the good seed By MARK MALLORY - https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/60761/pg60761-images.html

 

Secret History of To-Day Being Revelations of a Diplomatic Spy By Allen Upward - https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/66181/pg66181-images.html

 

A Message From Our Sponsor By HENRY SLESAR - https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/67589/pg67589-images.html

 

THE BUSINESS, AS USUAL By JACK SHARKEY - https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/51435/pg51435-images.html

 

DAWN OF THE DEMIGODS By RAYMOND Z. GALLUN - https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/63797/pg63797-images.html

 As unheralded as ghosts, but as significant as a

new dawn of history, there came to Earth from distant
Ganymede's glowing crescent—three micro-androids,
minuscule beings, carrying the moot treasure of immortality.

Somebody invented the first locomotive. Then came the nuclear bomb. I guess that people were somewhat scared of newness both times.

Mostly, it has been worse ever since.

World War III was also before my day. But then fear, the protective emotion, played a reasonable part. So no cities were actually vaporized. But our side came out the victors with bombers so high-flying that they were already atom-propelled rocket ships of space. We had artificial satellites circling the Earth, and a fortress on the Moon.

I, Charles Harver, was born in Chicago, March 9th, 2014. But in my earliest, murky memories, Earth was only a place known from television, picture books, and the nostalgic remarks of my parents. We had a house and a flower and vegetable garden under a transparent airdome of dark blue plastic. The sun would shine among the stars for what I heard was fourteen days; then, for another two weeks the solar lamps would burn in the dome top.

The region where we lived was called the spaceward lunar hemisphere. Earth never shone there, but life was good. There were other kids, and school, and the usual dreams about being a bold space wanderer, speeding out to find unimagined marvels.

As we whizzed along, Dr. Lanvin smirked at me like a sly elf. "To what our poor friend complained about, I owe much," he remarked. "Consider my birth-date, January 23rd, 1932. It's now 2033. Yes, I'm a hundred and one, though I look and feel fifty by old standards. It's common enough. Wizardry? No. Let's face facts, Charlie. Something like immortality has been sneaking up on the human race for well over a century. First, diseases were conquered one by one. Meanwhile, surgery, replacing worn out organs with new ones grown artificially, went far ahead. Hormone therapy was developed. The final degenerative disease, senility, is proving to be just as conquerable as cancer. Remove its causes—accumulation of minerals and certain fatty acids among other things, and tone up the machine—and it just isn't there anymore!"

It Takes a Thief By Walter Miller, Jr. - https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/58673/pg58673-images.html

 Quotations from the ancient gods—Fermi, Einstein, Elgermann, Hanser and the rest—most men owned scattered phrases, and scattered phrases remained meaningless. But a thief memorized all transactions that he overheard, and the countless phrases could be fitted together into meaningful ideas.

If the intruder has not acquired the proper knowledge, Big Oswald will kill."

Thunderstruck, he leaped back from the entrance and swayed heavily against an instrument panel. The panel lit up and a polite recorded voice began reading something about "President Snell's role in the Eighth World War". He lurched away from the panel and stumbled back toward Mara who sat glumly on the foundation slab of a weighty machine.

GAMBLER'S WORLD By KEITH LAUMER - https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/21627/pg21627-images.html

 What's it all about?" Retief asked.

"The revolution. We're taking over now."

"Who's 'we'?"

"The People's Anti-Fascist Freedom League."

"What are all the knives for?"

"For the Nenni; and for all you foreigners."

"What do you mean?" Magnan gasped.

"We'll slit all the throats at one time. Saves a lot of running around."

"What time will that be?"

"Just at dawn; and dawn comes early, this time of year. By full daylight the PAFFL will be in charge."

"You'll never succeed," Magnan said. "A few servants with knives! You'll all be caught and killed."

"By who, the Nenni?" the man laughed. "You Nenni are a caution."

"But we're not Nenni—"

"We've watched you; you're the same. You're part of the same blood-sucking class."

Equal rights for all—"

"These threats won't work," the man said. "You don't scare me."

"Threats? I'm promising relief to the exploited classes of Petreac!"

"You must be nuts," the man said. "You trying to upset the system or something?"

"Isn't that the purpose of your revolution?"

"Look, Nenni, we're tired of you Nenni getting all the graft. We want our turn. What good would it do us to run Petreac if there's no loot?"

"You mean you intend to oppress the people? But they're your own group."

"Group, schmoop. We're taking all the chances; we're doing the work. We deserve the payoff. You think we're throwing up good jobs for the fun of it?"

"You're basing a revolt on these cynical premises?"

"Wise up, Nenni. There's never been a revolution for any other reason."

AND ALL THE EARTH A GRAVE BY C.C. MacAPP - https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/23146/pg23146-images.html

 There's nothing wrong with dying—it just hasn't ever had the proper sales pitch!

It all began when the new bookkeeping machine of a large Midwestern coffin manufacturer slipped a cog, or blew a transistor, or something. It was fantastic that the error—one of two decimal places—should enjoy a straight run of okays, human and mechanical, clear down the line; but when the figures clacked out at the last clacking-out station, there it was. The figures were now sacred; immutable; and it is doubtful whether the President of the concern or the Chairman of the Board would have dared question them—even if either of those two gentlemen had been in town.

As for the Advertising Manager, the last thing he wanted to do was question them. He carried them (they were the budget for the coming fiscal year) into his office, staggering a little on the way, and dropped dazedly into his chair. They showed the budget for his own department as exactly one hundred times what he'd been expecting. That is to say, fifty times what he'd put in for.

BLACK MAN'S BURDEN BY MACK REYNOLDS - https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/32390/pg32390-images.html

 "Take up the white man's burden

Send forth the best ye breed...."

—KiplingThe two-vehicle caravan emerged from the sandy wastes of the erg and approached the small encampment of Taitoq Tuareg which consisted of seven goat leather tents. They were not unanticipated, the camp's scouts had noted the strange pillars of high-flung dust which were set up by the air rotors an hour earlier and for the past fifteen minutes they had been visible to all.

But the vehicles traveling through the sand dunes! That had been the last advantage of the camel. No wheeled vehicle could cross the vast stretches of the ergs, they must stick to the hard ground, to the tire-destroying gravel.

They came to a halt and Moussa-ag-Amastan drew up his teguelmoust turban-veil even closer about his eyes. He had no desire to let the newcomers witness his shocked surprise at the fact that the desert lorries had no wheels, floated instead without support, and now that they were at a standstill settled gently to earth.

The newcomer shrugged. "I am Omar ben Crawf and these are my followers, Abrahim el Bakr Ma el Ainin, Keni Ballalou and Bey-ag-Akhamouk. We come today from Tamanrasset and we are smiths, as we can prove. As is known, there is high pay to be earned by working in the oil fields, at the dams on the Niger, in the afforestation projects, in the sinking of the new wells whose pumps utilize the rays of the sun, in the developing of the great new oases. There is much Rouma money to be made in such work and my men and I have brought these vehicles specially built in the new factories in Dakar for desert use."

"Slave work!" one of Moussa-ag-Amastan's kinsmen sneered.

From the tents debouched women and children. The children were completely nude, and the Tuareg women were unveiled for such are the customs of the Ahaggar Tuareg that the men go veiled but women do not.

There was a stir as two men dressed in the clothes of the Rouma approached the river bank. It was not forbidden, but good manners called for males to refrain from this area while the woman bathed and washed their laundry, without veil or upper garments. These mean were obviously shameless, and probably had come to stare. From their dress, their faces and their bearing, they were strangers. Possibly Senegalese, up from the area near Dakar, products of the new schools and the new industries mushrooming there. Strange things were told of the folk who gave up the old ways, worked on the dams and the other new projects, sent their little ones to the schools, and submitted to the needle pricks which seemed to compose so much of the magic medicine being taught in the medical schools by the Rouma witchmen.

A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs - https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/62/pg62-images.html

 

Formula For Murder By LEE GREGOR - https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/71800/pg71800-images.html

 It's easy to get away with murder: just prove insanity.

But make sure you hide the method in your madness!

The Way Of Decision by M. C. PEASE - https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/37572/pg37572-images.html

 TOM VORD sat on the porch of his clan's house with his feet on the railing. Across the valley, he could hear the muted roar of the commuter track that led south to New Haven; but all he could see were the sprawling rows of private houses that strung along the belt. And behind them, more isolated from each other, the larger structures of the homes of other clans. The bright greenness of spring lay over the land, and it was fresh and sparkling. A typical suburban scene in this year of 2013, Tom thought. Even the mixture of private houses and clan was symbolic of the time. And in a way, symbolic also of the problem he had.

Alfred Boyer felt very happy that afternoon over the printer's proofs that the mail had just brought him. He could not take his eyes off the page containing the title: "Mémoires du Maréchal Frédet Prince d'Augsbourg, Duc d'Ivrea, with notes and introduction by Alfred Boyer, former student of the École de Chartres." The work to which he had devoted himself during the last two years was nearing completion. His name was going to be associated for ever with that of "Catinat of the Grande Armée," who had begun as volunteer in 1792, and had died of a broken heart after Waterloo. Need one recall Frédet's heroism in the wars in the North—then too, in the first campaign in Italy, just under the walls of Ivrea, and his brilliant services in Egypt and Germany; how after Ulm, he had surrounded and taken prisoner ten thousand of the enemy at the gates of Augsbourg, with a handful of hussars? Austerlitz, Iéna, Eylau, Wagram, and Spain in turn saw this indefatigable soldier maneuvre his troops with the skill to which the "Mémoires" bore testimony. "I sent Frédet to Catalonia," said the Emperor, "with twenty thousand men. It was like sending fifty thousand. He alone made up the difference." A very severe wound prevented his joining Napoleon in Russia, he achieved wonders at Dresden, though scarcely reestablished in health, and at Leipzig, where he saved the retreat by checking during several hours, the main body of the Austrian cavalry. Like Ney, and like the Emperor himself, he was one of those who sought death at Waterloo, and whom death would not accept, in spite of prodigies of valor, exalted almost to madness by the despair of the defeat. When peace was concluded, the veteran shut himself up at Combronde, near Riom, on a small estate that he had acquired in Auvergne, where he had been born. It was there where he commenced to write or rather to dictate his mémoires in a haphazard fashion, following his exalted fancy, accumulating a pile of rather incoherent notes, which had slept in their portfolios for eighty years—from 1821, at which date the old soldier died, until 1900 when his grandson, the present Prince of Augsbourg, had at last decided to publish those papers, a little influenced, it must be admitted, by his need of money. Having a scanty fortune and a very large family—five marriageable daughters—he had been tempted by the success of "Marbot's Mémoires." He summoned from Paris to his little Château of Combes, where the meagreness of his income and his misanthropy kept him prisoner the year round, a young man who was to put in order that mass of documents mostly without shape. That is how Alfred Boyer found himself with a task that developed into a passion. Whatever may be the political value accorded to the Napoleonic legend, its heroic character casts a magic spell that few historians of that fantastic epoch have been able to overthrow. That magic spell had acted so much the more on the young compiler, because the moral figure of Frédet was fully in accord with his military bearing. Among the portraits of those marshals, all equally brilliant, but not equally attractive, his was one of the most pure and exalted. The heroism of the Prince of Augsbourg retained to the last that antique charm that one imagines would have adorned Desaix had he lived long enough. It seems that Frédet never had any ambition for these dignities which his master delighted to shower upon him. When did he have a chance to enjoy them? Bonaparte, who knew men and their value, never ceased for a moment to keep him employed, in peace as well as in war. When he was not fighting, Frédet was an administrator. His proverbial integrity, his gentleness, and—a quality extremely rare in that army sprung from the Revolution—his religious fervor, gave to his countenance the look of a paladin. While he lived it was impossible to come in contact with him without loving him. He disarmed the envy of Marmont, the sour humor of Soult, and warmed the coldness of Macdonald. The writings of these three rivals in glory, give ample proof of it. Dead, his rare personality had just performed a similar miracle of seduction in his memorialist, who gazed as if hypnotized at the first page of the mémoires, and the bulky package of proofs. At that very minute he was living over again the two years of his arduous labor. He saw himself once more, after his thesis had been approved, hesitating between accepting a poorly paid post as librarian in an obscure corner of some province, and the offer that one of his professors had made him, to work on the mémoires of the famous marshal. It was food and lodging assured for some time, a means of becoming known, and of laying aside a few thousand francs with which he could support himself until he could obtain appointment to some good post. Beyond this, Boyer did not know anything about the soldier whose papers he had to classify. In that old house at Combes, which had remained unchanged during three-quarters of a century, he had commenced to give himself up to that retrospective semi-hallucination known only to those who have a scholarly disposition. Taine has pictured it in that eloquent page, where he describes himself at the archives, following over the yellowed paper the old writings of the men of the Revolution. "I was," he says, "tempted to speak aloud to them." In that poor mansion where the old hero had sheltered himself in his last few days, the walls were covered with relics of his glorious adventures, brought together in confusion; here, swords of honor hung on the wall, next to them some engravings representing feats of arms; there, portraits of the marshal himself, the first Consul, the Emperor, Frédet's chosen companions, among others that of Ney, who had been one of the witnesses to his marriage. Frédet's wife was there, frail and delicate in her rich costume of a court lady, painted by Gérard, in an attitude identical with that of the Duchess of Rovigo, on the edge of a park leaning on a small column ornamented with helmets and cuirasses in high relief. She had survived her husband forty years, and to her piety was due the preservation of the home to which the eldest son of the family had not returned until 1875, after having served in the army and resigned while simple lieutenant-colonel, when another had—unjustly as he maintained—been promoted over him. His carelessness produced at least this advantage, that the species of family museum brought together through the sorrow of the grandmother had remained undisturbed. In the mean while, that is to say, under the monarchy of July and the Second Empire, the Frédets had lived in Paris; the second Prince of Augsbourg as a peer of France, and then as Senator; the third, the present Prince, as an officer of the staff of Napoleon the Third. Physically the colonel was the living image of his illustrious grandfather. He had the leonine face, the calm and powerful mien, the grave eyes, the serious mouth, and also the athlete's muscles, broad shoulders and powerful neck. There the resemblance stopped. Was it lack of education or opportunity? Did he take morally after some ancestor on the mother's side? His father had married a girl of noble birth, but of that country nobility with whom hunting is the sole hereditary occupation. In his old age it was the only pleasure that seemed to survive in this heir to an illustrious name, the first ambition of a disappointed career. Alfred Boyer recalled his strange impression during the first weeks of his sojourn when he saw the Prince start out in the early morning, with his gamekeeper and his dogs and not return until nightfall, covered with dust or mud, sunburned or else soaked in rain, according to the weather, his gun on his shoulder, and his game bag bulging with the pheasants hunted during the day. To his five daughters, left at home under the charge of an old aunt, who managed the household for him, this taciturn hunter seemed to give no thought. They were pretty and refined girls, and if the memorialist had not been a poor pale-faced student, his presence in this isolation with these five young unmarried girls might not have been without danger. But Alfred belonged to that class of timid, intellectual men who have no need of disenchanting experiences to put in practise the advice the fair Venetian gave so amusingly to Rousseau: "Avoid women and study mathematics." Being of a sickly nature, knowing himself awkward and homely, he had early turned into intellectual channels the feverish ardor that young men of his age usually spend in sentimental adventures. His only pleasures were the discoveries of unpublished texts, of ingenious hypotheses on obscure historical points, and the patient conquest of a chair in the Institute by force of erudite publications. The marshal's papers fell in well with this program, and with something more—the poetry of the extraordinary imperial exploit incarnate in one of the most magnificent workers. Thus it was that after having engaged in the work as compiler of records, Alfred Boyer continued as enthusiast, identifying himself with his hero in each episode of his brilliant career, collating the smallest anecdotes about him, claiming for him the first place in all the events in which he had taken part, putting himself at infinite pains to make this great man greater still; possessed by one of those retrospective idolatries at which we can not smile, so disinterested and pathetic are they when their object is a name sunk in misfortune and oblivion, like that of this soldier who had died of the defeat of his master and of France. What a work it was to decipher the piles of notes and documents he had left, to make selection from among the texts, to complete them with commentaries! But those "Mémoires" were at last to appear, all the traits of that noble figure were to shine out in a brilliant light, and the author of this posthumous justice could not gaze enough on the printed characters that would soon shine forth in the cover of the first volume—the complete work would be in four volumes—in the booksellers' shop windows.... The sound of a door opening roused Boyer from his "semihypnotic"[14] trance. He raised his head and sprang suddenly to his feet. It was the Prince of Augsbourg who had just entered the library. Those visits, rare at first, had become more frequent as Alfred Boyer's work advanced. Not that the sportsman had ever ventured to give any advice to the memorialist, who had read to him some of the pages dictated or written by his grandfather—those, more frequently, in which the marshal told of the departure from his paternal roof (he was the son of a physician at Combronde), to join the army—the story of the first battle in which he had taken part, at Hondschoote—that of his last, and his farewell to the Emperor before the charge at Waterloo. The manner in which he listened to those recitals, his head in his hands, never uttering a word, revealed an intense feeling in the hero's descendant. Evidently an almost religious cult for his ancestor burned in this obscure and wild nature, which Alfred Boyer pitied without quite comprehending. He could see that, overburdened by the weight of a great name, ruined by his father, discontented with his present circumstances, and knowing his inability to alter them, the colonel had fallen into that lethargy of the will in which for some years he had simply vegetated. He had given up the society of his set, as well as his profession, turning countryman, and since his wife's death had not paid any attention to the small details in personal appearance that, even in the most ordinary surroundings, reveal the man who has been used to good company. It was evident that he loved his daughters, as proved by the sadness with which his eyes would sometimes rest on these pretty children, doomed by their portionless condition to some obscure marriage in that corner of Auvergne. The remnants of his fortune yielded an income of about thirty thousand francs a year. Was that enough to sustain the rank of a prince? The colonel had said to himself that decadence would be better borne in the solitude of this house peopled with the memories of his grandfather. Thus he had reasoned. Or at least that was the solution that Alfred Boyer had found in his mind to the enigma presented by that character; and his own constantly increasing cult for the marshal made him sympathize with the homage rendered by abdication to that ruinous heritage. The grandson felt the glory of the grandfather. That was enough to make the enthusiastic compiler of the "Mémoires" feel himself in sympathy with his taciturn patron, and on this occasion he felt keen pleasure at seeing him enter the library. He would show him the proofs just arrived by the courier. He welcomed the newcomer, and, handing to him the proofs, he said: "I was just going to ask you to receive me, Prince. Our first volume is printed." "I do not understand much about these things," replied the Prince of Augsbourg, after having glanced at the bundle of proofs, "but all this seems to me very good." He glanced through them again more slowly, stopping at certain passages that he recognized, and, a detail that Alfred was surprised to note, his face grew visibly more sombre. This made his resemblance to his grandfather much more striking. One would have said that to hold in his hand this book, which was, in a measure, his production since he had kept the memorialist at work at his own expense during the past two years, was more than painful to him. At last he returned the sheets to the young man, saying: "Yes, that is very good—but perhaps you will have to add some notes to it. Yes," he continued after a moment's hesitation, "I received a letter this morning informing me that certain documents will be placed at my disposal. I shall have to go to Paris to fetch them. I have come to ask you to accompany me—Thanks," he went on as Alfred Boyer nodded assent, "I did not doubt that you would be willing to come—" He hesitated again, then with an effort he added: "Doubtless you have heard something about the Duchesse d'Ivrea." "The Duchesse d'Ivrea?" repeated the young man. "I thought that title was one of those belonging to the Princess of Augsbourg." "It is borne by the widow of my younger brother," interrupted the colonel, who added in a singular tone: "You are right. All the titles of the family should belong to the eldest, but my uncle was formerly called the Duc d'Ivrea, and my brother naturally took the same title. I am surprised at your not knowing this, after having been busy with the marshal, as you have, for almost twenty months. It is true," and a bitter smile curled his lips, "that, compared with him, we are scarcely interesting. And then my brother and I had not visited each other, and I do not know his wife. That is why I never mentioned her to you. She is very ill, she informs me—given up by her physicians, in fact. She wishes to deliver into my hands some family papers left in her keeping by my brother. I can rely on you, then. The most interesting part of them is a correspondence with Moreau during the latter's sojourn in America. You know that the marshal made a campaign with him in Holland. He foresaw his failure and wished to prevent it. These letters were offered for sale some years ago. They got them away from me because they were wealthier than I, but now they wish to return them to me, and it is right that they should. We should find a place for them in the second volume. That will mean a great deal of revising, but it is worth the trouble. I shall leave you now, as I have many orders to attend to. We shall start this evening." ... While making his preparations after this interview, Alfred Boyer could not shake off an impression, that, vague as it was and without foundation, seemed to him a certainty. This visit to his sister-in-law was costing the Prince very dear. There was a mystery in their relations, and a very painful one. Whence came this rupture, and what were its causes, so profound that not the slightest mention of a Duchess d'Ivrea had ever been made either by the Prince or by any of his five daughters? Not one of them bore this name; they were called simply the Frédets of Augsbourg. What had happened between the two brothers? Had this rupture preceded the marriage? Or had that event been the cause of it? All these questions presented themselves to the young man's mind without his having the faintest inkling as to their solution. During the long months of his sojourn he had not established relations with any one among the few country families in the neighborhood of Combes. Moreover, he would have considered himself unworthy of the confidence that his patron had shown him from the very first, opening his archives to him, letting him live in complete intimacy with his household, if he had made any inquiries about the Frédets. From the moment that there was a question of some family secret, to start a conversation on this subject with the old relative who acted as housekeeper would have been as impossible as to try and make one of the young girls talk about it. He knew no more of the affair when the day after the conversation the Prince and he arrived in Paris than he did on the preceding evening. During the journey he had noted the increasing preoccupation of his companion, who, when they reached the station, said to him: "I do not know as yet where we shall put up. Let us take a cab and we will stop at some lodging-house. I used to know a place in the Rue de Bourgogne, in the neighborhood of the Chamber of Deputies. We will be near the Rue de Grenelle, where our business is. The d'Ivrea house is the same that the marshal lived in under the Empire." "Next door to the house of the Duc de Feltré?" returned Alfred Boyer. "It was only three days ago that I was transcribing the page on which he relates their meeting on the sidewalk in front of their houses on his return from Waterloo, and his refusal to return the Duc's salutation. How finely the passage concludes: 'Perhaps it was not just,' he writes, 'but at that time every French officer who had not fought at Waterloo filled me with horror. I should add that if the Duc de Feltré deserted us, at least it was not, as in so many other cases, for money. He was my friend, and I attest that I have always known him to be an upright man with clean hands.' "Upright and with clean hands," repeated the Prince. "Yes, those were his words; I recall them, too. That might have been his own device, do you not think so? My brother repurchased the house," he added after a pause. "I do not know how they have furnished it, but the façade should not be changed. It is of the seventeenth century and has the grand style of that period. You shall judge of it yourself this afternoon, for I do not intend to remain here long. I count upon going to the d'Ivrea house in this same cab as soon as we have engaged our apartment in the Rue Bourgogne. You will not leave me—I am not paying a visit to a relative. I have come here to obtain some papers that belong to me by right as the senior. You have been good enough to engage your services as historian for our family until the end of the publication of the 'Mémoires.' Your place, then, is with me." They had taken their places in the carriage while the ex-colonel was thus formulating the program of a proceeding made the more mysterious by these words, and by the irrevocable determination that they indicated. During the three-quarters of an hour that it took them to reach the Rue de Bourgogne, where the lodging-house stood, and then the Rue de Grenelle, they were silent, the Prince absorbed in his thoughts, and the young man out of respect for a sadness of which he divined the cause, without being able to determine its precise nature. The sadness was changed into an actual contraction of pain when the carriage stopped in front of a high porte-cochère, above which could be read this inscription, recently restored, as the brilliancy of the lettering indicated: "Hôtel d'Ivrea." Alfred alighted first and waited before the open door, ready to assist the Prince out of the carriage. The latter did not move. This last effort was almost intolerable to him. "I thought at first I should send you in my place, my dear Boyer," he said, finally deciding to alight, "but she would not receive you. It is me that she wishes to see. She has adopted the only way, my veneration for the marshal. Let us go in—but it is so hard!" Never in all those weeks that they had lived almost constantly together had he uttered such intimate sentiments to his companion. His irritation, which he scarcely gave himself the trouble to conceal, increased still more as they crossed the court at the back of which rose the beautiful gray façade he had spoken of, with its high windows and its ample mansard roof pierced with bull's-eyes. Though Alfred Boyer was much moved by the family tragedy, of which the Prince's attitude was an index, he could not but admire the noble aspect of the structure in which the heroic Frédet had thought to find rest. But if the exterior of the ancient house harmonized with the legend of the hero, the interior offered a no less striking contrast to it. The extraordinary excess of gaudy upholstery, the multiplicity of trifling ornaments, and the total absence of real works of art, the petty coquetry of the curtains, everything from the very entrance stairs and the vestibule gave an impression of false luxury and cheap imitation. The walls and ceiling of the salon into which the two men were shown were draped with blue satin, the assorted portières were held up by silver-fringed curtain rings; double curtains of heavy silk and lace veiled the windows. The sumptuous upholstering of the furniture utterly lacking in taste, the overladen garnishment of the mantel capped the climax, and made of this sumptuous apartment an almost questionable place. It fairly reeked with orders from the fashionable draper, of bank bills, and nothing showed personal taste. The abundance of coronets scattered everywhere proclaimed the parvenu. That the woman who ordered such furnishings for the austere mansion should be the Duchesse d'Ivrea was one of those paradoxes of fate that amuse only the unthinking. When one has such a passionate adoration for a hero as the compiler of the "Mémoires" had for the Duc d'Ivrea, such antitheses seemed to be a profanation. Alfred was not surprised, then, at the visible repugnance shown in the face of the actual bearer of the name and arms of the Frédets during the few moments passed in the salon while they were waiting to be presented. The Prince had sent word by the servant that he was there with the gentleman who had charge of the publication of the marshal's papers. As if turning his back on this cheap luxury, he had gone and leaned against the window, from which his rude hand had roughly pushed aside the flimsy curtains. He looked out on a narrow garden to which the first shoots of spring were already giving a touch of green, and which was vulgarized by a Japanese kiosk with colored windows. When the servant returned to the room, Alfred could see that the eyes of the sturdy hunter were suffused with tears. "Well?" he demanded almost imperiously. "Madame la Duchesse is awaiting Monsieur le Prince," was the reply, "but alone; she is too ill this morning to receive two visitors."—"What did I tell you, Boyer!" exclaimed the Prince, not caring whether or not he was heard by the footman. "She wants me to come to pay her a visit, but I have not come with any such intention, and I will not have it so. I came with you to obtain the papers. Let her receive you or not in her bedroom, that is of no importance. You are none the less here in the house, and officially. Wait for me here then. It will not be long." Ten minutes later the irascible nobleman appeared again, holding in his hand a large sealed envelope, which he displayed, saying: "It is the first restitution, and the most important for us: the correspondence with Moreau." And when they were again in the carriage, rolling toward the Rue Bourgogne: "I must do her this justice," he continued, without giving his sister-in-law her title, "she was quite correct. I found her in bed. I had never seen her, as I have already told you. She has the reputation of having been very beautiful, and she must have been. Though she is worn by sickness, she still has fine features and astonishing eyes. She is dying of cancer of the liver. She knows it; she told me of it. She returned these papers to me very simply, saying that on my next visit she would give me other documents, which she says she must arrange. I am not her dupe; they are all arranged. She wants to prove—though I have not the slightest idea to whom—that the Frédet family recognizes her since the Prince of Augsbourg goes to her house. But the matter is done with. I have the packet necessary for our work. We can start back again for Combes with our booty this evening or to-morrow, and though it is to be regretted that some parts of it are lacking, still they are mere trifles. But let us assure ourselves that we have not been cheated. "There were thirty-seven letters, according to the catalog of the sale at which they bought them. Good, here we are! we can go upstairs and make sure that the number is correct. Will you take charge of the matter and count them carefully? Thirty-seven—" When they were both in the apartment, consisting of two little communicating bedrooms, that had been reserved for them, Alfred Boyer's first action was to open the envelope, which was fastened with a seal bearing the escutcheon and device of the Frédets. His historian's heart beat high as he saw that it was not merely a matter of simple notes, but of long letters, some of which covered ten or a dozen pages. He began to count them, drawing them out of the envelope one by one. He was unfolding the fifteenth when he noticed a smaller envelope, that had been slipped into it. He took it out and read the direction: "For the Prince of Augsbourg." The envelope had not been sealed. He opened it mechanically, thinking that it had some connection with the correspondence. In it was a sheet of paper, again with the crest of the Frédets, on which he read with that swift look that takes in ten lines at a glance: "This is my will, which annuls all preceding ones. I constitute as my sole legatee Monsieur Jules Frédet, Prince d'Augsbourg, under the express condition that he shall personally conduct my funeral, that he shall have my body as well as that of my husband deposited in the tomb of the Frédet family, and that I appear as donor of the letters to General Moreau in the forthcoming 'Mémoires' of the marshal. If Monsieur Jules Frédet does not accept this legacy, my will deposited at my notary's shall be valid in place of this. Given under my hand"—here followed a date and beneath it the signature: "Duchesse d'Ivrea." "Is the count correct?" This question, snapped out by the Prince through the open door from the end of the other room where he had gone to dress, startled the young man. Surely he was quite innocent of all design, and he had no sooner discovered the confidential nature of the paper than he replaced it in its envelope. Nevertheless he had discovered its contents, and it was with cheeks flaming like those of a guilty man that he replied: "I do not know yet, but I have just found this in the correspondence." He had on the tip of his tongue the avowal of his involuntary indiscretion, but false shame restrained him. "An envelope?" said the Prince. "Addressed to me? It must be some trick she has devised to get a letter to me. If it is a letter I shall tear it up without reading it. Let me see"—he had advanced to the door of the room and began reading aloud: "This is my—

 He stopped short. He had turned terribly pale. Alfred saw that his hand clenched over the sheet as if to crush and tear it. Then, folding the paper, he returned it to its envelope and placed it on the mantel under a book, as if it were of no importance. He came back to the door and looked at Alfred, who was already bent over his work, prudently avoiding this look. He seemed to have a question on his lips that he did not put into words. He had stopped while shaving to call out his question. Without saying anything more he finished shaving while Boyer continued to arrange the letters with hands trembling with emotion, and the same emotion shook his voice as he said, finally breaking the silence, when the work was done:

"The thirty-seven letters are here."

"They are all here, eh?" replied the Prince. He was so upset that he did not notice the young man's embarrassment. "You need not begin to examine them until to-morrow morning," he continued. "I give you leave of absence for this afternoon. You have not been in Paris for a long time, and you may have some friends that you wish to look up here. You are at liberty for the rest of the day, but come back at about six o'clock to see if I need you."

He had scarcely reached the sidewalk of the Rue de Bourgogne, when the young man felt so strongly the pangs of remorse at not having confessed his indiscretion that he stood still for several minutes, asking himself whether he should not at once go upstairs and tell the Prince that he had read the will. At the same time he saw that, once in the Prince's presence, it would again be impossible for him to confess.

Not that he feared reproaches for the act itself; he had only done as he had been directed in ascertaining the contents of the envelope, which, moreover, was open. His silence afterward was easily explained by timidity. What now made the avowal so painful was the knowledge that he had surprised the grandson of his hero in a moment of mental anguish. The manner in which the Prince had spoken of his sister-in-law, his attitude at the d'Ivrea house, his gesture when he had taken up the envelope, his first words, then the contraction of his hand over the paper—all these indications combined to reveal an aversion which could not arise from a mere family disagreement, such as is ordinarily dissolved by death, but from a most intense, a most violent contempt. The silence concerning her maintained by the family proved that the aversion was not personal. Why? For what reason had all the elder branch taken such a stand against the marriage of the head of the younger branch? Alfred could no longer doubt that the Duchesse d'Ivrea knew the disposition of her relatives toward her. The method she had adopted to send her will to her brother-in-law sufficiently proved that.

Then why did she make this will? Why should she leave this fortune unreservedly to relatives for whom she ought to have a hatred equal to their own?

Suddenly the terms of this will that he had scarcely looked at—but how could he ever forget its smallest detail?—recurred to the young man's mind. The funeral, conducted officially by the Prince, the place in the family tomb at Père-Lachaise, the name in the "Mémoires" of the marshal—it would be to acknowledge the relationship and the marriage with the Duc d'Ivrea, giving a formal revocation to an ostracism that, doubtless, had lasted many years and exasperated her womanly pride. The Duchess had placed the bargain entirely in the Prince's hands. The figure of the latter actually holding in his hands the paper that formulated this bargain arose before Alfred's mind with the clearness of a perfect image, and again he saw the conflict of the three emotions which his face had expressed: astonishment, anger, hesitation.

The Prince had hesitated. He hesitated still. Alfred, who had gone a few steps in the direction of the Bourbon Palace, stopped a second time to turn back to his lodgings. For a long time his eyes were fastened on the windows of the second floor, behind which a drama of conscience was being enacted of which he would soon know all the details. As yet he could only see facts that were of too doubtful a significance to enable him to form an opinion. "After all," said he, shrugging his shoulders, "it is none of my business. It is for the Prince to decide whether the motives of his antipathy toward his sister-in-law are stronger than his desire to become rich. The episode is worth my little trip to Paris; let us profit by it."

Ever since the now distant time when he had exiled himself in Auvergne until his work should have been finished, in order not to draw upon his savings, he had let slip the bonds of friendship that had united him to many of his comrades in the École de Chartres. Having no parents to visit, he began to think of them, moved thereto, perhaps, by a last remark of his patron. All at once a face and a name stood out in his memory with singular distinctness. Was it not in this very quarter where he now was, in the Rue de l'Université, that one of his most charming classmates lived, Raymond de Contay? He was a young man of high birth, grandson to the famous Duchesse de Contay, who was so well known for her unbounded charity. After making an excellent record as student in the same college with Alfred, and having no desire to be an idler, he had enrolled himself in the École de Chartres. His intention had been to devote himself to historical work.

If Alfred had probed his own motives he would have recognized the fact that the sympathy he had formerly felt for this clever and pleasing youth was not the real cause of the temptation that led him irresistibly to go to his house this very morning in spite of the unusual hour. It was nearly noon. "I hope I will find him." A thought that was not inspired merely by a friendly feeling. The real cause was that Raymond belonged to the most select class. To Alfred, who had no idea of the air-tight partitions that divide the different circles of the various nobilities, this meant that his comrade certainly knew the Duchesse d'Ivrea, or had heard her spoken of by people who knew her. If any one could give him exact information about her it was Contay, and Alfred Boyer felt that he must have this information.

He hungered and thirsted for it, as much as if, instead of being the simple posthumous secretary to the marshal Prince of Augsbourg, the blood of this hero coursed in his own veins, and he had a right to know who bore this title of d'Ivrea, won at the cannon's mouth on the battlefield. Besides, the will stipulated that the Duchess should figure in the "Mémoires" as the donor of the letters to Moreau, and was not his own honor involved in these "Mémoires"? Had he not devoted two precious years of his youth to them? Was he not ready to devote a third, with this recompense as his supreme ambition, that his name as a poor scribbler should one day be linked forever with that of the mighty warrior of the "Grande Armée"? What if this woman, however, who bought a place in the book with the gift of her fortune, had made herself unworthy of the honor by some infamous action? Was such a thing possible? No. The master of Combes professed such a passionate reverence for his grandfather!

That her name should be cited in the "Mémoires," that the Prince should conduct the funeral, that she should be given a place in the tomb of the Frédets—never would he admit it, even for a moment, and even at the price of millions, that these three things could be granted to a person unworthy.

But the Prince had not destroyed the will—then he must have seen some possibility of conforming to it! Yet his sadness and disgust, the tone of voice in which he had spoken of her, as he put it, his first movement, his subsequent silence—how were all these contradictory indications to be reconciled? Alfred hastened his steps toward the sole chance of learning the whole truth with a feverish impatience that amounted almost to pain....

Raymond de Contay was at home getting ready to go out to lunch. This was a relief to Boyer, who in his embarrassment suddenly feared that it would look as if he had come, thus early, in order to be asked to stay for luncheon. But his classmate's welcome was so cordial that he had no scruples about suggesting that he should walk with him. As he ascended Raymond's stairs he felt an almost painful apprehension over the means he should employ in his quest. The pretext was furnished to him by his friend, who, not content with asking him about his work, wished to know how he had got along at Combes. Boyer took occasion to sketch in a few words the characters of the Prince, his five daughters, and the maiden aunt. With a lump in his throat at the thought of what he might be about to learn he continued: "This is all I have seen of the family. But there is another branch, the younger, now represented by the Duchesse d'Ivrea"—he looked for a sign of intelligence in his friend's face. "Who is she?"—"The Duchesse d'Ivrea," replied Raymond. "I do not know her."

"But she belongs to your world," said Alfred naively; then giving way to the morbid curiosity that had been goading him on ever since he had read the will, he added: "You surely must know some people who know her. I can not explain the matter to you, but I have a strong interest in knowing why she is at odds with her relatives. The matter concerns the entire future of my work, perhaps. In fact, I ask you as a great service—understand me, a very great service indeed—to try to find out about her for me."

He spoke in so serious a tone, his face expressed so much anxiety, that Raymond was deeply impressed. He thought that probably these "Mémoires of Frédet" had started one of those disagreements between relatives that sometimes prevent for many years the publication of books of this sort.

"If you are so bent upon it," replied his comrade, "I shall try to find out. I am lunching to-day with one of my cousins, who belongs to all the clubs and has Paris at his fingers' ends. If your Duchesse d'Ivrea broke with her family for any reasons that have been talked about, my cousin will know them. I will drop you a line about it this evening, but I do not promise you success. In any event, give me your address."

Although this chance of seeing a little more clearly into the relations that existed between the celebrated marshal's heirs was very dubious, it was a chance, and for the time being the prospect calmed the agitation into which the morning's episode had thrown Boyer. He had a few errands to do relative to his work. He attended to them all carefully, and about six o'clock he found himself at the door of his lodgings in the Rue de Bourgogne. He asked if his patron were in. On the concièrge's reply that the Prince had not gone out during the afternoon, Alfred was again seized with the feverish curiosity of the morning.

Raymond had left no letter for him, from which he concluded that the inquiry of the cousin had been useless, and he ascended the stairs a prey to an uneasiness that reached a climax when he found himself face to face with the Prince. Evidently the unhappy man was at the end of his mental resources. He paced to and fro from one extremity to the other of the two narrow chambers like a wild beast in a cage. The luncheon that he had ordered had not been touched and was still on the table, and at the first glance Alfred could see that the envelope that contained the will had not been moved from its place. It still rested under the book on the marble mantel. It had been beyond the Prince's strength even to touch it. Alas, the temptation had begun to work in him. Alfred had proof of it immediately in the words that were addressed to him as soon as he appeared.

"I have had news from the Rue de Grenelle," said the Prince. "It seems that she has had a severe attack since we left her, and almost succumbed to it. The doctor is not sure that she will live through the day. You see, we did well to come when we did for the letters to Moreau. Apropos of these letters, perhaps it would be well to publish them separately. We will talk it over. What I have been having a day-dream about is a library made up of works concerning the men of the First Empire who had relations with the Prince, all his papers well classified, and all his memoirs, and all of this installed in the d'Ivrea house where we were this morning. I can see the house now, stripped of the tawdry gewgaws that spoil it, and restored to the exact condition in which it was in the marshal's time. It would be very easy—we have the inventories at Combes. I would like to make it a museum to the glory of the "Grande Armée," with rooms consecrated to all the companions in arms whom he loved—a Ney room, a Masséna room, a Davoust room, a Macdonald room—what do you say to this project, my dear Boyer, with you as perpetual curator at some small emolument? Do not say no to it; you deserve the place. Do you imagine that I do not know the difference between purely mercenary work and that which you have devoted to the "Mémoires"? But your devotion shall not be lost. It is a pity that you could not be in Paris with your time your own, all your time, to devote to some great historical work. You shall have it. It is also a pity—do you not think so?—that so many objects of interest in the history of the Empire should be hidden away at Combes and that no one should know them? The portraits, for instance; they must be brought here; they must be—and it is the same with my daughters. I wish them to be here; I wish them to be married—well and happily married." For a long time he continued in this vein without any response from the young man. The Prince busied himself with the future employment of the fortune that had suddenly fallen into his possession, putting almost a kind of fever into his projects. He reveled in anticipatory visions of the noble end to which he would devote his wealth—always provided he accepted it, for his ardor in justifying the acceptance in advance clearly proved that he had not yet decided, as did also the painful hesitation in his voice, in his gestures, in the sound of his footsteps on the floor, and still more in his obstinacy in not returning to the house of his dying sister-in-law. Against what idea was he struggling so violently? Against what apprehension of remorse? Why did this flood of imaginative confidences—since there was no question yet but of possibilities—roll forth while the real confidence, that which concerned the will, never appeared?

Alfred saw the whiteness of the envelope standing out against the gray on the marble mantel, and as he listened his heart became more oppressed with each new phrase, for each was a fresh sign that the Prince considered the acceptance of the conditions contained in that envelope as an indelicacy, worse than that, as a crime. A crime? Against whom? Against whom, if not against this ancestor? What image obsessed him, passing and repassing in all these words? that of the marshal. It was as if by making promises to that great figure he wished to disarm the anger of its shade, to expiate in advance an outrage on its memory that he was about to commit, that he had already committed in not at once spurning a certain offer.

How long might this strange monologue have continued, in which the grandson of the illustrious soldier concealed the fever of a terrible indecision by thinking aloud before a witness whose cognizance of the facts he did not suspect? Would Alfred Boyer have given way to the passionate longing he felt to interrupt this half confession with his own complete confession by crying out to the Prince: "I have read the will!" Would he, on the other hand, have continued to listen to this discourse, seeking to solve an enigma of which the answer had not yet been given?

An incident he had not hoped for suddenly extricated him from his uncertainty, all at once giving frightful distinctness to what had until then been only a vague guess. The servant came to tell him that Monsieur de Contay was waiting to see him.

"I got some information, as I thought I would, from my cousin," said Raymond after the other had flown downstairs four steps at a time in his haste to know. "I was not able to bring it to you before, and I have only a minute." He pointed to the carriage which was waiting for him in the street. "Here it is. The present Duchesse d'Ivrea has never been received, either by the family or by any one else. She was a fast woman, who had formerly been on the stage. She was then called Leona d'Asti. After living a very gay life, she married an old swindler on his deathbed, a confessed thief named Audry, who left her a very large fortune. Once a widow, she married d'Ivrea, a poor devil, who, it seems, had eaten and drunk up everything he had—a most shameful union for one of his name. Now you know as much as I do."...

Next morning, when the Prince of Augsbourg awoke from a sleep broken by all the nightmares by which intense moral anguish pursues us even in our rest, his first glance was toward the ill-fated envelope that his fingers had not touched since he had placed it under the book. Had he been dreaming? Had all the internal tempest of which he had been the victim been a hallucination, a stroke of madness? The envelope was not there. He jumped out of bed and went to the mantel; he lifted up the book. Nothing! Immediately the whole series of events came back to him. No; he had not been mad. The scenes of the preceding day arose in his mind with a certainty that left no room for doubt; his visit to his sister-in-law, his return to his lodgings, Alfred Boyer handing to him the envelope and what had followed, his afternoon spent in struggling against temptation, Alfred's return, then his going out again, the note that the young man had afterward sent him and in which he said that he would dine out with a friend. The Prince had spent the evening alone, eating his heart out over the evil action that had such a horrible attraction for him. He had gone to bed early, without having been able to eat anything, in order to try to forget this ill-fated will, to forget himself. He had heard his neighbor come in about midnight—then all was a blank. He had fallen asleep, and now this mystery, this envelope missing. But how? Stolen—by whom?

He began to dress, a prey to the superstitious fear that sometimes lays hold of the most energetic men in face of an absolutely incomprehensible fact, and little by little his ideas began to coordinate in his mind. Of the two doors of his chamber, one, that which opened upon the stairs, was fastened with a bolt; he had neglected to turn the key on that which led to Alfred Boyer's room. The thief, then, must have come in by that door during his sleep. But he had remained awake until the young man had come in. Suddenly the Prince recalled the latter's face at the time of the discovery of the will; how he had flushed and avoided his eyes. He remembered also the expression on that transparent face while, late in the afternoon, he had been developing those projects, all of which presupposed a change in the condition of his fortune. As in a flash of lightning the whole thing was clear to him. He sank half dressed upon a chair. He sat there motionless, a prey to a tumult of so many contradictory and violent emotions that his whole body trembled; disillusionment as to this fortune, suddenly snatched away, if the young man had actually destroyed the will; shame at having been seen by him, tempted and giving way to the temptation, anger at Alfred's audacity in having interfered, and by what right? Through his veneration for the marshal's memory, remorse that this veneration had been stronger in an outsider than in himself, and, in spite of all, a sort of sorrowful joy at this deliverance, if the will no longer really existed, with its shameful conditions, which were, indeed, less shameful than the origin of ignoble money. Again the d'Ivrea house rose before his mind's eye; he saw the great door hung with black draperies, with his coat-of-arms, the bier upon which that miserable creature, that public woman enriched by a swindler, who had dishonored his brother, should lie, himself behind her conducting this sinister mourning; and the tomb, the tomb! Wildly, as the prisoner who escapes from his cell through broken bars stained with his blood, but sustained, intoxicated by the freedom of liberty, he burst into the room where Alfred sat at his table. His bed had not been disturbed. He had not slept, and his pale face, his burning eyes, betrayed in what agony he had spent the sleepless hours. Ever since he had glided into the Prince's bedroom to take the will and burn it he had been awaiting the terrible moment when his patron should awake, determined this time not to make any denial and to suffer the consequences of his act, whatever they might be.

"Boyer," said the Prince, "when you gave me that envelope yesterday, had you read the paper that it contained?"

"Yes," replied the young man.

"Did you know who the person was that wrote that paper?"

"I have learned since."

"And it was you who destroyed the will?"

"It was I."

"It was you!" cried the Prince; "you!" Then, bursting into sobs: "Let me embrace you and thank you in his name!" and he pointed with his hand to the thin sheets on the table in which was to be recognized the proud, delicate writing of "Catinat of the Grande Armée," of "the Black Lion," as the old soldiers of the First Empire had called him to distinguish him from his brother in arms, Ney, "the Red Lion." Tears streamed down his face, so like that of his glorious ancestor, while he pressed Alfred to his breast, and both of them, the old man and the young, felt that exquisite emotion that floods our souls with melancholy and an almost supernatural serenity when we have paid a sacred debt to the dead.

One November evening, the eve of Sainte-Catherine's Day, the gate of the Auberive prison turned upon its hinges to allow to pass out a woman of some thirty years, clad in a faded woolen gown and coiffed in a linen cap that framed in a singular fashion a face pale and puffed by that sickly-hued fat which develops on prison regimen. She was a prisoner whom they had just liberated, and whom her companions of detention called La Bretonne. Condemned for infanticide, it was exactly, day for day, six years ago that the prison van had brought her to the Centrale. Now, in her former garb, and with her small stock of money received from the clerk in her pocket, she found herself free and with her roadpass stamped for Langres. The courier for Langres, however, had long since gone. Cowed and awkward, she took her way stumblingly toward the chief inn of the borough, and with trembling voice asked shelter for the night. But the inn was crowded, and the aubergiste, who did not care to harbor "one of those birds from over yonder," counseled her to push on to the cabaret at the far end of the village. La Bretonne passed on, and, more trembling and awkward than ever, knocked at the door of that cabaret, which, properly speaking, was but a cantine for laborers. The cabaretière also eyed her askance, scenting doubtless a "discharged" from the Centrale, and finally refused her on the plea that she had no bed to give her. La Bretonne dared not insist, but with bowed head pursued her way, while at the bottom of her soul rose and grew a dull hatred for that world which thus repulsed her. She had no other resource than to gain Langres afoot. Toward the end of November, night comes quickly. Soon she found herself enveloped in darkness, on a grayish road that ran between two divisions of the forest, and where the north wind whistled fiercely, choked her with dust, and pelted her with dead leaves. After six years of sedentary and recluse life her legs were stiff, the muscles knotted and her feet, accustomed to sabots, pinched and bruised by her new slippers. At the end of a league she felt them blistered and herself exhausted. She dropped upon a pile of stones by the wayside, shivering and asking herself if she was going to be forced to perish of cold and hunger in this black night, under this icy breeze, which froze her to the marrow. All at once, in the solitude of the road, she seemed to hear the droning notes of a voice singing. She listened and distinguished the air of one of those caressing and monotonous chants with which one soothes young children. She was not alone, then! She struggled to her feet and in the direction from which the voice came, and there, at the turn of a crossroad, perceived a reddish light streaming through the branches. Five minutes later she was before a mud-walled hovel, whose roof, covered by squares of sod, leaned again the rock, and whose window had allowed to pass that beckoning ray. With anxious heart she decided to knock. The chant ceased instantly and a woman opened the door, a peasant woman, no older than La Bretonne herself, but faded and aged by work. Her bodice, torn in places, displayed the skin tanned and dirty; her red hair escaped disheveled from under a soiled stuff cap, and her gray eyes regarded with amazement the stranger whose face had in it something of touching loneliness. "Good evening!" said she, lifting yet higher the sputtering lamp in her hand; "what do you desire?" "I am unable to go on," murmured La Bretonne, in a voice broken by a sob; "the city is far, and if you will lodge me for the night, you will do me a service.... I have money; I will pay you for the trouble." "Enter," replied the other, after a moment's hesitancy; "but why," continued she, in a tone more curious than suspicious, "did you not sleep at Auberive?" "They would not give me a lodging," lowering her blue eyes and taken with a sudden scruple, "be—because, see you, I come from the Maison Centrale." "So! the Maison Centrale! but no matter—enter—I fear nothing, having known only misery. Moreover, I've a conscience against turning a Christian from the door on a night like this. I'll give you a bed and a slice of cheese." And she pulled from the eaves some bundles of dried heather and spread them as a pallet in the corner by the fire. "Do you live here alone?" demanded La Bretonne, timidly. "Yes, with my gâchette, going on seven years now. I earn our living by working in the wood." "Your man, then, is dead?" "Yes," said the other bruskly, "the gâchette has no father. Briefly, to each his sorrow! But come, behold your straw, and two or three potatoes left from supper. It is all I can offer you—" She was called by a childish voice coming from a dark nook, separated from the room by a board partition. "Good night!" she repeated, "the little one cries; I must go, but sleep you well!" And taking up the lamp she passed into the closet, leaving La Bretonne crouched alone in the darkness. Stretched upon her heather, after she had eaten her supper, she strove to close her eyes, but sleep would not come to her. Through the thin partition she heard the mother still softly talking to the child, whom the arrival of a stranger had wakened, and who did not wish to go to sleep again. The mother soothed and fondled it with words of endearment that somehow strangely disturbed La Bretonne. That outburst of simple tenderness seemed to waken a confused maternal instinct in the soul of that girl condemned in the past for having stifled her new-born. "If things had not gone so badly with me," thought La Bretonne, sorrowfully, "it would have been the same age as this little one here." At that thought and at the sound of that childish voice, a sickening shudder seemed to shake her very vitals; something soft and tender to spring up in that soured heart, and an increasing need for the relief of tears. "But come, come, my little one," the mother cried, "to sleep you must go! And if you are good and do as I say, to-morrow I'll take you to the Sainte-Catherine's Fair!" "The fête of little children, mama; the fête of little children, you mean?" "Yes, my angel, of little children." "And the day when the good Sainte-Catherine brings playthings to the babies, mama?" "Sometimes—yes." "Then why doesn't she bring playthings to our house, mama?" "We live too far away, perhaps; and then—we are too poor." "She brings them only to rich babies, then, mama? But why, mama, why, I say? I should love to see playthings!" "Eh, bien! some day you may, if you are very good—to-night, perhaps, if you are wise and go to sleep soon." "I will, then, mama, I will right away, so she can bring them to-morrow." The little voice ceased; there was a long silence; then a long breath, even and light! The child slept at last—the mother also. La Bretonne, only, did not sleep! An emotion, at once poignant and tender, tore at her heart, and she thought more than ever of that other little one, whom they said she had killed.... This lasted till dawn. Mother and child slept still, but La Bretonne was up and out, gliding hurriedly and furtively in the direction of Auberive and slackening her pace only when the first houses of the village came in sight. Soon she had reached and was traversing its only street, walking slowly now and scanning with all her eyes the signs of the shops. One at last seemed to fix her attention. She knocked at the shutter and presently it opened. A mercer's shop, apparently, but also with some toys and playthings in the window—poor, pitiful trifles, a pasteboard doll, a Noah's ark, a woolly, stiff-legged little sheep! To the astonishment of the merchant, La Bretonne purchased them all, paid, and went out. She had resumed the road to the hovel in the wood, when suddenly a hand fell heavily upon her shoulder, and she was face to face with a brigadier of gendarmerie. The unhappy one had forgotten that it was forbidden to liberated prisoners to loiter near the Maison Centrale. "Instead of vagabondizing here, you should already be at Langres," said the brigadier, gruffly. "Come, march, be off with you! To the road, to the road, I say!" She sought to explain. Pains lost. At once a passing cart was pressed into service, La Bretonne bundled into it, and in charge of a gendarme once more en route for Langres. The cart jolted lumberingly over the frozen ruts. The poor La Bretonne clutched with a heartbroken air her bundle of playthings in her freezing fingers. All at once, at a turn of the road, she recognized the cross path that led through the wood. Her heart leaped and she besought the gendarme to stop only one moment. She had a commission for La Fleuriotte, the woman that lived there! She supplicated with so much fervor that the gendarme, a good man at heart, allowed himself to be persuaded. They stopped, tied the horse to a tree, and ascended the pathway. Before the door La Fleuriotte hewed the gathered wood into the required fagots. On seeing her visitor return, accompanied by a gendarme, she stood open-mouthed and with arms hanging. "Hist!" said La Bretonne, "hist! the little one—does it sleep still?" "Yes—but—" "Then, here, these playthings, lay them on the bed and tell her Sainte-Catherine brought them. I returned to Auberive for them; but it seems I had no right to do it, and they are taking me now to Langres." "Holy Mother of God!" cried the amazed La Fleuriotte. "Hist! be still, I say!" And drawing near the bed herself, followed always by her escort, La Bretonne scattered upon the coverlet the doll, the Noah's ark, and the stiff-legged, woolly, and somewhat grimy little lamb, bent the bare arm of the child till it clasped the latter, then turned with a smile. "Now," said she, addressing the gendarme, vigorously rubbing his eyes with the cuff of his jacket—the frost, it seemed, had gotten into them—"I am ready: we can go!"

One might pass Dr. Auvray's house twenty times without suspecting the miracles that are wrought there. It is a modest establishment near the end of Montaigne Avenue, between Prince Soltikoff's Gothic palace and the gymnasium. The unpretentious iron gates open into a small garden, filled with lilacs and rosebushes. The porter's lodge is on the left side of the gateway; the wing containing the doctor's office and the apartments of his wife and daughter are on the right; while the main building stands with its back to the street and its south windows overlook a small grove of horsechestnuts and lindens. It is there that the doctor treats, and generally cures, cases of mental aberration. I would not introduce you into his house, however, if you incurred any risk of meeting frenzied lunatics or hopeless imbeciles. You will be spared all such harrowing sights. Dr. Auvray is a specialist, and treats cases of monomania only. He is an extremely kind-hearted man, endowed with plenty of shrewdness and good sense; a true philosopher, an untiring student, and an enthusiastic follower of the famous Esquirol. Having come into possession of a small fortune soon after the completion of his medical course, he married, and founded the establishment which we have described. Had there been a spark of charlatanism in his composition, he could easily have amassed a fortune, but he had been content to merely earn a living. He shunned notoriety, and when he effected a wonderful cure, he never proclaimed it upon the housetops. His very enviable reputation had been acquired without any effort on his part, and almost against his will. Would you have a proof of this? Well, his treatise on monomania, published by Baillière in 1852, has passed through six editions, though the author has never sent a single copy to the newspapers. Modesty is a good thing, certainly, but one may carry it too far. Mademoiselle Auvray will have a dowry of only twenty thousand francs, and she will be twenty-two in April. About a month ago a hired coupé stopped in front of Dr. Auvray's door, from which two men alighted and entered the office. The servant asked them to be seated, and await his master's return. One of the visitors was about fifty years of age, a tall, stout, dark-complexioned but ruddy-faced man, rather ungainly in figure and appearance. He had thick, stubby hands and enormous thumbs. Picture a laboring man, dressed in his employer's clothes, and you have M. Morlot. His nephew, Francis Thomas, is a young man, about twenty-three years old; but it is very difficult to describe him, as there is nothing distinctive either in his manner or appearance. He is neither tall nor short, handsome nor ugly, stout nor thin—in short, he is commonplace and mediocre in every respect, with chestnut hair, and of an extremely retiring disposition, manner and attire. When he entered Dr. Auvray's office, he seemed to be greatly excited. He walked wildly to and fro, as if unable to remain in one place; looked at twenty different things in the same instant, and would certainly have handled them all if his hands had not been tied. "Compose yourself, my dear Francis," said his uncle, soothingly. "What I am doing is for your own good. You will be perfectly comfortable and happy here, and the doctor is sure to cure you." "I am not sick. There is nothing whatever the matter with me. Why have you tied my hands?" "Because you would have thrown me out of the window, if I had not. You are not in your right mind, my poor boy, but Dr. Auvray will soon make you well again." "I am as sane as you are, uncle; and I can't imagine what you mean. My mind is perfectly clear and my memory excellent. Shall I recite some poetry to you, or construe some Latin? I see there is a Tacitus here in the bookcase. Or, if you prefer, I will solve a problem in algebra or geometry. You don't desire it? Very well, then listen while I tell you what you have been doing this morning. "You came to my room at eight o'clock, not to wake me, for I was not asleep, but to get me out of bed. I dressed myself without any assistance from Germain. You asked me to accompany you to Dr. Auvray's; I refused; you insisted; then Germain aided you in tying my hands. I shall dismiss him this evening. I owe him thirteen days' wages; that is to say, thirteen francs, as I promised to pay him thirty francs a month. You, too, owe him something, as you are the cause of his losing his New Year's gift. Isn't this a tolerably clear statement of the facts? Do you still intend to try to make me out a lunatic? Ah, my dear uncle, let your better nature assert itself. Remember that my mother was your sister. What would my poor mother say if she saw me here? I bear you no ill-will, and everything can be amicably arranged. You have a daughter." "Ah, there it is again. You must certainly see that you are not in your right mind. I have a daughter—I? Why, I am a bachelor, as you know perfectly well." "You have a daughter—" repeated Francis, mechanically. "My poor nephew, listen to me a moment. Have you a cousin?" "A cousin? No, I have no cousin. Oh, you won't catch me there. I have no cousin, either male or female." "But I am your uncle, am I not?" "Yes; you are my uncle, of course, though you seem to have forgotten the fact this morning." "Then if I had a daughter, she would be your cousin; but as you have no cousin, I can have no daughter." "You are right, of course. I had the pleasure of meeting her at Ems last summer with her mother; I love her; I have reason to believe that she is not indifferent to me, and I have the honor to ask you for her hand in marriage." "Whose hand, may I ask?" "Your daughter's hand." "Just hear him," Morlot said to himself. "Dr. Auvray must certainly be very clever if he succeeds in curing him. I am willing to pay him six thousand francs a year for board and treatment. Six thousand francs from thirty thousand leaves twenty-four thousand. How rich I shall be! Poor Francis!" He seated himself again, and picked up a book that chanced to be lying on a table near him. "Calm yourself," he said soothingly, "and I will read you something. Try to listen. It may quiet you." Opening the volume, he read as follows: "'Monomania is opinionativeness on one subject; a persistent clinging to one idea; the supreme ascendency of a single passion. It has its origin in the heart. To cure the malady, the cause must be ascertained and removed. It arises generally from love, fear, vanity, overweening ambition or remorse, and betrays itself by the same symptoms as any other passion; sometimes by boisterousness, gaiety, and garrulousness; sometimes by extreme timidity, melancholy, and silence.'" As M. Morlot read on, Francis became more quiet, and at last appeared to fall into a peaceful slumber. "Bravo!" thought the uncle, "here is a triumph of medical skill already. It has put to sleep a man who was neither hungry nor sleepy!" Francis was not asleep, but he was feigning sleep to perfection. His head drooped lower and lower, and he regulated his heavy breathing with mathematical exactness. Uncle Morlot was completely deceived. He went on reading for some time in more and more subdued tones; then he yawned; then he stopped reading; then he let the book drop from his hands and closed his eyes, and in another minute he was sound asleep, to the intense delight of his nephew, who was watching him maliciously out of the corner of his eye. Francis began operations by scraping his chair on the uncarpeted floor, but M. Morlot moved no more than a post. Francis then tramped noisily up and down the room, but his uncle snored the louder. Then the nephew approached the doctor's desk, picked up an eraser that was lying there, and with it finally succeeded in cutting the rope that bound his hands. On regaining his liberty he uttered a smothered exclamation of joy; then he cautiously approached his uncle. In two minutes, M. Morlot himself was securely bound, but it had been done so gently and so adroitly that his slumbers had not been disturbed in the least. Francis stood admiring his work for a moment; then he stooped and picked up the book that had fallen to the floor. It was Dr. Auvray's treatise on monomania. He carried it off into a corner of the room and began to read it with much apparent interest, while awaiting the doctor's coming. II It is necessary to revert briefly to the antecedents of this uncle and nephew. Francis Thomas was the only son of a former toy-merchant, on the Rue de Saumon. The toy trade is an excellent business, about one hundred per cent profit being realized on most of the articles; consequently, since his father's death, Francis had been enjoying that ease generally known as honest ease; possibly because it enables one to live without stooping to sordid acts; possibly, too, because it enables one to keep one's friends honest, also. In short, he had an income of thirty thousand francs a year. His tastes were extremely simple, as I have said before. He detested show, and always selected gloves, waistcoats, and trousers of those sober hues shading from dark brown to black. He never carried an eyeglass for the very good reason, he said, that he had excellent eyesight; he wore no scarf-pin, because he needed no pin to hold his cravat securely; but the fact is, he was afraid of exciting comment. He would have been wretched had his sponsors bestowed upon him any save the most commonplace names; but, fortunately, his cognomens were as modest and unpretending as if he had chosen them himself. His excessive modesty prevented him from adopting a profession. When he left college, he considered long and carefully the seven or eight different paths open before him. A legal career seemed to be attended with too much publicity; the medical profession was too exciting; business too complicated. The responsibilities of an instructor of youth were too onerous; the duties of a government official too confining and servile. As for the army, that was out of the question, not because he feared the enemy, but because he shuddered at the thought of wearing a uniform; so he finally decided to live on his income, not because it was the easiest thing to do, but because it was the most unobtrusive. But it was in the presence of the fair sex that his weakness became most apparent. He was always in love with somebody. Whenever he attended a play or a concert he immediately began to gaze around him in search of a pretty face. If he found one to his taste, the play was admirable, the music perfection; if he failed, the whole performance was detestable, the actors murdered their lines, and all the singers sang out of tune. He worshiped these divinities in secret, however, for he never dared to speak to one of them. When he fancied himself a victim to the tender passion, he spent the greater part of his time in composing the most impassioned declarations of love, which never passed his lips, however. In imagination he addressed the tenderest words of affection to his adored one, and revealed the innermost depths of his soul to her; he held long conversations with her, delightful interviews, in which he furnished both the questions and answers. His burning protestations of undying love would have melted a heart of ice, but none of his divinities were ever aware of his aspirations and longings. It chanced, however, in the month of August of that same year, about four months before he so adroitly bound his uncle's hands, that Francis had met at Ems a young lady almost as shy and retiring as himself, a young lady whose excessive timidity seemed to imbue him with some of the courage of an ordinary mortal. She was a frail, delicate Parisienne—pale as a flower that had blossomed in the shade, and with a skin as transparent as an infant's. She was at Ems in company with her mother, who had been advised to try the waters for an obstinate throat trouble, chronic laryngitis, if I remember right. The mother and daughter had evidently led a very secluded life, for they watched the noisy crowd with undisguised curiosity and amazement. Francis was introduced to them quite unexpectedly by one of his friends who was returning from Italy by way of Germany. After that, Francis was with them almost constantly for a month; in fact, he was their sole companion. For sensitive, retiring souls, a crowd is the most complete of solitudes; the more people there are around them, the more persistently they retreat to a corner to commune with themselves. Of course, the mother and daughter soon became well acquainted with Francis, and they grew very fond of him. Like the navigator who first set foot on American soil, they discovered some new treasure every day. They never inquired whether he was rich or poor; it was enough for them to know that he was good. Francis, for his part, was inexpressibly delighted with his own transformation. Have you ever heard how spring comes in the gardens of Russia? One day everything is shrouded in snow; the next day a ray of sunshine appears and puts grim winter to flight. By noon the trees are in bloom; by night they are covered with leaves; a day or two more and the fruit appears. The heart of Francis underwent a similar metamorphosis. His reserve and apparent coldness disappeared as if by magic, and in a few short weeks the timid youth was transformed into a resolute, energetic man—at least to all appearances. I do not know which of the three persons first mentioned marriage, but that is a matter of no consequence. Marriage is always understood when two honest hearts avow their love. Now Francis was of age, and undisputed master of himself and his possessions, but the girl he loved had a father whose consent must be obtained, and it was just here that this young man's natural timidity of disposition reasserted itself. True, Claire had said to him: "You can write to my father without any misgivings. He knows all about our attachment. You will receive his consent by return mail." Francis wrote and rewrote his letter a hundred times, but he could not summon up the courage to send it. Surely the ordeal was an easy one, and it would seem as though the most timorous mind could have passed through it triumphantly. Francis knew the name, position, fortune, and even the disposition of his prospective father-in-law. He had been initiated into all the family secrets, he was virtually a member of the household. The only thing he had to do was to state in the briefest manner who he was and what he possessed. There was no doubt whatever as to the response; but he delayed so long that at the end of a month Claire and her mother very naturally began to doubt his sincerity. I think they would have waited patiently another fortnight, however, but the father would not permit it. If Claire loved the young man, and her lover was not disposed to make known his intentions, the girl must leave him at once. Perhaps Mr. Francis Thomas would then come and ask her hand in marriage. He knew where to find her. Thus it chanced that, one morning when Francis went to invite the ladies to walk as usual, the proprietor of the hotel informed him that they had returned to Paris, and that their apartments were already occupied by an English family. This crushing blow, falling so unexpectedly, destroyed the poor fellow's reason, and, rushing out of the house like a madman, he began a frantic search for Claire in all the places where he had been in the habit of meeting her. At last he returned to his own hotel with a violent sick headache, which he proceeded to doctor in the most energetic manner. First he had himself bled, then he took baths in boiling hot water, and applied the most ferocious mustard plasters; in short, he avenged his mental tortures upon his innocent body. When he believed himself cured, he started for France, firmly resolved to have an interview with Claire's father before even changing his clothes. He traveled with all possible speed, jumped off the train before it stopped, forgetting his baggage entirely, sprang into a cab, and shouted to the coachman: "Drive to her home as quick as you can!" "Where, sir?" "To the house of Monsieur—on the—the Rue—I can't remember." He had forgotten the name and address of the girl he loved. "I will go home," he said to himself, "and it will come back to me." So he handed his card to the coachman, who took him to his own home. His concierge was an aged man, with no children, and named Emmanuel. On seeing him, Francis bowed profoundly, and said: "Sir, you have a daughter, Mlle. Claire Emmanuel. I intended to write and ask you for her hand in marriage, but decided it would be more seemly to make the request in person." They saw that he was mad, and his uncle Morlot, in the Faubourg Saint Antoine, was immediately summoned. Now Uncle Morlot was the most scrupulously honest man on the Rue Charonne, which, by the way, is one of the longest streets in Paris. He manufactured antique furniture with conscientious care, but only mediocre skill. He was not a man to pass off ebonized pine for real ebony, or a cabinet of his own make for a medieval production; and yet, he understood the art of making new wood look old and full of apparent worm-holes as well as anybody living; but it was a principle of his never to cheat or deceive any one. With almost absurd moderation for a follower of this trade, he limited his profits to five per cent over and above the expenses of the business, so he had gained more esteem than money. When he made out a bill, he invariably added up the items three times, so afraid was he of making a mistake in his own favor. After thirty years of close attention to business he was very little better off than when he finished his apprenticeship. He had merely earned his living, just like the humblest of his workmen, and he often asked himself rather enviously how his brother-in-law had managed to acquire a competence. If this brother-in-law, with the natural arrogance of a parvenu, rather looked down on the poor cabinet-maker, the latter, with all the pride of a man who has not tried to succeed financially, esteemed himself all the more highly. He gloried in his poverty, as it were; and said to himself with plebeian pride: "I, at least, have the satisfaction of knowing that I owe nothing to any one." Man is a strange animal: I am not the first person who has made that remark. This most estimable M. Morlot, whose overscrupulous probity made him almost a laughing-stock, experienced a singular feeling of elation in his secret heart when he was apprised of his nephew's condition. An insinuating voice whispered softly: "If Francis is insane, you will become his guardian." "You will be none the richer," responded Conscience, promptly. "And why not?" persisted the Tempter. "The expenses of an insane person never amount to thirty thousand francs a year. Besides, you will be put to a great deal of trouble and have to neglect your business, very probably, so it is only right that you should receive some compensation. You will not be wronging any one by taking part of the money." "But one ought to expect no compensation for such services to a member of one's family," retorted the voice of Conscience. "Then why have the members of our family never done anything for me? I have been in straitened circumstances again and again, and have found it almost impossible to meet my obligations, but neither my nephew Francis nor his deceased father ever rendered me the slightest assistance." "Nonsense," replied his better nature; "this attack of insanity is nothing serious. Francis will be himself again in a few days." "It is just as probable that the malady will wear him out and that you will come into possession of the entire property," persisted the wily Tempter. The worthy cabinet-maker tried to close his ears to the insidious voice, but his ears were so large that the subtle, persistent voice glided in, despite all his efforts. The establishment on the Rue Charonne was intrusted to the care of the foreman, and the uncle took up his abode in his nephew's comfortable apartments. He slept in an excellent bed, and enjoyed it very much; he sat down to a well-spread table, and the indigestion, which had tormented him for years, vanished as if by enchantment. He was waited upon and shaved by Germain, his nephew's valet, and he speedily came to regard such attentions as a necessity. Gradually, too, he became accustomed to seeing his nephew in this deplorable condition, and to quite reconcile himself to the idea that he would never be cured, but all the while he kept repeating to himself, as if to ease his conscience, "I am wronging nobody." At the expiration of three months he had become very tired of having an insane person shut up in the house with him—for he had long since begun to consider himself at home—and his nephew's incessant maundering, and continual requests for Mlle. Claire's hand in marriage, became an intolerable bore. He therefore resolved to get rid of him by placing him in Dr. Auvray's insane asylum. "After all, my nephew will be much better cared for there," he said to himself, "and I shall be much easier in mind. Every one admits that the best way to divert a lunatic's mind is to give him a change of scene, so I am only doing my duty." It was with this very thought in his mind that he fell asleep just before Francis bound his hands. What an awakening was his! The doctor entered with a smiling excuse for his long delay. Francis rose, laid his book on the table, and proceeded with volubility to explain the business that had brought him there. "It is my uncle on my mother's side that I desire to intrust to your care," he began. "He is, as you see, a man between forty-five and fifty years of age, accustomed to manual labor and the economy and privations of a humble and busy life; moreover, he was born of healthy, hard-working parents, in a family where no case of mental aberration was ever before known. You will not, therefore, be obliged to contend with a hereditary malady. His is probably one of the most peculiar cases of monomania that has ever come under your observation. His mood changes almost instantaneously from one of extreme gaiety to profound melancholy. In fact, it is a strange compound of monomania and melancholy." "He has not lost his reason entirely?" "Oh, no; he is never violent; in fact, he is insane upon one subject only." "What is the nature of his malady?" "Alas! the besetting sin of the age, sir; cupidity. He has become deeply imbued with the spirit of our times. After working hard from childhood, he finds himself still comparatively poor, while my father, who began life under like circumstances, was able to leave me a snug little fortune. My uncle began by being envious of me; then the thought occurred to him that, being my only relative, he would become my heir in case of my death, and my guardian in case I became insane; and as it is very easy for a weak-minded person to believe whatever he desires to believe, the unfortunate man soon persuaded himself that I had lost my reason. He has told everybody that this is the case; and he will soon tell you so. In the carriage, though his hands were tied, he really believed that it was he who was bringing me here." "When did this malady first show itself?" "About three months ago. He came to my concierge and said to him, in the wildest manner: 'Monsieur Emmanuel, you have a daughter. Let me in, and then come and assist me in binding my nephew.'" "Is he aware of his condition? Does he know that his mind is affected?" "No, sir, and I think that is a favorable sign. I should add, however, that his physical health is somewhat impaired, and he is much troubled with indigestion and insomnia." "So much the better; an insane person who sleeps and eats regularly is generally incurable. Suppose you allow me to wake him." Dr. Auvray placed his hand gently on the shoulder of the sleeper, who instantly sprang to his feet. The first movement he made was to rub his eyes. When he discovered that his hands were tied, he instantly suspected what had taken place while he was asleep, and burst into a hearty laugh. "A good joke, a very good joke!" he exclaimed. Francis drew the doctor a little aside. "Sir, in five minutes he will be in a towering rage," he whispered. "Let me manage him. I know how to take him." The good doctor smiled on the supposed patient as one smiles on a child one wishes to amuse. "Well, you wake in very good spirits, my friend; did you have a pleasant dream?" he asked affably. "No, I had no dream at all; I'm merely laughing to find myself tied up like a bundle of fagots. One would suppose that I was the madman, instead of my nephew." "There, I told you so," whispered Francis. "Have the goodness to untie my hands, doctor. I can explain better when I am free." "I will unbind you, my friend, but you must promise to give no trouble." "Can it be, doctor, that you really take me for an insane person?" "No, my friend, but you are ill, and we will take care of you, and, I hope, cure you. See, your hands are free; don't abuse your liberty." "What the devil do you imagine I'll do? I came here merely to bring my nephew." "Very well, we will talk about that matter by and by. I found you sound asleep. Do you often fall asleep in the daytime?" "Never! It was that stupid book that—" "Oh, oh! This is a serious case," muttered the author of the book referred to. "So you really believe that your nephew is insane?" "Dangerously so, doctor. The fact that I was obliged to bind his hands with this very rope is proof of that." "But it was your hands that were bound. Don't you recollect that I just untied them?" "But let me explain—" "Gently, gently, my friend, you are becoming excited. Your face is very red; I don't want you to fatigue yourself. Just be content to answer my questions. You say that your nephew is ill?" "Mad, mad, mad, I tell you!" "And it pleases you to see him mad?" "What?" "Answer me frankly. You don't wish him to be cured, do you?" "Why do you ask me that?" "Because his fortune is under your control. Don't you wish to be rich? Are you not disappointed and discouraged because you have toiled so long without making a fortune? Don't you very naturally think that your turn has come now?" M. Morlot made no reply. His eyes were riveted on the floor. He asked himself if he was not dreaming, and tried his best to decide how much of this whole affair was real, and how much imaginary, so completely bewildered was he by the questions of this stranger, who read his heart as if it had been an open book. "Do you ever hear voices?" inquired Dr. Auvray. Poor M. Morlot felt his hair stand on end, and remembering that relentless voice that was ever whispering in his ear, he replied mechanically, "Sometimes." "Ah, he is the victim of an hallucination," murmured the doctor. "No, there is nothing whatever the matter with me, I tell you. Let me get out of here. I shall be as crazy as my nephew if I remain much longer. Ask my friends. They will all tell you that I am perfectly sane. Feel my pulse. You can see that I have no fever." "Poor uncle!" murmured Francis. "He doesn't know that insanity is delirium unattended with fever." "Yes," added the doctor, "if we could only give our patients a fever, we could cure every one of them." M. Morlot sank back despairingly in his armchair. His nephew began to pace the floor. "I am deeply grieved at my uncle's deplorable condition," he remarked feelingly, "but it is a great consolation to me to be able to intrust him to the care of a man like yourself. I have read your admirable treatise on monomania. It is the most valuable work of the kind that has appeared since the publication of the great Esquirol's Treatise upon Mental Diseases. I know, moreover, that you are truly a father to your patients, so I will not insult you by commending M. Morlot to your special care. As for the compensation you are to receive, I leave that entirely to you." As he spoke, he drew from his pocket-book a thousand-franc note and laid it on the mantel. "I shall do myself the honor to call again some time during the ensuing week. At what hour are your patients allowed to see visitors?" "From twelve to two, only; but I am always at home. Good day, sir." "Stop him! stop him!" shouted Uncle Morlot. "Don't let him go. He is the one that is mad; I will tell you all about it." "Calm yourself, my dear uncle," said Francis, starting toward the door. "I leave you in Dr. Auvray's care; he will soon cure you, I trust." M. Morlot sprang up to intercept his nephew, but the doctor detained him. "What a strange fatality!" cried the poor uncle. "He has not uttered a single senseless remark. If he would only rave as usual, you would soon see that I am not the one who is mad, but—" Francis already had his hand on the door-knob, but turning suddenly, he retraced his steps as if he had forgotten something and, walking straight up to the doctor, said: "My uncle's malady was not the only thing that brought me here." "Ah," murmured M. Morlot, seeing a ray of hope, at last. "You have a daughter," continued the young man. "At last!" shouted the poor uncle. "You are a witness to the fact that he said: 'You have a daughter.'" "Yes," replied the doctor, addressing Francis. "Will you kindly explain—" "You have a daughter, Mlle. Claire Auvray." "There, there! didn't I tell you so?" cried the uncle. "Yes," again replied the doctor. "She was at Ems three months ago with her mother." "Bravo! Bravo!" yelled M. Morlot. "Yes," responded the physician for the third time. M. Morlot rushed up to the doctor, and cried: "You are not the doctor, but a patient in the house." "My friend, if you are not more quiet we shall have to give you a douche." M. Morlot recoiled in terror. His nephew continued calmly: "I love your daughter, sir; I have some hope that I am loved in return, and if her feelings have not changed since the month of September, I have the honor to ask her hand in marriage." "Is it to Monsieur Francis Thomas that I have the honor of speaking?" inquired the doctor. "The same, sir. I should have begun by telling you my name." "Then you must permit me to say, sir, that you have been guilty of no unseemly haste—" But just then the good doctor's attention was diverted by M. Morlot, who was rubbing his hands in a frenzied manner. "What is the matter with you, my friend?" the doctor asked in his kind, fatherly way. "Nothing, nothing! I am only washing my hands. There is something on them that troubles me." "Show me what it is. I don't see anything." "Can't you see it? There, there, between my fingers. I see it plainly enough." "What do you see?" "My nephew's money. Take it away, doctor. I'm an honest man; I don't want anything that belongs to anybody else." While the physician was listening attentively to M. Morlot's first ravings, an extraordinary change took place in Francis. He became as pale as death, and seemed to be suffering terribly from cold, for his teeth chattered so violently that Dr. Auvray turned and asked what was the matter with him. "Nothing," he replied. "She is coming, I hear her! It is joy, but it overpowers me. It seems to be falling on me and burying me beneath its weight like a snowdrift. Winter will be a dreary time for lovers. Oh, doctor, see what is the matter with my head!" But his uncle rushed up to him, crying: "Enough, enough! Don't rave so! I don't want people to think you mad. They will say I stole your reason from you. I'm an honest man. Doctor, look at my hands, examine my pockets, send to my house on the Rue Charonne. Search the cupboard. Open all the drawers. You will find I have nothing that belongs to any other person." Between his two patients the doctor was at his wits' end, when a door opened, and Claire came in to tell her father that breakfast was on the table. Francis leaped up out of his chair, as if moved by a spring, but though his will prompted him to rush toward Mlle. Auvray, his flesh proved weak, and he fell back in his chair like lead. He could scarcely murmur the words: "Claire, it is I! I love you. Will you—" He passed his hand over his forehead. His pale face became a vivid scarlet. His temples throbbed almost to bursting; it seemed to him that an iron band was contracting more and more around his head, just above his brows. Claire, frightened nearly to death, seized both his hands; his skin was so dry, and his pulse so rapid that the poor girl was terrified. It was not thus that she had hoped to see him again. In a few minutes, a yellowish tinge appeared about his nostrils; nausea ensued, and Dr. Auvray recognized all the symptoms of a bilious fever. "How unfortunate!" he said to himself. "If this fever had only attacked his uncle, it would have cured him!" He rang. A servant appeared, and shortly afterward Mme. Auvray, who scarcely knew Francis, so greatly had he changed. It was necessary that the sick man should be got to bed without delay, and Claire relinquished her own pretty room to him. While they were installing him there, his uncle wandered excitedly about the parlor, tormenting the doctor with questions, embracing the sick man, seizing Mme. Auvray's hand and exclaiming wildly: "Save him, save him! He shall not die! I will not have him die! I forbid it. I have a right to. I am his uncle and guardian. If you do not care for him, people will say I killed him. You are witnesses to the fact that I ask for none of his property! I shall give all his possessions to the poor! Some water—please give me some water to wash my hands!" He was taken to the building occupied by the patients, where he became so violent that it was necessary to put him in a strait-jacket. Mme. Auvray and her daughter nursed Francis with the tenderest care. Confined in the sick-room day and night, the mother and daughter spent most of their leisure time discussing the situation. They could not explain the lover's long silence or his sudden reappearance. If he loved Claire, why had he left her in suspense for three dreary months? Why did he feel obliged to give his uncle's malady as an excuse for presenting himself at Dr. Auvray's house? But if he had recovered from his infatuation, why did he not take his uncle to some other physician? There were plenty of them in Paris. Possibly he had believed himself cured of his folly until the sight of Claire undeceived him? But no, he had asked her father for her hand in marriage before he saw her again. But, in his delirium, Francis answered all or nearly all of these questions. Claire, bending tenderly over him, listened breathlessly to his every word, and afterward repeated them to her mother and to the doctor, who was not long in discovering the truth. They soon knew that he had lost his reason and under what circumstances; they even learned how he had been the innocent cause of his uncle's insanity. Fears of an entirely different nature now began to assail Mlle. Auvray. Was the terrible crisis which she had unwittingly brought about likely to cure his mental disorder? The doctor assured his daughter that a fever, under such circumstances, was almost certain to put an end to the insanity, but there is no rule without its exception, especially in medicine. And even if he seemed to be cured, was there not danger of a recurrence of the malady? "So far as I am concerned, I am not in the least afraid," said Claire, smiling sadly. "I am the cause of all his troubles. Therefore, it is my duty to console him. After all, his madness consists merely in continually asking my hand. There will be no need of doing that after I become his wife, so we really have nothing to fear. The poor fellow lost his reason through his excessive love; so cure him, my dear father, but not entirely. Let him remain insane enough to love me as much as I love him!" "We will see," replied Dr. Auvray. "Wait until this fever passes off. If he seems ashamed of having been demented, if he appears gloomy, or melancholy after his recovery, I can not vouch for him; if, on the contrary, he remembers his temporary aberration of mind without mortification or regret—if he speaks of it without any reserve, and if he is not averse to seeing the persons who nursed him through his illness, there is not the slightest reason to apprehend a return of the malady." On the 25th of December, Francis, fortified by a cup of chicken broth and half the yolk of a soft boiled egg, sat up in bed, and without the slightest hesitancy or mortification, and in a perfectly lucid manner, gave the history of the past three months without any emotion save that of quiet joy. Claire and Mme. Auvray wept as they listened to him; the doctor pretended to be taking notes, or rather to be writing under dictation, but something besides ink fell on the paper. When the story ended, the convalescent added, by way of conclusion: "And now on this, the 25th day of December, I say to my good doctor, and much loved father—Dr. Auvray, whose street and number I shall never again forget—'Sir, you have a daughter, Mlle. Claire Auvray, whom I met at Ems, with her mother. I love her; she has proved that she loves me in return, and if you have no fears that I will become insane again, I have the honor to ask her hand in marriage." The doctor was so deeply affected that he could only bow his head in token of assent, but Claire put her arms around the sick man's neck and kissed him tenderly on the forehead. I am sure I should desire no better response under like circumstances. That same day, M. Morlot, who had become much more quiet and tractable, and who had long since been released from the bondage of a strait jacket, rose about eight o'clock in the morning, as usual. On getting out of bed, he picked up his slippers, examined and reexamined them inside and out, then handed them to a nurse for inspection, begging him to see for himself that they contained no thirty thousand francs. Until positively assured of this fact he would not consent to put them on. Then he carefully shook each of his garments out of the window, but not until after he had searched every fold and pocket in them. After his toilet was completed, he called for a pencil, and wrote on the walls of his chamber: "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's money, nor anything that is his." Dr. Auvray is confident of his ability to cure him, but it will take time. It is in the summer and autumn that physicians are most successful in their endeavors to cure insanity.

Status Quo by Mack Reynolds - https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/30339/pg30339-images.html

 In his income bracket and in the suburb in which he lived, government employees in the twenty-five to thirty-five age group were currently wearing tweeds. Tweeds were in. Not to wear tweeds was Non-U.

Lawrence Woolford wore tweeds. His suit, this morning, had first seen the light of day on a hand loom in Donegal. It had been cut by a Swede widely patronized by serious young career men in Lawrence Woolford's status group; English tailors were out currently and Italians unheard of.

Woolford sauntered down the walk before his auto-bungalow, scowling at the sportscar at the curb—wrong year, wrong make. He'd have to trade it in on a new model. Which was a shame in a way, he liked the car. However, he had no desire to get a reputation as a weird among colleagues and friends. What was it Senator Carey MacArthur had said the other day? Show me a weird and I'll show you a person who has taken the first step toward being a Commie.

LaVerne Polk was a cute little whizz of efficiency. Like Napoleon and his army, she knew the name of every member of the department and was on a first-name basis with all. However, she was definitely a weird. For instance, styles might come and styles might go, but LaVerne dressed for comfort, did her hair the way she thought it looked best, and wore low-heeled walking shoes on the job. In fact, she was ready and willing to snarl at anyone, no matter how kindly intentioned, who even hinted that her nonconformity didn't help her promotion prospects.

None. They've all been passed in Greater Washington, which is suspicious in itself. The amount of expense that has gone into the manufacture of these bills does not allow for only a handful of them being passed. They should be turning up in number. Lawrence, this reproduction is such that a pusher could walk into a bank and have his false currency changed by any clerk.”

“Wow,” Larry whistled.

“Indeed.”

“So you want me to work with Secret Service on this on the off chance that the Soviet Complex is doing us deliberate dirt.

That doesn't matter now,” Steve said. “Various ways. Maybe he makes them himself, sometimes he buys them from a crooked engraver. But I'm talking about pushing green goods once it's printed. Anyway, our friend runs off, say, a million dollars worth of fives. But he doesn't try to pass them himself. He wholesales them around netting, say, fifty thousand dollars. In other words, he sells twenty dollars in counterfeit for one good dollar.”

Larry pursed his lips. “Quite a discount.”

Um-m-m. But that's safest from his angle. The half dozen or so distributors he sold it to don't try to pass it either. They also are playing it carefully. They peddle it, at say ten to one, to the next rung down the ladder.”

“And these are the fellows that pass it, eh?”

“Not even then, usually. These small timers take it and pass it on at five to one to the suckers in the trade, who take the biggest risks. Most of these are professional pushers of the queer, as the term goes. Some, however, are comparative amateurs. Sailors for instance, who buy with the idea of passing it in some foreign port where seamen's money flows fast.”

For one thing, most professionals won't touch anything bigger than a twenty. Tens are better, fives better still. When you pass a fifty, the person you give it to is apt to remember 
where he got it.” Steve Hackett said slowly, “Particularly if you give one as a tip to the maître d'hôtel in a first-class restaurant. A maître d' holds his job on the strength of his ability to remember faces and names.”

That's another sign of the amateur, by the way. A competent pusher buys a small item and gets change from his counterfeit bill. Our girl's been buying expensive items, obviously more interested in the product than in her change.

 Because people get conditioned, like, to words. Like revolution. Everybody is against the word because they all think of killing and everything, and, Daddy says, there doesn't have to be any shooting or killing or anything like that at all. It just means a fundamental change in society. And, Daddy says, take the word propaganda. Everybody's got to thinking that it automatically means lies, but it doesn't at all. It just means, like, the arguments you use to convince people that what you stand for is right and it might be lies or it might not. And, Daddy says, take the word socialism. So many people have the wrong idea of what it means that the socialists ought to scrap the word and start using something else to mean what they stand for.”

Larry said gently, “Your father is a socialist?”

“Oh, no.”

He nodded in understanding. “Oh, a Communist, eh?”

Susan Self was indignant. “Daddy thinks the Communists are strictly awful, really weird.”

The Boss said patiently, “I'm just observing that cultures aren't overthrown by little handfuls of secret conspirators. You might eliminate a few individuals in that manner, in other words change the personnel of 
the government, but you aren't going to alter a socio-economic system. That can't be done until your people have been pushed outside their limits of tolerance. Very well then. A revolutionary organization must get out and propagandize. It has got to convince the people that they are being pushed beyond endurance. You have got to get the masses to moving. You have to give speeches, print newspapers, books, pamphlets, you have got to send your organizers out to intensify interest in your program

Up above in his living room, he had one of the new autobars. You could dial any one of more than thirty drinks. Autobars were all the rage. The Boss had one that gave a selection of a hundred. But what difference did it make when nobody but eccentric old-timers or flighty blondes drank anything except vodka martinis? He didn't like autobars anyway. A well mixed drink is a personal thing, a work of competence, instinct and art, not something measured to the drop, iced to the degree, shaken or stirred to a mathematical formula.

Out of the tiny refrigerator he brought a four-ounce cube of frozen pineapple juice, touched the edge with his thumbnail and let the ultra thin plastic peel away. He tossed the cube into his mixer, took up a bottle of light rum and poured in about two ounces. He brought an egg from the refrigerator and added that. An ounce of whole milk followed and a teaspoon of powdered sugar. He flicked the switch and let the conglomeration froth together.

He poured it into a king-size highball glass and took it over to his chair. Vodka martinis be damned, he liked a slightly sweet long drink.

And you have no feeling of revolt in having such a label hung on you? Consider this system for a moment. You have lower-lower, middle-lower, and upper-lower; then you have lower-middle, middle-middle, upper-middle; then you have lower-upper, middle-upper, and finally we achieve to upper-upper class. Now tell me, when we get to that rarified category, who do we find? Do we find an Einstein, a Schweitzer, a Picasso; outstanding scientists, humanitarians, the great writers, artists and musicians of our day? Certainly not. We find ultra-wealthy playboys and girls, a former king and his duchess who eke out their income by accepting fees to attend 
parties, the international born set, bearers of meaningless feudalistic titles. These are your upper-upper class!

The Professor seemed angry. “I repeat, I'm afraid I get carried away on this subject. I'm in revolt against a culture based on the status label. It eliminates the need to judge a man on his merits. To judge a person by the clothes he wears, the amount of money he possesses, the car he drives, the neighborhood in which he lives, the society he keeps, or even his ancestry, is out of the question in a vital, growing society. You wind up with nonentities as the leaders of your nation. In these days, we can't afford it.

The Boss was shaking his head. “You're not thinking clearly, Lawrence. Revolution, per se, is not illegal in the United States. Our Constitution was probably the first document of its kind which allowed for its own amendment. The men who wrote it provided for changing it either slightly or in toto. Whenever the majority of the American people decide completely to abandon the Constitution and govern themselves by new laws, they have the right to do it.”

“Then what's the whole purpose of this department, sir?” Larry argued. “Why've we been formed to combat foreign and domestic subversion?”

WHERE THE PHPH PEBBLES GO By MIRIAM ALLEN DeFORD - https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/52805/pg52805-images.html

 

Gral and Hodnuth were playing phph. In case you are not a phph fan, and haven't ever seen Bliten's classic Ways of Improving Your Phph Game, its essence consists in lobbing pebbles at a target as near the horizon as your skill permits. After each throw, you fly over to see how far you went.

It sounds like a simple game, but it has complicated restrictions and rules, and a good phph player can command any amount of heavy service from the spectators. Since a lot of the Ground Dwellers are also phph addicts (they could never become players, of course, being far too small and light to handle the phph pebbles), this means that a real champion never has to do any kind of work again, being fed, clothed, housed and entertained by his admirers, and can devote all his time to the game.

I know not if it be from lack of habit, but I can never enter the Palais de Justice without an uneasiness, an inexplicable heart pang. That grating, those great courts, that stone staircase so vast that every one mounts it in isolation, enveloped in his individual torment. The antiquity of the structures, the melancholy clock, the height of the windows, and also the mist of the quay, that moisture that clings to walls that skirt the water, all give you a foretaste of the neighboring prison. In the halls the impression is the same, or more vivid still, because of the peculiar company which peoples them, because of those long black robes which make the solemn gestures, because of those who accuse, and the unintelligible records, the eternal records spread out everywhere on the tables, carried under the arms in enormous bundles, overflowing— There are great green doors, noiseless and mysterious, from whence escape—when they are ajar—gusts of voices severe or weeping, and visions of school benches, platforms black with caps, and great crucifixes leaning forward. Muskets ring out on the flags. Sinister rumblings of carriages pass shaking the arches. All these noises blended together are like a respiration, the panting breath of a factory, the apparatus of justice at work. And hearing this terrible machine at labor, one desires to shrink within himself, to dwindle for fear of being caught, even by a hair, in this formidable gearing which one knows to be so complicated, tenacious, destructive— I was thinking of this the other morning, in going to see an examining magistrate before whom I had, in behalf of a poor devil, to recommend a stay of proceedings. The hall of witnesses, where I was waiting, was full of people, sheriff’s officers, clerks engrossing behind a glass partition, witnesses whispering to each other in advance of their depositions, women of the people, impressive and garrulous who were telling the officers their entire lives in order to arrive at the affair that had brought them there. Near me, an open door lit the sombre lobby of the examining magistrate, a lobby which leads everywhere, even to the scaffold, and from which the prisoners issue as accused. Some of these unfortunates, brought there under a strong escort by way of the staircase of la Conciergerie, lay about on the benches awaiting their turn to be interrogated, and it is in this ante-chamber of the convict prison that I overheard a lovers’ dialogue, an idyl of the faubourg, as impassioned as “l’Oarystis,” but more heartbreaking—Yes, in the midst of this shadow, where so many criminals have left something of their shuddering, of their hopes, and of their rages, I saw two beings love, and smile; and however lowly was this love, however faded was this smile, the old lobby must have been as astonished by it as would a miry and black street of Paris, if penetrated by the cooing of a turtle-dove. In a listless attitude, almost unconscious, a young girl was seated at the end of a bench, quiet as a working woman who waits the price of her day’s labor. She wore the calico bonnet, and the sad costume of Saint-Lazare with an air of repose and of well-being, as though the prison régime were the best thing she had found in all her life. The guard, who sat beside her, seemed to find her much to his taste, and they laughed together softly. At the other end of the lobby, wholly in the shadow, was seated, handcuffs on wrists, the Desgrieux of this Manon. She had not seen him at first; but as soon as her eyes became accustomed to the darkness, she perceived him and trembled: “Why, that’s Pignou—hé! Pignou!”— The guard silenced her. The prisoners are expressly forbidden to talk to each other. “Oh! I beg of you, only one word!” she said, leaning far forward toward the remotest part of the lobby. But the soldier remained inflexible. “No—no—it can’t be done—only if you have some message to give him, tell it to me, I will repeat it to him.” Then a dialogue was entered into between this girl and her Pignou, with the guard as interpreter. Much moved, without heeding those about her, she began: “Tell him I have never loved any one but him; that I will never love another in all my life.” The guard made a number of steps in the lobby, and redoubling his gravity as though to take from the proceeding all that was too kindly, he repeated: “She says she has never loved but you, and that she’ll never love another.” I heard a grumbling, a confused stammering which must have been the response of Pignou, then the guard went back with measured step toward the bench. “What did he say?” demanded the child all anxious, and as though waiting were too long: “Well, tell me what he said now?” “He said he was very miserable!”— Then, carried away by her emotion and the custom of the noisy and communicative streets, she cried out loud: “Don’t be weary, m’ami—the good days will come again!” And in this voice, still young, there was something piteous, almost maternal. Plainly this was the woman of the people with her courage under affliction and her dog-like devotion. From the depths of the lobby, a voice replied, the voice of Pignou, wine-soaked, torn, burned with alcohol: “Va donc! the good days—I’ll have them at the end of my five years.” He knew his case well, that one!— The guards cried: “Chut!—Keep quiet!”—But too late. A door had opened, and the examining magistrate himself appeared on the sill. Skull-cap of velvet, grizzled whiskers, mouth thin and evil, the eye scrutinizing, distrustful, but not profound, it was just the type of an examining magistrate, one of those men who thinks he has a criminal before him always, like those doctors of the insane who see maniacs everywhere. That one in particular had a certain way of looking at you, so annoying, and so insulting, that you felt guilty without having done anything. With one glance of the eye he terrified all the lobby: “What does all this noise mean?—Try to do your duty a little better,” he said, addressing the guards. Then he closed his door with a sharp click. The municipal guard taken to task, red, mortified, looked around a moment for some one upon whom to lay the blame. But the little girl said nothing more, Pignou sat quiet on his bench—All at once he perceived me, and as I was at the door of the hall, almost in the lobby, he took me by the arm and jerked me around brutally. “What are you doing there, you?”

The child was lying stretched out in his little, white bed, and his eyes, grown large through fever, looked straight before him, always with the strange fixity of the sick who already perceive what the living do not see. The mother at the foot of the bed, torn by suffering and wringing her hands to keep herself from crying, anxiously followed the progress of the disease on the poor, emaciated face of the little being. The father, an honest workman, kept back the tears which burned his eyelids. The day broke clear and mild, a beautiful morning in June, and lighted up the narrow room in the street of the Abessess where little François, the child of Jacques and Madeleine Legrand, lay dying. He was seven years old and was very fair, very rosy, and so lively. Not three weeks ago he was gay as a sparrow; but a fever had seized him and they had brought him home one evening from the public school with his head heavy and his hands very hot. From that time he had been here in this bed and sometimes in his delirium when he looked at his little well-blackened shoes, which his mother had carefully placed in a corner on a board, he said: “You can throw them away now, little François’ shoes! Little François will not put them on any more! Little François will not go to school any more—never, never!” Then the father cried out and said: “Wilt thou be still!” And the mother, very pale, buried her blond head in his pillow so that little François could not hear her weep. This night the child had not been delirious; but for the two days past the doctor had been uneasy over an odd sort of prostration which resembled abandon, it was as if at seven years the sick one already felt the weariness of life. He was tired, silent, sad, and tossed his little head about on the bolster. He had no longer a smile on his poor, thin lips, and with haggard eyes he sought, seeing they knew not what, something there beyond, very far off— In Heaven! Perhaps! thought Madeleine, trembling. When they wished him to take some medicine, some sirup, or a little soup, he refused. He refused everything. “Dost thou wish anything, François?” “No, I wish nothing!” “We must draw him out of this,” the doctor said. “This torpor frightens me!—you are the father and the mother, you know your child well—Seek for something to reanimate this little body, recall to earth this spirit which runs after the clouds!” Then he went away. “Seek!” Yes, without doubt they knew him well, their François, these worthy people! They knew how it amused him, the little one, to plunder the hedges on Sunday and to come back to Paris on his father’s shoulders laden with hawthorne—Jacques Legrand had bought some images, some gilded soldiers, and some Chinese shadows for François; he cut them out, put them on the child’s bed and made them dance before the bewildered eyes of the little one, and with a desire to weep himself he tried to make him laugh. “Dost thou see, it is the broken bridge—Tire tire tire!—And that is a general!—Thou rememberest we saw one, a general, once, in the Bois de Boulogne?—If thou takest thy medicine well I will buy thee a real one with a cloth tunic and gold epaulets—Dost thou wish for him, the general, say?” “No,” replied the child, with the dry voice which fever gives. “Dost thou wish a pistol, some marbles—a crossbow?” “No,” repeated the little voice, clearly and almost cruelly. And to all that they said to him, to all the jumping-jacks, to all the balloons that they promised him, the little voice—while the parents looked at each other in despair—responded: “No.”—“No.”—“No!” “But what dost thou wish, my François?” asked the mother. “Let us see, there is certainly something thou wouldst like to have—Tell it, tell it to me! to me!—thy mother!” And she laid her cheek on the pillow of the sick boy and whispered this softly in his ear as if it were a secret. Then the child, with an odd accent, straightening himself up in his bed and stretching out his hand eagerly toward some invisible thing, replied suddenly in an ardent tone, at the same time supplicating and imperative: “I want Boum-Boum!” Boum-Boum. Poor Madeleine threw a frightened look toward her husband. What did the little one say? Was it the delirium, the frightful delirium, which had come back again? Boum-Boum! She did not know what that meant, and she was afraid of these singular words which the child repeated with a sickly persistence as if, not having dared until now to formulate his dream, he grasped the present time with invincible obstinacy: “Yes, Boum-Boum! Boum-Boum! I want Boum-Boum!” The mother had seized Jacques’s hand and spoke very low, as if demented. “What does that mean, Jacques? He is lost!” But the father had on his rough, working man’s face a smile almost happy, but astonished too, the smile of a condemned man who foresees a possibility of liberty. Boum-Boum! He remembered well the morning of Easter Monday when he had taken François to the circus. He had still in his ears the child’s outbursts of joy, the happy laugh of the amused boy, when the clown, the beautiful clown, all spangled with gold and with a great gilded butterfly sparkling, many-colored, on the back of his black costume, skipped across the track, gave the trip to a rider or held himself motionless and stiff on the sand, his head down and his feet in the air. Or again he tossed up to the chandelier some soft, felt hats which he caught adroitly on his head, where they formed, one by one, a pyramid; and at each jest, like a refrain brightening up his intelligent and droll face, he uttered the same cry, repeated the same word, accompanied now and then by a burst from the orchestra: Boum-Boum! Boum-Boum! and each time that it rang out, Boum-Boum, the audience burst out into hurrahs and the little one joined in with his hearty, little laugh. Boum-Boum! It was this Boum-Boum, it was the clown of the circus, it was this favorite of a large part of the city that little François wished to see and to have and whom he could not have and could not see since he was lying here without strength in his white bed. In the evening Jacques Legrand brought the child a jointed clown, all stitched with spangles, which he had bought in a passageway and which was very expensive. It was the price of four of his working days! But he would have given twenty, thirty, he would have given the price of a year’s labor to bring back a smile to the pale lips of the sick child. The child looked at the plaything a moment as it glistened on the white cover of the bed, then said, sadly: “It is not Boum-Boum!—I want to see Boum-Boum!” Ah! if Jacques could have wrapped him up in his blankets, could have carried him to the circus, could have shown him the clown dancing under the lighted chandelier and have said to him, Look! He did better, Jacques, he went to the circus, demanded the address of the clown, and timidly, his legs shaking with fear, he climbed, one by one, the steps which led to the apartment of the artist, at Montmartre. It was very bold this that Jacques was going to do! But after all the comedians go to sing and recite their monologues in drawing-rooms, at the houses of the great lords. Perhaps the clown—oh! if he only would—would consent to come and say good-day to François. No matter, how would they receive him, Jacques Legrand, here at Boum-Boum’s house? He was no longer Boum-Boum! He was Monsieur Moreno, and, in the artistic dwelling, the books, the engravings, the elegance was like a choice decoration around the charming man who received Jacques in his office like that of a doctor. Jacques looked, but did not recognize the clown, and turned and twisted his felt hat between his fingers. The other waited. Then the father excused himself. “It was astonishing what he came there to ask, it could not be—pardon, excuse—But in short, it was concerning the little one—A nice little one, monsieur. And so intelligent! Always the first at school, except in arithmetic, which he did not understand—A dreamer, this little one, do you see! Yes, a dreamer. And the proof—wait—the proof—” Jacques now hesitated, stammered; but he gathered up his courage and said bruskly: “The proof is that he wishes to see you, that he thinks only of you, and that you are there before him like a star which he would like to have, and that he looks—” When he had finished the father was deadly pale and he had great drops on his forehead. He dared not look at the clown who remained with his eyes fixed on the workman. And what was he going to say, this Boum-Boum? Was he going to dismiss him, take him for a fool and put him out the door? “You live?” asked Boum-Boum. “Oh! very near! Street of the Abessess!” “Come!” said the other. “Your boy wants to see Boum-Boum? Ah, well, he is going to see Boum-Boum.” When the door opened and showed the clown, Jacques Legrand cried out joyfully to his son: “François, be happy, child! See, here he is, Boum-Boum!” A look of great joy came over the child’s face. He raised himself on his mother’s arm and turned his head toward the two men who approached, questioning, for a moment, who it was by the side of his father; this gentleman in an overcoat, whose good, pleasant face he did not know. When they said to him: “It is Boum-Boum!” he slowly fell back on the pillow and remained there, his eyes fixed, his beautiful large, blue eyes, which looked beyond the walls of the little room, and were always seeking the spangles and the butterfly of Boum-Boum, like a lover who pursues his dream. “No,” replied the child with a voice which was no longer dry, but full of despair, “no, it is not Boum-Boum.” The clown, standing near the little bed, threw upon the child an earnest look, very grave, but of an inexpressible sweetness. He shook his head, looked at the anxious father, the grief-stricken mother, and said, smiling, “He is right, this is not Boum-Boum!” and then he went out. “I can not see him, I will never see Boum-Boum any more!” repeated the child, whose little voice spoke to the angels. “Boum-Boum is perhaps there, there, where little François will soon go.” And suddenly—it was only a half-hour since the clown had disappeared—the door opened quickly, and in his black, spangled clothes, his yellow cap on his head, the gilded butterfly on his breast and on his back, with a smile as big as the mouth of a money-box and a powdered face, Boum-Boum, the true Boum-Boum, the Boum-Boum of the circus, the Boum-Boum of the popular neighborhood, the Boum-Boum of little François—Boum-Boum appeared. Lying on his little white bed the child clapped his thin, little hands, laughing, crying, happy, saved, with a joy of life in his eyes, and cried “Bravo!” with his seven-year gaiety, which all at once kindled up like a match: “Boum-Boum! It is he, it is he, this time! Here is Boum-Boum! Long live Boum-Boum! Good-day, Boum-Boum.” And when the doctor came back, he found, seated by little François’s bedside, a clown with a pale face, who made the little one laugh again and again, and who said to the child while he was stirring a piece of sugar into a cup of medicine: “Thou knowest, if thou dost not drink, little François, Boum-Boum will not come back any more.” So the child drank. “Is it not good?” “Very good!—thanks, Boum-Boum!” “Doctor,” said the clown to the doctor, “do not be jealous—It seems to me that my grimaces will do him as much good as your prescriptions!” The father and the mother wept, but this time from joy. Until little François was on his feet again a carriage stopped every day before the dwelling of a workman in the street of the Abessess, at Montmartre, and a man got out with a gay powdered face, enveloped in an overcoat with the collar turned back, and underneath it one could see a clown’s costume. “What do I owe you, monsieur?” said Jacques, at last, to the master-clown when the child took his first walk, “for now I owe you something!” The clown stretched out his two soft, Herculean hands to the parents. “A shake of the hand!” said he. Then placing two great kisses on the once more rosy cheeks of the child: “And (laughing) permission to put on my visiting-card: “Boum-Boum Acrobatic Doctor and Physician in ordinary to little François!”

On a cold December morning in the year 1612, a young man, whose clothing was somewhat of the thinnest, was walking to and fro before a gateway in the Rue des Grands-Augustins in Paris. He went up and down the street before this house with the irresolution of a gallant who dares not venture into the presence of the mistress whom he loves for the first time, easy of access though she may be; but after a sufficiently long interval of hesitation, he at last crossed the threshold and inquired of an old woman, who was sweeping out a large room on the ground floor, whether Master Porbus was within. Receiving a reply in the affirmative, the young man went slowly up the staircase, like a gentleman but newly come to court, and doubtful as to his reception by the king. He came to a stand once more on the landing at the head of the stairs, and again he hesitated before raising his hand to the grotesque knocker on the door of the studio, where doubtless the painter was at work—Master Porbus, sometime painter in ordinary to Henri IV till Mary de’ Medici took Rubens into favor. The young man felt deeply stirred by an emotion that must thrill the hearts of all great artists when, in the pride of their youth and their first love of art, they come into the presence of a master or stand before a masterpiece. For all human sentiments there is a time of early blossoming, a day of generous enthusiasm that gradually fades until nothing is left of happiness but a memory, and glory is known for a delusion. Of all these delicate and short-lived emotions, none so resemble love as the passion of a young artist for his art, as he is about to enter on the blissful martyrdom of his career of glory and disaster, of vague expectations and real disappointments. Those who have missed this experience in the early days of light purses; who have not, in the dawn of their genius, stood in the presence of a master and felt the throbbing of their hearts, will always carry in their inmost souls a chord that has never been touched, and in their work an indefinable quality will be lacking, a something in the stroke of the brush, a mysterious element that we call poetry. The swaggerers, so puffed up by self-conceit that they are confident oversoon of their success, can never be taken for men of talent save by fools. From this point of view, if youthful modesty is the measure of youthful genius, the stranger on the staircase might be allowed to have something in him; for he seemed to possess the indescribable diffidence, the early timidity that artists are bound to lose in the course of a great career, even as pretty women lose it as they make progress in the arts of coquetry. Self-distrust vanishes as triumph succeeds to triumph, and modesty is, perhaps, distrust of itself. The poor neophyte was so overcome by the consciousness of his own presumption and insignificance, that it began to look as if he was hardly likely to penetrate into the studio of the painter, to whom we owe the wonderful portrait of Henri IV. But fate was propitious; an old man came up the staircase. From the quaint costume of this newcomer, his collar of magnificent lace, and a certain serene gravity in his bearing, the first arrival thought that this personage must be either a patron or a friend of the court painter. He stood aside therefore upon the landing to allow the visitor to pass, scrutinizing him curiously the while. Perhaps he might hope to find the good nature of an artist or to receive the good offices of an amateur not unfriendly to the arts; but besides an almost diabolical expression in the face that met his gaze, there was that indescribable something which has an irresistible attraction for artists. Picture that face. A bald high forehead and rugged jutting brows above a small flat nose turned up at the end, as in the portraits of Socrates and Rabelais; deep lines about the mocking mouth; a short chin, carried proudly, covered with a grizzled pointed beard; sea-green eyes that age might seem to have dimmed were it not for the contrast between the iris and the surrounding mother-of-pearl tints, so that it seemed as if under the stress of anger or enthusiasm there would be a magnetic power to quell or kindle in their glances. The face was withered beyond wont by the fatigue of years, yet it seemed aged still more by the thoughts that had worn away both soul and body. There were no lashes to the deep-set eyes, and scarcely a trace of the arching lines of the eyebrows above them. Set this head on a spare and feeble frame, place it in a frame of lace wrought like an engraved silver fish-slice, imagine a heavy gold chain over the old man’s black doublet, and you will have some dim idea of this strange personage, who seemed still more fantastic in the sombre twilight of the staircase. One of Rembrandt’s portraits might have stepped down from its frame to walk in an appropriate atmosphere of gloom, such as the great painter loved. The older man gave the younger a shrewd glance, and knocked thrice at the door. It was opened by a man of forty or thereabout, who seemed to be an invalid. “Good day, Master.” Porbus bowed respectfully, and held the door open for the younger man to enter, thinking that the latter accompanied his visitor; and when he saw that the neophyte stood a while as if spellbound, feeling, as every artist-nature must feel, the fascinating influence of the first sight of a studio in which the material processes of art are revealed, Porbus troubled himself no more about this second comer. All the light in the studio came from a window in the roof, and was concentrated upon an easel, where a canvas stood untouched as yet save for three or four outlines in chalk. The daylight scarcely reached the remoter angles and corners of the vast room; they were as dark as night, but the silver ornamented breastplate of a Reiter’s corselet, that hung upon the wall, attracted a stray gleam to its dim abiding-place among the brown shadows; or a shaft of light shot across the carved and glistening surface of an antique sideboard covered with curious silver-plate, or struck out a line of glittering dots among the raised threads of the golden warp of some old brocaded curtains, where the lines of the stiff, heavy folds were broken, as the stuff had been flung carelessly down to serve as a model. Plaster écorchés stood about the room; and here and there, on shelves and tables, lay fragments of classical sculpture—torsos of antique goddesses, worn smooth as though all the years of the centuries that had passed over them had been lovers’ kisses. The walls were covered, from floor to ceiling, with countless sketches in charcoal, red chalk, or pen and ink. Amid the litter and confusion of color boxes, overturned stools, flasks of oil, and essences, there was just room to move so as to reach the illuminated circular space where the easel stood. The light from the window in the roof fell full upon Porbus’s pale face and on the ivory-tinted forehead of his strange visitor. But in another moment the younger man heeded nothing but a picture that had already become famous even in those stormy days of political and religious revolution, a picture that a few of the zealous worshipers, who have so often kept the sacred fire of art alive in evil days, were wont to go on pilgrimage to see. The beautiful panel represented a Saint Mary of Egypt about to pay her passage across the seas. It was a masterpiece destined for Mary de’ Medici, who sold it in later years of poverty. “I like your saint,” the old man remarked, addressing Porbus. “I would give you ten golden crowns for her over and above the price the Queen is paying; but as for putting a spoke in that wheel—the devil take it!” “It is good then?” “Hey! hey!” said the old man; “good, say you?—Yes and no. Your good woman is not badly done, but she is not alive. You artists fancy that when a figure is correctly drawn, and everything in its place according to the rules of anatomy, there is nothing more to be done. You make up the flesh tints beforehand on your palettes according to your formulæ, and fill in the outlines with due care that one side of the face shall be darker than the other; and because you look from time to time at a naked woman who stands on the platform before you, you fondly imagine that you have copied nature, think yourselves to be painters, believe that you have wrested His secret from God. Pshaw! You may know your syntax thoroughly and make no blunders in your grammar, but it takes that and something more to make a great poet. Look at your saint, Porbus! At a first glance she is admirable; look at her again, and you see at once that she is glued to the background, and that you could not walk round her. She is a silhouette that turns but one side of her face to all beholders, a figure cut out of canvas, an image with no power to move nor change her position. I feel as if there were no air between that arm and the background, no space, no sense of distance in your canvas. The perspective is perfectly correct, the strength of the coloring is accurately diminished with the distance; but, in spite of these praiseworthy efforts, I could never bring myself to believe that the warm breath of life comes and goes in that beautiful body. It seems to me that if I laid my hand on the firm, rounded throat, it would be cold as marble to the touch. No, my friend, the blood does not flow beneath that ivory skin, the tide of life does not flush those delicate fibres, the purple veins that trace a network beneath the transparent amber of her brow and breast. Here the pulse seems to beat, there it is motionless, life and death are at strife in every detail; here you see a woman, there a statue, there again a corpse. Your creation is incomplete. You had only power to breathe a portion of your soul into your beloved work. The fire of Prometheus died out again and again in your hands; many a spot in your picture has not been touched by the divine flame.” “But how is it, dear master?” Porbus asked respectfully, while the young man with difficulty repressed his strong desire to beat the critic. “Ah!” said the old man, “it is this! You have halted between two manners. You have hesitated between drawing and color, between the dogged attention to detail, the stiff precision of the German masters and the dazzling glow, the joyous exuberance of Italian painters. You have set yourself to imitate Hans Holbein and Titian, Albrecht Dürer and Paul Veronese in a single picture. A magnificent ambition truly, but what has come of it? Your work has neither the severe charm of a dry execution nor the magical illusion of Italian chiaroscuro. Titian’s rich golden coloring poured into Albrecht Dürer’s austere outlines has shattered them, like molten bronze bursting through the mold that is not strong enough to hold it. In other places the outlines have held firm, imprisoning and obscuring the magnificent, glowing flood of Venetian color. The drawing of the face is not perfect, the coloring is not perfect; traces of that unlucky indecision are to be seen everywhere. Unless you felt strong enough to fuse the two opposed manners in the fire of your own genius, you should have cast in your lot boldly with the one or the other, and so have obtained the unity which simulates one of the conditions of life itself. Your work is only true in the centres; your outlines are false, they project nothing, there is no hint of anything behind them. There is truth here,” said the old man, pointing to the breast of the Saint, “and again here,” he went on, indicating the rounded shoulder. “But there,” once more returning to the column of the throat, “everything is false. Let us go no further into detail; you would be disheartened.” The old man sat down on a stool, and remained a while without speaking, with his face buried in his hands. “Yet I studied that throat from the life, dear master,” Porbus began; “it happens sometimes, for our misfortune, that real effects in nature look improbable when transferred to canvas—” “The aim of art is not to copy nature, but to express it. You are not a servile copyist, but a poet!” cried the old man sharply, cutting Porbus short with an imperious gesture. “Otherwise a sculptor might make a plaster cast of a living woman and save himself all further trouble. Well, try to make a cast of your mistress’s hand, and set up the thing before you. You will see a monstrosity, a dead mass, bearing no resemblance to the living hand; you would be compelled to have recourse to the chisel of a sculptor who, without making an exact copy, would represent for you its movement and its life. We must detect the spirit, the informing soul in the appearances of things and beings. Effects! What are effects but the accidents of life, not life itself? A hand, since I have taken that example, is not only a part of a body, it is the expression and extension of a thought that must be grasped and rendered. Neither painter nor poet nor sculptor may separate the effect from the cause, which are inevitably contained the one in the other. There begins the real struggle! Many a painter achieves success instinctively, unconscious of the task that is set before art. You draw a woman, yet you do not see her! Not so do you succeed in wresting Nature’s secrets from her! You are reproducing mechanically the model that you copied in your master’s studio. You do not penetrate far enough into the inmost secrets of the mystery of form; you do not seek with love enough and perseverance enough after the form that baffles and eludes you. Beauty is a thing severe and unapproachable, never to be won by a languid lover. You must lie in wait for her coming and take her unawares, press her hard and clasp her in a tight embrace, and force her to yield. Form is a Proteus more intangible and more manifold than the Proteus of the legend; compelled, only after long wrestling, to stand forth manifest in his true aspect. Some of you are satisfied with the first shape, or at most by the second or the third that appears. Not thus wrestle the victors, the unvanquished painters who never suffer themselves to be deluded by all those treacherous shadow-shapes; they persevere till Nature at the last stands bare to their gaze, and her very soul is revealed. “In this manner worked Rafael,” said the old man, taking off his cap to express his reverence for the King of Art. “His transcendent greatness came of the intimate sense that, in him, seems as if it would shatter external form. Form in his figures (as with us) is a symbol, a means of communicating sensations, ideas, the vast imaginings of a poet. Every face is a whole world. The subject of the portrait appeared for him bathed in the light of a divine vision; it was revealed by an inner voice, the finger of God laid bare the sources of expression in the past of a whole life. “You clothe your women in fair raiment of flesh, in gracious veiling of hair; but where is the blood, the source of passion and of calm, the cause of the particular effect? Why, this brown Egyptian of yours, my good Porbus, is a colorless creature! These figures that you set before us are painted bloodless fantoms; and you call that painting, you call that art! “Because you have made something more like a woman than a house, you think that you have set your fingers on the goal; you are quite proud that you need not to write currus venustus or pulcher homo beside your figures, as early painters were wont to do and you fancy that you have done wonders. Ah! my good friend, there is still something more to learn, and you will use up a great deal of chalk and cover many a canvas before you will learn it. Yes, truly, a woman carries her head in just such a way, so she holds her garments gathered into her hand; her eyes grow dreamy and soft with that expression of meek sweetness, and even so the quivering shadow of the lashes hovers upon her cheeks. It is all there, and yet it is not there. What is lacking? A nothing, but that nothing is everything. “There you have the semblance of life, but you do not express its fulness and effluence, that indescribable something, perhaps the soul itself, that envelopes the outlines of the body like a haze; that flower of life, in short, that Titian and Rafael caught. Your utmost achievement hitherto has only brought you to the starting-point. You might now perhaps begin to do excellent work, but you grow weary all too soon; and the crowd admires, and those who know smile.” “Oh, Mabuse! oh, my master!” cried the strange speaker, “thou art a thief! Thou hast carried away the secret of life with thee!” “Nevertheless,” he began again, “this picture of yours is worth more than all the paintings of that rascal Rubens, with his mountains of Flemish flesh raddled with vermilion, his torrents of red hair, his riot of color. You, at least have color there, and feeling and drawing—the three essentials in art.” The young man roused himself from his deep musings. “Why, my good man, the Saint is sublime!” he cried. “There is a subtlety of imagination about those two figures, the Saint Mary and the Shipman, that can not be found among Italian masters; I do not know a single one of them capable of imagining the Shipman’s hesitation.” “Did that little malapert come with you?” asked Porbus of the older man. “Alas! master, pardon my boldness,” cried the neophyte, and the color mounted to his face. “I am unknown—a dauber by instinct, and but lately come to this city—the fountain-head of all learning.” “Set to work,” said Porbus, handing him a bit of red chalk and a sheet of paper. The newcomer quickly sketched the Saint Mary line for line. “Aha!” exclaimed the old man. “Your name?” he added. The young man wrote “Nicolas Poussin” below the sketch. “Not bad that for a beginning,” said the strange speaker, who had discoursed so wildly. “I see that we can talk of art in your presence. I do not blame you for admiring Porbus’s saint. In the eyes of the world she is a masterpiece, and those alone who have been initiated into the inmost mysteries of art can discover her shortcomings. But it is worth while to give you the lesson, for you are able to understand it, so I will show you how little it needs to complete this picture. You must be all eyes, all attention, for it may be that such a chance of learning will never come in your way again.—Porbus! your palette.” Porbus went in search of palette and brushes. The little old man turned back his sleeves with impatient energy, seized the palette, covered with many hues, that Porbus handed to him, and snatched rather than took a handful of brushes of various sizes from the hands of his acquaintance. His pointed beard suddenly bristled—a menacing movement that expressed the prick of a lover’s fancy. As he loaded his brush, he muttered between his teeth, “These paints are only fit to fling out of the window, together with the fellow who ground them, their crudeness and falseness are disgusting! How can one paint with this?” He dipped the tip of the brush with feverish eagerness in the different pigments, making the circuit of the palette several times more quickly than the organist of a cathedral sweeps the octaves on the keyboard of his clavier for the “O Filii” at Easter. Porbus and Poussin, on either side of the easel, stood stock-still, watching with intense interest. “Look, young man,” he began again, “see how three or four strokes of the brush and a thin glaze of blue let in the free air to play about the head of the poor Saint, who must have felt stifled and oppressed by the close atmosphere! See how the drapery begins to flutter; you feel that it is lifted by the breeze! A moment ago it hung as heavily and stiffly as if it were held out by pins. Do you see how the satin sheen that I have just given to the breast rends the pliant, silken softness of a young girl’s skin, and how the brown-red, blended with burnt ochre, brings warmth into the cold gray of the deep shadow where the blood lay congealed instead of coursing through the veins? Young man, young man, no master could teach you how to do this that I am doing before your eyes. Mabuse alone possessed the secret of giving life to his figures; Mabuse had but one pupil—that was I. I have had none, and I am old. You have sufficient intelligence to imagine the rest from the glimpses that I am giving you.” While the old man was speaking, he gave a touch here and there; sometimes two strokes of the brush, sometimes a single one; but every stroke told so well, that the whole picture seemed transfigured—the painting was flooded with light. He worked with such passionate fervor that beads of sweat gathered upon his bare forehead; he worked so quickly, in brief, impatient jerks, that it seemed to young Poussin as if some familiar spirit inhabiting the body of this strange being took a grotesque pleasure in making use of the man’s hands against his own will. The unearthly glitter of his eyes, the convulsive movements that seemed like struggles, gave to this fancy a semblance of truth which could not but stir a young imagination. The old man continued, saying as he did so— “Paf! paf! that is how to lay it on, young man!—Little touches! come and bring a glow into those icy cold tones for me! Just so! Pon! pon! pon!” and those parts of the picture that he had pointed out as cold and lifeless flushed with warmer hues, a few bold strokes of color brought all the tones of the picture into the required harmony with the glowing tints of the Egyptian, and the differences in temperament vanished. “Look you, youngster, the last touches make the picture. Porbus has given it a hundred strokes for every one of mine. No one thanks us for what lies beneath. Bear that in mind.” At last the restless spirit stopped, and turning to Porbus and Poussin, who were speechless with admiration, he spoke— “This is not as good as my ‘Belle Noiseuse’; still one might put one’s name to such a thing as this.—Yes, I would put my name to it,” he added, rising to reach for a mirror, in which he looked at the picture.—“And now,” he said, “will you both come and breakfast with me? I have a smoked ham and some very fair wine!... Eh! eh! the times may be bad, but we can still have some talk about art! We can talk like equals.... Here is a little fellow who has aptitude,” he added, laying a hand on Nicolas Poussin’s shoulder. In this way the stranger became aware of the threadbare condition of the Norman’s doublet. He drew a leather purse from his girdle, felt in it, found two gold coins, and held them out. “I will buy your sketch,” he said. “Take it,” said Porbus, as he saw the other start and flush with embarrassment, for Poussin had the pride of poverty. “Pray, take it; he has a couple of king’s ransoms in his pouch!” The three came down together from the studio, and, talking of art by the way, reached a picturesque wooden house hard by the Pont Saint-Michel. Poussin wondered a moment at its ornament, at the knocker, at the frames of the casements, at the scroll-work designs, and in the next he stood in a vast low-ceiled room. A table, covered with tempting dishes, stood near the blazing fire, and (luck unhoped for) he was in the company of two great artists full of genial good humor. “Do not look too long at that canvas, young man,” said Porbus, when he saw that Poussin was standing, struck with wonder, before a painting. “You would fall a victim to despair.” It was the “Adam” painted by Mabuse to purchase his release from the prison where his creditors had so long kept him. And, as a matter of fact, the figure stood out so boldly and convincingly, that Nicolas Poussin began to understand the real meaning of the words poured out by the old artist, who was himself looking at the picture with apparent satisfaction, but without enthusiasm. “I have done better than that!” he seemed to be saying to himself. “There is life in it,” he said aloud; “in that respect my poor master here surpassed himself, but there is some lack of truth in the background. The man lives indeed; he is rising, and will come toward us; but the atmosphere, the sky, the air, the breath of the breeze—you look and feel for them, but they are not there. And then the man himself is, after all, only a man! Ah! but the one man in the world who came direct from the hands of God must have had a something divine about him that is wanting here. Mabuse himself would grind his teeth and say so when he was not drunk.” Poussin looked from the speaker to Porbus, and from Porbus to the speaker, with restless curiosity. He went up to the latter to ask for the name of their host; but the painter laid a finger on his lips with an air of mystery. The young man’s interest was excited; he kept silence, but hoped that sooner or later some word might be let fall that would reveal the name of his entertainer. It was evident that he was a man of talent and very wealthy, for Porbus listened to him respectfully, and the vast room was crowded with marvels of art. A magnificent portrait of a woman, hung against the dark oak panels of the wall, next caught Poussin’s attention. “What a glorious Giorgione!” he cried. “No,” said his host, “it is an early daub of mine—” “Gramercy! I am in the abode of the god of painting, it seems!” cried Poussin ingenuously. The old man smiled as if he had long grown familiar with such praise. “Master Frenhofer!” said Porbus, “do you think you could spare me a little of your capital Rhine wine?” “A couple of pipes!” answered his host; “one to discharge a debt, for the pleasure of seeing your pretty sinner, the other as a present from a friend.” “Ah! if I had my health,” returned Porbus, “and if you would but let me see your ‘Belle Noiseuse,’ I would paint some great picture, with breadth in it and depth; the figures should be life-size.” “Let you see my work!” cried the painter in agitation. “No, no! it is not perfect yet; something still remains for me to do. Yesterday, in the dusk,” he said, “I thought I had reached the end. Her eyes seemed moist, the flesh quivered, something stirred the tresses of her hair. She breathed! But though I have succeeded in reproducing Nature’s roundness and relief on the flat surface of the canvas, this morning, by daylight, I found out my mistake. Ah! to achieve that glorious result I have studied the works of the great masters of color, stripping off coat after coat of color from Titian’s canvas, analyzing the pigments of the king of light. Like that sovereign painter, I began the face in a slight tone with a supple and fat paste—for shadow is but an accident; bear that in mind, youngster!—Then I began afresh, and by half-tones and thin glazes of color less and less transparent, I gradually deepened the tints to the deepest black of the strongest shadows. An ordinary painter makes his shadows something entirely different in nature from the high lights; they are wood or brass, or what you will, anything but flesh in shadow. You feel that even if those figures were to alter their position, those shadow stains would never be cleansed away, those parts of the picture would never glow with light. “I have escaped one mistake, into which the most famous painters have sometimes fallen; in my canvas the whiteness shines through the densest and most persistent shadow. I have not marked out the limits of my figure in hard, dry outlines, and brought every least anatomical detail into prominence (like a host of dunces, who fancy that they can draw because they can trace a line elaborately smooth and clean), for the human body is not contained within the limits of line. In this the sculptor can approach the truth more nearly than we painters. Nature’s way is a complicated succession of curve within curve. Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as drawing.—Do not laugh, young man; strange as that speech may seem to you, you will understand the truth in it some day.—A line is a method of expressing the effect of light upon an object; but there are no lines in Nature, everything is solid. We draw by modeling, that is to say, that we disengage an object from its setting; the distribution of the light alone gives to a body the appearance by which we know it. So I have not defined the outlines; I have suffused them with a haze of half-tints warm or golden, in such a sort that you can not lay your finger on the exact spot where background and contours meet. Seen from near, the picture looks a blur; it seems to lack definition; but step back two paces, and the whole thing becomes clear, distinct, and solid; the body stands out; the rounded form comes into relief; you feel that the air plays round it. And yet—I am not satisfied; I have misgivings. Perhaps one ought not to draw a single line; perhaps it would be better to attack the face from the centre, taking the highest prominences first, proceeding from them through the whole range of shadows to the heaviest of all. Is not this the method of the sun, the divine painter of the world? Oh, Nature, Nature! who has surprised thee, fugitive? But, after all, too much knowledge, like ignorance, brings you to a negation. I have doubts about my work.” There was a pause. Then the old man spoke again. “I have been at work upon it for ten years, young man; but what are ten short years in a struggle with Nature? Do we know how long Sir Pygmalion wrought at the one statue that came to life?” The old man fell into deep musings, and gazed before him with wide unseeing eyes, while he played unheedingly with his knife. “Look, he is in conversation with his dæmon!” murmured Porbus. At the word, Nicolas Poussin felt himself carried away by an unaccountable accession of artist’s curiosity. For him the old man, at once intent and inert, the seer with the unseeing eyes, became something more than a man—a fantastic spirit living in a mysterious world, and countless vague thoughts awoke within his soul. The effect of this species of fascination upon his mind can no more be described in words than the passionate longing awakened in an exile’s heart by the song that recalls his home. He thought of the scorn that the old man affected to display for the noblest efforts of art, of his wealth, his manners, of the deference paid to him by Porbus. The mysterious picture, the work of patience on which he had wrought so long in secret, was doubtless a work of genius, for the head of the Virgin which young Poussin had admired so frankly was beautiful even beside Mabuse’s “Adam”—there was no mistaking the imperial manner of one of the princes of art. Everything combined to set the old man beyond the limits of human nature. Out of the wealth of fancies in Nicolas Poussin’s brain an idea grew, and gathered shape and clearness. He saw in this supernatural being a complete type of the artist nature, a nature mocking and kindly, barren and prolific, an erratic spirit intrusted with great and manifold powers which she too often abuses, leading sober reason, the Philistine, and sometimes even the amateur forth into a stony wilderness where they see nothing; but the white-winged maiden herself, wild as her fancies may be, finds epics there and castles and works of art. For Poussin, the enthusiast, the old man, was suddenly transfigured, and became Art incarnate, Art with its mysteries, its vehement passion and its dreams. “Yes, my dear Porbus,” Frenhofer continued, “hitherto I have never found a flawless model, a body with outlines of perfect beauty, the carnations—Ah! where does she live?” he cried, breaking in upon himself, “the undiscoverable Venus of the older time, for whom we have sought so often, only to find the scattered gleams of her beauty here and there? Oh! to behold once and for one moment, Nature grown perfect and divine, the Ideal at last, I would give all that I possess.... Nay, Beauty divine, I would go to seek thee in the dim land of the dead; like Orpheus, I would go down into the Hades of Art to bring back the life of art from among the shadows of death.” “We can go now,” said Porbus to Poussin. “He neither hears nor sees us any longer.” “Let us go to his studio,” said young Poussin, wondering greatly. “Oh! the old fox takes care that no one shall enter it. His treasures are so carefully guarded that it is impossible for us to come at them. I have not waited for your suggestion and your fancy to attempt to lay hands on this mystery by force.” “So there is a mystery?” “Yes,” answered Porbus. “Old Frenhofer is the only pupil Mabuse would take. Frenhofer became the painter’s friend, deliverer, and father; he sacrificed the greater part of his fortune to enable Mabuse to indulge in riotous extravagance, and in return Mabuse bequeathed to him the secret of relief, the power of giving to his figures the wonderful life, the flower of Nature, the eternal despair of art, the secret which Mabuse knew so well that one day when he had sold the flowered brocade suit in which he should have appeared at the Entry of Charles V, he accompanied his master in a suit of paper painted to resemble the brocade. The peculiar richness and splendor of the stuff struck the Emperor; he complimented the old drunkard’s patron on the artist’s appearance, and so the trick was brought to light. Frenhofer is a passionate enthusiast, who sees above and beyond other painters. He has meditated profoundly on color, and the absolute truth of line; but by the way of much research he has come to doubt the very existence of the objects of his search. He says, in moments of despondency, that there is no such thing as drawing, and that by means of lines we can only reproduce geometrical figures; but that is overshooting the mark, for by outline and shadow you can reproduce form without any color at all, which shows that our art, like Nature, is composed of an infinite number of elements. Drawing gives you the skeleton, the anatomical framework, and color puts the life into it; but life without the skeleton is even more incomplete than a skeleton without life. But there is something else truer still, and it is this—for painters, practise and observation are everything; and when theories and poetical ideas begin to quarrel with the brushes, the end is doubt, as has happened with our good friend, who is half crack-brained enthusiast, half painter. A sublime painter! but unluckily for him, he was born to riches, and so he has leisure to follow his fancies. Do not you follow his example! Work! painters have no business to think, except brush in hand.” “We will find a way into his studio!” cried Poussin confidently. He had ceased to heed Porbus’s remarks. The other smiled at the young painter’s enthusiasm, asked him to come to see him again, and they parted. Nicholas Poussin went slowly back to the Rue de la Harpe, and passed the modest hostelry where he was lodging without noticing it. A feeling of uneasiness prompted him to hurry up the crazy staircase till he reached a room at the top, a quaint, airy recess under the steep, high-pitched roof common among houses in old Paris. In the one dingy window of the place sat a young girl, who sprang up at once when she heard some one at the door; it was the prompting of love; she had recognized the painter’s touch on the latch. “What is the matter with you?” she asked. “The matter is ... is.... Oh! I have felt that I am a painter! Until to-day I have had doubts, but now I believe in myself! There is the making of a great man in me! Never mind, Gillette, we shall be rich and happy! There is gold at the tips of those brushes—” He broke off suddenly. The joy faded from his powerful and earnest face as he compared his vast hopes with his slender resources. The walls were covered with sketches in chalk on sheets of common paper. There were but four canvases in the room. Colors were very costly, and the young painter’s palette was almost bare. Yet in the midst of his poverty he possessed and was conscious of the possession of inexhaustible treasures of the heart, of a devouring genius equal to all the tasks that lay before him. He had been brought to Paris by a nobleman among his friends, or perchance by the consciousness of his powers; and in Paris he had found a mistress, one of those noble and generous souls who choose to suffer by a great man’s side, who share his struggles and strive to understand his fancies, accepting their lot of poverty and love as bravely and dauntlessly as other women will set themselves to bear the burden of riches and make a parade of their insensibility. The smile that stole over Gillette’s lips filled the garret with golden light, and rivaled the brightness of the sun in heaven. The sun, moreover, does not always shine in heaven, whereas Gillette was always in the garret, absorbed in her passion, occupied by Poussin’s happiness and sorrow, consoling the genius which found an outlet in love before art engrossed it. “Listen, Gillette. Come here.” The girl obeyed joyously, and sprang upon the painter’s knee. Hers was perfect grace and beauty, and the loveliness of spring; she was adorned with all luxuriant fairness of outward form, lighted up by the glow of a fair soul within. “Oh! God,” he cried; “I shall never dare to tell her—” “A secret?” she cried; “I must know it!” Poussin was absorbed in his dreams. “Do tell it me!” “Gillette ... poor beloved heart!...” “Oh! do you want something of me?” “Yes.” “If you wish me to sit once more for you as I did the other day,” she continued with playful petulance, “I will never consent to do such a thing again, for your eyes say nothing all the while. You do not think of me at all, and yet you look at me—” “Would you rather have me draw another woman?” “Perhaps—if she were very ugly,” she said. “Well,” said Poussin gravely, “and if, for the sake of my fame to come, if to make me a great painter, you must sit to some one else?” “You may try me,” she said; “you know quite well that I would not.” Poussin’s head sank on her breast; he seemed to be overpowered by some intolerable joy or sorrow. “Listen,” she cried, plucking at the sleeve of Poussin’s threadbare doublet. “I told you, Nick, that I would lay down my life for you; but I never promised you that I in my lifetime would lay down my love.” “Your love?” cried the young artist. “If I showed myself thus to another, you would love me no longer, and I should feel myself unworthy of you. Obedience to your fancies was a natural and simple thing, was it not? Even against my own will, I am glad and even proud to do thy dear will. But for another, out upon it!” “Forgive me, my Gillette,” said the painter, falling upon his knees; “I would rather be beloved than famous. You are fairer than success and honors. There, fling the pencils away, and burn these sketches! I have made a mistake. I was meant to love and not to paint. Perish art and all its secrets!” Gillette looked admiringly at him, in an ecstasy of happiness! She was triumphant; she felt instinctively that art was laid aside for her sake, and flung like a grain of incense at her feet. “Yet he is only an old man,” Poussin continued; “for him you would be a woman, and nothing more. You—so perfect!” “I must love you indeed!” she cried, ready to sacrifice even love’s scruples to the lover who had given up so much for her sake; “but I should bring about my own ruin. Ah! to ruin myself, to lose everything for you!... It is a very glorious thought! Ah! but you will forget me. Oh! what evil thought is this that has come to you?” “I love you, and yet I thought of it,” he said, with something like remorse. “Am I so base a wretch?” “Let us consult Père Hardouin,” she said. “No, no! Let it be a secret between us.” “Very well; I will do it. But you must not be there,” she said. “Stay at the door with your dagger in your hand; and if I call, rush in and kill the painter.” Poussin forgot everything but art. He held Gillette tightly in his arms. “He loves me no longer!” thought Gillette when she was alone. She repented of her resolution already. But to these misgivings there soon succeeded a sharper pain, and she strove to banish a hideous thought that arose in her own heart. It seemed to her that her own love had grown less already, with a vague suspicion that the painter had fallen somewhat in her eyes. II CATHERINE LESCAULT Three months after Poussin and Porbus met, the latter went to see Master Frenhofer. The old man had fallen a victim to one of those profound and spontaneous fits of discouragement that are caused, according to medical logicians, by indigestion, flatulence, fever, or enlargement of the spleen; or, if you take the opinion of the Spiritualists, by the imperfections of our mortal nature. The good man had simply overworked himself in putting the finishing touches to his mysterious picture. He was lounging in a huge carved oak chair, covered with black leather, and did not change his listless attitude, but glanced at Porbus like a man who has settled down into low spirits. “Well, master,” said Porbus, “was the ultramarine bad that you sent for to Bruges? Is the new white difficult to grind? Is the oil poor, or are the brushes recalcitrant?” “Alas!” cried the old man, “for a moment I thought that my work was finished, but I am sure that I am mistaken in certain details, and I can not rest until I have cleared my doubts. I am thinking of traveling. I am going to Turkey, to Greece, to Asia, in quest of a model, so as to compare my picture with the different living forms of Nature. Perhaps,” and a smile of contentment stole over his face, “perhaps I have Nature herself up there. At times I am half afraid that a breath may waken her, and that she will escape me.” He rose to his feet as if to set out at once. “Aha!” said Porbus, “I have come just in time to save you the trouble and expense of a journey.” “What?” asked Frenhofer in amazement. “Young Poussin is loved by a woman of incomparable and flawless beauty. But, dear master, if he consents to lend her to you, at the least you ought to let us see your work.” The old man stood motionless and completely dazed. “What!” he cried piteously at last, “show you my creation, my bride? Rend the veil that has kept my happiness sacred? It would be an infamous profanation. For ten years I have lived with her; she is mine, mine alone; she loves me. Has she not smiled at me, at each stroke of the brush upon the canvas? She has a soul—the soul that I have given her. She would blush if any eyes but mine should rest on her. To exhibit her! Where is the husband, the lover so vile as to bring the woman he loves to dishonor? When you paint a picture for the court, you do not put your whole soul into it; to courtiers you sell lay figures duly colored. My painting is no painting, it is a sentiment, a passion. She was born in my studio, there she must dwell in maiden solitude, and only when clad can she issue thence. Poetry and women only lay the last veil aside for their lovers. Have we Rafael’s model, Ariosto’s Angelica, Dante’s Beatrice? Nay, only their form and semblance. But this picture, locked away above in my studio, is an exception in our art. It is not a canvas, it is a woman—a woman with whom I talk. I share her thoughts, her tears, her laughter. Would you have me fling aside these ten years of happiness like a cloak? Would you have me cease at once to be father, lover, and creator? She is not a creature, but a creation. “Bring your young painter here. I will give him my treasures; I will give him pictures by Correggio and Michelangelo and Titian; I will kiss his footprints in the dust; but make him my rival! Shame on me. Ah! ah! I am a lover first, and then a painter. Yes, with my latest sigh I could find strength to burn my ‘Belle Noiseuse’; but—compel her to endure the gaze of a stranger, a young man and a painter!—Ah! no, no! I would kill him on the morrow who should sully her with a glance! Nay, you, my friend, I would kill you with my own hands in a moment if you did not kneel in reverence before her! Now, will you have me submit my idol to the careless eyes and senseless criticisms of fools? Ah! love is a mystery; it can only live hidden in the depths of the heart. You say, even to your friend, ‘Behold her whom I love,’ and there is an end of love.” The old man seemed to have grown young again; there was light and life in his eyes, and a faint flush of red in his pale face. His hands shook. Porbus was so amazed by the passionate vehemence of Frenhofer’s words that he knew not what to reply to this utterance of an emotion as strange as it was profound. Was Frenhofer sane or mad? Had he fallen a victim to some freak of the artist’s fancy? or were these ideas of his produced by the strange light-headedness which comes over us during the long travail of a work of art. Would it be possible to come to terms with this singular passion? Harassed by all these doubts, Porbus spoke—“Is it not woman for woman?” he said. “Does not Poussin submit his mistress to your gaze?” “What is she?” retorted the other. “A mistress who will be false to him sooner or later. Mine will be faithful to me forever.” “Well, well,” said Porbus, “let us say no more about it. But you may die before you will find such a flawless beauty as hers, even in Asia, and then your picture will be left unfinished. “Oh! it is finished,” said Frenhofer. “Standing before it you would think that it was a living woman lying on the velvet couch beneath the shadow of the curtains. Perfumes are burning on a golden tripod by her side. You would be tempted to lay your hand upon the tassel of the cord that holds back the curtains; it would seem to you that you saw her breast rise and fall as she breathed; that you beheld the living Catherine Lescault, the beautiful courtezan whom men called ‘La Belle Noiseuse,’ And yet—if I could but be sure—” “Then go to Asia,” returned Porbus, noticing a certain indecision in Frenhofer’s face. And with that Porbus made a few steps toward the door. By that time Gillette and Nicolas Poussin had reached Frenhofer’s house. The girl drew away her arm from her lover’s as she stood on the threshold, and shrank back as if some presentiment flashed through her mind. “Oh! what have I come to do here?” she asked of her lover in low vibrating tones, with her eyes fixed on his. “Gillette, I have left you to decide; I am ready to obey you in everything. You are my conscience and my glory. Go home again; I shall be happier, perhaps, if you do not—” “Am I my own when you speak to me like that? No, no; I am like a child.—Come,” she added, seemingly with a violent effort; “if our love dies, if I plant a long regret in my heart, your fame will be the reward of my obedience to your wishes, will it not? Let us go in. I shall still live on as a memory on your palette; that shall be life for me afterward.” The door opened, and the two lovers encountered Porbus, who was surprised by the beauty of Gillette, whose eyes were full of tears. He hurried her, trembling from head to foot, into the presence of the old painter. “Here!” he cried, “is she not worth all the masterpieces in the world!” Frenhofer trembled. There stood Gillette in the artless and childlike attitude of some timid and innocent Georgian, carried off by brigands, and confronted with a slave merchant. A shamefaced red flushed her face, her eyes drooped, her hands hung by her side, her strength seemed to have failed her, her tears protested against this outrage. Poussin cursed himself in despair that he should have brought his fair treasure from its hiding-place. The lover over, came the artist, and countless doubts assailed Poussin’s heart when he saw youth dawn in the old man’s eyes, as, like a painter, he discerned every line of the form hidden beneath the young girl’s vesture. Then the lover’s savage jealousy awoke. “Gillette!” he cried, “let us go.” The girl turned joyously at the cry and the tone in which it was uttered, raised her eyes to his, looked at him, and fled to his arms. “Ah! then you love me,” she cried; “you love me!” and she burst into tears. She had spirit enough to suffer in silence, but she had no strength to hide her joy. “Oh! leave her with me for one moment,” said the old painter, “and you shall compare her with my Catherine ... yes—I consent.” Frenhofer’s words likewise came from him like a lover’s cry. His vanity seemed to be engaged for his semblance of womanhood; he anticipated the triumph of the beauty of his own creation over the beauty of the living girl. “Do not give him time to change his mind!” cried Porbus, striking Poussin on the shoulder. “The flower of love soon fades, but the flower of art is immortal.” “Then am I only a woman now for him?” said Gillette. She was watching Poussin and Porbus closely. She raised her head proudly; she glanced at Frenhofer, and her eyes flashed; then as she saw how her lover had fallen again to gazing at the portrait which he had taken at first for a Giorgione— “Ah!” she cried; “let us go up to the studio. He never gave me such a look.” The sound of her voice recalled Poussin from his dreams. “Old man,” he said, “do you see this blade? I will plunge it into your heart at the first cry from this young girl; I will set fire to your house, and no one shall leave it alive. Do you understand?” Nicolas Poussin scowled; every word was a menace. Gillette took comfort from the young painter’s bearing, and yet more from that gesture, and almost forgave him for sacrificing her to his art and his glorious future. Porbus and Poussin stood at the door of the studio and looked at each other in silence. At first the painter of the Saint Mary of Egypt hazarded some exclamations: “Ah! she has taken off her clothes; he told her to come into the light—he is comparing the two!” but the sight of the deep distress in Poussin’s face suddenly silenced him; and though old painters no longer feel these scruples, so petty in the presence of art, he admired them because they were so natural and gracious in the lover. The young man kept his hand on the hilt of his dagger, and his ear was almost glued to the door. The two men standing in the shadow might have been conspirators waiting for the hour when they might strike down a tyrant. “Come in, come in,” cried the old man. He was radiant with delight. “My work is perfect. I can show her now with pride. Never shall painter, brushes, colors, light, and canvas produce a rival for ‘Catherine Lescault,’ the beautiful courtezan!” Porbus and Poussin, burning with eager curiosity, hurried into a vast studio. Everything was in disorder and covered with dust, but they saw a few pictures here and there upon the wall. They stopped first of all in admiration before the life-size figure of a woman partially draped. “Oh! never mind that,” said Frenhofer; “that is a rough daub that I made, a study, a pose, it is nothing. These are my failures,” he went on, indicating the enchanting compositions upon the walls of the studio. This scorn for such works of art struck Porbus and Poussin dumb with amazement. They looked round for the picture of which he had spoken, and could not discover it. “Look here!” said the old man. His hair was disordered, his face aglow with a more than human exaltation, his eyes glittered, he breathed hard like a young lover frenzied by love. “Aha!” he cried, “you did not expect to see such perfection! You are looking for a picture, and you see a woman before you. There is such depth in that canvas, the atmosphere is so true that you can not distinguish it from the air that surrounds us. Where is art? Art has vanished, it is invisible! It is the form of a living girl that you see before you. Have I not caught the very hues of life, the spirit of the living line that defines the figure? Is there not the effect produced there like that which all natural objects present in the atmosphere about them, or fishes in the water? Do you see how the figure stands out against the background? Does it not seem to you that you pass your hand along the back? But then for seven years I studied and watched how the daylight blends with the objects on which it falls. And the hair, the light pours over it like a flood, does it not?... Ah! she breathed, I am sure that she breathed! Her breast—ah, see! Who would not fall on his knees before her? Her pulses throb. She will rise to her feet. Wait!” “Do you see anything?” Poussin asked of Porbus. “No ... do you?” “I see nothing.” The two painters left the old man to his ecstasy, and tried to ascertain whether the light that fell full upon the canvas had in some way neutralized all the effect for them. They moved to the right and left of the picture; they came in front, bending down and standing upright by turns. “Yes, yes, it is really canvas,” said Frenhofer, who mistook the nature of this minute investigation. “Look! the canvas is on a stretcher, here is the easel; indeed, here are my colors, my brushes,” and he took up a brush and held it out to them, all unsuspicious of their thought. “The old lansquenet is laughing at us,” said Poussin, coming once more toward the supposed picture. “I can see nothing there but confused masses of color and a multitude of fantastical lines that go to make a dead wall of paint.” “We are mistaken, look!” said Porbus. In a corner of the canvas, as they came nearer, they distinguished a bare foot emerging from the chaos of color, half-tints and vague shadows that made up a dim, formless fog. Its living delicate beauty held them spellbound. This fragment that had escaped an incomprehensible, slow, and gradual destruction seemed to them like the Parian marble torso of some Venus emerging from the ashes of a ruined town. “There is a woman beneath,” exclaimed Porbus, calling Poussin’s attention to the coats of paint with which the old artist had overlaid and concealed his work in the quest of perfection. Both artists turned involuntarily to Frenhofer. They began to have some understanding, vague though it was, of the ecstasy in which he lived. “He believes it in all good faith,” said Porbus. “Yes, my friend,” said the old man, rousing himself from his dreams, “it needs faith, faith in art, and you must live for long with your work to produce such a creation. What toil some of those shadows have cost me. Look! there is a faint shadow there upon the cheek beneath the eyes—if you saw that on a human face, it would seem to you that you could never render it with paint. Do you think that that effect has not cost unheard-of toil? “But not only so, dear Porbus. Look closely at my work, and you will understand more clearly what I was saying as to methods of modeling and outline. Look at the high lights on the bosom, and see how by touch on touch, thickly laid on, I have raised the surface so that it catches the light itself and blends it with the lustrous whiteness of the high lights, and how by an opposite process, by flattening the surface of the paint, and leaving no trace of the passage of the brush, I have succeeded in softening the contours of my figures and enveloping them in half-tints until the very idea of drawing, of the means by which the effect is produced, fades away, and the picture has the roundness and relief of nature. Come closer. You will see the manner of working better; at a little distance it can not be seen. There! Just there, it is, I think, very plainly to be seen,” and with the tip of his brush he pointed out a patch of transparent color to the two painters. Porbus, laying a hand on the old artist’s shoulder, turned to Poussin with a “Do you know that in him we see a very great painter?” “He is even more of a poet than a painter,” Poussin answered gravely. “There,” Porbus continued, as he touched the canvas, “lies the utmost limit of our art on earth.” “Beyond that point it loses itself in the skies,” said Poussin. “What joys lie there on this piece of canvas!” exclaimed Porbus. The old man, deep in his own musings, smiled at the woman he alone beheld, and did not hear. “But sooner or later he will find out that there is nothing there!” cried Poussin. “Nothing on my canvas!” said Frenhofer, looking in turn at either painter and at his picture. “What have you done?” muttered Porbus, turning to Poussin. The old man clutched the young painter’s arm and said, “Do you see nothing? clodpate! Huguenot! varlet! cullion! What brought you here into my studio?—My good Porbus,” he went on, as he turned to the painter, “are you also making a fool of me? Answer! I am your friend. Tell me, have I ruined my picture after all?” Porbus hesitated and said nothing, but there was such intolerable anxiety in the old man’s white face that he pointed to the easel. “Look!” he said. Frenhofer looked for a moment at his picture, and staggered back. “Nothing! nothing! After ten years of work....” He sat down and wept. “So I am a dotard, a madman, I have neither talent nor power! I am only a rich man, who works for his own pleasure, and makes no progress. I have done nothing after all!” He looked through his tears at his picture. Suddenly he rose and stood proudly before the two painters. “By the body and blood of Christ,” he cried with flashing eyes, “you are jealous! You would have me think that my picture is a failure because you want to steal her from me! Ah! I see her, I see her,” he cried “she is marvelously beautiful....” At that moment Poussin heard the sound of weeping; Gillette was crouching forgotten in a corner. All at once the painter once more became the lover. “What is it, my angel?” he asked her. “Kill me!” she sobbed. “I must be a vile thing if I love you still, for I despise you.... I admire you, and I hate you! I love you, and I feel that I hate you even now!” While Gillette’s words sounded in Poussin’s ears, Frenhofer drew a green serge covering over his “Catherine” with the sober deliberation of a jeweler who locks his drawers when he suspects his visitors to be expert thieves. He gave the two painters a profoundly astute glance that expressed to the full his suspicions and his contempt for them, saw them out of his studio with impetuous haste and in silence, until from the threshold of his house he bade them “Good-by, my young friends!” That farewell struck a chill of dread into the two painters. Porbus, in anxiety, went again on the morrow to see Frenhofer, and learned that he had died in the night after burning his canvases. Paris, February, 1832.

FAREWELL MESSAGE By DAVID MASON - https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/73869/pg73869-images.html

 V'gu found Earth primitive and crude.

Its hydrogen bombs, for instance....

There was the alien spaceship. It squatted in the middle of the airfield's main runway, in the way of every plane landing and taking off, to the complete confusion of traffic control.

The airport people had asked V'gu, politely, to move it. He had looked at them with blank indifference, and gone on making notes on Terran marriage rites.

Nobody had suggested forcing V'gu to move his ship. The ship looked as heavy as a battle cruiser—it probably was armed—and it did not look as if it could be moved by anything short of a hydrogen bomb. V'gu, when told about hydrogen bombs, had smiled and implied that such weapons were about on par with stone axes.

The governments of the world treated V'gu with respect, and informed their peoples that he was merely a visiting student, with no intention of harming them, and should be given every courtesy, according to the best traditions of hospitality to strangers.

Do you know La Piroche? No. No more do I. So I shall not abuse my privilege as an author by giving you a description; especially since, between you and me be it said, they are very tiresome, those descriptions. Unless it be a question of the virgin forests of America, as in Cooper, or of Meschaccbé,[12] as in Chateaubriand, that is to say, countries that are not close at hand, and about which the imagination, to obtain a clear vision of the details, must be assisted by those poetical voyagers who have visited them, in general descriptions are not of much consequence except to be skipped by the reader. Literature has this advantage over painting, sculpture, and music; the threefold advantage of being able to paint by itself a picture in a single word, to carve a statue in one phrase, to mold a melody on one page; it must not abuse itself of that privilege, and one should leave to the special arts a little of their own prerogative. I own, then, for my part, and for lack of better advice, that when I find that I have to describe a country which every one has seen, or every one could see, if it be near, if it does not differ from our own, I prefer to leave to my reader the pleasure of recalling it if he has seen it, or of imagining it if he does not yet know it. The reader likes well enough to be left to do his share of the work he is reading. This flatters him and makes him believe that he is capable of doing the rest. Indeed, it is an excellent thing to flatter your reader. Moreover, the whole world in reality knows what the sea is like—a plain, a forest, a blue sky, an effect of sun, an effect of the moon, or an effect of storm. Of what use to dwell upon it? It would be far better to trace a landscape in one stroke of the brush like Rubens or Delacroix; this should be said without comparison and keep the whole value of your palette for the figures you wish to reanimate. When one blackens with descriptions page after page of paper, one doesn’t give the reader an impression equal to that experienced by the most artless bourgeois who walks through the Bois de Vincennes on a soft April day, or by an unlettered girl who strolls in June, on the arm of her fiancé, at eleven o’clock at night through the shady vistas of the woods of Romainville or the park of Enghien. We all have in our minds and hearts a gallery of landscapes made from memory, and which serves as background for all the stories of the world. There is but one word to use—day or night, winter or spring, calm or storm, wood or plain—to evoke at once a most finished landscape. So I have only to tell you this: that at the moment when the story I am about to tell you begins it is noon, that it is May, that the highway we are going to enter is bordered on the right with furze bushes, on the left by the sea; you know at once all that I have not told you; that is to say, that the bushes are green, that the sea is murmuring, that the sky is blue, that the sun is warm, and that there is dust on the road. I have only to add that this highway that winds along the coast of Brittany runs from La Poterie to La Piroche; that Piroche is a village about which I know nothing, but which must be more or less like all villages, that we are in the middle of the fifteenth century, in 1418, and that two men, one older than the other, one the father of the other, both peasants, are following the highway mounted on two nags trotting along comfortably enough for two nags under the weight of two peasants. “Shall we get there in time?” said the son. “Yes, it is not to take place until two o’clock,” replied the father, “and the sun marks but a quarter after noon.” “Oh, but I am curious to see that!” “I can well believe it.” “So he will be hanged in the armor that he stole?” “Yes.” “How the devil did he get the idea of stealing armor?” “It’s not the idea that is hard to get—” “It’s the armor,” interrupted the boy, who wanted his share in making a part of that joke. “And that, too, he didn’t get.” “Was it fine armor?” “Splendid, they say, all shining with gold.” “And did they catch him as he was carrying it away?” “Yes, you know as well as I do that armor like that never goes astray without raising a great outcry; it can’t escape its proper owner all by itself.” “So, then, it was of iron?” “They woke up in the château at the noise they heard.” “And did they arrest the man?” “Not at once; they began by being afraid.” “Of course, it’s always that way that people who have been robbed begin when they are in the presence of thieves; otherwise there would be no object in being a thief.” “No, nor any pleasant excitement in being robbed! But those brave folks had no idea that it was an affair of robbery.” “Of what, then?” “Of a ghost. That wretched, most vigorous fellow was carrying the armor in front of him, holding his head at the height of the loins of said armor so effectively that he acquired gigantic proportions in the corridor where he passed. Add to this a clattering noise which the rascal made behind him, and you will appreciate the fright of the valets. But, unfortunately for him, he woke up the Seigneur of La Piroche, he who has fear of neither the dead nor the living, who easily, and all by himself, arrested the thief and handed him over, bound, to his well-deserved justice.” “And his well-deserved justice?” “The condemned man is to be hanged clothed in the armor.” “Why that clause in the sentence?” “Because the Seigneur of La Piroche is not only a brave captain, but a man of common sense and of spirit, who wished to draw from this just condemnation an example for others and an advantage for himself. Why, don’t you know that whatever touches a hanged man becomes a talisman for him who possesses it? So the Seigneur of La Piroche has ordered that the thief should be hanged dressed in his armor, so as to reclaim it when the man is dead and have a talisman to wear during our next wars.” “That is very ingenious.” “I should think so.” “Let’s make haste, for I am so anxious to see the poor man hanged.” “We have plenty of time! We must not wear our beasts out. We are not going to stop at La Piroche; we will have to go on a league farther, and then return to La Poterie.” “Yes, but our beasts will rest for five or six hours, for we do not return until evening.” The father and son continued on their way, talking, and half an hour later they reached La Piroche. As the father had said, they arrived on time. Have fathers always the privilege of being right? There was an immense concourse of people on the great square in front of the château, for it was there that the scaffold had been erected, a splendid gallows, in faith, of sound oak, not very high, it is true, since it was intended for a wretched, obscure criminal, but high enough, nevertheless, for death to do its work between earth and the end of the rope which was swinging in the fresh sea breeze like an eel hanging by its tail. The condemned man was certain of having a beautiful view at the moment of death, for he was to die with his face turned toward the ocean. If this view could be any consolation to him, so much the better, but, for my part, I doubt it. And all the while the sea was blue, and from time to time between the azure of the sky and that of the sea floated a white cloud, like an angel on its way to heaven, but whose long robes still trailed upon the earth it was quitting. The two companions approached as near as possible to the scaffold, so as to miss nothing that was going on, and, like all the rest, they waited, having this advantage over the others, that they were mounted on two nags and could see better with less fatigue. They had not long to wait. At a quarter of two the gates of the château opened, and the condemned man appeared, preceded by the guards of the Seigneur of La Piroche and followed by the executioner. The thief was dressed in the stolen armor and was mounted reversed on the bare back of a jackass. He rode with vizor down and head lowered. They had tied his hands behind his back, and if they wish for our opinion in the matter we have no hesitation in saying that, judging by his position, in default of his face, which could not be seen, he ought to have been very ill at ease, and indulging at that moment in very sad reflections. They conducted him to the side of the scaffold, and a moving picture hardly pleasant for him began to silhouette itself against the blue sky. The hangman set his ladder against the scaffold, and the chaplain of the Seigneur of La Piroche, mounted on a prepared platform, delivered the sentence of justice. The condemned man did not move. One might have said that he had given the spectators the slip by dying before he was hanged. They called to him to descend from his ass and deliver himself to the hangman. He did not move. We understand his hesitation. Then the hangman took him by the elbows, lifted him off the ass, and set him upright on the ground. Fine fellow, that hangman! When we say that he set him upright, we do not lie. But we would lie in saying that he remained as they placed him. He had in two minutes jumped two-thirds of the alphabet; that is to say, in vulgar parlance, that instead of standing straight like an I, he became zigzag like a Z. During this time the chaplain finished reading the sentence. “Have you any request to make?” he asked of the culprit. “Yes,” replied the unfortunate, in a voice sad and low. “What do you ask?” “I ask for pardon.” I do not know if the word “farceur” was invented in those days, but then or never was the time to invent it and to speak it. The Seigneur of La Piroche shrugged his shoulders and ordered the executioner to do his duty. The latter made ready to mount the ladder leaning against the gibbet, which, impassive, was about to draw with extended arm the soul out of a body, and he attempted to make the condemned mount in front of him, but it was not an easy thing to do. One does not know, in general, what obstacles those condemned to death will put in the way of their dying. The hangman and the man there had the air of passing civilities one to another. It was a question of who should go first. The hangman, to make him mount on his ladder, returned to the method he employed in making him descend from his ass. He seized him around the middle of his body, balanced him on the third rung of the ladder, and began to push him up from beneath. “Bravo!” cried the crowd. He ought to have mounted well. Then the executioner adroitly slipped the running noose, which adorned the end of the rope, around the neck of the culprit, and, giving the latter a vigorous kick in the back, he flung him out into space, which strongly resembled Eternity. An immense clamor greeted this looked-for dénouement, and a shudder passed through the crowd. Whatever may be the crime he has committed, the man who dies is always at the moment greater than those who watch him die. The hanged man swung for three or four minutes at the end of his rope, as he had a right to do, danced, wriggled, then hung motionless and rigid. The Z had become an I again. They gazed a while longer on the culprit, whose gilded armor glistened in the sun, then the spectators divided themselves, little by little, into groups, and went their way home, chatting about the event. “Pooh! a horrid thing is death!” said the son of the peasant, as he continued his journey with his father. “In good faith, to hang one for not having succeeded in stealing a piece of armor, that’s expensive. What do you think?” “I wonder, I do, what they would have done to him if he had really stolen the armor?” “They would not have done anything to him, for if he had really stolen the armor he would have been able to escape from the château. Then, possibly, he would not have returned to be arrested.” “Yet he is punished more for a crime that he has not committed than he would have been if he had committed the crime!” “But he had the intention of committing it.” “And the intention was accounted as a fact—” “That is perfectly just.” “But it isn’t pretty to look at.” And since they found themselves on rising ground, the two companions turned to contemplate for the last time the silhouette of the unfortunate. Twenty minutes later they entered the little town where, save the mark! they were to receive certain moneys, and which they were to leave that evening in order to accomplish the return home that same night. On the morrow, at break of day, the guards sallied out from the château of La Piroche for the purpose of taking down the corpse of the hanging man, from which they intended to recover the armor of the Seigneur, but they discovered something which they had been far from anticipating, that is to say, the gibbet was there, as always, but the hanged man was not there. The two guards rubbed their eyes, believing themselves to be dreaming, but the thing was very real. No more hanged man, and naturally no more armor. And what was extraordinary, the rope was neither broken nor cut, but just in the condition it was before receiving the condemned. The two guards ran to announce this news to the Seigneur of La Piroche. He was not willing to believe it, and proceeded to assure himself of the truth of the facts. So puissant a seigneur was he that he was convinced the hanged man would reappear for him there; but he saw what all the rest had seen. What had become of the dead? For the condemned had certainly died the day before, before the eyes of the whole village. Had another thief profited by the night to get possession of the armor that covered the corpse? Possibly—but in taking the armor he would naturally leave the corpse, for which he had no use. Had the friends or relations of the culprit wished to give him Christian burial? Nothing impossible in that if it were not for the fact that the culprit had neither friends nor relations, and that people who had had religious sentiments like that would have taken the culprit and left the armor. That, then, was no longer to be thought of. What should one believe, then? The Seigneur of La Piroche was in despair. He was all for his armor. He made promise of a reward of ten gold écus to any one who should deliver to him the thief, dressed as he was in dying. They ransacked the houses; they found nothing. No one presented himself. They caused a sage of the town of Rennes to be sent for, and they propounded this question to him: “In what way does a dead man who has been hanged manage to free himself from the rope that holds him in the air by the neck?” The sage demanded eight days to ponder over the question, at the termination of which he replied: “He can not do it.” Then they propounded this second question: “A thief, unsuccessful in stealing while alive, and having been condemned to death for stealing, can he steal after his death?” The sage replied: “Yes.” He was asked how it could be done. He replied that he knew nothing about it. He was the greatest sage of his time. They sent him home and contented themselves with believing, for those were the days of witchcraft, that the thief was a wizard. Then they said masses to exorcise that evil spirit, which was without doubt taking his revenge upon the Seigneur who had ordered his death and upon those who had come to see him die. A month passed in fruitless search. The gibbet still stood there as always, humiliated, gloomy, and discredited. Never had a gibbet committed such a breach of confidence. The Seigneur of La Piroche continued to clamor for his armor from man, God, and the devil. Nothing. At last he was beginning, without a doubt, to make the best of this strange event, and of the loss which had been the result, when one morning, as he was waking, he heard a great commotion on the square where the execution had taken place. He was making ready to inform himself of what was passing when his chaplain entered the room. “Monseigneur,” said he, “do you know what has happened?” “No, but I am going to ask.” “I can tell you, I can.” “What is it, then?” “A miracle from heaven!” “Really!” “The hanged man—” “Well?” “He is there!” “Where?” “On the scaffold.” “Hanging?” “Yes, Monseigneur.” “In his armor?” “In your armor.” “True, for it is mine. And is he dead?” “Absolutely dead—only—” “Only what?” “Did he have spurs on when they hanged him?” “No.” “Well, Monseigneur, he has them, and in place of having the casque on his head, he has placed it with great care at the foot of the gibbet, and left his head hanging uncovered.” “Let us see, Mr. Chaplain, let us see, straight off!” The Seigneur of La Piroche ran to the square crowded with the curious. The neck of the hanged man had passed again into the running noose, the corpse was there at the end of the rope, and the armor was there on the corpse. It was astounding. So they proclaimed it a miracle. “He has repented,” said one, “and has come to hang himself over again.” “He has been there all the time,” said another; “only we did not see him.” “But why has he got spurs?” asked a third. “No doubt, because he has come from afar and wished to return in a hurry.” “I know well, for my part, that far or near, I would not have needed to put on spurs, for I would not have come back.” And they laughed, and they stared at the ugly face the dead man made. As for the Seigneur of La Piroche, he thought of nothing but of making sure that the thief was quite dead, and of securing his armor. They cut down the corpse and stripped it; then, once despoiled, they hung it up again, and the ravens investigated so thoroughly that at the end of two days it was all jagged, at the end of eight days it had only the appearance of a rag, and at the end of fifteen days it had no longer the appearance of anything at all; or, if it did resemble anything, it was only those impossible hanged men we used to make pictures of on the first page of our text-book, and below which we wrote the amphibious quatrain, half Latin, half French: Aspice Pierrot pendu, Qui nunc librum n’a pas rendu, Si hunc librum reddidisset: Pierrot pendu non-faisset.[13] But what had the hanged man been doing during his month of absence? How did it happen that he escaped, and, having escaped, that he hanged himself again? We will give below the three versions which have been presented to us. A magician, a pupil of Merlin, declared that if at the moment of dying the culprit has had the will to disappear and the ability to absorb his body into his will, the will being an immaterial thing, invisible, and impalpable, the body, which finds itself absorbed by it, and consequently hidden in it, becomes by that means also impalpable, immaterial, and invisible, and that if the body of a thief has reappeared at the end of a month, and at the end of a rope, it is because at that supreme moment his will, troubled by his conscience, has not had sufficient force for eternal absorption. This may not be a good version, but it is one. The theologians affirm that the culprit did succeed in vanishing, but that, pursued by remorse and being in haste to reconcile himself with God, he could not endure the life longer than one month, and, full of repentance, came to execute upon himself that justice which he had escaped the first time. That, perhaps, is not the true version, but it is always Christian logic, and as a Christian we will not dismiss it altogether. Finally, they declared that our two peasants in returning home that evening, and passing close to the gibbet, heard lamentations, a rattling, and something like a prayer; that they piously crossed themselves and demanded what was the matter; that they received no reply, but the lamentations continued, and it seemed to them that they came from the corpse that was above their heads. Then they took the ladder that the hangman had left at the foot of the scaffold, rested it against the arm of the gibbet, and the son, having mounted to the level of the condemned, said to him: “Is it you who are making these complaints, poor man?” The condemned gathered all his strength together and said: “Yes.” “Then you are still alive?” “Yes.” “You repent of your crime?” “Yes.” “Then I will loosen you, and since the Evangelist commands us to give succor to those who suffer, and that you suffer, I am going to succor you and bring you to life in order to bring you to good. God prefers a soul that repents to a corpse that expiates.” Then the father and the son cut down the dying man, and saw how it was that he still lived. The rope, instead of tightening about the neck of the thief, had tightened at the base of the casque so effectually that the culprit was suspended but not strangled, and, occupying with his head a kind of vantage-point in the interior of the casque, he was able to breathe and to keep alive up to the time our two companions passed by. The latter took him down and carried him home with them, where they gave him into the care of the mother and the young daughter. But he who has stolen will steal. There were but two things to steal at the peasant’s, for the money he had brought back with him was not in his house. These two things were his horse and his daughter, a fair-haired girl of sixteen. The ex-hanged decided to steal both the one and the other, for he was covetous of the horse and had fallen in love with the daughter. So one night he saddled the horse, buckled on the spurs to make him ride faster, and went to take the young girl while she was asleep, and lift her up on to the crupper. But the girl awoke and cried out. The father and the son came running up. The thief tried to escape, but he was too late. The young girl told about the attempt of the hanged man; and the father and the son, seeing well that no repentance was to be expected from such a man, resolved to execute justice upon him, but more effectually than the Seigneur of La Piroche had allowed himself to do it. They bound the thief to the horse which he had saddled himself, led him to the square of La Piroche, and strung him up there where he had been hanged, but placed his casque on the ground to make sure that he should not vanish again; then they returned home quietly. There is the third version. I do not know why I believe it to be the most probable, and that you would do well, like me, to give it preference over the other two. As for the Seigneur of La Piroche, as soon as he had secured a real talisman, he went happily off to the wars, where he was the first to be killed.

During my travels in the south of Ireland the following adventure happened to me. One evening in the month of August, after a long walk, I was ascending the mountain which overlooks the village of Cahin, when I suddenly came in sight of a fine old castle. It was built upon a rock, and behind it was a large wood, and before it was a river. Over the river there was a bridge, which formed the approach to the castle. When I arrived at the bridge I stood still awhile to enjoy the prospect around me: far below was the wide sheet of still water in which the reflection of the pale moon was not disturbed by the smallest wave; in the valley was the cluster of cabins which is known by the appellation of Cahin; and beyond these were the mountains of Killala. Over all, the grey robe of twilight was now stealing with silent and scarcely perceptible advances. No sound except the hum of the distant village and the sweet song of the nightingales in the wood behind me broke upon the stillness of the scene. While I was contemplating this beautiful prospect a gentleman, whom I had not before observed, accosted me with ‘Good evening, sir; are you a stranger in these parts?’ I replied that I was. He then asked me where I was going to stop for the night; I answered that I intended to sleep somewhere in the village. ‘I am afraid you will find very bad accommodation there,’ said the gentleman; ‘but if you will take up your quarters with me at the castle, you are welcome.’ I thanked him for his kind offer, and accepted it. When we arrived at the castle I was shown into a large parlour, in which was an old lady sitting in an armchair by the fireside, knitting. On the rug lay a very pretty tortoiseshell cat. As soon as mentioned, the old lady rose; and when Mr. O’Callaghan (for that, I learned, was his name) told her who I was, she said in the most cordial tone that I was welcome, and asked me to sit down. In the course of conversation I learned that she was Mr. O’Callaghan’s mother, and that his father had been dead about a year. We had sat about an hour, when supper was announced, and after supper Mr. O’Callaghan asked me if I should like to retire for the night. I answered in the affirmative, and a little boy was commissioned to show me to my apartment. It was a snug, clean, and comfortable little old-fashioned room at the top of the castle. As soon as we had entered, the boy, who appeared to be a shrewd, good-tempered little fellow, said with a shrug of the shoulder: ‘If it was going to bed I was, it shouldn’t be here that you’d catch me.’ ‘Why?’ said I. ‘Because,’ replied the boy, ‘they say that the ould masther’s ghost has been seen sitting on that there chair.’ ‘And have you seen him?’ ‘No; but I’ve heard him washing his hands in that basin often and often.’ ‘What is your name, my little fellow?’ ‘Dennis Mulready, please, your honour.’ ‘Well, good night to you.’ ‘Good night, masther; and may the saints keep you from all fairies and brownies,’ said Dennis as he left the room. As soon as I had laid down I began to think of what the boy had been telling me, and I confess I felt a strange kind of fear, and once or twice I even thought I could discern something white through the darkness which surrounded me. At length, by the help of reason, I succeeded in mastering these, what some would call idle fancies, and fell asleep. I had slept about an hour when a strange sound awoke me, and I saw looking through my curtains a skeleton wrapped in a white sheet. I was overcome with terror and tried to scream, but my tongue was paralysed and my whole frame shook with fear. In a deep hollow voice it said to me: ‘Arise, that I may show thee this world’s wonders,’ and in an instant I found myself encompassed with clouds and darkness. But soon the roar of mighty waters fell upon my ear, and I saw some clouds of spray arising from high falls that rolled in awful majesty down tremendous precipices, and then foamed and thundered in the gulf beneath as if they had taken up their unquiet abode in some giant’s cauldron. But soon the scene changed, and I found myself in the mines of Cracone. There were high pillars and stately arches, whose glittering splendour was never excelled by the brightest fairy palaces. There were not many lamps; only those of a few poor miners, whose rough visages formed a striking contrast to the dazzling figures and grandeur which surrounded them. But in the midst of all this magnificence I felt an indescribable sense of fear and terror; for the sea raged above us, and by the awful and tumultuous noises of roaring winds and dashing waves it seemed as if the storm was violent. And now the mossy pillars groaned beneath the pressure of the ocean, and the glittering arches seemed about to be overwhelmed. When I heard the rushing waters and saw a mighty flood rolling towards me I gave a loud shriek of terror. The scene vanished and I found myself in a wide desert full of barren rocks and high mountains. As I was approaching one of the rocks, in which there was a large cave, my foot stumbled and I fell. Just then I heard a deep growl, and saw by the unearthly light of his own fiery eyes a royal lion rousing himself from his kingly slumbers. His terrible eye was fixed upon me, and the desert rang and the rocks echoed with the tremendous roar of fierce delight which he uttered as he sprang towards me. ‘Well, masther, it’s been a windy night, though it’s fine now,’ said Dennis, as he drew the window curtain and let the bright rays of the morning sun into the little old-fashioned room at the top of O’Callaghan Castle.

Love Among The Robots By EMMETT McDOWELL - https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/63821/pg63821-images.html

 

I had idly entered the shop of one of those curiosity-venders who, in that Parisian lingo which is so perfectly unintelligible to the rest of France, are called marchands de bric-à-brac. You have doubtless glanced through the windows into one of those shops which have become so numerous since it is the mode to buy antique furniture, and since the pettiest stockbroker thinks he must have his “mediæval room.” There is one thing that clings alike to the shop of the old-iron dealer, the wareroom of the tapestry-maker, the laboratory of the alchemist, and the studio of the artist: in these mysterious dens through whose window-shutters filters a furtive twilight, the thing that is the most manifestly ancient is the dust; there the spider-webs are more authentic than the gimps, and the old pear-wood furniture is younger than the mahogany which arrived yesterday from America. The wareroom of my bric-à-brac dealer was a veritable Capernaum; all centuries and all countries seemed to have rendezvoused there: an Etruscan lamp of red clay stood upon a Boule cabinet whose ebony panels were brilliantly inlaid with filaments of brass; a Louis XV half-lounge carelessly stretched its fawn-like feet under a massive table of the reign of Louis XIII, with heavy oaken spirals, and carvings of intermingled foliage and chimeras. In one corner glittered the striped cuirass of a damascened suit of Milanese armor; bisque cupids and nymphs, grotesques from China, céladon and craquelé vases, Saxon and old Sèvres cups, encumbered what-nots and corners. Upon the fluted shelves of several dressers glittered immense plates from Japan, with designs in red and blue relieved by gilt hatching, side by side with several Bernard Palissy enamels, showing frogs and lizards in relief work. From disembowelled cabinets escaped cascades of Chinese silk lustrous with silver, billows of brocade, sown with luminous specks by a slanting sunbeam, while portraits of every epoch, in frames more or less tarnished, smiled out through their yellow varnish. The dealer followed me with precaution through the tortuous passage contrived between the piles of furniture, fending off with his hand the hazardous swing of my coat-tails, watching my elbows with the uneasy attention of the antiquary and the usurer. It was a singular figure, that of the dealer: an immense cranium, polished like a knee, and surrounded by a meagre aureole of white hair that brought out all the more vividly the clear salmon tint of the skin, gave him a false air of patriarchal simplicity—contradicted, on the other hand, by the sparkling of two little yellow eyes, which trembled in their orbits like two louis d’ors on a surface of quicksilver. The curve of the nose presented an aquiline silhouette which recalled the Oriental or Jewish type. His hands—thin, bony, veined, full of sinews stretched like the strings on the neck of a violin, and armed with talons resembling those which terminate the membranous wings of a bat—shook with a senile movement disquieting to see. But those feverishly nail-bitten hands became firmer than lobster-claws or steel pincers when they lifted some precious piece—an onyx carving, a Venetian cup, or a plate of Bohemian crystal. This old rascal had an aspect so profoundly rabbinical and cabalistic that three centuries ago they would have burned him merely from the evidence of his face. “Will you not buy something from me to-day, Monsieur? Here is a Malay kris with a blade undulating like a flame: see those grooves to serve as gutters for the blood, those teeth fashioned and set inversely so as to rip out the entrails when the dagger is withdrawn. It is a fine type of ferocious weapon, and would look very well among your trophies. This two-handed sword is very beautiful—it is a José de la Hera; and this colichemarde with perforated guard, what a superb piece of work!” “No, I have plenty of arms and instruments of carnage. I want a figurine, something that would do for a paper-weight, for I cannot endure those stock bronzes which the stationers sell, and which may be found on any desk.” The old gnome, foraging among his antiquities, finally arranged before me several antique bronzes—so called, at least; fragments of malachite; little Hindu or Chinese idols, a kind of poussah toys made of jade, showing the incarnation of Brahma or of Vishnu, marvellously well-suited for the sufficiently ungodlike purpose of holding papers and letters in place. I was hesitating between a porcelain dragon all starred with warts, its jaws adorned with tusks and bristling whiskers, and a highly abominable little Mexican fetich, representing the god Vitziliputzili au naturel, when I noticed a charming foot which I at first took for a fragment of an antique Venus. It had those beautiful tawny and ruddy tints which give to Florentine bronze that warm and vivacious look so preferable to the grayish green tone of ordinary bronze, which might be taken for statues in putrefaction. Satiny lights frisked over its form, rounded and polished by the loving kisses of twenty centuries; for it seemed to be a Corinthian bronze, a work of the best era, perhaps a casting by Lysippus! “This foot will be the thing for me,” said I to the merchant, who regarded me with an ironical and saturnine air as he held out the desired object for me to examine at will. I was surprised at its lightness; it was not a foot of metal, but indeed a foot of flesh, an embalmed foot, a foot of a mummy; on examining it still more closely one could see the grain of the skin, and the lines almost imperceptibly impressed upon it by the texture of the bandages. The toes were slender, delicate, terminated by perfect nails, pure and transparent as agates; the great toe, slightly separate, and contrasting happily with the modelling of the other toes, in the antique style, gave it an air of lightness, the grace of a bird’s foot; the sole, scarcely streaked by several almost invisible grooves, showed that it had never touched the earth, and had come in contact with only the finest matting of Nile rushes and the softest carpets of panther skin. “Ha, ha! You wish the foot of the Princess Hermonthis!” exclaimed the merchant, with a strange chuckle, fixing upon me his owlish eyes. “Ha, ha, ha!—for a paper-weight! Original idea! Artistic idea! If any one would have said to old Pharaoh that the foot of his adored daughter would serve for a paper-weight, he would have been greatly surprised, considering that he had had a mountain of granite hollowed out to hold the triple coffin, painted and gilded and all covered with hieroglyphics and beautiful paintings of the Judgment of Souls,” continued the singular little merchant, half aloud, and as though talking to himself. “How much will you charge me for this mummy fragment?” “Ah, the highest price I am able, for it is a superb piece: if I had its counterpart, you could not have it for less than five hundred francs; the daughter of a Pharaoh, nothing is more rare!” “Assuredly it is not common; but still, how much do you want? In the first place, let me tell you something, and that is, my entire treasure consists of only five louis: I can buy anything that costs five louis, but nothing dearer. You might search my innermost waistcoat pockets, and my most secret desk-drawers, without finding even one miserable five-franc piece more.” “Five louis for the foot of the Princess Hermonthis! That is very little, very little, in truth, for an authentic foot,” muttered the merchant, shaking his head and rolling his eyes. “All right, take it, and I will give you the bandages into the bargain,” he added, wrapping it in an ancient damask rag. “Very fine: real damask, Indian damask, which has never been redyed; it is strong, it is soft,” he mumbled, passing his fingers over the frayed tissue, from the commercial habit which moved him to praise an object of so little value that he himself judged it worth only being given away. He poured the gold pieces into a sort of mediæval alms-purse hanging at his belt, as he kept on saying: “The foot of the Princess Hermonthis to serve as a paper-weight!” Then, turning upon me his phosphorescent eyes, he exclaimed in a voice strident as the miauling of a cat that has swallowed a fish-bone: “Old Pharaoh will not be pleased—he loved his daughter, that dear man!” “You speak as if you were his contemporary; old as you are, you do not date back to the Pyramids of Egypt,” I answered laughingly from the shop door. I went home, well content with my acquisition. In order to put it to use as soon as possible, I placed the foot of the divine Princess Hermonthis upon a heap of papers, scribbled over with verses, an undecipherable mosaic work of erasures; articles just begun; letters forgotten and mailed in the table-drawer—an error which often occurs with absent-minded people. The whole effect was charming, bizarre, and romantic. Well satisfied with this embellishment, I went down into the street with the becoming gravity and pride of one who feels that he has the ineffable advantage over all the passers-by whom he elbows, of possessing a fragment of the Princess Hermonthis, daughter of Pharaoh. I looked upon as sovereignly ridiculous all those who did not possess, like myself, a paper-weight so notoriously Egyptian; and it seemed to me that the true occupation of every man of sense was to have a mummy’s foot upon his desk. Happily, my meeting some friends distracted me from my infatuation with the recent acquisition; I went to dinner with them, for it would have been difficult for me to dine by myself. When I came back in the evening, my brain slightly confused by a few glasses of wine, a vague whiff of Oriental perfume delicately tickled my olfactory nerves: the heat of the room had warmed the sodium carbonate, bitumen, and myrrh in which the paraschites, who cut open the bodies of the dead, had bathed the corpse of the princess; it was a perfume both sweet and penetrating, a perfume that four thousand years had not been able to dissipate. The dream of Egypt was Eternity: her odors have the solidity of granite, and endure as long. I soon drank to fulness from the black cup of sleep: for an hour or two all remained opaque. Oblivion and nothingness inundated me with their sombre emptiness. Presently my mental obscurity cleared; dreams commenced to graze me softly in their silent flight. The eyes of my soul were opened, and I beheld my chamber precisely as it was. I might have believed myself to be awake, but a vague perception told me that I slept and that something fantastic was about to take place. The odor of the myrrh had intensely increased, and I felt a slight headache, which—with great reasonableness—I attributed to several glasses of champagne that we had drunk to the unknown gods, and our future success. I peered through my room with a feeling of expectation which nothing actually justified; the furniture was precisely in place; the lamp burned upon its bracket, softly shaded by the milky whiteness of its dull crystal; the water-color sketches shone under their Bohemian glass; the curtains hung languidly: everything had an air slumbrous and tranquil. Presently, however, this calm interior appeared to become troubled: the woodwork cracked furtively, the log enveloped in cinders suddenly emitted a jet of blue flame, and the circular ornaments on the frieze seemed like metallic eyes, watching, like myself, for the things which were about to happen. My gaze by chance fell upon the desk where I had placed the foot of the Princess Hermonthis. Instead of being immobile, as became a foot which had been embalmed for four thousand years, it moved uneasily, contracted itself and leaped over the papers like a frightened frog: one would have imagined it to be in contact with a galvanic battery. I could quite distinctly hear the dry sound made by its little heel, hard as the hoof of a gazelle. I became somewhat discontented with my acquisition, preferring my paper-weights to be sedentary, and thought it a little unnatural that feet should walk about without legs; indeed, I commenced to feel something which strongly resembled fear. Suddenly I saw the folds of one of my bed-curtains stir, and I heard a bumping sound, like that of a person hopping on one foot. I must confess I became alternately hot and cold, that I felt a strange wind blow across my back, and that my suddenly rising hair caused my nightcap to execute a leap of several yards. The bed-curtains parted, and I beheld coming towards me the strangest figure it is possible to imagine. It was a young girl, of a deep café-au-lait complexion, like the bayadere[1] Amani, of a perfect beauty, and recalling the purest Egyptian type. She had almond eyes with the corners raised, and brows so black that they seemed blue; her nose was delicately chiselled, almost Grecian in its fineness of outline, and indeed she might have been taken for a statue of Corinthian bronze had not the prominence of the cheekbones and the slightly African lips made it impossible not to recognize her as belonging beyond doubt to the hieroglyphic race of the banks of the Nile. Her arms, slender and turned with the symmetry of a spindle—like those of very young girls—were encircled by a kind of metal bands and bracelets of glass beads; her hair was plaited in cords; and upon her bosom was suspended a little idol of green paste, which, from its bearing a whip with seven lashes, enabled one to recognize it as an image of Isis, conductress of spirits. A disk of gold scintillated upon her brow, and a few traces of rouge relieved the coppery tint of her cheeks. As for her costume, it was very strange. Imagine an under-wrapping of linen strips, bedizened with black and red hieroglyphics, stiffened with bitumen, and apparently belonging to a freshly unbandaged mummy. In one of those flights of thought so frequent in dreams, I heard the rough falsetto of the bric-à-brac dealer, which repeated like a monotonous refrain the phrase he had uttered in his shop with an intonation so enigmatical: “Old Pharaoh will not be pleased—he loved his daughter, that dear man!” Strange circumstance—and one which scarcely reassured me—the apparition had but one foot; the other was broken off at the ankle! She approached the desk where the foot was moving and wriggling with redoubled liveliness. Once there, she supported herself upon the edge, and I saw tears form and grow pearly in her eyes. Although she had not as yet spoken, I clearly discerned her thoughts: she looked at her foot—for it was indeed her own—with an infinitely graceful expression of coquettish sadness; but the foot leaped and coursed hither and yon, as though driven by steel springs. Two or three times she extended her hand to seize it, but she did not succeed. Then commenced between the Princess Hermonthis and her foot—which appeared to be endowed with a life of its own—a very fantastic dialogue in a most ancient Coptic dialect, such as might have been spoken some thirty centuries ago by voices of the land of Ser: luckily, that night I understood Coptic to perfection. The Princess Hermonthis cried, in a voice sweet and vibrant as a crystal bell: “Well, my dear little foot, you flee from me always, though I have taken good care of you. I bathed you with perfumed water in a basin of alabaster; I smoothed your heel with pumice-stone mixed with oil of palms; your nails were cut with golden scissors and polished with a hippopotamus tooth; I was careful to select sandals for you, broidered and painted and turned up at the toes, which made all the young girls in Egypt envious; you wore on your great toe rings representing the sacred Scarabæus, and you carried about the lightest body it was possible for a lazy foot to sustain.” The foot replied, in a tone pouting and chagrined: “You well know that I do not belong to myself any longer. I have been bought and paid for. The old merchant knew perfectly what he was doing; he always bore you a grudge for having refused to espouse him: this is an ill turn which he has done you. The Arab who robbed your royal sarcophagus in the subterranean pits of the necropolis of Thebes was sent by him: he desired to prevent you from going to the reunion of the shadowy peoples in the cities below. Have you five pieces of gold for my ransom?” “Alas, no! My jewels, my rings, my purses of gold and silver, were all stolen from me,” answered the Princess Hermonthis, with a sigh. “Princess,” I then exclaimed, “I never retained anybody’s foot unjustly; even though you have not got the five louis which it cost me, I give it to you gladly: I should be in despair to make so amiable a person as the Princess Hermonthis lame.” I delivered this discourse in a tone so royal and gallant that it must have astonished the beautiful Egyptian. She turned toward me a look charged with gratitude, and her eyes shone with bluish gleams. She took her foot—which, this time, let itself be taken—like a woman about to put on her little shoe, and adjusted it to her leg with much address. This operation ended, she took two or three steps about the room, as if to assure herself that she really was no longer lame. “Ah, how happy my father will be—he who was so desolated because of my mutilation, and who had, from the day of my birth, put a whole people at work to hollow out for me a tomb so deep that he would be able to preserve me intact until that supreme day when souls must be weighed in the balances of Amenthi! Come with me to my father—he will receive you well, for you have given me back my foot.” I found this proposition natural enough. I enveloped myself in a dressing-gown of large flowered pattern, which gave me a very Pharaohesque appearance, hurriedly put on a pair of Turkish slippers, and told the Princess Hermonthis that I was ready to follow her. Hermonthis, before starting, took from her neck the tiny figurine of green paste and laid it on the scattered sheets of paper which covered the table. “It is only fair,” she said smilingly, “that I should replace your paper-weight.” She gave me her hand, which was soft and cold, like the skin of a serpent, and we departed. For some time we spun with the rapidity of an arrow through a fluid and grayish medium, in which faintly outlined silhouettes were passing to right and left. For an instant, we saw only sea and sky. Some moments afterward, obelisks commenced to rise, porches and flights of steps guarded by sphinxes were outlined against the horizon. We had arrived. The princess conducted me toward the mountain of rosy granite, where we found an opening so narrow and low that it would have been difficult to distinguish it from the fissures in the rock, if two sculptured columns had not enabled us to recognize it. Hermonthis lighted a torch and walked before me. There were corridors hewn through the living rock; the walls, covered with hieroglyphic paintings and allegorical processions, might well have occupied thousands of arms for thousands of years; these corridors, of an interminable length, ended in square chambers, in the midst of which pits had been contrived, through which we descended by means of cramp-hooks or spiral stairways; these pits conducted us into other chambers, from which other corridors opened, equally decorated with painted sparrow-hawks, serpents coiled in circles, and those mystic symbols, the tau, the pedum, and the bari—prodigious works which no living eye would ever examine, endless legends in granite which only the dead have time to read throughout eternity. At last we issued into a hall so vast, so enormous, so immeasurable, that the eye could not perceive its confines. Flooding the sight were files of monstrous columns between which twinkled livid stars of yellow flame, and these points of light revealed further incalculable depths. The Princess Hermonthis always held me by the hand, and graciously saluted the mummies of her acquaintance. My eyes accustomed themselves to the crepuscular light, and objects became discernible. I beheld, seated upon their thrones, the kings of the subterranean races: they were magnificent, dry old men, withered, wrinkled, parchmented, blackened with naphtha and bitumen—all wearing golden headdresses, breast-plates, and gorgets starry with precious stones, eyes of a sphinx-like fixity, and long beards whitened by the snows of the centuries. Behind them, their embalmed people stood, in the rigid and constrained pose of Egyptian art, preserving eternally the attitude prescribed by the hieratic code. Behind these peoples, contemporary cats mewed, ibises flapped their wings, and crocodiles grinned, all rendered still more monstrous by their swathing bands. All the Pharaohs were there—Cheops, Chephrenes, Psammetichus, Sesostris, Amenotaph—all the dark rulers of the pyramids and the nymphs. On the yet higher thrones sat King Chronos, Xixouthros, who was contemporary with the deluge, and Tubal Cain, who preceded it. The beard of King Xixouthros had grown so full that it already wound seven times around the granite table upon which he leaned, lost in a somnolent revery. Further back, through a dusty cloud across the dim centuries, I beheld vaguely the seventy-two preadamite Kings, with their seventy-two peoples, forever passed away. After allowing me to gaze upon this astounding spectacle a few moments, the Princess Hermonthis presented me to Pharaoh, her father, who vouchsafed me a majestic nod. “I have recovered my foot again! I have recovered my foot!” cried the Princess, as she clapped her little hands one against the other with all the signs of playful joy. “Here is the gentleman who restored it to me.” The races of Kemi, the races of Nahasi, all the black, bronze, and copper-colored nations, repeated in chorus: “The Princess Hermonthis has recovered her foot!” Even Xixouthros was visibly affected: he raised his dull eyelids, passed his fingers over his mustache, and bent upon me his look weighty with centuries. “By Oms, the dog of Hell, and by Tmei, daughter of the Sun and of Truth, there is a brave and worthy fellow!” exclaimed Pharaoh, extending toward me his sceptre, terminated with a lotus-flower. “What do you desire for recompense?” Strong in that audacity which is inspired by dreams, where nothing seems impossible, I asked the hand of Hermonthis: the hand seemed to me a very proper antithetic recompense for such a good foot. Pharaoh opened wide his eyes of glass, astonished by my pleasantry and my request. “From what country do you come, and what is your age?” “I am a Frenchman, and I am twenty-seven years old, venerable Pharaoh.” “Twenty-seven years old—and he wishes to espouse the Princess Hermonthis, who is thirty centuries old!” exclaimed at once all the thrones and all the circles of nations. Hermonthis alone did not seem to find my request unreasonable. “If only you were even two thousand years old,” replied the ancient King, “I would quite willingly give you the Princess; but the disproportion is too great; and, besides, we must give our daughters husbands who are durable—you no longer know how to preserve yourselves: the oldest people that you can produce are scarcely fifteen hundred years old, and they are no more than a pinch of dust. See here—my flesh is hard as basalt, my bones are bars of steel! “I shall be present on the last day of the world with the body and the features which were mine in life; my daughter Hermonthis will endure longer than a statue of bronze. “Then the winds will have dispersed the last particles of your dust, and Isis herself, who was able to recover the atoms of Osiris, would be embarrassed to recompose your being. “See how vigorous I still am, and how well my hands can grip,” he said to me as he shook my hand à l’Anglaise, in a manner that cut my fingers with my rings. He squeezed me so hard that I awoke, and found it was my friend Alfred who was shaking me by the arm to make me get up. “Ah, you maddening sleepyhead! Must I have you carried out into the middle of the street, and fireworks exploded in your ears? It’s afternoon; don’t you remember that you promised to take me with you to see M. Aguado’s Spanish pictures?” “Mon Dieu! I didn’t remember it any more!” I answered as I dressed myself. “We will go there at once; I have the permit here on my desk.” I went forward to take it; but judge of my astonishment when instead of the mummy’s foot I had purchased the evening before, I saw the tiny figurine of green paste left in its place by the Princess Hermonthis!

Subversive "Subversive" is, in essence, a negative term—it means simply "against the existent system." It doesn't mean subversives all agree ... by Mack Reynolds - https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/23197/pg23197-images.html

 Nor is even that the nadir of this socio-economic hodge-podge we've allowed to develop, this economy of production for sale, rather than production for use." He stabbed with his finger. "I think one of the best examples of what was to come was to be witnessed way back at the end of the Second War. The idea of the ball-bearing pen was in the air. The first one to hurry into production gave his pen a tremendous build-up. It had ink enough to last three years, it would make many carbon copies, you could use it under water. And so on and so forth. It cost fifteen dollars, and there was only one difficulty with it. It wouldn't write. Not that that made any difference because it sold like hotcakes what with all the promotion. He wasn't interested in whether or not it would write, but only in whether or not it would sell." Moncure threw up his hands dramatically. "I ask you, can such an economic system be taken seriously?

On the twenty-second of January, 1793, about eight o’clock in the evening, an old lady was walking down the steep hill that ends in front of the church of Saint Laurent, in the Faubourg Saint Martin in Paris. It had snowed so much throughout the day that foot-falls could scarcely be heard. The streets were deserted. The very natural dread inspired by the silence was augmented by all the terror which at that time caused France to groan; then, too, the old lady had not as yet met any one; her sight had long been feeble, so for this and for other reasons she could not discern by the lights of the lanterns the few distant passers-by, who were scattered like phantoms on the broad highway of the quarter. She went on courageously alone through that solitude, as though her age were a talisman which would preserve her from all evil. When she had passed the rue des Morts, she thought she could distinguish the heavy and resolute steps of a man walking behind her. She fancied that she had heard that sound before; she was frightened at having been followed, and tried to walk more rapidly in order to reach a brightly lighted shop, hoping to be able in the light to settle the suspicions that had seized her. As soon as she found herself within the direct rays of light which came from the shop, she quickly turned her head and glimpsed a human form in the haze; that indistinct vision sufficed. She faltered a moment under the weight of the terror which oppressed her, for she doubted no longer that she had been followed by the stranger from the first step that she had taken outside of her home, but the desire to escape from a spy lent her strength. Incapable of reasoning, she doubled her pace, as though she could escape from a man who was, necessarily, more agile than she. After running for several minutes she reached the shop of a pastry-cook, rushed in, and tumbled rather than sat down upon a chair in front of the counter. The moment she rattled the door-latch, a young woman who was occupied in embroidering raised her eyes, recognized through the glass partition the old-fashioned mantle of violet silk in which the old lady was enveloped, and hastened to open a drawer, as though to take out something which she intended to give her. Not only did the young woman’s movement and expression indicate a wish to be rid promptly of the unknown, as if she were one of those persons whom one is not glad to see, but she even allowed an expression of impatience to escape her upon finding that the drawer was empty; then, without looking at the lady, she rushed from the counter, turned toward the back shop, and called her husband, who appeared immediately. “Now, where did you put—,” she demanded of him, with a mysterious air, and designated the old lady by a turn of the eye, without finishing her sentence. Although the pastry-cook could see only the immense black silk bonnet, surrounded by knots of violet ribbons, which formed the head-dress of the unknown, he turned away, after having given his wife a look which seemed to say, “Did you suppose that I would leave that on your counter?” and quickly disappeared. Astounded by the old lady’s silence and immobility, the tradeswoman walked toward her, and as she examined her she was conscious of a feeling of compassion, and perhaps also of curiosity. Although the stranger’s complexion was naturally pallid, like that of a person vowed to secret austerities, it was easy to recognize that some recent emotion had given her an extraordinary pallor. Her head-dress was so disposed as to hide her hair—doubtless whitened by age, since the neatness of the collar of her dress proclaimed that she did not use hair-powder. That article of adornment lent to her figure a sort of religious severity. Her features were grave and dignified. Formerly the manners and the habitudes of people of quality were so different from those of people belonging to the other classes that one easily divined a person of the nobility. So the young woman was herself persuaded that the unknown was a member of the outlawed nobility, and that she had belonged to the court. “Madame—” she said to her, involuntarily, and with respect, forgetting that this title was proscribed. The old lady did not respond. She held her eyes fixed upon the window of the shop, as if some terrifying object had there been descried. “What is the matter, Citizeness?” asked the proprietor of the shop who reappeared at that moment. The citizen pastry-cook aroused the lady from her revery by handing to her a little pasteboard box, covered with blue paper. “Nothing, nothing, my friends,” she replied in a mild voice. She raised her eyes to the pastry-cook as though to cast upon him a glance of gratitude; but upon seeing him with a red bonnet upon his head, she allowed a cry to escape her: “Ah! you have betrayed me!” The young woman and her husband replied by a gesture of horror which caused the Unknown to blush—perhaps for having suspicion, perhaps from pleasure. “Excuse me,” she said, with a childlike gentleness. Then, taking a louis d’or from her pocket, she presented it to the pastry-cook. “Here is the price agreed upon,” she added. There is an indigence which the poor know how to divine. The pastry-cook and his wife looked at each other and watched the old lady, while they exchanged the same thought. That louis d’or seemed to be the last. The hands of the lady trembled in offering that piece, which she looked upon with sadness and without avarice, for she seemed to realize the full extent of the sacrifice. Fasting and misery were graven upon that face in lines quite as legible as those of fear and her habits of asceticism. There were in her garments some vestiges of magnificence: the silk was threadbare, the cloak neat though old-fashioned, the lace carefully mended—in short, the tatters of opulence! The tradespeople, placed between pity and self-interest, commenced to solace their consciences by words: “But Citizeness, you seem very feeble—” “Perhaps Madame would like to take some refreshment?” asked the woman, cutting the words of her husband short. “We are not so black as we are painted!” cried the pastry-cook. “It’s so cold! Madame was perhaps chilled by her walk? But you may rest here and warm yourself a little.” Won by the tone of benevolence which animated the words of the charitable shopkeepers, the lady avowed that she had been followed by a stranger, and that she was afraid to return home alone. “It is no more than that?” replied the man with the red hat. “Wait for me, Citizeness.” He gave the louis to his wife; then, moved by that species of restitution which glides into the conscience of a merchant when he has received an exorbitant price for merchandise of mediocre value, he went to put on his uniform of the National Guard, took his chapeau, thrust his sabre into his belt, and reappeared under arms; but his wife had had time to reflect. As in many other hearts, reflection closed the hand opened by beneficence. Disturbed, and fearing to see her husband in a bad affair, the pastry-cook’s wife essayed to stop him by tugging at the skirt of his coat. But, obedient to a sentiment of charity, the brave man offered to escort the old lady at once. “It seems that the man who frightened the Citizeness is still prowling about the shop,” said the young woman nervously. “I am afraid so,” artlessly replied the lady. “If he should be a spy! If it should be a conspiracy! Don’t go; and take back from her the box.” These words, breathed into the ear of the pastry-cook by his wife, froze the impromptu courage which had possessed him. “Eh’ I’ll just go out and say two words to him, and rid you of him quickly,” cried the pastry-cook, opening the door and rushing out. The old lady, passive as an infant, and almost dazed, reseated herself upon the chair. The honest merchant was not slow in reappearing; his face, naturally red, and still more flushed by the heat of his oven, had suddenly become livid; such a great fright agitated him that his legs trembled and his eyes looked like those of a drunken man. “Do you wish to have our heads cut off, miserable aristocrat?” he shrieked at her with fury. “Just show us your heels, never come back here again, and don’t count any more on me to furnish you the stuff for conspiracy.” As he ejaculated these words, the pastry-cook tried to take from the old lady the little box which she had put in one of her pockets. But scarcely had the bold hands of the pastry-cook touched her vestments than the Unknown, preferring to face the dangers of her way home without other defense than God, rather than to lose that which she had come to purchase, recovered the agility of her youth; she darted toward the door, opened it abruptly, and disappeared before the eyes of the stupefied and trembling woman and her husband. As soon as the Unknown found herself outside, she began walking rapidly; but her strength soon failed her, for she heard the spy by whom she was pitilessly followed make the snow craunch under the pressure of his heavy steps. She was obliged to stop—he stopped. She dared neither to speak to him nor to look at him, whether on account of the fear with which she was seized or from lack of intelligence. She continued her way, walking slowly; thereupon the man slackened his steps so as to remain standing at a distance which permitted him to keep his eye upon her. He seemed to be the very shadow of that old woman. Nine o’clock was striking when the silent couple repassed in front of the church of Saint Laurent. It is in the nature of all souls, even the most infirm, that a feeling of calm should succeed one of violent agitation, for if our feelings are infinite, our organs are limited. And so the Unknown, not experiencing any harm from her supposed persecutor, chose to see in him a secret friend, eager to protect her. She reconstructed all the circumstances which had accompanied the Stranger’s appearances, as if to find plausible arguments for that consoling opinion, and she then took pleasure in recognizing in him good rather than evil intentions. Forgetting the fright which that man had inspired in the pastry-cook, she advanced with a firm step into the higher regions of the Faubourg Saint-Martin. After a half-hour of walking, she reached a house situated near the junction formed by the main street of the Faubourg and that which leads to the Barrière de Pantin. Even to-day that spot is one of the most deserted of all Paris. The north wind, passing over the Buttes Chaumont and from Bellville, whistles athwart the houses, or rather the hovels, scattered about in that almost uninhabited valley where the dividing lines are walls made of earth and bones. That desolate place seemed to be the natural asylum of misery and despair. The man who had persisted in the pursuit of the poor creature who had the hardihood to traverse those silent streets at night seemed impressed by the spectacle presented to his eyes. He rested pensively, standing and in an attitude of hesitation, in the feeble light of a lantern whose uncertain rays with difficulty pierced the mist. Fear gave eyes to the old woman, who fancied that she could perceive something sinister in the features of the Stranger. She felt her terrors reawake, and profited by the sort of uncertainty which had retarded the man’s advance to glide in the darkness toward the door of the lonely house. She pressed a spring, and disappeared like a ghost. The Stranger, immobile, contemplated that house, which stood in some sort as the type of the miserable habitations of the quarter. That rickety hovel, built of rubble, was covered by a coat of yellow plaster, so deeply cracked that one thought to see it tumble before the least effort of the wind. The roof, of brown tiles and covered with moss, had so sunk in several places as to make it seem likely to give way under the weight of the snow. Each floor there had three windows, whose sashes, rotted by dampness and disjointed by the action of the sun, announced that the cold must penetrate into the room. That isolated house resembled an old tower which time had forgotten to destroy. A feeble light shone through the windows which irregularly cleft the mansard roof by which the poor edifice was crowned, while all the rest of the house was in complete obscurity. The old woman climbed, not without difficulty, the steep and rough staircase, whose length was supplied with a rope in the guise of a baluster. She knocked mysteriously at the door of the apartment which she found in the attic, and dropped hastily upon a chair which an old man offered her. “Hide! hide yourself!” she said to him. “Although we go out very rarely, our movements are known, our footsteps are spied upon.” “What is there new in that?” demanded another old lady, seated beside the fire. “The man who has been prowling around the house since yesterday followed me to-night.” At these words the three occupants of the attic regarded one another, allowing signs of profound terror to appear on their faces. The old man was the least agitated of the three, perhaps because he was in the greatest danger. Under the weight of a great calamity, or under the yoke of persecution, a courageous man begins, so to say, by making the sacrifice of himself; he looks upon his days as just so many victories won back from destiny. The looks of the two women, fastened upon this old man, made it easy to divine that he was the sole object of their intense solicitude. “Why despair of God, my sisters?” said he in a voice low but impressive. “We sang His praises amid the cries which the assassins raised, and the groans of the dying at the Carmelite convent. If He decreed that I should be saved from that butchery, it was doubtless in order to reserve me for a destiny which I must accept without murmuring. God protects his own, He may dispose of them at His pleasure. It is of you, and not of me, that we must think.” “No,” said one of the old ladies; “what are our lives in comparison with that of a priest?” “When once I found myself outside of the Abbey of Chelles, I considered myself as dead,” said that one of the two nuns who had not gone out. “Here,” replied the one who had come in, handing the priest the little box, “here are the wafers.... But,” she cried, “I hear some one mounting the stairs!” All three thereupon listened intently. The sounds ceased. “Do not be affrighted,” said the priest, “if some one should essay to enter. A person upon whose fidelity we can count has undoubtedly taken all needful measures to pass the frontier, and will come to seek the letters which I have written to the Duc de Langeais and to the Marquis de Beauséant, asking them to consider the means of rescuing you from this terrible country, from the death or the misery which awaits you here.” “You do not mean to go with us, then?” cried the two nuns gently, manifesting a sort of despair. “My place is where there are victims,” said the priest with simplicity. They remained silent, and gazed at their companion with devout admiration. “Sister Martha,” he said, addressing the nun who had gone to get the wafers, “that messenger I speak of will reply ‘Fiat voluntas’ to the word ‘Hosanna.’” “There is some one on the stairs!” cried the other nun, opening the door of a hiding-place under the roof. This time they could easily hear, amid the most profound silence, the footsteps of a man resounding upon the stairs, whose treads were covered with ridges made by the hardened mud. The priest crept with difficulty into a species of cupboard, and the nun threw over him some garments. “You may close the door, Sister Agatha,” said he in a muffled voice. The priest was scarcely hidden before three taps on the door gave a shock to the two saintly women, who consulted each other with their eyes, without daring to pronounce a single word. They each seemed to be about sixty years old. Separated from the world for forty years, they were like plants habituated to the air of a hothouse, which wilt if they are taken from it. Accustomed to the life of a convent, they were no longer able to conceive of any other. One morning, their grating having been shattered, they shuddered to find themselves free. One can easily imagine the species of artificial imbecility which the events of the Revolution had produced in their innocent hearts. Incapable of reconciling their conventual ideas with the difficulties of life, and not even comprehending their situation, they resembled those children who have been zealously cared for hitherto, and who, abandoned by their motherly protector, pray instead of weeping. And so, in face of the danger which they apprehended at that moment, they remained mute and passive, having no conception of any other defense than Christian resignation. The man who desired to enter interpreted that silence in his own manner. He opened the door and appeared suddenly before them. The two nuns shuddered as they recognized the man who for some time had been prowling about their house and making inquiries about them. They remained stock-still, but gazed at him with anxious curiosity, after the manner of savage children, who examine strangers in silence. The man was tall and large; but nothing in his demeanor, in his air, nor in his physiognomy indicated an evil man. He imitated the immobility of the nuns, and moved his eyes slowly about the room in which he found himself. Two straw mats, laid upon boards, served the two nuns as beds. A single table was in the middle of the room and upon it they had placed a copper candlestick, a few plates, three knives, and a round loaf of bread. The fire on the hearth was meagre. A few sticks of wood piled in a corner attested the poverty of the two recluses. The walls, coated with an ancient layer of paint, proved the bad state of the roof, for stains like brown threads marked the infiltrations of the rainwater. A relic, rescued doubtless from the pillage of the Abbey of Chelles, adorned the chimney mantel. Three chairs, two coffers, and a wretched chest of drawers completed the furniture of the room. A door beside the chimney allowed one to conjecture the existence of a second chamber. The inventory of the cell was speedily made by the person who had thrust himself under such alarming auspices into the midst of that group. A sentiment of commiseration painted itself upon his face, and he cast a benevolent glance upon the two women, at least as embarrassed as they. The singular silence preserved by all three lasted but a short time, for the Stranger at last divined the moral simplicity and the inexperience of the two poor creatures, and he said to them in a voice which he tried to soften: “I do not come here as an enemy, Citizenesses.” He paused, and then resumed: “My sisters, if there should come to you any misfortune, believe that I have not contributed to it.... I have a favor to ask of you.” They still maintained their silence. “If I seem importunate, if ... I embarrass you, tell me so freely.... I will go; but understand that I am entirely devoted to you; that if there is any good office that I am able to render you, you may employ me without fear; and that I alone, perhaps, am above the law, since there is no longer a king.” There was such an accent of truth in these words that Sister Agatha, the one of the two nuns who belonged to the family of Langeais, and whose manners seemed to say that she had formerly known the magnificence of fêtes and had breathed the air of the court, instantly pointed to one of the chairs, as if to ask their guest to be seated. The Stranger manifested a sort of joy mingled with sadness as he recognized that gesture; and he waited until the two venerable women were seated, before seating himself. “You have given shelter,” he continued, “to a venerable unsworn priest, who has miraculously escaped the massacre at the Carmelites.” “Hosanna!” said Sister Agatha, interrupting the Stranger, and gazing at him with anxious inquiry. “I don’t think that is his name,” he replied. “But, monsieur,” said Sister Martha hastily, “we haven’t any priest here, and——” “In that case, you must be more careful and more prudent,” retorted the Stranger gently, reaching to the table and taking up a breviary. “I do not believe that you understand Latin, and——” He did not continue, for the extraordinary emotion depicted on the faces of the two poor nuns made him feel that he had gone too far; they were trembling, and their eyes were filled with tears. “Reassure yourselves,” he said to them in a cheery voice; “I know the name of your guest, and yours; and three days ago I was informed of your destination and of your devotion to the venerable Abbé of——” “Chut!” said Sister Agatha naïvely, putting her finger to her lips. “You see, my sisters, that if I had formed the horrible design of betraying you, I might already have accomplished it more than once.” When he heard these words, the priest emerged from his prison and reappeared in the middle of the room. “I cannot believe, monsieur,” he said to the Stranger, “that you can be one of our persecutors, and I have faith in you. What do you want of me?” The saintlike confidence of the priest, the nobility that shone in all his features, would have disarmed assassins. The mysterious personage who had enlivened that scene of misery and resignation gazed for a moment at the group formed by these three; then he assumed a confidential tone, and addressed the priest in these words: “Father, I have come to implore you to celebrate a mortuary mass for the repose of the soul of a—a consecrated person, whose body, however, will never repose in holy ground.” The priest involuntarily shuddered. The two nuns, not understanding as yet of whom the Stranger was speaking, stood with necks outstretched, and faces turned towards the two speakers in an attitude of curiosity. The ecclesiastic scrutinized the Stranger; unfeigned anxiety was depicted upon his face, and his eyes expressed the most ardent supplication. “Very well,” replied the priest; “to-night, at midnight, return, and I shall be ready to celebrate the only funeral service which we can offer in expiation of the crime of which you speak.” The Stranger started; but a satisfaction, at once gentle and solemn, seemed to triumph over some secret grief. After having respectfully saluted the priest and the two holy women, he disappeared, manifesting a sort of mute gratitude which was comprehended by those three noble hearts. About two hours after this scene the Stranger returned, knocked discreetly at the attic door, and was admitted by Mademoiselle de Beauséant, who conducted him into the second room of that modest retreat, where everything had been prepared for the ceremony. Between the flues of the chimney the two nuns had carried the old chest of drawers, whose decrepit outlines were concealed beneath a magnificent altar-cloth of green moiré silk. A large crucifix of ebony and ivory was fastened upon the yellow wall, which served to emphasize its nakedness, and irresistibly drew the eye. Four little fluttering wax-tapers, which the sisters had succeeded in fixing upon that improvised altar by means of sealing wax, threw a light pale and sickly, which was reflected by the wall. That feeble glow scarcely illuminated the rest of the room, but by shedding its glory only over those holy things upon that unadorned altar, it seemed a ray from the torch of heaven. The floor was damp. The roof, which on two sides declined abruptly, as in a loft, had several cracks, through which passed an icy wind. Nothing displayed less pomp, and yet perhaps nothing could have been more solemn than that sad ceremony. A profound silence that would have permitted them to hear the faintest sound on distant thoroughfares diffused a sort of sombre majesty over that nocturnal scene. In short, the grandeur of the occasion contrasted so strongly with the poverty of the surroundings that the result was a sentiment of religious awe. On either side of the altar, the two old nuns, kneeling on the damp floor, heedless of the deadly moisture, prayed in concert with the priest, who, clad in his pontifical vestments, prepared a golden chalice ornamented with precious stones, a consecrated vessel rescued doubtless from the pillage of the Abbey of Chelles. Beside that pyx, a monument of royal magnificence, were the water and wine destined for the sacrament, contained in two glasses scarcely worthy of the lowest tavern. In default of a missal, the priest had placed his breviary on a corner of the altar. A common plate was provided for the washing of those innocent hands, pure of bloodshed. All was majestic, and yet paltry; poor, but noble; profane and holy at the same time. The Stranger knelt piously between the two nuns. But suddenly, when he noticed a band of crape on the chalice and on the crucifix—for, having nothing to indicate the purpose of that mortuary mass, the priest had draped God Himself in mourning—he was assailed by such an overpowering memory that drops of sweat gathered upon his broad forehead. The four silent actors in that scene gazed at one another mysteriously; then their hearts, acting upon one another, communicated their sentiments to one another and flowed together into a single religious commiseration; it was as if their thoughts had evoked the martyr whose remains had been devoured by quicklime, and whose shade stood before them in all its royal majesty. They celebrated an obit without the body of the deceased. Beneath those disjointed tiles and laths, four Christians had come to intercede before God for a king of France, and perform his obsequies without a bier. It was the purest of all possible devotions, an astounding act of fidelity, accomplished without a selfish thought. Doubtless, in the eyes of God, it was like the cup of cold water which balances the greatest virtues. The whole of monarchy was there, in the prayers of a priest and of two poor women; but perhaps also the Revolution was represented, by that man whose face betrayed too much remorse not to cause a belief that he was fulfilling the vows of an immense repentance. In lieu of pronouncing the Latin words, “Introibo ad altare Dei,” etc., the priest, by a divine inspiration, looked at the three assistants who represented Christian France, and said to them, in order to efface the poverty of that wretched place: “We are about to enter into the sanctuary of God!” At these words, uttered with an impressive unction, a holy awe seized the assistant and the two nuns. Beneath the arches of St. Peter’s at Rome God could not have appeared with more majesty than He then appeared in that asylum of poverty, before the eyes of those Christians; so true is it that between man and Him every intermediary seems useless, and that He derives His grandeur from Himself alone. The fervor of the Stranger was genuine, and so the sentiment which united the prayers of those four servitors of God and the king was unanimous. The sacred words rang out like celestial music amid the silence. There was a moment when tears choked the Stranger; it was during the paternoster. The priest added to it this Latin prayer, which was evidently understood by the Stranger: “Et remitte scelus regicidis sicut Ludovicus eis remisit semetipse! (And pardon the guilt of the regicides even as Louis himself forgave them!)” The two nuns saw two great tears leave a humid trace adown the manly cheeks of the Stranger, and fall upon the floor. The Office for the Dead was recited. The Domine salvum fac regem, chanted in a deep voice, touched the hearts of those faithful royalists, who reflected that the infant king, for whom at that moment they were supplicating the Most High, was a prisoner in the hands of his enemies. The Stranger shuddered at the thought that there might yet be committed a new crime, in which he would doubtless be forced to participate. When the funeral service was terminated, the priest made a sign to the two nuns, who retired. As soon as he found himself alone with the Stranger, he walked towards him with a mild and melancholy expression, and said to him in a paternal voice: “My son, if you have dipped your hands in the blood of the martyr king, confess yourself to me. There is no sin which, in the eyes of God, may not be effaced by repentance as touching and sincere as yours seems to be.” At the first words pronounced by the ecclesiastic, the Stranger allowed an involuntary movement of terror to escape him; but he resumed a calm countenance, and regarded the astonished priest with assurance. “Father,” he said to him in a perceptibly altered voice, “no one is more innocent than I of bloodshed.” “I am bound to believe you,” said the priest. There was a pause, during which he examined his penitent more closely; then, persisting in taking him for one of those timid members of the Convention who sacrificed an inviolable and consecrated head in order to preserve their own, he continued in a solemn voice: “Remember, my son, that it is not enough, in order to be absolved from that great crime, not to have actually taken part in it. Those who, when they might have defended the king, left their swords in the scabbard, will have a very heavy account to render before the King of the Heavens.... Ah, yes!” added the old priest, shaking his head with an expressive movement, “yes, very heavy; for, by remaining idle, they became the involuntary accomplices of that hideous crime.” “Do you think,” demanded the stupefied Stranger, “that an indirect participation will be punished?... The soldier who is ordered to join the shooting-squad, is he also culpable?” The priest hesitated. Pleased with the dilemma in which he had placed that puritan of royalty by planting him between the dogma of passive obedience, which, according to the partisans of monarchy, dominates the military codes, and the no less important dogma which consecrates the respect due to the persons of kings, the Stranger was ready to see in the hesitation of the priest a favorable solution of the doubts by which he seemed to be tormented. Then, in order not to allow the venerable Jansenist any more time to reflect, he said to him: “I should blush to offer you any sort of compensation for the funeral service which you have celebrated for the repose of the king’s soul and for the relief of my conscience. One cannot pay for an inestimable thing except by an offering which is also priceless. Deign, then, monsieur, to accept the gift of a blessed relic which I offer you. A day will come, perhaps, when you will understand its value.” As he said these words, the Stranger handed the ecclesiastic a small box of light weight; the priest took it involuntarily, so to speak, for the solemnity of the man’s words, the tone in which he said them, and the respect with which he handled the box, had plunged him into a profound surprise. They then returned to the room where the two nuns were awaiting them. “You are,” said the Stranger, “in a house whose owner, Mucius Scaevola, the plasterer who occupies the first floor, is celebrated throughout the section for his patriotism; but he is secretly attached to the Bourbons. He used to be a huntsman of Monseigneur the Prince of Conti, and to him he owes his fortune. If you do not go out of his house, you are in greater safety here than in any place else in France. Stay here. Devout hearts will attend to your necessities, and you may await without danger less evil times. A year hence, on the twenty-first of January”—(in uttering these words he could not conceal an involuntary movement)—“if you continue to adopt this dismal place of asylum, I will return to celebrate with you the expiatory mass.” He said no more. He bowed to the silent occupants of the attic, cast a last glance upon the evidences which testified of their indigence, and went away. To the two innocent nuns, such an adventure had all the interest of a romance; and so, as soon as the venerable abbé informed them of the mysterious gift so solemnly bestowed upon him by that man, the box was placed upon the table and the three faces, unquiet, dimly lighted by the candle, betrayed an indescribable curiosity. Mademoiselle de Langeais opened the box, and found therein a handkerchief of very fine linen, drenched with perspiration; and, on unfolding it, they recognized stains. “It is blood!” said the priest. “It is marked with the royal crown!” cried the other nun. The two sisters dropped the precious relic with horror. To those two naïve souls the mystery in which the Stranger was enveloped became altogether inexplicable; and as for the priest, from that day he did not even seek an explanation. The three prisoners were not slow in perceiving that in spite of the Terror a powerful arm was stretched over them. In the first place, they received some wood and some provisions; then the two nuns realized that a woman must be associated with their protector, when some one sent them linen and clothing which enabled them to go out without being remarked on account of the aristocratic fashion of the garments which they had been forced to retain; and lastly, Mucius Scaevola gave them two cards of citizenship. Often, advice necessary to the priest’s safety reached him by devious ways; and he found this advice so opportune that it could have been given only by one initiated in secrets of state. Despite the famine which prevailed in Paris, the outcasts found at the door of their lodging rations of white bread which were regularly brought there by invisible hands; nevertheless, they believed that they could recognize in Mucius Scaevola the mysterious agent of that benefaction, which was always as ingenious as it was discerning. The noble occupants of the attic could not doubt that their protector was the person who had come to ask the priest to celebrate the expiatory mass on the night of the twenty-second of January, 1793; so that he became the object of a peculiar cult of worship to those three beings, who had no hope except in him, and lived only through him. They had added special prayers for him to their devotions; night and morning those pious hearts lifted their voices for his happiness, for his prosperity, for his health, and supplicated God to deliver him from all snares, to deliver him from his enemies, and to accord him a long and peaceable life. Their gratitude, renewed every day, so to speak, was necessarily accompanied by a sentiment of curiosity which became more lively from day to day. The circumstances which had accompanied the appearance of the Stranger were the subject of their conversations; they formed a thousand conjectures regarding him, and the diversion afforded them by their thoughts of him was a benefaction of a new kind. They promised themselves not to allow the Stranger to evade their friendship on the evening when he should return, according to his promise, to commemorate the sad anniversary of the death of Louis XVI. That night, so impatiently awaited, came at last. At midnight the sound of the Stranger’s heavy steps was heard on the old wooden staircase; the room had been arrayed to receive him, the altar was dressed. This time the sisters opened the door beforehand and both pressed forward to light the stairway. Mademoiselle de Langeais even went down a few steps in order to see her benefactor the sooner. “Come,” she said to him in a tremulous and affectionate voice, “come, we are waiting for you.” The man raised his head, cast a sombre glance upon the nun, and made no reply. She felt as if a garment of ice had fallen upon her, and she said no more; at his aspect the gratitude and curiosity expired in all their hearts. He was perhaps less cold, less taciturn, less terrible, than he appeared to those hearts, the exaltation of whose feelings disposed to outpourings of friendliness. The three poor prisoners, understanding that the man desired to remain a Stranger to them, resigned themselves. The priest fancied that he detected upon the Stranger’s lips a smile that was promptly repressed the moment he saw the preparations that had been made to receive him. He heard the mass, and prayed; but he disappeared after having responded negatively to a few words of polite invitation upon the part of Mademoiselle de Langeais to partake of the little collation they had prepared. After the ninth of Thermidor, the nuns and the Abbé de Marolles were able to go about Paris without incurring the least danger. The first errand of the old priest was to a perfumer’s shop, at the sign of La Reine des Fleurs, kept by Citizen and Citizeness Ragon, formerly perfumers to the Court, who had remained faithful to the royal family, and of whose services the Vendeans availed themselves to correspond with the princes and the royalist committee in Paris. The abbé, dressed according to the style of that epoch, was standing on the doorstep of that shop, between Saint-Roch and Rue des Frondeurs, when a crowd which filled the Rue Saint-Honoré prevented him from going out. “What is it?” he asked Madame Ragon. “It is nothing,” she replied; “just the tumbril and the executioner, going to the Place Louis XV. Ah, we saw him very often last year; but to-day, four days after the anniversary of the twenty-first of January, we can look at that horrible procession without distress.” “Why so?” said the abbé. “It is not Christian, that which you say.” “Eh, it’s the execution of the accomplices of Robespierre. They defended themselves as long as they could, but they’re going now themselves where they have sent so many innocents.” The crowd passed like a flood. Over the sea of heads, the Abbé de Marolles, yielding to an impulse of curiosity, saw standing on the tumbril the man who, three days before, had listened to his mass. “Who is that?” he said, “that man who——” “That is the headsman,” replied Monsieur Ragon, calling the executioner of the great by his monarchical name. “My friend, my friend,” cried Madame Ragon, “monsieur l’abbé is fainting!” And the old woman seized a phial of salts, in order to bring the old priest to himself. “Without doubt he gave me,” said he, “the handkerchief with which the King wiped his brow when he went to his martyrdom.... Poor man! ... That steel knife had a heart, when all France had none!” The perfumers thought that the unhappy priest was delirious.

Elle & The Pocket Belles - Dancing With The Devil (Official MV) #electro...

DELAYED ACTION By CHARLES V. DeVET - https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/33790/pg33790-images.html

 It was just a hunch. Johnson knew that, but his hunches had often paid off in the past, and now he waited with a big man's patience. For five hours he sat in the wooden stands, under the rumpled canvas the concessionaires had put up to protect the tourists from Marlock's yellow sun.

The sun was hot and soon Johnson's clothing was marked with large soiled patches of sweat. Now and then a light breeze blew across the stands from the native section and at each breath his nostrils crinkled in protest at the acrid smell.

Marlock wasn't much of a planet. Its one claim to fame was its widely advertised Nature's Moebius Strip. For eighteen months of the year—nine months of sub-zero cold, and nine months of sultry, sand-driven summer—the only outsiders to visit the planet came to buy its one export, the fur of the desert ox. But during the two months of fall and two months of spring the tourists poured in to gape at the Strip.

Their laws are fairly simple," Johnson began. "There's no law against stealing or taking by force anything you can get away with. That sounds absurd by Earth standards, it prevents the amassing of more goods than an individual needs, and makes for fairly equitable distribution. If a native somehow acquires a sudden amount of wealth—goods, in their case—he must hire guards to protect it. Guarding is a major occupation. They do an especially big business during the tourist seasons. In time the pay of the guards will eat up any native's surplus. Either way—by loss or guard pay—the wealth is soon redistributed.

Not Snow Nor Rain By MIRIAM ALLEN DeFORD - https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/60725/pg60725-images.html

 "Who are you? What are you doing here?" the newcomer said in a strained whisper, just like a scared character in a soap opera. So he spoke English. Good: Sam didn't speak anything else.

JUKE-BOX By Henry Kuttner Writing under the pseudonym Woodrow Wilson Smith - https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/68107/pg68107-images.html

 I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead, You Rascal You.”

TIME and the WOMAN By Dewey, G. Gordon - https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/40965/pg40965-images.html

 

THE PLAGIARIST FROM RIGEL IV By Evan Hunter - https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/66291/pg66291-images.html

 

I bought the typewriter in a pawn shop on Third Avenue.

The pawn shop proprietor was a balding old man with a walrus mustache.

"How much?" I asked him.

"Five dollars," he said casually.

I glanced at him skeptically. The machine was a Remington Noiseless, with italics, probably worth a little over a hundred new, and it couldn't have been more than a year or two old.

"How much?" I asked.

"Five dollars, is what I said. Five." He held up the fingers of his widespread hand. "Five. One-two-three...."

"What's wrong with it?" I asked suspiciously.

The old man shrugged. "Something has to be wrong with it? Listen, young man, don't look a gift horse in the mouth."

"How come it's so cheap?"

The old man sighed deeply. "You try to do a favor, you get all kinds of questions. Would you feel happier if I charged you fifty-five dollars?"

"I wouldn't pay fifty-five dollars. I haven't got that much money."

"Have you got five dollars? Can you pay that much?"

"Yes. But...."

"All right, take the machine. A case goes with it. Believe me, young man, this is a bargain."

"Five dollars?" I asked again.

"Five dollars. You want it? Yes or no? I got other things to do."

"I'll take it."

The old man smiled. "Good, you'll never regret it."

....

...."Huh?"

"I-work-alone," he said slowly, as if he were repeating the sentence for a sub-level moron.

"Alone?" I gulped hard.

"Alone," he said firmly.

"Oh."

ADAPTATION By MACK REYNOLDS - https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/24749/pg24749-images.html

 And suddenly, with an all but religious zeal, mankind conceived its fantasy dream of populating the galaxy. Never in the history of the race had fervor reached such a peak and held so long. The question of why was seemingly ignored. Millions of Earth-type planets beckoned and with a lemming-like desperation humanity erupted into them.

 To a hundred thousand worlds they sent smaller colonies, as few as a hundred pioneers apiece, and there marooned them, to adapt, if adapt they could.

For a millennium each colony was left to its own resources, to conquer the environment or to perish in the effort.

A thousand years was sufficient. Invariably it was found, on those planets where human life survived at all, man slipped back during his first two or three centuries into a state of barbarism. Then slowly began to inch forward again. There were exceptions and the progress on one planet never exactly duplicated that on another, however the average was surprisingly close to both nadir and zenith, in terms of evolution of society.

In a thousand years it was deemed by the Office of Galactic Colonization such pioneers had largely adjusted to the new environment and were ready for civilization, industrialization and eventual assimilation into the rapidly evolving Galactic Commonwealth.

Of course, even from the beginning, new and unforeseen problems manifested themselves ...from "Man In Antiquity"published in Terra City, Sol Galactic Year 3,502.

The first generation gets along well with the weapons and equipment brought with them from Earth. They maintain the old ways. The second generation follows along but already ammunition for the weapons runs short, the machinery imported from Earth needs parts. There is no local economy that can provide such things. The third generation begins to think of Earth as a legend and the methods necessary to survive on the new planet conflict with those the first settlers imported. By the fourth generation, Earth is no longer a legend but a fable ..."

"But the books, the tapes, the films ..." Roberts injected.

"Go with the guns, the vehicles and the other things brought from Earth. On a new planet there is no leisure class among the colonists. Each works hard if the group is to survive. There is no time to write new books, nor to copy the old, and the second and especially the third generation are impatient of the time needed to learn to read, time that should be spent in the fields or at the chase. The youth of an industrial culture can spend twenty years and more achieving a basic education before assuming adult responsibilities but no pioneer society can afford to allow its offspring to so waste its time."

PLANET IN REVERSE By HENRY GUTH - https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/64474/pg64474-images.html

 

When Major Pendleton Talbot, of Mobile, sir, and his daughter, Miss Lydia Talbot, came to Washington to reside, they selected for a boarding place a house that stood fifty yards back from one of the quietest avenues. It was an old-fashioned brick building, with a portico upheld by tall white pillars. The yard was shaded by stately locusts and elms, and a catalpa tree in season rained its pink and white blossoms upon the grass. Rows of high box bushes lined the fence and walks. It was the Southern style and aspect of the place that pleased the eyes of the Talbots. In this pleasant private boarding house they engaged rooms, including a study for Major Talbot, who was adding the finishing chapters to his book, Anecdotes and Reminiscences of the Alabama Army, Bench, and Bar. Major Talbot was of the old, old South. The present day had little interest or excellence in his eyes. His mind lived in that period before the Civil War when the Talbots owned thousands of acres of fine cotton land and the slaves to till them; when the family mansion was the scene of princely hospitality, and drew its guests from the aristocracy of the South. Out of that period he had brought all its old pride and scruples of honor, an antiquated and punctilious politeness, and (you would think) its wardrobe. Such clothes were surely never made within fifty years. The Major was tall, but whenever he made that wonderful, archaic genuflexion he called a bow, the corners of his frock coat swept the floor. That garment was a surprise even to Washington, which has long ago ceased to shy at the frocks and broad-brimmed hats of Southern Congressmen. One of the boarders christened it a “Father Hubbard,” and it certainly was high in the waist and full in the skirt. But the Major, with all his queer clothes, his immense area of plaited, raveling shirt bosom, and the little black string tie with the bow always slipping on one side, both was smiled at and liked in Mrs. Vardeman’s select boarding house. Some of the young department clerks would often “string him,” as they called it, getting him started upon the subject dearest to him—the traditions and history of his beloved Southland. During his talks he would quote freely from the Anecdotes and Reminiscences. But they were very careful not to let him see their designs, for in spite of his sixty-eight years he could make the boldest of them uncomfortable under the steady regard of his piercing gray eyes. Miss Lydia was a plump, little old maid of thirty-five, with smoothly drawn, tightly twisted hair that made her look still older. Old-fashioned, too, she was; but antebellum glory did not radiate from her as it did from the Major. She possessed a thrifty common sense, and it was she who handled the finances of the family, and met all comers when there were bills to pay. The Major regarded board bills and wash bills as contemptible nuisances. They kept coming in so persistently and so often. Why, the Major wanted to know, could they not be filed and paid in a lump sum at some convenient period—say when the Anecdotes and Reminiscences had been published and paid for? Miss Lydia would calmly go on with her sewing and say, “We’ll pay as we go as long as the money lasts, and then perhaps they’ll have to lump it.” Most of Mrs. Vardeman’s boarders were away during the day, being nearly all department clerks and business men; but there was one of them who was about the house a great deal from morning to night. This was a young man named Henry Hopkins Hargraves—every one in the house addressed him by his full name—who was engaged at one of the popular vaudeville theaters. Vaudeville has risen to such a respectable plane in the last few years, and Mr. Hargraves was such a modest and well-mannered person, that Mrs. Vardeman could find no objection to enrolling him upon her list of boarders. At the theater Hargraves was known as an all-round dialect comedian, having a large repertoire of German, Irish, Swede, and black-face specialties. But Mr. Hargraves was ambitious, and often spoke of his great desire to succeed in legitimate comedy. This young man appeared to conceive a strong fancy for Major Talbot. Whenever that gentleman would begin his Southern reminiscences, or repeat some of the liveliest of the anecdotes, Hargraves could always be found, the most attentive among his listeners. For a time the Major showed an inclination to discourage the advances of the “play actor,” as he privately termed him; but soon the young man’s agreeable manner and indubitable appreciation of the old gentleman’s stories completely won him over. It was not long before the two were like old chums. The Major set apart each afternoon to read to him the manuscript of his book. During the anecdotes Hargraves never failed to laugh at exactly the right point. The Major was moved to declare to Miss Lydia one day that young Hargraves possessed remarkable perception and a gratifying respect for the old régime. And when it came to talking of those old days—if Major Talbot liked to talk, Mr. Hargraves was entranced to listen. Like almost all old people who talk of the past, the Major loved to linger over details. In describing the splendid, almost royal, days of the old planters, he would hesitate until he had recalled the name of the negro who held his horse, or the exact date of certain minor happenings, or the number of bales of cotton raised in such a year; but Hargraves never grew impatient or lost interest. On the contrary, he would advance questions on a variety of subjects connected with the life of that time, and he never failed to extract ready replies. The fox hunts, the ’possum suppers, the hoe-downs and jubilees in the negro quarters, the banquets in the plantation-house hall, when invitations went for fifty miles around; the occasional feuds with the neighboring gentry; the Major’s duel with Rathbone Culbertson about Kitty Chalmers, who afterward married a Thwaite of South Carolina; and private yacht races for fabulous sums on Mobile Bay; the quaint beliefs, improvident habits, and loyal virtues of the old slaves—all these were subjects that held both the Major and Hargraves absorbed for hours at a time. Sometimes, at night, when the young man would be coming upstairs to his room after his turn at the theater was over, the Major would appear at the door of his study and beckon archly to him. Going in, Hargraves would find a little table set with a decanter, sugar bowl, fruit, and a big bunch of fresh green mint. “It occurred to me,” the Major would begin—he was always ceremonious—“that perhaps you might have found your duties at the—at your place of occupation—sufficiently arduous to enable you, Mr. Hargraves, to appreciate what the poet might well have had in his mind when he wrote, ‘tired Nature’s sweet restorer’—one of our Southern juleps.” It was a fascination to Hargraves to watch him make it. He took rank among artists when he began, and he never varied the process. With what delicacy he bruised the mint; with what exquisite nicety he estimated the ingredients; with what solicitous care he capped the compound with the scarlet fruit glowing against the dark green fringe! And then the hospitality and grace with which he offered it, after the selected oat straws had been plunged into its tinkling depths! After about four months in Washington, Miss Lydia discovered one morning that they were almost without money. The Anecdotes and Reminiscences was completed, but publishers had not jumped at the collected gems of Alabama sense and wit. The rental of a small house which they still owned in Mobile was two months in arrears. Their board money for the month would be due in three days. Miss Lydia called her father to a consultation. “No money?” said he with a surprised look. “It is quite annoying to be called on so frequently for these petty sums, Really, I—” The Major searched his pockets. He found only a two-dollar bill, which he returned to his vest pocket. “I must attend to this at once, Lydia,” he said. “Kindly get me my umbrella and I will go downtown immediately. The congressman from our district, General Fulghum, assured me some days ago that he would use his influence to get my book published at an early date. I will go to his hotel at once and see what arrangement has been made.” With a sad little smile Miss Lydia watched him button his “Father Hubbard” and depart, pausing at the door, as he always did, to bow profoundly. That evening, at dark, he returned. It seemed that Congressman Fulghum had seen the publisher who had the Major’s manuscript for reading. That person had said that if the anecdotes, etc., were carefully pruned down about one-half, in order to eliminate the sectional and class prejudice with which the book was dyed from end to end, he might consider its publication. The Major was in a white heat of anger, but regained his equanimity, according to his code of manners, as soon as he was in Miss Lydia’s presence. “We must have money,” said Miss Lydia, with a little wrinkle above her nose. “Give me the two dollars, and I will telegraph to Uncle Ralph for some to-night.” The Major drew a small envelope from his upper vest pocket and tossed it on the table. “Perhaps it was injudicious,” he said mildly, “but the sum was so merely nominal that I bought tickets to the theater to-night. It’s a new war drama, Lydia. I thought you would be pleased to witness its first production in Washington. I am told that the South has very fair treatment in the play. I confess I should like to see the performance myself.” Miss Lydia threw up her hands in silent despair. Still, as the tickets were bought, they might as well be used. So that evening, as they sat in the theater listening to the lively overture, even Miss Lydia was minded to relegate their troubles, for the hour, to second place. The Major, in spotless linen, with his extraordinary coat showing only where it was closely buttoned, and his white hair smoothly roached, looked really fine and distinguished. The curtain went up on the first act of A Magnolia Flower, revealing a typical Southern plantation scene. Major Talbot betrayed some interest. “Oh, see!” exclaimed Miss Lydia, nudging his arm, and pointing to her program. The Major put on his glasses and read the line in the cast of characters that her fingers indicated. Col. Webster Calhoun .... Mr. Hopkins Hargraves. “It’s our Mr. Hargraves,” said Miss Lydia. “It must be his first appearance in what he calls ‘the legitimate.’ I’m so glad for him.” Not until the second act did Col. Webster Calhoun appear upon the stage. When he made his entry Major Talbot gave an audible sniff, glared at him, and seemed to freeze solid. Miss Lydia uttered a little, ambiguous squeak and crumpled her program in her hand. For Colonel Calhoun was made up as nearly resembling Major Talbot as one pea does another. The long, thin white hair, curly at the ends, the aristocratic beak of a nose, the crumpled, wide, raveling shirt front, the string tie, with the bow nearly under one ear, were almost exactly duplicated. And then, to clinch the imitation, he wore the twin to the Major’s supposed to be unparalleled coat. High-collared, baggy, empire-waisted, ample-skirted, hanging a foot lower in front than behind, the garment could have been designed from no other pattern. From then on, the Major and Miss Lydia sat bewitched, and saw the counterfeit presentment of a haughty Talbot “dragged,” as the Major afterward expressed it, “through the slanderous mire of a corrupt stage.” Mr. Hargraves had used his opportunities well. He had caught the Major’s little idiosyncrasies of speech, accent, and intonation and his pompous courtliness to perfection—exaggerating all to the purpose of the stage. When he performed that marvelous bow that the Major fondly imagined to be the pink of all salutations, the audience sent forth a sudden round of hearty applause. Miss Lydia sat immovable, not daring to glance toward her father. Sometimes her hand next to him would be laid against her cheek, as if to conceal the smile which, in spite of her disapproval, she could not entirely suppress. The culmination of Hargraves audacious imitation took place in the third act. The scene is where Colonel Calhoun entertains a few of the neighboring planters in his “den.” Standing at a table in the center of the stage, with his friends grouped about him, he delivers that inimitable, rambling character monologue so famous in A Magnolia Flower, at the same time that he deftly makes juleps for the party. Major Talbot, sitting quietly, but white with indignation, heard his best stories retold, his pet theories and hobbies advanced and expanded, and the dream of the Anecdotes and Reminiscences served, exaggerated and garbled. His favorite narrative—that of his duel with Rathbone Culbertson—was not omitted, and it was delivered with more fire, egotism, and gusto than the Major himself put into it. The monologue concluded with a quaint, delicious, witty little lecture on the art of concocting a julep, illustrated by the act. Here Major Talbot’s delicate but showy science was reproduced to a hair’s breadth—from his dainty handling of the fragrant weed—“the one-thousandth part of a grain too much pressure, gentlemen, and you extract the bitterness, instead of the aroma, of this heaven-bestowed plant”—to his solicitous selection of the oaten straws. At the close of the scene the audience raised a tumultuous roar of appreciation. The portrayal of the type was so exact, so sure and thorough, that the leading characters in the play were forgotten. After repeated calls, Hargraves came before the curtain and bowed, his rather boyish face bright and flushed with the knowledge of success. At last Miss Lydia turned and looked at the Major. His thin nostrils were working like the gills of a fish. He laid both shaking hands upon the arms of his chair to rise. “We will go, Lydia,” he said chokingly. “This is an abominable—desecration.” Before he could rise, she pulled him back into his seat. “We will stay it out,” she declared. “Do you want to advertise the copy by exhibiting the original coat?” So they remained to the end. Hargraves’s success must have kept him up late that night, for neither at the breakfast nor at the dinner table did he appear. About three in the afternoon he tapped at the door of Major Talbot’s study. The Major opened it, and Hargraves walked in with his hands full of the morning papers—too full of his triumph to notice anything unusual in the Major’s demeanor. “I put it all over ’em last night, Major,” he began exultantly. “I had my inning, and, I think, scored. Here’s what The Post says: “‘His conception and portrayal of the old-time Southern colonel, with his absurd grandiloquence, his eccentric garb, his quaint idioms and phrases, his motheaten pride of family, and his really kind heart, fastidious sense of honor, and lovable simplicity, is the best delineation of a character role on the boards to-day. The coat worn by Colonel Calhoun is itself nothing less than an evolution of genius. Mr. Hargraves has captured his public.’ “How does that sound, Major, for a first-nighter?” “I had the honor”—the Major’s voice sounded ominously frigid—“of witnessing your very remarkable performance, sir, last night.” Hargraves looked disconcerted. “You were there? I didn’t know you ever—I didn’t know you cared for the theater. Oh, I say, Major Talbot,” he exclaimed frankly, “don’t you be offended. I admit I did get a lot of pointers from you that helped out wonderfully in the part. But it’s a type, you know—not individual. The way the audience caught on shows that. Half the patrons of that theater are Southerners. They recognized it.” “Mr. Hargraves,” said the Major, who had remained standing, “you have put upon me an unpardonable insult. You have burlesqued my person, grossly betrayed my confidence, and misused my hospitality. If I thought you possessed the faintest conception of what is the sign manual of a gentleman, or what is due one, I would call you out, sir, old as I am. I will ask you to leave the room, sir.” The actor appeared to be slightly bewildered, and seemed hardly to take in the full meaning of the old gentleman’s words. “I am truly sorry you took offense,” he said regretfully. “Up here we don’t look at things just as you people do. I know men who would buy out half the house to have their personality put on the stage so the public would recognize it.” “They are not from Alabama, sir,” said the Major haughtily. “Perhaps not. I have a pretty good memory, Major; let me quote a few lines from your book. In response to a toast at a banquet given in—Milledgeville, I believe—you uttered, and intend to have printed, these words: “‘The Northern man is utterly without sentiment or warmth except in so far as the feelings may be turned to his own commercial profit. He will suffer without resentment any imputation cast upon the honor of himself or his loved ones that does not bear with it the consequence of pecuniary loss. In his charity, he gives with a liberal hand; but it must be heralded with the trumpet and chronicled in brass.’ “Do you think that picture is fairer than the one you saw of Colonel Calhoun last night?” “The description,” said the Major, frowning, “is—not without grounds. Some exag—latitude must be allowed in public speaking.” “And in public acting,” replied Hargraves. “That is not the point,” persisted the Major, unrelenting. “It was a personal caricature. I positively decline to overlook it, sir.” “Major Talbot,” said Hargraves, with a winning smile, “I wish you would understand me. I want you to know that I never dreamed of insulting you. In my profession, all life belongs to me. I take what I want, and what I can, and return it over the footlights. Now, if you will, let’s let it go at that. I came in to see you about something else. We’ve been pretty good friends for some months, and I’m going to take the risk of offending you again. I know you are hard up for money—never mind how I found out, a boarding house is no place to keep such matters secret—and I want you to let me help you out of the pinch. I’ve been there often enough myself. I’ve been getting a fair salary all the season, and I’ve saved some money. You’re welcome to a couple hundred—or even more—until you get——” “Stop!” commanded the Major, with his arm outstretched. “It seems that my book didn’t lie, after all. You think your money salve will heal all the hurts of honor. Under no circumstances would I accept a loan from a casual acquaintance; and as to you, sir, I would starve before I would consider your insulting offer of a financial adjustment of the circumstances we have discussed. I beg to repeat my request relative to your quitting the apartment.” Hargraves took his departure without another word. He also left the house the same day, moving, as Mrs. Vardeman explained at the supper table, nearer the vicinity of the downtown theater, where A Magnolia Flower was booked for a week’s run. Critical was the situation with Major Talbot and Miss Lydia. There was no one in Washington to whom the Major’s scruples allowed him to apply for a loan. Miss Lydia wrote a letter to Uncle Ralph, but it was doubtful whether that relative’s constricted affairs would permit him to furnish help. The Major was forced to make an apologetic address to Mrs. Vardeman regarding the delayed payment for board, referring to “delinquent rentals” and “delayed remittances” in a rather confused strain. Deliverance came from an entirely unexpected source. Late one afternoon the door maid came up and announced an old colored man who wanted to see Major Talbot. The Major asked that he be sent up to his study. Soon an old darkey appeared in the doorway, with his hat in hand, bowing, and scraping with one clumsy foot. He was quite decently dressed in a baggy suit of black. His big, coarse shoes shone with a metallic luster suggestive of stove polish. His bushy wool was gray—almost white. After middle life, it is difficult to estimate the age of a negro. This one might have seen as many years as had Major Talbot. “I be bound you don’t know me, Mars’ Pendleton,” were his first words. The Major rose and came forward at the old, familiar style of address. It was one of the old plantation darkeys without a doubt; but they had been widely scattered, and he could not recall the voice or face. “I don’t believe I do,” he said kindly—“unless you will assist my memory.” “Don’t you ’member Cindy’s Mose, Mars’ Pendleton, what ’migrated ’mediately after de war?” “Wait a moment,” said the Major, rubbing his forehead with the tips of his fingers. He loved to recall everything connected with those beloved days. “Cindy’s Mose,” he reflected. “You worked among the horses—breaking the colts. Yes, I remember now. After the surrender, you took the name of—don’t prompt me—Mitchell, and went to the West—to Nebraska.” “Yassir, yassir,”—the old man’s face stretched with a delighted grin—“dat’s him, dat’s it. Newbraska. Dat’s me—Mose Mitchell. Old Uncle Mose Mitchell, dey calls me now. Old mars’, your pa, gimme a pah of dem mule colts when I lef’ fur to staht me goin’ with. You ’member dem colts, Mars’ Pendleton?” “I don’t seem to recall the colts,” said the Major. “You know. I was married the first year of the war and living at the old Follinsbee place. But sit down, sit down, Uncle Mose. I’m glad to see you. I hope you have prospered.” Uncle Mose took a chair and laid his hat carefully on the floor beside it. “Yessir; of late I done mouty famous. When I first got to Newbraska, dey folks come all roun’ me to see dem mule colts. Dey ain’t see no mules like dem in Newbraska. I sold dem mules for three hundred dollars. Yessir—three hundred. “Den I open a blacksmith shop, suh, and made some money and bought some lan’. Me and my old ’oman done raised up seb’m chillun, and all doin’ well ’cept two of ’em what died. Fo’ year ago a railroad come along and staht a town slam ag’inst my lan’, and, suh, Mars’ Pendleton, Uncle Mose am worth leb’m thousand dollars in money, property, and lan’.” “I’m glad to hear it,” said the Major heartily. “Glad to hear it.” “And dat little baby of yo’n, Mars’ Pendleton—one what you name Miss Lyddy—I be bound dat little tad done growed up tell nobody wouldn’t know her.” The Major stepped to the door and called: “Lydie, dear, will you come?” Miss Lydia, looking quite grown up and a little worried, came in from her room. “Dar, now! What’d I tell you? I knowed dat baby done be plum growed up. You don’t ’member Uncle Mose, child?” “This is Aunt Cindy’s Mose, Lydia,” explained the Major. “He left Sunnymead for the West when you were two years old.” “Well,” said Miss Lydia, “I can hardly be expected to remember you, Uncle Mose, at that age. And, as you say, I’m ’plum growed up,’ and was a blessed long time ago. But I’m glad to see you, even if I can’t remember you.” And she was. And so was the Major. Something alive and tangible had come to link them with the happy past. The three sat and talked over the olden times, the Major and Uncle Mose correcting or prompting each other as they reviewed the plantation scenes and days. The Major inquired what the old man was doing so far from his home. “Uncle Mose am a delicate,” he explained, “to de grand Baptis’ convention in dis city. I never preached none, but bein’ a residin’ elder in de church, and able fur to pay my own expenses, dey sent me along.” “And how did you know we were in Washington?” inquired Miss Lydia. “Dey’s a cullud man works in de hotel whar I stops, what comes from Mobile. He told me he seen Mars’ Pendleton comin’ outen dish here house one mawnin’. “What I come fur,” continued Uncle Mose, reaching into his pocket—“besides de sight of home folks—was to pay Mars’ Pendleton what I owes him. “Yessir—three hundred dollars.” He handed the Major a roll of bills. “When I lef’ old mars’ says: ‘‘Take dem mule colts, Mose, and, if it be so you gits able, pay fur ’em.’ Yessir—dem was his words. De war had done lef’ old mars’ po’ hisself. Old mars’ bein’ long ago dead, de debt descends to Mars’ Pendleton. Three hundred dollars. Uncle Mose is plenty able to pay now. When dat railroad buy my lan’ I laid off to pay fur dem mules. Count de money, Mars’ Pendleton. Dat’s what I sold dem mules fur. Yessir.” Tears were in Major Talbot’s eyes. He took Uncle Mose’s hand and laid his other upon his shoulder. “Dear, faithful, old servitor,” he said in an unsteady voice, “I don’t mind saying to you that ‘‘Mars’ Pendleton spent his last dollar in the world a week ago. We will accept this money, Uncle Mose, since, in a way, it is a sort of payment, as well as a token of the loyalty and devotion of the old régime. Lydia, my dear, take the money. You are better fitted than I to manage its expenditure.” “Take it, honey,” said Uncle Mose. “Hit belongs to you. Hit’s Talbot money.” After Uncle Mose had gone, Miss Lydia had a good cry—-for joy; and the Major turned his face to a corner, and smoked his clay pipe volcanically. The succeeding days saw the Talbots restored to peace and ease. Miss Lydia’s face lost its worried look. The major appeared in a new frock coat, in which he looked like a wax figure personifying the memory of his golden age. Another publisher who read the manuscript of the Anecdotes and Reminiscences thought that, with a little retouching and toning down of the high lights, he could make a really bright and salable volume of it. Altogether, the situation was comfortable, and not without the touch of hope that is often sweeter than arrived blessings. One day, about a week after their piece of good luck, a maid brought a letter for Miss Lydia to her room. The postmark showed that it was from New York. Not knowing any one there, Miss Lydia, in a mild flutter of wonder, sat down by her table and opened the letter with her scissors. This was what she read: Dear Miss Talbot: I thought you might be glad to learn of my good fortune. I have received and accepted an offer of two hundred dollars per week by a New York stock company to play Colonel Calhoun in A Magnolia Flower. There is something else I wanted you to know. I guess you’d better not tell Major Talbot. I was anxious to make him some amends for the great help he was to me in studying the part, and for the bad humor he was in about it. He refused to let me, so I did it anyhow. I could easily spare the three hundred. Sincerely yours, H. Hopkins Hargraves. P.S. How did I play Uncle Mose? Major Talbot, passing through the hall, saw Miss Lydia’s door open and stopped. “Any mail for us this morning, Lydia, dear?” he asked. Miss Lydia slid the letter beneath a fold of her dress. “The Mobile Chronicle came,” she said promptly. “It’s on the table in your study.”

TOURISTS TO TERRA By Mack Reynolds - https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/65077/pg65077-images.html

 They came from a far sun in a distant time,

seeking thrills on alien planets. Earth was their
latest stop and its puny humans promised good sport!

The LOST RACE By Robert E. Howard - https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/73793/pg73793-images.html

 

But the curse was nothing. Words can do no harm, can do nothing, to a man. I live. An hundred generations have I seen come and go, and yet another hundred. What is time? The sun rises and sets, and another day has passed into oblivion. Men watch the sun and set their lives by it. They league themselves on every hand with time. They count the minutes that race them into eternity. Man outlived the centuries ere he began to reckon time. Time is man-made. Eternity is the work of the gods. In this cavern there is no such thing as time. There are no stars, no sun. Without is time; within is eternity. We count not time.

Time Out for Redheads By MIRIAM ALLEN deFORD - https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/69257/pg69257-images.html

 For twelve years, ever since 2827, he had sold tickets at one of the windows of Time Travel Tours, Unlimited. If raises hadn't been automatic, he would never have had one, though he was punctual, faithful, honest, quick and accurate. Even the other ticket-sellers still called him Citizen Skot.

He had never budged from his cozy era—even though, as an employee, he was entitled to take any tour he wished, on his semi-annual vacation, at no cost to him beyond the planetary sales tax—nor had he ever left his native city, let alone his native planet. He was too shy even to realize he was lonely.

This morning there was the usual rush. Staggered vacations meant that any time of the year was the busy season for TTT. Skillfully Mikel Skot arranged tours and calculated rates.

"Two weeks in Rome, 45 B.C.? That will be creds 850, Citizen. You get your costume and equipment in Room 104, right off the Teleport. Yes, I'm sure they'll have a Latin language-transformer you can hire." "England in 1600, one month, reservation in the name of Chas Rusl. Yes, I have it right here. That will be creds 500, please." "You mean you want a ticket for here in Los, for a week six years ago in February?

Certainly this was not his Los—his giant city stretching from Mex to Sanfran without a break. This was a little place of probably not much more than two million inhabitants. 

He was a very quiet, self-possessed sort of man, sitting a moment on top of the wall to sound the damp darkness for warnings of the dangers it might conceal. But the plummet of his hearing brought nothing to him save the moaning of wind through invisible trees and the rustling of leaves on swaying branches. A heavy fog drifted and drove before the wind, and though he could not see this fog, the wet of it blew upon his face, and the wall on which he sat was wet. Without noise he had climbed to the top of the wall from the outside, and without noise he dropped to the ground on the inside. From his pocket he drew an electric night-stick, but he did not use it. Dark as the way was, he was not anxious for light. Carrying the night-stick in his hand, his finger on the button, he[Pg 2] advanced through the darkness. The ground was velvety and springy to his feet, being carpeted with dead pine-needles and leaves and mold which evidently had been undisturbed for years. Leaves and branches brushed against his body, but so dark was it that he could not avoid them. Soon he walked with his hand stretched out gropingly before him, and more than once the hand fetched up against the solid trunks of massive trees. All about him he knew were these trees; he sensed the loom of them everywhere; and he experienced a strange feeling of microscopic smallness in the midst of great bulks leaning toward him to crush him. Beyond, he knew, was the house, and he expected to find some trail or winding path that would lead easily to it. Once, he found himself trapped. On every side he groped against trees and branches, or blundered into thickets of underbrush, until there seemed no way out. Then he turned on his light, circumspectly, directing its rays to the ground at his feet. Slowly and carefully he moved it about him, the white brightness showing in sharp detail all the obstacles to his progress. He saw an opening between huge-trunked trees, and advanced through it, putting out the light and treading on dry footing as yet protected from the drip of the fog by the dense foliage overhead. His sense of direction was good, and he knew he was going toward the house. And then the thing happened—the thing unthinkable and unexpected. His descending foot came down upon something that was soft and alive, and that arose with a snort under the weight of his body. He sprang clear, and crouched for another spring, anywhere, tense and expectant, keyed for the onslaught of the unknown. He[Pg 3] waited a moment, wondering what manner of animal it was that had arisen from under his foot and that now made no sound nor movement and that must be crouching and waiting just as tensely and expectantly as he. The strain became unbearable. Holding the night-stick before him, he pressed the button, saw, and screamed aloud in terror. He was prepared for anything, from a frightened calf or fawn to a belligerent lion, but he was not prepared for what he saw. In that instant his tiny searchlight, sharp and white, had shown him what a thousand years would not enable him to forget—a man, huge and blond, yellow-haired and yellow-bearded, naked except for soft-tanned moccasins and what seemed a goat-skin about his middle. Arms and legs were bare, as were his shoulders and most of his chest. The skin was smooth and hairless, but browned by sun and wind, while under it heavy muscles were knotted like fat snakes. Still, this alone, unexpected as it well was, was not what had made the man scream out. What had caused his terror was the unspeakable ferocity of the face, the wild-animal glare of the blue eyes scarcely dazzled by the light, the pine-needles matted and clinging in the beard and hair, and the whole formidable body crouched and in the act of springing at him. Practically in the instant he saw all this, and while his scream still rang, the thing leaped, he flung his night-stick full at it, and threw himself to the ground. He felt its feet and shins strike against his ribs, and he bounded up and away while the thing itself hurled onward in a heavy crashing fall into the underbrush. As the noise of the fall ceased, the man stopped and[Pg 4] on hands and knees waited. He could hear the thing moving about, searching for him, and he was afraid to advertise his location by attempting further flight. He knew that inevitably he would crackle the underbrush and be pursued. Once he drew out his revolver, then changed his mind. He had recovered his composure and hoped to get away without noise. Several times he heard the thing beating up the thickets for him, and there were moments when it, too, remained still and listened. This gave an idea to the man. One of his hands was resting on a chunk of dead wood. Carefully, first feeling about him in the darkness to know that the full swing of his arm was clear, he raised the chunk of wood and threw it. It was not a large piece, and it went far, landing noisily in a bush. He heard the thing bound into the bush, and at the same time himself crawled steadily away. And on hands and knees, slowly and cautiously, he crawled on, till his knees were wet on the soggy mold. When he listened he heard naught but the moaning wind and the drip-drip of the fog from the branches. Never abating his caution, he stood erect and went on to the stone wall, over which he climbed and dropped down to the road outside. Feeling his way in a clump of bushes, he drew out a bicycle and prepared to mount. He was in the act of driving the gear around with his foot for the purpose of getting the opposite pedal in position, when he heard the thud of a heavy body that landed lightly and evidently on its feet. He did not wait for more, but ran, with hands on the handles of his bicycle, until he was able to vault astride the saddle, catch the pedals, and start a spurt. Behind he could hear the quick thud-thud[Pg 5] of feet on the dust of the road, but he drew away from it and lost it. Unfortunately, he had started away from the direction of town and was heading higher up into the hills. He knew that on this particular road there were no cross roads. The only way back was past that terror, and he could not steel himself to face it. At the end of half an hour, finding himself on an ever increasing grade, he dismounted. For still greater safety, leaving the wheel by the roadside, he climbed through a fence into what he decided was a hillside pasture, spread a newspaper on the ground, and sat down. "Gosh!" he said aloud, mopping the sweat and fog from his face. And "Gosh!" he said once again, while rolling a cigarette and as he pondered the problem of getting back. But he made no attempt to go back. He was resolved not to face that road in the dark, and with head bowed on knees, he dozed, waiting for daylight. How long afterward he did not know, he was awakened by the yapping bark of a young coyote. As he looked about and located it on the brow of the hill behind him, he noted the change that had come over the face of the night. The fog was gone; the stars and moon were out; even the wind had died down. It had transformed into a balmy California summer night. He tried to doze again, but the yap of the coyote disturbed him. Half asleep, he heard a wild and eery chant. Looking about him, he noticed that the coyote had ceased its noise and was running away along the crest of the hill, and behind it, in full pursuit, no longer chanting, ran the naked creature he had encountered in the garden.[Pg 6] It was a young coyote, and it was being overtaken when the chase passed from view. The man trembled as with a chill as he started to his feet, clambered over the fence, and mounted his wheel. But it was his chance and he knew it. The terror was no longer between him and Mill Valley. He sped at a breakneck rate down the hill, but in the turn at the bottom, in the deep shadows, he encountered a chuck-hole and pitched headlong over the handle bar. "It's sure not my night," he muttered, as he examined the broken fork of the machine. Shouldering the useless wheel, he trudged on. In time he came to the stone wall, and, half disbelieving his experience, he sought in the road for tracks, and found them—moccasin tracks, large ones, deep-bitten into the dust at the toes. It was while bending over them, examining, that again he heard the eery chant. He had seen the thing pursue the coyote, and he knew he had no chance on a straight run. He did not attempt it, contenting himself with hiding in the shadows on the off side of the road. And again he saw the thing that was like a naked man, running swiftly and lightly and singing as it ran. Opposite him it paused, and his heart stood still. But instead of coming toward his hiding-place, it leaped into the air, caught the branch of a roadside tree, and swung swiftly upward, from limb to limb, like an ape. It swung across the wall, and a dozen feet above the top, into the branches of another tree, and dropped out of sight to the ground. The man waited a few wondering minutes, then started on.[Pg 7] II Dave Slotter leaned belligerently against the desk that barred the way to the private office of James Ward, senior partner of the firm of Ward, Knowles & Co. Dave was angry. Every one in the outer office had looked him over suspiciously, and the man who faced him was excessively suspicious. "You just tell Mr. Ward it's important," he urged. "I tell you he is dictating and cannot be disturbed," was the answer. "Come to-morrow." "To-morrow will be too late. You just trot along and tell Mr. Ward it's a matter of life and death." The secretary hesitated and Dave seized the advantage. "You just tell him I was across the bay in Mill Valley last night, and that I want to put him wise to something." "What name?" was the query. "Never mind the name. He don't know me." When Dave was shown into the private office, he was still in the belligerent frame of mind, but when he saw a large fair man whirl in a revolving chair from dictating to a stenographer to face him, Dave's demeanor abruptly changed. He did not know why it changed, and he was secretly angry with himself. "You are Mr. Ward?" Dave asked with a fatuousness that still further irritated him. He had never intended it at all. "Yes," came the answer. "And who are you?" "Harry Bancroft," Dave lied. "You don't know me, and my name don't matter."[Pg 8] "You sent in word that you were in Mill Valley last night?" "You live there, don't you?" Dave countered, looking suspiciously at the stenographer. "Yes. What do you mean to see me about? I am very busy." "I'd like to see you alone, sir." Mr. Ward gave him a quick, penetrating look, hesitated, then made up his mind. "That will do for a few minutes, Miss Potter." The girl arose, gathered her notes together, and passed out. Dave looked at Mr. James Ward wonderingly, until that gentleman broke his train of inchoate thought. "Well?" "I was over in Mill Valley last night," Dave began confusedly. "I've heard that before. What do you want?" And Dave proceeded in the face of a growing conviction that was unbelievable. "I was at your house, or in the grounds, I mean." "What were you doing there?" "I came to break in," Dave answered in all frankness. "I heard you lived all alone with a Chinaman for cook, and it looked good to me. Only I didn't break in. Something happened that prevented. That's why I'm here. I come to warn you. I found a wild man loose in your grounds—a regular devil. He could pull a guy like me to pieces. He gave me the run of my life. He don't wear any clothes to speak of, he climbs trees like a monkey, and he runs like a deer. I saw him chasing a coyote, and the last I saw of it, by God, he was gaining on it."[Pg 9] Dave paused and looked for the effect that would follow his words. But no effect came. James Ward was quietly curious, and that was all. "Very remarkable, very remarkable," he murmured. "A wild man, you say. Why have you come to tell me?" "To warn you of your danger. I'm something of a hard proposition myself, but I don't believe in killing people ... that is, unnecessarily. I realized that you was in danger. I thought I'd warn you. Honest, that's the game. Of course, if you wanted to give me anything for my trouble, I'd take it. That was in my mind, too. But I don't care whether you give me anything or not. I've warned you anyway, and done my duty." Mr. Ward meditated and drummed on the surface of his desk. Dave noticed that his hands were large, powerful, withal well-cared for despite their dark sunburn. Also, he noted what had already caught his eye before—a tiny strip of flesh-colored courtplaster on the forehead over one eye. And still the thought that forced itself into his mind was unbelievable. Mr. Ward took a wallet from his inside coat pocket, drew out a greenback, and passed it to Dave, who noted as he pocketed it that it was for twenty dollars. "Thank you," said Mr. Ward, indicating that the interview was at an end. "I shall have the matter investigated. A wild man running loose is dangerous." But so quiet a man was Mr. Ward, that Dave's courage returned. Besides, a new theory had suggested itself. The wild man was evidently Mr. Ward's brother, a lunatic privately confined. Dave had heard of such things. Perhaps Mr. Ward wanted it kept quiet. That was why he had given him the twenty dollars.[Pg 10] "Say," Dave began, "now I come to think of it that wild man looked a lot like you—" That was as far as Dave got, for at that moment he witnessed a transformation and found himself gazing into the same unspeakably ferocious blue eyes of the night before, at the same clutching talon-like hands, and at the same formidable bulk in the act of springing upon him. But this time Dave had no night-stick to throw, and he was caught by the biceps of both arms in a grip so terrific that it made him groan with pain. He saw the large white teeth exposed, for all the world as a dog's about to bite. Mr. Ward's beard brushed his face as the teeth went in for the grip of his throat. But the bite was not given. Instead, Dave felt the other's body stiffen as with an iron restraint, and then he was flung aside, without effort but with such force that only the wall stopped his momentum and dropped him gasping to the floor. "What do you mean by coming here and trying to blackmail me?" Mr. Ward was snarling at him. "Here, give me back that money." Dave passed the bill back without a word. "I thought you came here with good intentions. I know you now. Let me see and hear no more of you, or I'll put you in prison where you belong. Do you understand?" "Yes, sir," Dave gasped. "Then go." And Dave went, without further word, both his biceps aching intolerably from the bruise of that tremendous grip. As his hand rested on the door knob, he was stopped.[Pg 11] "You were lucky," Mr. Ward was saying, and Dave noted that his face and eyes were cruel and gloating and proud. "You were lucky. Had I wanted, I could have torn your muscles out of your arms and thrown them in the waste basket there." "Yes, sir," said Dave; and absolute conviction vibrated in his voice. He opened the door and passed out. The secretary looked at him interrogatively. "Gosh!" was all Dave vouchsafed, and with this utterance passed out of the offices and the story. III James G. Ward was forty years of age, a successful business man, and very unhappy. For forty years he had vainly tried to solve a problem that was really himself and that with increasing years became more and more a woeful affliction. In himself he was two men, and, chronologically speaking, these men were several thousand years or so apart. He had studied the question of dual personality probably more profoundly than any half dozen of the leading specialists in that intricate and mysterious psychological field. In himself he was a different case from any that had been recorded. Even the most fanciful flights of the fiction-writers had not quite hit upon him. He was not a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, nor was he like the unfortunate young man in Kipling's Greatest Story in the World. His two personalities were so mixed that they were practically aware of themselves and of each other all the time.[Pg 12] His one self was that of a man whose rearing and education were modern and who had lived through the latter part of the nineteenth century and well into the first decade of the twentieth. His other self he had located as a savage and a barbarian living under the primitive conditions of several thousand years before. But which self was he, and which was the other, he could never tell. For he was both selves, and both selves all the time. Very rarely indeed did it happen that one self did not know what the other was doing. Another thing was that he had no visions nor memories of the past in which that early self had lived. That early self lived in the present; but while it lived in the present, it was under the compulsion to live the way of life that must have been in that distant past. In his childhood he had been a problem to his father and mother, and to the family doctors, though never had they come within a thousand miles of hitting upon the clue to his erratic conduct. Thus, they could not understand his excessive somnolence in the forenoon, nor his excessive activity at night. When they found him wandering along the hallways at night, or climbing over giddy roofs, or running in the hills, they decided he was a somnambulist. In reality he was wide-eyed awake and merely under the night-roaming compulsion of his early life. Questioned by an obtuse medico, he once told the truth and suffered the ignominy of having the revelation contemptuously labeled and dismissed as "dreams." The point was, that as twilight and evening came on he became wakeful. The four walls of a room were an irk and a restraint. He heard a thousand voices[Pg 13] whispering to him through the darkness. The night called to him, for he was, for that period of the twenty-four hours, essentially a night-prowler. But nobody understood, and never again did he attempt to explain. They classified him as a sleep-walker and took precautions accordingly—precautions that very often were futile. As his childhood advanced, he grew more cunning, so that the major portion of all his nights were spent in the open at realizing his other self. As a result, he slept in the forenoons. Morning studies and schools were impossible, and it was discovered that only in the afternoons, under private teachers, could he be taught anything. Thus was his modern self educated and developed. But a problem, as a child, he ever remained. He was known as a little demon of insensate cruelty and viciousness. The family medicos privately adjudged him a mental monstrosity and a degenerate. Such few boy companions as he had, hailed him as a wonder, though they were all afraid of him. He could outclimb, outswim, outrun, outdevil any of them; while none dared fight with him. He was too terribly strong, too madly furious. When nine years of age he ran away to the hills, where he flourished, night-prowling, for seven weeks before he was discovered and brought home. The marvel was how he had managed to subsist and keep in condition during that time. They did not know, and he never told them, of the rabbits he had killed, of the quail, young and old, he had captured and devoured, of the farmers' chicken-roosts he had raided, nor of the cave-lair he had made and carpeted with dry leaves and[Pg 14] grasses and in which he had slept in warmth and comfort, through the forenoons of many days. At college he was notorious for his sleepiness and stupidity during the morning lectures and for his brilliance in the afternoon. By collateral reading and by borrowing the notebook of his fellow students he managed to scrape through the detestable morning courses, while his afternoon courses were triumphs. In football he proved a giant and a terror, and, in almost every form of track athletics, save for strange Berserker rages that were sometimes displayed, he could be depended upon to win. But his fellows were afraid to box with him, and he signalized his last wrestling bout by sinking his teeth into the shoulder of his opponent. After college, his father, in despair, sent him among the cow-punchers of a Wyoming ranch. Three months later the doughty cowmen confessed he was too much for them and telegraphed his father to come and take the wild man away. Also, when the father arrived to take him away, the cowmen allowed that they would vastly prefer chumming with howling cannibals, gibbering lunatics, cavorting gorillas, grizzly bears, and man-eating tigers than with this particular young college product with hair parted in the middle. There was one exception to the lack of memory of the life of his early self, and that was language. By some quirk of atavism, a certain portion of that early self's language had come down to him as a racial memory. In moments of happiness, exaltation, or battle, he was prone to burst out in wild barbaric songs or chants. It was by this means that he located in time and space that strayed half of him who should have been dead and[Pg 15] dust for thousands of years. He sang, once, and deliberately, several of the ancient chants in the presence of Professor Wertz, who gave courses in old Saxon and who was a philologist of repute and passion. At the first one, the professor pricked up his ears and demanded to know what mongrel tongue or hog-German it was. When the second chant was rendered, the professor was highly excited. James Ward then concluded the performance by giving a song that always irresistibly rushed to his lips when he was engaged in fierce struggling or fighting. Then it was that Professor Wertz proclaimed it no hog-German, but early German, or early Teuton, of a date that must far precede anything that had ever been discovered and handed down by the scholars. So early was it that it was beyond him; yet it was filled with haunting reminiscences of word-forms he knew and which his trained intuition told him were true and real. He demanded the source of the songs, and asked to borrow the previous book that contained them. Also, he demanded to know why young Ward had always posed as being profoundly ignorant of the German language. And Ward could neither explain his ignorance nor lend the book. Whereupon, after pleadings and entreaties that extended through weeks, Professor Wertz took a dislike to the young man, believed him a liar, and classified him as a man of monstrous selfishness for not giving him a glimpse of this wonderful screed that was older than the oldest any philologist had ever known or dreamed. But little good did it do this much-mixed young man to know that half of him was late American and the other half early Teuton. Nevertheless, the late American[Pg 16] in him was no weakling, and he (if he were a he and had a shred of existence outside of these two) compelled an adjustment or compromise between his one self that was a night-prowling savage that kept his other self sleepy of mornings, and that other self that was cultured and refined and that wanted to be normal and love and prosecute business like other people. The afternoons and early evenings he gave to the one, the nights to the other; the forenoons and parts of the nights were devoted to sleep for the twain. But in the mornings he slept in bed like a civilized man. In the night time he slept like a wild animal, as he had slept the night Dave Slotter stepped on him in the woods. Persuading his father to advance the capital, he went into business, and keen and successful business he made of it, devoting his afternoons whole-souled to it, while his partner devoted the mornings. The early evenings he spent socially, but, as the hour grew to nine or ten, an irresistible restlessness overcame him and he disappeared from the haunts of men until the next afternoon. Friends and acquaintances thought that he spent much of his time in sport. And they were right, though they never would have dreamed of the nature of the sport, even if they had seen him running coyotes in night-chases over the hills of Mill Valley. Neither were the schooner captains believed when they reported seeing, on cold winter mornings, a man swimming in the tide-rips of Raccoon Straits or in the swift currents between Goat Island and Angel Island miles from shore. In the bungalow at Mill Valley he lived alone, save for Lee Sing, the Chinese cook and factotum, who knew[Pg 17] much about the strangeness of his master, who was paid well for saying nothing, and who never did say anything. After the satisfaction of his nights, a morning's sleep, and a breakfast of Lee Sing's, James Ward crossed the bay to San Francisco on a midday ferryboat and went to the club and on to his office, as normal and conventional a man of business as could be found in the city. But as the evening lengthened, the night called to him. There came a quickening of all his perceptions and a restlessness. His hearing was suddenly acute; the myriad night-noises told him a luring and familiar story; and, if alone, he would begin to pace up and down the narrow room like any caged animal from the wild. Once, he ventured to fall in love. He never permitted himself that diversion again. He was afraid. And for many a day the young lady, scared at least out of a portion of her young ladyhood, bore on her arms and shoulders and wrists divers black-and-blue bruises—tokens of caresses which he had bestowed in all fond gentleness but too late at night. There was the mistake. Had he ventured love-making in the afternoon, all would have been well, for it would have been as the quiet gentleman that he would have made love—but at night it was the uncouth, wife-stealing savage of the dark German forests. Out of his wisdom, he decided that afternoon love-making could be prosecuted successfully; but out of the same wisdom he was convinced that marriage would prove a ghastly failure. He found it appalling to imagine being married and encountering his wife after dark. So he had eschewed all love-making, regulated his dual[Pg 18] life, cleaned up a million in business, fought shy of match-making mamas and bright- and eager-eyed young ladies of various ages, met Lilian Gersdale and made it a rigid observance never to see her later than eight o'clock in the evening, ran of nights after his coyotes, and slept in forest lairs—and through it all had kept his secret save for Lee Sing ... and now, Dave Slotter. It was the latter's discovery of both his selves that frightened him. In spite of the counter fright he had given the burglar, the latter might talk. And even if he did not, sooner or later he would be found out by some one else. Thus it was that James Ward made a fresh and heroic effort to control the Teutonic barbarian that was half of him. So well did he make it a point to see Lilian in the afternoons and early evenings, that the time came when she accepted him for better or worse, and when he prayed privily and fervently that it was not for worse. During this period no prize-fighter ever trained more harshly and faithfully for a contest than he trained to subdue the wild savage in him. Among other things, he strove to exhaust himself during the day, so that sleep would render him deaf to the call of the night. He took a vacation from the office and went on long hunting trips, following the deer through the most inaccessible and rugged country he could find—and always in the daytime. Night found him indoors and tired. At home he installed a score of exercise machines, and where other men might go through a particular movement ten times, he went hundreds. Also, as a compromise, he built a sleeping porch on the second story. Here he at least breathed the blessed night air.[Pg 19] Double screens prevented him from escaping into the woods, and each night Lee Sing locked him in and each morning let him out. The time came, in the month of August, when he engaged additional servants to assist Lee Sing and dared a house party in his Mill Valley bungalow. Lilian, her mother and brother, and half a dozen mutual friends, were the guests. For two days and nights all went well. And on the third night, playing bridge till eleven o'clock, he had reason to be proud of himself. His restlessness he successfully hid, but as luck would have it, Lilian Gersdale was his opponent on his right. She was a frail delicate flower of a woman, and in his night-mood her very frailty incensed him. Not that he loved her less, but that he felt almost irresistibly impelled to reach out and paw and maul her. Especially was this true when she was engaged in playing a winning hand against him. He had one of the deer-hounds brought in, and, when it seemed he must fly to pieces with the tension, a caressing hand laid on the animal brought him relief. These contacts with the hairy coat gave him instant easement and enabled him to play out the evening. Nor did any one guess the terrible struggle their host was making, the while he laughed so carelessly and played so keenly and deliberately. When they separated for the night, he saw to it that he parted from Lilian in the presence of the others. Once on his sleeping porch, and safely locked in, he doubled and tripled and even quadrupled his exercises until, exhausted, he lay down on the couch to woo sleep and to ponder two problems that especially troubled[Pg 20] him. One was this matter of exercise. It was a paradox. The more he exercised in this excessive fashion, the stronger he became. While it was true that he thus quite tired out his night-running Teutonic self, it seemed that he was merely setting back the fatal day when his strength would be too much for him and overpower him, and then it would be a strength more terrible than he had yet known. The other problem was that of his marriage and of the stratagems he must employ in order to avoid his wife after dark. And thus fruitlessly pondering he fell asleep. Now, where the huge grizzly bear came from that night was long a mystery, while the people of the Springs Brothers' Circus, showing at Sausalito, searched long and vainly for "Big Ben, the Biggest Grizzly in Captivity." But Big Ben escaped, and, out of the mazes of half a thousand bungalows and country estates, selected the grounds of James J. Ward for visitation. The first Mr. Ward knew was when he found himself on his feet, quivering and tense, a surge of battle in his breast and on his lips the old war-chant. From without came a wild baying and bellowing of the hounds. And sharp as a knife-thrust through the pandemonium came the agony of a stricken dog—his dog, he knew. Not stopping for slippers, pajama-clad, he burst through the door Lee Sing had so carefully locked, and sped down the stairs and out into the night. As his naked feet struck the graveled driveway, he stopped abruptly, reached under the steps to a hiding-place he knew well, and pulled forth a huge knotty club—his old companion on many a mad night adventure on the hills. The frantic hullabaloo of the dogs was coming[Pg 21] nearer, and, swinging the club, he sprang straight into the thickets to meet it. The aroused household assembled on the wide veranda. Somebody turned on the electric lights, but they could see nothing but one another's frightened faces. Beyond the brightly illuminated driveway the trees formed a wall of impenetrable blackness. Yet somewhere in that blackness a terrible struggle was going on. There was an infernal outcry of animals, a great snarling and growling, the sound of blows being struck, and a smashing and crashing of underbrush by heavy bodies. The tide of battle swept out from among the trees and upon the driveway just beneath the onlookers. Then they saw. Mrs. Gersdale cried out and clung fainting to her son. Lilian, clutching the railing so spasmodically that a bruising hurt was left in her finger-ends for days, gazed horror-stricken at a yellow-haired, wild-eyed giant whom she recognized as the man who was to be her husband. He was swinging a great club, and fighting furiously and calmly with a shaggy monster that was bigger than any bear she had ever seen. One rip of the beast's claws had dragged away Ward's pajama-coat and streaked his flesh with blood. While most of Lilian Gersdale's fright was for the man beloved, there was a large portion of it due to the man himself. Never had she dreamed so formidable and magnificent a savage lurked under the starched shirt and conventional garb of her betrothed. And never had she had any conception of how a man battled. Such a battle was certainly not modern; nor was she there beholding a modern man, though she did not know it.[Pg 22] For this was not Mr. James J. Ward, the San Francisco business man, but one unnamed and unknown, a crude, rude savage creature who, by some freak of chance, lived again after thrice a thousand years. The hounds, ever maintaining their mad uproar, circled about the fight, or dashed in and out, distracting the bear. When the animal turned to meet such flanking assaults, the man leaped in and the club came down. Angered afresh by every such blow, the bear would rush, and the man, leaping and skipping, avoiding the dogs, went backwards or circled to one side or the other. Whereupon the dogs, taking advantage of the opening, would again spring in and draw the animal's wrath to them. The end came suddenly. Whirling, the grizzly caught a hound with a wide sweeping cuff that sent the brute, its ribs caved in and its back broken, hurtling twenty feet. Then the human brute went mad. A foaming rage flecked the lips that parted with a wild inarticulate cry, as it sprang in, swung the club mightily in both hands, and brought it down full on the head of the uprearing grizzly. Not even the skull of a grizzly could withstand the crushing force of such a blow, and the animal went down to meet the worrying of the hounds. And through their scurrying leaped the man, squarely upon the body, where, in the white electric light, resting on his club, he chanted a triumph in an unknown tongue—a song so ancient that Professor Wertz would have given ten years of his life for it. His guests rushed to possess him and acclaim him, but James Ward, suddenly looking out of the eyes of the early Teuton, saw the fair frail Twentieth Century[Pg 23] girl he loved, and felt something snap in his brain. He staggered weakly toward her, dropped the club, and nearly fell. Something had gone wrong with him. Inside his brain was an intolerable agony. It seemed as if the soul of him were flying asunder. Following the excited gaze of the others, he glanced back and saw the carcass of the bear. The sight filled him with fear. He uttered a cry and would have fled, had they not restrained him and led him into the bungalow. James J. Ward is still at the head of the firm of Ward, Knowles & Co. But he no longer lives in the country; nor does he run of nights after the coyotes under the moon. The early Teuton in him died the night of the Mill Valley fight with the bear. James J. Ward is now wholly James J. Ward, and he shares no part of his being with any vagabond anachronism from the younger world. And so wholly is James J. Ward modern, that he knows in all its bitter fullness the curse of civilized fear. He is now afraid of the dark, and night in the forest is to him a thing of abysmal terror. His city house is of the spick and span order, and he evinces a great interest in burglar-proof devices. His home is a tangle of electric wires, and after bed-time a guest can scarcely breathe without setting off an alarm. Also, he has invented a combination keyless door-lock that travelers may carry in their vest pockets and apply immediately and successfully under all circumstances. But his wife does not deem him a coward. She knows better. And, like any hero, he is content to rest on his laurels. His bravery is never questioned by those of his friends who are aware of the Mill Valley episode.

HUNTING LICENSE By James V. McConnell - https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/66570/pg66570-images.html

 The helicopters buzzed lazily overhead like fat flies in a warm May wind.

"There they go. Right on time," said William Karsten III. His hunting jacket shone bright red in the early morning sun as he moved out into the open to watch the planes.

Putting his hands on the arms of the chair, the Warden made a valiant effort and managed, just barely, to remove his body from the comforting confines of the chair. "Well," he said, "I must be off. Have a lot of other hunters to see before the season opens." The two hunters rose and shook hands with him.

"Now, let's synchronize our watches before I leave," the officer said. He peered closely at his timepiece. "It's now 7:23:05 by my official clock. I got word on my plane radio just as I was landing that the criminals were dropped in the center of the Preserve at 7:03 exactly." He looked up. "The season opens at ten sharp. I'll see you at the Gate before then, of course." He turned around and bounced towards the plane.

EARTH IS MISSING! By CARL SELWYN - https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/64361/pg64361-images.html

 87th Century Earth, entombed in a relentless,

mile-thick coat of ice—its buried cities groaning
in slow-congealing despair

Man is a part of Nature, not something contrasted with Nature. His thoughts and his bodily movements follow the same laws that describe the motions of stars and atoms. The physical world is large compared with Man—larger than it was thought to be in Dante’s time, but not so large as it seemed a hundred years ago. Both upward and downward, both in the large and in the small, science seems to be reaching limits. It is thought that the universe is of finite extent in space, and that light could travel round it in a few hundred millions of years. It is thought that matter consists of electrons and[2] protons, which are of finite size, and of which there are only a finite number in the world. Probably their changes are not continuous, as used to be thought, but proceed by jerks, which are never smaller than a certain minimum jerk. The laws of these changes can apparently be summed up in a small number of very general principles, which determine the past and the future of the world when any small section of its history is known. Physical science is thus approaching the stage when it will be complete, and therefore uninteresting. Given the laws governing the motions of electrons and protons, the rest is merely geography—a collection of particular facts telling their distribution throughout some portion of the world’s history. The total number of facts of geography required to determine the world’s history is probably finite; theoretically,[3] they could all be written down in a big book to be kept at Somerset House, with a calculating machine attached, which, by turning a handle, would enable the inquirer to find out the facts at other times than those recorded. It is difficult to imagine anything less interesting, or more different from the passionate delights of incomplete discovery. It is like climbing a high mountain and finding nothing at the top except a restaurant where they sell ginger-beer, surrounded by fog but equipped with wireless. Perhaps in the time of Ahmes the multiplication-table was exciting. Of this physical world, uninteresting in itself, Man is a part. His body, like other matter, is composed of electrons and protons, which, so far as we know, obey the same laws as those not forming part of animals or plants. There are some who maintain that physiology[4] can never be reduced to physics, but their arguments are not very convincing and it seems prudent to suppose that they are mistaken. What we call our “thoughts” seem to depend upon the organization of tracks in the brain in the same sort of way in which journeys depend upon roads and railways. The energy used in thinking seems to have a chemical origin; for instance, a deficiency of iodine will turn a clever man into an idiot. Mental phenomena seem to be bound up with material structure. If this be so, we cannot suppose that a solitary electron or proton can “think”; we might as well expect a solitary individual to play a football match. We also cannot suppose that an individual’s thinking survives bodily death, since that destroys the organization of the brain, and dissipates the energy which utilized the brain-tracks. [5] God and immortality, the central dogmas of the Christian religion, find no support in science. It cannot be said that either doctrine is essential to religion, since neither is found in Buddhism. (With regard to immortality, this statement in an unqualified form might be misleading, but it is correct in the last analysis). But we in the West have come to think of them as the irreducible minimum of theology. No doubt people will continue to entertain these beliefs, because they are pleasant, just as it is pleasant to think ourselves virtuous and our enemies wicked. But for my part I cannot see any ground for either. I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove that Satan is a fiction. The Christian God may exist; so may the Gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon. But no one of these[6] hypotheses is more probable than any other: they lie outside the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason to consider any of them. I shall not enlarge upon this question, as I have dealt with it elsewhere

 Survival of bodily death is, however, a different matter from immortality:

[9] it may only mean a postponement of psychical death. It is immortality that men desire to believe in. Believers in immortality will object to physiological arguments, such as I have been using, on the ground that soul and body are totally disparate, and that the soul is something quite other than its empirical manifestations through our bodily organs. I believe this to be a metaphysical superstition. Mind and matter alike are for certain purposes convenient terms, but are not ultimate realities. Electrons and protons, like the soul, are logical fictions: each is really a history, a series of events, not a single persistent entity. In the case of the soul, this is obvious from the facts of growth. Whoever considers conception, gestation, and infancy cannot seriously believe that the soul is an indivisible something, perfect and complete throughout this process. It[10] is evident that it grows like the body, and that it derives both from the spermatozoon and from the ovum, so that it cannot be indivisible. This is not materialism: it is merely the recognition that everything interesting is a matter of organization, not of primal substance.

Metaphysicians have advanced innumerable arguments to prove that the soul must be immortal. There is one simple test by which all these arguments can be demolished. They all prove equally that the soul must pervade all space. But as we are not so anxious to be fat as to live long, none of the metaphysicians in question have ever noticed this application of their reasonings. This is an instance of the amazing power of desire in blinding even very able men to fallacies which would otherwise be obvious at once. If we were not afraid of death, I do[11] not believe that the idea of immortality would ever have arisen.

Fear is the basis of religious dogma, as of so much else in human life. Fear of human beings, individually or collectively, dominates much of our social life, but it is fear of nature that gives rise to religion. The antithesis of mind and matter is, as we have seen, more or less illusory; but there is another antithesis which is more important—that, namely, between things that can be affected by our desires and things that cannot be so affected. The line between the two is neither sharp nor immutable—as science advances, more and more things are brought under human control. Nevertheless there remain things definitely on the other side. Among these are all the large facts of our world, the sort of facts that are dealt with by astronomy. It is only facts on or near[12] the surface of the earth that we can, to some extent, mould to suit our desires. And even on the surface of the earth, our powers are very limited. Above all, we cannot prevent death, although we can often delay it.

Religion is an attempt to overcome this antithesis. If the world is controlled by God, and God can be moved by prayer, we acquire a share in omnipotence. In former days, miracles happened in answer to prayer; they still do in the Catholic Church, but Protestants have lost this power. However, it is possible to dispense with miracles, since Providence has decreed that the operation of natural laws shall produce the best possible results. Thus belief in God still serves to humanize the world of nature, and to make men feel that physical forces are really their allies. In like manner immortality removes the terror from death. People[13] who believe that when they die they will inherit eternal bliss may be expected to view death without horror, though, fortunately for medical men, this does not invariably happen. It does, however, soothe men’s fears somewhat, even when it cannot allay them wholly.

Religion, since it has its source in terror, has dignified certain kinds of fear, and made people think them not disgraceful. In this it has done mankind a great disservice: all fear is bad, and ought to be overcome not by fairy tales, but by courage and rational reflection. I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young, and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is none the less true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting.[14] Many a man has borne himself proudly on the scaffold: surely the same pride should teach us to think truly about man’s place in the world. Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cosy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigour, and the great spaces have a splendour of their own.

The philosophy of nature is one thing, the philosophy of value is quite another. Nothing but harm can come of confusing them. What we think good, what we should like, has no bearing whatever upon what is, which is the question for the philosophy of nature. On the other hand, we cannot be forbidden to value this or that on the ground that the non-human world does not value it, nor can we be compelled to admire anything because it is a “law of nature.” Undoubtedly[15] we are part of nature, which has produced our desires, our hopes and fears, in accordance with laws which the physicist is beginning to discover. In this sense we are part of nature; in the philosophy of nature, we are subordinated to nature, the outcome of natural laws, and their victims in the long run.

The philosophy of nature must not be unduly terrestrial; for it, the earth is merely one of the smaller planets of one of the smaller stars of the Milky Way. It would be ridiculous to warp the philosophy of nature in order to bring out results that are pleasing to the tiny parasites of this insignificant planet. Vitalism as a philosophy, and evolutionism, show, in this respect, a lack of sense of proportion and logical relevance. They regard the facts of life, which are personally interesting to us, as having a cosmic significance, not[16] a significance confined to the earth’s surface. Optimism and pessimism, as cosmic philosophies, show the same naïve humanism: the great world, so far as we know it from the philosophy of nature, is neither good nor bad, and is not concerned to make us either happy or unhappy. All such philosophies spring from self-importance, and are best corrected by a little astronomy.

But in the philosophy of value the situation is reversed. Nature is only a part of what we can imagine; everything, real or imagined, can be appraised by us, and there is no outside standard to show that our valuation is wrong. We are ourselves the ultimate and irrefutable arbiters of value, and in the world of value Nature is only a part. Thus in this world we are greater than Nature. In the world of values, Nature in itself is neutral, neither good[17] nor bad, deserving of neither admiration nor censure. It is we who create value, and our desires which confer value. In this realm we are kings, and we debase our kingship if we bow down to Nature. It is for us to determine the good life, not for Nature—not even for Nature personified as God.

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