"Halloa! you, to have a daughter of that calibre!" and he laughed coarsely.

"You, who know everything, my officer, must at least have heard of the peerless Iza, the original of the most beautiful statue which—reproduced in the precious and the mean metals, in clay, in parian, in plaster—made the round of the civilized world? 'The Bather!' That was my daughter! She had her faults—even the truly lovely have mental flaws, though bodily they are perfect—but whilst she lived, her poor old mother dressed in silks and velvets—not in rags; she ate and drank delicately, not sour crusts and sourer wine; she slept on down and not in a cellar!"

Von Sendlingen shook his head; he was of the new generation and he preserved but a dim remembrance of the noted beauties—the stars of the living galaxy decorating the first cycle of the Bonapartist Restoration.

"I foresaw it all and I warned her; but she was so perverse! It is my duty to avenge her, and to see that the same blunder is not made by—no matter! Enough that my science—at which you smile, I see—points out to me that your greatest enemies and mine are in that house." She gestured toward the hotel, which the major had been studying.

"Do you say enemies in the plural?" he said, ceasing to curl his lip in mocking of the witch.

"In that house are the Jewish couple, father and daughter, who played at the Harmonista, La Belle Stamboulane and the Turkophonist Daniel, and the young man who belabored your excellency so that he almost died of the drubbing."

"Hang you for being so profuse in your explanations! How do you know all this?"

"The servant-maid is a customer of mine. I tell her fortune and she tells me all that goes on in her master's house. The young man has been cared for there these five or six days, and they only await the chance to smuggle him out of the city. Have him seized and secure him in prison, where he shall rot—for I declare to you, as surely as there are stars above, these letters of the divine volume in which soothsayers read, he will be your death in the end unless you are his."

"I would not be contented with that. I want to return him blow for blow—and yet you say I cannot fight him in duello."

"Listen, my officer. He has been brought up in ignorance of his name and origin, in my country Poland. He is French by birth, and his name is Felix Clemenceau. It was his father, a celebrated sculptor, who married my daughter Iza, after decoying her to Paris from her mother's side, and he murdered her on some frivolous pretext when they were living separated and he, heaven knows, had no farther claim upon her—his existence was pure indifference to her. I answer for it! They tried his father for the atrocity. Even a French jury could not find extenuating circumstances for that kind of cold-blooded assassin who slays in the small hours the wife of his bosom—after having cast her off and driven her to evil ways, poor, spotless angel! They brought him in guilty of a foul murder and he was guillotined—gentleman and artist of merit though he was. They were kind to his young son; his friends made up a purse and sent him afar to be educated and reared in ignorance. But the shadow of the guillotine is projected afar, and I saw its red finger point to the assassin's offspring. I have found him. If my hand is not too feeble to strike, it may anticipate yours."

"I cannot measure swords with a felon's son!" muttered Von Sendlingen. "But I shall not cease aching in the heart until he is in the shameful grave he imprudently snatched me from."

"You are a man after my own liking," said the hag, chuckling. "I can foresee that you will go far and perish in a blaze of glory! Listen! There are troublous times when an unscrupulous and ambitious soldier may make his mark and carve a good slice out of the great, rich cake called Europe. Aid me, and I will aid you. Yes, Herr Major, it is one potentate speaking with another," the singular woman went on with sinister pride, and trying to draw her shrunken form into straightness; "I rule an army of my own, camped by cohorts in the capitals of Europe—dating farther back than your own, and, perhaps, as formidable. It is we who spy out the weak spots in great cities. The next time, we shall swarm into the doomed city in a mass and we shall devour its wealth and luxuries until we are gorged. But for the day, it will be glut enough for me to have the life's blood of this man. You cannot honor him with single combat, it appears. Then, let me propose another mode to finish him."

The major was silent. Standing high in the ranks of the police, he was not sure how closely he might ally himself with this avowed leader of the evil-doers, who announced the pillage of a metropolis. She took his silence for consent or approval, for she jauntily continued:

"The house-maid has told me all they are hatching. They have a chaise always ready and passports to mask the departure of the young man as a clerk going abroad. But for precaution, they will not have him go to the train at the depot; he might be questioned and the discrepancies in the passport be perceived. The chaise is to convey him down the line, and he will get on the cars at a rural depot where the gendarme and ticket-seller will be dull and easily hoodwinked."

"Very neat," said Von Sendlingen, appreciating the plan at its due value. "I always said old Daniels was no fool."

"What more easy than to post a couple of the horse patrol on the road—young, hot-headed fellows with restless fingers on the triggers? The youth will certainly refuse to surrender, whereupon, bang, bang! he falls into the ditch with a brace of bullets in his body. You and I will have an enemy the less. This is not the way I planned it in my dreams, but we must take our revenge with the sauce fate serves it up to us 'on the table of Fact.'"

"The scheme is plausible."

"Feasible! especially will it work like well-oiled machinery if you play your part of lure creditably."

"My part?" questioned the major.

"Yes, yours. With a sorrowful eye and a smooth face, I confess I could not confront the man I hate as strongly as his father. You are different—you are an arch-villain—a born diplomatist who wears the very mask for this task and has no face, no compunction, no pity of his own. Go into that house, ask for Herr Daniels—that is the Jew player's non-professional name—and see him and his daughter, perhaps, the young student, too. Boldly proclaim your position as the Secret Intelligence Agent, by which you learned their whereabouts, and that they harbor the charitable young man who saved your life. Touch lightly on his thumping you within an inch of it, and enlarge on your undying gratitude. Apologize to the young lady—lay all blame on her irresistible charms and abuse a little the fair and fickle Fraulein von Vieradlers who has eloped without so much as an adieu to you! Depend upon it, Jews though they are, they will applaud your Christian forgiveness, and, I do not doubt, Frenchman though he is, young Clemenceau will give you his hand. Dilate not at all, but urge him to leave the town without delay. From the maid I will get to know the hour of the chaise's starting and the route so that you can plant your men. I grant that this has the air of a highwayman's attack, but, after all, the uniform covers a host of civil sins, and, really, I do not see a better way to have done with the youth. It will never do to have him strut about Paris boasting that he snatched the sword away from an officer and drubbed him with a cane into the bargain."

Sullen fire burned in the hearer's eyes. He stamped his foot, suppressed an oath, and when he looked up, had a serene countenance.

"You have said enough. A willing steed does not need the spur. I will lay the train and prepare the match. Let each look to himself lest he suffer by the explosion."

Successful though the old woman had been in her arrangement to convert an offended employer into a vigorous ally, she shuddered as if he were, in these ominous words, as good a soothsayer as he pretended to be.



CHAPTER VII.

ONE GOOD TURN DESERVES—A BAD ONE.

Probably no more terrifying a figure could have presented itself at the Persepolitan Hotel than the major of cavalry, and he looked the type of his class, insolent with aristocratic hauteur, martial to the point of arrogance, and domineering and as blustering toward inferiors as he would have been bland and meek to his superiors. The landlord, one of the hybrid Levantines in whose blood that of a dozen races flowed, was as alarmed as the maid, whom he sent up the stairs to announce the visitor to Herr Daniels. Strange to say, the officer, who had taken a seat in the sitting-room, unasked, with his heavy sabre held upright between his knees, bore the somewhat lengthy delay with patience. The girl returned to say that Herr Daniels would be honored with the visit, although, he had said, he had not a pleasant remembrance of the gentleman. In fact, before his assault in the street upon La Belle Stamboulane, the major had persecuted her and deserved the reproof from her father which it was too dangerous, as Munich society was ruled, for him to utter.

But, contrary to all precedent, the military Lovelace quietly walked into the room where Claudius was restored to health and whence he had been removed to the inmost chamber vacated by the young singer. The major's accident might account for his meekness, but his manners and voice accorded with his speech so that one attributed the change to an altogether different cause than a purely physical one.

He approached the Jew with open countenance, wearing a chastened and subdued expression, and extended his hand as to a brother officer. Daniels accepted it, struck by the unexpected mien, although he could not, in his astonishment and inveterate prudence, return the pressure. The major spoke an apology for his outrageous conduct, in a faltering voice and with moist eyes, spacing the apparently unstudied phrases with a cough as if to master tearfulness unbecoming even an invalid soldier. He laid the blame on the surpassing charms of the songstress who had enflamed him beyond his self-control and, partly, on the infernal French wine in which he had imprudently over-indulged at the evening's garrison officer's dinner. Had he but patriotically stuck to the beer! But that was not worth lamenting now. He tendered his regrets to the father of the young lady and promised to use his poor influence—here he smiled at the disparagement as if he knew his power and that his hearer was sure of it—for her professional advancement as long as she rejoiced Munich with her beauty and accomplishments.

The night in the dead-house, on the very brink of the deathpit, had transformed him, he freely acknowledged. He hardly recognized his own voice in communicating the sentiments that carried him into new directions, so strange was it all, but he was eager to show by deeds that his conversion was great and sincere. He had engaged his protection for the distinguished turkophone-player and his unparalleled daughter, but he felt that was enough.

"Ample," said Daniels, at last able to speak a word on the torrent of glib language momentarily pausing; "but we are going away to fulfill an engagement in Paris."

"One moment," said the major, politely lifting his hand from which he kept the buckskin gauntlet as if he meant again to shake hands with the Ishmael at their farewell. "Perhaps I cannot, then, be of service to you, but there is another to whom my assistance is of other value—nay, of the highest consequence. I am not referring to the young lady—whom Munich will be so sorry to part with and whom I do not expect to see again even to accept my excuses—but the student from the Polish University who deservedly corrected me and brought me to my sober senses—although, perhaps, he had a heavy hand." He spoke with an assumption of manly regret, which enchanted the hearer and completed his revocation of the bad opinion of the rough suitor of his daughter. Still the Jew had not laid aside all his habitual caution and he did not by word or movement betray that he had an acquaintance with his champion.

"I see that I must drop all flourishes and speak unfettered," went on the major, bluntly. "In two words, our brawl has got to the ears of the provost-marshal as well as those of the town guardians, and the search is going to be thorough for that young gentleman. I know it is absurd, and I protested against it, but the idea has penetrated their wooden heads that he is one of those tramp-students who are permeating the masses—worse, the dangerous classes—with seditious ideas, and they think he and Baboushka's gang too long lording it in the poor quarter, are hand and glove. In fact, in a day or two—perhaps now—the forces will be a-foot in uniform and in disguise to make a keen and searching inspection of the dwellings suspected of harboring the liberal-minded; and God knows that you have, Herr Daniels, chosen a veritable hot-bed! Two months ago, we arrested a Nihilist with a portmanteau full of glass bombs, luckily uncharged, in the attic upstairs; not three weeks since, two Hungarian malcontents were stopped at the door—but why enter into these details, fitter for the police than a soldier to relate? You, of course, were not told of these blots on this hotel's fame or you would have selected it as the last roof to shelter your talented daughter. It is one thing to cross swords—I mean staves—with a man, and another to guide the watchmen to clap their coarse paws on his shoulder. I have made honorable amends, I hope, to the lady and yourself, for my rudeness; as for the gallant fellow, I bear him no ill will—on the contrary! since I could wish to meet with him again, and tell him that the Great Prison of Munich is not badly constructed and promises little chance of an escape. I beg you to convey the warning to him that he must lose not one instant if he can escape beyond the walls."

Still Daniels believed it prudent, if not polite, to make no compromising admission. But the speaker was not offended. He smiled wisely, not without good humor, and offered his hand so frankly that the Jew again took it and this time slightly returned the generous pressure.

But on the way to the door, he was stopped by the entrance of Rebecca. Although she was clad in the plain garments affected by the Jewess in ordinary days, and they were in the most striking contrast with the stage flippery in which the officer had previously seen her, her loveliness was as manifest as the stars when even a fleecy cloud veils them on an autumnal eve. In her anxiety as regarded her father—or, perhaps, the student, who can tell?—she must have stooped to listening to some portion of the singular and one-sided dialogue. For she said, without any prelude:

"Herr Officer, you have acted a noble part and it would be a grief if I had not taken the occasion to accept your apology and thank you for the warning which may save the life of one who—believe me—is no longer your foe, if he had been one. I am not able to judge the greatness and loftiness of your act from your people's point of view, but I shall no longer have a mean opinion of the creed which can perform such a conversion as yours—that is, making you a true gentleman instead of leading one to believe you a heartless libertine."

She held out her hand and he took it so reverently, without haste and with tenderness, and kissed it so respectfully that her last doubt vanished—although she scarcely had the ghost of one.

He had triumphed completely, and he retired with an airy step and a heart replete with gratification.

"If he is dragged into the prison and locked up to rot in the dungeon, they will blame me the last of all," he muttered. "Heavens, how supernally beautiful she is! There are times when I think that if she and her rival occupied the scales of the balance, a butterfly's wing would turn them. My heart would be divided in their mutual favor."

With the same aerial step, he passed two or three men in threadbare suits and shabby hats, who were hovering about the Persepolitan, and who carefully exchanged glances of understanding with him. He went straight to the superintendent-inspector of police, and sat down in his cabinet to concert with him on the best way to suppress, without scandal, the dangerous emissary from ever-restless Poland, lodged in consultation with the Jew, the bugbear of the monarchies of Europe.

"Tut, tut! tell not the official that Daniels and his daughter, for the paltry lucre of the drink-halls or for artistic satisfaction, made the tour of the capitals!"

In the meantime, the "suspects," not themselves suspicious, commenced, with Rebecca a listener, upon the move counseled by the chivalrous major. It was one they had almost settled upon and they determined to put it all the sooner into execution. The post chaise was kept in a state of readiness, alike with the horse that drew it on these important occasions, a surefooted nag whose pace was better than her appearance. Claudius, to be sure, rested under the disadvantage of being a stranger to the roads, as he had traveled only upon one to enter this city—commonly accounted dull, but so far crammed with serious adventures. This blank in his topographical lore was easily filled: the bright-eyed Hedwig was to meet him at the first corner, mount into the vehicle of which the capacious hood of enameled cloth would hide her, and there pilot him in steering to the Sendling Thur or gate. Once in the open country, the road was plainer—in fact, he could be guided by the locomotive's smoke and whistle till he reached the little station. Even twenty miles out, the Persepolitan's landlord had acquaintances—perhaps they were brothers in some occult league—and the vehicle could be left without misgivings at any of the inns which he named.

There was nothing in this plan, so simple as to promise success, to trouble the brain, but, all the same, Claudius had a sleepless night, though he retired early to be prepared for the probably eventful morrow.

He wished to think only of Rebecca, who had added sound hints to her father's and the host's experienced advice; but, do what he could, it was another's image that haunted him. It was the winning one of the aristocratic singer. Again he beheld her matchless shape, her caressing and enthralling eyes, her supple undulations in the waltz and her shimmering golden curls. And whatever the sounds in the street, where there seemed more footfalls than before that evening, all though actual, were overpowered and formed the burden to the ghostly but delightful strains from that silvery voice. He was not only at the age to be impressionable, but he had not known one of those college amorettes which may be as innocent as a page of a scientific text-book. No woman even in the poetry had caused him to vibrate in the untouched heart-chords like this unexpected star in the firmament of beer fumes and tobacco smoke! But it was not joyous to muse upon this vision for he had no doubt that she marked a new starting-point in his life.

Did he love her, or Rebecca? They had appeared to him so closely together that he was confused. He viewed them as a double-star, without yet having the coolness to separate them. He was a man to love once only, and there is but one love. There are different phases of it as there are different lodgers in the same house; they do not know each other, but they come in and go forth by the same staircase-way.

Of this he was instinctively certain that if he loved Kaiserina, she would guide him in altogether another direction than he had looked and whither his proud and admiring professors had pointed. Enormous wealth in our days is to the monopolist, immense fame to the specialist. To rise above contestants, one must be patient, resigned, long toiling and abhorrent of the social ties which fetter one when most of the time is demanded to solve a problem, and pester one to recite the two or three letters he has learnt when he ought to study till he masters the entire alphabet. A man must immolate himself.

Oh, he had been so happy at whiles with the thought, accounted providential, that he stood alone, with no one to distract him, to impose burdens on him and to claim a right to make inroads on his precious hours. He loved the loneliness in which he sank when he stepped out of the lecture-room and the amphitheatre. He had not felt the need, which others confessed, of some one with whom to share griefs, debate enigmas and communicate projects. Since he saw Rebecca, he had, indeed, had an almost momentary glimpse of a home where a dashing woman, moving silently and airily, guarded his meditations from the external plagues. Such a woman was created to comfort, cheer and encourage if he flagged. But the love she inspired was ideal, perceived hazily during the hours when he was out of health, and divined rather than watched her tender ministrations.

The courtships are long when love is based on respect. She gave repose to the soul, not excitement to the spirit. He saw that she admired him for his courage in daring so much—more than he had fully realized—for the despised and trampled-upon, and she pitied one before whom yawned the dreadful prison which rarely lets out the political prisoner with enough life in his wrecked frame to be worth living out. But he did not see that she was truth and that he should follow her. As the sailors drive the ship toward the false beacon, near them and garish and flaring, so he thought the erratic orb brighter than the serene fixed star.

He felt ungrateful. This sneaking out of the town was ridiculous after the heroic introduction to La Belle Stamboulane. He examined a pair of pistols which the host had generously presented him with, when, after the restless night, he rose with the dawn, and he determined to use them if assailed. It is the inoffensive, quiet man who works most mischief when roused—nothing so terrible even to the wolves as the sheep gone mad. The student, having dipped his hand in blood, was now eager to be attacked on the highway by a company of unrepentant Von Sendlingens.

This was no mood, however, in which to start on a journey of possible peril. Rebecca did not appear at the breakfast table. She, too, had passed a wakeful night, but it was in prayer for the safety of the first real friend she had so far met among the Gentiles. The host looked in at the conclusion of the meal. Nothing could wear a fairer aspect. Even the hovering figures which he, for good reason, set down as spies, had become tired of their useless quest, and disappeared with the fog that floated amid the smoke of the numerous brewery chimneys.



CHAPTER VIII.

A SECOND DEFEAT.

The sun was well up, showing a jolly red face, which indicated that he had been passing the night in the tropics, when Claudius, having said his farewell within the hospitable house where his bill had been obstinately withheld from him, took the reins in the chaise. The grinning ostler held the unbarred door of the yard ready to open it quickly and slam it behind him. At least, he had not the host's delicacy and he had accepted his gratuity.

"Good speed, master!" he had hastily cried out as the equipage rolled out into the street.

It was deserted. The horse and vehicle aroused no curiosity where odder animals and more curiously antiquated rattletraps were also out. He traversed the town as unimpeded as a Czar environed by secret guards. The officer at the gate, yawning behind the passport which he did not trouble to read, wished him a good dinner at the rural friend's, where it was hinted he would put up, and returned into the guardroom to resume telling a dream which he wished interpreted. Since Joseph, these functionaries at the gate and in prison seem to be tormented with puzzling visions.

All had gone well but for one serious omission: Hedwig had not appeared to be taken up; yet he had not mistaken the streets laid down in the itinerary. But once outside the walls, he was forced to go slowly and foresaw the moment when he must stop. It was hazardous to inquire, for, while he was dressed, by the hotel-keeper's provision, like a citizen of Munich, he had not the speech of the residents.

In his quandary he was greatly relieved when the horse pricked up his ears and gave a whinny in a kind of recognition. Claudius glanced to the roadside gladly and hopefully, as a young, feminine figure stepped out from the cover of a post painted in stripes to indicate parish, township and other boundary marks. But although the short frock, coarse woolen stockings, cap and velvet bodice were Hedwig's Sunday clothes, sure enough, in which the student had once seen the pretty maid, this girl was no rustic slightly polished by the hotel experience.

He felt his heart melt like wax in a cast when the bronze rushes within the clay—it was Kaiserina von Vieradlers!

A strange feeling nearly mastered him! Instinct bade him run and, whipping the horse, flee at the top of speed anywhere beyond the charm of this unexpected apparition. And yet she came forward so brightly, and so frankly, and her first words were so reassuring that he was ashamed of the impulse which—he was yet to know—had all the worth of heavenly inspired suggestions.

"Herr Student!" she said sweetly, "it is fated that I shall be of service to you. Do not go farther in this course. They lie in wait for you. Luckily, I know of a cross-country lane—if you will only let me accompany you to set you right, and help me to roll some stones and logs from the mouth. It saves time, and you will baffle your foes. Oh, I know all. The faithful Hedwig, whose clothes I have borrowed, is a daughter of a tenant on my father's estate. She means well, but she has no brains for these steps out of her even tenor, and she was glad to have me replace her in her mission. Help me up!"

There was no denying her anything. The horse had appeared to greet her with pleasure, though it was probably the clothes of Hedwig that he recognized with the whinny after a sonorous sniff.

As she held out her hand, he offered his and, like a fawn clearing a hedge, she bounded up, just touched with a winged foot the iron step, and cleared the seat with a second leap. Crouching down within the hood, she began merrily but spoke with gravity before she had finished:

"Drive on after turning."

He turned the horse and vehicle. At the same moment a shrill whistle sounded in the opposite direction.

"That's the gendarmes," she said. "The watchman's horn in the old town; the military whistle without. They are keeping good guard for you—but we shall cheat them, I tell you again!"

She laughed that purely feminine laugh at the prospect of somebody being deceived.

"Take the northern fork, although you would seem to be going very different to your aim. At the lane I spoke of, stop—but I shall be at your elbow to prompt you."

The drive was resumed in this singular way; there was something piquant in not seeing his companion, her presence manifested only by her sweet breath, the slight rustling of the glazed cloth which afforded her such scanty room, and the prattle which flowed from her lips.

She was happy to serve him again; she had liked him from the first sight in the hall; they did not seem to be strangers; he was like she knew not whom, but she could swear the resemblance was perfect! She had been read such a lecture by her manager and the police sub-chief, but, pooh! what were such men but the knob on a post—the post remained and the knob was unscrewed for another to be put on every now and then. They had threatened but she was not a strolling player who feared the lock-up and the House of Correction. They would think twice before they sent a child of the Vieradlers into the Home of the Unrepentant Magdalens! and all this intermixed with snatches of song and flashes of original wit at the expense of the police and soldiers and the citizens.

And the flight into Italy with the Marchioness famous for proteges as other old ladies for keeping cats or parrots? It was true she had made her an offer and she had connived at the police being made to think she had accompanied the eccentric dame. But she had remained in Munich to help the man who was endeared to her.

Not a word about Baboushka and a fear to break the spell kept Claudius quiet on that point.

Eight minutes passed like one, when—"Stop!" she exclaimed, and was out beside him without a helping hand and upon the dusty road.

The walls had a gap here, roughly choked up by a higgledy-piggledy heap of rubbish. Fraulein von Vieradlers had attacked it before her astonished companion, also alighting, came to her aid. There was witchery in the creature, for her delicate, ungloved hands, covered with rings, tugged at the roughly hewn tree-trunks and misshapen blocks of stone without a scratch and, as her frame offered no suggestion of strength, the swiftness with which they were moved, confirmed the idea of the supernatural. As soon as he recovered from his amazement, he aided her energetically, and in an incredibly short space the two cleared a passage for the horse to scramble over and the wheels to be lifted clean across. Without pausing, they replaced the beams and boulders, and made good the breach.

"Excellent!" ejaculated the vocalist, contemplating the work. "But I am wrong to delay. We are not out of the vale of tribulation. Help me in and tan the horse's hide well! We must, without farther delay, reach the farmhouse whose red-tiled roof gleams under the lindens. Help me in, and lay on the whip!"

This drive, at redoubled speed, despite its being in broad daylight, had to the student the fascination of the gallop of the returned dead lover and Lenore in the ballad. Though never cruel before, he now spared the horse not a stroke or impatient shout, however imprudent the latter was. On the rutty, ill-kept lane the wheels bounded unevenly and the driver had hard work to keep his seat; but the girl, by a miracle of balancing, held her half-crouching, half-standing position in the calash, and only now and then, flung forward by a jolt, rested her hands on Claudius' shoulders. At this contact—at the sight of those roseate, dimpled hands—he was electrified and in the headlong rush he pictured himself as Phaeton, careering behind the glancing tails of the steeds of the solar chariot.

Such a pace overtasked the poor mare. At any moment now her sudden collapse after a stumble might be expected. On the other hand, the farm-house, winning-post of the race, loomed up clearly, and, luckily, the road improved a little by becoming harder and descending gradually. On one side rose a willow coppice, in the trailing branches of which a musically rippling brook was running; on the other, the ruins of a barn, which a flood had demolished.

On the knoll beyond, the haven stood, and Kaiserina smiled as she leaned her head forward so that her cheek was next his.

Again she had saved him!

No; not yet!

From both sides of the road at the hollow, three horsemen came solemnly forth, two from the right, one from the ruins.

The girl turned pale and shrank back. Claudius flung down the broken whip, and, taking the reins in his teeth, held a pistol in each hand. He had recognized in the most prominent rider Major von Sendlingen, and in an instant he comprehended that this was a trap and that his chivalric, Christian conduct was the most base of impudent tricks.

Was Kaiserina also a betrayer? He did not believe that.

Each horseman had a pistol as well as a sword drawn, and, besides, the two inferiors were armed with carbines. This had the air of an assassination, and, infuriated by the treachery, Claudius resolved to begin the attack. It mattered little whether Fraulein von Vieradlers was in the conspiracy or not. Once she had saved his life, and he was bound not to molest her now, so long as she remained neutral. She had cowered down, from fear or because her guilt oppressed her. Perhaps his contempt would punish her sufficiently.

The old mare bore the unusual exertion bravely and charged down the incline against the odds like a war-stallion.

"Take him alive!" shouted the major, beating down the pistols with his sword flat, as a second thought changed his first intention.

He had spied the young singer in the shadow of the hood, and he had no wish to injure her.

"That's not as you decide!" retorted Claudius, and he fired both shots at the same time.

But he had not allowed for the steep descent. One bullet stung the major in the thigh, the other so cruelly lacerated the horse of the gendarme on his right that it screamed, reared and fell sidewise with a crash into the brook. The man, although encumbered by his heavy boots, contrived to disengage himself and stood up, furious at being unhorsed.

At the same moment, out of the reeds, much as though the disappeared horse had suffered a transformation, an old woman leaped up into the lane. Her grey hair was disheveled and her pelisse was shredded by the brambles. She ran to place herself before the horse in the chaise and the gendarmes, and screamed, with her eyes fastened on the girl in the vehicle:

"Hold! do not shoot! God is not willing!" But the major alone obeyed the injunction; the others, in the saddle and dismounted, were wild with rage and pain. Their two firearms rang out as one, and the old woman had only time to cover the mark by drawing herself to her full height, with an effort unknown for thirty years. Both bullets entered her chest, for she fell under the horse's feet, as it stumbled and went down beside her.

As the vehicle abruptly came to a stop, quivering in every portion, Claudius clung to the frame of the hood to save himself from being cast out. The girl was hurled against him, but she did not think of herself. She thrust into his hand a revolver and whispered rapidly:

"Quick! they are going to fire again!"

It was true; excepting, this time, the gendarmes had recourse to their carbines, the dismounted one having picked his up from the briars, and found the cap secure. At that short range, the student would be a dead man if he awaited the double discharge.

Heated with the action, inhaling the acrid smell of gunpowder, the demon possessed him which at such moments hisses: "Kill, kill, kill!" into a man's ear. The angelic demon there had supplied him with the weapon, and he fired three shots as rapidly as the mechanism would work.

The dismounted gendarme had come out on an unlucky day; a bullet in his neck laid him lifeless in the rushes beside the strangled horse; his comrade, pierced so that he bled internally, drew off to the roadside mechanically—the image of despair; nothing more heartrending than the anguish on his convulsed visage and the increasingly hopeless expression.

Here was a double tragedy, but it was the major who, under the eyes of Fraulein von Vieradlers, was to furnish the comedy of the incident. His horse took the bit in its teeth and ran away with him along the bank of the brook, threatening at any moment to lose footing and roll the two in the water.

"Victory!" said the girl, with a joy-flushed cheek, alighting and displaying no more compassion for the soldiers slain in doing their duty than for the chaise horse—or the old woman beside its heaving carcass.

"She is dead," remarked Claudius. "But what did she say? She spoke in Polish—I understand it—I caught the words, but they were not intelligible."

"Were they not?" continued the girl, not displeased.

"She said, 'my child!'"

"Very well! I am her grandchild. That was not all, though—she affectionately recommended you to me, as my cousin."

"Cousin? your cousin?" repeated Claudius, without contradicting the speaker on his impression that Baboushka's face had not worn a soft expression, in his eyes.

"It would appear that you do not know yourself as Felix Clemenceau?"

"Clemenceau?" echoed the student, remembering what he had heard in the music-hall.

"Yes; your father was the famous sculptor."

Was his predilection for art a hereditary trait? the son of a celebrity? then his essays in design were unworthy of his name. Abashed, inclined to despair, having a glimpse of a tumultuous rabble shouting: "At last he is here!" before the ruddy guillotine on a raw morning, a pale, prim man between the executioner's aids, the young Clemenceau listened to the girl, who probably resembled the Lovely Iza, but looked at the dead woman at their feet.

"Yes, we are cousins! that is why I took a fancy to you at the sight. I knew this time I loved for a good reason. The band of nature—the bond of blood—connected us! But this is not the place or time to pluck leaves, and compare them, from our genealogical tree. The major has succeeded in reining in his horse, but, who cares? the old farmhouse stood a siege in the Great Napoleon's time and could mock at him now. Leave all—all these cooling pieces of carrion, and my dear grandma!" she sneered, "and let us hasten to the house where I have friends."

Like a man in a dream, Claudius, or, better, Felix Clemenceau, since this was his true title, holding the half-emptied revolver by his side, automatically allowed the strange creature to lead him from the battlefield. He was oppressed by the magnitude of the ruin he left behind: the peaceful student to whom the pencil and the eraser were alone familiar had handled firearms like "the professor" in a shooting gallery. And then the assertion—or revelation—that he was of kin not only to the old witch, who had perished in shielding him unintentionally in saving her grandchild, but to the latter. Fair as a sylph but icy-hearted as a woman of five social seasons! But the son of the guillotined wife-murderer should not be fastidious about those relatives who deigned to recognize him.

The farmhouse was a large stone and brick structure, moss-grown but firm as a castle; at its porch, three men had tranquilly awaited the result of the conflict; most of the episodes had been observed by them. Two were comfortably clothed like farmer and overseer, and showed a respectful bearing to the third. This was a man of about thirty years, but looking younger, tall, slender, elegant and proud. Not yet calm, Clemenceau vaguely recalled the refined, winning, though dissipated visage; this was the gentleman in the Harmonista who had enlightened him unawares on the antecedents of Fraulein von Vieradlers. He did not notice her companion but his stiffness disappeared as he bowed to her. Without asking for any explanation on the affray, he said to her:

"Can he—your companion—ride? The horses are under saddle. If not—"

Clemenceau replied in the affirmative to Fraulein von Vieradlers, instead of to the gentleman. He conceived an aversion to him on the spot, although his intention to include him in the pre-arranged flight was manifest. But he was the victim of circumstances and for the present he had to yield. Besides, the prospect held out was for him to continue beside the dazzling beauty, whose influence seemed more wide than her deceased ancestress.

Like many bookworms, he had entertained a humiliating opinion of the sex that makes the world move round; he was beginning to doubt, and he would retract it before long.

Kaiserina related the events briefly, while one of the farmers brought two magnificent saddle-horses round to the long, high side of the house, facing the northwest. Clemenceau mechanically mounted the bay, and the gentleman assisted the lady upon the black. Both animals were impatient to be gone, and when given the head, started off madly. This exciting pace roused the student from his lethargy, and when the steeds had settled down to a less frenzied gait, he asked what was his guide's intention.

"It is plain. You must be put across the border into France."

"France!" it seemed to him, since the revelation of his birth in that country, that the name had a charm unknown heretofore. Yes, he ought to make a pilgrimage into that sunny land where his father had been a gem in its artistic crown.

"It is your native country and you will be safer there than in Italy or Austria. Our next stage will be the little railway station to which you may see that long double silver serpent, the metal tracks, stretching across the plain."



CHAPTER IX.

REPARATION.

Fortunately for the fugitives, the poorly paid railway officials in these parts are the obsequious servants of those who liberally bribe. The station-master, though a very grand personage, indeed, in his uniform and metal-bound cap, became pliant as an East Indian waiter and accepted without question the explanation of the lady. It was she who was spokesman throughout. She said that she and her companion were play-actors and that their baggage was detained by a cruel manager of a Munich musical beer-hall; this was a wise admission as the man might have seen her at the Harmonista, or, at least, her photograph in the doorway. But they were compelled to reach Lucerne without delay or lose a profitable engagement, by the proceeds of which they could redeem their paraphernalia. While listening, the man dealt out the tickets, pocketed the gratuity which was handsomely added to a previous donation, and, without any surprise, agreed to let any one calling take away the horses; they certainly were above the means of strolling singers who had to flee from a town. Farther discussion, if he had sought it, was curtailed by the electric signal heralding the coming of a train. In eight minutes, the two were ensconced in a first-class compartment and hurried along toward the Land of Lakes.

In the sumptuous coach, the girl unburdened herself, but, with rare art or imperfect knowledge of her origin, she was more explicit on the family of her cousin than on her own. However, it was his that had made a niche in art and scandalous story.

As for Kaiserina, her mother was the eldest daughter of a Count Dobronowska, of a Polish branch of the Vieradlers, who had settled in Fuiland. The count had meddled with politics and the Czar had promptly confiscated his landed property. The loss and fear of Siberia had broken his heart. After his death, the widow passed the intervals of her grief in besieging persons of influence to obtain a restitution of the estate. Unfortunately, she had no son to fight the battle with the Czar, but two daughters were growing up with such a superabundance of charm that they promised to be no mean allies in the enterprise. But fortune did not altogether favor the widow; it is true that she interested a Russian of great wealth and political sway, but when the time came for his co-operation to be active, he played her a wicked trick. He attracted her elder daughter to him and married her. Not liking to have a mother-in-law in his mansion, he pensioned her off, with the proviso that her presence should never clash immediately with his own in any country. It is regrettable to add that Wanda, Madame Godaloff, agreed to this arrangement, and, indeed, having attained woman's goal, troubled herself not once about her parent who had schemed and plotted tirelessly for this end. The countess had brought her deer to a pretty market; but, unhappily, she gained little by the bargain compared with what she had dreamed.

She had a brother-in-law who had acted very differently from her husband. Instead of playing the patriot—and the fool—he had submitted to the tyrant and won a lucrative post at St. Petersburg. He was afraid to injure himself by giving countenance to his brother's relict, who was always seeking an audience of the Emperor. It was strongly suspected that she intended, since Wanda was out of the lists, to throw the next daughter, Iza, at the head of a Grand-duke with whom the two girls had played when all three were children at Warsaw.

The countess seemed to have educated the girl, as soon as her elder was out of the way, for a royal match. Like most Poles, Iza spoke several languages fluently, sang and played the harp and piano. She was growing lovelier than her sister because she was a purer blonde, and yet Wanda had been accounted a miracle. Remembering that, at a later period, a foreign adventuress almost inextricably ensnared one of the imperial family, the Countess Dobronowska's matrimonial project was not so insane. Some other pretender to the grand-ducal left or right hand thought it feasible, for everybody said that it was feminine jealousy that led to the countess and her "little beauty" being ordered out of the White Czar's realm. The pair, spurred on by the police of every capital, and all are in communication with St. Petersburg, at last rested in Paris. It was a favorable moment; the French government had offended the older powers by its presumption in chastising venerable Austria almost as severely as the Great Napoleon had done. The Dobronowskas were let alone in the imperial city on the Seine; but, unfortunately, the important state functionaries soon became as tired of the countess's plaints as their brothers on the Neva. Reduced to the shifts of the penniless aristocrats, the two lived like the shabby genteel. They made a desperate attempt to entrap their Grand-duke again. But the victim had warning and the pair were stopped at Warsaw. Here a beam of the sun, long withheld, glanced through the clouds and transiently warmed "the marrying mamma." A distant relative of hers, one Lergins, was an attache of the embassy and he fell in love with his "cousin" Iza, as the mother allowed the youth to call her. As he had splendid prospects and seemed to be quite another man as regarded maternal control of Wanda's husband, mamma dismissed her brilliant ignis fatuus and tried to have a clandestine marriage come off. But the young secretary of embassy was not of age and again she was forced to depart for Paris—that sink-hole for refugees of all sorts. His family put pressure on the officiale who in turn applied it to the luckless intriguante.

Farewell, the future in which a semi-imperial coronet hand gleamed! even that where a cascade of gold coin inundated the new Danae. Wearied of this constant grasping at the unattainable Iza, who had something of a heart, chose for herself, much as her elder had done, with happiness at home as the object; one fine morning, married M. Pierre Clemenceau, a young but rising sculptor. He had on the previous visit of theirs to Paris, materially befriended them. It was only gratitude after all, although he, enamored like an artist of this unrivaled beauty, would have sacrificed fortune to possess her. Indeed, he sacrificed all—even his honor, for he suffered himself to be gulled by her wiles as profoundly as he was infatuated by her charms.

At this point, as became a young woman telling of a relative's iniquity, Kaiserina glazed the facts and gave a perversion. It was later, therefore, that Felix Clemenceau learned in detail the whole mournful tale of a beautiful wanton's ingrained perfidy and a loving husband's blind confidence. The end was inevitably tragical. Lergins was decoyed by the countess to Paris, where she languished like a shark out of water. The sculptor's income did not come up to her dreams of luxury, any more than those she inspired in her daughter. She brought about a separation of the wedded pair and rejoiced when a fresh scandal necessitated a duel between the young Russian and the Frenchman. Unhappily for her revengeful ideas, it passed over harmlessly enough.

Iza remained the talk and admiration of the gay capital, although women of superior physical attractions rendezvous there. Nothing blemished her appearance; no excesses, no indulgements, not even bearing a son had a blighting effect. Unfortunately for the dissevered artist, she had been his model for the most renowned of his works and her name was inseparably intertwined with his own.

Although "crowned" as the favorite of a king who came in transparent incognito to Paris to visit her, though occupying princely quarters, outshining the fading La Mesard and the rising Julia Barucci in diamonds, Iza was still known as "the Clemenceau Statue."

Her mother, as lost to shame, was the mistress of the wardrobe in this palace; she was spiteful as a witch, and began to resemble one in her prime, bloated, red with importance and self-indulgence, before the wrinkles came many and fast. One day, annoyed at the persistency with which a friend of Clemenceau's watched the queen of the disreputable in hopes to make her flagrancy a cause for legal annulment of the marriage, she denounced him as a traitor in an anonymous letter to the fretting husband, then in Rome. Her daughter agreed to make good the assertion that the friend had failed monstrously in his trust.

Like Othello, Clemenceau swore that this demon of lasciviousness should betray no more men. The force of depravity should no farther flow to corrupt the finest and best. He entered the boudoir of the royal favorite and stabbed her to the heart. In the morning, he gave himself up to the police.

The victim was so notorious that the Clemenceau trial was a nine days' wonder. His advocate was eloquent to a fault, but that inexplicable thing, the jury, found no extenuating circumstances in the act and brought in the verdict of murder. The good men were incapable of appreciating the right he claimed to stop the blighting career of Messalina—to divorce with steel where the state of the law, then meekly following the ecclesiastical ruling, forbade any sundering of the connubial tie except by death.

He met his doom calmly and laid his head beneath the axe with a martyr's brow. Kaiserina acknowledged this.

Felix Clemenceau understood everything now. The trustees to whom he owed his subsistence-money, M. Rollinet the imperial counsel, and M. Constantin Ritz, a famous sculptor's son, and the life-companion of Clemenceau, were characters in the momentous drama which Kaiserina recited, whom he knew by correspondence.

The finger of fate, which had urged the artist to commit a homicide for morality's sake, had pointed out to his son the way which had to be followed over corpses of the young student's slaying.

Brooding over the alteration in his future, he exchanged hardly a word with his cousin, during the prolonged journey, which they continued together, as though mutual reluctance to part bound them indissolubly. Logic said there should be a powerful repugnance between those whom the shadow of the guillotine's red arm clouded. But, spite of all, Felix felt that Kaiserina was, like himself, well within the circle of infamy. Her mother was the sister of the shameful Iza, and her husband's careful guard of her proved that he doubted her walking virtuously if her unscrupulous mother stood by her side. This old Megara—who sold her offspring to worse than death—was living—seemed eternal as evil itself. It were a pious act to save Kaiserina from her as his father had tried to do with Iza. He was pleased that she seemed inclined to cling to him as though wearied of the erratic life she seemed to have led after a flight from her mother's, and which she did not describe minutely. He was also grateful that, in her allusions to his father, she did not speak with the bitterness of a blood-avenger.

They made the journey to Paris without any stoppage. He had to visit M. Ritz, for M. Rollinet was no longer there, having accepted a judgeship in Algeria. In the vehicle, carrying to a hotel where he purposed leaving her, Felix said, feelingly:

"I think I see why we were brought together. I am not to lead the life of an artist, lounging in galleries, sketching ruins and pretty girls, but one of expiation for my poor father's crime."

"Perhaps. More surely," she replied with a smile which, on her peerless lips, seemed divine, "I should make the faults of the Dobronowskas be forgotten."

They had arrived at the same conclusion as the journey ended, but the means had not occurred yet to either.

"Here we are," he exclaimed, as the carriage horse came to a stop.

He alighted, entered the hotel and settled for the young lady's stay. Returning, he came to help her out.

"My door will never be closed to you," she said, remembering how, in her story, her notorious ancestors had playfully suggested in a letter announcing her renunciation of her scheming mother's toils and her return to marry Clemenceau, that he might leave his door on the jar for her at all instants. "And yet, what will be the gain in our meeting again?"

"Everything for our souls, and materially! Here in France, where La Belle Iza and the executed Clemenceau point a moral, neither of us can find a mate in marriage easily. If blood stains me, shame is reflected on you. Let us efface both blood and shame by an united effort! Let our life in common force the world to look no farther than ourselves and see nothing of the disgrace beyond."

"I do not care a fig for what people think or say," said the one-night diva, with a curl of the lip. "And I do not understand you fully."

"Wait till I see you again, when all shall be made clear. Meanwhile, cousin—since without you I should have lost my life, or, certainly my liberty—I am eternally bound to you. It is left to you to have the bonds solemnized in the church, here, in France—my country!"



CHAPTER X.

THE FOX IN THE FOLD.

Among the secluded villas that dot with pretty colors the suburb of Montmorency, there is none more agreeable than the Villa Reine-Claude, which was in the hands of the notary who had managed the transmission of the maintenance money to young Clemenceau. At the hint from M. Ritz, who had a debt of honor to pay the son of his dead friend, the house was rented at a nominal sum. Here Felix, as he boldly described himself by right, though the name had a tinge of mockery, installed himself with his bride. He had a portfolio of architectural sketches soon completed and, thanks to the fellowship to which his name might exercise a spell, all the old artists who had known his father, helped him manfully. Luckily, there was something markedly novel in his work.

His odd training helped him. He came from the Polish University into an unromantic society which, after its stirring up by the Great Revolution, was so levelled and amalgamated that everybody resembled his neighbor as well in manners and speech as in attire. Strong characters, heated passions, black vices, deep prejudices, grievous misfortunes, and even utterly ridiculous persons had disappeared. The country he had been reared in still thrilled with patriotism and meant something when it muttered threats to kill its tyrant—meant so much that the Czar did not pass through a Polish town until the police and military had "ensured an enthusiastic reception." But in France, tyrants and love of country were mere words to draw applause from the country cousins in a popular theatre.

Felix, though a youth, stood a head and shoulders above the level of the weaklings excluded as "finished" from these commonplace educational institutions—schools called colleges and colleges called universities, resulting necessarily from the proclamation of man's equality. He sickened at seeing the neutral-tinted lake of society, with "shallow-swells," more painful to the right-minded than an ocean in a tempest.

He soon became like the French, but not so his wife. She suffered the change of her unpronounceable name, being euphonized as "Cesarine," smilingly, but life at home in a demure and tranquil suburb little suited the young meteor who had flashed across Germany. Felix saw with dismay that domestic bliss was not that which she enjoyed. For a while he hoped that she would content herself as his helpmate and the genius of the hearth when a mother.

But maternity had nothing but thorns for her. She chafed under the burden and her joy was indecent when the little boy died. Until then he had believed that the path of duty was wide enough and lined sufficiently with flowers to gratify or at least pacify her.

But Cesarine was, like her aunt, a born dissolvent of society's vital elements. Ruled by a strong hand, and removed from the pernicious influence of the vicious countess, her mother had never inculcated evil to her child; on the contrary, impressed by the lesson of Iza's career, she had perhaps been too Puritanic with Cesarine, whose flight from home at an early age, was like the spring of a deer through a gap in a fence. Cesarine, wherever placed, sapped morality, faith, labor and the family ties.

In the new country she feared at first that she had but exchanged parental despotism for marital tyranny. But soon she perceived that nothing was changed that would affect her. On the contrary, France, in the last decade of the Empire, was more corrupt than Russia's chief towns and the dissoluteness, though not as coarse as at Munich, was more diffused. Here she was assured that she could gratify her insatiable appetite at any moment. She saw that the manners excused her; the laws guaranteed the unfaithful wife, and religion screened her; that the social atmosphere, despite slander and gossip, enveloped and preserved her; in short, it was clear that to a creature in whom wickedness developed like a plant in a hot-house, the freedom society accorded her was as delicious as that given by her husband in his trust and his devotion to art.

It seemed to her that, after the death of their first-born, his silence signified some contempt for her; in fact, she had, stupidly frank for once, expressed relief at this escape from the cares of maternity. Did he suspect that she had, not with any repugnance, precipitated its death? She feared this passionate man who, by strength of will, made himself calm, alarmed her more than an angry one would have done. Moved by instinct, for she really felt that his sacrifice to her in marrying had condoned for his father's blow at her ancestress, she tried to return him harm for good. But it is not easy for a serpent to sting a rock.

Recovered from the slight eclipse of beauty during her experience as a mother, she endeavored to make him once again her worshiper. But her tricks, her tears and her caresses seemed not to count as before when they fled from Von Sendlingen's vengeance. He remained so strictly the husband that she could perceive scarcely an atom of the lover. Then she vowed to torture him: he should no longer find a wife in her—not even a woman, still less a lovely companion; she would implant in him intolerable longing and guard that he might not gratify it—not even lull it on any side, while she would become a statue of marble to his most maddening advance. He should have no more leisure for study, but be thrilled with the incessant and implacable sensation which relaxes the muscles, pales the blood, poisons the marrow, obscures reason, weakens the will and eats away the soul.

Unfortunately for her hideous project, it was in vain that she painted the lily of her cheeks and the carmine of her lips, studied useless arts of the toilet harder than a sage muses over nature's secrets to benefit mankind, and was the peerless darling of three years ago.

He resisted her till she grew mad.

The progression of vice is such that while she believed she was simply at the degree of passion, she contemplated another crime.

She ruled the little household, for she had brought from Germany the girl Hedwig, who had been the tool of her grandmother; this silly and superstitious girl had gone once to the witch to have her fortune told and had never shaken off the bonds; these Cesarine took up and drove her by them. She had led to the entrance of the girl under her roof ingeniously; Felix was cajoled into believing that she came rather on the hint of Fraulein Daniels, the Rebecca, of whom he often had agreeable and soothing memories in his distress.

Ah, she would not have interrupted his studies; she would have encouraged them; she would never have urged him to accumulate wealth to expend it in social diversions; while Cesarine fretted at her splendid voice going to waste in this solitude—the house in the suburbs where no company comes.

She dreamed of holding a Liberty Hall, where her fancies might have unlicensed play and her freaks have free course. While gliding about the quiet house in a neat dress, she imagined herself in robes almost regal, with golden ornaments, diamonds and the pearls and turquoises which suited her fairness. What if the gems were set in impurities?

Alas! perfect as a husband, denying her nothing which his limited means allowed, Felix had not once an inclination to tread beside her the ballroom floor, the reception hall marbles, and the flower-strewn path at the aristocratic charity bazaar. Yet he felt firmly assured that he was destined to a great fortune. He saw the gleam of it although he could not trace the beam to its source, too dazzling. But she had no faith in him, she did not understand his value, and from the time of his certainty that they were not the unit of two hearts to which happiness accrues and where it abides, he merely resigned himself to the irremediable grief. Having vainly tried to make of her a worthy wife, and seeing that motherhood had not saved her—earthly redemption though it is of her sex—he could only watch her and prevent her resuming that orbit which would no doubt end badly, as her race offered too many examples.

On one occasion, fatigued with watching that she did not take a faulty step, he had written to Russia to see if she would find a harbor there, but the answer came from her father and sealed up that outlet. Her elopement had caused her mother fatal sorrow, and her father said plainly that he regarded her as dead. Though she came to his gates, begging her bread, he would bid his janitor drive her away. Her mother had been a good wife, but her grandmother had extorted a mint of money and, after all, nearly ruined him in the good graces of his Emperor out of spite, from her blackmail failing at last to remunerate her.

Since in Cesarine, Felix found no intelligent and sympathetic companion, he took into intimacy a kind of apprentice whom he had literally picked up on the road. A slender lad of southern origin, whom a band of vagrants, making for the sea to embark to South America, had cast off to die in the ditch. Clemenceau gave him shelter, nursed him—for his wife would have nothing to do with a beggar—and to cover the hospitality and soothe the Italian's pride, paid him liberally to be his model. He was named Antonino and might have been a descendant of the Emperor from his lofty features, burning eye and fine sentiments. Healed, able to resume his journey and offered a loan to make it smooth, he effusively uttered a declaration of gratitude and devotion, and vowed to remain the slave of the man who had saved him from a miserable death.

A good work rarely goes unrewarded. Antonino, who had never touched a piece of colored chalk to a black stone, soon revealed strong gift as a draftsman and served his new master with brightness and taste.

Left lonely by his wife, each day more and more estranged, Felix loved to labor with the youth in the tasks to both congenial. That Cesarine should grow jealous would be natural, but it was pique that she felt toward Felix. In Antonino, she saw the possible instrument of her vengeance. His good looks, fervid temperament, youthful impressionability, all conspired in her favor as well as the innate artistic craving which had at the first sight lifted her on a pedestal as his ideal of the woman to be idolized.

Nevertheless, the vagabond had a stronger spirit than she anticipated, and the emotion which she set down as timidity, and which protected him from the baseness of deceiving his benefactor, was due to honor. She flattered herself that she could pluck the fruit at any time, and, since this moneyless youth could not in the least appease her yearning for inordinate luxury, she cast about for another conquest.

Clemenceau would not hear of his home being turned into the pandemonium of a country-house receiving all "the society that amuses," and rigidly restricted his wife from visiting where she would meet the odd medley in the suburbs of Paris. Retired opera-singers, Bohemians who have made a fortune by chance, superseded politicians, officials who have perfected libeling into an art, and reformed female celebrities of the dancing-gardens and burlesque theatres. But, as society is constituted, it would have earned him the reputation of a tyrant if he had refused her receiving and returning the visits of the venerable Marchioness de Latour-Lagneau, to whom the Bishop always accorded an hour during his pastoral calls. This was a neighbor.

In her old Louis XIV. mansion, conspicuous among the new structures, the old dame, in silvered hair which needed no powder, welcomed the "best people" in the neighborhood and a surprising number of visitors who "ran down" from the city. Considering her age, her activity in playing the hostess was remarkable. On the other hand, the "at homes" were most respectable, and the music remained "classical;" not an echo of Offenbach or Strauss; the conversation was restrained and decorous and the scandal delicately dressed to offend no ear.

Not all were old who came to the chateau, and the foreigners were numerous to give variety to the gatherings; but the white neck-cloth and black coat suppressed gaiety in even the rising youth, who were destined for places under government or on boards of finance and commerce.

It may be judged that an afternoon spent in such company was little change to Madame Clemenceau, and that the five o'clock tea, initiated from the English, was a kind of penitential drink. But she became a habitue, and took a very natural liking to hear again the anecdotes indicating how matters moved in Germany and Russia, where her childhood and early girlhood had passed.

One evening, she arrived late. She was exasperated: Antonino had imbibed his master's imperturbability and seemed to meet her advances with rebuking chilliness. A marked gravity governed them both of late; they shut themselves up for hours in their study, but instead of the silence becoming artists, noises of hammering and filing metal sounded, and the chimney belched black smoke of which the neighbors would have had reason to complain.

"A fresh craze!" thought Cesarine, dismissing curiosity from her mind.

Dull and decorous though the marchioness' salon was, it might be an ante-chamber to a more brilliant resort beyond, while the laboratory of science leads to no place where a pretty woman cares to be.

The Marchioness had remembered her meeting with Cesarine at Munich and was polite enough to express her regret that her offer of a companionship had not been accepted. "All her pets had married well," she observed, as much as to say that she would have found no difficulty in paving the lovely one with a superior to Clemenceau.

Soon Madame Clemenceau had become the favorite at the chateau; and, tardy as she was, the servant hastened to usher her in to her reserved chair. It was placed in the row of honor in the large, lofty drawing-room, hung with tapestry and damask curtains, and filled with funereally garbed men and powdered old dowagers. The late comer was struck by their eyes being directed with unusual interest upon a vocalist. He stood before the kind of throne on which the marchioness conceitedly installed herself.

He was singing in German, and he accompanied himself on a zither. He had an excellent baritone voice, and the ballad, simple and unfinished, became a tragic scena from his skill in repeating some exceptionally talented teacher's instructions.

To Cesarine, the strains awakened dormant meditations; aspirations frozen in her placid home, began to melt; a curtain was gradually drawn aside to reveal a world where woman reigned over all. What she had heard from her grandmother of the magic splendor which Wanda had missed and Iza enjoyed, flashed up before her, and her heart warmed delightedly in the voluptuous intoxication of unspeakable bliss. On the wings of this melody, which, in truth, merely sought to picture the celestial dwelling of the elect, she was carried into one of those bijou palaces of the best part of the Queen City of the Universe, where the bedizened Imperia at the plate-glass window reviews an army of faultlessly-clad gentlemen filing before her, and sweetly calls out:

"This, gentlemen, is the spot where you can be amused!"

Yes, Cesarine was intended to entertain men! She longed to be the central figure in the scene, however brief, of that apotheosis where Cupid is proclaimed superior to all the high interests of human conscience; this glittering stage sufficed for her, although it would have limited Felix's ideal of man's function.

In a struggle between duty and passion, she expected passion to overcome, and she concurred beforehand with this troubadour who protested that the gentler sex really held the under one in its dependence.

Radiant with pleasure and farther delighted to recognize a well-known face on the minstrel's shoulders, she hastened at the conclusion to give him her compliments. It was the young nobleman who had aided her flight with Clemenceau at Munich, and of whom she had not cherished a second thought! Better than all, while titled a baron in Germany, he held a viscount's rank in France, and his aunt, the marchioness, presented him as the last of the Terremondes.

She had not expected to meet in this coterie a gentleman who patronized the singers of a beer-hall, but the frock does not make the monk, and Baron Gratian von Linden-Hohen-Linden, Viscount de Terremonde in France, was of another species than the frequenters of Latour chateau.

From his income in both countries, he had the means to maintain what would have been ruinous establishments; he had the racing stud which no English peer would be ashamed of, a gallery of masterpieces acquired from living painters, an unrivaled hot-house of orchids, wolf-hounds and fox-hounds and other dogs, and the rumor went that the famous Caroline Birchoffstein, in consideration of his being a fellow-countryman, was more often seen in his box at the Grand Opera House than in her own.

The imperial court, also, not averse to being on good terms with South Germany, since Prussia was supposed to be France's greatest opponent in case Luxembourg were clutched, petted the Franco-Teuton, and regretted that he was so pleasure-loving.

To continue her thraldom over him, Cesarine left not a word unsaid or a glance undelivered. In this attack, she was met halfway, for, had she been less eager, she must have seen that the viscount-baron's joy at seeing her again was sincere.

"You hesitate to ask what happened after your fortunate escape with that young student," he said, when they were allowed a few minutes together by the artful management of the hostess. "I can tell you that I had to pass through a fiery ordeal and I hope you preserved a kindly memory of one who suffered tremendously for you. Major Von Sendlingen was not an undetached person whose quarrel could be kept among private ones. On the contrary, he moved the authorities like a chess-player does the pieces, and he moved them against me. At the first, they talked of nothing less than trying me for treason, since the projected arrest of the Polish conspirator and yourself—kinswoman of the Dobronowska inscribed in the black book of the Russian and Polish police—was foiled on my territory. The major affirmed that he had seen me not only looking on at the defeat of his posse, but holding my farmers in check not to hasten to their assistance. He alleged that I had lent racehorses to you and your accomplice, for your continued flight. This Polander—"

"You can say Frenchman, now," returned Madame Clemenceau; "he is one, and my cousin. The story is long and involved and will keep to another day. It is he I married."

"Your husband!" he exclaimed, and she nodded apologetically.

"Then," sighed he, "my dream ends here—on that day when we last met."

"A learned man has said, in a lecture here, that dreams can be repeated and continued, by an effort of the will. My advice to you is to try it."

"Do not jest with me! You can see—you can be sure if you will but question—that I narrowly escaped the State's prison for helping you. Spite of all, I can love no other woman but you—"

She held up her closed fan and touched his lips with the feathery edging.

"You must not talk so—at least—here," she said, with her glance in contradiction to her words. "I am happy, or contented, strictly speaking, in my home, and as soon as my husband realizes one or two of the ideas over which he is musing, happiness must be mine. A success in art will drag him forth; he must go to Paris to be feasted in the salons and lionized in the conversaziones."

And her eyes blazed as she figured herself presiding at an assemblage of artists and patrons.

"Pardon me," said the viscount-baron. "I am afraid I add to your worry. I see that you are pining for the sphere to which your grace and charms entice you. I will do anything you order; but yet, since I, too, am an exile, and for your sake, pray do not ask me not to see you and speak of love."

"It must be thus," she replied, with half-closed eyes, turning away abruptly, as if she feared her virtuous resolution were failing. "Let our parting be forever!"

"Forever!" he repeated, following her into the window alcove, although thirty pairs of eyes regarded them. "You cannot mean that. At least, I deserve—have earned—your friendship by what I have undergone for you. Let me have a word of hope! Though divorce is not allowed in this country, death befalls any man, for while your statisticians figure out that the married live longest, they do not assert that they are immortal. Clemenceau dead, his widow may remarry. You say he is an enthusiast—one of those college-growths which run to seed without any fruit. I thought the contrary from the way he rode my horse and handled the pistols. But, being an enthusiast, how can you expect to do anything but vegetate? You will always be poor, for, if the man's ideas bore fruit, he would only sink the gains in fresh enterprises. These artists are always unthrifty, and they should wed their laundresses or their cooks. But I—though they have tied up my German revenue, and I have been practically banished—enjoy a tolerable return from my property in this Empire. I have been offered a very handsome present if I wholly transfer allegiance to the Napoleons. Would you not like to have the entre to the Empress's coterie and shine among the acknowledged beauties? I give you my word that your peer is not among them, and the leader would be enchanted with you. Come, suppose a little fatal accident to Monsieur—may he not suck poison off his paint brush or cut an artery with his sculptor's chisel? And, after a sojourn at Bravitz, you might return to Paris a viscountess—a countess, perhaps, and rule in a pretty court of your own!"

For a woman who had said adieu! she had lingered still listening much too long. They continued the conversation, turned into this ominous channel, in the same low key.

Cesarine returned home with the sentiment of loneliness which had oppressed her almost utterly removed. She did not love Gratian, but one need not be a prisoner to understand how admirable the jailer with the outer door-key may appear. She saw in him a precious friend and ally—a worshiper who would obey a hint like a fanatic. Cautiously, at the marchioness's, and more deeply than at Munich, she made inquiries upon his pecuniary standing and was rejoiced to learn that he had not deceived her in that respect. It was left to him to be a favorite in the court, which, not succeeding in weaning away the scions of the Legitimist nobility, greeted the foreign nobles cordially and sought to attach them to its standard in foresight of a European war. One thing was certain: Gratian had illimitable resources, and the sharp-witted, who had sharp tongues, did not hesitate to aver that he was one of those spoilt children of politics who are fed from State treasuries—not such a shallow-brain as he pretended. The new type of diplomatist was like him, the Morny's, not the effete Metternich's, gentlemen who settled affairs of the State in the boudoir not in the cabinet.

Brave, gallant, dashing, craftier than his manner indicated, he was destined to play no inconsiderable part in the conflict impending; such an one might emerge from the smoke a lieutenant of an emperor and holding a large slice of territory which neither of the two contestants cared yet to rule.

Compared with a sculptor who had produced nothing—an architect whose buildings had appeared only on paper—this young noble was to be run away with, if not to be run after.

The marchioness favored their future and less public meetings, and her gardens were their scene. But while the relations of the treacherous wife with her cavalier became closer, a singular change took place in him. Instead of growing bolder, he seemed to hold aloof, and he fixed each new appointment at a longer interval. He was gloomy and absent, and she began to feel that her charm was weakening. She reproached him, and tried to find excuses for him. Everybody knew what he had lost at the races or over the baccarat-board; and she knew, according to a rhymed saying, that "lucky at love is unlucky at gambling."

"It is not that," he answered slowly, with an anxious glance around in the green avenues of trimmed trees. "I do not know why I should speak of politics to a woman; but you and I are as one: you should know the worst. I am not my own master, and they who rule me presume to dictate my course as regards my heart. Brain and sword are theirs, but I shall feel too ignoble a slave if I sacrifice my love for you to la haute politique."

"Sacrifice your love! That would be odious—that must not be! Do you mean that they want you to marry? How cruel!"

He did not smile at the absurdity of her protest, it was so sincere.

"Well, Cesarine, they are blind here, and deaf to the signs along their own frontier. The French rely on a Russian alliance, when already Herr von Bismarck, the Prussian ambassador at St. Petersburg, long ago secured its suspension. Besides, the Crimean War will always be remembered against Napoleon—it is so easy not to ally oneself with England, and, considering her proverbial ingratitude, so rarely profitable. I spoke of Bismarck! This man of a million, with deep, dark eyes, fixed and unreadable, with a cold, mocking mouth, iron will and mighty brain, is soon to be pitted against Napoleon, the shadow whom you have seen. I am no soothsayer, but I can tell which must go down in the charge, and never to hold up his head again. I am one of the flies on the common wheel who will be carried into the action and smashed, whoever is the victor. I am unwilling to perish thus, when I can find in love of you a paradise on earth wherever you consent to dwell with me. Listen: I am entrusted with a prodigious sum in cash by a political organization, the headquarters of which in France are here, at the old marchioness's—a veteran puller of the wires that move the European puppets. They have practically seized my German bands, and unless I retake them at the head of a column of victorious French, I may as well say good-bye to them. As for Terremonde, the revenue is falling every quarter. If it were not for this secret service, I should be bankrupt, for the Tuileries, perhaps, suspecting my good faith, pay me only in pretty words—a la francaise. This bank which I hold tempts me sorely, Cesarine, but only if you will dip into it with me. Only once in a life does a man have his great opportunity. Mine is the present. A fortune—a beauty! Never will I have such an opportunity again to found a principality in Florida or the South Seas or South America—wherever we choose to come to a rest. Speak, Cesarine, are you with me? After a while, when the modern Attila has swept over France, perhaps we will like to come and view the ruins and fill our gallery with the art-treasures which the impoverished defeated ones will gladly sell."

"A large sum!" repeated the woman, frowning as her thoughts concentrated.

"Enormous! I have been changing it into sight-drafts, and we can put on our wings at a moment's notice."

"It belongs to a political organization, you say?"

"Have no qualms—it is a few drops out of a reptilian fund! No one can claim what was handed over to me without witnesses, and no receipt demanded. I make no secret: I am offering for your love the price of my honor. Only let us flee to a distance for a while. The money could not be claimed of me in a public court, but they might punish me with an assassin's bullet."

"And for me, for my happiness, you would do this? I cannot doubt you any longer, if ever I did. Enough, Gratian, I will go to the world's end with you!"



CHAPTER XI.

A SPRAT AND THE WHALE.

A few moments were enough for the two to enter the chateau again, where their absence had begun to arouse curiosity, though the guests were too well bred to make general remarks. With the cue that these "slow," tame gatherings were but the cloak to more important conclaves, Cesarine studied them as never before. It was clear. Here and there were groups which did not waste a word on the accent of Mademoiselle Delaporte, the early history of Aimee Derclee, or the latest episode in the stage and boudoir history of "the Beauty who is also the Stupid Beast." For a certainty, conspiracy went on here at the gates of the capital; perhaps from the pretty belvedere, where the large telescope was mounted for lovers to see Venus, the sons of Mars ascertained where the batteries of siege guns should be planted to shell Parisian palaces and forts.

Two of a trade never agree, says the wisdom of our ancestors, and from that time Cesarine detested Gratian. If he so easily betrayed his friends, countrymen and employers for her, what might he not do as regards her when she was older and her bloom vanished? Better not place herself under his thumb and be cast off, in some remote, barbarous region, when the caprice had worn out. But the money! What was this political league and its aims to her? For her limited education, that of a refined and expensive toy, she was ignorant of the laws and regulations governing even herself, and these laws were too subtly interwoven and inexorable for man alone to have formed them. She did not suspect the great reasons of the State in setting them in motion to accomplish collective ends and destinies, whether they wrought good or evil to individuals. Enough that they were necessary for a dynasty or a class; but in all cases, the rulers knew why they were made.

Little by little, but without loss of time, her perspicacity penetrated the disguises, although not to the motives that impelled the plotters. She centered her thoughts on the old, white-locked pianist, who silently listened to all the parties and was tolerated even when the piano was closed; he was taciturn, always blandly smiling and bent in a servile bow. Nevertheless, this was the principal of the conspirators and even the viscount-baron treated him with some deference as representing a formidable power.

One morning, Cesarine came over to the marchioness's and took advantage of the drawing-room being open to be aired, to open the piano and practice an aria which she had promised at the next soiree. There was nothing but praise for her singing, and old, retired tenors and obese soprani had assured her that she had but to have one hearing in the Opera to be placed among the stars. The aged pianist had often listened to her vocalism with enraptured gaze, and she believed he, too, was her slave.

He had now glided into the room and upon the piano stool, and, as if by magic divining her wish, silently opened the piece of music for which she had been hunting. For the first time their eyes met without any medium, for he had discarded the tinted spectacles he usually wore. These were not the worn orbs of a man who had pored over crabbed partitions for sixty years. They were eyes familiar to her.

"Major Von Sendlingen!" she exclaimed, in a kind of terror; for women, being judges of duplicity, are alarmed by any one successful in disguises.

"Precisely, but do not be alarmed. You struck me in warfare, and I forgive your share in that paltry incident. I am your friend, now. By the way, as a proof of that assertion, let me tell you that the viscount is no more worthy of you than that ever-dreaming student. You think he adores you? pfui! only so far as you will aid the realization of his ambition. Besides, he is only an officer in our ranks; he is not unbridled, and at any moment he may be ordered away. Renounce this kind of love, my child, not durable and unendurable!"

Was this the major preaching? He who had held with the hare and run with the hounds, that is, tried to win the ascending and the declining star!

"Tell me," he continued, seriously, "tell me when you can control your heart, and it is I who will set you on that stage where you should have figured long since."

She had turned pale and she bit her lip. Her dullness in not suspecting the identity of this spy, her lover, pained her acutely. She had thought to read the Sphynx, and it had its paw upon her. Her exasperation was so keen that she determined to be revenged on both the speaker and Gratian, whose inferiority to the major was manifest.

"They shall see how I can plot," she thought, "and best of all, how I carry off the prize which I need to obtain a station of my own selection in society."

One thing she saw clearly, that Von Sendlingen was out of her clutches. He still acknowledged her attractions, but he was obedient to a master more paramount. If only he had been capable of jealousy! But, no, he had alluded to the Viscount de Terremonde's flame with perfect indifference. Like Clemenceau, he would not have fought a duel for her choice. Nevertheless, her husband might have another burst of the homicidal instinct which his father showed in Paris, and he in Germany. While refusing a duel as illogical, he might fell Gratian after the model he had displayed for Major Von Sendlingen's profit in Munich.

Perhaps, though, Clemenceau was no longer jealous.

Hedwig had told her of letters addressed to Daniels which she had to mail, if Clemenceau was in correspondence with the old Jew, he would not have forgotten his daughter, the only woman of whom Cesarine harbored jealousy.

But she could attain her end, profound, treacherous and bloody, like the dream of a frivolous woman going to extremes. The revelation of Von Sendlingen's presence enlightened her and filled the gap in her plan.

Meanwhile, she redoubled her efforts to entrance Gratian, and the day of their flight had but to be fixed. On hearing from Madame Clemenceau that Von Sendlingen was the chief of surveillance at the coterie, the dread that he was his rival in the contest for Cesarine, filled his cup to overflowing with disgust. He had believed himself chief of the fraternity in France, and behold! another was set over him and probably reported that he neglected the business to pay court to a married woman. He felt that he was lost and that his only chance to secure the beloved one was to step outside the circle which he knew would be the vortex of a whirlpool once war was proclaimed.

"You speak most timely," he answered gravely, when she said that she was ready; "I have been notified to transfer the funds to another, in such terms as would better suit a clerk than a gentleman—a noble intelligence officer. That cursed major who learned the piano to be a means of torture to his fellow man! he has done it. He loves you no longer, and he is my enemy since I looked at him being run away with, like a raw recruit, on his first troop-horse. He will, believe me, be our destroyer unless we levant."

Nothing was easier. Since four days, Clemenceau had been invisible, even at meals. Closeted with his disciple Antonino, they worked out some more than ever preposterous conceptions into substance, in the studio where the uncompleted artistic models had been neglected. Hedwig was the false wife's bondwoman and would actively help in the removal of her trunks. The viscount had but to send a trusty man with a vehicle, and the lady could meet him at a station of the Outer Circle Railway and thence proceed to a main station for Havre or Marseilles, as they selected. The famous sight-drafts were safe on Gratian's person. With the simplicity of a child, Cesarine wished again and again to gloat over them; never could she be convinced that those flimsy pieces of paper stood for large sums of ready money and that bankers would pay simply on their presentation. It was reluctantly that she restored the wallet to his inner pocket, of which she buttoned the flap, bidding him be so very, very careful of what would be their subsistence in the mango groves.

"Oh, how I love you," he said, bewildered and enthralled; "I love you because you retain, after the finished graces of woman have come, the naive traits of the guileless girl. What a joy that I divined your excellences when you were so young and that I was favored by your regard, and now am gladdened by your trustful smiles."

"I trust you so much that I could wish this money did not weigh on your bosom. I love you without it, and I shall love you as long as you live."

Seeming to be as exalted as he, she grasped both his hands and drew his face nearer and nearer hers to look him in the eyes.

"I do not ask anything of you but to be good to me. Do not reproach me for leaving my lawful lord for you! If there is a fault in quitting him who neglects me, never cast it upon me. Let us go! anywhere, if but you are ever beside me, to protect, to support and cherish!"

Her moist eyes were as eloquent as her lips, and to have doubted her, he must have doubted all evidence of his senses. And yet it was that same hand on which he had impressed a score of burning kisses that wrote these lines:

"The faithless one will take the train at Montmorency Station this night at nine."

And she deposited it, as had been agreed between her and Major Von Sendlingen in a vase on the drawing-room mantel-shelf at the marchioness's, where the viscount conducted her before their last parting. It was one of those notes which burn in the hand, and so thought the major, for he took measures, by a communication which he had established, to send it to M. Clemenceau.

Except on holidays and Sundays, when the Parisians muster in great force to promenade the still picturesque suburbs, the country roads are desolate after the return home of the clerks who have slaved at the desk in the city. One might believe oneself a hundred miles from a center of civilization.