"There! You can hide that in the pocket of your dress, or hold it in

your hand even. When you wish to close the circuit, pinch the wires, and

they will touch each other. When you withdraw the pressure the rubber

will push them apart."

Alma declared she could do it easily, and the armature having been

connected with the wires and the battery, they both prepared to go to

the parlor.

Down the stairs they crept, slowly unwinding two delicate coils of

insulated wire as they went, and pushing them back against the wall well

out of sight. When they came to the mats Alma lifted them up, and Elmer

laid the wires down, and then the mats covered them from sight.

"Now, you sit here, in a comfortable chair, and hide the wires in the

folds of your dress. I'll lead them off over the carpet behind you, and

unless the----Lawrence is brighter than I think he is, he'll not find

them."

These mysterious operations were hardly completed before the door bell

rang and Lawrence came in. He did not seem particularly pleased to find

Mr. Franklin sitting up with Alma, and the meeting was not very cordial.

After a few unimportant remarks Mr. Franklin said that he must retire.

"I'd like to know, miss, what that puppy said to you. He's been here all

the evening, I dare say."

"He has, Lawrence; but I will not have my friends spoken of in that

way."

"Your friends indeed! What do you intend to do about it?"

Meanwhile her hand, persistently kept in her pocket, nervously moved the

electric armature, and a sudden twinge of pain startled her. Her finger,

caught between the wires, felt the shock of a returning current.

Suddenly the pain flashed again, and she understood it. Elmer was

replying to her. She forced herself to read his words by the pain the

wires caused her, and she spelled out:

"Keep cool. Don't fear him."

"Seems to me you're precious silent, miss."

"One might well keep silence while you use such language as you do,

Lawrence Belford."

"Who's a better right?"

"No man has a right not to be a gentleman, and as for your right, I have

decided to withdraw it."

"What do you mean?" he cried in sudden anger.

She drew her hand out of her pocket, slowly took off her engagement

ring, and said,

"That."

"Oh! We'll have none of that. You may put your ring on again."

"I shall never wear it again."

"Yes, you will."

"I shall not."

"Look here, Miss Denny. We'll have no nonsense. You are going to marry

me next week. I suppose you know that mortgage is to be foreclosed on

Monday, and you and your father will be beggars. I know how to stop all

this, and I can do it. Marry me, and go to New York with me on

Wednesday, and the mortgage will be withdrawn."

"We may find the will before that."

"Oh! You may, you may. You and your father have been searching for that

will these ten years. You haven't found it yet, and you won't."

Alma under any ordinary circumstances would have quailed before this

man. As it was, those trails of copper wire down her dress kept her

busy. She rapidly sent off through them nearly all that was said, and

her knight of the battery sat up stairs copying it off alone in his

room, and almost swearing with anger and excitement.

Suddenly the messages stopped. He listened sharply at the door. Not a

sound. The old house was as still as a grave. Several minutes passed,

and nothing came. What had happened? Had he cut the wires? Had Alma

fainted? Suddenly the sounder spoke out sharp and clear in the silent

room:

"Elmer, come!"

He seized a revolver from the bureau, and thrusting it into his pocket,

tore off the white strip of paper that had rolled out of the instrument,

and with it in his hand he went quickly down stairs. He opened the door

without knocking, and advanced into the middle of the room.

The moment he entered, Alma sprang up from her seat, pulling out the two

wires as she did so, and throwing her arm about the young man, she cried

out in an agony of fear and shame:

"Oh, Elmer, Elmer! Take me away! Take me to my father!"

He supported her with his right arm, and turned to face her assailant

with the crumbled ribbon of paper still in his hand.

"What does this mean, sir? Have you been ill treating my cousin?"

"Go to bed, boy. It's very late for school children to be up."

"Your language is insulting, sir. I repeat it. What have you said or

done to Miss Denny?"

"Oh! Come away! come away, Elmer!"

"None of your business, you puppy."

"There is no need to ask what you said, sir. I know every word and have

made a copy of it."

"Ah! Listening, were you?"

"No, sir. Miss Denny has told me. Do you see those wires? They will

entangle you yet and trip you up."

"Come away, Elmer. Come away."

"For the present I will retire, sir; but, mark me, your game is nearly

up."

"By, by, children. Good night. Remember your promise, Miss Denny. The

carriage will be all ready."

Without heeding this last remark, Elmer, with his cousin on his arm,

withdrew. As they closed the door the telegraph wires caught in the

carpet and broke. The man saw them, and picking one up, he examined it

closely.

Suddenly he dropped it and turned ashen pale. With all his bravado, he

quailed before those slender wires upon the carpet. He did not

understand them. He guessed they might be some kind of telegraph, but

beyond this everything was vague and mysterious, and they filled him

with guilty alarm and terror.

CHARLES BARNARD.

FROM NORMANDY TO THE PYRENEES.

The other day, before the first fire of winter, when the deepening dusk

had compelled me to close my book and wheel my chair closer, I indulged

in a retrospect. The objects of it were not far distant, and yet they

seemed already to glow with the mellow tints of the days that are no

more. In the crackling flame the last remnant of the summer appeared to

shrink up and vanish. But the flicker of its destruction made a sort of

fantastic imagery, and in the midst of the winter fire the summer

sunshine seemed to glow. It lit up a series of visible memories.

I.

One of the first was that of a perfect day on the coast of Normandy--a

warm, still Sunday in the early part of August. From my pillow, on

waking, I could look at a strip of blue sea and a section of white

cliff. I observed that the sea had never been so brilliant, and that the

cliff was shining like the coast of Paros. I rose and came forth with

the sense that it was the finest day of summer, and that one ought to do

something uncommon by way of keeping it. At Etretal it was uncommon to

take a walk; the custom of the country is to lie all day upon the pebbly

strand watching, as we should say in America, your fellow boarders. Your

leisurely stroll, in a scanty sheet, from your bathing cabin into the

water, and your trickling progress from the water back into your cabin,

form, as a general thing, the sum total of your peregrination. For the

rest you remain horizontal, contemplating the horizon. To mark the day

with a white stone, therefore, it was quite sufficient to stretch my

legs. So I climbed the huge grassy cliff which shuts in the little bay

on the right (as you lie on the beach, head upward), and gained the

bleak white chapel of Notre Dame de la Garde, which a lady told me she

was sure was the original of Matthew Arnold's "Little Gray Church on the

Windy Hill." This is very likely; but the little church to-day was not

gray; neither was the hill windy.

I had occasion, by the time I reached the summit, to wish it had been.

Deep, silent sunshine filled the air, and the long grass of the downs

stood up in the light without a tremor. The downs at Etretal are

magnificent, and the way they stretched off toward Dieppe, with their

shining levels and their faintly-shaded dells, was in itself an

irresistible invitation. On the land side they have been somewhat

narrowed by cultivation; the woods, and farms, and grain fields here and

there creep close enough to the edge of the cliff almost to see the

shifting of the tides at its base. But cultivation in Normandy is itself

picturesque, and the pedestrian rarely need resent its encroachments.

Neither walls nor hedges or fences are anywhere visible; the whole land

lies open to the breezes and to his curious footsteps. This universal

absence of barriers gives an air of vastness to the landscape, so that

really, in a little French province, you have more of the feeling of

being in a big country than on our own huge continent, which bristles so

unconsciously with prohibitory rails and stone-piles. Norman farmhouses,

too, with their mossy roofs and their visible beams making all kinds of

triangles upon the ancient plaster of their walls, are very delightful

things. Hereabouts they have always a dark little wood close beside

them; often a _chênaie_, as the term is--a fantastic little grove of

tempest-tossed oaks. The trees look as if, some night, when the

sea-blasts were howling their loudest and their boughs were tossing

most wildly, the tumult had suddenly been stilled and they had stopped

short, each in the attitude into which the storm was twisting it. The

only thing the storm can do with them now is to blow them straight. The

long, indented coast line had never seemed to me so charming. It

stretched away into the light haze of the horizon, with such lovely

violet spots in its caves and hollows, and such soft white gleams on its

short headlands--such exquisite gradations of distance and such

capricious interruptions of perspective--that one could only say that

the land was really trying to smile as hard as the sea. The smile of the

sea was a positive simper. Such a glittering and twinkling, such a

softness and blueness, such tiny little pin-points of foam, and such

delicate little wrinkles of waves--all this made the ocean look like a

flattered portrait.

The day I speak of was a Sunday, and there were to be races at Fécamp,

ten miles away. The agreeable thing was, of course, to walk to Fécamp,

over the grassy downs. I walked and walked, over the levels and the

dells, having land and ocean quite to myself. Here and there I met a

shepherd, lying flat on his stomach in the sun, while his sheep, in

extreme dishabille (shearing time being recent), went huddling in front

of me as I approached. Far below, on the blue ocean, like a fly on a

table of lapis, crawled a little steamer, carrying people from Etretal

to the races. I seemed to go much faster, yet the steamer got to Fécamp

before me. But I stopped to gossip with a shepherd on a grassy hillside,

and to admire certain little villages which are niched in small,

transverse, seaward-sloping valleys. The shepherd told me that he had

been farm-servant to the same master for five-and-thirty years--ever

since the age of ten; and that for thirty-five summers he had fed his

flock upon those downs. I don't know whether his sheep were tired of

their diet, but he professed himself very tired of his life. I remarked

that in fine weather it must be charming, and he observed, with

humility, that to thirty-five summers there went several rainy days.

The walk to Fécamp would be purely delightful if it were not for the

_fonds_. The _fonds_ are the transverse valleys just mentioned--the

channels, for the most part, of small water-courses which discharge

themselves into the sea. The downs subside, precipitately, to the level

of the beach, and then slowly lift their grassy shoulders on the other

side of the gully. As the cliffs are of immense height, these

indentations are profound, and drain off a little of the exhilaration of

the too elastic pedestrian. The first _fond_ trike him as delightfully

picturesque, and he is down the long slope on one side and up the

gigantic hump on the other before he has time to feel hot. But the

second is greeted with that tempered _empressement_ with which you bow

in the street to an acquaintance with whom you have met half an hour

before; the third is a stale repetition; the fourth is decidedly one too

many, and the fifth is sensibly exasperating. The _fonds_, in a word,

are very tiresome. It was, if I remember rightly, in the bottom of the

last and widest of the series that I discovered the little town of

Yport. Every little fishing village on the Norman coast has, within the

last ten years, set up in business as a watering-place; and, though one

might fancy that Nature had condemned Yport to modest obscurity, it is

plain that she has no idea of being out of the fashion. But she is a

miniature imitation of her rivals. She has a meagre little wood behind

her and an evil-smelling beach, on which bathing is possible only at the

highest tide. At the scorching mid-day hour at which I inspected her she

seemed absolutely empty, and the ocean, beyond acres of slippery

seaweed, looked very far away. She has everything that a properly

appointed _station de bains_ should have, but everything is on a

Lilliputian scale. The whole place looked like a huge Nüremburg toy.

There is a diminutive hotel, in which, properly, the head waiter should

be a pigmy and the chambermaid a sprite, and beside it there is a

_Casino_ on the smallest possible scale. Everything about the _Casino_

is so harmoniously undersized that it seems a matter of course that the

newspapers in the reading-room should be printed in the very finest

type. Of course there is a reading-room, and a dancing-room, and a

_café_, and a billiard-room, with a bagatelle board instead of a table,

and a little terrace on which you may walk up and down with very short

steps. I hope the prices are as tiny as everything else, and I suspect,

indeed, that Yport honestly claims, not that she is attractive, but that

she is cheap.

I toiled up the perpendicular cliff again, and took my way over the

grass, for another hour, to Fécamp, where I found the peculiarities of

Yport directly reversed. The place is a huge, straggling village, seated

along a wide, shallow bay, and adorned, of course, with the classic

_Casino_ and the row of hotels. But all this is on a very brave scale,

though it is not manifest that the bravery of Fécamp has won a victory;

and, indeed, the local attractions did not strike me as irresistible. A

pebbly beach of immense length, fenced off from the town by a grassy

embankment; a _Casino_ of a bold and unsociable aspect; a principal inn,

with an interminable brown façade, suggestive somehow of an asylum or an

almshouse--such are the most striking features of this particular

watering-place. There are magnificent cliffs on each side of the bay,

but, as the French say, without impropriety, it is the devil to get to

them. There was no one in the hotel, in the Casino, or on the beach; the

whole town being in the act of climbing the further cliff, to reach the

downs on which the races were to be held. The green hillside was black

with trudging spectators and the long sky line was fretted with them.

When I say there was no one at the inn, I forget the gentleman at the

door who informed me positively that he would give me no breakfast; he

seemed to have staid at home from the races expressly to give himself

this pleasure. But I went further and fared better, and procured a meal

of homely succulence, in an unfashionable tavern, in a back street,

where the wine was sound, the cutlets tender, and the serving-maid rosy.

Then I walked along--for a mile, it seemed--through a dreary, gray

_grand rue_, where the sunshine was hot, the odors portentous, and the

doorsteps garnished with aged fishwives, retired from business, whose

plaited linen coifs looked picturesquely white, and their faces

picturesquely brown. I inspected the harbor and its goodly basin--with

nothing in it--and certain pink and blue houses, which surround it, and

then, joining the last stragglers, I clambered up the side of the cliff

to the downs.

The races had already begun, and the ring of spectators was dense. I

picked out some of the smallest people, looked over their heads, and saw

several young farmers, in parti-colored jackets, and very red in the

face, bouncing up and down on handsome cart-horses. Satiated at last

with this diversion, I turned away and wandered down the hill again; and

after strolling through the streets of Fécamp, and gathering not a

little of the wayside entertainment that a seaport and fishing town

always yields, I repaired to the Abbey church, a monument of some

importance, and almost as great an object of pride in the town as the

Casino. The Abbey of Fécamp was once a very rich and powerful

establishment, but nothing remains of it now save its church and its

_trappistine_. The church, which is for the most part early Gothic, is

very stately and picturesque, and the _trappistine_, which is a

distilled liquor of the _Chartreuse_ family, is much prized by people

who take a little glass after their coffee. By the time I had done with

the Abbey, the townsfolk had slid _en masse_ down the cliff again, the

yellow afternoon had come, and the holiday takers, before the

wine-shops, made long and lively shadows. I hired a sort of two-wheeled

gig, without a board, and drove back to Etretal in the rosy stage of

evening. The gig dandled me up and down in a fashion of which I had been

unconscious since I left off baby-clothes; but the drive, through the

charming Norman country, over roads which lay among the peaceful meadows

like paths amid a park, was altogether delightful. The sunset gave a

deeper mellowness to the standing crops, and in the grassiest corner of

the wayside villages the young men and maidens were dancing like the

figures in vignette illustrations of classic poets.

II.

You may say there is nothing in this very commonplace adventure to

sentimentalize about, and that when one plucks sentimentally a brand

from the burning one should pick out a more valuable one. I certainly

call it a picked day, at any rate, when I went to breakfast at St.

Jouin, at the beautiful Ernestine's. Don't be alarmed; if I was just now

too tame, I am not turning wild. The beautiful Ernestine is not my

especial beauty, but every one's, and to contemplate her charms you have

only to order breakfast. They shine forth the more brilliantly in

proportion as your order is liberal, and Ernestine is beautiful

according as your bill is large. In this case she comes and smiles,

really very handsomely, around your table, and you feel some hesitation

in accusing so well-favored a person of extortion. She keeps an inn at

the end of a lane which diverges from the high road between Etretal and

Havre, and it is an indispensable feature of your "station" at the

former place that you choose some fine morning and seek her hospitality.

She has been a celebrity these twenty years, and is no longer a simple

maiden in her flower; but twenty years, if they have diminished her

early bloom, have richly augmented her _museé_. This is a collection of

all the verses and sketches, the autographs, photographs, monographs,

and trinkets presented to the amiable hostess by admiring tourists. It

covers the walls of her sitting-room and fills half a dozen big albums

which you look at while breakfast is being prepared, just as if you were

awaiting dinner in genteel society. Most Frenchmen of the day whom one

has heard of appear to have called at St. Jouin, and to have left their

_homages_. Each of them has turned a compliment with pen or pencil, and

you may see in a glass case on the parlor wall what Alexandre Dumas,

Fils, thought of the landlady's nose, and how several painters measured

her ankles.

Of course you must make this excursion in good company, and I affirm

that I was in the very best. The company prefers, equally of course, to

have its breakfast in the orchard in front of the house; which, if the

repast is good, will make it seem better still, and if it is poor, will

carry off its poorness. Clever innkeepers should always make their

victims (in tolerable weather) eat in the garden. I forget whether

Ernestine's breakfast was intrinsically good or bad, but I distinctly

remember enjoying it, and making everything welcome. Everything, that

is, save the party at the other table--the Paris actresses and the

American gentlemen. The combination of these two classes of persons,

individually so delightful, results in certain phenomena which seem less

in harmony with appleboughs and summer breezes than with the gas lamps

and thick perfumes of a _cabinet particulier_, and yet it was

characteristic of this odd mixture of things that Mlle. Ernestine,

coming to chat with her customers, should bear a beautiful infant on her

arm, and smile with artless pride on being assured of its filial

resemblance to herself. She looked decidedly handsome as she caressed

this startling attribute of quiet spinsterhood.

St. Jouin is close to the sea and to the finest cliffs in the world. One

of my companions, who had laden the carriage with his painting traps,

went off into a sunny meadow to take the portrait of a windmill, and I,

choosing the better portion, wandered through a little green valley with

the other. Ten minutes brought us to the edge of the cliffs, which at

this point of the coast are simply sublime. I had been thinking the

white sea-walls of Etretal the finest thing conceivable in this way, but

the huge red porphoritic-looking masses of St. Jouin have an even

grander character. I have rarely seen anything more picturesque. They

are strange, fantastic, out of keeping with the country, and for some

rather arbitrary reason suggested to me a Spanish or even African

landscape. Certain sun-scorched precipices in Spanish Sierras must have

very much the same warmth of tone and desolation of attitude. A very

picturesque feature of the cliffs of St. Jouin is that they are double

in height, as one may say. Falling to an immense depth, they encounter a

certain outward ledge, or terrace, where they pause and play a dozen

fantastic tricks, such as piling up rocks into the likeness of needles

and watch-towers; then they plunge again, and in another splendid sweep

descend to the beach. There was something very impressive in the way

their evil brows, looking as if they were all stained with blood and

rust, were bent upon the blue expanse of the sleeping sea.

III.

In a month of beautiful weather at Etretal, every day was not an

excursion, but every day seemed indeed a picked day. For that matter, as

I lay on the beach watching the procession of the easy-going hours, I

took a good many mental excursions. The one, perhaps, on which I

oftenest started was a comparison between French manners, French habits,

French types, and those of my native land. These comparisons are not

invidious; I don't conclude against one party and in favor of the other;

as the French say, _je constate_ simply. The French people about me were

"spending the summer" just as I had so often seen my fellow countrymen

spend it, and it seemed to me, as it had seemed to me at home, that this

operation places men and women under a sort of monstrous magnifying

glass. The human figure has a higher relief in the country than in town,

and I know of no place where psychological studies prosper so as at the

seaside. I shall not pretend to relate my observations in the order in

which they occurred to me (or indeed to relate them in full at all); but

I may say that one of the foremost was to this effect--that the summer

question, for every one, had been more easily settled than it usually is

at home. The solution of the problem of where to go had not been a

thin-petalled rose, plucked from among particularly sharp-pointed

thorns. People presented themselves with a calmness and freshness very

different from the haggard legacy of that fevered investigation which

precedes the annual exodus of the American citizen and his family. This

impression, with me, rests perhaps on the fact that most Frenchwomen

turned of thirty--the average wives and mothers--are so comfortably fat.

I have never seen such massive feminine charms as among the mature

_baigneuses_ of Etratal. The lean and desiccated person into whom a

dozen years of matrimony so often converts the blooming American girl

has no apparent correlative in the French race. A majestic plumpness

flourished all around me--the plumpness of triple chins and deeply

dimpled hands. I mused upon it, and I concluded that it was the result

of the best breakfasts and dinners in the world. It was the corpulence

of ladies who are thoroughly well fed, and who never walk a step that

they can spare. The assiduity with which the women of America measure

the length of our democratic pavements is doubtless a factor in their

frequent absence of redundancy of outline. As a "regular boarder" at the

Hotel Blanquet--pronounced by Anglo-Saxon visitors Blanket--I found

myself initiated into the mysteries of the French dietary system. I

assent to the common tradition that the French are a temperate people,

so long as it is understood in this sense--that they eat no more than

they want to. But they want to eat so much! Their capacity strikes me as

enormous, and we ourselves, if we are less regulated, are certainly much

more slender consumers.

The American breakfast has, I believe, long been a subject of irony to

the foreign observer; but the American breakfast is an ascetic meal

compared with the French _déjeuner à la fourchette_. The latter, indeed,

is simply a dinner without soup; it differs neither generically nor

specifically from the evening repast. If it excludes soup, it includes

eggs, prepared in a hundred forms; and if it proscribes champagne, it

admits beer in foaming pitchers, so that the balance is fairly

preserved. I think it is rarely that an American will not feel a certain

sympathetic heaviness in the reflection that a French family that sits

down at half past eleven to fish and entrées and roasts, to asparagus

and beans, to salad and dessert, and cheese and coffee, proposes to do

exactly the same thing at dinner time. But we may be sure at any rate

that the dinner will be as good as the breakfast, and that the breakfast

has nothing to fear from prospective comparison with the dinner; and we

may further reflect that in a country where eating is a peculiarly

unalloyed pleasure it is natural that this pleasure should be prolonged

and reiterated. Nothing is more noticeable among the French than their

superior intelligence in dietary matters; every one seems naturally a

judge, a dilettante. They have analyzed tastes and savors to a finer

point than we; they are aware of differences and relations of which we

take no heed. Observe a Frenchman of any age and of any station (I have

been quite as much struck with it in the very young men as in the old)

as he orders his breakfast or his dinner at a Parisian restaurant, and

you will perceive that the operation is much more solemn than it is apt

to be in New York or in London. (In London, indeed, it is intellectually

positively brutal.) Monsieur has, in a word, a certain ideal for that

particular repast, and it will make a difference in his happiness

whether the kidneys, for instance, of a certain style, are chopped to

the ultimate or only to the penultimate smallness. His directions and

admonitions to the waiter are therefore minute and exquisite, and

eloquently accentuated by the pressure of thumb and forefinger; and it

must be added that the imagination of the waiter is usually quite worthy

of the refined communion thus opened to it.

This subtler sense of quality is observable even among those classes in

which in other countries it is generally forestalled by a depressing

consciousness on the subject of quantity. Watch your Parisian porter and

his wife at their mid-day meal, as you pass up and down stairs. They are

not satisfying nature upon green tea and potatoes; they are seated

before a meal which has been reasoned out, which, on its modest scale,

is served in courses, and has a beginning, a middle, and an end. I will

not say that the French sense of comfort is confined to the philosophy

of nutrition, but it is certainly higher at this point (and perhaps one

other) than it is elsewhere. French people must have a good dinner and a

good bed; but they are willing that the bed should be stationed and the

dinner be eaten in the most unpleasant neighborhoods. Your porter and

his wife dine grandly and sleep soft in their lodge, but their lodge is

in all probability a fetid black hole, five feet square, in which, in

England or in America, people of their talents would never consent to

live. French people consent to live in the dark, to huddle together, to

forego privacy, and to let bad smells grow great among them. They have

an accursed passion for coquettish furniture: for cold, brittle chairs,

for tables with scolloped edges, for ottomans without backs, for

fireplaces muffled in plush and fringe and about as cheerful as a

festooned hearse. A French bedroom is a bitter mockery--a ghastly

attempt to serve two masters which succeeds in being agreeable to

neither. It is a thing of traps and delusions, constructed on the

assumption that it is inelegant to be known to wash or to sleep, and yet

pervaded with suggestions of uncleanness compared with which a

well-wrung bathing sponge, well _en evidence_, is a delightful symbol of

purity. This comes of course from that supreme French quality, the

source of half the charm of the French mind as well of all its dryness,

the genius for economy. It is wasting a room to let it be a bedroom

alone; so it must be tricked out as an ingeniously contrived

sitting-room, and ends by being (in many cases) insufferable both by

night and by day. But allowing all weight to these latter reflections,

it is still very possible that the French have the better part. If you

are well fed, you can perhaps afford to be ill lodged; whereas, I doubt

whether enjoyment of the most commodious apartments is compatible with

inanition and dyspepsia.

IV.

If I had not cut short my mild retrospect by these possibly milder

generalizations, I should have touched lightly upon some of the social

phenomena of which the little beach at Etretal was the scene. I shall

have narrated that the French, at the seaside, are not "sociable" as

Americans affect to be in a similar situation, and I should subjoin that

at Etretal it was very well on the whole that they were not. The

immeasurably greater simplicity of composition of American society makes

sociability with us a comparatively untaxed virtue; but anything like

an equal exercise of it in France would be attended with alarming perils

and inconveniences. Sociability (in the American sense of the word) in

any aristocratic country would indeed be very much like an attempt to

establish visiting relations between birds and fishes. At Etretal no

making of acquaintance was observable; people went about in compact,

cohesive groups, of natural formation, governed doubtless, internally,

by humane regulation, but presenting to the world an impenetrable

defensive front. These groups usually formed a solid phalanx about two

or three young girls, compressed into the centre, the preservation of

whose innocence was their chief solicitude. Here, doubtless, the groups

were acting wisely, for with half a dozen _cocottes_, in scarlet

petticoats, scattered over the sunny, harmless looking beach, what were

mammas and duennas to do? In order that there should be a greater number

of approachable-irreproachable young girls in France there must first be

a smaller number of _cocottes_. It is not impossible, indeed, that if

the approachable-irreproachable young ladies were more numerous, the

_cocottes_ would be less numerous. If by some ingenious sumptuary

enactment the latter class could be sequestrated or relegated to the

background for a certain period--say ten years--the latter might

increase and multiply, and quite, in vulgar parlance, get the start of

it.

And yet after all this is a rather superficial reflection, for the

excellent reason that the very narrow peep at life allowed to young

French girls is not regarded, either by the young girls themselves or by

those who have their felicity most at heart, as a grave privation. The

case is not nearly so hard as it would be with us, for there is this

immense difference between the lot of the _jeune fille_ and her American

sister, that the former may as a general thing be said to be certain to

marry. "Ay, to marry ill," the Anglo-Saxon objector may reply. But the

objection is precipitate; for if French marriages are almost always

arranged, it must be added that they are in the majority of cases

arranged well. Therefore, if a _jeune fille_ is for three or four years

tied with a very short rope and compelled to browse exclusively upon the

meagre herbage which sprouts in the maternal shadow, she has at least

the comfort of reflecting that according to the native phrase, _on

s'occupe de la marier_--that measures are being carefully taken to

promote her to a condition of unbounded liberty. Whatever, to her

imagination, marriage may fail to mean, it at least means freedom and

consideration. It does not mean, as it so often means in America, being

socially shelved--and it is not too much to say, in certain circles,

degraded; it means being socially launched and consecrated. It means

becoming that exalted personage, a _mère de famille_. To be a _mère de

famille_ is to occupy not simply (as is rather the case with us) a

sentimental, but a really official position. The consideration, the

authority, the domestic pomp and circumstance allotted to a French mamma

are in striking contrast with the amiable tolerance which in our own

social order is so often the most liberal measure that the female parent

may venture to expect at her children's hands, and which, on the part of

the young lady of eighteen who represents the family in society, is not

infrequently tempered by a conscientious severity. All this is worth

waiting for, especially if you have not to wait very long. Mademoiselle

is married certainly, and married early, and she is sufficiently well

informed to know, and to be sustained by the knowledge, that the

sentimental expansion which may not take place at present will have an

open field after her marriage. That it should precede her marriage seems

to her as unnatural as that she should put on her shoes before her

stockings. And besides all this, to browse in the maternal shadow is not

considered in the least a hardship. A young French girl who is _bien

élevée_--an expression which means so much--will be sure to consider her

mother's company the most delightful in the world, and to think that the

herbage which sprouts about this lady's petticoats is peculiarly tender

and succulent. It may be fanciful, but it often seems to me that the

tone with which such a young girl says _Ma mère_ has a peculiar

intensity of meaning. I am at least not wrong in affirming that in the

accent with which the mamma--especially if she be of the well-rounded

order alluded to above--speaks of _Ma fille_ there is a kind of

sacerdotal dignity.

V.

After this came two or three pictures of quite another

complexion--pictures of which a long green valley, almost in the centre

of France, makes the general setting. The valley itself, indeed, forms

one delightful picture, although the country which surrounds it is by no

means a show region. It is the old region of the Gâtinais, which has

plenty of history, but no great beauty. It is very still, deliciously

rural, and immitigably French. Normandy is Norman, Gascony is Gascon,

but this is France itself--the typical, average, "pleasant" France of

history, literature, and art--of art, of landscape art, perhaps,

especially. Wherever I look in the country I seem to see one of the

familiar pictures on a dealer's wall--a Lambinet, a Troyon, a Daubigny,

a Diaz. The Lambinets perhaps are in the majority; the mood of the

landscape usually expresses itself in silvery lights and vivid greens.

The history of this part of France is the history of the monarchy, and

its language is, I won't say absolutely the classic tongue, but a nearer

approach to it than any local _patois_. The peasants deliver themselves

with rather a drawl, but what they speak is good clean French that any

cockney can understand, which is more than can be said sometimes for

the violent jargon that emanates from the fishing folk of Etretal.

Each side of the long valley is a long low ridge, which offers it a

high, bosky horizon, and through the middle of it there flows a charming

stream, wandering, winding, and doubling, smothered here and there in

rocks, and spreading into lily-coated reaches, beneath the clear shadow

of tall, straight, light-leaved trees. On each side of the stream the

meadows stretch away flat, clean, and magnificent, lozenged across with

rows of sober foliage under which a cow-maiden sits on the grass hooting

now and then, nasally, to the large-uddered browsers in front of her.

There are no hedges, nor palings, nor walls; it is all a single estate.

Here and there in the meadows stands a cluster of red-roofed

hovels--each a diminutive village. At other points, at about half an

hour's walk apart, are three charming old houses. The châteaux are

extremely different, but, both picturesquely and conveniently, each has

its points. They are very intimate with each other, so that these points

may be amicably discussed. The points in one case, however, are

remarkably strong. The château stands directly in the little river I

have mentioned, on an island just great enough to hold it, and the

garden flowers grow upon the further bank. This, of course, is a most

delightful affair. But I found something very agreeable in the aspect of

one of the others, when I made it the goal of certain of those walks

before breakfast which of cool mornings in the late summer do not fall

into the category of ascetic pleasures. (In France, indeed, if one did

not do a great many things before breakfast, the work of life would be

but meagerly performed.)

The dwelling in question stands on the top of the long ridge which

encloses the comfortable valley to the south, being by its position

quite in the midst of its appurtenant acres. It is not particularly

"kept up," but its quiet rustiness and untrimmedness only help it to be

picturesque. A grassy plateau approaches it from the edge of the hill,

bordered on one side by a short avenue of horse-chestnuts, and on the

other by a dusky wood. Beyond the chestnuts are the steep-roofed,

yellow-walled farm buildings, and under cover of the wood a stretch of

beaten turf, where, on Sundays and holidays, the farm-servants play at

bowls. Directly before the château is a little square garden enclosed by

a low stone parapet, interrupted by a high gateway of mossy pillars and

iron arabesques, the whole of it overclambered by flowering vines. The

house, with its yellow walls and russet roof, is ample and substantial;

it is a very proper _gentilhommière_. In a corner of the garden, at the

angle of the parapet, rises that classic emblem of rural gentility, the

_pigeonnier_, the old stone dovecote. It is a great round tower, as

broad of base as a lighthouse, with its roof shaped like an

extinguisher, and a big hole in its upper portion, in and out of which a

dove is always fluttering.

You see all this from the windows of the drawing-room. Be sure that the

drawing-room is pannelled in white and gray, with old rococo moulding

over the doorways and mantlepiece. The open garden gateway, with its

tangled vines, makes a frame for the picture that lies beyond the little

grassy esplanade where the thistles have been suffered to grow around a

disused stone well, placed at quaint remoteness from the house (if,

indeed, it is not a relic of an earlier habitation), a picture of a wide

green country rising beyond the unseen valley, and stretching away to a

far horizon in deep blue lines of wood. Behind, through other windows,

you look out on the gardens proper. There are places that take one's

fancy by some accident of expression, by some mystery of accident. This

one is high and breezy, both sunny and shady, plain yet picturesque,

extremely cheerful, and a little melancholy. It has what in the arts is

called "style," and so it took mine.

Going to call on the peasants was as charming an affair as a chapter in

one of George Sand's rural tales. I went one Sunday morning with my

hostess, who knew them well and engaged their most garrulous confidence.

I don't mean that they told her all their secrets, but they told her a

good many; if the French peasant is a simpleton, he is a very shrewd

simpleton. At any rate, of a Sunday morning in August, when he is

stopping at home from work, and he has put on his best jacket and

trowsers, and is loafing at the door of his neighbor's cabin, he is a

very charming person. The peasantry in the region I speak of had

admirably good manners. The curé gave me a low account of their morals;

by which he meant, on the whole, I suspect, that they were moderate

church-goers. But they have the instinct of civility and a talent for

conversation; they know how to play the host and the entertainer. By

"he," just now, I meant _she_ quite as much; it is rare that, in

speaking superlatively of the French, in any connection, one does not

think of the women even more than of the men. They constantly strike the

foreigner as a stronger expression of the qualities of the race. On the

occasion I speak of the first room in the very humble cabins I

successively visited--in some cases, evidently, it was the only

room--had been set into irreproachable order for the day. It had usually

a sort of brown-toned picturesqueness, begotten of the high

chimney-place, with its swinging pots, the important bed, in its dusky

niche, with its flowered curtains, the big-bellied earthenware on the

cupboard, the long-legged clock in the corner, the thick, quiet light of

the small, deeply-set window; the mixture, on all things, of smoke-stain

and the polish of horny hands. Into the midst of this "la Rabillon" or

"la Mère Léger" brings forward her chairs and begs us to be seated, and

seating herself, with crossed hands, smiles handsomely and answers

abundantly all questions about her cow, her husband, her bees, her eggs,

and her last-born. The men linger half outside and half in, with their

shoulders against dressers and door-posts; every one smiles, with that

simple, clear-eyed smile of the gratified peasant; they talk much more

like George Sand's Berrichons than might be supposed. And if they

receive us without gross awkwardness, they speed us on our way with

proportionate urbanity. I go to six or eight little hovels, all of them

dirty outside and clean within; I am entertained everywhere with the

_bonhomie_, the quaintness, the good faces and good manners of their

occupants, and I finish my tour with an esteem for my new acquaintance

which is not diminished by learning that several of them have thirty or

forty thousand francs securely laid by.

And yet, as I say, M. le Curé thinks they are in a bad way, and he knows

something about them. M. le Curé, too, is not a dealer in scandal; there

is something delightfully quaint in the way in which he deprecates an

un-Christian construction of his words. There is more than one curé in

the valley whose charms I celebrate; but the worthy priest of whom I

speak is the pearl of the local priesthood. He has been accused, I

believe, of pretentions to what is called _illuminisme_; but even in his

most illuminated moments it can never occur to him that he has been

chronicled in an American magazine, and therefore it is not indiscreet

to say that he is the curé, not of Gy, but of the village nearest to Gy.

I write this sentence half for the pleasure of putting down that

briefest of village names and seeing how it looks in print. But it may

be elongated at will, and yet be only improved. If you wish to be very

specific, you may call it Gy-les-Nonnains--Gy of the Little Nuns. I went

with my hostess, another morning, to call upon M. le Curé, who himself

opened his garden door to us (there was a crooked little black cross

perched upon it), and, lifting his rusty _calotte_, stood there a moment

in the sunshine, smiling a greeting more benignant than words.

A rural _presbytère_ is not a very sumptuous dwelling, and M. le Curé's

little drawing room reminded me of a Yankee parlor (_minus_ the

subscription books from Hartford, on the centre-table) in some

out-of-the-way corner of New England. But he took us into his very

diminutive garden, and showed us an ornament that would not have

flourished in the shade of a Yankee parlor--a rude stone image of the

Virgin, which he had become possessed of I know not how, and for which

he was building a sort of niche in the wall. The work was going on

slowly, for he must take the labor as he could get it; but he appealed

to his visitors, with a smile of indulgent irony, for an assurance that

his little structure would not make too bad a figure. One of them told

him that she would send him some white flowers to set out round his

statue; whereupon he clasped his hands together over his snuff-box and

expressed cheerful views of the world we live in. A couple of days

afterward he came to breakfast, and, of course, he arrived early, in his

new cassock and band. I found him in the billiard-room, walking up and

down alone, and reading his breviary. The combination of the locality,

the personage, and the occupation made me smile; and I smiled again

when, after breakfast, I found him walking up and down the garden,

puffing a cigarette. Of course he had an excellent appetite; but there

is something rather cruel in those alternations of diet to which the

French parish priest is subjected. At home he lives like a peasant--a

fact which, in itself, is not particularly cruel, inasmuch as he is

usually a peasant born. But his fellow peasants don't breakfast at the

château and gaze adown the savory vistas opened by cutlets à la

Soubise. They have not the acute pain of being turned back into the

stale atmosphere of bread and beans. Of course it is by no means every

day or every week even that M. le Curé breakfasts at the château; but

there must nevertheless be a certain uncomfortable crookedness in his

position. He lives like a laborer, and yet he is treated like a

gentleman. The latter character must seem to him sometimes a rather

heavy irony on the other. But to the ideal curé, of course, all

characters are equal; he thinks neither too ill of his bad breakfasts,

nor too well of his good ones. I won't say that the excellent man I

speak of is the ideal curé, but I suspect he is an approach to it; he

has a grain of epicureanism to an ounce of stoicism. In the garden path,

beside the moat, while he puffed his cigarette, he told me how he had

held up his head to the Prussians; for, hard as it seemed to believe it,

that pastoral valley had been occupied by ravaging Teutons. According to

this recital, he had spoken his mind civilly, but most distinctly, to

the group of officers who had made themselves at home in his

dwelling--had informed them that it grieved him profoundly that he was

obliged to meet them standing there in his cassock, and not out in the

fields with a musket in his hands and a dozen congenial spirits at his

side. The scene must have been picturesque. The first of the officers

got up from table and asked for the privilege of shaking his hand. "M.

le Curé," he said, "j'estime hautement votre caractère."

Six miles away--or nearer, by a charming shaded walk along a canal--was

an ancient town with a legend--a legend which, as a child, I read in my

lesson-book at school, marvelling at the wood-cut above it, in which a

ferocious dog was tearing a strange man to pieces, while the king and

his courtiers sat by as if they were at the circus. I allude to it

chiefly in order to mention the name of one of its promenades, which is

the stateliest, beyond all comparison, in the world; the name, I mean,

not the street. The latter is called Les Belles Manières. Could

anything be finer than that? With what a sweep gentlemen must once have

taken off their hats there; how ladies must once have curtsied,

regardless of gutters, and how people must have turned up their toes as

they walked!

VI.

My next impressions were gathered on the margin of a southern sea--if

the Bay of Biscay indeed deserves so soft-sounding a name. We generally

have a mental image beforehand of a place we think of going to, and I

supposed I had a tolerably vivid prevision of Biarritz. I don't know

why, but I had a singular sense of having been there; the name always

seemed to me expressive. I saw the way it lay along its gleaming beach;

I had taken in imagination the long walks toward Spain over the low

cliffs, with the blue sea always to my right, and the blue Pyrenees

always before me. My only fear was that my mental picture was not

brilliant enough; but this could easily be touched up on the spot. In

truth, however, I was exclusively occupied in toning it down. Biarritz

seemed to be decidedly below its reputation; I am at a loss to see how

its reputation was made. There is a partial explanation that is obvious

enough. There is a low, square, bare brick mansion seated on the sands,

under shelter of a cliff; it is one of the first objects to attract the

attention of an arriving stranger. It is not picturesque, it is not

romantic, and even in the days of its prosperity it never can have been

impressive. It is called the Villa Eugénie, and it explains in a great

measure, as I say, the Biarritz which the arriving stranger, with some

dismay, perceives about him. It has the aspect of one of the "cottages"

of Newport during the winter season, and is surrounded by an even

scantier umbrage than usually flourishes in the vicinity of those

establishments. It was what the newspapers call the "favorite resort"

of the ex-Empress of the French, who might have been seen at her

imperial avocations with a good glass at any time from the Casino. The

Casino, I hasten to add, has quite the air of an establishment

frequented by gentlemen who look on ladies' windows with telescopes.

There are Casinos and Casinos, and that of Biarritz is, in the summary

French phrase, "impossible." Except for its view, it is moreover very

unattractive. Perched on the top of a cliff which has just space enough

to hold its immense brick foundations, it has no garden, no promenade,

no shade, no place of out-of-door reunion--the most indispensable

feature of a Casino. It turns its back to the Pyrenees and to Spain, and

looks out prettily enough over a blue ocean to an arm of the low French

coast.

Biarritz, for the rest, scrambles over two or three steep hills,

directly above the sea, in a promiscuous, many-colored, noisy fashion.

It is a watering-place, pure and simple; every house has an expensive

little shop in the basement, and a still more expensive set of rooms to

let above stairs. The houses are blue, and pink, and green; they stick

to the hillsides as they can, and being near Spain, you try to fancy

they look Spanish. You succeed perhaps, even a little, and are rewarded

for your zeal by finding, when you cross the border a few days

afterward, that the houses at San Sebastian look strikingly French.

Biarritz is bright, crowded, irregular, filled with many sounds, and not

without a certain second-rate picturesqueness; but it struck me as

common and cocknified, and my vision travelled back to modest little

Etretal, by its northern sea, as to a more truly delectable

resting-place. The southwestern coast of France has little of the

exquisite charm of the Mediterranean shore. It has of course a southern

expression which in itself is always delightful. You see a brilliant,

yellow sun, with a pink-faced, red-tiled house staring up at it. You

can see here and there a trellis and an orange tree, a peasant woman in

gold necklace, driving a donkey, a lame beggar adorned with ear-rings, a

glimpse of blue sea between white garden walls. But the superabundant

detail of the French Riviera is wanting; the softness, luxuriousness,

enchantment.

The most picturesque thing at Biarritz is the Basque population, which

overflows from the adjacent Spanish provinces and swarms in the crooked

streets. It lounges all day in the public places, sprawls upon the

curbstones, clings to the face of the cliffs, and vociferates

continually in a shrill, strange tongue, which has no discoverable

affinity with any other. The Basques look like the hardier and thriftier

Neapolitan lazzaroni; if the superficial resemblance is striking, the

difference is very much in their favor. Although those specimens which I

observed at Biarritz appeared to enjoy an excess of leisure, they had

nothing of a shiftless or beggarly air, and seemed as little disposed to

ask favors as to confer them. The roads leading into Spain were dotted

with them, and here they were coming and going as if on important

business--the business of the abominable Don Carlos himself. They struck

me as a very handsome race. The men are invariably clean shaved; smooth

chins seem a positively religious observance. They wear little round,

maroon-colored caps, like those of sailor-boys, dark stuff shirts, and

curious white shoes, made of strips of rope laid together--an article of

toilet which makes them look like honorary members of base-ball clubs.

They sling their jackets, cavalier fashion, over one shoulder, hold

their heads very high, swing their arms very bravely, step out very

lightly, and when you meet them in the country at eventide, charging

down a hillside in companies of half a dozen, make altogether a most

impressive appearance. With their smooth chins and childish caps, they

may be taken, in the distance, for a lot of very naughty little boys.

They have always a cigarette in their teeth.

The best thing at Biarritz is your opportunity for driving over into

Spain. Coming speedily to a consciousness of this fact, I found a charm

in sitting in a landau and rolling away to San Sebastian, behind a

driver in a high glazed hat with long streamers, a jacket of scarlet and

silver, and a pair of yellow breeches and of jack-boots. If it has been

the desire of one's heart and the dream of one's life to visit the land

of Cervantes, even grazing it so lightly as by a day's excursion from

Biarritz is a matter to set one romancing. Everything helping--the

admirable scenery, the charming day, my operatic coachman, and

smooth-rolling carriage--I am afraid I romanced more than it is decent

to tell of. You face toward the beautifully outlined mass of the

Pyrenees, as if you were going to plunge straight into them, but in

reality you travel beneath them and beside them; you pass between their

expiring spurs and the sea. It is on proceeding beyond San Sebastian

that you seriously attack them. But they are already extremely

picturesque--none the less so that in this region they abound in

suggestion of the recent Carlist war. Their far-away peaks and ridges

are crowned with lonely Spanish watch-towers and their lower slopes are

dotted with demolished dwellings. It was hereabouts that the fighting

was most constant. But the healing powers of nature are as remarkable as

the destructive powers of man, and the rich September landscape appeared

already to have forgotten the injuries of yesterday. Everything seemed

to me a savory foretaste of Spain. I discovered an unconscionable amount

of local color. I discovered it at St. Jean de Luz, the last French

town, in a great brown church, filled with galleries and boxes, like a

playhouse--the altar and chair, indeed, looked very much like a

proscenium; at Bohebia, on the Bidassoa, the small yellow stream which

divides France from Spain, and which at this point offers to view the

celebrated Isle of Pheasants, a little bushy strip of earth adorned with

a decayed commemorative monument, on which, in the seventeenth century,

the affairs of Louis XIV. and his brother monarch were discussed in

ornamental conference; at Fuentarabia (glorious name), a mouldering

relic of Spanish stateliness; at Hondaye, at Irun, at Renteria, and

finally at San Sebastian. At all of these wayside towns the houses show

marks of Alphonsist bullets (the region was strongly Carlist); but to be

riddled and battered seems to carry out the meaning of the pompous old

escutcheons carven above the doorways, some of them covering almost half

the house. It seemed to me, in fact, that the narrower and shabbier was

the poor little dusky dwelling, the grander and more elaborate was this

noble advertisement. But it stood for knightly prowess, and pitiless

Time had taken up the challenge. I found it fine work to rumble through

the narrow single street of Irun and Renteria, between the

strange-colored houses, the striped awnings, the universal balconies,

and the heraldic doorways.

San Sebastian is a lively watering-place, and is set down in the

guidebooks as the Biarritz or the Brighton of Spain. It has of course a

new quarter in the provincial-elegant style (fresh stucco cafés, barber

shops, and apartments to let), looking out upon a planted promenade and

a charming bay, locked in fortified heights, with a narrow portal to the

ocean. I walked about for two or three hours, and devoted most of my

attention to the old quarter, the town proper, which has a great

frowning gate upon the harbor, through which you look along a vista of

gaudy house fronts, balconies, and awnings, surmounted by a narrow strip

of sky. Here the local color was richer, the manners more _naïf_. Here

too was a church with a flamboyant Jesuit façade and an interior

redolent of Spanish Catholicism. There was a life-sized effigy of the

Virgin perched upon a table beside the great altar (she appeared to

have been walking abroad in a procession), whom I looked at with extreme

interest. She seemed to me a heroine, a solid Spanish person, as perfect

a reality as Don Quixote or St. Theresa. She was dressed in an

extraordinary splendor of laces, brocades, and jewels, her coiffure and

complexion were of the finest, and she evidently would answer to her

name if you spoke to her. Improving the stateliest title I could think

of, I addressed her as Doña Maria of the Holy Office; whereupon she

looked round the great dusky, perfumed church, to see whether we were

alone, and then she dropped her fringed eyelids and held out her hand to

be kissed. She was the Sentiment of Spanish Catholicism: gloomy, yet

bedizened, emotional as a woman, and yet mechanical as a doll. After a

moment I grew afraid of her, and went slinking away. After this I didn't

really recover my spirits until I had the satisfaction of hearing myself

addressed as "Cabellero." I was hailed with this epithet by a ragged

infant, with sickly eyes and a cigarette in his lips, who invited me to

cast a copper into the sea, that he might dive for it; and even with

these limitations, the sensation seemed worth the cost of my excursion.

It appeared kinder, to my gratitude, to make the infant dive upon the

pavement.

A few days later I went back to San Sebastian, to witness a bull fight;

but I suppose my right to descant upon this entertainment should be

measured less by the gratification it afforded me than by the question

whether there is room in literature for another bull fight. I incline to

think there is not; the Spanish diversion is the best described thing in

the world. Besides, there are other reasons for not describing it. It is

extremely disgusting, and one should not describe disgusting

things--except (according to the new school) in novels, when they have

not really occurred, and are manufactured on purpose. But one has taken

a certain sort of pleasure in the bull fight, and yet how is one to

state gracefully that one has taken pleasure in a disgusting thing? It

is a hard case. If you record your pleasure, distinctly, you seem to

exaggerate it and to calumniate your delicacy; and if you record nothing

but your displeasure, you feel rather crabbed and stingy. This much I

can say, at any rate, that as there had been no bull fights in that part

of the country during the Carlist war, the native dilettanti (and every

man, woman, and child of them comes under this denomination) returned to

their previous pastime with peculiar zest. The spectacle, therefore, had

an unusual splendor. Under these circumstances it is highly picturesque.

The weather was beautiful; the near mountains peeped over the top of the

vast open arena, as if they too were curious; weary of disembowelled

horses and posturing _espadas_, the spectator (in the boxes) might turn

away and look through an unglazed window at the empty town and the

cloud-shadowed sea. But few of the native spectators availed themselves

of this privilege. Beside me sat a blooming matron, in a white lace

mantilla, with three very juvenile daughters; and if these ladies

sometimes yawned, they never shivered. For myself, I confess that if I

sometimes shivered, I never yawned. A long list of bulls was sacrificed,

each of whom had pretentions to originality. The _banderillos_, in their

silk stockings and embroidered satin costumes, skipped about with a

great deal of elegance; the _espada_ folded his arms, within six inches

of the bull's nose, and stared him out of countenance; but I thought the

bull, in any case, a finer fellow than any of his tormentors, and I

thought his tormentors finer fellows than the spectators. In truth, we

were all, for the time, rather sorry fellows together. A bull fight

will, to a certain extent, bear looking at, but it will not bear

thinking of. There was a more innocent picturesqueness in what I saw

afterward, when we all came away, in the late afternoon, as the shadows

were at their longest: the bright-colored southern crowd, spreading

itself over the grass, and the women, with mantillas and fans, strolling

up along before the mountains and the sea.

HENRY JAMES, JR.

THE BALLAD OF CONSTANCE.

I.

With diamond dew the grass was wet,

T'was in the spring, and gentlest weather,

And all the birds of morning met,

And carolled in her heart together.

II.

The wind blew softly o'er the land,

And softly kissed the joyous ocean:

He walked beside her, on the sand,

And gave and won a heart's devotion.

III.

The thistledown was in the breeze,

With birds of passage homeward flying:

His fortune called him o'er the seas,

And on the shore he left her sighing.

IV.

She saw his barque glide down the bay--

Through tears and fears she could not banish;

She saw his white sails melt away;

She saw them fade; she saw them vanish.

V.

And "Go," she said; "for winds are fair,

And love and blessing round you hover:

When you sail backward through the air,

Then I will trust the word of lover."

VI.

Still ebbed, still flowed the tide of years,

Now chilled with snows, now bright with roses,

And many smiles were turned to tears,

And sombre morns to radiant closes.

VII.

And many ships came gliding by,

With many a golden promise freighted:

But nevermore from sea or sky

Came love to bless her heart that waited.

VII.

Yet on, by tender patience led,

Her sacred footsteps walked unbidden,

Wherever sorrow bows its head,

Or want and care and shame are hidden.

IX.

And they who saw her snow-white hair,

And dark, sad eyes, so deep with feeling,

Breathed all at once the chancel air,

And seemed to hear the organ pealing.

X.

Till once, at shut of autumn day,

In marble chill she paused and harkened,

With startled gaze where far away

The waste of sky and ocean darkened.

XI.

There, for a moment, faint and wan,

High up in air, and landward striving,

Stern-fore a spectral barque came on,

Across the purple sunset driving.

XII.

Then something out of night she knew,

Some whisper heard, from heaven descended,

And peacefully as falls the dew

Her long and lonely vigil ended.

XIII.

The violet and the bramble-rose

Make glad the grass that dreams above her;

And freed from time and all its woes,

She trusts again the word of lover.

WILLIAM WINTER.

THE HEARTBREAK CAMEO.

"It is a cameo to break one's heart!" said Mrs. Dalliba, as she toyed

with the superb jewel. "The cutting is unmistakably Florentine, and yet

you have placed it among your Indian curiosities. I do not understand it

at all."

Mrs. Dalliba was a connoisseur in gems; she had travelled from one

extremity of Europe to the other; had studied the crown jewels of nearly

every civilized nation, haunted museums, and was such a frequent visitor

at the jewellers' of the Palais Royal, that many of them had come to

regard her as an individual who might harbor burglarious intentions. She

was a very harmless specialist, however, who, though she loved these

stars of the underworld better than any human being, could never have

been tempted to make one of them unfairly her own, and she seldom

purchased, for she never coveted one unless it was something quite

extraordinary, beyond the reach of even her considerable fortune.

Meanwhile few of the larger jewelry houses had in their employ

lapidaries more skilled than Mrs. Dalliba. She pursued her studies for

the mere love of the science, devoting a year in Italy to mosaics,

cameos, and intaglios. And yet the Crèvecoeur cameo had puzzled wiser

heads than Mrs. Dalliba's, adept though she was. It was cut from a solid

heart-shaped gem, a layer of pure white, shading down through exquisite

gradations into deep green, and represented Aphrodite rising from the

sea; the white form rose gracefully, with arms extended, scattering the

drops of spray from her hands and her wind-blown hair; the foamy waves

were beautifully cut with their intense hollows and snowy crests; it was

evidently the work of a cultivated as well as a natural artist; it was

not surprising that Mrs. Dalliba should insist that it could not have

been executed out of Italy.

But Prof. Stonehenge was right too; it was a stone of the chalcedonic

family, resembling sardonyx, except in color; others, similar to it both

in a natural state and wrought into arrow-heads, had been found along

the shores of Lake Superior. This seemed to have been brought away from

its associates by some wandering tribe, for it had been discovered in

Central Illinois. The nearest point at which other relics belonging to

the same period had been found was the site of Fort Crèvecoeur, near

Starved Rock, Illinois. After all, the stone only differed from the

arrow-heads of Lake Superior in its beautiful carving and unprecedented

size--and, ah, yes! there was another difference, the mystery of its

discovery. No other skeleton among all the buried braves unearthed by

scientific research at Crèvecoeur had been found with a gem for a

heart--a gem that glittered not on the breast, but within a chest hooped

with human bone. Mrs. Dalliba had just remarked that she had never felt

so strong a desire to possess and wear any jewel as now; but when Prof.

Stonehenge told how the uncanny thing rattled within the white ribs of

the skeleton in which it was found, she allowed the gem to slip from her

hand, while something of its own pale green flickered in the disgusted

expression which quivered about the corners of her mobile mouth. The

cameo was a mystery which had baffled geologist, antiquarian, and

sculptor alike, for Father Francis Xavier had gone down to his grave

with his secret and his cameo hidden in his heart. He had kept both well

for two centuries, and when the heart crumbled in dust it took its

secret with it, leaving only the cameo to bewilder conjecture.

Its story was, after all, a simple one. On the southern shore of

Michillimackinac, in the romantic days of the first exploration of the

great lakes by the Courreurs de Bois and pioneer priests, had settled

good Père Ignace, a devoted Jesuit missionary. The old man was revered

and loved by the Indians among whom he dwelt. His labors blossomed in a

little village, called from his patron saint the mission of St. Ignace,

that displayed its cluster of white huts and wigwams like the petals of

a water-lily on the margin of the lake. Just back of the village was a

round knoll which served as a landmark on the lake, for the shore near

St. Ignace was remarkably level. On the summit of this mound the good

father had reared a great white cross, and at its foot the superstitious

Indians often laid votive offerings of strongly incongruous character.

Here he had lived and taught for many years, succeeding in instructing

his little flock in the French tongue, and in at least an outward

semblance of the Catholic religion. Even the rude trappers, who came to

trade at regular intervals, revered him, and lived like good Christians

while at the mission, so as not to counteract his teaching by their

lawless example. Here Père Ignace was growing old, and even this

grasshopper of a spiritual charge was becoming a burden. His superior,

at Montreal, understood this and sent him an assistant.

Very unlike Father Ignatius was Père François Xavier, a man with all the

fire and enthusiasm of youth in his blood--just the one for daring,

hazardous enterprises; just the one to undergo all the privation and

toil of planting a mission; to undertake plans requiring superhuman

efforts, and to carry them through successfully by main force of will. A

better assistant for Father Ignatius could not have been found. It was

force, will, and intellect in the service of love and meekness; only

there was a doubt if the servant might not usurp the place of the

master, and the sway of love be not materially advanced by its new

ally. Indeed, if the truth had been known, even the Bishop of Montreal

had felt that Father Francis Xavier was too ambitious a character to

reside safely in too close proximity to himself; and engrossing

employment at a distance for him, rather than the expressed solicitude

for Father Ignatius, prompted this appointment. The results of the

following year approved the arrangement. The mission received a new

accession of life; its interests were pushed forward energetically.

Father Francis Xavier devoted himself to an acquisition of the various

Indian dialects, and to excursions among the neighboring tribes.

Converts were made in astonishing numbers, and they brought liberal

gifts to the little church from their simple possessions. Father

Ignatius had never thought to barter with the trappers and traders, but

his colleague did; large church warehouses were erected, and the mission

soon had revenues of importance. Away in the interior Father Xavier had

discovered there was a silver mine; but this discovery, for the present,

he made no attempt at exploiting. He had secured it to the church by

title deed and treaty with the chief who claimed it; had visited it and

assured himself that it would some day be very valuable, and he

contented himself with this for the present, and even managed to forget

its acquisition in his yearly report sent to Montreal. Father Francis

Xavier was something of a geologist; his father was a Florentine

jeweller, and the son had studied as his apprentice, not having at first

been destined for the church. Even after taking holy orders, Father

Francis Xavier had labored over precious stones designed for

ecclesiastical decoration. His specialty had been that of a gem

engraver, and his long white fingers were remarkably skilful and

delicate. This northern region, with all its wealth of precious stones,

was a great jewel casket for him, and he became at once an enthusiastic

collector.

Before the coming of his assistant, Father Ignatius had managed his own

simple housekeeping in all its most humble details. Now they had the

services of an Indian maid of all work, who had been brought up under

the eyes of Father Ignatius, and whom the old man regarded rather as a

daughter than as a servant. Her moccasined feet fell as silently as

those of spirits as she glided about their lodge. She never sang at her

work, and rarely spoke, but she smiled often with a smile so childlike

as to be almost silly in expression. Father Ignatius loved the silent

smile, and a word from him was always sure to bring it; but it angered

Father Francis Xavier more than many a more repulsive thing would have

done. It seemed so utterly imbecile and babyish to him, he had got so

far away from innocence and smiles and childhood himself, that the sight

of them irritated him. The young Indian girl had a long and almost

unpronounceable name. Père Ignace had baptized her Marie, and the new

name had gradually taken the place of the old.

One day, as she was silently but dexterously putting to order the large

upper room, which served Père Francis Xavier as study and dormitory, she

paused before his collection of agates and minerals, and stroking the

stones, said in her soft French and Indian patois, "Pretty, pretty."

Father Xavier was seated at the great open window, looking over the top

of his book away across the breezy lake. He heard the words, and knew

that she was looking at him from the corner of her eye, but his only

reply was a deeper scowl and a lowering of his glance to the printed

page. The silly smile which he felt sure was upon her face faded out,

but the girl spoke again, and this time more resolutely, determined to

attract his attention. "Pretty stones. Marie's father many more, much

prettier--much."

Father Xavier laid down his book. He was all attention. "Where did your

father get them?" he asked.

"In the mountains climb, in the mines dig, in the lake dive, he seek

them all the time summer."

"What does he do with them?"

"Cuts them like _mon père_," and Marie imitated in pantomime the use of

the hammer and chisel. "Cut them all time winter, very many."

"What does he do that for?" asked the priest, surprised.

"All the same you," replied the girl--"make arrow-heads."

"Oh! he makes arrow-heads, does he? Mine are not arrow-heads, but I

should like to see what your father does. Does he live far from here?"

"Marie take you to-night in canoe."

"Very well, after supper."

She had often taken him out upon the lake before, for she managed their

birch-bark canoe with more skill than himself, and it was convenient to

have some one to paddle while he fished or read or dreamed. She rowed

him swiftly up the lake for several miles, then, fastening the canoe,

led the way through a trail in the forest. The sun was setting, and "the

whispering pines and the hemlocks" of the forest primeval formed a

tapestry of gloom around the paternal wigwam as they reached it. Black

Beaver, her father, reclined lazily in the door, watching the coals of

the little fire in front of his tent. He was always lazy. It was

difficult to believe that he ever climbed or dug or dived for agates as

Marie had said, so complete a picture he seemed of inaction. The girl

spoke a few words to him in their native dialect, and he grumblingly

rose, shuffled into the interior of the wigwam, and brought out two

baskets. One was a shallow tray filled with the finished heads in great

variety of material and color. There were white carnelian, delicately

striped with prophetic red, blood-stone deep-colored and hard as ruby,

agates of every shade and marking, flinty jasper, emerald-banded

malachite, delicate rose color, and purple ones made from shells, and

various crystals with whose names Father François Xavier was

unfamiliar. There was one shading from dark green through to red, only

a drop of the latter color on the very tip of the arrow where blood

would first kiss blood. Father Xavier looked at it in wondering

admiration, and at last asked Black Beaver what he called it.

"It is a devil-stone," replied the Indian. "More here," and he opened

the deeper basket in which were stored the unground and uncut stones,

and placed a superb gem in Father Xavier's hand. He had ground it

sufficiently to show that it was in two layers, white and green; in this

there was no touch of red, but in every other respect it was the

handsomer stone.

"Will you sell it to me?" asked the priest. "How much?"

The Indian smiled with an expression strangely like that of his

daughter, and put it back with alacrity in his basket, saying, "Me no

sell big devil-stone. No money buy."

"What do you mean to do with it?" asked Father Xavier.

"Make arrowhead--very hungry--no blood"; and he indicated the absence of

the red tint. "Very hungry--kill very much--never have enough!"

"Then you mean to keep it and use it yourself?"

"No," said the other. "Me no hunt game--hunt stones."

"What will you do with it?" asked the puzzled priest.

"Give it away," said Black Beaver--"give away to greatest----"

"Chief?" asked Father Xavier.

Black Beaver shook his head.

"Friend then?"

"No," grunted the arrowhead maker--"give away to big _enemy_!"

"What did he mean by that?" Father Xavier asked of Marie on their way

back to the mission. And the girl explained the superstition that

Indians of their own tribe never killed an enemy with ordinary weapons,

for fear that his soul would wait for theirs in the Happy Hunting

Grounds; but if he was shot with a devil-stone, the soul could not fly

upward, but would sink through all eternity, until it reached the

deepest spot of all the great lakes under the stony gaze of the Doom

Woman.

When he inquired further as to the whereabouts of the Doom Woman's

residence he ascertained that she was only a sharp cliff among "the

pictured rocks of sandstone" of the upper lake--a cliff that viewed from

either side maintained its resemblance to a female profile looking

sternly down at the water beneath it, which was here believed to be

unfathomable. The Doom Woman still exists. Strange to say, under its

sharp-cut features a steamer has since been wrecked and sunk, and its

expression of gloomy fate is now awfully appropriate. Marie had visited

"the great Sea Water" with her father. Nature's titanic and fanciful

frescoing and cameo cutting had strongly wrought upon her impressionable

mind, and the old legends and superstitions of paganism had been by no

means effaced by the very slight veneer of Christianity which she had

received at the mission.

From this evening Father Xavier's manner toward her changed. Her smile

no longer seemed to irritate him, and a close observer might have

noticed that she smiled less than formerly. He talked with her more,

paid closer attention to her studies, made her little presents from time

to to time, and spoke to her always with studied gentleness that was

quite foreign to his nature. And Marie watched him at work over his

stones, spent her spare time in rambling in search of those which she

had learned he liked, and laid upon his table without remark each new

discovery of quartz, or crystal, or pebble. She had been in the habit of

making little boxes which she decorated with a rude mosaic of small

shells, and Father Xavier noticed that these gradually acquired more

taste and were arranged with some eye to the harmonies of color, while

the forms were copied with Chinese accuracy from patterns on the

bindings of his books or the borders of the religious pictures. Marie

was developing under an art education which if carried far enough might

effect great things. She even managed his graving tools with a good deal

of accuracy, copying designs which he set her, until he wondered what

his father would have thought of so apt an apprentice.

Suddenly, one morning in midsummer, Marie announced that she should

leave them. Her father was going on a long expedition for stones to the

head of Lake Superior, and she did not know when she might return. As

she imparted this information she watched Father Xavier from the corner

of her eye, and something of the old childish smile reappeared as he

showed that he was really annoyed.

The summer passed profitably for the Black Beaver, and he began to think

of returning to St. Ignace with his small store of valuable stones

before the fall gales should set in. He was just a few days too late.

When within sight of Michillimackinac a storm arose driving them out

upon the open lake, and playing with their canoe as though it were a

cockle shell. When the storm abated a cloudy night had set in; no land

was visible in any direction; they had completely lost their direction,

and knew not toward which point to seek the shore. Paddling at hazard

might take them further out into the centre of the lake, and indeed they

were too worn with battling with the storm to do any more than keep the

tossed skiff from capsizing. Morning dawned wet and gray, after a

miserable night; they were drenched to the skin, and almost spent with

weariness and hunger, and now that a wan and ghostly daylight had come

they were no better for it, for an impenetrable fog shut them in on

every side. Marie and her mother began to pray. The Black Beaver sat

dogged and inert, with upturned face, regarding the sky.

The day wore by wearily; some of the time they paddled straight onward,

with sinking hearts, knowing not toward what they were going, and at

others rested with the inaction of despair. When the position of the

bright spot which meant the sun told that it lacked but an hour of

sunset, and the clouds seemed to be thickening rather than dispersing,

the Black Beaver gave a long and hideous howl. His wife and daughter

shuddered when they heard it, as would any one, for a more unearthly and

discordant cry was never uttered by man or beast; but they had double

reason to shudder; it was the death cry of their nation.

"We can never live through another night," said he, and he covered his

face with his arms.

"Father," said Marie, "try what power there is in the white man's God.

Say that you will give Him your devil-stone if He will save us now."

"The priest may have it," said the Black Beaver, and he uncovered his

face and sat up as though expecting a miracle. And the miracle came. The

sun was setting behind them, and in front, somewhat above the horizon,

the clouds parted, forming a circle about a white cross which hung

suspended in the air. They all saw it distinctly, but only for a few

moments; then the clouds closed and the vision vanished. With new hope

the little party rowed toward the spot where they had last seen it, and

through the fog they could dimly discern the outlines of the coast--they

were nearing land. A little further on, and a village was visible, which

gained a more and more familiar aspect as they approached. Night settled

down before they reached it, but ere their feet touched the land they

had recognized the mission of St. Ignace. The cross was not a vision.

The clouds had parted to show them the great white landmark and sign

which Father Ignatius had raised upon the little knoll.

The next day the Black Beaver unearthed his devil-stone, and fastening a

silver chain to it, was about to carry it away and attach it to the

cross, which was already loaded with the gifts of the little colony;

but Marie took it from his hand. "I will give it to the good priest

myself," she said. "He may see fit to place it on the image of the

Virgin in the church."

A few days later Marie placed the coveted stone in Father Xavier's hand;

but what was his bitter disappointment to find that she had marred the

exquisite thing by a rude attempt at a delineation upon it of the vision

of the cross. She had carefully chiselled away the milky white layer,

excepting on the crests of some very primitive representations of waves,

and within the awkwardly plain cross in the centre of the gem. All his

hopes of cutting a face upon this lovely jewel were crushed; it was

ruined by her unskilful work. Father Xavier was completely master of his

own emotions. He took the stone without remark, and hung it, as Marie

requested, about the neck of the Madonna. Each day as he said mass the

sight of the mutilated jewel roused within him resentful feelings

against poor, well-wishing little Marie. He had been very kind to her

since he had first seen the stone in the possession of her father, but

now it was worse than before. He avoided her markedly, for the smile

which so annoyed him still lighted her face whenever she saw him, and

there was in it a reproachful sadness which was even more aggravating

than its simple childishness had been.

One day Father Xavier in turning over his papers came across an old

etching of Venus rising from the sea. The figure, with its outstretched

arms, suggested a possibility to him. He made a careful tracing of it,

took it to the church and laid it upon the stone. All of its outlines

came within the white cross; there was still hope for the cameo. All

that winter Father Xavier toiled upon it, exhausting his utmost skill,

but never exhausting his patience. His chief trial was in the extreme

hardness of the stone, which rapidly wore out his graving tools. At last

it was finished, and Father Xavier confessed to himself, in all

humility, that he had not only never executed so delicate a piece of

workmanship, but he had never seen its equal. Every curve of the

exquisite-hued waves was studied from the swell that sometimes swept

grandly in from the lake on the long reef of rocks a few miles above St.

Ignace. The form of the goddess was modelled from his remembrance of the

Greek antique. It was a gem worthy of an emperor. What should he do with

it?

As the spring ripened into summer, ambitious thoughts flowered in Père

Francis Xavier's soul. What a grand bishopric this whole western country

would make with its unexplored wealth of mines, and furs, and forest.

Why should he be obliged to make reports of the revenue which his own

financiering had secured to the mission, to the head at Montreal? Why

should not his reverence the Lord Bishop Francis Xavier dwell in an

episcopal palace built somewhere on these lakes, with unlimited

spiritual and temporal sway over all this country? To effect such a

scheme it would be necessary for him to see both the King of France and

the Pope. He was not sure that even if he could return to Europe

immediately, he had the influence necessary in either quarter, but the

cameo was a step in the right direction. Something of the same thought

occurred at the same time to the Bishop of Montreal. Father Xavier's

reports showed the mission to be in a flourishing condition. The first

struggles of the pioneer were over. Father Xavier must not be left in

too luxurious a position. The Chevalier La Salle was now fitting out his

little band designed to explore the lakes and follow the Mississippi

from its source to the Gulf. A most important expedition; it would be

well that the Jesuit fathers should share in the honors if it proved

successful, and if the little party perished in its hazardous

enterprise, Père Francis Xavier could perhaps be spared as easily as any

member of his spiritual army.

And so, in the summer of 1679, the Chevalier sailed up the Lac du

Dauphin, as Lake Erie was then called, into the Lac d'Orleans, or Huron,

carrying letters in which Père Francis Xavier was ordered to leave his

charge for a time in order to render all the assistance in his power to

the explorers. The Bishop of Montreal could never have guessed with what

heartfelt joy his command was obeyed. Father Xavier was tired of this

peaceful life, tired of "the endless wash of melancholy waves," of the

short cool summers, and long white blank of winter; tired of inaction,

of the lack of stimulating surroundings, of the gentleness of Father

Ignatius and Marie's haunting smile. Here, too, might be the very

occasion he craved of making himself famous and deserving of reward as

an explorer. It was true that he started as a subordinate, but that was

no reason that he should return in the same capacity. Marie had served

the noble guests with pleasant alacrity, passing the rainbow-tinted

trout caught as well as broiled by her own hand, and the luscious

huckleberries in tasteful baskets of her own braiding, and Tontz Main de

Fer, the chivalric companion and friend of La Salle, was moved like

Geraint, served by Enid, "to stoop and kiss the dainty little thumb that

crossed the trencher." The salutation was received with unconscious

dignity by little Marie; once only was Père François Xavier annoyed by

the absence of a display of childish pleasure in an ever ready smile.

History tells how trial and privation of every kind waited on this

little band of heroic men--how hunger, and cold, and fever dogged their

steps; how the Indians proved treacherous and hostile; how, having

reached central Illinois after incredible exertion, they found

themselves in the dead of winter unable to proceed further, and

surrounded by tribes incited against them by some unknown enemy. A

fatality seemed to hang over them; suspicious occurrences indicated that

they had a traitor among their number, but he was never discovered. La

Salle did not despair or abandon the enterprise, but when six of his

most trusted men mutinied and deserted, he lost hope, and became seized

with a presentiment that he would never return from his expedition.

Father Xavier was his confidant as well as confessor, but he seems not

to have been able to disperse the gloom which settled over the leader's

mind. Perhaps he did not endeavor to do so. Hopeless but still true to

his trust, La Salle constructed near Peoria a fort which he named

Crèvecoeur, in token of his despondency and disappointment. Leaving

Tontz Main de Fer in command here with the greater part of his men, he

set out with five for Frontenac, on the 2d of March, 1680, intending to

return with supplies to take command again of his party, and to proceed

southward. It was at this point that the most inexplicable event of the

entire enterprise occurred. Before the party divided _some one_

attempted to poison the Chevalier La Salle. The poison was a subtle and

slow one, similar in its effects to those used by the Borgia family; the

secret of its manufacture was thought to be unknown out of Italy.

Fortunately he had taken an under or overdose of it, and the effects

manifested themselves only in a long illness. He was too far on his

journey from Fort Heartbreak when stricken down to return to it, and was

mercifully received and nursed back to health by the friendly

Pottawottamies.

While the leader was lying sick in an Indian lodge, the knightly Tontz,

ignorant of the fate of his friend, was having his troubles at the

little fort of Heartbreak. Père François Xavier had remained with him,

and aided him with counsels and personal exertions; he had made himself

so indispensable that he was now lieutenant; if anything should happen

to Tontz, he would be commander. He was secretary of the expedition,

drew careful maps, and made voluminous daily entries in a journal, which

was afterward found to be a marvel of painstaking both in the facts and

fictions which it contained. Scanty mention was there of La Salle and

Tontz Main de Fer, and much of Père François Xavier, but it was clear,

explicit, depicting the advantages of an acquisition of this territory

to the crown of France in glowing terms, and strongly advising that the

man who had most distinguished himself in the difficulties of its

discovery should be appointed as governor, or baron, under the royal

authority.

While Father Xavier was compiling this remarkable piece of authorship,

the Iroquois descended in warlike array upon the somewhat friendly

disposed Illinois Indians, in whose midst Fort Crèvecoeur had been

built. The suspicious Indian mind immediately connected the advent of

their enemies with the building of the fort, and regarded the little

garrison with distrust. Tontz, at the instance of Father Xavier,

presented himself to their chief, and offered to do anything in his

power to prove his friendly intentions. The chief accepted his services,

and sent him as ambassador to inquire into the cause of the coming of

the Iroquois. This mission had nearly been his last, for Tontz was

received with stabs, and hardly allowed to give the message of the

chief. His ill treatment at the hands of their enemies did not reassure

the suspicious Illinois, who ordered Tontz to immediately evacuate the

fort and return with his forces to the country whence he had come. In

his wounded condition such a journey was extremely hazardous, and it

must have been with grave doubts as to his surviving it that Father

Xavier took temporary command of the returning expedition.

It was the spring of 1681. Father Xavier had been absent nearly two

years. Father Ignatius missed him sadly--all the life and fire seemed to

have gone out of the mission. Even Marie moved about her work in a

listless, languid way, which contrasted markedly with her once lithe and

rapid movements. They had not once heard from the explorers, and Father

Ignatius shook his head sadly, and feared that he would never see his

energetic colleague again. The Black Beaver had slept through the last

months of winter, and, as with the general awakening of spring the bears

came out of their dens, and the snakes sunned themselves near their

holes, he too stretched himself lazily and awoke to a consciousness of

what was passing around him. In the first place something was amiss with

Marie. When she came to the wigwam it was not to chat merrily of the

affairs of the mission. She did not braid as many baskets as formerly,

and no longer showed him new patterns in shell mosaic on the lids of

little boxes. He was a curious old man, and he soon drew her secret from

her. Marie loved Père François Xavier, and he had gone.

The Black Beaver went down to the mission one evening and had a long

talk with Father Ignatius. He ascertained first that Père François

Xavier really meant to return; then, with all the dignity of an old

feudal baron, he offered Marie as a bride for his spiritual son. Very

gently the good Père Ignace explained that Romish priests were so nearly

in the kingdom of heaven that the question of marrying and giving in

marriage was not for them to consider. The Black Beaver went home, told

no one of his visit, and for several days indulged in the worst drunken

spree of which he was capable. When he came out of it he announced to

his wife and Marie that he was going away on his annual trip for stores,

but that they need not accompany him.

Marie knelt as usual in the little church on the evening of the day on

which her father had gone away. Père François Xavier had replaced the

cameo on the Virgin's breast before he went; it was a safer place than

the vault of a bank would have been, had such a thing existed in the

country. There was no one in the island sacrilegious enough to rob the

church. Marie had gazed at the stone each time that she repeated the

prayer which he had taught her. She looked up now, and it was gone.

Half-way upon their northward route, Tontz's band were struggling

wearily on when they were met by a solitary Indian, who, though he

carried a long bow, had not an unfriendly aspect. He eyed the little

band silently as they passed by him in defile, then ran after them, and

inquired if the Père François Xavier, of Mission St. Ignace, was not of

their number. He was informed that the reverend father had remained a

short distance behind to write in his journal, but that he would soon

overtake them; and he was warmly pressed to remain with them if he had

messages for the priest, and give them to him when he arrived; but the

Indian shook his head and passed on in the direction in which they told

him he would be likely to meet Father Xavier. The party halted and

waited hour after hour for the priest, but he did not come. Finally two

went back in search, and found him lying upon the sod with upturned

face--the place where he had written last in his journal marked by a few

drops of his heart's blood, and the long shaft of an arrow protruding

from his breast. They drew it out, but the arrow-head had been attached,

as is the custom in some Indian tribes, by means of a soft wax, which is

melted by the warmth of the body, and it remained in the heart. Father

Xavier had been dead some hours. They buried him where they found him,

and proceeded on their march. Tontz recovered on the way. They reached

Michillimackinack in safety, where they were joined two months later by

La Salle; and the world knows the result of his second expedition.

Little Marie learned by degrees to smile again, and in after years

married another arrow-head maker, as swarthy and as shaggy as the Black

Beaver. There is no moral to my story except that of poetic justice.

Père François Xavier had sown a plentiful crop of stratagems, and he

learned in the lonely forest that "Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he

also reap."

Meanwhile to all but you, my readers, the Crèvecoeur cameo remains as

great a mystery as ever.

LIZZIE W. CHAMPNEY.

MONSIEUR DELILLE.

NOTE-BOOK OF A SECRETARY OF LEGATION.

The newspapers of Berlin announced the arrival of a superior artist, the

celebrated M. Delille of the Théâtre Français de Paris, where he had

played first parts. Born and bred in the French metropolis, it was

believed he would not only open new sources of amusement to the public,

but add elegance to the French even of the highest regions. Everybody

was talking of him. His acquisition, rendered possible only by a

_différend_ with the Paris manager, was a triumph for Berlin. I was

quite curious to see him.

One day I stepped into Rey's perfumery shop to buy some cologne water.

The rooms were crowded with fashionable ladies looking over the

glittering and fragrant assortment of _savons de toilette_, _pâtes

d'amandes_, _huiles essentielles_, _eaux de vie aromatisées_, etc. While

making my purchase, a very handsome fellow came in who excited unusual

attention. His toilette _recherchée_, his noble but modest air made one

look at him again and again. He spoke with Rey in a voice so harmonious

and in such French as one does not hear every day even in Paris. I

heard a lady whisper to another: "Ah, voilà qui est parlez Français

(that is the way to speak French)." The stranger was certainly

_somebody_, or so many furtive glances would not have been cast at him.

I might, by inquiry, easily have ascertained who he was, but I found a

kind of pleasure in prolonging my curiosity. The Emperor Nicholas of

Russia was daily expected. He was supposed to be the handsomest man in

the world. But he was six feet two, taller than this person. The Grand

Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin had arrived the previous afternoon; but, it

seemed to me, no German could speak French with just that modulation.

The Prince de Joinville was expected. Perhaps it was he.

"Will you kindly give yourself the trouble to send the box to M.

Delille, Friedrich strasse 30?"

Ah ha! _Le voilà!_ There was my man. Strange I had not thought of him.

I had a season ticket at the French theatre for the purpose of learning

French, and I had been as much entertained as instructed (I mean

instructed in the language). Every one knows a Frenchman can infuse airy

elegance into a button, bestow a marketable value upon a straw, breathe

_esprit_ into a feather, and make ten dishes out of a nettle-top. So the

poet can transform any incident into an attractive vaudeville. The

tender _situation dramatique_, the humorous _coup de théâtre_, _the jeu

d'esprit_ sparkling up into music, the elevated sentiment, the merciless

exposure of vice and folly, the purest and noblest morality, largely

mixed with an ostentatious ridicule of every sacred truth, and an

absolute disregard of every principle of decency and duty, give strange

glimpses into French social life.

As a school for the French student, however, the theatre is a useful

institution. For French has got to be learned somehow or other. A

dancing master of my acquaintance used always to commence his course by

a short address to his class in which he remarked: "Mesdemoiselles! La

chose la plus importante du monde c'est la danse!" (the most important

thing in the world is dancing.) Perhaps he was right. In that case I

must add that the next most important thing in the world is the French

language; at least to a foreigner on the continent of Europe. Without

that you do not know anything. You are a straw man. You are a deaf and

dumb creature. Ladies gaze at you with compassion, gentlemen with

contempt, children with wonder, while waiters quiz you, cheat you, and

make the imaginary mill behind your back.

Impressed with the inconvenience of this position, I had long ago

commenced a siege of the French language. I studied it _a fond_. I

looked into every _y_ and _en_. I had attended the French theatre as a

school, and profited by the performances. The company was excellent,

particularly one young girl, Mlle. Fontaine. Her playing was

unsurpassable. She knew always when to go on and when to stop. Perfect

simplicity, a taste never at fault, delightful humor, a high tragic

power; to these add a lovely face, a beautiful form, grace in every

movement, a voice just as sweet as a voice could be, and you have a dim

idea of Mlle. Fontaine. In her private life, moreover, she enjoyed the

reputation of being without reproach. The whole world repeated of her

the old saying: "Elle n'a qu'un défaut, celui de mettre de l'esprit

partout!" (She has but one fault: she touches nothing without importing

to it a charm of her own.)

When M. Delille came out, Mlle. Fontaine and he generally played

together, amid thundering plaudits of overflowing audiences. Delille

himself was a perfect artist. The French theatre was in its glory.

One morning, hard at work in my office, I was surprised by a card,

"Monsieur Delille, du Théâtre Français." The gentleman wished to have

the honor of a few moments' conversation.

The theatre and all the various personages of its imaginary world were

so completely apart from my real life, that I could scarcely have been

more surprised at receiving a card from Louis XIV., or hearing that the

General Napoleon Bonaparte was waiting at the door, and desired the

honor of my acquaintance.

M. Delille entered, hat in hand, with bow and smile, as I had so often

seen him do in the theatre drawing-rooms. We had a pleasant chat. He

spoke no English, which forced upon me the necessity of exhibiting my

dazzling French. He complimented me upon it. I told him it was

principally owing to himself and to Mlle. Fontaine. This brought out the

object of his visit. He was going to be married. He had been in America,

which emboldened him to consider himself in some sort my countryman, and

to request the honor of my presence at the ceremony.

"And the lady?"

"_Monsieur_," he said, "_peut-on douter_? (can you doubt?) Mlle.

Fontaine! You are to come to the French church at 3. You will, then,

will you not, do us the honor to dine at our lodgings, Friedrich

strasse, No. 30?"

I returned his own answer:

"Monsieur, peut-on douter?"

At the hour appointed I was at the church. I found quite an

assembly--artists, painters, sculptors, actors, critics, poets,

newspaper writers, several members of the corps diplomatique, some

officers, a few gentlemen of the court, etc.

The bride and groom appeared very simply attired. Their deportment was

perfect. The ceremony was impressive. In a short time the holy bands had

made them one. There was no acting about either of them. M. Delille was

pale; Mademoiselle still paler. Their emotion was obviously genuine.

Some folks think when actors tremble or shed tears, it must be only

acting; and that they can get married or die as easily in the world as

on the stage. This is a mistake. Getting really married is as serious a

step to them as to you; and they know that real dying is a very

different thing from those exits which they make at the end of the

tragedy. They struggle with life, and walk forward toward death just as

do their fellow-creatures, who preach from the pulpit, speak in the

Senate, or congregate on the exchange. The rich banker; the

self-important diplomat; the general, covered with orders; the minister,

who holds the helm of state; the emperor, the queen, who deign to honor

the representation with their presence, smile when they behold

themselves reflected on the stage. But there is not so much difference,

as they are pleased to suppose, between themselves and their theatre

colleagues. Shakespeare says:

All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players.

The question is, which of these men and women are the best? Perhaps the

theatre statesman would have administered the affairs of his country

with more wisdom; the dramatic banker would have made his money more

honestly and used it with greater discretion; the stage general would

have conducted the war with more humanity and success; and the senators,

in "Julius Cæsar" and "Damon and Pythias," would have been less open to

bribery and corruption than the gentlemen who have really occupied

similar positions in the world. Perhaps, if M. Delille had been Admiral

Blank, he would have looked at his chart, and not run his ship upon that

rock in the Mediterranean on a clear summer morning. Perhaps, if Mme.

Delille had been Empress of France, she would not have striven quite so

hard to bring on the last war with Prussia.

From the church to the lodgings of Monsieur and Madame Delille. On

passing through the entrance, in Berlin generally a way for horses and

carriages, you would scarcely expect such elegant apartments. The moment

you crossed the threshold you were in another world. Everything rich,

tasteful, new; the walls superbly papered; the woodwork painted like

snow and varnished like a mirror: Brussels carpet, then not over-common

in the richest houses; lounges, _chaises longues_, sofas, divans; a

strong smell of Russia binding from splendid volumes on the table, and

gleaming from mahogany book-cases; beautiful paintings and engravings; a

lavish display of clocks on tables and writing-desks; one, looking down

from a loftier pedestal, clicked audibly the seconds and struck the

quarters with a solemn sound, like the booming of some far-off old

cathedral bell hanging in the clouds. Everything told of the new married

man: everything new, bright, unexceptionable, faultless, perfect--like

the new wife, the new husband, the new affection, the new hopes, yet

unexposed to the wear and tear of years.

I was among the first. My host and hostess awaited their guests.

Mademoiselle--I beg her pardon--madame received me with graceful

cordiality. The company immediately began to appear, principally

performers whose faces I had never seen before, except on the stage,

associated with incidents, words, actions, intrigues, and scenes of the

poet's imagination. I enjoyed as if I had been a boy, recognizing the

various characters whose pranks, joys, and sorrows I had followed with

so much interest: the wicked "jeune homme à la mode," the bewitching

"femme de chambre," the _vieux_ "général sous l'empire," the rich

_banquier de Paris_, the handsome, dangerous _guardien_, the naughty

husband who had exclaimed, "Ciel ma femme!" the jealous lover, the

hard-hearted landlord, and the _comique_ of the troupe, upon whose

mobile face I could scarcely look without laughing when he asked me:

"Voulez-vous bien avoir la bonté de passer le sel?" There were present

several from the court: the Marquis de B----, who in private theatricals

at the King's had distinguished himself; M. le Comte de S----, supposed

to be a little _impressionné_ by Mlle. Zoé, the last successful

débutante, and now among the guests.

Mme. Delille looked like a lady born, and did the honors of her house

like one. The servant announced the dinner, and we adjourned to the

dining-room.

The dinner was _on ne peut pas mieux_. I sat between the lady of the

house and Mlle. Zoé. One of the French arts is that of placing people at

ease in society. It is not uncommon to meet persons not wanting in

intelligence, yet who, unless you draw them out, will simply remain in

the whole evening. My charming neighbors drew me out immediately. They

possessed a magnetism which made talking, and in one's best style, as

easy as flying to a bird. Mlle. Zoé said a great many brilliant and

surprising things; but Mme. Delille's manners and conversation were far

superior. I found in her a thoughtful, cultivated, balanced mind,

inspiring genuine esteem. I was struck by her views of political events

and characters. She touched lightly and skilfully upon various

personages with wisdom and humor, but with charity. She referred to her

own position in life as an actress in a way which interested me

extremely, and she found opportunity amid the miscellaneous conversation

to relate her history, and how she came to adopt a profession contrary

to her taste; and a more touching story I never heard. The conversation

even ascended to higher subjects. I was not a little astonished to find

in a young and universally flattered French actress a noble-minded,

superior woman, who had suffered deeply, and thought seriously and

spiritually upon subjects generally considered irreconcileable with her

profession.

The dinner was finished; the nuts and the jokes were cracked; the café,

the chasse-café, the enigmas, the conundrums, the anecdotes, the songs,

the _tableaux-vivants_ followed each other. My amiable hostess seemed to

think I must have had enough of it, and, with her graceful

acquiescence, I stole out after a confidential pantomimic leave-taking

with her and my host.

I became subsequently well acquainted with Monsieur and Madame Delille,

and have seldom known more interesting persons. Occasionally they

invited me to a quiet family dinner, where I always met one or two

distinguished guests; and sometimes I had the pleasure of having them at

my house in a quiet way. They both rose more and more in my esteem the

more I observed their inner life and character. As years rolled on, my

visits were enlivened by the sight of small drums, trumpets, horses with

their tails pulled out, and dolls with their noses knocked off.

Sometimes very pretty little cherubs peeped in at the door, or were

invited for half an hour to the dinner table.

The world went on with its ways. More than one throne was vacated and

filled anew. Great knotty questions of diplomacy rose and disappeared.

Mehemet Ali, M. Thiers, the King of Hanover, Metternich, the Chartist,

the anti-corn law league, Sir Robert and Mr. Cobden filled the

newspapers. Nations growled at each other like bulldogs, and we had wars

and rumors of wars a plenty.

One day who should come in but Monsieur and Madame Delille, the very

picture of a perfectly happy man and wife. They came to bid me good-by.

He had made his fortune, wound up his affairs with the theatre, and

abandoned his profession for ever. Madame was at the summit of earthly

felicity. She spoke with inexpressible delight of the change in her

life. She had longed so often to quit the theatre, and now at last her

dream was realized. M. Delille was going to buy a cottage in the south

of France, and to be perfectly happy with his dear wife and four

children. Amid oranges, lemons, and grapes, beneath the blue summer sky,

surrounded by flowers, the waves of the beautiful Mediterranean breaking

at his feet, he intended to pass the rest of his days in unclouded

peace and joy. He had worked all his life, and now he was going to take

his reward.