[Illustration: Poufaille’s Goods Ready for Auction]

He liked best to choose for himself at the Hôtel Drouot—that big

collecting-sewer of art, rolling pell-mell in its dusty waves

masterpieces and daubs. The salesrooms, heaped from ceiling to floor,

gave him the feeling that he might sometime make a discovery there like

the cock who found pearls in a dunghill.

“What horrors!” Will said one day, as they were passing in front of a

hall full of plaster statues and unframed paintings. “It must be from

the studio of some poor devil whom they are selling out at auction.”

There were casts from nature—arms and legs and feet; there were

formless sketches, canvases hung on the wall; for some, it was

impossible to see what they represented, as they had been hung head

downward. There was a tub, some bottles, a few chairs, a mattress,

and a rickety table, all heaped up in a corner. Two monstrous statues

seemed to keep watch over the confusion. On the pedestal of one was

inscribed “Liberty,” and she raised arms and head furiously; the

second, “Fraternity,” lay on the ground in fragments, turning enormous

haunches to the public.

“What are those mastodons there?” Will asked.

“That,” said Phil, with surprise, “that must be from a sculptor

whose name is Poufaille; yes, look at the sign over the door—_Vente

Poufaille_.”

“Poor Poufaille!” said Phil to himself; “he must have been unable to

pay his rent—the landlord has come down on him. If I had known, I might

have helped; but it is so long since I have seen him.”

What he saw recalled the day when he entered the sculptor’s place on

his arrival in Paris. He remembered the gay laughter of Suzanne from

the top of her ladder, and the pork fried with garlic. Those statues,

those pictures worthy to figure in a collection of horrors,—how

much more ugly and more lamentable still it all seemed to him in the

presence of the crowd of indifferent passers-by!

“Poufaille?” Ethel asked with interest. “Is it the Poufaille of

whom you used to tell me? Why, he has no talent; he’d do better as a

farmer.”

The sale began and they heard the auctioneer above the confusion of the

throng: “Magnificent statues—‘Liberty’—‘Fraternity’—give me a bid!”

“Forty sous!”

“Forty sous? There’s half a ton of plaster there! Come, now, a higher

bid!”

A silence, and then some one called, “Fifty sous!”

“Bid it up a thousand francs, Will!” Ethel said to her brother.

“Really, now, Ethel,” Will answered, “even at fifty sous it’s dear.

I’ll buy something else from M. Poufaille, some other time.”

So many years of toil and want, and all his poor dreams of the future

soon to be scattered and ground to mortar—yet Poufaille was right! He

had followed his dream, he had tried his fortune; it had tumbled to

the ground, but what a beautiful dream it had been all the same! And

Phil thought, with a thrill at his heart, that there was one thing

which justified every effort; one thing which broke down distinctions

and made a poor artist the equal of a reigning duke, of a king even;

something which would put him on a level with Ethel; something which he

would reach, had he to kill himself in the struggle for it!

Ethel came up to Phil as they were going out of the hall.

“Tell me, Phil, what can induce a man like Poufaille to try art? Isn’t

it sheer folly?”

“No, Miss Rowrer. It is true Poufaille has not succeeded, but that

matters little. He has tried to reach the only thing which makes life

worth living.”

“What is that, Phil?”

“Fame!”

CHAPTER VII

CARACAL’S NARROW ESCAPE

“À bas Caracal!”

“Vive Vieillecloche!”

Phil, who was reading a newspaper as he passed along, looked up with

astonishment.

He was in front of the entrance of a music-hall. On a strip of cotton

cloth he read, in huge letters, “PUNCH d’INDIGNATION!” The name of

Vieillecloche was displayed everywhere, mingled with the flags which

covered a good half of the theatrical posters of acrobats, jugglers,

and clowns.

“The flag covers the goods!” Phil said, as he saw this assemblage of

patriotism and fakery. “Vieillecloche is at his old tricks; what a

humbug!”

Phil stopped. Confused imprecations against impostors and grafters came

to his ears between the bang! bang! of the door, pushed one way or the

other by the public and clanging back into its place.

Bang! “Vive Vieillecloche!”

Bang! “À bas!” Bang! “Traitors! Sold out!” Bang! “À bas Caracal!” Bang!

bang!

“Hello!” said Phil. “‘À bas Caracal’? What does that mean? I must go

in.”

He entered.

Bang! It was the door slamming after Phil. He had now a right to the

indignation and to the punch.

To tell the truth, there was little indignation in the hall, but a

great deal of drinking and still more laughter. The public was made

up of the idlers of the quarter, who had come to be amused. There

were stable-boys and grooms in their great wooden shoes. The hall was

infected with the smell of rum and tobacco. The voices, which but now

had reached Phil’s ear in broken cries, rolled uninterruptedly. There

was a continuous torrent of _à bas!_ and _vive!_ mingled with coarse

wit and the clink of glasses. On the stage, mastering the tumult,

Vieillecloche was speaking.

“Vive Vieillecloche!”

“Hear! hear!”

Bang!

The flights of oratory were lost amid the noise.

“Only yesterday,” Vieillecloche was saying, as he raised his voice,

“not satisfied with attacking the majesty of universal suffrage,

forgetful of the famous night of the 13th of March, foreigners feared

not to brave the lion-people in its den! They banded together to

despoil us of our dead—to soil the majesty of the tomb where our great

ancestors—” Bang! said the door, cutting the discourse, “—ancestors

sleep their eternal sleep! Do you not hear, O people, beneath the

earth Richard the Lion-hearted roaring with wrath and shame? And to

think there are French pens that treat us as visionaries—us who point

out such attacks—and that pretend that we are wanting in courtesy

by accusing our passing guests of an imaginary crime! This vile pen,

citizens, I deliver it up to your indignant scorn. It is Caracal!”

“À bas Caracal!”

“Oho! I understand,” Phil said to himself. “Caracal has taken up the

defense of the foreigners, as he promised Miss Rowrer the other day.”

“Eh bien!” Vieillecloche went on, “it shall not be said that Caracal

has appealed in vain to our courtesy when he asks us to cease our

political campaign against such foreigners, among whom there are

ladies and even a young girl. We shall speak no more of Richard the

Lion-hearted! All that is a blunder, a visionary’s dream, a groundless

accusation. So be it! They ask for definite facts and not for vague

accusations. Here is a definite fact! I accuse, formally, an American

of stealing our ideas and stifling under the power of his cursed gold

the outburst of a young genius, the hope of our glorious national

art. They come to pillage even in their calm retreats, and to deprive

of their labor the sons of the soil—_les autochtones!_—hum!—_les

autochtones!_” (The word intoxicated Vieillecloche and he sent it

bounding like a rubber ball.) “Yes, citizens! He has signed his work

with a false name, he has picked the lock of our national museums, and,

like a cuckoo, he has deposited in the bosom of glory the egg which he

has not laid! And you suffer that, O people? Do you not feel the blush

of shame mounting to your cheek? Take your clubs, Parisians—” and so he

went on and on.

Vieillecloche in his haranguing embroidered his theme with violent

gestures which sent the skirts of his coat flying around his thin body.

[Illustration: The Punch d’Indignation]

Phil was not sorry to have come. The inventions of this crank amused

him, most of all when the orator, rising to higher flights, brought out

personal facts so as “to enter into the domain of practical things.”

Vieillecloche calmed down. The storm-tossed skirts of his coat fell. He

was no longer the roaring tribune of the people: he was the statesman,

speaking calmly and coolly. He held one hand between the buttons of his

waistcoat, and the other behind his back, like Napoleon. To begin with,

according to him, these facts would never have taken place if they had

only listened to him.

A quarter of an hour of counsels followed, in which there were

insurrections and barricades, blood and glory, and _à bas!_ and _vive!_

“But if the sword remains in the scabbard,” Vieillecloche concluded,

“let the people, at least, console despoiled genius with their songs;

let the old Gaulish gaiety inflict its avenging laugh on the robber of

its glory!”

As Vieillecloche retired amid ironic applause, a long-haired poet came

out on the platform and a hurdy-gurdy ground out despairingly such an

air as goats dance to. Phil looked at the furious grinder and gave a

cry of astonishment: “Poufaille!”

“What is Poufaille doing here? And why does he look so furious?” Phil

asked himself, as he saw the sculptor’s wrathful head leaning over the

hurdy-gurdy whose crank he turned with rage.

Bing! bing!

“After all,” thought Phil, “there is nothing strange in Poufaille being

here. Artists belong to all sorts of provincial and Parisian societies,

as if they were really children of the soil, so as to get orders. He

might as well grind out a tune at an indignation meeting as Suzanne do

the Muse of the South at the Pig’s-Rump Dinner.”

Phil also knew that the “Poets of the Landes” or the “Broom-flower”

were only too happy to make themselves heard by a Parisian public, and

would not miss an occasion for avenging genius despoiled by cowards,

and for declaiming in its honor to the accompaniment of a hurdy-gurdy

or bagpipes.

So it was a very simple thing that Poufaille should have offered his

services. Meanwhile Vieillecloche had sat down after many a handshake

with the notabilities of the committee. It was now the turn of the

poet.

The singer on the platform gesticulated to his Norman patois, more

monotonous than the fall of rain, while the air of the hurdy-gurdy,

piercing and thrilling, filled the hall like a continued wailing from

a herd of kids.

“Enough!” cried the public; “be done, _fouchtri!_”

“To the door!”

“Enough! enough!”

“Silence, François!”

“Ta bouche, bébé!”

“Stow it! I say! _pétrusquin!_”

It was the _Parigot_ wit replying to the wit of the provinces. The

people had indeed arisen, but not as Vieillecloche would have wished.

Instead of tearing up the paving-stones in honor of misunderstood

Genius, and casting out the robbers of Glory, they were content to

finish the punch and laugh in the face of the poet who bored them with

his doggerel.

Besides, all these questions of signatures to pictures, of museum locks

picked, and of Richard the Lion-hearted interested nobody.

But the banging of the door now began covering the bing! bing! of the

tune. The public was going out in a mass. Vieillecloche tried to keep

them by new flights of oratory which had no echo. Phil foresaw that

the fierce tribune of the people would soon be making his prophetic

gestures and proclaiming the eternal glory of the _autochtones_ alone

with his hurdy-gurdy, like St. Anthony with his pig. So Phil went away,

followed to the very street by the exasperated grinding of the crank.

“What madness!” Phil said to himself. “Poufaille is certainly earning

his money. He puts as much heat into it as if some one had stolen his

own share of glory.” Poufaille a despoiled young genius! Phil, at the

very idea, could not refrain from laughter.

“I must wait for him here,” he thought; “I shall see him when he comes

out.”

He walked back and forth, but Poufaille did not come out. Still, Phil

lost nothing by waiting. A final bang of the door made him turn his

head and—what did he see but, arm in arm and laughing and talking

together as gay as school-boys, Vieillecloche with Caracal!

“Well, I never! That’s too much!” Phil said, as he followed them with

his eyes, trying to gather from their gestures the meaning of their

conversation.

Vieillecloche lifted his hands, as if to show that they were empty.

Caracal spoke low to him. Vieillecloche nodded approvingly.

“Those fine fellows must be preparing some stroke of business,” Phil

said to himself, strongly interested. “Who knows if I do not play

a part in it? It may be my turn—and Miss Ethel will no longer hear

of Richard the Lion-hearted. The attacks will now fall on Caracal.

Bravo! But perhaps Miss Ethel will not be displeased to learn of the

friendship between Caracal and Vieillecloche. One might have supposed

they would not be quite so thick! I don’t understand it,” was Phil’s

conclusion. Moreover, he was accustomed never to take seriously what

Caracal said or did.

“Besides,” Phil added, “Poufaille must know what is going on. I have

not seen him come out, but he will tell me to-night.” So he determined

to dine at Mère Michel’s, where he would have a chance of seeing

Poufaille.

For a long time he had not met the _copains_—they had almost become

strangers to him. The talk about art and the masterpieces traced with a

burnt match on grimy tables no longer interested him. He felt himself

out of place in the environment, but he wished to see Poufaille that

very evening. To begin with, he would have the pleasure of offering his

services to the poor devil, who could not be very rich, to judge from

the sale at the Hôtel Drouot a few days before. Phil would find some

delicate means of being useful to him. Who knows if he would ever see

him again? It would be like a farewell to his own past. So Phil went to

Mère Michel’s.

His past mounted up to his brain. It seemed to rise up whole and

entire before him when, near the Boulevard, in a narrow street, he

saw the painted canvas and fixtures deposited at the stage entrance

of a circus. The damp courtyard, the frayed walls, the store-rooms of

stage-properties, the theater’s insides—all that was a little of his

own past.

It was himself, again, whom he elbowed in the Boulevard beside the

Café des Artistes, where women with red tresses topped with feathers

were drinking from little glasses with ill-shaven messieurs, showing

each other photographs and programs, and signing engagements with

fingers stiff with rings. Phil could hear their technical slang:

_Chiqué-dèche—purée-j’te fais une bleue en cinq secs!_ “Garçon, two

absinthes, and get a move on you, _bougre d’andouille_!”

Strolling artists offered to do his portrait for two sous. A bohemian

imitated an _ocarina_ by swelling out his cheeks. A contortionist

spread his little carpet and dislocated himself on the sidewalk.

“Do you like my trade?” he said to Phil, who stood looking at him. “If

you do, I’ll hire you!”

“What a world it is, all the same! And to think that once I loved it

all,” Phil thought, as he turned away.

Farther on there was a restaurant still celebrated for the reason that,

long ago, my Lord l’Arsouille had supped there with Cora Pearl. As

Phil passed in front of it, he saw the staircase decorated with green

palms, and he thought he recognized Helia going up,—it was her hat

and cloak,—and, lifting his eyes, Phil saw, at the window above, the

profile of the Duke of Morgania. Phil lowered his head and went his

way pensively, leaving behind him the restaurant full of fragrance and

lights, wherein the beautiful butterflies of the night were coming to

burn their wings.

To escape from these mournful visions, Phil called up the remembrance

of Ethel. The remainder of his way he traversed without noticing the

distance. He had already passed the Seine and gone under the vault of

the Institut, following a quiet old street. A moment later he was at

Mère Michel’s. A volley of enthusiastic cries welcomed him. Phil asked

himself if he were not the plaything of a dream.

“Vive Phil! Hurrah for Phil! Bravo, Phil! A _ban_ for Phil!”

“_Pan! pan! pan! pan! pan!_”

“It must be my tall hat,” thought Phil, and he took it off with a quick

movement. The welcome doubled its noise.

“Vive Phil!”

“Hurrah!”

“Am I dreaming?” Phil asked himself, “or are these men crazy?” They

were all crowding round him, patting him on the back and shaking his

hand.

“Old Phil!”

“Good old Phil!”

“My best compliments, old comrade!”

“Compliments for what? Whose compliments?” Phil asked in a daze.

“But for your picture, of course!”

“What picture?”

“Your picture in the Luxembourg. Haven’t you read the papers?”

You could have “knocked Phil over with a feather.” They were telling

him he had a picture in the Luxembourg, and he was the only one not to

know it! Surely they must be amusing themselves with him—they must have

got up a practical joke. So he went away, ill disposed for a _rigolade_

after the events of the day.

He had not gone ten steps when he stumbled on Poufaille; but it was

Poufaille cold and sinister, a Northern Poufaille as it were, closer

buttoned up than Vieillecloche in his rôle as statesman.

“How goes it?” Phil said cordially, holding out his hand.

Poufaille did not budge.

“What’s the matter?” said Phil. “You’re giving me the cold shoulder! Is

everybody losing his head? You won’t take my hand, good old Poufaille!”

“I am no longer your good old Poufaille!”

“But what have I done?” Phil asked.

“What have you done?” Poufaille burst out, unable to restrain himself

longer. “I’ll tell you what you’ve done. You’ve stolen my share of

glory—you sign pictures which were painted by me! I’ve seen my cows

in the Luxembourg, signed by your name—the picture into which I put my

whole soul!”

If lightning had fallen at Phil’s feet he would have been less

surprised. So he was the robber cuckoo and Poufaille was the young

genius! Now he understood the meaning of the “Punch d’Indignation.”

“That’s what you’ve done to me!” Poufaille cried, quite beside himself.

“You would hinder me from flying with my own wings. I had something

here” (and Poufaille gave himself a tremendous blow on the forehead),

“I had something here—and you robbed me of it!”

“Your cows—” Phil began in distress, “it was a joke I wanted to play

on Caracal. I bought the picture and signed it—that is true. But was it

yours? I didn’t know it.”

“You didn’t know it! Doesn’t one know the mark of the lion?”

“My good Poufaille, let me explain it to you—let me—” Phil all but

stammered; (it was not easy to tell Poufaille that his picture had been

used as a scarecrow)—“let me explain it to you.”

“We’ll have the explanation in public,” Poufaille shouted.

“Only let me tell you, my dear Poufaille—”

But Poufaille would listen to nothing. He only knew that he was

perishing of hunger while another was stealing his glory. In his

rage fragments of the speech came back to him in chance words: “_Les

autochtones!_—young genius—you have deposited in the bosom of glory an

_autochtone’s_ egg—do you understand?—an _autochtone’s_ egg!”

“Poufaille,” Phil said gravely, “if I have done you wrong, I swear it

was not done wilfully. How much do you think your cows are worth? I’ll

give you whatever you ask.”

“Money!” Poufaille answered indignantly. “You dare offer me money to

purchase my silence!”

“Listen to me, I beseech you!”

“No! I am going to tell them all about it inside there!” and Poufaille,

terrible and furious, entered Mère Michel’s.

It was now Phil’s turn to be angry—not against the poor simpleton

Poufaille, but Caracal should pay for this! “What will Miss Rowrer

think of me with this story of a forged signature?” Phil said to

himself.

The idea that his name figured on a picture in the collection of daubs

which form the foreign hall of the Luxembourg Museum—and that just

when he dreamed he was sure of fame! At the very thought he clenched

his fists with fury. So Caracal had bewitched the Fine Arts Commission

into accepting such a horror!—or perhaps they were willing to discredit

American art by presenting to the public a wretched work bought for

a few sous in a junk-shop! And now he, Phil, was to suffer shipwreck

from the ridiculousness of it, while Ethel would laugh! What could be

Caracal’s aim? With a flash it came to him that the abominable critic

wished to make him grotesque and odious at the same time.

“Ah, Caracal,” Phil said to himself, “you are mistaken this time. You

shall pay for all this!”

A sudden idea came to him: “What if I should go and punch his head!”

He knew he should find Caracal at home at that hour. It was the day

before the feuilleton, impertinent and familiar, which he was in

the habit of signing “A Parisian,” or the _chronique scandaleuse_ of

courts by an “Old Diplomat,” alternating with art criticisms signed

“Caracal.” A cab happened to be passing. Phil hailed it, called out the

address to the driver, and—_en route_! What streets he took, through

what quarters, Phil did not know. He knew only that the critic was

going to have a bad quarter of an hour. He must have from him a frank

explanation, without dodging or subterfuge. This time there would be

no duel carried on by winking the eye and shrugging the shoulder. Phil

stiffened his arm as the cab stopped short. He jumped to the ground and

with three steps reached the concierge’s lodge.

“M. Caracal, if you please?”

“Seventh floor, last door—on the court!”

Phil ran quickly up the stairs. A thick carpet deadened his steps, and

he could hear, behind the doors, the sound of pianos or the laughter

of children. He imagined to himself the pleasant homes with their lamps

surrounded by a circle of golden heads.

“Good, simple, good people!” Phil thought. “Perhaps it is from you

that Caracal takes his studies for ‘The House of Glass’—wolf in the

sheepfold that he is!”

The thought increased his anger. He went up and up. At last he was

going to see that apartment of Caracal’s which no one ever entered. No

doubt it would be insolent in its luxury and have a big valet in the

anteroom and invaluable pictures which this grafter of the press must

have extorted for his collection of art works, of which he was always

talking in his articles.

Seventh floor, last door! It must be there. Phil had reached it. There

was no bell! Phil knocked, but there was no reply. The key had been

forgotten in the door, and he entered. On a table a small lamp shed

its light over papers and books. There were other books on the ground

and on chairs—perhaps the encyclopedia from which Caracal drew his

weekly erudition. In the half-obscurity, farther back, Phil saw a brass

bedstead like a child’s couch. Beside it, on a chest of drawers, there

were garments carefully folded and a hat protected from the dust by

a newspaper. On the floor were shoes beside a blacking-brush. On the

chimneypiece there was a photograph in which an old lady held the hand

of an old gentleman. Everything in the room was neatly ordered and

touching in its simplicity.

“I must have mistaken the floor,” Phil said to himself. “This is not

the apartment of an arbiter of society elegance.”

He was on the point of retreating when, on a sofa near him in the

shadow, some one moved, and he seemed to hear a sob. Phil started back

and the figure on the sofa came into full light. It was Caracal asleep.

There was an expression of sadness on his face and tears were on his

cheeks—the cheeks which Phil had always seen smirking with a convulsive

sneer.

Caracal, when he came home, must have thrown himself on the sofa worn

out with his day’s work. The calm which had come over his features

showed that he had dropped off to sleep in some sad and gentle dream.

Phil, in spite of himself, looked up to the chimneypiece where the old

lady and the old gentleman seemed watching over their child—yes, yes,

Phil was sure of it now, from the sadness on the face of Caracal. He

must have gone back to his childhood; perhaps, in his dreams, he heard

the beloved voices which had long since become silent. A sob from

Caracal made Phil tremble again—a dull, deep sob like the sigh of a

dying man. One would have said that his whole life was rising up before

him—his heart’s bitterness, humiliations undergone and illusions fled,

the success of others and regrets for his own ill-doing.

Phil felt his anger fade away. He divined all the wretchedness of

his life, so full of meanness and bluff. Asleep, the poor creature,

overcome by his distress, seemed sacred to him. He went out without

noise.

“Old Caracal,” he murmured, “I’ll leave you to your dream—that shall be

your punishment.”

CHAPTER VIII

A QUEEN FOR KINGS

Poufaille, seated on a high stool, was copying in the Louvre Gallery.

Since his share of glory had been stolen from him, he had become as

downcast as a caged lion from whom his quarter of meat has been taken.

Poor Poufaille! Everything fell to pieces in his hands. His studio had

been dispersed at auction; “Liberty” and “Fraternity” had been sold for

nothing, not even for enough to pay up the garlic- and potato-seller.

And his cows were in the Luxembourg under another name! What reasons

for sadness! He did not even listen to Suzanne, babbling near him on

a lower seat. He was timidly copying the goat and kids of Paul Potter.

The company of such good animals consoled him a little for that of men.

He was a touching sight, with the veins in his forehead swollen by his

effort, exhausting himself in the handling of brushes and paint-knives,

which were things too delicate for his big hairy hands made for the

plow and the wine-press.

Nothing could amuse him. Yet Suzanne lifted toward him her laughing

face and told her funniest stories. One was an adventure of the other

evening, when she had taken Helia’s hat and cloak to go and sup with

the duke. _Mon Dieu!_ how she had laughed. At the thought of it she

still held her sides, careless of the stares of the public.

“I wish you had been there, my little Poufaille, when I went up the

stairs. They bowed to me as if I were a queen—_ah, mais oui!_ I made

myself as fine as I could and I had Helia’s hat and cloak. If Phil had

seen me he might have thought it was Helia.

“_Eh bien! quoi!_” Suzanne exclaimed, interrupting herself to look at

Poufaille. “What do you mean by grinding your teeth when I speak of

Phil? One would say you were going to eat some one up. Phil doesn’t

hear us, you know; he is up there with Helia, who is posing for him

in what they used to call their oasis—the garden, you know, where

you wanted to grow potatoes. Oh, forgive me, my little Poufaille,

I didn’t wish to hurt your feelings,” Suzanne added quickly, as she

saw Poufaille clenching his fist at the remembrance of the rejected

potatoes, as painful to him as the stolen share of glory. Poufaille

went back to work with a heavy sigh.

“Besides,” Suzanne went on, “you know I’m not so stuck on Phil myself

any more, and I wish he were here, to tell him what I think of his way

of acting toward Helia. I wouldn’t hide the truth from him; and I’d

like to know if he’d answer as he used to do in his attic—‘I’m not that

kind of a man!’ Ah!” Suzanne continued, “you’re all the same, you men!

You’re not worth the rope to hang you!”

Poufaille sighed as if his heart were breaking. He kept on painting his

goat and kids.

“I wish you had been there when the garçon brought me in,” Suzanne

began again, to finish her story. “Imagine a table all spread with

fruits and flowers and lights; and whom do I see coming toward me but

the duke, in evening clothes, leaning over and kissing my hand. I had

my veil down and he did not recognize me—it was Helia he was waiting

for; the duke had invited her with a little note, very well expressed,

you know, such as dukes know how to write. When Helia had opened the

note she asked me to go and present her excuses. You can imagine I took

the opportunity—I whom you see before you. I had supped before that

with smart people, but with a duke never! What would you have done,

Poufaille? That humbug of a Caracal once told me I should have to get

down on my knees when I spoke to him. Well, I just took off my veil

and said: ‘Cuckoo! It’s me! You’re waiting for Helia, but she begs to

be excused!’ Would you think men could be so odd? My little Poufaille,

Helia’s stock went up with him at once. I could see it by the way he

spoke of her. But never mind that; he was very amiable and kept me

to dinner. I didn’t wish to, but he insisted so—and it’s a very chic

place, that restaurant. Then all at once there was a squabble at the

door and I saw two bears coming in!—I mean two men like bears, bowing

to the ground to the duke and calling him monseigneur. They spoke of

lots of things—that they had just come from the monseigneur’s house;

that they had been told monseigneur was in diplomatic consultation—_et

patati et patata_—and then there was Turkey and Morgania and I

don’t know what all. The duke had a very embarrassed look—‘my dear

Zrnitschka—Bjelopawlitji—my dear minister—’

“Ministers—those two bears! I was bursting! And, on my word, I believe

the duke presented me as the diplomatic agent! After that there was

dinner and jokes and songs, and the duke brewed a champagne salad,

while I tickled the two bears under the chin to make them swallow

brandied cherries.”

Suzanne spoke in vain. Poufaille kept the fated look of a man who has

been grazed by glory as it passes. He lifted his head sullenly and then

let it fall again on his breast, as if crushed.

“Attention!” suddenly cried Suzanne, who was looking down the gallery.

“Here are serious customers—Miss Rowrer and Mme. Rowrer, Mr. Will, the

duke, and Caracal. I’m sure they’re going to visit Phil up there in his

oasis. Helia isn’t expecting such an honor!”

Miss Rowrer and her party came on, a compact group among the scattered

visitors. Ethel was listening absently to Caracal. Grandma was

examining the crowd. The duke was winking at the pictures, while Will

looked at the parquet floor.

Caracal seemed delighted. Besides his opportunity to shine by telling

off names and dates, he was also going to show the party one of the

hanging gardens of Paris. Presently he would explain the very _modus

operandi_ for making such blooming terraces—fine sand, tar, gravel, and

earth.

“You know, Miss Rowrer, you go to the Louvre Gardens up a staircase.”

[Illustration: Suzanne and Poufaille at the Louvre]

“Awful!” said grandma.

“A winding staircase cut in the thickness of the wall.”

“Really! Oh, how nice that is!” said Ethel, to whom these little

details gave the sensation of being abroad. She forgave the lack of an

elevator, as long as the staircase was winding and cut in the thickness

of the wall—something impossible to find in her own country.

“It’s a kind of Jacob’s ladder that will take us up to Paradise,”

Caracal continued. “A real Paradise, where I myself have known an Adam

and Eve, known them personally, intimately!”

“Oh, M. Caracal, don’t talk of that now,” Miss Rowrer said, “but tell

me what this picture is.”

Caracal explained the picture, regretting that Ethel did not question

him about the Adam and Eve he had known in the Paradise.

Poufaille, who had lifted his head, lowered it quickly. The party was

just in front of him, all looking at his picture. He had heard Caracal

say to Miss Rowrer: “An artist, a great artist, with a brain, but no

luck! It is incredible, his lack of luck—I could tell you a story—”

But Caracal was interrupted by grandma, who noticed the frayed cravat

and worn shoes of Poufaille, and pointed him out to Will. Caracal

presented Poufaille, who nearly fell from his high stool. The duke

bowed. Ethel greeted him cordially, as well as Suzanne, at whom the

duke did not even look.

“That’s the way of the world!” Suzanne thought within herself.

“Do you really wish me to buy such a daub?” Will said in an aside to

grandma, after judging, at a glance, the “Goat and the Kids.”

“Poor devil! he is in rags,” Ethel murmured.

“All right,” Will answered; “it’s frightful, but I’ll send it to my

farm in Texas—it will give them a poor idea of grazing in the old

country!”

Poufaille felt his legs tremble under him, and thought all the torrents

of Pactolus were pouring down upon him when Will, taking his leave,

gave him in advance the money for the order.

“Au revoir, Mlle. Suzanne! M. Poufaille, au revoir!” Miss Rowrer said,

not a little flattered to know, not a Charley, but a real and genuine

bohemian.

With a final bow, Poufaille watched the party going away, in utter

amazement at the possession of so much money.

“Vive la joie—and fried potatoes!” Suzanne said, by way of moral.

Soon Ethel and grandma, Will, the duke, and Caracal were lost in the

distance.

“You would think Caracal was the chief of the party,” Suzanne remarked

to Poufaille; “only look—you see nothing but him!”

Indeed, Caracal, who at first was abashed at not being allowed to

tell the story of Adam and Eve, nor that of the false signature of

the Luxembourg, became doubly amiable, and fished for compliments

because of his courageous behavior toward Vieillecloche, a man with

five corpses in his trail. Meanwhile, he went on explaining, endlessly,

the pictures of the old masters. He greeted them as friends; he

spoke familiarly of the painters, called them by their first names

and their nicknames—the old Breughel—the young Teniers—“Van Ryn” for

Rembrandt—and so on.

He told over the jokes about the Louvre Museum. It was a national

lounge, heated in winter and the place for a siesta in summer. He

attacked the curators, who were incompetent, to his thinking; and he

cited the forged art objects bought for their weight in gold, crowns

and coins and jewels, and the famous Holbein on a mahogany panel—the

Louvre’s pride up to the day when, scratching it on the back, the words

appeared: “Flor de Habaña—Lawyers’ Club Brand”!

The duke passed along heedlessly. The Louvre for him was, most of all,

a place in which you can talk amid sumptuous decoration. His only real

interest in painting was in the hall of the Italian primitives, before

the St. Morgana of Botticelli.

“St. Morgana, my ancestress,” he said to Miss Rowrer.

He drew himself up as he pointed to the saint, amid the choir

of angels, in a sky of gold above a fantastic landscape, where

architecture and monuments were piled together. He seemed moved,

especially when he explained to Miss Rowrer that he should definitively

be obliged to go back to Morgania, that grave events were on the way,

and that only the other evening he had had a diplomatic interview with

his people’s delegates.

Miss Rowrer liked him better, with this air of one convinced of his own

importance and duties, than when he was making fun of himself with the

skeptical tone which she abhorred. Just as she was glad to know a real

and genuine bohemian, so she was delighted to walk with the scion of

a legendary family, whose ancestress figured in the Louvre, painted by

Botticelli, surrounded by angels in a golden sky. She found it amusing

to take the arm of a man in whose pedigree there was the equal of the

White Lady of Potsdam and the Cavalier of Hatfield House. It was all so

un-American and exciting.

She was also really at her ease in the Louvre among these old royal

personages. She pleased herself in the midst of history and polished

courts. Her intelligence revealed to her their grandeur.

“I like sincere men who are faithful to their traditions,” she said.

“There is a noble side to it all which I understand.”

She admired the effete generations who had heaped here, to the very

ceiling, royal escutcheons and chimeras and victories.

“There is something great in it,” she said; “you feel the conviction

of it. Compare it with the frightful style which artists bungle with

nowadays! The beautiful has had its time here; it is our turn now,

in our great Republic! Faith in traditions—that is what produces

masterpieces! Whether royalty, as in the old times, or the Republic, as

with us—I recognize only that.”

“But there is a golden mean,” the duke said, conciliatingly.

“Away with the golden mean, with cowardly compromises and satisfied

selfishness, with falsehood and insincerity. We must be one thing or

another—loyalty before all else!”

Grandma and Will approved this.

“Ah!” the duke thought to himself, struck by Miss Rowrer’s accents of

conviction, “it wouldn’t be well to fail in one’s words to this lady!”

“This is a Signorelli,” Caracal explained, pointing out a picture;

“this is a Filippo Lippi; this is a Pinturicchio.”

“Say, M. Caracal, if we stop at every picture of the Quattro Cento we

shall never reach Paradise. Where is your winding staircase?”

There were halls after halls, marbles and gilding, the Salon Carré, and

galleries with resplendent jewels; marble for the pavement, and then

parquetry shining like a smooth lake, and pictures, and pictures again.

The copyists were up on their ladders in galleries, which heap together

civilizations that have disappeared, statues of gods and the mummies

of kings, decayed grandeur pell-mell with fragments of columns and open

tombs and women’s jewels. And there was the crouching sphinx seeming to

take them to witness that all things pass like a dream.

Miss Rowrer and the duke walked together. In front were grandma

and Will and Caracal. The duke sought to understand Miss Rowrer’s

ideas, which seemed contradictory to him. How was he to reconcile her

admiration both for republic and royalty?

“Miss Rowrer,” the duke began, “your theories are contrary to progress.

Your extreme loyalty implies a government which is unchangeable.”

“Not at all!” Ethel answered. “Greatness is in the constant effort

toward progress; it is the pursuit of the best. A people’s loyalty

toward its king is very beautiful.”

“_Eh bien_, then!” the duke replied.

“I told you my way of looking at things the day we visited St. Denis,”

Ethel continued. “But you forget one thing—the king’s loyalty to his

people!”

They were leaving the gallery and walking ever onward. They saw a

monumental staircase under a vault as high as a cathedral apse, and

then there were more halls, with marbles and gilding and galleries,

never ending.

“But where is your Paradise?” Miss Rowrer asked.

“It is here,” answered Caracal.

He gave a glance at the guardian who was pacing up and down the hall,

and Will slipped a heavy _pourboire_ into the man’s hand.

“Is Monsieur Phil up there?”

“The former gardener? Yes. Go up.” Lifting a piece of tapestry at

the corner of a wall, a little door appeared—it was the door of the

staircase.

“Go ahead, M. Caracal; show us the way!” Ethel said.

Caracal, proud to lead, showed them the way up. They went on, turning

round and round in single file, the staircase being wide enough for

nothing else.

“This reminds me of going up the Monument in London,” Ethel said.

“And me of the corkscrew in the Mammoth Cave,” said grandma.

“Only a few more steps,” said Caracal, as he opened the door giving on

the roof.

The light was dazzling. Great clouds floated high in a sky that was

sweet and calm. Across the branches of the garden they looked on Paris,

bathed in sun. The great city stretched out from horizon to horizon

and, vibrating with the heat, seemed to wave like a sea. Grandma,

Ethel, and Will, as well as the duke, stopped short. While the distant

view was full of grandeur, the nearer scene was just as charming. There

were shaded alleys, and under the oleanders and apple- and pear-trees,

currants and strawberries were ripening. Caracal was already beginning

his explanations.

“The green spots you see over there are the hanging gardens of the

Rue de Valois. If we were a little higher up we could see those of the

Automobile Club of the Place de la Concorde. This is the way they make

them—first a layer of Norway tar, then fine sand, and then gravel—”

“M. Caracal,” Ethel interrupted, “you are right; this is a real

Paradise!”

“And over there you have Adam and Eve,” Caracal said, pointing amid the

greenery to where Phil was painting Helia, posed in an old arm-chair

half hidden by climbing plants.

“That is what is best in the Louvre,” Ethel said to the group, looking

at Helia. “Let us greet her Majesty Beauty!”

Phil had just caught sight of Ethel and her party. He hurriedly laid

down his palette and came forward. Helia saw them also, and arose and

bowed. Ethel recognized her and spoke with a friendly manner. They

looked at each other in that peculiar way which women have of taking

each other’s measure,—it was like a mute dialogue between Beauty and

Culture. But Beauty—poor Helia—lowered her eyes. She became humble and

acknowledged herself vanquished.

For Helia no longer had any hope. She understood, she saw with fright

the ever-growing distance between herself and Phil. Ah, no! Phil was

no longer the same; he was above her, far above, among the rich and

powerful; and he would continue his upward march, while she, Helia,

would, little by little, go downwards.

She had agreed to pose for him that day—it was the decisive test. It

had cost her much to do it. Phil, after all, ought to know what his

conscience told him to do; but she did not wish there should be any

fault on her part. She had never had the courage to say to herself it

was all over, until this day, which she was passing alone with him. She

had come to see if he would remember—if the trees in bloom amid their

oasis would recall anything to him. She counted on the complicity of

the blue sky and the fragrance of roses. But the day had passed, under

the splendid heavens, and they had not, as in other days, gathered

fruit from the trees or picked flowers from the parterres. Phil had

been good-natured, but he was like a friend and nothing more. Phil—she

saw it clearly—Phil would be a stranger for her to-morrow. Who knows?

The time might come when he would forget even her name.

Helia acknowledged that it was possible when she looked at Miss Rowrer,

who drew near and began chatting with Phil. What charm there was in

her words! Helia was never tired of listening to her. She felt no

jealousy of Ethel, whose goodness saved her from envy. She admired her

in silence. Sometimes, like a lightning flash, she seemed to understand

the abyss which separated them, and then everything reëntered the

shadow. No—she did not know; everything escaped her grasp in that

sphere of life, more inaccessible to her than the white clouds up in

the depths of the azure. What had she with which to struggle against

this young girl, so brilliant and so playful, before whom Phil and the

duke were content to seem little? And then, she was so rich!

But Helia blushed for herself and quickly cast away any thoughts of

Miss Rowrer’s wealth. Since she could not help loving Phil, she at

least would not cease giving him her esteem. She looked in a sort of

fear at Miss Rowrer, of whom so much was said, and who seemed so simple

and gay. What could she do against so many advantages—she, Helia, who

had only her beauty? And perhaps Phil found her ugly now!

“What are you painting?” Ethel asked Phil. “I suppose I may look.”

“Miss Rowrer, I beg you,” Phil answered, “give me your advice.”

Miss Rowrer squinted with her eye, measured and made a few professional

gestures, probably the only thing she retained from her art studies

among so many social duties. She remarked a few things, showing refined

tastes, and then looked at Helia as a connoisseur.

She admired her noble profile, like that of a marble Venus, her full

neck and bare arms, and the sumptuous thickness of her hair over

shoulders which would have thrown Phidias into despair.

“What success a young girl like that would have in society—if she

belonged to society—” thought Miss Rowrer. “Ought not beauty like that

to overcome all social distinctions?”

Helia appeared to Miss Rowrer as the splendid flowering of the Louvre,

personifying in herself all the masterpieces heaped up beneath their

feet—all that men have loved and made divine in marble or on canvas.

At her feet roses and fuchsias breathed forth their fragrance, sweet as

the Attic breeze.

“What you are doing there, Monsieur Phil, is very fine—a magnificent

study,” Miss Rowrer said. “But it is not up to the model. Is it,

Monsieur le Duc?”

The duke assented.

“Tell me, Monsieur Phil,” Miss Rowrer continued, “what is that thing on

the ground, with your palette on top of it?”

She pointed to one of the busts which lined the walks.

“Those are busts,” Phil began.

“Yes, but of whom?” Ethel asked.

“Imperial and presidential busts,” Phil explained, “Napoleon III,

Charles X, Louis Philippe.”

“Really,” Miss Rowrer said, with amusement; “only think, each bust

represents a revolution. They are sovereigns who no longer pleased—let

them be an example to you, monseigneur,” she added, laughing. “This

is not Paradise, then, but the other place—each of these busts is a

paving-stone of good intentions!”

“And that, Phil, that old arm-chair which has lost its gilding?

Mademoiselle Helia, who was in it just now, looked, with these busts at

her feet, like a sovereign surrounded by the dwarfs of the court. What

is that old arm-chair?”

[Illustration: Ethel and the Royal Throne]

“A throne, Miss Rowrer!”

“Now you are laughing at me!”

“Not at all.”

“The throne of some fairy king?”

“The throne of King Louis Philippe,” answered Phil. In a few words he

explained how it happened to be there in the company of the busts.

“It is not a very comfortable seat,” grandma remarked.

“They’d make a better one than that at Grand Rapids,” Will added.

“Will you try it, Miss Rowrer?” Caracal hastened to ask. “Be seated on

the throne; you might believe yourself a queen.”

“Ah! that’s all the same to me,” said Miss Rowrer.

“The queen you are worthy to be,” Caracal corrected, by way of

compliment. “You would not have ill become Louis Philippe’s throne, I

imagine.”

“I hope not, indeed,” Ethel replied. “What! that bourgeois king, that

king of the golden mean, who was neither brave nor cowardly, without

vice as without virtue, flat, like a pancake; an old wolf turned

shepherd? And I could sit on a throne and fancy myself the consort of

that imitation goodman, be queen of such a king? Even for his kingdom,

I would not!”

Helia looked at Miss Rowrer as she prodded with her parasol the worn

velvet of the throne. She thought of her own half hesitation to sit

down in it the first time she came to the oasis, and how she had

answered Phil: “A king’s throne! You wouldn’t think of it—a poor girl

like me!” To her it had seemed a sort of sacrilege, whereas Miss

Rowrer, quite the contrary, turned her back on it with disdain and

walked away, saying to the duke and Phil:

“Louis Philippe was possibly a king, but at any rate he was not a man!

The people did well to cast him out.”

And Helia asked herself in amazement: “Who is this Miss Rowrer that

judges kings and would refuse them their kingdoms? Is she, then, more

than a queen?”

PART III

YOUTHFUL FOLLIES

CHAPTER I

TEUFF-TEUFF! TEUFF! BRRR!

We should need words from the old, old time, worn from long use, to

give an idea of Mme. de Grojean’s house in her little corner of the

provinces. It was typical of its kind and just the opposite of any

truly Parisian corner. The latter would have been a populous, noisy

street, with odors from the markets, from horses, from tobacco. The

former was a deserted street, where you could hear sparrows chattering

on the housetops and breathe the fragrance of mignonette and new-mown

hay.

The house of Mme. de Grojean—“grand’mère,” as Yvonne called her—formed

the angle of a street on a very provincial place. It was on an open

space, in the middle of which a water-jet, long since dry, marked on

its basin a turning shadow like a sun-dial.

The house and garden wall formed one of the sides of the place as far

as the river, which was crossed by a bridge; and, beyond, the plain

stretched out.

Place and house, and trees overhanging the wall, and the street where

grass grew between the paving-stones—all had the look of having always

been there, of being there forever,—changeless as the hills of the

horizon. But worthiest of description was the salon where grand’mère

with her daughter and her granddaughter Yvonne were seated in the dim

light, amid tapestries of old silk and brown furniture, with glints of

brass and portraits in their frames.

Grand’mère sat squarely back in her wheeled chair, knitting a pair

of stockings. The younger Mme. de Grojean was looking through a

fashion-paper. Yvonne, by the half-opened blinds, glanced from time to

time out on the place while continuing her work. Her little table was

encumbered with ribbons and light stuffs. She was finishing a gown,

with a heap of patterns around her; and her little scissors traveled

slowly through the muslin.

“It’s this ribbon that gives me trouble,” Yvonne said, half aloud, as

if speaking to herself. “Why, this ribbon should go on the right!” she

went on, with a comical air of surprise.

“By no means, my daughter!” Mme. de Grojean protested.

“Yes, yes! I assure you. Look at the fashion-paper. I must find out for

myself,” Yvonne concluded gravely, with her chin in her hand and her

eyes fixed on the engraving. “I shall have to ask Cousin Henri, who was

present at the last ball of the prefecture.”

“Yvonne,” said the grandmother, stopping her knitting, “Yvonne, really,

you have nothing but dresses in your head. Rather than lose your time

on such trifles, you’d do better to finish picking the lint for the

soldiers.”

“Grand’mère, here’s the circus coming!” Yvonne interrupted suddenly, as

she looked out on the place.

[Illustration: Watching the Arrival of the Rowrers]

“Those mountebanks?” grand’mère said, looking in her turn. “They are

coming to the fair, just as they do every year. It must be they—I can

tell by the dust they make. Only the big drum is lacking to make it

complete.”

In fact, an odd-looking vehicle had drawn up in the place. It was an

immense auto, like a top-carriage behind and torpedo-like in front.

In the carriage part two ladies were seated; two men occupied the

torpedo-end. They wore big smoked glasses, which made them look like

frogs, while the enormous auto, spitting and snorting, shook up its

passengers, and rattled the canes and umbrellas in the wicker basket

behind.

“It is near four o’clock,” grand’mère said, consulting the familiar

shadow of the water-jet. “They must be crazy to be exposing themselves

to the heat; but such people fear nothing.”

“They’re brought up to rough it,” Yvonne remarked.

“But people are saluting them, on my word,” grand’mère said. “There

is the _adjoint_, who must be there for the license; and there’s Mme.

Riçois also, and others besides. It looks as if they were personal

acquaintances; they are shaking hands!”

Grand’mère in astonishment saw the ladies in the carriage-end part

holding out their hands like princesses. One of them, the younger, got

down and moved about to stir herself. As far as could be seen at that

distance, between dust and sun, she was dressed in a light silk, very

becoming in color. The plaits of the skirt molded her form, and fell to

a level with the ground. Her head, enveloped in a cloud of gauze, was

not to be seen.

“Where will elegance end, my poor Yvonne?” said grand’mère. “There’s a

gown worth five times as much as your ball-dress.”

“Oh, here are the horses!” Yvonne cried, pointing to magnificent

animals which grooms were leading by the bridle from the direction of

the railway station. As they passed by the auto the young girl went up

to one of them, patted him on the neck, and, putting her hand in her

pocket, gave him a lump of sugar.

“She must be the circus-rider,” Yvonne guessed.

On the place there was now a little group of curious onlookers drawing

near. The proprietor of the Lion d’Or made himself important. They

could imagine him at that distance saying: “The Lion d’Or is the

tourists’ rendezvous—every one puts up at my place—every one. I do

this—I have that—”

He had not the time to finish before the young girl had quickly climbed

back into the auto, given orders to the groom, pointed to the inn, and

made a sign of farewell to everybody.

Teuff-teuff! teuff! The auto swung into movement—teuff-teuff! brrrr!

and off it went at high speed.

“Bon voyage!” grand’mère wished them. “How can people be allowed to

race about like that! and all these do-nothings who salute them,—they

couldn’t be more polite to ambassadors!”

No doubt it was an event. Every one along the road stared at the

disappearing column of dust.

“It’s a strange world,” said grand’mère. “But here comes Mme. Riçois;

she may tell us something about them.”

[Illustration: The Arrival of the Rowrers]

Grand’mère had scarcely finished when the bonne opened the salon door

and announced Mme. Riçois, the banker’s wife, a little woman all fire

and motion, alert and dimpled and forever laughing.

“My compliments, dear Mme. Riçois. You have fine acquaintances!”

grand’mère began. “You can tell us, I suppose, what has been turning

our place upside down.”

“But you ought to know,” Mme. Riçois answered; “Yvonne is better

acquainted with them than I am.”

“Yvonne is acquainted with them?” grand’mère asked severely. “Who are

they?”

“The Rowrers.”

“Goodness gracious!” cried grand’mère, “in all this dust—and in such

heat?”

“The Rowrers—what luck!” Yvonne cried. “I shall see Miss Ethel again;

and I did not recognize her! All those dusters and masks and veils—they

didn’t wear anything like that in Paris the day I went in their auto,

with Mr. Will Rowrer to conduct us.”

“Are they going to stay in our town?” Mme. de Grojean asked.

“For several weeks, it seems.”

“Where are they stopping?” grand’mère asked. “At the Hôtel de France or

at the Hôtel d’Eurôpe?”

“They are not at a hotel,” answered Mme. Riçois, with an important air,

as one having a great piece of news to communicate.

“Where are they going, then?” grand’mère persisted.

“To nobody’s house.”

“But where are they going to sleep? Not in the fields, I suppose?”

“Exactly-in the fields,” Mme. Riçois said, looking in turn at

grand’mère, Mme. de Grojean, and Yvonne, to enjoy their astonishment.

“You mean a house in the country?” grand’mère said. “What house?”

“No house,” Mme. Riçois answered.

“Not in the open air, I suppose?”

“Exactly; in the open air!”

The effect which Mme. Riçois had missed with “the fields” was produced

by her “open air.”

“Is it possible!” grand’mère said, as she let her knitting fall.

“People as rich as that sleep out of doors?”

“Rich!” observed Mme. Riçois. “They could buy the town and turn it into

wheat-fields!”

“Then they must be crazy!”

“For that matter,” Mme. Riçois went on, “when I say that they sleep out

of doors—”

“Do tell us—you’re laughing at us!”

“No, no! Let me explain. They are going to sleep out of doors, but

under tents—camping out, they call it in America. I know all about it.

My husband has been in correspondence with the Rowrers and has had all

the arrangements to make. The Comtesse de Donjeon asked them to come to

her château for the summer. Miss Rowrer simply begged the comtesse to

put at her disposal a corner of her estate, the most deserted and the

most picturesque. She has taken the part she wished and set up her camp

in it. She wanted to have it a surprise, and that is why I kept it a

secret. It seems that camping out is delightful and Miss Rowrer intends

starting the fashion of it in France.”

“Poor France!” grand’mère exclaimed. “We needed only that! It’s just

like the automobiles. I’d rather be dragged about all my life in a

cripple’s go-cart than get into one.”

“Not I!” said Yvonne. “I should love going in an auto!”

“Yvonne!” expostulated grand’mère.

Yvonne was silent, but thought, all the same, how delightful it would

be to go here and there in the country and live under one’s tent, by

the bank of the river, along with Ethel. She listened absently to the

remainder of the conversation, and looked far away at the highroad,

golden with dust and with the green grass beside it.

Grand’mère took up the discourse.

“What is camping out, anyway?”

“Oh, it’s all very simple,” Mme. Riçois answered. “I have heard my

husband talking about it.”

“And I have heard Miss Ethel,” said Yvonne. “She describes it so well!”

“But explain it to me,” grand’mère said.

They gave her an explanation, in all its details, of camping out and

summer touring and fishing, of chaperons and boys and girls.

“What!” grand’mère cried, “young men and young girls go camping out

like that in the woods for weeks together, simply accompanied by a

chaperon, and you consider that proper?”

“_Ma foi_, yes,” said Mme. Riçois. “I should have been delighted with

anything of the kind.”

Yvonne kept silence, but she asked herself what harm there could be in

walking through the country with Monsieur Will or Monsieur Phil. Miss

Ethel did it—why should not she?

“So that is what you call progress,” grand’mère observed.

“Milliardaires making their horses travel by express train and lodging

them at the hotel, while they themselves wander along the highroads

and sleep out of doors like vagabonds—you must acknowledge it does not

sound well!”

“Perhaps you like that kind of thing better,” Mme. Riçois retorted,

pointing to the place.

An omnibus was driving up from the station, loaded with trunks and

packages, with its horses prancing heavily. A traveler, with a single

glass in his eye, was looking out.

The emotion aroused by the auto had scarcely calmed down. People were

standing in the place in front of the hotel, which the last of the

Rowrers’ horses had just entered. A few curious faces were still to be

seen at the windows. The traveler, evidently thinking that all this was

in his honor, bowed all around in his satisfaction at their welcome.

As he got out of the omnibus at the Lion d’Or, amiable smiles were

awaiting him—a politeness which he repaid with a nod, as if to say,

“Greatly flattered, believe me!”

“Him I recognize,” said Yvonne. “I saw him two or three times in Paris.

That is M. Caracal.”

But grand’mère no longer listened. She had returned to her knitting.

The place no longer interested her; too many people were passing

there. All this movement annoyed her. Why do not people stay at home?

Meanwhile Caracal’s manœuvers were amusing Yvonne.

“Poor M. Caracal,” she thought; “there he is, politely bowing to every

one. Really, he seems persuaded that they’ve all come out to welcome

him! If he knew that it was all for horses and an auto, his vanity as

a writer would be wounded.”

Yvonne sympathized with him, but she could not help being amused at the

sight of Caracal jumping about like a puppet, giving orders about his

trunks, and at last, when the crowd had seen enough of him, entering

the Lion d’Or behind the Rowrers’ horses.

CHAPTER II

IN CAMP

Grand’mère de Grojean was talking about camping out, with many an

“_est-ce possible!_” and “_Grand Dieu!_” and Mademoiselle Yvonne was

looking at the dust in the distance, while Miss Rowrer and grandma were

already inspecting their camping-ground.

“How well off we shall be here, Ethel!” grandma said. “What a capital

idea! We shall breathe freely and, in spite of being in an old country,

we shall have new experiences. I like new things!”

It was in full July. For several weeks Miss Rowrer had had the

intention of quitting Paris. First of all, it was hot, and there was

nothing to see, now that the Grand Prix race had been run. Besides, the

national holiday of the Fourteenth of July was drawing near, and then

the sovereign people dance and eat and drink in the street, which is

really too common!

“Let us hurry away!” Miss Rowrer said. “Let us not take back to America

a bad opinion of France. We must not judge it by Paris. Let us go

and see France at home—away from dust and dances and noise, away from

_punch d’indignation_. The countess has invited us to pass the summer

in her château; with her leave, we’ll pass it in her park. Let me

arrange it.”

Miss Rowrer had chosen a hill from which you could see the whole

country-side. Then she sent for a house-furnisher, told him her plans,

saying: “I want this—and this—and this.” The tradesman remonstrated:

“But, mademoiselle, that is never done!” She finished by making him

understand, all the same, by dint of repeating, “I wish this! and this!

and this!” At last, without any one knowing it except M. Riçois, who

paid the bills, the camp was set up.

Several square tents, with a flooring of boards, had been raised amid

the trees. When the door-flaps were drawn back, Japanese mats were

to be seen, and, behind dainty screens, little brass bedsteads and

rocking-chairs and toilet furniture.

The tent for Will and Phil had its beds concealed under Algerian

rugs, which made lounges for the daytime. It served as a smoking-room

for the dining-tent, which was set up alongside very simply, with

an abundance of flowers in rustic vases. Farther back, hidden in the

shrubbery, were the kitchen and offices. Near by there was an immense

water-butt, ingeniously made to furnish each tent with an inexhaustible

supply of fresh water. There was also a tent for the auto and for the

saddle-horses, when needed.

“It is perfect, Ethel!” grandma said, looking around.

“I am well pleased with it, my dear grandma,” Ethel acknowledged.

“It is not as good as Tent City, on Coronado Beach at San Diego,” she

added, laughing, “but we shall be more at home here and the view is

superb. How do you find it, Phil? Will, are you pleased?” And she waved

her hand to the horizon.

From their hilltop, across the river which wound below, they saw

an immense plain. Its calm beauty impressed Ethel, fresh from noisy

Paris. France had never seemed so large to her. Among the trees there

were bell-towers rising above red roofs, and here and there high

factory-chimneys crested with smoke. It was “the province,” wide and

active and silent.

In the distance, fields stretched away to the horizon. It was like an

immense sea, with waves forever motionless. Wagons moved across it and

boats glided along the waters of the river, and on the roads and in the

fields members of the human ant-hill were stirring everywhere.

“It is beautiful,” Phil said, “and I am grateful to you for having

invited me. Here I shall paint from nature, and you, Miss Rowrer, ought

to do delightful water-colors.”

“What do you think of my landscape, Will?” Ethel asked her brother, who

was examining the auto.

“It’s all right—there’s something wrong with my carbureter,” answered

Will. “I’ll have to see to it at once. I’ll look at the landscape

later.”

“That’s just like Will!” Ethel remarked. “You talk landscape to him and

he answers with carbureters and floaters and all the rest. If you only

listened to him you’d think him the most earth-bound of mechanicians.

And in his heart he is a poet—yes, a poet! He has a little blue flower

in his heart; perhaps it’s a forget-me-not!”

“The dinner-bell is ringing,” observed Will.

“Well, let’s to table!” Ethel said. “There’s nothing like forty miles

an hour to give one an appetite.”

The dinner was delicious. There were the country dishes—_soupe

blanchie_, artichokes and beans, an eel in bouillon, stewed chicken

and a salad, an ice and the fritters of the province. The middle of

the table was decorated with a magnificent bouquet of roses, while all

around were wild flowers of the fields. The cook hired by Mme. Riçois

had done things well,—too well, indeed. Over and above the flowers, the

table was furnished with as many bottles as in an inn.

“Take away those bottles of wine that litter up the table,” Ethel said

to the valet.

“But, mademoiselle, what are you going to drink?” asked the cook, who

was standing near.

“We shall drink water—with ice in it.”

“Water—with ice!”

“At every meal,” Miss Rowrer added.

“But after your ice-cream—to warm up the stomach?”

“Ice-water!” said Ethel.

Over the cook’s face there crept an expression of terror and pity.

To console her, Ethel complimented her cookery, but the smile had

vanished from the good woman’s lips until they asked her recipe for the

fritters.

“I’ll take it back to Chicago with me,” said grandma. “We’ll give a

german, and we’ll have pastry just like that on the sideboard. It will

be a novelty.”

Ethel, after the meal, pretended to light a cigarette, to put the men

at their ease. Will picked out a cigar, and Phil, who patterned himself

after Miss Rowrer, took a whiff at a cigarette and threw it away. Then

he picked up his banjo.

“Play us the ‘Arkansaw Traveler’!” grandma asked. “The very turn of the

tune makes me wish to dance.”

Ethel spoke up: “What if we should map out our time for the two months

we are to spend here? We have, first, the invitation from the countess

and her friends—there are a _rallye-paper_ and a _chasse à courre_.”

“The hunt is much later—a few days before we leave for Morgania,”

observed Will.

“The good duke!” said Ethel; “it seems things are not going at all well

in his country. Who knows? By the time we get to Morgania there may be

neither duke nor duchy!”

“I’d rather be a trapper in the far West than a duke in such a

country,” said grandma.

“As for me,” said Phil, stopping short the “Arkansaw Traveler,” which

he had been strumming lightly, “my picture is already there and I must

put it up and retouch it on the spot. I shall go, whatever happens.”

“Bravo!” Ethel answered. “‘Whatever happens’! That’s talking! One ought

to know what one has to do, and then do it, whatever happens! But that

has nothing to do with our camp,” she went on, as she poured out a

lemon squash. We must see the Grojeans. I do hope dear Yvonne will come

and sketch with me; and we must visit the country fair,—they tell me it

is very curious. And then there will be our excursions, and photographs

for our albums; and I must take a good deal of exercise. There are so

many things to see that we shall have no time to bore ourselves.”

The next day they completed the setting up of the camp. Ethel

christened it “Camp Rosemont,” looked over it with the eye of the

master, and arranged everything for the meals. She had a flag-pole

planted for the Stars and Stripes. The rumor ran through the country

that circus people had come and were camping under a tent in the open.

Curious villagers came and looked on from a distance, stretching out

their necks.

“Let the children come!” Ethel said. She stuffed them with sweetmeats,

spreading bread and butter with jelly for them with her own hands.

The little girls amused her most, with their braided hair and simple

gowns and little wooden shoes. She met an inborn politeness in them—the

refinement of ancient days; they curtsied to her.

“You’d say they were fresh from the company of princesses,” was Ethel’s

appreciation. True enough, their games, the _volant_, the _grâces_,

the dancing in a round, and the songs, in which they spoke of ladies

and princes and knights, all told of the olden time of joust and

tournament.

“How nice you all are,” Ethel said to them. “Will you come often? You

are not afraid of me?”

“Oh, no, mademoiselle!”

“Bring your little playmates. I shall always have cakes for you.”

“Oh, no, mademoiselle!”

“What! You do not wish to eat my cakes?”

“Oh, not every day! Our parents would scold us! But you can tell us

nice stories, and then you might give us tickets for the circus. You

must look pretty when you go riding horseback.”

“So you think I’m a circus-rider?”

“That’s what people say.”

“Well, they are mistaken. I am,—I am”—Ethel did not find it easy to

say just what she was. She could not say, “I am a painter,” or, “I am

a musician.” So she contented herself with saying, “I am an American!”

“America—that is a country. Is it farther than Paris?”

“Oh, yes!”

“My papa has a machine to mow hay which comes from Chicago. Is that a

city? Is it as big as the city yonder?”

“It is as big as all that!” Ethel said, opening her arms to the

boundless horizon. “And three times as high as the tallest tree.”

“My papa has been in Buenos Aires. Perhaps you saw him there?”

“Never.”

“You were never bitten by serpents?”

“Never.”

“Does everybody in your country sleep under tents as you do?”

“No; but in big, big houses.”

“That must be fine.”

“I’ll show you pictures, children, and tell you stories of my country

and pretty stories of yours, too. Do you love your country very much?”

“France? Oh, yes!”

[Illustration: Ethel and the Little Peasant Girls]

“You are right, darlings, and I love it also. It is a beautiful

country, which we all love in America. But we sha’n’t be friends any

longer if you won’t eat my cakes.”

“Oh, yes, mademoiselle!”

Ringing laughter followed, and they ate the cakes, and there were

games, and dances in which there was something of the majestic minuet

and something of the light gavotte.

“It does me good to see how happy they are,” Ethel said to herself.

“Oh, how I should like to have all the world happy forever!”

They were to visit the Grojeans later, when everything should be

finished at the camp. The countess had not yet arrived at her château,

and Ethel profited by this to explore the country round about. Phil and

Will, and even Caracal, who was living at the hotel, from time to time

accompanied them. They made sketches and water-colors and talked over

their impressions. In her walks Ethel wore a gray serge skirt adorned

with large plaits, a bolero of the same stuff edged with white, silk

shirt-waist, and a white straw hat; and with that she went up hill and

down dale with the readiness of a college boy.

They saw France at home. The endless parceling out of properties and

labor astonished them. Every one was half peasant and half workman,

and had his own house and fields and vineyards. Thanks to the spirit of

saving, want was unknown; and the variety of work made anything like a

dead season impossible. When the workshop closed its doors, the workman

took up his spade and cultivated his garden.

“I had no idea of anything like this,” Will said, with deep interest.

What a rest for him, who had just left Chicago and the business strife,

to find himself in the open country, where everything smiled around

him!

Sometimes they met a wedding-party on the way—the bride in white, the

groom in black, the old men in their blouses. A fiddler, the village

barber, marched at the head, scraping out airs of the good old time.

They talked with housewives who were twirling their spindles on the

threshold. They were asked to enter, and saw the great chimney with

its fire-dogs, on which the soup was heating, and the dresser with

its colored crockery shining in the shadow. Chickens pecked at their

feet. When Phil and Will sat down at the old oaken table to taste the

_piquette_ (light wine) a familiar magpie perched on their shoulders

and asked its share.

Issuing forth, they met the “priest-eater” of the village offering a

pinch of snuff to Monsieur le Curé. Boys were coming back from school,

shouting and rattling military marches on imaginary drums. For the

girls were dancing and the boys playing their soldier-games, just as in

the days of yore, when only the brave deserved the fair.

On the village signs, names and trades bore witness to the antiquity of

the race and the power of its traditions.

“What dignity there is in this people!” Ethel said to Will. “See the

old goodman there, with his spade on his shoulder, how he saluted us as

he passed by. Our people would think it servility, but it is far from

that; it is like the refined greeting of a marquis who does the honors

of his land.”

Will thought long over this. All these villages were the same now as

they had been in other days. They had always been the refuge of simple

ideas, and brave hearts had been born and had died in them, content to

consider the smoke of the horizon only from afar. These lowly lives had

passed between the old church and the little cemetery on the hill, with

its cypresses among the tombs.

“Yes, here we breathe to the full filial piety and the reverence of

forefathers,” Ethel said. “There is something good in all that, you

know. You are right, M. Caracal, to prepare a romance on this country

life. It’s a beautiful subject and full of striking pictures. Look at

that village before us, with its gardens cut by a network of hedges and

walls, and at the roofs pressed one against the other as if they were

afraid of the horizon, and the smoke mounting straight up to the sky.”

“But all that smells of the stable,” Caracal murmured, “the

country—_pouah_!”

“It doesn’t smell so strong as your Montmartre cafés,” Phil whispered

in his ear.

For his part, Phil was living strange days. The valley and hill and the

woods he looked at mechanically, thinking of Miss Rowrer the while. The

deep charm of the young woman possessed him more and more; he no longer

tried to resist it. She had taken possession of him without knowing

it. Her mind was large, cosmopolitan, human. All Phil’s happiness was

now in being at her disposition, in living near her, and seeing and

hearing her. He felt that he grew morally in her presence, and he was

more in love with her soul than with her beauty. When he walked through

the country with her, he fancied that Columbia herself was at his side,

explaining France to him.

The feeling of his littleness in her presence gave him pain. He could

not imagine himself letting her know what he felt, either by word or

gesture—he would never dare. She was too immensely rich. Ah! if he

only could, he would give all the riches of the world that she might be

poor!

It was especially when evening came, with its melancholy, that such

thoughts arose in him. One night, after dinner, Phil, to please

grandma, took his banjo and played the “Arkansaw Traveler.” The perfume

of roses filled the tent, which was lighted dimly. The raised canvas

showed a cloudless sky; the stars were rising and the crystal notes of

the banjo were lost in the great silence.

“What a beautiful night!” said Ethel, “and how calm! It is like the

infinite.”

“But what are we in it all?” said Phil. “In a hundred years nothing of

all this will remain; a new mankind will take the place of our own. We

count no more than the flower or the drop of water.”

“No,” Miss Rowrer answered; “I am more than a drop of water, and more

than a blade of grass. How, Phil, can you speak that way? As for me,

there are times when I feel myself the equal of the whole world.”

“Miss Rowrer,” said Phil, “the whole world itself is nothing to the

infinite.”

[Illustration: Phil Listening to Ethel]

“And I say,” replied the young girl, “that the end and aim of this

whole boundless universe is the production and development of the soul,

or, if you prefer it that way, of consciousness in man’s perishable

body. How do you know that Alfred Russel Wallace is not right when he

supposes the earth to be the center of the universe? The Bible always

said so. What if science should prove it?”

“Frankly, now,” remarked Will, who was smoking a bad cigar (and yet the

brand bore his name—it was enough to disgust one with earthly grandeur)

“frankly now, Ethel, can you suppose these little creatures that we

are—”

“But I will not be a little creature!” cried Ethel. “The telescope

seems to show that there is no such thing as an infinity of suns.

Limited as they must be in number, they only form what is called a

globular agglomeration, concentric with the Milky Way. I read that

the other day. Our solar system is in the center of this agglomeration

and so in the center of the Milky Way, which we see around us like a

circle. And beyond, there is, perhaps, nothing at all. Our solar system

is, then, in the center of the material universe; and this earth of

ours—that which is nothing to the infinite, according to Phil—on the

contrary, occupies so privileged a place near its central sun that here

only, it is probable, life can have been developed and man created, and

so the whole universe must have its fulfilment in us! What do you think

of such a theory? I had rather believe that than be only a flower or a

drop of water,” Ethel concluded, as she arose.

From his corner in the shadow Phil saw her, in the full light of the

lamp, standing out luminous against the dark horizon as if mingled with

the stars. He admired her superb self-confidence—why should he doubt

himself? He vowed that before their departure for Morgania he would

let Miss Rowrer know his feelings for her. Perhaps she suspected them

a little. No matter, he would tell her! As an extreme limit, so much

did he feel the need of binding himself, he fixed the time for his

declaration at the stag hunt.

CHAPTER III

GRAND’MÈRE VERSUS GRANDMA

“I thought the Grojeans were absent—their house has been all the time

shut up,” Caracal said to Ethel; “but I caught sight of them yesterday.

They must be back.”

“We’ll go to-day and invite them to tennis,” Ethel said. “It will give

so much pleasure to Mademoiselle Yvonne—and perhaps Will might be glad

to see her again,” Ethel added to herself.

In the afternoon the auto, in all its splendor, flew along the way to

the home of the Grojeans.

Caracal was delighted. Miss Rowrer had been very gracious to him.

He would have gone oftener to Camp Rosemont, but he had been content

to shine from afar on account of the drafts and mosquitos under the

accursed tents. He kept to his lodgings at the Lion d’Or, a little inn

full of flies and smelling of cabbage-soup.

“What a beautiful road this is!” Ethel observed. “You would say it was

an avenue in a park, everything has such a refined air, so prinked and

pretty, with its flowers set here and there!”

Every one was impressed by the gardens of flowers and the finished,

distinguished look of everything. Will had the deepest enjoyment of

it. His head may have been full of business, he may have handled his

millions in his sleep, but he felt himself taken by this provincial

charm. His love for it was the love of that which contrasts with

one’s self. When he saw the hills crowned with oak and the inclosures

bordered with roses, the variegated fields alive with vine and corn, a

sweet country and a strong one, whose people greeted him with smiles,

he seemed to forget all care, to be reading a poem.

“Will,” Ethel remarked, “is in love with France.”

Caracal kept his impressions to himself. A loftier anxiety was weighing

on him: “The House of Glass” was about to appear. It was a thunderbolt

which would soon burst and he would be famous; and, after the town, the

country should have its turn! His work should be the life-encyclopedia

of our day. He already had notes on the mosquitos, remarks on the

grunting of pigs in their sties and the smells of the manure-heap. His

novel would begin well.

“Tell me, M. Caracal,” Ethel chanced to ask just as he was thinking of

all this, “have you found a title for your novel on country life which

we were talking about the other day?”

“I am hunting for one, Miss Rowrer,” answered Caracal.

“I hope every one will be allowed to read it, even young girls,” she

went on.

“Ah—” Caracal interrupted.

“Good!” Ethel said, “why should unpleasant things be written? Very

dirty things some authors write, so I hear it said. I don’t understand

this fouling of one’s own nest.”

Caracal hid his chagrin. To him a novel for the “young person”—a

“proper” novel—was the lowest term of contempt. No, his would not be

a rose-colored romance; it would be something that had been lived,

thrilling with human passion, bleeding and fierce, even if it smelled

of the stable and dung-hill—ah!—and he turned his Mephistophelian

eye-glass toward the horizon.

A writer for young persons! The indignation which dictated his

verses to Juvenal made Caracal find a title for his romance. “Let’s

see,” he thought. “In fact, what title shall I give it? It must be

something suggestive. For the city I have ‘The House of Glass’; would

‘The Pigsty’ do for the country? No, they’d say it was a treatise on

breeding. ‘The Rose on the Dung-Hill’? No, they’d say it was poetry.

‘Dung-Hill’ alone is too short. ‘Worms from the Dung-Hill’—that’s the

thing! comparing the country to a vast manure-heap with worms crawling

through it.”

Secretly satisfied with this stroke of his genius, Caracal rubbed his

hands.

As they drew near the town, the houses, scattered at first and amid

gardens, became more numerous. The camping-party now jolted over the

“King’s Pavement.” At a distance, above the low roofs, the spires of a

church were seen. All at once they came out in the place where a few

days before, through the blinds, when the sun-fountain marked four

o’clock, the Grojeans had watched their passing by.

“The Grojean house?” A person standing near answered their inquiry: “It

is the great doorway beyond there opening on the place.”

Brrr! and the auto was in front of the house.

There was a great door, studded with big iron nails, and a little

wicket, with a grating in front of it, opening in the thickness of

the wood. The front of the house, smooth and with drawn blinds, had

a venerable look. The stroke of the knocker resounded long, as if

re-echoing through an empty house. A moment passed.

They had time to notice the fine grass which grew between the stones of

the walk and the foot of the wall, and the old escutcheon carved above

the door.

“It is the Grojeans’ coat of arms,” Ethel explained in a low voice.

“They belonged to the old _noblesse de robe_. One grandfather was a

presiding judge, another was a chancellor.”

Just then the noise of the bolt was heard, the heavy door opened, and

Mlle. de Grojean welcomed them on the threshold.

“I am delighted! What a pleasant surprise! You must excuse me for

receiving you as I am. The servants have gone out and I was at work.”

“But you are charming as you are!” answered Ethel.

Mlle. Yvonne was certainly very pretty in her bib and apron, with her

graceful neck issuing from the wide white collar, and her refined head,

with its hair rolled like a helmet above it.

“Do come in!” she exclaimed.

The hallway, paved with marble, and with its lofty ceiling, surprised

them by its coolness. To right and left there were double doors. At

one side rose a great stone staircase with an iron railing and without

carpet. On the wall there were a few old pictures, and these, with two

benches of the time of Charles X, formed the furniture of the hall. At

the foot, through a glass door, there was a view on a terrace leading

down to the garden.

“Grand’mère, here are my Paris friends,” Mlle. Yvonne said, as she

brought the party into the salon: “Mme. Rowrer, Miss Rowrer, Monsieur

William, Monsieur Phil Longwill.”

Caracal kept himself to one side, smiling as if it were understood that

he, a celebrated man, was superior to these poor children of the soil.

“M. Caracal, of Paris,” Miss Rowrer said, presenting him. “M. Caracal

has come to study the country. He is preparing a book.”

“Ah! Monsieur is a professor of agriculture. You are welcome,

monsieur,” grand’mère said, with simplicity, leaving Caracal to

that isolation which is the lot of psychologues once they leave the

Boulevard.

“I shall surely put you into my novel!” Caracal muttered to himself, in

his vexation.

“If I had known, I would have taken the covers from the chairs,” said

Mlle. Yvonne. “But sit down all the same, I beg of you. Mama will be

very glad to see you. She is coming back. I will go fetch her.”

“Don’t mind, Yvonne,” said Ethel; “we will wait. You know,” she added,

“everything is delightful to us here.”

There was the same dim light on the silken hangings and the furniture,

reflecting its brasses. The air was fine and sweet, like the fragrance

of the caskets of our grandmothers in family store-rooms. Through the

windows, half open on the garden, they could hear the song of birds

amid the groves.

Mme. de Grojean now came in. The chairs were moved from their formal

rows and every one sat down. Conversation began.

The perfectly natural manners and air of high distinction of Mlle.

Yvonne and Mme. de Grojean, found in the midst of their domestic

occupations, were a pleasure to Will.

“You were working at this water-color?” Ethel asked of Mlle. Yvonne.

“No. I’m going to send that to a charity bazaar; but I was working at

this.”

“This muslin gown?”

“Not just now,” said Yvonne, “I was scraping lint.”

“Lint! For what?”

“Why, for some expedition they are preparing; for the next war.”

Will and Ethel were in admiration at such simplicity of life, in which

young girls sewed at their own muslin gowns for the yearly ball, and

varied their employment by picking lint for the next war.

“Just imagine!” Ethel said to herself. “I pitied her in Paris because

she never went anywhere! Quite the contrary, she must have been having

a thoroughly good time. Those days must have been regular escapades, an

excess of liberty, compared to this life of work and obscure duties.”

She looked in turn at Yvonne, in her high spirits, at her mother,

who was so self-effacing, and at the rigid, conservative, severe

grandmother.

“Have you many amusements here?” Ethel asked. “A theater, books, fine

walks?”

“Oh!” answered Yvonne, “we hardly go to the theater—once or twice a

year, perhaps—and we receive few books, we have so little time to read.

But amusements are not wanting, I assure you. Sometimes I go to market,

and there’s the care of the house, with preserves to make; there are

the garden and the fruits. We must have an eye to everything.”

“Yvonne is very whimsical, too,” said grand’mère; “she wanted some

canary birds! Nowadays, young girls have nothing but pleasure in their

heads!”

“But birds are so amusing,” replied Yvonne. “Just now,” she added, “we

are in a hurry with our gift to the soldiers—there are lint, preserves

and tobacco and liqueurs, and linen to send them. We have a committee

here, and we occupy ourselves with it at our monthly meetings. And when

it isn’t that, it’s something else. My cousin Henri accompanies me at

the piano, or I read French history or some treatise on education. I

haven’t a minute to myself, especially here, because grand’mère is the

president of the committee.”

“Alas! what a different idea of the Frenchwoman psychological novelists

have been giving!” was Phil’s thought as he looked at Caracal, with his

monocle glistening in the shadow.

“In your place, madame,” said grandma, speaking directly to grand’mère,

“I’d start a committee for general disarmament.”

Mme. de Grojean opened her eyes wide. Ethel, who saw the effect which

had been produced, hastened to say, “Grandma is joking.”

“Not at all, Ethel,” replied grandma. “The country is very pretty, with

its flowers and its soldiers; but I prefer our Western plains, and I’d

give all the military music in the world for our peaceful tunes.”

Grand’mère and grandma were face to face; they formed a perfect

contrast to each other.

Grandma seemed to have in her clear eyes the sheen of the sea and of

the prairies, where new dawns had arisen for her. Incredible energy

could be read on her nervous features. One would have said that she

was still young and active, and full of ambition; and, if she was

able to talk with grand’mère, it was because during the past months

she had begun again to speak and read French with as much ardor as

a school-girl. She did not feel herself growing old so long as she

improved herself. She detested things which never changed, homes too

shut in, too hushed a silence, and too passive obedience. Leaning

forward, she looked into the eyes of grand’mère. The latter was the

majestic representative of changeless things, of tradition that must

not be touched. Of what use is it to learn so much, since all sin comes

from knowledge? And why change, since all through the centuries men

have gone to war, while women stayed at home and spun.

Seated squarely back in her arm-chair, she looked like a tower of the

Middle Ages, ready for the assault. She prepared her batteries and took

from her arsenal replies a thousand years old, with which to overwhelm

the assailant. To grandma asking, “Why not change?” grand’mère would

answer, “What use to change?”

She had the proverbs of her ancestors all in line. Against the taste

for travel she could throw this bomb: “Each in his place!” She would

stifle the spirit of adventure with “A rolling stone gathers no moss!”

Against the pursuit of progress her ammunition was ready: “The better

is the enemy of the good.” And the daring ones who would attempt to

climb up, in the name of modern ambition and equality for all, would

receive from her mitrailleuse: “There was a frog who tried to become as

big as an ox, and who burst in the endeavor!”

Last of all, if the enemy should really force a way into the

stronghold, she had the crushing reply: “_Ça ne se fait pas_ [It isn’t

done]!”

But grandma was not to be intimidated, and her best argument was Ethel

herself.

“In America,” said grandma, “we haven’t the same idea of education.

It’s the young girl’s Paradise!”

“But I am very happy here,” Yvonne said, smiling.

“Ignorance is bliss,” grandma thought to herself.

“With us,” Ethel said aloud, “a young girl like Yvonne, who has a taste

for painting, would go to Paris to study.”

“Ah! _Seigneur!_ how could you imagine my going to live in Paris at my

age!” exclaimed Yvonne’s mother.

“But you would remain here,” grandma said. “Your daughter would go

alone.”

“_Est-il possible!_” grand’mère exclaimed.

“It is so pleasant,” grandma went on, “to have the whole world before

you; it is so exciting to be in the strife and to feel one’s self alive

at twenty. It is done every day with us and we are none the worse for

it. On the contrary—”

“That I can see,” grand’mère admitted, looking at Ethel. Grand’mère

found her charming, and could not understand how a young girl brought

up with such liberty should be so nice.

Grandma continued: “The will ought to develop itself freely, just like

the body. Women must know how to deliberate, to be fit companions for

strong men; and a young girl ought to have some experience of life to

make her way later and to choose her husband.”

“To choose a husband!” grand’mère cried; “but I suppose that is the

parents’ concern?”

“Well, I declare!” was the answer of grandma, who did not declare often.

Yvonne was beginning to ask herself whether, since they were talking

of husbands, they would not, quite by chance, send her to look for

something which had been forgotten on the garden bench.

Ethel, to get away from the subject, spoke up: “Mme. de Grojean, I have

a great favor to ask of you.”

“I grant it in advance,” said Mme. Grojean.

“It is this,” said Ethel. “We are camping in the grounds of the

Comtesse de Donjeon. Oh! the establishment is quite simple, and more

agreeable than a hotel, I assure you. We go fishing and walking and

painting; we play the banjo. It is so pleasant to live in the open air,

and I would be so glad if Yvonne could come with us. We should amuse

ourselves so much.”

[Illustration: “They went down into the garden”]

“And it would be so good to have these young people around me,” grandma

added. “I love life and movement.”

“We shall go about the country in our auto,” Ethel continued. “We shall

get up picnics, we shall have impromptu plays, with lanterns, when we

have guests of an evening; and I count on Yvonne, Mme. de Grojean. It

is granted in advance!”

“I should like it, if mama pleases,” ventured Yvonne, with a blush of

pleasure.

“It is for grand’mère to decide, my dear Yvonne. Ask grand’mère. I am

willing, if she is.”

The judge was about to pronounce. She meditated a moment. Mme. Rowrer

and Miss Ethel were very kind, it was true. But would they always be

present to look after Yvonne? Might not Yvonne sometimes go out alone

with Monsieur William or Monsieur Phil? Her granddaughter walking with

men! She hesitated no longer.

“It is impossible,” she said. “I thank you very much, Mlle. Rowrer, but

it is impossible.”

The judge had pronounced, without appeal!