Two or three days after I called, but the ladies were not in, so that

except at church at the Hôtel Marboeuf on Sunday morning I saw nothing

of Miss Hermione. Monday, February 21st, was sunny and bright. The

public excitement was such that an unusual number of working-men were

keeping their St. Crispin. The soldiers, however, were confined to their

quarters: not a uniform was to be seen abroad. Our night had been

disturbed by the continuous rumble of carts and carriages.

"Is it a fine day for the banquet?" I heard Amy say as our maid opened

her windows on Tuesday morning.

"There is to be no banquet," was the answer. "_Voyez done_ the

proclamation posted on the door of the barrack at the corner of the Rue

Chaillot."

I sprang from my bed and looked out of my window. A strange change had

taken place in the teeming little caserne at the corner. Instead of the

usual groups of well-behaved boy-soldiers in rough uniforms, the barrack

looked deserted, and its lower windows had been closed up to their top

panes with bags of hay and mattresses. Not a soldier, not even a sentry,

was to be seen.

I dressed myself and went out to collect news. The carts that had

disturbed us during the night had been not only employed in removing all

preparations for the banquet, but in taking every loose paving-stone out

of the way. I found the Place de la Madeleine full of people, all

looking up at the house of Odillon Barrot, asking "What next?" and "What

shall we do?" Odillon Barrot was the hero of the moment--literally _of

the moment_. In forty-eight hours from that time his name had faded from

the page of history. In the Place de la Concorde there was more

excitement, for threats were being made to cross the bridge and to

insult the Chambers. The Pont de l'Institut, notwithstanding the efforts

of the garde municipale or mounted police, was greatly crowded. A party

of dragoons, on sorrel ponies barely fourteen hands high, rode up and

began to clear the bridge, but gently and gradually. The crowd was

retiring as fast as its numbers would permit, when some of the municipal

guard rode through the ranks of the dragoons and set themselves, with

ill-judged roughness, to accelerate the operation. The crowd grew angry,

and stones began to be thrown at the guard and soldiers.

Growing anxious for the women I had left in the Rue Neuve de Berri, I

returned home by side-streets. A crowd had collected on the Champs

Élysées about thirty yards from the corner of our street, and was

forming a barricade. All were shouting, all gesticulating. Citadines at

full speed were driving out of reach of requisition; horses were going

off disencumbered of their vehicles; the driver of a remise was seated

astride his animal, the long flaps of his driving-coat covering it from

neck to tail; a noble elm was being hewn down by hatchets and even

common knives. An omnibus, the remise, a few barrels and dining-tables,

a dozen yards of _pave_ torn up by eager hands, a sentry-box, some

benches and the tree, formed the barricade. _Gamins_ and _blouses_

worked at it. The respectables looked on and did not trouble the

workers. Suddenly there was a general stampede among them. A squadron of

about fifty dragoons charged up the Champs Élysées. One old

peasant-woman in a scanty yellow-and-black skirt, which she twitched

above her knees, led the retreat. But soon they stopped and turned

again, while the dragoons rode slowly back, breathing their horses.

Nobody was angry, for nobody had been hurt, but they were frightened

enough.

At this moment, stealing from a porte-cochère where she had taken refuge

during the fright and _sauve gui peut_, came a figure wrapped in dark

drapery. Could it be possible? Hermione Leare! In a moment I was at her

side. She was very pale and breathless, and she was glad to take my arm.

"What brings you here?" I whispered.

"Our servants have all run away: they think mamma is compromised.

Victor, our chasseur, broke open mamma's secretary and took his wages.

She is almost beside herself. She wanted to send a letter to the post,

and as it is steamer-day I thought papa had better know that thus far

nothing has happened to us. There was nobody to take the letter: I said

I would put it in the box in the Rue Ponthieu."

"And did you post it?"

"No: I could not get to the Rue Ponthieu. They were firing down the

street, and now I dare not."

"Trust it to me, Miss Leare, and promise me to send for me if you have

any more such errands. You must never run such risks again."

"I have to be the man of the family," she answered, almost with an

apologetic air.

"Do not say that again. I shall come over three times a day while this

thing lasts to see if you have any commissions."

She smiled and pressed my hand as she turned into her own porte-cochère.

Frightened servants and their friends were in the porter's lodge, who

gazed after her with exclamations as she went up the common stair.

The remainder of that day passed with very little fighting. Up to that

time it had been a riot apropos of a change of ministry, but in the

night the secret societies met and flung aside the previous question.

When we awoke on Wednesday morning, February 23d, we were struck by the

strange quiet of the streets. No provisions entered Paris through the

barrier, no vehicles nor venders of small wares. The absolute silence,

save when "Mourir pour la Patrie" sounded hoarsely in the distance, was

as strange as it was unexpected. I had always connected an insurrection

with noise. It was rumored that Guizot the Unpopular had been dismissed,

and that Count Mole, a man of half measures, had been called to the

king's councils. The affair looked to me as if it were going to die out

for want of fuel. But I was mistaken: the blouses, who had not had one

gun to a hundred the day before, had been all night arming themselves by

domiciliary requisitions. The national guard was not believed to be

firm.

The night before, an hour after I had parted with Miss Hermione, I had

made an attempt to see her and Mrs. Leare, without any success. Not even

bribery would induce the concierge to let me in. His orders were

peremptory: "_Pas un seul, monsieur, personne_"--madame received nobody.

Early on Wednesday morning I again presented myself: the ladies were not

visible. Later in the day I called again, and was again refused. But

several times Amy had seen Hermione at a window, and they had made signs

across the street to one another. I began to understand that Mrs. Leare

was overwhelmed by the responsibility she had incurred in opening her

salon to men whom she now perceived to have been conspirators, and that

she was obstinately determined not to compromise herself further by

giving admittance to any one.

Our bonne had been able to ascertain from the concierge of the Leare

house that madame was hysterical, and could hardly be controlled by

mademoiselle.

I was in the streets till five o'clock on Wednesday, when, concluding

all was over, I came home, intending to make another effort to see the

Leares, and if possible to take Miss Hermione, with Ellen and Lætitia,

to view the debris of the two days' fight--to let them get their first

glimpse of real war in the Place de la Concorde, where a regiment was

littering down its horses for the night, and a peep into the closed

gardens of the Tuileries.

When I got up to our rooms I found my sisters at a window overlooking

the courtyard of Mrs. Leare's hotel, and they all cried out with one

voice, "Mrs. Leare's carriage is just ready to drive away."

I looked. A travelling-equipage stood in the courtyard. On it the

concierge was hoisting trunks, and into it was being heaped a

promiscuous variety of knick-knackery and wearing apparel. A country

postilion--who, but for his dirt, would have looked more like a

character in a comedy than a real live, serviceable post-boy--was

standing in carpet slippers (having divested himself of his boots of

office) harnessing three undersized gray Normandy mares to an elegant

travelling-carriage.

Hermione herself, Claribel her little sister, Mrs. Leare and the old

colored nurse got quickly in. Mrs. Leare was in tears, with her head

muffled in a yard or two of green _barège_, then the distinctive mark of

a travelling American woman. The child's-nurse had long gold ear-drops

and a head-dress of red bandanna. There was not a man of any kind with

them except the postilion. The concierge opened the gates of the

courtyard.

"Stop! stop!" I cried, and rushed down our own staircase and out of our

front door.

As I ran past their entrance a woman put a paper into my hand. I had no

time to glance at it, for the carriage had already turned into the Rue

Ponthieu. For some distance I ran after it, encountering at every step

excited groups of people, some of whom seemed to me in search of

mischief, while some had apparently come out to gather news. There were

no other carriages in the streets, and that alone enabled me to track

the one I was in chase of, for everybody I met had noticed which way it

had turned. It wound its way most deviously through by-streets to avoid

those in which paving-stones had been torn up or barricades been formed,

and the postilion made all possible speed, fearing the carriage might be

seized and detached from his horses. But the day's work was finished and

the disorders of the night were not begun.

Forced at last to slacken my speed and to take breath, I glanced at the

paper that I still held in my hand. It contained a few words from

Hermione: "Thank you for all the kindness you have tried to show us,

dear sir. My mother has heard that all the English in Paris are to be

massacred at midnight by the mob, and directs me to give you notice,

which is the reason I address this note to you and not to Amy. Mamma is

afraid of being mistaken for an Englishwoman. We have secured

post-horses and are setting out for Argenteuil, where we shall take the

railway. Again, thank you: your kindness will not be forgotten by H.

LEARE."

This note reassured me. I no longer endeavored to overtake the carriage,

but I pushed my way as fast as possible beyond the nearest barrier. Once

outside the wall of Paris, I was in the Banlieu, that zone of rascality

whose inhabitants are all suspected by the police and live under the

ban. Of course on such a gala-day of lawlessness this hive was all

astir. At a village I passed through I tried to hire a conveyance to

Argenteuil. I also tried to get some railway information, but nobody

could tell me anything and all were ravenous for news. I secured,

however, without losing too much time, a seat with a stout young

country-man who drove a little country cart with a powerful gray horse,

and was going in the direction I wanted to travel.

"What will be the result of this affair?" I said to him when he had got

his beast into a steady trot.

He shrugged his shoulders. A French workingman has a far larger

vocabulary at his command than the English laborer. "Bon Dieu!" he

exclaimed: "who knows what will come of it? A land without a master is

no civilized land. We shall fall back into barbarism. What there is

certain is, that we shall all be ruined."

At length, to my great relief, we saw a carriage before us; and we drove

into the railway-station at the same moment as the Leares.

Before the ladies could alight I was beside the window of their

carriage.

"You here, Mr. Farquhar?" cried Hermione. "How good of you! You cannot

guess the relief. Help me to get them out, these helpless ones."

We lifted Mrs. Leare on to the platform of the railway, weeping and

trembling. The old colored nurse could not speak French, and seemed to

think her only duty was to hold the hand of little Claribel and to stand

where her young mistress placed her. All looked to Hermione. She carried

a canvas bag of five-franc pieces and paid right and left. I tried to

interfere, as she was giving the postilion an exorbitant sum.

"No, hush!" she whispered: "we can afford to pay, but in our situation

we cannot afford to dispute."

She then deputed me to see after the "baggage," as she called the

luggage of the party, and went with her mother into the glass cage that

the French call a _salle d'attente_ at a railway-station.

We had come from the seat of war, and every one crowded around us asking

for news. I had little to tell, but replied that I believed the affair

was nearly over. I did not foresee that two hours later a procession

roaring "Mourir pour la Patrie" under the windows of the Hôtel des

Affaires Étrangères would be fired into by accident, and that the

_émeute_ of February, 1848, would be converted into a revolution.

It was nine o'clock in the evening. The lamps were lighted in the

station. The night was cloudy, but far off on the horizon we could see a

gleam of radiance, marking the locality of the great city.

After an hour of very anxious waiting, during which Mrs. Leare was

beside herself with nervous agitation, the locked doors of our prison

were flung open and we were permitted to seat ourselves in a

railway-carriage.

Hermione's tender devotion to her mother, the old servant and the child

was beautiful to witness. Now that Mrs. Leare was helpless on her

daughter's hands, they seemed to have found their natural relations.

Hermione said few words to me, but a glance now and then thanked me for

being with them. The train started. For about three miles all went on

well, although we travelled cautiously, fearing obstructions. Suddenly

the speed of our train was checked, and there was a cry of consternation

as we rounded a sharp curve. The bridge over the Seine at its third bend

was ablaze before us!

All the men upon the train sprang out upon the track as soon as the

carriage-doors were opened, and in a few moments we were surrounded by

ruffians refusing to let us go on.

"Back the train!" cried the railroad official in charge.

No, they were not willing to let us go back to Paris. Conspirators

against the people might be making their escape. They had set fire to

the bridge, they said, to prevent the train from passing over. It must

remain where it was. If we passengers desired to return to Paris, we

must walk there.

"Walk?" I exclaimed: "it is ten miles! Women--delicate

ladies--children!"

My remonstrance was drowned in the confusion. Suddenly the party of

women under my charge stood at my elbow: Mrs. Leare was leaning on

Hermione's arm; Mammy Christine and Claribel cowered close and held her

by her drapery.

"Make no remonstrances," she said in a low voice: "let us not excite

attention. An Englishman never knows when not to complain: an American

accepts his fate more quietly. These people mean to sack the train. We

had better get away as soon as possible."

"But how?" I cried.

"I can walk. We must find some means of transporting mamma, Mammy Chris

and Clary."

As Hermione said this she turned to an official and questioned him upon

the subject. He thought that there was a little cart and horse which

might be hired at a neighboring cottage.

"Let us go and see about it, Mr. Farquhar," said Hermione.

"I will."

"No: I put greater trust in my own powers of persuasion.--Mammy dear,

take good care of mamma: we shall be back directly."

Her _we_ was very sweet to me, and I shared her mistrust of my French

and my diplomacy.

The glare of the burning bridge lighted our steps: the air was full of

falling flakes of fire. The cottage was a quarter of a mile off.

Hermione refused my arm, but, holding her skirts daintily, stepped

bravely at my side. She exhibited no bashfulness, no excitement, no

confusion, no fear: she was simply bent on business. We reached the

peasant's farmyard. He and his family were outside the house. We like to

say a Frenchman has no word for _home_. But the conclusion that the man

of Anglo-Saxon birth deduces from this lack in his vocabulary is false:

no man cares more for the domicile that shelters him. Hermione made her

request with sweet persuasiveness. I saw at once it would have been

refused if I had made it, but to her they made excuses. The old horse,

they said, was very old, the old cart was broken.

"Let me look at it," said Hermione. At this they led us into an

outhouse, where she assisted me to make a careful inspection. I might

have rejected the old trap at once, but she offered a few suggestions,

which she told me in an aside were the fruit of her experiences in

Maryland and Virginia, and the cart was pronounced safe enough to be

driven slowly with a light load.

A half-grown son of the house was put in charge of it. Hermione

suggested he should bring the family clothes-line in case of a

breakdown, and prevailed upon the farmer's wife to put in plenty of

fresh straw, a blanket and a pillow. She made a bargain, less

extravagant than I expected, with the peasant proprietor, promising,

however, a very handsome _pourboire_ to his son in the event of our good

fortune. The farmer stipulated, in his turn, that cart, horse and lad

were not to pass the barrier, that the boy should walk at the horse's

head, and that the cart was to contain only two women and little

Claribel.

It was harnessed up immediately. Hermione and I followed it on foot back

to the little band of travellers waiting beside the railway.

"Can we not get some of your trunks out?" I said to her.

"No," she answered: "leave them to their fate. I dare not overload the

cart, and I doubt whether those men with hungry eyes would let us take

them. Mamma," she whispered, "has her diamonds."

"You will get into the cart, Miss Leare?" I said as I saw her motioning

to the old colored woman to take the place beside her mother.

"No indeed," she replied: "our contract stipulated only for mamma, Mammy

and Clary: Mammy is crippled with rheumatism. If you have no objection I

will walk with you."

"Objection? No. But it is ten miles."

"A long stretch," she said with a half sigh, "but I am young, strong,

and excitement counts for something: besides, there is no remedy. We

must consider them."

There had been about fifteen other persons on the train. A dozen of

these, finding we were going to walk back to Paris, proposed to join us.

The night was growing dark, and we pushed on. There was no woman afoot

but Hermione. "Madame" they called her, evidently taking her for my

wife, but by no word or smile did she notice the blunder. After a while

she accepted my arm, drawing up her skirts by means of loops or pins. We

had one lantern among us, and from time to time its glare permitted me

to see her dainty feet growing heavy with mud and travel.

It was not what could be called a lovers' walk, tramping in the dark

through mud and water, on a French country road, at a cart's tail, and

hardly a word was exchanged between us; yet had it not been for fears

about her safety it would have been the most delightful expedition I had

ever known.

From time to time Mrs. Leare and the old nurse in the cart complained of

their bones. Hermione was always ready with encouragement, but she said

little else to any one. She appeared to be reserving all her energies to

assist her physical endurance and to strengthen her for her task of

taking care of the others.

I had always seen my sisters and other girls protected, sheltered, cared

for: it gave me a sharp pang to see this beautiful and dainty creature

totally unthought of by those dependent on her. Nor did Mrs. Leare seem

to feel any anxiety about my comradeship with her daughter. I could

fully appreciate Hermione's remark about her chaperonage being very

unsatisfactory.

Every now and then we passed through villages along whose straggling

streets the population was aswarm, eager for news and wondering at our

muddy procession. In one of the villages I suggested stopping, but Mrs.

Leare was now as frantic to get home again as she had been to get away.

She said, and truly, that it had been a wild plan to start from

Paris--that if she had seen me and had heard that I thought the émeute

was at an end and that the report about the English was untrue, she

should never have left her apartment. She had been frightened out of her

senses by some men _en blouse_ who had made their way into her rooms and

had carried off her pistol and a little Turkish dagger. Victor's theft

of his own wages had upset her. She had insisted upon setting out.

Hermione had got post-horses somehow: Hermione ought never to have let

her come away.

About three in the morning we reached a larger village than we had

hitherto passed. The inhabitants had been apprised of the events in the

Rue Neuve des Capucines before the ministry of the Affaires Étrangères,

and the revolutionary element had increased in audacity. A crowd of

turbulent-looking working-men dressed in blouses, armed with muskets,

old sabres and all kinds of miscellaneous weapons, stopped our way. Some

seized the head of the old horse, some gathered round the cart and

lifted lanterns into the faces of the ladies. The French workman is a

much more athletic man than the French soldier. I own to a sensation of

deadly terror for a moment when I saw the ladies in the midst of a

lawless rabble whose brawny arms were bared as if prepared for butchery

of any kind. Far off, too, a low rattle of distant musketry warned us

that the tumult in Paris was renewed.

"Mourir pour la Patrie" appeared to come from every throat, and many of

the crowd were the worse for liquor. Indeed, these patriots had

rendezvoused at a cabaret at the entrance of the village, and swarmed

from its tables to intercept us. The ladies, they insisted, must alight

and be examined. Mammy Chris was drawn out of the cart, looking as if

her face had been rubbed in ashes: Mrs. Leare was nervously excited,

Hermione went up to her, supported her and drew her bag of diamonds out

of her hand. I took Claribel in my arms.

"Vos passeports," they demanded.

"Here are our American passports," said Hermione: "we are Americans."

"Yes, Americans, republicans!" cried Mrs. Leare: "we fraternize with all

republicans in France."

"Aristos," said a man between his teeth, glancing at her dress and at

that of Hermione.

"What does he say?" cried Mrs. Leare, who did not catch the word.

"Hush, mother!" said Hermione.

"But what did he say?" she shrieked. "Tell me at once: do not keep it

from me."

Hermione replied (unwilling to use the word "aristocrat") by an American

idiom: "He said we belonged to the Upper Ten."

"But we don't! Oh, Hermie, your father belongs to a good family in

Maryland, but _my_ grandfather made shoes. I was quite poor when he

married me. I was only sixteen."

"What you say?" said a railroad-hand who knew a little English. "You say

you are not some aristos?"

"No, sir," said I: "these ladies claim to be Americans and republicans."

"Vive la République!" cried the man.

"Vive la République!" quickly echoed Hermione.

"C'est bien! c'est bien!" cried another, raising his lantern to her

blanched and beautiful face.

"You will let us all pass, monsieur?" she said persuasively: "you will

even be our escort a little way. We will pay handsomely for your

protection."

Before he could answer her two or three fellows, more drunk than the

rest, burst out with a proposition: "She says they are not aristos, but

republicans. Let her prove it. She cannot, if she be a true republican,

refuse to kiss her fellow-patriots."

I started and was about to knock the rascal down with the bag of

diamonds.

But Hermione laid a restraining hand upon my arm. "Gentlemen," she said

in clear tones and perfect French, "it is quite true that we are

Americans and republicans. We wish you well, and if it be for the good

of France to be free under a republican form of government, no one can

wish her prosperity more than ourselves. But in our free country,

messieurs, a woman is held free to give her kiss to whom she will, and

according to our custom she gives it only to her betrothed or to her

husband." Here stooping she picked up a little boy who had worked

himself into the forefront of the crowd, and before I knew what she was

about to do she had lifted him upon the cart beside her. She looked a

moment steadily at the men around her, holding the boy's hand in both

her own, then turning toward him and pressing her lips upon his face,

she said, "Messieurs, I kiss your representative: I cannot embrace a

multitude;" and placed a piece of money in the gamin's hand.

For a moment there was some doubt what view the crowd might take of

this, but her beauty, her fearlessness, and, above all, the awe inspired

by her womanliness, prevailed. They shouted "Vive la République!"

"With all my heart," replied Hermione. "Now shout for me, gentlemen:

Vive la République des États Unis!"

They were completely won. A French crowd is never dangerous or

unmanageable till it has tasted blood, and besides it has--or at least

in those days it used to have--_sentiments_, to which it was possible

with a little tact to appeal successfully.

The opposition to our progress came to an end. Mrs. Leare and old Mammy

were helped back into the cart, and a man offered them some wine. They

brought some also to Hermione. I pressed her to drink it, which she did

to their good health, and giving back the glass placed in it a napoleon.

"Do me the favor, messieurs," she said, "to drink your next toast to our

American republic."

Cheers rose for her. There was no longer any talk of detaining us: the

old horse was urged forward. Hermione took my arm. We marched on,

escorted by the rabble. At the end of the village-street they all gave

us an unsteady cheer and turned back to their wine-tables. Hermione

proceeded in silence a little farther. Then I felt her slipping from my

arm, and was just in time to catch her.

Without compunction I requested Mammy Chris to get out of the cart and

put her young lady in her place, pillowing her head as carefully as I

could on my own coat, and proceeding in my shirtsleeves.

We were then not half a mile from the Banlieu, which we passed without

adventure, much to my surprise, its inhabitants having taken advantage

of the confusion to pour into Paris and infest its richer quarters.

The ladies were obliged to get out at the barrier and to send back the

cart to its proprietor. Again I had the happiness of supporting Hermione

while I carried little Claribel, and Mrs. Leare and Mammy walked on

ahead.

"I feel humiliated," I said, "that the whole burden of those dreadful

moments should have fallen upon you."

"And to avoid that feeling you were ready to knock down a drunken blouse

in English style?" she said, smiling. "No, Mr. Farquhar, nothing but the

power that a woman finds in her own womanhood could have brought us

through safely. Those men had all had mothers, and each man had some

sort of womanly ideal. I could not have managed a crowd of _poissardes_,

but, thank Heaven, there is yet a chord that a woman may strike in the

hearts of men."

The dawn of Thursday, February 24, 1848, was breaking at the eastward

when I arrived with Mrs. Leare, Hermione, the nurse and child at their

own apartment. I went up stairs with them. All was cold and cheerless in

the rooms. There were no servants. Mrs. Leare sat down; the old nurse

bemoaned her rheumatism and her aching bones; Hermione, with the

assistance of the concierge's wife, lighted a fire, made some tea and

waited on her mother.

For several days afterward she was very ill. She knew nothing of passing

events--of the king's flight, of the triumphal and victorious

processions that passed up the Champs Élysées, of the sudden

impossibility of procuring supplies of change, and of the consequent

difficulty of paying household bills with _billets de mille francs_

without gold or silver.

Each day I went several times to make inquiries, and twice I saw Mrs.

Leare in bed, but Hermione was invisible.

My father, an honorable British officer of the old school, perceived how

things were with me. "My son," he said one clay, "there are two courses

open to you. You have nothing but your profession. Your education and

the premium on your admittance to the office of the great man for whom

you work have been my provision for you: the little property I have to

leave must support your sisters. You cannot under such circumstances

address Miss Leare. You must either go back at once to your work in

England and forget this episode, or you may go out to America and see

her father. You can tell him you have nothing on which to support his

daughter, and ask if he will give you leave to address the young lady.

No son of mine, situated like yourself, shall offer himself in any other

way to an heiress whose father is three thousand miles away, and who is

supposed to have two millions of francs for her dowry."

I saw he was right, but, forlorn as the hope was of any appeal to Mr.

Leare, I would not relinquish it. I resolved to go out to America and

see him, and wrote to England to secure letters of introduction to the

chief engineers in the United States and Canada. Meantime, my father

proposed that we should go together and call upon Mrs. and Miss Leare.

Hermione received us in the boudoir, looking like a bruised lily: her

mother came in afterward.

"We are going right straight home," she said, "the moment we can get

money to get away. I have written to Mr. Leare that he must find some

means to send me some."

"I am glad to hear you say this, madame," said my father. "My son has

just made up his mind to go out to America and seek employment on one of

your railways."

Hermione looked up with a question in her eyes: so did her mother.

"Why, Mr. Farquhar, that will suit us exactly," cried Mrs.

Leare.--"Hermione, won't it be lovely if Mr. Farquhar takes care of us

on the voyage?--You will engage your passage--won't you?--in the same

steamer as we do?--No one was ever so good a squire of dames as your

son, Captain Farquhar. Hermione and I shall never forget our obligations

to him."

"No, madame," said my father; and he got up and walked to the fireplace,

where in his embarrassment he laid his hand upon the ornamented box

which held the cigarettes of the fast lady.

She rose up too and went hastily toward him, anxious he should not

surprise her little frailty.

"The truth is, madame," whispered my father, who never could restrain

his tongue from any kindly indiscretion, "the poor fellow is suffering

too much from the attractions of Miss Leare. He has nothing but his

profession, and I tell him he must not dare to address her in her

father's absence."

"My dear captain, what does that matter? And I believe Hermione would

have him too," said her mother.

"Disparity of means--" began my father.

"Oh, no matter," interrupted Mrs. Leare: "her father always told her

just to please herself. Mr. Farquhar is an Englishman and of good

family. He has his profession to keep him out of mischief, and Hermie

will more than pay her own expenses. Indeed, I dare not go home without

a gentleman to look after us on the passage: my nerves have been too

shattered, and I never again shall trust a courier. Do let your son go

back with us," she implored persuasively; and added, as she saw that he

still hesitated, "Besides, what rich man in America knows how long he

may be rich? 'Spend your money and enjoy yourself' has always been my

motto."

Thus urged, what could my father do but suppose that Mrs. Leare knew Mr.

Leare's views better than he did? He no longer held out on the point of

honor.

In twenty-four hours Hermione and I were engaged to be married.

During the voyage to New York I learned to understand her father's

character, and when he met us on the wharf I was no longer afraid of

him.

Hermione's choice in marriage seemed to be wholly left to herself. Mr.

Leare told me, when I had that formidable talk with him dreaded by all

aspirants to the hand of a man's daughter, that Hermione had too much

good sense, self-respect and womanliness to give herself away to a man

unworthy of her. "That she can love you, sir," he said, "is sufficient

recommendation."

That it might be sufficient in my case I hoped with all my soul, but

felt, as Hermione had expressed it early in our acquaintance, that

society in America must be founded upon very different opinions than our

own in regard to the relations of men and women.

E.W. LATIMER.

THE AUTHORS OF "FROUFROU."

No doubt it will surprise some theatre-goers who are not special

students of the stage to be told that the authors of _Froufrou_ are the

authors also of the _Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein_ and of _La Belle

Hélène_, of _Carmen_ and of _Le Petit Duc_. There are a few, I know, who

think that _Froufrou_ was written by the fertile and ingenious M.

Victorien Sardou, and who, without thinking, credit M. Jacques Offenbach

with the composition of the words as well as the music of the _Grande

Duchesse_; and as for _Carmen_, is it not an _Italian_ opera, and is not

the book, like the music, the work of some Italian? As a matter of fact,

all these plays, unlike as they are to each other, and not only these,

but many more--not a few of them fairly well known to the American

play-goer--are due to the collaboration of M. Henri Meilhac and M.

Ludovic Halévy.

Born in 1832, M. Henri Meilhac, like M. Émile Zola, dealt in books

before he began to make them. He soon gave up trade for journalism, and

contributed with pen and pencil to the comic _Journal pour Rire_. He

began as a dramatist in 1855 with a two-act play at the Palais Royal

Theatre: like the first pieces of Scribe and of M. Sardou, and of so

many more who have afterward abundantly succeeded on the stage, this

play of M. Meilhac's was a failure; and so also was his next, likewise

in two acts. But in 1856 the _Sarabande du Cardinal_, a delightful

little comedy in one act, met with favor at the Gymnase. It was followed

by two or three other comediettas equally clever. In 1859, M. Meilhac

made his first attempt at a comedy in five acts, but the _Petit fils de

Mascarille_ had not the good fortune of his ancestor. In 1860, for the

first time, he was assisted by M. Ludovic Halévy, and in the twenty

years since then their names have been linked together on the

title-pages of two score or more plays of all kinds--drama, comedy,

farce, opera, operetta and ballet. M. Meilhac's new partner was the

nephew of the Halévy who is best known out of France as the composer of

the _Jewess_, and he was the son of M. Léon Halévy, poet, philosopher

and playwright. Two years younger than M. Henri Meilhac, M. Ludovic

Halévy held a place in the French civil service until 1858, when he

resigned to devote his whole time, instead of his spare time, to the

theatre. As the son of a dramatist and the nephew of a popular composer,

he had easy access to the stage. He began as the librettist-in-ordinary

to M. Offenbach, for whom he wrote _Ba-ta-clan_ in 1855, and later the

_Chanson de Fortunio_, the _Pont des Soupirs_ and _Orphée aux Enfers_.

The first very successful play which MM. Meilhac and Halévy wrote

together was a book for M. Offenbach; and it was possibly the good

fortune of this operetta which finally affirmed the partnership. Before

the triumph of the _Belle Hélène_ in 1864 the collaboration had been

tentative, as it were: after that it was as though the articles had been

definitely ratified--not that either of the parties has not now and then

indulged in outside speculations, trying a play alone or with an

outsider, but this was without prejudice to the permanent partnership.

This kind of literary union, the long-continued conjunction of two

kindred spirits, is better understood amongst us than the indiscriminate

collaboration which marks the dramatic career of M. Eugène Labiche, for

instance. Both kinds were usual enough on the English stage in the days

of Elizabeth, but we can recall the ever-memorable example of Beaumont

and Fletcher, while we forget the chance associations of Marston,

Dekker, Chapman and Ben Jonson. And in contemporary literature we have

before us the French tales of MM. Erckmann-Chatrian and the English

novels of Messrs. Besant and Rice. The fact that such a union endures is

proof that it is advantageous. A long-lasting collaboration like this of

MM. Meilhac and Halévy must needs be the result of a strong sympathy and

a sharp contrast of character, as well as of the possession by one of

literary qualities which supplement those of the other.

One of the first things noticed by an American student of French

dramatic literature is that the chief Parisian critics generally refer

to the joint work of these two writers as the plays of M. Meilhac,

leaving M. Halévy altogether in the shade. At first this seems a curious

injustice, but the reason is not far to seek. It is not that M. Halévy

is some two years the junior of M. Meilhac: it lies in the quality of

their respective abilities. M. Meilhac has the more masculine style, and

so the literary progeny of the couple bear rather his name than his

associate's. M. Meilhac has the strength of marked individuality, he has

a style of his own, one can tell his touch; while M. Halévy is merely a

clever French dramatist of the more conventional pattern. This we detect

by considering the plays which each has put forth alone and unaided by

the other. In reading one of M. Meilhac's works we should feel no doubt

as to the author, while M. Halévy's clever pictures of Parisian society,

wanting in personal distinctiveness, would impress us simply as a

product of the "Modern French School."

Before finally joining with M. Halévy, M. Meilhac wrote two comedies in

five acts of high aim and skilful execution, and two other five-act

pieces have been written by MM. Meilhac and Halévy together. The _Vertu

de Célimène_ and the _Petit fils de Mascarille_ are by the elder

partner--_Fanny Lear_ and _Froufrou_ are the work of the firm. Yet in

these last two it is difficult to see any trace of M. Halévy's

handiwork. Allowing for the growth of M. Meilhac's intellect during the

eight or ten years which intervened between the work alone and the work

with his associate, and allowing for the improvement in the mechanism of

play-making, I see no reason why M. Meilhac might not have written

_Fanny Lear_ and _Froufrou_ substantially as they are had he never met

M. Halévy. But it is inconceivable that M. Halévy alone could have

attained so high an elevation or have gained so full a comic force.

Perhaps, however, M. Halévy deserves credit for the better technical

construction of the later plays: merely in their mechanism the first

three acts of _Froufrou_ are marvellously skilful. And perhaps, also,

his is a certain softening humor, which is the cause that the two later

plays, written by both partners, are not so hard in their brilliance as

the two earlier comedies, the work of M. Meilhac alone.

It may seem something like a discussion of infinitesimals, but I think

M. Halévy's co-operation has given M. Meilhac's plays a fuller ethical

richness. To the younger writer is due a simple but direct irony, as

well as a lightsome and laughing desire to point a moral when occasion

serves. Certainly, I shall not hold up a play written to please the

public of the Palais Royal, or even of the Gymnase, as a model of all

the virtues. Nor need it be, on the other hand, an embodiment of all the

cardinal sins. The frequenters of the Palais Royal Theatre are not

babes; young people of either sex are not taken there; only the

emancipated gain admittance; and to the seasoned sinners who haunt

theatres of this type these plays by MM. Meilhac and Halévy are

harmless. Indeed, I do not recall any play of theirs which could hurt

any one capable of understanding it. Most of their plays are not to be

recommended to ignorant innocence or to fragile virtue. They are not

meant for young men and maidens. They are not wholly free from the taint

which is to be detected in nearly all French fiction. The mark of the

beast is set on not a little of the work done by the strongest men in

France. M. Meilhac is too clean and too clever ever to delve in

indecency from mere wantonness: he has no liking for vice, but his

virtue sits easily on him, and though he is sound on the main question,

he looks upon the vagaries of others with a gentle eye. M. Halévy, it

seems to me, is made of somewhat sterner stuff. He raises a warning

voice now and then--in _Fanny Lear_, for instance, the moral is pointed

explicitly--and even where there is no moral tagged to the fable, he who

has eyes to see and ears to hear can find "a terrible example" in almost

any of these plays, even the lightest. For the congregation to which it

was delivered there is a sermon in _Toto chez Tata_, perhaps the piece

in which, above all others, the Muse seems Gallic and _égrillarde_. That

is a touch of real truth, and so of a true morality, where Tata, the

fashionable courtesan, leaning over her stairs as Toto the school-boy

bears off her elderly lover, and laughing at him, cries out, "Toi, mon

petit homme, je te repincerai dans quatre ou cinq ans!" And a cold and

cutting stroke it is a little earlier in the same little comedy where

Toto, left alone in Tata's parlor, negligently turns over her basket of

visiting-cards and sees "names which he knew because he had learnt them

by heart in his history of France." Still, in spite of this truth and

morality, I do not advise the reading of _Toto chez Tata_ in young

ladies' seminaries. Young ladies in Paris do not go to hear Madame

Chaumont, for whom _Toto_ was written, nor is the Variétés, where it was

played, a place where a girl can take her mother.

It was at the Variétés in December, 1864, that the _Belle Hélène_ was

produced: this was the first of half a score of plays written by MM.

Meilhac and Halévy for which M. Jacques Offenbach composed the music.

Chief among these are _Barbe-bleue_, the _Grande Duchesse de

Gérolstein_, the _Brigands_ and _Périchole_. When we recall the fact

that these five operas are the most widely known, the most popular and

by far the best of M. Offenbach's works, there is no need to dwell on

his indebtedness to MM. Meilhac and Halévy, or to point out how

important a thing the quality of the opera-book is to the composer of

the score. These earlier librettos were admirably made: they are models

of what a comic opera-book should be. I cannot well imagine a better bit

of work of its kind than the _Belle Hélène_ or the _Grande Duchesse_.

Tried by the triple test of plot, characters and dialogue, they are

nowhere wanting. Since MM. Meilhac and Halévy have ceased writing for M.

Offenbach they have done two books for M. Charles Lecoq--the _Petit Duc_

and the _Grande Demoiselle_. These are rather light comic operas than

true _opéras-bouffes_, but if there is an elevation in the style of the

music, there is an emphatic falling off in the quality of the words.

From the _Grande Duchesse_ to the _Petit Duc_ is a great descent: the

former was a genuine play, complete and self-contained--the latter is a

careless trifle, a mere outline sketch for the composer to fill up. The

story--akin in subject to Mr. Tom Taylor's fine historical drama

_Clancarty_--is pretty, but there is no trace of the true poetry which

made the farewell letter of Périchole so touching, or of the true comic

force which projected Général Bourn. _Carmen_, which, like _Périchole_,

owes the suggestion of its plot and characters to Prosper Mérimée, is

little more than the task-work of the two well-trained play-makers: it

was sufficient for its purpose, no more and no less.

Of all the opera-books of MM. Meilhac and Halévy, that one is easily

first and foremost which has for its heroine the Helen of Troy whom

Marlowe's Faustus declared

Fairer than the evening air,

Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars.

In the _Belle Hélène_ we see the higher wit of M. Meilhac. M. Halévy had

been at the same college with him, and they had pored together over the

same legends of old time, but working without M. Meilhac on _Orphée aux

Enfers_, M. Halévy showed his inferiority, for _Orphée_ is the

old-fashioned anachronistic skit on antiquity--funny if you will, but

with a fun often labored, not to say forced--the fun of physical

incongruity and exaggeration. But in the _Belle Hélène_ the fun, easy

and flowing, is of a very high quality, and it has root in mental, not

physical, incongruity. Here indeed is the humorous touchstone of a whole

system of government and of theology. And, allowing for the variations

made with comic intent, it is altogether Greek in spirit--so Greek, in

fact, that I doubt whether any one who has not given his days and nights

to the study of Homer and of the tragedians, and who has not thus taken

in by the pores the subtle essence of Hellenic life and literature, can

truly appreciate this French farce. Planché's _Golden Fleece_ is in the

same vein, but the ore is not as rich. Frere's _Loves of the Triangles_

and some of his _Anti-Jacobin_ writing are perhaps as good in quality,

but the subjects are inferior and temporary. Scarron's vulgar burlesques

and the cheap parodies of many contemporary English play-makers are not

to be mentioned in the same breath with this scholarly fooling. There is

something in the French genius akin to the Greek, and here was a Gallic

wit who could turn a Hellenic love-tale inside out, and wring the

uttermost drop of fun from it without recourse to the devices of the

booth at the fair, the false nose and the simulation of needless

ugliness. The French play, comic as it was, did not suggest hysteria or

epilepsy, and it was not so lacking in grace that we could not recall

the original story without a shudder. There is no shattering of an

ideal, and one cannot reproach the authors of the _Belle Hélène_ with

what Theophrastus Such calls "debasing the moral currency, lowering the

value of every inspiring fact and tradition."

Surpassed only by the _Belle Hélène_ is the _Grande Duchesse de

Gérolstein_. It is nearly fifteen years since all the world went to

Paris to see an Exposition Universelle and to gaze at the "sabre de mon

père," and since a Russian emperor, going to hear the operetta, said to

have been suggested by the freak of a Russian empress, sat incognito in

one stage-box of the little Variétés Theatre, and glancing up saw a

Russian grand duke in the other. It is nearly fifteen years since the

tiny army of Her Grand-ducal Highness took New York by storm, and since

American audience after audience hummed its love for the military and

walked from the French Theatre along Fourteenth street to Delmonico's to

supper, sabring the waiters there with the venerated weapon of her sire.

The French Theatre is no more, and Delmonico's is no longer at that

Fourteenth-street corner, and Her Highness Mademoiselle Tostée is dead,

and M. Offenbach's sprightly tunes have had the fate of all over-popular

airs, and are forgotten now. _Où sont les neiges d'antan?_

It has been said that the authors regretted having written the _Grande

Duchesse_, because the irony of history soon made a joke on Teutonic

powers and principalities seem like unpatriotic satire. Certainly, they

had no reason to be ashamed of the literary quality of their work: in

its class it yields only to its predecessor. There is no single figure

as fine as Calchas--Général Boum is a coarser outline--but how humorous

and how firm is the drawing of Prince Paul and Baron Grog! And Her

Highness herself may be thought a cleverer sketch of youthful femininity

than even the Hellenic Helen. It is hard to judge the play now. Custom

has worn its freshness and made it too familiar: we know it too well to

criticise it clearly. Besides, the actors have now overlaid the action

with over-much "business." But in spite of these difficulties the merits

of the piece are sufficiently obvious: its constructive skill can be

remarked; the first act, for example, is one of the best bits of

exposition on the modern French stage.

Besides these plays for music, and besides the more important five-act

comedies to be considered later, MM. Meilhac and Halévy are the authors

of thirty or forty comic dramas--as they are called on the English

stage--or farce-comedies in one, two, three, four, and even five acts,

ranging in aim from the gentle satire of sentimentality in _La Veuve_ to

the outspoken farce of the _Réveillon_. Among the best of the longer of

these comic plays are _Tricoche et Cacolet_ and _La Boule_. Both were

written for the Palais Royal, and they are models of the new dramatic

species which came into existence at that theatre about twenty years

ago, as M. Francisquc Sarcey recently reminded us in his interesting

article on the Palais Royal in _The Nineteenth Century_. This new style

of comic play may be termed realistic farce--realistic, because it

starts from every-day life and the most matter-of-fact conditions; and

farce, because it uses its exact facts only to further its fantasy and

extravagance. Consider _La Boule_. Its first act is a model of accurate

observation; it is a transcript from life; it is an inside view of a

commonplace French household which incompatibility of temper has made

unsupportable. And then take the following acts, and see how on this

foundation of fact, and screened by an outward semblance of realism,

there is erected the most laughable superstructure of fantastic farce. I

remember hearing one of the two great comedians of the Théâtre Français,

M. Coquelin, praise a comic actor of the Variétés whom we had lately

seen in a rather cheap and flimsy farce, because he combined "la vérité

la plus absolue avec la fantasie la plus pure." And this is the merit of

_La Boule_: its most humorous inventions have their roots in the truth.

Better even than _La Boule_ is _Tricoche et Cacolet_, which is the name

of a firm of private detectives whose exploits and devices surpass those

imagined by Poe in America, by Wilkie Collins in England, and by

Gaboriau in France. The manifold disguises and impersonations of the two

partners when seeking to outwit each other are as well-motived and as

fertile in comic effect as any of the attempts of Crispin or of some

other of Regnard's interchangeable valets. Is not even the _Légataire

Universel_, Regnard's masterpiece, overrated? To me it is neither higher

comedy nor more provocative of laughter than either _La Boule_ or

_Tricoche et Cacolet_; and the modern plays, as I have said, are based

on a study of life as it is, while the figures of the older comedies are

frankly conventional. Nowhere in Regnard is there a situation equal in

comic power to that in the final act of the _Réveillon_--a situation

Molière would have been glad to treat.

Especially to be commended in _Tricoche et Cacolet_ is the satire of the

hysterical sentimentality and of the forced emotions born of luxury and

idleness. The parody of the amorous intrigue which is the staple of so

many French plays is as wholesome as it is exhilarating. Absurdity is a

deadly shower-bath to sentimentalism. The method of Meilhac and Halévy

in sketching this couple is not unlike that employed by Mr. W.S. Gilbert

in _H.M.S. Pinafore_ and _The Pirates of Penzance_. Especially to be

noted is the same perfectly serious pushing of the dramatic commonplaces

to an absurd conclusion. There is the same kind of humor too, and the

same girding at the stock tricks of stage-craft--in _H.M.S. Pinafore_ at

the swapping of children in the cradle, and in _Tricoche et Cacolet_ at

the "portrait de ma mère" which has drawn so many tears in modern

melodrama. But MM. Meilhac and Halévy, having made one success, did not

further attempt the same kind of pleasantry--wiser in this than Mr.

Gilbert, who seems to find it hard to write anything else.

As in the _Château à Toto_ MM. Meilhac and Halévy had made a modern

perversion of _Dame Blanche_, so in _La Cigale_ did they dress up afresh

the story of the _Fille du R'egiment_. As the poet asks--

Ah, World of ours, are you so gray,

And weary, World, of spinning,

That you repeat the tales to-day

You told at the beginning?

For lo! the same old myths that made

The early stage-successes

Still hold the boards, and still are played

With new effects and dresses.

I have cited _La Cigale_, not because it is a very good play--for it is

not--but because it shows the present carelessness of French

dramatists in regard to dramatic construction. _La Cigale_ is a very

clever bit of work, but it has the slightest of plots, and this made out

of old cloth; and the situations, in so far as there are any, follow

each other as best they may. It is not really a play: it is a mere

sketch touched up with Parisianisms, "local hits" and the wit of the

moment. This substitution of an off-hand sketch for a full-sized picture

can better be borne in a little one-act play than in a more ambitious

work in three or four acts.

And of one-act plays Meilhac and Halévy have written a score or

more--delightful little _genre_ pictures, like the _Été de

Saint-Martin_, simple pastels, like _Toto chez Tata_, and vigorous

caricatures, like the _Photographe_ or the _Brésilien_. The Frenchman

invented the ruffle, says Emerson: the Englishman added the shirt. These

little dramatic trifles are French ruffles. In the beginning of his

theatrical career M. Meilhac did little comedies like the _Sarabande_

and the _Autographe_, in the Scribe formula--dramatized anecdotes, but

fresher in wit and livelier in fancy than Scribe's. This early work was

far more regular than we find in some of his latest, bright as these

are: the _Petit Hôtel_, for instance, and _Lolotte_ are etchings, as it

were, instantaneous photographs of certain aspects of life in the city

by the Seine or stray paragraphs of the latest news from Paris.

It is perhaps not too much to say that Meilhac and Halévy are seen at

their best in these one-act plays. They hit better with a single-barrel

than with a revolver. In their five-act plays, whether serious like

_Fanny Lear_ or comic like _La Vie Parisienne_, the interest is

scattered, and we have a series of episodes rather than a single story.

Just as the egg of the jelly-fish is girt by circles which tighten

slowly until the ovoid form is cut into disks of independent life, so if

the four intermissions of some of Meilhac and Halévy's full-sized plays

were but a little longer and wider and deeper they would divide the

piece into five separate plays, any one of which could fairly hope for

success by itself. I have heard that the _Roi Candaule_ was originally

an act of _La Boule_, and the _Photographe_ seems as though it had

dropped from _La Vie Parisienne_ by mistake. In M. Meilhac's earlier

five-act plays, the _Vertu de Celimène_ and the _Petit fils de

Mascarille_, there is great power of conception, a real grip on

character, but the main action is clogged with tardy incidents, and so

the momentum is lost. In these comedies the influence of the new school

of Alexandre Dumas _fils_ is plainly visible. And the inclination toward

the strong, not to say violent, emotions which Dumas and Angier had

imported into comedy is still more evident in _Fanny Lear_, the first

five-act comedy which Meilhac and Halévy wrote together, and which was

brought out in 1868. The final situation is one of truth and immense

effectiveness, and there is great vigor in the creation of character.

The decrepit old rake, the Marquis de Noriolis, feeble in his folly and

wandering in helplessness, but irresistible when aroused, is a striking

figure; and still more striking is the portrait of his wife, now the

Marquise de Noriolis, but once Fanny Lear the adventuress--a woman who

has youth, beauty, wealth, everything before her, if it were not for the

shame which is behind her: gay and witty, and even good-humored, she is

inflexible when she is determined; hers is a velvet manner and an iron

will. The name of Fanny Lear may sound familiar to some readers because

it was given to an American adventuress in Russia by a grand-ducal

admirer.

After _Fanny Lear_ came _Froufrou_, the lineal successor of _The

Stranger_ as the current masterpiece of the lachrymatory drama. Nothing

so tear-compelling as the final act of _Froufrou_ had been seen on the

stage for half a century or more. The death of Froufrou was a watery

sight, and for any chance to weep we are many of us grateful. And yet it

was a German, born in the land of Charlotte and Werther,--it was Heine

who remarked on the oddity of praising the "dramatic poet who possesses

the art of drawing tears--a talent which he has in common with the

meanest onion." It is noteworthy that it was by way of Germany that

English tragedy exerted its singular influence on French comedy.

Attracted by the homely power of pieces like _The Gamester_ and _Jane

Shore_, Diderot in France and Lessing in Germany attempted the _tragédie

bourgeoise_, but the right of the "tradesmen's tragedies"--as Goldsmith

called them--to exist at all was questioned until Kotzebue's pathetic

power and theatrical skill captured nearly every stage in Europe. In

France the bastard offspring of English tragedy and German drama gave

birth to an equally illegitimate _comédie larmoyante_. And so it happens

that while comedy in English literature, resulting from the clash of

character, is always on the brink of farce, comedy in French literature

may be tinged with passion until it almost turns to tragedy. In France

the word "comedy" is elastic and covers a multitude of sins: it includes

the laughing _Boule_ and the tearful _Froufrou_: in fact, the French

Melpomene is a sort of _Jeanne qui pleure et Jeanne qui rit_.

So it happens that _Froufrou_ is a comedy. And indeed the first three

acts are comedy of a very high order, full of wit and rich in character.

I mentioned _The Stranger_ a few lines back, and the contrast of the

two plays shows how much lighter and more delicate French art is. The

humor to be found in _The Stranger_ is, to say the least, Teutonic; and

German humor is like the simple Italian wines: it will not stand export.

And in _The Stranger_ there is really no character, no insight into

human nature. _Misanthropy and Repentance_, as Kotzebue called his play

(_The Stranger_ was Sheridan's title for the English translation he

revised for his own theatre), are loud-sounding words when we capitalize

them, but they do not deceive us now: we see that the play itself is

mostly stalking sententiousness, mawkishly overladen with gush. But in

_Froufrou_ there is wit of the latest Parisian kind, and there are

characters--people whom we might meet and whom we may remember. Brigard,

for one, the reprobate old gentleman, living even in his old age in that

Bohemia which has Paris for its capital, and dyeing his few locks

because he feels himself unworthy to wear gray hair,--Brigard is a

portrait from life. The Baron de Cambri is less individual, and I

confess I cannot quite stomach a gentleman who is willing to discuss the

problem of his wife's virtue with a chance adorer. But the cold Baronne

herself is no commonplace person. And Louise, the elder daughter of

Froufrou, the one who had chosen the better part and had kept it by much

self-sacrifice,--she is a true woman. Best, better even than Brigard, is

Gilberte, nicknamed "Froufrou" from the rustling of her silks as she

skips and scampers airily around. Froufrou, when all is said, is a real

creation, a revelation of Parisian femininity, a living thing, breathing

the breath of life and tripping along lightly on her own little feet.

Marrying a reserved yet deeply-devoted husband because her sister bid

her; taking into her home that sister, who had sacrificed her own love

for the husband; seeing this sister straighten the household which she

in her heedless seeking for idle amusement had not governed, then

beginning to feel herself in danger and aware of a growing jealousy,

senseless though it be, of the sister who has so innocently supplanted

her by her hearth, and even with her child; making one effort to regain

her place, and failing, as was inevitable,--poor Froufrou takes the

fatal plunge which will for ever and at once separate her from what was

hers before. What a fine scene is that at the end of the third act, in

which Froufrou has worked herself almost to a frenzy, and, hopeless in

her jealousy, gives up all to her sister and rushes from the house to

the lover she scarcely cares for! And how admirably does all that has

gone before lead up to it! These first three acts are a wonder of

constructive art. Of the rest of the play it is hard to speak so highly.

The change is rather sudden from the study of character in the first

part to the demand in the last that if you have tears you must prepare

to shed them now. The brightness is quenched in gloom and despair. Of a

verity, frivolity may be fatal, and death may follow a liking for

private theatricals and the other empty amusements of fashion; but is it

worth while to break a butterfly on the wheel and to put a humming-bird

to the question? To say what fate shall be meted out to the woman taken

in adultery is always a hard task for the dramatist. Here the erring and

erratic heroine comes home to be forgiven and to die, and so after the

fresh and unforced painting of modern Parisian life we have a finish

full of conventional pathos. Well, death redeems all, and, as Pascal

says, "the last act is always tragedy, whatever fine comedy there may

have been in the rest of life. We must all die alone."

J. BRANDER MATTHEWS.

THE KING'S GIFTS.

Cyrus the king in royal mood

Portioned his gifts as seemed him good:

To Artabasus, proud to hold

The priceless boon, a cup of gold--

A rare-wrought thing: its jewelled brim

Haloed a nectar sweet to him.

No flavor fine it seemed to miss;

But when the king stooped down, a kiss

To leave upon Chrysantas' lips,

The jewels paled in dull eclipse

To Artabasus: hard and cold

And empty grew the cup of gold.

"Better, O Sire, than mine," cried he,

"I deem Chrysantas' gift to be."

Yet the wise king his courtiers knew,

And unto each had given his due.

To all who watch and all who wait

The king will come, or soon or late.

Choose well: thy secret wish is known,

And thou shalt surely have thine own--

A golden cup thy poor wealth's sign,

Or on thy lips Love's seal divine.

EMILY A. BRADDOCK.

BAUBIE WISHART.

"I have taken you at your word, you see, Miss Mackenzie. You told me not

to give alms in the street, and to bring the begging children to you. So

here is one now."

Thus introduced, the begging child was pushed forward into the room by

the speaker, a lady who was holding her by one shoulder.

She was a stunted, slim creature, that might have been any age from nine

to fourteen, barefooted and bareheaded, and wearing a Rob Roy tartan

frock. She entered in a sidelong way that was at once timid and

confidently independent, and stared all round her with a pair of large

brown eyes. She did not seem to be in the least frightened, and when

released by her guardian stood at ease comfortably on one foot, tucking

the other away out of sight among the not too voluminous folds of her

frock.

It was close on twelve o'clock of a March day in the poor sewing-women's

workroom in Drummond street. The average number of women of the usual

sort were collected together--a depressed and silent gathering. It

seemed as if the bitter east wind had dulled and chilled them into a

grayer monotony of look than usual, so that they might be in harmony

with the general aspect which things without had assumed at its grim

bidding. A score or so of wan faces looked up for a minute, but the

child, after all, had nothing in her appearance that was calculated to

repay attention, and the lady was known to them all. So "white seam"

reasserted its old authority without much delay.

Miss Mackenzie laid down the scissors which she had been using on a bit

of coarse cotton, and advanced in reply to the address of the newcomer.

"How do you do? and where did you pick up this creature?" she asked,

looking curiously at the importation.

"Near George IV. Bridge, on this side of it, and I just took hold of her

and brought her off to you at once. I don't believe"--this was said

_sotto voce_--"that she has a particle of clothing on her but that

frock."

"Very likely.--What is your name, my child?"

"Baubie Wishart, mem." She spoke in an apologetic tone, glancing down at

her feet, the one off duty being lowered for the purpose of inspection,

which over, she hoisted the foot again immediately into the recesses of

the Rob Roy tartan.

"Have you a father and mother?"

"Yes, mem."

"What does your father do?"

Baubie Wishart glanced down again in thought for an instant, then raised

her eyes for the first time directly to her questioner's face: "He used

to be a Christy man, but he canna be that any longer, sae he goes wi'

boords."

"Why cannot he be a Christy man any longer?"

Down came the foot once more, and this time took up its position

permanently beside the other: "Because mother drinks awfu', an' pawned

the banjo for drink." This family history was related in the most

matter-of-fact, natural way.

"And does your father drink too?" asked Miss Mackenzie after a short

pause.

Baubie Wishart's eyes wandered all round the room, and with one toe she

swept up a little mass of dust before she answered in a voice every tone

of which spoke unwilling truthfulness, "Just whiles--Saturday nichts."

"Is _he_ kind to you?"

"Ay," looking up quickly, "excep' just whiles when he's fou--Saturday

nichts, ye ken--and then he beats me; but he's rale kind when he's

sober."

"Were you ever at school?"

"No, mem," with a shake of the head that seemed to convey that she had

something else, and probably better, to do.

"Did you ever hear of God?" asked the lady who had brought her.

"Ay, mem," answered Baubie quite readily: "it's a kind of a bad word I

hear in the streets."

"How old are you?" asked both ladies simultaneously.

"Thirteen past," replied Baubie, with a promptness that made her

listeners smile, suggesting as it did the thought that the question had

been put to her before, and that Baubie knew well the import of her

answer.

She grew more communicative now. She could not read, but, all the same,

she knew two songs which she sang in the streets--"Before the Battle"

and "After the Battle;" and, carried away by the thought of her own

powers, she actually began to give proof of her assertion by reciting

one of them there and then. This, however, was stopped at once. "Can

knit too," she added then.

"Who taught you to knit?"

"Don' know. Wis at a Sunday-schuil too."

"Oh, you were? And what did you learn there?"

Baubie Wishart looked puzzled, consulted her toes in vain, and then

finally gave it up.

"I should like to do something for her," observed her first friend: "it

is time this street-singing came to an end."

"She is intelligent, clearly," said Miss Mackenzie, looking curiously at

the child, whose appearance and bearing rather puzzled her. There was

not a particle of the professional street-singer about Baubie Wishart,

the child of that species being generally clean-washed, or at least

soapy, of face, with lank, smooth-combed and greasy hair; and usually,

too, with a smug, sanctimonious air of meriting a better fate. Baubie

Wishart presented none of these characteristics: her face was simply

filthy; her hair was a red-brown, loosened tangle that reminded one

painfully of oakum in its first stage. And she looked as if she deserved

a whipping, and defied it too. She was just a female arab--an arab

_plus_ an accomplishment--bright, quick and inconsequent as a sparrow,

and reeking of the streets and gutters, which had been her nursery.

"Yes," continued the good lady, "I must look after her."

"Poor little atom! I suppose you will find out where the parents live,

and send the school-board officer to them. That is the usual thing, is

it not? I must go, Miss Mackenzie. Good-bye for to-day. And do tell me

what you settle for her."

Miss Mackenzie promised, and her friend took her departure.

"Go and sit by the fire, Baubie Wishart, for a little, and then I shall

be ready to talk to you."

Nothing loath apparently, Baubie established herself at the end of the

fender, and from that coign of vantage watched the on-goings about her

with the stoicism of a red Indian. She showed no symptom of wonder at

anything, and listened to the disquisitions of Miss Mackenzie and the

matron as to the proper adjustment of parts--"bias," "straights,"

"gathers," "fells," "gussets" and "seams," a whole new language as it

unrolled its complexities before her--with complacent indifference.

At last, all the web of cotton being cut up, the time came to go. Miss

Mackenzie buttoned up her sealskin coat, and pulling on a pair of warm

gloves beckoned Baubie, who rose with alacrity: "Where do your father

and mother live?"

"Kennedy's Lodgings, in the Gressmarket, mem."

"I know the place," observed Miss Mackenzie, to whom, indeed, most of

these haunts were familiar. "Take me there now, Baubie."

They set out together. Baubie trotted in front, turning her head,

dog-fashion, at every corner to see if she were followed. They reached

the Grassmarket at last, and close to the corner of the West Bow found

an entry with the whitewashed inscription above it, "Kennedy's

Lodgings." Baubie glanced round to see if her friend was near, then

vanished upward from her sight. Miss Mackenzie kilted her dress and

began the ascent of the stairs, the steps of which, hollowed out as they

were by the tread of centuries of human feet, afforded a not too safe

footing.

Arrived at the third floor, she found Baubie waiting for her,

breathless and panting.

"It's here," she said--"the big kitchen, mem."

A long, narrow passage lay before them, off which doors opened on all

sides. Precipitating herself at one of these doors, Baubie Wishart, who

could barely reach the latch, pushed it open, giving egress to a

confusion of noises, which seemed to float above a smell of cooking, in

which smell herrings and onions contended for the mastery.

It was a very large room, low-ceilinged, but well enough lighted by a

couple of windows, which looked into a close behind. The walls had been

whitewashed once upon a time, but the whitewash was almost lost to view

under the decorations with which it was overlaid. These consisted of

pictures cut out of the illustrated weekly papers or milliners' books.

All sorts of subjects were represented: fashion-plates hung side by side

with popular preachers and statesmen, race-horses and Roman Catholic

saints; red-and white-draped Madonnas elbowed the "full-dress" heroines

of the penny weeklies. It was a curious gallery, and a good many of the

works of art had the merit of being antique. Generations of flies had

emblazoned their deeds of prowess on the papers: streaks of

candle-grease bore witness to the inquiring turn of mind, attracted by

the letter-press, or the artistic proclivities of Kennedy's lodgers. It

was about two, the dinner-hour probably, which accounted for the

presence of so many people in the room. Most, but not all, seemed to be

of the wandering class. They were variously employed. Some were sitting

on the truckle-beds that ran round the walls; one or two were knitting

or sewing; a cripple was mending baskets in one of the windows; and

about the fire a group were collected superintending the operations

which produced, though not unaided, the odors with which the room was

reeking.

Miss Mackenzie stood for a few minutes, unnoticed apparently, looking

about her at the motley crowd. Baubie on entering the room had raised

herself for a second on tiptoe to look into a distant corner, and then,

remarking to herself, half audibly, "His boords is gane," subsided, and

contented herself with watching Miss Mackenzie's movements.

There seemed to be no one to do the honors. The inmates all looked at

each other for a moment hesitatingly, then resumed their various

occupations. A young woman, a sickly, livid-faced creature, rose from

her place behind the door, and, advancing with a halting step, said to

Miss Mackenzie, "Mistress Kennedy's no' in, an' Wishart's oot wi's

boords."

"I wanted to see him about this child, who was found begging in the

streets to-day."

Miss Mackenzie looked curiously at the woman, wondering if she could

belong in any way to the Wishart family. She was a miserable object,

seemingly in the last stage of consumption.

"Eh, mem," she answered hurriedly, and drawing nearer, "ye're a guid

leddy, I ken, an' tak' t' lassie away oot o' this. The mither's an awfu'

wuman: tak' her away wi' ye, or she'll sune be as bad. She'll be like

mysel' and the rest o' them here."

"I will, I will," Miss Mackenzie said, shocked and startled, recoiling

before the spirit-reeking breath of this warning spectre. "I will, I

will," she repeated hastily. There was no use remaining any longer. She

went out, beckoning to Baubie, who was busy rummaging about a bed at the

top of the room.

Baubie had bethought her that it was time to take her father his dinner.

So she slipped over to that corner of the big kitchen which was allotted

to the Wishart family and possessed herself of a piece of a loaf which

was hidden away there. As she passed by the fire she profited by the

momentary abstraction of the people who were cooking to snap up and make

her own a brace of unconsidered trifles in the shape of onions which

were lying near them. These, with the piece of bread, she concealed on

her person, and then returned to Miss Mackenzie, who was now in the

passage.

"Baubie," said that lady, "I will send some one here about you. Now,

don't let me hear of your singing in the streets or begging again. You

will get into trouble if you do."

She was descending the stairs as she spoke, and she turned round when

she had reached the entry: "You know the police will take you, Baubie."

"Yes, mem," answered Baubie, duly impressed.

"Well, now, I am going home. Stay: are you hungry?"

Without waiting for her answer, Miss Mackenzie entered a tiny shop close

by, purchased a mutton-pie and handed it to Baubie Wishart, who received

it with wondering reverence. Miss Mackenzie took her way home westward

up the Grassmarket. She turned round before leaving it by way of King's

Stables, and caught sight of Bauble's frock by the entry of Kennedy's

Lodgings--a tiny morsel of color against the shadow of the huge gray

houses. She thought of the big kitchen and its occupants, and the face

and words of the poor girl, and promised herself that she would send the

school-board officer to Kennedy's Lodgings that very night.

Baubie waited till her friend was well out of sight: then she hid her

mutton-pie in the same place with the onions and the piece of bread, and

started up the Grassmarket in her turn. She stopped at the first shop

she passed and bought a pennyworth of cheese. Then she made her way to

the Lothian road, and looked up and down it anxiously in search of the

walking advertisement-man. He was not there, so she directed her course

toward Princes street, and after promenading it as far east as the

Mound, she turned up into George street, and caught sight of her father

walking along slowly by the curbstone. It was not long before she

overtook him.

"Od, lassie, I wis thinkin' lang," he began wearily as soon as he

realized her apparition. Baubie did not wait for him to finish: with a

peremptory nod she signified her will, and he turned round and followed

her a little way down Hanover street. Then Baubie selected a flight of

steps leading to a basement store, and throwing him a look of command

flitted down and seated herself at the bottom. It was sheltered from

the cold wind and not too much overlooked. Wishart shifted the boards

from about his shoulders, and, following her, laid them against the wall

at the side of the basement-steps, and sat down heavily beside her. He

was a sickly-looking man, sandy-haired, with a depressed and shifty

expression of face--not vicious, but weak and vacillating. Baubie seemed

to have the upper hand altogether: every gesture showed it. She opened

the paper that was wrapped about her fragment of rank yellow cheese,

laid it down on the step between them, and then produced, in their order

of precedence, the pie, the onions and the bread.

"Wha gied ye that?" asked Wishart, gazing at the mutton-pie.

"A leddy," replied Baubie, concisely.

"An' they?" pointing to the onions.

A nod was all the answer, for Baubie, who was hungry, was busy breaking

the piece of loaf. Wishart with great care divided the pie without

spilling much more than half its gravy, and began on his half of it and

the biggest onion simultaneously. Baubie ate up her share of pie,

declined cheese, and attacked her onion and a great piece of crust. The

crust was very tough, and after the mutton-pie rather dry and tasteless,

and she laid it down presently in her lap, and after a few minutes'

passive silence began: "That," nodding at the cheese, or what was left

of it rather, "wis all I got--ae penny. The leddy took me up till a

hoose, an' anither are that wis there came doon hame and gaed in ben,

an' wis speirin' for ye, an' says she'll gie me till the polis for

singin' an' askin' money in t' streets, an' wants you to gie me till her

to pit in schuil."

She stopped and fixed her eyes on him, watching the effect of her words.

Wishart laid down his bread and cheese and stared back at her. It seemed

to take some time for his brain to realize all the meaning of her

pregnant speech.

"Ay," he said after a while, and with an effort, "I maun tak' ye to

Glasgae, to yer aunt. Ye'll be pit in schuil if yer caught."

"I'll no bide," observed Baubie, finishing off her onion with a

grimace. The raw onion was indeed strong and hot, even for Bauble's not

too epicurean palate, but it had been got for nothing--a circumstance

from which it derived a flavor which many people more dainty than Bauble

Wishart find to be extremely appetizing.

"Bide!" echoed her father: "they'll mak' ye bide. Gin I had only the

banjo agen!" sighed the whilom Christy man, getting up and preparing to

adjust the boards once more.

The last crumb of the loaf was done, and Bauble, refreshed, got up too.

"Whenll ye be hame?" she questioned abruptly when they had reached the

top of the steps.

"Seven. Gaeway hame wi' ye, lassie, noo. Ye didna see _her_?" he

questioned as he walked off.

"Na," replied Bauble, standing still and looking about her as if to

choose which way she should take.

He sighed deeply, and moved off slowly on his way back to his post, with

the listless, hopeless air that seems to belong to the members of his

calling.

Bauble obeyed her parent's commands in so far as that she did go home,

but as she took Punch and Judy in her course up the Mound, and diverged

as far as a football match in the Meadows, it was nearly seven before

Kennedy's Lodgings saw her again.

The following morning, shortly after breakfast, Miss Mackenzie's butler

informed her that there was a child who wanted to speak with her in the

hall. On going down she found Bauble Wishart on the mat.

"Where is your father? and why did he not come with you?" asked Miss

Mackenzie, puzzled.

"He thoucht shame to come an' speak wi' a fine leddy like you." This

excuse, plausible enough, was uttered in a low voice and with downcast

eyes, but hardly was it pronounced when she burst out rapidly and

breathlessly into what was clearly the main object of her visit: "But

please, mem, he says he'll gie me to you if ye'll gie him the three

shillin's to tak' the banjo oot o' the pawn."

This candid proposal took Miss Mackenzie's breath away. To become the

owner of Baubie Wishart, even at so low a price, seemed to her rather a

heathenish proceeding, with a flavor of illegality about it to boot.

There was a vacancy at the home for little girls which might be made

available for the little wretch without the necessity of any preliminary

of this kind; and it did not occur to her that it was a matter of any

moment whether Mr. Wishart continued to exercise the rôle of

"sandwich-man" or returned to his normal profession of banjo-player.

Baubie was to be got hold of in any case. With the muttered adjuration

of the wretched girl in Kennedy's Lodgings echoing in her ears, Miss

Mackenzie determined that she should be left no longer than could be

helped in that company.

How earnest and matter of fact she was in delivering her extraordinary

errand! thought Miss Mackenzie to herself, meeting the eager gaze of

Baubie Wishart's eyes, looking out from beneath her tangle of hair like

those of a Skye terrier.

"I will speak to your father myself, Baubie--tell him so--to-morrow,

perhaps: tell him I mean to settle about you myself. Now go."

The least possible flicker of disappointment passed over Baubie's face.

The tangled head drooped for an instant, then she bobbed by way of adieu

and vanished.

That day and the next passed before Miss Mackenzie found it possible to

pay her long-promised visit to Mr. Wishart, and when, about eleven in

the forenoon, she once more entered the big kitchen in Kennedy's

Lodgings, she was greeted with the startling intelligence that the whole

Wishart family were in prison.

The room was as full as before. Six women were sitting in the middle of

the floor teasing out an old hair mattress. There was the same odor of

cooking, early as it was, and the same medley of noises, but the people

were different. The basket-making cripple was gone, and in his place by

the window sat a big Irish beggar-woman, who was keeping up a

conversation with some one (a compatriot evidently) in a window of the

close behind.

The mistress of the house came forward. She was a decent-looking little

woman, but had rather a hard face, expressive of care and anxiety. On

recognizing her visitor she curtsied: "The Wisharts, mem? Yes, they're

a' in jail."

"All in jail?" echoed Miss Mackenzie. "Will you come outside and speak

to me? There are so many people--"

"Eh yes, mem: I'm sure ye fin' the room closs. Eh yes, mem, the Wisharts

are a' in the lock-up."

They were standing outside in the passage, and Mrs. Kennedy held the

door closed by the latch, which she kept firmly grasped in her hand. It

struck Miss Mackenzie as being an odd way to secure privacy for a

privileged communication, to fasten the door of their room upon those

inside. It was expressive, however.

"Ye see, mem," began the landlady, "Wishart's no a very bad man--jist

weak in the heid like--but's wife is jist something awfu', an' I could

not let her bide in a decent lodging-house. We hae to dra' the line

somewhere, and I dra' it low enough, but she wis far below that. Eh,

she's jist terrible! Wishart has a sister in Glasgae verra weel to do,

an' I h'ard him say he'd gie the lassie to her if it wer na for the

wife. The day the school-board gentleman wis here she came back: she'd

been away, ye ken, and she said she'd become a t'otaller, an' so I sed

she micht stay; but, ye see, when nicht came on she an' Wishart gaed out

thegither, an' jist to celebrate their bein' frien's again she an' him

gaed intil a public, an' she got uproarious drunk, an' the polis took

her up. Wishart wis no sae bad, sae they let him come hame; but, ye see,

he had tasted the drink, an' wanted mair, an' he hadna ony money. Ye

see, he'd promised the gentleman who came here that he widna send Baubie

oot to sing again. But he _did_ send her oot then to sing for money for

him, an' the polis had been put to watch her, an' saw her beg, an' took

her up to the office, an' came back here for Wishart. An' so before the

day was dune they were a' lockit up thegither."

Such was the story related to Miss Mackenzie. What was to be done with

Baubie now? It was hardly fair that she should be sent to a reformatory

among criminal children. She had committed no crime, and there was that

empty bed at the home for little girls. She determined to attend the

sheriff-court on Monday morning and ask to be given the custody of

Baubie.

When Monday morning came, ten o'clock saw Miss Mackenzie established in

a seat immediately below the sheriff's high bench. The Wisharts were

among the first batch tried, and made their appearance from a side-door.

Mrs. Wishart came first, stepping along with a resolute, brazen bearing

that contrasted with her husband's timid, shuffling gait. She was a

gypsy-looking woman, with wandering, defiant black eyes, and her red

face had the sign-manual of vice stamped upon it. After her came Baubie,

a red-tartan-covered mite, shrinking back and keeping as close to her

father as she could. Baubie had favored her mother as to complexion:

that was plain. The top of her rough head and her wild brown eyes were

just visible over the panel as she stared round her, taking in with

composure and astuteness everything that was going on. She was the most

self-possessed of her party, for under Mrs. Wishart's active brazenness

there could easily be seen fear and a certain measure of remorse hiding

themselves; and Wishart seemed to be but one remove from imbecility.

The charges were read with a running commentary of bad language from

Mrs. Wishart as her offences were detailed; Wishart blinked in a

helpless, pathetic way; Baubie, who seemed to consider herself as

associated with him alone in the charge, assumed an air of indifference

and sucked her thumb, meantime watching Miss Mackenzie furtively. She

felt puzzled to account for her presence there, but it never entered her

head to connect that fact with herself in any way.

"Guilty or not guilty?" asked the sheriff-clerk.

"There's a kin' lady in coort," stammered Wishart, "an' she kens a'

aboot it."

"Guilty or not guilty?" reiterated the clerk: "this is not the time to

speak." "She kens it a', an' she wis to tak' the lassie."

"Guilty or not guilty? You must plead, and you can say what you like

afterward." Wishart stopped, not without an appealing look at the kind

lady, and pleaded guilty meekly. A policeman with a scratched face and

one hand plastered up testified to the extravagances Mrs. Wishart had

committed on the strength of her conversion to teetotal principles.

Baubic heard it all impassively, her face only betraying anything like

keen interest while the police-officer was detailing his injuries. Three

months' imprisonment was the sentence on Margaret Mactear or Wishart.

Then Wishart's sentence was pronounced--sixty days.

He and Baubie drew nearer to each other, Wishart with a despairing,

helpless look. Baubie's eyes looked like those of a hare taken in a gin.

Not one word had been said about her. She was not to go with her father.

What was to become of her? She was not long left in doubt as to her

fate.

"I will take the child, sheriff," said Miss Mackenzie eagerly and

anxiously. "I came here purposely to offer her a home in the refuge."

"Policeman, hand over the child to this lady at once," said the

sheriff.--

"Nothing could be better, Miss Mackenzie. It is very good of you to

volunteer to take charge of her."

Mrs. Wishart disappeared with a parting volley of blasphemy; her

husband, casting, as he went, a wistful look at Miss Mackenzie, shambled

fecklessly after the partner of his joys and sorrows; and the child

remained alone behind. The policeman took her by an arm and drew her

forward to make room for a fresh consignment of wickedness from the

cells at the side. Baubie breathed a short sigh as the door closed upon

her parents, shook back her hair, and looked up at Miss Mackenzie, as if

to announce her readiness and good will. Not one vestige of her internal

mental attitude could be gathered from her sun-and wind-beaten little

countenance. There was no rebelliousness, neither was there guilt. One

would almost have thought she had been told beforehand what was to

happen, so cool and collected was she.

"Now, Baubie, I am going to take you home. Come, child."

Pleased with her success, Miss Mackenzie, so speaking, took the little

waif's hand and led her out of the police-court into the High street.

She hardly dared to conjecture that it was Baubie Wishart's first visit

to that place, but as she stood on the entrance-steps and shook out her

skirts with a sense of relief, she breathed a sincere hope that it might

be the child's last.

A cab was waiting. Baubie, to her intense delight and no less

astonishment, was requested to occupy the front seat. Miss Mackenzie

gave the driver his order and got in, facing the red tartan bundle.

"Were you ever in a cab before?" asked Miss Mackenzie.

"Na, niver," replied Baubie in a rapt tone and without looking at her

questioner, so intent was she on staring out of the windows, between

both of which she divided her attention impartially.

They were driving down the Mound, and the outlook, usually so

far-reaching from that vantage-ground, was bounded by a thick sea-fog

that the east wind was carrying up from the Forth and dispensing with

lavish hands on all sides. The buildings had a grim, black look, as if a

premature old age had come upon them, and the black pinnacles of the

Monument stood out sharply defined in clear-cut, harsh distinctness

against the floating gray background. There were not many people

stirring in the streets. It was a depressing atmosphere, and Miss

Mackenzie observed before long that Baubie either seemed to have become

influenced by it or that the novelty of the cab-ride had worn off

completely. They crossed the Water of Leith, worn to a mere brown thread

owing to the long drought, by Stockbridge street bridge, and a few yards

from it found themselves before a gray stone house separated from the

street by a grass-plot surrounded by a stone wall: inside the wall grew

chestnut and poplar trees, which in summer must have shaded the place

agreeably, but which this day, in the cold gray mist, seemed almost

funereal in their gloomy blackness. The gate was opened from within the

wall as soon as Miss Mackenzie rang, and she and Baubie walked up the

little flagged path together. As the gate clanged to behind them Baubie

looked back involuntarily and sighed.

"Don't fear, lassie," said her guide: "they will be very kind to you

here. And it will be just a good home for you."

It may be questioned whether this promise of a good home awoke any

pleasing associations or carried with it any definite meaning to Baubie

Wishart's mind. She glanced up as if to show that she understood, but

her eyes turned then and rested on the square front of the little

old-fashioned gray house with its six staring windows and its front

circumscribed by the wall and the black poplars and naked chestnuts, and

she choked down another sigh.

"Now, Mrs. Duncan," Miss Mackenzie was saying to a comfortably-dressed

elderly woman, "here's your new girl, Baubie Wishart."

"Eh, ye've been successful then, Miss Mackenzie?"

"Oh dear, yes: the sheriff made no objection. And now, Mrs. Duncan, I

hope she will be a good girl and give you no trouble.--Come here,

Baubie, and promise me to do everything you are told and obey Mrs.

Duncan in everything."

"Yes, mem," answered Bauble reverently, almost solemnly.

There seemed to be no necessity for further exhortation. Baubie's

demeanor promised everything that was hoped for or wanted, and,

perfectly contented, Miss Mackenzie turned her attention to the minor

details of wardrobe, etc.: "That frock is good enough if it were washed.

She must get shoes and stockings; and then underwear, too, of some sort

will be wanted."

"That will it," responded the matron; "but I had better send her at

once to get a bath."

A big girl was summoned from a back room and desired to get ready a tub.

It was the ceremony customary at the reception of a neophyte--customary,

and in general very necessary too.

Baubie's countenance fell lower still on hearing this, and she blinked

both eyes deprecatingly. Nevertheless, when the big girl--whom they

called Kate--returned, bringing with her a warm whiff of steam and soap,

she trotted after her obediently and silently.

After a while the door opened, and Kate's yellow head appeared. "Speak

with ye, mem?" she said. "I hae her washen noo, but what for claes?"

"Eh yes.--Miss Mackenzie, we can't put her back into those dirty

clothes."

"Oh no.--I'll come and look at her clothes, Kate." As she spoke Miss

Mackenzie rose and followed the matron and Kate into a sort of kitchen

or laundry.

In the middle of the floor was a tub containing Miss Wishart mid-deep in

soapsuds. Her thick hair was all soaking, and clung fast to her head:

dripping locks hung clown over her eyes, which looked out through the

tangle patient and suffering. She glanced up quickly as Miss Mackenzie

came in, and then resigned herself passively into Kate's hands, who with

a piece of flannel had resumed the scrubbing process.

Miss Mackenzie was thinking to herself that it was possibly Baubie

Wishart's first experience of the kind, when she observed the child

wince as if she were hurt.