But as soon as I entered college I became sufficiently absorbed in the actual. Neither Holt nor Dart had changed in the slightest degree, except that Jack wore trim English whiskers and looked quite middle-aged, and Harry was engaged in nursing the incipient down of a moustache, and was the tallest, handsomest, cleverest fellow in his class. Jack had always been the closest of students, and his old diligence had not abated here: he kept up with the rest by dint of solid hard work. Harry flung scholarship to the winds of course, but made a special career for himself which won him more admiration from everybody except the faculty than any amount of legitimate industry. He was a fluent and ready debater; he wrote for the college journal; his high animal spirits brought everybody about him, and his mind seemed ever eager and poised for flight: he was ready in wit; decried trifling subjects, yet would dispute for two hours over an absurdity; was dexterous and unanswerable in his syllogisms; would advance the crudest and most untenable theory, defend it, reducing the arguments of his opponents to meaningless folly, conquer apparently by both wit and reason, then turn his own hypothesis inside out, confute it, dash it into senseless atoms, and dismiss it as unworthy of a thought. In short, among us lads, busy with books and full of admiration of our own cleverness, he was delightful; and among other ostentatious pedantries such as prevail at college his passed unrebuked. When he tried his wits with Mr. Floyd, that gentleman implored him for God's sake to hold his tongue and to consult Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, book 2, chapter 4, and discover the opinion of sensible men concerning youthful intellects like his own.

I appeared to poor enough advantage at first, and was almost afraid to speak in the curious and motley society which thronged our rooms. The quick wit, the ready epigram and squib, the oppressive and multitudinous puns in every language,—all served to stun and confuse me, fixed as I was in grave and quiet habits of mind and thought. It was amazing to me at first with what ease many of the boys had acquired clear ideas upon every question of the day, and with what brilliancy they could advance them, while I was tongue-tied from modesty or reserve. Presently, however, I discovered that these promising young gentlemen were not so wondrous wise after all. I dismissed my fears, felt less fastidious about the emphatic utterance of a thoughtless opinion, and soon was as loud-tongued as any in my demand that the world should be made over at once to suit men of our calibre. At first they were all very tender and patient with me, but when I grew a trifle bolder my little gravities became the target for everybody's wit, and I dare say I was much improved by having my mannerisms and elegancies knocked rudely off from me.

Every boy is fortunate who carries the oldest and best associations of his life into his university career; and Harry and I were supremely lucky in always having Jack Holt with us in the old way, and being able in a world of transient delusions and attractions of absorbing charm to fall back upon something real—an influence which could not be overturned by our eagerness for fashion and novelty, and which, if forgotten for a moment, reasserted itself with vital force to atone for such a base neglect. Not that Jack claimed anything from us: perhaps his power over us was commensurate with the modesty and dignity of his character. His regard was a necessary note in the harmony of our well-being: his disapprobation was a voice which cried "Shame!" to us, although he never uttered a reproach. I felt all this as well as Harry, but he, of course, undisciplined and untrained, possessed more ardor and a more decided temperament than I: his aberrations were wider; and, as the pendulum must always swing back to the right as far as it bounded to the left, he came in his repentance as much closer to his cousin than did I as his deviations had exceeded mine. No wonder Jack loved him—not with impetuosity, for Jack was never impetuous: all his feelings were deep, calm, patient, tender, unconquerable by time or chance. The two felt that mutual attraction which opposites and counterparts possess. Harry was the most popular man in his class. Nature had done everything for him, and lavished those gifts of which she is usually most sparing. He had a good mind and genial wit; a relish for every form of enjoyment; a perfect form, the glorious beauty of a Greek god, with crisp golden curls, brilliant deep-set eyes of blue, noble and chiselled features; frank manners which none could resist; spirits which nothing could depress; an impetuous temper, but passing like a flash the moment it was spent. Jack, on the other hand, had no beauty, and was regarded by those whom he did not care for as a dull fellow. He was a little slow, and had slight appreciation of wit except to admire every evidence of it in Harry. He had certain settled objects in life, and spent none of his forces on the pleasant distractions which the rest of us sought on the way. He had been born with a sort of reposeful energy, which had always impressed me with the conviction that no ordinary situation was enough for him; and at college there was something disproportionate in his position among light-hearted boys, so that I never wondered that he found our aims trivial. He possessed to the full that force of character by which a man masters himself, always keeps himself in check, and in times of risk and extremity of peril can suffice unto his own needs and courageously resist sorrow, misfortune and disappointment.

But while Harry, full of lawless and uncontrollable impulses, had a stormy and untried future before him, in which he was to be obliged to work hard for all his successes, Jack's seemed a dazzling vista of prosperity and ease. He was already engaged to the girl he loved; he was the only son of a man whose wealth was enormous; and while the rest of us were to be hungrily gazing into the world's windows with our cold hands in our empty pockets, he was calmly to take the prettiest girl we knew by the hand and lead her away into a fairyland whose glories we might only guess at. But he took all his prospects very quietly: not even for the sake of love did he neglect his work. He rarely spoke of Georgy, and I knew that it would never be his fault to illuminate with too bright a glare the sweet mysteries of the love that must lie between them. I saw him sometimes writing to her with her picture before him.

"What do you suppose he writes about?" Harry used to ask me on such occasions. "She cares little enough about fine sentiments, even if he were given to that sort of thing; and I can't believe that he is very ostentatious in declaring his passion. I don't think she will ever pass that criticism upon his epistles that some old party did upon a pudding: 'Too many plums and not enough suet.' I confess I cannot guess how he contrives to fill his six regulation pages."

"I don't see that it concerns us, at all events."

"Very true. But she would show me his letters if I asked her to. I wonder how Jack likes a certain ease she has in other men's society? What claws are to a cat, what the sting is to the bee, what its poison is to the upas tree, coquetry is to Georgy Lenox. I wish him joy of her, but wash my hands of the engagement."

He spoke with some heat, which was his wont in every allusion to Jack's love-affair. But I knew that Harry had a dozen flirtations on hand, and the fatalest effect of the false is its power of destroying our delicate and just perception of the true.

CHAPTER IX.

My mother, on her return, had gone at once to her sister, Mrs. Woolsey of New York, and remained with her until she joined me for a Christmas visit at Mr. Raymond's. Three years had passed since I was there, and the three years had changed Helen from a mere child into a slim maiden of almost fourteen, tall and stately for her years. Mr. Raymond seemed no older and no feebler: his eyes held the old restless fire, the only reminiscence of youthful power about him; he was still anxiously served and tended, and in this cold season huddled before the fires covered with furs, a tiger-skin over his knees, his pale hands clasping his wrappings together at the throat. He was considerate for my mother's comfort, as a host should be, and he betrayed an eager curiosity and interest concerning my infirmity; which showed his care for me, but which I resented as an intrusion. For I had reached the point when it was easy for me to endure the fact that I was unlike other men in my physical strength, but was not yet sufficiently resigned to it to bear questioning or sympathy. Helen never alluded to it, and although at first she tried to save me footsteps, she had tact enough to give up even that evidence of any knowledge of my weakness. Indeed, she was shy of me now: she had a governess in these days, and had perhaps been taught one of the first lessons that young girls learn—to shrink from every man who is neither her father nor her brother nor her grandfather. Accordingly, during all that Christmas week I rarely heard the sound of her voice.

Mr. Floyd had joined us a few hours after we reached The Headlands. The three years had made more change in him than in any of the rest of us, if I except myself. He had grown older—was more quiet and languid, and more tender in his manner. I had often wondered of late, now that I was strong again and in a measure launched into life, whether he and my mother would marry. I saw many meanings in my mother's beautiful face of which she never spoke to me; the two had long talks together every day, and their manner to each other held all the sweetness of steadfast affection and true sympathy; yet there was a nameless something which was never in his tones now.

It was a lovely, quiet Christmas-time. Outside, the winter seas roared and great masses of ice covered the rocks and bound the shore: heavy snows fell and the winds whistled cold. But inside, everything went on in a still, blessed fashion that only comes when people love one another, and in a stately, comfortable fashion that is only at command in rich houses where all stores of state and comfort are opened with a golden key. The greenhouses were in their perfection now: there were many of them of various temperatures, but all opening from one into the other. Mr. Floyd and I were walking one day where the oranges, lemons and cedrats were ripening in different degrees of maturity: they seemed to blossom and yield as freely as if in their native climates, and our favorite walk was there these chilly winter afternoons; for Mr. Floyd, always a shiverer, of late found every place except the tropical atmosphere of a greenhouse too cold for him. My mother had been with us picking a few orange-blossoms. My guardian had taken one little spray and put it against her hair, sighing meanwhile, although he was smiling.

"No orange-blossoms for my white hair," said she, laughing and flushing. "They are for the dark curls of a young girl."

"Oh, youth! youth! youth!" he exclaimed half bitterly.

"Dear friend," said she very calmly and sweetly, "youth is only so beautiful when we have lost it. Middle life is stronger, pleasanter, nobler."

"I might cry for middle life too," Mr. Floyd said lightly, "for I have lost that as well as youth. I am an old man: I have no to-morrows. Carry your orange-blossoms away, Mary: their perfume is too strong for me."

I had listened dreamily, without taking much meaning from their words. My mother went on into the next conservatory and picked roses and camellias, and Mr. Floyd watched her, shivered, and, passing his arm within mine, walked back into the first greenhouse, among the bristling cactuses and broad, silky-leaved bananas.

"As soon as you are free from college, Floyd," said he, "you and I will go to Europe; that is, if I am alive. The doctors say travel is good for me—occupation without fever, interest without personal emotion. Yes, a year from July we will set out, and if Helen can go with us, she and your mother shall be our companions."

"And how about your position at Washington?"

"After the fourth of March I shall never hold office again. I suppose that is what is killing me: I have worked too hard and abused my strength a little."

I looked into his face. I was almost as tall as he now, and Mr. Floyd had always been a head above other men. I put my hand on his shoulder and looked steadily into his face.

"I wish you would tell me, sir," said I, "what you mean when you say these things. Are you really ill? Your allusions to your state of health are so painful to me, and to my mother too."

"Oh," he returned kindly, "your mother knows all about it." He mused a little, then cheered up, laughed and clapped me on the shoulder. "If I were a man in decent health," he affirmed with an air of jollity, "I should be your father-in-law. No, that is not it: I should be your stepfather. Thank your stars that I have the modesty not to believe myself irresistible under present circumstances."

"But why not?" said I, quite in earnest. "If you are less strong than formerly, all the more need of your having a wife. I should suppose."

"As to my need, that is nothing, nothing. But think: if she cared for me I should be preparing tortures for her. She would feel nothing but dread. I may die at any time, Floyd, if I am shocked or startled. Raptures would not do for me, either: I should be afraid to kiss my wife, lest my heart should increase its beating by a throb a minute. No: I shall marry no one now: I have put by the hope, as an old man puts by all the dreams of his prime."

"It might all have come to pass," I exclaimed bitterly, "had it not been for me."

"Oh, my boy! my dear boy!" said Mr. Floyd. "When your accident came I forgot my own wishes at once, thinking only of your need of your mother. I would have given up more for you than that: I would have given up my life. Come, come! we have fallen into too serious a vein. Let us talk about our trip to Europe and the East. I never had the right sort of a travelling-companion yet: wise men stay at home, but bores and noodles go abroad."

"But when we start the wise men will no longer be at home."

"You have hit it precisely. There are a few things I want to show you—some cathedrals, landscapes and pictures. I will save you a world of trouble, and will instruct you at once to find certain objects frightful and unworthy of notice or esteem. The zest of travel is taken out of one by the necessity of muttering vague formulas of meaningless praise before pictures and statues it is traditional to admire. There's too much of everything in this world. When a man has reached my age and my state of health he feels the necessity of getting at the real substance of things."

"But can one get at it?"

"Oh, don't utter any precocious wisdom. Certainly, one can get at the substance of things. True, there is enough mystery and perplexity about the system of the world, and at times all life looms up a terrible enigma, so increasing in difficulty of solution that Death's key to knowledge seems the one thing to be desired. But it is well for a man not to lose himself in labyrinths of conjecture, but to resolutely put aside his spirit of philosophical inquiry, and do something useful for himself and his fellow-men. For my own part, I don't think Hamlet a fine fellow. Don't ask conundrums. Your duty now is to finish your collegiate course respectably. Take honors or not as it happens, but be a man, and win yourself the place you ought to take, and keep it like a gentleman. Then we will travel, and I will remember you are young and let you do the foolish things youth loves to do. We will have famous times together. Not that I altogether approve of vagabondizing. Still, what is there for us to do? I am worn out: you are too young to have duties to society, and ought to try life, and examine, criticise and become enlightened. I suppose I shall catch the mania for bric-a-brac and curiosities, and make them the object of my life, since I have no other. If I do, I shall be obliged to will them to you, Floyd, for, Goodness knows, Helen will have enough to set up a museum of art without any help from me."

"I think so," I rejoined: "this house is so filled with wonderful things. But Helen—"

"Don't talk about me, please," cried a voice from behind the acacias, "for I am here;" and the little girl came through the drooping branches covered with their plumy canary-colored blossoms, and advanced toward us with that wonderful princess-like gait of hers. She was smiling demurely. "Listeners hear no good of themselves, they say," she observed, throwing a laughing glance at me.

"I was only about to remark that you seemed tolerably indifferent to your possessions."

"The fact is," said Mr. Floyd teasingly, "since Helen found that the moon and the sea did not belong to her, she gave up, and has not believed she is so very rich, after all;" and while he laughed and Helen blushed, and half hid herself, I heard how the child, when she was six years old, had taken her new nursery-governess around the place, saying, "This is my pony," "These are my dogs," "This is my conservatory," and "These are my greenhouses:" then, when she had exhausted the inventory of her wealth, she had affirmed, "That is my moon" and "That is my water;" and when it was explained to her that the crescent over the pine trees in the west belonged alike to all the children on the wide earth, and that the fickle sea too paid its homage at a thousand shores, she was quite inconsolable, and nothing could make up to her for her loss.

A very quiet, demure little woman was Helen now-a-days. I deplored the necessity for the graceful French governess who was polishing her into a conventional manner and preparing her for the dull routine which other girls must follow. I never analyzed my impressions of Helen then, but I am sure I considered her far above any commonplace educational needs, for I knew that she was so wise, so disciplined, so true to all her duties, that she was altogether a woman, and not a little girl at all. It gave me a positive shock to discover that she was ciphering in vulgar fractions and that her spelling was, to say the least, crude. Not but that she was childish enough in many things, and so exquisitely docile with her father that he often scolded her for her over-careful obedience. I could understand well enough myself how she liked to be led by the strong man who loved her, and whom she so dearly loved, because when she was alone with her grandfather she needed to govern, holding a dreary sway over her little kingdom.

As I have said before, we were not intimate this winter. I was not of an age to be interested in a little girl in the schoolroom, and Mademoiselle Blois took care not to allow the little girl in the schoolroom to take an interest in me. Occasionally, however, when she was with her father and I joined them, the memories we shared between us broke through the gossamer web of diffidence which shackled us both, and for a little while we would be as free as in the old childish confidential days on the seashore or back among the brown stubble of the stripped harvest-fields of the uplands. At these times she would ask me many questions about Georgy Lenox, and when I told her that Georgy was quite a grown woman now, and engaged to my friend Jack Holt, she thought it wonderful and strange.

"But why?" I asked. "Georgy is a trifle older than I am, and I am now almost nineteen."

"Everybody is so old!" she said with a droll little gesture of despair. "It seems to me I shall never grow up."

"Oh yes, you will soon be fourteen: I have heard you say your mother was married when she was seventeen: that is only three years off; and Georgy Lenox is much older, and only just engaged, and will not be married until Jack is out of college and a partner in his father's business."

"Does he like her very much?" asked Helen solemnly.

"Well, yes: he has loved her ever since she was a very little girl. He has spent all his money upon her: he knows all her little needs, her tastes. I have been out shopping with him frequently when he would devote hours to the matching of a shade of ribbon or the selection of a peculiar color of gloves. Harry Dart is never tired of making fun of Jack, for the dear old fellow is a little absurd in his painstaking for a capricious girl who does not even know her own mind, and is certain to find fault with even his most fastidious choice."

"I should not like that," said Helen, so decidedly that I looked with some surprise at the expression of her imperious face. "I should want to have everything, and give it all to him."

"To whom? to Jack?"

"Oh, dear me, no! You know what I mean."

I understood her, and I made an involuntary grimace in thinking of mademoiselle's chaste teachings in the schoolroom. Here was a little girl of fourteen with her mind made up about what she would do for the lover who was to come out of Shadowland some day.

"Don't you think that would be nicer, Floyd?" she asked.

"For the girl to be rich, that she might make her husband rich? Some men would like that."

"But what do you think?"

A boy of nineteen is not so glib in speaking of marriage as a girl of fourteen, but I finally told her that I should not fancy the destiny of marrying a rich girl: then my imagination warmed, and I let her hear what my dream would be. She, the girl I loved, should be poor: very likely life would have been cruel to her, and she would have known cold and privation. What joy I should have in wrapping her in costly things, in setting off her beauty with ornaments appropriate and rare! What a light would shine in her eyes when I led her to the lovely house where we two were to dwell in Fairyland! Every duty in life should be taken from her: all she would have to do would be to grow more and more beautiful. I myself would be chief servant to this dainty little new-made queen, and not even the winds should be allowed to play too freely with her hair.

Helen looked at me pensively, and Mr. Floyd, who was writing in the corner, laughed a low amused laugh which reminded me for a moment of Mephistopheles.

"So you would like that?" mused Helen. "Do you know, I should not like it at all."

"Well, you will never be poor," I retorted, "and you will give your golden key to some man who wants to marry a princess. But, to tell the truth, Helen, I don't expect to marry anybody: I think it is great nonsense. Both Harry and I have made up our minds to be bachelors."

CHAPTER X.

I had not seen Georgy Lenox for four years when, the spring we graduated, she came to visit a cousin of her mother's in Boston, and we were all invited to an Easter-party at Mrs. Dwight's, the cards being brought to us by no less a person than Mr. Lenox himself. I was in my own room writing when I heard Harry's sweet voice calling, and I went out. Harry was, as usual, sitting on the table before his easel. It had been one of his guardian's regulations that he should not touch paints or canvas during his collegiate course, and until within the last few months he had obeyed orders, and only lately had taken to water-colors as a sort of negative course of action calculated to give him relaxation after the monotony of his unnatural deprivation, without infringing upon his uncle's injunctions. He was painting a girl in a flower-garden, and over his shoulder was gazing a shabby, jaunty, decayed-looking person, who was strangely foreign to my eyes, yet irresistibly familiar.

"Don't you remember Mr. Lenox?" asked Harry, staring at me. "Have you forgotten the pleasures of your boyhood, miserable ingrate? Have you no recollection of the big kite this benefactor of your youth made you, which dragged you down the hill and threw you into the ditch?"

"I remember all about it," said I; and indeed I had been shaking hands with my old friend all the time Harry was speaking.—"And I am delighted to see you, Mr. Lenox."

I began looking about me for a chair. In fact, finding a chair was the one trouble of our three lives, and was the only way in which we felt hospitality to be a tax upon our time. For, although we had as many chairs as the room would accommodate, they were always full of books, fruit, cigars or hats and coats. There was one arm-chair, originally covered with horsehair, which Harry called the "funeral coach:" it might have been called anything, for it was so dingy, so battered, so broken, that its raison d'etre had come to be a matter of speculation. Into this seat I now inducted our visitor. He was as shabby as the funeral coach itself, but had kept up more gentility in his decay. I had not seen him for four years, and the lack of any change in his appearance surprised me. There he was, as well shaven, as threadbare, as jaunty and well-mannered, as in the old days when we used to play the siege of Troy, using an old packing-case for the wooden horse, and he was our Trojan victim. I was much impressed by my own age, and said a good deal in those days about the flight of time and the mutability of human affairs: I expected anybody who was grown up when I was young to be well stricken in years; and if Mr. Lenox had been a shrunken old man with altered aspect and a deep sense of the worthlessness of all efforts after temporalities, the change would have seemed only a reasonable one to me.

But, on the contrary, he was just the same as ever, and began talking at once about a grand coup he was going to make presently by investing in a silver-mine. He had two thousand dollars, and would buy shares at forty-nine, and be in time for the dividends of ten per cent. in July. The stock was going up like a skyrocket: a week ago you could have bought it for nineteen.

Jack had come in now, and was standing behind his future father-in-law's chair. "A skyrocket is a bad simile," he remarked. "Everybody knows what it comes down."

Mr. Lenox appeared so happy it seemed really a pity to wilt his enthusiasm: he had been beaten so many times that the prediction of failure was a familiar knell to him. But Jack had no time to waste in talk of any kind, and at once went into my room to study.

"Never mind Jack," said Harry: "he is a born croaker. I dare say the silver-mine is made of gold. How about the stock in the —— Railroad that your wife holds, Mr. Lenox?" And we both laughed at the old joke.

Mr. Lenox smiled furtively: "It was never safe to trust such a secret to scatter-brains like yourselves. But don't you know about the great defalcation? Brown, the president of the road, absconded with over a million of dollars, and they have not paid a single dividend in three years. You ought to hear my wife go on about it."

"But you have an easy time: you didn't mind Brown's embezzlement," said Harry. "What a stroke of luck for you! You can buy back your wife's ten shares at a low figure, and have a good conscience the rest of your life."

"By Jove, Harry! you have given me an idea. Just as soon as this new stock of mine gets above par I will sell out, reinvest and put the certificates in my wife's bureau-drawer. I should breathe more freely, there is no doubt of it. I confess to you, boys, it's a deuce of a life to keep a secret from a woman, she has you at such a disadvantage. Yes, on my honor, I'll buy in some of that stock: it's utterly worthless for years to come, and there must be thousands and thousands of shares of it in the market. Yes, I will do it as soon as I have made two hundred per cent. on my silver-mine. Yet it does seem a pity—" and he gave us a prudent nod—"to put money into such a broken-down concern."

"But you are as rich as Croesus," remarked Harry, mixing his colors meanwhile. "It must be awfully jolly to take two thousand in one's pocket and go out and buy a silver-mine."

"The fact is," said Mr. Lenox confidentially, "that old Raymond has shelled out at last. I wrote to him, but he took no notice; so I induced Georgy to send a note to the little girl at The Headlands, and she somehow persuaded her grandfather to let me have three thousand dollars. He sent it in a way which robbed the courtesy of charm; but he is an old man, and for the sake of little Helen I did not repay him in kind."

"Why, what did he do?"

"Sent me his check pinned to a scrap of paper on which he had scrawled, 'A fool and his money are soon parted.' Of course I sent him my note of hand, and shall pay him as soon as possible. Do you happen to know, Floyd, anything of the ultimate disposal of his property—the terms of the old gentleman's will?"

"I know nothing whatever about it," I answered, "but have no doubt of Helen's being sole heiress. Why not? There is no other direct heir."

"I am his nephew," said Mr. Lenox with his jauntiest air. "I have no doubt of my claims or the claims of my daughter being recognized by the head of my family. By all accounts, too, Helen is a delicate child, fancifully reared and probably short-lived."

"Where do you get your information? Miss Floyd is a tall girl of fifteen now, straight as an arrow, and can out-ride and out-walk any girl I know."

"I wish her no harm," exclaimed Mr. Lenox eagerly. "I love the child as if she were my own. Georgy has always represented her as delicate and puny."

"She has not seen her for five years."

"True, true! Don't repeat what I said: you know the code of men of honor on these points, and what is said between friends is inviolate as the grave. Little Helen Floyd has been a good friend to my poor girl, who has none of Fortune's gifts. Not a month passes without a letter with an enclosure of money; and she begs Georgy to look upon her as a loving sister who is proud and glad to be of help to her in any way."

"And Miss Georgy accepts the money?" drawled Harry with a well-known look on his handsome face.

"Of course she does," responded Georgy's father with considerable heat. "Mr. Raymond ought to do anything for her. The amount of that man's income is fabulous, sir: I tell you, it is fabulous: he cannot begin to spend it. I sometimes doubt if he spends more than the interest of his income. Reflect upon his principal; what must it be!"

"Well, it's his own to do as he likes with, I suppose," said Harry, rather bored with the subject. "And I am sure you cannot complain, since you are jingling his money in your pocket this very moment. How did it happen that when Miss Georgy was at Mr. Raymond's she did not make the old gentleman take a fancy to her? She turns most people's heads."

"It was always a mystery to me," returned Mr. Lenox mournfully. "But Mr. Raymond does not like my wife, nor, I sometimes think, does he like me. The truth of the matter is, that that unlucky Hermetically-Sealed Barrel Company—"

Harry looked at me. The unlucky Hermetically-Sealed Barrel Company had been one of our old jokes at Belfield, for we had been compelled to hear its history a hundred times over. It seemed to me, in my youthful wisdom, odd and pitiful that while we had grown from boyishness into something better, leaving follies and weaknesses behind us, this man, almost thrice our age, still studied the old pages of his book, not reading them with any clearer vision than before, in spite of all his experience. Why did he not turn the leaf and take a different story? Experienced in life as I believed myself in those days, I had not learned then that we halt groping over one lesson throughout our careers. Although our harps seem tuned for the most various harmonies, we strike the same chords over and over again in hopeless iteration.

So we got him off the subject, and talked college-talk, and told him about the probable appointments for commencement. He was one of our alumni, liked our gossip, and could supplement our stories with those of the jollier days twenty-five or thirty years before. Harry and I nearly died of suppressed laughter as he gravely informed us that he had expected the valedictory, and was served badly when it was given to another. It appeared a huge joke that this seedy, broken-down man, without a person in the wide world to respect him or believe in him, could ever have been justified in any of our high hopes—could ever have stood in the places we filled now, and, like us, securely counted on winning the prizes of life.

Then he produced the little white envelopes which he had hitherto forgotten, and we read that Mrs. Dwight presented us her compliments and hoped to see us for a social gathering at her house the next Wednesday evening.

"Miss Georgy's writing," said Harry, putting his down.

"How do you know, you rascal? She certainly does not write to you usually."

"No, but she writes to a fellow I know," returned Harry, nodding toward the next room. We all abated our tones now, and talked softly about Georgy, not wishing Jack to hear. Mr. Lenox was always eloquent upon this theme. He had brought her up to town himself three days before, and the Dwights were charmed with her—could not do enough for her. She was the one success of his life, and no wonder she was precious to him. A good deal of his ready money had gone into her outfit, which must be suitable for an aristocratic house and Easter gayeties, and he had put off getting a new coat until his stock was ripe for harvest. The Dwights had not seen him, you may be sure. He knew that such people would think less of Georgy for having a seedy old father out at elbows, so he was willing to keep in the background. This very morning, however, Georgy had come out for a rendezvous in a secluded corner of the Common, and had taken rare delight in the assignation and pretended he was her lover whom she was forced to meet in secret.

"I dare say she has tripped out before to meet somebody," said Harry, who was always cynical regarding women, but especially severe where Georgy was concerned. "Girls practise those wiles on fathers and brothers, that they may do the thing neatly when a lover turns up."

"Nonsense! For the matter of that, it has sometimes seemed a little hard upon my girl that, although she is engaged to the best fellow in the world, she should have no chance to win lovers from society at large. Not but that I am glad that her future is so secure—a most fortunate match for her. I am proud when I think of it."

Well he might be proud. It is something out of the course of every-day events for a girl to possess the love of a man like Jack, whose nature combined the strongest masculine qualities with the tenderness and faithfulness of a woman. Of a woman? Strange how we use phrases which have outworn their meaning! Jack's tenderness and faithfulness were altogether without parallel.

ELLEN W. OLNEY.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]



PERSONAL SKETCHES OF SOME FRENCH LITTERATEURS.

Paris, any Frenchman will tell you, is the capital of intellect; and though this is but one of a hundred things equally flattering to their country which all Frenchmen believe, yet it happens to be true. In some societies it is social rank, in others wealth and fine houses, in others, still, capacity to render service to the state, which makes old men courted and opens doors to the novice. But in Paris it is brains. If you have written a book or painted a picture or discovered a scientific theory, you have at once a reserved seat, as it were, in the social world, and nobody thinks of asking who your father was, or where you live, or what your income may be. With the literary society the political is so closely allied that the two may be said to coincide. There are coteries of course, but there are also neutral grounds on which members of all sets meet in peace and separate in harmony; and especially since the Republic has become firmly established the barriers based upon party differences have tended steadily to disappear. During the Empire some of the cleverest writers, such as Sainte-Beuve and Merimee and About, were imperialists: now they are all dead or have changed their politics. During this period, too, the intelligent and literary opposition was mostly Orleanistic, but the last seven years have clearly shown not only that the bourgeois monarchy had no roots in the heart of the people, but also that the conservative Republic possesses all its advantages, combined with few of its objectionable qualities. To men like Renan and Laugel, who have been Orleanists all their lives, and who cherish a personal affection for the party, the situation appears melancholy, and the wail of Renan in his last book is sad enough. He is French to the core; supports openly the doctrine, "My country—right or wrong;" finds the centralization of the French system, carried to its logical extreme, the ideal government; and hates, above all things, "Americanism." What strikes an Anglo-Saxon as the merest commonplace of healthy politics or intellectual life is in his eyes the most pernicious heresy. We believe that freedom to teach and to write is the only way to discover the truth, and are confident that in the struggle of life which opposing systems must pass through the truth is sure in the end to win. Not so Renan. "The idea that there is a true knowledge, which must be taught, protected, patronized by the state, to the exclusion of false knowledge, is losing ground—one of the results of the general enfeeblement of notions of government." This is bad enough, but the political situation is even worse than the moral and intellectual; for M. Renan finds that France has "preferred the democratic programme, according to which the state, composed of the agglomeration of individuals, having no other object than the happiness of these individuals as they themselves understand it, gives up all notion of initiative above their feelings and ideas. The consequence of such a state of things is the pursuit of prosperity and liberty, the destruction of whatever remains of the spirit of class, weakening of the power of the state. Individuals and the subordinate groups of the state, such as the county and the township, will prosper under such a regime; but it is to be feared that the nation, the country—France—will lose every day something of its authority and its strong cohesion. The period which we are entering upon will be one of liberty a l'Americaine."

All this seems mournful to men of Renan's type, and to young men of fashion who sigh for the "elegance" of the Empire or the Restoration, and pose consequently as imperialists or as adherents of Henri V. But the mass of the nation is supremely contented. The peasants say that the Republic is the only government which does not go to war; the middle classes, richer and more numerous in France than in any other country, are happy in having the care of their material interests in their own hands, and especially in the consciousness that they are now the ruling class, and that bourgeois intelligence and respectability, rather than imperial frivolity or royal pietism, is the prevailing idea. Even Renan admits that "the present hour is sweet:" what troubles him is the thought of the future. But the republicans are not troubled at all. They don't intend to carry out any great reforms; they wish to avoid all foreign complications until the yearned-for hour arrives when Germany will be forced to disgorge what they are pleased to term its ill-gotten booty; they have in their ranks almost all the administrative and oratorical powers of the country; and they tell you that M. Grevy, the present president of the Chamber of Deputies, will succeed to the presidency, when the "stupid" MacMahon goes out, with just as little difficulty as the latter had in coming in, and that he, in turn, will in all probability be succeeded by Gambetta. These two men are bourgeois to the tips of their fingers, as was Thiers—modest, leading a regular life; well-informed on all local matters, and naively ignorant of the rest of the world; not strong believers in political economy; prudent and anti-clerical. Only, Gambetta, being twenty years younger than Grevy, is by twenty years more fiery and radical.

The reader must not complain that he has been entrapped into reading a leader on French politics when he desired nothing of the sort; for, without bearing in mind these preliminary facts, it is quite impossible to understand the relations of French literary men among themselves. Party passion has ever run high in France, and now that everybody can freely speak his mind, it has become more difficult than ever for even the oldest friendship to stand the strain of daily discussion. Take the instance of M. About and M. Taine. They were schoolboys together, and it would be hard to say which of the two most distinguished himself at this period of his career. They were both prodigies, but, though rivals, the fastest friends. After they had emerged from the Ecole Normale they went and set up housekeeping together in an old house in the Quartier Latin; and as they were both poor as rats, the difficulties they had in keeping soul and body together recall the most picturesque and thrilling scenes in Murger's Vie de Boheme. One day they discovered that they had neither money nor anything to eat, and About started out to scare up some nutriment for the inner man. After a while he returned laden with a basket containing a dozen bottles of wine and various packets of provisions, and followed by an organ-grinder. Taine was of course no less pleased than astonished, but he demanded an explanation. "Oh," said About, "I stumbled across a wine-dealer who wanted a first-class advertisement done in the highest style of art, so I sat down and wrote it for him, and he gave me fifty francs and this wine."—"But the organ-grinder?" pursued Taine.—"Heavens!" exclaimed his friend, "you don't think one can enjoy a banquet without music, do you? Come, fall to; and you, old buffer, go to work on that divine instrument of yours;" which the old buffer proceeded to do, probably more to the satisfaction of his employer than to that of Taine.

Nor was lively companionship and assistance of this sort all that the future philosopher and critic owed to the friend of his youth: he probably owes him his life also, and hence the world is, in a sense, indebted to M. About for the History of English Literature and Les Origines de la France contemporaine. While they were living in the style above described Taine was taken suddenly ill, and, as the common purse was not sufficiently full to enable him to consult a physician, the two went to see a clever medical student of the quartier and requested his advice. The budding doctor examined Taine carefully, and finally pronounced that there was but one thing for him to do, and that thing was to go to the Pyrenees. "You might as well tell me to go to the moon," said the poor fellow. "Ah, well," replied the student, "you asked my opinion, and I have given it; and I may add that if you don't do what I tell you, you are a dead man." It may be imagined that the two friends did not pass a particularly pleasant evening; but after much cogitation About hit upon a possible means of relief; which, however, he kept to himself.

About's youthful talent was as precocious as his matured abilities are brilliant, and he had at this time published a book. One evening during the last season the present writer formed one of a group of three to whom he narrated, in a most charming manner, how he had made the acquaintance of the great publisher Hachette, a granddaughter of whom was another of the trio. He had left his manuscript at the publishing-house, and after some time was informed that the firm would be happy to publish it, and to pay him in cash for the copyright eight hundred francs—an offer with which he closed immediately. A week or so later he was visited, to his astonishment, by the great publisher in person. "Sir," began the latter, "it is often said that publishers don't know how to read, and I myself know some who drive a thriving trade on that principle. But I read occasionally the books which I publish, and I have read yours. I am unable to approve the contract which my agent has made with you. You have parted with your copyright for eight hundred francs: I return to you the contract, you retain the copyright, and I give you for the edition fifteen hundred francs." About was even more touched by the publisher's kindness than he was gratified by his generosity, and the two men mutually pleased each other—a fact which the younger now proposed to turn to account in aid of his friend Taine. So he went to M. Hachette with the following proposition: "I have a friend named Taine, who is very ill, and I want you to send him to the Pyrenees."—"But, M. About, I don't know your friend, and why, in Heaven's name, should I send him to the Pyrenees?"—"But he is a genius, he will be famous one day, and he will make your fortune. Your fortune is already made, I know, but he will increase it." The publisher then remarked that the name Taine was familiar to him, and finally dismissed his enthusiastic author with a promise to consider the matter. In a few days Taine received a note requesting him to come and dine with M. Hachette at his country-place just outside of Paris. The two young men were again in the depths of financial need, and all the money they could scrape together was barely sufficient to pay for a railway-ticket. Taine was quite nonplussed by the invitation—did not know what to make of it; but About persuaded him to accept, saying that he would at least have a good dinner, which was more than he could expect at home. And so he went. The publisher was politeness and cordiality itself, complimented his guest on his successes at the Ecole Normale, and after dinner took him aside and said: "M. Taine, we want a book written on the Pyrenees, and we think you are the best man we can get to do it. If you accept our offer you will start at once for that region, you will deliver us the manuscript in six months, and we will pay you for it six thousand francs; of which I have the pleasure of offering you half to-day." This, the first of Taine's books, duly appeared, and was a great commercial as well as literary success, so that the publisher had no cause to regret his generosity.

One might suppose that a friendship founded and sustained in this fashion would be tolerably secure against the wear and tear of life, especially if no personal difficulties intervened. And so it might in any other land; but literary Frenchmen are too much sentimentalists and doctrinaires to allow friendship or anything else to stand in the way of the expression of their opinion, in season or out of season, in regard to what, from their individual standpoint, constitutes the public weal. Love me, love my dog; subscribe to all my opinions; follow all my political changes or I disown you,—when people guide their conduct by this principle all pairs of friends, except such a one as Boswell and Dr. Johnson's, sooner or later must separate. Taine is an observer, an investigator, a critic; and having devoted himself in turn to travel and to the study of metaphysics, of art and of literature, he has now turned his attention to recent French history; and the book he has written is not at all to the taste of sentimental politicians of the About type. The reader will not need to be reminded that there is no country in the world so favorable to the growth of "legend" as France: the petite bourgeoisie of Paris, as I found by personal experience, has already fabricated a complete legendary history of the Commune, and there is no subject on which the average Frenchman is so ignorant, and on which his ignorance is so precious to him, as the real character of the Great Revolution. As France is the guide of nations; as it represents, and always has represented, the summit of civilization; as it has ever possessed the greatest hearts, the purest spirits, as well as the most brilliant intellects of the time,—why, it is nothing less than high treason for a Frenchman to turn round and begin to show up the weakness or wickedness of, say, Robespierre. This sort of thing is pardonable only when the exposure of some historical character is offensive to the reigning government, as was the case with the early volumes of Lanfrey's Napoleon. About probably knows the truth about the men of '92 and '93 as well as anybody, but he thinks it desirable that the illusions respecting them should continue. They are, he says, an important political factor. Whereas Taine, like the late MM. Lanfrey and De Tocqueville, loving truth for its own sake, slashes away without caring for the practical result. I was told by an intimate and lifelong friend of both men that it had required the most persistent efforts of persons situated like himself to prevent About's sharply attacking Taine in his paper (since the appearance of La Revolution the radicals have favored its author with the epithet of "reactionnaire"); in which case a rupture would have been unavoidable.

Taine does not like German historians nor German methods of working up history, and he absolutely denies what, to my mind, is their greatest and most unrivalled excellence—their relative impartiality. Mommsen was the subject of unsparing denunciation, as having used Roman history as a mannikin by which he could illustrate certain views on contemporary German politics. Mommsen is an author of whom I know little, but there is another German historian, Von Sybel, who seems to me the most admirable writer in this department with whom I am acquainted; and as his great work partially covers the same period to which Taine has recently devoted himself, I ventured to mention his name in this connection. But I might as well have stirred up a hornet's nest. "Von Sybel," said Taine, "wrote his book to prove that Prussia was perfectly right in taking part in the partition of Poland, and some other things of like nature." He seemed to think this assertion (admitting its truth) settled Von Sybel's place in literature as definitely as if he had said he had written a book to prove Friedrich II. to have been the son of Jupiter or that the Prussians were God's chosen people. One would have supposed that the fact of a man's holding such an opinion in regard to the partition of Poland sufficient evidence for sending him to a lunatic asylum, although most people believe it to be a perfectly established historic truth. Taine would not even admit the excellence of Von Sybel's style—well enough, he said, and clear, but the style of a leader-writer in the —— (naming an old, soberly, but far from stupidly written Paris daily—one of the most readable papers in Paris, and the favorite of the petite bourgeoisie). I mentioned the reputation Von Sybel enjoyed in Germany as having an excellent style, and the response was, "Very likely: where all the rest are blind a one-eyed man sees very well"—a remark true enough as regards the mass of German writers, but very unjust to the person under discussion. Taine's models are Macaulay and Froude, but one would hardly think so from reading his France contemporaine. Be their demerits what they may—and they are no doubt great—the two English historians certainly have the faculty of presenting a sharply-outlined and vivid picture, while Taine heaps up hundreds of little facts, so that the reader, as the French say, can hardly see the wood for the trees. I may add that the French scholar's opinion of Prescott and Motley and Bancroft is still lower than that which he cherishes for their German contemporaries.

Taine has more the air of a scholar, and less that of a man of the world, than any other litterateur whom I met at Paris. During the winter his wife receives once a fortnight, and he regularly attends the famous weekly dinners of the Princess Mathilde, and occasionally dines informally with some intimate friend; but beyond this he goes but little into society, and takes his opinions of it at second hand; with regard to which fact Sainte-Beuve once kindly remonstrated with him in an admirable letter printed in the second volume of the Correspondance. He is fifty years old, and made, some sixteen years ago, what, in respect to the rank and wealth and amiable and intellectual qualities of his wife, was a very brilliant marriage. The story of the wooing is a "romance in real life." They have two children, the usual size of French families, though About has seven—"toute une famille anglaise," as Madame About remarked to me—whether with pride or in a half-ashamed happiness I did not discover. The Taines live handsomely in the midst of the Faubourg St. Germain, in a house whose windows have a clear view of the Hotel des Invalides across the gardens of the Sacre-Coeur. I would say that I found Taine particularly courteous and cordial, were it not that I met no French gentleman who in any other society would not be distinguished for perfection of manner and winning kindness.

Taine has often been urged by friends who have been in America to visit the United States, both with a view to repair his somewhat shattered health and to write a book about us after the manner of his Notes on England. He always says he will do so; and it is probable that upon the completion of the great work, of which the third and last volume is now nearly finished, he and Madame Taine will set sail for our shores.

One of the peculiarities of Paris, regarded as a weltstadt, is, that it contains no socially disreputable quarters: there is no part of the city where men of wealth and position do not live. Thus, Theuriet and Cherbuliez reside in the Quartier du Luxembourg (between the Latin Quarter and the Faubourg St. Germain), as did Sainte-Beuve, About and Tourgueneff in the Rue de Douai (toward Montmartre), Girardin and Dumas in the Champs Elysees, Feuillet in the Rue de Rivoli, etc. Feuillet's name is, I think, as well known in the United States as that of any French man of letters except Taine, and if his biography were written he would be as famous for his eccentricities as was Balzac. An old friend of his once told me that one day, in calling upon Madame Feuillet, he expressed his regret that she had no regular reception-day, as in that case he would be able to see her more frequently. "Well," she answered, "I should like to have one, but, you see, it is quite impossible. One can't light the candles till after four o'clock, and before that time it is so dark here in the entresol that you can't see anybody." (I should have prefaced this anecdote by saying, for the benefit of those readers who have never been in Paris, that the entresol is a low story just over the shops, and that the Rue de Rivoli is one of the noisiest streets in the city.)—"But Feuillet has leased the third and fourth floors: why don't you receive up there?" responded the visitor.—"Oh, Octave would never hear of such a thing. Why, when I merely asked leave to hang some of my dresses up stairs, he would not let me: 'I have leased this whole story in order to have silence about me when I write, and the story overhead to have quiet above me. If you should hang your dresses up here, your maid would all the time be rummaging round, and that would derange my thoughts.'" Another of Feuillet's oddities is his hatred of railways. He has a country-place on the coast in Normandy, and every summer sends down his wife and children and servant by rail; after which, like a Russian grand seigneur, he goes down himself with post-horses. I am inclined to think Feuillet has greater genius than any other living writer of French fiction, with one exception. His Monsieur de Camors, for instance, is a masterpiece, though one of the most painful and unhealthy books ever written. But his talent is essentially dramatic talent, and when he writes a novel his inner consciousness, in spite of himself, is centred upon the stage effect. Thus, in his last story, Les Amours de Philippe, there is no unity whatever, the book consisting of three distinct and independent episodes, precisely corresponding to the three acts of a play. The first of these parts is one of the most agreeable pieces of writing in French literature, a really charming little idyl—a Parisian idyl, to be sure, and not precisely the most suitable reading for young girls. Nothing is more peculiar than a Frenchman's ideas of morality in literature; for, strange as it may appear, several of Feuillet's books are considered highly edifying, and the secretary of the Academy, upon his entrance into that august body, was able to greet him with the, in France, by no means negative praise that it was not his fault if there still existed mauvaises menages. Feuillet, rather by sentiment than by conviction, it would appear, is an ardent Catholic, and, like Dumas, owes no small portion of his worldly success to the appreciation of this fact in high quarters. Another of his peculiarities is, that almost alone among the writers of the day he cherishes a lingering regret for the pleasant days of the Empire, when for a long period he was not only a favorite at the Tuileries and Compiegne, but almost the only man of talent who found it possible to write.

Another writer whom I used to meet in Paris, at About's and at his own house, was Andre Theuriet, favorably known in America by his lovely little story of Gerard's Marriage. I had read that and other almost equally charming tales of its author, and felt a strong desire to see him. Of some literary men one creates in his mind's eye a picture of which the colors are the impressions produced by their books, and I had imagined Theuriet either a youngish man with a pretty wife or a gray-haired paterfamilias with two or three grown-up sons and daughters. Theuriet's hair is partially gray, to be sure, but he is unmarried, and by no means bon enfant as regards personal appearance. He was born in 1833 at Marly-le-Roi, near Paris, but educated in a little town in Lorraine, where his mother's family lived, and whither he still returns two or three times a year, as he said to me, "to run in the woods." He early entered the civil service, and was long stationed at Auberive, a place situated in the forest-region on the edge of Burgundy, and about which is laid the scene of his novels Gerard and Raymonde. For the last eight years his official duties have caused him to live at Paris, and it is during this period that his works of fiction have been produced. Theuriet is a poet as well as a novelist, and his poetry is said by competent critics to be very good; but the public looks with a more kindly eye upon his novels, and as their author cannot afford to disdain contemporary profit and reputation, he has been obliged rather to show the cold shoulder to the Muse. Theuriet's appearance in letters and his popularity are, I think, to be taken as a sign that a healthy change is going on in the taste of French readers. His books, consciously or unconsciously, are a protest against the system in which young girls are brought up in France, and which most intelligent Frenchmen deplore. It is less from an innate tendency to that sort of thing than because young girls of their own rank must not only always be under the eye of a chaperone, but also are intentionally afflicted with a deadly ignorance, incapacity to talk or to make themselves agreeable, that the young men leave them for the society of cocottes. Now, Theuriet has been a good deal in the society of English people, and while he stoutly maintains that his girl-characters are thoroughly French, he yet admits that the idea of describing a kind of young girl that in France is always assumed to be hoydenish and ill-brought-up, came to him from observing the family-life of his neighbors from across the Channel. Theuriet is not a great writer: he has none of that power of analyzing physical and mental emotions in which Balzac and Stendhal are the great adepts, though their descriptions, while unquestionably implying great knowledge of the human heart, produce upon the Anglo-Saxon reader a feeling of pain, of offence, and often of disgust. I once asked him if he thought France, under the present bourgeois regime, likely to return to a healthier taste in literature, and received as answer the assurance that since coarse and sordid realism could go no further than L'Assommoir, a reaction must set in. From the filthiness of low life, I dare say, but how about the elegant fleshliness of the previous school? France will have to undergo a complete turning inside out before this loses its hold upon the national mind; as a proof of which I may mention the fact that a man who knew as much of the world and of books as Taine does, one day said to me that the best advice he could offer to a foreigner who thought of devoting himself to letters was to carry back with him, to his own country, Balzac, Stendhal and Merimee.

Of all the men of letters at Paris, there was no one for whose works I cherished so hearty an admiration as I did for those of Ivan Tourgueneff, and none in whose personality I felt so profound an interest. Tourgueneff is far from being a model novelist, but his tales are written with wonderful power, and yet are neither indecent nor melodramatic nor rasping to the nerves. That the burden of strong natures is in proportion to their strength, that human nature in general is weak, and that the Devil still sometimes appears incarnate in the person of lovely woman, seem to form his theory of life. Hence his stories are ever sad, but they are not depressing; for his weak characters we sympathize with and do not despise, his strong and generous ones we sorrow for, his lovely women we reverence. And, however great one's admiration of Tourgueneff's books may be, the man Tourgueneff will not appear unworthy of them. What storms may, in earlier years, have passed over the heart of the now sixty-year-old man I do not know, but now his rather aged face, fringed with perfectly white hair and beard, bears an expression of perfect peace. Much of his time is constantly employed in helping others, and, from all I heard, Madame Greville hardly exaggerated when she said to me, "He is a saint, a nineteenth-century saint!" And withal he is one of the most guileless of men: whatever he may think of men in general, he never can bring himself to think ill of any man in particular.

Tourgueneff has now for a long period passed at least six months of the year in Paris, and only three or four in Russia. He used to spend the summer at Baden, but since the war he has exchanged Baden for Carlsbad—whether or not on account of sympathy with France, and hence hatred of the peacefully-disposed nation which it is pleased to consider its deadly enemy, I do not know. It might well be, for he feels almost as strongly as a Frenchman as he does as a Russian, and I met no one in France who was so enthusiastic a republican as he. The present French Republic (which he insists is fundamentally and thoroughly different from the Republics of '93 and '48, as well as from that of the United States) seems to be his ideal government. In a century, he says, there won't be a king in Europe, except perhaps in England, and there he will be nothing but a pageant—a political mummy shown to the populace at so much a head.

In writing of the great Russian novelist it naturally suggests itself to say a word upon Madame Emile Durand, or "Henri Greville," who has lately achieved so universal a reputation. One of her slightest efforts has just been crowned by the Academy, and one or more of her tales has been translated into all the tongues of Europe, including Dutch and Spanish. The Durands, who are childless, reside in a little pavillon, or house with garden behind the main structure which fronts the street, in the not very inviting region of Montmartre. Madame Greville is a comfortable-looking lady of thirty-five with the air of forty, and is a most agreeable talker. In her varied experience she has seen a good deal of the up and downs of life, but has now settled down, as she told me, "to making her three novels a year." I hardly think she will ever again reach the level of the Expiation de Saveli. Her husband is the Paris correspondent of a St. Petersburg paper, and incidentally a painter.

No sketch of French literary society, however short, should omit mention of that most famous of all periodicals, the Revue des Deux Mondes. It is forty-eight years old, and during its long life it has seen perhaps a hundred rivals rise and fall, while it has itself gone on constantly increasing in importance, so that it is now become an institution, like the Academy or the Comedie Francaise. Its offices are located in a fine old hotel not far from the noble faubourg, where M. Charles Buloz (son of the founder of the Revue) and his wife give during the winter fortnightly receptions to the contributors and their friends, as well as literary dinner-parties which form, I suppose, the most catholic reunions in Paris; and for the excellent reason that all opinions except blatant radicalism and the dogmatic idiocy of Bishop Dupanloup and his friends are represented by its contributors. By admitting him to its columns the Revue gives a French author a stamp of approval which suffices to make him known and respected (at least as regards talent) in all quarters of the globe. As was the late, so is the present, manager fully conscious of his power, and feels as independent with regard to his authors as does the director of the Theatre Francais toward his. A short time since the most famous of those literary Frenchmen who are not novelists, and a man who rarely writes for periodical publications, sent an important contribution to the Revue, but neither the name of the author nor the fact that the contribution was of a character to attract great attention among the public induced M. Buloz to print what seemed to him, from a literary point of view, unworthy of a place in the columns of this journal. The pecuniary rewards of writing for the latter are but slight: a writer receives nothing at all for his first article, and afterward the prices vary—not in proportion to the merit of the production, but in relation to the reputation of the author. Henri Greville, for instance, obtained for her L'Expiation de Saveli—a novel which, I am inclined to think, will not only always remain her masterpiece, but will ever be considered a most perfect work of art—but one hundred and fifty dollars; and the ordinary price for articles upon historical or philosophical or art topics is but one dollar to two dollars per page. It is odd, too, considering the artistic eye and touch possessed by Frenchmen, and their sensitiveness in regard to such matters, that the Revue, in spite of its large circulation and high subscription-price, is the worst printed magazine in the world. To American readers, who have doubtless noticed with pleasure the attention paid of late years by the Revue to American literature, it will perhaps be interesting to learn that "Thomas Bentzon," who has discovered for the French public so many of our authors, is a Madame Blanc. She was described to me as a woman of great intelligence and the highest character, the daughter of an old but poor noble family, and early married to a wealthy banker. This person not proving to be a model husband, his wife sought a separation; and the fault being obviously on his side, he was ordered by the court to make Madame Blanc a handsome allowance. She, however, refused to take the money of a man whom she could not respect, and having consented to accept only the small annual sum necessary for their child's education, set bravely but quietly to work to earn her own living—a task in which she has slowly succeeded.

ARTHUR VENNER.



HIS GREAT DEED.

In all the old Norse legends we are sure to find the inevitable three brothers, to the youngest of whom, Grimmel, fall all the adventures, the dealings with the Devil, and the pot of yellow gold at the end.

Not many years ago there lived in a lonely hut on Mount Mitchell in North Carolina this identical Grimmel and his brothers. Their father, John Boyer, was a hunter. When he died the two elder sons, Richard and Hugh, remained with their mother, farmed a sterile tract on the Black Mountains and trapped bears and wolves through the great southern ranges of the Appalachian chain. Twice in the year they came down to the hamlet at Gray Eagle to exchange their peltry for such goods as they needed. They were, in short, Grimmel's elder brothers, who sat satisfied in the chimney-corner while giants, devils and trolls were carousing without. They wore the cloth which their mother had spun, woven and made up for them. They shot with their father's rifle, ate the same corn-dodgers, nodded over the same Bible every evening, and drank plenty of whiskey from the same secret still back in the gorge. It had never occurred to them to go down into the world, to learn a trade or profession or to make money. Why should they? Money was of very little use. They probably did not handle twenty dollars in the year, yet they had all they wanted.

They were big and slow-moving and serious as the tame bear which lay before the fire. At forty they always spoke of the house and farm as "my mother's, Mistress Boyer's," and meekly obeyed the old woman as she ordered them about with a sharp tongue. The instinct of kinship was as strong in them as in the old Jews. They would strike a bee-line for each other through the trackless wilderness when miles apart. This happened often.

"How do I know where to find Richard?" said Hugh. "I don't know how I know. Something in my bones tells me."

I think that when the youngest brother, Peter, left the mountains these older men suffered a kind of physical loss ever after, as if an arm or a leg had been taken from them. Peter was somewhere out in the world, living by his wits. God had given him precisely the same kind of wits as his brothers, but with a single added drop of uneasy leaven. He tumbled out of his cradle when he was a baby to see what lay beyond. He was thin, wizened, restless as a strange beast in a cage, though his brothers tirelessly puzzled their slow brains to soothe and satisfy him. When he was a boy he was wretched because he was not taken down into the valley or to far-off towns. His brothers were puzzled, dismayed.

"It is the bird in the bush he wants," said his shrewd old mother. "The bird in the bush: he will never get it in his hand."

When he was a boy of ten a party of geologists stopped at the log hut. There was much talk among them of the cities, of science and of politics. Peter Boyer thought he had found his bird in the bush.

"I must have an education, and a good one, mother," he said.

He was sent to Raleigh to school. Reports came home that no such boy had ever been taught there. His fellow-students prophesied that Carolina would some day be proud of her gifted son. Up in the mountains the two brothers ploughed, trapped, dug ginseng and climbed the peaks for balsam with hot, steady zeal to earn the little money which was needed to pay for his schooling. The bare cabin grew barer, mother and brothers went hungry many a day, but the pittance was always saved and sent to him.

The boy came home in vacations with his moustache, his gorgeous scarf-pin and his quick, eager talk: he brought, too, piles of gilded prize-books, and once a silver medal. He did not care much for books or medal, but Richard wrapped each one carefully in paper and packed them in the big chest, and when the boy was gone the two broad-shouldered men would take them out at night and turn them over, and sometimes spell out a page, with a grave awe and delight.

Presently, the lad sent back their money: he was pushing his own way—into college, into the University of Virginia, finally—great and culminating triumph!—into the newspapers. Poems (after Poe, as a matter of course), political diatribes in Johnsonese periods in De Bow's Review, essays, criticisms,—nothing came amiss to him.

The young man's mind was of that flabby but fidgety kind which throws off ideas as a crab its shells, one after another—useless, imperfect moulds of itself. He came home to the mountain-hut in the first flush and triumph of authorship, bringing every newspaper-clipping in his pocket-book wherein a mention of his name had appeared. Richard, Hugh and his mother were never tired of hearing nor he of reading them. The poems and the clippings were left to be stored away—sacred relics—with the prize-books and medals. Peter set off to the West.

"The bird in the bush is always out of sight with Peter," said his mother, whose hair was growing white and her voice feeble. He became a lawyer, a Congressman. When he made his first speech (on the snags in the Missouri River) he ran down to Carolina with a copy of it in The Congressional Globe. He had grown portly and red-faced, and talked in a strident voice. All the towns on his route received him as a conquering hero. "The Honorable Peter M. Boyer arrived last night," said the papers, "and received a magnificent public dinner at the —— Hotel. The distinguished Senator, one of the favorite sons of the Old North State, is on his way to visit his parents at their summer retreat in Buncombe county."

The distinguished and pompous Senator, at home in the hut, walked up and down with uneasy strides and anxious wandering eyes, just as he had done when a thin cub of a boy. The Senate Chamber evidently was but as narrow a cage for this alien beast as the life of a hunter had been.

"I'm not satisfied," he told Hugh and Richard. "Politics are not the right groove for me. But I'll find it. I know that I have an intellect different from that of the ordinary man. You can't compare pure gold and brass, can you? Well, I've tested those fellows at Washington, and they are brass: they're pot-metal, sir! My brain," tapping his forehead, "will tell some day on the world: I'll make my mark. I'll hit the bull's eye yet."

The Senator went back to Iowa. He was not returned for the next term. In a month or two his mother received a letter from him dated at London. "When I succeed," he said, "I will come back to you. I have given up politics and taken to literature. Literature is the only career in which my brain can reach its full development: all others compress and constrain me. I shall seek in the Old World for the recognition which the New did not yield me." All this was Greek to his mother and her sons, but they knew that it meant that he was gone.

He never came back.

In two years the Honorable Peter was as extinct, so far as the American Congress, newspapers and people were concerned, as any saurian dead before the Flood. His mother died. Peter had always been an alien to her, a perpetual disquiet. But when he was gone the thorn was out of her flesh. She talked and thought of him as in his babyhood, and left him her blessing at the last. As year after year crept by, the twin-brothers ceased to talk of him. But it was because they had begun to think of him with that strained, tense attention with which we sit and listen for the steps of one who long delays his coming, and who may be dead by the way.

He might come back any day, with a crown of glory on his head. Or—was he dead? So many ships went down in that dim outer world—so many cities were burned; legions of men were swept away in battle; in short, the millions of graves which dotted the earth's surface only meant to these Boyers the one possible grave where he might lie. The gray-headed old men went stealthily alone at night sometimes to the big chest and turned over again the poems and essays yellow now with age, and the gilded prize-books. But they never spoke to each other of them.

* * * * *

About eighty miles from Black Mountains, in a hamlet on the Nantahela range, the whereabouts of Peter Boyer was discussed one July day as a subject of more practical interest. All the men in Sevier—a dozen, all told—were gathered as usual under the great oak which stood by the pump in the middle of the square. It was a grassy, weedy square: one or two cows lay chewing the cud on it, as they did all day long. Why not? There was never enough noise in the little street which ran round its four sides to disturb them. In the evening the women went out and milked them just where they were: occasionally, a meditative sow with her litter, or a slouching boy, passed them; or a canvas-covered wagon drawn by a steer would lumber slowly along, stop, and a woman get out of it with a bag of ginseng or angelica to barter for sugar and shoes; or a farmer in butternut homespun would jog up the street on his mule, his gun and bag of rations strapped behind, on his way to the higher peaks to salt his wild cattle; or a party of Cherokees from Qualla would come in with baskets to sell; or Seth Keen, the dwarf hunter, would bring in a roll of wolf-skins, and stay to tell his old stories over for the hundredth time. But these were rare events: on ordinary days the cows dozed undisturbed in the sleepy, foggy air, and the men lounged on the trough by the pump, and smoked from morning until bed-time, and cracked jokes on each other, and told marvellous stories of the war and its ravages.

"It giv' Sevier a staggerin' blow, gentlemen," old Judge Scroope would say: "we'll never recover from it. I tell you, Jefferson Davis an' Lincoln wur men the country hed no use for. Nor the Almighty neyther. That's my cool jedgment, now that we are out of the fracas. Look at the ruin them men wrought around you!"

And his audience would look around them, and shift their legs, and shake their heads with solemn conviction, though they knew, and he knew that they knew, that since North Carolina began to exist the decrepit frame houses yonder had turned the same pauper faces to the square in Sevier, and that their grandfathers in homespun had lounged just as they did on this very broken trough, and watched their lean cows chew the cud, and leisurely abused the Federalists for the ruin of the country. Twice a year the judge and Lawyer Grayson rode down to court and crossed the old track of Sherman and his raiders, and coming back would tell of levelled fences and burned barns. For thirteen years they had gone down, and the barns and fences yet lay as Sherman left them, as unchanged as the gneiss rocks about them.

On this day, however, they had a new subject to discuss. The sheepskin-covered chair which sat by the pump day and night the year round, ready for the judge, had been empty for two weeks. The old man had pneumonia, and was on his deathbed. Every morning the doctor brought a full account of his latest symptoms, and the crowd drearily discussed them during the rest of the day over interminable melancholy games of backgammon.

On this morning Grayson the lawyer had been sent for.

"The old gentleman's going to make his will," said the doctor, taking a seat.

The words were like a chilly wind from the grave. The gossips of Sevier were, after all, a simple affectionate folk. They had grown together like the mossy logs of their houses: when one was torn away, it left a gap and a dull, abiding sense of loss for years. There was a long silence.

"De jedge am bin a class-leader fohty year," said at last old Primus the barber in the background, shaking his woolly poll.

Nobody answered. The squire noiselessly laid down the dice and shut the backgammon-board. Major Fetridge rose with a groan: "I'll go over and get a glass of somethin'. Won't some gentleman join me?"

Nobody joined him. The major's red head and lean little legs moved unsteadily over the square.

"Sam Fetridge hes hed enough a'ready," said the squire. "He'll follow the jedge, and that hot foot, ef he don't pull up. D'ye think Dave Cabarreux will come in for all the Scroope proputty, doc?"

"I don't know. I—don't—know," pulling his beard meditatively. "It'll be left in a lump: that much the jedge told me himself. 'I'll not part the proputty,' he says, 'but I'll leave it whar it'll keep up the standin' of the family.' The old man always hed his sheer of pride in the Scroopes, you know."

"Dave Cabarreux is his cousin once removed," interrupted Bright the landlord, who had sauntered back with the major, and engineered that unsteady worthy to a place on the trough. "He hes no other kin than Dave, that I know of. David's as genteel a young man as walks Sevier streets."

"He's a damned cub!" The major staggered to his feet, gesticulating angrily with his trembling hands.

"Tut, tut, Sam! sit down," said the squire, pulling at his coat-tail. "You begrudge Dave his pretty little sweetheart. I understand: I've watched you. Why, Fetridge, you're old enough to be her father, you moon-calf!"

Sam stiffened his shaky body into a drunken dignity: "Squire, you can talk of me as you choose: every scrag-end of humanity kin take liberties with my name now, and does it. But the pump is no place to mention that lady, nor any lady, sir."

"No, it's not: that's a fact, Sam. I beg her pardon. But Primus tells me, gentlemen, that the jedge has been talkin' incessant of his nephew Boyer. Who's Boyer?"

"I've heerd the jedge talk of him frequent, sittin' on that very cheer," said Byloe the carpenter. "He's his grand-nephew. Peter Marmyduke Boyer is the full name. Governor of Iowy. The jedge has told me he was one of the first men of the present century. He'd all the genius of the Scroope family. Fact is, I used to think he was a straw man the jedge had made expressly to hang the honors of the family on."

"What's the jedge callin' on him now for?" said the major.

The doctor glanced around cautiously to the circle of attentive faces, the silent street beyond, the houses that fenced them in: "It's my opinion—in strict confidence, gentlemen," lowering his voice: the faces gathered more closely, Sam's, pimpled and eager, the nearest—"it's my opinion that the jedge means to cut off Dave without a shilling, and leave the proputty to this Honorable Peter M. Boyer. But what's the difference?" he continued after waiting a moment to allow the sensation produced by his words to subside. "This man Boyer, they tell me, has not been heard of for years. He didn't even turn up in the war. Undoubtedly, he's dead."

Major Fetridge sank back against the pump with a drunken chuckle: "Dave Cabarreux thinks that he's dead, hey? Boyer's not the sort of man to die as long as a good thing like this is in the dice. Why, Boyer's young, sir. He's got more brains and experience and vitality than all the damned wooden Cabarreuxes in a lump."

Byloe squirted tobacco-juice skilfully into the puddle between his feet, and winked at the squire. "It would go dead ag'in' your chances down at Calhoun's, major, if Dave gets that proputty," he said gravely. "Old Tony Calhoun is a full-blood Yankee. He'll never give his daughter to a man with lean pockets."

The major pulled himself up, half sobered as if by a dash of cold water. "And what has Cabarreux to make him fit for her?" he demanded shrilly. "Neither money nor brains. No one of the name ever had energy to earn salt to his bread. Cabarreux? Bah-h! Boyer is a man! Why, gentlemen, if Peter Marmaduke Boyer were to appear in Sevier, it would be like the coming of the eagle among the magpies."

"Sam, you're drunk," said Byloe. "What d'ye know about the man?"

"Know Boyer?" He laughed. The major had a peculiar laugh, which always put the crowd about the pump in a good-humor—a shrill, pleasant cackle of exultation. "Why, the whole country knows Boyer. But, if you must know it, he was a personal friend of mine. He had a great intellect—a gi-gantic intellect," sweeping the horizon with his arm. "He represented one of the great Western States in the Senate, Mr. Byloe: ten years ago he was known through the length and breadth of the Union as North Carolina's favorite son. To have asked who was Peter M. Boyer then would have argued yourself unknown."

"Sam's right," said the squire, nodding. "Now, that you speak of it, I remember him perfectly well. He had a great reputation as a politician. The Raleigh Herald used to publish his speeches in extenso. Queer he took no part in the war!"

The major chuckled again, delighted: "He did, sir! he did! Beauregard had no braver officer. To see that man lead his command into the teeth of the Yankees was a spectacle nobody who saw it can ever forget." The little man stood up as he talked, gesticulating fiercely as if in the presence of the foe, his linen coat flapping about his legs, his white hat set jauntily on one side. "Ha! those were pleasant days, squire," wiping his forehead in a glow of triumph. "They brought men up to their proper level! Boyer was never promoted, though. He was too modest to push himself, and war was hardly the right groove for him, after all."

"So this great man was a personal friend of yours, Sam?" asked Byloe with another wink and shrug at the crowd.

The major nodded: "Yes. I wasn't always a drunken loafer in Sevier, nor Ike Byloe's companion," he said quietly.

There was a laugh of applause. The little man, with all his vaporing, his windy boasts, his general utter worthlessness, had at bottom a grain of something genuine which keen Ike Byloe lacked.

"What sort of looking man was this Boyer, Sam?" asked the doctor. "I confess I have a curiosity about the jedge's heir."

"Oh, a fine-looking fellow—every inch a man," said the major carelessly. "Voice orotund, magnetic. Easy manners. Good figure;" and he walked up and down complacently, slapping his own shrunk shank. There had been a well-shaped leg inside of the ragged linen trousers once, and the conscious merit which infused every atom of his lean little body still culminated in his strut.

The sun was setting behind the Balsam Range, and threw a cheerful glow over the oak and the pump and the little group, when a loose-jointed figure came across the fields.

"Hyar's Grayson!—Well, colonel, how is he?"

"It's all over, gentlemen. The jedge is gone."

There was a sudden silence. The men asked no questions, as Northern gossips would have done. Presently, they got up one by one, with a brief word or two, and went quietly away to their own houses to close them up, and to tell madam. The Carolinian "madam" may be ugly and shabby and silly, but she is usually first in her husband's mind all day.

Nobody was left under the oak but Grayson, the major and Byloe, who was resolved to solve the mystery of the will.

"I s'pose the jedge attended to his earthly affairs before he went off, Colonel Grayson?" he said.

Grayson nodded.

"Will witnessed, signed—all correct?"

"Yes."

Byloe gave a dolorous cough: "Folks are talkin' a good deal about Dave Cabarreux as the heir. Dave's the next of kin."