Throughout the rest of the volume, Daudet disappears and reappears, as his fancy prompts him to do. Now he lets himself be carried back to past memories and distant places; now he gives us a mediaeval tale or a domestic drama of to-day compressed into a few brief pages, or a picture of rural life, or a glimpse of that literary hell from which he had just escaped and to which he was soon to return. He changed his tone and his subject with amazing versatility, from the bitterest satire to idyllic sweetness, or to a pleasant kind of clever naivete which is truly his own. We see him musing among the firs and the pine-trees of his native Provence, or riding on the top of the diligence under the scorching sun and listening, in a Sterne-like fashion, to the conversation which took place between the facetious baker and the unhappy knife-grinder, or chatting familiarly with Frederic Mistral, who takes him into the confidence of his poetical dreams. Then, again, we see him sitting down at the table of an Algerian sheik; or wandering on the gloomy rocks where the Semillante was lost, and trying to revive the awful tragedy of her last minutes; or shut up in a solitary light-house with the keepers for weeks and weeks together, content with the society and with the fare of those poor, rough, uncultivated men, cut off from the whole world, alone with the stormy winds and his stormy thoughts. Wherever his morbid restlessness takes him, whatever part he chooses to assume, whether he wants to move us to laughter or to tears, we can but follow him fascinated and spell-bound, and in harmony with his moods. Daudet when he wrote those letters was already a perfect master of all the resources of the language. What he had seen or felt, he could make us see and feel. He could make old words new with the freshness, ardor, and sincerity of the personal impressions which he was pouring into them unceasingly.

The 'Letters from My Mill' had been scattered here and there through different newspapers, and at different times. They were reprinted in the form of a book in 1868. The year before he had given to the public 'Le Petit Chose' (A Little Chap), which is better known, I believe, to the English-speaking races under the rather misleading title of 'My Brother Jack.' 'Le Petit Chose' was a commercial success, but it is doubtful whether it will rank as high among Daudet's productions as the 'Lettres de Mon Moulin.' He began to compose it in February 1866, during one of those misanthropic fits to which he was subject at periodical intervals, and which either paralyzed altogether, or quickened into fever, his creative faculties. He finished the work two years later in a very different mood, immediately after his marriage. As might have been expected, the two parts are very dissimilar, and it must be confessed greatly unequal. 'Le Petit Chose' has reminded more than one reader of 'David Copperfield'; and it cannot be denied that the two works bear some resemblance both as regards manner and matter. But though Dickens was then widely read and much admired in France, plagiarism is out of the question. If there is a little of Dickens about 'Le Petit Chose,' there is a great deal more of Daudet himself in it. Young Eyssette, the hero of the novel, starts in life as Daudet had done and at the same period of life, in the quality of an usher at a small provincial college. Whether we take it as a fiction, with its innumerable bits of delicate humor, lovely descriptions of places and glimpses of characters in humble life, or whether we accept it as an autobiography which is likely to bring us into closer acquaintance with the inner soul of a great man, the first part is delightful reading. But we lose sight of him through all the adventures, at once wild and commonplace, which are crowding in the second part, to culminate into the most unconvincing denouement. Even when speaking of himself, Daudet is sometimes at a disadvantage, perhaps because, as he justly observed, "it is too early at twenty-five to comment upon one's own past career." Only the old man is able to look at his former self through the distance of years and to see it as it stood once, in its true light and with its real proportions.

'Tartarin of Tarascon' saw the light for the first time in 1872. Strange to say, the readers of the Petit Moniteur, to whom it was first offered in a serial form, did not like it. In consequence of their marked disapproval, the publication had to be abandoned and was then resumed through the columns of another newspaper. This time the mistake was entirely on the side of the public. For—apart from the fact that the immortal Tartarin was not yet Tartarin, but answered to the much less typical name of Chapatin—the general outlines of the character were already visible in all their distinctness from the beginning, as all those who have read the introductory chapters will readily admit. And the same lines were to be followed with an undeviating fixity of artistic purpose and with unfailing verve and spirit to the last. 'The Prodigious Adventures of Tartarin,' 'Tartarin on the Alps,' and 'Port-Tarascon,' form a trilogy; and I know of no other example in modern French literature of so long and so well sustained a joke. How is it then that we never grow tired of Tartarin? It is probably because beneath the surface of Daudet's playful absurdity there underlies a rich substratum of good common-sense and keen observation. Since 'Don Quixote' was written, no caricature has ever been more human or more true than Tartarin.

Frenchmen are not, as is frequently asserted by their Anglo-Saxon critics, totally unfit to appreciate humor, when it is mingled with the study of man's nature and seasoned with that high-spiced irony of which they have been so fond at all times, from the days of Villon to those of Rochefort. Still, Daudet would never have acquired such a complete mastery over the general public in his own country, if he had not been able to gratify their taste for that graphic and faithful description of manners and characters, which in other centuries put the moralists into fashion. Realism never disappears altogether from French literature: it was at that moment all-powerful. Zola was coming to the front with the first volumes of the well-known 'Rougon-Macquart' and Daudet in 1874 entered on the same path, though in a different spirit, with 'Fromont Jeune et Risler Aine.' The success was immediate and immense. The French bourgeoisie accepted it at once as a true picture of its vices and its virtues. The novel might, it is true, savor a little of Parisian cockneyism. Fastidious critics might discover in it some mixture of weak sentimentalism, or a few traces of Dickensian affectation and cheap tricks in story-telling. Young men of the new social school might take exception to that old-fashioned democracy which had its apotheosis in Risler senior. Despite all those objections, it was pronounced a masterpiece of legitimate pathos and sound observation. Even the minor characters were judged striking, and Delobelle's name, for instance, occurs at once to our mind whenever we try to realize the image of the modern cabotin.

'Jack,' which came next, exceeded the usual length of French novels. "Too much paper, my son!" old Flaubert majestically observed with a smile when the author presented him with a copy of his book. As for George Sand, she felt so sick at heart and so depressed when she had finished reading 'Jack,' that she could work no more and had to remain idle for three or four days. A painful book, indeed, a distressing book, but how fascinating! And is not its wonderful influence over the readers exemplified in the most striking manner by the fact that it had the power to unnerve and to incapacitate for her daily task that most valiant of all intellectual laborers, that hardest of hard workers, George Sand?

The lost ground, if there had been any lost at all, was soon regained with 'Le Nabab' (The Nabob) and 'Les Rois en Exil' (Kings in Exile). They took the reader to a higher sphere of emotion and thought, showed us greater men fighting for greater things on a wider theatre than the middle-class life in which Fromont and Risler had moved. At the same time they kept the balance more evenly than 'Jack' had done between the two elements of human drama, good and evil, hope and despair, laughter and tears. But a higher triumph was to be achieved with 'Numa Roumestan,' which brought Daudet's literary fame to its zenith.

'Tartarin' had not exhausted all that the author had to say of meridional ways and manners. The Provencal character has its dramatic as well as its comic aspect. In 'Numa Roumestan' we have the farce and the tragedy blended together into a coherent whole. We have a Tartarin whose power over man and woman is not a mockery but a reality, who can win love and sympathy and admiration, not in little Tarascon, mind you, but in Paris; who sends joy abroad and creates torture at home; a charming companion, a kind master, a subtle politician, a wonderful talker, but a light-hearted and faithless husband, a genial liar, a smiling and good-natured deceiver; the true image of the gifted adventurer who periodically emerges from the South and goes northward finally to conquer and govern the whole country.

As Zola has remarked, the author of 'Numa Roumestan' poured himself out into that book with his double nature, North and South, the rich sensuous imagination, the indolent easy-going optimism of his native land, and the stern moral sensitiveness which was partly characteristic of his own mind, partly acquired by painful and protracted experience. To depict his hero he had only to consult the most intimate records of his own lifelong struggle. For he had been trying desperately to evince Roumestan out of his own being. He had fought and conquered, but only partially conquered. And on this partial failure we must congratulate him and congratulate ourselves. He said once that "Provencal landscape without sunshine is dull and uninteresting." The same may be said of his literary genius. It wants sunshine, or else it loses half its loveliness and its irresistible charm. 'Roumestan' is full of sunshine, and there is no other among his books, except 'Tartarin,' where the bright and happy light of the South plays more freely and more gracefully.

The novel is equally strong if you examine it from a different standpoint. Nothing can be artistically better and more enchanting than the Farandole scene, or more amusing than Roumestan's intrigue with the young opera singer; nothing can be more grand than old Le Quesnoy's confession of sin and shame, or more affecting than the closing scene where Rosalie is taught forgiveness by her dying sister. Other parts in Daudet's work may sound hollow; 'Numa Roumestan' will stand the most critical scrutiny as a drama, as a work of art, as a faithful representation of life. Daudet's talents were then at their best and united in happy combination for that splendid effort which was not to be renewed.

In 'Sapho' Daudet described the modern courtesan, in 'L'Evangeliste' a desperate case of religious madness. In 'L'Immortel' he gave vent to his feelings against the French Academy, which had repulsed him once and to which he turned his back forever in disgust. The angry writer pursued his enemy to death. In his unforgiving mood, he was not satisfied before he had drowned the Academy in the muddy waters of the Seine, with its unfortunate Secretaire-perpetuel, Astier-Rehu. The general verdict was that the vengeance was altogether out of proportion to the offense; and that despite all its brilliancy of wit and elaborate incisiveness of style, the satire was really too violent and too personal to give real enjoyment to unbiased and unprejudiced readers.

At different periods of his career Daudet had tried his hand as a dramatist, but never succeeded in getting a firm foot on the French stage. Play-goers still remember the signal failure of 'Lise Tavernier,' the indifferent reception of 'L'Arlesienne,' or more recently, of 'L'Obstacle.' All his successful novels have been dramatized, but their popularity in that new form fell far short of the common expectation. As an explanation of the fact various reasons may be suggested. Daudet, I am inclined to think, is endowed with real dramatic powers, not with scenic qualities; and from their conventional point of view, old stagers will pronounce the construction of his novels too weak for plays to be built upon them. Again, in the play-house we miss the man who tells the story, the happy presence—so unlike Flaubert's cheerless impassibility—the generous anger, the hearty laugh, the delightful humor, that strange something which seems to appeal to every one of us in particular when we read his novels. Dickens was once heard to say, on a public occasion, that he owed his prodigious world-wide popularity to this: that he was "so very human." The words will apply with equal felicity to Daudet's success. He never troubles to conceal from his readers that he is a man. When the critic of the future has to assign him a place and to compare his productions with the writings of his great contemporary and fellow-worker Emile Zola, it will occur to him that Daudet never had the steady-going indomitable energy, the ox-like patience, the large and comprehensive intellect which are so characteristic in the master of Medan; that he recoiled from assuming, like the author of 'Germinal' and 'Lourdes,' a bold and definite position in the social and religious strife of our days; that he never dreamt for a moment of taking the survey of a whole society and covering the entire ground on which it stands with his books.

Such a task—the critic will say—would have been uncongenial to him. The scientist is careful to explain everything and to omit nothing; he aims at completeness. But Daudet is an artist, not a scientist. He is a poet in the primitive sense of the word, or, as he styled himself in one of his books, a "trouvere." He has creative power, but he has at the same time his share of the minor gift of observation. He had to write for a public of strongly realistic tendencies, who understood and desired nothing better than the faithful, accurate, almost scientific description of life. Daudet could supply the demand, but as he was not born a realist, whatever social influences he had been subjected to, he remained free from the faults and excesses of the school. He borrowed from it all that was good and sound; he accepted realism as a practical method, not as an ultimate result and a consummation. Again, he was preserved from the danger of going down too deep and too low into the unclean mysteries of modern humanity, not so much perhaps by moral delicacy as by an artistic distaste for all that is repulsive and unseemly. For those reasons, it would not be surprising if—when Death has made him young again—Alphonse Daudet was destined to outlive and outshine many who have enjoyed an equal or even greater celebrity during this century. He will command an ever increasing circle of admirers and friends, and generations yet unborn will grow warm in his sunshine.



THE TWO TARTARINS

From 'Tartarin of Tarascon'

Answer me, you will say, how the mischief is it that Tartarin of Tarascon never left Tarascon, with all this mania for adventure, need of powerful sensations, and folly about travel, rides, and journeys from the Pole to the Equator?

For that is a fact: up to the age of five-and-forty, the dreadless Tarasconian had never once slept outside his own room. He had not even taken that obligatory trip to Marseilles which every sound Provencal makes upon coming of age. The most of his knowledge included Beaucaire, and yet that's not far from Tarascon, there being merely the bridge to go over. Unfortunately, this rascally bridge has so often been blown away by the gales, it is so long and frail, and the Rhone has such a width at this spot that—well, faith! you understand! Tartarin of Tarascon preferred terra firma.

We are afraid we must make a clean breast of it: in our hero there were two very distinct characters. Some Father of the Church has said: "I feel there are two men in me." He would have spoken truly in saying this about Tartarin, who carried in his frame the soul of Don Quixote, the same chivalric impulses, heroic ideal, and crankiness for the grandiose and romantic; but, worse is the luck! he had not the body of the celebrated hidalgo, that thin and meagre apology for a body, on which material life failed to take a hold; one that could get through twenty nights without its breast-plate being unbuckled, and forty-eight hours on a handful of rice. On the contrary, Tartarin's body was a stout honest bully of a body, very fat, very weighty, most sensual and fond of coddling, highly touchy, full of low-class appetite and homely requirements—the short, paunchy body on stumps of the immortal Sancho Panza.

Don Quixote and Sancho Panza in the one same man! you will readily comprehend what a cat-and-dog couple they made! what strife! what clapperclawing! Oh, the fine dialogue for Lucian or Saint-Evremond to write, between the two Tartarins—Quixote-Tartarin and Sancho-Tartarin! Quixote-Tartarin firing up on the stories of Gustave Aimard, and shouting, "Up and at 'em!" and Sancho-Tartarin thinking only of the rheumatics ahead, and murmuring, "I mean to stay at home."

THE DUET

QUIXOTE-TARTARIN SANCHO-TARTARIN

[Highly excited] [Quite calmly]

Cover yourself with glory, Tartarin, cover yourself with Tartarin. flannel.

[Still more excitedly] [Still more calmly]

Oh for the terrible double-barreled Oh for the thick knitted rifle! Oh for bowie-knives, waist-coats! lassos, and moccasins! and warm knee-caps! Oh for the welcome padded caps with ear-flaps!

[Above all self-control] [Ringing up the maid]

A battle-axe! fetch me a battle-axe! Now then, Jeannette, do bring up that chocolate!

Whereupon Jeannette would appear with an unusually good cup of chocolate, just right in warmth, sweetly smelling, and with the play of light on watered silk upon its unctuous surface, and with succulent grilled steak flavored with anise-seed, which would set Sancho-Tartarin off on the broad grin, and into a laugh that drowned the shouts of Quixote-Tartarin.

Thus it came about that Tartarin of Tarascon never had left Tarascon.



OF "MENTAL MIRAGE," AS DISTINGUISHED FROM LYING

From 'Tartarin of Tarascor'

Under one conjunction of circumstances, Tartarin did however once almost start out upon a great voyage.

The three brothers Garcio-Camus, natives of Tarascon, established in business at Shanghai, offered him the managership of one of their branches there. This undoubtedly presented the kind of life he hankered after. Plenty of active business, a whole army of understrappers to order about, and connections with Russia, Persia, Turkey in Asia—in short, to be a merchant prince.

In Tartarin's mouth, the title of Merchant Prince thundered out as something stunning!

The house of Garcio-Camus had the further advantage of sometimes being favored with a call from the Tartars. Then the doors would be slammed shut, all the clerks flew to arms, up ran the consular flag, and zizz! phit! bang! out of the windows upon the Tartars.

I need not tell you with what enthusiasm Quixote-Tartarin clutched this proposition; sad to say, Sancho-Tartarin did not see it in the same light, and as he was the stronger party, it never came to anything. But in the town there was much talk about it. Would he go or would he not? "I'll lay he will"—and "I'll wager he won't!" It was the event of the week. In the upshot, Tartarin did not depart, but the matter redounded to his credit none the less. Going or not going to Shanghai was all one to Tarascon. Tartarin's journey was so much talked about that people got to believe he had done it and returned, and at the club in the evening members would actually ask for information on life at Shanghai, the manners and customs and climate, about opium, and commerce.

Deeply read up, Tartarin would graciously furnish the particulars desired, and in the end the good fellow was not quite sure himself about not having gone to Shanghai; so that after relating for the hundredth time how the Tartars came down on the trading post, it would most naturally happen him to add:—

"Then I made my men take up arms and hoist the consular flag, and zizz! phit! bang! out of the windows upon the Tartars."

On hearing this, the whole club would quiver.

"But according to that, this Tartarin of yours is an awful liar."

"No, no, a thousand times over, no! Tartarin is no liar."

"But the man ought to know that he has never been to Shanghai—"

"Why, of course, he knows that; but still—"

"But still," you see—mark that! It is high time for the law to be laid down once for all on the reputation as drawers of the long bow which Northerners fling at Southerners. There are no Baron Munchausens in the South of France, neither at Nimes nor Marseilles, Toulouse nor Tarascon. The Southerner does not deceive, but is self-deceived. He does not always tell the cold-drawn truth, but he believes he does. His falsehood is not falsehood, but a kind of mental mirage.

Yes, purely mirage! The better to follow me, you should actually follow me into the South, and you will see I am right. You have only to look at that Lucifer's own country, where the sun transmogrifies everything, and magnifies it beyond life-size. The little hills of Provence are no bigger than the Butte Montmartre, but they will loom up like the Rocky Mountains; the Square House at Nimes—a mere model to put on your sideboard—will seem grander than St. Peter's. You will see—in brief, the only exaggerator in the South is Old Sol, for he does enlarge everything he touches. What was Sparta in its days of splendor? a pitiful hamlet. What was Athens? at the most, a second-class town; and yet in history both appear to us as enormous cities. This is a sample of what the sun can do.

Are you going to be astonished, after this, that the same sun falling upon Tarascon should have made of an ex-captain in the Army Clothing Factory, like Bravida, the "brave commandant"; of a sprout, an Indian fig-tree; and of a man who had missed going to Shanghai one who had been there?



THE DEATH OF THE DAUPHIN

From 'Letters from My Windmill'

The little Dauphin is ill; the little Dauphin will die. In all the churches of the kingdom the Holy Sacrament is laid ready day and night, and tapers are burning, for the recovery of the royal child. The streets of the old town are sad and silent; the bells ring no more; the carriages are driven very slowly. The curious townspeople are gathered just outside the palace, and are staring in through the grating of the gates at the guards, with their golden helmets, who walk the court with an important air. The entire castle is in a state of anxiety; the chamberlains and major-domos go up and down the staircase, and run through the marble halls. The galleries are filled with pages and courtiers in silk clothing, who go from group to group collecting later news in a low voice. On the large porches can be seen the ladies of honor, bathed in tears, bowing their heads and wiping their eyes with pretty embroidered handkerchiefs. In the orangery is a numerous assembly of doctors in long robes: one can see them through the panes gesticulating in their long sleeves, and shaking their wigs knowingly. The little Dauphin's tutor and squire are waiting before the door, anxious for the decision of the faculty. Scullions pass by without saluting them. The squire swears like a pagan; the tutor recites verses from Horace. And during this time down by the stables one can hear a long plaintive neighing. It is the Dauphin's little sorrel pony, whom the grooms are neglecting, and who calls sadly from his empty manger. And the King—where is his Majesty the King? The King has shut himself up in a room in a remote part of the castle. Their Majesties do not like to be seen weeping. But the Queen—that is different. Seated by the little prince's pillow, her beautiful face bathed in tears, she sobs bitterly before every one, just as a peasant mother would.

In his lace crib is the little Dauphin, whiter than the cushions on which he reposes, with closed eyelids. They think he is sleeping; but no, the little Dauphin does not sleep. He turns toward his mother, and seeing that she weeps, he says to her, "Madame my Queen, why do you weep? Do you think truly that I am going to die?" The Queen wishes to reply, but sobs prevent her speaking. "Pray do not cry, Madame my Queen. You forget that I am the Dauphin, and Dauphins cannot die thus." The Queen sobs more bitterly still, and the little Dauphin begins to be frightened. "Hola!" he says, "I do not wish to have Death come and take me; and I shall know how to prevent his coming here. Bring forth forty lancers, our strongest, to mount guard around our bed; a hundred cannon night and day; torches lighted beneath our windows. And unhappy Death if he dares to approach us then!" The Queen gives a sign to please the royal child. Forthwith, one can hear heavy cannon being rolled across the courtyard; and forty soldiers, halberds in hand, come and range themselves around the room: they are veterans, with gray moustaches. The little Dauphin claps his hands feebly as he sees them, and recognizing one he calls him by name, "Lorrain! Lorrain!" The old soldier takes a step towards the bed. "I love you well, my good Lorrain. Let me see your big sword. If Death comes to take me, we must kill him, must we not?" Lorrain replies, "Yes, Monseigneur," as the big tears run down his bronzed cheeks.

At this moment the chaplain approaches the little Dauphin, and talks to him for some time in a low tone, showing him a crucifix. The little Dauphin listens with an astonished air; then suddenly interrupting, "I understand well what you say, Monsieur l'Abbe; but after all, could not my little friend Beppo die in my place, if we should give him a great deal of money?"

The chaplain continues talking to him in a low voice, and the little Dauphin looks more and more astonished. When the chaplain has finished, the little Dauphin resumes, with a heavy sigh, "All that you tell me is very sad, Monsieur l'Abbe, but one thing consoles me: up there, in the paradise of stars, I shall still be the Dauphin. I know that our good God is my cousin, and would not fail to treat me according to my rank." Then he adds, turning to his mother, "Have my finest garments brought—my ermine cloak and velvet slippers. I wish to array myself for the angels, and enter paradise dressed as a Dauphin."

A third time the chaplain bends over the little prince, and talks a long time in whispering tones. The royal child interrupts him in anger, in the midst of his discourse, and cries, "Then it is no use to be Dauphin,—it is nothing at all;" and not wishing to hear more, he turns toward the wall weeping.

Translation of Mary Corey.



JACK IS INVITED TO TAKE UP A "PROFESSION"

From 'Jack'

"Do you hear, Jack?" resumed D'Argenton, with flashing eyes and outstretched arm. "In four years you will be a good workman; that is to say, the noblest, grandest thing that can exist in this world of slavery and servitude. In four years you will be that sacred, venerated thing, a good workman!"

Yes, indeed he heard it!—"a good workman." Only he was bewildered and was trying to understand.

The child had seen workmen in Paris. There were some who lived in the Passage des Douze Maisons, and not far from the Gymnase there was a factory, from which he often watched them as they left work at about six o'clock; a crowd of dirty-looking men with their blouses all stained with oil, and their rough hands blackened and deformed by work.

The idea that he would have to wear a blouse struck him at once. He remembered the tone of contempt with which his mother would say: "Those are workmen, men in blouses,"—the care she took in the streets to avoid the contact of their soiled garments. Labassindre's fine speeches on the duties and influence of the working-man in the nineteenth century attenuated and contradicted, it is true, these vague impressions. But what he did understand, and that most clearly and bitterly, was that he must go away, leave the forest whose tree-tops he saw from the window, leave the Rivalses, leave his mother, his mother whom he had recovered at the cost of so much pain, and whom he loved so tenderly.

What on earth was she doing at that window all this time, seeming so indifferent to all that was going on around her? Within the last few minutes, however, she had lost her immovable indifference. A convulsive shudder seemed to shake her from head to foot, and the hand she held over her eyes closed over them as if she were hiding tears. Was it then so sad a sight that she beheld yonder in the country, on the far horizon where the sun sets, and where so many dreams, so many illusions, so many loves and passions sink and disappear, never to return?

"Then I shall have to go away?" inquired the child in a smothered voice, and the automatic air of one who lets his thought speak, the one thought that absorbed him.

At this artless question all the members of the tribunal looked at each other with a smile of pity; but over there at the window a great sob was heard.

"We shall start in a week, my lad," answered Labassindre briskly. "I have not seen my brother for a long time. I shall avail myself of this opportunity to renew my acquaintance with the fire of my old forge, by Jove!"

As he spoke, he turned back his sleeve, distending the muscles of his brawny, hairy, tattooed arm, till they looked ready to burst.

"He is superb," said Dr. Hirsch.

D'Argenton, however, who did not lose sight of the sobbing woman standing at the window, had an absent air, and a terrible frown gathering on his brow.

"You can go, Jack," he said to the child, "and prepare to start in a week."

Jack went down-stairs, dazed and stupefied, repeating to himself, "In a week! in a week!" The street door was open; he rushed out, bare-headed, just as he was, dashed through the village to the house of his friends, and meeting the Doctor, who was just going out, informed him in a few words of what had taken place.

Monsieur Rivals was indignant.

"A workman! They want to make a workman of you? Is that what they call looking after your prospects in life? Wait a moment. I am going to speak myself to monsieur your step-father."

The villagers who saw them pass by, the worthy Doctor gesticulating and talking out loud, and little Jack, bare-headed and breathless from running, said, "There is certainly some one very ill at Les Aulnettes."

No one was ill, most assuredly. When the Doctor arrived they were sitting down to table; for on account of the capricious appetite of the master of the house, and as in all places where ennui reigns supreme, the hours for the meals were constantly being changed.

The faces around were cheerful; Charlotte could even be heard humming on the stairs as she came down from her room.

"I should like to say a word to you, M. d'Argenton," said old Rivals with quivering lips.

The poet twirled his moustache:—

"Well, Doctor, sit down there. They shall give you a plate and you can say your word while you eat your breakfast."

"No, thank you, I am not hungry; besides, what I have to say to you as well as to Madame"—he bowed to Charlotte, who had just come in—"is strictly private."

"I think I can guess your errand," said D'Argenton, who did not care for a tete-a-tete conversation with the Doctor. "It is about the child, is it not?"

"You are right; it is about the child."

"In that case you can speak. These gentlemen know the circumstances, and my actions are always too loyal and too disinterested for me to fear the light of day."

"But, my dear!" Charlotte ventured to say, shocked for many reasons at the idea of this discussion before strangers.

"You can speak, Doctor," said D'Argenton coldly.

Standing upright in front of the table, the Doctor began:—

"Jack has just told me that you intend to send him as an apprentice to the iron works at Indret. Is this serious? Come!"

"Quite serious, my dear Doctor."

"Take care," pursued M. Rivals, restraining his anger; "that child has not been brought up for so hard a life. At a growing age you are going to throw him out of his element into new surroundings, a new atmosphere. His health, his life are involved. He has none of the requisites needed to bear this. He is not strong enough."

"Oh! allow me, my dear colleague," put in Dr. Hirsch solemnly.

M. Rivals shrugged his shoulders, and without even looking at him, went on:—

"It is I who tell you so, Madame."

He pointedly addressed himself to Charlotte, who was singularly embarrassed by this appeal to her repressed feelings.

"Your child cannot possibly endure a life of this sort. You surely know him, you who are his mother. You know that his nature is a refined and delicate one, and that it will be unable to resist fatigue. And here I only speak of the physical pain. But do you not know what terrible sufferings a child so well gifted, with a mind so capable and ready to receive all kinds of knowledge, will feel in the forced inaction, the death of intellectual faculties to which you are about to condemn him?"

"You are mistaken, Doctor," said D'Argenton, who was getting very angry. "I know the fellow better than any one. I have tried him. He is only fit for manual labor. His aptitudes lie there, and there only. And it is when I furnish him with the means of developing his aptitudes, when I put into his hands a magnificent profession, that instead of thanking me, my fine gentleman goes off complaining to strangers, seeking protectors outside of his own home."

Jack was going to protest. His friend however saved him the trouble.

"He did not come to complain. He only informed me of your decision, and I said to him what I now repeat to him before you all:—'Jack, my child, do not let them do it. Throw yourself into the arms of your parents, of your mother who loves you, of your mother's husband, who for her sake must love you. Entreat them, implore them. Ask them what you have done to deserve to be thus degraded, to be made lower than themselves!'"

"Doctor," exclaimed Labassindre, bringing his fist heavily down upon the table, making it tremble and shake, "the tool does not degrade the man, it ennobles him. The tool is the regenerator of mankind. Christ handled a plane when he was ten years of age."

"That is indeed true," said Charlotte, who at once conjured up the vision of her little Jack dressed for the procession of the Fete-Dieu as the child Jesus, armed with a little plane.

"Don't be taken in by such balderdash, Madame," said the exasperated doctor. "To make a workman of your son is to separate him from you forever. If you were to send him to the other end of the world, he could not be further from your mind, from your heart; for you would have, in this case, means of drawing together again, whereas social distances are irremediable. You will see. The day will come when you will be ashamed of your child, when you will find his hands rough, his language coarse, his sentiments totally different from yours. He will stand one day before you, before his mother, as before a stranger of higher rank than himself,—not only humbled, but degraded."

Jack, who had hitherto not uttered a word, but had listened attentively from a corner near the sideboard, was suddenly alarmed at the idea of any possible disaffection springing up between his mother and himself.

He advanced into the middle of the room, and steadying his voice:—

"I will not be a workman," he said in a determined manner.

"O Jack!" murmured Charlotte, faltering.

This time it was D'Argenton who spoke.

"Oh, really! you will not be a workman? Look at this fine gentleman who will or who will not accept a thing that I have decided. You will not be a workman, eh? But you are quite willing to be clothed, fed, and amused. Well, I solemnly declare that I have had enough of you, you horrid little parasite; and that if you do not choose to work, I for my part refuse to be any longer your victim."

He stopped abruptly, and passing from his mad rage to the chilly manner which was habitual to him:—

"Go up to your room," he said; "I will consider what remains to be done."

"What remains to be done, my dear D'Argenton, I will soon tell you."

But Jack did not hear the end of Monsieur Rivals's phrase, D'Argenton with a shove having thrust him out.

The noise of the discussion reached him in his room, like the various parts in a great orchestra. He distinguished and recognized all the voices, but they melted one into the other, united by their resonance, and made a discordant uproar through which some bits of phrases were alone intelligible.

"It is an infamous lie."

"Messieurs! Messieurs!"

"Life is not a romance."

"Sacred blouse, beuh! beuh!"

At last old Rivals's voice could be heard thundering as he crossed the threshold:—

"May I be hanged if ever I put my foot in your house again!"

Then the door was violently slammed, and a great silence fell on the dining-room, broken only by the clatter of knives and forks.

They were breakfasting.

"You wish to degrade him, to make him something lower than yourself." The child remembered that phrase, and he felt that this was indeed his enemy's intention.

Well, no; a thousand times no—he would not be a workman.

The door opened, and his mother came in.

She had cried a great deal, had shed real tears, tears such as furrow the cheek. For the first time, a mother showed herself in that pretty woman's face, an afflicted and sorrowing mother.

"Listen to me, Jack," she said, striving to appear severe; "I must speak very seriously to you. You have made me very unhappy by putting yourself in open rebellion against your real friends, and by refusing to accept the situation they offer you. I am well aware that there is in the new existence—"

While she spoke, she carefully avoided meeting the child's eyes, for they had such an expression of desperate grief and heartfelt reproach that she would not have been able to resist their appeal.

"—That there is, in the new existence we have chosen for you, an apparent inconsistency with the life you have hitherto been leading. I confess that I was myself at first rather startled by it, but you heard, did you not, what was said to you? The position of a workman is no longer what it used to be; oh no! not at all the same thing, not at all. You must know that the time of the working-man has now come. The middle classes have had their day, the aristocracy likewise. Although, I must say, the aristocracy—Moreover, is it not more natural at your age, to allow yourself to be guided by those who love you, and who are experienced?"

A sob from the child interrupted her.

"Then you too send me away; you too send me away."

This time the mother could no longer resist. She took him in her arms, clasped him passionately to her heart:—

"I send you away? How can you imagine such a thing? Is it possible? Come, be calm; don't tremble and give way like that. You know how I love you, and how, if it only depended on me, we would never leave each other. But we must be reasonable, and think a little of the future. Alas! the future is already dark enough for us."

And in one of those outbursts of words that she still had sometimes when freed from the presence of the master, she endeavored to explain to Jack, with all kinds of hesitations and reticences, the irregularity of their position.

"You see, my darling, you are still very young; there are many things you cannot understand. Some day, when you are older, I will reveal to you the secret of your birth; quite a romance, my dear! Some day I will tell you the name of your father, and the unheard-of fatality of which your mother and yourself have been the victims. But for the present, what you must know and thoroughly comprehend, is that nothing here belongs to us, my poor child, and that we are absolutely dependent on him. How can I therefore oppose your departure, especially when I know that he wants you to leave for your good? I cannot ask him for anything more. He has already done so much for us. Besides, he is not rich, and this terrible artistic career is so expensive! He could not undertake the expense of your education. What will become of me between you two? We must come to a decision. Remember that it was a profession you were being given. Would you not be proud of being independent, of gaining your own livelihood, of being your own master?"

She saw at once by the flash in the child's eye that she had struck home; and in a low tone, in the caressing, coaxing voice of a mother, she murmured:—

"Do it for my sake, Jack; will you? Put yourself in a position that will enable you soon to gain your livelihood. Who knows if some day I may not be obliged myself to have recourse to you as my only protector, my only friend?"

Did she really think what she said? Was it a presentiment, one of those sudden glimpses into the future which unfold to us our destiny and reveal the failure and disappointments of our existence? Or had she been merely carried away in the whirlwind words of her impulsive sentimentality?

In any case she could not have found a better argument to convince that little generous spirit. The effect was instantaneous. The idea that his mother might want him, that he could help her by his work, suddenly decided him.

He looked her straight in the face.

"Swear that you will always love me, that you will never be ashamed of me when my hands are blackened!"

"If I shall love you, my Jack!"

Her only answer was to cover him with kisses, hiding her agitation and her remorse under her passionate embraces; but from that moment the wretched woman knew remorse, knew it for the rest of her life; and could never think of her child without feeling a stab in her heart.

He however, as though he understood all the shame, uncertainty, and terror concealed under these caresses, dashed towards the stairs, to avoid dwelling on it.

"Come, mamma, let us go down. I am going to tell him I accept his offer."

Down-stairs the "Failures" were still at table. They were all struck by the grave and determined look on Jack's face.

"I beg your pardon," he said to D'Argenton. "I did wrong in refusing your proposal. I now accept it, and thank you."



THE CITY OF IRON AND FIRE

From 'Jack'

The singer rose and stood upright in the boat, in which he and the child were crossing the Loire a little above Paimboeuf, and with a wide sweeping gesture of the arms, as if he would have clasped the river within them, exclaimed:—

"Look at that, old boy; is not that grand?"

Notwithstanding the touch of grotesqueness and commonplace in the actor's admiration, it was well justified by the splendid landscape unrolling before their eyes.

It was about four o'clock in the afternoon. A July sun, a sun of melting silver, spread a long luminous pathway of rays upon the waters. In the air was a tremulous reverberation, a mist of light, through which appeared the gleaming light of the river, active and silent, flashing upon the sight with the rapidity of a mirage. Dimly seen sails high in the air, which in this dazzling hour seem pale as flax, pass in the distance as if in flight. They were great barges coming from Noirmoutiers, laden to the very edge with white salt sparkling all over with shining spangles, and worked by picturesque crews; men with the great three-cornered hat of the Breton salt-worker, and women whose great cushioned caps with butterfly wings were as white and glittering as the salt. Then there were coasting vessels like floating drays, their decks piled with sacks of flour and casks; tugs dragging interminable lines of barges, or perhaps some three-master of Nantes arriving from the other side of the world, returning to the native land after two years' absence, and moving up the river with a slow, almost solemn motion, as if bearing within it a silent contemplation of the old country, and the mysterious poetry belonging to all things that come from afar. Notwithstanding the July heat, a strong breeze blew freshly over the lovely scene, for the wind came up from the coast with the cheerful freshness of the open sea, and let it be guessed that a little further away, beyond those hurrying waves already abandoned by the calm tranquillity of still waters, lay the deep green of the limitless ocean, with its billows, its fogs, and its tempests.

"And Indret? where is it?" asks Jack.

"There, that island in front of us."

In the silvery mist which enveloped the island, Jack saw confusedly lines of great poplars and tall chimneys, whence issued a thick filthy smoke, spreading over all, blackening even the sky above it. At the same time he heard a clamorous and resounding din, hammers falling on wrought and sheet iron, dull sounds, ringing sounds, variously re-echoed by the sonority of the water; and over everything a continuous and perpetual droning, as if the island had been a great steamer, stopped, and murmuring, moving its paddles while at anchor, and its machinery while yet motionless.

As the boat approached the shore, slowly and yet more slowly,—for the tide ran strongly and was hard to fight against,—the child began to distinguish long buildings with low roofs, blackened walls extending on all sides with uniform dreariness; then, on the banks of the river as far as the eye could reach, long lines of enormous boilers painted with red lead, the startling color giving a wildly fantastic effect. Government transports, steam launches, ranged alongside the quay, lay waiting till these boilers should be put on board by means of a great crane near at hand, which viewed from a distance looked like a gigantic gibbet.

At the foot of this gallows stood a man watching the approach of the boat.

"It is Roudic," said the singer; and from the deepest depths he brought forth a formidable "hurrah!" which made itself heard even in the midst of all the din of forging and hammering.

"Is that you, young 'un?"

"Yes, by Jove, it is I; are there two such notes as mine in the whole world?"

The boat touched the shore, and the two brothers sprang into each other's arms with a mighty greeting.

They were alike; but Roudic was much older, and wanting in that embonpoint so quickly acquired by singers in the exercise of trills and sustained notes. Instead of the pointed beard of his brother, he was shaven, sunburnt; and his sailor's cap, a blue wool knitted cap, shaded a true Breton face, tanned by the sea, cut in granite, with small eyes, and a keen glance sharpened by the minute work of a fitter and adjuster.

"And how are all at home?" asked Labassindre. "Clarisse, Zenaide, every one?"

"Every one is quite well, thank Heaven. Ah, ah! this is our new apprentice. He looks like a nice little chap; only he doesn't look over strong."

"Strong as a horse, my dear fellow, and warranted by the Paris doctors."

"So much the better, then, for ours is a roughish trade. And now, if you are ready, let us go and see the manager."

They followed a long alley of fine trees that soon changed into a street, such as is found in small towns, bordered by white houses, clean and all alike. Here lived a certain number of the factory workmen, the foremen, and first hands. The others were located on the opposite bank, at Montagne or at Basse Indre.

At this hour all was silent, life and movement being concentrated within the iron works; and had it not been for the linen drying at the windows, the flower-pots ranged near the panes, the occasional cry of a child, or the rhythmical rocking of a cradle heard through some half-opened door, the place might have been deemed uninhabited.

"Oh! the flag's down," said the singer, as they reached the gate leading to the workshops. "What frights that confounded flag has given me before now."

And he explained to his "old Jack," that five minutes after the arrival of the workmen for the opening hour, the flag over the gate was lowered, and thus it was announced that the doors were closed. So much the worse for those who were late; they were marked down as absent, and at the third offense dismissed.

While he was giving these explanations, his brother conferred with the gate-keeper, and they were admitted within the doors of the establishment. The din was frightful; whistlings, groanings, grindings, varying but never diminishing, were re-echoed from many vast triangular-roofed sheds, standing at intervals on a sloping ground intersected by numerous railways.

An iron city!

Their footsteps rang upon plates of metal incrusted in the earth. They picked their way amid heaps of bar iron, pig iron, ingots of copper; between rows of worn-out guns brought hither to be melted down, rusty outside, all black within and almost smoking still, venerable masters of fire about to perish by fire.

Roudic, as they passed along, pointed out the various quarters of the establishment: "This is the setting-up room, these the workshops of the great lathe and little lathe, the braziery, the forges, the foundry." He had to shout, so deafening was the noise.

Jack, half dazed, looked with surprise through the workshop doors, nearly all open on account of the heat, at a swarming of upraised arms, of blackened faces, of machinery in motion in a cave-like darkness, dull and deep, lit up by brief flashes of red light.

Out poured the hot air, with mingled odors of coal, burned clay, molten iron and the impalpable black dust, sharp and burning, which in the sunlight had a metallic sparkle, the glitter of coal that may become diamond.

But what gave a special character to these formidable works was the perpetual commotion of both earth and air, a continual trepidation, something like the striving of a huge beast imprisoned beneath the foundry, whose groans and burning breath burst hissing out through the yawning chimneys. Jack, fearful of appearing too much of a novice, dared not ask what it was made this noise, which even at a distance had so impressed him....

As they talked, they passed along the streets of the iron-works laid with rails, crowded at this hour, the working day just at an end, with a concourse of men of all kinds and sizes and trades; a motley of blouses, pilot jackets, the coats of the designers mixing with the uniforms of the overseers.

The gravity with which this deliverance from toil was effected struck Jack forcibly. He compared this scene with the cries, the jostling on the pavements which in Paris enliven the exit from the workshops, and make it as noisy as that of a school. Here, rule and discipline were sensibly felt, just as on board a man-of-war.

A warm mist of steam floated over this mass of human beings, a steam that the sea breeze had not yet dispersed, and which hung like a heavy cloud in the stillness of this July evening. From the now silent workshops evaporated the odors of the forge. Steam whistled forth in the gutters, sweat stood on all the foreheads, and the panting that had puzzled Jack a little while ago had given place to a breath of relief from these two thousand chests wearied with the day's labor.

As he passed through the crowd, Labassindre was soon recognized.

"Hullo! young 'un, how are you?"

He was surrounded, his hand eagerly shaken, and from one to another passed the words:—

"Here, look at Roudic's brother, the fellow who makes four thousand pounds a year just by singing."

Every one wished to see him, for one of the legends of the workshops was this supposed fortune of the quondam blacksmith, and since his departure more than one young fellow-worker had searched to the very bottom of his larynx, to try if the famous note, the note worth millions, were not by some happy chance to be found there.

In the midst of this cortege of admirers, whom his theatrical costume impressed still more, the singer walked along with his head in the air, talking and laughing, casting "Good morning, Father So-and-so! Good morning, Mother What-'s-your-name!" towards the little houses enlivened by women's faces looking out, towards the public-houses and cook-shops which were frequent in this part of Indret; where also hawkers of all kinds held sway, exposing their merchandise in the open air: blouses, shoes, hats, kerchiefs, all the ambulating trumpery to be found in the neighborhood of camps, barracks, and factories.

As they made their way through this display of wares, Jack imagined he saw a familiar face, a smile, parting the various groups to reach him; but it was only a lightning flash, a mere vision swept away at once by the ever changing tide of the mass flowing away and dispersing through the great industrial city, and spreading itself over to the other side of the river in long ferry-boats, active, numerous, heavily laden, as if it were the passage of an army.

Evening was closing in over the dispersing crowd. The sun went down. The wind freshened, moving the poplars like palms; and the spectacle was imposing of the toiling island in its turn sinking to repose, restored to nature for the night. As the smoke cleared, masses of verdure became visible between the workshops. The river could be heard lapping the banks; and the swallows, skimming the water with tiny twitter, fluttered around the great boilers ranged along the quay.



THE WRATH OF A QUEEN

From 'Kings in Exile'

All the magic beauty of that June night poured in through the wide-open casement in the great hall. A single lighted candelabrum scarcely disturbed the mystery of the moonlight, which streamed in like a "milky way." On the table, across some dusty old papers, lay a crucifix of oxydized silver. By the side of the crucifix was a thick broad sheet of parchment, covered with a big and tremulous writing. It was the death-warrant of royalty, wanting nothing but the signature, one stroke of the pen, and a strong and violent effort of will to give this; and that was the reason why this weak King hesitated, sitting motionless, his elbows resting on the table, by the lighted candles prepared for the royal seal.

Near him, anxious, prying, yet soft and smooth, like a night-moth or the black bat that haunts ruins, Lebeau, the confidential valet, watched him and silently encouraged him; for they had arrived at the decisive moment that the gang had for months expected, with alternate hopes and fears, with all the trepidation, all the uncertainty attending a business dependent upon such a puppet as this King. Notwithstanding the magnetism of this overpowering desire, Christian, pen in hand, could not bring himself to sign. Sunk down in his arm-chair, he gazed at the parchment, and was lost in thought. It was not that he cared for that crown, which he had neither wished for nor loved, which as a child he had found too heavy, and that later in life had bowed him down and crushed him by its terrible responsibilities. He had felt no scruple in laying it aside, leaving it in the corner of a room which he never entered, forgetting it as much as possible when he was out; but he was scared at the sudden determination, the irrevocable step he was about to take. However, there was no other way of procuring money for his new existence, no other means of meeting the hundred and twenty thousand pounds' worth of bills he had signed, on which payment would soon be due, and which the usurer, a certain Pichery, picture-dealer, refused to renew. Could he allow an execution to be put in at Saint-Mande? And the Queen, the royal child; what would become of them in that case? If he must have a scene—for he foresaw the terrible clamor his cowardice must rouse—was it not better to have it now, and brave once for all anger and recriminations? And then—all this was not really the determining reason.

He had promised the Comtesse to sign this renunciation; and on the faith of this promise, Sephora had consented to let her husband start alone for London, and had accepted the mansion Avenue de Messine, and the title and name that published her to the world as the king's mistress, reserving, however, anything further till the day when Christian himself would bring her the deed, signed by his own hand. She assigned for this conduct the reasons of a woman in love: he might, later on, return to Illyria, abandon her for the throne and power; she would not be the first person whom these terrible State reasons have made tremble and weep. D'Axel, Wattelet, all the gommeux of the Grand Club little guessed when the king, quitting the Avenue de Messine, rejoined them at the club with heavy fevered eyes, that he had spent the evening on a divan, by turns repulsed or encouraged, his feelings played upon, his nerves unstrung by the constant resistance; rolling himself at the feet of an immovable, determined woman, who with a supple opposition abandoned to his impassioned embrace only the cold little Parisian hands, so skillful in defense and evasion, while she imprinted on his lips the scorching flame of the enrapturing words:—"Oh! when you have ceased to be king, I shall be all yours—all yours!" She made him pass through all the dangerous phases of passion and coldness; and often at the theatre, after an icy greeting and a rapid smile, would slowly draw off her gloves and cast him a tender glance; then, putting her bare hand in his, she would seem to offer it up to his ardent kiss.

"Then you say, Lebeau, that Pichery will not renew?"

"He will not, sire. If the bills are not paid, the bailiffs will be put in."

How well he emphasized with a despairing moan the word "bailiffs," so as to convey the feeling of all the sinister formalities that would follow: bills protested, an execution, the royal hearth desecrated, the family turned out of doors. Christian saw nothing of all this. His imagination carried him far away to the Avenue de Messine: he saw himself arriving there in the middle of the night, eager and quivering; ascending with stealthy and hurried step the heavily carpeted stairs, entering the room where the night-light burned, mysteriously veiled under lace:—"It is done—I am no longer king. You are mine, mine." And the loved one held out her hand.

"Come," he exclaimed, starting out of his fleeting dream.

And he signed.

The door opened and the Queen appeared. Her presence in Christian's rooms at such an hour was so unforeseen, so unexpected, they had lived so long apart, that neither the King in the act of signing his infamy, nor Lebeau, who stood watching him, turned round at the slight noise she made. They thought it was Boscovich coming up from the garden. Gliding lightly like a shadow, she was already near the table, and had reached the two accomplices, when Lebeau saw her. With her finger on her lips she motioned him to be silent, and continued to advance, wishing to convict the king in the very act of his treachery, and avoid all evasion, subterfuge, or useless dissimulation; but the valet set her order at defiance and gave the alarm, "The Queen, sire!"

The Dalmatian, furious, struck straight in the face of this malevolent caitiff with the powerful hand of a woman accustomed to handle the reins; and drawing herself up erect, waited till the wretch had disappeared before she addressed the king.

"What has happened, my dear Frederique? and to what am I indebted for—?"

Standing bent over the table that he strove to hide, in a graceful attitude that showed off his silk jacket embroidered in pink, he smiled, and although his lips were rather pale, his voice remained calm, his speech easy, with that polished elegance which never left him when addressing his wife, and which placed a barrier between them like a hard lacquer screen adorned with flowery and intricate arabesques. With one word, one gesture, she put aside the barrier behind which he would fain have sheltered himself.

"Oh! no phrases, no grimacing—if you please. I know what you were writing there. Do not try to give me the lie."

Then drawing nearer, overwhelming his timorous objection by her haughty bearing:—

"Listen to me, Christian," and there was something in her tone that gave an impression of solemnity to her words; "listen to me: you have made me suffer cruelly since I became your wife. I have never said anything but once—the first time, you remember. After that, when I saw that you had ceased to love me, I left you to yourself. Not that I was ignorant of anything you did—not one of your infidelities, not one of your follies remained unknown to me. For you must indeed be mad, mad like your father, who died of exhaustion, mad with love for Lola; mad like your grandfather John, who died in a shameful delirium, foaming and framing kisses with the death-rattle in his throat, and uttering words that made the Sisters of Charity grow pale. Yes, it is the same fevered blood, the same hellish passion that devours you. At Ragusa, on the nights of the sortie, it was at Foedora's that they sought you. I knew it, I knew that she had left her theatre to follow you. I never uttered a single reproach. The honor of your name was saved. And when the King was absent from the ramparts, I took care his place should not be empty. But here in Paris—"

Till now she had spoken slowly, coldly, in a tone of pity and maternal reproof, as though inspired thereto by the downcast eyes and pouting mouth of the King, who looked like a vicious child receiving a scolding. But the name of Paris exasperated her. A city without faith, a city cynical and accursed, its blood-stained stones ever ready for sedition and barricades! What possessed these poor fallen kings, that they came to take refuge in this Sodom! It was Paris, it was its atmosphere tainted by carnage and vice that completed the ruin of the historical houses; it was this that had made Christian lose what the maddest of his ancestors had always known how to preserve—the respect and pride of their race. Oh! When on the very day of their arrival, the first night of their exile, she had seen him so excited, so gay, while all around him were secretly weeping, Frederique had guessed the humiliation and shame she would have to undergo. Then in one breath, without pausing, with cutting words that lashed the pallid face of the royal rake, and striped it red as with a whip, she recalled one after the other all his follies, his rapid descent from pleasure to vice, and vice to crime.

"You have deceived me under my very eyes, in my own house; adultery has sat at my table, it has brushed against my dress. When you were tired of that dollish little face who had not even the grace to conceal her tears, you went to the gutter, wallowing shamelessly in the slime and mud of the streets, and bringing back the dregs of your orgies, of your sickly remorse, all the pollution of the mire. Remember how I saw you totter and stammer on that morning, when for the second time you lost your throne. What have you not done! Holy Mother of angels! What have you not done! You have traded with the royal seal, you have sold crosses and titles."

And in a lower tone, as though she feared lest the stillness and silence of the night might hear, she added:—

"You have stolen, yes, stolen! Those diamonds, those stones torn from the crown—it was you who did it, and I allowed my faithful Greb to be suspected and dismissed. The theft being known, it was necessary to find a sham culprit to prevent the real one ever being discovered. For this has been my one, my constant preoccupation: to uphold the King, to keep him untouched; to accept everything for that purpose, even the shame which in the eyes of the world will end by sullying me. I had adopted a watchword that sustained me, and encouraged me in my hours of trial: 'All for the crown!' And now you want to sell it—that crown that has cost me such anguish and such tears; you want to barter it for gold, for the lifeless mask of that Jewess, whom you had the indecency to bring face to face with me to-day."

Crushed, bending low his head, he had hitherto listened without a word, but the insult directed against the woman he loved roused him. Looking fixedly at the queen, his face bearing the traces of her cutting words, he said politely, but very firmly:—

"Well, no, you are mistaken. The woman you mention has had nothing to do with the determination I have taken. What I am doing is done for you, for me, for our common happiness. Tell me, are you not weary of this life of privations and expedients? Do you think that I am ignorant of what is going on here; that I do not suffer when I see you harassed by a pack of tradespeople and duns? The other day when that man was shouting in the yard I was coming in and heard him. Had it not been for Rosen I would have crushed him under the wheels of my phaeton. And you—you were watching his departure behind the curtains of your window. A nice position for a Queen. We owe money to every one. There is a universal outcry against us. Half the servants are unpaid. The tutor even has received nothing for the last ten months. Madame de Silvis pays herself by majestically wearing your old dresses. And there are days when my councilor, the keeper of the royal seals, borrows from my valet the wherewithal to buy snuff. You see I am well acquainted with the state of things. And you do not know my debts yet. I am over head and ears in debt. Everything is giving way around us. A pretty state of things, indeed; you will see that diadem of yours sold one day at the corner of a street with old knives and forks."

Little by little, gradually carried away by his own scoffing nature and the jesting habits of his set, he dropped the moderate tone he commenced with, and in his insolent little snuffling voice began to dwell upon the ludicrous side of the situation, with jeers and mockery, borrowed no doubt from Sephora, who never lost an opportunity of demolishing by her sneering observations the few remaining scruples of her lover.

"You will accuse me of making phrases, but it is you who deafen yourself with words. What, after all, is that crown of Illyria that you are always talking about? It is worth nothing except on a king's head; elsewhere it is obstruction, a useless thing, which for flight is carried hidden away in a bonnet-box or exposed under a glass shade like the laurels of an actor or the blossoms of a concierge's bridal wreath. You must be convinced of one thing, Frederique. A king is truly king only on the throne, with power to rule; fallen, he is nothing, less than nothing, a rag. Vainly do we cling to etiquette, to our titles, always bringing forward our Majesty, on the panels of our carriages, on the studs of our cuffs, hampering ourselves with an empty ceremonial. It is all hypocrisy on our part, and mere politeness and pity on the part of those who surround us—our friends and our servants. Here I am King Christian II. for you, for Rosen, for a few faithful ones. Outside I become a man like the rest, M. Christian Two. Not even a surname, only 'Christian,' like an actor of the Gaete."

He stopped, out of breath; he did not remember having ever spoken so long standing. The shrill notes of the night-birds, the prolonged trills of the nightingales, broke the silence of the night. A big moth that had singed its wings at the lights flew about, thumping against the walls. This fluttering distress and the smothered sobs of the Queen were the only sounds to be heard; she knew how to meet rage and violence, but was powerless before this scoffing banter, so foreign to her sincere nature; it found her unarmed, like the valiant soldier who expects straight blows and feels only the harassing stings of insects. Seeing her break down, Christian thought her vanquished, and to complete his victory he put the finishing touch to the burlesque picture he had drawn of kings in exile. "What a pitiful figure they cut, all these poor princes in partibus, figurants of royalty, who drape themselves in the frippery of the principal characters, and declaim before the empty benches without a farthing of receipts! Would they not be wiser if they held their peace and returned to the obscurity of common life? For those who have money there is some excuse. Their riches give them some right to cling to these grandeurs. But the others, the poor cousins of Palermo for instance, crowded together in a tiny house with their horrid Italian cookery. It smells of onions when the door is opened. Worthy folk certainly, but what an existence! And those are not the worst off. The other day a Bourbon, a real Bourbon, ran after an omnibus. 'Full, sir,' said the conductor. But he kept on running. 'Don't I tell you it is full, my good man?' He got angry; he would have wished to be called 'Monseigneur'—as if that should be known by the tie of his cravat! Operetta kings, I tell you, Frederique. It is to escape from this ridiculous position, to insure a dignified and decent existence, that I have made up my mind to sign this."

And he added, suddenly revealing the tortuous Slavonic nature molded by the Jesuits:—"Moreover, this signature is really a mere farce. Our own property is returned to us, that is all, and I shall not consider myself in the slightest degree bound by this. Who knows?—these very thousands of pounds may help us to recover the throne."

The Queen impetuously raised her head, looked him straight in the eyes for a moment, then shrugged her shoulders, saying:

"Do not make yourself out viler than you are. You know that when once you have signed—but no. The truth is, you lack strength and fortitude; you desert your kingly post at the most perilous moment, when a new society, that will acknowledge neither God nor master, pursues with its hatred the representatives of Divine right, makes the heavens tremble over their heads and the earth under their steps. The assassin's knife, bombs, bullets, all serve their purpose. Treachery and murder are on every side. In the midst of our pageantry or our festivities, the best of us as well as the worst, not one of us does not start if only a man steps forward out of the crowd. Hardly a petition that does not conceal a dagger. On leaving his palace what king is certain of returning alive? And this is the hour you choose to leave the field!"

"Ah! if fighting could do it!" eagerly said Christian II. "But to struggle as we do against ridicule, against poverty, against all the petty meannesses of life, and feel that we only sink deeper every day—"

A ray of hope lit up her eyes:—"Is it true? would you fight? Then listen."

Breathlessly she related, in a few rapid words, the expedition she and Elysee had been preparing for the last three months by letters, proclamations, and dispatches, which Father Alphee, ever on the move, carried from one mountain village to the other. This time it was not to the nobility they appealed, but to the people; the muleteers, the porters of Ragusa, the market-gardeners of Breno, of La Brazza, the islanders who go to market in their feluccas, the nation which had remained faithful to the monarchical tradition, which was ready to rise and die for its king, on condition that he should lead them. Companies were forming, the watchword was already circulating, only the signal now remained to be given.

The Queen, hurling her words at Christian to rout his weakness by a vigorous charge, had a cruel pang when she saw him shake his head, showing an indifference which was even greater than his discouragement. Perhaps at the bottom of his heart he was annoyed that the expedition should have been so far organized without his knowledge. But he did not believe in the feasibility of the plan. It would not be possible to advance into the country; they would be compelled to hold the islands, and devastate a beautiful country with very little chance of success: a second edition of the Duc de Palma's adventure, a useless effusion of blood.

"No, really, my dear Frederique, you are led away by the fanaticism of your chaplain and the wild enthusiasm of that hot-headed Gascon. I also have my sources of information, far more reliable than yours. The truth is, that in Dalmatia, as in many other countries, monarchy has had its day. They are tired of it, they will have no more of it."

"Oh! I know the coward who will have no more of it," said the Queen. And she went out hurriedly, leaving Christian much surprised that the scene should have ended so abruptly. He hastily thrust the deed into his pocket, and prepared to go out in his turn, when Frederique reappeared, accompanied this time by the little prince.

Roused out of his sleep and hurriedly dressed, Zara, who had passed from the hands of his nurse to those of the Queen without a word having been uttered, opened wide his bewildered eyes under his auburn curls, but asked no questions; he remembered confusedly in his poor little dizzy head similar awakenings for hasty flights, in the midst of pallid faces and breathless exclamations. It was thus that he had acquired the habit of passive obedience; that he allowed himself to be led anywhere, provided the Queen called him in her grave and resolute voice, and held ready for his childish weakness the shelter of her tender arms and the support of her strong shoulder. She had said: "Come!" and he had come with confidence, surprised only at the surrounding silence, so different from those other stormy nights, with their visions of blood and flames, roar of cannon, and rattle of musketry.

He saw the King standing, no longer the careless good-natured father who at times surprised him in his bed or crossed the schoolroom with an encouraging smile, but a stern father, whose expression of annoyance became more accentuated as he saw them enter. Frederique, without uttering one word, led the child to the feet of Christian II. and abruptly kneeling, placed him before her, crossing his little fingers in her joined hands:—

"The king will not listen to me, perhaps he will listen to you, Zara. Come, say with me, 'Father.'" The timid voice repeated, "Father."

"'My father! my king! I implore! do not despoil your child. Do not deprive him of the crown he is to wear one day. Remember that it is not yours alone; it comes from afar, from God himself, who gave it six hundred years ago to the house of Illyria. God has chosen me to be a king, father. It is my inheritance, my treasure; you have no right to take it from me.'"

The little prince accompanied his fervent murmur with the imploring looks of a supplicant; but Christian turned away his head, shrugged his shoulders, and furious though still polite, he muttered a few words between his teeth: "Exaggeration! most improper; turn the child's head." Then he tried to withdraw and gain the door. With one bound the Queen was on her feet, caught sight of the table from which the parchment had disappeared, and comprehending at once that the infamous deed was signed, that the king had it in his possession, gave a despairing shriek:—

"Christian!"

He continued to advance towards the door.

She made a step forward, picking up her dress as if to pursue him; then suddenly said:—

"Well, be it so."

He stopped short and turned round. She was standing before the open window, her foot upon the narrow stone balcony, with one arm clasping her son ready to bear him into death, the other extended menacingly towards the cowardly deserter. The moon lit up from without this dramatic group.

"To an operetta King, a Queen of tragedy," she said, stern and terrible. "If you do not burn this instant what you have just signed, and swear on the cross that it will never be repeated, your race is ended, crushed, wife and child, there on the stones."

Such earnestness seemed to inspire her vibrating tone, her splendid figure bent towards the emptiness of space as though to spring, that the King, terrified, dashed forward to stop her.

"Frederique!"

At the cry of his father, at the quiver of the arm that held him, the child—who was entirely out of the window—thought that all was finished, that they were about to die. He never uttered a word nor a moan; was he not going with his mother? Only, his tiny hands clutched the queen's neck convulsively, and throwing back his head with his fair hair hanging down, the little victim closed his eyes before the appalling horror of the fall.

Christian could no longer resist. The resignation, the courage of this child, who of his future kingly duties already knew the first—to die well—overcame him. His heart was bursting. He threw upon the table the crumpled parchment which for a moment he had been nervously holding in his hand, and fell sobbing in an arm-chair. Frederique, still suspicious, read the deed through from the first line to the very signature, then going up to a candle, she burned it till the flame scorched her fingers, shaking the ashes upon the table; she then left the room, carrying off her son, who was already falling asleep in her arms in his heroically tragic attitude.

Translation of Laura Ensor and E. Bartow.



MADAME DU DEFFAND

(MARIE DE VICHY-CHAMROND)

(1697-1780)



Madame du Deffand is interesting as a personality, a type, and an influence. Living through nearly the whole of the eighteenth century, she assimilated its wealth of new ideas, and was herself a product of the thought-revolution already kindling the spirit of 1789.

She very early showed her mental independence by puzzling questions upon religion. The eloquent Massillon attempted to win her to orthodoxy. But he soon gave up the task, told the Sisters to buy her a catechism, and went off declaring her charming. The inefficacy of the catechism was proved later, when the precocious girl developed into the graceful, unscrupulous society woman. She was always fascinating to the brightest men and women of her own and other lands. But the early years of social triumph, when she still had the beautiful eyes admired by Voltaire, are less significant than the nearly thirty years of blindness in the convent of St. Joseph, which after her affliction she made her home. Here she held her famous receptions for the literary and social celebrities of Paris. Here Mademoiselle Lespinasse endured a miserable ten years as her companion, then rebelled against her exactions, and left to establish a rival salon of her own, aided by her devoted D'Alembert. His preference Madame du Deffand never forgave. Henceforth she opposed philosophy, and demanded from her devotees only stimulus and amusement. It was here that Horace Walpole found the "blind old woman" in her tub-like chair, and began the friendship and intellectual flirtation of fifteen years. It proved a great interest in her life, notwithstanding Walpole's dread of ridicule at a suggestion of romance between his middle-aged self and this woman twenty years older.

She was a power in the lives of many famous people, intimate with Madame de Stael, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Madame de Choiseul, the Duchess of Luxembourg, Madame Necker, Hume, Madame de Genlis. In her salon old creeds were argued down, new ideas disseminated, and bons mots and witty gossip circulated. She has recounted what went on, and explained the reign of clever women in her century. Ignoring her blindness, she lived her life as gayly as she could in visiting, feasting, opera-going, and letter-writing. But even her social supremacy and brilliant correspondence with Voltaire, Walpole, and others, did not satisfy her. She wished to appeal to the heart, and she appealed only to the head. Of all ills she most dreaded ennui, and the very dread of it made her unhappy. She became more and more insufficient to herself, until at eighty-three she died with clear-sighted indifference.

"She was perhaps the wittiest woman who ever lived," says Saintsbury. Hers was an inextinguishable wit, always alert, epigrammatic, enriching the language with proverbial phrases.

During her life Voltaire's science of unbelief and Rousseau's appeal to nature and sentiment were stimulating Europe. For Rousseau, Madame du Deffand had no respect; but Voltaire's philosophy appealed to her egotism. It bade a human being investigate his own puzzles, and seek solution in himself. Madame du Deffand agreed, but failed to find satisfaction in her anxious analysis; she envied believers in God, and longed for illusions, yet allowed herself none. Jealous, exacting, critical, with all the arrogance of the old aristocracy, she was as merciless to herself as to others. "All my judgments have been false and daring and too hasty.... I have never known any one perfectly.... To whom then can I have recourse?" she cries despairingly.

Sainte-Beuve emphasizes her noblest quality: with all her faults she was true. She lived out her life frankly, boldly, without self-deception or imposition. So in the entertaining volumes of her letters and pen-portraits of acquaintances, she has left a valuable record. She takes us back a century, and shows not only how people looked and what they did, but how they thought and felt.



TO THE DUCHESSE DE CHOISEUL

PARIS, Sunday, December 28th, 1766.

Do you know, dear Grandmama [a pet name], that you are the greatest philosopher that ever lived? Your predecessors spoke equally well, perhaps, but they were less consistent in their conduct. All your reasonings start from the same sentiment, and that makes the perfect accord one always feels between what you say and what you do. I know very well why, loving you madly, I am ill at ease with you. It is because I know that you must pity everybody who is unlike yourself. My desire to please you, the brief time that I am permitted with you, and my eagerness to profit by it, all trouble, embarrass, intimidate me and discompose me.

I exaggerate, I utter platitudes; and end by being disgusted with myself, and eager to rectify the impression I may have made upon you.

You wish me to write to M. de Choiseul, and to make my letter pretty and bright. Ah, indeed! I'm the ruler of my own imagination, am I! I depend upon chance. A purpose to do or to say such or such a thing takes away the possibility. I am not in the least like you. I do not hold in my hands the springs of my spirit. However, I will write to M. de Choiseul. I will seize a propitious moment. The surest means of making it come is to feel hurried.

I am sending you an extract from an impertinent little pamphlet entitled 'Letter to the Author of the Justification of Jean Jacques.' You will see how it treats our friend. I am not sure that it should be allowed; whether M. de Choiseul should not talk to M. de Sartines about it. It is for you to decide, dear Grandmama, if it is suitable, and if M. de Choiseul ought to permit licenses so impertinent.

I am dying to see you. In spite of my fear, in spite of my dreads, I am convinced that you love me because I love you.



TO MR. CRAWFORD

SUNDAY, March 9th, 1766.

I read your letter to Madame de Forcalquier, or rather I gave it to her to read. I thought from her tone that she liked it, but she will not commit herself. She is more than incomprehensible. The Trinity is not more mysterious. She is composed of systems, which she does not understand herself; great words, great principles, great strains of music, of which nothing remains. However, I am of your opinion, that she is worth more than all my other acquaintances. She agrees that it would be delightful to have you live in this country; but if she were only to see you en passant, it hardly matters whether you came or not; that she has not forgotten you, but that she will forget you. Eh! Why shouldn't she forget you? She does not know you.... A hundred speeches of the sort which vex me.

They say of people who have too much vivacity that they were put in too hot an oven. They might say of her, on the contrary, that she is underdone. She is the sketch of a beautiful work, but it is not finished. What is certain is, that her sentiments, if she has sentiments, are sincere, and that she does not bore you. I showed her your letter because I thought that would give you pleasure; but be sure that no one in the world, not even she, shall see what you write me in future except Niart [her secretary], who as you know is a well.

I have just made you a fine promise that I will not show your letters; perhaps I shall never be able to show them. Truly, truly, I am like Madame de Forcalquier, and do not know you!

I spent three hours with Mr. Walpole yesterday, but only half an hour alone with him. Lord George and his wife returned his short call, but your Dr. James stayed there all the time. He is a very gloomy, uninteresting man.

Have you seen Jean Jacques? Is he still in London? Have you seen your father? Imagine yourself tete-a-tete with me in the corner of the fireplace, and answer all my questions, but especially those which concern your health. Have you seen the doctors? Have they ordered you the waters? And tell me too, honestly, if I shall ever see you again. Reflect that you are only twenty-five years old, that I am a hundred, and that it only requires a brief kindness to put pleasure in my life. No, I will not assume the pathetic. Do just what pleases you.



TO HORACE WALPOLE

TUESDAY, August 5th, 1766.

I have received your letter of July 31st—no number, sheets of different sizes. All these observations mean nothing, unless it is that a person without anything to do or to think occupies herself with puerile things. Indeed, I should do very wrong not to profit by all your lessons, and to persist in the error of believing in friendship, and regarding it as a good; no, no; I renounce my errors, and am absolutely persuaded that of all illusions that is the most dangerous.

You who are the apostle of this wise doctrine, receive my confession and my vows never to love, never to seek to be loved by any one; but tell me if it is permitted to desire the return of agreeable persons; if one may long for news of them, and if to be interested in them and to let them know it is to lack virtue, good sense, and proper behavior. I am awaiting enlightenment. I cannot doubt your sincerity; you have given me too many proofs of it; explain yourself without reserve.

WEDNESDAY, 6th.

Of all the things in your letter, what struck me the most yesterday were your moralizings on friendship, which forced me to reply at once. I was interrupted by Monsieur and Madame de Beauvan, who came to take me to supper with them in the country at the good Duchess of Saint-Pierre's. I returned early. I did not close my eyes during the night. I woke up Niart [her secretary] earlier than usual to go on with my letter, and to re-read me yours. I am better pleased with it this morning than I was yesterday. The matter of friendship shocked me less. I find that the conclusion is—let us be friends without friendship. Ah well, so be it; I consent. Perhaps it is agreeable; let us learn by experience, and for that—see each other the oftener! In truth, you have only a comic actress, a deaf woman, and some chickens to leave, as you have only a blind woman and many goslings to find; but I promise you that the blind woman will have much to ask and much to tell.

I do not know what to say to you about your ministry. You have entertained me so little with politics, that if others had not informed me, all that goes on with you would be less intelligible to me than the affairs of China. They have told me something of the character of the count; and as for this certain good comrade [Conway], I think I know him perfectly. I am pleased that he has remained, but not that he does not oppose your philosophy. All your opinions are beautiful and praiseworthy; but if I were in his place I should certainly hinder you from making use of them, and not regulate my conduct by your moderation and disinterestedness. Oh! as for my lord, you cannot keep him,—that's the public cry. It seems to me that the brother and sister-in-law are not pleased. Do you not detest the people? From the agrarian law to your monument, your lamps, and your black standard, its joy, its sadness, its applause, its complaints, are all odious to me. But I am going back to speak to you about yourself. You say that your fortune, instead of augmenting, will suffer diminution. I am much afraid of that. No liberty without a competency. Remember that. If your economy falls upon your trips to France I shall be miserable. But listen to this without getting vexed.

I possess, as you know, a small lodging-room belonging to me, little worthy of the son of Robert Walpole, but which may satisfy the philosopher Horace. If he found it convenient, he could occupy it without incurring the slightest ridicule. He can consult sensible people, and while waiting, be persuaded that it is not my personal interest which induces me to offer it to him.

Honestly, my mentor, you could not do better than take it. You would be near me or a hundred leagues from me if you liked it better. It would not engage you to any attention nor any assiduity; we would renew our vows against friendship. It would even be necessary to render more observance to the Idol [Comtesse de Boufflers]; for who could be shocked, if not she? Pont-de-Veyle, who approves and advises this arrangement, claims that even the Idol would find nothing to oppose. Think of that.