CHAPTER XXII. ON WINGS OF HOPE.

ON THE VIA SAN BASILIO by EARL MARBLE.

A CHRISTMAS HYMN by T. BUCHANAN READ.

THE PARSEES by FANNIE ROPER FEUDGE.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP

A SWEDISH PROVINCIAL THEATRE.

VENETIAN CAFFÈS.

A NEW MEXICAN CHRISTMAS EVE.

ENGLISH BIBLE TRANSLATIONS.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

_Books Received._

ILLUSTRATIONS

CÆSAR'S PENNY.

THE THRONED CORPSE.

THE SKELETON IN ARMOR.

BRUSSELS.

FATHER JOLIET.

THE CATECHISM.

FRAU KRANICH.

"TO MY ARMS."

THE FUTURE OF FFARINA.

HOHENFELS' FAILURE.

READING THE CONTRACT.

INTERRUPTED REPOSE.

COALS vs. COATS

THE JESTER AT THE FEAST.

ST. GUDOLE, BRUSSELS.

SQUARE OF THE HÔTEL DE VILLE, BRUSSELS.

DIVERS DIVERSIONS.

THE MIMIC HUNT.

HOMEWARD BOUND.

CHARLES AND JOSEPHINE.

ARGUS AND ULYSSES.

"HAND IT OVER TO ART."

NEAR THE SOURCE OF THE TIBER.

CAPRESE.

LAKE THRASIMENE.

THE TIBER NEAR PERUGIA.

TODI.

CHURCH AND CONVENT OF SAINT FRANCIS, AT ASSISI.

THE NEW HYPERION.

FROM PARIS TO MARLY BY WAY OF THE RHINE.

XIX.--TYING UP THE CLEWS.

[Illustration: CÆSAR'S PENNY.]

In leaving Cologne for Aix-la-Chapelle you turn your back to the

river--a particular which suited my mood well enough. The railway bore

us away from the Rhine-shore at an abrupt angle, and in my notion the

noble Germanic goddess or image seemed at this point to recede with

grand theatric strides, like a divinity of the stage backing away

from her admirers over the billowy whirlpool of her own skirts. As

I dreamed we penetrated the tunnel of Königsdorf, which is fifteen

hundred yards long, and which seemed to me sufficiently protracted to

contain the slumber of Barbarossa. The thought gave me a useful hint,

and I fell into a light sleep, while Charles and Hohenfels pervaded

the darkness merely by their perfumes--the former with whiffs at a

concealed bottle of Farina, the latter with a pastille counterfeiting

the incense of the cathedral. In a couple of hours from the Hôtel de

Hollande we reached Aachen, as the fond natives call the burgh so dear

to Charlemagne. Deprived of that magnificent mirror, the Rhine, the

pretty towns throughout this part of Germany seem but like country

belles. We should hardly have paused at Aix but for the sake of

affording a rest to Charles, who grew worse whenever lunch-time

competed with railway-time. As for the dull little city, for us it was

a wilderness, with the blank cleanliness of the desert, except in so

far as it was informed and populated by the memory of Charlemagne.

[Illustration: THE THRONED CORPSE.]

Here he died, and entered his tomb in the church himself had founded.

Into this sepulchre the emperor Otho III. dared to penetrate in the

year 997, impelled by a motive of vile and varlet-like curiosity. They

say the dead monarch confronted his living visitor in the great marble

chair in which he had been seated at his own command, haughty and

inflexible as in life, the ivory sceptre in his ivory fingers, his

white skull crowned with the diadem of gold. The peeping emperor

looked upon him with awe, half afraid of the mysterious and

penetrating shadows that reached forth out of his rayless eyes. Before

he left, however, he peered about, touched the sceptre and the throne,

fingered this and that, and having, as it were, trimmed the nails and

combed the beard of the great spectre, retired with a valet's bow.

Observing that Charlemagne had lost most of his nose, he caused it

to be replaced in gold very delicately chiseled and enchased. The

sacrilege was repeated by Frederick Barbarossa in 1165, who went

farther and forced Charlemagne to get up from his chair before him.

The corpse, in rising, fell in pieces, which have been dispersed

through Europe as relics. We saw such of them as remain here at the

Chapelle. I was allowed, for about the equivalent of an American

dollar, to measure the Occidental emperor's leg--they call it his arm.

And then, as a makeweight in the bargain, the venal sacristan placed

in my hands the head of Charlemagne.

I thought Hohenfels would have sunk to the ground with disgust. He

colored deeply and dragged me into the air. "I am ashamed of every

drop of German blood in my veins," he cried. "What are we to think of

the commerce of these wretches, for whom the very wounds of Cæsar are

the lips of a money-box?"

I had given back the skull, as Hamlet returns the skull of Yorick to

the grave-digger, and was dusting my fingers with a handkerchief,

as hundreds of Hamlets have dusted theirs. I said, "'Thrift, thrift,

Horatio.'"

"At Kreutzberg there are twenty monks on the counter! This morning, at

St. Ursula's, it was the eleven thousand virgins, their skulls ranged

like Dutch cheeses above our heads or in rows around the walls, with

a battery-full of them in the neighboring apartment, like a

cheesemonger's reserved magazine. Here, the very leader of modern

ideas, the creator of our form of civilization, is shown for so

many pennies to any grocer who wants to weigh the head of a king!

Profanation! Barbarians! Philistines!"

[Illustration: THE SKELETON IN ARMOR.]

I turned rather hastily, while my hands were yet clammy with the

skull, thinking that this accusation of Philistinism was aimed at me.

But Hohenfels thought of nothing less than of a personality, being

in his cloudiest mood of generalization. So I only concealed the

handkerchief, while I said, as easily as I might, "You need not accuse

your German blood, for I have lived long enough in my American's

Paradise to know that civilized Paris is considerably worse in this

particular respect, with the addition of a certain goblin levity

particularly French. How often have I seen babies frightened by the

skulls in the dentists' windows, with their cynical chewing action!

It is said that a child sat next a dentist's apprentice once in an

omnibus, and was observed to turn rigid, fixed and white, but unable

to speak: he had sat on one of these skulls, and it had bitten him.

Silver-mounted skulls set as goblets, in imitation of Byron, are to

be seen at any of the china-shops rubbing against the chaste cheeks

of the old maid's teacup. Skeletons are sold, bleached and with gilded

hinges, to the medical students, who buy the pale horrors as openly

as meerschaum pipes. Have I not often found young Grandstone

supping among his doctors' apprentices of the Ober restaurant after

theatre-hours, a skeleton in the corner filled with umbrellas like

a hall-rack, and crowned with the triple or quintuple tiara of the

girls' best bonnets? Ay, Mimi Pinson's cap has known what it is to

perch on the bony head of Death. The juxtaposition is but an emblem.

The sewing-girl, like Hood's shirtmaker, scarcely fears the

'phantom of grisly bone.' Poor Francine! where have you taken _your_

artisanne's cap to, I wonder? Are you left alone, all alone again, and

thinking of the pretty solitude you have left behind you at Carlsruhe?

Who uses those polished keys now?"

Hohenfels interrupted me, complaining that my monologue was

uninteresting and diffuse, and was interfering with the railway

time-table. But I finished it in the car: "And the railway! What has

a person of fixed and independent habits to do with railways but

to growl at them? Before I was tempted upon the railway by that

impertinent engineer at Noisy, I got up and sat down when I liked, ate

wholesome food at my own hours, and was contented at home. Confusion

to him who made me the victim of his engineering calculations!

Confusion to Grandstone and his nest of serpents at Épernay! Did they

not introduce me to Fortnoye, who has doubly destroyed my peace? Where

are the conspirators, that I may pulverize them with my maledictions?"

[Illustration: BRUSSELS.]

This question--which Hohenfels called peevish as he buried himself in

his book--was not answered until we had passed Verviers, Chaudfontaine

and Liège. I was aroused from a sulky slumber in the station at

Brussels by Hohenfels, who said, in his musical scolding way, like the

busy wheeze of a clicking music-box, "You may say what you like, with

your left-handed flatteries, in regard to Fortnoye, and you may praise

Ariadnes and widows to the end of the chapter. You are sorry at

this moment not to be at Épernay to see the destroyer of your peace

married: you had rather assist at the making of a wife than at the

making of a widow."

I was just sending Fortnoye to the gloomiest shades of Acheron when a

strong hand entered the carriage-door, helped me handsomely down the

steps, and then began warmly to shake my own. Fortnoye!--Fortnoye

in flesh and blood was before me. While my mouth was yet filled with

maledictions he began to pour out a storm of thanks with all his own

particular warmth, expressing the most effusive gratitude for the

trouble I had taken in forsaking my route to be his wife's bridesmaid.

That is what he called it. "She has but one other," said Fortnoye.

At the same time I began to recognize other faces not unknown to me,

crudely illuminated by the raw colors of the railway-lights. They

all had black wedding-suits and enormous buttonhole nosegays of

orange-flowers. I picked them out, with a particular recognition for

each: 'twas the civil engineer of Noisy; the short gentleman named

Somerard; James Athanasius Grandstone, with his saintly aureole upon

him in the shape of a Yankee wide-awake; the nameless mutes, or rather

chorus, of the champagne-crypt; in short, my nest of serpents in

all its integrity. Still entangled with my slumbers, I hesitated

to respond to the friendly hands that were everywhere thrust

centripetally toward me.

I looked blackly at Hohenfels. He was chuckling.

At Heidelberg, making the acquaintance of M. Fortnoye

contemporaneously with my departure, he had become more enthralled

than he ever confessed to this radiant traveler--whom he called a

packman, but regarded as a Mercury--and his pretty scheme of matrimony

in motion. Even now, if I can believe my eyes, he goes up to the

"vintner" and "peddler" of his objurgations, and meekly whispers into

his ear with the air of a conspirator reporting a plot to his chief.

Having engaged to produce me at the wedding of Fortnoye, and finding

me unexpectedly recusant, he had adopted a little stratagem for

bringing me to the scene while thinking to escape from it.

"Thou too, Brutus!" I said, and gave it up. It only remained for me

to return all round, after five minutes of petrified stupidity,

the hand-grasps that had been offered from every quarter of the

compass-box.

Next morning, at an early hour, I was interrupted by a knock, just

as Charles had buttoned my gaiters and the young man from the

perruquier's (who had stolen in with that air of delicacy and of

almost literary refinement which belongs to his gentle profession) had

lathered me. A nick he gave my chin at the shock made my countenance

all argent and gules, and the visitor entering saw me thus emblazoned,

while the barber and Charles, "like two wild men supporters of a

shield," could only stare at the untimely apparition.

"Do you know him, Charles?" I asked, not recognizing my guest, and

putting over my painted face a mask of wet toweling.

"I know him intimately," replied my jester-in-ordinary: "I would thank

Monsieur Paul just to tell me his name. Do you remember, monsieur, a

sort of beggar, with a wagon and a stylish horse and a pretty wife,

who limped a bit with his right hand, or perhaps his left hand? Does

monsieur know what I mean? He used to come and see us at Passy; and

monsieur even had some traffic with him in a little matter of two

chickens."

"Father Joliet!" I cried.

"Present!" shouted the personage thus designated at my appeal to his

name. I turned round, toweled, and he grasped my hands. The unusual

hour, appropriate as I supposed only to some porter or other

stipendiary visitor of my hotel, caused to shine out with startling

refulgence the morning splendors in which Papa Joliet had arrayed

himself. He wore a courtly dress, appropriate to the most formal

possible ceremony; his black suit was glossy; his hat was glossy;

his varnished pumps were more than glossy--they were phosphorescent.

Gloves only were wanting to his honest hands.

[Illustration: PERRUQUIER.]

Soaped, napkined and generally extinguished, I could only stammer,

"You here in Brussels? What a droll meeting!"

"Wherefore droll?" asked Joliet, with a huge surprise, which lasted

him all through his next sentence. "I come here to marry my daughter.

Everything is ready; we count on your presence at the wedding; the

lawyer has drawn up the contract; and the breakfast is now cooking at

the best restaurant in the place."

"Francine's wedding, my dear Joliet!" I exclaimed. And, going back to

my apprehensions at her furtive disappearance from Carlsruhe, and

to my conjectures of some amorous mystery between her and her Yankee

traducer, Kraaniff, I added gravely, "It is very creditable!"

"How, creditable--and droll?" repeated the honest man, evidently much

surprised at my own accumulating surprises. "Did not you hear?"

[Illustration: FATHER JOLIET.]

"Not the faintest word," I said, "but I am none the less gratified to

find this affair ending, as it should, in the presence of a lawyer. As

for your wedding-invitation, my good friend, you are a little tardy in

delivering it, for it is exactly to-day that I am obliged to attend at

the marriage of one of my friends, M. Fortnoye."

"Ah, that is a good joke!" cried Joliet, breaking into an explosion of

laughter and clapping me pleasantly on the shoulder--an action which

caused a slight frown on the part of Charles. "You always would have

your jest, Monsieur the American! Tease me and scare me as much as

you like: I like these hoaxes better before a wedding than after.

Hold that," he added, extending his hand as if it were a piece of

merchandise.

I "held" it, and he went on, dwelling slowly on his words: "If you are

at Henri Fortnoye's wedding you will be at Francine Joliet's also, for

both of these persons are to be married at one church."

"Impossible!" I exclaimed, dropping the hand and stepping back.

"What! again?" said Joliet, his manly face visibly darkening. "Droll!

and creditable! and impossible! Why impossible?" Then he dropped his

head and looked angrily at the floor. "Ah, yes, even you," he said,

his eyes still fixed on the boards, "believed that a French girl,

trained as French girls are trained, would flirt and expose herself to

remark; and all on account of such a man as your compatriot, the other

American! Well! well! you ought to know your countrymen best."

"I know of no harm," I interposed hastily. "I should always have

thought Kraaniff hard to swallow as a mere matter of taste. I can but

recollect, Father Joliet," I went on more seriously, "that the last

time I met you you begged me not to talk of Francine if I would not

break your heart. I have to add to this the news brought me from

Heidelberg, that this Kraaniff was a serpent who had fascinated some

young girl for an approaching meal.--How dare you, Charles," I cried

suddenly, recalled to the consciousness of his presence by this

souvenir of his oratory, "stand here staring? Show the young man out

directly, and pay him."

I will not answer for Charles's having got much farther away than the

door. Joliet continued: "But his aunt knows him now for what he is.

Kraaniff, say you? I call him Kranich, though he had better change his

baptismal record than disgrace one of the best names in Brussels."

[Illustration: THE CATECHISM.]

"Frau Kranich, then, my old friend, is really his aunt?"

"Madame Kranich, whom I have known in your parlor, is really

Francine's godmother. Did you never know of all her secret kindness?

That rigid lady would commit a perjury to deny one of her own good

actions. Young Kranich has written her a letter confessing his lies.

Don't you know? The very same day when you were determined to fight

him in a duel--"

"Certainly, certainly," I said, a little confused. "We will change the

subject and leave my ferocity alone. Let us understand one another.

In regard to Fortnoye's marriage, was there not some talk of a Madame

Ashburleigh?"

"I believe you. Madame Ashburleigh is the very key of the manoeuvre.

Madame Ashburleigh--don't you perceive?--lost a child."

"For that matter, she has lost four. I know the lady confidentially,

and she told me their histories and present address. Lucia lies in

Glasgow, Hannibal at Nice, and Waterloo sleeps somewhere hereabout, as

well as another nameless little dear."

"She is a good woman. She has collected all her proofs, and has come

hither with them voluntarily--has perhaps already arrived. Brussels,

where two of her marmots rest, is one of her most frequent stations.

That censorious Madame Kranich made a scene, but she had to yield to

conviction."

"A censorious Madame Kranich! Is the young duelist married?"

"What? No, no! It is Francine's guardian I speak of. Of late years she

has become a sort of Puritan abbess, seeking the Protestant society

which abounds in Belgium, and lamenting her husband, whom they say she

used to drug with opium."

"Then is she not Kranich's aunt?"

"Oh yes, an aunt by marriage; but he is not her nephew: I will die

before I call him so."

"Listen," said I, "Father Joliet. You are as full of information as an

oracle, but you are not coherent. This month past I have been hunting

down a chimaera, a hydra with a dozen heads: each head shows me by

turn the portrait of Fortnoye, or Francine, or yourself, or Kranich,

or Mrs. Ashburleigh. Ever since Noisy I have been meandering through

the folds of a mystery. My head is turning with it. If you want to

save me from distraction, sit down in this chair and answer me a long

catechism, without saying a word but in reply to my questions."

[Illustration: FRAU KRANICH.]

"I am sure I talk as plain as a professor. Look! You frightened me at

first with your doubts and your impossibilities. You have only to make

Kranich's aunt agree with Francine's guardian, and at the same time

forgive Francine's husband for having assumed the undertaker's bill

for Madame Ashburleigh's baby."

"Yes, yes, my dear Joliet, you are clearer than Euclid." And I

administered a category of questions. Joliet, with his fatherly joy

bursting out of him in the longest of parentheses, kept quiet in his

refulgent shoes and answered as well as he could.

[Illustration: "TO MY ARMS."]

Francine, he protested, had never been a flirt (I have met no

Frenchmen who were ignorant of that one English word, to which they

give a new value by pronouncing it in a very orotund manner, as

_flort_). When she came to be ten or twelve, Frau Kranich--until then

a well-preserved lioness with an appetite for society--ceased to give

her dolls and promised to give her an education. At the same time, the

banker's widow left Paris, and repaired with her charge to Brussels,

where the little girl received some good half-Jesuitical, half-English

schooling, of the kind suggested in the Brontë novels. Her diploma

attained, Francine begged to accompany her English teacher back to

London: she wished to become a _meess_, she said, and be competent to

teach like a new Hypatia. She had hardly bidden her kind protectress

adieu when Frau Kranich's nephew arrived at Brussels, exceedingly

dissatisfied with his American business in the bar-rooms of the grand

duke of Mississippi. A sordid jealousy of Mademoiselle Joliet's claims

upon his aunt took possession of this prudent spirit. He took up a

watch-post at a university town on the Rhine. He began to whisper

vague exaggerations of her coquetries and liveliness, which the

Protestant circle that revolved about Madame Kranich did not fail to

bear in to her. This lady admired her nephew, sure that his want of

manners was the sign of a noble frankness. She wrote to Francine,

bidding her come immediately from London. The girl not replying, the

hopeful nephew was put upon her track. He went away. His letters from

England reported that Francine was no longer in that country, but was

probably come back to Belgium, "I know not in what suburb of Brussels

our very independent miss may this instant be hiding," he wrote.

About the same time, in the circle of French exiles at Brussels,

a young _romantique_ named Fortnoye was reported as weeping and

lavishing statues over the grave of an unknown infant in the

churchyard at Laaken. It was a delicious mystery. Kind meddlers

approached the sexton, who said that all he knew of the babe's mother

was that she was a beautiful lady from London. Kranich carried the

story dutifully to his aunt, adding his own ingenious surmise: "Can

Francine have become sufficiently Anglicised to contract secret

marriages with roving revolutionists, and scamper about the country

with ardent young Frenchmen in the style of Gretna Green?" In fact, it

was really from London that Mrs. Ashburleigh was proceeding, for the

purpose of taking care, in the Rhenish city where he was dying, of

her handsome, dissipated, worthless husband. Taken suddenly ill at

Brussels, she left her infant to the unequaled chill of a strange,

unknown cemetery, hastening thence with tears and despair to the

bedside where duty called her.

Has my reader forgotten the dim, tear-swollen story which I heard--not

at all improved in the telling--from my generous young friend

Grandstone--how an impulsive Frenchman had laid to rest, in flowers

and evergreens, the unnamed baby of a woman he had never seen? Jealous

as I was of Fortnoye, I never could think without tenderness of this

singular action. To make the tomb of this helpless Innocence the young

man braved the curiosity of his comrades--despised the rumor, the

obloquy, and, hardest of all, the jests. Well has the wise dramatist

decided that Ophelia must needs be laid in Yorick's bed!

Poor Francine, gay, frivolous, innocently vain of her little travesty

of English behavior, found her accomplishments and graces received

by her guardian's circle with incomprehensible coldness. Hurt and

humiliated, she asked to pay a visit to her father. The honest rustic

received her with a miserable confusion of doubt and severity, for

her escapade to England had never pleased him, and her return from her

godmother's home wore to him the air of a repudiation. At her father's

house, however, she was discovered by Fortnoye, who had never heard

the ingenious Kranich's theory of his own private wedding with

Francine, and who thought to find in her the veiled unknown of the

cemetery. He saw for the first time, in the flowery home at Noisy,

that fresh ingenuous beauty, a little over-cast with disappointment.

His generous nature was touched; and, with his talent for

administration and planning, he conceived the idea of establishing

Francine in the pretty bird's nest at Carlsruhe, distant alike from

the strongholds of her calumniators, Belgium and France.

Fortnoye now had an object in life. "There is a very young person in

the cemetery of Laaken who is much in need of a chaperone," he said.

The frank proofs of his own relations with this churchyard would

not only do credit to his own reputation, but would gratify the best

friends of Mademoiselle Joliet and at least one other lady. To attain

these proofs he had to step over the coiling, writhing bodies of

a whole nest of rumors. When he seized by the throat the especial

slander that he himself was the husband of the babe's mother, he found

written on its crest the signature of John Kranich. He sought the

aunt. This lady gave him several interviews, the Lutheran prayer-book

for ever in her hand. "Why does the dear girl not come to me?"

she would say, weeping, but she refused to hear a word against her

precious nephew, the personification of bluff frankness. As if to make

crushing him impossible, young Kranich had now withdrawn to America,

leaving his reputation in that best possible protection, the chivalry

that is extended toward the absent. Fortnoye was baffled. "I will ask

the baby at its tomb for its mother's and father's name," he cried.

In the pretty God's Acre he found a fresh harvest of flowers and a

new statue over the well-known grave. It was a pretty miniature of

Thorwaldsen's Psyche, on which the proud copyist had inscribed his

name. A respectful correspondence with Mrs. Ashburleigh, to whom

he was guided by the sculptor, and who was now taking the waters at

Wildbad, soon put the whole tangled story to rights. Fortnoye had the

happiness of conducting Francine, by this time his affianced wife, to

the good Frau Kranich, who, convinced that she had wrongly judged

her, threw her arms ardently around her recovered jewel, letting the

eternal little book fly from her hand like a projectile.

[Illustration: THE FUTURE OF FFARINA.]

"But the most singular part of the story," concluded Father Joliet,

"is the letter which Fortnoye, after two or three quarrels, forced

out of young Kranich when the latter had returned to Europe, full of

triumph and debts, to take possession of his aunt for the rest of his

life. Here it is," added the good man, opening a pocket-book. "The

hand-writing is drunken, but the sense is clear as Seltzer-water.

The scholars tell me _in vino veritas est_, but it appears to me that

truth really comes out in the repentance and headache that follow."

[Illustration: HOHENFELS' FAILURE.]

"MY DEAR AUNT" (ran the letter which Charles had seen forced from the

alligator after his unlucky game of dominoes): "You have known me as

the soul of candor. It is this happy quality which compels me to state

(for I am something of a Rousseau) that if I ever playfully accused

your pretty pet Francine of being a flirt, I knew nothing about it.

The best proof is that she absolutely refused to join her expectations

with mine, though I am something of an Adonis. If you believed that

she and the wine-peddler had made a match, I pity your credulity and

ignorance of human nature. I am certain that neither the peddler nor

myself would touch the enterprise until you had shown exactly what you

would (pecuniarily) do. For my part, I have acted throughout on the

most exact and advanced scientific principles. Intending to modify

the spirit-trade in America, and especially to introduce the exclusive

agency of the Farina essences, I found that the sinew particularly

needed for this leap was capital. Desiring to absorb your bounties

toward Francine, I at first proposed matrimony. This offer was made

without any enmity toward the girl, as my next move was without

affection, though it seems to be resulting to her benefit. I became

her accuser as coolly as I had been her lover. Passion has nothing

to do with the combinations of strategic genius: I am something of a

Washington. My theory of her clandestine marriage was one of the most

masterly fictions of the age--a plot worthy of Thackeray. If I could

have succeeded in mutilating the statue in the graveyard, I might have

carried it, while you would have admired my act of iconoclasm with all

your Puritan nature. In the momentary abandonment of my plans, owing

to the machinations of my enemies, you will conceive that I am not

very rich. My college-debts and other expenses I am obliged to leave

for your kind attention. The main point of this letter, which M.

Fortnoye has persuaded me to set down as distinctly as in my present

feeble state I can, is that Francine is a pretty little maid who has

never passed by Gretna Green. There! that is my _credo_, and I will

subscribe to it,

"Your loving nephew, JOHN.

"P. S. Address, with such an enclosure as your generosity will prompt,

JEAN K. FFARINA, sole representative and cosmetical chemist in America

on behalf of the Farinas of Cologne, at New Orleans where I am going

to beat my adversaries like Old HIC--"

At this point the tipsy scrawl became illegible.

"This is not a very handsome apology. Did Fortnoye accept it?" I

asked, turning over the clammy and malodorous epistle. At this inquiry

the crack of the door widened and Charles appeared, on fire with

enthusiasm, and so possessed with self-importance that he forgot the

betrayal of his indiscretion.

"I can reply to that question," said Charles. "When M. Fortnoye

received the paper from the duelist he read it over and said, 'You

have meant to impose on me, monsieur, with an incomplete confession.

But, in return for your imperfect restoration of Mademoiselle Joliet's

portrait, you have unconsciously set down such a masterpiece of

yourself that I am certain your aunt will see you as she never did

before.'"

Charles, having thus added himself to our cabal without rebuke, took

a lively interest in what followed. The proud father continued: "My

son-in-law, after some business preliminaries, wrote me a handsome

letter demanding what he had already effectively possessed himself of.

I wrote to Francine, already returned to her duties, to be a good girl

and make her husband obey her in all things."

"That may have been," said I, "what made Francine take to laughing

all day and all night, as I heard she did some little time after my

departure from her house. The next news of her," I pursued, "was

that she had been spirited away by some sly old kidnapper. I almost

suspected Kranich."

"The old kidnapper," said Joliet, laughing heartily at the compliment,

"is the man now talking to you. I wanted to take Francine to her

godmother. I turned the key in the door at Carlsruhe, set the

geographers all upon their travels to explore new worlds, and we have

been living ever since quite close to Madame Kranich, who treats me

like an emperor."

It was easy now to understand why the young Kranich, as soon as he

could identify me as a protector of Francine, had been thrown off his

guard and tempted to attack me with his clumsy abuse. It was not very

mysterious, even, why he had wished all handsome girls to be drowned

in the Rhine. For him a pretty damsel was simply a rival in trade.

[Illustration: READING THE CONTRACT.]

Had I stopped at Wildbad with the party of orpheonists, I should have

encountered rather sooner the fatal beauties of Mary Ashburleigh. It

was to meet her that Fortnoye had paused at that resort, considering

her introduction to Frau Kranich almost indispensable to the success

of his scheme. She had no hesitation in following the protecting angel

of her lost child. "My object in this journey is a happy marriage,"

she had told me when to my unworthy care her guardianship had been

transferred. If I timorously suspected the marriage to be her own,

whose fault was it but mine? My heart leaped up at the successive

stages of this recital, its hopes confirmed by every additional fact:

the Dark Ladye's hand was certainly free. Fortnoye, I should surmise,

was not too desirous to abandon this magnificent companion at

Schwetzingen; but the serpent, he knew, was left behind, in company

with two or three of his and my friends: it was necessary to take

the youth by the ear, as it were, and dismiss him from the country,

without loss of time, to his future of counter-jumping. His dueling

experience may be of some use to him among the bowie-knives of

Louisiana. If his subsequent path is not strewn with roses, let him

rejoice that it is at least lubricated with cologne-water.

[Illustration: INTERRUPTED REPOSE.]

An hour had passed, and into my room from his own adjoining one now

ambled amicably my friend the baron. He greeted Joliet as an old

friend. Many a smoking-match had they had in my garden at Marly. But

Hohenfels this morning was in robes of state, with shoes that shone

even beside old Father Joliet's, and as a concession to elegance he

had abandoned his cavernous pipes in favor of cigarettes. A scroll of

this description, flavored with his Cologne pastille and very badly

rolled, was trying to exhale itself between his lips.

"What a genius for conversation you have to-day, my Flemming! This

hour I have rocked back and forth in bed, trying to understand your

observations or to cover my ears and go to rest. Your tongue has been

like the tongue of a monastery-bell summoning all hands to penance."

But I had hardly spoken ten consecutive words. The ears of the baron

were this morning quite muffled, I think, with the abundance of his

hair, which he had evidently been dressing with an avalanche of soap

and water, for the topknot was as harsh and tight as a felt. He had

lemon-blossoms on his lappel and lemon kids on his fists.

It was then I remembered that my bags were all in the steamer, where

I had left them when surprised by Charles's indisposition. My tin box

would possibly yield me a button-nosegay, but otherwise I might beat

my breast, like the wedding-guest in the _Ancient Mariner_, for I

heard the summons and was unable to attend in right attire. "We two

must take you out in the street and dress you," said Hohenfels.

Although I had never been dressed in the street, I yielded. It was a

grand public holiday, and the sounds of festivity, which had floated

into my chamber with the entrance of Hohenfels, were in full cadence

outside. Everybody was pouring out to the city-gate, or returning from

thence, where, in honor of some visit from the king of the Belgians

and count and countess of Flanders, a festival was going on in

imitation or rehearsal of the grand annual _kermesse_. These

festivals, retained in Belgium with a delightful fidelity to the

customs of antique Brabant, would fit the brush of Teniers better

than the pen of a mere bewildered tourist. Still, I will try, copying

principally from the reports of Charles (who contrives to peep at

everything, with an interest whose amount is in ratio with the square

of his distance from his master), to give a few features of the scene,

which he spread in detail before the attentive Josephine during many

an evening after.

[Illustration: COALS vs. COATS]

The principal fair-ground--though the occasion crammed the whole city

with revelers--was just outside the gate. It was a veritable town in

miniature, with a pattern of checker-board streets--Columbine street,

Polichinelle street, Avenue des Parades, Place des Parades, Street of

the Chanson, and the like. There were more than five hundred booths,

all numbered--shops and restaurants. There were the Salon Curtius,

the Ménagerie Bidel, the Bal Mabille, the Café Bataclan, the American

Tavern. From one of the little costumers' shops, Charles--with

a higher evincement of antiquarian taste than I should have

expected--managed to bear away a pattern of wall-paper, which I

afterward conferred on Mary Ashburleigh with great applause: it was

Parisian of 1824, the epoch of Charles Dix, and was entirely covered

with giraffes in honor of that puissant and elegant monarch. The above

establishments were near the entrance, to the right.

At the left were more attractions: another menagerie, a heap of

ostensible gold representing the five milliards paid by France, a

gallery of astonished wax soldiers representing the Franco-Prussian

war, a cook-shop with "mythologic" confectionery. Farther on, in the

Théâtre Casti, was exposed the "renowned buffoon Peppino," breveted by

His Majesty the "king of Egypt;" then came the Chiarini Theatre; then

the Théâtre Adrien Delille, an enchantingly pretty structure, where

receptions were given by a little creature who should have sat under

a microscope: she was "the Princess Felicia, aged thirteen, born at

Clotat, near Marseilles, weighing three kilogrammes and measuring

forty-six centimètres--a ravishing figure, admirably proportioned in

her littleness and _tout à fait sympathique!"_

The announcements were heard, it was thought by Charles, to the very

centre of the city. A low-browed animal with rasped hair was shouting,

"Messieurs and ladies, come and see--come and see the theatre of the

galleys! The only one in the world! This is the place to view the real

instruments of torture used on the prisoners---chains four yards long

and balls of thirty-five pounds. All authentic, gentlemen and ladies.

You will see the poisoners of Marseilles, Grosjon who killed his

father, Madame Cottin who ate her baby. Come in, come in, gentlemen

and ladies! Fifteen centimes! 'Tis given away! You enter and go out

when you like. Come in! It is educational: you see vice and crime

depicted on the faces of the criminals!"

[Illustration: THE JESTER AT THE FEAST.]

In another place a malicious Flemish Figaro explained the analogy

betwen _een spinnekop_ and _eene meisie_, the perspiration streaming

over his face; and my ancient minnesinger's blood stirred within me at

the report of the pleasantries which were improvised by this Rabelais

of the people, and I remembered that I too was a Flemming.

The bands belonging to the different booths tried to play each other

down, forming a stupefying charivari, with tributary processions that

quite overflowed the city. The house of "confections" yielded me no

broadcloth of a cut or dimension suitable to my figure. But my two

friends chose me a hat, a light pale-tot (my second purchase in that

sort on this eventful journey), a scented cambric handkerchief, a

rosebud, and a snowy waistcoat, in which, as in a whited sepulchre,

I concealed the decay of my toilet. These changes were judged to be

sufficient for my accoutrement. They might have done very well, but on

my way back I paused at a lace-shop window to inspect some present for

Francine. A band, with many banners and figures in masquerade, swept

past, followed by a shouting crowd. My friends lost me in a moment,

and I lost my way. I turned into a street which I was sure led to the

hotel, gave it up for another, lost that in a blind alley, and finally

brought up in a steep, narrow cañon, where I was forced to ask a

direction. The passer-by who obliged me was a man bearing a bag of

charcoal. He answered with a ready intelligence that did honor to his

heart and his sense of Progressive Geography. But he left on my white

waistcoat, alas! a charcoal sketch, full of chiaroscuro and _coloris_,

representing his index-finger surrounded with a sort of cloud-effect.

My waistcoat had to be given over in favor of the elder garment

buttoned up in the all-concealing overcoat.

[Illustration: ST. GUDOLE, BRUSSELS.]

The ceremonies of the day, I soon found, were to consist in an early

and informal breakfast at the house of Frau Kranich; then the civil

wedding at the mayor's office, followed by the usual church-service,

from which the Protestant godmother of Francine begged to be excused;

the day to wind up with a general dinner at a place of resort outside

the city at four o'clock, the usual dining-hour in old Brabant.

The early breakfast gave a renewal of my friendship with good Frau

Kranich and a glimpse of the bride, with her sweet, patient, dewy face

shadowed like a honey-drop in the gauzy calyx of her artisanne cap;

for she was in the simplest of morning dresses--something gray, with

a clean white apron. The quaint, old-fashioned house where we met was

decorated with exquisite trifles, the memorials of the mistress's old

fashionable taste, but scattered over the tables also were lecture

programmes, hospital reports and photographs of eminent philosophers.

As I took up for a plaything a gold pen-case, well used, which rested

on a magnificent old fan, the Kranich said, with just a reminiscence

of her former vivacity, "You find me much changed, Mr. Flemming. I

used to be the grasshopper in the fable--now I am the ant."

"I bless any change, ma'am," said I, "which increases your kindness

toward this charming girl."

"Dear Mr. Flemming," said pretty Francine, "how nice and shabby you

look! You will do admirably to stand by a poor girl--so poor that she

has hardly a bridesmaid. I hope you are as indigent as you were at

Carlsruhe." Upon this I felt very fatherly, and clasped her waist from

behind as I kissed her forehead.

The lawyer, a professionally bland old man, with a porous bald head

like an emu's egg, said as he was introduced, "Ah, I have heard of you

before, monsieur. You are the man of the two chickens."

Joliet was so enchanted with this rare joke, laughing and clapping

all his nearer neighbors on the back, that I could not but accept it

graciously. For this exceptional day, at least, I must bear my eternal

nickname. Was not the maid now present whose dower had been hatched

by those well-omened fowls? and was not the dower now coming to

use? Hohenfels paired off with the notary, and discussed with that

parchment person the music of Mozart, and, what would have been absurd

and incredible in any Anglo-Saxon country, the scribe understood it!

Our party had to wait but ten minutes for the groom and his men.

Fortnoye, in a grand blue suit, with a wondrous dazzle of frilling

on his broad chest, looked a noble husband, but was preoccupied and

silent. His chorus supported him--Grandstone, Somerard, my engineer

and the others--in dignified black clothes, official boutonnières

and ceremonial cravats: they greeted Frau Kranich with awe, and

bowed before the polished head of the lawyer with the parallelism of

ninepins. My little group of fellow-travelers was almost complete.

The young duelist, of course, was not expected or wanted. The Scotch

doctor, Somerard told me, had been obliged to fly to London, where a

mammoth meeting of the homoeopathic faith was in progress.

The great feature of the breakfast came on when every crumb of

breakfast had been eaten. Charles and the maid cleared away the table,

and the notary stood up to read the marriage contract. The reading,

ordinarily a dull affair, was in this instance vivified by curious

incidents. In the first place, Frau Kranich. amending the injustice

her over-credulity had caused, gave her _protègée_ a wedding-present

of twenty thousand francs, accompanying the gift with some singularly

tart remarks about her nephew: this sum was increased by the groom to

sixty thousand. The second incident was when Joliet, amid the almost

incredulous surprise of the whole table, raised the gift, by the

addition of ten thousand, to seventy thousand francs: the money was

the product of his former house and garden--that house of shreds and

patches which had cost him ten francs. When it came to affixing the

signatures, the notary appealed to Joliet for his name. He could

not sign it, being gouty and half forgetful of pen-practice, but he

responded to the question as bold as a lion: "John Thomas Joliet,

baron de Rouvière," throwing to the lawyer a fine bunch of papers

bearing witness to the validity of the title; after which he added, no

less proudly, "wine-merchant, wholesale and retail, at the sign of the

Golden Chickens, Noisy."

[Illustration: SQUARE OF THE HÔTEL DE VILLE, BRUSSELS.]

In truth, Joliet's father had rightfully borne the title of baron de

Rouvière, but, ruined by '48, had abandoned the practice of signing

it. Joliet resumed it for this special occasion, having every warrant

for the act, but whispered to me that he should never so call himself

in future, greatly preferring the enumeration of his qualities on his

business-card.

Poor Francine meanwhile had looked so timid and blushed so that Frau

Kranich nodded to her permission of absence. She gave one glance at

Fortnoye, buried her face in her hands, laughed a sweet little gurgle,

and fled. When her presence was again necessary, she reappeared,

drowned in white. We went to the mayor's office, where she lost a

pretty little surname that had always seemed to fit her like a

glove; then to the church, an obscure one in the neighborhood of Frau

Kranich's house. But at the door of the sacred edifice the elder lady

said, with much conciliatory grace in her manner, "I claim exemption

from witnessing this part of the ceremony; and you, Mr. Flemming, must

resume or discover your Protestantism and enter the carriage with

me. I must show you a little of the city while these young birds are

pairing."

No objection was made to this rather strange proposal. The bride,

between her father and husband, forgot that she had no friend of her

own sex to stand near her. We arranged for a general meeting at the

dinner.

In the carriage she said, "I brought you away because I am devoured

with uneasiness. Mrs. Ashburleigh wrote me that she would certainly

be here for at least the principal part of the ceremony. I do not know

what to make of it. It may be of no use, but we will scour the city.

These throngs, this noise, make me uneasy. I fear some accident,

having," she added with a smile, "one lone woman's sympathy for

another lone woman."

[Illustration: DIVERS DIVERSIONS.]

I peered through the crowds at this, right and left, with

inexpressible emotion. Perhaps this accidental sort of quest was that

which destiny had arranged for the solution of my life-problem. To

light upon Mary Ashburleigh in these festal throngs, perhaps wanting

assistance, perhaps calling upon my name even now through her velvet

lips, was a chance the mere notion of which made my blood leap.

When Brussels gives herself over to holiday-making, she does it in

a whole-souled and self-consistent way that has plenty of

attractiveness. The houses seemed to have turned themselves inside

out to replenish the streets. People in their best clothes, equipages,

processions, bands, troops of children, filled the avenues. Some

conjecture that there might have been a mistake about the church took

us to the cathedral of St. Gudule. Here, amid the superb spectrums of

the stained windows, we searched through the vari-colored throngs that

covered the floor, but no familiar face looked upon us. Strange to

us as the old, impassive monumental dukes of Brabant who occupy the

niches, the people made way to let us pass from the doorway between

the lofty brace of towers to the high altar, which is a juggler's

apparatus, and has concealed machinery causing the sacred wafer to

come down seemingly of its own accord at the moment when the priest is

about to lift the Host. All was unfamiliar and splendid, and we came

away, feeling as if our own little wedding-group would have been lost

in so magnificent a tabernacle. The Grande Place, on which lay the

wedge-like shadow of the high-towered Hôtel de Ville, was perhaps as

thronged a honeycomb of buzzing populace as when Alva looked out upon

it to see the execution of Egmont and Horn. Among all the good-natured

Netherlandish countenances that paved the square there was none that

responded to my own.

We drove vaguely through the principal streets, and then, baffled,

made our way to the faubourg in which is situated the zoological

garden, toward which a considerable portion of the inhabitants was

going even as ourselves. At the entrance our carriage encountered

that of the bride and groom, and soon the whole party of the

breakfast-table assembled by the gate, for the great coffee-rooms at

which our meal was laid were close by the garden, and a promenade

in this famous living museum was a premeditated part of the day's

enjoyment. We entered the grounds in character, frankly putting

forward our claims as a wedding-procession. That is the delightful

French custom among those who are brought up as Francine had been:

her father would have been heartbroken to have been denied the proud

exhibition of his joy, and Fortnoye was too great a traveler, too

cosmopolitan, to object to a little family pageant that he had seen

equaled or exceeded in publicity in most of the Catholic countries

on the globe. Francine, her artisanne cap for ever lost, her

gleaming dark hair set, like a Milky Way, with a half wreath of

orange-blossoms, the silvery gauzes of her protecting veil floating

back from her forehead, strayed on at the head of the little parade.

She was wrapped in the delicious reverie of the wedding-day. She was

not yellow nor meagre, nor uglier than herself, as so many brides

contrive to be. Her air of delicacy and tenderness was a blossom of

character, not a canker of ill-health. Her color was hardly raised,

though her head was perpetually bent. Fortnoye, holding her on his

firm arm, seemed like a man walking through enchantments. Just behind,

protecting Madame Kranich with an action of effusive gallantry that

must have been seen to be conceived, walked the baron de Rouvière,

his brave knotted hands, for which he had not found any gloves, busily

occupied in pointing out the animated rarities that to him seemed most

worthy of selection. The hilarious hyenas, the seals, the polar bears

plunging from their lofty rocks, all attracted his commendation; and

we, who walked behind in such order as our friendships or familiarity

taught us, were perpetually tripping upon his honest figure brought to

a halt before some object more than usually interesting. Exclamations

of delight at the bride's beauty, politely wrapped in whispers, arose

on all sides as we penetrated the throng: it was a proud thing to be

a part of a procession so distinguished. My good Joliet beamed with

complacency, and drove his little herd up and down and across and

about till the greater part of the garden was explored. The zoological

garden of Brussels has the beauty of not showing too obviously the

character of a prison. It is extensive, umbrageous, and the poor

captives within its borders have enough air and space around their

eyes to give them a semblance of liberty. For the special feast-day

on which we visited it the place had been arranged with particular

adaptation to the character of the time. There were elephant-races and

rides upon the camels free to all ladies who would make the venture.

In addition to the zebras, gnus and Shetlands, there was that species

of race-horse which never wins and never spoils a course, being

of wood and constructed to go round in a tent, and never to arrive

anywhere or lose any prizes. The pelicans were in high excitement, for

all along their beautiful little river, where it winds through bowery

trees, a profusion of living fish had been emptied and confined here

and there by grated dams, so that the awkward birds had opportunity

to angle in perfect freedom and to their hearts' content. In the

more wooded part of the garden a mimic hunt had been arranged, and

sportsmen in correct suits of green, with curly brass horns and baying

hounds, coursed through the grounds, following a stag which, though

mangy and asthmatic, may yet have been a descendant of the fawn that

fed Genevieve of Brabant. We had re-entered one of the grand alleys,

and were receiving again the little tribute of encomiums which the

greater privacy of the groves had pretermitted--we were parading

happily along, conscious of nothing to be ashamed of, our

orange-blossoms glistening, our veil flying, our broadcloth and

wedding-favors gleaming--when we met another group, which, though more

furtively, bore that matrimonial character which distinguished our

own.

[ILLUSTRATION: THE MIMIC HUNT.]

At the head walked Mr. Cookson & Jenkinson. He still wore that species

of shooting-costume which he had made his uniform, but it was decked

with roses, and his hands were encased in milk-white gloves: on his

hands, besides the gloves, he had the two grammatical ladies from

the Rhine steamboat in guise of bridesmaids. Behind him walked Mary

Ashburleigh. And emerging from the skirts of Mary Ashburleigh's dress,

with the embarrassed happiness of a middle-aged bridegroom, was--no?

yes! no, no! but yes--was Sylvester Berkley. I will not expose what I

suffered to the curiosity of imperfectly sympathetic strangers. I did

not faint, and I believe men in genuine despair never do so. But

I felt that weakness and unmanageableness of knee which comes with

strong mental anguish, and I sank back impotent upon the baron, whose

lingering legs repudiated the pressure, so that we both accumulated

miserably upon Grandstone. My eyes closed, and I did not hear the Dark

Ladye's salutations to Frau Kranich. But I awoke to see with anguish a

sight that drew involuntary applause from all that careless crowd.

It was the salute of the two brides. Imagine, if you can, two

great purple pansies, flushed with all the perfumed sap of an Eden

spring-time, threaded with diamonds of myriad-faceted dew,--imagine

them leaning forward on their elastic stems until both their soft

velvet countenances cling together and exchange mutually their

caparisons of honeyed gems; then let them sway gently back, and

balance once more in their morning splendor. Such was the effect when

these two imperial creatures approached each other and imprinted with

lips and palms a sister's salute. Mary Ashburleigh, whom the throng

recognized as a natural empress, was arrayed this morning as brides

are seldom arrayed, but with a sense of artistic obedience to her own

sumptuous nature and personality. The royal purple of her velvets

was cut, on skirt and bodice, into one continuous fretwork of heavy

scrolls and leafage, and through the crevices of this textile carving

shone the robe she carried beneath: it was tawny yellow, for she wore

under her outward dress a complete robe of ancient lace, whose cobweb

softness was more than half sacrificed--only perceived as the slashes

of her velvets made it evident. It was such dressing as queens alone

should indulge in perhaps, but Mary Ashburleigh chose for once to do

justice to her style and her magnificence.

I was leaning against a tree, stunned in the sick sunshine. I heard,

while my eyes were closed, a sort of voluminous cloudy roll, and the

Dark Ladye was beside me. She whispered quickly and volubly in my

ear, "I tried to confide in you, but I could not get it spoken. Yet

I managed to confess that my heart had been touched. It was only this

summer--at the Molkencur over Heidelberg--he lectured about the ruins.

'Twas information--'twas rapture! I found at once he was the Magician.

We were quietly united at the embassy this morning. And now he can

leave that dreadful consulate and has got his promotion, for he is

to be _chargé_ here in Brussels. It is sudden, but we were positively

afraid to do it in any other way, I am such a timid creature. When I

saw the travelers' agent on the steamboat, I was at first struck with

his manly British bearing and his resemblance to Sylvester. Then I

found he had the matrimonial prospectus, and perceived he might be a

link. He has managed everything beautifully. I had no idea--With his

assistance you need no more mind being married than going into a shop

for a plate of pudding. You must come up and be presented, to show you

bear no malice."

I cannot tell how I did it, but I allowed Sylvester and the agent to

grasp my hands, one on either side. Berkley, as to his collar, his

cravat, his face and his white gloves, presented one general surface

of mat silver. He clasped me with some affection, but his intellect

had quite gone, and he said it was a fine day.

I did not rally in the least until after my fourth glass of champagne

at the dinner. We made one party: indeed, Mrs. Ashburleigh had brought

her husband hither in that expectation. Fortnoye vanished a minute

to arrange the banquet-room; and as his wife rushed in to find him,

followed by the rest of us, he snatched a great damask cloth from

the table, and there was such a set-out of flowers and viands as has

seldom been seen in Belgium or elsewhere. The table, instead of a

cloth, was entirely laid with; young emerald vine-leaves: our places

were marked, and at each plate was a gift for the bride, ostensibly

coming from the person who sat there, but really provided by the

forethought of Fortnoye. In front of my own cover two pretty downy

chicks were pecking in a cottage made of crystal slats and heavily

thatched with spun glass--the prettiest birdcage in the world. On the

eaves was an inscription: "The Man of the Two Chickens." It happened

that the little keepsake I had found for Francine consisted of

wheat-ears in pearls and gold, adapted for brooch and eardrops; so

I only had to drop them in beside the chickens and the present was

appropriate and complete.

I cannot tell of the effect as Mary Ashburleigh swept into that

splendid banqueting-room, one long pyramid of velvet pierced with

webbed interstices of light. If the largest window of St. Ursula's

church had come down and entered the room, the spectacle could not

have been so superb. One item struck me: the younger bride, of course,

wore orange buds; but for the Englishwoman, a beauty ripe with many

summers, buds and blossoms were inappropriate; she wore fruits: in

the grand coronal of plaits that massed itself upon her head were

set, like gems, three or four small, delicious, amber-scented mandarin

oranges. With this piece of exquisite apropos did the infallible Mary

Ashburleigh crown the edifice of her good taste. The two brides sat

opposite each other. A small watch, which I had happened to buy at

Coblenz, I managed to detach and lay on the Dark Ladye's plate as my

offering. On a card beside it I merely wrote, "ANOTHER TIME!"

Who knows? Perhaps Sylvester may fill and founder as the other has

done. He looks miserably bilious and frightened.

I had rather partake of a rare dinner than describe one. The wines

alone represented all the cellars of the Rhine and the whole champagne

country. Fortnoye, who gave the feast, entertained both Sylvester's

party and his own with regal good cheer. Think not that Henri Fortnoye

was the ordinary obfuscated, superfluous, bewildered bridegroom. On

the contrary, assuming immediately the head of his own table, he took

the responsibility of the party's merriment, and made the good humor

flow like the wine. I know not how it was, but ere the meal was over

I found myself joining in one of his choruses; Frau Kranich forgot

her asceticism and exhumed all her youthful air of gayety; James

Athanasius Grandstone promised the host to set his wines running in

every State of America. But the prettiest moment was when the two

brides rose and touched glasses, mutually and to the health of the

company, apropos of a little wedding-song which Fortnoye had composed

and was trolling at the head our willing chorus.

[ILLUSTRATION: HOMEWARD BOUND.]

CONCLUSION.

I have arrived at Marly, and, with the ssistance of much sarcasm from

Hohenfels, am getting on with considerable spirit at my Progressive

Geography. When man's Hope ceases temporarily to take a merely Human

aspect, may it not suffer a fresh avatar and begin in a new and

Geographical form its beneficent career? The Dark Ladye has sunk

beneath my horizon, but speculations over the Atlantean and Lunar

Mountains are still succulent and vivifying.

[ILLUSTRATION: CHARLES AND JOSEPHINE.]

I fled, lashed by a hundred despairs and by many symptoms of headache

and dyspepsia, from the wedding-feast at Brussels. Charles and the

baron of Hohenfels accompanied me. It was a night-train. The spectacle

of so much wedded happiness was too much for me, too much for

Hohenfels. The effect was, contrarily, rather stimulating to Charles,

who has made a match with Josephine, and with her assistance is

now listening, the tear of sensibility in his eye, to Mendelssohn's

"Wedding March" as executed by the village organ!

We passed Valenciennes, Somain, Donai, Arras, Amiens, Clermont, Criel,

Pontoise--the last points of merely bodily travel that I shall ever

make: here-after my itineracy shall be entirely theoretical. We took

a carriage at Pontoise, and traversed the woods of Saint-Germain. As I

neared home I bowed right and left to amicable and smiling neighbors,

who waved me good-day from their doors. So did my Newfoundland,

who broke his chain and leaped upon my shoulders, flourishing his

tail--overjoyed to salute the returning Ulysses.

[ILLUSTRATION: ARGUS AND ULYSSES.]

In the British Museum, among the Elgin Marbles, Phidias has carved

a pile of heaped-up marble waves, and out of them rise the arms of

Hyperion--the most beautiful arms in the world. Homesick for heaven,

those weary arms try to free themselves of the clinging foam. Another

minute and surely the triumphant god will leap from his watery couch

and guide with unerring hands the coursers of the Dawn! But that

reluctant minute is eternal, and the divinity still remains incapable,

clogged and wrapped in the embrace of marble waves. Yet the real

sun every morning succeeds in equipping himself for his journey, and

arrives, glad, at his welcome bath in the western sea.

The inference I draw is: If you want a career to be eternal instead of

transitory, hand it over to Art.

[ILLUSTRATION: "HAND IT OVER TO ART."]

The true moral of it all is, that we are all savage myths of the

Course of the Sun. We disappear any number of times, but we rise and

trail new clouds of glory, and our readers or our audiences perceive

that it is the same old Hyperion back again. The youth who by the

faithful hound, half buried in the snow, is found far up on the most

inaccessible peaks of imagination, is perceived to grasp still in his

hand of ice that Germanesque and strange device--_Auf Wiedersehen_.

[ILLUSTRATION]

FOLLOWING THE TIBER.

TWO PAPERS.--1.

[Illustration: NEAR THE SOURCE OF THE TIBER.]

"Ecce Tiberum!" cried the Roman legions when they first beheld the

Scottish Tay. What power of association could have made them see in

the clear and shallow stream the likeless of their tawny Tiber,

with his full-flowing waters sweeping down to the sea? Perhaps those

soldiers under whose mailed and rugged breasts lay so tender a thought

of home came from the northerly region among the Apennines, where a

little bubbling mountain-brook is the first form in which the storied

Tiber greets the light of day. One who has made a pilgrimage from its

mouth to its source thus describes the spot: "An old man undertook to

be our guide. By the side of the little stream, which here constitutes

the first vein of the Tiber, we penetrated the wood. It was an immense

beech-forest.... The trees were almost all great gnarled veterans

who had borne the snows of many winters: now they stood basking above

their blackened shadows in the blazing sunshine. The little stream

tumbled from ledge to ledge of splintered rock, sometimes creeping

into a hazel thicket, green with long ferns and soft moss, and then

leaping once more merrily into the sunlight. Presently it split into

numerous little rills. We followed the longest of these. It led us

to a carpet of smooth green turf amidst an opening in the trees;

and there, bubbling out of the green sod, embroidered with white

strawberry-blossoms, the delicate blue of the crane's bill and dwarf

willow-herb, a copious little stream arose. Here the old man paused,

and resting upon his staff, raised his age-dimmed eyes, and pointing

to the gushing water, said, _'E questo si chiama il Tevere a Roma!'_

('And this is called the Tiber at Rome!') ... We followed the stream

from the spot where it issued out of the beech-forest, over barren

spurs of the mountains crested with fringes of dark pine, down to a

lonely and desolate valley, shut in by dim and misty blue peaks. Then

we entered the portals of a solemn wood, with gray trunks of trees

everywhere around us and impenetrable foliage above our heads, the

deep silence only broken by fitful songs of birds. To this succeeded

a blank district of barren shale cleft into great gullies by many a

wintry torrent. Presently we found ourselves at an enormous height

above the river, on the ledge of a precipice which shot down almost

perpendicularly on one side to the bed of the stream.... A little past

this place we came upon a very singular and picturesque spot. It was

an elevated rock shut within a deep dim gorge, about which the river

twisted, almost running round it. Upon this rock were built a few

gloomy-looking houses and a quaint, old-world mill. It was reached

from the hither side by a widely-spanning one-arched bridge. It was

called Val Savignone."[1] Beyond this, at a small village called

Balsciano, the hills begin to subside into gentler slopes, which

gradually merge in the plain at the little town of Pieve San Stefano.

[Illustration: CAPRESE.]

Thus far the infant stream has no history: its legends and chronicles

do not begin so early. But a few miles farther, on a tiny branch

called the Singerna, are the vestiges of what was once a place of

some importance--Caprese, where Michael Angelo was born exactly four

hundred years ago. His father was for a twelvemonth governor of this

place and Chiusi, five miles off (not Lars Porsenna's Clusium, which

is to the south, but Clusium Novum), and brought his wife with him to

inhabit the _palazzo communale_. During his regency the painter of the

"Last Judgment," the sculptor of "Night and Morning," the architect of

St. Peter's cupola, first saw the light. Here the history of the Tiber

begins--here men first mingled blood with its unsullied waves. On

another little tributary is Anghiara, where in 1440 a terrible battle

was fought between the Milanese troops, under command of the gallant

free-lance Piccinino, and the Floren-tines, led by Giovanni Paolo

(commonly called Giampaolo) Orsini; and a little farther, on the main

stream, Città di Castello recalls the story of a long siege which it

valiantly sustained against Braccio da Montone, surnamed Fortebraccio

(Strongarm), another renowned soldier of fortune of the fifteenth

century.

[Footnote 1: _The Pilgrimage of the Tiber_, by Wm. Davies.]

[Illustration: LAKE THRASIMENE.]

As the widening flood winds on through the beautiful plain, a broad

sheet of water on the right spreads for miles to the foot of the

mountains, whose jutting spurs form many a bay, cove and estuary. It

was in the small hours of a night of misty moonlight that our eyes,

stretched wide with the new wonder of beholding classic ground, first

caught sight of this smooth expanse gleaming pallidly amid the dark,

blurred outlines of the landscape and trees. The monotonous noise and

motion of the train had put our fellow-travelers to sleep, and when it

gradually ceased they did not stir. There was no bustle at the little

station where we stopped; a few drowsy figures stole silently by in

the dim light, like ghosts on the spectral shore of Acheron; the whole

scene was strangely unreal, phantasmal. "What can it be?" we asked

each other under our breaths. "There is but one thing that it can

be--Lake Thrasimene." And so it was. Often since, both by starlight

and daylight, we have seen that watery sheet of fatal memories, but

it never wore the same shadowy yet impressive aspect as on our first

night-journey from Florence to Rome.

Not far from here one leaves the train for Perugia, seated high on

a bluff amid walls and towers. We had been told a good deal of the

terrors of the way--how so steep was the approach that at a certain

point horses give out and carriages must be dragged up by oxen. It was

with some surprise, therefore, that we saw ordinary hotel omnibuses

and carriages waiting at the station. But we did not allow ourselves

to feel any false security: by and by we knew the tug must come. We

set off by a wide, winding road, uphill undoubtedly, but smooth and

easy: however, this was only the beginning; and as it grew steeper and

steeper, we waited in trepidation for the moment when the heavy beasts

should be hitched on to haul us up the acclivity. We crawled up safely

and slowly between orchards of olive trees, which will grow wherever

a goat can set its foot: beneath us the great fertile vale of Umbria

spread like a lake, the encircling mountains, which had looked like

a close chain from below, unlinking themselves to reveal gorges and

glimpses of other valleys. Thus by successive zigzags we mounted

the broad turnpike-road, now directly under the fortifications, now

farther off, until we saw them close above us, with the old citadel

and the new palace. And now surely the worst had come, but the carnage

turned a sharp corner, showing two more zigzags, forming a long acute

angle which carried us smoothly to the rocky plateau on which the city

stands, and we bowled in through the old gate-way at a round trot,

with the usual cracking of whips and rattling and jingling of harness

which announces the arrival of travelers at minor places on the

Continent.

We were not comfortable at Perugia--and let no one think to be so

until there is a new hotel on a new principle--but it is a place where

one can afford to forego creature comforts. Of all the towns on the

Tiber, so rich in heirlooms of antiquity and art, none can boast such

various wealth as this. The moment one leaves the centre of the town,

which is built on a table of rock, the narrow streets plunge down on

every side like dangerous broken flights of stairs: they disappear

under deep cavernous arches, so that if you are below they seem to

lead straight up through the darkness to the soft blue heaven, while

from above they seem to go straight down into deep cellars, but

cellars full of slanting sunshine. And whether you look up or down,

there is always a picture in the dark frame against the bright

background--a woman in a scarlet kerchief with a water-vessel of

antique form, or a ragged brown boy leading a ragged brown donkey, or

a soldier in gay uniform striking a light for his pipe. As soon as

you leave the live part of the town, with the few little _caffès_ and

shops, and the esplanades whence the thrice-lovely landscape unfolds

beneath your gaze, you wander among quiet little paved _piazzas_ with

a bit of daisied grass in their midst, surrounded by great silent

buildings, whence through some opening you descry a street which is a

ravine, and the opposite cliff rising high above you piled close with

gray houses overhung with shrubs and creepers, and little gardens in

their crevices like weeds between the stones of a wall; or you come

out upon a secluded gallery with tall, deserted-looking mansions on

one hand--except that at some sunny window there is always to be seen

a girl's head beside a pot of carnations or nasturtiums--and on the

other a parapet over which you lean to see the town scrambling up the

hillside, while a great breadth of valley and hill and snow-covered

mountain stretches away below.

Then what historical associations, straggling away across three

thousand years to when Perugia was one of the thirty cities of

Etruria, and kept her independence through every vicissitude until

Augustus starved her out in 40 B.C.! Portions of the wall, huge smooth

blocks of travertine stone, are the work of the vanished Etruscans,

and fragments of several gateways, with Roman alterations. One

is perfect, imbedded in the outer wall of the castle: it has a

round-headed arch, with six pilasters, in the intervals of which are

three half-length human figures and two horses' heads. On the southern

slope of the hill, three miles beyond the walls, a number of Etruscan

tombs were accidentally discovered by a peasant a few years ago. The

outer entrance alone had suffered, buried under the rubbish of two

millenniums: the burial-place of the Volumnii has been restored

externally after ancient Etruscan models, but within it has been left

untouched. Descending a long flight of stone steps, which led into the

heart of the hill, we passed through a low door formerly closed by a

single slab of travertine, too ponderous for modern hinges. At first

we could distinguish nothing in the darkness, but by the uncertain

flaring of two candles, which the guide waved about incessantly, we

saw a chamber hewn in the rock, with a roof in imitation of beams and

rafters, all of solid tufa stone. A low stone seat against the wall

on each hand and a small hanging lamp were all the furniture of this

apartment, awful in its emptiness and mystery. On every side there

were dark openings into cells whence came gleams of white, indefinite

forms: a great Gorgon's head gazed at us from the ceiling, and from

the walls in every direction started the crested heads and necks of

sculptured serpents. We entered one by one the nine small grotto-like

compartments which surround the central cavern: the white shapes

turned out to be cinerary urns, enclosing the ashes of the three

thousand years dead Volumnii. Urns, as we understand the word, they

are not, but large caskets, some of them alabaster, on whose lids

recline male figures draped and garlanded as for a feast: the faces

differ so much in feature and expression that one can hardly doubt

their being likenesses: the figures, if erect, would be nearly two

feet in height. The sides of these little sarcophagi are covered

with _bassi-rilievi_, many of them finely executed: the subjects are

combats and that favorite theme the boar-hunt of Kalydon; there was

one which represented the sacrifice of a child. The Medusa's head,

as it is thought to be, recurs constantly, treated with extraordinary

power: we were divided among ourselves whether it was Medusa or an

Erinnys with winged head. The sphinx appears several times: there

are four on the corners of an alabaster urn in the shape of a

temple, exquisite in form and features, and exceedingly delicate in

workmanship. Bulls' heads, with garlands drooping between them, a

well-known ornament of antique altars, are among the decorations. But

far the most beautiful objects were the little hanging figures, which

seemed to have been lamps of a green bronze color, though we were

assured that they are _terra-cotta_: they are male figures of

exquisite grace and beauty, with a lightness and airiness commonly

given to Mercury; but these had large angel pinions on the shoulders,

and none on the head or feet. There was not a scholar in the party,

so we all returned unenlightened, but profoundly interested and

impressed, and with that delightful sense of stimulated curiosity

which is worth more than all Eurekas. With the exception of a few

weapons and trinkets, which we saw at the museum, this is all that

remains of the mighty Etruscans, save the shapes of the common red

pottery which is spread out wholesale in the open space opposite the

cathedral on market-days--the most graceful and useful which could

be devised, and which have not changed their model since earlier days

than the occupants of those tombs could remember.

[Illustration: THE TIBER NEAR PERUGIA.]

The conquering Roman has left his sign-manual everywhere, but one

is so used to him in Italy that the scantier records of later ages

interest us more here. Like every other old Italian town, Perugia

had its great family, the Baglioni, who lorded it over the place,

sometimes harshly and cruelly enough, sometimes generously and

splendidly--protectors of popular rights and patrons of art and

letters. Their mediaeval history is full of picturesque incident and

dramatic catastrophe: it would make a most romantic volume, but

a thick one. At length the Perugians, master and men, grew too

turbulent, and Pope Paul III. put them down, and sat upon them, so to

speak, by building the citadel.

But time would fail us to tell of the Baglioni, or Pope Paul the

Borghese, or Fortebraccio, the chivalric _condottiere_ who led the

Perugians to war against their neighbors of Todi, or even the still

burning memories of the sack of Perugia by command of the present

pope. We can no longer turn our thoughts from the treasures of art

which make Perugia rich above all cities of the Tiber, save Rome

alone. We cannot tarry before the cathedral, noble despite its

incompleteness and the unsightly alterations of later times, and full

of fine paintings and matchless wood-carving and wrought metal and

precious sculptures; nor before the Palazzo Communale, another grand

Gothic wreck, equally dignified and degraded; nor even beside the

great fountain erected six hundred years ago by Nicolo and Giovanni da

Pisa, the chiefs and founders of the Tuscan school of sculpture; nor

beneath the statue of Pope Julius III., which Hawthorne has made known

to all; for there are a score of churches and palaces, each with its

priceless Perugino, and drawings and designs by his pupil Raphael

in his lovely "first manner," which has so much of the Eden-like

innocence of his master; and the Academy of Fine Arts, where one may

study the Umbrian school at leisure; and last, but not least, the Sala

del Cambio, or Hall of Exchange, where Perugino may be seen in his

glory. It is not a hall of imposing size, so that nothing interferes

with the impression of the frescoes which gaze upon you from every

side as you enter. Or no; they do not gaze upon you nor return your

glance, but look sweetly and serenely forth, as if with eyes never

bent on earthly things. The right-hand wall is dedicated to the sibyls

and prophets, the left to the greatest sages and heroes of antiquity.

There is something capricious or else enigmatical in the mode of

presenting many of them--the dress, attitude and general appearance

often suggest a very different person from the one intended--but the

grace and loveliness of some, the dignity and elevation of others, the

expression of wisdom in this face, of celestial courage in that, the

calm and purity and beauty of all, give them an indescribable charm

and potency. At the end of the room facing the door are the "Nativity"

and "Transfiguration," the latter, infinitely beautiful and religious,

full of quiet concentrated feeling. We were none of us critics: none

of us had got beyond the stage when the sentiment of a work of art is

what most affects our enjoyment of it; and we all confessed how much

more impressive to us was this Transfiguration, with its three quiet

spectators, than the world-famous one at the Vatican. Although

there are masterpieces of Perugino's in nearly every great European

collection, I cannot but think one must go to Perugia to appreciate

fully the limpid clearness, the pensive, tranquil suavity, which

reigns throughout his pictures in the countenances, the landscape, the

atmosphere.

[Illustration: TODI.]

We found it hard to rob Perugia even of a day for a pilgrimage to the

tomb of Saint Francis at Assisi, yet could not leave the neighborhood

without making it. We took the morning-train for the little excursion,

meaning to drive back, and crossed the Tiber for the first time on the

downward journey at Ponte San Giovanni. We got out at the station of

Santa Maria degli Angeli, so named from the immense church built over

the cell where Saint Francis lived and died and the little chapel

where he prayed. The Porzionuncula it was called, or "little share,"

being all that he deemed needful for man's abode on earth, and more

than needful. It was hither that he came in the heyday of youth,

forsaking the house of his wealthy father, the love of his mother,

a life of pleasure with his gay companions, and dedicated himself to

poverty and preaching the word of God. One of our party had said that

she considered Saint Francis the author of much evil, and as having

done irreparable harm to the Italian people in sanctifying dirt and

idleness. But apostles are not to be judged by the abuse of their

doctrine; and although it cannot be denied that Saint Francis

encouraged beggary by forbidding his followers to possess aught of

their own, he enjoined that they should labor with their hands for

several hours daily. And to me it seemed as if out of Palestine

there could be no spot of greater significance and sacredness to any

Christian than this, where in a sanguinary and licentious age a young

man suddenly broke all the bonds of self, and taught in his own person

humility, renunciation and brotherly love as they had hardly been

taught since his Master's death. The sternness of his personal

self-denial is only equaled by his sweetness toward all living things:

not men alone, but animals, birds, fishes, the frogs, the crickets,

shared his love, and were called brother and sister by him. The great

and instantaneous movement which he produced in his own time was no

short-lived blaze of fanaticism, for its results have lasted from the

twelfth century to our own; and although we may well believe that the

day is past for serving Christ by going barefoot and living on

alms, the spirit of Saint Francis's doctrine, charity, purity,

self-abnegation, might do as much for modern men as for those of six

hundred years ago. Believing all this, we were not sorry that our

uncompromising friend had stayed behind, and it was in a reverent

mood that we left the little stone chamber--which shrinks to lowlier

proportions by contrast with the enormous dome above it--and turned

to climb the long hill which leads to the magnificent monument which

enthusiasm raised over him who in life had coveted so humble a home.

[Illustration: CHURCH AND CONVENT OF SAINT FRANCIS, AT ASSISI.]

The cliff on which Assisi stands rises abruptly on the side toward

the Tiber: long lines of triple arches, which look as if hewn in

the living stone, stretch along its face, one above another, like

galleries, the great mass of the church and convent, with its towers

and gables and spire-like cypress trees, crowning all. It is this

marriage of the building to the rock, these lower arcades which rise

halfway between the valley and the plateau seeking the help of

the solid crag to sustain the upper ones and the vast superimposed

structure, that makes the distant sight of Assisi so striking, and

almost overwhelms you with a sense of its greatness as the winding

road brings you close below on your way up to the town. It is a triple

church. The uppermost one, begun two years after the saint's death,

has a magnificent Gothic west front and high steps leading from the

piazza, and a rich side-portal with a still higher flight leading from

a court on a lower level. As we entered, the early afternoon sun was

streaming in through the immense rose-window and flooding the vast

nave, illumining the blue star-studded vault of the lofty roof and the

grand, simple frescoes of Cimabue and Giotto on the walls. Thence we

descended to the second church, in whose darkness our vision groped,

half blind from the sudden change; but gradually through the dusk we

began to discern low vaults stretching heavily across pillars which

look like stunted giants, so short are they and so tremendously

thick-set, the high altar enclosed by an elaborate grating, the little

side-chapels like so many black cells, and through the gloom a twinkle

and glimmer of gold and color and motes floating in furtive sunbeams

that had strayed in through the superb stained glass of the infrequent

windows. The frescoes of Giotto and his school enrich every spandril

and interspace with their simple, serious forms--no other such place

to study the art of that early day--but a Virgin enthroned among

saints by Lo Spagna, a disciple of Perugino's, made a pure light in

the obscurity: it had all the master's golden transparency, like clear

shining after the rain. From this most solemn and venerable place we

went down to the lowest church, the real sepulchre: it was darker than

the one we had left, totally dark it seemed to me, and contracted,

although--it is in the form of a Greek cross--each arm is sixty feet:

in fact, it is only a crypt of unusual size; and although here

were the saint's bones in an urn of bronze, we were conscious of a

weakening of the impression made by the place we had just left. No

doubt it is because the crypt is of this century, while the other two

churches are of the thirteenth.

There are other things to be seen at Assisi; and after dining at the

little Albergo del Leone, which, like every part of the town except

the churches, is remarkably clean, my companion set out to climb up to

the castle, and I wandered back to the great church. As I sat idly

on the steps a monk accosted me, and finding that I had not seen the

convent, carried me through labyrinthine corridors and galleries, down

long flights of subterranean stone steps, one after another, until

I thought we could not be far from the centre of the earth, when he

suddenly turned aside into a vast cloister with high arched openings

and led me to one of them. Oh, the beauty, the glory, the wonder of

the sight! We were halfway down the mountain-side, hanging between the

blue heaven and the billowy Umbrian plain, with its verdure and its

azure fusing into tints of dreamy softness as they vanished in the

deep violet shadows of thick-crowding mountains, on whose surfaces

and gorges lay changing colors of the superbest intensity. Poplars and

willows showed silvery among the tender green of other deciduous trees

in their fresh spring foliage and the deep velvet of the immortal

cypresses and the blossoming shrubs, which looked like little puffs

of pink and white cloud resting on the bosom of the valley. A small,

clear mountain-stream wound round the headland to join the Tiber,

which divides the landscape with its bare, pebbly bed. It was almost

the same view that one has from twenty places in Perugia, but coming

out upon it as from the bowels of the earth, framed in its huge stone

arch, it was like opening a window from this world into Paradise.

Slowly and lingeringly I left the cloister, and panted up the many

steps back to the piazza to await my companion and the carriage which

was to take us back to Perugia. The former was already there, and in a

few minutes a small omnibus came clattering down the stony street, and

stopping beside us the driver informed us that he had come for us. Our

surprise and wrath broke forth. Hours before we had bespoken a little

open carriage, and it was this heavy, jarring, jolting vehicle which

they had sent to drive us ten miles across the hills. The driver

declared, with truly Italian volubility and command of language and

gesture, that there was no other means of conveyance to be had; that

it was excellent, swift, admirable; that it was what the signori

always went from Assisi to Perugia in; that, in fine, we had engaged

it, and _must_ take it. My companion hesitated, but I had the

advantage here, being the one who could speak Italian; so I promptly

replied that we would not go in the omnibus under any circumstances.

The whole story was then repeated with more adjectives and

superlatives, and gestures of a form and pathos to make the fortune

of a tragic actor. I repeated my refusal. He began a third time: I

sat down on the steps, rested my head on my hand and looked at the

carvings of the portal. This drove him to frenzy: so long as you

answer an Italian he gets the better of you; entrench yourself in

silence and he is impotent. The driver's impotence first exploded

in fury and threats: at least we should pay for the omnibus, for his

time, for his trouble; yes, pay the whole way to Perugia and back, and

his _buon' mano_ besides. All the beggars who haunt the sanctuary of

their patron had gathered about us, and from playing Greek chorus

now began to give us advice: "Yes, we would do well to go: the only

carriage in Assisi, and excellent, admirable!" The numbers of these

vagrants, their officiousness, their fluency, were bewildering. "But

what are we to do?" asked my anxious companion. "Why, if it comes to

the worst, walk down to the station and take the night-train back." He

walked away whistling, and I composed myself to a visage of stone

and turned my eyes to the sculptures once more. Suddenly the driver

stopped short: there was a minute's pause, and then I heard a voice

in the softest accents asking for something to buy a drink. I turned

round--beside me stood the driver hat in hand: "Yes, the signora is

right, quite right: I go, but she will give me something to get a

drink?" I nearly laughed, but, biting my lips, I said firmly, "A

drink? Yes, if it be poison." The effect was astounding: the man

uttered an ejaculation, crossed himself, mounted his box and drove

off; the beggars shrank away, stood aloof and exchanged awestruck

whispers; only a few liquid-eyed little ragamuffins continued to turn

somersets and stand on their heads undismayed.

Half an hour elapsed: the sun was beginning to descend, when the sound

of wheels was again heard, and a light wagon with four places and a

brisk little horse came rattling down the street. A pleasant-looking

fellow jumped down, took off his hat and said he had come to drive

us to Perugia. We jumped up joyfully, but I asked the price. "Fifty

francs"--a sum about equivalent to fifty dollars in those regions. I

smiled and shook my head: he eagerly assured me that this included

his _buon mano_ and the cost of the oxen which we should be obliged

to hire to drag us up some of the hills. I shook my head again: he

shrugged and turned as if to go. My unhappy fellow-traveler started

forward: "Give him whatever he asks and let us get away." I sat down

again on the steps, saying in Italian, as if in soliloquy, that

we should have to go by the train, after all. Then the new-comer

cheerfully came back: "Well, signora, whatever you please to give."

I named half his price--an exorbitant sum, as I well knew--and in

a moment more we were skimming along over the hard, smooth

mountain-roads: we heard no more of those mythical beasts the oxen,

and in two hours were safe in Perugia.

THE PARADOX.

I wish that the day were over,

The week, the month and the year;

Yet life is not such a burden

That I wish the end were near.

And my birthdays come so swiftly

That I meet them grudgingly:

Would it be so were I longing

For the life that is to be?

Nay: the soul, though ever reaching

For that which is out of sight,

Yet soars with reluctant motion,

Since there is no backward flight.

CHARLOTTE F. BATES.

A NIGHT AT COCKHOOLET CASTLE.

I.

Cockhoolet was the name of the place: it was a farm of which the

Ormistons were and had been tenants for several generations. A father,

mother and five olive-branches made up the family. A healthy, happy,

united, thriving family they were, and as such much respected. There

were two sons and three daughters, the eldest of whom was Bessie,

the "Rose of Cockhoolet," as she was called; for that she had all the

beauty and sweetness of the rose was generally allowed, although

there were people who could not be made to see this--people who were

probably idiopts; not idiots--although they might have a streak

of idiocy in them, too, perhaps--but idiopts, or persons who were

color-blind. None of the young men of the district were color-blind.

The clergyman of the parish in which Cockhoolet was situated, and at

whose church the Ormistons attended, was an old man comparatively,

whose sermons were old-fashioned, and not given forth with the fire

of youth: he was not one you would have expected to be very popular,

especially with the young; yet various young men from considerable

distances were attracted to his church, and, generally speaking, they

settled themselves in pews opposite the gallery in front of which

sat Mr. Ormiston and his family. Any person who chanced to be in the

vicinity, if of discerning powers, might have been conscious of the

electricity in the air. Dull people neither saw nor felt it.

Bessie Ormiston was not dull, but, being a modest girl, she would

rather not have been stared at; and, being a good girl, she thought

people might be better employed in church: still, she was only a girl,

and it would not be the truth to say she was mortally offended. Did

the person ever exist who was offended at an honest compliment? If

he ever did, he ought to have been fed on sarcasm for the rest of his

days.

Not only was Bessie pretty--she was also rich. A grand-uncle had left

her five thousand pounds, her brothers and sisters getting only one

thousand each. There is no use in asking reasons for this: simply, the

Rose was born with a silver spoon in her mouth. Perhaps, indeed, the

old man did not know he had so much money, for it was as residuary

legatee that Bessie got the five thousand pounds, and it was not

thought she would get anything like that: people remarked, in the

language of the district, which was apt occasionally to be strong and

graphic rather than elegant,--people remarked that "old Ormiston

had cut up well." Five thousand charms added to those Bessie already

possessed--not to mention that her father was a rich man--made her

most miraculously charming: like Tibby Fowler of the Glen, whose

perplexities of this kind have been embalmed in song, she had wealth

of wooers, and wealth, it is well known, makes wit waver.

It is a saying that an Englishman's house is his castle, but the

phrase is understood to be figurative: Mr. Ormiston's house was his

castle without a figure. Cockhoolet Castle is very old, at least one

part of it is, having been built probably about the year 1400. A more

modern part was built in 1527, while the most modern part of all was

added in 1726: this last division of it is used as the farm-house.

The rooms have been painted and papered in the present style of house

decoration, and in the sitting-rooms, in addition to the little old

windows, the thick walls have been pierced and a large bow-window put

in with fine effect. There are three narrow stone staircases leading

up the three divisions of the castle; there are long passages; there

are sudden short flights of steps taking you up or down into all

manner of cornered rooms; there is a hall which might hold the

population of the county. Keeping up one of the spiral staircases,

you come out on the roof, round which there is a walk guarded by a low

stone coping: should you want to fling yourself over, you have ample

opportunity. There are stone sentry-boxes where you can sit hidden

from the wind and everything else, and look far and wide over the

country, and down into the garden if you can do so without growing

giddy. There is also a dungeon tenanted by nothing more subject

to suffering than potatoes and other roots, for which it is a most

favorable receptable, the walls being so thick and the roof so low

that cold cannot get in in winter nor heat in summer: there is only a

single narrow slit in the wall for the admission of light, but it is

comforting to know that the doomed wretches who inhabited it in past

ages had at least a temperate climate.

There is the room Queen Mary Stuart slept in when she occasionally

visited in the vicinity. The reader is perhaps not familiar with Queen

Mary's name in connection with Cockhoolet Castle, but there may be

other facts about her of which he is also ignorant. Does he know, for

instance, that she had a daughter by her third marriage, whom, as an

infant, she despatched to France to be reared in a nunnery, "that she

may not," said the unhappy queen, "run the risk of having such a lot

as I have"? Does he know that John Knox was possessed by a mad passion

of love for Mary Stuart? It has always been thought otherwise--that

in point of fact he held her in contempt; but as it is proverbial that

"nippin' and scartin' (figurative of course) is Scotch folks' wooin',"

there may be truth in the new discovery. But true or not true, it

is enough to make the bold Reformer blush standing on the top of his

pillar in the necropolis of Glasgow: perhaps he _is_ blushing, if he

were near enough to see.

Be that as it may, there is no manner of doubt that Mary Stuart

honored Cockhoolet Castle by abiding under its roof when it suited her

to do so. Have not I, the present writer, stood in the room she slept

in--looked from the small windows set in the ten-foot thick wall from

which she looked? Have I not gazed over the same country, up to the

same skies, into the same moon at which she gazed? Could her face be

more fair than that of the present Rose of Cockhoolet, her thoughts

more innocent, her reveries more sweet, than those of Bessie Ormiston,

who in the course of time had succeeded to the room which had been

consecrated by royal slumbers?

It is a matter of certainty that Mary Stuart planted a tree fast by

Cockhoolet Castle--she would not have been herself if she had not done

that--and a magnificent tree it is, very old and quite big enough

for its age. The queen must have been fond of planting trees, and,

considering the number she planted, it is astonishing how she found

time for so many less innocent employments: she must have improved

each shining hour, and, poor woman! she had not too many of these.

There is a walk also, called the Lady's Walk, leading away from

the castle up a bosky dell, where a burn amuses itself playing at

hide-and-seek, but, like a little child, betrays its hiding-places by

its voice, and comes out into the light again and laughs at its own

joke. Did the queen ever wander here? did she ever "paidle in the burn

when summer days were fine"? did its murmur ever soothe her ear?

did she ever see her fair face in its pools, or drop bitter tears to

mingle and; flow on with its waters?

The burn has kept trotting through the dell for six thousand years,

singing its song all the time, and its speed is as good and its voice

as clear and musical as when the morning stars sang together and all

the sons of God shouted for joy. Many a wild story it could tell if

its murmur could be understood; but it is a murmur only--a murmur

which crept into the ears of Cæsar's legions, of Queen Mary, of Bessie

Ormiston, and will creep into yours, O reader! if you like to go

and explore the Lady's Walk, when you can interpret the murmur for

yourself, as all your predecessors no doubt did. In days of old it

fed the moat, traces of which are to be seen round the castle still,

although it has long since been filled up and covered, like the park

of which it forms part, with rich natural pasture, soft, thick and

velvety. In short, Cockhoolet had everything that a castle ought to

have, and wanted nothing that a castle ought not to want, not even a

ghost.

It was not the ghost of Mary Stuart: that would have been too

shocking--a ghost without a head, or having a head and a broad vivid

ray of red encircling its neck. Such a ghost would have made every one

who saw it lose his senses. Cockhoolet Castle had a ghost: so much was

certain, but hitherto no one had ever either seen or heard it. How,

then, was it certain? Why ask a question like that? Is it reasonable

to pin a human being down to prove a ghost? Will not presumptive

evidence do? Strange things had happened, must have happened, at

the castle: is it for a moment to be supposed that these things had

happened and all gone scot free?--in other words, that not one of them

had left a ghost? It is not to be supposed.

II.

It was Christmas Day. Christmas Day is not solemnized and festivalized

in Scotland as it is in England; still, the observance of it in some

shape is creeping in more and more. It was Christmas, and Mr. and Mrs.

Ormiston had gone to be present at a feast from which they were not

expected to return till the following day. There were left at home the

Rose, as head of the family for the time being; her sisters, Bell and

Jessie, supposed to be little girls still, although the supposition

made them very indignant; and her two brothers, John and William. A

guest aad two servants made up the known inhabitants of the house.

The guest was a young man who had arrived before the heads of the

house left, and had been laughingly charged by them to see that the

children did not work mischief. He was an old friend of the family; at

least as old a friend as he was a man, and she had been in the world

a quarter of a century. We shall call him Edwin: that name will do as

well as another; indeed, better, for he might not like his own made

public. It need hardly be said that among the rest young Edwin loved,

and, like his namesake in the ballad, he never talked of love. This

might be stupid, but the stupidity which springs from true modesty

is not to be classed with the stupidity which springs from want of

brains, even when, as is quite likely, the consequences are to the

full as disastrous. Now, how is a young lady to understand or bring

things to a bearing in a case like this? The Rose could not go up

to Edwin and tell him she was not a goddess; neither could she say,

"Although I have five thousand pounds--and you know it, and I know

that you know it, and you know that I know that you know it--I am

quite ready to believe that you love me, and would love me if I hadn't

a farthing:" she could not say this, but she thought it, she worried

herself thinking over it, and, being a sensible girl with a humble

opinion of herself, she came to the conclusion that she had been

altogether mistaken--that Edwin did not care for her, at least not

as she cared for him, otherwise why should he not say so? "If," she

thought--"if I were in his place and he in mine, neither money nor

pride, nor anything else, would keep me silent." And the roses in

her face deepened in color as she thought of her own silly folly in

allowing her feelings to be drawn in, and she determined her folly

should cease from that hour; which determination had the effect of

bringing sharp, short speeches about Edwin's ears tinged with sarcasm

that were meant to convey to him the conviction that she did not care

a pin about him; and they answered the purpose admirably.

Love is a fickle game, which they

Whose stakes are deepest worst can play,

Edwin was at Cockhoolet that Christmas Day by the same fatality that

causes a moth to hover round a brilliant light; and when her sister

told Bessie that Edwin had come and was putting his horse into the

stable, she said, "Is Mr. Forrester here again? He must surely be dull

at home." But of course she received him with friendly civility.

Edwin employed the forenoon out of doors with the boys and two other

visitors. A Mr. and Mrs. Parker arriving unexpectedly, who were

anxious to see the castle, the afternoon was spent in going through

every part of it from dungeon to roof.

Bessie carried the keys: she was châtelaine, seneschal and cicerone,

all rolled in one.

Going up the narrow stairs, the party had to climb Indian file: in the

passages they could spread out a little, and in some of the rooms in

the uninhabited portion they had to walk circumspectly, as if they

were crossing water on stepping-stones, for the flooring was wanting

in some places, leaving a stretch of bare rafters. Bessie tripped

lightly over them, and then turned to wait for the others. "Don't be

frightened," she said: "these rafters are as sound as the day they

were laid down. The flooring has not rotted: it must have been taken

up for some purpose. They did not know how to scamp work in those

days."

"If we fall through, where shall we go?" inquired Mrs. Parker, looking

down into what seemed deep mysterious darkness.

"Oh, not very far; but don't fall: it won't be pleasant," said Bessie:

"you would alight on very hard stones."

Mr. Forrester got on the roof first, and handed up the ladies; and

they all stood looking out over the country. It was not a cold, bleak,

snowy day, as Christmas in northern latitudes has a right to be. The

winter had been mild--one of a series of mild winters, overturning the

old traditions of frosts and snow-storms that lasted for months,

and to a great extent stopped traffic and labor, and made traveling

difficult and wearisome. This Christmas was different. The year was

dying with calmness and dignity, and with a smile on its face, as you

might take the pale gleam of sunshine to be; and if you were a little

sad in mood you could suppose there was a wistfulness in the smile

that was spread over the still, soft face of Nature. Cockhoolet stood

high, and the country immediately round it was flat, and much of it

moorland.

If you climb to our castle's top,

I don't see where your eye can stop;

For when you've passed the corn-field country,

Where vineyards leave off flocks are packed,

And sheep-range leads to cattle-tract,

And cattle-tract to open chase,

And open chase to the very base

O' the mountain.

Strike out the vineyards and that description will apply very well

to Cockhoolet; and in addition you ought to have seen from its roof

Edinburgh and the sea; but on this day the sea wore a garment of mist,

and had wrapped the metropolis in it also, as it not unfrequently

does. You ought to have seen more than one range of hills too, yet

except by eyes well acquainted with them their outlines could hardly

be distinguished from the leaden gray clouds lying in bands along the

horizon.

But as the party stood on the roof the clouds began to rise, tower

upon tower, against the sky, and the sun, who retires early at this

season, went behind them, when, instead of the pale, wistful gleam he

had been keeping up all day, he suddenly threw a deep bright golden

border on all the edges of the dark misty battlements which had piled

themselves like castles of the Titans: a big rift appearing at their

base, there poured through it, filling up the space, a great belt of

crimson rays streaked with gray, as if from burning ashes falling into

it, and like the dense glow from a furnace, giving the idea that the

cloud-building was on fire, and that the flames from below, shooting

up inside the dark walls, were the cause of the brilliant illumination

that shone round every pinnacle and coign of vantage. It was a grand

and a curious sight. You could fancy the sun looking across to the

old Castle of Edinburgh standing on its rock, and saying, "Can you

do anything like this with all the gas and paddelle you can lay your

hands on?" Precisely this idea struck Mrs. Parker, for she said, "I

think that is as good a sight as the castle the night the prince was

married."

"That was a very good sight in its way," said Mr. Parker, "but we can

hardly hope to compete with the sun, my dear: he has all his materials

within himself, and we have to pay for them."

"Do you know, Miss Ormiston," said Mrs. Parker, "one of the buildings

they said had such a fine effect put me in mind of a trunk studded

with brass nails--the initials of the happy pair in gas-jets looked

like the name of the owner of the trunk. All the time I was on the

street I could not get that notion out of my head; and I was sorry,

for I am sure it cost a great deal of money to light it up, and I

really wished to think it grand."

"We were all in town that night," said John Ormiston--"papa and mamma,

and the whole of us, and Mr. Forrester, who made eight."

"I thought it a beautiful sight," said Bessie.