Martha said nothing to her mother and sisters of her encounter with the
princess. She had a way of locking very close in her heart her most
personal and sacred feelings, and all that related to the princess was
sacred to her now. During her earlier years she had so often been
laughed at for an enthusiast that she had learned to keep back what she
felt most strongly; and for that very reason, perhaps, the intensity of
her feelings grew greater as she grew older. The enthusiasm of her life
was for her only brother, whom she worshiped with a blind idolatry of
the extent of which even he was unaware. There had been one or two other
divinities in her horizon, always second to Harold; but at this period
of her life she was suffering from a sense of disappointment in these
as, one after the other, they had come short of her ardent expectations.
She was now, therefore, in the exact state of mind to take on a new
object of worship. This the princess had become.
It was not surprising that Martha’s ideal had been so repeatedly
unrealized, for it was a difficult one. She had suffered acutely from
her former disappointments, and had even resolved never to pin her faith
and hope on another woman. But the princess was not to be resisted.
Martha felt that even if her goddess never spoke to her again, she was
worthy of all adoration.
As the young girl drove through the streets of Paris in the early
morning of the day following her brief interview with the princess, her
heart was very happy.
In appearance Martha was small and rather plain; and no one would have
noticed her, perhaps, but for the concentration of expression on her
face as she looked out of the carriage window on her way to her atelier
in the Latin Quarter. The people abroad at that hour were not of a class
to pay much attention to such a look on a girl’s face. The little army
of street-cleaners, occupying their brief hour with busy industry to
produce the beautiful effect of gay cleanliness which the world enjoyed
later in the day, had no time to notice Martha, and she was as unaware
of them. Even the ice on the figures in the fountains of the Place de la
Concorde, which she generally admired in passing, she did not so much as
see to-day. The “cold sea-maidens” wore an unusually beautiful veil of
mist, made by the freezing spray, and Martha might have got an
impression for some future picture if she had studied it with the early
sunlight on it.
But she was thinking only of the princess as she drove along and crossed
the bridge and entered old Paris. Here, too, all was familiar, for
Martha had taken this drive daily for months, and there was nothing to
disturb her preoccupation until she reached the Invalides, where her
hero-worshiping soul never failed to offer a passing tribute of awe to
the ashes of Napoleon.
As she turned into a cross street farther on, a little funeral
procession met her. This sight, too, was familiar; but no wont and usage
could keep Martha from being deeply moved as often as she witnessed the
pitiful little ceremonial which attends the burial of the very poor in
Paris.
It is usually in the early morning that these funerals occur, as there
seems to be a demand upon the poor to give up to the more prosperous
even the space in the streets which they, with their dead, lay claim to
for so short a time. This was a child’s funeral, or, rather, it was the
funeral of two children. There was neither hearse nor carriage. Each
little coffin was borne upon a wretched bier carried by rough and shabby
men, who appeared cross and reluctant in their miserable, faded
trappings of mourning. Looking carefully, Martha discovered that there
was a separate family of mourners to each little bier; and as the whole
procession was under the command of a tall old man, who held his
shoulders very erect, as if to atone for a limp in one leg, she
comprehended that this bedizened old undertaker, with the ragged crape
on his cocked hat and the dirty bunches of black and white ribbons on
the end of his long staff of office, had consolidated his duties,
probably at a slight and very welcome discount to his poor patrons, and
was burying the dead of two families at once. Directly after him came
the bearers of the light coffin, and just behind it were five little
children, four girls and a boy, walking abreast, and dressed in
mourning. This mourning consisted of hastily fashioned aprons made of
dull black calico, and so carelessly fitted that the many-colored
undergarments of the children showed plainly at every opening. The
children were regular little steps, the boy being the youngest; and cold
as it was, they were all bareheaded. Each carried a sprig of yellow
bloom, which resembled, if indeed it was not, the mustard-flower. This
they held very stiffly and correctly in their right hands, and they
walked with an air of the utmost decorum. Behind them came their father
and mother, the former looking more apathetic than sad, and the latter
carrying with some complacency the dignity of a dingy and draggled crape
veil, in frank contrast to a blue-and-green plaid dress. She was taller
than her husband, and leaned awkwardly upon his arm, keeping no time
whatever to his shuffling gait. Then came the other coffin and the
second group of mourners, who were evidently not so fashionable as the
first; for they made no effort at mourning, and walked after their
little dead one with nothing like a flower, and in their common
working-clothes.