WISDOM, WIT, AND PATHOS

 OF

 OUIDA. 

 WISDOM, WIT, AND PATHOS

 _SELECTED FROM THE WORKS_

 OF

 OUIDA

 BY F. SYDNEY MORRIS

 PHILADELPHIA

 J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 

 1884

 CONTENTS. 

 _SELECTIONS FROM_--

 PAGE

 ARIADNE 1

 CHANDOS 32

 FOLLE-FARINE 48

 IDALIA 97

 A VILLAGE COMMUNE 106

 PUCK 115

 TWO LITTLE WOODEN SHOES 158

 FAME 177

 MOTHS 182, 354

 IN A WINTER CITY 189

 A LEAF IN THE STORM 205

 A DOG OF FLANDERS 209

 A BRANCH OF LILAC 216

 SIGNA 220

 TRICOTRIN 264

 A PROVENCE ROSE 288

 PIPISTRELLO 291

 HELD IN BONDAGE 294

 PASCARÈL 296

 IN MAREMMA 335

 UNDER TWO FLAGS 363

 STRATHMORE 417

 FRIENDSHIP 427

 WANDA 452

_ARIADNE. _

One grows to love the Roman fountains as sea-born men the sea. Go whereyou will there is the water; whether it foams by Trevi, where the greenmoss grows in it like ocean weed about the feet of the ocean god, orwhether it rushes reddened by the evening light, from the mouth of anold lion that once saw Cleopatra; whether it leaps high in air, tryingto reach the gold cross on St. Peter's or pours its triple cascade overthe Pauline granite; whether it spouts out of a great barrel in a wallin old Trastevere, or throws up into the air a gossamer as fine asArachne's web in a green garden way where the lizards run, or in acrowded corner where the fruit-sellers sit against the wall;--in all itsshapes one grows to love the water that fills Rome with an unchangingmelody all through the year. 

 * * *

And indeed I do believe all things and all traditions. History is likethat old stag that Charles of France found out hunting in the woodsonce, with the bronze collar round its neck on which was written, "Cæsarmihi hoc donavit. " How one's fancy loves to linger about that old stag, and what a crowd of mighty shades come thronging at the very thought ofhim! How wonderful it is to think of--that quiet grey beast leading hislovely life under the shadows of the woods, with his hinds and theirfawns about him, whilst Cæsar after Cæsar fell and generation ongeneration passed away and perished! But the sciolist taps you on thearm. "Deer average fifty years of life; it was some mere court trick ofcourse--how easy to have such a collar made!" Well, what have we gained?The stag was better than the sciolist. 

 * * *

Life costs but little on these sunny, silent shores; four walls of loosestones, a roof of furze and brambles, a fare of fish and fruit andmillet-bread, a fire of driftwood easily gathered--and all is told. Fora feast pluck the violet cactus; for a holiday push the old red boat tosea, and set the brown sail square against the sun--nothing can becheaper, perhaps few things can be better. 

To feel the western breezes blow over that sapphire sea, laden with thefragrance of a score of blossoming isles. To lie under the hollow rocks, where centuries before the fisher folk put up that painted tablet to thedear Madonna, for all poor shipwrecked souls. To climb the high hillsthrough the tangle of myrtle and tamarisk, and the tufted rosemary, withthe kids bleating above upon some unseen height. To watch the soft nightclose in, and the warning lights shine out over shoals and sunken rocks, and the moon hang low and golden in the blue dusk at the end there underthe arch of the boughs. To spend long hours in the cool, fresh, break ofday, drifting with the tide, and leaping with bare free limbs into thewaves, and lying outstretched upon them, glancing down to the depthsbelow, where silvery fish are gliding and coral branches are growing, and pink shells are floating like rose-leaves, five fathoms low andmore. Oh! a good life, and none better, abroad in the winds and weather, as Nature meant that every living thing should be, only, alas, thedevil put it into the mind of man to build cities! A good life for thesoul and the body: and from it this sea-born Joy came to seek theGhetto!

 * * *

With a visible and physical ill one can deal; one can thrust a knifeinto a man at need, one can give a woman money for bread or masses, onecan run for medicine or a priest. But for a creature with a face likeAriadnê's, who had believed in the old gods and found them fables, whohad sought for the old altars and found them ruins, who had dreamed ofImperial Rome and found the Ghetto--for such a sorrow as this, whatcould one do?

 * * *

Some said I might have been a learned man, had I taken more pains. But Ithink it was only their kindness. I have that twist in my brain, whichis the curse of my countrymen--a sort of devilish quickness at doingwell, that prevents us ever doing best; just the same sort of thing thatmakes our goatherds rhyme perfect sonnets, and keeps them dunces beforethe alphabet. 

 * * *

If our beloved Leopardi, instead of bemoaning his fate in his despairand sickening of his narrow home, had tried to see how many fair strangethings there lay at his house door, had tried to care for the troublesof the men that hung the nets on the trees, and the innocent woes of thegirl that carried the grass to the cow, and the obscure martyrdom ofmaternity and widowhood that the old woman had gone through who satspinning on the top of the stairs, he would have found that his littleborgo that he hated so for its dulness had all the comedies andtragedies of life lying under the sound of its tolling bells. He wouldnot have been less sorrowful, for the greater the soul the sadder it isfor the unutterable waste, the unending pain of life. But he would neverhave been dull: he would never have despised, and despising missed, thestories and the poems that were round him in the millet fields and theolive orchards. There is only one lamp which we can carry in our hand, and which will burn through the darkest night, and make the light of ahome for us in a desert place: it is sympathy with everything thatbreathes. 

 * * *

Into other lands I wandered, then, and sought full half the world. Whenone wants but little, and has a useful tongue, and knows how to be merrywith the young folk, and sorrowful with the old, and can take the fairweather with the foul, and wear one's philosophy like an easy boot, treading with it on no man's toe, and no dog's tail; why, if one be ofthis sort, I say, one is, in a great manner, independent of fortune; andthe very little that one needs one can usually obtain. Many years Istrayed about, seeing many cities and many minds, like Odysseus; beingno saint, but, at the same time, being no thief and no liar. 

 * * *

Art was dear to me. Wandering through many lands, I had come to know thecharm of quiet cloisters; the delight of a strange, rare volume; theinterest of a quaint bit of pottery; the unutterable loveliness of someperfect painter's vision, making a glory in some dusky, world-forgottenchurch: and so my life was full of gladness here in Rome, where theass's hoof ringing on a stone may show you that Vitruvius was right, where you had doubted him; or the sun shining down upon a cabbagegarden, or a coppersmith's shreds of metal, may gleam on a signet ringof the Flavian women, or a broken vase that may have served vile Tulliafor drink. 

 * * *

Art is, after nature, the only consolation that one has at all forliving. 

 * * *

I have been all my life blown on by all sorts of weather, and I knowthere is nothing so good as the sun and the wind for driving ill-natureand selfishness out of one. 

 * * *

Anything in the open air is always well; it is because men now-a-daysshut themselves up so much in rooms and pen themselves in stiflingstyes, where never the wind comes or the clouds are looked at, thatpuling discontent and plague-struck envy are the note of all modernpolitics and philosophies. The open air breeds Leonidas, the factoryroom Felix Pyat. 

 * * *

I lit my pipe. A pipe is a pocket philosopher, a truer one thanSocrates. For it never asks questions. Socrates must have been verytiresome when one thinks of it. 

 * * *

I have had some skill in managing the minds of crowds; it is a mereknack, like any other; it belongs to no particular character or culture. Arnold of Brescia had it, and so had Masaniello. Lamartine had it, andso had Jack Cade. 

 * * *

It is of use to have a reputation for queerness; it gains one manysolitary moments of peace. 

 * * *

Ersilia was a good soul, and full of kindliness; but charity is a flowernot naturally of earthly growth, and it needs manuring with a promise ofprofit. 

 * * *

The soul of the poet is like a mirror of an astrologer: it bears thereflection of the past and of the future, and can show the secrets ofmen and gods; but all the same it is dimmed by the breath of those whostand by and gaze into it. 

 * * *

"You are not unhappy now?" I said to her in farewell. 

She looked at me with a smile. 

"You have given me hope; and I am in Rome, and I am young. "

She was right. Rome may be only a ruin, and Hope but another name fordeception and disappointment; but Youth is supreme happiness in itself, because all possibilities lie in it, and nothing in it is as yetirrevocable. 

 * * *

There never was an Æneas; there never was a Numa; well, what the betterare we? We only lose the Trojan ship gliding into Tiber's mouth, whenthe woodland thickets that bloomed by Ostia were reddening with thefirst warmth of the day's sun; we only lose the Sabine lover going bythe Sacred Way at night, and sweet Egeria weeping in the woods of Nemi;and are--by their loss--how much the poorer!

Perhaps all these things never were. 

The little stone of truth, rolling through the many ages of the world, has gathered and grown grey with the thick mosses of romance andsuperstition. But tradition must always have that little stone of truthas its kernel; and perhaps he who rejects all, is likelier to be wrongthan even foolish folk like myself who love to believe all, and whotread the new paths, thinking ever of the ancient stories. 

 * * *

There can be hardly any life more lovely upon earth than that of a youngstudent of art in Rome. With the morning, to rise to the sound ofcountless bells and of innumerable streams, and see the silver lines ofthe snow new fallen on the mountains against the deep rose of the dawn, and the shadows of the night steal away softly from off the city, releasing, one by one, dome and spire, and cupola and roof, till all thewide white wonder of the place discloses itself under the broadbrightness of full day; to go down into the dark cool streets, with thepigeons fluttering in the fountains, and the sounds of the morningchants coming from many a church door and convent window, and littlescholars and singing children going by with white clothes on, or scarletrobes, as though walking forth from the canvas of Botticelli orGarofalo; to eat frugally, sitting close by some shop of flowers andbirds, and watching all the while the humours and the pageants of thestreets by quaint corners, rich with sculptures of the Renaissance, andspanned by arches of architects that builded for Agrippa, under gratedwindows with arms of Frangipanni or Colonna, and pillars thatApollodorus raised; to go into the great courts of palaces, murmurouswith the fall of water, and fresh with green leaves and golden fruit, that rob the colossal statues of their gloom and gauntness, and thenceinto the vast chambers where the greatest dreams that men have ever had, are written on panel and on canvas, and the immensity and the silence ofthem all are beautiful and eloquent with dead men's legacies to theliving, where the Hours and the Seasons frolic beside the Maries at theSepulchre, and Adonis bares his lovely limbs, in nowise ashamed becauseS. Jerome and S. Mark are there; to study and muse, and wonder and bestill, and be full of the peace which passes all understanding, becausethe earth is lovely as Adonis is, and life is yet unspent; to come outof the sacred light, half golden, and half dusky, and full of manyblended colours, where the marbles and the pictures live, sole dwellersin the deserted dwellings of princes; to come out where the oranges areall aglow in the sunshine, and the red camellias are pushing against thehoary head of the old stone Hermes, and to go down the width of themighty steps into the gay piazza, alive with bells tolling, and crowdslaughing, and drums abeat, and the flutter of carnival banners in thewind; and to get away from it all with a full heart, and ascend to seethe sun set from the terrace of the Medici, or the Pamfili, or theBorghese woods, and watch the flame-like clouds stream homewards behindS. Peter's, and the pines of Monte Mario grow black against the west, till the pale green of evening spreads itself above them, and the starsarise; and then, with a prayer--be your faith what it will--a prayer tothe Unknown God, to go down again through the violet-scented air and thedreamful twilight, and so, with unspeakable thankfulness, simply becauseyou live, and this is Rome--so homeward. 

 * * *

The strong instinctive veracity in her weighed the measure of her days, and gave them their right name. She was content, her life was full ofthe sweetness and strength of the arts, and of the peace of nobleoccupation and endeavour. But some true instinct in her taught her thatthis is peace, but is not more than peace. Happiness comes but from thebeating of one heart upon another. 

 * * *

There was a high wall near, covered with peach-trees, and topped withwistaria and valerian, and the handsome wild caperplant; and against thewall stood rows of tall golden sunflowers late in their blooming; thesun they seldom could see for the wall, and it was pathetic always tome, as the day wore on, to watch the poor stately amber heads turnstraining to greet their god, and only meeting the stones and thecobwebs, and the peach-leaves of their inexorable barrier. 

They were so like us!--straining after the light, and only findingbricks and gossamer and wasps'-nests! But the sunflowers never mademistakes as we do: they never took the broken edge of a glass bottle orthe glimmer of a stable lanthorn for the glory of Helios, and comfortedthemselves with it--as we can do. 

 * * *

Dear, where we love much we always forgive, because we ourselves arenothing, and what we love is all. 

 * * *

There is something in the silence of an empty room that sometimes has aterrible eloquence: it is like the look of coming death in the eyes of adumb animal; it beggars words and makes them needless. 

 * * *

When you have said to yourself that you will kill any one, the worldonly seems to hold yourself and him, and God--who will see the justicedone. 

 * * *

What is it that love does to a woman?--without it she only sleeps; withit, alone, she lives. 

 * * *

A great love is an absolute isolation, and an absolute absorption. Nothing lives or moves or breathes, save one life: for one life alonethe sun rises and sets, the seasons revolve, the clouds bear rain, andthe stars ride on high; the multitudes around cease to exist, or seembut ghostly shades; of all the sounds of earth there is but one voiceaudible; all past ages have been but the herald of one soul; alleternity can be but its heritage alone. 

 * * *

Is Nature kind or cruel? Who can tell?

The cyclone comes, or the earthquake; the great wave rises and swallowsthe cities and the villages, and goes back whence it came; the earthyawns, and devours the pretty towns and the sleeping children, thegardens where the lovers were sitting, and the churches where womenprayed, and then the morass dries up and the gulf unites again. Menbuild afresh, and the grass grows, and the trees, and all the floweringseasons come back as of old. But the dead are dead: nothing changesthat!

As it is with the earth, so it is with our life; our own poor, short, little life, that is all we can really call our own. 

Calamities shatter, and despair engulfs it; and yet after a time thechasm seems to close; the storm wave seems to roll back; the leaves andthe grass return; and we make new dwellings. That is, the daily ways ofliving are resumed, and the common tricks of our speech and act are asthey used to be before disaster came upon us. Then wise people say, heor she has "got over it. " Alas, alas! the drowned children will not comeback to us; the love that was struck down, the prayer that was silenced, the altar that was ruined, the garden that was ravished, they are allgone for ever, --for ever, for ever! Yet we live; because grief does notalways kill, and often does not speak. 

 * * *

I crept through the myrtles downward, away from the house where thestatue lay shattered. The earliest of the nightingales of the year wasbeginning her lay in some leafy covert hard by, but never would he hearmusic in their piping again; never, never: any more than I should hearthe song of the Faun in the fountain. 

For the song that we hear with our ears is only the song that is sung inour hearts. 

And his heart, I knew, would be for ever empty and silent, like a templethat has been burned with fire, and left standing, pitiful and terrible, in mockery of a lost religion, and of a forsaken god. 

 * * *

Men and women, losing the thing they love, lose much, but the artistloses far more; for him are slaughtered all the children of his dreams, and from him are driven all the fair companions of his solitude. 

 * * *

Love art alone, forsaking all other loves, and she will make you happy, with a happiness that shall defy the seasons and the sorrows of time, the pains of the vulgar and the changes of fortune, and be with you dayand night, a light that is never dim. But mingle with it any humanlove--and art will look for ever at you with the eyes of Christ when helooked at the faithless follower as the cock crew. 

 * * *

And, indeed, there are always the poor: the vast throngs born centuryafter century, only to know the pangs of life and of death, and nothingmore. Methinks that human life is, after all, but like a human body, with a fair and smiling face, but all the limbs ulcered and cramped andracked with pain. No surgery of statecraft has ever known how to keepthe fair head erect, yet give the trunk and the limbs health. 

 * * *

For in a great love there is a self-sustaining strength by which itlives, deprived of everything, as there are plants that live upon ourbarren ruins burned by the sun, and parched and shelterless, yet everlifting green leaves to the light. 

 * * *

And indeed after all there is nothing more cruel than the impotence ofgenius to hold and keep those commonest joys and mere natural affectionswhich dullards and worse than dullards rejoice in at their pleasure; thecommon human things, whose loss makes the great possessions of itsimperial powers all valueless and vain as harps unstrung, or as lutesthat are broken. 

 * * *

"This world of our own immediate day is weak and weary, because it is nolonger young; yet it possesses one noble attribute--it has an acute andalmost universal sympathy, which does indeed often degenerate into afalse and illogical sentiment, yet serves to redeem an age of egotism. We have escaped both the gem-like hardness of the Pagan, and thenarrowing selfishness of the Christian and the Israelite. We are sickfor the woe of creation, and we wonder why such woe is ours, and why itis entailed on the innocent dumb beasts, that perish in millions for us, unpitied, day and night. Rome had no altar to Pity: it is the one Godthat we own. When that pity in us for all things is perfected, perhapswe shall have reached a religion of sympathy that will be purer than anyreligion the world has yet seen, and more productive. 'Save my country!'cried the Pagan to his deities. 'Save my soul!' cries the Christian athis altars. We, who are without a god, murmur to the great unknownforces of Nature: 'Let me save others some little portion of this painentailed on all simple and guileless things, that are forced to live, without any fault of their own at their birth, or any will of their ownin their begetting. '"

 * * *

How should we have great Art in our day? We have no faith. Belief ofsome sort is the lifeblood of Art. When Athene and Zeus ceased to exciteany veneration in the minds of men, sculpture and architecture both losttheir greatness. When the Madonna and her son lost that mystery anddivinity, which for the simple minds of the early painters theypossessed, the soul went out of canvas and of wood. When we carve aVenus now, she is but a light woman; when we paint a Jesus now, it isbut a little suckling, or a sorrowful prisoner. We want a greatinspiration. We ought to find it in the things that are reallybeautiful, but we are not sure enough, perhaps, what is so. What doesdominate us is a passion for nature; for the sea, for the sky, for themountain, for the forest, for the evening storm, for the break of day. Perhaps when we are thoroughly steeped in this we shall reach greatnessonce more. But the artificiality of all modern life is against it; so isits cynicism. Sadness and sarcasm make a great Lucretius as a greatJuvenal, and scorn makes a strong Aristophanes; but they do not make aPraxiteles and an Apelles; they do not even make a Raffaelle, or aFlaxman. 

Art, if it be anything, is the perpetual uplifting of what is beautifulin the sight of the multitudes--the perpetual adoration of thatloveliness, material and moral, which men in the haste and the greed oftheir lives are everlastingly forgetting: unless it be that it is emptyand useless as a child's reed-pipe when the reed is snapt and thechild's breath spent. Genius is obligation. 

 * * *

"No woman, I think, ever loved you as this woman does, whom you haveleft as I would not leave a dog, " said Maryx, and something of his oldardent eloquence returned to him, and his voice rose and rang clearer asthe courage in him consummated the self-sacrifice that he had sethimself for her sake. "Have you ever thought what you have done? Whenyou have killed Art in an artist, you have done the cruellest murderthat earth can behold. Other and weaker natures than hers might forget, but she never. Her fame will be short-lived as that rose, for she seesbut your face, and the world will tire of that, but she will not. Shecan dream no more. She can only remember. Do you know what that is tothe artist?--it is to be blind and to weary the world; the world thathas no more pity than you have! You think her consoled because hergenius has not left her: are you a poet and yet do not know that geniusis only a power to suffer more and to remember longer?--nothing else. You say to yourself that she will have fame, that will beguile her asthe god came to Ariadnê; perhaps; but across that fame, let it becomewhat it may, there will settle for ever the shadow of the world'sdishonour; it will be for ever poisoned, and cursed, and embittered bythe scorn of fools, and the reproach of women, since by you they havebeen given their lashes of nettles, and by you have been given theirby-word to hoot. She will walk in the light of triumph, you say, andtherefore you have not hurt her; do you not see that the fiercer thatlight may beat on her, the sharper will the eyes of the world search outthe brand with which you have burned her. For when do men forgive forcein the woman? and when do women ever forgive the woman's greatness? andwhen does every cur fail to snarl at the life that is higher than itsfellows? It is by the very genius in her that you have had such power towound, such power to blight and to destroy. By so long as her name shallbe spoken, so long will the wrong you have done her cling round it, tomake it meet for reproach. A mere woman dies, and her woe and her shamedie with her, and the earth covers her and them; but such shelter isdenied for ever to the woman who has genius and fame; long after she isdead she will lie out on common soil, naked and unhouselled, for all thewinds to blow on her and all the carrion birds to tear. "

 * * *

"No, no. That is accursed! To touch Art without a right to touch it, merely as a means to find bread--you are too honest to think of such athing. Unless Art be adored for its own sake and purely, it must beleft alone. Philip of Macedon had every free man's child taught Art! Iwould have every boy and girl taught its sacredness; so, we might intime get back some accuracy of taste in the public, someconscientiousness of production in the artist. If artistic creation benot a joy, an imperious necessity, an instinct of all the forces of themind, let the boy go and plough, and the girl go and spin. "

 * * *

Maybe you turn your back on happiness. I have heard that wise peopleoften do that. They look up so at the sun and the stars, that they settheir foot on the lark that would have sung to them and woke thembrightly in the morning--and kill it. 

 * * *

Landscape painting is the only original form of painting that moderntimes can boast. It has not exhausted itself yet; it is capable ofinfinite development. Ruysdael, Rembrandt, and the rest, did greatscenes, it is true, but it has been left to our painters to put soulinto the sunshine of a cornfield, and suggest a whole life of labour ina dull evening sky hanging over a brown ploughed upland, with the horsesgoing tired homewards, and one grey figure trudging after them, to thehut on the edge of the moor. Of course the modern fancy of making natureanswer to all human moods, like an Eölian harp, is morbid andexaggerated, but it has a beauty in it, and a certain truth. Ourtenderer souls take refuge in the country now, as they used to do in thecloister. 

 * * *

I think if people oftener saw the break of day they would vow oftener tokeep that dawning day holy, and would not so often let its fair hoursdrift away with nothing done that were not best left undone. 

 * * *

We are the sons of our Time: it is not for us to slay our mother. Let uscover her dishonour if we see it, lest we should provoke the Erinyes. 

 * * *

How one loves Canova the man, and how one execrates Canova the artist!Surely never was a great repute achieved by so false a talent and soperfect a character. One would think he had been born and bred inVersailles instead of Treviso. He is called a naturalist! Look at hisGraces! He is always Coysevax and Coustou at heart. Never purelyclassic, never frankly modern. Louis XIV. Would have loved him betterthan Bernini. 

 * * *

If Alexander had believed himself a bubble of gas instead of the son ofa god, he would not have changed the face of the world. Negation cannotbe the parent of heroism, though it will produce an indifference thatcounterfeits it not ill, since Petronius died quite as serenely as everdid the martyrs of the Church. 

 * * *

Genius cannot escape the taint of its time more than a child theinfluence of its begetting. Augustus could have Horace and Ovid; hecould never have had Homer and Milton. 

 * * *

I do not think with you. Talent takes the mark of its generation; geniusstamps its time with its own impression. Virgil had the sentiment of anunited Italy. 

 * * *

Tell her that past she thinks so great was only very like the Serapiswhich men worshipped so many ages in Theophilis, and which, when thesoldiers struck it down at last, proved itself only a hollow Colossuswith a colony of rats in its head that scampered right and left. 

 * * *

Falconet struck the death-note of the plastic arts when he said, "Ourmarbles have _almost_ colour. " That is just where we err. We areincessantly striving to make Sculpture at once a romance-writer and apainter, and of course she loses all dignity and does but seem the jayin borrowed plumes of sable. Conceits are altogether out of keeping withmarble. They suit a cabinet painting or a piece of china. Bernini wasthe first to show the disease when he veiled the head of his Nile toindicate that the source was unknown. 

 * * *

Whosoever has any sort of fame has lighted a beacon that is alwaysshining upon him, and can never more return into the cool twilight ofprivacy even when most he wishes. It is of these retributions--some callthem compensations--of which life is full. 

 * * *

Men have forgotten the virile Pyrrhic dance, and have become incapableof the grace of the Ionian; their only dance is a Danse Macabre, andthey are always hand in hand with a skeleton. 

 * * *

By night Rome is still a city for the gods; the shadows veil its wounds, the lustre silvers all its stones; its silence is haunted as no othersilence is; if you have faith, there where the dark gloss of the laurelbrushes the marble as in Agrippa's time, you will see the Immortalspassing by chained with dead leaves and weeping. 

 * * *

A great love is an absolute isolation and an absolute absorption. Nothing lives or moves or breathes save one life; for one life alone thesun rises and sets, the seasons revolve, the clouds bear rain, and thestars ride on high; the multitudes around cease to exist, or seem butghostly shades; of all the sounds of earth there is but one voiceaudible; all past ages have been but the herald of one soul; alleternity can be but its heritage alone. 

 * * *

Perhaps she was right: for a few hours of joy one owes the debt ofyears, and should give a pardon wide and deep as the deep sea. 

This Love which she had made in his likeness, the tyrant and compellerof the world, was to her as the angel which brings perfect dreams andlets the tired sleeper visit heaven. 

 * * *

"And when the ship sails away without you?" I said brutally, andlaughing still, because the mention of the schooner had broken the bondsof the silence that had held me against my will half paralysed, and Iseemed to be again upon the Tyrrhene shore, seeing the white sail fadeagainst the sky. 

"And when that ship sails without you? The day will come. It alwayscomes. You are my Ariadnê; yet you forget Naxos! Oh, the day will come!you will kiss the feet of your idol then, and they will not stay; theywill go away, away, away, and they will not tarry for your prayers oryour tears--ay, it is always so. Two love, and one tires. And you knownothing of that; you who would have love immortal. "

And I laughed again, for it seemed to me so horrible, and I was halfmad. 

No doubt it would have been kinder had I struck my knife down into herbreast with her words unspoken. 

All shade of colour forsook her face; only the soft azure of the veinsremained, and changed to an ashen grey. She shook with a sudden shiverfrom head to foot as the name she hated, the name of Ariadnê, fell uponher ear. The icebolt had fallen in her paradise. A scared and terriblefear dilated her eyes, that opened wide in the amaze of some suddenlystricken creature. 

"And when he leaves you?" I said, with cruel iteration. "Do you rememberwhat you told me once of the woman by the marshes by the sea, who hadnothing left by which to remember love save wounds that never healed?That is all his love will leave you by-and-by. "

"Ah, never!"

She spoke rather to herself than me. The terror was fading out of hereyes, the blood returning to her face; she was in the sweet bewilderedtrance of that blind faith which goes wherever it is led, and never asksthe end nor dreads the fate. Her love was deathless: how could she knowthat his was mortal?

"You are cruel, " she said, with her mouth quivering, but the old, soft, grand courage in her eyes. "We are together for ever; he has said so. But even if--if--I only remembered him by wounds, what would that changein me? He would _have_ loved me. If he would wish to wound me, so heshould. I am his own as the dogs are. Think!--he looked at me, and allthe world grew beautiful; he touched me, and I was happy--I, who neverhad been happy in my life. You look at me strangely; you speak harshly. Why? I used to think, surely you would be glad----"

I gripped my knife and cursed him in my soul. 

How could one say to her the thing that he had made her in man's andwoman's sight?

"I thought you would be glad, " she said, wistfully, "and I would havetold you long ago--myself. I do not know why you should look so. Perhapsyou are angered because I seemed ungrateful to you and Maryx. Perhaps Iwas so. I have no thought--only of him. What he wished, that I did. EvenRome itself was for me nothing, and the gods--there is only one for me;and he is with me always. And I think the serpents and the apes are gonefor ever from the tree, and he only hears the nightingales--now. Hetells me so often. Very often. Do you remember I used to dream ofgreatness for myself--ah, what does it matter! I want nothing now. Whenhe looks at me--the gods themselves could give me nothing more. "

And the sweet tranquil radiance came back into her eyes, and herthoughts wandered into the memories of this perfect passion whichpossessed her, and she forgot that I was there. 

My throat was choking; my eyes felt blind; my tongue clove to my mouth. I, who knew what that end would be as surely as I knew the day thenshining would sink into the earth, I was dumb, like a brute beast--I, who had gone to take his life. 

Before this love which knew nothing of the laws of mankind, how poor andtrite and trivial looked those laws! What could I dare to say to her ofshame? Ah! if it had only been for any other's sake! But he, --perhaps hedid not lie to her; perhaps he did only hear the nightingales with herbeside him; but how soon their song would pall upon his ear, how soonwould he sigh for the poisonous kiss of the serpents! I knew! I knew!

I stood heart-broken in the warm light that was falling through thecasement and streaming towards her face. What could I say to her? Menharder and sterner and surer in every way of their own judgment than Iwas of mine no doubt would have shaken her with harsh hands from thatdream in which she had wandered to her own destruction. 

No doubt a sterner moralist than I would have had no pity, and wouldhave hurled on her all the weight of those bitter truths of which shewas so ignorant; would have shown her that pit of earthly scorn uponwhose brink she stood; would have torn down all that perfect, credulousfaith of hers, which could have no longer life nor any more lasting rootthan the flowering creeper born of a summer's sun, and gorgeous as thesunset's hues, and clinging about a ruin-mantling decay. Oh yes, nodoubt. But I am only weak, and of little wisdom, and never certain thatthe laws and ways of the world are just, and never capable of longgiving pain to any harmless creature, least of all to her. 

She seemed to rouse herself with effort to remember I was there, andturned on me her eyes that were suffused and dreamful with happiness, like a young child's with sleep. 

"I must have seemed so thankless to you: you were so very good to me, "she said, with that serious sweetness of her rare smile that I had usedto watch for, as an old dog watches for his young owner's--an old dogthat is used to be forgotten, but does not himself forget, though he isold. "I must have seemed so thankless; but he bade me be silent, and Ihave no law but him. After that night when we walked in Nero's fields, and I went home and learned he loved me;--do you not see I forgot thatthere was any one in all the world except himself and me? It must alwaysbe so--at least, so I think. Oh, how true that poem was! Do youremember how he read it that night after Mozart amongst the roses by thefire? What use was endless life and all the lore of the spirits andseers to Sospitra? I was like Sospitra, till he came; always thinking ofthe stars and the heavens in the desert all alone, and always wishingfor life eternal, when it is only life _together_ that is worth a wishor a prayer. But why do you look at me so? Perhaps you do notunderstand. Perhaps I am selfish. "

This was all that it seemed to her--that I did not understand. Could shesee the tears of blood that welled up in my eyes? Could she see theblank despair that blinded my sight? Could she see the frozen hand thatI felt clutching at my heart and benumbing it? I did not understand;that was all that it seemed to her. 

She was my Ariadnê, born again to suffer the same fate. I saw thefuture: she could not. I knew that he would leave her as surely as thenight succeeds the day. I knew that his passion--if passion, indeed, itwere, and not only the mere common vanity of subjugation andpossession--would pall on him and fade out little by little, as thestars fade out of the grey morning skies. I knew, but I had not thecourage to tell her. 

Men were faithful only to the faithless. But what could she know ofthis?

"Thinking of the stars and of the heavens in the desert all alone! Yes!"I cried; and the bonds of my silence were unloosed, and the words rushedfrom my lips like a torrent from between the hills. 

"Yes; and never to see the stars any more, and to lose for ever thepeace of the desert--that, you think, is gain! Oh, my dear! what can Isay to you? What can I say? You will not believe if I tell you. I shallseem a liar and a prophet of false woe. I shall curse when I wouldbless. What can I say to you? Athene watched over you. You were of thosewho dwell alone, but whom the gods are with. You had the clue and thesword, and they are nothing to you; you lose them both at his word, atthe mere breath of his lips, and know no god but his idle law, thatshifts as the winds of the sea. And you count that gain? Oh, justHeaven! Oh, my dear, my heart is broken; how can I tell you? One manloved you who was great and good, to whom you were a sacred thing, whowould have lifted you up in heaven, and never have touched too roughly asingle hair of your head; and you saw him no more than the very earththat you trod; he was less to you than the marbles he wrought in; and hesuffers: and what do you care? You have had the greatest wrong that awoman can have, and you think it the greatest good, the sweetest gift!He has torn your whole life down as a cruel hand tears a rose in themorning light, and you rejoice! For what do you know? He will kill yoursoul, and still you will kiss his hand. Some women are so. When heleaves you, what will you do? For you there will only be death. The weakare consoled, but the strong never. What will you do? What will you do?You are like a child that culls flowers at the edge of a snake'sbreeding-pit. He waked you--yes!--to send you in a deeper sleep, blindand dumb to everything but his will. Nay, nay! that is not your fault. Love does not come at will; and of goodness it is not born, nor ofgratitude, nor of any right or reason on the earth. Only that you shouldhave had no thought of us--no thought at all--only of him by whom yourruin comes; that seems hard! Ay, it is hard. You stood just so in mydream, and you hesitated between the flower of passion and the flower ofdeath. Ah, well might Love laugh. They grow on the same bough; Loveknows that. Oh, my dear, my dear, I come too late! Look! he has doneworse than murder, for that only kills the body; but he has killed thesoul in you. He will crush out all that came to you from heaven; allyour mind and your hopes and your dreams, and all the mystery in you, that we poor half-dumb fools call genius, and that made the commondaylight above you full of all beautiful shapes and visions that ourduller eyes could not see as you went. He has done worse than murder, and I came to take his life. Ay, I would slay him now as I wouldstrangle the snake in my path. And even for this I come too late. Icannot do you even this poor last service. To strike him dead would onlybe to strike you too. I come too late! Take my knife, lest I should seehim--take it. Till he leaves you I will wait. "

I drew the fine, thin blade across my knee and broke it in two pieces, and threw the two halves at her feet. 

Then I turned without looking once at her, and went away. 

I do not know how the day waned and passed; the skies seemed red withfire, and the canals with blood. I do not know how I found my road overthe marble floors and out into the air. I only remember that I felt myway feebly with my hands, as though the golden sunlight were alldarkness, and that I groped my way down the steps and out under an angleof the masonry, staring stupidly upon the gliding waters. 

I do not know whether a minute had gone by or many hours, when someshivering sense of sound made me look up at the casement above, a high, vast casement fretted with dusky gold and many colours, and all kinds ofsculptured stone. The sun was making a glory as of jewels on its paintedpanes. Some of them were open; I could see within the chamber Hilarion'sfair and delicate head, and his face drooped with a soft smile. I couldsee her, with all her loveliness, melting, as it were, into his embrace, and see her mouth meet his. 

If I had not broken the steel!----

I rose from the stones and cursed them, and departed from the place asthe moon rose. 

 * * *

He was silent; the moonlight poured down between us white and wide;there lay a little dead bird on the stones, I remember, a redbreast, stiff and cold. The people traffic in such things here, in the square ofAgrippa; it had fallen, doubtless, off some market stall. 

Poor little robin! All the innocent sweet woodland singing-life of itwas over, over in agony, and not a soul in all the wide earth was thebetter for its pain; not even the huckster who had missed making hiscopper coin by it. Woe is me; the sorrow of the world is great. 

I pointed to it where it lay, poor little soft huddled heap of brightfeathers; there is no sadder sight than a dead bird, for what lovelierlife can there be than a bird's life, free in the sun and the rain, inthe blossom and foliage?

"Make the little cold throat sing at sunrise, " I said to him. "When youcan do that, then think to undo what you have done. "

"She will forget:--"

"You know she never will forget. There is your crime. "

"She will have her art----"

"Will the dead bird sing?"

 * * *

Here, if anywhere in the "divine city of the Vatican"--for in truth acity and divine it is, and well has it been called so--here, ifanywhere, will wake the soul of the artist; here, where the verypavement bears the story of Odysseus, and each passage-way is a ViaSacra, and every stone is old with years whose tale is told by hundredsor by thousands, and the wounded Adonis can be adored beside the temptedChrist of Sistine, and the serious beauty of the Erythean Sibyl livesbeside the laughing grace of ivy-crowned Thalia, and the JupiterMaximus frowns on the mortals made of earth's dust, and the Jehovah whohas called forth woman meets the first smile of Eve. A Divine Cityindeed, holding in its innumerable chambers and its courts of graniteand of porphyry all that man has ever dreamed of, in his hope and in histerror, of the Unknown God. 

 * * *

The days of joyous, foolish mumming came--the carnival mumming that as aboy I had loved so well, and that, ever since I had come and stitchedunder my Apollo and Crispin, I had never been loth to meddle and mix in, going mad with my lit taper, like the rest, and my whistle of theBefana, and all the salt and sport of a war of wits such as old Rome hasalways heard in midwinter since the seven nights of the Saturnalia. 

Dear Lord! to think that twice a thousand years ago and more, alongthese banks of Tiber, and down in the Velabrum and up the Sacred Way, men and women and children were leaping, and dancing, and shouting, andelecting their festal king, and exchanging their new-year gifts of waxcandles and little clay figures: and that now-a-days we are doing justthe same thing in the same season, in the same places, only with all thereal faunic joyfulness gone out of it with the old slain Saturn, and agreat deal of empty and luxurious show come in instead! It makes onesad, mankind looks such a fool. 

Better be Heine's fool on the seashore, who asks the winds their"wherefore" and their "whence. " You remember Heine's poem--that one inthe "North Sea" series, that speaks of the man by the shore, and askswhat is Man, and what shall become of him, and who lives on high in thestars? and tells how the waves keep on murmuring and the winds rising, the clouds scudding before the breeze, and the planets shining so coldand so far, and how on the shore a fool waits for an answer, and waitsin vain. It is a terrible poem, and terrible because it is true. 

Every one of us stands on the brink of the endless sea that is Time andis Death; and all the blind, beautiful, mute, majestic forces ofcreation move around us and yet tell us nothing. 

It is wonderful that, with this awful mystery always about us, we can goon on our little lives as cheerfully as we do; that on the edge of thatmystical shore we yet can think so much about the crab in thelobster-pot, the eel in the sand, the sail in the distance, the child'sface at home. 

Well, no doubt it is heaven's mercy that we can do so; it saves frommadness such thinking souls as are amongst us. 

 * * *

"My dear, of love there is very little in the world. There are manythings that take its likeness: fierce unstable passions and pooregotisms of all sorts, vanities too, and many other follies--Apatê andPhilotês in a thousand masquerading characters that gain great Lovediscredit. The loves of men, and women too, my dear, are hardly bettervery often than Minos' love for Skylla; you remember how he threw herdown from the stern of his vessel when he had made the use of her hewished, and she had cut the curls of Nisias. A great love does not ofnecessity imply a great intelligence, but it must spring out of a greatnature, that is certain; and where the heart has spent itself in muchbase petty commerce, it has no deep treasury of gold on which to draw;it is bankrupt from its very over-trading. A noble passion is very rare;believe me; as rare as any other very noble thing. "

 * * *

"Do you call him a poet because he has the trick of a sonorous cadenceand of words that fall with the measure of music, so that youths andmaidens recite them for the vain charm of their mere empty sound? It isa lie--it is a blasphemy. A poet! A poet suffers for the meanest thingthat lives; the feeblest creature dead in the dust is pain to him; hisjoy and his sorrow alike outweigh tenfold the joys and the sorrows ofmen; he looks on the world as Christ looked on Jerusalem, and weeps; heloves, and all heaven and all hell are in his love; he is faithful untodeath, because fidelity alone can give to love the grandeur and thepromise of eternity; he is like the martyrs of the church who lay uponthe wheel with their limbs racked, yet held the roses of Paradise intheir hands and heard the angels in the air. That is a poet; that iswhat Dante was, and Shelley and Milton and Petrarca. But this man? thissinger of the senses, whose sole lament is that the appetites of thebody are too soon exhausted; this languid and curious analysist whorends the soul aside with merciless cruelty, and puts away the quiveringnerves with cold indifference, once he has seen their secrets?--this apoet? Then so was Nero harping! Accursed be the book and all thepolished vileness that his verses ever palmed off on men by their meretricks of sound. This a poet! As soon are the swine that rout thegarbage, the lions of the Apocalypse by the throne of God!"

 * * *

The glad water sparkles and ripples everywhere; above the broad porphyrybasins butterflies of every colour flutter, and swallows fly; lovers andchildren swing balls of flowers, made as only our Romans know how tomake them; the wide lawns under the deep-shadowed avenues are full ofblossoms; the air is full of fragrance; the palms rise against acloudless sky; the nights are lustrous; in the cool of the greatgalleries the statues seem to smile: so spring had been to me always;but now the season was without joy, and the scent of the flowers on thewind hurt me as it smote my nostrils. 

For a great darkness seemed always between me and the sun, and Iwondered that the birds could sing, and the children run amongst theblossoms--the world being so vile. 

 * * *

Women hope that the dead love may revive; but men know that of all deadthings none are so past recall as a dead passion. 

The courtesan may scourge it with a whip of nettles back into life; butthe innocent woman may wet it for ever with her tears, she will find noresurrection. 

 * * *

Art is an angel of God, but when Love has entered the soul, the angelunfolds its plumes and takes flight, and the wind of its wings withersas it passes. He whom it has left misses the angel at his ear, but he isalone for ever. Sometimes it will seem to him then that it had been noangel ever, but a fiend that lied, making him waste his years in abarren toil, and his nights in a joyless passion; for there are twothings beside which all Art is but a mockery and a curse: they are achild that is dying and a love that is lost. 

 * * *

Love art alone, forsaking all other loves, and she will make you happy, with a happiness that shall defy the seasons and the sorrows of time, the pains of the vulgar and the changes of fortune, and be with you dayand night, a light that is never dim. But mingle with it any humanlove--and art will look for ever at you with the eyes of Christ when helooked at the faithless follower as the cock crew. 

 * * *

The little garden of the Rospigliosi seems to have all mediæval Romeshut in it, as you go up the winding stairs with all their lichens andwater-plants and broken marbles, into the garden itself, with its smoothemerald turf and spreading magnolias, and broad fish-ponds, and orangeand citron trees, and the frescoed building at the end where Guido'sAurora floats in unchanging youth, and the buoyant Hours run before thesun. 

Myself I own I care not very much for that Aurora; she is no incarnationof the morning, and though she floats wonderfully and does truly seem tomove, yet is she in nowise ethereal nor suggestive of the dawn either ofday or life. When he painted her, he must have been in love with somelusty taverner's buxom wife busked in her holiday attire. 

But whatever one may think of the famed Aurora, of the loveliness of herquiet garden home, safe in the shelter of the stately palace walls, there can be no question; the little place is beautiful, and sitting inits solitude with the brown magnolia fruit falling on the grass, and theblackbirds pecking between the primroses, all the courtly and superbpageant of the dead ages will come trooping by you, and you will fancythat the boy Metastasio is reciting strophes under yonder Spanishchestnut-tree, and cardinals, and nobles, and gracious ladies, andpretty pages are all listening, leaning against the stone rail of thecentral water. 

For this is the especial charm and sorcery of Rome, that, sitting idlyin her beautiful garden-ways, you can turn over a score of centuries andsummon all their pomp and pain before you, as easily as little childrencan turn over the pages of a coloured picture-book until their eyes aredazzled. 

_CHANDOS. _

It is so easy for the preacher, when he has entered the days ofdarkness, to tell us to find no flavour in the golden fruit, no music inthe song of the charmer, no spell in eyes that look love, no delirium inthe soft dreams of the lotus--so easy when these things are dead andbarren for himself, to say they are forbidden! But men must be far moreor far less than mortal ere they can blind their eyes, and dull theirsenses, and forswear their nature, and obey the dreariness of thecommandment; and there is little need to force the sackcloth and theserge upon us. The roses wither long before the wassail is over, andthere is no magic that will make them bloom again, for there is nonethat renews us--youth. The Helots had their one short, joyous festivalin their long year of labour; life may leave us ours. It will be surelyto us, long before its close, a harder tyrant and a more remorselesstaskmaster than ever was the Lacedemonian to his bond-slaves, --biddingus make bricks without straw, breaking the bowed back, and leaving us asour sole chance of freedom the hour when we shall turn our faces to thewall--and die. 

 * * *

Society, that smooth and sparkling sea, is excessively difficult tonavigate; its surf looks no more than champagne foam, but a thousandquicksands and shoals lie beneath: there are breakers ahead for morethan half the dainty pleasure-boats that skim their hour upon it; andthe foundered lie by millions, forgotten, five fathoms deep below. Theonly safe ballast upon it is gold dust; and if stress of weather come onyou, it will swallow you without remorse. Trevenna had none of thisballast; he had come out to sea in as ticklish a cockle-shell as mightbe; he might go down any moment, and he carried no commission, being asort of nameless, unchartered rover: yet float he did, securely. 

 * * *

Corals, pink and delicate, rivet continents together; ivy tendrils, thata child may break, bold Norman walls with bonds of iron; a little ring, a toy of gold, a jeweller's bagatelle, forges chains heavier than thegalley-slave's: so a woman's look may fetter a lifetime. 

 * * *

He had passed through life having escaped singularly all the shadowsthat lie on it for most men; and he had, far more than most, what may betermed the faculty for happiness--a gift, in any temperament, whosewisdom and whose beauty the world too little recognises. 

 * * *

A temperament that is _never_ earnest is at times well-nigh as wearisomeas a temperament that is never gay; there comes a time when, if you cannever touch to any depth, the ceaseless froth and brightness of thesurface will create a certain sense of impatience, a certain sense ofwant. 

 * * *

A straw misplaced will make us enemies; a millstone of benefits hungabout his neck may fail to anchor down by us a single friend. We maylavish what we will--kindly thought, loyal service, untiring aid, andgenerous deed--and they are all but as oil to the burning, as fuel tothe flame, when spent upon those who are jealous of us. 

 * * *

Truth is a rough, honest, helter-skelter terrier, that none like to seebrought into their drawing-rooms, throwing over all their dainty littleornaments, upsetting their choicest Dresden, that nobody guessed wascracked till it fell with the mended side uppermost, and keeping everyone in incessant tremor lest the next snap should be at their braids ortheir boots, of which neither the varnish nor the luxuriance will standrough usage. 

 * * *

When will men learn to know that the power of genius, and the humanshell in which it chances to be harboured, are as distinct as is thediamond from the quartz-bed in which they find it?

 * * *

Had he embraced dishonour, and accepted the rescue that a lie would havelent him, this misery in its greatest share had never been upon him. Hewould have come hither with riches about him, and the loveliness he hadworshipped would have been his own beyond the touch of any rival's hand. Choosing to cleave to the old creeds of his race, and passing, without abackward glance, into the paths of honour and of justice, it was thuswith him now. Verily, virtue must be her own reward, as in the Socraticcreed; for she will bring no other dower than peace of conscience in hergift to whosoever weds her. "I have loved justice, and fled frominiquity; wherefore here I die in exile, " said Hildebrand upon hisdeath-bed. They will be the closing words of most lives that havefollowed truth. 

 * * *

There are liberties sweeter than love; there are goals higher thanhappiness. 

Some memory of them stirred in him there, with the noiseless flow of thelingering water at his feet, and above the quiet of the stars; thethoughts of his youth came back to him, and his heart ached with theirlonging. 

Out of the salt depths of their calamity men had gathered the heroismsof their future; out of the desert of their exile they had learned thepower to return as conquerors. The greater things within him awakenedfrom their lethargy; the innate strength so long untried, so long lulledto dreamy indolence and rest, uncoiled from its prostration; the forcethat would resist and, it might be, survive, slowly came upon him, withthe taunts of his foe. It was possible that there was that still in himwhich might be grander and truer to the ambitions of his imaginativechildhood under adversity, than in the voluptuous sweetness of his richand careless life. It was possible, if--if he could once meet the fatehe shuddered from, once look at the bitterness of the life that waitedfor him, and enter on its desolate and arid waste without going back tothe closed gates of his forfeited paradise to stretch his limbs withintheir shadow once more ere he died. 

There is more courage needed oftentimes to accept the onward flow ofexistence, bitter as the waters of Marah, black and narrow as thechannel of Jordan, than there is ever needed to bow down the neck to thesweep of the death-angel's sword. 

 * * *

He accepted the desolation of his life, for the sake of all beyond life, greater than life, which looked down on him from the silence of thenight. 

 * * *

It was sunset in Venice, --that supreme moment when the magical flush oflight transfigures all, and wanderers whose eyes have long ached withthe greyness and the glare of northward cities gaze and think themselvesin heaven. The still waters of the lagunes, the marbles and the porphyryand the jasper of the mighty palaces, the soft grey of the ruins allcovered with clinging green and the glowing blossoms of creepers, thehidden antique nooks where some woman's head leaned out of an archedcasement, like a dream of the Dandolo time when the Adriatic swarmedwith the returning galleys laden with Byzantine spoil, the dim, mystic, majestic walls that towered above the gliding surface of the eternalwater, once alive with flowers, and music, and the gleam of goldentresses, and the laughter of careless revellers in the Venice ofGoldoni, in the Venice of the Past;--everywhere the sunset glowed withthe marvel of its colour, with the wonder of its warmth. 

Then a moment, and it was gone. Night fell with the hushed shadowystillness that belongs to Venice alone; and in the place of the riot andluxuriance of colour there was the tremulous darkness of the youngnight, with the beat of an oar on the water, the scent of unclosingcarnation-buds, the white gleam of moonlight, and the odour oflilies-of-the-valley blossoming in the dark archway of some mosaic-linedwindow. 

 * * *

The ruin that had stripped him of all else taught him to fathom thedepths of his own attainments. He had in him the gifts of a Goethe; butit was only under adversity that these reached their stature and boretheir fruit. 

 * * *

The words were true. The bread of bitterness is the food on which mengrow to their fullest stature; the waters of bitterness are thedebatable ford through which they reach the shores of wisdom; the ashesboldly grasped and eaten without faltering are the price that must bepaid for the golden fruit of knowledge. The swimmer cannot tell hisstrength till he has gone through the wild force of opposing waves; thegreat man cannot tell the might of his hand and the power of hisresistance till he has wrestled with the angel of adversity, and held itclose till it has blessed him. 

 * * *

The artist was true to his genius; he knew it a greater gift thanhappiness; and as his hands wandered by instinct over the familiarnotes, the power of his kingdom came to him, the passion of his mistresswas on him, and the grandeur of the melody swelled out to mingle withthe night, divine as consolation, supreme as victory. 

 * * *

The man who puts chains on another's limbs is only one shade worse thanhe who puts fetters on another's free thoughts and on another's freeconscience. 

 * * *

One fetter of tradition loosened, one web of superstition broken, oneray of light let in on darkness, one principle of liberty secured, areworth the living for, he mused. Fame!--it is the flower of a day, thatdies when the next sun rises. But to do something, however little, tofree men from their chains, to aid something, however faintly, therights of reason and of truth, to be unvanquished through all andagainst all, these may bring one nearer the pure ambitions of youth. 

Happiness dies as age comes to us; it sets for ever, with the suns ofearly years: yet perhaps we may keep a higher thing beside which itholds but a brief loyalty, if to ourselves we can rest true, if for theliberty of the world we can do anything. 

 * * *

Do not believe that happiness makes us selfish; it is a treason to thesweetest gift of life. It is when it has deserted us that it grows hardto keep all the better things in us from dying in the blight. 

 * * *

"Coleridge cried, 'O God, how glorious it is to live!' Renan asks, 'OGod, when will it be worth while to live?' In nature we echo the poet;in the world we echo the thinker. "

 * * *

"Yet you are greater than you were then, " he said, slowly. "I know it, --Iwho am but a wine-cup rioter and love nothing but my summer-day fooling. You are greater; but the harvest you sow will only be reaped over yourgrave. "

"I should be content could I believe it would be reaped then. "

"Be content then. You may be so. "

"God knows! Do you not think Marsy and Delisle de Sales and Linguetbelieved, as they suffered in their dungeons for mere truth of speech, that the remembrance of future generations would solace them? Bichâtgave himself to premature death for science' sake; does the world oncein a year speak his name? Yet how near those men are to us, to beforgotten! A century, and history will scarce chronicle them. "

"Then why give the wealth of your intellect to men?"

"Are there not higher things than present reward and the mere talk oftongues? The _monstrari digito_ were scarce a lofty goal. We may loveTruth and strive to serve her, disregarding what she brings us. Thosewho need a bribe from her are not her true believers. "

Philippe d'Orvâle tossed his silvery hair from his eyes, --eyes of suchsunny lustre still. 

"Ay! And those who held that sublime code of yours, that cleaving totruth for truth's sake, where are they? How have they fared in everyclimate and in every age? Stoned, crucified, burned, fettered, broken onthe vast black granite mass of the blind multitude's brutality, of thepriesthood's curse and craft!"

"True! Yet if through us, ever so slightly, the bondage of the creeds'traditions be loosened from the lives they stifle, and thosemultitudes--so weary, so feverish, so much more to be pitied thancondemned--become less blind, less brute, the sacrifice is not in vain. "

"In your sense, no. But the world reels back again into darkness as soonas a hand has lifted it for a while into light. Men hold themselvespurified, civilised; a year of war, --and lust and bloodthirst rageuntamed in all their barbarism; a taste of slaughter, --and they arewolves again! There was truth in the old feudal saying, 'Oignez vilain, il vous poindra; poignez vilain, il vous oindra. ' Beat the multitudesyou talk of with a despot's sword, and they will lick your feet; touchthem with a Christ-like pity, and they will nail you to the cross. "

There was terrible truth in the words: this man of princely blood, whodisdained all sceptres and wanted nothing of the world, could lookthrough and through it with his bold sunlit eyes, and see itsrottenness to the core. 

Chandos sighed as he heard. 

"You are right, --only too right. Yet even while they crouch to thetyrant's sabre, how bitterly they need release! even while they crucifytheir teachers and their saviours, how little they know what they do!They may forsake themselves; but they should not be forsaken. "

Philippe d'Orvâle looked on him with a light soft as woman's tears inhis eyes, and dashed his hand down on the alabaster. 

"Chandos, you live twenty centuries too late. You would have beencrowned in Athens, and throned in Asia. But here, as a saving grace, they will call you--'mad!'"

"Well, if they do? The title has its honours. It was hooted againstSolon and Socrates. "

 * * *

"I would do all in the world to please _you_, monseigneur, " he answered, sadly; "but I cannot change my nature. The little aziola loves theshade, and shrinks from noise and glare and all the ways of men; I amlike it. You cannot make the aziola a bird for sunlight; you cannot makeme as others are. "

Chandos looked down on him with an almost tender compassion. To him, whose years were so rich in every pleasure and every delight that mencan enjoy, the loneliness and pain of Lulli's life, divorced from allthe living world, made it a marvel profoundly melancholy, profoundlyformed to claim the utmost gentleness and sympathy. 

"I would not have you as others are, Lulli, " he said, softly. "If in allthe selfishness and pleasures of our world there were not some here andthere to give their lives to high thoughts and to unselfish things, asyou give yours, we should soon, I fear, forget that such existed. Butfor such recluse's devotion to an art as yours, the classics would haveperished; without the cloister-penmen, the laws of science would neverhave broken the bondage of tradition. "

Lulli looked up eagerly; then his head drooped again with theinexpressible weariness of that vain longing which "toils to reach thestars. "

"Ah, what is the best that I reach?--the breath of the wind whichpasses, and sighs, and is heard no more. "

 * * *

"How crabbed a scroll!" he went on, throwing himself down a moment onthe thyme and grass. "The characters must baffle even you; the yearsthat have yellowed the vellum have altered the fashion. Whose is it?"

"An old Elizabethan musician's, " answered Lulli, as he looked up. "Yes;the years take all, --our youth, our work, our life, even our graves. "

Something in his Provençal cadence gave a rhythm to his simplest speech:the words fell sadly on his listener's ear, though on the sensuousluxuriance of his own existence no shadow ever rested, no skeleton evercrouched. 

"Yes: the years take all, " he said, with a certain sadness on him. "Howmany unperfected resolves, unachieved careers, unaccomplished ambitions, immatured discoveries, perish under the rapidity of time, as unripefruits fall before their season! Bichât died at thirty-one:--if he hadlived, his name would now have outshone Aristotle's. "

"We live too little time to do anything even for the art we give ourlife to, " murmured Lulli. "When we die, our work dies with us: ourbetter self must perish with our bodies; the first change of fashionwill sweep it into oblivion. "

"Yet something may last of it, " suggested Chandos, while his handwandered among the blue bells of the curling hyacinths. "Because fewsave scholars read the '_Defensio Populi_' now, the work it did for freethought cannot die. None the less does the cathedral enrich Colognebecause the name of the man who begot its beauty has passed unrecorded. None the less is the world aided by the effort of every true and daringmind because the thinker himself has been crushed down in the rush ofunthinking crowds. "

"No, if _it_ could live!" murmured Lulli, softly, with a musing pain inthe broken words. "But look! the scroll was as dear to its writer as hisscore to Beethoven, --the child of his love, cradled in his thoughtsnight and day, cherished as never mother cherished her first-born, beloved as wife or mistress, son or daughter, never were. Perhaps hedenied himself much to give his time more to his labour; and when hedied, lonely and in want, because he had pursued that for which mencalled him a dreamer, his latest thought was of the work which nevercould speak to others as it spoke to him, which he must die and leave, in anguish that none ever felt to sever from a human thing. Yet whatremains of his love and his toil? It is gone, as a laugh or a sob diesoff the ear, leaving no echo behind. His name signed here tells nothingto the men for whom he laboured, adds nothing to the art for which helived. As it is with him, so will it be with me. "

His voice, that had risen in sudden and untutored eloquence, sanksuddenly into the sadness and the weariness of the man whose highest joyis but relief from pain; and in it was a keener pang still, --the griefof one who strives for what incessantly escapes him. 

"Wait, " said Chandos, gently. "Are we sure that nothing lives of themusic you mourn? It may live on the lips of the people, in thoseOld-World songs whose cause we cannot trace, yet which come sweet andfresh transmitted to every generation. How often we hear some namelessmelody echo down a country-side! the singers cannot tell you whence itcame; they only know their mothers sang it by their cradles, and theywill sing it by their children's. But in the past the song had its birthin genius. "

Guido Lulli bent his head. 

"True: such an immortality were all-sufficient: we could well afford tohave our names forgotten----"

 * * *

"Let that fellow alone, Cos, " laughed Chandos, to avert the stormyelement which seemed to threaten the serenity of his breakfast-party. "Trevenna will beat us all with his tongue, if we tempt him to tryconclusions. He should be a Chancellor of the Exchequer or a Cheap John;I am not quite clear which as yet. "

"Identically the same things!" cried Trevenna. "The only difference isthe scale they are on; one talks from the bench, and the other from thebenches; one cheapens tins, and the other cheapens taxes; one has asalve for an incurable disease, and the other a salve for the nationaldebt; one rounds his periods to put off a watch that won't go, and theother to cover a deficit that won't close; but they radically drive thesame trade, and both are successful if the spavined mare trots outlooking sound, and the people pay up. 'Look what I save you, ' cry CheapJohn and Chancellor; and while they shout their economics, they pockettheir shillings. Ah, if I were sure I could bamboozle a village, Ishould know I was qualified to make up a Budget. "

 * * *

"Most impudent of men! When will you learn the first lesson of society, and decently and discreetly _apprendre à vous effacer_?"

"_A m'effacer_? The advice Lady Harriet Vandeleur gave Cecil. Very goodfor mediocre people, I dare say; but it wouldn't suit _me_. There aresome people, you know, that won't iron down for the hardest rollers. _M'effacer_? No! I'd rather any day be an ill-bred originality than awell-bred nonentity. "

"Then you succeed perfectly in being what you wish! Don't you know, monsieur, that to set yourself against conventionalities is like talkingtoo loud?--an impertinence and an under-breeding that society resents byexclusion. "

"Yes, I know it. But a duke may bawl, and nobody shuts out _him_; aprince might hop on one leg, and everybody would begin to hop too. Now, what the ducal lungs and the princely legs might do with impunity, Ideclare I've a right to do, if I like. "

"_Bécasse_! no one can declare his rights till he can do much more, and--purchase them. Have a million, and we may perhaps give you a littlelicense to be unlike other persons: without the million it is anill-bred _gaucherie_. "

"Ah, I know! Only a nobleman may be original; a poor penniless wretchupon town must be humbly and insignificantly commonplace. What a pityfor the success of the aristocratic monopolists that nature puts cleverfellows and fools just in the reverse order! But then nature's ashocking socialist. "

"And so are you. "

Trevenna laughed. 

"Hush, madame. Pray don't destroy me with such a whisper. "

 * * *

Talent wears well; genius wears itself out; talent drives a brougham infact, genius a sun-chariot in fancy; talent keeps to earth and fattensthere, genius soars to the empyrean, to get picked by every kite thatflies; talent is the part and the venison, genius the seltzer andsouffle of life. The man who has talent sails successfully on the top ofthe wave; the man with genius beats himself to pieces, fifty to one, onthe first rock he meets. 

 * * *

One innocent may be wrongly suspected until he is made the thing thatthe libel called him. 

 * * *

Men shut out happiness from their schemes for the world's happiness. They might as well try to bring flowers to bloom without the sun. 

 * * *

The most dastardly sin on earth is the desertion of the fallen. 

 * * *

Let the world abandon you, but to yourself be true. 

 * * *

The bread of bitterness is the food on which men grow to their fulleststature. 

 * * *

Youth without faith is a day without sun. 

 * * *

I detest posterity--every king hates his heir. 

 * * *

Scandals are like dandelion seeds; they are arrow-headed and stick whenthey fall, and bring forth and multiply fourfold. 

 * * *

The puff perfect is the puff personal--adroitly masked. 

 * * *

I wear the Bonnet Rouge discreetly weighed down with a fine tassel ofBritish prudence. 

 * * *

He was a master of the great art of banter. It is a marvellous force; itkills sanctity, unveils sophistry, travesties wisdom, cuts through thefinest shield, and turns the noblest impulses to hopeless ridicule. 

 * * *

Immortality is dull work--a hideous statue that gets black as soot in notime; funeral sermons that make you out a vial of revelations anddiscuss the probabilities of your being in the realms of Satan; a bustthat slants you off at the shoulders and sticks you up on a bracket; atombstone for the canes of the curious to poke at; an occasionalattention in the way of withered immortelles or biographicalBillingsgate, and a partial preservation shared in common with mummies, auks' eggs, snakes in bottles, and deformities in spirits ofwine:--that's posthumous fame. I must say I don't see much fun in it. 

 * * *

It were hard not to be wrong in philosophies when the body starves on apinch of oatmeal. It is the law of necessity, the balance of economy;human fuel must be used up that the machine of the world may spin on;but it is not, perhaps, marvellous that the living fuel is sometimesunreconciled to that symmetrical rule of waste and repair, of consumerand consumed. 

 * * *

It is many centuries since Caius Gracchus called the mercantile classesto aid the people against the patricians, and found too late that theywere deadlier oppressors than all the optimates; but the error stillgoes on, and the moneymakers churn it into gold, as they churned it theninto the Asiatic revenues and the senatorial amulets. 

 * * *

The love of a people is the most sublime crown that can rest on the browof any man, but the love of a mob is a mongrel that fawns and slaversone moment, to rend and tear the next. 

_FOLLE-FARINE. _

In this old-world district, amidst the pastures and corn-lands ofNormandy, superstition had taken a hold which the passage of centuriesand the advent of revolution had done very little to lessen. Few of thepeople could read, and fewer still could write. They knew nothing butwhat their priests and politicians told them to believe. They went totheir beds with the poultry, and rose as the cock crew: they went tomass, as their ducks to the osier and weed ponds; and to theconscription as their lambs to the slaughter. They understood that therewas a world beyond them, but they remembered it only as the best marketfor their fruit, their fowls, their lace, their skins. Their brains wereas dim as were their oil-lit streets at night; though their lives werecontent and mirthful, and for the most part pious. They went out intothe summer meadows chanting aves, in seasons of drought to pray for rainon their parching orchards, in the same credulity with which they gropedthrough the winter-fog bearing torches, and chanting dirges to gain ablessing at seed-time on their bleak, black fallows. 

The beauty and the faith of the old mediæval life were with them still;and with its beauty and its faith were its bigotry and cruelty likewise. 

They led simple and contented lives; for the most part honest, andamongst themselves cheerful and kindly: preserving much grace of colour, of costume, of idiosyncrasy, because apart from the hueless communismand characterless monotony of modern cities. 

But they believed in sorcery and in devilry: they were brutal to theirbeasts, and could be as brutal to their foes: they were steeped inlegend and tradition from their cradles; and all the darkestsuperstitions of dead ages still found home and treasury in their heartsand at their hearths. 

They had always been a religious people in this birth country of theFlamma race: the strong poetic reverence of their forefathers, which hadsymbolised itself in the carving of every lintel, corbel or buttress intheir streets, and the fashion of every spire on which a weather-vanecould gleam against the sun, was still in their blood; the poetry haddeparted, but the bigotry remained. 

 * * *

"The earth and the air are good, " she thought, as she lay there watchingthe dark leaves sway in the foam and the wind, and the bright-bosomedbirds float from blossom to blossom. For there was latent in her, alluntaught, that old pantheistic instinct of the divine age, when theworld was young, to behold a sentient consciousness in every leafunfolded to the light; to see a soul in every created thing the dayshines on; to feel the presence of an eternal life in every breeze thatmoves, in every grass that grows; in every flame that lifts itself toheaven; in every bell that vibrates on the air; in every moth that soarsto reach the stars. 

Pantheism is the religion of the poet; and nature had made her a poet, though man as yet had but made of her an outcast, a slave, and a beastof burden. 

"The earth and the air are good, " she thought, watching the sun-rayspierce the purple hearts of a passion-flower, the shadows move acrossthe deep brown water, the radiant butterfly alight upon a lily, thescarlet-throated birds dart in and out through the yellow featheryblossoms of the limes. 

 * * *

When a man clings to life for life's sake, because it is fair and sweet, and good in the sight and the senses, there may be weakness in hisshudder at its threatening loss. But when a man is loth to lose lifealthough it be hard, and joyless, and barren of all delights, becausethis life gives him power to accomplish things greater than he, whichyet without him must perish, there is the strength in him, as there isthe agony of Prometheus. 

With him it must die also: that deep dim greatness within him, whichmoves him, despite himself; that nameless unspeakable force whichcompels him to create and to achieve; that vision by which he beholdsworlds beyond him not seen by his fellows. 

Weary of life he may be; of life material, and full of subtlety; ofpassion, of pleasure, of pain; of the kisses that burn, of the laughthat rings hollow, of the honey that so soon turns to gall, of thesickly fatigues, and the tired, cloyed hunger, that are the portion ofmen upon earth. Weary of these he may be; but still if the gods havebreathed on him, and made him mad with the madness that men have calledgenius, there will be that in him greater than himself, which heknows, --and cannot know without some fierce wrench and pang, --will benumbed and made impotent, and drift away, lost for evermore, into thateternal night, which is all that men behold of death. 

 * * *

The grass of the Holy River gathers perfume from the marvellous suns, and the moonless nights, and the gorgeous bloom of the east, from thearomatic breath of the leopard, and the perfume of the fallenpomegranate, and the sacred oil that floats in the lamps, and the caressof the girl-bather's feet, and the myrrh-dropping unguents that glidefrom the maiden's bare limbs in the moonlight, --the grass holds andfeeds on them all. But not till the grass has been torn from the roots, and been crushed, and been bruised and destroyed, can the full odoursexhale of all it has tasted and treasured. 

Even thus the imagination of man may be great, but it can never be atits greatest until one serpent, with merciless fangs, has bitten itthrough and through, and impregnated it with passion and withpoison, --that one deathless serpent which is memory. 

 * * *

And, indeed, to those who are alive to the nameless, universal, EternalSoul which breathes in all the grasses of the fields, and beams in theeyes of all creatures of earth and air, and throbs in the living lightof palpitating stars, and thrills through the young sap of forest trees, and stirs in the strange loves of wind-borne plants, and hums in everysong of the bee, and burns in every quiver of the flame, and peopleswith sentient myriads every drop of dew that gathers on a hare-bell, every bead of water that ripples in a brook--to them the mortal life ofman can seem but little, save at once the fiercest and the feeblestthing that does exist; at once the most cruel and the most impotent;tyrants of direst destruction, and bondsmen of lowest captivity. 

 * * *

The earth has always most charm, and least pain, to the poet or theartist when men are hidden away under their roofs. Then they do notbreak its calm with either their mirth or their brutality; then the vileand revolting coarseness of their works, that blot it with so muchdeformity, is softened and obscured in the purple breaths of shadow, andthe dim tender gleam of stars. 

 * * *

When the world was in its youth, it had leisure to treasure itsrecollections; even to pause and look back; to see what flower of a fairthought, what fruit of a noble art, it might have overlooked or leftdown-trodden. But now it is so old, and is so tired; it is purblind, andheavy of foot; it does not notice what it destroys; it desires rest andcan find none; nothing can matter greatly to it; its dead are so manythat it cannot count them; and being thus worn and dulled with age, andsuffocated under the weight of its innumerable memories, it is very slowto be moved, and swift--terribly swift--to forget. 

Why should it not be?

It has known the best, it has known the worst that ever can befall it. 

And the prayer that to the heart of man seems so freshly born from hisown desire, what is it on the weary ear of the world, save the same old, old cry which it has heard through all the ages, empty as the sound ofthe wind, and for ever--for ever--unanswered?

 * * *

For there is nothing so cruel in life as a Faith;--the Faith, whateverits name may be, that draws a man on all his years through on one narrowpath, by one tremulous light, and then at the last, with a laugh--drownshim. 

 * * *

I think I see!--the great God walked by the edge of the river, and hemused on a gift to give man, on a joy that should be a joy on the earthfor ever; and he passed by the lily white as snow, by the thyme that fedthe bees, by the gold heart in the arum flower, by the orange flame ofthe tall sandrush, by all the great water-blossoms which the sun kissedand the swallows loved, and he came to the one little reed pierced withthe snake's-tongues, and all alone amidst millions. Then he took it up, and cut it to the root, and killed it; killed it as a reed--but breathedinto it a song audible and beautiful to all the ears of men. Was thatdeath to the reed?--or life? Would a thousand summers of life by thewaterside have been worth that one thrill of song when a god first spokethrough it?

 * * *

It is odd that you should live in a palace, and he should want forbread; but then he can create things, and you can only buy them. So itis even, perhaps. 

 * * *

A word that needs compelling is broken by the heart before the lips giveit. It is to plant a tree without a root to put faith in a man thatneeds a bond. 

 * * *

"You are glad since you sing!" said the old man to her as she passed himagain on her homeward way and paused again beside him. 

"The birds in cages sing, " she answered him, "but think you they areglad?"

"Are they not?"

She sat down a moment beside him, on the bank which was soft with moss, and odorous with wild flowers curling up the stems of the poplars andstraying over into the corn beyond. 

"Are they? Look. Yesterday I passed a cottage, it is on the Great SouthRoad; far away from here. The house was empty; the people no doubt weregone to labour in the fields; there was a wicker cage hanging to thewall, and in the cage there was a blackbird. The sun beat on his head;his square of sod was a dry clod of bare earth; the heat had dried everydrop of water in his pan; and yet the bird was singing. Singing how? Intorment, beating his breast against the bars till the blood started, crying to the skies to have mercy on him and to let the rain fall. Hissong was shrill; it had a scream in it; still he sang. Do you say themerle was glad?"

"What did you do?" asked the old man, still breaking his stones with amonotonous rise and fall of his hammer. 

"I took the cage down and opened the door. "

"And he?"

"He shot up in the air first, then dropped down amidst the grasses, where a little brook which the drought had not dried was still running;and he bathed and drank, and bathed again, seeming mad with the joy ofthe water. When I lost him from sight he was swaying among the leaves ona bough over the river; but then he was silent. "

"And what do you mean by that?"

Her eyes clouded; she was mute. She vaguely knew the meaning it bore toherself, but it was beyond her to express it. All things of nature hadvoices and parables for her, because her fancy was vivid, and her mindwas still too dark, and too profoundly ignorant, for her to be able toshape her thoughts into metaphor or deduction. The bird had spoken toher; by his silence as by his song; but what he had uttered she couldnot well utter again. Save indeed that song was not gladness, andneither was silence pain. 

 * * *

"The future?" she said at last, "that means something that one has not, and that is to come--is it so?" "Something that one never has, and thatnever comes, " muttered the old man, wearily cracking the flints in two;"something that one possesses in one's sleep, and that is farther offeach time that one awakes; and yet a thing that one sees always, seeseven when one lies a dying they say--for men are fools. "

 * * *

In one of the most fertile and most fair districts of northern Francethere was a little Norman town, very, very old, and beautifulexceedingly by reason of its ancient streets, its high peaked roofs, itsmarvellous galleries and carvings, its exquisite greys and browns, itssilence and its colour, and its rich still life. 

Its centre was a great cathedral, noble as York or Chartres; acathedral, whose spire shot to the clouds, and whose innumerable towersand pinnacles were all pierced to the day, so that the blue sky shoneand the birds of the air flew all through them. A slow brown river, broad enough for market boats and for corn barges, stole through theplace to the sea, lapping as it went the wooden piles of the houses, andreflecting the quaint shapes of the carvings, the hues of the signs andthe draperies, the dark spaces of the dormer windows, the bright headsof some casement-cluster of carnations, the laughing face of a girlleaning out to smile on her lover. 

All around it lay the deep grass unshaven, the leagues on leagues offruitful orchards, the low blue hills tenderly interlacing one another, the fields of colza, where the white head-dress of the women-workersflashed in the sun like a silvery pigeon's wing. To the west there werethe deep green woods, and the wide plains golden with gorse of Arthur'sand of Merlin's lands; and beyond, to the northward, was the dimstretch of the ocean breaking on a yellow shore, whither the river ran, and whither led straight shady roads, hidden with linden and with poplartrees, and marked ever and anon by a wayside wooden Christ, or by alittle murmuring well crowned with a crucifix. 

A beautiful, old, shadowy, ancient place: picturesque everywhere; oftensilent, with a sweet sad silence that was chiefly broken by the sound ofbells or the chaunting of choristers. A place of the Middle Ages still. With lanterns swinging on cords from house to house as the only light;with wondrous scroll-works and quaint signs at the doors of all itstraders; with monks' cowls and golden croziers and white-robed acolytesin its streets; with the subtle smoke of incense coming out from thecathedral door to mingle with the odours of the fruits and flowers inthe market-place; with great flat-bottomed boats drifting down the riverunder the leaning eaves of its dwellings; and with the galleries of itsopposing houses touching so nearly that a girl leaning in one couldstretch a Provence rose or toss an Easter egg across to her neighbour inthe other. 

Doubtless there were often squalor, poverty, dust, filth, anduncomeliness within these old and beautiful homes. Doubtless often thedwellers therein were housed like cattle and slept like pigs, and lookedbut once out to the woods and waters of the landscapes round for onehundred times that they looked at their hidden silver in an old delfjug, or at their tawdry coloured prints of St. Victorian or St. Scævola. 

But yet much of the beauty and the nobility of the old, simple, restful, rich-hued life of the past still abode there, and remained with them. Inthe straight, lithe form of their maidens, untrammelled by modern garb, and moving with the free majestic grace of forest does. In the vast, dim, sculptured chambers, where the grandam span by the wood fire, andthe little children played in the shadows, and the lovers whispered inthe embrasured window. In the broad market-place, where the mulescropped the clover, and the tawny awnings caught the sunlight, and thewhite caps of the girls framed faces fitted for the pencils of missalpainters, and the flush of colour from mellow wall-fruits andgrape-clusters glanced amidst the shelter of deepest, freshest green. Inthe perpetual presence of their cathedral, which, through sun and storm, through frost and summer, through noon and midnight, stood there amidstthem, and watched the galled oxen tread their painful way, and thescourged mules droop their humble heads, and the helpless, harmlessflocks go forth to the slaughter, and the old weary lives of the men andwomen pass through hunger and cold to the grave, and the sun and themoon rise and set, and the flowers and the children blossom and fade, and the endless years come and go, bringing peace, bringing war;bringing harvest, bringing famine; bringing life, bringing death; and, beholding these, still said to the multitude in its terrible irony, "Lo!your God is Love. "

This little town lay far from the great Paris highway and all greatlyfrequented tracks. It was but a short distance from the coast, but nearno harbour of greater extent than such as some small fishing village hadmade in the rocks for the trawlers. Few strangers ever came to it, except some wandering painters or antiquaries. It sent its apples andeggs, its poultry and honey, its colza and corn to the use of the greatcities; but it was rarely that any of its own people went thither. 

Now and then some one of the oval-faced, blue-eyed, lithe-limbed maidensof its little homely households would sigh and flush and grow restless, and murmur of Paris; and would steal out in the break of a warm greymorning whilst only the birds were still waking; and would patter awayin her wooden shoes over the broad, white, southern road, with a stickover her shoulder, and a bundle of all her worldly goods upon the stick. And she would look back often, often, as she went; and when all was lostin the blue haze of distance save the lofty spire which she still sawthrough her tears, she would say in her heart, with her lips parched andtrembling, "I will come back again. I will come back again. "

But none such ever did come back. 

They came back no more than did the white sweet sheaves of the lilieswhich the women gathered and sent to be bought and sold in the city--togleam one faint summer night in a gilded balcony, and to be flung outthe next morning, withered and dead. 

One amongst the few who had thus gone whither the lilies went, and ofwhom the people would still talk as their mules paced homewards throughthe lanes at twilight, had been Reine Flamma, the daughter of the millerof Yprés. 

 * * *

"There are only two trades in a city, " said the actors to her, with asmile as bitter as her own, "only two trades--to buy souls and to sellthem. What business have you here, who do neither the one nor theother?"

There was music still in this trampled reed of the river, into which thegods had once bidden the stray winds and the wandering waters breathetheir melody; but there, in the press, the buyers and sellers only sawin it a frail thing of the sand and the stream, only made to be wovenfor barter, or bind together the sheaves of the roses of pleasure. 

 * * *

Art was to him as mother, brethren, mistress, offspring, religion--allthat other men hold dear. He had none of these, he desired none of them;and his genius sufficed to him in their stead. 

It was an intense and reckless egotism, made alike cruel and sublime byits intensity and purity, like the egotism of a mother in her child. Toit, as the mother to her child, he would have sacrificed every livingcreature; but to it also, like her, he would have sacrificed his veryexistence as unhesitatingly. But it was an egotism which, thoughmerciless in its tyranny, was as pure as snow in its impersonality; itwas untainted by any grain of avarice, of vanity, of selfish desire; itwas independent of all sympathy; it was simply and intensely the passionfor immortality:--that sublime selfishness, that superb madness, of allgreat minds. 

Art had taken him for its own, as Demeter, in the days of herdesolation, took the child Demophoon to nurture him as her own on thefood of gods, and to plunge him through the flames of a fire that wouldgive him immortal life. As the pusillanimous and sordid fears of themortal mother lost to the child for evermore the possession of Olympianjoys and of perpetual youth, so did the craven and earthly cares ofbodily needs hold the artist back from the radiance of the life of thesoul, and drag him from the purifying fires. Yet he had not been utterlydiscouraged; he strove against the Metanira of circumstance; he did hisbest to struggle free from the mortal bonds that bound him; and, as thechild Demophoon mourned for the great goddess that had nurtured him, refusing to be comforted, so did he turn from the base consolations ofthe senses and the appetites, and beheld ever before his sight theineffable majesty of that Mater Dolorosa who once and for ever hadanointed him as her own. 

 * * *

Men did not believe in him; what he wrought saddened and terrified them;they turned aside to those who fed them on simpler and on sweeter food. 

His works were great, but they were such as the public mind deemsimpious. They unveiled human corruption too nakedly, and they shadowedforth visions too exalted, and satires too unsparing, for them to beacceptable to the multitude. They were compounded of an idealism clearand cold as crystal, and of a reality cruel and voluptuous as love. Theywere penetrated with an acrid satire and an intense despair: the worldcaring only for a honied falsehood and a gilded gloss in every art, would have none of them. 

 * * *

"See you--what he lacks is only the sinew that gold gives. What he hasdone is great. The world rightly seeing must fear it; and fear is thehighest homage the world ever gives. But he is penniless; and he hasmany foes; and jealousy can with so much ease thrust aside the greatnesswhich it fears into obscurity, when that greatness is marred by thefailures and the feebleness of poverty. Genius scorns the power of gold:it is wrong; gold is the war-scythe on its chariot, which mows down themillions of its foes and gives free passage to the sun-coursers withwhich it leaves those heavenly fields of light for the grossbattle-fields of earth. "

 * * *

It is true that the great artist is as a fallen god who remembers a timewhen worlds arose at his breath, and at his bidding the barren landsblossomed into fruitfulness; the sorcery of the thyrsus is still his, though weakened. 

The powers of lost dominions haunt his memory; the remembered glory ofan eternal sun is in his eyes, and makes the light of common day seemdarkness; the heart sickness of a long exile weighs on him; incessantlyhe labours to overtake the mirage of a loveliness which fades as hepursues it. In the poetic creation by which the bondage of his materiallife is redeemed, he finds at once ecstasy and disgust, because he feelsat once his strength and weakness. For him all things of earth and air, and sea and cloud, have beauty; and to his ear all voices of the forestland and water world are audible. 

He is as a god, since he can call into palpable shape dreams born ofimpalpable thought; as a god, since he has known the truth divested oflies, and has stood face to face with it, and been not afraid; a godthus. But a cripple inasmuch as his hand can never fashion the shapesthat his vision beholds; an alien because he has lost what he never willfind upon earth; a beast, since ever and again his passions will draghim to wallow in the filth of sensual indulgence; a slave, sinceoftentimes the divinity that is in him breaks and bends under thedevilry that also is in him, and he obeys the instincts of vileness, andwhen he would fain bless the nations he curses them. 

 * * *

"I do not know, " she said, wearily afresh. "Marcellin says that everyGod is deaf. He must be deaf--or very cruel. Look; everything lives inpain; and yet no God pities and makes an end of the earth. I would--if Iwere He. Look--at dawn, the other day, I was out in the wood. I cameupon a little rabbit in a trap; a little, pretty, soft black-and-whitething, quite young. It was screaming in its horrible misery; ithad been screaming all night. Its thighs were broken in the iron teeth;the trap held it tight; it could not escape, it could onlyscream--scream--scream. All in vain. When I had set it free it wasmangled as if a wolf had gnawed it; the iron teeth had bitten throughthe fur, and the flesh, and the bone; it had lost so much blood, and itwas in so much pain, that it could not live. I laid it down in thebracken, and put water to its mouth, and did what I could; but it was ofno use. It had been too much hurt. It died as the sun rose; a little, harmless, shy, happy thing, you know, that never killed any creature, and only asked to nibble a leaf or two, or sleep in a little round hole, and run about merry and free. How can one care for a God since He letsthese things be?"

Arslàn smiled as he heard. 

"Child, --men care for a god only as a god means a good to them. Men areheirs of heaven, they say; and, in right of their heritage, they makelife hell to every living thing that dares dispute the world with them. You do not understand that, --tut! You are not human then. If you werehuman, you would begrudge a blade of grass to a rabbit, and arrogate toyourself a lease of immortality. "

 * * *

"Of a winter night, " she said, slowly, "I have heard old Pitchou readaloud to Flamma, and she reads of their God, the one they hangeverywhere on the crosses here; and the story ran that the populacescourged and nailed to death the one whom they knew afterwards, when toolate, to have been the great man that they looked for, and that, beingbidden to make their choice of one to save, they chose to ransom andhonour a thief: one called Barabbas. Is it true?--if the world's choicewere wrong once, why not twice?"

Arslàn smiled; the smile she knew so well, and which had no more warmththan the ice floes of his native seas. 

"Why not twice? Why not a thousand times? A thief has the world'ssympathies always. It is always the Barabbas--the trickster in talent, the forger of stolen wisdom, the bravo of political crime, the hucksterof plundered thoughts, the charlatan of false art, whom the vox populielects and sets free, and sends on his way rejoicing. 'Will ye haveChrist or Barabbas?' Every generation is asked the same question, andevery generation gives the same answer; and scourges the divinity out ofits midst, and finds its idol in brute force and low greed. "

She only dimly comprehended, not well knowing why her words had thusroused him. She pondered awhile, then her face cleared. 

"But the end?" she asked. "The dead God is the God of all these peopleround us now, and they have built great places in His honour, and theybow when they pass His likeness in the highway or the market-place. Butwith Barabbas--what was the end? It seems that they loathe and despisehim?"

Arslàn laughed a little. 

"His end? In Syria may be the vultures picked his bones, where they laywhitening on the plains--those times were primitive, the world wasyoung. But in our day Barabbas lives and dies in honour, and has a tombthat stares all men in the face, setting forth his virtues, so that allwho run may read. In our day Barabbas--the Barabbas of money-greeds anddelicate cunning, and the theft which has risen to science, and theassassination that kills souls and not bodies, and the crime that dealsmoral death and not material death--our Barabbas, who is crowned Fraudin the place of mailed Force, lives always in purple and fine linen, andends in the odours of sanctity with the prayers of priests over hiscorpse. "

He spoke with a certain fierce passion that rose in him whenever hethought of that world which had rejected him, and had accepted so manyothers, weaker in brain and nerve, but stronger in one sense, becausemore dishonest; and as he spoke he went straight to a wall on his right, where a great sea of grey paper was stretched, untouched and ready tohis hand. 

She would have spoken, but he made a motion to silence. 

"Hush! be quiet, " he said to her, almost harshly, "I have thought ofsomething. "

And he took the charcoal and swept rapidly with it over the dull blanksurface till the vacancy glowed with life. A thought had kindled in him;a vision had arisen before him. 

The scene around him vanished utterly from his sight. The grey stonewalls, the square windows through which the fading sun-rays fell; thelevel pastures and sullen streams, and paled skies without, all fadedaway as though they had existed only in a dream. 

All the empty space about him became peopled with many human shapes thatfor him had breath and being, though no other eye could have beheldthem. The old Syrian world of eighteen hundred years before arose andglowed before him. The things of his own life died away, and in theirstead he saw the fierce flame of eastern suns, the gleaming range ofmarble palaces, the purple flush of pomegranate flowers, the deep colourof oriental robes, the soft silver of hills olive crested, the tumult ofa city at high festival. And he could not rest until all he thus saw inhis vision he had rendered as far as his hand could render it; and whathe drew was this. 

A great thirsty, heated, seething crowd; a crowd that had manhood andwomanhood, age and infancy, youths and maidens within its ranks; a crowdin whose faces every animal lust and every human passion were let loose;a crowd on which a noon sun without shadow streamed; a sun which parchedand festered and engendered all corruption in the land on which itlooked. This crowd was in a city, a city on whose flat roofs the myrtleand the cistus bloomed; above whose walls the plumes of olives waved;upon whose distant slopes the darkling cedar groves rose straightagainst the sky, and on whose lofty temple plates of gold glistenedagainst the shining heavens. This crowd had scourges, and stones, andgoads in their hands; and in their midst they led one clothed in white, whose head was thorn-crowned, and whose eyes were filled with a god'spity and a man's reproach; and him they stoned, and lashed, and hooted. 

And triumphant in the throng, whose choice he was, seated aloft uponmen's shoulders, with a purple robe thrown on his shoulders, there sat abrawny, grinning, bloated, jibbering thing, with curled lips and savageeyes, and satyr's leer: the creature of greed, of lust, of obscenity, ofbrutality, of avarice, of desire. This thing the people followed, rejoicing exceedingly, content in the guide whom they had chosen, victorious in the fiend for whom they spurned a deity; crying, with wideopen throats and brazen lungs, --"Barabbas!"

There was not a form in all this close-packed throng which had not aterrible irony in it, which was not in itself a symbol of some appetiteor of some vice, for which women and men abjure the godhead in them. 

A gorged drunkard lay asleep with his amphora broken beneath him, thestream of the purple wine lapped eagerly by ragged children. Amoney-changer had left the receipt of custom, eager to watch and shout, and a thief clutched both hands full of the forsaken coins and fled. 

A miser had dropped a bag of gold, and stopped to catch at all therolling pieces, regardless in his greed how the crowd trampled and trodon him. A mother chid and struck her little brown curly child, becausehe stretched his arms and turned his face towards the thorn-crownedcaptive. 

A priest of the temple, with a blood-stained knife thrust in his girdle, dragged beside him, by the throat, a little tender lamb doomed for thesacrifice. 

A dancing woman with jewels in her ears, and half naked to the waist, sounding the brazen cymbals above her head, drew a score of youths afterher in Barabbas' train. 

On one of the flat roof tops, reclining on purple and fine linen, looking down on the street below from the thick foliage of her citronboughs and her red Syrian roses, was an Egyptian wanton; and leaningbeside her, tossing golden apples in her bosom, was a young centurion ofthe Roman guard, languid and laughing, with his fair chest bare to theheat, and his armour flung in a pile beside him. 

And thus, in like manner, every figure bore its parable; and above allwas the hard, hot, cruel, cloudless sky of blue, without one faintestmist to break its horrible serenity, whilst high in the azure ether andagainst the sun, an eagle and a vulture fought, locked close, andtearing at each other's breasts. 

Six nights this conception occupied him. His days were not his own, hespent them in a rough mechanical labour which his strength executedwhile his mind was far away from it; but the nights were all his, and atthe end of the sixth night the thing arose, perfect as far as his handcould perfect it; begotten by a chance and ignorant word as have beenmany of the greatest works the world has seen;--oaks sprung from theacorn that a careless child has let fall. 

When he had finished it his arm dropped to his side, he stoodmotionless; the red glow of the dawn lighting the depths of hissleepless eyes. 

 * * *

It was a level green silent country which was round her, with littleloveliness and little colour; but as she went she laughed incessantlyin the delirious gladness of her liberty. 

She tossed her head back to watch the flight of a single swallow; shecaught a handful of green leaves and buried her face in them. Shelistened in a very agony of memory to the rippling moisture of a littlebrook. She followed with her eyes the sweeping vapours of therain-clouds, and when a west wind rose and blew a cluster of loose appleblossoms between her eyes--she could no longer bear the passionate painof all the long-lost sweetness, but flinging herself downward, sobbedwith the ecstasy of an exile's memories. 

The hell in which she had dwelt had denied them to her for so long. 

"Ah God!" she thought, "I know now--one cannot be utterly wretchedwhilst one has still the air and the light and the winds of the sky. "

And she arose, calmer, and went on her way; wondering, even in thathour, why men and women trod the daily measures of their lives withtheir eyes downward and their ears choked with the dust; hearkening solittle to the sound of the breeze in the grasses, looking so little tothe passage of the clouds against the sun. 

 * * *

The ground ascended as it stretched seaward, but on it there were onlywide dull fields of colza or of grass lying, sickly and burning, underthe fire of the late afternoon sun. 

The slope was too gradual to break their monotony. 

Above them was the cloudless weary blue; below them was the faintparched green; other colour there was none; one little dusky pantingbird flew by pursued by a kite; that was the only change. 

She asked him no questions; she walked mutely and patiently by his side;she hated the dull heat, the colourless waste, the hard scorch of theair, the dreary changelessness of the scene. But she did not say so. Hehad chosen to come to them. 

A league onward the fields were merged into a heath, uncultivated andcovered with short prickly furze; on the brown earth between the stuntedbushes a few goats were cropping the burnt-up grasses. Here the slopegrew sharper, and the earth seemed to rise up between the sky and them, steep and barren as a house-roof. 

Once he asked her--

"Are you tired?"

She shook her head. 

Her feet ached, and her heart throbbed; her limbs were heavy like leadin the heat and the toil. But she did not tell him so. She would havedropped dead from exhaustion rather than have confessed to him anyweakness. 

He took the denial as it was given, and pressed onward up the ascent. 

The sun was slanting towards the west; the skies seemed like brass; theair was sharp, yet scorching; the dull brown earth still rose up beforethem like a wall; they climbed it slowly and painfully, their hands andtheir teeth filled with its dust, which drifted in a cloud before them. He bade her close her eyes, and she obeyed him. He stretched his arm outand drew her after him up the ascent, which was slippery from droughtand prickly from the stunted growth of furze. 

On the summit he stood still and released her. 

"Now look. "

She opened her eyes with the startled, half-questioning stare of oneled out from utter darkness into a full and sudden light. 

Then, with a great cry, she sank down on the rock, trembling, weeping, laughing, stretching out her arms to the new glory that met her sight, dumb with its grandeur, delirious with its delight. 

For what she saw was the sea. 

Before her dazzled sight all its beauty stretched, the blueness of thewaters meeting the blueness of the skies; radiant with all the marvelsof its countless hues; softly stirred by a low wind that sighed acrossit; bathed in a glow of gold that streamed on it from the westward;rolling from north to south in slow, sonorous measure, filling thesilent air with the ceaseless melody of its wondrous voice. 

The lustre of the sunset beamed upon it; the cool fresh smell of itswaters shot like new life through all the scorch and stupor of the day;its white foam curled and broke on the brown curving rocks and woodedinlets of the shores; innumerable birds, that gleamed like silver, floated or flew above its surface; all was still, still as death, saveonly for the endless movement of those white swift wings and the murmurof the waves, in which all meaner and harsher sounds of earth seemedlost and hushed to slumber and to silence. 

The sea alone reigned, as it reigned in the young years of the earthwhen men were not; as, may be, it will be its turn to reign again in theyears to come, when men and all their works shall have passed away andbe no more seen nor any more remembered. 

Arslàn watched her in silence. 

He was glad that it should awe and move her thus. The sea was the onlything for which he cared, or which had any power over him. In thenorthern winters of his youth he had known the ocean, in one wildnight's work, undo all that men had done to check and rule it, andburst through all the barriers that they had raised against it, andthrow down the stones of the altar and quench the fires of the hearth, and sweep through the fold and the byre, and flood the cradle of thechild and the grave of the grandsire. 

He had seen its storms wash away at one blow the corn harvests of years, and gather in the sheep from the hills, and take the life of theshepherd with the life of the flock. He had seen it claim lovers lockedin each other's arms, and toss the fair curls of the first-born as ittossed the riband weeds of its deeps. And he had felt small pity; it hadrather given him a certain sense of rejoicing and triumph to see thewater laugh to scorn those who were so wise in their own conceit, andbind beneath its chains those who held themselves masters over allbeasts of the field and birds of the air. 

Other men dreaded the sea and cursed it; but he in his way loved italmost with passion, and could he have chosen the manner of his deathwould have desired that it should be by the sea and through the sea; adeath cold and serene and dreamily voluptuous: a death on which no womanshould look and in which no man should have share. 

He watched her now for some time without speaking. When the firstparoxysm of her emotion had exhausted itself, she stood motionless, herfigure like a statue of bronze against the sun, her head sunk upon herbreast, her arms outstretched as though beseeching that wondrousbrightness which she saw to take her to itself and make her one with it. Her whole attitude expressed an unutterable worship. She was like onewho for the first time hears of God. 

"What is it you feel?" he asked her suddenly. He knew without asking;but he had made it his custom to dissect all her joys and sufferingswith little heed whether he thus added to either. 

At the sound of his voice she started, and a shiver shook her as sheanswered him slowly, without withdrawing her gaze from the waters. 

"It has been there always--always--so near me?"

"Before the land, the sea was. "

"And I never knew!"--

Her head drooped on her breast; great tears rolled silently down hercheeks; her arms fell to her sides; she shivered again and sighed. Sheknew all that she had lost--this is the greatest grief that life holds. 

"You never knew, " he made answer. "There was only a sand-hill betweenyou and all this glory; but the sand-hill was enough. Many people neverclimb theirs all their lives long. "

The words and their meaning escaped her. 

She had for once no remembrance of him, nor any other sense save of thissurpassing wonder that had thus burst on her--this miracle that had beennear her for so long, yet of which she had never in all her visionsdreamed. 

She was quite silent; sunk there on her knees, motionless, and gazingstraight, with eyes unblenching, at the light. 

There was no sound near them, nor was there anything in sight exceptwhere above against the deepest azure of the sky two curlews werecircling around each other, and in the distance a single ship wasgliding, with sails silvered by the sun. All signs of human life lay farbehind; severed from them by those steep scorched slopes swept only bythe plovers and the bees. And all the while she looked slow tearsgathered in her eyes and fell, and the loud hard beating of her heartwas audible in the hushed stillness of the upper air. 

He waited awhile: then he spoke to her. 

"Since it pains you, come away. "

A great sob shuddered through her. 

"Give me that pain, " she muttered, "sooner than any joy. Pain? pain?--itis life, heaven--liberty!"

For suddenly those words which she had heard spoken around her, andwhich had been to her like the mutterings of the deaf and the dumb, became real to her with thousand meanings. 

The seagulls were lost in the heights of the air; the ship sailed oninto the light till the last gleam of its canvas vanished; the sun sankwestward lower and lower till it glowed in a globe of flame upon theedge of the water: she never moved; standing there on the summit of thecliff, with her head drooped upon her breast, her form thrown out darkand motionless against the gold of the western sky, on her face stillthat look of one who worships with intense honour and passionate faithan unknown God. 

The sun sank entirely, leaving only a trail of flame across the heavens;the waters grew grey and purple in the shadows; one boat, black againstthe crimson reflections of the west, swept on swiftly with thein-rushing tide; the wind rose and blew long curls of seaweed on therocks; the shores of the bay were dimmed in a heavy mist, through whichthe lights of the little hamlets dimly glowed, and the distant voices offishermen calling to each other as they drew in their deep-sea nets camefaint and weirdlike. 

 * * *

What she wanted was to live. Live as the great moor bird did that shehad seen float one day over these pale, pure, blue skies, with itsmighty wings outstretched in the calm grey weather; which came none knewwhence, and which went none knew whither; which poised silent andstirless against the clouds; then called with a sweet wild love-note toits mate, and waited for him as he sailed in from the misty shadowswhere the sea lay; and with him rose yet higher and higher in the air;and passed westward, cleaving the fields of light, and so vanished;--aqueen of the wind, a daughter of the sun; a creature of freedom, ofvictory, of tireless movement, and of boundless space, a thing of heavenand of liberty. 

 * * *

In the springtime of the year three gods watched by the river. 

The golden flowers of the willows blew in the low winds; the waters cameand went; the moon rose full and cold over a silvery stream; the reedssighed in the silence. 

Two winters had drifted by and one hot drowsy summer since their creatorhad forsaken them, and all the white still shapes upon the walls alreadyhad been slain by the cold breath of Time. The green weeds waved in theempty casements; the chance-sown seeds of thistles and of bell-flowerswere taking leaf between the square stones of the paven places; on thedeserted threshold lichens and brambles climbed together; the filmy oozeof a rank vegetation stole over the loveliness of Persephone anddevoured one by one the divine offspring of Zeus; about the feet of thebound sun king in Pheroe and over the calm serene mockery of Hermes'smile the grey nets of the spiders' webs had been woven to and fro, across and across, with the lacing of a million threads, as Fate weavesround the limbs and covers the eyes of mortals as they stumble blindlyfrom their birthplace to their grave. All things, the damp and the dust, the frost and the scorch, the newts and the rats, the fret of theflooded waters, and the stealing sure inroad of the mosses thateverywhere grew from the dews and the fogs, had taken and eaten, inhunger or sport, or had touched, and thieved from, then left, gangrenedand ruined. 

The three gods alone remained; who being the sons of eternal night, areunharmed, unaltered, by any passage of the years of earth. The only godswho never bend beneath the yoke of years; but unblenchingly behold thenations wither as uncounted leaves, and the lands and the seas changetheir places, and the cities and the empires pass away as a tale that istold; and the deities that are worshipped in the temples alter in nameand attributes and cultus, at the wanton will of the age which begotthem. 

In the still, cold, moonlit air their shadows stood together. Hand inhand; looking outward through the white night-mists. Other gods perishedwith the faith of each age as it changed; other gods lived by the breathof men's lips, the tears of prayer, the smoke of sacrifice. Butthey, --their empire was the universe. 

In every young soul that leaps into the light of life rejoicing blindly, Oneiros has dominion; and he alone. In every creature that breathes, from the conqueror resting on a field of blood to the nest bird cradledin its bed of leaves, Hypnos holds a sovereignty which nothing mortalcan long resist and live. And Thanatos, --to him belongs every createdthing, past, present, and to come; beneath his feet all generations lie;and in the hollow of his hand he holds the worlds; though the earth betenantless, and the heavens sunless, and the planets shrivel in theircourses, and the universe be shrouded in an endless night, yet throughthe eternal desolation Thanatos still will reign, and through theeternal darkness, through the immeasurable solitudes, he alone willwander, and he still behold his work. 

Deathless as themselves their shadows stood; and the worm and the lizardand the newt left them alone and dared not wind about their calm clearbrows, and dared not steal to touch the roses at their lips, knowingthat ere the birth of the worlds these were, and when the worlds shallhave perished these still will reign on:--the slow, sure, soundless, changeless ministers of an eternal rest, of an eternal oblivion. 

A late light strayed in from the grey skies, pale as the primroseflowers that grew amongst the reeds upon the shore; and found its way tothem, trembling; and shone in the far-seeing depths of theirunfathomable eyes. 

The eyes which spake and said:

"Sleep, dreams, and death:--we are the only gods that answer prayer. "

 * * *

Night had come; a dark night of earliest spring. The wild day had sobbeditself to sleep after a restless life with fitful breath of storm andmany sighs of shuddering breezes. 

The sun had sunk, leaving long tracks of blood-red light across one-halfthe heavens. 

There was a sharp crisp coldness as of lingering frost in the gloom andthe dulness. Heavy clouds, as yet unbroken, hung over the cathedral andthe clustering roofs around it in dark and starless splendour. 

Over the great still plains which stretched eastward and southward, black with the furrows of the scarce-budded corn, the wind blew hard;blowing the river and the many streamlets spreading from it into foam;driving the wintry leaves which still strewed the earth thickly, hitherand thither in legions; breaking boughs that had weathered the winterhurricanes, and scattering the tender blossoms of the snowdrops and theearliest crocuses in all the little moss-grown garden ways. 

The smell of wet grass, of the wood-born violets, of trees whose newlife was waking in their veins, of damp earths turned freshly upwards bythe plough, were all blown together by the riotous breezes. 

Now and then a light gleamed through the gloom where a little peasantboy lighted home with a torch some old priest on his mule, or a boatwent down the waters with a lamp hung at its prow. For it grew darkearly, and people used to the river read a threat of a flood on itsface. 

A dim glow from the west, which was still tinged with the fire of thesunset, fell through a great square window set in a stone building, andstriking across the sicklier rays of an oil lamp reached the opposingwall within. 

It was a wall of grey stone, dead and lustreless like the wall of aprison-house, over whose surface a spider as colourless as itselfdragged slowly its crooked hairy limbs loaded with the moisture of theplace, which was an old tower, of which the country folk told strangetales, where it stood among the rushes on the left bank of the stream. 

A man watched the spider as it went. 

It crept on its heavy way across the faint crimson reflection from theglow of the sunken sun. 

It was fat, well-nourished, lazy, content; its home of dusky silver hungon high, where its pleasure lay in weaving, clinging, hoarding, breeding. It lived in the dark; it had neither pity nor regret; ittroubled itself neither for the death it dealt to nourish itself, norfor the light without, into which it never wandered; it spun and throveand multiplied. 

It was an emblem of the man who is wise in his generation; of the manwhom Cato the elder deemed divine; of the Majority and the Mediocritywho rule over the earth and enjoy its fruits. 

This man knew that it was wise; that those who were like to it were wisealso: wise with the holy wisdom which is honoured of other men. 

He had been unwise--always; and therefore he stood watching the sun die, with hunger in his soul, with famine in his body. 

For many months he had been half famished, as were the wolves in his ownnorthern mountains in the winter solstice. For seven days he had onlybeen able to crush a crust of hard black bread between his teeth. Fortwenty hours he had not done even so much as this. The trencher on histressel was empty; and he had not wherewithal to re-fill it. 

He might have found some to fill it for him no doubt. He lived amidstthe poor, and the poor to the poor are good, though they are bad andbitter to the rich. But he did not open either his lips or his hand. Heconsumed his heart in silence; and his vitals preyed in anguish onthemselves without his yielding to their torments. 

He was a madman; and Cato, who measured the godliness of man by whatthey gained, would have held him accursed;--the madness that starves andis silent for an idea is an insanity, scouted by the world and the gods. For it is an insanity unfruitful; except to the future. And for thefuture who cares, --save these madmen themselves?

He watched the spider as it went. 

It could not speak to him as its fellow once spoke in the old Scottishstory. To hear as that captive heard, the hearer must have hope, and akingdom, --if only in dreams. 

This man had no hope; he had a kingdom indeed, but it was not of earth;and, in an hour of sheer cruel bodily pain, earth alone has dominion andpower and worth. 

The spider crawled across the grey wall; across the glow from thevanished sun; across a coil of a dead passion-vine, that strayed loosethrough the floor; across the classic shapes of a great cartoon drawn inchalks upon the dull rugged surface of stone. 

Nothing arrested it; nothing retarded it, as nothing hastened it. Itmoved slowly on; fat, lustreless, indolent, hueless; reached at lengthits den, and there squatted aloft, loving the darkness; its youngswarming around, its prey held in its forceps, its nets cast about. 

Through the open casement there came on the rising wind of the storm, in the light of the last lingering sunbeam, a beautiful night-moth, begotten by some cruel hot-house heat in the bosom of some frail exiledtropical flower. 

It swam in on trembling pinions, and alighted on the golden head of agathered crocus that lay dying on the stones--a moth that should havebeen born to no world save that of the summer world of a MidsummerNight's Dream. 

A shape of Ariel and Oberon; slender, silver, purple, roseate, lustrous-eyed, and gossamer-winged. 

A creature of woodland waters, and blossoming forests; of the yellowchalices of kingcups and the white breasts of river lilies, of moonbeamsthat strayed through a summer world of shadows, and dew-drops thatglistened in the deep folded hearts of roses. A creature to brush thedreaming eyes of a poet, to nestle on the bosom of a young girlsleeping: to float earthwards on a falling star, to slumber on a lotusleaf. 

A creature that amidst the still soft hush of woods and waters stilltells, to those who listen, of the world when the world was young. 

The moth flew on, and poised on the fading crocus leaves, which spreadout their pale gold on the level of the grey floor. 

It was weary, and its delicate wings drooped; it was storm-tossed, wind-beaten, drenched with mist and frozen with the cold; it belonged tothe moon, to the dew, to the lilies, to the forget-me-nots, and to thenight; and it found that the hard grip of winter had seized it whilstyet it had thought that the stars and the summer were with it. It livedbefore its time, --and it was like the human soul, which being born inthe darkness of the world dares to dream of light, and, wandering invain search of a sun that will never rise, falls and perishes inwretchedness. 

It was beautiful exceedingly, with the brilliant tropical beauty of alife that is short-lived. It rested a moment on the stem of the paleflower, then with its radiant eyes fastened on the point of light whichthe lamp thrust upward, it flew on high; and, spreading out itstransparent wings and floating to the flame, kissed it, quivered once, and died. 

There fell among the dust and cinder of the lamp a little heap ofshrunken, fire-scorched, blackened ashes. 

The wind whirled them upward from their rest, and drove them forth intothe night to mingle with the storm-scourged grasses, the pale deadviolets, the withered snow-flowers, with all things frost-touched andforgotten. 

The spider sat aloft, sucking the juices from the fettered flies, teaching its spawn to prey and feed; content in squalor and inplenitude; in sensual sloth, and in the increase of its body and itshoard. 

He watched them both: the success of the spider, the death of the moth;trite as a fable; ever repeated as the tides of the sea; the two symbolsof humanity; of the life which fattens on greed and gain, and the lifewhich perishes of divine desire. 

 * * *

There were no rare birds, no birds of moor and mountain, in thatcultivated and populous district; but to her all the little home-bredthings of pasture and orchard were full of poetry and of character. 

The robins, with that pretty air of boldness with which they veil theirreal shyness and timidity; the strong and saucy sparrows, powerful bythe strength of all mediocrities and majorities; all the dainty familiesof finches in their gay apparellings; the plain brown bird that filledthe night with music; the gorgeous oriole ruffling in gold, the gildedprinceling of them all; the little blue warblers, the violets of theair; the kingfishers who had hovered so long over the forget-me-notsupon the rivers that they had caught the colours of the flowers on theirwings; the bright blackcaps green as the leaves, with their yellowwaistcoats and velvet hoods, the innocent freebooters of the woodlandliberties: all these were her friends and lovers, various as any humancrowds of court or city. 

She loved them; they and the fourfooted beasts were the sole things thatdid not flee from her; and the woeful and mad slaughter of them by thepeasants was to her a grief passionate in its despair. She did notreason on what she felt; but to her a bird slain was a trust betrayed, an innocence defiled, a creature of heaven struck to earth. 

Suddenly on the silence of the garden there was a little shrill sound ofpain; the birds flew high in air, screaming and startled; the leaves ofa bough of ivy shook as with a struggle. 

She rose and looked; a line of twine was trembling against the foliage;in its noosed end the throat of the mavis had been caught; it hungtrembling and clutching at the air convulsively with its little drawn-upfeet. It had flown into the trap as it had ended its joyous song andsoared up to join its brethren. 

There were a score of such traps set in the miller's garden. 

She unloosed the cord from about its tiny neck, set it free, and laid itdown upon the ivy. The succour came too late; the little gentle body wasalready without breath; the feet had ceased to beat the air; the smallsoft head had drooped feebly on one side; the lifeless eyes had startedfrom their sockets; the throat was without song for evermore. 

"The earth would be good but for men, " she thought, as she stood withthe little dead bird in her hand. 

Its mate, which was poised on a rose bough, flew straight to it, andcurled round and round about the small slain body, and piteouslybewailed its fate, and mourned, refusing to be comforted, agitating theair with trembling wings, and giving out vain cries of grief. 

Vain; for the little joyous life was gone; the life that asked only ofGod and Man a home in the green leaves; a drop of dew from the cup of arose; a bough to swing on in the sunlight; a summer day to celebrate insong. 

All the winter through, it had borne cold and hunger and pain withoutlament; it had saved the soil from destroying larvæ, and purified thetrees from all foul germs; it had built its little home unaided, and hadfed its nestlings without alms; it had given its sweet song lavishly tothe winds, to the blossoms, to the empty air, to the deaf ears of men;and now it lay dead in its innocence; trapped and slain because a humangreed begrudged it a berry worth the thousandth part of a copper coin. 

Out from the porch of the mill-house Claudis Flamma came, with a knifein his hand and a basket, to cut lilies for one of the choristers of thecathedral, since the morrow would be the religious feast of theVisitation of Mary. 

He saw the dead thrush in her hand, and chuckled to himself as he wentby. 

"The tenth bird trapped since sunrise, " he said, thinking how shrewd andhow sure in their make were these traps of twine that he set in thegrass and the leaves. 

She said nothing; but the darkness of disgust swept over her face, as hecame in sight in the distance. 

She knelt down and scraped a hole in the earth; and laid moss in it, andput the mavis softly on its green and fragrant bier, and covered it withhandfuls of fallen rose leaves, and with a sprig or two of thyme. 

Around her head the widowed thrush flew ceaselessly, uttering sadcries;--who now should wander with him through the sunlight?--who nowshould rove with him above the blossoming fields?--who now should sitwith him beneath the boughs hearing the sweet rain fall between theleaves?--who now should wake with him whilst yet the world was dark, tofeel the dawn break ere the east were red, and sing a welcome to theunborn day?

 * * *

And, indeed, to those who are alive to the nameless, universal, eternalsoul which breathes in all the grasses of the fields, and beams in theeyes of all creatures of earth and air, and throbs in the living lightof palpitating stars, and thrills through the young sap of forest trees, and stirs in the strange loves of wind-borne plants, and hums in everysong of the bee, and burns in every quiver of the flame, and peopleswith sentient myriads every drop of dew that gathers on a harebell, every bead of water that ripples in a brook--to these the mortal life ofman can seem but little, save at once the fiercest and the feeblestthing that does exist; at once the most cruel and the most impotent;tyrant of direst destruction and bondsman of lowest captivity. 

Hence, pity entered very little into his thoughts at any time; theperpetual torture of life did indeed perplex him, as it perplexes everythinking creature, with wonder at the universal bitterness that taintsall creation, at the universal death whereby all forms of life arenurtured, at the universal anguish of all existence which daily andnightly assails the unknown God in piteous protest at the inexorablelaws of inexplicable miseries and mysteries. But because such sufferingwas thus universal, therefore he almost ceased to feel pity for it; ofthe two he pitied the beasts far more than the human kind:--the horsestaggering beneath the lash in all the feebleness of hunger, lameness, and old age; the ox bleeding from the goad on the hard furrows, orstumbling through the hooting crowd, blind, footsore, and shivering, toits last home in the slaughter-house; the dog, yielding up its noblelife inch by inch under the tortures of the knife, loyally licking thehand of the vivisector while he drove his probe through its quiveringnerves; the unutterable hell in which all these gentle, kindly, andlong-suffering creatures dwelt for the pleasure or the vanity, theavarice or the brutality of men, --these he pitied perpetually, with atenderness for them that was the softest thing in all his nature. 

 * * *

"There lived once in the East, a great king; he dwelt far away, amongstthe fragrant fields of roses, and in the light of suns that never set. 

"He was young, he was beloved, he was fair of face and form; and thepeople, as they hewed stone, or brought water, said amongst themselves, 'Verily, this man is as a god; he goes where he lists, and he lies stillor rises up as he pleases; and all fruits of all lands are culled forhim; and his nights are nights of gladness, and his days, when theydawn, are all his to sleep through or spend as he wills. ' But the peoplewere wrong. For this king was weary of his life. 

"His buckler was sown with gems, but his heart beneath it was sore. Forhe had been long bitterly harassed by foes who descended on him aswolves from the hills in their hunger, and he had been long plagued withheavy wars and with bad rice harvests, and with many troubles to hisnation that kept it very poor, and forbade him to finish the building ofnew marble palaces, and the making of fresh gardens of delight, on whichhis heart was set. So he, being weary of a barren land and of an emptytreasury, with all his might prayed to the gods that all he touchedmight turn to gold, even as he had heard had happened to some magicianlong before in other ages. And the gods gave him the thing he craved;and his treasury overflowed. No king had ever been so rich, as this kingnow became in the short space of a single summer-day. 

"But it was bought with a price. 

"When he stretched out his hand to gather the rose that blossomed in hispath, a golden flower scentless and stiff was all he grasped. When hecalled to him the carrier-dove that sped with a scroll of love wordsacross the mountains, the bird sank on his breast a carven piece ofmetal. When he was athirst and shouted to his cupbearer for drink, thered wine ran a stream of molten gold. When he would fain have eaten, thepulse and the pomegranate grew alike to gold between his teeth. And lo!at eventide, when he sought the silent chambers of his harem, saying, 'Here at least shall I find rest, ' and bent his steps to the couchwhereon his best-beloved slave was sleeping, a statue of gold was all hedrew into his eager arms, and cold shut lips of sculptured gold were allthat met his own. 

"That night the great king slew himself, unable any more to bear thisagony; since all around him was desolation, even though all around himwas wealth. 

"Now the world is too like that king, and in its greed of gold it willbarter its life away. 

"Look you, --this thing is certain--I say that the world will perish, even as that king perished, slain as he was slain, by the curse of itsown fulfilled desire. 

"The future of the world is written. For God has granted their prayer tomen. He has made them rich, and their riches shall kill them. 

"When all green places have been destroyed in the builder's lust ofgain:--when all the lands are but mountains of brick, and piles of woodand iron:--when there is no moisture anywhere; and no rain everfalls:--when the sky is a vault of smoke; and all the rivers reek withpoison:--when forest and stream, and moor and meadow, and all the oldgreen wayside beauty are things vanished and forgotten:--when everygentle timid thing of brake and bush, of air and water, has been killedbecause it robbed them of a berry or a fruit:--when the earth is onevast city, whose young children behold neither the green of the fieldnor the blue of the sky, and hear no song but the hiss of the steam, andknow no music but the roar of the furnace:--when the old sweet silenceof the country-side, and the old sweet sounds of waking birds, and theold sweet fall of summer showers, and the grace of a hedgerow bough, andthe glow of the purple heather, and the note of the cuckoo and cushat, and the freedom of waste and of woodland, are all things dead, andremembered of no man:--then the world, like the Eastern king, willperish miserably of famine and of drought, with gold in its stiffenedhands, and gold in its withered lips, and gold everywhere:--gold thatthe people can neither eat nor drink, gold that cares nothing for them, but mocks them horribly:--gold for which their fathers sold peace andhealth, and holiness and liberty:--gold that is one vast grave. "

 * * *

The earth is crowded full with clay gods and false prophets, and freshlegions for ever arriving to carry on the old strife for supremacy; andif a man pass unknown all the time that his voice is audible, and hishand visible, through the sound and smoke of the battle, he will dreamin vain of any remembrance when the gates of the grave shall have closedon him and shut him for ever from sight. 

When the world was in its youth, it had leisure to treasure itsrecollections; even to pause and look back, and to see what flower of afair thought, what fruit of a noble art it might have overlooked or leftdown-trodden. 

But now it is so old, and is so tired; it is purblind and heavy of foot;it does not notice what it destroys; it desires rest, and can find none;nothing can matter greatly to it; its dead are so many that it cannotcount them; and being thus worn and dulled with age, and suffocatedunder the weight of its innumerable memories, it is very slow to bemoved, and swift--terribly swift--to forget. 

Why should it not be?

It has known the best, it has known the worst, that ever can befall it. 

And the prayer that to the heart of a man seems so freshly born from hisown desire, what is it on the weary ear of the world, save the same oldold cry which it has heard through all the ages, empty as the sound ofthe wind, and for ever--for ever--unanswered?

 * * *

There is no more terrible woe upon earth than the woe of the strickenbrain, which remembers the days of its strength, the living light of itsreason, the sunrise of its proud intelligence, and knows that these havepassed away like a tale that is told; like a year that is spent; like anarrow that is shot to the stars, and flies aloft, and falls in a swamp;like a fruit that is too well loved of the sun, and so, over-soon ripe, is dropped from the tree and forgot on the grasses, dead to all joys ofthe dawn and the noon and the summer, but still alive to the sting ofthe wasp, to the fret of the aphis, to the burn of the drought, to thetheft of the parasite. 

She only dimly understood, and yet she was smitten with awe andreverence at that endless grief which had no taint of cowardice upon it, but was pure as the patriot's despair, impersonal as the prophet'sagony. 

For the first time the intellect in her consciously awoke. For the firsttime she heard a human mind find voice even in its stupor and itswretchedness to cry aloud, in reproach to its unknown Creator:

"I am _yours_! Shall I perish with the body? Why have you ever bade medesire the light and seek it, if for ever you must thrust me into thedarkness of negation? Shall I be Nothing?--like the muscle that rots, like the bones that crumble, like the flesh that turns to ashes, andblows in a film on the winds? Shall I die so? I?--the mind of a man, thebreath of a god?"

 * * *

He could not bear to die without leaving behind his life some work theworld would cherish. 

Call it folly, call it madness, it is both: the ivory Zeus that was togive its sculptor immortality, lives but in tradition; the bronzeAthene, that was to guard the Piræus in eternal liberty, has long beenlevelled with the dust; yet with every age the artist still gives lifefor fame, still cries, "Let my body perish, but make my soul immortal!"

 * * *

The spider had drawn his dusty trail across them; the rat had squattedat their feet; the darkness of night had enshrouded and defaced them;yet with the morning they arose, stainless, noble, undefiled. 

Amongst them there was one colossal form, on which the sun poured withits full radiance. 

This was the form of a captive grinding at a millstone; the majestic, symmetrical, supple form of a man who was also a god. 

In his naked limbs there was a supreme power; in his glance there was adivine command; his head was lifted as though no yoke could ever lie onthat proud neck; his foot seemed to spurn the earth as though no mortaltie had ever bound him to the sod that human steps bestrode: yet at thecorn-mill he laboured, grinding wheat like the patient blinded oxenthat toiled beside him. 

For it was the great Apollo in Pheræ. 

The hand which awoke the music of the spheres had been blood-stainedwith murder; the beauty which had the light and lustre of the sun hadbeen darkened with passion and with crime; the will which no other onearth or in heaven could withstand had been bent under the chastisementof Zeus. 

He whose glance had made the black and barren slopes of Delos to laughwith fruitfulness and gladness--he whose prophetic sight beheld allthings past, present, and to come, the fate of all unborn races, thedoom of all unspent ages--he, the Far-Striking King, laboured herebeneath the curse of crime, greatest of all the gods, and yet a slave. 

In all the hills and vales of Greece his Io pæan sounded still. 

Upon his holy mountains there still arose the smoke of fires ofsacrifice. 

With dance and song the Delian maidens still hailed the divinity ofLêtô's son. 

The waves of the pure Ionian air still rang for ever with the name ofDelphinios. 

At Pytho and at Clarus, in Lycia and in Phokis, his oracles stillbreathed forth upon their fiat terror or hope into the lives of men; andstill in all the virgin forests of the world the wild beasts honouredhim wheresoever they wandered, and the lion and the boar came at hisbidding from the deserts to bend their free necks and their wills offire meekly to bear his yoke in Thessaly. 

Yet he laboured here at the corn-mill of Admetus; and watching him athis bondage there stood the slender, slight, wing-footed Hermes, with aslow, mocking smile upon his knavish lips, and a jeering scorn in hiskeen eyes, even as though he cried:

"O brother, who would be greater than I! For what hast thou bartered tome the golden rod of thy wealth and thy dominion over the flocks and theherds? For seven chords strung on a shell--for a melody not even thineown! For a lyre outshone by my syrinx hast thou sold all thine empire tome. Will human ears give heed to thy song now thy sceptre has passed tomy hands? Immortal music only is left thee, and the vision foreseeingthe future. O god! O hero! O fool! what shall these profit thee now?"

Thus to the artist by whom they had been begotten the dim white shapesof the deities spoke. Thus he saw them, thus he heard, whilst the paleand watery sunlight lit up the form of the toiler in Pheræ. 

For even as it was with the divinity of Delos, so is it likewise withthe genius of a man, which, being born of a god, yet is bound as a slaveto the grindstone. Since even as Hermes mocked the Lord of the UnerringBow, so is genius mocked of the world, when it has bartered the herds, and the grain, and the rod that metes wealth, for the seven chords thatno ear, dully mortal, can hear. 

And as he looked upon this symbol of his life, the captivity and thecalamity, the strength and the slavery of his existence overcame him;and for the first hour since he had been born of a woman Arslàn buriedhis face in his hands and wept. 

He could bend great thoughts to take the shapes that he chose, as thechained god in Pheræ bound the strong kings of the desert and forest tocarry his yoke; yet, like the god, he likewise stood fettered to themill to grind for bread. 

 * * *

One evening, a little later, he met her in the fields on the same spotwhere Marcellin first had seen her as a child amongst the scarlet blazeof the poppies. 

The lands were all yellow with saffron and emerald with the young corn;she balanced on her head a great brass jar; the red girdle glowed abouther waist as she moved: the wind stirred the folds of her garments; herfeet were buried in the shining grass; clouds tawny and purple werebehind her; she looked like some Moorish phantom seen in a dream under asky of Spain. 

He paused and gazed at her with eyes half content, half cold. 

She was of a beauty so uncommon, so strange, and all that was his forhis art:--a great artist, whether in words, in melody, or in colour, isalways cruel, or at the least seems so, for all things that live underthe sun are to him created only to minister to his one inexorablepassion. 

Art is so vast, and human life is so little. It is to him only supremelyjust that the insect of an hour should be sacrificed to the infinite andeternal truth which must endure until the heavens themselves shallwither as a scroll that is held in a flame. It might have seemed toArslàn base to turn her ignorance, and submission to his will, for thegratification of his amorous passions; but to make these serve the artto which he had himself abandoned every earthly good was in his sightjustified, as the death agonies of the youth whom they decked with rosesand slew in sacrifice to the sun, were in the sight of the Mexicannation. 

The youth whom the Mexicans slew, on the high hill of the city, with hisface to the west, was always the choicest and the noblest of all theopening flower of their manhood: for it was his fate to be called toenter into the realms of eternal light, and to dwell face to face withthe unbearable brightness without whose rays the universe would haveperished frozen in perpetual night. So the artist, who is true to hisart, regards every human sacrifice that he renders up to it; how can hefeel pity for a thing which perishes to feed a flame that he deems thelife of the world?

The steel that he draws out from the severed heart of his victim he isready to plunge into his own vitals: no other religion can vaunt as muchof its priests. 

"What are you thinking of to-night?" he asked her where she came throughthe fields by the course of a little flower-sown brook, fringed withtall bulrushes and waving willow-stems. 

She lifted her eyelids with a dreamy and wistful regard. 

"I was thinking--I wonder what the reed felt that you told me of--theone reed that a god chose from all its millions by the waterside and cutdown to make into a flute. "

"Ah?--you see there are no reeds that make music now-a-days; the reedsare only good to be woven into kreels for the fruits and the fish of themarket. "

"That is not the fault of the reeds?"

"Not that I know; it is the fault of men, most likely, who find thechink of coin in barter sweeter music than the song of the syrinx. Butwhat do you think the reed felt then?--pain to be so sharply severedfrom its fellows?"

"No--or the god would not have chosen it. "

"What then?"

A troubled sigh parted her lips; these old fables were fairest truths toher, and gave a grace to every humblest thing that the sun shone on, orthe waters begat from their foam, or the winds blew with their breathinto the little life of a day. 

"I was trying to think. But I cannot be sure. These reeds haveforgotten. They have lost their soul. They want nothing but to feedamong the sand and the mud, and grow in millions together, and shelterthe toads and the newts, --there is not a note of music in themall--except when the wind rises and makes them sigh, and then theyremember that long, long-ago the breath of a great god was in them. "

Arslàn looked at her where she stood; her eyes resting on the reeds, andthe brook at her feet; the crimson heat of the evening all about her, onthe brazen amphora, on the red girdle on her loins, on the thoughtfulparted lips, on the proud bent brows above which a golden butterflyfloated as above the brows of Psyche. 

He smiled; the smile that was so cold to her. 

"Look: away over the fields, there comes a peasant with a sickle; hecomes to mow down the reeds to make a bed for his cattle. If he heardyou, he would think you mad. "

"They have thought me many things worse. What matter?"

"Nothing at all;--that I know. But you seem to envy that reed--so longago--that was chosen?"

"Who would not?"

"Are you so sure? The life of the reed was always pleasant;--dancingthere in the light, playing with the shadows, blowing in the winds; withthe cool waters all about it all day long, and the yellow daffodils andthe blue bell-flowers for its brethren. "

"Nay;--how do you know?"

Her voice was low, and thrilled with a curious eager pain. 

"How do you know?" she murmured. "Rather, --it was born in the sands, amongst the stones, of the chance winds, of the stray germs, --no oneasking, no one heeding, brought by a sunbeam, spat out by a toad--no onecaring where it dropped. Rather, --it grew there by the river, and suchmillions of reeds grew with it, that neither waters nor winds couldcare for a thing so common and worthless, but the very snakes twistingin and out despised it, and thrust the arrows of their tongues throughit in scorn. And then--I think I see!--the great god walked by the edgeof the river, and he mused on a gift to give man, on a joy that shouldbe a joy on the earth for ever; and he passed by the lily white as snow, by the thyme that fed the bees, by the gold heart in the arum flower, bythe orange flame of the tall sandrush, by all the great water-blossomswhich the sun kissed, and the swallows loved, and he came to the onelittle reed pierced with the snakes' tongues, and all alone amidstmillions. Then he took it up, and cut it to the root, and killedit;--killed it as a reed, --but breathed into it a song audible andbeautiful to all the ears of men. Was that death to the reed?--or life?Would a thousand summers of life by the waterside have been worth thatone thrill of song when a god first spoke through it?"

Her face lightened with a radiance to which the passion of her words waspale and poor; the vibrations of her voice grew sonorous and changing asthe sounds of music itself; her eyes beamed through unshed tears asplanets through the rain. 

 * * *

Of all the forms with which he had peopled its loneliness, these had themost profound influence on her in their fair, passionless, majesticbeauty, in which it seemed to her that the man who had forgotten themhad repeated his own likeness. For they were all alike, yet unlike; ofthe same form and feature, yet different even in their strongresemblance, like elder and younger brethren who hold a closecompanionship. For Hypnos was still but a boy with his blue-veinedeyelids closed, and his mouth rosy and parted like that of a slumberingchild, and above his golden head a star rose in the purple night. Oneiros standing next was a youth whose eyes smiled as though theybeheld visions that were welcome to him; in his hand, amongst the whiteroses, he held a black wand of sorcery, and around his bended head therehovered a dim silvery nimbus. Thanatos alone was a man fully grown; andon his calm and colourless face there were blended an unutterablesadness, and an unspeakable peace; his eyes were fathomless, far-reaching, heavy laden with thought, as though they had seen at oncethe heights of heaven and the depths of hell; and he, having thus seen, and knowing all things, had learned that there was but one good possiblein all the universe, --that one gift which his touch gave, and which menin their blindness shuddered from and cursed. And above him and aroundhim there was a great darkness. 

So the gods stood, and so they spoke, even to her; they seemed to her asbrethren, masters, friends--these three immortals who looked down on herin their mute majesty. 

They are the gods of the poor, of the wretched, of the outcast, of theproscribed, --they are the gods who respect not persons nor palaces, --whostay with the exile and flee from the king, --who leave the tyrant of aworld to writhe in torment, and call a smile beautiful as the morning onthe face of a beggar child, --who turn from the purple beds where wealthand lust and brutal power lie, and fill with purest visions the darkesthours of the loneliest nights, for genius and youth, --they are the godsof consolation and of compensation, --the gods of the exile, of theorphan, of the outcast, of the poet, of the prophet, of all whose bodiesache with the infinite pangs of famine, and whose hearts ache with theinfinite woes of the world, of all who hunger with the body or thesoul. 

 * * *

It became mid-April. It was market-day for all the country lying roundthat wondrous cathedral-spire, which shot into the air far-reaching andethereal, like some fountain whose column of water had been arrestedaloft and changed to ice. 

The old quiet town was busy, with a rich sunshine shed upon it, in whichthe first yellow butterflies of the year had begun to dance. 

It was high noon, and the highest tide of the market. 

Flower-girls, fruit-girls, egg-sellers, poultry-hucksters, crowds ofwomen, old and young, had jolted in on their docile asses, throned ontheir sheepskin saddles; and now, chattering and chaffering, drove fasttheir trade. On the steps of the cathedral boys with birds'-nests, knife-grinders making their little wheels fly, cobblers hammering, withboards across their knees, travelling pedlars with knapsacks full oftoys and mirrors, and holy images, and strings of beads, sat side byside in amicable competition. 

Here and there a priest passed, with his black robe and broad hat, likea dusky mushroom amongst a bed of many-hued gillyflowers. Here and therea soldier, all colour and glitter, showed like a gaudy red tulip inbloom amidst tufts of thyme. 

The old wrinkled leathern awnings of the market-stalls glowed likecopper in the brightness of noon. The red tiles of the houses edging thegreat square were gilded with yellow houseleeks. The little children ranhither and thither with big bunches of primroses or sheaves of bluewood-hyacinths, singing. The red and blue serges of the young girls'bodices were like the gay hues of the anemones in their baskets. Thebrown faces of the old dames under the white roofing of their headgearwere like the russet faces of the home-kept apples which they hadgarnered through all the winter. 

Everywhere in the shade of the flapping leather, and the darkness ofthe wooden porches, there were the tender blossoms of the field andforest, of the hedge and garden. The azure of the hyacinths, the palesaffron of the primroses, the cool hues of the meadow daffodils, theruby eyes of the cultured jonquils, gleamed amongst wet rushes, greyherbs, and freshly budded leafage. Plovers' eggs nestled in moss-linedbaskets; sheaves of velvet-coated wallflowers poured fragrance on theair; great plumes of lilac nodded on the wind, and amber feathers oflaburnum waved above the homelier masses of mint and marjoram, and sageand chervil. 

_IDALIA. _

Whatever fate rose for them with the dawn, this night at least wastheirs: there is no love like that which lives victorious even beneaththe shadow of death: there is no joy like that which finds its paradiseeven amid the cruelty of pain, the fierce long struggle of despair. 

Never is the voluptuous glory of the sun so deep, so rich, as when itslast excess of light burns above the purple edge of the tempest-cloudthat soars upward to cover and devour it. 

 * * *

"And we reign still!"

She turned, as she spoke, towards the western waters, where the sea-lineof the Ægean lay, while in her eyes came the look of a royal pride andof a deathless love. 

"Greece cannot die. No matter what the land be now, Greece--_our_Greece--must live for ever. Her language lives; the children of Europelearn it, even if they halt it in imperfect numbers. The greater thescholar, the humbler he still bends to learn the words of wisdom fromher school. The poet comes to her for all his fairest myths, his noblestmysteries, his greatest masters. The sculptor looks at the brokenfragments of her statues, and throws aside his calliope in despairbefore those matchless wrecks. From her soldiers learn how to die, andnations how to conquer and to keep their liberties. No deed of heroismis done but, to crown it, it is named parallel to hers. They write oflove, and who forgets the Lesbian? They dream of freedom, and to reachit they remember Salamis. They talk of progress, and while they talkthey sigh for all that they have lost in Academus. They seek truth, andwhile they seek, wearily long, as little children, to hear the goldenspeech of Socrates, that slave, and fisherman, and sailor, andstonemason, and date-seller were all once free to hear in her Agora. Butfor the light that shone from Greece in the breaking of the Renaissance, Europe would have perished in its Gothic darkness. They call her dead:she can never die while her life, her soul, her genius breathe fire intothe new nations, and give their youth all of greatness and of grace thatthey can claim. Greece dead! She reigns in every poem written, in everyart pursued, in every beauty treasured, in every liberty won, in everygod-like life and godlike death, in your fresh lands, which, but forher, would be barbarian now. "

Where she stood, with her eyes turned westward to the far-off snows ofCithæron and Mount Ida, and the shores which the bronze spear of PallasAthene once guarded through the night and day, the dark light in hereyes deepened, and the flush of a superb pride was on her brow--itseemed Aspasia who lived again, and who remembered Pericles. 

 * * *

The chant of the Imaum rang up from the shore, deep and sonorous, calling on the Faithful to prayer, an hour before midnight. She listeneddreamily to the echoes that seemed to linger among the dark foliage. 

"I like those national calls to prayer, " she said, as she leaned overthe parapet, while the fire-flies glittered among the mass of leaves asthe diamond sprays glistened in her hair. "The Ave Maria, the Vespers, the Imaum's chant, the salutation of the dawn or of the night, the hymnbefore sleep, or before the sun;--you have none of those in your chillislands? You have only weary rituals, and stuccoed churches, where the'Pharisees for a pretence make long prayers!' As if _that_ was not thebest--the only--temple!"

She glanced upward at the star-studded sky, and on her face was thatgraver and gentler look which had come there when she sang. 

"I have held it so many a time, " he answered her, lying awake at nightamong the long grass of the Andes, or under the palms of the desert. Itwas a strange delusion to build shrines to the honour of God while thereare still his own--the forests and the mountains. 

 * * *

"It was a fair heritage to lose through a feeble vanity--that beautifulConstantinople!" she said musingly. "The East and the West--what anempire! More than Alexander ever grasped at--what might not have beendone with it? Asian faith and Oriental sublimity, with Roman power andGothic force; if there had been a hand strong enough to weld all thesetogether, what a world there might have been!"

"But to have done that would have been to attain the Impossible, " heanswered her. "Oil and flame, old and new, living and dying, traditionand scepticism, iconoclast and idolater, you cannot unite and harmonisethese antagonisms?"

She gave a sign of dissent. 

"The prophet or the hero unites all antagonisms, because he binds themall to his own genius. The Byzantine empire had none such; the nearestwas Julian, but he believed less in himself than in the gods; thenearest after him was Belisarius--the fool of a courtesan, and he wasbut a good soldier; he was no teacher, no liberator, no leader for thenations. John Vatices came too late. A man must be his own convertbefore he can convert others. Zoroaster, Christ, Mahommed, Cromwell, Napoleon, believed intensely in their own missions; hence theirinfluence on the peoples. How can we tell what Byzantium might havebecome under one mighty hand? It was torn in pieces among courtesans, and parasites, and Christian fanatics, and Houmousians andHoumoiousians! I have the blood of the Commneni in me. I think of itwith shame when I remember what they might have been. "

"You come from the Roman Emperors?"

"The Roman Emperors?" she repeated. "When the name was a travesty, anignominy, a reproach! When Barbarians thronged the Forum, and therepresentative of Galilee fishermen claimed power in the Capitol? Yes; Idescend, they say, from the Commneni; but I am far prouder that, on theother hand, I come from pure Athenians. I belong to two buried worlds. But the stone throne of the Areopagus was greater than the gold one ofManuel. "

 * * *

"That animal life is to be envied perhaps, " she said. 

"Their pride is centred in a silver hairpin; their conscience iscommitted to a priest; their credulity is contented with tradition;their days are all the same, from the rising of one sun to another; theydo not love, they do not hate; they are like the ass that they drive, follow one patient routine, and only take care for their food. Perhapsthey are to be envied!"

"You would not lose 'those thoughts that wander through eternity, ' togain in exchange the peace from ignorance of the peasant or thedullard?"

She turned her face to him, with its most beautiful smile on her lipsand in her eyes. 

"No, I would not: you are right. Better to know the secrets of the gods, even though with pain, than to lead the dull, brute life, thoughpainless. It is only in our dark hours that we would sell our souls fora dreamless ease. "

"Dark hours! _You_ should not know them. Ah, if you would but trust mewith some confidence! if there were but some way in which I could serveyou!"

Her eyes met his with gratitude, even while she gave him a gesture ofsilence. She thought how little could the bold, straight stroke of thisman's frank chivalry cut through the innumerable and intricate chainsthat entangled her own life. The knightly Excalibur could do nothing tosever the filmy but insoluble meshes of secret intrigues. 

"It is a saint's-day: I had forgotten it, " she said to turn his wordsfrom herself, while the bell of the campanile still swung through theair. "I am a pagan, you see: I do not fancy that you care much forcreeds yourself. "

"Creeds? I wish there were no such word. It has only been a rallying-cryfor war, an excuse for the bigot to burn his neighbour. "

"No. Long ago, under the Andes, Nezahualcoytl held the same faith thatSocrates had vainly taught in the Agora; and Zengis Khan knew the truthof theism like Plato; yet the world has never generally learnt it. It isthe religion of nature--of reason. But the faith is too simple and toosublime for the multitude. The mass of minds needs a religion ofmythics, legend, symbolism, and fear. What is impalpable escapes it; andit must give an outward and visible shape to its belief, as it gives inits art a human form to its deity. Come, since we agree in our creed, Iwill take you to my temple--a temple not made by hands. "

 * * *

"I never had a fair field!"--it may be sometimes a coward's apology; butit is many a time the epitome of a great, cramped, tortured, wastedlife, which strove like a caged eagle to get free, and never could beatdown the bars of the den that circumstances and prejudice had forged. The world sees the few who do reach freedom, and, watching their boldupright flight, says rashly, "will can work all things. " But they whoperish by the thousand, the fettered eagles who never see the sun; whopant in darkness, and wear their breasts bare beating on the iron thatwill never yield; who know their strength, yet cannot break theirprison; who feel their wings, yet never can soar up to meet the sweetwild western winds of liberty; who lie at last beaten, and hopeless, andblind, with only strength enough to long for death to come and quenchall sense and thought in its annihilation, --who thinks of them--whocounts them?

 * * *

The earliest dawn had broken eastward, where the mountainsstretched--the dawn of a southern summer, that almost touches the sunsetof the past night--but under the dense shadows of the old woods that hadsheltered the mystic rites of Gnostics and echoed with the Latin hymnsto Pan, no light wandered. There was only a dim silvery haze that seemedto float over the whiteness of the tall-stemmed arum lilies and thefoam-bells of the water that here and there glimmered under the rankvegetation, where it had broken from its hidden channels up to air andspace. Not a sound disturbed the intense stillness; that the night wanedand the world wakened, brought no change to the solitudes that men hadforgotten, and only memories of dead-deserted gods still haunted in theplaces of their lost temples, whose columns were now the sea-pines'stems, and on whose fallen altars and whose shattered sculptures thelizard made her shelter and the wind-sown grasses seeded and took root. Of the once graceful marble beauty and the incense-steeped stones ofsacrifice nothing remained but moss-grown shapeless fragments, buriedbeneath a pall of leaves by twice a thousand autumns. Yet the ancientsanctity still rested on the nameless, pathless woods; the breath of anearlier time, of a younger season of the earth, seemed to lie yet uponthe untroubled forest ways; the whisper of the unseen waters had adream-like, unreal cadence; in the deep shade, in the warm fragrance andthe heavy gloom, there was a voluptuous yet mournful charm--the worldseemed so far, the stars shone so near; there were the sweetness of restand the oblivion of passion. 

 * * *

Death is not ours to deal. And were it ours, should we give him thenameless mystic mercy which all men live to crave--give it as thechastisement of crime? Death! It is rest to the aged, it is oblivion tothe atheist, it is immortality to the poet! It is a vast, dim, exhaustless pity to all the world. And would you summon it as yourhardest cruelty to sin?

They were silent; she stirred their souls--she had not bound theirpassions. 

"A traitor merits death, " they muttered. 

"Merits it! Not so. The martyr, the liberator, the seeker of truth, maydeserve its peace; how has the traitor won them? You deem yourselvesjust; your justice errs. If you would give him justice, make him live. Live to know fear lest every wind among the leaves may whisper of hissecret; live to feel the look of a young child's eyes a shame to him;live to envy every peasant whose bread has not been bought with taintedcoin; live to hear ever in his path the stealing step of hauntingretribution; live to see his brethren pass by him as a thing accurst;live to listen in his age to white-haired men, who once had been hiscomrades, tell to the youth about them the unforgotten story of hisshame. Make him live thus if you would have justice. "

They answered nothing; a shudder ran through them as they heard. 

"And--if you have as I--a deliverance that forbids you even so muchharshness, still let him live, and bury his transgression in yourhearts. Say to him as I say, 'Your sin was great, go forth and sin nomore. '"

 * * *

"One is not an assassin!"

"Since when have you discovered that?"

The flush grew darker on Count Conrad's forehead; he moved restlesslyunder the irony, and drank down a draught of red fiery Roussillonwithout tasting it more than if it had been water. Then he laughed; thesame careless musical laughter with which he had made the requiem over aviolet--a laugh which belonged at once to the most careless and the mostevil side of his character. 

"Since sophism came in, which was with Monsieur Cain, when he asked, 'AmI my brother's keeper?' It was ingenious that reply; creditable to abeginner, without social advantages. 'An assassin!' Take the word boldlyby the beard, and look at it. What is there objectionable?"

"Nothing--except to the assassinated. "

"It has had an apotheosis ever since the world began, " pursued Phaulcon, unheeding, in his bright vivacity. "Who are celebrated in Scripture?Judith, Samuel, David, Moses, Joab. Who is a patriot? Brutus. Who is animmortal? Harmodius and Aristogiton. Who is a philosopher? Cicero, whilehe murmurs '_Vixerunt!_' after slaying Lentulus. Who is a hero? Marius, who nails the senators' heads to the rostræ. Who is a martyr? Charles, who murders Strafford. What is religion? Christianity, that has burntand slain millions. Who is a priest? Calvin, who destroys Servetus; orPole, who kills Latimer, which you like. Who is a saint? George ofCappadocia, who slaughters right and left. Who is a ruler? Sulla, whoslays Ofella. Who is a queen? Christina, who stabs Monaldeschi;Catherine, who strangles Peter; Isabella, who slays Moors and Jews bythe thousand. Murderers all! Assassination has always been deified; andbefore it is objected to, the world must change its creeds, itscelebrities, and its chronicles. 'Monsieur, you are an assassin, ' saysan impolite world. 'Messieurs, ' says the polite logician, 'I found mywarrant in your Bible, and my precedent in your Brutus. What you deifyin Aristogiton and Jael you mustn't damn in Ankarström and me. ' Voilà!What could the world say?"

"That you would outwit Belial with words, and beguile Beelzebub out ofhis kingdom with sophistry. "

_A VILLAGE COMMUNE. _

Power is sweet, and when you are a little clerk you love its sweetnessquite as much as if you were an emperor, and maybe you love it a gooddeal more. 

 * * *

He saw no reason why he should not become a deputy, and even a ministerbefore he died, and indeed there was no reason whatever. He was only aclerk at fifty pounds a year; but he had a soul above all scruples, anda heart as hard as a millstone. 

 * * *

He was only a clerk indeed, at a slender salary, and ate his friends'tomatoes publicly in the little back room of the caffè; but he had thesoul of a statesman. When a donkey kicks, beat it; when it dies, skinit; so only will it profit you; that was his opinion, and the public wasthe donkey of Messer Nellemane. 

 * * *

Pippo and Viola feared everything, yet knew not what they feared; it isa ghostly burden of dread, that which the honest poor carry with themall through their toiling hungry days, the vague oppressive dread ofthis law which is always acting the spy on them, always dogging theirsteps, always emptying their pockets. The poor can understand criminallaw, and its justice and its necessity easily enough, and respect itsseverities; but they cannot understand the petty tyrannies of civil law;and it wears their lives out, and breaks their spirits. When it does notbreak their spirits it curdles their blood and they become socialists, nihilists, internationalists, anything that will promise them riddanceof their spectre and give them vengeance. We in Italy are all of usafraid of socialism, we who have anything to lose; and yet we let thesyndics, and their secretaries, conciliators, and chancellors sow itbroadcast in dragon's teeth of petty injustices and petty cruelties, that soon or late will spring up armed men, hydra-headed and torch inhand!

 * * *

The law should be a majesty, solemn, awful, unerring: just, as man hopesthat God is just; and from its throne it should stretch out a mightyhand to seize and grasp the guilty, and the guilty only. But when thelaw is only a petty, meddlesome, cruel, greedy spy, mingling in everyhousehold act and peering in at every window pane, then the poor who areguiltless would be justified if they spat in its face, and called it byits right name, a foul extortion. 

 * * *

The Italian tongue chatters like a magpie's; if they did not let thesteam off thus they would be less easily ruled than they are; but nogreat talker ever did any great thing yet, in this world. 

 * * *

A retentive memory is of great use to a man, no doubt; but the talent ofoblivion is on the whole more useful. 

 * * *

Sarta Rosalia is in a lovely pastoral country; the country that seems tothrill with Theocritus' singing, as it throbs with the little tamborineof the cicala; a country running over with beautiful greenery, and withclimbing creepers hanging everywhere, from the vine on the maples to thechina-rose hedges, and with the deep-blue shadows, and the sun-flushedwhiteness of the distant mountains lending to it in the golden distancethat solemnity and ethereal charm which, without mountains somewherewithin sight, no country ever has. But since the advent of "freedom" itis scarred and wounded; great scar-patches stretch here and there wherewoods have been felled by the avarice illumined in the souls oflandowners; hundreds and thousands of bare poles stand stark and stiffagainst the river light which have been glorious pyramids of leafshedding welcome shadows on the river path; and many a bold round hilllike the _ballons_ of the Vosges, once rich of grass as they, now shornof wood, and even of undergrowth, lift a bare stony front to the lovelysunlight, and never more will root of tree, or seed of flower or offern, find bed there. 

Such is Progress. 

 * * *

For the first time his _liberi pensieri_ were distasteful to him andunsatisfactory; for atheism makes a curse a mere rattle of dry peas in afool's bladder, as it makes a blessing a mere flutter of a breath. Messer Nellemane for the first time felt that the old religion has itsadvantages over agnosticism; it gave you a hell for your rivals and yourenemies!

 * * *

He had never heard of Virgil and of Theocritus--but it hurt him to havethese sylvan pictures spoiled; these pictures which are the same asthose they saw and sang; the threshing barns with the piles of goldengrain, and the flails flying to merry voices; the young horses tramplingthe wheat loose from its husk with bounding limbs and tossing manes; thegreat arched doorways, with the maidens sitting in a circle breaking themaize from its withered leaves, and telling old-world stories, andsinging sweet _fiorellini_ all the while; the hanging fields broken upin hill and vale with the dun-coloured oxen pushing their patient waythrough labyrinths of vine boughs, and clouds of silvery olive leaf: thebright laborious day, with the sun-rays turning the sickle to asemi-circlet of silver, as the mice ran, and the crickets shouted, andthe larks soared on high: the merry supper when the day was done, withthe thrill and thrum of the mandolini, and the glisten of the unhousedfire-flies, whose sanctuary had been broken when the bearded barley andthe amber corn fell prone: all these things rose to his memory: they hadmade his youth and manhood glad and full of colour; they were here stillfor his sons a little while, but when his sons should be all grown men, then those things would have ceased to be, and even their very memorywould have perished, most likely, while the smoke of the accursedengines would have sullied the pure blue sky, and the stench of theirfoul vapours would have poisoned the golden air. 

He roused himself and said wearily to Pippo, "There is a tale I have heard somewhere of a man who sold his birthrightfor gold, and when the gold was in his hands, then it changed towithered leaves and brown moss: I was thinking, eh? that the world ismuch like that man!"

 * * *

When all your politics and policies are summed up in the one intentionto do well for yourself, great simplicity is given to your theories, ifnot to your practice. 

 * * *

The ministerialists . . . Made florid and beautiful speeches full ofsesquipedalian phrases in which they spoke about the place of Italyamong the great powers, the dangers of jealousy and invasion from othernations, the magnificence of the future, the blessings of education, thedelights of liberty, the wickedness of the opposition, the sovereignrights of the people; and said it all so magnificently and sobewilderingly that the people never remembered till it was too late thatthey had said nothing about opposing the cow-tax--or indeed any taxes atall, but listened and gaped, and shouted, and clapped; and being toldthat they could sit at a European Congress to decide the fate of Epirus, were for the moment oblivious that they had bad bread, dear wine, scantmeat, an army of conscripts, and a bureaucracy that devoured them asmaggots a cheese. What is political eloquence for, if not to make thepeople forget such things as these?

 * * *

To sell your grapes to foreigners and have none at all at home is aspirited commerce, and fine free trade; that the poor souls around areall poisoned with cheap chemicals in the absence of wine, is only anevidence of all that science can do. 

 * * *

It is the noblest natures that tyranny drives to frenzy. 

 * * *

The bureaucratic mind, all the world over, believes the squeak of theofficial penny whistle to be as the trump of archangels and the voice ofSinai. That all the people do not fall down prostrate at the squeak is, to this order of mind, the one unmentionable sin. 

 * * *

It is not true that no Italian ever tells the truth, as commentators onthe country say, but it is sadly true that when one does he suffers forit. 

 * * *

A day in prison to a free-born son of the soil, used to work with thebroad bright sky alone above his head, is more agony than a year of itis to a cramped city-worker used only to the twilight of a machine-roomor a workshop, only to an air full of smuts and smoke, and the stench ofacids, and the dust of filed steel or sifted coal. The sufferings of thetwo cannot be compared, and one among many of the injustices the law, all over the world, commits, is that it never takes into considerationwhat a man's past has been. There are those to whom a prison is as hell;there are those to whom it is something better than the life they led. 

 * * *

She was an old woman, and had been bred up in the old faiths; faithsthat were not clear indeed to her nor ever reasoned on, but yet gave herconsolation, and a great, if a vague hope. Now that we tell the poorthere is no such hope, that when they have worked and starved longenough, then they will perish altogether, like bits of candle that haveburnt themselves out, that they are mere machines made of carbon andhydrogen, which, when they have had due friction, will then crumble backinto the dust; now that we tell them all this, and call this the spreadof education, will they be as patient?

 * * *

Take hope from the heart of man, and you make him a beast of prey. 

 * * *

One of the cruellest sins of any state, in giving petty and tyrannousauthority into petty and tyrannous hands, is that it thus brings intohatred and disgust the true and high authority of moral law. 

 * * *

In these modern times of cowardice, when great ministers dare not saythe thing they think, and high magistrates stoop to execute decrees theyabhor, it is scarcely to be hoped for that moral courage will be a plantof very sturdy growth in the souls of carpenters, and coopers, andbakers, and plumbers, and day-labourers, who toil for scarce a shillinga day. 

 * * *

He had been wronged, and a great wrong is to the nature as a cancer isto the body; there is no health. 

 * * *

A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does, but anunjust one changes all his blood to gall. 

 * * *

In these days, Christian Europe decides that not only the poor man lyingby the wayside, but also the Samaritan who helps him, are sinnersagainst political economy, and its law forbids what its religion orders:people must settle the contradiction as they deem best; they generallyare content to settle it by buttoning up their pockets, and passing by, on the other side. 

 * * *

In this lovely land that brims over with flowers like a cup over-filled, where the sun is as a magician for ever changing with a wand of gold allcommon things to paradise; where every wind shakes out the fragrance ofa world of fruit and flower commingled; where, for so little, the lutesounds and the song arises; here, misery looks more sad than it does insadder climes, where it is like a home-born thing, and not an alientyrant as it is here. 

 * * *

You cannot cage a field bird when it is old; it dies for want of flight, of air, of change, of freedom. No use will be the stored grain of yourcages; better for the bird a berry here and there, and peace of gentledeath at last amidst the golden gorse or blush of hawthorn buds. 

 * * *

"What is England?"

"It is a place where the poor souls have no wine of their own, I think;and they make cannons and cheese. You see their people over here nowand then. They carry red Bibles, and they go about with their mouthsopen to catch flies, and they run into all the little old dusty places;you must have seen them. "

"And why do we want to have anything to do with them?"

"They will come in ships and fire at us, if we are not bigger andstronger than they. We must build iron houses that float, and go on thesea and meet them. "

_PUCK. _

"Animalism, " forsooth!--a more unfair word don't exist. When we animalsnever drink only just enough to satisfy thirst, never eat except when wehave genuine appetites, never indulge in any sort of debauch, and neverstrain excess till we sink into the slough of satiety, shall "animalism"be a word to designate all that men and women dare to do? "Animalism!"You ought to blush for such a libel on our innocent and reasonable liveswhen you regard your own! You men who scorch your throats with alcohols, and kill your lives with absinthe; and squander your gold in theKursaal, and the Cecle, and the Arlington; and have thirty services atyour dinner betwixt soup and the "chasse;" and cannot spend a summerafternoon in comfort unless you be drinking deep the intoxication ofhazard in your debts and your bets on the Heath or the Downs, atHurlingham or at Tattersalls' Rooms. You women, who sell your souls forbits of stones dug from the bowels of the earth; who stake your honourfor a length of lace two centuries old; who replace the bloom yourpassions have banished with the red of poisoned pigments; who wreatheyour aching heads with purchased tresses torn from prisons, andmadhouses, and coffins; who spend your lives in one incessant struggle, first the rivalry of vanity and then the rivalry of ambition; who deckout greed, and selfishness, and worship of station or gold, as "love, "and then wonder that your hapless dupes, seizing the idol that you offerthem as worthy of their worship, fling it from them with a curse, finding it dumb, and deaf, and merciless, a thing of wood and stone. 

"Animalism, " forsooth! God knows it would be well for you, here andhereafter, men and women both, were you only patient, continent, andsingleminded, only faithful, gentle, and long-suffering, as are thebrutes that you mock, and misuse, and vilify in the supreme blindness ofyour egregious vanity!

 * * *

I was horribly cold and hungry; and this is a combination which killssentiment in bigger people than myself. The emotions, like a hothouseflower or a sea-dianthus, wither curiously when aired in an east wind, or kept some hours waiting for dinner. 

 * * *

In truth, too, despite all the fine chances that you certainly give yourpeasants to make thorough beasts of themselves, they are your realaristocrats, and have the only really good manners in your country. Inan old north-country dame, who lives on five shillings a week, in acottage like a dream of Teniers' or Van Tol's, I have seen a finecourtesy, a simple desire to lay her best at her guest's disposal, aperfect composure, and a freedom from all effort, that were in their waythe perfection of breeding. I have seen these often in the peasantry, inthe poor. It is your middle classes, with their incessant flutter, andbluster, and twitter, and twaddle; with their perpetual strain aftereffect; with their deathless desire to get one rung of the ladder higherthan they ever can get; with their preposterous affectations, theirpedantic unrealities, their morbid dread of remark, their everlastingimitations, their superficial education, their monotonous commonplaces, and their nervous deference to opinion;--it is your middle classes thathave utterly destroyed good manners, and have made the prevalent mode ofthe day a union of boorishness and servility, of effervescence and ofapathy--a court suit, as it were, worn with muddy boots and a hempenshirt. 

 * * *

I think Fanfreluche spoke with reason. Coincidence is a god that greatlyinfluences mortal affairs. He is not a cross-tempered deity either, always; and when you beat your poor fetish for what seems to you anuntoward accident, you may do wrong; he may have benefited you far morethan you wot. 

 * * *

Now I believe that when a woman's own fair skin is called rouge, and herown old lace is called imitation, she must in some way or other haveroused sharply the conscience or the envy of her sisters who sit injudgment. 

 * * *

I canna go to church. Look'ee, --they's allus a readin' o' cusses, anddamnin', and hell fire, and the like; and I canna stomach it. What forshall they go and say as all the poor old wimmin i' tha parish is goneto the deil 'cause they picks up a stick or tew i' hedge, or likes tomumble a charm or tew o'er their churnin'? Them old wimmin be rare an'good i' ither things. When I broke my ankle three years agone, old DameStuckley kem o'er, i' tha hail and the snaw, a matter of five mile andmore, and she turned o' eighty; and she nursed me, and tidied theplace, and did all as was wanted to be done, 'cause Avice was away, working somewhere's; and she'd never let me gie her aught for it. And Iheard ta passon tell her as she were sold to hell, 'cause the old soulhave a bit of belief like in witch-stones, and allus sets one aside herspinnin' jenny, so that the thrid shanna knot nor break. Ta passon hesaid, God cud mak tha thrid run smooth, or knot it, just as He chose, and 'twas wicked to think she could cross His will. And the old dame, she said, Weel, sir, I dinna b'lieve tha Almighty would ever spite apoor old crittur like me, don't 'ee think it? But if we're no to helpoursells i' this world, what for have He gied us the trouble o' thathrid to spin? and why no han't He made tha shirts, an' tha sheets, an'tha hose grow theersells? And ta passon niver answered her that, he onlysaid she was fractious and blas-_phe_-mous. Now she warn't, she spoke i'all innocence, and she mint what she said--she mint it. Passons nivercan answer ye plain, right-down, nataral questions like this'n, andthat's why I wunna ga ta tha church. 

 * * *

Dinna ye meddle, Tam; it's niver no good a threshin' other folk's corn;ye allays gits the flail agin i' yer own eye somehow. 

 * * *

The flowers hang in the sunshine, and blow in the breeze, free to thewasp as to the bee. The bee chooses to make his store of honey, that issweet, and fragrant, and life-giving; the wasp chooses to make his fromthe same blossoms, but of a matter hard, and bitter, and useless. Shallwe pity the wasp because, of his selfish passions, he selects theportion that shall be luscious only to his own lips, and spends hishours only in the thrusting-in of his sting? Is not such pity--wastedupon the wasp--an insult to the bee who toils so wearily to gather infor others; and who, because he stings not man, is by man maltreated?Now it seems to me, if I read them aright, that vicious women, and womenthat are of honesty and honour, are much akin to the wasp and to thebee. 

 * * *

My dear, a gentleman may forget his appointments, his love vows, and hispolitical pledges; he may forget the nonsense he talked, the dances heengaged for, the women that worried him, the electors that bullied him, the wife that married him, and he may be a gentleman still; but thereare two things he must never forget, for no gentleman ever does--andthey are, to pay a debt that is a debt of honour, and to keep a promiseto a creature that can't force him to keep it. 

 * * *

A genius? You must mistake. I have always heard that a genius issomething that they beat to death first with sticks and stones, and setup on a great rock to worship afterwards. Now they make her very happywhilst she is alive. She cannot possibly be a genius. 

 * * *

I learned many wondrous things betwixt Epsom and Ascot. A brief space, indeed, yet one that to me seemed longer than the whole of my previouslife, so crowded was it every hour with new and marvellous experiences. Worldly experiences, I mean. Intellectually, I am not sure that Iacquired much. 

Indeed, to a little brain teeming with memories of the ThéâtresBeaumarchais, Voltaire, Molière, Feuillet, Sardou, Sandeau, &c. , whichI had heard read so continually at the Dower-House amongst the Fens, theviews of dramatic literature held at the Coronet appeared of the mostextraordinary character. They certainly had one merit--simplicity. 

The verb "to steal" was the only one that a successful dramatic authorappeared to be required to conjugate. 

For your music steal from the music-halls; for your costumes steal from_Le Follet_; for your ideas steal from anybody that happens to carrysuch a thing about him; for your play, in its entirety, steal the plot, the characters, the romance, the speeches, and the wit, if it have any, of some attractive novel; and when you have made up your parcel ofthefts, tie it together with some string of stage directions, herald itas entirely original, give a very good supper to your friends on thepress, and bow from your box as the "Author. "

You will certainly be successful: and if the novelist ever object, threaten him with an action for interference with _your_ property. 

These I found were the laws laid down by London dramatists; and theyassuredly were so easy to follow and so productive to obey, that if anyBen Jonson or Beaumarchais, Sheridan or Marivaux, had arisen andattempted to infringe them, he would have infallibly been regarded as avery evil example, and been extinguished by means of journalisticslating and stall-siflage. 

 * * *

By the way, permit me, in parenthesis, to say that one of the chiefcauses of that preference for the _demi-monde_ which you daily andhourly discover more and more, is the indulgence it shows to idleness. Because your lives are so intense now, and always at high pressure--forthat very reason are you more indolent also in little things. It boresyou to dress; it bores you to talk; it bores you to be polite. SirCharles Grandison might find ecstasy in elaborating a bow, a wig, or aspeech; you like to give a little nod, cut your hair very short, andmake "awfully" do duty for all your adjectives. 

"_Autres temps, autres mæurs. _" You are a very odd mixture. You will goto the ends of the earth on the scent of big game; but you shirk allsocial exertion with a cynical laziness. You will come from Damascus ata stretch without sleeping, and think nothing of it; but you find it awretched thing to have to exert yourself to be courteous in adrawing-room. 

Therefore the _demi-monde_ suits you with a curious fitness, and suitsyou more and more every year. I am afraid it is not very good for you. Idon't mean for your morals; I don't care the least about them, I am adog of the world; I mean for your manners. It makes you slangy, inert, rude, lazy. And yet what perfect gentlemen you can be still, and whatgrace there is in your careless, weary ease, when you choose to becourteous; and you always _do_ choose, that I must say for you, when youfind a woman who is really worth the trouble. 

 * * *

I never knew quite whether I liked her--how can you with those women ofthe world? She was kind and insincere; she was gentle and she was cruel;she was generous and ungenerous; she was true as steel, and she wasfalse as Judas--what would you?--she was a woman of the world, withseveral sweet natural impulses, and all a coquette's diplomacies. 

She tended me with the greatest solicitude one day that autumn, when Ihad run a thorn into my foot: and the very next day, when I was wellagain, she laughed to see me worried on the lawn by a bull-terrier. Ifyou have not met a woman like that, I wonder where you have lived. 

 * * *

You must be spider or fly, as somebody says. Now all my experience tellsme that men are mostly the big, good-natured, careless blue-bottles, half-drunk with their honey of pleasure, and rushing blindly into anyweb that dazzles them a little in the sunshine; and women are thedainty, painted, patient spiders that just sit and weave, and weave, andweave, till--pong!--Bluebottle is in head foremost, and is killed, andsucked dry, and eaten up at leisure. 

You men think women do not know much of life. Pooh! I, Puck, who havedwelt for many of my days on their boudoir cushions, and eaten of theirdainty little dinners, and been smuggled under their robes even intooperas, balls, and churches, tell you that is an utter fallacy. They donot choose you to know that they know it, very probably; but there isnothing that is hidden from them, I promise you. 

 * * *

Don't you know that whilst broad, intellectual scepticism is masculine, narrow, social scepticism is feminine? To get hearty, reverent, genuinebelief in the innocence of a slandered woman, go to a man: where theworld has once doubted, women, the world-worshippers, will for everafter doubt also. You can never bring women to see that the pecked-atfruit is always the richest and sweetest; they always take the benisonof the wooing bird to be the malison of the hidden worm!

 * * *

Not very long ago I was down away in the vale of Belvoir. I stayed withmy friends at a great stately place, owned by as gallant a gentleman asever swung himself into saddle. His wife was a beautiful woman, and hetreated her with the courtliest tenderness: indeed, I often heard theirunion cited as one of almost unequalled felicity. "He never had athought that he did not tell me, " I heard his wife once say to a friend. "Not a single thought, I know, all these twelve years of our marriage. "It was a happy belief--many women have the like--but it was anunutterably foolish one; for the minds of the best and truest amongstyou are, in many things, as sealed books to those whom you care for themost. 

One bitter, black hunting-day, a day keen and cold, with frost, as menfeared, in the air, and with the ground so hard that even the Duke'speerless "dandies, " perfect hounds though they are, scarcely could keepthe scent, there came terrible tidings to the Hall--he had met with acrashing fall. His horse had refused at timber, and had fallen upon him, kicking his head with the hind hoofs repeatedly. They had taken him tothe nearest farmhouse, insensible; even dead already, they feared. Hiswife and the elder amongst the beautiful children fled like madcreatures across the brown fallows, and the drear blackened meadows. Thefarm, happily, was not far: I sped with them. 

When they reached him he was not quite lifeless, but he knew none ofthem; his head had been beaten in by the plates of the kicking hoofs;and they waited for his death with every moment, in the little old duskyroom, with its leaded lattices, and its odour of dried lavender, and itsbough of holly above the hearth. For this had chanced upon ChristmasEve. 

To his wife's agonies, to his children's moans, he was silent: he knewnothing; he lay with closed eyes and crushed brain--deaf, blind, mute. Suddenly the eyes opened, and stared at the red winter sun where itglowed dimly through the squares of the lattice-panes. "Dolores!" hecried aloud; "Dolores! Dolores!" It was the name of none there. 

"My God! What woman is it he calls?" his wife asked in her torture. Butnone ever knew. Through half the night his faint pulse beat, his faintbreath came and went; but consciousness never more returned, and forever he muttered only that one name, that name which was not her own. And when they laid the dead body in its shroud, they found on the leftarm above the elbow the word "Dolores" marked on the skin, as sailorsstamp letters in their flesh. But whose it was, or what woe or passionit recorded, none ever knew--not even his wife, who had believed sheshared his every thought. And to his grave his dead and secret love wentwith him. 

This man was but a gay, frank, high-spirited gentleman, of no greatknowledge, and of no great attainments, riding fearlessly, laughingjoyously, living liberally; not a man, one would have said, to know anydeep passions, to treasure any bitter memories--and yet he had loved onewoman so well that he had never spoken of her, and never forgotten her;never--not even in his death-hour, when the poor, stunned, stifled brainhad forgotten all other things of earth. 

And so it seems to me that it is very often with you, and that you bearwith you through your lifetime the brand of an unforgotten name, brandeddeep in, in days of passion, that none around you ever wot of, and thatthe wife who sleeps on your heart never knows. 

It is dead--the old love--long dead. And yet, when your last hour shallcome, and your senses shall be dizzy with death, the pale loves of thetroth and the hearth will fade from you, and this love alone will abide. 

 * * *

"Modern painters do not owe you much, sir, " said a youngster to himonce, writhing under the _Midas'_ ruthless flagellation of his firstAcademy picture. 

"On the contrary, " said the great censor, taking his snuff; "they owe memuch, or might have owed me much. If they had only listened to me, theywould have saved every shilling that they have thrown away on canvas!"

 * * *

In your clubs and your camps, in your mischievous moods and yourphilosophic moods, always indeed theoretically, you consider all womenimmoral (except just, of course, your own mothers); but practically, when your good-feeling is awakened, or your honest faith honestlyappealed to, you will believe in a woman's honour with a heartiness andstrength for which she will look in vain in her own sex. According toyour jests, the world is one vast harem, of which all the doors are opento every man, and whose fair inmates are all alike impressionable to thecharm of intrigue or to the chink of gold. But, in simple earnest andreality, I have heard the wildest and most debonair amongst you--onceconvinced of the honour and innocence looking from a woman's eyes--standup in defence of these when libelled in her absence, with a zeal and astanchness that did my heart good. 

 * * *

His simple creed, "the good faith of a gentleman, " forbade him to injurewhat lay defenceless at his mercy. 

Ah! revile that old faith as you will, it has lasted longer than anyother cultus; and whilst altars have reeled, and idols been shattered, and priests changed their teachings, and peoples altered their gods, theold faith has lasted through all; and the simple instinct of the Greekeupatrid and of the Roman patrician still moves the heart of the Englishgentleman--the instinct of _Noblesse oblige_. 

 * * *

"The exception proves the rule, " runs your proverb; but why, I wonder, is it that you always only believe in the rule, and are always utterlysceptical as to the existence of the exception?

 * * *

The sun shone in over the roofs; the bird in its cage began a lowtremulous song; the murmur of all the crowded streets came up upon thesilence; and Nellie lay there dead;--the light upon her curly hair, andon her mouth the smile that had come there at his touch. 

"Ah, my dear!" said Fanfreluche, as she ceased her story, with ahalf-soft and half-sardonic sadness, "she was but a little, ignorant, common player, who made but three pounds a week, and who talked theslang of the streets, and who thought shrimps and tea a meal for thegods, and who made up her own dresses with her own hands, out of tinseland tarlatanes and trumperies, and who knew no better than to follow theblind, dumb instincts of good that, self-sown and uncultured, lived inher--God knows how!--as the harebells, with the dew on them, will liveamidst the rank, coarse grass of graveyards. She was but a poor littleplayer, who tried to be honest where all was corruption, who tried towalk straightly where all ways were crooked. So she died to-day in agarret, my dear. "

 * * *

If all men in whose hearts lives a dull, abiding grief, whose throbsdeath and death only ever will still, deserted for desert or ocean yourworld of fame and of fashion, how strangely that world would look! Howmuch eloquence would be dumb in your senatorial chambers; how many asmile would be missing from your ball-rooms and hunting-fields; how manya frank laugh would die off for ever from your ear; how many awell-known face would vanish from your clubs, from your park, from yourdinner-tables, from your race-stands!

And how seldom would it be those that you had pitied who would go!--howoften would the vacant place be that place where so many seasons throughyou had seen, and had envied, the gayest, the coldest, the mostlight-hearted, the most cynical amongst you!

Ah! let Society be thankful that men in their bitterness do not now fly, as of old, to monastery or to hermitage; for, did they do so, Societywould send forth her gilded cards to the wilderness. 

 * * *

"_Une vie manquée!_" says the world. 

Is there any threnody over a death half so unutterably sad as that onejest over a life?

"_Manquée!_"--the world has no mercy on a hand that has thrown the dieand has lost; no tolerance for the player who, holding fine cards, willnot play them by the rules of the game. "_Manquée!_" the world says, with a polite sneer, of the lives in which it beholds no blazonedachievement, no public success. 

And yet, if it were keener of sight, it might see that those lives, notseldom, may seem to have missed of their mark, because their aim washigh over the heads of the multitude; or because the arrow was sped bytoo eager a hand in too rash a youth, and the bow lies unstrung in thathand when matured. It might see that those lives which look so lost, sopurposeless, so barren of attainment, so devoid of object or fruition, have sometimes nobler deeds in them and purer sacrifice than lies inthe home-range of its own narrowed vision. "_Manquée!_"--do not castthat stone idly: how shall you tell, as you look on the course of a lifethat seems to you a failure, because you do not hear its "_Io triumphe_"on the lips of a crowd, what sweet dead dreams, what noble vain desires, what weariness of futile longing, what conscious waste of vanishedyears--nay, what silent acts of pure nobility, what secret treasures ofunfathomed love--may lie within that which seems in your sight even as awaste land untilled, as a fire burnt out, as a harp without chords, as abird without song?

 * * *

Genius is oftentimes but a poor fool, who, clinging to a thing thatbelongs to no age, Truth, does oftentimes live on a pittance and die ina hospital; but whosoever has the gift to measure aright theirgeneration is invincible--living, they shall enjoy all the vicesundetected; and dead, on their tombstones they shall possess all thevirtues. 

 * * *

Cant, naked, is honoured throughout England. Cant, clothed in gold, is aking never in England resisted. 

 * * *

"Ben Dare, he be dead?" he asked suddenly. "They telled me so byDarron's side. "[A]

[A] The river Derwent. 

Ambrose bent his head, silently. 

"When wur't?"

"Last simmar-time, i' th' aftermath. "

"It were a ston' as killed him?"

"Ay, " said Ambrose, softly shading his eyes with his hand from the sunthat streamed through the aisles of pine. 

"How wur't?"

"They was a blastin'. He'd allus thoct as he'd dee that way, you know. They pit mair pooder i' quarry than common; and the ston' it split, androared, and crackit, wi' a noise like tha crack o' doom. And one bit on't, big as ox, were shot i' th' air, an' fell, unlookit for like, anddang him tew the groun', and crushit him, --a-lyin' richt athwart hisbrist. "

"An' they couldna stir it?"

"They couldna. I heerd tha other min screech richt tew here, an' I knewwhat it wur, tha shrill screech comin' jist i' top o' tha blastin' roar;an' I ran, an' ran--na gaze-hound fleeter. An' we couldna raise it--mean' Tam, an' Job, an' Gideon o' the Mere, an' Moses Legh o' Wissen Edge, a' strong min and i' our prime. We couldna stir it, till Moses o' WissenEdge he thoct o' pittin' fir-poles underneath--poles as was sharp an'slim i' thur ends, an' stout an' hard further down. Whin tha poles wasweel thrust under we heaved, an' heaved, an' heaved, and got it slantedo' one side, and drawed him out; an' thin it were too late, too late! A'tha brist was crushit in--frushed flesh and bone together. He jistmuttered i' his throat, 'Tha little lass, tha little lass!' and then heturned him on his side, and hid his face upo' the sod. When we raisedhim he wur dead. "

The voice of Ambrose sank very low; and where he leaned over his smithydoor the tears fell slowly down his sun-bronzed cheeks. 

"Alack a day!" sighed Daffe, softly. "Sure a better un niver drew breathi' the varsal world!"

"An' that's trew, " Ambrose made answer, his voice hushed and verytender. 

"He was varra changed like, " murmured Daffe, his hand wandering amongstthe golden blossoms of the stonecrop. "He niver were the same critturarter the lass went awa'. He niver were the same--niver. Ta seemed tewmak an auld man o' him a' at once. "

"It did, " said Ambrose, brokenly. "He couldna bear tew look na tew spikto nane o' us. He were bent i' body, an' gray o' head, that awfu' nightwhen he kem back fra' the waking. It were fearfu' tew see; and wecouldna dew naught. Th' ony thing as he'd take tew were Trust. "

"Be dog alive?"

"Na. Trust he'd never quit o' Ben's grave. He wouldna take bit na drop. He wouldna be touchit; not whin he was clem would he be tempted awa'. And he died--jist tha fifth day arter his master. "

"An' the wench? Hev' 'ee e'er heerd on her?"

"Niver--niver. Mappen she's dead and gone tew. She broke Ben's heart forsure; long ere tha ston' crushit life out o't. "

"And wheer may he lie?"

Ambrose clenched his brawny hand, his eyes darkened, his swarthy faceflushed duskily. 

"Wheer? What think 'ee, Daffe? When we took o' him up for the burial, tatha church ower theer beyant tha wood, the passon he stoppit us, a' thagate of tha buryin' field. The passon he med long words, and sed as howa unb'liever sud niver rest i' blessed groun', sin he willna iver enterinto the sight o' tha Lord. He sed as how Ben were black o' heart andwicked o' mind, an' niver set fute i' church-door, and niver ate o' thasacrament bread, and niver not thocht o' God nor o' Devil; an' hewouldna say tha rites o'er him an' 'twere iver so, an' he wouldna lethim lie i' tha holy earth, nor i' tha pale o' tha graveyard. Well, wecouldna gae agin him--we poor min, an' he a squire and passon tew. Saewe took him back, five weary mile; and we brocht him here, and we dughis grave under them pines, and we pit a cross o' tha bark to mark theplace, and we laid old Trust, when he died, by his side. I were mad withgrief like, thin; it were awfu' ta ha' him forbad Christian burial. "

"Dew it matter?" asked the gentle Daffe, wistfully. He had never beenwithin church-doors himself. 

Ambrose gave a long troubled sigh. 

"Aweel! at first it seemed awfu'--awfu'! And to think as Ben 'ud niversee the face o' his God was mair fearfu' still. But as time gees on andon--I can see his grave fra' here, tha cross we cut is tha glimmer o'white on that stem ayont, --it dew seem as 'tis fitter like fer him tolie i' tha fresh free woods, wi' tha birds a' chirmin' abuve him, an' a'tha forest things as he minded a flyin', an' nestin', an' runnin', an'rejoicin' arount him. 'Tis allus so still there, an' peacefu'. 'Tis blueand blue now, wi' tha hy'cinths; and there's one bonnie mavis as dewmake her home wi' each spring abuve the gravestone. 'Bout not meetin'his God, I dunno--I darena saw nowt anent it--but, for sure, it dew seemto me that we canna meet Him no better, nor fairer, than wi' lips thatha ne'er lied to man nor to woman, and wi' hands as niver hae harmed thepoor dumb beasts nor the prattlin' birds. It dew seem so. I canna tell. "

As the words died off his lips the sun fell yet more brightly throughthe avenues of the straight, dark, odorous pines; sweet silent windsswept up the dewy scents of mosses, and of leaves, and of wildhyacinths; and on the stillness of that lonely place there came onetremulous, tender sound. It was the sound of the mavis singing. 

"I canna tell; but for sure it is well with him?" said Ambrose; and hebared his head, and bowed it humbly, as though in the voice of the mavishe heard the answer of God:

"It is well. "

Ah! I trust that it may be so for you; that the sweetness of yourarrogant dreams of an unshared eternity be not wholly a delusion; thatfor you--although to us you do deny it--there may be found pity, atonement, compensation, in some great Hereafter. 

 * * *

"I have heard a very great many men and women call the crows carrionbirds, and the jackals carrion beasts, with an infinite deal of disgustand much fine horror at what they were pleased to term 'feasting oncorpses;' but I never yet heard any of them admit their own appetite forthe rotten 'corpse' of a pheasant, or the putrid haunch of a deer, to beanything except the choice taste of an epicure!"

"But they do cook the corpses!" I remonstrated; whereupon she grinnedwith more meaning than ever. 

"Exactly what I am saying, my dear. Their love of synonyms has made themforget that they are _carnivori_, because they talk so sweetly of the_cuisine_. A poor, blundering, honest, ignorant lion only kills and eatswhen the famine of his body forces him to obey that law of slaughterwhich is imposed on all created things, from the oyster to the man, bywhat we are told is the beautiful and beneficent economy of Creation. Ofcourse, the lion is a brutal and bloodthirsty beast of prey, to behunted down off the face of the earth as fast as may be. Whereasman--what does he do? He devours the livers of a dozen geese in one_pâté_; he has lobsters boiled alive, that the scarlet tint may looktempting to his palate; he has fish cut up or fried in all its livingagonies, lest he should lose one _nuance_ of its flavour; he has thecalf and the lamb killed in their tender age, that he may eat daintysweetbreads; he has quails and plovers slaughtered in thenesting-season, that he may taste a slice of their breasts; he crushesoysters in his teeth whilst life is in them; he has scores of birds andanimals slain for one dinner, that he may have the numberless disheswhich fashion exacts; and then--all the time talking softly of _rissôle_and _mayonnaise_, of _consommé_ and _entremet_, of _croquette_ and_côtelette_--the dear _gourmet_ discourses on his charming science, andthanks God that he is not as the parded beasts that prey!"

"Well, " said I, sulkily, for I am fond myself of a good_vol-au-vent_, --"well, you have said that eating is a law in theeconomies--or the waste--of creation. Is it not well to clothe adistasteful and barbaric necessity in a refining guise and under anelegant nomenclature?"

"Sophist!" said Fanfreluche, with much scorn, though she herself is askeen an epicure and as suave a sophist, for that matter, as I know, --"Inever denied that it was well for men to cheat themselves, through theart of their cooks, into believing that they are not brutes and beastsof prey--it is well exceedingly--for their vanity. Life is sustainedonly by the destruction of life. Cookery, the divine, can turn thishorrible fact into a poetic idealism; can twine the butcher's knife withlilies, and hide the carcass under roses. But I do assuredly think that, when they sit down every night with their _menu_ of twenty services, they should not call the poor lion bad names for eating an antelope oncea fortnight. "

And, with the true consistency of preachers, Fanfreluche helped herselfto a Madeira stewed kidney which stood amongst other delicacies on thedeserted luncheon table. 

 * * *

"If this play should succeed it will be a triumph of true art, " saidanother critical writer to Dudley Moore. 

That great personage tapped his Louis-Quinze snuffbox with someimpatience. 

"Pardon me, but it is not possible to have art at all on the stage. Artis a pure idealism. You can have it in a statue, a melody, a poem; butyou cannot have it on the stage, which is at its highest but a graphicrealism. The very finest acting is only fine in proportion as it is anexact reproduction of physical life. How, then, can it be art, which isonly great in proportion as it escapes from the physical life into thespiritual?"

"But may not dramatic art escape thither also?" asked the critic, whowas young, and deferred to him. 

"Impossible, sir. It is shackled with all the forms of earth, and--worsestill--with all its shams and commonplaces. When we read _Othello_, weonly behold the tempest of the passions and the wreck of a great soul;but when we see _Othello_, we are affronted by the colour of the Moor'sskin, and are brought face to face with the vulgarities of the bolster!"

"Then there is no use in a stage at all?"

"I am not prepared to conclude that. It is agreeable to a vast number ofpeople: as a Frith or an O'Neil is agreeable to a vast number of peopleto whom an Ary Scheffer or a Delaroche would be unintelligible. It isbetter, perhaps, that this vast number should look at Friths and O'Neilsthan that they should never look on any painting at all. Now the stagepaints rudely, often tawdrily; still it does paint. It is better thannothing. I take it that the excellence, as the end, of histrionic art isto portray, to the minds of the many, poetic conceptions which, withoutsuch realistic rendering, would remain unknown and impalpable to allsave the few. Histrionic art is at its greatest only when it is thefollower and the interpreter of literature; the actor translates thepoet's meanings into the common tongue that is understood of the people. But how many on the miserable stage of this country have ever had eitherhumility to perceive, or capability to achieve this?"

The other critic smiled. 

"I imagine not one, in our day. Their view of their profession issimilar to Mrs. Delamere's, when Max Moncrief wrote that sparklingcomedy for her. 'My dear, ' she said to him, 'why did you troubleyourself to put all that wit and sense into it? We didn't want _that_. Ishall wear all my diamonds, and I have ordered three splendid newdresses!'"

 * * *

All day long the fowls kept it alive with sound and movement; for of allmercurial and fussy things there is nothing on the face of the earth toequal cocks and hens. They have such an utterly exaggerated sense, too, of their own importance; they make such a clacking and clucking overevery egg, such a scratching and trumpeting over every morsel oftreasure-trove, and such a striding and stamping over every bit ofwell-worn ground. On the whole, I think poultry have more humanity inthem than any other race, footed or feathered; and cocks certainly musthave been the first creatures that ever hit on the great art ofadvertising. Myself I always fancy that the souls of this featheredtribe pass into the bodies of journalists; but this may be a merebaseless association of kindred ideas in my mind. 

 * * *

She kissed the dog on the forehead; then pointed to the kreel of shellsand seaweed on the red, smooth piece of rock. 

"Take care of them, dear Bronze, " she murmured; "and wait till I comeback. Wait here. "

She did not mean to command; she only meant to console him by theappointment of some service. 

Bronze looked in her face with eyes of woe and longing; but he made nomoan or sound, but only stretched himself beside the kreel on guard. Iam always glad to think that as she went she turned, and kissed him onceagain. 

The boat flew fast over the water. When boats leave you, and drag yourheart with them, they always go like that; and when they come, and yourheart darts out to meet them, then they are so slow!

The boat flew like a seagull, the sun bright upon her sail. Bronze, leftupon the rock, lifted his head and gave one long, low wail. It echoedwoefully and terribly over the wide, quiet waters. They gave back noanswer--not even the poor answer that lies in echo. 

It was very still there. Nothing was in sight except that single littlesail shining against the light, and flying--flying--flying. 

Now and then you could hear a clock striking in the distant village, thefaint crow of a cock, the far-off voices of children calling to oneanother. 

The little sea-mouse stole athwart a pool; the grey sea-crabs passedlike a little army; the tiny sea creatures that dwelt in rosy shellsthrust their delicate heads from their houses to peep and wonder at thesun. But all was noiseless. How dared they make a sound, when that greatsea, that was at once their life and death, was present with itsnever-ceasing "Hush!"

Bronze never moved, and his eyes never turned from the little boat thatwent and left him there--the little boat that fast became merely a flashand speck of white against the azure air, no bigger than the breadth ofa seagull's wings. 

An hour drifted by. The church-clock on the cliffs had struck fourtimes; a deep-toned, weary bell, that tolled for every quarter, and mustoften have been heard, at dead of night, by dying men, drowningunshriven and unhouselled. 

Suddenly the sand about us, so fawn-hued, smooth, and beautifullyribbed, grew moist, and glistened with a gleam of water, like eyes thatfill with tears. 

Bronze never saw: he only watched the boat. A little later the watergushed above the sand, and, gathering in a frail rippling edge of foam, rolled up and broke upon the rock. 

And still he never saw; for still he watched the boat. 

Awhile, and the water grew in volume, and filled the mouse's pool tillit brimmed over, and bathed the dull grasses till they glowed likeflowers; and drew the sea-crabs and the tiny dwellers of the shells backonce more into its wondrous living light. 

And all around the fresh tide rose, silently thus about the rocks andstones; gliding and glancing in all the channels of the shore, until thesands were covered, and the grasses gathered in, and all the creeping, hueless things were lost within its space; and in the stead of them, andof the bronzed palm-leaves of weed, and of the great brown bouldersgleaming in the sun, there was but one vast lagoon of shadowless brightwater everywhere. 

And still he never saw; for still he watched the boat. 

By this time the tide, rolling swiftly in before a strong sou'-wester, had risen midway against the rock on which we had been left, and wasbreaking froth and foam upon the rock's worn side. For this rock alonewithstood the passage of the sea: there was naught else but this tobreak the even width of water. All other things save this had beensubdued and reapen. 

It was all deep water around; and the water glowed a strange emeraldgreen, like the green in a lizard or snake. The shore, that had lookedso near, now seemed so far, far off; and the woods were hidden in mist, and the cottages were all blurred with the brown of the cliff, and therecame no sound of any sort from the land--no distant bell, no farm-bird'scall, no echo of children's voices. There was only one sound at all;and that was the low, soft, ceaseless murmuring of the tide as it glidedinward. 

The waters rose till they touched the crest of the rock; but still henever moved. Stretched out upon the stone, guarding the things of hertrust, and with his eyes fastened on the sail which rose against thelight, he waited thus--for death. 

I was light, and a strong swimmer. I had been tossed on those waves frommy birth. Buffeted, fatigued, blind with the salt sea-spray, drenchedwith the weight of the water, I struggled across that calm dread widthof glassy coldness, and breathless reached the land. 

By signs and cries I made them wot that something needed them at sea. They began to get ready a little boat, bringing it down from its woodenrest on high dry ground beneath the cliff. Whilst they pushed anddragged through the deep-furrowed sand I gazed seaward. The shore wasraised; I could see straight athwart the waters. They now were levelwith the rock; and yet he had never moved. 

The little skiff had passed round the bend of a bluff, and was out ofhis sight and ours. 

The boat was pushed into the surf; they threw me in. They could seenothing, and trusted to my guidance. 

I had skill enough to make them discover whither it was I wanted them togo. Then, looking in their eagerness whither my eyes went, they saw himon the rock, and with a sudden exercise of passionate vigour, bent totheir oars and sent the boat against the hard opposing force of theresisting tide. For they perceived that, from some cause, he wasmotionless there, and could not use his strength; and they knew that itwould be shame to their manhood if, within sight of their land, thecreature who had succoured their brethren in the snow, and saved thetwo-year child from the storm, should perish before their sight on acalm and unfretted sea and in a full noon sun. 

It was but a furlong to that rock; it was but the breadth of the beach, that at low water stretched uncovered; and yet how slowly the boat sped, with the ruthless tide sweeping it back as fast as the oars bore itforward!

So near we seemed to him that one would have thought a stone flung fromus through the air would have lit far beyond him; and yet the space wasenough, more than enough, to bar us from him, filled as it was with thestrong adverse pressure of those low, swift, in-rushing waves. 

The waters leaped above the summit of the rock, and for a moment coveredhim. A great shout went up from the rowers beside me. They strained inevery nerve to reach him; and the roll of a fresh swell of water liftedthe boat farther than their uttermost effort could achieve, but liftedher backward, backward to the land. 

When the waters touched him he arose slowly, and stood at bay like astag upon a headland, when the hounds rage behind, and in front yawnsthe fathomless lake. 

He stood so that he still guarded the things of his trust; and his eyeswere still turned seaward, watching for the vanished sail. 

Once again the men, with a loud cry to him of courage and help, strainedat their oars, and drove themselves a yard's breadth farther out. Andonce again the tide, with a rush of surf and shingle, swept the boatback, and seemed to bear her to the land as lightly as though she were aleaf with which a wind was playing. 

The waters covered the surface of the rock. It sank from sight. The foamwas white about his feet, and still he stood there--upon guard. Everywhere there was the brilliancy of noontide sun; everywhere therewas the beaming calmness of the sea, that spread out, far and wide, inone vast sheet of light; from the wooded line of the shore there echoedthe distant gaiety of a woman's laugh. A breeze, softly stirring throughthe warm air, brought with it from the land the scent of myrtle thicketsand wild flowers. How horrible they were--the light, the calm, themirth, the summer fragrance!

For one moment he stood there erect; his dark form sculptured, lion-like, against the warm yellow light of noon; about his feet thefoam. 

Then, all noiselessly, a great, curled, compact wave surged over him, breaking upon him, sweeping him away. The water spread out quickly, smooth and gleaming like the rest. He rose, grasping in his teeth thekreel of weed and shells. 

He had waited until the last. Driven from the post he would not ofhimself forsake, the love of life awoke in him; he struggled againstdeath. 

Three times he sank, three times he rose. The sea was now strong, anddeep, and swift of pace, rushing madly in; and he was cumbered with thatweight of osier and of weed, which yet he never yielded, because it hadbeen her trust. With each yard that the tide bore him forward, by somuch it bore us backward. There was but the length of a spar between us, and yet it was enough!

He rose for the fourth time, his head above the surf, the kreel upliftedstill, the sun-rays full upon his brown weary eyes, with all theirsilent agony and mute appeal. Then the tide, fuller, wilder, deeper witheach wave that rolled, and washing as it went all things of the shorefrom their places, flung against him, as it swept on, a great rough limbof driftwood. It struck him as he rose; struck him across the brow. Thewave rushed on; the tide came in; the black wood floated to the shore;he never rose again. 

And scarcely that span of the length of a spar had parted us from himwhen he sank!

All the day through they searched, and searched with all the skill ofmen sea-born and sea-bred. The fisher, whose little child he had savedin the winter night, would not leave him to the things of the deep. Andat sunset they found him, floating westward, in the calm water where therays of the sun made it golden and warm. He was quite dead; but in histeeth there still was clenched the osier kreel, washed empty of itsfreight. 

They buried him there; on the shore underneath the cliff, where a greatwild knot of myrtle grows, and the honeysuckle blooms all over the sand. And when Lord Beltran in that autumn came, and heard how he had died inthe fulfilling of a trust, he had a stone shapen and carved; and set itagainst the cliff, amongst the leafage and flowers, high up where thehighest winter tide will not come. And by his will the name of Bronzewas cut on it in deep letters that will not wear out, and on which thesun will strike with every evening that it shall pass westward above thesea; and beneath the name he bade three lines be chiselled likewise, andthey are these:

 "HE CHOSE DEATH RATHER THAN UNFAITHFULNESS. HE KNEW NO BETTER. HE WAS A DOG. "

"They are all words. Creatures that take out their grief in crape andmortuary tablets can't feel very much. "

"There are many lamentations, from Lycidas to Lesbia, which prove thatwhether for a hero or a sparrow--" I began timidly to suggest. 

"That's only a commonplace, " snapped my lady. "They chatter andscribble; they don't feel. They write stanzas of 'gush' on Maternity;and tear the little bleating calf from its mother to bleed to death ina long, slow agony. They maunder twaddle about Infancy over some uglyred lump of human flesh, in whose creation their vanity happens to beinvolved; and then go out and send the springtide lamb to the slaughter, and shoot the parent birds as they fly to the nest where theirfledglings are screaming in hunger! Pooh! Did you never find out thevalue of their words? Some one of them has said that speech was giventhem to conceal their thoughts. It is true that they use it for thatend; but it was given them for this reason. At the time of the creation, when all except man had been made, the Angel of Life, who had beenbidden to summon the world out of chaos, moving over the fresh and yetinnocent earth, thought to himself, 'I have created so much that isdoomed to suffer for ever, and for ever be mute; I will now create ananimal that shall be compensated for all suffering by listening to thesound of its own voluble chatter. ' Whereon the Angel called Man intobeing, and cut the _frænum_ of his tongue, which has clacked incessantlyever since, all through the silence of the centuries. "

 * * *

There was once a dog, my dear, that was hit by three men, one afteranother, as they went by him where he lay in the sun; and in return hebit them--deep--and they let him alone then, and ever after sought topropitiate him. Well, the first he bit in the arm, where there was abrand for deserting; and the second he bit in the throat, where therewas a hideous mole; and the third he bit in the shoulder, where therewas the mark of a secret camorra. Now, not one of these three durstspeak of the wounds in places they all wished to hide; and wheneverafterwards they passed the dog, they gave him fair words, and sweetbones, and a wide berth. It is the dogs, and the satirists, and thelibellers, and the statesmen who know how to bite like that--in theweak part--that get let alone, and respected, and fed on the fat of theland. 

 * * *

For him by whom a thirsty ear is lent to the world's homage, the tocsinof feebleness, if not of failure, has already sounded. 

The gladness of the man is come when the crowds lisp his name, and thegold fills his hand, and the women's honeyed adulations buzz like goldenbees about his path; but how often is the greatness of the artist gone, and gone for ever!

Because when the world denies you it is easy to deny the world; becausewhen the bread is bitter it is easy not to linger at the meal; becausewhen the oil is low it is easy to rise with dawn; because when the bodyis without surfeit or temptation it is easy to rise above earth on thewings of the spirit. Poverty is very terrible to you, and kills yoursoul in you sometimes; but it is like the northern blast that lashes meninto Vikings; it is not the soft, luscious south wind that lulls theminto lotos-eaters. 

 * * *

I have grave doubts of Mrs. Siddons. She was a goddess of the age offret and fume, of stalk and strut, of trilled R's and of nodding plumes. If we had Siddons now I fear we should hiss; I am quite sure we shouldyawn. She must have been Melpomene always; Nature never. 

 * * *

Oh, how wise you are and how just!--if there be a spectacle on earth torejoice the angels, it is your treatment of the animals that you say Godhas given unto you!

It is not for me, a little dog, to touch on such awful mysteries;but--sometimes--I wonder, if ever He ask you how you have dealt with Hisgift, what will you answer then?

If all your slaughtered millions should instead answer for you--if allthe countless and unpitied dead, all the goaded, maddened beasts fromforest and desert who were torn asunder in the holidays of Rome; and allthe innocent, playful, gentle lives of little home-bred creatures thathave been racked by the knives, and torn by the poisons, and convulsedby the torments, of your modern Science, should, instead, answer, withone mighty voice, of a woe no longer inarticulate, of an accusation nomore disregarded, what then? Well! Then, if it be done unto you as youhave done, you will seek for mercy and find none in all the width of theuniverse; you will writhe, and none shall release you; you will pray, and none shall hear. 

 * * *

"These fine things don't make one's happiness, " I murmured pensively toFanfreluche. 

"No, my dear, they don't, " the little worldling admitted. "They do towomen; they're so material, you see. They are angels--O yes, ofcourse!--but they're uncommonly sharp angels where money and good livingare concerned. Just watch them--watch the tail of their eye--when acheque is being written or an _éprouvette_ being brought to table. Andafter all, you know, minced chicken is a good deal nicer than dry bread. Of course we can easily be sentimental and above this sort of thing, when the chicken _is_ in our mouths where we sit by the fire; but if wewere gnawing wretched bones, out in the cold of the streets, I doubt ifwe should feel in such a sublime mood. All the praises of poverty aresung by the minstrel who has got a golden harp to chant them on; andall the encomiums on renunciation come from your _bon viveur_ who neverdenied himself aught in his life!"

 * * *

Emotions are quite as detrimental to a dog's tail as they are to alady's complexion. Joseph Buonaparte's American wife said to an Americangentleman, whom I heard quote her words, that she "never laughed becauseit made wrinkles:" there is a good deal of wisdom in that cachinatoryabstinence. There is nothing in the world that wears people (or dogs) somuch as feeling of any kind, tender, bitter, humoristic, or emotional. 

How often you commend a fresh-coloured matron with her daughters, and arosy-cheeked hunting squire in his saddle, who, with their half-centuryof years, yet look so comely, so blooming, so clear-browed, and sosmooth-skinned. How often you distrust the weary delicate creature, withthe hectic flush of her rouge, in society; and the worn, tired, colourless face of the man of the world who takes her down to dinner. Well, to my fancy, you may be utterly wrong. An easy egotism, acontented sensualism, may have carried the first comfortably andserenely through their bank-note-lined paradise of commonplaceexistence. How shall you know what heart-sickness in their youth, whataching desires for joys never found, what sorrowful power of sympathy, what fatal keenness of vision, have blanched the faded cheek, and linedthe weary mouth, of the other twain?

 * * *

"Sheep and men are very much alike, " said Trust, who thought both verypoor creatures. "Very much alike indeed. They go in flocks, and can'tgive a reason why. They leave their fleece on any bramble that is strongenough to insist on fleecing them. They bleat loud at imagined evils, while they tumble straight into real dangers. And for going off theline, there's nothing like them. There may be pits, thorns, quagmires, spring-guns, what not, the other side of the hedge, but go off thestraight track they will--and no dog can stop them. It's just the sheerlove of straying. You may bark at them right and left; go they will, though they break their legs down a limekiln. Oh, men and sheep arewonderfully similar; take them all in all. "

 * * *

Ah! you people never guess the infinite woe we dogs suffer in new homes, under strange tyrannies; you never heed how we shrink from unfamiliarhands, and shudder at unfamiliar voices, how lonely we feel in unknownplaces, how acutely we dread harshness, novelty, and scornful treatment. Dogs die oftentimes of severance from their masters; there isGreyfriars' Bobby now in Edinboro' town who never has been persuaded toleave his dead owner's grave all these many years through. You see suchthings, but you are indifferent to them. "It is only a dog, " you say;"what matter if the brute fret to death?"

You don't understand it of course; you who so soon forget all your owndead--the mother that bore you, the mistress that loved you, the friendthat fought with you shoulder to shoulder; and of course, also, you carenothing for the measureless blind pains, the mute helpless sorrows, thevague lonely terrors, that ache in our little dumb hearts. 

 * * *

Lucretius has said how charming it is to stand under a shelter in astorm, and see another hurrying through its rain and wind; but a womanwould refine that sort of cruelty, and would not be quite contentunless she had an umbrella beside her that she refused to lend. 

 * * *

"Oh, pooh, my dear!" cried Fanfreluche. "He has robbed his host atcards, and abused his host behind his back; to fulfil the whole duty ofa nineteenth century guest it only remains for him to betray his host inlove!"

"You think very ill of men?" I muttered; I was, indeed, slightly wearyof her sceptical supercilious treatment of all things; yourpseudo-philosopher, who will always think he has plumbed the ocean withhis silver-topped cane, is a great bore sometimes. 

"I think very well of men, " returned Fanfreluche. "You are mistaken, mydear. There are only two things that they never are honest about--andthat is their sport and their women. When they get talking of theirrocketers, or their runs, their pigeon-score, or their _bonnesfortunes_, they always lie--quite unconsciously. And if they miss theirbird or their woman, isn't it always because the sun was in their eyesas they fired, or because she wasn't half good-looking enough to tryafter?--bless your heart, I know them!"

"If you do, you are not complimentary to them, " I grumbled. 

"Can't help that, my dear, " returned Fanfreluche. "Gracious! whatever isthere that stands the test of knowing it well? I have heard Beltran say, that you find out what an awful humbug the Staubbach is when you go upto the top and see you can straddle across it. Well, the Staubbach isjust like everything in this life. Keep your distance, and how well thecreature looks!--all veiled in its spray, and all bright with itsprismatic colours, so deep, and so vast, and so very impressive. Butjust go up to the top, scale the crags of its character, and measure theheight of its aspirations, and fathom the torrent of its passions, andsift how much is the foam of speech, and how little is the well-springof thought. Well, my dear, it is a very uncommon creature if it don'tturn out just like the Staubbach. "

 * * *

I think if you knew what you did, even the most thoughtless amongst youwould not sanction with your praise, and encourage with your coin, thebrutality that trains dancing-dogs. 

Have human mimes if you will; it is natural to humanity to caper andgrimace and act a part: but for pity's sake do not countenance thetorture with which Avarice mercilessly trains us "dumb beasts" for thetrade of tricks. 

"The Clown-dog draws throngs to laugh and applaud, " says someadvertisement: yes, and I knew a very clever clown-dog once. His feetwere blistered with the hot irons on which he had been taught to dance;his teeth had been drawn lest he should use his natural weapons againsthis cowardly tyrants; his skin beneath his short white hair was blackwith bruises; though originally of magnificent courage, his spirit hadbeen so broken by torture that he trembled if a leaf blew against him;and his eyes--well, if the crowds that applauded him had once looked atthose patient, wistful, quiet eyes, with their unutterable despair, those crowds would have laughed no more, unless they had indeed beendevils. 

Who has delivered us unto you to be thus tortured, and martyred?Who?--Oh, that awful eternal mystery that ye yourselves cannot explain!

 * * *

Believe me, it is the light or the darkness of our own fate that eithergives "greenness to the grass and glory to the flower, " or leaves bothsickly, wan, and colourless. A little breadth of sunny lawn, thespreading shadow of a single beech, the gentle click of a littlegarden-gate, the scent of some simple summer roses--how fair these arein your memory because of a voice which then was on your ear, because ofeyes that then gazed in your own. And the grandeur of Nile, and thelustre of the after-glow, and the solemn desolation of Carnac, and thewondrous beauty of the flushed sea of tossing reeds, are all cold, anddead, and valueless, because in those eyes no love now lies for you;because that voice, for you, is now for ever silent. 

 * * *

For, write as you will of the glory of poverty, and of the ennui ofpleasure, there is no life like this life, wherein to the sight and thesense all things minister; wherefrom harsh discord and all unlovelinessare banished: where the rare beauty of high-born women is common; wherethe passions at their wildest still sheathe themselves in courtesy'ssilver scabbard; where the daily habits of existence are made gracefuland artistic; where grief, and woe, and feud, and futile longing forlost loves, can easiest be forgot in delicate laughter and in endlesschange. Artificial? Ah, well, it may be so! But since nevermore will youreturn to the life of the savage, to the wigwam of the squaw, it isbest, methinks, that the Art of Living--the great _Savoir Vivre_--shouldbe brought, as you seek to bring all other arts, up to uttermostperfection. 

 * * *

Men are very much in society as women will them to be. Let a woman'ssociety be composed of men gently born and bred, and if she find themeither coarse or stupid, make answer to her--"You must have been coarseor stupid yourself. "

And if she demur to the _tu quoque_ as to a base and illogical form ofargument, which we will grant that it usually is, remind her that thecream of a pasturage may be pure and rich, but if it pass into the handsof a clumsy farm serving-maid, then shall the cheese made thereof beneither Roquefort nor Stilton, but rough and flavourless and uneatable, "like a Banbury cheese, nothing but paring. " Now, the influence of awoman's intelligence on the male intellects about her is as the churn tothe cream: it can either enrich and utilise it, or impoverish and wasteit. It is not too much to say that it almost invariably, in the presentdecadence of the salon and parrot-jabbering of the suffrage, has thelatter effect alone. 

 * * *

Humiliation is a guest that only comes to those who have made ready hisresting-place, and will give him a fair welcome. My father used to sayto me, "Child, when you grow to womanhood, whether you be rich or poor, gentle or simple, as the balance of your life may turn for or againstyou, remember always this one thing--that no one can disgrace you saveyourself. Dishonour is like the Aaron's Beard in the hedgerows, it canonly poison if it be plucked. " They call the belladonna Aaron's Beard inthe country, you know; and it is true that the cattle, simple as theyare, are never harmed by it; just because, though it is always in theirpath, they never stop and taste it. I think it may just be so with us;with any sort of evil. 

 * * *

"Every pleasure has its penalty. If a woman be celebrated, the worldalways thinks she must be wicked. If she's wise, she laughs. It is thebitter that you must take with the sweet, as you get the sorrel flavourwith the softness of the cream, in your soup à la Bonne Femme. But thecream would clog without it, and the combination is piquant. "

"Only to jaded palates, " I retorted; for I have often tasted the BonneFemme, and detest it. 

By the way, what exquisite irony lies in some of your kitchennomenclature!

 * * *

Once at a great house in the west I saw a gathering on the young lord'scoming of age. There were half the highest people in England there; anda little while before the tenantry went to their banquet in themarquees, the boy-peer and his guests were all out on the terraces andthe lawns. With him was a very noble deer-hound, whom he had owned forfour years. 

Suddenly the hound, Red Comyn, left his titled master, and plungedhead-foremost through the patrician crowd, and threw himself in wildraptures on to a poor, miserable, tattered, travelling cobbler, who haddared to creep in through the open gates and the happy crowds, hopingfor a broken crust. Red Comyn pounced on him, and caressed him, and laidmassive paws upon his shoulders, and gave him maddest welcome--this poorhungry man, in the midst of that aristocratic festival. 

The cobbler could scarcely speak awhile; but when he got his breath, hisarms were round the hound, and his eyes were wet with tears. 

"Please pardon him, my lord, " he said, all in a quiver and a tremble. "He was mine once from the time he was pupped for a whole two year; andhe loved me, poor soul, and he ha'n't forgot. He don't know no better, my lord--he's only a dog. "

No; he didn't know any better than to remember, and be faithful, and torecognise a friend, no matter in what woe or want. Ah, indeed, dogs arefar behind you!

For the credit of "the order, " it may be added that Red Comyn and thecobbler have parted no more, but dwell together still upon that younglord's lands. 

 * * *

Appearances are so and so, hence facts must be so and so likewise, isSociety's formula. This sounds mathematical and accurate; but as facts, nine times out of ten, belie appearances, the logic is very false. Thereis something, indeed, comically stupid in your satisfied belief in thesurface of any parliamentary or public facts that may be presented toyou, varnished out of all likeness to the truth by the suave periods ofwriter or speaker. But there is something tragically stupid about yourdogged acceptation of any social construction of a private life, damnedout of all possibility of redemption by the flippant deductions ofchatter-box or of slanderer. 

Now and then you poor humanities, who are always so dimly conscious thatyou are all lies to one another, get a glimpse of various truths fromsome cynical dead man's diary, or some statesman's secret papers. Butyou never are warned: you placidly continue greedily to gobble up, unexamined, the falsehoods of public men; and impudently to adjudicateon the unrevealed secrets of private lives. 

 * * *

You are given, very continually, to denouncing or lamenting the gradualencroachment of mob-rule. But, alas! whose fault, pray, is it thatbill-discounters dwell as lords in ancient castles; that money-lendersreign over old, time-honoured lands; that low-born hirelings dare toaddress their master with a grin and sneer, strong in the knowledge ofhis shameful secrets; and that the vile daughters of the populace arethroned in public places, made gorgeous with the jewels which, from theheirlooms of a great patriciate, have fallen to be the gew-gaws of afashionable infamy?

Ah, believe me, an aristocracy is a feudal fortress which, though it hasmerciless beleaguers in the Jacquerie of plebeian Envy, has yet no foeso deadly as its own internal traitor of Lost Dignity!

 * * *

"But ye dunna get good wage?" said the miner, with practical wisdom. 

"We doan't, " confessed the East Anglian, "we doan't. And that theerbotherin' machinery as do the threshin', and the reapin', and thesawin', and the mowin', hev a ruined us. See!--in old time, when groundwas frost-bit or water-soaked, the min threshed in-doors, in barns, andkep in work so. But now the machine, he dew all theer is to dew, and dewit up so quick. Theer's a many more min than theer be things to dew. Inwinter-time measter he doan't want half o' us; and we're just out o'labour; and we fall sick, cos o' naethin' to eat; and goes tewparish--able-bodied min strong as steers. "

"Machine's o' use i' mill-work, " suggested one of the northerners. 

"O' use! ay, o' coorse 'tis o' use--tew tha measters, " growled the EastAnglian. "But if ye warn't needed at yer mill cos the iron beast was aweavin' and a reelin' and a dewin' of it all, how'd yer feel? Wi' sixchildren, mebbe, biggest ony seven or eight, a crazin' ye for bread. Andye mayn't send 'em out, cos o' labour-laws, to pick up a halfpenny fortheerselves; and tha passon be all agin yer, cos ye warn't thrifty anddidn't gev a penny for the forrin blacks out o' the six shillin' a week?Would yer think iron beast wor o' use thin? or would yer damn him hard?"

 * * *

The poetic faculty--as you call the insight and the sympathy which feelsa divinity in all created things and a joy unutterable in the naturalbeauty of the earth--is lacking in the generality of women, notwithstanding their claims to the monopoly of emotion. If it be not, how comes it that women have given you no great poet since the days ofSappho?

It is women's deficiency in intellect, you will observe. Not a whit: itis women's deficiency in sympathy. 

The greatness of a poet lies in the universality of his sympathies. Andwomen are not sympathetic, because they are intensely self-centred. 

 * * *

All living things seemed to draw closer together in the perils andprivations of the winter, as you men do in the frost of your frights oryour sorrows. In summer--as in prosperity--every one is for himself, andis heedless of others because he needs nothing of them. 

 * * *

It was covered, from the lowest of its stones to the top of its peakedroof, with a gigantic rose-thorn. 

"Sure the noblest shrub as ever God have made, " would Ben say, lookingat its massive, cactus-like branches, with their red, waxen, tender-coloured berries. The cottage was very old, and the rose-thornwas the growth of centuries. Men's hands had never touched it. It hadstretched where it would, ungoverned, unhampered, unarrested. It had abeautiful dusky glow about it always, from its peculiar thickness andits blended hues; and in the chilly weather the little robin red-breastswould come and flutter into it, and screen themselves in its shelterfrom the cold, and make it rosier yet with the brightness of theirlittle ruddy throats. 

"Tha Christ-birds do allus seem safest like i' tha Christ-bush, " Benwould say softly, breaking off the larger half of his portion of oatencake, to crumble for the robins with the dawn. I never knew what hemeant, though I saw he had some soft, grave, old-world story in histhoughts, that made the rose-thorn and the red-breasts both sacred tohim. 

 * * *

"Ah, my dear, you little dream the ecstatic delight that exists inWaste, for the vulgarity of a mind that has never enjoyed Possession, till it comes to riot at one blow in Spoliation!"

"I do wish you would answer me plainly, " I said, sulkily, "without--without----"

"Epigrams!" she added, sharply; "I daresay you do, my dear. Epigrams arethe salts of life; but they wither up the grasses of foolishness, andnaturally the grasses hate to be sprinkled therewith. "

 * * *

We are ill appreciated, we cynics; on my honour if cynicism be not thehighest homage to Virtue there is, I should like to know what Virtuewants. We sigh over her absence, and we glorify her perfections. ButVirtue is always a trifle stuck-up, you know, and she is very difficultto please. 

She is always looking uneasily out of the "tail of her eye" at heropposition-leader Sin, and wondering why Sin dresses so well, and drinkssuch very good wine. We "cynics" tell her that under Sin's fine clothesthere is a breast cancer-eaten, and at the bottom of the wine there is abitter dreg called satiety; but Virtue does not much heed that; like thewoman she is, she only notes that Sin drives a pair of ponies in thesunshine, while she herself is often left to plod wearily through theeverlasting falling rain. So she dubs us "cynics" and leaves us--who canwonder if we won't follow her through the rain? Sin smiles so merrily ifshe makes us pay toll at the end; whereas Virtue--ah me, Virtue _will_find such virtue in frowning!

 * * *

Women always put me in mind of that bird of yours, the cuckoo. 

Your poetry and your platitudes have all combined to attach a mostsentimental value to cuckoos and women. All sorts of pretty phantasiessurround them both; the springtide of the year, the breath of earlyflowers, the verse of old dead poets, the scent of sweet summer rains, the light of bright dewy dawns--all these things you have mingled withthe thought of the cuckoo, till its first call through the woods inApril brings all these memories with it. Just so in like manner have youentangled your poetic ideals, your dreams of peace and purity, alldivinities of patience and of pity, all sweet saintly sacrifice andsorrow, with your ideas of women. 

Well--cuckoos and women, believe me, are very much like each other, andnot at all like your phantasy:--to get a well-feathered nest without thetrouble of making it, and to keep easily in it themselves, no matter whomay turn out in the cold, is both cuckoo and woman all over; and, whileyou quote Herrick and Wordsworth about them as you walk in the dewygreenwood, they are busy slaying the poor lonely fledglings, that theirown young may lie snug and warm. 

 * * *

"Then everybody is a hypocrite?"

"Not a bit, child. We always like what we haven't got; and people arequite honest very often in their professions, though they give the liedirect to them in their practice. People can talk themselves intobelieving that they believe anything. When the preacher discourses onthe excellence of holiness, he may have been a thoroughgoing scamp allhis life; but it don't follow he's dishonest, because he's so accustomedto talk goody-goody talk that it runs off his lips as the thread off areel----"

"But he must know he's a scamp?"

"Good gracious me, why should he? I have met a thousand scamps; but Inever met one who considered himself so. Self-knowledge isn't so common. Bless you, my dear, a man no more sees himself, as others see him, in amoral looking-glass, than he does in a mirror out of his dressing-box. Iknow a man who has forged bills, run off with his neighbour's wife, andleft sixty thousand pounds odd in debts behind him; but he only thinkshimself 'a victim of circumstances'--honestly thinks it too. A man neveris so honest as when he speaks well of himself. Men are always optimistswhen they look inwards, and pessimists when they look round them. "

I yawned a little; nothing is so pleasant, as I have known later, as todisplay your worldly wisdom in epigram and dissertation, but it is atrifle tedious to hear another person display theirs. 

When you talk yourself, you think how witty, how original, how acute youare; but when another does so, you are very apt to think only--What acrib from Rochefoucauld!

_TWO LITTLE WOODEN SHOES. _

Brussels has stones that are sermons, or rather that are quaint, touching, illuminated legends of the middle ages, which those who runmay read. 

Brussels is a gay little city that lies as bright within its girdle ofwoodland as any butterfly that rests upon moss. 

The city has its ways and wiles of Paris. It decks itself with white andgold. It has music under its trees and soldiers in its streets, andtroops marching and counter-marching along its sunny avenues. It hasblue and pink, and yellow and green, on its awnings and on itshouse-fronts. It has a merry open-air life on its pavements at littlemarble tables before little gay-coloured cafés. It has gilded balconiesand tossing flags and comic operas, and leisurely pleasure-seekers, andtries always to believe and make the world believe that it is Paris invery truth. 

But this is only the Brussels of the noblesse and the foreigners. 

There is a Brussels that is better than this--a Brussels that belongs tothe old burgher-life, to the artists and the craftsmen, to the mastermasons of Moyen-age, to the same spirit and soul that once filled thefree men of Ghent and the citizens of Bruges and the besieged of Leyden, and the blood of Egmont and of Horne. 

Down there by the water-side, where the old quaint walls lean over theyellow sluggish stream, and the green barrels of the Antwerp bargesswing against the dusky piles of the crumbling bridges:

In the grey square desolate courts of the old palaces, where incobwebbed galleries and silent chambers the Flemish tapestries drop topieces:

In the great populous square, where, above the clamorous and rushingcrowds, the majestic front of the Maison du Roi frowns against the sun, and the spires and pinnacles of the Burgomaster's gathering-halls towerinto the sky in all the fantastic luxuriance of Gothic fancy:

Under the vast shadowy wings of angels in the stillness of thecathedral, across whose sunny aisles some little child goes slowly allalone, laden with lilies for the Feast of the Assumption, till theirwhite glory hides its curly head:

In all strange quaint old-world niches withdrawn from men in silentgrass-grown corners, where a twelfth-century corbel holds a pot ofroses, or a Gothic arch yawns beneath a wool-warehouse, or a water-spoutwith a grinning faun's head laughs in the grim humour of the Moyen-ageabove the bent head of a young lace-worker;----

In all these, Brussels, although more worldly than her sisters of Ghentand Bruges, and far more worldly yet than her Teuton cousins of Freiburgand Nürnberg, Brussels is in her own way still like some monkish story, mixed up with the Romaunt of the Rose, or rather like some light Frenchvaudeville, all jests and smiles, illustrated in motley contrast withhelm and hauberk, cope and cowl, praying knights and fighting priests, winged griffins and nimbused saints, flame-breathing dragons andenamoured princes, all mingled together in the illuminated colours andthe heroical grotesque romance of the Middle Ages. 

And it was this side of the city that Bébée knew, and she loved it welland would not leave it for the market of the Madeleine. 

 * * *

It was a warm grey evening, the streets were full; there were blossomsin all the balconies, and gay colours in all the dresses. The old tinkerput his tools together and whispered to her--

"Bébée, as it is your feast-day, come and stroll in St. Hubert'sgallery, and I will buy you a horn of sugarplums or a ribbon, and we cansee the puppet-show afterwards, eh?"

But the children were waiting at home: she would not spend the eveningin the city; she only thought she would just kneel a moment in thecathedral and say a little prayer or two for a minute--the saints wereso good in giving her so many friends. 

There is something very touching in the Netherlander's relation with hisDeity. It is all very vague to him; a jumble of veneration andfamiliarity, of sanctity and profanity, without any thought of beingfamiliar, or any idea of being profane. 

There is a homely poetry, an innocent affectionateness, in itcharacteristic of the people. 

He talks to his good angel Michel, and to his friend that dear littleJesus, much as he would talk to the shoemaker over the way, or thecooper's child in the doorway. 

It is a very unreasonable, foolish, clumsy sort of religion, thistheology in wooden shoes; it is half grotesque, half pathetic; thegrandmothers pass it on to the grandchildren, as they pass the bowl ofpotatoes round the stove in the long winter nights; it is as silly aspossible, but it comforts them as they carry faggots over the frozencanals or wear their eyes blind over the squares of lace; and it has init the supreme pathos of a perfect confidence, of an utter childlike andundoubting trust. 

This had been taught to Bébée, and she went to sleep every night in thefirm belief that the sixteen little angels of the Flemish prayer keptwatch and ward over her bed. 

 * * *

She said her prayer, and thanked the saints for all their gifts andgoodness, her clasped hands against her silver shield; her basket on thepavement by her; abovehead the sunset rays streaming purple and crimsonand golden through the painted windows that are the wonder of the world. 

When her prayer was done she still kneeled there; her head thrown backto watch the light; her hands clasped still; and on her upturned facethe look that made the people say, "What does she see?--the angels orthe dead?"

She forgot everything. She forgot the cherries at home, and the childreneven. She was looking upward at the stories of the painted panes; shewas listening to the message of the dying sun-rays; she was feelingvaguely, wistfully, unutterably the tender beauty of the sacred placeand the awful wonder of the world in which she with her sixteen yearswas all alone, like a little blue cornflower amongst the wheat that goesfor grist, and the barley that makes men drunk. 

For she was alone, though she had so many friends. Quite alonesometimes, for God had been cruel to her, and had made her a larkwithout song. 

 * * *

He went leisurely, travelling up the bright Meuse river, and across themonotony of the plains, then green with wheat a foot high, and musicalwith the many bells of the Easter kermesses in the quaint old-worldvillages. 

There was something so novel, so sleepy, so harmless, so mediæval, inthe Flemish life, that it soothed him. He had been swimming all his lifein salt, sea-fed rapids; this sluggish, dull canal-water, mirroringbetween its rushes a life that had scarcely changed for centuries, had acharm for him. 

He stayed awhile in Antwerpen. The town is ugly and beautiful; it islike a dull, quaint, grès de Flandre jug, that has precious stones setinside its rim. It is a burgher ledger of bales and barrels, of sale andbarter, of loss and gain; but in the heart of it there are illuminatedleaves of missal vellum, all gold and colour, and monkish story andheroic ballad, that could only have been executed in the days when Artwas a religion. 

 * * *

"Oh--to-morrow perhaps, or next year--or when Fate fancies. 

"Or rather--when I choose, " he thought to himself, and let his eyes restwith a certain pleasure on the little feet that went beside him in thegrass, and the pretty neck that showed ever and again, as the frills ofher linen bodice were blown back by the wind, and her own quick motion. 

Bébée looked also up at him; he was very handsome, or seemed so to her, after the broad, blunt, characterless faces of the Brabantois aroundher. He walked with an easy grace, he was clad in picture-like velvets, he had a beautiful poetic head, and eyes like deep-brown waters, and aface like one of Jordaens' or Rembrandt's cavaliers in the gallerieswhere she used to steal in of a Sunday, and look up at the paintings, and dream of what that world could be in which those people had lived. 

"_You_ are of the people of Rubes' country, are you not?" she asked him. 

"Of what country, my dear?"

"Of the people that live in the gold frames, " said Bébée, quiteseriously. "In the galleries, you know. I know a charwoman that scrubsthe floors of the Arenenberg, and she lets me in sometimes to look--andyou are just like those great gentlemen in the gold frames, only youhave not a hawk and a sword, and they always have. I used to wonderwhere they came from, for they are not like any of us one bit, and thecharwoman--she is Lisa Dredel, and lives in the street of the Potd'Etain--always said, 'Dear heart, they all belong to Rubes' land--wenever see their like now-a-days. ' But _you_ must come out of Rubes'land--at least, I think so; do you not?"

He caught her meaning; he knew that Rubes was the homely abbreviation ofRubens, that all the Netherlanders used, and he guessed the idea thatwas reality to this little, lonely, fanciful mind. 

"Perhaps I do, " he answered her with a smile, for it was not worth hiswhile to disabuse her thoughts of any imagination that glorified him toher. "Do you not want to see Rubes' world, little one? To see the goldand the grandeur, and the glitter of it all?--never to toil or gettired?--always to move in a pageant?--always to live like the hawks inthe paintings you talk of, with silver bells hung round you, and a hoodall sewn with pearls?"

"No, " said Bébée, simply. "I should like to see it--just to see it, asone looks through a grating into the king's grapehouses here. But Ishould not like to live in it. I love my hut, and the starling, and thechickens--and what would the garden do without me?--and the children, and the old Annémie? I could not anyhow, anywhere be any happier than Iam. There is only one thing I wish. "

"And what is that?"

"To know something. Not to be so ignorant. Just look--I can read alittle, it is true; my hours, and the letters, and when Krebs brings ina newspaper I can read a little of it--not much. I know French well, because Antoine was French himself, and never did talk Flemish to me;and they, being Flemish, cannot, of course, read the newspapers at all, and so think it very wonderful indeed in me. But what I want is to knowthings, to know all about what _was_ before ever I was living. Ste. Gudule now--they say it was built hundreds of years before; and Rubesagain--they say he was a painter-king in Antwerpen before the oldestwoman like Annémie ever began to count time. I am sure books tell youall those things, because I see the students coming and going with them;and when I saw once the millions of books in the Rue de la Musée, Iasked the keeper what use they were for, and he said, 'to make men wise, my dear. ' But Bac the cobbler, who was with me, --it was a fête day--Bac, _he_ said, 'Do you not believe that, Bébée? they only muddle folk'sbrains; for one book tells them one thing, and another book another, andso on, till they are dazed with all the contrary lying; and if you see abookish man, be sure you see a very poor creature who could not hoe apatch, or kill a pig, or stitch an upper-leather, were it ever so. ' ButI do not believe that Bac said right. Did he?"

"I am not sure. On the whole, I think it is the truest remark onliterature I have ever heard, and one that shows great judgment in Bac. Well?"

"Well--sometimes, you know, " said Bébée, not understanding his answer, but pursuing her thoughts confidentially; "sometimes I talk like this tothe neighbours, and they laugh at me. Because Mère Krebs says that whenone knows how to spin, and sweep, and make bread, and say one's prayers, and milk a goat or a cow, it is all a woman wants to know this side ofheaven. But for me, I cannot help it--when I look at those windows inthe cathedral, or at those beautiful twisted little spires that are allover our Hôtel de Ville, I want to know who the men were that madethem--what they did and thought--how they looked and spoke--how theylearned to shape stone into leaves and grasses like that--how they couldimagine all those angel faces on the glass. When I go alone in the quiteearly morning or at night when it is still--sometimes in winter I haveto stay till it is dark over the lace--I hear their feet come after me, and they whisper to me close, 'Look what beautiful things we have done, Bébée, and you all forget us quite. We did what never will die, but ournames are as dead as the stones. ' And then I am so sorry for them andashamed. And I want to know more. Can you tell me?"

He looked at her earnestly; her eyes were shining, her cheeks were warm, her little mouth was tremulous with eagerness. 

"Did any one ever speak to you in that way?" he asked her. 

"No, " she answered him. "It comes into my head of itself. Sometimes Ithink the cathedral angels put it there. For the angels must be tired, you know; always pointing to God and always seeing men turn away. I usedto tell Antoine sometimes. But he used to shake his head and say that itwas no use thinking; most likely Ste. Gudule and St. Michael had set thechurch down in the night all ready made--why not? God made the trees, and they were more wonderful, he thought, for his part. And so perhapsthey are, but that is no answer. And I do _want_ to know. I want someone who will tell me, --and if you come out of Rubes' country as I think, no doubt you know everything, or remember it?"

He smiled. 

 * * *

The Sun came and touched the lichens of the roof into gold. 

Bébée smiled at it gaily as it rose above the tops of the trees, andshone on all the little villages scattered over the plains. 

"Ah, dear Sun!" she cried to it. "I am going to be wise. I am going intogreat Rubes' country. I am going to hear of the Past and the Future. Iam going to listen to what the Poets say. The swallows never would tellme anything; but now I shall know as much as they know. Are you not gladfor me, O Sun?"

The Sun came over the trees, and heard and said nothing. If he hadanswered at all he must have said:--

"The only time when a human soul is either wise or happy, is in that onesingle moment when the hour of my own shining or of the moon's beamingseems to that single soul to be past and present and future, to be atonce the creation and the end of all things. Faust knew that; so willyou. "

But the Sun shone on and held his peace. He sees all things ripen andfall. He can wait. He knows the end. It is always the same. 

He brings the fruit out of the peach-flower, and rounds it and touchesit into ruddiest rose and softest gold; but the sun knows well that thepeach must drop--whether into the basket to be eaten by kings, or on tothe turf to be eaten by ants. What matter which very much after all?

The Sun is not a cynic; he is only wise because he is Life and He isdeath, the creator and the corrupter of all things. 

 * * *

"And where are you going so fast, as if those wooden shoes of yours weresandals of mercury?"

"Mercury--is that a shoemaker?"

"No, my dear. He did a terrible bit of cobbling once, when he madeWoman. But he did not shoe her feet with swiftness that I know of; sheonly runs away to be run after, and if you do not pursue her, she comesback--always. "

Bébée did not understand at all. 

"I thought God made women?" she said, a little awe-stricken. 

 * * *

There is a dignity of peasants as well as of kings--the dignity thatcomes from all absence of effort, all freedom from pretence. Bébée hadthis, and she had more still than this: she had the absolute simplicityof childhood with her still. 

Some women have it still when they are fourscore. 

 * * *

Prosper Bar, who is a Calvinist, always says, "Do not mix up prayer andplay; you would not cut a gherkin in your honey;" but I do not know whyhe called prayer a gherkin, because it is sweet enough--sweeter thananything, I think. 

 * * *

There is not much change in the great Soignies woods. They are aisles onaisles of beautiful green trees, crossing and recrossing; tunnels ofdark foliage that look endless; long avenues of beech, of oak, of elm, or of fir, with the bracken and the brushwood growing dense between; adelicious forest growth everywhere, shady even at noon, and, by a littlepast midday, dusky as evening; with the forest fragrance, sweet anddewy, all about, and under the fern the stirring of wild game, and thewhite gleam of little rabbits, and the sound of the wings of birds. 

Soignies is not legend-haunted like the Black Forest, nor king-hauntedlike Fontainebleau, nor sovereign of two historic streams like the bravewoods of Heidelberg; nor wild and romantic, and broken with black rocks, and poetised by the shade of Jaques, and swept through by a perfectriver, like its neighbours of Ardennes; nor throned aloft on mightymountains like the majestic oak glades of the Swabian hills of theivory-carvers. 

Soignies is only a Flemish forest in a plain, throwing its shadow overcorn-fields and cattle-pastures, with no panorama beyond it and nowonders in its depth. But it is a fresh, bold, beautiful forest for allthat. 

It has only green leaves to give--green leaves always, league afterleague; but there is about it that vague mystery which all forests have, and this universe of leaves seems boundless, and Pan might dwell in it, and St. Hubert, and John Keats. 

 * * *

"I am going to learn to be very wise, dear, " she told them; "I shall nothave time to dance or to play. "

"But people are not merry when they are wise, Bébée, " said Franz, thebiggest boy. 

"Perhaps not, " said Bébée; "but one cannot be everything, you know, Franz. "

"But surely you would rather be merry than anything else?"

"I think there is something better, Franz. I am not sure; I want to findout; I will tell you when I know. "

"Who has put that into your head, Bébée?"

"The angels in the Cathedral, " she told them, and the children were awedand left her, and went away to play blindman's buff by themselves on thegrass by the swan's water. 

"But for all that the angels have said it, " said Franz to his sisters, "I cannot see what good it will be to her to be wise, if she will notcare any longer afterwards for almond gingerbread and currant cake. "

 * * *

To vice, innocence must always seem only a superior kind of chicanery. 

 * * *

"Ay dear; when the frost kills your brave rosebush, root and bud, do youthink of the thorns that pricked you, or only of the fair sweet-smellingthings that flowered all your summer?"

 * * *

Flowers belong to fairyland; the flowers and the birds, and thebutterflies are all that the world has kept of its golden age; the onlyperfectly beautiful things on earth, joyous, innocent, half divine, useless, say they who are wiser than God. 

 * * *

When the day was done, Bébée gave a quick sigh as she looked across thesquare. She had so wanted to tell him that she was not ungrateful, andshe had a little moss-rose ready, with a sprig of sweetbriar, and a tinyspray of maiden-hair fern that grew under the willows, which she hadkept covered up with a leaf of sycamore all the day long. 

No one would have it now. 

The child went out of the place sadly, as the carillon rang. There wasonly the moss-rose in her basket, and the red and white currants thathad been given her for her dinner. 

She went along the twisting, many-coloured, quaintly-fashioned streets, till she came to the water-side. 

It is very ancient, there still; there are all manner of old buildings, black and brown and grey, peaked roofs, gabled windows, arched doors, crumbling bridges, twisted galleries leaning to touch the dark surfaceof the canal, dusky wharves crowded with barrels, and bales, and cattle, and timber, and all the various freightage that the good ships come andgo with all the year round, to and from the Zuyder Zee, and the Balticwater, and the wild Northumbrian shores, and the iron-bound Scottishheadlands, and the pretty grey Norman seaports, and the white sandydunes of Holland, with the toy towns and the straight poplar-trees. 

Bébée was fond of watching the brigs and barges, that looked so big toher, with their national flags flying, and their tall masts standingthick as grass, and their tawny sails flapping in the wind, and aboutthem the sweet, strong smell of that strange, unknown thing, the sea. 

Sometimes the sailors would talk with her; sometimes some old salt, sitting astride of a cask, would tell her a mariner's tale of far-awaylands and mysteries of the deep; sometimes some curly-headed cabin-boywould give her a shell or a plume of seaweed, and try and make herunderstand what the wonderful wild water was like, which was not quietand sluggish and dusky as this canal was, but was for ever changing andmoving, and curling and leaping, and making itself now blue as her eyes, now black as that thunder-cloud, now white as the snow that the winterwind tossed, now pearl-hued and opaline as the convolvulus that blew inher own garden. 

And Bébée would listen, with the shell in her lap, and try tounderstand, and gaze at the ships and then at the sky beyond them, andtry to figure to herself those strange countries, to which these shipswere always going, and saw in fancy all the blossoming orchard provinceof green France, and all the fir-clothed hills and rushing rivers of thesnow-locked Swedish shore, and saw too, doubtless, many lands that hadno place at all except in dreamland, and were more beautiful even thanthe beauty of the earth, as poets' countries are, to their own sorrow, oftentimes. 

But this dull day Bébée did not go down upon the wharf; she did not wantthe sailor's tales; she saw the masts and the bits of bunting thatstreamed from them, and they made her restless, which they had neverdone before. Instead she went in at a dark old door and climbed up asteep staircase that went up and up and up, as though she were mountingSte. Gudule's belfry towers; and at the top of it entered a littlechamber in the roof, where one square unglazed hole that served forlight looked out upon the canal, with all its crowded craft, from thedainty schooner yacht, fresh as gilding and holystone could make her, that was running for pleasure to the Scheldt, to the rude, clumsycoal-barge, black as night, that bore the rough diamonds of Belgium tothe snow-buried roofs of Christiania and Stromsöon. 

In the little dark attic there was a very old woman in a red petticoatand a high cap, who sat against the window, and pricked out lacepatterns with a pin on thick paper. She was eighty-five years old, andcould hardly keep body and soul together. 

Bébée, running to her, kissed her. 

"O mother Annémie, look here! Beautiful red and white currants, and aroll; I saved them for you. They are the first currants we have seenthis year. Me? oh, for me, I have eaten more than are good! You know Ipick fruit like a sparrow, always. Dear mother Annémie, are you better?Are you quite sure you are better to-day?"

The little old withered woman, brown as a walnut and meagre as a rush, took the currants, and smiled with a childish glee, and began to eatthem, blessing the child with each crumb she broke off the bread. 

"Why had you not a grandmother of your own, my little one?" she mumbled. "How good you would have been to her, Bébée?"

"Yes, " said Bébée seriously, but her mind could not grasp the idea. Itwas easier for her to believe the fanciful lily-parentage of Antoine'sstories. "How much work have you done, Annémie? Oh, all that? all that?But there is enough for a week. You work too early and too late, youdear Annémie. "

"Nay, Bébée, when one has to get one's bread, that cannot be. But I amafraid my eyes are failing. That rose now, is it well done?"

"Beautifully done. Would the Baës take them if they were not? You knowhe is one that cuts every centime in four pieces. "

"Ah! sharp enough, sharp enough--that is true. But I am always afraid ofmy eyes. I do not see the flags out there so well as I used to do. "

"Because the sun is so bright, Annémie; that is all. I myself, when Ihave been sitting all day in the Place in the light, the flowers lookpale to me. And you know it is not age with _me_, Annémie?"

The old woman and the young girl laughed together at that droll idea. 

"You have a merry heart, dear little one, " said old Annémie. "The saintskeep it to you always. "

"May I tidy the room a little?"

"To be sure, dear, and thank you too. I have not much time, you see; andsomehow my back aches badly when I stoop. "

"And it is so damp here for you, over all that water!" said Bébée, asshe swept and dusted and set to rights the tiny place, and put in alittle broken pot a few sprays of honeysuckle and rosemary that she hadbrought with her. "It is so damp here. You should have come and lived inmy hut with me, Annémie, and sat out under the vine all day, and lookedafter the chickens for me when I was in the town. They are suchmischievous little souls; as soon as my back is turned one or other issure to push through the roof, and get out amongst the flower-beds. Willyou never change your mind, and live with me, Annémie? I am sure youwould be happy, and the starling says your name quite plain, and he issuch a funny bird to talk to; you never would tire of him. Will younever come? It is so bright there, and green and sweet-smelling, and tothink you never even have seen it!--and the swans and all, --it is ashame. "

"No, dear, " said old Annémie, eating her last bunch of currants. "Youhave said so so often, and you are good and mean it, that I know. But Icould not leave the water. It would kill me. 

"Out of this window you know I saw my Jeannot's brig goaway--away--away--till the masts were lost in the mists. Going with ironto Norway; the Fleur d'Epine of this town, a good ship, and a sure, andhe her mate; and as proud as might be, and with a little blest Mary inlead round his throat. 

"She was to be back in port in eight months bringing timber. Eightmonths--that brought Easter time. 

"But she never came. Never, never, never, you know. 

"I sat here watching them come and go, and my child sickened and died, and the summer passed, and the autumn, and all the while Ilooked--looked--looked; for the brigs are all much alike; only his Ialways saw as soon as she hove in sight because he tied a hank of flaxto her mizzen mast; and when he was home safe and sound I spun the hankinto hose for him; that was a fancy of his, and for eleven voyages, oneon another, he had never missed to tie the flax nor I to spin the hose. 

"But the hank of flax I never saw this time; nor the brave brig; nor mygood man with his sunny blue eyes. 

"Only one day in winter, when the great blocks of ice were smashinghither and thither, a coaster came in and brought tidings of how off inthe Danish waters they had come on a waterlogged brig, and had boardedher, and had found her empty, and her hull riven in two, and her crewall drowned and dead beyond any manner of doubt. And on her stern therewas her name painted white, the Fleur d'Epine, of Brussels, as plain asname could be; and that was all we ever knew--what evil had struck her, or how they had perished, nobody ever told. 

"Only the coaster brought that bit of beam away, with the Fleur d'Epinewrit clear upon it. 

"But you see I never _know_ my man is dead. 

"Any day--who can say?--any of those ships may bring him aboard of her, and he may leap out on the wharf there, and come running up the stairsas he used to do, and cry, in his merry voice, 'Annémie, Annémie, hereis more flax to spin, here is more hose to weave!' For that was alwayshis homeward word; no matter whether he had had fair weather or foul, healways knotted the flax to his mast-head. 

"So you see, dear, I could not leave here. For what if he came and foundme away? He would say it was an odd fashion of mourning for him. 

"And I could not do without the window, you know. I can watch all thebrigs come in; and I can smell the shipping smell that I have loved allthe days of my life; and I can see the lads heaving, and climbing, andfurling, and mending their bits of canvas, and hauling their flags upand down. 

"And then who can say?--the sea never took him, I think--I think I shallhear his voice before I die. 

"For they do say that God is good. "

Bébée sweeping very noiselessly, listened, and her eyes grew wistful andwondering. She had heard the story a thousand times; always in differentwords, but always the same little tale, and she knew how old Annémie wasdeaf to all the bells that tolled the time, and blind to all thewhiteness of her hair, and all the wrinkles of her face, and onlythought of her sea-slain lover as he had been in the days of her youth. 

 * * *

When we suffer very much ourselves, anything that smiles in the sunseems cruel--a child, a bird, a dragonfly--nay, even a flutteringribbon, or a spear-grass that waves in the wind. 

 * * *

Bébée, whose religion was the sweetest and vaguest mingling of Pagan andChristian myths, and whose faith in fairies and in saints was exactlyequal in strength and in ignorance--Bébée filled the delf pot anewcarefully, then knelt down on the turf in that little green corner, andprayed in devout hopeful childish good faith to the awful unknown Powerswho were to her only as gentle guides and kindly playmates. 

Was she too familiar with the Holy Mother?

She was almost fearful that she was; but then the Holy Mother lovedflowers so well, Bébée could not feel aloof from her, nor be afraid. 

"When one cuts the best blossoms for her, and tries to be good, andnever tells a lie, " thought Bébée, "I am quite sure, as she loves thelilies, that she will never altogether forget me. "

 * * *

The loveliest love is that which dreams high above all storms, unsoiledby all burdens; but, perhaps, the strongest love is that which, whilstit adores, drags its feet through mire, and burns its brow in heat forthe thing beloved. 

 * * *

It is, perhaps, the most beautiful square in all Northern Europe, withits black timbers and gilded carvings, and blazoned windows, andmajestic scutcheons, and fantastic pinnacles. This Bébée did not know, but she loved it, and she sat resolutely in front of the Broodhuis, selling her flowers, smiling, chatting, helping the old woman, countingher little gains, eating her bit of bread at noon-day like any othermarket girl; but, at times, glancing up to the stately towers and theblue sky, with a look on her face that made the old tinker and cobblerwhisper together--"What does she see there?--the dead people or theangels?"

The truth was that even Bébée herself did not know very surely what shesaw--something that was still nearer to her than even this kindly crowdthat loved her. That was all she could have said had anybody asked her. 

But none did. 

No one wanted to hear what the dead said; and for the angels, the tinkerand the cobbler were of opinion that one had only too much of themsculptured about everywhere, and shining on all the casements--inreverence be it spoken of course. 

_FAME. _

"There is no soul in them, " he muttered, and he set down his lamp andfrowned; a sullen mechanical art made him angered like an insult toheaven; and these were soulless; their drawing was fine, their anatomyfaultless, their proportions and perspective excellent; but there allmerit ended. They were worse than faulty--they were commonplace. Thereis no sin in Art so deadly as that. 

 * * *

He had been only a poor lad, a coppersmith's son, here in Munich; oneamong many, and beaten and cursed at home very often for mooning overfolly when others were hard at work. But he had minded neither curse norblow. He had always said to himself, "I am a painter. " Whilst camps weresoaked with blood and echoing only the trumpets of war, he had only seenthe sweet divine smile of Art. He had gone barefoot to Italy for love ofit, and had studied, and laboured, and worshipped, and been full of thefever of great effort and content with the sublime peace of consciouspower. He had believed in himself: it is much. But it is not all. Asyears had slid away and the world of men would not believe in him, thisnoble faith in himself grew a weary and bitter thing. One shadow climbedthe hills of the long years with him and was always by his side: thisconstant companion was Failure. 

Fame is very capricious, but Failure is seldom inconstant. Where it onceclings, there it tarries. 

 * * *

It was a brilliant and gay day in Munich. It was the beginning of aBavarian summer, with the great plain like a sea of grass with flowersfor its foam, and the distant Alps of Tyrol and Vorarlberg clearly seenin warm, transparent, buoyant weather. 

Down by the winding ways of the river there were birch and beechenthickets in glory of leaf; big water-lilies spread their white beautyagainst the old black timbers of the water-mills; and in the quaint, ancient places of the old streets, under the gables and beams, pots ofbasil, and strings of green pease, and baskets of sweet-smellinggillyflowers and other fragrant old-fashioned things, blossomed whereverthere was a breadth of blue sky over them or a maiden's hand within;whilst above the towers and steeples, above the clanging bells of theDomkirche and the melon-shaped crest of the Frauenkirche, and all thecupolas and spires and minarets in which the city abounds, the pigeonswent whirling and wheeling from five at sunrise to seven of sunset, flocks of grey and blue and black and white, happy as only birds can be, and as only birds can be when they are doves of Venice or of Munich, with all the city's hearths and homes for their granaries, and with thesun and the clouds for their royal estate. 

In the wide, dull new town it was dusty and hot; the big squares wereempty and garish-looking; the blistering frescoes on the buildings weregaudy and out of place; the porticoes and friezes were naked andstaring, and wanted all that belongs to them in Italy. All the deep, intense shadows, the sultry air, the sense of immeasurable space and ofunending light, the half-naked figures graceful as a plume of maize, thevast projecting roofs, the spouts of tossing water, the brown barefootstraw-plaiter passing in a broad path of sunshine, the old bronze lampabove the painted shrine, the gateway framing the ethereal landscape ofamethystine horizons and silvery olive ways--they want all these, dothese classic porticoes and pediments of Italy, and they seem to stare, conscious of a discordance and a lack of harmony in the German air. Butin the old town there is beauty still; in the timbered house-fronts, inthe barred and sculptured casements, in the mighty gables, in the gildedand pictured signs, in the sunburnt walls, in the grey churches, in thefurriers' stalls, in the toysellers' workshops, in the beetlingfortresses, in the picturesque waysides, here is the old Munich of theMinnesingers and master masons, of the burghers and the _burschen_, ofthe Schefflertanz, and of the merry Christchild Fair. And old Munichkeeps all to itself, whether with winter snow on its eaves, or summerleaves in its lattices; and here the maidens still wear colouredkerchiefs on their heads and clattering shoes on their feet; and herethe students still look like etchings for old ballads, with long hair ontheir shoulders and grey cloaks worn jauntily; and here something of theodour and aspect of the Middle Ages lingers as about an illuminated rollof vellum that has lain long put away and forgotten in a desk, withfaded rose-leaves and a miniature that has no name. 

The Munich of builder-king Ludwig is grand, no doubt, and tedious andutterly out of place, with mountains of marble and granite, and acres ofcanvas more or less divine, and vast straight streets that make one weepfrom weariness, and frescoed walls with nude women that seem to shiverin the bitter Alpine winds; it is great, no doubt, but ponderouslyunlovely, like the bronze Bavaria that looks over the plain, who canhold six men in her head, but can never get fire in her eyes normeaning in her mouth--clumsy Athenæ-Artemis that she is. 

New Munich, striving to be Athens or Rome, is monotonous and tiresome, but old Munich is quaint and humble, and historical and romancical, withits wooden pavements under foot, and its clouds of doves above head;indeed, has so much beauty of its own, like any old painted Missal orgolden goblet of the _moyen âge_, that it seems incredible to think thatany man could ever have had the heart to send the hammers of masonsagainst it, and set up bald walls of plaster in its stead. Wandering inold Munich--there is not much of it left, alas!--is like reading ablack-letter ballad about Henry the Lion or Kaiser Max; it has sombrenooks and corners, bright gleams of stained casements, bold oriels, andsculptured shields, arcades and arches, towers and turrets, light andshade, harmony and irregularity, all, in a word, that old cities have, and old Teutonic cities beyond all others; and when the Metzgersprung isin full riot round the Marienplatz, or on Corpus Christi day, when theKing and the Court and the Church, the guilds and the senate and themagistracy, all go humbly through the flower-strewn streets, it is easyto forget the present and to think that one is still in the old dayswith the monks, who gave their name to it, tranquil in their work-roomsand the sound of battle all over the lands around them. 

It was the Corpus Christi day in Munich now, and the whole city, the newand the old, had hung itself with garlands and draperies, with picturesand evergreens, with flags and tapestries, and the grand procession hadpassed to and from the church, and the archbishop had blessed thepeople, and the king had bared his handsome head to the sun and the HolyGhost, and it was all over for the year, and the people were all happyand satisfied and sure that God was with them and their town; especiallythe people of the old quarters, who most loved and clung to theseceremonials and feasts; good God-fearing families, labouring hard, living honestly and wholesomely, gay also in a quiet, mirthful, innocentfashion--much such people as their forefathers were before them, in dayswhen Gustavus Adolphus called their city the golden saddle on the leanhorse. 

The lean horse, by which he meant the sterile plains, which yield littleexcept hay, looks rich with verdure in the mellow afternoon light, whenmidsummer is come, and the whole populace, men, women, and children, onSundays and feast-days pour out of the city gates eagerly to their ownlittle festivities under the cherry-trees of the little blue and whitecoffee-houses along the course of the river, when the beanflowers are inbloom. For out of the old city you go easily beyond the walls to thegrey glacier water of "Isar rolling rapidly, " not red with blood now asafter Hohenlinden, but brilliant and boisterous always, with washerwomenleaning over it with bare arms, and dogs wading where rushes and damsbreak the current, and the hay blowing breast-high along the banks, andthe students chasing the girls through it, and every now and then uponthe wind the music of a guitar, light and dancing, or sad and slow, according as goes the heart of the player that tunes it. At this seasonBavaria grows green, and all is fresh and radiant. Outside the town allthe country is a sheet of cherry-blossom and of clover. Night and day, carts full of merrymakers rattle out under the alders to the dancingplaces amongst the pastures, or to the _Sommerfrischen_ of their countryfriends. Whoever has a kreuzer to spend will have a draft of beer and awhiff of the lilac-scented air, and the old will sit down and smoketheir painted pipes under the eaves of their favourite _Gasthof_, andthe young will roam with their best-loved maidens through the shadows ofthe Anlagen, or still farther on under the high beech-trees ofGrosshesslohe. 

_MOTHS. _

The ear has its ecstasy as have other senses. 

 * * *

As there is love without dominion, so there is dominion without love. 

 * * *

When Fame stands by us all alone, she is an angel clad in light andstrength; but when Love touches her she drops her sword, and fades away, ghostlike and ashamed. 

 * * *

Society only thought her--unamiable. True, she never said an unkindthing, or did one; she never hurt man or woman; she was generous to afault; and to aid even people she despised would give herself troubleunending. But these are serious, simple qualities which do not showmuch, and are soon forgotten by those who benefit from them. Had shelaughed more, danced more, taken more kindly to the fools and theirfollies, she might have been acid of tongue and niggard of sympathy; theworld would have thought her much more amiable. 

 * * *

"If she would only listen to me!" thought her mother, in the superiorwisdom of her popular little life. "If she would only kiss a few womenin the morning, and flirt with a few men in the evening, it would sether all right with them in a month. It is no use doing good to anybody;they only hate you for it. You have seen them in their straits; it islike seeing them without their wig or their teeth; they never forgiveit. But to be pleasant, always to be pleasant, that is the thing. Andafter all it costs nothing. "

 * * *

Marriage, as our world sees it, is simply a convenience; a somewhatclumsy contrivance to tide over a social difficulty. 

 * * *

A sin! did the world know of such a thing? Hardly. Now and then, forsake of its traditions, the world took some hapless boy, or some stillyet unhappier woman, and pilloried one of them, and drove them out undera shower of stones, selecting them by caprice, persecuting them withoutjustice, slaying them because they were friendless. But that was all. For the most part sin was an obsolete thing, archaic and unheard of. 

 * * *

Music is not a science, any more than poetry is. It is a sublimeinstinct, like genius of all kinds. 

 * * *

Charity in various guises is an intruder the poor see often; butcourtesy and delicacy are visitors with which they are seldom honoured. 

 * * *

There is no shame more bitter to endure than to despise oneself. It isharder to keep true to high laws and pure instincts in modern societythan it was in the days of martyrdom. 

 * * *

One weeps for the death of children, but perhaps the change of them intocallous men and women is a sadder change to see after all. 

 * * *

Honour is an old-world thing, but it smells sweet to those in whose handit is strong. 

 * * *

Young lives are tossed upon the stream of life like rose-leaves on afast-running river, and the rose-leaves are blamed if the river be toostrong and too swift for them and they perish. It is the fault of therose-leaves. 

 * * *

Every pretty woman should be a flirt, every clever woman a politician;the aim, the animus, the intrigue, the rivalry which accompany each ofthese pursuits make the salt without which the great dinner weretasteless. 

 * * *

In these old Austrian towns the churches are always very reverentplaces; dark and tranquil; overladen, indeed, with ornament and image, but too full of shadow for these to much offend; there is the scent ofcenturies of incense; the walls are yellow with the damp of ages. Mountain suzerains and bold reiters, whose deeds are still sung of intwilight to the zither, deep beneath the moss-grown pavement; theirshields and crowns are worn flat to the stone they were embossed on bythe passing feet of generations of worshippers. High above in thedarkness there is always some colossal carved Christs. Through thehalf-opened iron-studded door there is always the smell of pinewood, thegleam of water, the greenness of Alpine grass; often, too, there is thesilvery falling of rain, and the fresh smell of it comes through thechurch by whose black benches and dim lamps there will be sure to besome old bent woman praying. 

 * * *

The moths will eat all that fine delicate feeling away, little bylittle; the moths of the world will eat the unselfishness first, andthen the innocence, and then the honesty, and then the decency; no onewill see them eating, no one will see the havoc being wrought, butlittle by little the fine fabric will go, and in its place will be dust. Ah, the pity of it! The pity of it! The webs come out of the greatweaver's loom lovely enough, but the moths of the world eat them all. 

 * * *

She had five hundred dear friends, but this one she was really fond of;that is to say, she never said anything bad of her, and only laughed ather good-naturedly when she had left a room; and this abstinence is asstrong a mark of sincerity now-a-days as dying for another used to be inthe old days of strong feeling and the foolish expression of them. 

 * * *

Gratitude is such an unpleasant quality, you know; there is always agrudge behind it!

 * * *

The richest soil always bears the rankest mushrooms: France is alwaysbearing mushrooms. 

 * * *

Position, she thought, was the only thing that, like old wine or oakfurniture, improved with years. 

 * * *

Position is a pillory: sometimes they pelt one with rose-leaves, andsometimes with rotten eggs, but one is for ever in the pillory!

 * * *

We are too afraid of death: that fear is the shame of Christianity. 

 * * *

He never could prevail on his vanity to break with her, lest men shouldthink she had broken with him. 

 * * *

She would go grandly to the guillotine, but she will never understandher own times. She has dignity; we have not a scrap; we have forgottenwhat it was like; we go into a passion at the amount of our bills; weplay and never pay; we smoke and we wrangle; we laugh loud, much tooloud; we inspire nothing unless, now and then, a bad war or a disastrousspeculation; we live showily, noisily, meanly, gaudily. 

 * * *

Big brains do not easily hold trifles . . . Little packets of starch thatthis world thinks are the staff of life. 

 * * *

Pehl, like a young girl, is prettiest in the morning. Pehl is calm andsedate, and simple and decorous. Pehl is like some tender, fair, wholesome yet patrician beauty, like the pretty aristocratic Charlottein Kaulbach's picture, who cuts the bread-and-butter, yet looks apatrician. Pehl has nothing of the _belle petite_, like her sister ofBaden; nothing of the titled _cocadetta_, like her cousin of Monaco;Pehl does not gamble or riot or conduct herself madly in any way; she isa little old-fashioned still in a courtly way; she has a littlerusticity still in her elegant manners; she is like the noble dames ofthe past ages, who were so high of rank and so proud of habit, yet werenot above the distilling-room and the spinning-wheel; who were quiet, serious, sweet, and smelt of the rose-leaves with which they filledtheir big jars. 

 * * *

The pity of modern Society is that all its habits make as effectual adisguise morally as our domino in carnival does physically. Everybodylooks just like everybody else. Perhaps, as under the domino, so underthe appearance, there may be great nobility or great deformity; but alllook alike. Were Socrates amongst us, he would only look like a clubbore; and were there Messalina, she would only look--well--look muchlike our Duchesse Jeunne!

 * * *

She did not know that from these swamps of flattery, intrigue, envy, rivalry, and emulation there rises a miasma which scarcely thehealthiest lungs can withstand. She did not know that though many may beindifferent to the tempting of men, few indeed are impenetrable to thesmile and the sneer of women; that to live your own life in the midst ofthe world is a harder thing than it was of old to withdraw to theThebaid; that to risk "looking strange" requires a courage perhapscooler and higher than the soldier's or the saint's; and that to standaway from the contact and custom of your "set" is a harder and sternerwork than it was of old to go into the sanctuary of La Trappe or PortRoyal. 

 * * *

The world has grown apathetic and purblind. Critics rage and quarrelbefore a canvas, but the nations do not care; quarries of marble arehewn into various shapes, and the throngs gape before them and areindifferent; writers are so many that their writings blend in the publicmind in a confused phantasmagoria, where the colours run into oneanother, and the lines are all waved and indistinct; the singer alonestill keeps the old magic power, "The beauty that was Athens, once theglory that was Rome's, " still holds the divine Cadmus, still sways thevast thronged auditorium, till the myriads hold their breath like littlechildren in delight and awe. The great singer alone has the magic swayof fame; and if he close his lips, "The gaiety of nations is eclipsed, "and the world seems empty and silent, like a wood in which the birds areall dead. 

_IN A WINTER CITY. _

The Duc found no topic that suited her. It was the Corso di Gala thatafternoon, would she not go?

No: her horses hated masks, and she hated noise. 

The Veglione on Sunday--would she not go to that?

No: those things were well enough in the days of Philippe d'Orléans, whoinvented them, but they were only now as stupid as they were vulgar;anybody was let in for five francs. 

Did she like the new weekly journal that was electrifying Paris?

No: she could see nothing in it: there was no wit now-a-days--onlypersonalities, which grew more gross every year. 

The Duc urged that personalities were as old as Cratinus andArchilochus, and that five hundred years before Christ the satires ofHipponax drove Bupalus to hang himself. 

She answered that a bad thing was not the better for being old. 

People were talking of a clever English novel translated everywhere, called "In a Hothouse, " the hothouse being society--had she seen it?

No: what was the use of reading novels of society by people who neverhad been in it? The last English "society" novel she had read haddescribed a cabinet minister in London as going to a Drawing-room inthe crowd, with everybody else, instead of by the _petite entrée_; theywere always full of such blunders. 

Had she read the new French story "Le Bal de Mademoiselle Bibi?"

No: she had heard too much of it; it made you almost wish for aCensorship of the Press. 

The Duc agreed that literature was terribly but truly described as "untas d'ordures soigneusement enveloppé. "

She said that the "tas d'ordures" without the envelope was sufficientfor popularity, but that the literature of any age was not to beblamed--it was only a natural growth, like a mushroom; if the soil werenoxious, the fungus was bad. 

The Duc wondered what a censorship would let pass if there were one. 

She said that when there was one it had let pass Crebillon, theChevalier Le Clos, and the "Bijoux Indiscrets;" it had proscribedMarmontel, Helvetius, and Lanjuinais. She did not know how one man couldbe expected to be wiser than all his generation. 

The Duc admired some majolica she had purchased. 

She said she began to think that majolica was a false taste; themetallic lustre was fine, but how clumsy the forms! one might be ledastray by too great love of old work. 

The Duc praised a magnificent Sèvres panel, just painted by Riocreux andGoupil, and given to her by Princess Olga on the New Year. 

She said it was well done, but what charm was there in it? All theirmodern iron and zinc colours, and hydrate of aluminum, and oxide ofchromium, and purple of Cassius, and all the rest of it, never gaveone-tenth the charm of those old painters who had only green greys anddull blues and tawny yellows, and never could get any kind of redwhatever; Olga had meant to please her, but she, for her part, wouldmuch sooner have had a little panel of Abruzzi, with all the holes anddefects in the pottery, and a brown contadina for a Madonna; there wassome interest in that, --there was no interest in that gorgeous landscapeand those brilliant hunting figures. 

The Duc bore all the contradictions with imperturbable serenity andurbanity, smiled to himself, and bowed himself out in perfectgood-humour. 

"Tout va bien, " he thought to himself; "Miladi must be very much in loveto be so cross. "

The Duc's personal experience amongst ladies had made him of opinionthat love did not improve the temper. 

 * * *

"In love!" she echoed, with less languor and more of impetuosity thanshe had ever displayed, "are you ever in love, any of you, ever? Youhave senses and vanity and an inordinate fear of not being in thefashion--and so you take your lovers as you drink your stimulants andwear your wigs and tie your skirts back--because everybody else does it, and not to do it is to be odd, or prudish, or something you would hateto be called. Love! it is an unknown thing to you all. You have a sortof miserable hectic passion, perhaps, that is a drug you take as youtake chlorodyne--just to excite you and make your jaded nerves a littlealive again, and yet you are such cowards that you have not even thecourage of passion, but label your drug Friendship, and beg Society toobserve that you only keep it for family uses like arnica or likeglycerine. You want notoriety; you want to indulge your fancies, and yetkeep your place in the world. You like to drag a young man about by achain, as if he were the dancing monkey that you depended upon forsubsistence. You like other women to see that you are not too _passée_to be every whit as improper as if you were twenty. You like toadvertise your successes as it were with drum and trumpet, because ifyou did not, people might begin to doubt that you had any. You like allthat, and you like to feel there is nothing you do not know and nolength you have not gone, and so you ring all the changes on all thevarieties of intrigue and sensuality, and go over the gamut of sicklysentiment and nauseous license as an orchestra tunes its strings upevery night! That is what all you people call love; I am content enoughto have no knowledge of it. "

 * * *

"I would rather have the crudest original thing than the mere galvanismof the corpse of a dead genius. I would give a thousand paintings byFroment, Damousse, or any of the finest living artists of Sèvres, forone piece by old Van der Meer of Delft; but I would prefer a painting onSèvres done yesterday by Froment or Damousse, or even any much lessfamous worker, provided only it had originality in it, to the bestreproduction of a Van der Meer that modern manufacturers could produce. "

"I think you are right; but I fear our old pottery-painters were notvery original. They copied from the pictures and engravings of Mantegna, Raffaelle, Marcantonio, Marco di Ravenna, Beatricius, and a score ofothers. "

"The application was original, and the sentiment they brought to it. Those old artists put so much heart into their work. "

"Because when they painted a _stemma_ on the glaze they had still feudalfaith in nobility, and when they painted a Madonna or Ecce Homo they hadstill childlike belief in divinity. What does the pottery-painter ofto-day care for the coat of arms or the religious subject he may becommissioned to execute for a dinner service or a chapel? It may beadmirable painting--if you give a very high price--but it will still beonly manufacture. "

"Then what pleasant lives those pottery painters of the early days musthave led! They were never long stationary. They wandered aboutdecorating at their fancy, now here and now there; now a vase for apharmacy, and now a stove for a king. You find German names on Italianware, and Italian names on Flemish grès; the Nuremberger would work inVenice, the Dutchman would work in Rouen. Sometimes, however, they wereaccused of sorcery; the great potter, Hans Kraut, you remember, wasfeared by his townsmen as possessed by the devil, and was buriedignominiously outside the gates, in his nook of the Black Forest. But onthe whole they were happy, no doubt; men of simple habits and of worthylives. "

"You care for art yourself, M. Della Rocca?"

There came a gleam of interest in her handsome, languid, hazel eyes, asshe turned them upon him. 

"Every Italian does, " he answered her. "I do not think we are ever, or Ithink, if ever, very seldom connoisseurs in the way that your Englishmanor Frenchman is so. We are never very learned as to styles and dates; wecannot boast the huckster's eye of the northern bric-à-brac hunter; itis quite another thing with us; we love art as children their nurses'tales and cradle-songs. It is a familiar affection with us, andaffection is never very analytical. The Robbia over the chapel-door, theapostle-pot that the men in the stables drink out of; the Sodoma or theBeato Angelico that hangs before our eyes daily as we dine; the oldbronze _secchia_ that we wash our hands in as boys in the Loggia--theseare all so homely and dear to us that we grow up with a love for themall as natural as our love for our mothers. You will say the children ofall rich people see beautiful and ancient things from their birth: sothey do, but not _as_ we see them. Here they are too often degraded tothe basest household uses, and made no more account of than the dustwhich gathers on them; but that very neglect of them makes them the morekindred to us. Art elsewhere is the guest of the salon--with us she isthe playmate of the infant and the serving-maid of the peasant: themules may drink from an Etruscan sarcophagus, and the pigeons be fedfrom a _patina_ of the twelfth century. "

 * * *

Taste, mon cher Della Rocca, is the only sure guarantee in thesematters. Women, believe me, never have any principle. Principle is abackbone, and no woman--except bodily--ever possesses any backbone. Their priests and their teachers and their mothers fill them withdoctrines and conventionalities--all things of mere word and wind. Nowoman has any settled principles; if she have any vague ones, it is theuttermost she ever reaches, and those can always be overturned by anyman who has any influence over her. But Taste is another matteraltogether. A woman whose taste is excellent is preserved from alleccentricities and most follies. You never see a woman of good sense_afficher_ her improprieties or advertise her liaisons as women ofvulgarity do. Nay, if her taste be perfect, though she have weaknesses, I doubt if she will ever have vices. Vice will seem to her like a gaudycolour, or too much gold braid, or very large plaits, or buttons as bigas saucers, or anything else such as vulgar women like. Fastidiousness, at any rate, is very good _postiche_ for modesty: it is always decent, it can never be coarse. Good taste, inherent and ingrained, natural andcultivated, cannot alter. Principles--ouf!--they go on and off like aslipper; but good taste is indestructible; it is a compass that nevererrs. If your wife have it--well, it is possible she may be false toyou; she is human, she is feminine; but she will never make youridiculous, she will never compromise you, and she will not romp in acotillon till the morning sun shows the paint on her face washed away inthe rain of her perspiration. Virtue is, after all, as Mme. De Montespansaid, "une chose tout purement géographique. " It varies with thehemisphere like the human skin and the human hair; what is vile in onelatitude is harmless in another. No philosophic person can put any trustin a thing which merely depends upon climate; but, Good Taste----

 * * *

Gossip is like the poor devil in the legend of Fugger's Teufelspalast atTrent; it toils till cock-crow picking up the widely-scattered grains ofcorn by millions till the bushel measure is piled high; and lo!--thefive grains that are _the_ grains always escape its sight and roll awayand hide themselves. The poor devil, being a primitive creature, shrieked and flew away in despair at his failure. Gossip hugs its falsemeasure and says loftily that the five real grains are of no consequencewhatever. 

 * * *

The Lady Hilda sighed. This dreadful age, which has produced communists, pétroleuses, and liberal thinkers, had communicated its vaguerestlessness even to her; although she belonged to that higher regionwhere nobody ever thinks at all, and everybody is more or less devout inseeming at any rate, because disbelief is vulgar, and religion is an"affaire des moeurs, " like decency, still the subtle philosophies andsad negations which have always been afloat in the air since Voltaireset them flying, had affected her slightly. 

She was a true believer, just as she was a well-dressed woman, and hadher creeds just as she had her bath in the morning, as a matter ofcourse. 

Still, when she did come to think of it, she was not so very sure. Therewas another world, and saints and angels and eternity; yes, ofcourse--but how on earth would all those baccarat people ever fit intoit? Who could, by any stretch of imagination, conceive Madame Mila andMaurice des Gommeux in a spiritual existence around the throne of Deity?

And as for punishment and torment and all that other side of futurity, who could even think of the mildest purgatory as suitable to those poorflipperty-gibbet inanities who broke the seventh commandment as gaily asa child breaks his indiarubber ball, and were as incapable of passionand crime as they were incapable of heroism and virtue?

There might be paradise for virtue and hell for crime, but what in thename of the universe was to be done with creatures that were only allFolly? Perhaps they would be always flying about like the souls Virgilspeaks of, "suspensæ ad ventos, " to purify themselves; as the sails of aship spread out to dry. The Huron Indians pray to the souls of the fishthey catch; well, why should they not? a fish has a soul if ModernSociety has one; one could conceive a fish going softly through shiningwaters for ever and for ever in the ecstasy of motion; but who couldconceive Modern Society in the spheres?

 * * *

"One grows tired of everything, " she answered with a little sigh. 

"Everything that is artificial, you mean. People think Horace's love ofthe rural life an affectation. I believe it to be most sincere. Afterthe strain of the conventionality and the adulation of the Augustancourt, the natural existence of the country must have been welcome tohim. I know it is the fashion to say that a love of Nature belongs onlyto the Moderns, but I do not think so. Into Pindar, Theocritus, Meleager, the passion for Nature must have entered very strongly; what_is_ modern is the more subjective, the more fanciful feeling whichmakes Nature a sounding-board to echo all the cries of man. "

"But that is always a northern feeling?"

"Inevitably. With us Nature is too _riante_ for us to grow morbid aboutit. The sunshine that laughs around us nine months of every year, thefruits that grow almost without culture, the flowers that we throw tothe oxen to eat, the very stones that are sweet with myrtle, the verysea sand that is musical with bees in the rosemary, everything we growup amongst from infancy, makes our love of Nature only a kind ofunconscious joy in it; but here even the peasant has that, and the songsof the men that cannot read or write are full of it. If a field labourersing to his love he will sing of the narcissus and the crocus, asMeleager sang to Heliodora twenty centuries ago. "

 * * *

That is an Italian amorous fancy. Romeo and Othello are the typicalItalian lovers. I never can tell how a northerner like Shakespeare coulddraw either. You are often very unfaithful; but _while_ you are faithfulyou are ardent, and you are absorbed in the woman. That is one of thereasons why an Italian succeeds in love as no other man does. "L'art debrûler silencieusement ment le coeur d'un femme" is a supreme art withyou. Compared with you, all other men are children. You have been thesupreme masters of the great passion since the days of Ovid. 

 * * *

Boredom is the ill-natured pebble that always _will_ get in the goldenslipper of the pilgrim of pleasure. 

 * * *

"They say, " the great assassin who slays as many thousands as ever didplague or cholera, drink or warfare; "they say, " the thief ofreputation, who steals, with stealthy step and coward's mask, to filchgood names away in the dead dark of irresponsible calumny; "they say, " agiant murderer, iron-gloved to slay you, a fleet, elusive, vaporouswill-o'-the-wisp, when you would seize and choke it; "they say, " mightyThug though it be which strangles from behind the purest victim, had notbeen ever known to touch the Lady Hilda. 

 * * *

All her old philosophies seemed falling about her like shed leaves, andher old self seemed to her but a purposeless frivolous chilly creature. The real reason she would not face, and indeed as yet was not consciousof; the reason that love had entered into her, and that love, if it beworth the name, has always two handmaidens: swift sympathy, and sadhumility, keeping step together. 

 * * *

The Femme Galante has passed through many various changes, in manycountries. The dames of the Decamerone were unlike the fairathlete-seekers of the days of Horace; and the powdered coquettes of theyears of Molière, were sisters only by the kinship of a common vice tothe frivolous and fragile faggot of impulses, that is called Frou-frou. 

The Femme Galante has always been a feature in every age; poets, fromJuvenal to Musset, have railed at her; artists, from Titian toWinterhalter, have painted her; dramatists, from Aristophanes toCongreve and Dumas Fils, have pointed their arrows at her; satirists, from Archilochus and Simonides to Hogarth and Gavarni, have poured outtheir aqua-fortis for her. But the real Femme Galante of to-day has beenmissed hitherto. 

Frou-frou, who stands for her, is not in the least the true type. Frou-frou is a creature that can love, can suffer, can repent, can die. She is false in sentiment and in art, but she is tender after all; poor, feverish, wistful, changeful morsel of humanity. A slender, helpless, breathless, and frail thing who, under one sad, short sin, sinks down todeath. 

But Frou-frou is in no sense the true Femme Galante of her day. Frou-frou is much more a fancy than a fact. It is not Frou-frou thatMolière would have handed down to other generations in enduringridicule, had he been living now. To her he would have doffed his hatwith dim eyes; what he would have fastened for all time in his pillorywould have been a very different, and far more conspicuous offender. 

The Femme Galante, who has neither the scruples nor the follies of poorFrou-frou, who neither forfeits her place nor leaves her lord; who hasstudied adultery as one of the fine arts and made it one of the domesticvirtues; who takes her wearied lover to her friends' houses as she takesher muff or her dog, and teaches her sons and daughters to call him byfamiliar names; who writes to the victim of her passions with the samepen that calls her boy home from school; and who smooths her child'scurls with the same fingers that stray over her lover's lips; whochallenges the world to find a flaw in her, and who smiles serene at herhusband's table on a society she is careful to conciliate; who has woventhe most sacred ties and most unholy pleasures into so deft a braid, that none can say where one commences or the other ends; who uses thesanctity of her maternity to cover the lawlessness of her license; andwho, incapable alike of the self-abandonment of love or of theself-sacrifice of duty, has not even such poor, cheap honour as, in thecreatures of the streets, may make guilt loyal to its dupe and partner. 

This is the Femme Galante of the passing century, who, with her hand onher husband's arm, babbles of her virtue in complacent boast; andignoring such a vulgar word as Sin, talks with a smile of Friendship. Beside her Frou-frou were innocence itself, Marion de l'Orme werehonesty, Manon Lescaut were purity, Cleopatra were chaste, and Faustinewere faithful. 

She is the female Tartuffe of seduction, the Précieuse Ridicule ofpassion, the parody of Love, the standing gibe of Womanhood. 

 * * *

She was always in debt, though she admitted that her husband allowed herliberally. She had eighty thousand francs a year by her settlements tospend on herself, and he gave her another fifty thousand to do as shepleased with: on the whole about one half what he allowed to BlancheSouris, of the Château Gaillard theatre. 

She had had six children, three were living and three were dead; shethought herself a good mother, because she gave her wet-nurses ever somany silk gowns, and when she wanted the children for a fancy ball or adrive, always saw that they were faultlessly dressed, and besides shealways took them to Trouville. 

She had never had any grief in her life, except the loss of the SecondEmpire, and even that she got over when she found that flying the RedCross flag had saved her hotel, without so much as a teacup being brokenin it, that MM. Worth and Offenbach were safe from all bullets, andthat society, under the Septennate, promised to be every bit as _leste_as under the Empire. 

In a word, Madame Mila was a type of the women of her time. 

The women who go semi-nude in an age which has begun to discover thatthe nude in sculpture is very immoral; who discuss "Tue-la" in ageneration which decrees Molière to be coarse, and Beaumont and Fletcherindecent; who have the Journal pour Rire on their tables in a day whenno one who respects himself would name the Harlot's Progress; who readBeaudelaire and patronise Térésa and Schneider in an era which finds"Don Juan" gross, and Shakespeare far too plain; who strain all theirenergies to rival Miles. Rose Thé and La Petite Boulotte in everything;who go shrimping or oyster-hunting on fashionable sea-shores, with theirlegs bare to the knee; who go to the mountains with confections, highheels, and gold-tipped canes, shriek over their gambling as the dawnreddens over the Alps, and know no more of the glories of earth and sky, of sunrise and sunset, than do the porcelain pots that hold their paint, or the silver dressing-box that carries their hair-dye. 

Women who are in convulsions one day, and on the top of a drag the next;who are in hysterics for their lovers at noon, and in ecstasies overbaccarat at midnight; who laugh in little nooks together over eachother's immoralities, and have a moral code so elastic that it willpardon anything except innocence; who gossip over each other's dresses, and each other's passions, in the self-same, self-satisfied chirp ofcontentment, and who never resent anything on earth, except anyeccentric suggestion that life could be anything except a perpetual fêteà la Watteau in a perpetual blaze of lime-light. 

Pain?--Are there not chloral and a flattering doctor? Sorrow?--Are therenot a course at the Baths, play at Monte Carlo, and new cases fromWorth? Shame?--Is it not a famine fever which never comes near awell-laden table? Old Age?--Is there not white and red paint, and headsof dead hair, and even false bosoms? Death? Well, no doubt there isdeath, but they do not realise it; they hardly believe in it, they thinkabout it so little. 

There is something unknown somewhere to fall on them some day that theydread vaguely, for they are terrible cowards. But they worry as littleabout it as possible. They give the millionth part of what they possessaway in its name to whatever church they belong to, and they think theyhave arranged quite comfortably for all possible contingencieshereafter. 

If it make things safe, they will head bazaars for the poor, or wearblack in holy week, turn lottery-wheels for charity, or put on fancydresses in the name of benevolence, or do any little amiable trifle ofthat sort. But as for changing their lives, --_pas si bête!_

A bird in the hand they hold worth two in the bush; and though yourbirds may be winged on strong desire, and your bush the burning portentof Moses, they will have none of them. 

These women are not all bad; oh, no! they are like sheep, that is all. If it were fashionable to be virtuous, very likely they would be so. Ifit were _chic_ to be devout, no doubt they would pass their life ontheir knees. But, as it is, they know that a flavour of vice is asnecessary to their reputation as great ladies, as sorrel-leaves to soupà la bonne femme. They affect a license if they take it not. 

They are like the barber, who said, with much pride, to Voltaire, "Je nesuis qu'un pauvre diable de perruquier, mais je ne crois pas en Dieuplus que les autres. "

They may be worth very little, but they are desperately afraid that youshould make such a mistake as to think them worth anything at all. Youare not likely, if you know them. Still, they are apprehensive. 

Though one were to arise from the dead to preach to them, they wouldonly make of him a nine days' wonder, and then laugh a little, and yawna little, and go on in their own paths. 

Out of the eater came forth meat, and from evil there may be begottengood; but out of nullity there can only come nullity. They have waddedtheir ears, and though Jeremiah wailed of desolation, or Isaiahthundered the wrath of heaven, they would not hear, --they would go onlooking at each other's dresses. 

What could Paul himself say that would change them?

You cannot make sawdust into marble; you cannot make sea-sand into gold. "Let us alone, " is all they ask; and it is all that you could do, thoughthe force and flame of Horeb were in you. 

 * * *

It is very curious, but loss of taste in the nobles has always beenfollowed by a revolution of the mob. The _décadence_ always ushers inthe democracy. 

 * * *

Pleasure alone cannot content any one whose character has any force, ormind any high intelligence. Society is, as you say, a book we soon readthrough, and know by heart till it loses all interest. Art alone cannotfill more than a certain part of our emotions; and culture, howeverperfect, leaves us unsatisfied. There is only one thing that can give tolife what your poet called the light that never was on sea or land--andthat is human love. 

 * * *

"Yes, it is a curious thing that we do not succeed in fresco. The graceis gone out of it; modern painters have not the lightness of touchnecessary; they are used to masses of colour, and they use the paletteknife as a mason the trowel. The art, too, like the literature of ourtime, is all detail; the grand suggestive vagueness of the Greek dramaand of the Umbrian frescoes are lost to us under a crowd of elaboratedtrivialities; perhaps it is because art has ceased to be spiritual ortragic, and is merely domestic or melodramatic; the Greeks knew neitherdomesticity nor melodrama, and the early Italian painters were imbuedwith a faith which, if not so virile as the worship of the Phidian Zeus, yet absorbed them and elevated them in a degree impossible in the tawdrySadduceeism of our own day. By the way, when the weather is milder youmust go to Orvieto; you have never been there, I think; it is theProsodion of Signorelli. What a fine Pagan he was at heart! He admiredmasculine beauty like a Greek; he must have been a singularly happyman--few more happy----"

_A LEAF IN THE STORM. _

The Berceau de Dieu was a little village in the valley of the Seine. 

As a lark drops its nest amongst the grasses, so a few peasant peoplehad dropped their little farms and cottages amidst the great green woodson the winding river. It was a pretty place, with one steep, stonystreet, shady with poplars and with elms; quaint houses, about whosethatch a cloud of white and grey pigeons fluttered all day long; alittle aged chapel with a conical red roof; and great barns covered withivy and thick creepers, red and purple, and lichens that were yellow inthe sun. 

All around it there were the broad, flowering meadows, with the sleekcattle of Normandy fattening in them, and the sweet dim forests wherethe young men and maidens went on every holy-day and feast-day in thesummer-time to seek for wood-anemones, and lilies of the pools, and thewild campanula, and the fresh dogrose, and all the boughs and grassesthat made their house-doors like garden-bowers, and seemed to take thecushat's note and the linnet's song into their little temple of God. 

The Berceau de Dieu was very old indeed. 

Men said that the hamlet had been there in the day of the Virgin ofOrléans; and a stone cross of the twelfth century still stood by thegreat pond of water at the bottom of the street, under thechestnut-tree, where the villagers gathered to gossip at sunset whentheir work was done. 

It had no city near it, and no town nearer than four leagues. It was inthe green core of a pastoral district, thickly wooded and intersectedwith orchards. Its produce of wheat, and oats, and cheese, and fruit, and eggs, was more than sufficient for its simple prosperity. Its peoplewere hardy, kindly, laborious, happy; living round the little greychapel in amity and good-fellowship. 

Nothing troubled it. War and rumours of war, revolutions andcounter-revolutions, empires and insurrections, military and politicalquestions--these all were for it things unknown and unheard of--mightywinds that arose and blew and swept the lands around it, but never camenear enough to harm it, lying there, as it did, in its loneliness likeany lark's nest. 

 * * *

"I am old: yes, I am very old, " she would say, looking up from herspinning-wheel in her house-door, and shading her eyes from the sun, "very old--ninety-two last summer. But when one has a roof over one'shead, and a pot of soup always, and a grandson like mine, and when onehas lived all one's life in the Berceau de Dieu, then it is well to beso old. Ah, yes, my little ones--yes, though you doubt it, you littlebirds that have just tried your wings--it is well to be so old. One hastime to think, and thank the good God, which one never seemed to have aminute to do in that work, work, work, when one was young. "

 * * *

The end soon came. 

From hill to hill the Berceau de Dieu broke into flames. The village wasa lake of fire, into which the statue of the Christ, burning andreeling, fell. Some few peasants, with their wives and children, fled tothe woods, and there escaped one torture to perish more slowly of coldand famine. All other things perished. The rapid stream of the flamelicked up all there was in its path. The bare trees raised theirleafless branches on fire at a thousand points. The stores of corn andfruit were lapped by millions of crimson tongues. The pigeons flewscreaming from their roosts and sank into the smoke. The dogs weresuffocated on the thresholds they had guarded all their lives. The calfwas stifled in the byre. The sheep ran bleating with the wool burning ontheir living bodies. The little caged birds fluttered helpless, and thendropped, scorched to cinders. The aged and the sick were stifled intheir beds. All things perished. 

The Berceau de Dieu was as one vast furnace, in which every livingcreature was caught and consumed and changed to ashes. 

The tide of war has rolled on and left it a blackened waste, a smokingruin, wherein not so much as a mouse may creep or a bird may nestle. Itis gone, and its place can know it never more. 

Never more. 

But who is there to care?

It was but as a leaf which the great storm withered as it passed. 

 * * *

"Look you, " she had said to him oftentimes, "in my babyhood there wasthe old white flag upon the château. Well, they pulled that down and putup a red one. That toppled and fell, and there was one of threecolours. Then somebody with a knot of white lilies in his hand came oneday and set up the old white one afresh; and before the day was donethat was down again, and the tricolour again up where it is still. Nowsome I know fretted themselves greatly because of all these changes ofthe flags, but as for me, I could not see that any one of them mattered:bread was just as dear, and sleep was just as sweet, whichever of thethree was uppermost. "

_A DOG OF FLANDERS. _

In the spring and summer especially were they glad. Flanders is not alovely land, and around the burgh of Rubens it is perhaps least lovelyof all. 

Corn and colza, pasture and plough, succeed each other on thecharacterless plain in wearying repetition, and save by some gaunt greytower, with its peal of pathetic bells, or some figure coming athwartthe fields, made picturesque by a gleaner's bundle or a woodman'sfaggot, there is no change, no variety, no beauty anywhere; and he whohas dwelt upon the mountains or amidst the forests feels oppressed as byimprisonment with the tedium and the endlessness of that vast and drearylevel. 

But it is green and very fertile, and it has wide horizons that have acertain charm of their own even in their dulness and monotony; andamongst the rushes by the water-side the flowers grow, and the treesrise tall and fresh where the barges glide with their great hulks blackagainst the sun, and their little green barrels and vari-coloured flagsgay against the leaves. 

Anyway, there is a greenery and breadth of space enough to be as good asbeauty to a child and a dog; and these two asked no better, when theirwork was done, than to lie buried in the lush grasses on the side of thecanal, and watch the cumbrous vessels drifting by, and bringing thecrisp salt smell of the sea amongst the blossoming scents of the countrysummer. 

 * * *

Antwerp, as all the world knows, is full at every turn of old piles ofstones, dark and ancient and majestic, standing in crooked courts, jammed against gateways and taverns, rising by the water's edge, withbells ringing above them in the air, and ever and again out of theirarched doors a swell of music pealing. 

There they remain, the grand old sanctuaries of the past, shut in amidstthe squalor, the hurry, the crowds, the unloveliness and the commerce ofthe modern world; and all day long the clouds drift and the birdscircle, and the winds sigh around them, and beneath the earth at theirfeet there sleeps--RUBENS. 

And the greatness of the mighty Master still rests upon Antwerp;wherever we turn in its narrow streets his glory lies therein, so thatall mean things are thereby transfigured; and as we pace slowly throughthe winding ways, and by the edge of the stagnant water, and through thenoisome courts, his spirit abides with us, and the heroic beauty of hisvisions is about us, and the stones that once felt his footsteps andbore his shadow seem to arise and speak of him with living voices. Forthe city which is the tomb of Rubens still lives to us through him, andhim alone. 

Without Rubens, what were Antwerp? A dirty, dusky, bustling mart, whichno man would ever care to look upon save the traders who do business onits wharves. With Rubens, to the whole world of men it is a sacred name, a sacred soil, a Bethlehem where a god of Art saw light, a Golgothawhere a god of Art lies dead. 

It is so quiet there by that great white sepulchre--so quiet, save onlywhen the organ peals, and the choir cries aloud the Salve Regina or theKyrie Eleison. Sure no artist ever had a greater gravestone than thatpure marble sanctuary gives to him in the heart of his birthplace in thechancel of St. Jacques?

O nations! closely should you treasure your great men, for by them alonewill the future know of you. Flanders in her generations has been wise. In his life she glorified this greatest of her sons, and in his deathshe magnifies his name. But her wisdom is very rare. 

 * * *

The night was very wild. The lamps under the wayside crosses were blownout: the roads were sheets of ice; the impenetrable darkness hid everytrace of habitations; there was no living thing abroad. All the cattlewere housed, and in all the huts and homesteads men and women rejoicedand feasted. There was only the dog out in the cruel cold--old andfamished and full of pain, but with the strength and the patience of agreat love to sustain him in his search. 

The trail of Nello's steps, faint and obscure as it was under the newsnow, went straightly along the accustomed tracks into Antwerp. It waspast midnight when Patrasche traced it over the boundaries of the townand into the narrow, tortuous, gloomy streets. It was all quite dark inthe town. Now and then some light gleamed ruddily through the crevicesof house-shutters, or some group went homeward with lanterns chantingdrinking songs. The streets were all white with ice: the high walls androofs loomed black against them. There was scarce a sound save the riotof the winds down the passages as they tossed the creaking signs andshook the tall lamp-irons. 

So many passers-by had trodden through and through the snow, so manydiverse paths had crossed and re-crossed each other, that the dog had ahard task to retain any hold on the track he followed. But he kept onhis way, though the cold pierced him to the bone, and the jagged ice cuthis feet, and the hunger in his body gnawed like a rat's teeth. But hekept on his way--a poor, gaunt, shivering, drooping thing in the frozendarkness, that no one pitied as he went--and by long patience traced thesteps he loved into the very heart of the burgh and up to the steps ofthe great cathedral. 

"He is gone to the things that he loved, " thought Patrasche; he couldnot understand, but he was full of sorrow and of pity for theart-passion that to him was so incomprehensible and yet so sacred. 

The portals of the cathedral were unclosed after the midnight mass. Someheedlessness in the custodians, too eager to go home and feast or sleep, or too drowsy to know whether they turned the keys aright, had left oneof the doors unlocked. By that accident the footfalls Patrasche soughthad passed through into the building, leaving the white marks of snowupon the dark stone floor. By that slender white thread, frozen as itfell, he was guided through the intense silence, through the immensityof the vaulted space--guided straight to the gates of the chancel, andstretched there upon the stones he found Nello. He crept up noiselessly, and touched the face of the boy. "Didst thou dream that I should befaithless and forsake thee? I--a dog?" said that mute caress. 

The lad raised himself with a low cry and clasped him close. 

"Let us lie down and die together, " he murmured. "Men have no need ofus, and we are all alone. "

In answer, Patrasche crept closer yet, and laid his head upon the youngboy's breast. The great tears stood in his brown sad eyes: not forhimself--for himself he was happy. 

They lay close together in the piercing cold. The blasts that blew overthe Flemish dykes from the northern seas were like waves of ice, whichfroze every living thing they touched. The interior of the immense vaultof stone in which they were was even more bitterly chill than thesnow-covered plains without. Now and then a bat moved in the shadows;now and then a gleam of light came to the ranks of carven figures. Underthe Rubens they lay together, quite still, and soothed almost into adreaming slumber by the numbing narcotic of the cold. Together theydreamed of the old glad days when they had chased each other through theflowering grasses of the summer meadows, or sat hidden in the tallbulrushes by the water's side, watching the boats go seaward in the sun. 

No anger had ever separated them; no cloud had ever come between them;no roughness on the one side, no faithlessness on the other, had everobscured their perfect love and trust. All through their short livesthey had done their duty as it had come to them, and had been happy inthe mere sense of living, and had begrudged nothing to any man or beast, and had been quite content because quite innocent. And in the faintnessof famine and of the frozen blood that stole dully and slowly throughtheir veins, it was of the days they had spent together that theydreamed, lying there in the long watches of the night of the Noël. 

Suddenly through the darkness a great white radiance streamed throughthe vastness of the aisles; the moon, that was at her height, had brokenthrough the clouds; the snow had ceased to fall; the light reflectedfrom the snow without was clear as the light of dawn. It fell throughthe arches full upon the two pictures above, from which the boy on hisentrance had flung back the veil: the Elevation and the Descent of theCross were for one instant visible as by day. 

Nello rose to his feet and stretched his arms to them: the tears of apassionate ecstasy glistened on the paleness of his face. 

"I have seen them at last!" he cried aloud. "O God, it is enough!"

His limbs failed under him, and he sank upon his knees, still gazingupward at the majesty that he adored. For a few brief moments the lightillumined the divine visions that had been denied to him so long--light, clear and sweet and strong as though it streamed from the throne ofHeaven. 

Then suddenly it passed away: once more a great darkness covered theface of Christ. 

The arms of the boy drew close again the body of the dog. 

"We shall see His face--_there_, " he murmured; "and He will not part us, I think; He will have mercy. "

On the morrow, by the chancel of the cathedral, the people of Antwerpfound them both. They were both dead: the cold of the night had frozeninto stillness alike the young life and the old. When the Christmasmorning broke and the priests came to the temple, they saw them lyingthus on the stones together. Above, the veils were drawn back from thegreat visions of Rubens, and the fresh rays of the sunrise touched thethorn-crowned head of the God. 

As the day grew on there came an old, hard-featured man, who wept aswomen weep. 

"I was cruel to the lad, " he muttered, "and now I would have madeamends--yea, to the half of my substance--and he should have been to meas a son. "

There came also, as the day grew apace, a painter who had fame in theworld, and who was liberal of hand and of spirit. 

"I seek one who should have had the prize yesterday had worth won, " hesaid to the people, --"a boy of rare promise and genius. An oldwoodcutter on a fallen tree at eventide--that was all his theme. Butthere was greatness for the future in it. I would fain find him, andtake him with me and teach him art. "

 * * *

Death had been more pitiful to them than longer life would have been. Ithad taken the one in the loyalty of love, and the other in the innocenceof faith, from a world which for love has no recompense, and for faithno fulfilment. 

All their lives they had been together, and in their deaths they werenot divided; for when they were found the arms of the boy were foldedtoo closely around the dog to be severed without violence, and thepeople of their little village, contrite and ashamed, implored a specialgrace for them, and, making them one grave, laid them to rest there sideby side--for ever. 

_A BRANCH OF LILAC. _

And indeed I loved France: still, in the misery of my life, I loved herfor all that I had had from her. 

I loved her for her sunny roads, for her cheery laughter, for hervine-hung hamlets, for her contented poverty, for her gay, sweet mirth, for her pleasant days, for her starry nights, for her little brightgroups at the village fountain, for her old, brown, humble peasants ather wayside crosses, for her wide, wind-swept plains all red with herradiant sunsets. She had given me beautiful hours; she is the mother ofthe poor, who sings to them so that they forget their hunger and theirnakedness; she had made me happy in my youth. I was not ungrateful. 

It was in the heats of September that I reached my country. It was justafter the day of Sedan. I heard all along the roads, as I went, sad, sullen murmurs of our bitter disasters. It was not the truth exactlythat was ever told at the poor wine-shops and about the harvest-fields, but it was near enough to the truth to be horrible. 

The blood-thirst which had been upon me ever since that night when Ifound her chair empty seemed to burn and seethe, till I saw nothing butblood--in the air, in the sun, in the water. 

 * * *

I remember in that ghastly time seeing a woman put the match to a piecewhose gunner had just dropped dead. She fired with sure aim: her shotswept straight into a knot of horsemen on the Neuilly road, and emptiedmore than one saddle. 

"You have a good sight, " I said to her. 

She smiled. 

"This winter, " she said slowly, "my children have all died for want offood--one by one, the youngest first. Ever since then I want to hurtsomething--always. Do you understand?"

I did understand: I do not know if you do. It is just these things thatmake revolutions. 

 * * *

When I sit in the gloom here I see all the scenes of that pleasant lifepass like pictures before me. 

No doubt I was often hot, often cold, often footsore, often ahungeredand athirst: no doubt; but all that has faded now. I only see the old, lost, unforgotten brightness; the sunny roads, with the wild poppiesblowing in the wayside grass; the quaint little red roofs and peakedtowers that were thrust upward out of the rolling woods; the clear blueskies, with the larks singing against the sun; the quiet, cool, moss-grown towns, with old dreamy bells ringing sleepily above them; thedull casements opening here and there to show a rose like a girl'scheek, and a girl's face like the rose; the little wine-shops buried intheir climbing vines and their tall, many-coloured hollyhocks, fromwhich sometimes a cheery voice would cry, "Come, stay for a stoup ofwine, and pay us with a song. "

Then, the nights when the people flocked to us, and the little tent waslighted, and the women's and the children's mirth rang out in peals ofmusic; and the men vied with each other as to which should bear each ofus off to have bed and board under the cottage roof, or in the oldmill-house, or in the weaver's garret; the nights when the homelysupper-board was brightened and thought honoured by our presence; whenwe told the black-eyed daughter's fortunes, and kept the childrenround-eyed and flushing red with wonder at strange tales, and smokedwithin the leaf-hung window with the father and his sons; and then wentout, quietly, alone in the moonlight, and saw the old cathedral whiteand black in the shadows and the light; and strayed a little into itsdim aisles, and watched the thorn-crowned God upon the cross, and in thecool fruit-scented air, in the sweet, silent dusk, moved softly withnoiseless footfall and bent head, as though the dead were there. 

Ah, well! they are all gone, those days and nights. Begrudge me nottheir memory. I am ugly, and very poor, and of no account; and I die atsunrise, so they say. Let me remember whilst I can: it is all oblivion_there_. So they say. 

 * * *

Whether I suffered or enjoyed, loved or hated, is of no consequence toany one. The dancing-dog suffers intensely beneath the scourge of thestick, and is capable of intense attachment to any one who is mercifulenough not to beat him; but the dancing-dog and his woe and his love arenothing to the world: I was as little. 

There is nothing more terrible, nothing more cruel, than the waste ofemotion, the profuse expenditure of fruitless pain, which every hour, every moment, as it passes, causes to millions of living creatures. Ifit were of any use who would mind? But it is all waste, frightful waste, to no end, to no end. 

 * * *

Ah, well! it is our moments of blindness and of folly that are the soleones of happiness for all of us on earth. We only see clearly, I think, when we have reached the depths of woe. 

 * * *

France was a great sea in storm, on which the lives of all men were asfrail boats tossing to their graves. Some were blown east, some west;they passed each other in the endless night, and never knew, the tempestblew so strong. 

 * * *

Winter tries hardly all the wandering races: if the year were allsummer, all the world would be Bohemians. 

 * * *

We poured out blood like water, and much of it was the proud blue bloodof the old nobility. We should have saved France, I am sure, if therehad been any one who had known how to consolidate and lead us. No onedid; so it was all of no use. 

Guerillas like us can do much, very much, but to do so much that it isvictory we must have a genius amidst us. And we had none. If the FirstBonaparte had been alive and with us, we should have chased the foe asMarius the Cimbri. 

I think other nations will say so in the future: at the present they areall dazzled, they do not see clearly--they are all worshipping therising sun. It is blood-red, and it blinds them. 

 * * *

It is so strange! We see a million faces, we hear a million voices, wemeet a million women with flowers in their breasts and light in theirfair eyes, and they do not touch us. Then we see one, and she holds forus life or death, and plays with them idly so often--as idly as a childwith toys. She is not nobler, better, or more beautiful than were allthose we passed, and yet the world is empty to us without her. 

_SIGNA. _

In the garden of these children all the flora of Italy was gathered andwas growing. 

The delights of an Italian garden are countless. It is not like anyother garden in the world. It is at once more formal and more wild, atonce greener with more abundant youth and venerable with more antiqueage. It has all Boccaccio between its walls, all Petrarca in its leaves, all Raffaelle in its skies. And then the sunshine that beggars words andlaughs at painters!--the boundless, intense, delicious, heavenly light!What do other gardens know of that, save in orange-groves of Granada androse thickets of Damascus?

The old broken marble statues, whence the water dripped and fed thewater-lily; the great lemon-trees in pots big enough to drown a boy, thegolden globes among their emerald leaves; the magnolias, like trees castin bronze, with all the spice of India in their cups; the spires ofivory bells that the yuccas put forth, like belfries for fairies; theoleanders taller than a man, red and white and blush colour; the broadvelvet leaves of the flowering rush; the dark majestic ilex oaks, thatmade the noon like twilight; the countless graces of the vast family ofacacias; the high box hedges, sweet and pungent in the sun; the stoneponds, where the gold-fish slept through the sultry day; the wildernessof carnations; the huge roses, yellow, crimson, snow-white, and thesmall noisette and the banksia with its million of pink stars; myrtlesin dense thickets, and camellias like a wood of evergreens; cacti in allquaint shapes, like fossils astonished to find themselves again alive;high walls, vine-hung and topped by pines and cypresses; low walls withcrowds of geraniums on their parapets, and the mountains and the fieldsbeyond them; marble basins hidden in creepers where the frogs dozed allday long; sounds of convent bells and of chapel chimes; green lizardsbasking on the flags; great sheds and granaries beautiful with theclematis and the wisteria and the rosy trumpets of the bignonia; greatwooden places cool and shady, with vast arched entrances, and scent ofhay, and empty casks, and red earthen amphoræ, and little mice scuddingon the floors, and a sun-dial painted on the wall, and a crucifix setabove the weather-cock, and through the huge unglazed windows sight ofthe green vines with the bullocks in the harvest-carts beneath them, orof some hilly sunlit road with a mule-team coming down it, or of a bluehigh hill with its pine-trees black against the sky, and on its slopesthe yellow corn and misty olive. This was their garden; it is tenthousand other gardens in the land. 

The old painters had these gardens, and walked in them, and thoughtnothing better could be needed for any scene of Annunciation orAdoration, and so put them in beyond the windows of Bethlehem or behindthe Throne of the Lamb--and who can wonder?

 * * *

In these little ancient burghs and hillside villages, scattered up anddown between mountain and sea, there is often some boy or girl, with amore wonderful voice, or a more beautiful face, or a sweeter knack ofsong, or a more vivid trick of improvisation than the others; and thisboy or girl strays away some day with a little bundle of clothes, and acoin or two, or is fetched away by some far-sighted pedlar in such humanwares, who buys them as bird-fanciers buy the finches from the nets; andthen, years and years afterwards, the town or hamlet hears indistinctlyof some great prima donna, or of some lark-throated tenor, that the bigworld is making happy as kings, and rich as kings' treasurers, and thepeople carding the flax or shelling the chestnuts say to one another, "That was little black Lià, or that was our old Momo;" but Momo or Liàthe village or the vine-field never sees again. 

 * * *

The heart of silver falls ever into the hands of brass. The sensitiveherb is eaten as grass by the swine. 

 * * *

Fate will have it so. Fate is so old, and weary of her task; she musthave some diversion. It is Fate who blinded Love for sport, and on theshoulders of Possession hung the wallet full of stones andsand--Satiety. 

 * * *

As passion yet unknown thrills in the adolescent, as maternity yetundreamed of stirs in the maiden; so the love of art comes to the artistbefore he can give a voice to his thought or any name to his desire. 

Signa heard "beautiful things" as he sat in the rising moonlight, withthe bells of the little bindweed white about his feet. 

That was all he could have said. 

Whether the angels sent them on the breeze, or the birds brought them, or the dead men came and sang them to him, he could not tell. Indeed, who can tell?

Where did Guido see the golden hair of St. Michael gleam upon the wind?Where did Mozart hear the awful cries of the risen dead come tojudgment? What voice was in the fountain of Vaucluse? Under what noddingoxlip did Shakespeare find Titania asleep? When did the Mother of Lovecome down, chaster in her unclothed loveliness than vestal in her veil, and with such vision of her make obscure Cleomenes immortal?

Who can tell?

Signa sat dreaming, with his chin upon his hands, and his eyes wanderingover all the silent place, from the closed flowers at his feet to themoon in her circles of mist. 

Who walks in these paths now may go back four hundred years. They arechanged in nothing. Through their high hedges of rhododendron and ofjessamine that grow like woodland trees it would still seem but naturalto see Raffaelle with his court-train of students, or Signorellisplendid in those apparellings which were the comment of his age; and onthese broad stone terraces with the lizards basking on their steps andthe trees opening to show a vine-covered hill with the white oxencreeping down it and the blue mountains farther still behind, it wouldbe but fitting to see a dark figure sitting and painting lilies upon agolden ground, or cherubs' heads upon a panel of cypress wood, and tohear that this painter was the monk Angelico. 

The deepest charm of these old gardens, as of their country, is, afterall, that in them it is possible to forget the present age. 

In the full, drowsy, voluptuous noon, when they are a gorgeous blaze ofcolour and a very intoxication of fragrance, as in the ethereal whitemoonlight of midnight, when, with the silver beams and the whiteblossoms and the pale marbles, they are like a world of snow, theircharm is one of rest, silence, leisure, dreams, and passion all in one;they belong to the days when art was a living power, when love was athing of heaven or of hell, and when men had the faith of children andthe force of gods. 

Those days are dead, but in these old gardens you can believe still thatyou live in them. 

 * * *

"Pippa!" echoed Istriel. His memories were wakened by the name, and wentback to the days of his youth, when he had gone through the fields atevening, when the purple beanflower was in bloom. 

"What is your name then?" he asked, with a changed sound in his voice, and with his fair cheek paler. 

"I am Bruno Marcillo; I come from the hills above the Lastra a Signa. "

Istriel rose, and looked at him; he had not remembered dead Pippa formany a year. All in a moment he did remember: the long light days, thelittle grey-walled town, the meetings in the vine-hung paths, whensunset burned the skies; the girl with the pearls on her round brownthroat, the moonlit nights, with the strings of the guitar throbbing, and the hearts of the lovers leaping; the sweet, eager, thoughtlesspassion that swayed them one to another, as two flowers are blowntogether in the mild soft winds of summer; he remembered it all now. 

And he had forgotten so long; forgotten so utterly; save now and then, when in some great man's house he had chanced to see some painting donein his youth, and sold then for a few gold coins, of a tendertempestuous face, half smiling and half sobbing, full of storm andsunshine, both in one; and then at such times had thought, "Poor littlefool! she loved me too well;--it is the worst fault a woman has. "

Some regret he had felt, and some remorse when he had found the garretempty, and had lost Pippa from sight in the great sea of chance; butshe had wearied him, importuned him, clung to him; she had had the worstfault, she had loved him too much. He had been young and poor, and veryambitious; he had been soon reconciled; he had soon learned to thinkthat it was a burden best fallen from his shoulders. No doubt she hadsuffered; but there was no help for that--some one always suffered whenthese ties were broken--so he had said to himself. And then there hadcome success and fame, and the pleasures of the world and the triumphsof art, and Pippa had dropped from his thoughts as dead blossoms from abough; and he had loved so many other women, that he could not havecounted them; and the memory of that boy-and-girl romance in the greenhill country of the old Etruscan land had died away from him like a songlong mute. 

Now, all at once, Pippa's hand seemed to touch him--Pippa's voice seemedto rouse him--Pippa's eyes seemed to look at him. 

 * * *

It was very early in the morning. 

There had been heavy rains at night, and there was, when the sun rose, everywhere, that white fog of the Valdarno country which is like asilvery cloud hanging over all the earth. It spreads everywhere andblends together land and sky; but it has breaks of exquisitetransparencies, through which the gold of the sunbeam shines, and therose of the dawn blushes, and the summits of the hills gleam here andthere, with a white monastery, or a mountain belfry, or a cluster ofcypresses seen through it, hung in the air as it were, and framed likepictures in the silvery mist. 

It is no noxious steam rising from the rivers and the rains: no grey andoppressive obliteration of the face of the world like the fogs of thenorth; no weight on the lungs and blindness to the eyes; no burden ofleaden damp lying heavy on the soil and on the spirit; no wall built upbetween the sun and men; but a fog that is as beautiful as the fullmoonlight is--nay, more beautiful, for it has beams of warmth, gloriesof colour, glimpses of landscape such as the moon would coldly kill; andthe bells ring, and the sheep bleat, and the birds sing underneath itsshadow; and the sun-rays come through it, darted like angels' spears:and it has in it all the promise of the morning, and all the sounds ofthe waking day. 

 * * *

A great darkness was over all his mind like the plague of that unendingnight which brooded over Egypt. 

All the ferocity of his nature was scourged into its greatest strength;he was sensible of nothing except the sense that he was beaten in theone aim and purpose of his life. 

Only--if by any chance he could still save the boy. 

That one thought--companion with him, sleeping and waking, through somany joyless nights--stayed with him still. 

It seemed to him that he would have strength to scale the very heightsof heaven, and shake the very throne of God until He heard--to save theboy. 

The night was far gone; the red of the day-dawn began to glow, and thestars paled. 

He did not know how time went; but he knew the look of the daybreak. When the skies looked so through his grated windows at home, he rose andsaid a prayer, and went down and unbarred his doors, and led out hiswhite beasts to the plough, or between the golden lines of the reapedcorn; all that was over now. 

The birds were waking on the old green hills and the crocus flowersunclosing; but he----

"I shall never see it again, " he thought, and his heart yearned to it, and the great, hot, slow tears of a man's woe stole into his aching eyesand burned them. But he had no pity on himself. 

He had freedom and health and strength and manhood, and he was still notold, and still might win the favour of women, and see his childrenlaugh--if he went back to the old homestead, and the old safe ways ofhis fathers. And the very smell of the earth there was sweet to him as avirgin's breath, and the mere toil of the ground had been dear to him byreason of the faithful love that he bore to his birthplace. But he hadno pity on himself. 

"My soul for his, " he had said; and he cleaved to his word and kept it. 

In his day he had been savage to others. He was no less so to himself. 

He had done all that he knew how to do. He had crushed out the naturalevil of him and denied the desires of the flesh, and changed his verynature to do good by Pippa's son: and it had all been of no use; it hadall been spent in vain, as drowning seamen's cries for help are spent onangry winds and yawning waters. He had tried to follow God's will and todrive the tempter from him, for the boy's sake; and it had all been ofno avail. Through the long score of years his vain sacrifices echoeddully by him as a dropt stone through the dark shaft of a well. 

Perhaps it was not enough. 

Perhaps it was needful that he should redeem the boy's soul by the uttersurrender and eternal ruin of his own--perhaps. After all it was a poorlove which balanced cost; a meek, mean love which would not dare to takeguilt upon it for the thing it cherished. 

To him crime was crime in naked utter blackness; without aught of thosepalliatives with which the cultured and philosophic temper can streak itsmooth and paint its soft excuse, and trace it back to influence orinsanity. To him sin was a mighty, hideous, hell-born thing, which beingembraced dragged him who kissed it on the mouth, downward and downwardinto bottomless pits of endless night and ceaseless torment. To him thedepths of hell and heights of heaven were real as he had seen them inthe visions of Orgagna. 

Yet he was willing to say, "Evil, be thou my good!" if by such evil hecould break the bonds of passion from the life of Pippa's son. 

He had in him the mighty fanaticism which has made at once the tyrantsand the martyrs of the world. 

"Leave him to me, " he had said, and then the strength and weakness, andruthless heat, and utter self-deliverance of his nature leaped to theirheight, and nerved him with deadly passion. 

"There is but one way, " he said to himself;--there was but one way tocut the cords of this hideous, tangled knot of destiny and let free theboy to the old ways of innocence. 

"He will curse me, " he thought; "I shall die--never looking on hisface--never hearing his voice. But he will be freed--so. He willsuffer--for a day--a year. But he will be spared the truth. And he is soyoung--he will be glad again before the summer comes. "

For a moment his courage failed him. 

He could face the thought of an eternity of pain, and not turn pale, norpause. But to die with the boy's curse on him--that was harder. 

"It is selfishness to pause, " he told himself. "He will loathe mealways; but what matter?--he will be saved; he will be innocent oncemore; he will hear his 'beautiful things' again; he will never know thetruth; he will be at peace with himself, and forget before the summercomes. He never has loved me--not much. What does it matter?--so that heis saved. When he sees his mother in heaven some day, then she will sayto him--'It was done for your sake. ' And I shall know that he sees then, as God sees. That will be enough. "

 * * *

The boy looked out through the iron bars of his open lattice into thecold, still night, full of the smell of fallen leaves and fir cones. Thetears fell down his cheeks; his heart was oppressed with a vagueyearning, such as made Mozart weep, when he heard his own Lacrimosachanted. 

It is not fear of death, it is not desire of life. 

It is that unutterable want, that nameless longing, which stirs in thesoul that is a little purer than its fellow, and which, burdened withthat prophetic pain which men call genius, blindly feels its way aftersome great light, that knows must be shining somewhere upon otherworlds, though all the earth is dark. 

When Mozart wept, it was for the world he could never reach--not for theworld he left. 

 * * *

He had been brought up upon this wooded spur, looking down on the Signacountry; all his loves and hatreds, joys and pains, had been known here;from the time he had plucked the maple leaves in autumn for the cattlewith little brown five-year-old hands he had laboured here, never seeingthe sun set elsewhere except on that one night at the sea. He was closerooted to the earth as the stonepines were and the oaks. It had alwaysseemed to him that a man should die where he took life first, amongsthis kindred and under the sods that his feet had run over in babyhood. He had never thought much about it, but unconsciously the fibres of hisheart had twisted themselves round all the smallest and the biggestthings of his home as the tendrils of a strong ivy bush fasten round agreat tower and the little stones alike. 

The wooden settle where his mother had sat; the shrine in the housewall; the copper vessels that had glowed in the wood-fuel light when alarge family had gathered there about the hearth; the stone well underthe walnut-tree where dead Dina had often stayed to smile on him; thecypress-wood presses where Pippa had kept her feast-day finery and herpearls; the old vast sweet-smelling sheds and stables where he hadthreshed and hewn and yoked his oxen thirty years if one: all thesethings, and a hundred like them, were dear to him with all the memoriesof his entire life; and away from them he could know no peace. 

He was going away into a great darkness. He had nothing to guide him. The iron of a wasted love, of a useless sacrifice, was in his heart. Hisinstinct drove him where there was peril for Pippa's son--that was all. 

If this woman took the lad away from him, where was there any mercy orjustice, earthly or divine? That was all he asked himself, blindly andstupidly; as the oxen seem to ask it with their mild, sad eyes as theystrain under the yoke and goad, suffering and not knowing why theysuffer. 

Nothing was clear to Bruno. 

Only life had taught him that Love is the brother of Death. 

One thing and another had come between him and the lad he cherished. Thedreams of the child, the desires of the youth, the powers of art, thepassion of genius, one by one had come in between him and loosened hishold, and made him stand aloof as a stranger. But Love he had dreadedmost of all; Love which slays with one glance dreams and art and genius, and lays them dead as rootless weeds that rot in burning suns. 

Now Love had come. 

He worked all day, holding the sickness of fear off him as best hecould, for he was a brave man;--only he had wrestled with fate so long, and it seemed always to beat him, and almost he grew tired. 

He cut a week's fodder for the beasts, and left all things in theirplaces, and then, as the day darkened, prepared to go. 

Tinello and Pastore lowed at him, thrusting their broad white foreheadsand soft noses over their stable door. 

He turned and stroked them in farewell. 

"Poor beasts!" he muttered; "shall I never muzzle and yoke you everagain?"

His throat grew dry, his eyes grew dim. He was like a man who sails fora voyage on unknown seas, and neither he nor any other can tell whetherhe will ever return. 

He might come back in a day; he might come back never. 

Multitudes, well used to wander, would have laughed at him. But to himit was as though he set forth on the journey which men call death. 

In the grey lowering evening he kissed the beasts on their white brows. There was no one there to see his weakness, and year on year he haddecked them with their garlands of hedge flowers and led them up onGod's day to have their strength blessed by the priest--their strengththat laboured with his own from dawn to dark over the bare brown fields. 

Then he turned his back on his old home, and went down the green sidesof the hill, and lost sight of his birthplace as the night fell. 

All through the night he was borne away by the edge of the sea, alongthe wild windy shores, through the stagnant marshes and the black poolswhere the buffalo and the wild boar herded, past the deserted cities ofthe coast, and beyond the forsaken harbours of Æneas and of Nero. 

The west wind blew strong; the clouds were heavy; now and then the moonshone on a sullen sea; now and then the darkness broke over rank maremmavapours; at times he heard the distant bellowing of the herds, at timeshe heard the moaning of the water; mighty cities, lost armies, slaughtered hosts, foundered fleets, were underneath that soil and sea;whole nations had their sepulchres on that low, wind-blown shore. But ofthese he knew nothing. 

It only seemed to him, that day would never come. 

Once or twice he fell asleep for a few moments, and waking in thatconfused noise of the stormy night and the wild water and the frightenedherds, thought that he was dead, and that this sound was the passing ofthe feet of all the living multitude going for ever to and fro, unthinking, over the depths of the dark earth where he lay. 

 * * *

To behold the dominion of evil; the victory of the liar; the empire ofthat which is base; to be powerless to resist, impotent to strip itbare; to watch it suck under a beloved life as the whirlpool thegold-freighted vessel; to know that the soul for which we would give ourown to everlasting ruin is daily, hourly, momentarily subjugated, emasculated, possessed, devoured by those alien powers of violence andfraud which have fastened upon it as their prey; to stand by fetteredand mute, and cry out to heaven that in this conflict the angelsthemselves should descend to wrestle for us, and yet know that all thewhile the very stars in their courses shall sooner stand still than thisreign of sin be ended:--this is the greatest woe that the world holds. 

Beaten, we shake in vain the adamant gates of a brazen iniquity; we maybruise our breasts there till we die; there is no entrance possible. Forthat which is vile is stronger than all love, all faith, all puredesire, all passionate pain; that which is vile has all the forces thatmen have called the powers of hell. 

 * * *

To him the world was like the dark fathomless waste of waters shelvingaway to nameless shapeless perils such as the old Greek mariners drewupon their charts as compassing the shores they knew. 

He had no light of knowledge by which to pursue in hope or fancy theyounger life that would be launched into the untried realms. To him suchseparation was as death. 

He could not write; he could not even read what was written. He couldonly trust to others that all was well with the boy. 

He could have none of that mental solace which supports the scholar;none of that sense of natural loveliness which consoles the poet; hismind could not travel beyond the narrow circlet of its own pain; hiseyes could not see beauty everywhere from the green fly at his foot tothe sapphire mountains above his head; he only noticed the sunset totell the weather; he only looked across the plain to see if therain-fall would cross the river. When the autumn crocus sank under hisshare, to him it was only a weed best withered; in hell he believed, andfor heaven he hoped, but only dully, as things certain that the priestsknew; but all consolations of the mind or the fancy were denied to him. Superstitions, indeed, he had, but these were all;--sad-coloured fungiin the stead of flowers. 

The Italian has not strong imagination. 

His grace is an instinct; his love is a frenzy; his gaiety is rather joythan jest; his melancholy is from temperament, not meditation; nature islittle to him; and his religion and his passions alike must havephysical indulgence and perpetual nearness, or they are nothing. 

He lived in almost absolute solitude. Sometimes it grew dreary, and theweeks seemed long. 

Two years went by--slowly. 

Signa did not come home. The travel to and fro took too much money, andhe was engrossed in his studies, and it was best so; so Luigi Dini said, and Bruno let it be. The boy did not ask to return. His letters werevery brief and not very coherent, and he forget to send messages to oldTeresina or to Palma. But there was no fear for him. 

The sacristan's friends under whose roof he was wrote once in a quarter, and spoke well of him always, and said that the professors did the same, and that a gentler lad or one more wedded to his work they never knew. And so Bruno kept his soul in patience, and said, "Do not trouble him;when he wishes he will come--or if he want anything. Let him be. "

To those who have traversed far seas and many lands, and who can bridgeuntravelled countries by the aid of experience and of understanding, such partings have pain, but a pain lessened by the certain knowledge oftheir span and purpose. By the light of remembrance or of imaginationthey can follow that which leaves them. 

But Bruno had no such solace. 

To him all that was indefinite was evil; all that was unfamiliar washorrible. It is the error of ignorance at all times. 

 * * *

He played for himself, for the air, for the clouds, for the trees, forthe sheep, for the kids, for the waters, for the stones; played as Pandid, and Orpheus and Apollo. 

His music came from heaven and went back to it. What did it matter whoheard it on earth?

A lily would listen to him as never a man could do; and a daffodil woulddance with delight as never woman could;--or he thought so at least, which was the same thing. And he could keep the sheep all round him, charmed and still, high above on the hillside, with the sad pinessighing. 

What did he want with people to hear? He would play for them; but he didnot care. If they felt it wrongly, or felt it not at all, he would stop, and run away. 

"If they are deaf I will be dumb, " he said. "The dogs and the sheep andthe birds are never deaf--nor the hills--nor the flowers. It is onlypeople that are deaf. I suppose they are always hearing their own stepsand voices and wheels and windlasses and the cries of the children andthe hiss of the frying-pans. I suppose that is why. Well, let them bedeaf. Rusignuola and I do not want them. "

So he said to Palma under the south wall, watching a butterfly, thatfolded was like an illuminated shield of black and gold, and with itswings spread was like a scarlet pomegranate blossom flying. Palma hadasked him why he had run away from the bridal supper of Griffeo, thecoppersmith's son, --just in the midst of his music; run away home, heand his violin. 

"They were not deaf, " resumed Palma. "But your music was so sad--andthey were merry. "

"I played what came to me, " said Signa. 

"But you are merry sometimes. "

"Not in a little room with oilwicks burning, and a stench of wine, andpeople round me. People always make me sad. "

"Why that?"

"Because--I do not know:--when a number of faces are round me I seemstupid; it is as if I were in a cage; I feel as if God went away, farther, farther, farther!"

"But God made men and women. "

"Yes. But I wonder if the trapped birds, and the beaten dogs, and thesmarting mules, and the bleeding sheep think so. "

"Oh, Signa!"

"I think they must doubt it, " said Signa. 

"But the beasts are not Christians, the priests say so, " said Palma, whowas a very true believer. 

"I know. But I think they are. For they forgive. We never do. "

"Some of us do. "

"Not as the beasts do. Agnoto's house-lamb, the other day, licked hishand as he cut its throat. He told me so. "

"That was because it loved him, " said Palma. 

"And how can it love if it have not a soul?" said Signa. 

Palma munched her crust. This sort of meditation, which Signa was veryprone to wander in, utterly confused her. 

She could talk at need, as others could, of the young cauliflowers, andthe spring lettuces, and the chances of the ripening corn, and the lookof the budding grapes, and the promise of the weather, and thelikelihood of drought, and the Parocco's last sermon, and the gossips'last history of the neighbours, and the varying prices of fine and ofcoarse plaiting; but anything else--Palma was more at ease with theheavy pole pulling against her, and the heavy bucket coming up sullenlyfrom the water-hole. 

She felt, when he spoke in this way, much as Bruno did--only far moreintensely--as if Signa went away from her--right away into the skysomewhere--as the swallows went when they spread their wings to theeast, or the blue wood-smoke when it vanished. 

"You love your music better than you do Bruno, or me, or anything, Signa, " she said, with a little sorrow that was very humble, and not inthe least reproachful. 

"Yes, " said Signa, with the unconscious cruelty of one in whom Art isborn predominant. "Do you know, Palma, " he said suddenly, after apause--"Do you know--I think I could make something beautiful, somethingmen would be glad of, if only I could be where they would care for it. "

"We do care, " said the girl gently. 

"Oh, in a way. That is not what I mean, " said the boy, with a littleimpatience which daily grew on him more, for the associates of his life. "You all care; you all sing; it is as the finches do in the fields, without knowing at all what it is that you do. You are all like birds. You pipe--pipe--pipe, as you eat, as you work, as you play. But whatmusic do we ever have in the churches? Who amongst you really likes allthat music when I play it off the old scores that Gigi says were writtenby such great men, any better than you like the tinkling of themandolines when you dance in the threshing barns? I am sure you all likethe mandolines best. I know nothing here. I do not even know whetherwhat I do is worth much or nothing. I think if I could hear great musiconce--if I could go to Florence----"

"To Florence?" echoed Palma. 

 * * *

The contadino not seldom goes through all his life without seeing oneleague beyond the fields of his labour, and the village that he isregistered at, married at, and buried at, and which is the very apex ofthe earth to him. Women will spin and plait and hoe and glean withinhalf a dozen miles of some great city whose name is an art glory in themouths of scholars, and never will have seen it, never once perhaps, from their birth down to their grave. A few miles of vine-borderedroads, a breadth of corn-land, a rounded hill, a little red roof under amulberry tree, a church tower with a saint upon the roof, and a bellthat sounds over the walnut-trees--these are their world: they know andwant to know no other. 

A narrow life, no doubt, yet not without much to be said for it. Withoutunrest, without curiosity, without envy; clinging like a plant to thesoil; and no more willing to wander than the vinestakes which theythrust into the earth. 

To those who have put a girdle round the earth with their footsteps, thewhole world seems much smaller than does the hamlet or farm of hisaffections to the peasant:--and how much poorer! The vague, dreamfulwonder of an untravelled distance--of an untracked horizon--has afterall more romance in it than lies in the whole globe run over in a year. 

Who can ever look at the old maps in Herodotus or Xenophon without awish that the charm of those unknown limits and those untraversed seaswas ours?--without an irresistible sense that to have sailed away, invaguest hazard, into the endless mystery of the utterly unknown, musthave had a sweetness and a greatness in it that is never to be extractedfrom "the tour of the world in ninety days. "

 * * *

"She takes a whim for him; a fancy of a month; he thinks it heaven andeternity. She has ruined him. His genius is burned up; his youth isdead; he will do nothing more of any worth. Women like her are like theIndian drugs, that sleep and kill. How is that any fault of mine? Hecould see the thing she was. If he will fling his soul away upon acreature lighter than thistle-down, viler than a rattlesnake's poison, poorer and quicker to pass than the breath of a gnat--whose blame isthat except his own? There was a sculptor once, you know, that fell tolascivious worship of the marble image he had made; well, --poets are noteven so far wise as that. They make an image out of the gossamer rainbowstuff of their own dreams, and then curse heaven and earth because itdissolves to empty air in their fond arms--whose blame is that? Thefools are made so----"

 * * *

Not only the fly on the spoke takes praise to itself for the speed ofthe wheel, but the stone that would fain have hindered it, says, whenthe wheel unhindered has passed it, "Lo! see how much I helped!"

 * * *

The woman makes or mars the man: the man the woman. Mythology had noneed of the Fates. 

There is only one; the winged blind god that came by night to Psyche. 

 * * *

All in a moment his art perished. 

When a human love wakes it crushes fame like a dead leaf, and all thespirits and ministers of the mind shrink away before it, and can no moreallure, no more console, but, sighing, pass into silence and are dumb. 

 * * *

Life, without a central purpose around which it can revolve, is like astar that has fallen out of its orbit. With a great affection or a greataim gone, the practical life may go on loosely, indifferently, mechanically, but it takes no grip on outer things, it has no vitalinterest, it gravitates to nothing. 

 * * *

Men who dwell in solitude are superstitious. There is no "chance" forthem. 

The common things of earth and air to them grow portents: and it iseasier for them to believe that the universe revolves to serve theearth, than to believe that men are to the universe as the gnats in thesunbeam to the sun; they can sooner credit that the constellations arecharged with their destiny, than that they can suffer and die withoutarousing a sigh for them anywhere in all creation. It is not vanity, asthe mocker too hastily thinks. It is the helpless, pathetic cry of themortal to the immortal nature from which he springs:

"Leave me not alone: confound me not with the matter that perishes: I amfull of pain--have pity!"

To be the mere sport of hazard as a dead moth is on the wind--the heartof man refuses to believe it can be so with him. To be created only tobe abandoned--he will not think that the forces of existence are socruel and so unrelenting and so fruitless. In the world he may learn tosay that he thinks so, and is resigned to it; but in loneliness thepenumbra of his own existence lies on all creation, and the winds andthe stars and the daylight and night and the vast unknown mute forces oflife--all seem to him that they must of necessity be either hisministers or his destroyers. 

 * * *

Of all the innocent things that die, the impossible dreams of the poetare the things that die with most pain, and, perhaps, with most loss tohumanity. Those who are happy die before their dreams. This is what theold Greek saying meant. 

The world had not yet driven the sweet, fair follies from Signa's head, nor had it yet made him selfish. If he had lived in the age whenTimander could arrest by his melodies the tide of revolution, or whenthe harp of the Persian could save Bagdad from the sword and flame ofMurad, all might have been well with him. But the time is gone by whenmusic or any other art was a king. All genius now is, at its best, but aservitor--well or ill fed. 

 * * *

Silently he put his hand out and grasped Signa's, and led him into theSpanish Chapel, and sank on his knees. 

The glory of the morning streamed in from the cloister; all the deadgold and the faded hues were transfigured by it; the sunbeams shone onthe face of Laura, the deep sweet colours of Bronzino's Coena glowedupward in the vault amidst the shadows; the company of the blessed, whom the old painters had gathered there, cast off the faded robes thatthe Ages had wrapped them in, and stood forth like the tender spiritsthat they were, and seemed to say, "Nay, we, and they who made us, weare not dead, but only waiting. "

It is all so simple and so foolish there; the war-horses of Taddeo thatbear their lords to eternity as to a joust of arms; the heretic dogs ofMemmi, with their tight wooden collars; the beauteous Fiammetta and herlover, thronging amongst the saints; the little house, where the HolyGhost is sitting, with the purified saints listening at the door, withstrings tied to their heads to lift them into paradise; it is all soquaint, so childlike, so pathetic, so grotesque, --like a set of woodenfigures from its Noah's Ark that a dying child has set out on its littlebed, and that are so stiff and ludicrous, and yet which no one well canlook at and be unmoved, by reason of the little cold hand that has foundbeauty in them. 

As the dying child to the wooden figures, so the dead faith gives to theold frescoes here something that lies too deep for tears; we smile, andyet all the while we say;--if only we could believe like this; if onlyfor us the dead could be but sleeping!

 * * *

It was past midnight, and the moon had vanished behind her mountain, withdrawing her little delicate curled golden horn, as if to blow withit the trumpet-call of morning. 

 * * *

Such pretty, neat, ready lying as this would stand him in better steadthan all the high spirit in the world; which, after all, only serves toget a man into hot water in this life and eternal fire in the next. 

 * * *

In the country of Virgil, life remains pastoral still. The fieldlabourer of northern countries may be but a hapless hind, hedging andditching dolefully, or at best serving a steam-beast with oil and fire;but in the land of the Georgics there is the poetry of agriculturestill. 

Materially it may be an evil and a loss--political economists will sayso; but spiritually it is a gain. A certain peace and light lie on thepeople at their toil. The reaper with his hook, the plougher with hisoxen, the girl who gleans amongst the trailing vines, the child thatsees the flowers tossing with the corn, the men that sing to get ablessing on the grapes--they have all a certain grace and dignity of theold classic ways left with them. They till the earth still with thesimplicity of old, looking straight to the gods for recompense. GreatApollo might still come down amidst them and play to them in theirthreshing-barns, and guide his milk-white beasts over theirfurrows, --and there would be nothing in the toil to shame or burden him. It will not last. The famine of a world too full will lay it waste; butit is here a little while longer still. 

 * * *

For Discontent already creeps into each of these happy households, andunder her fox-skin hood says, "Let me in--I am Progress. "

 * * *

In most men and women, Love waking wakes, with itself, the soul. 

In poets Love waking kills it. 

 * * *

When God gives genius, I think He makes the brain of some strange, glorious stuff, that takes all strength out of the character, and allsight out of the eyes. Those artists--they are like the birds we blind:they sing, and make people weep for very joy to hear them; but theycannot see their way to peck the worms, and are for ever wounding theirbreasts against the wires. No doubt it is a great thing to have genius;but it is a sort of sickness after all; and when love comes--

 * * *

Lippo knew that wise men do not do harm to whatever they may hate. 

They drive it on to slay itself. 

So without blood-guiltiness they get their end, yet stainless go to God. 

 * * *

He was a little shell off the seashore that Hermes had taken out ofmillions like it that the waves washed up, and had breathed into, andhad strung with fine chords, and had made into a syrinx sweet for everyhuman ear. 

Why not break the simple shell for sport? She did not care for music. Did the gods care--they could make another. 

 * * *

Start a lie and a truth together, like hare and hound; the lie will runfast and smooth, and no man will ever turn it aside; but at the truthmost hands will fling a stone, and so hinder it for sport's sake, ifthey can. 

 * * *

He heard the notes of a violin, quite faint and distant, but sweet asthe piping of a blackbird amongst the white anemones of earliestspring. 

 * * *

"Nature makes some folks false as it makes lizards wriggle, " said he. "Lippo is a lizard. No dog ever caught him napping, though he looks solazy in the sun. "

 * * *

He did not waver. He did not repine. He made no reproach, even in hisown thoughts. He had only lost all the hope out of his life and all thepride of it. 

But men lose these and live on; women also. 

He had built up his little kingdom out of atoms, little by little; atomsof time, of patience, of self-denial, of hoarded coins, of snatchedmoments;--built it up little by little, at cost of bodily labour and ofbodily pain, as the pyramids were built brick by brick by the toil andthe torment of unnoticed lives. 

It was only a poor little nook of land, but it had been like an empirewon to him. 

With his foot on its soil he had felt rich. 

And now it was gone--gone like a handful of thistle-down lost on thewinds, like a spider's web broken in a shower of rain. Gone: never to behis own again. Never. 

He sat and watched the brook run on, the pied birds come to drink, thethrostle stir on the olive, the cloud shadows steal over the brown, barefields. 

The red flush of sunrise faded. Smoke rose from the distant roofs. Mencame out on the lands to work. Bells rang. The day began. 

He got up slowly and went away; looking backwards, looking backwards, always. 

Great leaders who behold their armed hosts melt like snow, and greatmonarchs who are driven out discrowned from the palaces of theirfathers, are statelier figures and have more tragic grace than hehad;--only a peasant leaving a shred of land, no bigger than a richman's dwelling-house will cover;--but vanquished leader or exiledmonarch never was more desolate than Bruno, when the full sun rose andhe looked his last look upon the three poor fields, where for ever thehands of other men would labour, and for ever the feet of other menwould wander. 

 * * *

He only heard the toads cry to one another, feeling rain coming, "Crake!crake! crake! We love a wet world as men an evil way. The skies aregoing to weep; let us be merry. Crock! crock! crock!"

And they waddled out--slow, quaint, black things, with arms akimbo, andstared at him with their shrewd, hard eyes. They would lie snug athousand years with a stone and be quite happy. 

Why were not men like that?

Toads are kindly in their way, and will get friendly. Only men seem tothem such fools. 

The toad is a fakeer, and thinks the beatitude of life lies incontemplation. Men fret and fuss and fume, and are for ever in haste;the toad eyes them with contempt. 

 * * *

I would die this hour, oh, so gladly, if I could be quite sure that mymusic would be loved, and be remembered. I do not know: there can benothing like it, I think:--a thing you create, that is all your own, that is the very breath of your mouth, and the very voice of your soul;which is all that is best in you, the very gift of God; and then to knowthat all this may be lost eternally, killed, stifled, buried, just forwant of men's faith and a little gold! I do not think there can be anyloss like it, nor any suffering like it, anywhere else in the world. Oh, if only it would do any good, I would fling my body into the graveto-morrow, happy, quite happy; if only afterwards, they would sing mysongs, all over the earth, and just say, "God spoke to him; and he hastold men what He said. "

 * * *

No one can make much music with the mandoline, but there is no othermusic, perhaps, which sounds so fittingly to time and place, as do itssimple sonorous tender chords when heard through the thickets ofrose-laurel or the festoons of the vines, vibrating on the stillness ofthe night under the Tuscan moon. It would suit the serenade of Romeo;Desdemona should sing the willow song to it, and not to the harp; Paolopleaded by it, be sure, many a time to Francesca; and Stradella sang toit the passion whose end was death; it is of all music the most Italian, and it fills the pauses of the love-songs softly, like a sigh or like akiss. 

Its very charm is, that it says so little. Love wants so little said. 

And the mandoline, though so mournful and full of languor as Love is, yet can be gay with that caressing joy born of beautiful nothings, whichmakes the laughter of lovers the lightest-hearted laughter that evergives silver wings to time. 

 * * *

It was a quaint, vivid, pretty procession, full of grace and ofmovement--classic and homely, pagan and mediæval, both at once--brightin hue, rustic in garb, poetic in feeling. 

Teniers might have painted the brown girls and boys leaping and singingon the turf, with their brandishing boughs, their flaring torches, theirbare feet, their tossing arms; but Leonardo or Guercino would have beenwanted for the face of the young singer whom they carried, with thecrown of the leaves and of the roses on his drooped head, like thelotus flowers on the young Antinous. 

Piero di Cosimo, perhaps, in one of his greatest moments of brilliantcaprice, might best have painted the whole, with the background of thedusky hillside; and he would have set it round with strange arabesquesin gold, and illumined amongst them in emblem the pipe of the shepherd, and the harp of the muse, and the river-rush that the gods would cutdown and fill with their breath and the music of heaven. 

Bruno stood by, and let the innocent pageant pass, with its gold ofautumn foliage and its purples of crocus-like colchicum. 

He heard their voices crying in the court: "We have got him--we havebrought him. Our Signa, who is going to be great!"

 * * *

All life had been to him as the divining-rod of Aaron, blooming everafresh with magic flowers. Now that the flame of pain and passion burnedit up, and left a bare sear brittle bough, he could not understand. 

Love is cruel as the grave. 

The poet has embraced the universe in his visions, and heard harmony inevery sound, from deep calling through the darkest storm to deep, asfrom the lightest leaf-dancing in the summer wind; he has found joy inthe simplest things, in the nest of a bird, in the wayside grass, in theyellow sand, in the rods of the willow; the lowliest creeping life hasheld its homily and solace, and in the hush of night he has lifted hisface to the stars, and thought that he communed with their Creator andhis own. Then--all in a moment--Love claims him, and there is no melodyanywhere save in one single human voice, there is no heaven for him saveon one human breast; when one face is turned from him there is darknesson all the earth; when one life is lost--let the stars reel from theircourses and the world whirl and burn and perish like the moon; nothingmatters; when Love is dead there is no God. 

 * * *

Bruno lay down that night, but for an hour only. He could not sleep. 

He rose before the sun was up, in the grey wintry break of day, whilethe fog from the river rose like a white wall built up across the plain. 

It is the season when the peasant has the least to do. Ploughing, andsowing, and oil-pressing, all are past; there is little labour for manor beast; there is only garden work for the vegetable market, and thecare of the sheep and cattle, where there are any. In large households, where many brothers and sisters get round the oil lamp and munch roastchestnuts and thrum a guitar, or tell ghost stories, these short emptydays are very well; sometimes there is a stranger lost coming over thepinewoods, sometimes there is a snow-storm, and the sheep want seeingto; sometimes there is the old roistering way of keeping Twelfth-night, even on these lonely wind-torn heights; where the house is full andmerry, the short winter passes not so very dully; but in the solitaryplaces, where men brood alone, as Bruno did, they are heavy enough; allthe rest of the world might be dead and buried, the stillness is sounbroken, the loneliness so great. 

He got up and saw after his few sheep above amongst the pines; one ortwo of them were near lambing; then he laboured on his garden mouldamongst the potato plants and cauliflowers, the raw mist in his lungsand the sea-wind blowing. It had become very mild; the red rose on hishouse-wall was in bud, and the violets were beginning to push fromunderneath the moss; but the mornings were always very cold and damp. 

An old man came across from Carmignano to beg a pumpkin-gourd or two; hegot a scanty living by rubbing them up and selling them to the fishermendown on the Arno. Bruno gave them. He had known the old creature all hislife. 

"You are dull here, " said the old man, timidly; because every one wasmore or less afraid of Bruno. 

Bruno shrugged his shoulders and took up his spade again. 

"Your boy does grand things, they say, " said the old man; "but it wouldbe cheerfuller for you if he had taken to the soil. "

Bruno went on digging. 

"It is like a man I know, " said the pumpkin-seller, thinking the soundof his own voice must be a charity. "A man that helped to castchurch-bells. He cast bells all his life; he never did anything else atall. 'It is brave work, ' said he to me once, 'sweating in the furnacethere and making the metal into tuneful things to chime the praise ofall the saints and angels; but when you sweat and sweat and sweat, andevery bell you make just goes away and is swung up where you never seeor hear it ever again--that seems sad; my bells are all ringing in theclouds, saving the people's souls, greeting Our Lady; but they are allgone ever so far away from me. I only hear them ringing in my dreams. 'Now, I think the boy is like the bells--to you. "

Bruno dug in the earth. 

"The man was a fool, " said he. "Who cared for his sweat or sorrow? Itwas his work to melt the metal. That was all. "

"Ay, " said the pumpkin-seller, and shouldered the big, yellow, wrinkledthings that he had begged; "but never to hear the bells--that is sadwork. "

Bruno smiled grimly. 

"Sad! He could hear some of them as other people did, no doubt, ringingfar away against the skies while he was in the mud. That was all hewanted; if he were wise, he did not even want so much as that. Good-day. "

It was against his wont to speak so many words on any other thing thanthe cattle or the olive harvest or the prices of seeds and grain in themarket in the town. He set his heel upon his spade and pitched theearth-begrimed potatoes in the skip he filled. 

The old man nodded and went--to wend his way to Carmignano. 

Suddenly he turned back: he was a tender-hearted, fanciful soul, and hadhad a long, lonely life himself. 

"I tell you what, " he said, a little timidly; "perhaps the bells, praising God always, ringing the sun in and out, and honouring Our Lady;perhaps they went for something in the lives of the men that made them?I think they must. It would be hard if the bells got everything, themakers nothing. "

Over Bruno's face a slight change went. His imperious eyes softened. Heknew the old man spoke in kindness. 

"Take these home with you. Nay; no thanks, " he said, and lifted on theother's back the kreel full of potatoes dug for the market. 

The old man blessed him, overjoyed; he was sickly and very poor; andhobbled on his way along the side of the mountains. 

Bruno went to other work. 

If the bells ring true and clear, and always to the honour of thesaints, a man may be content to have sweated for it in the furnace andto be forgot; but--if it be cracked in a fire and the pure ore of itmelt away shapeless?

 * * *

"Toccò" was sounding from all the city clocks. He met another man heknew, a farmer from Montelupo. 

"Brave doings!" said the Montelupo man. "A gala night to-night for theforeign prince, and your boy summoned, so they say. No doubt you arecome in to see it all?"

Bruno shook himself free quickly, and went on; for a moment it occurredto him that it might be best to wait and see Signa in the town; but thenhe could not do that well. Nothing was done at home, and the lambs couldnot be left alone to the shepherd lad's inexperience; only a day old, one or two of them, and the ground so wet, and the ewes weakly. To leavehis farm would have seemed to Bruno as to leave his sinking ship does toa sailor. Besides, he had nothing to do with all the grandeur; the kingdid not want _him_. 

All this stir and tumult and wonder and homage in the city was forSigna; princes seemed almost like his servants, the king like hishenchman! Bruno was proud, under his stern, calm, lofty bearing, whichwould not change, and would not let him smile, or seem so womanish-weakas to be glad for all the gossiping. 

The boy wanted no king or prince. 

He said so to them with erect disdain. 

Yet he was proud. 

"After all, one does hear the bells ringing, " he thought; his minddrifting away to the old Carmignano beggar's words. He was proud, andglad. 

He stopped his mule by Strozzi palace, and pushed his way into thealmost empty market to the place called the Spit or Fila, where all daylong and every day before the roaring fires the public cooks roast fleshand fowl to fill the public paunch of Florence. 

Here there was a large crowd, pushing to buy the frothing, savoury hotmeats. He thrust the others aside, and bought half a kid smoking, and afine capon, and thrust them in his cart. Then he went to a shop near, and bought some delicate white bread, and some foreign chocolate, andsome snowy sugar. 

"No doubt, " he thought, "the boy had learned to like daintier fare thantheirs in his new life;" theirs, which was black crusts and oil andgarlic all the year round, with meat and beans, perhaps, on feastnights, now and then, by way of a change. Then as he was going to getinto his seat he saw among the other plants and flowers standing forsale upon the ledge outside the palace a damask rose-tree--a littlething, but covered with buds and blossoms blushing crimson against thestately old iron torch-rings of the smith Caprera. Bruno looked atit--he who never thought of flowers from one year's end on to another, and cut them down with his scythe for his oxen to munch as he cut grass. Then he bought it. 

The boy liked all beautiful innocent things, and had been always sofoolish about the lowliest herb. It would make the dark old house uponthe hill look bright to him. Ashamed of the weaknesses that he yieldedto, Bruno sent the mule on at its fastest pace; the little red rose-treenodding in the cart. 

He had spent more in a day than he was accustomed to spend in threemonths' time. 

But then the house looked so cheerless. 

As swiftly as he could make the mule fly, he drove home across theplain. 

The boy was there, no doubt; and would be cold and hungry, and alone. 

Bruno did not pause a moment on his way, though more than one called tohim as he drove, to know if it were true indeed that this night therewas to be a gala for the Lamia and the princes. 

He nodded, and flew through the chill grey afternoon, splashing the deepmud on either side of him. 

The figure of St. Giusto on his high tower; the leafless vines and theleafless poplars; the farriers' and coopers' workshops on the road; grimCastel Pucci, that once flung its glove at Florence; the green low darkhills of Castagnolo; villa and monastery, watch-tower and bastion, homestead and convent, all flew by him, fleeting and unseen; all hethought of was that the boy would be waiting, and want food. 

He was reckless and furious in his driving always, but his mule hadnever been beaten and breathless as it was that day when he tore up theascent to his own farm as the clocks in the plain tolled four. 

He was surprised to see his dog lie quiet on the steps. 

"Is he there?" he cried instinctively to the creature, which rose andcame to greet him. 

There was no sound anywhere. 

Bruno pushed his door open. 

The house was empty. 

He went out again and shouted to the air. 

The echo from the mountain above was all his answer. When that died awaythe old silence of the hills was unbroken. 

He returned and took the food and the little rose-tree out of his cart. 

He had bought them with eagerness, and with that tenderness which was inhim, and for which dead Dina had loved him to her hurt. He had now nopleasure in them. A bitter disappointment flung its chill upon him. 

Disappointment is man's most frequent visitor--the uninvited guest mostsure to come; he ought to be well used to it; yet he can never getfamiliar. 

Bruno ought to have learned never to hope. 

But his temper was courageous and sanguine: such madmen hope on to thevery end. 

He put the things down on the settle, and went to put up the mule. Thelittle rose-tree had been too roughly blown in the windy afternoon; itsflowers were falling, and some soon strewed the floor. 

Bruno looked at it when he entered. 

It hurt him; as the star Argol had done. 

He covered the food with a cloth, and set the flower out of the draught. Then he went to see his sheep. 

There was no train by the seaway from Rome until night. Signa would notcome that way now, since he had to be in the town for the evening. 

"He will come after the theatre, " Bruno said to himself, and tried toget the hours away by work. He did not think of going into the cityagain himself. He was too proud to go and see a thing he had never beensummoned to; too proud to stand outside the doors and stare with thecrowd while Pippa's son was honoured within. 

Besides, he could not have left the lambs all a long winter's night; andthe house all unguarded; and nobody there to give counsel to the poormute simpleton whom he had now to tend his beasts. 

"He will come after the theatre, " he said. 

The evening seemed very long. 

The late night came. Bruno set his door open, cold though it was; sothat he should catch the earliest sound of footsteps. The boy, no doubt, he thought, would drive to the foot of the hill, and walk the rest. 

It was a clear night after the rain of many days. 

He could see the lights of the city in the plain fourteen miles or soaway. 

What was doing down there?

It seemed strange;--Signa being welcomed there, and he himself knowingnothing--only hearing a stray word or two by chance. 

Once or twice in his younger days he had seen the city in gala over somegreat artist it delighted to honour; he could imagine the scene andfashion of it all well enough; he did not want to be noticed in it, onlyhe would have liked to have been told, and to have gone down and seenit, quietly wrapped in his cloak, amongst the throng. 

That was how he would have gone, had he been told. 

He set the supper out as well as he could, and put wine ready, and therose-tree in the midst. In the lamplight the little feast did not lookso badly. 

He wove wicker-work round some uncovered flasks by way of doingsomething. The bitter wind blew in; he did not mind that; his ear wasstrained to listen. Midnight passed. The wind had blown his lamp out. Helighted two great lanthorns, and hung them up against the doorposts; itwas so dark upon the hills. 

One hour went; another; then another. There was no sound. When yetanother passed, and it was four of the clock, he said:

"He will not come to-night. No doubt they kept him late, and he was tootired. He will be here by sunrise. "

He threw himself on his bed for a little time, and closed the door. Buthe left the lanthorns hanging outside; on the chance. 

He slept little; he was up while it was still dark, and the robins werebeginning their first twittering notes. 

"He will be here to breakfast, " he said to himself, and he left thetable untouched, only opening the shutters so that when day came itshould touch the rose at once and wake it up; it looked so drooping, asthough it felt the cold. 

Then he went and saw to his beasts and to his work. 

The sun leapt up in the cold, broad, white skies. Signa did not comewith it. 

The light brightened. The day grew. Noon brought its hour of rest. 

The table still stood unused. The rose-leaves had fallen in a littlecrimson pool upon it. Bruno sat down on the bench by the door, nothaving broken his fast. 

"They are keeping him in the town, " he thought. "He will come later. "

He sat still a few moments, but he did not eat. 

In a little while he heard a step on the dead winter leaves and tufts ofrosemary. He sprang erect; his eyes brightened; his face changed. Hewent forward eagerly:

"Signa!--my dear!--at last!"

He only saw under the leafless maples and brown vine tendrils a youngman that he had never seen, who stopped before him breathing quicklyfrom the steepness of the ascent. 

"I was to bring this to you, " he said, holding out a long gun in itscase. "And to tell you that he, the youth they all talk of--Signa--wentback to Rome this morning; had no time to come, but sends you this, withhis dear love and greeting, and will write from Rome to-night. Ah, Lord!There was such fuss with him in the city. He was taken to the foreignprinces, and then the people!--if you had heard them!--all the streetrang with the cheering. This morning he could hardly get away for allthe crowd there was. I am only a messenger. I should be glad of wine. Your hill is steep. "

Bruno took the gun from him, and put out a flask of his own wine on thethreshold; then shut close the door. 

It was such a weapon as he had coveted all his life long, seeing such ingunsmiths' windows and the halls of noblemen: a breech-loader, offoreign make, beautifully mounted and inlaid with silver. 

He sat still a little while, the gun lying on his knees; there was agreat darkness on his face. Then he gripped it in both hands, the buttin one, the barrel in the other, and dashed the centre of it down acrossthe round of his great grindstone. 

The blow was so violent, the wood of the weapon snapped with it acrossthe middle, the shining metal loosened from its hold. He struck itagain, and again, and again; until all the polished walnut was flying insplinters, and the plates of silver, bent and twisted, falling at hisfeet; the finely tempered steel of the long barrel alone was whole. 

He went into his woodshed, and brought out branches of acacia brambles, and dry boughs of pine, and logs of oak; dragging them forth with fury. He piled them in the empty yawning space of the black hearth, and builtthem one on another in a pile; and struck a match and fired them, tossing pine-cones in to catch the flames. 

In a few minutes a great fire roared alight, the turpentine in thepine-apples and fir-boughs blazing like pitch. Then he fetched thebarrel of the gun, and the oaken stock, and the silver plates andmountings, and threw them into the heat. 

The flaming wood swallowed them up; he stood and watched it. 

After a while a knock came at his house-door. 

"Who is there?" he called. 

"It is I, " said a peasant's voice. "There is so much smoke, I thoughtyou were on fire. I was on the lower hill, so I ran up--is all rightwith you?"

"All is right with me. "

"But what is the smoke?"

"I bake my bread. "

"It will be burnt to cinders. "

"I make it, and I eat it. Whose matter is it?"

The peasant went away muttering, with slow unwilling feet. 

Bruno watched the fire. 

After a brief time its frenzy spent itself; the flames died down; thereddened wood grew pale, and began to change to ash; the oaken stock wasall consumed, the silver was melted and fused into shapeless lumps, thesteel tube alone kept shape unchanged, but it was blackened and chokedup with ashes, and without beauty or use. 

Bruno watched the fire die down into a great mound of dull grey andbrown charred wood. 

Then he went out, and drew the door behind him, and locked it. 

The last red rose dropped, withered by the heat. 

 * * *

There is always song somewhere. As the wine waggon creaks down the hill, the waggoner will chant to the corn that grows upon either side of him. As the miller's mules cross the bridge, the lad as he cracks his whipwill hum to the blowing alders. In the red clover, the labourers willwhet their scythes to a trick of melody. In the quiet evenings a KyrieEleison will rise from the thick leaves that hide a village chapel. Onthe hills the goatherd, high in air amongst the arbutus branches, willscatter on the lonely mountain-side stanzas of purest rhythm. By thesea-shore, where Shelley died, the fisherman, rough and salt andweather-worn, will string notes of sweetest measure under thetamarisk-tree on his mandoline. But the poetry and the music float onthe air like the leaves of roses that blossom in a solitude, and driftaway to die upon the breeze; there is no one to notice the fragrance, there is no one to gather the leaves. 

 * * *

But then life does not count by years. Some suffer a lifetime in a day, and so grow old between the rising and the setting of a sun. 

 * * *

But he was not obstinate. He only stretched towards the light he saw, asthe plant in the cellar will stretch through the bars. 

Tens of millions of little peasants come to the birth, and grow up andbecome men, and do the daily bidding of the world, and work and die, andhave no more of soul or Godhead in them than the grains of sand. Buthere and there, with no lot different from his fellows, one is born todream and muse and struggle to the sun of higher desires, and the worldcalls such a one Burns, or Haydn, or Giotto, or Shakespeare, or whatevername the fierce light of fame may burn upon and make irridescent. 

 * * *

The mighty lives have passed away into silence, leaving no likeness tothem on earth; but if you would still hold communion with them, evenbetter than to go to written score or printed book or painted panel orchiselled marble or cloistered gloom is it to stray into one of theseold quiet gardens, where for hundreds of years the stone naiad hasleaned over the fountain, and the golden lizard hidden under the fallencaryatide, and sit quite still, and let the stones tell you what theyremember, and the leaves say what the sun once saw; and then the shadesof the great dead will come to you. Only you must love them truly, elseyou will see them never. 

 * * *

"How he loves that thing already--as he never will love me, " thoughtBruno, looking down at him in the starlight, with that dull sense ofhopeless rivalry and alien inferiority which the self-absorption ofgenius inflicts innocently and unconsciously on the human affectionsthat cling to it, and which later on love avenges upon it in the samemanner. 

 * * *

Who can look at the old maps in Herodotus or Xenophon, without a wishthat the charm of those unknown limits and those untraversed seas wasours?--without an irresistible sense that to have sailed away, invaguest hazard, into the endless mystery of the utterly unknown, musthave had a sweetness and a greatness in it that is never to be extractedfrom the "tour of the world in ninety days. "

 * * *

Fair faiths are the blossoms of life. When the faith drops, spring isover. 

 * * *

In the country of Virgil, life remains pastoral still. Thefield-labourer of northern counties may be but a hapless hind, hedgingand ditching dolefully, or at least serving a steam-beast with oil andfire, but in the land of the Georgics there is the poetry of agriculturestill. 

 * * *

The fatal desire of fame, which is to art the corroding element, as thedesire of the senses is to love--bearing with it the seeds of satietyand mortality--had entered into him without his knowing what it was thatailed him. 

 * * *

Genius lives in isolation, and suffers from it. But perhaps it createsit. The breath of its lips is like ether; purer than the air around it, it changes the air for others into ice. 

 * * *

Conscience and genius--the instinct of the heart, and the desire of themind--the voice that warns and the voice that ordains: when these are inconflict, it is bitter for life in which they are at war; most bitter ofall when that life is in its opening youth, and sure of everything, andyet sure of nothing. 

 * * *

Between them there was that bottomless chasm of mental difference, across which mutual affection can throw a rope-chain of habit andforbearance for the summer days, but which no power on earth can everbridge over with that iron of sympathy which stands throughout allstorms. 

 * * *

When the heart is fullest of pain, and the mouth purest with truth, there is a cruel destiny in things, which often makes the words worstchosen and surest to defeat the end they seek. 

 * * *

There is a chord in every human heart that has a sigh in it if touchedaright. When the artist finds the key-note which that chord will answerto--in the dullest as in the highest--then he is great. 

 * * *

Life without a central purpose around which it can revolve, is like astar that has fallen out of its orbit. With a great affection or a greataim gone, the practical life may go on loosely, indifferently, mechanically, but it takes no grip on outer things, it has no vitalinterest, it gravitates to nothing. 

 * * *

Fame has only the span of a day, they say. But to live in the hearts ofthe people--that is worth something. 

 * * *

Keep young. Keep innocent. Innocence does not come back: and repentanceis a poor thing beside it. 

 * * *

The chimes of the monastery were ringing out for the first mass; deepbells of sweet tone, that came down the river like a benediction on theday. Signa kneeled down on the grass. 

"Did you pray for the holy men?" Bruno asked him when they rose, andthey went on under the tall green quivering trees. 

"No, " said Signa under his breath. "I prayed for the devil. "

"For him?" echoed Bruno aghast; "what are you about, child? Are youpossessed? Do you know what the good priests would say?"

"I prayed for him, " said Signa. "It is he who wants it. To be wicked_there_ where God is, and the sun, and the bells"----

"But he is the foe of God. It is horrible to pray for him. "

"No, " said Signa, sturdily. "God says we are to forgive our enemies, andhelp them. I only asked Him to begin with His. "

Bruno was silent. 

_TRICOTRIN. _

At every point where her eyes glanced there was a picture of exquisitecolour, and light, and variety. 

But the scene in its loveliness was so old to her, so familiar, that itwas scarcely lovely, only monotonous. With all a child's usual ignorantimpatience of the joys of the present--joys so little valued at thetime, so futilely regretted in the after-years--she was heedless of thehour's pleasure, she was longing for what had not come. 

 * * *

On the whole, the Waif fared better, having fallen to the hands of avagabond philosopher, than if she had drifted to those of a respectedphilanthropist. The latter would have had her glistening hair shornshort, as a crown with which that immortal and inconsistent socialistNature had no justification in crowning a foundling, and, in his desireto make her fully expiate the lawless crime of entering the worldwithout purse or passport, would have left her no choice, as she grewinto womanhood, save that between sinning and starving. The former badethe long fair tresses float on the air, sunny rebels against bondage, and saw no reason why the childhood of the castaway should not have itsshare of childish joyousness as well as the childhood prince-begottenand palace-cradled; holding that the fresh life just budded on earthwas as free from all soil, no matter whence it came, as is the brook ofpure rivulet water, no matter whether it spring from classic lake orfrom darksome cavern. 

 * * *

The desire to be "great" possessed her. When that insatiate passionenters a living soul, be it the soul of a woman-child dreaming of acoquette's conquests, or a crowned hero craving for a new world, itbecomes blind to all else. Moral death falls on it; and any sin lookssweet that takes it nearer to its goal. It is a passion that generatesat once all the loftiest and all the vilest things, which between themennoble and corrupt the world--even as heat generates at once theharvest and the maggot, the purpling vine and the lice that devour it. It is a passion without which the world would decay in darkness, as itwould do without heat, yet to which, as to heat, all its filthiestcorruption is due. 

 * * *

A woman's fair repute is like a blue harebell--a touch can wither it. 

 * * *

Viva had gained the "great world;" and because she had gained it all theold things of her lost past grew unalterably sweet to her now that theyno longer could be called hers. The brown, kind, homely, tender face ofgrand'mère; the gambols of white and frolicsome Bébé; the woods where, with every spring, she had filled her arms with sheaves of delicateprimroses; the quaint little room with its strings of melons and sweetherbs, its glittering brass and pewter, its wood-fire with the soup-potsimmering above the flame; the glad free days in the vineyard and onthe river, with the winds blowing fragrance from over the clover andflax, and the acacias and lindens; nay, even the old, quiet, sleepyhours within the convent-walls, lying on the lush unshaven grass, whilethe drowsy bells rang to vespers or compline, --all became suddenlyprecious and dear to her when once she knew that they had drifted awayfrom her for evermore. 

 * * *

Then he bent his head, letting her desire be his law; and that music, which had given its hymn for the vintage-feast of the Loire, and whichhad brought back the steps of the suicide from the river-brink in thedarkness of the Paris night, which sovereigns could not command andwhich held peasants entranced by its spell, thrilled through thestillness of the chamber. 

Human in its sadness, more than human in its eloquence, now melancholyas the Miserere that sighs through the gloom of a cathedral at midnight, now rich as the glory of the afterglow in Egypt, a poem beyond words, aprayer grand as that which seems to breathe from the hush of mountainsolitudes when the eternal snows are lighted by the rising of thesun--the melody of the violin filled the silence of the closing day. 

The melancholy, ever latent in the vivid natures of men of genius, isbetrayed and finds voice in their Art. Goethe laughs with the riotousrevellers, and rejoices with the summer of the vines, and loves the gladabandonment of woman's soft embraces, and with his last words prays forLight. But the profound sadness of the great and many-sided master-mindthrills through and breaks out in the intense humanity, the passionatedespair of Faust; the melancholy and the yearning of the soul are there. 

With Tricotrin they were uttered in his music. 

 * * *

"Let me be but amused! Let me only laugh if I die!" cries the world inevery age. It has so much of grief and tragedy in its own realities, ithas so many bitter tears to shed in its solitude, it has such wearinessof labour without end, it has such infinitude of woe to regard in itsprisons, in its homes, in its battlefields, in its harlotries, in itsavarices, in its famines; it is so heart-sick of them all, that it wouldfain be lulled to forgetfulness of its own terrors; it asks only tolaugh for awhile, even if it laugh but at shadows. 

"The world is vain, frivolous, reckless of that which is earnest; it isa courtesan who thinks only of pleasure, of adornment, of gewgaws, ofthe toys of the hour!" is the reproach which its satirists in every agehoot at it. 

Alas! it is a courtesan who, having sold herself to evil, strives toforget her vile bargain; who, having washed her cheeks white withsaltest tears, strives to believe that the paint calls the true colourback; who, having been face to face for so long with blackest guilt, keenest hunger, dreadest woe, strives to lose their ghosts, thatincessantly follow her, in the tumult of her own thoughtless laughter. 

"Let me be but amused!"--the cry is the aching cry of a world that isoverborne with pain, and with longing for the golden years of its youth;that cry is never louder than when the world is most conscious of itsown infamy. 

In the Roman Empire, in the Byzantine Empire, in the Second Empire ofNapoleonic France, the world, reeking with corruption, staggering underthe burden of tyrannies, and delivered over to the dominion of lust, hasshrieked loudest in its blindness of suffering, "Let me only laugh if Idie!"

 * * *

Not as others! Why, my Waif? Is your foot less swift, your limb lessstrong, your face less fair than theirs? Does the sun shine less often, have the flowers less fragrance, does sleep come less sweetly to youthan to them? Nature has been very good, very generous to you, Viva. Becontent with her gifts. What you lack is only a thing of man'sinvention--a quibble, a bauble, a Pharisee's phylactery. Look at theriver-lilies that drift yonder--how white they are, how their leavesenclose and caress them, how the water buoys them up and plays withthem! Well, are they not better off than the poor rare flowers that livepainfully in hothouse air, and are labelled, and matted, and given longnames by men's petty precise laws? You are like the river-lilies. Ochild, do not pine for the glass house that would ennoble you, only toforce you and kill you?

 * * *

Wrong to be proud, you ask? No. But then the pride must be of a rightfashion. It must be the pride which says, "Let me not envy, for thatwere meanness. Let me not covet, for that were akin to theft. Let me notrepine, for that were weakness. " It must be the pride which says, "I canbe sufficient for myself. My life makes my nobility; and I need noaccident of rank, because I have a stainless honour. " It must be pridetoo proud to let an aged woman work where youthful limbs can help her;too proud to trample basely on what lies low already; too proud to be acoward, and shrink from following conscience in the confession of knownerror; too proud to despise the withered toil-worn hands of the poor andold, and be vilely forgetful that those hands succoured you in yourutmost need of helpless infancy!

 * * *

Philosophy, Viva, is the pomegranate of life, ever cool and mostfragrant, and the deeper you cut in it the richer only will the coregrow. Power is the Dead-Sea apple, golden and fair to sight while thehand strives to reach it, dry grey ashes between dry fevered lips whenonce it is grasped and eaten!

 * * *

Pleasure is but labour to those who do not know also that labour in itsturn is pleasure. 

 * * *

Happy! As a mollusc is happy so long as the sea sweeps prey into itsjaws; what does the mollusc care how many lives have been shipwrecked solong as the tide wafts it worms? She has killed her conscience, Viva;there is no murder more awful. It is to slay what touch of God we havein us!

 * * *

Have I been cruel, my child? Your fever of discontent needed a sharpcure. Life lies before you, Viva, and you alone can mould it foryourself. Sin and anguish fill nine-tenths of the world: to one soulthat basks in light, a thousand perish in darkness; I dare not let yougo on longer in your dangerous belief that the world is one wideparadise, and that the high-road of its joys is the path of recklessselfishness. Can you not think that there are lots worse than that of aguiltless child who is well loved and well guarded, and has all herfuture still before her?

 * * *

It rests with you to live your life nobly or vilely. We have not ourchoice to be rich or poor, to be happy or unhappy, to be in health or insickness; but we have our choice to be worthy or worthless. Noantagonist can kill our soul in us; that can perish only from its ownsuicide. Ever remember that. 

 * * *

But they are hollow inside, you still urge? fie, for shame! What a pleathat is! Have you the face to make it? If you have, let me bargain withyou. 

When all the love that is fair and false goes begging for believers, andall the passion that is a sham fails to find one fool to buy it; whenall the priests and politicians clap in vain together the brazen cymbalsof their tongues, because their listeners will not hearken to brassclangour, nor accept it for the music of the spheres; when all thecreeds, that feast and fatten upon the cowardice and selfishness of men, are driven out of hearth and home, and mart and temple, as impostorsthat put on the white beard of reverence and righteousness to passcurrent a cheater's coin; when all the kings that promise peace whilethey swell their armouries and armies; when all the statesmen thatchatter of the people's weal as they steal up to the locked casket wherecoronets are kept; when all the men who talk of "glory, " and prate of an"idea" that they may stretch their nation's boundary, and filch theirneighbour's province--when all these are no longer in the land, and nomore looked on with favour, then I will believe your cry that you hatethe toys which are hollow. 

 * * *

Can an ignorant or an untrained brain follow the theory of light, or themetamorphosis of plants? Yet it may rejoice in the rays of a summer sun, in the scent of a nest of wild-flowers. So may it do in my music. ShallI ask higher payment than the God of the sun and the violets asks forHimself?

 * * *

Once there were three handmaidens of Krishna's; invisible, of course, tothe world of men. They begged of Krishna, one day, to test their wisdom, and Krishna gave them three drops of dew. It was in the season ofdrought, --and he bade them go and bestow them where each deemed best inthe world. 

Now one flew earthward, and saw a king's fountain leaping and shining inthe sun; the people died of thirst, and the fields and the plains werecracked with heat, but the king's fountain was still fed and played on. So she thought, "Surely, my dew will best fall where such glorious waterdances?" and she shook the drop into the torrent. 

The second hovered over the sea, and saw the Indian oysters lying underthe waves, among the sea-weed and the coral. Then she thought, "Arain-drop that falls in an oyster's shell becomes a pearl; it may bringriches untold to man, and shine in the diadem of a monarch. Surely it isbest bestowed where it will change to a jewel?"--and she shook the dewinto the open mouth of a shell. 

The third had scarcely hovered a moment over the parched white lands, ere she beheld a little, helpless brown bird dying of thirst upon thesand, its bright eyes glazed, its life going out in torture. Then shethought, "Surely my gift will be best given in succour to the first andlowliest thing I see in pain?"--and she shook the dew-drop down into thesilent throat of the bird, that fluttered, and arose, and wasstrengthened. 

Then Krishna said that she alone had bestowed her power wisely; and hebade her take the tidings of rain to the aching earth, and the earthrejoiced exceedingly. Genius is the morning dew that keeps the worldfrom perishing in drought. Can you read my parable?

 * * *

To die when life can be lived no longer with honour is greatness indeed;but to die because life galls and wearies and is hard to pursue--thereis no greatness in that? It is the suicide's plea for his own self-pity. You live under tyranny, corruption, dynastic lies hard to bear, despoticenemies hard to bear, I know. But you forget--what all followers of yourcreed ever forget--that without corruption, untruth, weakness, ignorancein a nation itself, such things could not be in its rulers. Men canbridle the ass and can drive the sheep; but who can drive the eagle orbridle the lion? A people that was strong and pure no despot could yoketo his vices. 

 * * *

No matter! He must have _race_ in him. Heraldry may lie; but voices donot. Low people make money, drive in state, throng to palaces, receivekings at their tables by the force of gold; but their antecedents alwayscroak out in their voices. They either screech or purr; they have noclear modulations; besides, their women always stumble over their train, and their men bow worse than their servants. 

 * * *

Ere long he drew near a street which in the late night was stillpartially filled with vehicles and with foot-passengers, hurryingthrough the now fast-falling snow, and over the slippery icy pavements. In one spot a crowd had gathered--of artisans, women, soldiers, andidlers, under the light of a gas-lamp. In the midst of the throng somegendarmes had seized a young girl, accused by one of the bystanders ofhaving stolen a broad silver piece from his pocket. 

She offered no resistance; she stood like a stricken thing, speechlessand motionless, as the men roughly laid hands on her. 

Tricotrin crossed over the road, and with difficulty made his way intothe throng of blouses and looked at her. Degraded she was, but scarcelyabove a child's years; and her features had a look as if innocence werein some sort still there, and sin still loathed in her soul. As he drewnear he heard her mutter, "Mother, mother! She will die of hunger!--it was for her, only for her!"

He stooped in the snow, and letting fall, unperceived, a five-francpiece, picked it up again. 

"Here is some silver, " he said, turning to the infuriated owner, alemonade-seller, who could ill afford to lose it now that it was winter, and people were too cold for lemonade, and who seized it with rapturousdelight. 

"That is it, monsieur, that is it. Holy Jesus! how can I thank you? Ah, if I had convicted the poor creature--and all in error!--I should neverhave forgiven myself! Messieurs les gendarmes, let her go! It was mymistake. My silver piece was in the snow!"

The gendarmes reluctantly let quit their prey: they muttered, theyhesitated, they gripped her arms tighter, and murmured of theprison-cell. 

"Let her go, " said Tricotrin quietly: and in a little while they didso, --the girl stood bareheaded and motionless in the snow like afrost-bound creature. 

Soon the crowd dispersed: nothing can be still long in Paris, and sincethere had been no theft there was no interest! they were soon leftalmost alone, none were within hearing. 

Then he stooped to her: she had never taken off him the wild, senseless, incredulous gaze of her great eyes. 

"Were you guilty?" he asked her. 

She caught his hands, she tried to bless him and to thank him, and brokedown in hysterical sobs. 

"I took it--yes! What would you have? I took it for my mother. She isold, and blind, and without food. It is for her that I came on thestreets; but she does not know it, it would kill her to know; she thinksmy money honest; and she is so proud and glad with it! That was thefirst thing I _stole_! O God! are you an angel? If they had put me inprison my mother would have starved!"

He looked on her gently, and with a pity that fell upon her heart likebalm. 

"I saw it was your first theft. Hardened robbers do not wear yourstricken face, " he said softly, as he slipped two coins into her hand. "Ah, child! let your mother die rather than allow her to eat the breadof your dishonour: which choice between the twain do you not think amother would make? And know your trade she must, soon or late. Sin nomore, were it only for that love you bear her. "

 * * *

Their lives had drifted asunder, as two boats drift north and south on ariver, the distance betwixt them growing longer and longer with eachbeat of the oars and each sigh of the tide. And for the lives that partthus, there is no reunion. One floats out to the open and sunlit sea;and one passes away to the grave of the stream. Meet again on the riverthey cannot. 

 * * *

"They shudder when they read of the Huns and the Ostrogoths pouring downinto Rome, " he mused, as he passed toward the pandemonium. "They keep ahorde as savage, imprisoned in their midst, buried in the very core oftheir capitals, side by side with their churches and palaces, and neverremember the earthquake that would whelm them if once the pent volcanoburst, if once the black mass covered below took flame and broke to thesurface! Statesmen multiply their prisons, and strengthen their lawsagainst the crime that is done--and they never take the canker out ofthe bud, they never save the young child from pollution. Their politicaleconomy never studies prevention; it never cleanses the sewers, it onlycurses the fever-stricken!"

 * * *

"What avail?" he thought. "What avail to strive to bring men nearer tothe right? They love their darkness best--why not leave them to it? Ageafter age the few cast away their lives striving to raise and to ransomthe many. What use? Juvenal scourged Rome, and the same vices that hisstripes lashed then, laugh triumphant in Paris to-day! The satirist, andthe poet, and the prophet strain their voices in vain as the crowds rushon; they are drowned in the chorus of mad sins and sweet falsehoods! OGod! the waste of hope, the waste of travail, the waste of pure desire, the waste of high ambitions!--nothing endures but the wellspring of liesthat ever rises afresh, and the bay-tree of sin that is green, andstately, and deathless!"

 * * *

He himself went onward through the valley, through the deep belt of thewoods, through the avenues of the park. The whole front of the antiquebuilding was lighted, and the painted oriels gleamed ruby, and amber, and soft brown, in the dusky evening, through the green screen offoliage. 

The fragrance of the orange alleys, and of the acres of flowers, washeavy on the air; there was the sound of music borne down the lowsoutherly wind; here and there through the boughs was the dainty glistenof gliding silks:--it was such a scene as once belonged to the terracesand gardens of Versailles. 

From beyond the myrtle fence and gilded railings which severed the parkfrom the pleasaunce, enough could be seen, enough heard, of thebrilliant revelry within to tell of its extravagance, and its elegance, in the radiance that streamed from all the illumined avenues. 

He stood and looked long; hearing the faint echo of the music, seeingthe effulgence of the light through the dark myrtle barrier. 

A very old crippled peasant, searching in the grass for truffles, with alittle dog, stole timidly up and looked too. 

"How can it feel, to live like _that?_" he asked, in a wistful, tremulous voice. 

Tricotrin did not hear: his hand was grasped on one of the gilded railswith a nervous force as from bodily pain. 

The old truffle-gatherer, with his little white dog panting at his feet, crossed himself as he peered through the myrtle screen. 

"God!" he muttered; "how strange it seems that people are there whonever once knew what it was to want bread, and to find it nowhere, though the lands all teemed with harvest! They never feel hungry, orcold, or hot, or tired, or thirsty: they never feel their bones ache, and their throat parch, and their entrails gnaw! These people ought notto get to heaven--they have it on earth!"

Tricotrin heard at last: he turned his head and looked down on the oldman's careworn, hollow face. 

"'Verily they have their reward, ' you mean? Nay, that is a cruelreligion, which would excruciate hereafter those who enjoy now. Judgethem not; in their laurel crowns there is full often twisted a serpent. The hunger of the body is bad indeed, but the hunger of the mind isworse perhaps; and from that they suffer, because from every fulfilleddesire springs the pain of a fresh satiety. "

The truffle-hunter, wise in his peasant-fashion, gazed wistfully up atthe face above him, half comprehending the answer. 

"It may be so, " he murmured; "but then--they _have_ enjoyed! Ah, Christ!that is what I envy them. Now we--we die, starved amidst abundance; wesee the years go, and the sun never shines once in them; and all we haveis a hope--a hope that may be cheated at last; for none have come backfrom the grave to tell us whether _that_ fools us as well. "

 * * *

"I incline to think you live twenty centuries too late, or--twentycenturies too early. "

Viva turned on him a swift and eager glance. 

"Of course!" she said, with a certain emotion, whose meaning he couldnot analyse. "Was there ever yet a man of genius who was not either therelic of some great dead age, or the precursor of some noble future one, in which he alone has faith?"

"Chut!" said Tricotrin, rapidly; he could not trust himself to hear herspeak in his own defence. "Fine genius mine! To fiddle to a fewvillagers, and dash colour on an alehouse shutter! I have the genius ofindolence, if you like. As to my belonging to a bygone age, --well! I amnot sure that I have not got the soul in me of some barefooted friar ofMoyen Age, who went about where he listed, praying here, laughing there, painting a missal with a Pagan love-god, and saying a verse of Horaceinstead of a chant of the Church. Or, maybe, I am more like some Greekgossiper, who loitered away his days in the sun, and ate his dates inthe market-place, and listened here and there to a philosopher, and--just by taking no thought--hit on a truer philosophy than evercame out of Porch or Garden. Ah, my Lord of Estmere! you have twohundred servants over there at Villiers, I have been told; do you notthink I am better served here by one little, brown-eyed, brown-cheekedmaiden, who sings her Béranger like a lark, while she brings me her dishof wild strawberries? There is fame too for you--his--the King of theChansons! When a girl washes her linen in the brook--when a herdsmandrives his flock through the lanes--when a boy throws his line in afishing-stream--when a grisette sits and works at her atticlattice--when a student dreams under the linden leaves--he is on theirlips, in their hearts, in their fancies and joys. What a power! What adominion! Wider than any that emperors boast!"

"And, " added Estmere, with a smile, "if you were not Tricotrin you wouldbe Béranger?"

 * * *

"Aye! Hymns forbad at noonday are ever so sung at night; and oftentimes, what at noon would have been a lark's chant of liberty, grows at nightto a vampire's screech for blood!" he murmured. "They are gay at yourchâteau up yonder. "

 * * *

Be not a coward who leaves the near duty that is as cruel to grasp as anettle, and flies to gather the far-off duty that will flaunt in men'ssight like a sun-flower. 

 * * *

"A great Character!" says Society, when it means--"a great Scamp!"

 * * *

Estmere laid the panel down as he heard. 

"Whoever painted it must have genius. "

"Genius!" interrupted Tricotrin. "Pooh! What is genius? Only the powerto see a little deeper and a little clearer than most other people. Thatis all. "

"The power of vision? Of course. But that renders it none the lessrare. "

"Oh yes, it is rare--rare like kingfishers, and sandpipers, and herons, and black eagles. And so men always shoot it down, as they do the birds, and stick up the dead body in glass cases, and label it, and stare atit, and bemoan it as 'so singular, ' having done their best to insure itsextinction!"

Estmere looked keenly at him. 

"Surely genius that secretes itself as your friend's must do, " he said, touching the panel afresh, "commits suicide, and desires its ownextinction. "

"Pshaw!" said Tricotrin, impatiently, and with none of his habitualcourtesy. "You think the kingfisher and the black eagle have no betterthing to live for than to become the decorations of a great personage'sglass cabinets. You think genius can find no higher end than to furnishfrescoes and panellings for a nobleman's halls and ante-chambers. Youmistake very much; the mistake is a general one in your order. Butbelieve me, the kingfisher enjoys his brown moorland stream, and histufts of green rushes, and his water-swept bough of hawthorn; the eagleenjoys his wild rocks, and his sweep through the air, and his steadygaze at the sun that blinds all human eyes;--and neither ever imaginethat the great men below pity them because they are not stuffed, andlabelled, and praised by rule in their palaces! And genius is much ofthe birds' fashion of thinking. It lives its own life; and is not, asyour connoisseurs are given to fancy, wretched unless you see fit inyour graciousness to deem it worth the glass-case of your criticism, andthe straw-stuffing of your gold. For it knows, as kingfisher and eagleknew also, that stuffed birds nevermore use their wings, and areevermore subject to be bought and be sold. "

 * * *

Against the foreign foes of your country die in your youth if she needit. But against her internecine enemies live out your life in continualwarfare. When I tell you this, do you dream that I spare you?Children!--you have yet to learn what life is! Who could think it hardto die in the glory of strife, drunk with the sound of the combat, andfeeling no pain in the swoon of a triumph? Few men whose blood was hotand young would ask a greater ending. But to keep your souls inpatience; to strive unceasingly with evil; to live in self-negation, inceaseless sacrifices of desire; to give strength to the weak, and sightto the blind, and light where there is darkness, and hope where there isbondage; to do all these through many years unrecognised of men, contentonly that they are done with such force as lies within you, --this isharder than to seek the cannons' mouths, this is more bitter than torush, with drawn steel, on your tyrants. 

Your women cry out against you because you leave them to starve and toweep while you give your hearts to revolution and your bodies to thesword. Their cry is the cry of selfishness, of weakness, of narrowness, the cry of the sex that sees no sun save the flame on its hearth: yetthere is truth in it--a truth you forget. The truth--that, forsaking thegold-mine of duty which lies at your feet, you grasp at the rainbow ofglory; that, neglectful of your own secret sins, you fly at public woesand at national crimes. Can you not see that if every man took heed ofthe guilt of his own thoughts and acts, the world would be free and atpeace? It is easier to rise with the knife unsheathed than to keep watchand ward over your own passions; but do not cheat yourself intobelieving that it is nobler, and higher, and harder. What reproach iscast against all revolutionists?--that the men who have nothing to lose, the men who are reckless and outlawed, alone raise the flag of revolt. It is a satire; but in every satire there lies the germ of a terriblefact. 

You--you who are children still, you whose manhood is still a goldscarcely touched in your hands, a gold you can spend in all great ways, or squander for all base uses;--you can give the lie to that publicreproach, if only you will live in such wise that your hands shall beclean, and your paths straight, and your honour unsullied through alltemptations. Wait, and live so that the right to judge, to rebuke, toavenge, to purify, become yours through your earning of them. Livenobly, first; and then teach others how to live. 

 * * *

"So you have brought Fame to Lélis, my English lord?" said Tricotrin, without ceremony. "That was a good work of yours. She is a comet thathas a strange fancy only to come forth like a corpse-candle, and danceover men's graves. It is her way. When men will have her out in the noonof their youth, she kills them; and the painter's bier is set under hisTransfiguration, and the soldier's body is chained to the St. Helenarock, and the poet's grave is made at Missolonghi. It is always so. "

Estmere bowed his head in assent; he was endeavouring to remember wherehe had once met this stranger who thus addressed him--where he had onceheard these mellow, ringing, harmonious accents. 

"Was it because you were afraid of dying in your prime that you wouldnever woo Fame then yourself?" asked Lélis, with a smile. 

"Oh-hè!" answered Tricotrin, seating himself on a deal box that servedas a table, and whereat he and the artist had eaten many a meal of roastchestnuts and black coffee; "I never wanted her; she is a weather vane, never still two moments; she is a spaniel that quits the Plantagenet themoment the battle goes against him, and fawns on Bolingbroke; she is analchemist's crucible, that has every fair and rich thing thrown into it, but will only yield in return the calcined stones of chagrin anddisappointment; she is a harlot, whose kisses are to be bought, and whoruns after those who brawl the loudest and swagger the finest in theworld's market-places. No! I want nothing of her. My lord here condemnedher as I came in; he said she was the offspring of echoing parrots, ofimitative sheep, of fawning hounds. Who can want the creature of suchprogenitors?"

 * * *

"There are many kinds of appreciation. The man of science appreciateswhen he marvels before the exquisite structure of the sea-shell, theperfect organism of the flower; but the young girl appreciates, too, when she holds the shell to her ear for its music, when she kisses theflower for its fragrance. Appreciation! It is an affair of the reason, indeed; but it is an affair of the emotions also. "

"And you prefer what is born of the latter?"

"Not always; but for my music I do. It speaks in an unknown tongue. Science may have its alphabet, but it is feeling that translates itspoems. Delaroche, who leaves off his work to listen; Descamps, in whoseeyes I see tears; Ingres, who dreams idyls while I play; a young poetwhose face reflects my thoughts, an old man whose youth I bring back, anhour of pain that I soothe, an hour of laughter that I give; these aremy recompense. Think you I would exchange them for the gold showers andthe diamond boxes of a Farinelli?"

"Surely not. All I meant was that you might gain a world-wide celebritydid you choose----"

"Gain a honey-coating that every fly may eat me and every gnat maysting? I thank you. I have a taste to be at peace, and not to becomefood to sate the public famine for a thing to tear. "

Estmere smiled; he did not understand the man who thus addressed him, but he was attracted despite all his strongest prejudices. 

"You are right! Under the coat of honey is a shirt of turpentine. Still--to see so great a gift as yours wasted----"

"Wasted? Because the multitudes have it, such as it is, instead of theunits? Droll arithmetic! I am with you in thinking that minoritiesshould have a good share of power, for all that is wisest and purest isever in a minority, as we know; but I do not see, as you see, thatminorities should command a monopoly--of sweet sounds or of anythingelse. "

"I speak to the musician, not to the politician, " said Estmere, with thecalm, chill contempt of his colder manner: the cold side of hischaracter was touched, and his sympathies were alienated at once. 

Tricotrin, indifferent to the hint as to the rebuff, looked at himamusedly. 

"Oh, I know you well, Lord Estmere; I told you so not long ago, to yourgreat disgust. You and your Order think no man should ever presume totouch politics unless his coat be velvet and his rent-roll large, likeyours. But, you see, we of the _école buissonnière_ generally do as welike; and we get pecking at public questions for the same reason as ourbrother birds peck at the hips and the haws--because we have nogranaries as you have. You do not like Socialism? Ah! and yet affect tofollow it. "

"I!" Estmere looked at this wayside wit, this wine-house philosopher, with a regard that asked plainly, "Are you fool or knave?"

"To be sure, " answered Tricotrin. "You have chapel and chaplain yonderat your château, I believe? The Book of the Christians is the verymanual of Socialism: '_You_ read the Gospel, Marat?' they cried. 'To besure, ' said Marat. 'It is the most republican book in the world, andsends all the rich people to hell. ' If you do not like my politics, _beau sire_, do not listen to the Revolutionist of Galilee. "

 * * *

Not rare on this earth is the love that cleaves to the thing it hascherished through guilt, and through wrong, and through misery. Butrare, indeed, is the love that still lives while its portion isoblivion, and the thing which it has followed passes away out to a joythat it cannot share, to a light that it cannot behold. 

For this is as the love of a god, which forsakes not, though itscreatures revile, and blaspheme, and deride it. 

 * * *

Ever and anon the old, dark, eager, noble face was lifted from itspillow, and the withered lips murmured three words:

"Is she come?"

For Tricotrin had bent over her bed, and had murmured, "I go to seekher, she is near;" and grand'mère had believed and been comforted, forshe knew that no lie passed his lips. And she was very still and onlythe nervous working of the hard, brown, aged hand showed the longing ofher soul. 

Life was going out rapidly, as the flame sinks fast in a lamp whose oilis spent. The strong and vigorous frame, the keen and cheery will, hadwarded off death so long and bravely; and now they bent under, allsuddenly, as those hardy trees will bend after a century of wind andstorm--bend but once, and only to break for ever. 

The red sun in the west was in its evening glory; and through the openlattice there were seen in the deep blue of the sky, the bough of asnow-blossomed pear-tree, the network of the ivy, and the bees hummingamong the jasmine flowers. From the distance there came faintly themusical cries of the boatmen down the river, the voices of thevine-tenders in the fields, the singing of a throstle on a wild-grapetendril. 

Only, in the little darkened chamber the old peasant lay quitestill--listening, through all the sweet and busy sounds of summer, for astep that never came. 

And little by little all those sounds grew fainter on her ear: thedulness of death was stealing over all her senses; and all she heard wasthe song of the thrush where the bird swayed on the vine, half in, halfout, of the lattice. 

But the lips moved still, though no voice came, with the same words: "Isshe come?" and when the lips no more could move, the dark and strainingwistfulness of the eyes asked the question more earnestly, moreterribly, more ceaselessly. 

The thrush sang on, and on, and on; but to the prayer of the dying eyesno answer came. 

The red sun sank into the purple mists of cloud; the song of the birdwas ended; the voice of the watching girl murmured, "They will come toolate!"

For, as the sun faded off from the vine in the lattice, and the singingof the bird grew silent, grand'mère raised herself with her armsoutstretched, and the strength of her youth returned in the hour ofdissolution. 

"They never come back!" she cried. "They never come back! nor will she!One dead in Africa--and one crushed beneath the stone--and one shot onthe barricade. The three went forth together; but not one returned. Webreed them, we nurse them, we foster them; and the world slays them bodyand soul, and eats the limbs that lay in our bosoms, and burns up thesouls that we knew so pure. And she went where they went: she is deadlike them. "

Her head fell back; her mouth was grey and parched, her eyes had nolonger sight; a shiver ran through the hardy frame that winter stormsand summer droughts had bruised and scorched so long; and a passionlessand immeasurable grief came on the brown, weary, age-worn face. 

"All dead!" she murmured in the stillness of the chamber, where the songof the bird had ceased, and the darkness of night had come. 

Then through her lips the last breath quivered in a deep-drawn sigh, andthe brave, patient, unrewarded life passed out for ever. 

 * * *

"You surely find no debtor such an ingrate, no master such a tyrant, asthe People?"

"Perhaps. But, rather I find it a dog that bullies and tears where it isfeared, but may be made faithful by genuine courage and strict justiceshown to it. "

"The experience of the musician, then, must be much more fortunate thanthe experience of the statesman. "

"Why, yes. It is ungrateful to great men, I grant; but it has theirritation of its own vague sense that it is but their tool, theirladder, their grappling-iron, to excuse it. Still--I know well what youmean; the man who works for mankind works for a taskmaster who makesbitter every hour of his life only to forget him with the instant of hisdeath; he is ever rolling the stone of human nature upward toward purerheights, to see it recoil and rush down into darkness and bloodshed. Iknow----"

_A PROVENCE ROSE. _

Flowers are like your poets: they give ungrudgingly, and, like alllavish givers, are seldom recompensed in kind. 

We cast all our world of blossom, all our treasure or fragrance, at thefeet of the one we love; and then, having spent ourselves in that tooabundant sacrifice, you cry, "A yellow, faded thing! to the dust-holewith it!" and root us up violently, and fling us to rot with the refuseand offal; not remembering the days when our burden of beauty madesunlight in your darkest places, and brought the odours of a lostparadise to breathe over your bed of fever. 

Well, there is one consolation. Just so likewise do you deal with yourhuman wonder-flower of genius. 

 * * *

I sighed at my square open pane in the hot, sulphurous mists of thestreet, and tried to see the stars and could not. For, between me andthe one small breadth of sky which alone the innumerable roofs leftvisible, a vintner had hung out a huge gilded imperial crown as a signon his roof-tree; and the crown, with its sham gold turning black in theshadow, hung between me and the planets. 

I knew that there must be many human souls in a like plight withmyself, with the light of heaven blocked from them by a gilded tyranny, and yet I sighed, and sighed, and sighed, thinking of the white purestars of Provence throbbing in the violet skies. 

A rose is hardly wiser than a poet, you see: neither rose nor poet willbe comforted, and be content to dwell in darkness because a crown oftinsel swings on high. 

 * * *

Ah! In the lives of you who have wealth and leisure we, the flowers, arebut one thing among many: we have a thousand rivals in your porcelains, your jewels, your luxuries, your intaglios, your mosaics, all yourtreasures of art, all your baubles of fancy. But in the lives of thepoor we are alone: we are all the art, all the treasure, all the grace, all the beauty of outline, all the purity of hue that they possess:often we are all their innocence and all their religion too. 

Why do you not set yourselves to make us more abundant in those joylesshomes, in those sunless windows?

 * * *

For the life of a painter is beautiful when he is still young, and lovestruly, and has a genius in him stronger than calamity, and hears a voicein which he believes say always in his ear, "Fear nothing. Men mustbelieve as I do in thee, one day. And meanwhile--we can wait!"

And a painter in Paris, even though he starve on a few sous a day, canhave so much that is lovely and full of picturesque charm in his dailypursuits: the long, wondrous galleries full of the arts he adores; the_réalité de l'idéal_ around him in that perfect world; the slow, sweet, studious hours in the calm wherein all that is great in humanity alonesurvives; the trance--half adoration, half aspiration, at once desireand despair--before the face of the Mona Lisa; then, without, thestreets so glad and so gay in the sweet, living sunshine; the quiver ofgreen leaves among gilded balconies; the groups at every turn about thedoors; the glow of colour in market-place and peopled square; the quaintgrey piles in old historic ways; the stones, from every one of whichsome voice from the imperishable Past cries out; the green and silentwoods, the little leafy villages, the winding waters garden-girt; theforest heights, with the city gleaming and golden in the plain; allthese are his. 

With these--and youth--who shall dare say the painter is not rich--ay, though his board be empty, and his cup be dry?

I had not loved Paris--I, a little imprisoned rose, caged in a clay pot, and seeing nothing but the sky-line of the roofs. But I grew to love it, hearing from René and from Lili of all the poetry and gladness thatParis made possible in their young and burdened lives, and which couldhave been thus possible in no other city of the earth. 

City of Pleasure you have called her, and with truth; but why not alsoCity of the Poor? For what city, like herself, has remembered the poorin her pleasure, and given to them, no less than to the richest, thetreasure of her laughing sunlight, of her melodious music, of hergracious hues, of her million flowers, of her shady leaves, of herdivine ideals?

_PIPISTRELLO. _

It was a strange, gaunt wilderness of stone, this old villa of theMarchioni. It would have held hundreds of serving-men. It had as manychambers as one of the palaces down in Rome; but life is homely andfrugal here, and has few graces. The ways of everyday Italian life inthese grand old places are like nettles and thistles set in an oldmajolica vase that has had knights and angels painted on it. You knowwhat I mean, you who know Italy. Do you remember those pictures ofVittario Carpacio and of Gentile? They say that is the life our Italysaw once in her cities and her villas;--that is the life she wants. Sometimes when you are all alone in these vast deserted places theghosts of all that pageantry pass by you, and they seem fitter than theliving people for these courts and halls. 

 * * *

I had been no saint. I had always been ready for jest or dance orintrigue with a pretty woman, and sometimes women far above me had casttheir eyes down on the arena as in Spain ladies do in the bull-ring topick a lover out thence for his strength: but I had never cared. I hadloved, laughed, and wandered away with the stroller's happy liberty; butI had never cared. Now all at once the whole world seemed dead; dead, heaven and earth; and only one woman's two eyes left living in theuniverse; living, and looking into my soul and burning it to ashes. Doyou know what I mean? No?--ay, then you know not love. 

 * * *

Sometimes I think love is the darkest mystery of life: mere desire willnot explain it, nor will the passions or the affections. You pass yearsamidst crowds, and know naught of it; then all at once you meet astranger's eyes, and never are you free. That is love. Who shall saywhence it comes? It is a bolt from the gods that descends from heavenand strikes us down into hell. We can do nothing. 

 * * *

In Italy one wants so little; the air and the light, and a little redwine, and the warmth of the wind, and a handful of maize or of grapes, and an old guitar, and a niche to sleep in near a fountain that murmursand sings to the mosses and marbles--these are enough in Italy. 

 * * *

Petty laws breed great crimes. Few rulers, little or big, remember that. 

 * * *

_L'esprit du clocher_ is derided nowadays. But it may well be doubtedwhether the age which derides it will give the world anything one-halfas tender and true in its stead. It is peace because it is content; andit is a peace which has in it the germ of heroism: menaced, it producespatriotism--the patriotism whose symbol is Tell. 

 * * *

The tyrannies of petty law hurt the authority of the State more with thepopulace than all the severity of a Draconian code against greatoffences. Petty laws may annoy but can never harm the rich, for they canalways evade them or purchase immunity; but petty laws for the poor areas the horse-fly on the neck and on the eyelids of the horse. 

 * * *

It was in the month of April; outside the walls and on the banks ofTiber, still swollen by the floods of winter, one could see the gold ofa million daffodils and the bright crimson and yellow of tulips in thegreen corn. The scent of flowers and herbs came into the town and filledits dusky and narrow ways; the boatmen had green branches fastened totheir masts; in the stillness of evening one heard the song of crickets, and even a mosquito would come and blow his shrill little trumpet, andone was willing to say to him "Welcome!" because on his little horn heblew the glad news, "Summer is here!"

_HELD IN BONDAGE. _

"A young man married is a man that's marred. " That's a golden rule, Arthur; take it to heart. Anne Hathaway, I have not a doubt, suggestedit; experience is the sole asbestos, only unluckily one seldom gets itbefore one's hands are burnt irrevocably. Shakespeare took to wife theignorant, rosy-cheeked Warwickshire peasant girl at _eighteen_! Poorfellow! I picture him, with all his untried powers, struggling likenew-born Hercules for strength and utterance, and the great germ ofpoetry within him, tingeing all the common realities of life with itsrose hue; genius giving him power to see with god-like vision the"fairies nestling in the cowslip chalices, " and the golden gleam ofCleopatra's sails; to feel the "spiced Indian air" by night, and thewild working of kings' ambitious lust; to know by intuition, alike thevoices of nature unheard by common ears, and the fierce schemes andpassions of a world from which social position shut him out! I picturehim in his hot, imaginative youth, finding his first love in theyeoman's daughter at Shottery, strolling with her by the Avon, makingher an "odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds, " and dressing her up inthe fond array of a boy's poetic imaginings! Then--when he had marriedher, he, with the passionate ideals of Juliets and Violas, Ophelias andHermiones in his brain and heart, must have awakened to find that thevoices so sweet to him were dumb to her. The "cinque spotted cowslipbells" brought only thoughts of wine to her. When he was watching"certain stars shoot madly from their spheres, " she most likely wasgrumbling at him for mooning there after curfew bell. When he waslearning Nature's lore in "the fresh cup of the crimson rose, " she wasdinning in his ear that Hammet and Judith wanted worsted socks. When hewas listening in fancy to the "sea-maid's song, " and weaving thoughts towhich a world still stands reverentially to listen, she was buzzingbehind him, and bidding him go card the wool, and weeping that, in hergirlhood, she had not chosen some rich glover or ale-taster, instead ofidle, useless, wayward Willie Shakespeare. Poor fellow! He did notwrite, I would swear, without fellow-feeling, and yearning over soulssimilarly shipwrecked, that wise saw, "A young man married is a manthat's marred. "

_PASCARÈL. _

When a man's eyes meet yours, and his faith trusts you, and his heartupon a vague impulse is laid bare to you, it always has seemed to me thebasest treachery the world can hold to pass the gold of confidence whichhe pours out to you from hand to hand as common coin for commoncirculation. 

 * * *

Circumstance is so odd and so cruel a thing. It is wholly apart fromtalent. 

Genius will do so little for a man if he do not know how to seize orseduce opportunity. No doubt, in his youth, Ambrogiò had been shy, silent, out of his art timid, and in his person ungraceful, andunlovely. So the world had passed by him turning a deaf ear to hismelodies, and he had let it pass, because he had not that splendidaudacity to grasp it perforce, and hold it until it blessed him, withoutwhich no genius will ever gain the benediction of the Angel of Fame. 

Which is a fallen Angel, no doubt; but still, perhaps, the spirit mostworth wrestling with after all; since wrestle we must in this world, ifwe do not care to lie down and form a pavement for other men's cars oftriumph, as the Assyrians of old stretched themselves on their facesbefore the coming of the chariot of their kings. 

 * * *

One of the saddest things perhaps in all the sadness of this world isthe frightful loss at which so much of the best and strongest work of aman's life has to be thrown away at the onset. If you desire a nameamongst men, you must buy the crown of it at such a costly price!

True, the price will in the end be paid back to you, no doubt, when youare worn out, and what you do is as worthless as the rustling canes thatblow together in autumn by dull river sides: then you scrawl yoursignature across your soulless work, and it fetches thrice its weight ingold. 

But though you thus have your turn, and can laugh at your will at theworld that you fool, what can that compensate you for all those deardead darlings?--those bright first-fruits, those precious earliestnestlings of your genius, which had to be sold into bondage for a brokencrust, which drifted away from you never to be found again, which youknow well were a million fold better, fresher, stronger, higher, betterthan anything you have begotten since then; and yet in which none couldbe found to believe, only because you had not won that magic spell whichlies in--being known?

 * * *

When I think of the sweet sigh of the violin melodies through the whitewinter silence of Raffaelino's eager, dreamy eyes, misty with thestudent's unutterable sadness and delight; of old Ambrogiò, with hissemicircle of children round him, lifting their fresh voices at hisword; of the little robin that came every day upon the waterpipe, andlistened, and thrilled in harmony, and ate joyfully the crumbs which theold maestro daily spared to it from his scanty meal--when I think ofthose hours, it seems to me that they must have been happiness too. 

"Could we but know when we are happy!" sighs some poet. As well mighthe write, "Could we but set the dewdrop with our diamonds! could we butstay the rainbow in our skies!"

 * * *

Every old Italian city has this awe about it--holds close the past andmoves the living to a curious sense that they are dead and in theirgraves are dreaming; for the old cities themselves have beheld so muchperish around them, and yet have kept so firm a hold upon tradition andupon the supreme beauty of great arts, that those who wander there grow, as it were, bewildered, and know not which is life and which is deathamongst them. 

 * * *

The sun was setting. 

Over the whole Valdarno there was everywhere a faint ethereal goldenmist that rose from the water and the woods. 

The town floated on it as upon a lake; her spires, and domes, andtowers, and palaces bathed at their base in its amber waves, and risingupward into the rose-hued radiance of the upper air. The mountains thatencircled her took all the varying hues of the sunset on their paleheights until they flushed to scarlet, glowered to violet, wavered withflame, and paled to whiteness, as the opal burns and fades. Warmth, fragrance, silence, loveliness encompassed her; and in the greatstillness the bell of the basilica tolled slowly the evening call toprayer. 

Thus Florence rose before me. 

A strange tremor of exceeding joy thrilled through me as I beheld thereddened shadows of those close-lying roofs, and those marble heights oftowers and of temples. At last my eyes gazed on her! the daughter offlowers, the mistress of art, the nursing mother of liberty and ofaspiration. 

I fell on my knees and thanked God. I pity those who, in such a moment, have not done likewise. 

 * * *

There is nothing upon earth, I think, like the smile of Italy as sheawakes when the winter has dozed itself away in the odours of itsoakwood fires. 

The whole land seems to laugh. 

The springtide of the north is green and beautiful, but it has nothingof the radiance, the dreamfulness, the ecstasy of spring in the southerncountries. The springtide of the north is pale with the gentlecolourless sweetness of its world of primroses; the springtide of Italyis rainbow-hued, like the profusion of anemones that laugh with it inevery hue of glory under every ancient wall and beside every hill-fedstream. 

Spring in the north is a child that wakes from dreams of death; springin the south is a child that wakes from dreams of love. One is rescuedand welcomed from the grave; but the other comes smiling on a sunbeamfrom heaven. 

 * * *

The landscape that has the olive is spiritual as no landscape can everbe from which the olive is absent; for where is there spiritualitywithout some hue of sadness?

But this spiritual loveliness is one for which the human creature thatis set amidst it needs a certain education as for the power ofEuripides, for the dreams of Phædrus, for the strength of Michaelangelo, for the symphonies of Mozart or Beethoven. 

The mind must itself be in a measure spiritualised ere aright it canreceive it. 

It is too pure, too impalpable, too nearly divine, to be grasped bythose for whom all beauty centres in strong heats of colour and greatbreadths of effect; it floats over the senses like a string of perfectcadences in music; it has a breath of heaven in it; though on the earthit is not of the earth; when the world was young, ere men had sinned onit, and gods forsaken it, it must have had the smile of this light thatlingers here. 

 * * *

Bad? Good? Pshaw! Those are phrases. No one uses them but fools. Youhave seen the monkeys' cage in the beast-garden here. That is the world. It is not strength, or merit, or talent, or reason that is of any usethere; it is just which monkey has the skill to squeeze to the front andjabber through the bars, and make his teeth meet in his neighbours'tails till they shriek and leave him free passage--it is that monkeywhich gets all the cakes and the nuts of the folk on a feast-day. Themonkey is not bad; it is only a little quicker and more cunning than therest; that is all. 

 * * *

It is a kind of blindness--poverty. We can only grope through life whenwe are poor, hitting and maiming ourselves against every angle. 

 * * *

Count art by gold, and it fetters the feet it once winged. 

 * * *

"Is that all you know?" he cried, while his voice rang like atrumpet-call. "Listen here, then, little lady, and learn better. What isit to be a player? It is this. A thing despised and rejected on allsides; a thing that was a century since denied what they call Christianburial; a thing that is still deemed for a woman disgraceful, and for aman degrading and emasculate; a thing that is mute as a dunce save when, parrot-like, it repeats by rote with a mirthless grin or a tearless sob;a wooden doll, as you say, applauded as a brave puppet in its prime, hissed at in its first hour of failure or decay; a thing made up oftinsel and paint, and patchwork, of the tailor's shreds and the barber'scurls of tow--a ridiculous thing to be sure. That is a player. And yetagain--a thing without which laughter and jest were dead in the sadlives of the populace; a thing that breathes the poet's words of fire sothat the humblest heart is set aflame; a thing that has a magic on itslips to waken smiles or weeping at its will; a thing which holds apeople silent, breathless, intoxicated with mirth or with awe, as itchooses; a thing whose grace kings envy, and whose wit great men willsteal; a thing by whose utterance alone the poor can know the fairfollies of a thoughtless hour, and escape for a little space from thedull prisons of their colourless lives into the sunlit paradise wheregenius dwells--_that_ is a player, too!"

 * * *

The instrument on which we histrions play is that strange thing, thehuman heart. It looks a little matter to strike its chords of laughteror of sorrow; but, indeed, to do that aright and rouse a melody whichshall leave all who hear it the better and the braver for the hearing, that may well take a man's lifetime, and, perhaps, may well repay it. 

 * * *

Oh, cara mia, when one has run about in one's time with a tinker'stools, and seen the lives of the poor, and the woe of them, and thewretchedness of it all, and the utter uselessness of everything, andthe horrible, intolerable, unending pain of all the things that breathe, one comes to think that in this meaningless mystery which men call lifea little laughter and a little love are the only things which save usall from madness--the madness that would curse God and die. 

 * * *

It always seems as if that well-spring of poetry and art which arose inItaly, to feed and fertilise the world when it was half dead and whollybarren under the tyrannies of the Church and the lusts of Feudalism; itwould always seem, I say, as though that water of life had so saturatedthe Italian soil, that the lowliest hut upon its hills and plains willever nourish and put forth some flower of fancy. 

The people cannot read, but they can rhyme. They cannot reason, but theycan keep perfect rhythm. They cannot write their own names, but writtenon their hearts are the names of those who made their country'sgreatness. They believe in the virtues of a red rag tied to a stickamidst their fields, but they treasure tenderly the heroes and theprophets of an unforgotten time. They are ignorant of all laws ofscience or of sound, but when they go home by moonlight through themaize yonder alight with lùcciole, they will never falsify a note, oroverload a harmony, in their love-songs. 

The poetry, the art, in them is sheer instinct; it is not the genius ofisolated accident, but the genius of inalienable heritage. 

 * * *

Do you ever think of those artist-monks who have strewed Italy withaltar-pieces and missal miniatures till there is not any little lonelydusky town of hers that is not rich by art? Do you often think of them?I do. 

There must have been a beauty in their lives--a great beauty--thoughthey missed of much, of more than they ever knew or dreamed of, let ushope. In visions of the Madonna they grew blind to the meaning of awoman's smile, and illuminating the golden olive wreath above the headsof saints they lost the laughter of the children under the homelyolive-trees without. 

But they did a noble work in their day; and leisure for meditation is nomean treasure, though the modern world does not number it amongst itsjoys. 

One can understand how men born with nervous frames and spiritualfancies into the world when it was one vast battle-ground, where itsthrones were won by steel and poison, and its religion enforced by torchand faggot, grew so weary of the never-ending turmoil, and of theriotous life which was always either a pageant or a slaughter-house, that it seemed beautiful to them to withdraw themselves into somepeaceful place like this Badià and spend their years in study and inrecommendation of their souls to God, with the green and fruitful fieldsbefore their cloister windows, and no intruders on the summer stillnessas they painted their dreams of a worthier and fairer world except theblue butterflies that strayed in on a sunbeam, or the gold porsellinithat hummed at the lilies in the Virgin's chalice. 

 * * *

Florence, where she sits throned amidst her meadows white with Lentenlilies, Florence is never terrible, Florence is never old. In herinfancy they fed her on the manna of freedom, and that fairest food gaveher eternal youth. In her early years she worshipped ignorantly indeed, but truly always the day-star of liberty; and it has been with heralways so that the light shed upon her is still as the light ofmorning. 

Does this sound a fanciful folly? Nay, there is a real truth in it. 

The past is so close to you in Florence. You touch it at every step. Itis not the dead past that men bury and then forget. It is anunquenchable thing; beautiful, and full of lustre, even in the tomb, like the gold from the sepulchres of the Ætruscan kings that shines onthe breast of some fair living woman, undimmed by the dust and thelength of the ages. 

The music of the old greatness thrills through all the commonest thingsof life like the grilli's chant through the wooden cages on AscensionDay; and, like the song of the grilli, its poetry stays in the warmth ofthe common hearth for the ears of the little children, and loses nothingof its melody. 

The beauty of the past in Florence is like the beauty of the greatDuomo. 

About the Duomo there is stir and strife at all times; crowds come andgo; men buy and sell; lads laugh and fight; piles of fruit blaze goldand crimson; metal pails clash down on the stones with shrillestclangour; on the steps boys play at dominoes, and women give theirchildren food, and merry maskers grin in carnival fooleries; but therein their midst is the Duomo all unharmed and undegraded, a poem and aprayer in one, its marbles shining in the upper air, a thing so majesticin its strength, and yet so human in its tenderness, that nothing canassail, and nothing equal it. 

Other, though not many, cities have histories as noble, treasuries asvast; but no other city has them living and ever present in her midst, familiar as household words, and touched by every baby's hand andpeasant's step, as Florence has. 

Every line, every rood, every gable, every tower, has some story of thepast present in it. Every tocsin that sounds is a chronicle; everybridge that unites the two banks of the river unites also the crowds ofthe living with the heroism of the dead. 

In the winding dusky irregular streets, with the outlines of their loggeand arcades, and the glow of colour that fills their niches andgalleries, the men who "have gone before" walk with you; not aselsewhere mere gliding shades clad in the pallor of a misty memory, butpresent, as in their daily lives, shading their dreamful eyes againstthe noonday sun or setting their brave brows against the mountain wind, laughing and jesting in their manful mirth and speaking as brother tobrother of great gifts to give the world. All this while, though thepast is thus close about you the present is beautiful also, and does notshock you by discord and unseemliness as it will ever do elsewhere. Thethrongs that pass you are the same in likeness as those that brushedagainst Dante or Calvacanti; the populace that you move amidst is thesame bold, vivid, fearless, eager people with eyes full of dreams, andlips braced close for war, which welcomed Vinci and Cimabue and foughtfrom Montaperto to Solferino. 

And as you go through the streets you will surely see at every step somecolour of a fresco on a wall, some quaint curve of a bas-relief on alintel, some vista of Romanesque arches in a palace court, some duskyinterior of a smith's forge or a wood-seller's shop, some Renaissanceseal-ring glimmering on a trader's stall, some lovely hues of fruits andherbs tossed down together in a Tre Cento window, some gigantic mass ofblossoms being borne aloft on men's shoulders for a church festivity ofroses, something at every step that has some beauty or some charm in it, some graciousness of the ancient time, or some poetry of the presenthour. 

The beauty of the past goes with you at every step in Florence. Buy eggsin the market, and you buy them where Donatello bought those which felldown in a broken heap before the wonder of the crucifix. Pause in anarrow bye-street in a crowd and it shall be that Borgo Allegri, whichthe people so baptized for love of the old painter and the new-born art. Stray into a great dark church at evening time, where peasants telltheir beads in the vast marble silence, and you are where the whole cityflocked, weeping, at midnight to look their last upon the face of theirMichael Angelo. Pace up the steps of the palace of the Signorìa and youtread the stone that felt the feet of him to whom so bitterly was known"_com' è duro calle, lo scendere è'l salir per l'altrúi scale_. " Buy aknot of March anemoni or April arum lilies, and you may bear them withyou through the same city ward in which the child Ghirlandajo onceplayed amidst the gold and silver garlands that his father fashioned forthe young heads of the Renaissance. Ask for a shoemaker and you shallfind the cobbler sitting with his board in the same old twisting, shadowy street way, where the old man Toscanelli drew his charts thatserved a fair-haired sailor of Genoa, called Columbus. Toil to fetch atinker through the squalor of San Niccolò, and there shall fall on youthe shadow of the bell-tower where the old sacristan saved to the worldthe genius of the Night and Day. Glance up to see the hour of theevening time, and there, sombre and tragical, will loom above you thewalls of the communal palace on which the traitors were painted by thebrush of Sarto, and the tower of Giotto, fair and fresh in its perfectgrace as though angels had builded it in the night just past, "_ond'ella toglie ancora e terza e nona_, " as in the noble and simple daysbefore she brake the "_cerchia antìca_. "

Everywhere there are flowers, and breaks of songs, and rills oflaughter, and wonderful eyes that look as if they too, like their Poets, had gazed into the heights of heaven and the depths of hell. 

And then you will pass out at the gates beyond the city walls, and allaround you there will be a radiance and serenity of light that seems tothrob in its intensity and yet is divinely restful, like the passion andthe peace of love when it has all to adore and nothing to desire. 

The water will be broad and gold, and darkened here and there intoshadows of porphyrine amber. Amidst the grey and green of the olive andacacia foliage there will arise the low pale roofs and flat-toppedtowers of innumerable villages. 

Everywhere there will be a wonderful width of amethystine hills andmystical depths of seven-chorded light. Above, masses of rosy cloud willdrift, like rose-leaves leaning on a summer wind. And, like a magicgirdle which has shut her out from all the curse of age and death andman's oblivion, and given her a youth and loveliness which will endureso long as the earth itself endures, there will be the circle of themountains, purple and white and golden, lying around Florence. 

 * * *

Amidst all her commerce, her wars, her hard work, her money-making, Florence was always dominated and spiritualised, at her noisiest andworst, by a poetic and picturesque imagination. 

Florentine life had always an ideal side to it; and an idealism, pureand lofty, runs through her darkest histories and busiest times like athread of gold through a coat of armour and a vest of frieze. 

The Florentine was a citizen, a banker, a workman, a carder of wool, aweaver of silk, indeed; but he was also always a lover, and always asoldier; that is, always half a poet. He had his Caròccio and hisGinevra as well as his tools and his sacks of florins. He had his swordas well as his shuttle. His scarlet giglio was the flower of love noless than the blazonry of battle on his standard, and the mint stamp ofthe commonwealth on his coinage. 

Herein lay the secret of the influence of Florence: the secret whichrendered the little city, stretched by her river's side, amongst herquiet meadows white with arums, a sacred name to all generations of menfor all she dared and all she did. 

"She amassed wealth, " they say: no doubt she did--and why?

To pour it with both hands to melt in the foundries of Ghiberti--tobring it in floods to cement the mortar that joined the marbles ofBrunelleschi! She always spent to great ends, and to mighty uses. 

When she called a shepherd from his flocks in the green valley to buildfor her a bell-tower so that she might hear, night and morning, the callto the altar, the shepherd built for her in such fashion that the belfryhas been the Pharos of Art for five centuries. 

Here is the secret of Florence--supreme aspiration. 

The aspiration which gave her citizens force to live in poverty, andclothe themselves in simplicity, so as to be able to give up theirmillions of florins to bequeath miracles in stone and metal and colourto the Future. The aspiration which so purified her soil, red withcarnage, black with smoke of war, trodden continuously by hurrying feetof labourers, rioters, mercenaries, and murderers, that from that soilthere could spring, in all its purity and perfection, theparadise-blossom of the Vita Nuova. 

Venice perished for her pride and carnal lust; Rome perished for hertyrannies and her blood-thirst; but Florence--though many a time nearlystrangled under the heel of the Empire and the hand of theChurch--Florence was never slain utterly either in body or soul;Florence still crowned herself with flowers even in her throes of agony, because she kept always within her that love--impersonal, consecrate, void of greed--which is the purification of the individual life and theregeneration of the body politic. "We labour for the ideal, " said theFlorentines of old, lifting to heaven their red flower de luce--and tothis day Europe bows before what they did and cannot equal it. 

"But she had so many great men, so many mighty masters!" I would urge, whereon Pascarèl would glance on me with his lightest and yet utmostscorn. 

"O wise female thing, who always traces the root to the branch anddeduces the cause from the effect! Did her great men spring upfull-armed like Athene, or was it the pure, elastic atmosphere of herthat made her mere mortals strong as immortals? The supreme success ofmodern government is to flatten down all men into one uniform likeness, so that it is only by most frightful, and often destructive, effort thatany originality can contrive to get loose in its own shape for amoment's breathing space; but in the Commonwealth of Florence a man, being born with any genius in him, drew in strength to do and daregreatly with the very air he breathed. "

Moreover, it was not only the great men that made her what she was. 

It was, above all, the men who knew they were not great, but yet had thepatience and unselfishness to do their appointed work for her zealously, and with every possible perfection in the doing of it. 

It was not only Orcagna planning the Loggia, but every workman whochiselled out a piece of its stone, that put all his head and heart intothe doing thereof. It was not only Michaelangelo in his studio, butevery poor painter who taught the mere a, b, c, d of the craft to acrowd of pupils out of the streets, who did whatsoever came before themto do mightily and with reverence. 

In those days all the servants as well as the sovereigns of art werepenetrated with the sense of her holiness. 

It was the mass of patient, intelligent, poetic, and sincere servitorsof art, who, instead of wildly consuming their souls in envy and desire, cultured their one talent to the uttermost, so that the mediocrity ofthat age would have been the excellence of any other. 

Not alone from the great workshops of the great masters did the lightshine on the people. From every scaffold where a palace ceiling wasbeing decorated with its fresco, from every bottega where the childrenof the poor learned to grind and to mingle the colours, from every cellwhere some solitary monk studied to produce an offering to the glory ofhis God, from every nook and corner where the youths gathered in thestreets to see some Nunziata or Ecce Homo lifted to its niche in thecity wall, from every smallest and most hidden home of art--from thenest under the eaves as well as from the cloud-reaching temples, --therewent out amidst the multitudes an ever-flowing, ever-pellucid stream oflight, from that Aspiration which is in itself Inspiration. 

So that even to this day the people of Italy have not forgotten thesupreme excellence of all beauty, but are, by the sheer instinct ofinherited faith, incapable of infidelity to those traditions; so thatthe commonest craftsman of them all will sweep his curves and shade hishues upon a plaster cornice with a perfection that is the despair of themaestri of other nations. 

 * * *

The broad plains that have been the battle-ground of so many races andso many ages were green and peaceful under the primitive husbandry ofthe contadini. 

Everywhere under the long lines of the yet unbudded vines the seed wasspringing, and the trenches of the earth were brimful with brownbubbling water left from the floods of winter, when Reno and Adda hadbroken loose from their beds. 

Here and there was some old fortress grey amongst the silver of theolive orchards; some village with white bleak house-walls and flat roofspale and bare against the level fields; or some little long-forgottencity once a stronghold of war and a palace for princes, now a littlehushed and lonely place, with weed-grown ramparts and gates rusted ontheir hinges, and tapestry weavers throwing the shuttle in its desertedand dismantled ways. 

But chiefly it was always the green, fruitful, weary, endless plaintrodden by the bullocks and the goats, and silent, strangely silent, asthough fearful still of its tremendous past. 

 * * *

The long bright day draws to a close. The west is in a blaze of gold, against which the ilex and the acacia are black as funeral plumes. Theinnumerable scents of fruits and flowers and spices, and tropical seeds, and sweet essences, that fill the streets at every step from shops andstalls, and monks' pharmacies, are fanned out in a thousand deliciousodours on the cooling air. The wind has risen, blowing softly frommountain and from sea across the plains through the pines of Pisa, across to the oak-forests of green Casentìno. 

Whilst the sun still glows in the intense amber of his own dying glory, away in the tender violet hues of the east the young moon rises. 

Rosy clouds drift against the azure of the zenith, and are reflected asin a mirror in the shallow river waters. 

A little white cloud of doves flies homeward against the sky. 

All the bells chime for the Ave Maria. 

The evening falls. 

Wonderful hues, creamy, and golden, and purple, and soft as the coloursof a dove's throat, spread themselves slowly over the sky; the belltower rises like a shaft of porcelain clear against the intense azure;amongst the tall canes by the river the fire-flies sparkle; the shoresare mirrored in the stream with every line and curve, and roof andcupola, drawn in sharp deep shadow; every lamp glows again thrice itssize in the glass of the current, and the arches of the bridges meettheir own image there; the boats glide down the water that is now whiteunder the moon, now amber under the lights, now black under the walls, for ever changing; night draws on, then closes quite. 

But it is night as radiant as day, and ethereal as day can never be; onthe hills the cypresses still stand out against the faint gold thatlingers in the west; there is the odour of carnations and of acaciaseverywhere. 

Noiseless footsteps come and go. 

People pass softly in shadow, like a dream. 

 * * *

You know how St. Michael made the Italian? he is saying to them, and theclear crystal ring of the sonorous Tuscan reaches to the farthest cornerof the square. Nay?--oh, for shame! Well, then, it was in this fashion;long, long ago, when the world was but just called from chaos, theDominiddio was tired, as you all know, and took his rest on the seventhday; and four of the saints, George and Denis and Jago and Michael, stood round him with their wings folded and their swords idle. 

So to them the good Lord said: "Look at those odds and ends, that areall lying about after the earth is set rolling. Gather them up, and makethem into four living nations to people the globe. " The saints obeyedand set to the work. 

St. George got a piece of pure gold and a huge lump of lead, and buriedthe gold in the lead, so that none ever would guess it was there, and sosent it rolling and bumping to earth, and called it the English people. 

St. Jago got a bladder filled with wind, and put in it the heart of afox, and the fang of a wolf, and whilst it puffed and swelled like thefrog that called itself a bull, it was despatched to the world as theSpaniard. 

St. Denis did better than that; he caught a sunbeam flying, and he tiedit with a bright knot of ribbons, and he flashed it on earth as thepeople of France; only, alas! he made two mistakes, he gave it noballast, and he dyed the ribbons blood-red. 

Now St. Michael, marking their errors, caught a sunbeam likewise, andmany other things too; a mask of velvet, a poniard of steel, the chordsof a lute, the heart of a child, the sigh of a poet, the kiss of alover, a rose out of paradise, and a silver string from an angel's lyre. 

Then with these in his hand he went and knelt down at the throne of theFather. "Dear and great Lord, " he prayed, "to make my work perfect, giveme one thing; give me a smile of God. " And God smiled. 

Then St. Michael sent his creation to earth, and called it the Italian. 

But--most unhappily, as chance would have it--Satanas watching at thegates of hell, thought to himself, "If I spoil not his work, earth willbe Eden in Italy. " So he drew his bow in envy, and sped a poisonedarrow; and the arrow cleft the rose of paradise, and broke the silverstring of the angel. 

And to this day the Italian keeps the smile that God gave in his eyes;but in his heart the devil's arrow rankles still. 

Some call this barbed shaft Cruelty; some Superstition; some Ignorance;some Priestcraft; maybe its poison is drawn from all four; be it how itmay, it is the duty of all Italians to pluck hard at the arrow of hell, so that the smile of God alone shall remain with their children'schildren. 

Yonder in the plains we have done much; the rest will lie with you, theFreed Nation. 

 * * *

There is an old legend, he made answer to me, an old monkish tale, whichtells how, in the days of King Clovis, a woman, old and miserable, forsaken of all, and at the point of death, strayed into the Merovingianwoods, and lingering there, and hearkening to the birds, and lovingthem, and so learning from them of God, regained, by no effort of herown, her youth; and lived, always young and always beautiful, a hundredyears; through all which time she never failed to seek the forests whenthe sun rose, and hear the first song of the creatures to whom she owedher joy. Whoever to the human soul can be, in ever so faint a sense, that which the birds were to the woman in the Merovingian woods, he, Ithink, has a true greatness. But I am but an outcast, you know; and mywisdom is not of the world. 

Yet it seemed the true wisdom, there, at least, with the rose lightshining across half the heavens, and the bells ringing far away in theplains below over the white waves of the sea of olives. 

 * * *

Only for the people! Altro! did not Sperone and all the critics at hisheels pronounce Ariosto only fit for the vulgar multitude? and was notDante himself called the laureate of the cobblers and the bakers?

And does not Sacchetti record that the great man took the trouble toquarrel with an ass-driver and a blacksmith because they recited hisverses badly?

If he had not written "only for the people, " we might never have gotbeyond the purisms of Virgilio, and the Ciceronian imitations of Bembo. 

Dante now-a-days may have become the poet of the scholars and the sages, but in his own times he seemed to the sciolists a most terribly lowfellow for using his mother tongue; and he was most essentially the poetof the vulgar--of the _vulgare eloquio_, of the _vulgare illustre_; andpray what does the "Commedia" mean if not a _canto villereccio_, a songfor the rustics? Will you tell me that?

Only for the people! Ah, that is the error. Only! how like a woman thatis! Any trash will do for the people; that is the modern notion; vileroulades in music, tawdry crudities in painting, cheap balderdash inprint--all that will do for the people. So they say now-a-days. 

Was the bell tower yonder set in a ducal garden or in a public place?Was Cimabue's masterpiece veiled in a palace or borne aloft through thethrongs of the streets?

 * * *

A man, be he bramble or vine, likes to grow in the open air in his ownfashion; but a woman, be she flower or weed, always thinks she would bebetter under glass. When she gets the glass she breaks it--generally;but till she gets it she pines. 

 * * *

When they grew up in Italy, all that joyous band, --Arlecchino inBergamo, Stenterello in Florence, Pulcinello in Naples, Pantaleone inVenice, Dulcamara in Bologna, Beltramo in Milan, Brighella inBrescia--masked their mirthful visages and ran together and jumped onthat travelling stage before the world, what a force they were for theworld, those impudent mimes!

"Only Pantomimi?" When they joined hands with one another and rolledtheir wandering house before St. Mark's they were only players indeed;but their laughter blew out the fires of the Inquisition, their fools'caps made the papal tiara look but paper toy, their wooden swords struckto earth the steel of the nobles, their arrows of epigram, featheredfrom goose and from falcon, slew, flying, the many-winged dragon ofSuperstition. 

They were old as the old Latin land, indeed. 

They had mouldered for ages in Etruscan cities, with the dust ofuncounted centuries upon them, and been only led out in Carnival times, pale, voiceless, frail ghosts of dead powers, whose very meaning thepeople had long forgotten. But the trumpet-call of the Renaissance wokethem from their Rip Van Winkle sleep. 

They got up, young again, and keen for every frolic--Barbarossas of sockand buskin, whose helmets were caps and bells, breaking the magic spellof their slumber to burst upon men afresh; buoyant incarnations of thenew-born scorn for tradition, of the nascent revolts of democracy, withwhich the air was rife. 

"Only Pantomimi?" Oh, altro!

The world when it reckons its saviours should rate high all it owed tothe Pantomimi, --the privileged Pantomimi--who first dared take licenseto say in their quips and cranks, in their capers and jests, what hadsent all speakers before them to the rack and the faggots. 

Who think of that when they hear the shrill squeak of Pulcinello in thedark bye-streets of northern towns, or see lean Pantaleone slip andtumble through the transformation-scene of some gorgeous theatre?

Not one in a million. 

Yet it is true for all that. Free speech was first due to the Pantomimi. A proud boast that. They hymn Tell and chant Savonarola and glorify theGracchi, but I doubt if any of the gods in the world's Pantheon or theother world's Valhalla did so much for freedom as those merry mimes thatthe children scamper after upon every holiday. 

 * * *

We are straws on the wind of the hour, too frail and too brittle tofloat into the future. Our little day of greatness is a mere child'spuff-ball, inflated by men's laughter, floated by women's tears; whatbreeze so changeful as the one, what waters so shallow as theother?--the bladder dances a little while; then sinks, and whoremembers?

 * * *

Do you know the delicate delights of a summer morning in Italy? morningI mean between four and five of the clock, and not the full hot mid-daythat means morning to the languid associations of this weary century. 

The nights, perfect as they are, have scarcely more loveliness than thebirth of light, the first rippling laughter of the early day. 

The air is cool, almost cold, and clear as glass. There is an endlessmurmur from birds' throats and wings, and from far away there will ringfrom village or city the chimes of the first mass. The deep broadshadows lie so fresh, so grave, so calm, that by them the very dust isstilled and spiritualised. 

Softly the sun comes, striking first the loftier trees and then theblossoming magnolias, and lastly the green lowliness of the gentlevines; until all above is in a glow of new-born radiance, whilst allbeneath the leaves still is dreamily dusk and cool. 

The sky is of a soft sea-blue; great vapours will float here and there, iris-coloured and snow-white. The stone parapets of bridge and towershine against the purple of the mountains, which are low in tone, andlook like hovering storm-clouds. Across the fields dun oxen pass totheir labour; through the shadows peasants go their way to mass; downthe river a raft drifts slowly, with the pearly water swaying againstthe canes; all is clear, tranquil, fresh as roses washed with rain. 

 * * *

To the art of the stage, as to every other art, there are two sides: thetruth of it, which comes by inspiration--that is, by instincts subtler, deeper, and stronger than those of most minds; and the artifice of it, in which it must clothe itself to get understood by the people. 

It is this latter which must be learnt; it is the leathern harness inwhich the horses of the sun must run when they come down to race uponearth. 

 * * *

For in Italy life is all contrast, and there is no laugh and love-songwithout a sigh beside them; there is no velvet mask of mirth and passionwithout the marble mask of art and death near to it. For everywhere thewild tulip burns red upon a ruined altar, and everywhere the blue boragerolls its azure waves through the silent temples of forgotten gods. 

 * * *

To enter Bologna at midnight is to plunge into the depths of the middleages. 

Those desolate sombre streets, those immense dark arches, dark asTartarus, those endless arcades where scarce a footfall breaks thestillness, that labyrinth of marble, of stone, of antiquity; the pastalone broods over them all. 

As you go it seems to you that you see the gleam of a snowy plume andthe shine of a straight rapier striking home through cuirass anddoublet, whilst on the stones the dead body falls, and high above overthe lamp-iron, where the torch is flaring, a casement uncloses, and awoman's voice murmurs, with a cruel little laugh, "Cosa fatta capo ha!"

There is nothing to break the spell of that old-world enchantment. 

Nothing to recall to you that the ages of Bentivoglio and of Viscontihave fled for ever. 

The mighty Academy of Luvena Juris is so old, so old, so old!--the follyand frippery of modern life cannot dwell in it a moment; it is as thatenchanted throne which turned into stone like itself whosoever dared toseat himself upon its majestic heights. 

For fifteen centuries Bologna has grimly watched and seen the mad lifeof the world go by; it sits amidst the plains as the Sphynx amidst herdeserts. 

 * * *

It is women's way. They always love colour better than form, rhetoricbetter than logic, priestcraft better than philosophy, and flourishesbetter than fugues. It has been said scores of times before I said it. 

Nay, he pursued, thinking he had pained me, you have a bright witenough, and a beautiful voice, though you sing without knowing very wellwhat you do sing. But genius you have not, look you; say yourthanksgiving to the Madonna at the next shrine we come to; genius youhave not. 

What is it?

Well, it is hard to tell; but this is certain, that it puts peasunboiled into the shoes of every pilgrim who really gets up to itsOlivet. 

Genius has all manner of dead dreams and sorrowful lost loves for itsscallop-shells; and the palm that it carries is the bundle of rodswherewith fools have beaten it for calling them blind. 

Genius has eyes so clear that it sees straight down into the hearts ofothers through all their veils of sophistry and simulation; but its ownheart is pierced often to the quick for shame of what it reads there. 

It has such long and faithful remembrance of other worlds and otherlives which most minds have forgotten, that beside the beauty of thosememories all things of earth seem poor and valueless. 

Men call this imagination or idealism; the name does not matter much;whether it be desire or remembrance, it comes to the same issue; so thatgenius, going ever beyond the thing it sees in infinite longing for somehigher greatness which it has either lost or otherwise cannot reach, finds the art, and the humanity, and the creations, and the affectionswhich seem to others so exquisite most imperfect and scarcely to beendured. 

The heaven of Phædrus is the world which haunts Genius--where thereshall not be women but Woman, not friends but Friendship, not poems butPoetry; everything in its uttermost wholeness and perfection; so thatthere shall be no possibility of regret nor any place for desire. 

For in this present world there is only one thing which can content it, and that thing is music; because music has nothing to do with earth, butsighs always for the lands beyond the sun. 

And yet all this while genius, though sick at heart, and alone, andfinding little in man or in woman, in human art or in human nature, thatcan equal what it remembers--or, as men choose to say, it imagines--ishalf a child too, always: for something of the eternal light whichstreams from the throne of God is always shed about it, though sadlydimmed and broken by the clouds and vapours that men call theiratmosphere. 

Half a child always, taking a delight in the frolic of the kids, thedancing of the daffodils, the playtime of the children, the romp of thewinds with the waters, the loves of the birds in the blossoms. Half achild always, but always with tears lying close to its laughter, andalways with desires that are death in its dreams. 

No; you have not genius, cara mia. Say your grazie at the next shrine wepass. 

 * * *

Therefore, in those days men, giving themselves leave to be glad for alittle space, were glad with the same sinewy force and manful singlenessof purpose as made them in other times laborious, self-denying, patient, and fruitful of high thoughts and deeds. 

Because they laboured for their fellows, therefore they could laugh withthem; and because they served God, therefore they dared be glad. 

In those grave, dauntless, austere lives the Carnival's jocund revelrywas as one golden bead in a pilgrim's rosary of thorn-berries. 

They had aimed highly and highly achieved; therefore they could go forthamidst their children and rejoice. 

But we--in whom all art is the mere empty Shibboleth of a ruinedreligion whose priests are all dead; we--whose whole year-long course isone Dance of Death over the putridity of our pleasures; we--whosesolitary purpose it is to fly faster and faster from desire to satiety, from satiety to desire, in an endless eddy of fruitless effort;we--whose greatest genius can only raise for us some inarticulateprotest of despair against some unknown God;--we have strangled KingCarnival and killed him, and buried him in the ashes of our ownunutterable weariness and woe. 

 * * *

Oh, I believe it was all true enough. 

There were mighty Pascarèlli in the olden days. But I am very glad thatI was not of them; except, indeed, that I should have liked to strike ablow or two for Guido Calvacanti and have hindered the merrymaking ofthose precious rascals who sent him out to die of the marsh fever. 

Great?

No; certainly I would not be great. To be a great man is endlessly tocrave something that you have not; to kiss the hands of monarchs andlick the feet of peoples. To be great? Who was ever more great thanDante, and what was his experience?--the bitterness of begged bread, andthe steepness of palace stairs. 

Besides, given the genius to deserve it, the up-shot of a life spent forgreatness is absolutely uncertain. Look at Machiavelli. 

After having laid down infallible rules for social and public successwith such unapproachable astuteness that his name has become a synonymfor unerring policy, Machiavelli passed his existence in obedience andsubmission to Rome, to Florence, to Charles, to Cosmo, to Leo, toClement. 

He was born into a time favourable beyond every other to sudden changesof fortune; a time in which any fearless audacity might easily becomethe stepping-stone to a supreme authority; and yet Machiavelli, whom theworld still holds as its ablest statesman--in principle--never inpractice rose above the level of a servant of civil and papal tyrannies, and, when his end came, died in obscurity and almost in penury. 

Theoretically, Machiavelli could rule the universe; but practically henever attained to anything finer than a more or less advantageous changeof masters. To reign doctrinally may be all very well, but when it onlyresults in serving actually, it seems very much better to be obscure andcontent without any trouble. 

 "Fumo di gloria non vale fumo di pipa. "

I, for one, at any rate, am thoroughly convinced of that truth oftruths. 

I hearkened to him sorrowful; for to my ignorant eyes the witch candleof fame seemed a pure and perfect planet; and I felt that the planetmight have ruled his horoscope had he chosen. 

Is there no glory at all worth having, then? I murmured. 

He stretched himself where he rested amongst the arum-whitened grass, and took his cigaretto from his mouth:

Well, there is one, perhaps. But it is to be had about once in fivecenturies. 

You know Or San Michele? It would have been a world's wonder had itstood alone, and not been companioned with such wondrous rivals that itsown exceeding beauty scarce ever receives full justice. 

Where the jasper of Giotto and the marble of Brunelleschi, where thebronze of Ghiberti and the granite of Arnolfo rise everywhere in thesunlit air to challenge vision and adoration, or San Michele fails ofits full meed from men. Yet, perchance, in all the width of Florencethere is not a nobler thing. 

It is like some massive casket of silver oxydised by time; such a casketas might have been made to hold the Tables of the Law by men to whosefaith Sinai was the holy and imperishable truth. 

I know nothing of the rule or phrase of Architecture, but it seems tome surely that that square-set strength, as of a fortress, toweringagainst the clouds, and catching the last light always on its frettedparapet, and everywhere embossed and enriched with foliage, and tracery, and the figures of saints, and the shadows of vast arches, and the lightof niches gold-starred and filled with divine forms, is a gift soperfect to the whole world, that, passing it, one should need say aprayer for great Taddeo's soul. 

Surely, nowhere is the rugged, changeless, mountain force of hewn stonepiled against the sky, and the luxuriant, dreamlike, poetic delicacy ofstone carven and shaped into leafage and loveliness more perfectlyblended and made one than where Or San Michele rises out of the dim, many-coloured, twisting streets, in its mass of ebon darkness and ofsilvery light. 

Well, the other day, under the walls of it I stood, and looked at itsSaint George where he leans upon his shield, so calm, so young, with hisbared head and his quiet eyes. 

"That is our Donatello's, " said a Florentine beside me--a man of thepeople, who drove a horse for hire in the public ways, and who paused, cracking his whip, to tell this tale to me. "Donatello did that, and itkilled him. Do you not know? When he had done that Saint George, heshowed it to his master. And the master said, 'It wants one thing only. 'Now this saying our Donatello took gravely to heart, chiefly of allbecause his master would never explain where the fault lay; and so muchdid it hurt him, that he fell ill of it, and came nigh to death. Then hecalled his master to him. 'Dear and great one, do tell me before I die, 'he said, 'what is the one thing my statue lacks. ' The master smiled, andsaid, 'Only--speech. ' 'Then I die happy, ' said our Donatello. And hedied--indeed, that hour. "

"Now, I cannot say that the pretty story is true; it is not in the leasttrue; Donato died when he was eighty-three, in the Street of the Melon;and it was he himself who cried, 'Speak then--speak!' to his statue, asit was carried through the city. But whether true or false the tale, this fact is surely true, that it is well--nobly and purely well--with apeople when the men amongst it who ply for hire on its public ways thinkcaressingly of a sculptor dead five hundred years ago, and tell such atale standing idly in the noonday sun, feeling the beauty and the pathosof it all. 

"'Our Donatello' still to the people of Florence. 'Our own littleDonato' still, our pet and pride, even as though he were living andworking in their midst to-day, here in the shadows of theStocking-maker's Street, where his Saint George keeps watch and ward. 

"'Our little Donato' still, though dead so many hundred years ago. 

"That is glory, if you will. And something more beautiful than anyglory--Love. "

He was silent a long while, gathering lazily with his left hand the arumlilies to bind them together for me. 

Perhaps the wish for the moment passed over him that he had chosen toset his life up in stone, like to Donato's, in the face of Florence, rather than to weave its light and tangled skein out from the breaths ofthe wandering winds and the sands of the shifting shore. 

 * * *

Come out here in the young months of summer, and leave, as we left, thehighways that grim walls fence in, and stray, as we strayed, through thefield-paths and the bridle-roads in the steps of the contadini, and youwill find this green world about your feet touched with the May-daysuns to tenderest and most lavish wealth of nature. 

The green corn uncurling underneath the blossoming vines. The vinefoliage that tosses and climbs and coils in league on league of verdure. The breast-high grasses full of gold and red and purple from thecountless flowers growing with it. 

The millet filled with crimson gladioli and great scarlet poppies. Thehill-sides that look a sheet of rose-colour where the lupinelli are inbloom. The tall plumes of the canes, new-born, by the side of everystream and rivulet. 

The sheaves of arum leaves that thrust themselves out from every jointof masonry or spout of broken fountain. The flame of roses that burns onevery handbreadth of untilled ground and springs like a rainbow abovethe cloud of every darkling roof or wall. The ocean spray of arbutus andacacia shedding its snow against the cypress darkness. The sea-green ofthe young ilex leaves scattered like light over the bronze and purple ofthe older growth. The dreamy blue of the iris lilies rising underneaththe olives and along the edges of the fields. 

 * * *

All greatest gifts that have enriched the modern world have come fromItaly. Take those gifts from the world, and it would lie in darkness, adumb, barbaric, joyless thing. 

Leave Rome alone, or question as you will whether she were the mightiestmother, or the blackest curse that ever came on earth. I do not speak ofRome, imperial or republican, I speak of Italy. 

Of Italy, after the greatness of Rome dropped as the Labarum was raisedon high, and the Fisher of Galilee came to fill the desolate place ofthe Cæsars. 

Of Italy, when she was no more a vast dominion, ruling over half theraces of the globe, from the Persian to the Pict, but a narrow slipbounded by Adriatic and Mediterranean, divided into hostile sections, racked by foreign foes, and torn by internecine feud. 

Of Italy, ravaged by the Longobardo, plundered by the French, scourgedby the Popes, tortured by the Kaisers; of Italy, with her cities at warwith each other, her dukedoms against her free towns, her tyrants inconflict with her municipalities; of Italy, in a word, as she has beenfrom the days of Theodoric and Theodolinda to the days of Napoleon andFrancis Joseph. It is this Italy--our Italy--which through all thecenturies of bloodshed and of suffering never ceased to bear aloft andunharmed its divining-rod of inspiration as S. Christopher bore theyoung Christ above the swell of the torrent and the rage of the tempest. 

All over Italy from north to south men arose in the darkness of thoseages who became the guides and the torchbearers of a humanity that hadgone astray in the carnage and gloom. 

The faith of Columbus of Genoa gave to mankind a new world. The insightof Galileo of Pisa revealed to it the truth of its laws of being. GuidoMonacco of Arezzo bestowed on it the most spiritual of all earthly joysby finding a visible record for the fugitive creations of harmony erethen impalpable and evanescent as the passing glories of the clouds. Dante Alighieri taught to it the might of that vulgar tongue in whichthe child babbles at its mother's knee, and the orator leads abreathless multitude at his will to death or triumph. Teofilo of Empolidiscovered for it the mysteries of colour that lie in the mere earths ofthe rocks and the shores, and the mere oils of the roots and thepoppies. Arnoldo of Breccia lit for it the first flame of free opinion, and Amatus of Breccia perfected for it the most delicate and exquisiteof all instruments of sound, which men of Cremona, or of Bologna, hadfirst created. Maestro Giorgio, and scores of earnest workers whosenames are lost in Pesaro and in Gubbio, bestowed on it those homeliertreasures of the graver's and the potter's labours which have carriedthe alphabet of art into the lowliest home. Brunelleschi of Florenceleft it in legacy the secret of lifting a mound of marble to the upperair as easily as a child can blow a bubble; and Giordano Bruno of Nolafound for it those elements of philosophic thought, which have beenperfected into the clear and prismatic crystals of the metaphysics ofthe Teuton and the Scot. 

From south and north, from east and west, they rose, the ministers andteachers of mankind. 

From mountain and from valley, from fortress smoking under battle, andfrom hamlet laughing under vines; from her great wasted cities, from hersmall fierce walled towns, from her lone sea-shores ravaged by thegalleys of the Turks, from her villages on hill and plain that struggledinto life through the invaders' fires, and pushed their vineshoots overthe tombs of kings, everywhere all over her peaceful soil, such menarose. 

Not men alone who were great in a known art, thought or science, ofthese the name was legion; but men in whose brains, art, thought, orscience took new forms, was born into new life, spoke with new voice, and sprang full armed a new Athene. 

Leave Rome aside, I say, and think of Italy; measure her gifts, whichwith the lavish waste of genius she has flung broadcast in grand andheedless sacrifice, and tell me if the face of earth would not be darkand drear as any Scythian desert without these?

She was the rose of the world, aye--so they bruised and trampled her, and yet the breath of heaven was ever in her. 

She was the world's nightingale, aye--so they burned her eyes out andsheared her wings, and yet she sang. 

But she was yet more than these: she was the light of the world: a lightset on a hill, a light unquenchable. A light which through the darknessof the darkest night has been a Pharos to the drowning faiths and dyinghopes of man. 

 * * *

"It must have been such a good life--a painter's--in those days; thoseearly days of art. Fancy the gladness of it then--modern painters canknow nothing of it. 

"When all the delicate delights of distance were only half perceived;when the treatment of light and shadow was barely dreamed of; whenaerial perspective was just breaking on the mind in all its wonder andpower; when it was still regarded as a marvellous boldness to draw fromthe natural form in a natural fashion;--in those early days only fancythe delights of a painter!

"Something fresh to be won at each step; something new to be penetratedat each moment; something beautiful and rash to be ventured on with eachtouch of colour, --the painter in those days had all the breathlesspleasure of an explorer; without leaving his birthplace he knew the joysof Columbus. 

"And then the reverence that waited on him. 

"He was a man who glorified God amongst a people that believed in God. 

"What he did was a reality to himself and those around him. Spinellofainted before the Satanas he portrayed, and Angelico deemed itblasphemy to alter a feature of the angels who visited him that theymight live visibly for men in his colours in the cloister. 

"Of all men the artist was nearest to heaven, therefore of all men washe held most blessed. 

"When Francis Valois stooped for the brush he only represented thespirit of the age he lived in. It is what all wise kings do. It is theironly form of genius. 

"Now-a-days what can men do in the Arts! Nothing. 

"All has been painted--all sung--all said. 

"All is twice told--in verse, in stone, in colour. There is nountraversed ocean to tempt the Columbus of any Art. 

"It is dreary--very dreary--that. All had been said and done so muchbetter than we can ever say or do it again. One envies those men whogathered all the paradise flowers half opened, and could watch thembloom. 

"Art can only live by Faith: and what faith have we?

"Instead of Art we have indeed Science; but Science is very sad, for shedoubts all things and would prove all things, and doubt is endless, andproof is a quagmire that looks like solid earth, and is but shiftingwaters. "

His voice was sad as it fell on the stillness of Arezzo--Arezzo who hadseen the dead gods come and go, and the old faiths rise and fall, therewhere the mule trod its patient way and the cicala sang its summer songabove the place where the temple of the Bona Dea and the Church ofChrist had alike passed away, so that no man could tell their place. 

It was all quiet around. 

"I would rather have been Spinello than Petrarca, " he pursued, after awhile. "Yes; though the sonnets will live as long as men love: and theold man's work has almost every line of it crumbled away. 

"But one can fancy nothing better than a life such as Spinello led fornigh a century up on the hill here, painting, because he loved it, tilldeath took him. Of all lives, perhaps, that this world has ever seen, the lives of painters, I say, in those days were the most perfect. 

"Not only the magnificent pageants of Leonardo's, of Raffaelle's, ofGiorgone's: but the lowlier lives--the lives of men such as Santi, andRidolfi, and Benozzo, and Francia, and Timoteo, and many lesser men thanthey, painters in fresco and grisaille, painters of miniatures, paintersof majolica and montelupo, painters who were never great, but whoattained infinite peacefulness and beauty in their native towns andcities all over the face of Italy. 

"In quiet places, such as Arezzo and Volterra, and Modena and Urbino, and Cortona and Perugia, there would grow up a gentle lad who frominfancy most loved to stand and gaze at the missal paintings in hismother's house, and the coena in the monk's refectory, and when he hadfulfilled some twelve or fifteen years, his people would give in to hiswish and send him to some bottega to learn the management of colours. 

"Then he would grow to be a man; and his town would be proud of him, andfind him the choicest of all work in its churches and its convents, sothat all his days were filled without his ever wandering out of reach ofhis native vesper bells. 

"He would make his dwelling in the heart of his birthplace, close underits cathedral, with the tender sadness of the olive hills stretchingabove and around; in the basiliche or the monasteries his labour woulddaily lie; he would have a docile band of hopeful boyish pupils withinnocent eyes of wonder for all he did or said; he would paint hiswife's face for the Madonna's, and his little son's for the childAngel's; he would go out into the fields and gather the olive bough, andthe feathery corn, and the golden fruits, and paint them tenderly onground of gold or blue, in symbol of those heavenly things of which thebells were for ever telling all those who chose to hear; he would sit inthe lustrous nights in the shade of his own vines and pity those whowere not as he was; now and then horsemen would come spurring in acrossthe hills and bring news with them of battles fought, of cities lost andwon; and he would listen with the rest in the market-place, and go homethrough the moonlight thinking that it was well to create the holythings before which the fiercest reiter and the rudest free-lance woulddrop the point of the sword and make the sign of the cross. 

"It must have been a good life--good to its close in the cathedralcrypt--and so common too; there were scores such lived out in theselittle towns of Italy, half monastery and half fortress, that werescattered over hill and plain, by sea and river, on marsh and mountain, from the day-dawn of Cimabue to the afterglow of the Carracci. 

"And their work lives after them; the little towns are all grey andstill and half peopled now; the iris grows on the ramparts, the caneswave in the moats, the shadows sleep in the silent market-place, thegreat convents shelter half-a-dozen monks, the dim majestic churches aredamp and desolate, and have the scent of the sepulchre. 

"But there, above the altars, the wife lives in the Madonna and thechild smiles in the Angel, and the olive and the wheat are fadeless ontheir ground of gold and blue; and by the tomb in the crypt thesacristan will shade his lantern and murmur with a sacred tenderness:--

"'Here he sleeps. '

"'He, ' even now, so long, long after, to the people of his birthplace. Who can want more of life--or death?"

So he talked on in that dreamy, wistful manner that was as natural withhim in some moments as his buoyant and ironical gaiety at others. 

Then he rose as the shadows grew longer and pulled down a knot ofpomegranate blossom for me, and we went together under the old walls, across the maize fields, down the slope of the hills to the oliveorchard, where a peasant, digging deep his trenches against the autumnrains, had struck his mattock on the sepulchre of the Etruscan king. 

There was only a little heap of fine dust when we reach the spot. 

 * * *

"There was so much more colour in those days, " he had said, rolling abig green papone before him with his foot. "If, indeed, it were laid onsometimes too roughly. And then there was so much more play forcharacter. Now-a-days, if a man dare go out of the common ways to seek amanner of life suited to him, and unlike others, he is voted a vagabond, or, at least, a lunatic, supposing he is rich enough to get the sentenceso softened. In those days the impossible was possible--a paradox? oh, of course. The perfection of those days was, that they were full ofparadoxes. No democracy will ever compass the immensity of Hope, thevastness of Possibility, with which the Church of those ages filled thelives of the poorest poor. Not hope spiritual only, but hopeterrestrial, hope material and substantial. A swineherd, glad to gnawthe husks that his pigs left, might become the Viceregent of Christ, andspurn emperors prostrate before his throne. The most famished studentwho girt his lean loins to pass the gates of Pavia or Ravenna, knew thatif he bowed his head for the tonsure he might live to lift it in apontiff's arrogance in the mighty reality and the yet mightier metaphorof a Canosa. The abuses of the mediæval Church have been gibbeted inevery language; but I doubt if the wonderful absolute _equality_ whichthat Church actually contained and caused has ever been sufficientlyremembered. Then only think how great it was to _be_ great in thoseyears, when men were fresh enough of heart to feel emotion and notashamed to show it. Think of Petrarca's entry into Rome; think of thesuperb life of Raffael; think of the crowds that hung on the lips ofthe Improvisatori: think of the influence of S. Bruno, of S. Bernard, ofS. Francis; think of the enormous power on his generation of FraGirolamo! And if one were not great at all, but only a sort of brutewith stronger sinews than most men, what a fearless and happy brute onemight be, riding with Hawkwood's Lances, or fighting with the BlackBands! Whilst, if one were a peaceable, gentle soul, with a turn for artand grace, what a calm, tender life one might lead in little, old, quietcities, painting praying saints on their tiptoes, or mouldingmarriage-plates in majolica! It must have been such a great thing tolive when the world was still all open-eyed with wonder at itself, likea child on its sixth birthday. Now-a-days, science makes a greatdiscovery; the tired world yawns, feels its pockets, and only asks, "Will it pay?" Galileo ran the risk of the stake, and Giordano Brunosuffered at it; but I think that chance of the faggots must have beenbetter to bear than the languid apathy and the absorbed avarice of thepresent age, which is chiefly tolerant because it has no interest exceptin new invented ways for getting money and for spending it. "

_IN MAREMMA. _

He remembered two years before, when he had passed through Italy on hisway eastward, pausing in Ferrara, and Brescia, and Mantua, and stayinglonger in the latter city on account of a trial then in course ofhearing in the court of justice, which had interested him by itspassionate and romantic history; it had been the trial of the youngCount d'Este, accused of the assassination of his mistress. Sanctis hadgone with the rest of the town to the hearing of the long and tediousexamination of the witnesses and of accused. It had been a warm day inearly autumn, three months after the night of the murder; Mantua hadlooked beautiful in her golden mantle of sunshine and silver veil ofmist; there was a white, light fog on the water meadows and the lakes, and under it the willows waved and the tall reeds rustled; whilst thedark towers, the forked battlements, the vast Lombard walls, seemed tofloat on it like sombre vessels on a foamy sea. 

He remembered the country people flocking in over the bridge, the bellsringing, the red sails drifting by, the townsfolk gathering together inthe covered arcades and talking with angry rancour against the deadwoman's lord. He remembered sitting in the hush and gloom of thejudgment-hall and furtively sketching the head of the prisoner becauseof its extreme and typical beauty. He remembered how at the time he hadthought this accused lover guiltless, and wondered that the tribunal didnot sooner suspect the miserly, malicious, and subtle meaning of thehusband's face. He remembered listening to the tragic tale that seemedso well to suit those sombre, feudal streets, those melancholy waters, seeing the three-edged dagger passed from hand to hand, hearing how thewoman had been found dead in her beauty on her old golden and crimsonbed with the lilies on her breast, and looking at the attitude of theprisoner--in which the judges saw remorse and guilt, and he could onlysee the unutterable horror of a bereaved lover to whom the world wasstripped and naked. 

He had stayed but two days in Mantua, but those two days had left animpression on him like that left by the reading at the fall of night ofsome ghastly poem of the middle ages. He had thought that they hadcondemned an innocent man, as the judge gave his sentence of the galleysfor life: and the scene had often come back to his thoughts. 

The vaulted audience chamber; the strong light pouring in through highgrated windows; the pillars of many-coloured marbles, the frescoed roof;the country people massed together in the public place, with faces thatwere like paintings of Mantegna or Masaccio; the slender supple form ofthe accused drooping like a bruised lily between the upright figures oftwo carabineers; the judge leaning down over his high desk in blackrobes and black square cap, like some Venetian lawgiver of Veronese orof Titian; and beyond, through an open casement, the silvery, watery, sun-swept landscape that was still the same as when Romeo came, banished, to Mantua. All these had remained impressed upon his mind bythe tragedy which there came to its close as a lover, passionate asRomeo and yet more unfortunate, was condemned to the galleys for hislife. "They have ill judged a guiltless man, " he had said to himself ashe had left the court with a sense of pain before injustice done, andwent with heart saddened by a stranger's fate into the misty air, alongthe shining water where the Mills of the Twelve Apostles were churningthe great dam into froth, as they had done through seven centuries, since first, with reverent care, the builder had set the sacred statuesthere that they might bless the grinding of the corn. 

Sitting now in the silence of the tomb, Sanctis recalled that day, when, towards the setting of the sun, he had strolled there by thewater-wheels of the twelve disciples, and allowed the fate of an unknownman, declared a criminal by impartial judges, to cloud over for him theradiance of evening on the willowy Serraglio and chase away his peacefulthoughts of Virgil. He remembered how the country people had come out bythe bridge and glided away in their boats, and talked of the murder ofDonna Aloysia; and how they had, one and all of them, said, going backover the lake water or along the reed-fringed roads, to theirfarmhouses, that there could be no manner of doubt about it--the loverhad been moon-struck and mad with jealousy, and his dagger had foundits way to her breast. They had not blamed him much, but they had neverdoubted his guilt; and the foreigner alone, standing by the millgateway, and seeing the golden sun go down beyond the furthermost fieldsof reeds that grew blood-red as the waters grew, had thought to himselfand said half aloud:

"Poor Romeo! he is guiltless, even though the dagger were his"----

And a prior, black-robed, with broad looped-up black hat, who was alsowatching the sunset, breviary in hand, had smiled and said, "Nay, Romeo, banished to us, had no blood on his hand; but this Romeo, native of ourcity, has. Mantua will be not ill rid of Luitbrand d'Este. "

Then he again, in obstinacy and against all the priest's betterknowledge as a Mantuan, had insisted and said, "The man is innocent. "

And the sun had gone down as he had spoken, and the priest had smiled--asmile cold as a dagger's blade--perhaps recalling sins confessed to himof love that had changed to hate, of fierce delight ending in as fiercea death-blow. Mantua in her day had seen so much alike of love and hate. 

"The man is innocent, " he had said insisting, whilst the carmine lighthad glowed on the lagoons and bridges, and on the Lombard walls, andGothic gables, and high bell-towers, and ducal palaces, and feudalfortresses of the city in whose street Crichton fell to the hired steelof bravoes. 

 * * *

She had the heaven-born faculty of observation of the poets, and she hadthat instinct of delight in natural beauty which made Linnæus fall onhis knees before the English gorse and thank God for having made sobeautiful a thing. 

Her sympathies and her imaginings spent themselves in solitary song asshe made the old strings of the lute throb in low cadence when she satsolitary by her hearth on the rock floor of the grave; and out of doorsher eyes filled and her lips laughed when she wandered through the leafyland and found the warbler's nest hung upon the reeds, or the firstbranching asphodel in flower. She could not have told why these made herhappy, why she could watch for half a day untired the little wrenbuilding where the gladwyn blossomed on the water's edge. It was onlyhuman life that hurt her, embittered her, and filled her with hatred ofit. 

As she walked one golden noon by the Sasso Scritto, clothed with itsmyrtle and thyme and its quaint cacti that later would bear their purpleheads of fruit; the shining sea beside her, and above her the boldarbutus-covered heights, with the little bells of the sheep sounding ontheir sides, she saw a large fish, radiant as a gem, with eyes likerubies. Some men had it; a hook was in its golden gills, and they hadtied its tail to the hook so that it could not stir, and they had put itin a pail of water that it might not die too quickly, die ere they couldsell it. A little further on she saw a large green and gold snake, oneof the most harmless of all earth's creatures, that only asked to creepinto the sunshine, to sleep in its hole in the rock, to live out itsshort, innocent life under the honey smile of the rosemary; the same menstoned it to death, heaping the pebbles and broken sandstone on it, andit perished slowly in long agony, being large and tenacious of life. Yeta little further on, again, she saw a big square trap of netting, with ablinded chaffinch as decoy. The trap was full of birds, some fifty orsixty of them, all kinds of birds, from the plain brown minstrel, beloved of the poets, to the merry and amber-winged oriole, from thedark grey or russet-bodied fly-catcher and whinchat to the glossy andhandsome jay, cheated and caught as he was going back to the north; theyhad been trapped, and would be strung on a string and sold for a coppercoin the dozen; and of many of them the wings or the legs were brokenand the eyes were already dim. The men who had taken them were seated onthe thymy turf grinning like apes, with pipes in their mouths, and aflask of wine between their knees. 

She passed on, helpless. 

She thought of words that Joconda had once quoted to her, words whichsaid that men were made in God's likeness!

 * * *

While it is winter the porphyrion sails down the willowy streams besidethe sultan-hen that is to be his love, and sees her not, and stays nother passage upon the water or through the air; she does not live as yetto him. But when the breath of the spring brings the catkins from thewillows, and the violets amidst the wood-moss on the banks, then heawakes and beholds her; and then the stream reflects but her shape forhim, and the rushes are full of the melody of his love-call. It wasstill winter with Este--a bitter winter of discontent; and he had noeyes for this water-bird that swam with him through the icy current ofhis adversity. 

To break the frozen flood that imprisoned him was his only thought. 

 * * *

Air is the king of physicians; he who stands often with nothing betweenhim and the open heavens will gain from them health both moral andphysical. 

 * * *

"Yes; you have a right to know. After all, it was ruin to me, but it isnot much of a story; a tale-teller with his guitar on a vintage nightwould soon make a better one. I loved a woman. She lived in Mantua. Sodid I, too. For her sake I lost three whole years--three years of thebest of my life. And yet, what is gain except love, and what better thanjoy can we have? A pomegranate is ripe but once. And I--my pomegranateis rotten for evermore! We lived in Mantua. It is a strange sad place. It was great and gay enough once. Grander pomp than Mantua's there wasnever known in Italy. Felix Mantua!--and now it is all decaying, mouldering, sinking, fading; it is silent as death; the mists, thewaters, the empty palaces, the walls that the marshes are eating littleby little every day, the grass and the moss and the wild birds' nests onthe roofs, on the temples, on the bridges, all are desolate in Mantuanow. Yet is it beautiful in its loneliness, when the sunrise comes overthe seas of reeds, and the towers and the arches are reflected in thepools and streams; and yet again at night, when the moon is high and thelagoons are as sheets of silver, and the shadows come and go over thebulrushes and St. Andrea lifts itself against the stars. Yes; then it isstill Mantova la Gloriosa. "

His voice dropped; the tears came into his closing eyes as though helooked on the dead face of a familiar friend. 

He felt the home sickness of the exile, of the wanderer who knows notwhere to lay his head. 

The glory was gone from the city. 

Its greatness was but as a ghost that glided through its desertedstreets calling in vain on dead men to arise. 

The rough red sail of the fishing-boat was alone on the waters oncecrowded with the silken sails of gilded galleys; the toad croaked andthe stork made her nest where the Lords of Gonzaga had gone forth tomeet their brides of Este or of Medici; Virgil, Alboin, great Karl, Otho, Petrarca, Ariosto, had passed by here over this world of watersand become no more than dreams; and the vapours and the dust togetherhad stolen the smile from Giulio's Psyche, and the light from Mantegna'sarabesques. On the vast walls the grass grew, and in the palaces ofprinces the winds wandered and the beggars slept. All was still, disarmed, lonely, forgotten; left to a silence like the silence of theendless night of death. Yet it was dear to him; this sad and statelycity, waiting for the slow death of an unpitied and lingering decay. 

It was dear to him from habit, from birth, from memory, from affinity, as the reeds of its stagnant waters were dear to the sedge-warbler thathung its slender nest on the stem of a rush. A price was set on hishead; and never more, he thought, would he see the sunshine in ripplesof gold come over the grey lagoons. 

 * * *

No one cared; the terrible, barren, acrid truth, that science trumpetsabroad as though it were some new-found joy, touched her ignorance withits desolating despair. No one cared. Life was only sustained by death. The harmless and lovely children of the air and of the moor were givenover, year after year, century after century, to the bestial play andthe ferocious appetites of men. The wondrous beauty of the earth reneweditself only to be the scene of endless suffering, of interminabletorture. The human tyrant, without pity, greedy as a child, more brutalthan the tiger in his cruelty, had all his way upon the innocent racesto which he begrudged a tuft of reeds, a palm's breadth of moss or sand. The slaughter, the misery, the injustice, renewed themselves as thegreenness of the world did. No one cared. There was no voice upon theblood-stained waters. There was no rebuke from the offended heavens. Toall prayer or pain there was eternal silence as the sole reply. 

 * * *

The uneducated are perhaps unjustly judged sometimes. To the ignorantboth right and wrong are only instincts; when one remembers theirpiteous and innocent confusion of ideas, the twilight of dimcomprehension in which they dwell, one feels that oftentimes the laws ofcultured men are too hard on them, and that, in a better sense than thatof injustice and reproach, there ought indeed to be two laws for richand poor. 

 * * *

It needs a great nature to bear the weight of a great gratitude. 

To a great nature it gives wings that bear it up to heaven; a lowernature feels it always as a clog that impatiently is dragged only solong as force compels. 

 * * *

When the thoughts of youth return, fresh as the scent of new-gatheredblossoms, to the tired old age which has so long forgot them, the comingof Death is seldom very distant. 

 * * *

The boat went through the waters swiftly, as the wind blew morestrongly; the sandy shore with its scrub of low-growing rock-rose andprickly Christ's thorn did not change its landscape, but what she lookedat always was the sea; the sea that in the light had the smiling azureof a young child's eyes, and when the clouds cast shadows on it, had theintense impenetrable brilliancy of a jewel. 

In the distance were puffs of white and grey, like smoke or mist; thosemists were Corsica and Caprajà. 

Elba towered close at hand. 

Gorgona lay far beyond, with all the other little isles that seem madeto shelter Miranda and Ariel, but of Gorgona she knew nothing; she wassteering straight towards it, but it was many a league distant on thenortherly water. 

When she at last stopped her boat in its course she was at the SassoScritto: a favourite resting-place with her, where, on feast-days, whenJoconda let her have liberty from housework and rush-plaiting andspinning of flax, she always came. 

Northward, there was a long smooth level beach of sand, and beyond thata lagoon where all the waterbirds that love both the sea and the marshcame in large flocks, and spread their wings over the broad spaces inwhich the salt water and the fresh were mingled. Beyond this there werecliffs of the humid red tufa, and the myrtle and the holy thorn grewdown their sides, and met in summer the fragrant hesperis of the shore. 

These cliffs were fine bold bluffs, and one of them had been called fromtime immemorial the Sasso Scritto, --why, no one knew; the only writingon it was done by the hand of Nature. It was steep and lofty; on itssummit were the ruins of an old fortress of the middle ages; its sideswere clothed with myrtle, aloe, and rosemary, and at its feet wereboulders of marble, rose and white in the sun; rock pools, withexquisite network of sunbeams crossing their rippling surface, andfilled with green ribbon-grasses and red sea-foliage, and shining gleamsof broken porphyry, and pieces of agate and cornelian. 

The yellow sands hereabouts were bright just now with the sea-daffodil, and the sea-stocks, which would blossom later, were pricking upward tothe Lenten light; great clusters of southern-wood waved in the wind, andthe pungent sea-rush grew in long lines along the shore, where thesand-piper was dropping her eggs, and the blue-rock was carrying drytwigs and grass to his home in the ruins above or the caverns beneath, and the stock-doves in large companies were winging their way over seatowards the Maritime or the Pennine Alps. 

This was a place that Musa loved, and she would come here and sit forhours, and watch the roseate cloud of the returning flamingoes wingingtheir way from Sardinia, and the martins busy at their masonry in thecliffs, and the Arctic longipennes going away northward as the weatheropened, and the stream-swallows hunting early gnats and frogs on thewater, and the kingfisher digging his tortuous underground home in thesand. Here she would lie for hours amongst the rosemary, and make silentfriendships with the populations of the air, while the sweet blue skywas above her head, and the sea, as blue, stretched away till it waslost in light. 

Once up above, on these cliffs, the eye could sweep over the sea northand south, and the soil was more than ever scented with that fragrantand humble blue-flowered shrub of which the English madrigals and gleesof the Stuart and Hanoverian poets so often speak, and seem to smell. Behind the cliffs stretched moorland, marshes, woodland, intermingled, crossed by many streams, holding many pools, blue-fringed in May withiris, and osier beds, and vast fields of reeds, and breadths of forestwith dense thorny underwood, where all wild birds came in their season, and where all was quiet save for a bittern's cry, a boar's snort, asnipe's scream, on the lands once crowded with the multitudes that gavethe eagle of Persia and the brazen trumpets of Lydia to the legions ofRome. 

Under their thickets of the prickly sloe-tree and the sweet-smelling baylay the winding ways of buried cities; their runlets of water rippledwhere kings and warriors slept beneath the soil, and the yellow marshlily, and the purple and the rose of the wind-flower and thepasque-flower, and the bright red of the Easter tulips, and the whiteand the gold of the asphodels, and the colours of a thousand other rarerand less homelike blossoms, spread their innocent glory in their turn tothe sky and the breeze, above the sunken stones of courts and gates andpalaces and prisons. 

These moors were almost as solitary as the deserts are. 

Now and then against the blue of the sky and the brown of the wood, there rose the shapes of shepherds and their flocks; now and then herdsof young horses went by, fleet and unconscious of their doom; now andthen the sound of a rifle cracked the silence of the windless air; butthese came but seldom. 

Maremma is wide, and its people are scattered. 

In autumn and in winter, hunters, shepherds, swineherds, sportsmen, birdcatchers, might spoil the solemn peace of these moors, but in springand summer no human soul was seen upon them. The boar and the buffalo, the flamingo and the roebuck, the great plover and the woodcock, reignedalone. 

 * * *

"They say he sang too well, and that was why they burnt him, " saidAndreino to her to-day, after telling her for the hundredth time of whathe had seen once on the Ligurian shore, far away yonder northward, whenhe, who knew nothing of Adonais or Prometheus, had been called, a stoutseafaring man in that time, amongst other peasants of the country-side, to help bring in the wood for a funeral pyre by the sea. 

He had known nought of the songs or the singer, but he loved to tell thetale he had heard then; and say how he had seen, he himself, with hisown eyes, the drowned poet burn, far away yonder where the pines stoodby the sea, and how the flames had curled around the heart that men haddone their best to break, and how it had remained unburnt in the midst, whilst all the rest drifted in ashes down the wind. He knew nought ofthe Skylark's ode, and nought of the Cor Cordium; but the scene by theseashore had burned itself as though with flame into his mind, and hespoke of it a thousand times if once, sitting by the edge of the seathat had killed the singer. 

"Will they burn me if I sing too well?" the child asked him this day, the words of Joconda being with her. 

"Oh, that is sure, " said Andreino, half in jest and half in earnest. "They burnt him because he sang better than all of them. So they said. I do not know. I know the resin ran out of the pinewood all golden andhissing and his heart would not burn, all we could do. You are a femalething, Musa; your heart will be the first to burn, the first of all!"

"Will it?" said Musa seriously, but not any way alarmed, for the thoughtof that flaming pile by the seashore by night was a familiar image toher. 

"Ay, for sure; you will be a woman!" said Andreino, hammering into hisboat. 

 * * *

"Though there is not a soul here, still sometimes they come--Lucchese, Pistoiese, what not--they come as they go; they are a faithless lot;they love all winter, and while the corn is in the ear it goes well, butafter harvest--phew!--they put their gains in their pockets and they areoff and away back to their mountains. There are broken hearts in Maremmawhen the threshing is done. "

"Yes, " said Musa again. 

It was nothing to her, and she heeded but little. 

"Yes, because men speak too lightly and women hearken too quickly; thatis how the mischief is born. With the autumn the mountaineers come. Theyare strong and bold; they are ruddy and brown; they work all day, but inthe long nights they dance and they sing; then the girl listens. Shethinks it is all true, though it has all been said before in his ownhills to other ears. The winter nights are long, and the devil is alwaysnear; when the corn goes down and the heat is come there is another sadsoul the more, another burden to carry, and he--he goes back to themountains. What does he care? Only when he comes down into the plainsagain he goes to another place to work, because men do not love women'stears. That is how it goes in Maremma. "

 * * *

"So the saints will pluck her to themselves at last, " thought Joconda;and the dreariness, the lovelessness, the hopelessness of such anexistence did not occur to her, because age, which has learned thesolace and sweetness of peace, never remembers that to youth peace seemsonly stagnation, inanition, death. 

The exhausted swimmer, reaching the land, falls prone on it, and blessesit; but the outgoing swimmer, full of strength, spurns the land, andonly loves the high-crested wave, the abyss of the deep sea. 

 * * *

Imagination without culture is crippled and moves slowly; but it can bepure imagination, and rich also, as folk-lore will tell the vainest. 

 * * *

It is this narrowness of the peasant mind which philosophers neverfairly understand, and demagogues understand but too well, and warp totheir own selfish purposes and profits. 

 * * *

Flying, the flamingoes are like a sunset cloud; walking, they are likeslender spirals of flame traversing the curling foam. When one looks onthem across black lines of storm-blown weeds on a November morning inthe marshes, as their long throats twist in the air with the flexilemotion of the snake, the grace of a lily blown by wind, one thinks ofThebes, of Babylon, of the gorgeous Persia of Xerxes, of the lasciviousEgypt of the Ptolemies. 

The world has grown grey and joyless in the twilight of age and fatigue, but these birds keep the colour of its morning. Eos has kissed them. 

 * * *

For want of a word lives often drift apart. 

 * * *

Nausicaa, in the safe shelter of her father's halls, had never tendedOdysseus with more serenity and purity than the daughter of Saturninotended his fellow-slave. 

The sanctity of the tombs lay on them, the dead were so near; neitherprofanity nor passion seemed to have any place here in this mysterioustwilight alive with the memories of a vanished people. Her innocence wasa grand and noble thing, like any one of the largest white lilies thatrose up from the noxious mud of the marshes; a cup of ivory wet with thedewdrops of dawn, blossoming fair on fetid waters. And in him thelanguor of sickness and of despair borrowed unconsciously for awhile theliveries of chastity; and he spoke no word, he made no gesture, thatwould have scared from its original calm the soul of this lonelycreature, who succoured him with so much courage and so much compassionthat they awed him with the sense of an eternal, infinite, andoverwhelming obligation. It needs a great nature to bear the weight of agreat gratitude. 

To a great nature it gives wings that bear it up to heaven; a lowernature feels it always a clog that impatiently is dragged only so longas force compels. 

 * * *

Her daily labours remained the same, but it seemed to her as if she hadthe strength of those immortals he told her she resembled. She felt asthough she trod on air, as though she drank the sunbeams and they gaveher force like wine; she had no sense of fatigue; she might have hadwings at her ankles, and nectar in her veins. She was so happy, withthat perfect happiness which only comes where the world cannot enter, and the free nature has lifted itself to the light, knowing nothing of, and caring nothing for, the bonds of custom and of prejudice with whichmen have paralysed and cramped themselves, calling the lower the higherlaw. 

 * * *

The world was so far from her; she knew not of it; she was a law toherself, and her whole duty seemed to her set forth in one single word, perhaps the noblest word in human language--fidelity. When life is castin solitary places, filled with high passions, and led aloof from men, the laws which are needful to curb the multitudes, but yet are poorconventional foolish things at their best, sink back into their truesignification, and lose their fictitious awe. 

 * * *

Moreover, love is for ever measureless, and the deepest and mostpassionate love is that which survives the death of esteem. 

Friendship needs to be rooted in respect, but love can live upon itselfalone. Love is born of a glance, a touch, a murmur, a caress; esteemcannot beget it, nor lack of esteem slay it. _Questi che mai da me nonfia diviso_, shall be for ever its consolation amidst hell. One lifealone is beloved, is beautiful, is needful, is desired: one life aloneout of all the millions of earth. Though it fall, err, betray, be mockedof others and forsaken by itself, what does this matter? This cannotalter love. The more it is injured by itself, derided of men, abandonedof God, the more will love still see that it has need of love, and tothe faithless will be faithful. 

 * * *

He stood mute and motionless awhile. Then as the truth was borne in onhim, tears gushed from his eyes like rain, and he laughed long, andlaughed loud as madmen do. 

He never doubted her. 

He sprang up the stone steps, and leapt into the open air: into thatlight of day which he had been forbidden to see so long. 

To stand erect there, to look over the plains, to breathe, and move, andgaze, and stretch his arms out to the infinite spaces of the sea andsky--this alone was so intense a joy that he felt mad with it. 

Never again to hide with the snake and the fox; never again to trembleas his shadow went beside him on the sand; never to waste the sunlithours hidden in the bowels of the earth; never to be afraid of everyleaf that stirred, of every bird that flew, of every moon-beam that fellacross his path!--he laughed and sobbed with the ecstasy of his release. 

"O God, Thou hast not forgotten!" he cried in that rapture of freedom. 

All the old childish faiths that had been taught him by dim old altarsin stately Mantuan churches came back to his memory and heart. 

On the barren rock of Gorgona he had cursed and blasphemed the Creatorand creation of a world that was hell; he had been without hope: he hadderided all the faiths of his youth as illusions woven by devils to makethe disappointment of man the more bitter. 

But now in the sweetness of his liberty, all the old happy beliefsrushed back to him; he saw Deity in the smile of the seas, in the lightupon the plains. He was free!

 * * *

The world has lost the secret of making labour a joy; but nature hasgiven it to a few. Where the maidens dance the _Saltarello_ under thedeep Sardinian forests, and the honey and the grapes are gatheredbeneath the snowy sides of Etna, and the oxen walk up to their loins inflowing grass where the long aisles of pines grow down the Adrian shore, this wood-magic is known still of the old simple charm of the pastorallife. 

 * * *

"Does it vex you that I am not a boy?" said the girl--"why should it vexyou? I can do all they can, I can row better than many, and sail andsteer; I can drive too, and I know what to do with the nets; if I had aboat of my own you would see what I could do. "

"All that is very well, " said Joconda with a little nod. "I do not sayit is not. But you have not a boat of your own, that is just it; that iswhat women always suffer from; they have to steer, but the craft is someone else's, and the haul too. "

 * * *

Wild bird of sea and cloud, you are a stormy petrel, but there may comea storm too many--and I am old. I have done my best, but that is little. If you were a lad one would not be so uneasy. I suppose the good Godknows best--if one could be sure of that--I am a hard working woman, andI have done no great sin that I know of, but up in heaven they nevertake any thought of me. When I was young, I asked them at my marriagealtar to help me, and when my boys were born, I did the same, but theynever noticed; my man was drowned, and my beautiful boys got the feverand sickened one by one and died: that was all I got. Priests say it isbest; priests are not mothers. 

 * * *

"They were greater than the men that live now, " she said with a solemntenderness, "Perhaps; Why think so?"

"Because they were not afraid of their dead; they built them beautifulhouses, and gave them beautiful things. Now, men are afraid or ashamed, or they have no remembrance. Their dead are huddled away in dust or mudas though they were hateful or sinful. That is what I think so cowardly, so thankless. If they will not bear the sight of death, it were betterto let great ships go slowly out, far out to sea, and give the wavestheir lost ones. "

_MOTHS. _

When gardeners plant and graft, they know very well what will be theissue of their work; they do not expect the rose from a bulb of garlic, or look for the fragrant olive from a slip of briar; but the culturersof human nature are less wise, and they sow poison, yet rave inreproaches when it breeds and brings forth its like. "The rosebud gardenof girls" is a favourite theme for poets, and the maiden in her likenessto a half-opened blossom, is as near purity and sweetness as a humancreature can be, yet what does the world do with its opening buds?--itthrusts them in the forcing-house amidst the ordure, and then, if theyperish prematurely, never blames itself. The streets absorb the girls ofthe poor; society absorbs the daughters of the rich; and not seldom oneform of prostitution, like the other, keeps its captives "bound in thedungeon of their own corruption. "

 * * *

The frivolous are always frightened at any strength or depth of nature, or any glimpse of sheer despair. 

Not to be consoled!

What can seem more strange to the shallow? What can seem more obstinateto the weak? Not to be consoled is to offend all swiftly forgettinghumanity, most of whose memories are writ on water. 

 * * *

It is harder to keep true to high laws and pure instincts in modernsociety than it was in days of martyrdom. There is nothing in the wholerange of life so dispiriting and so unnerving as a monotony ofindifference. Active persecution and fierce chastisement are tonics tothe nerves; but the mere weary conviction that no one cares, that no onenotices, that there is no humanity that honours, and no deity thatpities, is more destructive of all higher effort than any conflict withtyranny or with barbarism. 

 * * *

Yet as he thought, so he did not realise that he would ever cease to bein the world--who does? Life was still young in him, was prodigal to himof good gifts; of enmity he only knew so much as made his triumph finer, and of love he had more than enough. His life was full--at timeslaborious--but always poetical and always victorious. He could notrealise that the day of darkness would ever come for him, when neitherwoman nor man would delight him, when no roses would have fragrance forhim, and no song any spell to rouse him. Genius gives immortality inanother way than in the vulgar one of being praised by others afterdeath; it gives elasticity, unwearied sympathy, and that sense of someessence stronger than death, of some spirit higher than the tomb, whichnothing can destroy. It is in this sense that genius walks with theimmortals. 

 * * *

A cruel story runs on wheels, and every hand oils the wheels as theyrun. 

 * * *

You may weep your eyes blind, you may shout your throat dry, you maydeafen the ears of your world for half a lifetime, and you may never geta truth believed in, never have a simple fact accredited. But the lieflies like the swallow, multiplies itself like the caterpillar, isaccepted everywhere, like the visits of a king; it is a royal guest forwhom the gates fly open, the red carpet is unrolled, the trumpets sound, the crowds applaud. 

 * * *

She lived, like all women of her stamp and her epoch, in an atmosphereof sugared sophisms; she never reflected, she never admitted, that shedid wrong; in her world nothing mattered much, unless, indeed, it werefound out, and got into the public mouth. 

Shifting as the sands, shallow as the rain-pools, drifting in all dangerto a lie, incapable of loyalty, insatiably curious, still as a friendand ill as a foe, kissing like Judas, denying like Peter, impure ofthought, even where by physical bias or political prudence still pure inact, the woman of modern society is too often at once the feeblest andthe foulest outcome of a false civilisation. Useless as a butterfly, corrupt as a canker, untrue to even lovers and friends because mentallyincapable of comprehending what truth means, caring only for physicalcomfort and mental inclination, tired of living, but afraid of dying;believing some in priests, and some in physiologists, but none at all invirtue; sent to sleep by chloral, kept awake by strong waters and rawmeat; bored at twenty, and exhausted at thirty, yet dying in the harnessof pleasure rather than drop out of the race and live naturally;pricking their sated senses with the spur of lust, and fancying it love;taking their passions as they take absinthe before dinner; false ineverything, from the swell of their breast to the curls at theirthroat;--beside them the guilty and tragic figures of old, the Medea, the Clytemnæstra, the Phædra, look almost pure, seem almost noble. 

When one thinks that they are the only shape of womanhood which comeshourly before so many men, one comprehends why the old Christianitywhich made womanhood sacred dies out day by day, and why the newPositivism, which would make her divine, can find no lasting root. 

The faith of men can only live by the purity of women, and there is bothimpurity and feebleness at the core of the dolls of Worth, as the cankerof the phylloxera works at the root of the vine. 

 * * *

"What an actress was lost in your mother!" he added with his roughlaugh; but he confused the talent of the comedian of society with thatof the comedian of the stage, and they are very dissimilar. The latteralmost always forgets herself in her part; the former never. 

 * * *

The scorn of genius is the most arrogant and the most boundless of allscorn. 

 * * *

"The fame of the singer can never be but a breath, a sound through areed. When our lips are once shut, there is on us for ever eternalsilence. Who can remember a summer breeze when it has passed by, ortell in any after-time how a laugh or a sigh sounded?"

 * * *

"When the soldier dies at his post, unhonoured and unpitied, and out ofsheer duty, is that unreal because it is noble?" he said one night tohis companions. "When the sister of charity hides her youth and her sexunder a grey shroud, and gives up her whole life to woe and solitude, tosickness and pain, is that unreal because it is wonderful? A man paintsa spluttering candle, a greasy cloth, a mouldy cheese, a pewter can;'How real!' they cry. If he paint the spirituality of dawn, the light ofthe summer sea, the flame of arctic nights, of tropic woods, they arecalled unreal, though they exist no less than the candle and the cloth, the cheese and the can. Ruy Blas is now condemned as unreal because thelovers kill themselves; the realists forget that there are lovers stillto whom that death would be possible, would be preferable, to lowintrigue and yet more lowering falsehood. They can only see the mouldycheese, they cannot see the sunrise glory. All that is heroic, all thatis sublime, impersonal, or glorious, is derided as unreal. It is adreary creed. It will make a dreary world. Is not my Venetian glass withits iridescent hues of opal as real every whit as your pot of pewter?Yet the time is coming when every one, morally and mentally at least, will be allowed no other than a pewter pot to drink out of, under painof being 'writ down an ass'--or worse. It is a dreary prospect. "

 * * *

"Good? bad? If there were only good and bad in this world it would notmatter so much, " said Corrèze a little recklessly and at random. "Lifewould not be such a disheartening affair as it is. Unfortunately themajority of people are neither one nor the other, and have littleinclination for either crime or virtue. It would be almost as absurd tocondemn them as to admire them. They are like tracts of shifting sand, in which nothing good or bad can take root. To me they are moredespairing to contemplate than the darkest depth of evil; out of thatmay come such hope as comes of redemption and remorse, but in the vast, frivolous, featureless mass of society there is no hope. "

 * * *

"No!" he said with some warmth: "I refuse to recognise the divinity ofnoise; I utterly deny the majesty of monster choruses; clamour andclangour are the death-knell of music as drapery and so-called realism(which means, if it mean aught, that the dress is more real than theform underneath it!) are the destruction of sculpture. It is verystrange. Every day art in every other way becomes more natural and musicmore artificial. Every day I wake up expecting to hear myself _dénigré_and denounced as old-fashioned, because I sing as my nature as well asmy training teaches me to do. It is very odd; there is such a cry fornaturalism in other arts--we have Millet instead of Claude; we have Zolainstead of Georges Sand; we have Dumas _fils_ instead of Corneille; wehave Mercié instead of Canova; but in music we have precisely thereverse, and we have the elephantine creations, the elaborate andpompous combinations of Baireuth, and the Tone school, instead of theold sweet strains of melody that went straight and clear to the ear andthe heart of man. Sometimes my enemies write in their journals that Ising as if I were a Tuscan peasant strolling through his corn--howproud they make me! But they do not mean to do so. I will not twist andemphasise. I trust to melody. I was taught music in its own country, andI will not sin against the canons of the Italians. They are right. Rhetoric is one thing, and song is another. Why confuse the two?Simplicity is the soul of great music; as it is the mark of greatpassion. Ornament is out of place in melody which represents singleemotions at their height, be they joy, or fear, or hate, or love, orshame, or vengeance, or whatsoever they will. Music is not a science anymore than poetry is. It is a sublime instinct, like genius of all kinds. I sing as naturally as other men speak; let me remain natural"----

 * * *

Childhood goes with us like an echo always, a refrain to the ballad ofour life. One always wants one's cradle-air. 

 * * *

"The poor you have always with you, " she said to a bevy of great ladiesonce. "Christ said so. You profess to follow Christ. How have you thepoor with you? The back of their garret, the roof of their hovel, touches the wall of your palace, and the wall is thick. You havedissipations, spectacles, diversions that you call charities; you have atombola for a famine, you have a dramatic performance for a flood, youhave a concert for a fire, you have a fancy fair for a leprosy. Do younever think how horrible it is, that mockery of woe? Do you ever wonderat revolutions? Why do you not say honestly that you care nothing? Youdo care nothing. The poor might forgive the avowal of indifference; theywill never forgive the insult of affected pity. "

 * * *

"Why do you go to such a place?" he asked her as she stood on thestaircase. 

"There are poor there, and great misery, " she answered him reluctantly;she did not care to speak of these things at any time. 

"And what good will you do? You will be cheated and robbed, and even ifyou are not, you should know that political science has found thatprivate charity is the hotbed of all idleness. "

"When political science has advanced enough to prevent poverty, it mayhave the right to prevent charity too, " she answered him, with acontempt that showed thought on the theme was not new to her. "Perhapscharity--I dislike the word--may do no good; but friendship from therich to the poor must do good; it must lessen class hatreds. "

"Are you a socialist?" said Zouroff with a little laugh, and drew backand let her pass onward. 

 * * *

"My dear! I never say rude things; but, if you wish me to be sincere, Iconfess I think everybody is a little vulgar now, except old women likeme, who adhered to the Faubourg while you all were dancing and changingyour dresses seven times a day at St. Cloud. There is a sort ofvulgarity in the air; it is difficult to escape imbibing it; there istoo little reticence, there is too much tearing about; men are notwell-mannered, and women are too solicitous to please, and tooindifferent how far they stoop in pleasing. It may be the fault ofsteam; it may be the fault of smoking; it may come from that flood ofnew people of whom 'L'Etrangère' is the scarcely exaggerated sample;but, whatever it comes from, there it is--a vulgarity that taintseverything, courts and cabinets as well as society. Your daughtersomehow or other has escaped it, and so you find her odd, and the worldthinks her stiff. She is neither; but no dignified long-descendedpoint-lace, you know, will ever let itself be twisted and twirled into acascade and a _fouillis_ like your Brétonne lace that is just thefashion of the hour, and worth nothing. I admire your Vera very greatly;she always makes me think of those dear old stately hotels with theirgrand gardens in which I saw, in my girlhood, the women who, in theirs, had known France before '30. These hotels and their gardens are gone, most of them, and there are stucco and gilt paint in their places. Andhere are people who think that a gain. I am not one of them. "

_UNDER TWO FLAGS. _

The old viscount, haughtiest of haughty nobles, would never abate onejot of his magnificence; and his sons had but imbibed the teaching ofall that surrounded them; they did but do in manhood what they had beenunconsciously moulded to do in boyhood, when they were sent to Eton atten with gold dressing-boxes to grace their dame's tables, embryo dukesfor their co-fags, and tastes that already knew to a nicety the worth ofthe champagnes at Christopher's. The old, old story--how it repeatsitself! Boys grow up amidst profuse prodigality, and are launched into aworld where they can no more arrest themselves, than the feather-weightcan pull in the lightning-stride of the two-year-old, who defies allcheck, and takes the flat as he chooses. They are brought up like youngdauphins, and tossed into the costly whirl to float as best they can--onnothing. Then on the lives and deaths that follow; on the graves where adishonoured alien lies forgotten by the dark Austrian lake-side, orunder the monastic shadow of some crumbling Spanish crypt; where a redcross chills the lonely traveller in the virgin solitudes of Amazonianforest aisles, or the wild scarlet creepers of Australia trail over anameless mound above the trackless stretch of sun-warmed waters--then, at them the world

 "Shoots out its lips with scorn. "

Not on _them_ lies the blame. 

 * * *

His influence had done more to humanise the men he was associated withthan any preachers or teachers could have done. 

Almost insensibly they grew ashamed to be beaten by him, and strove todo like him as far as they could. They never knew him drunk, they neverheard him swear, they never found him unjust, even to a poverty-stricken_indigène_, or brutal, even to a _fille de joie_. Insensibly hispresence humanised them. Of a surety, the last part Bertie dreamed ofplaying was that of a teacher to any mortal thing. Yet--here inAfrica--it might reasonably be questioned if a second Augustine orFrançois Xavier would ever have done half the good among thedevil-may-care Roumis that was wrought by the dauntless, listless, reckless soldier, who followed instinctively the one religion which hasno cant in its brave, simple creed, and binds man to man in links thatare as true as steel--the religion of a gallant gentleman's loyalty andhonour. 

 * * *

The child had been flung upward, a little straw floating in the gutterof Paris iniquities; a little foam-bell, bubbling on the sewer waters ofbarrack vice; the stick had been her teacher, the baggage-waggon hercradle, the camp-dogs her playfellows, the _caserne_ oaths her lullaby, the _guidons_ her sole guiding-stars, the _razzia_ her sole fete-day: itwas little marvel that the bright, bold, insolent little friend of theflag had nothing left of her sex save a kitten's mischief and coquette'sarchness. It said much rather for the straight, fair, sunlit instinctsof the untaught nature, that Cigarette had gleaned, even out of such alife, two virtues that she would have held by to the death, if tried--atruthfulness that would have scorned a lie as only fit for cowards, anda loyalty that cleaved to France as a religion. 

 * * *

Tired as over-worked cattle, and crouched or stretched like worn-outhomeless dogs, they had never wakened as he had noiselessly harnessedhimself, and he looked at them with that interest in other lives whichhad come to him through adversity; for if misfortune had given himstrength, it had also given him sympathy. 

 * * *

And he did her that injustice which the best amongst us are apt to do tothose whom we do not feel interest enough in to study with thatcloseness which can alone give comprehension of the intricate andcomplex rebus, so faintly sketched, so marvellously involved, of humannature. 

 * * *

The gleam of the dawn spread in one golden glow of the morning, and theday rose radiant over the world; they stayed not for its beauty or itspeace; the carnage went on hour upon hour; men began to grow drunk withslaughter as with raki. It was sublimely grand; it was hideouslyhateful--this wild-beast struggle, that heaving tumult of striving livesthat ever and anon stirred the vast war-cloud of smoke and broke from itas the lightning from the night. The sun laughed in its warmth over athousand hills and streams, over the blue seas lying northward, and overthe yellow sands of the south; but the touch of its heat only made theflame in their blood burn fiercer; and the fulness of its light onlyserved to show them clearer where to strike, and how to slay. 

 * * *

She might be a careless young coquette, a lawless little brigand, achild of sunny caprices, an elf of dauntless mischief; but she was morethan these. The divine fire of genius had touched her, and Cigarettewould have perished for her country not less surely than Jeanne d'Arc. The holiness of an impersonal love, the glow of an imperishablepatriotism, the melancholy of a passionate pity for the concrete andunnumbered sufferings of the people, were in her instinctive and inborn, as fragrance in the heart of flowers. And all these together moved hernow, and made her young face beautiful as she looked down upon thecrowding soldiery. 

 * * *

After all, Diderot was in the right when he told Rousseau which side ofthe question to take. On my life, civilisation develops comfort, but Ido believe it kills nobility. Individuality dies in it, and egotismgrows strong and specious. Why is it that in a polished life a man, whilst becoming incapable of sinking to crime, almost always becomesalso incapable of rising to greatness? Why is it that misery, tumult, privation, bloodshed, famine, beget, in such a life as this, suchcountless things of heroism, of endurance, of self-sacrifice--thingsmostly of demigods--in men who quarrel with the wolves for a wild-boar'scarcase, for a sheep's offal?

 * * *

As for death--when it comes it comes. Every soldier carries it in hiswallet, and it may jump out on him any minute. I would rather die youngthan old. Pardi! age is nothing else but death that is _conscious_. 

 * * *

It is misery that is glory--the misery that toils with bleeding feetunder burning suns without complaint; that lies half dead through thelong night with but one care, to keep the torn flag free from theconqueror's touch; that bears the rain of blows in punishment ratherthan break silence and buy release by betrayal of a comrade's trust;that is beaten like the mule, and galled like the horse, and starvedlike the camel, and housed like the dog, and yet does the thing which isright, and the thing which is brave, despite all; that suffers, andendures, and pours out his blood like water to the thirsty sands whosethirst is never stilled, and goes up in the morning sun to the combat asthough death were the Paradise of the Arbico's dream, knowing the whilethat no Paradise waits save the crash of the hoof through the throbbingbrain, or the roll of the gun-carriage over the writhing limb. _That_ isglory. The misery that is heroism because France needs it, because asoldier's honour wills it. _That_ is glory. It is to-day in the hospitalas it never is in the Cour des Princes where the glittering host of themarshals gather!

 * * *

Spare me the old world-worn, thread-bare formulas. Because the flax andthe colza blossom for use, and the garden flowers grow trained andpruned, must there be no bud that opens for mere love of the sun, andswings free in the wind in its fearless fair fashion? Believe me, it isthe lives which follow no previous rule that do the most good, and givethe most harvest. 

 * * *

"The first thing I saw of Cigarette was this: She was seven years old;she had been beaten black and blue; she had had two of her tiny teethknocked out. The men were furious, she was a pet with them; and shewould not say who had done it, though she knew twenty swords would havebeaten him flat as a fritter if she had given his name. I got her to sitto me some days after. I pleased her with her own picture. I asked herto tell me why she would not say who had ill-treated her. She put herhead on one side like a robin, and told me, in a whisper: 'It was one ofmy comrades--because I would not steal for him. I would not have thearmy know--it would demoralise them. If a French soldier ever does acowardly thing, another French soldier must not betray it. ' That wasCigarette--at seven years. The _esprit du corps_ was stronger than herown wrongs. "

 * * *

A better day's sport even the Quorn had never had in all its brilliantannals, and faster things the Melton men themselves had never wanted:both those who love the "quickest thing you ever knew--thirty minuteswithout a check--_such_ a pace!" and care little whether the _finale_ be"killed" or "broke away, " and those of older fashion, who prefer "longday, you know, steady as old time, the beauties stuck like wax throughfourteen parishes as I live; six hours if it were a minute; horses deadbeat; positively walked, you know, no end of a day!" but must have thefatal "who-whoop" as conclusion--both of these, the "new style and theold, " could not but be content with the doings of the "Demoiselles" fromstart to finish. 

Was it likely that Cecil remembered the caustic lash of his father'sironies while he was lifting Mother of Pearl over the posts and rails, and sweeping on, with the halloo ringing down the wintry wind as thegrasslands flew beneath him? Was it likely that he recollected thedifficulties that hung above him while he was dashing down the Gorsehappy as a king, with the wild hail driving in his face, and a break ofstormy sunshine just welcoming the gallant few who were landed at thedeath, as twilight fell? Was it likely that he could unlearn all thelessons of his life, and realise in how near a neighbourhood he stood toruin when he was drinking Regency sherry out of his gold flask as hecrossed the saddle of his second horse, or, smoking, rode slowlyhomeward through the leafless muddy lanes in the gloaming?

Scarcely;--it is very easy to remember our difficulties when we areeating and drinking them, so to speak, in bad soups and worse wines inContinental impecuniosity, sleeping on them as rough Australianshake-downs, or wearing them perpetually in Californian rags andtatters, it were impossible very well to escape from them then; but itis very hard to remember them when every touch and shape of life ispleasant to us--when everything about us is symbolical and redolent ofwealth and ease--when the art of enjoyment is the only one we are Calledon to study, and the science of pleasure all we are asked to explore. 

It is well-nigh impossible to believe yourself a beggar when you neverwant sovereigns for whist; and it would be beyond the powers of humannature to conceive your ruin irrevocable, while you still eat turbot andterrapin with a powdered giant behind your chair daily. Up in his garreta poor wretch knows very well what he is, and realises in stern fact theextremities of the last sou, the last shirt, and the last hope; but inthese devil-may-care pleasures--in this pleasant, reckless, velvet-softrush down-hill--in this club-palace, with every luxury that the heart ofman can devise and desire, yours to command at your will--it is hardwork, _then_, to grasp the truth that the crossing-sweeper yonder, inthe dust of Pall Mall, is really not more utterly in the toils ofpoverty than you are!

 * * *

The bell was clanging and clashing passionately, as Cecil at last wentdown to the weights, all his friends of the Household about him, and allstanding "crushers" on their champion, for their stringent _esprit ducorps_ was involved, and the Guards are never backward in putting theirgold down, as all the world knows. In the inclosure, the cynosure ofdevouring eyes, stood the King, with the _sang froid_ of a superbgentleman, amid the clamour raging round him, one delicate ear laid backnow and then, but otherwise indifferent to the din, with his coatglistening like satin, the beautiful tracery of vein and muscle, likethe veins of vine-leaves, standing out on the glossy, clear-carved neckthat had the arch of Circassia, and his dark antelope eyes gazing with agentle, pensive earnestness on the shouting crowd. 

His rivals, too, were beyond par in fitness and in condition, and therewere magnificent animals among them. Bay Regent was a huge, rakingchestnut, upwards of sixteen hands, and enormously powerful, with veryfine shoulders, and an all-over-like-going head; he belonged to aColonel in the Rifles, but was to be ridden by Jimmy Delmar of the 10thLancers, whose colours were violet with orange hoops. Montacute's horse, Pas de Charge, which carried all the money of the Heavy Cavalry, Montacute himself being in the Dragoon Guards, was of much the sameorder, a black hunter with racing blood in him, loins and withers thatassured any amount of force, and no fault but that of a rather coarsehead, traceable to a slur on his 'scutcheon on the distaff side from aplebeian great-grandmother, who had been a cart mare, the only stain inhis otherwise faultless pedigree. However, she had given him her massiveshoulders, so that he was in some sense a gainer by her after all. WildGeranium was a beautiful creature enough, a bright bay Irish mare, withthat rich red gloss that is like the glow of a horse-chestnut, veryperfect in shape, though a trifle light perhaps, and with not quitestrength enough in neck or barrel; she would jump the fences of her ownpaddock half a dozen times a day for sheer amusement, and was game toanything. She was entered by Cartouche of the Enniskillens, to be riddenby "Baby Grafton, " of the same corps, a feather-weight, and quite a boy, but with plenty of science in him. These were the three favourites; DayStar ran them close, the property of Durham Vavassour, of the ScotsGreys, and to be ridden by his owner; a handsome, flea-bitten, greysixteen-hander, with ragged hips, and action that looked a triflestring-halty, but noble shoulders, and great force in the loins andwithers; the rest of the field, though unusually excellent, did not findso many "sweet voices" for them, and were not so much to be feared: eachstarter was of course much backed by his party, but the betting wastolerably even on these four:--all famous steeplechasers;--the King atone time, and Bay Regent at another, slightly leading in the Ring. 

Thirty-two starters were hoisted up on the telegraph board, and as thefield got at last under weigh, uncommonly handsome they looked, whilethe silk jackets of all the colours of the rainbow glittered in thebright noon sun. As Forest King closed in, perfectly tranquil still, butbeginning to glow and quiver all over with excitement, knowing as wellas his rider the work that was before him, and longing for it in everymuscle and every limb, while his eyes flashed fire as he pulled at thecurb and tossed his head aloft, there went up a general shout of"Favourite!" His beauty told on the populace, and even somewhat on theprofessionals, though the legs kept a strong business prejudice againstthe working powers of "the Guards' crack. " The ladies began to laydozens in gloves on him; not altogether for his points, which perhapsthey hardly appreciated, but for his owner and rider, who, in thescarlet and gold, with the white sash across his chest, and a look ofserene indifference on his face, they considered the handsomest man ofthe field. The Household is usually safe to win the suffrages of thesex. 

In the throng on the course Rake instantly bonneted an audacious dealerwho had ventured to consider that Forest King was "light and curby inthe 'ock. " "You're a wise 'un, you are!" retorted the wrathful andever-eloquent Rake, "there's more strength in his clean flat legs, blesshim! than in all the round, thick, mill-posts of _your_ half-breds, thathave no more tendon than a bit of wood, and are just as flabby as asponge!" Which hit the dealer home just as his hat was hit over hiseyes; Rake's arguments being unquestionable in their force. 

The thoroughbreds pulled and fretted, and swerved in their impatience;one or two over-contumacious bolted incontinently, others put theirheads between their knees in the endeavour to draw their riders overtheir withers; Wild Geranium reared straight upright, fidgeted all overwith longing to be off, passaged with the prettiest, wickedest grace inthe world, and would have given the world to neigh if she had dared, butshe knew it would be very bad style, so, like an aristocrat as she was, restrained herself; Bay Regent almost sawed Jimmy Delmar's arms offlooking like a Titan Bucephalus; while Forest King, with his nostrilsdilated till the scarlet tinge on them glowed in the sun, his musclesquivering with excitement as intense as the little Irish mare's, and allhis Eastern and English blood on fire for the fray, stood steady as astatue for all that, under the curb of a hand light as a woman's, butfirm as iron to control, and used to guide him by the slightest touch. 

All eyes were on that throng of the first mounts in the Service;brilliant glances by the hundred gleamed down behind hot-house bouquetsof their chosen colour, eager ones by the thousand stared thirstily fromthe crowded course, the roar of the Ring subsided for a second, abreathless attention and suspense succeeded it; the Guardsmen sat ontheir drags, or lounged near the ladies with their race-glasses ready, and their habitual expression of gentle and resigned weariness in nowisealtered, because the Household, all in all, had from sixty to seventythousand on the event, and the Seraph murmured mournfully to hischeroot, "That chestnut's no end _fit_, " strong as his faith was in thechampion of the Brigades. 

A moment's good start was caught--the flag dropped--off they went, sweeping out for the first second like a line of cavalry about tocharge. 

Another moment, and they were scattered over the first field, ForestKing, Wild Geranium, and Bay Regent leading for two lengths, whenMontacute, with his habitual "fast burst, " sent Pas de Charge past themlike lightning. The Irish mare gave a rush and got alongside of him; theKing would have done the same, but Cecil checked him, and kept him inthat cool swinging canter which covered the grassland so lightly; BayRegent's vast thundering stride was Olympian, but Jimmy Delmar saw hisworst foe in the "Guards' crack, " and waited on him warily, ridingsuperbly himself. 

The first fence disposed of half the field, they crossed the second inthe same order, Wild Geranium racing neck to neck with Pas de Charge;the King was all athirst to join the duello, but his owner kept himgently back, saving his pace and lifting him over the jumps as easily asa lapwing. The second fence proved a cropper to several, some awkwardfalls took place over it, and tailing commenced; after the third field, which was heavy plough, all knocked off but eight, and the real strugglebegan in sharp earnest: a good dozen who had shown a splendid strideover the grass being done up by the terrible work on the clods. 

The five favourites had it all to themselves; Day Star pounding onwardat tremendous speed, Pas de Charge giving slight symptoms of distressowing to the madness of his first burst, the Irish mare literally flyingahead of him, Forest King and the chestnut waiting on one another. 

In the Grand Stand the Seraph's eyes strained after the Scarlet andWhite, and he muttered in his moustaches, "Ye gods, what's up? Theworld's coming to an end!--Beauty's turned cautious!"

Cautious, indeed, --with that giant of Pytchley fame running neck to neckby him; cautious, --with two-thirds of the course unrun, and all theyawners yet to come; cautious, --with the blood of Forest King lashing toboiling heat, and the wondrous greyhound stride stretching out fasterand faster beneath him, ready at a touch to break away and take thelead: but he would be reckless enough by-and-by; reckless, as his naturewas, under the indolent serenity of habit. 

Two more fences came, laced high and stiff with the Shire thorn, andwith scarce twenty feet between them, the heavy ploughed land leading tothem, clotted, and black, and hard, with the fresh earthy scent steamingup as the hoofs struck the clods with a dull thunder. Pas de Charge roseto the first: distressed too early, his hind feet caught in the thorn, and he came down rolling clear of his rider; Montacute picked him upwith true science, but the day was lost to the Heavy Cavalry men. ForestKing went in and out over both like a bird, and led for the first time;the chestnut was not to be beat at fencing, and ran even with him; WildGeranium flew still as fleet as a deer, true to her sex, she would notbear rivalry; but little Grafton, though he rode like a professional, was but a young one, and went too wildly--her spirit wanted cooler curb. 

And now only, Cecil loosened the King to his full will and his fullspeed. Now only, the beautiful Arab head was stretched like a racer'sin the run-in for the Derby, and the grand stride swept out till thehoofs seemed never to touch the dark earth they skimmed over; neitherwhip nor spur was needed, Bertie had only to leave the gallant temperand the generous fire that were roused in their might to go their way, and hold their own. His hands were low; his head was a little back; hisface very calm; the eyes only had a daring, eager, resolute willlighting in them; Brixworth lay before him. He knew well what ForestKing could do; but he did not know how great the chestnut Regent'spowers might be. 

The water gleamed before them, brown and swollen, and deepened with themeltings of winter snows a month before; the brook that has brought somany to grief over its famous banks, since cavaliers leapt it with theirfalcon on their wrist, or the mellow note of the horn rang over thewoods in the hunting days of Stuart reigns. They knew it well, that longdark line, skimmering there in the sunlight, the test that all must passwho go in for the Soldiers' Blue Ribbon. Forest King scented water, andwent on with his ears pointed, and his greyhound stride lengthening, quickening, gathering up all its force and its impetus for the leap thatwas before--then like the rise and the swoop of the heron he spanned thewater, and, landing clear, launched forward with the lunge of a speardarted through air. Brixworth was passed--the Scarlet and White, a meregleam of bright colour, a mere speck in the landscape, to the breathlesscrowds in the stand, sped on over the brown and level grassland; two anda quarter miles done in four minutes and twenty seconds. Bay Regent wasscarcely behind him; the chestnut abhorred the water, but a finertrained hunter was never sent over the Shires, and Jimmy Delmar rodelike Grimshaw himself. The giant took the leap in magnificent style, andthundered on neck and neck with the "Guards' crack. " The Irish marefollowed, and, with miraculous gameness, landed safely; but herhind-legs slipped on the bank, a moment was lost, and "Baby" Graftonscarce knew enough to recover it, though he scoured on nothing daunted. 

Pas de Charge, much behind, refused the yawner; his strength was notmore than his courage, but both had been strained too severely at first. Montacute struck the spurs into him with a savage blow over the head;the madness was its own punishment; the poor brute rose blindly to thejump, and missed the bank with a reel and a crash; Sir Eyre was hurledout into the brook, and the hope of the Heavies lay there with hisbreast and fore-legs resting on the ground, his hind-quarters in thewater, and his back broken. Pas de Charge would never again see thestarting-flag waved, or hear the music of the hounds, or feel thegallant life throb and glow through him at the rallying notes of thehorn. His race was run. 

Not knowing, or looking, or heeding what happened behind, the trio toreon over the meadow and the ploughed; the two favourites neck by neck, the game little mare hopelessly behind through that one fatal momentover Brixworth. The turning-flags were passed; from the crowds on thecourse a great hoarse roar came louder and louder, and the shouts rang, changing every second, "Forest King wins, " "Bay Regent wins, " "Scarletand White's ahead, " "Violet's up with him, " "Violet's past him, ""Scarlet recovers, " "Scarlet beats, " "A cracker on the King, " "Ten toone on the Regent, " "Guards are over the fence first, " "Guards arewinning, " "Guards are losing, " "Guards are beat!!"

Were they?

As the shout rose, Cecil's left stirrup leather snapped and gave way; atthe pace they were going most men, ay, and good riders too, would havebeen hurled out of their saddle by the shock; he scarcely swerved; amoment to ease the King and to recover his equilibrium, then he took thepace up again as though nothing had changed. And his comrades of theHousehold, when they saw this through their race-glasses, broke throughtheir serenity and burst into a cheer that echoed over the grasslandsand the coppices like a clarion, the grand rich voice of the Seraphleading foremost and loudest--a cheer that rolled mellow and triumphantdown the cold bright air like the blast of trumpets, and thrilled onBertie's ear where he came down the course a mile away. It made hisheart beat quicker with a victorious headlong delight, as his kneespressed closer into Forest King's flanks, and, half stirrupless like theArabs, he thundered forward to the greatest riding feat of his life. Hisface was very calm still, but his blood was in tumult, the delirium ofpace had got on him, a minute of life like this was worth a year, and heknew that he would win or die for it, as the land seemed to fly like ablack sheet under him, and, in that killing speed, fence and hedge anddouble and water all went by him like a dream, whirling underneath himas the grey stretches, stomach to earth, over the level, and rose toleap after leap. 

For that instant's pause, when the stirrup broke, threatened to lose himthe race. 

He was more than a length behind the Regent, whose hoofs as they dashedthe ground up sounded like thunder, and for whose herculean strength theplough has no terrors; it was more than the lead to keep now, there wasground to cover, and the King was losing like Wild Geranium. Cecil feltdrunk with that strong, keen, west wind that blew so strongly in histeeth, a passionate excitation was in him, every breath of winter airthat rushed in its bracing currents round him seemed to lash him like astripe--the Household to look on and see him beaten!

Certain wild blood that lay latent in Cecil under the tranquilgentleness of temper and of custom, woke, and had the mastery; he sethis teeth hard, and his hands clenched like steel on the bridle. "Oh! mybeauty, my beauty, " he cried, all unconsciously half aloud as they clearthe thirty-sixth fence; "kill me if you like, but don't _fail_ me!"

As though Forest King heard the prayer and answered it with all hishero's heart, the splendid form launched faster out, the stretchingstride stretched farther yet with lightning spontaneity, every fibrestrained, every nerve struggled; with a magnificent bound like anantelope the grey recovered the ground he had lost, and passed BayRegent by a quarter-length. It was a neck-to-neck race once more, acrossthe three meadows with the last and lower fences that were between themand the final leap of all; that ditch of artificial water with thetowering double hedge of oak rails and of blackthorn that was rearedblack and grim and well-nigh hopeless just in front of the Grand Stand. A roar like the roar of the sea broke up from the thronged course as thecrowd hung breathless on the even race; ten thousand shouts rang asthrice ten thousand eyes watched the closing contest, as superb a sightas the Shires ever saw, while the two ran together, the giganticchestnut, with every massive sinew swelled and strained to tension, sideby side with the marvellous grace, the shining flanks, and theArabian-like head of the Guards' horse. 

Louder and wilder the shrieked tumult rose: "The Chestnut beats!" "TheGrey beats!" "Scarlet's ahead!" "Bay Regent's caught him!" "Violet'swinning, Violet's winning!" "The King's neck by neck!" "The King'sbeating!" "The Guards will get it!" "The Guards' crack has it!" "Notyet, not yet!" "Violet will thrash him at the jump!" "Now for it!" "TheGuards, the Guards, the Guards!" "Scarlet will win!" "The King has thefinish!" "No, no, no, NO!"

Sent along at a pace that Epsom flat never saw eclipsed, sweeping by theGrand Stand like the flash of electric flame, they ran side to side onemoment more, their foam flung on each other's withers, their breath hotin each other's nostrils, while the dark earth flew beneath theirstride. The blackthorn was in front behind five bars of solid oak, thewater yawning on its farther side, black and deep, and fenced, twelvefeet wide if it were an inch, with the same thorn wall beyond it! a leapno horse should have been given, no steward should have set. Cecilpressed his knees closer and closer, and worked the gallant hero for thetest; the surging roar of the throng, though so close, was dull on hisear; he heard nothing, knew nothing, saw nothing but that lean chestnuthead beside him, the dull thud on the turf of the flying gallop, and theblack wall that reared in his face. Forest King had done so much, couldhe have stay and strength for this?

Cecil's hands clenched unconsciously on the bridle, and his face wasvery pale--pale with excitation--as his foot where the stirrup wasbroken crushed closer and harder against the grey's flanks. 

"Oh, my darling, my beauty--_now_!"

One touch of the spur--the first--and Forest King rose at the leap, allthe life and power there were in him gathered for one superhuman andcrowning effort; a flash of time, not half a second in duration, and hewas lifted in the air higher, and higher, and higher in the cold, fresh, wild winter wind; stakes and rails, and thorn and water lay beneath himblack and gaunt and shapeless, yawning like a grave; one bound, even inmid air, one last convulsive impulse of the gathered limbs, and ForestKing was over!

And as he galloped up the straight run-in, he was alone. 

Bay Regent had refused the leap. 

As the grey swept to the judge's chair, the air was rent with deafeningcheers that seemed to reel like drunken shouts from the multitude. "TheGuards win, the Guards win;" and when his rider pulled up at thedistance with the full sun shining on the scarlet and white, with thegold glisten of the embroidered "Coeur Vaillant se fait Royaume, "Forest King stood in all his glory, winner of the Soldier's Blue Ribbon, by a feat without its parallel in all the annals of the Gold Vase. 

 * * *

Over there in England, you know, sir, pipe-clay is the deuce-and-all;you've always got to have the stock on, and look as stiff as a stake, orit's all up with you; you're that tormented about little things that youget riled and kick the traces before the great 'uns come to try you. There's a lot of lads would be game as game could be in battle, ay, andgood lads to boot, doing their duty right as a trivet when it came toanything like war, that are clean druv' out of the service in time o'peace, along with all them petty persecutions that worry a man's skinlike mosquito-bites. Now here they know that, and Lord! what soldiersthey do make through knowing of it! It's tight enough and stern enoughin big things; martial law sharp enough, and obedience to the letter allthrough the campaigning; but that don't grate on a fellow; if he's worthhis salt he's sure to understand that he must move like clockwork in afight, and that he's to go to hell at double-quick march, and mute as amouse, if his officers see fit to send him. _That's_ all right, but theydon't fidget you here about the little fal-lals; you may stick yourpipe in your mouth, you may have your lark, you may do as you like, youmay spend your _décompte_ how you choose, you may settle your littleduel as you will, you may shout and sing and jump and riot on the march, so long as you _march on_; you may lounge about half dressed in anystyle as suits you best, so long as you're up to time when the trumpetssound for you; and that's what a man likes. He's ready to be a machinewhen the machine's wanted in working trim, but when it's run off theline and the steam all let off, he do like to oil his own wheels, andlie a bit in the sun at his fancy. There aren't better stuff to makesoldiers out of nowhere than Englishmen, God bless 'em, but they'rebadgered, they're horribly badgered, and that's why the service don'ttake over there, let alone the way the country grudge 'em every bit ofpay. In England you go in the ranks--well, they all just tell you you'rea blackguard, and there's the lash, and you'd better behave yourself oryou'll get it hot and hot; they take for granted you're a bad lot or youwouldn't be there, and in course you're riled and go to the badaccording, seeing that it's what's expected of you. Here, contrariwise, you come in the ranks and get a welcome, and feel that it just restswith yourself whether you won't be a fine fellow or not; and just alongof feelin' that you're pricked to show the best metal you're made on, and not to let nobody else beat you out of the race like. Ah! it makes awonderful difference to a fellow--a wonderful difference--whether theservice he's come into look at him as a scamp that never will be nothin'_but_ a scamp, or as a rascal that's maybe got in him, all rascal thoughhe is, the pluck to turn into a hero. It makes a wonderful difference, this 'ere, whether you're looked at as stuff that's only fit to beshovelled into the sand after a battle; or as stuff that'll belike churninto a great man. And it's just that difference, sir, that France hasfound out, and England hasn't--God bless her all the same. 

With which the soldier whom England had turned adrift, and France hadwon in her stead, concluded his long oration by dropping on his knees torefill his Corporal's chibouque. 

"A army's just a machine, sir, in course, " he concluded, as he rammed inthe Turkish tobacco. "But then it's a live machine for all that; andeach little bit of it feels for itself like the joints in an eel's body. Now, if only one of them little bits smarts, the whole crittur goeswrong--there's the mischief. "

 * * *

It makes all the difference in life, whether hope is left, or--left out!

 * * *

She had been ere now a child and a hero; beneath this blow which struckat him she changed--she became a woman and a martyr. 

And she rode at full speed through the night, as she had done throughthe daylight, her eyes glancing all around in the keen instinct of atrooper, her hand always on the butt of her belt pistol. For she knewwell what the danger was of these lonely, unguarded, untravelled leaguesthat yawned in so vast a distance between her and her goal. The Arabs, beaten, but only rendered furious by defeat, swept down on to thoseplains with the old guerilla skill, the old marvellous rapidity. Sheknew that with every second shot or steel might send her reeling fromher saddle, that with every moment she might be surrounded by somedesperate band who would spare neither her sex nor her youth. But thatintoxication of peril, the wine-draught she had drunk from her infancy, was all which sustained her in that race with death. It filled her veinswith their old heat, her heart with its old daring, her nerves withtheir old matchless courage: but for it she would have dropped, heart-sick with terror and despair, ere her errand could be done; underit she had the coolness, the keenness, the sagacity, the sustainedforce, and the supernatural strength of some young hunted animal. Theymight slay her so that she left perforce her mission unaccomplished; butno dread of such a fate had even an instant's power to appal her orarrest her. While there should be breath in her, she would go on to theend. 

There were eight hours' hard riding before her, at the swiftest pace herhorse could make; and she was already worn by the leagues alreadytraversed. Although this was nothing new that she did now, yet as timeflew on and she flew with it, ceaselessly, through the dim solitarybarren moonlit land, her brain now and then grew giddy, her heart nowand then stood still with a sudden numbing faintness. She shook theweakness off her with the resolute scorn for it of her nature, andsucceeded in its banishment. They had put in her hand as she had passedthrough the fortress gates a lance with a lantern muffled in Arabfashion, so that the light was unseen from before, while it streamedover her herself, to enable her to guide her way if the moon should beveiled by clouds. With that single starry gleam aslant on a level withher eyes, she rode through the ghastly twilight of the half-lit plains, now flooded with lustre as the moon emerged, now engulfed in darkness asthe stormy western winds drove the cirri over it. But neither darknessnor light differed to her; she noted neither; she was like one drunkwith strong wine, and she had but one dread--that the power of her horsewould give way under the unnatural strain made on it, and that she wouldreach too late, when the life she went to save would have fallen forever, silent unto death, as she had seen the life of Marquise _fall_. 

Hour on hour, league on league, passed away; she felt the animal quiverunder the spur, and she heard the catch in his panting breath as hestrained to give his fleetest and best, that told her how, ere long, theracing speed, the extended gallop at which she kept him, would tell, andbeat him down despite his desert strain. She had no pity; she would havekilled twenty horses under her to reach her goal. She was giving her ownlife, she was willing to lose it, if by its loss she did this thing, tosave even the man condemned to die with the rising of the sun. She didnot spare herself; and she would have spared no living thing, to fulfilthe mission that she undertook. She loved with the passionate blindnessof her sex, with the absolute abandonment of the southern blood. If tospare him she must have bidden thousands fall, she would have given theword for their destruction without a moment's pause. 

Once from some screen of gaunt and barren rock a shot was fired at her, and flew within a hair's-breadth of her brain; she never even lookedaround to see whence it had come; she knew it was from some Arab prowlerof the plains. Her single spark of light through the half-veiled lanternpassed as swiftly as a shooting-star across the plateau. And as she feltthe hours steal on--so fast, so hideously fast--with that horriblerelentlessness, "ohne Hast, ohne Rast, " which tarries for no despair, asit hastens for no desire, her lips grew dry as dust, her tongue clove tothe roof of her mouth, the blood beat like a thousand hammers on herbrain. 

What she dreaded came. 

Midway in her course, when, by the stars, she knew midnight was passed, the animal strained with hard-drawn panting gasps to answer the demandmade on him by the spur and by the lance-shaft with which he was goadedonward. In the lantern-light she saw his head stretched out in theracing agony, his distended eyeballs, his neck covered with foam andblood, his heaving flanks that seem bursting with every throb that hisheart gave; she knew that half a league more forced from him, he woulddrop like a dead thing never to rise again. She let the bridle drop uponthe poor beast's neck, and threw her arms above her head with a shrillwailing cry, whose despair echoed over the noiseless plains like the cryof a shot-stricken animal. She saw it all; the breathing of the rosy, golden day; the stillness of the hushed camp; the tread of the fewpicked men; the open coffin by the open grave; the levelled carbinesgleaming in the first rays of the sun. . . . She had seen it so manytimes--seen it to the awful end, when the living man fell down in themorning light a shattered, senseless, soulless, crushed-out mass. 

That single moment was all the soldier's nature in her gave to theabandonment of despair, to the paralysis that seized her. With that onecry from the depths of her breaking heart, the weakness spent itself:she knew that action alone could aid him. She looked across, southwardand northward, east and west, to see if there were aught near from whichshe could get aid. If there were none, the horse must drop down to die, and with his life the other life would perish as surely as the sun wouldrise. 

Her gaze, straining through the darkness, broken here and there byfitful gleams of moonlight, caught sight in the distance of some yetdarker thing moving rapidly--a large cloud skimming the earth. She letthe horse, which had paused the instant the bridle had touched his neck, stand still awhile, and kept her eyes fixed on the advancing cloud till, with the marvellous surety of her desert-trained vision, shedisentangled it from the floating mists and wavering shadows, andrecognised it, as it was, a band of Arabs. 

If she turned eastward out of her route, the failing strength of herhorse would be fully enough to take her into safety from their pursuit, or even from their perception, for they were coming straightly andswiftly across the plain. If she were seen by them she was certain ofher fate; they could only be the desperate remnant of the decimatedtribes, the foraging raiders of starving and desperate men, hunted fromrefuge to refuge, and carrying fire and sword in their vengeancewherever an unprotected caravan or a defenceless settlement gave themthe power of plunder and of slaughter, that spared neither age nor sex. She was known throughout the length and the breadth of the land to theArabs: she was neither child nor woman to them; she was but the soldierwho had brought up the French reserve at Zaraila; she was but the foewho had seen them defeated, and ridden down with her comrades in theirpursuit in twice a score of vanquished, bitter, intolerably shamefuldays. Some among them had sworn by their God to put her to a fearfuldeath if ever they made her captive, for they held her in superstitiousawe, and thought the spell of the Frankish successes would be broken ifshe were slain. She knew that; yet, knowing it, she looked at theiradvancing band one moment, then turned her horse's head and rodestraight toward them. 

"They will kill me, but that may save him, " she thought. "Any other wayhe is lost. "

So she rode directly toward them; rode so that she crossed their front, and placed herself in their path, standing quite still, with the clothtorn from the lantern, so that its light fell full about her, as sheheld it above her head. In an instant they knew her. They were theremnant who had escaped from the carnage of Zaraila; they knew her withall the rapid unerring surety of hate. They gave the shrill wildwar-shout of their tribe, and the whole mass of gaunt, dark, mountedfigures with their weapons whirling round their heads enclosed her: acloud of kites settled down with their black wings and cruel beaks uponone young silvery-plumed gerfalcon. 

She sat unmoved, and looked up at the naked blades that flashed aboveher: there was no fear upon her face, only a calm resolute proud beauty, very pale, very still in the light that gleamed on it from the lanternrays. 

"I surrender, " she said briefly. She had never thought to say thesewords of submission to her scorned foes; she would not have been broughtto utter them to spare her own existence. Their answer was a yell offurious delight, and their bare blades smote each other with a clash ofbrutal joy: they had her, the Frankish child who had brought shame anddestruction on them at Zaraila, and they longed to draw their steelacross the fair young throat, to plunge their lances into the brightbare bosom, to twine her hair round their spear handles, to rend herdelicate limbs apart, as a tiger rends the antelope, to torture, tooutrage, to wreak their vengeance on her. Their chief, only, motionedtheir violence back from her, and bade them leave her untouched. At himshe looked, still with the same fixed, serene, scornful resolve: she hadencountered these men so often in battle, she knew so well how rich aprize she was to him. But she had one thought alone with her; and for itshe subdued contempt, and hate, and pride, and every passion in her. 

"I surrender, " she said, with the same tranquillity. "I have heard thatyou have sworn by your God and your Prophet to tear me limb from limbbecause that I--a child, and a woman-child--brought you to shame and togrief on the day of Zaraila. Well, I am here; do it. You can slake yourwill on me. But that you are brave men, and that I have ever met you infair fight, let me speak one word with you first. "

Through the menaces and the rage around her, fierce as the yelling ofstarving wolves around a frozen corpse, her clear brave tones reachedthe ear of the chief in the lingua-sabir that she used. He was a youngman, and his ear was caught by that tuneful voice, his eyes by thatyouthful face. He signed upward the swords of his followers, andmotioned them back as their arms were stretched to seize her, and theirshouts clamoured for her slaughter. 

"Speak on, " he said briefly to her. 

"You have sworn to take my body, sawn in two, to Ben-Ihreddin?" shepursued, naming the Arab leader whom her Spahis had driven off the fieldof Zaraila. "Well, here it is; you can take it to him; and you willreceive the piastres, and the horse, and the arms that he has promisedto whosoever shall slay me. I have surrendered; I am yours. But you arebold men, and the bold are never mean; therefore I will ask one thing ofyou. There is a man yonder, in my camp, condemned to death with thedawn. He is innocent. I have ridden from Algiers to-day with the orderof his release. If it is not there by sunrise, he will be shot; and heis guiltless as a child unborn. My horse is worn out; he could not goanother half-league. I knew that, since he had failed, my comrade mustdie, unless I found a fresh beast or a messenger to go in my stead. Isaw your band come across the plain. I knew that you would kill me, because of your oath and of your Emir's bribe; but I thought that youwould have greatness enough in you to save this man who is condemned, without crime, and who must perish unless you, his foes, have pity onhim. Therefore I came. Take the paper that frees him; send your fleetestand surest with it, under a flag of truce, into our camp by the dawn;let him tell them there that I, Cigarette, gave it him--he must say noword of what you have done to me, or his white flag will not protect himfrom the vengeance of my army--and then receive your reward from yourchief, Ben-Ihreddin, when you lay my head down for his horse's hoofs totrample into the dust. Answer me--is the compact fair? Ride on with thispaper northward, and then kill me with what torments you choose. "

She spoke with calm unwavering resolve, meaning that which she utteredto its very uttermost letter. She knew that these men had thirsted forher blood; she offered it to be shed to gain for him that messenger onwhose speed his life was hanging; she knew that a price was set upon herhead, but she delivered herself over to the hands of her enemies so thatthereby she might purchase his redemption. 

As they heard, silence fell upon the brutal clamorous herd around--thesilence of amaze and of respect. The young chief listened gravely; bythe glistening of his keen black eyes, he was surprised and moved, though, true to his teaching, he showed neither emotion as he answeredher:

"Who is this Frank for whom you do this thing?"

"He is the warrior to whom you offered life on the field of Zaraila, because his courage was as the courage of gods. "

She knew the qualities of the desert character; knew how to appeal toits reverence and to its chivalry. 

"And for what does he perish?" he asked. 

"Because he forgot for once that he was a slave; and because he hasborne the burden of a guilt that was not his own. "

They were quite still now, closed around her; these ferociousplunderers, who had been thirsty a moment before to sheathe theirweapons in her body, were spell-bound by the sympathy of courageoussouls, by some vague perception that there was a greatness in thislittle tigress of France, whom they had sworn to hunt down andslaughter, which surpassed all they had known or dreamed. 

"And you have given yourself up to us that by your death you maypurchase a messenger from us for this errand?" pursued their leader. Hehad been reared as a boy in the high tenets and the pure chivalries ofthe school of Abd-el-Kader; and they were not lost in him despite thecrimes and the desperation of his life. 

She held the paper out to him with a passionate entreaty breakingthrough the enforced calm of despair with which she had hitherto spoken. 

"Cut me in ten thousand pieces with your swords, but save _him_, as youare brave men, as you are generous foes!"

With a single sign of his hand, their leader waved them back where theycrowded around her, and leaped down from his saddle, and led the horsehe had dismounted to her. 

"Maiden, " he said gently, "we are Arabs, but we are not brutes. We sworeto avenge ourselves on an enemy; we are not vile enough to accept amartyrdom. Take my horse--he is the swiftest of my troop--and go you onyour errand; you are safe from me. "

She looked at him in stupor; the sense of his words was not tangible toher; she had had no hope, no thought, that they would ever deal thuswith her; all she had ever dreamed of was so to touch their hearts andtheir generosity that they would spare one from among their troop to dothe errand of mercy she had begged of them. 

"You play with me;" she murmured, while her lips grew whiter and hergreat eyes larger in the intensity of her emotion. "Ah! for pity'ssake, make haste and kill me, so that this only may reach him!"

The chief, standing by her, lifted her up in his sinewy arms, on to thesaddle of his charger. His voice was very solemn, his glance was verygentle; all the nobility of the highest Arab nature was aroused in himat the heroism of a child, a girl, an infidel--one, in his sight, abandoned and shameful among her sex. 

"Go in peace, " he said simply; "it is not with such as thee that wewar. "

Then, and then only, as she felt the fresh reins placed in her hands, and saw the ruthless horde around her fall back and leave her free, didshe understand his meaning, did she comprehend that he gave her backboth liberty and life, and, with the surrender of the horse he loved, the noblest and most precious gift that the Arab ever bestows or everreceives. The unutterable joy seemed to blind her, and gleam upon herface like the blazing light of noon, as she turned her burning eyes fullon him. 

"Ah! now I believe that thine Allah rules thee, equally with Christians!If I live, thou shalt see me back ere another night; if I die, Francewill know how to thank thee!"

"We do not do the thing that is right for the sake that men mayrecompense us, " he answered her gently. "Fly to thy friend, andhereafter do not judge that those who are in arms against thee mustneeds be as the brutes that seek out whom they shall devour. "

Then, with one word in his own tongue, he bade the horse bear hersouthward, and, as swiftly as a spear launched from his hand, the animalobeyed him and flew across the plains. He looked after her awhile, through the dim tremulous darkness that seemed cleft by the rush of thegallop as the clouds are cleft by lightning, while his tribe sat silenton their horses in moody unwilling consent, savage in that they hadbeen deprived of prey, moved in that they were sensible of thismartyrdom which had been offered to them. 

"Verily the courage of a woman has put the best among us unto shame, " hesaid, rather to himself than them, as he mounted the stallion broughthim from the rear and rode slowly northward, unconscious that the thinghe had done was great, because conscious only that it was just. 

And, borne by the fleetness of the desert-bred beast, she went awaythrough the heavy bronze-hued dulness of the night. Her brain had nosense, her hands had no feeling, her eyes had no sight; the rushing asof waters was loud on her ears, the giddiness of fasting and of fatiguesent the gloom eddying round and round like a whirlpool of shadow. Yetshe had remembrance enough left to ride on, and on, and on without onceflinching from the agonies that racked her cramped limbs and throbbed inher beating temples; she had remembrance enough to strain her blind eyestoward the east and murmur, in her terror of that white dawn, that mustsoon break, the only prayer that had been ever uttered by the lips nomother's kiss had ever touched:

"_O God! keep the day back!_"

 * * *

One of the most brilliant of Algerian autumnal days shone over the greatcamp in the south. The war was almost at an end for a time; the Arabswere defeated and driven desertwards; hostilities irksome, harassing, and annoying, like all guerilla warfare, would long continue, but peacewas virtually established, and Zaraila had been the chief glory that hadbeen added by the campaign to the flag of Imperial France. The kitesand the vultures had left the bare bones by thousands to bleach upon thesands, and the hillocks of brown earth rose in crowds where those morecared for in death had been hastily thrust beneath the brown crust ofthe earth. The dead had received their portion of reward--in thejackall's teeth, in the crow's beak, in the worm's caress. And theliving received theirs in this glorious rose-flecked glittering autumnmorning, when the breath of winter made the air crisp and cool, but theardent noon still lighted with its furnace glow the hillside and theplain. 

The whole of the Army of the South was drawn up on the immense level ofthe plateau to witness the presentation of the Cross of the Legion ofHonour. 

It was full noon. The sun shone without a single cloud on the deepsparkling azure of the skies. The troops stretched east and west, northand south, formed up in three sides of one vast massive square. 

The red white and blue of the standards, the brass of the eagle guidons, the grey tossed manes of the chargers, the fierce swarthy faces of thesoldiery, the scarlet of the Spahis' cloaks, and the snowy folds of theDemi-Cavalerie turbans, the shine of the sloped lances, and the glistenof the carbine barrels, fused together in one sea of blended colour, flashed into a million of prismatic hues against the sombre bistreshadow of the sunburnt plains and the clear blue of the skies. 

It had been a sanguinary, fruitless, cruel campaign; it had availednothing except to drive the Arabs away from some hundred leagues ofuseless and profitless soil; hundreds of French soldiers had fallen bydisease, and drought, and dysentery, as well as by shot and sabre, andwere unrecorded save on the books of the bureaus, unlamented save, perhaps, in some little nestling hamlet among the great green woods ofNormandy, or some wooden hut among the olives and the vines ofProvence, where some woman toiling till sunset among the fields, orpraying before some wayside saint's stone niche, would give a thought tothe far-off and devouring desert that had drawn down beneath its sandsthe head that had used to lie upon her bosom, cradled as a child's, orcaressed as a lover. 

But the drums rolled out their long deep thunder over the wastes; andthe shot-torn standards fluttered gaily in the breeze blowing from thewest, and the clear full music of the French bands echoed away to thedim distant terrible south, where the desert-scorch and thedesert-thirst had murdered their bravest and best--and the Army was _enfête_. _En fête_, for it did honour to its darling. Cigarette receivedthe Cross. 

Mounted on her own little bright bay, Etoile-Filante, with tricolourribbons flying from his bridle and among the glossy fringes of his mane, the Little One rode among her Spahis. A scarlet _képi_ was set on herthick silken curls, a tricolour sash was knotted round her waist, herwine-barrel was slung on her left hip, her pistols thrust in her_ceinturon_, and a light carbine held in her hand with the butt-endresting on her foot. With the sun on her child-like brunette face, hereyes flashing like brown diamonds in the light, and her marvelloushorsemanship, showing its skill in a hundred _désinvoltures_ and daringtricks, the little Friend of the Flag had come hither among herhalf-savage warriors, whose red robes surrounded her like a sea ofblood. 

And on a sea of blood she, the Child of War, had floated, never sinkingin that awful flood, but buoyant ever above its darkest waves, catchingever some ray of sunlight upon her fair young head, and being oftentimeslike a star of hope to those over whom its dreaded waters closed. Therefore they loved her, these grim, slaughterous, and lustfulwarriors, to whom no other thing of womanhood was sacred, by whom intheir wrath or their crime no friend and no brother was spared, whoselaw was license, and whose mercy was murder. They loved her, thesebrutes whose greed was like the tiger's, whose hate was like thedevouring flame; and any who should have harmed a single lock of hercurling hair would have had the spears of the African Mussulmans buriedby the score in his body. They loved her, with the one fond triumphantlove these vultures of the army ever knew; and to-day they gloried inher with fierce passionate delight. To-day she was to her wild wolves ofAfrica what Jeanne of Vaucouleurs was to her brethren of France. Andto-day was the crown of her young life. It is given to most, if thedesire of their soul ever become theirs, to possess it only when longand weary and fainting toil has brought them to its goal; when beholdingthe golden fruit so far off, through so dreary a pilgrimage, dulls itsbloom as they approach; when having so long centred all their thoughtsand hopes in the denied possession of that one fair thing, they find butlittle beauty in it when that possession is granted to satiate theirlove. But thrice happy, and few as happy, are they to whom the dream oftheir youth is fulfilled _in_ their youth, to whom their ambition comesin full sweet fruitage, while yet the colours of glory have not faded tothe young, eager, longing eyes that watch its advent. And of these wasCigarette. 

In the fair, slight, girlish body of the child-soldier there lived acourage as daring as Danton's, a patriotism as pure as Vergniaud's, asoul as aspiring as Napoleon's. Untaught, untutored, uninspired bypoet's words or patriot's bidding, spontaneous as the rising and theblossoming of some wind-sown, sun-fed flower, there was, in this childof the battle and the razzia, the spirit of genius, the desire to liveand to die greatly. It was unreasoned on, it was felt, not thought, itwas often drowned in the gaiety of young laughter, and the ribaldry ofmilitary jest, it was often obscured by noxious influence, and stifledbeneath the fumes of lawless pleasure; but there, ever, in the soul andthe heart of Cigarette, dwelt the germ of a pure ambition--the ambitionto do some noble thing for France, and leave her name upon her soldiers'lips, a watchword and a rallying-cry for evermore. To be for ever abeloved tradition in the army of her country, to have her nameremembered in the roll-call as "_Mort sur le champ d'honneur_;" to beonce shrined in the love and honour of France, Cigarette--full of theboundless joys of life that knew no weakness and no pain, strong as theyoung goat, happy as the young lamb, careless as the young flowertossing on the summer breeze--Cigarette would have died contentedly. Andnow, living, some measure of this desire had been fulfilled to her, somebreath of this imperishable glory had passed over her. France had heardthe story of Zaraila; from the throne a message had been passed to her;what was far beyond all else to her, her own Army of Africa had crownedher, and thanked her, and adored her as with one voice, and wheresoevershe passed the wild cheers rang through the roar of musketry, as throughthe silence of sunny air, and throughout the regiments every sword wouldhave sprung from its scabbard in her defence if she had but lifted herhand and said one word--"Zaraila!"

The Army looked on her with delight now. In all that mute, still, immovable mass that stretched out so far, in such gorgeous array, therewas not one man whose eyes did not turn on her, whose pride did notcentre in her--their Little One who was so wholly theirs, and who hadbeen under the shadow of their flag ever since the curls, so dark now, had been yellow as wheat in her infancy. The flag had been her shelter, her guardian, her plaything, her idol; the flutter of the striped foldshad been the first thing at which her childish eyes had laughed; thepreservation of its colours from the sacrilege of an enemy's touch hadbeen her religion, a religion whose true following was, in her sight, salvation of the worst and the most worthless life; and that flag shehad saved, and borne aloft in victory at Zaraila. There was not one inall those hosts whose eyes did not turn on her with gratitude, andreverence, and delight in her as their own. 

But she had scarce time even for that flash of pain to quiver inimpotent impatience through her. The trumpets sounded, the salvoes ofartillery pealed out, the lances and the swords were carried up insalute; on to the ground rode the Marshal of France, who represented theimperial will and presence, surrounded by his staff, by generals ofdivision and brigade, by officers of rank, and by some few civilianriders. An _aide_ galloped up to her where she stood with the corps ofher Spahis, and gave her his orders. The Little One nodded carelessly, and touched Etoile-Filante with the prick of the spur. Like lightningthe animal bounded forth from the ranks, rearing and plunging, andswerving from side to side, while his rider, with exquisite grace andaddress, kept her seat like the little semi-Arab that she was, and witha thousand curves and bounds cantered down the line of the gatheredtroops, with the west wind blowing from the far-distant sea, and fanningher bright cheeks till they wore the soft scarlet flush of the glowingjaponica flower. And all down the ranks a low, hoarse, strange, longingmurmur went--the buzz of the voices which, but that disciplinesuppressed them, would have broken out in worshipping acclamations. 

As carelessly as though she reined up before the _café_ door of the _Asde Pique_, she arrested her horse before the great Marshal who was theimpersonation of authority, and put her hand up in the salute, with hersaucy wayward laugh. He was the impersonation of that vast, silent, awful, irresponsible power which, under the name of the Second Empire, stretched its hand of iron across the sea, and forced the soldiers ofFrance down into nameless graves, with the desert sand choking theirmouths; but he was no more to Cigarette than any drummer-boy that mightbe present. She had all the contempt for the laws of rank of yourthorough inborn democrat, all the gay _insouciant_ indifference tostation of the really free and untrammelled nature; and, in her sight, adying soldier, lying quietly in a ditch to perish of shot-wounds withouta word or a moan, was greater than all Messieurs les Maréchauxglittering in their stars and orders. As for impressing her, or hopingto impress her, with rank--pooh! You might as well have bid the sailingclouds pause in their floating passage because they came between royaltyand the sun. All the sovereigns of Europe would have awed Cigarette notone whit more than a gathering of muleteers. "Allied sovereigns--bah!"she would have said, "what did that mean in '15? A chorus of magpieschattering over one stricken eagle!"

So she reined up before the Marshal and his staff, and the few greatpersonages whom Algeria could bring around them, as indifferently as shehad many a time reined up before a knot of grim Turcos, smoking under abarrack-gate. _He_ was nothing to her; it was her Army that crowned her. "The Generalissimo is the poppy-head, the men are the wheat; lay everyear of the wheat low, and of what use is the towering poppy that blazedso grand in the sun?" Cigarette would say with metaphorical unction, forgetful, like most allegorists, that her fable was one-sided andunjust in figure and deduction. 

Nevertheless, despite her gay contempt for rank, her heart beat fastunder its golden-laced jacket as she reined up Etoile and saluted. Inthat hot clear sun all the eyes of that immense host were fastened onher, and the hour of her longing desire was come at last. France hadrecognised that she had done greatly, and France, through the voice ofthis, its chief, spoke to her--France, her beloved, and herguiding-star, for whose sake the young brave soul within her would havedared and have endured all things. There was a group before her, largeand brilliant, but at them Cigarette never looked; what she saw were thesunburnt faces of her "children, " of men who, in the majority, were oldenough to be her grandsires, who had been with her through so manydarksome hours, and whose black and rugged features lightened and grewtender whenever they looked upon their Little One. For the moment shefelt giddy with sweet fiery joy; they were here to behold her thanked inthe name of France. 

The Marshal, in advance of all his staff, touched his plumed hat andbowed to his saddle-bow as he faced her. He knew her well by sight, thispretty child of his Army of Africa, who had, before then, suppressedmutiny like a veteran, and led the charge like a Murat--this kitten witha lion's heart, this humming-bird with an eagle's swoop. 

"Mademoiselle, " he commenced, while his voice, well skilled to suchwork, echoed to the farthest end of the long lines of troops, "I havethe honour to discharge to-day the happiest duty of my life. Inconveying to you the expression of the Emperor's approval of your nobleconduct in the present campaign, I express the sentiments of the wholeArmy. Your action on the day of Zaraila was as brilliant in conceptionas it was great in execution; and the courage you displayed was onlyequalled by your patriotism. May the soldiers of many wars remember youand emulate you. In the name of France, I thank you. In the name of theEmperor, I bring to you the Cross of the Legion of Honour. "

As the brief and soldierly words rolled down the ranks of the listeningregiments, he stooped forward from his saddle and fastened the redribbon on her breast; while from the whole gathered mass, watching, hearing, waiting breathlessly to give their tribute of applause to theirdarling also, a great shout rose as with one voice, strong, full, echoing over and over again across the plains in thunder that joined hername with the name of France and of Napoleon, and hurled it upward infierce tumultuous idolatrous love to those cruel cloudless skies thatshone above the dead. She was their child, their treasure, their idol, their young leader in war, their young angel in suffering; she was alltheir own, knowing with them one common mother--France. Honour to herwas honour to them; they gloried with heart and soul in this brightyoung fearless life that had been among them ever since her infant feethad waded through the blood of slaughter-fields, and her infant lips hadlaughed to see the tricolour float in the sun above the smoke of battle. 

And as she heard, her face became very pale, her large eyes grew dim andvery soft, her mirthful mouth trembled with the pain of a too intensejoy. She lifted her head, and all the unutterable love she bore hercountry and her people thrilled through the music of her voice:

"_Français!--ce n'était rien!_"

That was all she said; in that one first word of their commonnationality, she spoke alike to the Marshal of the Empire and to theconscript of the ranks. "Français!" that one title made them all equalin her sight; whoever claimed it was honoured in her eyes, and wasprecious to her heart, and when she answered them that it was nothing, this thing which they glorified in her, she answered but what seemed thesimple truth in her code. She would have thought it "nothing" to haveperished by shot, or steel, or flame, in day-long torture, for that onefair sake of France. 

Vain in all else, and to all else wayward, here she was docile andsubmissive as the most patient child; here she deemed the greatest andthe hardest thing that she could ever do far less than all that shewould willingly have done. And as she looked upon the host whosethousand and ten thousand voices rang up to the noonday sun in herhomage, and in hers alone, a light like a glory beamed upon her face, that for once was white and still and very grave;--none who saw her facethen, ever forgot that look. 

In that moment she touched the full sweetness of a proud and pureambition, attained and possessed in all its intensity, in all itsperfect splendour. In that moment she knew that divine hour which, bornof a people's love and of the impossible desires of genius in its youth, comes to so few human lives--knew that which was known to the youngNapoleon when, in the hot hush of the nights of July, France welcomedthe Conqueror of Italy. 

 * * *

She longed to do as some girl of whom she had once been told by an oldInvalide had done in the '89--a girl of the people, a fisher-girl of theCannébière who had loved one above her rank, a noble who deserted herfor a woman of his own order, a beautiful, soft-skinned, lily-likescornful aristocrat, with the silver ring of merciless laughter, and thelanguid lustre of sweet contemptuous eyes. The Marseillaise bore herwrong in silence--she was a daughter of the south and of the populace, with a dark, brooding, burning beauty, strong and fierce, and bracedwith the salt lashing of the sea and with the keen breath of the stormymistral. She held her peace while the great lady was wooed and won, while the marriage joys came with the purple vintage time, while thepeople were made drunk at the bridal of their _châtelaine_ in those hot, ruddy, luscious autumn days. 

She held her peace; and the Terror came, and the streets of the city bythe sea ran blood, and the scorch of the sun blazed, every noon, on thescaffold. Then she had her vengeance. She stood and saw the axe falldown on the proud snow-white neck that never had bent till it bentthere, and she drew the severed head into her own bronzed hands andsmote the lips his lips had kissed, a cruel blow that blurred theirbeauty out, and twined a fish-hook in the long and glistening hair, anddrew it, laughing as she went, through dust, and mire, and gore, andover the rough stones of the town, and through the shouting crowds ofthe multitudes, and tossed it out on to the sea, laughing still as thewaves flung it out from billow to billow, and the fish sucked it down tomake their feast. "_Voilà tes secondes noces!_" she cried where shestood, and laughed by the side of the gray angry water, watching thetresses of the floating hair sink downward like a heap of sea-tossedweed. 

 * * *

"There is only one thing worth doing--to die greatly!" thought theaching heart of the child-soldier, unconsciously returning to the onlyend that the genius and the greatness of Greece could find as issue tothe terrible jest, the mysterious despair, of all existence. 

 * * *

A very old man--one who had been a conscript in the bands of YoungFrance, and marched from his Pyrenéan village to the battle-tramp of theMarseillaise, and charged with the Enfans de Paris across the plains ofGemappes; who had known the passage of the Alps, and lifted the longcurls from the dead brow of Désaix, at Marengo, and seen in the sultrynoonday dust of a glorious summer the Guard march into Paris, while thepeople laughed and wept with joy, surging like the mighty sea around onepale frail form, so young by years, so absolute by genius. 

A very old man; long broken with poverty, with pain, with bereavement, with extreme old age; and by a long course of cruel accidents, alone, here in Africa, without one left of the friends of his youth, or of thechildren of his name, and deprived even of the charities due from hiscountry to his services--alone save for the little Friend of the Flag, who, for four years, had kept him on the proceeds of her wine trade, inthis Moorish attic, tending him herself when in town, taking heed thathe should want for nothing when she was campaigning. 

She hid, as her lawless courage would not have stooped to hide a sin, had she chosen to commit one, this compassion which she, the young_condottiera_ of Algeria, showed with so tender a charity to the soldierof Bonaparte. To him, moreover, her fiery imperious voice was gentle asthe dove, her wayward dominant will was pliant as the reed, hercontemptuous sceptic spirit was reverent as a child's before an altar. In her sight the survivor of the Army of Italy was sacred; sacred theeyes which, when full of light, had seen the sun glitter on thebreastplates of the Hussars of Murat, the Dragoons of Kellerman, theCuirassiers of Milhaud; sacred the hands which, when nervous with youth, had borne the standard of the Republic victorious against the gatheredTeuton host in the Thermopylæ of Champagne; sacred the ears which, whenquick to hear, had heard the thunder of Arcola, of Lodi, of Rivoli, and, above even the tempest of war, the clear, still voice of Napoleon;sacred the lips which, when their beard was dark in the fulness ofmanhood, had quivered, as with a woman's weeping, at the farewell in thespring night in the moonlit Cour des Adieux. 

Cigarette had a religion of her own; and followed it more closely thanmost disciples follow other creeds. 

 * * *

The way was long; the road ill-formed, leading for the most part acrossa sere and desolate country, with nothing to relieve its barrennessexcept long stretches of the great spear-headed reeds. At noon the heatwas intense; the little cavalcade halted for half an hour under theshade of some black towering rocks which broke the monotony of thedistrict, and commenced a more hilly and more picturesque portion of thecountry. Cigarette came to the side of the temporary ambulance in whichCecil was placed. He was asleep--sleeping for once peacefully withlittle trace of pain upon his features, as he had slept the previousnight. She saw that his face and chest had not been touched by thestinging insect-swarm; he was doubly screened by a shirt hung above himdexterously on some bent sticks. 

"Who has done that?" thought Cigarette. As she glanced round shesaw--without any linen to cover him, Zackrist had reared himself up andleaned slightly forward over against his comrade. The shirt thatprotected Cecil was his; and on his own bare shoulders and mighty chestthe tiny armies of the flies and gnats were fastened, doing their willuninterrupted. 

As he caught her glance, a sullen ruddy glow of shame shone through theblack hard skin of his sunburnt visage--shame to which he had been nevertouched when discovered in any one of his guilty and barbarous actions. 

"_Dame!_" he growled savagely; "he gave me his wine; one must dosomething in return. Not that I feel the insects--not I; my skin isleather, see you; they can't get through it; but his is _peau defemme_--white and soft--bah! like tissue paper!"

"I see, Zackrist; you are right. A French soldier can never take akindness from an English fellow without outrunning him in generosity. Look--here is some drink for you. "

She knew too well the strange nature with which she had to deal to say asyllable of praise to him for his self-devotion, or to appear to seethat, despite his boast of his leather skin, the stings of the cruelwinged tribes were drawing his blood and causing him alike pain andirritation which, under that sun, and added to the torment of hisgunshot wound, were a martyrdom as great as the noblest saint everendured. 

"_Tiens! tiens!_ I did him wrong, " murmured Cigarette. "That is whatthey are--the children of France--even when they are at their worst, like that devil, Zackrist. Who dare say they are not the heroes of theworld?"

And all through the march she gave Zackrist a double portion of herwater dashed with red wine, that was so welcome and so precious to theparched and aching throats; and all through the march Cecil lay asleep, and the man who had thieved from him, the man whose soul was stainedwith murder, and pillage, and rapine, sat erect beside him, letting theinsects suck his veins and pierce his flesh. 

It was only when they drew near the camp of the main army that Zackristbeat off the swarm and drew his old shirt over his head. "You do notwant to say anything to him, " he muttered to Cigarette. "I am ofleather, you know; I have not felt it. "

She nodded; she understood him. Yet his shoulders and his chest werewell-nigh flayed, despite the tough and horny skin of which he made hisboast. 

"_Dieu!_ we are droll!" mused Cigarette. "If we do a good thing, we hideit as if it were a bit of stolen meat, we are so afraid it should befound out; but, if they do one in the world there, they bray it at thetops of their voices from the houses' roofs, and run all down thestreets screaming about it for fear it should be lost. _Dieu!_ we aredroll!"

And she dashed the spurs into her mare and galloped off at the height ofher speed into camp--a very city of canvas, buzzing with the hum oflife, regulated with the marvellous skill and precision of Frenchwarfare, yet with the carelessness and the picturesqueness of thedesert-life pervading it. 

 * * *

Like wave rushing on wave of some tempestuous ocean, the men swept outto meet her in one great surging tide of life, impetuous, passionate, idolatrous, exultant, with all the vivid ardour, all the uncontrolledemotion, of natures south-born, sun-nurtured. They broke away from theirmid-day rest as from their military toil, moved as by one swift breathof fire, and flung themselves out to meet her, the chorus of a thousandvoices ringing in deafening _vivas_ to the skies. She was enveloped inthat vast sea of eager, furious lives, in that dizzy tumult ofvociferous cries, and stretching hands, and upturned faces. As hersoldiers had done the night before, so these did now--kissing her hands, her dress, her feet, sending her name in thunder through the sunlit air, lifting her from off her horse, and bearing her, in a score of stalwartarms, triumphant in their midst. 

She was theirs--their own--the Child of the Army, the Little One whosevoice above their dying brethren had the sweetness of an angel's song, and whose feet, in their hours of revelry, flew like the swift anddazzling flight of gold-winged orioles. And she had saved the honour oftheir Eagles; she had given to them and to France their god of Victory. They loved her--O God, how they loved her!--with that intense, breathless, intoxicating love of a multitude which, though it may stoneto-morrow what it adores to-day, has yet for those on whom it has oncebeen given thus a power no other love can know--a passion unutterablysad, deliriously strong. 

That passion moved her strangely. 

As she looked down upon them, she knew that not one man breathed amongthat tumultuous mass but would have died that moment at her word; notone mouth moved among that countless host but breathed her name inpride, and love, and honour. 

She might be a careless young coquette, a lawless little brigand, achild of sunny caprices, an elf of dauntless mischief; but she was morethan these. The divine fire of genius had touched her, and Cigarettewould have perished for her country not less surely than Jeanne d'Arc. The holiness of an impersonal love, the glow of an imperishablepatriotism, the melancholy of a passionate pity for the concrete andunnumbered sufferings of the people were in her, instinctive and inborn, as fragrance in the heart of flowers. And all these together moved hernow, and made her young face beautiful as she looked down upon thecrowded soldiery. 

"It was nothing, " she answered them; "it was nothing. It was forFrance. "

For France! They shouted back the beloved word with tenfold joy; and thegreat sea of life beneath her tossed to and fro in stormy triumph, infrantic paradise of victory, ringing her name with that of France uponthe air, in thunder-shouts like spears of steel smiting on shields ofbronze. 

But she stretched her hand out, and swept it backward to thedesert-border of the south with a gesture that had awe for them. 

"Hush!" she said softly, with an accent in her voice that hushed theriot of their rejoicing homage till it lulled like the lull in a storm. "Give me no honour while _they_ sleep yonder. With the dead lies theglory!"

 * * *

Thoughts are very good grain, but if they are not whirled round, round, round, and winnowed and ground in the millstones of talk, they remainlittle, hard, useless kernels, that not a soul can digest. 

 * * *

Love was all very well, so Cigarette's philosophy had always reckoned; achocolate bonbon, a firework, a bagatelle, a draught of champagne, toflavour an idle moment. "_Vin et Vénus_" she had always been accustomedto see worshipped together, as became their alliterative; it was a bitof fun--that was all. A passion that had pain in it had never touchedthe Little One; she had disdained it with lightest, airiest contumely. "If your sweetmeat has a bitter almond in it, eat the sugar, and throwthe almond away, you goose! that is simple enough, isn't it? Bah! Idon't pity the people who eat the bitter almond; not I--_ce sont bienbêtes, ces gens!_" she had said once, when arguing with an officer onthe absurdity of a melancholy love which possessed him, and whosesadness she rallied most unmercifully. Now, for once in her young life, the Child of France found that it was remotely possible to meet withalmonds so bitter that the taste will remain and taint all things, dowhat philosophy may to throw its acridity aside. 

 * * *

There were before them death, deprivation, long days of famine, longdays of drought and thirst; parching sun-baked roads; bitter chillynights; fiery furnace-blasts of sirocco; killing, pitiless, northernwinds; hunger, only sharpened by a snatch of raw meat or a handful ofmaize; and the probabilities, ten to one, of being thrust under the sandto rot, or left to have their skeletons picked clean by the vultures. But what of that? There were also the wild delight of combat, thefreedom of lawless warfare, the joy of deep strokes thrust home, thechance of plunder, of wine-skins, of cattle, of women; above all, thatlust for slaughter which burns so deep down in the hidden souls of men, and gives them such brotherhood with wolf and vulture, and tiger, whenonce its flames burst forth. 

 * * *

The levelled carbines covered him; he stood erect with his face fulltoward the sun; ere they could fire, a shrill cry pierced the air--

"Wait! in the name of France. "

Dismounted, breathless, staggering, with her arms flung upward, and herface bloodless with fear, Cigarette appeared upon the ridge of risingground. 

The cry of command pealed out upon the silence in the voice that theArmy of Africa loved as the voice of their Little One. And the cry cametoo late; the volley was fired, the crash of sound thrilled across thewords that bade them pause, the heavy smoke rolled out upon the air, thedeath that was doomed was dealt. 

But beyond the smoke-cloud he staggered slightly, and then stood erectstill, almost unharmed, grazed only by some few of the balls. The flashof fire was not so fleet as the swiftness of her love; and on his breastshe threw herself, and flung her arms about him, and turned her headbackward with her old dauntless sunlit smile as the balls pierced herbosom, and broke her limbs, and were turned away by that shield of warmyoung life from him. 

Her arms were gliding from about his neck, and her shot limbs weresinking to the earth as he caught her up where she dropped to his feet. 

"O God! my child! they have killed you!"

He suffered more, as the cry broke from him, than if the bullets hadbrought him that death which he saw at one glance had stricken down forever all the glory of her childhood, all the gladness of her youth. 

She laughed--all the clear, imperious, arch laughter of her sunniesthours unchanged. 

"Chut! It is the powder and ball of France! _that_ does not hurt. If itwere an Arbico's bullet now! But wait! Here is the Marshal's order. Hesuspends your sentence; I have told him all. You are safe!--do youhear?--you are safe! How he looks! Is he grieved to live? _MesFrançais!_ tell him clearer than I can tell--here is the order. TheGeneral must have it. No--not out of my hand till the General sees it. Fetch him, some of you--fetch him to me. "

"Great Heaven! you have given your life for mine!"

The words broke from him in an agony as he held her upward against hisheart, himself so blind, so stunned, with the sudden recall from deathto life, and with the sacrifice whereby life was thus brought to him, that he could scarce see her face, scarce hear her voice, but onlydimly, incredulously, terribly knew, in some vague sense, that she wasdying, and dying thus for him. 

She smiled up in his eyes, while even in that moment, when her life wasbroken down like a wounded bird's, and the shots had pierced throughfrom her shoulder to her bosom, a hot scarlet flush came over her cheeksas she felt his touch and rested on his heart. 

"A life! _Tiens!_ what is it to give? We hold it in our hands everyhour, we soldiers, and toss it in change for a draught of wine. Lay medown on the ground--at your feet--so! I shall live longest that way, andI have much to tell. How they crowd around me! _Mes soldats_, do notmake that grief and that rage over me. They are sorry they fired; thatis foolish. They were only doing their duty, and they could not hear mein time. "

But the brave words could not console those who had killed the Child ofthe Tricolour; they flung their carbines away, they beat their breasts, they cursed themselves and the mother who had borne them; the silent, rigid, motionless phalanx that had stood there in the dawn to see deathdealt in the inexorable penalty of the law was broken up into atumultuous, breathless, heart-stricken, infuriated throng, maddened withremorse, convulsed with sorrow, turning wild eyes of hate on him as onthe cause through which their darling had been stricken. He, laying herdown with unspeakable gentleness as she had bidden him, hung over her, leaning her head against his arm, and watching in paralysed horror thehelplessness of the quivering limbs, the slow flowing of the bloodbeneath the Cross that shone where that young heroic heart so soon wouldbeat no more. 

"Oh, my child, my child!" he moaned, as the full might and meaning ofthis devotion which had saved him at such cost rushed on him. "What am Iworth that you should perish for me? Better a thousand times have leftme to my fate! Such nobility, such sacrifice, such love!"

The hot colour flushed her face once more; she was strong to the last toconceal that passion for which she was still content to perish in heryouth. 

"Chut! we are comrades, and you are a brave man. I would do the same forany of my Spahis. Look you, I never heard of your arrest till I heardtoo of your sentence"----

She paused a moment, and her features grew white, and quivered with painand with the oppression that seemed to lie like lead upon her chest. Butshe forced herself to be stronger than the anguish which assailed herstrength; and she motioned them all to be silent as she spoke on whileher voice still should serve her. 

"They will tell you how I did it--I have not time. The Marshal gave hisword you shall be saved; there is no fear. That is your friend who bendsover me here?--is it not? A fair face, a brave face! You will go back toyour land--you will live among your own people--and _she_, she will loveyou now--now she knows you are of her Order!"

Something of the old thrill of jealous dread and hate quivered throughthe words, but the purer, nobler nature vanquished it; she smiled up inhis eyes, heedless of the tumult round them. 

"You will be happy. That is well. Look you--it is nothing that I did. Iwould have done it for any one of my soldiers. And for this"--shetouched the blood flowing from her side with the old, bright, bravesmile--"it was an accident; they must not grieve for it. My men are goodto me; they will feel such regret and remorse; but do not let them. I amglad to die. "

The words were unwavering and heroic, but for one moment a convulsionwent over her face; the young life was so strong in her, the youngspirit was so joyous in her, existence was so new, so fresh, so bright, so dauntless a thing to Cigarette. She loved life: the darkness, theloneliness, the annihilation of death were horrible to her as theblackness and the solitude of night to a young child. Death, like night, can be welcome only to the weary, and she was weary of nothing on theearth that bore her buoyant steps; the suns, the winds, the delights ofthe sights, the joys of the senses, the music of her own laughter, themere pleasure of the air upon her cheeks, or of the blue sky above herhead, were all so sweet to her. Her welcome of her death-shot was theonly untruth that had ever soiled her fearless lips. Death was terrible;yet she was content--content to have come to it for his sake. 

There was a ghastly stricken silence round her. The order she hadbrought had just been glanced at, but no other thought was with the mostcallous there than the heroism of her act, than the martyrdom of herdeath. 

The colour was fast passing from her lips, and a mortal pallor settlingthere in the stead of that rich bright hue, once warm as the scarletheart of the pomegranate. Her head leant back on Cecil's breast, and shefelt the great burning tears fall one by one upon her brow as he hungspeechless over her; she put her hand upward and touched his eyessoftly. 

"Chut! What is it to die--just to die? You have _lived_ your martyrdom;I could not have done that. Listen, just one moment. You will be rich. Take care of the old man--he will not trouble long--and of Vole-qui-veutand Etoile, and Boule Blanche, and the rat, and all the dogs, will you?They will show you the Château de Cigarette in Algiers. I should notlike to think that they would starve. "

She felt his lips move with the promise he could not find voice toutter; and she thanked him with that old child-like smile that had lostnothing of its light. 

"That is good; they will be happy with you. And see here;--that Arabmust have back his white horse: he alone saved you. Have heed that theyspare him. And make my grave somewhere where my Army passes; where I canhear the trumpets, and the arms, and the passage of the troops--O God! Iforgot! I shall not wake when the bugles sound. It will all _end_ now, will it not? That is horrible, horrible!"

A shudder shook her as, for the moment, the full sense that all herglowing, redundant, sunlit, passionate life was crushed out for everfrom its place upon the earth forced itself on and overwhelmed her. Butshe was of too brave a mould to suffer any foe--even the foe thatconquers kings--to have power to appal her. She raised herself, andlooked at the soldiery around her, among them the men whose carbines hadkilled her, whose anguish was like the heartrending anguish of women. 

"Mes Français! That was a foolish word of mine. How many of my bravesthave fallen in death; and shall I be afraid of what they welcomed? Donot grieve like that. You could not help it; you were doing your duty. If the shots had not come to me, they would have gone to him; and he hasbeen unhappy so long, and borne wrong so patiently, he has earned theright to live and enjoy. Now I--I have been happy all my days, like abird, like a kitten, like a foal, just from being young and taking nothought. I should have had to suffer if I had lived; it is much best asit is"----

Her voice failed her when she had spoken the heroic words; loss of bloodwas fast draining all strength from her, and she quivered in a tortureshe could not wholly conceal; he for whom she perished hung over her inan agony greater far than hers; it seemed a hideous dream to him thatthis child lay dying in his stead. 

"Can nothing save her?" he cried aloud. "O God! that you had fired onemoment sooner!"

She heard; and looked up at him with a look in which all the passionate, hopeless, imperishable love she had resisted and concealed so longspoke with an intensity she never dreamed. 

"She is content, " she whispered softly. "You did not understand herrightly; that was all. "

"_All!_ O God! how I have wronged you!"

The full strength, and nobility, and devotion of this passion he haddisbelieved in and neglected rushed on him as he met her eyes; for thefirst time he saw her as she was, for the first time he saw all of whichthe splendid heroism of this untrained nature would have been capableunder a different fate. And it struck him suddenly, heavily, as with ablow; it filled him with a passion of remorse. 

"My darling!--my darling! what have I done to be worthy of such love?"he murmured, while the tears fell from his blinded eyes, and his headdrooped until his lips met hers. At the first utterance of that wordbetween them, at the unconscious tenderness of his kisses that had theanguish of a farewell in them, the colour suddenly flushed all over herblanched face; she trembled in his arms; and a great shivering sigh ranthrough her. It came too late, this warmth of love. She learned what itssweetness might have been only when her lips grew numb, and her eyessightless, and her heart without pulse, and her senses withoutconsciousness. 

"Hush!" she answered, with a look that pierced his soul. "Keep thosekisses for Miladi. She will have the right to love you; she is of your'_aristocrates_, ' she is not 'unsexed. ' As for me, --I am only a littletrooper who has saved my comrade! My soldiers, come round me oneinstant; I shall not long find words. "

Her eyes closed as she spoke; a deadly faintness and coldness passedover her; and she gasped for breath. A moment, and the resolute couragein her conquered: her eyes opened and rested on the war-worn faces ofher "children"--rested in a long-lost look of unspeakable wistfulnessand tenderness. 

"I cannot speak as I would, " she said at length, while her voice grewvery faint. "But I have loved you. All is said!"

All was uttered in those four brief words. "She had loved them. " Thewhole story of her young life was told in the single phrase. And thegaunt, battle-scarred, murderous, ruthless veterans of Africa who heardher could have turned their weapons against their own breasts, andsheathed them there, rather than have looked on to see their darlingdie. 

"I have been too quick in anger sometimes--forgive it, " she said gently. "And do not fight and curse among yourselves; it is bad amid brethren. Bury my Cross with me, if they will let you; and let the colours be overmy grave, if you can. Think of me when you go into battle; and tell themin France"----

For the first time her own eyes filled with great tears as the name ofher beloved land paused upon her lips; she stretched her arms out with agesture of infinite longing, like a lost child that vainly seeks itsmother. 

"If I could only see France once more! France"----

It was the last word upon her utterance; her eyes met Cecil's in onefleeting upward glance of unutterable tenderness; then with her handsstill stretched out westward to where her country was, and with thedauntless heroism of her smile upon her face like light, she gave atired sigh as of a child that sinks to sleep, and in the midst of herArmy of Africa the Little One lay dead. 

_STRATHMORE. _

The sun was setting, sinking downward beyond purple bars of cloud, andleaving a long golden trail behind it in its track--sinking slowly andsolemnly towards the west as the day declined, without rest, yet withouthaste, as though to give to all the sons of earth warning and time toleave no evil rooted, no bitterness unhealed, no feud to ripen, and nocrime to bring forth seed, when the day should have passed away to benumbered with hours irrevocable, and the night should cast its pall overthe dark deeds done, and seal their graves never to be unclosed. The sunwas setting, and shedding its rich and yellow light over the greenearth, on the winding waters, and the blue hills afar off, and down thethousand leafy aisles close by; but to one place that warm radiancewandered not, in one spot the rays did not play, the glory did notenter. That place was the deer-pond of the old Bois, where the darkplants brooding on the fetid waters, which only stirred with noisomethings, had washed against the floating hair of lifeless women, and thesombre branches of the crowding trees had been dragged earthward by thelifeless weight of the self-slain, till the air seemed to be poisonouswith death, and the grasses, as they moved, to whisper to the windsdread secrets of the Past. And here the light of the summer evening didnot come, but only through the leafless boughs of one seared tree, whichbroke and parted the dark barrier of forest growth, they saw the west, and the sun declining slowly in its haze of golden air, sinking downwardpast the bars of cloud. 

All was quiet, save the dull sounds of the parting waters, when someloathsome reptiles stirred among its brakes, or the hot breeze moved itspestilential plants; and in the silence they stood fronting each other;in this silence they had met, in it they would part. And there, on theirright hand, through the break in the dank wall of leaves, shone the sun, looking earthward, luminous, and blinding human sight like the gaze ofGod. 

The light from the west fell upon Erroll, touching the fair locks of hissilken hair, and shining in his azure eyes as they looked up at thesunny skies, where a bird was soaring and circling in space, happythrough its mere sense and joy of life; and on Strathmore's face thedeep shadows slanted, leaving it as though cast in bronze, chill andtranquil as that of an Eastern Kabyl, each feature set into themerciless repose of one immovable purpose. Their faces were strangelycontrasted, for the serenity of the one was that of a man who fearlesslyawaits an inevitable doom, the serenity of the other that of a man whomercilessly deals out an implacable fate; and while in the one thosepresent saw but the calmness of courage and of custom, in the other theyvaguely shrank from a new and an awful meaning. For beneath the suavesmile of the Duellist they read the intent of the Murderer. 

The night was nigh at hand, and soon the day had to be gathered to thepast, such harvest garnered with it as men's hands had sown throughoutits brief twelve hours, which are so short in span, yet are so long insin. "LET NOT THE SUN GO DOWN UPON YOUR WRATH. " There, across the west, in letters of flame, the warning of the Hebrew scroll was written on thepurple skies; but he who should have read them stood immutable yetinsatiate, with the gleam of a tiger's lust burning in his eyes--thelust when it scents blood; the lust that only slakes its thirst in life. 

They fronted one another, those who had lived as brothers; while attheir feet babbled the poisonous waters, and on their right hand shonethe evening splendour of the sun. 

"One!"

The word fell down upon the silence, and the hiss of a shrill cicadaechoed to it like a devil's laugh. Their eyes met, and in the gaze ofthe one was a compassionate pardon, but in the gaze of the other arelentless lust. 

And the sun sank slowly downward beyond the barrier of purple cloud, passing away from earth. 

"Two!"

Again the single word dropped out upon the stillness, marking the flightof the seconds; again the hoot of the cicada echoed it, laughinghideously from its noisome marsh. 

And the sun sank slowly, still slowly, nearer and nearer to its shroudof mist, bearing with it all that lingered of the day. 

"Three!"

The white death-signal flickered in the breeze, and the last golden raysof the sun were still above the edge of the storm-cloud. 

There was yet time. 

But the warning was not read: there was the assassin's devilish greedwithin Strathmore's soul, the assassin's devilish smile upon his lips;the calmness of his face never changed, the tranquil pulse of his wristnever quickened, the remorseless gleam of his eyes never softened. Itwas for him to fire first, and the doom written in his look neverrelaxed. He turned--in seeming carelessness, as you may turn to aim atcarrion bird--but his shot sped home. 

One moment Erroll stood erect, his fair hair blowing in the wind, hiseyes full open to the light; then--he reeled slightly backward, raisedhis right arm, and fired in the air! The bullet flew far and harmlessamidst the forest foliage, his arm dropped, and without sign or sound hefell down upon the sodden turf, his head striking against the earth witha dull echo, his hands drawing up the rank herbage by the roots, as theyclosed convulsively in one brief spasm. 

He was shot through the heart. 

And the sun sank out of sight, leaving a dusky, sultry gloom to broodover the noxious brakes and sullen stagnant waters, leaving the world toNight, as fitting watch and shroud of Crime; and those who stood therewere stricken with a ghastly horror, were paralysed by a vague andsudden awe, for they knew that they were in the presence of death, andthat the hand which had dealt it was the hand of his chosen friend. Buthe, who had slain him, more coldly, more pitilessly than the mercifulamongst us would slay a dog, stood unmoved in the shadow, with hisruthless calm, his deadly serenity, which had no remorse as it had hadno mercy, while about his lips there was a cold and evil smile, and inhis eyes gleamed the lurid flame of a tiger's triumph--the triumph whenit has tasted blood, and slaked its thirst in life. 

_"Voyez!--il est mort!"_

The words, uttered in his ear by Valdor, were hoarse and almosttremulous; but he heard and assented to them unmoved. An exultant lightshone and glittered in his eyes; he had avenged himself and her! Lifewas the sole price that his revenge had set; his purpose had been asiron, and his soul was as bronze. He went nearer, leisurely, and stoopedand looked at the work of his hand. In the gloom the dark-red bloodcould yet be clearly seen, slowly welling out and staining the clottedherbage as it flowed, while one stray gleam of light still stoleacross, as if in love and pity, and played about the long fair hairwhich trailed amidst the grass. 

Life still lingered, faintly, flickeringly, as though both to leave forever that which one brief moment before had been instinct with all itsrichest glory; the eyes opened wide once more, and looked up to theevening skies with a wild, delirious, appealing pain, and the lips whichwere growing white and drawn moved in a gasping prayer:

"Oh, God! I forgive--I forgive. He did not know"----

Then his head fell back, and his eyes gazed upward without sight orsense, and murmuring low a woman's name, "Lucille! Lucille!" while onelast breath shivered like a deep-drawn sigh through all his frame--hedied. And his murderer stood by to see the shudder convulse the rigidlimbs, and count each lingering pang--calm, pitiless, unmoved, his faceso serene in its chill indifference, its brutal and unnaturaltranquillity, whilst beneath the drooped lids his eyes watched with thedark glitter of a triumphant vengeance the last agony of the man whom hehad loved, that the two who were with him in this ghastly hour shrankinvoluntarily from his side, awed more by the Living than the Dead. Almost unconsciously they watched him, fascinated basilisk-wise, as hestooped and severed a long flake of hair that was soiled by the dankearth and wet with the dew: unarrested they let him turn away with thegolden lock in his hand and the fatal calm on his face, and move to thespot where his horse was waiting. The beat of the hoofs rang muffled onthe turf, growing fainter and fainter as the gallop receded. Strathmorerode to her whose bidding had steeled his arm, and whose soft embracewould be his reward; rode swift and hard, with his hand closing fast onthe promised pledge of his vengeance; while behind him, in the shadowsof the falling night, lay a man whom he had once loved, whom he had nowslain, with the light of early stars breaking pale and cold, to shineupon the oozing blood as it trailed slowly in its death-stream throughthe grasses, staining red the arid turf. 

And the sun had gone down upon his wrath. 

 * * *

Mes frères! it is well for us that we are no seers! Were we cursed withprevision, could we know how, when the idle trifle of the present hourshall have been forged into a link of the past, it will stretch out andbind captive the whole future in its bonds, we should be paralysed, hopeless, powerless, old ere we were young! It is well for us that weare no seers. Were we cursed with second sight, we should see the whiteshroud breast-high above the living man, the phosphor light of deathgleaming on the youthful radiant face, the feathery seed, lightly sown, bearing in it the germ of the upas-tree; the idle careless word, dailyuttered, carrying in its womb the future bane of a lifetime; we shouldsee these things till we sickened, and reeled, and grew blind with painbefore the ghastly face of the Future, as men in ancient days before theloathsome visage of the Medusa!

 * * *

Contretemps generally have some saving crumbs of consolation for thosewho laugh at fate, and look good-humouredly for them; life's only evilto him who wears it awkwardly, and philosophic resignation works as manymiracles as Harlequin; grumble, and you go to the dogs in a wretchedstyle; make _mots_ on your own misery, and you've no idea how pleasant a_trajet_ even drifting "to the bad" may become. 

 * * *

The statue that Strathmore at once moulded and marred was his life: thestatue which we all, as we sketch it, endow with the strength of theMilo, the glory of the Belvedere, the winged brilliance of the Perseus!which ever lies at its best; when the chisel has dropped from our hands, as they grow powerless and paralysed with death; like the mutilatedtorso; a fragment unfinished and broken, food for the ants and worms, buried in the sands that will quickly suck it down from sight or memory, with but touches of glory and of value left here and there, only faintlyserving to show what _might have been_, had we had time, had we hadwisdom!

 * * *

With which satirical reflection on his times and his order driftingthrough his mind, Strathmore's thoughts floated onward to a piece ofstatecraft then numbered among the delicate diplomacies and intricateembroglie of Europe, whose moves absorbed him as the finesses of aproblem absorb a skilful chess-player, and from thence stretched onwardsto his future, in which he lived, like all men of dominant ambition, farmore than he lived in his present. It was a future brilliant, secure, brightening in its lustre, and strengthening in its power, with eachsuccessive year; a future which was not to him as to most wrapped in achiaroscuro, with but points of luminance gleaming through the mist, butin whose cold glimmering light he seemed to see clear and distinct, aswe see each object of the far-off landscape stand out in the air of awinter's noon, every thread that he should gather up, every distantpoint to which he should pass onward; a future singular andcharacteristic, in which state-power was the single ambition marked out, from which the love of women was banished, in which pleasure and wealthwere as little regarded as in Lacedæmon, in which age would be courted, not dreaded, since with it alone would come added dominion over theminds of men, and in which, as it stretched out before him, failure andalteration were alike impossible. What, if he lived, could destroy afuture that would be solely dependent on, solely ruled by, himself? Byhis own hand alone would his future be fashioned; would he hew out anyshape save the idol that pleased him? When we hold the chisel ourselves, are we not secure to have no error in the work? Is it likely that ourhand will slip, that the marble we select will be dark-veined, andbrittle, and impure, that the blows of the mallet will shiver ourhandiwork, and that when we plan a Milo--god of strength--we shall butmould and sculpture out a Laocoön of torture? Scarcely; and Strathmoreheld the chisel, and, certain of his own skill, was as sure of what heshould make of life as Benvenuto, when he bade the molten metal pourinto the shape that he, master-craftsman, had fashioned, and gave to thesight of the world the Winged Perseus. But Strathmore did not rememberwhat Cellini did--that one flaw might mar the whole!

 * * *

In the little _millefleurs_-scented billet lay, unknown to its writer asto him, the turning-point of his life! God help us! what avail areexperience, prescience, prudence, wisdom, in this world, when at everychance step the silliest trifle, the most commonplace meeting, aninvitation to dinner, a turn down the wrong street, the dropping of aglove, the delay of a train, the introduction to an unnoticed stranger, will fling down every precaution, and build a fate for us of which wenever dream? Of what avail for us to erect our sand-castle when everychance blast of air may blow it into nothing, and drift another intoform that we have no power to move? Life hinges upon hazard, and atevery turn wisdom is mocked by it, and energy swept aside by it, as thebattled dykes are worn away, and the granite walls beaten down by thefickle ocean waves, which, never two hours together alike, never twoinstants without restless motion, are yet as changeless as they arecapricious, as omnipotent as they are fickle, as cruel as they arecountless! Men and mariners may build their bulwarks, but hazard and thesea will overthrow and wear away both alike at their will--their wildand unreined will, which no foresight can foresee, no strength canbridle. 

Was it not the mere choice between the saddle and the barouche that daywhen Ferdinand d'Orléans flung down on second thoughts his riding-whipupon the console at the Tuileries, and ordered his carriage instead ofhis horse, that cost himself his life, his son a throne, the Bourbonblood their royalty, and France for long years her progress and herpeace? Had he taken up his whip instead of laying it aside, he might beliving to-day with the sceptre in his hand, and the Bee, crushed beneathhis foot, powerless to sting to the core of the Lily! Of all strangethings in human life, there is none stranger than the dominance ofChance. 

 * * *

He landed and went into Silver-rest in the morning light. Far as the eyecould reach stretched the deep still waters of the bay; the white sailsof his yacht and of the few fishing skiffs in the offing stood outdistinct and glancing in the sun; over the bluffs and in all the cleftsof rock the growing grass blew and flickered in the breeze; and as hecrossed the sands the air was fragrant with the scent of the wildflowers that grew down to the water's edge. But to note these things aman must be in unison with the world; and to love them he must be inunison with himself. Strathmore scarce saw them as he went onward. 

 * * *

If a military man's friend dies who had the step above him, his firstthought is "Promotion! deucedly lucky for me!" His next, "Poor fellow, what a pity!" always comes two seconds after. I understand Voltaire. Ifyour companion's existence at table makes you have a dish dressed as youdon't like it, you are naturally relieved if an apoplectic fit emptieshis chair, and sets you free to say, "_Point de sauce blanche!_" All menare egotists, they only persuade themselves they are not selfish byswearing so often, that at last they believe what they say. No motiveunder the sun will stand the microscope; human nature, like a fadedbeauty, must only have a _demi-lumièr_; draw the blinds up, and theblotches come out, the wrinkles show, and the paint peels off. Thebeauty scolds the servants--men hiss the satirists--who dare to let indaylight!

 * * *

The Frenchwoman prides herself on being thought unfaithful to herhusband; the Englishwoman on being thought faithful to him; but thoughtheir theories are different, their practice comes to much the samething. 

_FRIENDSHIP. _

When Zeus, half in sport and half in cruelty, made man, young Hermês, who, as all Olympus knew, was for ever at some piece of mischief, insisted on meddling with his father's work, and got leave to fashionthe human ear out of a shell that he chanced to have by him, acrosswhich he stretched a fine cobweb that he stole from Arachne. But hehollowed and twisted the shell in such a fashion that it would turn backall sounds except very loud blasts that Falsehood should blow on abrazen horn, whilst the impenetrable web would keep out all suchwhispers as Truth could send up from the depths of her well. 

Hermês chuckled as he rounded the curves of his ear, and fastened it onto the newly-made human creature. 

"So shall these mortals always hear and believe the thing that is not, "he said to himself in glee--knowing that the box he would give toPandora would not bear more confused and complex woes to the haplessearth than this gift of an ear to man. 

But he forgot himself so far that, though two ears were wanted, he onlymade one. 

Apollo, passing that way, marked the blunder, and resolved to avenge thetheft of his milk-white herds which had led him such a weary chasethrough Tempe. 

Apollo took a pearl of the sea and hollowed it, and strung across it asilver string from his own lyre, and with it gave to man one ear bywhich the voice of Truth should reach the brain. 

"You have spoilt all my sport, " said the boy Hermes, angry and weeping. 

"Nay, " said the elder brother with a smile. "Be comforted. The brazentrumpets will be sure to drown the whisper from the well, and tenthousand mortals to one, be sure, will always turn by choice your earinstead of mine. "

 * * *

Women never like one another, except now and then an old woman and ayoung woman like you and me. They are good to one another amongst thepoor, you say! Oh, that I don't know anything about. They may be. Barbarians always retain the savage virtues. In Society women hate oneanother--all the more because in Society they have to smile in eachother's faces every night of their lives. Only think what that is, mydear!--to grudge each other's conquests, to grudge each other'sdiamonds, to study each other's dress, to watch each other's wrinkles, to outshine each other always on every possible occasion, big or little, and yet always to be obliged to give pet names to each other, and visiteach other with elaborate ceremonial--why, women _must_ hate each other!Society makes them. Your poor folks, I daresay, in the midst of theirtoiling and moiling, and scrubbing and scraping, and starving andbegging, do do each other kindly turns, and put bread in each other'smouths now and then, because they can scratch each other's eyes out, andcall each other hussies in the streets, any minute they like, in themost open manner. But in Society women's entire life is a struggle forprecedence, precedence in everything--beauty, money, rank, success, dress, everything. We have to smother hate under smiles, and envy undercompliment, and while we are dying to say "You hussy, " like the womenin the streets, we are obliged, instead of boxing her ears, to kiss heron both cheeks, and cry, "Oh, my dearest--how charming of you--so kind!"Only think what all that repression means. You laugh? Oh, you veryclever people always do laugh at these things. But you must studySociety, or suffer from it, sooner or later. If you don't always striveto go out before everybody, life will end in everybody going out beforeyou, everybody--down to the shoeblack!

 * * *

"Read!" echoed the old wise man with scorn. "O child, what use is that?Read!--the inland dweller reads of the sea, and thinks he knows it, andbelieves it to be as a magnified duck-pond, and no more. Can he tellanything of the light and the shade; of the wave and the foam; of thegreen that is near, of the blue that is far; of the opaline changes, nowpure as a dove's throat, now warm as a flame; of the great purple depthsand the fierce blinding storm; and the delight and the fear, and thehurricane rising like a horse snorting for war, and all that is known toman who goes down to the great deep in ships? Passion and the sea arelike one another. Words shall not tell them, nor colour portray them. The kiss that burns, and the salt spray that stings--let the poet exceland the painter endeavour, yet the best they can do shall say nothing tothe woman without a lover; and the landsman who knows not the sea. Ifyou would live--love. You will live in an hour a lifetime; and you willwonder how you bore your life before. But as an artist all will be overwith you--that I think. "

 * * *

What is the use of railing against Society? Society, after all, is onlyHumanity _en masse_, and the opinion of it must be the opinion of thebulk of human minds. Complaints against Society are like the lions'against the man's picture. No doubt the lions would have painted thecombat as going just the other way, but then, so long as it is the manwho has the knife or the gun, and the palette and the pencil, where isthe use of the lions howling about injustice? Society has the knife andthe pencil; that's the long and the short of it; and if people don'tbehave themselves they feel 'em both, and have to knock under. They'reknifed first, and then caricatured--as the lions were. 

 * * *

"Excelling!--it is rather a Dead Sea apple, I fear. The effort ishappiness, but the fruit always seems poor. "

Lady Cardiff could not patiently hear such nonsense. 

"There you are again, my dear feminine Alceste, " she said irritably, "looking at things from your solitary standpoint on that rock of yoursin the middle of the sea. _You_ are thinking of the excelling of genius, of the possessor of an ideal fame, of the 'Huntress mightier than themoon' and _I_ am thinking of the woman who excels in Society--who hasthe biggest diamonds, the best _chef_, the most lovers, the most _chic_and _chien_, who leads the fashion, and condescends when she takes teawith an empress. But even from your point of view on your rock, I can'tquite believe it. Accomplished ambition must be agreeable. To look backand say, 'I have achieved!'--what leagues of sunlight sever that proudboast from the weary sigh, 'I have failed!' Fame must console. "

"Perhaps; but the world, at least, does its best that it should not. Itsglory discs are of thorns. "

"You mean that superiority has its attendant shadow, which is calumny?Always has had, since Apelles painted. What does it matter if everybodylooks after you when you pass down a street, what they say when youpass?"

"A malefactor may obtain that sort of flattery. I do not see the charmof it. "

"You are very perverse. Of course I talk of an unsullied fame, not of aninfamous notoriety. "

"Fame nowadays is little else but notoriety, " said Etoile with a certainscorn, "and it is dearly bought, perhaps too dearly, by the sacrifice ofthe serenity of obscurity, the loss of the peace of private life. Art isgreat and precious, but the pursuit of it is sadly embittered when wehave become so the plaything of the public, through it, that thesimplest actions of our lives are chronicled and misconstrued. You donot believe it, perhaps, but I often envy the women sitting at theircottage doors, with their little children on their knees; no one talksof _them_!"

 "J'ai tant de gloire, ô roi, que j'aspire au fumier!"

said Lady Cardiff. "You are very thankless to Fate, my dear, but Isuppose it is always so. "

And Lady Cardiff took refuge in her cigar case, being a woman of toomuch experience not to know that it is quite useless to try and makeconverts to your opinions; and especially impossible to convince peopledissatisfied with their good fortune that they ought to be charmed withit. 

"It is very curious, " she thought when she got into her own carriage, "really it makes one believe in that odd doctrine of, what is it, Compensations; but, certainly, people of great talent always are alittle mad. If they're not flightily mad with eccentricity and brandy, they are morbidly mad with solitude and sentiment. Now she is a greatcreature, really a great creature; might have the world at her feet ifshe liked; and all she cares for is a big dog, a bunch of roses, andsome artist or poet dead and gone three hundred or three thousand years!It is very queer. It is just like that extraordinary possession ofVictor Hugo's; with powers that might have sufficed to make ten menbrilliant and comfortable, he must vex and worry about politics thatdidn't concern him in the least, and go and live under a skylight in themiddle of the sea. It is very odd. They are never happy; but when theyare unhappy, and if you tell them that Addison could be a great writer, and yet live comfortably and enjoy the things of this world, they onlytell you contemptuously that Addison had no genius, he had only a Style. I suppose he hadn't. I think if I were one of them and had to choose, Iwould rather have only a Style too. "

 * * *

When passion and habit long lie in company it is only slowly and withincredulity that habit awakens to find its companion fled, itself alone. 

 * * *

A new acquaintance is like a new novel; you open it with expectation, but what you find there seldom makes you care to take it off the shelfanother time. 

 * * *

The pity which is not born from experience is always cold. It cannothelp being so. It does not understand. 

 * * *

The house she lived in was very old, and had those charming conceits, those rich shadows and depth of shade, that play of light, that variety, and that character which seem given to a dwelling-place in ages whenmen asked nothing better of their God than to live where their fathershad lived, and leave the old roof-tree to their children's children. 

The thing built yesterday, is a caravanserai: I lodge in it to-day, andyou to-morrow; in an old house only can be made a home, where theblessings of the dead have rested and the memories of perfect faiths andlofty passions still abide. 

 * * *

There is so much mystery in this world, only people who lead humdrumlives will not believe it. 

It is a great misfortune to be born to a romantic history. The humdrumalways think that you are lying. In real truth romance is common inlife, commoner, perhaps, than the commonplace. But the commonplacealways looks more natural. 

In Nature there are millions of gorgeous hues to a scarcity of neutraltints; yet the pictures that are painted in sombre semi-tones and haveno one positive colour in them are always pronounced the nearest tonature. When a painter sets his palette, he dares not approach the goldof the sunset and dawn, or the flame of the pomegranate and poppy. 

 * * *

This age of Money, of Concessions, of Capitalists, and of LimitedLiabilities, has largely produced the female financier, who thinks withM. De Camors, that "_l'humanité est composée des actionnaires_. " Othercenturies have had their especial type of womanhood; the learned andgraceful _hetaira_, the saintly and ascetic recluse, the warrior ofOriflamme or Red Rose, the _dame de beauté_, all loveliness and light, like a dewdrop, the philosophic _précieuse_, with sesquipedalian phrase, the revolutionist, half nude of body and wholly nude of mind, each intheir turn have given their sign and seal to their especial century, forbetter or for worse. The nineteenth century has some touch of all, butits own novelty of production is the female speculator. 

The woman who, breathless, watches _la hausse_ and _la baisse_; whosefavour can only be won by some hint in advance of the newspapers; whoseheart is locked to all save golden keys; who starts banks, who concoctscompanies, who keeps a broker, as in the eighteenth century a woman kepta monkey, and in the twelfth a knight; whose especial art is to buy inat the right moments, and to sell out in the nick of time; who is greatin railways and canals, and new bathing-places, and shares infashionable streets; who chooses her lovers, thinking of concessions, and kisses her friends for sake of the secrets they may betray fromtheir husbands--what other centuries may say of her who can tell?

The Hôtel Rambouillet thought itself higher than heaven, and thegeneration of Catherine of Sienna believed her deal planks the solehighway to the throne of God. 

 * * *

Proud women, and sensitive women, take hints and resent rebuffs, and soexile themselves from the world prematurely and haughtily. They abdicatethe moment they see that any desire their discrowning. Abdication isgrand, no doubt. But possession is more profitable. "A well-bred dogdoes not wait to be kicked out, " says the old see-saw. But the well-breddog thereby turns himself into the cold, and leaves the crumbs fromunder the table to some other dog with less good-breeding and moreworldly wisdom. The sensible thing to do is to stay where you like bestto be; stay there with tooth and claw ready and a stout hide on whichcudgels break. People, after all, soon get tired of kicking a dog thatnever will go. 

High-breeding was admirable in days when the world itself was high-bred. But those days are over. The world takes high-breeding now as only aform of insolence. 

 * * *

"To your poetic temper life is a vast romance, beautiful and terrible, like a tragedy of Æschylus. You stand amidst it entranced, like a childby the beauty and awe of a tempest. And all the while the worldly-wise, to whom the tempest is only a matter of the machineries of a theatre--ofpainted clouds, electric lights, and sheets of copper--the world-wisegovern the storm as they choose and leave you in it defenceless andlonely as old Lear. To put your heart into life is the most fatal oferrors; it is to give a hostage to your enemies whom you can only ransomat the price of your ruin. But what is the use of talking? To you, lifewill be always Alastor and Epipsychidion, and to us, it will always be aTreatise on Whist. That's all!"

"A Treatise on Whist! No! It is something much worse. It is a Book ofthe Bastile, with all entered as criminal in it, who cannot be boughtoff by bribe or intrigue, by a rogue's stratagem or a courtesan's vice!"

"The world is only a big Harpagon, and you and such as you are MaîtreJacques. '_Puisque vous l'avez voulu!_' you say, --and call him franklyto his face, '_Avare, ladre, vilain, fessemathieu!_' and Harpagonanswers you with a big stick and cries, '_Apprenez à parler!_' PoorMaître Jacques! I never read of him without thinking what a type he isof Genius. No offence to you, my dear. He'd the wit to see he wouldnever be pardoned for telling the truth, and yet he told it! The perfecttype of Genius. "

 * * *

The untruthfulness of women communicates itself to the man whose chiefsociety they form, and the perpetual necessities of intrigue end incorrupting the temper whose chief pursuit is passion. 

Women who environ a man's fidelity by ceaseless suspicion and exaction, create the evil that they dread. 

 * * *

Society, after all, asks very little. Society only asks you to wash theoutside of your cup and platter: inside you may keep any kind ofnastiness that you like: only wash the outside. Do wash the outside, says Society; and it would be a churl or an ass indeed who would refuseso small a request. 

 * * *

A woman who is ice to his fire, is less pain to a man than the woman whois fire to his ice. There is hope for him in the one, but only a drearydespair in the other. The ardours that intoxicate him in the firstsummer of his passion serve but to dull and chill him in the later time. 

 * * *

A frog that dwelt in a ditch spat at a worm that bore a lamp. 

"Why do you do that?" said the glow-worm. 

"Why do you shine?" said the frog. 

 * * *

When a name is in the public mouth the public nostril likes to smell afoulness in it. It likes to think that Byron committed incest; thatMilton was a brute; that Raffaelle's vices killed him; that Pascal wasmad; that Lamartine lived and died a pauper; that Scipio took thetreasury moneys; that Thucydides and Phidias stole; that Heloise andHypatia were but loose women after all--so the gamut runs over twice athousand years; and Rousseau is at heart the favourite of the worldbecause he was such a beast, with all his talent. 

When the world is driven to tears and prayers by Schiller, it hugsitself to remember that he could not write a line without the smell ofrotten apples near, and that when he died there was not enough money inhis desk to pay his burial. They make him smaller, closer, lessdivine--the apples and the pauper's coffin. 

 * * *

"Get a great cook; give three big balls a winter, and drive Englishhorses; you need never consider Society then, it will never find faultwith you, _ma très-chère_. "

She did not quite understand, but she obeyed; and Society never did. Society says to the members of it as the Spanish monk to the tree thathe pruned, and that cried out under his hook:

"It is not beauty that is wanted of you, nor shade, but olives. "

Moral loveliness or mental depth, charm of feeling or nobleness ofinstinct, beauty, or shade, it does not ask for, but it does ask forolives--olives that shall round off its dessert, and flavour its dishes, and tickle its sated palate; olives that it shall pick up withouttrouble, and never be asked to pay for; these are what it likes. 

Now it is precisely in olives that the woman who has one foot in Societyand one foot out of it will be profuse. 

She must please, or perish. 

She must content, or how will she be countenanced?

The very perilousness of her position renders her solicitous to attractand to appease. 

Society follows a natural selfishness in its condonation of her; she isafraid of it, therefore she must bend all her efforts to be agreeable toit! it can reject her at any given moment, so that her court of it mustbe continual and expansive. No woman will take so much pains, give somuch entertainment, be so willing to conciliate, be so lavish inhospitality, be so elastic in willingness, as the woman who adoresSociety, and knows that any black Saturday it may turn her out with abundle of rods, and a peremptory dismissal. 

Between her and Society there is a tacit bond. 

"Amuse me, and I will receive you. "

"Receive me, and I will amuse you. "

 * * *

Of all lay figures there is none on earth so useful as a wooden husband. You should get a wooden husband, my dear, if you want to be left inpeace. It is like a comfortable slipper or your dressing-gown after aball. It is like springs to your carriage. It is like a clever maid whonever makes mistakes with your notes or comes without coughingdiscreetly through your dressing-room. It is like tea, cigarettes, postage-stamps, foot-warmers, eiderdown counterpanes--anything thatsmooths life, in fact. Young women do not think enough of this. Aneasy-going husband is the one indispensable comfort of life. He is likea set of sables to you. You may never want to put them on; still, if thenorth wind do blow--and one can never tell--how handy they are! You popinto them in a second, and no cold wind can find you out, my dear. Couldn't find you out, if your shift were in rags underneath! Withoutyour husband's countenance, you have scenes. With scenes, you havescandal. With scandal, you come to a suit. With a suit, you most likelylose your settlements. And without your settlements, where are you inSociety? With a husband you are safe. You need never think about him inany way. His mere existence suffices. He will always be at the bottom ofyour table, and the head of your visiting-cards. That is enough. He willrepresent Respectability for you, without your being at the trouble torepresent Respectability for yourself. Respectability is a thing ofwhich the shadow is more agreeable than the substance. Happily for us, Society only requires the shadow. 

 * * *

Very well; if you dislike dancing, don't dance; though if a woman don't, you know, they always think she has got a short leg, or a cork leg, orsomething or other that's dreadful. But why not show yourself at them?At least show yourself. One goes to balls as one goes to church. It's asocial muster. 

 * * *

The art of pleasing is more based on the art of seeming pleased thanpeople think of, and she disarmed the prejudices of her enemies by theunaffected delight she appeared to take in themselves. You may thinkvery ill of a woman, but after all you cannot speak very ill of her ifshe has assured you a hundred times that you are amongst her dearestfriends. 

 * * *

Society always had its fixed demands. It used to exact birth. It used toexact manners. In a remote and golden age there is a tradition that itwas once contented with mind. Nowadays it exacts money, or ratheramusement, because if you don't let other folks have the benefit of yourmoney, Society will take no account of it. But have money and spend itwell (that is, let Society live on it, gorge with it, walk ankle-deep init), and you may be anything and do anything; you may have been anomnibus conductor in the Strand, and you may marry a duke's daughter;you may have been an oyster-girl in New York, and you may entertainroyalties. It is impossible to exaggerate an age of anomaly andhyperbole. There never was an age when people were so voracious ofamusement, and so tired of it, both in one. It is a perpetual carnivaland a permanent yawn. If you can do anything to amuse us you aresafe--till we get used to you--and then you amuse no longer, and must goto the wall. Every age has its price: what Walpole said of men must betrue of mankind. Anybody can buy the present age that will bid very highand pay with tact as well as bullion. There is nothing it will notpardon if it see its way to getting a new sensation out of its leniency. Perhaps no one ought to complain. A Society with an india-rubberconscience, no memory, and an absolute indifference to eating its ownwords and making itself ridiculous, is, after all, a convenient one tolive in--if you can pay for its suffrages. 

 * * *

If you are only well beforehand with your falsehood all will go uponvelvet; nobody ever listens to a rectification. "Is it possible?"everybody cries with eager zest; but when they have only to say "Oh, wasn't it so?" nobody feels any particular interest. It is the firststatement that has the swing and the success; as for explanation orretractation--pooh! who cares to be bored?

 * * *

Those people with fine brains and with generous souls will never learnthat life is after all only a game--a game which will go to theshrewdest player and the coolest. They never see this; not they; theyare caught on the edge of great passions, and swept away by them. Theycling to their affections like commanders to sinking ships, and go downwith them. They put their whole heart into the hands of others, who onlylaugh and wring out their lifeblood. They take all things too vitally inearnest. Life is to them a wonderful, passionate, pathetic, terriblething that the gods of love and of death shape for them. They do not seethat coolness and craft, and the tact to seize accident, and thewariness to obtain advantage, do in reality far more in hewing out asuccessful future than all the gods of Greek or Gentile. They are veryunwise. It is of no use to break their hearts for the world; they willnot change it. _La culte de l'humanité_ is the one of all others whichwill leave despair as its harvest. Laugh like Rabelais, smile likeMontaigne; that is the way to take the world. It only puts to death itsSebastians, and makes its Shelleys not sorrowful to see the boat isfilling. 

 * * *

Society always adheres to its principles; just as a Moslem subscribesnone the less to the Koran because he may just have been blowing thefroth off his bumper of Mumm's before he goes to his mosque. 

 * * *

Pleasantness is the soft note of this generation, just as scientificassassination is the harsh note of it. The age is compounded of the two. Half of it is chloroform; the other half is dynamite. 

 * * *

You make us think, and Society dislikes thinking. You call things bytheir right names, and Society hates that, though Queen Bess didn't mindit. You trumpet our own littleness in our ear, and we know it so wellthat we do not care to hear much about it. You shudder at sin, and wehave all agreed that there is no such thing as sin, only meredifferences of opinion, which, provided they don't offend us, we have nobusiness with: adultery is a _liaison_, lying is gossip, debt is amomentary embarrassment, immorality is a little slip, and so forth: andwhen we have arranged this pretty little dictionary of convenientpseudonyms, it is not agreeable to have it sent flying by fierce, dreadful, old words, that are only fit for some book that nobody everreads, like Milton or the Family Bible. We do not want to think. We donot want to hear. We do not care about anything. Only give us a gooddinner and plenty of money, and let us outshine our neighbours. There isthe Nineteenth Century Gospel. My dear, if Ecclesiasticus himself camehe would preach in vain. You cannot convince people that don't want tobe convinced. We call ourselves Christians--Heaven save the mark!--butwe are only the very lowest kind of pagans. We do not believe inanything--except that nothing matters. Well, perhaps nothing doesmatter. Only one wonders why ever so many of us were all created, onlyjust to find _that_ out. 

 * * *

Love to the looker-on may be blind, unwise, unworthily bestowed, awaste, a sacrifice, a crime; yet none the less is love, alone, the onething that, come weal or woe, is worth the loss of every other thing;the one supreme and perfect gift of earth, in which all common things ofdaily life become transfigured and divine. And perhaps of all the manywoes that priesthoods have wrought upon humanity, none have been greaterthan this false teaching, that love can ever be a sin. To the sorrowand the harm of the world, the world's religions have all striven tomake men and women shun and deny their one angel as a peril or a shame;but religions cannot strive against nature, and when the lovers see eachother's heaven in each other's eyes, they know the supreme truth thatone short day together is worth a lifetime's glory. 

 * * *

Genius is like the nautilus, all sufficient for itself in its prettyshell, quite at home in the big ocean, with no fear from any storm. Butif a wanton stone from a boat passing by break the shell, where is thenautilus then? Drowned; just like any common creature!

 * * *

There are times when, even on the bravest temper, the ironical mockery, the cruel despotism of trifling circumstances, that have made themselvesthe masters of our lives, the hewers of our fate, must weigh with asense of involuntary bondage, against which to strive is useless. 

The weird sisters were forms of awe and magnitude proportionate to thewoes they dealt out, to the destiny they wove. But the very littlenessof the daily chances that actually shape fate is, in its discordance andits mockery, more truly terrible and most hideously solemn--it is thelittle child's laugh at a frisking kitten which brings down theavalanche, and lays waste the mountain side, or it is the cackle of thestartled geese that saves the Capitol. 

To be the prey of Atropos was something at the least; and the grim _Deusvult perdere_, uttered in the delirium of pain, at the least made themaddened soul feel of some slender account in the sight of the gods andin the will of Heaven. But we, who are the children of mere accident andthe sport of idlest opportunity, have no such consolation. 

 * * *

Of course they will stone you, as village bumpkins run out and stone anodd stray bird that they have never seen before; and the more beautifulthe plumage looks, the harder rain the stones. If the bird were asparrow the bumpkins would let it be. 

 * * *

Love that remembers aught save the one beloved may be affection, but itis not love. 

 * * *

Ariel could not combat a leopardess; Ithuriel's spear glances pointlessfrom a rhinoceros' hide. To match what is low and beat it, you muststoop, and soil your hands to cut a cudgel rough and ready. She did notsee this; and seeing it, would not have lowered herself to do it. 

 * * *

Which is the truth, which is the madness?--when the artist, in thesunlit ice of a cold dreamland, scorns love and adores but one art; orwhen the artist, amidst the bruised roses of a garden of passion, findsall heaven in one human heart?

 * * *

There is a story in an old poet's forgotten writings of a woman who wasqueen when the world was young, and reigned over many lands, and loved acaptive, and set him free, and thinking to hurt him less by seeminglowly, came down from her throne and laid her sceptre in the dust, andpassed amongst the common maidens that drew water at the well, or beggedat the city gate, and seemed as one of them, giving him all and keepingnought herself: "so will he love me more, " she thought; but he, crownedking, thought only of the sceptre and the throne, and having those, looked not amongst the women at the gate, and knew her not, because whathe had loved had been a queen. Thus she, self-discrowned, lost both herlover and her kingdom. A wise man amongst the throng said to her, "Nay, you should have kept aloof upon your golden seat and made him feel yourpower to deal life or death, and fretted him long, and long kept him indurance and in doubt, you, meanwhile, far above. For men are lightcreatures as the moths are. "

 * * *

They had lived in London and Paris all their lives, and had, beforethis, heard patriotism used as a reason for a variety of things, from aminister's keeping in office against the will of the country, to anewspaper's writing a country into bloodshed and bankruptcy; they werequite aware of the word's elasticity. 

 * * *

It was the true and perfect springtide of the year, when Love walksamongst the flowers, and comes a step nearer what it seeks with everydawn. 

Without Love, spring is of all seasons cruel; more cruel than all frostand frown of winter. 

 * * *

In the early days of an illicit passion concealment is charming; everysecret stairway of intrigue has a sweet surprise at its close; to be inconspiracy with one alone against all the rest of humanity is the mostseductive of seductions. Love lives best in this soft twilight, where itonly hears its own heart and one other's beat in the solitude. 

But when the reverse of the medal is turned; when every step on thestairs has been traversed and tired of, when, instead of the heart'sbeat, there is but an upbraiding voice, when it is no longer _with_ onebut _from_ one that concealment is needed, then the illicit passion isits own Nemesis, then nothing were ever drearier, wearier, more anxious, or more fatiguing than its devious paths become, and they seem to holdthe sated wanderer in a labyrinth of which he knows, and knowing hates, every wind, and curve, and coil, yet out of which it seems to him hewill never make his way back again into the light of wholesome day. 

 * * *

My dear, the days of Fontenoy are gone out; everybody nowadays onlytries to get the first fire, by hook or by crook. Ours is an age ofcowardice and cuirassed cannon; chivalry is out of place in it. 

 * * *

With a woman, the vulgarity that lies in public adulation is apt tonauseate; at least if she be so little of a woman that she is not vain, and so much of one that she cares for privacy. For the fame of our ageis not glory but notoriety; and notoriety is to a woman like the bull toPasiphae--whilst it caresses it crushes. 

 * * *

Had she your talent the world would have heard of her. As it is, sheonly enjoys herself. Perhaps the better part. Fame is a cone of smoke. Enjoyment is a loaf of sugar. 

 * * *

There is no such coward as the woman who toadies Society because she hasoutraged Society. The bully is never brave. 

"Oignez vilain il vous poindra: poignez vilain il vous oindra, " is astrue of the braggart's soul still, as it used to be in the old days ofFroissart, when the proverb was coined. 

 * * *

She was of opinion with Sganarelle, that "cinq ou six coups de bâtonentre gens qui s'aiment ne font que ragaillarder l'affection. "

But, like Sganarelle also, she always premised that the right to givethe blows should be hers. 

 * * *

She was only like any other well-dressed woman after all, and humanityconsiders that when genius comes forth in the flesh the touch of thecoal from the altar should have left some visible stigmata on the lipsit has burned, as, of course anybody knows, it invariably leaves somesmirch upon the character. 

Humanity feels that genius ought to wear a livery, as Jews and loosewomen wore yellow in the old golden days of distinction. 

"They don't even paint!" said one lady, and felt herself aggrieved. 

 * * *

Calumny is the homage of our contemporaries, as some South Sea Islandersspit on those they honour. 

 * * *

Popularity has been defined as the privilege of being cheered by thekind of people you would never allow to bow to you. 

Fame may be said to be the privilege of being slandered at once by thepeople who do bow to you, as well as by the people who do not. 

 * * *

Nobody there knew at all. So everybody averred they knew for certain. Nobody's story agreed with anybody else's, but that did not matter atall. The world, like Joseph's father, gives the favourite coat of manycolours which the brethren rend. 

 * * *

"Be honey, and the flies will eat you, " says the old saw, but, like mostother proverbs, it will not admit of universal application. There is away of being honey that is thoroughly successful and extremely popular, and constitutes a kind of armour that is bomb-proof. 

 * * *

The longest absence is less perilous to love than the terrible trials ofincessant proximity. 

 * * *

She forgot that love likes to preserve its illusions, and that it willbear better all the sharpest deprivations in the world than it will thecruel tests of an unlovely and unveiled intercourse. 

She had committed the greatest error of all: she had let him bedisenchanted by familiarity. Passion will pardon rage, will surviveabsence, will forgive infidelity, will even thrive on outrage, and willoften condone a crime; but when it dies of familiarity it is dead forever and aye. 

 * * *

Society will believe anything rather than ever believe that Itself canbe duped. 

If you have only assurance enough to rely implicitly on this, there ishardly anything you cannot induce it to accept. 

 * * *

Here was the secret of her success. To her nothing was little. 

This temper is always popular with Society. To enjoy yourself in theworld, is, to the world, the prettiest of indirect compliments. 

The chief offence of the poet, as of the philosopher, is that the worldas it is fails to satisfy them. 

Society, which is after all only a conglomerate of hosts, has the host'sweakness--all its guests must smile. 

The poet sighs, the philosopher yawns. Society feels that theydepreciate it. Society feels more at ease without them. 

To find every one acceptable to you is to make yourself acceptable toevery one. 

Hived bees get sugar because they will give back honey. All existence isa series of equivalents. 

 * * *

Even the discreetest friends will, like the closest-packed hold of aship, leak occasionally. Salt water and secrets are alike apt to ooze. 

 * * *

The simplicity of the artist is always the stumbling-block of the artistwith the world. 

 * * *

A woman need never dread the fiercest quarrel with her lover; thetempest may bring sweeter weather than any it broke up, and after thethunder the singing of birds will sound lovelier than before. Anger willnot extinguish love, nor will scorn trample it dead; jealousy will fanits fires, and offences against it may but fasten closer the fettersthat it adores beyond all liberty. But when love dies of a worn-outfamiliarity it perishes for ever and aye. 

Jaded, disenchanted, wearied, indifferent, the tired passion expires ofsheer listlessness and contemptuous disillusion. 

The death is slow and unperceived, but it is sure; and it is a deaththat has no resurrection. 

 * * *

There is nothing that you may not get people to believe in if you willonly tell it them loud enough and often enough, till the welkin ringswith it. 

 * * *

What Raffaelle has left us must be to the glories he imagined as theweaver's dye to the sunset's fire. 

 * * *

A woman's violence is a mighty power; before it reason recoils unnerved, justice quails appalled, and peace perishes like a burnt-up scroll; itis a sand-storm, before which courage can do but little: the bravest mancan but fall on his face and let it rage on above him. 

 * * *

A very trustful woman believes in her lover's fidelity with her heart; avery vain woman believes in it with her head. 

 * * *

From the moment that another life has any empire on ours, peace is gone. 

Art spreads around us a profound and noble repose, but passion entersit, and then art grows restless and troubled as the deep sea at the callof the whirlwind. 

_WANDA. _

A man cast forth from his home is like a ship cut loose from its anchorand rudderless. Whatever may have been his weakness, his offences, theycannot absolve you from your duty to watch over your husband's soul, tobe his first and most faithful friend, to stand between him and histemptations and perils. That is the nobler side of marriage. When thelight of love is faded, and its joys are over, its duties and itsmercies remain. Because one of the twain has failed in these the otheris not acquitted of obligation. 

 * * *

"Choose some career; make yourself some aim in life; do not fold yourtalents in a napkin; in a napkin that lies on the supper-table atBignon's. That idle, aimless life is very attractive, I daresay, in itsway, but it must grow wearisome and unsatisfactory as years roll on. Themen of my house have never been content with it; they have always beensoldiers, statesmen, something or other beside mere nobles. "

"But they have had a great position. "

"Men make their own position; they cannot make a name (at least, not tomy thinking). You have that good fortune; you have a great name; youonly need, pardon me, to make your manner of life worthy of it. "

"Cannot make a name? Surely in these days the beggar rides on horsebackin all the ministries and half the nobilities;"

"You mean that Hans, Pierre, or Richard becomes a count, an excellency, or an earl? What does that change? It alters the handle; it does notalter the saucepan. No one can be ennobled. Blood is blood; nobility canonly be inherited; it cannot be conferred by all the heralds in theworld. The very meaning and essence of nobility are descent, inheritedtraditions, instincts, habits, and memories--all that is meant by_noblesse oblige_. "

 * * *

"Men are always like Horace, " said the princess. "They admire rurallife, but they remain for all that with Augustus. "

 * * *

I read the other day of some actresses dining off a truffled pheasantand a sack of bonbons. That is the sort of dinner we make all the yearround, morally--metaphorically--how do you say it? It makes us thirsty, and perhaps--I am not sure--perhaps it leaves us half starved, though wenibble the sweetmeats, and don't know it. 

"Your dinner must lack two things--bread and water. "

"Yes; we never see either. It is all truffles and caramels and _vinsfrappés_. "

"There is your bread. "

She glanced at the little children, two pretty, graceful little maids ofsix and seven years old. 

"_Ouf!_" said the Countess Branka. "They are only little bits of puffpaste, a couple of _petits fours_ baked on the boulevards. If they be_chic_, and marry well, I for one shall ask no more of them. If ever youhave children, I suppose you will rear them on science and theAntonines?"

"Perhaps on the open air and Homer. "

 * * *

Cannot you make them understand that we are not public artists to need_réclames_, nor yet sovereigns to be compelled to submit to themicroscope? Is this the meaning of civilisation--to make privacyimpossible, to oblige every one to live under a lens?

 * * *

The world was much happier when distinctions and divisions wereimpassable. There are no sumptuary laws now. What is the consequence?That your _bourgeoise_ ruins her husband in wearing gowns fit only for aduchess, and your prince imagines it makes him popular to look preciselylike a cabman or a bailiff. 

 * * *

A great love must be as exhaustless as the ocean in its mercy, and asprofound in its comprehension. 

 * * *

What was love if not one long forgiveness? What raised it higher thanthe senses if not its infinite patience and endurance of all wrong? Whatwas its hope of eternal life if it had not gathered strength in itenough to rise above human arrogance and human vengeance?

 * * *

There is an infinite sense of peace in those cool, vast, unworn mountainsolitudes, with the rain-mists sweeping like spectral armies over thelevel lands below, and the sun-rays slanting heavenward, like the spearsof an angelic host. There is such abundance of rushing water, of deepgrass, of endless shade, of forest trees, of heather and pine, oftorrent and tarn; and beyond these are the great peaks that loom throughbreaking clouds, and the clear cold air, in which the vulture wheels andthe heron sails; and the shadows are so deep, and the stillness is sosweet, and the earth seems so green, and fresh, and silent, and strong. Nowhere else can one rest so well; nowhere else is there so fit a refugefor all the faiths and fancies that can find a home no longer in theharsh and hurrying world; there is room for them all in the Austrianforests, from the Erl-King to Ariel and Oberon. 

 * * *

"You think any sin may be forgiven?" he said irrelevantly, with his faceaverted. 

"That is a very wide question. I do not think St. Augustine himselfcould answer it in a word or in a moment. Forgiveness, I think, wouldsurely depend on repentance. "

"Repentance in secret--would that avail?"

"Scarcely--would it?--if it did not attain some sacrifice. It would haveto prove its sincerity to be accepted. "

"You believe in public penance?" said Sabran, with some impatience andcontempt. 

"Not necessarily public, " she said, with a sense of perplexity at theturn his words had taken. "But of what use is it for one to say herepents unless in some measure he makes atonement?"

"But where atonement is impossible?"

"That could never be. "

"Yes. There are crimes whose consequences can never be undone. Whatthen? Is he who did them shut out from all hope?"

"I am no casuist, " she said, vaguely troubled. "But if no atonement werepossible I still think--nay, I am sure--a sincere and intense regretwhich is, after all, what we mean by repentance, must be accepted, mustbe enough. "

"Enough to efface it in the eyes of one who had never sinned?"

"Where is there such a one? I thought you spoke of heaven. "

"I spoke of earth. It is all we can be sure to have to do with; it isour one poor heritage. "

"I hope it is but an antechamber which we pass through, and fill withbeautiful things, or befoul with dust and blood, at our own will. "

"Hardly at our own will. In your antechamber a capricious tyrant waitsus all at birth. Some come in chained; some free. "

 * * *

"Do not compare the retreat of the soldier tired of his wounds, of thegambler wearied by his losses, with the poet or the saint who is atpeace with himself and sees all his life long what he at least believesto be the smile of God. Loyola and Francis d'Assisi are not the samething, are not on the same plane. "

"What matter what brought them, " she said softly, "if they reach thesame goal?"

 * * *

"You bade me do good at Romaris. Candidly, I see no way to do it exceptin saving a crew off a wreck, which is not an occasion that presentsitself every week. I cannot benefit these people materially, since I ampoor; I cannot benefit them morally, because I have not their faith inthe things unseen, and I have not their morality in the thingstangible. They are God-fearing, infinitely patient, faithful in theirdaily lives, and they reproach no one for their hard lot, cast on aniron shore and forced to win their scanty bread at the risk of theirlives. They do not murmur either at duty or mankind. What should I sayto them? I, whose whole life is one restless impatience, one petulantmutiny against circumstance? If I talk with them I only take them whatthe world always takes into solitude--discontent. It would be a cruelgift, yet my hand is incapable of holding out any other. It is a homelysaying that no blood comes out of a stone; so, out of a life saturatedwith the ironies, the contempt, the disbelief, the frivolousphilosophies, the hopeless negations of what we call Society, there canbe drawn no water of hope and charity, for the well-head--belief--isdried up at its source. Some pretend, indeed, to find in humanity whatthey deny to exist as Deity, but I should be incapable of the illogicalexchange. It is to deny that the seed sprang from a root; it is toreplace a grand and illimitable theism by a finite and vaingloriousbathos. Of all the creeds that have debased mankind, the new creed thatwould centre itself in man seems to me the poorest and the most baselessof all. If humanity be but a _vibrion_, a conglomeration of gases, amere mould holding chemicals, a mere bundle of phosphorus and carbon, how can it contain the elements of worship? what matter when or how eachbubble of it bursts? This is the weakness of all materialism when itattempts to ally itself with duty. It becomes ridiculous. The _carpidiem_ of the classic sensualists, the morality of the 'Satyricon' or the'Decamerone, ' are its only natural concomitants and outcome; but as yetit is not honest enough to say this. It affects the soothsayer's longrobe, the sacerdotal frown, and is a hypocrite. "

In answer she wrote back to him:

"I do not urge you to have my faith: what is the use? Goethe was right. It is a question between a man and his own heart. No one should ventureto intrude there. But taking life even as you do, it is surely a casketof mysteries. May we not trust that at the bottom of it, as at thebottom of Pandora's, there may be hope? I wish again to think withGoethe that immortality is not an inheritance, but a greatness to beachieved like any other greatness, by courage, self-denial, and purityof purpose--a reward allotted to the just. This is fanciful, may be, butit is not illogical. And without being either a Christian or aMaterialist, without beholding either majesty or divinity in humanity, surely the best emotion that our natures know--pity--must be largeenough to draw us to console where we can, and sustain where we can, inview of the endless suffering, the continual injustice, the appallingcontrasts, with which the world is full. Whether man be the _vibrion_ orthe heir to immortality, the bundle of carbon or the care of angels, onefact is indisputable: he suffers agonies, mental and physical, that arewholly out of proportion to the brevity of his life, while he is toooften weighted from infancy with hereditary maladies, both of body andof character. This is reason enough, I think, for us all to help eachother, even though we feel, as you feel, that we are as lost children, wandering in a great darkness, with no thread or clue to guide us to theend. "

 * * *

"We do not cultivate music one-half enough among the peasantry. Itlightens labour; it purifies and strengthens the home life; it sweetensblack bread. Do you remember that happy picture of Jordaens' 'Where theold sing, the young chirp, ' where the old grandfather and grandmother, and the baby in its mother's arms, and the hale five-year-old boy, andthe rough servant, are all joining in the same melody, while the goatcrops the vine-leaves off the table? I should like to see every cottageinterior like that when the work was done. I would hang up an etchingfrom Jordaens where you would hang up, perhaps, the programme ofProudhon. "

Then she walked back with him through the green sun-gleaming woods. 

"I hope that I teach them content, " she continued. "It is the lessonmost neglected in our day. '_Niemand will ein Schuster sein; Jedermannein Dichter. _' It is true we are very happy in our surroundings. Amountaineer's is such a beautiful life, so simple, healthful, hardy, andfine; always face to face with nature. I try to teach them what aninestimable joy that alone is. I do not altogether believe in theprosaic views of rural life. It is true that the peasant digging histrench sees the clod, not the sky; but then when he does lift his headthe sky is there, not the roof, not the ceiling. That is so much initself. And here the sky is an everlasting grandeur; clouds and domes ofsnow are blent together. When the stars are out above the glaciers howserene the night is, how majestic! even the humblest creature feelslifted up into that eternal greatness. Then you think of the home-lifein the long winters as dreary; but it is not so. Over away there, atLahn, and other places on the Hallstadtersee, they do not see the sunfor five months; the wall of rock behind them shuts them from all lightof day; but they live together, they dance, they work. The young menrecite poems, and the old men tell tales of the mountains and the Frenchwar, and they sing the homely songs of the _Schnader-hüpfeln_. Then whenwinter passes, when the sun comes up again over the wall of rocks, whenthey go out into the light once more, what happiness it is! One old mansaid to me, 'It is like being born again!' and another said, 'Where itis always warm and light I doubt they forget to thank God for thesunshine;' and quite a young child said, all of his own accord, 'Theprimroses live in the dusk all the winter, like us, and then when thesun comes up we and they run out together, and the Mother of Christ hasset the water and the little birds laughing. ' I would rather have thewinter of Lahn than the winter of Belleville. "

 * * *

If the Venus de Medici could be animated into life women would onlyremark that her waist was large. 

 * * *

Tedium is the most terrible and the most powerful foe love everencounters. 

 * * *

"Life is after all like baccarat or billiards, " he said to himself. "Itis no use winning unless there be a _galerie_ to look on and applaud. "

 * * *

Time hung on his hands like a wearisome wallet of stones. 

When all the habits of life are suddenly rent asunder, they are like arope cut in two. They may be knotted together clumsily, or they may bethrown altogether aside and a new strand woven, but they will never bethe same thing again. 

 * * *

The greatness of a great race is a thing far higher than mere pride. Itsinstincts are noble and supreme, its obligations are no less than itsprivileges; it is a great light which streams backward through thedarkness of the ages, and if by that light you guide not your footsteps, then are you thrice accursed, holding as you do that lamp of honour inyour hands. 

 * * *

Even to those who care nothing for Society, and dislike the stir andnoise of the world about them, there is still always a vague sense ofdepression in the dispersion of a great party; the house seems sostrangely silent, the rooms seem so strangely empty, servants flittingnoiselessly here and there, a dropped flower, a fallen jewel, anoppressive scent from multitudes of fading blossoms, a broken vaseperhaps, or perhaps a snapped fan--these are all that are left of theteeming life crowded here one little moment ago. Though one may be gladthey are gone, yet there is a certain sadness in it. "_Le lendemain dela fête_" keeps its pathos, even though the _fête_ itself has possessedno poetry and no power to amuse. 

 * * *

In every one of her villages she had her schools on this principle, andthey throve, and the children with them. Many of these could not read aprinted page, but all of them could read the shepherd's weather-glass insky and flower; all of them knew the worm that was harmful to the crops, the beetle that was harmless in the grass; all knew a tree by a leaf, abird by a feather, an insect by a grub. 

Modern teaching makes a multitude of gabblers. She did not think itnecessary for the little goat-herds, and dairymaids, and foresters, andcharcoal-burners, and sennerins, and carpenters, and cobblers, to studythe exact sciences or draw casts from the antique. She was of opinion, with Pope, that "a little learning is a dangerous thing, " and that asmattering of it will easily make a man morose and discontented, whilstit takes a very deep and lifelong devotion to it to teach a man contentwith his lot. Genius, she thought, is too rare a thing to make itnecessary to construct village schools for it, and whenever or whereverit comes upon earth, it will surely be its own master. 

She did not believe in culture for little peasants who have to work fortheir daily bread at the plough-tail or with the reaping-hook. She knewthat a mere glimpse of a Canaan of art and learning is cruelty to thosewho never can enter into and never even can have leisure to merely gazeon it. She thought that a vast amount of useful knowledge is consignedto oblivion whilst children are taught to waste their time in picking upthe crumbs of a great indigestible loaf of artificial learning. She hadher scholars taught their "ABC, " and that was all. Those who wished towrite were taught, but writing was not enforced. What they were made tolearn was the name and use of every plant in their own country; thehabits and ways of all animals; how to cook plain food well, and makegood bread; how to brew simples from the herbs of their fields andwoods, and how to discern the coming weather from the aspect of theskies, the shutting-up of certain blossoms, and the time of day fromthose "poor men's watches, " the opening flowers. In all countries thereis a great deal of useful household and out-of-door lore that is fastbeing choked out of existence under books and globes, and which, unlessit passes by word of mouth from generation to generation, is quickly andirrevocably lost. All this lore she had cherished by herschool-children. Her boys were taught in addition any useful trade theyliked--boot-making, crampon-making, horse-shoeing, wheel-making, orcarpentry. This trade was made a pastime to each. The little maidenslearned to sew, to cook, to spin, to card, to keep fowls and sheep andcattle in good health, and to know all poisonous plants and berries bysight. 

"I think it is what is wanted, " she said. "A little peasant child doesnot need to be able to talk of the corolla and the spathe, but he doeswant to recognise at a glance the flower that will give him healing andthe berries that will give him death. His sister does not in the leastrequire to know why a kettle boils, but she does need to know when awarm bath will be good for a sick baby or when hurtful. We want a newgeneration to be helpful, to have eyes, and to know the beauty ofsilence. I do not mind much whether my children reap or not. Thelabourer that reads turns Socialist, because his brain cannot digest thehard mass of wonderful facts he encounters. But I believe every one ofmy little peasants, being wrecked like Crusoe, would prove as handy ashe. "

 * * *

"Can you inform me how it is that women possess tenacity of will inprecise proportion to the frivolity of their lives? All thesebutterflies have a volition of iron. "

"It is egotism. Intensely selfish people are always very decided as towhat they wish. That is in itself a great force; they do not waste theirenergies in considering the good of others. "

 * * *

"I am not like you, my dear Olga, " she wrote to her relative theCountess Brancka. "I am not easily amused. That _course effrénée_ of thegreat world carries you honestly away with it; all those incessantballs, those endless visits, those interminable conferences on yourtoilettes, that continual circling of human butterflies round you, thoseperpetual courtships of half a score of young men; it all diverts you. You are never tired of it; you cannot understand any life outside itspale. All your days, whether they pass in Paris or Petersburgh, atTrouville, at Biarritz, or at Vienna or Scheveningen, are modelled onthe same lines; you must have excitement as you have your cup ofchocolate when you wake. What I envy you is that the excitement excitesyou. When I was amidst it I was not excited; I was seldom ever diverted. See the misfortune that it is to be born with a grave nature! I am asserious as Marcus Antoninus. You will say that it comes of havinglearned Latin and Greek. I do not think so; I fear I was bornunamusable. I only truly care about horses and trees, and they are bothgrave things, though a horse can be playful enough sometimes when he isallowed to forget his servitude. Your friends, the famous tailors, sendme admirably-chosen costumes which please that sense in me which Titiansand Vandycks do (I do not mean to be profane); but I only put them on asthe monks do their frocks. Perhaps I am very unworthy of them; at least, I cannot talk toilette as you can with ardour a whole morning and everywhole morning of your life. You will think I am laughing at you; indeedI am not. I envy your faculty of sitting, as I am sure you are sittingnow, in a straw chair on the shore, with a group of _boulevardiers_around you, and a crowd making a double hedge to look at you when it isyour pleasure to pace the planks. My language is involved. I do not envyyou the faculty of doing it, of course; I could do it myself to-morrow. I envy you the faculty of finding amusement in doing it, and findingflattery in the double hedge. "

 * * *

"No doubt a love of nature is a triple armour against self-love. How canI say how right I think your system with these children? You seem not tobelieve me. There is only one thing in which I differ with you; youthink the 'eyes that see' bring content. Surely not! surely not!"

"It depends on what they see. When they are wide open in the woods andfields, when they have been taught to see how the tree-bee forms hercell and the mole her fortress, how the warbler builds his nest for hislove and the water-spider makes his little raft, how the leaf comesforth from the hard stem and the fungi from the rank mould, then I thinkthat sight is content--content in the simple life of the woodland place, and in such delighted wonder that the heart of its own accord goes up inpeace and praise to the Creator. The printed page may teach envy, desire, coveteousness, hatred, but the Book of Nature teachesresignation, hope, willingness to labour and live, submission to die. The world has gone farther and farther from peace since larger andlarger have grown its cities, and its shepherd kings are no more. "

 * * *

She remained still, her hands folded on her knees, her face set asthough it were cast in bronze. The great bedchamber, with its hangingsof pale blue plush and its silver-mounted furniture, was dim and shadowyin the greyness of a midwinter afternoon. Doors opened, here to the bathand dressing chambers, there to the oratory, yonder to the apartments ofSabran. She looked across to the last, and a shudder passed over her; asense of sickness and revulsion came on her. 

She sat still and waited; she was too weak to go farther than this room. She was wrapped in a long loose gown of white satin, lined and trimmedwith sable. There were black bearskins beneath her feet; the atmospherewas warmed by hot air, and fragrant with some bowls full of forcedroses, which her women had placed there at noon. The grey light of thefading afternoon touched the silver scrollwork of the bed, and thesilver frame of one large mirror, and fell on her folded hands and onthe glister of their rings. Her head leaned backward against the highcarved ebony of her chair. Her face was stern and bitterly cold, as thatof Maria Theresa when she signed the loss of Silesia. 

He approached from his own apartments, and came timidly and with a slowstep forward. He did not dare to salute her, or go near to her; he stoodlike a banished man, disgraced, a few yards from her seat. 

Two months had gone by since he had seen her. When he entered he read onher features that he must leave all hope behind. 

Her whole frame shrank within her as she saw him there, but she gave nosign of what she felt. Without looking at him she spoke, in a voicequite firm, though it was faint from feebleness. 

"I have but little to say to you, but that little is best said, notwritten. "

He did not reply; his eyes were watching her with a terrible appeal, avery agony of longing. They had not rested on her for two months. Shehad been near the gates of the grave, within the shadow of death. Hewould have given his life for a word of pity, a touch, a regard--and hedared not approach her!

She dared not look at him. After that first glance, in which there hadbeen so much of horror, of revulsion, she did not once look towards him. Her face had the immutability of a mask of stone; so many wretched daysand haunted nights had she spent nerving herself for this inevitablemoment that no emotion was visible in her; into her agony she had pouredher pride, and it sustained her, as the plaster poured into the drybones at Pompeii makes the skeleton stand erect, the ashes speak. 

"After that which you have told me, " she said, after a moment's silencein which he fancied she must hear the throbbing of his heart, "you mustknow that my life cannot be lived out beside yours. The law gives youmany rights, no doubt, but I believe you will not be so base as toenforce them. "

"I have no rights!" he muttered. "I am a criminal before the law. Thelaw will free you from me, if you choose. "

"I do not choose, " she said coldly; "you understand me ill. I do notcarry my wrongs or my woes to others. What you have told me is knownonly to Prince Vásárhely and to the Countess Brancka. He will be silent;he has the power to make her so. The world need know nothing. Can youthink that I shall be its informant?"

"If you divorce me"---- he murmured. 

A quiver of bitter anger passed over her features, but she retained herself-control. 

"Divorce? What could divorce do for me? Could it destroy the past?Neither Church or Law can undo what you have done. Divorce would make mefeel that in the past I had been your mistress, not your wife, that isall. "

She breathed heavily, and again pressed her hand on her breast. 

"Divorce!" she repeated. "Neither priest nor judge can efface a past asyou clean a slate with a sponge! No power, human or divine, can free_me_, purify _me_, wash your dishonoured blood from your children'sveins. "

She almost lost her self-control; her lips trembled, her eyes were fullof flame, her brow was black with passion. With a violent effort sherestrained herself; invective or reproach seemed to her low and coarseand vile. 

He was silent; his greatest fear, the torture of which had harassed himsleeping and waking ever since he had placed his secret in her hands, was banished at her words. She would seek no divorce--the children wouldnot be disgraced--the world of men would not learn his shame; and yet ashe heard a deeper despair than any he had ever known came over him. Shewas but as those sovereigns of old who scorned the poor tribunals ofman's justice because they held in their own might the power of so muchheavier chastisement. 

"I shall not seek for a legal separation, " she resumed; "that is to say, I shall not, unless you force me to do so to protect myself from you. Ifyou fail to abide by the conditions I shall prescribe, then you willcompel me to resort to any means that may shelter me from your demands. But I do not think you will endeavour to force on me conjugal rightswhich you obtained over me by a fraud. "

All that she desired was to end quickly the torture of this interview, from which her courage had not permitted her to shrink. She had todefend herself because she would not be defended by others, and she onlysought to strike swiftly and unerringly so as to spare herself and himall needless or lingering throes. Her speech was brief, for it seemed toher that no human language held expression deep and vast enough tomeasure the wrong done to her, could she seek to give it utterance. 

She would not have made a sound had any murderer stabbed her body; shewould not now show the death-wound of her soul and honour to this manwho had stabbed both to the quick. Other women would have made theirmoan aloud, and cursed him. The daughter of the Szalras choked down herheart in silence, and spoke as a judge speaks to one condemned by manand God. 

"I wish no words between us, " she said, with renewed calmness. "You knowyour sin; all your life has been a lie. I will keep me and mine backfrom vengeance; but do not mistake--God may pardon you, I never! What Idesired to say to you is that henceforth you shall wholly abandon thename you stole; you shall assign the land of Romaris to the people; youshall be known only as you have been known here of late, as the Countvon Idrac. The title was mine to give, I gave it you; no wrong is donesave to my fathers, who were brave men. "

He remained silent; all excuse he might have offered seemed as if fromhim to her it would be but added outrage. He was her betrayer, and shehad the power to avenge betrayal; naught that she could say or do couldseem unjust or undeserved beside the enormity of her irreparable wrongs. 

"The children?" he muttered faintly, in an unuttered supplication. 

"They are mine, " she said, always with the same unchanging calm that wascold as the frozen earth without. "You will not, I believe, seek toenforce your title to dispute them with me?"

He gave a gesture of denial. 

He, the wrong-doer, could not realise the gulf which his betrayal hadopened betwixt himself and her. On him all the ties of their pastpassion were sweet, precious, unchanged in their dominion. He could notrealise that to her all these memories were abhorred, poisoned, stampedwith ineffable shame; he could not believe that she, who had loved thedust that his feet had brushed, could now regard him as one leprous andaccursed. He was slow to understand that his sin had driven him out ofher life for evermore. 

Commonly it is the woman on whom the remembrance of love has anenthralling power when love itself is traitor; commonly it is the man onwhom the past has little influence, and to whom its appeal is vainlymade; but here the position was reversed. He would have pleaded by it;she refused to acknowledge it, and remained as adamant before it. Hisnerve was too broken, his conscience was too heavily weighted, for himto attempt to rebel against her decisions or sway her judgment. If shehad bidden him go out and slay himself he would gladly have obeyed. 

"Once you said, " he murmured timidly, "that repentance washes out allcrimes. Will you count my remorse as nothing?"

"You would have known no remorse had your secret never been discovered!"

He shrank as from a blow. 

"That is not true, " he said wearily. "But how can I hope you willbelieve me?"

She answered nothing. 

"Once you told me that there was no sin you would not pardon me!" hemuttered. 

She replied:

"We pardon sin; we do not pardon baseness. "

She paused and put her hand to her heart; then she spoke again in thatcold, forced, measured voice, which seemed on his ear as hard andpitiless as the strokes of an iron hammer, beating life out beneath it. 

"You will leave Hohenszalras; you will go where you will; you have therevenues of Idrac. Any other financial arrangements that you may wish tomake I will direct my lawyers to carry out. If the revenues of Idrac beinsufficient to maintain you"----

"Do not insult me--so, " he murmured, with a suffocated sound in hisvoice, as though some hand were clutching at his throat. 

"Insult _you_!" she echoed with a terrible scorn. 

She resumed with the same inflexible calmness, "You must live as becomes the rank due to my husband. The world needsuspect nothing. There is no obligation to make it your confidante. Ifany one were wronged by the usurpation of the name you took it would beotherwise, but as it is you will lose nothing in the eyes of men;Society will not flatter you the less. The world will only believe thatwe are tired of one another, like so many. The blame will be placed onme. You are a brilliant comedian, and can please and humour it. I amknown to be a cold, grave, eccentric woman, a recluse, of whom it willdeem it natural that you are weary. Since you allow that I have theright to separate from you--to deal with you as with a criminal--youwill not seek to recall your existence to me. You will meet myabstinence by the only amends you can make to me. Let me forget--as faras I am able--let me forget that ever you have lived!"

He staggered slightly, as if under some sword-stroke from an unseenhand. A great faintness came upon him. He had been prepared for rage, for reproach, for bitter tears, for passionate vengeance; but thischill, passionless, disdainful severance from him for all eternity hehad never dreamed of; it crept like the cold of frost into his verymarrow; he was speechless and mute with shame. If she had dragged himthrough all the tribunals of the world she would have hurt him andhumiliated him far less. Better all the hooting gibes of the whole earththan this one voice, so cold, so inflexible, so full of utter scorn!

Despite her bodily weakness she rose to her full height, and for thefirst time looked at him. 

"You have heard me, " she said; "now go!"

But instead, blindly, not knowing what he did, he fell at her feet. 

"But you loved me, " he cried, "you loved me so well!"

The tears were coursing down his cheeks. 

She drew the sables of her robe from his touch. 

"Do not recall _that_, " she said, with a bitter smile. "Women of my racehave killed men before now for less outrage than yours has been to me. "

"Kill me!" he cried to her. "I will kiss your hand. "

She was mute. 

He clung to her gown with an almost convulsive supplication. 

"Believe, at least, that _I_ loved _you_!" he cried, beside himself inhis misery and impotence. "Believe that, at the least!"

She turned from him. 

"Sir, I have been your dupe for ten long years; I can be so no more!"

Under that intolerable insult he rose slowly, and his eyes grew blind, and his limbs trembled, but he walked from her, and sought not againeither her pity or her pardon. 

On the threshold he looked back once. She stood erect, one hand restingupon the carved work of her high oak chair; cold, stately, motionless, the furred velvets falling to her feet like a queen's robes. 

He looked, then passed the threshold and closed the door behind him. 

THE END.