"I've heard of that too," said the doctor. "Well, beauty is a wonderful gift; that is, the transcendent beauty that every one acknowledges."

"And very rare," said Mary. "I should like to see the beauty every one would acknowledge. If this girl seemed as beautiful to every one as she does to you, I think she would have been advanced to a tobacconist's shop at least by this time."

"Don't speak of it!" said her brother.

V.

On the following day about the same hour Dr. Brunton approached the lodge where he had come so often full of pity, and had submitted to be bored with a good grace. But instead of dragging himself up to make this visit as a tiresome duty, which he had sometimes felt it to be, it had floated before his mind all day, and he went through the gate with the most vivid and even tremulous expectation and interest. But the celestial beauty in the amber beads was not there. He sat and listened patiently to the old woman's story, and various times tried to draw her out about her visitor of yesterday; but she was so occupied with herself that she could speak of nothing else, and he left with a stinging, empty sense of disappointment, as he did on the next day, and the next; but on the fourth the rustic beauty reappeared, as innocently simple and slightly sheepish in manner as before.

"You have not been here for some days?" the doctor said to her.

"Na, I couldna coom."

"Why not?"

"My faither said I was to bide in the house and mind my wark."

"What do you do? Can you read well?"

"Oh, ay, I can read no that ill: I whiles take a lesson on the newspapers."

"Can you write?"

"Weel, I canna say muckle for my writing, but the likes o' us hae nae time to put off writing;" and she sent her eyes right into the eyes of the doctor, as they stood beside Bell's little window—innocently, simply, appealingly, the doctor felt—and from that moment he was a lost man: his prudence went down like straws before the wind.

"You are far too beautiful," he said with deep earnestness, "to go to service: would you not like to be educated and be a lady?"

"Oh, I wad like it weel aneuch, I daur say, but I'll just hae to be content wi' the place I'm in: I've a heap to be thankfu' for, and I maun bide wi' my faither."

"But you'll not be with him if you are at service?"

"No, but I can help him with the siller I mak."

The doctor was silent. This girl was good, then, as well as beautiful.

"Are you his only child?" he asked: "have you no brothers or sisters?"

"I've nae brothers, but I've twa sisters."

"And what do they do?"

"The ane's married, and, the ither bides at name like me, except when she's awa'."

"She can't be so beautiful as you?"

"Do ye think me so extra weel-faured, sir?" she said with much simplicity, and glancing at the morsel of looking-glass that hung by the window. "Whether do ye like my yellow beads or my blue anes best? I put on my blue anes the day: my sister's gudeman give me them when they were married."

"Are you fond of beads?"

"Oh, ay—they set a body off, divn't they?"

"You set them off: everything near you looks well because it is near you."

"Ye've a fair tongue, sir."

"I always speak the truth."

"I believe that," she said; and again her eyes looked into the doctor's with childish simplicity.

"You can trust me?" he said.

"What about, sir?"

"About anything: if you want a friend you'll trust me?"

"Oh, ay, sir: I'll do that; but I'm no ill off for friends."

"I should think not," he said. "Where does your married sister live?"

"Oh, far away—away up on the English hand."

"What is her husband?"

"He has a bit land o' his ain, sir: she made a gude marriage, it's thought, but I whiles jalouse he's no very gude to her."

"Surely not, surely not," said the doctor; and a vision crossed him of this beautiful and simple girl he was speaking to marrying some coarse working-man, and being made a hardly-used drudge of to the end of her days; and he determined it should not be. He determined it should not be: surely, she was born for some better fate. The very idea of it made him feel dazed, and it was possible that even now she was pledged to some such thing. Another man would have had no difficulty in "chaffing" her on such a subject and finding out all he wanted to know, but this man could not: even if chaffing had been a habit with him, he could not have done it in this instance: his feeling was far too deep and real and reverent to admit of it. He went back to his patient and tried to listen to her story as usual, but in truth it was little of it that he heard. He was in a dream.

After he went away, Bell looked across to her young attendant, who was sweeping up about the fireside in active business-style, and said, "My bonnie leddy, see that ye dinna wark mischief."

"I'm no settin' up a stour, am I?" the girl said.

"Weel, see that ye dinna set up a stour," Bell answered.

VI.

Early next forenoon, as Dr. Brunton was driving home after having been out the most of the night, he saw two ladies on horseback approaching, followed by a servant in livery: he liked to look at a pleasant sight, and first his eye caught the horses, and he thought what fine animals they were; then he glanced at the ladies. The one nearest bowed to him and touched her hat: the action could not be called "fast;" still, it piquantly broke the bounds of very exact stiff propriety. He hurriedly roused himself to look in her face, which he had not thought of doing till he saw her action, and lo! it was the face, with the smile, of the girl with the amber beads!

Beautiful as she was, she might have been the head of the Medusa, for Dr. Brunton felt suddenly as if turned to stone. When he went into his house all chance of an hour's sleep was gone. He met his sister in the passage: she stopped and said, "Oh, James, you must have passed the Ladies Moor as you came home: did you notice Lady Louisa?—did you?"

"Yes," he said shortly.

"Well, allow that she excels your rustic beauty."

"I allow it," he said. "I'm going to bed: don't call me for an hour or two unless it's something urgent."

Not that he wanted to sleep or could have slept, but he wanted to think: he wanted to cast out the dream he had been dreaming, and from which he had been roused so thoroughly. The girl, the peasant-girl that he had purposed to take from her rude, coarse setting, that he had yearned to love and protect while he lived,—she had disappeared like the mists of the morning, and in her place was left a lady of rank and fashion, the daughter of an earl, the sister of a duchess. How she must have been laughing at him! how she had taken him in! He, whose very business it was to observe, and who prided himself on his powers of observation, to be so thoroughly deceived! Was he densely stupid, or was she superlatively clever? He leaned to the last solution. No actual daughter of a hind could have played the part better. Her language, both in the pronunciation and accent, was perfect: she had even caught the trick of phrase and idea natural to the peasantry; and she had neither underdone it nor overdone it. She was not only perfectly beautiful, she was excessively clever, down to twisting her hands in her apron, which she was always doing, as if it had been a piece of rustic awkwardness, when it was to hide them of course: if her hands had been visible, they would at once have betrayed her. But he might as well think to win a star from heaven as her. It was a conflict, but it was soon over: there was no doubt about it, no uncertainty. He gave up the thought of her at once: his peasant-girl had taken wings and soared into a region where he could not follow.

He began to dress wearily, as people do when the zest of life has been taken out of it: the world was not the world of yesterday, nor even the world of last week, when he had been his own master and felt no want. If only he had never seen her, or seen and known her only as the Lady Louisa Moor, when the idea of loving her never would have occurred to him—when she would simply to him have been a beautiful creature to look at without exciting the shadow of a thought of appropriation, and not the peasant-girl, the beautiful peasant-girl, he had thought he might possibly win and wear!

While he was still dressing he saw a man in livery ride up to the door and hand in a note, which was sent up to him at once. He opened it and read:

"THE CASTLE, Tuesday.

"DEAR DOCTOR BRUNTON: Bell is much worse to-day. Could you make it convenient to see her at five o'clock, when I shall be at the lodge? I am glad I can write so that you will at least be able to read this.

"I am yours sincerely,

"LOUISA MOOR."



He read this, and read it again, and yet again: it was frank, friendly and familiar. Did it mean merely what the words stood for, or was it possible—was it in the least degree possible—that she really cared for him? It might mean everything or it might mean nothing. "But I shall see when we meet," he thought as he laid it down.

He was at the lodge before five, and found the peasant-girl with the amber beads there before him. He merely bowed to her, and went direct to his patient, whom he examined closely: then he turned round and said somewhat sharply, "She is not worse than when I saw her last."

"She appeared to me to be much worse," said the rustic maiden, coloring ever so little.

"That may be," said the doctor, going to the window out of hearing of the old woman. "Do you know," he said to the girl standing before him in her short-gown and amber beads—"do you know that my visits here are of no real use? I can do nothing. I can't fight with death, which is certain to be the end before long. I shall make my visits very much more seldom than I have done."

"Will you?" she said softly.

"Yes, I will."

"No you won't," she said pleadingly—"not if I wish you to come."

"Do you wish me to come?"

"Certainly I wish it."

"Then you distinctly understand that I come on your account?"

"Yes. Bell was an old favorite of mamma's, and I should like to see her well attended to."

The doctor looked into the beautiful eyes to help him to make up his mind: they fell gently and graciously under his gaze, and he said, "I'll see her every day," meaning his patient.

Which he did—not quite every day, but very near it. Lady Louisa flitted in and out of the lodge, sometimes in her own character, or as the peasant-girl, or in any other role she chose to assume: it was an amusement she was fond of.

Dr. Brunton lived in a fever. If she was not at the lodge when he called, he felt his day was lost; if she was, it was almost worse: he felt he himself was lost. Where was it to end? If she married him, what chance of happiness was there for her, or even for him? and if she did not—But he would not allow himself to think of that. Cloth of gold had matched with cloth of frieze before now, and the union had been blessed. Why not in this case? If Lady Louisa thought the world well lost for love, who had a right to interfere? Not that the doctor was a vain man—he was the reverse—but he held that human beings were men and women before they were earls and countesses, and that the lesser rank should give place to the greater. The insignificant dwelling at the corner of the wood became the centre of his world, the place round which his thoughts revolved, whether he would or no.

One day when he went in he found his patient alone, and she explained to him that her ladyship had been there, but had gone away, saying she might be back in a little.

"It was a thoughtless thing o' her to gang awa' and leave me my lane, after she had tell't Ann she might bide at her ain house for an hour," the old woman said, feeling injured; "but what can ye expect o' the like o' her?"

"I'll stay till one or other of them comes," said the doctor; and he sat down by the bedside, and did not listen to the history of Bell's last severe attack. His ears were at the door, and when he heard a movement outside he went and looked out; but it was only an old beggar-woman he saw, much bent with age and with her head pearled. She was the impersonation of clean, decent, thread-bare poverty: she had a plain snowy muslin mutch close round her face, which was small and wrinkled, and a black ribbon bound round her head, as the fashion used to be. A basket with some pins and tapes in it served as a kind of apology for her visit.

When she saw the doctor she said, "Maybe ye wad tak some preens frae a puir auld body that can neither work nor want?"

She spoke in a thin, shaky voice, and Dr. Brunton's compassion was moved. "Do you belong to this district?" he asked.

"'Deed, div I, sir. Eh, but auld age and poverty are ill neighbors!"

"You ought to be looked after: have you ever applied for relief?"

"Frae the parish? Na, nane o' our family hae come to that yet, let me be thankfu', and I'll mak a fend without it."

"Then how do you live?"

"Ye may say that. Whiles the young leddies at the castle gie me a pickle tea or the like—that's the youngest ane, her they ca' Leddy Louisa: she's just an angel o' licht. Eh, if a' body was like her!"

"I'll inquire into your case and see that something is done for your comfort."

"Oh, mony thanks, sir! I'm no very able noo to travel wi' the basket. Eh, what time does! Little did I think I wad ever come to this."

The doctor dropped a shilling into her hand, which, cased in a carefully-mended big coarse worsted glove, she held out: when she saw what she had got she bowed her head, overcome with thankfulness, and passed on.

The doctor resumed his watch, and in a little he was rewarded: Lady Louisa came in.

"If I had not promised Bell to look in again," she said, "I would not have been here. See, there's your shilling. If I worked as hard for my money as you do, I would not give it to every impostor: I don't do it, as it is."

"I don't understand," he said.

"You gave a shilling to an old woman at the door?"

"Yes: was she an impostor?"

"Rank," said Lady Louisa; and she pulled a cap from her pocket, put it on her head, drew it close round her face, which she threw into age and wrinkles with marvelous effect, and looked at the doctor, shaking her head like the pearled old woman.

"Didn't I give myself a high character?" she said, laughing.

"It was the truth," the doctor said—"nothing but the truth."

"The whole truth, and just a little more, don't you think?"

VII.

Shortly after, as the Ladies Moor were walking through the village, Lady Louisa said to her sister suddenly, "I'm going to call at the doctor's house."

"Why?" said Lady Helen.

"I want to see what it is like. It must be a queer little nutshell of a place, and yet I fancy," she said, glancing her eye along the village street, "people are happy enough in these birdcages."

"They may easily be as happy as people who live in big houses, but what excuse are you going to make for calling at the doctor's? Do you want anything?"

"Nothing except to see the house: it is mere curiosity."

"Won't it seem impertinent?"

"Oh no: they ought to think it an honor. We'll ask for Miss Brunton: the doctor won't be in at this hour."

They were shown into the ordinary sitting-room of the house, in which was Dr. Brunton engaged in reading the newspapers, but from the news of the day his thoughts were straying away to the visit he was to make to his singularly interesting patient at the lodge. Would she be there or would she not? It was not merely that his eyes were fed by her beauty, but it seemed to him that custom could not stale her infinite variety: she had all the qualities that make life noble. He had got to this point of his meditations when the door opened and the lady walked in.

"How do you do?" she said. "This is my sister, Dr. Brunton. I was sure you would be out at this hour."

"In general I am, but I have had a most fortunate lazy fit to-day."

"Why, Loo," said her sister, "I don't know how you always come to know everything. I should not know in the least when Dr. Brunton was likely to be in or out."

"That's different," said Loo: "I'm intimate with the doctor."

"We called," said Lady Helen, feeling that the visit needed to be accounted for in some shape, and that her sister was in the humor for speaking nonsense—"we called to see Miss Brunton: we thought we should like to know her."

"Dr. Brunton," said Lady Louisa, "the truth is I came to see your house. I was curious, and I like to gratify myself. I don't see why your house should not be open to inspection as well as ours: ours is open to the public two days a week all summer—Wednesdays and Saturdays, I think—and it is a great nuisance. Have you ever been through it? If not, I shall be happy to be your guide any day: if every person were as sick of it as I am, fewer would come to see it."

"Sick of it, are you?" said the doctor.

"Yes, sick. It's just like a well-organized prison, with papa for jailer—an upright, humane man, no doubt, but always feeling responsible for his prisoners, and giving them very little indulgence."

"Loo," said Lady Helen, "you talk nonsense.—You must not believe all she says, Dr. Brunton."

"You want to see my house?" he said. "Why do you want to see it?"

"Why do you not want to see ours?" said Lady Louisa.

"I do want to see it."

"Well, I want to see yours for the same reason you want to see ours—curiosity. I like to poke my nose in wherever I can get it."

"This, then, is our chief apartment."

"You live, move and have your being here?"

"Yes, my in-doors being: my sister will show you the rest."

"Oh, we don't want to see any more. We only show our own public rooms, and not all of them: we generally keep one for a refuge."

Miss Brunton appeared, and the ladies prolonged their call a few minutes: in leaving they invited her to the castle. Miss Brunton and her brother went with them to the gate, and when they came in again and were standing in the nutshell room, Miss Brunton said, "James, one feels as if there had been a bright light here, and it had gone suddenly out."

"There has been a bright light here, and it has gone suddenly out," he said.

In a few days there came an invitation to Dr. and Miss Brunton from the earl to dine at the castle.

The earl fastened on Dr. Brunton as a leech or mosquito fastens on fresh blood: this was an entirely new listener, and he felt free to tell his very oldest stories without a lurking suspicion that he had told them before. And Dr. Brunton enjoyed the evening, even though Lady Louisa did not bring her charms specially to bear upon him. The earl had mixed much in the world and seen a great deal of life; and a man who has done so must be stupid indeed if he can't say something that shall be both interesting and profitable. As man to man the doctor felt every inch the earl's equal, and more, for he discovered that the earl was commonplace in intellect, and informed only in one or two beats; nor did it require strained attention to take in the meaning of his lordship's talk, so that Dr. Brunton could listen and at the same time think of the many instances—which only of late had stuck to his memory—of ladies of rank who had married professional men; indeed, it seemed, now that his thoughts were occupied with the subject, that he never opened a book of gossip or memoirs but he came on some such instance in it. Why should this not be his case? Why, indeed?

It has been said that the founder of civil society was the man who first staked off a piece of ground, said it was his, and got fools to believe him: possibly the earldom of Birndale had been founded in some such way; and there it was. But the ancestors of Dr. Brunton had had neither the boldness nor the originality for such a stroke; and there he was, in the estimation of society at a very long distance indeed from equality with the earl of Birndale. But the doctor shut his eyes to this answer to his question, and began to let the tow of discretion go with the bucket of hope.

"Well," said Miss Robertson when Miss Brunton and her brother got home—"well, doctor, has the beauty the gypsy-woman spoke of asked you to marry her yet?"

"I don't suppose ladies ever do that," said Mary, "but Lady Louisa might, I am sure, if beauty may be a law to itself."

Seeing she got no answer from her host, Miss Robertson said, "And what kind of an evening had you?"

"Very pleasant," said Mary: "they were good and kind, and the house is well worth seeing, although, as a rule, I don't care for seeing gentlemen's houses, they are all so much alike. Still, where there are the gatherings of two or three hundred years, it is wonderfully interesting."

The old woman at the lodge still lingered. Never was an old woman so well looked after. Was she proud of the attention she got? did it please her that a doctor and an earl's daughter should wait on her every day? or had the nearness of the eternal world brought everything to its level? It would depend on her natural temperament: there are people whose vanity and self-love can be flattered at the grave's brink. She lingered, and stuck to life like a beech leaf to the tree, which a child's breath might almost blow to the ground. But she had weathered the winter, and the days were stretching out again: it was almost the end of March, with bright sunshine and an occasional softness in the atmosphere that had a tinge of summer in it. As the doctor paid his afternoon visit the sun's beams streamed in at the little window, and hitting some of the tins hung on the wall for ornament, made a glory in the room which caused Bell to yearn for out-door sunshine and the caller air.

"Eh, doctor," she said, "do ye no think I might get the length of the door, just to see how things are looking?"

"Hardly yet, I doubt," he was saying, knowing well that never more would she walk to her own doorstep, when Lady Louisa came in.

"I have only time," she said to Bell, "to ask you how you are and run home again, and I have not time to speak to you at all, Dr. Brunton."

"I'll not detain you," he said. "I go your way, and I'll walk with you: I have a visit to make near the castle."

"Very well," she said; and they left the lodge.

They had often met in Bell's little room, and they had met at the castle, but they had never walked together before; and it seemed to the doctor that this was something closer and nearer than had yet been.

"Do you know," said Lady Louisa, "that I have got my carte taken again? Papa wished it: my sister Mary is here, and we all three were in town yesterday getting them done. Had you ever your photograph taken?"

"Yes."

"And was it good?"

"It is like, I believe."

"But not good: that's often the case. Have you got it? I should like to see it."

"I haven't it with me, if you mean that."

"Oh, it doesn't signify, but I am rather fond, do you know, of collecting the photos of people I know."

They had been walking up hill, and had now descended a little, and had come to a seat above a waterfall in the grounds. They did not sit down—neither proposed that—but they stood a moment at this spot. The waterfall was an artificial feature in the grounds, and bore about as great a resemblance to the reality as a glass eye does to the living orb, or a drawing-room polka to the wild war-dance of a tribe of savages. The water fell smoothly and peacefully over a smooth ledge of masonry, then got up quietly and went on its way again, as if slightly ashamed of its tumble; a wild green bank sloped up toward the seat, but as the gardener had planned and made it, it was in keeping with the waterfall: there, however, the primrose showed its richly-embossed leaves and clusters of pale stars, the first love of the year. How is it that all first things are so delicate and pure? Overhanging the bank behind the seat stood what the gardener had not planted, a gigantic Scotch fir, its arms spread out hither and thither, scarred and weatherbeaten: if it had clung to a mountain-side over a raging torrent, it might have seemed the genius of the storm: even as it was, in the afternoon light of the spring day, it had a haggard, weird effect; but the pale green spines at the end of every twig, contrasting with the dark green of a former year, showed that, bare and battered as it looked, it was strong with the strength of renewed life. On the other side of the stream was a smooth green haugh; the clouds of the early part of the day had vanished, and the blue sky stretched overhead; innumerable crows flying homeward dotted it all over and patterned the azure dome.

"Don't those crows flying often look like a lady's veil floating and fluttering against the blue?" said Lady Louisa. "I like to watch the flight of birds. 'Oh, had I the wings of a dove!'"

"What would you do?" asked Dr. Brunton.

"I should be pretty frequently absent from Birns Castle."

"Should you?"

"Yes, but a railway-train does equally well, only it is a fussier way of traveling than merely spreading one's wings would be. I am not at all romantic. Good-bye," she suddenly said, flinging a bright glance at him, and running down the narrow winding path that led to the side of the stream.

"Oh, stay," he cried in a tone of entreaty—"stay only a moment!" But she heard as if she heard not, and running on crossed a little rustic wooden bridge below the fall, when she turned round and waved her hand to him, still standing where she had left him: then she disappeared through a gate and went up the gardens to the castle.

"When or how is this to end?" he said to himself.

Going away from her presence into the little sordid houses where disease and sickness were rife, he felt as if he had dropped from heaven to earth, from paradise to purgatory. When in heaven and paradise every obstacle to his wishes vanished, and he was lapped in elysium; but when he returned to earth and purgatory, the idea of marrying Lady Louisa seemed the most wild and improbable dream.

He went home and wrote to Lady Louisa, enclosing his photograph—had she not almost asked for it?—and as he did it he felt that according as it should turn out he was committing an act either of great folly or great wisdom. He did not sleep, thinking of it and continually balancing the probabilities of the case; but even if he had been sleepier than he was, the roar of the wind, which rose almost to a tempest, would have prevented sleep.

In the morning a messenger came to let him know that his patient at the lodge had died suddenly during the night. It has been recorded that the soul of the Lord Protector Cromwell passed away in the midst of a tempest; but it was not remarked at the time, nor has it been noticed since, except on this page, that Bell Thomson breathed her last when the fury of the wind was at its height. Whether the one fact was significant, and the other insignificant, I do not know.

It is to be feared that Dr. Brunton's first thought in connection with the intelligence sent him was, the excuse for meeting at the lodge being over, where or how was he to see Lady Louisa?

VIII.

At the very time Dr. Brunton was thinking of this, the family at the castle were sitting at breakfast, and the letter-bag came in. As the earl was looking over the letters he said, "Here's a thick despatch for you, Loo: open it, and tell me what it is?" She opened it.

"Well?" said her father.

"It is a likeness of the doctor," she said.

"The doctor! what doctor?"

"Oh, Dr. Brunton—he who lives in the village. He has been here several times, you remember?"

"I remember perfectly. How is his likeness sent to you? who sends it?"

"Himself probably, but I have not read the letter yet."

"Don't read it: hand it to me," he said sternly.

The duchess and Lady Helen were listening to this dialogue, and watching the rising wrath of their father and the cool, calm bearing of Loo.

The earl read the letter, then rose and flung it and the carte into the fire. "The man is a vain fool," he said—"a perfect fool!"

"I don't see that, papa. I should have wished to have his likeness: I am not sure that I did not say so to him. I sometimes meet him in the cottages of the people about."

"Do you know the kind of insult you have brought upon yourself?"

"I have brought no insult on myself, and I know of none."

"In that letter he asked you to be his wife."

"The thing is not possible," she said, starting from her chair: "he must be mad. I his wife! Why, he'll want the moon down to put into his gig-lanterns next."

"If it were not for the laws of the country," said the earl, his face red with wrath—"if it were not for the laws of the country, I would shoot that man as I would shoot a partridge."

Lady Louisa rose and left the room: her sister Mary followed her. "Loo," she said, "you have been doing wrong."

"Not that I know of, Mary."

"Dr. Brunton would never have written or sent his carte if he had not been led on to do it somehow."

"He never was led on by me: he may have been by his own vanity; only I did not think he was so stupid."

"I don't say he was wise, but I say you have been foolish: you have done a thing you had no right to do."

"I have done nothing. Is it reasonable to blame me because a man wrote a foolish letter? His vanity is egregious: to think I was going to forget my rank to marry him! I always gave him credit for more brains."

"Maybe you thought your rank entitled you to amuse yourself as you liked."

"No, I didn't, but I certainly thought it enough to prevent him forgetting himself so far as he seems to have done. I wish I had seen that letter: I wonder how he expressed himself? It is a ridiculous mistake, but I'll soon put it right."

"To love, and have your love flung back with contempt, is something more than a ridiculous mistake. It is—" and the duchess stopped with a quaver in her voice, and failed to go on: perhaps she was speaking from experience that she was so strongly affected.

In the afternoon, at the usual time, Lady Louisa set out to walk to the lodge; not that she did not know of what had happened, for she had heard of that, but she thought it not unlikely that Dr. Brunton might be there on the chance of meeting her, and the sooner this misunderstanding was put right the better, especially as they were on the eve of leaving Birns for London, and she might as well make things straight before going. She was right in her calculations: Dr. Brunton was walking on the road outside the park-gate, in the hope that Lady Louisa, not knowing of the old woman's death, might come to visit her as before.

She came up as frankly as was her custom and shook hands, and there was no unusual expression in her face whatever; but the doctor had too much at stake, was feeling far too keenly, to be capable of sharp observation at this time, and he said, hardly knowing what he was saying, "My patient here does not need me any longer."

"Yes, I heard of her death," Lady Louisa said.

A great flash of joy thrilled him: she had come here, then, for no other end than to meet him. He had difficulty in controlling himself. "You have got my letter?" he said.

"Yes, I got it."

He was silent as he stood before her.

"I got it," she repeated, "but I did not read it: papa took it from me and read it, and put it and the carte into the fire. I won't tell you what he said, but I agreed with him, and came to say that you had made a ridiculous mistake."

He was still silent.

"You knew," she went on—"you must have known from the first—that I cared no more for you than I do for the shoe below my foot. Could you think for a moment that I would demean myself by coming here to meet you or any one else? Could you think it? It is impossible. That is all I have to say."

"All?" he echoed.

"Yes, all. But I am sorry you should have made such a mistake—very sorry."

"Thank you," he said, bowing his head; and they each turned and went different ways.

Dr. Brunton went home. "Is Miss Robertson still here?" he said to his sister.

"To be sure she is: she was not speaking of going away."

"Then send her away—send her away as soon as you can."

"Indeed! Have you taken a dislike to her?"

"No, but I want to be alone, in my own house at least."

"Oh, James, has anything happened?" she said anxiously, struck by his look and tone.

"Nothing—nothing but what has happened often before, I dare say"—and he laughed in a way painful to his sister to hear—"to other men, and is not much thought of; but my organization is different. Mary, I feel as if I shall lose my reason: I am dazed;" and he burst into tears.

Mary was dazed for the moment too: in all her life she had never seen her brother like this. The peculiar gleam in his eye was altogether new to her: could there be truth in what he said? Was it the glitter of insanity that shone in his eyes? But she could not admit the idea.

In a small place like Birns the frequent meeting of Lady Louisa and Dr. Brunton had not passed unnoticed, and had, of course, been the subject of remark, and Mary guessed what had happened, and felt sure that Lady Louisa had been guilty of heartless thoughtlessness, to give it the mildest name. Oh, how from her inmost heart she wished they had never seen her, or that she had exercised her folly on some one better able to bear the consequences of it! How to commit the inhospitality of suggesting her friend's departure Mary did not know, but it chanced that Miss Robertson proposed it herself, having received a letter which made her eager to get home; and the brother and sister were left alone to do battle with the threatened calamity.

For months Dr. Brunton struggled like a man against the dark cloud that was settling down upon him, but at last he said, "It's all in vain, Mary; my mind is going from me; my memory is gone already; I forget everything, even the most important engagement; and when a man told me of a sad death to-day I burst out laughing: I could not help it. Mary," he said in a kind of cowering whisper, "I know what the end will be."

"No, you don't: no one knows what the end of anything will be. We'll leave this place, James; we'll go and travel about; we'll sell off everything—I'll manage that—and when you are better you can begin life again elsewhere."

"Take me away from this place," he said with a kind of cry: "I'm not fit to go about among people."

And they went away, and moved from place to place, but still the malady grew, till at last, unutterably mournful as it was, Mary felt it a relief when he ceased to be capable of watching the progress of it himself: his misery at least was over. Thereafter he slipped into perfect mindlessness, happy and harmless, but hopelessly mindless and vacant. Meantime, Lady Louisa Moor made a very brilliant marriage to a marquis, the eldest son of a duke, the account of which Mary Brunton read in the newspapers while watching her brother's face with its meaningless smile. How her heart swelled! and she burst into a passion of weeping. She threw her arm round him as if to shield him from evil as she said, "Oh, Jamie, nothing can reach you now—nothing." He looked at her with the look that was always so touching, as if he were vainly trying to remember or comprehend: that occasional look of effort was the only remnant left of all his powers of mind.

The duchess of Dover asked her sister the marchioness one day if she knew what had become of Dr. Brunton.

"No," said she, "I don't. He has left the Birns, I know."

"Shortly after he wrote that letter to you he became insane," said the duchess: she put the information in that form, fearful that her sister would be overwhelmed with self-reproach.

"He was insane before he wrote it," said the young marchioness: "only insanity could excuse such presumption. Men don't go mad from disappointed love, or women either, I believe, unless there's a predisposition to madness. He must have had that, and any other accident in his life would have brought it out as well as his foolish fancy for me. If he had been thrown from his gig, or had two or three of his patients die on his hands at once, the effect would have been the same;" and she passed easily to other topics.

The marchioness was wonderfully beautiful, and she was clever and ambitious, and took and kept a very conspicuous place in her sphere; but her amusements were sometimes costly in their nature, whether she thought so or not. THE AUTHOR OF "BLINDPITS."



WALPURGIS NIGHT.

Three travelers making haste, And whisp'ring of some errand of their own, With arms enlinked and garments backward blown, Across a twilight waste.

Three gibbets dumb and tall, Against the east, with scrawny arms, outlined; Far off a lonely tower, left behind, With silver cross and ball.

And distant, round and dim, Behind the waste, behind the gibbets high, The witches' moon, with filmy bloodshot eye, Peering above the rim!

W. W. YOUNG.



FREDERIC LEMAITRE.

"Incomparably the finest acting I ever saw," wrote Dickens from Paris twenty years ago, "I saw last night at the Ambigu." The actor was Frederic Lemaitre, and the part he played was that of Georges de Germany in the drama of Thirty Years, or the Life of a Gambler. At this time (February, 1855) Lemaitre was already so old a man that Dickens was surprised to see him still playing, and the part was one which the actor had created originally twenty-eight years before that. He first played it at the Porte Saint-Martin Theatre in 1827, close upon half a century ago. "Never," continues Dickens, "did I see anything in art so exaltedly horrible and awful. In the earlier acts he was so well made up and so light and active that he really looked sufficiently young. But in the last two, when he had grown old and miserable, he did the finest things, I really believe, that are within the power of acting. Two or three times a great cry of horror went all round the house. When he met in the inn-yard the traveler whom he murders, and first saw his money, the manner in which the crime came into his head—and eyes—was as truthful as it was terrific. This traveler, being a good fellow, gives him wine. You should see the dim remembrance of his better days that comes over him as he takes the glass, and in a strange dazed way makes as if he were going to touch the other man's, or do some airy thing with it, and then stops and flings the contents down his hot throat, as if he were pouring it into a limekiln. But this was nothing to what follows after he has done the murder, and comes home with a basket of provisions, a ragged pocket full of money, and a badly-washed, bloody right hand, which his little girl finds out. After the child asked him if he had hurt his hand, his going aside, turning himself round, and looking over all his clothes for spots was so inexpressibly dreadful that it really scared one. He called for wine, and the sickness that came upon him when he saw the color was one of the things which brought out the curious cry I have spoken of from the audience. Then he fell into a sort of bloody mist, and went on to the end groping about, with no mind for anything except making his fortune by staking this money and a faint dull kind of love for the child. It is quite impossible to satisfy one's self by saying enough of such a magnificent performance. I have never seen him come near its finest points in anything else. He said two things in a way that would put him far apart from all other actors. One to his wife, when he has exultingly shown her the money, and she has asked him how he got it—'I found it;' and the other to his old companion and tempter, when he charged him with having killed that traveler, and he suddenly went headlong mad and took him by the throat and howled out, 'It wasn't I who murdered him—it was misery!' And such a dress! such a face! and, above all, such an extraordinarily guilty, wicked thing as he made of a knotted branch of a tree which was his walking-stick from the moment when the idea of the murder came into his head! I could write pages about him. It is an impression quite ineffaceable. He got half boastful of that walking-staff to himself, and half afraid of it, and didn't know whether to be grimly pleased that it had the jagged end, or to hate it and be horrified at it. He sat at a little table in the inn-yard drinking with the traveler; and this horrible stick got between them like the Devil, while he counted on his fingers the uses he could put the money to."

It will be a surprise to many readers to learn that Frederic Lemaitre is still living and still playing. On the evening of March 25, 1874, I went to this same old theatre of the Ambigu to see him play Feuillantin in Le Portier du Numero 15. The part is that of an old man, and the actor played it "in his habit as he lived," without artificial make-up or wig. His own long iron-gray hair floated on the air; the wrinkles in his old face were painted there by the hand of Time; his voice was cracked and broken, and his gait that of advanced age. I had formed the impression, beforehand, that Lemaitre was simply a tottering old wreck, a painful and pitiable sight; and I went to the theatre prepared to be saddened by the spectacle of a ruin. A ruin it was, perhaps, but what a grand and impressive one! The old man was magnificent! So far from exciting pity, he roused in me feelings of the warmest enthusiasm. So far from seeming to ask for sympathy, he compelled admiration by force of his splendid pantomime, in witnessing which one forgot he had no voice, or remembered it only to see in the fact a fitting feature of the old portier he was playing. In the midst of my admiration for the actor, however, I studied the man himself; and I saw that he dominated his fellow-actors with a will of the most imperious sort. He swept along the action of the piece, and manipulated the rather poor company of actors who moved about him, with a leonine agility of movement and an autocratic command of the scene which showed that even in his old age he was no subject for patronizing sympathy. There was a meek, white-faced young lady who played the part of granddaughter to the old portier, and I transferred my pity to her; for the way Lemaitre hauled her hither and thither by her slender wrists (not in simulated rudeness, for she was the pet of the old portier's heart, but simply in the actor's imperative arrangements of tableaux), and the manner in which he dragged her young head with his iron arms to his broad breast in affectionate but rough and picturesque embrace, were enough to wear on the nerves of the stoutest young woman; and this one was as frail in form as she was fair in face.

A day or two later I had an opportunity of observing more closely the hero of fifty years of mimic life. It was in the green-room of the Ambigu, half an hour before the curtain rose on his fiftieth performance of the portier, and the old man was in his shirt-sleeves and with his apparel otherwise disordered. Learning that we were from America, he invited us to sit for a moment in his dressing-room, which adjoined the green-room, and waved us toward the door with as grand a gesture as if he were Hamlet saying "Lead on! I'll follow thee." The dressing-room was a pleasant little box (in French stage-parlance, by the way, a player's dressing-room is always called his loge), with the walls covered with portraits of theatrical and other celebrities. The impression Lemaitre made on me at this time was more that which might be made by an American statesman of the old school—a Clay, a Webster, an Adams—than that one would expect from a mere mouther of other people's words. However, I am wrong to apply this term to Lemaitre, who was in the truest sense an author. But of this later. He was full of a sort of sad dignity, and the burden of his conversation was, "I am no longer young." He inquired curiously concerning America, but when it was suggested that he should visit our country, shook his head: "No; I am too old to cross the sea now." The above passage from Dickens was referred to, but he had never heard of it: he said, however, that Monsieur Dickens had once sent him some novels to read, and by his tone did not imply that he was at all flattered by the admiration of the Englishman. For in truth Lemaitre was already a spoiled child of adulation years before Charles Dickens became famous; and now that Dickens was nearly four years dead, the old actor still lived, and remembered that every admiring adjective known to the French language had been showered upon himself: what mattered a few more in the English language? Looking in the tired, watery old eyes of the man sitting before me with his hands thrust deep in his pockets—and what magnificent, fiery, great black billiard-balls of eyes they must have been in his youth!—looking at the skinny folds which years had gathered about his aged jaws, it was still, strange to say, perfectly easy to realize the fascinating man Lemaitre had been in his prime, the tremendous power for swaying the emotions of his auditors which once abode in that rugged frame.

Frederic Lemaitre was born at Havre on the 21st of July, 1798, and had been on the stage thirty years at the time when Dickens saw him at the Ambigu. As he was at that time already nearly sixty years old, it is easy to believe what some have asserted, that his powers were beginning to wane. Seeing him, therefore, in the year 1874, at the age of seventy-six, still an actor of such fascination that I hardly know his equal in Paris, and reading Dickens's account of his acting at the age of fifty-eight, the most cautious critic may accept without modification the extravagant stories told of the power he had over his audience when he was still young. Similar stories are related of Edmund Kean, and the resemblance in the private characters of the two men is most striking.

Lemaitre's father was an architect. There is nothing to show that the boy displayed extraordinary mimetic genius. He was already about twenty years old when his father, yielding to his wishes, and perceiving in him a certain taste for declamation, brought him to Paris that he might be educated for the stage. He was admitted to the Conservatoire[A] and began his studies. He was not a very brilliant student, though he was assiduous in his devotion to study. During his pupilage he secured his first engagement as an actor at a little theatre on the Boulevard du Crime, called the Varietes Amusantes—a theatre long since dead. They were playing a piece with three actors, called Pyramus and Thisbe. As in the Babylonian anecdote, the lovers of the play agreed to meet under a mulberry tree at some distance from the town. Thisbe, who arrived first, was surprised by a lion: she fled, and was about to hide when her veil fell, and the lion seized it and tossed it about in his bloody jaws. The lion was Frederic Lemaitre, who thus made his first appearance on any stage on all fours. One night the actor who played Pyramus got into a dispute in a neighboring cafe, and could not appear on account of the exceeding warmth of the discussion, which resulted in sending him home with a broken head. The manager was in a highly excited state of mind. "Who the devil will play my Pyramus?" he cried. Whereupon the lion, who was waiting on all fours to make his entrance, straightened himself, took off his head, and said, "I'll play it if you like."—"You?"—"I, who know the part."—"Well roared, lion!" quoth the manager: "I accept your offer." This was Lemaitre's first essay in a speaking part. It was greeted by the indulgent audience with cries of indignation, peltings of apples, insults, hisses, whatever could most energetically express disapprobation of the lion turned lover. The next night Lemaitre resumed his dramatic career as a wild beast.

Yet he was at this period as handsome as Antinoeus, with an elegant and slender but powerful figure, waving black hair, expressive and noble features, a beautiful complexion, wide forehead, flashing dark eyes, and a carriage full of grace and poetry. Rare personal beauty and extraordinary strength were striking physical advantages for the stage: the mental qualities were as yet but faintly shadowed forth.

On the conclusion of his studies at the Conservatoire young Lemaitre sought admission to the classic Odeon Theatre, and would have failed had not the tragedian Talma perceived what others could not, and insisted that the young man had in him the making of a great actor. He made his "serious" debut at the Odeon, and remained at this theatre five months, but without producing any special impression as an actor. Then removing to the Ambigu, he suddenly achieved a startling and brilliant success, and created the first of that long list of parts which have since won worldwide celebrity, and been played in every polite tongue, in every civilized land. This was Robert Macaire in L'Auberge des Adrets. It is no exaggeration to say that Lemaitre created this part, though this verb is used in our day in very slipshod fashion. Robert Macaire was the creation of Lemaitre, and not of the authors of the play. At the rehearsals he repeatedly declared that the part was "impossible," and that the public would never receive it as the authors had written it. The event justified his opinion: the piece was hissed outrageously. But it was redeemed on the second night through the audacity of Lemaitre, who, in strolling about the streets during the day in no very pleasant frame of mind, racked his brains for an expedient for saving the fortunes of the theatre. Suddenly he perceived a strange creature standing before the open-air shop of a cake-seller—an outre individual, clad in indescribable clothing. In some former day the man's garments had been elegant and fashionable, but they were now dropping to pieces. Misery and debauchery could be read in every stain upon them, but the wearer seemed not to have lost a particle of his self-esteem. Standing proudly in a pair of boots all run down at the heel and riddled with holes, a greasy and misshapen felt hat perched on one ear, he daintily broke with the extreme tips of his fingers a piece from a penny cake, carried it to his lips with the delicate air of a dandy, and ate it as if he were an Epicurean philosopher. His collation over, he drew from the pocket of his coat a torn rag, wiped his hands elaborately upon it, dusted his costume airily and then resumed his leisurely promenade up the boulevard. "I've got him!" cried Lemaitre; for here he saw the flesh-and-blood reality of the conception of Robert Macaire which had been running through his brain during the rehearsals of the new piece. That evening the actor appeared on the stage with a coat, hat and boots modeled on those of the man on the boulevard. He reproduced the manner of this ragged fashionable, his grotesque calm, his ridiculous dignity; and having induced his fellow-actor, Serres, to get up a like metamorphosis for the part of Bertrand, the piece obtained a marvelous success.

The management of the Ambigu, appreciating the service Lemaitre had rendered the theatre, immediately raised his salary to a high figure, and from that day, as the saying is, his fortune was made. Saturday is the usual pay-day in French theatres, and it was one of the first illustrations of the eccentricity of Lemaitre's character that he took a whim to have himself paid every Saturday in silver five-franc pieces. Then throwing over his shoulder the bag of money, he would walk proudly through the crowd which was waiting to see him at the door of the theatre.

One of the earliest developments of Lemaitre's independence of spirit and contempt of the honeyed adjectives of critics was displayed in his refusal to pay those amiable taxes which are so much the rule in Paris, if not in all European cities. Generous enough in his own way with the abundant earnings of his art, Lemaitre declined to pay for puffery. A well-known journalist of the time, counting on his success with less eccentric artists, called one day at Lemaitre's residence and suggested that the actor should smooth over the rough places of criticism by a liberal douceur. Lemaitre refused. "It is but a small matter to you," said this gentle literary bandit: "a thousand or twelve hundred francs a year—what does so trifling a sum signify to one who has your splendid income? And thanks to this modest subvention you will be constantly well treated in my columns." To which Lemaitre replied, "Monsieur, I will not be eulogized for gold: other eulogies or none." Two days later a slashing article against Lemaitre appeared in the columns over which the blackmailer had control. Lemaitre made no complaint, but knowing that it would not be long ere his assailant would visit the green-room of the theatre according to French custom, he waited in patience. A night or two later the critic appeared. Lemaitre walked up to him, made a low bow, and while the crowd in the green-room were attending to see what would follow, slapped the fellow's face. Naturally, this liberty was resented by the journalist, who struck back at Lemaitre; but the actor, who was gifted with extraordinary muscular power, took both the man's hands in one of his own, and holding him thus, said to the witnesses of the scene, "To-morrow, if it is necessary, I will fight this miserable; but before all I desire to treat him in your presence as he merits—that is to say as a vulgar scoundrel." With this he dragged the blackmailer to the door and kicked him out.

The part of Georges de Germany, which Dickens saw played in 1856, was Lemaitre's second great creation. Those who saw him in this part in his younger days so rave about it that even Dickens's warm eulogy seems cool in comparison. Such unheard-of developments of passion and disorder! such incredible fire and magnetism! such subjugation of a vast audience to his will!—language fails to express the rapturous accounts which those old Frenchmen now living who saw him then will give you with many a roll upward of the eyes, many a hopeless shake of head and shrug of shoulder and agitation of outstretched hand.

Boiling over with health, radiant with youth, full of vigor, Lemaitre now began to lead a life of extravagance which would almost have given Bacchus the delirium tremens and driven Hercules into a consumption. But his excesses seemed to take away nothing from the magnificence of his physical beauty, and he was petted by the fair sex in a manner to which the coddlings of a young English unmarried curate are as nothing. Nor can it be said that the actor was quite an anchorite: few French bachelors are. It is not meet to dwell on this phase of Lemaitre's character at length, perhaps; but I should hardly envy the old man's feelings in these days when, sitting by his lonely hearth, he lets his fancy wander among the ruins of the dead past, if he ever does such a thing.

There is a gray-haired and toothless old woman at present engaged in that menagerie of old women, the old-clo' market of the Temple in Paris, who might go wandering back with Lemaitre into that dead past of his if he wanted company. Fifty years ago she was a ruddy-cheeked young girl from the provinces, who had come up to Paris with a little fortune of thirty thousand francs, which a relative had left her. Going one night to the theatre where Lemaitre was playing, she became fascinated with Georges de Germany, and went to see him evening after evening. Forty-five nights in succession she attended the theatre to weep, to shudder and to admire, and ended by offering the actor her heart, her hand and her fortune. Lemaitre accepted the heart, but declined the hand; and as for the fortune, pooh! What did he want of the lady's pin-money? Nevertheless, six weeks saw the end of her little fortune, and left her with a quantity of elegant dresses and a few diamonds. Waking up one morning from her dream, she betook herself to the old market of the Temple, and began to try and get her money back. She is said to be worth a good deal more to-day than Lemaitre is.

In the drama of Faust Lemaitre's genius took a new development in creating the part of Mephistopheles. The feature of the part which balked and baffled him was the infernal laugh indicated by Goethe. By every expedient that mimicry could suggest day after day he studied to give forth that terrible laugh, but all his efforts were useless: he could not satisfy his conception with his execution. Then the idea came into his head to abandon the laugh altogether, and substitute for it that diabolical grimace which every Mephisto of the grand opera in our day strives again to repeat. But, unless all testimony is to be utterly flouted, there has never since been seen a grimace so inexpressibly hideous and terrifying as that of Lemaitre. He practiced it before the glass for days, and at last, succeeding in a play of muscles which gave an expression to his face as sinister and frightful as he wished, he walked to the window of his room to try the effect of it upon the passers-by in the street. A woman who chanced to look up at him while he stood there grinning fell to the ground in a swoon. "Good!" said the artist, turning away from the window: "I have succeeded at last."

It does not seem wonderful at the present day that Robert Macaire or Mephistopheles should be played in the manner which all play-goers are so familiar with, and recognize as the correct mode of embodying the part; but he who creates the idea that is afterward accepted as a matter of course is a very different being from him who repeats it. In our day and country the actor who creates one role in the way Lemaitre created a score is a made man in his profession. Jefferson created Rip Van Winkle—Sothern created Dundreary. But Lemaitre, in addition to the parts already named, created Ruy Blas, Don Caesar de Bazan, Gennaro, Corporal Cartouche, and a host of others familiar as household words to American play-goers through the grand army of his imitators who have played them since.

When Macaire, Germany and Mephisto had successively dawned on the delighted consciousness of the Parisians—those most insatiate of all theatre-goers—Lemaitre had won the sceptre of the Paris stage. He reigned over the public with despotic sway, and the public adored its theatrical monarch. With his subjects he could do anything, take any liberty, without fear of dethronement. One evening, during an act in which he had not to appear on the stage, he was leaning while chatting with a comrade against that part of the wings known in French as "harlequin's cloak"—in our stage language the prompt-place. A brass knob was under his elbow. "What's this machine for?" he said, examining it. "Don't touch it, Monsieur Frederic," cried an employe: "it's the gas-regulator." "Bah! has the gas got a regulator, then? Lucky gas! Let's see what will happen." With this he turned the knob and plunged the whole theatre into darkness. Two thousand Frenchmen and women cried out in alarm and consternation. Great was their indignation and savage their inquiries as to the cause of the occurrence. But no sooner were they informed that Lemaitre had committed this hangable feat than the joke seemed charming, and when he came on the stage in the following act they received him with bravos and joyous laughs.

Lemaitre was indeed a spoiled child of the public, and his prodigious success began to have the effect which success often has upon us poor mortals. He became impatient of all restraint, jealous of all honor offered to his confreres. The Ambigu won him away from the Porte Saint-Martin after a short time, and on the stage of his first successes he was supported by Madame Dorval, one of the finest actresses the French stage has known. These two dramatic powers did wonders, and the public divided its applause between them. This did not suit the petted genius. He complained to the manager. "Your horrible claque splits my ears," he cried in a fury: "I expect you to get rid of it at once. Or if not—" Before his ultimatum was pronounced Madame Dorval appeared. "Are you crazy?" she said to the manager: "what is the use of these imbeciles with their hand-clapping? Drive them all away from the theatre, and leave the real public to its own impressions. If your Romans[B] do not at once disappear, I play no more."—"Nor I," said Lemaitre.—"So be it," said the manager: "the claque shall be discharged."

Such a bold step in a Paris theatre was almost unheard of. What! try to run a theatre without the regular corps of hired applauders? The thing was incredible. But the leading artists demanded it, and the manager notified his claqueurs that their pay was stopped. That night not a ripple of applause disturbed the monotony of the performance. The public, left to itself, and accustomed to have a gang of paid worthies to start the applause at the right moment, applauded neither Lemaitre nor Dorval, nor any of the other players. "It is evident," said Lemaitre to himself, "that people who admire my acting fear being mistaken for hired claqueurs if they express their enthusiasm. I must arrange that." He therefore quietly caused to be planted a few judicious claqueurs about the house at his own expense, and that night bravos and hand-clappings were bestowed on Lemaitre alone. This suited the actor's notions to a nicety. Not so with the actress, however. "These people have no taste," she thought; "but that can't last." So she arranged privately for a small claque of her own, and that night she also was applauded. But this sort of game was one which the smaller players of the theatre could take a hand in, too. And on the third night, strange to say, there was applause for everything and everybody; all the performers had "ovations" in turn; even the ballet-girls had a share in the general glory so liberally bestowed. "What is the meaning of this?" demanded Lemaitre and Dorval of the manager: "did you not promise that your claque should be discharged?" The manager shrugged his shoulders. "My claque is discharged," said he; "and now there are, I perceive, three claques instead of one—yours, madame's and the whole company's. Nothing could be fairer."

It may seem strange that our actor, who dealt so roughly with the critic who suggested bribery, should have condescended to pay men for applause. But custom regulates our sense of honor. The claque is an institution so openly recognized in French theatres that the proudest dramatic or lyric temple in Paris would not know what to do without it. Even the classic Theatre Francais and the frigid Odeon, which are in great part supported by the government, and about which hangs the purest odor of high art, have each a regularly organized claque, which is paid to applaud, and which holds its rehearsals with the same solemnity that the players do, in order to introduce at the proper moment a gust of hand-clapping, a burst of laughter, or cries of "Bravo! bravo!" There is no concealment whatever about their operations. The claqueurs occupy conspicuous seats in every theatre, and it is often quite an entertainment in itself to watch their goings on. The leader gives the signal to begin and the sign to stop; and if any man of his band applauds too idly, that man is openly rebuked, and instructed by vehement gesture to do his duty better.

But, as has been said, Lemaitre was growing spoiled as a man by his success as an artist. He rebelled against the idea that any person should be admired on the scene where he was king, and he carried this feeling to the absurdest lengths. In one of his plays he had to bring in the corpse of his young brother (of the story), and the actor who played this part identified himself so well with the immobility of the last sleep that the public, struck with astonishment, broke in upon one of Lemaitre's finest speeches with cries of bravo for the little dead brother. "This is a very impertinent rascal," muttered Lemaitre, "who makes himself applauded in my very arms. I shall punish him for it." Leaning over the supposed corpse while speaking his lines, he blew into the dead boy's nostrils. Not a movement! Then pretending to yield to despair—always in consonance with the part he was playing—Lemaitre pulled the hair of the defunct with frantic gestures. Not a muscle stirred! Whereupon Lemaitre seemed to break down utterly under his grief, let go of the body, and it fell hard upon the stage like an inert mass. The effect was superb. The whole house applauded, the bravos became frantic, the great actor was hoist with his own petard. Lemaitre passed the night in solemn reflection on the seriousness of the case. The result was that at the next representation, while carrying in his little dead brother, he delicately tickled him under the arms. The unhappy defunct could not stand this. He came to life, burst out laughing, and was heartily hissed, while Lemaitre, the picture of solemn grief, inly chuckled at the success of his efforts to destroy rivalry.

But, notwithstanding his superb egotism and his jealousy of applause, Lemaitre was capable of mocking at himself in a most amusing manner. At one of the last representations of Robert Macaire he expected to be called before the curtain at the end of the play. He was not, however; whereupon he ordered the curtain to be raised and came forward with his gravest air. "Gentlemen," said he, addressing the audience, "I desire to know if M. Auguste is not here." M. Auguste does not answer, and the spectators look at each other in surprise. "M. Antoine!" Silence again. "Well, gentlemen, I am the victim of the dishonesty of the chef and sous-chef of the claque. I gave them forty francs this morning to call me out, and neither of them is here. You perceive, gentlemen, how grossly I have been swindled."

After his fame had grown to greatness Lemaitre reappeared on the classic stage of the Odeon, the scene of his earliest efforts. Here he played a number of parts, including Othello. But the actor had in his mind an idea which haunted him. It was that his favorite role of Robert Macaire had not had all the development of which it was capable. He associated with himself two authors, Antier and Saint-Amant, who accepted his ideas and wove them into a new play under his direction, bearing the name of his thieving hero. The success the piece achieved was something prodigious. All Paris ran to see it, and it was played for an unparalleled length of time. Lemaitre was so in love with the part that he used often to play it off the stage. Thus, one day at the Cafe de Malte they brought him his bill after breakfast. He arose, threw ten francs on the counter, and was leaving. "But the bill is ten francs fifty," said the cafe-master. "Very good," said Lemaitre: "the fifty centimes are for the garcon." The stage and caricature have since dressed up this mot in various forms, but Lemaitre was its first publisher. During this same winter of 1836 he was skating one afternoon on the basin in the Luxembourg garden, where he was the object of great admiration for his graceful evolutions. Presently one of a group of women, as he passed near, recognized him and cried out, "My fifteen francs, Monsieur Frederic: have you forgotten my fifteen francs?" The actor stopped. The woman was his former hostess of the Latin quarter, with whom he had lived in the days of his impecuniosity during his first connection with the Odeon. Putting on the air of Robert Macaire, Lemaitre replied, "Your fifteen francs, madam? You are mighty impertinent. Under the alcove in my room I left an old wig. That wig cost me thirty-five francs: you owe me a louis. I will send for it to-morrow." And he skated calmly away. Next day, however, the hostess received her due.

After having played this wicked and trivial thief so long that people began to say (as they say now of the creator of Rip Van Winkle) that he could not play anything else, Lemaitre startled the town with a new creation, utterly distinct from anything he had hitherto done. From depicting the most abject rascality he passed in a moment, as it seemed, to the representation of delicacy of sentiment and grandeur of soul in Alexandre Dumas's play of Richard d'Arlington, and again as Gennaro in Victor Hugo's Lucretia Borgia. Yet the wild dissipation of the man's life was never so great as at this precise period of his career. Harel, the manager of the theatre where he was now playing (the Porte Saint-Martin), was obliged almost every night to send emissaries after him to the restaurant opposite the play-house, where Lemaitre was indulging in monstrous dinners and was usually hilarious with wine. Harel, it must be mentioned, was a very penurious man, who never paid his people when he could postpone it, and whose meanness of soul Lemaitre delighted to excoriate. Often when dining bountifully at his restaurant, the actor being sent for in hot haste with the intelligence that the curtain was just going up, would cry, "Diable! And I haven't a sou in my pocket! Here's the bill. Carry it to Harel, and tell him they are keeping me here as a hostage." Though grinding his teeth with rage, the manager never failed to send the necessary sum for the release of his principal actor. At other times, when Lemaitre had breakfasted copiously, he did not dine, but the manager's purse then ran another peril. His actor would arrive at the theatre in a carriage, after having been driven about for five or six hours "for the benefit of his digestion," as he said, but never did he have the necessary sum to settle with the cocher, and again Harel paid before Lemaitre would get out of the vehicle. At other times during an entr' acte Lemaitre would disappear from the theatre, and when the curtain was ready to go up again could nowhere be found. "Frederic! where is Frederic?" the distracted manager would cry. Frederic was down stairs in the cafe under the theatre playing games where the stakes were high, and almost always losing. "Monsieur Frederic, the curtain is up!" the prompter would rush in to say. "Ciel! What can I do?" the imperturbable actor would reply. "I can't leave here, my dear fellow: I must win back what I've lost." Poor Harel had to pay again. As the receipts of the theatre were large, he did not dare complain much of these forced presents of money: Lemaitre called them his perquisites. He had a profound contempt for his manager's slippery financial manoeuvres. Harel was really almost as eccentric in his own way as Lemaitre was in his. The history of some of his subterfuges with his creditors would make a curious chapter. One day he stuck up the following notice in the theatre: "To-morrow the box-office will be open from three-quarters past two until a quarter before three for the payment of claims." The box-office was besieged at half-past two by a crowd of creditors who had failed to see the hoax.

"My dear Frederic," said Harel one night to the actor, "I have a proposition to make to you that will not displease you."—"Very good: tell it me to-morrow at breakfast." The next day they breakfasted, as our hero always breakfasted in those days, on truffles and champagne. Harel's proposition was this: "My project is to diminish your salary one-half."—"What!" cried Lemaitre in very natural surprise, "are you mocking me?"—"The theatre is on the verge of bankruptcy," pleaded Harel.—"How can that be? I have earned more than a million francs for it. What the devil do you do with your money?"—"My dear fellow," quoth Harel, "what do you do with yours?"—"Ah! that's different: I have no account to give to anybody but myself."—"But come, let us not get angry," said Harel: "I will continue to pay you the whole sum, while appearing to give you but half of it. In this way I shall be at liberty to cut down the other salaries, and the theatre can go on." Lemaitre arose, looked Harel straight in the eyes, and answered, "You have the secret of sobering a man by a single phrase. So you think me capable—" Harel interrupted him hurriedly, not relishing the angry light in the actor's eyes: "No, no—not at all: I was joking."—"Ah, you were joking? Eh bien, your joke is a horribly bad one. Pray don't repeat it."

Lemaitre was not deceived by the manager's sudden change of base. Three days afterward he revenged himself by a cutting bit of sarcasm. It was in Harel's own office. A young and well-dressed man presented himself, carrying a roll of manuscript. At sight of Lemaitre he drew back modestly, but Harel bade him remain, and asked him if he brought a drama. "Yes," answered the young man.—"Your own?"—"Yes."—"Then you have a reputation, doubtless?"—"No, it is my first piece."—"Ah," said the manager, who had taken note of the fact that the young author was far from shabby-looking, "in that case you are no doubt aware of the conditions. The essential thing with us managers always is to raise the receipts over the expenses."—"I understand that, sir."—"We prudent managers are obliged to refuse the pieces of all authors who have not yet achieved success, unless they will guarantee us the expenses that the rehearsal of the piece will entail upon us."—"That is my intention," was the young man's reply.—"Then we shall be able to understand each other. Your piece is in five acts?"—"In three, sir."—"Five acts would not have cost you a sou more." The conversation continued in this strain until the young author had signed a contract to pay ten thousand francs. With the spirit of a Shylock, Harel made out an account of actors, actresses, costumes, musicians, etc. that would have given gooseflesh to a less anxious and less wealthy author. Lemaitre remained sitting in a corner of the room until the manager arose to conduct the young man to the door: then he went up to them, laid his hand on Harel's shoulder, and said, "Why do you let him go? He has got his watch yet."

When Victor Hugo wrote Ruy Blas he informed the director of the Renaissance—for which theatre the piece was intended—that the only actor who could play the part of Ruy was Lemaitre. The result was another of his wonderful creations, which set all Paris wild with excitement. Those who have admired Fechter in this part will perhaps be surprised to hear that in Paris his performance was pronounced but a faint imitation of Lemaitre's. Soon after this Lemaitre's despotic and ungovernable disposition began to get him into trouble with the law. He quarreled with the manager of the Renaissance, and was compelled by a judicial condemnation to play his part. Later, he threw up the principal part in Zacharie, and compelled the manager to post up an announcement, after repeated postponements and disappointments of the public, that Lemaitre refused to play, and the theatre was closed in consequence. The press took sides with the manager. Threatened again with the terrors of the law, Lemaitre consented to play. He came on the stage and was greeted with a storm of hisses. With imperturbable coolness he advanced to the footlights and with hand on heart said, "I am really confused, embarrassed, gentlemen, by the enthusiastic reception you have so kindly given me. Pray receive the expressions of my gratitude, and believe that I will place at the service of this drama all my good will and my best efforts." Thereupon the wind changed: that weather-cock, the French public, whirled around and applauded to the echo.

Lemaitre did not often speak to his audience with so much submissiveness. Sometimes he treated them to such impertinences that he brought the police on him. After these theatrical escapades he not unfrequently slept in the station-house. He once made a bet that he could take off his wig on the stage without his audience getting angry. No American play-goer, unacquainted with the temper of French audiences, their reverence for stage decorum, can fully appreciate what a defiance of public sentiment this was on Lemaitre's part. He did it, however, and the action was received in silence. This indulgence encouraging him, he took the wig off again and wiped his face with it: still no expression from the audience. Lemaitre then put the wig in his pocket: the audience remained silent. Surprised at their indulgence, the actor advanced to the prompter's hole at the front of the stage, bent down grotesquely, took out his snuff-box and offered some to the invisible functionary: the audience broke out in a fury. Lemaitre drew the wig from his pocket and threw it at the souffleur's head: a frightful tumult followed. The pit climbed over the footlights, determined to make the insolent actor offer apologies: he refused. The play was stopped, and the commissaire of the theatre sent the offending actor to prison, where he remained thirty-nine days. When he got out again Lemaitre hastened to make his peace with the public. It was easy enough. He had only to act in the superb manner of which he was master, and everything was forgiven.

The great genius of the actor finally triumphed over the erratic dispositions of the man so far as to secure for him a call to that theatrical holy of holies, the stage of the Comedie Francaise. He made his debut at the theatre in the Rue Richelieu in Fredegonde et Brunehaut. The frigid array of respectable and scholarly old men who sit in solemn state in the orchestra-stalls of the Francaise, holding their seats from year to year by subscription, cabaled against Lemaitre, and endeavored to drive him from the stage. But the audience with a tumult of applause stifled the rancor of the classic phalanx of orchestra-ancients. Lemaitre afterward, in Othello, conquered even the prejudices of these stern stage-censors, and they applauded with the rest. The actor was in his place at the Comedie Francaise, because it is by common consent the leading theatre of the world; but the man was sadly out of his element there. In the "House of Moliere" there is an atmosphere of respectability as severe among the artists as that of the most dignified college in America, and the stage is bound round with a solemn network of dignified forms and sacred traditions, amid which Lemaitre chafed and fretted like a caged lion. His strolling-player instincts, his lack of self-respect, his bacchanalian habits and his irregularities generally unfitted him for association with the scholarly and correct-lived men who for the most part formed the company. Lemaitre felt ill at ease there, and conceived the idea that the societaires did not respect him enough. The actors of the Comedie Francaise are of two bodies—the first and controlling one in the councils of the theatre being composed of men who are participators in the profits of the house as well as recipients of salaries. They are an extremely dignified body of artists, with the utmost reverence for the proprieties of life. For these societaires Lemaitre entertained a profound dislike, and loved to sneer at them and ridicule their dignity. One day these artists were giving a grand dinner to some manager when a knock was heard at the door of the banquet-hall. "Who is there?" cried several voices.—"A man," answered Lemaitre outside, "who wishes to have some converse with you, and tell you once for all what he has on his heart." So saying, he entered, threw off his cloak, and appeared before the company dressed simply in a shirt-collar and a pair of stockings.

Lemaitre returned to the Porte Saint-Martin, and soon after created the role of Don Caesar de Bazan, a part in which he was indescribably delightful, and of which he was the real author. The play, written by Dumanoir and Dennery, was roundly condemned by the critics for its weakness, but the actor created prodigious effects, and the piece obtained a great success. In the Ragpicker of Paris, a sort of honest Robert Macaire, written by Felix Pyat for Lemaitre, this extraordinary actor went through another transformation not less striking than some which had preceded it. He engaged the lamplighter of the theatre to wear the ragpicker's costume for three weeks, so that it might be suitably dirty. He went every day into the low cabarets of the Rue Mouffetard, where ragpickers congregated in great numbers (and still do), in order to study from nature the peculiarities of the race. One day, as he was chatting with his models, familiarizing himself with their characters and manners, he was recognized by one of them, who immediately communicated his discovery to his companions. The report spread up and down the Rue Mouffetard like wild-fire. In a few minutes two or three hundred ragpickers had assembled about the door of the cabaret, and as many as could get in crowded about the wonderful actor whom they had seen from their perch in the gallery of the theatre. They pressed him to drink with them; they poured out their compliments and praises on him; they wanted to carry him in triumph through the streets. Not relishing the idea of such an ovation, Lemaitre jumped through a window and took to flight.

It was not until he had passed the age of fifty that Lemaitre began in the least to modify the excesses of his career, either on or off the stage. He still indulged in bacchanalian orgies; he still broke out at times into those violations of the stage proprieties which are so startling to any audience, but which are to a French audience something bordering on the incredible and awful. He was already an old man when he was playing one evening at Amiens, on a provincial tour, in Tragaldabas, a play written for him by M. Vacquerie, who shared Victor Hugo's exile at Jersey. At a certain point in the piece the actor is supposed to drink champagne. Now, dramatic managers are obliged to be economical about such things as food and drink, and generally replace the sparkling vintage by another liquid quite as gaseous, but less agreeable to the palate. Lemaitre put the glass to his lips, made a horrible grimace, spit out the mouthful, and to the consternation of the audience cried out, "Where is the manager of this theatre? Send me the manager instantly!" Great excitement behind the scenes: the manager arrives. "Approach," says the actor to him gravely, and he walks upon the stage in full view of the audience. "What is the meaning of this bad joke, Mr. Manager? Do you think me capable of being your accomplice in the wickedness of deceiving the public!" "Deceive the public! I!" stammers the manager.—"Yes, sir, you:" then addressing the pit, "Gentlemen, you think I am drinking champagne. No, it is seltzer-water." At this there was a roar of laughter, and the manager, deeming it wise to humor the joke, promised to go and get real champagne. During the time he was gone—when necessarily the action of the piece was brought to a standstill—Lemaitre entertained his audience with a dissertation on seltzer-water and the consciencelessness of managers.

With regard to similar stories related of the elder Booth, it is often said now-a-days that his audiences were not made up of the decorous class which attends theatres in our times, and that managers of the present day would not for a moment tolerate such insolent violations of theatrical discipline. This may be possible as regards Booth, but so far as it relates to Lemaitre it affords no explanation of the anecdotes in question. For the severest theatrical audience that can be gathered in America to-day—at Wallack's, at Booth's, or wherever decorum is supposed to be most preserved—could not for a moment compare, in the severity of its artistic judgments and the sternness of its requirements, with the audiences which Lemaitre so boldly trifled with. And the fact illustrates, as nothing else could, the prodigious popularity of the man and the marvelous power of his art. At the repetition generale of Toussaint L'Ouverture the cream of artistic Paris was present. The members of the Comedie Francaise came in force; Lamartine occupied a stage-box; the house was full of poets, novelists, painters, artists and authors of every description. Yet on this solemn night Lemaitre had one of his explosions of temper, and stopped the play to publicly scold the stage-carpenter for setting a scene wrong in some trifling detail. The incident was destructive to the power of the play, or would have been in an ordinary case; but before the evening was over Lemaitre regained perfect control of himself and swept his audience with him as by storm.

Before passing his sixtieth year Lemaitre turned over a new leaf. He abandoned his dissipated habits and set to work to take care of his health and his morals. Better late than never. He had always borne a good reputation for generosity: he now set about winning one for virtue. He devoted himself to his children—of whom he had four—with exemplary care and solicitude. The Antinoeus of former days is now, as has been said, but a ruin, but what a magnificent ruin! He has no voice, but voice seems hardly necessary to him, so eloquent is his pantomime, so expressive are his features, so full of fire his great black eyes when acting. Several years ago, while still in his full vigor, he sustained a loss of his teeth, which temporarily destroyed his articulation. He was playing in a piece called The Black Doctor at the time, and did not intermit his representations on account of his misfortune. But one who was present on the occasion relates that the audience heard him repeat again and again, in ever-varying tones, "Ellla marrr montaaat tojors" ("Et la mer montait toujours"—"And the sea still rose!"), and shuddered and sobbed under the pathos of his tones for more than twenty minutes without appearing to notice the absurdity of the language. And for fully fifteen years Frederic Lemaitre has now been playing without a voice.

No stage reputation in the century he lives in has equaled this actor's. Talma and Rachel, if as great as he, were not so complete, so versatile. This sketch has mentioned but a few of his many marvelous creations, each so rich in individuality, each so marked and so distinct from the other, and each in its turn so original and novel. In his proud face, his fiery eyes, his trembling lip, there seems still energy enough for a hundred ordinary actors of merit; and yet he gives to any part he essays the minute attention to details, the unwearying patience, which would in themselves almost win success for an incarnation of commonplace.

WIRT SIKES.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] The Conservatoire de Musique et de Declamation lyrique is a municipal and governmental institution in the French capital, founded for the gratuitous instruction of youth of both sexes in singing, music and declamation. It accommodates six hundred pupils, and has a library of eight thousand volumes.

[B] A cant name among the French for the claque.



THE SONG-WIND.

I stand in a climate of spring, Overblown by a wind from the South, With joy unspeakable thrilled, Ineffable song in my mouth; For the wind is a breeze of delight, And its blowing is rhythmic and fleet; It comes from the heart of the South. Oh, the South wind, the song-wind is sweet!

It comes like the breath of a dream Blown through the still regions of sleep; It comes from the islands of love, Lying midmost the tropical deep; It has the fresh smell of sea-grass, It is woven of coolness and heat, Fruit-flavored and burdened with spice. Oh, the South wind, the song-wind is sweet!

It stirs the high tops of the trees, With greenness and fragrance o'erfraught, Through which the swift sun-glories glance Like flashes of wonderful thought; It touches the rose till it burns Like love in a heart made complete; It kisses the world into flower. Oh, the South wind, the song-wind is sweet!

A breath of all ages it is, From Teos, and Lesbos, and Ind; Through the years, like a shuttle of gold, Runs the wonder of song on the wind— The wonder of flute and of lyre, A music made mellow and meet For Sappho, the princess of song. Oh, the South wind, the song-wind is sweet!

O Sappho! O love-laden soul! A thrill in the rushes there is, And the sea breaks into loud song That throbs with the pulse of the breeze; And singers, remembering thee, Cast their crowns and their lyres at their feet, For the South wind rewakens thy song. Oh, the South wind, the song-wind is sweet!

It blows with a rustle of palms And a sound of the laurel and bay, Far voices and clapping of hands, Like applause at the end of a play: It strengthens the poet like wine, And clothes him from head unto feet In the power and glory of life. Oh, the South wind, the song-wind is sweet!

It lifts the gold hair of a girl Till it shines in the sun like a flame, It flows through the locks of a man Toiling hard at his song and his fame; It is heavy with music of birds; It has whispers no lips can repeat: The angels float by on its tide. Oh, the South wind, the song-wind is sweet!

Ah, world! while the South wind prevails— With flowers and rushes and streams, Intrude not a sound of thy wheels, But leave me alone with my dreams— My reveries born of this breeze; And my life, though lowly it be, Will be happier far than a king's If the South wind, the song-wind kiss me!

JAMES MAURICE THOMPSON.



NORTHWARD TO HIGH ASIA.

From Calcutta my route was northward to Thibet, to reach, if possible, its capital city of Lhassa, residence of the Grand Lama of the Booddhists—the pontifical sovereign of Eastern Asia. My journey thither was planned by the way of Sikkim, and thence through the Cholah Pass in the Himalaya range. I was most anxious to reach a city so interestingly described by the Abbe Huc nearly thirty years ago, and to learn something further about the present condition and prospects of the "Snowy Region of the North" and the lofty table-lands of Central Asia, so seldom visited by European travelers.

The cars of the East Indian Railway carry one in a single night 220 miles to the town of Sahibgunge and the banks of the Ganges. The first sight of the sacred river excited in me but little enthusiasm. It was about a mile in width, shallow and very muddy, with a swift current and dreary sandy banks, where huge crocodiles were basking in the sun. Its religious character among the Hindoos is well known. Though highly esteemed from its source to its mouth, there are some particular places more eminently sacred than others—as Benares, Allahabad and Hurdwar—and to these pilgrims resort from great distances to perform their ablutions and carry off water to be used in future ceremonies. The Ganges water is also valued for its supposed medicinal properties, and in the British courts of justice witnesses of the Brahmanical faith are sworn upon it.

Having been ferried across the sacred flood, I journeyed onward in what is termed a shigram—simply a large palanquin on wheels drawn by two horses. As I reclined at length upon its cushion-covered bottom, I could see that the country through which we passed was an immense plain, and a clump of bamboos or an occasional palm alone hinted at an Oriental and a tropical landscape. The trees were mostly banians, peepuls and mangoes, and there were many large fields of rice and corn. The native huts were made of bamboo reeds and mud, with straw-thatched roofs. A view of their interiors was of course forbidden me on account of that cursed system of caste which prevails from Peshawur to Rangoon and from Cashmere and Thibet to Cape Cormorin and Ceylon. The road was macadamized and shaded by rows of immense trees. The tricky and balky horses (Mongol ponies) delayed us considerably, but it was very amusing to see the methods employed to coax or coerce them. A groom held in his hand a piece of bamboo about two feet in length, at the extremity of which was fastened a strong looped horsehair cord, which was twisted around the ear of a fractious beast, and a very little power applied a few paces in advance generally removed all scruples as to its progress. Horses who would not back into the shafts were assisted by a rope secured round a hind leg, and one who would not start forward was suddenly persuaded to change its mind through a similar combination of rope and pressure applied to a fore leg. Often one native would take a wheel, others would push from behind, some would lift one of the fore feet of the obstinate brutes, a few would take their heads, and then, after much alternate fondling and beating, off we would go at a very break-neck speed for perhaps a mile, when the horses would quiet down into an easy trot for the remainder of the stage.

About twelve o'clock on the first night a very provoking yet amusing incident happened. I had some time previously covered myself with my blankets and closed the sliding doors of the vehicle, as it was a bitter cold night, and had been enjoying a sound sleep, when, waking suddenly, I found the shigram standing in the middle of the road, but without either horses, coachman or groom. I had heard that such an event will occasionally happen in Indian dak-posting and so endeavored not to be disconcerted. Alighting from the shigram, I walked toward a fire which was just discernible through the trees, and found my missing coachman taking a comfortable smoke and a quiet chat with half a dozen bullock-drivers, friends of his, who were camping there for the night. I approached the social group with the feelings of a ghoul, shook my fists in the coachman's face and talked exceedingly loud, making free use of all the bad words in Bengalee of which my then limited vocabulary would admit, placing particular emphasis upon the scathing soour ("pig") and the withering gudha ("fool")—epithets more dreaded by the Hindoos than the most profane oaths. The man jabbered something in his native tongue, about as intelligible to me as if spoken in the language of the Bechuanas of South Africa or in that of our Sioux Indians. Returning to the shigram, I quietly prepared myself to await the issue. But the effects of my furious philippic had been complete, and in less than ten minutes the ponies were harnessed and we were again on our way.

In the morning I stopped at a dak-bungalow for breakfast. The word dak means post or stage, and the bungalows are inns for the accommodation of post-travelers built by government at distances of about twenty miles apart. They are of one story, and usually contain some half dozen apartments for sitting, dining and sleeping, besides dressing- and bath-rooms. These bungalows are under the direction of a khansamah, or native butler, who hires a small corps of servants to attend the wants of travelers. If you bring provisions, the khansamah will have them cooked for you, or he will supply you with a limited bill of fare, charging for each dish according to an official scale with which every bungalow is furnished. Any traveler can obtain rooms in a dak-bungalow during twenty-four hours, for which he must pay one rupee (fifty cents), and no one can claim shelter for more than this period should the bungalow be full or should other travelers arrive.