the thankless office of a stepmother must fully realize the magnitude
of the task and the measure of strength which she can bring to the
fulfillment of her arduous duty. She is to conquer a child’s heart,
which is defended by a strong garrison of hostile insinuations, and by
constant watchfulness guard it against continual attacks; she must
daily wage a fierce warfare against the stupid, the thoughtless and the
wicked people, in which she will continually receive aching wounds; she
must struggle and bleed for years, alone and unaided, but at last
victory will be hers, for in the battle against evil and injustice love
always triumphs because it is the strongest of the three. If the future
wife feels that her powers will not be equal to this conflict, then let
her remain away from the house where children await a foster-mother;
she would render it a hell for them and for herself. But if the goal
seems to her attainable and the road not too rough, let her confidently
take up the cross, for her reward will be rich and enviable. She will
work miracles such as can be wrought by love alone. The children will
gradually see the living image of the stepmother merge into the fading
one of the dead mother, and will no longer be able to separate the one
from the other. They will always hold the stepmother in grateful
remembrance as the angel whom God sent to the languishing Ishmael, when
poor Hagar could no longer obtain water for her child. Perhaps, in
later years, when the second mother has followed the first, foolish
people will speak in the customary way of stepmothers, in the presence
of the children, whose heads already have the snow of years. Then they
will—and, judging from your letter, madame, I think you, too, would do
the same—then they will look upward with tearful eyes to the portrait
of the dead stepmother, whispering: “Forgive them, for they know not
what they do!”
“PAS DE CHANCE!”
The dissecting room in the old Hôtel Dieu, in Paris, which was torn
down in the year 1877, was a strange and gruesome place. To reach it,
one was obliged to go upstairs and down, past the wards occupied by the
sick, through spacious, lofty vestibules, echoing corridors paved with
tiles, turning now to the right, now to the left, and across covered
wooden bridges, spanning the little arm of the Seine which flowed
between the two buildings of the hospital, and, after a walk of many
minutes, finally descend into the spacious subterranean chambers, which
were the most ancient portion of a structure erected many centuries
ago, and dating from the early part of the Middle Ages. On reaching the
foot of the worn stone steps leading to the dissecting room, one found
one’s self in a narrow, unpaved outer cellar, lighted by a grated
window above, and containing at one end a low, rusty iron door as broad
as it was high. A person familiar with the place opened this door by
turning a rude handle in the center, which moved a heavy, creaking
double-bolt inside, and entered a low vaulted chamber about fifteen
paces long and ten wide, which was very insufficiently lighted by two
square grated windows, which pierced the thick wall directly under the
vaulted ceiling, and which could be opened only when the Seine was low.
The cellars of the Hôtel Dieu were below the surface of the river, from
which it was separated by its strong walls, overgrown with moss and
blackened by age, and when it rose ever so little, one could look from
the lower portions of the windows of the dissecting-room several inches
into the turbid waves of the river. Usually several gaslights burned
here, filling the place with a bright glare, in which human beings and
all objects assumed unpleasantly sharp outlines and a livid,
disagreeable color, while dark shadows, like silhouettes, were thrown
upon the floor and walls. But it was a fitting illumination of the
place and its contents. The blackish-gray walls were always covered
with a clammy moisture, which, on the side facing the river, gathered
here and there into thick drops, that slowly, gradually trickled down
on the slippery, dirty marble floor, and suggested, even to the
observer least susceptible to sentimental fancies, the sorrowful
impression of tears, held back by a strong will, yet slowly oozing
forth. On the windowless side of the room was a wash basin set in the
wall, supplied with a faucet and waste pipe. Several pieces of soap lay
on it, and, upon a nail at the side, hung towels of doubtful
cleanliness, and a dilapidated yellow tablet which contained, in faded
letters, the rules of the dissecting room. On the opposite side six
tables were ranged in a row, above each of which a gas jet descended
from the ceiling; the first, of the usual shape, held a pair of scales
and a number of rusty weights. The brass balances, soiled with horrible
fat and blood stains, showed the purpose for which they were used—the
weighing of diseased portions of the human body. The form of the other
five was peculiar. The top was long, narrow, slightly concave, like a
trough covered with tin, a little inclined, wider at the upper end than
at the lower, where it was perforated by a hole leading into a metal
pipe, which discharged its contents into a tin pail standing under the
narrow end of the table. These were the dissecting tables, “Morgagni’s
tables,” as we used to call them in our technical jargon. Upon them,
surrounded by knives, scissors, chisels and hammers of singular form,
lay cold, rigid human forms, in which the disciples of science searched
with sacred curiosity to surprise, in the mysterious depths of the
organs, the secret of life. On the wall at the head of each table hung
a little blackboard, on which was fastened a label bearing the name,
age, and date of death of the body beneath. At the back of the
dissecting room was a glass door, opening into an adjoining chamber,
much smaller and lighted only by a single window. Two laths, painted
black, formed a cross extending from the floor to the ceiling on the
side wall, and several roughly-made coffins stood on the floor, which
was thickly covered with aromatic pine shavings. This was the death
chamber. After dissection the bodies were brought here, wrapped in a
linen sheet supplied by the hospital, and laid in the coffin to await
burial. If within the next twelve hours relatives came to claim the
body, it was delivered to them; if not, it was conveyed the following
morning in the hearse to the overseer of the poor, and buried in the
paupers’ ground in the cemetery of Père la Chaise. The only living
creature in these uncanny rooms, during the time when no dissections
were being made, was a beautiful white cat, which sprang gaily to meet
every one who entered and, mewing and purring, pressed and twisted
around him, and the master of the affectionate creature, a little,
thin, one-eyed old man, who coughed continually and had lived here
thirty years, yet in the midst of the scene of constant sorrow and
destruction, in which he worked, maintained so cheerful a spirit that
he was always humming a gay little song while preparing the bodies for
dissection, or washing, sewing them up, and wrapping them in sheets
after it. He assumed a serious, nay, even melancholy mien, only when
the relatives of any corpse came to carry away their dead, for during
the many years of his sorrowful occupation, the worthy man had retained
sufficient courtesy and consideration not to wound the feelings of the
mourners by displaying a face of business-like indifference or of
cheerfulness.
Most of the physicians and students who visited the Hôtel Dieu were in
the habit, at the close of the morning call, of going down to the
dissecting room to see “what there was new.” In the same way the
habitué of the theater, after witnessing the performance, goes on the
stage to cast a glance behind the scenes. One morning in May, 1877,
following this custom, I entered the subterranean chamber just
described. The cat was sitting in the corner, washing her fur, old Jean
was busy with some empty coffins in the death chamber, one of the
dissecting tables was empty, while on the other four lay subjects.
Around the first body, that of a strong old man, who had died of a
brain disease, stood a group of young people, some with white aprons
and blood-stained hands, others with hats on their heads, gloved hands,
and cigars in their mouths, eagerly discussing the ravages which the
knife had just disclosed, and the phenomena caused during the progress
of the illness. At the second and third tables the work was already
done. A hasty glance at the cruelly emaciated bodies and the organs on
the table sufficed to reveal the cause of death. “Consumption!” It is
so common a disease, the ravages it produces in the organism are so
often seen, that people do not linger over it. So I passed on without
delay to the fifth table, the last in the row, and perceived that it
contained a corpse still undisturbed, the sight of which instantly
filled me with sympathy. It was the body of a woman, very young, and of
remarkable beauty, whom death must have snatched away in the midst of
health. No long sickness could have preceded it, for the outlines of
the form were full, round, almost sensuous; illness had had no time to
caricature the noble lines of the figure by the ugly angles of
emaciation. The skin, in spite of the horrible chill which it sent
through the whole frame to the heart at the lightest touch of the
finger-tips, was as smooth and fine as velvet, and the hue so
dazzlingly white that it had the iridescent tints of mother-of-pearl.
The features of the oval face had assumed, in the last agony, an
expression of suffering which death had stereotyped. The lips were
slightly parted, revealing teeth which resembled transparent white
enamel. The dark eyes were wide open, and the dull, glassy pupils gazed
at me with the leaden stare of a corpse. The shining black hair was
gathered at the back of the head into a knot held by several pins,
which were half slipping out, and a few waving locks still rested
lightly on the smooth brow, as an unsuspecting little child plays
happily around its dead mother. The shadows of death shrouding the
beautiful form had not wholly effaced the bloom of youth. As it lay in
its chaste, pure, classic loveliness, one might believe that he had
before him a Greek statue carved from Parian marble. To examine the
body on all sides I walked around the table and, in doing so, made a
discovery which increased the interest already awakened by the mute,
rigid form. The right arm of the corpse bore on the upper surface
several tattooed inscriptions. I read in one line: “Marie Balok,” below
the date “1876,” and below this, in a third line, the words: “Pas de
chance!” (No chance.)
“Pas de chance!” It seemed as if these words contained the sorrowful
index of the hapless human life, which a few hours before had found its
pitiful end in a hospital bed. The label at the head of the table
informed me that “Marie Balok” had been the name of the body and that
she was not more than seventeen. Old Jean, in reply to my questions,
could tell me that the beautiful Marie had been brought to the hospital
the night before and had died a few minutes after. She was at a dancing
hall in the outer boulevards, and, from jealousy, made a furious scene
with a young man; in the midst of the outburst of her rage she suddenly
sank fainting; when they were unable to revive her by dashing cold
water on her and using scent bottles, two of her women friends put her
into a carriage and brought her to the hospital, where they gave the
physician on duty the explanation Jean repeated. The girl had died
without recovering her consciousness, and early in the morning she had
been brought down to the dissecting room.
This much the label and old Jean could tell me. But far more than
either was revealed by the words tattooed on the girl’s arm: “Pas de
chance!” I had before me the title of a biographical romance, and, with
little difficulty, read in the dim eyes, on the pale lips and
snow-white form of the corpse the romance itself from the first to the
last chapter. Marie Balok, her name proved it, was the child of
foreigners, who had come to Paris as ten thousand other foreigners do
every year to seek a more favorable place for the battle of life. Her
father was a workman in Belleville, or on the slopes of Montmartre.
Marie had grown up in dirt and poverty, played during the day in the
dust and the gutters of the streets of the suburb, and at night went
home to find a crust of bread and a pallet in the corner of the room
with her parents. She was ten or eleven years old when the insurrection
of the Commune occurred. Her father put on the uniform of the
insurgents, her mother followed the battalion as a vivandière or a
nurse. Eight or nine weeks passed like a whirlwind, and ended with her
mother’s leaning against a wall one beautiful May morning and being
shot as a petroleuse, and her father’s first being driven to Versailles
with blows from the butt ends of muskets, and then sent to New
Caledonia.
Marie was left alone in the world, without relatives or acquaintances,
like a young swallow thrust from the nest, which must perish miserably
in the dust unless Heaven works a miracle in its behalf. The beginning
of this miracle was apparently wrested from iron-hearted fate. Marie
neither starved to death in summer, nor froze during the following
winter. A family of work people, poor and wretched themselves, received
the still poorer and more wretched child, and gave it a seat at the
scantily spread table and a place on the floor of the bare room. It
learned to do something, sewing, embroidery, or flower-making, and soon
earned so much that it was no longer compelled to accept the favors of
the kindhearted neighbors as alms. Thus Marie spent several years until
she had become a blooming, beautiful girl of fifteen. People cannot be
beautiful, young, and poor in Paris, unpunished. A temptation sprang
from every stone in the pavement, and the finger of evil beckoned to
her at every street corner. Soon she no longer went to her work alone,
nor returned home without a companion. She found it inconvenient to
live with her benefactors, and one day left them to go to a garret room
in a shabby house in Montmartre, with a lover in blouse and silk cap.
Now, scarcely beyond childhood, she began to lead the life of a
solitary Parisian working girl. Toil during the day, in the evening a
ball, the cancan till midnight, blows from the friend, hunger, rags,
misery, singing and merriment, and withal, total forgetfulness of the
past and the future. If a friend carried palpable jealousy too far, she
dismissed him unceremoniously with a scornful shrug of the shoulders,
and sought another, with whom she remained until the vague, burning
longing for happiness and contentment, which filled her heart, urged
her once more into new and unknown paths.
It was in the summer of the year 1876 when, one Sunday, she went on an
excursion to St. Germain with the friend whom she was making happy by
her affection. These summer Sunday excursions to the charming places
near the city are the object of longing to all Parisian work-women, who
go fairly crazy with joy when they have the prospect of skipping about
on the grass during a whole warm, sunny day, gathering flowers,
catching butterflies, and singing sentimental songs in the arbor of a
country tavern over a bottle of wine. Marie had been gay to the verge
of recklessness all day long, had laughed and chattered and sung till
she was hoarse and thirsty; in the evening she found herself, with her
friend, in a restaurant of St. Germain; they were alone in the tavern,
and emptied one glass after another of the cheap wine of the
neighborhood. The friend, who had taken off his coat and rolled up his
shirt sleeves to cool himself, was tattooed on the arm like most Paris
workmen. There, in various colors, was a flaming heart, two hearts
transfixed by a huge arrow as if on a spit, and several names, dates,
and inscriptions, such as “Ever Thine!” or “Faithful unto Death!” Marie
saw these signs and figures, and a reckless thought darted through her
mind. “Tattoo my arm, too!” she cried, and the workman, bursting into a
loud laugh, asked what he should tattoo. “First, my name; so that I can
try whether it hurts.”
No sooner said than done. Some indigo was quickly obtained, Marie had a
needle, and the workman went to work at once. At every prick Marie
uttered a faint cry and shrank away a little, but in the pauses she
laughed and drank, and the workman did not stop until in large,
distinct letters appeared the name: “Marie Balok.”
“Shall I tattoo anything else?”
“Yes, the date.”
Five minutes after the date, “1876,” was inscribed beneath the name.
While the workman was rubbing indigo into the little wounds, from each
of which a tiny drop of blood was oozing, the landlord brought in a
fresh bottle of wine, and Marie soothed the slight pain of the
operation with another drink. The man eyed his work approvingly, and
then asked:
“Are you satisfied?”
“Yes, my dear fellow.”
“Don’t you want to add something to it? A name and a date—that’s silly.
We’ll make it more amusing. Shall I draw an emblem?”
“No.”
“Or a motto?”
“Stop, you’re right. A motto—that’s it. But what shall it be? Let me
think.”
The workman proposed some of the usual amorous phrases, but Marie would
not accept them. The usual relapse had followed the exuberant
mirthfulness of the day, and she now sank into a melancholy reverie.
Perhaps, for the first time in her life, she looked back upon her past
and found it miserable beyond measure. A wicked fairy seemed to have
sat beside her cradle. Every phase of her existence appeared to be
under the influence of a curse. Born in poverty, orphaned, growing up
in penury, living in shame, vegetating without a future, without a
purpose, without pleasure,—this was her past, her present, her future
destiny, and her eyes involuntarily filled with tears, as she examined
this dark, hideous picture, destitute of light and beauty. And when her
friend roused her from her sorrowful reverie with the exclamation:
“Then find a motto yourself, if you don’t like mine!” She condensed the
substance of her life, as it presented itself to her mental vision,
into a phrase which, in this application, lost its triviality, and
charged itself with profound desolation as if with electricity, as with
a sorrowful smile she said to the workman: “Tattoo Pas de chance! That
is the real motto of my life.”
No chance! It was not only the motto of her life, it was also a
prophecy. Poor Marie was to have no happiness to the end. Barely
seventeen, in the dawn of her young life, only a few months after she
had had the sorrowful, resigned motto inscribed upon her arm, she died
in a hospital bed. This was the story of beautiful Marie, as, standing
beside her lifeless body, I imagined it. Was it really her history? I
cannot warrant it, but it is probable. But it is certain that the
lovely young girl lay dead before me on the table, and that on the
pearly skin of her plump, nobly-moulded arm, as if written in blue,
phosphorescent characters by the finger of a malicious demon, were the
words: “Pas de chance!”
The dissection showed that Marie had suffered from a defect in the
valvular action of the heart. This explained her sudden death in a
moment of passionate excitement. I waited until all was over, the other
physicians had left the room, and old Jean came forward with his big
needle and coarse woolen thread to attend to the body. Now I closed the
beautiful Marie’s open eyes, still staring at me with a strange, vacant
glance, and slowly withdrew. As I closed the heavy iron door of the
dissecting room behind me, it seemed as if, from the last table at the
end of the hall, a faint, ghostly voice whispered in my ears: “Pas de
chance!”
HOW THE FOX HUNTER FARED IN ENGLAND.
Baron K. is one of the pleasantest young fellows I ever met. In fact,
he possesses the rarest combination of all the qualities which cannot
fail to make a man the favorite of every circle. He captivates women by
his twenty-five years, a handsome, slender figure, expressive dark
eyes, and a coquettish little moustache; men he wins by the chivalrous
frankness of his nature, and his heartfelt and therefore contagious
cheerfulness. He speaks several languages with great fluency, is an
admirable conversationalist, who would appear to advantage in any
Parisian drawing-room; he dances admirably, sings well in a fine
baritone voice, plays excellently on the piano, and does not easily
find a rival as a horseman, fencer or shot. Aristocratic birth and a
fortune which, according to Continental ideas, is considerable, placed
him from early youth in a position which enabled him to develop his
social talents and put his light into a suitable candlestick.
I made his acquaintance in London, in the spring of the year 1874. He
had apparently given himself up completely to the swelling flood-tide
of the “season,” and let it bear him unresistingly away. His days and
nights were spent at the clubs, in Hyde Park, at dinners, theaters, and
evening parties. He was rarely in any costume except a dress suit and a
white cravat, and if any one wished to be sure of finding him in his
elegant lodgings in Bruton street, he was obliged to go there between
five and eleven o’clock in the morning and feel no hesitation about
rousing him from his sleep. An introduction from his ambassador, Count
B., secured him admittance to the best circles, and there were few of
the most prominent families where he could not be found at least once a
fortnight, singing Hungarian folk songs, playing the czardas, and
awakening universal enthusiasm. The “nice Hungarian” often formed the
subject of very animated conversations between young and older ladies,
and once, when contrary to English custom, he appeared in the
drawing-room of Alderman Sir Frederick Fr. in the rich,
gold-embroidered uniform of a Honved Hussar lieutenant, he created the
greatest sensation, and even a young Tamil prince who was present,
attired in a gay silk caftan, with a girdle of gold brocade and a
cachemire shawl turban, in which blazed a magnificent ruby, could not
divert the attention of the company from our baron. Though the favorite
of so many circles, received everywhere with open arms, and loaded with
half a dozen invitations for every evening, Baron K. showed a very
marked preference for the home of Mr. George F.
The master of the house, a member of Parliament for one of the central
counties of England, is one of the most eminent sportsmen in the
country; he has broken all his limbs, and once very nearly his neck, in
fox-hunting, won the Queen’s cup at Wimbledon, was one of the champions
of his county versus the neighboring one, at cricket, fifteen years
ago, and if he did not conquer, it was only because he had the
misfortune of being pitted against the champion of the United Kingdom;
but to succumb with honor to such an antagonist is more glorious than
to conquer a Mr. Nobody. Mr. F.’s library contains all the numbers of
the Field bound in handsome volumes; he has a copy of the first edition
of Isaak Walton’s superb book on angling, obtained at an auction of
Christie, Mason & Co.’s for 115 guineas, and in his private reception
room, besides a fine collection of dog and horse whips and pretty
models of saddles of every form, the eyes are specially attracted by a
large number of fox brushes tastefully arranged, the most precious
trophies of as many hunting seasons, in which he took part as one of
the most esteemed sportsmen.
It is apparent that Mr. George F. is a sufficiently interesting person
for it to be perfectly natural that Baron K. should prefer him to many
others, but I do not believe that it was the master of the house who
attracted our friend so often to the elegant residence on Albion
street. Mr. F. has a daughter, a charming creature of nineteen, slender
and pliant as a reed, with the roseate complexion which Nature bestows
on English women in their cradles as an enviable gift and a national
inheritance, and sparkling blue eyes, into which one cannot look
without instantly feeling the most intense poetic sentiments. There are
satisfactory reasons for the assertion that Miss Bridget, not her papa,
was the great magnet of the F. household for our friend. The relation
between Baron K. and the F. family soon became one of great intimacy.
The young Hungarian and the beautiful Bridget F. rode together alone in
Hyde Park; in Drury Lane; and at Her Majesty’s Theater they were always
in the same box; in going to Ascot Baron K. did not fail to accompany
the F. family; in short, no one could doubt that their intercourse
meant something more than the mere acquaintanceship of fashionable
society. In fact, Baron K. had already made Bridget a formal
declaration of love; she had asked him, in the usual way, to speak to
mamma, at the same time assuring him, with a lovely blush, that she
would not fail to support his wishes, and papa had already taken one
step: he had closely questioned certain persons, to whom Baron K.
introduced him, about his family and his position at home. Fortune
played no part in the affair, for Miss Bridget, according to the
statements of well-informed people, was “worth 18,000 a year”—ten times
as much as the baron possessed.
The happy suitor now withdrew more and more from general society, in
order to devote himself exclusively to Bridget, he could already
venture to say his Bridget. He spent all his evenings with her, and
went to entertainments only when he knew that she would be present
also.