"I do not wish to marry Mademoiselle Feliciani," replied I, "nor does

she dream of marrying me. I found her in wretchedness; I rescued her. I

loved her as a friend. Have men and women no hearts but that they must

sneer at what is natural and good? What is the barrier that divides a

man from a woman so that comradeship seems impossible between them,

simplicity, and all good feeling, including Christian charity?"

"Sex," replied M. le Vicomte de Chatellan.

CHAPTER XXV

FRANZIUS MEETS ELOISE

Next day, when I returned to the Pavilion of Saluce, I took a companion

with me--Franzius.

I called early at his wretched lodging in the Rue Dijon; the sound of

his violin led me upstairs, and I found him, seated on the side of his

bed, playing, his soul in Germany or dreamland.

A day in the country, away from Paris, the houses, the streets! If I had

offered him a day in paradise the simple soul could not have expressed

more delight.

"Well," I said, "it is nine o'clock. We will just have time to catch the

train at Evry. Get ready and come on."

He took his hat from a shelf, placed it on his head, put his violin

under his arm, and declared himself ready.

"But surely you are not taking your violin?"

"My violin--but why not?"

"Going into the country!"

"But why not? Ah, my friend, it never leaves me; without it I am not I.

It is myself, my soul, my heart. Ach!"

"Come on--come on!" I said, laughing and pushing him and his violin

before me. "Take anything you like, so long as you are happy. That's

right--mind the stairs. Don't you lock your door when you go out?"

"There is nothing to steal," replied Franzius simply.

In the street I hailed a fiacre and bundled the violinist in,

protesting. The mad extravagance of the business shocked him. He had

never been in a fiacre before; even omnibuses were luxuries to this son

of St. Cecilia, who had tramped the continent of Europe on foot. Yet he

wanted to pay when we reached the station; and the return ticket I

bought for him pained his sense of independence so much that I took the

fare from him. Then he was happy--happy as a child; and I do not know

what the other passengers thought of the young beau, elegantly dressed,

seated beside the shabby violinist, both happy, laughing, and in the

highest of spirits; the violinist, unconsciously, now and then plucking

pizzicato notes from the strings of his instrument, caressing it as a

man caresses the woman he loves.

We walked from Evry to Etiolles under the bright May morning, under the

sparkling blue, along the delightful white dusty roads, the larks

singing lustily, and the wind blowing the vanishing hawthorn-blossoms

upon the dust like snow.

Then, at the drawbridge over the moat, Eloise was waiting for us, and we

followed her into the Pavilion, Franzius with his hat crushed to his

heart, bowing, the violin under his arm forgotten, his whole simple soul

worshipping, very evidently, the beautiful and gracious goddess who had

received us.

Ah, that was the day of Franzius's life! We had déjeûner in the little

garden, under the chestnut-tree alight with a thousand clusters of pink

blossom. He forgot his shyness completely, and told us stories of his

wanderings, unconsciously dominating the conversation and leading us

hundreds of miles away from Etiolles to the forests of the Roth Alps and

the Hartz. The great forests of the Vosges, so soon to resound to the

drums of war and the tramping of armies, spread their perfumed shade

around us as we listened. Castle Nidek, whose ruined walls still echo to

the ghostly hunting-horn of Sebalt Kraft; the Rhine and its storeyed

hills; the white roads of Germany; Pirmasens and the Swan Inn, with its

rose-decked porch; mountain rivers, leaping waterfalls, skies

turquoise-blue against the black-green armies of the high mountain

pines--all spread before us, lay around us, domed us in as he talked the

morning into afternoon, and the afternoon half away.

What a gift of description was his; and how we listened as children may

have listened to the story of the wanderings of Ulysses! Then, to forge

his simple chains more completely--to give the last touch to his

magic--he played to us.

Gipsy dances! And you could hear, as the smoke of the camp-fires blew

across the figures of the dancers, the feet of the women and the men who

had wandered all day keeping time on the turf to the tune--a tune wild

as the cry of the mountain kestrel, filled with all sorts of wandering

undertones, heart-snatching subtleties.

Czardas and folk-airs he played, and the wonderful spinning-song of

Oberthal, in which you can hear, through the drone of the wheel and the

flying flax, the history of the poor. Just a thread of song told by the

thread of flax--the flax that forms the swaddling-clothes, the bridal

linen, and the shroud of man. And lastly a tune of his own, more

beautiful than any of the others.

"But why don't you write music?" I said, when we were seated in the

railway-train on our way back to Paris. "You are a greater musician than

any of those men who are famous and rich."

"My friend," said Franzius, "I am the second violin at La Closerie de

Lilas."

It was the first time I had heard him speak at all bitterly, and I said

no more. I did not approach the subject again, but that did not prevent

me from making plans.

I would rescue this nightingale from its cage in a beer-garden and put

it back in the woods; but the thing would require great tact and

infinite discretion.

"Have you any music written out--you know what I mean, written out on

paper--that I could show to a friend?" I asked him, as we parted at the

station.

"I have several 'Lieder,'" replied Franzius. "Very small--just, as you

might say, snatches."

"If I send a man for them to-morrow morning, will you give them to him?

I will take the greatest care of them."

"But they are so small!"

"Never mind--never mind! I have influence, and may get them published."

He promised. And I saw the light of a new hope in his face as he

departed through the gaslit streets on foot--this child of the forest

and the dawn, to whom God had given wings, and to whom the world had

given a cage!

I went to the Opera that night. It was "Don Giovanni"; and as I sat with

all the splendour of the Second Empire around me, tier upon tier of

beauty and magnificence drawn like gorgeous summer night-moths around

the flame of Mozart's genius, the vision of Franzius wandering through

the gaslit streets, with his violin under his arm, passed and repassed

before me.

He seemed so far from this; his music, before this triumphant burst of

song, so like the voice of a cicala, faint and thin, and of no account.

Yet, when I went to bed, the tune that pursued me from the day was the

haunting spinning-song of Oberthal--the song so simple and full of fate,

the song of the flax, caught and interpreted by the humming strings,

telling the story of the cradle, the marriage-bed, and the grave!

I did not go to Etiolles next day, for I had business that detained me

in Paris; but I went the day following, and Eloise received me, pouting.

"Ah well, wait!" said I, as I followed her into the Pavilion. "Wait till

I tell you what I have been doing, and then you won't scold me for

leaving you alone."

"Tell, then!" said Eloise, putting a bunch of violets in my coat, and

pressing them flat with her little hand.

"I will tell you," said I, kissing the little violet-perfumed hand. And

sitting down, I told her of how I had asked Franzius to let me have his

music.

"He sent me the three songs yesterday morning," I went on. "I cannot

read music, though I love it; but that did not matter. I had my plan. I

ordered the Vicomte's best carriage to the door, and drove to the Opera

House, where I inquired of the doorkeeper the address of the best

music-publisher in Paris. Flandrin, of the Rue St. Honoré, it seems, is

the best, so I drove there.

"It was a big shop. Flandrin sells pianos as well as songs. He is a big

man, with a big, white, fat face with an expression like this." I puffed

out my cheeks and opened my eyes wide to show Eloise what Flandrin was

like. She laughed; and I went on: "He was very civil. He had seen me

drive up to his door in a carriage and pair, and I suppose he thought I

had come to buy a piano. When he heard my real business his manner

changed. He said he was sick of musical geniuses; he would not even look

at poor Franzius's 'Lieder.' 'Take them to Barthelmy,' he said. 'He

lives in the Passage de l'Opera; he publishes for those sort of people,

and he is going bankrupt next week, so another genius won't do him any

harm.' 'I haven't time to go to Barthelmy,' I replied. 'Besides, I don't

want you to buy these things. I want to buy them.'

"'Well, my dear sir,' said Flandrin, 'if you want to buy them, why don't

you buy them?'

"'Just for this reason,' I replied. 'M. Franzius, who wrote these

things, is not a shopman who sells pianos; he is a poet. He would be

offended if I offered him money for his productions, for he would know

that I did it for charity's sake. I want you to buy these things from

him. I will give you the money to do so, and, by way of commission, I

will buy a piano from you. My only condition is that you come with me

now in my carriage and see M. Franzius, and pay him the money yourself.

Of course, you will have to publish the things, too; but I will give you

the money to do that as well. Here are a thousand francs, which you are

to give M. Franzius. Send one of your pianos round to No. 14, Place

Vendôme, M. le Vicomte de Chatellan's. And now, if you are ready, we

will start.'

"He came like a lamb. The purchase of the piano had put him into a very

good humour. He seemed to look upon the thing as a practical joke; and

the idea of paying an unknown musician a thousand francs for three

pieces of music seemed to tickle him immensely, for he kept repeating

the sum over and chuckling to himself the whole way to the Rue Dijon.

"Franzius was in bed and asleep when we got there. I led Flandrin right

up to the attic; and you may imagine Franzius's feelings when he woke up

and found us in his room--the best music-publisher in Paris standing at

the foot of his bed waiting to offer him a thousand francs for his

'Lieder'! A thousand francs down! Oh, there is nothing like money! It

was just as if I had opened a window in his life and let in spring. I

saw him grow younger under my eyes as he sat up in bed unconscious of

everything but the great idea that luck had come at last and some hand

had opened the door of his cage. Even old Flandrin was a bit moved, I

think. Ah, well! I bundled Flandrin off when the business was done, and

then I made Franzius write a note to the Closerie de Lilas people,

telling them that at the end of the week he was leaving there, and then

I told him my plan. You know old Fauchard, the forest-keeper's cottage?

It's only half a mile from here; it's right in the forest. Well, he has

a room to spare, and he will put Franzius up for twelve francs a week.

He will be free to write his music----"

"Ah, Toto," cried Eloise, who had been trying to in a word for the last

two minutes, "how good of you!"

"Good of me! Why, I have only done what pleased myself! It's a debt. The

man saved my life--but no matter about that. Get your hat and come with

me, and we will go to Fauchard's and make arrangements about the room."

CHAPTER XXVI

THE TURRET ROOM

Fauchard, the ranger's, cottage lay at the meeting of two drives; all

the trees here were pines, and the air was filled with their balsam.

It was, even in 1869, an old-fashioned cottage, set back in a clearing

amidst the trees. The tall pines seemed to have stepped back to give it

room, and were eternally blowing their compliments to it. Ah, they were

fine fellows to live amongst, those pine-trees, true noblemen of the

forest, erect as grenadiers, spruce, perfumed; and the blue sky looked

never so beautiful as when seen over their tops.

The cottage had an old wooden gallery under the upper windows, and an

outside staircase gone to decay; the porch was covered with rambler

roses; on the apex of the red-tiled roof pigeons white as pearls sat in

strings, fluttering now to the ground, and now circling in the blue

above the trees like a ring of smoke.

It was a place wherein to taste the beauty of summer to the very dregs.

Dawn, coming down the pine-set drive, touching the branches with her

fingers and setting the woods a-shiver, peeped into Fauchard's cottage

as she never peeped into the Tuileries. Noon sat with folded hands

before the rose-strewn porch, singing to herself a song which mortals

heard in the croonings of the pigeons. Dusk set glow-worms, like little

lamps, amidst the roses of the porch.

When we arrived, Fauchard was out, but his wife was in and received us.

Madame Fauchard was over seventy; a woman as clean and bright as a new

pin, active as a cat; a woman who had brought twelve children into the

world, yet had worked all her life as hard as a man.

Oh, yes! she would be very glad to take a lodger, if he would be

satisfied with their simple place. She showed us over the little house.

It smelt sweet as lavender, and the spare room was so close to the trees

that the pine-branches almost brushed the window.

"It will be lovely for him," said Eloise, when, having settled about

terms with Fauchard's wife, we were taking our way back to the Pavilion.

"But will he find it dull when he is not writing his music?"

"If he does," said I, "he can come over to the Pavilion and see you.

Then he will love Etiolles, where he will, no doubt, find friends; and

he has the woods, and Fauchard will take him out with him. Oh, no; he

will not find it dull."

"Toto," said Eloise, as though suddenly remembering something, just as

we reached the drawbridge.

"Yes."

"You remember the day before yesterday you said you would show me over

the château the next time you came. Let us go over it now."

"Very well," I replied. "Wait for me here, and I will get the key."

The Château de Saluce had not been lived in for years--ever since my

mother's death, in fact. But it had been well cared for. Fires had been

lit every fortnight or so to air the rooms during the autumn and winter;

every room had been left in exactly the same state it was in at my

mother's death, and the gardens had been tended and looked after as

though the family were in residence.

"When you marry," said my guardian, "it will make a very nice present

for your wife. Let it! Good God, Patrique, are we shopkeepers?"

"Here's the key," said I, coming back to Eloise, who had waited for me

at the angle of the drawbridge. She was standing with her elbow on the

drawbridge rail, and her eyes fixed on the water. She seemed paler than

when I had left her; and when I touched her arm she drew her gaze away

from the water lingeringly, as if fascinated by something she had seen

there.

"Toto," said Eloise, "are there fish in the moat?"

"I never hear of any. Why?"

"I saw something white and flat," said Eloise, "deep down. I first

thought it was a flat-fish, then it looked like a ball of mist in the

water deep down, and then it looked like a--a face."

"A face!" said I, laughing, and looking over the bridge-rail and down

into the water.

"I know it was only fancy," said Eloise. "Perhaps I went asleep for a

second and dreamed it. It felt like a dream, and I felt just as a person

feels wakened up from sleep when you touched me on the arm just now. It

was a man's face, pale, and--and---- Ah, well, it was perhaps only my

imagination!"

She shivered, and took my arm; and I led her along a by-path that took

us to the carriage drive and the front door of the château.

The great hall, with its oak gallery and ceiling painted by Boucher,

echoed our footsteps and our voices.

This echo was the defect of the hall, as I have often heard my father

say. The builder of the place had, by some mischance, imprisoned an

echo. She was there, and nothing would dislodge her--everything had been

tried. Architects from Paris had been consulted--even the great Violette

Le Duc himself--without avail. She was there like a ghost, and nothing

would drive her out. Whether she was hiding in the gallery or the coigns

of the ceiling, who can say? But one thing was certain: her voice

changed. It was sometimes louder, sometimes lower, sometimes harsher,

sometimes sweeter; a change caused, I believe, by atmospheric influence.

But superstition takes no account of atmospheric influence or natural

causes. Superstition said that the echo was the voice of Marianne de

Saluce, a girl famed for her beautiful voice, who, like Antonina in the

Violon de Cremone, had died singing, under tragic circumstances, one

winter day here in the hall of the château, in the late years of the

reign of his sun-like Majesty Louis XIV.

"The blood flowing from her mouth had mixed with her song," said the old

chronicle; and this, with the fact that she was wild, wayward, and bad,

gave superstition groundwork for a conceit not without charm.

"Marianne!" cried Eloise, when I had told her this tale; and

"Marianna--Marianne!" the ghostly voice replied.

Eloise laughed, and Marianne laughed in reply all along the gallery, as

though she were running from room to room; and, to my mind, made

fanciful by the recollection of the old legend, it seemed that there was

something sinister and sneering in the laughter of Marianne.

Then I called out myself, making my voice as deep as possible; and the

answer was so horrible as to make us both start. For it was as though a

woman, leaning over the gallery and imitating my man's voice, were

mocking me.

I have never heard anything more hobgoblin, if I may use the expression.

"Ugh!" said Eloise. "Don't speak to her any more. Speak in whispers;

don't give her the satisfaction of answering. Toto, are those men in

armour your ancestors?"

"They are the shells of old Saluces," I replied. "Eloise, do you

remember the man in armour in the tower of Lichtenberg--the one who

struck the bell?"

"Don't speak of him," said Eloise; "at least, here. The place is ghostly

enough. Shall we go upstairs?"

We went up the broad staircase, peeped into the sitting-rooms and

boudoirs of the first floor, and then up another flight of stairs to the

floor of the bedrooms.

"See the funny little staircase?" said Eloise, when we had looked into

the bedrooms, ghostly and deserted. She was pointing to a narrow

staircase leading from the corridor we were in.

"Let's see where it goes," said I, for it was years since I had

explored this part of the château. "It looks ugly and wicked enough to

lead to a Bluebeard's chamber."

But it did not. It led to a turret room, with four windows looking

north, south, east, and west. A charming little room, with a painted

ceiling, on which cupids disported themselves with doves.

Faded rose-coloured couches were placed at each window; on a table in

the centre lay some old books, dust on their covers. The view was

superb.

One window showed the forest, another the Seine winding blue through the

country of spring, another the country of fields and gardens, vineyards,

and far white roads.

The smoke of Etiolles made a wreath above the poplar-trees.

We sat down on a couch by the window overlooking Etiolles. We were so

close together that I could feel the warmth of her arm against mine, and

her hand hanging loose beside her was so close to mine that I took it

without thinking. The picture outside, the picture of Nature and the

wind-blown trees over which the larks were carolling and the small white

clouds drifting, contrasted strangely with the room we were in and the

silence of the great empty house. The little hand lying in mine suddenly

curled its little finger around my thumb.

"Eloise!" I said.

She turned her head, her breath, sweet and warm, met my face. Then I

kissed her, not as a brother but as a lover.

CHAPTER XXVII

REMORSE

And I did not love her at all. Nor did she love me. It was just as

though the great tide of Nature had seized us, innocently floating, and

flung us together, drifted us together for a little while, and then let

us part; for we never referred to the matter again after that day.

But a cloud had arisen on my horizon, a cloud no larger than Eloise's

hand.

I installed Franzius at Fauchard's cottage.

He brought his luggage with him, done up in a brown-paper parcel, under

his right arm; under his left he carried his violin. I will never forget

him that afternoon as he stepped from the train at Evry station, where

Eloise and I were waiting to receive him. Such a Bohemian, bringing the

very pavement of Paris with him, the music of Mirlitons, the gaslight of

the Rue Coquenard, and the sawdust of La Closerie de Lilas.

Unhappy man! Paris had marked him for her own. Heaven itself could never

entirely remove from his exterior the stains and the scorching, the

lines around his eyes drawn during the early hours in dancing hall and

café, the bruised look that poverty, hunger, and cold impress upon the

servants who wait upon the Muses--the lower servants, whose place is

the courtyard! But the stains and the scorching had not reached his

soul; like Shadrach he had passed through the burning fiery furnace and

come out a living man.

Besides his luggage and his violin he was carrying some rolls of

music-paper.

We walked to the Pavilion, and from there through the woods to

Fauchard's cottage. The bees were working in the little garden, and the

pearl-white pigeons were drawn up in parade order on the roof as if to

receive us. Never seemed so loud the shouting and laughter of the birds,

never so beautiful the rambler roses round the porch! The humble things

of Nature seemed to have put themselves en fête to welcome back their

own.

I did not go to Etiolles for some days after this. A new era of my life

had begun.

And now it was that the truth of the Vicomte's philosophy was borne in

upon me:

"You are getting yourself into a position from which you cannot escape

with honour. You cannot marry Mademoiselle Feliciani, for Paris would

not receive her as your wife."

What was I to do with her? Of course, a man of the world would have

answered the question promptly; but I was not a man of the world. And

the summer went on; and I was taken about to balls and fêtes by my

guardian, and as I was young, not bad-looking, and wealthy, I was well

received.

The summer went on, the cuckoos hoarsened in the forest of Sénart, the

splendour of Nature deepened, the corn in the fields at Evry was tall

and yellow, the grapes in the vineyards full-globed, and the

dragon-flies had attained the zenith of their magnificence, and all day

mirrored themselves in the moat of the Pavilion. Franzius, lost in his

music and in the paradise in which he found himself, had got back years

of his youth. His genius, clipped and held back, had suddenly burst into

bloom. He was projecting and carrying out a great work--an opera founded

on an old German legend. Carvalho had inspected some of the scores, and

had become enthusiastic. All was well with Franzius, but not with

Eloise. As the summer went on she seemed to droop.

At first I thought it was only my fancy, but by the end of July I was

certain.

Franzius was a frequent visitor at the Pavilion. When he was there with

us she seemed bright and gay, but when we found ourselves alone she grew

abstracted and sad. Her cheeks had lost colour, and Madame Ancelot

declared that she did not eat. The meaning of all this was plain--at

least, I thought so. She cared for me.

This thought, which would have given a lover joy, filled me with deep

sadness. I had offered and given the girl my protection, Heaven knows,

from the highest motives. And now behold the imbroglio! If she cared for

me, it was my duty to marry her and give her a future. If I married her,

society would not receive her as my wife. I had, in fact, in trying to

make her future happy, gone a long way towards ruining my own. Heaven

knows, if I had loved her, little I would have cared for society; but

the mischief and the misery of the thing was just that--I did not love

her.

I felt a repulsion towards her whenever the idea of love came into my

mind, with her image. It was as if a man, who, tasting a fruit in a

sudden fit of hunger and finding it nauseous and insipid, were suddenly

condemned to eat of that fruit for ever after, and none other.

And I had the whole of life before me, and I would be tied to a woman

all through life--to a woman I did not love! And the worst part of the

whole business was the fact that I could get out of the whole thing as

easily as a man steps out of a cab--as easily as a man crushes a flower.

And that was what bound me.

To stay in the affair, to be made party to my own social ruin, was the

most difficult business on earth.

Days of argument I spent with myself. The two terrible logicians that

live in every man's brain fought it out; there was no escaping from the

conclusion: "If you have made this girl love you, you must ask her to be

your wife, for under the guise of a brother's friendship you have

treated her just as any of these Boulevard sots and fools would have

treated her. Oh, don't talk of Nature and sudden impulse--that is just

the argument they would use! You did this thing unpremeditatedly, we

will admit. Well, you have your whole life to meditate over the

reparation and to make it. Faults of this description are ugly toys made

by the devil, and they have to be paid for with either your happiness

or your soul. Of course, you can treat her as your mistress; and she,

poor child, tossed already about and bruised by the waves of chance,

would be content. But would you? Would you be content to thrust still

deeper in the mud of life this creature that fate has thrown on your

hands? The powers of darkness have surely conspired against this

unfortunate being. She, a daughter of the Felicianis, has been dragged

in the mire of Paris. Would you be on the side of darkness too?"

That was what my heart said against all the arguments of my head. And so

it remained.

"To-morrow," said I, "I will go to Etiolles, and I will ask Eloise to be

my wife."

That afternoon, walking in the Rue de Rivoli, I saw Franzius--Franzius,

whom I imagined to be at Fauchard's cottage, green leagues away from

Paris! He was walking rapidly. I had to run to catch him up; and when he

turned his face I saw that he was in trouble. He was without his violin.

"Why, Franzius," I cried, "what are you doing here, and what ails you?

Have you lost your violin?"

"Oh, my friend!" said Franzius. "What ails me? I am in trouble. No, I

have not lost my violin, I have forgotten it--it has ceased to be, for

me. Ah, yes, there is no more music in life! The birds have ceased

singing, the blue sky has gone--Germany calls me back."

"Good heavens!" I said. "What's the matter? You haven't left Etiolles

for good, have you?"

"Oh, no! I am going back for a few days. I came to Paris to-day to seek

relief--to hear the streets--to forget----"

"To forget what? Come, tell me what has happened."

"Not now," said Franzius. "I cannot tell you now. To-morrow I will call

on you at your house in the Place Vendôme. Then I will tell you."

That was all I could get from him; and off he went, having first wrung

both my hands, the tears running down his face so that the passers-by

turned to look and wonder at him.

"Come early to-morrow," I called out after him as he went. Then I

pursued my way home to the Place Vendôme, wondering at the meaning of

what I had seen and troubled at heart.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE OLD COAT

Next morning I sent Joubert to my guardian's apartments with a message

craving an interview.

It was nine o'clock, and the old gentleman received me in his

dressing-room and in his dressing-gown. Beril had just shaved him, and

he was examining his rubicund, jovial face in a hand-mirror. The place

smelt of Parma violets and shaving-soap. It was like the dressing-room

of a duchess, so elaborate were the fittings and so complex the manicure

instruments and toilet arrangements set out on the dressing-table.

"Leave me, Beril," said the old gentleman, when he had made a little bow

to my reflection in the big mirror facing him. Then, taking up a tooth

instrument--for, like M. Chateaubriand, he kept on his toilet-table a

set of dental instruments with which he doctored his own pearly

teeth--he motioned me to take a seat and proceed.

"I have come this morning, monsieur, to place my position before you and

to tell you of a serious step in life which I have decided to take."

"Yes?" replied the Vicomte, tenderly tapping with the little steel

instrument on a front tooth, as though he were questioning it as to its

health.

"You told me once that I was getting myself into a difficult position.

Well, as a matter of fact----"

"You have?"

"Yes, monsieur."

Then I told him everything.

When I had finished, the old gentleman put away the tooth instrument,

folded his dressing-gown more closely round him, and examined

contemplatively his hands, of which he was very proud.

"The only thing that would have surprised me," said he at last, "would

have been if all this had not occurred. Well, now, let us make the best

of it. We will assure her future, and she will forget."

"Monsieur, I am this morning about to offer Mademoiselle Feliciani my

hand in marriage."

My guardian, who had been attending to his left-hand little finger with

an ivory polisher, turned in his chair and looked at me. He saw I was in

earnest. The blow was severe, yet his power of restraint was so great

that his face did not alter.

Only the hand which held the ivory manicure instrument trembled

slightly.

"You have decided on this step?"

"Absolutely, monsieur."

"You know, of course, it will mean your social ruin, and, as you do not

love the girl, the ruin of your happiness?"

"I am aware of all that, monsieur--bitterly."

My guardian sighed, rubbed his chin softly, and, for a moment, seemed

plunged in a profound reverie.

"I am growing old," said he. "I have no children. I looked upon you

almost as a child of mine. I made plans for your future, a magnificent

future; I took pleasure to introduce you to my friends, in seeing you

well dressed. With the Emperor at your right hand you would have made a

very great figure in society, monsieur. Ah, yes, you might have been

what you would! And now, in a moment, this has all vanished. Excuse me

if I complain. Of course, as you are not of full age I could compel you

not to take this step. I could, as a matter of fact, sequestrate you;

but I know your spirit, and I am not a believer in brute force. Well,

well, what can I say? You come and tell me this thing--your suicide

would sadden me less than this marriage which will be your social death.

You are a man, and it is not for me to treat you as though you were a

child. Think once again on the matter, and then---- Why, then act as

your will directs."

He rang the bell for Beril to complete his toilet, and I left the room

smitten to the heart. His unaffected sadness, his kindness, his

straightforwardness would have moved me from my course if anything

mortal could have done so.

Yet I left the room with my determination unshaken.

I was coming down the stairs when a footman accosted me on the first

landing.

"A person has called to see you, monsieur, and I have shown him into the

library."

I turned to the library, opened the door, and found myself engulfed in

the arms of Franzius.

"Mind the violin, mind the violin!" I cried, for he was carrying it, and

I felt the bridge snapping against my chest. Then I held him at arm's

length.

He was radiant, laughing like a boy. He had come from Etiolles, all the

way on foot, and all the joy that had been bottled up in him during the

twenty-four miles' tramp had burst loose.

"And now," I said, laughing, too, from the infection of his gaiety,

"what is it?"

"Oh, my friend," said Franzius, "she loves me!"

"Good heavens! Who?"

But you might just as well have questioned the Sud Express going full

speed.

"Yesterday you saw me--I was in despair. I had not understood aright.

She had not understood me. She thought I cared for nothing but my music;

she did not know that my music was herself--that her soul had entered

into me, that she was me----"

"But stay!" I cried, recalling to mind all the women at Etiolles, from

Madame Fauchard to Elise, the station-master's pretty daughter;

recalling to my mind all but the right one. "But, stay!"

"That she was me, that my music was her--that every strand of her golden

hair, every motion of her lips, every----"

Ah, then it began to dawn on me!

"Franzius," I cried, suddenly seizing him by the shoulders, "Franzius,

is it Mademoiselle Eloise?"

"They call her that," replied the stricken one, "but for me she is my

soul."

Then I embraced Franzius. It was the first time in my life that I had

"embraced" a man French fashion. He and his old violin I took in my

arms, nearly crushing them. Fool! fool! Double fool that I was not to

have seen it before! Her sadness when I was with her, the way she

lighted up when he was near! And I had fancied that she was in love with

me!

There was a grain of cynical bitterness in that recollection, but so

small a grain that it was swallowed up, perished for ever, in the honest

joy that filled my heart.

I had done the right thing, I had prepared to sacrifice myself, and this

was my reward.

Then the recollection of the old man upstairs came to me, and, bidding

Franzius to wait for me, I ran from the room. I saw a servant on the

stairs and called to him to bring wine and cigars to the gentleman in

the library; then, two steps at a time, up I went to the dressing-room.

I knocked and opened the door without waiting for a reply. Beril was

tying my guardian's cravat. I took him by the shoulders and marched him

out of the room.

"Saved!" cried I to the astonished Vicomte as I stood with my back to

the door and he stood opposite me, his striped satin cravat hanging

loose and his hand half reaching for the bell.

Then I told him all, and he saw that I was not mad.

"Is he downstairs, this Monsieur Franzius?" asked my guardian when I had

finished my tale and he had finished congratulating me.

"Yes."

"I would like to see him. Ask him to déjeûner."

"He's rather---- I mean, you know, he's a Bohemian; does not bother much

about dress and that sort of thing--so you must not expect to see a

Boulevardier."

"My dear sir," said the old man with delightful gaiety, "if one is in a

burning building, does one trouble about the colour of the fire escape

that saves one from destruction, or if it has been new painted? Ask him

to déjeûner though he came dressed as a red Indian!"

Franzius, when I found him in the library, would not touch the wine or

cigars I had ordered up; he was in a frame of mind far above such

earthly things. I made him sit down, and, taking a seat opposite to him,

listened while he told me the whole affair.

He declared that the idea of love for Eloise had never come to him of

itself; he was far too humble to worship her, except as one worships the

sun. It was his music that said to him: "She loves you, and you love

her. Listen to me: Am I not beautiful? I am the child of your soul and

hers; divine love has brought you together so that you might create me.

I will exist for ever, for I am the child of two immortal souls."

"Then, my friend," said Franzius, "I knew what love was--it is the birth

of music in the heart, it is the music itself, the little birds try to

tell us this. I had loved her without knowing from the first day; and

when knowledge came to me I was still dumb; dumb as a miser who speaks

not of his gold; till yesterday, when I told her all. She cried out and

ran from me, and hid herself in the house, and I thought she was

offended. I thought she did not love me, I thought the music had lied to

me, and that there was no God, that the flowers were fiends in disguise,

the sun a goblin. I came to Paris, I walked here and there, I met you,

my distress was great. Then I returned to Etiolles. It was evening,

towards sunset, and, coming through the wood near the Pavilion, I saw

her.

"She had taken her seat on the root of an old tree; her basket of

needlework was by her side, and in her lap was an old coat; she had made

me bring it to the Pavilion some days before, saying she would mend it.

I thought she had forgotten it, but now it was in her lap; her needle

was in her hand, and she had just finished mending a rent in the sleeve.

Then she held it up as if to see were there any more to be done;

then--she kissed it."

"So that----"

"Ah, my friend, all is right with me now. I have come home to the home

that has been waiting for me all these weary years. Often when I have

looked back at my wanderings I have said to myself, Why? It all seemed

so useless and leading nowhere--such a zig-zag road here and there

across Europe on foot, poor as ever when the year was done. _But now I

see that every footstep of that journey was a footstep nearer to her_,

and I praise God."

He ceased, and I bowed my head. The holy spirit of Love seemed present

in that room, and I dared not break the sacred silence with words.

It was broken by the opening of the door, and the cheery voice of M. le

Vicomte bidding me introduce him to my friend.

CHAPTER XXIX

IN THE SUNK GARDEN

I shall never forget that déjeûner, and the kindness of my guardian to

poor Franzius. The tall footmen who served us may have wondered at this

very unaccustomed guest; but had the Emperor been sitting in Franzius'

place M. le Vicomte could not have laid himself out more to please. And

from no hidden motive. Franzius was his guest, he had invited him to

déjeûner, he saw the Bohemian was ill at ease in his strange

surroundings, and with exquisite delicacy only attainable by a man of

good birth, trained in all the subtleties of life, he set himself the

task of setting his guest at ease.

When the meal was over we went into the smoking-room; and then, and only

then, did M. le Vicomte refer to the question of Eloise in a few

well-chosen words.

Then he dismissed us as though we were schoolboys; and I took the

musician off to see my apartments.

Now, I am Irish, or at least three parts Irish, and I suppose that

accounts for some eccentricities in my conduct of affairs. I am sure

that it accounts for the fact that my joy up to this had carried me

along so irresistibly and so pleasantly that I had not once looked back.

It was when I opened the door of my sitting-room that memory, or

perhaps conscience, woke up to deal my happiness a blow.

The man beside me knew nothing of Eloise's past. Or did he?

Never, I thought, as I looked at him. His happiness is new-born, it has

been stained by no cloud. She has told him nothing.

I sat down and watched him as he roamed about the room, examining the

works of art, the pictures, and the hundred-and-one things, pretty or

quaint; costly toys for the grown-up.

I sat and watched him.

An overmastering impulse came upon me to go at once to Etiolles, see

Eloise, and speak to her alone, if possible.

"Come," I said, "let us go down to the Pavilion. I want a breath of

country air. Paris is smothering me. Shall we start?"

He went to the library to fetch his violin, and we left the house.

We took the train. It was a glorious September day; they were carting

the corn at Evry; and the country, warm and mellow from the long, hot

summer, was covered by the faintest haze, a gauze of heat that paled the

horizon, making a diaphanous film from which the sky rose in a dome of

perfect blue.

The little gardens by the way were filled with autumn flowers--stocks

and hollyhocks and Michaelmas daisies--simple and old-fashioned flowers,

great bouquets with which God fills the hands of the poor, more

beautiful than all the treasures of Parma and Bordighera.

A child of six, a son of one of the railway porters, bound also for

Etiolles on a message, tramped with us. Franzius carried him on his

shoulder part of the way, and bought him sweets at the village shop.

Eloise was not at the Pavilion. Madame Ancelot said she had taken her

sewing and was in the sun-garden of the Château, and there we sought for

her. This garden, small and protected from the east wind by a palisaded

screen, was the prettiest place imaginable. It was at the back of the

Château, and steps from it led up to the rose-garden. It had in its

centre a square marble pond from which a Triton blew thin jets of water

for ever at the sky.

Eloise was seated on a small grassy bank; her workbasket was beside her;

and she was engaged in some needlework which she held in her lap.

She made a pretty picture against the hollyhocks which lined the bank;

and prettier still she looked when, hearing our footsteps, she cast her

work aside and ran to meet us.

With a swift glance at Franzius, she ran straight to me and took both my

hands in hers.

"He has told you?" said she, looking up full and straight into my face,

full and straight with perfect candour and firm eyes more liquid and

beautiful than the blue of heaven washed by the early dawn.

"He has told me," I replied, holding her hands in mine.

All the sadness and pain that my past relationship with her had caused

me was now banished, for I could read in her eyes, or, blind that I was,

I thought I could read in her eyes, that the past was for her not in the

new world in which she found herself.

We sat down on the little grassy bank, and talked things over, the three

of us. Three people who had found a treasure could not have been more

happily jubilant as we talked of the future.

"And you know," said I, "you will never want money. Franzius will be

rich with his music; and even should he never care to write again, I

have a large sum of money in trust for you. Oh, don't ask who gave it in

trust for you both! It is there."

We talked till the dusk fell and star after star came out.

So dark was it when I left that a tiny point of light in Eloise's hair

made me hold her head close to look. It was a glow-worm that had fallen

from the bending hollyhocks.

It seemed to me like a little star that God had placed there as a

portent of fortune and happiness.

When I got back to Paris my guardian was out.

I went to my rooms to think things over. My thoughts had received a new

orientation. I remembered my delight that morning on finding myself

free--free of all that heaven!

Ah, if I could only have loved her as Franzius did!

What, then, was this thing called Love, which I had never known, the

thing which I had never guessed till to-day, till this evening, there in

the sunk garden of Saluce, in the dusk so filled with the sound of

unseen wings and the music of an unknown tongue?

Some drawing things were on the table.

I have always been a fair artist, and sketching has been one of my few

amusements.

Almost mechanically I took a pencil, and tried to sketch the face of

Eloise Feliciani.

But it was not the face of Eloise Feliciani that appeared on the paper.

I gazed on it, when it was finished, in troubled amazement. It was the

face of a woman--yet it was also the portrait of a child. Ah, yes;

beyond any doubt of memory it was the face of Margaret von Lichtenberg,

the old portrait in the gallery of Schloss Lichtenberg! Yet it was the

face, also, of little Carl!

CHAPTER XXX

THE MARRIAGE OF ELOISE

"We will give them a good send-off," said my guardian, as, some days

later, we discussed the matter of Eloise's wedding. "Let them be married

at Etiolles; have the village en fête. I will settle for it all."

The proposition seemed good; nowhere could one find a more suitable spot

for such a wedding than the little church of Etiolles; yet it met with

opposition.

Franzius was not a man to forget his friends. He had many in the Latin

Quarter, and he was a peasant born, with a peasant's instincts. Birth,

marriage, and death, those three supreme events in the life of man, are

more insistent in their ceremonial amidst the poor than the rich. To

Franzius it would have been a strange thing to marry without inviting to

the ceremony the people who were his friends; and the journey to

Etiolles would be too far for some of these.

Then, it was impossible for the marriage to be solemnised in a church,

for the simple reason that he was a Lutheran and Eloise had been born a

Catholic. So it was arranged to take place on the 1st of October at the

Mairie of the quarter which includes the Rue Dijon.

It was to be quite a simple affair, a wedding such as takes place every

day amongst the bourgeoisie, with the additional lustre that the

presence of the Vicomte Armand de Chatellan would lend to the

proceedings.

It was a lovely day. It had rained during the night, but the morning

broke nearly cloudless, and there was that feeling of spring in the air,

that freshness which comes sometimes in autumn like the reminiscence of

May.

Franzius had slept the night at the Place Vendôme; and I must say,

dressed in a brand-new suit of clothes and with a flower in his

buttonhole, he never looked worse in his life. Dressed in his old

clothes, with his violin under his arm, he was picturesque, but now he

looked like a tailor out for a holiday, and I told him so, to keep up

his spirits, as we breakfasted hurriedly and without appetite, but with

a good deal of gaiety.

Eloise was to come from Saluce in one of the Vicomte's carriages, and he

was to accompany her to the Mairie, where we were to wait for them. Noon

was the hour of the ceremony; and when we arrived at the Mairie the

place was crowded: four other couples, it seemed, were to be united that

day, and we were third on the list.

The people whom Franzius had invited were there already: not many,

scarcely a dozen, and mostly men, musicians with long hair and German

accents; his landlady of the Rue Dijon and her daughter, a cripple

dressed for the occasion in a newly starched white frock and blue sash;

and a young lady of the sempstress type, pale-faced and modest, and

seeming dazed with the grandeur of the officials in their chains and all

the paraphernalia of the law.

For a moment a pang went to my heart to think that a daughter of the

Felicianis was to be married here amidst these folks like one of them.

But it soon passed. The Archbishop of Paris, the choir of Notre Dame,

the congregated aristocracy of France, could not have added one whit to

the beauty of the marriage or to its sanctity.

I had dreaded that in the fulness of his heart and his simplicity

Franzius might have invited undesirable guests. The vision of

Changarnier appearing like an evil beast had horrified me. But my fears

were set at rest. Leave the simple-hearted alone, and they rarely make

mistakes. Franzius' guests, humble though they might be, were of the

aristocracy of the poor, good, kind-hearted, and honest people.

At ten minutes to noon the Vicomte arrived, with Eloise on his arm. How

charming she looked, in that simple, old-fashioned wedding-gown which

she had made for herself! And how charming the Vicomte was, insisting on

being introduced to everyone, chatting, laughing, immeasurably above

everyone else, yet suffusing the wedding-party with his own grace and

greatness so that everyone felt elevated instead of dwarfed!

And I never have been able to determine in my mind whether it was

natural goodness, or just gentility polished to its keenest edge, that

made this old libertine so lovable.

After the ceremony carriages conveyed the wedding-party to the Café

Royale in the Boulevard St. Michel.

The Vicomte had, through Beril, made all arrangements; and in a room

flower-decked, and filled with the sunlight and sounds of the boulevard,

we sat down to déjeûner.

Scarcely had we begun than the waiters announced two gentlemen, at the

same time handing the Vicomte de Chatellan two cards. "Show them up,"

said my guardian, "and lay two more covers."

It was the great Carvalho, who, hearing indirectly from my guardian of

the marriage, had come, bringing with him the director of the Opera.

You may be sure we made room for them. And what a good omen it

seemed--better than a flight of white doves--these two well-fed,

prosperous, commonplace individuals, who held the music of France in

their hands, and the laurel-wreaths!

They did not stay long, just long enough to pay their compliments and

drink success to the bride and bridegroom.

Just before departing, Carvalho whispered to me: "His opera is accepted.

He will hear officially to-morrow. It will be produced in April, or, at

latest, May."

PART III

CHAPTER XXXI

THE BALL

"By the way," said my guardian, "how are you off for money?"

We were driving back from the station, having seen the newly married

couple off on their honeymoon.

"Oh, pretty well," I replied. "Why do you ask?"

He did not seem to hear my reply, but sat gazing out of the

carriage-window at the streets we were passing through, and the people,

gazing at them contemplatively and from Olympian heights, after the

fashion of a god gazing upon beetles.

When we reached the Place Vendôme, he drew me into the library.

"I have been on the point of speaking to you several times lately about

money," said he. "Not about personal expenses, but about the bulk of

your fortune. It is invested in French securities. Clement, our lawyer,

has the number and names of them. They are all good securities, paying

good dividends; they are the securities in which I myself have invested

my money. Well, I am selling out----"

"I beg your pardon, sir?"

"Selling out--realising. I am collecting my money, marshalling my

francs, and marching them out of France into England. I propose to do

the same with yours."

"But," said I, "is that safe, to have all our money in a foreign

country? Suppose that there should be war?"

The Vicomte laughed.

"You have said the words. Suppose there should be war? France would be

smashed like a ball of glass--ouf. Do you think I am blind? At the

Tuileries, at the Quai d'Orsay, they speak of M. le Vicomte de Chatellan

as a very nice man, perhaps, but out of date--out of date; at the War

Minister's it is the same--out of date. Meanwhile, I know the machine. I

have counted the batteries of artillery and the regiments of the line on

paper, and I have counted them in the field, and contrasted the

difference. Not that I care a halfpenny for the things in themselves,

but they are the protectors of my money; and as such I look after them.

I have reviewed the personality of the people at the Tuileries--not that

I care a halfpenny for their psychological details, but they are the

stewards of my money; and I examine their physiognomies and their lives

to see if they are worthy of trust. I look at society--not that I care a

halfpenny for the morals of society, but because the health of society

is essential to the health of the State. Now, what do I see? I speak not

from any moral standpoint, but just as a man speaks who is anxious about

the safety of his money. What do I see? Widespread corruption;

peculators hiding peculators--from the man who hides the rotten army

contract at the Ministry of War to the man who hides the rottenness of

the fodder in the barrack-stable. Widespread corruption; Ministers the

servants of vice, each duller than Jocrisse; marshals as wooden and as

useless as their bâtons; skeleton regiments, batteries without cannon,

cannon without horses; no esprit; an army of gamins with

cigarette-stained fingers and guns in their hands."

The old gentleman, who for seventeen years or so had been in a state of

chronic irritation with the Second Empire and its makers, paused in his

peregrinations up and down the room, and snapped his fingers. I sat

listening in astonishment, for to me, who only saw the varnish and the

glitter, France seemed triumphant amongst the nations as the Athena of

the Parthenon amongst statues; and the French Army, from the Cent Gardes

at the Tuileries to the drummer-boy of the last line regiment, the _ne

plus ultra_ of efficacy, splendour, and strength.

He went on:

"Tell me: when you see a house in disorder, bills unpaid, the servants

liars and rogues, inefficient and useless, dust swept under the beds,

and nothing clean about the place except perhaps the windows and the

door-handle: whom do you accuse but the master and the mistress? A

nation is a house, and France is a nation. I say no more. I have been a

guest at the Tuileries; and it is not for me, who have partaken of their

hospitality, to speak against the rulers of France. But I will not allow

them to play ducks and drakes with my money. In short, my friend, in my

opinion my money is no longer safe in France, and I am going to move it

to a place of safety. I have been uneasy for some time, but of late I

am not uneasy--I am frightened. _I smell disaster._"

He did.

Now, in October, 1869, from evidence in my possession, the fate of

France was already definitely fixed. Bismarck had decided on war. He had

not the slightest enmity toward France, nothing but contempt for her and

for the wretched marionettes playing at Royalty in the Tuileries. He was

assisting at the birth of the great German Empire, that giant who in a

short twelve months was to leap living and armed from the womb of Time.

The destruction of France was the surgical operation necessary for the

birth--that was all. In October, 1869, the last rivets of the giant's

armour were being welded.

My guardian knew nothing of this; yet that extraordinary man had already

scented the coming ruin, guessing from the corruption around him the

birds of prey beyond the frontier.

"Thank you!" said he, when I had given him permission to deal with my

fortunes as his judgment dictated. "And now you have just time to dress

for dinner. Remember, you are to accompany me to-night to the ball at

the Marquis d'Harmonville's."

I went off to my own rooms not overjoyed. Society functions never

appealed to me, and balls were my detestation, for then my lameness was

brought into evidence. Condemned not to dance, it was bitter to see

other young people enjoying themselves, and to have to stand by and

watch them, pretending to oneself not to care. My lameness, though I

have dwelt little upon it, was the bane of my life. I fancied that

everyone noticed it, and either pitied me or ridiculed me. It was a

bitter thing, tainting all my early manhood; it made me avoid young

people, and people of the opposite sex. I have seen girls looking at me,

and have put their regard down to ridicule or pity--fool that I was!

Joubert put out my evening clothes. Joubert of late had grown more testy

than ever, and more domineering. He spent his life in incessant warfare

with Beril, the factotum of my guardian; and the extra acidity that he

could not vent on Beril he served up to me. But it was the business of

Eloise and Franzius (that lot, as he called them) which he had now, to

use a vulgar expression, in his nose.

"Not those boots," said I, as he took a pair of patent-leather boots

from their resting-place. "Dancing shoes!"

"Dancing shoes!" said Joubert, putting the boots back. "Ah, yes; I

forgot that monsieur was a dancer."

"You forgot no such thing, for you know very well I do not dance, but

one does not go to a ball in patent-leather boots. You like to fling my

lameness in my face. You are turning into vinegar these times. I will

pension you, and send you off to the country to live, if M. le Vicomte

does not do what he has threatened to do."

"And what may that be?" asked the old fellow, with the impudent air of a

naughty child.

"He says he'll put you and Beril in a sack and drop you in the Seine,

if he has any more trouble with the pair of you--always fighting like a

couple of old cats."

"Old, indeed!" replied Joubert. "Ma foi! it well becomes a young man

like the Vicomte to think of age! And did I make you lame? More likely

it was a curse from one of that lot----"

"Here!" I said, "give me the hair-brushes, and leave 'that lot,' as you

call them alone."

I wondered to myself what Joubert would have said had he known the real

cause of my lameness, but I had never spoken to anyone of the child, so

like little Carl, the mysterious child who had lured me through the

bushes into the hidden gravel-pit. If I had, what ammunition it would

have given him against "that lot," as he was pleased to call anyone who

had been present at the Schloss Lichtenberg that September nine years

ago!

I dined tête-à-tête with my guardian, then we played a game of écarté;

and at ten o'clock, the carriage being at the door, we departed for the

Marquis d'Harmonville's in the Avenue Malakoff.

It was a very big affair; the Avenue Malakoff was lined with carriages;

and we, wedged between the carriage of the Countess de Pourtalès and

that of the Russian Ambassador, had time on our hands, during which the

Vicomte, irritated by the loss of five louis at écarté and the slowness

of the queue, continued his strictures on the social life of Paris and

the condition of France.

We passed up the stairs, between a double bank of flowers; and despite

the condition of the social life of Paris and the state of France, the

scene was very lovely.

The great ballroom--with its scheme of white and gold, its crystal

candelabra and its extraordinarily beautiful ceiling, in which, as in a

snowstorm, the ice spirits whirled in a fantastic dance--might have been

the ballroom in the palace of the Ice Queen but for the warmth, the

banks of white camellias, and the music of M. Strauss's band.

Following my usual custom, I cast round for someone whom I could bore

with my conversation, a fellow-wall-flower; and it was not long before I

lit on M. de Présensé, a friend of my guardian, one of those old

gentlemen who go everywhere, know everything, talk to everybody, and

from whom everyone tries to escape. Delighted to obtain a willing

listener, M. de Présensé, who did not dance, drew me into a corner and

pointed out the notabilities. We had mounted to a kind of balcony, and

presently, when M. de Présensé was engaged in conversation with a lady

of his acquaintance, I stood alone and looked down on the assembled

guests.

Recalling them now, and recalling the Vicomte's strictures, it seems

strange enough that amidst the guests were most of those who, fatuously

playing into Bismarck's hands, brought war and the destruction of war on

France; all, nearly, of the undertakers of the Second Empire's funeral

were there. The Duc d'Agenor de Gramont; Benedetti, who happened to be

in Paris at that time; Marshal Leboeuf, that ruinous fool the clap of

whose portfolio cast on the council table at Saint-Cloud was answered

by the mobilisation of the German Army; Vareigne, the Palace Prefect of

the Tuileries; and, to complete the collection, Baron Jérome David,

destined to be the first recipient of the news of Sedan.

I was looking on and listening, amused and interested by old M. de

Présensé's descriptions, that were not destitute of barbs and points,

when through the crowd in my direction, walking beside my old enemy the

Comte de Coigny, came a young man.

A young man, pale, very handsome, with an air of distinction which

marked him at once as a person above other people, a distinction which,

starlike, reduced the surrounding crowd to the level of wax lights and

the function of D'Harmonville to a bourgeois rout. He was dressed in

simple evening attire, without jewellery or adornment of any

description, except an order set in brilliants, a point of sparkling

light which gave the last touch to a picture worthy of the brush of

Vandyck or Velasquez.

"Quick!" I said, plucking old M. Présensé by the sleeve. "That young man

with the Comte de Coigny: who is he?"

"That!--ma foi--he is Baron Carl von Lichtenberg, the new attaché at the

Prussian Embassy. Oh, yes; he is the sensation of the moment in Paris.

The women rave about him----"

But I did not hear what more the old man may have said, for at that

moment Von Lichtenberg, as they called him, looking in my direction,

caught my eye and halted dead, with his hand on De Coigny's arm.

He seemed stricken with paralysis; the words he had just been saying to

his companion withered on his lips; we stared at each other for ten

seconds; then De Coigny, glancing in my direction, broke the spell, and,

pulling old Présensé by the arm, I retired precipitately through an

alcove which led to the cardroom.

I was terrified, shocked. Terrified as an animal which suddenly finds

itself trapped in a gin; shocked as a man who sees a ghost.

All the nameless excitement and soul-terror that had filled me for a

moment as a child when Gretel, in the gallery of the Schloss, had held

the light to the portrait of Margaret von Lichtenberg, were mine now

again, for the face I had just seen was hers. The Baron Carl von

Lichtenberg was little Carl.

I said "Good-evening," to M. Présensé, escaped through the cardroom

door, got my hat and coat from the attendants, and found myself in the

street.

CHAPTER XXXII

TRYING TO ESCAPE FROM FATE

I walked fast as one who would try to escape from his fate.

I _could_ not but see the cards being dealt by some mysterious hand; I

could not but remember that Von Lichtenberg, a nobleman, a man of

honour, the friend of his King, and presumably sane, had three times

attempted my assassination when I was a child, to shield little Carl

from some terrible evil at my hands; and look, to-night, whom had I met?

Then, Franzius, entering my life as he had done, and Eloise, like the

people on the stage who are seen in the first act of the drama, to

reappear in the last act, helping to form the tragic tableau on which

the curtain falls.

But the terror and repulsion in my mind rose not from these things; it

came like a breath from afar; it came like a breath from the unknown,

from the time remote in the past when lived Margaret von Lichtenberg,

the woman murdered by Philippe de Saluce.

I walked hurriedly, not caring whither I went; the sounds and lights of

Paris surrounded me, but my spirit was not there. It was in the gardens

of Lichtenberg, walking with Eloise and little Carl; it was in the

picture-gallery, gazing at the portrait of the dead-and-gone Margaret,

beneath which was the little portrait of Philippe de Saluce, so horribly

like myself; it was in the windy bell-tower where the Man in Armour

stood with his iron hammer before the iron bell; I saw again the duel in

the forest, and Von Lichtenberg lying in the arms of General Hahn, and I

heard again the slobbering of the torches, the wind in the pine-trees,

and the far-off barking of the fox in the wood.

Ah, yes; all that might have something to do with me, but beyond all

that I refused my fate. I refused to believe that the dead Margaret had

a hold upon me--the last of the Mahons, who was also the last of the

Saluces; the horrible whispered suggestion: "Are _you_ Philippe de

Saluce returned? Were _you_ once in that old time the murderer of

Margaret? And is she--is she little Carl?" This I refused; that I would

not listen to; this I abhorred, as a whisper from the devil, as a

blasphemy against God's goodness and against life.

"I have never done harm to any man!"

"Or woman?" queried the whisperer, whose voice seemed my own voice, just

as in that story of Edgar Poe's the voice of William Wilson found an

echo in his double.

"Or woman? Ah, yes--Eloise--a moment of passion----"

"A moment of passion murdered Margaret de Saluce."

"But God is good; He does not create to torture; He does not bring the

dead back to confront them with their crimes."

"Know you that there is a God?" replied the whisperer. "And not a Fate

working inexorably and by law?"

"Cease!" I replied, "Let there be a Fate. I am a living man with a will.

No dead fate working by law shall drag me against my will, or move me to

another purpose than my own. I will not--I will not!"

This mental dialogue had brought me a long way. I was called to my

senses by a bright light illuminating what seemed a river of blood

stretching across the pavement.

It was a red carpet, and the great house from whose door it was laid

down was the Prussian Embassy.

A carriage, flanked by a squadron of Cent Gardes, was at the pavement,

and a man was leaving the Embassy.

It was Napoleon, who had been dining privately with the Prussian

Ambassador. He was in evening dress, covered by a dark overcoat; his

hat-brim was over his eyes, and he held a cigarette between his lips.

When Napoleon wore his hat in this fashion, with the brim covering his

eyes like a penthouse, the whole figure of the man became sinister and

full of fate.

I would sooner a flock of black birds had crossed my path than that

mysterious figure in the broad-brimmed, tall hat, beneath which in the

darkness the profile showed vaguely, yet distinctly, like the profile on

some time-battered coin of Imperial Rome, some coin on which the

Imperial face alone remains asking the dweller in a new age: Who is

this?

I watched him getting into his carriage and the carriage driving away,

surrounded by the glittering sabres of the Cent Gardes; then I returned

home.

This, it will be remembered, was the night of the 1st of October.

* * * * *

On the 4th of October, three days after, I was sitting at my club,

reading a newspaper, when the Comte de Brissac proposed a game of

écarté.

I take cards seriously; the gain or loss of money is nothing to me

beside the gain or loss of the game. That is why, perhaps, I am often

successful.

There were several other players in the room, and a good many loungers

looking on at the games, several around our table, of whom I did not

take the slightest notice, so immersed was I in the play.

I lost. Never had I such bad luck. The cards declared themselves against

me; some evil influence was at work. At the end of half an hour, during

a pause in the game, and after having lost a good sum of money to De

Brissac, I looked up, and for the first time noticed the people around

us. Right opposite to me, standing behind De Brissac, and looking me

full in the face, was Baron Carl von Lichtenberg.

The surprising thing was that I was not surprised. My unconscious self

seemed to have recognised the fact that he was there all the time,

whilst the conscious self was sublimely indifferent to everything but

the cards.

Then I did just what I would have done had a cry of "Fire" been

raised--cast my cards on the table, and left the room, walking

hurriedly, but not so hurriedly as to express what the old Marquis

d'Ampreville once described as ungentlemanly alarm.

Now, Lichtenberg was not a member of the Mirlitons; and as I was a

pretty regular frequenter of the place during certain hours of the day,

and as he had taken his place at the card-table at which I was playing,

the suggestion became almost a certainty that he had come there to meet

me.

"I am a living man with a will. No dead Fate working by law shall drag

me against my will or move me to another purpose than my own." I had

said that on the night of the 1st of October. Well, there was something

more than a dead Fate here, a thing working by law. There was the will

of Von Lichtenberg; and as I walked down the Boulevard des Italiens,

away from the club, the gin seemed to have closed more tightly around

me.

It is unpleasant to feel not that you are going to meet your fate, but

that your fate is coming to meet you; to swim from a danger, yet find

the tide slowly and remorselessly driving you towards it.

Now, what was this danger I dreaded? Impossible to say; but I felt

surely in my soul that far more destructive to my happiness and my life

than Vogel, or the fantastic old woman who lived in the wood and made

whistles of glass, silver, and gold for children to play upon, was this

man Carl von Lichtenberg. That, just as Eloise had brought me the

flowers of childhood perfumed and dew-wet in her hands, Carl von

Lichtenberg was bringing me flowers from an unknown land, flowers

scentless as immortelles, sorrowful as death.

Why should I, young and happy, and rich, with all the joy of life in me,

with a clear conscience and a healthy mind: why should I be troubled by

the tragic and the fateful? As day by day men turn the pages of their

life-story, men ask of God this question, receiving only the Author's

reply: "Read on."

The next day I had the extra knowledge that not only was Von

Lichtenberg's will against me, but the tattle of fools.

The affair at the Mirlitons had been talked about. The loungers about

the card-table had seen me look up, stare at the Baron, fling my cards

down, and leave the room.

I had, it seemed, put a public affront on him.

My guardian told me of the talk.

"Paris is a whispering gallery," said the old gentleman, "filled with

fools. They put the thing down to the fact of the duel between your

father and Baron Imhoff. The whole thing is unfortunate; the relations

of the Saluces and the Lichtenbergs have always been unfortunate; yet

the two families have had an attraction for each other, to judge by the

intermarriages. Still, this young Baron Carl seems quite a nice person,

a nobleman of the old type, a man of distinction and presence----"

"You have met him?"

"I was introduced at D'Harmonville's ball. Yes; quite a nobleman of the

old school; and it seems a pity that you should bear him any grudge on

account of the unfortunate fact that Baron Imhoff----"

"I don't. I don't hold him responsible for the fact that Baron Imhoff

killed my father. I have no grudge against him."

"I am glad to hear that," said the Vicomte; and two days later he

invited Von Lichtenberg to dinner with me!

I did not come to that dinner. I was a living man with a will of my own.

(How that phrase haunts me like satiric laughter!) I would pursue my own

course; and no dead Fate would drag me against my will, or move me to

another purpose except my own.

I dined at the Café de Paris with a friend, and as I was coming away

whom should I meet but my old enemy the Comte de Coigny!

This gentleman was flushed with wine; he was descending the stairs with

two ladies, and when he saw me he started. We had not spoken for years,

yet he came forward to introduce himself.

When we had exchanged a few platitudes, he turned to the matter that was

evidently the motive-power of his civility.

"I am surprised to see you here to-night," said he, "for my friend M. le

Baron von Lichtenberg told me he was to dine with you."

"He told you wrong."

"Ah! just so. I thought there was some mistake; he would scarcely be

dining with you after the affair at the Mirlitons."

"M. de Coigny," I replied, "I know of nothing that gives you the

warrant to introduce yourself into my private affairs. I dine where I

choose, do what I please; and should anyone question my actions they do

so at their own peril."

Then I turned on my heel and left the café with my friend.

"Another man would send you his seconds in reply to that," said my

friend.

"And why not De Coigny?"

"Oh, he is a coward. But he is also a bad man. Be on your guard, for he

will try to do you an evil turn."

I laughed, and told him of the occurrence when, years ago, I had made De

Coigny's nose to bleed in the gardens of the Hôtel de Morny.

"All the same," replied he, "be on your guard."

Next day I had a very unpleasant interview with my guardian. I had not

only insulted Von Lichtenberg, it seems, but I had also hit the

convenances a foul blow. Hit them below the belt, in fact.

"Ah, yes," said the old gentleman, "I try to do the best for you, and

see your return! In my own house, too! And to receive the message that

you were dining out only an hour before he was expected, giving me no

time to make excuses!"

"What did he say?" I asked.

"Say!" burst out M. le Vicomte. "He said nothing. Ah, if I had been in

his place! But, no. He only looked sad and depressed. Had he been a girl

instead of a man, a girl in love with you, monsieur, he could not have

taken the matter with more quietness or with more sad restraint. Say!

Ah, yes, I will tell you what he said, what we said. I will give you

the dialogue:

"'I had hoped to meet someone else.' That was what he said.

"And I: 'Alas! monsieur, Fate has ordained us to a solitude à deux.'

"I did not mention your name, monsieur, for in mentioning your name I

would have mentioned a person who had disgraced me."

"Very well," said I. "I will disgrace you no longer. I will leave Paris

to-morrow, and go to Nice."

This determination I carried out next day.

Now, under the tragic cloak of the story, under all these evasions of

mine and this pursuit of Von Lichtenberg, there lay a lovely comedy, of

which I, one of the chief actors, was utterly ignorant of the motive and

the extraordinary dénouement. But this, if you have not guessed it, you

will see presently.

I went to Nice. I had never been South before; I had never seen the

white, white roads, the black shadows, the green olives, the leaping

palms; I had never seen the oranges glowing like dim golden lamps amidst

the glossy green leaves; and it seemed to me that I had never seen the

blue of sky or the blue of sea before I entered that Paradise.

It is all changed now. The Avenue de la Gare from a road in heaven has

become a street in a town; vulgarity and wealth have done their work;

and to-day you may buy a diamond necklace of M. Marx, where, in 1869,

under a plane-tree, sat the old woman who sold peeled oranges for a sou

a dozen.

I spent the winter at Nice, finding plenty of amusement and friends,

and cutting myself off completely from Paris, communicating only with my

guardian and with Franzius and his wife, who were living at the

Pavilion.

The 4th of April was the date for the production of his opera, "Undine."

It was based on De la Motte Fouquet's lovely tale; and its success, as

far as I could learn from Carvalho, was assured, for one can say of

certain artistic productions, just as one can say of sunlight or pure

gold: "This is assured. Let the tastes or the fashions alter, this will

always be reckoned at its full value, a treasure indestructible."

I had fixed to return to Paris on the 30th of March, but I came back

sooner; for on the 15th of March, driving on the Promenade des Anglais,

I passed a carriage in which were seated the Comte de Coigny and the

Baron Carl von Lichtenberg.

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE OVERTURE TO "UNDINE"

It was the morning of the day of "Undine's" production. I had ridden

over to the Pavilion from Paris to breakfast with Franzius and Eloise.

The rehearsal had almost wrecked Franzius, but he was all right now; the

ship was built; only the launching remained. As to Eloise, in six months

she had altered subtly yet marvellously. I had last seen her a girl in

her bridal dress; she was now a woman, for in six months she had aged

years, without gaining a wrinkle or losing a trace of the beauty of

youth. Love had ripened her; her every movement was marked by that

self-contained grace which comes from maturity of mind; the wild beauty

of spring had vanished, giving place to the full beauty of summer--the

grace of Demeter gazing upon the fields of immortal wheat.

It was the wish of both my guardian and myself that Franzius and Eloise

should inhabit the Pavilion as much as they chose. We had offered the

place to them, indeed, as a wedding gift, but the permission to live

there was all they would take.

This morning we breakfasted with the windows open. The swallows had not

come back, yet the wind that puffed the chintz curtains was warm as the

wind of May. Its sound amidst the trees was like the sound of April

walking in the woods.

We came out and walked to the cottage of old Fauchard, whose wife was

ill. Eloise had made her some soup, and she carried it in one of those

tins the workmen use for their food.

The birds were calling to each other from tree to tree; clumps of

violets were showing their blue amidst the brown of last autumn's fallen

leaves, and the forest, half fledged, was breathing in the delicious

breeze, sighing and shivering under the kiss of April.

It was no poetic fancy that presence which we felt around us, that call

to which every fibre of my being responded. It was very real, and

reaching far. The swallows were listening to it away at Luxor and

Carnac; it touched the sun-baked Pyramids and the reeds of the Mareotid

lakes, that call from the green fields of France; fields that in a few

short months were to be ploughed by the cannon and watered with blood

and tears.

We came to Paris in the afternoon, and, leaving Eloise with the Vicomte

at the Place Vendôme, I accompanied Franzius to the Opera House, where

he had some business to transact.

The last rehearsal had taken place the day before, and the huge building

seemed very grim, empty and deserted as it was.

"Franzius," I said, as we stood looking at the empty orchestra, "do you

remember that night in the Schloss Lichtenberg when you and Marx and the

rest of your band played in the great hall, and a child in his

nightshirt peeped at you from the gallery?"

"My friend," replied Franzius, "do I remember? Ach Gott! but for that

night I would never have met you, I would never have met Eloise, I would

be now second violin at the Closerie de Lilas, a man without love and

without a future. It is to you I owe all."

"Not a bit. It is to chance. And if it comes to that, it is to you I owe

all. But for you I would have been killed that night in my sleep. You

remember the hunting-song that held me--you gave me the words of it last

autumn. I wish some time you would write out the music for me."

Franzius smiled; then, as if speaking with an effort: "It was to have

been a surprise. I have written out the music of it for you; it is in

the score of the opera; it forms part of the overture."

I have never felt more excited than I felt that night. Despite the

assurance of Carvalho, I felt that the fate of my friend was hanging in

the balance; and I am sure I felt far more nervous than he, for he

seemed quite calm and certain of success.

We dined early, and he departed before us, for he was to conduct.

We arrived before the house was half filled, and took our places in M.

le Vicomte's box, which was situated in the first tier. Then the

flood-gates of the world where all the inhabitants are wealthy slowly

opened; box after box became a galaxy of stars; diamonds, ribbons, and

orders reflected the brilliant light which flooded the house, fans

fluttered like gorgeous butterflies, and the house, no longer half

deserted, became a scene of splendour filled with the perfume of

flowers, the intoxication of brilliancy; and my heart leapt to think of

Franzius as I had met him that night in the Boul' Miche, going along in

his old threadbare coat, with his violin under his arm, poor,

unfriended, and unknown, and to think of him now, like a magician,

compelling the wealth and beauty of Europe to his will!

Ah, yes! there is something in genius after all, something in it, if it

is not trampled to death by fools before it has time to expand its

wings.

The Empress was unable to attend, but the Emperor was there; and in the

box with him were the Duc de Gramont and the Duc de Bassano. The

Faubourg St. Germain was there, and the Chaussée d'Antin, old nobility

and new, at daggers drawn, yet brought under the same roof by Art.

There was an electrical feeling in the place, a something I could not

describe, till the Vicomte de Chatellan gave it a name.

"Success is in the air!" said he; then it seemed to me that I could hear

her wings, that glorious goddess more beautiful than the Athena of the

Parthenon.

And now from the orchestra came the complaint of the violin-strings,

proclaiming their readiness, and the deep, gasping grunts of the

'cellos, saying as plainly as 'cellos could speak: "Begin! begin!" And

there was Franzius, in correct evening attire (how different from the

long coat of the Schloss Lichtenberg!), and I was swept right back to

the gallery overlooking the hall; and it seemed to me that I was

standing once more in my nightshirt, looking down at the guests, at

General Hahn, and my father, and the Countess Feliciani; at Major von

der Goltz, at the jägers crowding to the doorway, and then--three taps

of the conductor's magic bâton; and with the first bars of the overture,

Spring, who had been walking all day in the forest of Sènart, Spring

herself entered the Opera House; the rush of the wind over leagues of

blowing trees swept Paris and the glittering ceiling away; and the

jewels and decorations, the Faubourg St. Germain and the Chaussée

d'Antin, became trash under the blue of immortal skies.

"All things bright and all things fair," sang the music, flowing and

beautiful, gemmed with star-like points of song. The skylark called from

the seventh heaven, and the wind and the rivers, the echoes of the

hills, the shepherd's song and the bells of sheep, the dim blue violets

and dancing daffodils made answer, heaven echoing earth, earth heaven,

till, deepening and changing, as a landscape stained with cloud shadows,

the music became overcast as if by the shadow of that tragic figure Man.

Man, for whom Spring is everything, and for whom Spring cares not at

all. Man, who gives a soul to Nature as her mortal lover gave a soul to

Undine; Man, who pursues a shadow for ever, even as the mysterious

hunters in the hunting-song pursued the shadow stag.

"Hound and horn give voice and tongue,

Fill the woods with music gay;

Let your echoes sweet be flung

To the Brocken far away."

Yes; there it was, the song that seemed woven in the texture of my life;

and as I sat, holding Eloise's hand and listening, it seemed to me that

the overture of "Undine" was in some way connected with the story of my

life, so gay and joyous in the opening bars, deepening now and shadowed

by Fate.

There it was, the horn and the echoes of the horn leading the shadowy

dogs and the ghostly huntsmen--where? In pursuit of a shadow. Whither?

That was the last mysterious message of the overture, in whose last

bars, sublime and peaceful, lay spread the mysterious country where all

hunting ceases, recalling from the loveliest of poems that country where

Orion, the hunter of the shadowy stag, possessed of Merope, dwells with

her in a remote and dense grove of cedars for ever and happily, whilst

the tamed shadow-stag drinks for ever at the stream.

"The shadow of a stag stoops to the stream.

Swift rolling toward the cataract, and drinks deeply.

Throughout the day unceasingly it drinks,

And when the sun hath vanished utterly,

Arm over arm the cedars spread their shade

Above that shadowy stag whose antlers still

Hang o'er the stream."

When the curtain fell on the first act of "Undine," the opera was

already a success.

"Ah, yes," said M. le Vicomte, "that is music. Beside it, the drumming

and trumpeting of Wagner sound like the noise of a village fair." Then,

turning to Eloise: "My congratulations." Then he left the box, to talk

to friends and take his share in the incipient triumph.

It was really a triumph for him. He had boasted at the clubs of the new

musician he had discovered; and it was a supreme satisfaction to him

that his diamond had not turned out to be a piece of glass.

"Eloise," said I, "it's a success already; and if I had written ten

thousand operas of my own, and they had all been successful on the same

night, I would not feel the pleasure I feel now. Dear old Franzius----"

As if the name had called for an answer, a light knock came to the door

of the box. The door opened, and Baron Carl von Lichtenberg stood before

me. M. le Duc de Choiseul and the Marquis de Mérode, two well-known

boulevardiers, stood behind him.

"Monsieur," said Von Lichtenberg, advancing towards me, "I have sought

you in many places without avail since the incident which occurred at

the Mirlitons, on the 1st of October last. I sought you to pay you this

compliment." And he flicked me on the shoulder with the white glove

which he had drawn from his hand.

I bowed, and he withdrew.

That was all. A deadly insult, very nicely wrapped up, lay in "this

compliment"--and he had struck me.

Ah, well! it was to be. Although I was a living man with a will of my

own, it seemed that my will could not prevent my meeting Von

Lichtenberg; and, to point the matter, the challenge would have to come

from me. I could not escape. Heaven knows I have a sufficiency of animal

courage, yet for a moment the thought came to me of leaving Paris and

ignoring the insult, sacrificing honour and name rather than submit to

the unknown destination towards which Fate was driving me. Some instinct

told me that this duel would have consequences far beyond what I could

imagine; that it was a turning-point in my life, having passed which my

fate would be irremediably fixed.

Only for a moment came the suicidal thought of flight, to be immediately

dismissed. Let come what might, it was not my fault. I would send my

seconds to Von Lichtenberg in the morning. Then I turned to Eloise, and

found her leaning against the side of the box, pale, and seemingly in a

fainting state.

"I am all right," she murmured, "but, oh, Toto, it was his face!"

"His face?"

"His face I saw deep down in the water of the moat, drowned, and with

the weeds floating across it."

I remembered that day when, leaning on the drawbridge rail, and looking

down into the moat water, she had seen what seemed a face.

"Eloise," I said, taking her hands in mine, "come to yourself. The

second act is about to begin. Do not let other people see you pale like

this. What matters it? He and I have an account to settle: what matters

it? You have Franzius to think of. Listen to me. Do you know who he is?

He is Baron Carl von Lichtenberg--he was little Carl. Do you remember

the gardens of Lichtenberg and the drum, and how we marched away into

the forest----"

And before Eloise could answer, the Vicomte returned, and the curtain

rose on the forest of the lovely land where Undine met her lover.

The opera was a great success. Not since the marvellous first night of

"The Barber of Seville" had Paris shown such enthusiasm. But the

pleasure was dimmed for me, and I saw everything at a distance.

During the interval between the second and third acts, I sent a message

to De Brissac and another friend who were in the house, to meet me at

the Place Vendôme that night; and towards one in the morning we met in

my apartments, and I gave them their commission.

Then I went to bed and to sleep, with the music of "Undine" ringing in

my ears, and in my heart the knowledge of Franzius' triumph, and the

knowledge that I had helped him to it.

At eleven o'clock next morning De Brissac was announced.

Von Lichtenberg had accepted my challenge, with an extraordinary

proviso: the duel was not to take place till that day three months.

"He will fight you to-day if you press the point," said De Brissac, "but

he asked me to lay before you the fact that he will require three months

in which to arrange his affairs, which are partly political. He added,"

continued De Brissac grimly, "that, as you have evaded him for three

months and more, you cannot in courtesy refuse him this favour."

"I accept. So he added that--another insult!"

"He is a strange person," said De Brissac, "though in all outward

respects a perfect nobleman. He is a strange person, and I do not care

for him. In my eyes this is a forced business--une mauvaise querelle."

"There have been several duels to the death between our houses," replied

I. "Well, let it be so. On the 5th of July we shall meet."

CHAPTER XXXIV

PREPARING FOR THE DUEL

On the afternoon of the same day upon which I sent him my seconds, Baron

Carl von Lichtenberg left Paris. So quietly had the whole affair been

transacted at the Opera that not till noon the following day did my

guardian hear of it.

He was rather pleased at first. In those days a young man could not have

been said to make his début till he had proved his courage. Besides, my

supposed insult to the Baron had been much talked about; and the affair

between us, to use the Vicomte's expression, was like an abscess that

required opening.

But when he heard of the three months' condition he was less pleased.

"Why three months?" said he. "In Heaven's name, are not forty-eight

hours enough for any man in which to put his house in order! What

business can he possibly be about which requires three months to attend

to? I don't like the look of this," he finished. "The Lichtenbergs are a

mad race. But as you have accepted the condition you must abide by it."

How widely the old gentleman would have opened his eyes had he known

then the reason why Baron Carl von Lichtenberg required three months in

which to put his house in order before the duel! But he knew as little

as I of the mysterious event towards which I was being driven--I, a

living man, with a will of my own.

I had fully made up my mind that death lay before me. Swords were the

weapons chosen by Von Lichtenberg, and I was an expert swordsman, but my

sword would never pierce Carl von Lichtenberg. Of that I was determined.

The old fatality which had attended the relationship of the Lichtenbergs

and the Saluces was coming to a head. Yes; I was condemned to fight, but

Fate could not condemn me to kill.

If this Baron Carl von Lichtenberg were in reality little Carl, then Von

Lichtenberg had foreseen the duel; it was with this in view that he had

attempted my assassination. "Peace, Von Lichtenberg," said I to myself.

"No harm will come to your child through me, unless he flings himself on

my sword. Even then I would let the weapon drop from my hand." And I

said this not from special goodwill to the living or the dead, but just

because I refused to be the instrument of Fate.

I preferred to be the victim, and for this I was prepared; nay, I felt

almost certain that I should remain on the ground; and all through that

summer the thought filled me with a vague melancholy, a mist that made

the landscape of life more beautiful, its distances and its beauties

more grand, its trivialities more futile.

Only when we come near the end do we see life as it is, and things in

their just proportions. I had seen the splendour of society, the pomp of

Royalty, and that thing men call the glory of the world. Did I regret

to leave all this? It never even entered into my consideration. It was

nothing to me. Nothing beside the passionate appeal of summer, the cry

of life that came from all things bright and all things fair; from the

roses of Saluce, from the trees of the forest, and the birds I loved.