Seven Gothic Tales, by Isak Dinesen [Karen Blixen], from Project Gutenberg Canada (2024)

by Isak Dinesen

with an introduction by Dorothy Canfield

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction (by Dorothy Canfield)

The Deluge at Norderney

The Old Chevalier

The Monkey

The Roads Round Pisa

The Supper at Elsinore

The Dreamers

The Poet

SEVEN GOTHIC TALES

Introduction

The person who has set his teeth into a kind of fruit new to him, isusually as eager as he is unable to tell you how it tastes. It is notenough for him to be munching away on it with relish. No, he must twisthis tongue trying to get its strange new flavor into words, which neveryet had any power to capture colors or tastes. "It's not like a peach,"you hear him say, biting out another mouthful from the oddly colored andoddly shaped thing, and chewing thoughtfully, "nor yet like a pear.Perhaps like a dead-ripe pineapple. Yet only if it had always beenwatered with fine old wine. Grown out of doors in Siberia, too, for allit has that southern tang. Nothing hothouse about it."

With some such nonsensical combination of impossibles do we all try todescribe something--book or food--that has given us a new sensation. Asif it were possible to suggest in words any sensation except thosealready known to everybody! Of course the only sensible thing is to say,"Take a taste, yourself. You'll eat it to the core, if you do."

To fit the occasion, an introduction to the seven stories--are theystories?--in this book, should, therefore, contain nothing but theexhortation, "Here, read one for yourself. You'll need no introductionto make you read the volume." But having just finished a second readingof the volume, myself, I am so much under its spell (it feels exactlylike a spell) that I must seize this opportunity for babbling about it.Yet I can't even tell you the first fact about it which everybody wantsto know about a book--who is the author. In this case, all that we aretold is that the author is a Continental European, writing in Englishalthough that is not native to his pen, who wishes his-or-her identitynot to be known, although between us be it said, it is safe from thesetting of the tales to guess that he is not a Sicilian. Really allthere is to tell you beforehand is what you will see for yourself assoon as you begin to read, that the people in this book are a raceapart.

Although solidly set in an admirably described factual backgroundsomewhere on the same globe we inhabit, in a past mostly no longer agothan sometime in the nineteenth century, although they are human beings,young men, maidens, old men, old women, they are unlike us and thepeople we know in books and in real life, because the attitude towardslife which they have is different from ours, or from any attitude wehave met in life or in books. All those who are given leading rôles inthese stories have in their youth expected more out of life than it hadto give--wait a moment!--you are jumping to the conclusion that the bookis just some more Romantic School stuff. You are mistaken. RomanticSchool characters, after encountering this disappointment, spend therest of their lives spooning up out of their disillusion the softest andmost delicately flavored custard of self-pity. If the characters inthese stories ever feel pity for anything, it is a cold, disdainful pityfor life itself in being so meanly smaller and poorer and safer thanthey would have made it, had they been God. Stop!--you are thinking ofByron. You are wrong. Byron was a poet of genius. At least that is whatis said about him by people who ought to know. And I daresay thesestories, for all their bizarre power, can scarcely expect to have thethumping signboard of genius hung up above the stand in the literarymarket where they are for sale. But Byron's moral atmosphere is that ofa naïve, kindly, immature youth compared to the tense, fierce, hard,controlled, over-civilized, savage something-or-other, for which I findno name, created in this book by its anonymous author.

Perhaps the best description of the spirit one divines back of thesestories, is found in the author's own description of one of thecharacters. She is walking here and there in a public park, taking smallwell-bred steps in prettily furred boots, and living through a moment ofwild emotion (about to keep a rendezvous with a long-dead brother, ifyou'd like to know). The author says of her, that "in her heart a greatmad wing-clipped bird was fluttering in the winter sunset." If you willmeditate a moment on that description, you will have quite a clearnotion of what you will find in the book--a great mad, wing-clippedbird, fluttering in a winter sunset. Let me add to that self-descriptivephrase, a bit of dialogue which also evokes the dominant mood of thebook. It is in "The Deluge at Norderney," to my notion (although youwill of course have your own favorite) one of the finest of the tales.The Cardinal says to the old maid of the noble family of Nat-og-Dag,(the world we step into through the covers of this book has manyaristocrats in it, cardinals, ambassadors, Chanoinesses, exquisite andperverted young noblemen--and old ones too), "Madame," he saysadmiringly, "you have a great power of imagination and a fine courage."

"Oh, I am a Nat-og-Dag," said Miss Malin modestly.

"But are you not," asked the Cardinal, "a little...?"

"Mad?" asked the old lady. "I thought you were aware of that, my lord."Now if you don't know what the general spirit animating the book is, Ican't tell you.

But there is a great deal more to an author than the spirit thatanimates him, let that be as curious and rare as it will. There is hisstyle. And I don't know how to tell you what the style of the book is,any more definitely than what the spirit of it is, because the style toois very new to me, and will be to you, I think.

You will probably read it as I did, laying it down from time to time, tolook up at the ceiling, pondering, "Is it of Cervantes' leisurely,by-path-following style that it reminds me? Or perhaps just R. L.Stevenson's more mannered--no, no, it is more like a Romantic SchoolGerman narrator's way of telling a story. Or is that only because thegrotesque and occasionally gruesome touches remind one of Hoffman?Perhaps it is because a foreigner, writing English, often falls as itwere by accident on inimitably fresh ways of using our battered oldwords. Perhaps, quite simply, the style seems so original and strangebecause the personality using it is original and strange." And havingcome to no conclusion at all, you will turn back to read until you areagain stopped by some passage for which you can't find a comparison inthe writing you know. Like this one, in "The Supper at Elsinore" at theend of the party. The two middle-aged but still brilliant sisters "werehappy to get rid of their guests; but a little silent bitter minuteaccompanied the pleasure. For they could still make people fall in lovewith them; they had the radiance in them which could refract littlerainbow effects on the atmosphere of Copenhagen existence. But who couldmake them feel in love? At this moment, the tristesse of the eternalhostess stiffened them a little."

Or this beginning of "Roads Around Pisa." "Count Augustus vonSchimmelmann, a young Danish nobleman of a melancholy disposition, whowould have been very good-looking if he had not been a little too fat,was writing a letter on a table made out of a millstone, in the gardenof an osteria near Pisa, on a fine May evening of 1823."

Or this, a phrase in a description of a small fashionable watering placeon the North Sea, "The very air had here in its embrace a scornful vigorwhich incited and renewed the heart. There was also a small Casino wherethe coquetry with the dangerous powers of existence could be carried onin a different manner."

And this description of an aging mother who died after hearing of heronly son's execution. "She was a stringed instrument from which herchildren had many of their high and clear notes. If it were never againto be used, if no waltz, serenade, or martial march were ever to beplayed upon it again, it might as well be put away. Death was no moreunnatural to her than silence."

"...that rare, wild, broken and arrogant smile of the dying poet..."sounds again like a description of the spirit of the book. Andthis from "The Monkey" (a story guaranteed to addle your brains in themost powerful manner), when young Boris kisses the hand of his old aunt,the Chanoinesse, "...and all at once got such a terrible impressionof strength and cunning that it was as if he had touched an electriceel. Women, he thought, when they are old enough to have done with thebusiness of being women and can let loose their strength, must be themost powerful creatures in the whole world." And on the next page, whenas he leaves he encounters a corpulent old countess, "...a gentlemelancholy veiled her always and her lady companion said of her, 'TheCountess Anastasia has a heavy cross. The love of eating is a heavycross.'" And as he drives on to find Athena, "Now in the afternoon sunthe trunks of the fir trees were burning red, and the landscape far awayseemed cool, all blue and pale gold. Boris was able to believe what theold gardener at the convent had told him when he was a child; that hehad once seen about this time of the year and the day, a herd ofunicorns come out of the woods to graze upon the sunny slopes, the whiteand dappled mares rosy in the sun, treading daintily and looking aroundfor their young, the old stallion, darker roan, sniffing and pawing theground. The air here smelled of pine needles and toadstools and was sofresh that it made him yawn. And yet, he thought, it was different fromthe freshness of spring; the courage and gayety of it were tinged withdespair. It was the finale of the symphony."

Where, you will ask yourself, puzzled, have I ever encountered suchstrange slanting beauty of phrase, clothing such arresting butcontrolled fantasy? As for me, I don't know where.

****

Have I given you an idea that the book is filled with a many-coloredliterary fog in which you can make out no recognizable human shapes? Ifso I have been exceptionally inept. The light in it is strange, not atall the good straight downward noon-day stare of the every day sun. Butit is clear light, and in it we see a series of vigorously presented,outrageously unexpected, sometimes horrifying, but perfectly real humanbeings. They seem endowed with a sort of legendary intensity of living,almost beyond the possible, but that may be a result of the eerie lightin which they are shown; as ordinary people sometimes for a moment ortwo, although perfectly visible to us as themselves, look legendary andepic in the darkening moment before the bursting of a storm, or in thefirst glimmer of dawn--in that moment or two during which the sunrise isseen as the miracle it is.

The Deluge at Norderney

During the first quarter of the last century, seaside resorts became thefashion, even in those countries of Northern Europe within the minds ofwhose people the sea had hitherto held the rôle of the devil, the coldand voracious hereditary foe of humanity. The romantic spirit of theage, which delighted in ruins, ghosts, and lunatics, and counted astormy night on the heath and a deep conflict of the passions a finertreat for the connoisseur than the ease of the salon and the harmony ofa philosophic system, reconciled even the most refined individuals tothe eternal wildness of the coast scenery and of the open seas. Ladiesand gentlemen of fashion abandoned the shade of their parks to come andwalk upon the bleak shores and watch the untameable waves. Theneighborhood of a shipwreck, where, in low tide, the wreck was still insight, like a hardened, black, and salted skeleton, became a favoritepicnic place, where fair artists put up their easels.

On the west coast of Holstein the bath of Norderney thus sprang up andflowered for a period of twenty years. Along the sandy roads of thedowns fine carriages and coaches came, to unload trunks and cartons, andladies on small feet, whose veils and chenilles blew about them in thefresh breeze, in front of neat little hotels and cottages. The Duke ofAugustenburg, with his beautiful wife and his sister, who was a finewit, and the Prince of Noer honored the place with their presence. Thelanded nobility of Schleswig-Holstein, with pins and needles in theirlegs from the new political stir, and the representatives of old Hamburgand Lübeck merchant houses, worth their weight in gold, togetherundertook the pilgrimage into the heart of nature. The peasants andfishermen of Norderney themselves learned to look upon the terrible andfaithless gray monster westward of them as upon some kind maître deplaisir.

Here was a promenade, a club, and a pavilion, the rendezvous in the longsummer evenings of many sweet colors and sounds. Ladies withmarriageable daughters, over whose heads barren seasons of the courtsand towns had washed, now watched fruitful courtships ripen on the sunnybeach. Young dandies managed their mounts on the long sands in front ofclear eyes. Old gentlemen dug themselves down into political anddynastic discussions in the club, their glasses of fine rum at theirsides; and their young wives walked, their cashmeres on their arms, to alonely hollow in the downs, still sun-baked from the long summer day, tobecome one with nature, with the lyme grass and the little wind-blownpansies, and to gaze straight up at the full moon, high in the palesummer sky. The very air had here in its embrace a scornful vigor whichincited and renewed the heart. Heinrich Heine, who visited the bath,held that the persevering smell of fish which clung to them would initself be enough to protect the virtue of the young fishermaidens ofNorderney. But there were other nostrils and hearts to which the rankbriny smell was intoxicating, even as the smell of gunpowder over thebattlefield. There was even a small casino, where the coquetry with thedangerous powers of existence could be carried on in a differentmeasure. At times there were great balls, and on fine summer eveningsthe orchestra played upon the terrace.

"You do not know," said the Princess of Augustenburg to Herr Gottingen,"what a place this is for making you clean. That sea breeze has blownstraight through my bonnet and my clothes, and through the very fleshand the bones of me, until my heart and spirit are swept, sun-dried, andsalted."

"With Attic salt, I have noticed," said Herr Gottingen, and, looking ather, he added in his heart: "God, yes. Precisely like a split cod."

In the late summer of 1835 a terrible disaster took place at the bath ofNorderney. After a three days' storm from the southwest, the wind sprangaround to the north. This is a thing that happens only once in a hundredyears. The tremendous mass of water driven up by the storm was turnedand pressed down in the corner, upon the Westerlands. The sea broke thedikes in two places and washed through them. Cattle and sheep weredrowned by the hundred. Farmhouses and barns came down like card castlesbefore the advancing waters, and many human lives were lost even as faras Wilsum and Wredon.

It began with an evening of more than ordinarily heavenly calm, but ofstifling air and a strange, luminous, sulphurous dimness. There was nodistinguishable line of division between the sky and the sea. The sunwent down in a confusion of light, itself a dull red like the targetupon the promenade. The waves seemed of a curious substance, likejellyfish washing up on the shore. It was a highly inspiring evening;many things happened at Norderney. That night the people who were notkept awake by the beating of their own hearts woke up, terrified, by anew, swiftly approaching roar. Could their sea sing now in this voice?

In the morning the world was changed, but none knew into what. In thisnoise nobody could talk, or even think. What the sea was doing you couldnot tell. Your clothes were already whipped off you before you got insight of the sand, and the salt foam whirled sky high. Long and toweringwaves came in behind it, each more powerful than the last. The air wascold and bitter.

The rumor of a ship run aground four miles to the north reached thebath, but nobody ventured out to see it. Old General von Brackel, whohad seen the occupation of East Prussia by Napoleon's armies in 1806,and old Professor Schmiegelow, the physician to the princely house ofCoburg, who had been in Naples at the time of the cholera, walked out alittle together, and from a small hill watched the scenery, both quitesilent. It was not till Thursday that the flood came. By then the stormwas over.

By this time, also, there were not many people left at Norderney. Theseason had been drawing to a close, and many of the most illustriousguests had gone before the time of the storm. Now most of the remainingvisitors made haste to depart. The young women pressed their faces tothe window panes of their coaches, wild to catch a last glimpse of thewild scenery. It seemed to them that they were driving away from the onereal place and hour of their lives. But when the grand coach of BaronGoldstein, of Hamburg, was blown straight off the road on the dike, itwas realized that the time for quick action had come. Everybody went offas speedily as possible.

It was during these hours, the last of the storm and the first of thefollowing night, that the sea broke the dikes. The dikes, made to resista heavy pressure from seaward, could not hold when sapped from the east.They gave way along a stretch of half a mile, and through the openingthe sea came in.

The farmers were awakened by the plaintive bellowing of their animals.Swinging their feet out of bed, in the dark, they put them down in afoot of cold, muddy water. It was salt. It was the same water whichrolled, out to the west, a hundred fathoms deep, and washed the whitefeet of the cliffs of Dover. The North Sea had come to visit them. Itwas rising quickly. In an hour the movables of the low farmhouses werefloating on the water, knocking against the walls. As the dawn came, thepeople, from the roofs of their houses, watched the land around themchange. Trees and bushes were growing in a moving gray ground, and thickyellow foam was washing over the stretches of their ripening corn, theharvest of which they had been discussing on the last days before thestorm.

There had been such floods before. A few old people could still recountto the young how they had once been snatched from their beds and hurledupon rafts by their pale mothers, and had seen, from the collapsinghouses, the cattle struggle and go under in dark water; and howbreadwinners had perished and households had been ruined and lost. Thesea did such things from time to time. Still, this flood lived long inthe memory of the coast. By coming on in summer time, the deluge assumedthe character of a terrible, grim joke. In the annals of the province,where it kept a place and a name of its own, it was called the flood ofthe Cardinal.

This was because in the midst of their misery the terror-stricken peoplegot support from one already half-mythical figure, and felt at theirside the presence of a guardian angel. Many years after, in the minds ofthe peasants, it seemed that his company in their dark despair had sheda great white light over the black waves.

The Cardinal Hamilcar von Sehestedt had, during the summer, been livingin a small fisherman's house at some distance from the bath, to collecthis writings of many years in a book upon the Holy Ghost. With Joachimde Flora, who was born in 1202, the Cardinal held that while the book ofthe Father is given in the Old Testament, and that of the Son, in theNew, the testament of the Third Person of the Trinity still remained tobe written. This he had made the task of his life. He had grown up inthe Westerlands, and had preserved, during a long life of travels andspiritual work, his love for the coast scenery and the sea. In hisleisure hours he would go, after the example of St. Peter himself, along way out on the sea with the fishermen in their boats, to watchtheir work. He had with him in his cottage only a sort of valet orsecretary, a man by the name of Kasparson. This man was a former actorand adventurer, a brilliant fellow in his way, who spoke many languagesand had been given to all sorts of studies. He was devoted to theCardinal, but he seemed a curious Sancho Panza for the noble knight ofthe church.

The name of Hamilcar von Sehestedt was at that time famous all overEurope. He had been made a Cardinal three years before, when he was onlyseventy. He was a strange flower upon the old solid wood of theSehestedt family tree. An old noble race of the province had lived formany hundred years for nothing but wars and their land, to produce him.The one remarkable thing about them was that they had stuck, throughmany trials, to the ancient Roman Catholic faith of the land. They hadno mobility of spirit to change what they had once got into their heads.The Cardinal had nine brothers and sisters, none of whom had shown anyevidences of a spiritual life. It was as if some slowly gathered andquite unused store of intellectuality in the tribe had come out in thisone child of it. Perhaps a woman, imported from outside, had dropped athought into the blood of it before becoming altogether a Sehestedt, orsome idea in a book had impressed itself upon a young boy before he hadbeen taught that books and ideas mean nothing, and all this had mountedup.

The extraordinary talents of young Hamilcar had been recognized, not byhis own people, but by his tutor, who had been tutor to the Crown Princeof Denmark himself. He succeeded in taking the boy off to Paris andRome. Here this new light of genius suddenly flared up in a clear blaze,impossible to ignore. There existed a tale of how the Pope himself,after the young priest had been presented to him, had seen in a dreamhow this youth had been set apart by providence to bring back the greatProtestant countries under the Holy See. Still, the church had tried theyoung man severely, distrustful of many of the ideas and powers in him,of his visionary gift, and of the most striking feature of his nature:an immense capacity for pity which embraced not only the sinful andmiserable but seemed to turn even toward the high and holy of the world.Their severity did not hurt him; obedience was in his nature. To hisgreat power of imagination he joined a deep love of law and order.Perhaps in the end these two sides of his nature came to the same thing:to him everything seemed possible, and equally likely to fall in withthe beautiful and harmonious scheme of things.

The Pope himself, later, said of him: "If, after the destruction of ourpresent world, I were to charge one human being with the construction ofa new world, the only person whom I would trust with this work would bemy young Hamilcar." Whereupon, however, he quickly crossed himself twoor three times.

The young Cardinal, after the church had handled him, came out a man ofthe world in the old sense of the word, but in a new and greaterproportion. He moved with the same ease and grace amongst kings andoutcasts. He had been sent to the missionary monasteries of Mexico, andhad had great influence with the Indian and half-caste tribes there. Onething about him impressed the world everywhere: wherever he went, it wasbelieved of him that he could work miracles. At the time of his stay inNorderney the hardened and heavy coast people took to thinking strangethings of him. After the flood it was said by many that he had been seento walk upon the waves.

He may have felt handicapped in this feat, for he was nearly killed atthe very start of events. When the fishermen from the hamlet, as theflood came on, ran to his assistance, they found his cottage alreadyhalf a ruin. In the fall of it the man Kasparson had been killed. TheCardinal himself was badly wounded, and wore, all during his rescuework, a long, blood-stained bandage wound about his head.

In spite of this the old man worked all day with undaunted courage withthe ruined people. The money that he had had with him he gave over tothem. It was the first contribution to the funds which were afterwardcollected for the sufferers from all over Europe. Much greater still wasthe effect of his presence amongst them. He showed good knowledge ofsteering a boat. They did not believe that any vessel holding him couldgo down. On his command they rowed straight in amongst fallen buildings,and the women jumped into the boats from the house roofs, their childrenin their arms. From time to time he spoke to them in a strong and clearvoice, quoting to them the book of Job. Once or twice, when the boat,hit by heavy floating timbers, came near to capsizing, he rose and heldout his hand, and as if he had a magic power of balance, the boatsteadied itself. Near a farmhouse a chained dog, on the top of itskennel, over which the sea was washing, pulled at its chain and howled,and seemed to have gone mad with fear. As one of the men tried to takehold of it, it bit him. The old Cardinal, turning the boat a little,spoke to the dog and loosened its chain. The dog sprang into the boat.Whining, it squeezed itself against the old man's legs, and would notleave him.

Many peasant households had been saved before anybody thought of thebath. This was strange, as the rich and gay life out there had played abig part in the minds of the population. But in the hour of danger oldties of blood and life were stronger than the new fascination. At thebaths they would have light boats for pleasure trips, but few people whoknew how to maneuver them. It was not till noon that the heavier boatswere sent out, advancing fathom-high over the promenade.

The place where the boats unloaded, on their return landward, was awindmill which, built on a low slope and a half-circular bastion of bigstones, gave them access to lay to. From the other side of it you couldsomehow move on by road. Here, at a distance, horses and carts had beenbrought up. The mill itself made a good landmark, her tall wingsstanding up, hard and grim, a tumbledown big black cross against a tawnysky. A crowd of people was collected here waiting for the boats. As theycame in from the baths for the first time there were no tears of welcomeand reunion, for these people they carried, luxuriously dressed even intheir panic, with heavy caskets on their knees, were strangers. The lastboat brought news that there were still, out at Norderney, four or fivepersons for whom no place had been found in the boat.

The tired boatmen looked at one another. They knew the tide and high seaout there, and they thought: We will not go. Cardinal Hamilcar wasstanding in a group of women and children, with his back to the men, butas if he could read their hardening faces and hearts he became silent.He turned and looked at the newly arrived party. Even he seemed totarry. Below the white bandages his eyes rested on them with a singular,a mysterious expression. He had not eaten all day; now he asked forsomething to drink, and they brought him a jug of the spirits of theprovince. Turning once more toward the water he said quietly, Eh bien.Allons, allons. The words were strange to the peasants, for they wereterms used by the coachmen of the nobility, trained abroad, for theirteams of four horses. As he walked down to the boat, and the people fromthe bath dispersed before him, some of the ladies suddenly and wildlyclapped their hands. They meant no harm. Knowing heroism only from thestage, they gave it the stage's applause. But the old man whom theyapplauded stopped under it for a moment. He bowed his head a little,with an exquisite irony, in the manner of a hero upon the stage. Hislimbs were so stiff that he had to be supported and lifted into theboat.

It was not till late on Thursday afternoon that the boat was again onits way back. A dead darkness had all day been lying upon the widelandscape. As far as the eye reached, what had been an undulating rangeof land was now nothing but an immense gray plane, alarmingly alive.Nothing seemed to be firm. To the crushed hearts of the men rowing overtheir cornfields and meadows, this movableness of what had been theirfoundation and foothold was unbearable, and they turned their eyes awayfrom it. The clouds hung low upon the water. The small boat, movingheavily, seemed to be advancing upon a narrow horizontal course,squeezed in between the mass of weight below and what appeared to be amass of weight above it. The four people lately rescued from the ruinsof Norderney sat, white as corpses, in the stern.

The first of them was old Miss Nat-og-Dag, a maiden lady of greatwealth, the last of the old illustrious race which carried armstwo-parted in black and white, and whose name meant "Night and Day." Shewas close to sixty years, and her mind had for some years been confused,for she, who was a lady of the strictest virtue, believed herself to beone of the great female sinners of her time. She had with her a girl ofsixteen, the Countess Calypso von Platen Hallermund, the niece of thescholar and poet of that name. These two ladies, although they behavedin the midst of danger with great self-control, gave nevertheless thatimpression of wildness which, within a peaceful age and society, onlythe vanishing and decaying aristocracy can afford to maintain. To therescuing party it was as if they had taken into the boat two tigresses,one old and one young, the cub quite wild, the old one only the moredangerous for having the appearance of being tamed. Neither of them wasin the least afraid. While we are young the idea of death or failure isintolerable to us; even the possibility of ridicule we cannot bear. Butwe have also an unconquerable faith in our own stars, and in theimpossibility of anything venturing to go against us. As we grow old weslowly come to believe that everything will turn out badly for us, andthat failure is in the nature of things; but then we do not much mindwhat happens to us one way or the other. In this way a balance isobtained. Miss Malin Nat-og-Dag, while perfectly indifferent to whatshould become of her, was also, because of the derangement of her mind,joining, to this advantage of her age, the privilege of youth, thatsimple and arrogant optimism which takes for granted that nothing can gowrong with it. It is even doubtful whether she believed that she coulddie. The girl of sixteen, pressed close to her, her dusky tressesloosened and blown about her, was taking in everything around her withecstasy: the faces of her companions, the movements of the boat, theterrible, dull-brownish hue of the water below her, and was imaginingherself to be a great divinity of the sea.

The third person of the rescued party was a young Dane, Jonathan Mærsk,who had been sent to Norderney by his doctor to recover from a severeattack of melancholia. The fourth was Miss Malin's maid, who lay in thebottom of the boat, too terrified to lift her face from the knees of hermistress.

These four people, so lately snatched out of the jaws of death, had notyet escaped his hold. As their boat, on its way landward, passed at alittle distance the scattered buildings of a farm, of which only theroofs and upper parts of the walls appeared above the water, they caughtsight of human beings making signs to them from the loft of one of thesebuildings. The peasant boatmen were surprised, for they were certainthat a barge had been sent to this place earlier in the day. Under thecommanding glances of young Calypso, who had caught sight of childrenamongst the castaways, they changed their direction, and with difficultyapproached the house. As they were drawing near, a small granary, ofwhich only the roof was visible, suddenly gave in, fell, and disappearednoiselessly before their eyes. At this sight Jonathan Mærsk rose up inthe boat. For a moment he tried to follow the dispersing bits ofwreckage with his eyes. Then he sat down again, very pale. The boatgrated along the wall of the farmhouse and at last found a holdfast in aprojecting beam, which made it possible for them to communicate with thepeople in the hayloft. They found there two women, one old and oneyoung, a boy of sixteen, and two small children, and learned that theyhad been visited by the rescuing barge about three hours before. Butthey had profited by it only to send off their cow and calf, and a smallcollection of poor farm goods, heroically remaining themselves with therising waters around them. The old woman had even been offered a placein the barge, with the animals, but she had refused to leave herdaughter and grandchildren.

The boat could not possibly hold an additional load of five persons, andit had to be decided quickly who of the passengers should change placeswith the family of the farmhouse. Those who were left in the loft wouldhave to remain there till the boat could return. Since it was alreadygrowing dark, and there was no chance of bringing a boat along untildawn, this would mean a wait of six or seven hours. The question waswhether the house would hold out for so long.

The Cardinal, rising up in his fluttering dark cloak, said that he wouldstay in the loft. At these words the people in the boat were thrown intodark despair. They were afraid to come back without him. The boatmen letgo their hold on the oars, laid their hands on him, and implored him tostay with them. But he would hear nothing, and explained to them that hewould be as much in the hand of God here as anywhere else, even thoughperhaps under a different finger, and that it might have been for thisthat he had been sent out on this last journey. They saw that they coulddo nothing with him, and resigned themselves to their fate. Miss Malinthen quickly pronounced herself determined to keep him company in thehayloft, and the girl would not leave her old friend. Young JonathanMærsk seemed to wake from a dream, and told them that he would come withthem. At the last moment Miss Malin's maid cried out that she would notleave her mistress, and the men were already lifting her from the bottomof the boat when her mistress cast upon her the sort of glance by whichyou judge whether a person is likely to make a satisfactory fourth at agame of cards. "My pussy," she said, "nobody wants you here. Besides,you are probably in the family way, and so must hold onto futurity, mypoor girl. Good night, Mariechen."

It was not easy for the women to get from the boat into the loft. MissMalin, though, was thin and strong, and the men lifted her and placedher in the doorway as one would plant a scarecrow in a field. The smalland light girl followed her as lithely as a cat. The black dog, onseeing the Cardinal leave the boat, whined loudly and suddenly jumpedfrom the rail to the loft, and the young girl hauled it in. It was nowhigh time for the peasant family to get into the boat, but they wouldnot go before they had, loudly weeping, kissed the hands of theirrelievers and piled blessings upon them. The old woman insisted onhanding over to them a small stable lantern with a couple of sparetallow candles, a jug of water, and a keg of gin, together with a loafof the hard black bread which the peasants of the Westerlands make.

The men in the boat shoved off, and in a moment a belt of brown waterlay between the house and the boat.

From the door of the hayloft the derelicts watched the boat withdraw,very slowly, for it was heavily laden, across the heaving plane. Thebranches of tall poplars near the house floated upon the surface of thewater and were washed about violently with it. The dark sky, which allday had lain like a leaden lid upon the world, suddenly colored deepdown in the west, as if the lid had been lifted a little there, to aflaming red that was reflected in the sea below. All faces in the boatwere turned toward the loft, and when they were nearly out of sight theylifted their arms in a farewell greeting. The Cardinal, standing in thedoorway of the loft, solemnly raised his arms to them in a blessing.Miss Malin waved a little handkerchief. Soon the boat, fading from theirsight, became one with the sea and the air.

As if they had been four marionettes, pulled by the same wire, the fourpeople turned their faces to one another.

"How will he do to dance with?" a young girl asks herself, when, at theball, the Chapeau is presented to her. She may even add: "How will hedo as a beau, an Épouseur, the Intended of my life?"

"How will these people do to die with?" the castaways of the hayloft,scrutinizing each others' faces, asked themselves. Miss Malin, alwaysinclined toward a bright view of things, found herself satisfied withher partners.

The Cardinal gave expression to these thoughts. The old man stood for alittle while in deep silence, as if it took him time to get used againto the steadiness of a house, after a day spent in boats upon therestless seas, and to an atmosphere of comparative quiet after longhours of incessant danger--for nothing was likely to happen here at themoment--to get used, also, after his work with the broken-heartedpeasants and fishermen around him, to the company of his equals. Slowlyhis manner changed from that of a commander to that of a convive. Hesmiled at his companions.

"My sisters and my brother," he said, "I congratulate myself upon beingamongst brave people. I am looking forward to what hours I shall, underthe favor of God, spend with you here. Madame," he said to Miss Malin,"I am not surprised at your gallantry, for I know about your race. Itwas a Nat-og-Dag who, at Warberg, when the King's horse was shot underhim, jumped from his own horse and handed it to the King, with thewords: 'To the King, my horse; to the enemy, my life; to the Lord, mysoul.' It was a Svinhoved,[1]if I am not wrong--yourgreat-great-grandfather--who, at the sea battle of Koege, rather thanexpose the rest of the Danish fleet to the danger of fire from hisburning ship, chose to go on fighting with his last breath, until thefire reached the powder room, and he was blown up with his crew. Here,"he said, looking around him at the loft, "I may say it: Blessed are thepure in blood, for they shall see----" He paused, reflecting upon histheme. "Death," he concluded. "They shall see, verily, the face ofdeath. For this moment here, for us, our fathers were brought up,through the centuries, in skill of arms and loyalty to their king; andour mothers, in virtue."

[Footnote 1]The name means "hog's head."

He could have said nothing which would better have strengthened andinspired the hearts of the women, who were both fierce devils in racialpride. But young Jonathan Mærsk, the bourgeois amongst them, made agesture as if of protest. Nevertheless he said nothing.

They closed the door of the loft, but as it was hanging loose, and keptknocking about, the Cardinal asked the women if they could not findsomething with which to tie it fast. The girl felt for the ribbon whichhad tied her hair, but it had blown away. Miss Malin then gracefullylifted her petticoat and took off a long garter, embroidered withrosebuds. "The zenith in the career of a garter, My Lord," she said, "isgenerally in the loosening, not in the fastening, of it. On that accountthe sister of this ribbon, which is now being sanctified by your holyhand, lies in the vault of the Royal Mausoleum of Stuttgart."

"Madame," said the Cardinal, "you speak frivolously. Pray do not talk orthink in that way. Nothing sanctifies, nothing, indeed, is sanctified,except by the play of the Lord, which is alone divine. You speak like aperson who would pronounce half of the notes of the scale--say, do,re and mi--to be sacred, but fa, sol, la, and si to be onlyprofane, while, Madame, no one of the notes is sacred in itself, and itis the music, which can be made out of them, which is alone divine. Ifyour garter be sanctified by my feeble old hand, so is my hand by yourfine silk garter. The lion lies in wait for the antelope at the ford,and the antelope is sanctified by the lion, as is the lion by theantelope, for the play of the Lord is divine. Not the bishop, or theknight, or the powerful castle is sacred in itself, but the game ofchess is a noble game, and therein the knight is sanctified by thebishop, as the bishop by the queen. Neither would it be an advantage ifthe bishop were ambitious to acquire the higher virtues of the queen, orthe castle, those of the bishop. So are we sanctified when the hand ofthe Lord moves us to where he wants us to be. Here he may be about toplay a fine game with us, and in that game I shall be sanctified by you,as you by any of us."

When the door of the loft was closed, the place became dark, but thelittle lantern on the floor shed a gentle light. The loft looked like ahome to the hearts of the derelicts. It was as if they had lived here along time. The farmers had lately harvested their hay, and half the loftwas stacked with it. It smelled very sweet and made a clean and softseat. The Cardinal, who was very tired, soon sank down into it, his longcloak spread around him on the floor. Miss Malin faced him from theopposite side of the lantern. The young girl sat next to her, her legscrossed, like a small oriental idol. The boy, when at last he sat downwith them, took a seat upon a ladder which lay on the floor, and whichraised him a little above the others. The dog kept close to theCardinal. Sitting up, its ears back, from time to time it seemed, in adeep movement, to swallow its fear and loneliness. In these positionsthe party remained for most of the night. Indeed, the Cardinal and MissMalin kept theirs, as will be heard, until the first light of dawn. Alltheir shadows, thrown away in a circle from the center of the stablelamp, reached up to the rafters under the roof. In the course of thenight it often seemed as if it were these long shadows which were reallyalive, and which kept up the spirit and the talk of the gathering,behind the exhausted people.

"Madame," said the Cardinal to Miss Malin, "I have been told of yoursalon, in which you make everybody feel at ease and at the same timekeen to be at his best. As we want to feel like this tonight, I praythat you will be our hostess, and transfer your talents to this loft."

Miss Malin at once fell in with his suggestion and took command of theplace. During the night she performed her rôle, regaling her guests uponthe rare luxuries of loneliness, darkness, and danger, while up hersleeve she had death itself, like some lion of the season, some fineItalian tenor, out of the reach of rival hostesses, waiting outside thedoor to appear and create the sensation of the night. Some people manageto loll upon a throne; Miss Malin, on the contrary, sat in the hay asupon one of those tabourets which are amongst the privileges ofduchesses. She made Jonathan cut up the bread and hand it around, and toher companions, who had had no food all day, the hard black crusts heldthe fragrance of the cornfields. In the course of the night she and theCardinal, who were old and faint, drank between them most of the gin inthe keg. The two young people did not touch it.

She had, straight away, more than she had asked for in the task ofmaking her companions comfortable, for hardly had the Cardinal spokenwhen he fell down in a dead faint. The women, who dared not loosen thebandages around his head, sprinkled them with water out of the jar. Whenhe first recovered he stared wildly at them, and put his hands to hishead, but as he regained consciousness he gently apologized for thetrouble he had given them, adding that he had had a fatiguing day. Heseemed, however, somehow changed after his recovery, as if weaker thanbefore, and, as if handing some of his leadership and responsibility toMiss Malin, he kept close to her.

It may be well at this point to give a brief account of Miss MalinNat-og-Dag:

****

It has been said that she was a little off her head. Still, tothe people who knew her well, it sometimes seemed open to doubtwhether she was not mad by her own choice, or from some capriceof hers, for she was a capricious woman. Neither had she alwaysbeen mad. She had even been a woman of great sense, who studiedphilosophy, and held human passions in scorn. If Miss Malin hadnow been given the choice of returning to her former reasonablestate, and had been capable of realizing the meaning of theoffer, she might have declined it on the ground that you have inreality more fun out of life when a little off your head.

Miss Malin was now a rich woman, but she had not always beenthat, either. She had grown up an orphan girl in the house ofrich relations. Her proud old name she had always had, also hervery proud big nose.

She had been brought up by a pious governess, of the sect of theHernhuten, who thought much of female virtue. In those days awoman's being had one center of gravity, and life was simpler toher on this account than it has been later on. She might poisonher relations and cheat at cards with a high hand, and yet be anhonnête femme as long as she tolerated no heresy in the sphereof her specialty. Ladies of her day might themselves fix theprice of their hearts and minds and of their souls, should theychoose to deal with the devil; but as to their bodies, thosewere the women's stock in trade, and the lowering of the sacredstandard price for them was thought of as disloyal competitionto the guild of the honnêtes femmes, and was a deadly sin.Indeed, the higher a young woman could drive up the priceindividually, the greater was her state of holiness, and it wasfar better that it should be said of her that for her sake manymen had been made unhappy, than that she should have made manymen happy.

Miss Malin, urged on by her disposition as well as hereducation, ran amuck a little in her relation to the doctrine.She took the line, not only of defense, but of a most audaciousoffensive. Fantastical by nature, she saw no reason fortemperance, and drove up her price fantastically high. In fact,in regard to the high valuation of her own body she became thevictim of a kind of megalomania. Sigrid the Haughty, the ancientQueen of Norway, summoned to her all her suitors amongst theminor kings of the country, and then put fire to the house andburned them all up, declaring that in this way she would teachthe petty kings of Norway to come and woo her. Malin might havedone the same with an equally good conscience. She had taken toheart what her governess had read her out of the Bible, that"whoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath alreadycommitted adultery with her in his heart," and she had madeherself the female counterpart of the conscientious young maleof the Gospel. A man's desire for her was to her, as probably toQueen Sigrid, a deadly impertinence, and as grave an offense asan attempted rape. She showed but little feminine esprit decorps, and appeared not to consider in the least that it wouldhave been hard on the honest young women in general if theprinciple had been carried through, since their whole field ofaction lay between the two ideas, and, by amalgamating them, youwould put as quick an end to their activity as you would to thatof a concertina player by folding up the concertina and hookingits two end pieces together. She cut a slightly pathetic figure,as do all people who, in this world, take the words of Scriptureau pied de la lettre. But she did not at all mind what sort offigure she cut.

In her youth, however, this fanatical virgin cut no mean figurein society, for she was highly talented and brilliant. Thoughnot beautiful, she had the higher gift of seeming so, and insociety she played the part of a belle when far lovelier womenwere left unattended. The homage that she received she took asthe natural tribute to a Nat-og-Dag, and she was not insensitiveto flatteries which concerned her spirit and courage, or herrare gifts for music and dancing. She even chose her friendsmostly amongst men, and thought women a little stupid. But shewas at the same time ever on the outlook, like a fighting bullfor a red cloth, or a crusader for the sign of the half-moon,for any sign of the eye of lust, in order to annihilate theowner without pity.

Yet Miss Malin had not escaped the common fate of human beings.She had her romance. When she was twenty-seven, already an oldmaid, she decided to marry after all. In this position she feltlike a very tall bitch surrounded by small yapping lap dogs. Shewas still prepared to burn up the petty kings who might come towoo her, but she picked out her choice. So did Queen Sigrid, whoswooped down on the Christian hero, Olav Trygveson, and in thesaga can be read the tragic outcome of the meeting of these twoproud hearts.

Malin, for her part, picked out Prince Ernest Theodore ofAnhalt. This young man was the idol of his time. Of the highestbirth and enormously rich, since his mother had been a grandduchess of Russia, he was also handsome as an angel, abel-esprit, and a lion of Judah as a soldier. He had even anoble heart, and no frivolity in his nature, so that when, tothe right and left of him, fair women died from love of him, hegrieved. With all this he was an observer; he saw things. Oneday he saw Miss Malin, and for some time saw little else.

This young man had obtained everything in life--and women inparticular--too cheaply. Beauty, talents, charm, virtue had beenhis for the lifting of his little finger. About Miss Malin therewas nothing striking but the price. That this thin, big-nosed,penniless girl, two years older than he, would demand not onlyhis princely name and a full share in his brilliant future, butalso his prostrate adoration, his life-long fidelity, andsubjection in life and death and could be had for nothingless,--this impressed the young Prince.

Some people have an unconquerable love of riddles. They may havethe chance of listening to plain sense, or to such wisdom asexplains life; but no, they must go and work their brains over ariddle, just because they do not understand what it means. Thatthe solution is most likely silly in itself makes no differenceto those possessed by this particular passion. Prince Ernest hadthis mentality, and, even from his childhood, would sit for dayslost in riddles and puzzles--a pastime which, in his case, wastaken as a proof of high intellectuality. When, therefore, hefound this hard nut to crack, the more easily solved beautiesfaded before his eyes.

So nervous was Prince Ernest about this first risk of refusalwhich he had taken in his life--and God knows whether he mostdreaded or coveted it--that he did not propose to MalinNat-og-Dag until the very last evening before he was to departfor the war. A fortnight later he was killed upon the battlefield of Jena, and he was clasping in his hand a small goldlocket with a curl of fair hair in it. Many lovely blondes foundcomfort in the thought of this locket. None knew that amongstall the riches of silken tresses that had weighed him down, onlythis lock from an old maid's head had been to him a wing featherof a Walkyrie, lifting him from the ground.

If Malin had been a Roman Catholic she would have gone into anunnery after the battle of Jena, to save, if not her soul, atleast her self-respect, for, say what you will, no maiden makessuch a brilliant match as she who becomes the bride of the Lord.But being a good Protestant, with a leaning toward the teachingsof the Hernhuten, she just took up her cross and carried itgallantly. That nobody in the world knew of her tragedy fell inwell with her opinion of other people, namely, that they neverdid know anything of any importance. She gave up all thought ofmarriage.

At the age of fifty she came unexpectedly into a very greatfortune. There were people who understood her so little as tobelieve that it was this that went to her head and caused therethe confounding of fact and fantasy. It was not so. She wouldnot have been in the least upset by finding herself inpossession of the treasures of the Grand Turk. What changed herwas what changes all women at fifty: the transfer from theactive service of life--with a pension or the honors of war, asthe case may be--to the mere passive state of a looker-on. Aweight fell away from her; she flew up to a higher perch andcackled a little. Her fortune helped her only in so far as itprovided the puff of air under her wings that enabled her to flya little higher and cackle a little louder, although it also didaway with all criticism from her surroundings. In her laughterof liberation there certainly was a little madness.

This madness took, as already said, the curious form of a firmfaith in a past of colossal licentiousness. She believed herselfto have been the grand courtesan of her time, if not the greatwhore of the Revelation. She took her fortune, her house, andher jewels as the wages of sin, collected in her long career offalls, and because of this she was extremely generous with hermoney, considering that what had been frivolously gathered mustbe frivolously spent. She could not open her mouth withoutreferring to her days of debauchery. Even Prince ErnestTheodore, the chaste young lover whom she had refused even aparting kiss, figured in her waxwork collection as a victim ofher siren's arts and ferocity.

It is doubtful whether any spectacle can be enjoyed in the sameway by those people who may, after all, run a risk of becomingpart of it and by those who are by circumstance entirely cut offfrom any such possibility. The Emperor of Rome himself might,after a particularly exciting show, see the trident and the netin a nightmare. But the Vestal Virgins would lie on their marblecouches and, with the knowledge of connoisseurs, go over everydetail in the fight, and imagine themselves in the place oftheir favorite gladiator. In the same way it is unlikely thateven the most pious old lady would attend the trial and burningof a witch with quite the untroubled mind of the male audiencearound the stake.

No young woman could, even from a nun's cell, have thrownherself into the imaginary excesses of Miss Malin without fearand trembling. But the old woman, who had seen to her safety,could dive down into any abyss of corruption with the grace of acrested grebe. Faithful by nature, she stuck to the point ofview of her youth with regard to the Gospel's words concerningadultery. She had the word of the Bible for it that a multitudeof young men had indeed committed it with her. But sheresolutely turned them inside out, as a woman will a frock thecolors of which have disappointed her by fading. She was thecatoptric image of the great repenting sinner whose sins aremade white as wool, and was here taking a genuine pleasure indyeing the pretty lamb's wool of her life in sundry fierce dyes.Jealousy, deceit, seduction, rape, infanticide, and senilecruelty, with all the perversities of the human world ofpassion, even to the maladies galantes, of which she exhibiteda surprising knowledge, were to her little sweetmeats which shewould pick, one by one, out of the bonbonnière of her mind,and crunch with true gourmandise. In all her fantasies she washer own heroine, and she ran through the spheres of the sevendeadly sins with the ecstasy of a little boy who gallops throughthe great races of the world upon his rocking-horse. No dangercould possibly put fear into her, nor any anguish of consciencespoil her peace. If there was one person of whom she spoke withcontempt it was the Mary Magdalene of the Gospel, who could nobetter carry the burden of her sweet sins than to retire to thedesert of Libya in the company of a skull. She herself carriedthe weight of hers with the skill of an athlete, and was up toplaying a graceful game of bilboquet with it.

Her face itself changed under her great spiritual revolution,and at the time when other women resort to rouge and belladonna,her lenience with human weakness produced in her a heightenedcolor and sweet brilliancy of eye. She was nearer to being apretty woman than she had ever been before. Like a witch she hadalways looked, but in her second childhood her appearance hadmore of the wicked fairy of the children's tales than of theMedusa, the revenging angel with her flaming sword who had heldher own against Prince Ernest. She had preserved her elfinleanness and lightness, and as for her skill as a dancer, shemight still be the belle of any great ball. The little clovenhoof beneath was now daintily gilded, like that of Esmeralda'sgoat itself. It was in this glow of mild madness and secondyouth that she now sat, marooned in the hayloft of the peasant'sbarn, conversing vivaciously with the Cardinal Hamilcar.

****

"When, as a boy, I stayed for some time at Coblentz, at the court of theemigrant Duke of Chartres," the Cardinal said, after a little pause,pensively, "I knew the great painter Abildgaard, and used to spend mymornings in his studio. When the ladies of the court came to him to havetheir portraits painted--for he was much sought by such fair women whowanted their beauty immortalized--how many times have I not heard himtell them: 'Wash your faces, Mesdames. Take the powder, rouge, and kohloff them. For if you will paint your faces yourselves I cannot paintyou.' Often, in the course of my life, have I thought of his words. Ithas seemed to me that this is what the Lord is continually telling thetoo weak and vain mortals: 'Wash your faces. For if you will do thepainting of them yourselves, laying on humility and renunciation,charity and chastity one inch thick, I can do nothing about them.'Tonight, indeed," the old man went on, smiling, as a deep movement ofthe sea seemed to shake the building, "the Lord is doing the washing forus with his own hands, and he is using a great deal of water for it. Butwe will seek comfort in the thought that there is no higher honor orhappiness for us than this: to have our portraits painted by the hand ofthe Lord. That alone is what we have ever longed for and namedimmortality."

Seeing that the face of the speaker was covered with blood-stainedbandages, Miss Malin was about to make a remark, but she restrainedherself, for she did not know what lasting disfigurements of a noblepresence they might conceal. The Cardinal understood her thought andexpressed it with a smile. "Yes, Madame," he said, "my face the Lord hasseen fit to wash in a more ardent spirit. But have we not been taught ofthe cleansing power of blood? Madame, I know now that it is strongereven than we thought. And perhaps my face needed it. Who, but the Lord,knows what rouge and powder I have put on it in the course of seventyyears? Verily, Madame, in these bandages I feel that I am nearer toposing for my portrait by him than I ever have been before."

Miss Malin blushed slightly at being detected in a lack of tact, andnimbly put back the conversation a little, as one sets back a clock. "Iam thankful," she said, "that I have in my life had neither rouge norpowder on my face, and Monsieur Abildgaard might have painted it at anymoment. But as to this divine portrait of me, which is, I suppose, to behung in the galleries of heaven, when I myself am dead and gone--allowme to say, My Lord, that here my ideas differ from yours a little.

"The ideas of art critics," said the Cardinal, "are likely to differ;that much I learned in the studio. I have seen the master himself strikethe face of a great French painter with a badger's-hair brush full ofcadmium, because they disagreed about the laws of perspective. Impart tome your views, Madame. I may learn from you."

"Well, then," said Miss Malin, "where in all the world did you get theidea that the Lord wants the truth from us? It is a strange, a mostoriginal, idea of yours, My Lord. Why, he knows it already, and may evenhave found it a little bit dull. Truth is for tailors and shoemakers, MyLord. I, on the contrary, have always held that the Lord has a penchantfor masquerades. Do you not yourself tell us, my lords spiritual, thatour trials are really blessings in disguise? And so they are. I, too,have found them to be so, at midnight, at the hour when the mask falls.But at the same time nobody can deny that they have been dressed up bythe hand of an unrivaled expert. The Lord himself--with yourpermission--seems to me to have been masquerading pretty freely at thetime when he took on flesh and dwelt amongst us. Indeed, had I been thehostess of the wedding of Cana, I might have resented the feat alittle--I might, I tell you, My Lord--had I there asked that brilliantyouth, the carpenter's son, in order to give him a treat on my bestBerncastler Doktor, and he had, at the moment when it suited him,changed pure water into a far finer vintage! And still the lady did notknow, of course, of what things he was really capable, being GodAlmighty.

"Indeed, My Lord," she went on, "of all monarchs of whom I have everheard, the one who came, to my mind, nearest to the true spirit of Godwas the Caliph Haroun of Bagdad, who, as you know, had a taste fordisguise. Ah, ah! had I lived in his day I should have played the gamewith him to his own taste, should I have had to pick up five hundredbeggars before knocking against the Commander of the Faithful under thebeggar's robe. And when I have, in my life, come nearest to playing therôle of a goddess, the very last thing which I have wanted from myworshipers has been the truth. 'Make poetry,' I have said to them, 'useyour imagination, disguise the truth to me. Your truth comes out quiteearly enough'--under your favor, My Lord--'and that is the end of thegame.'

"And now, what, My Lord," said the old lady, "do you think of womanlymodesty? Surely, that is a divine quality; and what is it but deceit onprinciple? Since here a youth and a maiden are present, you and I, whohave observed life from the best of observatories--you from theconfessional, and I from the alcove--will take pains to disregard thetruth; we will talk only of legs. I can tell you, then, that you maydivide all women according to the beauty of their legs. Those who havepretty legs, and who know the concealed truth to be sweeter than allillusions, are the truly gallant women, who look you in the face, whohave the genuine courage of a good conscience. But if they took towearing trousers, where would their gallantry be? The young men of ourdays, who wear tight trousers which oblige them to keep two valets fordrawing them on, one for each leg----"

"And a difficult job even at that," said the Cardinal thoughtfully.

"To walk about as true missionaries of the truth," Miss Malin resumed,"may be more human, but surely they have nothing divine. They may havethe facts of life on their side, while the legs of the women, undertheir petticoats, are ideas. But the people who go forth on ideas arethe ones who have the true heroism. For it is the consciousness ofhidden power which gives courage. But I beg your pardon, My Lord, forspeaking so long."

"Madame," said the Cardinal gently, "do not apologize. I have profitedby your speech. But it has not convinced me that you and I are notreally of one mind. This world of ours is like the children's game ofbread and cheese; there is always something underneath--truth, deceit;truth, deceit! When the Caliph masqueraded as one of his own poorsubjects, all his hidden splendor could not have saved the jest frombeing in pretty poor taste, had he not had beneath it a fraternal heartfor his poor people. Likewise, when our Lord did, for some thirty years,masquerade as a son of man, there would have been no really good sensein the thing had he not had, after all, a humane heart, and even,Madame, a sympathy with lovers of good wine. The witty woman, Madame,chooses for her carnival costume one which ingeniously reveals somethingin her spirit or heart which the conventions of her everyday lifeconceal; and when she puts on the hideous long-nosed Venetian mask, shetells us, not only that she has a classic nose behind it, but that shehas much more, and may well be adored for things other than her merebeauty. So speaketh the Arbiter of the masquerade: 'By thy mask I shallknow thee.'

"But let us agree, Madame," he went on, "that the day of judgment shallnot be, as insipid preachers will have us believe, the moment ofunveiling of our own poor little attempts at deceit, about which theLord does indeed already know all, but, on the contrary, that it shallbe the hour in which the Almighty God himself lets fall the mask. Andwhat a moment! Oh, Madame, it will not be too much to have waited for ita million years. Heaven will ring and resound with laughter, pure andinnocent as that of a child, clear as that of a bride, triumphant asthat of a faithful warrior who lays down the enemy's banners at hissovereign's feet, or who is at last lifted from the dungeon and thechains, cleared of his slanderer's calumnies!

"Still, Madame, has not the Lord arranged for us here a day of judgmentin miniature? It will be soon midnight. Let it be the hour of thefalling of the mask. If it be not your mask, or mine, which is to fall,let it be the mask of fate and life. Death we may soon have to face,without any mask. In the meantime we have nothing to do but to rememberwhat life be really like. Come, Madame, and my young brother and sister!As we shall not be able to sleep, and are still comfortably seated here,tell me who you are, and recount to me your stories without restraint.

"You," the old man said, addressing himself to Jonathan Mærsk, "rose upin the boat, with danger of capsizing it, at the sight of the fallinggranary. Thus, I believe, some proud building of your life has fallen,and has gone to pieces under your eyes. Tell us which it was.

"Also, I noticed a short time ago," he went on, "when I spoke of thepurity of our blood, that you shrank from my words as from the sight ofthe granary. You are, perhaps, a partisan of the revolutionary ideas ofyour generation. Do not imagine, then, that I am a stranger to thosetheories. I am indeed more closely in touch with them than you couldknow. But should we let any discrepancy in politics separate our heartsat this hour? Come, I shall Speak to you in your own words: And nowabideth liberty, equality, fraternity, these three, but the greatest ofthese is fraternity.

"Or," he said, "you may be, my dear son, groaning under the sad burdenof the bastard. But who more than the bastard needs to cry out to askwho he is? So have faith in us. Tell us now, before morning, the storyof your life."

The young man, whose countenance had all the time been stamped with theloneliness which is the hallmark of true melancholy, at these wordslooked up into the Cardinal's face. The great dignity of manner of theold man had impressed the others from the moment they came into hispresence. Now the boy was fascinated by the strange lucidity of hiseyes. For a few moments the two looked intensely at each other. Thecolor rose in the pale cheeks of the young man. He drew a deep sigh.

"Yes," he said, as if inspired, "I will tell you my story. Perhaps Ishall understand it all better when I can, at last, give words to it."

"Wash your face, my young friend," said Miss Malin, "and your portrait,within our hearts, will impart to you immortality."

"I will call my tale," said the young man, "The Story of Timon ofAssens."

****

"If you had happened to live in Copenhagen," the young man began, "youwould have heard of me, for there I was, at a time, much talked about.They even gave me a name. They called me Timon of Assens. And they wereright in so far as I do indeed come from Assens, which is, as you mayknow, a small seaport town on the island of Funen. There I was born, theson of very respectable people, the skipper Clement Mærsk and his wife,Magdalena, who owned a pretty house with a garden in the town.

"I do not know whether you will think it curious that all the time Ilived at Assens it never occurred to me that anything could or wouldharm me. I never, indeed, thought that anything at all might occupyitself with me. It seemed to me that it was, on the contrary, my task tolook after the world. My father sailed, and for many summers I sailedwith him, and came to Portugal and Greece. When we were on the sea, theship and the cargo had to be looked after by us, and to both of us theyseemed the important things in the world.

"My mother was a lovely woman. Although I have for some time moved inthe highest society, I never have seen her equal either in looks or inmanners. But she kept no company with the other skippers' wives, andnever went to other people's houses. Her father had been assistant tothe great Swedish botanist, Linné, and to her the flowers, and whathappened to them, and the bees, and their hives and works, seemed moreimportant than anything which had to do with human beings. While I waswith her I held the belief that the plants, flowers, and insects of theworld were the really important things in it, and that human beings werehere only to look after them.

"In the garden at Assens my mother and I lived in what I think is calledan idyll. Our days were filled with nothing but innocence and pleasure."

Miss Malin, who had been listening attentively, always keen for any kindof narrative, here interrupted the narrator, sighing a little. "Ah," shesaid, "I know about idylls. Mais moi je n'aime pas les plaisirsinnocents."

"I had a friend in Assens, or so I thought," Jonathan went on, "a cleverboy by the name of Rasmus Petersen, a couple of years older than I, andtaller by a head. He was to have been a parson, but he got into sometrouble and never succeeded, but when he was a student in Copenhagen hewas a tutor in many great houses. He always took a great interest in me,but though I admired him I never felt quite well in his company. He wasvery sharp, like a razor; you did not come away from him without havingcut your fingers a little, although at the moment you might not feel it.When I was about sixteen he told my father that I ought to come with himto Copenhagen, to study under the learned people that he knew there, forhe thought me a very brilliant boy."

"And were you very brilliant?" asked Miss Malin with surprise.

"Alas, no, Madame," said Jonathan.

"When I first came to Copenhagen," Jonathan went on, "I was very lonely,because there was nothing for me to do. It seemed to me that there wasnothing but people there. They did not care for me, either. When I hadtalked to them for a little they generally walked away. But after awhile my interest was caught by the expansive hothouses and nurseries ofthe royal palaces and of the great noblemen. Amongst these the mostrenowned were those of Baron Joachim von Gersdorff, who was High Stewardof Denmark, and himself a great botanist, who had traveled all overEurope, India, Africa, and America and collected rare plants everywhere.

"Have you heard of this man before, or do you know him? He came of aRussian family, and his wealth was such as is otherwise unknown inDenmark. He was a poet and musician, a diplomat, a seducer of women,even then, when he was an old man. Still, all this was not what caughtyour mind about the man. But it was this: that he was a man of fashion.Or you might say that fashion itself was only, in Copenhagen at least,the footman of Baron Gersdorff. Whatever he did at once became the thingfor everybody to do. Oh, I do not want to describe the man. You willknow, I think, what a man of fashion means. I have learned it. Such aman was he.

"I had not been to his hothouses, to which Rasmus obtained admission forme, more than a few times when I met Baron Gersdorff himself there oneafternoon. Rasmus presented me to him, and he greeted me in a veryfriendly way, and offered to show me the whole place, which he did withmuch patience and benevolence. After that day I nearly always found himthere. He took me on to write a catalogue for his cactus house. We spentmany days together in that hot glasshouse. I liked him much, because hehad seen so much of the world, and could tell me about the flowers andinsects of it. At times I noticed that my presence moved him strangely.One afternoon, as I was reading to him a treatise upon the mouth of thetube of the Epiphyllum, I saw that he had shut his eyes. He took my handand held it, and as I finished he looked up and said: 'What am I to giveyou, Jonathan, as a finder's fee?' I laughed and answered that I did notthink that I had found out anything exceptional yet. 'Oh, God,' he said,'a finder's fee for the summer of 1814!' Shortly after that day he beganto talk to me of my voice. He told me that I had a remarkably sweetvoice, and asked me to let him arrange for Monsieur Dupuy to give mesinging lessons."

"And did you have a lovely voice?" asked Miss Malin with someincredulity, for the voice of the narrator was low and hoarse.

"Yes, Madame," he said, "at that time I had a very pretty voice. I hadbeen taught to sing by my mother."

"Ah," said Miss Malin, "there is nothing in the world more lovely than alovely boy's voice. When I was in Rome there was a boy named Mario inthe choir of the Jesu, who had a voice like an angel. The Pope himselftold me to go and hear him, and I was well aware why, for he was hopingto convert me to Rome, and thought that this golden angel's song mightbreak down all my resistance. From my pew I saw the Pope himself burstinto tears when, like a swan taking the wing, this Mario lifted up hisvoice in Carissimi's immortal recitative: 'Get thee behind me, Satan!'Oh, that good Pius VIII. Two days later he was wickedly poisoned bythree cantharide pills. I do not hold with popery, but I admit that hewas a fine figure of a Pope, and died like a man. And so you had yourlessons, and became a virtuoso, Monsieur Jonathan?"

"Yes, Madame," said Jonathan with a smile, "my lessons I had. And as Iwas always very fond of music I worked hard and made good progress. Atthe beginning of the third winter the Baron, who by this time neverseemed to like to part with me, took me around to the great houses ofhis friends and made me sing for them. When I had first come toCopenhagen I used to stand outside the great houses on winter evenings,to see the flowers and chandeliers in the halls, and the young women asthey got out of their carriages. Now I went in everywhere myself, andthe ladies, old and young, were as kind to me as if I had been theirchild or young brother. I sang at Court, before King Frederick and QueenMarie, and the Queen smiled very kindly at me. I was very happy. Ithought: How foolish those people are who tell you that the great peopleof the towns love nothing but riches and worldly honors. All theseladies and great gentlemen love music as much as I do--yes, more--andforget everything else for it, and what a great thing is the love of thebeautiful."

"Did you fall in love?" Miss Malin asked.

"In a way I was in love with all of them," said Jonathan. "They hadtears in their eyes when I sang; they accompanied me on the harp, orjoined me in duets; they took flowers from their hair and gave them tome. But perhaps I was in love with the Countess Atalanta Danneskjold,who was the youngest of the sisters Danneskjold, whom they called thenine swans of Samsø. Her mother made us pose together in a charade, asOrpheus and Euridice. All that winter was very much like a dream, for doyou not sometimes dream that you can sing whatever note you like, andrun up and down the whole scale, like the angels on Jacob's ladder? Isometimes dream that even now.

"But toward spring there befell me what I took to be a great misfortune,not knowing then what misfortune means. I fell ill, and as I was gettingwell the court physician, who was attending me, told me that I had lostmy voice and that I had no hope of getting it back. While I was still inbed I was much worried by this, not only by the loss of my voice itself,but by the thought of how I should now disappoint and lose my friends,and how sad my life would now become. I was even shedding tears about itwhen Rasmus Petersen came to see me. I opened my heart to him, to gethis sympathy in my distress. He had to get up from his chair and pretendto look out of the window to hide his laughter. I thought it heartlessof him, and did not say any more to him. 'Why, Jonathan,' he said, 'Ihave reason to laugh, for I have won my bet. I held that you were indeedthe simpleton you look, which nobody else would believe. They think thatyou are a shrewd boy. It will not make the slightest difference in theworld to you that you have lost that voice of yours.' I did notunderstand him. I think I grew pale, even though his words cheered me.

"'Come,' he said, 'the Baron Gersdorff is your father. I guessed asmuch, before I ever brought you to his hothouses, from looking at aportrait of him as a child, in which he also has the head of an angel.When he knew it himself he was more pleased than I have ever seen him.He said: "I have never had a child in my life. It seems very curious tome that I should have got one. Still, I believe this boy to be indeedthe son of my body, and I shall reward him for that. But should I findthat my soul is going to live on, in him--as God liveth I willlegitimatize him, and leave him all that I own. If it be not possible tohave him made a Baron Gersdorff, I will at least have him a Knight ofMalta under the name of De Résurrection."

"'It is on this account,' Rasmus said, 'that the fine people ofCopenhagen have all been spoiling you, Jonathan. They have been watchingyou all the time to see if the soul of Baron Gersdorff was showingitself in you, in which case you would be the richest man, and the bestmatch, Jonathan, in all northern Europe.' Then he proceeded to recountto me a conversation that he had had with Baron Gersdorff about me:

"'You know me, my good Rasmus, to be a poet," the Baron had said to him.'Well, I will tell you what sort of poet I am. I have never in my lifewritten a line without imagining myself in the place of some poet orother that I know of. I have written poems in the manner of Horace orLamartine. Likewise I am not capable of writing a love letter to a womanwithout representing to myself in my own mind either Lovelace, theCorsaire or Eugene Onegine. The ladies have been flattered, adored, andseduced by all the heroes of Chateaubriand and Lord Byron in turn. Thereis nothing that I have ever done unconsciously, without knowing wellwhat I did. But this boy, this Jonathan, I have really made withoutthinking of it. He is bound to be, not any figure out of Firdousi, oreven Oehlenschlaeger, but a true and genuine work of Joachim Gersdorff.That is a curious thing, a very curious thing, for Joachim Gersdorff tobe watching. That is a phenomenon of extreme importance to JoachimGersdorff. Let him but show me what a Joachim Gersdorff is in reality,and no reward of mine shall be too great. Riches, houses, jewels, women,wines, and the honors of the land shall be his for it.'

"All this I heard as I was lying in my bed.

"I do not know if you will think it strange, My Lord, or you, MissNat-og-Dag, that the strongest emotion which these words aroused in mewas a feeling of deep shame. Such a strong feeling I had never, in allmy life, experienced.

"If the Baron had seduced me, as I believe that he did seduce otherpretty boys, I should have had to blush before the faces of honestpeople. But I might have found refuge from that shame in my own heart,for in a way I loved the man. For the shame which I now felt it seemedto me that there was no refuge anywhere. Upon the very bottom of mysoul, I felt, and that for the first time in my life, the eyes of allthe world.

"God made the world, My Lord, and looked at it, and saw that it wasgood. Yes. But what if the world had looked back at him, to see whetherhe was good or not? This was, I thought, what Lucifer had really done toGod: he had looked at him, and had made the Lord feel that he himselfwas being judged by a critic. Was he good? I--I had been innocent asGod. Now I was made a true Joachim Gersdorff. I had in all my veins theblood of this man, of a man of fashion, the sort of man who attracts theeyes of all the world. God could not stand it. He hurled down Lucifer,as you remember, into the abyss. God was right; he should not have stoodit. I could not stand it either, but I had to.

"To find out whether Rasmus was right I did, I think, a brave, even aheroic, thing, which proves to my mind that I had been well brought up,after all, by the skipper and his wife. I went to a big party at thehouse of Countess Danneskjold, and sang to them again. I sang my oldsongs, and I heard my own voice, or what was left of it. You willunderstand, who are listening to me now, how poor that must have been. Ihad sung to them before, and done my best, and it seemed to me that Ihad then given them the very best which I had in me. As I now sang therewas not one of the faces around me which showed the slightestdisappointment or regret. All the people were kind and complimentary tome, as they had always been. I felt then that I had never given themanything, had never done anything to them at all. It was the worldaround me which was watching me, and meant to do something to me. Alleyes were on me, for I was a genuine Joachim Gersdorff, a young man offashion. I came away from that house at midnight, and that was the hour,My Lord, of which the fall of the granary reminded me.

"The same night I wrote a letter to the Baron, to take leave of him. Iwas so filled with abhorrence of him and all his world that, on readingmy letter through, I found the word 'fashion' recurring nine times. Igave my letter to Rasmus to hand to him. As he was leaving I rememberedthat I had said nothing of the fortune which the Baron meant to leave tome. I now charged my friend to communicate to him my refusal of any ofit.

"I could not stand the sight of the streets. Leaving my pretty rooms inthe neighborhood of the Gersdorff Palace, I went in a boat across theharbor to the small fortified island of Trekroner, and took lodgingswith the quartermaster, where I could see nothing but the sea. Rasmuswalked down with me, and carried my bag. All the time he was trying tohold me back. We had to pass the door of the Gersdorff Palace, and sucha sudden loathing of the whole place filled me at the sight of it that Ispat at it, as my father--alas, as the skipper Clement Mærsk ofAssens--had taught me to spit when I was a boy.

"For a few days I lived at Trekroner, trying to find again there theworld as it had once been mine--not myself, for I wanted nothing lessthan myself. I thought of the garden of Assens, but it was closed to meforever. Once you have eaten of the tree of knowledge, and have seenyourself, gardens close themselves to you. You become a person offashion, even as did Adam and Eve when they began to occupy themselveswith their appearance.

"But only a few days later Rasmus came over to see me. He had taken asmall yawl to get to me, he who was so terrified of the sea.

"'Ah, my friend,' he said, rubbing his hands, 'you were born under alucky star. I gave your letter to the Baron, and as he read it he becameto the highest degree excited and delighted. He got up and walked to andfro, and exclaimed: "God, this misanthropy, this melancholy! How I knowthem. They are my own altogether! For the first week after I had becomethe lover of the Empress Catherine I felt all that he feels now. I meantto enter a monastery. It is young Joachim Gersdorff to a turn, but doneall in black, an etching from the colored original. But good God, whatpower the boy has got in him, what a fine deep black! I had not thoughtit of him with his high voice. This is the winter night of Russia, thewolves upon the steppes." After he had read your letter a second time hesaid: "He will not be a man of fashion? But so we all are, weGersdorffs; so was my father at the court of the young Empress. Whyshould not my son be the same? Surely he shall be our heir, the glass offashion, and the mold of form."

"'I tell you, Jonathan,' said Rasmus, 'that your melancholy is thehighest fashion of the day. The elegant young men of Copenhagen wearblack and speak with bitterness of the world, and the ladies talk of thegrave.'

"And this was the time when they took to calling me Timon of Assens.

"'Did you tell him,' I asked Rasmus, 'that I will on no account have anyof his money?' And Rasmus answered, 'Yes, I did; and he was so pleasedthat I thought that he might have a stroke and leave you his heir thereand then. "Good," he said, "good, my son Timon. Let me see you throw itaway. Scatter it well. Show the world your contempt of it in the trueGersdorff way. Let the hetæra have it; there is no better advertisementfor a melancholy man of fashion. They will follow you everywhere andmake a charming contrast to your deep black. How I love that boy," hesaid. "I have," he added, "a collection of emeralds, unmatched in allEurope. I will send him that to start with." And here, indeed, it is,'said Rasmus, handing me, with great care, a case of jewels.

"'But when the Baron heard,' Rasmus said, 'of your spitting at the doorof his house, he became very grave. "That," he said, "I did to myfather's door, to the door of the Gersdorff Palace of St. Petersburg."He at once sent for his lawyer, and drew up a document to acknowledgeyou as his son, and to leave you all his fortune. Likewise he haswritten to obtain for you the title of Knight of Malta, and the name ofDe Résurrection.'

"By this time I was so depressed that I thought of death with a truelonging and nostalgia. I returned with Rasmus to town, to pay my debts,so that my tailor and my hatter should not talk of me when I was dead,and I walked out upon the bridge of Langebro, looking at the water andthe boats lying there, some of which came from Assens. I waited untilthere were not so many people about. It was one of the blue Aprilevenings of Copenhagen. A barcarole by Salvadore that I had used to singran into my mind. It gave me much ease, together with the thought that Iwould soon disappear. As I was standing there a carriage, driving by,slackened its pace, and a little later a lady dressed in black lace cameup, looked around, and spoke to me in a low voice, quite out of breath.'You are Jonathan Mærsk?' she asked me, and as I said yes, she came upclose to me. 'Oh, Jonathan Mærsk,' she said, 'I know you. I havefollowed you. I see what you are about. Let me die with you. I have longmeant to seek death, but I dare not go alone. Let me go in your company.I am as great a sinner as Judas,' she said, 'like him I have betrayed,betrayed. Come, let us go.' In the spring twilight she seized my handand held it. I had to shake her off and run away.

"I thought: There are probably always in Copenhagen four or five womenwho are on the verge of suicide; perhaps there are more. If I havebecome the man of fashion amongst them, how shall I escape them, to diein peace? Must I die, now, in fashionable company, and give the tone offashion to the bridge of Langebro? Must I go down to the bottom of thesea in the society of women who do not know a major from a minor key,and is my last moan to be----"

"Le dernier cri," said Miss Malin, with a truly witchlike littlelaugh.

"I went back to Trekroner," said Jonathan after a short pause, "and satin my room. I could neither eat nor drink.

"At this moment I unexpectedly received a visit from skipper ClementMærsk of Assens. He had been away to Trankebar, and had just returned,and had looked me up.

"'What is this,' he said, 'that I hear of you, Jonathannerl? Are they tomake you a Knight of Malta? I know Malta well. As you go into theentrance and have got the Castle of San Angelo on your right hand, youhave to be careful about a rock to port.'

"'Father,' I said, remembering again how we had sailed together, 'isBaron Gersdorff my father? Do you know that man?'

"'Leave the women's business alone,' he said. 'Here you are, Jonathan, aseaworthy ship, whoever built you.'

"I told him then all that had happened to me.

"'Little Jonathan,' he said, 'you have fallen amongst women.' I saidthat I really did not know many women. 'That does not signify,' he said,'I have seen the men of Copenhagen. Those people who want things tohappen are all of them women, masquerading in a new model of wax noses.I tell you, in regard to ships, if it were not for the women sitting inports waiting for silks, tea, cochineal, and pepper--all things whichthey want for making things happen--the ships would sail on quietly,content to be on the sea and never thinking of land. Your mother,' hewent on after a little while, 'was the only woman I ever knew who didnot want things to happen.' I said, 'But even she, Father, did notsucceed in it, and God help me now.'

"I told him how Baron Gersdorff had wanted to leave me his fortune.Father had become hard of hearing. Only after a time he said, 'Did youspeak of money? Do you want money, Jonathan? It would be curious if youdid, for I know where there is a lot of it. Three years ago,' herecounted, 'I was becalmed off a small island near Haiti. I went ashoreto see the place, and to dig up some rare plants which I meant to bringyour mother, and there I struck upon the buried treasure of Captainl'Olonnais, who was one of the Filibustiers. I dug it all up, and as Iwanted exercise I dug it all down again, in better order than theCaptain had done. I know the exact place of it. If you want it I willget it for you some time, and if you cannot stop the Baron from givingyou his money, you might make him a present of it. It is more than hehas got.'

"'Father!' I cried, 'you do not know what you say. You have not lived inthis town. What a gesture that would be. It would make me a man offashion forever--I should indeed be Timon of Assens. Bring me a parrotfrom Haiti, Father, but not money.'

"'I believe you are unhappy, Jonathan,' he said.

"'I am unhappy, Father,' I said. 'I have loved this town and the peoplein it. I have drunk them down with delight. But they have some poison inthem which I cannot stand. If I think of them now, I vomit up my soul.Do you know of a cure for me?'

"'Why, yes,' he said, 'I know of a cure for everything: salt water.'

"'Salt water?' I asked him.

"'Yes,' he said, 'in one way or the other. Sweat, or tears, or the saltsea.'

"I said: 'I have tried sweat and tears. The salt sea I meant to try, buta woman in black lace prevented me.'

"'You speak wildly. Jonathan,' he said.

"'You might come with me,' he said after a little time. 'I am bound forSt. Petersburg.'

"'No,' I said, 'to St. Petersburg I will not go.'

"'Well,' he said, 'I am bound for it. But go and get well while I amthere, for you are looking very sick. I will take you when I come back,into open sea.'

"'I cannot stay in Copenhagen,' I said. "'Good,' he said, 'go to someplace of which the doctors can tell you, and I will pick you up atHamburg.'

"And in this way, My Lord, and Miss Nat-og-Dag," the young man said, "Iwas sent here, by skipper Mærsk, whether he be my father or not, to getcured by salt water."

"Ah, ah, ah," said Miss Malin, when the young man had finished his tale,in which she had by this time become quite absorbed. She rubbed hersmall hands together, as pleased as a child with a new toy. "What astory, Monsieur Timon. What a place this is! What people we are! Imyself have by now become aware of my identity: I am MademoiselleDiogenes, and this little lantern, which the fat old peasant woman leftus, that is my famous lamp, by the light of which I have sought a man,and by which I have found him. You are the man, Timon! If I had searchedall Europe with lamp and lantern I should not have found more preciselywhat I wanted."

"What do you want me for, Madame?" Jonathan asked her.

"Oh, not for myself," said Miss Malin. "I am not in a mood forlove-making tonight. In fact, I might have had, for supper, a decoctionof the tree agnus castus, of which a specimen is shown in Guinenne. Iwant you for Calypso.

"You see this girl?" she asked him, looking with pride and tenderness atthe fair young creature by her side. "She is not my own daughter, andstill, by the Holy Ghost, I am making her, as much as my old friendBaron Gersdorff ever made you. I have carried her in my heart and mymind, and sighed under her weight. Now the days are accomplished when Ishall be delivered, and here we have the stable and the manger. But whenI have brought her forth, I shall want a nurse; further, I shall want agoverness, a tutor, a maestro for her, and you are to be all that."

"Alas, to teach her what?" asked Jonathan.

"To teach her to be seen," said Miss Malin. "You complain of peoplelooking at you. But what if you were bent down by the oppositemisfortune? What if nobody could or would see you, although you were,yourself, firmly convinced of your own existence? There are moremartyrdoms than yours, Misanthrope of Assens. You may have read the taleof the Emperor's new clothes, by that brilliant, rising young author,Hans Andersen. But here we have it the other way around: the Emperor iswalking along in all his splendor, scepter and orb in hand, and no onein the whole town dares to see him, for they believe that they shallthen be thought unfit for their offices, or impossibly dull. This is mylittle Emperor; the procession a bad man made, about whom I shall tellyou; and you, Monsieur Timon, you are the innocent child who cries out:'But there is an Emperor!'

"The motto of the Nat-og-Dag family," went on Miss Malin, "runs thus:'The sour with the sweet.' Out of piety to my ancestors I have partakenof many of the mixed dishes of life: the giblet soup of Mr. Swedenborg,the salad of platonic love, even the sauerkraut of the divine Marquis. Ihave developed the palate of a true Nat-og-Dag; I have come to relishthem. But the bitterness of life, that is bad nourishment, particularlyto a young heart. Upon the meadows of the Westerlands they raise a sortof mutton which, fed on salt grass, produces an excellent-tasting meatknown in the culinary world as pré-salé. This girl has been fed onsuch salt plains and on brine and bitter herbs. Her little heart has hadnothing else to eat. She is indeed, spiritually, an agneau pré-salé,my salted little ewe lamb."

The girl, who had all the time sat crouching near her old friend, drewherself up when Miss Malin began to tell her story. She sat up straightthen, her amber-colored eyes below their delicate, long-drawn eyebrowsthat were like the markings on a butterfly's wings, or themselves like apair of low extended wings, were fixed on the air, too haughty to turntoward her audience. In spite of her gentle brow she was a dangerousanimal, ready to spring. But at what? At life altogether.

"Have you ever heard," asked Miss Malin, "of Count AugustPlaten-Hallermund?" At the sound of the name the girl shuddered andbecame pale. A threatening dusk sank over her clear eyes. "Hush," saidMiss Malin, "we shall not name him again. As he is not a man, but anangel, we shall call him the Count Seraphina. We shall sit, tonight, ina lit de justice on the Count. The truth must be told about him justthis one time. When I was a little girl and was taught French," the oldlady addressed herself, above the heads of the young people, in a suddenlittle fit of familiarity, to the Cardinal, "the very first phrase in myreading book ran thus: Le lit est une bonne chose; si l'on n'y dortpas, l'on s'y repose. Like much else which we were taught as children,it was proved by life to be a complete fallacy. But it may still applyto the bed of justice."

"Indeed I have read the poetry and philosophy of Count August," said theCardinal.

"Not I," said Miss Malin. "When, on doomsday, I am called to account formany hours spent in the wrong places, I shall still be able to plead:'But I have not read the poems of Count August von Platen.' How manypoems has he written, My Lord?"

"Ah, I could not tell," said the Cardinal. Miss Malin said: "Cinq ousix milles? C'est beaucoup. Combien en a-t-il de bons? Quinze ou seize.C'est beaucoup, dit Martin."

"You have read, My Lord," she went on, "of the unhappy young man who hadbeen changed into a pug by a witch, and who could not be transformedback unless a pure virgin, who had known no man, should, upon a St.Sylvester's night, read the poems of Gustav Pfizer without fallingasleep? And his sympathetic friend, when he is told all this, answers:'Then, alas, I cannot help you. First of all, I am no virgin. Secondly,I never could, reading Gustav Pfizer's poems, keep from falling intoslumber.' If Count August is turned into a pug, for exactly the samereasons I shall not be able to help him."

"This man, then, this Count Seraphina," she took up the thread of hertale, after her little flutter of thought, "was the uncle of this girl,and she was brought up in his house after the death of her parents. Sonow, my good friends, I will lighten the darkness of this night to you,by impressing upon it the deeper darkness of Calypso's story:

****

"Count Seraphina," said Miss Malin, "meditated much upon celestialmatters. And, as you must be aware, who have read his poems, he wasconvinced that no woman was ever allowed to enter heaven. He dislikedand mistrusted everything female; it gave him goose flesh.

"His idea of paradise was, then, a long row of lovely young boys, intransparent robes of white, walking two by two, singing his poems to hismusic, in such lovely trebles as you yourself once possessed, Mr.Jonathan, or otherwise discussing his philosophy, or absorbed in hisbooks upon arithmetics. The estate which he owned at Angelshorn inMechlenburg he endeavored to turn into such a heaven, a Von Platenwaxwork elysium, and in the very center of it he had, most awkwardly forhimself and for her, this little girl, about whom he had doubts as towhether or not she might pass as an angel.

"As long as she was a child he took pleasure in her company, for he hadan eye for beauty and grace. He had her dressed up in boy's clothes, allof velvet and lace, and he allowed her hair to grow into suchhyacinthine locks as young Ganymede wore at the court of Jove. He wasmuch occupied by the thought of showing himself to the world as aconjurer, a high white Magian, capable of transforming that drop ofblood of the devil himself, a girl, into that sweet object nearest tothe angels, which was a boy. Or perhaps he even dreamed of creating abeing of its own kind, an object of art which was neither boy nor girl,but a pure Von Platen. There may have been times, then, when hisdelicate artist's blood stirred a little in his veins at the idea. Hetaught the little girl Greek and Latin. He tried to convey to her theidea of the beauty of higher mathematics. But when he lectured to herupon the infinite loveliness of the circle, she asked him: if it werereally so fair, what color was it--was it not blue? Ah, no, he said, ithad no color at all. From that moment he began to fear that she wouldnot become a boy.

"He kept looking at her, with terrible doubts, more and more virtuouslyindignant at the signs of his mistake. And when he found that there wasno longer any doubt, but that his failure was a certainty, with a shiverhe turned his eyes away from her forever, and annihilated her. Hergirl's beauty was her sentence of death. This happened two or threeyears ago. Since then she has not existed. Mr. Timon, you are free toenvy her.

"The Count Seraphina had a great predilection for the Middle Ages. Hishuge castle of Angelshorn dated from that time, and he had taken painsto bring it back inside, as outside, to the times of the Crusades. Itwas not constructed, no more than was the Count himself, to spreaditself much on earth, but the tall towers aspired to heaven, with aflight of jackdaws like a thin smoke around their heads, and the deepvaults seemed to dig themselves down toward the pit. The daylight waslet in, between fathom-thick walls, through old stained glass, likecinnamon and blood of oxen, along the sides of the rooms, where, uponfaded tapestries, unicorns were killed and the Magians and their retinuecarried gold and myrrh to Bethlehem. Here the Count listened to, andhimself played, the viol de gamba and the viol d'amore, andpracticed archery. He never read a printed book, but had his authors ofthe day copied by hand in ultramarine and scarlet letters.

"He liked to imagine himself the abbot of a highly exclusive monastery,whereto only fair young monks of brilliant talent and soft manners wereadmitted. He and his circle of young friends sat down to dinner in oldsculptured oak pews, and wore cowls of purple silk. His house was anabbey upon the northern soil, a Mount Athos to which no hen or cow isallowed to come, not even the wild bees, on account of their queen bee.Aye, the Count was more zealous than the monks of Athos, for when he andhis seraglio of lovely youths sometimes drank wine out of a skull, tokeep present the thought of death and eternity, he took care that itshould not be the skull of a lady. Oh, that the name of that man mustdishonor my lips! It were better for a man that he should kill a lady,in order to procure her skull to drink his wine from, than that heshould excite himself by drinking it, so to say, out of his own skull.

"In this dark castle the annihilated girl would walk about. She was theloveliest thing in the place, and would have adorned the court of QueenVenus, who would very likely have made her keeper of her doves, dove asshe is herself. But here she knew that she did not exist, for nobodyever looked at her. Where, My Lord, is music bred--upon the instrumentor within the ear that listens? The loveliness of woman is created inthe eye of man. You talk, Timon, of Lucifer offending God by looking athim to see what he was like. That shows that you worship a male deity. Agoddess would ask her worshiper first of all: 'How am I looking?'

"You might well ask me now: 'Did not one of the castellan's sleekminions look for himself, and find out how sweet she was?' But no; thisis the story of the Emperor's new clothes, and is told to prove to youthe power of human vanity. These beautiful boys were too fearful ofbeing found impossibly dull, and unfit for their office. They were busydiscussing Aristotle and lecturing upon the doctrines and mysteries ofancient and medieval scholastics.

"The Emperor himself, you will remember, believed that he was finelyattired. So also the maid herself believed that she was not worthlooking at. Still, in her heart she could hardly believe it, and thiseverlasting struggle between instinct and reason devoured her, as muchas it did Hercules himself, or any other traditional hero of tragedy.Sometimes she would stand and look at the mighty coats of armor in thecorridors of Angelshorn. These looked like real men. She felt that theywould have been partisans of hers, had they not all been hollow. Shebecame shy of all people, and wild, in the loneliness of the brilliantcircle of the house. But she became also fierce, and might well, on adark night, have put fire to the castle.

"In the end, as you, Timon, could not stand your existence, but meant tojump into the water from Langebro, she could no longer stand hernonexistence at Angelshorn. But your task was easier. You wanted only todisappear, while she had to create herself. She had been for such a longtime brought up in the wicked heresies of those falsifiers of truth, andso thoroughly tortured and threatened with the stake, that she was bynow ready to deny any god. Abu Mirrah had a ring which made himinvisible, but when he wanted to marry the Princess Ebadu, and could notget it off his finger, he cut off the finger with it. In this wayCalypso resolved to cut off her long hair, and to chop off her youngbreasts, so as to be like her acquaintances. This deed of darkness shemade up her mind to commit one summer night."

At this point of Miss Malin's narrative, the girl, who had hithertostared straight in front of her, turned her wild eyes toward thenarrator, and began to listen with a new kind of interest, as if sheherself were hearing the tale for the first time. Miss Malin had anopulent power of imagination. But still the story, correct or not, wasto the heroine herself a symbol, a dressed-up image of what she had inreality gone through, and she acknowledged it by her clear deep glanceat the old woman.

"At midnight, My Lord," Miss Malin went on, "the maiden got up to go tothis dismal rendezvous. She took a candlestick in one hand, and a sharphatchet in the other, like to Judith when she went to kill Holophernes.But what darkness, my friends, what darkness in the castle ofAngelshorn, compared to that of the tent of Dothaim. The angels musthave turned away and wept.

"She walked all through the house to a room in which she knew there wasa long looking-glass on the wall. It was a room that was never used;nobody would come there. The lost girl swept down her clothes to herwaist, and fixed her eyes on the glass, not allowing herself anythought, lest it should frighten her from her purpose.

"In that same midnight hour newly married young men, within nuptialchambers, were trembling, unveiling, fondling and kissing the bodies oftheir young brides. In the light of five hundred wax candles greatladies were turning the destinies of nations by lifting their shouldersin their low frocks. Even in the houses of ill fame of Naples, the oldbrown madamas, dragging their girls to the little candle on thebed-table, and pulling down their bodices, were bargaining with theircustomers for higher fees. Calypso, while lowering her eyes to thewhiteness of her bosom within the dim mirror, for she had never seenherself naked in a mirror, was trying the edge of her ax upon her littlefinger.

"At that moment she saw in the looking-glass a big figure behind herown. It seemed to move, and she turned around. There was nobody there,but on the wall was an enormous old painting which had grown dark withage, but in which the lighter parts, illuminated by her candle, sprangout. It represented a scene out of the life of the nymphs, fauns, andsatyrs, with the centaurs, playing in groves and on the flowery plains.It had been brought, many years ago, from Italy by one of the old lordsof the house, but it had been thought a very indecent picture evenbefore the time of the present Count, and had been removed from theliving-rooms. It was not a well-painted picture, but there were a lot offigures in it. In the foreground three young naked nymphs, silvery aswhite roses, were holding up branches of trees.

"Calypso walked all along the huge picture, holding up her candle, andgazing gravely at it. That it was a scandalous picture she lackedknowledge to see; neither did she doubt that it was a truerepresentation of beings actually existing. She looked with greatinterest at the satyrs and centaurs. In her lonely existence she haddeveloped a passionate tenderness for animals. To the mind of CountAugust the existence of the brute creation was an enigma and a tragedy,and there were no animals at Angelshorn. But to the girl they seemedsweeter than human beings, and she was delighted to find that there werepeople who possessed so many of their characteristics. But whatsurprised and overwhelmed her was the fact that these strong and lovelybeings were obviously concentrating their attention upon following,adoring, and embracing young girls of her own age, and of her own figureand face, that the whole thing was done in their honor and inspired bytheir charms.

"She looked at them for a very long time. In the end she returned to hermirror and stood there contemplating herself within it. She had thesense of art of her uncle himself, and knew by instinct what thingsharmonized together. Now a hitherto unexperienced feeling of a greatharmony came upon her.

"She knew now that she had friends in the world. By right of her looksshe might step into the mellow golden light, the blue sky and grayclouds, and the deep brown shadows of these plains and olive groves. Herheart swelled with gratitude and pride, for here they all looked at herand recognized her as their own. The god Dionysos himself, who waspresent, looked her, laughingly, straight into the eyes.

"She looked around the room and saw, in showcases, what she had neverseen before at Angelshorn: woman's clothes, fans, jewels, and littleshoes. All these had belonged to her great-grandmother. For, strange tosay, the Count had had a grandmother. He had even had a mother, andthere had been a time, when, bon gré mal gré, he had made a closeacquaintance with the body of a fair young woman. He had a tendernessfor his grandmother, who had birched him when he was a child. In thevery center of his abbey he had left her boudoir untouched. A faintperfume of attar of roses still lived here.

"The girl spent the night in the room. She put on and took off one afterthe other of the court robes, the pearl strings, and diamonds. Shelooked from the glass to the painting for the applause of thecentaurs--in what attire did they like her best? She could have no doubtabout it. At last she left the room to go to the room of the castellan.Before she closed the door she gently kissed the nymphs, as high up asshe could place her kiss, as if they had been her beloved friends.

"She walked up the stairs very gently, and went close to the great bedof her uncle. There he was, between the yellow silk hangings, his eyesshut, his nose in the air, white in a fine white nightshirt. The girlstill had on a great yellow-brocade frock, and she stood by his bedsidelike Psyche beside the couch of Eros. Psyche had feared to see amonster, and had found the god of love. But Calypso had held her uncleto be a minister of truth, an arbiter of taste, an Apollo himself, andwhat did she find? A poor little doll stuffed with sawdust, a caricatureof a skull. She blushed deeply. Had she been afraid of thiscreature--she, who was the sister of the nymphs and had centaurs forplaymates? She was a hundred times as strong as he.

"Had he woke up then, and seen her by his bedside, still with herhatchet in her hand, he might have died from fear, or it might have donehim good in some other way. But he slept on--God knows what his dreamswere--and she did not cut off his head. She gave him instead a littleswift epigram out of her French book, which had once been made about aking who also imagined himself much-beloved:

Ci-git Louis, ce pauvre roi.
L'on dit qu'il fut bon--mais à quoi?

And she did not bear him the slightest grudge; for she was not a freedslave, but a conqueror with a mighty train, who could afford to forget.

"She left the room as quietly as she had come, and blew out the candle,for in the summer night she could find her way without it. All aroundher the whole seraglio was silent; only as she passed a door she heardtwo of the young boys arguing upon divine love. They might all have beendead as far as she was concerned. As she lifted the heavy medieval lockof the front door she lifted their weight off her heart.

"When she came out it was raining. The night itself wanted to touch her.

"She walked over the moors, grave as Ceres herself with a thunderboltborrowed from Jove in her hand, who, even as she knits her brows, smellsof strawberries and honey. Around the horizon the corn-lightnings wereplaying in her honor. She let her frock trail over the heather. Whyshould she not? Had a young highwayman met her, she might have made himher husband then and there, until death had them parted; or she mighthave chopped off his head, and God knows which fate would have been moreto be envied him.

"She had no gay ditty on her lips. She had been seriously brought up asa good Protestant, and life had taught her no frivolity. In her heartshe repeated the hymn of good Paul Gerhardt, altering it as to thepersonal pronoun only:

Against me who can stand?
The lightning's in my hand.
Who dares to bring distress
Where I decide to bless?

"In the early morning she came to the house where I was staying. She waswet all through like a tree in the garden. She knew of me, for I am hergodmother, and she felt that I had knowledge of, and might tell her moreabout, nymphs and centaurs. She found me getting into my carriage to goto the bath of Norderney. In this way fate drove us together, to be, inthe end, like yourself, Mr. Timon, cured by salt water."

"And to shine above them," the Cardinal said, as gently as he had allthe time been listening to the tale of the old woman, "a Stella Maris inthe darkness of our loft."

"Madame, indeed," said Jonathan, "I do not know if you will think itstrange, but I have never in my life, until you told me so now, thoughtthat fair women could suffer. I held them to be precious flowers, whichmust be looked after carefully."

"And what do you feel now that I have told you so?" Miss Malin askedhim.

"Madame," said the young man after having thought it over, "I feel howedifying is the thought that toward women we are always in the wrong."

"You are an honest young man," said Miss Malin. "Your side hurts younow, where your rib was once taken out of you."

"If I had been in the castle of Angelshorn," he went on, in highagitation, "I should not have minded dying to serve this lady."

"Come, Jonathan and Calypso," said Miss Malin, "it would be sinful andblasphemous were you two to die unmarried. You have been brought herefrom Angelshorn and Assens, into each other's arms. You are hers, andshe is yours, and the Cardinal and I, who stand you in parents' stead,will give you our blessing." The two young people stared at each other."If anybody will say," said Miss Malin, "that you are not her equal inbirth, I shall answer him that you belong to the order of knighthood ofthe hayloft of Norderney, outside of which no member of it can marry."The girl, in great excitement, rose half up and stood on her knees. "Didyou not see, Calypso," Miss Malin addressed herself kindly to her, "howhe followed you here, and how, the moment he heard that you were stayinghere with me, nothing in the world could induce him to go with the boat?Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it."

"Is that true?" asked the girl, turning her eyes upon the boy with suchan intense and frantic look as if life and death for her depended uponhis answer.

"Yes, that is true," said Jonathan. It was not in the least true. He hadnot even, at the time, been aware of the girl's existence. But the powerof imagination of the old woman was enough to sway anybody off his feet.The girl's face, at his words, suddenly paled into a rare pearly white.Her eyes grew bigger and darker. They shone at him like stars with amoisture deeper than tears, and at the sight of her changed faceJonathan sank upon his knees before her in the hay.

"Oh, Jonathan," said Miss Malin, "are you going to thank the Baron, uponyour knees, that he took the trouble about you?"

"Yes, Madame," said the young man.

"And you, Calypso," she asked the girl, "do you want him to look at youforever and ever?"

"Yes," said the girl.

Miss Malin looked at them triumphantly. "Then, My Lord," she said to theCardinal, "will you consent to marry these two people, who stand ingreat need of it?"

The Cardinal's eyes gravely sought their faces, which had now colored asstrongly as if they had been in front of a high fire. "Yes," he said."Lift me up." The bridegroom-to-be helped him to rise.

"You will," said Miss Malin, "have a Cardinal to marry you, and aNat-og-Dag for a bridesmaid, which no one will have hereafter. Yourmarriage must be in every way a more intense affair than the lukewarmunions generally celebrated around us, for you must see her, listen toher, feel her, know her with the energy which you meant to use forjumping into the sea from Langebro. One kiss will make it out for thebirth of twins, and at dawn you shall celebrate your golden wedding."

"My Lord," she said to the Cardinal, "the circumstances being sounusual--for we have no need of procreation, seeing that the boat canhold no more than we are, and we run but little risk of fornication, Ifeel; and as to the company of one another, we cannot escape it if wewould--I think that you will have to make us out a new marriage rite."

"I am aware of that," said the Cardinal.

To make a clear space in the middle of the circle, Miss Malin lifted upthe little lamp in her clawlike hand, and Calypso moved the bread andthe keg away. The dog, at this rearrangement of the group, got up andwalked around them uneasily. In the end it settled down close to theyoung bride.

"Kneel down, my children," said the old priest.

He stood up, his huge and heavy figure looming over them in the large,half-dark room. At this moment, as the wind had risen a little, theyheard the sighing of the waters all around and beneath them.

"I cannot," said the Cardinal very slowly, "here tonight call upon themagnificence of the cathedral, or the presence of a congregation, tosanction this covenant. I have no time to teach or prepare you. Youmust, therefore, accept my profession to you solely on my authority. Youtwo, I have seen," he went on after a pause, "have had your faith in thecohesion and justice of life shaken. Have faith in me now; I will helpyou. Have you a ring?"

The young people had no ring, and were much put out by the lack of it,but Miss Malin took off a very magnificent diamond, which she handed tothe old man.

"Jonathan," said he, "place this ring on this girl's finger." The boydid so, and the Cardinal placed a hand on the head of each of thekneeling people. "Jonathan," said the Cardinal again, "do you nowbelieve that you are married?"

"Yes," said Jonathan.

"And you, Calypso?" the Cardinal asked the girl.

"Yes," she whispered.

"And that you will," said the Cardinal, "from now, love and honor eachother until the end of your lives, and even in death and eternity?"

"Yes," they said.

"Then," said the Cardinal, "you are married."

Miss Malin stood by, erect, holding the lamp like a sibyl.

The hours of rest in the hayloft had not strengthened the Cardinal, whowas probably past all his strength. He was less steady in his movementsthan when he had come out of the boat. His figure seemed to sway,strangely, in time to the sound of the water.

"As to the state of marriage," he said, "and the matter of love, Isuppose that neither of you knows anything at all about these things?"The two young people shook their heads. "I cannot," said the Cardinalagain, "here make the Scripture and the Fathers of the Church bearwitness to my words to you. I cannot even, for I am very tired, call upthe texts and examples wherewith to enlighten and instruct you. Youwill, again, accept my profession on my authority as a very old man whohas been throughout a long and strange life a student of divine matters.These matters, I tell you, are divine. Do you, Jonathan, expect and holdthem to be so?"

"Yes," said Jonathan.

"And you, Calypso?" he asked the bride.

"Yes," she said.

"Then that is all," said the Cardinal.

As he did not appear to be going to say any more, the married youngpeople, after a moment, got up, but they were too strongly moved to beable to get away. Standing there, they looked at each other for thefirst time since they had been called out to be married, and this onelook took away all self-consciousness from both of them. They went backto their places in the hay.

"As to you and me, Madame," said the Cardinal, speaking over their headsto Miss Malin, but apparently forgetting that he was no longer in thepulpit, for he went on talking as solemnly as he had done whenperforming the marriage ceremony, "who are only onlookers upon thisoccasion, and who know more about the matters of love and marriage, wewill consider the lesson which they, above and before all other things,teach us about the tremendous courage of the Creator of this world.Every human being has, I believe, at times given room to the idea ofcreating a world himself. The Pope, in a flattering way, encouragedthese thoughts in me when I was a young man. I reflected then that Imight, had I been given omnipotence and a free hand, have made a fineworld. I might have bethought me of the trees and rivers, of thedifferent keys in music, of friendship, and innocence; but upon my wordand honor, I should not have dared to arrange these matters of love andmarriage as they are, and my world should have lost sadly thereby. Whatan overwhelming lesson to all artists! Be not afraid of absurdity; donot shrink from the fantastic. Within a dilemma, choose the mostunheard-of, the most dangerous, solution. Be brave, be brave! Ah,Madame, we have got much to learn."

Upon this, he fell into deep thought.

As they sat down, their former positions were not much changed, exceptthat the newly married people now sat closer together, and held eachother's hands. Sometimes they also turned their faces toward each other.The lantern stood on the floor in front of them. Miss Malin and theCardinal, after their effort in marrying them, remained silent for abouthalf an hour, and drank a few drops out of the keg of gin.

Miss Malin sat up straight, but by now she looked like a corpse oftwenty-four hours. She was deeply moved and happy, as if she had reallygiven away a daughter in marriage. Long shudders ran through her fromhead to feet. When she at last took up the conversation again, her voicewas faint, but she smiled. She had probably been reflecting uponmarriage and the Garden of Eden.

"Do you, My Lord," she asked, "believe in the fall of man?"

The Cardinal thought over her question for some time, then he bentforward, his elbows on his knees, and pushed back the bandage a littlefrom his brow.

"This is a question," he said, in a voice slightly changed, thicker thanbefore, but also with a great deal more energy in it, as if he had atthe same time pushed back ten years of his age, "upon which I havethought much. It is pleasant that I shall get an opportunity for talkingof it tonight.

"I am convinced," he declared, "that there has been a fall, but I do nothold that it is man who has fallen. I believe that there has been a fallof the divinity. We are now serving an inferior dynasty of heaven."

Miss Malin had been prepared for an ingenious argument, but at thisspeech she was shocked, and for a moment held her little hands to herears. "These are terrible words to the ear of a Legitimist," she cried.

"What are they, then," asked the Cardinal solemnly, "to the lips of aLegitimist? I have detained them for seventy years. But you asked me,Madame, and, if the truth must out, this is a good place and night forit. At some time there has taken place, in heaven, a tremendousoverturning, equal to the French Revolution upon earth, and itsafter-effects. The world of today is, like the France of today, in thehands of a Louis Philippe."

"There are traditions still," he went on, "from le Grand Monarque andle Grand Siècle. But no human being with a feeling for greatness canpossibly believe that the God who created the stars, the sea, and thedesert, the poet Homer and the giraffe, is the same God who is nowmaking, and upholding, the King of Belgium, the Poetical School ofSchwaben, and the moral ideas of our day. We two may at last speak aboutit. We are serving Louis Philippe, a human God, much as the King ofFrance is a bourgeois King."

Miss Malin stared at him, pale, her mouth a little open.

"Madame," he said, "we who are by birth the grandees of the King, andhereditary office-holders of his court, and who have the code of leGrand Monarque in our veins, have a duty toward the legitimate king,whatever we think of him. We must keep up his glory. For the people mustnot doubt the greatness of the king, or suspect any weakness of his, andthe responsibility for keeping up their faith rests upon you and me,Madame. The barber of the court was not capable of keeping his owncounsel; he had to whisper to the reeds of the king's asses' ears. Butwe--are we barbers? No, Madame, we are no barbers."

"Have we not done our best?" asked Miss Malin proudly.

"Yes," said the Cardinal, "we have done our best. When you look around,Madame, you see everywhere the achievements of the faithful, who haveworked, nameless, for the king's honor. I could name you many examplesout of history, of which I have thought. I shall give you a few only.God made the shell, which is a pretty object, but not more than whateven Louis Philippe might have hit upon when he was playing with a pairof dividers. Out of the shell we made all the art of the rococo, whichis a charming jest, in the true spirit of the Grand Monarque. And ifyou read the history of great people, you will find that the lords andladies of the bedchamber have been at work, serving our master ofblessed memory. The Pope Alexander and his children, according to thelatest historical researches, were a group of pleasant people, given togardening and house decoration, and full of family affection, et voilàtout--obviously the handwork of Louis Philippe. But out of thatindifferent material we have made our figures of the Borgias. You willfind very nearly the same thing if you go into the facts about the greatreputations of history. Or even, Madame, if you do not mind," the oldman went on, "death: What is it, nowadays, at the hand of LouisPhilippe? A negation, a decay, not even in the best of taste. But lookat what we have made of it, faithful to our gone Lord: the ImperialMausoleum of Escurial, Madame, the 'Funeral March' of Herr Ludwig vonBeethoven. How could we ever have made those--poor human beings as weare, and, moreover, ourselves bound to be part in this meager affair--ifwe had not in our hearts the unquenchable love for our departed Lord,the great adventurer, to whom our family did first swear its oath ofallegiance."

"But with all that," he went on, very gravely, "the end is nearing. Ihear the cocks crow. King Louis Philippe cannot last. In his cause theblood of Roland himself would be shed in vain. He has all the qualitiesof a good bourgeois, and none of the vices of a Grand Seigneur. Heclaims no rank except that of the first citizen of his kingdom, and noprivileges except on account of his loyalty to the bourgeois code ofmorals. When it comes to that, the days of royalty are counted. I willpronounce a prophecy, Madame: that good King of France will not lastanother thirteen years. And the good God, whom Louis Philippe and hisbourgeoisie worship today, he has all the virtues of a righteous humanbeing; he claims no divine privileges except by virtue of his virtues.We, we no more expected a moral attitude in our God than we meant tohold our great King responsible to the penal law. The humane God mustshare the fate of the bourgeois King. I was myself brought up by humanepeople to have faith in a humane God. It was to the highest extentintolerable to me. Ah, Madame, what a revelation, what a bliss to myheart, when, in the nights of Mexico, I felt the great traditions riseup again of a God who did not give a pin for our commandments. In thismanner, Madame, we are dying for a lost cause."

"To get our reward in paradise," said Miss Malin.

"Oh, no, Madame," said the old man, "we shall not get into paradise, youor I. Look at the people whom the King Louis Philippe today decorates,elevates to peer's rank and places in the great offices. They are safelybourgeois, all of them; no name of the old aristocracy appears in thelist. Neither you nor I succeed in pleasing the Lord nowadays; we evenirritate him a little, and he is not beyond showing it in his behaviortoward us. The old nobility, whose manner and very names bring back thetraditions of the Great Monarch, must needs be a little trying to KingLouis Philippe."

"So we have no hope of heaven, you or I?" asked Miss Malin proudly.

"I wonder if you would be keen to get in there," said the old Cardinal,"if you were first allowed a peep into the place. It must be therendezvous of the bourgeoisie. Madame, to my mind there never was agreat artist who was not a bit of a charlatan; nor a great king, nor agod. The quality of charlatanry is indispensable in a court, or atheater, or in paradise. Thunder and lightning, the new moon, anightingale, a young girl--all these are bits of charlatanry, of adivine swank. So is the gallérie de glaces at Versailles. But KingLouis Philippe has no drop of blood of the charlatan in him; he isgenuinely reliable all through. Paradise, these days, is very likely thesame. You and I, Madame, were not brought up to a reasonable content. Weshall cut a finer figure in hell. We were trained for it.

"It is a satisfaction, Madame, to do a thing that one has learned well.It must be a satisfaction to you, I am sure, to dance the minuet. Let ustake an example. Let us say that I have been trained from a child to dosomething. For argument's sake, let us say to do rope-dancing. I havebeen taught it, beaten to learn it. If I fall down and break my bones, Istill have to get up again on my rope. My mother has wept over me, andhas still encouraged me. She has had to go without bread to pay thevaulter who teaches me. And I have become a good rope-dancer, say thebest rope-dancer in the world. It is a fine thing, then, to be arope-dancer. And I shall be amply rewarded when, upon some greatoccasion, at the entertainment of a great foreign monarch, my King saysto his royal guest: 'You must really see this, Sire and my Brother; thisis my finest show, my servant Hamilcar, the rope-dancer!' But what if heshould say, Madame, 'There is not much sense in rope-dancing. It is arough performance; I am going to stop it'? What sort of performance, onthe part of the King, should that be to me?

"Have you been to Spain, Madame?" he asked the old lady.

"Oh, yes," said Miss Malin, "a beautiful country, My Lord. I hadserenades sung under my window, and my portrait painted by Monsieur Goyahimself."

"Have you seen a bullfight there?" the Cardinal asked.

"Yes," said Miss Malin. "It is a very picturesque thing, though not tomy taste."

"It is a picturesque thing," said the Cardinal. "And what do youimagine, Madame, that the bull thinks of it? The plebeian bull may wellthink: 'God have mercy on me, what terrible conditions here. Whatdisasters, what a run of bad luck. But it must be endured.' And he wouldbe deeply thankful, moved even to humble tears, were the King, in themidst of the bullfight, to send directions to have it stopped, out ofcompassion for him. But the purebred fighting bull falls in with it, andsays: 'Lo, this is a bullfight.' He will have his blood up straightaway, and he will fight and die, because otherwise there would be nobullfight out of the thing at all. He will also be known for many yearsas that black bull which put up such a fine fight, and killed thematador. But if, in the middle of it, when this bull's blood had alreadyflowed, the King chose to stop it, what would the true fighting bullthink of it? He might go for the audience, even for the master ofceremonies then. He would roar at them: 'You should have thought of thisbefore!' Madame, the King should have his show. He has bred and rearedme for it, and I am ready to fight and die before the Great Monarch,when he comes in state to see me. But I am hanged," he said after amoment, with great energy, "if I care to perform before Louis Philippe."

"Ah, but wait," said Miss Malin. "I have thought of something else.Perhaps you are mistaken in your ideas of the sense of humor of KingLouis Philippe. He may have a quite different taste from yours and mine,and may like a world turned upside down, like that Empress of Russiawho, to amuse herself, made her old Councilors, the tears running downtheir faces, dance in a ballet before her, and her ballet-dancers sit incouncil. That, My Lord, might well be his idea of a joke. I will tellyou a little story to make myself clear, and it fits in well, since wehave been talking of rope-dancing.

"When I was in Vienna twenty years ago," she began, "a pretty boy withbig blue eyes made a great stir there by dancing on a rope blindfolded.He danced with wonderful grace and skill, and the blindfolding wasgenuine, the cloth being tied around his eyes by a person out of theaudience. His performance was the great sensation of the season, and hewas sent for to dance before the Emperor and Empress, the archdukes andarchduchesses, and the court. The great oculist, Professor Heimholz, waspresent. He had been sent for by the Emperor, since everybody wasdiscussing the problem of clairvoyance. But at the end of the show herose up and called out: 'Your Majesty,' he said, in great agitation,'and your Imperial Highnesses, this is all humbug, and a cheat.'

"'It cannot be humbug,' said the court oculist, 'I have myself tied thecloth around the boy's eyes most conscientiously.'

"'It is all humbug and a cheat,' the great professor indignantlyinsisted. 'That child was born blind.'"

Miss Malin made a little pause. "What," she said, "if your LouisPhilippe shall say, on seeing us cutting such fine figures in hell: Thisis all humbug. These people have been in hell from their birth." Shelaughed a little.

"Madame," said the Cardinal after a silence, "you have a great power ofimagination, and a fine courage."

"Oh, I am a Nat-og-Dag," said Miss Malin modestly.

"But are you not," said the Cardinal, "a little----"

"Mad?" asked the old lady. "I thought that you were aware of that, MyLord."

"No," said he, "that was not what I meant to say. But a little hard onthe King of France. I may perhaps be in a position to understand himbetter than you. Bourgeois he is, but not canaille.

"I shall also tell you a story," went on the old man, "seeing that Ihave not yet contributed to the night's entertainment. I shall tell itjust to illustrate that there are--with your permission, Madame--worsethings than perdition, and I shall call it--" he reflected a moment--"Ishall call it 'The Wine of the Tetrarch'."

****

"As, then, upon the first Wednesday after Easter," the Cardinal began,"the Apostle Simon, called Peter, was walking down the streets ofJerusalem, so deeply absorbed in the thought of the resurrection that hedid not know whether he was walking upon the pavement or was beingcarried along in the air, he noticed, in passing the Temple, that a manwas standing by a pillar waiting for him. As their eyes met, thestranger stepped forward and addressed him. 'Wast thou not also,' heasked, 'with Jesus of Nazareth?'

"'Yes, yes, yes,' Peter replied quickly.

"'Then I should much like to have speech with you,' said the man. 'I donot know what to do. Will you come inside the inn close hereby, and havea drink with me?' Peter, because he could not disengage himself from histhoughts sufficiently to find an excuse, accepted, and soon the two wereseated together inside the inn.

"The stranger seemed to be well known there. He at once obtained a tableto himself at the end of the room and out of earshot of the other guestswho from time to time entered the inn and went out again, and he alsoordered the best wine for himself and the Apostle. Peter now looked atthe man, and found him an impressive figure. He was a swarthy, stronglybuilt, proud young man. He was badly dressed and had on a much-patchedgoatskin cloak, but with it he wore a fine crimson silk scarf, and hehad a gold chain around his neck, and upon his hands many heavy goldrings, one of which had a large emerald in it. It now seemed to Peterthat he had seen the man before, in the midst of terrible fear andturbulence; still, he did not remember where.

"'If you are indeed one of the followers of the Nazarene,' he said, 'Iwant to ask you two questions. I will tell you my reasons, too, forasking them, as we go on.'

"'I shall be glad if I can help you in any way,' said Peter, stillabsent-minded.

"'Well,' said the man, 'first: Is it true, what they tell of this Rabbiwhom you served, that he has risen from the dead?'

"'Yes, it is true,' said Peter, even feeling his own heart to swell athis proclamation.

"'Nay, I heard rumors about it,' said the man, 'but I did not know forsure. And is it true that he told you himself, before he was crucified,that he would rise?'

"'Yes,' said the Apostle, 'he told us. We knew that it would happen.'

"'Do you think, then,' the stranger asked, 'that every word which he hasspoken is certain to come true?'

"'Nothing in the world is as sure as that,' Peter answered. The man satsilent for a while.

"'I will tell you why I ask you this,' he suddenly said. 'It is becausea friend of mine was crucified with him on Friday at the place of askull. You saw him there, I think. To him this Rabbi of yours promisedthat he should be with him in paradise on the very same day. Do you thenbelieve that he did go to paradise on Friday?'

"'Yes, he is sure to have gone there and he is there now,' said Peter.The man again was silent.

"'Well, that is good,' he said. 'He was my friend.'

"Here a young boy of the inn brought the wine which the man had ordered.The man poured some of it out into their glasses, looked at it, and putit down again. 'And this,' he said, 'is the other thing that I wanted tospeak with you about. I have tried many wines within the last few days,and they all tasted bad to me. I do not know what has happened to thewine of Jerusalem. It has neither flavor nor body any longer. I think itmay be due to the earthquake which we had on Friday afternoon; it hasturned it all bad.'

"'I do not think that this wine is bad,' said Peter, to encourage thestranger, for he looked sad as death.

"'Is it not?' the man said hopefully, and drank a little of it. 'Yes,this also is bad,' he said, as he put down his glass. 'If you call itgood, perhaps you have not much knowledge of wine? I have, and good wineis my great pleasure. Now I do not know what to do.

"'Now about that friend of mine, Phares,' he took up the thread of theconversation, 'I will tell you all about how he was taken prisoner, andput to death. He was a robber on the road between Jericho and Jerusalem.On that road there came along a transport of wine which the Emperor ofRome sent as a present to the tetrarch Herodes, and amongst it was ahogshead of red Capri wine, which was beyond price. One evening, in thissame place where we are now, I was talking to Phares. I said to him: "Iwould give my heart to drink that red wine of the tetrarch's." He said:"For the sake of my love of you, and to show you that I am not a muchlesser man than you, I will kill the overseer of this transport and havethe hogshead of red wine buried under such and such a cedar on themountain, and you and I will drink the wine of the tetrarch together."He did indeed do all this, but as he came into Jerusalem to find me, hewas recognized by one of the people of the transport, who had escaped,and thrown into prison, and condemned to be crucified.

"'I was told of it, and I walked about in Jerusalem in the night,thinking of a means to help him escape. In the morning, on passing thesteps of the Temple, I saw there an old beggar, whom I had seen manytimes before, who had a bad leg, all bandaged up, and was also mad. Inhis madness he would scream out, and prophesy, complaining of his fateand cursing the governors of the town, proclaiming many bad thingsagainst the tetrarch and his wife. As he was mad, people only used tolaugh at him. But this morning it happened that a centurion was passingwith his men, and when he heard what the beggar said of the tetrarch'swife he was angry. He told the beggar that if he did this again he wouldmake him sleep in the prison of Jerusalem, and he would have him dealttwenty-five strokes of a stick in the evening, and twenty-five in themorning, to teach him to speak reverently about high people.

"'I listened, and thought: this is the opportunity for me. So in thecourse of the day I had my beard and hair shaved off, I dyed my face innut oil, and dressed myself in rags, and I also bandaged up my rightleg, but in those bandages I had hidden a strong, sharp file and a longrope. In the evening, when I went to the steps of the Temple, the oldbeggar had been so frightened that he had not come, so I took his placethere myself. Just as the watch was passing, I cried out loudly, in thevoice of the mad beggar, the worst curses I could think of against Cæsarin Rome himself, and, as I had thought, the watch took hold of me andbrought me to the prison, and no one could recognize me in my rags. Iwas given, there, twenty-five strokes, and I took note of the face ofthe man who beat me, for the sake of the future; but with a piece ofsilver I bribed the turnkey to shut me up for the night in the prisonwhere Phares was kept, which was very high up in the prison, the which,as you know, is built into the rock.

"'Phares fell down and kissed my feet, and he gave me some water that hehad, but later we set to work to file through the iron bar of thewindow. It was high up, and he had to stand upon my shoulders, or I uponhis, but by early morning we broke it, and then tied the rope onto thebroken bar. Phares lowered himself down first, until he came to the endof the rope, which was not quite long enough, and then he let himselffall. Then I got out, but I was weak, and too slow at it, and ithappened that just at that hour a batch of soldiers came to the placewith a prisoner. They had torches with them, and one of them caughtsight of me as I was hanging onto the rope on the wall. Now Phares couldhave got away, if he had run, but he would not go before he had seenwhat would happen to me, and in this way we were both taken once more,and they saw who I was.

"'That is how it happened,' said the stranger. 'But then you tell methat Phares is now in paradise.'

"'All this,' said Peter, who had, though, been listening only with halfan ear, 'I hold to be very brave of you, and it was well done to riskyour life for your friend.' At that he sighed deeply. 'Oh, I have livedtoo long in the woods to be frightened of an owl,' said the stranger.'Has anybody told you of me that I was the sort that runs away fromdanger?'

"'No,' said Peter. 'But then you tell me,' he said after a moment, 'thatyou, too, were made prisoner. Still, since you are here, you got offsomehow?'

"'Yes; I got off,' said the man, and gave Peter a strange deep glance.'I meant, then, to revenge Phares's death. But since he is in paradise Ido not see that I need to worry. And now I do not know what to do. ShallI dig up this hogshead of the tetrarch's wine and drink it?'

"'It will be sad to you without your friend,' said Peter, and his eyesfilled with such tears as were still left in him after this last week.He thought that he ought perhaps to reproach the man with the theft ofthe tetrarch's wine, but too many recollections welled up in his ownheart.

"'No, it is not that of which I am thinking,' said the stranger, 'but ifthat wine also has gone bad and gives me no pleasure, what am I to dothen?'

"Peter sat for a little while in his own thoughts. 'Friend,' he said,'there are other things in life to give you pleasure than the wine ofthe tetrarch.'

"'Yes, I know,' said the stranger, 'but what if the same thing hashappened to them? I have two lovely wives waiting for me at home, andjust before this happened I purchased a virgin of twelve years. I havenot seen her since. I could try them, if I chose. But the earthquake mayhave affected them as well, so that they may have neither flavor norbody, and what shall I do then?'

"Now Peter began to wish that this man would stop his complaints andleave him to himself. 'Why,' he asked, 'do you come to me about this?'

"'You remind me,' said the stranger. 'I will tell you. I have beeninformed that your Rabbi, on the night before he died, gave a party tohis followers, and that at that time a special wine was served, whichwas very rare and had some highly precious body in it. Have you, now,any more of this wine, and will you consent to sell it to me? I willgive you your price.'

"Peter stared at the stranger. 'Oh, God, oh, God,' he cried, so highlyaffected that he upset his wine, which ran onto the floor, 'you do notknow what you are saying. This wine which we drank on Thursday night,the Emperor of Rome cannot pay for one drop of it.' His heart was soterribly wrung that he rocked to and fro in his seat. Still, in themidst of his grief the words of the Lord, that he was to be a fisher ofmen, were brought back to him, and he reflected that it might be hisduty to help this man, who seemed in some deep distress. He turned tohim again, but as he was looking at him it came over him that of allpeople in the world, this young man was the one whom he could not help.To strengthen himself he called up one of the words of the Lord himself.

"'My son,' he said kindly and gravely, 'take up thine cross and followhim.' The stranger, just at the same moment as the Apostle, had beenabout to speak. Now he stopped and looked very darkly at Peter. 'Mycross!' he cried. 'Where is my cross? Who is to take up my cross?'

"'No one but yourself can take up your cross,' said Peter, 'but He willhelp you to carry it. Have patience and strength. I will tell you muchmore about all this.'

"'What have you to tell me about it?' said the stranger. 'It seems to methat you know nothing of it. Help? Who is it who wants help to carry thesort of cross which the carpenters of Jerusalem make in these days? NotI, you may be sure. That bow-legged Cyrenean would never have had theopportunity to exhibit his strength on my behalf. You talk of strengthand patience,' he went on after a moment, still highly agitated, 'but Ihave never known a man as strong as myself. Look,' he said, and pullingback his cloak he showed Peter his chest and shoulders, crossed by manyterrible deep white scars. 'My cross! The cross of Phares was to theright, and the cross of the man Achaz, who was never worth much, to theleft. I should have taken up my cross better than any of them. Do younot think that I should have lasted more than six hours? I do not thinkmuch of that, I tell you. Wherever I have been, I have been a leader ofmen, and they have looked to me. Do not believe, because now I do notknow what to do, that I have not been used to telling others to come andgo as I liked.'

"At the disdainful tone of this speech Peter was about to lose hispatience with the stranger, but he had promised himself, since he cutoff Malchus's ear, to control his temper, so he said nothing.

"After a while the man looked at him, as if impressed by his silence.'And you,' he said, 'who are a follower of this Prophet, what do youthink is likely to happen to yourself now?' Peter's face, marred bysorrow, cleared and softened. His whole countenance radiated hope. 'Itrust and believe,' he said, 'that my faith, though it be tried withfire, be found unto praise and honor. I hope that it may be granted tome to suffer and die for my Lord. Sometimes, even, in these lastnights,' he went on, speaking in a low voice, 'I have thought that atthe end of the road a cross might await me.' Having spoken thus he darednot look up to meet the other's eyes. He added quickly, 'Although youmay think that I am boasting, and that I am too low for that.'

"'No,' said the stranger, 'I think it very likely that all this of whichyou have spoken will indeed happen to you.'

"This confidence in his own hopes struck Peter as a most unexpected andgenerous piece of friendliness in the stranger. His heart melted withgratitude. He blushed like a young bride. For the first time he felt areal interest in his companion, and it seemed to him that he ought to dosomething for him in return for the lovely things that he had said tohim. 'I am sorry,' he said gently, 'that I have not been able to helpyou in what weighs upon your soul. But indeed I am hardly in command ofmyself, so much has happened to me in these last days.'

"'Oh,' said the stranger, 'I hardly expected anything better.'

"'In the course of our talk,' Peter said, 'you said a couple of timesthat you did not know what to do. Tell me in what matter it is that youare in such doubts. Even about this wine, of which you speak, I will tryto advise you.' The stranger looked at him. 'I have not been talking ofany particular matter," he said. 'I do not know what to do at all. I donot know where such wine is found that will gladden my heart again. ButI suppose,' he went on, after a little while, 'that I had better go anddig up that wine of the tetrarch's, and sleep with this girl that I toldyou of. I may as well try.'

"With these words he got up from the table and draped his cloak aroundhim.

"'Do not go yet,' Peter said. 'It seems to me that there are many thingsof which we ought to talk together.'

"'I have to go in any case,' said the man. 'There is a transport of oilon its way from Hebron, which I must meet."

"'Are you trading in oil, then?' Peter asked. 'In a way,' said the man.

"'But tell me, before you go,' said Peter, 'what is your name? For wemight speak again together, some time, if I knew where to find you?' Thestranger was already standing in the door. He turned around and lookedat Peter with hauteur and a slight scorn. He looked a magnificentfigure. 'Did you not know my name?' he asked him. 'My name was cried allover the town. There was not one of the tame burghers of Jerusalem whodid not shout it with all his might. "Barabbas," they cried, "Barabbas!Barabbas! Give us Barabbas." My name is Barabbas. I have been a greatchief, and, as you said yourself, a brave man. My name shall beremembered.'

"And with these words he walked away."

****

As the Cardinal had finished his tale, Jonathan got up and changed thetallow candle in the lantern, for it had burned quite down, and was nowflickering wildly up and down in its last convulsions.

He had no sooner done this than the girl at his side became deadly pale.Her eyes closed, and her whole figure seemed to sink together. MissMalin asked her kindly if she felt sleepy, but she denied it with greatenergy, and might well do so. She had lived during this night as she hadnever lived before. She had faced death and had thrown herself noblyinto the jaws of danger for the sake of her fellow-creatures. She hadbeen the center of a brilliant circle, and she had even been married.She did not want to miss a single moment of these pregnant hours. Butduring the next ten minutes she fell asleep time after time in spite ofher efforts to keep awake, her young head rocking forward and back.

She at last consented to lie down to rest for a moment, and her husbandarranged a couch for her in the hay, and took off his coat to spreadover her. Still holding his hand she sank down, and looked, on the darkground, like a lovely marble figure of the angel of death. The dog,which had stayed near her for the last hour, at once followed her, and,curling itself up, pressed close to her, its head on her knees.

Her young husband sat for some time watching her sleep, but after alittle while he could no longer keep awake himself, and lay down at alittle distance from her, but close enough so that he could still holdher hand. For a while he did not sleep, but looked sometimes at her, andsometimes at the erect figures of Miss Malin and the Cardinal. When hedid at last fall asleep, in his sleep he made a sudden movement,thrusting himself forward, so that his head nearly touched the head ofthe girl, and their hair, upon the pillow of the hay, was mingledtogether. A moment later he sank into the same slumber as had his wife.

The two old people sat silent before the light of the new candle, which,to begin with, burned only feebly. Miss Malin, who now looked as if shewere not going to sleep for all eternity, regarded the sleepers with thebenevolence of a successful creator. The Cardinal looked at her for amoment and then he evaded her eyes. After a while he began to undo thebandages around his head, and in doing so he kept his eyes fixed uponthe face of the old lady in a strange stare.

"I had better get rid of these," he said, "now that morning is almosthere."

"But will it not hurt you?" Miss Malin asked anxiously.

"No," he said, and went on with his occupation. After a moment he added:"It is not even my blood. You, Miss Nat-og-Dag, who have such an eye forthe true noble blood, you ought to recognize the blue blood of CardinalHamilcar."

Miss Malin did not move, but her white face changed a little.

"The blood of Cardinal Hamilcar?" she asked in a slightly less steadyvoice. "Yes," he said, "the blood of that noble old man. On my head. Andon my hands as well. For I struck him on the head with a beam which hadfallen down, before the boat arrived to rescue us early this morning."

For quite two or three minutes there was a deep silence in the hayloft.Only the dog stirred, whining a little in its sleep as it poked its headfurther into the clothes of the young girl. The bandaged man and the oldwoman did not let go the hold of each other's eyes. He slowly finishedtaking off the long, red-stained linen strips, and laid them down. Freedof these, he had a broad, red, puffed face, and dark hair.

"God rest the soul of that noble man," said Miss Malin at last. "And whoare you?"

The man's face changed a little at her words. "Is that what you ask me?"he said. "Is it of me that you are thinking, and not of him?"

"Oh, we need not think of him, you and I," she said. "Who are you?"

"My name," said the man, "is Kasparson. I am the Cardinal's valet."

"You must tell me more," said Miss Malin with firmness. "I still want toknow with whom I have passed the night."

"I will tell you much more, if it amuses you," Kaparson said, "for Ihave been to many continents, and I myself like to dwell in the past.

"I am an actor, Madame, as you are a Nat-og-Dag; that is, we remain sowhatever else we take on, and fall back upon this one thing when theothers fail us.

"But when I was a child I danced in ballet, and when I was thirteenyears old I was taken up--because of being so extraordinarily graceful,and particularly because I had to an unusual extent what in thetechnique of the ballet is termed ballon, which means the capacity forsoaring, for rising above the ground and the laws of gravitation--by thegreat elderly noblemen of Berlin. My stepfather, the famous tenor, HerrEunicke, introduced me to them, and believed that I was to be a goldmine to him. For five years I have known what it is to be a lovelywoman, fed upon dainties, dressed in silks and a golden turban, whosecaprices are law to everyone. But Herr Eunicke, like all tenors, forgotto reckon with the laws of passing time. Age stole upon us before wedreamed of it, and my career as a courtesan was a short one.

"Then I went to Spain, and became a barber. I was a barber in Sevillefor seven years, and I liked that, for I have always had a partialitytoward soap and toilet waters, and have liked all sorts of clean andneat things. For this reason it often surprised me in the Cardinal thathe did not object to dirtying his hands with his black and red inks. Ibecame, Madame, a very good barber indeed.

"But I have also been a printer of revolutionary papers in Paris, adog-seller in London, a slavetrader in Algiers, and the lover of adowager principezza of Pisa. Through her I came to travel with ProfessorRosellini, and the great French orientalist Champollion, upon theirEgyptian expedition. I have been to Egypt, Madame. I have stood in thegreat triangular shadow of the great pyramid, and from the top of itfour thousand years gazed down upon me."

Miss Malin, outshone as a world traveler by the valet, quickly tookrefuge in the wide world of her imagination. "Ah," she said, "in Egypt,in the great triangular shadow of the great pyramid, while the ass wasgrazing, St. Joseph said to the Virgin: 'Oh, my sweet young dear, couldyou not just for a moment shut your eyes and make believe that I am theHoly Ghost?'"

Kasparson went on with his account. "I have even lived in Copenhagen,"he said, "but toward the end I had but a poor time of it. I became ahostler in the night-lodgings of the fat old man called BolleBandeat--which means, with your permission, the cursed, ordamned--where, for the fee of a penny, you could sleep on the floor, andfor a halfpenny standing up, with a rope under your arms. When at last Ihad to flee from the hands of the law there, I changed my name to thatof Kasparson, in remembrance of that proud and unfortunate boy ofNürnberg who stabbed himself to death in order to make Lord Stanhopebelieve that he was the illegitimate son of Grand Duchess Stephanie ofBaden.

"But if it be about my family that you want to hear, I have the honor toinform you that I am a bastard of the purest bastard blood extant. Mymother was a true daughter of the people, an honest artisan's child,that lovely actress Johanna Handel-Schutz, who made all the classicideals live upon the stage. She had a melancholy dispositionnevertheless. Of my sixteen brothers and sisters, five have committedsuicide. But if I tell you who was my father, that will be sure tointerest you. When Johanna came to Paris, sixteen years old, to studyart, she found favor in the eyes of a great lord.

"I am the son of that Duke of Orléans--who shortly after took up withthe people in still another way--who insisted on being addressed as acitoyen, voted for the death of the King of France, and changed hisname to that of Égalité. The bastard of Égalité! Can one be more bastardthan that, Madame?"

"No," said the old woman, with white and stiff lips, unable to give aword of comfort to the pale man before her.

"That poor King Louis Philippe," said Kasparson, "for whom I feel sorry,and about whom I regret having spoken so harshly tonight--he is mylittle brother."

Miss Malin, even face to face with the greatest misfortunes, was neverspeechless for long. She said after a silence:

"Tell me now, for we may not have much time, first, why did you murderthe Cardinal? And secondly, why did you take the trouble to deceive me,after you came here with me, and to make a fool of me on what may be thelast night of my life? You were in no danger here. Did you think that Ihad not sufficient spirit myself, or sympathy with the dark places ofthe heart, to understand you?"

"Ah," said Kasparson, "why did I not tell you? That moment, in which Ikilled the Cardinal, that was the mating of my soul with destiny, witheternity, with the soul of God. Do we not still impose silence at thethreshold of the nuptial chamber? Or even, does the Emperor demandpublicity, may not Pythagoras have a taste for decorum?

"And why did I kill my master?" he went on. "Madame, there was littlehope that both of us could be saved, and he would have sacrificed hislife for mine. Should I have lived on as the servant for whom the lordhad died, or should I have been simply drowned and lost, a sadadventurer?

"I told you: I am an actor. Shall not an actor have a rôle? If all thetime the manager of the theater holds back the good rôles from us, maywe not insist upon understudying the stars? The proof of our undertakingis in the success or fiasco. I have played the part well. The Cardinalwould have applauded me, for he was a fine connoisseur of the art. SirWalter Scott, Madame, took much pleasure in Wilibald Alexis's novel,Walladmor, which he published in his name, and which he called themost delightful mystery of the century. The Cardinal would haverecognized himself in me. Quoting the great tragedy, Axel and Walborg,he said, slowly:

"My honored Lord, St. Olaf comes in person,
He puts me on, he drapes himself in me.
I am his ghost, the larva of his spirit;
The transient shell of an immortal mind....

"The only thing," he went on after a pause, "which he might havecriticized is this: he might have held that I overdid my rôle. I stayedin this hayloft to save the lives of those sottish peasants, whopreferred the salvation of their cattle to their own. It is doubtfulwhether the Cardinal would ever have done that, for he was a man ofexcellent sense. That may be so. But a little charlatanry there mustneeds be in all great art, and the Cardinal himself was not free fromit.

"But in any case," he concluded, lifting his voice and his body, "at theday of judgment God shall not say to me now: 'Kasparson, you bad actor!How was it that you could not, not even with death in your own heart,play me the dying Gaul?'"

Again Miss Malin sat for a long time in the deep silence of the hugedark room.

"And why," she said at last, "did you want this rôle so much?"

"I will confide in you," said Kasparson, speaking slowly. "Not by theface shall the man be known, but by the mask. I said so at the beginningof the night.

"I am a bastard. I have upon me the bastard's curse, of which you knownot. The blood of Égalité is an arrogant blood, full ofvanity--difficult, difficult for you, when you have it in your veins. Itclaimed splendor, Madame; it will stand no equivalence; it makes yousuffer greatly at the least slight.

"But these peasants and fishermen are my mother's people. Do you notthink that I have wept blood over the hardness of their lives and theirpale children? At the thought of their hard crusts and thin-wornbreadknives, their patched clothes and patient faces, my heart is wrung.Nothing in the world have I ever loved, except them. If they would havemade me their master I would have served them all my life. If they wouldonly have fallen down and worshiped me, I would have died for them. Butthey would not. That they reserved for the Cardinal. Only tonight havethey come around. They have seen the face of God in my face. They willtell you, after tonight, that there was a white light over the boat inwhich I went out with them. Yes, even so, Madame.

"Do you know," he said, "do you know why I look to, why I cleave to,God? Why I cannot do without him? Because he is the only being towardwhom I need not, I cannot, I must not, feel pity. Looking at all theother creatures of this life I am tortured, I am devoured by pity, and Iam bent and crushed under the weight of their sorrows. I was sorry forthe Cardinal, very sorry for that old man who had to be great and good,and who wrote a book on the Holy Ghost like a little spider hanging inthe great space. But in the relation of God and me, if there is anypitying to be done, it is for him to do it. He will be sorry for me.

"Why, Madame, so it should have been with our kings. But, God help me, Ifeel sorry for my brother the King of France. My heart aches a littlefor the little man.

"Only God I shall keep, to have no mercy upon him. Let me, at least,keep God, you tender-hearted humans."

"But in that case," said Miss Malin suddenly, "it cannot possibly meanmuch to you whether we are saved or not. Forgive me for saying so,Kasparson, but it will not make much difference to your fate if thishouse holds on until the boat comes back for us, or not."

Kasparson, at these words, laughed a little, softly and congenially. Itwas clear by now that he was under the influence of the peasants' keg ofgin, but in this matter Miss Malin was not far behind him.

"You are right, Miss Nat-og-Dag," he said, "your sharp wits have hit thenail on the head. And so much for my fine courage. But have patiencejust a little longer, and I will explain the case to you.

"Few people, I said, could say of themselves that they were free of thebelief that they could have made the world. Nay, go further, Madame: fewpeople can say of themselves that they are free of the belief that thisworld which they see around them is in reality the work of their ownimagination. Are we pleased with it, proud of it, then? Yes, at times.In the evenings, in early spring, in the company of children and ofbeautiful, witty women, I have been pleased with and proud of mycreation. At other times, when I have been with ordinary people, I havehad a very bad conscience over my producing of such vulgar, insipid,dull stuff. I may have tried to do away with them, as the monk, in hiscell, tries to drive out the degrading pictures which disturb his peaceof mind and his pride in being a servant of the Lord. Now, Madame, I ampleased to have made this night here. I am genuinely proud of havingmade you, I assure you. But what about this one figure within thepicture, this man Kasparson? Is he a success? Is he worth keeping? Mayhe not be pronounced a blot in the picture? The monk may go to theextent of flagellating himself to drive out the image which offends him.My five brothers and sisters, who, of my mother's sixteen children, havecommitted suicide, may have felt in this way, for, as I have alreadysaid, my mother had a deep feeling and instinct for the classics, forthe harmonious cosmos. They may have said: 'This work is in itselfrather brilliant. My only failure is this one figure within it, which Iwill now have removed, even at a cost."

"Well," said Miss Malin after a pause, "and did you enjoy playing therôle of the Cardinal when you had your chance at last? Did you have apleasant time?"

"As God liveth, Madame, I had that," said Kasparson, "a good night andday. For I have lived long enough, by now, to have learned, when thedevil grins at me, to grin back. And what now if this--to grin back whenthe devil grins at you--be in reality the highest, the only true fun inall the world? And what if everything else, which people have named fun,be only a presentiment, a foreshadowing, of it? It is an art worthlearning, then."

"And I too, I too," said Miss Malin in a voice which, although it wassubdued, was rich and shrill, and which seemed to rise in the flight ofa lark. As if she wanted to accompany in person the soaring course ofit, she rose straight up, with the lightness and dignity of a lady whohas had, by now, enough of a pleasant entertainment, and is taking herleave. "I have grinned back at him too. It is an art worth learning."

The actor had risen with her, her cavalière servante, and now stoodup. She looked at him with radiant eyes.

"Kasparson, you great actor," she said, "Bastard of Égalité, kiss me."

"Ah, no, Madame," said Kasparson, "I am ill; there is poison in mymouth."

Miss Malin laughed. "A fig for that tonight," she said. She looked,indeed, past any sort of poison. She had on her shoulders thatdeath's-head by which druggists label their poison bottles, anunengaging object for any man to kiss. But looking straight at the manbefore her, she said slowly and with much grace: "Fils de St. Louis,montez au ciel!"

The actor took her in his arms, held her even in a strong embrace, andkissed her. So the proud old maid did not go unkissed into her grave.

With a majestic and graceful movement she lifted up the hem of her skirtand placed it in his hand. The silk, which had been trailing over thefloor, was dripping wet. He understood that this was the reason why shehad got up from her seat.

Their eyes, together, sought the floor of the loft. A dark figure, likethat of a long thick snake, was lying upon the boards, and a littlelower down, where the floor slanted slightly, it widened to a black poolwhich nearly touched the feet of the sleeping girl. The water had risento the level of the hayloft. Indeed, as they moved, they felt the heavyboards gently rocking, floating upon the waters.

The dog suddenly sat up with a jerk. It threw its head back, its earsflattened and its nose in the air, and gave a low whine.

"Hush, Passup," said Miss Malin, who had learned its name from thefishermen.

She took one of the actor's hands in hers. "Wait a moment," she saidsoftly, so as not to waken the sleepers. "I want to tell you. I, too,was once a young girl. I walked in the woods and looked at the birds,and I thought: How dreadful that people shut up birds in cages. Ithought: If I could so live and so serve the world that after me thereshould never again be any birds in cages, they should all be free----"

She stopped and looked toward the wall. Between the boards a strip offresh deep blue was showing, against which the little lamp seemed tomake a red stain. The dawn was breaking.

The old woman slowly drew her fingers out of the man's hand, and placedone upon her lips.

"A ce moment de sa narration," she said, "Scheherazade vit paraîtrele matin, et, discrète, se tut."

The Old Chevalier

My father had a friend, old Baron von Brackel, who had in his daytraveled much and known many cities and men. Otherwise he was not at alllike Odysseus, and could least of all be called ingenious, for he hadshown very little skill in managing his own affairs. Probably from asense of failure in this respect he carefully kept from discussingpractical matters with an efficient younger generation, keen on theircareers and success in life. But on theology, the opera, moral right andwrong, and other unprofitable pursuits he was a pleasant talker.

He had been a singularly good-looking young man, a sort of ideallyhandsome youth, and although no trace of this past beauty could be foundin his face, the history of it could be traced in a certainlight-hearted dignity and self-reliance which are the product of acareer of good looks, and which will be found, unaccountably, in thecarriage of those shaking ruins who used to look into the mirrors of thelast century with delight. In this way one should be able to point out,at a danse macabre, the skeletons of the real great beauties of theirtime.

One night he and I came to discuss an old theme, which has done its dutyin the literature of the past: namely, whether one is ever likely to getany real benefit, any lasting moral satisfaction, out of forsaking aninclination for the sake of principle, and in the course of our talk hetold me the following story:

****

On a rainy night in the winter of 1874, on an avenue in Paris, a drunkenyoung girl came up and spoke to me. I was then, as you will understand,quite a young man. I was very upset and unhappy, and was sittingbareheaded in the rain on a seat along the avenue because I had justparted from a lady whom, as we said then, I did adore, and who hadwithin this last hour tried to poison me.

This, though it has nothing to do with what I was going to tell you, wasin itself a curious story. I had not thought of it for many years until,when I was last in Paris, I saw the lady in her box at the opera, now avery old woman, with two charming little girls in pink who were, I wastold, her great-granddaughters. She was lovely no more, but I had never,in the time that I have known her, seen her look so contented. I wassorry afterward that I had not gone up and called on her in her box, forthough there had been but little happiness for either of us in that oldlove affair of ours, I think that she would have been as pleased to bereminded of the beautiful young woman, who made men unhappy, as I hadbeen to remember, vaguely as it was, the young man who had been sounhappy that long time ago.

Her great beauty, unless some rare artist has been able to preserve itin color or clay, now probably exists only within a few very old brainslike mine. It was in its day something very wonderful. She was a blonde,the fairest, I think, that I have ever seen, but not one of yourpink-and-white beauties. She was pale, colorless, all through, like anold pastel or the image of a woman in a dim mirror. Within that cool andfrail form there was an unrivaled energy, and a distinction such aswomen have no more, or no more care to have.

I had met her and had fallen in love with her in the autumn, at thechâteau of a friend where we were both staying together with a largeparty of other gay young people who are now, if they are alive, fadedand crooked and deaf. We were there to hunt, and I think that I shall beable to remember to the last of my days how she used to look on a bigbay horse that she had, and that autumn air, just touched with frost,when we came home in the evenings, warm in cold clothes, tired, ridingside by side over an old stone bridge. My love was both humble andaudacious, like that of a page for his lady, for she was so muchadmired, and her beauty had in itself a sort of disdain which might wellgive sad dreams to a boy of twenty, poor and a stranger in her set. Sothat every hour of our rides, dances and tableaux vivants wasexuberant with ecstasy and pain, the sort of thing you will knowyourself: a whole orchestra in the heart. When she made me happy, as onesays, I thought that I was happy indeed. I remembered smoking a cigar onthe terrace one morning, looking out over the large view of low,wood-covered blue hills, and giving the Lord a sort of receipt for allthe happiness that I should ever have any claim to in my life. Whateverwould happen to me now, I had had my due, and declared myself satisfied.

Love, with very young people, is a heartless business. We drink at thatage from thirst, or to get drunk; it is only later in life that weoccupy ourselves with the individuality of our wine. A young man in loveis essentially enraptured by the forces within himself. You may comeback to that view again, in a second adolescence. I knew a very oldRussian in Paris, enormously rich, who used to keep the most charmingyoung dancers, and who, when once asked whether he had, or needed tohave, any illusions as to their feelings for him, thought the questionover and said: "I do not think, if my chef succeeds in making me a goodomelette, that I bother much whether he loves me or not." A young mancould not have put his answer into those words, but he might say that hedid not care whether his wine merchant was of his own religion or not,and imagine that he had got close to the truth of things. In middle age,though, you arrive at a deeper humility, and you come to consider it ofimportance that the person who sells or grows your wine shall be of thesame religion as you yourself. In this case of my own, of which I amtelling you, my youthful vanity, if I had too much of it, was to betaught a lesson very soon. For during the months of that winter, whilewe were both living in Paris, where her house was the meeting place ofmany bel-esprits, and she herself the admired dilettante in music andarts, I began to think that she was making use of me, or of her own lovefor me, if such can be said, to make her husband jealous. This hashappened, I suppose, to many young men down through the ages, withoutthe total sum of their experience being much use to the young man whofinds himself in the same position today. I began to wonder what therelations between those two were really like, and what strange forcesthere might be in her or in him, to toss me about between them in thisway, and I think that I began to be afraid. She was jealous of me, too,and would scold me with a sort of moral indignation, as if I had been agroom failing in his duties. I thought that I could not live withouther, and also that she did not want to live without me, but exactly whatshe wanted me for I did not know. Her contact hurt me as one is hurt bytouching iron on a winter day: you do not know whether the pain comesfrom heat or from cold.

Before I had ever met her I had read about her family, whose name randown for centuries through the history of France, and learned that thereused to be werewolves amongst them, and I sometimes thought that Ishould have been happier to see her really go down on all fours andsnarl at me, for then I should have known where I was. And even up tothe end we had hours together of a particular charm, for which I shallalways be thankful to her. During my first year in Paris, before I knewany people there, I had taken up studying the history of the old hotelsof the town, and this hobby of mine appealed to her, so that we used todive into old quarters and ages of Paris, and dwell together in the ageof Abélard or of Molière, and while we were playing in this way she wasserious and gentle with me, like a little girl. But at other times Ithought that I could stand it no longer, and would try to get away fromher, and any suspicion of this was enough, I imagine, to make her lieawake at night thinking out new methods of punishing me. It was betweenus the old game of the cat and the mouse--probably the original model ofall the games of the world. But because the cat has more passion in it,and the mouse only the plain interest of existence, the mouse is boundto become tired first. Toward the end I thought that she wished us to befound out, she was so careless in this liaison of ours; and in thosedays a love affair had to be managed with prudence.

I remember during this period coming to her hotel on the night of a ballto which she was going, while I had not been asked, disguised as ahairdresser. In the 'seventies ladies had large chignons and the work ofa coiffeur took time. And through everything the thought of herhusband would follow me, like, I thought, the gigantic shadow, upon thewhite back-curtain, of an absurd little punchinello. I began to feel sotired--not exactly of her, but really exhausted in myself--that I wasmaking up my mind to have a scene and an explanation from her, even if Ishould lose her by it, when suddenly, on the night of which I am tellingyou, she herself produced both the scene and the explanation, such ahurricane as I have never again been out in; and all with exactly thesame weapons as I had myself had ready: with the accusation that Ithought more of her husband than I did of her. And when she said this tome, in that pale blue boudoir of hers that I knew so well--thesilk-lined, upholstered and scented box, such as the ladies of that timeliked to keep themselves in, with, I remember, some paintings of flowerson the walls, and very soft silk cushions everywhere, and a lot oflilacs in the corner behind me, with the lamp subdued by a large redshade--I had no reply, for I knew that she was right.

You would know his name if I told you, for he is still talked about,though he has been dead for many years. Or you would find it in any ofthe memoirs of that period, for he was the idol of our generation. Lateron, great unhappiness came upon him, but at that moment--I believe thathe was then thirty-three years old--he was walking quietly in the fullsplendor of his strange power. I once, about that time, heard two oldmen talk about his mother, who had been one of the beauties of theRestoration, and one of them said of her that she carried all her famousjewels as lightly and gracefully as other young ladies would weargarlands of field flowers. "Yes," the other said after he had thought itover for a moment, "and she scattered them about her, in the end, likeflowers, à la Ophelia." Therefore I think that this rare lightness ofhis must have been, together with the weakness, a family trait. Even inhis wildest whims, and in a sort of mannerism which we then named finde siècle and were rather proud of, he had something of le grandsiècle about him: a straight nobility that belonged to the old France.

I have looked since at those great buildings of the seventeenth centurywhich seem altogether inexpedient as dwellings for human beings, andhave thought that they must have been built for him--and his mother, Isuppose--to live in. He had a confidence in life, independent of thesuccesses which we envied him, as if he knew that he could draw upongreater forces, unknown to us, if he wanted to. It gave me much to thinkabout, on the fate of man, when many years later I was told how thisyoung man had, toward the end of his tragic destiny, answered thefriends who implored him in the name of God, in the words of Sophocles'sAjax: "You worry me too much, woman. Do you not know that I am no longera debtor of the gods?"

I see that I ought not to have started talking about him, even after allthese years; but an ideal of one's youth will always be a landmarkamongst happenings and feelings long gone. He himself has nothing to dowith this story.

I told you that I myself felt it to be true that my feelings for thelovely young woman, whom I adored, were really light of weight comparedto my feelings for the young man. If he had been with her when we firstmet, or if I had known him before I met her, I do not think that Ishould ever have dreamed of falling in love with his wife.

But his wife's love for him, and her jealousy, were indeed of a strangenature. For that she was in love with him I knew from the moment thatshe began to speak of him. Probably I had known it a long time before.And she was jealous. She suffered, she cried--she was, as I have toldyou, ready to kill if nothing else would help her--and all the time thatfight, which was very likely the only reality in her life, was not astruggle for possession, but a competition. She was jealous of him as ifhe had been another young woman of fashion, her rival, or as if sheherself had been a young man who envied him his triumphs. I think thatshe was, in herself, always alone with him in a world that she despised.When she rode so madly, when she surrounded herself with admirers, shehad her eye on him, as a competitor in a chariot race would have hiseyes only on the driver just beside him. As for the rest of us, we onlyexisted for her in so far as we were to belong to her or to him, and shetook her lovers as she took her fences, to pile up more conquests thanthe man with whom she was in love.

I cannot, of course, know how this had begun between them. Afterward Itried to believe that it must have arisen from a desire for revenge, onher side, for something that he had done to her in the past. But I hadthe feeling that it was this barren passion which had burned all thecolor out of her.

Now you will know that all this happened in the early days of what wecalled then the "emancipation of woman." Many strange things took placethen. I do not think that at the time the movement went very deep downin the social world, but here were the young women of the highestintelligence, and the most daring and ingenious of them, coming out ofthe chiaroscuro of a thousand years, blinking at the sun and wild withdesire to try their wings. I believe that some of them put on the armorand the halo of St. Joan of Arc, who was herself an emancipated virgin,and became like white-hot angels. But most women, when they feel free toexperiment with life, will go straight to the witches' Sabbath. I myselfrespect them for it, and do not think that I could ever really love awoman who had not, at some time or other, been up on a broomstick.

I have always thought it unfair to woman that she has never been alonein the world. Adam had a time, whether long or short, when he couldwander about on a fresh and peaceful earth, among the beasts, in fullpossession of his soul, and most men are born with a memory of thatperiod. But poor Eve found him there, with all his claims upon her, themoment she looked into the world. That is a grudge that woman has alwayshad against the Creator: she feels that she is entitled to have thatepoch of paradise back for herself. Only, worse luck, when chasing atime that has gone, one is bound to get hold of it by the tail, thewrong way around. Thus these young witches got everything they wanted asin a catoptric image.

Old ladies of those days, patronesses of the church and of home, saidthat emancipation was turning the heads of the young women. Probablythere were more young ladies than my mistress galloping high up abovethe ground, with their fair faces at the backs of their necks, after themanner of the wild huntsman in the tale. And in the air there was atheory, which caught hold of them there, that the jealousy of lovers wasan ignoble affair, and that no woman should allow herself to bepossessed by any male but the devil. On their way to him they were proudof being, according to Doctor Faust, always a hundred steps ahead ofman. But the jealousy of competition was, as between Adam and Lilith, anoble striving. So there you would find, not only the old witches ofMacbeth, of whom one might have expected it, but even young ladies withfaces smooth as flowers, wild and mad with jealousy of their lovers'mustachios. All this they got from reading--in the orthodox witches'manner--the book of Genesis backwards. Left to themselves, they mighthave got a lot out of it. It was the poor, tame, male preachers ofemancipation, cutting, as warlocks always will, a miserable figure atthe Sabbath, who spoiled the style and flight of the whole thing bybringing it down to earth and under laws of earthly reason. I believe,though, that things have changed by now, and that at the present day,when males have likewise emancipated themselves, you may find the younglover on the hearth, following the track of the witch's shadow along theground, and, with infinitely less imagination, blending the deadly brewfor his mistress, out of envy of her breasts.

The part which had been granted to me, in the story of my emancipatedyoung witch, was not in itself flattering. Still I believe that she wasdesperately fond of me, probably with the kind of passion which a littlegirl has for her favorite doll. And as far as that goes I was really thecentral figure of our drama. If she would be Othello, it was I, and nother husband, who must take the part of Desdemona, and I can well imagineher sighing, "Oh, the pity of it, the pity of it, Iago," over thisunfortunate business, even wanting to give me a kiss and yet anotherbefore finishing it altogether. Only she did not want to kill me out ofa feeling of justice or revenge. She wished to destroy me so that sheshould not have to lose me and to see a very dear possession belong toher rival, in the manner of a determined general, who will blow up afortress which he can no longer hold, rather than see it in the hands ofthe enemy.

It was toward the end of our interview that she tried to poison me. Ibelieve that this was really against her program, and that she had meantto tell me what she thought of me when I already had the poison in me,but had been unable to control herself for so long. There was, as youwill understand, something unnatural in drinking coffee at that stage ofour dialogue. The way in which she insisted upon it, and her suddendeadly silence as I raised the cup to my mouth, gave her away. I canstill, although I only just touched it, recall the mortal, insipid tasteof the opium, and had I emptied the cup, it could not have made mystomach rise and the marrow in my bones turn to water more than did theabrupt and fatal conviction that she wanted me to die. I let the cupdrop, faint as a drowning man, and stood and stared at her, and she madeone wild movement, as if she meant to throw herself at me still. Then westood quite immovable for a minute, both knowing that all was lost. Andafter a little while she began to rock and whimper, with her hands ather mouth, suddenly changed into a very old woman. For my own part, Iwas not able to utter a sound, and I think that I just ran from thehouse as soon as I had strength enough to move. The air, the rain, andthe street itself met me like old forgotten friends, faithful still inthe hour of need.

And there I sat on a seat of the Avenue Montaigne, with the entirebuilding of my pride and happiness lying around me in ruins, sick todeath with horror and humiliation, when this girl, of whom I was tellingyou, came up to me.

I think that I must have been sitting there for some time, and that shemust have stood and watched me before she could summon up her courage toapproach. She probably felt herself in sympathy with me, thinking that Iwas drunk too, as sensible people do not sit without a hat in the rain,perhaps also because I was so near her own age. I did not hear what shesaid, neither the first nor the second time. I was not in a mood toenter into talk with a little girl of the streets. I think that it musthave been from sheer instinct of self-preservation that I did in the endcome to look at her and to listen. I had to get away from my ownthoughts, and any human being was welcome to assist me. But there was atthe same time something extraordinarily graceful and expressive aboutthe girl, which may have attracted my attention. She stood there in therain, highly rouged, with radiant eyes like stars, very erect thoughonly just steady on her legs. When I kept on staring at her, she laughedat me, a low, clear laughter. She was very young. She was holding up herdress with one hand--in those days ladies wore long trains in thestreets. On her head she had a black hat with ostrich feathers droopingsadly in the rain and overshadowing her forehead and eyes. The firmgentle curve of her chin, and her round young neck shone in the light ofthe gas lamp. Thus I can see her still, though I have another picture ofher as well.

What impressed me about her was that she seemed altogether so strangelymoved, intoxicated by the situation. Hers was not the conventionaladvance. She looked like a person out on a great adventure, or someonekeeping a secret. I think that on looking at her I began to smile, somesort of bitter and wild smile, known only to young people, and that thisencouraged her. She came nearer. I fumbled in my pocket for some moneyto give her, but I had no money on me. I got up and started to walk, andshe came on, walking beside me. There was, I remember, a certain comfortin having her near me, for I did not want to be alone. In this way ithappened that I let her come with me.

I asked her what her name was. She told me that it was Nathalie.

At this time I had a job at the Legation, and I was living in anapartment on the Place François I, so we had not far to go. I wasprepared to come back late, and in those days, when I would come home atall sorts of hours, I used to keep a fire and a cold supper waiting forme. When we came into the room it was lighted and warm, and the tablewas laid for me in front of the fire. There was a bottle of champagne onice. I used to keep a bottle of champagne to drink when I returned frommy shepherd's hours.

The young girl looked around the room with a contented face. Here in thelight of my lamp I could see how she really looked. She had soft browncurls and blue eyes. Her face was round, with a broad forehead. She waswonderfully pretty and graceful. I think that I just wondered at her, asone would wonder at finding a fresh bunch of roses in a gutter, no more.If I had been normally balanced I suppose I should have tried to getfrom her some explanation of the sort of mystery that she seemed to be,but now I do not think that this occurred to me at all.

The truth was that we must both have been in quite a peculiar sort ofmood, such as will hardly ever have repeated itself for either of us. Iknew as little of what moved her as she could have known about my stateof mind, but, highly excited and strained, we met in a special sort ofsympathy. I, partly stunned and partly abnormally wide awake andsensitive, took her quite selfishly, without any thought of where shecame from or where she would disappear to again, as if she were a giftto me, and her presence a kind and friendly act of fate at this momentwhen I could not be alone. She seemed to me to have come as a littlewild spirit from the great town outside--Paris--which may at any momentbestow unexpected favors on one, and which had in the right moment senther to me. What she thought of me or what she felt about me, of that Ican say nothing. At the moment I did not think about it, but on lookingback now I should say that I must also have symbolized something to her,and that I hardly existed for her as an individual.

I felt it as a great happiness, a warmth all through me, that she was soyoung and lovely. It made me laugh again after those weird and dismalhours. I pulled off her hat, lifted her face up, and kissed her. Then Ifelt how wet she was. She must have walked for a long time on thestreets in the rain, for her clothes were like the feathers of a wethen. I went over and opened the bottle on the table, poured her out aglass, and handed it to her. She took it, standing in front of the fire,her tumbled wet curls falling down over her forehead. With her redcheeks and shining eyes she looked like a child that has just awakenedfrom sleep, or like a doll. She drank half the glass of wine quiteslowly, with her eyes on my face, and, as if this half-glass ofchampagne had brought her to a point where she could no longer besilent, she started to sing, in a low, gentle voice, hardly moving herlips, the first lines of a song, a waltz, which was then sung in all themusic halls. She broke it off, emptied her glass, and handed it back tome. À votre santé, she said.

Her voice was so merry, so pure, like the song of a bird in a bush, andof all things music at that time went most directly to my heart. Hersong increased the feeling I had, that something special and more thannatural had been sent to me. I filled her glass again, put my hand onher round white neck, and brushed the damp ringlets back from her face."How on earth have you come to be so wet, Nathalie?" I said, as if I hadbeen her grandmother. "You must take off your clothes and get warm." AsI spoke my voice changed. I began to laugh again. She fixed her starlikeeyes on me. Her face quivered for a moment. Then she started to unbuttonher cloak, and let it fall onto the floor. Underneath this cloak ofblack lace, badly suited for the season and faded at the edges into arusty brown, she had a black silk frock, tightly fitted over the bust,waist and hips, and pleated and draped below, with flounces and rufflessuch as ladies wore at that time, in the early days of the bustle. Itsfolds shone in the light of my fire. I began to undress her, as I mighthave undressed a doll, very slowly and clumsily, and she stood upstraight and let me do it. Her fresh face had a grave and childlikeexpression. Once or twice she colored under my hands, but as I undid hertight bodice and my hands touched her cool shoulders and bosom, her facebroke into a gentle and wide smile, and she lifted up her hand andtouched my fingers.

****

The old Baron von Brackel made a long pause. "I think that I mustexplain to you," he said, "so that you may be able to understand thistale aright, that to undress a woman was then a very different thingfrom what it must be now. What are the clothes that your ladies of thesedays are wearing? In themselves as little as possible--a fewperpendicular lines, cut off again before they have had time to developany sense. There is no plan about them. They exist for the sake of thebody, and have no career of their own, or, if they have any mission atall, it is to reveal.

"But in those days a woman's body was a secret which her clothes didtheir utmost to keep. We would walk about in the streets in bad weatherin order to catch a glimpse of an ankle, the sight of which must be asfamiliar to you young men of the present day as the stems of thesewineglasses of ours. Clothes then had a being, an idea of their own.With a serenity that it was not easy to look through, they made it theirobject to transform the body which they encircled, and to create asilhouette so far from its real form as to make it a mystery which itwas a divine privilege to solve. The long tight stays, the whalebones,skirts and petticoats, bustle and draperies, all that mass of materialunder which the women of my day were buried where they were not lacedtogether as tightly as they could possibly stand it--all aimed at onething: to disguise.

"Out of a tremendous froth of trains, pleatings, lace, and flounceswhich waved and undulated, secundum artem, at every movement of thebearer, the waist would shoot up like the chalice of a flower, carryingthe bust, high and rounded as a rose, but imprisoned in whalebone up tothe shoulder. Imagine now how different life must have appeared and feltto creatures living in those tight corsets within which they could justmanage to breathe, and in those fathoms of clothes which they draggedalong with them wherever they walked or sat, and who never dreamed thatit could be otherwise, compared to the existence of your young women,whose clothes hardly touch them and take up no room. A woman was then awork of art, the product of centuries of civilization, and you talked ofher figure as you talked of her salon, with the admiration which onegives to the achievement of a skilled and untiring artist.

"And underneath all this Eve herself breathed and moved, to be indeed arevelation to us every time she stepped out of her disguise, with herwaist still delicately marked by the stays, as with a girdle of rosepetals.

"To you young people who laugh at the ideas, as at the bustles, of the'seventies, and who will tell me that in spite of all our artificialitythere can have been but little mystery left to any of us, may I beallowed to say that you do not, perhaps, quite understand the meaning ofthe word? Nothing is mysterious until it symbolizes something. The breadand wine of the church itself has to be baked and bottled, I suppose.The women of those days were more than a collection of individuals. Theysymbolized, or represented, Woman. I understand that the word itself, inthat sense, has gone out of the language. Where we talked ofwoman--pretty cynically, we liked to think--you talk of women, and allthe difference lies there.

"Do you remember the scholars of the middle ages who discussed thequestion of which had been created first: the idea of a dog, or theindividual dogs? To you, who are taught statistics in yourkindergartens, there is no doubt, I suppose. And it is but justice tosay that your world does in reality look as if it had been madeexperimentally. But to us even the ideas of old Mr. Darwin were new andstrange. We had our ideas from such undertakings as symphonies andceremonials of court, and had been brought up with strong feelings aboutthe distinction between legitimate and illegitimate birth. We had faithin purpose. The idea of Woman--of das ewig weibliche, about which youyourself will not deny that there is some mystery--had to us beencreated in the beginning, and our women made it their mission torepresent it worthily, as I suppose the mission of the individual dogmust have been worthily to represent the Creator's idea of a dog.

"You could follow, then, the development of this idea in a little girl,as she was growing up and was gradually, no doubt in accordance withvery ancient rules, inaugurated into the rites of the cult, and finallyordained. Slowly the center of gravity of her being would be shiftedfrom individuality to symbol, and you would be met with that particularpride and modesty characteristic of the representative of the greatpowers--such as you may find again in a really great artist. Indeed, thehaughtiness of the pretty young girl, or the old ladies' majesty,existed no more on account of personal vanity, or on any personalaccount whatever, than did the pride of Michelangelo himself, or theSpanish Ambassador to France. However much greeted at the banks of theStyx by the indignation of his individual victims with flowing hair andnaked breasts, Don Giovanni would have been acquitted by a board ofwomen of my day, sitting in judgment on him, for the sake of his greatfaith in the idea of Woman. But they would have agreed with the mastersof Oxford in condemning Shelley as an atheist; and they managed tomaster Christ himself only by representing him forever as an infant inarms, dependent upon the Virgin.

"The multitude outside the temple of mystery is not very interesting.The real interest lies with the priest inside. The crowd waiting at theporch for the fulfillment of the miracle of the boiling blood of St.Pantaleone--that I have seen many times and in many places. But veryrarely have I had admittance to the cool vaults behind, or the chance ofseeing the priests, old and young, down to the choirboys, who feelthemselves to be the most important persons at the ceremony, and areboth scared and impudent, occupying themselves, in a measure of theirown, with the preparations, guardians of a mystery that they know allabout. What was the cynicism of Lord Byron, or of Baudelaire, whom wewere just reading then with the frisson nouveau, to the cynicism ofthese little priestesses, augurs all of them, performing with the utmostconscientiousness all the rites of a religion which they knew all aboutand did not believe in, upholding, I feel sure, the doctrine of theirmystery even amongst themselves. Our poets of those days would tell ushow a party of young beauties, behind the curtains of thebathing-machine, would blush and giggle as they 'put lilies in water.'

"I do not know if you remember the tale of the girl who saves the shipunder mutiny by sitting on the powder barrel with her lighted torch,threatening to put fire to it, and all the time knowing herself that itis empty? This has seemed to me a charming image of the woman of mytime. There they were, keeping the world in order, and preserving thebalance and rhythm of it, by sitting upon the mystery of life, andknowing themselves that there was no mystery. I have heard you youngpeople saying that the women of old days had no sense of humor. Thinkingof the face of my young girl upon the barrel, with severely downcasteyes, I have wondered if our famous male humor be not a little insipidcompared to theirs. If we were more thankful to them for existing thanyou are to your women of the present day, I think that we had goodreason for it.

"I trust that you will not mind," he said, "an old man lingering overthese pictures of an age gone by. It will be, I suppose, like beingdetained a little in a museum, before a montre showing its fashions.You may laugh at them, if you like."

The old chevalier then resumed his story:

****

As I then undressed this young girl, and the layers of clothes which soseverely dominated and concealed her fell one by one there in front ofmy fire, in the light of my large lamp, itself swathed in layers ofsilk--all, my dear, was thus draped in those days, and my large chairshad, I remember, long silk fringes all around them and on the tops ofthose little velvet pompons, otherwise they would not have been thoughtreally pretty--until she stood naked, I had before me the greatestmasterpiece of nature that my eyes have ever been privileged to restupon, a sight to take away your breath. I know that there may besomething very lovable in the little imperfections of the female form,and I have myself worshiped a knock-kneed Venus, but this young figurewas pathetic, was heart-piercing, by reason of its pure faultlessness.She was so young that you felt, in the midst of your deep admiration,the anticipation of a still higher perfection, and that was all therewas to be said.

All her body shone in the light, delicately rounded and smooth asmarble. One straight line ran through it from neck to ankle, as thoughthe heaven-aspiring column of a young tree. The same character wasexpressed in the high instep of the foot, as she pushed off her oldshoes, as in the curve of the chin, as in the straight, gentle glance ofher eyes, and the delicate and strong lines of her shoulder and wrist.

The comfort of the warmth of the fire on her skin, after the clinging ofher wet and tumbled clothes, made her sigh with pleasure and turn alittle, like a cat. She laughed softly, like a child who quits thedoorstep of school for a holiday. She stood up erect before the fire;her wet curls fell down over her forehead and she did not try to pushthem back; her bright painted cheeks looked even more like a doll'sabove her fair naked body.

I think that all my soul was in my eyes. Reality had met me, such ashort time ago, in such an ugly shape, that I had no wish to come intocontact with it again. Somewhere in me a dark fear was still crouching,and I took refuge within the fantastic like a distressed child in hisbook of fairy tales. I did not want to look ahead, and not at all tolook back. I felt the moment close over me, like a wave. I drank a largeglass of wine to catch up with her, looking at her.

I was so young then that I could no more than other young people give upthe deep faith in my own star, in a power that loved me and looked afterme in preference to all other human beings. No miracle was incredible tome as long as it happened to myself. It is when this faith begins towear out, and when you conceive the possibility of being in the sameposition as other people, that youth is really over. I was not surprisedor suspicious of this act of favor on the part of the gods, but I thinkthat my heart was filled with a very sweet gratitude toward them, Ithought it after all only reasonable, only to be expected, that thegreat friendly power of the universe should manifest itself again, andsend me, out of the night, as a help and consolation, this naked anddrunk young girl, a miracle of gracefulness.

We sat down to supper, Nathalie and I, high up there in my warm andquiet room, with the great town below us and my heavy silk curtainsdrawn upon the wet night, like two owls in a ruined tower within thedepth of the forest, and nobody in the world knew about us. She leanedone arm on the table and rested her head on it. I think that she wasvery hungry, under the influence of the food. We had some caviar, Iremember, and a cold bird. She began to beam on me, to laugh, to talk tome, and to listen to what I said to her.

I do not remember what we talked about. I think we were veryopen-hearted, and that I told her, what I could not have mentioned toanybody else, of how I had come near to being poisoned just before I mether. I also think that I must have told her about my country, for I knowthat at a time afterwards the idea came to me that she would write to methere, or even come to look for me. I remember that she told me, rathersadly to begin with, a story of a very old monkey which could do tricks,and had belonged to an Armenian organ-grinder. Its master had died, andnow it wanted to do its tricks and was always waiting for the catchword,but nobody knew it. In the course of this tale she imitated the monkeyin the funniest and most gracefully inspired manner that one canimagine. But I remember most of her movements. Sometimes I have thoughtthat the understanding of some pieces of music for violin and piano hascome to me through the contemplation of the contrast, or the harmony,between her long slim hand and her short rounded chin as she held theglass to her mouth.

I have never in any other love affair--if this can be called a loveaffair--had the same feeling of freedom and security. In my lastadventure I had all the time been worrying to find out what my mistressreally thought of me, and what part I was playing in the eyes of theworld. But no such doubts or fears could possibly penetrate into ourlittle room here. I believe that this feeling of safety and perfectfreedom must be what happily married people mean when they talk aboutthe two being one. I wonder if that understanding can possibly, inmarriage, be as harmonious as when you meet as strangers; but this, Isuppose, is a matter of taste.

One thing did play in to both of us, though we were not conscious of it.The world outside was bad, was dreadful. Life had made a very nasty faceat me, and must have made a worse at her. But this room and this nightwere ours, and were faithful to us. Although we did not think about it,ours was in reality a supper of the Girondists.

The wine helped us. I had not drunk much, but my head was fairly lightbefore I began. Champagne is a very kind and friendly thing on a rainynight. I remember an old Danish bishop's saying to me that there aremany ways to the recognition of truth, and that Burgundy is one of them.This is, I know, very well for an old man within his paneled study. Butyoung people, who have seen the devil face to face, need a strongerhelping hand. Over our softly hissing glasses we were brought back toseeing ourselves and this night of ours as a great artist might haveseen us and it, worthy of the genius of a god.

I had a guitar lying on my sofa, for I was to serenade, in a tableauvivant, a romantic beauty--in real life an American woman from theEmbassy who could not have given you an echo back from whatever angleyou would have cried to her. Nathalie reached out for it, a little laterin our supper. She shuddered slightly at the first sound, for I had nothad time or thought for playing it, and crossing her knees, in my largelow chair, she began to tune it. Then she sang two little songs to me.In my quiet room her low voice, a little hoarse, was clear as a bell,faintly giddy with happiness, like a bee's in a flower. She sang first asong from the music halls, a gay tune with a striking rhythm. Then shethought for a moment and changed over into a strange plaintive littlesong in a language that I did not understand. She had a great sense ofmusic. That strong and delicate personality which showed itself in allher body came out again in her voice. The light metallic timbre, thestraightness and ease of it, corresponded with her eyes, knees, andfingers. Only it was a little richer and fuller, as if it had grown upfaster or had stolen a march somehow upon her body. Her voice knew morethan she did herself, as did the bow of Mischa Elman when he played as aWunderkind.

All my balance, which I had kept somehow while looking at her, suddenlyleft me at the sound of her voice. These words that I did not understandseemed to me more directly meaningful than any I had ever understood. Isat in another low chair, opposite her. I remember the silence when hersong was finished, and that I pushed the table away, and how I cameslowly down on one knee before her. She looked at me with such a clear,severe, wild look as I think that a hawk's eyes must have when they liftoff his hood. I went down on my other knee and put my arms around herlegs. I do not know what there was in my face to convince her, but herown face changed and lighted up with a kind of heroic gentleness.Altogether there had been from the beginning something heroic about her.That was, I think, what had made her put up with the young fool that Iwas. For du ridicule jusqu'au sublime, surely, il n'y a qu'un pas.

My friend, she was as innocent as she looked. She was the first younggirl who had been mine. There is a theory that a very young man shouldnot make love to a virgin, but ought to have a more experienced partner.That is not true; it is the only natural thing.

It must have been an hour or two later in the night that I woke up tothe feeling that something was wrong, or dangerous. We say when we turnsuddenly cold that someone is walking over our grave--the future bringsitself into memory. And as l'on meurt en plein bonheur de ses malheurspassés, so do we let go our hold of our present happiness on account ofcoming misfortune. It was not the omne animal affair only; it was adistrust of the future as if I had heard myself asking it: "I am to payfor this; what am I to pay?" But at the time I may have believed thatwhat I felt was only fear of her going away.

Once before she had sat up and moved as if to leave me, and I haddragged her back. Now she said: "I must go back," and got up. The lampwas still burning, the fire was smoldering. It seemed to me natural thatshe should be taken away by the same mysterious forces which had broughther, like Cinderella, or a little spirit out of the Arabian Nights. Iwas waiting for her to come up and let me know when she would come backto me, and what I was to do. All the same I was more silent now.

She dressed and got back into her black shabby disguise. She put on herhat and stood there just as I had seen her first in the rain on theavenue. Then she came up to me where I was sitting on the arm of mychair, and said: "And you will give me twenty francs, will you not?" AsI did not answer, she repeated her question and said: "Marie saidthat--she said that I should get twenty francs."

I did not speak. I sat there looking at her. Her clear and light eyesmet mine.

A great clearness came upon me then, as if all the illusions and artswith which we try to transform our world, coloring and music and dreams,had been drawn aside, and reality was shown to me, waste as a burnthouse. This was the end of the play. There was no room for anysuperfluous word.

This was the first moment, I think, since I had met her those few hoursago, in which I saw her as a human being, within an existence of herown, and not as a gift to me. I believe that all thoughts of myself leftme at the sight, but now it was too late.

We two had played. A rare jest had been offered me and I had acceptedit; now it was up to me to keep the spirit of our game until the end.Her own demand was well within the spirit of the night. For the palacewhich he builds, for four hundred white and four hundred black slavesall loaded with jewels, the djinn asks for an old copper lamp; and theforest-witch who moves three towns and creates for the woodcutter's sonan army of horse-soldiers demands for herself the heart of a hare. Thegirl asked me for her pay in the voice and manner of the djinn and theforest-witch, and if I were to give her twenty francs she might still besafe within the magic circle of her free and graceful and defiantspirit. It was I who was out of character, as I sat there in silence,with all the weight of the cold and real world upon me, knowing wellthat I should have to answer her or I might, even within these fewseconds, pass it on to her.

Later on I reflected that I might have had it in me to invent somethingwhich would have kept her safe, and still have allowed me to keep her. Ithought then that I should only have had to give her twenty francs andto have said: "And if you want another twenty, come back tomorrownight." If she had been less lovely to me, if she had not been so youngand so innocent, I might perhaps have done it. But this young girl hadcalled, during our few hours, on all the chivalrousness that I had in mynature. And chivalrousness, I think, means this: to love, or cherish,the pride of your partner, or of your adversary, as you will define it,as highly, or higher than, your own. Or if I had been as innocent ofheart as she was, I might perhaps have thought of it, but I had keptcompany with this deadly world of reality. I was practiced in its lawsand had the mortal bacilli of its ways in my blood. Now it did not entermy head any more than it ever has to alter my answers in church. Whenthe priest says: "O God, make clean our hearts within us," I have neverthought of telling him that it is not needed, or to answer anythingwhatever but, "And take not your holy spirit from us."

So, as if it were the only natural and reasonable thing to do, I tookout twenty francs and gave them to her.

Before she went she did a thing that I have never forgotten. With mynote in her left hand she stood close to me. She did not kiss me or takemy hand to say good-by, but with the three fingers of her right hand shelifted my chin up a little and looked at me, gave me an encouraging,consoling glance, such as a sister might give her brother in farewell.Then she went away.

In the days that followed--not the first days, but later--I tried toconstruct for myself some theory and explanation of my adventure.

This happened only a short time after the fall of the Second Empire,that strange sham millennium, and the Commune of Paris. The atmospherehad been filled with catastrophe. A world had fallen. The Empressherself, whom, on a visit to Paris as a child, I had envisaged as afemale deity resting upon clouds, smilingly conducting the ways ofhumanity, had flown in the night, in a carriage with her Americandentist, miserable for the lack of a handkerchief. The members of hercourt were crowded into lodgings in Brussels and London while theircountry houses served as stables for the Prussians' horses. The Communehad followed, and the massacres in Paris by the Versailles army. A wholeworld must have tumbled down within these months of disaster.

This was also the time of Nihilism in Russia, when the revolutionarieshad lost all and were fleeing into exile. I thought of them because ofthe little song that Nathalie had sung to me, of which I had notunderstood the words.

Whatever it was that had happened to her, it must have been acatastrophe of an extraordinary violent nature. She must have gone downwith a unique swiftness, or she would have known something of theresignation, the dreadful reconciliation to fate which life works uponus when it gets time to impress us drop by drop.

Also, I thought, she must have been tied to, and dragged down with,somebody else, for if she had been alone it could not have happened. Itwould have been, I reflected, somebody who held her, and yet was unableto help her, someone either very old, helpless from shock and ruin, orvery young, children or a child, a little brother or sister. Left toherself she would have floated, or she would have been picked up nearthe surface by someone who would have valued her rare beauty, grace, andcharm and have congratulated himself upon acquiring them; or, lowerdown, by somebody who might not have understood them, but whom theywould still have impressed. Or, near the bottom, by people who wouldhave thought of turning them to their own advantage. But she must havegone straight down from the world of beauty and harmony in which she hadlearned that confidence and radiance of hers, where they had taught herto sing, and to move and laugh as she did, where they had loved her, toa world where beauty and grace are of no account, and where the facts oflife look you in the face, quite straight to ruin, desolation andstarvation. And there, on the last step of the ladder, had been Marie,whoever she was, a friend who out of her narrow and dark knowledge ofthe world had given her advice, and lent her the miserable clothes, andpoured some sort of spirit into her, to give her courage.

About all this I thought much, and for a long time; but of course Icould not know.

As soon as she had gone and I was alone--so strange are the automaticmovements which we make within the hands of fate--I had no thought butto go after her and get her back. I think that I went, in those minutes,through the exact experience, even to the sensation of suffocation, of aperson who has been buried alive. But I had no clothes on. When I gotinto some clothes and came down to the street it was empty. I walkedabout in the streets for a long time. I came back, in the course of theearly morning, to the seat on which I had been sitting when she firstspoke to me, and to the hotel of my former mistress, I thought what astrange thing is a young man who runs about, within the selfsame night,driven by the mad passion and loss of two women. Mercutio's words toRomeo about it came into my mind, and, as if I had been shown abrilliant caricature of myself or of all young men, I laughed. When theday began to spring I walked back to my room, and there was the lamp,still burning, and the supper table.

This state of mine lasted for some time. During the first days it wasnot so bad, for I lived then in the thought of going down, at the samehour, to the same place where I had met her first. I thought that shemight come there again. I attached much hope to this idea, which onlyslowly died away.

I tried many things to make it possible to live. One night I went to theopera, because I had heard other people talk about going there. It wasclear that it was done, and there might be something in it. It happenedto be a performance of Orpheus. Do you remember the music where heimplores the shadows in Hades, and where Euridice is for such a shorttime given back to him? There I sat, in the brilliant light of theentr'actes, a young man in a white tie and lavender gloves, withbright people who smiled and talked all around, some of them nodding tome, closely covered and wrapped up in the huge black wings of theEumenides.

At this time I developed also another theory. I thought of the goddessNemesis, and I believed that had I not had the moment of doubt and fearin the night, I might have felt, in the morning, the strength in me, andthe right, to move her destiny and mine. It is said about the highwaymenwho in the old days haunted the forests of Denmark that they used tohave a wire stretched across the road with a bell attached. The coachesin passing would touch the wire and the bell would ring within their denand call out the robbers. I had touched the wire and a bell had rungsomewhere. The girl had not been afraid, but I had been afraid. I hadasked: "What am I to pay for this?" and the goddess herself hadanswered: "Twenty francs," and with her you cannot bargain. You think ofmany things, when you are young.

All this is now a long time ago. The Eumenides, if they will excuse mefor saying so, are like fleas, by which I was also much worried as achild. They like young blood, and leave us alone later in life. I havehad, however, the honor of having them on me once more, not very manyyears ago. I had sold a piece of my land to a neighbor, and when I sawit again, he had cut down the forest that had been on it. Where were nowthe green shades, the glades and the hidden footpaths? And when I thenheard again the whistle of their wings in the air, it gave me, with thepain, also a strange feeling of hope and strength--it was, after all,music of my youth.

****

"And did you never see her again?" I asked him.

"No," he said, and then, after a little while, "but I had a fantasyabout her, a fantaisie macabre, if you like.

"Fifteen years later, in 1889, I passed through Paris on my way to Rome,and stayed there for a few days to see the exhibition and the EiffelTower which they had just built. One afternoon I went to see a friend, apainter. He had been rather wild as a young artist, but later had turnedabout completely, and was at the time studying anatomy with great zeal,after the example of Leonardo. I stayed there over the evening, andafter we had discussed his pictures, and art in general, he said that hewould show me the prettiest thing that he had in his studio. It was askull from which he was drawing. He was keen to explain its rare beautyto me. 'It is really,' he said, 'the skull of a young woman, but theskull of Antinoüs must have looked like that, if one had been able toget hold of it.'

"I had it in my hand, and as I was looking at the broad, low brow, theclear and noble line of the chin, and the clean deep sockets of theeyes, it seemed suddenly familiar to me. The white polished bone shonein the light of the lamp, so pure. And safe. In those few seconds I wastaken back to my room in the Place François I, with the silk fringes andthe heavy curtains, on a rainy night of fifteen years before."

"Did you ask your friend anything about it?" I said.

"No," said the old man, "what would have been the use? He would not haveknown."

The Monkey

[I]

In a few of the Lutheran countries of northern Europe there are still inexistence places which make use of the name convent, and are governed bya prioress or chanoiness, although they are of no religious nature. Theyare retreats for unmarried ladies and widows of noble birth who herepass the autumn and winter days of their lives in a dignified andcomfortable routine, according to the traditions of the houses. Many ofthese institutions are extremely wealthy, own great stretches of land,and have had, during the centuries, inheritances and legacies bequestedto them. A proud and kindly spirit of past feudal times seems to dwellin the stately buildings and to guide the existence of the communities.

The Virgin Prioress of Closter Seven, under whose hands the conventprospered from the year 1818 to that of 1845, had a little gray monkeywhich had been given her by her cousin, Admiral von Schreckenstein, onhis return from Zanzibar, and of which she was very fond. When she wasat her card table, a place where she spent some of her happiest hours,the monkey was wont to sit on the back of her chair, and to follow withits glittering eyes the course of the cards as they were dealt out andtaken in. At other times it would be found, in the early mornings, ontop of the stepladder in the library, pulling out brittle folios ahundred years old, and scattering over the black-and-white marble floorbrowned leaves dealing with strategy, princely marriage contracts, andwitches' trials.

In a different society the monkey might not have been popular. But theconvent of Closter Seven held, coördinately with its estimable femalepopulation, a whole world of pets of all sorts, and was well aware ofthe order of precedence therein. There were here parrots and cockatoos,small dogs, graceful cats from all parts of the world, a white Angoragoat, like that of Esmeralda, and a purple-eyed young fallow deer. Therewas even a tortoise which was supposed to be more than a hundred yearsold. The old ladies therefore showed a forbearance with the whims of thePrioress's favorite, much like that which courtiers of apetticoat-governed court of the old days, conscious of their ownfrailty, might have shown toward the caprices of a royalmaîtresse-en-titre.

From time to time, particularly in the autumn, when nuts were ripeningin the hedges along the roads and in the large forests that surroundedthe convent, it happened that the Prioress's monkey would feel the callof a freer life and would disappear for a few weeks or a month, to comeback of its own accord when the night frosts set in. The children of thevillages belonging to Closter Seven would then come upon it runningacross the road or sitting in a tree, from where it watched themattentively. But when they gathered around it and started to bombard itwith chestnuts from their pockets, it would roll its eyes and grind itsteeth at them, and finish by swiftly mounting the branches to disappearin the crowns of the forest.

It was the general opinion, or a standing joke amongst the ladies of theconvent, that the Prioress, during these periods, would become silentand the victim of a particular restlessness, and would seem loth to actin the affairs of the house, in which at ordinary times she showed greatvigor. Amongst themselves they called the monkey her Geheimrat, andthey rejoiced when it was to be seen again in her drawing-room, a littlechilled after its stay in the woods.

Upon a fine October day, when the monkey had in this way been missingfor some weeks, the Prioress's young nephew and godson, who was alieutenant in the Royal Guards, arrived unexpectedly at the convent.

The Prioress was held in high respect by all her relations, and had inher time presented at the font many babies of her own noble blood, butthis young man was her favorite amongst them. He was a graceful boy oftwenty-two, with dark hair and blue eyes. Although he was a younger son,he was fortunately situated in life. He was the preferred child of hismother, who had come from Russia and had been an heiress; he had made afine career. He had friends, not everywhere in the world, but everywherein that world, that is of any significance.

On his arrival at the convent he did not, however, look like a young manunder a lucky star. He came, as already said, in headlong hurry andunannounced, and the ladies with whom he exchanged a few words whilewaiting for admission to his aunt, and who were all fond of him, noticedthat he was pale and looked deadly tired, as if under some greatagitation of mind.

They were not unaware, either, that he might have reason to be so.Although Closter Seven was a small world of its own, and moved in aparticular atmosphere of peace and immutability, news of the greaterworld outside reached it with surprising quickness, for each of theladies had her own watchful and zealous correspondents there. Thus thesecloistered women knew, just as well as the people in the center ofthings, that during the last month clouds of strange and sinister naturehad been gathering over the heads of that very regiment and circle offriends to which the boy belonged. A sanctimonious clique of thecapital, led by the Court Chaplain, of all people, who had the ear ofhigh personages, had, under pretense of moral indignation, lifted theirvoices against these young flowers of the land, and nobody knew forcertain, or could even imagine, what might come out of that.

The ladies had not discussed these happenings much amongst themselves,but the librarian of the convent, who was a theologian and a scholar,had been dragged away into more than one tête-à-tête, and encouraged togive his opinion on the problem. From him they had learnt to connect itsomehow with those romantic and sacred shores of ancient Greece whichthey had till now held in high esteem. Remembering their young days,when everything Greek had been le dernier cri, and frocks andcoiffures had been named à la grecque, they wondered--Could theexpression be used also to designate anything so little related to theiryoung ladies' dreams of refinement? They had loved those frocks, theyhad waltzed with princes in them; now they thought of them withuneasiness.

Few things could have stirred their natures more deeply. It was not onlythe impudence of the heroes of the pulpit and the quill attackingwarriors which revolted the old daughters of a fighting race, or thepresentiment of trouble and much woe that worried them, but something inthe matter which went deeper than that. To all of them it had been afundamental article of faith that woman's loveliness and charm, whichthey themselves represented in their own sphere and according to theirgifts, must constitute the highest inspiration and prize of life. Intheir own individual cases the world might have spread snares in orderto capture this prize of their being at less cost than they meant it to,or there might have been a strange misunderstanding, a lack ofappreciation, on the part of the world, but still the dogma held good.To hear it disputed now meant to them what it would mean to a miser tobe told that gold no longer had absolute value, or to a mystic to haveit asserted that the Lord was not present in the Eucharist. Had theyknown that it might ever be called into question, all these lives, whichwere now so nearly finished, might have come to look very different. Toa few proud old maids, who had the strategic instincts of their breeddeveloped to the full, these new conceptions came very hard. So mighthave come, to a gallant and faithful old general who through a longcampaign, in loyalty to higher orders, had stood strictly upon thedefensive, the information that an offensive would have been the right,and approved, move.

Still in the midst of their inquietude every one of the old women wouldhave liked to have heard more of this strange heresy, as if, after all,the tender and dangerous emotions of the human heart were, even withintheir own safe reclusion, by right their domain. It was as if the tallbouquets of dried flowers in front of the convents' pier glasses hadstirred and claimed authority when a question of floriculture was beingraised.

They gave the pale boy an unsure welcome, as if he might have beeneither one of Herod's child martyrs, or a young priest of black magic,still within hope of conversion, and when he walked up the broad stairwhich led to the Prioress's rooms, they evaded one another's eyes.

The Prioress received her nephew within her lofty parlor. Its three tallwindows looked out, between heavy curtains which had on them borders offlower garlands done in cross-stitch, over the lawns and avenues of theautumnal garden. From the damask-clad walls her long-departed father andmother gazed down, out of broad gilt frames, with military gravity andyouthful grace, powdered and laced for some great court occasion. Thosetwo had been the young man's friends since he was a baby, yet today hewas struck and surprised by a puzzled, even a worried, look upon theirfaces. It seemed to him also, for a moment, that there was a certainstrange and disquieting smell in the room, mixed with that of theincense sticks, which were being burned more amply than usual. Was this,he thought, a new aspect of the catastrophal tendencies of hisexistence?

The boy, while taking in the whole well-known and harmonious atmosphere,did not want or dare to waste time. After he had kissed his aunt's hand,inquired after her health and the monkey, and given her the news of hisown people in town, he came straight to the matter which had brought himto Closter Seven.

"Aunt Cathinka," he said, "I have come to you because you have alwaysbeen so good to me. I should like"--here he swallowed to keep hisrebellious heart in place, knowing how little indeed it would likeit--"to marry, and I hope that you will give me your advice and help."

[II]

The boy was well aware that under ordinary circumstances nothing that hecould have said could possibly have pleased the old woman better. Thusdid life, he thought, manage to satisfy its taste for parody, even inrelation to people like his aunt, whom in his own heart he had namedafter the Chinese goddess Kuan-Yin, the deity of mercy and of benignantsubtlety. He thought that in this case she would suffer from the ironyof destiny more than he himself, and it made him feel sorry for her.

On his way to the convent, driving through the forests and littlevillages, past long stretches of stubble-fields on which large flocks ofgeese were feeding, herded by bare-legged children and young girls, hehad been trying to imagine how the meeting between his aunt and himselfwould be likely to develop. Knowing the old lady's weakness for littleLatin phrases, he had wondered if he would get from her lips Et tu,Brute, or a decided Discite justitiam moniti, et non temnere divos.Perhaps she would say Ad sanitatem gradus est novisse morbum--thatwould be a better sign.

After a moment he looked straight at the old lady's face. Herhigh-backed chair was in the chiaroscuro of the lace curtain, while hehad on him the full light of the afternoon sun. From the shade herluminous eyes met his, and made him look away, and this dumb play wasrepeated twice over.

"Mon cher enfant," she said at last in a gentle voice which gave himthe impression of firmness, although it had in it a curious littleshiver, "it has long been a prayer of my heart that you should make thisdecision. On what help an old woman, outside the world, can give you,dear Boris, you can surely rely."

Boris looked up with smiling eyes in a white face. After a terriblyagitated week, and a row of wild scenes which his mother's love andjealousy had caused, he felt like a person who is, from a flooded town,taken up into a boat. As soon as he could speak he said: "It is all foryou to decide, Aunt Cathinka," trusting that the sweetness of powerwould call out all the generosity of the old woman's nature.

She kept her eyes on him, kindly. They took possession of him as if shehad actually been drawing him to her bosom, or even within the closercircle of her heart. She held her little handkerchief to her mouth, agesture common with her when she was moved. She would help him, he felt,but she had something to say first.

"What is it," she said very slowly, in the manner of a sibylla, "whichis bought dearly, offered for nothing, and then most oftenrefused?--Experience, old people's experience. If the children of Adamand Eve had been prepared to make use of their parents' experience, theworld would have been behaving sensibly six thousand years ago. I willgive you my experience of life in a little pill, sugar-coated by poetryto make it go down: 'For as of all the ways of life but one--the path ofduty--leads to happiness.'" Boris sat silent for a moment. "AuntCathinka," he said at last, "why should there be only one way? I knowthat good people think so, and I was taught it myself at myconfirmation, but still the motto of our family is: 'Find a way or makeit.' Neither can you read any cookery book which will not give you atleast three or four ways of making a chicken ragoût, or more. And whenColumbus sailed out and discovered America," he went on, because thesewere thoughts which had occupied him lately, and the Prioress was afriend of his, to whom he could venture to express them, "he really didso to find the back way to the Indies, and it was considered a heroicexploit." "Ah," said the Prioress with great energy, "Dr. Sass, who wasthe parson of Closter Seven in the seventeenth century, maintained thatin paradise, until the time of the fall, the whole world was flat, theback-curtain of the Lord, and that it was the devil who invented a thirddimension. Thus are the words 'straight,' 'square,' and 'flat' the wordsof noblemen, but the apple was an orb, and the sin of our first parents,the attempt at getting around God. I myself much prefer the art ofpainting to sculpture." Boris did not contradict her. His own tastediffered from hers here, but she might be right. Up to now he hadcongratulated himself upon his talent for enjoying life from all sides,but lately he had come to consider it a doubtful blessing. It was tothis, he thought, that he owed what seemed to be his fate: to geteverything he wanted at a time when he no longer wanted it. He knew fromexperience how a wild craving for an orgy, or music, or the sea, orconfidence might, before there had been time for its fulfillment, haveceased to exist--as in the case of a star, of which the light onlyreaches the earth long after it has itself gone under--so that at themoment when his wish was about to be granted him, only a bullfight, orthe life of a peasant plowing his land in the rain, would satisfy thehunger of his soul.

The Prioress looked him up and down, and said:

Straight is the line of duty,
Curved is the line of beauty.
Follow the straight line; thou shalt see
The curved line ever follows thee.

The boy thought the poem over.

A decanter of wine and some fruit were at this moment brought in forhim, and as he understood that she wanted him to keep quiet, he dranktwo glasses, which did him good, and in silence peeled the famous silkypears of Closter Seven, and picked the dim black grapes off their stemsone by one. Without looking at his aunt he could follow all herthoughts. The dramatic urgency for quick action, which might havefrightened another person of her age, did not upset her in the least.She had amongst her ancestors great lords of war who had preparedcampaigns with skill, but who had also had it in them to give over atthe right moment to pure inspiration.

He understood that for her in these moments her red parlor was filledwith young virgins of high birth--dark and fair, slim and junoesque,good housekeepers, good horsewomen, granddaughters of schoolmates andfriends of her youth--a muster-roll of young femininity, who could hideno excellency or shortcoming from her clear eyes. Spiritually she waslicking her lips, like an old connoisseur walking through his cellar,and Boris himself followed her in thought, like the butler who isholding the candle.

Just then the door opened and the Prioress's old servant came in again,this time with a letter on a silver tray, which he presented to her. Shetook it with a hand that trembled a little, as if she could not verywell take in any more catastrophe, read it through, read it again, andcolored faintly. "It is all right, Johann," she said, keeping the letterin her silken lap.

She sat for a little while in deep thought. Then she turned to the boy,her dark eyes clear as glass. "You have come through my new firplantation," she said with the animation of a person talking about ahobby. "What do you think of it?" The planting and upkeep of forestswere indeed among her greatest interests in life. They talked for sometime pleasantly of trees. There was nothing for your health, she said,like forest air. She herself was never able to pass a good night in townor amongst fields, but to lie down at night knowing that you had thetrees around you for miles, their roots so deep in the earth, theircrowns moving in the dark, she considered to be one of the delights oflife. The forest had always done Boris good when he had been staying atCloster Seven as a child. Even now he would notice a difference when hehad been in town for a long time, and she wished that she could get himdown more often.--"And who, Boris," she said with a sudden skip ofthought and a bright and determined benevolence, "who, now that we cometo talk about it, could indeed make you a better wife than that greatfriend of yours and mine, little Athena Hopballehus?"

No name could in this connection have come more unexpectedly to Boris.He was too surprised to answer. The phrase itself sounded absurd to him.He had never heard Athena described as little, and he remembered her asbeing half an inch taller than himself. But that the Prioress shouldspeak of her as a great friend showed a complete change of spirit, forhe was sure that ever since their neighbor's daughter had grown up, hisaunt and his mother, who were rarely of one mind, had been joiningforces to keep him and Athena apart.

As his mind turned from this unaccountable veering on the part of theold lady to the effect which it might have upon his own destiny, hefound that he did not dislike the idea. The burlesque he had alwaysliked, and it might even be an extravaganza of the first water to bringAthena to town as his wife. So when he looked at his aunt he had theface of a child. "I have the greatest faith in your judgment, AuntCathinka," he said.

The Prioress now spoke very slowly, not looking at him, as if she didnot want any impressions from other minds to intermingle with her own."We will not waste time, Boris," she said. "That has never been my habitonce my mind was made up." And that means, never at all, Boris thought."You go and change into your uniform, and I will in the meantime write aletter to the old Count. I will tell him how you have made me yourconfidante in this matter of your heart, upon which the happiness ofyour life depends, and in which your dear mother has not been able togive you her sympathy. And you, you must be ready to go within half anhour."

"Do you think, Aunt Cathinka, that Athena will have me?" asked Boris ashe rose to go. He was always quick to feel sorry for other people. Now,looking out over the garden, and seeing two of the old ladies emerge, ingaloshes, from one of the avenues, wherein they had been taking theirafternoon walk, he felt sorry for Athena for merely existing. "Athena,"the Prioress was saying, "has never had an offer of marriage in herlife. I doubt if, for the last year, she has seen any man but PastorRosenquist, who comes to play chess with her papa. She has heard myladies discuss the brilliant marriages which you might have made if youhad wanted to. If Athena will not have you, my little Boris," she said,and smiled at him very sweetly, "I will."

Boris kissed her hand for this, and reflected what an excellentarrangement it might prove to be, and then all at once he got such aterrible impression of strength and cunning that it was as if he hadtouched an electric eel. Women, he thought, when they are old enough tohave done with the business of being women, and can let loose theirstrength, must be the most powerful creatures in the whole world. Hegazed at his aunt's refined face.

No, it would not do, he thought.

[III]

Boris drove from Closter Seven in the Prioress's britzska, with herletter upon his heart, looking the ideal young hero of romance. The newsof his errand had spread mysteriously in the convent, as if it had beena new kind of incense, and had gone straight to the hearts of the oldladies. Two or three of them were sitting in the sun on the long terraceto see him go, and a particular friend of his, a corpulent old maid,bleached by having been kept for fifty years from all the lights oflife, stood beside his carriage to hand him three long-stemmed whiteasters from her little winter garden. Thus had gone away, thirty yearsago, the young man she loved, and then he had been killed at Jena. Agentle melancholy veiled her always, and her lady companion said of her:"The Countess Anastasia has a heavy cross. The love of eating is a heavycross." But it was the memory of this last parting of theirs that hadkept her eyes, in her puny face, bright like light blue enamel. She feltat the moment the resurrection of an entire destiny, and handed him herflowers as if they had been some part of it, mysteriously come to lifein a second round, as if they had been her three unborn daughters, nowtall and marriageable, joining his journey in the quality ofbridesmaids.

Boris had left his servant at the convent, for he knew him to be in lovewith one of the lady's maids, and it seemed to him that he ought now toshow sympathy towards all legitimate love-making. He wished to be alone.Solitude was always a pleasure to him, and he never had much opportunityfor it. Lately he seemed never to have been alone at all. When peoplewere not at him, working upon his feelings with all their might, theyhad still succeeded in making him take up their line of thought, untilhe felt those convolutions of the brain which had to do with thesematters aching as if they were worn out. Even on his way down to theconvent he had been made to think the thoughts of other people. Now, hethought with great contentment, for an hour he could think whatever heliked.

The road from Closter Seven to Hopballehus rises more than five hundredfeet and winds through tall pine forest. From time to time this opensand affords a magnificent view over large stretches of land below. Nowin the afternoon sun the trunks of the fir trees were burning red, andthe landscape far away seemed cool, all blue and pale gold. Boris wasable now to believe what the old gardener at the convent had told himwhen he was a child: that he had once seen, about this time of the yearand the day, a herd of unicorns come out of the woods to graze upon thesunny slopes, the white and dappled mares, rosy in the sun, treadingdaintily and looking around for their young, the old stallion, darkerroan, sniffing and pawing the ground. The air here smelled of fir leavesand toadstools, and was so fresh that it made him yawn. And yet, hethought, it was different from the freshness of spring; the courage andgayety of it were tinged with despair. It was the finale of thesymphony.

He remembered how he had, upon a May evening not six months ago, beentaken into the young heart of spring, as now into the sad heart ofautumn. He and a young friend of his had amused themselves by wanderingfor three weeks about the country, visiting places where nobody hadknown them to be. They had traveled in a caravan, carrying with them alittle theater of dolls, and had given performances of plays which theymade up themselves in the villages that they came through. The air hadbeen filled with sweet smells, the nightingales had been raving withinthe bird cherries, the moon stood high, not much paler than the sky ofthose nights of spring.

One night they had come, very tired, to a farmhouse in a grass field,and had been given a large bed in a room that had in it a grandfather'sclock and a dim looking-glass. Just as the clock was striking twelve,three quite young girls appeared on the threshold in their shifts, eachwith a lighted candle in her hand, but the night was so clear that thelittle flames looked only like little drops of the moon. They clearlydid not know that two wayfaring young men had been taken in and giventhe large bedroom, and the guests watched them in deep silence frombehind the hangings of the big bed. Without looking at one another,without a word, one by one they dropped their slight garments on thefloor and quite naked they walked up to the mirror and looked into it,the candle held high overhead, absorbed in the picture. Then they blewout their candles, and in the same solemn silence they walked backwardto the door, their long hair hanging down, got into their shifts, anddisappeared. The nightingales kept on singing outside, in a green bushnear the window. The two boys remembered that this was Walpurgis Night,and decided that what they had witnessed was some witchcraft by whichthese girls had hoped to catch a glimpse of their future husbands.

He had not been up this way for a long time, not since, as a child, hehad gone with the Prioress in her landaulet to pay a call at herneighbors'. He recognized the curves, but they had shrunk, and he fellto meditating upon the subject of change.

The real difference between God and human beings, he thought, was thatGod cannot stand continuance. No sooner has he created a season of ayear, or a time of the day, than he wishes for something quitedifferent, and sweeps it all away. No sooner was one a young man, andhappy at that, than the nature of things would rush one into marriage,martyrdom or old age. And human beings cleave to the existing state ofthings. All their lives they are striving to hold the moment fast, andare up against a force majeure. Their art itself is nothing but theattempt to catch by all means the one particular moment, one mood, onelight, the momentary beauty of one woman or one flower, and make iteverlasting. It is all wrong, he thought, to imagine paradise as anever-changing state of bliss. It will probably, on the contrary, turnout to be, in the true spirit of God, an incessant up and down, awhirlpool of change. Only you may yourself, by that time, have becomeone with God, and have taken to liking it. He thought with deep sadnessof all the young men who had been, through the ages, perfect in beautyand vigor--young pharaohs with clean-cut faces hunting in chariots alongthe Nile, young Chinese sages, silk-clad, reading within the live shadeof willows--who had been changed, against their wishes, into supportersof society, fathers-in-law, authorities on food and morals. All this wassad.

A turning of the road and a long vista cut through the wood brought himface to face with Hopballehus, still at a distance. The old architect oftwo hundred years ago had succeeded in building something so enormousthat it fell in with nature, and might have been a little formation ofthe gray rock. To someone now standing on the terrace, Boris thought, Iand the britzska and the gray and black horses would look diminutive,hardly distinguishable.

The sight of the house turned his thoughts toward it. It had alwaysappealed to his imagination. Even now, when he had not seen it foryears, it would happen that he would dream of it at night. It was initself a fantastic place, resting upon a large plateau, with miles ofavenues around it, rows of statues and fountains, built in late baroqueand now baroquely dilapidated and more than half a ruin. It seemed asort of Olympus, more Olympic still for the doom which was hanging overit. The existence therein of the old Count and his daughter had about itsomething Olympic as well. They lived, but how they got through thetwenty-four hours of their day and night must remain a mystery tohumans. The old Count, who had once been a brilliant diplomatist, ascientist and a poet, had for many years been absorbed in a greatlawsuit which he had going on in Poland, and which he had inherited fromhis father and grandfather. If he could win it, it would give him backthe immense riches and estates that had once belonged to his family, butit was known that he could never win it, and it was only ruining himwith ever greater speed. He lived in those gigantic worries as in cloudswhich made all his movements dim. Boris had at times wondered what theworld looked like to his daughter. Money, if she had ever seen it, heknew to hold no place in her life; no more did society or what is calledthe pleasures of life, and he wondered if she had ever heard of love.God knows, he thought, if she has ever looked at herself in a glass.

The light carriage swished through the layers of fallen leaves upon theterrace. In places they lay so thick that they half covered the stonebalusters and reached the knees of Diana's stag. But the trees werebare; only here and there a single golden leaf trembled high upon theblack twigs. Following the curve of the road, Boris's carriage camestraight upon the main terrace and the house, majestic as the Sphinxherself in the sunset. The light of the setting sun seemed to havesoaked into the dull masses of stone. They reddened and glowed with ituntil the whole place became a mysterious, a glorified, abode, in whichthe tall windows shone like a row of evening stars.

Boris got out of the britzska in front of the mighty stone stairs andwalked toward them, feeling for his letter. Nothing stirred in thehouse. It was like walking into a cathedral. And, he thought, by thetime that I get into that carriage once more, what will everything belike to me?

[IV]

At this moment the heavy doors above the stairs were flung open, and theold Count appeared at the top step, standing like Samson when in hiswrath he broke down the temple of the Philistines.

He was always a striking figure, short in the legs and with the torso ofa giant, his mighty head surrounded by a mane of wild gray hair, like apoet's or a lion's. But today he seemed strangely inspired, in the gripof some tremendous emotion, swaying where he stood. He remained for amoment immovable, scrutinizing his visitor, like an old man gorillaoutside his lair, ready for the attack; then he came down the stairsupon the young man, imposing upon him a presence such as the Lordhimself might have shown had he descended, for once, the ladder ofJacob.

Good God, thought Boris, as he walked up the steps to meet him, this oldman knows all, and is going to kill me. He had a glimpse of the oldCount's face, filled with wild triumph, the light eyes aflame. The nextmoment he felt his arms around him, and his body trembling against hisown.

"Boris!" he cried, "Boris, my child," for he had known the boy fromchildhood, and had, Boris was aware, once been one of his beautifulmother's adorers, "welcome. Welcome here today. Do you know?" "Know?"said Boris. "I have won my case," said the old man. Boris stared at him."I have won my case in Poland," he repeated. "Lariki, Lipnika, ParnovGrabovo--they are all mine, as they were the old people's."

"I congratulate you," said Boris, slowly, his thoughts strangely putinto motion. "With all my heart. This is unexpected news indeed!" Theold Count thanked him many times, and showed him the letter from hislawyer, which he had just received, and was still holding in his hand.As he was talking to the boy he spoke slowly at first, seeking for hiswords, as a man out of the habit of speech, but as he went on herecovered his old voice and speech that had in the old days charmed somany people. "A great passion, Boris," he said, "such as does really andtruly devour your heart and soul, you cannot feel for individual beings.Perhaps you cannot feel it for anything which is capable of loving youin return. Those officers who have loved their armies, those lords whohave loved their soil, they can talk about passion. My God, I have hadthe whole weight of the land of Hopballehus upon my chest at night, whenI imagined that I had been leading it into a lost battle. But this," hesaid, drawing a deep breath, "this is happiness." Boris understood thatit was not the thought of his riches which filled the soul of the oldman, but the triumph of right over wrong, the righteousness of theentire universe being, to him, concentrated in his own figure. He beganto explain the judgment in detail, still with one hand upon the youngman's shoulder, and Boris felt that he was welcome to his heart as afriend who could listen. "Come in, come in, Boris," he said, "we willdrink a glass together, you and I, from the wine which I have put asidefor today. Our good Pastor is here. I sent for him when I got theletter, to keep me company, as I did not know that you would be coming."

Within the prodigious hall, richly ornamented with black marble, a smallcorner was made habitable by a few chairs and a table, covered with theCount's books and papers. Above it was a gigantic picture, much darkenedby age, an equestrian portrait of an old lord of the house, holdinghimself very calm upon a rearing horse with a small head, and pointingwith a roll of paper toward a battlefield depicted in the distance underthe belly of the horse. Pastor Rosenquist, a short man with red cheeks,who had for many years been the spiritual guide of the family, and whomBoris knew well, was sitting in one of the chairs, apparently in deepthought. The happenings of the day had brought disorder in his theories,which was to him a more serious disaster than if the parsonage had burntdown. He had suffered from poverty and misfortunes all his life, and hadin the course of time come to live upon a system of spiritualbookkeeping according to which earthly trials became an investment,drawing interest in the other world. His own personal account, he knew,was made up in very small change, but he had taken a great interest inthe old Count's sorrows, and had looked upon him as a favorite of theLord's, whose treasures were all the time accumulating in the newJerusalem, like to sapphires, chrysoprase and amethyst propagating ontheir own. Now he was upset and did not know what to think, which to himwas a terrible condition. He had sought comfort in the book of Job, buteven there the figures would not agree, Behemoth and Leviathan coming inupon an account of losses and profits of their own. The whole affairseemed to him in the nature of a gift, which, according to Ecclesiastes,destroyeth the heart, and he could not get away from the thought thatthis old man, whom he loved, was in the bad way of anticipating hisincome.

"Now I would," said the old Count, when he had fetched and opened thegolden bottle, "that my poor father and my dear grandfather were herewith us to drink this wine. I have felt, as I have lain awake at night,that they have kept awake with me within their sarcophagi below. I amhappy," he went on as, still standing, he lifted his glass, "that it bethe son of Abunde"--that was his old name for Boris's mother--"whodrinks here with me tonight." In the exuberance of his heart he pattedBoris's cheek with tenderness, while his face radiated a gentlenesswhich had been in exile for years; and the boy, who knew a good thingwhen he saw it, envied the old man his innocence of heart. "And to ourgood Pastor," the Count said, turning to him. "My friend, you have shedtears of sympathy in this house. They arise now as wine."

The old Count's manner heightened Pastor Rosenquist's uneasiness. Itseemed to him that only a frivolous heart could move with such ease in anew atmosphere, forgetting the old. Brought up himself upon a system ofexaminations and promotions, he was not prepared to understand a racereared upon the laws of luck in war and court favor, adjusted for theunforeseen and accustomed to the unexpected, for whom to be safe, oreven saved, seems the least necessary of all things. Then again cameinto his mind the words of the Scripture--"He saith amongst thetrumpets, ha, ha!"--and he thought that perhaps after all his old friendwas all right. "Yes, yes," he said, smiling, "water has certainly beenchanged into wine, once. It is without doubt a good drink. But you knowwhat our good peasants hold: that wine-begotten children will end badly.So, we have reason to fear, will wine-begotten hopes and moods. Thoughthat," he added, "would not, of course, apply to the children of thewedding of Cana, of which I was just speaking."

"At Lariki," said the Count, "there is hung, in the ceiling of thegateway, a hunting-horn in an iron chain. My grandfather's grandfatherwas a man of herculean strength. When in the evening he rode through thegate, he used to take hold of the horn, and, lifting himself and hishorse from the ground, he blew it. I have known that I could do thesame, but I thought I should never ride through that gate. Athena mightdo it, too," he added thoughtfully.

He refilled his glasses. "How is it that you came here today?" he askedBoris, beaming upon him and his gala uniform, as if his coming had beena unique exploit. "What brings you to Hopballehus?" Boris felt the oldman's openness reflected in his own heart, like a blue sky in the sea.He looked into his friend's face. "I came here today," he said, "to askAthena to marry me." The old man gave him a great, luminous glance. "Toask Athena to marry you!" he exclaimed. "You came here today for that?"He stood for a moment, deeply moved. "The ways of God are strangeindeed," he said. Pastor Rosenquist rose from his chair and sat downagain, to arrange his accounts.

When the old Count spoke again he was much changed. The intoxication wasgone, and he seemed to have collected the forces of his nature in goodorder. It was this balance which had given him a name in the old days,when he had, as a young man of the Embassy in Paris, upon the firstnight of his tragedy, The Undine, fought a duel with pistols in theentr'acte.

"Boris, my child," he said, "you have come here to change my heart. Ihave been living with my face toward the past, or for this hour ofvictory. This moment is the first in which I have thought of the future.I see that I shall have to come down from a pinnacle to walk along aroad. Your words are opening up a great vista to me. What am I to be?The patriarch of Hopballehus, crowning virtuous village maidens?Grandpapa, planting apple trees? Ave, Hopballehus. Naturi te salutem."

Boris remembered the Prioress's letter, and told the old man how he hadcalled at Closter Seven on his way. The Count inquired after the lady,and, always keen on all sorts of papers, he put on his glasses andbecame absorbed in the letter. Boris sat and drank his wine in a happymood. During the last week he had come to doubt whether life ever heldanything pleasant at all. Now his reception in the old Count's house wasto him a show of the most enjoyable kind, and he always moved with easefrom one mood to another.

When the Count had finished the reading, he laid the letter down and,keeping his folded hands upon it, he sat for a long time silent.

"I give you," he said at last slowly and solemnly, "my blessing. First Igive it to the son of your mother--and of your father--secondly to theyoung man who, as I see now, has loved so long against all. And finallyI feel that you have been sent, Boris, by stronger hands than your owntonight.

"I give you, in Athena, the key of my whole world. Athena," he repeated,as if it gave him joy to pronounce his daughter's name, "is herself likea hunting-horn in the woods." And as if, without knowing it himself,some strange and sad memory of his youth had taken possession of him, headded, almost in a whisper, "Dieu, que le son du cor est triste au fonddu bois."

[V]

While they had been talking, a strong wind had sprung up outside. Theday had been still. This blowing weather had come with the dusk, like ananimal of the night. It swept along the long walls, around the cornersof the house, and whirled the dead leaves up in the air. In the midst ofit, Athena, who had been outspanning the horse from Pastor Rosenquist'strap in the stables, was heard to cross the terrace and come up thestairs.

The old Count, whose eyes had been dwelling on Boris's face, made asudden movement, as if he had been alarmed by something he did nothimself understand. "Do not speak to her tonight," he said. "You willunderstand: our friend, the Pastor, Athena and myself have had so manyevenings here, together. Let this be the last of them. I will tell hermyself, and you, my dear son, come back to Hopballehus tomorrowmorning." Boris thought this a good plan. As the Count spoke, hisdaughter came into the room, still in her big cloak.

Athena was a strong young woman of eighteen, six feet high and broad inproportion, with a pair of shoulders which could lift and carry a sackof wheat. At forty she would be enormous, but now she was too young tobe fat, and straight as a larch tree. Beneath her flaming hair her nobleforehead was white as milk; lower down her face was, like her broadwrists, covered with freckles. Still she was so fair and clear of skinthat she seemed to lighten up the hall on entering it, with the lightthat you will get inside a room when the snow is lying outside. Herclear eyes had a darker ring around the iris--a pair of eyes for a younglioness or eagle--otherwise the strong young creature's countenance waspeaceful, and her round face had that expression of attention andreserve which is ordinarily found in the faces of people who are hard ofhearing. When he had been with her, Boris had sometimes thought of theold ballad about the giant's daughter, who finds a man in the wood, and,surprised and pleased, takes him home to play with. The giant orders herto let him go, telling her that she will only break him.

The giant himself, the old Count, showed her an old-fashionedchivalrousness which appeared to Boris like a rather noble old coin, dugout of the ground, and keeping its gold value, even when no morecurrent. It was said that the Count had been, in his young days, one ofthe lovers of Princess Pauline Borghese, who was the loveliest woman ofher time. He had seen Venus Anadyomene face to face, and for the sake ofthat vision gave homage to the likeness of the goddess, even where itwas more clumsily cut in wood or stone. With no claim to beauty, Athenahad grown up in an atmosphere of incense burnt to woman's loveliness.

She blinked a little at the light and the stranger, and indeed Boris, inhis white uniform and high golden collar, his pomatumed curls like ahalo in the light, was a striking meteor in the great dim room. Still,safe in her great strength, she asked him--standing, as was her habit,on one leg, like a big stork--of news of his aunt, and the ladies ofCloster Seven. She knew very few people, and for these old women, whohad given her much good advice, though she had shocked them a little bygrowing up so unromantically big, she had, Boris thought, the sort ofadmiration that a peasant's child at a fair has for the skilled andspangled tight-rope dancers. If she marries me, he thought, as he stoodand talked to her, his voice sweet as a song, with the fond gaze of theold Count upon her face and his, she will be susceptible to my tricks;but is my married life to be an everlasting fair? And if ever I dropfrom my rope, will she pick me up, or just turn her back and leave?

She bid him let the Prioress know that she had seen her monkey a fewnights ago, on the terrace of Hopballehus, sitting upon the socle ofVenus's statue, in the place where a small Cupid, now broken, used tobe. Talking about the monkey, she asked him if he did not think itcurious that her father's solicitor in Poland had a monkey of the samekind, which had also come from Zanzibar. The old Count started to speakof the Wendish idols, from whose country his own family originally came,and of which the goddess of love had the face and façade of a beautifulwoman, while, if you turned her around, she presented at the back theimage of a monkey. How, he asked, had these wild Nordic tribes come toknow about monkeys? Might there have lived monkeys in the somber pineforests of Wenden a thousand years ago?

"No, that is not possible," said Pastor Rosenquist. "It would alwayshave been too cold. But there are certain symbols which seem to havebeen the common property of all pagan iconoclasts. It would be worthstudying; it might be due to the idea of original sin."

But how, asked Athena, did they know, in the case of that goddess oflove, which was the front and which the back?

Boris here ordered his carriage, and took leave of the party. The oldCount seemed to be sorry to send him away and repentant of his hardnessto a lover. He apologized for the bad weather of Hopballehus, held theyouth's hand with tears in his eyes, and told Athena to see him out.Pastor Rosenquist, on the other hand, could not but be pleased by thedeparture of anyone who looked so much like an angel without being one.

Athena walked out on the terrace with Boris. In the light of hiscarriage lanterns her big cloak, blowing about her, threw strangeshadows upon the gravel, like a pair of large wings. Over the vast lawn,iron-gray in the moonlight, the moon herself appeared and disappeared ina stormy sky.

Boris felt at this moment really sorry to be leaving Hopballehus. Thechaotic world of the place had reminded him of his childhood, and seemedto him infinitely preferable to the existence of clock-work order whichhe would find at the convent. He stood a little in silence, near Athena.The clouds were parted, and a few of the constellations of stars stoodclear in the sky. The Great Bear preached its lesson: Keep yourindividuality in the crowd. "Do you ever think of the bear hunt?" Borisasked Athena. The children had not been allowed to take part in it, butthey had stolen away together, and had joined the Count's huntsmen, on avery hot July day, high up in the hills. Two spotted dogs had beenkilled, and he remembered the terrible tumult of the fight, and thequick movements of the huge ragged brown beast within the thicket offirs and ferns, and one glimpse of its furious roaring face, the redtongue hanging out.

"Yes, I do, sometimes," said Athena, her eyes, with his, in the skies,on a stellar bear hunt. "It was the bear which the peasants called theEmpress Catherine. She had killed five men."

"Are you still a Republican, Athena?" he asked. "One time you wanted tocut off the heads of all the tyrants of Europe."

The color of Athena's face, in the light of the lamp, heightened. "Yes,"she said, "I am a Republican. I have read the history of the FrenchRevolution. The kings and priests were lazy and licentious, cruel to thepeople, but those men who called themselves 'the Mountain' and put onthe red Phrygian bonnet were courageous. Danton was a true patriot, andI should have liked to meet him; so was the Abbé Sieyès." She warmed toher subject in the night air. "I should like to see that place in Pariswhere the guillotine stood," she said.

"And to wear the Phrygian bonnet?" Boris asked her. Athena noddedshortly, collecting her thoughts. Then, as if meaning to be sure tobring the truth home to him, she broke into some lines of verse,herself, as she went on, carried away by the pathos of the words:

O Corse à cheveux plats, que la France était belle
au grand soleil de Messidor.
C'était une cavale indomptable et rebelle,
sans freins d'acier, ni rênes d'or.
Une jument sauvage, à la croupe rustique,
fumant encore du sang des rois.
Mais fière, et d'un pied fibre heurtant le sol antique,
Libre, pour la première fois!

As Boris drove away from Hopballehus the wind was blowing strong. Themoon was racing the heavens behind wild thin clouds; the air was cold.It must be near the freezing point, he thought. His lanterns chased thetrees and their shadows and threw them to all sides around him. A largedry branch from a tree was suddenly blown down, and crashed in front ofhis shying horses. He thought, alone in the dark, of the three people inthe hall of Hopballehus, and laughed.

As he drove on, below him in the valley lights leapt up. As if they wereplaying with him they appeared between the trees, looked him straight inthe face and went off again. A large group of lights came in sight, likea reflection, on the earth, of the Pleiades. Those were the lamps ofCloster Seven.

And suddenly it came upon him that somewhere something was not right,was quite wrong and out of order. Strange powers were out tonight. Thefeeling was so strong and distinct that it was as if an ice-cold handhad passed for a moment over his scalp. His hair rose a little upon hishead. For a few minutes he was really and genuinely afraid, struck by anextraordinary terror. In this strange turbulence of the night, and thewild life of dead things all around him, he felt himself, his britzska,and his gray and black horses terribly and absurdly small, exposed andunsafe.

As he turned into the long avenue of Closter Seven, his lamps suddenlyshone into a pair of glinting eyes. A very small shadow ran across theroad and was gone into the deeper black shadows of the Prioress'sshrubbery.

On his arrival at the convent he was told that the Prioress had gone tobed. To have, Boris thought, all her strength on hand in the morning.

The supper table was laid for him in his aunt's private dining-room,which she had just lately redecorated. Before it had been white, withornaments of stucco perhaps a hundred years old. Now it was prettilycovered with a wall paper whose pattern, upon a buff background,presented various scenes of oriental life. A girl danced under a palmtree, beating a tambourine, while old men in red and blue turbans andlong beards looked on. A sultan held his court of justice under a goldencanopy, and a hunting party on horseback, preceded by its greyhounds andNegro dog-boys, passed a ruin. The Prioress had also done away with theold-fashioned candlesticks, and had the table lighted by tall, brightlymodern, Carcel lamps of blue china, painted with pink roses. In the warmand cozy room he supped by himself. Like, he thought, Don Giovanni inthe last act of the opera. "Until the Commandante comes," his thoughtsadded on their own. He stole a glance at the window. The wind was stillsinging outside, but the disquieting night had been shut out by theheavy drawn curtains.

[VI]

The aunt and the nephew had breakfast together in pleasant harmony, fromtime to time gazing, within the Prioress's silver samovar, at their ownfaces curiously distorted. A little shining sun also showed itselftherein, for the day that followed the stormy night was clear andserene. The wind had wandered on to other neighborhoods, leaving thegardens of Closter Seven airy and bare.

Boris had recorded to the old lady the happenings at Hopballehus, andshe had listened with great content and a deep interest in the fate ofher old neighbor and friend. She could hardly refrain from letting herimagination flutter amongst the glories of the boy's future, but it wasdone so gracefully that the old Count and Athena might have beenpresent.

"I feel, my dear," she said, "that now Athena ought to travel and see alittle of the world. When I was her age, Papa took me to Rome and Paris,and I met many celebrities. What a pleasure to a man of talent toaccompany that highly gifted child to those places, and show her life."

"Yes," said Boris, pouring himself out some more coffee, "she told meyesterday that she wanted to see Paris."

"Naturally," said the Prioress. "The dear child has never owned a Parisbonnet in her life. At Lariki," she went on, her thoughts runningpleasantly to and fro, "there is splendid bear-hunting, and wild boars.I can well imagine your divinity, spear in hand. At Lipnika the cellaris stored with Tokay, presented to one old lord by the Empress MariaTheresa. Athena will pour it out with the generous hand of her family.At Patnov Grabovo are found the famous row of jets d'eaux, which wereconstructed by the great Danish astronomer Ole Roemer, the same who madethe grandes eaux of Versailles."

While they were thus playing about with the happy possibilities of life,old Johann had brought in two letters, which had arrived at the sametime, although the one for the Prioress had come by post, and Boris'sletter had been brought by a groom from Hopballehus. Boris, on lookingup after having read a few lines, noticed the hard and fine little smileon the face of the old lady, absorbed in her reading. She will not smilefor long, he thought.

The old Count's letter ran as follows:

I am writing to you, my dear Boris, because Athena refuses to do so. I am taking hold of my pen in deep distress and repentance; indeed I have come to know that desire to cover my head with ashes, of which the old writers talk.

I have to tell you that my daughter has rejected your suit, which last night seemed to me to crown the benefactions of destiny toward my house. She surely feels no reluctance toward this alliance in particular, but she tells me that she will never marry, and that it is even impossible for her to consider the question at all.

In a way it is right that it should be I who write you this letter. For in this misfortune the guilt is mine, the responsibility rests with me.

I, who have had this young life in my hand, have made her strong youth my torchbearer on my descent to the sepulchral chamber. Step by step, as I have gone downwards, her shoulder has been my support, and she has never failed me. Now she will not--she cannot--look up.

The peasants of our province have the saying that no child born in wedlock can look straight at the sun; only bastards are capable of it. Alas, how much is my poor Athena my legitimate child, the legitimate child of my race and its fate! She is so far from being able to look straight at the sun, that she fears no darkness whatever, but her eyes are hurt by light. I have made, of my young dove, a bird of the night.

She has been to me both son and daughter, and I have in my mind seen her wearing the old coats of armor of Hopballehus. Too late I now realize that she is wearing it, not as the young St. George fighting the dragons, but as Azrael, the angel of death, of our house. Indeed, she has shut herself up therein, and for all the coming years of her life, she will refuse to lay it aside.

I have never sinned against the past, but I see now that I have been sinning against the future; rightly it will have none of me. Upon Athena's maiden grave I shall be laying down flowers for those unborn generations in whose faces I had for a moment, my dear child, thought to see your features. In asking your forgiveness I shall be asking the forgiveness of much doomed energy, talent and beauty, of lost laurels and myrtles. The ashes which I strew on my head is theirs!...

Boris handed the letter to the Prioress without words, and leaned hischin in his hand to watch her face while she read it. He nearly got morethan he asked for. She became so deadly white that he feared that shewas going to faint or die, while red flames sprang out on her face as ifsomebody had struck her across it with a whip. King Solomon, it isknown, shut up the most prominent demons of Jewry in bottles, sealedthem, and had them sunk to the bottom of the sea. What goings on, downthere, of impotent fury! Alike, Boris thought, to the dumb struggleswithin the narrow and wooden chests of old women, sealed up by theSolomonic wax of their education. Probably her sight failed her, and thered damask parlor grew black before her eyes, for she laid down theletter before she could have had time to finish it.

"What! what!" she said in a hoarse and hardly audible voice, "what doesthe Poet write to you?" She gasped for air, raised her right hand, andshook her trembling forefinger in the air. "She will not marry you!" sheexclaimed.

"She will not marry at all, Aunt," said Boris to console her.

"No? Not at all?" sneered the old lady. "A Diana, is she that? But wouldyou not have made a nice little Actæon, my poor Boris? And all that youhave offered her--the position, the influence, the future--that meansnothing to her? What is it she wants to be?" She looked into the letter,but in her agony she was holding it, bewildered, upside down. "A stonefigure upon a sarcophagus--in the dark, in silence, forever? Here wehave a fanatical virgin, en plein dix-neuvième siècle? Vraiment tu n'aspas de la chance! There is no horror vaccui here."

"The law of the horror vaccui" Boris, who was really frightened, saidto distract her, "does not hold good more than thirty-two feet up."

"More than what?" asked the Prioress.

"Thirty-two feet," he said. The Prioress shrugged her shoulders.

She turned her glinting eyes on him, pulling the letter, which she hadreceived by the post, half up from her silk pocket, and putting it backagain. "She will have nothing," she said slowly, "and you will givenothing. It seems to me, in all modesty, that you are well paired. Imyself, giving you my blessing, have got nothing to say. That wasalready in the rules of my forefathers: 'Where nothing is, le Seigneura perdu son droit.' You, Boris, you will have to go back to Court, andto the old Dowager Queen and her Chaplain, by the way you came. For,"she added, still more slowly, "where we have entered in, there also wewithdraw." These words impressed the old woman herself more than theydid her nephew, who had heard them before. She became very silent.

Boris began to feel really uncomfortable, and desired to put an end tothe conversation. He could understand quite well that she wanted him tosuffer. While she had been happy she had liked to have happy peoplearound her. Now, tortured, she had to surround herself with the sort ofsubstance which was within herself, or, as in the vacuum of which shehad been talking, she would be crushed. But in his particular case shehad such strong allies in the very circumstances. It was true that hehad not yet realized what Athena's refusal would mean to him. If the oldwoman would go on beating him like this with all her might, all themisery of the last weeks would be returned upon his head again. Suddenlythe Prioress turned from him and went up to the window, as if she meantto throw herself out.

In the midst of his own individual distress Boris could not hold histhoughts from the other two persons within this trinity of theirs.Perhaps Athena was walking the pine forests of Hopballehus, her face aswildly set as that of the old woman in her parlor. In his mind he sawhimself, in his white uniform, as a marionette, pulled alternately bythe deadly determined old lady and the deadly determined young lady. Howwas it that things meant so much to them? What forces did theseimpassionate people have within them to make them prefer death tosurrender? Very likely he had himself as strong tastes in the matter ofthis marriage as anybody, but still he did not clench his hands or losehis power of speech.

The Prioress turned from the window and came up to him. She was allchanged, and carried no implements of the rack with her. On the contraryshe seemed to bring a garland to crown his head. She looked so muchlighter, that it was really as if she had been throwing a weight away,out of the window, and was now gracefully floating an inch above theground.

"Dear Boris," she said, "Athena still has a heart. She owes it to theold playfellow of her childhood to see him, to give him a chance ofspeaking to her, and to answer him by word of mouth. I will tell her allthis, and send the letter back at once. The daughter of Hopballehus hasa sense of duty. She will come."

"Where?" asked Boris.

"Here," said the Prioress.

"When?" asked Boris, looking around.

"This evening, for supper," said his aunt. She was smiling, a gentle,even waggish little smile, and still her mouth seemed to get smaller andsmaller, like a very dainty little rosebud. "Athena," she said, "mustnot leave Closter Seven tomorrow without being----" She paused a little,looked to the right and left, and then at him. "Ours!" she said,smiling, in a little whisper. Boris looked at her. Her face was fresh asthat of a young girl.

"My child, my dear child," she exclaimed, in a sudden outburst of deep,gentle passion, "nothing, nothing must stand in the way of yourhappiness!"

[VII]

This great supper of seduction, which was to remain a landmark in theexistence of the banqueters, was served in the Prioress's dining-room,and groups of oriental statesmen and dancers watched it from the walls.The table was prettily decorated with camellias from the orangery, andupon the snow-white tablecloth, amongst the clear crystal glasses, theold green wineglasses threw delicate little shadows, like the spirit ofa pine forest in summer. The Prioress had on a gray taffeta frock withvery rare lace, a white lace cap with streamers, and her large olddiamond eardrops and brooches. The heroic strength of soul of old women,Boris thought, who with great taste and trouble make themselvesbeautiful--more beautiful, perhaps, than they have ever been as youngwomen--and who still can hold no hope of awakening any desire in thehearts of men, is like that of a righteous man working at his good deedseven after he has abandoned his faith in a heavenly reward.

The food was very good, and they had one of the famous carp of ClosterSeven, cooked in a way which was kept a secret of the convent. OldJohann poured out the wine very freely, and before they had come to themarzipan and crystallized fruit, the convives of this quiet anddignified meal of an old and a young maid and a rejected lover, were allthree of them more than a little drunk.

Athena was slightly drunk in the everyday sense of the word. She haddrunk very little wine in her life, and had never tasted champagne, andwith the amounts which the hostess of the supper party poured into her,she ought rightly not to have been able to stand on her legs. But shehad behind her a long row of ancestors who had in their time lain underall the heavy old oak tables of the province, and who now came to theassistance of the daughter of their race. Still the wine went to herhead. It gave her a rose on each cheek, and very bright eyes, and letloose new forces of her nature. She came to swell over a little in herfeeling of invincibility, like a young captain advancing into fire, witha high courage, overbearingly.

Boris, who could drink more than most people, and who till the endremained the most sober of the party, was drunk in a more spiritual way.The deepest and truest thing in the nature of the young man was hisgreat love for the stage and all its ways. His mother, as a maiden, hadhad the same grand passion, and had fought a mighty combat with herparents in Russia to go onto the stage, and lost it. Her son had no needto fight anybody. He was not dogmatic enough to believe that you musthave boards and footlights to be within the theater; he carried thestage with him in his heart. As a very young boy he had played manyladies' rôles in amateur theatricals, and the famous old stage managerPaccazina had burst into tears on seeing him as Antigone, so much did heremind him of Mars. To him the theater was real life. As long as hecould not act, he was puzzled by the world and uncertain what to do withit; but as an actor he was his true self, and as soon as he could see asituation in the light of the theater, he would feel at home in it. Hedid not shirk tragedy, and would perform with good grace in a pastoral,if it were asked of him.

There was something in this way of thinking that he had whichexasperated his mother, in spite of her old sympathies for the art, forshe suspected him of having in his heart very little preference for therôle of a promising and popular young officer. He was, she thought,prepared to give it up at any moment should a rôle that would appealmore strongly to him present itself, be it that of an outcast or martyr,or, possibly, the tragic part of a youth ascending the scaffold. She hadsometimes wanted to cry to him, contrarily to the Old Cordelier: Oh, mychild, you fear too little unpopularity, exile and death! Still shecould not herself help admiring him in his favorite rôles, nor, even, attimes taking up a rôle herself in an ensemble with him, and theseperformances of theirs might embrace a very wide scale.

Tonight Paccazina would have delighted in him; he had never playedbetter. Out of gratitude to his godmother, he had resolved to do hisbest. He had laid his mask with great care in front of his mirror, andhad exchanged his uniform for that black color which he considered moreappropriate to his part. In itself he always preferred the rôle of theunhappy, to that of the successful, lover. The wine helped him on, asdid the faces of his fellow-players, including old Johann, who wore onhis closed countenance a discreet shine of happiness. But he was himselfin his own heart carried away by the situation, by the action of theplay and by his own talents. He was on the boards, the curtain was up,every moment was precious, and he needed no souffleur.

As he looked at Athena on his left hand, he was pleased with his jeunepremière of the night. Now that they were upon the stage together heread her like a book.

He quite understood the deep impression which his proposal had made uponthe mind of the girl. It had not flattered her; it had probably at themoment made her very angry. And the fact that any live person could inthis way break in upon the proud isolation of her life had given her ashock. He agreed with her about it. Having lived all his life withpeople who were never alone, he had become sensitive to her atmosphereof solitude. It had happened to himself, at times, to be entirely aloneon a night, dreaming, not of familiar persons or things, but of scenesand people wholly his own creation, and the recollection of such nightshe would cherish in his mind. What was now at the moment bewildering thegirl was the fact that the enemy approached her in such an extremelygentle manner, and that the offender was asking for consolation. AsBoris grew conscious of these feelings of hers, he accentuated thesweetness and sadness of his behavior.

It was probably such a new thing to Athena to feel fear that it had astrange attraction for her. It was doubtful, he thought, whetheranything but the scent of some sort of danger could have brought her toCloster Seven on this night. Of what is she afraid? he thought. Of beingmade happy by my aunt and me? This is this tragic maiden's prayer: Frombeing a success at court, a happy, congratulated bride, a mother of apromising family, good Lord, deliver me. As a tragic actor of a highstandard himself, he applauded her.

The presence of some unknown danger, he felt, was impressed upon thegirl by the Prioress's manner toward her. The old woman had been herfriend before, but a severe friend. Most of what the girl had said anddone had till now been wrong here at the convent, and she had alwaysknown that in a benevolent way the old lady had wanted to put her in acage. Tonight the old eyes dwelt upon her with sweet content, what shesaid was received with little smiles as gentle as caresses. The cage hadbeen put out of sight. This special sort of incense, offered to herindividually, was as unknown to Athena as the champagne itself, and asit was now being burnt at her from her right and her left, she mighthave felt a difficulty in breathing within the comfortable dining-roomof Closter Seven, had she not felt so sure that the door behind herwould open, whenever she wanted it, to the woods of Hopballehus.

Boris, who knew more about that door, lifted his eyelashes, soft asmimosa leaves, upon her flaming face. Had her father called her a birdof the night, the eyes of which are hurt by the light? He himself wasnow walking, slowly, backwards in front of her, carrying some sort ofchandelier which twinkled at her. She blinked a little at the light, butshe came on.

The Prioress was drunk with some secret joy which remained a mystery tothe other convives of her supper party and which glinted in the dark.From time to time she dabbed her eyes or her mouth with her little,delicately perfumed, lace handkerchief.

[VIII]

"My great-grandmother," said the Prioress in the course of theconversation, "was, in her second marriage, ambassadress to Paris, andlived there for twenty years. This was under the Regency. She haswritten down in her memoirs, how, during the Christmas of 1727, the HolyFamily came to Paris and were known to stay there for twelve hours. Theentire building of the stable of Bethlehem had mysteriously been moved,even with the crib and the pots in which St. Joseph had been cooking thespiced beer for the Virgin, to a garden of a small convent, called duSaint Esprit. The ox and the ass were themselves transported, togetherwith the straw upon the floor. When the nuns reported the miracle at theCourt of Versailles, it was kept from the public, for they feared thatit might presage a judgment upon the lewdness of the rulers of France.But the Regent went in great state, with all his jewels on, togetherwith his daughter, the Duchess of Berri, the Cardinal Dubois, and a fewselected ladies and gentlemen of the Court, to do homage to the Motherof God and her husband. My great-grandmother was allowed, because of thehigh esteem in which she was held at Court, to come with them as theonly foreigner, and she preserved to the end of her days the furred robeof brocade, with a long train, which she wore on the occasion.

"The Regent had been highly moved and agitated by the news. At the sightof the Virgin he went into a strange ecstasy. He swayed and utteredlittle screams. You will know that the beauty of the Mother of the Lord,while without equal, was of such a kind that it could awaken no sort ofearthly desire. This the Duke of Orléans had never experienced before,and he did not know what to do. At last he asked her, in turn blushingscarlet and deadly pale, to come to a supper at the Berri's, where hewould have such food and wine served as had never been seen before, andto which he would make the Comte de Noircy come, and Madame de Parabere.

"The Duchess of Berri was at the time in grossesse, and evil tongueshad it that this was by her father, the Regent. She threw herself at thefeet of the Virgin. 'Oh, dear sweet Virgin,' she cried, 'forgive me. Youwould never have done it, I know. But if I could only tell you what adeadly, what a damnably dull Court this is!' Fascinated by the beauty ofthe child she dried her tears and asked for permission to touch it.'Like strawberries and cream,' she exclaimed, 'like strawberries à laZelma Kuntz.' Cardinal Dubois saluted St. Joseph with extremepoliteness. He considered that this saint would not often be botheringthe Almighty with supplications, but when he did so, he would be heard,as the Lord owed him much. The Regent fell upon my great-grandmother'sneck, all in tears, and cried: 'She will never, never come. Oh,Madame--you, who are a virtuous woman, tell me what in the world to do.'All this is in my great-grandmother's memoirs."

They talked about travels, and the Prioress entertained them with manypleasant reminiscences of her young days. She was in high spirits, herold face freshly colored under the lace of her cap. From time to timeshe made use of a little gesture peculiar to her, of daintily scratchingherself here and there with her delicately pointed little finger. "Youare lucky, my little friend," she said to Athena. "To you the world islike a bride, and each particular unveiling is a surprise and a delight.Alas, we, who have celebrated our golden wedding with it, are prudent inour inquisitiveness."

"I should like," said Athena, "to go to India, where the King of Ava isnow fighting the English General Amhurst. He has, Pastor Rosenquist hastold me, tigers with his army, which are taught to fight the enemy alongwith it." In her excited state of mind she overturned her glass,breaking the stem of it, and the wine flowed over the tablecloth.

"I should like," said Boris, who did not want to talk of PastorRosenquist, in whom he suspected an antagonist--beware, his mind toldhim, of people who have in the course of their lives neither taken partin an orgy nor gone through the experience of childbirth, for they aredangerous people--"to go away and live upon a forlorn island, far fromother people. There is nothing for which you feel such a great longingas for the sea. The passion of man for the sea," he went on, his darkeyes on Athena's face, "is unselfish. He cannot cultivate it; its waterhe cannot drink; in it he dies. Still, far from the sea you feel part ofyour own soul dying, disappearing, like a jellyfish thrown on dry land."

"On the sea!" the Prioress cried. "Going on the sea! Ah, never, never."Her deep disgust drove the blood to her face until it became quite pinkand her eyes shone. Boris was impressed, as he had been before, by theintensity of all women's aversion to anything nautical. He had himselfas a boy tried to run away from home to be a sailor. But nothing, hethought, makes a woman flare up in a deadly hostility as quickly as talkof the sea. From the first smell of sea water to the contact with saltedand tarred ropes, they loath and shun it and all its ways; and perhapsthe church might have kept the sex in order by painting them a maritime,an ashen gray and frigid waving hell. For fire they fear not, lookingupon it as an ally to whom they have long done service. But to talk tothem of the sea is like talking of the devil. By the time when the ruleof woman shall have made the land inhabitable to man, he will have totake to the sea for peace, for women will rather die than follow himthere.

A sweet pudding was served to them, and the Prioress, with a neatgourmandise, picked out a few of the cloves in it and ate them. "Thisis a very lovable smell and taste," she said, "and the fragrance of aclove grove unbelievably delightful in the midday sun, or when theevening breeze fans the spiced currents of air all over the land. Try afew of them. It is incense to the stomach."

"Where do they come from, Madame my Aunt?" asked Athena, who, inaccordance with the tradition of the province, was used to address herin this way.

"From Zanzibar," said the Prioress. A gentle melancholy seemed for a fewminutes to sink over her as she sat in deep thought, nibbling at hercloves.

Boris, in the meantime, had been looking at Athena, and had let afantasy take hold of his mind. He thought that she must have a lovely,an exquisitely beautiful, skeleton. She would lie in the ground like apiece of matchless lace, a work of art in ivory, and in a hundred yearsmight be dug up and turn the heads of old archeologists. Every bone wasin place, as finely finished as a violin. Less frivolous than thetraditional old libertine who in his thoughts undresses the women withwhom he sups Boris liberated the maiden of her strong and fresh fleshtogether with her clothes, and imagined that he might be very happy withher, that he might even fall in love with her, could he have her in herbeautiful bones alone. He fancied her thus, creating a sensation onhorseback, or trailing her long dresses through the halls and galleriesat Court, with the famous tiara of her family, now in Poland, upon herpolished skull. Many human relations, he thought, would be infinitelyeasier if they could be carried out in the bones only.

"The King of Ava," said the Prioress, awakening from the soft reverieinto which she had been sunk, "had, in the city of Yandabu--so I havebeen told by those who have been there--a large menagerie. As in all hiscountry he had none but the elephants of India, the Sultan of Zanzibarpresented him with an African elephant, which is much bigger and moremagnificent than the rotund, domesticated Indian beasts. They are indeedwonderful animals. They rule the highlands of East Africa, and the ivorytraders who sell their mighty tusks at the ivory markets have many talesof their strength and ferocity. The elephants of Yandabu and theirherdsmen were terrified of the Sultan's elephant--such as Africa alwaysfrightens Asia--and in the end they made the King have him put in chainsand a barred house built for him in the menagerie. But from that time,on moonlit nights, the whole city of Yandabu began to swarm with theshades of the elephants of Africa, wandering about the place and wavingtheir large shadow-ears in the streets. The natives of Yandabu believedthat these shadow-elephants were able to walk along the bottom of theocean, and to come up beside the landing place of the boats. No peopledared any more be out in the town after dark had fallen. Still theycould not break the cage of the captive elephant.

"The hearts of animals in cages," the Prioress went on, "become grated,as upon a grill, upon the shadow of the bars. Oh, the grated hearts ofcaged animals!" she exclaimed with terrible energy.

"Still," she said after a moment, her face changing, with a littlegiggle at the bottom of her voice, "it served those elephants right.They were great tyrants when in their own country. No other animal couldhave its own way for them."

"And what became of the Sultan's elephant?" Athena asked.

"He died, he died," said the old woman, licking her lips.

"In the cage?" asked Athena.

"Yes. In the cage," the Prioress answered.

Athena laid her folded hands upon the table, with exactly the gesture ofthe old Count after he had read the Prioress's letter. She looked aroundthe room. The bright color sank from her face. The supper was finished,and they had nearly emptied their glasses of port.

"I think, my Aunt," she said, "that with your permission I will now goto bed. I feel very tired."

"What?" said the Prioress. "Indeed you must not deprive us of thepleasure of your company yet, my nutmeg. I was going to withdraw myselfnow, but I want you two old friends to have a little talk on this night.Surely you promised Boris that--the dear boy."

"Yes, but that must be tomorrow morning," Athena said, "for I believethat I have drunk too much of the good wine. Look, my hand is not evensteady when I put it on this table." The Prioress stared at the girl.She probably felt, Boris thought, that she ought not to have talkedabout cages, that she had here made her one faux pas of the evening.

Athena looked at Boris, and he felt that he had obtained this slightsuccess: that she was sorry to part from him. Altogether she probablyrealized that she was making an abrupt retreat from the battle, andregretted it, but under the circumstances she considered it the bestmove. Boris felt her straight glance as a decoration received before thefront. It was not a high decoration, but in this campaign he could notexpect more. The girl bid a very kind good night to the Prioress,curtseyed to her, and was gone.

The Prioress turned in great agitation to her nephew. "Do not let her goaway," she said to him. "Follow her. Take hold of her. Do not waste yourtime."

"Let us leave her alone," said Boris. "That girl has spoken the truth.She will not have me."

The double rebelliousness in the two young people, the happiness ofwhose lives she was arranging, seemed to make the Prioress lose speech,or faith in speech. She and Boris remained together in the room forperhaps five minutes more, and it seemed to Boris, when he afterwardthought of it, that their intercourse had been carried out entirely inpantomime.

The Prioress stood quite still and looked at the young man, and hereally did not know whether within the next seconds she would kill himor kiss him. She did neither. She laughed a little in his face, andfumbling in her pocket she drew out the letter which she had received inthe morning, and gave it to him to read.

This letter was a last deadly blow upon the boy's head. It was writtenby the Prioress's friend, who was the first lady of honor of the DowagerQueen. With deep compassion for his aunt she gave, in very dark colors,the latest news of the capital. His name had been brought up, he hadeven been pointed out particularly by the Court Chaplain, as one of thecorrupters of youth in the case. It was clear that he was at this momentstanding upon the brink of an abyss, and that unless he could get thismarriage of his through, he should fall over and disappear.

He stood for a little while, his face changed by pain. His whole beingrose against being dragged from his star part of the evening, and theelegiac mood of a lover, back to this reality that he loathed. As helooked up to give back the letter to his aunt he found her standingquite close to him. She lifted one hand, keeping her elbow close to herbody, and pointed toward the door.

"Aunt Cathinka," said Boris, "you do not know, perhaps, but there is alimit to the effects of will-power in a man."

The old woman kept staring at him. She stretched out her dry delicatelittle hand and touched him. Her face twisted in a wry little grimace.After a moment she moved around to the back of the room and brought backa bottle and a small glass. Very carefully she filled the glass, handedit to him, and nodded her head two or three times. In sheer despair heemptied it.

The glass was filled with a liquor of the color of very old dark amber.It had an acrid and rank taste. Acrid and rank were also the olddark-amber eyes of the woman, watching him over the rim of the glass. Ashe drank, she laughed. Then she spoke. Boris, strangely enough,afterward remembered these words, which he did not understand: "Help himnow, you good Faru," she said.

When he had left the room, after a second or two she very gently closedthe door after him.

[IX]

Now this might be the hour for tears, to move the proud beauty's heart,Boris thought. He remembered the tales of that gruesome gang ofpilgrims, the old hangmen, who are said to have been wandering overEurope in the twelfth century, visiting the holy places. They carriedwith them the attributes of their trade: thumbscrews, whips, irons andtongs, and these people, it was said, were able to weep whenever theywanted to. "Yes," the boy said to himself, "but I have not hewed up,flayed and fried alive enough people for that. A few I have, of course,as we all have; but I am only a young hangman for all that--a hangman'sapprentice--and the gift of weeping whenever I want to, I have notattained."

He walked down the long white corridor, which led to Athena's room. Ithad on his left hand a row of old portraits of ladies, and on the righta row of tall windows. The floor was laid with black and white marbletiles, and the whole place looked seriously at him in the nocturnallight. He heard his own footfall, fatal to others and to himself. Helooked out of one of the windows as he passed it. The moon stood high inthe heavens, clear and cold, but the trees of the park and the lawns layin a silvery mist. There outside was the whole noble blue universe, fullof things, in which the earth swam onward amongst thousands of stars,some near and others far away. O world, he thought, O rich world. Intohis hot brain was thrown a long-forgotten verse:

Athena, my high mistress, on Apollon's bidding,
Here I come to thee.
Much experienced, and tried in many things.
A house, inhabited by strangers, strangely changed.
Thus have I wandered far on land, and on the sea....

He had come to the door. He turned the handle, and went in.

Of all the memories which afterward Boris carried with him from thisnight, the memory of the transition from the coloring and light of thecorridor to that of the room was the longest lasting.

The Prioress's state guest room was large and square, with windows, uponwhich the curtains were now drawn, on the two walls. The whole room washung with rose silks, and in the depths of it the crimson draperies ofthe four-poster bed glowed in the shade. There were two pink-globedlamps, solicitously lighted by the Prioress's maid. The floor had awine-colored carpet with roses in it, which, near the lamps, seemed tobe drinking in the light, and farther from them looked like pools ofdark crimson into which one would not like to walk. The room was filledwith the scent of incense and flowers. A large bouquet decorated thetable near the bed.

Boris knew at once what it was that he felt like. He had at one time,when he had been on a visit to Madrid, been much addicted to bullfights. He was familiar with the moment when the bull is, from his darkwaiting-room underneath the tribune, rushed into the dazzling sunlightof the arena, with the many hundred eyes around it. So was he himself ina moment hurled from the black and white corridor, of quiet moonlight,into this red atmosphere. His blood leapt up to his brain; he hardlyknew where he was. With failing breath he wondered if this was an effectof the Prioress's love potion. He did not know either whether Athena wasnow to be the disemboweled horse, which would be dragged out of thearena, having no more will of its own, or the matador who was to lay himlow. One or the other she would be--he could meet nobody else in thisplace.

Athena was standing in the middle of the room. She had taken off herfrock and was dressed only in a white chemise and white pantalettes. Shelooked like a sturdy young sailor boy about to swab the deck. She turnedas he came in, and stared at him.

Boris had been afraid, when imagining the development of the situation,that he would not be able to keep himself from laughing. This risibilityof his had before now been his ruin in tender situations. But at themoment he ran no such risk. He was as much in earnest as the girlherself. He had, before he knew where he was, taken hold of one of herwrists and drawn her toward him. Their breaths met and mingled, theywere both baring their teeth a little in a sort of perplexed smile orchallenge.

"Athena," he said, "I have loved you all my life. You know that withoutyou I shall dry up and shrink, there shall be nothing left of me. Stoopto me, throw me back in the deep. Have mercy on me."

For a moment the light-eyed girl stared at him, bewildered. Then shedrew herself up as a snake does when it is ready to strike. That she didnot attempt to cry for help showed him that she had a clearerunderstanding of the situation, and of the fact that she had no friendin the house, than he had given her credit for; or perhaps her youngbroad breast harbored sheer love of combat. The next moment she struckout. Her powerful, swift and direct fist hit him in the mouth andknocked out two of his teeth. The pain and the smell and taste of theblood which filled his mouth sent him beside himself. He let her go totry for a stronger hold, and immediately they were in each other's arms,in an embrace of life and death.

At this same moment Boris's heart leapt up within him and sang aloud,like a bird which swings itself to the top of a tree and there burstsinto song. Nothing happier in all the world could have happened to him.He had not known how this conflict between them was to be solved, butshe had known it; and as a coast sinks around a ship which takes theopen sea, so did all the worries of his life sink around this release ofall his being. His existence up to now had given him very littleopportunity for fury. Now he gave his heart up to the rapture of it. Hissoul laughed like the souls of those old Teutons to whom the lust ofanger was in itself the highest voluptuousness, and who demanded nothingbetter of their paradise than the capacity for being killed once a day.

He could not have fought another young man, were he one of the Einherjarof Valhalla, as he fought this girl. All hunters of big game will knowthat there is a difference between hunting the wild boar or buffalo,however dangerous they may be, and hunting the carnivora, who, ifsuccessful, will eat you up at the end of the contest. Boris, on a visitto his Russian relations, had seen his horse devoured by a pack ofwolves. After that, none of the Prioress's raging wild elephants couldhave called forth the same feeling in him. The old, wild love, whichsympathy cannot grant, which contrast and adversity inspire, filled himaltogether.

If the shadows of the young women who had clung to him, and out of whosesoft arms the fickle lover had torn himself, had been at this momentgathered within the Prioress's rose-colored guest room, they would havefelt the pride of their sex satisfied in the contemplation of his mortalpursuit of this maiden who now strove less to escape than to kill him.They tumbled to and fro for a few seconds, and one of the lamps wasturned over, fell down, and went out. Then the struggle stabilizeditself. They ceased moving and stood clasped together, swaying a littleuntil they found their foothold, the balance of the one so dependentupon and amalgamated with that of the other that neither knew clearlywhere his own body ended and that of his adversary began. They werebreathing hard. Her breath in his face was fragrant as an apple. Theblood kept coming into his mouth.

The girl had no feminine inspiration to scratch or bite. Like a youngshe bear, she relied on her great strength, and in weight she scored alittle. Against his attempts to bend her knees she stood up as straightas a tree. By a sudden movement she got her hands on his throat. He washolding her close to him, her elbows pressed to her sides. Her posturewas that of a warrior, clinging to the hilt of his lifted sword, takinga vital vow. He had not known the power of her hands and wrists. Gaspingfor air, his mouth full of blood, he saw the whole room swaying from oneside to another. Red and black flecks swam in front of him. At thismoment he struck out for a last triumph. He forced her head forward withthe hand that he had at the back of her neck, and pressed his mouth tohers. His teeth grated against her teeth.

Instantly he felt, through his whole body, which was clinging to hersfrom the knees to the lips, the terrible effect which his kiss had onthe girl. She, surely, had never been kissed in her life, she had noteven heard or read of a kiss. The force used against her made her wholebeing rise in a mortal disgust. As if he had run a rapier straightthrough her, the blood sank from her face, her body stiffened in hisarms like that of a slowworm, when you hit it. Then all the strength andsuppleness which he had been fighting seemed to roll back and withdraw,as a wave withdraws from a bather. He saw her eyes grow dim, her face,so close to his, fade to a dead white. She went down so suddenly that hecame down with her, like a drowning man tied to a weight. His face wasthrown against hers.

He got up on his knees, wondering if she were dead. As he found that shewas not, he lifted her, after a moment, with difficulty, and laid herupon her bed. She was indeed now like a stone effigy of a mail-cladknight, felled in battle. Her face had preserved its expression ofdeadly disgust. He watched her for a little while, very still himself.He did not know that his own face had the same expression. Had thethought of the Court Chaplain been with him, had the Court Chaplain beenwith him in the flesh, it could not have stirred him. His spirit hadgone almost as definitely as hers. There was no more effect of the winein him; none, either, of the Prioress's love philter, which perhaps wasnot calculated for more than one great effort. He wiped his bleedingmouth and left the room.

Within his own room and bed he came to wonder whether the maiden would,upon her awakening, lament her lost innocence. He laughed to himself inthe dark, and it seemed to him that a thin, shrill laughter, like to theshoot of hot steam from a boiling kettle, was echoing his own somewherein the great house, in the dark.

[X]

In the morning the Prioress sent for Boris. He was a little frightenedwhen he saw her, for she seemed to have shrunk. She filled up neitherher clothes nor her armchair, and he wondered what sort of night hourshad passed over her head in her lonely bed to have squeezed out herstrength like this. If all this, he thought, is to go on much longer,there will be nothing left of her. But probably I am looking worse thanshe myself. Still, she appeared to be in high spirits, and pleased tohave got hold of him, as if she had been, somehow, in fear that he mighthave run away. She told him to sit down. "I have sent for Athena aswell," she said.

Boris was content that she did not ask him any questions. His mouth hadswelled badly, and hurt him when he had to speak. While waiting hethought of the Vicomte de Valmont, who loved de passion, les mines delendemain. Would the unusual in the circumstances have given thisparticular morrow an additional charm in the eyes of the matter-of-factold conqueror of a hundred years ago? Or was it not more likely that hewould have considered the romantic values of the situation to be allnonsense? Athena's arrival put an end to his reflections.

She was wearing the same great gray cloak in which he had seen her atHopballehus, and seemed about to depart. She did indeed so much give theimpression of having turned her back on Closter Seven, and of beingalready away from it, that he felt somehow left out in the cold. As shelooked slowly around, he was deeply struck by her appearance. She seemedto be well on her way to that purified state of the skeleton in which hehad imagined her on the night before. She had in reality a death's-headupon her strong shoulders. Her eyes, grown paler in themselves, lay inblack holes. She had given up her habit of standing on one leg, as if itnow required both her legs to keep her upright and in balance.Confronted by the Prioress, who had still much keen life in her face,she might well have been an accused in the felon's dock, broughtstraight from the vaults of a dungeon, and from the rack.

Boris at this moment wondered whether it would be better for her that heshould tell her all, and assure her that he had done her no harm andwould not be likely ever to do her any; in fact, that she had come outof their trial of strength with the honors of war. But he thought itwould not. If you prepare yourself, he considered, for lifting a leadenweight, and are deceived by a painted cardboard, your arms come out ofjoint. In his admiration for her skeleton he was the last person to wishthis to happen to her. It was better for her to carry the weight. Thismaiden, he thought, who could not, who would not, be made happy, let hernow have her fill. Like to an artist who has got his statue in thecrucible and finds himself short of metals, and who seizes the gold andsilver from his treasury, from his table, from his women's caskets tohurl it in, so he had thrown his being, body and soul, into the fatalsoundings of her nature. Now she must make out of it what she could.

The Prioress, looking in turn at one and then at the other of the youngpeople, spoke to the girl.

"I have been informed," she said in a dull and hard voice, "by Boris ofwhat has happened here in the night. I do not forgive him. It is ahorrible deed to seduce a maiden. But I know that he was goaded on, andalso that a candid repentance extenuates the crime. But you, Athena, agirl of your blood and your upbringing--what have you done? You, whomust have known your own nature, you ought never to have come here."

"No, no, Madame my Aunt," said Athena, looking straight at the oldwoman, "I came here because you invited me, and you told me that it wasmy duty to come. Now I go away again, and if you do not like to think ofme, you need not."

"Ah, no," said the Prioress, "such a thing you cannot do. It is terribleto me that this has happened within the walls of Closter Seven. You knowme very little if you think that I shall not have it repaired. Would Ishow so little friendship toward your father, who is a nobleman? Tillthis wrong has been expiated, you shall not depart."

Athena first seemed to let this pass for what it was worth and did notanswer. Then she asked: "How is it to be repaired?"

"We must be thankful," said the Prioress, "that Boris, guilty as he be,has still a sense of duty left. He will marry you even now." With thesewords she shot at her nephew a little hard and shining glance, whichstartled him, as if she had touched him once more.

"Yes, but I will not marry him," said Athena.

The Prioress had by now a highly glowing color in her face. "How is it,"she asked in a shrill voice, "that you refuse an honorable offer, ofwhich your father approves, to accept, in the middle of the night, thelove that you had rejected?"

"I do not think," said Athena, "that it matters whether a thing happensin the day or the night."

"And if you have a child?" cried the Prioress.

"What!" said Athena.

The Prioress subdued her blazing passion with a wonderful strength ofspirit. "I pity you as much as I condemn you," she said. "And if youhave a child, unfortunate girl?"

Athena's world was evidently tumbling down to the right and left of her,like a position under heavy gun fire, but still she stood up straight."What?" she asked. "Shall I have a child from that?"

The old woman looked hard at her. "Athena," she said after a moment,with the first particle of gentleness which she had, during theconversation, shown toward the girl, "the last thing I wish is todestroy what innocence you may still have left. But it is more thanlikely that you will have a child."

"If I have a child," said Athena, from her quaking earth thrusting atthe heavens, "my father will teach him astronomy."

Boris leaned his elbow on the table and his face in his hand to hide it.For the life of him he could not help laughing. This deadly pale andstill maiden was not beaten. A good deal of her pallor and immobilitymight be due to the wine and the exertion of the night, and God onlyknew if they would ever get her into their power. She had in her themagnet, the maelstrom quality of drawing everything which came insideher circle of consciousness into her own being and making it one withherself. It was a capacity, he thought, which had very likely been acharacteristic of the martyrs, and which may well have aggravated theGreat Inquisitor, and even the Emperor Nero himself, to the brink ofmadness. The tortures, the stake, the lions, they made their own, andthereby conveyed to them a great harmonious beauty; but the torturerthey left outside. No matter what efforts he made to possess them, theystood in no relation to him, and in fact deprived him of existence. Theywere like the lion's den, into which all tracks were seen to lead, whilenone came out; or like the river, which drowns blood or filth in its ownbeing, and flows on. Here, just as the conquering old woman and youngman had believed the situation to be closing around her, the girl wasabout to ride away from Closter Seven, like to Samson when he liftedupon his shoulders the doors of Gazi, the two posts, bars and all, andcarried them to the top of the hill that is before Hebron. And if sheshould really become aware of him, would the giant's daughter, hewondered, carry him with her upon the palm of her hand to Hopballehus,and make him groom her unicorns? Again a verse from Euripides ranthrough his head, and he felt that it must be the wine of the previousnight and the whole agitation around him which now caused him, in thisway, to mix up the classics with Scripture and with the legends of hisprovince, for ordinarily he did not do that sort of thing:

Oh, Pallas, savior of my house, I was bereft
of Fatherland, and thou hast given me a home again therein.
It shall be said
in Hellas: Lo, the man is an Argive once more,
and dwells again within his father's heritance....

"And what of the honor of your house?" asked the Prioress with a deadlycalm, "Who do you think, Athena, of the daughters of Hopballehus, has,before you, been breeding bastards?"

At these words all Athena's blood rushed to her face until it flameddarker than her flaming hair. She took a step toward the old lady.

"My child," she cried in a low tone, but with the lioness's roar deepwithin her voice, from head to foot the offended daughter of a mightyrace, "would my child be that?"

"You are ignorant, Athena," said the old woman. "Unless Boris marriesyou, what can your child be but a bastard?" Brave as the Prioress was,she probably realized that the girl, if she wished to, could crush herbetween her fingers. She kept her quick eyes on Boris, who did not feelcalled upon to interfere in the women's discussion of his child.

Athena did not move. She stood for a few moments quite still. "Now," shesaid at length, "I will go back to Hopballehus, and speak with myfather, and ask his advice about all this."

"No," said the Prioress again, "that is not as it should be. If you tellyour father of what you have done, you will break his heart. I will notlet that happen. And who knows, if you go now, if Boris will still beready to marry you when you meet again? No, Athena, you must marryBoris, and you must never let your father know of what has happenedhere. These two things you shall promise me. Then you can go."

"Good," said Athena. "I will never tell Papa of anything. And as toBoris, I promise you that I shall marry him. But, Madame my Aunt, whenwe are married, and whenever I can do so, I shall kill him. I came nearto killing him last night, he can tell you that. These three things Ipromise you. Then I will go."

After Athena's words there was a long pause. The three people in theroom had enough in their own thoughts, without speech, to occupy them.

In this silence was heard a hard and sharp knocking upon the pane of oneof the windows. Boris now realized that he had heard it before, duringthe course of their talk, without paying any attention to it. Now it wasrepeated three or four times.

He became really aware of it at sight of the extraordinary effect whichthe sound had upon his aunt. She had, like himself, been too absorbed inthe debate to listen. Now it attracted her attention and she wasimmediately struck by a deadly terror. She glanced toward the window andgrew white as a corpse. Her arms and legs moved in little jerks, hereyes darted up and down the walls, like a rat that is shut up and cannotget out. Boris turned to the window to find out what was frighteningher. He had not known that anything could really do so. Upon the stonesill outside, the monkey was crouching together, its face close to theglass.

He rose to open the window for it. "No! No!" shrieked the old woman in aparoxysm of horror. The knocking went on. The monkey obviously hadsomething in its hand with which it was beating against the pane. ThePrioress got up from her chair. She swayed in raising herself, but onceon her legs she seemed alert and ready to run. But at the next momentthe glass of the window fell crashing to the floor, and the monkeyjumped into the room.

Instantly, without looking around, as if escaping from the flames of anadvancing fire, the Prioress, gathering up the front of her silk frockwith her two hands, ran, threw herself, toward the door. On finding itclosed, she did not give herself time to open it. With the mostsurprising, most wonderful, lightness and swiftness she heaved herselfstraight up along the frame, and at the next moment was sitting squeezedtogether upon the sculptured cornice, shivering in a horrible passion,and grinding her teeth at the party on the floor. But the monkeyfollowed her. As quickly as she had done it, it squirmed up the doorcaseand was stretching out its hand to seize her when she deftly slid downthe opposite side of the doorframe. Still holding her frock with bothhands, and bending double, as if ready to drop on all fours, madly, asif blinded by fright, she dashed along the wall. But still the monkeyfollowed her, and it was quicker than she. It jumped upon her, got holdof her lace cap, and tore it from her head. The face which she turnedtoward the young people was already transformed, shriveled and wrinkled,and of dark-brown color. There was a few moments' wild whirling fight.Boris made a movement to throw himself into it, to save his aunt. Butalready at the next moment, in the middle of the red damask parlor,under the eyes of the old powdered general and his wife, in the broaddaylight and before their eyes, a change, a metamorphosis, was takingplace and was consummated.

The old woman with whom they had been talking was, writhing anddisheveled, forced to the floor; she was scrunched and changed. Whereshe had been, a monkey was now crouching and whining, altogether beaten,trying to take refuge in a corner of the room. And where the monkey hadbeen jumping about, rose, a little out of breath from the effort, herface still a deep rose, the true Prioress of Closter Seven.

The monkey crawled into the shade of the back of the room and for alittle while continued its whimpering and twitching. Then, shaking offits misfortunes, it jumped in a light and graceful leap onto a pedestal,which supported the marble head of the philosopher Immanuel Kant, andfrom there it watched, with its glittering eyes, the behavior of thethree people in the room.

The Prioress took up her little handkerchief and held it to her eyes.For a few minutes she found no words, but her deportment was as quietlydignified and kindly as the young people had always remembered it.

They had been following the course of events, too much paralyzed bysurprise to speak, move, or even look at each other. Now, as out of theterrible tornado which had been reigning in the room, calm was againdescending, they found themselves close to each other. They turnedaround and looked into each other's faces.

This time Athena's luciferous eyes within their deep dark sockets didnot exactly take Boris into possession. She was aware of him as a beingoutside herself; even the memory of their fight was clearly to be foundin her clear limpid gaze. But she was, in this look, laying down anotherlaw, a command which was not to be broken: from now, between, on the oneside, her and him, who had been present together at the happenings ofthe last minutes, and, on the other side, the rest of the world, whichhad not been there, an insurmountable line would be forever drawn.

The Prioress lowered the handkerchief from her face, and in a soft andsweeping movement sat down in her large armchair. She looked at theyoung man and the girl.

"Discite justitiam, et non temnere divos," she said.

The Roads Round Pisa

I. The Smelling-Bottle

Count Augustus von Schimmelmann, a young Danish nobleman of a melancholydisposition, who would have been very good-looking if he had not been alittle too fat, was writing a letter on a table made out of a millstonein the garden of an osteria near Pisa on a fine May evening of 1823.He could not get it finished, so he got up and went for a stroll downthe highroad while the people of the inn were getting his supper readyinside. The sun was nearly down. Its golden rays fell in between thetall poplars along the road. The air was warm and pure and filled withthe sweet smell of grass and trees, and innumerable swallows werecruising about high and low, as if wanting to make the most of the lasthalf-hour of daylight.

Count Augustus's thoughts were still with his letter. It was addressedto a friend in Germany, a schoolfellow of his happy student days inIngolstadt, and the only person to whom he could open his heart. Buthave I been, he thought, really truthful in my letter to him? I wouldgive a year of my life to be able to talk to him tonight and, whiletalking, to watch his face. How difficult it is to know the truth. Iwonder if it is really possible to be absolutely truthful when you arealone. Truth, like time, is an idea arising from, and dependent upon,human intercourse. What is the truth about a mountain in Africa that hasno name and not even a footpath across it? The truth about this road isthat it leads to Pisa, and the truth about Pisa can be found withinbooks written and read by human beings. What is the truth about a man ona desert island? And I, I am like a man on a desert island. When I was astudent my friends used to laugh at me because I was in the habit oflooking at myself in the looking-glasses, and had my own rooms decoratedwith mirrors. They attributed this to personal vanity. But it was notreally so. I looked into the glasses to see what I was like. A glasstells you the truth about yourself. With a shudder of disgust heremembered how he had been taken, as a child, to see the mirror-room ofthe Panoptikon, in Copenhagen, where you see yourself reflected, to theright and the left, in the ceiling and even on the floor, in a hundredglasses each of which distorts and perverts your face and figure in adifferent way--shortening, lengthening, broadening, compressing theirshape, and still keeping some sort of likeness--and thought how muchthis was like real life. So your own self, your personality andexistence are reflected within the mind of each of the people whom youmeet and live with, into a likeness, a caricature of yourself, whichstill lives on and pretends to be, in some way, the truth about you.Even a flattering picture is a caricature and a lie. A friendly andsympathetic mind, like Karl's, he thought, is like a true mirror to thesoul, and that is what made his friendship so precious to me. Love oughtto be even more so. It ought to mean, along the roads of life, thecompanionship of another mind, reflecting your own fortune andmisfortunes, and proving to you that all is not a dream. The idea ofmarriage has been to me the presence in my life of a person with whom Icould talk, tomorrow, of the things that happened yesterday.

He sighed, and his thoughts returned to his letter. There he had triedto explain to his friend the reasons that had driven him from his home.He had the misfortune to have a very jealous wife. It is not, hethought, that she is jealous of other women. In fact she is that leastof all, and the reason is, first, that she knows that she can hold herown with most of them, being the most charming and accomplished of themall; secondly, that she feels how little they mean to me. Karl himselfwill remember that the little adventures which I had at Ingolstadt meantless to me than the opera, when a company of singers came along and gaveus Alceste or Don Giovanni--less even than my studies. But she isjealous of my friends, of my dogs, of the forests of Lindenburg, of myguns and books. She is jealous of the most absurd things.

He remembered something that had happened some six months after hiswedding. He had come into his wife's room to bring her a pair ofeardrops which he had made a friend in Paris buy for him from the estateof the Duke of Berri. He had always been fond of jewels himself, and hadgood knowledge of their quality and cut. It had even at times annoyedhim that men should not be free to wear them, and after his marriage ithad given him pleasure to make them set off the beauty of his youngwife, who wore them so well. These were very fine, and he had been sopleased to have got them that he had fastened them in her ears himself,and held up the mirror for her to see them. She watched him, and wasaware that his eyes were on the diamonds and not on her face. Shequickly took them off and handed them to him. "I am afraid," she said,with dry eyes more tragic than if they had been filled with tears, "thatI have not your taste for pretty things." From that day she had given upwearing jewels, and had adopted a style of dress as severe as that of anun, and she was so elegant and graceful that she had created asensation and made a whole school of imitators.

Can I make Karl understand, Augustus thought, that she is indeed jealousof her own jewels? Surely nobody can understand such folly. I know thatI do not understand her myself, and I often think that I make her asunhappy as she makes me. I had hoped to find, in my wife, somebody towhom I could be perfectly truthful, with whom I could share every motionof my mind. But with Malvina that is the most impossible thing of all.She has made me lie to her twenty times a day, and deceive her even inlooks and voice. No, I am certain that it could not go on, and that Ihave been right in leaving her, for while I was with her it would havebeen the same thing always.

But what will happen to me now? I do not know what to do with myself ormy life. Can I trust to fate to hold out a helping hand to me just foronce?

He took a small object from his waistcoat pocket and looked at it. Itwas a smelling-bottle, such as ladies of an earlier generation had beenwont to use, made in the shape of a heart. It had painted on it alandscape with large trees and a bridge across a river. In thebackground, on a high hill or rock, was a pink castle with a tower, andon a ribbon below it all was written Amitié sincère.

He smiled as he thought that this little bottle had played its part inmaking him go to Italy. It had belonged to a maiden aunt of hisfather's, who had been the beauty of her time, and to whom he had beendevoted. As a girl she had traveled in Italy, and had been a guest inthat same rose-colored palace, and every dream of romance and adventurewas in her mind attached to it. She had faith in her littlesmelling-bottle, thinking that it would cure any ache of the teeth orthe heart. When he had been a little boy he had shared these fancies ofhers, and had himself made up tales of the beautiful things to be foundin the house and the happy life to be led there. Now that she was manyyears dead, nobody would know where it was to be found. Perhaps, hethought, some day I shall come across the bridge under the trees and seethe rock and the castle before me.

How mysterious and difficult it is to live, he thought, and what does itall mean? Why does my life seem to me so terribly important, moreimportant than anything that has ever happened? Perhaps in a hundredyears people will be reading about me, and about my sadness tonight, andthink it only entertaining, if even that.

II. The Accident

At that moment he was interrupted in his thoughts by a terrible noisebehind him. He turned around and the sinking sun shone straight into hiseyes so that he was blinded and for a few seconds saw the world as allsilver, gold and flames. In a cloud of dust a large coach was comingtoward him at a terrifying speed, the horses running in a wild gallopand hurling the carriage from one side of the road to the other. Whilehe was looking at it he seemed to see two human forms being whirled downand out. They were, in fact, the coachman and lackey who were thrownfrom their seats to the road. For a moment Augustus thought of throwinghimself in the way of the horses to stop them, but before the carriagereached him something gave way; first one and then the other of thehorses detached itself from the carriage and came galloping past him.The carriage was thrown to one side of the road, stopping dead there,with one of the back wheels off. He ran toward it.

Leaning against the seat of the smashed carriage now lying in the dustwas a bald old man with a refined face and a large nose. He staredstraight at Augustus, but was so deadly pale and kept so still thatAugustus wondered if he had not really been killed after all. "Allow meto help you, Sir," Augustus said. "You have had a horrible accident, butI hope you are not badly hurt." The old man looked at him as before,with bewildered eyes.

A broad young woman who had sat in the opposite seat and had been throwndown on her hands and knees between cushions and boxes, now begandisentangling herself with loud lamentations. The old man turned hiseyes upon her. "Put on my bonnet," he said. The maid, as Augustus foundher to be, after some struggle got hold of a large bonnet with ostrichfeathers, and managed to get it fixed on the old bald head. Fastenedinside the bonnet was an abundance of silvery curls, and in a moment theold man was transformed into a fine old lady of imposing appearance. Thebonnet seemed to set her at ease. She even found the shadow of a sweetand thankful smile for Augustus.

The coachman now came running up, all covered with dust, while thelackey was still lying in a dead faint in the middle of the road. Alsothe people of the osteria had come out with uplifted arms and loudexclamations of sympathy. One of them brought one of the horses back,and at a distance two peasants were seen trying to get hold of theother. Between them they carried the old lady out of the wreckage of thecoach and into the best bedroom of the inn, which was adorned with anenormous bed with red curtains. She was still pale as a corpse, andbreathed with difficulty. Her right arm seemed to have been broken abovethe wrist, but what other injuries she had received they could not tell.The maid, who had large round eyes like big black buttons, turned towardAugustus and asked: "Are you a doctor?"

"No," said the old lady from the bed, in a very faint voice, hoarse withpain. "No, he is neither a doctor nor a priest, of which I want none. Heis a nobleman, and that is the only person I need. Leave the room, allof you, and let me speak to him alone."

When they were alone her face changed and she shut her eyes; then shetold him to come nearer and asked his name. "Count," she said, after ashort silence, "do you believe in God?"

Such a direct question threw Augustus into confusion, but as he foundher pale old eyes fixed on him, he answered: "That was in fact the veryquestion which I was asking myself at the moment when your horses ranaway. I cannot tell."

"There is a God," she said, "and even very young people will realize itsome day. I am going to die," she went on, "but I cannot, I will not,die till I have seen my granddaughter once more. Will you, as a man ofnoble birth and high mind, undertake to find her and bring her here?"She paused, and a strange series of expressions passed over her face."Tell her," she said, "that I cannot lift my right hand, and that I willbless her."

Augustus, after wondering a moment, asked her where the young lady couldbe found. "She is in Pisa," said the grandmother, "and her name is DonnaRosina di Gampocorta. If you had been in the country nine months ago youwould have known her name, for then nobody talked of anything else." Shespoke so feebly that he had to keep his head close to her pillow, andfor a moment he thought that all was over. Then she seemed to collecther strength. Her voice changed and became at times very high and clear,but he was not sure that she saw him or knew where she was. A faintcolor rose into her cheeks; her eyelids, like thick crape, trembledslightly. Strange and deep emotions seemed to shake her whole being. "Iwill tell you my whole story," she said, "so that you will understandwhat I want you to do for me."

III. The Old Lady's Story

"I am an old woman," she said, "and I know the world. I do not cling toit, for I know enough about it to realize that whatever you cling towill either patronize you or get tired of you. I do not even cling toGod, for that same reason. Do not pretend to be sorry for me because Iam going to die, for I feel that it is really more comme il faut to bedead than alive.

"I have had lovers, a husband, hundreds of friends and admirers. I havemyself in my life loved three people, and of those I have now only oneleft, this girl Rosina.

"Her mother was not my own child--I was her stepmother. But we were moredevoted to each other than any mother and daughter ever have been. Itwas all meant to be so, for from my girlhood I have had the greatestterror of childbearing, and when I was demanded in marriage by awidower, whose first wife had died in childbirth, I made it a conditionthat I should never bear him any children myself, and because of mybeauty and wealth he agreed. The girl Anna was so lovely that I havewith my own eyes seen the statue of St. Joseph at the Basilica turn hishead to look at her, remembering the appearance of the Virgin at thetime that they were betrothed. Her feet were like swan's bills, and theshoemaker made us our shoes over the same last. I brought her up to knowthat a woman's beauty is the crowning masterpiece of God, and is not tobe given away, but when she was seventeen years old she fell in lovewith a man, a soldier, at that--for this was the time of the wars of theFrench and their dreadful Emperor. She married him and followed him, anda year later she died in great agonies, like her mother.

"Though I have never had it in me really to care for any male, I hadhoped that the child would be a boy. But it was a girl, and she wasgiven into my care, for her father could not stand the sight of her, andin fact he died of a broken heart only a few months later, leaving herthe heiress of his great riches, of which most was booty of war.

"Now as my granddaughter grew up, you will understand that I was all thetime thinking of how I could best arrange the future for her. Did I saythat her mother's beauty was the Almighty's highest work? No, it provedto be but his probation work, Rosina herself being the masterpiece ofhis craft. She was so fair that it was said in Pisa that when she drankred wine you could follow its course as it ran down her throat andchest. I did not want her to marry, so I was for a long time wellpleased to see the hardness and contempt that the child showed towardall men, and especially toward the brilliant young swains who surroundedher with their adoration. But I was getting old, and I did not want todie and leave her alone in the world, either. Upon the morning of herseventeenth birthday I took to the Church of Santa Maria della Spina agreat treasure that had been in my mother's family for many hundredyears, a belt of chastity that one of her ancestors had had made inSpain when he went to fight the infidels. And because his wife was aniece of St. Ferdinand of Castile, it was set with crosses of rubies.This I gave so that the saints should help me to think of what to do.

"That same evening I gave a great ball, at which the Prince Pozentianisaw Rosina, and applied for her hand. Now I will ask you, Count, wasthis not an answer to my prayer? For the Prince was a magnificent match.He is today the richest man in the province, for it is well known thathis family can never keep their hands from making money in one way oranother. Although he is a little advanced in years he is the mostcharming person, a Mæcenas, a man of refined tastes and many talents,and an old friend of mine. And I knew also that a caprice of nature hadmade him, although an admirer of our sex, incapable of being a lover ora husband. It was his vanity or his weakness not to like this to beknown, and he used to keep the most expensive courtesans with him, andpeople were afraid of him, so that the secret did not get out. But Ihappened to know, because he had at a time many years ago been one of mygreatest admirers, and I had liked him very much. I was so happy andthankful that I saw my own face smile to me in the mirror, like the faceof a blessed spirit.

"The child Rosina herself was pleased with the Prince's proposal, andfor a time she liked him very much because of his wit and charmingmanners and the rich gifts which he showered upon her. The betrothal hadbeen announced when one night, after I had already retired to bed,Rosina came into my room in her frock of high-red satin. She stood inthe light of the candles, as lovely as the young St. Michele himselfcommanding the heavenly hosts, and told me, as if it might have beenwelcome news to me, that she had fallen in love with her cousin Mario,and would never marry anybody but him. Already at that moment I felt myheart faint within me. But I controlled my face, and only reminded herthat the Prince was a deadly shot, and that, whatever she thought of hercousin, she had better keep him out of his way if she really liked him.She only answered as if she had been in love with death itself.

"I did not dislike Mario, for I have always had a curious weakness formy husband's family, although they have all in them a sort ofeccentricity, which has in this boy come out in a passion for astronomy.But as a husband he could not be compared to the Prince, and moreover Ihad only to see Rosina and him together to realize that any weakness ofmine here would, within nine months, lead her straight into her mother'stomb. Rosina had had her head turned by the Prince's flatteries. Sheimagined that should she want the moon, she was to have it, much moreher young cousin. When I saw her holding on to her fancy I took herbefore me and explained to her the facts of life. But God alone knowswhat has come over the generation of women who have been born after theRevolution of the French and the novels of that woman de Staël--wealth,position and a tolerant husband are not enough to them, they want tomake love as we took the Sacrament."

Here the old lady interrupted her tale. "Are you married?" she asked.

"Yes, I am married," the young man answered her.

"I need not then," she went on, as if satisfied with the accent of hisreply, "develop to you the folly of these ideas. Rosina was so obstinatethat I could not reason with her. If in the end she had told me thatwhat she wanted was to have nine children, I should not have beensurprised.

"I have arrived at an age when I cannot very well stand to be crossed. Igot furious with her, as furious as I would have been with a brigandwhom I had seen slinging her over his horse to carry her off to wildmountains. I told the Prince that we must hurry with the wedding, and Ikept Rosina shut up in the house. I lived through these months in such astate of deadly worry that I hardly ever slept, and each night was likea journey around the world.

"Rosina had a friend, Agnese della Gherardesci, whom all her life shehad loved next to me. Once, when the girls were doing needleworktogether, they had pricked their fingers, mixed their blood, and vowedsisterhood. This girl had been allowed to grow up wild and had become areal child of the age. She got into her head the notion that she lookedlike the Milord Byron, of whom so much is talked, and she used to dressand ride as a man, and to write poetry. To make Rosina happier I madeAgnese come and stay with her the last week before the wedding. Butthere is a demon in girls when they believe a love affair to be atstake, and I think that she managed somehow to bring letters to Mario.

"On the morning before the wedding, when the Prince and I thought thatall was safe, Agnese got hold of a hackney coach, Rosina slipped out ofthe house and got into it, and they started on the road to Pisa. Afaithful maid gave them away to me, and I got into my own coach andfollowed them at once. By midday I overtook the miserable littlecarriage on the road, Agnese driving it, dressed in a coachman's cloak,and the horses ready to drop, while mine were as fresh as ever.

"When Rosina saw me approaching at full speed she got out, and I also,when I came up to her, descended on the road, but neither of us spoke aword. I took her into my coach, paying no attention whatever to herfriend, and told my coachman to turn back. On that road there is alittle chapel amongst some trees. As we came up to it Rosina asked mefor permission to stop the coach and enter it for a moment. I said tomyself, 'She is going to make a vow of some sort,' and I got out andwent with her into the little church. But in that dark room, smellingfrom the cold incense, I felt with despair that the heart of a maid is adark church, a place of mystery, and that it is no use for an old womanto try to find her way in it. Rosina went straight to the altar anddropped on her knees. She looked into the face of the Virgin and thenwalked up, as if I had been an old peasant woman praying in the chapelon my own. I was in great pain, since for the life of me I could notmake up a prayer. It was as if I had been informed that the Virgin andthe saints had gone deaf. When I came out and saw her standing besidethe coach looking toward Pisa, I spoke to her. 'I know, if you do not,'I said, 'what madness it is to let the thought of any man come betweenyou and me. Now, I can make a vow as well as you can. As I hope that weshall some day walk together in paradise, I swear that as long as I canlift my right hand I am not going to give my blessing to any marriage ofyours, except with the Prince.' Rosina looked at me and courtesied aswhen she was a child, and never spoke. The next day the marriage wascelebrated with much splendor.

"A month after the wedding Rosina petitioned the Pope for an annulmentof her marriage on the ground that it had not been consummated.

"This was a very great scandal. The Prince had mighty friends and shewas all alone to begin with, and quite young and inexperienced; but sheheld out with a wonderful strength till in the end it was the only thingthat anybody talked about, and she got the whole people with her. ThePrince was not popular, mostly on account of his unhappy passion formoney; and romance, you will know, appeals to the lower classes. Theyended by looking upon her as some sort of saint, and when she had atlast been assisted to get to Rome, the population there surrounded herin the streets and applauded her as if she had been a prima donna of theopera. The Prince behaved like a fool and used his influence to chaseMario out of Pisa, which under the circumstances was probably the moststupid thing he could have done, and he mocked the church and shockedthe people.

"Rosina threw herself at the feet of the Holy Father with hercertificates from all the doctors and midwives of Rome. The Prince felldown like dead when he was told about it, and for three days could notspeak. He had to shut the windows so as not to hear them sing in thestreets about the Virgin of Pisa, and would keep on biting his fingerswhile imagining the happiness of the young people--at which I think thathe would be good--for as soon as she had the Pope's letter of annulmentthey were married.

"During all this time, while I had heard the very air around me hummingwith her name, I had refused to see her, and had tried not to think ofher. But what is there left in the world to take an old woman's mind offthe things she has thought about for seventeen years, when she does notwant to think about them any longer?

"Two months ago I was told that my granddaughter was to have a child.Although I had of course been prepared for this, it was like the lastblow to me. It nearly killed me. I thought of her mother and of my vow.I failed to believe in the saints any longer. Rosina's picture wasbefore me day and night as she had looked in the chapel, and my heartwas filled with such bitterness as it is not right that a woman shallendure at my time of life. In the end I gave up thinking of paradise,for I thought that a hundred years there would not be worth a weekwithin her house in Italy. For a long time I have been too ill totravel, but yesterday I set out for Pisa.

"Now, my friend, you have heard all my story, and I leave it to you tomake your reflections upon the ways of providence."

Here she made a long pause. When, frightened by it, he looked up at herface, he saw that it had fallen. She seemed to have shrunk, but beneathher waxen eyelids her clear eyes were still fixed upon his face.

"I am ready to leave this world," she said. "It must by now know me byheart as I know it. We have nothing more to say to each other. It seemscurious to me myself that I should still feel so much affection for, andtake so much interest in, this old Carlotta de Gampocorta, who will soonhave disappeared altogether, that I cannot let her go out without givingher the chance of assembling, and forgiving, those who have trespassedagainst her. But what will you--habits are not easily changed at my age.Will you go and find her for me?"

Her left arm moved on the sheet as if trying to reach his hand. Augustustouched the cold fingers. "I am at your service, Madame," he said. Shedrew a deep sigh and closed her eyes. He hastened to get hold of thedoctor, who had been sent for from the village.

He ordered his servants to have everything ready for an early start inthe morning, and as he wanted to get his letter off before leaving, hetook it up again to finish it. On reading through his reflections onlife, he thought that their sadness might upset his good Karl, so hetook his pen and added two lines out of Goethe's Faust, a favoritequotation of his friend's, by which he had many times, in Ingolstadt,closed one of their discussions:

A good man, through obscurest aspirations,
Has still the instinct of the one true way....

And half smiling, he sealed the letter.

IV. The Young Lady's Sorrows

At the next inn to which he came--which was the last before Pisa, andhad more houses, carts and people around it, so that one felt already inthe air the nearness of a great town--a phaëton drove up just in frontof Augustus, from which descended a slim young man in a large dark cloakand an old major-domo who looked like Pantalone. It was getting dark. Afew stars had sprung out upon the deep blue sky, and there was a slightbreeze in the air. Augustus had that feeling of being really on the roadin which lies so much of the happiness of all true travelers. He hadpassed so many wayfarers in the course of the day--riders on horses anddonkeys, coaches, oxcarts and mule carts--that there seemed to be adirection in life, and it would be strange if there should be none forhim. The lamplight, the noise, and the smell of wood-smoke, grease andcheese from the house pleased him. The air of Italy seemed to have comedown from mountains and across rivers to lay itself gently against hisface.

The osteria had at one time been the lodge of a great villa; it had alarge fine room with frescoes on the walls. Entering it, he found theold landlord with two attendants laying the table at the open window,and at the same time having a heated discussion, from which the old mantore himself away to welcome the guest and assure him that he would doanything to make him happy. But all these honored guests arriving at thesame moment, unexpected; to a house so keen to maintain its renomménearly overwhelmed him. For Prince Pozentiani was arriving within halfan hour, and with him his young friend, the Prince Giovanni Gastone.These were people who could judge a meal, and they had ordered quails,but the cook had made a mistake in the cooking. Augustus asked if theboy whom he had just seen arrive would be the Prince Giovanni. Ah, no,said the old man, that undoubtedly was another rich and fastidiouscustomer. But was it possible that the Milord had never heard of PrinceNino? He was such a young man the like of whom one would not findoutside of Tuscany. When he was a baby his beauty had made him the modelof the infant Jesus on the painting in the cathedral. Wherever he wentthe people loved him. For he was a patriot, a true son of Tuscany.Though he had been sent by his ambitious mother to the courts of bothVienna and St. Petersburg, he had come back unwilling to speak anylanguage but that of the great poets. His palazzi were run in the oldTuscan manner: he kept an orchestra to play Italian music only; he ranhis horses in the classical races; and when his vintage was finished,the festivals--at which the old dances were performed, the virgins ofthe villages pressed the grapes, naked, and the improvvisatori recitedin the old way--called back the ancient happy days.

With a greasy towel under his arm and his little black eyes upon everymovement of the servants, the old man had still sufficient vivacity ofspirit to entertain his foreign guest with great charm. Had not PrinceNino, when a German singer had the audacity to appear in Cimarosa'sopera, Ballerina Amante, chased him off the stage and himself sung theentire part to an enraptured audience? As to the fair sex--here thebroad face of the landlord seemed to draw itself together actually intoa point, so concentrated did it become in the communication--the Milordmust know for himself, if they choose to throw themselves in the way ofa man, what is it possible for him to do? And even there he had shownhimself a true son of his country. For he might have married anarchduchess, and the sister of the Czar of Russia herself had gone madwith love of him when he had been at the Court of St. Petersburg, but hehad quoted the exquisite Redi in his Bacco in Tuscany, saying thatonly the barrels of the wine of Tuscany should come to groan under hiscaresses. Also it was said that the husbands of Tuscany did not alwaysmind his invincibility as much as one would have thought, for a womanwho had belonged to Prince Nino would never afterward condescend to takeanother lover, and more than one coquettish lady had, when he had lefther, settled down to her husband and her memories. It was a great pitythat the way in which he had scattered the riches of his house, and evenof his mother, had delivered him to the mercy of the old PrincePozentiani, who lent out money. It was said that of late he had changed.He had been known to say that a miracle had crossed his way and made himbelieve in miracles. Some people thought that the sainted QueenMathilda, of his own house, had shown herself to him in a dream andturned his heart from this world. Here one of the waiters made such agrave mistake in the laying of the table that the old man, as in aterrific spiritual bound, flew off from the conversation. He came back alittle later, smiling but silent, with the wine that Augustus hadordered, and left him to it with a deep bow.

Two old priests sat over their wine near the glowing coals on thefireplace, which shone on their greasy black frocks, and the boy who haddriven the phaëton was thoughtfully drinking coffee out of a glass whichhis old servant brought him, on a low seat under a picture of the angelsvisiting Abraham. His young figure there was so graceful that Augustus,always an admirer of beauty, and finding in his pure pensive face alikeness to his friend Karl's as a boy, found his eyes wandering back toit. When the old major-domo, returning, reported on a quarrel betweenthe young man's groom and his own over the best stabling places,Augustus profited by the opportunity to ask him a few questions aboutthe road to Pisa, and prayed him to have a glass of wine with him. Theboy very courteously declined, saying that he never drank wine, butfinding that Augustus was a foreigner and ignorant of the road, he satdown with him for a moment to give him the information he wanted. Whiletalking, the youth rested his left arm on the table, and Augustus,looking at it, thought how plainly one must realize, in meeting thepeople of this country, that they had been living in marble palaces andwriting about philosophy while his own ancestors in the large forestshad been making themselves weapons of stone and had dressed in the fursof the bears whose warm blood they drank. To form a hand and wrist likethese must surely take a thousand years, he reflected. In Denmarkeverybody has thick ankles and wrists, and the higher up you go, thethicker they are.

The boy colored with pleasure on learning that Augustus came fromDenmark, and told him that he was the first person from the country ofPrince Hamlet that he had ever met. He appeared to know the Englishtragedy very well, and talked as if Augustus must have come straightfrom the court of King Claudius. His Italian courtesy kept him fromdwelling upon the tragic happenings, as if Ophelia might have been therecently lost cousin of the other young man, but he quoted the soliloquywith great charm, and said that he had often in his thoughts stood atElsinore, upon the dreadful summit of the cliff that beetles o'er hisbase into the sea. Augustus did not want to tell him that Elsinore isquite flat, so asked him instead if he did not write poetry himself.

"Ah, no," said the boy, shaking his soft brown curls, "I used to, but Igave it up a year ago."

"You were wrong, I think," said Augustus, smiling. "Surely poetry is oneof the delights of life, and helps us to endure the monotony of theworld."

The boy seemed to feel that he had here met a brother or friend of theunhappy Danish Prince, and to open his heart to the stranger on thisaccount.

"Something happened to me," he said after a short silence, "that I couldnot turn into poetry. I have written both comedies and tragedies, but Icould not fit it into either." Again after a short pause he added: "I amnow going to Pisa to study astronomy."

He had a grave and friendly manner that attracted Augustus, who hadhimself at Ingolstadt given much time to the study of the stars. Theytalked for some time of them, and he told the boy how the great Danishastronomer Tycho Brahe had ordered at Augsburg the construction of anineteen-foot quadrant and of a celestial globe five feet in diameter.

"I want to study astronomy," said the boy, "because I can no longerstand the thought of time. It feels like a prison to me, and if I couldonly get away from it altogether I think I should be happy."

"I have thought that myself," Augustus said pensively, "and still I havereflected that if at any single moment of our lives, even such as weourselves call the happiest, we were told that it was to go on forever,we would conclude that we had been brought, not to eternal bliss, but toeverlasting suffering." He remembered with sadness how this oldreflection of his had come back to him even on a certain moment of hiswedding night. The young man seemed to follow the train of his thoughtwith sympathy.

"I have had the misfortune, Signore," he said after a moment, his youngface looking somehow paler and his eyes darker than before, "to havealways on my mind the recollection of one single hour of my life. Up tothat hour I used to think with pleasure of both the past and the future,as well as of the present itself, and time was like a road through apleasant landscape on which I could wander to and fro as I fancied. Butnow I cannot get my thoughts away from that one hour. Every second of itseems bigger than whole years of the rest of my life. I must escape fromit to where there is no time. I know," he said, "that some people wouldrecommend the idea of moral infinity, as given to us in religion, as theright refuge, but I have already tried it and it is of no use to me--onthe contrary, the thought of the omnipotence of God, man's free will,heaven and hell, all bring back to me the thoughts from which I want toget away. I want to turn to the infinity of space, and from what I haveheard it seems to me that the roads of the planets and stars, theirellipses and circles within the infinite space, must have the power toturn the mind into new ways. Do you not think so, Signore?"

Augustus thought of the time, not many years ago, when he had himselffelt the spheres his right home. "I think," he said sadly, "that lifehas its law of gravitation spiritually as well as physically. Landedproperty, women----" He looked out through the window. On the blue skyof the spring evening Venus stood, radiant as a diamond.

The boy turned toward him. "You do not," he said, "really think that Iam a man? I am not, and under your favor, I am happy not to be. I know,of course, that great work has been achieved by men, but still I thinkthat the world would be a more tranquil place if men did not come in tobreak up, very often, the things that we cherish."

Augustus became confused to find that he had been treating a young ladyas a boy, but he could not apologize for it, as it was not his fault. Hemade haste to introduce himself and to ask if he could be of anyassistance to her on her journey. The girl, however, did not alter hermanner toward him in the least, and seemed quite indifferent to anychange in his attitude toward her which her information might havecaused. She sat in the same position, with her slender knees crossedunder her cloak and her hands folded around one knee. Augustus thoughtthat he had hardly ever talked to a young woman whose chief interest inthe conversation had not been the impression that she herself was makingon him, and he reflected that this must be what generally made conversewith women awkward and dull to him. The way in which this young womanseemed to take a friendly and confident interest in him, withoutapparently giving any thought to what he thought of her, seemed to himnew and sweet, as if he suddenly realized that he had all his life beenlooking for such an attitude in a woman. He wished that he could nowhimself keep away from the conventional accent of male and femaleconversation.

"It is very sad," he said thoughtfully, "that you should think so littleof us, for I am sure that all men that you have met have tried to pleaseyou. Will you not tell me why it should be so? For it has happened to memany times that a lady has told me that I was making her unhappy, andthat she wished that she and I were dead, at a time when I have triedhardest to make her happy. It is so many years now since Adam andEve"--he looked across the room to a picture of them--"were firsttogether in the garden, that it seems a great pity that we have notlearned better how to please one another."

"And did you not ask her?" said the girl.

"Yes," he answered, "but it seemed to be our fate that we should nevertake up these questions in cold blood. For myself, I think that women,for some reason, will not let us know. They do not want anunderstanding. They want to mobilize for war. But I wish that once, inall the time of men and women, two ambassadors could meet in a friendlymind and come to understand each other. It is true," he added after amoment, "that I did once meet, in Paris, a woman, a great courtesan, whomight have been such an ambassador. But you would hardly have given heryour letters of credence or have submitted to her decisions. I do noteven know if you would not have considered her a traitor to your sex."

The girl thought for a time of what he had said. "I suppose," she thensaid, "that even in your country you have parties, balls andconversazione?"

"Yes," he said, "we have those."

"Then you will know," she went on slowly, "that the part of a guest isdifferent from that of a host or hostess, and that people do not want orexpect the same things in the two different capacities?"

"I think you are right," said Augustus.

"Now God," she said, "when he created Adam and Eve"--she also looked atthem across the room--"arranged it so that man takes, in these matters,the part of a guest, and woman that of a hostess. Therefore man takeslove lightly, for the honor and dignity of his house is not involvedtherein. And you can also, surely, be a guest to many people to whom youwould never want to be a host. Now, tell me, Count, what does a guestwant?"

"I believe," said Augustus when he had thought for a moment, "that if wedo, as I think we ought to here, leave out the crude guest, who comes tobe regaled, takes what he can get and goes away, a guest wants first ofall to be diverted, to get out of his daily monotony or worry. Secondlythe decent guest wants to shine, to expand himself and impress his ownpersonality upon his surroundings. And thirdly, perhaps, he wants tofind some justification for his existence altogether. But since you putit so charmingly, Signora, please tell me now: What does a hostesswant?"

"The hostess," said the young lady, "wants to be thanked."

Here loud voices outside put an end to their conversation.

V. The Story of the Bravo

The landlord of the osteria came in first, walking backwards with athree-armed candlestick in each hand, with surprising grace andlightness for an old man. Following him came the party of threegentlemen for whom the table had been laid, the first two walking arm inarm. Their arrival changed the whole room in a moment, they brought withthem so much light, loud talk and color--even so much plain matter, fortwo of them were very big men.

The one who attracted Augustus's attention, as he would always attractthe attention of anybody near him, was a man of about fifty, very talland broad, and enormously fat. He was dressed very elegantly in black,his white linen shining, and wore some heavy rings and in his largestock a brilliantly sparkling diamond. His hair was dyed jet black, andhis face was painted and powdered. In spite of his fatness and hisstays, he moved with a peculiar grace, as if he had in him a rhythm ofhis own. Altogether, Augustus thought, if one could get quite away fromthe conventional idea of how a human being ought to look, he would be avery handsome object and a fine ornament in any place, and would havemade, for instance, a most powerful and impressive idol. It was he whospoke, in a high and piercing, and at the same time strangely pleasing,voice.

"Oh, charming, charming, my Nino," he said, "to be together again. But Ihave heard about you last week only, and how you have bought a Danaë byCorreggio, and sixteen piebald horses from Cascine, to drive with yourcoach."

The young man to whom he spoke and whose arm he was holding seemed topay very little attention to him. On looking at him Augustus understoodthat the people of the country should think highly of his beauty. He hadbeen looking over many galleries of paintings lately, and reflected thatany young St. Sebastian or John the Baptist, living on wild honey andlocust, or even a young angel from the opened sepulcher, might have comedown from his frame, dressed in modern clothes with elegance andcarelessness, and looked like that. He even had in the pronounced browncolor-tones of his hair, face and eyes something of the patina of oldpaintings, and he had withal the appearance of thinking of nothing atall which must be natural in paradise where there is no need of thought.

The third of the party was a tall young man, also very richly dressed,with fair curly hair and a pink face like a sheep's, which continueddown into his fat throat without any sign of a jawbone. He was absorbedin listening to the old man and never took his eyes off him. All threesat down to their meal, with the light of the candles on them.

The young lady looked at the newly arrived party for a few seconds, thengot up and, draping her cloak around her, left the room. Augustusfollowed her out, where her old servant was waiting for her with acandle.

As he came back his own supper was being brought in, and he sat down toa capon and a cake decorated with pink whipped cream. The supper partyat the larger table was so noisy that he was disturbed in his thoughtsand from time to time had his eyes drawn toward them. He noticed thatthe old man, while all the time making his guests drink, drank himselfonly lemonade, but nevertheless kept pace with them in their risingspirits, as if he had within him a sort of natural intoxication uponwhich he could draw without outward assistance. Once his voice, talkingfor a long time, caught Augustus's ear as he was telling the others astory.

"At Pisa," he said, "I was, many years ago, present when our gloriousMonti, the poet, drew out his pistol and shot down Monsignor Talbot. Ithappened at a supper party, just like ours here with only the three ofus present. And it all arose from an argument on eternal damnation.

"Monti, who had then just finished his Don Giovanni, had for some timebeen sunk in a deep melancholy, and would neither drink nor talk, andMonsignor Talbot asked him what was the matter with him, and wonderedthat he was not happy after having achieved so great a success. So Montiasked him whether he did not think that it might weigh upon the mind ofa man to have created a human being who was to burn through eternity inhell. Talbot smiled at him and declared that this could only happen toreal people. Whereupon the poet cried out and asked him if his DonGiovanni were not real, and the monsignore, still smiling at him fortaking it so seriously, and leaning back in his chair, explained that hemeant beings who had really been in the flesh. 'The flesh!' the poetcried. 'Can you doubt that he was in the flesh when in Spain alone therecan be found one thousand and three ladies to give evidence to thateffect?' Monsignor Talbot asked him if he did really believe himself acreator in the same sense as God.

"'God!' Monti cried, 'God! Do you not know that what God really wants tocreate is my Don Giovanni, and the Odysseus of Homer, and Cervantes'sknight? Very likely those are the only people for whom heaven and hellhave ever been made, for you cannot imagine that an Almighty God wouldgo on forever and ever, world without end, with my mother-in-law and theEmperor of Austria? Humanity, the men and women of this earth, are onlythe plaster of God, and we, the artists, are his tools, and when thestatue is finished in marble or bronze, he breaks us all up. When youdie you will probably go out like a candle, with nothing left, but inthe mansions of eternity will walk Orlando, the Misanthrope and my DonnaElvira. Such is God's plan of work, and if we find it somehow slow, whoare we that we should criticize him, seeing that we know nothingwhatever of time or eternity?'

"Monsignor Talbot, although himself a great admirer of the arts, beganto feel uncomfortable about such heretical views, and took the poet totask over them. 'Oh, go and find out for yourself then!' Monti cried,and resting the barrel of the pistol, with which he had been playing,upon the edge of the table, he fired straight at the monsignore, whosat opposite him, so that he fell down in his blood. It was a seriousaffair, for Monsignor Talbot had to have a grave operation, and hoveredfor a long time between life and death."

The young men, who had by this time had a good deal to drink, began tomake jests over this idea, holding up to the narrator the various formsof immortality which he might obtain under the hands of different poets.In this they used many names and expressions unknown to Augustus; alsotheir voices were less distinct than that of the old man, so he onlybegan to give their conversation his attention when the latter was againtalking alone.

"No, no, my children," he said, "I have other hopes than that. But as itmay be good for you to occupy yourselves a little with the idea of theother world, and may even dissipate that new melancholy of our sweetNino, about which the whole province grieves, I will tell you anotherstory."

He leaned back in his chair, and throughout his narrative he did notagain touch food or drink. Augustus noticed that as he proceeded hisdark young neighbor, whom he had called his Nino, took to the samemanner, so that of the three it was only the fair young man with thesheep's face who went on enjoying the pleasures of the table.

"In Pisa lived, my dear friends," the old man began, "at the time of mygrandfather, a nobleman of high rank and great wealth, who had the sadexperience of having a young friend, on whom he had bestowed everybenefaction, turn upon him with the common ingratitude of youth andinflict upon him a deadly insult, one which, moreover, turned him intoan object of ridicule in the eyes of the world. The nobleman was aphilosopher, and valued beyond everything in life his peace of mind.When he realized that this matter was about to spoil his sleep, and thathe would not get any pleasure, or recover his balance, till he had hadthe blood of his young enemy, he decided to have it. Now because of hisposition and other circumstances he did not see his way to do ithimself, so addressed himself to a young bravo of the town. In thosedays such people were still to be found. This young man was of anextravagant disposition, and thereby had got himself into heavy debt andsuch a miserable position that he could hardly see any way out of it butmarriage. My grandfather's friend said to him: 'I want everybody to comeout of this affair perfectly satisfied. I will pay you for my peace ofsoul what I think it worth, which is a great deal. Do me this service,and I will have your debts wiped out, even down to your grandmother'slittle rosary of coral beads, which you had pawned.' Upon this the bravoagreed, and everything was arranged between them."

A big cat that had been walking about the room, here sprang up on theknee of the old man who was telling the story. Without looking at it hekept on stroking it while he continued his tale.

"The clock struck midnight when the bravo left him, and as he knew thathe should not be able to sleep until he had made sure that the businesshad been settled, he kept awake in his room, waiting for the young man'sreturn, and had a very dainty supper prepared for him there. Just as theclock struck the hour of one the young man entered, looking like death.'Is my enemy dead?' the nobleman asked. 'Yes,' said the bravo. 'And isit sure?' said his employer, whose heart began to dance within hisbreast. 'Yes,' said the bravo, 'if a man be dead who has had my stilettoin his heart three times, up to the hilt. Everybody ought, as you havesaid, to come out of this affair perfectly satisfied. Now I will have abottle of champagne with you.' So the two had a very pleasant suppertogether. 'Do you know,' said the bravo, 'what I think a great pity? Itis this: that we have all become such skeptics that we hardly believewhat our pious grandmothers told us. For it would give me great pleasureto think that both you and I shall be eternally damned.'

"The nobleman was surprised, and sorry for the young man, for he lookedas if he were out of his senses. He also felt very kindly disposedtoward him, so he tried to comfort him. 'This has been too much foryou,' he said. 'I took you for a stronger man. As to this business ofdamnation, I see what you mean, and believe that very likely you areright. The murder that you have committed tonight I have myselfcommitted many times already in my heart, and the Scripture has it thatit is then as good as done. Sophistical thinkers may even prove yourpart in it to be entirely illusory, and you may very well still washyour robes in the blood of the Lamb and make them white. Still, I mustsay that what I paid you, I paid for the trouble which you had to takeand for the risk you are running with regard to the law of Pisa and therelations of my dead enemy. Of your soul I had not thought. Against thisrisk, small as I consider it to be, I will give you, in addition to whatyou have already, this ring of mine.' With these words he took from hishand a ring with a large ruby in it, a very valuable stone, and handedit to the young man, who laughed at him as if they had never beentalking of sacred things, and went away. Our nobleman went to bed, andslept well for the first time in many months, in the consciousness ofhaving had his wish fulfilled at last, and also of having behaved withgreat generosity toward his bravo."

At this point in the tale the cat walked across the table and jumpedinto the lap of the young Prince. As if he had been the reflection,within a looking-glass, of his neighbor, he began to stroke the beastsoftly while leaning back in his chair and listening.

"But it was his fate," the old man went on, "to have his faith in humanbeings shaken. It was only a few weeks later, and while he was stillenjoying, as in a second youth, the society of his friends, music, andthe beauty of the scenery around Pisa, that he had a letter from afriend in Rome who wrote to tell him that his enemy, for whose death hehad paid so high a price, was there, fresher than ever, and highlyadmired in Roman society and at the papal court.

"This last proof of human perfidy, and of the foolishness of havingfaith in friends or employees, hit the unsuspecting man hard. He fellill and suffered for a long time from pains in his eyes and his rightarm, so that he had to go to the baths of Pyrmont to recover. But I willpass over this sad period. Only, as he was a man given to thinking, hebegan to speculate upon the future of himself and his bravo as they haddiscussed it over their supper table. Is it really, he thought, theintention only which weighs down the scale, and saves us or condemns us,and has the action nothing to do with it all? The more he thought ofthis the more he realized that it must be so. Probably even, he thought,the intention only carries this weight in so far as it remains anintention and nothing else. For the action wipes out the desire. Thesurest way to leave off coveting your neighbor's wife is, without doubt,to have her, and we can love our enemies and pray for them whichdespitefully use us, if only they be dead. He remembered how kindly hehad thought of his young enemy during that short period when he believedhim to have been killed.

"Therefore, he thought, hell is very likely filled with people who havenot carried out what they had meant to do. Theirs is the worm that neverdies. And so," said the old man, his voice suddenly becoming very slowand gentle as a caress, "having lost his faith in bravoes, he decided,in the future, to carry out his intentions himself. But there was onething," he went on in the same soft voice, "which he thought he shouldhave liked to know, before he put the whole tragedy out of his mind: Howmuch, he wondered, did this bravo of his, who had been so handsomelypaid by him, make out of the affair from the other side?

"This, my sweet Nino, is my story, and I hope that I have not bored youwith it. You would do me a great service if you would tell me what youthink of it."

There was a silence. The dark young Prince leaned forward, put his armupon the table and his chin in his hand, and looked at the old man. Thismovement had in it so much of the cat which he was holding that it gaveAugustus quite a shock.

"Yes, under your favor," he said, "I have been a little bored, for Ithink that as a story yours was too long, and even yet it has had noend. Let us make an end tonight."

He refilled his glass with his left hand and half emptied it. Then, witha gentle movement, as if he had drunk too much to make a more violenteffort, he tossed the glass across the table into the old man's face.The wine ran down the scarlet mouth and powdered chin. The glass rolledonto his lap and from there fell to the floor and was broken.

The young man with the fair curly hair gave a scream. He jumped up and,producing a small lace handkerchief, tried to wipe the wine from theother's face as if it had been blood. But the fat old man pushed himaway. His face remained for a moment quite immovable, like a mask. Thenit began to glow, as if from inside, with a strange triumphantbrightness. It would have been impossible to say whether his face reallycolored under the paint, but it showed suddenly the same effect ofheightened primitive vitality. He had looked old while he was tellinghis tale. Now he gave the impression of youth or childhood. Augustus nowsaw who he was really like: he had the soft fullness, and the greatpower behind it, of the ancient statues of Bacchus. The atmosphere ofthe room became resplendent with his rays, as if the old god hadsuddenly revealed himself, vine-crowned, to mortals. He took up ahandkerchief and carefully dabbed his mouth with it, then, looking atit, he spoke in a low and sweet voice, such as a god would use inspeaking to human beings, aware that his natural strength is too muchfor them.

"It is a tradition of your family, Nino, I know," he said, "thisexquisite savoir-mourir." He sipped a little of his lemonade to takeaway the taste of the wine which had touched his mouth. "What anexcellent critic you are," he went on, "not only of your own Tuscansongs, but of modern prose as well. That exactly was the fault of mystory: that it had no end. A charming thing, an end. Will you cometomorrow at sunrise to the terrace at the back of this house? I know theplace; it is a very good spot."

"Yes," said Nino, still in the same position, with his chin in his hand."Thank you," said the old man, "thank you, my dear. And now," he went onwith quiet dignity, "with your permission I shall retire. I cannot," hesaid, with a glance downward at his soiled shirt, "remain in yourcompany in these clothes. Arture, give me your arm. I will send him backto arrange with you, Nino. Good night, sleep you well!"

When he had gone away on the arm of the fair young man, who was nowdeadly pale and seemed stricken with panic, the other young man sat fora time without moving, as if he had fallen asleep over the table. Then,turning, he looked straight at Augustus, of whose presence he had notbefore seemed to be aware, got up, came over to him, and greeted himvery politely. He was not quite steady on his feet, but neverthelesslooked as if he would, mentally, be able to take a part in any ballet.

"Signore," he said, "you have been the witness of a quarrel betweenmyself and my friend, the Prince Pozentiani, whom I shall have to givesatisfaction. Will you, as a nobleman, show me the favor of acting as mysecond tomorrow morning? I am Giovanni Gastone, of Tuscany, at yourservice." Augustus told the Prince that he had never had anything to dowith a duel and the idea now made him uneasy.

"I should be glad to be of assistance to you," he said, "but I cannothelp thinking that it would be better to settle such a quarrel, betweenfriends and over a supper table, in a friendly way, and that you cannothave any wish to fight a man so much older than yourself over nothing."

Giovanni smiled very sweetly at him. "Set your conscience at rest,Count," he said, "the Prince is the affronted party and will choose theweapons. If you had lived in Tuscany you would have heard something ofhis shooting. As to his being old, it is true that he has lived fortwice as many years as either you or I, but for all that he is inhimself a child compared to any of us. It will be as natural to him tolive for two hundred years as for us to live sixty. The things that wearus down do not touch him. He is very wonderful."

"What you have said," Augustus replied, "does not seem to me to makeyour duel more reasonable. Might he not then kill you?"

"No, no," said the young man, "but he has been my best friend for manyyears. We want to find out which of us does really stand best with God."

The low and clear cry of a bird sounded from the garden, like the voiceof the night itself. "Do you hear the aziola cry?" asked Giovanni. "Thatused to mean that something fortunate was going to happen to me. I donot know," he added after a while, "what it would be now, unless God hasvery much more power of imagination than I myself have--that is, unlesshe is very much more like my friend the Prince than he is like me. Butthat, of course, I trust him to be." He sat in thought for some time."Those horses which I bought--" he said, "I have not yet given themnames. The Prince, now, could so easily have found names for them. Canyou think of any?"

VI. The Marionettes

As the young Prince had, with repeated thanks, said good night to hissecond and left him, the old servant whom he had seen in the phaëtoncame up behind Augustus, noiseless as a cat, and touched his sleeve. Hismistress, he said, had been disturbed by the noises in the house andwished the Count to tell her what was happening. She was, in fact,waiting for him at the end of the house, where the light from a windowfell out upon a stone seat. The old servant remained in attendance, neara large tree a little way off.

Augustus hesitated to inform the young lady of the duel, but he foundthat she knew all about it already, her old major-domo having, with thehost of the inn, been listening outside the door. What she wanted toknow, and seemed in a highly excited state about, was how the quarrelhad arisen. Augustus thought that he might as well tell her, in casethere should be an inquest later on, so declaring that he was himselfquite unable to see how it could have brought on a fight of life anddeath, he repeated to her as much of the conversation of the supperparty as he could remember. She listened to him without a word, standingas still and erect as a statue, but in the midst of the narrative shetook hold of his arm and led him into the circle of light. When he hadfinished she begged him to tell her the old Prince's story of the bravoall over again, and stopped him to have certain words and figuresrepeated to her.

As he came to the end the second time she suddenly turned toward thelight, and he was startled to see in her face, as if reflected within amirror, the expression in the face of the old Prince when he had been sodeeply insulted. She did not use either powder or paint, so that hecould follow the course of her blood as it slowly rose to her foreheaduntil her whole face glowed as from violent exercise or strong wine. Ina lighter manner--since she did not carry any of his weight, eitherphysically or morally--she partook at this moment of his divinemetamorphosis, and might well have passed, in the train of that oldDionysus, for a young bacchante, or possibly, with the light in her bigeyes, for one of his panthers.

She drew her breath deeply. "From the moment I first saw you, Signore,"she said, "I knew that something fortunate was going to happen to me.Please tell me now: Is it possible, if they both fire at the samemoment, and both take good aim, that the two bullets would hit theirhearts at the same instant and that they would both be killed?"

Augustus thought this young lady to be, for a student of the stars andof philosophy, of a sanguinary turn of mind. "I have never heard of sucha thing happening," he said, "though I cannot say that it would not bepossible. I am myself uneasy about the result of this duel, and it is astrange coincidence that I should have been told, only yesterday, ofthis old Prince being such a deadly shot."

"Everybody knows that," she said, "if he cannot frighten people in anyother way, he frightens them with his pistols. But kindly tell me,Signore," she went on, "who is the young man whom the old Prince isgoing to kill? You did not tell me his name." Augustus told her. Againshe stood silent and very quiet. "Giovanni Gastone," she repeatedslowly, "then I have myself seen him. On the day of my first communion,five years ago, he accompanied his grandmother to the basilica, and heldhis umbrella over her from her carriage to the porch, for it was rainingheavily."

"Let them go to bed," she said after a little while. "If this is to bethe last night he will ever go to bed, let him sleep. But we, Signore,cannot possibly sleep, and what are we to do? My servant tells me thatthere is a marionette company at the inn, and as the wagoners from Pisacome back late, they are giving a performance within this hour. Let usgo and see them."

Augustus felt himself that he was not likely to sleep. In fact, he hadnot often been more wide awake or more pleasantly so. He felt his ownbody lighter, as when he had been a boy. With the happy wonder of asearcher for gold who strikes a vein of the metal in the rock, hereflected that he had come upon a vein of events in life. The company ofthe girl also pleased him in a particular way, and he was thinkingwhether it might not be, partly, because she was dressed like himself inthose long black trousers which seemed to him the normal costume for ahuman being. The fluffs and trains with which women in generalaccentuate their femininity are bound, he thought, to make talking withthem much like conversation with officers in uniform or clergymen intheir robes, neither of which you are likely to get much out of. Hefollowed her into the large whitewashed barn where the theater had beenerected and the play had just started.

The air in there was hot and stifling, though high up in the roof awindow had been opened to the powder-blue nocturnal sky. The buildingwas half filled with people and very dimly lighted by some old lanternswhich hung from the ceiling. Around the stage itself the candles of thefootlights were creating a magic oasis of light, and making the crimson,orange and bright green of the puppets' little costumes, probably fadedand dull in the daylight, shine and glow like jewels. Their shadows,much larger than themselves, reflected all their movements upon thewhite cloth of the back-curtain.

The performer stopped his speech upon the arrival of the distinguishedspectators, and brought them two armchairs to sit in near the stage, infront of the audience. Then he took up the thread where he hadinterrupted it, speaking loudly in the various voices of his characters.

The play which was being acted was the immortal Revenge of Truth, thatmost charming of marionette comedies. Everybody will remember how theplot is created by a witch pronouncing, upon the house wherein all thecharacters are collected, a curse to the effect that any lie told withinit will become true. Thus the mercenary young woman who tries to catch arich husband by making him believe that she loves him, does fall in lovewith him; the braggart becomes a hero; the hypocrites finish by becomingreally virtuous; the old miser who tells people that he is poor losesall his money. When the women are alone they speak in verse, but thelanguage of the men is very coarse in parts; only a young boy, the oneinnocent person in the comedy, has some very fine songs which areaccompanied by a mandolin behind the stage.

The moral of the play pleased the audience, and their tired, dusty faceslighted up as they laughed at Mopsus, the clown. The girl followed thedevelopment of the plot in the spirit of a fellow author. Augustus felt,in his present mood, some of the speeches go strangely to his heart.When the lover says to his mistress that a piece of dry bread satiatesone's hunger better than a whole cookery book, he took it, somehow, asadvice to himself. The unsuspecting victim discourses to his intendedmurderer upon the loveliness of the moonlight, and the villain answersby lecturing on the absurdity of the power of God to make us delight inthings which are of no advantage whatever to us, which may even be quitethe contrary; and he goes on saying that God therefore likes us in thesame way as we like our dogs: because when he is in high spirits, we arein high spirits; and when he is depressed, we are depressed; and whenhe, in a romantic mood, makes the moonlight night, we trot at his heelsas well as we can. This made Augustus smile. He thought that he wouldlike to feel once more, as when he was a child, like one of the dogs ofGod.

At the end the witch appears again, and on being asked what is reallythe truth, answers: "The truth, my children, is that we are, all of us,acting in a marionette comedy. What is important more than anything elsein a marionette comedy, is keeping the ideas of the author clear. Thisis the real happiness of life, and now that I have at last come into amarionette play, I will never go out of it again. But you, my fellowactors, keep the ideas of the author clear. Aye, drive them to theirutmost consequences." This speech seemed to him suddenly to hold a lotof truth. Yes, he thought, if my life were only a marionette comedy inwhich I had my part and knew it well, then it might be very easy andsweet. The people of this country seemed, somehow, to be practicing thisideal. They were as immune to the terrors, the crimes and miracles ofthe life in which they took part as were the little actors upon the oldplayer's stage. To the people of the North the strong agitations of thesoul come each time as a strange thing, and when they are in a state ofexcitement their speech comes by fits and starts. But these people spokefluently under the wildest passions, as if life were, in any of herwhims, a comedy which they had already rehearsed. If I have now at last,he thought, come into a marionette play, I will not go out of it again.

During the last scene, when all the puppets were on the stage to receivethe applause of the house, Augustus heard a door open at the back of theroom, and on turning saw the Prince Giovanni and his servant come in andlook around the audience as if searching for somebody. As he thoughtthat they might be looking for him, he went up to them, a little awayfrom the noise of the theater. He felt somehow shy for having gone awayto amuse himself on what might be the last night of this young man'slife, but Giovanni did not appear to be surprised, and asked if the playhad been good. "An unfortunate thing has happened," he said. "The youngfriend of the Prince, who was to have been his second, has been takenwith fits. He is very sick and cannot stop crying. I remembered havingseen you, in the evening, in the company of a boy whom I took, from yourmanner toward him, to be a young gentleman of high rank, perhaps fromyour own country. I came to beg you to make him take the part of secondtomorrow morning, for neither the Prince nor I wish the affair delayed."

The speech of the Prince brought Augustus into a dilemma. He did notwant to give away the young lady's secret, and reflected that he hadperhaps better let Giovanni remain in the belief that she was really aboy of his own country, of whom he was somehow in charge. "This younggentleman," he said, "seems to me to be very young to take part in sosinister an affair. But as he is here with me, if you will wait I willgo and speak with him."

As he came back to the young lady she was still looking at the stage,but just then the curtain went down for the last time. He repeated toher his conversation with the Prince and suggested that they should findsome excuse which would enable her to get away early in the morning, sothat she might keep out of the affair. She thought this over for amoment, and got up and looked at Giovanni, who was himself, from theother end of the room, looking at her and Augustus.

"Signore," she said slowly and gravely, "I wish to meet your friend thePrince Nino, and nothing could give me greater pleasure than to be asecond at this duel. Our families have never been friendly to oneanother, but in an affair of honor it is a duty to disregard any mattersof the past. Have the goodness to tell him that my name is Daniele delleGherardesci, and that I am at his service."

Prince Giovanni, seeing them looking at him, came up to them, and asAugustus introduced them to each other the young people exchanged agreeting of extreme politeness. She was standing with her back to thestage, and the footlights of the theater made a halo around her head, sothat in her easy and arrogant attitude she looked like a young saintmasquerading as a dandy. The people in the audience, who had beengetting up, on recognizing the Prince stopped to look at him, holdingback a little from the group.

The Prince expressed his gratitude for the courtesy shown to him. "Sir,"said the girl, "in Egypt, when she was an old lady and he primeminister, Potiphar's wife once obtained an audience with Joseph to askhim for the high order, the star of paradise, for her son-in-law. 'Imuch dislike being exacting,' she said, 'still, I feel that it is nowsuch a long time since I asked Your Excellency for anything that I hopethat you will lend me a favorable ear.'

"'Madame,' said the Prime Minister, 'once upon a time I happened to bein a prison. There I could not see the stars, but I used to dream aboutthem. I dreamed that because I could not watch them they were runningwild all over heaven, and the shepherds and the camelherds driving theirflocks at night would lose their way. I even once dreamed about you,Madame, and that when I found the star Aldebaran fallen from the sky, Ipicked it up and gave it to you. You pinned it in your fichu and said:"A thousand thanks, Joseph." I am glad that my dream has more or lesscome true. The order which you want for your son-in-law is alreadyhis.'"

Soon after they parted.

VII. The Duel

The sun was not up as yet, but there was a wonderful promise of light inthe air, and not a cloud in the sky. The stone pavement of the terracewas still wet with dew; a bird, and then another, started singing withinthe trees of the garden, and from the road came the shouts of the wagondrivers, who were afoot early, walking beside their long-hornedbullocks.

Augustus was the first to come out of the house. The coolness of themorning air, pure as a glass of water, made him draw his breath deeply,slowly taking in the smell of smoke, flowering trees, and the dust ofthe road. It seemed strange to him that there should be death in thisair, and yet he could not doubt that the adversaries were in deadearnest; and from the rules of the duel, as they had made them up theprevious night, he thought it very likely that one of them would not bealive to see the sun high up upon this cloudless sky.

The thought of death grew stronger in him as he walked slowly up to theend of the long terrace. From there he had a wide view of the road withits rows of trees, winding up and down through the landscape. On thehorizon he distinguished a low, broken, blue line over which a littlecloud was hovering in the air. He thought that when the sun came up thiswould prove to be Pisa. So here was the first station on his journey,for he had letters of introduction to people there. But these peoplewere hurrying to the last station of their entire journey, and hereflected that they must have traveled, in a way, much farther thanhimself, and have seen more on the road, to be prepared to make an endto it in this way.

As he turned again he saw Giovanni come out, accompanied by his valet,and stop to look at the sky just as he himself had done. On seeing theyoung Dane, he came up and bade him good morning, and they walked up anddown the terrace together, talking of indifferent matters. If theduelist was nervous, this was deep down in him and showed itself only ina new softness and playfulness of manner. At the same time Augustus hadthe feeling that he was clinging to the fatefulness of the coming hourwith a passionate tenderness, so that he would not have allowed anythingin the world to take it away from him.

Two of the old Prince's servants came out, carrying a large armchair.The Prince was too fat to stand up for his duel, and was accustomed todo his shooting practice sitting down. They asked Augustus where to putthe chair, and they all began to look for a perfectly level place on theground. There was to be ten paces between the combatants, and theymeasured the distance out carefully, and marked the place where Giovanniwas to stand. The old Prince's servants also brought out a pair ofpistols in a very elegant case, and placed it, together with a glass oflemonade and a silk handkerchief, on a small table near the old man'schair. Then they went back into the house. While they were arrangingthis, the girl and her old servant came up the long terrace. She lookedpale in her large cloak, and kept a little away from the others. Thedoctor, who had been sent for from the village--an old man who smelledof peppermint and still wore the pigtail and bag of the lastgeneration--arrived at the same time, and kept standing close to her,entertaining her with tales of duels of which he had heard and read, andwhich had all ended with death. The young Prince, at a distance, lookedat them from time to time. The air seemed to be slowly filling withlight; the song of the birds was suddenly very clear. In a moment, itwas felt, something would happen. Upon the road a large flock of sheeppassed in a cloud of dust which was already tinged with gold.

They were looking toward the door of the osteria when it was openedand the old Prince walked out, leaning upon his servant's arm. He wasvery elegantly dressed in a bottle-green coat, and made up with greatcare, and he carried himself with the utmost grace and dignity. It wasplain that he was deeply moved. The sun rose at this moment above thehorizon, but it did not change or dominate the scene any more than didhis arrival. All the others were in some way repressing or disguisingtheir real feelings, whereas he showed his distress with the simplicityof an unspoiled child, perfectly confident of the sympathy of hissurroundings. His dark eyes were moist, but frank and gentle, as ifeverything in life were natural and sweet to him, and he gave the sameimpression of assurance and mastery as a great virtuoso who on hisviolin runs up and down all the scales, even to the devil's own thrill,as if it were child's play. This equilibrium of his mind was as strikingand surprising as the balance of his great body upon his extraordinarilysmall and elegant feet. The moment Augustus met his eyes, on thatmorning on the terrace, he felt convinced that the shot of this old manwould be deadly. Jupiter himself, with his thunderbolt within the pocketof his coat-tail, could not have given a stronger impression ofinsuperability.

He spoke with courtesy and friendliness to them all, and seemed to makethe doctor his slave from the first instant. The fish-like eyes of thelatter followed the great man's slightest movement. He was in no hurry,but obviously did not want to draw things out, either. It was clear,from the moment when he came in, that everything would proceed with themeasure and grace of a perfectly performed minuet.

After a few remarks on the weather and the surroundings, and on hisgratitude to the two seconds, he offered, still standing, the choice ofpistols to his friend, and as Giovanni, with one of them in his hand,withdrew a little to the place marked for him, he freed himself of hisservant's arm, made a deep bow to his adversary and a sort of greatmovement of relief, as if he had now happily come to the end of everydayexistence and the beginning of real life, and, holding the other pistol,he seated himself in the large armchair, resting, for a moment, theweapon on his knee. Augustus took up his position at an equal distancefrom both duelists, so that each of them should be able to hear hissignal. A faint breeze at this moment ran through the leaves of thetrees in the garden, shaking down the blossoms and spreading theirfragrance.

At the moment when Augustus was clearing his throat to pronounce theone--two--three of the moment, the slim figure of the girl, who stoodwith her face toward him, stepped up to the old Prince, and, lifting onehand to her hip, she spoke to him in a clear low voice, as if a bird ofthe garden had descended on his shoulder to sing to him.

"Allow me, Prince," she said, "to speak to you before you shoot. I havesomething to tell you. If I were quite sure about the issue of your duelI would wait till you have killed your friend, but nobody can knowcertainly the ways of providence, and I do not wish you to die beforeyou have heard what I have to say." All faces had turned toward her, butshe looked only into the still and sorrowful face of the old man. Shelooked very young and small, but her deep gravity and greatself-possession gave her figure a terrible importance, as if a youngdestroying angel had rushed from the blue sky above them onto the stoneterrace, to stand in judgment there.

"A year ago," she said, "Rosina, your wife, went in the middle of thenight to see her cousin Mario, who was to leave Pisa in the morning, atthe house of her old nurse near the harbor. It was necessary to thosetwo to meet and decide what they were to do, and Rosina also felt thather strength was giving way, and that she must see her lover again orshe thought that she might die.

"Rosina, as you know, always had a night lamp burning in her bedroom,and she dared not put it out on this night for fear that you yourselfmight walk through the room, or that one of your spies, her maids, mightlook in, and, on finding the room empty, might wake up all the house. Soshe asked her best friend, a virgin like herself, one who, by virtue ofa sacred vow, would always be ready to serve her, to take her place inthe bed for this one hour. Between them they bribed your negro servant,Baba, with twelve yards of crimson velvet and a little Bologna dogbelonging to Rosina's friend--which was all that they possessed in theworld to give away--to let them in and out of the house. They came andwent away dressed like the apothecary's assistant, who would sometimesbe called for to give a clyster to your old housekeeper. Rosina went toher nurse's house and talked to Mario in the old woman's presence, forso it had to be. They pledged eternal fidelity and she gave him a letterto her great-uncle in Rome, and she came back to the palazzo a littleafter one o'clock. This, Prince, was my tale, which I wanted you toknow."

They all stood perfectly immobile, like a party of little wooden dollsplaced on that terrace of the inn, in the middle of the greatlandscape--Augustus and the old doctor, because they did not know whatthis speech meant; the old Prince and Giovanni, because they were toodeeply impressed to move.

At last the old man spoke. "Who," said he, "has sent you to tell me thistoday, my pretty young signore?" The girl looked him straight in theeyes.

"Do you not recognize me, Prince?" she asked. "I am that girl, Agnesedella Gherardesci, who did your wife this service. You have seen me atyour wedding, where I was a bridesmaid, dressed in yellow. Also at onetime you came into Rosina's rooms, and I was playing chess with theProfessor Pacchiani, whom you had sent to talk to her about her duties.She stood at the window so as not to show that she was crying." Aftershe had spoken these words the Prince Giovanni never took his eyes offher face; during all that happened later he kept quite still, like oneof the trees in the garden.

The old Prince sat in the large chair, looking more than ever like abeautiful and severe old idol made in a mosaic of gold, ivory and ebony.He looked with interest at the young girl. "I am extremely sorry,Signora," he said with a deep courtesy. Then again he sat silent.

"And so," he said very slowly after a time, "if Baba had been faithfulto me I should have found the two together at that house near theharbor, in the night, and I should have had them in my hand?"

"Yes, that you would," said the girl. "But they would not have mindedbeing killed by you if they had died together."

"No, no, no," said the old Prince, "by no means. How can you imaginethat I would have killed either of them? But I would have taken theirclothes away and told them that I was going to have them killed in aterrible way, in the morning, and I would have had them shut up togetheralone, over the night. When she was frightened or angry her face, herwhole body, blushed like an oleander flower." This gave him stuff forthought for a long time. He seemed to stiffen more and more intosomething inanimate, until suddenly a great wave of high color spreadover his old face.

"And," he exclaimed with deep emotion, "I should have had her, my lovelychild, to play with still!"

There was a long silence; nobody dared to speak in the presence of sogreat a pain.

Suddenly he smiled at them all, a very gentle and sweet smile. "Always,"he said in a high and clear voice, "we fail because we are too small. Igrudged the boy Mario that, in a petty grudge. And in my vanity Ithought that I should prefer an heir to my name, if it was to be, out ofa ducal house. Too small I have been, too small for the ways of God."

"Nino," he said after a minute, "Nino, my friend, forgive me. Give meyour hand." Deeply moved, Giovanni put away his pistol and took the handof his old friend. But the old Prince, after having squeezed the youngman's fingers, again took hold of his pistol, as if on guard against agreater enemy.

His deep dark eyes looked straight in front of him. His mouth wasslightly open, as if he were going to sing. "Carlotta," he said.

Then, with a strange, as if weary, movement, he turned to the right andfell, with the chair, sideways onto the ground, his heavy weightstriking the stone pavement with a dull thud. The chair lay with its twolegs in the air as he rolled out of it onto the pavement and remainedstill. At that moment his pistol, which he was still holding in hishand, went off, the bullet, taking a wild line up in the air, passed soclose to Augustus's head that he heard its whistle as it passed, like abird's singing. It stunned him for a second, and brought back the imageof his wife. When he felt steady on his feet again he saw the doctor,kneeling beside the old Prince, lifting both arms toward heaven. Theface of the old man slowly took on an ashen color. The paint on hischeeks and mouth looked like rose and crimson enamel upon silver.

The doctor dropped his arms and put one hand on the breast of the stillfigure. After a minute he turned his head and looked back at the peoplebehind him, his face so terrified that it had no expression in it atall. Meeting their eyes, it changed. He got up and solemnly declared tothem, "All is over."

They remained quite still around him. The figure of the old Prince,lying immovably on the ground, still held the center of the picture asmuch as if he had been slowly ascending to heaven, and they hisdisciples, left behind, gazing up toward him. Only Nino, like one ofthose figures which were put into sacred pictures as the portrait of theman on whose order they were painted, kept somehow his own direction.

The sun, rising in the blue morning sky, lent a misty bloom to the greenbroadcloth covering the heavy curves of the old man's body upon thestone terrace.

VIII. The Freed Captive

When the old Prince's servants had lifted him up and carried him intothe house, Giovanni and Agnese found themselves face to face on thedeserted terrace. Their dark eyes met, and as if this were the mostfatal of her missions on this spring morning, she looked straight at himfor as long a time as it took the landlady's cock--which was adescendant of the cock in the house of the high priest Caiaphas, andwhose ancestors had been brought to Pisa by the Crusaders--to raise andfinish a long crow. Then she turned to follow the others into the house.At that he spoke, standing quite still. "Do not go away," he said. Shestood for a moment, waiting, but did not speak to him. "Do not go away,"he said again, "before you have let me speak to you."

"I cannot think," said she, "that you can have anything to say to me."He stood for a long time, very pale, as if making a great effort tocollect his voice, then he spoke in a changed and low voice:

Lo spirito mio, che giá cotanto
tempo era stato ch'alla sua presenza
non era di stupor tremando affranto
sanza degli occhi aver più conoscenza,
per occulta virtù che da lei mosse
d'antico amor senti la gran potenza.

There was a long and deep silence. She might have been a little statuein the garden, except for the light morning wind playing with andlifting her soft locks.

"I had left you," he said, speaking altogether like a person in a dream,"and was going away, but I turned back at the door. You were sitting upin the bed. Your face was in the shadow, but the lamp shone on yourshoulders and your back. You were naked, for I had torn off yourclothes. The bed had green and golden curtains, like my forests in themountains, and you were like my picture of Daphne, who turns away and ischanged into a laurel. And I was standing in the dark. Then the clockstruck one. For a year," he cried, "I have thought of nothing but thatone moment."

Again the two young people stood quite still. Like the marionettes ofthe night before, they were within stronger hands than their own, andhad no idea what was going to happen to them. He spoke again:

Di penter sì mi punse ivi l'ortica
che di tutt'altre cose, qual mi torse
più nel suo amor, più mi si fe' nemica.
Tanta riconoscenza il cuor mi morse
ch' io caddi vinto....

He stopped because, though he had repeated these lines to himself manytimes, at the moment he could not remember any more. It was as if hemight have dropped down dead, like his old adversary.

She turned again and looked at him, very severely, and yet her faceexpressed the clearness and calm which the sound of poetry produces inthe people who love it. She spoke very slowly to him, in her clear andsweet voice, like a bird's:

...da tema e da vergogna
voglio che tu omai ti disviluppe
e che non parli più com'uom che sogna.

She looked away for a moment, drew a deep breath, and her voice took onmore force.

Sappi che il vaso che il serpente ruppe
fu e non è, ma chi n'ha colpa creda
che vendetta di Dio non teme suppe.

With these words she walked away, and though she passed so near to himthat he might have held her back by stretching out his hand, he did notmove or try to touch her, but stood upon the same spot as if he intendedto remain there forever, and followed her with his eyes as she walked upto the house.

Augustus came out of the door at that same moment, and walked up to meether. Though he was deeply affected by the happenings of the morning, andlast of all by the sight of the old Prince, now lying in peace anddignity on a large bed within the inn, his conscience told him that heought to make an effort to get the message of the old lady to Pisa, andhe wanted the girl to help him and guide him there. At the same time hewas, now that he understood more of the whole affair which had broughton the morning's tragedy, shy of approaching her, as one of theprincipal figures in it, and talking to her of such trivial matters asroads and coaches. She met him, however, as if he had been an old friendwhom she was happy to meet again. She took his hand and looked at him.She was changed, like a statute come to life, he thought.

She listened with great interest to all he had to tell her, and wasnaturally eager to bring the message to her friend as soon as possible.She suggested that they travel together in her phaëton, which would bequicker than his coach. She told him that she would drive it herself.

"My friend," she said, "let us go away. Let us go to Pisa as quickly aswe can. For I am free. I can choose where I will go, I can think oftomorrow. I think that tomorrow is going to be lovely. I can rememberthat I am seventeen, and that by the mercy of God I have sixty yearsmore to live. I am no more shut up within one hour. God!" she said witha sudden deep shudder, "I cannot remember it now if I try."

She looked like a young charioteer who is confident of winning his race.It was clear that the idea of speed was at this moment the mostattractive of all ideas to her. As they were going into the house shelooked back at the terrace.

"We have all been wrong," she said. "That old man was great and mightwell have been loved. While he was alive we wished for his death, butnow that he is dead I think that we all wish that he were back."

"That," said Augustus, who had been reflecting upon his own life, "maymake us realize that every human being whom we meet and get to know is,after all, something in our minds, like a tree planted in our gardens ora piece of furniture within our house. It may be better to keep them andtry to put them to some use, than to cast them away and have nothing atall there in the end." She thought of this for a little while. "Then theold Prince shall be," said she, "within the garden of my mind a greatfountain, made of black marble, near which it is always cool and fresh,and from which great cascades of water are rushing and playing. I shallgo and sit there sometimes, when I have much to think of. If I had beenRosina I would not have tried to get away from him. I would have madehim happy. It would have been good if he had been happy; it is hard tomake anybody unhappy."

Augustus, who thought he heard the note of a late regret in her voice,said in order to console her: "Remember now that you have saved theother's life." She changed color and was silent for a moment. Then sheturned and looked at him with deep serenity. "Who," she said, "wouldhave stood by and heard a man so unjustly accused?"

As soon as her carriage was ready they started for Pisa and went at agreat speed. The day was beginning to get warm, the road was dusty, andthe shadows of the trees were keeping close underneath them. Augustushad left his address with the old doctor in case there would have to bean inquest, but after all the old Prince had died a natural death.

IX. The Parting Gift

Count Augustus von Schimmelmann had been staying in Pisa for more thanthree weeks and had come to like the place. He had had a love affairwith a Swedish lady, some years older than himself, who lived in Pisa tokeep away from her husband, and had a small opera stage on which sheappeared to her friends. She was a disciple of Swedenborg, and toldAugustus that she had had a vision of herself and him in the next world.What really interested him more were the attempts of two priests, oneold and one young, to convert him to the Church of Rome. He had nointention of joining it, but it surprised and pleased him that anyoneshould chose to occupy himself so much with his soul, and he took muchtrouble in explaining to the churchmen his ideas and states of mind. Hecould, however, foresee that this affair of spiritual seduction couldnot go on forever, but would, like, worse luck, all affairs ofseduction, have to come to an end one way or another, and he had begunto give much of his time to a secret political society to which he hadbeen introduced as coming from a freer country. At their séances he hadmet one of the genuine old Jacobins, an exile, a former member of theMountain, who had been a friend of Robespierre. Augustus often visitedhim in a little dark and dirty room high up in an old house, anddiscussed tyranny and freedom with him. He was also taking paintinglessons, and had begun to copy an old picture in the gallery.

One day he received a letter from the old Countess di Gampocorta, whowas at the time in residence at her villa close to Pisa and asked him tocome and see her. She wrote with great friendliness and gratitude andgave him her news. On being informed, at the same moment, of hergrandmother's accident and the death of her former husband, the youngRosina had been brought to bed of a boy, who had been christened Carloafter his great-grandmother, and whom she described as a very wonderfulbaby. Both the old and the young woman were well again, though the oldCountess wrote that she had given up all hope of getting back the use ofher right hand, and they were longing to express to him their thanks forthe service that he had done them in their hour of need.

Augustus drove out to the old lady's villa on the afternoon of anextremely hot day. As he was nearing the place a thunderstorm which hadhung over Pisa for three days broke loose. A strange sulphurous colorand smell filled the air, and the large dark trees near the road onwhich they were driving were bent down by the violent gusts of wind. Afew tremendous flashings of lightning seemed to strike quite close tothe carriage, and were followed by long wild roarings of thunder. Thencame the rain in heavy warm drops, and in a moment the whole landscapewas veiled to him, within his covered carriage, behind streaks of grayand luminous water. As they drove over a stone bridge with a lowbalustrade he saw the rain strike the dark river like many hundredarrowheads. They climbed up a road along a steep and rocky hill, nowslippery with the rain, and as they came to a stop at the bottom of along stone stair in front of the house, a servant with a large umbrellacame running down to protect the visitor on his ascent to the house.

In the very large room opening onto a long stone terrace with a viewover the river, the quick drumming of heavy raindrops upon the stoneswas as distinct as if it had been in the room itself. With it came,through the tall open windows, the smell of the sudden freshness andmoisture of the air, and of hot stones cooling under water. The roomitself smelled of roses. At the other end of it an old abbate had beengiving a little girl a lesson on the piano, but they had stopped becausethe noise of the thunder and rain interfered with their counting theirmeasures, and they were now looking out over the valley and the river.

The old Countess and the young mother, on a sofa, had had the babybrought in to look at. He was in the arms of his nurse, a very largemagnificent young woman in pink and red, like an oleander flower, andthere looked fantastically small, like a little roasted apple to whichhad been attached a great stream of lace and ribbons. Their attentionwas divided between the child and the storm, and the two had broughtthem into a state of exultation, as if their lives had at this hourreached their zenith.

The old lady, who had meant to get up to meet him, was so overcome withher feelings at the sight of Augustus that she could not move. Her eyes,under the old eyelids that were like crape, filled with tears, whichfrom time to time during their conversation rolled down her face. Shekissed him on both cheeks, and introduced him with deep emotion to hergranddaughter, who was in reality as lovely as any Madonna he had seenin Italy, and to the baby. Augustus had never been able to feel anythingbut fear in the presence of very young children--though they might, hethought, be of some interest as a kind of promise--and he was surprisedto realize that the women were all of the opinion that the baby at thisstage had reached its very acme of perfection, and that it was a tragicthing that it should ever have to change. This view, that the human raceculminates at birth to decline ever after, impressed him as being easierto live up to than his own.

The old lady had changed since the day when he had met her on the road.The love for a male creature, which she had told him that she had thusfar been unable to feel, had rounded out her life in a great and sweetharmony. She told him so herself in the course of their talk. "When Iwas a little girl," she said, "I was told never to show a fool a thinghalf finished. But what else does the Lord himself do to us during allour lives? If I had been shown this child from the beginning I shouldhave been docile and have let the Lord ride me in any direction hewanted. Life is a mosaic work of the Lord's, which he keeps filling inbit by bit. If I had seen this little bit of bright color as thecenterpiece, I would have understood the pattern, and would not haveshaken it all to pieces so many times, and given the good Lord so muchtrouble in putting it together again." Otherwise she talked mostly abouther accident and the afternoon that they had spent together at the inn.She talked with that great delight in remembering which gives value toany occurrence of the past, however insignificant it may have been atthe moment.

A servant brought wine and some very beautiful peaches, and the youngfather came in and was introduced to the guest; but he played no greaterpart in the picture than the youngest Magus of the adoration, the oldCountess having taken for herself the part of Joseph.

When the rain had eased off the old lady took Augustus to the window tosee the view. "My friend," she said, while they were standing theretogether, a little away from the others, "I can never rightly express mygratitude to you, but I want to give you a small token of it to rememberme by, when you are far away, and I hope that you will give me thepleasure of accepting it."

Augustus was looking out at the landscape below. A vaguely familiar notewithin it struck him and made him feel slightly giddy.

"When we first met," she went on, "I told you that I had loved threepersons in the course of my life. About the two you know. The third andfirst was a girl of my own age, a friend from a far country, whom I knewfor a short time only and then lost. But we had promised to remembereach other forever, and the memory of her has given me strength manytimes in the vicissitudes of life. When we parted, with many tears, wegave each other a gift of remembrance. Because this thing is precious tome and a token of a real friendship, I want you to take it with you."

With these words she took from her pocket a small object and handed itto him.

Augustus looked at it, and unconsciously his hand went up to his breast.It was a small smelling-bottle in the shape of a heart. On it waspainted a landscape with trees, and in the background a white house. Ashe gazed at it he realized that the house was his own place in Denmark.He recognized the high roof of Lindenburg, even the two old oaks infront of the gate, and the long line of the lime tree avenue behind thehouse. The stone seat under the oaks had been painted with great care.Underneath, on a painted ribbon, were the words Amitié sincère.

He could feel his own little bottle in his waistcoat pocket, and camenear to taking it out and showing it to the old lady. He felt that thiswould have made a tale which she would forever have cherished andrepeated; that it might even come to be her last thought on herdeathbed. But he was held back by the feeling that there was, in thisdecision of fate, something which was meant for him only--a value, adepth, a resort even, in life which belonged to him alone, and which hecould not share with anybody else any more than he would be able toshare his dreams.

He thanked the old lady with much feeling, and as she realized how muchher gift was being appreciated she answered him back with pride anddignity.

He parted from his old friend and the young couple with all theexpressions of sincere friendship and took the road to Pisa.

The rain had stopped. The afternoon air was almost cold. Golden sunlightand deep quiet blue shadows divided the landscape between them. Arainbow stood low in the sky.

Augustus took a small mirror from his pocket. Holding it in the flat ofhis hand, he looked thoughtfully into it.

The Supper at Elsinore

Upon the corner of a street of Elsinore, near the harbor, there stands adignified old gray house, built early in the eighteenth century, andlooking down reticently at the new times grown up around it. Through thelong years it has been worked into a unity, and when the front door isopened on a day of north-north-west the door of the corridor upstairswill open out of sympathy. Also when you tread upon a certain step ofthe stair, a board of the floor in the parlor will answer with a faintecho, like a song.

It had been in the possession of the family De Coninck for many years,but after the state bankruptcy of 1813 and simultaneous tragichappenings within the family itself, they gave it up and moved to theirhouse in Copenhagen. An old woman in a white cap looked after the oldhouse for them, with a man to assist her, and, living in the old rooms,would think and talk of old days. The two daughters of the house hadnever married, and were now too old for it. The son was dead. But insummers of long ago--so Madam Bæk would recount--on Sunday afternoonswhen the weather was fine, the Papa and Mamma De Coninck, with the threechildren, used to drive in a landaulet to the country house of the oldlady, the grandmother, where they would dine, as the custom was then, atthree o'clock, outside on the lawn under a large elm tree which, inJune, scattered its little round and flat brown seeds thickly upon thegrass. They would partake of duck with green peas and of strawberrieswith cream, and the little boy would run to and fro, in white nankeens,to feed his grandmother's Bolognese dogs.

The two young sisters used to keep, in cages, the many birds presentedto them by their seafaring admirers. When asked if they did not play theharp, old Madam Bæk would shrug her shoulders over the impossibility ofgiving any account of the many perfections of the young ladies. As totheir adorers, and the proposals which had been made them, this was ahopeless theme to enter upon. There was no end to it.

Old Madam Bæk, who had herself been married for a short time to asailor, and had, when he was drowned, reëntered the service of the DeConinck family as a widow, thought it a great pity that neither of thelovely sisters had married. She could not quite get over it. Toward theworld she held the theory that they had not been able to find any manworthy of them, except their brother. But she herself felt that herdoctrine would not hold water. If this had been the two sisters'trouble, they ought to have put up with less than the ideal. Sheherself, on their behalf, would have done so, although it would havecost her much. Also, in her heart she knew better. She was seventeenyears older than the elder sister, Fernande, whom they called Fanny, andeighteen years older than the younger, Eliza, who was born on the day ofthe fall of the Bastille, and she had been with them for the greaterpart of her life. Even if she was unable to put it into words, she feltkeenly enough, as with her own body and soul, the doom which hung overthe breed, and which tied these sisters and this brother together andmade impossible for them any true relation to other human beings.

While they had been young, no event in the social world of Elsinore hadbeen a success without the lovely De Coninck sisters. They were theheart and soul of all the gayety of the town. When they entered itsballrooms, the ceilings of sedate old merchants' houses seemed to lift alittle, and the walls to spring out in luminous Ionian columns, boundwith vine. When one of them opened the ball, light as a bird, bold as athought, she consecrated the gathering to the gods of true joy of life,from whose presence care and envy are banished. They could sing duetslike a pair of nightingales in a tree, and imitate without effort andwithout the slightest malice the voices of all the beau monde ofElsinore, so as to make the paunches of their father's friends, thematadors of the town, shake with laughter around their card tables. Theycould make up a charade or a game of forfeits in no time, and when theyhad been out for their music lessons, or to the Promenade, they cameback brimful of tales of what had happened, or of tales out of their ownimaginations, one whim stumbling over the other.

And then, within their own rooms, they would walk up and down the floorand weep, or sit in the window and look out over the harbor and wringtheir hands in their laps, or lie in bed at night and cry bitterly, forno reason in the world. They would talk, then, of life with the blackbitterness of two Timons of Athens, and give Madam Bæk an uncannyfeeling, as in an atmosphere of corrodent rust. Their mother, who didnot have the curse in her blood, would have been badly frightened hadshe been present at these moments, and would have suspected some unhappylove affair. Their father would have understood them, and have grievedon their behalf, but he was occupied with his affairs, and did not comeinto his daughters' rooms. Only this elderly female servant, whosetemperament was as different as possible from theirs, would understandthem in her way, and would keep it all within her heart, as they didthemselves, with mingled despair and pride. Sometimes she would try tocomfort them. When they cried out, "Hanne, is it not terrible that thereis so much lying, so much falsehood, in the world?" she said, "Well,what of it? It would be worse still if it were actually true, all thatthey tell."

Then again the girls would get up, dry their tears, try on their newbonnets before the glass, plan their theatricals and sleighing parties,shock and gladden the hearts of their friends, and have the whole thingover again. They seemed as unable to keep from one extremity as from theother. In short, they were born melancholiacs, such as make others happyand are themselves helplessly unhappy, creatures of playfulness, charmand salt tears, of fine fun and everlasting loneliness.

Whether they had ever been in love, old Madam Bæk herself could nottell. They used to drive her to despair by their hard skepticism as toany man being in love with them, when she, indeed, knew better, when shesaw the swains of Elsinore grow pale and worn, go into exile or becomeold bachelors from love of them. She also felt that could they ever havebeen quite convinced of a man's love of them, that would have meantsalvation to these young flying Dutchwomen. But they stood in a strange,distorted relation to the world, as if it had been only their reflectionin a mirror which they had been showing it, while in the background andthe shadow the real woman remained a looker-on. She would follow withkeen attention the movements of the lover courting her image, laughingto herself at the impossibility of the consummation of their love, whenthe moment should come for it, her own heart hardening all the time. Didshe wish that the man would break the glass and the lovely creaturewithin it, and turn around toward herself? Oh, that she knew to be outof the question. Perhaps the lovely sisters derived a queer pleasure outof the adoration paid to their images in the mirror. They could not dowithout it in the end.

Because of this particular turn of mind they were predestined to be oldmaids. Now that they were real old maids, of fifty-two and fifty-three,they seemed to have come to better terms with life, as one bears up witha thing that will soon be over. That they were to disappear from theearth without leaving any trace whatever did not trouble them, for theyhad always known that it would be so. It gave them a certainsatisfaction to feel that they were disappearing gracefully. They couldnot possibly putrefy, as would most of their friends, having alreadybeen, like elegant spiritual mummies, laid down with myrrh and aromaticherbs. When they were in their sweet moods, and particularly in theirrelations with the younger generation, the children of their friends,they even exhaled a spiced odor of sanctity, which the young peopleremembered all their lives.

The fatal melancholy of the family had come out in a different manner inMorten, the boy, and in him had fascinated Madam Bæk even to possession.She never lost patience with him, as she sometimes did with the girls,because of the fact that he was male and she female, and also by reasonof the true romance which surrounded him as it had never surrounded hissisters. He had been, indeed, in Elsinore, as another highborn youngdandy before him, the observed of all observers, the glass of fashionand the mold of form. Many were the girls of the town who had remainedunmarried for his sake, or who had married late in life one having alikeness, perhaps not quite en face and not quite in profile, to thatgod-like young head which had, by then, forever disappeared from thehorizon. And there was even the girl who had been, in the eyes of allthe world, engaged to be married to Morten, herself married now, withchildren--aber frage nur nicht wie! She had lost that radiant fairnesswhich had in his day given her the name, in Elsinore, of "goldenlambkin," so that where that fairy creature had once pranced in thestreets a pale and quiet lady now trod the pavement. But still this wasthe girl whom, when he had stepped out of his barge on a shining Marchday at the pier of Elsinore, with the whole population of the townwaving and shouting to him, he had lifted from the ground and held inhis arms, while all the world had swung up and down around her, hadwhirled fans and long streamers in all the hues of the rainbow.

Morten De Coninck had been more reticent of manner than his sisters. Hehad no need to exert himself. When he came into a room, in his quietway, he owned and commanded it. He had all the beauty of limb andelegance of hands and feet of the ladies of the family, but not theirfineness of feature. His nose and mouth seemed to have been cut by arougher hand. But he had the most striking, extraordinarily noble andserene forehead. People talking to him lifted their eyes to that broadpure brow as if it had been radiant with the diamond tiara of a youngemperor, or the halo of a saint. Morten De Coninck looked as if he couldnot possibly know either guilt or fear. Very likely he did not. Heplayed the part of a hero to Elsinore for three years.

This was the time of the Napoleonic wars, when the world was tremblingon its foundations. Denmark, in the struggle of the Titans, had tried toremain free and to go her own ways, and had had to pay for it.Copenhagen had been bombarded and burned. On that September night, whenthe sky over the town had flamed red to all Sealand, the great chimingbells of Frue Kirke, set going by the fire, had played, on their own,Luther's hymn, Ein fester Burg ist unser Gott, just before the talltower fell into ruins. To save the capital the government had had tosurrender the fleet. The proud British frigates had led the warships ofDenmark--the apples of her eye, a string of pearls, a flight of captiveswans--up through the Sound. The empty ports cried to heaven, and shameand hatred were in all hearts.

It was in the course of the struggles and great events of the followingyears of 1807 and 1808 that the flotilla of privateers sprang up, likelive sparks from a smoking ruin. Driven forth by patriotism, thirst ofrevenge, and hope of gain, the privateers came from all the coasts andlittle islands of Denmark, manned by gentlemen, ferrymen, and fishermen,idealists and adventurers--gallant seamen all of them. As you took outyour letter of marque you made your own cause one with that of thebleeding country; you had the right to strike a blow at the enemywhenever you had the chance, and you might come out of the rencounter arich man. The privateer stood in a curious relationship to the state: itwas a sort of acknowledged maritime love affair, a left-handed marriage,carried through with passionate devotion on both sides. If she did notwear the epaulets and sanctifying bright metal of legitimate union, shehad at least the burning red kiss of the crown of Denmark on her lips,and the freedom of the concubine to enchant her lord by these wild whimswhich queens do not dream of. The royal navy itself--such as was left ofit in those ships which had been away from Copenhagen that fatalSeptember week--took a friendly view of the privateer flotilla and livedwith it on congenial terms; on such terms, probably, as those on whichRachel lived with her maid Bilhah, who accomplished what she could notdo herself. It was a great time for brave men. There were cannonssinging once more in the Danish fairways, here and there, and where theywere least expected, for the privateers very rarely worked together;every one of them was out on its own. Incredible, heroic deeds wereperformed, great prizes were snatched away under the very guns of theconveying frigates and were brought into port, by the triumphant wildlittle boats with their rigging hanging down in rags, amid shouts ofexultation. Songs were made about it all. There can rarely have been aclass of heroes who appealed more highly and deeply to the heart andimagination of the common people, and to all the boys, of a nation.

It was soon found that the larger type of ship did not do well for thistraffic. The ferryboat or snow, with a station bill of twelve to twentymen, and with six to ten swivel guns, handy and quick in emergencies,was the right bird for the business. The nautical skill of the captainand his knowledge of the seaways played a great part, and the personalbravery of the crew, their artfulness with the guns, and, in boarding,with hand weapons, carried the point. Here were the honors of war to bewon; and not only honor, but gold; and not gold alone, but revenge uponthe violator, sweet to the heart. And when they came in, these old andyoung sea dogs, covered with snow, their whole rigging sometimes coatedwith ice until the ship looked as if it were drawn with chalk upon adark sea, they had their hour of glory behind them, but a greatexcitement in front, for they made a tremendous stir in the littleseaport towns. Then came the judgment of the prize, and the sale of thesalved goods, which might be of great value. The government took itsshare, and each man on board came in for his, from the captain, gunner,and mate to the boys, who received one-third of a man's share. A boymight have gone to sea possessing nothing but his shirt, trousers andtrouser-strap, and come back with those badly torn and red-stained, anda tale of danger and high seas to tell his friends, and might bejingling five hundred riksdaler in his pocket a fortnight later, whenthe sale was over. The Jews of Copenhagen and Hamburg, each in threetall hats, one on top of the other, made their appearance upon the spotquickly, to play a great rôle at the sale, or, beforehand, to coax theprize-marks out of the pockets of impatient combatants.

Soon there shot up, like new comets, the names of popular heroes andtheir boats, around whose fame myths gathered daily. There was JensLind, of the Cort Adeler, the one they called "Velvet" Lind because hewas such a swell, and who played the rôle of a great nabob for someyears, and then, when all gain was spent, finished up as a bear-leader.There was Captain Raaber, of The Revenger, who was something of apoet; the brothers Wulffsen, of The Mackerel and the Madame Clark,who were gentlemen of Copenhagen; and Christen Kock of the Æolus,whose entire crew--every single man--was killed or wounded in her fightwith a British frigate off Læssø; and there was young Morten De Coninck,of the Fortuna II.

When Morten first came to his father and asked him to equip a privateerfor him, the heart of old Mr. De Coninck shrank a little from the idea.There were many rich and respectable shipowners of Copenhagen, some ofthem greater merchants than he, who had in these days launched theirprivateers, and Mr. De Coninck, who yielded to no one in patrioticfeeling, had himself suffered heavy losses at the hands of the British.But the business was painful to him. There was to his mind somethingrevolting in the idea of attacking merchant ships, even if they didcarry contraband. It seemed to him like assaulting ladies or shootingalbatrosses. Morten had to turn for support to his father's cousin,Fernand De Coninck, a rich old bachelor of Elsinore whose mother wasFrench and who was an enthusiastic partisan of the Emperor Napoleon.Morten's two sisters masterfully assisted him in getting around UncleFernand, and in November, 1807, the young man put to sea in his ownboat. The uncle never regretted his generosity. The whole businessrejuvenated him by twenty years, and he possessed, in the end, acollection of souvenirs from the ships of the enemy that gave him greatpleasure.

The Fortuna II of Elsinore, with a crew of twelve and four swivelguns, received her letter of marque on the second of November--was notthis date, and the dates of exploits following it, written in MadamBæk's heart, like the name of Calais in Queen Mary's, now, thirty-threeyears after? Already on the fourth the Fortuna II surprised an Englishbrig off Hveen. An English man-of-war, hastening to the spot, shot atthe privateer, but her crew managed to cut the cables of the prize andbring her into safety under the guns of Kronborg.

On the twentieth of November the boat had a great day. From a convoy shecut off the British brig, The William, and the snow, Jupiter, whichhad a cargo of sail cloth, stoneware, wine, spirits, coffee, sugar andsilks. The cargo was unloaded at Elsinore, but both prizes were broughtto Copenhagen, where they were condemned. Two hundred Jews came toElsinore to bid at the auction sale of the Jupiter's cargo, on thethirtieth of December. Morten himself bought in a piece of white brocadewhich was said to have been made in China and sent from England for thewedding dress of the Czar's sister. At this time Morten had just becomeengaged, and all Elsinore laughed and smiled at him as he walked awaywith the parcel under his arm.

Many times he was pursued by the enemy's men-of-war. Once, on thetwenty-seventh of May, in flight from a British frigate, he ran ashorenear Aarhus, but escaped by throwing his ballast of iron overboard, andgot in under the guns of the Danish batteries. The burghers of Aarhusprovided the illustrious young privateers-man with new iron for hisballast, free of charge. It was said that the little seamstressesbrought him their pressing-irons, and kissed them in parting with them,to bring him luck.

On the fifteenth of January the Fortuna had, together with theprivateer Three Friends, captured six of the enemy's ships, and withthese was bearing in with Drogden, to have them realized in Copenhagen,when one of the prizes ran ashore on the Middelgrund. It was a bigBritish brig loaded with sail cloth, valued at 100,000 riksdaler, whichthe privateers had, on the morning of the same day, cut off from anEnglish convoy. The British men-of-war were still pursuing them. At thesight of the accident the pursuing ships instantly dispatched a strongdetachment of six longboats to recapture their brig. The privateers, ontheir side, were not disposed to give her up, and beat up against theBritish, who were driven away by a fire of grapeshot and had to give upthe recapture. But the ship was to be lost all the same. Theprize-master on board her, at the sight of the enemy's boats with theirgreatly superior forces, had put fire to the brig so that she should notfall again into the hands of the British. The fire spread so violentlythat the ship could not be saved, and all night the people of Copenhagenwatched the tall, terrible beacon to the north. The five remainingprizes were taken to Copenhagen.

It was in the summer of the same year that the Fortuna II came in fora life-and-death fight off Elsinore. She had by then become a thorn inthe flesh of the British, and on a dark night in August they made ready,from the men-of-war stationed on the Swedish coast, to capture her. Twobig launches were sent off, their tholes bound with wool. The crew ofthe privateer had turned in, and only young Morten himself and hisbalker were on deck when the launches, manned by thirty-five sailors,grated against the Fortuna's sides, and the boarding pikes wereplanted in her boards. From the launches shots were fired, but on boardthe privateer there was neither time nor room for using the guns. Itbecame a struggle of axes, broadswords and knives. The enemy swarmed ondeck from all sides; men were cutting at the chain-cable and hanging inthe figurehead. But it did not last long. The Fortuna's men put up adesperate fight, and in twenty minutes the deck was cleared. The enemyjumped into its boats and pushed off. The guns were used then, and threecanister shots were fired after the retreating British. They left twelvedead and wounded men on the deck of the Fortuna II.

At Elsinore the people had heard the musketry fire from the longboats,but no reply from the Fortuna. They gathered at the harbor and alongthe ramparts of Kronborg, but the night was dark, and although the skywas just reddening in the east, no one could see what was happening.Then, just as the first light of morning was filling the dull air, threeshots rang out, one after another, and the boys of Elsinore said thatthey could see the white smoke run along the dark waves. The FortunaII bore in with Elsinore half an hour later. She looked black againstthe eastern sky. It was apparent that her rigging had been badlycrippled, and gradually the people on land were able to distinguish thelittle dark figures on board, and the red on the deck. It was said thatthere was not a single broadsword or knife on board that was not red,and all the netting from stern to main chains had been soaked withblood. There was not one man on board, either, who had not been wounded,but only one was badly hurt. This was a West-Indian Negro, from theDanish colonies there--"black in skin but a Dane in heart," thenewspapers of Elsinore said the next day. Morten himself, fouled withgunpowder, a bandage down over one eye, white in the morning light andwild still from the fight, lifted both his arms high in the air to thecheering crowd on shore.

In the autumn of that same year the whole privateer trade was suddenlyprohibited. It was thought that it drew the enemy's frigates to theDanish seas, and constituted a danger to the country. Also, it was onmany sides characterized as a wild and inhuman way of fighting. Thisbroke the hearts of many gallant sailors, who left their decks to wanderall over the world, unable to settle down again to their work in thelittle towns. The country grieved over her birds of prey.

To Morten De Coninck, all people agreed, the new order cameconveniently. He had gathered his laurels and could now marry and settledown in Elsinore.

He was then engaged to Adrienne Rosenstand, the falcon to the whitedove. She was the bosom friend of his sisters, who treated her much asif they had created her themselves, and took pleasure in dressing up herloveliness to its greatest advantage. They had refined and decidedtastes, and spent as much time on the choice of her trousseau as if ithad been their own. Between themselves they were not always so lenientto their frail sister-in-law, but would passionately deplore to oneanother the mating of their brother with a little bourgeoise, anornamental bird out of the poultry yard of Elsinore. Had they thoughtthe matter over a little, they ought to have congratulated themselves.The timidity and conventionality of Adrienne still allowed them to shineunrivaled within their sphere of daring and fantasy; but what figureswould the falcon's sisters have cut, had he, as might well havehappened, brought home a young eagle-bride?

The wedding was to take place in May, when the country around Elsinoreis at its loveliest, and all the town was looking forward to the day.But it did not come off in the end. On the morning of the marriage thebridegroom was found to be missing, and he was never seen again inElsinore. The sisters, dissolved in tears of grief and shame, had totake the news to the bride, who fell down in a swoon, lay ill for a longtime, and never quite recovered. The whole town seemed to have beenstruck dumb by the blow, and to wrap up its head in sorrow. No one mademuch out of this unique opportunity for gossip. Elsinore felt the lossits own, and the fall.

No direct message from Morten De Coninck ever reached Elsinore. But inthe course of the years strange rumors of him drifted in from the West.He was a pirate, it was said first of all, and that was not anunheard-of fate for a homeless privateer. Then it was rumored that hewas in the wars in America, and had distinguished himself. Later it wastold that he had become a great planter and slave-owner in the Antilles.But even these rumors were lightly handled by the town. His name washardly ever mentioned, until, after long years, he could be talked aboutas a figure out of a fairy tale, like Bluebeard or Sindbad the Sailor.In the drawing-rooms of the De Coninck house he ceased to exist afterhis wedding day. They took his portrait down from the wall. Madame DeConinck took her death over the loss of her son. She had a great deal oflife in her. She was a stringed instrument from which her children hadmany of their high and clear notes. If it were never again to be used,if no waltz, serenade, or martial march were ever to be played upon itagain, it might as well be put away. Death was no more unnatural to herthan silence.

To Morten's sisters the infrequent news of their brother was manna onwhich they kept their hearts alive in a desert. They did not serve it totheir friends, nor to their parents; but within the distillery of theirown rooms they concocted it according to many recipes. Their brotherwould come back an admiral in a foreign fleet, his breast covered withunknown stars, to marry the bride waiting for him, or come back wounded,broken in health, but highly honored, to die in Elsinore. He would landat the pier. Had he not done so, and had they not seen it with their owneyes? But even this spare food came in time to be seasoned with muchpungent bitterness. They themselves, in the end, would rather havestarved than have swallowed it, had they had the choice. Morten, it wastold, far from being a distinguished naval officer or a rich planter,had indeed been a pirate in the waters around Cuba and Trinidad--one ofthe last of the breed. But, pursued by the ships Albion and Triumph,he had lost his ship near Port of Spain, and himself had a narrowescape. He had tried to make his living in many hard ways and had beenseen by somebody in New Orleans, very poor and sick. The last thing thathis sisters heard of him was that he had been hanged.

From Morten's wedding day, Madam Bæk had carried her wound in silencefor thirty years. The sophistries of his sisters she never chose to makeuse of; she let them go in at one ear and out at the other. She was veryhumble and attentive to the deserted bride, when she again visited thefamily, yet she never showed her much sympathy. Also she knew, as wasever the case in the house, more than any other inhabitant of it. Itcannot be said that she had seen the catastrophe approach, but she hadhad strange warnings in her dreams. The bridegroom had been in thehabit, from childhood, of coming and sitting with her in her little roomfrom time to time. He had done that while they were making greatpreparations for his happiness. Over her needlework and her glasses shehad watched his face. And she, who often worked late at night, and whowould be up in the linen-room before the early summer sun was above theSound, was aware of many comings and goings unknown to the rest of thehousehold. Something had happened to the engaged people. Had he beggedher to take him and hold him, so that it should no longer be in hispower to leave her? Madam Bæk could not believe that any girl couldrefuse Morten anything. Or had she yielded, and found the magicineffective? Or had she been watching him, daily slipping away from her,and still had not the strength to offer the sacrifice which might haveheld him?

Nobody would ever know, for Adrienne never talked of these things;indeed, she could not have done so if she had wanted to. Ever since herrecovery from her long illness she seemed to be a little hard ofhearing. She could only hear the things which could be talked about veryloudly, and finished her life in an atmosphere of high-shriekedplatitudes.

For fifteen years the lovely Adrienne waited for her bridegroom, thenshe married.

The two sisters De Coninck attended the wedding. They were magnificentlyattired. This was really the last occasion upon which they appeared asthe belles of Elsinore, and although they were then in their thirties,they swept the floor with the young girls of the town. Their weddingpresent to the bride was no less imposing. They gave her their mother'sdiamond earrings and brooch, a parure unique in Elsinore. They hadlikewise robbed the windows of their drawing-rooms of all their flowersto adorn the altar, this being a December wedding. All the world thoughtthat the two proud sisters were doing these honors to their friend tomake amends for what she had suffered at their brother's hands. MadamBæk knew better. She knew that they were acting out of deep gratitude,that the diamond parure was a thankoffering. For now the fair Adriennewas no longer their brother's virgin widow, and held no more the placenext to him in the eyes of all the world. When the gentle intruder nowwalked out of their house, the least they could do was to follow her tothe door with deep courtesies. To her children, later in life, they alsofor the same reason showed the most excessive kindness, leaving them, inthe end, most of their worldly goods; and to all this they were drivenby their thankfulness to that pretty brood of ornamental chickens out ofthe poultry yard of Elsinore, because they were not their brother'schildren.

Madam Bæk herself had been asked to the wedding, and had a pleasantevening. When the ice was being served, she suddenly thought of theicebergs in the great black ocean, of which she had read, and of alonely young man gazing at them from the deck of a ship, and at thatmoment her eyes met those of Miss Fanny, at the other end of the table.These dark eyes were all ablaze, and shone with tears. With all her DeConinck strength the distinguished old maid was suppressing something: agreat longing, or shame, or triumph.

But there was another girl of Elsinore whose story may rightly be told,very briefly, in this place. That was an innkeeper's daughter ofSletten, by the name of Katrine, of the blood of the charcoal burnerswho live near Elsinore and are in many ways like gypsies. She was a big,handsome, dark and red-cheeked girl, and was said to have been, at atime, the sweetheart of Morten De Coninck. This young woman had a sadfate. She was thought to have gone a little out of her head. She took todrink and to worse ways, and died young. To this girl, Eliza, theyounger of the sisters, showed great kindness. Twice she started her ina little milliner's shop, for the girl was talented and had an eye forelegance, and advertised it herself by wearing no bonnets but hers, andto the end of her life she gave her money. When, after many scandals inElsinore, Katrine moved to Copenhagen, and took up her residence in thestreet of Dybensgade, where, in general, the ladies of the town neverset foot, Eliza De Coninck still went to see her, and seemed to comeback having gathered strength and a secret joy from her visits. For thiswas the way in which a girl beloved and deserted by Morten De Coninckought to behave. This plain ruin, misery and degradation were the onlyharmonious accompaniment to the happenings, which might resound in andrejoice the heart of the sister while she stopped her ears to the wordsof comfort of the world. Eliza sat at Katrine's deathbed like a witchattentively observing the working of the deadly potion, holding herbreath for the fulfillment of it.

The winter of 1841 was unusually severe. The cold began beforeChristmas, but in January it turned into a deadly still, continuousfrost. A little snow in spare hard grains came down from time to time,but there was no wind, no sun, no movement in air or water. The ice wasthick upon the Sound, so that people could walk from Elsinore to Swedento drink coffee with their friends, the fathers of whom had met theirown fathers to the roar of cannons on the same waters, when the waveshad gone high. They looked like little rows of small black tin soldiersupon the infinite gray plane. But at night, when the lights from thehouses and the dull street lamps reached only a little way out on theice, this flatness and whiteness of the sea was very strange, like thebreath of death over the world. The smoke from the chimneys wentstraight up in the air. The oldest people did not remember another suchwinter.

Old Madam Bæk, like other people, was very proud of this extraordinarilycold weather, and much excited about it, but during these winter monthsshe changed. She probably was near her end, and was going off quickly.It began by her fainting in the dining-room one morning when she hadbeen out by herself to buy fish, and for some time she could hardlymove. She became very silent. She seemed to shrink, and her eyes grewpale. She went about in the house as before, but now it seemed to herthat she had to climb an endless steep hill when in the evenings, withher candlestick and her shadow, she walked up the stair; and she seemedto be listening to sounds from far away when, with her knitting, she satclose to the crackling tall porcelain stove. Her friends began to thinkthat they should have to cut out a square hole for her in that ironground before the thaw of spring would set in. But she still held on,and after a time she seemed to become stronger again, although morerigid, as if she herself had frozen in the hard winter with a frost thatwould not thaw. She never got back that gay and precise flow of speechwhich, during seventy years, had cheered so many people, kept servantsin order, and promoted or checked the gossip of Elsinore.

One afternoon she confided to the man who assisted her in the house herdecision to go to Copenhagen to see her ladies. The next day she wentout to arrange for her trip with the hackney man. The news of herproject spread, for the journey from Elsinore to Copenhagen is no joke.On a Thursday morning she was up by candlelight and descended the stonesteps to the street, her carpetbag in her hand, while the morning lightwas still dim.

The journey was no joke. It is more than twenty-six miles from Elsinoreto Copenhagen, and the road ran along the sea. In many places there washardly any road; only a track that went along the seashore. Here thewind, blowing onto the land, had swept away the snow, so that no sledgescould pass, and the old woman went in a carriage with straw on thefloor. She was well wrapped up, still, as the carriage drove on and thewinter day came up and showed all the landscape so silent and cold, itwas as if nothing at all could keep alive here, least of all an oldwoman all by herself in a carriage. She sat perfectly quiet, lookingaround her. The plane of the frozen Sound showed gray in the gray light.Here and there seaweeds strewn upon the beach marked it with brown andblack. Near the road, upon the sand, the crows were marching martiallyabout, or fighting over a dead fish. The little fishermen's houses alongthe road had their doors and windows carefully shut. Sometimes she wouldsee the fishermen themselves, in high boots that came above their knees,a long way out on the ice, where they were cutting holes to catch codwith a tin bait. The sky was the color of lead, but low along thehorizon ran a broad stripe the color of old lemon peel or very oldivory.

It was many years since she had come along this road. As she drove on,long-forgotten figures came and ran alongside the carriage. It seemedstrange to her that the indifferent coachman in a fur cap and the smallbay horses should have it in their power to drive her into a world ofwhich they knew nothing.

They came past Rungsted, where, as a little girl, she had served in theold inn, red-tiled, close to the road. From here to town the road wasbetter. Here had lived, for the last years of his life, in sickness andpoverty, the great poet Ewald, a genius, the swan of the North. Brokenin health, deeply disappointed in his love for the faithless Arendse,badly given to drink, he still radiated a rare vitality, a bright lightthat had fascinated the little girl. Little Hanne, at the age of ten,had been sensitive to the magnetism of the great mysterious powers oflife, which she did not understand. She was happy when she could be withhim. Three things, she had learned from the talk of the landlady, he wasalways begging for: to get married, since to him life without womenseemed unbearably cold and waste; alcohol of some sort--although he wasa fine connoisseur of wine, he could drink down the crass gin of thecountry as well; and, lastly, to be taken to Holy Communion. All threewere firmly denied him by his mother and stepfather, who were richpeople of Copenhagen, and even by his friend, Pastor Schoenheyder, forthey did not want him to be happy in either of the first two ways, andthey considered that he must alter his ways before he could be madehappy in the third. The landlady and Hanne were sorry for him. Theywould have married him and given him wine and taken him to HolyCommunion, had it lain with them. Often, when the other children hadbeen playing, Hanne had left them to pick early spring violets for himin the grass with cold fingers, looking forward to the sight of his facewhen he smelled the little bunches of flowers. There was something herewhich she could not understand, and which still held all her beingstrongly--that violets could mean so much. Generally he was very gaywith her, and would take her on his knees and warm his cold hands onher. His breath sometimes smelled of gin, but she never told anybody.Even three years later, when she was confirmed, she imagined the LordJesus with his long hair in a queue, and with that rare, wild, brokenand arrogant smile of the dying poet.

Madam Bæk came through the East Gate of Copenhagen just as people wereabout to light their lamps. She was held up and questioned by the tollcollectors, but when they found her to be an honest woman in possessionof no contraband they let her pass. So she would appear at the gate ofheaven, ignorant of what was wanted of her, but confident that if shebehaved correctly, according to her lights, others would behavecorrectly, according to theirs.

She drove through the streets of Copenhagen, looking around--for she hadnot been there for many years--as she would look around to form anopinion of the new Jerusalem. The streets here were not paved with goldor chrysoprase, and in places there was a little snow; but such as theywere she accepted them. She likewise accepted the stables, where she wasto get out, and the walk in the icy-cold blue evening of Copenhagen toGammeltorv, where lay the house of her ladies.

Nevertheless she felt, as she took her way slowly through the streets,that she was an intruder and did not belong. She was not even noticed,except by two young men, deep in a political discussion, who had toseparate to let her pass between them, and by a couple of boys, whoremarked upon her bonnet. She did not like this sort of thing, it didnot take place in Elsinore.

The windows of the first floor of the Misses De Conincks' house werebrightly lighted. Remembering it to be Fernande's birthday, Madam Bæk,down in the square, reasoned that the ladies would be having a party.

This was the case, and while Madam Bæk was slowly ascending the stair,dragging her heavy feet and her message from step to step, the sisterswere merrily entertaining their guests in their warm and cozy grayparlor with its green carpet and shining mahogany furniture.

The party was characteristic of the two old maids by being mostlycomposed of gentlemen. They existed, in their pretty house inGammeltorv, like a pair of prominent spiritual courtesans of Copenhagen,leading their admirers into excesses and seducing them into scatteringtheir spiritual wealth and health upon their charms. As a couple ofcorresponding young courtesans of the flesh would be out after the greatpeople and princes of this world, so were they ever spreading theirsnares for the honoratiori of the world spiritual, and tonight couldlay on the table no meaner acquisition than the Bishop of Sealand, thedirector of the Royal Theater of Copenhagen, who was himself adistinguished dramatic and philosophical scribe, and a famous oldpainter of animals, just back from Rome, where he had been shown greathonor. An old commodore with a fresh face, who had carried a wound since1807, and a lady-in-waiting to the Dowager Queen, elegant and a goodlistener, who looked as if her voluminous skirt was absolutely massive,from her waist down, completed the party, all of whom were old friends,but were there chiefly to hold the candle.

If these sisters could not live without men, it was because they had thefirm conviction, which, as an instinct, runs in the blood of seafaringfamilies, that the final word as to what you are really worth lies withthe other sex. You may ask the members of your own sex for their opinionand advice as to your compass and crew, your cuisine and garden, butwhen it comes to the matter of what you yourself are worth, the words ofeven your best friends are void and good for nothing, and you mustaddress yourself to the opposite sex. Old white skippers, who have beenround the Horn and out in a hundred hurricanes, know the law. They maybe highly respected on the deck or in the mess, and honored by theirstaunch gray contemporaries, but it is, finally, the girls who have thesay as to whether they are worth keeping alive or not. The old sailor'swomen are aware of this fact, and will take a good deal of trouble toimpress even the young boys toward a favorable judgment. This doctrine,and this quick estimating eye is developed in sailor's families becausethere the two sexes have the chance to see each other at a distance. Asailor, or a sailor's daughter, judges a person of the other sex asquickly and surely as a hunter judges a horse; a farmer, a head ofcattle; and a soldier, a rifle. In the families of clergymen andscribes, where the men sit in their houses all their days, people mayjudge each other extremely well individually, but no man knows what awoman is, and no woman what a man is; they cannot see the wood fortrees.

The two sisters, in caps with lace streamers, were doing the honors ofthe house gracefully. In those days, when gentlemen did not smoke in thepresence of ladies, the atmosphere of an evening party remained sereneto the end, but a very delicate aromatic and exotic stream of steam rosefrom the tumblers of rare old rum with hot water, lemon, and sugar, uponthe table in the soft glow of the lamp. None of the company was quiteuninfluenced by this nectar. They had a moment before been conjuringforth their youth by the singing of old songs which they themselvesremembered their fathers' friends singing over their wine in the reallygood old days. The Bishop, who had a very sweet voice, had been holdingup his glass while giving the ancient toast to the old generation:

Let the old ones be remembered now; they once were gay and free.
And that they knew to love, my dear, the proof thereof are we!

The echo of the song--for she now declared that it was a five minutes'course from her ear to her mind--was making Miss Fanny De Coninckthoughtful and a little absent-minded. What a strange proof, shethought, are these dry old bodies here tonight of the fact that youngmen and women, half a century ago, sighed and shivered and lostthemselves in ecstasies. What a curious proof is this gray hand of thefollies of young hands upon a night in May long, long ago.

As she was standing, her chin, in this intensive dreaming, pressed downa little upon the black velvet ribbon around her throat, it would havebeen difficult for anyone who had not known her in her youth to find anytrace of beauty in Fanny's face. Time had played a little cruelly withher. A slight wryness of feature, which had been an adorable piquantryonce, was now turned into an uncanny little disfigurement. Her birdlikelightness was caricatured into abrupt little movements in fits andstarts. But she had her brilliant dark eyes still, and was, all in all,a distinguished, and slightly touching, figure.

After a moment she took up again the conversation with the bishop asanimatedly as before. Even the little handkerchief in her fingers andthe small crystal buttons down her narrow silk bosom seemed to take partin the argument. No pythoness on her tripod, her body filled withinspiring fumes, could look more prophetic. The theme under discussionwas the question whether, if offered a pair of angel's wings which couldnot be removed, one would accept or refuse the gift.

"Ah, Your Right Worshipfulness," said Miss Fanny, "in walking up theaisle you would convert the entire congregation with your back. Therewould not be a sinner left in Copenhagen. But remember that even youdescend from the pulpit at twelve o'clock every Sunday. It must bedifficult enough for you as it is, but how would you, in a pair of whiteangels' wings, get out of----" What she really wanted to say was, "getout of using a chamber-pot?" Had she been forty years younger she wouldhave said it. The De Coninck sisters had not been acquainted withsailors all of their lives for nothing. Very vigorous expressions, andoaths even, such as were never found in the mouths of the other youngladies of Elsinore, came naturally to their rosy lips, and used to charmtheir admirers into idolatry. They knew a good many names for the devil,and in moments of agitation would say, "Hell--to hell!" Now the longpractice of being a lady and a hostess prevented Fanny, and she saidinstead very sweetly, "of eating a roast white turkey?" For that waswhat the Bishop had been doing at dinner with obvious delight. Still,her imagination was so vividly at work that it was curious that theprelate, gazing, at close quarters, with a fatherly smile into her cleareyes, did not see there the picture of himself, in his canonicals,making use of a chamber-pot in a pair of angels' wings.

The old man was so enlivened by the debate that he spilled a few dropsfrom his glass onto the carpet. "My dear charming Miss Fanny," he said,"I am a good Protestant and flatter myself that I have not quite failedin making things celestial and terrestrial go well together. In thatsituation I should look down and see, in truth, my celestialindividuality reflected in miniature, as you see yours every day in thelittle bit of glass in your fair hand."

The old professor of painting said: "When I was in Italy I was shown asmall, curiously shaped bone, which is found only in the shoulder of thelion, and is the remains of a wing bone, from the time when lions hadwings, such as we still see in the lion of St. Mark. It was veryinteresting."

"Ah, indeed, a fine monumental figure on that column," said the Bishop,who had also been in Italy, and who knew that he had a leonine head.

"Oh, if I had a chance of those wings," said Miss Fanny, "I should notcare a hang about my fine or monumental figure. But, by St. Anne, Ishould fly."

"Allow me," said the Bishop, "to hope, Miss Fanny, that you would not.We may have our reasons to mistrust a flying lady. You have, perhaps,heard of Adam's first wife, Lilith? She was, in contradistinction toEve, made all out of earth, like himself. What was the first thing thatshe did? She seduced two angels and made them betray to her the secretword which opens heaven, and so she flew away from Adam. That goes toteach us that where there is too much of the earthly element in a woman,neither husband nor angels can master her.

"Indeed," he went on, warming to his subject, his glass still in hishand, "in woman, the particularly heavenly and angelic attributes, andthose which we most look up to and worship, all go to weigh her down andkeep her on the ground. The long tresses, the veils of pudicity, thetrailing garments, even the adorable womanly forms in themselves, theswelling bosom and hip, are as little as possible in conformity with theidea of flying. We, all of us, willingly grant her the title of angel,and the white wings, and lift her up on our highest pedestal, on the oneinevitable condition that she must not dream of, must even have beenbrought up in absolute ignorance of, the possibility of flight."

"Ah, la la," said Fanny, "we are aware of that, Bishop, and so it isever the woman whom you gentlemen do not love or worship, who possessesneither the long lock nor the swelling bosom, and who has had to trussup her skirts to sweep the floor, who chuckles at the sight of theemblem of her very thraldom, and anoints her broomstick upon the eve ofWalpurgis."

The director of the Royal Theater rubbed his delicate hands gentlyagainst each other. "When I hear the ladies complain of their hard taskand restrictions in life," he said, "it sometimes reminds me of a dreamthat I once had. I was at the time writing a tragedy in verse. It seemedto me in my dream that the words and syllables of my poem made arebellion and protested, 'Why must we take infinite trouble to stand,walk and behave according to difficult and painful laws which the wordsof your prose do not dream of obeying?' I answered, 'Mesdames, becauseyou are meant to be poetry. Of prose we think, and demand, but little.It must exist, if only for the police regulations and the calendar. Buta poem which is not lovely has no raison d'être.' God forgive me if Ihave ever made poems which had in them no loveliness, and treated ladiesin a manner which prevented them from being perfectly lovely--myremaining sins I can shoulder easily then."

"How," said the old commodore, "could I entertain any doubts as to thereality of wings, who have grown up amongst sailing ships and amongstthe ladies of the beginning of our century? The beastly steamships whichgo about these days may well be a species of witches of the sea--theyare like self-supporting women. But if you ladies are contemplatinggiving up being white-sailed ships and poems--well, we must be perfectlylovely poems ourselves, then, and leave you to make up the policeregulations. Without poetry no ship can be sailed. When I was a cadet,on the way to Greenland, and in the Indian Ocean, I used to consolemyself, on the middle watch, by thinking, in consecutive order, of allthe women I knew, and by quoting poetry that I had learned by heart."

"But you have always been a poem, Julian," said Eliza, "a roundel." Shefelt tempted to put her arms round her cousin, they had always beengreat friends.

"Ah, in talking about Eve and Paradise," said Fanny, "you all stillremain a little jealous of the snake."

"When I was in Italy," said the professor, "I often thought what acurious thing it is that the serpent, which, if I understand theScripture, opened the eyes of man to the arts, should be, in itself, anobject impossible to get into a picture. A snake is a lovely creature.At Naples they had a large reptile house, and I used to study the snakesthere for many hours. They have skins like jewels, and their movementsare wonderful performances of art. But I have never seen a snake donesuccessfully in a picture. I could not paint it myself."

"Do you remember," said the commodore, who had been following his ownthoughts, "the swing that I put up for you, at Øregaard, on yourseventeenth birthday, Eliza? I made a poem about it."

"Yes, I do, Julian," said Eliza, her face brightening, "it was made likea ship."

It was a curious thing about the two sisters, who had been so unhappy asyoung women, that they should take so much pleasure in dwelling upon thepast. They could talk for hours of the most insignificant trifles oftheir young days, and these made them laugh and cry more heartily thanany event of the present day. Perhaps to them the first condition foranything having real charm was this: that it must not really exist.

It was another curious phenomenon about them that they, to whom so verylittle had happened, should talk of their married friends who hadhusbands, children, and grandchildren with pity and slight contempt, asof poor timid creatures whose lives had been dull and uneventful. Thatthey themselves had had no husbands, children, or lovers did notrestrain them from feeling that they had chosen the more romantic andadventurous part. The explanation was that to them only possibilitieshad any interest; realities carried no weight. They had themselves hadall possibilities in hand, and had never given them away in order tomake a definite choice and come down to a limited reality. They mightstill take part in elopements by rope-ladder, and in secret marriages,if it came to that. No one could stop them. Thus their only intimatefriends were old maids like themselves, or unhappily married women,dames of the round table of possibilities. For their happily marriedfriends, fattened on realities, they had, with much kindness, adifferent language, as if these had been of a slightly lower caste, withwhom intercourse had to be carried on with the assistance ofinterpreters.

Eliza's face had brightened, like a fine, pure jar of alabaster behindwhich a lamp is lighted, at mention of the swing, made like a boat,which had been given her for her seventeenth birthday. She had alwaysbeen by far the loveliest of the De Coninck children. When they wereyoung their old French aunt had named them la Bonté, la Beauté, andl'Esprit, Morten being la Bonté.

She was as fair as her sister was dark, and in Elsinore, where at thetime a fashion for surnames had prevailed, they had called her "Ariel,"or "The Swan of Elsinore." There had been that particular quality abouther beauty that it seemed to hold promise, to be only the first step ofthe ladder of some extraordinary career. Here was this exceptional youngfemale creature who had had the inspiration to be, from head to foot,strikingly lovely. But that was only the beginning of it. The next stepwas perhaps her clothes, for Eliza had always been a great swell, andhad run up heavy debts--for which at times her brother had taken theresponsibility before their father--on brocades, cashmeres, and plumesordered from Copenhagen and Hamburg, and even from Paris. But that wasalso only the beginning of something. Then came the way in which shemoved, and danced. There was about it an atmosphere of suspense whichcaused onlookers to hold their breaths. What was this extraordinary girlto do next? If at this time she had indeed unfolded a pair of largewhite wings, and had soared from the pier of Elsinore up into the summerair, it would have surprised no one. It was clear that she must dosomething extraordinary with such an abundance of gifts. "There is morestrength in that girl," said the old boatswain of La Fortuna, whenupon a spring day she came running down to the harbor, bareheaded, "thanin all Fortuna's crew." Then in the end she had done nothing at all.

At Gammeltorv she was quietly, as if intentionally, fading day by day,into an even more marble-like loveliness. She could still span her waistwith her two long slim hands, and moved with much pride and lightness,like an old Arab mare a little stiff, but unmistakably noble, at ease inthe sphere of war and fantasias. And there was still that about herwhich kept open a perspective, the feeling that somewhere there werereserves and it was not out of the question that extraordinary thingsmight happen.

"God, that swing, Eliza!" said the commodore. "You had been so hard onme in the evening that I actually went out into the garden of Øregaard,on that early July morning, resolved to hang myself. And as I waslooking up into the crown of the great elm, I heard you saying behindme: 'That would be a good branch.' That, I thought, was cruelly said.But as I turned around, there you were, your hair still done up incurling papers, and I remembered that I had promised you a swing. Icould not die, in any case, till you had had it. When I got it up, andsaw you in it, I thought: If it shall be my lot in life to be foreveronly ballast to the white sails of fair girls, I still bless my lot."

"That is what we have loved you for all your life," said Eliza.

An extremely pretty young maid, with pale blue ribbons on her cap--keptby the pair of old spiritual courtesans to produce an equilibrium in theestablishment, in the way in which two worldly young courtesans mighthave kept, to the same end, an ugly and misshapen servant, a dwarf withwit and imagination--brought in a tray filled with all sorts ofdelicacies: Chinese ginger, tangerines, and crystallized fruit. Inpassing Miss Fanny's chair she said softly, "Madam Bæk has come fromElsinore, and waits in the kitchen."

Fanny's color changed, she could never receive calmly the news thatanybody had arrived, or had gone away. Her soul left her and flewstraight to the kitchen, from where she had to drag it back again.

"In that summer of 1806," she said, "the Odyssey had been translatedinto Danish for the first time, I believe. Papa used to read it to us inthe evenings. Ha, how we played the hero and his gallant crew, bravedthe Cyclops and cruised between the island of the Læstrygones and thePhæacian shores! I shall never be made to believe that we did not spendthat summer in our ships, under brown sails."

Shortly after this the party broke up, and the sisters drew up theblinds of their window to wave to the four gentlemen who helped MissBardenfleth into her court carriage and proceeded in a gayly talkinggroup across the little iron-gray desert of nocturnal Gammeltorv,remarking, in the midst of philosophical and poetic discussions, uponthe extraordinary cold.

This moment at the end of their parties always went strangely to thesisters' hearts. They were happy to get rid of their guests; but alittle silent, bitter minute accompanied the pleasure. For they couldstill make people fall in love with them. They had the radiance in themwhich could refract little rainbow effects in the atmosphere ofCopenhagen existence. But who could make them feel in love? That glassof mental and sentimental alcohol which made for warmth and movementwithin the old phlebolitic veins of their guests--from where were theythemselves to get it? From each other, they knew, and in general theywere content with the fact. Still, at this moment, the tristesse ofthe eternal hostess stiffened them a little.

Not so tonight, for no sooner had they lowered the blind again than theywere off to the kitchen, making haste to send their pretty maid to bed,as if they knew the real joy of life to be found solely amongst elderlywomen. They made Madam Bæk and themselves a fresh cup of coffee, liftingdown the old copper kettle from the wall. Coffee, according to the womenof Denmark, is to the body what the word of the Lord is to the soul.

Had it been in the old days that the sisters and their servant met againafter a long separation, the girls would have started at once toentertain the widow with accounts of their admirers. The theme was everfascinating to Madam Bæk, and dear to the sisters by reason of theopportunity it gave them of shocking her. But these days were past. Theygave her the news of the town--an old widower had married again, andanother had gone mad--also a little gossip of the Court, such as shewould understand, which they had heard from Miss Bardenfleth. But therewas something in Madam Bæk's face which caught their attention. It washeavy with fate; she brought news herself. Very soon they paused to lether speak.

Madam Bæk allowed the pause to wax long.

"Master Morten," she said at last, and at the sound of her own thoughtsof these last long days and nights she herself grew very pale, "is atElsinore. He walks in the house."

At this news a deadly silence filled the kitchen. The two sisters felttheir hair stand on end. The terror of the moment lay, for them, inthis: that it was Madam Bæk who had recounted such news to them. Theymight have announced it to her, out of perversity and fancies, and itwould not have meant much. But that Hanne, who was to them the principleof solidity and equilibrium for the whole world, should open her mouthto throw at them the end of all things--that made these seconds in theirkitchen feel to the two younger women like the first seconds of a greatearthquake.

Madam Bæk herself felt the unnatural in the situation, and all which waspassing through the heads of her ladies. It would have terrified her aswell, had she still had it in her to be terrified. Now she felt only agreat triumph.

"I have seen him," she said, "seven times."

Here the sisters took to trembling so violently that they had to putdown their coffee cups.

"The first time," said Madam Bæk, "he stood in the red dining room,looking at the big clock. But the clock had stopped. I had forgotten towind it up."

Suddenly a rain of tears sprang out of Fanny's eyes, and bathed her paleface. "Oh, Hanne, Hanne," she said.

"Then I met him once on the stair," said Madam Bæk. "Three times he hascome and sat with me. Once he picked up a ball of wool for me, which hadrolled onto the floor, and threw it back in my lap."

"How did he look to you?" asked Fanny, in a broken, cracked voice,evading the glance of her sister, who sat immovable.

"He looks older than when he went away," said Madam Bæk. "He wears hishair longer than people do here; that will be the American fashion. Hisclothes are very old, too. But he smiled at me just as he always did.The third time that I saw him, before he went--for he goes in his ownway, and just as you think he is there, he is gone--he blew me a kissexactly as he used to do when he was a young man and I had scolded him alittle."

Eliza lifted her eyes, very slowly, and the eyes of the two sisters met.Never in all their lives had Madam Bæk said anything to them which theyhad for a moment doubted.

"But," said Madam Bæk, "this last time I found him standing before yourtwo pictures for a long time. And I thought that he wanted to see you,so I have come to fetch you to Elsinore."

At these words the sisters rose up like two grenadiers at parade. MadamBæk herself, although terribly agitated, sat where she had sat, as everthe central figure of their gatherings.

"When was it that you saw him?" asked Fanny.

"The first time," said Madam Bæk, "was three weeks ago today. The lasttime was on Saturday. Then I thought: 'Now I must go and fetch theladies.'"

Fanny's face was suddenly all ablaze. She looked at Madam Bæk with agreat tenderness, the tenderness of their young days. She felt that thiswas a great sacrifice, which the old woman was bringing out of herdevotion to them and her sense of duty. For these three weeks, duringwhich she had been living with the ghost of the outcast son of the DeConinck house, all alone, must have been the great time of Madam Bæk'slife, and would remain so for her forever. Now it was over.

It would have been difficult to say if, when she spoke, she came nearestto laughter or tears. "Oh, we will go, Hanne," she said, "we will go toElsinore."

"Fanny, Fanny," said Eliza, "he is not there; it is not he."

Fanny made a step forward toward the fire, so violently that thestreamers of her cap fluttered. "Why not, Lizzie?" she said. "God meansto do something for you and me after all. And do you not remember, whenMorten was to go back to school after the holiday, and did not want togo, that he made us tell Papa that he was dead? We made a grave underthe apple tree, and laid him down in it. Do you remember?" The twosisters at this moment saw, with the eyes of their minds, exactly thesame picture of the little ruddy boy, with earth in his curls, who hadbeen lifted out of his grave by their angry young father, and ofthemselves, with their small spades and soiled muslin frocks, followingthe procession home like disappointed mourners. Their brother might playa trick on them this time.

As they turned to each other their two faces had the same expression ofyouthful waggishness. Madam Bæk, in her chair, felt at the sight like ahappily delivered lady-in-the-straw. A weight and a fullness had beentaken from her, and her importance had gone with it. That was ever theway of the gentry. They would lay their hands on everything you had,even to the ghosts.

Madam Bæk would not let the sisters come back with her to Elsinore. Shemade them stay behind for a day. She wanted to see for herself that therooms were warm to receive them, and that there would be hot waterbottles in those maiden beds in which they had not slept for so long.She went the next day, leaving them in Copenhagen till the morrow.

It was good for them that they had been given these hours in which tomake up their minds and prepare themselves to meet the ghost of theirbrother. A storm had broken loose upon them, and their boats, which hadbeen becalmed in back waters, were whirled in a blizzard, amongst wavesas high as houses. Still they were, in their lappets of lace, nolandlubbers in the tempests of life. They were still able to maneuver,and they held their sheets. They did not melt into tears either. Tearswere never a solution for them. They came first and were a weaknessonly; now they were past them, out in the great dilemma. They werethemselves acquainted with the old sailors' rule:

Comes wind before rain--Topsail down and up again.
Comes rain before wind--Topsail down and all sails in.

They did not speak together much while waiting for admission to theirElsinore house. Had the day been Sunday they would have gone to church,for they were keen churchgoers, and critics of the prominent preachersof the town, so that they generally came back holding that they couldhave done it better themselves. In the church they might have joinedcompany; the house of the Lord alone of all houses might have held themboth. Now they had to wander in opposite parts of the town, in snowystreets and parks, their small hands in muffs, gazing at cold nakedstatues and frozen birds in the trees.

How were two highly respected, wealthy, popular and petted ladies towelcome again the hanged boy of their own blood? Fanny walked up anddown the linden avenue of the Royal Rose Gardens of Rosenborg. She couldnever revisit it later, not even in summer time, when it was a green andgolden bower, filled like an aviary with children's voices. She carriedwith her, from one end of it to the other, the picture of her brother,looking at the clock, and the clock stopped and dead. The picture grewupon her. It was upon his mother's death from grief of him that he wasgazing, and upon the broken heart of his bride. The picture still grew.It was upon all the betrayed and broken hearts of the world, all thesufferings of weak and dumb creatures, all injustice and despair onearth, that he was gazing. And she felt that it was all laid upon hershoulders. The responsibility was hers. That the world suffered and diedwas the fault of the De Conincks. Her misery drove her up and down theavenue like a dry leaf before the wind--a distinguished lady in furredboots, in her own heart a great, mad, wing-clipped bird, fluttering inthe winter sunset. Looking askance she could see her own large nose,pink under her veil, like a terrible, cruel beak. From time to time aquestion came into her mind: What is Eliza thinking now? It was strangethat the elder sister should feel thus, with bitterness and fear, thather younger sister had deserted her in her hour of need. She had herselffled her company, and yet she repeated to herself: "What, could she notwatch with me one hour?" It had been so even in the old De Coninck home.If things began to grow really difficult, Morten and the Papa and MammaDe Coninck would turn to the quiet younger girl, so much less brilliantthan herself: "What does Eliza think?"

Toward evening, as it grew dark, and as she reflected that Madam Bækmust by now be at home in Elsinore, Fanny suddenly stopped and thought,Am I to pray to God? Several of her friends, she knew, had found comfortin prayer. She herself had not prayed since she had been a child. Uponthe occasions of her Sundays in church, which were visits of courtesy tothe Lord, her little silences of bent head had been gestures ofcivility. Her prayer now, as she began to form it, did not please hereither. She used, as a girl, to read out his correspondence to her papa,so she was well acquainted with the jargon of mendicant letters--"...Feeling deeply impressed with the magnificence of your noble andwell-known loving-kindness..." She herself had had many mendicantletters in her days; also many young men had begged her, on their knees,for something. She had been highly generous to the poor, and hard on thelovers. She had not begged herself, nor would she begin it now on behalfof her proud young brother. As her prayer took on a certain likeness toa mendicant letter or to a proposal, she stopped it. "He shall not beashamed," she thought, "for he has called upon me. He shall not beafraid of ten thousands of people that have set themselves against himround about." Upon this she walked home.

When upon Saturday afternoon the sisters arrived at the house inElsinore, they went through much deep agitation of the heart. Even theair--even the smell in the hall, that atmosphere of salt and seaweedwhich ever braces up old seaside houses--went straight through them.They say, thought Miss Fanny, sniffing, that your body is changedcompletely within the course of seven years. How I have changed, and howI have forgotten! But my nose must be the same. My nose I have stillkept and it remembers all. The house was as warm as a box, and thisstruck them as a sweet compliment, as if an old admirer had put on hisgala uniform for them. Many people, in revisiting old places, sigh atthe sight of change and age. The De Coninck sisters, on the contrary,felt that the old house might well have deplored the signs of age anddecay at this meeting again of theirs, and have cried: Heavens, heavens!Are these the damask-cheeked, silver-voiced girls in dancing sandals whoused to slide down the bannisters of my stairs?--sighing down its longchimneys, Oh, God! Fare away, fare away! When, then, it chose to passover its feelings and pretend that they were the same, it was a finepiece of courtesy on its part.

Old Madam Bæk's great and ceremonious delight in their visit was alsobound to touch them. She stood out on the steps to receive them; shechanged their shoes and stockings for them, and had warm drinks ready.If we can make her happy so easily, they thought, how is it that wenever came till now? Was it that the house of their childhood and youngdays had seemed to them a little empty and cold, a little grave-like,until it had a ghost in it?

Madam Bæk took them around to show them the spots where Morten hadstood, and she repeated his gestures many times. The sisters did notcare a pin what gestures he would make to anybody but themselves, butthey valued the old woman's love of their brother, and listenedpatiently. In the end Madam Bæk felt very proud, as if she had beengiven a sacred relic out of the boy's beloved skeleton, a little bonethat was hers to keep.

The room in which supper was made ready was a corner room. It turned twowindows to the east, from which there was a view of the old gray castleof Kronborg, copper-spired, like a clenched fist out in the Sound. Abovethe ramparts departed commandants of the fortress had made a garden, inwhich, in their winter bareness, lindens now showed the world whatloosely built trees they are when not drilled to walk, militarily, twoby two. Two windows looked south out upon the harbor. It was strange tofind the harbor of Elsinore motionless, with sailors walking back fromtheir boats on the ice.

The walls of the room had once been painted crimson, but with time thecolor had faded into a richness of hues, like a glassful of dying redroses. In the candlelight these flat walls blushed and shone deeply, inplaces glowing like little pools of dry, burning, red lacquer. On onewall hung the portraits of the two young De Coninck sisters, thebeauties of Elsinore. The third portrait, of their brother, had beentaken down so long ago that only a faint shadow on the wall showed whereit had once been. Some potpourri was being burned on the tall stove, onthe sides of which Neptune, with a trident, steered his team of horsesthrough high waves. But the dried rose-petals dated from summers of longago. Only a very faint fragrance now spread from their funeral pile, alittle rank, like the bouquet of fine claret kept too long. In front ofthe stove the table was laid with a white tablecloth and delicateChinese cups and plates.

In this room the sisters and the brother De Coninck had in the old dayscelebrated many secret supper-parties, when preparing some theatrical orfancy-dress show, or when Morten had returned very late at night from anexpedition in his sailing boat, of which their parents must knownothing. The eating and drinking at such times had to be carried on in asubdued manner, so as not to wake up the sleeping house. Thirty-fiveyears ago the red room had seen much merriment caused by thisprecaution.

Faithful to tradition, the Misses De Coninck now came in and took theirseats at table, opposite each other, on either side of the stove, and insilence. To these indefatigable old belles of a hundred balls, age andagitation all the same began to assert themselves. Their eyelids wereheavy, and they could not have held out much longer if something had nothappened.

They did not have to wait long. Just as they had poured out their tea,and were lifting the thin cups to their lips, there was a slight rustlein the quiet room. When they turned their heads a little, they saw theirbrother standing at the end of the table.

He stood there for a moment and nodded to them, smiling at them. Then hetook the third chair and sat down, between them. He placed his handsupon the edge of the table, gently moving them sideward and back again,exactly as he always used to do.

Morten was poorly dressed in a dark gray coat that looked faded and muchworn. Still it was clear that he had taken pains about his appearancefor the meeting, he had on a white collar and a carefully tied highblack stock, and his hair was neatly brushed back. Perhaps he had beenafraid, Fanny for a moment thought, that after having lived so long inrough company he should impress his sisters as less refined and wellmannered than before. He need not have worried; he would have looked agentleman on the gallows. He was older than when they had seen him last,but not as old as they. He looked a man of forty.

His face was somehow coarser than before, weather-beaten and very pale.It had, with the dark, always somewhat sunken eyes, that same divineplay of light and darkness which had long ago made maidens mad. Hislarge mouth also had its old frankness and sweetness. But to his pureforehead a change had come. It was not that it was now crossed by amultitude of little horizontal lines, for the marble of it was too fineto be marred by such superficial wear. But time had revealed its truecharacter. It was not the imperial tiara, that once had caught all eyes,above his dark brows. It was the grave and noble likeness to a skull.The radiance of it belonged to the possessor, not of the world, but ofthe grave and of eternity. Now, as his hair had withdrawn from it, itgave out the truth frankly and simply. Also, as you got, from the faceof the brother, the key of understanding to this particular type offamily beauty, you would recognize it at once in the appearance of thesisters, even in the two youthful portraits on the wall. The moststriking characteristic in the three heads was the generic resemblanceto the skull.

All in all, Morten's countenance was quiet, considerate, and dignified,as it had always been.

"Good evening, little sisters; well met, well met," he said, "it wasvery sweet and sisterly of you to come and see me here. You had a--" hestopped a moment, as if searching for his word, as if not in the habitof speaking much with other people--"a nice fresh drive to Elsinore, Ishould say," he concluded.

His sisters sat with their faces toward him, as pale as he. Morten hadalways been wont to speak very lowly, in contrast to themselves. Thus adiscussion between the sisters might be carried on with the two speakingat the same time, on the chance of the one shrill voice drowning theother. But if you wanted to hear what Morten said, you had to listen. Hespoke in just the same way now, and they had been prepared for hisappearance, more or less, but not for his voice.

They listened then as they had done before. But they were longing to domore. As they had set eyes on him they had turned their slim torsos allaround in their chairs. Could they not touch him? No, they knew that tobe out of the question. They had not been reading ghost stories alltheir lives for nothing. And this very thing recalled to them the olddays, when, for these private supper-parties of theirs, Morten had comein at times, his large cloak soaked with rain and sea water, shining,black and rough like a shark's skin, or glazed over with snow, orfreshly tarred, so that they had, laughing, held him at arm's length offtheir frocks. Oh, how thoroughly had the tunes of thirty years ago beentransposed from a major to a minor key! From what blizzards had he comein tonight? With what sort of tar was he tarred?

"How are you, my dears?" he asked. "Do you have as merry a time inCopenhagen as in the old days at Elsinore?"

"And how are you yourself, Morten?" asked Fanny, her voice a full octavehigher than his. "You are looking a real, fine privateer captain. Youare bringing all the full, spiced, trade winds into our nunnery ofElsinore."

"Yes, those are fine winds," said Morten.

"How far away you have been, Morten?" said Eliza, her voice trembling alittle. "What a multitude of lovely places you have visited, that wehave never seen! How I have wished, how I have wished that I were you."

Fanny gave her sister a quick strong glance. Had their thoughts gone upin a parallel motion from the snowy parks and streets of Copenhagen? Ordid this quiet sister, younger than she, far less brilliant, speak thesimple truth of her heart?

"Yes, Lizzie, my duck," said Morten. "I remember that. I have thought ofthat--how you used to cry and stamp your little feet and wring yourhands shouting, 'Oh, I wish I were dead.'"

"Where do you come from, Morten?" Fanny asked him.

"I come from hell," said Morten. "I beg your pardon," he added, as hesaw his sister wince. "I have come now, as you see, because the Sound isfrozen over. I can come then. That is a rule."

Oh, how the heart of Fanny flew upward at his words. She felt itherself, as if she had screamed out, in a shout of deliverance, like awoman in the final moment of childbirth. When the Emperor, from Elba,set foot on the soil of France he brought back the old time with him.Forgotten was red-hot Moscow, and the deadly white and black wintermarches. The tricolor was up in the air, unfolded, and the oldgrenadiers threw up their arms and cried once more: Vive l'Empereur!Her soul, like they, donned the old uniform. It was for the benefit ofonlookers only, and for the fun of the thing, from now, that she wasdressed up in the body of an old woman.

"Are we not looking a pair of old scarecrows, Morten?" she asked, hereyes shining at him. "Were not our old aunts right when they preached tous about our vanity, and the vanity of all things? Indeed, the peoplewho impress on the young that they should purchase, in time, crutchesand an ear-trumpet, do carry their point in the end."

"No, you are looking charming, Fanny," he said, his eyes shining gentlyback. "Like a bumblebee-hawkmoth."--For they used to collect butterfliestogether in their childhood. "And if you were really looking like a pairof old ladies I should like it very much. There have been few of themwhere I have been, for many years. Now when grandmamma had her birthdayparties at Øregaard, that was where you would see a houseful of fine oldladies. Like a grand aviary, and grandmamma amongst them like a proudcockatoo."

"Yet you once said," said Fanny, "that you would give a year of yourexistence to be free from spending the afternoon with the old devils."

"Yes, I did that," said Morten, "but my ideas about a year of myexistence have changed since then. But tell me, seriously, do they stilltie weights to billets-doux, and throw them into your carriage whenyou drive home from the balls?"

"Oh!" said Eliza, drawing in her breath.

Was klaget aus dem dunkeln Thal
Die Nachtigall?
Was seuszt darein der Erlenbach
Mit manchen Ach?

She was quoting a long-forgotten poem by a long-forgotten lover.

"You are not married, my dears, are you?" said Morten, suddenlyfrightened at the absurd possibility of a stranger belonging to hissisters.

"Why should we not be married?" asked Fanny. "We both of us havehusbands and lovers at each finger-tip. I, I married the Bishop ofSealand--he lost his balance a little in our bridal bed because of hiswings." She could not prevent a delicate thin little laughter coming outof her in small puffs, like steam from a kettle-spout. The Bishoplooked, at the distance of forty-eight hours, ridiculously small, like alittle doll seen from a tower. "Lizzie married----" she went on, andthen stopped herself. When they were children the young De Conincks hadlived under a special superstition, which they had from a marionettecomedy. It came to this: that the lies which you tell are likely tobecome truth. On this account they had always been careful in theirchoice of what lies they would tell. Thus they would never say that theycould not pay a Sunday visit to their old aunts because they had atoothache, for they would be afraid that Nemesis might be at theirheels, and that they would indeed have a toothache. But they mightsafely say that their music master had told them not to practice theirgavottes any longer, as they already played them with masterly art. Thehabit was still in their blood.

"No, to speak the truth, Morten," Fanny said, "we are old maids, all onyour account. Nobody would have us. The De Conincks have had a bad nameas consorts since you went off and took away the heart and soul andinnocence of Adrienne."

She looked at him to see what he would say to this. She had followed histhoughts. They had been faithful, but he--what had he done? He hadencumbered them with a lovely and gentle sister-in-law.

Their uncle, Fernand De Coninck, he who had helped Morten to get hisship, had in the old days lived in France during the Revolution. Thatwas the place and the time for a De Coninck to live in. Also he hadnever got quite out of them again, not even when he had been an oldbachelor in Elsinore, and he never felt quite at home in a peacefullife. He had been full of anecdotes and songs of the period, and whenthey had been children the brother and the sisters had known them byheart from him. After a moment Morten slowly and in a low voice began toquote one of Uncle Fernand's ditties. This had been made on a specialoccasion, when the old aunts of the King of France had been leaving thecountry, and the revolutionary police had ordered all their boxes to beopened and examined at the frontier, for fear of treachery.

He said:

Avez-vous ses chemises,
à Marat?
Avez-vous ses chemises?
C'est pour vous un très vilain cas
si vous les avez prises.

Fanny's face immediately reflected the expression of her brother's.Without searching her memory more than a moment she followed him withthe next verse of the song. This time it is the King's old auntsspeaking:

Avait-il de chemises,
à Marat?
Avait-il de chemises?
Moi je crois qu'il n'en avait pas.
Ou les avait-il prises?

And Eliza took up the thread after her, laughing a little:

Il en avait trois grises,
à Marat.
Il en avait trois grises.
Avec l'argent de son mandat
sur le Pont Neuf acquises.

With these words the brother and the sisters lightened their hearts andwashed their hands forever of fair, unhappy Adrienne Rosenstand.

"But you were married, Morten?" said Eliza kindly, the laughter still inher voice.

"Yes," said Morten, "I had five wives. The Spanish are lovely women, youknow, like a mosaic of jewels. One of them was a dancer, too. When shedanced it was really like a swarm of butterflies whirling round, andbeing drawn into, the little central flame; you did not know what was upand what was down, and that seemed to me then, when I was young, acharming quality in a wife. One was an English skipper's daughter, anhonest girl, and she will never have forgotten me. One was the youngwidow of a rich planter. She was a real lady. All her thoughts had somesort of long train trailing after them. She bore me two children. Onewas a Negress, and her I liked best."

"Did they go on board your ship?" Eliza asked.

"No, none of them ever came on board my ship," said Morten.

"And tell us," said Fanny, "which, out of all the things that you had,you liked the best?"

Morten thought her question over for a moment. "Out of all lives," hesaid, "the life of a pirate is the best."

"Finer than that of a privateer captain in the Sound?" asked Fanny.

"Yes, it is that," said Morten, "inasmuch as you are in the open sea."

"But what made you decide to become a pirate?" asked Fanny, muchintrigued, for this was really like a book of romance and adventure.

"The heart, the heart," said Morten, "that which throws us into all ourdisasters. I fell in love. It was the coup de foudre of which UncleFernand spoke so much. He himself knew it to be no laughing matter. Andshe was somebody else's, so I could not have her without cheating lawand order a little. She was built in Genoa, had been used by the Frenchas a dispatch-carrier, and was known to be the quickest schooner thatever flew over the Atlantic. She was run ashore at the coast of theisland of St. Martin, which is half French and half Dutch, and was soldby the Dutch at Philippsburg. Old Van Zandten, the ship-owner, whoemployed me then and loved me as a son, sent me to Philippsburg to buyher for him. She was the loveliest, yes, by far the loveliest thing Iever saw. She was like a swan. When she came along, carrying the pressof her sails, she was light, gallant, noble, a great lady--like one ofgrandmamma's swans at Øregaard, when we teased them--pure, loyal, like aDamascene blade. And then, my dears, she was a little like Fortuna II.She had, like her, a very small foresail with an unusually largemainsail and high boom.

"I took all old Van Zandten's money then and bought her for myself, andafter that we had, she and I, to keep off the respectable people of thecountry. What are you to do when love sets to at you? I made her afaithful lover, and she had a fine time with her loyal crew, adored andpetted like a dainty lady who has her toe nails polished with henna.With me she became the fear of the Caribbean Sea, the little sea-eagletwho kept the tame birds on the stir. So I do not know for certainwhether I did right or wrong. Shall not he have the fair woman who lovesher most?"

"And was she in love with you as well?" asked Eliza, laughing.

"But who shall ask a woman if she is in love with him?" said Morten."The question to ask about woman is this: 'What is her price, and willyou pay it?' We should not cheat them, but should ask them courteouslyand pay with a good grace, whether it be cash, love, marriage, or ourlife or honor which they charge us; or else, if we are poor people andcannot pay, take off our hats to them and leave them for the wealthierman. That has been sound moral Latin with men and women since the worldbegan. As to their loving us--for one thing, Can they love us?"

"And what of the women who have no price?" said Eliza, laughing still.

"What of those indeed, dear?" said Morten. "Whatever they ought to havebeen, they should not have been women. God may have them, and he mayknow what to do with them. They drive men into bad places, and afterwardthey cannot get us out even when they want to."

"What was the name of your ship?" asked Eliza, her eyes cast down.

Morten looked up at her, laughing. "The name of my ship was La BelleEliza," he answered. "Did you not know?"

"Yes, I knew," said Eliza, her voice full of laughter once more. "Amerchant captain of Papa's told me, many years ago in Copenhagen, howhis crew had gone mad with fear and had made him turn back into portwhen, off St. Thomas, they spied the topsails of a pirate ship. Theywere as afraid of her, he said, as of Satan himself. And he told me thatthe name of the ship was La Belle Eliza. I thought then that she wouldbe your boat."

So this was the secret which the old maid had guarded from all theworld. She had not been marble all through. Somewhere within her thislittle flame of happiness had been kept alive. To this purpose--for ithad been to no other--had she grown up so lovely in Elsinore. A ship wasin blue water, as in a bed of hyacinths, in winds and warm air, her fullwhite sails like to a bold chalk-cliff, baked by the sun, with muchsharp steel in boards, not one of the broadswords or knives not red, andthe name of the ship fairly and truly La Belle Eliza. Oh, you burghersof Elsinore, did you see me dance the minuet once? To those samemeasures did I tread the waves.

While he had been speaking the color had mounted to her face. She lookedonce more like a girl, and the white streamers of her cap were no longerthe finery of an old lady, but the attire of a chaste, flaming bride.

"Yes, she was like a swan," Morten said, "sweet, sweet, like a song."

"Had I been in that merchant ship," said Eliza, "and you had boardedher, your ship should have been mine by right, Morten."

"Yes," said he, smiling at her, "and my whole matelotage. That was ourcustom when we took young women. You would have had an adoringseraglio."

"I lost her," he said, "through my own fault, at a river mouth ofVenezuela. It is a long story. One of my men betrayed her anchoringplace to the British governor of Port of Spain, in Trinidad. I was notwith her then. I had gone myself the sixty miles to Port of Spain in afishing boat, to get information about a Dutch cargo boat. I saw all mycrew hanged there, and saw her for the last time.

"It was after that," he said after a pause, "that I never slept wellagain. I could not get down into sleep. Whenever I tried to dive downinto it I was shoved upward again, like a piece of flotsam. From thattime I began to lose weight, for I had thrown overboard my ballast. Itwas with her. I had become too light for anything. From that time on Iwas somehow without body. Do you remember how Papa and Uncle Fernandused to discuss, at dinner, the wines which they had bought together,and to talk of some of them having a fine enough bouquet, but no body tothem? That was the case with me, then, my dears: a bouquet I should saythat I may still have had, but no body. I could not sink intofriendship, or fear, or any real delight any longer. And still I couldnot sleep."

The sisters had no need to pretend sympathy with this misfortune. It wastheir own. All the De Conincks suffered from sleeplessness. When theyhad been children they had laughed at their father and his sisters whenthey greeted one another in the morning first of all with minuteinquiries and accounts of how they had slept at night. Now they did notlaugh; the matter meant much to them also now.

"But when you cannot sleep at night," said Fanny, sighing, "is it thatyou wake up very early, or is it that you cannot fall asleep at all?"

"Nay, I cannot fall asleep at all," said Morten.

"Is it not, then," asked Fanny, "because you are----" She would havesaid "cold," but remembering where he had said he came from, she stoppedherself.

"And I have known all the time," said Morten, who did not seem to haveheard what she said to him, "that I shall never lay me down to restuntil I can sleep once more on her, in her, La Belle Eliza."

"But you lived ashore, too," said Fanny, her mind running after his, forshe felt as if he were about to escape her.

"Yes, I did," said Morten. "I had for some time a tobacco plantation inCuba. And that was a delightful place. I had a white house with pillarswhich you would have liked very much. The air of those islands is fine,delicate, like a glass of true rum. It was there that I had the lovelywife, the planter's widow, and two children. There were women to dancewith there, at our balls, light like the trade winds--like you two. Ihad a very pretty pony to ride there, named Pegasus; a little likePapa's Zampa--Do you remember him?"

"And you were happy there?" Fanny asked.

"Yes, but it did not last," said Morten. "I spent too much money. Ilived beyond my means, something which Papa had always warned meagainst. I had to clear out of it." He sat silent for a little while.

"I had to sell my slaves," he said.

At these words he grew so deadly pale, so ashen gray, that had they notknown him to be dead for long they would have been afraid that he mightbe going to die. His eyes, all his features, seemed to sink into hisface. It became the face of a man upon the stake, when the flames takehold.

The two women sat pale and rigid with him, in deep silence. It was as ifthe breath of the hoarfrost had dimmed three windows. They had no wordof comfort for their brother in this situation. For no De Coninck hadever parted with a servant. It was a code to them that whoever enteredtheir service must remain there and be looked after by them forever.They might make an exception with regard to marriage or death, butunwillingly. In fact it was the opinion of their circle of friends thatin their old age the sisters had come to have only one real object inlife, which was to amuse their servants.

Also they felt that secret contempt for all men, as beings unable toraise money at any fatal moment, which belongs to fair women with theirconsciousness of infinite resources. The sisters De Coninck, in Cuba,would never have allowed things to come to such a tragic point. Couldthey not easily have sold themselves three hundred times, and made threehundred Cubans happy, and so saved the welfare of their three hundredslaves? There was, therefore, a long pause.

"But the end," said Fanny finally, drawing in her breath deeply, "thatwas not yet, then?"

"No, no," said Morten, "not till quite a long time after that. When Ihad no more money I started an old brig in the carrying trade, fromHavana to New Orleans first, and then from Havana to New York. Those aredifficult seas." His sister had succeeded in turning his mind away fromhis distress, and as he began to explain to her the various routes ofhis trade he warmed to his subject. Altogether he had, during themeeting, become more and more sociable and had got back all his oldmanner of a man who is at ease in company and is in really goodunderstanding with the minds of his convives. "But nothing would goright for me," he went on. "I had one run of bad luck after another. No,in the end, you see, my ship foundered near the Cay Sal bank, where sheran full of water and sank in a dead calm; and with one thing andanother, in the end, if you do not mind my saying so, in Havana I washanged. Did you know that?"

"Yes," said Fanny.

"Did you mind that, I wondered, you two?" he asked.

"No!" said his sisters with energy.

They might have answered him with their eyes turned away, but they bothlooked back at him. And they thought that this might perhaps be thereason why he was wearing his collar and stock so unusually high; theremight be a mark on that strong and delicate neck around which they hadtied the cambric with great pains when they had been going to ballstogether.

There was a moment's silence in the red room, after which Fanny andMorten began to speak at the same time.

"I beg your pardon," said Morten.

"No," said Fanny, "no. What were you going to say?"

"I was asking about Uncle Fernand," said Morten. "Is he still alive?"

"Oh, no, Morten, my dear," said Fanny, "he died in 'thirty. He was anold man then. He was at Adrienne's wedding, and made a speech, but hewas very tired. In the evening he took me aside and said to me: 'Mydear, it is a gênante fête.' And he died only three weeks later. Heleft Eliza his money and furniture. In a drawer we found a little silverlocket, set with rose diamonds, with a curl of fair hair, and on it waswritten, 'The hair of Charlotte Corday.'"

"I see," said Morten. "He had a fine figure, Uncle Fernand. And AuntAdelaide, is she dead too?"

"Yes, she died even before he did," said Fanny. She meant to tell himsomething of the death of Madame Adelaide De Coninck, but did not go on.She felt depressed. These people were dead; he ought to have known ofthem. The loneliness of her dead brother made her a little sick atheart.

"How she used to preach to us, Aunt Adelaide," he said. "How many timesdid she say to me: 'This melancholy of yours, Morten, thisdissatisfaction with life which you and the girls allow yourselves,makes me furious. What is good enough for me is good enough for you. Youall ought to be married and have large families to look after; thatwould cure you.' And you, Fanny, said to her: 'Yes, little Aunt, thatwas the advice, from an auntie of his, which our Papa did follow.'"

"Toward the end," Eliza broke in, "she would not hear or think ofanything that had happened since the time when she was thirty years oldand her husband died. Of her grandchildren she said: 'These are some ofthe new-fangled devices of my young children. They will soon find outhow little there is to them.' But she could remember all the religiousscruples of Uncle Theodore, her husband, and how he had kept her awakeat night with meditations upon the fall of man and original sin. Ofthose she was still proud."

"You must think me very ignorant," Morten said. "You know so many thingsof which I know nothing."

"Oh, dear Morten," said Fanny, "you surely know of a lot of things ofwhich we know nothing at all."

"Not many, Fanny," said Morten. "One or two, perhaps."

"Tell us one or two," said Eliza.

Morten thought over her demand for a little while.

"I have come to know of one thing," he said, "of which I myself had noidea once. C'est une invention très fine, très spirituelle, de la partde Dieu, as Uncle Fernand said of love. It is this: that you cannot eatyour cake and have it. I should never have hit upon that on my own. Itis indeed an original idea. But then, you see, he is really très fin,très spirituel, the Lord."

The two sisters drew themselves up slightly, as if they had received acompliment. They were, as already said, keen churchgoers, and theirbrother's words had ever carried great weight with them.

"But do you know," said Morten suddenly, "that little snappy pug of AuntAdelaide's, Fingal--him I have seen."

"How was that?" Fanny asked. "Tell us about that."

"That was when I was all alone," said Morten, "when my ship hadfoundered at the Cay Sal bank. We were three who got away in a boat, butwe had no water. The others died, and in the end I was alone."

"What did you think of then?" Fanny asked.

"Do you know, I thought of you," said Morten.

"What did you think of us?" Fanny asked again in a low voice.

Morten said, "I thought: we have been amateurs in saying no, littlesisters. But God can say no. Good God, how he can say no. We think thathe can go on no longer, not even he. But he goes on, and says no oncemore.

"I had thought of that before, quite a good deal," Morten said, "atElsinore, during the time before my wedding. And now I kept on thinkingupon it. I thought of those great, pure, and beautiful things which sayno to us. For why should they say yes to us, and tolerate our insipidcaresses? Those who say yes, we get them under us, and we ruin them andleave them, and find when we have left them that they have made us sick.The earth says yes to our schemes and our work, but the sea says no; andwe, we love the sea ever. And to hear God say no, in the stillness, inhis own voice, that to us is very good. The starry sky came up, there,and said no to me as well. Like a noble, proud woman."

"And did you see Fingal then?" Eliza asked.

"Yes," said Morten. "Just then. As I turned my head a little, Fingal wassitting with me in the boat. You know, he was an ill-tempered little dogalways, and he never liked me because I teased him. He used to bite meevery time he saw me. I dared not touch him there in the boat. I wasafraid that he would snap at me again. Still, there he sat, and stayedwith me all night."

"And did he go away then?" Fanny asked.

"I do not know, my dear," Morten said. "An American schooner, bound forJamaica, picked me up in the early morning. There on board was a man whohad bid against me at the sale in Philippsburg. In this way it came topass that I was hanged--in the end, as you say--at Havana."

"Was that bad?" asked Fanny in a whisper.

"No, my poor Fanny," said Morten.

"Was there anyone with you there?" Fanny whispered.

"Yes, there was a fat young priest there," said Morten. "He was afraidof me. They probably told him some bad things about me. But still he didhis best. I asked him: 'Can you obtain for me, now, one minute more tolive in?' He said, 'What will you do with one minute of life, my poorson?' I said, 'I will think, with the halter around my neck, for oneminute of La Belle Eliza.'"

While they now sat in silence for a little while, they heard some peoplepass in the street below the window, and talk together. Through theshutters they could follow the passing flash of their lanterns.

Morten leaned back in his chair, and he looked now to his sisters olderand more worn than before. He was indeed much like their father, whenthe Papa De Coninck had come in from his office tired, and had takenpleasure in sitting down quietly in the company of his daughters.

"It is very pleasant in here, in this room," he said, "it is just likeold days--do you not think so? With Papa and Mamma below. We three arenot very old yet. We are good-looking people still."

"The circle is complete again," said Eliza gently, using one of theirold expressions.

"Is completed, Lizzie," said Morten, smiling back at her.

"The vicious circle," said Fanny automatically, quoting another of theirold familiar terms.

"You were always," said Morten, "such a clever lass."

At these kind direct words Fanny impetuously caught at her breath.

"And, oh, my girls," Morten exclaimed, "how we did long then, with thevery entrails of us, to get away from Elsinore!"

His elder sister suddenly turned her old body all around in the chair,and faced him straight. Her face was changed and drawn with pain. Thelong wake and the strain began to tell on her, and she spoke to him in ahoarse and cracked voice, as if she were heaving it up from theinnermost part of her chest.

"Yes," she cried, "yes, you may talk. But you mean to go away again andleave me. You! You have been to these great warm seas of which you talk,to a hundred countries. You have been married to five people--Oh, I donot know of it all! It is easy for you to speak quietly, to sit still.You have never needed to beat your arms to keep warm. You do not need tonow!"

Her voice failed her. She stuttered in her speech and clasped the edgeof the table. "And here," she groaned out, "I am--cold. The world isbitterly cold around me. I am so cold at night, in my bed, that mywarming-pans are no good to me!"

At this moment the tall grandfather's clock started to strike, for Fannyhad herself wound it up in the afternoon. It struck midnight in a graveand slow measure, and Morten looked quickly up at it.

Fanny meant to go on speaking, and to lift at last all the deadly weightof her whole life off her, but she felt her chest pressed together. Shecould not out-talk the clock, and her mouth opened and shut twicewithout a sound.

"Oh, hell," she cried out, "to hell!"

Since she could not speak she stretched out her arms to him, trembling.With the strokes of the clock his face became gray and blurred to hereyes, and a terrible panic came upon her. Was it for this that she hadwound up the clock! She threw herself toward him, across the table.

"Morten!" she cried in a long wail. "Brother! Stay! Listen! Take me withyou!"

As the last stroke fell, and the clock took up its ticking again, as ifit meant to go on doing something, in any case, through all eternity,the chair between the sisters was empty, and at the sight Fanny's headfell down on the table.

She lay like that for a long time, without stirring. From the winternight outside, from far away to the north, came a resounding tone, likethe echo of a cannon shot. The children of Elsinore knew well what itmeant: it was the ice breaking up somewhere, in a long crack.

Fanny thought, dully, after a long while, What is Eliza thinking? andlaboriously lifted her head, looked up, and dried her mouth with herlittle handkerchief. Eliza sat very still opposite her, where she hadbeen all the time. She dragged the streamers of her cap downward andtogether, as if she were pulling a rope, and Fanny remembered seeingher, long, long ago, when angry or in great pain or joy, pulling in thesame way at her long golden tresses. Eliza lifted her pale eyes andstared straight at her sister's face.

"To think," said she, "'to think, with the halter around my neck, forone minute of La Belle Eliza.'"

The Dreamers

On a full-moon night of 1863 a dhow was on its way from Lamu toZanzibar, following the coast about a mile out.

She carried full sails before the monsoon, and had in her a freight ofivory and rhino-horn. This last is highly valued as an aphrodisiac, andtraders come for it to Zanzibar from as far as China. But besides thesecargoes the dhow also held a secret load, which was about to stir andraise great forces, and of which the slumbering countries which shepassed did not dream.

This still night was bewildering in its deep silence and peace, as ifsomething had happened to the world; as if the soul of it had been, bysome magic, turned upside down. The free monsoon came from far places,and the sea wandered on under its sway, on her long journey, in the faceof the dim luminous moon. But the brightness of the moon upon the waterwas so clear that it seemed as if all the light in the world were inreality radiating from the sea, to be reflected in the skies. The waveslooked solid, as if one might safely have walked upon them, while it wasinto the vertiginous sky that one might sink and fall, into theturbulent and unfathomable depths of silvery worlds, of bright silver ordull and tarnished silver, forever silver reflected within silver,moving and changing, towering up, slowly and weightless.

The two slaves in the prow were still like statues, their bodies, nakedto the waist in the hot night, iron-gray like the sea where the moon wasnot shining on it, so that only the clear dark shades running alongtheir backs and limbs marked out their forms against the vast plane. Thered cap of one of them glowed dull, like a plum, in the moonlight. Butone corner of the sail, catching the light, glinted like the white bellyof a dead fish. The air was like that of a hothouse, and so damp thatall the planks and ropes of the boat were sweating a salt dew. The heavywaters sang and murmured along the bow and stern.

On the after deck a small lantern was hung up, and three people weregrouped round it.

The first of them was young Said Ben Ahamed, the son of Tippo Tip'ssister, and himself deeply beloved by the great man. He had been,through the treachery of his rivals, for two years a prisoner in theNorth, and had escaped and got to Lamu by many strange ways. Now he washere, unknown to the world, on his way home to take revenge upon hisenemies. It was the hope of revenge within Said's heart which, morepowerful than the monsoon, was in reality forcing the boat on. It wasboth sail and ballast to the dhow. Had they now been aware that Said wasin a ship on his way to Zanzibar tonight, many great people would havebeen hurriedly packing up their property and their harems, to get awaybefore it should be too late. Of Said's revenge, in the end, other taleshave told.

He sat on the deck crosslegged, bent forward, his hands loosely foldedand resting on the planks before him, in deep thought.

The second, and eldest, of the party was a person of great fame, themuch-renowned story-teller Mira Jama himself, the inventions of whosemind have been loved by a hundred tribes. He sat with his legs crossed,like Said, and with his back to the moon, but the night was clear enoughto show that he had, at some rencounter with his destiny, had the noseand ears of his dark head cut clear off. He was poorly dressed, butstill had kept a regard for his appearance. Around his thin body he hada faded, thick, crimson silk scarf, which sometimes, at a movement ofhis, flamed up and burned like fire or pure rubies in the light of thesmall lantern.

The third in the company was a red-haired Englishman whose name wasLincoln Forsner, and whom the natives of the coast called Tembu, whichmay mean either ivory or alcohol, as it pleases you. Lincoln was thechild of a rich family in his own country, and had been blown about bymany winds to lie tonight flat on his stomach on the deck of the dhow,dressed in an Arab shirt and loose Indian trousers, but still shaved andwhiskered like a gentleman. He was chewing the dried leaves which theSwaheli call murungu, which keep you awake and in a pleasant mood, andfrom time to time spitting at a long distance. This made himcommunicative. He was joining Said's expedition out of his love for theyoung man, and also to see what would happen, as he had before seenthings happen in various countries. His heart was light. He was veryfond of a boat, and pleased with the speed, the warm night, and the fullmoon.

"How is it, Mira," he said, "that you cannot tell us a story as we aresailing on here tonight? You used to have many tales, such as make theblood run cold and make you afraid to trust your oldest friend, talesgood on a hot night and for people out on great undertakings. Have youno more?"

"No, I have no more, Tembu," said Mira, "and that in itself makes a sadtale, good for people out on great undertakings. I was once a greatstory-teller, and I specialized in such tales as make the blood runcold. Devils, poison, treachery, torture, darkness, and lunacy: thesewere Mira's stock in trade."

"I remember one of your tales now," said Lincoln. "You frightened me byit, and two young dancers of Lamu, who really need not have been afraidof it, so that we did not sleep all night. The Sultan wanted a truevirgin, and after much trouble she was fetched for him from themountains. But he found her----"

"Yes, yes," Mira took up the tale, his whole countenance suddenlychanging, his dark eyes brightening and his hands coming to life in theold telltale manner, like two aged dancing snakes called out from theirbasket by the flute, "the Sultan wanted a true virgin, such as had neverheard of men. With great trouble she was fetched for him from the Amazonkingdom in the mountains, where all male children had been killed off bythe women, who made wild wars on their own. But when the Sultan went into her, between the hangings of the door he saw her looking out at ayoung water-carrier, who was walking to and fro in the palace, and heardher speak to herself: 'Oh, I have come to a good place,' she said, 'andthat creature there must be God, or a strong angel, the one who hurlsthe lightning. I do not mind dying now, for I have seen what no one hasever seen.' And at that the young water-carrier looked up at the windowtoo, and kept standing there, gazing at the maiden. So the Sultan becamevery sad, and he had the virgin and the young man buried alive together,in a marble chest broad enough to make a marriage bed, under a palm treeof his garden, and seating himself below the same tree he wondered atmany things, and at how he was never to have his heart's desire, and hehad a young boy to play the flute to him. That was the tale you heardonce."

"Yes, but better told then," said Lincoln.

"It was that," said Mira, "and the world could not do without Mira then.People love to be frightened. The great princes, fed up with the sweetsof life, wished to have their blood stirred again. The honest ladies, towhom nothing ever happened, longed to tremble in their beds just foronce. The dancers were inspired to a lighter pace by tales of flight andpursuit. Ah, how the world loved me in those days! Then I was handsome,round-cheeked. I drank noble wine, wore gold-embroidered clothes andamber, and had incense burned in my rooms."

"But how has this change come upon you?" asked Lincoln.

"Alas!" said Mira, sinking back into his former quiet manner, "as I havelived I have lost the capacity of fear. When you know what things arereally like, you can make no poems about them. When you have had talkwith ghosts and connections with the devils you are, in the end, moreafraid of your creditors than of them; and when you have been made acuckold you are no longer nervous about cuckoldry. I have become toofamiliar with life; it can no longer delude me into believing that onething is much worse than the other. The day and the dark, an enemy and afriend--I know them to be about the same. How can you make others afraidwhen you have forgotten fear yourself? I once had a really tragic tale,a great tale, full of agony, immensely popular, of a young man who inthe end had his nose and his ears cut off. Now I could frighten no onewith it, if I wanted to, for now I know that to be without them is notso very much worse than to have them. This is why you see me here, skinand bone, and dressed in old rags, the follower of Said in prison andpoverty, instead of keeping near the thrones of the mighty, flourishingand flattered, as was young Mira Jama."

"But could you not, Mira," Lincoln asked, "make a terrible tale aboutpoverty and unpopularity?"

"No," said the story-teller proudly, "that is not the sort of storywhich Mira Jama tells."

"Well, yes, alas," said Lincoln, turning around on his side, "what islife, Mira, when you come to think upon it, but a most excellent,accurately set, infinitely complicated machine for turning fat playfulpuppies into old mangy blind dogs, and proud war horses into skinnynags, and succulent young boys, to whom the world holds great delightsand terrors, into old weak men, with running eyes, who drink groundrhino-horn?"

"Oh, Lincoln Forsner," said the noseless story-teller, "what is man,when you come to think upon him, but a minutely set, ingenious machinefor turning, with infinite artfulness, the red wine of Shiraz intourine? You may even ask which is the more intense craving and pleasure:to drink or to make water. But in the meantime, what has been done? Asong has been composed, a kiss taken, a slanderer slain, a prophetbegotten, a righteous judgment given, a joke made. The world drank inthe young story-teller Mira. He went to its head, he ran in its veins,he made it glow with warmth and color. Now I am on my way down a little;the effect has worn off. The world will soon be equally pleased to pissme out again, and I do not know but that I am pressing on a littlemyself. But the tales which I made--they shall last."

"What do you do in the meantime to keep so good a face toward it, inthis urgency of life to rid itself of you?" Lincoln asked.

"I dream," said Mira.

"Dream?" said Lincoln.

"Yes, by the grace of God," said Mira, "every night, as soon as I sleepI dream. And in my dreams I still know fear. Things are terrible to methere. In my dreams I sometimes carry with me something infinitely dearand precious, such as I know well enough that no real things be, andthere it seems to me that I must keep this thing against some dreadfuldanger, such as there are none in the real world. And it also seems tome that I shall be struck down and annihilated if I lose it, though Iknow well that you are not, in the world of the daytime, struck down andannihilated, whatever you lose. In my dreams the dark is filled withindescribable horrors, but there are also sometimes flights and pursuitsof a heavenly delight."

He sat for a while in silence.

"But what particularly pleases me about dreams," he went on, "is this:that there the world creates itself around me without any effort on mypart. Here, now, if I want to go to Gazi, I have to bargain for a boat,and to buy and pack my provisions, to tack up against the wind, and evento make my hands sore by rowing. And then, when I get to Gazi, what am Ito do there? Of that also I must think. But in my dreams I find myselfwalking up a long row of stone steps which lead from the sea. Thesesteps I have not seen before, yet I feel that to climb them is a greathappiness, and that they will take me to something highly enjoyable. OrI find myself hunting in a long row of low hills, and I have got peoplewith me with bows and arrows, and dogs in leads. But what I am to hunt,or why I have gone there, I do not know. One time I came into a roomfrom a balcony, in the very early morning, and upon the stone floorstood a woman's two little sandals, and at the same moment I thought:they are hers. And at that my heart overflowed with pleasure, rocked inease. But I had taken no trouble. I had had no expense to get the woman.And at other times I have been aware that outside the door was a bigblack man, very black, who meant to kill me; but still I had donenothing to make him my enemy, and I shall just wait for the dream itselfto inform me how to escape from him, for in myself I cannot find out howto do it. The air in my dreams, and particularly since I have been inprison with Said, is always very high, and I generally see myself as avery small figure in a great landscape, or in a big house. In all this ayoung man would not take any pleasure at all; but to me, now, it holdssuch delight as does making water when you have finished with wine."

"I do not know about it, Mira; I hardly ever dream," said Lincoln.

"Oh, Lincoln, live forever," said old Mira. "You dream indeed more thanI do myself. Do I not know the dreamers when I meet them? You dreamawake and walking about. You will do nothing yourself to choose your ownways: you let the world form itself around you, and then you open youreyes to see where you will find yourself. This journey of yours,tonight, is a dream of yours. You let the waves of fate wash you about,and then you will open your eyes tomorrow to find out where you are."

"To see your pretty face," said Lincoln.

"You know, Tembu," said Mira suddenly, after a pause, "that if, inplanting a coffee tree, you bend the taproot, that tree will start,after a little time, to put out a multitude of small delicate roots nearthe surface. That tree will never thrive, nor bear fruit, but it willflower more richly than the others.

"Those fine roots are the dreams of the tree. As it puts them out, itneed no longer think of its bent taproot. It keeps alive by them--alittle, not very long. Or you can say that it dies by them, if you like.For really, dreaming is the well-mannered people's way of committingsuicide.

"If you want to go to sleep at night, Lincoln, you must not think, aspeople tell you, of a long row of sheep or camels passing through agate, for they go in one direction, and your thoughts will go along withthem. You should think instead of a deep well. In the bottom of thatwell, just in the middle of it, there comes up a spring of water, whichruns out in little streamlets to all possible sides, like the rays of astar. If you can make your thoughts run out with that water, not in onedirection, but equally to all sides, you will fall asleep. If you canmake your heart do it thoroughly enough, as the coffee tree does it withthe little surface roots, you will die."

"So that is the matter with me, you think: that I want to forget mytaproot?" asked Lincoln.

"Yes," said Mira, "it must be that. Unless it be that, like many of yourcountrymen, you never had much of it."

"Unless it be that," said Lincoln.

They sailed on for a little while in silence. A slave took up a fluteand played a few notes on it, to try it.

"Why does not Said speak a word to us?" Lincoln asked Mira.

Said lifted his eyes a little and smiled, but did not speak.

"Because he thinks," said Mira. "This conversation of ours seems to himvery insipid."

"What is he thinking of?" asked Lincoln.

Mira thought for a little. "Well," he said, "there are only two coursesof thought at all seemly to a person of any intelligence. The one is:What am I to do this next moment?--or tonight, or tomorrow? And theother: What did God mean by creating the world, the sea, and the desert,the horse, the winds, woman, amber, fishes, wine? Said thinks of the oneor the other."

"Perhaps he is dreaming," said Lincoln.

"No," said Mira after a moment, "not Said. He does not know how to dreamyet. The world is just drinking him in. He is going to its head and intoits blood. He means to drive the pulsation of its heart. He is notdreaming, but perhaps he is praying to God. By the time when you havefinished praying to God--that is when you put out your surface roots;that is when you begin to dream. Said tonight may be praying to God,throwing his prayer at the Lord with such energy as that with which theAngel shall, upon the last day, throw at the world the note of histrump, with such energy as that with which the elephant copulates. Saidsays to God: 'Let me be all the world.'

"He says," Mira went on after a minute, "I shall show no mercy, and Iask for none. But that is where Said is mistaken. He will be showingmercy before he has done with all of us."

"Do you ever dream of the same place twice?" asked Lincoln after a time.

"Yes, yes," said Mira. "That is a great favor of God's, a great delightto the soul of the dreamer. I come back, after a long time, in my dream,to the place of an old dream, and my heart melts with delight."

They sailed on for some time, and no one said anything. Then Lincolnsuddenly changed his position, sat up, and made himself comfortable. Hespat out on the deck the last of his Morungu, dived into a pocket, androlled himself a cigarette.

"I will tell you a tale tonight, Mira," he said, "since you have none.You have reminded me of long-gone things. Many good stories have comefrom your part of the world to ours, and when I was a child I enjoyedthem very much. Now I will tell this one, for the pleasure of your ears,Mira, and for the heart of Said, to whom my tale may prove useful. Itall goes to teach you how I was, twenty years ago, taught, as you say,Mira, to dream, and of the woman who taught me. It happened just as Itell it to you. But as to names and places, and conditions in thecountries in which it all took place, and which may seem very strange toyou, I will give you no explanation. You must take in whatever you can,and leave the rest outside. It is not a bad thing in a tale that youunderstand only half of it."

****

Twenty years ago, when I was a young man of twenty-three, I sat onewinter night in the room of a hotel, amongst mountains, with snow,storm, great clouds and a wild moon outside.

Now the continent of Europe, of which you have heard, consists of twoparts, the one of which is more pleasant than the other, and these twoare separated by a high and steep mountain chain. You cannot cross itexcept in a few places where the formation of the mountains is a littleless hostile than elsewhere, and where roads have been made, with muchtrouble, to take you over them. Such a place there was near the hotelwhere I was staying. A road that would admit pedestrians, horses andmules, and even coaches had been cut in the rocks, and on the top of thepass, where, from laboriously climbing upwards, cursing your fate, youbegin to descend, soon to feel the sweet air caressing your face andlungs, a brotherhood of holy men have built a great house for therefreshment of travelers. I was on my way from the North, where thingswere cold and dead, to the blue and voluptuous South. The hotel was mylast station before the steep journey to the top of the pass, which Imeant to undertake on the next day. It was a little early in the seasonyet to travel this way at all. There were only a few people on the roadas yet, and higher up in the mountains the snow was lying deep.

To the world I looked a pretty, rich, and gay young man, on his way fromone pleasure to another, and providing himself, on the way, with thebest of everything. But in truth I was just being whirled about, forwardand backward, by my aching heart, a poor fool out on a wild-goose chaseafter a woman.

Yes, after a woman, Mira, if you believe it or not. I had already beensearching for her in a variety of places. In fact, so hopeless was mypursuit of her that I should most certainly have given it up if it hadbeen at all within my power to do so. But my own soul, Mira, my dear,was in the breast of this woman.

And she was not a girl of my own age. She was many years older than I.Of her life I knew nothing except what was painful to me to swallow,and, what was the worst of the business, I had no reason to believe thatshe would be at all pleased should I ever contrive to find her.

The whole thing had come about like this: My father was a very rich manin England, the owner of large factories and of a pleasant estate in thecountry, a man with a big family and an enormous working capacity. Heread the Bible much--our Holy Book--and had come to feel himself God'sone substitute on earth. Indeed, I do not know if he was capable ofmaking any distinction between his fear of God and his self-esteem. Itwas his duty, he thought, to turn the chaotic world into a universe oforder, and to see that all things were made useful--which, to him, meantmaking them useful to him himself. Within his own nature I know of twothings only which he could not control: he had, against his ownprinciples, a strong love of music, particularly of Italian opera music;and he sometimes could not sleep at night. Later on I was told by myaunt, his sister, who much disliked him, that he had, as a young man inthe West Indies, driven to suicide, or actually killed, a man. Perhapsthis was what kept him awake. I and my twin sister were much youngerthan our other brothers and sisters. What flea had bitten my father thathe should beget two more children when he had got through most of histrouble with the rest of us, I do not know. At the day of judgment Ishall ask him for an explanation. I have sometimes thought that it wasreally the ghost of the West-Indian gentleman which had been after him.

My father was not pleased with anything which I did. In the end I thinkthat I became a carking care to him, for had I not been of his ownmanufacture he would have been pleased to see me come to a bad end. NowI felt that I was ever, as My Son Lincoln, being drawn, hammered andbattered into all sorts of shapes, in order to be made useful, betweenone o'clock and three of the night. During these hours I myselfgenerally had a pretty heated and noisy time, for I had become anofficer in a smart regiment of the army, and there, to keep up myprestige amongst the sons of the oldest families of the land, spent muchof the money, time, and wit which my father reckoned to be really andrightly his.

At about this time a neighbor of ours died, and left a young widow. Shewas pretty and rich, and had been unhappily married, and in her trialshad consoled herself with a sentimental friendship with my twin sister,who was so like me that if I dressed up in her clothes nobody would knowthe one of us from the other. Therefore my father now thought that thislady might consent to marry me, and lift the burden of me from hisshoulders onto hers. This prospect suited me as well as anything that Iat that time expected from life. The only thing for which I asked myfather was his consent to let me travel on the continent of Europeduring the lady's year of mourning. In those days I had various stronginclinations, for wine, gambling and cockfighting, and the society ofgypsies, together with a passion for theological discussion which I hadinherited from my father himself--all of which my father thought I hadbetter rid myself of before I married the widow, or, at least, which Ihad better not let her contemplate at too close quarters while she couldstill change her mind. As my father knew me to be quick and ardent inlove affairs, I think that he also feared that I might seduce my fiancéeinto too close a relation, profiting by our neighborhood in the country,and, perhaps, by my likeness to my sister. For all these reasons the oldman agreed that I should go traveling for nine months, in the company ofan old schoolfellow of his, who had lived on his charity and whom he waspleased to turn in this way to some sort of use.

This man, however, I soon managed to rid myself of, for when we came toRome he took up the study of the mysteries of the ancient Priapean cultof Lampsacus and I enjoyed myself very well.

But in the fourth month of my year of grace, it happened to me that Ifell in love with a woman within a brothel of Rome. I had gone there, onan evening, with a party of theologians. It was thus not a dashing placewhere people with lots of money went to amuse themselves, neither was ita murky house frequented by artists or robbers. It was just a middlingrespectable establishment. I remember the narrow street in which itstood, and the many smells which met therein. If ever I were to smellthem again, I should feel that I had come home. To this woman I owe itthat I have ever understood, and still remember, the meaning of suchwords as tears, heart, longing, stars, which you poets make use of. Yes,as to stars in particular, Mira, there was much about her that remindedone of a star. There was the difference between her and other women thatthere is between an overcast and a starry sky. Perhaps you too have metin the course of your life women of that sort, who are self-luminous andshine in the dark, who are phosphorescent, like touchwood.

As, upon the next day, I woke up in my hotel in Rome, I remember that Ihad a great fright. I thought: I was drunk last night; my head hasplayed a trick on me. There are no such women. At this I grew hot andcold all over. But again I thought, lying in my bed: I could notpossibly, all on my own, have invented such a person as this woman. Why,only our greatest poet could have done that. I could never have imagineda woman with so much life in her, and that great strength. I got up andwent straight back to her house, and there I found her again, suchindeed as I remembered her.

Later on I learned that the extraordinary impression of great strengthwhich she gave me was somehow false after all; she had not all thestrength that she showed. I will tell you what it was like:

If all your life you had been tacking up against the winds and thecurrents, and suddenly, for once, you were taken on board a ship whichwent, as we do tonight, with a strong tide and before a following wind,you would undoubtedly be much impressed with the power of that ship. Youwould be wrong; and yet in a way you would also be right, for the powerof the waters and the winds might be said rightly to belong to the ship,since she had managed, alone amongst all vessels, to ally herself withthem. Thus had I, all my life, under my father's ægis, been taught totack up against all the winds and currents of life. In the arms of thiswoman I felt myself in accord with them all, lifted and borne on by lifeitself. This, to my mind then, was due to her great strength. And still,at that time I did not know at all to what extent she had allied herselfwith all the currents and winds of life.

After this first night we were always together. I have never been ableto get anything out of the orthodox love affairs of my country, whichbegin in the drawing-room with banalities, flatteries and giggles, andgo through touches of hands and feet, to finish up in what is generallyheld to be a climax, in the bed. This love affair of mine in Rome, whichbegan in the bed, helped on by wine and much noisy music, and which grewinto a kind of courtship and friendship hitherto unknown to me, was theonly one that I have ever liked. After a while I often took her out withme for the whole day, or for a whole day and night. I bought a smallcarriage and a horse, with which we went about in Rome and in theCampagna, as far as Frascati and Nemi. We supped in the little inns,and in the early mornings we often stopped on the road and let the horsegraze on the roadside, while we ourselves sat on the ground, drank abottle of fresh, sour, red wine, ate raisins and almonds, and looked upat the many birds of prey which circled over the great plain, and whoseshadows, upon the short grass, would run alongside our carriage. Once ina village there was a festival, with Chinese lamps around a fountain inthe clear evening. We watched it from a balcony. Several times, also, wewent as far as the seaside. It was all in the month of September, a goodmonth in Rome. The world begins to be brown, but the air is as clear ashill water, and it is strange that it is full of larks, and that herethey sing at that time of the year.

Olalla was very pleased with all this. She had a great love for Italy,and much knowledge of good food and wine. At times she would dress up,as gay as a rainbow in cashmeres and plumes, as a prince's mistress, andthere never was a lady in England to beat her then; but at other timesshe would wear the linen hood of the Italian women, and dance in thevillages in the manner of the country. Then a stronger or more gracefuldancer was not to be found, although she liked even better to sit withme and watch them dance. She was extraordinarily alive to allimpressions. Wherever we went together she would observe many morethings than I did, though I have been a good sportsman all my life. Butat the same time there never seemed to be to her much difference betweenjoy and pain, or between sad and pleasant things. They were all equallywelcome to her, as if in her heart she knew them to be the same.

One afternoon we were on our way back to Rome, about sunset, and Olalla,bareheaded, was driving the horse and whipping him into a gallop. Thebreeze then blew her long dark curls away from her face, and showed meagain a long scar from a burn, which, like a little white snake, ranfrom her left ear to her collar bone. I asked her, as I had done before,how she had come to be so badly burned. She would not answer, butinstead began to talk of all the great prelates and merchants of Romewho were in love with her, until I said, laughing, that she had noheart. Over this she was silent for a little while, still going at fullspeed, the strong sunlight straight in our faces.

"Oh, yes," she said at last, "I have a heart. But it is buried in thegarden of a little white villa near Milan."

"Forever?" I asked.

"Yes, forever," she said, "for it is the most lovely place."

"What is there," I asked her, oppressed by jealousy, "in a little whitevilla of Milan to keep your heart there forever?"

"I do not know," she said. "There will not be much now, since nobody isweeding the garden or tuning the piano. There may be strangers livingthere now. But there is moonlight there, when the moon is up, and thesouls of dead people."

She often spoke in this vague whimsical way, and she was so graceful,gentle, and somehow humble in it that it always charmed me. She was verykeen to please, and would take much trouble about it, though not as aservant who becomes rigid by his fear of displeasing, but like somebodyvery rich, heaping benefactions upon you out of a horn of plenty. Like atame lioness, strong of tooth and claw, insinuating herself into yourfavor. Sometimes she seemed to me like a child, and then again old, likethose aqueducts, built a thousand years ago, which stand over theCampagna and throw their long shadows on the ground, their majestic,ancient, and cracked walls shining like amber in the sun. I felt like anew, dull thing in the world, a silly little boy beside her then. Andalways there was that about her which made me feel her so much strongerthan myself. Had I known for certain that she could fly, and might haveflown away from me and from the earth whenever she choose to, it wouldhave given me the same feeling, I believe.

It was not till the end of September that I began to think of thefuture. I saw then that I could not possibly live without Olalla. If Itried to go away from her, my heart, I thought, would run back to her aswater will run downhill. So I thought that I must marry her, and makeher come to England with me.

If when I asked her she had made the slightest objection, I should nothave been so much upset by her behavior later on. But she said at oncethat she would come. She was more caressing, more full of sweetnesstoward me from that time than she had ever been before, and we wouldtalk of our life in England, and of everything there, and laugh over ittogether. I told her of my father, and how he had always been anenthusiast about the Italian opera, which was the best thing that Icould find to say of him. I knew, in talking to her about all this, thatI should never again be bored in England.

It was about then that I was for the first time struck by theappearance, whenever I went near Olalla, of a figure of a man that I hadnever seen before. The first few times I did not think of it, but afterour sixth or seventh meeting he began to occupy my thoughts and to makeme curiously ill at ease. He was a Jew of fifty or sixty years, slightlybuilt, very richly dressed, with diamonds on his hands, and with themanners of a fine old man of the world. He was of a pale complexion andhad very dark eyes. I never saw him with her, or in the house, but I raninto him when I went there, or came away, so that he seemed to me tocircle around her, like the moon around the earth. There must have beensomething extraordinary about him from the beginning, or I should nothave had the idea, which now filled my head, that he had some power overOlalla and was an evil spirit in her life. In the end I took so muchinterest in him that I made my Italian valet inquire about him at thehotel where he was living, and so learned that he was a fabulously richJew of Holland, and that his name was Marcus Cocoza.

I came to wonder so much about what such a man could have to do in thestreet of Olalla's house, and why he thus appeared and againdisappeared, that in the end, half against my will--for I was afraid ofwhat she might tell me--I asked her if she knew him. She put two fingersunder my chin and lifted it up. "Have you not noted about me,Carissime," she asked me, "that I have no shadow? Once upon a time Isold my shadow to the devil, for a little heart-ease, a little fun. Thatman whom you have seen outside--with your usual penetration you willeasily guess him to be no other than this shadow of mine, with which Ihave no longer anything to do. The devil sometimes allows it to walkabout. It then naturally tries to come back and lay itself at my feet,as it used to do. But I will on no account allow it to do so. Why, thedevil might reclaim the whole bargain, did I permit it! Be you at easeabout him, my little star."

She was, I thought, in her own way obviously speaking the truth foronce. As she spoke I realized it: she had no shadow. There was nothingblack or sad in her nearness, and the dark shades of care, regret,ambition, or fear, which seem to be inseparable from all humanbeings--even from me myself, although in those days I was a fairlycareless boy--had been exiled from her presence. So I just kissed her,saying that we would leave her shadow in the street and pull down theblind.

It was about this time, too, that I began to have a strange feeling,that I have come to know since, and which I then innocently mistook forhappiness. It seemed to me, wherever I went, that the world around mewas losing its weight and was slowly beginning to flow upwards, a worldof light only, of no solidity whatever. Nothing seemed massive anylonger. The Castel San Angelo was entirely a castle in the air, and Ifelt that I might lift the very Basilica of St. Peter between my twofingers. Nor was I afraid of being run over by a carriage in thestreets, so conscious was I that the coach and the horses would have nomore weight in them than if they had been cut out of paper. I feltextremely happy, if slightly light-headed, under the faith, and took itas a foreboding of a greater happiness to come, a sort of apotheosis.The universe, and I myself with it, I thought, was on the wing, on theway to the seventh heaven. Now I know well enough what it means: it isthe beginning of a final farewell; it is the cock crowing. Since then,on my travels, I have known a country or a circle of people to havetaken on that same weightless aspect. In one way I was right. The worldaround me was indeed on the wing, going upwards. It was only me myself,who, being too heavy for the flight, was to be left behind, in completedesolation.

I was occupied with the thought of a letter that I must write to myfather, to tell him that I could not marry the widow, when I wasinformed that one of my brothers, who was an officer in the navy, was atNaples with his ship. I reflected that it might be better to give himthe letter to carry, and told Olalla that I should have to go to Naplesfor a couple of days. I asked her if she would be likely to see the oldJew while I was away, but she assured me that she would neither see himnor speak to him.

I did not get on quite well with my brother. When I talked to him, I sawfor the first time how my plans for the future would appear to the eyesof others, and it made me feel very ill at ease. For while I still heldtheir views to be idiotic and inhuman, I was yet, for the first timesince I had met Olalla, reminded of the dead and clammy atmosphere of myformer world and my home. However, I gave my letter to my brother, andasked him to plead my cause with my father as well as he could, and Ihastened to return to Rome.

When I came back there I found that Olalla had gone. At first they toldme, in the house where she had been, that she had died suddenly fromfever. This made me deadly ill and nearly drove me mad for three days.But I soon found out that it could not possibly be so, and then I wentto every inhabitant of the house, imploring and threatening them to tellme all. I now realized that I ought to have taken her away from theplace before I went to Naples--although what would it have helped me ifshe herself had meant to leave me? A strange superstition made meconnect her disappearance with the Jew, and in a last interview with themadama of the house I seized her by the throat, told her that I knewall, and promised her that I would strangle her if she did not tell methe truth. In her terror the old woman confessed: Yes, it had been he.Olalla had left the house one day and had not come back. The next day apale old Jewish gentleman with very dark eyes had appeared at the house,had settled Olalla's debts and paid a sum to the madama to raise notrouble. She had not seen the two together. "And where have they gone?"I cried, sick because I had not had an outlet for my despair in killingoff the old yellow female. That she could not tell me, but on secondthought she believed that she had heard the Jew mention to his servantthe name of a town called Basel.

To Basel I then proceeded, but people who have not themselves tried itcan have no idea of the difficulties you have in trying to find, in astrange town, a person whose name you do not know.

My search was made more difficult by the fact that I did not know at allin what station of life I was to seek Olalla. If she had gone with theJew she might be a great lady by now, whom I should meet in her owncarriage. But why had the Jew left her in the house where I had foundher in Rome? He might do the same thing now, for some reason unknown tome. I therefore searched all the houses of ill renown in Basel, of whichthere are more than one would think, for Basel is the town in Europewhich stands up most severely for the sanctity of marriage. But I foundno trace of her. I then bethought me of Amsterdam, where I should have,at least, the name of Cocoza to go by. I did indeed find, in Amsterdam,the fine old house of the Jew, and learned about him that he was therichest man of the place, and that his family had traded in diamonds forthree hundred years. But he himself, I was told, was always traveling.It was thought that he was now in Jerusalem. I ran, from Amsterdam, uponvarious false tracks which took me to many countries. This maddeningjourney of mine went on for five months. In the end I made up my mind togo to Jerusalem, and I was on my way back to Italy, to take ship atGenoa, and these things were all running through my mind when I wassitting, as I have told you, at the Hotel of Andermatt, waiting to crossthe pass upon the following day.

On the previous day I had found a letter from my father, which had beenfollowing at my heels for some months, being sent after me from oneplace to another. My father wrote to me:

"I am now able to look upon your conduct with calm and understanding.This I owe to the perusal of a collection of family papers, to which Ihave during the three last months given much of my time and attention.From the study of these papers it has become clear to me that a highlyremarkable fate lies, and for the last two hundred years has lain, uponour family.

"We are, as a family, only so much better than others because we havealways had amongst us one individual who has carried all the weaknessand vice of his generation. The faults which normally would have beendivided up among a whole lot of people have been gathered together uponthe head of one of them only, and we others have in this way come to bewhat we have been, and are.

"In going through our papers I can no longer have any doubt of thisfact. I have been able to trace the one particular chosen delinquentthrough seven generations, beginning with our great-aunt Elizabeth, intowhose behavior I do not want here to go. I shall only quote the examplesof my uncles Henry and Ambrose, who in their days without any doubt..."

Here followed various names and facts for the support of my father'stheory. He then continued:

"I do not know whether it would not be more of a fatal blow than of ablessing to our name and family should this strange condition ever ceaseto be. It might do away with much trouble and anxiety, but it might alsolead to the family becoming no better than other people.

"As to you, you have so perseveringly declined to follow my command oradvice that I feel I have reason to believe you the chosen victim ofyour generation. You have refused to make, by your example, virtueattractive and the reward of good conduct obvious. I have now reached,in my relation to you, a sufficiently philosophical outlook to give youmy blessing in the completion of a career which may make filialdisobedience, weakness, and vice a usefully repugnant and deterringexample to your generation of our family."

I never saw my father again. But from my former tutor, whom, many yearslater, I happened to meet again in Smyrna, in melancholy circumstances,I heard of him. My father had so far reconciled himself to the situationas to marry my young widow himself. They had a son, and him hechristened Lincoln. But whether he did so because after all he had likedme better than I had known, or with the purpose of removing anyunpleasant sensations which might present themselves to him between oneand three o'clock of a night, in connection with the thought of his sonLincoln, I cannot tell.

I had read his letter twice, and was taking it from my pocket to read itagain to pass the time, when, looking up, I saw two young men come intothe dining-room of the hotel from the cold night outside. One of them Iknew, and I thought that if he caught sight of me he would come and sitdown with me, which he did, so that the three of us spent the rest ofthe night together.

The first of these two nicely dressed and well-mannered young gentlemenwas a boy of a noble family of Coburg, whom, a year before, I had knownin England, where he was sent to study parliamentary procedure, since hemeant to become a diplomat, and also to study horse-breeding, which wasthe livelihood of his people. His name was Friederich Hohenemser, but hewas, in looks and manners, so like a dog I had once owned and which wasnamed Pilot, that I used to call him that. He was a tall and fair,handsome, young man.

But since it will please you, Mira, to hear your own ingenious parablemade use of, I am going to tell you of him that he was a person whomlife would on no account consent to gulp down. He had himself a burningcraving to be swallowed by life, and on every occasion would try toforce himself down her throat, but she just as stubbornly refused him.She might, from time to time, just to imbue him with an illusion, sip ina little of him, though never a good full draught; but even on theseoccasions she would vomit him up again. What it was about him which thusmade her stomach rise, I cannot quite tell you; only I know this: thatall people who came near him had, somehow, the same feeling about him,that, while they had nothing against him, here was a fellow with whomthey could do nothing at all. In this way he was, mentally, in the stateof a very young embryo.

It probably takes a certain amount of cunning, or luck, in a man to gethimself established as an embryo. My friend Pilot had never got beyondthat. His condition was often felt by himself, I believe, as veryalarming; and so indeed it was. His blue eyes at times gave out a mostpainful reflection of the hopeless struggle for existence which went oninside him. If he ever found in himself any original taste at all, hemade the most of it. Thus he would go on talking of his preference forone wine over another, as if he meant to impress such a precious findingdeeply upon you. A philosopher, about whom I was taught in school andwhom you would have liked, Mira, has said: "I think; consequently I am."In this way did my friend Pilot repeat to himself and to the world: "Iprefer Moselle to Rhenish wine; consequently I exist." Or, if he enjoyeda show or a game, he would dwell upon it the whole evening, telling you:"That sort of thing amuses me." But he had no imagination, and was,besides, very honest. He could invent nothing for himself, but was leftto describe such preferences as he really found in his own mind, whichwere always preciously few. Probably it was, altogether, his lack ofimagination which prevented him from existing. For if you will create,as you know, Mira, you must first imagine, and as he could not imaginewhat Friederich Hohenemser was to be like, he failed to produce anyFriederich Hohenemser at all.

I had named him, I have told you, after a dog of mine, which had so muchthe same sort of disposition--never having the slightest idea of what hewanted to do, or had to do--that I finished up by shooting him. The Godof Friederich Hohenemser was more forbearing to him in the end.

With all this, Pilot did not get on badly in society, which, I suppose,demands but a minimum of existence from its members, on the continent ofEurope. He was, besides, a rich young man, pink and white, with a pairof vigorous calves--about all of which he was not a little vain--and hewas even thought by elderly ladies to be a very model of a youth. Heliked me, and was pleased at having made such a definite impression onme that I had given him a nickname. A person, he thought, has given me anickname. Consequently I exist.

As he now came up to me I noticed that a change had come upon him. Hehad come to life; there was a shine about him. Thus did the dog Pilotshine and wag his tail upon the rare occasions on which he hoped to haveproved that he did really exist. It might have been, in the boy, theeffect of his new friendship with the young gentleman who accompaniedhim. In any case he would be sure, I felt, to play out his ace to me inthe course of the evening. I sighed. I would have given much, on thatnight, for the company of a really good dog. I thought regretfully of myold dogs in England.

He presented his friend to me as Baron Guildenstern of Sweden. I had nothad the pleasure of their company for ten minutes before I had beeninformed by both of them that the Baron in his own country held thereputation of a great seducer of women. This made me meditate--althoughall the time my intercourse with other people was carried on only uponthe surface of my mind--on what kind of women they have in Sweden. Theladies who have done me the honor of letting me seduce them have, all ofthem, insisted upon deciding themselves which was to be the centralpoint in the picture. I have liked them for it, for therein lay what wasto me the variety of an otherwise monotonous performance. But in thecase of the Baron it was clear that the point of gravity had always beenentirely with him. You would suppose him to be of an unenthusiasticnature, even while he was talking of the beauties whom he had pursued,but you would not find him lacking in enthusiasm when he had once turnedyour eyes toward what he wanted you really to admire. It appeared fromhis talk that all his ladies had been of exactly the same kind, and thatkind of woman I have never met. With himself so absolutely the hero ofeach single exploit, I wondered why he should have taken so muchtrouble--and he was obviously prepared to go to any length of trouble inthese affairs--to obtain, time after time, a repetition of exactly thesame trick. To begin with I was, being a young man myself, highlyimpressed by such a superabundance of appetite.

Still I got, after a while, from his conversation, which was very livelyand became more so after we had emptied a few bottles together, the keyto the existence of the young Swede, which lay in the single word"competition." Life, to him, was a competition in which he must needsshine beyond the other entrants. I had myself been fairly keen forcompetition as a boy, but even while I had been still at school I hadlost my sense of it, and by this time, unless a thing was in itself tomy taste, I thought it silly to exert myself about it just because ithappened to be to the taste of others. Not so this Swedish Baron.Nothing in the whole world was in itself good or bad to him. He waswaiting for a cue, and a scent to follow, from other people, and to findout from them what things they held precious, in order to outshine themin the pursuit of such things, or to bereave them of them. When he wasleft alone he was lost. In this way he became more dependent upon othersthan Pilot himself, and probably he shunned solitude as the very devil.His past life, I found from his talk, he saw as a row of triumphs over arow of rivals, and as nothing else whatever, although he was a littleolder than I. Neither in his rivals nor in his victims had he anyinterest at all. He had in him neither admiration nor pity, no feelingthat was not either envy or contempt.

Yet he was no fool. On the contrary, I should say that he was a veryshrewd person. He had adopted in life the manner of a good, plain,outspoken fellow who is a little unpolished but easily forgiven onaccount of his open, simple mind. With that he had an attentive, lurkingglance, and spied on you, when you least expected it, in order to getfrom you a valuation of things, so as to be able to defraud you of them.As he was without the nerves which make ordinary people feel the strainof things, he had without doubt an extraordinary strength and stamina,and was held by himself and by others to be a giant in comparison withthose who have imagination or compassion in them.

The two got on very well together, Pilot being flattered into existenceby the cute young Swede--I have got, Pilot thought, a friend who is aterrible seducer of women; consequently I exist--and the Baron quitepleased to have outshone all former friends of the rich young German,and to be admired by him. They would really rather have been without me.But they were drawn magnetically toward me, Pilot to show off his friendto me, and the Baron hot on the track of something which I might valueor want, and which he might win or trick from me.

I was so bored, after a while, with the conversation of the Baron that Iturned my attention to Pilot--a thing rarely done by anyone--and as soonas he got the chance he began to reveal to me the great happenings inhis life.

"You might not care to be seen in my company, Lincoln," he said, "if youknew all. I shall not be out of danger till I am out of Switzerland. Thewalls have ears in a country of so much political unrest." He waited towatch the effect of his words, then went on: "I come from Lucerne."

Now I knew that there had been a fight in that town, but it had neveroccurred to me that Pilot might have been in it.

"It was hot there," he said. Poor Pilot! In his little, bashfullysmiling mouth the very truth sounded badly invented. The Baron, I amsure, would have made a whole chain of lies come out with such aplombthat his audience would not for a moment have doubted them. "I shot aman in the barricade fight on the third of March," said Pilot.

I knew that there had been a fight in the streets between, on the oneside, the parties in power, and particularly the partisans of thepriests, and on the other, the common people in rebellion. "You did?" Iasked, with a deep pang of envy because he had been in a fight. "Youshot a rebel?" For Pilot had always been to me a figure of highrespectability and small intellect. I took it for granted that he hadsided with the priests, and this at least I did not envy him.

Pilot shook his head proudly and secretively. After a moment he said, "Ishot the chaplain of the Bishop of St. Gallen."

The newspapers had been full of this murder, and the murderer had beensearched for everywhere. I naturally became interested to know how thegreat deed had fallen to Pilot, and made him tell me his tale from thebeginning. The Baron, bored by the recount of somebody else's martialexploits, sat without listening, drinking and watching the people asthey went in and out.

"When I went away from Coburg," said Pilot, "I meant to stay in Lucernefor three weeks with my uncle De Watteville. As I was about to depart,all the elegant ladies of the place, one after the other, begged me tobring her back from Lucerne a bonnet from a milliner whom they calledMadame Lola. This woman, they assured me, was famous from one end ofEurope to the other. Ladies from the great courts and capitals came toher for their bonnets, and never in the history of millinery had therebeen such a genius. I was naturally not averse to doing the ladies of mynative town a service, so I went off, my pockets bulging with littlesilk patterns, and even, will you believe it, with little locks of hairfor Madame Lola to match her bonnets to. Still, in Lucerne, where theair was filled with political discussions, I forgot all about MadameLola until one night, when I was dining with a party of high officialsand politicians, I suddenly drew out, with my handkerchief, a littleslip of rose-colored satin, and had to furnish my explanation. To mysurprise the whole conversation immediately turned to the milliner. Themarried men, at least, and all the clericals, all knew about her. It wastrue, said the Bishop of St. Gallen, who was present, that the woman wasa genius. The slightest touch of her hand, like a magic wand, createdmiracles of art and elegance, and the great ladies of St. Petersburg andMadrid, and of Rome itself, made pilgrimages to the milliner's shop. Butshe was more than that. She was suspected of being a conspirator of thefirst water, who made use of her atelier as a meeting place for themost dangerous revolutionists. And in this capacity, also, she was agenius, a Circe, moving and organizing things with her little hands, andthe roughest of her partisans would have died for her.

"They all warned me so strongly against her that naturally the firstthing which I did on the following day was to go to her house, in thestreet which had been pointed out to me. On that occasion I found heronly a highly intelligent and agreeable woman. She took all my orders,and talked to me of my journey and even of my character and career. Ared-haired young man came in while I was there, and went out again, wholooked much like a revolutionist, but to whom she paid but littleattention.

"While she was completing all these bonnets for me, the atmosphere ofLucerne was darkening more and more; a thunderstorm hung over the town.My uncle, who held a high position in the town council, foresawdisaster. He sent my aunt and his daughters away to his château, andadvised me to go with them. But I felt that I could not go away withouthaving seen Madame Lola again, and having collected my goods from her.

"On the day on which I went to her at last, the disturbance in thestreets was so great that I had to approach her abode by a network oflittle side streets, and even that was extremely difficult. But uponentering the house I found it, from doorway to garret, one seething massof armed people streaming in and out, the whole place indeed like awitch's cauldron. There was no time to talk of bonnets. She herself,standing on the counter, discoursing and directing the people, at thesight of me jumped straight into my arms. 'Ah,' she cried, 'your hearthas driven you the right way at last!' And the whole crowd, she with it,at this moment advanced out of the house and down the street. It draggedme with it, or I was so filled with the very enthusiasm of the womanthat I went freely. In this way, in a second, I was whirled into abarricade fight, and on to the barricades, always at the side of MadameLola.

"She was loading the guns and handing them to the combatants, and shewas using for the terrible task all the verve and adroitness which shehad used in trimming her bonnets. Now all the people around her,although they were brave, were afraid, and had reason to be so; but shewas not in the least afraid. As she handed the rifles to the men on thebarricade, she handed them with the weapons some of her ownfearlessness. I saw this on their faces. And it was strange that Imyself was at the time convinced that nothing could harm her, or couldharm me as long as I was with her. I remembered our old cook at Coburgtelling me that a cat has nine lives. Madame Lola, I thought, must havein her the life of nine cats. At that moment I really saw her assomething more than human, although she was, as I think I told you, nolady of noble birth, but only a milliner of Lucerne, not young.

"It was then that I myself, carried away by the rage around me, seized arifle and fired into the crowd of soldiers and town militia which wasslowly advancing up the street against us. My own uncle De Watteville,for all I knew, might be leading them, but I had no thought for him. Atthe same moment I was struck down, I know not how, and dropped likedead.

"When I woke up I was in a small room, in bed, and Madame Lola was inthe room with me. As I tried to move I found that my right leg was alldone up in bandages. She gave a great exclamation of joy at seeing meawake, but then approached with her finger on her lips. In the darkenedroom she told me of how the fight was over, and how I had killed thechaplain of the Bishop of St. Gallen. She begged me to be very still,first because my leg had been broken by a shot, and secondly, becausethings were still upset in Lucerne. I was in great danger and must bekept a secret in her house.

"I was there in the garret of her house, for three weeks, being nursedby her. The fighting was still going on, and I heard shots. But of this,of my wound, of what I had done and what my people would say, even of mydangerous position, I hardly thought. It seemed to me that I had,somehow, got up very high outside the world in which I used to live, andthat I was now quite alone there, with her. A doctor came to see me fromtime to time. Nobody else came, but Lola would put on her shawl andleave me for a while, begging me to keep very quiet till she came back.These hours when she was away were to me infinitely long.

"But while I was with her we talked together much. When I have sincethought of it, I remember that she did not say a great deal, but that Imyself talked as well as I have always wished to do. Altogether, Iunderstood life and the world, myself and God even, while I was in thegarret. In particular we talked of the great things which I was to do inlife. I had, you understand, already done enough to be known amongstpeople, but both of us felt that this was only the beginning.

"I understood that many of her friends had left Lucerne, and that shewas exposing herself to dangers for my sake, and I begged her to goaway. No, she said, she would not leave me for anything in the world.First of all, after what I had done, the revolutionists of Lucernelooked upon me as a brother, and would all be ready to die for my sake.But more than that, she explained, blushing deeply, in case we werefound by the tyrants of the town or their militia, she and I must bothinsist that we had taken no part in the fight, but were here togetherbecause of a love affair. She would have to pose as my mistress, and Ias her lover, while my wound would be said to have been given me by ajealous rival. These words of hers, although the whole thing was only acomedy, again made me feel extraordinarily happy, and made me dream ofwhat I would do when I got well again. Yes, I do not know if any reallove affair could possibly have made me as happy.

"At last one evening she told me that the doctor had declared me to beout of danger, and that we must part. She was leaving Lucerne herselfthat night. I was to go away, secretly, in the early morning. A friend,she said, would place his carriage at my disposal, and himself escort meout of town. A sort of terror came over me at her words. But I was tooslow. I did not know what was the matter with me till it was too late.Madame Lola went on talking gently to me. I was, she said, to havesomething for my trouble, and she would give me all the bonnets that shehad in her shop. 'For I myself,' she said, 'am not coming back toLucerne.' So with the assistance of her little maid she made the journeyup and down the stairs twelve times, each time loaded with bandboxes,which she placed around me. I began to laugh, and in the end could notstop again, for I found myself nearly drowned in bonnets of all thecolors of the rainbow, trimmed with flowers, ribbons, and plumes. Thefloor, the bed, chair, and table were covered with them, probably theprettiest bonnets in all the world. 'Now,' she said, when she had filledthe room with them, 'here you have the wherewithal to conquer the heartsof women.' She herself put on a plain bonnet and shawl, and took myhand. 'Do not ever,' said she, 'bear me any grudge. I have tried to doyou good.' She put her arms around my neck, kissed me, and was gone.'Lola!' I cried, and sank back in my chair in a faint. I passed, when Iwoke up, a terrible night. There was not a single pleasant thing for meto think of. The image of the curate of the Bishop of St. Gallen alsobegan to worry me, and it seemed to me that I had nothing to turn to inall the world.

"Lola was as good as her word. The next morning an elderly Jewishgentleman, of great elegance, presented himself in my garret, and at thefoot of the stair I found his handsome carriage waiting for me. He droveme through the town, where here and there I still saw traces of thefighting, and entertained me pleasantly on the way. As we were nearingthe outskirts of the city he said to me: 'The Baron de Watteville'scarriage will meet us at such and such a park. But the feelings ofMonsieur your Uncle have been hurt by your behavior, and he has chargedme to say that he prefers you to continue your journey straight on, sothat he and you should not meet until later.'

"'But does my uncle,' I exclaimed in great surprise, 'know of what hashappened to me?'

"'Yes,' said the old Jew, 'he has indeed known all the time. The Baronhas much influence with the clergy of Lucerne, and it is doubtfulwhether we could have done without him.' He said no more, so we drove onin silence, I in a disturbed mind.

"My uncle's carriage was indeed waiting near a park, as the Jew hadsaid. As we stopped, a man got out of it and slowly came up to meet us,and I recognized the red-haired young man whom I had seen in Lola'shouse on my first visit there, and later, I now remembered, on thebarricade. He now looked as if he had gone through much. He limped whenhe walked, and his face was very pale and stern as he bowed to mycompanion. Still, as he looked around at me, he suddenly smiled. 'Sothis,' I heard him say, 'is Madame Lola's little caged goldfinch?'

"'Yes,' said the old Jew, smiling, 'that is her golem.'

"Then I did not know what I found out later, that the word golem, inthe Jewish language, means a big figure of clay, into which life ismagically blown, most frequently for the accomplishment of some crimewhich the magician dares not undertake himself. These golems areimagined to be very big and strong.

"The two saw me into my uncle's carriage, and we took leave of oneanother. I drove on, but I had too much to think of now, and I did notknow where to find myself again. The smell of gunpowder of thebarricades, our talks of God and Lola's kiss in the attic, together withall these bonnets which she had given me, all ran before my eyes, likethe colored spots which you see before your eyes when you have for along time been looking at the sun. I have not been able, since then, tothink much of those great deeds which I was to perform. I cannot evenremember what they were. But still, I have killed the curate of theBishop of St. Gallen, and I must be careful until I get out of thiscountry. I have seen a doctor, who tells me that my leg has been soskillfully put together that it is as if it had never been broken."

"And so you are," I said, "trying to find this woman, and searching forher everywhere, lying awake at night?"

"You guess that?" said Pilot. "Yes, I am looking for her. I do not knowwhat to think or feel about anything until I shall see her again. Stillshe was not young, you know, and no woman of noble birth, but only amilliner of Lucerne."

Now I had heard Pilot's tale. And while I had been listening to it, Ihad been frightened more than once. There were many things in italarming to my ears. I thought, I have not been drunk a single timesince I lost Olalla, till tonight. It is obvious that when I drink now,even as much as two bottles of this Swiss wine, my head betrays me. Thatcomes from thinking, for a long time, of one single thing only. Thistale of my friend's is too much like a dream of my own. There is much inhis woman of the barricades which recalls to me the manner of mycourtesan of Rome, and when, in the middle of his story, an old Jewappears like a djinn of the lamp, it is quite clear that I am a littleoff my head. How far can I be, I wonder, from plain lunacy?

To clear up this question I went on drinking.

The Baron Guildenstern, during the course of Pilot's narration, had fromtime to time looked at me with a smile, and sometimes winked at me. Butas it drew on he had lost his interest in it, and had had a new bottlebrought in. Now he opened it, and refilled the glasses.

"My good Fritz," he said, laughing, "I know that ladies love theirbonnets. A husband to them means a person who will buy them bonnets ofall possible shapes and colors, God bless him. But it is a poor articleof dress to get off a woman. I have let them keep the bonnet on aftereverything else had gone; and as to having it flung at your head, Iprefer the chemise."

"Have you never, then, paid your court to a woman without getting thechemise?" Pilot asked, a little nervously, looking straight in front ofhim at things far away.

The Baron watched him attentively, as if he were on the point of findingout that a failure and an unsatisfied appetite might have a value forsome kinds of people. "My dear friend," he said, "I will tell you anadventure of mine in return for your confession":

****

"Seven years ago I was sent by the colonel of my regiment in Stockholm,the Prince Oscar, to the riding school of Saumur. I did not stay my termout there, as I got into some sort of trouble at Saumur, but while I wasthere I had some pleasant hours in the company of two rich young friendsof mine, one of whom was Waldemar Nat-og-Dag, who had come with me fromSweden. The other was the Belgian Baron Clootz, who belonged to the newnobility, and possessed a large fortune.

"Through letters of introduction of old aunts of ours, my Swedish friendand I dropped for a time into a curious community of old ruinedLegitimists of the highest aristocracy, who had lost all that they hadin the French Revolution, and who lived in a small provincial town nearSaumur.

"They were all of them very aged, for when they had been young theladies had had no dowries to marry on, and the gentlemen no money tomaintain a family in the style of their old names, so there had been noyounger generation produced. They could thus foresee the near end of alltheir world, and with them to be young was synonymous with being of thesecond-best circles. The ladies held their heads together over my aunts'letters, wondering at the strangeness of conditions in Sweden, where thenobility still had the courage to breed.

"It all bored me to death. It was like being put on a shelf with a lotof bottles of old wine and old pickle pots, sealed and bound withparchment.

"In these circles there was much talk of a rich young woman who had fora year been renting a pretty country house outside the town. I had seenit myself, within its walled gardens, on my morning rides. In thebeginning she interested me as little as possible. I thought her onlyone more of the company of Beguines. I wondered, though, how it was thatthe qualities of youth and prosperity were in her no faults, but on thecontrary seemed to endear her to all the dry old hearts of the town.

"They themselves eagerly furnished me the explanation, informing me thatthis lady had consecrated her life to the memory of General ZumalaCarregui, who had been, I believe, a hero and a martyr to the cause ofthe rightful king of Spain, and had been killed by the rebels. In hishonor she dressed forever in white, lived on lenten food and water, andevery year undertook a pilgrim's voyage to his tomb in Spain. She gavemuch charity to the poor, and kept a school for the children of thevillage, and a hospital. From time to time she also had visions andheard voices, probably the sweet and martial voice of General Zumala.For all this she was highly thought of. That she had, before his death,stood in a more earthly relation to the martyr in no way damaged herreputation. The collection of old maids of both sexes were on thecontrary much intrigued by the idea of experience in this holy person,as were, very likely, the eleven thousand martyrized virgins of Colognewhen they were, in paradise, introduced to the highly ranking saint ofheaven, St. Mary of Magdala.

"But the heart of my friend Waldemar, when he met her, melted as quicklyas a lump of sugar in a cup of hot coffee.

"'Arvid,' he said to me, 'I have never met such a woman, and I know thatit was the will of fate that I should meet her. For as you know my nameis Night-and-Day, and my arms two-parted in black and white. Thereforeshe is meant for me--or I for her. For this Madame Rosalba has in hermore life than any person I have ever met. She is a saint of the firstmagnitude, and she uses in being a saint as much vigor as a commander instorming a citadel. She sits like a fresh, full flower in the circle ofold dry perisperms. She is a swan in the lake of life everlasting. Thatis the white half of my shield. And at the same time there is deathabout her somewhere, and that is the black half of the Nat-og-Dag arms.This I can only explain to you by a metaphor, which presented itself tome as I was looking at her.

"'We have heard much of wine growing since we came here, and havelearned, too, how, to obtain perfection in the special white wine ofthis district, they leave the grapes on the vines longer than for otherwines. In this way they dry up a little, become over-ripe and verysweet. Furthermore, they develop a peculiar condition which is called inFrench pourriture noble, and in German, Edelfaule, and which givesthe flavor to the wine. In the atmosphere of Rosalba, Arvid, there is aflavor which there is about no other woman. It may be the true odor ofsanctity, or it may be the noble putrefaction, the royal corrodent rustof a strong and rare wine. Or, Arvid, my friend, it may be both, in asoul two-parted white and black, a Nat-og-Dag soul.'

"On the following Sunday--in May, it was--I managed to be introduced toMadame Rosalba, after mass, at dinner in the house of an old friend ofmine.

"These old aristocrats, in the midst of their ruin, kept a fairly goodtable, and did not despise a bottle of wine. But the younger woman atelentils and dry bread, with a glass of water, and did this with such asweet and frank demureness that the diet seemed very noble, and nobodywould have thought of offering her anything else. After dinner, in thefresh, darkened salon, she entertained the company, with the samefrankness and modesty, by describing a vision which she had lately had.She had found herself, she said, in a vast flowery meadow, with a greatflock of young children, each of whom had around its head a small halo,as clear as the flame of a little candle. St. Joseph himself had come toher there, to inform her that this was paradise, and that she was to actas nurse to the children. These, he explained, were none other thanthose first of all martyrs, the babes of Bethlehem murdered by Herod. Hepointed out to her what a sweet task was hers, inasmuch as, just as theLord had suffered and died in the stead of humanity, so had thesechildren suffered and died in the stead of the Lord. A great felicityhad at his words come upon her, she said, and sighing with bliss she haddeclared that she should never want anything of all eternity but to lookafter and play with the martyrized children.

"I am not a great believer in visions or in paradise, but as this youngwoman told her tale I had no doubt that she had really seen with her owneyes what she described, or that she had been chosen for paradise. Shehad so much life in her that she made one feel how well the choice hadbeen made; the little martyrs would have a great deal of fun.

"Once, while she was talking, she lifted her eyes. Good God, what a pairof eyes to have! They were, indeed, of the greatest power; and when shegave you one of her thirty-pound glances--puff!

"Now, as I was listening demurely myself and looking around at her happycircle of old disciples, I became convinced that somewhere in all thisstuff there was a very bold piece of deceit. Rosalba might very well bea saint of the first water. She might also be heaping benefactions onrich and poor, out of a horn of plenty. And she might have loved theGeneral Zumala Carregui, in which case the general was to be envied. Butshe had not loved him only in all the world, and she was not living nowfor his memory alone. Monogamy--for it does exist, and I have myselfbeen loved by women of a monogamous disposition--shows in a woman. Youmay confound the nun and the whore, but those ladies who in India, I amtold, beg to be committed to the flames of their husbands' funeralpyres, you know when you see them. Either, I thought, this white swanRosalba can count the names of her lovers with the beads of her rosary,or she is some perverse old maid--for as a maid she was not young; shehad passed her thirtieth year--who, out of desperation, poses to myLegitimists as the mistress of a general.

"Rosalba had not looked at me more than once, but she was aware of me.She and I, for all that we were placed far apart, were as much incontact as if we had been performing a pas-de-deux upon the center ofa stage, with the aged corps du ballet grouped around us. When shewent to the window to look for her carriage, the folds of her whitedress and the tresses of her dark hair moved and floated all for mybenefit.

"I thought: I have never in my life had a dead rival. Let us see nowwhat the General Zumala is capable of. At Easter I had to listen to asermon on St. Mary Magdalen--this holy Mary, would she have been moredifficult to seduce than any of the others of the name; or easier? Theold war horse, we are told, raises its head to the war trumpet.

"I soon became a frequent visitor at Madame Rosalba's château. I do notknow whether the old aristocratic community of the town had any idea ofthe peril of its saint. I was accepted as her companion on her visits tothe poor and the sick. In the beginning I consulted her much upon mysoul. I confessed to her many of my sins, and none of them seemed toimpress her much. They might well have appeared familiar to her. I thinkthat she really gave me good advice, and that if I had meant to reform Ishould have done well to follow it. She had the same earnest and sweetmanner, and seemed to like me, but in our amorous pas-de-deux she wasslow of movement. I, on my side, was patient. I had to keep my youngfriend Waldemar in view, and I knew that I had a pleasant surprise forher at the end of the dance.

"One thing was strange to me in that house. I have been brought up aLutheran, and taken to church on Christmas Day by my good grandmother. Ihave heard many sermons, and I know the difference between saintlinessand sin as well as old Pastor Methodius himself, even if we disagreed alittle as to our personal tastes in the matter. But upon my honor as aguardsman, with her it was difficult to know which was which. Shepreached theology with as much voluptuousness as if the table of theLord was the one real treat to a gourmet, and when we talked about loveshe would make it look like a pastime in a kindergarten. This I did notlike. I had a nurse who believed in witches, and at times, in Rosalba'ssociety, I remembered the dark tales of old Maja-Lisa. Even so, such aholy witch and wanton saint I had not come across before.

"In the end, however, I obtained from Rosalba the promise of arendezvous in her house late on a Friday afternoon. On that day all thepeople were going to the funeral of a maréchal's widow, who had been ahundred years old. This was late in June. By then I was bored with herdallying, and I thought, It is to be on Friday, or I will never makelove to a woman again.

"All this, I can tell you, might have ended up in a different way, hadnot something else happened in Saumur. But it came to pass that a veryrich old Jewish gentleman--in the style of the Jew of your tale,Fritz--stopped there for a week on his way from Spain. He had everythingof the best. His coach, his servants, and his diamonds were much talkedof. But what struck our riding school to the heart was a pair ofAndalusian horses which he brought with him. They were, particularly theone of them, the finest that had been seen in France. Even at myregiment in Sweden there were hardly any like that. Moreover they hadbeen trained in the royal manège at Madrid, and it was a shame thatthey should be in the hands of a Jew, and a civilian.

"Because of these horses I neglected Madame Rosalba for a few days, somuch talk was there about them. Few of us would have been rich enough tobuy them, and still we thought it a point of honor with us that theyshould not leave Saumur. In the end Baron Clootz, who was a millionaireand a young nobleman of much wit, one evening after dinner made aproposition to five of us who had been for a long time his closestfriends and associates. He promised that he would buy the horse of theJew, and put it up as the prize in a competition in which we were toshow what we were worth. The rule of this competition was that we wereto ride, within one day, three French miles, drink three bottles of thewine of the district, and make love to three ladies in the course. Inwhat order we would take the events it was for our own judgment todecide, but the Jew's horse was to belong to that one of us who arrivedfirst at Baron Clootz's house after having fulfilled the conditions.

"His proposition was a great success, and I was already in my mindarranging the consecutive order of the items, and going through mycircle of acquaintances amongst the pretty women of the district, when Ifound that the day chosen for the contest was the day of my rendezvouswith Madame Rosalba. The day had been chosen for both purposes from thesame reason: because the élite of the town would be occupied, and notable to poke their noses into our affairs.

"I had, however, confidence in myself, and as I walked away arm in armwith young Waldemar I thought it a good joke. He was still worshipingRosalba from the footstep of her pedestal, so much so as to want tochange his religion for her sake, even, I believe, and become a monk. Ioften had to listen to his panegyrics upon her. Still after someargument we had persuaded him to come into our contest. I think that hemeant to show himself to Rosalba on the Spanish horse, for he was atolerably good horseman.

"I was, without vanity, punctual at my rendezvous at the white châteauof Rosalba on that Friday afternoon. By her own maid--for there was notanother soul in the house; they had all gone to the funeral--I was takento her boudoir in the tower, and at the top of a long stone stair. Theshutters were closed, the room was half dark, and, when you came fromoutside, as cool as a church. There were a great many white lilies, sothat the air was heavy with their scent. Upon a table were glasses, anda bottle of the best wine that I have ever tasted, a dry Château Yquem.This made my third bottle of the day.

"Rosalba also was there. She was as ever very plainly attired, but shehad shaken herself, with one shake, into very great beauty.

"If what happened to me in this tower seems somehow wild andfantastical, and more like a fairy tale or a ghost story than a romance,the fault is not mine. It is true that the day was hot; a thunderstormfollowed it in the night; and that as I came in from the white road,heavy in my riding boots, I was not too sure of my head. I may even havebeen more in love with her than I myself knew, for everything seemed tome to turn on her, and my bottles and my wildly galloped races to beonly the reasonably fit initiatory ceremonies to this great moment oflove-making. But I remember well all that happened.

"I had not much time to give away. Light-headed as I was, with the roomswinging up and down before my eyes, my words came easily to me, and Ihad her in my arms pretty soon, her clothes disheveled. She was like alily in a thunderstorm herself, white and swaying, her face wet. But sheheld me back with her outstretched arms. 'Listen for one moment,' shesaid. 'Here we are all alone. There is no one in the house but we and mymaid who brought you here, that pretty girl. Are you not afraid?

"'Arvid,' she said, 'have you ever heard the story of Don Giovanni?' Shelooked at me so intently that I had to answer that I had even heard thatopera about him. 'Do you remember, then,' she said, 'the scene in whichthe statue of the Commandante comes for him? Such a statue there is onthe tomb of the General Zumala, in Spain.' I said, 'Oh, let it keep himdown in it, then.'

"'Wait,' said Rosalba. 'Rosalba belonged to General Zumala Carregui.When she betrays him, poor Rosalba must disappear. But then, an operamust have a fifth act to it sooner or later. And you, my star of thenorth, are to be the hero of it. You have your honor in the matter, asif you were a woman. You would have no mercy on St. Mary of Magdala.Rosalba was such a shining bubble, and when you break her, a little bitof wet will be all that you get out of it. But it was time that shewent. The people, and her creator even, were becoming too fond of her.You give her her great tragic end. No other man in the world, I think,could have done that so well. You are well worthy of coming in.'

"'Let me come in, then,' I gasped.

"'You have no pity on poor Rosalba at all?' she asked. 'That she shouldlose her last refuge, and be haunted and doomed forever--that meansnothing to you?'

"'You yourself have no pity on me,' I cried.

"'Ah, how much you are mistaken,' she exclaimed. 'For you, Arvid, I amworried, I am terribly sorry. An awful future awaits you--waste, adesert--oh, tortures! If I could help you, I would; but that isimpossible to me. The thought of Rosalba will never be any good to you;her example cannot help you. The thought of this hour might, afterward,do you some good, but even that is not certain. Oh, my lover, if to saveyou I made you a present of a lovely horse, all saddled within mystable, fiery enough to carry you away in a gallop from this terriblefall and the perdition of us both, and if I sent my maid, that prettygirl who showed you up here, with you to find him, would you not go?

"'For soon,' she said, drawing herself up to her full height, her handstill on my breast, as mine in hers, and speaking in the manner of asibyl, 'it may be too late, and we shall hear the fatal step on thestair, marble upon marble.'

"In our agitation her dark hair, which used to hang down in ringlets onboth sides of her face, was flung back, and I saw that she had indeedthe brand of the witch upon her. From her left ear to her collar bone adeep scar ran, like a little white snake----"

At these words of the Baron, Pilot cried out: "What! What are yousaying?"

"I said," said the Baron patiently, pleased with the impression made byhis tale, "that from her left ear to the collar bone ran a scar, like asnake."

"I heard it," cried Pilot. "Why are you repeating my words? The millinerof Lucerne, Madame Lola, had on her neck just such a scar, and I havethis hour described it to you."

"You have not said one word of it," said the Baron.

"Have I not?" cried Pilot to me.

I said nothing at all. I thought: I am dreaming. By now I am quite surethat I am dreaming. This hotel, Pilot, and the Swedish Baron are allparts of a dream. Good God, what a nightmare! I have at last lost myreason for good and all, and the next thing that will happen will bethat Olalla will walk in through that door, swiftly, as she always comesin dreams. With that thought I kept my eyes on the door.

From time to time, while we had been talking, new guests had come infrom the outside, to sit down or to walk through the room to the innerapartments of the hotel. Now a lady and her maid came in, and passed usquickly and quietly. The lady wore a black cloak, which disguised herface and figure. The maid had her hair wrapped around her head in theSwiss way, and carried the shawls. Both looked so demure that not eventhe Baron gave them more than one glance. It was not till they werealready gone that Pilot, suddenly stopping in his heated debate with theBaron, stood up like a statue, staring in their direction. When we askedhim, laughing--for we had drunk enough to think one anotherridiculous--what was the matter with him, he turned his big face towardus. "That," he cried, deeply moved, and even more so by the sound of hisown voice, "was she. That was Madame Lola of Lucerne."

The lightning of madness had struck, then, but it had hit Pilot and notme. Still no one could tell what would happen next; and indeed at hiswords it seemed to me that there had been something familiar about thelady. Pilot began to pull his hair. "Come, my boy," I said, taking holdof his arm. "It is not necessary to be mad. We will go together and askthe porter, who will know her, if this lady be not the midwife ofAndermatt, who will be found to have nothing whatever in common with theMaid of Orléans." Still laughing, I dragged him to the porter's logeand began to question the bald old Swiss about the newcomers. The porterwas at first busy counting up various pieces of elegant luggage, and didnot pay much attention to us.

"Come," I said to him, "here is a handsome reward for a little favor. Isthat lady, in the black juste-au-corps, a revolutionist, who inspiredthe murder of the Bishop of St. Gallen's curate? Or is she a mystic whohas dedicated her life to the memory of General Zumala Carregui? Or isshe a prostitute of Rome?" The old man dropped his pencil and stared atme.

"God help me, Sir, of what are you talking?" he exclaimed. "The lady whohas just gone through the dining-room, and who is occupying our numbernine, is no other than the wife of Herr Councilor Heerbrand, of Altdorf.The Councilor is the greatest man of the town, and was a widower with alarge family. The present Frau Councilor Heerbrand is the widow of anItalian wine-grower, and owns a property in Tuscany, which obliges herto travel back and forth in this way. At Altdorf, where my own threegranddaughters are in service, she is highly respected. She gives toneto all the town, and is known as a very fine card player."

"Well, Pilot," I said, as I guided him back, for he was so stupefiedthat he would have stood where he was left had I let go my hold, "thisis a prosaic solution to our enigma. We may sleep calmly tonight inrooms eight and ten with the Frau Councilor in the bed next to the otherside of the wall."

I did not look much where I was going, and knocked into a person who,with a little stick in his hand, was walking slowly through thedining-room, in our own direction. As I apologized he lifted his tallhat a little to me, and I saw that it was the old Jew of Rome, MarcusCocoza. At the same second he went on, and passed through the same dooras had the lady.

After my first moment of sheer terror at looking into his pale face anddeep dark eyes I was seized with a fury which shook me from head tofoot. I am slow to get angry, as you know, Mira, and was so even as ayoung man. When I really become so, it is a great relief to me. I hadbeen depressed, disappointed, and made a fool of, and inactive for avery long time, and my despair had reached its climax in my meeting withthe two friends at the hotel. Now, I thought, if all things in the worldwere really against me, and all of them equally damnable, the moment hadcome for a fight. At least that was how I felt it at the time. Later onI reflected that it was nothing in myself which worked the change, butjust the nearness of the woman. She had passed within six feet of me,and had liberated my heart by the waft of her petticoat, and I had oncemore the winds of life in my sails, and its currents under my keel.

I looked at my two companions and saw that they had both recognized theJew. In their amazement they looked like two clay figures. Whatevermagic I had encountered was encircling them as well as me, or else theywere themselves creatures of my imagination. It mattered little to me. Iwas determined by now to drive fate into a corner. I took out my card,wrote on it the name of the old Jew, and a regular challenge in the beststyle, asking him to see me at once, and sent the waiter of the hotel tohis room with it. I was not a little frightened of the old man whomOlalla had called her shadow. I truly believed that he belonged to thedevil, but I had to see him. But the waiter returned to say that it wasout of the question. The old gentleman had gone to bed, had had a hotdrink brought him by his valet, and now had locked his door and wouldnot be disturbed. I told the man that it was a matter of greatimportance, but he declined to do anything for me. He knew their guest,who went in his own splendid coach with his own servants, and was a manof unfathomable wealth.

"Has he traveled this way," I asked the waiter, "in the company ofMadame Heerbrand?"

"No, never," declared the poor fellow, scared, I think, by my looks. Hedid not think that the lady and the gentleman knew each other at all, hesaid.

It was a loathsome thought to me that I should have to wait all nightbefore I could do anything in the matter. Still, it could not be helped,and I therefore dragged a chair to the fireplace and stirred up thefire, not daring to go to sleep. I was afraid that the woman might leavethe hotel early, so I called the waiter back, gave him money, andenjoined him to let me know when the lady of number nine should be aboutto leave the hotel in the morning.

"But, Sir," said the young man, "the lady has gone."

"Gone?" I cried, with Pilot and the Baron repeating my exclamation likea double echo. Yes, she had gone. No sooner had she left the room by onedoor than she had come back to the porter's loge by another, in greatdistress, and had ordered a coach at once to take her to the monasteryeven tonight. She had, she told the porter, found a letter for her atthe hotel, informing her that her sister lay dying in Italy. It was amatter of life and death to her to get on.

"But is it possible," I asked, "to go up that road tonight, and in thisstorm?" The waiter agreed that it would be difficult, but she hadinsisted, offered to double and triple the fare, and had wrung her handsin such grief that she had moved the heart of the coachman. Besides, itwas not easy to disobey Frau Heerbrand. She was no ordinary lady. Shehad gone. We must ourselves have heard the wheels of her coach. That wastrue. We had indeed just heard wheels.

There we stood, like three hounds around a fox hole.

I did not doubt but that it was the sight of the old Jew which haddriven away the woman. He was, indeed, a conjurer and a devil, the djinnwho had somehow got the fair lady into his power. For a moment it threwme into the most terrible distress that I could not get at him and killhim. But it would cause too much stir, and they would prevent it. Nowthere was nothing to do but to follow her and protect her against him.At this idea my heart flew up like a lark.

We had some trouble in getting a coach, but this in the end was overcomeby the Baron, who showed much energy and efficiency in the matter. Iunderstood that my two companions, who were unaware of any personalinterest of mine in the matter, felt surprised at my zeal. The Baron,holding me to be very drunk, was still not averse to one more spectatorfor his exploits. Pilot took my eagerness as a proof of my friendshipfor him. He even, although he seemed the whole time to have been struckdumb, tried to give words to his gratitude. "Go to hell, Pilot," I saidto him. He thereupon contented himself with pressing my hand.

At last, at great cost, a coach was produced, and the three of us setoff together for the monastery.

The wind was terrible, and the snow was thick on the road. Our coach, inconsequence, went very irregularly in bumps and starts, and at timesstood quite still. We sat inside it, each in his corner. From the timewhen we got into the stifling atmosphere of the closed carriage, behindthe panes which were swiftly blinded by the snow beating in upon them,we did not talk together. Each of us would, I am sure, willingly havehad his two fellow passengers perish on the journey. I myself, however,was soon so entirely swallowed up by the idea of seeing Olalla againthat the outside world sank away and disappeared for me. We were goingupwards all the time. We might, for all I knew, be driving into heaven.My heaven, had I been free to choose it then, must also have beenturbulent, filled with wild galloping air.

As we drove on, the road became steeper and the snow more fierce. Ourcoachman and groom were unable to see six feet in front of them.Suddenly the coach gave a particularly bad jump, and stopped altogether.The coachman, descending from his box, tore open the carriage door to agreat gust of wind and snow, and, himself all covered with snow, roaredin, infuriated, that it was impossible to get out of the drift in whichthe coach was stuck.

We held a short consultation inside, which meant nothing to any of us,as no one would give up the journey. We tumbled out, buttoning our coatsand turning up the collars, and, doubling over like old men, we took upthe pursuit.

It had stopped snowing. The sky was almost clear. The moon, runningalong behind thin clouds, showed us the way. But the wind was terriblehere. I remembered, just as I got out of the coach, a fairy tale, whichI had been told as a child, in which an old witch keeps all the winds ofheaven imprisoned in a sack. This pass, I thought, must be the sack. Thelocked-up winds were raging wildly in it, jumping down straight, likefighting dogs chained by their collars. Sometimes they seemed to beatdown vertically upon our heads, again they rose from the ground,whirling the snow sky-high. In the carriage it had been cold, but here,as we were already high up in the mountains, the air felt as frigid asif someone had emptied a bucket of iced water over our heads. We couldhardly breathe in it. But all this wildness of the elements did me good.In such a world and night I should find her, and she would need me.

The figures of my fellow travelers, even at arm's length dim and vaguelike shadows on the snowy road, were insignificant to me. This search Ifelt to be mine alone, and soon I was a good bit in front of them. Pilotdropped out of sight. The Baron kept fairly close to me, but did notreach me.

Suddenly, after perhaps an hour's walk, as the road turned around arock, a large square object, slanting on the edge of the track, loomedlike a large tower in front of me. It was Olalla's carriage. It wasstanding there, stuck like our own and half upset, and there wereneither horses nor coachman with it. I jerked open the door, and a womaninside gave a terrible shriek. It was the maid whom I had seen in thehotel. She was crouching on the carriage floor with shawls pulled overher. She was alone, and when she saw that I did not mean to kill or robher, she cried to me that the coachman had unhitched the horses to getthem into a shelter, after he had had to give up, like our own coachman,the hope of getting any farther. But where, I cried back to her, was hermistress? She had, the maid told me, gone ahead on foot. The girl washorribly scared, and in describing her lady's flight and danger shesobbed and cried, and could hardly get her words out. I tore myselfloose from her, for she did not want to let me go, and banged the doorupon her. What terror, what danger, I thought, had there been in thatcoach to drive a woman out of it, alone, in the dead of the night andamongst wild mountains? What could it be that threatened her at thehands of the old Jew of Amsterdam?

I had stopped beside the coach for a quarter of an hour, perhaps, andthis had enabled the Baron to catch up with me. The two lanterns on thecoach were still burning, and as he came up behind me and spoke to me itwas curious to see, in the moon-cold night, his face appear, flamingscarlet in the light of them. In the shelter of the coach we exchanged afew words. We started again, going for a while side by side.

At a place where the road got steeper, through the mist of the loosewhirling snow which was driven along the ground like the smoke from acannon, I caught sight of a dark shadow in front of me, not a hundredyards away, which might be a human figure. At first it seemed todisappear and to appear again, and it was difficult in the night and inthe storm to keep your eyes fixed upon it. But after a time, although Igot no nearer, my eyes became used to their task, and I could follow hersteadily. She walked, on this steep and heavy road, as quickly as Imyself did, and my old fancy about her, that she could fly if she would,came back. The wind whirled her clothes about. Sometimes it filled themand stretched them out, so that she looked like an angry owl on abranch, her wings spread out. At other times it screwed them up allaround her, so that on her long legs she was like a crane when it runsalong the ground to catch the wind and get on the wing.

At the sight of her I felt the Baron's nearness intolerable. If I hadchased Olalla for six months, to run her down in this mountain pass, Imust have her alone to myself. It would be of no use to try to explainthis to him. I stopped, and as he stopped with me, I seized him by thefront of his cloak and threw him back. He was tired by our climb. He wasbreathing heavily, and had stopped a couple of times. But he came tolife at my grip and on seeing the expression of my face. Now he would byno means let me go on alone. His eyes and teeth glinted at me. We had afew minutes' fight on the stony road, and he knocked off my hat, whichrolled away. But, still gripping his clothes with my left hand, I struckhim a strong blow in the face, which made him lose his balance. The roadwas slippery, and he fell and rolled backwards. As he fell he had takenhold of a muffler around my neck, and had nearly strangled me. Cursingthe delay, I sprang on, hot and shaking from the effort.

Alone again, and certain now to catch Olalla in the end here in the highhills, I was filled both with great happiness and with that fear whichhad first taken hold of me beside the coach. Both drove me forth withequal strength. I thought again, as I ran along down here on the darkground, like the moon up in the sky, that I was very likely mad. It wasindeed a maddening situation, suitable for an extravaganza for thetheaters of Rome. Here was I, out after a woman whom I loved, and shefleeing before me in the night as fast as her legs would take her, inthe belief that I was that same old enemy of hers and mine who had firstparted us, and whom I longed to kill. She did not turn her head a singletime, and it would have been quite hopeless to shout to her against thewind. Also, we were, both of us, exerting ourselves to our utmoststrength in the flight and pursuit; and even at that, going along, as wewere, bent double like old people, we could cover only about two milesto the hour. But the strangest thing of all, and the one which worriedme most, was how she could possibly take me to be the old Jew. In thestreets of Rome and in the room of Andermatt he had been walking veryslowly on a stick. I was a young man and a good athlete, and yet shecould mistake me for him. He must be, in reality, a devil, or he musthave it in his power to dispatch devils on his errands. I began to feelmyself as his messenger, sent on by him. Was I, perhaps, without knowingit, already in his power, and was I, against my will, the familiar ofthe old wizard of Amsterdam?

While all this had been running through my head I had been gaining onher. And then, spurred on by her nearness, quite mad to catch and holdher, I made a few last long leaps. Suddenly her long cloak, sweptbackwards, blew against my face, and in the next moment I was at herside, I leaped past her, and, spinning around, stopped her. She ran onstraight into my arms and would have fallen had I not caught her. In amoment we were under the wild winter moon, in a tight embrace. Pressedto each other by the elements themselves, we both panted for breath.

Do you know, Mira, it is a great thing, the foolishness of human beings.I had run for my life, sure that the moment I caught her up, myhappiness of Rome should be caught again. I do not remember now what Ihad meant to do--to lift her up, make love to her there, or kill her,perhaps, so that she should not make me unhappy again. I did have onemoment of it, too, just as I held her in my arms and felt her breath onmy face, and her long-missed form on my own body. That was a very shorttime to have, surely. Her bonnet, like my hat, had blown off and away.Her upturned face, white as bone, with its big eyes like two pools, wasquite close to me. I saw now that she was terrified of me. It was notfrom the Jew that she had run--it was from me.

Many years later, on crossing the Mediterranean in a storm, I looked,for one moment, into the face of a falcon which had tried many times invain to hook itself to the rigging of my ship, before it was blown offand down into the sea for good. That was again the face of Olalla in themountain pass. That bird, too, was wild and mad with fear, broken byoverstrain, without hope.

I suppose that I stared at her, just as terrified as she was herself,when I understood, and cried her name into her face two or three times.She herself had no breath left to speak, and I do not know if she heardme.

Now that I was sheltering her from the wind her long dark hair and darkclothes sank down all around her. She seemed to change her form, and tobe transformed into a pillar in my arms. After we had stood there for alittle while I said to her: "Why do you run away from me?" She looked atme. "Who are you?" she said at last. I held her closer to me and kissedher twice. Her face was quite cold and fresh. She stood still and let mekiss her. It might as well have been the snowflakes and the wild airpressing themselves upon her lips as my face and mouth. "Olalla," Isaid, "I have sought you all over this world my whole life. Can we notbe together here now?"

"I am all alone here," she said after a little time. "You frightened me.Who are you?"

By this time I had been chased all around the compass, and thought thatit might be enough just for the present. So I stood still to think thesituation over. I could not leave her alone in the night and wind. Ireleased her a little, still supporting her with my right arm.

"Madame," I said, "I am an Englishman, traveling in these cursedmountains. My name is Lincoln Forsner. It is not right that a ladyshould be out alone on this bad road, at this time of the night. If youwill therefore allow me to escort you to the monastery I shall feel muchhonored."

This she thought over, and she seemed to lean with a good grace on myarm. But she said: "I cannot possibly walk any farther."

It was clear that she could not. If I had not held her she would havefallen. What were we to do? She herself looked all around her, and up atthe moon. When she had regained her balance a little, she said: "Let merest a little. Let us sit down here and rest ourselves; then I can gowith you to the monastery."

I looked around for a place of shelter, and saw one that was not toobad, close to where we stood, under a great rock which projected overthe road. The snow had been whirled in there, but into the hook of itthe wind could not quite get. It was perhaps ten yards away. I led orcarried her to that place. I took off my cloak, and the muffler withwhich the Baron had come near to strangling me, and made her ascomfortable as I could. The night grew clearer at the same time. Thewhole great landscape was quite white and bright, except when from timeto time a cloud passed over the moon. I sat beside her, and hoped thatwe might be left in peace for a little, up here.

Olalla sat close to me, her shoulder even touching mine, calm andperfectly friendly. I felt again the same thing about her that I havetalked of before: that pain and suffering did not affect her, but thatall things were in some way the same to her. She sat in the cold, waste,mountain pass as a little girl would sit in a flower meadow, her skirtfilled with the flowers she had picked.

After a time I said to her: "What brings you up in these mountains,Madame? I am traveling myself in search of something, but I have noluck. I wanted, also, to assist you, and am sorry that I frightened you,because it makes it more difficult for me to be of any help."

"Yes," she said, after a silence, "it is not easy to live, for any ofyou. That was so, too, with Madame Nanine. She wanted to keep her girlswell disciplined, and at the same time she did not like to crush ourspirits, for then we should have been no good to the house."

Madame Nanine was the woman who ran the house in Rome of which I havespoken. This she said to me in a friendly way, as if to show me acourtesy. She evidently thought that since I had been kind enough toadmit that she was a perfect stranger to me, she would make me a returnby admitting that we had known each other long ago.

I said to her: "It is only here that it is so cold. Tomorrow, when youdescend the pass, you will meet the spring winds. In Italy it is springnow, and in Rome, I think, the swallows are back."

"Is it spring there?" she said. "No, not yet. But it will be soon, andthat will be very pleasant to you, who are so young."

****

"Do you know, Mira," Lincoln said, interrupting himself in his tale,"that this is the first time that I have thought at all of that hour upthere? I only remember it now step by step, so to say, as I tell you ofit. I do not know why I have not thought of it before. Does this moonremember it perhaps? She was there, too."

****

"Madame," I said to her, "if we were now in my own country I shouldprepare for you a drink, when we arrive at a house, which would reviveyou--yes, and ginger should be hot in the mouth, too." I described toher our strong spirits and how one comes home on a winter day, withfingers and toes frozen, and drinks them in front of the fire. We cameto talk about drinks and food, and of how we should manage if we wereleft up here forever. It was pleasant that here one could speak and beheard without shouting. Altogether, this cave under the rock was verymuch like a house to her and me, such as we had never before ownedbetween us. It seemed to me that everything would fit in well here, thateven my father, could I have conjured forth his ghost, would have joinedus with pleasure and pride. She did not say much, but laughed a littleat me. Neither did I speak all the time. We sat there, I believe, forthree-quarters of an hour or so. I knew that it would be dangerous to goto sleep.

Just then I caught sight of a light on the road, and of two dolefulfigures advancing in it, pausing from time to time. It was Pilot, deadtired and sore from his climb, with the Baron leaning on his arm andlimping along the heavy road in the moonlight. I learned afterward thatthe Swede had sprained his ankle in his fall, and that Pilot, coming upbehind him, had helped him up and assisted him. The Baron had sent theother back to take off the one lantern which was then still burning onOlalla's coach. This they carried with them, with much trouble, and theywere both benumbed with the cold.

My bad luck had it that they stopped to gather up strength to go on withtheir journey, and put down their lantern on the ground just beside ourrefuge. Pilot did not see us; he never saw anything of the world aroundhim. But the Baron, even limping, his face white with pain, was watchfuland quick of eye as a lynx. He turned around, pulling Pilot with him. Ihad got up at the sight of them. I thought that it might perhaps be aswell that they had come; they might help me to bring Olalla to thehouse.

I do not think that the Baron wanted to fight me once more, but he wasin a rage against me. It was probably always difficult to get him out ina fight with anyone as strong as himself. But here he felt, I think,that he had got Pilot with him. He must have described our encounter tohim, and made me out a madman or dead drunk.

"Hullo," he cried, "the chase is up and the Englishman has won. He hasimproved the occasion at once, and that at ten degrees of frost. Weought not to have told him of so many attractions. He has seen only thewomen of his own country till now, and we drove him mad straight away.Let us have a look at the lady now ourselves, Fritz."

They looked like two big birds of ill omen as they came upon us. Pilothad turned the lantern around, so that the light fell upon Olalla. Shehad got up, and stood by my side, but she did not lean upon me at allnow.

The Baron stared at her. So did Pilot. "So it is you, indeed, my saintedRosalba," said the former, "pausing a moment on your way to heaven. Iwish you luck in the more pleasant career."

I could see that at his words Olalla could with difficulty keep fromlaughing. In fact every time she looked at the Swede she was tempted tolaugh. But she was very pale, and with every minute she grew paler.

Now Pilot, who had been holding the lantern, and had stood as if he washimself blinded by the light, made a step nearer to us and stared intoher face. "Madame Lola," he cried, "is it you?"

"No, that is not I," said she. "You are making a mistake."

This confused Pilot terribly. He pulled his hair. I believed that hewould go mad then and there. "Do not deceive me, I beg you," he said,"tell me who you are, then."

"That would not mean anything to you," she said. "I do not know you atall."

"I know that you are angry with me," he cried, "for having told ourstory to other people. But I did not know what to do. Indeed, since Isaw you last, I have not known what to do at all. I am unhappy, MadameLola. Tell me who you are."

By the light of the lantern I saw that Olalla's clothes were stiff andshining with frozen snow, her shoes thickly covered with it. But still Idid not drag her away, but stood on and listened.

Suddenly Pilot dropped on his knees, in the snow, before her. "MadameLola," he cried, "save me. You are the only person in the world who cando it. Those weeks of Lucerne were the only time of my life that I havebeen happy. And all the things which I was to do! I myself haveforgotten what they were. Tell me who you are!"

The Baron snatched the lantern, which Pilot had dropped, and held ithigh. I think that he was upset at seeing his partner brought so low."That Madame Rosalba," he cried, "elle se moque des gens! I was toldthat from the first. But not for a long time of little ArvidGuildenstern. That holy lady has on her back a little brown mole. We canfind out quickly enough about that, between us, to know who she is."

Again I saw Olalla restrain herself from laughing at him. But she spoketo Pilot gently. "If I had ever known you," she said to him, "I shouldhave done you no harm. I should have tried to give you a littlepleasure. But I do not know you. Now let me go."

She turned to me, slowly, and looked at me, as if she were confidentthat I would be on her side. So I should have been, against all theworld, ten minutes before, but it is extraordinary how quickly one iscorrupted in bad company. When I heard these other people talking oftheir old acquaintance with her, I myself, who stood so much closer thanthe others, turned toward her, staring into her face. "Tell them," Icried. "Tell them who you are!"

She gave me a great dark and radiant look, then turned her eyes off meand looked up at the moon. A long shiver ran through her body.

"We shall put an end to the mystery," cried the Baron, "when we get holdof your old Jew. He seems to have held the paint-cup to all yourdisguises."

"Of whom are you talking?" said Olalla, laughing a little, "there is noold Jew here."

"But not far off," said the Baron, "we shall all be together at themonastery."

At this she stood quite still, like a statue. And this stillness ofhers, toward the others, was intolerable to me. "I will chase these twoaway for you," I said to her, "but this once tell me only the truth--Whoare you?"

She did not turn, or look at me. But the next moment she did what I hadalways feared that she might do: she spread out her wings and flew away.Below the round white moon she made one great movement, throwing herselfaway from us all, and the wind caught her and spread out her clothes. Ihave said already that on her flight from me up the hill she had lookedlike some big bird which runs to catch the wind and get on the wing. Nowagain she behaved exactly like a black martin when you see it throwitself out from a slope or a roof to get off the ground and take flight.For one second she seemed to lift herself up with the wind, then,running straight across the road, with all her might she threw herselffrom the earth clear into the abyss, and disappeared from our sight.

I had had no time to try to stop her, and for a moment I meant to followher. But standing on the blink of the precipice I saw that she had notfallen far, but onto a sort of projection about twenty feet down. Sheseemed in the dim light to be lying on her face, all covered by herlarge cloak.

I found Pilot weeping aloud at my side, and together the three of usworked for an hour or more to bring her up. We cut our cloaks by thelight of the lantern, knotting the strips together. When we had finishedwe hung the lantern out over the edge of the road. Our task was mademore difficult for us, first by the lantern suddenly going out, as thecandle within it burnt down, and then by the snow, which started to fallagain.

The first time that they lowered me down, I missed the terrace and kepthanging in the air. Finally I found my foothold on it, and touched her.She seemed quite without life. Her head fell back as I lifted it, likethe head of a dead flower, but still her body was not quite cold. Itried to make fast the rope around her, but it would not do. As theydragged her up, her body beat against the rocks in a dreadful manner. Ihad to shout to the others and to lift her back into my arms. Theterrace on which we stood was narrow and covered with thick snow. It wasnot easy to move about on it. The great gulf was below us, and once ortwice I despaired of getting her up. I thought then of how it had beenmy question to her which had driven her into this great white full-moondeath, in the end.

At last I managed to make a sort of noose in which to place my one foot,and to make fast her body to mine somehow, and I cried to the others todraw us up. This they did more quickly and easily than I had thoughtthey could do it. As they loosened her from me, and I fell down flat,unable to hold myself up, I heard many voices around us, crying out thatshe was not dead.

When again I could lift my head I saw, without surprise, the old Jew ofRome, Amsterdam and Andermatt, with our party. It seemed to me naturalthat he should have come up with us. His coach was standing on the road,and his coachman and valet had helped to draw up Olalla and me. How hehad ever managed to get his heavy carriage along in the night, on thatroad, I do not know; only to a Jew anything is possible.

They lifted Olalla into the carriage, and the Jew made me come in withher, as I was bleeding at the hands and knees. I sat there with him,holding her feet, and remembering how I had first met him in the streetof Rome. I was very thirsty and cold, for I had been wet with sweat, andthe night air went to my bones. At last we got to the large square stonebuilding of the monastery, from a couple of windows of which light wasshining out. People came out to meet us.

Here I had some hot wine to drink, and my hands washed. When I theninquired about Olalla, they showed me into a large room, where on atable two candles were burning.

Olalla was lying, as immovable as before, upon a stretcher which theyhad placed on the floor. I think that they had meant to carry hersomewhere, but had given it up. They had only loosened her clothes. Alarge fur rug, which belonged to the Jew, was spread over her. Her headwas slightly turned upon the pillow, and a dark shadow covered the oneside of her face.

The old Jew sat on a chair near her, still in his furred cloak and withhis tall hat on his head, his chin resting on the button of his walkingstick. He did not take his dark eyes off her face, and hardly moved. Iwas surprised, on looking at a big clock in the room, to find that itwas only three hours after midnight.

I sat down myself, for a long time without speaking. As then the clockstruck, I made up my mind to speak to the Jew. If I had killed Olalla bymy question, I might as well get an answer now, and he would know. Italked to him a little, and he answered me very civilly. I then told himall that I knew about her, and asked him, while we were waiting here, totell me of her. For a time he did not seem to want to speak. Then in theend he spoke with much energy. Pilot and the Baron were in there too.Pilot came up from his chair at the other end of the room to look ather, and went back again. The Baron had fallen asleep in his chair.Later on, however, he woke up and joined us.

"I have indeed," said the Jew, "known this woman at a time when all theworld knew her and worshiped her by her real name. She was the operasinger, Pellegrina Leoni."

At first these words meant nothing to me, so that there was a silence.But then my memory woke up, and recalled to me my childhood.

"Why," I cried, "that is not possible. That great singer was the star ofwhom my father and mother used to rave. When they came back from Italythey would talk of nothing else. And I well remember their tears whenshe was hurt at the theater fire of Milan, and died. But all this musthave been when I was ten years old, thirteen years ago."

"No," said the Jew. "Yes, she died. The great opera singer died.Thirteen years ago, as you rightly say. But the woman lived on, forthese thirteen years."

"Explain yourself," I said to him.

"Explain myself?" he repeated. "Young Sir, you are asking much. Youmight say: 'Disguise your meaning into such phrases as I am used tohear, which mean nothing.' Pellegrina was, at the theater fire of Milan,badly hurt. From the injuries and the shock she lost her voice. Shenever sang a note again as long as she lived."

It was clear to me, as he spoke, that this was the first time that hehad ever given words to this story. I was so much impressed by hissuffering and terror at his own words that I could find nothing to say,even though I wanted to hear more, for I found no explanation in hisstatement. But Pilot asked him: "Did she, then, not die?"

"Die, live. Live, die," said the Jew. "She lived as much as any of you,or more."

"Still," Pilot said, "all the world believed her to be dead."

"She made it believe that," said the Jew. "We--she and I--took muchtrouble to make it believe so. I saw her grave filled. I erected amonument upon it."

"Were you her lover?" the Baron asked.

"No," said the old Jew with great pride and contempt. "No, I have seenher lovers running about, yapping around her, flattering and fighting.No. I was her friend. When at the gate of paradise the keeper shall askme: 'Who are you?' I shall give that great angel no name, no position ordeed of mine in the world to be recognized by, but I shall answer him:'I am the friend of Pellegrina Leoni.' You, who killed her now, as youhave told me, by asking her who she was--when in your time you areasked, on the other side of the grave, 'Who are you?'--what will youhave to answer? You will have, before the face of God, to give yournames, as at the Hotel of Andermatt."

Pilot, at these words, seemed ill at ease; he wanted to speak, butthought better of it.

"Now, young gentlemen," said the old Jew, "leave me to tell this tale atmy pleasure. Listen well, for there will be no such tale again.

"All my life I have been a very rich man. I inherited great fortunesfrom my father and mother, and from their people, who were all greattraders. Also, for the first forty years of my life I was a very unhappyman, such as you yourselves are. I traveled much. I had always been fondof music. I was even a composer, and composed and arranged ballets, forwhich I had a liking. For twenty years I kept my own corps du ballet,to perform my works before me and my friends, or before me alone. I hada staff of thirty young girls, none more than seventeen, whom my ownballet-master taught, and who used to dance naked before me."

The Baron woke up to attention, and grinned kindly at the old man. "Youwere not bored," he said.

"Why not?" asked the old Jew. "I was, on the contrary terribly bored,bored to death. I might very well then have died from boredom, had I nothappened to hear, upon a small theater stage of Venice, PellegrinaLeoni, who was then sixteen years old. Then I understood the meaning ofheaven and earth, of the stars, life and death, and eternity. She tookyou out to walk in a rose garden, filled with nightingales, and then,the moment she wanted to, she rose and lifted you with her, higher thanthe moon. Had you ever been frightened of anything, miserable creaturethat you were, she made you feel as safe, above the abyss, as in yourown chair. Like a young shark in the sea, mastering the strong greenwaters by a strike of her fins, thus did she swim along within thedepths and mysteries of the great world. Your heart would melt at thesound of her voice, till you thought: This is too much; the sweetness iskilling me, and I cannot stand it. And then you found yourself on yourknees, weeping over the unbelievable love and generosity of the LordGod, who had given you such a world as this. It was all a greatmiracle."

I felt a great compassion for this old Jew, who had to pour out hisheart to us. He had not talked of these things till now; and now that hehad begun he could not stop himself. His long delicate nose threw a sadshadow upon the whitewashed wall.

"I had the honor, as I have said," he went on, "to become her friend. Ibought for her a villa near Milan. When she was not traveling, shestayed there, and had many friends around her, and sometimes also wewere alone together, and then used to laugh much at the world, and towalk arm in arm in the gardens in the afternoons and evenings.

"She turned to me as a child to its mother. She gave me many pet names,and she used to take my fingers and play with them, telling me that Ihad the finest hands in the world, hands made to handle only diamonds.As we had first met in Venice, and as my name was Marcus, she used tocall herself my lioness. That was what she was: a winged lioness. Ialone, of all people, knew her.

"She had in her life two great, devouring passions, which meanteverything to her proud heart.

"The first was her passion for the great soprano, Pellegrina Leoni. Thiswas a zealous, a terribly jealous love, such as that of one of yourpriests for the miracle-working image of the Virgin, which he attends,or of a woman for her husband, who is a hero, or of a diamond-cutter forthe purest diamond that has ever been found. In her relation to thisidol she had no forbearance and no rest. She gave no mercy, and sheasked for none. She worked in the service of Pellegrina Leoni like aslave under the whip, weeping, dying at times, when it was demanded ofher.

"She was a devil to the other women of the opera, for she needs musthave all the parts for Pellegrina. She was indignant because it wasimpossible for her to perform two rôles within the same opera. Theycalled her Lucifera there. More than one time she boxed the ears of arival on the stage. Both old and young singers were constantly in tearswhen acting with her. And for all this she had no cause whatever, shewas so absolutely the star of all the heavens of music. It was not only,either, in regard to her voice that she was jealous of PellegrinaLeoni's honor. She meant Pellegrina to be, likewise, the most beautiful,elegant, and fashionable of women, and in this connection she was fairlyridiculous in her vanity. On the stage she would wear none but realjewels, and the most magnificent attire. She would appear in the rôle ofAgatha, a village maiden, all covered with diamonds and with a trainthree yards long. She drank nothing but water for fear of spoiling thecomplexion of Pellegrina. And were a prince or a cardinal or the popehimself to call on her before noon, she would meet him with her hairdone up in curling pins, and her face covered with zinc cream, so thatin the evening she might sweep the floor with all the other women, notonly of the stage but of the parquet and boxes as well--and she had themost brilliant audiences of all the world. It was the fashion to adorePellegrina Leoni. The greatest people of Italy, Austria, Russia, andGermany thronged to her salons. And she was pleased about it; sheliked to see them all at Pellegrina's feet. But she would be rude to theCzar of Russia himself, and risk a sojourn in Siberia, before she wouldgive up her own repertoire or her regular hours of practice.

"And the other great passion, young gentlemen, of this great heart washer love for her audience. And that was not for the great people, theproud princes and magnates and the lovely ladies, all in jewels; noteven for the famous composers, musicians, critics, and men of letters,but for her galleries. Those poor people of the back streets and marketplaces, who would give up a meal or a pair of shoes, the wages of hardlabor, to crowd high up in the hot house and hear Pellegrina sing, andwho stamped the floor, shrieked and wept over her--she loved them beyondeverything in the world. This second passion of hers was as mighty asthe first, but it was as gentle as the love of God, or of your Virgin,for the world. You people of the North, you do not know the women of theSouth and the East when they love. When they embrace their children, andweep over their dead, they are like holy flames. When, after the firstperformance of Medée, the people of the town outspanned the horses ofmy carriage, in which she was driving, to draw it themselves, she didnot look at the Ducas who put their noble shoulders to the task. No, shewept a rain of warm tears, more precious than diamonds, she lifted arainbow of sweet smiles, over the streetsweepers, the carriers, thefruitsellers and watermen of Milan. She would have died for them. I waswith her in the carriage, and she held my hand. She was not herself thechild of very poor people. She was a baker's daughter, and her mother,the child of a Spanish farmer. I do not know where she had caught herpassion for those lowest in the world. It was not exactly for them alonethat she sang, for she wanted the applause of the great connoisseurs aswell; but she wanted that for the sake of her galleries. She grieved forthem when times were hard and they were suppressed. She would give themall her money and sell her clothes for them. It was curious that theynever begged much of her, as if they had realized that she had giventhem the best she had to give when she sang to them. Had they asked her,they should have had all. Her gardens and her house were open to them,and she would sit with the children of the poor under the oleander treesof her terraces when she refused to receive great lords of England, whohad crossed the sea to see her.

"In the relation between these two great passions of hers lay all herhappiness. During the years of her triumphs it was perfect. Her voiceand her art grew more wonderful every day. It was an incredible thing. Imyself do not hold that she had, at the time of her fall, reached thefulfillment of her possibilities. The world rang with her name. She heldin her little hand the philosopher's stone of music, which turnedeverything that she touched into gold. You, Sir," he said, turning tome, "have told me how, in far countries, people wept at the remembranceof that deep river of gold, of those tall cascades of diamonds,sapphires, and pigeon-blood rubies. And she was adored by the people.They felt that as long as Pellegrina was singing to them, on the stage,the earth had not been abandoned by the angels.

"This, then--that Pellegrina should sing like an angel to her galleries,to melt their hearts and make them shed tears of heavenly joy, and tomake them forget all the hardships of their existence, and remember thelost paradise; that she should scatter her soul over them, like a swarmof stars, and that they, on their side, should worship Pellegrina as aMadonna of their own, and the manifestation upon earth of God in hisheaven, and to them all that was lovely, great, elegant, andbrilliant--in this was her happiness.

"Even when she played, as I have told you, the village maidens of theopera, all in brocades and plumes, it was not from personal vanityeither. It was as much from a feeling of duty to her galleries, just asthe priests of your churches will deck out the image of the Virgin inthe most elegant clothes that they can find. Virgin the pictures of theNativity themselves, where all are moved by the sight of the Mother andchild of God in the stables, on straw, and with a crib for a cradle, thepriest cannot bear to see the Virgin poorly dressed, but adorns her insilks, and hangs gold chains on her.

"I myself smiled at this passion of hers for the poor, for to me thecommon people have always smelled badly, and I have no conviction oftheir virtue. 'Oh, must we all be cut to the same pattern,' she asked methen, 'and be sinners worshiping the divinities? Come, let me be what Iam, Marcus, and choose to be. Let me be a divinity worshiping thesinners.'

"As to her lovers, I knew most of them, and they meant very littleeither to her or me. In fact, until she got used to them, they causedher more grief than pleasure.

"For she was ever in life, in spite of her excellent good sense, a DonnaQuixotta de la Mancha. The phenomena of life were not great enough forher; they were not in proportion with her own heart. She was like a manwho has been given an elephant gun and is asked to shoot little birds.Or like a great bird, an albatross, asked to hop and twitter with thelittle birds within an aviary. When she was hurt in her love affairs, itwas not her vanity which was wounded. For outside of the stage she hadnone of it, and she knew well herself that the young men were not makinglove to the great soprano, but to the lovely woman of fashion, with eyeslike two stars, and the grace of those gentle and wise gazelles of whicha countryman of mine has written poems. On that account she took theirshallowness and falsity lightly. But she was badly hurt and disappointedbecause the world was not a much greater place than it is, and becausenothing more colossal, more like the dramas of the stage, took place init, not even when she herself went into the show with all her might.

"She came back from these first love affairs of hers, when she was stilla very young girl, even a little ashamed of herself. She would then, Ithink, have liked to become a man, and saw no sense in being a woman.For in all this splendor of woman's beauty, the magnificence of bosomand limb, and radiance of eye, of lip, and flesh, she was like a ladywho has put on her richest attire to meet the prince at a great ball,only to find that what she has been invited to is a homely gathering inhonor of the police magistrate, at which everyday clothes are worn. Suchladies also feel a little ashamed, and drag their long trains andrivières of diamonds along with anger and bashfulness, feeling thatthey are likely, in this place, to put them to ridicule.

"I should think," said the old Jew, "that many women, in their loveaffairs, must feel like that.

"In these hours of trouble she would turn to me, sure of myunderstanding. The world would have laughed at her, had it been at allpossible for the vulgar and the unimaginative to recognize in one sobeautiful and rich the traits of the knight of the woeful countenance.But I could not help laughing at her, as it was. I said to her: 'To theworld, and to your lovers as part of it, the whole doctrine of love, andin fact of all human intercourse, presents itself under the aspect oftoxicology, the science of poisons and counterpoisons. They are all ofthem prepared for and adjusted to poisons. They are like little vipersor scorpions, proud of their bite, and proof against poisonproportionate to their own virulence. To most of them love is a mutualdistribution of poisons and counterpoisons, and in the course of a longcareer of love affairs they pride themselves on having become immune toall poisons, as natives of India are said to train themselves to becomeimmune to the venom of all snakes. But you, Pellegrina, are no venomoussnake, but a python. Very often, in your walk, you recall to me thedancing snakes which I was once shown by an Indian snake-charmer. Butyou have no poison whatever in you, and if you kill it is by the forceof your embrace. This quality upsets your lovers, who are familiar withlittle vipers, and who have neither the strength to resist you, nor thewisdom to value the sort of death which they might obtain with you. And,in fact, the sight of you unfolding your great coils to revolve around,impress yourself upon, and finally crush a meadow mouse is enough tosplit one's side with laughter.' In this way I used to make her laugh,even through her tears.

"However, as she was so intelligent, and had been trained by myintelligence, it was she who learned from her lovers, and in the endthese matters meant no more to her than to them. For this I owed theyoung men much thanks. For they had assisted her to achieve a lightnessin such things which was not hers by birth. From the time that she hadtaken their lessons to heart, she reached perfection, on the stage, inthe part of the young innocent girl in love."

"And this," said Lincoln, interrupting the tale, "you will yourself knowto be true, Mira. You remember the old immortal song of the young maidenwho refuses all the gifts of the Sultan to be true to her lover, whichbegins: Ah Rupia, kama na Majasee. It is a very lovely song about trueand pure love. Only a whore has ever sung it well, that I know of."

He then returned to the story told by the old Jew:

"Thus did we live," the old Jew went on, "in the white villa of Milan,until the day of her disaster.

"Young men, you remember your fathers weeping over this Tuesday. Ithappened during a performance of Don Giovanni, in the second act,where Donna Anna comes on the stage, with Ottavio's letter in her hand,and begins the recitative: Crudele? Ah nò, mio bene! Troppo mi spiaceallontanarti un ben che lungamente la nostr' alma desia. Just asPellegrina entered, two or three bits of flaming wood fell down from theceiling in front of her. She had a brave heart; she just steadily wenton, gazing up a little only, taking the high note as easily as shebreathed. But a whole burning beam followed, and the entire theater roseup in a panic, the orchestra stopping in the middle of a measure. Peoplerushed to the doors, and women fainted. Pellegrina took a step back andlooked around until her eyes met mine, where I sat in the front row ofthe parquet. Yes, she looked for me in that moment of despair. And haveI no cause to be proud? She was not at all frightened. She stood therequite calm, as if she meant to say: 'Here we are to die together now,you and I, Marcus.' But I, I was afraid. I dared not force my way uponto that flaming stage, where all the trees, and the houses of thestreets, were cardboard only. At that same moment, as a great cloud ofsmoke wafted out from the one wing of the stage to the other, and theheat struck out like the breath of a great furnace, she was hidden frommy eyes. I ran along with the crowd and got out somehow, and in thestreet, which was like a madhouse, the cold air met me again. Myservant, who had been waiting for me in the hall, held me up. We wereinformed then that Pellegrina had been saved by the man who sang thepart of Leporelle, and whom she had helped in his career. He had carriedher with him all through the burning wing, and down the stairs, her hairand her clothes all aflame. The people, when they heard that she wassaved, fell on their knees.

"I brought her to her house, and collected the doctors of Milan aroundher, and she lived. She had been struck by a falling beam, and had adeep burn, where the smoldering wood had hit her, from the ear to thecollar bone. Otherwise her burns were not deep. She recovered from themquickly. But it was found that from the shock she had lost her voice.She would never sing one note again.

"When I think of her as she was this first week after her loss, it seemsto me that she had in reality been burned up, and was lying on her sidein the bed, immovable, black and charred like those bodies which theyhave dug up from the burned town of Pompeii. I sat with her for sixdays, and she did not speak a word. And it seemed to me the most cruelthing amongst them all that the grief of Pellegrina Leoni should bedumb.

"I did not speak to her, either. The carriages of all the world drove upand turned on the paved terrace outside her room, asking for news ofher.

"I sat in the darkened room and thought of the case. This to her is, Ithought, like what it would be to the priest to find the miracle-workingimage of the Virgin, which he has served, only a profane, an obscene,pagan idol, hollow and gnawed by rats. Like what it would be to the wifeto find her heroic husband no hero, but a lunatic or a clown.

"No, I thought again, it is not like that. I knew the distress to whichhers might be compared. The distress of the royal bride, who goes, witha kingdom for her dowry, adorned with the treasures of her father'shouse, her young bridegroom, a king's son, waiting for her, the citydecorated for her welcome, and ringing with cymbals and songs of maidensand youths, and who is ravished by robbers on her way. Yes, it was likethat, I thought.

"None of the great people arriving from all parts of the world toinquire about her ever obtained access to her house. From that fact grewthe rumor that she lay dying. What would they have said had she let themcome in, I wondered. That she was still young and beautiful, and belovedby them all?

"What would those people, I thought, have said to the ravished royalvirgin to comfort her? That she was young and lovely still, and that herbridegroom would cherish her? They might have told her that she had nofault, and had done nothing wrong: 'There is no sin in her worthy ofdeath, for he found her in the field, and the betrothed damsel cried,and there was none to save her.' But the consolations of the vulgar arebitter in the royal ear. Let physicians and confectioners and theservants in the great houses be judged by what they have done, and evenby what they have meant to do; the great people themselves are judged bywhat they are. I have been told that lions, trapped and shut up incages, grieve from shame more than from hunger.

"You must excuse me, gentlemen, if I am talking of things too wonderfulfor you, things which you understand not. For where do your women keeptheir honor, in these modern times? Do they know the word even, whenthey hear it?

"That I did not speak one word of comfort to her, and that no word inthe world could have comforted me myself, this made my presence bearableto Pellegrina during this week of ours.

"She grieved for her great name, and the applause of the courts, and forthe homage of princes, as that ravished royal virgin would have weptover her splendor, her bridal crown, and the balls and pageants of thewedding festivities. But at the thought of her galleries she wept suchtears as the bride would have wept for her royal bridegroom. For howwere they to bear the loss of Pellegrina Leoni? Were they, from now, tolive on, day after day, going to their hard work, oppressed and wrongedby their masters and the authorities, ill paid, and the heavens neveropen to them again? And no Madonna in the skies to smile on them? Theirone star had fallen; they were left in the dark of the night--thegalleries which had laughed and wept with her.

"During that week I learned what a difference there may be, in thelength of twenty-four hours, between one month and the next. Here at ourhouse time used to fly lightly, like a May breeze, like butterflies,like a summer shower and rainbow. Now the day was long as a year; thenight, as ten years.

"After that first week, Pellegrina asked me to give her some strongpoison, with which to shorten her time for good. I had been in thehabit, as a young man, of carrying such stuff with me, in case lifeshould become unbearable to me. I was at this time living in Milan, andI used to drive out to her house every day. I handed her the poison atnoon on a Wednesday, and she asked me to come back the next afternoon.

"When I came, I found her still very ill. She told me that she had takenthe full dose of opium, which I had given her, but that it had had noeffect. She could not die. This, although she believed it herself, Iknow was not the truth. What I had given her could not have failed tokill any human being. She may have taken enough to be ill, perhapsunconscious, and she thought that she had taken it all. Still, thismakes no difference. The truth was that, as she had said, she could notdie. In one way or another she had too much life in her.

"Afterward I thought that had I at the time killed myself, she mighthave had the strength to follow me. From what she had said to me fromtime to time I have it that she had always dreaded death, as a thing tooforeign to her nature, and that it had been a comfort to her to thinkthat I, being so much older than she, would be likely to die before shedid, and to prepare the way for her, or to receive her in the otherworld, did such a world exist. That was one of the reasons why shepreferred me to younger and stronger men. But at the time I did notthink of that.

"All the same, my powders had worked a change in her. She had done withdeath. Dead-tired, she had risen, in a way, from the dead. On thatafternoon, for the first time, she wanted me to talk to her.

"I told her then how, after the long hours of the previous night, justbefore daybreak, a nightingale had taken to singing, wildly,exuberantly, as if she meant to overtake time, outside my window, andhow, listening, I had thought of a ballet which was to take its themefrom all the things that had befallen us. Pellegrina listened to thisattentively, and in the course of the next day came back to the idea ofmy ballet, and asked me about the scenario and tunes of it. I told herthat I meant it to be called Philomela, and explained to her how thescenes and dances were to follow one another. While we were talkingabout it she took my hand and played with my fingers. This was the firsttime since her fall that she had touched any human being.

"A couple of days later she sent for me very early in the morning,before sunrise. I was surprised to find her in the pergola outside herhouse, up and dressed in a negligee.

"It was a beautiful morning. The acacias and the grass of the gardenspread a delicate, fresh, and lovely scent in the clear, somber blueair.

"She looked as she had before her misfortune. Her flower-like face waswhite in the dim light. But when she began to speak to me her voice wasvery low, as if she were afraid of waking somebody.

"'I have sent for you so early, Marcus,' she said, 'so that we shouldhave all the day to talk together, if it be necessary.' She took my armand made me walk up and down with her. As we came to the end of thepergola she stopped and looked, before turning, out over the landscape.The air was very fresh. 'I have much to say to you,' she said. But shedid not go on. Only as we came back once more to the same spot, she saidthe same thing again: 'I have much to say to you, Marcus.'

"At last we sat down on a seat in the pergola. She did not release myarm, so we sat there side by side, as in a carriage.

"'You think, Marcus,' she said, 'that I have not thought of anything allthese days, but you are mistaken. Only it is not easy to tell you of it,for these little thoughts of mine, I have fetched them from far, faraway. Be patient, we have all the day.

"'You see, Marcus,' she went on, still speaking very softly, 'I havecome to see, now, that I have been very selfish. I have always thoughtof Pellegrina, Pellegrina. What has happened to her, that has seemed tome terribly important, the most important thing in all the world. Thepeople who loved Pellegrina, those only, I thought, were the kind, goodpeople of the world, and it seemed to me that the only sensible thingthat any wise person could do was to go and hear Pellegrina Leoni sing.'Again she sat silent, pressing my arm a little.

"'Even this disaster of mine,' she said suddenly, 'had it happened tosomeone else--say now, Marcus, to a soprano of China, of the ImperialOpera of China, a hundred years ago--we might have heard of it, and nothave thought much about it, or wept many tears over it. Still, it wouldhave been as sad and as terrible. But because it happened to Pellegrina,it seemed to us too cruel to bear. This, my Marcus, it need not be, andit shall not be so for us again.

"'Wait,' she said. 'I shall explain everything better to you.

"'Pellegrina is dead,' she said. 'Was she not a great singer, a star?You remember the song:

"'A light of glory is put out,
High from the sky a star has fallen....

"'It was so with her; her death was a great sorrow to the world. Oh,sad, sad. You must now help me to tell the world of her death; you mustmake the grave of Pellegrina, and have a monument erected upon it. Donot put up a very splendid statue, such as we should have chosen had Idied and never lost my voice, but still a marble plate, to give the nameand the dates of her birth and her death. Put a short inscription uponit as well. Put this, Marcus: By the grace of God. Yes, By the graceof God, Marcus.'

"'Pellegrina is dead,' she said once more. 'Nobody, nobody must ever bePellegrina again. To have her once more upon the stage of life, of thishard world, and to have such awful things happen to her as do happen topeople on the earth--no, that must not be thought of. No human beingcould stand the thought. Now, you will promise me that, first of all?'she asked me.

"I said that I would do as she wished.

"She rose again, and went to the end of the pergola. It was gettinglighter now; the last pale stars had gone; all the world around us waswet with dew, and the grass, which had been dark until now, was shininglike silver with it. There was a great clarity in the air, as if the skywere lifting itself high above the earth. Pellegrina stood close to me.Her clothes were moist with dew. She played with her long dark tresses,drawing one of them along between her lips, and she shivered a little inthe morning air. From this end of the pergola the ground sloped down; agreat landscape lay far beneath us; now we could distinguish the roads,the fields, and the trees within it. Below us, on the road, we saw someworkmen and women going out into the fields.

"'Look,' she said. 'I have waited for them, to explain things to you. Itis easier for you to understand when you can see. See, there is a womangoing out to her work in the fields. Perhaps she is a peasant's wife;perhaps her name is Maria. She is happy this morning, because herhusband is good to her and has given her a coral necklace. Or perhapsshe is unhappy, because he worries her with his jealousy. Well, what dowe think of that, Marcus, you and I? A woman named Maria is unhappy, wethink. There will always be such women here and there around us, and wedo not think very much of it. Look, there is another, going the otherway. She is taking vegetables and fruit to Milan, on her donkey, and sheis annoyed because that donkey is so old, and can walk only very slowly,so that she will be late at the market. Nor of that do we think much,Marcus. Oh, I will be that now. The time has come for me to be that: awoman called one name or another. And if she is unhappy we shall notthink a great deal about it.'

"We stood there in silence, and I tried to follow her thoughts.

"'And if,' she said, 'I come to think very much of what happens to thatone woman, why I shall go away, at once, and be someone else: a womanwho makes lace in the town, or who teaches children to read, or a ladytraveling to Jerusalem to pray at the Holy Sepulcher. There are manythat I can be. If they are happy or unhappy, or if they are fools orwise people, those women, I shall not think a great deal about that.Neither will you, if you hear about it. I will not be one person again,Marcus, I will be always many persons from now. Never again will I havemy heart and my whole life bound up with one woman, to suffer so much.It is terrible to me to think of it even. That, you see, I have donelong enough. I cannot be asked to do it any more. It is all over.'

"'And you, Marcus,' she said, 'you have given me many things; now Ishall give you this good advice. Be many people. Give up this game ofbeing one and of being always Marcus Cocoza. You have worried too muchabout Marcus Cocoza, so that you have been really his slave and hisprisoner. You have not done anything without first considering how itwould affect Marcus Cocoza's happiness and prestige. You were alwaysmuch afraid that Marcus might do a stupid thing, or be bored. What wouldit really have mattered? All over the world people are doing stupidthings, and many people are bored, and we have always known about it.Give up being Marcus Cocoza now; then what difference does it make tothe world if one more person, one old Jew, does a stupid thing, or isbored for a day or two? I should like you to be easy, your little heartto be light again. You must, from now, be more than one, many people, asmany as you can think of. I feel, Marcus--I am sure--that all people inthe world ought to be, each of them, more than one, and they would all,yes, all of them, be more easy at heart. They would have a little fun.Is it not strange that no philosopher has thought of this, and that Ishould hit upon it?'

"I thought over what she said, and wondered whether it would be likelyto do me any good. But I knew that it would not be possible for me tofollow this advice of hers while she was still alive. Were she dead Imight find refuge in her whim. The moon must follow the earth, but ifthe earth were to split and evaporate, it might perhaps swing itselffree of its dependency, and be, in an unfettered flight in the ether,for a short time the moon of Jupiter, and for another, that of Venus. Ido not know enough about astronomy to tell. I leave it to you, who mayhave more insight into the science.

"'What a lovely morning,' said Pellegrina. 'One thinks that it is darkstill, but really the air is as filled with light as a glassful of wine.How wet everything is. But soon all the world will be dry again, and itwill be hot on the roads. It does not matter to us. We shall be heretogether all day.'

"'And what do you want me to do?' I asked her.

"She sat for a very long time in deep silence.

"'Yes, Marcus,' she said, 'we must part. Tonight I am going away.'

"'Shall we not meet again?' I asked.

"She put her finger on her lips. 'You must never speak to me,' she said,'if we ever happen to meet. You once knew Pellegrina, you know.'

"'Let me,' I said, 'follow you, and be near you, so that you can sendfor me if ever you want a friend to help you.'

"'Yes, do that,' she said. 'Be near me, Marcus, so that if ever anyoneshould mistake me for Pellegrina Leoni, I can get hold of you, and youcan help me to get away. Be never far off, so that you can always keepthe name of Pellegrina away from me. But speak to me you must never,Marcus. I could not hear your voice without remembering the divine voiceof Pellegrina, and her great triumphs, and this house, where we standnow, and the garden.' She looked around at the house as if it were athing which no longer existed.

"'Oh, the currents of life are cold, Pellegrina,' I said.

"She laughed a little in the morning air, then became again very still.'The swallows are cruising about now,' she said. 'What,' she said aftera moment, 'do you think of this paradise that they talk about? Is itanywhere, really? There we two shall walk again into this house, and theparadise-winds shall lift the curtains a little. There it is spring, andthe swallows are back, and everything is forgiven.'

"She went away," said the old Jew, "as she had said, upon the evening ofthat day.

"I have never spoken to her since," he said, "but she has written to mefrom time to time, to make me help her when she wanted to get away andto change from one thing into another. In Rome, if you had not"--heturned to me--"told her that your father was an enthusiast for theItalian opera, she would have gone with you to England. But only for ayear or two. She would have left you again. She would never let herselfbecome tied up in any of her rôles."

Thus the old man finished his tale. He looked around at us, then quieteddown again, rested his chin upon the golden button of his walking stick,and sank into deep thought, always watching the face of the dying womanon the stretcher.

We three, who had been listening to him, sat on in silence, feeling, Ishould say, a little sheepish, all of us.

****

Lincoln himself, here, fell into a reverie, and for some time saidnothing.

And I ought to tell you here, now, Mira, that afterward in life myfriend Pilot took the advice of Pellegrina Leoni.

It is like this: I do not now quite remember whether, many years later,I met, at the Cape of Good Hope, an elderly German clergyman, by thename of Pastor Rosenquist, who, while we were discussing the strangenessof human nature, recounted to me this tale of my friend, or whether Iamused myself, many years later, by imagining that I had met, at theCape of Good Hope, a German clergyman who told me all this about him.

But there it is, in any case. Pilot followed her advice, and took tobeing more than one person. From time to time he withdrew from the hardand hopeless task of being Friederich Hohenemser and took on theexistence of a small landowner in a far district, by the name ofFridolin Emser. He surrounded this second existence of his with thegreatest secrecy, and let nobody know what he was doing. He felt, whenhe got away, as if he were running for his life, and he cuddled up inFridolin's little house, outside a village, like an animal safe in hisden. Had anyone become suspicious of him and followed up the track whichhe took such pains to cover, to find out what, in the end, he did in hisconcealment, he would have found that Pilot as Emser did absolutelynothing. He looked after his little place with care, collected day byday a little money for Fridolin, and sat of an evening in the arbor ofhis garden, beneath a blackbird in a cage, smoking his long pipe; orsometimes he would go and drink beer in the inn, and discuss politicswith friendly people. Here he was happy. For since he himself, from thebeginning, knew Fridolin to be nonexistent, he was never worried byefforts to make him exist. The one thing which troubled him was that hedared not remain too long in his holiday existence for fear that itmight put on too much weight, and tilt him over. He had to return to thecountry place of the Hohenemsers. But even Friederich Hohenemser washappier after he had begun to follow the plan of Pellegrina, for asecret in his life was an asset to him as well as to Fridolin.

I do not know if, in any of his existences, he married. The marriage ofFriederich Hohenemser would have been bound to be miserably unhappy, andI would have pitied the woman who had to drag him along with her in it;but Fridolin might well have married and given his wife a peaceful andpleasant time. For he would not have been occupied all the time inproving to her that he really existed, which is the curse of many wives,but might have quietly enjoyed seeing her existing. I do not know why itshould be so, but whenever I think of Pilot now, I picture him under anumbrella--he who was so exposed, once, to all weathers. Beneath thisshelter the sun shall not smite him by day, nor the moon by night.

****

Shaking himself out of these reflections, Lincoln resumed his account ofthe old Jew's tale:

Suddenly a violent change came over the face of the old Jew. It was asif we, to whom he had just lately recounted the story of his life, hadall at once been annihilated. Lowering his stick, he bent forward, hiswhole being concentrated on Pellegrina's face.

She stirred upon her couch. Her bosom heaved, and she moved her headslightly on the pillow. A tremor ran over her face; after a minute herbrows lifted a little, and the fringes of her dark eyelids quivered,like the wings of a butterfly that sits on a flower. We had all got up.Again I looked at the Jew. It was obvious that he was terrified lest sheshould see him, in case she opened her eyes. He shrank back and tookshelter behind me. The next second she slowly looked up. Her eyes seemedsupernaturally large and somber.

In spite of the Jew's move to hide himself, her gaze fell straight uponhim. He stood quite still under it, deadly pale as if he feared anoutburst of abhorrence. But none came. She looked at him attentively,neither smiling nor frowning. At this I heard him drawing in his breathtwice, deeply, in a sort of suspense. Then he timidly approached alittle.

She tried to speak two or three times, without getting a sound out, andagain closed her eyes. But once more she opened them, looking againstraight at him. When she spoke it was in her ordinary low voice, alittle slowly, but without any effort.

"Good evening, Marcus," she said.

I heard him strain his throat to speak, but he said nothing.

"You are late," she said, as if a little vexed.

"I have been delayed," said he, and I was surprised at his voice, soperfectly calm and pleasant was it, and nobly sonorous.

"How am I looking?" asked Pellegrina.

"You are looking well," he answered her.

At the moment when she had spoken to him, the face of the old Jew hadundergone a strange and striking change. I have spoken before of hisunusual pallor. While he was telling us his tale he had grown white, asif there were no blood in him. Now, as she spoke and he answered her, adeep, delicate blush, like that of a young boy, of a maiden surprised inher bath, spread all over his face.

"It was good that you came," she said. "I am a little nervous tonight."

"No, you have no reason to be," he reassured her. "It has gone very wellup till now."

"Do you really mean that," she asked, scrutinizing his face. "You do notcriticize? Nothing could have been improved? I have done well, and youare pleased with it all?"

"Yes," he answered, "I do not criticize; nothing could be improved. Youhave done well, and I am well content with the whole thing."

She was silent for perhaps two or three minutes. Then her dark eyes slidfrom his face to ours. "Who are these gentlemen?" she asked him.

"These," he said, "are three foreign young gentlemen, who have traveleda long way to have the honor of being introduced to you."

"Introduce them, then," she said. "But I am afraid that you must bequick about it. I do not think that the entr'act can last muchlonger."

The Jew, advancing toward us, took us by the hand, one by one, and ledus nearer to the stretcher. "My noble young Sirs," he said, "frombeautiful, distant countries, I am pleased to have obtained for you anunforgettable moment in your lives. I introduce you herewith to DonnaPellegrina Leoni, the greatest singer in the world."

With this he gave her our names, which for each of us he rememberedquite correctly.

She looked at us kindly. "I am very glad to see you here tonight," shesaid. "I shall sing to you now, and, I hope, to your satisfaction." Wekissed her hand with deep bows, all three. I remembered the caresseswhich I had demanded of that noble hand. But immediately after sheturned again to the Jew.

"Nay, but I am really a little nervous tonight," she said. "What sceneis it, Marcus?"

"My little star," said he, "be not nervous at all. It is sure to go wellwith you tonight. It is the second act of Don Giovanni; it is theletter air. It begins now with your recitative, Crudele? Ah nò, miobene! Troppo mi spiace allontanarti un ben che lungamente la nostr' almadesia."

She drew a deep sigh and repeated his words: "Crudele? Ah nò, mio bene!Troppo mi spiace allontanarti un ben che lungamente la nostr' almadesia."

As she spoke these words of the old opera a wave of deep dark color,like that of a bride, like that in the face of the old Jew, washed overher white and bruised face. It spread from her bosom to the roots of herhair. The three of us who were lookers-on were, I believe, pale faced;but those who, looking at each other, glowed in a mute, increasingecstasy.

Suddenly her face broke, as the night-old ice on a pool was broken upwhen, as a boy, I threw a stone into it. It became like a constellationof stars, quivering in the universe. A rain of tears sprang from hereyes and bathed it all. Her whole body vibrated under her passion likethe string of an instrument.

"Oh," she cried, "look, look here! It is Pellegrina Leoni--it is she, itis she herself again--she is back. Pellegrina, the greatest singer, poorPellegrina, she is on the stage again. To the honor of God, as before.Oh, she is here, it is she--Pellegrina, Pellegrina herself!"

It was unbelievable that, half dead as she was, she could house thisstorm of woe and triumph. It was, of course, her swan song.

"Come unto her, now, all, again," she said. "Come back, my children, myfriends. It is I--I forever, now." She wept with a rapture of relief, asif she had in her a river of tears, held back long.

The old Jew was in a terrible state of pain and strain. He also swayedfor a moment where he stood. His eyelids swelled and heavy tears pressedthemselves out under them and ran down his face. But he kept standing,and dared not give way to his emotion, although tried to his utmost. Ibelieve that he held out against it so strongly for fear that he mightotherwise, very weak as he was, die before her, and thus fail her in herlast moments.

Of a sudden he took up his little walking stick and struck three shortstrokes on the side of the stretcher.

"Donna Pellegrina Leoni," he cried in a clear voice. "En scène pour ledeux."

Like a soldier to the call, or a war horse to the blast of the trumpet,she collected herself at his words. Within the next minute she becamequiet in a gallant and deadly calm. She gave him a glance from herenormous dark eyes. In one mighty movement, like that of a billow risingand sinking, she lifted the middle of her body. A strange sound, likethe distant roar of a great animal, came from her breast. Slowly theflames in her face sank, and an ashen gray covered it instead. Her bodyfell back, stretched itself out and lay quite still, and she was dead.

The Jew pressed his tall hat on his head, "Iisgadal rejiiskadischschemel robo," he said.

We stood for a little while. Afterward we went into the refectory to sitthere. Later, when it was nearly morning, it was announced to us thatour two coaches had at last arrived. I went out to give orders to thecoachmen. We wanted to go on as soon as it was quite light. That wouldbe best, I thought, although I did not know at all where to go.

As I passed the long room the candles were still burning, but thedaylight came in through the windows. The two were there: Pellegrina onher stretcher and the old Jew by her side, his chin resting on hisstick. It seemed to me that I ought not to part from him yet. I went upto him.

"Then, Mr. Cocoza," I said, "you are this time burying, not the greatartist, whose grave you made many years ago, but the woman, whose friendyou were."

The old man looked up at me. "Vous êtes trop bon, Monsieur," he said,which means: You are too good, Sir.

****

"This," Lincoln said, "is my tale, Mira."

Mira drew in his breath, blew it out again slowly, and whistled.

"I have thought," said Lincoln, "What would have happened to this womanif she had not died then? She might have been with us here tonight. Shewas good company and would have fitted in well. She might have become adancer of Mombasa, like Thusmu, that tawny-eyed old bat, the mistress ofhis father and grandfather, for whose arms Said is even now longing. Orshe might have gone with us into the highlands, on an expedition forivory or slaves, and have made up her mind to stay there with a war-liketribe of the highland natives, and have been honored by them as a greatwitch.

"In the end, I have thought, she might perhaps have decided to become apretty little jackal, and have made herself a den on the plain, or uponthe slope of a hill. I have imagined that so vividly that on a moonlightnight I have believed that I heard her voice amongst the hills. And Ihave seen her, then, running about, playing with her own small gracefulshadow, having a little ease of heart, a little fun."

"Ah la la," said Mira, who, in his quality of a story-teller, was anexcellent and imaginative listener, "I have heard that little jackaltoo. I have heard her. She barks: 'I am not one little jackal, not one;I am many little jackals.' And pat! in a second she really is another,barking just behind you: 'I am not one little jackal. Now I am another.'Wait, Lincoln, till I have heard her once more. Then I shall make you atale about her, to go with yours."

"Well," said Lincoln, "this is my tale. The lesson for Said."

"I know all your tale," said Mira. "I have heard it before. Now Ibelieve that I made it myself."

"The Sultan Sabour of Khorassan was a great hero, and not that only, buta man of God, who had visions and heard voices which instructed him inthe will of the Lord. So he meant to teach this to all the world, withfire and sword. But alas, he was betrayed by a woman, a dancer, just atthe zenith of his orbit; it is a long story. His great army was wipedout. The sand of the desert drank their blood; the vultures fed on it.The wails of the widows and orphans rose to heaven. His harem wasscattered amongst his enemies. He himself was wounded, and only draggedaway and saved by a slave. For the sake of his soldiers, then, he willnot show himself or let himself be known in his beggar's state. He hasbecome, like your woman, many persons, and gives up, like her, to beone. Sometimes he is a water carrier, again a Khadi's servant, again afisherman by the sea, or a holy hermit. He is very wise. He knows manythings and leaves deep footprints wherever he goes. He does all peoplewhom he meets much good and some harm; he is a king still. But he willnot remain the same for long. When he gains friends and women to lovehim, he flees the country from them, too much afraid of being again theSultan Sabour, or any one person at all. Only his slave knows. Thisslave, I now remember, has had his nose cut off for Sabour's sake."

"Alas, Mira, life is full of disagreeables," said Lincoln.

"Ah, as to me," said Mira, "I am safe wherever I go. You yourself haveit written down in your Holy Book that all things work together for goodto them that love God."

"Does that declaration of love," asked Lincoln, "come from the heart? Orfrom the lips of an old court poet?"

"Nay, I speak from my heart," said Mira. "I have been trying for a longtime to understand God. Now I have made friends with him. To love himtruly you must love change, and you must love a joke, these being thetrue inclinations of his own heart. Soon I shall take to loving a jokeso well that I, who once turned the blood of all the world to ice, shallbecome a teller of funny tales, to make people laugh."

"Then, according to the law of the Prophet," said Lincoln, "you will be,with barbers and such people as kiss their wives in public, debarredfrom giving evidence before a court of law."

"Yes, that is so," Mira agreed. "I shall be debarred from givingevidence."

"What says Said?" asked Lincoln.

Said, who had sat silent and motionless all the time, laughed a little.He looked toward land. In the moonlight a dim white strip showed, andthere was a murmur, like to the vibrating of a string, in the air.

"Those," said Said, "are the great breakers of Takaungu Creek. We shallbe in Mombasa at dawn."

"At dawn?" said Mira. "Then I will go to sleep for an hour or two."

He crawled down on the deck, drew his cloak around him and over hishead, and laid himself down to sleep, immovable as a corpse.

Lincoln sat for a little while, smoking a cigarette or two. Then he alsolay down, turned himself over a couple of times, and went to sleep.

The Poet

Around the name of the little town of Hirschholm, in Denmark, there ismuch romance.

In the early years of the eighteenth century, Queen SophiaMagdalena--the consort of that pious monarch, King Christian VI, whowent to chapel with his court three times a day and had all the theatersof Copenhagen shut up--one summer evening, after a long day's hunting,killed a stag on the bank of a tranquil lake in the midst of a forest.She was so much pleased with the spot that she resolved to have a palacebuilt there, and she named it after the stag: Hirschholm. It was, likemost teutonic architecture of the period, a pompous and finicky affairwhen it was finished, built up as it was in the middle of the lake, withlong straight embarkments across the water, upon which the royal coachescould drive up in all their splendor, reflected, head down, in the clearsurface, as had been the stag, surrounded by the Queen's hounds. Aroundthe lake the little town, with its employees' houses, taverns and littlemodest shops grew up, red-tiled, around the huge royal stables andmanèges. It was very quiet most of the year, but they had a great timewhen the magnificent court arrived for the hunting season.

Fifty years later, when Sophia Magdalena's grandson, King Christian VII,ruled over Denmark, the tragedy of his young English Queen, CarolinaMathilda, took place, or was prepared, at Hirschholm. This patheticpink-and-white and full-bosomed young Princess sailed over the North Seaat the age of fifteen to marry a debauched and heartless little king,not much older than herself, but already far on his way toward thatroyal lunacy which swallowed him up some years later, a sort of Caligulain miniature, whose portrait gives you a strange impression of anentirely lonely and disillusioned mind. After a few unhappy years thatwere probably both dull and bewildering to the English maiden, she, bythe time when the King took to playing at horses with his Negro page,met her fate. She fell deeply, desperately, in love with the doctor whohad been summoned from Germany to heal, by means of his novel cold-watercures, the sickly little Crown Prince. This doctor was a very brilliantman who was much in advance of his time. Her great passion for him firstraised her lover to the highest places in the land, where he shonesurprisingly as a star of the first magnitude, a reckless revolutionarytyrant, and then ruined them both. They had their short good time atHirschholm, where Carolina Mathilda impressed her Danish subjects byriding to hounds in men's clothes--attire which one cannot imagine, fromher portraits, to have been very becoming to her. Then the rancor of theindignant old Dowager Queen encircled the lovers and brought them down.The doctor had his head cut off for pilfering the regalia of the crownof Denmark, and the young Queen was sent in exile to a little town inHanover, and died there. Virtue triumphed in its most dismal form, andthe palace that had housed such blasphemy was itself left and finallypulled down, partly because the royal family did not like to see it,partly because it was said to be sinking, of itself, into the lake. Thewhole splendor disappeared, and a church, in the classical style of thedawning nineteenth century, was erected where the palace had stood, likea cross upon its grave. Many years later statues and carved and giltfurniture, with rose garlands and cupids, were to be found in the housesof the wealthy peasants around Hirschholm.

After the storm had passed over its head the little town gave for yearsthe impression of someone benumbed by shock and lying very low. It hadnot been able to believe that such things could happen, in any case notin its very middle. It had perhaps still in its heart remnants of aloyal sympathy for the gay young Queen who had smiled at it. But to haveone's head cut off is a serious business, and it had only to look towardthe place where the palace had stood to have the wages of sin broughthome to it. Hard times came upon the country: wars, the loss of thefleet, bankruptcy of the state, the spirit of virtue and severe economy.The frivolous days of the eighteenth century were gone forever.

Then, about fifty or sixty years after the tragedy of the young Queenand her premier, the town had a pleasant little renaissance.

It could not go on forever being repentant of sins in which it had inreality no part, and it could, no more than the rest of the country,live forever upon the conviction of the excellency of prudence. When oneis tied down heavily enough to an existence of care, it becomes pleasantto think of careless times and people. Also, though people do not liketheir mothers' virtue to be questioned, the frivolities of grandmothersmay be charming things to smile at. By the time when men began to growwhiskers and ladies to wear sidecurls, the sins of people in powderbegan to look romantic, like passions and crimes on the stage. The timehad come when poets would drive out in wagonettes from Copenhagen andboard at Hirschholm to sing of the unhappy Queen Carolina Mathilda, andsee her shadow, flighty on her flighty steed, galloping past them in theforest. The avenues of lime trees, planted upon the embankments in theunselfish spirit of the eighteenth century--which must have walkedbetween sticks six feet high in order to give coming generations shadeand foliage--had grown up and grown old, and within their green bowersold ladies and men who had seen, as children, the Queen ride clatteringacross the stone bridges with her hounds, or the King, like an elegantpowdered and corseted little doll with a blank face, pass in his coach,were expanding upon the excitement of court life to pretty maidens,matrons, and youths of the town, who held their own hearts carefully incheck.

At this time there lived in Hirschholm two men who distinguishedthemselves, in different ways, from the average burgher.

The first of these was, rightly, the prominent figure of the town, acitizen of great influence, and a man not only of property and prestige,but of the world and of great charm. His name was Mathiesen, and he hadbeen made a Kammerraad, a chamber-councilor. Later a bust of him waserected, in remembrance of him, at the entrance to one of those longlime avenues in which he loved to walk.

He was at the time--that is, in the early 'thirties--between fifty-fiveand sixty years old, and lived quietly and contentedly in Hirschholm.But he had been younger, and had lived in other places. He had eventraveled much and had been in both Germany and France during those fataland restless times which preceded the idyll: in the days of the FrenchRevolution and the wars of Napoleon. There he had seen, and probablyhimself played a part in, many things which the little town could nothave dreamed of, and the people who had known him as a young man said ofhim that he had come back with other eyes--formerly they had been blue,but now they were light gray or green. If he had lost illusions outthere, he was not likely now to think the loss very great, and he hadsurely won instead a talent for making life pleasant and himselfcomfortable. There is probably no better place for a sensible epicureanthan a small provincial town. The councilor, who had been a widower forfifteen years, had an excellent housekeeper and a cellar which mighthave done honor to a Cardinal. It was said of him in Hirschholm thatwhen alone of an evening he did needlework in cross-stitch; but then,there was no reason why, in his position, he should give up any pleasantpastime in life for the sake of conventionality.

Amongst the treasures which the Councilor had collected in the greatworld and brought home to Hirschholm, there was none that he valued ashighly as his recollections of Weimar, where he had lived for two years,and his remembrance of having once lived in the atmosphere of the greatGeheimerat Goethe. It is a great thing to have been face to face withthe highest, and a law of life that one thing amongst all that we meetmust impress itself deeper upon our souls than any other; and the imageof that serene town and of the great poet were stamped forever on hisbeing. Here was the ideal man--the superman, he might have thought, ifthe word had been invented--who combined in himself all the qualitieswhich humanity envies and toward which it strives: the poet,philosopher, statesman, the friend and adviser of princes and theconqueror of women. The Councilor had many times met Goethe on hismorning walks, and had heard him talk with friends who accompanied him.On one occasion he had even been introduced to the great man himself,had met the glance of those Olympian and yet human eyes, and hadexchanged a few words with the Giant. The poet and Herr Eckermann hadbeen discussing a question of Nordic archeology, and Herr Eckermann hadcalled upon the young foreigner to give evidence in the argument. Goethethen questioned him upon the matter, and courteously asked him if hecould possibly procure certain information. Mathiesen had made a deepbow and had answered:

Ich bin Eurer Excellenz ehrerbietigster Diener.

The Councilor was not an ordinary man, and had none of the ordinaryman's ambitions. He had a high opinion of his position in Hirschholm--asindeed he had reason to have--and in his daily existence he had no wantswhich were not well satisfied. If he did, for the rest of his days,cherish, together with a picture of the Geheimerat, an ambition to feelhimself, in his smaller surroundings, a superman in miniature, it wasknown only to himself, and in real life played the part of ideals ingeneral--that of an unseen directive force, which makes for balance. Buthe was a man of broad outlook who took a long and wide view of things.He maintained an idea of paradise, for his generation had been broughtup on the thought of life everlasting, and the idea of immortality camenaturally to him. His paradise was to be a Weimar--an elysium ofdignity, grace, and brilliancy. Still, his feelings about another worldwere not of vital importance to him; he might have given them up withouttoo much pain. But he had a very firm faith in history, and in theimmortality which it may grant you. He had seen it made around him andhad felt its breath upon his cheek, and he knew the great Emperor andthe heroes of the Revolution to be more alive than the functionaries andtradesmen of Hirschholm who lifted their hats to him in the roughlypaved streets and with whom he exchanged little pleasant remarks everyday. It was upon the arena, and in this high society of history, that hedesired to live on.

It was either the deep impression which poetry had made upon him when itmanifested itself with so much grandeur, or an inborn tendency in hisown heart, which one might perhaps not have expected--but who can tell,seeing how little we know about hearts?--which made this art take such agreat place in his scheme of things. Outside of poetry there was to himno real ideal in life, or, indeed, any satisfactory immortality. It wasnatural, then, that he should have tried to write poetry himself. On hisreturn from Weimar he had produced a tragedy which took its theme fromold Danish history, and later he wrote a few poems inspired by theromance of Hirschholm. But he was a judge of art, and realized, asquickly as anybody else could have done, that he was no poet. So he hadbeen aware for some time that the poetry of his life would have to comefrom somewhere else, and had recognized his own part in connection withit to be that of a Mæcenas, a part for which he felt himself well fittedand which he thought would be becoming to him in that immortality towardwhich he was striving.

It so happened that what he was looking for had come to meet him, in theperson of a young man who also lived at Hirschholm and who was at thistime a district clerk and--although this was only known to the Councilorand himself--a great poet.

His name was Anders Kube, and he was twenty-four years old. He wasconsidered not at all good-looking by the people who knew him, but atthe same time an artist painting a sacred picture and looking for amodel for a young angel's face might have found it in him. He had abroad face and dark blue eyes set wide apart. For his work he usedspectacles, and when he took them off and looked directly at the worldhis eyes had a clear and deep gaze, such as Adam's eyes may have hadwhen he first walked around the garden and looked at the beasts. Of astrange, slow and angular, unexpected gracefulness in all his movements,with thick dark red hair and very big hands, he was a nearly perfectspecimen of a type of Danish peasant which was then to be found amongstparish clerks and fiddlers, but which has, now that peasants are sittingin parliament, disappeared.

Of the two worlds in which he lived, the one that gave him his dailybread was very limited, made up of the whitewashed office room of thedistrict court, his own rooms--very neatly kept by his landlady, who wasfond of him--at the top of a stair and behind a large lime tree, and thewoods and fields around Hirschholm, where he roamed in his free hours.He was also received into the houses of a few kind and respectableburghers of Hirschholm, to play cards and listen to political arguments,and he had friends amongst the wagoners of the great road who outspannedand supped at the inn, as well as among members of the strange tribe ofcharcoal burners who carted their charcoal from the great woods nearElsinore to Copenhagen. The Councilor's house held a position of its ownin his existence. Three years before, when he first came to the town, hehad carried letters from a friend of the Councilor's, old ApothecaryLerche, who had recommended him as a talented and industrious young man,and on the strength of them he had received a standing invitation forsupper with the Councilor on Saturday nights. These evenings werepleasant to him, and gave him many impressions. He had never before hadthe chance of listening to so much worldly wisdom, such rich stock ofexperience, as that with which he was here regaled. Probably theCouncilor did indeed speak more openly to him than to anybody else, butthe youth had no idea that he himself played such a part in the life ofhis protector.

Neither had he any notion of a theory which the Councilor had developedon his behalf, which came to this: that the young man had to be kept ina sort of cage or coop in order to bring out his best as a poet. Perhapsthis theory was based upon experiences of the Councilor's own life; hemay have felt that he himself had, in the course of events of the past,lost powers and ideals essential to a poet. Perhaps it was entirely amatter of instinct. In any case it was a deeply rooted conviction of hisheart that he had to guard his protégé. As long as he could keep himquietly in Hirschholm, treading the pavement from his lodgings to hisoffice, or the long avenues, the great forces within him would have tocome out in poetry. But if the world and its wild and incalculableinfluences were to get hold of him, he might be lost to literature andto his Mæcenas; he might be dragged into uproars and rebellions againstthat law and order of which the Councilor was himself a staunch support,and come to finish his days upon a barricade. Seeing that nobody elsewould have imagined young Kube upon a barricade, the theory showed, iftrue, a deep insight into human nature on the part of theCouncilor--except that perhaps the people found on barricades maygenerally be those least expected there. At any rate its effect was thatthe old man kept an untiring eye on the youth, like a sort of unselfishlover, like a mighty and dignified Kislar Aga toward a budding beauty ofthe seraglio for whom he has planned great things.

On his part the Councilor could have no knowledge that he himself was,in the eyes of his protégé, encircled by a poetic halo. It had beencreated, at the beginning of the youth's stay at Hirschholm, by a taleof his landlady's, the truth of which was doubtful, and which ran asfollows:

The Councilor was, as already said, a widower, but before he came tothis state he had gone through much. The late Madame Mathiesen had beenan heiress in a modest way. She had come from Christiansfeld, which isthe seat, in Denmark, of the Hernhuten, a severe puritan sect, like theJansenites in France, and she was a woman with a highly developedconscience. But one summer evening, two years before her death, she hadsuddenly lost her mind in a fit of terror of the devil, and had wantedto kill her husband or herself with a pair of scissors. They sent forthe old doctor, who tried all his arts on her without doing her anygood, so, as there was no hospital for that kind of patient near by,they boarded her with the old palace gardener of Fredensborg--anotherroyal palace at some distance from Hirschholm--and his wife, who werekind people and owed their appointment to the influence of theCouncilor. There she lived, without regaining her reason, but in ahappier state of mind, for she believed that she was dead and in heaven,waiting for her husband. Sometimes, though, she expressed a fear of hisnever getting there, for she said that he was a great sinner; but shetrusted to the grace of God.

The narrator of the tale, who had at the time been a maid in MadameMathiesen's house, was the only person, outside of the narrow familycircle, who knew how this crisis had been brought on. On that Julyevening, after a thunderstorm, and while a double rainbow stood burningover the landscape, the Councilor and his wife, with a young girl whowas the daughter of a functionary at Court, the Councilor's friend, andwho had been sent to Hirschholm to recover from a disappointment inlove, were going out for a walk. Madame Mathiesen was in her roomputting on her bonnet, when, through the open window, she saw the girlpick a yellow pansy and fasten it upon the Councilor's coat. There maybe, for the Hernhuten, some magic in a yellow pansy or in the air undera double rainbow. At any rate the sight had upon Madame Mathiesen aneffect which nobody else could have foreseen.

Two years later, at about the same time of the year, the Councilor hadnews from Fredensborg that his wife's health had improved, she no longerthought that she was in heaven, and they believed that it would do hergood to see him. So he had his gig brought out on a fine afternoon, gotinto the neat little carriage, and took the reins himself. Then heseemed to think better of it, got out again, and went into the garden,where he picked a yellow pansy and fastened it on his coat lapel. Themeeting between the husband and the wife did not turn out as theirfriends had hoped, though she had been in her window all day waiting forhim. She no sooner saw him than she was seized by her old confusion. Shebecame so wild that they had to call for assistance. In fact, she fellback into madness altogether, from which she never recovered, for shedied a year later.

Young Kube had not a judging mind, and would never, left to himself,approach any phenomena in life from a moral standpoint. He neitheradmired nor blamed the Councilor for his rôle in the drama. But he had amind which strangely enlarged everything he met. Under the handling ofhis thoughts, things became gigantic, like those huge shadows ofthemselves upon the mist, which travelers in mountains meet and areterrified of, gigantic and somehow grotesque, like objects playingabout, a little outside of human reason. So the Councilor began to swelland evaporate and to move in mystic serpentine windings, like the spiritwhich came out of Solomon's bottle and showed itself to the poorfisherman of Bagdad; and every Saturday night the young poet sat down tosupper with Loki himself.

On most other nights he would be alone, and as he was a poorly paidclerk, by instinct very careful about his money, and encouraged thereinby his landlady, he would sup on porridge and afterward let his big catdrink milk out of his plate. Then he would sit very still, looking atthe fire, or, on summer nights, out of the window to where a slightmilky mist upon the surface indicated the contour of the lake, and letall the world quietly open its heart to him, unfold and reveal itself insuch wild forms as appeared natural to him. The young son of the soil,tied to a register, had the soul of the old Eddas, which created theworld around them in terms of gods and demons, and filled it withheights and abysses unknown in their country; and also the playfulmentality of those old mystics who populated it with centaurs, fauns,and water deities who did not always behave properly. Those Danishpeasants, who were by nature their descendants, had, under a deepgravity like that of a child, more playfulness and shamelessness of mindthan a clown. Generally they have not been much understood orappreciated except as they could turn this side of their being out, andin a craving for understanding they have often had to take to drink.Anders Kube still, because he thought it the right thing, would writelittle poems of a spider upon a branch of roses, but later on, when hecame more into his own, his creations took quite different dimensions.

Some evenings he would go out not to come back till daylight, and hislandlady could not get out of him where he had been.

A few miles out of Hirschholm there is a little property with a pleasantwhite manor house, surrounded by trees and pretty grounds, called LaLiberté. For years nobody had been living there. The owner had been anold apothecary, the same man who had given Anders Kube his letters ofintroduction, who had his business in Copenhagen and had been makingmoney all his life. At the age of seventy, after having borrowed someromantic narratives of travel at his club, he made up his mind to seethe world, and started on a voyage to Italy. A halo of adventurousnesshad surrounded his enterprise from the beginning. It grew brighter whenit was reported how he had experienced an earthquake at Naples, and hadthere made the acquaintance of a compatriot, a mysterious figure who wassometimes described as a merchant captain and sometimes as a theatricaldirector, and who died in the apothecary's arms, leaving a large familyin distress. From Naples the old man had informed his friends that hehad taken charge of the eldest daughter of this family, and was thinkingof adopting her; but from Genoa, a fortnight later, he wrote that he hadmarried her. "Now why did he do that?" asked his female acquaintances athome. He never did tell them. He died at Hamburg on the return journey,leaving his fortune to his relations, and La Liberté and a small pensionto his young widow. Toward the end of the winter of 1836 she came andsettled there.

The Councilor drove out to assist her and to see the adventuress ofNaples who had ensnared--and, he suspected, killed off--his old friend.He found her demure, very ready to do everything that he told her. Shewas a short, slight young woman who looked like a doll; not like thedolls of the present day, which are imitations of the faces and forms ofhuman babies, but like the dolls of old days which strove, parallel withhumanity, toward an abstract ideal of female beauty. Her big eyes wereclear as glass, and her long eyelashes and delicate eyebrows were asblack as if they had been painted on her face. The most remarkable thingabout her was the rare lightness of all her movements, which were likethose of a bird. She had what the Councilor knew, in the technicallanguage of the ballet, as ballon, a lightness that is not only thenegation of weight, but which actually seems to carry upwards and makefor flight, and which is rarely found in thin dancers--as if the matteritself had here become lighter than air, so that the more there is of itthe better it works. Her mourning frocks and bonnets were somewhat moreelegant than those commonly seen in Hirschholm; or perhaps it was that,having been bought in Hamburg, they appeared a little outlandish in thevillage. But she was either careful of her money or simple of taste. Shealtered nothing in the old house, and did not even move about any of themusty old furniture that had for so long led a forlorn existence in thepainted rooms. In the garden-room there was a large and costly musicalbox which had been brought all the way from Russia. She seemed to liketo walk about and to sit in the garden, but she let it remain overgrown,as it had been for years. Apparently she was bent on behaving with greatcorrectness, for she drove about to call on the ladies of theneighborhood, who gave her good advice and recipes for making sausagesand gingerbread, but she spoke little herself, and was perhaps shybecause of a slight accent in speaking Danish. There was anothercharacteristic which the Councilor noted in her: she was to the utmostshy of, or averse to, touch. She never kissed or caressed any of theother ladies, such as was the custom at Hirschholm, and evidentlydisliked being petted by them. There was something of a Psyche in thedoll. The ladies of Hirschholm thought her harmless. She would be norival either at making gingerbread or within the brilliant little schoolof scandal of the town. They wondered whether she was not a bitfeebleminded. The Councilor agreed with them, and disagreed. There wassomething there, he thought.

On Easter day the Councilor and Anders went to church at Hirschholm. Thesun was shining and the lake around the church was a bright blue, butstill the day was cold with a sharp east wind, and there were showersfrom time to time. The daffodils, the crowns-imperial, and theDiclytra--which the Danes call "heart-of-a-lieutenant," because, whenyou open the blossom, you find inside a champagne bottle and adancer--which were just out in the little gardens, were harshly treatedand bowed down by the wind and rain. The peasant women, who came to takeholy communion in their gold-embroidered caps, had to struggle withtheir heavy skirts and long silk ribbons at the church entrance.

Just as the Councilor and his protégé were about to go in, the younglady of La Liberté arrived in a landaulet drawn by two heavy bay horses,which amply allowed themselves everything in front of the church door.She had got out of her widow's weeds for the first time, it being now ayear since her old husband had died, and was in a pale gray cloak and ablue bonnet. She felt as happy as a stock-dove within a green tree, andradiated a joy of life that was like a waltz played upon a violin with asordine.

As the Councilor was exchanging ideas with the parson at the moment, itwas young Kube who went to help her out of her carriage. In respect tothe widow of his old patron he held his hat in his hand while theytalked together for a moment. The Councilor was watching the scene fromthe porch and found himself strangely attracted by the sight. He did nottake his eyes off them. Both the young people were exceedingly shy.Together with the slow and heavy grace of the young man's countenanceand her extraordinary lightness of movement, this double shyness seemedto give the brief encounter a particular expressiveness, a pregnantquality, as if there were a secret in it, and something would come outof it. The Councilor did not know himself why it so struck and movedhim. It was, he thought, like the opening bars of a piece of music, orthe first chapter of a romance called "Anders and Fransine."

Geheimerat Goethe, he reflected, might--would indeed--have madesomething of it. He went into the church in a thoughtful mood.

All through the service the Councilor's mind was playing about with hisrecent impression. It had come to him at a seasonable moment, for he hadlately been uneasy about his poet. This young slave of his had beensingularly absent-minded, and even absent bodily from one or two oftheir Saturday suppers. There was in his whole manner an unconsciousrestlessness, and underneath it the sign of a melancholy about which theCouncilor was anxious, for he knew well that he could find no remedy forit. From a talk with the landlady he had got the idea that the youngclerk might be drinking too much. Many great poets had been drunkards,he knew, but it did not quite fit into the picture with his own figureas a Mæcenas. Under the influence of drink, which he knew to have playeda part in the history of the boy's family, he might get out of hand,might run away to play the fiddle at the peasants' weddings. TheCouncilor had opposed a raise in the young clerk's salary at thedistrict office, knowing that that would do him no good, but he shouldhave liked a surer way of anchoring him. Now it occurred to him thatmarriage might be what was needed. The little widow with her smallincome, in the white house of La Liberté, might have been provided byprovidence as the ideal wife for his genius. She might prove to be,even, a Christiane Vulpius, the only woman, he had been informed, whohad lain in the arms of the Geheimerat for whole nights without askinghim questions about the meaning of life. These vague pictures pleasedthe Councilor.

From the men's section, to the right of the aisle, his eye turned onceor twice toward the women's benches. The young woman kept very still.She was absorbed in the parson's words, but all the time her face hadthe expression of deep secret joy. Toward the end of the service, as shewas kneeling, deeply moved, she held a small handkerchief to her face.The old man wondered whether she was really crying or laughing into it.

After the service the older and the young man walked together to theCouncilor's house. As they passed the bridge a lashing, ice-cold showerwas swept across the landscape. They had to put up their umbrellas, andthey stopped on the little arched stone bridge to watch the hail beatingdown on the water, and the two swans of the lake rushing angrily underthe arch through the gray waves. They kept standing there longer thanthey knew, both deep in thought.

Anders had had his mind filled, by the Easter sermon, with a row ofshadows, which slowly took shape, like clouds banking up.

Mary Magdalena, he thought, came hurriedly on the dawn of Friday to thehouse of Caiaphas. She had seen in a vision how, upon the afternoon ofthe morrow, the veil of the temple was to be rent. She had seen thegraves opening, and the saints coming forth. She had also beheld theangel of the Lord rolling back the stone of the grave and sitting uponit; and she hurled at the high priests reproaches for the monstrositythey were about to commit in crucifying God. Her words convinced the oldmen that Christ was in reality the only-begotten son of God, and theredeemer of all the world, and that what they were about to do would bethe only true crime in all the history of mankind.

Thereupon they held a council within the dark room of the palace, inwhich a lamp shone upon their multicolored caftans and bearded,passionately pensive faces. Some of the priests were struck with terrorand demanded that the prisoner be released at once; others went intoecstasy and prophesied in shrill voices. But Caiaphas and a few of thevery old men discussed the matter with thoroughness, and agreed thatthey must carry through their prospect. If the world had really this onehope of salvation, they would have to fall in with the plan of God,however dreadful the deed.

Mary, in despair, talked to them of the sins and the misery of theearth, about which she knew so much, and of the holiness of Christ. Themore they listened the more they shook their heads.

Caiaphas called forth Satan to talk the matter over with him. As hisfirst impersonation, red-haired Judas came into the room and offered toreturn his thirty pieces of silver. When the council refused, helaughingly depicted to them the long future misery of the chosen people,from now forever hunted down and spat upon by the world, with the piecesof silver forever in their hands. He even described to the high prieststhe Ghetto of Amsterdam, which the Councilor had himself, upon aSaturday evening, painted to his protégé. The head of the old priestfell down upon his heavy textbook.

The Councilor's own face was somewhere in the council of the highpriests, although not yet quite distinctly placed. Mary Magdalena waskneeling, hiding her face.

The head of the young clerk swam a little. He had sat up late lastnight, playing cards with wayfaring people at the inn.

The rain had stopped. They put down their umbrellas and walked on.

The Councilor also, in spite of his matrimonial plans, had got stuff forthought from the sermon. He reflected how strange it is that St. Peter,who was the only person who knew of it, and who must have been in aposition to suppress it, should ever have allowed the story of the cockto get about.

During the next three weeks the weather was very mild, but it rained.The soil was filled with growth, and the air with a fragrance that wasonly waiting for a clear day and sun to expand. Flowering plum treesfloated like clouds of chalk around the farmhouses. Later the ground ofthe woods, underneath the beech trunks, was covered with windflowers,pink as shells, with digitate leaves and sweet and bitter scent. Thenightingales arrived and turned all the world into a violin, still insweetly dripping rain and mist.

Upon a Thursday toward the end of May the Councilor supped and playedcards at Elsinore with a friend who was an officer in the service of theSound duties. These parties were annual festivities where old friendsmet. They always drew out late, and it is thirteen miles from Elsinoreto Hirschholm; but the Councilor did not mind, for the nights are lightin Denmark at this season. He drove in his neat gig, lolling in his biggray riding cloak, while Kresten, his old coachman, drove the horse, andtaking in a little sleepily the beauty of the May night and the smellfrom the fields and budding groves through which they were driving. Alittle way out of Hirschholm something in the harness broke. They had tostop, and Kresten concluded that they would have to borrow a piece ofrope at the nearest farm to repair the damage. On looking around theCouncilor found that they were just outside of La Liberté. Fearing thatKresten might make too much noise and disturb the sleep of the lady ofthe house, he decided to go himself. He knew the caretaker of the place;in fact, had himself got him the job, and could knock at his windowwithout waking up anybody else. A little chilled, he got out of hiscarriage and walked up the drive. It was just before dawn.

The dim air was filled with the sweet and acid scent of fresh wetleafage. Upon the graveled drive there were still little pools of water;but the night was clear. He walked slowly, for here amongst the treesand bushes it was dark. An avenue of populus balsamifera led off thedrive toward the farmyard, contributing the nectarous acrid breath oftheir shaggy flowers to the harmony of the atmosphere.

Suddenly, as he was walking on, he heard the sound of music. He stopped,hardly believing his ears--yes, there was no doubt: it was music. Adancing tune was being played, and it came from the house. He walked alittle, then stopped again, wondering. Who was playing and dancing herebefore sunrise? He left the drive and walked across the wet grass of thelawn toward the front side of the house. As he came up toward theterrace the façade of the white house shone a dead white, and he saw aclear light between the lists of the closed shutters. The young widowmight be having a ball in her garden-room tonight.

The wet lilac bushes on the terrace were full of unfolded flowers. Thedark spiky clusters held a surprise in them; they would be so muchlighter when they opened. A row of tulips kept their white and pink cupsprudently closed to the night air. It was very still. The Councilorremembered two lines of an old poem:

The gentle zephyrs cease to rock
Newly inslumbered Nature's cradle.

It was that hour just before sunrise when the world seems absolutelycolorless, when it gives indeed a sense of negation of color. The richhues of night have withdrawn, oozed away like the waves from a shore,and all the colors of daytime lie dormant in the landscape like in thepaints used for pottery, which are all alike gray clay until they comeout in the furnace. And in this still world there is a tremendouspromise.

The old man, gray in his gray cloak, would have been nearly invisibleeven to somebody looking for him. In fact he felt extremely lonely, asif he knew that he could not be seen. He dared not put his hand to theshutter for fear of making a noise. With his hands on his back he leanedforward and peeped in.

He had hardly ever been more surprised. The long garden-room with itsthree French windows opening on to the terrace was painted a sky blue,much faded with time. There was but little furniture in the room, andwhat was there had been pushed back against the walls. But from theceiling in the middle of the room hung a fine old chandelier, and it wasall ablaze, every candle in it being lighted. The big Russian musicalbox was open, placed upon the old dumb spinet, and was pouring forth inhigh clear notes the tune of a mazurka.

The young mistress of the house stood on the tips of her toes in themiddle of the room. She had on the very short diaphanous frock of aballet dancer, and her little heelless shoes were fastened with blackribbons laced around her delicate ankles and legs. She held her armsover her head, gracefully rounded, and stood quite still, watching themusic, her face like the placid, happy face of a doll.

As her bar of music fell in, she suddenly came to life. She lifted herright leg slowly, slowly, the toe pointing straight at the Councilor,higher and higher, as if she were really rising from the ground andabout to fly. Then she brought it down again, slowly, slowly, on the tipof the toe, with a little gentle pat, no more than a fingertap upon thetable.

The spectator outside held his breath. As before, on watching the balletat Vienna, he had the feeling that this was too much; it could not bedone. And then it was done, lightly, as in jest. One begins to doubt thefall of man, and not to worry about it, when a young dancer can thusrise from it again.

Standing upon the tip of her right toe now, she lifted her left leg,slowly, high up, opened her arms in a swift audacious movement, whirledall around herself, and began to dance. The dance was more than a realmazurka, very fiery and light, lasting perhaps two minutes: ahumming-top, a flower, a flame dancing, a play upon the law ofgravitation, a piece of celestial drollery. It was also a bit of acting:love, sweet innocence, tears, a sursum corda expressed in music andmovement. In the middle of it there was a little pause to frighten theaudience, but it went on all the same, only even more admirably, as iftransposed into a higher key. Just as the music box gave signs ofrunning down, she looked straight at the Councilor and sank down uponthe floor in a graceful heap, like a flower flung stem upward, exactlyas if her legs had been cut off with a pair of scissors.

The Councilor knew enough about the art of the ballet to value this as avery high-class performance. He knew enough about the pretty things inlife altogether to value this early morning apparition altogether as avision worthy of the Czar Alexander himself, if it came to that.

At her direct clear glance he took alarm and drew back a little. When helooked in again she had got up, but remained as if irresolute, and didnot turn on the box again. There was a long mirror in the room. Pressingthe palm of her hand gently upon the glass she bent forward and kissedher own silvery image within it. Then she took up a long extinguisher,and one by one she put out the candles of the chandelier. She opened thedoor and was gone.

In spite of his reluctance to be seen there by anybody, the Councilorstood still on the terrace for a minute or two. He was as astonished asif he had happened to surprise, upon this early May morning, Echo,practicing all on her own in the depths of the woods.

As he turned from the house he was struck by the greatness of the viewfrom La Liberté. He had not noticed it before. From this terrace helooked out over all the surrounding country, verdant and undulating,even over the top of the forest. In the far distance the Sound shonelike a strip of silver, and above the Sound the sun arose.

He walked back to his carriage in deep thought. Stupidly, a bit of anursery rhyme, with a lovely little tune to it, came into his head:

Oh, it is not the fault of the hen,
That the cock be dead.
It is the fault of the nightingale,
Within the green garden.

He had forgotten all about the rope. On being informed by Kresten thathe had managed to do the repair without it, he did not find a word tosay to him.

During the rest of the drive he was very wide awake. It seemed to himthat he had much to do, that he must rearrange all the chess men uponthe board. The occupation carried in its train many ideas pleasantlyrefreshing to a man who in his daily life deals much with books and law,and who had been playing omber with three old bachelors only this lastnight.

The apothecary's widow was no Christiane Vulpius, that was clear. Shewas not a person to anchor anybody. She might on the contrary have it inher to lift the young man, whom he had decided for her, off the ground,and together those two might fly, nobody could tell where to, all awayfrom his supremacy. That she had thus deceived him he did not mind. Heliked her for it; he was so rarely surprised in life. But it was a luckything that he had found her out, for he would not lose his poet. Indeed,he thought, he should like to keep them both. He took off his hat for amoment, and the wind of the young morning played around his temples. Hewas not an old man; he was young, compared with what she was used to. Hewas a rich man, a man who valued and deserved the rarest things in life.Could he make her dance for him of an evening? That would make adifferent married life from what he had before experienced. The poetwould remain his protégé, and the friend of the house.

His thoughts went a little further while the sun rose up higher. Anunhappy love is an inspiring feeling. It has created the greatest worksof history. A hopeless passion for his benefactor's wife might make ayoung poet immortal; it was a dramatic thing to have in the house. Thetwo young people would remain loyal to him, however much they mightsuffer, and though love and youth are such strong things. And if theydid not remain so?

The Councilor helped himself to a pinch of snuff, in the relish of whichhis delicate nose seemed to twist a little. His drive was nearlyfinished now. In the still limpid morning air the little town lookedlike a town at the bottom of the sea. The tiled roofs blossomed forthlike a growth of bold or pale coral; the blue smoke arose like thinseaweeds rising to the surface. The bakers were taking their fresh breadfrom the ovens. The morning air made the Councilor feel a little sleepy,but very well. He came to think of that old saying which the peasantscall the bachelors' prayer:

"I pray thee, good Lord, that I may not be married. But if I am to bemarried, that I may not be a cuckold. But if I am to be a cuckold, thatI may not know. But if I am to know, that I may not mind."

These are the thoughts which only such a man can allow himself who haswithin the structure of his mind a perfectly swept room to which he isabsolutely sure that no one but himself has the key.

The next evening, that being Saturday, Anders came to the Councilor'shouse for supper. Afterward he read to his host a poem about a youngpeasant who watches three wild swans at night transform themselves intothree maidens, and bathe in the lake. He steals the wings of one ofthem, which she has laid off while bathing, and makes her his wife. Shebears him children. But one day she recovers her wings from where he hashidden them, and puts them on. She circles above the house in everlarger rings, and at last disappears in the air.

How is it that he writes this, that he should write this? the Councilorthought. It is curious. He has not seen her dance.

Now the beech forests of the province unfolded themselves. The gray rainfell for a few days around all the world as the veil around a bride, andthere came a morning when all the woods were green.

This happens in Denmark every year in May, but impresses you every year,and it impressed these people of a hundred years ago as somethingentirely surprising and inexplicable. Through all the long months ofwinter you have been, even within the deep of the woods, exposed to thewinds and the bleak light of heaven. Then, all of a sudden, the month ofMay builds a dome over your head, and creates for you a refuge, amysterious sanctuary for all human hearts. The young light foliage, softas silk, springs out here and there like little tufts of down, littlenew wings which the forest is hanging out and trying on. But the nextday, or the day after, you walk in a bower. All perpendicular lines maygive the impression of either a fall or a rise. The beech trees'pewter-gray columns not only raise themselves, and reach forth from theground toward infinity, the ether, the sun as the earth swings aroundit, but they lift and carry the lofty, the tremendous, roof of the airyhall. The light within, less bright than before, seems more powerful,filled with meaning, pregnant with secrets which are light inthemselves, although unknowable to mortals. Here and there an old ruggedoak, slow in putting out its leaves, opens a peephole in the ceiling.The fragrance and freshness encircle you as in an embrace. The branches,swaying down from above, seem to caress you or bless you, and as youwalk onward you go under an incessant benediction.

Then all the country goes to the woods! to the woods! to make the mostof a glory which does not last, for soon the leaves will darken andharden, and a shadow sink within. Driving and walking, the townsemigrate to the forest, sing and play amongst the tall trees, and bringbread and butter and make coffee upon the sward.

The Councilor also walked in the woods, and Domine, non sum dignus, hethought. Young Anders also confused the registers in the office, andleft his bed untouched at night, and from La Liberté Fransine went out,her new straw bonnet upon her arm.

When the landscape was at its prettiest, the Councilor received a visitfrom his friend, Count Augustus von Schimmelmann. In spite of adifference in age of fifteen years, the two were real friends, united bymany sympathies and common tastes. When the young Count was fifteenyears old, the old Councilor had for a year filled the place of a friendof his, who had died, as tutor to the boy, and later they had metabroad, in Italy, and could talk together of books and religions, and offar people and places. For some years they had not met, but this was dueto no estrangement between them, but to a development through which theCount had been passing, during which he had been engaged in making forhimself a sort of modus vivendi, in which undertaking his old friendcould have been of no use to him.

Count Augustus was by nature of a heavy and melancholy disposition. Hewanted to be very happy but he had no talent for happiness. He hadsuffered during his youth. Somewhere, somewhere in the world, he hadthought, there must be a great, a wonderful, happiness, the fons etorigo of the power which manifests itself in the delights of music, offlowers, and friendship. He had collected flowers, studied music, andhad many friends. He had tried a life of pleasure and had been madehappy many times. But the road leading from it all into the heart ofthings he had not found. As time went on a dreadful thing had happenedto him: one thing had become to him as good as another. Now, later inlife, he had accepted the happiness of life in a different way, not ashe really believed it to be, but, as in a reflection within a mirror,such as others saw it.

This inner development had begun when he had unexpectedly come into avery large fortune. Left to himself, he would have thought very littleof it, for he did not know what he was to do with the money. But uponthis occasion he was impressed by the attitude of the world around him:the happening occupied it much; the world thought it a great andsplendid thing for him. Count Augustus was by nature very envioushimself, and had housed this particular agony many times, mostly towardpeople in books, so that he was in a position to value the weight of thefeeling. Next to painting a picture of which you yourself approve, themost pleasant thing is perhaps to paint a picture about which the wholeworld agrees to approve. Thus with the happiness of Count Augustus.Slowly he took to living, so to say, upon the envy of the outside world,and to accept his happiness according to the quotation of the day. Henever let himself be deceived into believing that the world was right;he worked upon a system of bookkeeping by double entry. Under the entryof the world he had much to be proud or thankful for; he had hardlyanything but assets in this account. He had an old name, one of thegreatest estates and finest houses in Denmark, a beautiful wife, fourpretty and industrious boys, the eldest twelve years old, a greatfortune, a high prestige. He was an unusually handsome man, and becameeven more so with age, which went well with his type, and at this timeof life he was a majestic figure. In the Consultation Chamber he hadbeen called the Alcibiades of the North. He looked stronger than he was,like a man who enjoys his food and wine and sleeps well at night. He didnot enjoy his food or wine much, and thought that he slept very badly,but to be envied by his neighbors for these goods of life became to himquite an acceptable substitute for the real goods.

Even the jealousy of his wife was, from this point of view, useful tohim. The Countess had no reason to be jealous of her husband. Indeed itwas doubtful whether, amongst all the women he had met, he did not likehis wife best. But fifteen years of married life and four big sons hadnot cured her of her watchfulness and distrust, of the tears and longscenes, sometimes ending in her fainting away, which as a young manCount Augustus had thought a heavy cross. Now her jealousy took itsplace in his scheme of things, suggesting or proving to him thepossibility, not of the ladies of the surrounding country seats and ofthe court falling in love with him--for that they unquestionablydid--but of him himself falling in love with them, or with one of them.He came to depend upon her attitude, and had she reformed and done awaywith her jealousy, he would have missed it. Like to the Emperor in hisnew clothes, he was walking on, dignified, his life a continualprocession, entirely successful in every respect except perhaps tohimself. He did not think highly of his system, but it did not workbadly, and during the last five years he had been happier than before.

While he had thus, like a coral polyp, been building up his moral world,the Councilor could have done him no good whatever. For he had not gotit in him to be envious of anybody, and he might have shaken the wholebuilding. But now that it was firmly fastened, and he himself safelyencysted within it, with no soft parts exposed, even to the extent oftaking the whole matter a bit in jest, he met his old friend again withgreat pleasure. The Councilor, for his part, would always have beenpleased to meet him. So would probably Diogenes always have been pleasedto meet Alexander. Alexander was pleased with the moment when hedeclared that had he not been Alexander he would have been Diogenes. Butwho knows whether the great conqueror, who was very likely to a certainextent dependent upon the opinion of the world, would at the time haveliked to hear the philosopher of the tub declare that had he not beenDiogenes he would have liked to be Alexander. Later on in his career hemight have allowed himself the luxury of a second meeting, and a realdiscussion upon the nature of things, with the Cynic. So did CountAugustus.

The two friends might still have passed as Alexander and Diogenes of1836 as they walked in the woods, along roads strewn with the silkyfallen teguments of the young leaves. In their dark clothes they werelike two sedate birds, rooks or magpies, out to enjoy the May afternoonwith their gayer colleagues.

They sat down upon a rustic seat in the forest and talked.

"As we live," said Count Augustus, "we become aware of the humiliatingfact that as we are dependent upon our subordinates--and without mybarber I should be, within a week, socially, politically, anddomestically a wreck--so are we, in the spiritual world, dependent uponpeople stupider than ourselves. I have, as you may know, some time sincegiven up any artistic ambitions and have been occupying myself, withinthe sphere of the arts, with connoisseurship." (He was indeed a shrewdcritic of all objects of art.) "Here I have learned that it is notpossible to paint any definite object, say, a rose, so that I, or anyother intelligent critic, shall not be able to decide, within twentyyears, at what period it was painted, or, more or less, at what place onthe earth. The artist has meant to create either a picture of a rose inthe abstract, or the portrait of a particular rose; it is never in theleast his intention to give us a Chinese, Persian, or Dutch, or,according to the period, a rococo or a pure Empire rose. If I told himthat this was what he had done, he would not understand me. He might beangry with me. He would say: 'I have painted a rose.' Still he cannothelp it. I am thus so far superior to the artist that I can mete himwith a measure of which he himself knows nothing. At the same time Icould not paint, and hardly see or conceive, a rose myself. I mightimitate any of their creations. I might say: 'I will paint a rose in theChinese or Dutch or in the rococo manner.' But I should never have thecourage to paint a rose as it looks. For how does a rose look?"

He sat for a while in thought, his walking stick upon his knees.

"Thus," he said, "with the general human idea of virtue, justice, or, ifyou will, of God. If anybody were to ask me what was the truth aboutthese things, I should answer: 'My friend, your question is withoutmeaning. The Hebrews conceived their God like this; the Aztecs ofAmerica, about whom I have just read a book, like that; the Jansenitesagain, like that. If you want any details of the various views I shallbe pleased to give them, having devoted a certain amount of my time tothis study. But let me advise you not to repeat your question inintelligent company.' But at the same time I should be, for thissuperior view of mine, in debt to the naïve people who have believed inthe possibility of obtaining a direct and absolutely truthful idea ofGod, and who were mistaken. For had they made it their object only tocreate a special Hebrew, Aztec or Christian idea of God, where would thepresuppositions of the observer have been found? He would be in theposition of the Israelites, who were to make bricks without straw.Indeed, my friend, while the fools could have done without us, we aredependent upon the fools for our better knowledge.

"When," he went on after a little pause, "you and I, on our morningwalk, pass a pawnbroker's shop, and, pointing at a painted board in thewindow, on which is written 'Clothes mangled here,' you say to me:'Look, clothes are mangled here--I shall go and bring my washing,' Ismile at you, and inform you that you will find neither mangle normangler here, that the painted board is for sale.

"Most religions are like that board, and we smile at them.

"But I should have no opportunity of smiling, or of feeling or showingmy superiority, and, in fact, the painted board would not be there atall, if, at some time or other, some people had not believed firmly inthe possibility, in the wisdom, of mangling clothes, had not even beenfirmly convinced of the existence of their own mangle, with whichclothes were indeed mangled."

The Councilor listened to him. Now that they were out here together inthe green wood, he thought that he would like to talk of his marriageplans, of which he had not yet informed anyone, not even MadameFransine.

"My friend," he said, "in all this foolishness of which you arespeaking, I myself fit in harmoniously. Alter schützt vor Thorheitnicht. Under this venerable beaver hat of mine, I, while listening toyou, have been harboring little thoughts which came out and flutteredlike those two yellow butterflies"--he pointed at them with hisstick--"little creeds, if you will forgive me, in absolute virtue, inbeauty, even, perhaps, in God. I am seriously contemplating entry intothe bonds of Hymen, and had you come to Hirschholm three months later, Imight have had a Madame Mathiesen to do the honors to you."

Count Augustus was much surprised, but he had so much faith in thewisdom of his friend that before the eyes of his mind the image of amature and pleasant beauty, witty and thrifty, with an agreeable dowry,was instantly formed. Smiling, he hastened to congratulate theCouncilor.

"Yes, but I do not know yet if she will have me," said the old man,"which is the worst of it. For she is not more than a third of my age,and, to the best of my belief, a romantic little devil. She can neithermake a pancake nor darn a sock, and she will not read the philosophy ofHegel. If I get her I shall have to buy the French fashion papers, carrymy wife's shawl at the balls of Hirschholm, study the language offlowers, and take to narrating ghost stories in the winter evenings."

Count Augustus at these words received quite a little shock, so much washe reminded of old days. It was indeed as if he saw young AugustusSchimmelmann playing chess with his tutor at the open window of thelibrary of Lindenburg. For this had always been a particular littletrick of the Councilor's whenever you brought out anything for hisinspection. When you were most confident in your aces and kings he wouldput down a tiny little trump to knock them on the head, and that at amoment when you had not been aware that there were any trumps in. He hadbeen the same as a little boy. When the other children had, in theautumn, been playing under the trees, pretending that the chestnuts werehorses, he would come out with a little cage of white mice, really aliveand thus much more like horses; or, as they were comparing their varioustreasures of knives, wooden soldiers and fishing hooks, he would pullout of his pocket a bit of gunpowder, which might blow up the whole lotin a very fine flash. He did not run down his friends' acquisitions;there was nothing negative in his argument. But he had a little familiardevil which at the right moment put out its head and conjured the weightout of your things, so that you would feel a little flat about them.Those who have no taste for devils disliked this quality in the man. Theopposite type, the chess player for one, was attracted by it. Here CountAugustus had been promenading before him, serenely, his superiority tolife, his secure and unassailable relation to it, when pat! theCouncilor took out of his pocket a little bright bit of risk and made itsparkle between his fingers like a jewel. The younger man had beenuttering words of wisdom, and the old man produced a little flute andplayed three notes on it, just to remind him that there was such a thingas music, and also such a thing as folly, and alas for the heart of hisold pupil.

The Councilor's eyes followed the dance of the butterflies as theydisappeared between the trees. "But light," he said, "terrible as anarmy with banners."

Count Augustus took off his hat and put it on his knees. The calm sweetair of the May evening ran like caressing fingers through his locks. Allthis was so much like old days, this little gentle shock of envy, as ifthe wings of the yellow butterflies had touched his heart. YoungAugustus was again walking, and meditating upon heroism and die fun oflife, in the cool and sweet-smelling air, under a light and silky youngfoliage. He let his silver-headed walking stick describe circles on theground. What was his reputation for enjoying his wine and sleeping wellat night--what was even the genuine enjoyment of these things? he askedhimself now as he remembered words that he had heard long ago: "Whonever ate his bread with tears, and never through the sorrowful nightsat weeping on his bed, he knows ye not, ye heavenly powers." Thoseheavenly powers--he had not thought of them for so long. His heartswelled a little at the remembrance of the way in which hearts do swell.

A figure came toward them down one of the forest paths, drew nearer, andwas recognized by the Councilor as that of his protégé. The Councilorintroduced him to his influential friend, and after a few remarks askedhim to recite a poem for them.

Anders found it difficult to think of anything. His heart, in thisparticular spring, was moving in circles as large as those of theplanets around the sun. Still he wanted to oblige this majestic, coldelderly gentleman. For he was not deceived by the Emperor's new clothes,but saw him at once as the center of a procession, shivering, in hisshirt. In the end he found a little ballad to recite, a little gay dropof overflow from all that happiness and pain which had filled himlately. It was about a young man who goes to sleep in the forest and istaken into fairyland. The fairies love him and look after him with greatconcern, puzzling their little brains to make him happy. The delights offorest life were inspiredly painted, a long line running out at the endof each stanza giving it something of the babbling of a spring in thewoods. But the fairies never sleep and have no knowledge of sleep.Whenever their young friend, fatigued by exquisite pleasure, dozes off,they lament "He dies, he dies!" and strain all their energy to keep himawake. So in the end, to their deep regret, the boy dies from lack ofsleep.

Count Augustus praised the beauty of the poem and thought the beauty ofthe little fairy queen charmingly put into words. This boy, he thought,had in him a very strong streak of primitive sensuality which would haveto be watched if the tastefulness of his production were not to suffer.

"Beware," he said smilingly to the Councilor, "of the delights offairyland. To poor mortals the value of pleasure, surely, lies in itsrarity. Did not the sages of old tell us: He is a fool who knows not thehalf to be more than the whole? Where pleasure goes on forever, we runthe risk of becoming blasé, or, according to our young friend, ofdying."

An idea occurred to the Councilor. This green wood, he thought, might dowell as the setting for a bit of drama. "The Count," he said, smiling,to the boy, "smiles at a little secret into which I have taken him. Iwill make you my confidant as well, Anders; only you must not smile atyour old friend. I hope to procure for you, before long, a youngpatroness to recite to, who may, in the beauty of your fairy queens,dryads and undines, see her own beauty reflected as in a mirror." As ina dim and silvery mirror, just before sunrise, he thought.

The young man, who was still standing up before the two dark figures onthe sea, remained thus for a few moments in silence, as if in deepthought. Then he lifted his hat a little to the Councilor. "I wish youhappiness, I am sure," he said, gravely, looking at him, "and thank youfor telling me. When is this going to be?"

"Ah, I do not know. In the time of the roses, Anders," said theCouncilor, taken somewhat aback by the youth's directness. Anders, aftera moment, bade good-by to the Count and to his patron and went away.Count Schimmelmann, who was an observer of men, followed him with hiseyes. What! he thought. Did the old conjurer of Hirschholm have at hisdisposal not only his old familiar spirit and evidently a dryad to makelove to, but also a young slave of that tribe of Asra who die when theylove?

He felt a little cold, as if left out, not only of life in the abstract,but of some fullness of this particular May evening. He rose from therustic seat and began to walk back. As, in the conversation with hishost, he looked at his face, he noted there a deep, a gently inspiredand resolute, look. "Das," thought the Count, who came of a militaryrace, smiling, "das ist nur die Freude eines Helden den schönen Todeines Helden zu sehen." Later on, however, he thought of these moments.

Now Count Augustus had one real talent and happiness, which other peoplemight well have envied him, but of which he never spoke. He tookhashish, and he took a little only, without ever overdoing the pleasure.Somewhere in the world he may have had brothers in hashish who wouldhave given him half of their lives could he have sold them thiscapacity.

Walking at the Councilor's side, he thought: What shall I dream tonight?Opium, he reflected, is a brutal person who takes you by the collar.Hashish is an insinuating oriental servant who throws a veil over theworld for you, and by experimenting you can arrive at the power ofchoosing the figures within the web of the veil. He had already been arajah hunting tigers from the backs of elephants, and watching bayaderesdancing; he had been the director of the great opera of Paris; and hehad been Shamyl, pushing onward with his rebellious freemen, through thetowering, snow-clad mountain passes of the Caucasus. But tonight whatwould he choose to dream? Could he recall the dewy May nights within thefestoons of boughs at Ingolstadt? If he choose to, could he?--If hecould, would he?

After supper at the Councilor's house he ordered his magnificentlandaulet and his much-envied English pair of horses, and drove away.

As Councilor Mathiesen was preparing to go to La Liberté, a-wooing, thenext day, news was brought which proved to be a nut somewhat hard forhim to crack. It was served him by his housekeeper, along with his newhat which he had asked her to take out of the box.

This woman, whose name was Abelone, had been in his house for more thanfifteen years, but was still a young woman, tall, red-haired, and of anextraordinary physical strength. She had lived all her life atHirschholm, and there was no particle of the life of the little townthat she did not know. It was strange that there should be any mysteryabout herself, but there were people who told that she had been, as agirl of fifteen, suspected of concealment of birth and infanticide, andhad had a narrow escape. The Councilor held her in respect. He had notmet her match as an economist, not only in the keeping of his house, butin existence as a whole. To her, waste was probably the one deadly sinand abomination. Everything which came within the circle of herconsciousness had to be made use of in one way or another, and nothing,as far as he could see, was ever thrown away by her. If she had hadnothing but a rat to make a ragoût of, she would have made a good ragoûtof it. In his own intercourse with her he always felt that every wordand mood of his was somehow taken stock of, and kept, to be made use ofsooner or later.

On this pleasant May day she proceeded to report to him the behavior, onthe previous night, of his young clerk, whom she had until then takeninto possession as an article of inventory of the household, and treatedkindly.

This young man had been part of a company at the inn. As the beer hadcome to an end, he had promised his convives that he would give themsomething better, and being, as the Councilor knew, in possession of thekeys to the church, where he had been going through the parochialregisters, he had fetched from the sacristy four bottles of communionwine, with which he had regaled the party. He had not been in the leastdrunk, but quiet in his manner, as usual. He had, Abelone added,proposed the Councilor's health in this wine.

While she was narrating, the Councilor was looking at himself in theglass, for he had decided, with the slight nervousness suitable in asuitor, to put on another stock, and was now tying it with solicitude.It is not too much to say that Abelone's tale frightened him. This was,in a Hirschholm format, Lucifer storming heaven. In what words had hisown toast been drunk?

He came to look at Abelone, behind him, in the mirror. Something in hermanner, more than in her broad, stagnant face, which was ever like thelocked door behind which was kept her rich store of material to be madeuse of, gave him the impression that she, too, was frightened, or deeplymoved. There was more here, then, than met the eye. Abelone was by nomeans a gossip. Whatever she knew about other people she did not letout--she probably knew of a better recipe for making use of it--and fourbottles of communion wine would be no more to her than four bottles. Ifshe would not let the devil have the boy, was it that she wanted himherself? Was he the rat out of which she was to make her ragoût?

He turned back to his own face, and met the eyes of a good councilor. Tobe a spectator when Lucifer was storming heaven might be a highlyinteresting experience; more interesting still if one could succeed inputting a spoke in the wheel for him.

"My good Abelone," he said, smiling, "Hirschholm seems to have a littletalent for scandal. I myself instructed Mr. Anders to take away the winefrom the sacristy. I have reason to believe that it was, by mistake,mixed with rum, which, not being made from the grape, can hardly besuitable for the transubstantiation. Mr. Anders will see to it that itis replaced."

Thereupon he drove off to La Liberté with much stuff for thought, mostof it, curiously enough, about his housekeeper. It was not till heturned up the poplar avenue that his mind turned again toward hisfuture.

On his arrival he did not find the young lady in, and had to wait for alittle while in the garden-room. On a little console table Fransine hadput a large bunch of jessamine in a vase. The sweet and bitter scent wasstrong, nearly stifling, in the cool room. He was a little nervous abouthis own appearance in the rôle of a suitor, not about her answer. Forshe would accept him. She was pretty sure to do, in life, as she wastold. He wondered whether, when he should be driving away again from LaLiberté as her accepted wooer, she would occupy herself at all with thethought of her future as his wife. That it would be he, who, later inlife, would be told how things were to turn out under her hands, thatwas a different matter.

It seemed to him, while he was waiting, that he was coming into a closerunderstanding with the furniture in the sky-blue room. The spinet, themusical box, and the chairs had withdrawn a little, with their backs tothe wall, as if uneasy about him, like the furniture of a doll's house,frightened at the intrusion of a grown-up person. Would the time forgames be over now? He tried to set them at ease. "I have not come," hesaid to them all, "to destroy, but to fulfill. The best games are tocome."

At this, as if actually soothed into existence again, young MadameLerche came into the room in a pink frock with flounces, followed by hermaid who carried the samovar and tea tablecloth for the guest. He could,after a bit of pleasant conversation, begin his proposal.

Fransine always gave him the impression of being anxious, or pleased, tohave done with what she had taken on. For what reason he knew not, forthere was nothing else on which she seemed at all keen to get started.She did not, he thought, run the risk of Faust in asking the moment tostay because of its loveliness. She pushed all her moments on as quicklyas a little nun of Italy, who counts her rosary, pushes on the beads. Ashe now talked to her of his love and audacious hopes, she grew a littlepaler and moved her slim figure slightly in the big chair. Her dark eyesmet his and looked away again. She was pleased when it was over. Sheaccepted him as he had thought, even with a little emotion, as a refugein life. The Councilor kissed her hand, and she was pleased to have thatover.

Afterward, as the betrothed couple were having tea together, Fransinepresiding on the sofa behind the tall samovar, to affect a littleimportance the Councilor told her of Anders and the communion wine. Herehe nearly got more than he had bargained for, for it made a terribleimpression upon her. She looked as if she wanted to sink into the groundto get away from such abomination. When she could speak, she asked him,deadly pale, whether the pastor knew it. The Councilor had not expectedsuch a profound awe of sacred things in her. It was an amiable quality,but there was more here, a fear of ghosts, or a ghost itself. Hereassured her, and told her how he had decided to free the young clerkfrom the consequences of his folly. Upon this she gave him a greatluminous glance, so languishing and alive in its deep dark sweetnessthat it filled all the room, like the perfume of the jessamine, and madehim feel powerful and benevolent.

"I ought," said the Councilor, "to frighten the boy for his own sake.Why, if I had not helped him to this job, he would be starving." At thislast word Fransine again grew pale. "And still you know, my dear," theCouncilor went on, "he has a great career in front of him. This is a sadthing: to see a thoughtless boy, a vagabond, ruin the future of a greatman. And to me it is somewhat my future too, as if he were my son. But Iam afraid to awaken in him an obstinacy which I shall not be able tosubdue. The gentle touch of a woman might appeal to his better feelings.He is, surely, the type of human who ought to have a guardian angel, andit would be noble in you if you would assist me in saving him by readinghim a little sermon."

So it was arranged that Fransine should accompany the Councilor toHirschholm to preach to Anders Kube. She quickly put on a pink bonnetthrough which the sun heightened the color of her face to the glow of arose. It was a little unusual for a young woman to drive out alone witha gentleman. Even with Kresten on the back seat, the Councilor thoughtthat the passers-by would conclude upon their engagement, and he enjoyedthe drive. Fransine, by his side, looked at the trotting horse andseemed happy to be getting it over with.

The Councilor and his young bride, who was to act the part of a guardianangel, arm in arm ascended the narrow stair to Anders's small roomsbehind the big, newly unfolded lime tree, and found his sister, who wasthe wife of a merchant captain of Elsinore, and her little boy with him.This made the young woman's errand more complicated, but eased herheart. She felt that she might pass a peaceful and pleasing hour in thiscompany. The sister and brother were much alike, and when the childlooked at her, the heart of Fransine ceased to beat, for here was abambino such as she had known in the churches of Naples--a cherub withAnders's eyes, showing the poet's personality as might a little mirrorin heaven.

Fransine had come, in her elegant shawl, as a patroness to the poor anderroneous. She stood now, dark-eyed and stock-still, with the face ofRachel as she said to Jacob: "Give me children or else I die." Shewanted to kneel down to hold the child against her, but was doubtfulabout the correctness of such a move. Then it occurred to her that shemight obtain the same result by lifting him to her level. She placed himupon a chair, first to look out of the window, then to play with herfingers in their black mittens. The child stared at her. He had neverseen such ringlets as hers, and poked his little hand into them. Toamuse him she took off her bonnet and shook the whole mass of darktresses forward. They fell like clouds around her face, and the childlaughed and pulled at them with both hands. She held him against herbosom, lightly, laughing, looking into his face, and felt for a momenthis heart, like a small clock, beating against her own. As the otherslooked at them she blushed. Waves of deep color washed over her face,but still she could not help smiling.

The Councilor began to converse with the young mother, who sat down onthe sofa, in her neat white fluted cap, with the little boy on her lap,and the two young people were left at the window in a tête-à-tête.Fransine felt that the time had come for her to enter upon her mission.

"Mr. Anders," she said, "the Councilor--my fiancé"--she correctedherself, "has told me with much regret that he has had reason to bedisappointed, to be angry with you. It is not right; you must not let itbe so. You do not know, perhaps, in Hirschholm, how much evil and miserythere is in the world. But I pray you, Mr. Anders, do not do thesethings which bring people into perdition."

Although she was addressing him so solemnly, her face still wore areflection of her smile of a moment ago. Even as she went on talking andwas deeply moved, it remained there.

Anders did not hear a word of what she was saying. With that greattalent for oblivion, which the Councilor did not always appreciate inhis protégé, Anders had long since forgotten all about the matter towhich she was referring. He smiled back at her with exactly her ownexpression. As her face changed, his changed. They took light and shadefrom each other like two mirrors hung opposite each other in a room.

Fransine felt that the situation was not developing quite as it oughtto, but she did not know what to do.

"The Councilor," she said, "loves you as if you were his son, and if hehad not helped you, you might have been starving. He is wise. He knowsbetter than we do how to behave in the world. Look," she said, fumblingat a small object which was tied to the golden watch-chain around herneck. It was a little piece of coral, formed like a horn, such as theplain people of Italy use as a talisman. "This my grandmother gave me.It is said to protect you against evil eyes. But she thought that itwould guard you also against smallpox, and your own dangerous thoughts.For this reason she gave it to me. You take it now, and let it remindyou to be careful, to follow the Councilor's advice."

Anders took the little amulet from her. As their hands met, they bothgrew very pale.

From his place on the sofa, the Councilor could see with the corner ofhis eye that great forces were in play. And he saw plainly that hisbride gave to the young clerk, as some sort of symbol, what looked likea little pair of horns. With this, were it more or less than he hadexpected, he had to be content, and he and Fransine walked down thestair, arm in arm, to where Kresten was waiting for them with thecarriage.

As it was not considered by the social world of Hirschholm quite properthat an engaged couple, even though the bridegroom were a man of acertain age, and the bride a widow, should be much together bythemselves, it became, during the summer months, the custom for Anders,in the capacity of a chaperon, to accompany the Councilor on his visitsto La Liberté. Upon fine evenings the three of them would have tea onthe terrace, and Fransine made them pretty little Italian dishes whichreminded the Councilor of other days and things. Looking then, in themild, glowing evening light, across the tea table at the two youngpeople who were both so precious to him--although their order ofprecedence within his heart might have surprised them--the Councilorfelt happy and in harmony with the universe as he very rarely hadbefore. It was difficult, he thought, to imagine a more perfect idyll."I, too," he said to himself, "have been in Arcadia."

At times the attitudes of his young shepherd and shepherdess surprisedhim and made him uneasy, and he was reminded of a tale which he had readin a book of travel. Therein a party of British explorers in a Negrovillage came upon a troop of prisoners who were being fattened, behind apalisade, for the table of their capturers. The indignant Britishersoffered to buy their freedom, but the victims refused, for they thoughtthat they were having a more pleasant time than they had ever had. Wasit possible, the Councilor thought, that the young people had some planof escape that they were skillfully concealing, or were they no moreprovident than the cannibals' captives? Both possibilities seemed to himequally unlikely.

Still he was not in his parable very far from the truth; or the truth,had he known it, would not have appeared to him any more probable.

To Anders the situation was simplified by his decision to kill himselfon Fransine's wedding day, a decision which he had made when he heard ofher engagement, and which seemed to him as inevitable as death itself.To the Danish peasant of his type the idea of flinging away your lifecomes very easily. Life never seems--or, indeed, is--to them any verygreat boon, and suicide in one way or another may be said to be thenatural end of them.

Anders had not been spoiled by fate. If he had been spoiled at all, ithad been done by other powers. He had felt the common lot of his kind,that is: to be, as if he had been made out of some stuff essentiallydifferent from the rest of the world, invisible to other people. When hehad met Fransine, she had seen him. Without any effort, her clear eyeshad taken him all in. This sort of human nonexistence of which he had attimes been tired had come to an end, and he had promised himself muchfrom his newly gained reality. If she was marrying the Councilor, andturning away her eyes, it was only reasonable that he himself shouldturn elsewhere.

He was always very reserved about his own plans, and in this case feltthat his decision concerned nobody but himself. Therefore he did not letit out in any manner. The Councilor, had he known of it, would not onlyhave prevented it, but would also have disliked it. Few people wouldchoose to sit down at their tea tables with a ghost of today a week.Fransine it might have made unhappy. Anders had no chivalry in hisdisposition, but he had a talent for friendliness, and he would not haveliked to grieve any of them. To avoid it he had even planned to borrow asailing boat from a friend of his amongst the fishermen of Rungsted andto capsize by accident. He was a skilled sailor and could manage that.From time to time he had a strange feeling toward Anders Kube, as towardsome central figure in one of his own poems. Sometimes he felt a littleguilty, and then again as a benefactor, for he was helping him to escapea lot of unpleasant things. Upon the whole he had, behind his palisade,as quiet eyes as those of the Negro prisoners in the tale.

Apart from this central idea of his, he had in his head a great poem, aswan song, which he was to finish before himself. Having written beforeof the forests and fields, and relying upon the sea for a last embrace,he had let all his thoughts wander toward her. Naiads and tritons dancedin the waves within this last great epos of his; the whales passed overtheir heads like clouds; dolphins, swans, and fishes played in thepowerful and pearly foam of long breakers, and the winds played atflutes and bassoons, and joined in great orchestras. That freedom inwhich people live, who can die, had got into it; and although it wasnot, as a drama, very long, there was no end to its many aspects. Heread it to Fransine, in the afternoons at La Liberté, as it proceeded.

As to Fransine, it was natural for her to live like this, from hand tomouth. She had no real idea of time; indeed did not have it in her todistinguish between time and eternity. That was one of the traits ofcharacter which made the ladies of Hirschholm think her a littlefeebleminded. She had never before in her life been as happy as this,and could not feel sure whether the uncertainty about its duration andabout the future might not be a peculiarity of happiness. For the resther thoughts followed the moods of Anders. She read his last great poem,and as it was all about the sea, she had the frocks of her trousseaumade in hues of sky and sea blue--rather heavenly the two men thoughther.

As during these months the Councilor came to know his bride better, hewas often surprised by her extreme disregard of truth. He was himself arearranger of existence, and in many ways in sympathy with her; also inthis he found her methods to fall in well with his own plans. But stillmore than once this talent of hers impressed him. It was, he reflected,an especially feminine trick, a code de femme of practical economy,proved by innumerable generations. Women, wanting to be happy, are upagainst a force majeure. Hence they may be justified in taking a shortcut to happiness by declaring things to be, in fact, that which theywant them to be. They have by practice made this household remedyindispensable in the housekeeping of life. In this way, because he wasto be her husband, he was pronounced by his young bride ipso factogood, clever, and generous. He did not take it as a personal compliment;she had probably made use of the same formula in connection with the oldapothecary Lerche. So were his presents to her always beautiful, so werethe sermons of old Pastor Abel of Hirschholm highly moving, so was theweather nice when he took her out for a drive. An exception to the rulewas formed by her frocks and bonnets, about which she took much genuinetrouble; but then she had such a talent for wearing clothes that in thisshe could successfully strive toward an ideal. Whether she had come totake refuge in this woman's religion from personal need, or had beeninaugurated into it by wise female Nestors, he did not know. Few women,he thought, come to know romance, married bliss, or success in lifeexcept by such an arrangement. The principle had some likeness to CountSchimmelmann's new clothes, but, invented by simple women, it was devoidof any masculine ambition to prove; it was plain dogma, indisputable.

Thus did the witches of old make up wax children, carry them for ninemonths under their clothes, and then have them christened, at midnight,with the name of someone of their acquaintance, and after that for allpractical purposes the wax child served in place of its namesake. In thehands of an amiable witch this pretty white magic might work much good.But if ever a young witch conceives and carries for nine months a childof her own flesh and blood? Ah! it is then that there will be the deviland all to pay.

The Councilor, seeing his protégé so absorbed in his new work, asked himto read it to him. Anders saw no reason whatever why his old friendshould not know of it, and recited bits of it to him from time to time.The old man was very much impressed, filled with an admiration which attimes came near to idolatry. It seemed to him, too, that he had come outinto a new sort of space and time, into the ether itself, until he wasswimming and flying in the blue, and in a new kind of harmony andhappiness. He thought it the beginning of great things. He discussed itmuch with the poet, and even advised him upon it, so that not a few ofthe Councilor's own ideas and reflections were, in one way or another,echoed within the epos, and he was, during these summer months, in a waymaking love, and writing poetry, to his bride by proxy--a piquantsituation, which would last till his wedding day. For days and weeks thethree of them, even while taking tea upon the terrace, would be livingin the waters of great, heavenly seas.

Two days before the wedding the Councilor received from a friend inGermany a copy of the new novel, Wally: Die Zweiflerin, by youngGutzkow, about which the waves of indignation and discussion were at thetime going high there.

As it will be remembered, Wally and Cæsar love each other, but theycannot marry, for Wally has promised to become the bride of theambassador of Sardinia. Cæsar then demands of her that she shall, tosymbolize the spiritual marriage between her and him, upon the verywedding morning, show herself to him naked, in her full beauty. Thereexists an old German poem in which Sigune in this way reveals herself toTchionatulander.

The Councilor was so much interested in the novel that he brought itwith him on his afternoon visit to La Liberté, and went on with hisreading, seated under a tree on the terrace, while the young people wentto look at a tame fox cub which Fransine kept in the kennel. Heconsidered that he would not, in the coming week, have much time forreading, and that he had better finish his book today.

He read:

To his left appears a picture of enrapturing beauty: Sigune, who uncovers herself more bashfully than the Medician Venus covers her nudity. She stands there helpless, blinded by the divine madness of love. It has asked this grace of her, and she is no more free of will; she is all shame, innocence, and devotion. And as a sign that a pious initiation sanctifies the scene, no red rose flowers there; only a tall white lily, blooming close to her body, covers her as a symbol of chastity. A mute second--a breath--that was all. A sacrilege, but a sacrilege inspired by innocence and by ever faithful renunciation....

The Councilor closed his book, and leaning back in his chair, as if hewere looking toward heaven, he even closed his eyes. The air under thecrown of the lime tree was filled with green and golden light, with thesweet scent of the linden blossoms, and the humming of innumerable bees.

This, he thought, is very pretty. Very pretty, let old Professor Menzelthunder against it as he likes. A dream of a golden age, of an eternalinnocence and sweetness came back to him. Let the critics say that suchthings do not happen; that does not really matter, for a new variety offlower has been forced in the frame of imagination. He could hearFransine and Anders talking a little way off, but he could not hear whatthe talk was about.

From the kennel the two young people had walked down to the vegetablegarden, south of the house, to pick some lettuce, peas, and youngcarrots for the supper table. Part of the low garden was already shadedby a row of old crooked birches which formed the boundary fence of thegarden. Through an opening they could look out on the fields, where, inthe mellow, golden, evening air two maids, walking out to milk the cowsand carrying their tall milk pans on their heads, threw tremendouslylong blue shadows across the clover field.

Fransine asked Anders's advice about the fox cub. "In the autumn," shesaid, "if I let him out, will he be able to find his own food?"

"I should let him out," said Anders, "only he may be too familiar withyour hen-coops, and come back in the night." He had a vision of thesharp-toothed, lonely fox, the ghost of the woolen playmate of theirsummer evenings, in a frosty, silvery, winter night, trotting on to LaLiberté. "Then you must come and catch him again," said Fransine.

"But then I shall not be here," said Anders, without thinking.

"Oh," said she, "what high offices, in what state, are taking you awayfrom us, Mr. Anders?" Anders was silent. What high offices, in whatstate?

"I have got to go away," he said at last. Fransine did not dispute thefact. Probably she knew enough of the hard necessity, mistress of menand gods. But after a moment she looked at him, as intently as if shehad thrown her whole being at him in the glance. "But if you are nothere," she said, "it will be--" she reflected for a second--"it will betoo cold here!" she said. Anders understood her very well. An immensewave of pity lifted him up and hurled him at her feet. It would indeedbe too cold for her. And his soul was rent between the despair of herfeeling cold, and the despair of his being, by that time, too cold tocomfort her. "What am I to do then?" she asked him. She was standing upbefore him. Except that she was clothed, and her two hands weretherefore reposing lightly on the flounces of her dress, she was holdingthe exact pose of that Venus of Medici of which the Councilor was at thesame moment reading. Looking at her, Anders remembered that he hadbefore seen her as a child who would not lose, in him, her favoritedoll. Now he saw her differently, as the doll which could not lose itschild, the child who was to play with it, dress and undress it, and gointo ecstasies over it--an ownerless doll, a stray doll, except in hishands.

"Mr. Anders," she said, "in those weeks after Easter, when we were muchtogether in the Councilor's house, at that picnic in Rungsted--do youremember?--you told me that it would be your happiness to remain here,as my friend, all your life." He did not speak. Those weeks after Easterhurt when you thought of them, and they might kill if you spoke aboutthem. "Are you such a faithless friend?" she asked.

"Listen, Madame Fransine," he said, "I dreamed of you two nights ago."At this she smiled, but was much interested. "I dreamed," he said, "thatyou and I were walking to a great seashore, where a strong wind wasblowing. You said to me: 'This is to go on forever.' But I said that wewere only dreaming. 'Oh, no, you must not think that,' you said. 'Now,if I take off my new bonnet and throw it into the sea, will you believethat it is no dream?' So you untied your bonnet and threw it from you,and the waves carried it far away. Still I thought that it was a dream.'Oh, how ignorant you are,' you said, 'but if I take off my silk shawland throw it away, you must see that all this is real.' You threw backyour silk shawl, and from the sand the wind lifted it and carried itoff. But I could not help thinking that it was a dream. 'If I cut off myleft hand,' you said, 'will you be convinced?' You had a pair ofscissors in the pocket of your frock. You held up your left hand, justas if it had been a rose, and cut it off. And with that----" He stopped,very pale. "With that I woke up," he said.

She stood quite still. She had much faith in dreams, and had feltherself walking with him on the seashore of which he had just told her.But now she was collecting all her arsenal to keep him, for she reallythought that if she were to lose him she would die. She would cut offher left hand for him, if he wanted it, but it were better that itshould be under his head. In the clear and sweet evening air she felther own body strong and light as a young birch tree, her slim waistpliant as a branch, her young breasts resting lightly, like a pair ofsmooth, round eggs, in the nest of warm and fresh lawn. Her flaming gazewas so deeply sunk in his, and his in hers, that it would take apowerful crane to lift them apart again.

She lifted the Venus's lower hand just a little and held it toward him,slowly, as if it had been a heavy weight. He stretched out his hand andtouched her finger tip. It was exactly the gesture of the Creator ofMichelangelo transmitting divine life to young Adam. Such variousreproductions of high classic art were moving about, in the evening, inthe kitchen garden of La Liberté.

They heard the Councilor stirring in his seat, laying away his book andgazing up into the crown of the tree. Slowly, without a word, Fransineturned and walked along the terrace toward him, and Anders followed herwith the basket of lettuce and peas.

The Councilor still had a finger in the book, at the page where he hadlast been reading. "Ah, Fransine," he said, "here I have been smugglinginto the academy of refinement of La Liberté a little sans-culotte ofliterature. The young author has been put into prison for it in Germany.That is right. Punish the flesh and let the spirit fly. Since theprofessors of universities have confiscated the poet, we may enjoy hispoetry. I am speaking frivolously, my dear," he went on, "but upon anevening like this, the moralist cuts a poor figure. And what reallycaptivated me was a curious incident, a very minor matter. For it seemsto me that Gutzkow gives, in the meeting place of the rash young lovers,an accurate description of your own little temple of friendship, at LaLiberté, down in the beech wood."

With these words he got up, and went to have tea with his bride, leavingthe book on the seat under the linden.

Upon the last day before his wedding the Councilor paid no visit to LaLiberté. This is considered the correct thing in Denmark. The bride isgiven the last day to meditate in peace upon the past and the future,and the bridal couple meet again only in church. The Councilor also hadmuch to do, and spent his day going through papers and makingarrangements with his subordinates, so as not to have the first days ofhis honeymoon disturbed by prosaic matters. But he sent over youngAnders with a large bouquet of roses. It was a fine summer day.

In the evening, after sunset, Anders took his gun and went out to shootduck. The Councilor, also, found no rest in his rooms, and started for along walk, as may a bridegroom, filled with sentiments. He took the roadacross the fields to La Liberté, to roam, unnoticed by the world and byher, in the nearness of his bride.

The sky of that summer night was a clear candid blue, like the petal ofa periwinkle. Large silvery clouds were towered up all around thehorizon; the big trees were holding up their severe dark crowns againstthem. The long wet grass was of a luminous green. All the colors of theday were within the landscape, no less bright than in daytime, butchanged, as if revealing a new side of their being, as if the wholeworld of color had been transposed from a major to a minor key. Thestillness and silence of the night was filled with a deep life, as ifwithin a moment the universe would give up its secret. As the oldCouncilor looked up, he was surprised to see the full summer moonstanding in the middle of the sky. Its shining disc threw a narrowbridge of gold across the iron-gray plane of the sea, as if a shoal ofmany hundred little fishes were playing in the surface; and still it didnot seem to spread much light, as if no more light were needed.

Now that he knew them to be there, however, he began to distinguish thetransparent pools of shadow under the trees, which the moon was making,and the narrow little puddles along the road, just at the edge of thelong, wet, and fragrant grass.

The Councilor found that he had been standing for some time, looking atthe moon. She was a long way off, he knew, but there was nothing betweenher and him but the diaphanous air, thinner, he had been told, thehigher you got up. How was it that he had never been able to write apoem to the moon? He had much to say to her. She was so white and round,and the white and round things he had always loved.

Suddenly it seemed to him that the moon had as much to say to him as heto her. More, or at least she expressed it with more power. Old, yes, hewas old; so was she, older than he. It is not a bad thing to be old, hethought; you see and enjoy things better than when you are young. It isnot only in the old wine that the bouquet lies; it wants an old palateas well.

But was this powerful communication from the moon a warning? Heremembered the nursery tale of the thief who has stolen a fat sheep andis eating it in the moonlight. Mockingly he holds up a bit of fat muttonto the moon, crying:

See, my dear,
What I here
Can with pleasure offer.

And the moon replies:

Thief! beware!
Key, with care,
Burn that stupid scoffer.

Whereupon a red-hot key comes flying through the air and brands the faceof the thief. That story must have been told him by his old nurse fiftyyears ago. Everything was in the night. Life, yes, and death, a mementomori somewhere. "Take care, death is here!" the moon said. Must he lethimself be warned?

Or was it a promise? Was his old self to be lifted now, like toEndymion, to be rewarded for the trouble of life by an everlastingsleep, sweet as this night? Would the world then have a statue erectedto him, here in the hayfield of La Liberté, in memory of his apotheosis?

What strange fancies were these? The dripping-wet, heavy-headed,honey-sweet clover brushed against his shins. He had a curious sensationof walking a little above the ground. There were cows lying or walkingin it somewhere; he could not distinguish them in the moonlight, buttheir deep sweet fragrance was in the air.

Suddenly he remembered something that had happened more than forty yearsbefore. Young Peter Mathiesen, a reserved, speculative boy then, hadbeen staying with his uncle, the parson at Mols, and in the same house alittle girl, a farmer's daughter, was being prepared for herconfirmation. His uncle had been a well-read man who talked abouteverything--God, love, life everlasting--and who was an enthusiast aboutthe new romantic literature. They used to read poetry in the evening atthe parsonage, and one night, because the little girl's name was Nanna,it had amused the pastor to make the children take part in the recitalof the tragedy Death of Baldur, and to address to each other theburning, passion-sick verses of Baldur and Nanna. With his glassespushed back the old parson had listened, transported, with that kind ofshamelessness which also makes old maids grow hyacinths in tall glassesso that they may watch the roots, and had not known that the countrychildren were burning and turning pale under the sound of their ownvoices. When bed time came the boy had not been able to go to bed. Hotand bewildered, he had wandered about the farm buildings, seeking forsomething which might wash off this touch, and he had come down to thestables. It was a moonlight, misty night in early spring. Leaningagainst the wall, he had felt terribly lonely, and not only lonely, butbetrayed, as if something were lying in wait for him. Then he had cometo think of the cows inside, and of their imperturbability in thedarkness. There was one big white cow, by the name of Rosa, which hadbeen a favorite with the children. He had felt that she might give himcomfort. Within her stall, his chest against the side of the reposing,gently chewing animal, a sweetly penetrating calm and balance had comeupon him, and he had made up his mind to sleep with her all night. Buthardly had he lain down in the straw when the stable door was openedgently, and a soft step approached. As he peeped over Rosa's back he sawthe little girl come in, dim and light in the dim moonlight. She hadbeen unhappy like him, he thought, and had felt that only a cud-chewinganimal would have power to give her back her peace of heart. The moonshone in through the little stable window--that same moon--turning thewhitewashed wall milk white where it struck it. The girl's fair hairglittered under its touch, but he was in the dark, and he kept verystill, like a fugitive in danger of discovery. He watched her kneelingdown in the straw, so close to him, breathing so hard. He was not surethat she was not sobbing a little to herself. They had lain there forseveral hours of the short spring night, sometimes sleeping, sometimesawake, with the tranquil, sweet-smelling Rosa between them like thetwo-edged sword in the poem of chivalry. Many thoughts, many pretty andstrong pictures had run through the boy's head. When he had slept he haddreamed of Nanna, and when he had woke up and had raised himself to lookat her, she was still there, unaware of his presence. Very early in themorning she got up, brushed the straw from her skirt, and was gone, andhe had never told her that he had been there with her.

The Councilor walked on, pleased. He thought of Count Schimmelmann'squotation: "He is the fool who knows not the half to be more than thewhole." This long-forgotten incident was a little flower in his life, inthe garland of his life, a field flower, a wild forget-me-not. Therewere not a few flowers, violets, pansies, in his life. Would this nightput a rose into the garland?

A little way from the garden of La Liberté, in the hayfield, there was abeech grove. In the corner of it, upon a mound, a lady of the manor whohad, a hundred years before, been partial to the quiet and sweetsolemnity of the spot, had had a little summer house erected, a templeto friendship. There were five wooden pillars which carried a domedroof. Two steps led up to it, and a seat ran along the inner side of thecolumns, in a half circle. From here you could see the sea. Later on,since the climate of Denmark is not always in harmony with Greekarchitecture, the one side of the building had been thatched to giveshelter to the meditator. The whole place was now dilapidated, and inthe daytime a little tristful, but below the full moon it lookedromantic.

He turned his steps toward the little temple as a harmonious spot forthe dreams of a bridegroom, but he walked slowly and with prudence, forhis young bride might have had the same fancy, and if so he would notfrighten or disturb her. As he came nearer, however, voices coming fromthe mound made him first stand stock-still, then move along quietly,following the sound. For the second time a lurker in the grounds of LaLiberté, he took care to approach without a sound, behind the thatchedwall.

Anders and Fransine were together in the temple, speaking softly. Theyoung man sat on the seat, immobile. The young woman stood up oppositehim, her back against a pillar. The moon was shining on them; the wholeworld around them was light, like a landscape under snow. But the oldCouncilor was in the deep shade of his hiding place. Indeed, he was likethat statue of himself about which he had recently been dreaming.Statues also, sometimes, see a lot.

The young woman had on an outlandish garment, a sort of black domino oropera cloak, which he had never seen in her possession, and which shewas holding closely together about her. Her dark hair hung down, a live,odorous mantle, and her face within it was like a white rose, dew-cool,in the night air. He had never seen her look so lovely. He had indeednever seen any human being look so lovely before. It was as if the wholesummer night had brought forth one flower, the epitome of its beauty.She seemed to sway a little, like a flexible branch, too heavy with theweight of its white roses.

There was a long silence. Then Fransine gave a low laugh of happiness,as soft and sweet as a dove's cooing.

"They are all lying down," she said, "like dead people in a churchyard.Only you and I are afoot. Is it not stupid to lie down?" She twisted alittle in her cloak. "Oh, I am tired of them," she exclaimed,passionately, "talking, talking always. I wish to God they would lieforever, so that we could be left alone in the world a little." Thesweetness of the thought seemed to overwhelm her. She drew in herbreath. She stood still, waiting for him to move or answer her. After awhile she asked him, her voice still filled with laughter andtenderness: "Anders, what is the matter?"

Anders was a long time in answering her, then he spoke very slowly:"Yes," he said, "you may well ask, Fransine. It is important. The spiritwe need not talk about; it is not dangerous. But what is the matter? Ithas many strange things about it. It is the phlogiston of our bodies,being of negative weight, you might say. That is easy to understand, ofcourse, but it gives you such great pain when it is demonstrated uponyou. First we are treated by fire--burned, or roasted slowly, that comesto the same thing--and even then we cannot fly."

Now the cause of the lover's immobility became clear to the oldlistener. This young man was dead drunk. He could just manage to keephimself, seated, in balance, but could make no further movement. He waspale as a corpse; the sweat kept pouring down his face; and he kept hiseyes on the face of the girl as if it would have caused him infinitepain to move them away from it. The Councilor, who had been repeating tohimself his little aphorism, "the half to be more than the whole," herehad the theory proved straight in his face.

Fransine smiled at the young man. Like many women, she did not recognizethe symptoms of drunkenness in a man. "Oh, Anders," she said, "you donot know it, so I will tell you: I can fly. Or nearly. Old ballet-masterBasso said to me: 'The other girls I have to whip up, but I shall haveto tie two stones to your legs soon, or you will fly away from me.'These old men are mad, and they want strange things of you. I do notmind now. I will show you soon that I can fly, like the flying fisheswith which the sea children made ducks and drakes."

"You see, my girl," said Anders, "you are like a cook who kills a whole,good, live duck just for making a giblet soup. You may use me for agiblet soup if you like, but you must come and cut out the bits you wantyourself. The birds do not themselves know the places of their liver andheart. That is woman's work, Fransine."

Fransine thought this over for a little while. She was sure that everyone of his words was wise, and kind to her. "My mother," she said, "camefrom the ghetto of Rome. You did not know that. Nobody knows that. ThereI saw her kill the birds in the right way, so that no blood was left inthem. That ghetto, Anders, that is the place, you can be sure, wherepeople suffer, where you have to be careful, or else you are robbed andhurt. Hanged, even. I have seen people hanged. My grandfather was hangedthere. The world has been hard to me, Anders, and to you as well. Butthen it is even sweeter still to be happy." She paused a moment. "To behappy," she said. "Do you not think so?"

"But it is too late," Anders said. "Things happen, even when you are notthere. That is the trouble. That is what you do not know. The cocks arecrowing, though we cannot hear them here." Quoting an old ditty of thecharcoal burners, he said, slowly and gently:

Early at midsummer-dawn the cock was crowing,
Twenty-nine cradles had I set a-going.

"No, they are not crowing," she said. "It is not daylight, Anders. It isnot even midnight." She stood still before him.

"There are two," said Anders, "who will take me whole, as I sit here.Abelone will take me whole. She wants to keep a public house atElsinore, and me to marry her and be landlord to the seamen. The sea,also, will take me whole. When one of the two has been at you, you willhave had your bones well picked."

The Councilor, even though absorbed in their talk, here got a smallshock. Had his housekeeper been entertaining such prospects, and notsaid a word to him? Had she, perhaps, even, perceived in Fransine arival of her own dignities, and in this shown more insight than hehimself had?

Fransine stood staring at Anders, bewildered. "Anders," she said, "donot speak like that. Listen. At the fairs, when I danced to them, theycried: 'Again! Again!' They said: 'It is like seeing the stars dancing,the hearts burning.' Do you not believe that I can make you happy?"

"Oh, my lass," said he, "let us be good. Let us behave like good people.Let me pay you what the seamen pay the girls at Elsinore. I have notmuch to give you, and that is a great pity. The other night I spent alot of my savings on beer for the people at the inn, and that was bad ofme. But fifty specie-dollars I have still laid aside. Do take them now,for God's sake. I do not ask you this for my own sake, I swear to you,for I am going to die sooner or later in any case, but for yours, youpoor, pretty girl. It is always a good thing for a girl to have fiftyspecie-dollars. Go buy yourself a shift, and do not run about naked inthe cold nights."

There was much strength in Fransine. Upon this she made a movementtowards him. Her tightly drawn cloak and long hair followed it. Withinher self-luminous face her two big dark eyes were fixed upon his face.She looked like a young witch under the moon. "Anders, Anders!" shesaid, "do you not love me?"

"Oh, God!" he said. "That was coming, I knew. I can answer that, frompractice, quite well. I love you, my pretty vixen. Your hair, now, islike a little red flame in the dark, a cloven tongue of fire, a littlemarsh fire to show people the wrong way, the way to hell."

The young woman was trembling from her head to her feet. "Did you not,"she said, wringing her hands, "want me to come, here, to you, tonight?"

He sat silent for a moment. "Well," he said, "if you are asking me myhonest opinion, Madame Fransine, No. I should like to be by myself."

Fransine turned and ran away. Her long cloak of Naples, trailing in herwake, hindered her. Still she held it closely wrapped about her. Thusfled Arethusa, when, long ago, she was changed into a river, and loudlylamenting, hurled herself through the myrtle groves.

Anders sat for a long time like a dead man. Then, with the slow anduncertain movement of drunken people, he took up his gun and got ontohis feet. He turned around, and in so doing was brought face to facewith the Councilor.

He did not seem at all surprised to see him. Perhaps he had thought ofhim, or had felt his presence, somehow, in the atmosphere of hisrendezvous. He only grinned, when he set eyes on him, as if he had beenshown the solution of a crafty riddle. The Councilor felt the momentmore awkward. For a few seconds the two stared at each other. Then, witha smile such as a boy might show in playing a bad prank on somebody,Anders half lifted his gun, and without taking aim fired it off straightinto the body of the old man. The retort boomed and echoed far away inthe summer night.

The roar and the sudden, overwhelming pain struck the old man as onething, as the end or the beginning of the world. He fell, and in fallingsaw his murderer, with an agility surprising in a dead-drunk man, swinghimself over the low wall of the little temple and disappear.

The Councilor found himself, after a long stay in a strange world, lyingon his back in the clover, in a pool of something warm and sticky: hisown blood, which was blending with the moisture of the field.

He had the feeling that he had been terribly angry. He was not surewhether the din and the darkness were not the effects of his wrath, ananathema flung at the head of his ungrateful protégé. Slowly returningto consciousness, he was still suffering from the pain and exhaustionwhich a great anger leaves in the breast, but he no longer hated orcondemned. He was past all that.

He had lost a lot of blood. He thought that he must have had the fullbarrel fired into his right side. He could not move his right leg,either. It was strange that you could change things so completely justby lying down where you had been standing up. He had never known thatthe scent of the flowering clover could be so strong, but that wasbecause he had not before been lying down, buried, bathed in it, as now.

He was going to die. The young man, whom he loved, had meant him to die.The world had thrown him out. His will, he remembered, was in order. Hewas leaving his money to his bride. His old servants were provided for,and his cellar was going to Count Schimmelmann, who took such pleasurein wine. In making this will he had been wondering whether the thoughtof a well-made will might be any comfort to a dying man. Now he knew itto be so.

After a little while he tried to realize whereto he had been thrown, outof the world. As he recognized the place, it occurred to him that hemight still save himself. He might control his world once more.

He must be about a mile from La Liberté. If he could manage to turn, andshift his weight onto his sound arm, he might be able to move. Could heget as far as the long avenue which led to the house, he might crawlalong the stone fence, and rest against it.

He was in great pain as soon as he started to move, and he wonderedwhether it would be worth while. "Now, my dear friend," he said tohimself, feeling that it was time for a kind word, "try. You will be allright." He could draw himself along in this way, like an old snake whichhas been run over on the road, but still wriggles on.

His arm gave way; he fell straight upon his face, and his mouth, open inthe struggle for breath, was filled with dust.

As he raised himself again he saw that he had been mistaken about theplace; he was not in Denmark, but at Weimar.

The sweetness of this discovery nearly overwhelmed him. Weimar, then,was so easy to get to. A road led there from the hayfield of La Liberté.This place--he saw it clearly now--was the terrace; the view over thetown was as fine as ever; it was the sacred garden itself, and thesolemn lime trees were guarding the sanctuary; he felt their full,balsamic scent. The moon was shining serenely on it all, and from ashining window the great poet might at this moment be watching her,forming divine lines to her divinity.

He remembered now: he himself was writing a tragedy. He had, upon atime, considered this undertaking the greatest of his life, and he didnot know how it was that he had for some time not thought about it. Hehad even had a plan for maneuvering it into the hands of the Geheimerat,to get his opinion on it. Perhaps this night would be the right moment.It had been called The Wandering Jew. It might not be worth very much.There were reminiscences of the Geheimerat's own Faust in it; still,there was also some imagination. The imaginary cross, which hisAhasuerus had been carrying through the world on his long weary road,that was not without effective power.

He thought: Would the great poet let his own people--Wilhelm Meister,Werther, Dorothea--associate with the creations of his, the Councilor's,mind? Undoubtedly there would be a social order in the world of fictionas there was everywhere, even in the world of Hirschholm. Indeed, itmight be the criterion of a work of art that you should be able toimagine its characters keeping company with the people, or frequentingthe places, of the works of the great masters. Would not Elmire andTartuffe land at Cyprus, and be received there, on his master's behalf,by young Cassio, having passed on the way a ship with brown sails,a-sail for Scheria?

He fell again, and rolled over on his back. This was a more difficultposition from which to raise himself, and while he was lying thus,gasping for breath, a dog barked some way off.

"The little dogs and all--Tray, Blanch, and Sweetheart--see, they barkat me."

Yes, they might have reason to do so. He saw his own clothes in thelight of the summer moon, stiff with blood and dust. No beggar couldlook worse.

King Lear, also, had at a time been in a bad position. Murderers hadbeen after him, too. He had been alone upon a heath and had struggledand fallen. The night that he had been out in had been much worse thanthis. But all the same the old King had somehow been so safe, sounshakenly secure. Still lying flat upon the ground, panting, theCouncilor tried to remember what it had been that had made King Lear soexceptionally safe, so that even the storm on the heath, and even allthe wickedness in the world, could not harm him in the least. He hadbeen in the hands of two ungrateful daughters; they had treated him withdreadful cruelty; there was nothing safe in the situation there. It wassomething else. The old King had been in the hands, whatever happened tohim, of the great British poet, of William Shakespeare. That was it.

The Councilor had reached the stone fence of the garden. With a verygreat effort he sat himself up against it. It gave him rest. Andsuddenly, with the face of the moon looking into his own blood-stainedand smirched face, the old Councilor understood everything in the world.

He was not only at Weimar. No, it was more than that. He had got insidethe magic circle of poetry. He was in the world of the mind of the greatGeheimerat. All this still landscape around him, also this great painwhich washed over him from time to time, they were the accomplishmentsof the poet of Weimar. He himself had got into these works of harmony,deep thought, and order undestroyable. He was free, if he liked, to beMephistopheles, or the silly student who comes to ask advice about life.In fact he might be anything without ever running any risk, for whateverhe did the author would see to it that things would somehow come out allright, that high and divine law and order would be maintained. How wasit that he had ever in his life been afraid? Had he believed that Goethemight fail?

Make ten of one,
and two let be.
Make even three.
And nine is one,
and ten is none....

The words gave him an extraordinary comfort. What a fool, what a fool hehad been! What could anything matter? He was in the hands of Goethe.

The old man looked, as if for the first time in his life, up toward thesky. His lips moved. He said:

Ich bin Eurer Excellenz ehrerbietigster Diener.

At this moment of his apotheosis he became aware of somebody crying alittle way off. The sound came nearer, then suddenly turned off andwithdrew. Was this, he thought, Margaret weeping in her desertion?

My mother, the harlot,
who put me to death,
My father, the varlet,
who eaten me hath....

No, he thought, it must be the young lady of La Liberté, his bride ofthe same day, poor Fransine. From the sound he judged her to be walkingup and down near him. She had gone to the farthest end of the terrace,so as not to be heard from the house. If he could get a few yardsfarther, he would be within earshot, and he would be saved.

With this certainty also a great feeling of pity came upon theCouncilor. Fransine must have heard the shot, he thought, and be besideherself with fear. Her sobbing sounded wild and without hope, and thereshe was, all alone in the night. This was rather cruel of theGeheimerat. Still, he had done worse when he had made Margaret kill herchild; and yet that had also been right, had been in good order,somehow.

He leaned against the fence, his paralyzed legs trailing in the dust,and tried to collect and control all these thoughts. Out of his richerknowledge he would have to console the unhappy young woman, and makethings right for her. She was young and simple; it would be no use totry to make her see how it was that everything was in order. But thatdid not matter; it was really better so. Children, who cannot digest thefull produce of the earth, are made happy with a stick of barley sugar.He would arrange to get for Fransine that which is generally calledhappiness. This, he felt, was in the plan of the author, of theGeheimerat.

In the sky the moon had changed position and color. The dawn wasapproaching. The summer sky was slowly rusting; the stars hung in itlike clear drops, ready to fall. Balsamic winds ran along, close to theearth.

The Councilor thought that he must look like a ghost, and with greatdifficulty he got out his handkerchief and wiped his face. The effortnearly killed him, and he succeeded only in smearing blood and dust allover his face. He felt that it would be no use to try to call to her;his voice was too faint. He must try to get nearer. There were two stonesteps leading from the road to the end of the terrace, through thefence, and if he could get there he would be seen by her. With his laststrength he moved forward, on elbow and knee, another ten yards, andthis, he knew, was the end; he could do no more. He got up onto thelower stone and leaned against the top step. He had meant to call, butcould not make a sound. Just then she turned and caught sight of him.

If he looked like a ghost, which he did--so much so that she took himfor one--she herself looked, she was indeed, the ghost of that youngbeauty of La Liberté, of lovely Fransine Lerche. She had on a plainnightgown only, put on in a hurry, for she had done with her body. Whenshe had flung away the domino of Naples, she had thrown away with itthat delicate, fragrant garland of roses and lilies of her beauty, whichhad meant everything to her. Her rounded bosom and hips had shrunk;there seemed to be nothing inside her white garment but a stick. Evenher long hair was hanging down, lifeless, like her arms. Her fresh andgentle doll's face was dissolved and ruined by tears; the doll had beenbroken; its starry eyes and rosebud mouth were now no more than blackholes in a white plane. Dead-tired, she could not sit or lie down. Herdespair kept her upright, like the lead in the little wooden figureswhich children play with, like the weight tied to dead seamen's feet,which keeps them standing up, swaying, at the bottom of the sea.

The two stared at each other. At last the old man gathered enoughstrength to whisper, "Help me. I cannot move any more."

She stood stock-still. The idea occurred to him that he musttranquillize her, for she was mad with horror. He said: "I have beenshot, as you see. But it does not matter." He did not know whether shehad heard him. He hardly knew whether he had spoken.

At last the girl understood. Her lover had shot this old man. In a shortmoment, as in a great, white, flash of light, a vision was shown her:Anders with the halter around his neck. And instantly a ghost of her oldstrength came back to her, as a wreckage of your ship may be washed backto you on a bleak shore. Let Anders have done what he liked, he and shebelonged to one another, were one. That he had hurt her to death andthat she had fled from him, and at this moment dreaded nothing in theworld as much as seeing him again--all this made no difference.

She stood and looked at the blood which was running out of the old man'sbody and coloring her stone steps. As if there had been some magic init, it lifted and steadied her heart within her. She saw, in the redlight of it, that whatever unhappiness there had been between her andAnders had come there through her fault. The conviction released all hernature; for that he should be in the wrong, that had been too much forher to bear. The red blood, the great relief of her heart, and thecoming daylight which began to fill the air, became all one to her. Thedarkness would be over. After she had gone from him, Anders had provedthat he loved her. And only she and the old man knew.

Like a mænad, her hair streaming down, she began to tug and tear at oneof the big flat stones of the fence, to get it loose. When she got itout she stood for a moment, holding it, with all her strength, in botharms, pressed to her bosom, as if it had been her only child, which theold sorcerer had managed to turn into stone.

The Councilor felt his blood running out quickly; if he had a message togive her it would have to be now. Afraid that his lips had given nosound when he had tried to speak to her, he dragged his right hand alongthe ground until it touched her bare foot. The girl, who had been sosensitive to touch, did not move; she had done with her body.

"My poor girl, my dove," he said, "listen. Everything is good. All, all!

"Sacred, Fransine," he said, "sacred puppets."

He had to wait for a minute, but he had more to say to her.

He said, very slowly: "There the moon sits up high. You and I shallnever die." He could not go on; his head dropped down upon the stone.

If Fransine did not hear him, she understood him through his touch. Hemeant to tell her that the world was good and beautiful, but indeed sheknew better. Just because it suited him that the world should be lovely,he meant to conjure it into being so. Perhaps he would hold forth on thebeauty of the landscape. He had done that to her before. Perhaps hewould tell her that it was her wedding day, and that heaven and earthwere smiling to her. But that was the world in which they meant to hangAnders.

"You!" she cried at him. "You poet!"

She lifted the stone, in both arms, above her head, and flung it down athim.

The blood spouted to all sides. The body, which had a second beforepossessed balance, a purpose, a conception of the world around it, felltogether, and lay on the ground like a bundle of old clothes, at thepleasure of the law of gravitation, as it had fallen.

To the Councilor himself it was as if he had been flung, in a tremendousmovement, headlong into an immeasurable abyss. It took a little time; hewas thrown down in three or four great leaps from one cataract to theother. And meanwhile, from all sides, like an echo in the engulfingdarkness, winding and rolling in long caverns, her last word wasrepeated again and again.

[End of Seven Gothic Tales, by Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen)]