The small person placed his boots upon the empty cushion before and regarded them with some benevolence; then he touched his mustache with a comb, which he took from the head of his cane.

"It is surprising, Andy," he said, "how the growth of one's feet bears no proportion to that of his head. Observe those pedals. One of my ancestors must have found a wife in China. They have gained no increase after all these pilgrimages—and I flatter myself that they are in some sort graceful—ay? Now remark my head. What does Hamlet, or somebody, say about the front of Jove? This trip to Italy has actually enlarged the diameter of my head thirteen barleycorns! Thirteen, by measurement!"

The tall gentleman said not a word, but compressed his tall shoulders into the corner of the coach, and muffled his face with his coat-collar and breathed like one sleeping uneasily.

"It has been a cheap trip!" exclaimed the diminutive person, changing the theme; "you have been an invaluable courier, Andy. The most ardent patriot cannot call us extravagant."

"How much money have you left?" echoed the other in a suppressed tone. "Count it. I will then tell you to a sou what will carry us to Paris."

The little person drew a wallet from his side-pocket and enumerated carefully certain circular notes. "Eleven times twenty is two hundred and twenty; twenty-five times two hundred and twenty, five thousand five hundred, plus nine gold louis—total, five thousand seven hundred and twenty-five francs."

One eye only of the large gentleman was visible through the folds of his collar. It rested like a charmed thing upon the roll of gold and paper. It was only an eye, but it seemed to be a whole face, an entire man. It was full of thoughts, of hopes, of acts! Had the little person marked it, thus sinister, and glittering and intense, he would have shrunk as from a burning-glass.

He folded up the wallet, however, and slipped it into his inside-pocket, while the other pushed forward his hat, so that it concealed even the eye, and sat rigid and still in his corner.

"You have not named the fare to Paris."

The tall man only breathed short and hard.

"Don't you recollect?"

"No!"

"I have a 'Galignani' here; perhaps it is advertised. But hallo, Andy!"

The exclamation was loud and abrupt, but the silent person did not move.

"The Confederate Privateer Planter will sail from Dieppe on Tuesday—(that is, to-morrow evening)—she will cruise in the Indian Ocean, if report be true."

The tall man started suddenly and uncovered his face with a quick gesture. It was flushed and earnest now, and he clutched the journal almost nervously, though his voice was yet calm and suppressed.

"To-morrow night, did you say? A cruise on the broad sea—glory without peril, gold without work; I would to God that I were on the Planter's deck, Hugenot!"

"Why not do something for ou-ah cause, Andy?"

"I am to return to Paris for what? To be dunned by creditors, to be marked for a parasite at the hotels, to be despised by men whom I serve, and pitied by men whom I hate. This pirate career suits me. What is society to me, whom it has ostracised? I was a gentleman once—quick at books, pleasing in company, shrewd in business. They say that I have power still, but lack integrity. Be it so! Better a freebooter at sea than upon the land. I have half made up my mind to evil. Hugenot, listen to me! I believe that were I to do one bad, dark deed, it would restore me courage, resolution, energy."

The little gentleman examined the other with some alarm; but just now the teams commenced the ascent of a steep hill, and as he beheld the guard a little way in advance, he forgot the other's earnestness, and raised his lunette.

"Andy," he said, "by my great ancestry! I have seen that man before. Look! the height, the style, the carriage, are familiar. Who is he?"

His co-voyageur was without curiosity; the former pallidness and silentness resumed their dominion over him, and the lesser gentleman settled moodily back to his newspaper.

No word was interchanged for several hours. They passed through shaggy glens, under toppled towers and battlements, by squalid villages, and within the sound of dashing streams. If they descended ever, it was to gain breath for a longer ascent; for now the mountain snows were above them on either side, and the Alps rose sublimely impassable in front. The hawks careened beneath them; the chamois above dared not look down for dizziness, and Hugenot said, at Ariola, that they were taking lunch in a balloon. The manner of Mr. Plade now altered marvellously. It might have been his breakfast that gave him spirit and speech; he sang a merry, bad song, which the rocks echoed back, and all the goitred women at the roadside stopped with their pack burdens to listen. He told a thousand anecdotes. He knew all the story of the pass; how the Swiss, filing through it, had scattered the Milanese; how Suwarrow and Massena had made its sterility fertile with blood.

Hugenot's admiration amounted to envy. He had never known his associate so brilliant, so pleasing; the exaltation was too great, indeed, to arise from any ordinary cause; but Hugenot was not shrewd enough to inquire into the affair. He wearied at length of the talk and of the scene, and when at last they reached the region of perpetual ice, he closed the cabriolet windows, and watched the filtering flakes, and heard the snow crush under the wheels, and dropped into a deep sleep which the other seemed to share.

The clouds around them made the mountains dusky, and the interior of the carriage was quite gloomy. At length the large gentleman turned his head, so that his ear could catch every breath, and he regarded the dim outlines of the lesser with motionless interest. Then he took a straw from the litter at his feet, and, bending forward, touched his comrade's throat. The other snored measuredly for a while, but the titillation startled him at length, and he beat the air in his slumber. When the irritation ceased he breathed tranquilly again, and then the first-named placed his hand softly into the sleeper's pocket. He drew forth the wallet with steady fingers, and as coolly emptied it of its contents. These he concealed in the leg of his boot, but replaced the book where he had found it. For a little space he remained at rest, leaning against the back of the carriage, with his head bent upon his breast and his hands clenched like one at bay and in doubt.

The slow advance of the teams and the frequent changes of direction—sometimes so abrupt as almost to reverse the cabriolet—advised him that they were climbing the mountain by zigzags or terraces. He knew that they were in the Val Tremola, or Trembling Way, and he shook his comrade almost fiercely, as if relieved by some idea which the place suggested.

"Hugenot," he said, "rouse up! The grandeur of the Alps is round about us; you must not miss this scene. Come with me! Quit the vehicle! I know the place, and will exhibit it."

The other, accustomed to obey, leaped to the ground immediately, and followed through the snow, ankle deep, till they passed the diligence, which kept in advance. The guard could not be seen—he might have resorted to the interior; and the two pedestrians at once left the roadway, climbing its elbows by a path more or less distinctly marked, so that after a half hour they were perhaps a mile ahead. The agility of Mr. Plade during this episode was the marvel of his companion. He scaled the rocks like a goatherd, and his foot-tracks in the snow were long, like the route of a giant. The ice could not betray the sureness of his stride; the rare, thin atmosphere was no match for his broad, deep chest. He shouted as he went, and tossed great boulders down the mountain, and urged on his flagging comrade by cheer and taunt and invective. No madman set loose from captivity could be guilty of so extravagant, exaggerated elation.

At last they stood upon a little bridge spanning a chasm like a cobweb. A low parapet divided it from the awful gulf. On the other side the mountain lifted its jagged face, clammy with icicles, and far over all towered the sterile peaks, above the reach of clouds or lightnings, forever in the sunshine—forever desolate.

"Stand fast!" said the leader, suddenly cold and calm. "Uncover, that the snow-flakes may give us the baptism of nature! There is no human God at this vast height; they worship Him in the flat world below. Give me your hand and look down! You are not dizzy? One should be free from the baseness of fear, standing here upon St. Gothard."

"If I had no qualm before," said Hugenot, "your words would make me shudder."

"You have heard of the 'valley of the shadow'? Was your ideal like this? I told you in Florence of the great poet Dante. You have here at a glance more beauty and dread conjoined than even his mad fancy could conjure up. That is the Tessino, braining itself in cataracts. Yonder, where the clouds make a golden lake, laving forests of firs, lies Italy as the Goths first beheld it, with their spears quivering. See how the eagles beat the mist beneath!—that was a symbol that the Roman standards should be rent."

The other, half in charm, half in awe, listened like one spell-bound, with his fingers tingling and his eyeballs throbbing.

"This silence," said the elder, "is more freezing to me than the bitterness of the cold. The very snow-flakes are dumb; nothing makes discord but the avalanche; it is always twilight; men lie down in the snows to die, but they are numb and cannot cry."

"Be still," replied the other, "your talk is strangely out of place. I feel as if my ancestors in their shrouds were beside me."

"You are not wrong," cried the greater, raising his voice till it became shrill and terrible; "your last moments are passing; that yawning ravine is your grave. I told you an hour ago how one bad, dark deed would redeem me. It is done! I have robbed you, and your death is essential to my safety."

Hugenot sank upon the snow of the parapet, speechless and almost lifeless. He clasped his hands, but could not raise his head; the whole scene faded from his eye. If he had been weak before, he was impotent now.

The strong man held him aloft by the shoulders with an iron grasp, and his cold eye gave evidence to the horrible validity of his words.

"I do not lie or play, Hugenot," he said, in the same clear voice; "I have premeditated this deed for many weeks. You are doomed! Only a miracle can help you. The dangers of the pass will be my exculpation; it will be surmised that you fell into the ravine. There will be no marks of violence upon you but those of the sharp stones. We have been close comrades. Only Omniscience can have seen premeditation. I have brought you into this wilderness to slay you!"

The victim had recovered sufficiently to catch a part of this confession. His lips framed only one reply—the dying man's last straw:

"After death!" he said; "have you thought of that?"

"Ay," answered the other, "long and thoroughly. Phantoms, remorses and hells—they have all had their argument. I take the chances."

It was only a moment's struggle that ensued. The wretch clung to the parapet, and called on God and mercy. He was lifted on high in the strong arms, and whirled across the barrier. The other looked grimly at the falling burden. He wondered if a dog or a goat would have been so long falling. The distance was profound indeed; but to the murderer's sanguine thought the body hung suspended in the air. It would not sink. The clouds seemed to bear it up for testimony; the cold cliffs held aloft their heads for justice; the snow-flakes fell like the ballots of jurymen, voting for revenge—all nature seemed roused to animation by this one act. An icicle dropped with a keen ring like a knife, and the stream below pealed a shrill alarum.

He had done the bad, dark deed. Was he more resolute or courageous now that he had taken blood upon his hands and shadow upon his soul?

The body disappeared at length, carried downward by the torrent; but a wild bird darted after it, as if to reveal the secret of its concealment, and then a noise like a human footfall crackled in the snow.

"I like a man who takes the chances," said a cold, hard voice; "but Chance, Andy Plade, decides against you to-day."



IX.

THE ONE GOOD DEED OF A PRIVATEERSMAN.

The murderer turned from his reverie with hands extended and trembling; the snow was not more bleached than his bloodless face, and his feet grew slippery and infirm. An alcove, which he had not marked, was hewn in the brow of the precipice. It had been intended to shelter pilgrims from the wind and the snow; and there, wrapped in his buff garments, whose hue, assimilating to that of the rock, absorbed him from detection, stood a witness to the deed—the guard to the diligence—none other than Auburn Risque.

For an instant only the accused shrank back. Then his body grew short and compact; he was gathering himself up for a life-struggle.

"Hold off!" said Risque, in his old, hard, measured way; "we guards go armed; if you move, I shall scatter your brains in the snow; if I miss you, a note of this whistle will summon my postilions."

The cold face was never more emotionless; he held a revolver in his hand, and kept the other in his blank, spotted eye, as if locating the vital parts with the end to bring him down at a shot.

"You do not play well," said Risque at length, when the other, ghastly white, sat speechless upon the parapet; "if you were the student of chance, that I have been, you would know that at murder the odds are always against you!"

"You will not betray me?" pleaded Plade; "so inveterate a gamester can have no conventional ideas of life or crime. I am ready to pay for your discretion with half my winnings."

"I am a gambler," said Risque, curtly; "not an assassin! I always give my opponents fair show. But I will not touch blood-money."

"What fair show do you give me?"

"Two hours' start. I am responsible for my passengers. Go on, unharmed, if you will. But at Hospice I shall proclaim you. Every moment that you falter spins the rope for your gallows!"

Plade did not dally, but took to flight at once. He climbed by the angles of the terraces, and saw the diligence far below tugging up the circuitous road. He ran at full speed; no human being was abroad besides, but yet there were other footfalls in the snow, other sounds, as of a man breathing hard and pursued upon the lonely mountain. The fugitive turned—once, twice, thrice; he laughed aloud, and shook his clenched hand at the sky. Still the flat, dead tramp followed close behind, and the pace seemed not unfamiliar. It could not be—his blood ceased to circulate, and stood freezing at the thought—was it the march, the tread of Hugenot?

He dropped a loud curse, like a howl, and kept upon his way. The footfalls were as swift; he saw their impressions at his heels—prints of a small, lithe, human foot, made by no living man. He shut his eyes and his ears, but the consciousness remained, the inexplicable phenomenon of some invisible but familiar thing which would not leave him; which made its register as it passed; which no speed could outstrip, no argument exorcise.

Was it a sick fancy, a probed heart, or did the phantom of the dead man indeed give chase?

Ah! there is but one class of folks whose faith in spirits nothing can shake—the guilty, the bloody-handed.

He came to a perturbed rest at the huge, half-hospitable Hospice, to the enthusiasm of the postilions.

"Will the gentleman have a saddle-horse?"

"A chariot?"

"A cabriolet?"

"Ten francs to Andermatt!"

"Thirty francs to Fluelen!"

"One hundred francs," cried Plade, "for the fleetest pony to Andermatt. Ten francs to the postilion who can saddle him in two minutes. My mother is dying in Lyons."

He climbed one of the dark flights of stairs, and an old, uncleanly monk gave him a glass of Kerschwasser. He descended to the stables, and cursed the Swiss lackeys into speed. He gave such liberal largess that there was an involuntary cheer, and as he galloped away the great diligence appeared in sight to rouse his haste to frenzy.

The telegraph kept above him—a single line; he knew the tardiness of foot when pursued by the lightning. In one place, the conductor, wrenched from the insulators, dropped almost to the ground. There was a strap upon his saddle; he reined his nag to the side of the road, and, making a knot about the wire, dashed off at a bound; the iron snapped behind; his triumphant laugh pealed yet on the twilight, when the cries of his pursuers rang over the fields of snow. They were aroused; he was fleetly mounted, but they came behind in sledges.

The night closed over the road as he caught the wizard bells. The moonlight turned the peaks to fire. The dark firs shook down their burdens of snow. There were cries of wild beasts from the ravines below. The post-houses were red with firelight. The steed floundered through the snow-drifts driven by blow and halloo. It was a fearful ride upon the high Alps; the sublimity of nature bowed down to the mystery of crime!

Bright noon, on the third day succeeding, saw the fugitive emerge from the railway station at Dieppe. He had escaped the Swiss frontier with his life, but had failed to make sure that escape by reaching the harbor at the appointed time. Broken in spirit, grown old already, he faltered toward the town, and, stopping on the fosse-bridge, looked sorrowfully across the shipping in the dock. Something caught his regard amid the cloud of tri-color; he looked again, shading his eye with a tremulous palm. There could not be a doubt—it was the Confederate standard—the Stars and Bars.

The Planter had been delayed; she waited with steam up and an expectant crew; her slender masts leaned against the sky; her anchor was lifted; a knot of idlers watched her from the quay.

In a moment Mr. Plade was on board. He asked for the commander, and a short, gristly, sunburnt personage being indicated, he introduced himself with that plausible speech which had wooed so many to their fall.

"I am a Charlestonian," said Plade; "a Yankee insulted me at the Grand Hotel; we met in the Bois de Boulogne, and I ran him through the body. His friends in Paris conspire against my life. I ask to save it now, only to die on your deck, that it may be worth something to my country."

They went below, and the privateer put the applicant through a rigid examination.

"This vessel must get to sea to night," he said. "I will not hazard trouble with the French authorities by keeping you here. Spend the afternoon ashore; we sail at eleven o'clock precisely; if at that time you come aboard, I will take you."

Plade protested his gratitude, but the skipper motioned him to peace.

"You seem to be a gentleman," he added; "if I find you so, you shall be my purser. But, hark!" he looked keenly at the other, and laid his hand upon his throat—"I am under the espionage of the Yankee ambassador. There are spies who seek to join my crew for treasonable ends; if I find you one of these, you shall hang to my yard-arm!"

The felon walked into the dim old city, and seated himself in a wine-shop. Some market folks were chanting in patois, and their light-heartedness enraged him. He turned up a crooked street, and stopped before an ancient church, grotesque with broken buttresses, pinnacles, and gargoyles. The portal was wide open, and, as he entered, some scores of school-children burst suddenly into song. It seemed to him an accusation, shouted by a choir of angels.

At the end of the city, facing the sea, rose a massive castle. He scaled its stairs, and passed through the courtyard, and, crossing the farther moat, stood upon a grassy hill—once an outwork—whence the blue channel was visible half way to England.

A knot of soldiers came out to regard him, and his fears magnified their curiosity; he ran down the parapet, to their surprise, and re-entered the town by a roundabout way. "I will take a chamber," he said, "and shun observation."

An old woman, in a starched cap, who talked incessantly, showed him a number of rooms in a great stone building. He chose a garret among the chimney-stacks, and lit a fire, and ordered a newspaper and a bottle of brandy. He sat down to read in loneliness. As he surmised, the murder was printed among the "Faits Divers;" it gave his name and the story of the tragedy. His chair rattled upon the tiles as he read, and the tongs, wherewith he touched the fire, clattered in his nervous fingers.

The place was not more composed than himself; the flame was the noisiest in the world; it crackled and crashed and made horrible shadows on the walls. There were rats under the floor whose gnawings were like human speech, and the old house appeared to settle now and then with a groan as if unwilling to shelter guilt. As he looked down upon the clustering roofs of the town they seemed wonderfully like a crowd of people gazing up at his retreat. All the dormer-windows were so many pitiless eyes, and the chimney-pots were guns and cannon to batter down his eyrie.

When night fell upon the city and sea, his fancies were not less alarming. He could not rid himself of the idea that the dead man was at his side. In vain he called upon his victim to appear, and laughed till the windows shook. It was there, there, always THERE! He did not see it—but it was there! He felt its breath, its eye, its influence. It leaned across his shoulder; it gossiped with the shadows; it laid its hand heavily upon his pocket where lay the unholy gold. Some prints of saints and the Virgin upon the wall troubled him; their faces followed him wherever he turned; he tore them down at length, and tossed them in the fire, but they blazed with so great flame that he cried out for fear.

The town-bells struck the hours; how far apart were the strokes! They tolled rather than pealed, as if for an execution, and the lamps of some passing carriages made a journey as of torches upon the ceiling.

After nine o'clock there was a heavy tread upon the stairs. It kept him company, and he was glad of its coming; but it drew so close, at length, that he stood upright, with the cold sweat upon his forehead.

The steps halted at his threshold; the door swung open; a corporal and a soldier stood without, and the former saluted formally:

"Monsieur the stranger, will remain in his chamber under guard. I grieve to say that he is an object of grave suspicion. Au revoir!"

The corporal retired without waiting for a reply; the soldier entered, and, leaning his musket against the wall, drew a chair before the door and sat down. The firelight fell upon his face after a moment, and revealed to Mr. Plade his old associate, Pisgah!

The former uttered a cry of hope and surprise; the soldier waved him back with a menace.

"I know you," he said; "but I am here upon duty; besides, I have no friendship with a murderer."

"We are both victims of a mistake! This accusation is not true. Will you take my hand?"

"I am forbidden to speak upon guard," answered Pisgah, sullenly. "Resume your chair."

"At least join me in a glass."

"There is blood in it," said Pisgah.

"I swear to you, no! Let me ring for your old beverage, absinthe."

The soldier halted, irresolutely; the liquor came before he could refuse. When once his lips touched the vessel, Mr. Plade knew that there was still a chance for life.

In an hour Mr. Pisgah was impotent from intoxication; his musket was flung down the stairway, the door was bolted upon him, and the prisoner was gone.

He gained the Planter's deck as the screw made its first revolution; they turned the channel-piles with a good-by gun; the motley crew cheered heartily as they cleared the mole.

The pirate was at sea on her mission of plunder—the murderer was free!

The engines stopped abreast the city; the steamer lay almost motionless, for there were lights upon the beach; a shrill "Ahoy!" broke over the intervening waters, and the dip of oars indicated some pursuit. The crew, half drunken, rallied to the edge of the vessel; knives glittered amid the confusion of oaths and the click of pistols, while Mr. Plade hastened to the skipper's side, and urged him for pity and mercy to hasten seaward.

The other motioned him back, coldly, and the boatswain piped all hands upon deck. Lafitte nor Kidd never looked down such desperate faces as this gristly privateer, when his buccaneers were around him.

"Seamen," he spoke aloud, "you are afloat! Gold and glory await you; you shall glut yourselves by the ruin of your enemy, and count your plunder by the light of his burning merchantmen."

The knives flickered in the torchlight, and a cheer, like the howl of the damned, went up.

"On the brink of such fortune, you find yourselves imperilled; treason is with you; this pursuit, which we attend, is a part of its programme! There is, within the sound of my voice, a spy!—a Yankee!"

The weapons rang again; the desperadoes pressed forward, demanding with shrieks and imprecations that the man should be named.

"He is here," answered the captain, turning full upon the astonished fugitive. "He came to me with a story of distress. I pitied him, and gave him shelter; but I telegraphed to Paris to test his veracity, and I find that he lied. No man has been slain in a duel as he states. I believe him to be a Federal emissary, and he is in our power."

A dozen rough hands struck Plade to the deck; he staggered up, with blood upon his face, and called Heaven to witness that he was no traitor.

"Did you speak the truth to me to-day?" cried the accuser.

"I did not; had I done so, you would have refused me relief."

"What are you then? Speak!"

The murderer cowered, with a face so blanched that the blood ceased to flow at its gashes.

"I cannot, I dare not tell!" he muttered.

The skipper made a sign to an attendant. A rope from the yard-arm was flung about the felon's neck, and made fast in a twinkling. He struggled desperately, but the fierce buccaneers held him down; his clothing was rent, and his hairs dishevelled; he made three frantic struggles for speech; but the loud cheers mocked his words as they brandished their cutlasses in his eyes.

Then began that strange lifetime of reminiscence; that trooping of sins and cruelties, in sure, unbroken continuity, through the reeling brain; that moment of years; that great day of judgment, in a thought; that last winkful of light, which flashes back upon time, and makes its frailties luminous. And, higher than all offences, rose that of the fair young wife deserted abroad, left to the alternatives of shame or starvation. Her wail came even now, from the bed of the crowded hospital, to follow him into the world of shadows.

"Monsieur the Commander," hailed the spokesman in the launch, "the government of his Imperial Majesty does not wish to interpose any obstacle to the departure of the Confederate cruiser. It is known, however, that a person guilty of an atrocious crime is concealed on board. In this paper, Monsieur the Capitaine will find all the specifications. The name of the person, Plade. The crime of the person, murder, with premeditation. The giving up of said person is essential to the departure of the cruiser from his Imperial Majesty's waters."

There was blank silence on the deck of the privateer; the torches in the launch threw a glare upon the water and sky. They lit up something struggling between both at the tip of the rocking yard-arm. It was the effigy of a man, bound and suspended, around which swept timidly the bats and gulls, and the sea wind beat it with a shrill, jubilant cry.

"I have done justice unconsciously," said the privateer; "may it be remembered for me when I shall do injustice consciously!"



X.

THE SURVIVING COLONISTS.

The catastrophe of the Colony and the episode having been attained, we have only to leave Mr. Pisgah in Algiers, whither court-martial consigned him, with the penalty of hard labor, and Mr. Risque on the stage route he was so eminently fitted to adorn. The unhappy Freckle continued in the prison of Clichy, and, having nothing else to do, commenced the novel process of thinking. The prison stood high up on Clichy Hill, walled and barred and guarded, like other jails, but within it a fair margin of liberty was allowed the bankrupts, just sufficient to make their fate terrible by temptation. Some good soul had endowed it with a library; newspapers came every day; a cafe was attached to it, where spirituous liquors were prohibited, to the wrath of the dry throats and raging thirsts of the captives; there was a garden behind it, and a billiard saloon, but these luxuries were not gratuitous; poor Freckle could not even pay his one sou per diem to cook his rations, so that the Prisoners' Relief Association had to make him a present of it. He spent his time between his bare, cheerless bedroom and the public hall. There were many Americans in the place; but none of them were friendly with him when he was found to have no cash. Yet he heard them speak together of their countrymen who had lain in the same jail years before. Yonder was the room of Horace Greeley, incarcerated for a debt which was not his own; here the blood-stains of the Pennsylvania youth who looked out of the window, heedless of warning, and was shot dead by the guard; there the ancient chair, in which Hallidore, the Creole, sat so often, possessor of a million francs, but too obstinate to pay his tailor's bill and go free. While Freckle thought of these, it was suggested to him that he was a very wicked man. The tuitions of his patriarchal father came to mind; he was seen on his knees, to the infinite amusement of the other debtors, who were, however, quite too polite to laugh in his face, and he no longer staked his ration of wine at cards, whereby he had commonly lost it, but held long conversations with an ardent old priest who visited the jail. The priest gave Freckle breviaries and catechisms, and told him that there was no peace of mind outside of the apostolic fold.

So Freckle diligently embraced the ancient Romish faith, renounced the tenets of his plain old sire as false and heretical, and earnestly prepared himself to enter the priesthood.

In this frame of mind he was found by Mr. Simp, who had unexpectedly returned to Paris, and, finding himself again prosperous, came to release Freckle from the toils of Clichy.

The latter waved him away. "I wish to know none of you," he said. "I shall serve out this term, and never again speak to an American abroad."

He was firm, and achieved his purpose. Enthusiasm often answers for brains, and Freckle's religious zeal made him a changed man. He entered a Jesuits' school after his discharge, and in another fashion became as stern, severe, and self-denying as had been his father. He sometimes saw his old comrade, Simp, driving down the Champs Elysees as Freckle came from church in Paris, but the gallant did not recognize the young priest in his dark gown and hose, and wide-rimmed hat.

They followed their several directions, and in the end, with the lessening fortunes of the Confederacy, grew more moody, and yet more ruined by the consciousness that after once suffering the agony of expatriation, they had not improved the added chance to make of themselves men, not Colonists.

It is not the pleasantest phase of our human nature to depict, but since we have essayed it, let it close with its own surrounding shadow.

If we have given no light touch of womanhood to relieve its sombre career, we have failed to be artistic in order to be true.

But that which made the Colonists weak has passed away. There are no longer slaves at home—may there be no exiles abroad!



LITTLE GRISETTE.

Little Grisette, you haunt me yet; My passion for you was long ago, Before my head was heavy with snow, Or mine eye had lost its lustre of jet. In the dim old Quartier Latin we met; We made our vows one night in June, And all our life was honeymoon; We did not ask if it were sin, We did not go to kirk to know, We only loved and let the world Hum on its pelfish way below; Marked from our castle in the air, How pigmy its triumphal cars: Eight stories from the entry stair, But near the stars!

Little Grisette, rich or in debt, We were too fond to chide or sigh— Never so poor that I could not buy A sweet, sweet kiss from my little Grisette. If I could nothing gain or get, By hook, or crook, or song, or story, Along the starving road to glory, I marvelled how your nimble thimble, As to a tune, danced fast and fleeting, And stopped my pen to catch the music, But only heard my heart a-beating; The quaint old roofs and gables airy Flung down the light for you to wear it, And made my love a queen in faery, To haunt my garret.

Little Grisette, the meals you set Were sweeter to me than banquet feast; Your face was a blessing fit for a priest, At your smile the candle went out in a pet; The wonderful chops I shall never forget! If the wine was a trifle too sharp or rank, We kissed each time before we drank. The old gilt clock, aye wrong, was swinging The waxen floor your feet reflected; And dear Beranger's chansons singing, You tricked at picquet till detected. You fill my pipe;—is it your eyes Whereat I light your cigarette? On all but me the darkness lies And my Grisette!

Little Grisette, the soft sunset Lingered a long while, that we might stay To mark the Seine from the breezy quay Around the bridges foam and fret; How came it that your eyes were wet When I ambitiously would be A man renowned across the sea? I told you I should come again— It was but half way round the globe— To bring you diamonds for your faith, And for your gray a silken robe: You were more wise than lovers are; I meant, sweetheart, to tell you true, I said a tearful "Au revoir;" You said, "Adieu!"

Little Grisette, we both regret, For I am wedded more than wived; Those careless days in thought revived But teach me I cannot forget. Perhaps old age must pay the debt Young sin contracted long ago— I only know, I only know, That phantoms haunt me everywhere By busy day, in peopled gloam— They rise between me and my prayer, They mar the holiness of home! My wife is proud, my boy is cold, I dare not speak of what I fret: 'Tis my fond youth with thee I fold, Little Grisette!



MARRIED ABROAD.

AN AMERICAN ROMANCE OF THE QUARTIER LATIN.



PART I.

TEMPTATION.

To say that Ralph Flare was "lonesome" would convey a feeble idea of his condition. Four months in England had gone by wearily enough; but in this great city of Paris, where he might as well have had no tongue at all, for the uses he could put it to, he pined and chafed—and finally swore.

An oath, if not relief in itself, conduces to that effect, and it happened in this case that a stranger heard it.

"You are English," said the stranger, turning shortly upon Ralph Flare.

"I am not," replied that youth, "I am an American."

"Then we are countrymen," cried the other. "Have you dwelt long in the Hotel du Hibou?"

Ralph Flare stated that he hadn't and that he had, and that he was bored and sick of it, and had resolved to go back to the Republic, and fling away his life in its armies.

"Pooh! pooh!" shouted the other, "I see your trouble—you have no acquaintances. It is six o'clock; come with me to dinner, and you shall know half of Paris, men and women."

They filed down the tortuous Rue Jacob, now thrice gloomy by the closing shadows of evening, and turning into the Rue de Seine, stopped before the doorway of a little painted boutique, whereon was written "Cremery du Quartier Latin."

A tall, sallow, bright-eyed Frenchman was seated at a fragment of counter within the smallest apartment in the world, and addressing this man as "Pere George" the stranger passed through a second sash doorway and introduced Ralph Flare to the most miscellaneous and democratic assemblage that he had ever beheld in his life.

Two long yellow tables reached lengthwise down a long, narrow salon, the floor whereof was made of tiles, and the light whereof fizzed and flamed from two unruly burners. A door at the farther end opened upon a cook-room, and the cook, a scorched and meagre woman, was standing now in the firelight, talking in a high key, as only a Frenchwoman can talk.

Then there was Madame George, fat and handsome, and gossipy likewise, with a baby, a boy, and a daughter; and the patrons of the place, twenty or more in number, were eating and laughing and all speaking at the same time, so that Ralph Flare was at first stunned and afterward astonished.

His new acquaintance, Terrapin, went gravely around the table, shaking hands with every guest, and Ralph was wedged into the remotest corner, with Terrapin upon his right, and upon his left a creature so naive and petite that he thought her a girl at first, but immediately corrected himself and called her a child.

Terrapin addressed her as Suzette, and stated that his friend Ralph was a stranger and quite solitary; whereat Suzette turned upon him a pair of soft, twinkling eyes, and laughed very much as a peach might do, if it were possible for a peach to laugh. He could only say a horrible bon jour, and make the superfluous intimation that he could not speak French; and when Madame George gave him his choice of a dozen unpronounceable dishes, he looked so utterly blank and baffled that Suzette took the liberty of ordering dinner for him.

"You won't get the run of the language, Flare," said Terrapin, carelessly, "until you find a wife. A woman is the best dictionary."

"You mean, I suppose," said Flare, "a wife for a time."

Little Suzette was looking oddly at him as he faced her, and when Ralph blushed she turned quietly to her potage and gave him a chance to remark her.

She had dark, smooth hair, closing over a full, pale forehead, and her shapely head was balanced upon a fair, round neck. There was an alertness in her erect ear, and open nostril, and pointed brows which indicated keen perception and comprehension; yet even more than this generic quickness, without which she could not have been French, the gentleness of Suzette was manifest.

Ralph thought to himself that she must be good. It was the face of a sweet sister or a bright daughter, or one of those school-children with whom he had played long ago. And withal she was very neat. If any commandment was issued especially to the French, it enjoined tidiness; but this child was so quietly attired that her cleanliness seemed a matter of nature, not of command. Her cheap coral ear-drops and the thin band of gold upon her white finger could not have been so fitting had they been of diamonds; and her tresses, inclosed in a fillet of beads, were tied in a breadth of blue ribbon which made a cunning lover's-knot above. A plain collar and wristbands, a bright cotton dress and dark apron, and a delicate slipper below—these were the components of a picture which Ralph thought the loveliest and pleasantest and best that he had ever known.

In his own sober city of the Middle States he would have been ashamed to connect with these innocent features a doubt, a light thought, a desire. Yet here in France, where climate, or custom, or man had changed the relations though not the nature of woman, he did but as the world, in blending with Suzette's tranquil face a series of ideas which he dared not associate with what he had called pure, beautiful, or happy.

Now and then they spoke together, unintelligibly of course, but very merrily, and Ralph's appetite was that of the great carnivora; potage, beef, mutton, pullet, vanished like waifs, and then came the salad, which he could not make, so that Suzette helped him again with her sprightly white fingers, contriving so marvellous a dish that Ralph thought her a little magician, and wanted to eat salad till daybreak.

"Now for the cards!" cried Terrapin, when they had finished the cafe and the eau-de-vie; and as the parties ranged themselves about the greater table, Terrapin, who knew everybody, gave their names and avocations.

"That is Boetia, a journalist on the Siecle; you will observe that he smokes his cigars quite down to the stump. The little man beside him, with a blouse, is Haynau, fellow of the College of Beaux Arts—dead-broke, as usual; and his friend, the sallow chap, is Moise, whose father died last week, leaving him ten thousand francs. Moise, you will see, has a wife, Feefine, though I suspect him of bigamy; and the tall girl, with hair like midnight and a hard voice, is at present unmarried. Those four fellows and their dames are students of medicine. They have one hundred francs a month apiece, and keep house upon it."

"And Suzette," said Ralph Flare, impatiently.

"Oh, she is a couturiere, a dressmaker, but just now a clerk at a glover's. She has dwelt sagely, generally speaking. She breakfasts upon five sous; a roll, cafe, and a bunch of grapes—her dinner costs eighty centimes, and she makes a franc and a half a day, leaving enough to pay her room-rent."

"It is a little sum—seven dollars and a half a month—how is the girl to dress?"

Terrapin shrugged his shoulders, but said nothing.

They played "ramps," an uproarious game; and Suzette was impetuous and noisy as the rest, with brightened cheeks and eyes and a clear, silvery voice. The stake was a bottle of Bordeaux. Few women play cards honestly, and Suzette was the first to go out; but seeing that Ralph floundered and lost continually, she gave him her attention, looking over his hand, and talking for him, and counting with so dexterous deceit that he escaped also, while Terrapin paid for the wine.

It was not the most reputable amusement in the world; but the hours were winged, and midnight came untimely. Suzette tied on a saucy brown flat streaming with ribbons, and bade them good-night, ending with Ralph, in whose palm her little fingers lay pulsing an instant, bringing the blood to his hand.

How mean the cremery and its patrons seemed now that she was gone! The great clamp at the portal of his hotel sounded very ghostly as he knocked; the concierge was a hideous old man in gown and nightcap.

"Toujours seul, monsieur," he said, with an ugly grin.

"What does that mean, Terrapin?" said Ralph.

"He says that you always come home alone."

"How else should I come?" said Ralph, dubiously.

"How, indeed?" answered Terrapin.

It was without doubt a dim old pile—the Hotel du Hibou. What murderers, and thieves, and Jacobins might not have ascended the tiles of the grand stairway? There was a cumbrous mantel in his chamber, funereal with griffins, and there were portraits with horribly profound eyes. The sofa and the chairs were huge; the deep window-hangings were talking together in a rustling, mocking way; while the bed in its black recess seemed so very long and broad and high for one person, that Ralph sat down at the stone table, too lonely or too haunted to sleep.

Would not even this old grave be made merry with sunlight, if little Suzette were here?

He opened the book of familiar French phrases, and began to copy some of them. He worked feverishly, determinedly, for quite a time. Then he read the list he had made, half aloud. It was this:

"Good-morning, my pretty one!"

"Will you walk with me?"

"May I have your company to dinner?"

"What is your name?"

"I dare say you laugh at my pronunciation."

"I am lonely in Paris."

"Are you?"

"You ought to see my chambers."

"Let me buy you a bracelet!"

"I love you!"

Ralph's voice stopped suddenly. There were deep echoes in the great room, which made him thrill and shudder. How still and terrible were the silence and loneliness!

A pang, half of guilt, half of fear, went keenly to his heart. It seemed to him that his mother was standing by his shoulder, pointing with her thin, tremulous fingers to the writing beneath him, and saying:

"My boy, what does this mean?"

He held it in the candle-flame, and thought he felt better when it was burned; but he could not burn all those thoughts of which the paper was only a copy.



PART II.

POSSESSION.

If the cremery had seemed lonely by gaslight, what must Ralph Flare have said of it next morning, as he sat in his old place and watched the ouvriers at breakfast? They came in, one by one, with their baton of brown bread, and called for two sous' worth of coffee and milk. The men wore blouses of blue and white, and jested after the Gallic code with the sewing-girls. This bread and coffee, and a pear which they should eat at noon, would give them strength to labor till nightfall brought its frugal repast. Yet they were happy as crickets, and a great deal more noisy.

Here is little Suzette, smiling and skipping, and driving her glances straight into Ralph Flare's heart.

"Good-day, sir," she cries, and takes a chair close by him, after the manner of a sparrow alighting. She smooths back her pure wristbands, disclosing the grace of the arm, and as she laughs in Ralph's face he knows what she is saying to herself; it is more doubtful that he loves her than that she knows it.

"Peut-etre, monsieur, vous-avez besoin des gants?"

She gave him the card of her boutique, and laughed like a sunbeam playing on a rivulet, and went out singing like the witch that she was.

"I don't want gloves," said Ralph Flare; "I won't go to her shop."

But he asked Pere George the direction, notwithstanding; and though his conscience seemed to be blocking up the way—a tangible, visible, provoking conscience—he put his feet upon it and shut his lips, and found the place.

Ralph Flare has often remarked since—for he is quite an artist now—that of all scenes in art or nature that boutique was to him the rarest. He has tried to put it into color—the miniature counter, the show-case, the background of boxes, each with a button looking mischievously at him, or a glove shaking its forefinger, or a shapely pair of hose making him blush, and the daintiest child in the world, flushing and flirting and gossiping before him; but the sketch recalls matters which he would forget, his hands lose command, something makes his eye very dim, and he lays aside his implements, and takes a long walk, and wears a sober face all that day.

We may all follow up the sequence of a young man's thoughts in doing a strange wrong for the first time. If Ralph's passions of themselves could not mislead him, there were not lacking arguments and advisers to teach him that this was no offence, or that the usage warranted the sin. He became acquainted, through Terrapin, with dozens of his countrymen; the youngest and the oldest and the most estimable had their open attachments. So far as he could remark, the married and the unmarried tradesmen's wives in Paris were nearly equal in consideration. How could he become perfect in the language without some such incentive and associate?

His income was not considerable, but they told him that to double his expenses was certain economy. He was very lonely, and he loved company. His age was that at which the affections and the instincts alike impel the man to know more of woman—the processes of her mind, her capacities, her emotions, the idiosyncrasies which divided her from his own sex.

Hitherto he had been chaste, though once when he had confessed it to Terrapin, that incredulous person said something about the marines, and repeated it as a good joke; he felt, indeed, that he was not entirely manly. He had half a doubt that he was worthy to walk with men, else why had not his desires, like theirs, been stronger than his virtue; and had not the very feebleness of desire proved also a feebleness of power? But, more than all, he had a weakness for Suzette.

There was old Terrapin, with bonnets and dresses in his wardrobe, and a sewing-basket on his mantel, and with his own huge boots outside the door a pair of tapering gaiters, and in his easy-chair a little being to sing and chatter and mix his punch and make his cigarettes. Ah! how much more entrancing would be Ralph's chamber with Suzette to garnish it! He would make a thousand studies of her face; she should be his model, his professor, his divinity! What was gross in her he would refine; what dark he would make known. They would walk together by the river side, into the parks, into the open country. He would know no regrets for the friends across the sea. Europe would become beautiful to him, and his art would find inspiration from so much loveliness. No indissoluble tie would bind them, to make kindness a duty and love necessity. No social tyranny should prescribe where he should visit, and where she should not. The hues of the picture deepened and brightened as he imagined it. He was resolved to do this thing, though a phantom should come to his bedside every night, and every shadow be his accusation.

He committed to memory some phrases of French; Terrapin was his interpreter, and they went together—those three and a sober cocher—to the Bois de Boulogne. Terrapin stated to Suzette in a shockingly informal way that Ralph loved her and would give her a beautiful chamber and relieve her from the drudgery of the glove-shop.

They were passing down the broad, gravelled drive, with the foliage above them edged with moonlight, the mock cataract singing musically below, and the cocher, half asleep, nodding and slashing his horses. And while Terrapin turned his head and made himself invisible in cigar-smoke, Ralph folded Suzette to his breast, and kissed her once so demonstratively that the cocher awoke with a spring and nearly fell off the box, but was quite too much of a cocher to turn and investigate the matter.

That was the ceremony, and that night the nuptials. Few young couples make a better commencement. She gave him a list of her debts, and he paid them. They removed from Ralph's dim quarters to a cheap and cheerful chamber upon the new Boulevard. It was on the fifth floor; the room was just adapted for so little a couple. Superficially observed, the furniture resolved itself into an enormous clock and a monstrously fine mirror; but after a while you might remark four small chairs and a great one, a bureau and a wardrobe, a sofa and a canopied bed; and just without the two gorgeously curtained windows lay a cunning balcony, where they could sit of evenings, with the old ruin of the Hotel Cluny beneath them, the towers of Notre Dame in the middle ground, and at the horizon the beautifully wooded hill of Pere la Chaise.

Suzette had tristful eyes when they rested upon this cemetery. Her baby lay there, without a stone—not without a flower.

"Pauvre petite Jules!" she used to say, nestling close to Ralph, and for a little while they would not speak nor move, but the smoke of his cigar made a charmed circle around them, and the stars came out above, and the panorama of the great Boulevard moved on at their feet.

Their first difficulties were financial, of course. Suzette would have liked a silken robe, a new bonnet, a paletot, gloves and concomitants unlimited. She delighted to walk upon the Boulevard, the Rue Rivoli, and into the Palais Royal, looking into the shop-windows and selecting what she would buy when Ralph's remittances came. Her hospitality when his friends visited him did less honor to her purse than to her heart. She certainly made excellent punches; Terrapin thought her cigarettes unrivalled; she was fond of cutting a fruit-pie, and was quite a connoisseur with wines. Ralph did not wonder at her tidiness when the laundry bills were presented, but doubted that the coiffeur beautified her hair; and one day, when a cool gentleman in civil uniform knocked at the door, and insisted upon the immediate payment of a bill for fifty francs, he lost his temper and said bad words. What could be done? Suzette was sobbing; Ralph detested "scenes;" he threatened to leave the hotel and Paris, and frightened her very much—and paid the money.

"You said, Suzette, that you had rendered a full account of all your indebtedness. You told me a lie!"

"Poor boy," she replied, "this debt was so old that I never expected to hear of it."

"Have you any more—old or otherwise?"

Suzette said demurely that she did not owe a sou in the world, but was able to recall thirty francs in the course of the afternoon, and assured him, truly, that this was the last.

Still, she lacked economy. They went to the same cremery, but her meals cost one half more than his. She never objected to a ride in a voiture; she liked to go to the balls, but walked very soberly upon his arm, recognizing nobody, and exacting the same behavior from Ralph. Let him look at an unusually pretty girl, through a shop-window, upon his peril! If a letter came for him signed Lizzie, or Annie, or Mary, she took the dictionary and tried to interpret it, and in the end called him a vilain and wept.

Toward the letters signed "Lizzie" she conceived a deep antipathy. With a woman's instinct she discerned that "Lizzie" was more to Ralph than any other correspondent. A single letter satisfied her of this; and when he was reading it, for the second time, she snatched it from his hand and flung it fiercely upon the floor. Ralph's eyes blazed menace and her own cowered.

"Take up that letter, Suzette!"

"I won't!"

"Take it up, I say! I command! instantly!" He had risen to his feet, and was the master now. She stooped, with pale jealousy lying whitely in her temples, and gave it to him meekly, and sat down very stricken and desolate. There was one whom he loved better than her—she felt it bitterly—a love more respectful, more profound—a woman, perhaps, whom he meant to make his wife some day, when SHE should be only a shameful memory!

It may have been the reproach of this infidelity, or the thought of his home, or the infatuation of his present guileful attachment, which kept Ralph Flare from labor.

There was the great Louvre, filled with the riches of the old masters, and the galleries of the Luxembourg with the gems of the French school, so marvellous in color and so superb in composition, and the mighty museum of Versailles, with its miles of battle pictures—yet the third month of his tenure in Paris was hastening by, and he had not made one copy.

Suzette was a bad model. She posed twice, but changed her position, and yawned, and said it was ridiculous. He had never made more than a crayon portrait of her. He found, too, that five hundred francs a month barely sufficed to keep them, and once, in the interval of a remittance, they were in danger of hunger. Yet Suzette plied her needle bravely, and was never so proud as when she had spread the dinner she had earned. In acknowledgment of this fidelity Ralph took her to a grand magasin, where they examined the goods gravely, as married folks do, consulting each other, and trying to seem very sage and anxious.

There probably was never such a bonnet as Suzette's in the world. It was black, and full of white roses, and floating a defiant ostrich-plume, and tied with broad red ribbons, whereby she could be recognized from one end of the Luxembourg gardens to the other.

The paletot was clever in like manner; she made the dress herself, and its fit was perfection, showing her plump little figure all the plumper, while its black color set off the whiteness of her simple collar, and with those magic gaiters, Ralph's gift also, he used to sit in the big chair, peering at her, and in a quandary as to whether he had ever been so happy before, or ever so disquieted.

"Now, my little woman," said Ralph, "I have redeemed my promises; you have a chamber, and garments, and subsistence—more than any of your friends—and I am with you always; few wives live so pleasantly; but there is one thing which you must do."

Suzette, sitting upon his knee, protested that he could not command any impossible thing which she would not undertake.

"You must work a little; we are both idle, and if we continue so, may have ennui and may quarrel. After three days I will not pay for your breakfasts, and every day in which you do not breakfast with me, paying for yourself, I will give you no dinner. Remember it, Suzette, for I am in earnest."

Her color fell a little at this, for she had no love for the needle. It was merrier in the boutique to chat with customers, yet she started fairly, and for a week earned a franc a day. The eighth day came; she had no money. Ralph put on his hat and went down the Rue L'Ecole de Medecin without her; but his breakfast was unpalatable, indigestible. Five o'clock came round; she was sitting at the window, perturbedly waiting to see how he would act.

It wrung his heart to think that she was hungry, but he tried to be very firm.

"I am going to dinner, Suzette! I keep my word, you see."

"It is well, Ralph."

That night they said little to each other. The dovecote was quite cold, for the autumn days were running out, and they lighted a hearth fire. Suzette made pretence of reading. She had an impenitent look; for she conceived that she had been cruelly treated, and would not be soothed nor kissed. Ralph smoked, and said over some old rhymes, and, finally rising, put on his cloak.

"I am going out, Suzette; you don't make my room cheerful."

"Bien!"

He walked very slowly and heavily down the stairs, to convince her that he was really going or hoping to be recalled, but she did not speak. He saw the light burning from his windows as he looked up from below. He was regretful and angry. At Terrapin's room he drank much raw brandy and sang a song. He even called the astute Terrapin a humbug, and toward midnight grew quarrelsome. They escorted him to his hotel door; the light was still burning in his room. He was sober and repentant when he had ascended the long stairs, though he counterfeited profound drunkenness when he stood before her.

She had been weeping, and in her white night-habit, with her dark hair falling loosely upon her shoulders, she was very lovely. The clock struck one as they looked at each other. She fell upon his neck and removed his garments, and wrapped him away between the coverlets; and he watched her for a long time in the flickering light till a deep sleep fell upon him, so that he could not feel how closely he was clasped in her arms.



PART III.

CONSCIENCE.

Lest it has not been made clear in these paragraphs whether Suzette was a good or a wicked being, we may give the matured and recent judgment of Ralph Flare himself. Put to the test of religion, or even of respectability, this intimacy was baneful. A wild young man had broken his honor for the companionship of a poor, errant girl. She was poor, but she hated to work; she had no regard for his money; she did not share his ambition. Making against her a case thus clear and certain, Ralph Flare entered for Suzette the plea of not wicked, and this was his defence!

She was educated in France. Particular sins lose their shame in some countries. Woman in France had not the high mission and respect which she fulfilled in his own land. Suzette was one of many children. Her father was the cultivator of a few acres in Normandy. Her mother died as the infant was ushered into the world. To her father and brothers she was of an unprofitable sex, and her sisters disliked her because she was handsomer than they. Her childhood was cheerless enough, for she had quick instincts, and her education availed only to teach her how grand was the world, and how confined her life. She left her home by stealth, in the night, and alone. In the city of Cherbourg she found occupation. She dwelt with strangers; she was lonely; her poverty and her beauty were her sorrows. She was a girl only till her fifteenth year.

The young mother has but one city of refuge—Paris. Without friends she passed the bitterness of reminiscence. Through the poverty of skill or sustenance she lost her boy, and the great city lay all before her where to choose. Luckily, in France every avenue to struggle was not closed to her sisterhood; with us such gather only the wages of sin. It was not there an irreparable disgrace to have fallen. For a full year she lived purely, industriously, lonely; what adventures ensued Ralph knew imperfectly. She met, he believed that she loved him. It was not probable, of course, that she came out of the wrestle unscathed. She deceived in little things, but he knew when to trust her. She was quick-tempered and impatient of control, but he understood her, and their quarrels were harbingers of their most happy seasons. She was generous, affectionate, artless. He did not know among the similar attachments of his friends any creature so pliable, so true, so beautiful.

It was upon her acquaintances that Ralph placed the blame when she erred. Fanchette was one of these—the dame of a student from Bretagne, a worldly, plotting, masculine woman—the only one whom he permitted to visit her. It was Fanchette who loaned her money when she was indolent, and who prompted her to ask favors beyond his means.

Toward the end of every month Ralph's money ran out, and then he was petulant and often upbraided her. Those were the only times when he essayed to study, and he would not walk with her of evenings, so destitute. Then Fanchette amused her: "Sew in my room," she would say; "Ralph will come for you at eight o'clock." But Ralph never went, and Fanchette poisoned his little girl's mind.

"When will you leave Paris, baby?" said Suzette one evening, as she returned from her friend's and found him sitting moodily by the fire.

"Very soon," he replied crisply; "that is, if ever I have money or resolution enough to start."

"Won't you take me with you, little one?"

"No!"

"You don't love me any more!"

"Pish!"

"Kiss me, my boy!"

"Oh, go away, you bother me—you always bother me when my money is low. Haven't I told you about it before?"

But the next morning as Suzette made her toilet, older and more silently, he felt repentant, and called her to him, and they talked a long while of nothingnesses. He had a cruel way of playing with her feelings.

"Suzette," he would say, "would you like me to take you to my country and live with you forever?"

"Very much, my child!"

"My father has a beautiful farm, which he means to give to me. There is a grand old house upon it, and from the high porch you can see the blue bay speckled with sails. The orchards are filled with apples and pears. You must walk an hour to get around the corn-fields, and there is a picnic ground in the beech-woods, where we might entertain our friends. I have many friends. How jolly you would look in my big rocking-chair, before the fireplace blazing with logs, and with your lap full of chestnuts, telling me of Paris life!"

She was drinking it all in, and the blood was ripe in her cheeks.

"Think, little one," he said, "of passing our days there, you and I! I have made you my wife, for example; I paint great pictures; you are proud of me; everybody respects you; you have your saddle-horse and your tea-parties; you learn to be ashamed of what you were; you are anxious to be better—not in people's eyes only, but in mine, in your own. To do good deeds; to sit in the church hearing good counsel; to be patted upon the forehead by my father—his daughter!—and to call my brother your brother also. Thus honored, contented, good, your hairs turn gray with mine. We walk along hand in hand so evenly that we do not perceive how old we are growing. We may forget everything but our love; that remains when we are gone—a part of our children's inheritance."

He spoke excellent French now; to her it was eloquence. Her arms were around his neck. He could feel her heart, beating. He had expressed what she scarcely dared to conceive—all her holiest, profoundest hopes, her longing for what she had never been, for what she believed she would try to be worthy of.

"Oh, my baby," she cried, half in tears, "you make me think! I have never thought much or often; I wish I was a scholar, as you are, to tell you how, since we have dwelt together, something like that has come to me in a dream. Perhaps it is because you talk to me so that I love you so greatly. Nobody ever spoke to me so before. That is why I am angry when your proud friend Lizzie writes to you. All that good fortune is for her; you are to quit Paris and me. My name will be unworthy to be mentioned to her. How shall I be in this bad city, growing old; yet I would try so earnestly to improve and be grateful!"

"Would you, truly, sweetheart?"

She only sobbed and waited; he coughed in a dry way and unclasped her hands.

"I pity you, poor Suzette," he said, "but it is quite impossible for us to be more to each other. My people would never speak to me if I behaved so absurdly. Go to bed now, and stop crying; good-night."

She staggered up, so crushed and bowed and haggard that his conscience smote him. He could not have done a greater cruelty to one like her—teaching her to hope, then to despair. The next day, and the next, she worked at Fanchette's. His remittance did not come; he was out of temper, and said in jest that he would set out for Italy within a week. There was a pale decision in her countenance the fourth morning. She put on her gray robe and a little cap which she had made. He did not offer to kiss her, and she did not beseech it. He saw her no more until nine o'clock, when she came in with Fanchette, and her cheeks were flushed as with wine. This made him more angry. He said nothing to either of them and went to sleep silently.

The fifth day she returned as before. He was sitting up by the fireplace; his rent was due; he was quite cast down, and said:

"Dear, when my purse was full you never went away two whole days, leaving me alone."

"You are to leave me, Ralph, forever!" But she was touched, and in the morning said that she would come back at midday. Still no remittance. He felt like a bear. Twelve o'clock came—Suzette did not appear. It drifted on to one; he listened vainly for her feet upon the stairs. At two he sat at the window watching; she entered at three, half mild, half timorous, and gave him a paper of sugar plums.

"Where did those come from?" he asked, with a scowl.

"Fanchette gave them to me."

"I don't believe it; there is kirsch wasser on your lips; you have been drinking."

She drew her handkerchief from her pocket; a little box, gilt-edged, came out with it, and rolled into the middle of the floor. Suzette leaped for it with a quick pallor; he wrenched it from her hands after a fierce struggle, and delving into the soft cotton with which it was packed, brought out sleeve-buttons of gold and a pearl breastpin. They were new and glittering, and they flashed a burning suspicion into his heart. He forced her unresisting into a chair, and flung them far out of the window, over the house-roofs. Then he sat down a moment to gain breath, and marked her with eyes in which she saw that she was already tried and sentenced.

"Who gave you those things, Suzette?" he asked in a forced, strange monotone.

"My ancient patronne."

"What's her name?"

"I don't know."

"Where does she live?"

"I shan't tell you."

He held her wrist tightly and pressed her back till her eyes were compelled to mark his white, pinched lips and altogether bloodless temples. His hand tightened upon her; his full, boyish figure straightened and heightened beyond nature; his regard was terrible. A terrible fear and silence fell around about them.

"These are the gifts of a man," he whispered; "you do not know it better than I. I shall walk out for one hour; at the end of that time there must not be even a ribbon of yours in this chamber."



PART IV.

REMORSE.

He gave the same order to the proprietor as he passed down-stairs, and hurried at a crazy pace across the Pont des Arts to the rooms of Terrapin. That philosopher was playing whist with his friends, and gave as his opinion that Ralph was "spooney."

Ralph drank much, talked much, chafed more. Somebody advised him to travel, but he felt that Europe had nothing to show him like that which he had lost. He told Madame George the story at the cremery.

"Ah, monsieur," she said, "that is the way with all love in Paris."

He played "ramps" with the French, but the game impressed him as stupid, and he tried to quarrel with Boetia, who was too polite to be vexed. He drank pure cognac, to the astonishment of the Gauls, but it had no visible effect upon him, and Pere George held up his hands as he went away, saying: "Behold these Americans! they do everything with a fever; brandy affects them no more than water."

The room in the fifth story was very cold now. He tried to read in bed, but the novel had no meaning in it. He walked up and down the balcony in the November night, where he had often explained the motions of the stars to her. They seemed to miss her now, and peeped inquisitively. He looked into the bureau and wardrobe, half ashamed of the hope that she had left some souvenir. There was not even a letter. She had torn a leaf, on which she had written her name, out of his diary. The sketches he had made of her were gone; if she had only taken her remembrance out of his heart, it would have been well. Then he reasoned, with himself, sensibly and consistently. It was a bad passion at first. How would it have shamed his father and mother had they heard of it! Its continuance was even more pernicious, making him profligate and idle; introducing him to light pleasures and companies; enfeebling him, morally and physically; diverting him from the beautiful arts; weakening his parental love; divorcing him from grand themes and thoughts. He could never marry this woman. Their heart-strings must have been wrung by some final parting; and now that she had been proved untrue, was it not most unmanly that he should permit her to stand even in the threshold of his mind? It was a good riddance, he said, pacing the floor in the firelight; but just then he glanced into the great mirror, and stood fixed to mark the pallor of his face. Say what he might, laugh as he did, with a hollow sound, that absent girl had stirred the very fountains of his feelings. Not learned, not beautiful, not anything to anybody but him—there was yet the difference between her love and her deceit, which made him content or wretched.

He felt this so keenly that he lifted his voice and cursed—himself, her, society, mankind. Then he cried like a child, and called himself a calf, and laughed bitterly, and cried again.

There was no sleep for him that night. He drank brandy again in the morning, and walked to the banker's. His remittance awaited him, and he came out of the Rue de la Paix with thirty gold napoleons in his pocket.

He met all the Americans at breakfast at Trappe's in the Palais Royal, and strolling to the morgue with a part of them, kept on to Vincennes, and spent a wretched day in the forest. At the Place de la Bastille, returning, he got into a cabriolet alone and searched ineffectually along the Rue Rivoli for a companion who would ride with him. "Go through the Rue de Beaux Arts!" he said, as they crossed Pont Neuf. This is a quiet street in the Latin Quarter filled with cheap pensions, in one of which dwelt Fanchette. His heart was wedged in his throat as he saw at the window little Suzette sewing. She wore one of the dresses he had given her. Her face was old and piteous; she was red-eyed and worked wearily, looking into the street like one on a rainy day.

When she saw him, he thought, by her start and flush, that she was going to fall from the chair; but then she looked with a dim, absent manner into his face, like one who essays to remember something that was very dear but is now quite strange. He was pleased to think that she was miserable, and would have given much to have found her begging bread, as she did that night of him.

He had ridden by on purpose to show that he had money, and she sent him by Terrapin's word a petition for a few francs to buy her a chamber. Fanchette's friend had come home from the country, and it would not do for her to occupy their single bedroom; but Ralph made reply by deputy, to the effect that the donor of the jewelry would, he supposed, give her a room. It was a weary week ensuing; he drank spirits all the time, and made love to an English governess in the Tuileries garden, and when Sunday came, with a rainy, windy, dismal evening, he went with Terrapin and Co. to the Closerie des Lilas.

This is the great ball of the Latin Quarter. It stands near the barriers upon the Boulevard, and is haunted with students and grisettes. Commonly it was thronged with waltzers, and the scene on gala nights, when all the lamps were aflame, and the music drowned out by the thunder of the dance, was a compromise between Paradise and Pandemonium. To-night there was a beggarly array of folk; the multitude of garcons contemplated each other's white aprons, and old Bullier, the proprietor, staggering under his huge hat, exhibited a desire to be taken out and interred. The wild-eyed young man with flying, carroty locks, who stood in the set directly under the orchestra, at that part of the floor called "the kitchen," was flinging up his legs without any perceptible enjoyment, and the policemen in helmets, and cuirassiers, who had hard work to keep order in general, looked like lay figures now, and strolled off into the embowered and sloppy gardens. There were not two hundred folk under the roofs. Ralph had come here with the unacknowledged thought of meeting Suzette, and he walked around with his cigar, leaning upon Terrapin's arm and making himself disagreeable.

Suddenly he came before her. She seemed to have arisen from the earth. She looked so weak and haggard that he was impelled to speak to her; but he was obdurate and hard-hearted. He could have filled her cup of bitterness and watched her drink it to the dregs, and would have been relentless if she was kneeling at his feet.

"Flare, what makes you tremble so?" said Terrapin; "are you cold? Confound it, man, you are sick! Sit here in the draft and take some cognac."

"No," answered Ralph, "I am all right again. You see my girl there? (Don't look at her!) You know some of these girls, old fellow? I mean to treat two of them to a bottle of champagne. She will see it. I mean for her to do so. Who are these passing? Come with me."

He walked by Suzette and her friend as if they had been invisible, and addressed those whom he pursued with such energy that they shrank back. He made one of them take his arm, and hurried here and there, saying honeyed words all the time, by which she was affrighted; but every smile, false as it was, fell into Suzette's heart.

Weary, wan, wretched, she kept them ever in view, crossing his path now and then, in the vain thought that she might have one word from him, though it were a curse. He took his new friends into an alcove. She saw the wine burst from the bottle, and heard the clink of the glasses as they drank good health. She did not know that all his laughter was feigned, that his happiness was delirium, that his vows were lies. She did not believe Ralph Flare so base as to put his foot upon her, whom he had already stricken down.

And he—he was all self, all stone!—he laid no offence at his own door. He did not ask if her infidelity was real or if it had no warrant in his own slight and goading. The poor, pale face went after him reproachfully. Every painful footfall that she made was the patter of a blood-drop. Such unnatural excitement must have some termination. He quarrelled with a waiter. Old Bullier ordered a cuirassier to take him to the door; he would have resisted, but Terrapin whispered: "Don't be foolish, Flare; if you are put out it will be a triumph for the girl;" and only this conviction kept him calm. The cyprians whom he wooed followed him out; he turned upon them bitterly when he had crossed the threshold, and leaping into a carriage was driven to his hotel, where he slept unquietly till daybreak.

See him, at dawn, in deep slumber! his face is sallow, his lips are dry, his chest heaves nervously as he breathes hard. It is a bad sleep; it is the sleep of bad children, to whom the fiend comes, knowing that the older they grow the more surely are they his own.

This is not, surely, the bashful young man who started at the phantom of his mother, and sinned reluctantly. Aye! but those who do wrong after much admonishment are wickeder than those who obey the first bad impulse. He is ten times more cast away who thinks and sins than he who only sins and does not think.

Ralph Flare was one of your reasoning villains. His conscience was not a better nature rising up in the man, and saying "this is wrong." It was not conscience at all; it was only a fear. Far down as Suzette might be, she never could have been unfeeling, unmerciful as he. It is a bad character to set in black and white, yet you might ask old Terrapin or any shrewd observer what manner of man was Ralph, and they would say, "So-so-ish, a little sentimental, spooney likewise; but a good fellow, a good fellow!" And more curious than all, Suzette said so too.

He rose at daylight, and dressed and looked at himself in the glass. He felt that this would not do. His revenge had turned upon himself. He had half a mind to send for Suzette, and forgive her, and plead with her to come back again. The door opened: she of whom he thought stood before him, more marked and meagre than he; and the old tyranny mounted to his eyes as he looked upon her. He knew that she had come to be pardoned, to explain, and he determined that she should suffer to the quick.



PART V.

TYRANNY.

If this history of Ralph Flare that we are writing was not a fiction, we might make Suzette give way at once under the burden of her grief, and rest upon a chair, and weep. On the contrary, she did just the opposite. She laughed.

Human nature is consistent only in its inconsistencies. She meant to break down in the end, but wished to intimidate him by a show of carelessness, so she first said quietly: "Monsieur Ralph, I have come to see to my washing; it went out with yours; will you tell the proprietor to send it to me?"

"Yes, madame."

"May I sit down, sir? It is a good way up-stairs, and I want to breathe a minute."

"As you like, madame."

He was resting on the sofa; she took a chair just opposite. There was a table between them, and for a little while she looked with a ghastly playfulness into his eyes, he regarding her coldly and darkly; and then, she laughed. It was a terrible laugh to come from a child's lips. It was a woman's pride, drowning at the bottom of her heart, and in its last struggle for preservation sending up these bubbles of sound.

We talk of tragic scenes in common life; this was one of them. The little room with its waxed, inlaid floor, the light falling bloodily in at the crimson curtains and throwing unreal shadows upon the spent fire, the disordered furniture, the unmade bed; and there were the two actors, suffering in their little sphere what only seems more suffering in prisons and upon scaffolds, and playing with each other's agonies as not more refined cruelty plays with racks and tortures.

"You are pleased, madame," said Ralph.

"No, I am wondering what has changed you. There are black circles around your eyes; you have not shaved; the bones of your cheeks are sharp like your chin, and you are yellow and bent like a dry leaf."

"I have had an excess of money lately. Being free to do as I like, I have done so."

She looked furtively around the room. "Somebody has gone away from here this morning—is it true?"

He laughed suggestively.

"I saw you with two girls last night; the company did you honor; it was one of them, perhaps."

"You guess shrewdly," he replied.

"This is her room now; it may be she will object to see me here."

"You are right," said Ralph Flare, with mock courtesy, rising up. "When you lived with me I permitted no one to visit me in your absence. My late friends will be vexed. You have finished the business which brought you here, and I must go to breakfast now."

Ralph was a good actor. Had he thought Suzette really meant to go, he would have fallen on his knees.

"Stop, Ralph, my boy," she cried. "I know that you do not love me; I can't see why I ever believed that you did. But let me sit with you a little while. You drove me from you once. I know that you have found one to fill my place; but, enfant, I love you. I want to take your head in my arms as I have done a hundred times, and hear you say one kind word before we part forever."

"There was a time," he said slowly, "when you did not need my embraces. I was eager to give them. I did not give you kindness only; I gave you nourishment, shelter, clothing, money. You were unworthy and ungrateful. You are nothing to me now. Do not think to wheedle me back to be your fool again."

"Oh! for charity, my child, not for love—I am too wretched to hope that—for pity, let me sit by your side five minutes. I cannot put it into words why I beg it, but it is a little thing to grant. If one starved you, or had stolen from you, and asked it so earnestly, you would consent. I only want you to think less bitterly of me. You must needs have some hard thoughts. I have done wrong, my boy, but you do not know all the cause, and as what I mean to say cannot make place in your breast for me now, you will know that it is true, because it has no design. Oh! Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! It is so hard to have but one deep love, and yet find that love the greatest sorrow of one's life. It is so hard to have loved my boy so well, and to know that to the end of his days he hated me."

She said this with all the impetuosity of her race; with utter abandonment of plan or effort, yet with a wild power of love and gesture which we know only upon the stage, but which in France is life, feeling, reality.

She sat down and sobbed, raising her voice till it rolled with a shrill music which made him quiver, through the parted curtain and into the turbulent street. There were troops passing beneath the balcony, and the clangor of drums and bugles climbed between the stone walls, as if to pour all its mockery into the little room.

Ralph Flare hated to see a woman cry; it pained him more than her; so he lifted her in his arms and carried her to the sofa and placed her head upon his breast. For a long while she sat in that strange luxury of grief, and she was fearful that he would send her away before her agitation could pass, and she might speak. His face wore an incredulous sneer as she spoke, though he knew it was absolute truth. She told him how wretched she had been, so wretched that even temptation respected her; how she had never known the intensity of her passion for him till they were asunder; how all previous attachments were as ice to fire compared to this; and how the consciousness of its termination should make her desolate forever.

"I looked upon you," she said, "as one whom I had trained up. Since I have lost my little Jules I have needed something to care for. I taught you to speak my language as if you were a baby. You learned the coinage of the land, and how to walk through the city, and all customs and places, precisely as a child learns them from his mother. Alas! you were wiser than I, and it made me sad to feel it. It was like the mother's regret that her boy is getting above her, in mind, in stature, so that he shall be able to do without her. Yet with that fear there is a pride like mine, when I felt that you were clever. Ah! Ralph, you loved to make me feel how weak and mean I was. You played with my poor heart, sick enough before, and little by little I felt your love gliding away from me, till at last you told me that it was gone. You said you should leave France, never to return—God forgive you if it was not true!—and when you treated me worst, I was tempted to hear kind words from another. Fanchette's friend has a rich cousin who admires me. He is to live in Paris many years. I never loved him, but I am poor, and many women marry only for a home. He offered that and more to me. I would not hear it. Oh! if you had only said one tender word to me in those days of temptation. I begged you for it. When I was humblest at your feet you put your heel upon me most.

"One night when I had the greatest trouble of all he sat beside me and plied his suit, and was pleasanter, my boy, than you have ever been; and then, rising, he placed that box of jewelry in my lap and ran away. I left it upon Fanchette's mantel that night. She filled my head with false thoughts next day. I never meant while you were in Paris to do you any wrong; but I put those jewels in my pocket, meaning to give them up again; you found them, and I was made wretched."

Ralph made that dry, biting cough which he used to express unbelief. She only bent her head and wept silently.

"When all was gone, poor me! I have found much sorrow in my little life, but we are light-hearted in France, and we live and laugh again. Perhaps you have made me more like one of your countrywomen. I do not know—only that I can never be happy any more.

"Since we have dwelt apart my tempter has been to see me every day. He has grand chambers which he will give me, and rich wardrobes, and a watch, and a voiture. It is a dazzling picture for one who toils, going all her days on foot, and lovely only to be deceived. But I hate that man now, because he has come between you and me, and I have slept upon my tears alone."