erected, in honour of the husband whom I have lost."
+
+The artist bowed again.
+
+"I wish that the monument should be superb, worthy of the man whose loss
+I weep, proportioned to the unending grief into which his loss has
+plunged me. I care not what it costs. I am rich, and I will willingly
+sacrifice all my fortune to do honour to the memory of an adored
+husband. I must have a temple--with columns--in marble--and in the
+middle--on a pedestal--his statue."
+
+"I will do my best to fulfill your wishes, Madam," replied the artist;
+"but I had not the honour of acquaintance with the deceased, and a
+likeness of him is indispensable for the due execution of my work.
+Without doubt, you have his portrait?"
+
+The widow raised her arm, and pointed despairingly to a splendid
+likeness by Amaury Duval.
+
+"A most admirable picture!" observed the artist; "and the painter's
+name is sufficient guarantee for its striking resemblance to the
+original."
+
+"Those are his very features, Sir; it is himself. It wants but life. Ah!
+Would that I could restore it to him at the cost of all my blood!"
+
+"I will have this portrait carried to my studio, Madam, and I promise
+you that the marble shall reproduce it exactly."
+
+The widow, at these words, sprung up, and at a single bound throwing
+herself towards the picture, with arms stretched out as though to defend
+it, exclaimed:
+
+"Take away this portrait! carry off my only consolation! my sole
+remaining comfort! never! never!"
+
+"But Madam, you will only be deprived of it for a short time, and--"
+
+"Not an hour! not a minute! could I exist without his beloved image!
+Look you, Sir, I have had it placed here, in my own room, that my eyes
+might be fastened upon it, without ceasing, and through my tears. His
+portrait shall never leave this spot one single instant, and in
+contemplating that will I pass the remainder of a miserable and
+sorrowful existence."
+
+"In that case, Madam, you will be compelled to permit me to take a copy
+of it. But do not be uneasy--I shall not have occasion to trouble your
+solitude for any length of time; one sketch--one sitting will suffice."
+
+The widow agreed to this arrangement; she only insisted that the artist
+should come back the following day. She wanted him to set to work on the
+instant, so great was her longing to see the mausoleum erected. The
+sculptor, however, remarked that he had another work to finish first.
+This difficulty she sought to overcome by means of money.
+
+"Impossible," replied the artist, "I have given my word; but do not
+distress yourself; I will apply to it so diligently, that the monument
+shall be finished in as short a time as any other sculptor would
+require, who could apply himself to it forthwith."
+
+"You see my distress," said the widow; "you can make allowance for my
+impatience. Be speedy, then, and above all, be lavish of magnificence.
+Spare no expense; only let me have a masterpiece."
+
+Several letters echoed these injunctions, during the few days
+immediately following the interview.
+
+At the expiration of three months the artist called again. He found the
+widow still in weeds, but a little less pallid, and a little more
+coquettishly dressed in her mourning garb.
+
+"Madam," said he, "I am entirely at your service."
+
+"Ah! at last; this is fortunate," replied the widow, with a gracious
+smile.
+
+"I have made my design, but I still want one sitting, for the likeness.
+Will you permit me to go into your bed-room?"
+
+"Into my bed-room? For what?"
+
+"To look at the portrait again."
+
+"Oh! yes; have the goodness to walk into the drawing-room; you will find
+it there now."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"Yes; it hangs better there; it is better lighted in the drawing-room,
+than in my own room."
+
+"Would you like, Madam, to look at the design for the monument?"
+
+"With pleasure. Oh! what a size! What profusion of decorations! Why, it
+is a palace, Sir, this tomb!"
+
+"Did you not tell me, Madam, that nothing could be too magnificent? I
+have not considered the expense; and by the way, here is a memorandum of
+what the monument will cost you."
+
+"Oh, Heavens!" exclaimed the widow, after having cast an eye over the
+total adding-up. "Why, this is enormous!"
+
+"You begged me to spare no expense."
+
+"Yes, no doubt, I desire to do things properly, but not exactly to make
+a fool of myself."
+
+"This, at present, you see, is only a design; and there is time yet to
+cut it down."
+
+"Well, then, suppose we were to leave out the temple, and the columns,
+and all the architectural part, and content ourselves with the statue?
+It seems to me that would be very appropriate."
+
+"Certainly it would."
+
+"So let it be, then--just the statue alone."
+
+Shortly after this second visit, the sculptor fell desperately ill. He
+was compelled to give up work; but, on returning from a tour in Italy,
+prescribed by his physician, he presented himself once more before the
+widow, who was then in the tenth month of her mourning. He found, this
+time, a few roses among the cypress, and some smiling colours playing
+over half-shaded grounds.
+
+The artist brought with him a little model of his statue, done in
+plaster, and offering in miniature the idea of what his work was to be.
+
+"What do you think of the likeness?" he inquired of the widow.
+
+"It seems to me a little flattered; my husband was all very well, no
+doubt; but you are making him an Apollo!"
+
+"Really? well, then, I can correct my work by the portrait."
+
+"Don't take the trouble--a little more, or less like, what does it
+matter?"
+
+"Excuse me, but I am particular about likenesses."
+
+"If you absolutely must--"
+
+"It is in the drawing-room, yonder, is it not? I'll go in there."
+
+"It is not there any longer," replied the widow, ringing the bell.
+
+"Baptiste," said she to the servant who came in, "bring down the
+portrait of your master."
+
+"The portrait that you sent up to the garret, last week, Madam?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+At this moment the door opened, and a young man of distinguished air
+entered; his manners were easy and familiar, he kissed the fair widow's
+hand, and tenderly inquired after her health.
+
+"Who in the world is this good man in plaster?" asked he, pointing with
+his finger to the statuette, which the artist had placed upon the
+mantel-piece.
+
+"It is the model of a statue for my husband's tomb."
+
+"You are having a statue of him made? The devil! it's very majestic!"
+
+"Do you think so?"
+
+"It is only great men who are thus cut out of marble, and at full
+length; it seems to me, too, that the deceased was a very ordinary
+personage."
+
+"In fact, his bust would be sufficient."
+
+"Just as you please, Madam," said the sculptor.
+
+"Well, let it be a bust, that's--determined!"
+
+Two months later, the artist, carrying the bust, encountered on the
+stairs a merry party. The widow, giving her hand to the elegant dandy
+who had caused the statue of the deceased to be cut down, was on his way
+to the Mayor's office, where she was about to take a second oath of
+conjugal fidelity.
+
+If the bust had not been completed, it would willingly have been
+dispensed with. When, some time later, the artist called for his money,
+there was an outcry about the price; and it required very little less
+than a threat of legal proceedings, before the widow, consoled and
+remarried, concluded by resigning herself to pay for this funeral
+homage, reduced as it was, to the memory of her departed husband.
+
+
+
+
+                       RAMBLING RECORDS.
+
+                     THE GENTLE ARLESIANS.
+
+
+**With one exception, however, I gleaned nothing of information that is
+not already chronicled in the guide-books; and that one piece of
+information I only set down, because I think it contains a hint that may
+be made practically useful in certain enterprising circles of New York.
+
+We were in the Arena at Arles. It was a splendid day--barring the
+Mistral, that windy nuisance, which, as it eddied through the antique
+and ample Roman corridors, brought to my recollection certain
+North-Westers experienced on a fine March day in Union Square. In fact,
+it was far too cold for sentimentalizing or tracing measurements. But
+the guardian, it seemed, had not latterly had much chance of exercising
+his vocation, and his tongue was too nimble to be frozen. And so at it
+he went. Only, being himself more interested in certain proceedings that
+had lately taken place within a boarded fence that now encloses the
+arena, than in historical or legendary lore, his subject was by many
+centuries more fresh than the ruins whereon we stood, sunning ourselves
+and crouching out of the wind's way. Arles, it appeared, had been
+favoured with a bull fight, real Spanish matadors doing the beastly
+honours; but to the credit of the city, be it said, the spectacle was
+received with intense disapprobation. The gentle Provencals, whose
+tastes are more Italian than Spanish, could not brook the sport dear to
+their fair Empress who sets fashions in Paris. Indeed, the beauteous
+Eugenie, I fear, will hold them to be the merest milk-sops, for when the
+grand climax of a disembowelled horse was exhibited before them, the
+Arlesians, male and female--in place of shouts of triumphant
+approval--gave vent to loud cries of shame and execration, and in short
+hissed the Spanish heroes incontinently from the scene of their
+performance.
+
+But what has all this to do with the future of New York, it may be asked
+by any reader of these rambling reminiscences. Stay, a moment; I am only
+at the commencement. I, too inquired if this were all. "By no means,
+Sir," was the reply. "We had then the real _courses aux taureaux_, and
+excellent they were." Now I must own that my notions of this branch of
+the tauromachia were somewhat indistinct. I knew it was not precisely
+the same thing as buffalo-hunting on the prairies, or as a steeple-chase
+in Warwickshire or Yorkshire; but I could not have defined it to save my
+life. "Perhaps, Monsieur, has never seen one" was the next appropriate
+suggestion, and it led very naturally to my enlightenment. Briefly,
+then, after the torture of the quadrupeds, and the indignant dismissal
+of the Spanish matadors, the young gentlemen of the town took the place
+of the latter, and began a diversion, which must have been infinitely
+amusing, and which, I humbly submit, might be adopted on a different
+soil. A lively young bull was turned into the arena, and was followed by
+a number of lively youths, armed only with light staves whereon
+fluttered blood-red pennons. The fun consists in provoking the excitable
+animal by the red flags thrust before his face, and eluding the
+consequences by a run, a dodge, or a jump. The fence, which was a
+barrier for the bull, could easily be vaulted by a nimble-footed
+youth--and none but such would venture upon the field. There was just
+enough danger to make the game piquant; scarcely enough to make it
+objectionable. One indiscreet young fellow did indeed narrowly escape a
+catastrophe on the occasion described to me; but the fault was entirely
+his own. He had been breakfasting at some Arlesian Delmonico's, and had
+partially lost his wits before coming to the encounter, while retaining
+all his courage. Therefore it happened--and I only tell the story as it
+was told me--that the youth, when pursued by the bull, tripped and fell,
+and the horns of the brute were immediately thrust into the fullest part
+of his peg-top trousers. A great sensation among the spectators! The
+bull succeeded in raising and throwing over his head the object of his
+attack, but by no means in disentangling himself therefrom. His frantic
+efforts to bring about a summary toss were for some minutes
+unsuccessful; and the reader may conceive the mingled sense of the
+ludicrous and the fearful, that pervaded the assembly. Finally--for even
+French cassimere will give way in the end--he, the bull that is,
+achieved his aim, and threw his unconscious tormentor a summerset, being
+diverted from ulterior measures of vengeance by fresh attacks made upon
+him, while the crest-fallen hero of the adventure was promptly bundled
+over the paling. To sum up this sketch of the sport, in the humane and
+pithy words of the guardian of the Amphitheatre--"it does no harm
+whatever to the bull, and very little to the young gentleman."
+
+Now then, Mr. Niblo; why should you not establish a Tauro-drome in the
+centre of civilization? The leaning of the day is toward athletic
+exercise. In England, at present, there is a run upon rifle-corps; and
+the boldest riders are all bent upon becoming the crackest shots. In New
+York, I have read since my absence in Europe, that the great English
+Eleven have begotten a very rage for cricket. An excellent move this;
+but then the climate is against it, and the summer is short, and the
+game is utterly incomprehensible to the gentler sex, who are always
+prompt to encourage the manly prowess of their admirers. Besides, for
+lack of a permanent Bude light of adequate strength, we have not yet
+achieved the desideratum of playing cricket during those special hours
+when the youth of a commercial community finds itself prone to
+relaxation. The _courses aux taureaux_ might just as well take place by
+gas-light and in a New York circus, as amid Roman ruins and under the
+blaze of sunshine. The dandies of Broadway have the two main requisites
+for brilliant success in this suggested entertainment. Their pluck may
+not be doubted; and who that has seen them, agile and unwearied in the
+German or the _valse a deux temps_, could question their ability to
+outfoot the fleetest bull that Andalusia itself could supply? I commend
+the matter then to the serious consideration of Managers in search of
+novelties, and to belles who would discover what stuff their beaux are
+made of.
+
+
+                           AT NUREMBURG.
+
+
+For these thirty-eight years past, the _Albion_ hath been protesting
+once a week, in the Latin tongue, that they who skip over the water
+change only their sky, not their mental existence. Nor did I ever
+doubt--indeed I ought to have faith therein--the truth of this motto,
+until I found myself yesterday in one of the streets of this old city of
+Nuremburg, with no promenaders at the moment save myself. There was not
+a man in sight, tiled with a black beaver chimney-pot; nor a woman
+redolent of the Rue de la Paix or Regent Street. Then it was that I
+incontinently asked myself if I were truly a Briton by birth and an
+Anglo-American by local ties; or whether I were not in fact a German
+burgher of the middle ages. I should scarcely have been surprised at
+sight of grave Albert Durer himself coming round the corner, or at
+hearing Hans Sachs, the cobbler poet, trolling one of his six thousand
+ditties.
+
+To say this, is simply to add the testimony of another witness to that
+which has set down Nuremburg as the city of all Europe least changed
+with changing times. The very little that has been done of late years in
+the way of repairing and rebuilding, within the walls, has been done in
+strict accordance with the prevalent mediaeval style. The result is
+that--whereas elsewhere, when you stumble upon a private dwelling of
+moderate proportions showing plainly that it was built some two or three
+or four or five centuries ago, you congratulate yourself upon having
+discovered a curiosity (as such a one really would be in Paris, for
+instance)--here the difficult search would be for a house, modern and
+spruce. Not that a rectangularly-ornamented gable-end is the
+quintessence of architectural beauty, or that a basement front of low
+iron-barred windows suggests an agreeable or hospitable interior. By no
+means. If this were all, there would be considerable quaintness, and
+nought beyond. But it is otherwise. Some of the decorative bits that
+catch the eye right and left, are absolute gems in their way--whether
+oriel windows, or fantastic turrets, or figures and devices embossed and
+sculptured. Taste, generally for the Gothic, but diverging at a later
+date into the Renaissance style, seems to have run riot here in wilful
+playfulness.
+
+Of the regular sights set down in the hand-books, and explored by
+conscientious Englishmen with their Murrays under their arms, it would
+not be appropriate to speak at length. I may however indulge in an
+allusion to the different material, whereof are constructed two of the
+most highly-laboured marvels, here exhibited. Now the city itself is
+divided into two nearly equal parts by the small river Pegnitz, these
+parts bearing the names respectively of the principal church that stands
+in either. The one is dedicated to St. Sebald, the other to St.
+Lawrence. The former, as its chief curiosity, contains the shrine of its
+patron Saint, an elaborate and most exquisitely wrought fretwork canopy,
+about fifteen feet in height, beneath which repose his remains. The
+design is in a measure architectural, and Gothic of course; but the
+ornamentation is its great glory, though one is staggered somewhat at
+the irreverent juxtaposition of the twelve Apostles with Cupids and
+Mermaids, and at sundry Fathers of the Church disporting themselves amid
+clusters of fruit and bouquets of flowers. This monument of artistic
+skill was the work of Peter Vischer, one of the worthies of Nuremburg,
+and has been completed three hundred and forty years. The able worker,
+having dispensed with consistency in the admixture of Christian and
+Pagan accessories, as I have mentioned, was at least justified in
+introducing a figure of himself as one of the human animals; and a very
+fine statuette he makes, with chisel in hand and his working apron about
+him. Now mark, if you please, O attentive reader, this shrine of St.
+Sebald is entirely cast in bronze. To say that the effect is beautiful,
+is too limited praise. It is harmonious; thoroughly satisfying to the
+eye; perfect.
+
+Cross with me now, if you be not weary, one of the dozen picturesque
+bridges over the Pegnitz, and let us see what Adam Krafft, another great
+Nuremburger of that same age, has done in the same line of Gothic
+decoration for the Church of St. Lawrence. His work is a shrine, or I
+should rather say a repository for the sacramental wafer of the Roman
+Catholic rite. It is an open-work spire, tapering to the height of sixty
+feet, with an infinity of graceful detail, and rare sculptures in high
+and low relief. One fantasy is, I think, unique of its kind. The roof is
+a little too low to admit the crowning summit fairly; and the top,
+therefore, has been made to bend over. The effect--purposely designed, I
+cannot doubt--is odd; nor can I agree with the fantastic remark of
+Murray's Handbook, that it "has the air of a plant which is chocked in
+its further growth." Spires and plants are not endowed with equal
+pliability, and the idea of one of the former waving about, or nodding
+gracefully, suggests an immediate "stand from under." And this all the
+more in this instance, because--which brings me thus round-aboutedly to
+my main point--the material hereon employed is stone, a clean and
+white-toned stone, that looks as though its excellent carvings and
+mouldings had been completed only for the last Crystal Palace
+Exhibition. The apparent newness is downright provoking; and if Adam
+Krafft could peep at it from his honoured grave, he would never dream
+that he has lain therein three centuries and a half. Let me say
+further--having thus stumbled upon personalities--that he too made
+himself as durable as his work. And with more modesty than Master Peter
+Vischer above named, who moulded for himself a niche in his monument
+corresponding, in size and position, to the one assigned to the patron
+Saint, though being at the opposite end of the shrine, the glorifier and
+the glorified could not be taken into one glance and a comparison
+forced. There was more modesty, I say, in Adam Krafft's mode of
+travelling down the stream of Time as showman of his show, though he was
+not methinks without a dash of _craft_, as befits the bearer of his
+name. Down upon their marrow-bones (as the school boys have it) with
+rounded backs grope Adam and his two apprentices, the three backs
+forming a base of operations, or in plainer words upholding the
+sixty-feet structure, and doing for it that which is done beneath his
+rival's shrine by a snail at each of the four corners. Perhaps, after
+all, the sculptor-architect was wiser than the bronze-caster, in his
+mode of identifying himself with his work. Amid a multitude of figures
+and emblems, Peter Vischer, as well as St. Sebald, may be overlooked,
+for they are small in size; but you can scarcely avoid asking "who are
+these three?" when you note how lofty is the edifice that the large
+quasi-Atlases bear.
+
+Enough, touching these minor differences. The essential one, whereof I
+intended to speak, is the material in which the pair wrought
+respectively. I have said that the bronze entirely satisfied my
+critical eye, which is tantamount to saying that it charmed me. Not so
+with the stone. It is obviously ill-adapted for detached ornamentation,
+needing the solid adjunct of buttress, window, wall, or pillar, just as
+ivy needs the oak, or (may I utter such a term?) lace the woman. Indeed,
+with all my admiration for sundry mediaeval specimens of Gothic
+architecture, wherein I scarcely yield to John Ruskin himself, I confess
+that the famous Eleanor's Crosses in England never quite pleased me,
+because therein the tracery and dainty delicacies of the design are not
+backed by anything massive. The greater part of my readers will not
+agree with me. I am sorry, but can't help it. Only, I don't want to see
+any more open-work baskets in stone. Give me the most fantastical of
+Gothic devices, as many as you please, so long as they have something to
+cling to.
+
+Finally, I have fallen quite in love with this quaint, irregular old
+place. Nor do I know how long I might have loitered, had not the
+inevitable disillusion come, as come it will over so many promising
+things and fair. Otherwise I might have gone back--in imagination--to
+those honest old times of Durer, Vischer, Krafft, and Company, and
+imagined myself a free burgher of a free city. But the spell was doubly
+broken. At the old castle--whereof some small apartments are
+unpretendingly fitted up for the King and Queen of Bavaria--there comes
+upon one, in another part thereof, a vision of certain instruments of
+torture, used undoubtedly in those good old times to keep the burghers
+submissive to their oligarchy of merchant princes. And again at the
+Rath-haus, or Hotel de Ville; the maidenly show-woman lighted us by
+lanthorn-light through a set of subterranean dungeons, too numerous to
+have been destined for offenders only against the criminal laws, too
+horrible to be sanctioned under our creed of comparative gentleness. And
+so, on the whole, I returned back to actual existence, and to all the
+boredom of Parliamentary conflicts and Presidential elections, with a
+certain sense of relief.
+
+
+                        ROMAN NOMENCLATURE.
+
+
+By dint of many rambles I am become fairly versed in the topography of
+Rome; but its history, as elucidated by monuments or relics, is a
+perpetual riddle to the beholder. The Republic, the Empire, the
+Barbarian Invasions, Free Lances, Barons, Kings, and Popes--all are
+suggested; all come before you in confused array; not unfrequently,
+three or four at once. You shall go into a church to hear mass amid
+modern tawdriness, entering through a mediaeval porch, taking your place
+between walls that were put up long before the Christian era, and under
+a roof supported by pillars whereon the sun of Phrygia has shone. Pagan
+and Christian--all is jumbled; until finally, unless you have the
+patience of Job and the zeal of an antiquarian, you begin to doubt all
+legendary and historic lore, and to measure what you see by its
+external attractiveness alone. One thing, however, is clearly marked.
+You are groping about, in a state of vexed uncertainty; suddenly you
+come upon an inscription, conspicuous, in large legible letters, often
+gilded. Now you are grateful. You stride up; and lo, there stands,
+emblazoned before you the interesting fact that such or such a Pontifex
+Maximus, some Benedict, or Clemens, or Pius, or Leo, or Gregory,
+restored, excavated, ornamented, or built, as the case may have been,
+the object upon which you have been pondering. Neither, in the dearth of
+desirable information, are you compensated by the opportunity of picking
+up chronological knowledge in regard to the Papacy. These fulsome
+records omit, not only all description that might be useful; they fail
+to mention the year of the World, or the year of Grace, altogether. In
+place thereof, you learn that the digging or decoration in question took
+place in a certain year of the reign of a certain Pope; but as the chair
+of St. Peter has had one hundred and sixteen occupants, between A.D.
+1000 and A.D. 1860, "Anno VI. of Innocent VI." or "Anno II. of Julius
+II." does not materially aid the memory as to dates. This petty craving
+after chiselled or painted immortality is nowhere more contemptibly
+exhibited than in Raphael's famous Loggie at the Vatican, where, over
+each separate window, one reads in staring type, "Leo X., Pontifex
+Maximus." Surely there is something strangely inconsistent, in a power
+that boasts its remote origin and its endowment in perpetuity, thus
+taking infinite pains to isolate its historical fragments.
+
+A smile only--not a grunt of indignation--is elicited by another
+peculiarity of Rome, which comes under the lounger's notice. Something
+of the same sort is perhaps also observable in all large cities; but it
+never struck me so strongly. I allude to the names of the streets and
+squares and public places, which names by the way are carefully and
+prominently labelled. The jumble is curious, though one starts a little
+at times from what to Protestant eyes seems irreverent. Take a sample,
+dispensing with the titles in Italian. You may stroll through the street
+of the Three Virgins, of the Three Robbers, of Jesus, of the Tarpeian
+Rock, of the Two Butchers' Shops, of the Baboon, of Divine Love, of the
+New Benches, of the Prefects, of the House-tops, of Jesus and Mary, of
+the Greeks, of the Tower of Blood, of the Triton, of the Guardian Angel,
+of the Strumpet, of the Soul, of the Scrofula, of the Eagle, of the
+Lion's Mouth, of the Five Moons, of Minerva, of the Incurables, of the
+Wind, of the Wolf, of St. John Beheaded. You may halt in the square of
+the Mouth of Truth, in that of the Field of Flowers, in that of the
+Satyrs, in that of Consolation, in that of the Goose. It is evident that
+no ruling mind or principle has regulated this public nomenclature. _Tot
+homines, quot sententiae._
+
+And is it not the same thing in private affairs? What variety of tastes!
+Here is a specimen. Two young men of my acquaintance, who have been
+campaigning in India, arrived here, the other day, on their first
+visit. One of them had a relative here, of a scholastic turn of mind,
+who was bringing a protracted sojourn to a close; and to him the cavalry
+officers were in a measure consigned. "Can you tell me what's to be seen
+at Ostia and Veii?" said one of them to me, forty-eight hours after
+their arrival. "Our friend, B., is going to take us a day's excursion to
+each place, to-morrow and the following day." I could scarcely keep my
+countenance. The poor innocents were sold to an antiquarian. Ostia is
+destitute of any objects that would repay a half-hour's walk. As for
+Veii, the learned have only agreed of late whereabouts that ancient city
+stood.
+
+
+              BRIGANDS, BEGGARS, AND SOUVENIRS.
+
+
+My last communication was from Rome. It was piquant, on the day of
+departure thence from Naples, to dine at Terracina with a Prussian
+family, who had been stopped and robbed by brigands, at eight o'clock
+the previous morning, at a spot between Velletri and Cisterna. There was
+however no _Fra Diavolo_ in the case. The respectable _pere de famille_,
+who with his sons and daughters had been laid under contribution,
+informed us that the fellows were evidently peasants unused to the
+trade; that they presented guns, in exacting their demand for money; but
+that they were nervous in their brief operation, and that they did not
+ransack the trunks, nor even carry off the watches and rings of the
+party. The chief sufferer was the vetturino, whom fright and the loss of
+thirty-six dollars had thrown into a fever, causing the detention which
+brought us into contact with the narrators. We passed on our way,
+without adventure; the safest period, there as elsewhere, being that
+which immediately follows one. I incline to think that extreme
+destitution induced this recourse to a practice almost obsolete, as it
+probably gave rise to the personal robberies, unattended with violence,
+which have been recently rife in Rome itself.
+
+And in connection with this point, I may swell the laments of late
+travellers as to the chronic prevalence, throughout Southern Italy, of
+those other unceasing robberies of extortion and mendicancy, which are
+so much more difficult of toleration. I declare that of all the mythical
+personages of classic lore brought back to one's memory by local
+association, whether in the Elysian Fields or on the borders of Lake
+Avernus, the Harpies are those who alone survive, and who obtrude
+themselves always and everywhere, in season and out of season. The foul
+brood have assumed human semblance, and haunt you in all varieties. The
+unbidden cicerone, or the sturdy beggar--it is hard to say which is the
+worse.
+
+How I anathematized them both at Sorrento, where there are certain
+souvenirs of Tasso, not so direct and tangible as those preserved in the
+Convent of San Onofrio at Rome, but which are worth the tracing. You
+will remember that the hapless poet found a resting place here in the
+house of his sister, after he escaped from his seven years' imprisonment
+at Ferrara. To be adjured, for charity, in the name of the Virgin and
+every Saint in the calendar--to have a jackass and a guide, or a jackass
+of a guide, thrust upon you, _nolens volens_ for an excursion that you
+have no mind to take, or to be importuned to "put out, put out, put out
+to sea," when you know that March winds and waves make the azure grotto
+of Capri totally inaccessible--these diversions, I say, do not assist
+one in gathering up one's reminiscences of Tasso, however much they may
+chasten and so improve the temper.
+
+And here I may observe also upon a peculiarity that marks the research
+of certain travellers, somewhat akin perhaps to the taste which induces
+certain readers to trace history through personal memoirs, in place of
+studying broader narrations. If truth were told, there are a hundred who
+commune with Pepys and Horace Walpole, to ten who find delight in Hume.
+So is it--though by no means in the same proportion--with sight-seers on
+ground that is rich in historical associations. All their sympathies, or
+the larger portion of them at least, are with individuals, as though
+there were no grappling with a race, a nation, an age that is past.
+Stories, wholly or in part fictitious, are their hand-books. To them the
+Capitol of Rome is the scene of Rienzi's rise and fall, as interpreted
+by Bulwer Lytton. At Pompeii their chief care is to find out the abode
+of Glaucus and Ione. Nor can it be denied that there is an additional
+charm in this mode of viewing localities that are new to us, if it be
+not the most philosophical. In my own case, without needless parading of
+the degree in which I share this gentle weakness or disapprove it, I
+must own that its exercise gives at times an unexpected zest to a
+ramble. Whilst in Rome, for instance, I do not think that one's serious
+views of history or art are in any manner jarred upon, because here and
+there one stumbles upon relics that savour of individuality. At any rate
+I should not like to have missed the old mansion of the Anviti family,
+near the bridge of St. Angelo, mentioned by that old gossip, Benvenuto
+Cellini, as the frequent rendezvous of Michael Angelo, Raffaele,
+Cardinal Bembo, and other choice spirits of his day. I should have been
+sorry to have omitted a visit to the boudoir of Lucrezia Borgia, in the
+Convent close beside the church of St. Pietro in Vincolo, once the
+residence of Pope Alexander VI., and now mainly converted into a barrack
+for the troops of "the elder son of the Church." The part however in
+which is placed this small apartment, decorated with frescoes of the
+period, is still applied to conventual purposes. There is no legend
+about the matter, at least so far as regards the possession of the
+Borgia family; and the room being small in size, and unique in situation
+and style of ornament within and without, it is not difficult to believe
+that it was the chosen resort of a young lady in days when there was
+less gadding about than now. Still, to be candid, I must own that in
+musing here, as in looking at the lock of the same amiable woman's hair
+preserved in the Ambrosian Library of Milan, one is apt to have one's
+recollections of mediaeval depravity not slightly tinctured by visions of
+Giulia Grisi in the prime of her voice and beauty, to say nothing of
+Victor Hugo's grand drama, and old Mademoiselle Georges' unrivalled
+performance therein.
+
+Again, and lastly--lest the reader imagine that when once I get back to
+Rome, I am spell-bound and cannot leave it--what traveller has not cast
+a pleased eye upwards towards the window whence the baker's daughter, A.
+D. 1515, or thereabouts, ogled the young prince of painters as he passed
+by on his way to, or from his work, at the Farnesina Palace? You know
+the precise spot, O Viator, in a small piazza very near the Ponte Sisto?
+The house is white-washed or yellow-washed now; but there is the old
+Ionic pilaster, yet embedded in the wall, and the ornamental
+architectural mouldings yet shut in the Fornarina's window. And here it
+occurs to me to make one more digression, for the purpose of suggesting
+a theory of my own touching one of the many portraits of La Fornarina
+that have come down to us, and that vary so much in expression though
+all evidently intended for the same person. Between the fine one in the
+Tribune at Florence, and the filthy one in the Sciarra Palace at Rome,
+there is the widest possible difference. The former is evidently enough
+a woman unrefined, though beautiful; but there is neither coarseness nor
+indelicacy in the portraiture. The latter has both these
+characteristics, pushed to an extreme that is repulsive. It is said to
+be a copy from Raffaele by Giulio Romano. Now my belief is, that it was
+painted as a quiz upon his master's grace and delicacy, by the
+scapegrace pupil who ran counter to those special attributes.
+Meretricious, ugly, and vulgar, this wretched creature bears emblasoned
+in large letters on the bracelet upon her arm the name of Raffaele
+Sanzio d'Urbino. This piece of impudence seems to me the crowning touch.
+I can't credit that such a Fornarina ever came from Raffaele's easel. I
+do think that a coarse-minded and coarse-handed young artist may have
+made fun of his superior in oil--as modern literary wags have sometimes
+done in ink--and that Raffaele therefore is in no way answerable for
+that caricature in the Sciarra, which affects to be a reproduction from
+himself.
+
+
+                       LIVRES DES VOYAGEURS.
+
+
+Verily there is no lack of the plainer symbols of humanity, to remind
+the wanderer that Childe Harold was bitterly truthful, when he appended
+to his inimitable descriptions of the Alps the assertion that they
+
+                                      "serve to show,
+How Earth may pierce to Heaven, yet leave vain man below."
+
+The impertinences and follies that are penned by men and women in the
+various Livres des Voyageurs, wherein they record their names, were
+alone sufficient proof of this. It is true that enthusiasm and fine
+feeling cannot endure for an indefinite period; and that he would be a
+sorry companion who always brought his stilts to the dinner-table.
+Still, one must regret that a certain craving for notoriety seems to
+impel so many a tourist to write himself down an ass, whilst no sense of
+fairness restrains others from commenting, appropriately or
+inappropriately, upon the names or remarks of predecessors. There is a
+cowardice and cruelty herein which has, I confess, sometimes made me
+angry, when the identity, characters, and conduct of the individuals
+concerned were alike unknown or indifferent to me. In place, however, of
+prolonging this digression, and without the least notion of proving
+anything whatever by the citation, I beg to offer the reader a brace of
+extracts from the visitors' record book at the Montanvert.
+
+The first tickled me exceedingly, as a genuine specimen of the so-called
+Irish Bull. Mr. Somebody had entered his name, and added thereto this
+valuable bit of information: "Walked up from Chamouni in four hours and
+a-half, _having lost the greater part of his way_?" The italics are
+mine, of course; but is not the _mot_ worth its space in print?
+
+My other extract concerns some of my young countrywomen, and I trust
+that their countrywomen who may read it will forgive me for putting it
+into circulation. They are very poor laughers, who never laugh when the
+joke tells against themselves; in this instance it is we who pay the
+piper. A party of English school girls had been lately at Montanvert
+with their governess, and had set down their names one after another in
+the big book, as is the custom there. A waggish Frenchman, waiting of
+course until their backs were turned, had bracketted the list, and
+written against the conclave this pithy and caustic criticism: "_Teint
+rouge; appetit geant; langage embarrasse._" What an ungallant scamp! Yet
+it must be owned that the same absurd album is rich in provocatives. A
+running fire of sarcasm, exchanged between English and French tourists,
+marks almost every page.
+
+
+                       A SINGULAR ANAGRAM.
+
+
+Among the curiosities--not of literature--but of letters, the Anagram
+was wont to be a favourite in the days of a by-gone generation. Who, for
+instance, has not smiled blandly over that famous transposition, which
+aptly converts "Horatio Nelson" into _Honor est a Nilo_?
+
+The taste, however, for this sort of laborious trifling has almost
+passed away; nor do we propose to re-open the subject of cabalistic
+lettering. Our only purport is to offer a new specimen of its
+eccentricities, which came upon us recently during a vain attempt to
+solve certain mysteries, that occupy just now many serious minds. It is
+commended alike to snappers-up of unconsidered trifles, and to readers
+who chance to be imbued with a little tinge of superstitious
+sensitiveness. We strive to hope that, though almost as curious, it is
+not so unimpeachably appropriate as the one quoted above. The name, so
+much in men's mouths, "Louis Napoleon Bonaparte," may by this method be
+converted into, _An open plot--arouse, Albion_!
+
+
+
+
+                    A WELL KNOWN DOCUMENT,
+
+                 _Very Slightly Paraphrased_.
+
+     A comparison of the following lines, with the original American
+     Declaration of Independence, will show that the earnest and
+     impassioned language of real life is sometimes closely assimilated
+     to blank verse.
+
+
+When, in their course, human events compel
+One people to dissolve the social bands
+That linked them with another, and to take
+Among the powers of the Earth that station,
+Equal and separate, to which the laws
+Of Nature and of Nature's God, by right,
+Entitle them--respect to the opinions
+Of fellow men calls on them to declare
+The causes, which have rendered necessary
+Such separation.
+                We, then, hold these truths
+To be self-evident: That all mankind
+Are equal, and endowed by their Creator
+With certain unalienable rights:
+That amongst these are Life, and Liberty,
+And the Pursuit of Happiness: That men,
+To make these rights available and safe,
+Have instituted Governments, deriving
+Their lawful power from the free consent
+
+Of those they govern: That when any form
+Of Government is proved to be destructive
+Of these their ends, it is the People's right
+To alter, or abolish it, and found
+A Government anew, with principles
+So laid for its foundation, and with powers
+In such form organized, as shall to them
+Seem most conducive to their happiness
+And safety.
+              Prudence will, indeed, dictate
+That long-established Governments should not
+Be changed for any light or transient cause:
+And all experience, accordingly,
+Hath shown that men are more disposed to suffer,
+So long as evils are endurable,
+Than to assert their rights, and throw aside
+Their customary forms. But when abuses
+And usurpations, in a lengthened train,
+Pursue an object steadfastly, evincing
+A firm design to bow them down beneath
+Absolute despotism, it is their right,
+It is their bounden duty, to throw off
+Such Government, and to provide new guards
+For their security in future.
+                                    Such
+Has been the patient sufferance of these
+Our Colonies, and such is now the need,
+That forces them to change their present systems
+Of Government. Great Britain's present King
+Hath made his history the history
+Of usurpation, and of injuries
+Often repeated, and directly tending
+To the establishment of Tyranny
+
+Over these States: to prove this, let the World
+In candour listen to undoubted facts.
+  He has refused to give assent to laws,
+Wholesome, and needful for the public good.
+He has denied his Governors the power
+To sanction laws of pressing urgency,
+Unless suspended in their operation,
+Till his assent should be obtained; and when
+Suspended thus, he has failed wilfully
+To give them further thought. He has refused
+To sanction other laws, deemed advantageous
+To districts thickly peopled, unless they,
+Who dwelt therein, would basely throw away
+Their right to representatives--a right
+Inestimable, to themselves and only
+To Tyrants formidable. In the hope
+To weary them into a weak compliance
+With his obnoxious measures, he has summoned
+The Legislative Bodies to assemble
+At places inconvenient, and unusual,
+And whence their public records were remote.
+He has repeatedly dissolved the Houses
+Of Representatives for interfering
+With manly firmness, when he has invaded
+The People's rights. Long time he has refused,
+After such dissolutions, to convene
+Others in lieu of them; whereby, the powers
+Of Legislation, since they might not be
+Annihilated, have for exercise
+Been forced upon the body of the people;
+Leaving, meanwhile, the unprotected State
+To dangers of invasion from without,
+And inward anarchy. He has endeavoured
+
+To check the population of these States,
+Thwarting the laws for naturalization
+Of foreigners, withholding his assent
+From other laws, that might encourage them
+In immigrating hither, and enhancing
+The price of new allotments of the soil.
+  He has obstructed the administration
+Of Justice, by his veto on the laws
+Establishing judiciary powers
+He has made Judges on his will alone
+Dependent, for the tenure of their office,
+For the amount, and for the proper payment
+Of their emoluments. He has erected
+New offices in multitudes, and sent
+Swarms of his officers to harass us,
+And to eat out our substance. He has kept,
+In times of peace, among us, standing armies,
+Without the sanction of our Legislatures.
+His aim has been to place the military
+Above the civil power, and beyond
+Its just control. He has combined with others
+To make us subject to a jurisdiction,
+In spirit foreign to our Constitution,
+And unacknowledged by our laws; assenting
+To acts, that they have passed with semblance only
+Of legislation: Acts for quartering
+Among us bodies of armed troops: For shielding,
+By a mock trial, those their instruments
+From punishment for any murders done
+On our inhabitants: For cutting off
+Our trade with every quarter of the world--
+For laying on us taxes not approved
+By our consent: For oft-times robbing us
+
+Of any benefit that might attend
+Trial by jury: For transporting us
+Beyond the seas, to answer for offences,
+Imputed to us: For abolishing,
+Within a neighbouring province, the free system
+Of English laws; establishing therein
+An arbitrary power; and enlarging
+Its boundaries, to render it at once
+The fit example, and the instrument
+For bringing into these our Colonies
+The same despotic rule: For taking from us
+Our Charters; and abolishing our laws
+Most valued; changing thus, in principle,
+Our forms of Government: And for suspending
+Our Legislatures, with the declaration
+That they, themselves, in each and every case,
+Were vested with supreme authority
+To legislate for us.
+                    He has laid down
+His sway, by holding us without the pale
+Of his protection, and by waging war
+Against us. He has plundered on our seas;
+Ravaged our coasts; our cities burnt; and taken
+Our people's lives. He is transporting hither
+Armies composed of foreign mercenaries,
+To end the works of death, and desolation,
+And tyranny, begun with circumstances
+Of cruelty and perfidy unequalled
+In the most barbarous ages, and unworthy
+The Ruler of a nation civilized.
+He has constrained our fellow-citizens,
+On the high seas made captive, to bear arms
+Against their country, and of friends and brothers
+
+To be the executioners, or fall
+Beneath his creatures' hands. He has excited
+Amongst ourselves domestic insurrection;
+And sought to bring on the inhabitants
+Of our frontier the savage Indian,
+Whose code of warfare, merciless and sure,
+Spares not, in undistinguished massacre,
+Age, sex, condition.
+                      We, in every stage
+Of these oppressions, have in humblest terms
+Petitioned for redress. To our petitions,
+Though oft repeated, there has been _one_ answer--
+Repeated injury.
+                      A prince, whose life
+And conduct thus are marked by every act
+That may define a Tyrant, is unfit
+To rule o'er Freemen.
+                        Neither have we failed
+In due attention to our British brethren.
+From time to time, we have admonished them
+Of efforts, by their Legislature made,
+Unwarrantably to extend to us
+Their jurisdiction. How we emigrated,
+And settled here, we have reminded them.
+We to their native justice have appealed
+And magnanimity; and have conjured them,
+By common kindred ties, to disavow
+These usurpations, which, inevitably,
+Would mar our intercourse and friendship. They
+Have also turned a deaf ear to the voice
+Of Justice and of Consanguinity.
+So must we yield to the necessity
+Which forces us to separate, and hold them--
+
+As we do hold the rest of human kind--
+Our enemies in War, in Peace our friends.
+  We, therefore, who are here to represent
+The States United of America,
+In General Congress met, for rectitude
+Of our intentions to the Judge Supreme
+Of all things here in confidence appealing,
+Do, in the name, and by authority
+Of the good people of these Colonies,
+Solemnly publish and declare, that these
+United Colonies are, and of right
+Ought to be, Free and Independent States:
+That from allegiance to the British Crown
+They are absolved: That all connecting ties
+Of policy between them and Great Britain
+Are, as they should be, totally dissolved:
+And that, as Free and Independent States,
+They have full power to levy war, conclude
+Peace, and contract alliances, establish
+Commerce, and do all other acts and things
+Which Independent States of right may do.
+  This is our Declaration: to support it,
+With firm reliance on Divine protection,
+We to each other mutually pledge
+Our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honour.
+
+
+
+
+          BEL PIEDE.
+
+
+Browning, whose household gods were planted
+  Beside the banks of classic Arno,
+Once, in a dainty ballad, chanted
+  The lady of the _bella mano_.
+
+Pass from the Arno to the Tiber,
+  From Tuscan to a Roman lady;
+And let a humbler bard describe her--
+  This fair one of the _bel piede_.
+
+To Roman dame, as I and you know,
+  Is rarely given a foot symmetrical;
+No Cinderellas--many a Juno--
+  Upon the Pincian we can yet recall.
+
+Those were the days when bonnets did not
+  Expose the face to every starer;
+When skirts, worn short and airy, hid not
+  The foot and ankle of the wearer.
+
+With high arched instep, narrow, tapering,
+  Divinely booted--none could beat hers--
+The foot, that set my young heart capering,
+  Came down the broad steps of St. Peter's.
+
+Her long black veil, the crowd around me,
+  Her swift landau, my swift emotion--
+She came: her fairy foot spell-bound me;
+  She went: which way, I had no notion.
+
+Haunting all public haunts was fruitless,
+  Mid solemn pomps, on festal hey-day;
+Search for those glorious boots was bootless:
+  Rome showed no more my _bel piede_.
+
+In Paris next enchained it held me,
+  Through redowa, waltz, all sorts of dances;
+But mask and domino repelled me--
+  She moved, but I made no advances.
+
+Again she passed--no trace behind her--
+  I sought, enquired, left nothing undone;
+But all was vain: I could not find her,
+  And, in despair, set off for London.
+
+The sea between Boulogne and Dover
+  Was, as it always is, terrific;
+Against that awful passage over,
+  Why not invent some smooth specific?
+
+Cloaked, muffled, shawled, a form was leaning
+  Across the gunwale, keeping shady;
+I recked not what might be its meaning--
+  I thought not, then, of _bel piede_.
+
+Sudden, a lurch, a shriek, a splashing!
+  I knew the shriek was from a lady;
+But horror through my brain went crashing--
+  I saw, heels up, my _bel piede_!
+
+She sank. No more! But O ye mermaids,
+  Of whose long tails we've had a surfeit,
+If ye were worthy to be her maids,
+  You'd cut your tails, and copy her feet!
+
+
+
+
+                                  WHO IS HE?
+
+                             _A Reply to Quevedo_.
+
+     These lines were suggested by some sprightly verses, entitled "Who
+     is She?" that had recently appeared in _Fraser's Magazine_.
+
+
+A Spanish writer once decided,
+    In flippant song,
+That woman's lip, or tongue, or eye did
+    All that went wrong.
+Nay, that the true mode of unmasking
+    Her wiles would be,
+On all occasions simply asking--
+    Pray, who is she?
+
+Now, why must woman's petticoats
+    Aye be the blamables?
+How is't Quevedo never quotes
+    Mankind's unnamables?
+He rates the sex, and certes for it he
+    Makes a good plea;
+But can't I, on as good authority,
+    Ask, who is he?
+
+Quevedo swears that Eve and Helen
+    Wrought dire mishaps:
+That Adam and the Trojans fell in
+    Their deep-laid traps.
+Eve?--why Diabolus beguiled her;
+    You know't, Quevedo!
+Helen?--that rascal Paris wiled her:
+    That's Homer's _credo_!
+
+Trust me, man causes woman's failing;
+    And, on my life,
+He's always wantonly assailing
+    Maid, widow, wife.
+Beneath the surface let the gazer
+    Look deep--he'll see
+Some stronger vessel that betrays her:
+    Just ask--who's he?
+
+Is it a milk-maid drops her pailful?--
+    Lubin's love-making:
+Is her fate scandalous or baleful?--
+    Lubin's been raking!
+The school-girl loaths her bread and butter,
+    Pouts o'er her tea,
+Mumbles her lessons in a flutter--
+    Ask, who is he?
+
+Despite experience, what can set
+    The widow hoping?
+Why are wives sometimes gadding met,
+    And sometimes moping?
+Don't talk of widows' amorous bump,
+    Of wives too free;
+But pop the question to them, plump--
+    Pray, who is he?
+
+We're mighty prompt to throw the blame on
+    The weaker fair sex;
+When justice ought to fix the shame on
+    Ours--not on their sex.
+Ours the seduction and the fooling,
+    If such there be:
+Come; your exception to this ruling--
+    Pray, who is he?
+
+The old and hump-backed ply their battery
+    Of gold and jewels;
+Well-knit young fellows deal in flattery,
+    Dance, song, oaths, duels.
+So, to conclude, I'll take my oath, sir,
+    Upon the Bible,
+That to blame one--in place of both, sir,--
+    Is a gross libel!
+
+
+
+
+                          TO NINON.
+
+            _From the French of Alfred de Musset._
+
+
+Were I to tell thee, ne'ertheless, that, troth, I love thee well,
+Blue-eyed brunette, blue-eyed brunette, thine answer who could tell?
+Love is the cause of many a pang--their source thou well can'st guess;
+No pity in him dwells, as thou must needs thyself confess:
+And yet, ah! me, thou would'st perchance chastise me ne'ertheless!
+
+Were I to tell thee that, beneath six months of silence crushed,
+Long-hidden torments I have borne, and vows insensate hushed;
+Ninon, despite thy careless air, thou hast a searching eye,
+That, like a Fairy's, ere it come, what's coming can espy:
+"I know it all, I know it all," thou would'st perchance reply.
+
+Were I to tell thee that I roam in sweet, delirious dream,
+Haunting thy footsteps so that I thy very shadow seem;
+A tinge of sadness on thy cheek, a quick, mistrustful glance,--
+Ninon, thou knowest well that these thy loveliness enhance:
+And thus, that thou believest not, thou would'st reply perchance.
+
+Were I to tell thee that my soul hoards up the lightest word,
+That falling from thy lips at eve in our discourse I've heard;
+Lady, thou know'st that, when aroused to anger or disdain,
+Eyes, though of azure they may be, can still their lightnings rain:
+And thine perchance would flashing say, "We must not meet again!"
+
+Were I to tell thee that by night I wake and think of thee,
+And that by day for thee I pray, and weep on bended knee,
+Ah! Ninon, when thou laugh'st, the bee, as well thou art aware,
+In hovering round thy rosy mouth, that 'twas a flower might swear:
+Were I to tell thee all, perchance the laugh would still be there
+
+But nothing shalt thou know of this. I venture, all untold,
+Calmly to sit beneath thy lamp, and converse with thee hold.
+I hear the murmur of thy voice, thy balmy breath inhale;
+And thou may'st doubt me, or surmise, or laugh, I shall not quail;
+Thine eyes shall see no cause in me, their kindly look to veil.
+
+By stealth at times, in secret joy, mysterious flowers I glean,
+When o'er thy harpsichord at eve enraptured I can lean,
+And list from thy harmonious hands what fairy accents flow;
+Or in voluptuous waltz, as round with flying feet we go,
+I feel thee in mine arms, a reed, that's waving to and fro.
+
+When from thy side I have been kept by thronged saloons at night,
+And in my chamber draw my bolt that shuts the world from sight,
+A thousand reminiscences I seize upon, and hold
+In jealous grasp; and there, alone, like miser o'er his gold,
+To Heaven my heart, all full of thee, with greedy joy unfold.
+
+I love; and I have learned to speak in cool and careless tone.
+I love; nought tells of it. I love; who knows it?--I alone!
+Dear is my secret, dear the pain with which I am oppressed;
+And I have sworn to love, without a hope on which to rest;
+But not without a taste of joy--I see thee, and am blest.
+
+No! not for me! I was not born such bliss supreme to meet:
+To die within thy arms, or live contented at thy feet.
+Alas! all proves it--e'en the grief that fain I would dispel.
+Were I to tell thee, ne'ertheless, that, troth, I love thee well:
+Blue-eyed brunette, blue-eyed brunette, thine answer who could tell?
+
+
+
+
+                  THE LAST OF THE ROMAN GLADIATORS.
+
+     The incident, which the following stanzas attempt to describe, is
+     historical. It is related by Gibbon in his "Decline and Fall of the
+     Roman Empire."
+
+
+Ye, who have the ruins seen
+  Of the Coliseum's walls,
+Think ye, what the sight hath been
+  Of Rome's highest festivals!
+If your fancy can restore
+Crumbled arch and corridor,
+          Call forth the dead;
+Bid them fill again the seats,
+Where now Echo only greets
+          The stranger's tread.
+
+Fourteen hundred years are past,
+  Rome hath fallen in her pride,
+Since the gladiator last
+  In the Coliseum died.
+Fourteen hundred years ago,
+Tens of thousands thronged the show,
+          In joyous guise,
+On the struggle and the strife,
+And the pangs of parting life,
+          Feasting their eyes.
+
+Then ye might have heard the roar
+  Of the noble beasts of prey,
+As they fought and bled, before
+  Men less noble far than they.
+Strength is useless, courage vain,
+Beauty saves not--they are slain,
+          The forest race;
+Whilst the still unsated crowd
+For new victims shout aloud,
+          To fill their place.
+
+Hark! the Praetor's stern command
+  Costlier sacrifice proclaims;
+Lo! the gladiatorial band,
+  Glory of the Roman Games!
+As they enter, man by man,
+Shape and size the people scan
+          With eager glance;
+And of each ill-fated pair,
+That await the signal there,
+          Foretell the chance.
+
+Hark! the trumpet's sudden sound;
+  Lo! the work of death begun:
+Seas of blood shall drench the ground,
+  Ere that deadly work be done.
+Ha! a moment of delay?
+What the lifted hand can stay?
+          Is there a fear
+Of Pompeii's fiery shower?
+Or, doth Earthquake's giant power
+          Make havoc here?
+
+No--for Nature with a smile
+  Looks upon her outraged laws,
+Man's indignant voice the while
+  Bidding man in pity pause.
+See!--a monk, obscure, unknown,
+Christ's disciple, treads alone
+          The arena's sand,
+Foe from foe intent to part,
+Striving with a zealous heart,
+          But feeble hand.
+
+Would ye seek to know his fate?
+  Listen to that savage yell!
+Scorn, derision, fury, hate,
+  Doomed his death--the martyr fell.
+Record there is none to show,
+Whose the hand that dealt the blow
+          That laid him there;
+Men who gazed, and men who fought,
+All alike to madness wrought,
+          The guilt must share.
+
+Whether stoned to death, or slain
+  By the sword, or by the spear,
+Little recks it--it were vain
+  Through the mists of time to peer.
+This we know--the martyr died;
+Nor without success had plied
+          His work of peace,
+Since, to expiate that deed,
+Rome's Imperial Lord decreed,
+          The Games should cease.
+
+Rome obeyed her Lord's commands;
+  Never were those Games renewed:
+Now the priest of Jesus stands
+  Where the gladiator stood.
+Thanks, Telemachus, to thee,
+Sainted martyr, now we see
+          Altars around;
+And the spot, where thou of yore
+Did'st thy life-blood nobly pour,
+          Is hallowed ground.
+
+
+
+
+       THE PRUDENT BRIDE.
+
+
+At Salem Meeting-House, one summer day,
+Two lovers, Abby Purkis and John Cole,
+Were joined in holy wedlock. Off they started
+To spend the honey-moon, gregarious,
+At Trenton, Saratoga, and the Falls.
+  Reaching this last-named wonder of the world,
+They went the usual round; mounted the tower
+That overlooks the cataract; stood and watched
+The eddying Rapids, and the whirling Pool;
+Nor on thy deck, O daring "_Maid of the Mist_,"
+Failed they to buffet the tumultuous roar,
+The drenching spray, the seeming perilous plunge
+Beneath the Horse-Shoe. Every where, throughout,
+Abby was brave; nay, on John's stalwart arm
+Leaning, was confident.
+                    At last they reached
+The Cavern of the Winds. Then changed her bearing.
+Trembling, she paused. In truth, the howling blasts,
+And gusty moans as of imprisoned spirits,
+Struck the bride's soul with terror. All aghast,
+She stood before the entrance, and refused,
+Firmly refused to trust herself within.
+John urged--she would not; coaxed--'twas all in vain;
+Laughed at, and called her "little fool"--she would not.
+Nay more, she prayed him by the love he bore her
+Not to set foot himself within a place
+So fraught with peril. John was ungallant,
+And only laughed the more. Not he the man
+To flinch from fisticuffs with Aeolus!
+Had he not harpooned whales in Arctic seas?
+Were not typhoon, white squall, and hurricane
+His some time playmates? It was her turn now
+To coax, and urge, and crave--and be denied.
+  Chafed that her will was not a law to John,
+Abby was woman still, and sorely grieved
+That he should run such risks. She kissed him fondly,
+And bade him tread with care, and hasten back.
+Her voice was choked with sobs. Her latest words
+Were scarcely audible, though through them breathed
+Salem's sound training. "John," she faltered forth,
+"We know not what may happen: dear, dear John,
+"Were it not well that you--should--leave--with--me--
+"Your--watch--and--pocket-book?"
+
+
+
+
+  THE TRAMPER'S BED--AND THE KING'S.
+
+
+Down by the side of a sweet clover-stack,
+On a summer night, I lie on my back.
+Clear space is above me; and there, as I lie,
+I look straight up to the stars in the sky.
+  Once, when the King was dethroned by the mob,
+They swarmed to his palace, to stare or to rob,
+And the frightened lackies flung open the doors,
+And clouted shoes scraped along polished floors.
+Then it was I caught sight of his Majesty's bed,
+With its canopy, gilded and carved, overhead;--
+If his Majesty wishes the stars to behold,
+And looks up, he can see but the carving and gold!
+  Some night, should my soul be unbound as I sleep,
+And downward an Angel in search of it sweep,
+No bar, no obstruction, would hinder his flight;--
+With a wave of his wings, by my corpse he would light.
+  But what, if the soul to be loosed were the King's?
+Could an Angel reach that by the poise of his wings?
+Could he easily cleave through a palace his way?
+Through ceilings bedizened, through floors in decay--
+Through gorgeous apartments and bare attic rooms,
+For lords and for ladies, for valets and grooms--
+Through a quaint peaked roof rising high o'er the whole--
+Could he enter, and tenderly waft off the soul?
+  Better, then, is the bed by the sweet clover-stack,
+With the stars full in view, and the clear Angel's track!
+And though much be not mine of this world's pleasant things,
+I should care not to barter my couch for the King's!
+
+
+
+
+                     OCCASION.
+
+           _From the Italian of Ternare_
+
+
+"Say, who art thou, with more than mortal air,
+Endowed by Heaven with gifts and graces rare,
+Whom restless, winged feet for ever onward bear?"--
+
+"I am Occasion--known to few, at best;
+And since one foot upon a wheel I rest,
+Constant my movements are--they cannot be repressed.
+
+"Not the swift eagle in his swiftest flight
+Can equal me in speed. My wings are bright;
+And man, who sees them waved, is dazzled by the sight.
+
+"My thick and flowing locks, before me thrown,
+Conceal my form--nor face, nor breast is shown,
+That thus, as I approach, my coming be not known.
+
+"Behind my head, no single lock of hair
+Invites the hand, that fain would it grasp there;
+But he, who lets me pass, to seize me may despair."
+
+"Whom, then, so close behind thee do I see?"--
+"Her name is Penitence; and Heaven's decree
+Hath made all those her prey, who profit not by me.
+
+"And thou, O mortal, who dost vainly ply
+These curious questions, thou dost not descry,
+That now thy time is lost--for I am passing by."
+
+
+
+
+THE MOURNFUL BALLAD OF THE "ALABAMA."
+
+
+Captain Semmes is on a cruise
+O'er the track that skippers use;
+From the Western Isles, to those
+Near Nantucket shoals, he goes.
+                Woe is me, Alabama!
+
+Letters to the merchants tell
+Who into his clutches fell;
+'Tis the talk of all the town;
+News-boys call it up and down
+                Woe is me, Alabama!
+
+Straight the sons of Commerce came
+To their Chamber, crying shame
+For the tidings they had learned,
+For their ships and cargoes burned.
+                Woe is me, Alabama!
+
+Up and spake a merchant prince:
+"Friends, our city well may wince,
+For you have, alas! to know
+Of a most disastrous blow!
+                Woe is me, Alabama!
+
+"All is sunk beneath the waves,
+Breadstuffs, lard, tobacco, staves;
+Chained have been our Captains bold
+In the 'Alabama's' hold!
+                Woe is me, Alabama!
+
+"Lawless, too, is Captain Semmes;
+Neutral shipments he condemns.
+Useless is it to appeal
+To Consul's signature and seal.
+                Woe is me, Alabama!
+
+"But there's worse than this behind;
+Treacherous friends this blow designed.
+Great as is the corsair's guilt,
+Greater theirs his ship who built!
+                Woe is me, Alabama!
+
+"Neutral money, neutral skill,
+Wrought us this outrageous ill;
+Neutral engines, neutral guns,
+Aid him as he fights or runs.
+                Woe is me, Alabama!
+
+"Sons of Commerce, men of worth,
+Let these words of mine go forth!
+Let the British monarch know
+That to her all this we owe!"
+                Woe is me, Alabama!
+
+So the warning words went forth
+To England, from the angered North,
+Passed along from mouth to mouth,
+"No more dealings with the South!"
+                Woe is me, Alabama!
+
+"You may sell to this our land
+All we want of contraband;
+But have a care that nothing goes,
+From you, a neutral, to our foes!"
+                Woe is me, Alabama!
+
+Now Heaven preserve us all in peace,
+And let these ugly squabbles cease!
+So fighters all, and standers-by,
+Shall nevermore have cause to cry,
+                "Woe is me, Alabama!"
+
+November, 1862.
+
+
+
+
+    LINES FOR THE GUITAR.
+
+_From the French of Victor Hugo._
+
+
+ Man was saying: "How can we,
+ In our little boats at sea,
+ Pass the guarda-costas by?"--
+"Row!" said Woman in reply.
+
+ Man was saying: "How forget
+ Perils that our lives beset,
+ Strife, and Poverty's low cry?"--
+"Sleep!" said Woman in reply.
+
+ Man was saying: "How be sure
+ Beauty's favour to secure,
+ Nor the subtle philtre try?"--
+"Love!" said Woman in reply.
+
+
+
+
+     THREE MEN AND A WOMAN.
+
+
+A Summer's dawn and a tranquil sea;
+  But lurid all with smoke:
+For a bark was burning furiously,
+  What time the morning broke.
+
+Terrible? ay, but risk there was none,
+  For stern the Captain's sway;
+And when he spoke, each mother's son
+  Could not but choose obey.
+
+"Man the boats!"--the boats were manned,
+  In order, one by one;
+To pull a hundred miles to land,
+  All under the Summer's sun.
+
+Four stalwart rowers bend to their oars:
+  Four sitters at the stern--
+Three men and a woman--silent sit,
+  Watching the vessel burn.
+
+They were no tremblers: each had known
+  Perils by land and deep;
+But the woman alone would gently moan,
+  And at times, perforce, would weep.
+
+Yet soon the sun was high in heaven,
+  And the sea was a-glow: and then
+The temper of those men peered out--
+  Of those three fearless men.
+
+One thought his white hand by the sun would be tanned;
+  One felt they were wrong to risk it,
+In sweltering heat, with nothing to eat
+  But a bit of dry ship-biscuit.
+
+The third brooded over his handful of freight
+  Going down, uninsured, to the deep:
+But the woman alone would gently moan,
+  And at times, perforce, would weep;
+
+Till a sense of shame the three o'ercame,
+  And a curious wish to know
+Why, still unfearing, she gave way
+  To her uncomplaining woe.
+
+"Ah, Sirs!"--she faltered in reply--
+  "The danger is easily braved:
+But my husband may hear that the ship is burnt--
+  And not that we are saved!"
+
+
+
+
+               ANOTHER MARBLE FAUN.
+
+  _A Translation of La Statue, by Victor Hugo._
+
+
+  He seemed to shiver, for the wind was keen.
+'Twas a poor statue underneath a mass
+Of leafless branches, with a blackened back
+And green foot--an old isolated Faun
+In old deserted park, who, bending forward,
+Half merged himself in the entangled boughs,
+Half in his marble settings. He was there,
+Pensive, and bound to the earth; and, as all things,
+Devoid of movement, he was there--forgotten.
+
+  Trees were around him, whipped by the icy blasts--
+Gigantic chestnuts, without leaf or bird,
+And, like himself, grown old in that same place.
+Through the dark network of their undergrowth,
+Pallid his aspect; and the earth was brown.
+Starless and moonless, a rough winter's night
+Was letting down her lappets o'er the mist.
+Trees more remote, with sombre shafts upreared,
+Each other crossed; and trees remoter still,
+By distance blurred, threw up to the grey sky
+Their thousand twigs sharp-pointed, intricate;
+And posed themselves around; and through the fog
+Took, on the horizon's verge, the shadowy form
+Of mighty porcupines in countless herd.
+
+  This--nothing more: old Faun, dull sky, dark wood.
+
+Piercing the mist, perchance there might be seen
+A distant terrace--its long layers of stone
+Tinted with slimy green; or group of Nymphs,
+Dimly defined beside a wide-spread basin,
+And shrinking--fitly in this desolate park--
+As once from gazers, from neglect to-day.
+The old Faun was laughing. In their dubious haze
+Leaving the shamed Nymphs and their dreary basin--
+The old Faun was laughing--'twas to him I came
+Moved to compassion, for these sculptors all
+Are pitiless ever, and, content with praise,
+Doom Nymphs to shame, condemn the Fauns to laughter.
+
+  Poor helpless marble, how I've pitied it
+Less often man--the harder of the two.
+  So then, without a word that might offend
+His ear difformed--for well the marble hears
+The voice of thought--I said to him: "You hail
+From the gay amorous age; O Faun, what saw you,
+When you were happy? Were you of the Court?
+Did you take part in fetes?--For your diversion
+These Nymphs were fashioned. In this wood, for you,
+Capable hands mingled the gods of Greece
+With Roman Caesars; made rare vases peer
+Into clear waters; and this garden vext
+With tortuous labyrinths. When you were happy,
+O Faun, what saw you? All the secrets tell
+Of that too vain yet captivating past,
+Thick set with prudent love-makers, a past
+In which great poets jostled mighty Kings.
+How fresh your memory--you are laughing still!
+
+  Speak to me, comely Faun, as you would speak
+To tree, or zephyr, or untrodden grass.
+From end to end of this well-shaded alley,
+When near you, with the handsome Lautrec, passed
+The soft-eyed Marguerite, the Bearnaise Queen,
+Have you, O Greek, O mocker of old days,
+Have you not sometimes with that oblique eye
+Winked at the Farnese Hercules?--Alone,
+In cave as it were of foliage green and moist,
+Have you, O Faun, considerately turned
+From side to side when counsel-seekers came,
+And now advised as shepherd; now as satyr?
+Have you sometimes upon this very bench
+Seen at mid-day, Vincent de Paul instilling
+Grace into Gondi?--Have you ever thrown
+That searching glance on Louis with Fontange,
+On Anne with Buckingham; and did they not
+Start, with flushed cheeks, to hear your laugh ring forth
+From corner of the wood?--Was your advice
+As to the thyrsis or the ivy asked,
+When, the grand ballet of fantastic form,
+God Phoebus, or god Pan, and all his court
+Turned the fair head of the fair Montespan,
+Calling her Amaryllis?--La Fontaine,
+Flying the courtiers' ears of stone, came he,
+Tears in his eyelids, to reveal to you
+The sorrows of his Nymphs of Vaux?--What said
+Boileau to you, to you, O lettered Faun,
+Who once with Virgil, in the Eclogue, held
+That charming dialogue, and deftly made--
+Couched on the turf--the heavy spondee dance
+To the light dactyl's step?--Say, have you seen
+Young beauties sporting on the sward: Chevreuse
+Of the swimming eyes, Thiange of airs superb?
+Have they sometimes, in rosy-tinted group,
+Girt you so fondly round, that all at once
+A straggling sunbeam on a fluttering bosom
+Marked your lascivious profile?--Has your tree
+Received beneath the quiet of its shade
+Pale Mazarin's scarlet winding sheet?--Have you
+Been honoured with a sight of Moliere
+In dreamy mood? Has he perchance at times,
+Dropping at random a melodious verse,
+In tone familiar--as is the wont
+'Twixt demi-gods--addressed you?--When at eve
+Homeward hereby the thinker went, has he
+Who--seeing souls all naked--could not fear
+Your nudity, in his enquiring mind
+Confronted you with Man? And did he deem
+You, spectral cynic, the less sad, less cold,
+Less wicked, less ironical--comparing
+Your laugh in marble with our human laugh?"
+
+  Under the thickly tangled branches, thus
+Did I speak to him; he no answer gave--
+Not even a murmur. On the pedestal
+Leaning, I listened; but the past stirred not.
+Dumb to my words and to my pity deaf,
+The Satyr, motionless, was vaguely blanched
+By the wan glimmer of the dying day.
+To see him there, sinister, half drawn out
+From his dark framing, and by damp discoloured,
+Brought to one's mind the handle of a sword
+In torso chiselled--an old rusty sword,
+Left for long years neglected in its sheath.
+
+  I shook my head, and moved myself away.
+Then, from the copses, from the dried up boughs
+Pendent above him, from secret caves
+Hid in the wood, methought a ghostly voice
+Came forth and woke an echo in my soul,
+As in the hollow of an amphora.
+
+  "Imprudent poet," thus it seemed to say,
+"What dost thou here? Leave the forsaken Fauns
+In peace beneath their trees! Dost thou not know,
+Poet, that ever it is impious deemed,
+In desert spots where drowsy shades repose--
+Though love itself might prompt thee--to shake down
+The moss that hangs from ruined centuries,
+And, with the vain noise of thine ill-timed words,
+To mar the recollections of the dead?"
+
+  Then to the gardens all enwrapped in mist
+I hurried, dreaming of the vanished days.
+And still the tree-tops were with mystery rife;
+And still, behind me--hieroglyph obscure
+Of antique alphabet--the lonely Faun
+Held to his laughter, through the falling night.
+
+  I went my way; but yet--in saddened spirit
+Pondering on all that had my vision crossed,
+Floating in air or scattered under foot,
+Confused and blent, beauty and spring and morn,
+Leaves of old summers, fair ones of old time--
+Through all, at distance would my fancy see,
+In the woods, statues; shadows in the past!
+
+
+
+
+                CHARADES.
+
+                   I.
+
+
+Look from the prow of thine anchored bark--
+Anchored by classic shore--and mark,
+Down fathoms-deep in the purple sea,
+How Time and the waters have dealt on me
+
+Art lost in the moonless and starless night?
+Far-away looming, a light! a light!
+Fearlessly steer, for on me 'tis placed,
+To guide thy bark o'er the trackless waste
+
+Earth knows me, too; and will heave and quake
+Where my subterranean course I take:
+And none so aghast at my ravages then,
+As they whose type was the Sire of men.
+
+But not ever thus; at times I'm seen
+On the cheek or the neck of Beauty's queen;
+Or (to favoured mortal alone confest)
+Tinging the snow upon Beauty's breast.
+
+So, whether above the waves, or below,
+Or beneath the Earth, or on breast of snow,
+Linked with the past, or alive to-day,
+Tell who I am--if tell ye may.
+
+
+               II.
+
+
+My lady calls; my First obeys--
+  Nor less his lord's behest:
+In bower and hall, in olden days,
+  My First was in request.
+
+Yet 'tis my First that tells us now
+  What then my First was doing;
+How he went forth to war, and how
+  He prospered in his wooing.
+
+A wise King bade the lazy fool
+  Observe my Second's ways,
+And notice--as it were in school--
+  The wisdom she displays.
+
+Yet hers is a devouring race,
+  And might--though strange it be--
+Eat up, in given time and place,
+  My First, or you, or me.
+
+As for my whole--in every age
+  Mankind must have its show;
+In actual life, on mimic stage,
+  In peace, war, joy, or woe.
+
+Now 'tis a wedding, now a death,
+  A gathering, or a play;
+It comes, but, like a passing breath,
+  Full soon 'tis swept away.
+
+
+            III.
+
+
+When Richard of the Lion Heart
+  In arms the Paynim sought,
+I of his panoply was part,
+  And, wielding me, he fought.
+
+When ladies on a different field
+  With men their skill essay,
+I am the weapon that they wield
+  If they would gain the day.
+
+When cooks in certain dishes show
+  Their culinary art,
+I am on hand--the masters know
+  What flavour I impart.
+
+
+                IV.
+
+
+I'm a word of one syllable. Look you for me
+Mid Niagara's roar; in the turbulent sea;
+Where the winds and the waters are wildest at play,
+And fling off their laughter in volumes of spray.
+
+I'm a noun of five letters; but throw one aside--
+I'm a verb; with the noun I'm no longer allied.
+I'm a grave, solemn verb; nay, I truly might say,
+Those who follow my precept do nothing but pray.
+
+But again; let two letters be dropped--there's a change;
+As a noun--and by no means a grave one--I range.
+Now I'm here; now I'm there; seen by night and by day,
+For in short, I'm a beam, or a flash, or a ray.
+
+Thus a verb and two nouns packed together you see,
+In a word of one syllable.--What can it be?
+
+
+                   V.
+
+
+There are some words, that in a double sense
+Must be interpreted; of these am I.
+Your housemaid, thus, wilt know me literally
+Better than you do; but, with all respect
+For Betty's carefulness, she scarce can catch
+My finer meaning. I'm, with her, a thing
+For brush and duster; in me, you behold
+A symbol. So much for me as I stand.
+Now cut my head off--I'm another word
+Of narrow and of wide significance,
+Handful of dust, the very world itself.
+Cut off my tail--the effect is still the same;
+I'm yet another of those duplex words:
+Mental and bodily, an essential part
+Of all mankind, without which no one lives,
+Nay, not an animal, though you may swear,
+And truly too, that I have no existence,
+And never had, in certain men and women.
+    Enough: it is not difficult to find
+Three words, six meanings, in one syllable.
+
+
+                 VI.
+
+
+Well may I call myself cosmopolite,
+Being of all lands and times. Barbaric tribes
+Know me, and honour. In the gentler world,
+Scholars have studied me, and poets sung,
+And painters painted, and musicians hymned.
+Nor from Religion have I held myself
+Apart. In Pagan and in savage rites
+Largely I mingle; and some Saints at least,
+Worshipped among us, owe me much. In short,
+Theme, inspiration, puzzle--I am all.
+As to my form, it may not be defined;
+Yet this is certain: were I rent in twain
+And of one half bereft, I should not have
+A leg to stand on--of the other half
+Equally mulcted, I should endless be.
+
+
+                 VII.
+
+
+In me, as the scholar saith,
+Is exhaustion, wasting, death.
+But--so close do grave and gay
+Touch, in this our world--you may,
+By a change of accent made,
+Change the meaning I conveyed;
+Change me so that I proclaim
+Victory won, and spoils, and fame!
+
+
+                       VIII.
+
+
+My first's a French noun; and, without it, stands not
+Church, palace, or hospital, villa, or cot.
+My Second no feature distinctive can claim;
+It but echoes my First--'t is precisely the same.
+  Yet my Whole to French parentage makes no pretence;
+It is plain Anglo-Saxon, in sound as in sense;
+Nor more widely asunder does pole lie from pole,
+Than my Gallican parts and my Anglican whole.
+Impalpable, it--solid, tangible, they;
+They may last, for long ages--it passes away!
+Now a sign of approval, a token of scorn;
+Sometimes of the wind or the waves it is born;
+Though its presence at intervals surely you'll trace
+Where my First and my Second have stablished their place;
+Where King hath his dwelling or Trade hath her marts--
+A whole evanescent, material parts!
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+The words "irresistible" and "irresistable" were left as they
+were printed in the original.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MATHIEU ROPARS: ET CETERA***
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