THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES
GIFT OF
FREDERIC THOMAS BLANCHARD
FOR THE
ENGLISH READING ROOM
THE MARTIAN
H
BY
GEORGE JDU MAUR1ER
AUTHOR OF "TRILBY" "PETER IBBETSON"
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY THE AUTHOR
"Aprea le plaisir vient la peine ;
Apres la peine, la vertu " ANON
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
1897
A ^
BY GEORGE DU MAURIER.
TRILBY. Illustrated by the Anthor. Post 8vo,
Cloth, Ornamental, $1 75 ; Three-quarter Calf, $3 50 ;
Three-quarter Crashed Levant, $4 50.
PETER IBBETSON. With an Introduction by his
Cousin, Lady * ("Madge Plunket"). Edited
and Illustrated by GKOP.OK i>u MAUKIEIU Post 8vo,
Cloth, Ornamental, $1 50 ; Three-quarter Calf, $3 25;
Three-quarter Levant, $4 25.
ENGLISH SOCIETY. Sketched by GEORGE i>u
MAUBIKK. With an Introduction by WII.I.IAM DRAM
HOWEI.LS. Oblong 4to, Cloth, Ornamental, $2 50.
PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, Nw YORK.
Copyright, 1896, 1897, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
All rigktt reterttd.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
PORTRAIT OP GEORGE DU MAURIER Frontispiece
INSTITUTION P. BROSSAKD 7
THE NEW BOY 11
A LITTLE PEACE MAKER 17
LORD RUNSWICK AND ANTOINETTE JOSSELIN 29
"'QUEL AMOUR D'ENFANT !'" 33
" AMIS, LA MATINEE EST BELLE " 51
"TOO MUCH 'MONTE CRISTO,' I'M AFRAID " 55
LE PERE POLYPH^ME 71
FANFARONNADE 79
MEROVEE RINGS THE BELL 85
"WEEL MAY THE KEEL ROW " 107
A TERTRE- JOUAN TO THE RESCUE ! 113
MADEMOISELLE MARCELINE 115
"'IF HE ONLY KNEW!'" 117
"'MAURICE AU PIQUET!'" . 121
"QUAND ON PERD, PAR THISTE OCCURRENCE," ETC. . . . 127
THREE LITTLE MAIDS PROM SCHOOL (1853) 139
SOLITUDE 149
' ' ' PILE OU FACE HEADS OR TAILS ?'" 153
"A LITTLE WHITE POINT OP INTERROGATION" 159
" 'BONJOUR, MONSIEUR BONZIG ' " 171
" 'DEMI-TASSE VOILA, M'SIEUR'" .179
PETER THE HERMIT AU PIQUET 187
"THE CARNIVAL OF VENICE". 197
"'A VOUS, MONSIEUR DE LA GARDE!'" 207
" 'I AM A VERY ALTERED PERSON !'" , . 213
"THE MOONLIGHT SONATA" 227
ENTER MR. SCATCEIERD . 237
BARTY GIVES HIMSELF AWAY . . 243
iv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
I'AGE
8O NKA.ll AND YET SO FAR 245
"'HELAS! MON JEUNE AMI. . .'" i>f)l
"'YOU ASK ME WHY I LOOK SO PALE?'" , 277
" 'YOU DON'T MEAN TO SAY YOU'RE GOING TO PAINT FOR
HIRE!'" 281
" ' HE MIGHT HAVE THROWN THE HANDKERCHIEF AS HE
PLEASED ' " 287
DR. HA8ENCLKVER AND MRS. BLETCHLEY 305
" 'MARTIA, I HAVE DONE MY BEST'" 311
AM RIIEIN 315
" 'DOES SHE KNOW YOU'RE VERY FOND OF HER ?' " . . . 319
"LEAH WAS SUMMONED FROM BELOW " 333
"BETWEEN TWO WELL KNOWN EARLS" 341
"LE DERNIER DES ABENCERRAGE8" 345
"SARDONYX" , 355
"' RATAPLAN, RATAPLAN '" 359
"'HE PRESENTS ME FIRST TO MADAME JOS8ELIN ' " .... 387
" ' I DON'T THINK I EVER HEARD HIM MENTION YOUR NAME*" 401
"'I'M A PHILISTINE, AND AM NOT ASHAMED'" 411
"'ZE BRINCESS VOULD BE SO JARMT '" 431
MARTY . 453
THE MARTIAN
THE MARTIAN
"BARTY JOSSELIN IS NO MOEE. . . .
WHEN so great a man dies, it is generally found that a
tangled growth of more or less contentious literature has
already gathered round his name during his lifetime.
He has been so written about, so talked about, so riddled
with praise or blame, that, to those who have never seen
him in the flesh, he has become almost a tradition, a
myth and one runs the risk of losing all clew to his
real personality.
This is especially the case with the subject of this bi-
ography one is in danger of forgetting what manner of
man he was who has so taught and touched and charmed
and amused us, and so happily changed for us the cur-
rent of our lives.
He has been idealized as an angel, a saint, and a demi-
god ; he has been caricatured as a self-indulgent sensu-
alist, a vulgar Lothario, a buffoon, a joker of practical
jokes.
He was in reality the simplest, the most affectionate,
and most good-natured of men, the very soul of honor,
the best of husbands and fathers and friends, the most
fascinating companion that ever lived, and one who kept
to the last the freshness and joyous spirits of a school-
boy and the heart of a child ; one who never said or did
an unkind thing; probably never even thought one.
Generous and open-handed to a fault, slow to condemn,
quick to forgive, and gifted with a power of immediately
inspiring affection and keeping it forever after, such as I
have never known in any one else, he grew to be (for all
his quick-tempered impulsiveness) one of the gentlest
and meekest and most humble-minded of men !
On me, a mere prosperous tradesman, and busy politi-
cian and man of the world, devolves the delicate and
responsible task of being the first to write the life of the
greatest literary genius this century has produced, and
of revealing the strange secret of that genius, which has
lighted up the darkness of these latter times as with a
pillar of fire by night.
This extraordinary secret has never been revealed be-
fore to any living soul but his wife and myself. And
that is one of my qualifications for this great labor of
love.
Another is that for fifty years I have known him as
never a man can quite have known his fellow-man before
that for all that time he has been more constantly and
devotedly loved by me than any man can ever quite have
been loved by father, son, brother, or bosom friend.
Good heavens ! Barty, man and boy, Barty's wife,
their children, their grandchildren, and all that ever
concerned them or concerns them still all this has been
the world to me, and ever will be.
He wished me to tell the absolute truth about him,
just as I know it ; and I look upon the fulfilment of this
wish of his as a sacred trust, and would sooner die any
shameful death or brave any other dishonor than fail in
fulfilling iii to the letter.
The responsibility before the world is appalling ; and
also the difficulty, to a man of such training as mine. I
feel already conscious that I am trying to be literary
myself, to seek for turns of phrase that I should never
have dared to use in talking to Barty, or even in writing
to him ; that I am not at my ease, in short not me but
straining every nerve to be on my best behavior ; and
that's about the worst behavior there is.
Oh ! may some kindly light, born of a life's devotion
and the happy memories of half a century, lead me to
mere naturalness and the use of simple homely words,
even my own native telegraphese ! that I may haply
blunder at length into some fit form of expression which
Barty himself might .have approved.
One would think that any sincere person who has
learnt how to spell his own language should at least be
equal to such a modest achievement as this ; and yet it
is one of the most difficult things in the world !
My life is so full of Barty Josselin that I can hardly
be said to have ever had an existence apart from his ;
and I can think of no easier or better way to tell Barty's
history than just telling my own from the days I first
knew him and in my own way ; that is, in the best tel-
egraphese I can manage picking each precious word
with care, just as though I were going to cable it, as
soon as written, to Boston or New York, where the love
of Barty Josselin shines with even a brighter and warm-
er glow than here, or even in France ; and where the
hate of him, the hideous, odious odium theologicum
the sceva indignatio of the Church that once burned at
so white a heat, has burnt itself out at last, and is now
as though it had never been, and never could be again.
P. S. (an after- thought) :
And here, in case misfortune should happen to me
before this book comes out as a volume, I wish to record
my thanks to my old friend Mr. du Maurier for the
readiness with which he has promised to undertake, and
the conscientiousness with which he will have performed,
his share of the work as editor and illustrator.
I also wish to state that it is to my beloved god-daugh-
ter, Roberta Beatrix Hay (nee Josselin), that I dedicate
this attempt at a biographical sketch of her illustrious
father ' ROBERT MAURICE.
part fftrst
" De Paris a Versailles, Ion, la,
De Paris & Versailles
II y a de belles allees,
Vive le Roi de France I
II y a de belles allees,
Vivent les ecoliers !"
ONE sultry Saturday afternoon in the summer of 1847
I sat at my desk in the junior school-room, or salle
d' 'etudes des petits, of the Institution F. Brossard, Rond-
point de 1' Avenue de St. -Cloud ; or, as it is called now,
Avenue du Bois de Boulogne or, as it was called during
the Second Empire, Avenue du Prince Imperial, or else
de 1'Imperatrice ; I'm not sure.
There is not much stability in such French names, I
fancy ; but their sound is charming, and always gives
me the nostalgia of Paris Eoyal Paris, Imperial Paris,
Republican Paris ! . . . whatever they may call it ten or
twelve years hence. Paris is always Paris, and always
will be, in spite of the immortal Haussmann, both for
those who love it and for those who don't.
All the four windows were open. Two of them, freely
and frankly, on to the now deserted play-ground, ad-
mitting the fragrance of lime and syringa and lilac, and
other odors of a mixed quality.
Two other windows, defended by an elaborate net-
work of iron wire and a formidable array of spiked iron
rails beyond, opened on to the Rond-point, or meeting
of the cross-roads one of which led northeast to Paris
through the Arc de Trioinphe ; the other three through
woods and fields and country lanes to such quarters of
the globe as still remain. The world is wide.
In the middle of this open space a stone fountain sent
up a jet of water three feet high, which fell back with a
feeble splash into the basin beneath. There was com-
fort in the sound on such a hot day, and one listened
for it half unconsciously ; and tried not to hear, instead,
Weber's "Invitation a la Valse," which came rippling
in intermittent waves from the open window of the dis-
tant parloir, where Chardonnet was practising the piano.
"Tum-te-dura-tum-tum . . .
Tum-te-dum-di, diddle-iddle um !"
e da capo, again and again. Chardonnet was no heaven-
born musician.
Monsieur Bonzig or " le Grand Bonzig," as he was
called behind his back sat at his table on the estrade,
correcting the exercises of the eighth class (huitieme),
which he coached in Latin and French. It was the
lowest class in the school; yet one learnt much in it that
was of consequence ; not, indeed, that Balbus built a
wall as I'm told we learn over here (a small matter to
make such a fuss about, after so many years) but that
the Lord made heaven and earth in six days, and rested
on the seventh.
He (Monsieur Bonzig) seemed hot and weary, as well
he might, and sighed, and looked up every now and then
to mop his brow and think. And as he gazed into the
green and azure depths beyond the north window, his
dark brown eyes quivered and vibrated from side to side
through his spectacles with a queer quick tremolo, such
as I have never seen in any eyes but his.
About five-and-twenty boys sat at their desks ; boys
INSTITUTION F. BROSSARD
8
of all ages between seven and fourteen many with
closely cropped hair, "a la malcontent," like nice little
innocent convicts ; and nearly all in blouses, mostly
blue ; some with their garments loosely flowing ; oth-
ers confined at the waist by a tricolored ceinture de
gymnastique, so deep and stiff it almost amounted to
stays.
As for the boys themselves, some were energetic and
industrious some listless and lazy and lolling, and quite
languid with the heat some fidgety and restless, on the
lookout for excitement of any kind : a cab or carriage
raising the dust on its way to the Bois a water-cart
laying it (there were no hydrants then); a courier bear-
ing royal despatches, or a mounted orderly ; the Passy
omnibus, to or fro every ten or twelve minutes ; the
marchand de coco with his bell ; a regiment of the line
with its band ; a chorus of peripatetic Orpheonistes a
swallow, a butterfly, a bumblebee ; a far-off balloon, oh,
joy ! any sight or sound to relieve the tedium of those
two mortal school-hours that dragged their weary lengths
from half past one till half past three every day but
Sunday and Thursday.
(Even now I find the early afternoon a little trying to
wear through without a nap, say from two to four.)
At 3.30 there would come a half-hour's interval of
play, and then the class of French literature from four
till dinner-time at six a class that was more than en-
durable on account of the liveliness and charm of Mon-
sieur Durosier, who journeyed all the way from the Col-
lege de France every Saturday afternoon in June and
July to tell us boys of the quatrieme all about Villon and
Ronsard, and Marot and Charles d'Orleans (exceptis excipi-
endis, of course), and other pleasant people who didn't
deal in Greek or Latin or mathematics, and knew better
9
than to trouble themselves overmuch about formal French
grammar and niggling French prosody.
Besides, everything was pleasant on a Saturday after-
noon on account of the nearness of the day of days
"And that's the day that comes between
The Saturday and Monday ". . . .
in France.
I had just finished translating my twenty lines of
Virgil
"Infandum, regina, jubes renovare," etc.
Oh, crimini, but it was hot ! and how I disliked the
pious ^neas ! I couldn't have hated him worse if I'd
been poor Dido's favorite younger brother (not mentioned
by Publius Vergilius Maro, if I remember).
Palaiseau, who sat next to me, had a cold in his head,
and kept sniffing in a manner that got on my nerves.
" Mouche-toi done, animal !" I whispered; "tu me
degoutes, a la fin !"
Palaiseau always sniffed, whether he had a cold or not.
" Taisez-vous, Maurice on je vous donne cent vers a
copier !'' said M. Bonzig, and his eyes quiveringly glit-
tered through his glasses as he fixed me.
Palaiseau, in his brief triumph, sniffed louder.
" Palaiseau," said Monsieur Bonzig, " si vous vous ser-
viez de votre mouchoir hein ? Je crois que cela ne
generait personne !" (If you were to use your pocket-
handkerchief eh ? I don't think it would inconven-
ience anybody !)
At this there was a general titter all round, which was
immediately suppressed, as in a court of law ; and Pa-
laiseau reluctantly and noisily did as he was told.
In front of me that dishonest little sneak Eapaud, with
10
a tall parapet of books before him to serve as a screen,
one hand shading his eyes, and an inkless pen in the oth-
er, was scratching his copy-book with noisy earnestness,
as if time were too short for all he had to write about the
pious ^Eneas's recitative, while he surreptitiously read the
Comte de Monte Cristo, which lay open in his lap just at
the part where the body, sewn up in a sack, was going
to be hurled into the Mediterranean. I knew the page
well. There was a splash of red ink on it.
It made my blood boil with virtuous indignation to
watch him, and I coughed and hemmed again and again
to attract his attention, for his back was nearly towards
me. He heard me perfectly, but took no notice what-
ever, the deceitful little beast. He was to have given up
Monte Cristo to me at half-past two, and here it was
twenty minutes to three ! Besides which, it was my
Monte Cristo, bought with my own small savings, and
smuggled into school by me at great risk to myself.
" Maurice F said M. Bonzig.
" Oui, m'sieur !" said I. I will translate :
"You shall conjugate and copy out for me forty times
the compound verb, ' I cough without necessity to dis-
tract the attention of my comrade Rapaud from his
Latin exercise !' "
" Moi, m'sieur ?" I ask, innocently.
" Oui, vous F
" Bien, m'sieur F
Just then there was a clatter by the fountain, and the
shrill small pipe of D'Aurigny, the youngest boy in the
school, exclaimed :
" He ! He ! Oh la la ! Le Roi qui passe F
And we all jumped up, and stood on forms, and craned
our necks to see Louis Philippe I. and his Queen drive
quickly by in their big blue carriage and four, with their
THE NEW BOY
12
two blue-and-silver liveried outriders trotting in front,
on their way from St. -Cloud to the Tuileries.
Sponde ! Selancy ! fermez les fenetres, ou je vous
mets touH au pain sec pour un mois !" thundered M. Bon-
zig, who did not approve of kings and queens an appal-
ling threat which appalled nobody, for when he forgot
to forget he always relented ; for instance, he quite for-
got to insist on that formidable compound verb of mine.
Suddenly the door of the school -room flew open, and
the tall, portly figure of Monsieur Brossard appeared,
leading by the wrist a very fair -haired boy of thirteen
or so, dressed in an Eton jacket and light blue trousers,
with a white chimney-pot silk hat, which he carried in
his hand an English boy, evidently ; but of an aspect so
singularly agreeable one didn't need to be English one's
self to warm towards him at once.
"Monsieur Bonzig, and gentlemen !" said the head mas-
ter (in French, of course). "Here is the new boy; he
calls himself Bartholomiou Josselin. He is English, but
he knows French as well as you. I hope you will find in
him a good comrade, honorable and frank and brave, and
that he will find the same in you. Maurice !" (that was
me).
" Oui, m'sieur !"
" I specially recommend Josseliu to you."
" Moi, m'sieur ?"
" Yes, you; he is of your age, and one of your compa-
triots. Don't forget."
" Bien, m'sieur."
"And now, Josselin, take that vacant desk, which will
be yours henceforth. You will find the necessary books
and copy-books inside ; you will be in the fifth class, un-
der Monsieur Dumollard. You will occupy yourself with
the study of Cornelius Nepos, the commentaries of Caesar,
13
and Xenophon's retreat of the ten thousand. Soyez dili-
gent et attentif, mon ami ; a plus tard !"
He gave the boy a friendly pat on the cheek and left
the room.
Josselin walked to his desk and sat down, between
d'Adhemar and Laferte, both of whom were en cinquieme.
He pulled a Cgesar out of his desk and tried to read it.
He became an object of passionate interest to the whole
school-room, till M. Bonzig said,
"The first who lifts his eyes from his desk to stare at
' le nouveau ' shall be au piquet for half an hour !" (To
be au piquet is to stand with your back to a tree for part
of the following play-time ; and the play-time which was
to follow would last just thirty minutes.)
Presently I looked up, in spite of piquet, and caught
the new boy's eye, which was large and blue and soft,
and very sad and sentimental, and looked as if he were
thinking of his mammy, as I did constantly of mine dur-
ing my first week at Brossard's, three years before.
Soon, however, that sad eye slowly winked at me, with
an expression so droll that I all but laughed aloud.
Then its owner felt in the inner breast pocket of his
Eton jacket with great care, and delicately drew forth by
the tail a very fat white mouse, that seemed quite tame,
and ran up his arm to his wide shirt collar, and tried to
burrow there ; and the boys began to interest themselves
breathlessly in this engaging little quadruped.
M. Bonzig looked up again, furious ; but his spectacles
had grown misty from the heat and he couldn't see, and
he wiped them ; and meanwhile the mouse was quickly
smuggled back to its former nest.
Josselin drew a large clean pocket-handkerchief from
his trousers and buried his head in his desk, and there
was silence.
14
" La ! re", fa ! la ! r6 "
So strummed, over and over again, poor Chardonnet
in his remote parlor he was getting tiivd.
I have heard " L'Invitation a la Valse" many hundreds
of times since then, and in many countries, but never
that bar without thinking of Josselin and his little white
mouse.
" Fermez votre pupitre, Josselin/' said M. Bonzig, af-
ter a few minutes.
Josselin shut his desk and beamed genially at the
usher.
" What book have you got there, Josselin Caesar or
Cornelius Nepos ?"
Josselin held the book with its title-page open for M.
Bonzig to read.
" Are you dumb, Josselin ? Can't you speak ?"
Josselin tried to speak, but uttered no sound.
"Josselin, come here opposite me."
Josselin came and stood opposite M. Bonzig and made
a nice little bow.
" What have you got in your mouth, Josselin choco-
late ? barley-sugar ? caoutchouc ? or an India-rubber
ball ?"
Josselin shrugged his shoulders and looked pensive,
but spoke never a word.
" Open quick the mouth, Josselin !"
And Monsieur Bonzig, leaning over the table, deftly
put his thumb and forefinger between the boy's lips, and
drew forth slowly a large white pocket-handkerchief,
which seemed never to end, and threw it on the floor
with solemn dignity.
The whole school-room was convulsed with laughter.
"Josselin leave the room you will be severely pun-
ished, as you deserve you are a vulgar buffoon a jo-
15
crisse a paltoquet, a mountebank ! Go, petit polisson
-go !"
The polisson picked up his pocket-handkerchief and
went quite quietly, with simple manly grace ; and that's
the first I ever saw of Barty Josselin and it was some
fifty years ago.
At 3.30 the bell sounded for the half -hour's recrea-
tion, and the boys came out to play.
Josselin was sitting alone on a bench, thoughtful,
with his hand in the inner breast pocket of his Eton
jacket.
M. Bonzig went straight to him, buttoned up and se-
vere his eyes dancing, and glancing from right to left
through his spectacles ; and Josselin stood up very po-
litely.
" Sit down !" said M. Bonzig ; and sat beside him,
and talked to him with grim austerity for ten minutes
or more, and the boy seemed very penitent and sorry.
Presently he drew forth from his pocket his white
mouse, and showed it to the long usher, who looked at
it with great seeming interest for a long time, and final-
ly took it into the palm of his own hand where it stood
on its hind legs and stroked it with his little finger.
Soon Josselin produced a small box of chocolate drops,
which he opened and offered to M. Bonzig, who took
one and put it in his mouth, and seemed to like it.
Then they got up and walked to and fro together, and
the usher put his arm round the boy's shoulder, and
there was peace and good-will between them ; and before
they parted Josselin had intrusted his white mouse to
"le grand Bonzig" who intrusted it to Mile. Marce-
line, the head lingere, a very kind and handsome per-
son, who found for it a comfortable home in an old bon-
16
bon-box lined with blue satin, where it had a large
family and fed on the best, and lived happily ever after.
But things did not go smoothly for Josselin all that
Saturday afternoon. When Bonzig left, the boys gath-
ered round "le nouveau," large and small, and asked
questions. And just before the bell sounded for French
literature, I saw him defending himself with his two
British fists against Dugit, a big boy with whiskers, who
had him by the collar and was kicking him to rights. It
seems that Dugit had called him, in would-be English,
" Pretty voman," and this had so offended him that he
had hit the whiskered one straight in the eye.
Then French literature for the quatrttme till six ;
then dinner for all soup, boiled beef (not salt), lentils ;
and Gruyere cheese, quite two ounces each ; then French
rounders till half past seven ; then lesson preparation
(with Monte Cristos in one's lap, or Mysteries of Paris,
or Wandering Jews) till nine.
Then, ding-daug-dong, and, at the sleepy usher's nod,
a sleepy boy would rise and recite the perfunctory even-
ing prayer in a dull singsong voice beginning, "Notre
Pere, qui etes aux cieux, vous dont le regard scrutateur
penetre jusque dans les replis les plus profonds de nos
cceurs," etc., etc., and ending, "an nom du Pere, du
Fils, et du St. Esprit, aiusi soit-il !"
And then, bed Josselin in my dormitory, but a long
way off, between d'Adhcmar and Laferte ; while Palai-
seau snorted and sniffed himself to sleep in the bed next
mine, and Bapaud still tried to read the immortal works
of the elder Dumas by the light of a little oil-lamp six
yards off, suspended from a nail in the blank wall over
the chimney-piece.
The Institution F. Brossard was a very expensive pri-
A LITTLE PEACE-MAKEK
18
vate school, just twice as expensive as the most expen-
sive of the Parisian public schools Ste.-Barbe, Fran9ois
Premier, Louis-le-Grand, etc.
These great colleges, which were good enough for the
sons of Louis Philippe, were not thought good enough
for me by my dear mother, who was Irish, and whose
only brother had been at Eton, and was now captain in
an English cavalry regiment so she had aristocratic no-
tions. It used to be rather an Irish failing in those days.
My father, James Maurice, also English (and a little
Scotch), and by no means an aristocrat, was junior part-
ner in the great firm of Vougeot-Conti et Cie., wine mer-
chants, Dijon. And at Dijon I had spent much of my
childhood, and been to a day school there, and led a very
happy life indeed.
Then I was sent to Brossard's school, in the Avenue de
St. -Cloud, Paris, where I was again very happy, and fond
of (nearly) everybody, from the splendid head master and
his handsome son, Monsieur M6rovee, down to Antoine
and Francisque, the men-servants, and Pere Jaurion,
the concierge, and his wife, who sold croquets and pains
d'epices and "blom-boudingues," and sucre-d'orge and
nougat and pate de guimauve ; also pralines, dragees,
and gray sandy cakes of chocolate a penny apiece ; and
gave one unlimited credit ; and never dunned one, un-
less bribed to do so by parents, so as to impress on us
small boys a proper horror of debt.
Whatever principles I have held through life on this
important subject I set down to a private interview my
mother had with le pere et la mere Jaurion, to whom I
had run in debt five francs during the horrible winter of
'47-8. They made my life a hideous burden to me for a
whole summer term, and I have never owed any one a
penny since.
19
The Institution consisted of four separate buildings,
or "corps de logis."
In the middle, dominating the situation, was a Greco-
Eoman pavilion, with a handsome Doric portico elevated
ten or twelve feet above the ground, on a large, hand-
some terrace paved with asphalt and shaded by horse-
chestnut trees. Under this noble esplanade, and venti-
lating themselves into it, were the kitchen and offices
and pantry, and also the refectory a long room, fur-
nished with two parallel tables, covered at the top by a
greenish oil-cloth spotted all over with small black disks;
and alongside of these tables were wooden forms for the
boys to sit together at meat "la table des grands/' "la
table des petits," each big enough for thirty boys and
three or four masters. M. Brossard and his family break-
fasted and dined apart, in their own private dining-room,
close by.
In this big refectory, three times daily, at 7.30 in the
morning, at noon, and at 6 P.M., boys and masters took
their quotidian sustenance quite informally, without any
laying of cloths or saying of grace either before or after ;
one ate there to live one did not live merely to eat, at
the Pension Brossard.
Breakfast consisted of a thick soup, rich in dark-hued
garden produce, and a large hunk of bread except on
Thursdays, when a pat of butter was served out to each
boy instead of that Spartan broth that "brouet noir
des Lacedemoniens," as we called it.
Everybody who has lived in France knows how good
French butter can often be and French bread. We
triturated each our pat with rock-salt and made a round
ball of it, and dug a hole in our hunk to put it in, and
ate it in the play-ground with clasp-knives, making it
last as long as we could.
20
This, and the half-holiday in the afternoon, made'
Thursday a day to be marked with a white stone. When
you are up at five in summer, at half past five in the
winter, and have had an hour and a half or two hours'
preparation before your first meal at 7.30, French bread-
and-butter is not a bad thing to break your fast with.
Then, from eight till twelve, class Latin, Greek,
French, English, German and mathematics and geome-
try history, geography, chemistry, physics everything
that you must get to know before you can hope to obtain
your degree of Bachelor of Letters or Sciences, or be ad-
mitted to the Polytechnic School, or the Normal, or the
Central, or that of Mines, or that of Roads and Bridges,
or the Military School of St. Cyr, or the Naval School of
the Borda. All this was fifty years ago ; of course
names of schools may have changed, and even the sci-
ences themselves.
Then, at twelve, the second breakfast, meat (or salt
fish on Fridays), a dish of vegetables, lentils, red or
white beans, salad, potatoes, etc.; a dessert, which con-
sisted of fruit or cheese, or a French pudding. This
banquet over, a master would stand up in his place and
call for silence, and read out loud the list of boys who
were to be kept in during the play-hour that followed :
"A la retenue, Messieurs Maurice, Rapaud, de Villars,
Jolivet, Sponde," etc. Then play till 1.30; and very
good play, too ; rounders, which are better and far more
complicated in France than in England; "barres";
"barres traversieres,"as rough a game as football; fly the
garter, or "la raie," etc., etc., according to the season.
And then afternoon study, at the summons of that dread-
ful bell whose music was so sweet when it rang the hour
for meals or recreation or sleep so hideously discordant
at 5.30 on a foggy December Monday morning.
21
Altogether eleven hours work daily and four hours
play, and sleep from nine till five or half past ; I find
this leaves half an hour unaccounted for, so I must have
made a mistake somewhere. But it all happened fifty
years ago, so it's not of much consequence now.
Probably they have changed all that in France by this
time, and made school life a little easier there, especially
for nice little English boys and nice little French boys
too. I hope so, very much ; for French boys can be as
nice as any, especially at such institutions as F. Bros-
sard's, if there are any left.
Most of my comrades, aged from seven to nineteen or
twenty, were the sons of well-to-do fathers Soldiers,
sailors, rentiers, owners of land, public officials, in profes-
sions or business or trade. A dozen or so were of aristo-
cratic descent three or four very great swells indeed ;
for instance, two marquises (one of whom spoke English,
having an English mother); a count bearing a string of
beautiful names a thousand years old, and even more
for they were constantly turning up in the Classe d'His-
toire de France au moyen age ; a Belgian viscount of
immense wealth and immense good-nature ; and several
very rich Jews, who were neither very clever nor very
stupid, but, as a rule, rather popular.
Then we had a few of humble station the son of the
woman who washed for us ; Jules, the natural son of a
brave old caporal in the trente-septieme legere (a country-
man of M. Brossard's), who was not well off so I sus-
pect his son was taught and fed for nothing the Bros-
sards were very liberal ; FiloseL the only child of a
small retail hosier in the Kue St. -Denis (who thought no
sacrifice too great to keep his son at such a first-rate
private school), and others.
During the seven years I spent at Brossard's I never
once heard paternal wealth (or the want of it) or pater-
nal rank or position alluded to by master, pupil, or ser-
vant especially never a word or an allusion that could
have given a moment's umbrage to the most sensitive
little only son of a well-to-do West End cheese-monger
that ever got smuggled into a private suburban boarding-
school kept " for the sons of gentlemen only," and was
so chaffed and bullied there that his father had to take
him away, and send him to Eton instead, where the
"sons of gentlemen" have better manners, it seems; or
even to France, where " the sons of gentlemen " have
the best manners of all or used to have before a certain
2d of December as distinctly 1 remember ; nous avons
change tout cela !
The head master was a famous republican, and after
February, '48, was elected a " representant du peuple "
for the Dauphine, and sat in the Chamber of Deputies
for a very short time, alas !
So I fancy that the titled and particled boys "les
nobles'' were of families that had drifted away from
the lily and white flag of their loyal ancestors from
Rome and the Pope and the past.
Anyhow, none of our young nobles, when at home,
seemed to live in the noble Faubourg across the river,
and there were no clericals or ultramontanes among us,
high or low we were all red, white, and blue in equal
and impartial combination. All this par parenthese.
On the asphalt terrace also, but separated from the
head master's classic habitation by a small square space,
was the lingerie) managed by Mile. Marceline and her
two subordinates, Constance and Felicite ; and beneath
this, le pere et la mere Jaurion sold their cheap goodies,
and jealously guarded the gates that secluded us from the
wicked world outside where women are, and merchants
of tobacco, and cafes where yon can sip the opalescent
absinthe, and libraries where you can buy books more
diverting than the Adventures of Telemaclms!
On the opposite, or western, side was the gymnastic
ground, enclosed in a wire fence, but free of access at
all times a place of paramount importance in all French
schools, public and private.
From the doors of the refectory the general play-
ground sloped gently down northwards to the Rond-point,
where it was bounded by double gates of wood and iron
that were always shut ; and on each hither side of these
rose an oblong dwelling of red brick, two stories high,
and capable of accommodating thirty boys, sleeping or
waking, at work or rest or play ; for in bad weather we
played indoors, or tried to, chess, draughts, backgam-
mon, and the like even blind-man's-buff (Colin Mail-
lard} even puss in the corner (aux quatre coins!}.
All the class-rooms and school-rooms were on the
ground -'floor ; above, the dormitories and masters'
rooms.
These two buildings were symmetrical ; one held the
boys over fourteen, from the third class up to the first ;
the other (into the " salle d'etudes " of which the reader
has already been admitted), the boys from the fourth
down to the eighth, or lowest, form of all just the re-
verse of an English school. ,
On either side of the play-ground were narrow strips
of garden cultivated by boys whose tastes lay that way,
and small arbors overgrown with convolvulus and other
creepers snug little verdant retreats, where one fed the
mind on literature not sanctioned by the authorities, and
smoked cigarettes of caporal, and even colored pipes, and
was sick without fear of detection (piquait son renard
sans crainte d'ttre coll'e}.
24
Finally, behind Pere Brossard's Ciceronian Villa, on
the south, was a handsome garden (we called it Tuscu-
lum); a green flowery pleasaimce reserved for the head
master's married daughter (Madame Germain) and her
family good people with whom we had nothing to do.
Would I could subjoin a ground-plan of the Institu-
tion F. Brossard, where Barty Josselin spent four such
happy years, and was so universally and singularly pop-
ular !
Why should I take such pains about all this, and dwell
so laboriously on all these minute details ?
Firstly, because it all concerns Josselin and the story of
his life and I am so proud and happy to be the biogra-
pher of such a man, at his own often expressed desire,
that I hardly know where to leave off and what to leave
out. Also, this is quite a new trade for me, who have
only dealt hitherto in foreign wines, and British party
politics, and bimetallism and can only write iu tele-
graphese !
Secondly, because I find it such a keen personal joy to
evoke and follow out, and realize to myself by means of
pen and pencil, all these personal reminiscences ; and
with such a capital excuse for prolixity !
At the top of every page I have to pull myself together
to remind myself that it is not of the Right Honorable
Sjr Robert Maurice, Bart., M.P., that I am telling the
tale any one can do that but of a certain Englishman
who wrote Sardonyx, to the everlasting joy and pride
of the land of his fathers and of a certain French-
man who wrote Berthe aux grands pieds," and moved his
mother-country to such delight of tears and tender laugh-
ter as it had never known before.
Dear me ! the boys who lived and learnt at Brossard's
school fifty years ago, and the masters who taught there
(peace to their ashes !), are far more to my taste than the
actual human beings among whom my dull existence of
business and politics and society is mostly spent in these
days. The school must have broken up somewhere
about the early fifties. The stuccoed Doric dwelling was
long since replaced by an important stone mansion, in a
very different style of architecture the abode of a
wealthy banker and this again, later, by a palace many
stories high. The two school-houses in red brick are no
more ; the play-ground grew into a luxuriant garden,
where a dozen very tall trees overtopped the rest ; from
their evident age and their position in regard to each
other they must have been old friends of mine grown out
of all knowledge.
I saw them only twenty years ago, from the top of a
Passy omnibus, and recognized every one of them. I
went from the Arc de Triomphe to Passy and back quite
a dozen times, on purpose once for each tree ! It
touched me to think how often the author of Sar-
donyx has stood leaning his back against one of those
giants au piquet I
They are now no more ; and Passy omnibuses no longer
ply up and down the Allee du Bois de Boulogne, which
is now an avenue of palaces.
An umbrageous lane that led from the Rond-point to
Chaillot (that very forgettable, and by me quite forgot-
ten, quarter) separated the Institution F. Brossard from
the Pensionnat Melanie Jalabert a beautiful pseudo-
Gothic castle which was tenanted for a while by Prince
de Oarabas-Ohenonceaux after Mile. Jalabert had broken
up her ladies' school in 1849.
My mother boarded and lodged there, with my little
sister, in the summer of 1847. There were one or two
other English lady boarders, half-pupils much younger
26
than my mother indeed, they may be alive now. If
they are, and this should happen to meet their eye, may
I ask them to remember kindly tKe Irish wife of the
Scotch merchant of French wines who supplied them
with the innocent vintage of Macon (ah ! who knows
that innocence better than I ?), and his pretty little
daughter who played the piano so nicely ; may I beg
them also not to think it necessary to communicate with
me on the subject, or, if they do, not to expect an an-
swer ?
One night Mile. Jalabert gave a small dance, and Me-
rovee Brossard was invited, and also half a dozen of his
favorite pupils, and a fair-haired English boy of thirteen
danced with the beautiful Miss .
They came to grief and fell together in a heap on the
slippery floor ; but no bones were broken, and there was
much good-natured laughter at their expense. If Miss
(that was) is still among the quick, and remembers,
it may interest her to know that that fair-haired Eng-
lish boy's name was no less than Bartholomew Josselin ;
and that another English boy, somewhat thick -set and
stumpy, and not much to look at, held her in deep love,
admiration, and awe and has not forgotten !
If I happen to mention this, it is not with a view of
tempting her into any correspondence about this little
episode of bygone years, should this ever meet her eye.
The Sunday morning that followed Barty's debut at
Brossard's the boys went to church in the Eue de
1'figlise, Passy and he with them, for he had been
brought up a Roman Catholic. And I went round to
Mile. Jalabert's to see my mother and sister.
I told them all about the new boy, and they were
much interested. Suddenly my mother exclaimed :
"Bartholomew Josselin ? why, dear me ! that must be
27
Lord Runswick's son Lord Runswick, who was the
eldest son of the present Marquis of Whitby. He was in
the 17th lancers with your uncle Charles, who was very fond
of him. He left the army twenty years ago, and married
Lady Selina Jobhouse and his wife went mad. Then
he fell in love with the famous Antoinette Josselin at
the ' Bouffes,' and wanted so much to marry her that he
tried to get a divorce ; it was tried in the House of
Lords, I believe ; but he didn't succeed so they a
well they contracted a a morganatic marriage, you
know ; and your friend was born. And poor Lord Runs-
wick was killed in a duel about a dog, when his son was
two years old ; and his mother left the stage, and "
Just here the beautiful Miss - - came in with her
sister, and there was no more of Josselin's family his-
tory ; and I forgot all about it for the day. For I pas-
sionately loved the beautiful Miss - ; I was just
thirteen !
But next morning I said to him at breakfast, in Eng-
lish,
" Wasn't your father killed in a duel ?"
" Yes," said Barty, looking grave.
" Wasn't he called Lord Runswick ?"
" Yes," said Barty, looking graver still.
" Then why are you called Josselin ?''
"Ask no questions and you'll get no lies," said Barty,
looking very grave indeed and I dropped the subject.
And here I may as well rapidly go through the well-
known story of his birth and early childhood.
His father, Lord Runswick, fell desperately in love
with the beautiful Antoinette Josselin after his own
wife had gone hopelessly mad. He failed to obtain a
divorce, naturally ; Antoinette was as much in love with
him, and they lived together as man and wife, and Barty
28
was born. They were said to be the handsomest couple
in Paris, and immensely popular among all who knew
them, though of course society did not open its doors
to la belle Madame de Ronsvic, as she was called.
She was the daughter of poor fisher-folk in Le Pollet,
Dieppe. I, with Barty for a guide, have seen the lowly
dwelling where her infancy and childhood were spent,
and which Barty remembered well, and also such of her
kin as was still alive in 1870, and felt it was good to
come of such a race, humble as they were. They were
physically splendid people, almost as splendid as Barty
himself ; and, as I was told by many who knew them
well, as good to know and live with as they were good
to look at all that was easy to see and their manners
were delightful.
When. Antoinette was twelve, she went to stay in Paris
with her uncle and aunt, who were concierges to Prince
Scorchakoff in the Rue du Faubourg St.-Honore ; next
door, or next door but one, to the lillysee Bourbon, as it
was called then. And there the Princess took a fancy to
her, and had her carefully educated, especially in music ;
for the child had a charming voice and a great musical
talent, besides being beautiful to the eye gifts which
her 'son inherited.
Then she became for three or four years a pupil at the
Conservatoire, and finally went on the stage, and was soon
one of the most brilliant stars of the Parisian theatre at
its most brilliant period.
Then she met the handsome English lord, who was
forty, and they fell in love with each other, and all hap-
pened as I have told.
In the spring of 1837 Lord Runswick was killed in a
duel by Lieutenant Rondelis, of the deuxieme Spahis.
Antoinette's dog had jumped up to play with the lieu-
LORD RUNSWICK AND ANTOINETTE JOS8ELIN
30
tenant, who struck it with his cane (for he was "en pe-
Mn," it appears in mufti) ; and Lord Runswick laid his
own cane across the Frenchman's back ; and next morn-
ing they fought with swords, by the Mare aux Biches, in
the Bois de Boulogne a little secluded, sedgy pool,
hardly more than six inches deep and six yards across.
Barty and I have often skated there as boys.
The Englishman was run through at the first lunge,
and fell dead on the spot.
A few years ago Barty met the son of the man who
killed Lord Runswick it was at the French Embassy in
Albert Gate. They were introduced to each other, and
M. Rondelis told Barty how his own father's life had
been poisoned by sorrow and remorse at having had "la
main si malheureuse" on that fatal morning by the Mare
aux Biches.
Poor Antoinette, mad with grief, left the stage, and
went with her little boy to live in the Pollet, near her
parents. Three years later she died there, of typhus, and
Barty was left an orphan and penniless ; for Lord Runs-
wick had been poor, and lived beyond his means, and
died in debt.
Lord Archibald Rohan, a favorite younger brother of
Runswick's (not the heir), came to Dieppe from Dover
(where he was quartered with his regiment, the 7th Royal
Fusileers) to see the boy, and took a fancy to him, and
brought him back to Dover to show his wife, who was
also French a daughter of the old Gascon family of
Lonlay-Savignac, who had gone into trade (chocolate)
and become immensely rich. They (the Rohans) had
been married eight years, and had as yet no children of
their own. Lady Archibald was delighted with the child,
who was quite beautiful. She fell in love with the little
creature at the first sight of him and fed him, on the
31
evening of his arrival, with crumpets and buttered toast.
And in return he danced "La Dieppoise" for her, and
sang her a little ungramraatical ditty in praise of wine
and women. It began :
" Beuvons, beuvons, beuvons done
De ce via le meilleur du monde . . .
Beuvons, beuvons, beuvons done
De ce vin, car il est tres-bon !
Si je n'en beuvions pas,
J'aunons la pepi-e !
Ce qui me. . . ."
I have forgotten the rest indeed, 1 am not quite sure
that it is fit for the drawing-room !
" Ah, moii Dieu ! quel amour d'enfant ! Oh ! gardons-
le !" cried my lady, and they kept him.
I can imagine the scene. Indeed, Lady Archibald has
described it to me, and Barty remembered it well. It
Avas his earliest English recollection, and he has loved
buttered toast and crumpets ever since as well as wom-
en and wine. And thus he was adopted by the Archi-
bald Rohans. They got him an English governess and
a pony; and in two years he went to a day school in
Dover, kept by a Miss Stone, who is actually alive at
present and remembers him well ; and so he became
quite a little English boy, but kept up his French
through Lady Archibald, who was passionately devoted
to him, although by this time she had a little daughter
of her own, whom Barty always looked upon as his sis-
ter, and who is now dead. (She became Lord Frognal's
wife he died in 1870 and she afterwards married Mr.
Justice Kobertson.)
Barty's French grandfather and grandmother came
over from Dieppe once a year to see him, and were well
pleased with the happy condition of his new life ; and
32
the more Lord and Lady Archibald saw of these grand-
parents of his, the more pleased they were that he had
become the child of their adoption. For they were first-
rate people to descend from, these simple toilers of the
sea ; better, perhaps, cater is paribus, than even the Ro-
hans themselves.
All this early phase of little Josselin's life seems to
have been singularly happy. Every year at Christmas
he went with the Rohans to Castle Rohan in Yorkshire,
where his English grandfather lived, the Marquis of
Whitby and where he was petted and made much of by
all the members, young and old (especially female), of
that very ancient family, which had originally come
from Brittany in France, as the name shows ; but were
not millionaires, and never had been.
Often, too, they went to Paris and in 1847 Colonel
Lord Archibald sold out, and they elected to go and live
there, in the Rue du Bac ; and Barty was sent to the
Institution F. Brossard, where he was soon destined to
become the most popular boy, with boys and masters
alike, that had ever been in the school (in any school, I
should think), in spite of conduct that was too often the
reverse of exemplary.
Indeed, even from his early boyhood he was the most
extraordinarily gifted creature I have ever known, or even
heard of ; a kind of spontaneous humorous Crichton, to
whom all things came easily and life itself as an un-
commonly good joke. During that summer term of
1847 I did not see very much of him. He was in the
class below mine, and took up with Laferte and little
Bussy-Rabutin, who were first-rate boys, and laughed at
everything he said, and worshipped him. So did every-
body else, sooner or later ; indeed, it soon became evi-
dent that he was a most exceptional little person.
34
In the first place, his beauty was absolutely angelic, as
will be readily believed by all who have known him since.
The mere sight of him as a boy made people pity his
father and mother for being dead !
Then he had a charming gift of singing little French
and English ditties, comic or touching, with his delight-
ful fresh young pipe, and accompanying himself quite
nicely on either piano or guitar without really knowing
a note of music. Then he could draw caricatures that
we boys thought inimitable, much funnier than Cham's
or BertalFs or Gavarni's, and collected and treasured up.
I have dozens of them now they make me laugh still,
and bring back memories of which the charm is inde-
scribable ; and their pathos, to me !
And then how funny he was himself, without effort,
and with a fun that never failed ! He was a born buf-
foon of the graceful kind more whelp or kitten than
monkey ever playing the fool, in and out of season,
but somehow always d propos ; and French boys love a
boy for that more than anything else; or did, in those days.
Such very simple buffooneries as they were, too that
gave him (and us) such stupendous delight !
For instance he is sitting at evening study between
Bussy-Rabutin and Lafert6 ; M. Bonzig is usher for the
evening.
At 8.30 Bussy-Rabutin gives way; in a whisper he in-
forms Barty that he means to take a nap (" piquer un
cJiien"), with his Gradus opened before him, and his
hand supporting his weary brow as though in deep study.
" But," says he
" If Bouzig finds me out (si Bonzig me colle), give me
a gentle nudge !"
"All right !" says Barty and off goes Bussy-Rabutin
into his snooze.
35
8.45. Poor fat little Lafert6 falls into a snooze too,
after giving Barty just the same commission to nudge
him directly he's found out from the cliaire.
8.55. Intense silence ; everybody hard at work. Even
Bonzig is satisfied with the deep stillness and studious
recueillement that brood over the scene steady pens
going quick turning over of leaves of the Gradus ad
Parnassum. Suddenly Barty sticks out his elbows and
nudges both his neighbors at once, and both jump up,
exclaiming, in a loud voice :
"Non, m'sieur, je n'dors pas. J'travaille."
Sensation. Even Bonzig laughs and Barty is happy
for a week.
Or else, again a new usher, Monsieur Goupillon
(from Gascony) is on duty in the school - room during
afternoon school. He has a peculiar way of saying "08,
vo !" instead of "oui, vous !" to any boy who says "moi,
m'sieur ?" on being found fault with ; and perceiving
this, Barty manages to he found fault with every five
minutes, and always says "moi, m'sieur ?" so as to elicit
the " od, vo!" that gives him such delight.
At length M. Goupillon says,
" Josselin, if you force me to say ( o,vd!'io you once
more, you shall be d la retenue for a week !"
" Moi, m'sieur ?" says Josselin, quite innocently.
" Oe, vd !" shouts M. Goupillon, glaring with all his
might, but quite unconscious that Barty has earned the
threatened punishment ! And again Barty is happy for
a week. And so are we.
Such was Barty's humor, as a boy mere drivel but
of such a kind that even his butts were fond of him.
He would make M. Bonzig laugh in the middle of his
severest penal sentences, and thus demoralize the whole
school-room and set a shocking example, and be ordered
d la porte of the salle d'e"tudes an exile which was quite
to his taste ; for he would go straight off to the lingerie
and entertain Mile. Marceline and Constance and Fe-
licite (who all three adored him) with comic songs and
break -downs of his own invention, and imitations of
everybody in the school. He was a born histrion a
kind of French Arthur Roberts but very beautiful to
the female eye, and also always dear to the female heart
a most delightful gift of God !
Then he was constantly being sent for when boys'
friends and parents came to see them, that he might
sing and play the fool and show off his tricks, and so
forth. It was one of M. Merovee's greatest delights to
put him through his paces. The message "on demande
Monsieur Josselin au parloir" would be brought down
once or twice a week, sometimes even In class or school
room, and became quite a by-word in the school ; and
many of the masters thought it a mistake and a pity.
But Barty by no means disliked being made much of
and showing off in this genial manner.
He could turn le pere Brossard round his little finger,
and Merovee too. Whenever an extra holiday was to
be begged for, or a favor obtained for any one, or the
severity of a pensum mitigated, Barty was the messen-
ger, and seldom failed.
His constitution, inherited from a long line of frugal
seafaring X orman ancestors (not to mention another long
line of well-fed, well-bred Yorkshire Squires), was mag-
nificent. His spirits never failed. He could see the
satellites of Jupiter with the naked eye ; this was often
tested by M. Dumollard, maitre de mathematiques (et de
cosmographie), who had a telescope, which, with a little
good-will on the gazer's part, made Jupiter look as big as
the moon, and its moons like stars of the first magnitude.
3?
His sense of hearing was also exceptionally keen. He
could hear a watch tick in the next room, and perceive
very high sounds to which ordinary human ears are deaf
(this was found out later) ; and when we played blind-
man's-buff on a rainy day, he could, blindfolded, tell
every boy he caught hold of not by feeling him all over
like the rest of us, but by the mere smell of his hair, or
his hands, or his blouse ! No wonder he was so much
more alive than the rest of us ! According to the
amiable, modest, polite, delicately humorous, and even
tolerant and considerate Professor MaxNordau, this per-
fection of the olfactory sense proclaims poor Barty a
degenerate ! I only wish there were a few more like him,
and that I were a little more like him myself !
By-the-way, how proud young Germany must feel of
its enlightened Max, and how fond of him, to be sure !
Mes compliments !
But the most astounding thing of all (it seems incred-
ible, but all the world knows it by this time, and it will
be accounted for later on) is that at certain times and
seasons Barty knew by an infallible instinct where the
north was, to a point. Most of my readers will remem-
ber his extraordinary evidence as a witness in the " Ran-
goon" trial, and how this power was tested in open court,
and how important were the issues involved, and how
he refused to give any explanation of a gift so extraor-
dinary.
It was often tried at school by blindfolding him, and
turning him round and round till he was giddy, and ask-
ing him to point out where the north pole was, or the
north star, and seven or eight times out of ten the an-
swer was unerringly right. When he failed, he knew
beforehand that for the time being he had lost the power,
but could never say why. Little Doctor Larcher could
38
never get over his surprise at this strange phenomenon,
nor explain it, and often brought some scientific friend
from Paris to test it, who was equally nonplussed.
When cross-examined, Barty would merely say :
"Quelquefois je sais quelquefois je ne sais pas mais
quand je sais, je sais, et il n'y a pas a s'y tromper !"
Indeed, oh one occasion that I remember well, a very
strange thing happened ; he not only pointed out the north
with absolute accuracy, as he stood carefully blindfolded
in the gymnastic ground, after having been turned and
twisted again and again but, still blindfolded, he
vaulted the wire fence and ran round to the refectory
door which served as the home at rounders, all of us fol-
lowing ; and there he danced a surprising dance of his
own invention, that he called " La Paladine," the most
humorously graceful and grotesque exhibition I ever saw ;
and then, taking a ball out of his pocket, he shouted :
"A 1'amandier!" and threw the ball. Straight and swift
it flew, and hit the almond-tree, which was quite twenty
yards off ; and after this he ran round the yard from
base to base, as at "la balle au camp," till he readied
the camp again.
" If ever he goes blind," said the wondering M. Mero-
v6e, "he'll never need a dog to lead him about."
" He must have some special friend above !" said
Madame Germain (Merovee's sister, who was looking on).
Prophetic words! I have never forgotten them, nor
the tear that glistened in each of her kind eyes as she
spoke. She was a deeply religious and very emotional
person, and loved Barty almost as if he were a child of
her own.
Such women have strange intuitions.
Barty was often asked to repeat this astonishing per-
formance before sceptical people parents of boys, visit-
39
ors, etc. who had been told of it, and who believed he
could not have been properly blindfolded ; but he could
never be induced to do so.
There was no mistake about the blindfolding I helped
in it myself ; and he afterwards told me the whole thing
was " aussi simple que bonjour" if once he felt the north
for then, with his back to the refectory door, he knew
exactly the position and distance of every tree from
where he was.
" It's all nonsense about my going blind and being able
to do without a dog" he added ; "I should be just as
helpless as any other blind man, unless I was in a place I
knew as well as my own pocket like this play-ground !
Besides, / sha'n't go blind ; nothing will ever happen to
my eyes they're the strongest and best in the whole
school !"
He said this exultingly, dilating his nostrils and chest;
and looked proudly up and around, like Ajax defying the
lightning.
" But what do you feel when you feel the north, Barty
a kind of tingling ?" I asked.
" Oh I feel where it is as if I'd got a mariner's com-
pass trembling inside my stomach and as if I wasn't
afraid of anybody or anything in the world as if I could
go and have my head chopped off and not care a fig."
"Ah, well I can't make it out I give it up," I ex-
claimed.
"So do I," exclaims Barty.
"But tell me, Barty," I whispered, " have you have
you really got a a special friend above?"
" Ask no questions and you'll get no lies," said Barty,
and winked at me one eye after the other and went
about his business. And I about mine.
Thus it is hardly to be wondered at that the spirit of
40
this extraordinary boy seemed to pervade the Pension F.
Brossard, almost from the day he came to the day he left
it a slender stripling over six feet high, beautiful as
Apollo but, alas ! without his degree, and not an incipi-
ent hair on his lip or chin !
Of course the boy had his faults. He had a tremen-
dous appetite, and was rather greedy so was I, for that
matter and we were good customers to la mere Jaurion ;
especially he, for he always had lots of pocket-money,
and was fond of standing treat all round. Yet, strange
to say, he had such a loathing of meat that soon by
special favoritism a separate dish of eggs and milk and
succulent vegetables was cooked expressly for him a
savory mess that made all our mouths water merely to see
and smell it, and filled us with envy, it was so good.
Aglae the cook took care of that !
" C'etait pour Monsieur Josselin i"
And of this he would eat as much as three ordinary
boys could eat of anything in the world.
Then lie "was quick-tempered and impulsive, and in
frequent fights in which he generally came off second
best ; for he was fond of fighting with bigger boys than
himself. Victor or vanquished, he never bore malice
nor woke it in others, which is worse. But he would
slap a face almost as soon as look at it, on rather slight
provocation, I'm afraid especially if it were an inch or
two higher up than his own. And he was fond of show-
ing off, and always wanted to throw farther and jump
higher and run faster than any one else. Not, indeed,
that he ever wished to mentally excel, or particularly ad-
mired those who did !
Also, he was apt to judge folk too much by their mere
outward appearance and manner, and not very fond of
dull, ugly, commonplace people the very people, unfor-
41
tunately, who were fondest of him ; he really detested
them, almost as much as they detest each other, in spite
of many sterling qualities of the heart and head they
sometimes possess. And yet he was their victim through
life for he was very soft, and never had the heart to
snub the deadliest bores he ever writhed under, even un-
deserving ones ! Like - , or , or the Bishop of
, or Lord Justice - , or General , or Admiral
, or the Duke of , etc., etc.
And he very unjustly disliked people of the bourgeois
type the respectable middle class, quorum pars magna
fui! Especially if we were very well off and success-
ful, and thought ourselves of some consequence (as we
now very often are, I beg to say), and showed it (as, I'm
afraid, we sometimes do). He preferred the commonest
artisan to M. Jourdain, the bourgeois gentilhomme, who
was a very decent fellow, after all, and at least clean in
his habits, and didn't use bad language or beat his wife !
Poor dear Barty ! what would have become of all those
priceless copyrights and royalties and what not if his
old school-fellow hadn't been a man of business ? and
where would Barty himself have been without his wife,
who came from that very class ?
And his admiration for an extremely good-looking
person, even of his own sex, even a scavenger or a dust-
man, was almost snobbish. It was like a well-bred,
well-educated Englishman's frank fondness for a noble
lord.
And next to physical beauty he admired great physical
strength ; and I sometimes think that it is to my posses-
sion of this single gift I owe some of the warm friendship
I feel sure he always bore me ; for though he was a
strong man, and topped me by an inch or two, I was
stronger still as a cart-horse is stronger than a racer.
42
For his own personal appearance, of which he always
took the greatest care, he had a naive admiration that
he did not disguise. His candor in this respect was
comical; yet, strange to say, he was really without
vanity.
When he was in the Guards he would tell you quite
frankly he was " the handsomest chap in all the House-
hold Brigade, bar three " just as he would tell you he
was twenty last birthday. And the fun of it was that
the three exceptions he was good enough to make, splen-
did fellows as they were, seemed as satyrs to Hyperion
when compared with Barty Josselin. One (F. Pepys)
was three or four inches taller, it is true, being six foot
seven or eight a giant. The two others had immense
whiskers, which Barty openly envied, but could not em-
ulate and the mustache with which he would have been
quite decently endowed in time was not permitted in an
infantry regiment.
To return to the Pension Brossard, and Barty the
school-boy :
He adored Monsieur Merovee because he was big and
strong and handsome not because he was one of the
best fellows that ever lived. He disliked Monsieur
Durosier, whom we were all so fond of, because he had
a slight squint and a receding chin.
As for the Anglophobe, Monsieur Dumollard, who
made no secret of his hatred and contempt for perfidi-
ous Albion . . .
" Dis done, Josselin V says Maurice, in English or
French, as the case might be, "why don't you like Mon-
sieur Dumollard ? Eh ? He always favors you more
than any other chap in the school. I suppose you dis-
like him because he hates the English so, and always
runs them down before you and me and says they're all
43
traitors and sneaks and hypocrites and bullies and cow-
ards and liars and snobs; and we can't answer him, be-
cause he's the mathematical master I"
"Ma foi, non !" says Josselin "c'est pas pour 9a !"
" Pourquoi, alors ?" says Maurice (that's me).
"C'est parce qu'il a le pied bourgeois et la jambe
canaille !" says Barty. (It's because he's got common
legs and vulgar feet.)
And that's about the lowest and meanest thing I ever
heard him say in his life.
Also, he was not always very sympathetic, as a boy,
when one was sick or sorry or out of sorts, for he had
never been ill in his life, never known an ache or a pain
except once the mumps, which he seemed to thorough-
ly enjoy and couldn't realize suffering of any kind, ex-
cept such suffering as most school-boys all over the
world are often fond of inflicting 011 dumb animals : this
drove him frantic, and led to many a licking by bigger
boys. I remember several such scenes one especially.
One frosty morning in January, '48, just after break-
fast, Jolivet trois (tertius) put a sparrow into his squirrel's
cage, and the squirrel caught it in its claws, and cracked
its skull like a nut and sucked its brain, while the poor
bird still made a desperate struggle for life, and there
was much laughter.
There was also, in consequence, a quick fight between
Jolivet and Josselin ; in which Barty got the worst, as
usual his foe was two years older, and quite an inch
taller.
Afterwards, as the licked one sat on the edge of a small
stone tank full of water and dabbed his swollen eye with
a wet pocket-handkerchief, M. Dumollard, the mathe-
matical master, made cheap fun of Britannic sentimen-
tality about animals, and told us how the English no-
44
blesse were privileged to beat their wives witli sticks no
thicker than their ankles, and sell them " au rabais" in
the horse-market of Smissfeld ; and that they paid men
to box each other to death on the stage of Drury Lane,
and all that deplorable things that we all know and are
sorry for and ashamed, but cannot put a stop to.
The boys laughed, of course ; they always did when
Dumollard tried to be funny, "and many a joke had
he/' although his wit never degenerated into mere
humor.
But they were so fond of Barty that they forgave him
his insular affectation ; some even helped him to dab his
sore eye ; among them Jolivet trois himself, who was a
very good-natured chap, and very good-looking into the
bargain ; and he had received from Barty a sore eye too
gallice, " un pochon" scholastic^, "un ceil au beurre
noir !"
By-the-way, / fought with Jolivet once about ^Esop's
fables ! He said that ^Esop was a lame poet of Laceda?-
mon I, that ^Esop was a little hunchback Armenian
Jew ; and I stuck to it. It was a Sunday afternoon, on
the terrace by the lingerie.
He kicked as hard as he could, so I had to kick too.
Mile. Marceline ran out with Constance and Felicite and
tried to separate us, and got kicked by both (uninten-
tionally, of course). Then up came Pere Jaurion and
kicked me! And they all took Jolivet's part, and said I
was in the wrong, because I was English ! What did
they know about ^Esop ! So we made it up, and went
in Jaurion's loge and stood each other a blomboudingue
on tick and called Jaurion bad names.
" Comme c'est bete, de s'battre, hein ?" said Jolivet,
and I agreed with him. I don't know which of us really
got the worst of it, for we hadn't disfigured each other
45
in the least and that's the best of kicking. Anyhow
he was two years older than I, and three or four inches
taller ; so I'm glad, on the whole, that that small battle
was interrupted.
It is really not for brag that I have lugged in this
story at least, I hope not. One never quite knows.
To go back to Barty : he was the most generous boy in
the school. If I may paraphrase an old saying, he really
didn't seem to know the difference betwixt tuum et
meum. Everything he had, books, clothes, pocket-
money even agate marbles, those priceless possessions
to a French school-boy seemed to be also everybody
else's who chose. I came across a very characteristic
letter of his the other day, written from the Pension
Brossard to his favorite aunt, Lady Caroline Grey (one
of the Rohans), who adored him. It begins :
I
" MY DEAR AUNT CAROLINE, Thank you so much
for the magnifying-glass, which is not only magnifying,
but magnifique. Don't trouble to send any more gin-
gerbread-nuts, as the boys are getting rather tired of
them, especially Laferte and Bussy-Eabutin. I think
we should all like some Scotch marmalade," etc., etc.
And though fond of romancing a little now and then,
and embellishing a good story, he was absolutely truth-
ful in important matters, and to be relied upon im-
plicitly.
He seemed also to be quite without the sense of phys-
ical fear a kind of callousness.
Such, roughly, was the boy who lived to write the
Motes in a Moonbeam and La quatri&me Dimension be-
fore he was thirty ; and such, roughly, he remained
through life, except for one thing : he grew to be the
46
very soul of passionate and compassionate sympathy, as
who doesn't feel who has ever read a page of his work, or
even had speech with him for half an hour ?
Whatever weaknesses he yielded to when he grew to
man's estate are such as the world only too readily con-
dones in many a famous man less tempted than Josselin
was inevitably bound to be through life. Men of the
Josselin type (there are not many he stands pretty
much alone) can scarcely be expected to journey from
adolescence to middle age with that impeccable decorum
which I and no doubt many of my masculine readers
have found it so easy to achieve, and find it now so pleas-
ant to remember and get credit for. Let us think of
The Footprints of Aurora, or Etoiles mortes, or Dejanire
et Dalila, or even Les Trepassees de Franpois Villon !
Then let us look at Rajon's etching of Watts's portrait
of him (the original is my own to/look at whenever I like,
and that is pretty often). And then let us not throw
too many big stones, or too hard, at Barty Josselin.
Well, the summer term of 1847 wore smoothly to its
close a happy "trimestre" during which the Institu-
tion F. Brossard reached the high-water mark of its pros-
perity.
There were sixty boys to be taught, and six house-mas-
ters to teach them, besides a few highly paid outsiders for
special classes such as the lively M. Durosier for French
literature, and M. le Professeur Martineau for the higher
mathematics, and so forth ; and crammers and coachers
for St.-Cyr, the Polytechnic School, the lcole des Ponts
et Chaussees.
Also fencing - masters, gymnastic masters, a Dutch
master who taught us German and Italian an Irish
master with a lovely brogue who taught us English.
Shall I ever forget the blessed day when ten or twelve
47
of us were presented with an Ivanhoe apiece as a class-
book, or how Barty and I and Bonneville (who knew
English) devoured the immortal story in less than a,
week to the disgust of Rapaud, who refused to believe
that we could possibly know such a beastly tongue as
English well enough to read an English book for mere
pleasure on our desks in play-time, or on our laps in
school, en cachette! " Quelle sacree pose !"
He soon mislaid his own copy, did Eapaud ; just as
he mislaid my Monte Cristo and Jolivet's illustrated
Wandering Jew and it was always :
"Dis done, Maurice ! prete-moi ton Ivanlio'e!" (with
an accent on the e), whenever he had to construe his
twenty lines of Valtere Scott and what a hash he made
of them !
Sometimes M. Brossard himself would come, smoking
his big meerschaum, and help the English class during
preparation, and put us up to a thing or two worth
knowing.
"Rapaud, comment dit-on 'pouvoir' en anglais ?"
" Sais pas, m'sieur I"
" Comment, petit cretin, tu ne sais pas V
And Rapaud would receive a pincee tordue a "twist-
ed pinch" on the back of his arm to quicken his
memory.
" Oh, la, la!" he would howl " je n' sais pas !"
" Et toi, Maurice ?"
"Ca se dit ' to be able,' m'sieur !" I would say.
"Mais lion, mon ami tu oublies ta langue natale
9a se dit, ' to can '! Maintenant, comment dirais-tu en
anglais, 'je voudrais pouvoir ' ?"
" Je dirais, ' I would like to be able.'"
" Comment, encore ! petit cancre ! aliens tu es An-
glais tu sais bien que tu dirais, ' I vould vill to can" I"
Then M. Brossard turns to Barty : "A ton tour,
Josselin !"
"Moi, m'sieur?" says Barty.
" Oui, toi ! comment dirais-tn, 'je ponrraisvonlnir"?"
" Je dirais 'Ivould can to vitt,'" says Barty, quite un-
abashed.
" A la bonne heure ! au moins tu sais ta langue, toi !"
says Pere Brossard, and pats him on the cheek ; while
Barty winks at me, the wink of successful time-serving
hypocrisy, and Bonneville writhes with suppressed de-
light.
What lives most in my remembrance of that summer
is the lovely weather we had, and the joy of the Passy
swimming-bath every Thursday and Sunday from two
till five or six ; it comes back to me even now in heavenly
dreams by night. I swim with giant side -strokes all
round the tie des Cygnes between Passy and Grenelle,
where the IScole de Natation was moored for the summer
months.
Round and round the isle I go, up stream and down,
and dive and float and wallow with bliss there is no
telling till the waters all dry up and disappear, and I
am left wading in weeds and mud and drift and drought
and desolation, and wake up shivering and such is life.
As for Barty, he was all but amphibious, and reminded
me of the seal at the Jardin des Plantes. He really
seemed to spend most of the afternoon under water, com-
ing up to breathe now and then at unexpected moments,
with a stone in his mouth that he had picked up from the
slimy bottom ten or twelve feet below or a weed or a
dead mussel.
part Second
"Laissons les regrets et les pleurs
A la vieillesse ;
Jeunes, il faut cueillir les fleurs
De la jeunesse !" BAIP.
SOMETIMES we spent the Sunday morning in Paris,
Barty and I in picture-galleries and museums and wax-
figure shows, churches and cemeteries, and the Hotel
Cluny and the Baths of Julian the Apostate or the
Jardin des Plantes, or the Morgue, or the knackers'
yards at Montfaucon or lovely slums. Then a swim at
the Bains Deligny. Then lunch at some restaurant on the
Quai Voltaire, or in the Quartier Latin. Then to some
cafe on the Boulevards, drinking our demi-tasse and our
chasse-cafe, and smoking our cigarettes like men, and
picking our teeth like gentlemen of France.
Once after lunch at Vachette's with Berquin (who was
seventeen) and Bonneville (the marquis who had got an
English mother), we were sitting outside the Cafe des
Varietes, in the midst of a crowd of consommateurs, and
tasting to the full the joy of being alive, when a poor
woman came up with a guitar, and tried to sing " Le
petit mousse noir," a song Barty knew quite well but
she couldn't sing a bit, and nobody listened.
" Allons, Josselin, chante-nous 9a \" said Berquin.
And Bonneville jumped up, and took the woman's
guitar from her, and forced it into Josselin's hands, while
the crowd became much interested and began to applaud.
50
Thus encouraged, Barty, who never in all his life
knew what it is to be shy, stood up and piped away like
a bird ; and when he had finished the story of the little
black cabin-boy who sings in the maintop halliards, the
applause was so tremendous that he had to stand up on
a chair and sing another, and yet another.
"lcoute-moi bien, ma Fleurette !" and "Amis, la
matinee est belle I" (from La Muette de Portici), while the
pavement outside the Varietes was rendered quite im-
passable by the crowd that had gathered round to look
and listen and who all joined in the chorus :
"Conduis ta barque avec prudence,
PScheur ! parle bas !
Jette tes filets en silence
Pficheur ! parle bas !
Et le roi des mers ne nous echappera pas !" (bis).
and the applause was deafening.
Meanwhile Bonneville and Berquin went round with
the hat and gathered quite a considerable sum, in which
there seemed to be almost as much silver as copper and
actually two five-franc pieces and an English half-sov-
ereign! The poor woman wept with gratitude at com-
ing into such a fortune, and insisted on kissing Barty's
hand. Indeed it was a quite wonderful ovation, con-
sidering how unmistakably British was Barty's appear-
ance, and how unpopular we were in France just then !
He had his new shiny black silk chimney-pot hat on,
and his Eton jacket, with the wide shirt collar. Ber-
quin, in a tightly fitting double-breasted brown cloth
swallow-tailed coat with brass buttons, yellow nankin
bell-mouthed trousers strapped over varnished boots,
butter-colored gloves, a blue satin stock, and a very tall
hairy hat with a wide curly brim, looked such an out-
"AMIS, LA MATINEE EST BELLE"
52
and-ont young gentleman of France that we were all
proud of being seen in his company especially young
de Bonneville, who was still in mourning for his father
and wore a crape band round his arm, and a common
cloth cap with a leather peak, and thick blucher boots;
though he was quite sixteen, and already had a little
black mustache like an eyebrow, and inhaled the smoke
of his cigarette without coughing and quite naturally,
and ordered the waiters about just as if he already
wore the uniform of the lcole St. - Cyr, for which he
destined himself (and was not disappointed. He should
be a marshal of France by now perhaps he is).
Then we went to the Cafe Mulhouse on the Boulevard
des Italiens (on the "Soul, ties It.," as we called it, to be
in the fashion) that we might gaze at Sefior Joaquin
Eliezegui, the Spanish giant, who was eight feet high
and a trifle over (or under I forget which) : he told
us himself. Barty had a passion for gazing at very tall
men; like Frederic the Great (or was it his Majesty's
royal father ?).
Then we went to the Boulevard Bonne -Nouvelle,
where, in a painted wooden shed, a most beautiful Cir-
cassian slave, miraculously rescued from some abomina-
ble seraglio in Constantinople, sold peu'orths of "galette
du gymnase.'' On her raven hair she wore a silk turban
all over sequins, silver and gold, with a yashmak that
fell down behind, leaving her adorable face exposed :
she had an amber vest of silk, embroidered with pearls
as big as walnuts, and Turkish pantalettes what her
slippers were we couldn't see, but they must have been
lovely, like all the rest of her. Barty had a passion for
gazing at very beautiful female faces like his father be-
fore him.
There was a regular queue of postulants to see this
53
heavenly Eastern houri and buy her confection, which is
very like Scotch butter-cake, but not so digestible ; and
even more filling at the price. And three of us sat on a
bench, while three times running Barty took his place in
that procession soldiers, sailors, workmen, chiffonniers,
people of all sorts, women as many as men all of them
hungry for galette, but hungrier still for a good hu-
manizing stare at a beautiful female face ; and he made
the slow and toilsome journey to the little wooden booth
three times and brought us each a pen'orth on each
return journey ; and the third time, Katidjah (such was
her sweet Oriental name) leaned forward over her coun-
ter and kissed him on both cheeks, and whispered in his
ear (in English and with the accent of Stratford-atte-
Bowe) :
" You little chick! your name is Brown, I know!"
And he came away, his face pale with conflicting emo-
tions, and told us !
How excited we were ! Bonneville (who spoke Eng-
lish quite well) went for a pen'orth on his own account,
and said : " My name's Brown too, Miss Katidjah !"
But he didn't get a kiss.
(She soon after married a Mr. , of , the well-
known of shire, in land. She may be alive
now.)
Then to the Palais Eoyal, to dine at the "Diner Eu-
ropeeii " with M. Berquin pere, a famous engineer ; and
finally to stalls at the "Franais"to see the two first
acts of Le Cid; and this was rather an anticlimax for
we had too much "Cid" at the Institution F. Brossard
already !
And then, at last, to the omnibus station in the Hue de
Itivoli, whence the " Accelerees " (en correspondence avec
les Constantines) started for Passy every ten minutes ;
t 54
and thus, up the gas-lighted Champs-filysees, and by the
Arc de Triomphe, to the Rond-point de F Avenue de St.-
Cloud ; tired out, but happy happy happy comme on
ne Vest plus !
Before the school broke up for the holidays there were
very severe examinations but no " distribution de prix";
we were above that kind of thing at Brossard's, just as we
were above wearing a uniform or taking in day boarders.
Barty didn't come off very well in this competition ;
but he came off anyhow much better than I, who had
failed to be " diligent and attentive " too much Monte
Cristo, I'm afraid.
At all events Barty got five marks for English History,
because he remembered a good deal about Richard Cosur
de Lion, and John, and Friar Tuck, and Robin Hood,
and especially one Cedric the Saxon, a historical person-
age of whom the examiner (a decorated gentleman from
the College de France) had never even heard !
And then (to the tune of " Au clair de la lune"):
"Vivent les vacances
Denique tandem;
Et les penitences
Habebunt finem!
Les pions intraitables,
Vultu Barbard,
S'en iront aux diables,
Gaudio nostrb."
N.B. The accent is always on the last syllable in
French Latin anApion means an usher.
Barty went to Yorkshire with the Rohans, and I spent
most of my holidays with my mother and sister (and the
beautiful Miss ) at Mademoiselle Jalabert's, next door
coming back to school for most of my meals, and at
/ / // M ',) ': ,
/
'TOO MUCH 'MONTE CRISTO,' I'M AFRAID"
56
night to sleep, with a whole dormitory to myself, and no
dreadful bell at five in the morning ; and so much time
to spare that I never found any leisure for my holiday
task, that skeleton at the feast ; no more did Jules, the
sergeant's son; no more did Caillard, who spent his vaca-
tion at Brossard's because his parents lived in Russia,
and his " correspondant " in Paris was ill.
The only master who remained behind was Bonzig,
who passed his time painting ships and sailors, in oil-
colors ; it was a passion with him : corvettes, brigan-
tines, British whalers, fishing -smacks, revenue -cutters,
feluccas, caiques, even Chinese junks all was fish that
came to his net. He got them all from La France
Maritime, an illustrated periodical much in vogue at
Brossard's ; and also his storms and his calms, his rocks
and piers and light -houses for he had never seen
the sea he was so fond of. He took us every morning
to the Passy swimming-baths, and in the afternoon for
long walks in Paris, and all about and around, and es-
pecially to the Musee de Marine at the Louvre, that we
might gaze with him at the beautiful models of three-
deckers.
He evidently pitied our forlorn condition, and told us
delightful stories about seafaring life, like Mr. Clark
Russell's ; and how he, some day, hoped to see the ocean
for himself before he died and with his own eyes.
I really don't know how Jules and Caillard would have
got through the hideous ennui of that idle September
without him. Even I, with my mother and sister and
the beautiful Miss within such easy reach, found
time hang heavily at times. One can't be always reading,
even Alexandre Dumas ; nor always loafing about, even
in Paris, by one's self (Jules and Caillard were not al-
lowed outside the gates without Bonzig) ; and beautiful
57
English girls of eighteen, like Miss s, don't always
want a small boy dangling after them, and show it some-
times ; which I thought very .hard.
It was almost a relief when school began again in Oc-
tober, and the boys came back with their wonderful
stories of the good time they had all had (especially some
of the big boys, who were " en rhetorique et en philoso-
phic ") and all the game that had fallen to their guns
wild-boars, roebucks, cerfs-dix-cors, and what not ; of
perilous swims in stormy seas tremendous adventures
in fishing-smacks on moonlight nights (it seemed that the
moon had been at the full all through those wonderful
six weeks); rides venire d terre on mettlesome Arab
steeds through gloomy wolf-haunted forests with charm-
ing female cousins ; flirtations and "good fortunes" with
beautiful but not happily married women in old mediaeval
castle keeps. Toujours au clair de la lune ! They didn't
believe each other in the least, these gay young romancers
nor expect to be believed themselves ; but it was very
exciting all the same ; and they listened, and were lis-
tened to in turn, without a gesture of incredulity nor
even a smile ! And we small boys held our tongues in
reverence and awe.
When Josselin came back he had wondrous things to
tell too but so preposterous that they disbelieved him
quite openly, and told him so. How in London he had
seen a poor woman so tipsy in the street that she had to
be carried away by two policemen on a stretcher. How
he had seen brewers' dray-horses nearly six feet high at
the shoulder and one or two of them with a heavy
cavalry mustache drooping from its upper lip.
How he had been presented to the Lord Mayor of
London, and even shaken hands with him, in Leadenhall
Market, and that his Lordship was quite plainly dressed ;
58
and how English Lord Mayors were not necessarily
" homines du monde," nor always hand in glove with
Qiieen Victoria !
Splendide mendax !
But they forgave him all his mendacity for the sake
of a new accomplishment he had brought back with him,
and which beat all his others. He could actually turn a
somersault backwards with all the ease and finish of a
professional acrobat. How he got to do this .1 don't
know. It must have been natural to him and he never
found it out before ; he was always good at gymnastics
and all things that required grace and agility more than
absolute strength.
Also he brought back with him (from Leadenhall
Market, no doubt) a gigantic horned owl, fairly tame
and with eyes that reminded us of le grand Bonzig's.
School began, and with it the long evenings with an
hour's play by lamp-light in the warm salle d'etudes ;
and the cold lamp-lit ninety minutes' preparation on an
empty stomach, after the short perfunctory morning
prayer which didn't differ much from the evening one.
Barty was still en cinqui&me, at the top ! and I at the
tail of the class immediately above so near and yet so
far ! so I did not have many chances of improving my
acquaintance with him that term ; for he still stuck to
Laferte and Bussy-Rabutin they were inseparable, those
three.
At mid- day play-time the weather was too cold for
anything but games, which were endless in their variety
and excitement ; it would take a chapter to describe
them.
It is a mistake to think that French school-boys are
(or were) worse off than ours in this. I will not say
that any one French game is quite so good as cricket or
59
football for a permanency. But I remember a great
many that are very nearly so.
Indeed, French rounders (la balle au camp) seems to
me the best game that ever was on account of the quick
rush and struggle of the fielders to get home when an
inside boy is hit between the bases, lest he should pick
the ball up in time to hit one of them with it before the
camp is reached ; in which case there is a most exciting
scrimmage for the ball, etc., etc.
Barty was good at all games, especially la balle au
camp. I ivsed to envy the graceful, easy way he threw
the ball so quick and straight it seemed to have no
curve at all in its trajectory : and how it bounded off the
boy it nearly always hit between' the shoulders !
At evening, play in the school-room, besides draughts
and chess and backgammon ; M. Bonzig, when de service,
would tell us thrilling stories, with "la suite au pro-
chain numero " when the bell rang at 7.30; a long series
that lasted through the winter of '47-'48. Le Tueur tfe
Daims, Le Lac Ontario., Le Dernier des Mohicans, Les'
Pionniers, La Prairie by one Fenimore Coupere ; all
of which he had read in M. Defauconpret's admirable
translations. I have read some of them in their native
American since then, myself. I loved them always
but they seemed to lack some of the terror, the fresh-
ness, and the charm his fluent utterance and solemn nasal
voice put into them as he sat and smoked his endless
cigarettes with his back against the big stone stove, and
his eyes dancing sideways through his glasses. Never
did that " ding-dang-dong " sound more hateful than
when le grand Bonzig was telling the tale of Bas-de-cuir's
doings, from his innocent youth to his noble and pathetic
death by sunset, with his ever-faithful and still-service-
able but no longer deadly rifle (the friend of sixty years)
60
lying across his knees. I quote from memory ; what a
gun that was !
Then on Thursdays, long walks, two by two, in Paris,
with Bonzig or Dumollard ; or else in the Bois to play
rounders or prisoners' base in a clearing, or skate on
the Mare aux Biches, which was always so hard to find
in the dense thicket . . . poor Lord Runswick ! He
found it once too often !
La Mare d'Auteuil was too deep, and too popular with
" la flotte de Passy," as we called the Passy voyous, big
and small, who came there in their hundred* to slide
and pick up quarrels with well-dressed and respectable
school-boys. Liberte egalite fraternity! ou la mort!
Vive la republique ! (This, by-the-way, applies to the
winter that came next. )
So time wore on with us gently ; through the short
vacation at New-year's day till the 23d or 24th of Feb-
ruary, when the Revolution broke out, and Louis Phi-
lippe premier had to fly for his life. It was a very troub-
lous time, and the school for a whole week was in a
state of quite heavenly demoralization ! Ten times a
day, or in the dead of night, the drum would beat le
rappel or la generate. A warm wet wind was blowing
the most violent wind I can remember that was not an
absolute gale. It didn't rain, but the clouds hurried
across the sky all day long, and the tops of the trees
tried to bend themselves in two ; and their leafless
boughs and black broken twigs littered the deserted play-
ground for we all sat on the parapet of the terrace by
the lingerie ; boys and servants, le pore et la mere Jau-
rion, Mile. Marceline and the rest, looking towards Paris
all feeling bound to each other by a common danger,
like wild beasts in a flood. Dear me ! I'm out of breath
from sheer pleasure in the remembrance.
(il
One night we had to sleep on the floor for fear of
stray bullets ; and that was a fearful joy never to be for-
gotten it almost kept us awake ! Peering out of the
school-room windows at dusk, we saw great fires, three
or four at a time. Suburban retreats of the over-
wealthy, in full conflagration ; and all day the rattle of
distant musketry and the boom of cannon a long way
off, near Montmartre and Montfaucon, kept us alive.
Most of the boys went home, and some of them never
came back and from that day the school began to slow-
ly decline. Pere Brossard an ancient "Brigand de la
Loire/' as the republicans of his youth were called was
elected a representative of his native town at the Cham-
ber of Deputies ; and possibly that did the school more
harm than good ne sutor ultra crepidam ! as he was so
fond of impressing on us !
However, we went on pretty much as usual through
spring and summer with occasional alarms (which we
loved), and beatings of le rappel till the July insurrec-
tion broke out.
My mother and sister had left Mile. Jalabert's, and
now lived with my father near the Boulevard Mont-
martre. And when the fighting was at its height they
came to fetch me home, and invited Barty, for the
Rohans were away from Paris. So home we walked,
quite leisurely, on a lovely peaceful summer evening,
while the muskets rattled and the cannons roared round
us, but at a proper distance ; women picking linen for
lint and chatting genially the while at shop doors and
porter's lodge - gates ; and a piquet of soldiers at the
corner of every street, who felt us all over for hidden
cartridges before they let us through ; it was all en-
trancing ! The subtle scent of gunpowder was in the
air the most suggestive smell there can be. Even now,
62
here in England, the night of the fifth of November
never comes round but I am pleasantly reminded of the
days when I was "en pleine revolution" in the streets
of Paris with my father and mother, and Barty and my
little sister and genial piou-pious made such a conscien-
tious examination of our garments. Nothing brings
back the past like a sound or a smell even those of a
penny squib !
Every now and then a litter borne by soldiers came
by, on which lay a dead or wounded officer. And then
one's laugh died suddenly out, and one felt one's self
face to face with the horrors that were going on.
Barty shared my bed, and we lay awake talking half
the night ; dreadful as it all was/ one couldn't help being
jolly ! Every ten minutes the sentinel on duty in the
court-yard below would sententiously intone :
" Sentinelles, prenez-garde a vous !" And other sen-
tinels would repeat the cry till it died away in the dis-
tance, like an echo.
And all next day, or the day after or else the day
after that, when the long rattle of the musketry had left
off we heard at intervals the "feu de peloton"in afield
behind the church of St. -Vincent de Paul, and knew that
at every discharge a dozen poor devils of insurgents,
caught red-handed, fell dead in a pool of blood !
I need hardly say that before three days were over the
irrepressible Barty had made a complete conquest of my
small family. My sister (I hasten to say this) has loved
him as a brother ever since ; and as long as my parents
lived, and wherever they made their home, that home
has ever been his and he has been their son almost
their eldest born, though he was younger than I by seven
months.
.Things have been reversed, however, for now thirty
63
years and more ; and his has ever been the home for me,
and his people have been my people, and ever will be
and the God of his worship mine !
What children and grandchildren of my own could
ever be to me as these of Barty Josselin's ?
"Ce sacre Josselin il avait tons les talents I"
And the happiest of these gifts, and* not the least im-
portant, was the gift he had of imparting to his offspring
all that was most brilliant and amiable and attractive
in himself, and leaving in them unimpaired all that was
strongest and best in the woman I loved as well as he
did, and have loved as long and have grown to look
upon as belonging to the highest female type that can
be ; for doubtless the Creator, in His infinite wisdom,
might have created a better and a nicer woman than
Mrs. Barty Josselin that was to be, had He thought fit
to do so ; but doubtless also He never did.
Alas ! the worst of us is that the best of us are those
that want the longest knowing to find it out.
My kind-hearted but cold-mannered and undemon-
strative Scotch father, evangelical, a total abstainer, with
a horror of tobacco surely the austerest dealer in French
wines that ever was a puritanical hater of bar sinisters,
and profligacy, and Rome, and rank, and the army, and
especially the stage he always lumped them together
more or less a despiser of all things French, except
their wines, which he never drank himself remained
devoted to Barty till the day of his death ; and so with
my dear genial mother, whose heart yet always yearned
towards serious boys who worked hard at school and col-
lege, and passed brilliant examinations, and got scholar-
ships and fellowships in England, and state sinecures i-n
France, and married early, and let their mothers choose
their wives for them, and train up their children in the
way they should go. She had lived so long in France
that she was Frencher than the French themselves.
And they both loved good music Mozart, Bach, Bee-
thoven and were almost priggish in their contempt for
anything of a lighter kind ; especially with a lightness
English or French ! It was only the musical lightness
of Germany they "could endure at all ! But whether in
Paris or London, enter Barty Josselin, idle schoolboy,
or dandy dissipated guardsman, and fashionable man
about town, or bohemian art student ; and Bach, lebe-
wohl ! good-bye, Beethoven ! bonsoir le bon Mozart ! all
was changed : and welcome, instead, the last comic song
from the Chateau des Fleurs, or Evans's in Covent Gar-
den ; the latest patriotic or sentimental ditty by Lo'isa
Puget, or Frederic Berat, or Eliza Cook, or Mr. Henry
Russell.
And then, what would Barty like for breakfast, din-
ner, supper after the play, and which of all those bur-
gundies would do Barty good without giving him a head-
ache next morning ? and where was Barty to have his
smoke? in the library, of course. "Light the fire in
the library, Mary; and Mr. Bob [that was me] can smoke
there, too, instead of going outside/' etc., etc., etc. It is
small wonder that he grew a bit selfish at times.
Though I was a little joyous now and then, it is quite
without a shadow of bitterness or envy that I write all
this. I have lived for fifty years under the charm of that
genial, unconscious, irresistible tyranny ; and, unlike my
dear parents, I have lived to read and know Barty Jos-
selin, nor merely to see and hear and love him for him-
self alone.
Indeed, it was quite impossible to know Barty at all
intimately and not do whatever he wanted you to do.
Whatever he wanted, he wanted so intensely, and at once ;
65
and he had such a droll and engaging way of expressing
that hurry and intensity, and especially of expressing his
gratitude and delight when what he wanted was what
he got that you could not for the life of you hold your
own ! Tout vient a qui ne sait pas attendre !
Besides which, every now and then, if things didn't
go quite as he wished, he would fly into comic rages, and
become quite violent and intractable for at least five min-
utes, and for quite five minutes more he would silently
sulk. And then, just as suddenly, he would forget all
about it, and become once more the genial, affectionate,
and caressing creature he always was.
But this is going ahead too fast ! revenons. At the
examinations this year Barty was almost brilliant, and I
was hopeless as usual ; my only consolation being that
after the holidays we should at last be in the same class
together, en quatridme, and all through this hopelessness
of mine !
Laferte was told by his father that he might invite two
of his school-fello.ws to their country-house for the vaca-
tion, so he asked Josselin and Bussy-Kabutin. But Bus-
sy couldn't go and, to my delight, I went instead.
That ride all through the sweet August night, the
three of us on the imperiale of the five-horsed diligence,
just behind the conductor and the driver and freedom,
and a full moon, or nearly so and a tremendous saucis-
son de Lyon (a Tail, bound in silver paper) and petits
pains and six bottles of biere de Mars and cigarettes
ad libitum, which of course we made ourselves !
The Lafertes lived in the Department of La Sarthe, in
a delightful country-house, with a large garden sloping
down to a ti'ansparent stream, which had willows and
alders and poplars all along its both banks, and a beauti-
ful country beyond.
60
Outside the grounds (where there were the old brick
walls, all overgrown with peaches and pears and apricots,
of some forgotten mediaeval convent) was a large farm ;
and close by, a water-mill that never stopped.
A road, with thick hedge-rows on either side, led to a
small and very pretty town called La Tremblaye, three
miles off. And har,d by the garden gates began the big
forest of that name : one heard the stags calling, and
the owls hooting, and the fox giving tongue as it hunted
the hares at night. There might have been wolves and
wild-boars. I like to think so very much.
M. Laferte was a man of about fifty entre les deux
ages ; a retired maitre de forges, or iron-master, or else
the son of one : I forget which. He had a charming
wife and two pretty little daughters, Jeanne et Marie,
aged fourteen and twelve.
He seldom moved from his country home, which was
called "Le Gue des Aulnes," except to go shooting in
the forest ; for he was a great sportsman and cared for
little else. He was of gigantic stature six foot six or
seven, and looked taller still, as he had a very small head
and high shoulders. He was not an Adonis, and could
only see out of one eye the other (the left one, fortu-
nately) was fixed as if it were made of glass perhaps it
was and this gave him a stern and rather forbidding
expression of face.
He had just been elected Mayor of La Tremblaye, beat-
ing the Comte de la Tremblaye by many votes. The
Comte was a royalist and not popular. The republican
M. Laferte (who was immensely charitable and very just)
was very popular indeed, in spite of a morose and gloomy
manner. He could even be violent at times, and then he
was terrible to see and hear. Of course his wife and
daughters were gentleness itself, and so was his son, uud
67
everybody who came into contact with him. Si vis pa-
cem,parabellum, as Pere Brossard used to impress upon us.
It was the strangest country household I have ever
seen, in France or anywhere else. They were evidently
very well off, yet they preferred to eat their mid-day meal
in the kitchen, which was immense ; and so was the mid-
day meal and of a succulency ! . . .
An old wolf - hound always lay by the huge log fire ;
often with two or three fidgety cats fighting for the soft
places on him and making him growl ; five or six other
dogs, non-sporting, were always about at meal-time.
The servants three or four peasant women who wait-
ed on us talked all the time; and were tutoyees by the
family. Farm-laborers came in and discussed agricultu-
ral matters, manures, etc., quite informally, squeezing
their bonnets de coton in their hands. The postman sat
by the fire and drank a glass of cider and smoked his
pipe up the chimney while the letters were read most
of them out loud and were commented upon by every-
body in the most friendly spirit. All this made the meal
last a long time.
M. Laferte always wore his blouse except in the even-
ing, and then he wore a brown woollen vareuse, or jer-
sey; unless there were guests, when he wore his Sun-
day morning best. He nearly always spoke like a peas-
ant, although he was really a decently educated man or
should have been.
His old mother, who was of good family and eighty
years of age, lived in a quite humble cottage in a small
street in La Tremblaye, with two little peasant girls to
wait on her ; and the La Tremblayes, with whom M.
Laferte was not on speaking terms, were always coming
into the village to see her and bring her fruit and flowers
and game. She was a most accomplished old lady, and
68
an excellent musician, and had known Monsieur de La-
fayette.
We breakfasted with her when we alighted from the
diligence at six in the morning ; and she took such a
fancy to Barty that her own grandson was almost for-
gotten. He sang to her, and she sang to him, and showed
him autograph letters of Lafayette, and a lock of her
hair when she was seventeen, and old-fashioned minia-
tures of her father and mother, Monsieur and Madame
de something I've quite forgotten.
M. Laf erte kept a pack of bassets (a kind of bow-legged
beagle), and went shooting with them every day in the
forest, wet or dry ; sometimes we three boys with him.
He lent us guns an old single-barrelled flint-lock cav-
alry musket or carbine fell to my share ; and I knew
happiness such as I had never known yet.
Barty was evidently not meant for a sportsman. On
a very warm August morning, as he and I squatted " a
Faffut" at the end of a long straight ditch outside a
thicket which the bassets were hunting, we saw a hare
running full tilt at us along the ditch, and we both fired
together. The hare shrieked, and turned a big somer-
sault and fell on its back and kicked convulsively its
legs still galloping and its face and neck were covered
with blood ; and, to my astonishment, Barty became
quite hysterical with grief at what we had done. It's
the only time I ever saw him cry.
" Cain! Cam! qu'as-tufait de tonfr&re?" he shrieked
again and again, in a high voice, like a small child's
like the hare's.
I calmed him down and promised I wouldn't tell, and
he recovered himself and bagged the game but he never
came out shooting with us again ! So I inherited his
gun, which was double-barrelled.
69
Barty's accomplishments soon became the principal
recreation of the Laferte ladies ; and even M. Laferte
himself would start for the forest an hour or two later
or come back an hour sooner to make Barty go through
his bag of tricks. He would have an arm-chair brought
out on the lawn after breakfast and light his short black
pipe and settle the programme himself.
First, " le saut p'erilleux " the somersault backwards
over and over again, at intervals of two or three min-
utes, so as to give himself time for thought and chuckles,
while he smoked his pipe in silent stodgy jubilation.
Then, two or three songs they would be stopped, if
M. Laferte didn't like them, after the first verse, and
another one started instead ; and if it pleased him, it
was encored two or three times.
Then, pen and ink and paper were brought, and a
small table and a kitchen chair, and Barty had to draw
caricatures, of which M. Laferte 1 chose the subject.
' ' Maintenant, fais-moi le profil de mon vieil ami M.
Bonzig, que j' n' connais pas, que j' n'ai jamais vu, mais
q' j'aime beaucoup." (Now do me the side face of my
old friend M. Bonzig, whom I don't know, but am very
fond of.)
And so on for twenty minutes.
Then Barty had to be blindfolded and twisted round
and round, and point out the north when he felt up
to it.
Then a pause for reflection.
Then : " Dis-moi que'q' chose en anglais/'
" How do you do very well hey diddle-diddle Chiches-
ter church in Chichester church-yard !" says Barty.
" Que"'q' 9a veut dire ?"
" II s'agit d'une e'glise et d'un cimetiere I" says Barty
rather sadly, with a wink at me.
70
" C'est pas gai ! Que vilaine langue, hein ? J' suis
joliment content que j' sais pas 1'anglais, moi !" (It's
not lively ! What a beastly language, eh? I'm precious
glad / don't know English.)
Then : " Demontre-moi un probleme de geometrie."
Barty would then do a simple problem out of Legendre
(the French Euclid), and M. Laferte would look on with
deep interest and admiration, but evidently no compre-
hension whatever. Then he would take the pen him-
self, and draw a shapeless figure, with A's and B's and
C's and D's stuck all over it in impossible places, and
quite at hazard, and say :
"Demontre-moi que A + B est plus grand que C-f D."
It was mere idiotic nonsense, and he didn't know better !
But Barty would manage to demonstrate it all the
same, and M. Laferte would sigh deeply, and exclaim,
" C'est joliment beau, la geometrie !"
Then: "Danse !"
And Barty danced "la Paladine,"and did Scotch reels
and Irish jigs and break - downs of his own invention,
amidst roars of laughter from all the family.
Finally the gentlemen of the party went down to the
river for a swim and old Laferte would sit on the bank
and smoke his brule-gueule, and throw carefully selected
stones for Barty to dive after and feel he'd scored off
Barty when the proper stone wasn't found, and roar in
his triumph. After which he would go and pick the
finest peach he could find, and peel it with his pocket-
knife very neatly, and when Barty was dressed, present
it to him with a kindly look in both eyes at once.
" Mange-moi ya ya t' fera du bien !"
Then, suddenly : " Pourquoi q' tu n'aimes pas la
chasse ? t'as pas peur, j'espere !" (Why don't you like
shooting ? you're not afraid, I hope !)
LE P&RE POLYPIlfiME
72
" ' Sais pas,' " said Josselin ; " don't like killing things,
I suppose."
So Barty became quite indispensable to the happiness
and comfort of Pere Polypheme, as he called him, as
well as of his amiable family.
On the 1st of September there was a grand breakfast
in honor of the partridges (not in the kitchen this time),
and many guests were invited ; and Barty had to sing
and talk and play the fool all through breakfast ; and
got very tipsy, and had to be put to bed for the rest of
the day. It was no fault of his, and Madame Laferto
declared that "ces messieurs" ought to be ashamed
of themselves, and watched over Barty like a mother.
He has often declared he was never quite the same
after that debauch and couldn't feel the north for a
month.
The house was soon full of guests, and Barty and I
slept in M. Laferte's bedroom his wife in a room ad-
joining.
Every morning old Polyphemus would wake us up by
roaring out :
" He ! ma femme !"
" Voila, voila, mon ami !" from the next room.
" Viens vite panser mon cautere !"
And in came Madame L. in her dressing-gown, and
dressed a blister he wore on his big arm.
Then: "Cafe"!"
And coffee came, and he drank it in bed.
Then: "Pipe!"
And his pipe was brought and filled, and he lit it.
Then: "Josselin!"
"Oui, M'sieur LaferteV'
"Tire moi une gamme."
" Doremifasollasido Dosilasolfamiredo !" sang Josse-
73
lin, up and down, in beautiful tune, with his fresh bird-
like soprano.
"Ah ! q' 9a fait du bien !" says M. L.; then a pause,
and puffs of smoke and grunts and sighs of satisfaction.
" Josselin ?"
" Oui, M'sieur Laferte !"
"<La brune Therese V"
And Josselin would sing about the dark-haired Theresa
three verses.
"Tu as change la fin du second couplet tu as dit
' des comtesses ' au lieu de dire ' des duchesses ' recom-
mence I" (You changed the end of the second verse
you said "countesses" instead of "duchesses" begin
again. )
And Barty would re-sing it, as desired, and bring in
the duchesses.
" Maintenant, ( Colin, disait Lisette !' "
And Barty would sing that charming little song, most
charmingly :
"'Colin,' disait Lisette,
' Je voudrais passer l'e;iu !
Mais je suis trop pauvrette
Pour payer le bateau !'
' Entrez, entrez, ma belle I
Entrez, entrez ton jours 1
Et vogue la nacelle
Qui porte mes amours I"
And old L. would smoke and listen with an air of
heavenly beatitude almost pathetic.
"Elle etait bien gentille, Lisette n'est-ce pas, petio?
recommence !" (She was very nice, Lisette ; wasn't
she, sonny ? being again !)
"Now both get up and wash and go to breakfast.
Come here, Josselin you see this little silver dagger"
74
(producing it from under his pillow). "It's rather
pointy, but not at all dangerous. My mother gave it
me when I was just your age to cut books with ; it's
for you. Allons, file ! [cut along] no thanks ! but look
here are you coming with us a la chasse to-day ?"
"Non, M. Laferte."
" Pourquoi ? t'as pas peur, j'espere !"
" Sais pas. J' n'aime pas les choses mortes ca saigne
et 9a n' sent pas bon 9a m' fait mal au cceur." (Don't
know. I'm not fond of dead things. They bleed
and they don't smell nice it makes me sick.)
And two or three times a day would Barty receive
some costly token of this queer old giant's affection, till
he got quite unhappy about it. He feared he was de-
spoiling the House of Laferte of all its treasures in silver
and gold ; but he soothed his troubled conscience later
on by giving them all away to favorite boys and masters
at Brossard's especially M. Bonzig, who had taken
charge of his white mouse (and her family, now quite
grown up children and grandchildren and all) when
Mile. Marceline went for her fortnight's holiday. In-
deed, he had made a beautiful cage for them out of
wood and wire, with little pasteboard mangers (which
they nibbled away).
Well, the men of the party and young Laferte and I
would go off with the dogs and keepers into the forest
and Barty would pick filberts and fruit with Jeanne and
Marie, and eat them with bread-and-butter and jam and
cernaux (unripe walnuts mixed with salt and water and
verjuice quite the nicest thing in the world). Then
he would find his way into the heart of the forest, which
he loved and where he had scraped up a warm friend-
ship with some charcoal-burners, whose huts were near
an old yellow-watered pond, very brackish and stagnant
75
and deep, and full of leeches and water-spiders. It was
in the densest part of the forest, where, the trees were
so tall and leafy that the sun never fell on it, even at
noon. The charcoal - burners told him that in '93 a
young de la Tremblaye was taken there at sunset to be
hanged on a giant oak-tree but he talked so agreeably
and was so pleasant all round that they relented, and
sent for bread and wine and cider and made a night of
it, and didn't hang him till dawn next day ; after which
they tied a stone to his ankles and dropped him into the
pond, which was called " the pond of the respite " ever
since ; and his young wife, Claire Elisabeth, drowned
herself there the week after, and their bones lie at the
bottom to this very day.
And, ghastly to relate, the ringleader in this horrible
tragedy was a beautiful young woman, a daughter of
the people, it seems one Seraphine Doucet, whom the
young viscount had betrayed before marriage le droit
du seigneur ! and but for whom he would have been let
off after that festive night. Ten or fifteen years later,
smitten with incurable remorse, she hanged herself on
the very branch of the very tree where they had strung
up her noble lover; and still walks round the pond at
night, wringing her hands and wailing. It's a sad story
let us hope it isn't true.
Barty Josselin evidently had this pond in his mind
when he wrote in " Ames en peine":
Sous la berge ban tee
L'eau morne croupit
Sous la sombre futaie
Lc renard glapit,
Et le cerf - dix - cors brame, et les daims viennent boire a 1'fitang
du Repit.
" Lfichez-moi, Loupgaroux !"
76
Que sinistre est la mare
Quand tombe la nuit ;
La chouette s'effare
Le blaireau s'enfuit !
L'on y sent que lea morts se reveillent qu'une ombre suns nom
vous poursuit.
" La'chez-moi, Loup-garoux !"
Fordt ! foret ! what a magic there is in that little
French dissyllable! Morne foret! Is it the lost " s,"
and the heavy "*" that makes up for it, which lend
such a mysterious and gloomy fascination ?
Forest ! that sounds rather tame almost cheerful !
If we want a forest dream we have to go so far back for
it, and dream of Robin Hood and his merrie men ! and
even then Epping forces itself into our dream and even
Chingford, where there was never a were -wolf within
the memory of man. Give us at least the virgin forest,
in some far Guyana or Brazil or even the forest pri-
meval
"... where the murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded witli moss and in garments green, indistinct in the
twilight,
Stand like druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
Stand like harpers hoar"
that we may dream of scalp - hunting Mingoes, and
grizzly-bears, and moose, and buffalo, and the beloved
Bas-de-cuir with that magic rifle of his, that so seldom
missed its mark and never got out of repair.
" Prom'nons-nous dans les bois
Pendant que le loup n'y est pas. . . ."
That's the first song I ever heard. Celine used to
sing it, my nurse who was very lovely, though she had
77
a cast in her eye and wore a black cap, and cotton in
her ears, and was pitted with the smallpox,, It was in
Burgundy, which was rich in forests, with plenty of
wolves in them, and wild-boars too and that was only
a hundred years ago, when that I was a little tiny boy.
It's just an old nursery rhyme to lull children to sleep
with, or set them dancing pas aut' chose but there's a
deal of Old France in it !
There I go again digressing as usual and quoting
poetry and trying to be literary and all that ! C'est plus
fort que moi. . . .
One beautiful evening after dinner we went, the whole
lot of us, fishing for crayfish in the meadows beyond
the home farm.
As we set about waiting for the crayfish to assemble
round the bits of dead frog that served for bait and were
tied to the wire scales (which were left in the water), a
procession of cows came past us from the farm. One
of them had a wound in her flank a large tumor.
"It's the bull who did that," said Marie. "II est tres
me'chant !"
Presently the bull appeared, following the herd in
sulky dignity. We all got up and crossed the stream on
a narrow plank all but Josselin, who remained sitting
on a camp-stool.
"Josselin ! Josselin ! venez done ! il est tres mauvais,
le taurean !"
Barty didn't move.
The bull came by ; and suddenly, seeing him, walked
straight to within a yard of him and stared at him for
five minutes at least, lashing its tail. Barty didn't stir.
Our hearts were in our mouths !
Then the big brindled brute turned quietly round with
a friendly snort and went after the cows and Barty got
78
up and made it a courtly farewell salute, saying, " Bon
voyage an plaisir \"
After which he joined the rest of us across the stream,
and came in for a good scolding and much passionate
admiration from the ladies, and huggings and tears of
relief from Madame Laferte*.
" I knew well he wouldn't be afraid !" said M. Laferte ;
" they are all like that, those English le sang-froid du
diable ! nom d'un Vellington ! It is we who were afraid
we are not so brave as the little Josselin ! plucky
little Josselin ! But why did you not come with us ?
Temerity is not valor, Josselin !"
" Because I wanted to show off \_faire le fanfaron] !"
said Barty, with extreme simplicity.
" Ah, diable ! Anyhow, it was brave of you to sit
still when he came and looked at you in the white of
the eyes ! it was just the right thing to do ; ces An-
glais ! je n'en reviens pas ! a quatorze ans ! hein, ma
femme ?"
"Pardi!" said Barty, "I was in such -a blue funk
[j'avais une venette si bleue] that I couldn't have moved
a finger to save my life I"
At this, old Polyphemus went into a Homeric peal of
laughter.
" Ces Anglais ! what originals they tell you the real
truth at any cost [ils vous ilisent la vraie verite, coute
que coute] !" and his affection for Barty seemed to in-
crease, if possible, from that evening.
Now this was Barty all over all through life. He
always gave himself away with a liberality quite uncalled
for so he ought to have some allowances made for that
reckless and impulsive indiscretion which caused him to
be so popular in general society, but got him -into so
many awkward scrapes in after-life, and made him such
80
mean enemies, and gave his friends so much anxiety
distress.
(And here I think it right to apologize for so much
translating of such a well-known language as French ; I
feel quite like another Ollendorf who must have been
a German, by-the-way but M. Lafert6's grammar and
accent would sometimes have puzzled Ollendorf him-
self !)
Towards the close of September, M. Lafei be" took .it
into his head to make a tour of provincial visits en
famille. He had never done such a thing before, and I
really believe it was all to show off Barty to his friends
and relations.
It was the happiest time I ever had, and shines out by
itself in that already so unforgettably delightful vaca-
tion.
We went in a large charabancs drawn by two stout
horses, starting at six in the morning, and driving right
through the Forest of la Tremblaye ; and just ahead of
us, to show us the way, M. Laferte driving himself in
an old cabriolet, with Josselin (from whom he refused
to be parted) by his side, singing or talking, according to
order, or cracking jokes ; we could hear the big laugh
of Polyphemus !
We travelled very leisurely ; I forget whether we ever
changed horses or not but we got over a good deal of
ground. We put up at the country houses of friends
and relations of the Lafertes ; and visited old historical
castles and mediaeval ruins Chateaudun and others
and fished in beautiful pellucid tributaries of the
Loire shot over " des chiens anglais " danced half the
night with charming people wandered in lovely parks
and woods, and beautiful old formal gardens with fish-
81
ponds, terraces, statues, marble fountains ; charmilles,
pelouses, quinconces ; and all the flowers and all the
fruits of France ! And the sun shone every day and all
day long and in one's dreams all night.
And the peasants in that happy country of the Loire
spoke the most beautiful French, and had the most
beautiful manners in the world. They're famous for it.
It all seems like a fairy tale.
If being made much of, and petted and patted and
admired and wondered at, make up the sum of human
bliss, Barty came in for as full a share of felicity dur-
ing that festive week as should last an ordinary mortal
for a twelvemonth. Figaro qud, Figaro Id, from morn-
ing till night in three departments of France !
But he didn't seem to care very much about it all ;
he would have been far happier singing and tumbling
and romancing away to his charbonniers by the pond in
the Fofest of la Tremblaye. He declared he was never
quite himself unless he could feel the north for at least
an hour or two every day, and all night long in his sleep
and that he should never feel the north again that
it was gone forever ; that he had drunk it all away
at that fatal breakfast and it made him lonely to
wake up in the middle of the night and not know which
way he lay ! " depayse," as he called it " desoriente
perdu !"
And laughing, he would add, " Ayez pitie d'un pauvre
orphelin !"
Then back to Le Gue des Aulnes. And one evening,
after a good supper at Grandmaman Laferte's, the dili-
gence de Paris came jingling and rumbling through the
main street of La Tremblaye, flashing right and left its
two big lamps, red and blue. And we three boys, after
the most grateful and affectionate farewells, packed
ourselves into the coupe, which had been retained for
us, and rumbled back to Paris through the night.
There was quite a crowd to see us off. Not only
Lafertes, but others all sorts and conditions of men,
women, and children and among them three or four of
Barty's charcoal-burning friends ; one of whom, an old
man with magnificent black eyes and an immense beard,
that would have been white if he hadn't been a charcoal-
burner, kissed Barty on both cheeks, and gave him a
huge bag full of some kind of forest berry that is good
to eat ; also a young cuckoo (which Barty restored to
liberty an hour later) ; also a dormouse and a large green
lizard ; also, in a little pasteboard box, a gigantic pale
green caterpillar four inches long and thicker than your
thumb, with a row of shiny blue stars in relief all along
each side of its back the most beautiful thing of the
kind you ever saw.
"Pioche bien ta geome'trie, mon bon petit Josselin !
c'est la plus belle science au moude, crois-moi I" said M.
Laferte to Barty, and gave him the hug of a grizzly-
bear; and to me he gave a terrific hand-squeeze, and a
beautiful double-barrelled gun by Lefaucheux, for which
I felt too supremely grateful to find suitable thanks. I
have it now, but I have long given up killing things
with it.
I had grown immensely fond of this colossal old
" bourru bienfaisant," as he was called in La Tremblaye,
and believe that all his moroseness and brutality were
put on, to hide one of the warmest, simplest, and ten-
derest hearts in the world.
Before dawn Barty woke up with such a start that he
woke me :
" Enfin ! 9a y est ! quelle chance !" he exclaimed.
83
" Quoi, quoi, quoi ?" said I, quacking like a duck.
"Lie nord c'estrevenu it's just ahead of us a little
to the left !"
We were nearing Paris.
And thus ended the proudest and happiest time I ever
had in my life. Indeed I almost had an adventure on
my own account une bonne fortune, as it was called at
Brossard's by boys hardly older than myself. I did not
brag of it, however, when I got back to school.
It was at " Les Latteries/' or " Les Poteries/' or "Les
Crucheries/' or some such place, the charming abode of
Monsieur et Madame Pelisson only their name wasn't
Pelisson, or anything like it. At dinner I sat next to
a Miss , who was very tall and wore blond side
ringlets. I think she must have been the English gov-
erness.
We talked very much together, in English ; and after
dinner we walked in the garden together by starlight
arm in arm, and she was so kind and genial to me in
English that I felt quite chivalrous and romantic, and
ready to do doughty deeds for her sake.
Then, at M. Pelisson's request, all the company assem-
bled in a group for evening prayer, under a spreading
chestnut-tree on the lawn : the prayer sounded very
much like the morning or evening prayer at Brossard's,
except that the Almighty was addressed as "toi" instead
of "vous"; it began:
"Notre Peve qui es aux cieux toi dont le regard
scrutateur penetre jusque dans les replis les plus pro-
fonds de nos coeurs" and ended, " Ainsi soit-il !"
The night was very dark, and I stood close to Miss
, who stood as it seemed with her hands somewhere
behind her back. I was so grateful to her for having
talked to me so nicely, and so fond of her for being Eng-
84
lish, that the impulse seized me to steal my hand into
hers and her hand met mine with a gentle squeeze
which I returned ; but soon the pressure of her hand in-
creased, and by the time M. le Cure had got to " au nom
du Pere " the pressure of her hand had become an agony
a thing to make one shriek !
" Ainsi soit-il !" said M. le Cure, and the little group
broke up, and Miss walked quietly indoors with her
arm around Madame P61isson's waist, and without even
wishing me good-night and my hand was being squeezed
worse than ever.
" Ah ha ! Lequel de nous deux est vole", petit co-
quin ?" hissed an angry male voice in my ear (which of
us two is sold, you little rascal ?).
And I found my hand in that of Monsieur Pelisson,
whose name was something else and I couldn't make it
out, nor why he was so angry. It has dawned upon me
since that each of us took the other's hand by mistake
for that of the English governess !
All this is beastly and cynical and French, and I apol-
ogize for it but it's true.
October !
It was a black Monday for me when school began again
after that ideal vacation. The skies they were ashen
and sober, and the leaves they were crisped and sere.
But anyhow I was still en quatri&me, and Barty was in
it too and we sat next to each other in "L'etude des
grands."
There was only one e"tude now ; only half the boys
came back, and the pavilion des petits was shut up,
study, class-rooms, dormitories, and all except that two
masters slept there still.
Eight or ten small boys were put in a small school-
MEKOVKE KINGS THE BELL
room in the same house as our?, and had a small dor-
mitory to themselves, with M. Bonzig to superintend
them.
I made up my mind that I would no longer be a cancre
and a cretin, but work hard and do my little best, so that
I might keep up with Barty and pass into the trotsibne
with him, and then into Rhetorique (seconde), and then
into Philosophic (premiere) that we might do our hu-
manities and take our degree together our " Bachot,"
which is short for Baccalaureat-2s-lettres. Most espe-
cially did I love Monsieur Dnrosier's class of French
Literature for which Merovee always rang the bell him-
self.
My mother and sister were still at Ste.-Adresse, Havre,
with my father ; so I spent my first Sunday that term
at the Archibald Rohans', in the Rue dn Bac.
I had often seen them at Brossard's. when they came
to see Barty, but had never been at their house before.
They were very charming people.
Lord Archibald was dressing when we got there that
Sunday morning, and we sat with him while he shaved
in an immense dressing-room where there were half
a dozen towel-horses with about thirty pairs of newly
ironed trousers on them instead of towels, and quite
thirty pairs of shiny boots on trees were ranged along
the wall. James, an impeccable English valet, waited
on "his lordship," and never spoke unless spoken to.
" Hullo, Barty ! Who's your friend T
" Bob Maurice, Uncle Archie."
And TJncle Archie shook hands with me most cor-
dially.
"And how's the north pole this morning ?"
"Nicely, thanks, Uncle Archie."
Lord Archibald was a very tall and handsome man,
about fifty very droll and full of anecdote ; he had
stories to tell about everything in the room.
For instance, how Major Welsh of the 10th Hussars
had given him that pair of Wellingtons, which fitted him
better than any boots Hoby ever made him to measure ;
they were too tight for poor Welsh, who was a head
shorter than himself.
How Kerlewis made him that frock-coat fifteen years
ago, and it wasn't threadbare yet, and fitted him as well
as ever for he hadn't changed his weight for thirty
years, etc.
How that pair of braces had been made by "my lady"
out of a pair of garters she wore on the day they were
married.
And then he told us* how to keep trousers from bag-
ging at the knees, and how cloth coats should be ironed,
and how often and how to fold an umbrella.
It suddenly occurs to me that perhaps these little
anecdotes may not be so amusing to the general reader
as they were to me when he told them, so I won't tell
any more. Indeed, I have often noticed that things look
sometimes rather dull in print that were so surprisingly
witty when said in spontaneous talk a great many years
ago!
Then we went to breakfast with my lady and Daphne,
their charming little daughter Barty^s sister, as he
called her "m'amour" and who spoke both French
and English equally well.
But we didn't breakfast at once, ravenous as we boys
were, for Lady Archibald took a sudden dislike to Lord
A.'s cravat, which, it seems, he had never worn before.
It was in brown satin, and Lady A. declared that Loulon
(so she called him) never looked "en beaute" with a
brown cravat ; and there was quite a little quarrel be-
tween husband and wife on the subject so that he had
to go back to his dressing-room and put on a blue one.
At breakfast he talked about French soldiers of the
line, and their marching kit (as it would be called now),
quite earnestly, and, as it seemed to me, very sensibly
though he went through little mimicries that made his
wife scream with laughter, and me too ; and in the mid-
dle of breakfast Barty sang "lie Chant du Depart" as
well as he could for laughing :
" La victoire en chantant nous ouvre la carridre !
La liberte-e gui-i-de nos pas" . . .
while Lord A. went through an expressive pantomime
of an overladen foot-soldier up and down the room, in
time to the music. The only jierson who didn't laugh
was James which I thought ungenial.
Then Lady A. had her innings, and sang "Rule Bri-
tannia, Britannia rule de vaves" and declared it was far
more ridiculous really than the " Chant du Depart," and
she made it seem so, for she went through a pantomime
too. She was a most delightful person, and spoke Eng-
lish quite well when she chose ; and seemed as fond of
Barty as if he were her own and only son and so did
Lord Archibald. She would say :
"Quel dommage qu'on ne peut pas avoir des crom-
pettes [crumpets]! Barty les aime tant ! n'est-ce pas,
mon chou, tu aimes bien les crompettes ? voici venir
du buttered toast c'est toujours c,a !"
And, "Mon Dieu, comme il a bonne mine, ce cher Barty
n'est-ce pas, mon amour, que tu as bonne mine ? re-
garde-toi dans la glace."
And, "Si nous allions a FHippodrome cette apres-midi
voir la belle ecuyere Madame Richard ? Barty adore les
jolies femmes, comme son oncle ! n'est-ce pas, mechant
89
petit Barty, que tu adores les jolies femmes ? et tu n'as
jamais vu Madame Eichard ? Tu m'en diras des nou-
velles ! et vous, mon ami [this to me], est-ce que vous
adorez aussi les jolies femmes ?"
"0 oui," says Daphne, "aliens voir M'ame Eichard;
it '11 be such fun ! oh, bully !"
So after breakfast we went for a walk, and to a cafe
on the Quai d'Orsay, and then to the Hippodrome, and
saw the beautiful ecuyere in graceful feats of la haute
ecole, and lost our hearts especially Lord Archibald,
though him she knew ; for she kissed her hand to him,
and he his to her.
Then we dined at the Palais Eoyal, and afterwards
went to the Cafe des Aveugles, an underground coffee-
house near the Cafe de la Eotonde, and where blind men
made instrumental music ; and we had a capital evening.
I have met in my time more intellectual people, per-
haps, than the Archibald Eohans but never people more
amiable, or with kinder, simpler manners, or who made
one feel more quickly and thoroughly at home and the
more* I got to know them, the more I grew to like them ;
and their fondness for each other and Daphne, and for
Barty too, was quite touching ; as was his for them. So
the winter sped happily till February, when a sad thing
happened.
I had spent Sunday with my mother and sister, who
now lived on the ground-floor of 108 Champs filysees.
I slept there that Sunday night, and walked back to
school next morning. To my surprise, as I got to a
large field through which a diagonal footpath led to
Pere Jaurion's loge, I saw five or six boys sitting on the
terrace parapet with their legs dangling outside. They
should have been in class, by rights. They watched me
cross the field, but made no sign.
90
" "What on earth can be the matter ?" thought I.
The cordon was pulled, and I came on a group of boys
all stiff and silent.
" Qu'est-ce que vous avez done, tous ?" I asked.
" Le P6re Brossard est mort I" said De Villars.
Poor M. Brossard had died of apoplexy on the previous
afternoon. He had run to catch the Passy omnibus di-
rectly after lunch, and had fallen down in a fit and died
immediately.
" II est tomb6 du haut mal " as they expressed it.
His son M6rovee and his daughter Madame Germain
were distracted. The whole of that day was spent by
the boys in a strange, unnatural state of desceuvrement
and suppressed excitement for which no outlet was pos-
sible. The meals, especially, were all but unbearable.
One was ashamed of having an appetite, and yet one had
almost keener than usual, if I may judge by myself
and for some undiscovered reason the food was better
than on other Mondays !
Next morning we all went up in sorrowful procession
to kiss our poor dear head-master's cold forehead Us he
lay dead in his bed, with sprigs of boxwood on his pillow,
and above his head a jar of holy water with which we
sprinkled him. He looked very serene and majestic, but
it was a harrowing ceremony. MerovSe stood by with
swollen eyes and deathly pale incarnate grief.
On Wednesday afternoon M. Brossard was buried in
the Cimeti^re de Passy, a tremendous crowd following
the hearse ; the boys and masters just behind Merovee
and M. Germain, the chief male mourners. The women
walked in another separate procession behind.
Beranger and Alphonse Karr were present among the
notabilities, and speeches were made over his open grave,
for he was a very distinguished man.
91
And, tragical to relate, that evening in the study
Barty and I fell out, and it led to a stand-up fight next
day.
There was no preparation that evening ; he and I sat
side by side reading out of a book by Chateaubriand
either Atala, or Rene or Les Natchez, I forget which. I
have never seen either since.
The study was hushed ; M. Dumollard was de service
as maitre d'etudes, although there was no attempt to do
anything but sadly read improving books.
If I remember aright, Ren6, a very sentimental young
Frenchman, who had loved the wrong person not wisely,
but too well (a very wrong person indeed, in his case),
emigrated to North America, and there he met a beauti-
ful Indian maiden, one Atala, of the Natchez tribe, who
had rosy heels and was charming, and whose entire skin
was probably a warm dark red, although this is not in-
sisted upon. She also had a brother, whose name was
Outogamiz.
Well, Rene loved Atala, Atala loved Rene, and they
were married ; and Outogamiz went through some cere-
mony besides, which made him blood brother and bosom
friend to Rene a bond which involved certain obligatory
rites and duties and self-sacrifices.
Atala died and was buried. Rene died and was buried
also ; and every day, as in duty bound, poor Outogamiz
went and pricked a vein and bled over Rene's tomb, till
he died himself of exhaustion before he was many weeks
older. I quote entirely from memory.
This simple story was told in very touching and beau-
tiful language, by no means telegraphese, and Barty and I
were deeply affected by it.
"I say, Bob I" Barty whispered to me, with a break in
his voice, " some day I'll marry your sister, and we'll all
92
go off to America together, and she'll die, and I'll die,
and you shall bleed yourself to death on my tomb !"
"No," said I, after a moment's thought. " No look
here ! I'll marry your sister, and I '11 die, and you shall
bleed over my tomb !"
Then, after a pause :
" I haven't got a sister, as you know quite well and
if I had she wouldn't be for you !" says Barty.
" Why not ?"
"Because you're not good-looking enough!" says
Barty.
At this, just for fun, I gave him a nudge in the wind
with my elbow and he gave me a " twisted pinch " on
the arm and I kicked him on the ankle, but so much
harder than I intended that it hurt him, and he gave me
a tremendous box on the ear, and we set to fighting like
a couple of wild -cats, without even getting up, to the
scandal of the whole study and .the indignant disgust of
M. Dumollard, who separated us, and read us a pretty
lecture :
" Voila bien' les Anglais ! rien n'est sacre pour eux,
pas meme la mort ! rien que les chiens et les chevaux."
(Nothing, not even death, is sacred to Englishmen
nothing but dogs and horses.)
When we went up to bed the head-boy of the school
a first - rate boy called d'Orthez, and Berquin (another
first-rate boy), who had each a bedroom to himself, came
into the dormitory and took up the quarrel, and discussed
what should be done. Both of us were English ergo,
both of us ought to box away the insult with our fists ; so
" they set a combat us between, to fecht it in the daw-
ing" that is, just after breakfast, in the school-room.
I went to bed very unhappy, and so, I think, did Barty.
Next morning at six, just after the morning prayer,
93
M. Merovee came into the school-room and made us a
most straightforward, manly, and affecting speech ; in
which he told us he meant to keep on the school, and
thanked us, boys and masters, for our sympathy.
We were all moved to our very depths and sat at our
work solemn and sorrowful all through that lamp-lit
hour and a half ; we hardly dared to cough, and never
looked up from our desks.
Then 7.30 ding-dang-dong and breakfast. Thursday
bread-and-butter morning !
I felt hungry and greedy and very sad, and disinclined
to fight. Barty and I had sat turned away from each
other, and made no attempt at reconciliation.
We all went to the refectoire : it was raining fast. I
made my ball of salt and butter, and put it in a hole in
my hunk of bread, and ran back to the study, where I
locked these treasures in my desk.
The study soon filled with boys : no masters ever came
there during that half-hour ; they generally smoked and
read their newspapers in the gymnastic ground, or else in
their own rooms when it was wet outside.
D'Orthez and Berquin moved one or two desks and
forms out of the way so as make a ring 1'arene, as they
called it with comfortable seats all round. Small boys
stood on forms and window-sills eating their bread-and-
butter with a tremendous relish.
" Dites done, vous autres," says Bonneville, the wit of
the school, who was in very high spirits ; " it's like the
Roman Empire during the decadence 'panem et cir-
censes !' ''
"What's that, circenses? what does it mean?" says
Rapaud, with his mouth full.
"Why, butter, you idiot! Didn't you know that?"
says Bonneville.
it
Barty and I stood opposite each other ; at his sides as
seconds were d'Orthez and Berquin ; at mine, Jolivet
trois (the only Jolivet now left in the school) and big du
Tertre- Jouan (the young marquis who wasn't Bonne-
ville).
We began to spar at each other in as knowing and
English a way as we knew how keeping a very respect-
ful distance indeed, and trying to bear ourselves as sci-
entifically as we could, with a keen expression of the eye.
When I looked into Barty's face I felt that nothing on
earth would ever make me hit such a face as that what-
ever he might do to mine. My blood wasn't up ; besides,
I was a coarse-grained, thick-set, bullet-headed little chap
with no nerves to speak of, and didn't mind punishment
the least bit. No more did Barty, for that matter,
though he was the most highly wrought creature that
ever lived.
At length they all got impatient, and d'Orthez said :
" Allez done, godems ce n'est pas un quadrille!
Nous n'sommes pas a La Salle Valentino I"
And Barty was pushed from behind so roughly that he
came at me, all his science to the winds and slogging like
a French boy ; and I, quite without meaning to, in the
hurry, hit out just as he fell over me, and we both rolled
together over Jolivet's foot Barty on top (he was taller,
though not heavier, than I); and I saw the blood flow
from his nose down his lip and chin, and some of it fell
on my blouse.
Says Barty to me, in English, as we lay struggling on
the dusty floor :
" Look here, it's no good. I can't fight to-day ; poor
Merov6e, you know. Let's make it up I"
" All right !" says I. So up we got and shook hands,
Barty saying, with mock dignity :
95
" Messieurs, le sang a coul^ ; 1'honneur britannique
est sauf " and the combat was over.
" Cristi ! J'ai joliment faim !" says Barty, mopping
his nose with his handkerchief. " I left my crust on the
bench outside the refectoire. I wish one of you fellows
would get it for me."
" Rapaud finished your crust [ta miche] while you were
fighting," says Jolivet. " I saw him."
Says Rapaud : " Ah, Dame, it was getting prettily wet,
your crust, and I was prettily hungry too ; and I thought
you didn't want it, naturally."
I then produced my crust and cut it in two, butter and
all, and gave Barty half, and we sat very happily side by
side, and breakfasted together in peace and amity. I
never felt happier or hungrier.
"Cristi, comme ils se sont bien battus," says little
Vaissiere to little Cormenu. "As-tu vu ? Josselin a
saigne tout plein sur la blouse a Maurice." (How well
they fought \ Josselin bled all over Maurice's blouse !)
Then says Josselin, in French, turning to me with
that delightful jolly smile that always reminded one of
the sun breaking through a mist :
" I would sooner bleed on your blouse than on your
tomb." (J'aime mieux saigner sur ta blouse que sur ta
tombe.)
So ended the only quarrel we ever had.
part Cbtrc*
"Quc ne puis-je uller oil s'en vont les roses,
Et n'attendre pas
Ces regrets navrants que la fin des cboses
Nous garde ici-bas!" ANON.
BARTY worked very hard, and so did I for me ! Hor-
ace Homer Jilschylus Plato etc., etc., etc., etc.,
etc., and all there was to learn in that French school-
boy's encyclopaedia "Le Manuel du Baccalaureat"; a
very thick book in very small print. And I came to the
conclusion that it is good to work hard : it makes one
enjoy food and play and sleep so keenly and Thursday
afternoons.
The school was all the pleasanter for having fewer
boys ; we got more intimate with each other, and with
the masters too. During the winter M. Bonzig told us
capital stories Modeste Mignon, by Balzac Le Chevalier
de Maison-rouge, by A. Dumas pere etc., etc.
In the summer the Passy swimming-bath was more
delightful than ever. Both winter and summer we pas-
sionately fenced with a pupil (un prevot) of the famous
M. Bonnet, and did gymnastics with M. Louis, the gym-
nastic master of the College Charlemagne the finest
man I ever saw a gigantic dwarf six feet high, all made
up of lumps of sinew and muscles, like .....
Also, we were taught equitation at the riding-school
in the Kue Duphot.
On Saturday nights Barty would draw a lovely female
97
profile, with a beautiful big black eye, in pen and ink,
and carefully shade it ; especially the hair, which was al-
ways as the raven's wing! And on Sunday morning he and
I used to walk together to 108 Champs filysees and enter
the rez-de-chaussee (where my mother and sister lived)
by the window, before my mother was up. Then Barty
took out his lovely female pen-and-ink profile to gaze at,
and rolled himself a cigarette and lit it, and lay back on
the sofa, and made my sister play her lightest music "La
pluie de Perles," by Osborne and "Indiana," a beauti-
ful valse by Marcailhon and thus combine three or four
perfect blisses in one happy quart d'heure.
Then my mother would appear, and we would have
breakfast after which Barty and I would depart by the
window as we had come, and go and do our bit of Boule-
vard and Palais Eoyal. Then to the Rue du Bac for
another breakfast with the Rohans ; and then, " au petit
bonheur"; that is, trusting to Providence for whatever
turned up. The programme didn't vary very much : ei-
ther I dined with him at the Rohans', or he with me at
108. Then, back to Brossard's at ten tired and happy.
One Sunday I remember well we stayed in school, for
old Josselin the fisherman came to see us there Barty's
grandfather, now a widower ; and M. Merovee asked him
to lunch with us, and go to the baths in the afternoon.
Imagine old Bonzig's delight in this " vieux loup de
mer," as he called him ! That was a happy day for the
old fisherman also ; I shall never forget his surprise at
M. Dumollard's telescope and how clever he was on
the subject.
He came to the baths, and admired and criticised the
good swimming of the boys especially Barty's, which
was really remarkable. I don't believe he co.uld swim a
stroke himself,
7
98
Then we went and dined together at Lord Archi-
bald's, in the Rue du Bac "Mon Colonel/' as the old
fisherman always called him. He was a very humorous
and intelligent person, this fisher, though nearer eighty
than seventy ; very big, and of a singularly picturesque
appearance for he had not endimanche himself in the
least ; and very clean. A splendid old man ; oddly
enough, somewhat Semitic of aspect as though he had
just come from a miraculous draught of fishes in the
Sea of Galilee, out of a cartoon by Raphael !
I recollect admiring how easily and pleasantly every-
thing went during dinner, and all through the per-
fection of this ancient sea-toiler's breeding in all essen-
tials.
Of course the poor all over the world are less nice in
their habits than the rich, and less correct in their
grammar and accent, and narrower in their views of
life ; but in every other respect there seemed little to
choose between Josselins and Rohans and Lonlay-Sa-
vignacs ; and indeed, according to Lord Archibald, the
best manners were to be found at these two opposite
poles or even wider still. He would have it that Roy-
alty and chimney-sweeps were the best - bred people all
over the world because there was no possible mistake
about their social status.
I felt a little indignant after all, Lady Archibald was
built out of chocolate, for all her Lonlay and her Sa-
vignac ! just as I was built out of Beaune and Cham-
bertin.
I'm afraid I shall be looked upon as a snob and a
traitor to my class if I say that I have at last come to be
of the same opinion myself. That is, if absolute sim-
plicity, and the absence of all possible temptation to try
and seem an inch higher up than we really are But
99
there ! this is a very delicate question, about which I
don't care a straw ; and there are such exceptions, and
so many, to confirm any such rule !
Anyhow, I saw how Barty couldn't help having the
manners we all so loved him for. After dinner Lady
Archibald showed old Josselin some of Barty's lovely
female profiles a sight that affected him strangely.
He would have it that they were all exact portraits of
his beloved Antoinette, Barty's mother.
They were certainly singularly like each other, these
little chefs-d'oeuvre of Barty's, and singularly handsome
an ideal type of his own ; and the old grandfather was
allowed his choice, and touchingly grateful at being
presented with such treasures.
The scene made a great impression on me.
So spent itself that year a happy year that had no
history except for one little incident that I will tell
because it concerns Barty, and illustrates him.
One beautiful Sunday morning the yellow omnibus
was waiting for some of us as we dawdled about in the
school-room, titivating ; the masters nowhere, as usual
on a Sunday morning; and some of the boys began to
sing in chorus a not very edifying chanson, which they
did not "Bowdlerize," about a holy Capuchin friar ; it
began (if I remember rightly) :
"C'etait un Capucin, oui bien, un pere Capucin,
Qui confessait trois filles
Itou, itou, itou, la la ]& !
Qui confessait trois filles
Au fond de son jardin
Oui bien
Au fond de son jardin !
II dit it la plus jeuue
100
Itou, ilou, itou, la 1& 1& !
II dit a la plus jeune
. . ' Vous reviendrez deinain !' "
Etc, etc., etc.
I have quite forgotten the rest.
Now this little song, which begins so innocently, like
a sweet old idyl of mediaeval France "un echo du temps
passe" seems to have been a somewhat Rabelaisian
ditty ; by no means proper singing for a Sunday morn-
ing in a boys' school. But boys will be boys, even in
France; and the famous "esprit Gaulois" was some-
what precocious in the forties, I suppose. Perhaps it is
now, if it still exists (which I doubt the dirt remains,
but all the fun seems to have evaporated).
Suddenly M. Dumollard bursts into the room in his
violent sneaky way, pale with rage, and says :
" Je vais gifler tous ceux qui ont chant6 " (I'll box
the ears of every boy who sang).
So he puts all in a row and begins :
"Rubinel, sur votre parole d'honneur, avez-vous
chant ?"
" Non, m'sieur !"
" Caillard, avez-vous chante ?"
" Non, m'sieur !"
"Lipmann, avez-vous chante?"
" Non, m'sieur !"
" Maurice, avez-vous chante ?"
"Non, m'sieur" (which, for a wonder, was true,
for I happened not to know either the words or the
tune).
" Josselin, avez-vous chante ?"
" Oui, m'sieur!"
And down went Barty his full length on the floor,
from a tremendous open-handed box on the ear. Dumol-
101
lard was a very Herculean person though by no means
gigantic.
Barty got up and made Dumollard a polite little bow,
and walked out of the room.
" Vous etes tous consignes I" says M. Dumollard and
the omnibus went away empty, and we spent all that
Sunday morning as best we might.
In the afternoon we went out walking in the Bois.
Dumollard had recovered his serenity and came with us ;
for he was de service that day.
Says Lipmann to him :
"Josselin drapes himself in his English dignity he
sulks like Achilles and walks by himself."
"Josselin is at least a man," says Dumollard. "He
tells the truth, and doesn't know fear and Fm sorry
he's English !"
And later, at the Mare d'Auteuil, he put out his hand
to Barty and said :
" Let's make it up, Josselin au moins vous avez du
coeur, vous. Promettez-moi que vous ne chanterez plus
cette sale histoire de Capucin !"
Josselin took the usher's hand, and smiled his open,
toothy smile, and said :
"Pas le dimanche matin toujours quand c'est vous
qui serez de service, M. Dumollard !" (Anyhow not Sun-
day morning when you're on duty, Mr. D.)
And Mr. D. left off running down the English in pub-
lic after that except to say that they couldn't be simple
and natural if they tried ; and that they affected a ridic-
ulous accent when they spoke French not Josselin and
Maurice, but all the others he had ever met. As if plain
French, which had been good enough for William the
Conqueror, wasn't good enough for the subjects of her
Britannic Majesty to-day !
102
The only event of any importance in Barty's life that
year was his first communion, which he took with several
others of about his own age. An event that did not
seem to make much impression on him nothing seemed
to make much impression on Barty Josselin when he was
very young. He was just a lively, irresponsible, irre-
pressible human animal always in perfect health and
exuberant spirits, with an immense appetite for food
and fun and frolic ; like a squirrel, a collie pup, or a
kitten.
Pere Bonamy, the priest who confirmed him, was
fonder of the boy than of any one, boy or girl, that he
had ever prepared for communion, and could hardly
speak of him with decent gravity, on account of his ex-
traordinary confessions all of which were concocted in
the depths of Barty's imagination for the sole purpose
of making the kind old cure laugh ; and the kind old
cure was just as fond of laughing as was Barty of playing
the fool, in and out of season. I wonder if he always
thought himself bound to respect the secrets of the con-
fessional in Barty's case !
And Barty would sing to him even in the confes-
sional :
"Stabat mater dolorosa
Juxta crucem lachrymosa
Dum pendebat filius" . . .
in a voice so sweet and innocent and pathetic that it
would almost bring the tears to the good old cure's eye-
lash.
"Ah ! ma chere Mamzelle Marceline !" he would say
"au moins s'ils etaient tous comme ce petit Josselin!
c,a irait comme sur des roulettes ! II est innocent
comme un jeune veau, ce mioche anglais ! II a le bon
Dieu dans le coeur I"
103
" Et une boussole dans 1'estomac \" said Mile. Marce-
line.
I don't think he was quite so innocent as all that, per-
haps but no young beast of the field was ever more
harmless.
That year the examinations were good all round ; even
/ did not disgrace myself, and Barty was brilliant. But
there were no delightful holidays for me to record. Barty
went to Yorkshire, and I remained in Paris with my
mother.
There is only one thing more worth mentioning that
year.
My father had inherited from his father a system of
shorthand, which he called Blaze I don't know why !
His father had learnt it of a Dutch Jew.
It is, I think, the best kind of cipher ever invented (I
have taken interest in these things and studied them).
It is very difficult to learn, but I learnt it as a child
and it was of immense use to me at lectures we used to
attend at the Sorbonne and College de France.
Barty was very anxious to know it, and after some
trouble I obtained my father's permission to impart this
calligraphic crypt to Barty, on condition he should swear
on his honor never to reveal it : and this he did.
With his extraordinary quickness and the perseverance
he always had when he wished a thing very much, he
made himself a complete master of this occult science
before he left school, two or three years later : it took me
seven years beginning when I was four ! It does equal-
ly well for French or English, and it played an important
part in Barty's career. My sister knew it, but imper-
fectly ; my mother not at all for all she tried so hard
and was so persevering ; it must be learnt young. As
far as I am aware, no one else knows it in England or
104
France or even the world although it is such a useful
invention ; quite a marvel of simple ingenuity when one
has mastered the symbols, which certainly take a long
time and a deal of hard work.
Barty and I got to talk it on our fingers as rapidly as
ordinary speech and with the slightest possible gestures :
this was his improvement.
Barty came back from his holidays full of Whitby, and
its sailors and whalers, and fishermen and cobles and
cliffs all of which had evidently had an immense attrac-
tion for him. He was always fond of that class ; possibly
also some vague atavistic sympathy for the toilers of the
sea lay dormant in his blood like an inherited memory.
And he brought back many tokens of these good peo-
ple's regard two formidable clasp-knives (for each of
which he had to pay the giver one farthing in current
coin of the realm); spirit-flasks, leather bottles, jet orna-
ments ; woollen jerseys and comforters knitted for him
by their wives and daughters ; fossil ammonites and
coprolites ; a couple of young sea-gulls to add to his
menagerie ; and many old English marine ditties, which
he had to sing to M. Bonzig with his now cracked voice,
and then translate into French. Indeed, Bonzig and
Barty became inseparable companions during the Thurs-
day promenade, on the strength of their common inter-
est in ships and the sea ; and Barty never wearied of
describing the place he loved, nor Bonzig of listening
and commenting.
"Ah ! mon cher ! ce que je donnerais, moi, pour voir
le retour d'un baleinier a Ouittebe ! Quelle 'marine' c.a
ferait ! hein ? avec la grande falaise, et la bonne petite
eglise en haut, pres de la Vieille Abbaye et les toits
rouges qui fument, et les trois jetees en pierre, et le
105
vieux pont-levis et toute cette grouille de mariniers
avec leurs femmes et leurs enfants et ces braves filles
qui attendent le retour du bien-aime ! nom d'un nom !
dire qne vous avez vu tout ga, vous qui n'avez pas en-
core seize ans . . . quelle chance ! . . . dites qu'est-ce
que ga veut bien dire, ce
' Ouile me sekile r6 !'
Chantez-moi c,a encore une fois I"
And Barty, whose voice was breaking, would raucously
sing him the good old ditty for the sixth time :
"Weel may the keel row, the keel row, the keel row,
Weel may the keel row
That brings my laddie home I"
which he would find rather difficult to render literally
into colloquial seafaring French !
He translated it thus :
" Vogue la carene,
Vogue la car^ne
Qui me nimene
Mon bien aime 1"
"Ah! vous verrez/' says Bonzig "vous verrez, aux
prochaines vacances de Paques je ferai un si joli tableau
de tout c.a ! avec la brume du soir qui tombe, vous savez
et le soleil qui disparait et la inaree qui monte et la
lune qui se leve a Fhorizon ! et les mouettes et les goe-
lands et les bruyeres lointaines et le vieux manoir
seigneurial de votre grand-pere . . . c'est bien ga, n'est-
ce pas ?"
"Oui, oui, M'sieur Bonzig vous y etes, en plein !"
And the good usher in his excitement would light
himself a cigarette of caporal, and inhale the smoke as
106
if it were a sea-breeze, and exhale it like a regular sou'-
wester ! and sing :
" Ovule me sekile r8,
Tat brirm my ladde ome !"
Barty also brought back with him the complete poet-
ical works of Byron and Thomas Moore, the gift of his
noble grandfather, who adored these two bards to the
exclusion of all other bards that ever wrote in English.
And during that year we both got to know them, possi-
bly as well as Lord Whitby himself. Especially "Don
Juan/' in which we grew to be as word-perfect as in
Polyeucte, Le Misanthrope, Athalie, PMloctete, Le Lutrin,
the first six books of the JEneid and the Iliad, the Ars
Poetica, and the Art Poetique (Boileau).
Every line of these has gone out of my head long
ago, alas ! But I could still stand a pretty severe exam-
ination in the now all-but-forgotteu English epic from
Dan to Beersheba I mean from "I want a hero" to
"The phantom of her frolic grace, Fitz-Fulke !"
Barty, however, remembered everything what he
ought to, and what he ought not ! He had the most
astounding memory : wax to receive and marble to re-
tain ; also a wonderful facility for writing verse, mostly
comic, both in English and French. Greek and Latin
verse were not taught us at Brossard's, for good French
reasons, into which I will not enter now.
We also grew very fond of Lamartine and Victor Hugo,
quite openly and of De Musset under the rose.
" C'etait dans la nuit brune
Sur le clocher jauni,
La lune,
Comme uu point sur son i 1"
(not for the young person). '
"WEEL MAY THE KEEL HOW '
108
I have a vague but pleasant impression of that year.
Its weathers, its changing seasons, its severe frosts, with
Sunday skatings on the dangerous canals, St.-Ouen and
De 1'Ourcq; its genial spring, all convolvulus and gobeas,
and early almond blossom and later horse - chestnut
spikes, and more lime and syringa than ever ; its warm
soft summer and the ever-delightful school of natation
by the Isle of Swans.
This particular temptation led us into trouble. We
would rise before dawn, Barty and Jolivet and I, and let
ourselves over the wall and run the two miles, and get a
heavenly swim and a promise of silence for a franc
apiece; and run back again and jump into bed a few
minutes before the five-o'clock bell rang the reveille^
But we did this once too often for M. Dumollard had
been looking at Venus with his telescope (I think it was
Venus) one morning before sunrise, and spied us out en
flagrant delit ; perhaps with that very telescope. Any-
how, he pounced on us when we came back. And our
punishment would have been extremely harsh but for
Barty, who turned it all into a joke.
After breakfast M. Merovee pronounced a very severe
sentence on us under the acacia. I forget what it was
but his manner was very short and dignified, and he
walked away very stiffly towards the door of the etude.
Barty ran after him without noise, and just touching his
shoulders with the tips of his fingers, cleared him at a
bound from behind, as one clears a post.
M. Merovee, in a real rage this time, forgot his dignity,
and pursued him all over the school through open win-
dows and back again into his own garden (Tusculum)
over trellis railings all along the top of a wall and fi-
nally, quite blown out, sat down on the edge of the tank:
the whole school was in fits by this time, even M. Dumol-
109
lard and at last Merove began to laugh too. So the
thing had to be forgiven but only that once !
Once also, that year, but in the winter, a great com-
pliment was paid to la perfide Albion in the persons of
MM. Josselin et Maurice, which I cannot help recording
with a little complacency.
On a Thursday walk in the Bois de Boulogne a boy
called out " A bas Dumollard I" in a falsetto squeak.
Dumollard, who was on duty that walk, was furious, of
course but he couldn't identify the boy by the sound of
his voice. He made his complaint to M. Merovee and
next morning, after prayers, Merovee came into the
school-room, and told us he should go the round of the
boys there and then, and ask each boy separately to own
up if it were he who had uttered the seditious cry.
"And mind you \" he said "you are all and each of
you on your ' word of honor ' I' etude entiere !"
So round he went, from boy to boy, deliberately fixing
each boy with his eye, and severely asking " Est-ce toi 9"
" Est-ce fotf" " Est-ce toi ?" etc., and waiting very de-
liberately indeed for the answer, and even asking for it
again if it were not given in a firm and audible voice.
And the answer was always, "Non, m'sieur, ce n'est
pas moi !"
But when he came to each of us (Josselin and me) he
just mumbled his "Est-ce toi ?" in a quite perfunctory
voice, and didn't even wait for the answer !
When he got to the last boy of all, who said " Non,
m'sieur," like all the rest, he left the room, saying, trag-
ically (and, as I thought, rather theatrically for him) :
" Je m'en vais le cceur navre il y a un -lache parmi
vous !" (My heart is harrowed there's a coward among
you.)
There was an awkward silence for a few moments.
110
Presently Eapaud got up and went out. We all knew
that Eapaud was the delinquent he had bragged about
it so overnight in the dormitory. He went straight to
M. Merovee and confessed, stating that he did not like to
be put on his word of honor before the whole school. I
forget whether he was punished or not, or how. He had
to make his apologies to M. Dumollard, of course.
To put the whole school on its word of honor was
thought a very severe measure, coming as it did from the
head master in person. "La parole d'honneur" was
held to be very sacred between boy and boy, and even be-
tween boy and head master. The boy who broke it was
always " mis a la quarantaine " (sent to Coventry) by the
rest of the school.
" I wonder why he let off Josselin and Maurice so
easily ?" said Jolivet, at breakfast.
" Parce qu'il aime les Anglais, ma foi I" said M. Du-
mollard " affaire de gout !"
" Ma foi, il n'a pas tort !" said M. Bonzig.
Dumollard looked askance at Bonzig (between whom
and himself not much love was lost) and walked off,
jauntily twirling his mustache, and whistling a few bars
of a very ungainly melody, to which the words ran :
"Non ! jamais en France,
Jamais Anglais ne rfignera !"
As if we wanted to, good heavens !
(By-the-way, I suddenly remember that both Berquin
and d'Orthez were let off as easily as Josselin and I.
But they were eighteen or nineteen, and "en Philoso-
phie," the highest class in the school and very first-rate
boys indeed. It's only fair that I should add this.)
By-the-way, also, M. Dumollard took it into his head
to persecute me because once I refused to fetch and
Ill
carry for him and be his " moricaud," or black slave (as
du Tertre-Jouan called it): a mean and petty persecu-
tion which lasted two years, and somewhat embitters my
memory of those happy days. It was always ' ' Maurice
au piquet pour une heure !" . . " Maurice a la retenue !"
. . " Maurice prive de bain !" . . " Maurice consigne di-
manche prochain \" . . . for the slightest possible of-
fence. But I forgive him freely.
First, because he is probably dead, and " de mortibus
nil desperandum !" as Rapaud once said and for saying
which he received a "twisted pinch" from Merotee
Brossard himself.
Secondly, because he made chemistry, cosmography,
and physics so pleasant and even reconciled me at last
to the differential and integral calculus (but never Barty !).
He could be rather snobbish at times, which was not
a common French fault in the forties we didn't even
know what to call it.
For instance, he was fond of bragging to us boys
about the golden splendors of his Sunday dissipation,
and his grand acquaintances, even in class. He would
even interrupt himself in the middle of an equation at
the blackboard to do so.
" You mustn't imagine to yourselves, messieurs, that
because I teach you boys science at the Pension Bros-
sard, and take you out walking on Thursday afternoons,
and all that, that I do not associate avec des gens du
monde! Last night, for example, I was dining at the
Cafe de Paris with a very intimate friend of mine he's
a marquis and when the bill was brought, what do you
think it came to ? you give it up ?" (vous donnez votre
langue aux chats?). "Well, it came to fifty -seven
francs, fifty centimes ! We tossed up who should pay
et, ma foi, le sort a favorise M. le Marquis !"
112
To this there was nothing to say ; so none of us said
anything, except du Tertre-Jouan, our marquis (No. 2),
who said, in his sulky, insolent, peasantlike manner :
"Et comment q'ca s'appelle, vot' marquis?" (What
does it call itself, your marquis ?)
"Upon which M. Dumollard turns very red ("pique
un soleil "), and says :
"Monsieur le Marquis Paul Francois Victor du
Tertre-Jouan de Haultcastel de St.-Paterne, vous etes
mi paltoquet et un rustre ! . . ."
And goes back to his equations.
Du Tertre-Jouan was nearly six feet high, and afraid
of nobody a kind of clodhopping young rustic Hercu-
les, and had proved his mettle quite recently when a
brutal usher, whom I will call Monsieur Boulot (though
his real name was Patachou), a Meridional with a horri-
ble divergent squint, made poor Rapaud go down on his
knees in the classe de geographic ancienne, and slapped
him violently on the face twice running a way he had
with Rapaud.
It happened like this. It was a kind of penitential
class for dunces during play-time. M. Boulot drew in
clalk an outline of ancient Greece on the blackboard,
and under it he wrote
"Tiraeo Danaos, et dona ferentes !"
" Rapaud, translate me that line of Virgil !" says Boulot.
" J'estime les Danois et leurs dents de fer I" says poor
Rapaud (I esteem the Danish and their iron teeth). And
we all laughed. For which he underwent the brutal
slapping.
The window was ajar, and outside I saw du Tertre-
Jouan, Jolivet, and Berquin, listening and peeping
through. Suddenly the window bursts wide open, and
A TERTRE-JOUAN TO THE RESCUE !
114
du Tertre-Jouan vaults the sill, gets between Boulot and
his victim, and says:
" Le troisieme coup fait feu, vous savez ! touchez-y
encore, a ce moutard, et j'vous assomme snr place !"
(Touch him again, that kid, and I'll break your head
where you stand !).
There was an awful row, of course and du Tertre-
Jouan had to make a public apology to M. Boulot, who
disappeared from the school the very same day ; and
Tertre-Jouan would have been canonized by us all, but
that he was so deplorably dull and narrow-minded, and
suspected of being a royalist in disguise. He was an
orphan and very rich, and didn't fash himself about
examinations. He left school that year without tak-
ing any degree and I don't know what became of
him.
This year also Barty conceived a tender passion for
Mile. Marceline.
It was after the mumps, which we both had together
in a double-bedded infirmerie next to the lingerie a place
where it was a pleasure to be ill ; for she was in and out all
day, and told us all that was going on, and gave us nice
drinks and tisanes of her own making and laughed at
all Barty's jokes, and some of mine ! and wore the most
coquettish caps ever seen.
Besides, she was an uncommonly good-looking woman
a tall blonde with beautiful teeth, and wonderfully
genial, good-humored, and lively an ideal nurse, but a
terrible postponer of cures ! Lord Archibald quite fell
in love with her.
" C'est moi qui voudrais bien avoir les oreillons ici !"
he said to her. " Je retarderais ma convalescence autant
que possible !"
" Comme il sait bien le franc.ais, votre oncle et comme
&-.. 9
k. ' . f.
MADEMOISELLE MAUCELINE
116
il est poll \" said Marceline to the convalescent Barty,
who was in no hurry to get well either !
When we did get well again, Barty would spend much
of his play-time fetching and carrying for Mile. Marce-
line even getting Dumollard's socks for her to darn
and talking to her by the hour as he sat by her pleasant
window, out of which one could see the Arch of Triumph,
which so triumphantly dominated Paris and its sub-
urbs, and does so still no Eiffel Tower can kill that
arch !
I, being less precocious, did not begin my passion for
Mile. Marceline till next year, just as Bonne ville and
Jolivet trois were getting over theirs. Nous avons tous
passe par la !
What a fresh and kind and jolly woman she was, to be
sure ! I wonder none of the masters married her. Per-
haps they did ! Let us hope it wasn't M. Dumollard !
It is such a pleasure to recall every incident of this
epoch of my life and Barty's that I should like to go
through our joint lives day by day, hour by hour, micro-
scopically to describe every book we read, every game
we played, every pensum (i.e., imposition) we performed;
every lark we were punished for every meal we ate.
But space forbids this self-indulgence, and other con-
siderations make it unadvisable so I will resist the temp-
tation.
La pension Brossard ! How often have we both talked
of it, Barty and I, as middle-aged men ; in the billiard-
room of the Marathoneum, let us say, sitting together on
a comfortable couch, with tea and cigarettes and always
in French whispers ! we could only talk of Brossard's in
French.
" Te rappelles-tu Inhabit neuf de Berquin, et son cha-
peau haute-forme ?"
'IF HE ONLY KNEW !'
118
"Te souviens-tu de la vieille chatte angora du p6re
Jaurion ?" etc., etc., etc.
Idiotic reminiscences ! as charming to revive as any
old song with words of little meaning that meant so
much when one was four five six years old ! before
one knew even how to spell them !
" Faille & Dine paille a Chine
Faille a Suzette et Martine
Bon lit a la Dumaine !"
Celine, my nurse, used to sing this and I never knew
what it meant ; nor do I now ! But it was charming
indeed.
Even now I dream that I go back to school, to get
coached by Dumollard in a little more algebra. I wander
about the playground ; but all the boys are new, and don't
even know my name r and silent, sad, and ugly, every
one ! Again Dumollard persecutes me. And in the
middle of it I reflect that, after all, he is a person of no
importance whatever, and that I am a member of the
British Parliament a baronet a millionaire and one
of her Majesty's Privy Councillors ! and that M. Dumol-
lard must be singularly " out of it," even for a French-
man, not to be aware of this.
"If he only knew I" says I to myself, says I in my
dream.
Besides, can't the man see with his own eyes that I'm
grown up, and big enough to tuck him under my left
arm, and spank him just as if he were a little naughty
boy confound the brute !
Then, suddenly :
" Maurice, au piquet pour une heure !"
" Moi, m'sieur ?"
" Oui, vous !"
119
" Pourquoi, m'sieur I"
" Parce que qa me plait I"
And I wake and could almost weep to find how old
I am !
And Barty Josselin is no more oh ! my God ! . . . .
and his dear wife survived him just twenty-four hours !
Behold us both " en Philosophic !"
And Barty the head boy of the school, though not
the oldest and the brilliant show-boy of the class.
Just before Easter (1851) he and I and Kapaud and
Laferte and Jolivet trois (who was nineteen) and Palai-
seau and Bussy-Rabutin went up for our "bachot" at
the Sorbonne.
We sat in a kind of big musty school-room with about
thirty other boys from other schools and colleges. There
we sat side by side from ten till twelve at long desks,
and had a long piece of Latin dictated to us, with the
punctuation in French : "un point point et virgule
deux points point d'exclamation guillemets ouvrez
la parenthese," etc., etc. monotonous details that ener-
vate one at such a moment !
Then we set to work with our dictionaries and wrote
out a translation according to our lights apion walking
about and watching us narrowly for cribs, in case we
should happen to have one for this particular extract,
which was most unlikely.
Barty's nose bled, I remember and this made him
nervous.
Then we went and lunched at the Cafe de FOdeon,
on the best omelet we had ever tasted.
" Te rappelles-tu cette omelette ?" said poor Barty to
me only last Christmas as ever was !
Then we went back with our hearts in our mouths to
120
find if we had qualified ourselves by our " version 6crite "
for the oral examination that comes after, and which is
so easy to pass the examiners having lunched them-
selves into good-nature.
There we stood panting, some fifty boys and masters,
in a small, whitewashed room like a prison. An official
conies in and puts the list of candidates in a frame on
the wall, and we crane our necks over each other's
shoulders.
And, lo ! Barty is plucked colle ! and / have passed,
and actually Rapaud and no one else from Brossard's !
An old man a parent or grandparent probably of
some unsuccessful candidate bursts into tears and ex-
claims,
" Oh ! que malheur que malheur !"
A shabby, tall, pallid youth, in the uniform of the
College Ste.-Barbe, rushes down the stone stairs shriek-
ing,
" a pue Finjustice, ici I"
One hears him all over the place : terrible heartburns
and tragic disappointments in the beginning of life re-
sulted from failure in this first step a failure which
disqualified one for all the little government appoint-
ments so dear to the heart of the frugal French parent.
"Mille francs par an ! c'est le Pactole !"
Barty took his defeat pretty easily he put it all down
to his nose bleeding and seemed so pleased at my suc-
cess, and my dear mother's delight in it, that he was
soon quite consoled ; he was always like that.
To M. Merovee, Barty's failure was as great a disap-
pointment as it was a painful surprise.
" Try again, Josselin ! Don't leave here till you have
passed. If you are content to fail in this, at the very
'MAURICE AU PIQUET!'"
122
outset of your career, you will never succeed in anything
through life ! Stay with us as my guest till you can go
up again, and again if necessary. Do, my dear child
it will make me so happy ! I shall feel it as a proof that
you reciprocate in some degree the warm friendship I
have always borne you in common with everybody in
the school ! Je t'en prie, mon gargon I"
Then he went to the Rohans and tried to persuade
them. But Lord Archibald didn't care much about
Bachots, nor his wife either. They were going back to
live in England, besides ; and Barty was going into the
Guards.
I left school also with a mixture of hope and elation,
and yet the most poignant regret.
I can hardly find words to express the gratitude and
affection I felt for Merovee Brossard when I bade him
farewell.
Except his father before him, he was the best and
finest Frenchman I ever knew. There is nothing in-
vidious in my saying this, and in this way. I merely
speak of the Brossards, father and son, as Frenchmen in
this connection, because their admirable qualities of
heart and mind were so essentially French ; they would
have done equal honor to any country in the world.
I corresponded with him regularly for a few years, and
so did Barty ; and then our letters grew fewer and far-
ther between, and finally left off altogether as nearly
always happens in such cases, I think. And I never saw
him again ; for when he broke up the school he went
to his own province in the southeast, and lived there
till twenty years ago, when he died unmarried, I be-
lieve.
Then there was Monsieur Bonzig, and Mile. Marceline,
and others and three or four boys with whom both
133
Barty and I were on terms of warm and intimate friend-
ship. None of these boys that I know of have risen to
any world-wide fame ; and, oddly enough, none of them
have ever given sign of life to Barty Josselin, who is just
as famous in France for his French literary work as on
this side of the Channel for all he has done in English.
He towers just as much there as here ; and this double
eminence now dominates the entire globe, and we are
beginning at last to realize everywhere that this bright
luminary in our firmament is no planet, like Mars or
Jupiter, but, like Sirius, a sun.
Yet never a line from an old comrade in that school
where he lived for four years and was so strangely pop-
ular and which he so filled with his extraordinary per-
sonality !
So much for Barty Josselin's school life and mine. I
fear I may have dwelt on them at too great a length.
No period of time has ever been for me so bright and
happy as those seven years I spent at the Institution
F. Brossard especially the four years I spent there with
Barty Josselin. The older I get, the more I love to re-
call the trivial little incidents that made for us both the
sum of existence in those happy days.
La chasse aux souvenirs d'enfance ! what better sport
can there be, or more bloodless, at my time of life ?
And all the lonely pathetic pains and pleasures of it,
now that he is gone !
The winter twilight has just set in "betwixt dog and
wolf." I wander alone (but for Barty's old mastiff, who
follows me willy-nilly) in the woods and lanes that sur-
round Marsfield on the Thames, the picturesque abode
of the Josselins.
Darker and darker it grows. I no longer make out the
124
familiar trees and hedges, and forget how cold it is and
how dreary.
"Je marcherai les yeux fixes sur mes pensees,
Sans rien voir au dehors, sans entendre aucun bruit
Seul, inconnu, le dos courbe, les mains croisees :
Triste et le jour pour rnoi sera comrae la nuit."
(This is Victor Hugo, not Barty Josselin.)
It's really far away I am across the sea ; across the
years, Posthumus ! in a sunny play-ground that has
been built over long ago, or overgrown with lawns and
flower-beds and costly shrubs.
Up rises some vague little rudiment of a hint of a ghost
of a sunny, funny old French remembrance long forgot-
ten a brand-new old remembrance a kind of will-o'-
the-wisp. Chut ! my soul stalks it on tiptoe, while these
earthly legs bear this poor old body of clay, by mere re-
flex action, straight home to the beautiful Elisabethan
house on the hill ; through the great warm hall, up the
broad oak stairs, into the big cheerful music-room like a
studio ruddy and bright with the huge log-fire opposite
the large window. All is on an ample scale at Marsfield,
people and things ! and I ! sixteen stone, good Lord !
How often that window has been my beacon on dark
nights ! I used to watch for it from the train a land-
mark in a land of milk and honey the kindliest light
that ever led me yet on earth.
I sit me down in my own particular chimney-corner,
in my own cane-bottomed chair by the fender, and stare
at the blaze with my friend the mastiff. An old war-
battered tomcat Barty was fond of jumps up and makes
friends too. There goes my funny little French remem-
brance, trying to fly up the chimney like a burnt love-
letter. .
125
Barty's eldest daughter (Roberta), a stately, tall Hebe
in black, brings me a very sizable cup of tea, just as I
like it. A well-grown little son of hers, a very Gany-
mede, beau comme le jour, brings me a cigarette, and in-
sists on lighting it for me himself. I like that too.
Another daughter of Barty's, "la rossignolle," as we
call her though there is no such word that I know of
goes to the piano and sings little French songs of forty,
fifty years ago songs that she has learnt from her dear
papa.
Heavens ! what a voice ! and how like his, but for the
difference of sex and her long and careful training (which
he never had) ; and the accent, how perfect !
Then suddenly :
"A. Saint-Blaize, & la Zuecca . . .
Vous etiez, vous etiez bien aise !
A. Saint-Blaize, & la Zuecca . . .
Nous etious, nous etions bien lit !
Mais de vous en souvenir
Prendrez-vous la peine ?
Mais de vous en souvenir,
Et d'y revenir ?
A. Saint-Blaize, a la Zuecca . . .
Vivre et raourir 1& !"
So sings Mrs. Trevor (Mary Josselin that was) in the
richest, sweetest voice I know. And behold ! at last I
have caught my little French remembrance, just as the
lamps are being lit and I transfix it with my pen and
write it down . . .
And then with a sigh I scratch it all out again, sunny
and funny as it is. For it's all about a comical advent-
ure I had with Palaiseau, the sniffer at the fete de St.-
Cloud all about a tame magpie, a gendarme, a blan-
chisseuse, and a volume of de Musset's. poems, and doesn't
126
concern Barty in the least ; for it so happened that
Barty wasn't there !
Thus, in the summer of 1851, Barty Josselin and I
bade adieu forever to our happy school life and for a
few years to our beloved Paris and for many years to
our close intimacy of every hour in the day.
I remember spending two or three afternoons with him
at the great exhibition in Hyde Park just before he went
on a visit to his grandfather, Lord Whitby, in Yorkshire
and happy afternoons they were ! and we made the
most of them. We saw all there was to be seen there, I
think ; and found ourselves always drifting back to the
"Amazon" and the "Greek Slave," for both of which
Barty's admiration was boundless.
And so was mine. They made the female fashions for
1851 quite deplorable by contrast especially the shoes,
and the way of dressing the hair ; we almost came to
the conclusion that female beauty when unadorned is
adorned the most. It awes and chastens one so ! and
wakes up the knight-errant inside ! even the smartest
French boots can't do this ! not the pinkest silken hose
in all Paris ! not all the frills and underfrills and won-
derfrills that M. Paul Bourget can so eloquently de-
scribe !
My father had taken a house for us in Brunswick
Square, next to the Foundling Hospital. He was about
to start an English branch of the Vougeot-Conti firm in
the City. I will not trouble the reader with any details
about this enterprise, which presented many difficulties
at first, and indeed rather crippled our means.
My mother was anxious that I should go to one of the
universities, Oxford or Cambridge ; but this my father
could not afford. She had a great dislike to business
' QUAND ON PERD, PAR TRI3TE OCCURRENCE,
SON ESPERANCK,
ET SA GAITE,
LE REMEDE AU MELANCOLIQUE
C'EST LA MUSIQUE
BT LA BEAOTE ' "
128
and so had I ; from different motives, I fancy. I had
the wish to become a man of science a passion that had
been fired by M. Dumollard, whose special chemistry class
at the Pension Brossard, with its attractive experiments,
had been of the deepest interest to me. I have not de-
scribed it because Barty did not come in.
Fortunately for my desire, my good father had great
sympathy with me in this ; so I was entered as a student
at the Laboratory of Chemistry at University College,
close by in October, 1851 and studied there for two
years, instead of going at once into my father's business
in Barge Yard, Bucklersbury, which would have pleased
him even more.
At about the same time Barty was presented with a
commission in the Second Battalion of the Grenadier
Guards, and joined immediately.
Nothing could have been more widely apart than the
lives we led, or the society we severally frequented.
I lived at home with my people ; he in rooms on a sec-
ond floor in St. James's Street ; he had a semi - grand
piano, and luxurious furniture, and bookcases already
well filled, and nicely colored lithograph engravings on
the walls beautiful female faces the gift of Lady
Archibald, who had superintended Barty's installation
with kindly maternal interest, but little appreciation of
high art. There were also foils, boxing-gloves, dumb-
bells, and Indian clubs ; and many weapons, ancient and
modern, belonging more especially to his own martial
profession. They were most enviable quarters. But he
often came to see us in Brunswick Square, and dined
with us once or twice a week, and was made much of
even by my father, who thoroughly disapproved of every-
thing about him except his own genial and agreeable
self, which hadn't altered in the least.
129
My father was much away in Paris and Dijon and
Barty made rain and fine weather in our dull abode, to
use a French expression il y faisait la pluie et le beau
temps. That is, it rained there when he was away, and
he brought the fine weather with him ; and we spoke
French all round.
The greatest pleasure I could have was to breakfast
with Barty in St. James's Street on Sunday mornings,
when he was not serving his Queen and country either
alone with him or with two or three of his friends mostly
young carpet warriors like himself ; and very charming
young fellows they were. I have always been fond of
warriors, young or old, and of whatever rank, and wish
to goodness I had been a warrior myself. I feel sure I
should have made a fairly good one !
Then we would spend an hour or two in athletic exer-
cises and smoke many pipes. And after this, in the
summer, we would walk in Kensington Gardens and
see the Eank and Fashion. In those days the Rank and
Fashion were not above showing themselves in the Ken-
sington Gardens of a Sunday afternoon, crossing the
Serpentine Bridge again and again between Prince's Gate
and Bayswater.
Then for dinner we went to some pleasant foreign pot-
house in or near Leicester Square, where they spoke
French and ate and drank it! and then back again
to his rooms. Sometimes we would be alone, which I
liked best : we would read and smoke and be happy ; or
he would sketch, or pick out accompaniments on his
guitar ; often not exchanging a word, but with a delight-
ful sense of close companionship which silence almost in-
tensified.
Sometimes we were in very jolly company : more war-
riors ; young Robson, the actor who became so famous ;
130
a big negro pugilist, called Snowdrop ; two medical stu-
dents from St. George's Hospital, who boxed well and
were capital fellows ; and an academy art student, who
died a Royal Academician, and who did not approve of
Barty's mural decorations and laughed at the colored
lithographs ; and many others of all sorts. There used
to be much turf talk, and sometimes a little card-play-
ing and mild gambling but Barty's tastes did not lie
that way.
His idea of a pleasant evening was putting on the
gloves with Snowdrop, or any one else who chose or
fencing or else making music ; or being funny in any
way one could ; and for this he had quite a special gift :
he had sudden droll inspirations that made one absolute-
ly hysterical mere things of suggestive look or sound
or gesture, reminding one of Robson himself, but quite
original ; absolute senseless rot and drivel, but still it
made one laugh till one's sides ached. And he never
failed of success in achieving this.
Among the dullest and gravest of us, and even some of
the most high-minded, there is often a latent longing for
this kind of happy idiotic fooling, and a grateful fond-
ness for those who can supply it without effort and who
delight in doing so. Barty was the precursor of the
Arthur Robertses and Fred Leslies and Dan Lenos of our
day, although he developed in quite another direction !
Then of a sudden he would sing some little twopenny
love-ballad or sentimental nigger melody so touchingly
that one had the lump in the throat ; poor Snowdrop
would weep by spoonfuls !
By-the-way, it suddenly occurs to me that I'm mixing
things up confusing Sundays and week-days ; of course
our Sunday evenings were quiet and respectable, and I
much preferred them when he and I were alone ; he was
131
then another person altogether a thoughtful and intelli-
gent young Frenchman", who loved reading poetry aloud
or being read to ; especially English poetry Byron ! He
was faithful to his " Don Juan/' his Hebrew melodies
his " O'er the glad waters of the deep blue sea." We knew
them all by heart, or nearly so, and yet we read them
still : and Victor Hugo and Lamartine, and dear Alfred
de Musset. . . .
And one day I discovered another Alfred who wrote
verses Alfred the Great, as we called him one Alfred
Tennyson, who had written a certain poem, among
others, called "In Memoriam " which I carried off to
Barty's and read out aloud one wet Sunday evening,
and the Sunday evening after, and other Sunday even-
ings ; and other poems by the same hand : " Locksley
Hall," "Ulysses," "The Lotos-Eaters," "The Lady of
Shalott " and the chord of Byron passed in music out
of sight.
Then Shelley dawned upon us, and John Keats, and
Wordsworth and our Sunday evenings were of a happi-
ness to be remembered forever ; at least they were so to
me !
If Barty Josselin were on duty on the Sabbath, it was
a blank day for Robert Maurice. For it was not very
lively at home especially when my father was there.
He was the best and kindest man that ever lived, but his
businesslike seriousness about this world, and his anxie-
ty about the next, and his Scotch Sabbatarianism, were
deadly depressing ; combined with the aspect of London
on the Lord's day London east of Russell Square ! Oh,
Paris . . Paris . . . and the yellow omnibus that took
us both there together, Barty and me, at eight on a Sun-
day morning in May or June, and didn't bring us back
to school till fourteen hours later !
182
I shall never forget one gloomy wintry Sunday some-
where in 1854 or 5, if I'm not mistaken, towards the end
of Barty's career as a Guardsman.
Twice after lunch I had called at Barty's, who was to
have been on duty in barracks or at the Tower that morn-
ing ; he had not come back ; I called for him at his club,
but he hadn'f been there either and I turned my face
eastward and homeward with a sickening sense of des-
olate ennui and deep disgust of London for which I
could find no terms that are fit for publication !
And this was not lessened by the bitter reproaches I
made myself for being such a selfish and unworthy son
and brother. It was precious dull at home for my mother
and sister and my place was there.
They were just lighting the lamps as I got to the arcade
in the Quadrant and there I ran against the cheerful
Barty. Joy ! what a change in the aspect of everything !
It rained light ! He pulled a new book out of his pocket,
which he had just borrowed from some fair lady and
showed it to me. It was called Maud.
We dined at Pergolese's, in Kupert Street and went
back to Barty's and read the lovely poem out loud, tak-
ing it by turns ; and that is the most delightful recollec-
tion I have since I left the Institution F. Brossard!
Occasionally I dined with him "on guard " at St.
James's Palace and well I could understand all the at-
tractions of his life, so different from mine, and see what
a good fellow he was to come so often to Brunswick
Square, and seem so happy with us.
The reader will conclude that I was a kind of over-af-
fectionate pestering dull dog, who made this brilliant
youth's life a burden to him. It was really not so ; we
had very many tastes in common ; and with all his vari-
ous temptations, he had a singularly constant and affec-
133
tionate nature and was of a Frenchness that made
French thought and talk and commune almost a daily
necessity. We nearly always spoke French when to-
gether alone, or with my mother and sister. It would
have seemed almost unnatural not to have done so.
I always feel a special tenderness towards young peo-
ple whose lives have been such that those two languages
are exactly the same to them. It means so many things
to me. It doubles them in my estimation, and I seem to
understand them through and through.
Nor did he seem to care much for the smart society of
which he saw so much ; perhaps the bar sinister may
have made him feel less at his ease in general society than
among his intimates and old friends. I feel sure he took
this to heart more than any one would have thought pos-
sible from his careless manner.
He only once alluded directly to this when we were to-
gether. I was speaking to him of the enviable brilliancy
of his lot. He looked at me pensively for a minute or
two, and said, in English :
" You've got a kink in your nose, Bob if it weren't
for that you'd be a deuced good-looking fellow like me ;
but you ain't. "
" Thanks anything else ?" said I.
" Well, I've got a kink in my birth, you see and that's
as big a kill-joy as I know. I hate it !"
It was hard luck. He would have made such a
splendid Marquis of Whitby ! and done such honor to
the proud old family motto :
" Roy ne puis, prince ne daigne, Rohan je suis !"
Instead of which he got himself a signet-ring, and on it
he caused to be engraved a zero within a naught, and
round them :
" Rohan ne puis, roi ne daigne. Rien ne suis !"
134
Soon it became pretty evident that a subtle change
was being wrought in him.
He had quite lost his power of feeling the north, and
missed it dreadfully ; he could no longer turn his back-
somersault with ease and safety ; he had overcome his
loathing for meat, and also his dislike for sport he had,
indeed, become a very good shot.
But he could still hear and see and smell with all the
keenness of a young animal or a savage. And that must
have made his sense of being alive very much more vivid
than is the case with other mortals.
He had also corrected his quick impulsive tendency
to slap faces that were an inch or two higher up than his
own. He didn't often come across one, for one thing
then it would not have been considered "good form"
in her Majesty's Household Brigade.
When he was a boy, as the reader may recollect, he
was fond of drawing lovely female profiles with black
hair and an immense black eye, and gazing at them as
he smoked a cigarette and listened to pretty, light mu-
sic. He developed a most ardent admiration for female
beauty, and mixed more and more in worldly and fash-
ionable circles (of which I saw nothing whatever) ; cir-
cles where the heavenly gift of beauty is made more of,
perhaps, than is quite good for its possessors, whether
female or male.
He was himself of a personal beauty so exceptional
that incredible temptations came his way. Aristocratic
people all over the world make great allowance for beau-
ty-born frailties that would spell ruin and everlasting
disgrace for women of the class to which it is my privi-
lege to belong.
Barty, of course, did not confide his love-adventures
to me ; in this he was no Frenchman. But I saw quite
135
enough to know he was more pursued than pursuing ;
and what a pursuer, to a man built like that ! no inno-
cent, impulsive young girl, no simple maiden in her
flower no Elaine.
But a magnificent full-blown peeress, who knew her
own mind and had nothing to fear, for her husband was
no better than herself. But for that, a Guinevere and
Vivien rolled into one, plus Messalina !
Nor was she the only light o' love ; there are many
naughty " grandes dames de par le monde " whose easy
virtue fits them like a silk stocking, and Avho live and
love pretty much as they please without loss of caste, so
long as they keep clear of any open scandal. It is one
of the privileges of high rank.
Then there were the ladies gay, frankly of the half-
world, these laughter-loving hetaerse, with perilously
soft hearts for such as Barty Josselin ! There was even
poor, listless, lazy, languid Jenny, "Fond of a kiss and
fond of a guinea !"
His heart was never touched of that I feel sure; and
he was not vain of these triumphs; but he was a very
reckless youth, a kind of young John Churchill before
Sarah Jennings took him in hand absolutely non-moral
about such things, rather than immoral.
He grew to be a quite notorious young man about
town ; and, most unfortunately for him, Lord (and even
Lady) Archibald Eohan were so fond of him, and so
proud, and so amiably non-moral themselves, that he
was left to go as he might.
He also developed some very rowdy tastes indeed
and so did I !
It was the fashion for our golden youth in the fifties
to do so. Every night in the Haymarket there was a
kind of noisy saturnalia, in which golden youths joined
136
hands with youths who were by no means golden, to
give much trouble to the police, and fill the pockets of
the keepers of night-houses "Bob Croft's," "Kate
Hamilton's," " the Piccadilly Saloon/' and other haunts
equally well pulled down and forgotten. It was good,
in these regions, to be young and big and strong like
Barty and me, and well versed in the " handling of one's
daddies." I suppose London was the only great city in
the world where such things could be. I am afraid that
many strange people of both sexes called us Bob and
Barty ; people the mere sight or hearing of whom would
have given my poor dear father fits !
Then there was a little public-house in St. Martin's
Lane, kept by big Ben the prize-fighter. In a room at
the top of the house there used to be much sparring.
We both of us took a high degree in the noble art es-
pecially I, if it be not bragging to say so ; mostly on
account of my weight, which was considerable for my
age. It was in fencing that he beat me hollow : he was
quite the best fencer I ever met ; the lessons at school
of Bonnet's prevot had borne good fruit in his case.
Then there were squalid dens frequented by touts and
betting-men and medical students, where people sang
and fought and laid the odds and got very drunk and
where Barty's performances as a vocalist, comic and
sentimental (especially the latter), raised enthusiasm
that seems almost incredible among such a brutalized
and hardened crew.
One night he and I and a medical student called
Ticklets, who had a fine bass voice, disguised ourselves
as paupers, and went singing for money about Camden
Town and Mornington Crescent and Regent's Park. It
took us about an hour to make eighteen pence. Barty
played the guitar, Ticklets the tambourine, and I the
137
bones. Then we went to the Haymarket, and Barty
made five pounds in no time ; most of it in silver dona-
tions from unfortunate women English, of course
who are among the softest-hearted and most generous
creatures in the world.
"O lachrymarum fons !"
I forget what use we made of the money a good one,
I feel sure.
I am sorry to reveal all this, but Barty wished it.
Forty years ago such things did not seem so horrible as
they would now, and the word "bounder" had not been
invented.
My sister Ida, when about fourteen (1853), became a
pupil at the junior school in the Ladies' College, 48
Bedford Square. She soon made friends nice young
girls, who came to our house, and it was much the live-
lier. I used to hear much of them, and knew them
well before I ever saw them especially Leah Gibson,
who lived in Tavistock Square, and was Ida's special
friend ; at last I was quite anxious to see this paragon.
One morning, as I carried Ida's books on her way to
school, she pointed out to me three girls of her own age,
or less, who stood talking together at the gates of the
Foundling Hospital. They were all three very pretty
children quite singularly so and became great beau-
ties ; one golden-haired, one chestnut-brown, one blue-
black. The black-haired one was the youngest and the
tallest a fine, straight, bony child of twelve, with a flat
back and square shoulders ; she was very well dressed,
and had nice brown boots with brown elastic sides on
arched and straight-heeled slender feet, and white stock-
ings on her long legs a fashion in hose that has long
138
gone out. She also wore a thick plait of black hair all
down her back another departed mode, and one not to
be regretted, I think ; and she swung her books round
her as she talked, with easy movements, like a strong
boy.
"That's Leah Gibson/'' says my sister ; "the tall one,
with the long black plait."
Leah Gibson turned round and nodded to my sister
and smiled showing a delicate narrow face, a clear pale
complexion, very beautiful white pearly teeth between
very red lips, and an extraordinary pair of large black
eyes rather close together the blackest I ever saw,
but with an expression so quick and penetrating and
keen, and yet so good and frank and friendly, that they
positively sent a little warm thrill through me though
she was only twelve years old, and not a bit older than
her age, and I a fast youth nearly twenty !
And finding her very much to my taste, I said to my
sister, just for fun, " Oh that's Leah Gibson, is it ? then
some day Leah Gibson shall be Mrs. Robert Maurice !"
From which it may be inferred that I looked on Leah
Gibson, at the first sight of her, as likely to become
some day an extremely desirable person.
She did.
The Gibsons lived in a very good house in Tavistock
Square. They seemed very well off. Mrs. Gibson had
a nice carriage, which she kept entirely with her own
money. Her father, who was dead, had been a wealthy
solicitor. He had left a large family, and to each of
them property worth 300 a year, and a very liberal al-
lowance of good looks.
Mr. Gibson was in business in the City.
Leah, their only child, was the darling of their hearts
and the apple of their eyes. To dress her beautifully,
THUEE LITTLE MAIDS FROM SCHOOL (1853)
140
to give her all the best masters money could procure,
and treat her to every amusement in London theatres,
the opera, all the concerts and shows there were, and
give endless young parties for her pleasure all this
seemed the principal interest of their lives.
Soon after my first introduction to Leah, Ida and I
received an invitation to a kind of juvenile festivity at
the Gibsons', and went, and spent a delightful evening.
We were received by Mrs. Gibson most cordially. She
was such an extremely pretty person, and so charmingly
dressed, and had such winning, natural, genial manners,
that I fell in love with her at first sight ; she was also
very playful and fond of romping ; for she was young
still, having married at seventeen.
Her mother, Mrs. Bletchley (who was present), was a
Spanish Jewess a most magnificent and beautiful old
person in splendid attire, tall and straight, with white
hair and thick black eyebrows, and large eyes as black as
night.
In Leah the high Sephardic Jewish type was more
marked than in Mrs. Gibson (who was not Jewish at all in
aspect, and took after her father, the late Mr. Bletchley).
It is a type that sometimes, just now and again, can
be so pathetically noble and beautiful in a woman, so
suggestive of chastity and the most passionate love com-
bined love conjugal and filial and maternal love that
implies all the big practical obligations and responsibil-
ities of human life, that the mere term "Jewess" (and
especially its French equivalent) brings to my mind some
vague, mysterious, exotically poetic image of all I love
best in woman. I find myself dreaming of Kebecca of
York, as I used to dream of her in the English class at
Brossard's, where I so pitied poor Ivanhoe for his mis-
placed constancy.
141
If Rebecca at fifty-five was at all like Mrs. Bletchley,
poor old Sir Wilfred's regrets must have been all that
Thackeray made them out to be in his immortal story of
Rebecca and Rowena.
Mr. Gibson was a good-looking man, some twelve or
fifteen years older than his wife ; his real vocation was
to be a low comedian ; this showed itself on my first
introduction to him. He informally winked at me and
said :
" Esker voo ker jer dwaw lah vee ? Ah ! kel Bon-
nure I"
This idiotic speech (all the French he knew) was de-
livered in so droll and natural a manner that I took to
him at once. Barty himself couldn't have been funnier !
Well, we had games of forfeits and danced, and Ida
played charming things by Mendelssohn on the piano,
and Leah sang very nicely in a fine, bold, frank, deep
voice, like a choir-boy's, and Mrs. Gibson danced a Span-
ish fandango, and displayed feet and ankles of which
she was very proud, and had every right to be ; and then
Mr. Gibson played a solo on the flute, and sang " My
Pretty Jane " both badly enough to be very funny with-
out any conscious effort or straining on his part. Then
we supped, and the food was good, and we were all very
jolly indeed ; and after supper Mr. Gibson said to me :
" Now, Mister Parleyvoo can't you do something to
amuse the company ? You're big enough !"
I professed my willingness to do anything and wished
I was as Barty more than ever !
"Well, then," says he "kneel to the wittiest, bow
to the prettiest and kiss the one you love best."
This was rather a large order but I did as well as I
could. I went down on my knees to Mr. Gibson and
craved his paternal blessing ; and made my best French
142
bow with my heels together to old Mrs. Bletchley ; and
kissed my sister, warmly thanking her in public for hav-
ing introduced me to Mrs. Gibson : and as far as mere
social success is worth anything, I was the Barty of that
party !
Anyhow, Mr. Gibson conceived for me an admiration
he never failed to express when we met afterwards, and
though this was fun, of course, I had really won his
heart.
It is but a humble sort of triumph to crow over and
where does Barty Josselin come in ?
Pazienza !
" Well what do you think of Leah Gibson ?" said my
sister, as we walked home together through Torrington
Square.
"I think she's a regular stunner," said I "like her
mother and her grandmother before her, and probably
her ^rrra^-grandmother too."
And being a poetical youth, and well up in my Byron,
I declaimed :
" She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes." . . .
Old fogy as I am, and still given to poetical quota-
tions, I never made a more felicitous quotation than
that. I little guessed then to what splendor that bony
black-eyed damsel would reach in time.
All through this period of high life and low dissipa-
tion Barty kept his unalterable good-humor and high
spirits and especially the kindly grace of manner and
tact and good-breeding that kept him from ever offend-
143
ing the most fastidious, in spite of his high spirits, and
made him many a poor grateful outcast's friend and
darling.
I remember once dining with him at Greenwich in
very distinguished company ; I don't remember how I
came to be invited through Barty, no doubt. He got
me many invitations that I often thought it better not
to accept. " Ne sutor ultra crepidam !"
It was it fish dinner, and Barty ate and drank a sur-
prising amount and so did I, and liked ifc very much.
"We were all late and hurried for the last train, some
twenty of us and Barty, Lord Archibald, and I, and a
Colonel Walker Lindsay, who has since become a peer
and a Field-Marshal (and is now dead), were all pushed
together into a carriage, already occupied by a distin-
guished clergyman and a charming young lady prob-
ably his daughter ; from his dress, he was either a dean
or a bishop, and I sat opposite to him in the corner.
Barty was very noisy and excited as the train moved
off ; he was rather tipsy, in fact and I was alarmed, on
account of the clerical gentleman and his female com-
panion. As we journeyed on, Barty began to romp and
play the fool and perform fantastic tricks to the im-
mense delight of the future Field-Marshal. He twisted
two pocket-handkerchiefs into human figures, one on
each hand, and made them sing to each other like Grisi
and Mario in the Huguenots and clever drivel of that
kind. Lord Archibald and Colonel Lindsay were beside
themselves with glee at all this ; they also had dined
well.
Then he imitated a poor man fishing in St. James's
Park and. not catching any fish. And this really was un-
commonly good and true to life with wonderful artistic
details, that showed keen observation.
144
I saw that the bishop and his daughter (if such they
were) grew deeply interested, and laughed and chuckled
discreetly ; the young lady had a charming expression
on her face as she watched the idiotic Barty, who got
more idiotic with every mile and this was to be the
man who wrote Sardonyx !
As the train slowed into the London station, the bishop
leant forward towards me and inquired, in a whisper,
" May I ask the name of your singularly delightful
young friend ?"
" His name is Barty Josselin," I answered.
" Not of the Grenadier Guards ?"
" Yes/'
" Oh, indeed ! a yes I've heard of him "
And his lordship's face became hard and stern and
soon we all got out.
Ipart JFourtb
"La cigale ayant chante
Tout 1'ete,
Se trouva fort depourvue
Quand la bise fut venue." . . .
LAPONTAINE.
SOMETIMES I went to see Lord and Lady Archibald,
who lived in Clarges Street; and Lady Archibald was
kind enough to call on my mother, who was charmed
with her, and returned her call in due time.
Also, at about this period (1853) my uncle Charles
(Captain Blake, late 17th Lancers), who had been Lord
Kunswick's crony twenty years before, patched up some
feud he had with my father, and came to see us in
Brunswick Square.
He had just married a charming girl, young enough
to be his daughter.
I took him to see Barty, and they became fast friends.
My uncle Charles was a very accomplished man, and
spoke French as well as any of us ; and Barty liked him,
and it ended, oddly enough, in Uncle Charles becoming-
Lord Whitby's land-agent and living in St. Hilda's Ter-
race, Whitby.
He was a very good fellow and a thorough man of the
world, and was of great service to Barty in many ways.
But, alas and alas ! he was not able to prevent or make
up the disastrous quarrel that happened between Barty
10
146
and Lord Archibald, with such terrible results to my
friend to both.
It is all difficult even to hint at but some of it must
be more than hinted at.
Lord Archibald, like his nephew, was a very passion-
ate admirer of lovely woman. He had been for many
years a faithful and devoted husband to the excellent
Frenchwoman who brought him wealth and such affec-
tion ! Then a terrible temptation came in his way. He
fell in love with a very beautiful and fascinating lady,
whose birth and principles and antecedents were alike
very unfortunate, and Barty was mixed up in all this :
it's the saddest thing I ever heard.
The beautiful lady conceived for Barty one of those
frantic passions that must lead to somebody's ruin ; it
led to his ; but he was never to blame, except for the
careless indiscretion which allowed of his being con-
cerned in the miserable business at all, and to this fran-
tic passion he did not respond.
" Spreta injuria forma."
So at least she fancied ; it was not so. Barty was no
laggard in love ; but he dearly loved his uncle Archie,
and was loyal to him all through.
" His honor rooted in dishonor stood,
And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true."
Where he was unfaithful was to his beloved and ador-
ing Lady Archibald his second mother at miserable
cost of undying remorse to himself for ever having sunk
to become Lord Archibald's confidant and love-messen-
ger, and bearer of nosegays and billets doux, and singer
of little French songs. He was only twenty, and thought
of such things as jokes ; he had lived among some of the
pleasantest, best-bred, and most corrupt people in London.
147
The beautiful frail lady told the most infamous lies,
and stuck to them through thick and thin. The story
is not new ; it's as old as the Pharaohs. And Barty and
his uncle quarrelled beyond recall. The boy was too
proud even to defend himself, beyond one simple denial.
Then another thing happened. Lady Archibald died,
quite suddenly, of peritonitis fortunately in ignorance
of what was happening, and with her husband and daugh-
ter and Barty round her bedside at the end. She died
deceived and happy.
Lord Archibald was beside himself with grief ; but in
six months he married the beautiful lady, and went to
the bad altogether went under, in fact; and Daphne,
his daughter of fourteen or fifteen, was taken by the
Whitbys.
So now Barty, thoroughly sick of smart society, found
himself in an unexpected position without an allow-
ance, in a crack regiment, and never a penny to look
forward to !
For old Lord Whitby, who loved him, was a poor man
with a large family ; and every penny of Lady Archi-
bald's fortune that didn't go to her husband and daugh-
ter went back to her own family of Lonlay-Savignac.
She had made no will no provision for her beloved, her
adopted son !
So Barty never went to the Crimea, after all, but sold
out, and found himself the possessor of seven or eight
hundred pounds most of which he owed and with the
world before him ; but I am going too fast.
In the winter of 1853, just before Christmas, my father
fitted up for. me a chemical laboratory at the top of the
fine old house in Barge Yard, Bucklersbury, where his
wine business was carried on, a splendid mansion, with
148
panelled rooms and a carved -oak staircase once the
abode of some Dick Whittington, no doubt a Lord
Mayor of London ; and I began my professional career,
which consisted in analyzing anything I could get to
analyze for hire, from a sample of gold or copper ore to
a poisoned stomach.
Lord Whitby very kindly sent me different samples of
soil from different fields on his estate, and I analyzed
them carefully and found them singularly like each oth-
er. I don't think the estate benefited much by my sci-
entific investigation. It was my first job, and brought
me twenty pounds (out of which I bought two beautiful
fans one for my sister, the other for Leah Gibson and
got a new evening suit for myself at Barty's tailor's).
When this job of mine was finished I had a good deal
of time on my hands, and read many novels and smoked
many pipes, as I sat by my chemical stove and distilled
water, and dried chlorate of potash to keep the damp
out of my scales, and toasted cheese, and fried sausages,
and mulled Burgundy, and brewed nice drinks, hot or
cold a specialty of mine.
I also made my laboratory a very pleasant place. My
father wouldn't permit a piano, nor could I afford one ;
but I smuggled in a guitar (for Barty), and also a con-
certina, which I could play a little myself. Barty often
carne with friends of his, of whom my father did not ap-
prove mostly Guardsmen ; also friends of my own
medical students, and one or two fellow-chemists, who
were serious, and pleased my father. We often had a
capital time : chemical experiments and explosions, and
fearful stinks, and poisoned waters of enchanting hue ;
also oysters, lobsters, dressed crab for lunch and my
Burgundy was good, I promise you, whether white or
red !
SOLITUDE
150
We also had songs and music of every description.
Barty's taste had improved. He could sing Beethoven's
"Adelaida" in English, German, and Italian, and Schu-
bert's " Serenade " in French quite charmingly, to his
own ingenious accompaniment on the guitar.
We had another vocalist, a little Hebrew art-student,
with a heavenly tenor (I've forgotten his name); and
Ticklets, the bass ; and a Guardsman who could yodel
and imitate a woman's voice one Pepys, whom Barty
loved because he was a giant, and, according to Barty,
"the handsomest chap in London."
These debauches generally happened when my father
was abroad always, in fact. I'm greatly ashamed of it
all now ; even then my heart smote me heavily at times
when I thought of the pride and pleasure he took in all
my scientific appliances, and the money they cost him
twenty guineas for a pair of scales ! Poor dear old man !
he loved to weigh things in them a feather, a minute
crumb of cork, an infinitesimal wisp of cotton wool ! . . .
However, I've made it all up to him since in many
ways ; and he has told me that I have been a good son,
after all ! And that is good to think of now that I am
older than he was when he died !
One fine morning, before going to business, I escorted
my sister to Bedford Square, calling for Leah Gibson on
the way ; as we walked up Great Russell Street (that
being the longest way round I could think of), we met
Barty, looking as fresh as a school-boy, and resplendent
as usual. I remember he had on a long blue frock-coat,
check trousers, an elaborate waistcoat and scarf, and
white hat as was the fashion and that he looked sin-
gularly out of place (and uncommonly agreeable to the
eye) in such an austere and learned neighborhood.
151
He was coming to call for me in Brunswick Square.
My sister introduced him to her friend, and he looked
down at Leah with a surprised glance of delicate fatherly
admiration he might have been fifty.
Then we left the young ladies and went off together
citywards ; my father was abroad.
" By Jove, what a stunner that girl is ! I'm blest if I
don't marry her some day you see if I don't \"
" That's just what / mean to do," said I. And we had
a good laugh at the idea of two such desperadoes, as we
thought ourselves, talking like this about a little school-
girl.
" We'll toss up/' says Barty ; and W9 did, and he
won.
This, I remember, was before his quarrel with Lord
Archibald. She was then about fourteen, and her sub-
tle and singular beauty was just beginning to make it-
self felt.
I never knew till long after how deep had been the
impression produced by this glimpse of a mere child on
a fast young man about town or I should not have been
amused. For there were times when I myself thought
quite seriously of Leah Gibson, and what she might be
in the long future ! She looked a year or two older than
she really was, being very tall and extremely sedate.
Also, both my father and mother had conceived such
a liking for her that they constantly talked of the possi-
bility of our falling in love with each other some day.
Castles in Spain !
As for me, my admiration for the child was immense,
and my respect for her character unbounded ; and I felt
myself such a base unworthy brute that I couldn't bear
to think of myself in such a connection until I had
cleansed myself heart and soul (which would take time) !
152
And as for showing by my manner to her that such an
idea had ever crossed my mind, the thought never en-
tered my head.
She was just my dear sister's devoted friend ; her pet-
ticoat hem was still some inches from the ground, and
her hair in a plait all down her back. . . .
Girlish innocence and purity incarnate that is what
she seemed; and what she was. "La plus forte des
forces est un cceur innocent," said Victor Hugo and if
you translate this literally into English, it comes to ex-
actly the same, both in rhythm and sense.
When Barty sold out, he first thought he would like
to go on the stage, but it turned out that he was too
tall to play anything but serious footmen.
Then he thought he would be a singer. We used to
go to the opera at Drury Lane, where they gave in Eng-
lish a different Italian opera every night ; and this was
always followed by Ads and Galatea.
We got our seats in the stalls every evening for a
couple of weeks, through the kindness of Mr. Hamilton
Braham, whom Barty knew, and who played Polyphemus
in Handel's famous serenata.
I remember our first night ; they gave Masaniello,
which I had never seen ; and when the tenor sang, " Be-
hold how brightly breaks the morning/' it came on us
both as a delicious surprise it was such a favorite song
at Brossard's " amis ! la matinee est belle ..." In-
deed, it was one of the songs Barty sang on the boule-
vard for the poor woman, six or seven years back.
The tenor, Mr. Elliot Galer, had a lovely voice ; and
that was a moment never to be forgotten.
Then came Ads and Galatea, which was so odd and
old-fashioned we could scarcely sit it out.
" 'PILE OU FACE HEADS OK TAILS ?'
154
Next night, Lucia charming ; then again Acts and
Galatea, because we had nowhere else to go.
"Tiens, tiens !" says Barty, as the lovers sang "the
flocks shall leave the mountains"; "c'est diantrement
joli, ca ! ecoute \"
Next night, La Sonnanibula then again Acis and
Galatea.
"Mais, nom d'une pipe elle est divine, cette mu-
sique-la !" says Barty.
And the nights after we could scarcely sit out the
Italian opera that preceded what we have looked upon
ever since as among the divinest music in the world.
So one must not judge music at a first hearing ; nor
poetry ; nor pictures at first sight ; unless one be poet
or painter or musician one's self not even then ! I
may live to love thee yet, oh Tannhditser !
Lucy Escott, Fanny Huddart, Elliot Galer, and Ham-
ilton Braham that was the cast; I hear their voices
now. . . .
One morning Hamilton Braham tried Barty's voice on
the empty stage at St. James's Theatre made him sing
"When other lips."
"Sing out, man sing out!" said the big bass. And
Barty shouted his loudest a method which did not suit
him. I sat in the pit, with half a dozen Guardsmen,
who were deeply interested in Barty's operatic aspira-
tions.
It turned out that Barty was neither tenor nor bary-
tone ; and that his light voice, so charming in a room,
would never do for the operatic stage ; although his
figure, in spite of his great height, would have suited
heroic parts so admirably.
Besides, three or four years' training in Italy were
needed a different production altogether.
155
So Barty gave up this idea and made up his mind to
be an artist. He got permission to work in the British
Museum, and drew the "Discobolus," and sent his draw-
ing to the Royal Academy, in the hope of being admitted
there as a student. He was not.
Then an immense overwhelming homesickness for Paris
came over him, and he felt he must go and study art
there, and succeed or perish.
My father talked to him like a father, my mother like
a mother; we all hung about him and entreated. He
was as obdurate as Tennyson's sailor-boy whom the mer-
maiden forewarned so fiercely !
He was even offered a handsome appointment in the
London house of Vougeot-Conti & Co.
But his mind was made up, and to my sorrow, and the
sorrow of all who knew him, he fixed the date of his de-
parture for the 2d of May (1856), this being the day
after a party at the Gibsons' a young dance in honor of
Leah's fifteenth birthday, on the 1st and to which my
sister had procured him an invitation.
He had never been to the Gibsons' before. They be-
longed to a world so different to anything he had been
accustomed to indeed, to a class that he then so much
disliked and despised (both as ex-Guardsman and as the
descendant of French toilers of the sea, who hate and
scorn the bourgeois) that I was curious to see how he
would bear himself there ; and rather nervous, for it
would have grieved me that he should look down on
people of whom I was getting very fond. It was his
theory that all successful business people were pompous
and purse-proud and vulgar.
I admit that in the fifties we very often were.
There may perhaps be a few survivals of that period :
old nouveaux riches, who are still modestly jocose on
156
the snbject of each other's millions when they meet, and
indulge in pompous little pleasantries about their pet
economics; and drop a pompous little h now and then,
and pretend they only did it for fun. But, dear me,
there are other things to be vulgar about in this world
besides money and uncertain aspirates.
If to be pompous and pretentious and insincere is to
be vulgar, I really think the vulgar of our time are not
"these old plutocrats not even their grandsons, who hunt
and shoot and yacht and swagger with the best but
those solemn little prigs who have done well at school or
college, and become radicals and agnostics before they've
even had time to find out what men and women are made
of, or what sex they belong to themselves (if any), and
loathe all fun and sport and athletics, and rave about
pictures and books and music they don't understand, and
would pretend to despise if they did things that were
not even meant to be understood. It doesn't take three
generations to make a prig worse luck !
At the Gibsons' there was neither pompousness nor in-
sincerity nor pretension of any kind, and therefore no
real vulgarity. It is true they were a little bit noisy
there sometimes, but only in fun.
When we arrived at that most hospitable house the
two pretty drawing-rooms were already crammed with
young people, and the dancing was in full swing.
I presented Barty to Mrs. Gibson, who received him
with her usual easy cordiality, just as she would have
received one of her husband's clerks, or the Prime Min-
ister ; or the Prince Consort himself, for that matter.
But she looked up into his face with such frank un-
abashed admiration that I couldn't help laughing nor
could he !
She presented him to Mr. Gibson, who drew himself
157
back and folded his arms and frowned ; then suddenly,
striking a beautiful stage attitude of surprised emotion,
with his hand on his heart, he exclaimed :
" Oh ! Monsewer ! Esker-voo ker jer dwaw lah vee ?
ah ! kel bonnure I"
And this so tickled Barty that he forgot his manners
and went into peals of laughter. And from that moment
I ceased to exist as the bright particular star in Mr. Gib-
son's firmament of eligible young rnen : for in spite of
the kink in my nose, and my stolid gravity, which was
really and merely the result of my shyness, he had
always looked upon me as an exceptionally presentable,
proper, and goodly youth, and a most exemplary that
is, if my sister was to be trusted in the matter ; for she
was my informant.
I'm afraid Barty was not so immediately popular with
the young cavaliers of the party but all came right in
due time. For after supper, which was early, Barty
played the fool with Mr. Gibson, and taught him how to
do a mechanical wax figure, of which he himself was the
showman ; and the laughter, both baritone and soprano,
might have been heard in Eussell Square. Then they
saug an extempore Italian duet together which was
screamingly droll and so forth.
Leah distinguished herself as usual by being attentive
to the material wants of the company : comfortable seats,
ices, syrups, footstools for mammas, and wraps ; safety
from thorough draughts for grandpapas the inherited
hospitality of the clan of Gibson took this form with
the sole daughter of their house and home ; she had no
"parlor tricks."
We remained the latest. It was a full moon, or nearly
so as usual on a balcony ; for I remember standing on
the balcony with Leah.
158
A belated Italian organ-grinder stopped beneath us
and played a tune from 1 Lombnrdi, called " La mia
letizia." Leah's hair was done up for the first time in
two heavy black bands that hid her little ears and framed
her narrow chinny face with a yellow bow plastered on
behind. Such was the fashion then, a hideous fashion
enough but we knew no better. To me she looked so
lovely in her long white frock long for the first time
that Tavistock Square became a broad Venetian moonlit
lagoon, and the dome of University College an old Ital-
ian church, and "La mia letizia" the song of Adria's
gondolier.
I asked her what she thought of Barty.
"I really don't know," she said. "He's not a bit
romantic, is he ?"
" No ; but he's very handsome. Don't you think
so?"
" Oh yes, indeed much too handsome for a man. It
seems such waste. Why, I now remember seeing him
when I was quite a little girl, three or four years ago,
at the Duke of Wellington's funeral. He had his bear-
skin on. Papa pointed him out to us, and said he looked
like such a pretty girl ! And we all wondered who he
could be ! And so sad he looked ! I suppose it was for
the Duke.
" I couldn't think where I'd seen him before, and now
I remember and there's a photograph of him in a stall
at the Crystal Palace. Have you seen it ? Not that he
looks like a girl now ! Not a bit ! I suppose you're very
fond of him ? Ida is ! She talks as much about Mr.
Josselin as she does about you ! Barty, she calls him."
"Yes, indeed; he's like our brother. We were boys
at school together in France. My sister calls him tliee
and tJioit , ; in French, you know."
160
"And was he always like that funny and jolly and
good-natured ?"
"Always; he hasn't changed a bit."
"And is he very sincere ?"
Just then Barty came on to the balcony : it was time
to go. My sister had been fetched away already (in her
gondola).
So Barty made his farewells, and bent his gallant,
irresistible look of mirthful chivalry and delicate middle-
aged admiration on Leah's upturned face, and her eyes
looked up more piercing and blacker than ever ; and in
each of them a little high light shone like a point of in-
terrogation the reflection of some white window-curtain,
I suppose ; and I felt cold all down my back.
(Barty's daughter, Mary Trevor, often sings a little
song of De Musset's. It is quite lovely, and begins :
"Beau chevalier qui partez pour la guerre,
Qu'allez-vous faire
Si loin d'ici?
Voyez-vous pas que la nuit est profonde,
Et que le monde
N'est que souci f
It is called " La Chanson de Barberine," and I never
hear it but I think of that sweet little white virginal
point d 'interrogation, and Barty going away to France.)
Then he thanked Mrs. Gibson and said pretty things,
and finally called Mr. Gibson dreadful French fancy-
names : " Cascam^che moutardier du pape, tromblon-
bolivard, vieux coquelicot"; to each of which the de-
lighted Mr. G. answered :
" Voos ayt oon 6ter voos ayt oon oter !"
And then Barty whisked himself away in a silver cloud
of glory. A good exit !
161
Outside was a hansom waiting, with a carpet-bag on
the top, and we got into it and drove up to Harnpstead
Heath, to some little inn called the Bull and Bush, near
North-end.
Barty lit his pipe, and said :
" What capital people ! Hanged if they're not the
nicest people I ever met !"
" Yes," said I.
And that's all that was said during that long drive.
At North-end we found two or three other hansoms,
and Pepys and Ticklets and the little Hebrew tenor art
student whose name I've forgotten, and several others.
We had another supper, and made a night of it. There
was a piano in a small room opening on to a krnd of little
terrace, with geraniums, over a bow-window. We had
music and singing of all sorts. Even / sang "The
Standard-bearer" and rather well. My sister had
coached me ; but I did not obtain an encore.
The next day dawned, and Barty had a wash and
changed his clothes, and we walked all over Hampatead
Heath, and saw London lying in a dun mist, with the
dome and gilded cross of St. Paul's rising into the pale
blue dawn ; and I thought what a beastly place London
would be without Barty but that Leah was there still,
safe and sound asleep in Tavistock Square !
Then back to the inn for breakfast. Barty, as usual,
fresh as paint. Happy Barty, off to Paris !
And then we all drove down to London Bridge to see
him safe into the Boulogne steamer. All his luggage
was on board. His late soldier : servant was there a
splendid fellow, chosen for his length and breadth as well
as his fidelity ; also the Snowdrop, who was lachrymose
and in great grief. It was a most affectionate farewell
all round.
162
" Good-bye, Bob. / won that toss didn't I ?"
Oddly enough, /was thinking of that, and didn't like it.
" What rot ! it's only a joke, old fellow !" said Barty.
All this about an innocent little girl just fifteen, the
daughter of a low - comedy John Gilpin : a still some-
what gaunt little girl, whose budding charms of color,
shape, and surface were already such that it didn't matter
whether she were good or bad, gentle or simple, rich or
poor, sensible or an utter fool.
C'est toujours comme qa !
We watched the steamer pick its sunny way down the
Thames, with Barty waving his hat by the man at the
wheel ; and I walked westward with the little Hebrew
artist, who was so affected at parting with his hero that
he had tears in his lovely voice. It was not till I had
complimented him on his wonderful B-flat that he got
consoled ; and he talked abonit himself, and his B-flat,
and his middle G, and his physical strength, and his eye
for color, all the way from the Mansion House to the
Foundling Hospital ; when we parted, and he went
straight to his drawing-board at the British Museum
an anticlimax !
I found my mother and sister at their late breakfast,
and was scolded ; and I told them Barty had got off,
and wouldn't come back for long it might not be for
years !
" Thank Heaven !" said my dear mother, and I was not
pleased.
Says my sister :
" Do you know, he's actually stolen Leah's photograph,
that she gave me for my birthday. He asked me for it
and I wouldn't give it him and it's gone !"
Then I washed and put on my work-a-day clothes, and
went straight to Barge Yard, Bucklersbury, and made
163
myself a bed on the floor with my great-coat, and slept
all day.
Oh heavens ! what a dull book this would be, and
how dismally it would drag its weary length along, if it
weren't all about the author of Sardonyx!
But is there a lost corner anywhere in this planet
where English is spoken (or French) in which The
Martian won't be bought and treasured and spelt over
and over again like a novel by Dickens or Scott (or Du-
mas) for Josselin's dear sake ! What a fortune my
publishers would make if I were not a man of business
and they were not the best and most generous publishers
in the world ! And all Josselin's publishers French,
English, German, and what not down to modern San-
scrit ! What millionaires if it hadn't been for this lit-
tle busy bee of a Bob Maurice !
Poor Barty ! I am here ! a bon chat, bon rat !
And' what on earth do / want a fortune for ? Barty's
dead, and I've got so much more than I need, who am of
a frugal mind and what I've got is all going to little
Josselins, who have already got so much more than they
need, what with their late father and me ; and my sister,
who is a widow and childless, and "riche a millions"
too ! and cares for nobody in all this wide world but lit-
tle Josselins, who don't care for money in the least, and
would sooner work for their living even break stones on
the road anything sooner than loaf and laze and loll
through life. We all have to give most of it away not
that I need proclaim it from the house-tops ! It is but a
dull and futile hobby, giving away to those who deserve ;
they soon leave off deserving.
How fortunate that so much money is really wanted
by people who don't deserve it any more than I do ; and
164
who, besides, are so weak and stupid and lazy and hon-
est or so incurably dishonest that they can't make it
for themselves ! I have to look after a good many of
these people. Barty was fond of them, honest or not.
They are so incurably prolific ; and so was he, poor dear
boy ! but, oh, the difference 1 Grapes don't grow on
thorns, nor figs on thistles !
I'm a thorn, alas ! in my own side, more often than
not and a thistle in the sides of a good many donkeys,
whom I feed because they're too stupid or too lazy to
feed themselves ! But at least I know my place, and the
knowledge is more bother to me than all my money, and
th| race of Maurice will soon be extinct.
When Barty went to foreign parts, on the 2d of May,
1856, I didn't trouble myself about such questions as
these.
Life was so horribly stale in London without Barty
that I became a quite exemplary young man when I
woke up from that long nap on the floor of my labora-
tory in Barge Yard, Bucklersbury ; a reformed charac-
ter : from sheer grief, I really believe!
I thought of many things ugly things very ugly
things indeed and meant to have done with them. I
thought of some very handsome things too a pair of
beautiful crown- jewels, each rare as the black tulip
and in each of them a bright little sign like this : ?
I don't believe I ever gave my father another bad
quarter of an hour from that moment. I even went to
church on Sunday mornings quite regularly ; not his
own somewhat severe place of worship, it is true ! But
the Foundling Hospital. There, in the gallery, would I
sit with my sister, and listen to Miss Dolby and Miss
Louisa Pyne and Mr. Lawler the bass and a tenor and
165
alto whose names I cannot recall ; and I thought they
sang as they ought to have sung, and was deeply moved
and comforted more than by any preachments in the
world ; and just in the opposite gallery sat Leah with
her mother-, and I grew fond of nice clean little boys
and girls who sing pretty hymns in unison; and after-
wards I watched them eat their roast beef, small mites of
three and four or five, some of them, and thought how
touching it all was I don't know why ! Love or grief ?
or that touch of nature that makes the whole world kin
at about 1 P.M. on Sunday ?
One would think that Barty had exerted a bad influ-
ence on me, since he seems to have kept me out of all
this that was so sweet and new and fresh and whole-
some !
He would have been just as susceptible to such im-
pressions as I ; even more so, if the same chance had
arisen for him for he was singularly fond of children,
the smaller and the poorer the better, even gutter chil-
dren ! and their poor mothers loved him, he was so
jolly and generous and kind.
Sometimes I got a letter from him in Blaze, my father's
shorthand cipher ; it was always brief and bright and
hopeful, and full of jokes and funny sketches.' And
I answered him in Blaze that was long and probably
dull.
All that I will tell of him now is not taken from his
Blaze letters, but from what he has told me later, by
word of mouth for he was as fond of talking of himself
as I of listening since he was droll and sincere and
without guile or vanity ; and would have been just as
sympathetic a listener as I, if I had cared to talk about
Mr. Eobert Maurice, of Barge Yard, Bucklersbury. Be-
sides, I am good at hearing between the words and
166
reading between the lines, and all that and love to ex-
ercise this faculty.
Well, he reached Paris in due time, and took a small
bedroom on a third floor in the Sue du Faubourg Pois-
sonniere over a cheap hatter's opposite the Conser-
vatoire de Musique.
Qn the first night he was awoke by a terrible invasion
such malodorous swarms of all sizes, from a tiny brown
speck to a full-grown lentil, that they darkened his bed ;
and he slept on the tiled floor after making an island of
himself by pouring cold water all round him as a kind
of moat ; and so he slept for a week of nights, until he
had managed to poison off most of these invaders with
poudre insecticide . . . "mort aux punaises!"
In the daytime he first of all went for a swim at the
Passy baths an immense joy, full of the ghosts of by-
gone times ; then he would spend the rest of his day re-
visiting old haunts often sitting on the edge of the
stone fountain in the rond-point of the Avenue du Prince
Imperial, or de 1'Imperatrice, or whatever it was to
gaze comfortably at the outside of the old school, which
was now a pensionnat de demoiselles : soon to be pulled
down and make room for a new house altogether. He
did not attempt to invade these precincts of maiden in-
nocence ; but gazed and gazed, and remembered and re-
alized and dreamt: it all gave him unspeakable excite-
ment, and a strange tender wistful melancholy delight
for which there is no name. Je connais qa ! I also,
ghostlike, have paced round the haunts of my child-
hood.
When the joy of this faded, as it always must when
indulged in too freely, he amused himself by sitting in
'his bedroom and painting Leah's portrait, enlarged and
167
in oils ; partly from the very vivid image he had pre-
served of her in his mind, partly from the stolen photo-
graph. At first he got it very like ; then he lost all the
likeness and could not recover it ; and he worked and
worked till he got stupid over it, and his mental image
faded quite away.
But for a time this minute examination of the photo-
graph (through a powerful lens he bought on purpose),
and this delving search into his own deep consciousness
of her, into his keen remembrance of every detail of
feature and color and shade of expression, made him
realize and idealize and foresee what the face might be
some day and what its owner might become.
And a horror of his life in London carne over him like
a revelation a blast a horrible surprise ! Mere sin is
ugly when it's no more ; and so beastly to remember,
unless the sinner be thoroughly acclimatized ; and Barty
was only twenty-two, and hated deceit and cruelty in
any form. Oh, poor, weak, frail fellow-sinner whether
Vivien or Guinevere ! How sadly unjust that loathing
and satiety and harsh male contempt should kill man's
ruth and pity for thee, that wast so kind to man ! what
a hellish after-math !
Poor Barty hadn't the ghost of a notion how to set to
work about becoming a painter, and didn't know a soul
in Paris he cared to go and consult, although there
were many people he might have discovered whom he
had known : old school-fellows, and friends of the Archi-
bald Eohans who would have been only too glad.
So he took to wandering listlessly about, lunching and
dining at cheap suburban restaurants, taking long walks,
sitting on benches, leaning over parapets, and longing
to tell people who he was, his age, how little money he'd
got, what lots of friends he had in England, what a nice
168
little English girl he knew, whose portrait he didn't
know how to paint any idiotic nonsense that came into
his head, so at least he might talk about something or
somebody that interested him.
There is no city like Paris, no crowd like a Parisian
crowd, to make you feel your solitude if you are alone
in its midst !
At night he read French novels in bed and drank eau
sncree and smoked till he was sleepy ; then he cunningly
put out his light, and lit it again in a quarter of an hour
or so, and exploded what remained of the invading
hordes as they came crawling down the wall from above.
Their numbers were reduced at last ; they were disap-
pearing. Then he put out his candle for good, and
went to sleep happy having at least scored for once in
the twenty-four hours. Mort aux punaises !
Twice he went to the Opera Comique, and saw Richard
Coeur de Lion and le Pre aux Clercs from the gallery,
and was disappointed, and couldn't understand why he
shouldn't sing as well as that he thought he could
sing much better, poor fellow ! he had a delightful
voice, and charm, and the sense of tune and rhythm,
and could please quite wonderfully but he had no
technical knowledge whatever, and couldn't be depended
upon to sing a song twice the same ! He trusted to the
inspiration of the moment like an amateur.
Of course he had to be very economical, even about
candle ends, and almost liked such economy for a change ;
but he got sick of his loneliness, beyond expression he
was a fish out of water.
Then he took it into his head to go and copy a pict-
ure at the Louvre an old master ; in this he felt he
could not go wrong. He obtained the necessary per-
mission, bought a canvas six feet high, and sat himself
169
before a picture by Nicolas Poussin, I think : a group of
angelic women carrying another woman though the air
up to heaven.
They were not very much to his taste, but more so
than any others. His chief notion about women in
pictures was that they should be very beautiful since
they cannot make themselves agreeable in any other
way ; and they are not always so in the works of the
great masters. At least, he thought not. These are
matters of taste, of course.
He had no notion of how to divide his canvas into
squares a device by which one makes it easier to get
the copy into proper proportion, it seems. He began by
sketching the head of the principal woman roughly in
the middle of his canvas, and then he wanted to begin
painting it at once he was so impatient.
Students, female students especially, came and inter-
ested themselves in his work, and some rapins asked
him questions, and tried to help him and give him tips.
But the more they told him, the more helpless and
hopeless he grew. He soon felt conscious he was be-
coming quite a funny man again a centre of inter-
est in a new line ; but it gave him no pleasure what-
ever.
After a week of this mistaken drudgery he sat despond-
ent one afternoon on a bench in the Champs filysees and
watched the gay people, and thought himself very down
on his luck ; he was tired and hot and miserable it was
the beginning of July. If he had known how, he would
almost have shed tears. His loneliness was not to be
borne, and his longing to feel once more the north had
become a chronic ache.
A tall, thin, shabby man came and sat by his side, and
made himself a cigarette, and hummed a tune a well-
170
known quartier-latin song about "Mon Aldegonde, ma
blonde," and "Ma Rodogune, ma brune."
Barty just glanced at this jovial person and found
he didn't look jovial at all, but rather sad and seedy
and out at elbows by no means of the kind that the
fair Aldegonde or her dark sister would have much to
say to.
Also that he wore very strong spectacles, and that his
brown eyes, when turned Barty's way, vibrated with a
quick, tremulous motion and sideways, as if 'they had
the "gigs."
Much moved and excited, Barty got up and put out
his hand to the stranger, and said :
" Bonjour, Monsieur Bonzig ! comment allez-vous ?"
Bonzig opened his eyes at this well-dressed Briton (for
Barty had clothes to last him a French lifetime).
" Pardonnez-moi, monsieur mais je n'ai pas 1'honneur
de vous remettre !"
" Je m'appelle Josselin de chez Brossard !"
" Ah ! Mon Dieu, mon cher, mon tres-cher I" said
Bonzig, and got up and seized Barty's both hands and
all but hugged him.
"Mais quel bonheur de vous revoir ! Je pense a vous
si souvent, et a Ouittebe ! comme vous etes change et
quel beau garqon vous etes ! qui vous aurait reconnu !
Dieu de Dieu c'est un re"ve ! Je n'en reviens pas !"
etc., etc. . . .
And they walked off together, and told the other each
an epitome of his history since they parted; and dined to-
gether cheaply, and spent a happy evening walking up
and down the boulevards, and smoking many cigarettes
from the Madeleine to the Porte St. -Martin and back
again and again.
" Non, mon cher Josseliu," said Bonzig, in answer to
" ' BON JOUR, MONSIEUR BONZIG ' "
172
a question of Barty's "non, I have not yet seen the
sea . . ; it will come in time. But at least I am no
longer a damned usher (un sacre pion d'etudes) ; I am
an artist un peintre de marines at last ! It is a happy
existence. I fear my talent is not very imposing, but my
perseverance is exceptional, and I am only forty-five.
Anyhow, I am able to support myself not in splendor,
certainly ; but my wants are few and my health is per-
fect. I will put you up to many things, my dear boy. . . .
We will storm the citadel of fame together. ..."
Bonzig had a garret somewhere, and painted in the
studio of a friend, not far from Barty's lodging. This
friend, one Lirieux, was a very clever young man a
genius, according to Bonzig. He drew illustrations on
wood with surprising quickness and facility and verve,
and painted little oil-pictures of sporting life a garde
champetre in a wood with his dog, or with his dog on a
dusty road, or crossing a stream, or getting over a stile,
and so forth. The dog was never left out ; and these
things he would sell for twenty, thirty, even fifty francs.
He painted very quick and very well. He was also a
capital good fellow, industrious and cultivated and re-
fined, and full of self-respect.
Next to his studio he had a small bedroom which he
shared with a younger brother, who had just got a small
government appointment that kept him at work all day,
in some minist^re. In this studio Bonzig painted his
marines still helping himself from La France Mari-
time, as he used to do at Brossard's.
He was good at masts and cordage against an even-
ing sky "1'heure oil le jaune de Naples rentre dans la
nature," as he called it. He was also excellent at foam,
and far-off breakers, and sea-gulls, but very bad at the
human figure sailors and fishermen and their wives.
173
Sometimes Lirieux would put one in for him with a
few dabs.
As soon as Bonzig had finished a picture, which didn't
take very long, he carried it round, still wet, to the small
dealers, bearing it very carefully aloft, so as not to smudge
it. Sometimes (if there were a sailor by Lirieux) he
would get five or even ten francs for it ; and then it was
"Mon Aldegonde" with him all the rest of the day; for
success always took the form, in his case, of nasally hum-
ming that amorous refrain.
But it very often happened that he was dumb, poor
fellow no supper, no song !
Lirieux conceived such a liking for Barty that he in-
sisted on taking him into his studio as a pupil-assistant,
and setting him to draw things under his own eye ; and
Barty would fill Bonzig's French sea pieces with Whitby
fishermen, and Bonzig got to sing "Mon Aldegonde"
much oftener than before.
And chumming with these two delightful men, Barty
grew to know a clean, quiet happiness which more than
made up for lost past splendors and dissipations and gay
dishonor. He wasn't even funny ; they wouldn't have
understood it. Well-bred Frenchmen don't understand
English fun not even in the quartier latin, as a gen-
eral rule. Not that it's too subtle for them ; that's not
why !
Thus pleasantly August wore itself away, Bonzig and
Barty nearly always dining together for about a franc
apiece, including the waiter, and not badly. Bonzig
knew all the cheap eating-houses in Paris, and what
each was specially renowned for ' ' bonne friture,"
"fricasse'e de lapin," "pommes sautees," "soupe aux
choux," etc., etc.
Then, after dinner, a long walk and talk and ciga-
174
rettes or they would look in at a cafe chantant, a bal de
barriere, the gallery of a cheap theatre then a bock out-
side a cafe et bonsoir la compagnie !
On September the 1st, Lirieux and his brother went to
see their people in the south, leaving the studio to Bon-
zig and Barty, who made the most of it, though greatly
missing the genial young painter, both as a companion
and a master and guide.
One beautiful morning Bonzig called for Barty at his
cremerie, and proposed they should go by train to some
village near Paris and spend a happy day in the country,
lunching on bread and wine and sugar at some little road-
side inn. Bonzig made a great deal of this lunch. It had
evidently preoccupied him.
Barty was only too delighted. They went on the
imperiale of the Versailles train and got out at V T ille
d'Avray, and found the kind of little pothouse they
wanted. And Barty had to admit that no better lunch
for the price could be than "small blue wine" sweet-
ened with sugar, and a hunch of bread sopped in it.
Then they had a long walk in pretty woods and mead-
ows, sketching by the way, chatting to laborers and sol-
diers and farm - people, smoking endless cigarettes of ca-
poral ; and finally they got back to Paris the way they
came so hungry that Barty proposed they should treat
themselves for once to a "prix-fixe" dinner at Carma-
gnol's, in the Passage Choiseul, where they gave you hors-
d'oeuvres, potage, three courses and dessert and a bottle
of wine, for two francs fifty and everything scrupulous-
ly clean.
So to the Passage Choiseul they went ; but just on the
threshold of the famous restaurant (which filled the en-
tire arcade with its appetizing exhalations) Bonzig sud-
denly remembered, to his great regret, that close by there
175
lived a young married couple of the name of Lousteau,
who were great friends of his, and who expected him to
dine with them at least once a week.
" I haven't been near them for a fortnight, mon cher,
and it is just their dinner hour. I am afraid I must
really just run in and eat an aile de poulet and apeche au
vin with them, "and give them of my news, or they will
be mortally offended. I'll be back with you just when
you are ' entre la poire et le fromaye ' so, sans adieu !"
and he bolted.
Barty went in and selected his menu ; and waiting for
his hors-d'oeuvre, he just peeped out of the door and
looked up and down the arcMe, which was always festive
and lively at that hour.
To his great surprise he saw Bonzig leisurely flaning
about with his cigarette in his mouth, his hands in his
pockets, his long spectacled nose in the air gazing at
the shop windows. Suddenly the good man dived into
a baker's shop, and came out again in half a minute with
a large brown roll, and began to munch it still gazing
at the shop windows, and apparently quite content.
Barty rushed after and caught hold of him, and breath-
lessly heaped bitter reproaches on him for his base and
unfriendly want of confidence snatched his roll and
threw it away, dragged him by main force into Carma-
gnol's, and made him order the dinner he preferred and
sit opposite.
" Ma foi, mon cher !" said Bonzig " I own to you that
I am almost at the end of my resources for the moment
and also that the prospect of a good dinner in your
amiable company is the reverse of disagreeable to me.
I thank you in advance, with all my heart !"
" My dear M'sieur Bonzig," says Barty, " you will
wound me deeply if you don't look on me like a brother,
176
as I do you ; I can't tell you how deeply you have wound-
ed me already ! Give me your word of honor that you
will share ma mangeaille with me till I haven't a sou left !"
And so they made it up, and had a capital dinner and
a capital evening, and Barty insisted that in future they
should always mess together at his expense till better
days and they did.
But Barty found that his own money was just giving
out, and wrote to his bankers in London for more.
Somehow it didn't arrive for nearly a week ; and they
knew at last what it was to dine for five sous each (2$cl.)
with loss of appetite just before the meal instead of after.
Of course Barty might very well have pawned his
watch or his scarf-pin ; but whatever trinkets he pos-
sessed had been given him by his beloved Lady Archi-
bald everything pawnable he had in the world, even his
guitar ! And he could not bear the idea of taking them
to the " Mont de Piete."
So he was well pleased one Sunday morning when his
remittance arrived, and he went in search of his friend,
that they might compensate themselves for a week's
abstinence by a famous dejeuner. But Bonzig was not
to be found ; and Barty spent that day alone, and gorged
in solitude and guzzled in silence moult tristement, a
1'anglaise.
He was aroused from his first sleep that night by the
irruption of Bonzig in a tremendous state of excitement.
It seems that a certain Baron (whose name I've forgot-
ten), and whose little son the ex-usher had once coached
in early Latin and Greek, had written, begging him to
call and see him at his chateau near Melun ; that Bon-
zig had walked there that very day thirty miles ; and
found the Baron was leaving next morning for a villa
he possessed near ICtretat, and wished him to join him
177
there the day after, and stay with him for a couple of
months to coach his son in more classics for a couple
of hours in the forenoon.
Bonzig was to dispose of the rest of his time as he
liked, except that he was commissioned to paint six
" marines" for the baronial dining-room ; and the Baron
had most considerately given him four hundred francs in
advance !
"So, then, to-morrow afternoon at six, my dear Josse-
lin, you dine with me, for once not in the Passage
Choiseul this time, good as it is there ! But at Babet's, en
plein Palais Royal ! un jour de separation, vous compre-
nez ! the dinner will be good, I promise you : a calf's
head a la vinaigrette they are famous for that, at Ba-
bet's and for their Pauillac and their St.-Estephe ;
at least, Fm told so ! nous en f erons 1'experience. . . .
And now I bid you good-night, as I have to be up before
the day so many things to buy and settle and arrange
first of all to procure myself a 'maillot' and a 'pei-
gnoir/ and shoes for the beach ! I know where to get
these things much cheaper than at the seaside. Oh ! la
mer, la .mer ! Enfin je vais piquer ma tdte [take my
header] 1& dedans et pas plus tard gu'apres-demain soir.
... A demain, tr^s-cher camarade six heures chez
Babet !"
And, delirious with joyful anticipations, the good Bon-
zig ran away all but "piquant sa tete" down the nar-
row staircase, and whistling " Mon Aldegonde" at the
very top of his whistle ; and even outside he shouted :
"Oui'le me sekile r6,
sekile ro,
sekile r6 . . .
Ouifle me sekile r<3
Tat brinn my ladde ome !"
178
He had to be silenced by a sergent de ville.
And next day they dined at Babet's, and Bonzig was
so happy he had to beg pardon for his want of feeling
at seeming so exuberant "un jour de separation ! mais
venez aussi, Josselin nous piquerons nos tetes ensemble,
et nagerons de conserve. . . ."
But Barty could not afford this little outing, and he
was very sad with a sadness that not all the Pauillac
and St.-Estephe in M. Babet's cellars could have dis-
pelled.
He made his friend a present of a beautiful pair of
razors English razors, which he no longer needed, since
he no longer meant to shave " en sigue de mon deuil I"
as he said. They had been the gift of Lord Archibald
in happier days. Alas ! he had forgotten to give his
uncle Archie the traditional halfpenny, but he took
good care to extract a sou from le Grand Bonzig !
So ended this little episode in Barty's life. He never
saw Bonzig again, nor heard from him, and of him only
once more. That sou was wasted.
It was at Blankenberghe, on the coast of Belgium,
that he at last had news of him a year later at the
cafe on the plage, and in such an odd and unexpected
manner that I can't help telling how it happened.
One afternoon a corner of the big coffee-room was
being arranged for private theatricals, in which Barty
was to perform the part of a waiter. He had just bor-
rowed the real waiter's jacket and apron, and was dust-
ing the little tables for the amusement of Mile. Solange,
the dame de comptoir, and of the waiter, Prosper, who
had on Barty's own shooting-jacket.
Suddenly an old gentleman came in and beckoned to
Barty and ordered a demi-tasse and petit-verre. There
were no other customers at that hour.
" ' DEMI-TASSE VOILA, M'SIEUR ' "
180
Mile. Solange was horrified ; but Barty insisted on
waiting on the old gentleman in person, and helped him
to his coffee and pousse-cafe with all the humorous
grace I can so well imagine, and handed him the In-
dependance Beige, and went back to superintend the ar-
rangements for the coming play.
Presently the old gentleman looked up from his paper
and became interested, and soon he grew uneasy, and
finally he rose and went up to Barty and bowed, and said
(in French, of course) :
" Monsieur, I have made a very stupid mistake. I am
near-sighted, and that must be my apology. Besides,
you have revenged yourself ' avec tant d'esprit/ that you
will not bear me rancune! May I ask you to accept my
card, with my sincere excuses ? . . ."
And lo ! it was Bonzig's famous Baron ! Barty imme-
diately inquired after his lost friend.
"Bonzig? Ah, monsieur what a terrible tragedy!
Poor Bonzig, the best of men he came to me at ifitre-
tat. I invited him there from sheer friendship ! He was
drowned the very evening he arrived.
"He went and bathed after sunset on his own re-
sponsibility and without mentioning it to any one. How
it happened I don't know nobody knows. He was a
good swimmer, I believe, but very blind without his
glasses. He undressed behind a rock on the shore,
which is against the regulations. His body was not
found till two days after, three leagues down the
coast.
" He had an aged mother, who came to fitretat. It
was harrowing ! They were people who had seen better
days," etc., etc., etc.
And so no more of le Grand Bonzig.
Nor did Barty ever again meet Lirieux, in whose ex-
181
istence a change had also been wrought by fortune ; but
whether for good or evil I can't say. He was taken to
Italy and Greece by a wealthy relative. What happened
to him there whether he ever came back, or succeeded
or failed Barty never heard ! He dropped out of
Barty's life as completely as if he had been drowned like
his old friend.
These episodes, like many others past and to come in
this biography, had no particular influence on Barty
Josselin's career, and no reference to them is to be found
in anything he has ever written. My only reason for
telling them is that I found them so interesting when
he told me, and so characteristic of himself. He was
"bon raconteur." I'm afraid I'm not, and that I've
lugged these good people in by the hair of the head;
but I'm doing my best. " La plus belle fille au monde
ne peut donner que ce qu'elle a !"
I look to my editor to edit me and to rny illustrator
to pull me through.
That autumn (1856) my father went to France for six
weeks, on business. My sister Ida went with the Gib-
sons to Eamsgate, and I remained in London with my
mother. I did my best to replace my father in Barge
Yard, and when he came back he was so pleased with me
(and I think with himself also) that he gave me twenty
pounds, and said, "Go to Paris for a week, Bob, and see
Barty, and give him this, with my love."
And " this" was another twenty-pound note. He had
never given me such a sum in my life not a quarter of
it ; and " this " was the first time he had ever tipped
Barty.
Things were beginning at last to go well with him.
He had arranged to sell the vintages of Bordeaux and
182
Champagne, as well as those of Burgundy ; and was
dreaming of those of Germany and Portugal and Spain.
Fortune was beginning to smile on Barge Yard, and ours
was to become the largest wine business in the world
comme tout un chacun sait.
I started for Paris that very night, and knocked at
Barty's bedroom door by six next morning ; it was hard-
ly daylight a morning to be remembered ; and what a
breakfasting at Babet's, after a rather cold swim in the
Passy school of natation, and a walk all round the out-
side of the school that was once ours !
Barty looked very well, but very thin, and his small
sprouting beard and mustache had quite altered the
character of his face. I shall distress my lady readers if
I tell them the alteration was not an improvement ; so I
won't.
What a happy week that was to me I leave to the read-
er's imagination. We took a large double-bedded room
at the Hotel de Lille et d'Albion in case we might want
to smoke and talk all night ; we did, I think, and had
our coffee brought up to us in the morning.
I will not attempt to describe the sensations of a young
man going back to his beloved Paris "after five years."
Tout <;a, c'est de 1'histoire ancienne. And Barty and
Paris together that is not for such a pen as mine.
I showed him a new photograph of Leah Gibson a
very large one and an excellent. He gazed at it a long
time with his magnifying-glass and without, all his keen
perceptions on the alert ; and I watched his face nar-
rowly.
" My eyes ! She is a beautiful young woman, and no
mistake !" he said, with a sigh. " You mustn't let her
slip through your fingers, Bob !"
"How about that toss ?" said I, and laughed.
183
" Oh, I resign my claim ; she's not for the likes o' me.
You're going to be a great capitalist a citizen of credit
and renown. I'm Mr. Nobody., of nowhere. Go in and
win, my boy ; you have my best wishes. If I can scrape
together enough money to buy myself a white waistcoat
and a decent coat, I'll be your best man ; or some left-off
things of yours might do we're about of a size, aren't
we ? You've become tres bel homme, Bob, plutot bel
homme que joli gallon, hein ? That's what women are
fond of ; English women especially. I'm nowhere now,
without my uniform and the rest. Is it still Skinner
who builds for you ? Good old Skinner ! Mes compli-
ments \"
This simple little speech took a hidden weight of! my
mind and left me very happy. I confided frankly to the
good Barty that no Sally in any alley had ever been more
warmly adored by any industrious young London appren-
tice than was Leah Gibson by me !
"Qa y est, alors ! Je te felicite d'avance, et je garde
mes larmes pour quand tu seras parti. Allons diner chez
Babet : j'ai soif de boire a ton bonheur !"
Before I left we met an English artist he had known
at the British Museum an excellent fellow, one Walters,
who took him under his wing, and was the means of his
entering the atelier Troplo.ng in the Hue des Beiges as
an art student. And thus Barty began his art studies in
a proper and legitimate way. It was characteristic of
him that this should never have occurred to him before.
So when I parted with the dear fellow things were
looking a little brighter for him too.
All through the winter he worked very hard the first
to come, the last to go ; and enjoyed his studio life
thoroughly.
Such readers as I am likely to have will not require to
184
be told what the interior of a French atelier of th'e kind
is like, nor its domestic economy ; nor will I attempt to
describe all the fun and the frolic, although I heard it
all from Barty in after-years, and very good it was. I
almost felt I'd studied there myself ! He was a prime
favorite " le Beau Josselin," as he was called.
He made very rapid progress, and had already begun
to work in colors by the spring. He made many friends,
but led a quiet, industrious life, unrelieved (as far as I
know) by any of those light episodes one associates with
student life in Paris. His principal amusements through
the long winter evenings were the cafe and the brasserie,
mild ecarte, a game at billiards or dominoes, and long
talks about art and literature with the usual unkempt
young geniuses of the place and time French, English,
American.
Then he suddenly took it into his head to go to Ant-
werp ; I don't know who influenced him in this direction,
but I arranged to meet him there at the end of April
and we spent a delightful week together, staying at the
" Grand Laboureur" in the Place de Meer. The town
was still surrounded by the old walls and the moat, and
of a picturesqueness that seemed as if it would never
pall.
Twice or three times that week British tourists and
travellers landed at the qu'ai by the Place Verte from
TJie Baron Osy and this landing was Barty's delight.
The sight of fair, fresh English girls, with huge crino-
lines, and their hair done up in chenille nets, made him
long for England again, and the sound of their voices
went nigh to weakening his resolve. But he stood firm
to the last, and saw me off by The Baron. I felt a
strange "serrement de coeur" as I left him standing
there, so firm, as if he had been put "an piquet" by
185
M. Dumollard ! and so thin and tall and slender and
his boyish face so grave. Good heavens ! how much
alone he seemed, who was so little built to live alone !
It is really not too much to say that I would have
given Up to him everything I possessed in the world
every blessed thing ! except Leah and Leah was not
mine to give !
Now and again Barty's face would take on a look so
ineffably, pathetically, angelically simple and childlike
that it moved one to the very depths, and made one feel
like father and mother to him in one ! It was the true
revelation of his innermost soul, which in many ways
remained that of a child even in his middle age and till
he died. All his life he never quite put away childish
things !
I really believe that in bygone ages he would have
moved the world with that look, and been another Peter
the Hermit !
He became a pupil at the academy under De Keyser
and Van Lerius, and worked harder than ever.
He took a room nearly all window on a second floor in
the Marche aux (Eufs, just under the shadow of the
gigantic spire which rings a fragment of melody every
seven minutes and a half and the whole tune at mid-
night, fortissimo.
He laid in a stock of cigars at less than a centime
apiece, and dried them in the sun ; they left as he smoked
them a firm white ash two inches long ; and he grew so
fond of them that he cared to smoke nothing else.
He rose before the dawn, and went for a swim more
than a mile away got to the academy at six worked till
eight breakfasted on a little roll called a pistolet, and a
cup of coffee ; then the academy again from nine till
twelve when dinner, the cheapest he had ever known,
186
but not the worst. Then work again all the afternoon,
copying old masters at the Gallery. Then a cheap sup-
per, a long walk along the quais or ramparts or outside
a game of dominoes, and a glass or two of " Malines"
or " Louvain" then bed, without invading hordes ; the
Flemish are as clean as the Dutch ; and there he would
soon smoke and read himself to sleep in spite of chimes
which lull you, when once you get " achimatized," as
he called it, meaning of course to be funny : a villanous
kind of fun caught, I fear, in Barge Yard, Bucklers-
bury. It used to rain puns in the City especially in the
Stock Exchange, which is close to Barge Yard.
It was a happy life, and he grew to like it better than
any life he had led yet ; besides, he improved rapidly, as
his facility was great for painting as for everything he
tried his hand at.
He also had a very agreeable social existence.
One morning at the academy, two or three days after
his arrival, he was accosted by a fellow-student one
Tescheles who introduced himself as an old pupil of
Troplong's in the Rue des Beiges. They had a long chat
in French about the old Paris studio. Among other
things, Tescheles asked if there were still any English
there.
"Oui" says Barty "un nomme Valteres" . . .
Barty pronounced this name as if it were French ; and
noticed that Tescheles smiled, exclaiming :
" Parbleu, ce bon Valteres je 1'connais bien \"
Next day Tescheles came up to an English student
called Fox and said :
"Well, old stick-in-the-mud, how are you getting
on ?"
" Why, you don't mean to say you're an Englishman ?"
says Barty to Tescheles.
PETER THE HERMIT AU PIQUET
188
"Good heavens! you don't mean to say you are!
fancy your calling poor old Walters Valteres !"
And after that they became very intimate, and that
was a good thing for Barty.
The polyglot Tescheles was of a famous musical fami-
ly, of mixed German and Russian origin, naturalized in
England and domiciled in France a true cosmopolite
and a wonderful linguist, besides being also a cultivated
musician and excellent painter ; and all the musicians,
famous or otherwise, that passed through Antwerp made
his rooms a favorite resort and house of call. And
Barty was introduced into a world as delightful to him
as it was new and to music that ravished his soul with
a novel 'enchantment : Chopin, Liszt, Wagner, Schu-
mann and he found that Schubert had written a few
other songs besides the famous "Serenade"!
One evening he was even asked if he could make
music himself, and actually volunteered to sing and
sang that famous ballad of Balfe's which seems destined
to become immortal in this country "When other lips"
. . . alias, "Then you'll remember me !"
Strange to say, it was absolutely new to this high
musical circle, but they went quite mad over it ; and
the beautiful melody got naturalized from that moment
in Belgium and beyond, and Barty was proclaimed the
primo tenore of Antwerp although he was only a bary-
tone !
A fortnight after this Barty heard " When other lips"
played by the "Guides" band in the park at Brussels.
Its first appearance out of England and all through
him.
Then he belonged to the Antwerp " Cercle Artistique,"
where he made many friends and was very popular, as I
can well imagine.
189
Thus he was happier than he had ever been in his life ;
but for one thing that plagued him now and again : his
oft-recurring desire to be conscious once more of the
north, which he had not felt for four or five years.
The want of this sensation at certain periods es-
pecially at night would send a chill thrill of desolation
through him like a wave ; a wild panic, a quick agony,
as though the true meaning of absolute loneliness were
suddenly realized by a lightning flash of insight, and it
were to last for ever and ever.
This would pass away in a second or two, but left a
haunting recollection behind for many hours. And then
all was again sunshine, and the world was made of many
friends and solitude was impossible evermore.
One memorable morning this happiness received a
check and a great horror befell him. It was towards
the end of summer just before the vacation.
"With a dozen others, he was painting the head of an
old man from the life, when he became quite suddenly
conscious' of something strange in his sight. First he
shut his left eye and saw with his right quite perfectly;
then he shut the right, and lo ! whatever he looked at
with the left dwindled to a vanishing point and became
invisible. No rubbing or bathing of his eye would alter
the terrible fact, and he knew what great fear really
means, for the first time.
Much kind concern was expressed, and Van Lerius
told him to go at once to a Monsieur Noiret, a professor
at the Catholic University of Louvain, who had attended
him for the eyes, and had the reputation of being the
first oculist in Belgium.
Barty wrote immediately and an appointment was
made, and in three days he saw the great man, half
professor, half priest, who took him into a dark chamber
190
lighted by a lamp, and dilated his pupil with atropine,
and looked into his eye with the newly discovered " oph-
thalmoscope."
Professor Noiret told him it was merely a congestion
of the retina for which no cause could be assigned;
and that he would be cured in less than a month. That
he was to have a seton let into the back of his neck,
dry-cup himself on the chest and thighs night and morn-
ing, and take a preparation of mercury three times a day.
Also that he must go to the seaside immediately and
he recommended Ostend.
Barty told him that he was an impecunious art student,
and that Ostend was a very expensive place.
Noiret considerately recommended Blankenberghe,
which was cheap ; asked for and took his full fee, and
said, with a courtly priestly bow :
" If you are not cured, come back in a month. Au
revoir !"
So poor Barty had the seton put in by a kind of barber-
surgeon, and was told how to dress it night and morn-
ing ; got his medicines and his dry-cupping apparatus,
and went off to Blankenberghe quite hopeful.
And there things happened to him which I really
think are worth telling ; in the first place, because, even
if they did not concern Barty Josselin, they should be
amusing for their own sake that is, if I could only tell
them as he told me afterwards ; and I will do my best !
And then he was nearing the end of the time when he
was to remain as other mortals are. His new life was
soon to open, the great change to which we owe the
Barty Josselin who had changed the world for us !"
Besides, this is a biography not a novel not litera-
ture ! So what does it matter how it's written, so long
as it's all true !
Ipart fftftb
" O celeste haine,
Comment t'assouvir ?
O souffrance huinaiue,
Qui te peut guerir ?
Si lourde est ma peiiie
J'en voudrais mourir
Tel est mon desir !
"Navre de comprendre,
Las de compatir,
Pour ne plus entendre,
Ni voir, ni sentir,
Je suis pre~t & rendre
Mon dernier soupir
Et c'est mon desir !
"Ne plus rien connaitre,
Ni me souvenir
Ne jamais renaitre,
Ni me rendormir
Ne plus jamais e*tre,
Mais en bien finir
Voila mon desir !" ANON.
BARTY went third class to Bruges, and saw all over it,
and slept at the " Fleur de Ble," and heard new chimes,
and remembered his Longfellow.
Next morning, a very fine one, as he was hopefully
smoking his centime cigar with immense relish near the
little three-horsed wasronette that was to bear him to
192
Blankenberghe, he saw that he was to have three fellow-
passengers, with a considerable amount of very interest-
ing luggage, and rejoiced.
First, a tall man about thirty, in a very smart white
summer suit, surmounted by a jaunty little straw hat
with a yellow ribbon. He was strikingly handsome, and
wore immense black whiskers but no mustache, and had a
most magnificent double row of white, pearly teeth, which
he showed very much when he smiled, and he smiled very
often. He was evidently a personage of importance and
very well off, for he gave himself great airs and ordered
people about and chaffed them, and it made them laugh
instead of making them angry ; and he was obeyed with
wonderful alacrity. He spoke French fluently, but with
a marked Italian accent.
Next, a very blond lady of about the same age, not
beautiful, but rather overdressed, and whose accent, when
she spoke French, was very German, and who looked as
if she might be easily moved to wrath. Now and then
she spoke to the gentleman in a very audible Italian
aside, and Barty was able to gather that her Italian was
about as rudimentary as .his own.
Last and least, a pale, plain, pathetic little girl of six
or eight, with a nose rather swollen, and a black plait
down her back, and large black eyes, something like
Leah Gibson's ; and she never took these eyes off Barty's
face.
Their luggage consisted of two big trunks, a guitar
and violin (in their cases), and music-books bound to-
gether by a rope.
" Vous allez a Blankenberghe, mossie ?" said the Italian,
with a winning smile.
Barty answered in the affirmative, and the Italian
smiled ecstatic delight.
193
"J6 souis bienn content nous ferons route ensiem-
ble. ..." I will translate : ' ' I call myself Carlo Vero-
nese first barytone of the theatre of La Scala, Milan.
The signora is my second wife ; she is prima donna as-
soluta of the grand opera, Naples. The little ragazza is
my daughter by my first wife. She is the greatest vio-
linist of her age now living un' prodige, mossie un'
fenomeno I"
Barty, charmed with his new acquaintance, gave the
signore his card, and Carlo Veronese invited him gra-
ciously to take a seat in the wagonette, as if it were his
own private carriage. Barty, who was the most easily
impressed person that ever lived, accepted with as much
sincere gratitude as if he hadn't already paid for his
place, and they started on their sunny drive of eight
miles along the dusty straight Belgian chaussee, bordered
with poplars on either side, and paved with flagstones all
the way to Blankenberghe.
Signor Veronese informed Barty that on their holiday
travels they always managed to combine profit with pleas-
ure, and that he proposed giving a grand concert at the
Cafe on the Plage, or the Kursaal, next day ; that he
was going to sing Figaro's great song in the Barbiere,
and the signora would give "Roberto, toua que z'aime"
in French (or, rather, " Ropert, doi que ch'aime," as she
called it, correcting his accent), and the fenomeno, whose
name was Marianina, would play an arrangement of the
"Carnival of Venice" by Paganini.
" Ma vous aussi, vous etes mousicien je vois 9a par la
votre figoure !"
Barty modestly disclaimed all pretensions, and said he
was only an art student a painter.
"All the arts are brothers," said the signore, and the
little signorina stole her hand into Barty's and left it there.
13
194
" Listen," said the signore ; " why not arrange to live
together, you and we ? I hate throwing away money on
mere pomposity and grandiosity and show. We always
take a little furnished apartment, elle et moi. Then I
go and buy provisions, bon marche and she cooks them
and we have our meals better than at the hotel and at
half the price ! Join us, unless you like to throw your
money by the window !"
The Signorina Marianina's little brown hand gave
Barty's a little warm squeeze, and Barty was only too
delighted to accept an arrangement that promised to be
so agreeable and so practically wise.
They arrived at Blankenberghe, and, leaving their lug-
gage at the wagonette station, went in search of lodgings.
These were soon found in a large attic at the top of a
house, over a bakery. One little mansarde, with a truckle-
bed and wash-hand stand, did for the family of Vero-
nese ; another, smaller still, for Barty.
Other mansardes also opened on to the large attic, or
grenier, where there were sacks of grain and of flour, and
a sweet smell of cleanliness. Barty wondered that such
economical arrangements could suit his new friends, but
was well pleased ; a weight was taken off his mind. He
feared a style of living he could not have afforded to
share, and here were all difficulties smoothed away with-
out any trouble whatever.
They got in their luggage, and Barty went with the
signore in search of bread and meat and wine and ground
coffee. When they got back, a little stove was ready
lighted in the Veronese garret ; they cooked the food in
a frying-pan, opening the window wide and closing the
door, as the signore thought it useless to inform the
world by the sense of smell that they did their cooking
en famille ; and Barty enjoyed the meal immensely,
195
and almost forgot his trouble, but for the pain of his
seton.
After lunch the signore produced his placards, already
printed by hand, and made some paste in an iron pot,
and the signora made coffee. And Veronese tuned his
guitar and said :
" Je vais vous canter couelquecose una piccola cosa
da niente ! vous comprenez Fltalien ?"
" Oh yes," said Barty : he had picked up a deal of Ital-
ian and many pretty Italian canzonets from his friend
old Pergolese, who kept the Italian eating-house in Kupert
Street. " Sing me a stornella je les adore."
And he set himself to listen, with his heart in his
mouth from sheer pleasurable anticipation.
The signore sang a pretty little song, by Gordigiani,
called "II vero amore." Barty knew it well.
" E lo mio amor 6 andato a soggiornare
A Lucca bella e diventar signore. . . ."
Alas for lost illusions ! The signore's voice was a
coarse, unsympathetic, strident buffo bass, not always
quite in the middle of the note ; nor, in spite of his na-
tive liveliness of accent and expression, did he make the
song interesting or pretty in the least.
Poor Barty had fallen from the skies ; but he did his
best not to show his disenchantment, and this, from a
kind and amiable way he always had and a constant
wish to please, was not difficult.
Then the signora sang " 6 mon Fernand!" from the Fa-
vorita, in French, but with a hideous German accent and
a screech as of some Teutonic peacock, and without a
single sympathetic note ; though otherwise well in tune,
and with a certain professional knowledge of what she
was about.
196
And then poor Marianina was made to stand up on six
music-books, opposite a small music-easel, and play her
"Carnival of Venice" on the violin. Every time she
made a false note in the" difficult variations, her father,
with his long, thick, hairy middle finger, gave her a
fierce fillip on the nose, and she had to swallow her tears
and play on. Barty was almost wild with angry pity, but
dissembled, for fear of making her worse enemies in her
father and stepmother.
Not that the poor little thing played badly ; indeed,
she played surprisingly well for her age, and Barty was
sincere in his warm commendation of her talent.
" Et vous ne cautez pas du tout du tout ?" said Ver-
onese.
" Oh, si, quelquefois !"
"Cantez couelquecoze ze vous accompagnerai sous la
guitare ! n'ayez pas paoure nous sommes indoulgents,
elle et moi
" Oh je m'accompagnerai bien moi-meme comme je
pourrai " said Barty, and took the guitar, and sang a
little French Tyrolienne called " Fleur des Alpes," which
he could always sing quite beautifully ; and the effect
was droll indeed.
Marianina wept ; the signore went down on his knees in
a theatrical manner to him, and called him " maestro "
and other big Italian names ; the Frau signora, with tears
in her eyes, asked permission to kiss his hand, which his
modesty refused he kissed hers instead.
"He was a great genius, a bird of God, who had
amused himself by making fools of poor, innocent, hum-
ble, wandering minstrels. Oh, would he not be generous
as he was great and be one of them for a few days, and
take half the profits more whatever he liked ?" etc.
And indeed they immediately saw the business side of
the question, and were, to do them justice, immensely
liberal in their conditions of partnership and also most
distressingly persistent, with adulations that got more
and more fulsome the more he held back.
There was a long discussion. Barty had to be quite
brutal at the end told them he was not a musician, but
a painter, and that nothing on earth should induce him
to join them in their concert.
And finally, much crestfallen and somewhat huffed, the
pair went out to post their placards all over the town, and
Barty went for a bath and a long walk suddenly feeling
sad again and horribly one-eyed and maimed, and more
wofully northless and homeless and friendless than ever.
Blankenberghe was already very full, and when he got
back he saw the famous placards everywhere. And found
his friends cooking their dinner, and was pressed to join
them; and did so producing a magnificent pasty and
some hot-house grapes and two bottles of wine as a peace-
offering and was forgiven.
And after dinner they all sat on grain-sacks together
in the large granary, and made music with lady's-maids
and valets and servants of the house for a most genial
and appreciative audience and had a very pleasant
evening ; and Barty came to the conclusion that he had
mistaken his trade that he sang devilish well, in fact ;
and so he did.
Whatever his technical shortcomings might be, he
could make any tune sound pretty when he sang it. He
had the native gift of ease, pathos, rhythm, humor, and
charm and a delightful sympathetic twang in his
voice. His mother must have sung something like that ;
and all Paris went mad about her. No technical teach-
ing in the world can ever match a genuine inheritance ;
and that's a fact.
199
Next morning they all bathed together, and Barty un-
heroically and quite obscurely saved a life.
The signore and his fat white signora went dancing
out into the sunny waves and right away seawards.
Then came Barty with an all-round shirt-collar round
his neck and a white tie on, to conceal his seton, and a
pair of blue spectacles for the glare. And behind him
Marianina, hopping on and following as best she might.
He turned round to encourage her, and she had sudden-
ly disappeared ; half uneasy, he went back a step or two,
and saw her little pale-brown face gasping just beneath
the surface she had just got out of her depth.
He snatched her out, and she clung to him like a small
monkey and cried dreadfully, and was sick all over him
and herself. He managed to get her back on shore and
washed and dried and consoled her before her people
came back and had the tact not to mention this ad-
venture, guessing what fillips she would catch on her
poor little pink nose for her stupidity. She looked her
gratitude for this reticence of his in the most touching
way, with her big black eyes and had a cunning smile
of delight at their common tacit understanding. Her
rescuer from a watery grave did not apply for the " me-
daille de sauvetage " I
Barty took an immense walk that day to avoid the
common repast ; he was getting very tired of the two
senior Veroiieses.
The concert in the evening was a tremendous suc-
cess. The blatant signore sang his Figaro song very well
indeed it suited him better than little feminine love-
ditties. The signora was loud and passionate and dra-
matic in "Boberto"; and Belgians make more allowance
for a German accent in French than Parisians ; besides,
it was not quite their own language that was being mur-
200
dered before them. It may be, some day ! I sincerely
hope so. Je leur veux du bien.
Poor little Marianina stood on her six music -books
and played with immense care and earnestness, just like
a frightened but well-trained poodle walking on its hind-
legs one eye on her music and the tail of the other on
her father, who accompanied her with his guitar. She
got an encore, to Barty's great relief ; and to hers too,
no doubt if she hadn't, fillips on the nose for supper
that night ! Then there were more solos and duets,
with obbligatos for the violin.
Next day Veronese and his wife were in high feather
at the Kursaal, where they had sung the night before.
A very distinguished military foreigner, in attendance
on some august personage from Spain or Portugal (and
later from Ostend), warmly and publicly complimented
the signore on " his admirable rendering of ' Largo al
factotum' which, as his dear old friend Rossini had
once told him (the General), he (Rossini) had always
modestly looked upon as the one thing he had ever writ-
ten with which he was almost pleased !"
Marianina also received warm commendation from
this agreeable old soldier ; while quite a fashionable
crowd was listening ; and Veronese arranged for anoth-
er concert that evening, and placarded the town accord-
ingly.
Barty managed to escape any more meals in the Casa
Veronese, but took Marianina for one or two pleasant
walks, and told her stories and sang to her in the grenier,
while she improvised for him clever little obbligatos on
her fiddle.
He found a cheap eating-house and picked up a com-
panion or two to chat with. He also killed time with
his seton - dressing and self dry - cupping and hired
201
French novels and read them as much as he dared with
his remaining eye, about which he was morbidly ner-
vous ; he always fancied it would get its retina con-
gested like the other, in which no improvement mani-
fested itself whatever and this depressed him very
much. He was a most impatient patient.
To return. The second concert was as conspicuous a
failure as the first had been a success : the attendance
was small and less distinguished, and there was no en-
thusiasm. The Fran signora slipped a note and lost her
temper in the middle of " Roberto/' and sang out of tune
and with careless, open contempt of her audience, and
this the audience seemed to understand and openly re-
sent. Poor Marianina was frightened, and played very
wrong notes under the furious gaze of her papa, and
finally broke down and cried, and there were some hisses
for him, as well as kind and encouraging applause for
the child. Then up jumps Barty and gets on the plat-
form and takes the signore's guitar and twangs it, and
smiles all round benignly immense applause !
Then he pats Marianina's thin pale cheek and wipes
her eyes and gives her a kiss. Frantic applause ! Then
" Fleur des Alpes !"
Ovation ! encore ! bis ! ter !
And for a third encore he sings a very pretty little
Flemish ballad about the rose without a thorn "Het
Roosje uit de Dome." It is the only Flemish song he
knows, and I hope I have spelt it right ! And the audi-
ence goes quite crazy with enthusiasm, and everybody
goes home happy, even the Veroneses and Marianina
does not get filliped that night.
After this the Veroneses tried humbler spheres for
the display of their talents, and in less than a week ex-
hausted every pothouse and beer-tavern and low drink-
ing -shop iu Blankenberghe ! and at last they took to
performing for casual coppers in the open street, and
went very rapidly down hill. The signore lost his jaunti-
ness and grew sordid and soiled and shabby and humble ;
the signora looked like a sulky, dirty, draggle-tailed fury,
ready to break out into violence on the slightest provoca-
tion ; poor Marianinu got paler and thinner, and Barty
was very unhappy about her. The only things left rosy
about her were her bruised nose, and her fingers, that
always seemed stiff with cold ; indeed, they were blue
rather than rosy and anything but clean.
One evening he bought her a little warm gray cloak
that took his fancy ; when he went home after dinner to
give it her he found the three birds of song had taken
flight sans tambour ni trompette, and leaving no mes-
sage for him. The baker - landlord had turned them
adrift sent them about their business, sacrificing some
of his rent to get rid of them ; not a heavy loss, I fancy.
Barty went after them all over the little town, but did
not find them ; he heard they were last seen marching
off with guitar and fiddle in a southerly direction along
the coast, and found that their luggage was to be sent to
Ostend.
He felt very sorry for Marianina and missed her and
gave the cloak to some poor child in the town, and was
very lonely.
One morning as he loafed about dejectedly with his
hands in his pockets, he found his way to the little
Hotel de Ville, whence issued sounds of music. He
went in. It was like a kind of reading - room and con-
cert - room combined ; there was a piano there, and a
young lady practising, with her mother knitting by her
side ; and two or three other people, friends of theirs,
lounging about and looking at the papers.
203
The mamma was a very handsome person of aristo-
cratic appearance. The pretty daughter was practising
the soprano part in a duet by Campana, which Barty
knew well ; it was " Una sera d' amore." The tenor had
apparently not kept his appointment, and madame ex-
pressed some irritation at this ; first to a friend, in
French, but with a slight English accent then in Eng-
lish to her daughter; and Barty grew interested.
After a little while, catching the mamma's eye (which
was nbt difficult, as she very frankly and persistently
gazed at him, and with a singularly tender and wistful
expression of face), he got up and asked in English if he
could be of any use seeing that he- knew the music well
and had often sung it. The lady was delighted, and
Barty and mademoiselle sang the duet in capital style
to the mamma's accompaniment: "guarda die bianca
luna,"-etc.
" What a lovely voice you've got ! May I ask your
name ?" says the mamma.
" Josselin."
"English, of course ?"
"Upon my word I hardly know whether I'm English
or French !" said Barty, and he and the lady fell into
conversation.
It turned out that she was Irish, and married to a
Belgian soldier, le General Comte de Cleves (who was
a tremendous swell, it seems but just then in Brussels).
Barty told Madame de Cleves the story of his eye he
was always very communicative about his eye ; and she
suddenly buried her face in her hands and wept ; and
mademoiselle told him in a whisper that her eldest
brother had gone blind and died three or four years ago,
and that he was extraordinarily like Barty both in face
and figure.
204
Presently another son of Madame de Cldves came in
an officer of dragoons in undress uniform, a splendid
youth. He was the missing tenor, and made his excuses
for being late, and sang very well indeed.
And Barty became the intimate friend of these good
people, who made Blankenberghe a different place to him
and conceived for him a violent liking, and introduced
him to all their smart Belgian friends ; they were quite
a set bathing together, making music and dancing, tak-
ing excursions, and so forth. And before a fortnight was
over Barty had become the most popular young man in
the town, the gayest of the gay, the young guardsman
once more, throwing dull care to the winds ; and in spite
of his impecuniosity (of which he made no secret what-
ever) the bonte-en-train of the company. And this led
to many droll adventures of which I will tell one as a
sample.
A certain Belgian viscount, who had a very pretty
French wife, took a dislike to Barty. He had the repu-
tation of being a tremendous fire-eater. His wife, a light-
hearted little flirt (but with not much harm in her), took
a great fancy to him, on the contrary.
One day she asked him for a wax impression of the
seal-ring he wore on his finger, and the following morn-
ing he sealed an empty envelope and stamped it with his
ring, and handed it to her on the Plage. She snatched
it with a quick gesture and slipped it into her pocket
with quite a guilty little coquettish look of mutual un-
derstanding.
Monsieur Jean (as the viscount was called) noticed
this, and jostled rudely against Josselin, who jostled
back again and laughed.
Then the whole party walked off to the " tir," or shoot-
ing-gallery on the Plage ; some wager was on, I believe,
205
and when they got there they all began to shoot at dif-
ferent distances, ladies and gentlemen ; all but Barty ; it
was a kind of handicap.
Monsieur Jean, after a fierce and significant look at
Barty, slowly raised his pistol, took a deliberate aim at the
small target, and fired hitting it just half an inch over the
bull's-eye; a capital shot. Barty couldn't have done bet-
ter himself. Then taking another loaded pistol,he present-
ed it to my friend by the butt and said, with a solemn bow:
"A vous, monsieur de la garde."
" Messieurs de la garde doivent toujours tirer ies pre-
miers !" said Barty, laughing ; and carelessly let off his
pistol in the direction of the target without even taking
aim. A little bell rang, and there was a shout of ap-
plause ; and Barty was conscious that by an extraordi-
nary fluke he had hit the bull's-eye in the middle, and
saw the situation at once.
Suddenly looking very grave and very sad, he threw
the pistol away, and said :
" Je ne tire plus j'ai trop peur d'avoir la main mal-
heureuse un jour I" and smiled benignly at M. Jean.
A moment's silence fell on the party and M. Jean
turned very pale.
Barty went up to Madame Jean :
" Will you forgive me for giving you with my seal an
empty envelope ? I couldn't think of anything pretty
enough to write you so I gave it up. Tear it and for-
give me. I'll do better next time !"
The lady blushed and pulled the letter out of her
pocket and held it up to the light, and it was, as Barty
said, merely an empty envelope and a red seal. She
then held it out to her husband and exclaimed :
"Le cachet de Monsieur Josselin, que je lui avais
demande . . I"
206
So bloodshed was perhaps avoided, and Monsieur Jean
took care not to jostle Josseliii any more. Indeed, they
became great friends.
For next day Barty strolled into the Salle d'Armes,
Rue des Dunes and there he found Monsieur Jean
fencing with young de Cleves, the dragoon. Both were
good fencers, but Barty was the finest fencer I ever met
in my life, and always kept it up ; and remembering his
adventure of the previous day, it amused him to affect a
careless nonchalance about such trivial things "des
enfantillages !"
" You take a turn with Jean, Josselin!" said the dragoon.
"Oh! I'm out of practice and I've only got one
eye. . . ."
" Je vous en prie, monsieur de la garde !" said the
viscount.
"Cette fois, alors, nous aliens tirer ensemble!" says
Barty, and languidly dons the mask with an affected air,
and makes a fuss about the glove not suiting him ; and
then, in spite of his defective sight, which seems to
make no difference, he lightly and gracefully gives M.
Jean such a dressing as that gentleman had never got in
his life not even from his maitre d'armes : and after-
wards to young de Cleves the same. Well I knew his
way of doing this kind of thing !
So Barty and M. and Madame Jean became quite in-
timate and with his usual indiscretion Barty told them
how he fluked that bull's-eye, and they were charmed !
" Vous etes impayable, savez-vous, mon cher !" says
M. Jean "vous avez tous les talents, et un million dans
le gosier par-dessus le marche ! Si jamais je puis vous
etre de service, savez-vous, comptez sur moi pour la
vie ..." said the impulsive viscount when they bade
each other good-bye at the end.
'A VOUS, MONSIEUR DE LA GARDE!'"
208
" Et plus jamais d'enveloppes vides, quand vous
m'ecrirez !" says madame.
So frivolous time wore on, and Barty found it pleasant
to frivol in such pleasant company very pleasant in-
deed ! But when alone in his garret, with his seton-
dressing and dry-cuppings, it was not so gay. He had
to confess to himself that his eye was getting slowly
worse instead of better ; darkening day by day ; and a
little more retina had been taken in by the strange
disease "la peau de chagrin," as he nicknamed this
wretched retina of his, after Balzac's famous story. He
could still see with the left of it and at the bottom, but
a veil had come over the middle and all the rest ; by
daylight he could see through this veil, but every object
he saw was discolored and distorted and deformed it was
worse than darkness itself ; and this was so distressing,
and so interfered with the sight of the other eye, that when
the sun went down, the total darkness in the ruined por-
tion of his left retina came as a positive relief. He took
all this very desperately to heart and had very terrible
forebodings. For he had never known an ache or a pain,
and had innocently gloried all his life in the singular
perfection of his five wits.
Then his money was coming to an end ; he would soon
have to sing in the streets, like Veronese, with Lady
Archibald's guitar.
Dear Lady Archibald ! When things went wrong with
her she would always laugh, and say :
" Les miseres du jour font le bonheur du lende-
main !"
This he would say or sing to himself over and over
again, and go to bed at night quite hopeful and sanguine
after a merry day spent among his many friends ; and
209
soon sink into sleep, persuaded that his trouble was a
bad dream which next morning would scatter and dis-
pel. But when he woke, it was to find the grim reality
sitting by his pillow, and he couldn't dry-cup it away.
The very sunshine was an ache as he went out and got
his breakfast with his blue spectacles on ; and black care
would link its bony arm in his as he listlessly strolled by
the much-sounding sea and cling to him close as he
swam or dived ; and he would wonder what he had ever
done that so serious and tragic a calamity should have be-
fallen so light a person as himself ; who could only dance
and sing and play the fool to make people laugh Rigo-
letto Triboulet a mere grasshopper, no ant or bee or
spider, not even a third-class beetle surely this was not
according to the eternal fitness of things !
And thus in the unutterable utterness of his dejection
he would make himself such evil cheer that he sickened
with envy at the mere sight of any living thing that
could see out of two eyes a homeless irresponsible dog,
a hunchback beggar, a crippled organ-grinder and his
monkey till he met some acquaintance ; even but a
rolling fisherman with a brown face and honest blue
eyes a pair of them and then he would forget his sor-
row and his envy in chat and jokes and laughter with
him over each a centime cigar ; and was set up in good
spirits for the day ! Such was Barty Josselin, the most
ready lover of his kind that ever existed, the slave of his
last impression.
And thus he lived under the shadow of the sword of
Damocles for many mouths ; on and off, for years in-
deed, as long as he lived at all. It is good discipline.
It rids one of much superfluous self-complacency and
puts a wholesome check on our keeping too good a
conceit of ourselves ; it prevents us from caring too
210
meanly about mean things too keenly about our own
infinitesimal personalities ; it makes us feel quick sym-
pathy for those who live under a like condition : there
are many such weapons dangling over the heads of us
poor mortals by just a hair a panoply, an armory, a
very arsenal ! And we grow to learn in time that when
the hair gives way and the big thing falls, the blow is
not half so bad as the fright had been, even if it kills us ;
and more often than not it is but the shadow of a sword,
after all ; a bogie that has kept us off many an evil track
perhaps even a blessing in disguise ! And in the end,
down comes some other sword from somewhere else and
cuts for us the Gordian knot of our brief tangled exist-
ence, and solves the riddle and sets us free.
This is a world of surprises/ where little ever happens
but the unforeseen, which is seldom worth meeting half-
way ! And these moral reflections of mine are quite un-
necessary and somewhat obvious, but they harm nobody,
and are very soothing to make and utter at my time of
life. Pity the sorrows of a poor old man and forgive
him his maudlin garrulity. . . .
One afternoon, lolling in deep dejection on the top of
a little sandy hillock, a "dune," and plucking the long
coarse grass, he saw a very tall elderly lady, accompanied
by her maid, coming his way along the asphalt path that
overlooked the sea or rather, that prevented the sea
from overlooking the land and overflowing it !
She was in deep black and wore a thick veil.
With a little jump of surprise he recognized his aunt
Caroline Lady Caroline Grey of all his aunts the aunt
who had loved him the best as a boy whom he had
loved the best.
Shejyas a Roman Catholic, and very devout indeed a
211
widow, and childless now. And between her and Barty
a coolness had fallen during the last few years a heavy
raw thick mist of cold estrangement ; and all on account
of his London life and the notoriety he had achieved
there ; things of which she disapproved entirely, and
thought " unworthy of a gentleman " : and who can
blame her for thinking so ?
She had at first written to him long letters of remon-
strance and good advice ; which he gave up answering,
after a while. And when they met in society, her man-
ner had grown chill and distant and severe.
He hadn't seen or heard of his aunt Caroline for
three or four years ; but at the sudden sight of her a
wave of tender childish remembrance swept over him,
and his heart beat quite warmly to her : affliction is
a solvent of many things, and first-cousin to forgive-
ness.
She passed without looking his way, and he jumped
up and followed her, and said :
" Oh, Aunt Caroline ! won't you even speak to me ?"
She started violently, and turned round, and cried :
" Oh, Barty, Barty, where have you been all these
years ?" and seized both his hands, and shook all over.
" Oh, Barty my beloved little Barty take me some-
where where we can sit down and talk. I've been think-
ing of you very much, Barty I've lost my poor son he
died last Christmas! I was afraid you had forgotten
my existence ! I was thinking of you the very moment
you spoke !"
The maid left them, and she took his arm and they
found a seat.
She put up her veil and looked at him : there was a
great likeness between them in spite of the difference of
age. She had been his father's favorite sister (some ten
212
years younger than Lord Runswick); and she was very
handsome still, though about fifty-five.
" Oh, Barty, jny darling how things have gone wrong
between us ! Is it all my doing ? Oh, I hope not ! . . ."
And she kissed him.
" How like, how like ! And you're getting a little
black and bulgy under the eyes especially the left one
and so did he, at just about your age ! And how thin
you are !"
"I don't think anything need ever go wrong between
us again, Aunt Caroline ! I am a very altered person,
and a very unlucky one !"
" Tell me, dear!"
And he told her all his story, from the fatal quarrel
with her brother Lord Archibald and the true history
of that quarrel ; and all that had happened since : he had
nothing to keep back.
She frequently wept a little, for truth was in every
tone of his voice ; and when it came to the story of his
lost eye, she wept very much indeed. And his need of af-
fection, of female affection especially, and of kinship, was
so immense that he clung to this most kind and loving
woman as if she'd been his mother come back from the
grave, or his dear Lady Archibald.
This meeting made a great difference to Barty in many
ways made amends ! Lady Caroline meant to pass
the winter at Malines, of all places in the world. The
Archbishop was her friend, and she was friends also with
one or two priests at the seminary there. She was by no
means rich, having but an annuity of not quite three
hundred a year ; and it soon became the dearest wish of
her heart that Barty should live with her for a while, and
be nursed by her if he wanted nursing ; and she thought
he did. Besides, it would be convenient on account of
"'I AM A VERY ALTERED PERSON!'
214
his doctor, M. Noiret, of the University of Louvain,
which was near Malines half an hour by train.
And Barty was only too glad ; this warm old love and
devotion had suddenly dropped on to him by some hap-
py enchantment out of the skies at a moment of sore
need. And it was with a passion of gratitude that he
accepted his aunt's proposals.
He well knew, also, how it was in him to brighten her
lonely life, almost every hour of it and promised him-
self that she should not be a loser by her kindness to
Mr. Nobody of Nowhere. He remembered her love of
fun, and pretty poetry, and little French songs, and droll
chat and nice cheerful meals tete-a-tete and he was
good at all these things. And how fond she was of read-
ing out loud to him ! The time might soon arrive when
that would be a blessing indeed.
Indeed, a new interest had come into his life not alto-
gether a selfish interest either but one well worth liv-
ing for, though it was so unlike any interest that had ever
filled his life before. He had been essentially a man's
man hitherto, in spite of his gay light love for lovely
woman ; a good comrade par excellence, a frolicsome
chum, a rollicking boon - companion, a jolly pal! He
wanted quite desperately to love something staid and
feminine and gainly and well bred, whatever its age !
some kind soft warm thing in petticoats and thin shoes,
with no hair on its face, and a voice that wasn't male !
Nor did her piety frighten him very much. He soon
found that she was no longer the over-zealous proselytiz-
ing busybody of the Cross but immensely a woman of
the world, making immense allowances. All roads lead
to Rome (dit-on !), except a few which converge in the
opposite direction ; but even Roman roads lead to this
wide tolerance in the end for those of a rich warm nat-
215
ure who have been well battered by life ; and Lady Car-
oline had been very thoroughly battered indeed: a bad
husband a bad son, her only child! both dead, but
deeply loved and lamented ; and in her heart of hearts
there lurked a sad suspicion that her piety (so deep and
earnest and sincere) had not bettered their badness on
the contrary, perhaps ! and had driven her Barty from
her when he needed her most.
Now that his need of her was so great, greater than it
had ever been before, she would take good care that no
piety of hers should ever drive him away from her again ;
she felt almost penitent and apologetic for having done
what she had known to be right the woman in her had
at last outgrown the nun.
She almost began to doubt whether she had not been
led to selfishly overrate the paramount importance of the
exclusive salvation of her own particular soul !
And then his frank, fresh look and manner, and
honest boyish voice, so unmistakably sincere, and that
mild and magnificent eye, so bright and humorous still,
" so like so like !" which couldn't even see her lov-
ing, anxious face. . . . Thank Heaven, there was still
one eye left that she could appeal to with both her
own !
And what a child he had been, poor dear the very
pearl of the Rohans ! What Rohan of them all was ever
a patch on this poor bastard of Antoinette Josselin's,
either for beauty, pluck, or mother -wit or even for
honor, if it came to that ? Why, a quixotic scruple of
honor had ruined him, and she was Rohan enough to
understand what the temptation had been the other
way : she had seen the beautiful bad lady !
And, pure as her own life had been, she was no puri-
tan, but of a church well versed in the deepest kiiowl-
216
edge of our poor weak frail humanity ; she has told me
all about it, and I listened between the words.
So during the remainder of her stay at Blankenberghe
he was very much with Lady Caroline, and rediscov-
ered what a pleasant and lively companion she could
be especially at meals (she was fond of good food
of a plain and wholesome kind, and took good care to
get it).
She had her little narrownesses, to be sure, and was
not hail-fellow-well-met with everybody, like him ; and
did not think very much of giddy little viscountesses
with straddling loud-voiced Flemish husbands, nor of
familiar facetious commercial millionaires, of whom
Barty numbered two or three among his adorers ; nor
even of the "highly born" Irish wives of Belgian gen-
erals and all that. Madame de Cleves was an O'Brien.
These were old ingrained Rohan prejudices, and she
was too old herself to alter.
But she loved the good fishermen whose picturesque
boats made such a charming group on the sands at sun-
set, and also their wives and children ; and here she and
her nephew were "bien d'accord."
I fear her ladyship would not have appreciated very
keenly the rising splendor of a certain not altogether
unimportant modern house in Barge Yard, Bucklers-
bury and here she would have been wrong. The time
has come when we throw the handkerchief at female
Rohans, we Maurices and our like. I have not done so
myself, it is true ; but not from any rooted antipathy to
any daughter of a hundred earls nor yet from any par-
ticular diffidence on my own part.
Anyhow, Lady Caroline loved to hear all Barty had to
say of his gay life among the beauty, rank, and fashion
of Blankenberghe. She was very civil to the handsome
217
Irish Madame de Cleves, nee O'Brien, and listened po-
litely to the family history of the O'Briens and that of
the de Cleveses too : and learnt, without indecent sur-
prise, or any emotion of any kind whatever, what she
had never heard before namely, that in the early part
of the twelfth century a Eohan de Whitby had married
an O'Brien of Ballywrotte; and other prehistoric facts of
equal probability and importance.
She didn't believe much in people's twelfth - century
reminiscences ; she didn't even believe in those of her
own family, who didn't believe in them either, or trouble
about them in the least ; and I dare say they were quite
right.
Anyhow, when people solemnly talked about such
things it made her rather sorry. But she bore up for
Barty's sake, and the resigned, half-humorous courtesy
with which she assented to these fables was really more
humiliating to a sensitive, haughty soul than any mere
supercilious disdain ; not that she ever wished to humil-
iate, but she was easily bored, and thought that kind of
conversation vulgar, futile, and rather grotesque.
Indeed, she grew quite fond of Madame de Cleves and
the splendid young dragoon, and the sweet little black-
haired daughter with lovely blue eyes, who sang so
charmingly. For they were singularly charming people
in every way, the de Cleveses ; and that's a way Irish
people often have as well as of being proud of their
ancient blood. There is no more innocent weakness.
I have it very strongly moi qui vous parle on the
maternal side. My mother was a Blake of Derrydown,
a fact that nobody would have known unless she now
and then accidentally happened to mention it herself, or
else my father did. And so I take the opportunity of
slipping it in here just out of filial piety !
218
So the late autumn of that year found Barty and his
aunt at Malines, or Mechelen, as it calls itself in its na-
tive tongne.
They had comfortable lodgings of extraordinary cheap-
ness in one of the dullest streets of that most picturesque
but dead-alive little town, where the grass grew so thick
between the paving-stones here and there that the brew-
ers' dray-horses might have browsed in the "Grand
Brul" a magnificent but generally deserted thorough-
fare leading from the railway station to the Place
d'Armes, where rose still unfinished the colossal tower
of one of the oldest and finest cathedrals in the world,
whose chimes wafted themselves every half -quarter of
an hour across the dreamy flats for miles and miles, ac-
cording to the wind, that one might realize how slow
was the flight of time in that particular part of King
Leopold's dominions.
" 'And from a tall tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down !' "
said Barty to his aunt -quoting (or misquoting) a bard
they were very fond of just then, as they slowly walked
down the "Grand Brul" in solitude together, from the
nineteenth century to the fourteenth in less than twenty
minutes or three chimes from St. Rombault, or fifty
skrieks from the railway station.
But for these a spirit of stillness and mediaeval melan-
choly brooded over the quaint old city and great archi-
episcopal see and most important railway station in all
Belgium. Magnificent old houses in carved stone with
wrought-iron balconies were to be had for rents that
were almost nominal. From the tall windows of some of
these a frugal, sleepy, priest-ridden old nobility looked
down on broad and splendid streets hardly ever trodden
219
by any feet but their own, or those of some stealthy Jes-
uit priest, or Sister of Mercy.
Only during the Kermesse, or at carnival- time, when
noisy revellers of either sex and ungainly processions of
tipsy masques and mummers waked Mechelen out of its
long sleep, and all the town seemed one vast estaminet,
did one feel one's self to be alive. Even at night, and in
the small hours, frisky masques and dominoes walked
the moonlit streets, and made loud old Flemish mediae-
val love, a la Teniers.
There was a beautiful botanical garden, through which
a river flowed under tall trees, and turned the wheels of
the oldest flour-mills in Flanders. This was a favorite
resort of Barty's and he had it pretty much to himself.
And for Lady Caroline there were, besides St. Rom-
bault, quite half-a-dozen churches almost as magnificent
if not so big, and in them as many as you could wish of
old Flemish masters, 4 beginning with Peter Paul Rubens,
who pervades the land of his birth very much as Michael
Angelo pervades Florence and Rome.
And these dim places of Catholic worship were gener-
ously open to all, every day and all day long, and never
empty of worshippers, high and low, prostrate in the
dust, or kneeling with their arms extended and their
heads in the air, their wide-open, immovable, unblink-
ing eyes hypnotized into stone by the cross and the
crown of thorns. Mostly peasant women, these : with
their black hoods falling from their shoulders, and stiff
little close white caps that hid the hair.
Out of cool shadowy recesses of fretted stone and ad-
mirably carved wood emanations seemed to rise as from
the long-forgotten past tons of incense burnt hundreds
of years ago, and millions of closely packed supplicants,
rich and poor, following each other in secula seculorum !
220
Lady Caroline spent many of her hours haunting these
crypts and praying there.
At the back of their house in the Rue des Ursulines
Blanches, Barty's bedroom window overlooked the play-
ground of the convent "des Sceurs Redemptoristines " :
all noble ladies, most beautifully dressed in scarlet and
ultramarine, with long snowy veils, and who were waited
upon by non-noble sisters in garments of a like hue but
less expensive texture.
So at least said little Finche Torfs, the daughter of the
house little Frau, as Lady Caroline called her, and who
seems to have been one of the best creatures in the
world ; she became warmly attached to both her lodgers,
who reciprocated the feeling in full; it was her chief
pleasure to wait on them and look after them at all times
of the day, though Lady Caroline had already a devoted
maid of her own.
Little Frau's father was a well-to-do burgher with a
prosperous ironmongery in the " Petit Brul."
This was his private house, where he pursued his hob-
by, for he was an amateur photographer, very fond of
photographing his kind and simple-minded old wife, who
was always attired in rich Brussels silks and Mechelen
lace on purpose. She even cooked in them, though not
for her lodgers, whose mid-day and evening meals were
sent from "La Cigogne," close by, in four large round
tins that fitted into each other, and were carried in a
wicker-work cylindrical basket. And it was little Frau's
delight to descant on the qualities of the menu as she
dished and served it. I will not attempt to do so.
But after little Frau had cleared it all away, Barty
would descant on the qualities of certain English dishes
he remembered, to the immense amusement of Aunt
Caroline, who was reasonably fond of what is good to eat.
321
He would paint in words (he was better in words than
any other medium oil, water, or distemper) the boiled
leg of mutton, not overdone ; the mashed turnips ; the
mealy potato ; the caper-sauce. He would imitate the
action of the carver and the sound of the carving-knife
making its first keen cut while the hot pink gravy runs
down the sides. Then he would wordily paint a French
roast chicken and its rich brown gravy and its water-
cresses ; the pommes sautees ; the crisp, curly salade aux
fines herbes ! And Lady Caroline, still hungry, would
laugh till her eyes watered, as well as her mouth.
When it came to the sweets, the apple-puddings and
gooseberry-pies and Devonshire cream and brown sugar,
there was no more laughing, for then Barty's talent
soared to real genius and genius is a serious thing.
And as to his celery and Stilton cheese But there !
it's lunch-time, and I'm beginning to feel a little peck-
ish myself. . . .
Every morning when it was fine Barty and his aunt
would take an airing round the town, which was en-
closed by a ditch where there was good skating in the
winter, on long skates that went very fast, but couldn't
cut figures, 8 or 3 !
There were no fortifications or ramparts left. But a
few of the magnificent old brick gateways still remained,
admitting you to the most wonderful old streets with
tall pointed houses clean little slums, where women sat
on their door-steps making the most beautiful lace in
the world odd nooks and corners and narrow ways
where it was easy to lose one's self, small as the town
really was ; innumerable little toy bridges over toy canals
one could have leaped at a bound, overlooked by quaint,
irregular little dwellings, of colors that had once been
as those of the rainbow, but which time had mellowed
into divine harmonies, as it does all it touches from
grand old masters to oak palings round English parks ;
from Venice to Mechelen and its lace ; from a disap-
pointed first love to a great sorrow.
Occasionally a certain distinguished old man of soldier-
like aspect would pass them on horseback, and gaze at
their two tall British figures with a look of curious and
benign interest, as if he mentally wished them well, and
well away from this drear limbo of penitence and exile
and expiation.
They learnt that he was French, and a famous gen-
eral, and that his name was Changarnier ; and they un-
derstood that public virtue has to be atoned for.
And he somehow got into the habit of bowing to them
with a good smile, and they would smile and bow back
again. Beyond this they never exchanged a word, but
this little outward show and ceremony of kindly look
and sympathetic gesture always gave them a pleasant
moment and helped to pass the morning.
All the people they met were to Lady Caroline like peo-
ple in a dream : silent priests ; velvet- footed nuns, who
were much to her taste ; quiet peasant women, in black
cloaks and hoods, driving bullock-carts or carts drawn by
dogs, six or eight of these inextricably harnessed together
and panting for dear life ; blue-bloused men in French
caps, but bigger and blonder than Frenchmen, and less
given to epigrammatic repartee, with mild, blue, beery
eyes, d fleur de tete, and a look of health and stolid amia-
bility ; sturdy green-coated little soldiers with cock-feath-
ered brigand hats of shiny black, the brim turned up
over the right eye and ear that they might the more
conveniently take a good aim at the foe before he ske-
daddled at the mere sight of them ; fat, comfortable
burgesses and their wives, so like their ancestors who
223
drink beer out of long glasses and smoke long clay pipes
on the walls of the Louvre and the National Gallery
that they seemed like old friends; and quaint old heavy
children who didn't make much noise !
And whenever they spoke French to you, these good
people, they said " savez-vous ?" every other second ;
and whenever they spoke Flemish to each other it
sounded so much like your own tongue as it is spoken
in the north of England that you wondered why on earth,
you couldn't understand a single word.
Now and then, from under a hood, a handsome dark
face with Spanish eyes would peer out eloquent of the
past history of the Low Countries, which Barty knew
much better than I. But I believe there was once a
Spanish invasion or occupation of some kind, and I dare
say the fair Belgians are none the worse for it to-day.
(It might even have been good for some of us, perhaps,
if that ill - starred Armada hadn't come so entirely to
grief. I'm fond of big, tawny-black eyes.)
All this, so novel and so strange, was a perpetual feast
for Lady Caroline. And they bought nice, cheap, savory
things on the way home, to eke out the lunch from " la
Cigogne."
In the afternoon Barty would take a solitary walk in
the open country, or along one of those endless straight
chaussees, paved in the middle, and bordered by equidis-
tant poplars on either side, and leading from town to
town, and the monotonous perspective of which is so
desolating to heart and eye ; backwards or forwards, it
is always the same, with a flat sameness of outlook to
right and left, and every 450 seconds the chime would
boom and flounder heavily by, with a dozen sharp rail-
way whistles after it, like swordfish after a whale, pierc-
ing it through and through,
224
Barty evidently had all this in his mind when he wrote
the song of the seminarist in " Gleams/' beginning :
" Twos April, and the sky was clear,
An east wind blowing keenly ;
The sun gave out but little cheer,
For all it shone serenely.
The wayside poplars, all arow,
For many a weary mile did throw
Down on the dusty flags below
Their shadows, picked out cleanly."
Etc., etc., etc.
(Isn't it just like Barty to begin a lyric that will prob-
ably last as long as the English language with an inno-
cent jingle worthy of a school-boy ?)
After dinner, in the evening, it was Lady Caroline's
delight to read aloud, while Barty smoked his cigarettes
and inexpensive cigars a concession on her part to
make him happy, and keep him as much with her as she
could ; and she grew even to like the smell so much that
once or twice, when he went to Antwerp for a couple of
days to stay with Tescheles, she actually, had to burn
some of his tobacco on a red-hot shovel, for the scent
of it seemed to spell his name for her and make his ab-
sence less complete.
Thus she read to him Esmond, Hypatia, Never too Late
to Mend, Les Maitres Sonneurs, La Mare au Diable, and
other delightful books, English and French, which were
sent once a week from a circulating library in Brussels.
How they blessed thy name, good Baron Tauchnitz !
"Oh, Aunt Caroline, if I could only illustrate books !
If I could only illustrate Esmond and draw a passable
Beatrix coming down the old staircase at Castlewood
with her candle !" said Barty, one night.
That was not to be. Another was to illustrate Es-
225
mond, a poor devil who, oddly enough, was then living
in the next street and suffering from a like disorder.*
As a return, Barty would sing to her all he knew, in
five languages three of which neither of them quite
understood accompanying himself on the piano or
'guitar. Sometimes she would play for him accompani-
ments that were beyond his reach, for she was a decent-
ly taught musician who could read fairly well at sight ;
whereas Barty didn't know a single note, and picked up
everything by ear. She practised these accompaniments
every afternoon, as assiduously as any school-girl.
Then they would sit up very late, as they always had
so much to talk about what had just been read or
played or sung, and many other things : the present, the
past, and the future. All their old affection for each
other had come back, trebled and quadrupled by pity on
one side, gratitude on the other and a little remorse on
both. And there were long arrears to make up, and life
was short and uncertain.
Sometimes FAbbe Lefebvre, one of the professors at
the seminaire and an old friend of Lady Caroline's,
would come to drink tea, and talk politics, which ran
high in Mechelen. He was a most accomplished and
delightful Frenchman, who wrote poetry and adored Bal-
zac and even owned to a fondness for good old Paul de
Kock, of whom it is said that when the news of his death
reached Pius the Ninth, his Holiness dropped a tear and
exclaimed :
" Mio caro Paolo di Kocco !"
Now and then the Abbe would bring with him a dis-
tinguished young priest, a Dominican also a professor ;
* (" tin malheureux, v6tu de noir,
Qui me ressemblait comme un frSre . . ." ED.)
15
226
Father Louis, of the princely house of Aremberg, who
died a Cardinal three years ago.
Father Louis had an admirable and highly cultivated
musical gift, and played to them Beethoven and Mozart,
Schubert, Chopin, and Schumann and this music, as
long as it lasted (and for some time after), was to Barty
as great a source of consolation as of unspeakable delight;
and therefore to his aunt also. Though I'm afraid she
preferred any little French song of Barty's to all the
Schumanns in the world.
First of all, the priest would play the " Moonlight So-
nata," let us say; and Barty would lean back and listen
with his eyes shut, and almost believe that Beethoven
was talking to him like a father, and pointing out to him
how small was the difference, really, between the greatest
earthly joy and the greatest earthly sorrow : these were
not like black and white, but merely different shades of
gray, as on moonlit things a long way off ! and Time,
what a reconciler it was like distance ! and Death, what
a perfect resolution of all possible discords, and how cer-
tain ! and our own little life, how short, and without im-
portance ! what matters whether it's to-day, this small
individual flutter of ours ; or was a hundred years ago ;
or will be a hundred years hence ! it has or had to be got
through and it's better past than to come.
" It all leads to the same divine issue, my poor friend,"
said Beethoven; "why, just see here I'm stone-deaf,
and can't hear a note of what I'm singing to you ! But
it is not about that I weep, when I am weeping. It was
terrible when it first came on, my deafness, and I could
no longer hear the shepherd's pipe or the song of the
lark ; but it's well worth going deaf, to hear all that / do.
I have to write everything down, and read it to myself ;
and my tears fall on the ruled paper, and blister the lines,
228
and make the notes run into each other ; and when I try
to blot it all out, there's that still left on the page, which,
turned into sound by good father Louis the Dominican,
will tell you, if you can only hear it aright, what is not
to be told in any human speech ; not even that of Plato,
or Marcus Aurelius, or Erasmus, or Shakespeare ; not
even that of Christ himself, who speaks through me from
His unknown grave, because I am deaf and cannot hear
the distracting words of men poor, paltry words at their
best, which mean so many things at once that they mean
just nothing at all. It's a Tower of Babel. Just stop
your ears and listen with your heart and you will hear all
that you can see when you shut your eyes or have lost
them and those are the only realities, mem armer
Barty !"
Then the good Mozart would say :
"Lieber Barty I'm so stupid about earthly things
that I could never even say Boh to a goose, so I can't
give you any good advice ; all my heart overflowed into
my brain when I was quite a little boy and made music
for grown-up people to hear ; from the day of my birth
to my fifth birthday I had gone on remembering every-
thing, but learning nothing new remembering all that
music !
"And I went on remembering more and more till I
was thirty-five ; and even then there was such a lot more
of it where that came from that it tired me^to try and
remember so much and I went back thither. And
thither back shall you go too, Barty when you are
some thirty years older !
"And you already know from me how pleasant life is
there how sunny and genial and gay ; and how graceful
and innocent and amiable and well-bred the natives and
what beautiful prayers we sing, and what lovely gavottes
229
and minuets we dance and how tenderly we make love
and what funny tricks we play ! and how handsome
and well dressed and kind we all are and the likes of
you, how welcome ! Thirty years is soon over, Barty,
Barty ! Bel Mazetto ! Ha, ha ! good \"
Then says the good Schubert :
" Fm a loud, rollicking, beer-drinking Kerl, I am ! Ich
bin ein lustiger Student, mein Pardy ; and full of droll
practical jokes ; worse than even you, when you were
a young scapegrace in the Guards, and wrenched off
knockers, and ran away with a poor policeman's hat !
But I don't put my practical jokes into my music ; if I
did, I shouldn't be the poor devil I am ! I'm very hungry
when I go to bed, and when I wake up in the morning I
have Katzenjammer (from an empty stomach) and a head-
ache, and a heartache, and penitence and shame and re-
morse ; and know there is nothing in this world or beyond
it worth a moment's care but Love, Love, Love ! Liebe,
Liebe ! The good love that knows neither concealment
nor shame from the love of the brave man for the
pure maiden whom he weds, to the young nun's love of
the Lord ! and all the other good loves lie between these
two, and are inside them, or come out of them, . . . and
that's the love I put into my music. Indeed, my music
is the only love I know, since I am not beautiful to the
eye, and can only care for tunes ! . . .
"But you, Pardy, are handsome and gallant and gay,
and have always been well beloved by man and woman
and child, and always will be ; and know how to love back
again even a dog ! however blind you go, you will al-
ways have that, the loving heart and as long as you can
hear and sing, you will always have my tunes to fall back
upon. ..."
"And mine!" says Chopin. "If there's one thing
230
sweeter than love, it's the sadness that it can't last ; she
loved me once and now she loves tout le monde! and
that's a little sweet melodic sadness of mine that will
never fail you, as long as there's a piano within your
reach, and a friend who knows how to play me on it for
you to hear. You shall revel in my sadness till you for-
get your own. Oh, the sorrow of my sweet pipings !
Whatever becomes of your eyes, keep your two ears for
my sake; and for your sake too! You don't know what
exquisite ears you've got. You are like me you and
I are made of silk, Barty as other men are made of
sackcloth; and their love, of ashes; and their joys, of
dust!
"Even the good priest who plays me to you so glibly
doesn't understand what I am talking about half so well
as you do, who can't read a word I write ! He had to
learn my language note by note from the best music-
master in Brussels. It's your mother - tongue ! You
learned it as you sucked at your sweet young mother's
breast, my poor love-child ! And all through her, your
ears, like your remaining eye, are worth a hatful of the
common kind and some day it will be the same with
your heart and brain. ..."
"Yes" continues Schumann "but you'll have to
suffer first like me, who will have to kill myself very
soon ; because I am going mad and that's worse than
any blindness ! and like Beethoven who went deaf, poor
demigod ! and like all the rest of us who've been singing
to you to-night; that's why our songs never pall be-
cause we are acquainted with grief, and have good mem-
ories, and are quite sincere. The older you get, the
more you will love us and our songs : other songs may
come and go in the ear; but ours go ringing in the heart
forever !"
231
In some such fashion did the great masters of tune
and tone discourse to Barty through Father Louis's
well-trained finger-tips. They always discourse to you
a little about yourself, these great masters, always; and
always in a manner pleasing to your self-love ! The fin-
ger-tips (whosesoever's finger-tips they be) have only to
be intelligent and well trained, and play just what's put
before them in a true, reverent spirit. Anything be-
yond may be unpardonable impertinence, both to the
great masters and yourself.
Musicians will tell you that all this i nonsense from
beginning to end ; you mustn't believe musicians about
music, nor wine-merchants about wine but vice versa!
When Father Louis got up from the music-stool,
the Abbe would say to Barty, in his delightful, pure
French :
" And now, mon ami just for me, you know a little
song of autrefois."
"All right, M. 1'Abbe I will sing you the 'Adelaide,'
of Beethoven ... if Father Louis will play for me."
" Oh, non, mon ami, do not throw away such a beauti-
ful organ as yours on such really beautiful music, which
doesn't want it ; it would be sinful waste ; it's not so
much the tune that I want to hear as the fresh young
voice ; sing me something French, something light,
something amiable and droll ; that I may forget the
song, and only remember the singer."
" All right, M. 1'Abbe," and Barty sings a delightful
little song by Gustave Nadaud, called "Petit bonhomme
vit encore."
And the good Abbe is in the seventh heaven, and quite
forgets to forget the song.
And so, cakes and wine, and good -night and M.
1'Abbe goes humming all the way home. . . .
233
"He, quoi ! pour des peccadilles
Gronder ces pauvres amours ?
Les femmes sont si gentilles,
Et 1'ou n'aime pas toujours !
C'est bonhomme
Qu'on me nomme. . . .
Ma galte, c'est mon tresor !
Et bonhomme vit encor'
Et bonhomme vit encor' !"
An extraordinary susceptibility to musical sound was
growing in Barty since his trouble had overtaken him,
and with it an extraordinary sensitiveness to the troubles
of other people, their partings and bereavements and
wants, and aches and pains, even those of people he
didn't know; and especially the woes of children, and
dogs and cats and horses, and aged folk and all the
live things that have to be driven to market and killed
for our eating or shot at for* our fun !
All his old loathing of sport had come back, and he
was getting his old dislike of meat once more, and to
sicken at the sight of a butcher's shop ; and the sight of
a blind man stirred him to the depths . . . even when
he learnt how happy a blind man can be !
These unhappy things that can't be helped preoccupied
him as if he had been twenty, thirty, fifty years older ;
and the world seemed to him a shocking place, a gray,
bleak, melancholy hell where there was nothing but sad-
ness, and badness, and madness.
And bit by bit, but very soon, all his old trust in an
all-merciful, all-powerful ruler of the universe fell from
him; he shed it like an old skin; it sloughed itself
away ; and with it all his old conceit of himself as a
very fine fellow, taller, handsomer, cleverer than any-
body else, "bar two or three"! Such darling beliefs are
233
the best stays we can have ; and he found life hard to
face without them.
And he got as careful of his aunt Caroline, and as
anxious about her little fads and fancies and ailments,
as if he'd been an old woman himself.
Imagine how she grew to dote on him !
And he quite lost his old liability to sudden freaks
and fits of noisy fraction sness about trifles when he
would stamp and rave and curse and swear, and be quite
pacified in a moment : " Soupe-au-lait," as he was nick-
named in Troplong's studio !
Besides his seton and his cuppings, dry and wet, and
his blisters on his arms and back, and his mustard
poultices on his feet and legs, and his doses of mercury
and alteratives, he had also to deplete himself of blood
three times a week by a dozen or twenty leeches behind
his left ear and on his temple. All this softens and re-
laxes the heart towards others, as a good tonic will
harden it.
So that he looked a mere shadow of his former self
when I went over to spend my Christmas with him.
And his eye was getting worse instead of better ; at
night he couldn't sleep for the fireworks it let off in the
dark. By day the trouble was even worse, as it so in-
terfered with the sight of the other eye even if he
wore a patch, which he hated. He never knew peace
but when his aunt was reading to him in the dimly
lighted room, and he forgot himself in listening.
Yet he was as lively and droll as ever, with a wan face
as eloquent of grief as any face I ever saw ; he had it in
his head that the right eye would go the same way as the
left. He could no longer see the satellites of Jupiter
with it : hardly Jupiter itself, except as a luminous blur ;
234
indeed, it was getting quite near-sighted, and f nil of spots
and specks and little movable clouds muscce volitantes,
as I believe they are called by the faculty. He was
always on the lookout for new symptoms, and never in
vain ; and his burden was as much as he could bear.
He would half sincerely long for death, of which he
yet had such a horror that he was often tempted to kill
himself to get the bother of it well over at once. The
idea of death in the dark, however remote an idea that
constantly haunted him as his own most probable end
so appalled him that it would stir the roots of his hair !
Lady Caroline confided to me her terrible anxiety,
which she managed to hide from him. She herself had
been to see M. Noiret, who was no longer so confident
and cocksure about recovery.
I went to see him too, without letting Barty know. I
did not like the man he was stealthy in look and man-
ner, and priestly and feline and sleek : but he seemed
very intelligent, and managed to persuade me that no
other treatment was even to be thought of.
I inquired about him in Brussels, and found his repu-
tation was of the highest. What could I do ? I knew
nothing of such things ! And what a responsibility for
me to volunteer advice !
I could see that my deep affection for Barty was a
source of immense comfort to Lady Caroline, for whom
I conceived a great and warm regard, besides being very
much charmed with her.
She was one of those gentle, genial, kindly, intelli-
gent women of the world, absolutely natural and sincere,
in whom it is impossible not to confide and trust.
When I left off talking about Barty, because there was
really nothing more to say, I fell into talking about my-
self : it was irresistible she made one ! I even showed
235
her Leah's last photograph, and told her of my secret
aspirations ; and she was so warmly sympathetic and
said such beautiful things to me about Leah's face and
aspect and all they promised of good that I have never
forgotten them, and never shall they showed such a
prophetic insight ! they fanned a flame that needed no
fanning, good heavens ! and rang in my ears and
my heart all the way to Barge Yard, Bucklersbury
while ,my eyes were full of Barty's figure as he again
watched me depart by the Baron Osy from the Quai de
la Place Verte in Antwerp; a sight that wrung me,
when I remembered what a magnificent figure of a youth
he looked as he left the wharf at London Bridge on the
Boulogne steamer, hardly more than two short years ago.
When I got back to London, after spending my
Christmas holiday with Barty, I found the beginning
of a little trouble of my own.
My father was abroad ; my mother and sister were
staying with some friends in Chiselhurst, and after hav-
ing settled all business matters in Barge Yard I called
at the Gibsons', in Tavistock Square, just after dusk.
Mrs. Gibson and Leah were at home, and three or four
young men were there, also calling. There had been a
party on Christmas-eve.
I'm afraid I did not think much, as a rule, of the
young men I met at the Gibsons'. They were mostly in
business, like myself ; and why I should have felt at all
supercilious I can't quite see ! But I did. Was it be-
cause I was very tall, and dressed by Barty's tailor, in
Jermyn Street ? Was it because I knew French ? Was
it because I was a friend of Barty the Guardsman, who
had never beBn supercilious towards anybody in his life ?
Or was it those maternally ancestral Irish Blakes of Der-
rydown stirring within me?
236
The simplest excuse I can make for myself is that I
was a young snob, and couldn't help it. Many fellows
are at that age. Some grow out of it, and some don't.
And the Gibsons were by way of spoiling me, because I
was Leah's bosom friend's brother, and I gave myself
airs in consequence.
As I sat perfectly content, telling Leah all about poor
Barty, another visitor was announced a Mr. Scatcherd,
whom I didn't know; but I saw at a glance that it
would not do to be supercilious with Mr. Scatcherd.
He was quite as tall as I, for one thing, if not taller.
His tailor might have been Poole himself; and he was
extremely good-looking, and had all the appearance and
manners of a man of the world. He might have been a
Guardsman. He was not that, it seemed only a barrister.
He had been at Eton, had taken his degree at Cam-
bridge, and ignored me just as frankly as I ignored
Tom, Dick, and Harry whoever they were ; and I
didn't like it at all. He ignored everybody but Leah
and her mamma : her papa was not there. It turned
out that he was the only son of the great wholesale fur-
rier in Ludgate Hill, the largest house of the kind in
the world, with a branch in New York and another in
Quebec or Montreal. He had been called to the bar to
please a whim of his father's.
He had been at the Gibson party on Christmas-eve,
and had paid Leah much attention there ; and came to
tell them that his mother hoped to call on Mrs. Gibson
on the following day. I was savagely glad that he did
not succeed in monopolizing Leah ; not even I could do
that. She was kind to us all round, and never made
any differences in her own house.
Mr. Scatcherd soon took his departure, and it was
then that I heard all about him.
ENTER MR. SCA.TCHKUD
238
There was no doubt that Mr. and Mrs. Gibson were
immensely flattered by the civilities of this very impor-
tant and somewhat consequential young man, and those
of his mother, which were to follow ; for within a week
the Gibsons and Leah dined with Mr. and Mrs. Scatch-
erd in Portland Place.
On this occasion Mr. Gibson was, as usual, very funny,
it seems. Whether his fun was appreciated I doubt, for
he confided to me that Mr. Scatcherd, senior, was a
pompous and stuck-up old ass. People have such dif-
ferent notions of what is funny. Nobody roared at Mr.
Gibson's funniments more than I did ; but he was Leah's
papa.
"Let him joke his bellyful;
I'll bear it all for Sally !"
Young Scatcherd was fond of his joke too a kind of
supersubtly satirical Cambridgy banter that was not to
my taste at all ; for I am no Cantab, and the wit of the
London Stock Exchange is subtle enough for me. His
father did not joke. Indeed he was full of useful infor-
mation, and only too fond of imparting it, and he al-
ways made use of the choicest language in doing so ;
and Mrs. Scatcherd was immensely genteel.
Young Scatcherd became the plague of my life. The
worst of it is that he grew quite civil seemed to take a
liking. His hobby was to become a good French scholar,
and he practised his French which was uncommonly
good of its English kind on me. And I am bound to
say that his manners were so agreeable (when he wasn't
joking), and he was such a thoroughly good fellow, that
it was impossible to snub him ; besides, he wouldn't have
cared if I had.
Once or twice he actually asked me to dine with him
239
at his club, and I actually did ; and actually he with me,
at mine ! And \ve spoke French all through dinner, and
I taught him a lot of French school-boy slang, with which
he was delighted. Then he came to see me in Barge
Yard, and I even introduced him to my mother and sis-
ter, who couldn't help being charmed with him. He
was fond of the best music only (he had no ear whatever,
and didn't know a note), and only cared for old pictures
the National Gallery, and all that ; and read no novels
but French Balzac and George Sand and that only
for practice ; for he was a singularly pure young man,
the purest in all Cambridge, and in those days I thought
him a quite unforgivable prig.
So Scatcherd was in my thoughts all day and in my
dreams all night a kind of incubus ; and my mother
made herself very unhappy about him, on Leah's account
and mine ; except that now and then she would fancy it
was Ida he was thinking of. And that would have
pleased my mother very much ; and me too !
His mother called on mine, who returned the call
but there was no invitation for us to dine in Portland
Place.
Nothing of all this interrupted for a moment the bos-
om-friendship between my sister and Leah ; nothing ever
altered the genial sweetness of Leah's manners to me, nor
indeed the cordiality of her parents : Mr. Gibson could
not get on without that big guffaw of mine, at whatever
he looked or said or did ; no Scatcherd could laugh as
loudly and as readily as I ! But I was very wretched in-
deed, and poured out my woes to Barty in long letters of
poetical Blaze, and he would bid me hope and be of good
cheer in his droll way ; and a Blaze letter from him
would hearten me up wonderfully till I was told of
Leah's going to the theatre with Mrs. Scatcherd and her
240
son, or saw his horses and groom parading up and down
Tavistock Square while he was at the Gibsons', or heard
of his dining there without Ida or me !
Then one fine day in April (the first, I verily believe)
young Scatcherd proposed to Leah and was refused
unconditionally refused to the deep distress and dismay
of her father and mother, who had thoroughly set their
hearts on this match ; and no wonder !
But Leah was an obstinate young woman, it seems, and
thoroughly knew her own mind, though she was so young
not seventeen.
Was I a happy man ? Ah, wasn't I ! I was sent to
Bordeaux by my father that very week on business and
promised myself I would soon be quite as good a catch or
match as Scatcherd himself. I found Bordeaux the sun-
niest, sweetest town I had ever been in and the Borde-
lais the jolliest men on earth ; and as for the beautiful
Bordelaises ma foi ! they might have been monkeys, for
me s ! There was but one woman among women one lily
among flowers everything else was a weed !
Poor Scatcherd ! when I met him, a few days later, he
must have been struck by the sudden warmth of my
friendship the quick idiomatic cordiality of my French
to him. This mutual friendship of ours lasted till his
death in '88. And so did our mutual French !
Except Barty, I never loved a man better ; two years
after his refusal by Leah he married my sister a happy
marriage, though a childless one ; and except myself,
Barty never had a more devoted friend. And now to
Barty I will return.
Ipart Sijtb
" From the east to western Ind,
No jewel is like Rosalind.
Her worth, being mounted on the wind,
Through all the world bears Rosalind.
All the pictures, fairest lin'd,
Are but black to Rosalind.
Let no fair be kept in mind,
But the fair of Rosalind.
"Thus Rosalind of many parts
By heavenly synod was devis'd,
Of many faces, eyes, and hearts,
To have the touches dearest priz'd."
As You Like It.
FOR many months Barty and his aunt lived their usual
life in the Rue des Ursulines Blanches.
He always looked back on those dreary montns as on
a long nightmare. Spring, summer, autumn, and an-
other Christmas ! ,
His eye got worse and worse, and so interfered with
the sight of the other that he had no peace till it was
darkened wholly. He tried another doctor Monsieur
Goyers, professor at the liberal university of Ghent
who consulted with Dr. Noiret about him one day
in Brussels, and afterwards told him that Noiret of
Louvain, whom he described as a miserable Jesuit, was
blinding him, and that he, this Goyers of Ghent, would
cure him in six weeks.
1C
242
" Mettez-vous au regime des viandes saiguantes !" had
said Noiret ; aud Barty had put himself on a diet of
underdone beef and mutton.
"Mettez-vous au lait !" said Goyers so he metted
himself at the milk, as he called it and put himself in
Goyers's hands ; and in six weeks got so much worse that
he went back to Noiret and the regimen of the bleeding
meats, which he loathed.
Then, in his long and wretched desceuvrement, his mel-
ancholia, he drifted into an indiscreet flirtation with
a beautiful lady he (as had happened before) being more
the pursued than the pursuer. And so ardent was the
pursuit that one fine morning the beautiful lady found
herself gravely compromised and there was a bother and
a row.
"Amour, amour, quand tu nous tiens,
On peut bien dire 'Adieu Prudence!'"
All this gave Lady Caroline great distress, and ended
most unhappily in a duel with the lady's husband, who
was a Colonel of Artillery, and meant business !
They fought with swords in a little wood near Laeken.
Barty, who could have run his fat antagonist through a
dozen times during the five minutes they fought, allowed
himself to be badly wounded in the side, just above the
hip, and spent a month in bed. He had hoped to man-
age for himself a slighter wound, and catch his adver-
sary's point on his elbow.
Afterwards, Lady Caroline, who had so disapproved
of the flirtation, did not, strange to say, so disapprove of
this bloody encounter, and thoroughly approved of the
way Barty had let himself be pinked ! and nursed him
devotedly ; no mother could have nursed him better
no sister no wife ! not even the wife of that Belgian
Colonel of Artillery !
V
. 244
" II s'est conduit en homme de cceur V said the good
Abbe.
" II s'est conduit en bon gentilhomme !" said the
aristocratic Father Louis, of the princely house of Arem-
berg.
On the other hand, young de Cloves the dragoon, and
Monsieur Jean the Viscount, who had served as Barty's
seconds (I was in America), were very angry with him
for giving himself away in this "idiotically quixotic
manner."
Besides which, Colonel Lecornu was a notorious bully,
it seems ; and a fool into the bargain ; and belonged to a
branch of the service they detested.
The only other thing worth mentioning is that Barty
and Father Louis became great friends almost insepa-
rable during such hours as the Dominican could spare
from the duties of his professorate.
It speaks volumes for all that was good in each of
them that this should have been so, since they were wide
apart as the poles in questions of immense moment:
questions on which I will not enlarge, strongly as I feel
about them myself for this is not a novel, but a biog-
raphy, and therefore no fit place for the airing of one's
own opinion on matters so grave and important.
When they parted they constantly wrote to each other
an intimate correspondence that was only ended by
the Father's death.
Barty also made one or two other friends in Malines,
and was often in Antwerp and Brussels, but seldom for
more than a few hours, as he did not like to leave his
aunt alone.
One day came, in April, on which she had to leave
him.
A message arrived that her father, the old Marquis
SO NEAK AND YET SO FAR
246
(Barty's grandfather), was at the point of death. He was
ninety-six. He had expressed a wish to see her once
more, although he had long been childish.
So Barty saw her off, with her maid, by the Baron
Osy. She promised to be back as soon as all was over.
Even this short parting was a pain they had grown so
indispensable to each other.
Tescheles was away from Antwerp, and the discon-
solate Barty went back to Malines and dined by himself;
and little Frau waited on him with extra care.
It turned out that her mother had cooked for him a
special dish of consolation sausage-meat stewed inside
a red cabbage, with apples and cloves, till it all gets
mixed up. It is a dish not to be beaten when you are
young and Flemish and hungry and happy and well (even
then you mustn't take more than one helping). When
you are not all this it is good to wash it down with half
a bottle of the best Burgundy and this Barty did (from
Vougeot-Conti and Co.).
Then he went out and wandered about in the dark
and lost himself in a dreamy daedalus of little streets
and bridges and canals and ditches. A huge comet
(Encke's, I believe) was flaring all over the sky.
He suddenly came across the lighted window of a small
estaminet, and went in.
It was a little beer-shop of the humblest kind and
just started. At a little deal table, brand-new, a mid-
dle-aged burgher of prosperous appearance was sitting
next to the barmaid, who had deserted her post at the
bar and to whom he seemed somewhat attentive ; for
their chairs were close together, and their arms round
each other's waists, and they drank out of the same
glass.
There was no one else in the room, and Barty was
247
about to make himself scarce, but they pressed him to
come in ; so he sat at another little new deal table on a
little new straw-bottomed chair, and she brought him a
glass of beer. She was a very handsome girl, with a tall,
graceful figure and Spanish eyes. He lit a cigar, and
she went back to her beau quite simply and they all
three fell into conversation about an operetta by Victor
Masse, which had been performed in Malines the pre-
vious night, called Les Noces de Jeannette.
The barmaid and her monsieur were trying to remem-
ber the beautiful air Jeannette sings as she mends her
angry husband's breeches :
" Cours, mon aiguille, dans la laine !
Ne te casse pas dans ma main ;
Avec de bons baisers demain
Jean nous palra de notre peine !"
So Barty sang it to them ; and so beautifully that they
were all but melted to tears especially the monsieur,
who was evidently very sentimental and very much in
love. Besides, there was that ineffable charm of the pure
French intonation, so caressing to the Belgian ear, so
dear to the Belgian soul, so unattainable by Flemish
lips. It was one of Barty's most successful ditties
and if I were a middle-aged burgher of Mechelen, I
shouldn't much like to have a young French Barty
singing ' ' Cours, mon aiguille " to the girl of my
heart.
Then, at their desire, he went on singing things till
it was time to leave, and he found he had spent quite
a happy evening ; nothing gave him greater pleasure
than singing to people who liked it and he went sing-
ing on his way home, dreamily staring at the rare gas-
lamps and the huge comet, and thinking of his old grand-
248
father who lay dying or dead : "Cours, mon aiguille, it
is good to live it is good to die \"
Suddenly he discovered that when he looked at one
lamp, another lamp close to it on the right was com-
pletely eclipsed and he soon found that a portion of his
right eye, not far from the centre, was totally sightless.
The shock was so great that he had to lean against
a buttress of St. Rombaulc for support.
When he got home he tested the sight of his eye with
a two-franc piece on the green table-cloth, and found
there was no mistake a portion of his remaining eye
was stone-blind.
He spent a miserable night, and went next day to
Louvain, to see the oculist.
M. Noiret heard his story, arranged the dark room
and the lamp, dilated the right pupil with atropine, and
made a minute examination with the ophthalmoscope.
Then he became very thoughtful, and led the way to
his library and begged Barty to sit down ; and began to
talk to him very seriously. indeed, like a father patting
the while a small Italian greyhound that lay and shiv-
ered and whined in a little round cot by the fire.
M. Noiret began by inquiring into his circumstances,
which were not flourishing, as we know and Barty made
no secret of them ; then he asked him if he were fond of
music, and was pleased to hear that he was, since it is such
an immense resource ; then he asked him if he belonged
to the Roman Catholic faith, and again was pleased.
"For" said he "you will need all your courage
and all your religion to hear and bear what it is my
misfortune to have to tell you. I hope you will have
more fortitude than another young patient of mine (also
an artist) to whom I was obliged to make a similar com-
munication. He blew out his brains on my door-step I"
249
" I promise yon I will not do that. I suppose I am
going blind ?"
" Helas ! mon jeune ami ! I grieve to say that the
fatal disease, congestion ad detachment of the retina,
which has so obstinately and irrevocably destroyed your
left eye, has begun its terrible work on the right. We
will fight for every inch of the way. But I fear I
must not give you any hope, after the careful exami-
nation I have just made. It is my duty to be frank with
you."
Then he said much about the will of God, and where
true comfort was to be found, at the foot of the Cross ;
in fact, he said all he ought to have said according to
his lights, as he fondled his little greyhound and finally
took Barty to the door, which he opened for him, most
politely bowing with his black velvet skull-cap ; and
pocketed his full fee (ten francs) with his usual grace of
careless indifference, and gently shut the door on him.
There was nothing else to do.
Barty stood there for some time, quite dazed ; partly
because his pupil was so dilated he could hardly see
partly (he thinks) because he in some way became un-
conscious ; although when he woke from this little
seeming trance, which may have lasted for more than a
minute, he found himself still standing 'upright on his
legs. What woke him was the sudden consciousness of
the north, which he hadn't felt for many years ; and this
gave him extraordinary confidence in himself, and such
a wholesome sense of power and courage that he quickly
recovered his wits ; and when the glad surprise of this
had worn itself away he was able to think and realize the
terrible thing that had happened. He was almost pleased
that his aunt Caroline was away. He felt he could not
have faced her with such news it was a thing easier
to write and prepare her for than to tell by word of
mouth.
He walked about Louvain for several hours, to tire
himself. Then he went toBrussels and dined, and
again walked about the lamp-lit streets and up and down
the station, and finally went back to Malines by a late
train very nervous expecting that the retina of his
right eye would suddenly go pop yet hugging himself
all the while in his renewed old comfortable feeling of
companionship with the north pole, that made him feel
like a boy again ; that inexplicable sensation so inti-
mately associated with all the best reminiscences of his
innocent and happy childhood.
He had been talking to himself like a father all day,
though not in the same strain as M. Noiret ; and had
almost arrived at framing the programme of a possible
existence singing at cafes with his guitar singing any-
where : he felt sure of a living for himself, and for the
little boy who would have to lead him about if the
worst came to the worst.
If but the feeling of self-orientation which was so
necessary to him could only be depended upon, he felt
that in time he would have pluck enough to bear any-
thing. Indeed, total eclipse was less appalling, in its
finality, than that miserable sword of Damocles which
had been hanging over him for months robbing him of
his manhood poisoning all the springs of life.
Why not make life-long endurance of evil a study, a
hobby, and a pride ; and be patient as bronze or marble,
and ever wear an invincible smile at grief, even when in
darkness and alone ? Why not, indeed !
And he set himself then and there to smile invincibly,
meaning to keep on smiling for fifty years at least the
blind live long.
252
So he chatted to himself, saying Sursum cor ! sursum
corda ! all the way home ; and walking down the Grand
Brul, he had a little adventure which absolutely gave
him a hearty guffaw and sent him almost laughing to
bed.
There was a noisy squabble between some soldiers and
civilians on the opposite side of the way, and a group of
men in blouses were looking on. Barty stood leaning
against a lamp-post, and looked on too.
Suddenly a small soldier rushed at the blouses, bran-
dishing his short straight sword (or coupe-choux, as it is
called in civilian slang), and saying :
" Qa ne vous regarde pas, savez-vous ! allez-vous en
bien vite, ou je vous . . ."
The blouses fled like sheep.
Then as he caught sight of Barty he reached at him.
" Qa ne vous regarde pas, savez-vous ! . . . "
(It doesn't concern you.)
"Non c'est moi qui regarde, savez-vous !" said Barty.
" Qu'est-ce que vous regardez ?"
"Je regarde la lune et les etoiles. Je regarde la
comete !"
" Voulez-vous bien vous en aller bien vite ?"
" Une autre fois !" says Barty.
"Allez-vous en, je vous dis !"
" Apres-demain !"
" Vous ... ne ... voulez . . . pas . . . vous ... en ...
aller ?" says the soldier, on tiptoe, his chest against
Barty's stomach, his nose almost up to Barty 's "chin,
glaring up like a fiend and poising his coupe-choux for a
death-stroke.
" Non, sacre petit pousse - cailloux du diable !" roars
Barty.
" Eh bien, restez ou vous etes !" and the little man
253
plunged back into the fray on the opposite side and no
blood was shed after all.
Barty dreamt of this adventure, and woke up laughing
at it in the small hours of that night. Then, suddenly,
in the dark, he remembered the horror of what had hap-
pened. It overwhelmed him. He realized, as in a sud-
den illuminating flash, what life meant for him hence-
forward life that might last for so many years.
Vitality is at its lowest ebb at that time of night ;
though the brain is quick to perceive, and so clear that
its logic seems inexorable.
It was hell. It was not to be borne a moment longer.
It must be put an end to at once. He tried to feel
the north, but could not. He would kill himself then
and there, while his aunt was away ; so that the hor-
ror of the sight of him, after, should at least be spared
her.
He jumped out of bed and struck a light. Thank
Heaven, he wasn't blind yet, though he saw all the
bogies, as he called them, that had made his life a bur-
den to him for the last two years the retina floating
loose about his left eye, tumbling and deforming every
lighted thing it reflected and also the new dark spot in
his right.
He partially dressed, and stole up-stairs to old Torfs's
photographic studio. He knew where he could find a
bottle full of cyanide of potassium, used for removing
finger-stains left by silver nitrate ; there was enough of
it to poison a whole regiment. That was better than
taking a header off the roof. He seized a handful of the
stuff, and came down and put it into a tumbler by his
bedside and poured some water over it.
Then he got his writing-case and a pen and ink, and
jumped into bed; and there he wrote four letters : one
254
to Lady Caroline, one to .Father Louis, one to Lord
Archibald, and one to me in Blaze.
The cyanide was slow in melting. He crushed it an-
grily in the glass with his penholder and the scent of
bitter-almonds filled the room. Just then the sense of
the north came back to him in full ; but it only strength-
ened his resolve and made him all the calmer.
He lay staring at the tumbler, watching little bubbles,
revelling in what remained of his exquisite faculty of
minute sight with a feeling of great peace ; and thought
prayerfully ; lost himself in a kind of formless prayer
without words lost himself completely. It was as if the
wished-for dissolution were coming of its own accord ;
Nirvana an ecstasy of conscious annihilation the
blessed end, the end of all ! as though he were passing
". . . . du sommeil au songe
Du songe & la mort."
It was not so. ...
He was aroused by a knock at the door, which was
locked. It was broad daylight.
"II est dix heures, savez-vous ?" said little Frau out-
side " voulez-vous votre cafe dans votre chambre ?"
"0 Christ!" said Barty and jumped out of bed.
" It's all got to be done now !"
But something very strange had happened.
The tumbler was still there, but the cyanide had dis-
appeared ; so had the four letters he had written. His
pen and ink were on the table, and on his open writiug-
case lay a letter in Blaze in his own handwriting. The
north was strong in him. He called out to Finche
Torfs to leave his coffee in the drawing-room, and read
his blaze letter and this is what he read :
255
" MY DEAR BARTY, Don't be in the least alarmed
on reading this hasty scrawl, after waking from the sleep
you meant to sleep forever. There is no sleep without a
live body to sleep in no such thing as everlasting sleep.
Self-destruction seems a very simple thing more often
a duty than not ; but it's not to be done ! It is quite
impossible not to be, when once you have been.
" If I were to let you destroy your body, as you were
so bent on doing, the strongest interest I have on earth
would cease to exist.
" I love you, Barty, with a love passing the love of
woman ; and have done so from the day you were born.
I loved your father and mother before you and theirs ;
9a date de loin, mon pauvre ami ! and- especially I love
your splendid body and all that belongs to it brain,
stomach, heart, and the rest ; even your poor remaining
eye, which is worth all the eyes of Argus !
" So I have used your own pen and ink and paper,
your own right hand and brain, your own cipher, and the
words that are yours, to write you this in English. I
like English better than French.
"Listen. Monsieur Noiret is a fool ; and you are a
poor self-deluded hypochondriac.
" I am convinced your right eye is safe for many years
to come probably for the rest of your life.
"You have quite deceived yourself in fancying that
the symptom you perceived in your right eye threatens
the disease which has destroyed your left for the sight
of that, alas ! is irretrievably gone; so don't trouble about
it any more. It will always be charming to look at, but
it will never see again. Some day I will tell you how you
came to lose the use of it. I think I know.
"M. Noiret is new to the ophthalmoscope. The old
humbug never saw your right retina at all nor your left
256
one either, for that matter. He only pretended, and
judged entirely by what you told him ; and you didn't
tell him very clearly. He's a Belgian, you know, and a
priest, and doesn't think very quick.
"/saw your retina, although but with his eye. There
is no sign of congestion or coming detachment whatever.
That blind portion you discovered is in every eye. It is
called the ' punctum caecum? It is where the optic nerve
enters the retina and spreads out. It is only with one
eye shut that an ordinary person can find it, for each eye
supplements this defect of the other. To-morrow morn-
ing try the experiment on little Finche Torfs ; on any
one you meet. You will find it in everybody.
" So don't trouble about either eye any more. I'm not
infallible, of course ; it's only your brain I'm using now.
But your brain is infinitely better than that of poor M.
Noiret, who doesn't know what his eye really perceives,
and takes it for something else ! Your brain is the best
brain I know, although you are not aware of this, and
have never even used it, except for trash and nonsense.
But you shall some day. I'll take care of that, and the
world shall wonder.
" Trust me. Live on, and I will never desert you
again, unless you again force me to by your conduct. I
have come back to you in the hour of your need.
" I have managed to make you, in your sleep, throw
away your poison where it will injure nobody but the
rats, and no one will be a bit the wiser. I have made
you burn your touching letters of farewell ; you will find
the ashes inside the stove. Yours is a good heart !
" Now take a cold bath and have a good breakfast, and
go to Antwerp or Brussels and sea people and amuse
yourself.
"Never see M. Noiret again. But when your aunt
257
comes back you must both clear out of this depressing
priestly hole ; it doesn't suit either of you, body or mind.
Go to Dusseldorf, in Prussia. Close by, at a village
called Riffrath, lives an old doctor, Dr. Hasenclever, who
understands a deal about the human heart and something
about the human body ; and even a little about the hu-
man eye, for he is a famous oculist. He can't cure, but
he'll give you things that at least will do you no harm.
He won't rid you of the eye that remains ! You will
meet some pleasant English people, whom I particularly
wish you to meet, and make friends, and have a holiday
from trouble, and begin the world anew.
"As to who / am, you shall know in time. My
power to help you is very limited, but my devotion to
you (for very good reasons) has no limits at all.
" Take it that my name is Martia. When you have fin-
ished reading this letter look at yourself in your looking-
glass and say (loud enough for your own ears to hear you):
" ' I trust you, Martia !'
" Then I will leave you for a while, and come back at
night, as in the old days. Whenever the north is in you,
there am I ; seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling
with your five splendid wits by day sleeping your love-
ly sleep at night ; but only able to think with your brain,
it seems, and then only when you are fast asleep. I only
found it out just now, and saved your earthly life, mon
beau somnambule ! It was a great surprise to me !
" Don't mention this to any living soul till I give you
leave. You will only hear from me on great occasions.
" MARTIA."
" P. S. Always leave something to write with by your
bedside at night, in case the great occasion should arise.
On ne sait pas ce qui pent arriver !"
17
258
Bewildered, beside himself, Barty ran to his looking-
glass, and stared himself out of countenance, and almost
, shouted :
" I trust you, Martia !"
And ceased suddenly to feel the north.
Then he dressed and went to breakfast. Little Fran
thought he had gone mad, for he put a five-franc piece
upon the carpet, and made her stand a few feet off from
it and cover her left eye with her hand.
"Now follow the point of my stick with your right
eye/' says he, "and tell me if the five-franc piece disap-
pears."
And he slowly drew with the point of his stick an im-
aginary line from the five-franc piece to the left of her,
at right angles to where she stood. When the point of
the stick was about two feet from the coin, she said :
" Tiens, tiens, I no longer see the piece !"
When the point of the stick had got a foot farther on,
she said, "Now I can see the piece again quite plain."
Then he tried the same experiment on her left eye,
rightwards, with the same result. Then he experiment-
ed with equal success on her father and mother, and
found that every eye at No. 36 Rue des Ursulines Blanches
had exactly the same blind spot as his own.
Then off he went to Antwerp to see his friends with a
light heart the first light heart he had known for many
months ; but when he got there he was so preoccupied
with what had happened that he did not care to see any-
body.
He walked about the ramparts and along the Scheldt,
and read and re-read that extraordinary letter.
Who and what could Martia be ?
The reminiscence of some antenatal incarnation of
his own soul ? the soul of some ancestor or ancestress
259
of his mother, perhaps ? or, perhaps, some occult portion
of himself of his own brain in unconscious cerebration
during sleep ?
As a child and a small boy, and even as a very young
man, he had often dreamt at night of a strange, dim
land by the sea, a land unlike any land he had ever be-
held with the waking eye, where beautiful aquatic peo-
ple, mermen and mermaids and charming little mer-
children (of which he was one) lived an amphibious life
by day, diving and sporting in the waves.
Splendid caverns, decorated with precious stones, and
hung with soft moss, and shining with a strange light ;
heavenly music, sweet, affectionate caresses and then
total darkness ; and yet one knew who and what and
where everything and everybody was by some keener
sense than that of sight.
It all seemed strange and delightful, but so vague
and shadowy it was impossible to remember anything
clearly; but ever pervading all things was that feeling
of the north which had always been such a comfort to
him.
Was this extraordinary letter the result of some such
forgotten dream he may have had during the previous
night, and which may have prompted him to write it in
his sleep ? some internal knowledge of the anatomy of
his own eye which was denied to him when awake ?
Anyhow, it was evidently true about that blind spot
in the retina (the punctum ccecum), and that he had been
frightening himself out of his wits for nothing, and that
his right eye was really sound ; and, all through this won-
drous yet simple revelation, it was time this old hyster-
ical mock-disease should die.
Once more life was full of hopes and possibilities, and
with such inarticulate and mysterious promptings as he
260
often felt within his soul, and such a hidden gift to
guide them, what might he not one day develop into ?
Then he went and found Tescheles, and they dined
together with a famous pianist, Louis Brassin, and after-
wards there was music, and Barty felt the north, and his
bliss was transcendent as he went back to Malines by the
last train talking to Martia (as he expressed it to him-
self) in a confidential whisper which he made audible to
his own ear (that she, if it was a she, might hear too) ;
almost praying, in a fervor of hope and gratitude ; and
begging for further guidance; and he went warmly to
sleep, hugging close within himself, somewhere about the
region of the diaphragm, an ineffable imaginary some-
thing which he felt to be more precious than any posses-
sion that had ever yet been his more precious even than
the apple of his remaining eye ; and when he awoke next
morning he felt he had been most blissfully dreaming
all night long, but could not remember anything of his
dreams, and on a piece of paper he had left by his bed-
side was written in pencil, in his own blaze :
"You must depend upon yourself, Barty, not on me.
Follow your own instincts when you feel you can do so
without self-reproach, and all will be well with you. M."
His instincts led him to spend the day in Brussels, and
he followed them ; he still wanted to walk about and
muse and ponder, and Brussels is a very nice, gay, and
civilized city for such a purpose a little Paris, with
charming streets and shops and a charming arcade, and
very good places to eat and drink in, and hear pretty
music.
He did all this, and spent a happy day.
He came to the conclusion that the only way to keenly
appreciate and thoroughly enjoy the priceless gift of
261
sight in one eye was to lose that of the other ; in the
kingdom of the blind the one-eyed is king, and he fully
revelled in the royalty that was now his, he hoped, for
evermore ; but wished for himself as limited a kingdom
and as few subjects as possible.
Then back to Malines by the last train and the sen-
sation of the north, and a good-night ; but no message
in the morning no message from Martia for many
mornings to come.
He received, however, a long letter from Lady Caro-
line.
The old Marquis had died without pain, and with
nearly all his family round him ; but perfectly childish,
as he had been for two or three years. He was to be
buried on the following Monday.
Barty wrote a long letter in reply, telling his aunt how
much better he had suddenly become in health and spir-
its ; how he had thought of things, and quite reconciled
himself at last to the loss of his left eye, and meant to
keep the other and make the best of it he could ; how he
had heard of a certain Doctor Hasenclever, a famous
oculist near Diisseldorf, and would like to consult him ;
how Dtisseldorf was such a healthy town, charming and
gay, full of painters and soldiers, the best and nicest
people in the world and also very cheap. Mightn't
they try it ?
He was very anxious indeed to go back to his paint-
ing, and Diisseldorf was as good a school as any, etc.,
etc., etc. He wrote pages of the kind he knew she
would like, for it was of the kind he liked writing to
her ; they understood each other thoroughly, he and
Lady Caroline, and well he knew that she could only be
quite happy in doing whatever he had most at heart.
How he longed to tell her everything ! but that must
262
not be. I can imagine all the deep discomfort to poor
Barty of having to be discreet for the first time in his
life, of having to keep a secret and from his beloved
Aunt Caroline of all people in the world !
That was a happy week he spent mostly in Antwerp
among the painters. He got no more letters from Mar-
tia, not for many days to come ; but he felt the north
every night as he sank into healthy sleep, and woke in
the morning full of hope and confidence in himself at
last sans peur et sans reproche.
One day in Brussels he met M. Noiret, who naturally
put on a very grave face ; they shook hands, and Barty
inquired affectionately after the little Italian greyhound,
and asked what was the French for "punctum ccecum."
Said Noiret: "Ca s'appelle le point cache c'est une
portion de la retine avec laquelle on ne peut pas
voir. ..."
Barty laughed and shook hands again, and left the
Professor staring.
Then he was a great deal with Father Louis. They
went to Ghent together, and other places of interest;
and to concerts in Brussels.
The good Dominican was very sorrowful at the pros-
pect of soon losing his friend. Poor Barty ! The trial
it was to him not to reveal his secret to this singularly
kind and sympathetic comrade ; not even under the seal
of confession ! So he did not confess at all ; although
he would have confessed anything to Father Louis, even
if Father Louis had not been a priest. There are the
high Catholics, who understand the souls of others, and
all the difficulties of the conscience, and do not prosely-
tize in a hurry ; and the low Catholics, the converts of
the day before yesterday, who will not let a body be !
Father Louis was a very high Catholic indeed.
263
The Lady Caroline Grey, 12A Seamore Place, London,
to M. Josselin, 36 Rue des TJrsuliues Blanches, Ma-
lines :
"MY DEAR LITTLE BARTY, Your nice long letter
made me very happy happy beyond description ; it
makes me almost jealous to think that you should have
suddenly got so much better in your health and spirits
while I was away : you won't want me any more ! That
doesn't prevent my longing to get back to you. You
must put up with your poor old aunty for a little while yet.
"And now for my news I couldn't write before.
Poor papa was buried on Monday, and we all came back
here next day. He has left you 200 : c'est toujours
9a ! Everything seems in a great mess. Your Uncle
Runswick* is going to be very poor indeed ; he is going
to let Castle Rohan, and live here all the year round.
Poor fellow, he looks as old as his father did ten years
ago, and he's only sixty-three ! If Algy could only make
a good marriage ! At forty that's easier said than done.
"Archibald and his wife are at a place called Monte
Carlo, where there are gaming-tables : she gambles fear-
fully, it seems ; and they lead a cat-and-dog life. She is
plus que coquette, and extravagant to a degree ; and he is
quite shrunk and prematurely old, and almost shabby,
and drinks more brandy than he ought.
" Daphne is charming, and is to come out next spring ;
she will have 3000 a year, lucky child ; all out of choc-
olate. What nonsense we've all talked about trade ! we
shall all have to take to it in time. The Lonlay-Savignac
people were wise in their generation.
" And what do you think ? Young Digby-Dobbs wants
* The new Marquis of Whitby.
264
to marry her, out of the school-room ! He'll be Lord
Frognal, you know; and very soon, for his father is drink-
ing himself to death.
"He's in your old regiment, and a great favorite ; not
yet twenty he only left Eton last Christmas twelve-
month. She says she won't have him at any price, be-
cause he stammers.
" She declares you haven't written to her for three
months, and that you owe her an illustrated letter in
French, with priests and nuns, and dogs harnessed to a
cart.
"And now for news that will delight you : She is to
come abroad with me for a twelvemonth, and wishes to
go with you and me to Diisseldorf first ! Isn't that a
happy coincidence ? We would all spend the summer
there, and then Italy for the winter ; you too, if you can
(so you must be economical with that 200).
" I have already heard wonders about Dr. Hasenclever,
even before your letter came ; he cured General Baines,
who was given up by everybody here, Lady Palmerston
told me ; she was here yesterday, by-the-bye, and the
Duchess of Bermondsey, and both inquired most kindly
after you.
" The Duchess looked as handsome as ever, and as
proud as a peacock ; for last year she presented her
niece, Julia Royce, 'the divine Julia,' the greatest
beauty ever seen, I am told with many thousands a year,
if you please Lady Jane Royce's daughter, an only
child, and her father's dead. She's six feet high, so you
would go mad about her. She's already refused sixty
offers, good ones ; among them little Lord Orrisroot, the
hunchback, who'll have 1000 a day (including Sundays)
when he comes into the title and that can't be very far
off, for the wicked old Duke of Deptford has got creep-
265
ing paralysis, like his father and grandfather before him,
and is now quite mad, and thinks himself a postman, and
rat-tats all day long on the furniture. Lady Jane is furi-
ous with her for not accepting ; and when Julia told her,
she slapped her face before the maid !
" There's another gigantic beauty that people have
gone mad about a Polish pianist, who's just married
young Harcourt, who's a grandson of that old scamp the
Duke of Towers.
" Talking of beauties, whom do you think I met yester-
day in the Park ? Whom but your stalwart friend Mr.
Maurice (he wasn't the beauty), with his sister, your old
Paris playfellow, and the lovely Miss Gibson. He intro-
duced them both, and I was delighted with them, and we
walked together by the Serpentine ; and after five min-
utes I came to the conclusion that Miss Gibson is as
beautiful as it is possible for a dark beauty to be, and as
nice as she looks. She isn't dark really, only her eyes
and hair ; her complexion is like cream : she's a freak of
nature. Lucky young Maurice if she is to be his fate
and both well off, I suppose.
"Upon my word, if you were King Cophetua and she
the beggar-maid, I would give you both my blessing.
But how is it you never fell in love with the fair Ida?
You never told me how handsome she is. She too com-
plained of you as a correspondent, and declares that she
gets one letter in return for three she writes you.
"I have bought you some pretty new songs, among
others one by Charles Kingsley, which is lovely ; about
three fishermen and their wives : it reminds one of our
dear Whitby ! I can play the accompaniment in per-
fection, and all by heart !
" Give my kindest remembrances to Father Louis and
the dear Abbe Lefebvre, and say kind things from me to
266
the Torfses. Martha sends her love to little Frau, and
so do I.
" We hope to be in Antwerp in a fortnight, and shall
put up at the Grand Laboureur. I shall go to Malines,
of course, to say good-bye to people. *
" Tell the Torfses to get my things ready for moving.
There will be five of us : I and Martha, and Daphne and
two servants of her own ; for Daphne's got to take old
Mrs. Richards, who won't be parted from her.
"Good-bye for the present. My dear boy, I thank
God on my knees night and morning for having given
you back to me in my old age.
" Your ever affectionate aunt,
" CAROLINE.
" P. S. You remember pretty little Kitty Hardwicke
you used to flirt with, who married young St. Clair,
who's now Lord Kidderminster ? She's just had three
at a birth ; she had twins only last year ; the Queen's
delighted. Pray be careful about never getting wet
feet"
One stormy evening in May, Mrs. Gibson drove Ida
and Leah and me and Mr. Babbage, a middle-aged but
very dapper War Office clerk (who was a friend of the
Gibson family), to Chelsea, that we might explore Cheyne
Walk and its classic neighborhood. I rode on the box
by the coachman.
We alighted by the steamboat pier and explored, I
walking with Leah.
We came to a very narrow street, quite straight, the
narrowest street that could call itself a. street at all, and
rather long; we were the only people in it. It has since
disappeared, with all that particular part of Chelsea.
Suddenly we saw a runaway horse without a rider
267
coming along it at full gallop, straight at us, with a most
demoralizing sharp clatter of its iron hoofs on the stone
pavement.
"Your backs to the wall !" cried Mr. Babbage, and
we flattened ourselves to let the maddened brute go by,
bridle and stirrups flying poor Mrs. Gibson almost faint
with terror.
Leah, instead of flattening herself against the wall,
put her arms round her mother, making of her own
body a shield for her, and looked round at the horse as
it came tearing up the street, striking sparks from the
flag-stones.
Nobody was hurt, for a wonder : but Mrs. Gibson was
quite overcome. Mr. Babbage was very angry with'
Leah, whose back the horse actually grazed, as he all
but caught his hoofs in her crinoline and hit her with a
stirrup on the shoulder.
I could only think of Leah's face as she looked round
at the approaching horse, with her protecting arms round
her mother. It was such a sudden revelation to me of
what she really was, and its expression was so hauntingly
impressive that I could think of nothing else. Its mild,
calm courage, its utter carelessness of self, its immense
tenderness all blazed out in such beautiful lines, in
such beautiful white and black, that I lost all self-con-
trol ; and when we walked back to the pier, following
the rest of the party, I asked her to be my wife.
She turned very pale again, and the flesh of her chin
quivered as she told me that was quite impossible, and
could never be.
I asked her if there was anybody else, and she said
there was nobody, but that she did not wish ever to
marry ; that, beyond her parents and Ida, she loved and
respected me more than anybody else in the whole world,
268
but that she could never marry me. She was much
agitated, and said the sweetest, kindest things, but put
all hope out of the question at once.
It was the greatest blow I have ever had in my life.
Three days after, I went to America ; and before I
came back I had started in New York the American
branch of the house of Vougeot-Conti, and laid the real
foundation of the largest fortune that has ever yet been
made by selling wine, and of the long political career
about which I will say nothing in these pages.
On my voyage out I wrote a long blaze letter to Barty,
and poured out all my grief, and my resignation to the
decree which I felt to be irrevocable. I reminded him
of that playful toss-up in Southampton Row, and told him
that, having surrendered all claims myself, the best thing
that could happen to me was that she should some day
marry him (which I certainly did not think at all likely).
So henceforward, reader, you will not be troubled by
your obedient servant with the loves of a prosperous
merchant of wines. Had those loves been more suc-
cessful, and the wines less so, you would never have
heard of either.
Whether or not I should have been a happier man in
the long-run I really can't say mine has been, on the
whole, a very happy life, as men's lives go ; but I am
bound to admit, in all due modesty, that the universe
would probably have been the poorer by some very splen-
did people, and perhaps by some very splendid things it
could ill have spared ; and one great and beautifully
borne sorrow the less would have been ushered into this
world of many sorrows.
It was a bright May morning (a year after this) when
Barty and his aunt Caroline and his cousin Daphne
269
and their servants left Antwerp for Dusseldorf on the
Ehine.
At Malines they had to change trains, and spent half
an hour at the station waiting for the express from
Brussels and bidding farewell to their Mechlin friends,
who had come there to wish them God-speed : the Abbe
Lefebvre, Father Louis, and others ; and the Torfses,
pere et mere ; and little Frau, who wept freely as Lady
Caroline kissed her and gave her a pretty little diamond
brooch. Barty gave her a gold cross and a hearty shake
of the hand, and she seemed quite heart-broken.
Then up came the long, full train, and their luggage
was swallowed, and they got in, and the two guards blew
their horns, and they left Malines behind them with a
mixed feeling of elation and regret.
They had not been very happy there, but many people
had been very kind ; and the place, with all its dreariness,
had a strange, still charm, and was full of historic beauty
and romantic associations.
Passing Louvain, Barty shook his fist at the Catholic
University and its scientific priestly professors, who con-
demned one so lightly to a living death. He hated the
aspect of the place, the very smell of it.
At Verviers they left the Belgian train ; they had
reached the limits of King Leopold's dominions. There
was half an hour for lunch in the big refreshment-room,
over which his Majesty and the Queen of the Belgians
presided from the wall nearly seven feet high each of
them, and in their regal robes.
Just as the Eohans ordered their repast another Eng-
lish party came to their table and ordered theirs a dis-
tinguished old gentleman of naval bearing and aspect ;
a still young middle-aged lady, very handsome, with
blue spectacles ; and an immensely tall, fair girl, very
270
fully developed, and so astonishingly beautiful that it
almost took one's breath away merely to catch sight of
her ; and people were distracted from ordering their
mid-day meal merely to stare at this magnificent goddess,
who was evidently born to be a mother of heroes.
These British travellers had a valet, a courier, and two
maids, and were evidently people of consequence.
Suddenly the lady with the blue spectacles (who had
seated herself close to the Rohan party) got up and came
round the table to Barty's aunt and said :
" You don't remember me, Lady Caroline ; Lady Jane
Royce !"
And an^old acquaintance was renewed in this informal
manner possibly some old feud patched up.
Then everybody was introduced to everybody else, and
they all lunched together, a scramble !
It turned out that Lady Jane Royce was in some alarm
about her eyes, and was going to consult the famous Dr.
Hasenclever, and had brought her daughter with her,
just as the London season had begun.
Her daughter was the "divine Julia" who had re-
fused so many splendid offers among them the little
hunchback Lord who was to have a thousand a day,
"including Sundays"; a most unreasonable young wom-
an, and a thorn in her mother's flesh.
The elderly gentleman, Admiral Royce, was Lady
Jane's uncle-in-law, whose eyes were also giving him a
little anxiety. He was a charming old stoic, by no means
pompous or formal, or a martinet, and declared he re-
membered hearing of Barty as the naughtiest boy in the
Guards ; and took an immediate fancy to him in con-
sequence.
They had come from Brussels in the same train that
had brought the Rohans from Malines, and they all
271
journeyed together from Verviers to Dllsseldorf in the
same first-class carriage, as became English swells of the
first water for in those days no one ever thought of
going first-class in Germany except the British aristoc-
racy and a few native royalties.
The divine Julia turned out as fascinating as she was
fair, being possessed of those high spirits that result
from youth and health and fancy-freedom, and no cares
to speak of. She was evidently also a very clever and
accomplished young lady, absolutely without affectation
of any kind, and amiable and frolicsome to the highest
degree a kind of younger Barty Josselin in petticoats ;
oddly enough, so like him in the face she might have
been his sister.
Indeed, it was a lively party that journeyed to Dttssel-
dorf that afternoon in that gorgeously gilded compart-
ment, though three out of the six were in deep mourn-
ing ; the only person not quite happy being Lady Jane,
who, in addition to her trouble about her eyes (which
was really nothing to speak of), began to fidget herself
miserably about Barty Josselin ; for that wretched young
detrimental was evidently beginning to ingratiate him-
self with the divine Julia as no young man had ever
been known to do before, keeping her in fits of laughter,
and also laughing at everything she said herself.
Alas for Lady Jane ! it was to escape the attentions of
a far less dangerous detrimental, and a far less ineligible
one, that she had brought her daughter with her all the
way to Eiffrath "from Charybdis to Scylla," as we
used to say at Brossard's, putting the cart before the
horse, more Latino !
I ought also to mention that a young Captain Graham-
Reece was a patient of Dr. Hasenclever's just then and
Captain Graham-Reece was heir to the octogenarian Earl
272
of Ironsides, who was one of the four wealthiest peers in
the United Kingdom, and had no direct descendants.
When they reached Dtisseldorf they all went to the
Breidenbacher Hotel, where rooms had been retained for
them, all but Barty, who, as became his humbler means,
chose the cheaper hotel Domhardt, which overlooks the
market-place adorned by the statue of the Elector that
Heine has made so famous.
He took a long evening walk through the vernal Hof
Gardens and by the Rhine, and thought of the beauty
and splendor of the divine Julia ; and sighed, and re-
membered that he was Mr. Nobody of Nowhere, pictor
ignotus, with only one eye he could see with, and pos-
sessed of a fortune which invested in the 3 per cents
would bring him in just 6 a year and made up his
mind he would stick to his painting and keep as much
away from her divinity as possible.
" Martia, Martia !" he said, aloud, as he suddenly
felt the north at the right of him, " I hope that you are
some loving female soul, and that you know my weak-
ness namely, that one woman in every ten thousand has
a face that drives me mad; and that I can see just as
well with one eye as with two, in spite of my punctum
ccecum! and that when that face is all but on a level
with mine, good Lord ! then am I lost indeed.! I am
but a poor penniless devil, without a name ; oh, keep
me from that ten -thousandth face, and cover my re-
treat !"
Next morning Lady Jane and Julia and the Admiral
left for Riff rath and Barty and his aunt and cousin
went in search of lodgings ; sweet it was, and bright and
sunny, as they strolled down the broad Allee Strasse ; a
regiment of Uhlans came along on horseback, splendid
fellows, the band playing the "Lorelei."
273
In the fulness of their hearts Daphne and Barty
squeezed each other's hand to express the joy and elation
they felt at the pleasantness of everything. She was his
little sister once more, from whom he had so long been
parted, and they loved each other very dearly.
" Que me voila done bien contente, mon petit Barty
et toi ? la jolie ville, hein ?"
" C'est le ciel, tout bonnement et tu vas m'apprendre
1'allemand, n'est-ce-pas, m'amour ?"
"Oui, et nous lirons Heine ensemble ; tiens, a propos !
regarde le nom de la rue qui fait le coin ! Bolker Strasse !
c'est la qu'il est ne, le pauvre Heine ! 6te ton chapeau !"
(Barty nearly always spoke French with Daphne, as he
did with my sister and me, and said " thee and thou.")
They found a furnished house that suited them in the
Schadow Strasse, opposite Geissler's, where for two hours
every Thursday and Sunday afternoon you might sit for
sixpence in a pretty garden and drink coffee, beer, or
Maitrank, and listen to lovely music, and dance in the
evening under cover to strains of Strauss, Lanner, and
Grimgl, and other heavenly waltz-makers ! With all their
faults, they know how to make the best of their lives,
these good Vaterlanders, and how to dance, and especial-
ly how to make music and also how to fight ! So we
won't quarrel with them, after all !
Barty found for himself a cheap bedroom, high up in
an immense house tenanted by many painters some of
them English and some American. He never forgot the
delight with which he awoke next morning and opened
his window and saw the silver Rhine among the trees,
and the fir-clad hills of Grafenberg, and heard the gay
painter fellows singing as they dressed ; and he called
out to the good-humored slavy in the garden below :
"Johanna, mein Frtihstiick, bitte !"
18
274
A phrase he had carefully rehearsed with Daphne the
evening before.
And, to his delight and surprise, Johanna understood
the mysterious jargon quite easily, and brought him what
he wanted with the most good-humored grin he had ever
seen on a female face.
Coffee and a roll and a pat of butter.
First of all, he went to see Dr. Hasenclever at Riffrath,
which was about half an hour by train, and then half an
hour's walk an immensely prosperous village, which owed
its prosperity to the famous doctor, who attracted pa-
tients from all parts of the globe, even from America.
The train that took Barty thither was full of them ; for
some chose to live in Dusseldorf.
The great man saw his patients on the ground-floor of
the Konig's Hotel, the principal hotel in Riffrath, the
hall of which was always crowded with these afflicted
ones patiently waiting each his turn, or hers ; and there
Barty took his place at four in the afternoon ; he had
sent in his name at 10 A.M., and been told that he would
be seen after four o'clock. Then he walked about the
village, which was charming, with its gabled white
houses, ornamented like the cottages in the Richter al-
bums by black beams and full of English, many of them
with green shades or blue spectacles or a black patch over
one eye ; some of them being led, or picking their way by
means of a stick, alas !
Barty met the three Royces, walking with an old gen-
tleman of aristocratic appearance, and a very nice-look-
ing young one (who was Captain Graham-Reece). The
Admiral gave him a friendly nod Lady Jane a nod that
almost amounted to a cut direct. But the divine Julia
gave him a look and a smile that were warm enough to
make up for much maternal frigidity.
275
Later on, in a tobacconist's shop, he again met the Ad-
miral, who introduced him to the aristocratic old gentle-
man, Mr. Beresford Duff, secretary to the Admiralty
who evidently knew all about him, and inquired quite af-
fectionately after Lady Caroline, and invited him to come
and drink tea at five o'clock : a new form of hospitality
of his own invention it has caught on !
Barty lunched at the Konig's Hotel table d'hote, which
was crowded, principally with English people, none of
whom he had ever met or heard of. But from these he
heard a good deal of the Royces and Captain Graham-
Eeece and Mr. Beresford Duff, and other smart people
who lived in furnished houses or expensive apartments
away from the rest of the world, and were objects of
general interest and curiosity among the smaller British
fry-
Riffrath was a microcosm of English society, from the
lower middle cjass upwards, with all its respectabilities
and incompatibilities and disabilities its narrownesses
and meannesses and snobbishnesses, its gossipings and
backbitings and toadyings and snubbings delicate little
social things of England that foreigners don't under-
stand !
The sensation of the hour was the advent of Julia,
the divine Julia ! Gossip was already rife about her and
Captain Reece. They had taken a long walk in the
woods together the day before with Lady Jane and the
Admiral far behind, out of ear-shot, almost out of sight !
In the afternoon, between four and five, Barty had his
interview with the doctor a splendid, white-haired old
man, of benign and intelligent aspect, almost mesmeric,
with his assistant sitting by him.
He used no new-fangled ophthalmoscope, but asked
many questions in fairly good French, and felt with his
276
fingers, and had many German asides with the assistant.
He told Barty that he had lost the sight of his left eye
forever ; but that with care he would keep that of the
right one for the rest of his life barring accidents, of
course. That he must never eat cheese nor drink beer.
That he (the doctor) would like to see him once a week
or fortnight or so for a few months yet and gave him a
prescription for an eye-lotion and dismissed him happy.
Half a loaf is so much better than no bread, if you can
only count upon it !
Barty went straight to Mr. Beresford Duff's, and there
found a very agreeable party, including the divine Julia,
who was singing little songs very prettily and accom-
panying herself on a guitar.
" * You ask me why I look so pale ?' " sang Julia, just
Barty entered : and red as a rose was she.
Lady Jane didn't seem at all overjoyed to see Barty,
but Julia did, and did not disguise the seeming.
There were eight or ten people there, and they all
appeared to know about him, and all that concerned or
belonged to him. It was the old London world over again,
in little ! the same tittle-tattle about well-known people,
and nothing else as if nothing else existed ; a genial,
easy-going, good-natured world, that he had so often
found charming for a time, but in which he was never
quite happy and had no proper place of his own, all
through that fatal bar-sinister la barre de batardise ;
a world that was his and yet not his, and in whose midst
his position was a false one, but where every one took
him for granted at once as one of them, so long as he
never trespassed beyond that sufferance ; that there must
be no love-making to lovely young heiresses by the bas-
tard of Antoinette Josselin was taken for granted also !
Before Barty had been there half an hour two or three
278
people had evidently lost their hearts to him in friend-
ship ; among them, to Lady Jane's great discomfiture, the
handsome and amiable Graham-Reece, the cynosure of
all female eyes in Riffrath ; and when Barty (after very
little pressing by Miss Royce) twanged her guitar and
sang little songs French and English, funny and sen-
timental he became, as he had so often become in other
scenes, the Rigoletto of the company ; and Riffrath was
a kingdom in which he might be court jester in ordi-
nary if he chose, whenever he elected to honor it with
his gracious and facetious musical presence.
So much for his debut in that strange little over-
grown busy village ! What must it be like now ?
Dr. Hasenclever has been gathered to his fathers long
ago, and nobody that I know of has taken his place. All
those new hotels and lodging-houses and smart shops
what can they have been turned into ? Barracks ? pris-
ons ? military hospitals and sanatoriums ? How dull !
Lady Caroline and Daphne and Barty between them
added considerably to the gayety of Diisseldorf that sum-
mer especially when Royces and Recces and Duffs and
such like people came there from Riffrath to lunch, or
tea, or dinner, or for walks or drives or rides to Grafen-
berg or Neanderthal, or steamboatings to Neuss.
There were one or two other English families in Diis-
seldorf, living there for economy's sake, but yet of the
world of the kind that got to be friends with the Ro-
hans ; half-pay old soldiers and sailors and their families,
who introduced agreeable and handsome Uhlans and
hussars from their Serene Highnesses the Princes Fritz
and Hans von Eselbraten - Himmelsblutwurst - Silber-
schinken, each passing rich on 200 a year, down to
poor Lieutenants von this or von that, with nothing but
their pay and their thirty-two quarterings.
279
Also a few counts and barons, and princes not serene,
but with fine German fortunes looming for them in the
future, though none amounting to 1000 a day, like lit-
tle Lord Orrisroot's !
Soon there was hardly a military heart left whole in
the town ; Julia had eaten them all up, except one
or two that had been unconsciously nibbled by little
Daphne.
Barty did not join in these aristocratic revels ; he had
become a pupil of Herr Duffenthaler, and worked hard
in his master's studio with two brothers of the brush
one English, the other American ; delightful men who
remained his friends for life.
Indeed, he lived among the painters, who all got to
love "der schone Barty Josselin" like a brother.
Now and then, of an evening, being much pressed by
his aunt, he would show himself at a small party in
Schadow Strasse, and sing and be funny, and attentive
to the ladies, and render himself discreetly useful and
agreeable all round and make that party go off. Lady
Caroline would have been far happier had he lived with
them altogether. But she felt herself responsible for her
innocent and wealthy little niece.
It was an article of faith with Lady Caroline that no
normal and properly constituted young woman could see
much of Barty without falling over head and ears in love
with him and this would never do for Daphne. Be-
sides, they were first-cousins. So she acquiesced in the
independence of his life apart from them. She was not
responsible for the divine Julia, who might fall in love
with him just as she pleased, and welcome ! That was
Lady Jane's lookout, and Captain G-raham-Beece's.
But Barty always dined with his aunt and cousin on
Thursdays and Sundays, after listening to the music in
280
Geissler's Garden, opposite, and drinking coffee with
them there, and also with Prince Fritz and Prince Hans,
who always joined the party and smoked their cheap
cigars ; and sometimes the divine Julia would make one
of the party too, with her mother and uncle and Captain
Reece ; and the good painter fellows would envy from
afar their beloved but too fortunate comrade ; and the
hussars and Uhlans, von this and von that, would find
seats and tables as near the princely company as pos-
sible.
And every time a general officer entered the garden, up
stood every officer of inferior rank till the great man had
comfortably seated himself somewhere in the azure sun-
shine of Julia's forget-me-not warm glance.
And before the summer had fulfilled itself, and the
roses at Geissler's were overblown, it became evident to
Lady Caroline, if to none other, that Julia had eyes for
no one else in the world but Barty Josselin. I had it
from Lady Caroline herself.
But Barty Josselin had eyes only (such eyes as they
were) for his work at Herr Duffenthaler's, and lived labo-
rious days, except on Thursday and Sunday afternoons,
and shunned delights, except to dine at the Runsberg
Speiserei with his two fellow - pupils, and Henley and
Armstrong and Bancroft and du Maurier and others,
all painters, mostly British and Yankee ; and an uncom-
monly lively and agreeable repast that was ! And after-
wards, long walks by moon or star light, or music at each
other's rooms, and that engrossing technical shop talk
that never palls on those who talk it. No Guardsman's
talk of turf or sport or the ballet had ever been so good
as this, in Barty's estimation ; no agreeable society gossip
at Mr. Beresford Duff's Riffrath tea-parties !
Once in every fortnight or so Barty would report him-
" 'YOU DON'T MEAN TO SAY YOU'RE GOING TO PAINT FOR HIRE!'"
282
self to Dr. Hasenclever, and spend the day in Riffrath
and lunch with the good old Beresford Duff, who was
very fond of him, and who lamented over his loss of caste
in devoting himself professionally to art.
" God bless me my dear Barty, you don't mean to
say you're going to paint for hire!"
" Indeed I am, if any one will hire me. How else am
I to live ?"
" Well, you know best, my dear boy ; but I should
have thought the Rohans might have got you something
better than that. It's true, Buckner does it, and Swinton,
and Francis Grant ! But still, you know . . . there are
other ways of getting on for a fellow like you. Look at
Prince Gelbioso, who ran away with the Duchess of Flit-
wick ! He didn't sing a bit better than you do, and as
for looks, you beat him hollow, my dear boy ; yet all
London went mad about Prince Gelbioso, and so did
she ; and off she bolted with him, bag arid baggage, leav-
ing husband and children and friends and all ! and she'd
got ten thousand a year of her own ; and when the
Duke divorced her they were married, and lived hap-
pily ever after in Italy; and some of the best peo-
ple called upon 'em, by George ! . . . just to spite the
Duke !"
Barty felt it would seem priggish or even insincere if
he were to disclaim any wish to emulate Prince Gelbioso ;
so he merely said he thought painting easier on the whole,
and not so risky ; and the good Beresford Duff talked of
other things of the divine Julia, and what a good thing
it would be if she and Graham- Reece could make a match
of it.
" Two of the finest fortunes in England, by George !
they ought to come together, if only just for the fun of
the thing ! Not that she is a bit in love with him I'll eat
283
my hat if she is ! What a pity you ain't goin' to be Lord
Ironsides, Barty I"
Barty frankly confessed he shouldn't much object, for
one.
" But, <ni For ni la grandeur ne nous rendent heureux,'
as we used to be taught at school."
"Ah, that's all gammon; wait till you're my age, my
young friend, and as poor as /am," said Beresford Duff.
And so the two friends talked on, Mentor and Telema-
chus and we needn't listen any further.
pajt Scventb
"Old winter was gone
In bis weakness back to the mountains hoar,
And the spring came down
From the planet that hovers upon the shore
Where the sea of sunlight encroaches
On the limits of wintry night ;
If the land, and the air, and the sea
Rejoice not when spring approaches,
We did not rejoice in thee,
Ginevra !"
SHELLEY.
RIFFKATH, besides its natives and its regular English
colony of residents, had a floating population that con-
stantly changed. And every day new faces were to be
found drinking tea with Mr. Beresford Duff and all
these faces were well known in society at home, you may
be sure ; and Barty made capital caricatures of them all,
which were treasured up and carried back to England ;
one or two of them turn up now and then at a sale at
Christie's and fetch a great price. I got a little pen-
and-ink outline of Captain Reece there, drawn before he
came into the title. I had to give forty-seven pounds
ten for it, not only because it was a speaking likeness
of the late Lord Ironsides as a young man, but on ac-
count of the little " B. J." in the corner.
And only the other evening I sat at dinner next to
the Dowager Countess. Heavens ! what a beautiful
285
creature she still is, with her prematurely white hair and
her long thick neck !
And after dinner we talked of Barty she with that
delightful frankness that always characterized her
through life, I am told :
"Dear Barty Josselin ! how desperately in love I was
with that man, to be sure ! Everybody was he might
have thrown the handkerchief as he pleased in Kiffrath,
I can tell you, Sir Robert ! He was the handsomest man
I ever saw, and wore a black pork-pie hat and a little
yellow Vandyck beard and mustache ; just the color of
Turkish tobacco, like his hair ! All that sounds odd
now, doesn't it ? Fashions have changed but not for
the better ! And what a figure ! and such fun he was !
and always in such good spirits, poor boy ! and now he's
dead, and it's one of the greatest names in all the world !
Well, if he'd thrown that handkerchief at me just about
then, I should have picked it up and you're welcome
to tell all the world so, Sir Robert !"
And next day I got a kind and pretty little letter :
"DEAR SIR ROBERT, I was quite serious last night.
Barty Josselin was rnes premieres amours ! Whether he
ever guessed it or not, I can't say. If not, he was very
obtuse ! Perhaps he feared to fall, and didn't feel fain
to climb in consequence. I all but proposed to him, in
fact ! Anyhow, I am proud my girlish fancy should have
fallen on such a man !
"I told him so myself only last year, and we had a
good laugh over old times ; and then I told his wife, and
she seemed much pleased. I can understand his pref-
erence, and am old enough to forgive it and laugh
although there is even now a tear in the laughter. You
286
know his daughter, Julia Mainwaring, is my godchild ;
sometimes she sings her father's old songs to me :
"'Petit chagriu de notre enfance
Coute un soupir !'
" Do you remember ?
" Poor Ironsides knew all about it when he married
me, and often declared I had amply made up to him
for that and many other things over and over again.
II avait bien raison ; and made of me a very happy wife
and a most unhappy widow.
"Put this in your book, if you like.
" Sincerely yours,
" JULIA IRONSIDES."
Thus time flowed smoothly and pleasantly for Barty
all through the summer. In August the Hoyces left, and
also Captain Reece they for Scotland, he for Algiers
and appointed to meet again in Riffrath next spring.
In October Lady Caroline took her niece to Rome,
and Barty was left behind to his work, very much to her
grief and Daphne's.
He wrote to them every Monday, and always got a
letter back on the Saturday following.
Barty spent the winter hard at work, but with lots of
play between, and was happy among his painter fellows
and sketching and caricaturing, and skating and sleigh-
ing with the English who remained in Dttsseldorf, and
young von this and young von that. I have many of
his letters describing this genial, easy life letters full of
droll and charming sketches.
He does not mention the fair Julia much, but there is
no doubt that the remembrance of her much preoccupied
him, and kept him from losing his heart to any of the
288
fair damsels, English and German, whom he skated and
danced with, and sketched and sang to.
As a matter of fact, he had never yet lost his heart in
his life not even to Julia. He never said much about
his love-making with Julia to me. But his aunt did
and I listened between the words, as I always do. His
four or five years' career in London as a thoroughgoing
young rake had given him a very deep insight into
woman's nature an insight rare at his age, for all his
perceptions were astonishingly acute, and his uncon-
scious faculty of sympathetic observation and induction
and deduction immense.
And, strange to say, if that heart had never been
touched, it had never been corrupted either, and prob-
ably for that very reason that he had never been in love
with these sirens. It is only when true love fades away
at last in the arms of lust that the youthful, manly heart
is wrecked and ruined and befouled.
He made up his mind that art should be his sole mis-
tress henceforward, and that the devotion of a lifetime
would not be price enough to pay for her favors, if but
she would one day be kind. He had to make up for so
much lost time, and had begun his wooing so late !
Then he was so happy with his male friends ! Whatever
void remained in him when his work was done for the
day could be so thoroughly filled up by Henley and Ban-
croft and Armstrong and du Maurier and the rest that
there was no room for any other and warmer passion.
Work was a joy by itself ; the rest from it as great a joy ;
and these alternations were enough to fill a life. To
how many great artists had they sufficed! and what hap-
py lives had been led, with no other distftiction, and how
glorious and successful ! Only the divine Julia, in all the
universe, was worthy to be weighed in the scales with
289
these, and she was not for the likes of Mr. Nobody 'of
Nowhere.
Besides, there was the faithful Martia. Punctually
every evening the ever- comforting sense of the north
filled him as he jumped into bed; and he Avhispered his
prayers audibly to this helpful spirit, or whatever it
might be, that had given him a sign and saved him from
a cowardly death, and filled his life and thoughts as even
no Julia could.
And yet, although he loved best to forgather with
those of his own sex, woman meant much for him !
There must be a woman somewhere in the world a nee-
dle in a bottle of hay a nature that could dovetail and
fit in with his own ; but what a life-long quest to find
her ! She must be young and beautiful, like Julia rien
que c.a ! and as kind and clever and simple and well-
bred and easy to live with as Aunt Caroline, and, heav-
ens ! how many things besides, before poor Mr. Nobody
of Nowhere could make her happy, and be made happy
by her !
So Mr. Nobody of Nowhere gave it up, and stuck to
his work, and made much progress, and was well content
with things as they were.
He had begun late, and found ma'ny difficulties in
spite of his great natural facility. His principal stock
in trade was his keen perception of human beauty, of
shape and feature and expression, male or female of
face or figure or movement ; and a great love and appre-
ciation of human limbs, especially hands and feet.
"With a very few little pen - strokes he could give the
most marvellously subtle likenesses of people he knew
beautiful or ordinary or plain or hideous; and the
beauty of the beautiful people, just hinted in mere out-
line, was so keen and true and fascinating that this
290
extraordinary power of expressing it amounted to real
genius.
It is a difficult thing, even for a master, to fully render
with an ordinary steel pen and a drop of common ink
(and of a size no bigger than your little finger nail) the
full face of a beautiful woman, let us say ; or a child, in
sadness or merriment or thoughtful contemplation ; and
make it as easily and unmistakably recognizable as a good
photograph, but with all the subtle human charm and
individuality of expression delicately emphasized in a
way that no photograph has ever achieved yet.
And this he could always do in a minute from sheer
memory and unconscious observation ; and in another
few minutes he would add on the body, in movement or
repose, and of a resemblance so wonderful and a grace
so enchanting, or a humor so happily, naively droll, that
one forgot to criticise the technique, which was quite
that of an amateur ; indeed, with all the success he
achieved as an artist, he remained an amateur all his
life. Yet his greatest admirers were among the most
consummate and finished artists of their day, both here
and abroad.
It was with his art as with his singing : both were all
wrong, yet both gave extraordinary pleasure ; one almost
feared that regular training would mar the gift of God,
so much of the charm we all so keenly felt lay in the
very imperfections themselves just as one loved him
personally as much for his faults as for his virtues.
" II a les qualites de ses defauts, le beau Josselin," said
M. Taine one day.
"Mon cher," said M. Renan, "ses defauts sont ses
meilleures qualites."
So he spent a tranquil happy winter, and wrote of his
happiness and his tranquillity to Lady Caroline and
291
Daphne and Ida and me ; and before he knew where he
was, or we, the almond-trees blossomed again, and then
the lilacs and limes and horse-chestnuts and syringas ;
and the fireflies flew in and out of his bedroom at night,
and the many nightingales made such music in the Hof
gardens that he could scarcely sleep for them ; and other
nightingales came to make music for him too most
memorable music ! Stockhausen, Jenny Ney, Joachim,
Madame Schumann ; for the triennial Musik festival was
held in Dtisseldorf that year (a month later than usual);
and musical festivals are things they manage uncommon-
ly well in Germany. Barty, unseen and unheard, as be-
comes a chorus-singer, sang in the choruses of Gluck's
Iphigenia, and heard and saw everything for nothing.
But, before this, Captain Reece came back to Riffrath,
and, according to appointment, Admiral Royce and Lady
Jane, and Julia, lovelier than ever ; and all the sweet-
ness she was so full of rose in her heart and gath-
ered in her eyes as they once more looked on Barty
Josselin.
He steeled and stiffened himself like a man who knew
that the divine Julias of this world were for his betters
not for him ! Nevertheless, as he went to bed, and
thought of the melting gaze that had met his, he was
deeply stirred ; and actually, though the north was in
him, he forgot, for the first time in all that twelvemonth,
for the first time since that terrible night in Malines, to
say his prayers to Martia and next morning he found a
letter by his bedside in pencil-written blaze of his own
handwriting :
" BARTY MY BELOVED, A crisis has come in your af-
fairs, which are mine ; and, great as the cost is to me, I
must write again, at the risk of betraying what amounts
292
to a sacred trust ; a secret that I have innocently sur-
prised, the secret of a noble woman's heart.
" One of the richest girls in England, one of the
healthiest and most beautiful women in the whole world,
a bride fit for an emperor, is yours for the asking. It is
my passionate wish, and a matter of life and death to me,
that you and Julia Royce should become man and wife;
when you are, you shall both know why.
" Mr. Nobody of Xowhere as you are so fond of call-
ing yourself you shall be such, some day, that the best
and highest in the land will be only too proud to be your
humble friends and followers ; no woman is too good for
you only one good enough ! and she loves you : of that
I feel sure and it is impossible you should not love her
back again.
"I have known her from a baby, and her father and
mother also ; I have inhabited her, as I have inhabited
you, although I have never been able to give her the
slightest intimation of the fact. You are both, physical-
ly, the most perfect human beings I was ever in ; and in
heart and mind the most simply made, the most richly
gifted, and the most admirably balanced ; and I have in-
habited many thousands, and in all parts of the globe.
" You, Barty, are the only one I have ever been able
to hold communication with, or make to feel my presence;
it was a strange chance, that a happy accident ; it saved
your life. I am the only one, among many thousands of
homeless spirits, who has ever been able to influence an
earthly human being, or even make him feel the magnetic
current that flows through us all, and by which we are
able to exist ; all the rappings and table-turnings are
mere hysterical imaginations, or worse the cheapest
form of either trickery or self-deception that can be.
Barty, your unborn children are of a moment to me be-
293
yond anything you can realize or imagine, and Julia
must be their mother ; Julia Royce, and no other woman
in the world.
"It is in you to become so great when you are ripe
that she will worship the ground you walk upon ; but
you can only become as great as that through her and
through me, who have a message to deliver to mankind
here on earth, and none but you to give it a voice not
one. But I must have my reward, and that can only
come through your marriage with Julia.
"When you have read this, Barty, go straight to Riff-
rath, and see Julia if you can, and be to her as you
have so often been to any women you wished to please,
and who were not worth pleasing. Her heart is her own
to give, like her fortune ; she can do what she likes with
them both, and will her mother notwithstanding, and
in the teeth of the whole world.
" Poor as you are, maimed as you are, irregularly born
as you are, it is better for her that she should be your
wife than the wife of any man living, whoever he be.
" Look at yourself in the glass, and say at once,
" * Martia, Fm off to Riffrath as soon as I've swallowed
my breakfast !'
"And then I'll go about my business with a light
heart and an easy mind.
" MARTIA."
Much moved and excited, Barty looked in the glass
and did as he was bid, and the north left him; and Jo-
hanna brought him his breakfast, and he started for
Riffrath.
All through this winter that was so happily spent by
Barty in Diisseldorf things did not go very happily in
294
London for the Gibsons. Mr. Gibson was not meant for
business ; nature intended him as a rival to Keeley or
Buckstone.
He was extravagant, and so was his wife ; they w*ere
both given to frequent and most expensive hospitalities;
and he to cards, and she to dressing herself and her
daughter more beautifully than quite became their posi-
tion in life. The handsome and prosperous shop in
Cheapside the "emporium," as he loved to call it was
not enough to provide for all these luxuries ; so he took
another in Conduit Street, and decorated it and stocked
it at immense expense, and called it the " Universal
Fur Company," and himself the " Head of a West End
firm."
Then he speculated, and was not successful, and his
affairs got into tangle.
And a day came when he found he could not keep*
up these two shops and his private house in Tavistock
Square as well ; the carriage was put down first a great
distress to Mrs. Gibson ; and finally, to her intense grief,
it became necessary to give up the pretty house itself.
It was decided that their home in future most be over
the new emporium in Conduit Street ; Mrs. Gibson had
a properly constituted English shopkeeper's wife's hor-
ror of living over her husband's shop the idea almost
broke her heart ; and as a little consolation, while the
necessary changes were being wrought for their altered
mode of life, Mr. Gibson treated her and Leah and my
sister to a trip up the Rhine and Mrs. Bletchley, the
splendid old Jewess (Leah's grandmother), who suffered,
or fancied she suffered, in her eyesight, took it into her
head that she would like to see the famous Dr. Hasen-
clever in Riffrath, and elected to journey with them at
all events as far as Dusseldorf. I would have escorted
295
them, but that my father was ill, and I had to replace
him in Barge Yard ; besides, I was not yet quite cured
of my unhappy passion, though in an advanced stage of
convalescence ; and I did not wish to put myself under
conditions that might retard my complete recovery, or
even bring on a relapse. I wished to love Leah as a sis-
ter ; in time I succeeded in doing so ; she has been fortu-
nate in her brother, though I say it who shouldn't and,
heavens ! haven't I been fortunate in my sister Leah ?
My own sister Ida wrote to Barty to find rooms and
meet them at the station, and fixed the day and hour of
their arrival ; and commissioned him to take seats for
Gluck's Iphigenia.
She thought more of Iphigenia than of the Drachenfels
or Ehrenbreitstein ; and was overjoyed at the prospect of
once more being with Barty, whom she loved as well as
she loved me, if not even better. He was fortunate in
his sister, too !
And the Rhine in May did very well as a background
to all these delights.
So Mr. Babbage (the friend of the family) and I saw
them safely on board the Baron Osy ("the Ank-works
package," as Mrs. Gamp called it), which landed them
safely in the Place Verte at Antwerp ; and then they
took train for Diisseldorf, changing at Malines and Ver-
viers ; and looked forward eagerly, especially Ida, to the
meeting with Barty at the little station by the Rhine.
Barty, as we know, started for Riffrath at Martia's
written command, his head full of perplexing thoughts.
Who was Martia ? What was she ? "A disembodied
conscience ?" Whose ? Not his own, which counselled
the opposite course.
He had once seen a man at a show with a third rudi-
296
mentary leg sticking out behind, and was told this ex-
tra limb belonged to a twin, the remaining portions of
whom had not succeeded in getting themselves begotten
and born. Could Martia be a frustrated and undeveloped
twin sister of his own, that interested herself in his
affairs, and could see with his eyes and hear with his ears,
and had found the way of communicating with him
during his sleep and was yet apart from him, as phe-
nomenal twins are apart from each other, however closely
linked and had, moreover, not managed to have any
part of her body born into this world at all ?
She wrote like him ; her epistolary style was his very
own, every turn of phrase, every little mannerism. The
mystery of it overwhelmed him again, though he had
grown somewhat accustomed to the idea during the last
twelvemonth. Wliy was she so anxious he should marry
Julia ? Had he, situated as he was, the right to win
the love of this splendid creature, in the face of the
world's opposition and her family's he, a beggar and a
bastard ? Would it be right and honest and fair to
her ?
And then, again, was he so desperately in love with
her, after all, that he should give up the life of art
and toil he had planned for himself and go through ex-
istence as the husband of a rich and beautiful woman
belonging, first of all, to the world and society, of which
she was so brilliant an ornament that her husband must
needs remain in the background forever, even if he were
a gartered duke or a belted earl ?
What success of his own would he ever hope to achieve,
handicapped as he would be by all the ease and luxury
she would bring him ? He had grown to love the poverty
which ever lends such strenuousness to endeavor. He
thought of an engraving he had once taken a fancy to in
297
Brussels,, and purchased and hung up in his bedroom.
/ have it now ! It is after Gallait, and represents a pict-
uresquely poor violinist and his violin in a garret, and
underneath is written " Art et liberte."
Then he thought of Julia's lovely face and magnificent
body and all his manhood thrilled as he recalled the
look in her eyes when they met his the day before.
This was the strongest kind of temptation by which
his nature could ever be assailed he knew himself to be
weak as water when that came his way, the ten-thousandth
face (and the figure to match)! He had often prayed to
Martia to deliver him from such a lure. But here was
Martia on the side of the too sweet enemy '.
The train stopped for a few minutes at Neanderthal,
and he thought he could think better if he got out and
walked in that beautiful valley an hour or two there
was no hurry ; he would take another train later, in
time to meet Julia at Beresford Duff's, where she was
sure to be. So he walked among the rocks, the lonely
rocks, and sat and pondered in the famous cave where
the skull was found that simple prehistoric cranium
which could never have been so pathetically nonplussed
by such a dilemma as this when it was a human head !
And the more he pondered the less he came to a
conclusion. It seemed as though there were the "tug
of war " between Martia and all that he felt to be best
in himself his own conscience, his independence as a
man. his sense of honor. He took her letter out of his
pocket to re-read, and with it came another letter ; it
was from my sister, Ida Maurice. It told him when
they would arrive in Diisseldorf.
He jumped up in alarm it was that very day. He
had quite forgotten !
He ran off to the station, and missed a train, and had
298
to wait an hour for another ; but he got himself to the
Rhine station in Dusseldorf a few minutes before the
train from Belgium arrived.
Everything was ready for the Gibson party lodgings
and tea and supper to follow he had seen to all that
before ; so there he walked up and down, waiting, and
still revolving over and over again in his mind the
troublous question that so bewildered and oppressed
him. Who was Martia ? what was she that he should
take her for a guide in the most momentous business of
his life ; and what were her credentials ?
And what was love ? Was it love he felt for this
young goddess with yellow hair and light-blue eyes so
like his own, who towered in her full-blown frolicsome
splendor among the sons and daughters of men, with her
moist, ripe lips so richly framed for happy love and laugh-
ter that royal milk-white fawn that had only lain in the
roses and fed on the lilies of life ?
" Oh, Mr. Nobody of Nowhere ! be at least a man ;
let no one ever call you the basest thing an able-bodied
man can become, a fortune-hunting adventurer !"
Then a bell rang, and the smoke of the coming train
was visible ten minutes late. The tickets were taken,
and it slowed into the station and stopped. Ida's head
and face were seen peering through one of the second-
class windows, on the lookout, and Barty opened the door
and there was a warm and affectionate greeting between
them ; the meeting was joy to both.
Then he was warmly greeted by Mrs. Gibson, who in-
troduced him to her mother ; then he was conscious of
somebody he had not seen yet because she stood at his
blind side (indeed, he had all but forgotten her exist-
ence) ; namely, the presence of a very tall and most
beautiful dark-haired young lady, holding out her slen-
299
cler gloved hand and gazing up into jiis face with the
most piercing and strangest and blackest eyes that ever
were ; yet so soft and quick and calm and large and kind
and wise and gentle that their piercingness was but an
added seduction ; one felt they could never pierce too
deep for the happiness of the heart they pronged and
riddled and perforated through and through !
Involuntarily came into Barty's mind, as he shook the
slender hand, a little song of Schubert's he had just
learnt :
"Du (list die Ruh', der Friede mild!"
And wasn't it odd ? all his doubts and perplexities
resolved themselves at once, as by some enchantment,
into a lovely, unexpected chord of extreme simplicity ;
and Martia was gently but firmly put aside, and the
divine Julia quietly relegated to the gilded throne which
was her fit and proper apanage.
Barty saw to the luggage, and sent it on, and they all
went on foot behind it.
The bridge of boats across the Rhine was open in the
middle to let a wood-raft go by down stream. This raft
from some distant forest was so long they had to wait
nearly twenty minutes ; and the prow of it had all but
lost itself in the western purple and gold and dun of sky
and river while it was still passing the bridge.
All this was new and delightful to the Londoners,
who were also delighted with the rooms Barty had taken
for them in the Konig's Allee and the tea that awaited
them there. Leah made tea, and gave a cup to Barty.
That was a good cup of tea, better even than the tea Julia
was making (that very moment, no doubt) a't Beresford
Duff's.
Then the elder ladies rested, and Barty took Leah
300
and Ida for a \^alk in the Hof gardens. They were
charmed with everything especially the fire -flies at
dusk. Leah said little; she was not a very talkative
person outside her immediate family circle. But Ida
and Barty had much to say.
Then home to supper at the Gibsons' lodgings, and
Barty sat opposite Leah, and drank in the beauty of her
face, which had so wonderfully ripened and accentuated
and individualized itself since he had seen her last, three
years before.
As he discreetly gazed, whenever she was not looking
his way, saying to himself, like Geraint : " ' Here by
God's rood is the one maid for me/ " he suddenly felt
the north, and started with a kind of terror as he re-
membered Martia. He bade the company a hasty good-
night, and went for a long walk by the llhine, and had a
long talk with his Egeria.
" Martia," said he, in a low but audible voice, " it's
no good, I can't; c'est plus fort que moi. I can't sell
myself to a woman for gold ; besides, I can't fall in love
with Julia ; I don't know why, but I can't ; I will never
marry her. I don't deserve that she should care for me ;
perhaps she doesn't, perhaps you're quite mistaken, and
if she does, it's only a young girl's fancy. What does a
girl of that age really know about her own heart ? and
how base I should be to take advantage of her innocence
and inexperience !''
And then he went on in a passionate and eager voice
to explain all he had thought of during the day and still
further defend his recalcitrancy.
" Give me at least your reasons, Martia ; tell me, for
God's sake, who you are and what ! Are you me ? are
you the spirit of my mother ? Why do you love me, as
you say you do, with a love passing the love of woman ?
301
What am I to you ? Why are you so bent on worldly
things ?"
This monologue lasted more than an hour, and he threw
himself on to his bed quite worn out, and slept at once,
in spite of the nightingales, who filled the starlit, breezy,
balmy night with their shrill, sweet clamor.
Next morning, as he expected, he found a letter :
"Barty, you are ruining me and breaking my life, and
wrecking the plans of many years plans made before
you were born or thought of.
"Who am I, indeed ? Who is this demure young
black-eyed witch that has come between us, this friend of
Ida Maurice's ?
" She's the cause of all my misery, I feel sure ; with
Ida's eyes I saw you look at her ; you never yet looked at
Julia like that ! never at any woman before !
"Who is she ? No mate for a man like you, I feel
sure. In the first place, she is not rich ; I could tell that
by the querulous complaints of her middle-class mother.
She's just fit to be some pious Quaker's wife, or a Sister
of Charity, or a governess, or a hospital nurse, or a nun-
no companion for a man destined to move the world !
" Barty, you don't know what you are ; you have never
thought; you have never yet looked within f
" Barty, with Julia by your side and me at your back,
you will be a leader of men, and sway the destinies of
your country, and raise it above all other nations, and
make it the arbiter of Europe of the whole world and
your seed will ever be first among the foremost of the
earth.
" Will you give up all this for a pair of bright black eyes
and a pretty white skin ? Isn't Julia white enough for
you ?
802
" A painter ? What a trade for a man built like you !
Take the greatest of them ; what have they ever really
mattered ? What do they matter now, except to those
who want to imitate them and can't, or to those who live
by buying cheap the fruits of their long labors, and sell-
ing them dear as so much wall furniture for the vulgar
rich ? Besides, you will never be a great painter ; you've
begun too late !
"Think of yourself ten years hence a king among
men, with the world at your feet, and at those of the
glorious woman who will have smoothed your path to
greatness and fame and power ! Mistress and wife god-
dess and queen in one !
" Think of the poor struggling painter, painting his
poor little pictures in his obscure corner to feed half a
dozen hungry children and the anxious, careworn wife,
whose beauty has long faded away in the petty, sordid,
hopeless domestic struggle, just as her husband's little
talent has long been wasted and used up in wretched
pot-boilers for mere bread ; think of poverty, debt, and
degradation, and all the miserable ugliness of life the
truest, tritest, and oldest story in the world ! Love soon
flies out of the window when these wolves snarl at the door.
" Think of all this, Barty, and think of the despair you
are bringing on one lost lonely soul who loves yon as a
mother loves her first-born, and has founded such hopes
on you ; dismiss this pretty little middle-class puritan
from your thoughts and go back to Julia.
" I will not hurry your decision ; I will come back in
exactly a week from to-night. I am at your mercy.
"MARTIA."
This letter made Barty very unhappy. It was a strange
dilemma.
303
What is it that now and again makes a woman in a single
moment take such a powerful grip of a man's fancy that he
can never shake himself free again, and never wants to ?
Tunes can be like that, sometimes. Not the pretty
little tinkling tunes that please everybody at once ; the
pleasure of them can fade in a year, a month even a
week, a day ! But those from a great mint, and whose
charm will last a man his lifetime I
Many years ago a great pianist, to amuse some friends
(of whom I was one), played a series of waltzes by
Schubert which I had never heard before the " Soirees
de Vienne," I think they were called. They were lovely
from beginning to end ; but one short measure in partic-
ular was full of such extraordinary enchantment for me
that it has really haunted me through life. It is as if it
were made on purpose for me alone, a little intimate
aside a mon intention the gainliest, happiest thought I
had ever heard expressed in music. For nobody else
seemed to think those particular bars were more beauti-
ful than all the rest ; but, oh ! the difference to me !
And said I to myself : " That's Leah ; and all the rest
is some heavenly garden of roses she's walking in !"
Tempo di valsa :
Rum tiddle-iddle um tuna turn,
TYVMle-tiddle-iddle-iddle urn-turn, turn
Turn tiddle-iddle-iddle um turn, turn
TYtMle-iddle, idd\e-fiay! . . . etc., etc.
That's how the little measure begins, and it goes on
just for a couple of pages. I can't write music, unfortu-
nately, and I've nobody by me at just this moment who
can ; but if the reader is musical and knows the " Soirees
de Vienne," he will guess the particular waltz I mean.
Well, the Dtisseldorf railway station is not a garden of
304
roses ; but when Leah stepped out of that second-class
carriage arid looked straight at Barty, dans le Uanc des
yeux, he fitted her to the tune he loved best just then
(not knowing the " Soirees de Vienne"), and it's one of
the tunes that last forever :
" Du bist die Ruh', der Friede mild!"
Barty's senses were not as other men's senses. With
his one eye he saw much that most of us can't see with
two ; I feel sure of this. And he suddenly saw in Leah's
face, now she was quite grown up, that which bound
him to her for life some veiled promise, I suppose ; we
can't explain these things.
Barty escorted the Gibson party to Riffrath, and put
down Mrs. Bletchley's name for Dr. Hasenclever, and
then took them to the woods of Hammerfest, close by,
with which they were charmed. On the way back to
the hotel they met Lady Jane and Miss Royce and the
good Beresford Duff, who all bowed to Barty, and Julia's
blue glance crossed Leah's black one.
" Oh, what a lovely girl!" said Leah to Barty. " What
a pity she's so tall ; why, I'm sure she's half a head
taller than even I, and they make my life a burden to me
at home because I'm such a giantess ! Who is she ?
You know her well, I suppose ?"
" She's a Miss Julia Royce, a great heiress. Her fa-
ther's dead ; he was a wealthy Norfolk Squire, and she
was his only child."
" Then I suppose she's a very aristocratic person ; she
looks so, I'm sure!"
" Very much so indeed," said Barty.
" Dear me ! it seems unfair, doesn't it, having every-
thing like that; no wonder she looks so happy!"
DR. HASENCLEVER AND MRS. BLETCHLEY
306
Then they went back to the hotel to lunch ; and in
the afternoon Mrs. Bletchley saw the doctor, who gave
her a prescription for spectacles, and said she had
nothing to fear ; and was charming to Leah and to Ida,
who spoke French so well, and to the pretty and lively
Mrs. Gibson, who lost her heart to him and spoke the
most preposterous French he had ever heard.
He was fond of pretty English women, the good Ger-
man doctor, whatever French they spoke.
They were quite an hour there. Meanwhile Barty
went to Beresford Duff's, and found Julia and Lady Jane
drinking tea, as usual at that hour.
"Who are your uncommonly well-dressed friends,
Barty ?" said Mr. Duff. "I never met any of them that
/ can remember. "
" Well they're just from London the elder lady is a
Mrs. Bletchley."
" Not one of the Berkshire Bletchleys, eh ?"
" Oh no she's the widow of a London solicitor."
" Dear me ! And the lovely, tall, black-eyed damigella
who's she ?""
" She's a Miss Gibson, and her father's a furrier in
Cheapside."
" And the pretty girl in blue with the fair hair ?"
" She's the sister of a very old friend of mine, Robert
Maurice he's a wine merchant."
" You don't say so ! Why, I took them for people of
condition !" said Mr. Beresford Duff, who was a trifle
old-fashioned in his ways of speech. " Anyhow, they're
uncommonly nice to look at."
"Oh yes," said the not too priggishly grammati-
cal Lady Jane; "nowadays those sort of people dress
like duchesses, and think themselves as good as any
one."
307
" They're good enough for me, at all events/' said
Barty, who was not pleased.
"I'm sure Miss Gibson's good enough for anybody in
the world !" said Julia. " She's the most beautiful girl I
ever saw !" and she gave Barty a cup of tea.
Barty drank it, and felt fond of Julia, and bade them
all good-bye, and went and waited in the hall of the
Konig's Hotel for his friends, and took them back to
Diisseldorf.
Next day the Gibsons started for their little trip up
the Rhine, and Barty was left to his own reflections, and
he reflected a great deal ; not about what he meant to
do himself, but about how he should tell Martia what he
meant to do.
As for himself, his mind was thoroughly made up : he
would break at once and forever with a world he did not
properly belong to, and fight his own little battle unaided,
and be a painter a good one, if he could. If not, so
much the worse for him. Life is short.
When he would have settled his affairs and paid his
small debts in Diisseldorf, he would have some ten or fif-
teen pounds to the good. He would go back to London
with the Gibsons and Ida Maurice. There were no friends
for him in the world like the Maurices. There was no
woman for him in the world like Leah, whether she would
ever care for him or not.
Rich or poor, he didn't mind ! she was Leah ; she had
the hands, the feet, the lips, the hair, the eyes ! That
was enough for him ! He was absolutely sure of his own
feelings ; absolutely certain that this path was not only
the pleasant path he liked, but the right one for a man
in his position to follow : a thorny path indeed, but the
thorns were thorns of roses !
All this time he was busily rehearsing his part in the
308
chorus of Ipliigenia ; he had applied for the post of sec-
ond tenor chorister ; the conditions were that he should
be able to read music at sight. This he could not do,
and his utter incapacity was tested at the Mahlcasten,
before a crowd of artists, by the conductor. Barty failed
signally, amid much laughter ; and he impudently sang
quite a little tune of his own, an improvisation.
The conductor laughed too ; but Barty was admitted
all the same ; his voice was good, and he must learn his
part by heart that was all ; anybody could teach him.
The Gibsons came back to Dtisseldorf in time for the
performance, which was admirable, in spite of Barty.
From his coign of vantage, amongst the second tenors,
he could see Julia's head with its golden fleece ; Julia,
that rose without a thorn
" Het Roosje uit de dome!"
She was sitting between Lady Jane and the Captain.
He looked in vain for the Gibsons, as he sang his loud-
est, yet couldn't hear himself sing (he was one of a chorus
of avenging furies, I believe).
But there were three vacant seats in the same row as
the Royces'. Presently three ladies, silken hooded and
cloaked one in yellow, one in pink, and one in blue
made their way to the empty places, just as the chorus
ceased, and sat down. Just then Orestes (Stockhausen)
stood up and lifted his noble barytone.
"Die Rube kehret mir zurtlck"
And the yellow-hooded lady unhooded a shapely little
black head, and it was Leah's.
''Prosit omen!" thought Barty and it seemed as if
his whole heart melted within him.
He could see that Leah and Julia often looked at each
309
other ; he could also see, during the intervals,, how many
double-barrelled opera-glasses were levelled at both ; it
was impossible to say which of these two lovely women
was the loveliest; probably most votes would have been
for Julia, the fair-haired one, the prima donna assoluta,
the soprano, the Eowena, who always gets the biggest sal-
ary and most of the applause.
The brunette, the contralto, the Rebecca, dazzles less,
but touches the heart all the more deeply, perhaps ; any-
how, Barty had no doubt as to which of the two voices
was the voice for him. His passion was as that of Brian
de Bois-Guilbert for mere strength, except that he was
bound by no vows of celibacy. There were no moonlit
platonics about Barty's robust love, but all the chivalry
and tenderness and romance of a knight-errant underlay
its vigorous complexity. He was a good knight, though
not Sir Galahad !
Also he felt very patriotic, as a good knight should
ever feel, and proud of a country which could grow such
a rose as Julia, and such a lily as Leah Gibson.
Next to Julia sat Captain Eeece, romantic and hand-
some as ever, with manly love and devotion expressed in
every line of his face, every movement of his body ; and
the heaviest mustache and the most beautiful brown
whiskers in the world. He was either a hussar or a
lancer ; I forget which.
"By my halidom," mentally ejaculated Barty, "I sin-
cerely wish thee joy and life-long happiness, good Sir
Wilfred of Ivanhoe. Thou art a right fit mate for her,
peerless as she may be among women ! A benison on you
both from your poor Wamba, the son of Witless."
As he went home that night, after the concert, to his
tryst with Martia, the north came back to him through
the open window as it were, with the fire-flies and fra-
310
grances, and the song of fifty nightingales, It was for
him a moment of deep and harassing emotion and keen
anxiety. He leaned over the window-sill and looked out
on the starlit heavens, and whispered aloud the little
speech he had prepared :
" Martia, I have done my best. I would make a?iy
sacrifice to obey you, but I cannot give up my freedom
to love the woman that attracts me as I have never been
attracted before. I would sooner live a poor and unsuc-
cessful struggler in the art I have chosen, with her to
help me live, than be the mightiest man in England
without her even with Julia, whom I admire as much,
and even more !
" One can't help these things. They may be fancies,
and one may live to repent them ; but while they last
they are imperious, not to be resisted. It's an instinct,
I suppose ; perhaps even a form of insanity ! But I love
Leah's little-finger nail better than Julia's lovely face
and splendid body and all her thousands.
" Besides, I will not drag Julia down from her high
position in the world's eye, even for a day, nor owe any-
thing to either man or woman except love and fidelity !
It grieves me deeply to disappoint you, though I cannot
understand your motives. If you love me as you say you
do, you ought to think of my happiness and honor before
my worldly success and prosperity, about which I don't
care a button, except for Leah's sake.
"Besides, I know myself better than you know me.
I'm not one of those hard, strong, stern, purposeful,
Napoleonic men, with wills of iron, that clever, ambi-
tious women conceive great passions for !
" I'm only a ' funny man ' a yringalet-jocrisse ! And
now that I'm quite grown up, and all my little funni-
ments are over, I'm only fit to sit and paint, with my one
" 'MAKTIA, I HAVE DONE MY BEST 1
312
eye, in my little corner, with a contented little wife, who
won't want me to do great things and astonish the world.
There's no place like home ; faire la popotte ensemble an
coin du feu c'est le ciel !
" And if I'm half as clever as you say, it '11 all come
out in my painting, and I shall be rich and famous, and
all off my own bat. I'd sooner be Sir Edwin Laudseer
than Sir Robert Peel, or Pam, or Dizzy !
" Even to retain your love and protection and interest
in me, which I value almost as much as I value life it-
self, I can't do as you wish. Don't desert me, Martia. I
may be able to make it all up to you some day ; after all,
you can't foresee and command the future, nor can I. It
wouldn't be worth living for if we could ! It would all
be discounted in advance !
" I may yet succeed in leading a useful, happy life ;
and that should be enough for you if it's enough for me,
since I am your beloved, and as you love me as your son.
. . . Anyhow, my mind is made up for good and all,
and . . ."
Here the sensation of the north suddenly left him, and
he went to his bed with the sense of bereavement that
had punished him all the preceding week : desperately
sad, all but heart-broken, and feeling almost like a cul-
prit, although his conscience, whatever that was worth,
was thoroughly at ease, and his intent inflexible.
A day or two after this he must have received a note
from Julia, making an appointment to meet him at the
Ausstellung, in the Alice Strasse, a pretty little picture-
gallery, since he was seen there sitting in deep conversa-
tion with Miss Royce in a corner, and both seeming much
moved; neither the Admiral nor Lady Jane was with
them, and there was some gossip about it in the British
colony both in Dusseldorf and Riffrath.
313
Barty, who of late years has talked to me so much,
and with such affectionate admiration, of "Julia Count-
ess/' as he called her, never happened to have mentioned
this interview ; he was very reticent about his love-mak-
ings, especially about any love that was made to him.
I made so bold as to write to Julia, Lady Ironsides,
and ask her if it were true they had met like this, and
if I might print her answer, and received almost by re-
turn of post the following kind and characteristic letter :
' ' 96 GUOSVENOR SQUARE.
" DEAR SIR ROBERT, You're quite right ; I did meet
him, and I've no objection whatever to telling you how
it all happened and you may do as you like.
"It happened just like this (you must remember that
I was only just out, and had always had my own way in
everything).
" Mamma and I and Uncle James (the Admiral) and
Freddy Reece (Ironsides, you know) went to the Musik-
fest in Diisseldorf. Barty was singing in the chorus. I
saw him opening and shutting his mouth and could al-
most fancy I heard him, poor dear boy.
"Leah Gibson, as she was then, sat near to me, with
her mother and your sister. Leah Gibson looked like
well, you know what she looked like in those days. By-
the-way, I can't make out how it is you weren't over
head and ears in love with her yourself ! I thought her
the loveliest girl I had ever seen, and felt very unhappy.
"We slept at the hotel that night, and on the way
back to Riffrath next morning Freddy Reece proposed
to me.
"I told him I couldn't marry him but that I loved
him as a sister, and all that ; I really was very fond of
him indeed, but I didn't want to marry him ; I wanted
314
to marry Barty, in fact ; and make him rich and famous,
as I felt sure he would be some day, whether I married
him or not.
" But there was that lovely Leah Gibson, the furrier's
daughter !
" When we got home to Riffrath mamma found she'd
got a cold, and had a fancy for a French thing called a
' loch '; I think her cold was suddenly brought on by my
refusing poor Freddy's offer !
" I went with Grissel, the maid (who knew about lochs),
to the Riffrath chemist's, but he didn't even know what
we meant so I told mamma I would go and get a loch in
Dusseldorf next day if she liked, with Uncle James.
Mamma was only too delighted, for next day was Mr.
Josselin's day for coming to Riffrath ; but he didn't, for
I wrote to him to meet me at twelve at a little picture-
gallery I knew of in the Alice Strasse as I wanted to have
a talk with him.
"Uncle James had caught a cold too, so I went with
Grissel ; and found a chemist who'd been in France, and
knew what a loch was and made one for me ; and then I
went to the gallery, and there was poor Barty sitting on a
crimson velvet couch, under a picture of Milton dictat-
ing Paradise Lost to his daughters (I bought it afterwards,
and I've got it now).
"We said how d'ye do, and sat on the couch together,
and I felt dreadfully nervous and ashamed.
" Then I said :
" ' You must think me very odd, Mr. Josselin, to ask
you to meet me like this !'
" ' I think it's a very great honor !' he said ; * I only
wish I deserved it.'
"And then he said nothing for quite five minutes, and
I think he felt as uncomfortable as I did.
W f
H W
H d
316
" ' Captain Graham-Reece has asked me to be his wife,
and I refused/ I said.
" 'Why did you refuse ? He's one of the best fellows
Fve ever met/ said Barty.
" ' He's to be so rich, and so am I/ I said.
" No answer.
" 'It would be right for me to marry a, poor man
man with brains and no money, you know, and help him
to make his way.'
" ' Reece has plenty of brains too/ said Barty.
"'Oh, Mr. Josselin don't misunderstand me* and
then I began to stammer and look foolish.
" ' Miss Royce I've only got 15 in the world, and
with that I mean to go to London and be an artist ; and
comfort myself during the struggle by the delightful re-
membrance of Riffrath and Reece and yourself and the
happy hope of meeting you both again some day, when I
shall no longer be the poor devil I am now, and am quite
content to be ! And when you and he are among the
great of the earth, if you will give me each a commission
to paint your portraits I will do my very best !' (and he
smiled his irresistible smile). 'You will be kind, I am
sure, to Mr. Nobody of Nowhere, the famous portrait-
painter who doesn't even bear his father's name as he
has no right to it/
"I could have flung my arms round his neck and
kissed him ! What did / care about his father's name ?
" 'Will you think me dreadfully bold and indiscreet,
Mr. Josselin, if I if I (I stammered fearfully.)
" ' If you what, Miss Royce ?'
."'If I if I ask you if you if you think Miss Gib-
son .the most beautiful girl you ever saw ?'
" ' Honestly, I think you the most beautiful girl I ever
saw !'
317
'"Oh, that's nonsense, Mr. Josselin, although I ought
to have known you would say that ! I'm not fit to tie
her shoes. What I mean is a a oh ! forgive me
are you very fond of her, as I'm sure she deserves, you
know ?'
" ' Oh yes, Miss Royce, very fond of her indeed ; she's
poor, she's of no family, she's Miss Nobody of Nowhere,
you know ; she's all that I am, except that she has a
right to her honest father's name
" ' Does she know you're very fond of her ?'
" 'No ; but I hope to tell her so some day.'
"Then we were silent, and I felt very red, and very
much inclined to cry, but I managed to keep in my
tears. ,
"Then I got up, and so did he and he made some
joke about Grissel and the loch-bottle ; and we both
laughed quite naturally and looked at the pictures, and
he told me he was going back to London with the Gib-
sons that very week, and thanked me warmly for my
kind interest in him, and assured me he thoroughly
deserved it and talked so funnily and so nicely that I
quite forgave myself. I really don't think he guessed
for one moment what I had been driving at all the while ;
I got back all my self-respect ; I felt so grateful to him
that I was fonder of him than ever, though no longer
so idiotically in love. He was not for me. He had
somehow laughed me into love with him, and laughed
me out of it.
"Then I bade him good-bye, and squeezed his hand
with all my heart, and told him how much I should like
some day to meet Miss Gibson and be her friend if she
would let me.
" Then I went back to Eiffrath and took mamma her
loch ; but she no longer wanted it, for I told her I had
318
changed my mind about Freddy, and that cured her like
magic ; and she kissed me on both cheeks and called me
her dear, darling, divine Julia. Poor, sweet mamma !
"I had given her many a bad quarter of an hour, but
this good moment made up for them all.
" She was eighty-two last birthday, and can still read
Josselin's works in the cheap edition without spectacles
thanks, no doubt, to the famous Doctor Hasenclever !
She reads nothing else !
"Et voila comment qa s'est passe.
"It's I that '11 be the proud woman when I read this
letter, printed, in your life of Josselin.
" Yours sincerely,
" JULIA IRONSIDES.
" P. S. I've actually just told mamma and I'm still
her dear, darling, divine Julia !"
Charming as Avere Barty's remembrances of Dusseldorf,
the most charming of all was his remembrance of going
aboard the little steamboat bound for Rotterdam, one
night at the end of May, with old Mrs. Bletchley, Mrs.
Gibson and her daughter, and my sister Ida.
The little boat was crowded ; the ladies found what
accommodation they could in what served for a ladies'
cabin, and expostulated and bribed their best ; fort-
unately for them, no doubt, there were no English on
board to bribe against them.
Barty spent the night on deck, supine, with a carpet-
bag for a pillow ; we will take the full moon for granted.
From Dusseldorf to Rotterdam there is little to see on
either side of a Rhine steamboat, except the Rhine
especially at night.
Next day, after breakfast, he made the ladies as com-
fortable as he could on the after-deck, and read to them
"'DOES SHE KXOW YOU'RE VERY POND OF HER?'"
320
from Maud, from the Idylh of the King, from the Mill on
the Floss. Then windmills came into sight Dutch wind-
mills ; then Rotterdam, almost too soon. They went to
the big hotel on the Boompjes and fed, and then explored
Rotterdam, and found it a most delightful city.
Next day they got on board the steamboat bound for
St. Katharine's wharf ; the wind had freshened and they
soon separated, and met at breakfast next morning in
the Thames.
Barty declared he smelt Great Britain as distinctly as
one can smell a Scotch haggis, or a Welsh rabbit, or an
Irish stew, and the old familiar smell made him glad.
However little you may be English, if you are English
at all you are more English than anything else, et plus
royalists que le Roi!
According to Heine, an Englishman loves liberty as a
good husband loves his wife ; that is also how he loves
the land of his birth ; at all events, England has a kind
of wifely embrace for the home-coming Briton, especially
if he comes home by the Thames.
It is not unexpected, nor madly exciting, perhaps ;
but it is singularly warm and sweet if the conjugal re-
lations have not been strained in the meanwhile. And
as the Thames narrows itself, the closer, the more ge-
nial, the more grateful and comforting this long -an-
ticipated and tenderly intimate uxorious dalliance seems
to grow.
Barty felt very happy as he stood leaning over the bul-
warks in the sunshine, between Ida and Leah, and looked
at Rotherhithe, and promised himself he would paint it
some day, and even sell the picture !
Then he made himself so pleasant to the custom-house
officers that they all but forgot to examine the Gibson
luggage.
321
Was I delighted to grasp his hand at St. Katharine's
wharf, after so many months ? Ah ! . . .
Mr. Gibson was there, funny as ever, and the Gibsons
went home with him to Conduit Street in a hired fly.
Alas ! poor Mrs. Gibson's home-coming was the saddest
part for her of the delightful little journey.
And Barty and Ida and I went our own way in a
four-wheeler to eat the fatted calf in Brunswick Square,
washed down with I will not say what vintage. There
were so many available from all the wine-growing lands of
Europe that I've forgotten which was chosen to celebrate
the wanderers' return !
Let us say Komane-Conti, which is the " cru " that
Barty loved best.
Next morning Barty left us early, with a portfolio of
sketches under his arm, and his heart f,ull of sanguine
expectation, and spent the day in Fleet Street, or there-
abouts, calling on publishers of illustrated books and
periodicals, and came back to us at dinner-time very
fagged, and with a long and piteous but very droll story
of his ignominious non-success : his weary waitings in
dull, dingy, little business back rooms, the patronizing
and snubbing he and his works had met with, the sense
that he had everything .to learn he, who thought he
was going to take the publishing world by storm.
Next day it was just the same, and the day after, and
the day after that every day of the week he spent under
our roof.
Then he insisted on leaving us, and took for himself
a room in Newman Street a studio by day, a bedroom
by night, a pleasant smoking-room at all hours, and
very soon a place of rendezvous for all sorts and con-
ditions of jolly fellows, old friends and new, from
21
322
Guardsmen to young stars of the art world, mostly idle
apprentices.
Gradually boxing-gloves crept in, and foils and masks,
and the faithful Snowdrop (whose condition three or
four attacks of delirium tremens during Barty's exile
had not improved).
And fellows who sang, and told good stories, and imi-
tated popular actors all as it used to be in the good old
days of St. James's Street.
But Barty was changed all the same. These amuse-
ments were no longer the serious business of life for him.
In the midst of all the racket he would sit at his small
easel and work. He declared he couldn't find inspira-
tion in silence and solitude, and, bereft of Martia, he
could not bear to be alone.
Then he looked up other old friends, and left cards
and got invitations to dinners and drums. One of his
first visits was to his old tailor in Jermyn Street, to whom
he still owed money, and who welcomed him with open
arms almost hugged him and made him two or three
beautiful suits ; I believe he would have dressed Barty
for nothing, as a mere advertisement. At all events, he
wouldn't hear of payment "for many years to come!
The finest figure in the whole Household Brigade ! the
idea !"
Soon Barty got a few sketches into obscure illustrated
papers, and thought his fortune was made. The first
was a little sketch in the manner of John Leech, which
he took to the British Lion, just started as a rival to
Punch. The British Lion died before the sketch ap-
peared, but he got a guinea for it, and bought a beauti-
ful volume of Tennyson, illustrated by Millais, Holrnan
Hunt, Rossetti, and others, and made a sketch on the fly-
leaf of a lovely female with black hair and black eyes,
323
and gave it to Leah Gibson. It was his old female face
of ten years ago ; yet, strange to say, the very image of
Leah herself (as it had once been that of his mother).
The great happiness of his life just then was to go to
the opera with Mrs. Gibson and Leah and Mr. Babbage
(the family friend), who could get a box whenever he
liked, and then to sup with them afterwards in Conduit
Street, over the Emporium of the " Universal Fur Com-
pany," and to imitate Signer Giuglini for the delectation
of Mr. Gibson, whose fondness for Barty soon grew into
absolute worship !
And Leah, so reserved and self-contained in general
company, would laugh till the tears ran down her
cheeks ; and the music of her laughter, which was deep
and low, rang more agreeably to Barty's ear than even
the ravishing strains of Adelina Patti the last of the
great prime donne of our time, I think whose voice
still stirs me to the depths, with vague remembrance of
fresh girlish innocence turned into sound.
Long life to her and to her voice ! Lovely voices
should never fade, nor pretty faces either !
Sometimes I replaced Mr. Babbage and escorted Mrs.
Gibson to the opera, leaving Leah to Barty ; for on fine
nights we walked there, and the ladies took off their
bonnets and shawls in the box, which Avas generally on
the upper tier, and we looked down on Scatcherd and
my mother and sister in the stalls. Then back to
Conduit Street to supper. It was easy with half an eye
to see the way things were going. I can't say I liked it.
No man would, I suppose. But I reconciled myself to
the inevitable, and bore up like a stoic.
L'amitie est Famour sans ailes ! A happy intimate
friendship, a wingless love that has lasted more than
thirty years without a break, is no bad substitute for
324
tumultuous passions that have missed their mark ! I
have been as close a friend to Barty's wife as to Barty
himself, and all the happiness I have ever known has
come from them and theirs.
Walking home, poor Mrs. Gibson would confide to me
her woes and anxieties, and wail over the past glories of
Tavistock Square and all the nice people who lived
there, and in Russell Square and Bedford Street and
Gower Street, many of whom had given up calling on
her now that she lived over a shop. Not all the liveli-
ness of Bond Street and Regent Street combined (which
Conduit Street so broadly and genially connected with
each other) could compensate her for the lost gentility,
the aristocratic d illness and quiet and repose, "almost
equal to that of a West End square."-
Then she believed that business was not going on well,
since Mr. Gibson talked of giving up his Cheapside
establishment ; he said it was too much for him to look
after. But he had lost much of his fun, and seemed
harassed and thin, and muttered in his sleep ; and the
poor woman was full of forebodings, some of which were
to be justified by the events that followed.
About this time Leah, who had forebodings too, took
it into her head to attend a class for book-keeping, and
in a short time thoroughly mastered the science in all
its details. I'm afraid she was better at this kind of
work than at either -drawing or music, both of which she
had been so perseveringly taught. She could read off
any music at sight quite glibly and easily, it is true
the result of hard plodding but could never play to
give real pleasure, and she gave it up. And with sing-
ing it was the same ; her voice was excellent and had
been well trained, but when she heard the untaught
Barty she felt she was no singer, and never would be,
325
and left off trying. Yet nobody got more pleasure out
of the singing of others especially Barty's and that of
young Mr. Santley, who was her pet and darling, and
whom she far preferred to that sweetest and suavest of
tenors, Giuglini, about whom we all went mad. I agreed
with her. Giuglini's voice was like green chartreuse in
a liqueur-glass ; Santley's like a bumper of the very best
burgundy that ever was ! Oh that high G ! Romane-
Conti, again; and in a quart-pot! En veux-tu? en
voila !
And as for her drawing, it was as that of all intelli-
gent young ladies who have been well taught, but have
no original talent whatever ; nor did she derive any
special pleasure from the masterpieces in the National
Gallery ; the Royal Academy was far more to her taste ;
and to mine, I frankly admit ; and, I fear, to Barty's
taste also, in those days. Enough of the Guardsman
still remained in him to quite unfit his brain and ear
and eye for what was best in literature and art. He was
mildly fond of the "Bacchus and Ariadne," and Rem-
brandt's portrait of himself, and a few others ; as he was
of the works of Shakespeare and Milton. But Mantegna
and Botticelli and Signorelli made him sad, and almost
morose.
The only great things he genuinely loved and revered
were the Elgin Marbles. He was constantly sketching
them. And I am told that they have had great influence
on his work and that he owes much to them. I have
grown to admire them immensely myself in consequence,
though I used to find that part of the British Museum a-
rather dreary lounge in the days when Barty used to
draw there.
I am the proud possessor of a Velasquez, two Titians,
and a Rembrandt ; but, as a rule, I like to encourage
326
the art of my own time and country and that of modern
France.
And I suppose there's hardly a great painter living,
or recently dead, some of whose work is not represented
on my walls, either in London, Paris, or Scotland ; or at
Marsfield, where so much of my time is spent; although
the house is not mine, it's my real home ; and thither I
have always been allowed to send my best pictures, and
my best bric-a-brac, my favorite horses and dogs, and the
oldest and choicest liquors that were ever stored in the
cellars of Vougeot-Conti & Co. Old bachelor friends
have their privileges, and Uncle Bob has known how to
make himself at home in Marsfield.
Barty soon got better off, and moved into better lodg-
ings in Berners Street ; a sitting-room and bedroom at
No. 12 B, which has now disappeared.
And there he worked all day, without haste and with-
out rest, and at last in solitude ; and found he could
work twice as well with no companion but his pipe and
his lay figure, from which he made most elaborate studies
of drapery, in pen and ink; first in the manner of Sandys
and Albert Diirer ! later in the manner of Millais, Walk-
er, and Keene.
Also he acquired the art of using the living model for
his little illustrations. It had become the fashion ; a
new school had been founded with Once a Week and the
Cornhill Magazine, it seems ; besides those already named,
there were Lawless, du Maurier, Poynter, not to mention
Holman Hunt and F. Leighton ; and a host of new
draughtsmen, most industrious apprentices, whose talk
and example soon weaned Barty from a mixed and some-
what rowdy crew.
And all became more or less friends of his ; a very
good thing, for they were admirable in industry and
327
talent, thorough artists and very good fellows all round.
Need I say they have all risen to fame and fortune as
becomes poetical justice ?
He also kept in touch with his old brother officers,
and that was a good thing too.
But there were others he got to know, rickety, un-
wholesome geniuses, whose genius (such as it was) had
allied itself to madness ; and who were just as conceited
about the madness as about the genius, and took more
pains to cultivate it. It brought them a quicker kudos,
and was so much more visible to the naked eye.
At first Barty was fascinated by the madness, and
took the genius on trust, I suppose. They made much
of him, painted him, wrote music and verses about him,
raved about his Greekness, his beauty, his yellow hair,
and his voice and what not, as if he had been a woman.
He even stood that, he admired them so! or rather, this
genius of theirs.
He introduced me to this little clique, who called
themselves a school, and each other "master": "the
neo-priapists," or something of that sort, and they wor-
shipped the tuberose.
They disliked me at sight, and I them, and we did not
dissemble !
Like Barty, I am fond of men's society ; but at least I
like them to be unmistakably men of my own sex, manly
men, and clean ; not little misshapen troglodytes with
foul minds and perverted passions, or self-advertising
little mountebanks with enlarged and diseased vanities ;
creatures who would stand in a pillory sooner than not be
stared at or talked about at all.
Whatever their genius might be, it almost made me
sick it almost made me kick, to see the humorous and
masculine Barty prostrate in admiration before these
328
inspired epicenes, these gifted epileptoids, these anaemic
little self-satisfied nincompoops, whose proper place, it
seemed to me, was either Earlswood, or Colney Hatch,
or Broadmoor. That is, if their madness was genuine,
which I doubt. He and I had many a quarrel about
them, till he found them out and cut them for good and
all a great relief to me ; for one got a bad name by
being friends with such nondescripts.
" Dis-moi qui tu hantes, je te dirai ce que tu es I"
Need I say they all died long ago, without leaving the
ghost of a name 'i and nobody cared. Poetical justice
again ! How encouraging it is to think there are no
such people now, and that the breed has been thoroughly
stamped out !*
Barty never succeeded as an illustrator on wood. He
got into a way of doing very slight sketches of pretty
people in fancy dress and coloring them lightly, and sold
them at a shop in the Strand, now no more. Then he
made up little stories, which he illustrated himself, some-
thing like the picture-books of the later Caldecott, and
I found him a publisher, and he was soon able to put
aside a few pounds and pay his debts.
* Editor.
Ipart Bigbtb
"And now I see with eyes serene
The very pulse of the machine ;
A being breathing thoughtful breath,
A traveller betwixt life and death ;
The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;
A perfect woman, nobly planned
To warn and comfort and command ;
And yet a spirit too and bright
With something of an angel-light."
-, WORDSWORTH.
Barty had been six months in England, poor
Mr. Gibson's affairs went suddenly smash. My father
saved him from absolute bankruptcy, and there was
lamentation and wailing for a month or so in Conduit
Street ; but things were so managed that Mr. Gibson
was able to keep on the " West End firm," and make with
it a new start.
He had long been complaining of his cashier, and had
to dismiss him and look out for another ; but here his
daughter carne in and insisted on being cashier herself
(to her mother's horror).
So she took her place at a railed-in desk at the back of
the shop, and was not only cashier and bookkeeper, but
overseer of all things in general, and was not above see-
ing any exacting and importunate customer whom the
shopmen couldn't manage.
She actually liked her work, and declared she had
830
found her real vocation, and quite ceased to regret Tav-
istock Square.
Her authority in the emporium was even greater than
her fathers, who was too fond of being funny. She
awed the shopmen into a kind of affectionate servility,
and they were prostrate as before a goddess, in spite of
her never-failing politeness to them.
Customers soon got into a way of asking to see Miss
Gibson, especially when they were accompanied by hus-
bands or brothers or male friends ; and Miss Gibson soon
found she sold better than any shopman, and became one
of the notables in the quarter.
All Mr. Gibson's fun came back, and he was as proud
of his daughter as if she'd been proposed to by an earl.
But Mrs. Gibson couldn't help shedding tears over Leah's
loss of caste Leah, on whose beauty and good breeding
she had founded such hopes : it is but fair to add that
she was most anxious to keep the books herself, so that
her daughter might be spared this degradation ; for no
"gentleman," she felt sure, would ever propose to her
daughter now.
But she was mistaken.
One night Barty and I dined at a little cagmag he
used to frequent, where he fared well so he said for a
shilling, which included a glass of stout. It was a dis-
gusting little place, but he liked it, and therefore so
did I.
Then we called for Mrs. Gibson and Leah, and took
them to the Princess's to see Fechter in Ruy Bias, and
escorted them home, and had supper with them, a very
good supper nothing ever interfered with the luxurious-
ly hospitable instincts of the Gibsons and a very merry
one. Barty imitated Fechter to the life.
" I 'av ze garrb of a lacquais you 'av ze sole of wawn !"
331
This he said to Mr. Gibson, who was in fits of delight.
Mr. Gibson had just come home from his club, and the
cards had been propitious ; Leah was more reserved than
usual, and didn't laugh at Barty, for a wonder, but
gazed at him with love in her eyes.
When we left them, Barty took my arm and walked
home with me, down Oxford Street and up Southampton
Row, and talked of Euy Bias and Fechter, whom he
had often seen in Paris.
Just where a little footway leads from the Row to
Queen Square and Great Ormond Street, he stopped and
said :
" Bob, do you remember how we tossed up for Leah
Gibson at this very spot ?"
"I should think I did," said I.
" Well, you had a fair field and no favor, old boy,
didn't you ?"
" Oh yes, I've long resigned any pretensions, as I
wrote you more than a year ago; you may go in and
win si le coeur t'en dit \"
"Well, then, your congratulations, please. I asked
her to marry me as we crossed Regent Circus, Oxford
Street, on the way home ; a hansom came by and scattered
and splashed us. Then we came together again, and
just opposite Peter Robinson's, she asked me if my mind
was quite made up if I was sure I wouldn't ever change.
I swore by the eternal gods, and she said she would be
my wife ; so there we are, an engaged couple."
I must ask the reader to believe that I was equal to
the occasion, and said what I ought to have said.
Mrs. Gibson was happy at last ; she was satisfied that
Barty was a "gentleman," in spite of the kink in his
birth ; and as for his prospects, money was a thing that
332
never entered Mrs. Gibson's head, and she loved Barty
as a son was a little bit in love with him herself, I
believe ; she was not yet forty, and as pretty as she
could be.
Besides, a week after, who should call upon her over
the shop there was a private entrance of course but
the Right Honorable Lady Caroline Grey and her niece,
Miss Daphne Rohan, granddaughter of the late and
niece of the present Marquis of Whitby !
And Mrs. Gibson felt as much at home with them in
five minutes as if she'd known them all her life.
Leah was summoned from below, and kissed and
congratulated by the two aristocratic relatives of Bar-
ty*s, and relieved of her shyness in a very short time
indeed.
As a matter of fact, Lady Caroline, who knew her
nephew well, and thoroughly understood his position,
was really well pleased ; she had never forgotten her im-
pression of Leah when she met her in the park with Ida
and me a year back, and we all walked by the Serpentine
together a certain kind of beauty seems to break down
all barriers of rank ; and she knew Leah's character both
from Barty and me, and from her own native shrewdness
of observation. She had been delighted to hear from
Barty of Leah's resolute participation in her father's
troubles, and in his attempt so successful through her
to rehabilitate his business. To her old-fashioned aristo-
cratic way of looking at things, there was little to choose
between a respectable West End shopkeeper and a medi-
cal practitioner or dentist or solicitor or architect or
even an artist, like Barty himself. Once outside the
Church, the Army and Navy, or a Government office,
what on earth did it matter who or what one was, or
wasn't ? The only thing she couldn't stand was that
334
horrid form of bourgeois gentility, the pretension to seem
something, better than you really are. Mrs. Gibson was
so naively honest in her little laments over her lost
grandeur that she could hardly be called vulgar about it.
Mr. Gibson didn't appear ; he was overawed, and dis-
trusted himself. I doubt if Lady Caroline would have
liked anything in the shape of jocose familiarity ; and
I fear her naturalness and simplicity and cordiality of
manner, and the extreme plainness of her attire, might
have put him at his ease almost a trifle too much.
Whether her ladyship would have been so sympathetic
about this engagement if Barty had been a legitimate
Rohan say a sou of her own is perhaps to be doubted ;
but anyhow she had quite made up her mind that Leah
was a quite exceptional person, both in mind and man-
ners. She has often said as much to me, and has always
had as high a regard for Barty's wife as for any woman
she knows, and has still the Rohans are a long-lived
family. She has often told me she never knew a better,
sincerer, nobler, or more sensible woman than Barty's
wife.
Besides which, as I have been told, the ancient York-
shire house of Rohan has always been singularly free
from aristocratic hauteur ; perhaps their religion may
have accounted for this, and also their poverty.
This memorable visit, it must be remembered, hap-
pened nearly forty years ago, when social demarcations
in England were far more rigidly defined than at present ;
then, the wife of a costermonger with a donkey did not
visit the wife of a costermonger who had to wheel his
barrow himself.
We are more sensible in these days, as all who like Mr.
Chevalier's admirable coster-songs are aware. Old Europe
itself has become less tolerant of distinctions of rank ;
335
even Austria is becoming so. It is only in southeastern
Bulgaria and even of this I am not absolutely sure that
the navvy who happens to be of noble birth refuses to
work in the same gang with the navvy who isn't'; and
that's what I call real "esprit de corps," without which
no aristocracy can ever hope to hold its own in these de-
generate days.
Noblesse oblige !
Why, I've got a Lord Arthur in my New York agency,
and two Hon'bles in Barge Yard, and another at Cape
Town ; and devilish good men of business they are, be-
sides being good fellows all round. They hope to become
partners some day ; and, by Jove ! they shall. Now I've
said it, I'll stick to it.
The fact is, I'm rather fond of noble lords : why
shouldn't I be ? I might have been one myself any day
these last ten years ; I might now, if I chose ; but there !
Charles Lamb knew a man who wanted to be a tailor
once, but hadn't got the spirit. I find I haven't got the
spirit to be a noble lord. Even Barty might have been a
lord he, a mere man of letters ! but he refused every
honor and distinction that was ever offered to him,
either here or abroad even the Prussian order of
Merit !
Alfred Tennyson was a lord, so what is there to make
such a fuss about. Give me lords who can't help them-
selves, because they were born so, and the stupider the
better ; and the older for the older they are the grander
their manners and the manners of their womankind.
Take, for instance, that splendid old dow, Penelope,
Duchess of Rumtifoozleland I always give nicknames to
my grand acquaintances ; not that she's particularly old
herself, but she belongs to an antiquated order of things
that is passing away for she was a Fitztartan, a daughter
336
of the ducal house of Comtesbois (pronounced County
Boyce); and she's very handsome still.
Have you ever been presented to her Grace, reader ?
If so, you must have been struck by the grace of her
Grace's manner, as with a ducal gesture and a few court-
ly words she recognizes the value of whatever immense
achievements yours must have been to have procured you
such an honor as such an introduction, and expresses her
surprise and regret that she has not known you before.
The formula is always the same, on every possible occa-
sion. I ought to know, for I've had the honor of being
presented to her Grace seven times this year.
Now this lofty forgetting of your poor existence or
mine is not aristocratic hauteur or patrician insolence ;
it is bdtise pure et si tuple, as they call it in France. She
was a daughter of the house of Comtesbois, and the Fitz-
tartuns were not the inventors of gunpowder, nor was she.
But for a stately, magnificent Grande Dame of the an-
cient regime, to meet for the seventh time, and be pre-
sented to for the seventh time with all due ceremony
in the midst of a distinguished conservative crowd say
at a ball at Buckingham Palace give me Penelope,
Dowager Duchess of Rumtifoozleland !
(This seems a somewhat uncalled-for digression. But,
anyhow, it shows that when it pleases me to do so I
move in the very best society just like Barty Josselin.)
So here was Mr. Nobody of Nowhere taking unto
himself a wife from among the daughters of Heth ; from
the class he had always disliked, the buyers pheap and
the sellers dear whose sole aim in life is the making of
money, and who are proud when they succeed and
ashamed when they fail and getting actually fond of
his future father and mother in law, as I was !
387
When I laughed to him about old Gibson John Gil-
pin, as we used to call him being a tradesman, he said :
' ' Yes ; but what an unsuccessful tradesman, my dear,
fellow !" as if that in itself atoned or made amends for
everything.
"Besides, he's Leah's father! And as for Mrs. Gil-
pin, she's a dear, although she's always on pleasure bent ;
at all events, she's not of a frugal mind ; and she's so
pretty and dresses so well and what a foot ! and she's
got such easy manners, too ; she reminds me of dear
Lady Archibald ! that's a mother-in-law I shall get on
with. ... I wish she didn't make such a fuss about living
over the shop ; I call that being above one's business in
every way."
"Je suis an-dessus de mes affaires," as old Bonzig
proudly said when he took a garret over the Mont de
Piete, in the Kue des Averses.
Barty's courtship didn't last long only five or six
months during which he made lots of money by sketch-
ing little full-length portraits of people in outline and
filling up with tints in water-color. He thus immortal-
ized my father and mother, and Ida Scatcherd and her
husband, and the old Scatcherds, and lots of other peo-
ple. It was not high art, I suppose ; he was not a high
artist ; but it paid well, and made him more tolerant of
trade than ever.
He took the upper part of a house in Southampton
Eow, and furnished it almost entirely with wedding-
gifts ; among other things, a beautiful semi-grand piano
by ICrard the gift of my father. Everything was charm-
ing there and in the best taste.
Leah was better at furnishing a house than at drawing
and music-making ; it was an occupation she revelled in.
22
It is npt perhaps for me to say that their cellar might
hold its own with that of any beginners in their rank of
life!
Well, and so they were married at Marylebone Church,
and I was Barty's best man (he was to have been mine,
and for that very bride). Nobody else was there but
the- family, and Ida, whose husband was abroad ; the
sun shone, though it was not yet May and then we
breakfasted ; and John Gilpin made a very funny
speech, though with tears in his voice ; and as for poor
Maman-belle-mere, as Barty called her, she was a very
Niobe.
They went for a fortnight to Boulogne. I wished them
joy from the bottom of my heart, and flung a charming
little white satin slipper of Mrs. Gibson's ; it alighted
on the carriage our carriage, by-the-way ; we had just
started one, and now lived at Lancaster Gate.
It was a sharp pang almost unbearable, but, also, al-
most the last. The last was when she came back and I
saw how radiant she looked. And as for Barty, he was
like
" the herald Mercury,
New lighted on a heaven-kissing hill !"
and he had shaved off his beard and mustache to please
his wife.
"From George du Maurier, Esqre., A.R.W.S., Hampstead Heath,
to the Right Honble. Sir Robert Maurice, Bart., M.P. :
" MY DEAR MAURICE, In answer to your kind letter, I shall be
proud and happy to illustrate your biography of Barty Josselin ;
but as for editing it, voiis plaisantez, mon ami ; un amateur comme
moi! who'll edit the editor ? Quis custodiet? . . .
" You're mistaken about Malines. I only got back there a week
or two before he left it. I remember often seeing him there, arm
339
in arm with his aunt, Lady Caroline Grey, and being told that he
was a monsieur anglais, qui axait mal aux yeux (like me) ; but in
Dilsseldorf, during the following winter, I knew him very well in-
deed.
" We, and the others you tell me you mention, had a capital
time in Dilsseldorf. I remember the beautiful Miss Royce they
were all so mad about, and also Miss Gibson, whom I admired
much the most of the two, although she wasn't quite so.tall you
know my craze for lovely giantesses.
" Josselin and I came to London at about the same time, and
there again I saw much of him, and was immensely attracted by
him, of course as we all were, in the very pleasant little artistic
clique you tell me you describe ; but somehow I was never very
intimate with him none of us were, except, perhaps, Charles
Keene.
" He went a great deal into smart society, and a little of the
guardsman still clung to him, and this was an unpardonable crime
in those Bohemian days.
"He was once seen walking between two well-known earls, in
the Burlington Arcade, arm in arm !
" Z (to whom a noble lord was as a red rag to a bul 1 ,) all but
cut him for this, and we none of us approved of his swell friends,
Guardsmen and others. How we've all changed, especially Z ,
who hasn't, missed a levee for twenty years, nor his wife a drawing-
room !
" Josselin and I acted in a little French musical farce together at
Cornelys's ; he had a charming- voice and sang beautifully, as you
know.
' ' Then he married, and a year after I did the same ; and though
we lived near each other for a little while, we didn't meet very
often, beyond dining together once or twice at each other's houses.
They lived very much in the world.
" It will be very difficult to draw his wife. I really think Mrs.
Josselin was the most beautiful woman I ever saw ; but she used
to be very reserved in those early days, and I never felt quite at my
ease with her. I'm sure she was sweetness and kindness itself; she
was certainly charming at her own dinner-table, where she was less
shy.
" Millais'.s portrait of her is very good, and so is Watts's ; but the
best idea of her is to be got from Josselin's little outlines in ' The
340
Discreet Princess,' and these are out of print. If you have any,
please lend them to me, and I will faithfully return them. I have
more than once tried to draw her in Punch, from memory, but
never with success.
" I used to call her ' La belle dame satis merci.'
"I've often, however, drawn Josselin, as you must remember,
and people have recognized him at once. Thanks for all his old
sketches qf school, etc., which will be very useful.
" I wish I had known the Josselins better. But when one lives
in Hampstead one has to forego many delightful friendships ; and
then he grew to be such a tremendous swell ! Good heavens !
Sardonyx, etc. I never could muster courage even to write and
congratulate him.
" It never occurred to any of us, either in Dlisseldorf or London,
to think him what is called deter; he never said anything very
witty or profound. But he was always funny in a good-natured,
jovial manner, and made me laugh more than any one else.
"As for satire, good heavens ! that seemed not in him. He was
always well dressed, always in high spirits and a good temper, and
very demonstrative and caressing ; putting his arm round one, and
slapping one on the back or lifting one up in the air; a kind of
jolly, noisy, boisterous boon - companion rather uproarious, in
fact, and with no disdain for a good bottle of wine or a good bottle
of beer. His artistic tastes were very catholic, for he was pros-
trate in admiration before Millais, Burne-Jones, Fred Walker, and
Charles Keene, with the latter of whom he used to sing old English
duets. Oddly enough, Charles Keene had for Josselin's little ama-
teur pencilliugs the most enthusiastic admiration probably be-
cause they were the very antipodes of his own splendid work. I
believe he managed to get some little initial letters of Josselin's into
Punch and Once a Week ; but they weren't signed, and made no
mark, and I've forgotten them.
" Josselin didn't really get his foot in the stirrup till a year or
two after his marriage.
"And that was by his illustrations to his own Sardonyx, which
are almost worthy of the letter-press, I think ; though still some-
what lacking in freedom and looseness, and especially in the sense
of tone. The feeling for beauty and character in them (especially
that of women and children) is so utterly beyond anything else of
.the kind that has ever been attempted, that technical considerations
342
no longer count. I think you will find all of us, in or outside the
Academy, agreed upon this point.
"I saw very little of him after he bought Marsfield; but I some-
times meet* his sons and daughters, de par Iv monde.
" And what a pleasure that is to an artist of my particular bent
you can readily understand. I would go a good way to see or
talk to any daughter of Josselin's ; and to hear Mrs. Trevor sing,
what miles ! I'm told the grandchildren are splendid chips of
the old block too.
" And now, my dear Maurice, I will do my best ; you may count
upon that, for old-limes' sake, and for Josselin's, and for that of
'La belle dame sans merci,' whom I used to admire so enthusias-
tically. It grieves me deeply to think of them both gone and
all so sudden !
" Sincerely yours,
"GEOUOE DU MAUHIEU.
"P. S. Very many thanks for the Chateau Yquem and the Stein-
berger Cabinet ; je tdcfterai de ne pas en abuser trap !
"I send you a little sketch of Graham-Recce (Lord Ironsides),
taken by me on a little bridge in Dusselthal, near Dlisseldorf. He
stood for me there in 1860. It was thought very like at the time."
When the Josselins came back from their honeymoon
and were settled in Southampton Row many people of
all kinds called on the newly married pair ; invitations
came pouring in, and they went very much into the
world. They were considered the handsomest couple in
London that year, and became quite the fashion, and
were asked everywhere, and made much of, and raved
about, and had a glorious time till the following season,
when somebody else became the fashion, and they had
grown tired of being lionized themselves, and discovered
they were people of no social importance whatever, as
Leah had long perceived ; and it did them good.
Barty was in his element. The admiration his wife
excited filled him with delight ; it was a kind of reflected
343
glory, that pleased him more than any glory he could
possibly achieve for himself.
I doubt if Leah was quite so happy. The grand people,
the famous people, the clever, worldly people she met
made her very shy at first, as may be easily imagined.
She was rather embarrassed by the attentions many
smart men paid her as to a very pretty woman, and not
always pleased or edified. Her deep sense of humor was
often tickled by this new position in which she found
herself, and which she put down entirely to the fact that
she was Barty's wife.
She never thought much of her own beauty, which had
never been made much of at home, where beauty of a
very different order was admired, and where she was
thought too tall, too pale, too slim, and especially too
quiet and sedate.
Dimpled little rosy plumpness for Mr. and Mrs. John
Gilpin, and the never - ending lively chatter, and the
ever-ready laugh that results from an entire lack of the
real sense of humor and a laudable desire to show one's
pretty teeth.
Leah's only vanity was her fondness for being very well
dressed ; it had become a second nature, especially her
fondness for beautiful French boots and shoes, an in-
stinct inherited from her mother.
For these, and for pretty furniture and hangings, she
had the truly aesthetic eye, and was in advance of her
time by at least a year.
She shone most in her own home by her great
faculty of making others at home there, too, and disin-
clined to leave it. Her instinct of hospitality was a true in-
heritance ; she was good at the ordering of all such things
food, wines, flowers, waiting, every little detail of the
dinner-table, and especially who should be asked to meet
344
whom, and which particular guests should be chosen to
sit by each other. All things of which Barty had no
idea whatever.
I remember their first dinner-party well, and how
pleasant it was. . How good the fare, and how simple ;
and how quick the hired waiting and the wines ! how
(but I Avon't talk of that); and how lively we all were,
and how handsome the women. Lady Caroline and Miss
Daphne Rohan, Mr. and Mrs. Graham-Reece, Scatcherd
and my sister; G. du Maurier (then a bachelor) and my-
self that was the party, a very lively one.
After dinner du Maurier and Barty sang capital songs
of the quartier latin, and told stories of the atelier, and
even danced a kind of cancan together an invention of
their own which they called " le dernier des Abencer-
rages." We were in fits of laughter, especially Lady
Caroline and Mrs. Graham-Reece. I hope D. M. has
not forgotten that scene, and will do justice to it in this
book.
There was still more of the Bohemian than the Guards-
man left in Barty, and his wife's natural tastes were far
more in the direction of Bohemia than of fashionable
West End society, as it was called by some people who
were not in it, whatever it consists of ; there was more of
her father in her than her mother, and she was not sen-
sitive to the world's opinion of her social status.
Sometimes Leah and Barty and I would dine together
and go to the gallery of the opera, let us say, or to see
Fechter and Miss Kate Terry in the Duke's Motto, or
Robson in Shylock, or the Porter's Knot, or whatever
was good. Then on the way home to Southampton Row
Barty would buy a big lobster, and Leah would make a
salad of it, with innovations of her own devising which
were much appreciated; and then we would feast, and
346
afterwards Leah would mull some claret in a silver
saucepan, and then we (Barty and I) would drink and
smoke and chat of pleasant things till it was very late
indeed and I had to be turned out neck and crop.
And the kindness of the two dear people ! Once, when
my father and mother were away in the Isle of Wight
and the Scatcherds in Paris, I felt so seedy I had to leave
Barge Yard and go home to Lancaster Gate. I had felt
pretty bad for two or three days. Like all people who
are never ill, I was nervous and thought I was going to
die, and sent for Barty.
In less than twenty minutes Leah drove up in a han-
som. Barty was in Hampton Court for the day, sketch-
ing. When she had seen me and how ill I looked, off
she went for the doctor, and brought him back with her
in no time. He saw I was sickening for typhoid, and
must go to bed at once and engage-two nurses.
Leah insisted on taking me straight off to Southamp-
ton Row, and the doctor came with us. There I was
soon in bed and the nurses engaged, and everything done
for me as if I'd been Barty himself all this at consider-
able inconvenience to the Josselins.
And I had my typhoid most pleasantly. And I shall
never forget the joys of convalescence, nor what an angel
that woman was in a sick - room nor what a companion
when the worst iwas over ; nor how she so bore herself
through all this, forced intimacy that no unruly regrets
or jealousies mingled in my deep affection and admira-
tion for her, and my passionate gratitude. She was
such a person to tell all one's affairs to, even dry busi-
ness affairs ! such a listener, and said such sensible
things, and sometimes made suggestions that were in-
valuable ; and of a discretion ! a very tomb for momen-
tous secrets.
347
How on earth Barty would have ever managed to get
through existence without her is not to be conceived.
Upon my word, I hardly see how I should have got on
myself without these two people to fill my life with ; and
in all matters of real importance to me she was the
nearest of the two, for Barty was so light about things,
and couldn't listen long to anything that was at all
intricate. Such matters bored him, and that extraor-
dinary good sense which underlies all his brilliant crit-
icism of life was apt to fail him in practical matters ;
he was too headstrong and impulsive, and by no means
discreet.
It was quite amusing to watch the way his wife man-
aged him without ever letting him suspect what she was
doing, and how, after his raging and fuming and storming
and stamping for all his old fractiousness had come
back she would gradually make him work his way
round of his own accord, as he thought to complete
concession all along the line, and take great credit to
himself in consequence ; and she would very gravely and
slowly give way to a delicate little wink in my direc-
tion, but never a smile at what was all so really funny.
I've no doubt she often got me to do what she thought
right in just the same way d mon insu and shot her
little wink at Barty.
In due time namely, late in the evening of December
31, 1862 Barty hailed a hansom, and went first to sum-
mon his good friend Dr. Knight, in Orchard Street ; and
then he drove to Brixton, and woke up and brought
back with him a very respectable, middle -aged, and
motherly woman whose name was Jones ; and next
morning, which was a very sunny, frosty one, my dear
little god-daughter was ushered into this sinful world, a
348
fact which was chronicled the very next day in Leah's
diary by the simple entry :
"Jan. 1. Roberta was born and the coals came in."
When Koberta was first shown to her papa by the
nurse, he was in despair and ran and shut himself up in his
studio, and. I believe, almost wept. He feared he had
brought a monster into the world. He had always
thought that female babies were born with large blue
eyes framed with long lashes, a beautiful complexion of
the lily and the rose, and their shining, flaxen curls
already parted in the middle. And this little bald,
wrinkled, dark -red, howling lump of humanity all but
made him ill. But soon the doctor came and knocked
at the door, and said :
"I congratulate you, old fellow, on having produced
the most magnificent little she I ever saw in my life
bar none ; she might be shown for money."
And it turned out that this was not the coarse, unfeel-
ing chaff poor Barty took it for at first, but the pure and
simple truth.
So, my blessed Roberta, pride of your silly old god-
father's heart and apple of his eye, mother of Cupid and
Ganymede and Aurora and the infant Hercules, think
of your poor young father weeping in solitude at the first
sight of you, because you were so hideous in his eyes !
You were noiso in mine. Next day you had improved,
no doubt I took you in my arms and thought well of
you, especially your little hands that were*very prehen-
sile, and your little feet turned in, with rosy toes and lit-
tle pink nails like shiny gems ; and I was complimented
by Mrs. Jones on the skill with which I dandled you. I
have dandled your sons and daughters, Roberta, and
may I live to dandle theirs !
349
So then Barty dried his tears, if he really shed them
and he swears he did and went and sat by his wife's
bedside, and felt unutterably, as I believe all good men
do under similar circumstances; and lo! proh! to his
wonderment and delight, in the middle of it all, the
sense of the north came back like a tide, like an over-
whelming avalanche. He declared he all but fainted in
the double ineffability of his bliss.
That night he arranged by his bedside writing materi-
als chosen with extra care, and before he went to bed
he looked out of window at the stars, and filled his
lungs with the clean, frozen, virtuous air of Bloomsbury,
and whispered a most passionate invocation to Martia,
and implored her forgiveness, and went to sleep hugging
the thought of her to his manly breast, now widowed for
quite a month to come.
Next morning there was a long letter in bold, vigorous
Blaze :
MOKE THAN EVER BELOVED BARTY, It is for
me to implore pardon, not for you! Your first-born is
proof enough to me how right you were in letting your
own instinct guide you in the choice of a wife.
"Ah ! and well now I know her worth and your good-
fortune. I have inhabited her for many months, little
as she knows it, dear thing !
"Although she was not the woman I first wanted for
you, and had watched so many years, she is all that I
could wish, in body and mind, in beauty and sense and
goodness of heart and intelligence, in health and strength,
and especially in the love with which she has so easily,
and I trust so lastingly, filled your heart for that is
the most precious thing of all to me, as you shall know
da} r , and why.; and you will .then .understand and
350
forgive me for seeming such a shameless egotist and
caring so desperately for my own ends.
" Barty, I will never doubt you again, and we will do
great things together. They will not be quite what I
used to hope, but they will be worth doing, and all the
doing will be yours. All I can do is to set your brains
in motion those innocent brains that don't know their
own strength any more than a herd of bullocks which
any little butcher boy can drive to the slaughter-house.
"As soon as Leah is well enough you must tell her
all about me all you know, that is. She won't believe
you at first, and she'll think you've gone mad ; but she'll
have to believe you in time, and she's to be trusted with
any secret, and so will you be when once you've shared
it with her.
" (By-the-way, I wish you weren't so slipshod and col-
loquial in your English, Barty Guardsman's English, I
suppose which I have to use, as it's yours ; your French
is much more educated and correct. You remember
dear M. Durosier at the Pension Brossard ? he taught
you well. You must read, and cultivate a decent Eng-
lish style, for the bulk of our joint work must be in Eng-
lish, I think ; and I can only use your own words to
make you immortal, and your own way of using them.)
"We will be simple, Barty as simple as Lemuel
Gulliver and the good Robinson Crusoe and cultivate a
fondness for words of one syllable, and if that doesn't do
we'll try French.
" Now listen, or, rather, read :
"First of all, I will write out for you a list of books,
which you must study whenever you feel I'm inside you
and this more for me than for yourself. Those marked
with a cross you must read constantly and carefully at
home, the others you must read at the British Museum.
351
" Get a reading ticket at once, and read the books in
the order I put down. Never forget to leave paper and
pencil by your bedside. Leah will soon get accustomed
to your quiet somnambulism ; I will never trouble your
rest for more than an hour or so each night, but you can
make up for it by staying in bed an hour or two longer.
You will have to work during the day from the pencil
notes in Blaze you will have written during the night,
and in the evening, or at any time you are conscious of
my presence, read what you have written during the day,
and leave it by your bedside when you go to bed, that I
may make you correct and alter and suggest during
your sleep.
" Only write on one side of a page, leaving a margin
and plenty of space between the lines, and let.it be in
copybooks, so that the page on the left-hand side be left
for additions and corrections from my Blaze notes, and so
forth ; you'll soon get into the way of it.
"Then when each copybook is complete I will let
you know get Leah to copy it out ; she writes a
very good, legible business hand. All will arrange it-
self
"And now, get the books and begin reading them. I
shall not be ready to write, nor will you, for more than a
month.
" Keep this from everybody but Leah ; don't even
mention it to Maurice until I give you leave not but
what's he's to be thoroughly trusted. You are fortunate
in your wife and your friend I hope the day will come
when you will find you have been fortunate in your
"MABTIA."
Here follows a list of books, but it has been more or
less carefully erased ; and though some of the names are
352
still to be made out, I conclude that Barty did not wish
them to be made public.
Before Roberta was born, Leah had reserved herself
an hour every morning and every afternoon for what she
called the cultivation of her mind the careful reading
of good standard books, French and English, that she
might qualify herself in time, as she said, for the intel-
lectual society in which she hoped to mix some day ; she
built castles in the air, being somewhat of a hero-worship-
per in secret, and dreamt of meeting her heroes in the
flesh, now that she was Barty's wife.
But when she became a mother there was not only
Roberta who required much attention, but Barty himself
made great calls upon her time besides.
To his friends' astonishment he had taken it into his
head to write a book. Good heavens ! Barty writing a
book ! What on earth could the dear boy have to write
about ?
He wrote much of the book at night in bed, and cor-
rected and put it into shape during the daytime ; and
finally Leah had to copy it all out neatly in her best
handwriting, and this copying out of Barty's books be-
came to her an all but daily task for many years a happy
labor of love, and one she would depute to no one else ;
no hired hand should interfere with these precious pro-
ductions of her husband's genius. So that most of the
standard works, English and French, that she grew to
thoroughly master were of her husband's writing not
a bad education, I venture to think !
Besides, it was more in her nature and in the circum-
stances of her life that she should become a woman of
business and a woman of the world rather than a reader
of books one who grew to thoroughly understand life
353
as it presented itself to her ; and men and women, and
especially children ; and the management of a large and
much frequented house ; for they soon moved away from
Southampton Eow.
She quickly arrived at a complete mastery of all
such science as this and it is a science; such a mas-
tery as I have never seen surpassed by any other woman,
of whatever world. She would have made a splen-
did Marchioness of Whitby, this daughter of a low-
comedy John Gilpin ; she would have beaten the Whitby
record !
She developed into a woman of the world in the best
sense full of sympathy, full of observation and quick
understanding of others' needs and thoughts and feel-
ings ; absolutely sincere, of a constant and even temper,
and a cheerfulness that never failed the result of her
splendid health ; without caprice, without a spark of
vanity, without selfishness of any kind generous, open-
handed, charitable to a fault ; always taking the large
and generous view of everything and everybody ; a little
impulsive perhaps, but not often having to regret her
impulses ; of unwearied devotion to her husband, and
capable of any heroism or self-sacrifice for his sake ; of
that I feel sure.
No one is perfect, of course. Unfortunately, she was
apt to be somewhat jealous at first of his singularly
catholic and very frankly expressed admiration of every
opposite type of female beauty ; but she soon grew to
see that there was safety in numbers, and she was made
to feel in time that her own type was the arch-type of
all in his eyes, and herself the arch-representative of that
type in his heart.
She was also jealous in her friendships, and was not
happy unless constantly assured of her friends' warm
354
love Ida's, mine, even that of her own father and
mother. Good heavens ! had ever a woman less cause
for doubt or complaint on that score !
Then, like all extremely conscientious people who
always know their own mind and do their very best,
she did not like to be found fault with; she secretly
found such fault with herself that she thought that was
fault-finding enough. Also, she was somewhat rigid in
sticking to the ways she thought were right, and in
the selection of these ways she was not always quite in-
fallible. On a Us defauts de ses qualites; and a little
obstinacy is often the fault of a very noble quality in-
deed !
Though somewhat shy and standoffish during the first
year or two of her married life, she soon became " joli-
ment degourdie," as Barty called it ; and I can scarcely
conceive any position in which she would have been
awkward or embarrassed for a moment, so ready was she
always with just the right thing to say or to withhold,
if silence were better than speech ; and her fit and proper
place in the world as a great man's wife and a good and
beautiful woman was always conceded to her with due
honor, even by the most impertinent among the highly
placed of her own sex, without any necessity for self-
assertion on her part whatever without assumption of
any kind.
It was a strange and peculiar personal ascendency she
managed to exert with so little effort, an ascendency
partly physical, no doubt ; and the practice of it had be-
gun in the West End emporium of the " Universal Fur
Company, Limited."
How admirably she filled the high and arduous posi-
tion of wife to such a man as Barty Josseliu is well
known to the world at large. It was no sinecure ! but
856
she gloried in it ; and to her thorough apprehension and
management of their joint lives and all that came of
them, as well as to her beauty and sense and genial
warmth, was due her great popularity for many years in
an immense and ever-widening circle, where the memory
of her is still preserved and cherished as one of the most
remarkable women of her time.
AVith all this power of passionate self-surrender to her
husband in all things, little and big, she was not of the
type that cannot see the faults of the beloved one, and
Barty was very often frankly pulled up for his short-
comings, and by no means had it all his own way when
his own way wasn't good for him. She was a person
to reckon with, and incapable of the slightest flattery,
even to Barty, who was so fond of it from her, and in
spite of her unbounded admiration for him.
Such was your mother, my dear Roberta, in the bloom
of her early twenties and ever after ; till her death, in
fact on the day following his !
Somewhere about the spring of 1863 she said to me :
" Bob, Barty has written a book. Either I'm an idiot,
or blinded by conjugal conceit, or else Barty's book
which I've copied out myself in my very best hand-
writing is one of the most beautiful and important
books ever written. Come and dine with me to-night ;
Barty's dining in the City with the Fishmongers you
shall have what you like best : pickled pork and pease-
pudding, a dressed crab and a Welsh rabbit to follow,
and draught stout and after dinner I will read you the
beginning of Sardonyx that's what he's called it and
I should like to have your opinion."
I dined with her as she wished. We were alone, and
she told me how he wrote every night in bed, in a kind
357
of ecstasy between two and four, in Blaze and then
elaborated his work during the day, and made sketches
for it.
And after dinner she read me the first part of Sardo-
nyx; it took three hours.
Then Barty came home, having dined well, and in
very high spirits.
"Well, old fellow ! how do you like Sardonyx f
I was so moved and excited I could say nothing I
couldn't even smoke. I was allowed to take the pre-
cious manuscript aw,ay with me, and finished it during
the night.
Next morning I wrote to him out of the fulness of
my heart.
I read it aloud to my father and mother, and then lent
it to Scatcherd, who read it to Ida. In twenty-four
hours our gay and genial Barty our Kobin Goodfellow
and Merry Andrew, our funny man had become for us
a demi-god ; for all but my father, who looked upon him
as a splendid but irretrievably lost soul, and mourned
over him as over a son of his own.
And in two months Sardonyx was before the reading
world, and the middle-aged reader will remember the
wild enthusiasm and the storm it raised.
All that is ancient history, and I will do no more than
allude to the unparalleled bitterness of the attacks made
by the Church on a book which is now quoted again and
again from every pulpit in England in the world and
has been translated into almost every language under
the sun.
Thus he leaped into fame and fortune at a bound, and
at first they delighted him. He would take little Roberta
on to the top of his head and dance " La Paladine " on
his hearth-rug, singing :
358
"Rataplan, Rataplan,
I'm a celebrated man "
in imitation of Sergeant Bouncer in Cox and Box.
But in less than a year celebrity had quite palled, and
all his money bored him as mine does me. He had a
very small appetite for either the praise or the pudding
which were served out to him in such excess all through
his life. It was only his fondness for the work itself
that kept his nose so constantly to the grindstone.
Within six months of the Sardonyx Barty wrote La
quatri&me Dimension in French, which was published
by Dollfus-Mois freres, in Paris, with if possible a
greater success; for the clerical opposition was even
more virulent. The English translation, which is ad-
mirable, is by Scatcherd.
Then came Motes in a Moonbeam, Interstellar Har-
monics, and Berthe aux grands Pieds within eighteen
months, so that before he was quite thirty, in the
space of two years, Barty had produced five works
three in English and two in French which, though
merely novels and novelettes, have had as wide and far-
reaching an influence on modern thought as the Ori-
gin of Species, that appeared about the same time, and
which are such, for simplicity of expression, exposition,
and idea, that an intelligent ploughboy can get all the
good and all the pleasure from them almost as easily as
any philosopher or sage.
Such was Barty's debut as a man of letters. This is not
the place to criticise his literary work, nor am I the prop-
er person to do so ; enough has been written already about
Barty Josselin during his lifetime to fill a large library
in nearly every language there is. I tremble to think of
what has yet to follow !
' BATAPLAN, KATAPLAN ' "
360
Sardonyx came of age nearly twelve years ago what a
coming of age that was the reader will remember well. I
shall not forget its celebration at Marsfield ; it happened
to coincide with the birth of Barty's first grandchild, at
that very house.
I will now go back to Barty's private life, which is the
sole object of this humble attempt at book-making on
my part.
During the next ten years Barty's literary activity was
immense. Beautiful books followed each other in rapid
succession and so did beautiful little Bartys, and Leah's
hands were full.
And as each book, English or French, was more beau-
tiful than the last ; so was each little Barty, male or fe-
male. All over Kensington and Campden Hill for they
took Gretna Lodge, next door to Cornelys, the sculptor's
the splendor of these little Bartys, their size, their beau-
ty, their health and high spirits, became almost a joke,
and their mother became almost a comic character in
consequence like the old lady who lived in a shoe.
Money poured in with a profusion few writers of good
books have ever known before, and every penny not want-
ed for immediate household expenses was pounced upon
by Scatcherd or by me to be invested in the manner we
thought best : nous avons eu la main heureuse !
The Josselins kept open house, and money was not to
be despised, little as Barty ever thought of money.
Then every autumn the entire smalah migrated to the
coast of Normandy, or Picardy, or Brittany, or to the
Highlands of Inverness, and with them the Scatcherds
and the chronicler of these happy times not to mention
cats, dogs, and squirrels, and guinea-pigs, and white
mice, and birds of all kinds, from which the children
would not be parted, and the real care of which, both
361
at home and abroad, ultimately devolved on poor Mrs.
Josselin who was not so fond of animals as all that
so that her life was full to overflowing of household
cares.
Another duty had devolved upon her also : that of an-
swering the passionate letters that her husband received
by every post from all parts of the world especially
America and which he could never be induced to an-
swer himself. Every morning regularly he would begin
his day's work by writing "Yours truly B. Josselin"
on-quite a score of square bits of paper, to be sent through
the post to fair English and American autograph collect-
ors who forwarded stamped envelopes, and sometimes
photographs of themselves, that he might study the feat-
ures of those who loved him at a respectful distance, and
who so frankly told their love ; all of which bored Barty
to extinction, and was a source of endless amusement to
his wife.
But even she was annoyed when a large unstamped or
insufficiently stamped parcel arrived by post from Ameri-
ca, enclosing a photograph of her husband to which his
signature was desired, and containing no stamps to frank
it on its return journey !
And the photographers he had to sit to ! and the in-
terviewers, male and female, to whom he had to deny
himself ! Life was too short !
How often has a sturdy laborer or artisan come up to
him, as he and I walked together, with :
" I should very much like to shake you by the hand,
Mr. Josselin, if I might make so bold, sir !"
And such an appeal as this would please him far more
than the most fervently written outpourings of the fe-
male hearts he had touched.
They, of course, received endless invitations to stay
362
at country-houses all over the United Kingdom, where
they might have been lionized to their hearts' content, if
such had been their wish ; but these they never accepted.
They never spent a single night away from their own
house till most of their children were grown up or ever
wanted to ; and every year they got less and less into the
way of dining out, or spending the evening from home
and I don't wonder ; no gayer or jollier home ever was
than that they made for themselves, and each other, and
their intimate friends ; not even at Cornelys's, next door,
was better music to be heard; for Barty was friends
with all the music - makers, English and foreign, who
cater for us in and out of the season ; even they read his
books, and understood them; and they sang and played
better for Barty and for Cornelys, next door than even
for the music-loving multitude who filled their pockets
with British gold.
And the difference between Barty's house and that of
Cornelys was that at the former the gatherings were
smaller and more intimate as became the smaller house
and one was happier there in consequence.
Barty gave himself up entirely to his writing, and left
everything else to his wife, or to me, or to Scatcherd.
She was really a mother to him, as well as a passionately
loving and devoted helpmeet.
To make up for this, whenever she was ill, which
didn't often happen except, of course, when she had a
baby he forgot all his writing in his anxiety about her;
and in his care of her, and his solicitude for her ease and
comfort, he became quite a motherly old woman, a better
nurse than Mrs. Jones or Mrs. Gibson as practical and
sensible and full of authority as Dr. Knight himself.
And when it was all over, all his amiable carelessness
came back, and with it his genius, his school-boy high
363
spirits, his tomfooling, his romps with his children, and
his utter irresponsibility, and absolute disdain for all the
ordinary business of life ; and the happy, genial temper
that never seemed to know a moment's depression or
nourish an unkind thought.
Poor Barty ! what would he have done without us all,
and what should we have done without Barty ? As Scatch-
erd said of him, " He's having his portion in this life."
But it was not really so.
Then, in 1870, he bought that charming house, Mans-
field, by the Thames, which he rechristened Marsfield ;
and which he with the help of the Scatcherds and my-
self, for it became our hobby made into one of the most
delig-htful abodes in England. It was the real home for
all of its ; I really think it is one of the loveliest spots on
earth. It was a bargain, but it cost a lot of money ; al-
together, never was money better spent even as a mere
investment. When I think of what it is worth now !
Je suis homme d'affaires !
What a house-warming that was on the very day that
France and Germany went to war ; we little guessed
what was to come for the country we all loved so dearly,
or we should not have been so glad.
I am conscious that all this is rather dull reading.
Alas ! Merry England is a devilish dull place compared
to foreign parts and success, respectability, and domes-
tic bliss are the dullest things to write or read about
that I know and with middle age to follow too !
It was during that first summer at Marsfield that Barty
told me the extraordinary story of Martia, and I really
thought he had gone mad. For I knew him to be the
most truthful person alive.
Even now I hardly know what to think, nor did Leah
nor did Barty himself up to the day of his death.
364
He showed me all her letters, which I may deem it ad-
visable to publish some day : not only the Blaze sugges-
tions for his books, and all her corrections; things to
occupy him for life all, of course, in his own handwrit-
ing ; but many letters about herself, also written in sleep
and by his own hand ; and the style is Barty's not the
style in which he wrote his books, and which is not to
be matched ; but that in which he wrote his Blaze letters
to me.
If her story is true and I never read a piece of doc-
umentary evidence more convincing these letters con-
stitute the most astonishing revelation ever yet vouch-
safed to this earth.
But her story cannot be true !
That Barty's version of his relations with "The Mar-
tian" is absolutely sincere it is impossible to doubt. He
was quite unconscious of the genesis of every book he
ever wrote. His first hint of every one of them was
the elaborately worked out suggestion he found by his
bedside in the morning written by himself in his sleep
during the preceding night, with his eyes wide open,
while more often than not his wife anxiously watched
him at his unconscious work, careful not to wake or dis-
turb him in any way.
Roughly epitomized, Martia's story was this :
For an immense time she had gone through countless
incarnations, from the lowest form to the highest, in the
cold and dreary planet we call Mars, the outermost of
the four inhabited worlds of our system, where the sun
seems no bigger than an orange, and which but for its
moist, thin, rich atmosphere and peculiar magnetic con-
ditions that differ from ours would be too cold above
ground for human or animal or vegetable life. As it
is, it is only inhabited now in the neighborhood of its
365
equator, and even there during its long winter it is colder
and more desolate than Cape Horn or Spitzbergen ex-
cept that the shallow, fresh-water sea does not freeze ex-
cept for a few months at either pole.
All these incarnations were forgotten by her but the
last ; nothing remained of them all but a vague con-
sciousness that they had once been, until their culmina-
tion in what would be in Mars the equivalent of a woman
on our earth.
Man in Mars is, it appears, a very different being from
what he is here. He is amphibious, and descends from
no monkey, but from a small animal that seems to be
something between our seal and our sea-lion.
According to Martia, his beauty is to that of the seal
as that of the Theseus or Antinous to that of an orang-
outang. His five senses are extraordinarily acute, even
the sense of touch in his webbed fingers and toes ; and
in addition to these he possesses a sixth, that comes
from his keen and unintermittent sense of the magnetic
current, which is far stronger in Mars than on the earth,
and far more complicated, and more thoroughly under-
stood.
When any object is too delicate and minute to be ex-
amined by the sense of touch and sight, the Martian shuts
his eyes and puts it against the pit of his stomach, and
knows all about it, even its inside.
In the absolute dark, or with his eyes shut, and when
he stops his ears, he is more intensely conscious of what
immediately surrounds him than at any other time, ex-
cept that all color-perception ceases ; conscious not only
of material objects, but of what is passing in his fellow-
Martian's mind and this for an area of many hundreds
of cubic yards.
In the course of its evolutions this extraordinary facul-
366
ty which exists on earth in a rudimentary state, but only
among some birds and fish and insects and in the lower
forms of animal life has developed the Martian mind in
a direction very different from ours, since no inner life
apart from the rest, no privacy, no concealment is pos-
sible except at a distance involving absolute isolation;
not even thought is free ; yet in some incomprehensible
way there is, as a matter of fact, a really greater free-
dom of thought than is conceivable among ourselves : ab-
solute liberty in absolute obedience to law, a paradox
beyond our comprehension.
Their habits are as simple as those we attribute to the
cave - dwellers during the prehistoric periods of the
earth's existence. But their moral sense is so far in ad-
vance of ours that we haven't even a terminology by
which to express it.
In comparison, the highest and best of us are monsters
of iniquity and egoism, cruelty and corruption ; and our
planet (a very heaven for warmth and brilliancy and
beauty, in spite of earthquakes and cyclones and tor-
nadoes) is a very hell through the creatures that people
it a shambles, a place of torture, a grotesque and im-
pure pandemonium.
These exemplary Martians wear no clothes but the ex-
quisite fur with which nature has endowed them, and
which constitutes a part of their immense beauty, accord-
ing to Martia.
They feed exclusively on edible moss and roots and
submarine seaweed, which they know how to grow and pre-
pare and preserve. Except for heavy-winged bat-like
birds, and big fish, which they have domesticated and
use for their own purposes in an incredible manner (in-
carnating a portion of themselves and their conscious-
ness at will in their bodies), they have cleared Mars of
867
all useless and harmful and mutually destructive forms
of animal life. A sorry fauna, the Martian even at its
best and a flora beneath contempt, compared to ours.
They are great engineers and excavators, great irri-
gators, great workers in delicate metal, stone, marble,
and precious gems (there is no wood to speak of); great
sculptors and decorators of the beautiful caves, so fanci-
fully and so intricately connected, in which they live,
and which have taken thousands of years to design and
excavate and ventilate and adorn, and which they warm
and light up at will in a beautiful manner by means of
the tremendous magnetic current.
This richly parti-colored light is part of their mental
and moral life in a way it is not in us to apprehend, and
has its exact equivalent in sound and vice versa.
They have no language of words, and do not need it,
since they can only be isolated in thought from each
other by a distance greater than that which any vocal
sound can traverse ; but their organs of voice and hearing
are far more complex and perfect than ours, and their
atmosphere infinitely more conductive of phonal vibra-
tions.
It seems that everything which can be apprehended by
the eye or hand is capable of absolute sonorous transla-
tion : light, color, texture, shape in its three dimensions,
weight, and density. The phonal expression and com-
prehension of all these are acquired by the Martian baby
almost as soon as it knows how to swim or dive, or move
upright and erect on dry land or beneath it; and the
mechanical translation of such expression by means of
wind and wire and sounding texture and curved surface
of extraordinary elaboration is the principal business of
the Martian life an art by which all the combined past
experience and future aspirations of the race receive the
368
fullest utterance. Here again personal magnetism plays
an enormous part.
And it is by means of this long and patiently evolved
and highly trained faculty that the race is still develop-
ing towards perfection with constant strain and effort
although the planet is far advanced in its decadence and
within measurable distance of its unfitness for life of any
kind.
All is so evenly and harmoniously balanced, whether
above ground or beneath, that existence is full of joy in
spite of the tremendous strain of life, in spite also of a
dreariness of outlook, on barren nature, which is not to
be matched by the most inhospitable regions of the earth ;
and death is looked upon as the crowning joy of all, al-
though life is prolonged by all the means in their power.
For when the life of the body ceases and the body it-
self is burned and its ashes scattered to the winds and
waves, the infinitesimal, imponderable, and indestructi-
ble something we call the soul is known to lose itself in
a sunbeam and make for the sun, with all its memories
about it, that it may then receive further development,
fitting it for other systems altogether beyond conception ;
and the longer it has lived in Mars the better for its
eternal life in the future.
But it often, on its journey sunwards, gets entangled
in other beams, and finds its way to some intermediate
planet Mercury, Venus, or the Earth ; and putting on
flesh and blood and bone once more, and losing for a
space all its knowledge of its own past, it has to undergo
another mortal incarnation a new personal experience,
beginning with its new birth ; a dream and a forgetting,
till it awakens again after the pangs of dissolution, and
finds itself a step further on the way to freedom.
Martia, it seems, came to our earth in a shower of
369
shooting-stars a hundred years ago. She had not lived
her full measure of years in Mars ; she had elected to be
suppressed, through some unfitness, physical or mental or
moral, which rendered it inexpedient that she should be-
come a mother of Martians, for they are very particular
about that sort of thing in Mars : we shall have to be so
here some day, or else we shall degenerate and become
extinct ; or even worse !
Many Martian souls come to our planet in this way, it
seems, and hasten to incarnate themselves in as promis-
ing unborn though just begotten men and women as they
find, that they may the sooner be free to hie them sun-
wards with all their collected memories.
According to Martia, most of the best and finest of our
race have souls that have lived forgotten lives in Mars.
But Martia was in no hurry ; she was full of intelligent
curiosity, and for ten years she went up and down the
earth, revelling in the open air, lodging herself in the
brains and bodies of birds, beasts, and fishes, insects,
and animals of all kinds like a hermit crab in a shell
that belongs to another but without the slightest incon-
venience to the legitimate owners, who were always quite
unconscious of her presence, although she made what
use she could of what wits they had.
Thus she had a heavenly time on this sunlit earth of
ours now a worm, now a porpoise, now a sea-gull or a
dragon-fly, now some fleet-footed, keen-eyed quadruped
that did not live by slaying, for she had a horror of
bloodshed.
She could only go where these creatures chose to take
her, since she had no power to control their actions in
the slightest degree ; but she saw, heard, smelled and
touched and tasted with their organs of sense, and was as
conscious of their animal life as they were themselves.
24
370
Her description of this phase of her earthly career is
full of extraordinary interest, and sometimes extremely
funny though quite unconsciously so, no doubt. For
instance, she tells how happy she once was when she* in-
habited a small brown Pomeranian dog called "Schnap-
fel," in Cologne, and belonging to a Jewish family who
dealt in old clothes near the Cathedral ; and how she
loved them and looked up to them how she revelled in
fried fish and the smell of it and in all the stinks in
every street of the famous city all except one, that arose
from Herr Johann Maria Farina's renowned emporium
in the Julichs Platz, which so offended the canine nos-
trils that she had to give up inhabiting that small Pom-
eranian dog forever, etc.
Then she took to man, and inhabited man and woman,
and especially child, in all parts of the globe for many
years ; and, finally, for the last fifty or sixty years or
so, she settled herself exclusively among the best and
healthiest English she could find.
She took a great fancy to the Rohans, who are singular-
ly well endowed in health of mind and body, and physical
beauty, and happiness of temper. She became especially
fond of the ill-fated but amiable Lord Runswick Barty's
father. Then through him she knew Antoinette, and
loved her so well that she determined to incarnate her-
self at last as their child ; but she had become very
cautious and worldly during her wandering life on earth,
and felt that she would not be quite happy either as a
man or a woman in Western Europe unless she were
reborn in holy wedlock a concession she made to
our British prejudices in favor of respectability ; she
describes herself as the only Martian Philistine and
snob.
Evil communications corrupt good manners, and poor
371
Martia, to her infinite sorrow and self-reproach, was con-
scious of a sad lowering of her moral tone after this long
frequentation of the best earthly human beings even
the best English.
She grew to admire worldly success, rank, social dis-
tinction, the perishable beauty of outward form, the lust
of the flesh and the pride of the eye the pomps and
vanities of this wicked world and to basely long for
these in her own person !
Then when Barty was born she loved to inhabit his
singularly well constituted little body better than any
other, and to identify herself with his happy child-life,
and enjoy his singularly perfect senses, and sleep his
beautiful sleep, and revel in the dreams he so completely
forgot when he woke reminiscent dreams, that she was
actually able to weave out of the unconscious brain that
was his : absolutely using his dormant organs of memo-
ry for purposes of her own, to remember and relive her
own past pleasures and pains, so sensitively and high-
ly organized was he ; and to her immense surprise she
found she could make him feel her presence even when
awake by means of the magnetic sense that pervaded'
her strongly as it pervades all Martian souls, till they re-
incarnate themselves among us and forget.
And thus he was conscious of the north whenever she
enjoyed the hospitality of his young body.
She stuck to him for many years, till he offended her
taste by his looseness of life as a Guardsman (for she was
extremely straitlaced) ; and she inhabited him no more
for some time, though she often watched him through
the eyes of others, and always loved him and lamented
sorely over his faults and follies.
Then one memorable night, in the energy of her de-
spair at his resolve to slip that splendid body of his, she
372
was able to influence him in his sleep, and saved his
life; and all her love came back tenfold.
She had never been able to impose a fraction of her
will on any being, animal or human, that she had ever
inhabited on earth until that memorable night in Ma-
lines, where she made him write at her dictation.
Then she conceived an, immense desire that he should
marry the splendid Julia, whom she had often inhabited
also, that she might one day be a child of his by such a
mother, and go through her earthly incarnation in the
happiest conceivable circumstances ; but herein she was
balked by Barty's instinctive preference for Leah, and
again gave him up in a huff.
But she soon took to inhabiting Leah a great deal,
and found her just as much to her taste for her own
future earthly mother as the divine Julia herself, and
made up her mind she would make Barty great and
famous by a clever management of his very extraordi-
nary brains, of which she had discovered the hidden ca-
pacity, and influence the earth for its good for she had
grown to love the beautiful earth, in spite of its iniquities
and finally be a child of Barty and Leah, every new child
of whom seemed an improvement on the last, as though
practice made perfect.
Such is, roughly, the story of Martia.
There is no doubt both Barty and Leah agreed with
me in this that it is an easy story to invent, though it
is curiously convincing to read in the original shape, with
all its minute details and their verisimilitude ; but even
then there is nothing in it that the author of Sardonyx
could not have easily imagined and made more convinc-
ing still.
He declared that all through life oir awaking from his
night's sleep he always felt conscious of having had
373
extraordinary dreams even as a child but that he for-
. got them in the very act of waking, in spite of strenuous
efforts to recall them. But now and again on sinking
into sleep the vague memory of those forgotten dreams
would come back, and they were all of a strange life
under new conditions just such a life as Martia had
described where arabesques of artificial light and inter-
woven curves of subtle sound had a significance undreamt
of by mortal eyes or ears, and served as conductors to a
heavenly bliss unknown to earth revelations denied to
us here, or we should be very different beings from what
we most unhappily are.
He thought it quite possible that his brain in sleep had
at last become so active through the exhausting and de-
pleting medical regime that he went through in Malines
that it actually was able to dictate its will to his body,
and that everything might have happened to him as it
did then and afterwards without any supernatural or
ultranatural agency whatever without a Martia !
He might, in short, have led a kind of dual life, and
Martia might be a simple fancy or invention of his
brain in an abnormal state of activity during slumber ;
and both Leah and I inclined to this belief (but for a
strange thing which happened later, and which I will tell
in due time). Indeed, it all seems so silly and far-fetched,
so " out of the question," that one feels almost ashamed
at bringing this Martia into a serious biography of a
great man un conte a dormir debout ! But you must
wait for the end.
Anyhow, the singular fact remains that in some way
inexplicable to himself Barty has influenced the world
in a direction which it never entered his thoughts even
to conceive, so far as he remembered.
Think of all he has done.
374
He has robbed Death of nearly all its terrors ; even for
the young it is no longer the grisly phantom it once was
for ourselves, .but rather of an aspect mellow and benign;
for to the most sceptical he (and only he) has restored
that absolute conviction of an indestructible germ of Im-
mortality within us, born of remembrance made perfect
and complete after dissolution : he alone has built the
golden bridge in the middle of which science and faith can
shake hands over at least one common possibility nay,
one common certainty for those who have read him aright.
There is no longer despair in bereavement all be-
reavement is but a half parting ; there is no real parting
except for those who survive, and the longest earthly life
is but a span. " Whatever the future may be, the past
will be ours forever, and that means our punishment and
our reward and reunion with those we loved. It is a
happy phrase, that which closes the career of Sardonyx.
It has become as universal as the Lord's Prayer !
To think that so simple and obvious a solution should
have lain hidden all these aeons, to turn up at last as
though by chance in a little illustrated story-book ! What
a nugget !
Oil avions-nous done la tete et les yeux ?
Physical pain and the origin of evil seem the only
questions with which he has nojt been able to grapple.
And yet if those difficulties are ever dealt with and mas-
tered and overcome for us it can only be by some fol-
lower of Barty's methods.
It is true, no doubt, that through him suicide has
become the normal way out of our troubles when these
are beyond remedy. I will not express any opinion as
to the ethical significance of this admitted result of his
teaching, which many of us still find it so hard to recon-
cile with their conscience.
375
Then, by a dexterous manipulation of our sympathies
that amounts to absolute conjuring, he has given the
death-blow to all cruelty that serves for our amusement,
and killed the pride and pomp and circumstance of glo-
rious sport, and made them ridiculous with his lusty
laugh ; even the bull-fights in Spain are coming to an
end, and all through a Spanish translation of Life-
blood. All the cruelties of the world are bound to fol-
low in time, and this not so much because they are cruel
as because they are ridiculous and mean and ugly, and
would make us laugh if they didn't make us cry.
And to whom but Barty Josselin do we owe it that
our race is on an average already from four to six inches
taller than it was thirty years ago, men^and women alike ;
that strength and beauty are rapidly becoming the rule
among us, and weakness and ugliness the exception ?
He has been hard on these ; he has been cruel to be
kind, and they have received notice to quit, and been
generously compensated in advance, I think ! Who in
these days would dare to enter the holy state of wed-
lock unless they were pronounced physically, morally,
and mentally fit to procreate their kind not only by
their own conscience, but by the common consent of all
who know them ? And that beauty, health, and strength
are a part of that fitness, and old age a bar to it, who
would dare deny ?
Fm no Adonis myself. I've got a long upper lip and
an Irish kink in my nose, inherited perhaps from some
maternally ancestral Blake of Derrydown, who may have
been a proper blackguard ! And that kink should be now,
no doubt, the lawful property of some ruffianly cattle-
houghing moonlighter, whose nose which should have
been mine is probably as straight as Barty's. For in
Ireland are to be found the handsomest and ugliest peo-
376
pie in all Great Britain, and in Great Britain the hand-
somest and ugliest people in the whole world.
Anyhow, I have known my place. I have not per-
petuated that kink, and with it, possibly, the base and
cowardly instincts of which it was meant to be the out-
ward and visible sign though it isn't in my case that
my fellow-men might give me a wide berth. *
Leah's girlish instinct was a right one when she said
me nay that, afternoon by the Chelsea pier for how
could she see inside me, poor child ? How could Beauty
guess the Beast was a Prince in disguise ? It was no
fairy-tale !
Things have got mixed up ; but they're all coming
right, and all through Barty Josseliu.
And what vulgar pride and narrownesses and mean-
nesses and vanities and uglinesses of life, in mass and
class and individual, are now impossible ! and all
through Barty Josselin and his quaint ironies of pen and
pencil, forever trembling between tears and laughter,
with never a cynical spark or a hint of bitterness.
How he has held his own against the world ! how he
has scourged its wickedness and folly, this gigantic op-
timist, who never wrote a single line in his own defence !
How quickly their laugh recoiled on those early laugh-
ers ! and how Barty alone laughed well because he laugh-
ed the last, and taught the laughers to laugh on his
side ! People thought he was always laughing. It was
not so.
part flfntb
" Cara deum soboles, magnum Jovis incrementum."
VIBGIL.
THE immense fame and success that Barty Josselin
achieved were to him a source of constant disquiet. He
could take neither pride nor pleasure in what seemed to
him not his ; he thought himself a fraud.
Yet only the mere skeleton of his work was built up
for him by his demon ; all the beauty of form and color,
all the grace of movement and outer garb, are absolutely
his own.
It has been noticed how few eminent men of letters
were intimate with the Josselins, though the best among
them except, of course, Thomas Carlyle have been so
enthusiastic and outspoken in their love and admiration
of his work.
He was never at his ease in their society, and felt him-
self a kind of charlatan.
The fact is, the general talk of such men was often
apt to be over his head, as it would Jiave been over mine,
and often made him painfully diffident and shy. He
needn't have been; he little knew the kind of feeling he
inspired among the highest and best.
Why, one day at the Marathonoaum, the first and
foremost of them all, the champion smiter of the Philis-
tines, the apostle of culture and sweetness and light,
told me that, putting Barty's books out of the question,
378
he always got more profit and pleasure out of Barty's
society than that of any man he knew.
" It does me good to be in the same room with him;
the freshness of the man, his voice, his aspect, his
splendid vitality and mother-wit, his boyish spirit, and
the towering genius behind it all. I only wish to good-
ness I was an intimate friend of his as you are ; it would
be a liberal education to me !"
But Barty's reverence and admiration for true scholar-
ship and great literary culture in others amounted to ab-
solute awe, and filled him with self-distrust.
There is no doubt that until he was universally ac-
cepted, the crudeness of his literary method was duly
criticised with great severity by those professional liter-
ary critics who sometimes carp with such a big mouth
at their betters, and occasionally kill the Keatses of this
world !
In writing, as in everything else, he was an amateur,
and more or less remained one for life; but the greatest
of his time accepted him at once, and laughed and wept,
and loved him for his obvious faults as well as for his
qualities. Tons les genres sont bons, hormis le genre en-
nuyeux ! And Barty was so delightfully the reverse of a
bore !
Dear me ! what matters it how faultlessly we paint or
write or sing if no one will care to look or read or lis-
ten ? He is all fault that hath no fault at all, and we
poor outsiders all but yawn in his face for his pains.
. They should only paint and write and sing for each
other, these impeccables, who so despise success and re-
vile the successful . How do they live, I wonder ? Do
they take in each other's washing, or review each other's
books ?
It edifies one to see what a lot of trouble these derid-
379
ers of other people's popularity will often take to adver-
tise themselves, and how they yearn for that popular ac-
claim they so scornfully denounce.
Barty was not a well-read man by any means; his
scholarship was that of an idle French boy who leaves
school at seventeen, after having been plucked for a
cheap French degree, and goes straightway into her
Majesty's Household Brigade.
At the beginning of his literary career it would cut him
to the quick to find himself alluded to as that inspired
Anglo-Gallic buffoon, the ex-Guardsman, whose real vo-
cation, when he wasn't twaddling about the music of the
spheres, or writing moral French books, was to be Mr.
Toole's understudy.
He was even impressed by the smartness of those sec-
ond-rate decadents, French and English, who so gloried
in their own degeneracy as though one were to glory in
scrofula or rickets ; those unpleasant little anthropoids
with the sexless little muse and the dirty little Eros, who
would ride their angry, jealous little tilt at him in the
vain hope of provoking some retort which would have
lifted them up to glory ! Where are they now ? He has
improved them all away ! Who ever hears of decadents
nowadays ?
Then there were the grubs of Grub Street, who some-
times manage to squirt a drop from their slime-bags on to
the swiftly passing boot that scorns to squash them. He
had no notion of what manner of creatures they really
were, these gentles ! He did not meet them at any club
he belonged to it was not likely. Clubs have a way of
blackballing grubs especially grubs that are out of the
common grubby ; nor did he sit down to dinner with
them at any dinner-table, or come across them at any
house he was by way of frequenting; but he imagined
380
they were quite important persons because they did not
sign their articles ! and he quite mistook their place in
the economy of creation. C'etait un na'if, le beau Josselin !
Big fleas have little fleas, and they've got to put up
with them ! There is no "poudre insecticide" for liter-
ary vermin and more's the pity ! (Good heavens ! what
would the generous and delicate-minded Barty say, if he
were alive, at my delivering myself in this unworthy
fashion about these long-forgotten assailants of his, and
at my age too he who never penned a line in retaliation !
He would say I was the most unseemly grub of them all,
and he would be quite right; so I am just now, and
ought to know better but it amuses me.)
Then there were the melodious bardlets who imitate
those who imitate those who imitate the forgotten minor
poets of the olden time and log-roll each other in quaint
old English. They did not log-roll Barty, whom they
thought coarse and vulgar, and wrote to that effect in
very plain English that was not old, but quite up to date.
"How splendidly they write verse!" he would say,
and actually once or twice he would pick up one or two
of their cheap little archaic mannerisms and proudly use
them as his own, and be quite angry to find that Leah had
carefully expunged them in her copy.
" A fair and gracious garden indeed !" says Leah. " I
won't have you use such ridiculous words, Barty you
mean a pretty garden, and you shall say so ; or even a
beautiful garden if you like ! and no more 'manifolds,'
and ( there-anents,' and 'in veriest sooths,' and 'waters
wan,' and ' wan waters,' and all that. I won't stand it ;
they don't suit your style at all !"
She and Scatcherd and I between us soon laughed him
out of these innocent little literary vagaries, and he re-
mained content with the homely words he had inherited
881
from his barbarian ancestors in England (they speak good
English, our barbarians), and the simple phrasing he had
learnt from M. Durosier's classe de litterature at the In-
stitution Brossard.
One language helps another ; even the smattering of a
dead language is better than no extra language at all, and
that's why, at such cost of time and labor and paternal
cash, we learn to smatter Greek and Latin, I suppose.
"Arma virumque cano" " Tityre tu patulae" "Mae-
cenas atavis" "Mijvtv aeiSe" and there you are! It
sticks in the memory, and it's as simple as ' ' How d'ye do ?"
Anyhow, it is pretty generally admitted, both here and
in France, that for grace and ease and elegance and ab-
solute clearness combined, Barty Josselin's literary style
has never been surpassed and very seldom equalled ; and
whatever his other faults, when he was at his ease he
had the same graceful gift in his talk, both French and
English.
It might be worth while my translating here the record
of an impression made by Barty and his surroundings
on a very accomplished Frenchman, M. Paroly, of the
Debats, who paid him a visit in the summer of 1809,
at Campden Hill.
I may mention that Barty hated to be interviewed and
questioned about his literary work he declared he was
afraid of being found out.
But if once the interviewer managed to evade the lynx-
eyed Leah, who had a horror of him, and get inside the
studio, and make good his footing there, and were a de-
cently pleasant fellow to boot, Barty would soon get over
his aversion utterly forget he was being interviewed
and talk as to an old friend ; especially if the reviewer
were a .Frenchman or an American.
The interviewer is an insidious and wily person, and
382
often presents himself to the soft-hearted celebrity in
such humble and pathetic guise that one really hasn't
the courage to snub him. He has come such a long way
for such a little thing ! it is such a lowly function he
plies at the foot of that tall tree whose top you reached
at a single bound ! And he is supposed to be a " gentle-
man," and has no other means of keeping body and soul
together ! Then he is so prostrate in admiration before
your Immensity. . . .
So you give way, and out comes the little note-book,
and out comes the little cross-examination.
As a rule, you are none the worse and the world is none
the better; we know all about you already all, at least,
that we want to know ; we have heard it all before, over
and over again. But a poor fellow-creature has earned his
crust, and goes home the happier for having talked to you
about yourself and been treated like a man and a brother.
But sometimes the reviewer is very terrible indeed in
his jaunty vulgarization of your distinguished person-
ality, and you have to wince and redden, and rue the day
you let him inside your house, and live down those light
familiar paragraphs in which he describes you and the
way you dress and how you look and what jolly things
you say ; and on what free and easy terms he is with you,
of all people in the world !
But the most terrible of all is the pleasant gentleman
from America, who has yearned to know you for so many
years, and comes perhaps with a letter of introduction
or even without ! not to interview you or write about
you (good heavens ! he hates and scorns that modern
pest, the interviewer), but to sit at your feet and wor-
ship at your shrine, and tell you of all the good you have
done him and his, all the happiness you have given them
all "the debt of a lifetime !"
383
And you let yourself go before him, and so do your
family, and so do your old friends ; is he not also a friend,
though not an old one ? You part with him almost in sor-
row, he's so nice ! And in three weeks some kind per-
son sends you from the other side such a printed account
of you and yours so abominably true, so abominably
false that the remembrance of it makes you wake up in
the dead of night, and most unjustly loathe an entire
continent for breeding and harboring such a shameless
type of press reptile !
I feel hard-hearted towards the interviewer, I own. I
wish him, and those who employ him, a better trade ;
and a better taste to whoever reads what he writes.
But Barty could be hard-hearted to nobody, and always
regretted having granted the interview when he saw the
published outcome of it.
Fortunately, M. Paroly was decently discreet.
" I've got a Frenchman coming this afternoon a tre-
mendous swell," said Barty, at lunch.
Leah. " Who is he ?"
Barty. " M. Paroly, of the Debats."
Leah. " What is he when he's at home ?"
Barty. "A famous journalist ; as you'd know if you'd
read the French newspapers sometimes, which you never
do."
Leah. " Haven't got the time. He's coming to inter-
view you, I suppose, and make French newspaper copy
out of you."
Barty. " Why shouldn't he come just for the pleasure
of making my acquaintance ?"
Leah. "And mine I'll be there and talk to him,
too !"
Barty. " My dear, he probably doesn't speak a word
384
of English; and your French, you know! You never
would learu French properly, although you've had. me to
practise on for so many years not to mention Bob and
Ida."
Leah. " How unkind of you, Barty ! When have I had
time to trouble about French ? Besides, you always laugh
at my French accent and mimic it and that's not en-
couraging !"
Barty. " My dear, I adore your French accent ; it's so
unaffected ! I only wish I heard it a little oftener."
Leah. "You shall hear it this afternoon. At what
o'clock is he coming, your Monsieur Paroly ?"
Barty. "At four-thirty."
Leah. "Oh, Barty, don't give yourself away don't
talk to him about your writings, or about yourself, or
about your family. He'll vulgarize you all over France.
Surely you've not forgotten that nice 'gentleman' from
America who came to see you, and who told you that he
was no interviewer, not he! but came merely as a friend
and admirer a distant but constant worshipper for
many years ! and how you talked to him like a long-lost
brother, in consequence ! ' There's nobody in the world
like the best Americans,' you said. You adored them all,
and wanted to be an American yourself till a month af-
ter, when he published every word you said, and more,
and what sort of cravat you had on, and how silent and
cold and uncommunicative your good, motherly English
wife was you, the brilliant and talkative Barty Josselin,
who should have mated with a countrywoman of his own!
and how your bosom friend was a huge, overgrown every-
day Briton with a broken nose ! / saw "what he was at,
from the low cunning in his face as he listened ; and felt
that every single unguarded word you dropped was a dol-
lar in his pocket ! How we've all had to live down that
385
dreadfully facetious and grotesque and familiar article
he printed about us all in those twenty American news-
papers that have got the largest circulation in the world!
and how you stamped and raved, Barty, and swore that
never another American ' gentleman ' should enter your
house! What names you called him: 'cad!' 'sweep!'
' low-bred, little Yankee penny-a-liner !' Don't you re-
member ? Why, he described you as a quite nice-look-
ing man somewhat over the middle height !"
" Oh yes ; damn him, / remember \" said Barty, who
was three or four inches over six feet, and quite openly
vain of his good looks.
Leah. " Well, then, pray be cautious with this Mon-
sieur Paroly you think so much of because he's French.
Let him talk interview him ask him all about his fami-
ly, if he's got one his children, and all that ; play a
game of billiards with him talk French politics dance
' La Paladine ' make him laugh make him smoke one
of those strong Trichinopoli cigars Bob gave you for the
tops of omnibuses make him feel your biceps teach
him how to play cup and ball give him a sketch then
bring him in to tea. Madame Cornelys will be there,
and Julia Ironsides, and Ida, who'll talk French by the
yard. Then we'll show him the St. Bernards and Mi-
nerva, and I'll give him an armful of Gloire de Dijon
roses, and shake him warmly by the hand, so that he
won't feel ill-natured towards us ; and we'll get him out
of the house as quick as possible."
Thus prepared, Barty awaited M. Paroly, and this is
a free rendering of what M. Paroly afterwards wrote
about him :
"With a mixture of feelings difficult to analyze and
98
386
define, I bade adieu to the sage and philosopher of
Cheyne Row, and had myself transported in ray hansom
to the abode of the other great sommite litteraire in
London, the light one M. Josselin, to whom we in
France also are so deeply in debt.
"After a longish drive through sordid streets we reached
a bright historic vicinity and a charming hill, and my
invisible Jehu guided me at the great trot by verdant
country lanes. We turned through lodge gates into a
narrow drive in a well-kept garden where there was a
lawn of English greenness, on which were children and
nurses and many dogs, and young people who played at
the lawn-tennis.
" The door of the house was opened by a charming
young woman in black with a white apron and cap,
like a waitress at the Bouillon Duval, who guided me
through a bright corridor full of pictures and panoplies,
and then through a handsome studio to a billiard-room,
where M. Josselin was playing at the billiard to himself
all alone.
"M. Josselin receives me with jovial cordiality; he
is enormously tall, enormously handsome, like a drum-
major of the Imperial Guard, except that his lip and
chin are shaved and he has slight whiskers ; very well
dressed, with thick curly hair, and regular features, and
a singularly sympathetic voice : he is about thirty-five.
" I have to decline a game of billiards, and refuse a
cigar, a very formidable cigar, very black and very thick
and very long. I don't smoke, and am no hand at a
cue. Besides, I want to talk about Etoiles Mortes,
about Les Trepassees de Franyois Villon, about Dejanire
et Dalila!
" M. Josselin speaks French as he writes it, in abso-
lute perfection ; his mother, he tells me, was from Nor-
mandy the daughter of fisherfolk in Dieppe ; he was at
school in Paris, and has lived there as an art student.
" He does not care to talk about Les Trepassees or
Les Etoiles, or any of his immortal works.
" He asks me if I'm a good swimmer, and can do la
coupe properly; and leaning over his billiard-table he
shows me how it ought to be done, and dilates on the
merits of that mode of getting through the water. He
confides to me that he suffers from a terrible nostalgia
a consuming desire to do la coupe in the swimming-baths
of Passy against the current ; to take a header d la
hussarde with his eyes open and explore the bed of the
Seine between Grenelle and the lie des Cygnes as he
used to do when he was a school-boy and pick up mus-
sels with his teeth.
"Then he explains to me the peculiar virtues of his
stove, which is almost entirely an invention of his own,
and shows me how he can regulate the heat of the room
to the fraction of a degree centigrade, which he prefers
to Fahrenheit just as he prefers metres and centimetres
to inches and feet and ten to twelve !
" After this he performs some very clever tricks with
billiard-balls ; juggles three of them in each hand simul-
taneously, and explains to me that this is an exceptional
achievement, as he only sees out of one eye, and that no
acrobat living could do the same with one eye shut.
" I quite believe him, and wonder and admire, and his
face beams with honest satisfaction and this is the man
who wrote La quatrieme Dimension!
" Then he tells me some very funny French school-
boy stories ; he delights in my hearty laughter ; they are
capital stories, but I had heard them all before when
I was at school.
" ' And now, M. Josselin,'' I say, 'a propos of that last
389
story you've just told me; in the Trepassees de Fran-
fois Villon you have omitted "la tres-sage Heloise" al-
together/
" ' Oh, have I ? How stupid of me ! Abelard and all
that ! Ah well there's plenty of time nous aliens ar-
ranger tout 9a ! All that sort of thing comes to me in
the night, you know, when Fm half asleep in bed a
a I mean after lunch in the afternoon, when I take my
siesta/
"Then he leads me into his studio and shows me pen-
cil studies from the life, things of ineffable beauty of
form and expression things that haunt the memory.
" ' Show me a study for Dejanire/ I say.
" * Oh ! I'll draw Dejanire for you,' and he takes a
soft pencil and a piece of smooth card-board, and in five
minutes draws me an outline of a naked woman on a
centaur's back, a creature of touching beauty no other
hand in the world could produce so aristocratically
delicately English and of to-day so severely, so nobly
and classically Greek. C'est la chastete meme mais ce
n'est pas Dejanire !
" He gives me this sketch, which I rechristen Godiva,
and value as I value few things I possess.
" Then he shows me pencil studies of children's heads,
from nature, and I exclaim :
" ' Heaven, what a dream of childhood ! Childhood
is never so beautiful as that.'
" ' Oh yes it is, in England, I assure you,' says he.
' I'll show you my children presently ; and you, have you
any children ?'
" ' Alas ! no/ I reply ; ' I am a bachelor.'
" I remark that from time to time, just as the moon
veils itself behind a passing cloud, the radiance of his
brilliant and jovial physiognomy is eclipsed by the ex-
390
pression of a sadness immense, mysterious, infinite ; this
is followed by a look of angelic candor and sweetness
and gentle heroism, that moves you strangely, even to the
heart, and makes appeal to all your warmest and deepest
sympathies the look of a very masculine Joan of Arc !
You don't know why, but you feel you would make any
sacrifice for a man who looks at you like that, follow him
to the death lead a forlorn hope at his bidding.
" He does not exact from me anything so arduous as
this, but passing round my neck his powerful arm, he
says :
" * Come and drink some tea ; I should like to present
you to my wife.'
"And he leads me through another corridor to a
charming drawing-room that gives on to the green lawn
of the garden.
" There are several people there taking the tea.
" He presents me first to Madame Josselin. If the
husband is enormously handsome, the wife is a beauty
absolutely divine ; she, also, is very tall tres elegante;
she has soft wavy black hair, and eyes and eyebrows
d'un noir de jais, and a complexion d'une blancheur
de lis, with just a point of carmine in the cheeks. She
does not say much she speaks French with difficulty ;
but she expresses with her smiling eyes so cordial and
sincere a welcome that one feels glad to be in the same
room with her, one feels it is a happy privilege , it does
one good one ceases to feel one may possibly be an
intruder one almost feels one is wanted there.
" I am then presented to three or four other ladies ;
and it would seem that the greatest beauties of London
have given each other rendezvous in Madame Josselin's
salon this London, where are to be found the most
beautiful women in the world and the ugliest.
391
"First, I salute the Countess of Ironsides ah, mon
Dieu, la Diane chasseresse la Sapho de Pradier! -Then
Madame Cornelys, the wife of the great sculptor, who
lives next door a daughter of the ancient gods of
Greece ! Then a magnificent blonde, an old friend of
theirs, who speaks French absolutely like a French-
woman, and says thee and thou to M. Josselin, and in-
troduces me to her brother, un vrai type de colosse bon
enfant, d'une tenue irreprochable [thank you, M. Paro-
ly], who also speaks the French of France, for he was
at school there a school-fellow of our host.
'There are two or three children, girls, more beauti-
ful than anything or anybody else in the house in the
world, I think ! They give me tea and cakes, and bread
and butter ; most delicious tartines, as thin as wafers,
and speak French well, and relate to me the biographies
of their animals, uue vraie menagerie which I afterwards
have to visit immense dogs, rabbits, hedgehogs, squir-
rels, white mice, and a gigantic owl, who answers to the
name of Minerva.
" I find myself, ma foi, very happy among these won-
derful people, and preserve an impression of beauty, of
bonhomie, of naturalness and domestic felicity quite
unlike anything I have ever been privileged to see an
impression never to be forgotten.
" But as for Etoiles Mortes and Les Trepassees de
Francois Villon, I really have to give them up ; the
beautiful big dogs are more important than all the books
in the world, even the master's even the master him-
self !
"However, I want no explanation to see and under-
stand how M. Josselin has written most of his chefs-
d'oauvre from the depths of a happy consciousness ha-
bituated to all that is most graceful and charming and
392
seductive in real life and a deeply sympathetic, poig-
nant, and compassionate sense of the contrast to all this.
" Happy mortal, happy family, happy country where
grow (poussent) such people, and where such children
flourish ! The souvenir of that so brief hour spent at
Gretna Lodge is one of the most beautiful souvenirs of
my life and, above all, the souvenir of the belle chate-
laine who filled my hansom with beautiful roses culled
by her own fair hand, which gave me at parting that
cordial English pressure so much more suggestive of Au
revoir than Adieu I
"It is with sincere regret one leaves people who part
with one so regretfully.
"ALPHOXSE PAROLY."
Except that good and happy women have no history, I
should almost like to write the history of Barty's wife,
and call it the history of the busiest and most hard-
working woman in Great Britain.
Barty left everything to her to the very signing of
cheques. He would have nothing to do with any busi-
ness of any kind.
He wouldn't even carve at lunch or dinner. Leah did,
unless / was there.
It is but fair to say he worked as hard as any man I
know. When he was not writing or drawing, he was
thinking about drawing or writing ; when they got to
Marsfield, he hardly ever stirred outside the grounds.
There he would garden with gardeners or cut down
trees, or do carpenter's work at his short intervals of
rest, or groom a horse.
How often have I seen him suddenly drop a spade or
axe or saw or curry-comb, and go straight off to a thatched
393
gazebo he had bnilt himself, where writing materials were
left, and write down the happy thought that had oc-
curred ; and then, pipe in mouth, back to his gardening
or the rest !
I also had a gazebo close to his, where I read blue-
books and wrote my endless correspondence with the
help of a secretary only too glad, both of us, to be dis-
turbed by festive and frolicsome young Bartys of either
sex by their dogs by their mother !
Leah's province it was to attend to all the machinery
by which life was carried on in this big house, and social
intercourse, and the education of the young, and endless
hospitalities.
She would even try to coach her boys in Latin and
Euclid during their preparation times for the school
where they spent the day, two miles off. Such Latin !
such geometry! She could never master the ablative ab-
solute, nor what used to be called at Brossard's le que re-
tranclie, nor see the necessity of demonstrating by A + B
what was sufficiently obvious to her without.
" Who helps you in your Latin, rny boy?" says the
master, with a grin.
"My father," says Geoffrey, too loyal to admit it was
his mother who had coached him wrong.
"Ah, I suppose he helps you with your Euclid also ?"
says the master, with a broader grin still.
" Yes, sir," says Geoffrey.
" Your father's French, I suppose ?"
" I dare say, sir," says Geoffrey.
" Ah, I thought so !"
All of which was very unfair to Barty, whose Latin,
like that of most boys who have been brought up at a
French school, was probably quite as good as the Eng-
lish school-master's own, except for its innocence of quan-
394
titles; and Blanchet and Legeiidre are easier to learn
than Euclid, and stick longer in the memory ; and Barty
remembered well.
Then, besides the many friends who came to the pleas-
ant house to stay, or else for lunch or tea or dinner, there
were pious pilgrims from all parts of the world, as to a
shrine from Paris, from Germany, Italy, Norway, and
Sweden ; from America especially. Leah had to play the
hostess almost every day of her life, and show off her lion
and make him roar and wag his tail and stand on his hind
legs a lion that was not always in the mood to tumble
and be shown off, unless the pilgrims were pretty and of
the female sex.
Barty was a man's man par excellence, and loved to
forgather with men. The only men he couldn't stand
were those we have agreed to call in modern English the
Philistines and the prigs or both combined, as they can
sometimes be ; and this objection of his would have con-
siderably narrowed his circle of male acquaintances but
that the Philistines and the prigs, who so detest each
other, were so dotingly fond of Barty, and ran him to
earth in Marsfield.
The Philistines loved him for his world-wide populari-
ty ; the prigs in spite of it ! They loved him for himself
alone because they couldn't help it, I suppose and la-
mented over him as over a fallen angel.
He was happiest of all with the good denizens of
Bohemia, who have known want and temptation and
come unscathed out of the fire, but with their affec-
tations and insincerities and conventionalities all burnt
away.
Good old Bohemia alma mater dolorosa ; stern old gray
she-wolf with the dry teats maratre an co3ur de pierre! It
is not a bad school in which to graduate, if you can do so
395
without loss of principle or sacrifice of the delicate bloom
of honor and self-respect.
Next to these I think he loved the barbarians he be-
longed to on his father's side, Avho, whatever their faults,
are seldom prigs or Philistines ; and then he loved the
proletarians, who had good, straightforward manners and
no pretension the laborer, the skilled artisan, especially
the toilers of the sea.
In spite of his love of his own sex, he was of the kind
that can go to the devil for a pretty woman.
He did not do this ; he married one instead, fortunately
for himself and for his children and for her, and stuck
to her and preferred her society to any society in the
world. Her mere presence seemed to have an extraordi-
narily soothing influence on him ; it was as though life
were short, and he could never see enough of her in the
allotted time and space; the chronic necessity of her
nearness to him became a habit and a second nature
like his pipe, as he would say.
Still, he was such a slave to his own aesthetic eye and
ever-youthful heart that the sight of lovely woman pleased
him more than the sight of anything else on earth ; he
delighted in her proximity, in the rustle of her garments,
in the sound of her voice ; and lovely woman's instinct
told her this, so that she was very fond of Barty in return.
He was especially popular with sweet, pretty young
girls, to whom his genial, happy, paternal manner always
endeared him. They felt as safe with Barty as with any
father or uncle, for all his facetious /ove-making; he
made them laugh, and they loved him for it, and they
forgot his Apolloship, and his Lionhood, and his general
Immensity, which he never remembered himself.
It is to be feared that women who lacked the heavenly
gift of good looks did not interest him quite so much,
396
whatever other gifts they might possess, unless it were
the gift of making lovely music. The little brown night-
ingale outshone the brilliant bird of paradise if she were
a true nightingale ; if she were very brown indeed, he
would shut his eyes and listen with all his ears, rapt, as
in a heavenly dream. And the closed lids would moisten,
especially the lid that hid the eye that couldn't see the
emotional one ! although he was the least lachrymose of
men, since it was with such a dry eye he wrote what I
could scarcely read for my tears.
But his natural kindliness and geniality made him al-
ways try and please those who tried to please him, beau-
tiful or the reverse, whether they succeeded or not ; and
he was just as popular with the ducks and geese as with
the swans and peacocks and nightingales and birds of
paradise. The dull, commonplace dames who prosed and
buzzed and bored, the elderly intellectual virgins who
knew nothing of life but what they had read or written
in "Tendenz" novels, yet sadly rebuked him, more
in sorrow than in anger, for this passage or that in his
books, about things out of their ken altogether, etc.
His playful amenity disarmed the most aggressive blue-
stocking, orthodox or Unitarian, Catholic or Hebrew
radicals, agnostics, vegetarians, teetotalers, anti-vaccina-
tionists, anti-vivisectionists even anti-things that don't
concern decent women at all, whether married or single.
It was only when his privacy was invaded by some pat-
ronizing, loud-voiced nouvelle-riche with a low-bred physi-
ognomy that no millions on earth could gild or refine,
and manners to match ; some foolish, fashionable, would-
be worldling, who combined the arch little coquetries and
impertinent affectations of a spoilt beauty with the ug-
liness of an Aztec or an Esquimau ; some silly, titled
old frump who frankly ignored his tea-making wife and
397
daughters and talked to Mm only and only about her
grotesque and ugly self and told him of all the famous
painters who had wanted to paint her for the last hun-
dred years it was only then he grew glum and reserved
and depressed and made an unfavorable impression on
the other sex.
What it must have cost him not to express his disgust
more frankly ! for reticence on any matter was almost a
torture to him.
Most of us have a mental sanctum to which we retire
at times, locking the door behind us ; and there we think
of high and beautiful things, and hold commune with
our Maker ; or count our money, or improvise that rep-
artee the gods withheld last night, and shake hands
with ourselves for our wit ; or caress the thought of some
darling, secret wickedness or vice ; or revel in dreams of
some hidden hate, or some love we mustn't own ; and
curse those we have to be civil to whether we like them
or not, and nurse our little envies till we almost get to
like them.
There we remember all the stupid and unkind things
we've ever said or thought or done, and all the slights
that have ever been put on us, and secretly plan the
revenge that never comes off because time has soft-
ened our hearts, let us hope, when opportunity serves at
last !
That Barty had no such holy of holies to creep into I
feel pretty sure unless it was the wifely heart of Leah ;
whatever came into his head came straight out of his
mouth ; he had nothing to conceal, and thought aloud,
for all the world to hear ; and it does credit, I think, to
the singular goodness and guilelessness of his nature that
he could afford to be so outspoken through life and yet
give so little offence to others as he did. His indiscretion
398
did very little harm, and his naive self-revelation only
made him the more lovable to those who knew him well.
They were poor creatures, the daws who pecked at that
manly heart, so stanch and warm and constant.
As for Leah, it was easy to see that she looked upon
her husband as a fixed star, and was well pleased to tend
and minister and revolve, and shine with no other light
than his; it was in reality an absolute adoration on her
part. But she very cleverly managed to hide it from
him ; she was not the kind of woman that makes a door-
mat of herself for the man she loves. She kept him in
very good order indeed.
It was her theory that female adoration is not good
for masculine vanity, and that he got quite enough of it
outside his own home ; and she would make such fun of
him and his female adorers all over the world that he
grew to laugh at them himself, and to value a pat on
the back and a hearty " Well done, Barty !" from his wife
more than
"The blandishments of all the womankind
In Europe and America combined."
Gentle and kind and polite as she was, however, she
could do battle in defence of her great man, who was so
backward at defending himself ; and very effective battle
too.
As an instance among many, illustrating her method of
warfare : Once at an important house a very immense per-
sonage (who had an eye for a pretty woman) had asked
to be introduced to her and had taken her down to sup-
per ; a very immense personage indeed, whose fame had
penetrated to the uttermost ends of the earth and de-
servedly made his name a beloved household word
wherever our tongue is spoken, so that it was in every
399
Englishman's mouth all over the world as Barty's is
now.
Leah was immensely impressed, and treated his elderly
Immensity to a very full measure of the deference that
was his due ; and such open homage is not always good
for even the Immensest Immensities it sometimes makes
them give themselves immense airs. So that this par-
ticular Immensity began mildly but firmly to patronize
Leah. This she didn't mind on her own account, but
when he said, quite casually :
" By-the-way, I forget if I know your good husband ;
do I ?"
she was not pleased, and immediately answered :
"I really can't say; I don't think I ever heard him
mention your name !"
This was not absolutely veracious on Leah's part ; for
to Barty in those days this particular great man was a
god, and he was always full of him. But it brought the
immense one back to his bearings at once, and he left
off patronizing and was almost humble.
Anyhow, it was a lie so white that the recording angel
will probably delete what there is of it with a genial
smile, and leave a little blank in its place.
In an old diary of Leah's I find the following entry :
" March 6th, 1874. Mamma and Ida Scatcherd came
to stay. In the evening our sixth daughter and eighth
child was born."
Julia (Mrs. Mainwaring) was this favored person
and is still. Julia and her predecessors have all lived
and flourished up to now.
The Josselins had been exceptionally fortunate in their
children ; each new specimen seemed an even finer speci-
men than the last. The health of this remarkable
400
family had been exemplary measles, and mumps, and
whooping-cough their only ailments.
During the month of Leah's confinement Barty's
nocturnal literary activity was unusually great. Night
after night he wrote in his sleep, and accumulated enough
raw material to last him a lifetime; for the older he
grew and the more practised his hand the longer it took
him to give his work the shape he wished ; he became
more fastidious year by year as he became less of an
amateur.
One morning, a day or two before his wife's complete
recovery, he found a long personal letter from Martia by
his bedside a letter that moved him very deeply, and
gave him food for thought during many weeks and
months and years :
" MY BELOVED BARTY, The time has come at last
when I must bid you farewell.
"I have outstayed my proper welcome on earth as a
disembodied conscience by just a hundred years, and my
desire for reincarnation has become an imperious passion
not to be resisted.
"It is more than a desire it is a duty as well, a duty
far too long deferred.
" Barty, I am going to be your next child. I can con-
ceive no greater earthly felicity than to be a child of
yours and Leah's. I should have been one long before,
but that you and I have had so much to do together for
this beautiful eartlv a great debt to pay : you, for being
as you are ; I, for having known you.
" Barty, you have no conception what you are to me
and always have been.
" I am to you but a name, a vague idea, a mysterious
inspiration; sometimes a questionable guide, I fear.
" 'I DON'T THINK I EVER HEARD HIM MENTION YOUR NAME'"
402
You don't even believe all I have told you about myself
you think it all a somnambulistic invention of your
own ; and so does your wife, and so does your friend.
"0 that I could connect myself in your mind with the
shape I wore when I was last a living thing ! No shape
on earth, not either yours or Leah's or that of any child
yet born to you both, is more beautiful to the eye that has
learned how to see than the fashion of that lost face and
body of mine.
" You wore the shape once, and so did your father
and mother, for you were Martians. Leah was a Martian,
and wore it too ; there are many of them here they are
the best on earth, the very salt thereof. I mean to be
the best of them all, and one of the happiest. Oh, help
me to that !
" Barty, when I am a splendid son of yours or a sweet
and lovely daughter, all remembrance of what I was be-
fore will have been wiped out of me until I die. But
you will remember, and so will Leah, and both will love
me with such a love as no earthly parents have ever felt
for any child of theirs yet.
"Think of the poor loving soul, lone, wandering, but
not lost, that will so trustfully look up at you out of
those gleeful innocent eyes !
" How that soul has suffered both here and elsewhere
you don't know, and never will, till the secrets of all
hearts shall be disclosed ; and I am going to forget it
myself for a few decades sixty, seventy, eighty years
perhaps ; such happy years, I hope with you for my
father and Leah for my mother during some of them at
least and sweet grandchildren of yours, I hope, for my
sons and daughters ! Why, life to me now will be al-
most a holiday.
" Oh, train me up the way I should go ! Bring me up
403
to be healthy and chaste and strong and brave never to
know a mean ambition or think an ungenerous thought
never to yield to a base or unworthy temptation.
" If I'm a boy and I want to be a boy very much
(although, perhaps, a girl would be dearer to your heart)
don't let me be either a soldier or a sailor, however
much I may wish it as a Josselin or a Eohan ; don't
bring me up to buy or sell like a Gibson, or deal in law
like a Bletchley.
" Bring me up to invent, or make something useful,
if it's only pickles or soap, but not to buy and sell them ;
bring me up to build or heal or paint or write or make
music to help or teach or please.
"If I'm a girl, bring me up to be as much like Leah
as you can, and marry me to just such another as your-
self, if you can find him. Whether I'm a girl or a boy,
call me Marty, that my name may rhyme with yours.
"When my conscience re-embodies itself, I want it
never to know another pang of self-reproach. And when
I'm grown up, if you think it right to do so, tell me who
and what I once was, that I may love you both the more ;
tell me how fondly I loved you when I was a bland and
fleeting little animalcule, without a body, but making
my home in yours so that when you die I may know
how irrevocably bound up together we must forever be,
we three ; and rejoice the more in your death and Leah's
and my own. Teach me over again all I've ever taught
you, Barty over and over again !
" Alas ! perhaps you don't believe all this ! How can
I give you a sign ?
" There are many ways ; but a law, of necessity in-
exorable, forbids it. Such little entity as I possess would
cease to be ; it was all but lost when I saved your life
and again when I told you that you were the beloved of
404
Julia Royce. It would not do for us Martians to meddle
with earthly things ; the fat would soon be in the fire, I
can tell you !
" Try and trust me, Barty, and give me the benefit of
any doubt.
"You have work planned out for many years to come,
and are now yourself so trained that you can do without
me. You know what you have still to say to mankind ;
never write a line about which you are not sure.
" For another night or two you will be my host, and
this splendid frame of yours my hostelry ; on y est tres
bien. Be hospitable still for a little while make the
most of me ; hug me tight, squeeze me warm !
" As soon as Leah is up and about and herself again
you will know me no more, and no more feel the north.
" Ah ! you will never realize what it is for me to bid
you good-bye, my Barty, my Barty ! All that is in your
big heart and powerful brain to feel of grief belongs to
me, now that you are fast asleep. And your genius for
sorrow, which you have never really tested yet, is as
great as any gift you possess.
"Happy Barty, who have got to forty years without
sounding the great depths, and all through me ! what
will you do without your poor devoted unknown Martia
to keep watch over you and ward to fight for you like
a wild-cat, if necessary ?
" Leah must be your wild-cat now. She has it in her
to be a tigress when you are concerned, or any of her
children ! Next to yon, Leah is the darling of my heart ;
for it's your heart I make use of to love her with.
" I want you to tell the world all about your Martia
some day. They may disbelieve, as you do ; but good
fruit will come of it in the future. Martians will have
a freer hand with you all, and that will be a good thing
405
for the earth ; they were trained in a good hard school
they are the Spartans of our universe.
" Such things will come to pass, before many years are
over, as are little dreamt of now, and all through your
wanting to swallow that dose of cyanide at No. 36 Rue
des Ursulines Blanches, and my having the gumption to
prevent you !
" It's a good seed that we have sown, you and I. It
Avas not right that this beautiful planet should go much
longer drifting through space without a single hope that
is not an illusion, without a single hint of what life
should really be, without a goal.
" AVhy such darkness under so bright a sun ! such
blindness to what is so patent ! such a deaf ear to the
roaring of that thunderous harmony which you call the
eternal silence ! you of the earth, earthy, who can hear
the little trumpet of the mosquito so well that it makes
you fidget and fret and fume all night, and robs you of
your rest. Then the sun rises and frightens the mos-
quitoes away, and you think that's what the sun is for
and are thankful ; but why the deuce a mosquito should
sting you, you can't make out ! mystery of mysteries !
"At the back of your brain is a little speck of perish-
able matter, Barty ; it is no bigger than a needle's point,
but it is bigger in you than in anybody else I know, ex-
cept in Leah ; and in your children it is bigger still-
almost as big as the point of a pin !
" If they pair well, and it is in them to do so if they
follow their inherited instinct, their children and their
children's children will have that speck still bigger.
When that speck becomes as big as a millet-seed in your
remote posterity, then it will be as big as in a Martian,
and the earth will be a very different place, and man of
earth greater and even better than the Martian by all the
406
greatness of his ampler, subtler, and more complex
brain ; his sense of the Deity will be as an eagle's sense of
the sun at noon in a cloudless tropical sky ; and he will
know how to bear that effulgence without a blink, as he
stands on his lonely summit, ringed by the azure world.
"Indeed, there will be no more Martians in Mars by
that time ; they are near the end of their lease ; all good
Martians will have gone to Venus, let us hope ; if not, to
the Sun itself !
" Man has many thousands of years before him yet ere
his little ball of earth gets too cold for him; "the little
speck in his brain may grow to the size of a pea, a cherry,
a walnut, an egg, an orange ! He will have in him the
magnetic consciousness of the entire solar system, and
hold the keys of time and space as long and as far as
the sun shines for us all and then there will be the
beginning of everything. And all through that little
episode in the street of those White Ursulines ! And
the seed of Barty and Leah will overflow to the utter-
most ends of the earth, and finally blossom and bear fruit
for ever and ever beyond the stars.
" What a beginning for a new order of things ! what a
getting up-stairs ! what an awakening ! what an annunci-
ation !
" Do you remember that knock at the door ?
" ' II est dix heures, savez-vous ? Voulez-vous votre
cafe dans votre chambre ?'
" She little knew, poor little Fran! humble little Finche
Torfs, lowly Flemish virgin, who loved you as the moth
loves the star ; vilain mangeur de coeurs que vous etes !
Barty, I wish your wife to hear nothing of this till
the child who once was your Martia shall have seen the
light of day with eyes of its own ; tell her that I have
left you at last, but don't tell her why or how ; tell her
407
some day, years hence, if you think she will love me the
better for it ; not otherwise.
" When you wake, Barty, I shall still be inside you ;
say to me in your mezza voce all the kind things you
can think of such things as you would have said to
your mother had she lived till now, and you were speed-
ing her on a long and uncertain journey.
" How you would have loved your mother ! She was
most beautiful, and of the type so dear to you. Her
skin was almost as white as Leah's, her eyes almost as
black, her hair even blacker; like Leah, she was tall
and slim and lithe and graceful. She might have been
Leah's mother, too, for the likeness between them. How
often you remind me of her when you laugh or sing, and
when you're funny in French; those droll,, quick gestures
and quaint intonations, that ease and freedom and deft-
ness as you move ! And then you become English in a
moment, and your big, burly, fair-haired father has come
back with his high voice, and his high spirits, and his
frank blue eyes, like yours, so kind and brave and genial.
"And you, dear, what a baby you were a very prince
among babies ; ah ! if I can only be like that when I
begin again !
"The people in the Tuileries garden used to turn
round and stare and smile at you when Rosalie with the
long blue streamers bore you along as proudly as if Louis
Philippe were your grandfather and she the royal wet-
nurse ; and later, after that hideous quarrel about noth-
ing, and the fatal fight by the 'mare aux biches/ how the
good fisher people of Le Pollet adored you! *'Un vrai
petit St. Jean ! il nous portera bonheur, bien sur !'
"You have been thoroughly well loved all your life,
my Barty, but most of all by me never forget that !
"I have been your father and your mother when they
408
sat and watched your baby-sleep; I have been Rosalie
when she gave you the breast ; I have been your French
grandfather and grandmother quarrelling as to which of
the two should nurse you as they sat and sunned them-
selves on their humble doorstep in the Rue des Guignes !
" I have been your doting wife when you sang to her,
your children when you made them laugh till they cried.
I've been Lady Archibald when you danced the Diep-
poise after tea, in Dover, with your little bare legs ; and
Aunt Caroline, too, as she nursed you in Malines after
that silly duel where you behaved so well ; and I've been
by turns Merovee Brossard, Bonzig, old Laferte, Mile.
Marceline, Finche Torfs, poor little Marianina, Julia
Royce, Father Louis, the old Abbe, Bob Maurice all the
people you've ever charmed, or amused, or been kind to
a legion ; good heavens ! I have been them all ! What
a snowball made up of all these loves I've been rolling
after you all these years ! and now it has all got to melt
away in a single night, and with it the remembrance of
all I've ever been during ages untold.
" And I've no voice to bid you good-bye, my beloved ;
no arms to hug you with, no eyes to weep I, a daughter
of the most affectionate, and clinging, and caressing race
of little people in existence ! Such eyes as I once had,
too; such warm, soft, furry arms, and such a voice it
would have wanted no words to express all that I feel
now ; that voice nous savons notre orthographic en
musique la has !
" How it will please, perhaps, to remember even this
farewell some day, when we're all together again, with
nothing to come between !
"And now, my beloved, there is no such thing as good-
bye; it is a word that has no real meaning; but it is so
English and pretty and sweet and child-like and non-
409
sensical that I could write it over and over again just
for fun !
"So good-bye! good-bye! good-bye! till I wake up
once more after a long living sleep of many years. I
hope ; a sleep filled with happy dreams of you, dear, de-
lightful people, whom I've got to live with and love, and
learn to lose once more ; and then no more good-byes !
"MARTI A."
80 much for Martia whoever or whatever it was that
went by that name in Barty's consciousness.
After such close companionship for so many years, the
loss of her or it was like the loss of a sixth and most
valuable sense, worse almost than the loss of his sight
would have been ; and with this he was constantly
threatened, for he most unmercifully taxed his remaining
eye, and the field of his vision had narrowed year by year.
But this impending calamity did not frighten him as
in the old days. ,His wife was with him now, and as
long as she was by his side he could have borne any-
thing blindness, poverty, dishonor anything in the
world. If he lost her, he would survive her loss just
long enough to put his affairs in order, and no more.
But most distressfully he missed the physical feeling
of the north even in his sleep. This strange bereave-
ment drew him and Leah even more closely together, if
that were possible ; and she was well content to reign
alone in the heart of her fractious, unreasonable but
most affectionate, humorous, and irresistible great man.
Although her rival had been but a name and an idea,
a mere abstraction in which she had never really be-
lieved, she did not find it altogether displeasing to her-
self that the lively Martia was no more ; she has almost
told me as much.
410
And thus began for them both the happiest and most
beautiful period of their joint lives, in spite of sorrows
yet to come. She took such care of him that he might
have been as blind as Belisarius himself, and he seemed
almost to depend upon her as much so wrapt up was he
in the work of his life, so indifferent to all mundane and
practical affairs. What eyesight was not wanted for his
pen and pencil he reserved to look at her with at his
oeloved children, and the things of beauty in and out-
side Marsfield : pictures, old china, skies, hills, trees, and
river; and what wits remained he kept to amuse his
family and his friends there was enough and to spare.
The older he grew the more he teemed and seethed and
bubbled and shone and set others shining round him
even myself. It is no wonder Marsfield became such a
singularly agreeable abode for all who dwelt there, even
for the men-servants and the maid-servants, and the birds
and the beasts, and the stranger within its gates and
for me a kind of earthly paradise.
And now, gentle reader, I want very badly to talk
about myself a little, if you don't mind just for half
a dozen pages or so, which you can skip if you like.
Whether you do so or not, it will not hurt you and it
will do me a great deal of good.
I feel uncommonly sad, and very lonely indeed, now
that Barty is gone ; and with him my beloved comrade
Leah.
The only people left to me that I'm really fond of ex-
cept -my dear widowed sister, Ida Scatcherd are all so
young. They're Josselins, of course one and all and
they're all that's kind and droll and charming, and I
adore them. But they can't quite realize what this sort
of bereavement means to a man of just my age, who has
'I'M A PHILISTINE, AND AM NOT ASHAMED"'
412 -
still got some years of life before him, probably and is
yet an old man.
The Right Honorable Sir Robert Maurice, Bart., M.P.,
etc., etc., etc. That's me. I take up a whole line of
manuscript. I might be a noble lord if I chose, and take
up two !
I'm a liberal conservative, an opportunist, a pessi-opti-
mist, an in-medio-tutissimist, and attend divine service
at the Temple Church.
I'm a Philistine, and not ashamed ; so was Moliere
so was Cervantes. So, if you like, was the late Martin
Farquhar Tupper and those who read him ; we're of all
sorts in Philistia, the great and the small, the good and
the bad.
I'm in the sixties sound of wind and limb only two
false teeth one at each side, bicuspids, merely for show.
I'm rather bald, but it suits my style ; a little fat, per-
haps a pound and a half over sixteen stone ! but I'm an
inch and a half over six feet, and very big-boned. Al-
together, diablement bien conserve ! I sleep well, the
sleep of the just ; I have a good appetite and a good di-
gestion, and a good conceit of myself still, thank Heaven
though nothing like what it used to be ! One can sur-
vive the loss of one's self - respect ; but of one's vanity,
never.
What a prosperous and happy life mine has been, to
be sure, up to a few short mouths ago hardly ever an
ache or a pain ! my only real griefs, my dear mother's
death ten years back, and my father's in 1870. Yes, I
have* warmed both hands at the fire of life, aud even
burnt my fingers now and then, but not severely.
One love disappointment. The sting of it lasted a
couple of years, the compensation more than thirty ! I
loved her all the better, perhaps, that I did not marry
413
her. I'm afraid it is not in me to love a very good wife
of my own as much as I really ought !
And I love her children as well as if they'd been mine,
and her grandchildren even better. They are irresistible,
these grandchildren of Barty's and Leah's mine wouldn't
have been a patch on them ; besides, I get all the fun and
none of the bother and anxiety. Evidently it was my
true vocation to remain single and be a tame cat in a
large, warm house, where there are lots of nice children.
happy Bob Maurice ! happy sexagenarian !
" me fortunatum, mea si bona norim I" ( What
would Pure Brossard say at this ? he would give me a
twisted pinch on the arm and serve me right !)
I'm very glad I've been successful, though it's not a
very high achievement to make a very large fortune by
buying and selling that which put into a man's mouth is
said to steal away his brains !
But it does better things than this. It reconciles and
solves and resolves mental discords, like music. It makes
music for people who have no ear and there are so many
of these in the world that I'm a millionaire, and Franz
Schubert died a pauper. So I prefer to drink beer as
he did ; and I never miss a Monday Pop if I can help it.
/ have done better things, too. I have helped to
govern my country and make its laws ; but it all came
out of wine to begin with all from learning how to buy
and sell i We're a nation of shopkeepers, although the
French keep better shops than ours, and more of them.
I'm glad I'm successful because of Barty, although
success, which brings the world to our feet, does* not
always endear us to the friend of our bosom. If I had
been a failure Barty would have stuck to me like a brick,
I feel sure, instead of my sticking to him like a leech !
And the sight of his success might have soured me that
414
eternal chorus of praise, that perpetual feast of pudding
in which I should have had no part but to take my share
as a mere guest, and listen and look on and applaud, and
wish I'd never been born !
As it is, I listened and looked on and clapped my hands
with as much pride and pleasure as if Barty had been my
son and my share of the pudding never stuck in my
throat !
I should have been always on the watch to take him
down a peg when he was pleased with himself to hold
him cheap and overpraise some duffer in his hearing so
that I might save my own self-esteem ; to pay him bad
little left-handed compliments, him and his, whenever I
was out of humor ; and I should have been always out of
humor, having failed in life.
And then I should have gone home wretched for I
have a conscience and woke up in the middle of the
night and thought of Barty ; and what a kind, genial,
jolly, large-minded, and generous-hearted old chap he
was and always had been and buried my face in my pil-
low, and muttered :
" Ach ! what a poor, mean, jealous beast I am un fruit
sec ! un malheureux rate !"
With all my success, this life-long exclusive cultivation
of Barty's society, and that of his artistic friends, which
has somehow unfitted me for the society of my brother-
merchants of wine and most merchants of everything
else has not, I regret to say, quite fitted me to hold
my own among the "leaders of intellectual modern
thought," whose company I would fain seek and keep
in preference to any other.
My very wealth seems to depress and disgust them, as
it does me and I'm no genius, I admit, and a poor con-
versationalist,
415
To amass wealth is an engrossing pursuit and now
that I have amassed a good deal more than I quite know
what to do with, it seems to me a very ignoble one. It
chokes up everything that makes life worth living; it
leaves so little time for the constant and regular practice
of those ingenuous arts which faithfully to have learned
is said to soften the manners, and make one an agreeable
person all round.
It is even more abrutissant than the mere pursuit of
sport or pleasure.
How many a noble lord I know who's almost as beastly
rich as myself, and twice as big a fool by nature, and per-
haps not a better fellow at bottom yet who can com-
mand the society of all there is of the best in science,
literature, and art !
Not but what they will come and dine with me fast
enough, these shining lights of culture and intellect my
food is very good, although I say it, and I get noble
lords to meet them.
But they talk their real talk to each other not to me
and to the noble lords who sit by them at my table, and
who try to understand what they say. With me they fall
back on politics and bimetallism, for all the pains Fve
taken to get up the subjects that interest them, and keep
myself posted in all they've written and done. Precious
little they know about bimetallism or politics !
Is it only on account of their pretty manners that my
titled friends are such favorites with these highly in-
tellectual guests of mine and with me ? If so, then
pretty manners should come before everything else in the
world, and be taught instead of Latin and Greek.
But if it's only because they're noble lords, then I'm
beginning to think with Mr. Labouchere that it's high
time the Upper House were abolished, and its denizens
416
wafted into space, since they make such siiobs of us all-
including your humble servant, of course, who at least
is not quite so snobbish as to know himself for a damned
snob and pretend he isn't one.
Anyhow, I'm glad my life has been such a success.
But would I live it all over again ? Even the best of it?
The " forty year " ?
Taking one consideration with another, most decidedly
not.
I have only met two men of my own age who would
live their lives over again. They both cared more for
their meals than for anything else in the world and they
have always had four of these everyday ; sometimes even
five ! plenty of variety, and never a meal to disagree with
them ! affaire d'estomac ! They simply want to eat all
those meals once more. They lived to feed, and to re-
feed would re-live !
My meals have never disagreed with me either but I
have always found them monotonous ; they have always
been .so simple and so regular when I've had the ordering
of them ! Fried soles, chops or steaks, and that sort of
thing, and a pint of lager-beer no wine for me, thank
you ; I sell it and all this just to serve as a mere foun-
dation for a smoke and a chat with Barty, if possible !
Hardly ever an ache or a pain, and I wouldn't live it
all over again ! yet I hope to live another twenty years,
if only to take Leah's unborn great-grandchildren to the
dentist's, and tip them at school, and treat them to the
pantomime and Madame Tussaud's, as I did their moth-
ers and grandmothers before them or their fathers and
grandfathers.
This seems rather inconsistent ! For would I care,
twenty years hence, to re-live these coming twenty years?
Evidently not it's out of the question.
417
So why don't I give up at once ? I know how to do it,
without pain, without scandal, without even invalidating
my life-insurance, about which I don't care a rap !
Why don't I ? why don't you, middle-aged reader
with all the infirmities of age before you and all the
pleasures of youth behind ? Anyhow, we don't, either
you or I and so there's an end on't.
Pandora ! I have promised myself that I would
take a great-grandchild of Barty's on a flying-machine
from Marsfield to London and back in half an hour
and that great-grandchild can't well be born for several
years perhaps not for another twenty !
And now, gentle reader, I've had my little say, and
I'm a good deal better, thanks, and I'll try not to talk
about myself any more.
Except just to mention that in the summer of 1876 I
contested East Eosherville in the Conservative interest
and was successful and owed my success to the canvass-
ing of Barty and Leah, who had no politics of their own
whatever, and would have canvassed for me just as con-
scientiously if I'd been a Radical, probably more so ! For
if Barty had permitted himself any politics at all, he
would have been a red-hot Radical, I fear and his wife
would have followed suit. And so, perhaps, would I !
27
part Centb
"Je suis alle de bon matin
Ctieillir la violetle,
Et 1'aubepine, et le jasmin,
Pour celebrer ta ffite.
J'ai lie de ma propre main
Bouton de rose et romarin
Pour couronner ta blonde tfite.
" Mais de ta royale beaute
Sois humble, je te prie.
Ici tout meurt, la fleur, 1'ete,
La jeunesse et la vie :
Bientot, bientot ce jour sera,
Ma belle, ou 1'on te portera
Dans un linceul, p&le et fletrie. "
A Favorite Song of MARY TREVOR'S.
THAT was a pleasant summer.
First of all we went to Ste. Adresse, a suburb of
Havre, where there is very good bathing with rafts,
perissoires, pique-tttes to dive from all those aquatic de-
lights the French are so clever at inventing, and which
make a " station balneaire " so much more amusing than
a mere British watering-place.
We made a large party and bathed together every
morning ; and Barty and I taught the young ones to dive
and do " la coupe " in the true orthodox form, with that
free horizontal sweep of each alternate arm that gives it
such distinction.
419
It was very good fun to see those rosy boys and girls
taking their "hussardes" neatly without a splash from
the little platform at the top of the pole, and solemnly
performing "la coupe" in the wake of their papa ; one
on his back. Right out to sea they went, I bringing up
the rear and the faithful Jean-Baptiste in attendance
with his boat, and Leah inside it her anxious eyes on
the stretch to count those curly heads again and again.
She was a good mathematician, and the tale, always came
right in the end ; and home was reached at last, and no
one a bit the worse for a good long swim in those well-
aired, sunlit waves.
Once we went on the top of the diligence to ]tretat
for the day, and there we talked of poor Bonzig and his
first and last dip in the sea ; and did " la coupe " in the
waters that had been so fatal to him, poor fellow !
Then we went by the steamer Jean Bart to Trou-
ville and Deauville, and up the Seine in a steam-launch
to Rouen.
In the afternoons and evenings we took long country
walks and caught moths, or went to Havre by tramway
and cleared out all the pastry-cooks in the Rue de Paris,
and watched the transatlantic steamers, out or home,
from that gay pier which so happily combines business
with pleasure utile dulci, as Pere Brossard would have
said and walked home by the charming Cote d'lngou-
ville, sacred to the memory of Modeste Mignon.
And then, a little later on, I was a good Uncle Bob,
and took the whole party to Auteuil, near Paris, and
hired two lordly mansions next door to each other in the
Villa Montmorency, and turned their gardens into one.
Altogether, with the Scatcherds and ourselves, eight
children, governesses, nurses, and other servants, and
dogs and the smaller animals, we were a very large party,
420
and a very lively one. I like this sort of thing better
than anything else in the world.
I hired carriages and horses galore, and for six weeks
we made ourselves thoroughly comfortable and at home
in Paris and around.
That was the happiest holiday I ever had since the
vacation Barty and I spent at the LaferteV in the Gue des
Aulnes when we were school-boys.
And such was our love for the sport he called " la
chasse aux souvenirs" that one day we actually went
there, travelling by train to La Tremblaye, where we
spent the night.
It was a sad disenchantment !
The old Lafertes were dead, the young ones had left
that part of the country ; and the house and what re-
mained of the gardens now belonged to another family,
and had become formal and mean and business-like in
aspect, and much reduced in size.
Much of the outskirts of the forest had been cleared
and was being cleared still, and cheap little houses run
up for workmen ; an immense and evil-smelling factory
with a tall chimney had replaced the old home-farm, and
was connected by a single line of rails with the station of
La Tremblaye. The clear, pellucid stream where we used
to catch crayfish had been canalized " s'est encanaille,"
as Barty called it its waters fouled by barge traffic and
all kinds of horrors.
We soon found the haunted pond that Barty was so
fond of but quite in the open, close to an enormous
brick-field, and only half full ; and with all its trees cut
down, including the tree on which they had hanged the
gay young Viscount who had behaved so badly to Sera-
phine Doucet, and on which Seraphine Doucet after-
wards hanged herself in remorse.
421
No more friendly charcoal-burners, no more wolves or
boars or cerfs dix-cors ; and as for were-wolves, the very
memory of them had died out.
There seems no greater desecration to me than cutting
down an old and well-remembered French forest I have
loved ; and solving all its mystery, and laying bare the
nakedness of the land in a way so brutal and expeditious
and unexpected. It reminds one of the manner in which
French market-women will pluck a goose before it's quite
dead ; you bristle with indignation to see it, but you
mustn't interfere.
La Tremblaye itself had become a nourishing manu-
facturing town, and to our jaundiced and disillusioned
eyes everybody and everything was as ugly as could be
and I can't say we made much of a bag in the way of
souvenirs.
We were told that young Laferte was a barrister at
Angers, prosperous and married. We deliberated Avhether
we would hunt him up and talk of old times. Then we
reflected how curiously cold and inhospitable Frenchmen
can sometimes be to old English friends in circumstances
like these and how little they care to talk of old times
and all that, unless it's the Englishman who plays the
host.
Ask a quite ordinary Frenchman to come and dine
with you in London, and see what a genial and charming
person he can be what a quick bosom friend, and with
what a glib and silver tongue to praise the warmth of
your British welcome.
Then go and call on him when you find yourself in
Paris and you will soon learn to leave quite ordinary
Frenchmen alone, on their own side of the Channel.
Happily, there are exceptions to this rule !
Thus the sweet Laferte remembrance, which had so
432
often come back to me in my dreams, was forever spoiled
by this unlucky trip.
It had turned that leaf from the tablets of my memory
into a kind of palimpsest, so that I could no longer quite
make out the old handwriting for the new, which would
not be obliterated, and these were confused lines it was
hard to read between with all my skill !
Altogether we were uncommonly glad to get back to
the Villa Montmorency from the distorted shadows of
a nightmare to happy reality.
There, all was fresh and delightful ; as boys we had
often seen the outside walls of that fine property which
had come to the speculative builder at last, but never a
glimpse within ; so that there was no desecration for us
in the modern laying out of that beautiful double garden
of ours, whatever there might have been for such ghosts
of Montmorencys as chose to revisit the glimpses of the
moon.
We haunted A'uteuil, Passy, Point du Jour, Suresnes,
Courbevoie, Neuilly, Meudon all the familiar places.
Especially we often haunted the neighborhood of the
rond point de 1' Avenue du Bois de Boulogne.
One afternoon, as he and I and Leah and Ida were
driving round what once was our old school, we stopped
in the lane not far from the porte-cochere, and Barty
stood up on the box and tried to look over the wall.
Presently, from the grand stone loge which had re-
placed Jaurion's den, a nice old concierge came out and
asked if we desired anything. We told him how once we
had been at school on that very spot, and were trying to
make out the old trees that had served as bases in " la
balle au camp," and that if we really desired anything
just then it was that we might become school-boys once
more!
423
"Ah, ma.foi ! jo comprends qa, messieurs moi aussi,
j'ai ete ecolier, et j'aimais bien la balle au camp/' said the
good old man, who had been a soldier.
He informed us the family were away, but that if we
liked to come inside and see the garden he was sure
his master would have no objection. We jumped at this
kind offer and spent quite an hour there, and if I were
Barty I could so describe the emotions of that hour
that the reader would feel quite as tearfully grateful
to me as to Barty Josselin for Chapters III. and IV. in
Le Fil de la Vierge, which are really founded, mutatis
mutandis, on this self-same little adventure of ours.
Nothing remained of our old school not even the outer
walls; nothing but the big trees and the absolute ground
they grew out of. Beautiful lawns, flower-beds, con-
servatories, summer-houses, ferns, and evergreen shrubs
made the place seem even larger than it had once been
the very reverse of what usually happens and softened
for us the disenchantment of the change.
Here, at least, was no desecration of a hallowed spot.
When the past has been dead and buried a long while ago
there is no sweeter decking for its grave than a rich
autumn tangle, all yellow and brown and pale and hectic
red, with glossy evergreens and soft, damp moss to keep
up the illusion of spring and summer all the year round.
Much to the amusement of the old concierge and his
wife, Barty insisted on climbing into a huge horse-
chestnut tree, in which was a natural seat, very high up,
where, well hidden by the dense foliage, he and I used to
color pipes for boys who couldn't smoke without feeling
sick.
Nothing would suit him now but that he must smoke a
pipe there while we talked to the good old couple below.
"Moi aussi, je fumais quand c'etait d^fendu; que
424
wulez-vous ? II faut bien que jeunesse se passe, n'est ce
pas ?" said the old soldier.
"Ah, dame !" said his old wife, and sighed.
Every tree in this enchanted place had its history
every corner, every square yard of soil. I will not inflict
these histories on the reader ; I will restrain myself with
all my might, and merely state that just as the old school
had been replaced by this noble dwelling the noble
dwelling itself has now been replaced, trees and garden
and all, by a stately palace many stories high, which
rears itself among so many other stately palaces that I
can't even identify the spot where once stood the Institu-
tion F. Brossard !
Later, Barty made me solemnly pledge my word that if
he and Leah should pre-decease me I would see to their
due cremating and the final mingling of their ashes ; that
a portion of these say half should be set apart to be
scattered on French soil, in places he would indicate in
his will, and that the lion's share of that half should be
sprinkled over the ground that once was our play-ground,
with or without the legitimate owner's permission.
(Alas ! and ah me ! These instructions would have
been carried out to the letter but that the place itself is
no more ; and, with a conviction that I should be merely
acting just as they would have wished, I took it on myself
to mingle with their ashes those of a very sweet and dar-
ling child of theirs, dearer to them and to me and to us
all than any creature ever born into this cruel universe ;
and I scattered a portion of these precious remains to
the four winds, close by the old spot we so loved.)
Yes, that was a memorable holiday ; the charming fete
de St. Cloud was in full swing it was delightful to
haunt it once more with those dear young people so little
425
dreamt of when Barty and I first got into scrapes there,
and were duly punished by Latin verbs to conjugate in
our best handwriting for Bonzig or Dumollard.
Then he and I would explore the so changed Bois de
Boulogne for the little " Mare aux Biches," where his
father had fallen under the sword of Lieutenant Ron-
delys ; but we never managed to find it : perhaps it had
evaporated ; perhaps the does had drunk it all up, before
they, too, had been made to vanish, before the German
invader or inside him ; for he was fond of French veni-
son, as well as of French clocks ! He was a most omniv-
orous person.
Then Paris had endless charms for us both, and we
relieved ourselves at last of that long homesickness of
years, and could almost believe we were boys again, as we
dived into such old and well-remembered streets as yet
remained.
There were still some slums we had loved ; one or two
of them exist even now. Only the other day I saw the
Rue de Clery, the Rue de la Lune, the Rue de la Mon-
tagne all three on the south side of the Boulevard
Bonne Nouvelle : they are still terrible to look at from
the genial Boulevard, even by broad daylight the houses
so tall, so irregular, the streets so narrow and winding
and black. They seemed to us boys terrible, indeed, be-
tween eight and nine on a winter's evening, with just a
lamp here and there to make their darkness visible.
Whither they led I can't say ; we never dared explore
their obscure and mysterious recesses. They may have
ended in the cour des miracles for all we knew it was
nearly fifty years ago and they may be quite virtuous
abodes of poverty to-day ; but they seemed to us then
strange, labyrinthine abysses of crime and secret dens of
infamy, where dreadful deeds were done in the dead of
426
long winter nights. Evidently, to us in those days, who-
ever should lose himself there would never see daylight
again; so we loved to visit them after dark, with our
hearts in our mouths, before going back to school.
We would sit on posts within call of the cheerful Boule-
vard, and watch mysterious women hurry up and down in
the cold, out of darkness into light and back again, poor
creatures dingy moths, silent but ominous night-jars,
forlorn women of the town ill-favored and ill-dressed,
some of them all but middle-aged, in common caps and
aprons, with cotton umbrellas, like cooks looking for a
situation.
They never spoke to us, and seemed to be often brutal-
ly repulsed by whatever men they did speak to mostly
men in blouses.
"6 dis-donc, //orteiise ! qn'yfatt froid ! quand done qu'y
s'ra 6nze heures, q'nous allions nous eo^cher ?"
So said one of them to another one cold, drizzly night,
in a raucous voice, with low intonations of the gutter.
The dimly felt horror and despair and pathos of it sent us
away shivering to our Passy omnibus as fast as our legs
could carry us.
That phrase has stuck in my memory ever since.
Thank Heaven ! the eleventh hour must have struck
long ago, and Hortense and her friend must be fast asleep
and well out of the cold by now they need walk those
evil streets no more. . . .
When we had exhausted it all, and we felt homesick
for England again, it was good to get back to Marsfield,
high up over the Thames so beautiful in its rich October
colors which the river reflected with its old trees that
grew down to the water's edge, and brooded by the boat-
house there in the mellow sunshine.
And then again when it became cold and dreary, at
427
Christmas-time there was my big house at Lancaster
Gate, where Josselins were fond of spending some of the
winter months, and where I managed to find room for
them all with a little squeezing during the Christmas
holidays when the boys came home from school. What
good times they were !
" On May 24th, at Marsfield, Berks, the wife of Bar-
tholomew Josselin, of a daughter" or, as Leah put it in
her diary, "our seventh daughter and ninth child to
be called Martia, or Marty for short."
It seems that Marty, prepared by her first ablution for
this life, and as she lay being powdered on Mrs. Jones's
motherly lap, was of a different type to her predecessors
much whiter, and lighter, and slighter ; and she made no
exhibition of that lusty lung-power which had so char-
acterized the other little Barties 011 their introduction to
this vale of tears.
Her face was more regularly formed and more highly
finished, and in a few weeks grew of a beauty so solemn
and pathetic that it would sometimes make Mrs. Jones,
who had lost babies of her own, shed motherly tears
merely to look at her.
Even / felt sentimental about the child; and as for
Barty, he could talk of nothing else, and made those
rough and hasty silver-point studies of her head and
face mere sketches which, being full of obvious faults,
became so quickly famous among aesthetic and exclusive
people who had long given up Barty as a writer on ac-
count of his scandalous popularity.
Alas ! even those silver-points have become popular
now, and their photogravures are in the shop-windows
of sea-side resorts and in the back parlors of the lower
middle-class ; so that the aesthetic exclusives who are up
428
to date have had to give up Barty altogether. No one is
sacred in these days not even Shakespeare and Michael
Angelo.
We shall be hearing Schumann and Wagner on the
piano-organ, and "nous autres" of the cultured classes
will have to fall back on Balfe and Byron and Landseer.
In a few months little Marty became famous for this
extra beauty all over Henley and Maidenhead.
She soon grew to be the idol of her father's heart, and
her mother's, and Ida's. But I really think that if there
was one person who idolized her more than all the rest,
it was I, Bob Maurice.
She was extremely delicate, and gave us much anxiety
and many alarms, and Dr. Knight was a very constant
visitor at Marsfield Lodge. It was fortunate, for her
sake, that the Josselins had left Campden Hill and made
their home in Marsfield.
Nine of these children including one not yet born
then developed there into the finest and completest
human beings, take them for all in all, that I have ever
known ; nine a good number !
" Numero Deus imparegaudet."
Or, as poor Rapaud translated this (and was pinched
black and blue by Pere Brossard in consequence) :
" Le numero deux se rjouit d'etre impair !" (Num-
ber two takes a pleasure in being odd !)
The three sons one of them now in the army, as be-
comes a Rohan ; and one a sailor, as becomes a Josselin ;
and one a famous actor, the true Josselin of all are the
very types of what I should like for the fathers of my
grandchildren, if I had marriageable daughters of my
own.
And as for Barty's daughters, they are all but one
so well known in society and the world so famous, I
429
may say that I need hardly mention them here ; all bnt
Marty, my sweet little "maid of Dove."
When Barty took Marsfield he and I had entered what
I have ever since considered the happiest decade of a
successful and healthy man's life the forties.
"Wait till you get to forty year!"
So sang Thackeray, but with a very different experi-
ence to mine. He seemed to look upon the fifth decade
as the grave of all tender illusions and emotions, and
exult !
My tender illusions and emotions became realties
things to live by and for. As Barty and I " dipped our
noses in the Gascon wine" Vougeot-Conti & Co. I
blessed my stars for being free of Marsfield, which was,
and is still, my real home, and for the warm friendship
of its inhabitants who have been my real family, and for
several years of unclouded happiness all round.
Even in winter what a joy it was, after a long solitary
walk, or ride, or drive, or railway journey, to suddenly
find myself at dusk in the midst of all that warmth and
light and gayety ; what a contrast to^the House of Com-
mons; what a relief after Barge Yard or Downing Street;
what tea that was, what crumpets and buttered toast,
what a cigarette ; what romps and jokes, and really jolly
good fun; and all that delightful untaught music that
afterwards became so cultivated! Music was a special
inherited gift of the entire family, and no trouble or
expense was ever spared to make the best and the most
of it.
Koberta became the most finished and charming ama-
teur pianist I ever heard, and as for Mary la rossignolle
Mrs. Trevor she's almost as famous as if she had made
singing her profession, as she once so wished to do. She
married happily instead, a better profession still ; and
430
though her songs are as highly paid for as any except,
perhaps, Madame Patti's every penny goes to the poor.
She can make a nigger melody sound worthy of Schu-
bert and a song of Schumann go down with the common
herd as if it were a nigger melody, and obtain a genuine
encore for it from quite simple people.
Why, only the other night she and her husband dined
with me at the Bristol, and we went to Baron Schwartz-
kind's in Piccadilly to meet Royal Highnesses.
Up comes the Baron with:
" Ach, Mrs. Drefor ! vill you not zing zomzing ? ze
Brincess vould be so jarmt."
" I'll sing as much as you like, Baron, if you promise
me you'll send a checque for 50 to the Foundling Hospi-
tal to-morrow morning," says Mary.
"I'll send another fifty, Baron/' says Bob Maurice.
And the Baron had to comply, and Mary sang again and
again, and the Princess was more than charmed.
She declared herself enchanted, and yet it was Brahms
and Schumann that Mary sang ; no pretty little English
ballad, no French, no Italian.
" Aus meinen Tlirftnen spriessen
Viel' bldhende Blumen hervor ;
Und meine Seufze warden
Eiu Nachtigallen Chor. ..."
So sang Mary, and I declare some of the royal eyes
were moist.
They all sang and played, these Josselins; and tumbled
and acted, and were droll and original and fetching, as
their father had been and was still; and, like him, amiable
and full of exuberant life ; and, like their mother, kind
and appreciative and sympathetic and ever thoughtful of
others, without a grain of selfishness or conceit.
"'ZE BBINCESS VOULD BE SO JAKMT'
432
They were also great athletes, boys and girls alike ;
good swimmers and riders, and first-rate oars. And
though not as good at books and lessons as they might
have been, they did not absolutely disgrace themselves,
being so quick and intelligent.
Amid all this geniality and liveliness at home and this
beauty of surrounding nature abroad, little Marty seemed
to outgrow in a measure her constitutional delicacy.
It was her ambition to become as athletic as a boy,
and she was persevering in all physical exercises and
threw stones very straight and far, with a quite easy
masculine sweep of the arm ; I taught her myself.
It was also her ambition to draw, and she would sit
for an hour or more on a high stool by her father, or on
the arm of his chair, and watch him at his work in si-
lence. Then she would get herself paper and pencil,
and try and do likewise ; but discouragement would
overtake her, and she would have to give it up in de-
spair, with a heavy sigh and a clouded look on her lovely
little pale face ; and yet they were surprisingly clever,
these attempts of hers.
Then she took to dictating a novel to her sisters and
to me : it was all about an immense dog and three
naughty boys, who were awful dunces at school and ran
away to sea, dog and all ; and performed heroic deeds
in Central Africa, and grew up there, "booted and
bearded, and burnt to a brick !" and never married or
fell in love, or stooped to any nonsense of that kind.
This novel, begun in the handwriting of all of us, and
continued in her own, remained unfinished ; and the
precious MS. is now in my possession. I have read it
of teuer than any other novel, French or English, except,
perhaps, Vanity Fair I
I may say that I had something to do with the devel-
433
opment of her literary faculty, as I read many good
books to her before she could read quite comfortably
for herself : Evenings at Home, The Swiss Family Rob-
inson, Gulliver, Robinson Crusoe, books by Ballantyne,
Marryat, Mayne Reid, Jules Verne, etc., and Treasure
Island, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, The Wreck of
the Grosvenor, and then her father's books, or some of
them.
But even better than her famous novel were the sto-
ries she improvised to me in a small boat which I often
rowed up-stream while she steered one story, in par-
ticular, that had no end; she would take it up at any
time.
She had imagined a world where all trees and flowers
and vegetation (and some birds) were the size they are
now ; but men and beasts no bigger than Lilliputians,
with houses and churches and buildings to match and a
family called Josselin living in a beautiful house called
Marsfield, as big as a piano organ.
Endless were the adventures by flood and field of these
little people : in the huge forest and on the gigantic
river which it took them nearly an hour to cross in a
steam-launch when the wind was high, or riding trained
carrier-pigeons to distant counties, and the coasts of
Normandy, Brittany, and Picardy, where everything was
on a similar scale.
It would astonish me to find how vivid and real she
could make these imaginations of hers, and to me how
fascinating oddly enough she reserved them for me only,
and told no one else.
There was always an immensely big strong man, one
Bobby Maurice, a good-natured giant, nearly three inches
high and over two ounces in weight, who among other
feats would eat a whole pea at a sitting, and hold out an
28
434
acorn at arm's-length, and throw a pepper-corn over two
yards which has remained the record.
Then, coming back down-stream, she would take the
si MI Us and I the tiller, and I would tell her (in French)
all about our school adventures at Brossard's and
Bonzig, and the Lafertes, and the Revolution of 1-V1>-
ruary ; and in that way she picked up a lot of useful
and idiomatic Parisian which considerably astonished
Fraulein Werner, the German governess, who yet knew
French almost as well as her own language almost as
well as Mr. Olleridorff himself.
She also changed one of the heroes in her famous
novel, Tommy Holt, into a French boy, and called him
Rapaud !
She was even more devoted to animals than the rest
of the family : the beautiful Angora, Kitty, died when
Marty was five, from an abscess in her cheek, where
she'd been bitten by a strange bull-terrier ; and Marty
tearfully wrote her epitaph in a beautiful round hand
"Here lies Kitty, full of grace;
Died of an abbess in her face !"
This was her first attempt at verse-making, and here's
her last, from the French of Sully-Prudhomme :
"If you but knew what tears, alas !
One weeps for kinship unbestowed,
In pity you would sometimes pass
My poor abode !
"If you but knew what balm, for all
Despond, lies in an angel's glance,
Your looks would on my window fall
As though by chance !
435
"If you but knew the heart's delight
To feel its fellow-heart is by,
You'd linger, as a sister might,
These gates anigh !
"If you but knew how oft I yearn
For one sweet voice, one presence dear,
Perhaps you'd even simply turn
And enter here !"
She was only just seventeen when she wrote them,
and, upon my word, I think they're almost as good as the
original !
Her intimate friendship with Chucker-out, the huge
St. Bernard, lasted for nearly both their lives, alas ! It
began when they both weighed exactly the same, and I
could carry both in one arm. When he died he turned
the scale at sixteen stone, like me.
It has lately become the fashion to paint big dogs and
little girls, and engravings of these pictures are to be
seen in all the print-sellers' shops. It always touches
me very much to look at these works of art, although
and I hope it is not libellous to say so the big dog
is always hopelessly inferior in beauty and dignity and
charm to Chucker-out, who was champion of his day.
And as for the little girls Ah, mon Dieu !
Such pictures are not high art of course, and that is
why I don't possess one, as I've got an aesthetic charac-
ter to keep up ; but why they shouldn't be I can't guess.
Is it because no high artist except Briton Riviere will
stoop to so easily understood a subject ?
A great master would not be above painting a small
child or a big dog separately why should he be above
putting them both in the same picture ? It would be too
obvious, I suppose like a melody by Mozart, or Han-
436
del's " Harmonious Blacksmith," or Schubert's Sere-
nade, and other catchpenny tunes of the same descrip-
tion.
/ was also very intimate with Chucker-out, who made
more of me than he even did of his master.
One night I got very late to Marsfield by the last
train, and, letting myself in with my key, I found
Chucker-out waiting for me in the hall, and apparently
in a very anxious frame of mind, and extremely demon-
strative, wanting to say something more than usual to
confide a trouble, to confess !
We went up into the big music-room, which was still
lighted, and lay on a couch together ; he, with his head
on my knees, whimpering softly as I smoked and read
a paper.
Presently Leah came in and said :
" Such an unfortunate thing happened ; Marty and
Chucker - out were playing on the slope, and he knocked
her down and sprained her knee."
As soon as Chucker-out heard Marty's name he sat up
and whined piteously, and pawed me down with great
violence ; pawed three buttons off my waistcoat and
broke my watch-chain couldn't be comforted ; the mis-
adventure had been preying on his mind for hours.
I give ,this subject to Mr. Briton Riviere, who ran
paint both dogs and children, and everything else he
likes. I will sit for him myself, if he wishes, and as a
Catholic priest ! He might call it a confession and an
absolution ! or, " The Secrets of the Confessional."
The good dog became more careful in future, and re-
strained his exuberance even going down -stairs with
Marty on the way to a ramble in the woods, which ex-
cited him more than anything ; if he came down - stairs
with anybody else, the violence of his joy was such that
437
one had to hold on by the banisters. He was a dear,
good beast, and a splendid body-guard for Marty in her
solitary woodland rambles never left her side for a sec-
ond. I have often watched him from a distance, un-
beknown to both ; he was proud of his responsibility
almost fussy about it.
I have been fond of many dogs, but never yet loved a
dog as I loved big Chucker-out or Choucrortte, as Cora-
lie, the French maid, called him, to Frauleiu. Werner's
annoyance (Choucroute is French for sauerkraut) ; and
I like to remember him in his splendid prime, guarding
his sweet little mistress, whom I loved better than any-
thing else on earth. She was to me a kind of pet Mar-
jorie, and said such droll and touching things that I
could almost fill a book with them. I kept a diary on
purpose, and called it Martiana.
She was tall, but lamentably thin and slight, poor
dear, with her mother's piercing black eyes and the
very fair curly locks of her papa a curious and most
effective contrast and features and a complexion of such
extraordinary delicacy and loveliness that it almost gave
one pain in the midst of the keen pleasure one had in
the mere looking at her.
Heavens ! how that face would light up suddenly at
catching the unexpected sight of some one she was fond
x of ! How often it has lighted up at the unexpected
sight of "Uncle Bob"! The mere remembrance of that
sweet illumination brightens my old age for me now ;
and I could almost wish her back again, in my senile
selfishness and inconsistency. Pazienza !
Sometimes she was quite embarrassing in her sim-
plicity, and reminded me of her father..
Once in Dieppe when she was about eight she and I
had gone through the fitablissement to bathe, and people
438
had stared at her even more than usual and whispered to
each other.
" I bet you don't know why they all stare so, Uncle
Bob ?"
" I give it up/' said I.
" It's because I'm so handsome we're all handsome,
you know, and I'm the handsomest of the lot, it seems !
You're not handsome, Uncle Bob. But oh ! aren't you
strong ! Why, you could tuck a piou-piou under one arm
and a postman under the other and walk up to the castle
with them and pitch them into the sea, couldn't you ?
And that's better than being handsome, .isn't it ? I wish
/ was like that."
And here she cuddled and kissed my hand.
When Mary began to sing (under Signer R.) it was her
custom of an afternoon to lock herself up alone with a
tuning-fork in a large garret and practise, as she was shy
of singing exercises before any one else.
Her voice, even practising scales, would give Marty
extraordinary pleasure, and me, too. Marty and I have
often sat outside and listened to Mary's rich and fluent
vocalizings ; and I hoped that Marty would develop a
great voice also, as she was so like Mary in face and
disposition, except that Mary's eyes were blue and her
hair very black, and her health unexceptionable.
Marty did not develop a real voice, although she sang
very prettily and confidentially to me, and worked hard
at the piano with Roberta; she learned harmony and
composed little songs, and wrote words to them, and
Mary or her father would sing them to her and make her
happy beyond description.
Happy ! she was always happy during the first few
years of her life from five or six to twelve.
I like to think her happiness was so great for this
439
brief period, that she had her full share of human felic-
ity just as if she had lived to the age of the Psalmist.
It seemed everybody's business at Marsfield to see that
Marty had a good time. This was an easy task, as she
was so easy to amuse ; and when amused, herself so
amusing to others.
As for me, it is hardly too much to say that every
hour I could spare from business and the cares of state
was spent in organizing the amusement of little Marty
Josselin, and I was foolish enough to be almost jealous
of her own father and mother's devotion to the same
object.
Unlike her brothers and sisters, she was a studious
little person, and fond of books too much so indeed,
for all she was such a tomboy ; and all this amusement
was designed by us with the purpose of winning her
away from the too sedulous pursuit of knowledge. I
may add that in temper and sweetness of disposition the
child was simply angelic, and could not be spoiled by
any spoiling.
It was during these happy years at Marsfield that
Barty, although bereft of his Martia ever since that fare-
well letter, managed, nevertheless, to do his best work, on
lines previously laid down for him by her.
For the first year or two he missed the feeling of the
north most painfully it was like the loss of a sense but
he grew in time accustomed to the privation, and quite
resigned ; and Marty, whom he worshipped as did her
mother compensated him for the loss of his demon.
Inaccessible Heights, Floreal et Fructidor, The Infinite-
ly Little, The Northern Pactolus, Pandore et sa Boite,
Cancer and Capricorn, Phcebus et Selene followed each
other in leisurely succession. And he also found time
for those controversies that so moved and amused the
440
world ; among others, his famous and triumphant confu-
tation of Canon , on one hand, and Professor .
the famous scientist, on the other, which has been com-
pared to the classic litigation about the oyster, since the
oyster itself fell to Barty's share, and a shell to each of
the two disputants.
Orthodox and agnostic are as the poles asunder, yet
they could not but both agree with Barty Josselin, who
so cleverly extended a hand to each, and acted as a
conductor between them.
That irresistible optimism which so forces itself upon
all Josselin's readers, who number by now half the world,
and will probably one day include the whole of it when
the whole of it is civilized belonged to him by nature,
by virtue of his health and his magnificent physique and
his happy circumstances, and an admirably balanced
mind, which was better fitted for his particular work
and for the world's good than any special gift of genius
in one direction.
His literary and artistic work never cost him the slightest
effort. It amused him to draw and write more than did
anything else in the world, and he always took great
pains, and delighted in taking them ; but himself he
never took seriously for one moment never realized
what happiness he gave, and was quite unconscious of the
true value of all he thought and wrought and taught !
He laughed good-humoredly at the passionate praise
that for thirty years was poured upon him from all
quarters of the globe, and shrugged his shoulders at the
coarse invective of those whose religious susceptibilities
he had so innocently wounded ; left all published insults
nnanswered ; never noticed any lie printed about himself
never wrote a paragrapli in explanation or self-defence,
but smoked many pipes and mildly wondered.
441
Indeed he was mildly wondering all his life : at his
luck at all the ease and success and warm domestic bliss
that had so compensated him for the loss of his left eye
and would almost have compensated him for the loss of
both.
" It's all because I'm so deuced good-looking !" says
Barty " and so's Leah V
And all his life he sorrowed for those who were less
fortunate than himself. His charities and those of his
wife were immense he gave all the money, and she took
all the trouble.
" C'est papa qui paie et maman qui regale," as Marty
would say ; and never were funds distributed more wisely.
But often at odd moments the Weltschmerz, the sorrow
of the world, would pierce this man who no longer felt
sorrows of his own stab him through and through bring
the sweat to his temples fill his eyes with that strange pity
and trouble that moved you so deeply when you caught
the look ; and soon the complicated anguish of that dim
regard would resolve itself into gleams of a quite celes-
tial sweetness and a heavenly message would go forth
to mankind in such simple words that all might read who
ran. . . .
All these endowments of the heart and brain, which in
him were masculine and active, were possessed in a passive
form by his wife ; instead of the buoyant energy and bois-
terous high spirits, she had patience and persistency
that one felt to be indomitable, and a silent sympathy
that never failed, and a fund of cheerfulness and good
sense on which any call might be made by life without
fear of bankruptcy ; she was of those who could play a
losing game and help others to play it and she never
had a losing game to play !
These gifts were inherited by their children, who, more-
442
over, were so fed on their father's books so imbued with
them that one felt sure of their 'courage, endurance,
and virtue, whatever misfortunes or temptations might
assail them in this life.
One felt this especially with the youngest but one,
Marty, who, with even more than her due share of those
gifts of the head and heart they had all inherited from
their two parents, had not inherited their splendid frames
and invincible health.
Roderick, alias Mark Tapley, alias Chips, who is now
the sailor, was, oddly enough, the strongest and the hard-
iest of the whole family, and yet he was born two years
after Marty. She always declared she brought him up
and made a man of him, and taught him how to throw
stones, and how to row and ride and swim ; and that it
was entirely to her he owed it that he was worthy to be
a sailor her ideal profession for a man.
He was devoted to her, and a splendid little chap, and
in the holidays he and she and I were inseparable, and
of course Chucker-out, who went with us wherever it
was Havre, Dieppe, Dinard, the Highlands, Whitby, etc.
Once we were privileged to settle ourselves for two
months in Castle Rohan, through the kindness of Lord
Whitby; and that was the best holiday of all for the
young people especially. And more especially for Barty
himself, who had such delightful boyish recollections of
that delightful place, and found many old friends among
the sailors and fisher people who remembered him as a
boy.
Chips and Marty and 1 and the faithful Chucker-out
were never happier than on those staiths where there is
always such an ancient and fishlike smell ; we never tired
of watching the miraculous draughts of silver herring
being disentangled from the nets and counted into bas-
443
kets, which were carried on the heads of the stalwart,
scaly fishwomen, and packed with salt and ice in innu-
merable barrels for Billingsgate and other great markets ;
or else the sales by auction of huge cod and dark-gray
dog-fish as they lay helpless all of a row on the wet flags
amid a crowd of sturdy mariners looking on, with their
hands in their pockets and their pipes in their mouths.
Then over that restless little bridge to the picturesque
old town, and through its long, narrow street, and up the
many stone steps to the ruined abbey and the old church
on the East Cliff ; and the old churchyard, where there
are so many stones in memory of those who were lost at
sea.
It was good to be there, in such good company, on
a sunny August morning, and look around and about
and down below : the miles and miles of purple moor,
the woods of Castle Rohan, the wide North Sea, which
turns such a heavenly blue beneath a cloudless sky ; the
two stone piers, with each its lighthouse, and little people
patiently looking across the waves for Heaven knows
what ! the busy harbor full of life and animation ; under
our feet the red roofs of the old town and the little clock
tower of the market-place ; across the stream the long
quay with its ale-houses and emporiums and jet shops
and lively traffic ; its old gabled dwellings and their
rotting wooden balconies. And rising out of all this,
tier upon tier, up the opposite cliff, the Whitby of the
visitors, dominated by a gigantic windmill that is or
was almost as important a landmark as the old abbey
itself.
To the south the shining river ebbs and flows, between
its big ship-building yards and the railway to York, under
endless moving craft and a forest of masts, now straight
on end, now slanting helplessly on one side when there's
444
not water enough to float their keels ; and the long row
of Cornisli fishing-smacks, two or three deep.
How the blue smoke of their cooking wreathes up-
ward in savory whiffs and whirls ! They are good cooks,
these rovers from Penzance, and do themselves well, and
remind us that it is time to go and get lunch at the hotel.
We do, and do ourselves uncommonly well also ; and
afterwards we take a boat, we four (if the tide serves),
and row up for a mile or so to a certain dam at It us warp,
and there we take another boat on a lovely little secluded
river, which is quite independent of tides, and where for
a mile or more the trees bend over us from either side us
we leisurely paddle along and watch the leaping salmon-
trout, pulling now and then under a drooping ash or
weeping-willow to gaze and dream or chat, or read out
loud from Xyli'ia's Lovers ; Sylvia Robson once lived in
a little farm-house near Upgang, which we know well,
and at Whitby every one reads about Sylvia Robson ; or
else we tell stories, or inform each other what a jolly
time we're having, and tease old Chucker-out, who gets
quite excited, and we admire the discretion with wliieh
he disposes of his huge body as ballast to trim the boat.
and remains perfectly still in spite of his excitement for
fear he should upset us. Indeed, he has been learning
all his life how to behave in boats, and how to get in and
out of them.
And so on till tea-time at five, and we remember
there's a little inn at Sleights, where the scones are good ;
or, better still, a leafy garden full of raspberry-bushes at
Cock Mill, where they give excellent jam with your tea,
and from which there are three ways of walking back to
Whitby when there's not enough water to row and
which is the most delightful of those three ways has
never been decided yet.
445
Then from the stone pier we watch a hundred brown-
sailed Cornish fishing-smacks follow each other in single
file across the harbor bar and go sailing out into the
west as the sun goes down a most beautiful sight, of
which Marty feels all the mystery and the charm and
the pathos, and Chips all the jollity and danger and
romance.
Then to the trap, and home all four of us au grand
trot, between the hedge-rows and through the splendid
woods of Castle Eohan ; there at last we find all the
warmth and light and music and fun of Marsfield, and
many good things besides : supper, dinner, tea all in
one ; and happy, healthy, hungry, indefatigable boys and
girls who've been trapesing over miles and miles of moor
and fell, to beautiful mills and dells and waterfalls too
many miles for slender Marty or little Chips ; or even
Bob and Chucker-out who weigh thirty -two stone be-
tween them, and are getting lazy in their old age, and fat
and scant of breath.
Whitby is an ideal place for young people ; it almost
makes old people feel $oung themselves there when the
young are about ; there is so much to do.
I, being the eldest of the large party, chummed most
of the time with the two youngest and became a boy
again ; so much so that I felt myself almost a sneak
when I tactfully tried to restrain such exuberance of
spirits on their part as might have led them into mis-
chief : indeed it was difficult not to lead them into mis-
chief myself ; all the old inventiveness (that had got me
and others into so many scrapes at Brossard's) seemed to
come back, enhanced by experience and maturity.
At all events, Marty and Chips were happier with me
than without of that I feel quite sure, for I tested it in
many ways.
446
I always took immense pains to devise the k-inds of ex-
cursion that would please them best, and these never
seemed to fail of their object ; and I was provident and
well skilled in all details of the commissariat (Chips was
healthily alimentative) ; I was a very BradsJiaw at trains
and times and distances, and also, if I am not bragging too
much, and making myself out an Admirable Crichton,
extremely weatherwise, and good at carrying small peo-
ple pickaback when they got tired.
Marty was well up in local folk-lore, and had mastered
the history of Whitby and St. Hilda, and Sylvia Robson ;
and of the old obsolete whaling-trade, in which she took
a passionate interest ; and fixed poor little Chips's mind
with a passion for the Polar regions (he is now on the
coast of Senegambia).
We were much on the open sea ourselves, in cobles ;
sometimes the big dog with us " Joomboa,"as the fish-
ermen called him ; and they marvelled at his good man-
ners and stately immobility in a boat.
One afternoon a perfect afternoon we took tea at
Runswick, from which charming little village the Whitbys
take their second title, and had ourselves rowed round
the cliffs to Staithes, which we reached just before sun-
set ; Chips and his sister also taking an oar between them,
and I another. There, on the brink of the little bay, with
the singularly quaint and picturesque old village behind
it, were fifty fish ing -boats side by side waiting to be
launched, and all the fishing population of Staithes were
there to launch them men, women and children ; as we
landed we were immediately pressed into the service.
Marty and Chips, wild with enthusiasm, pushed and
yo-ho'd with the best ; and I also won some commenda-
tion by my hearty efforts in the common cause. Soon
the coast was clear of all but old men and boys, women
447
and children, and our four selves ; and the boats all sailed
westward, in a cluster, and lost themselves in the golden
haze. It was the prettiest sight I ever saw, and we were
all quite romantic about it.
Chucker-out held a small court on the sands, and was
worshipped and fed with stale fish by a crowd of good-
looking and agreeable little lasses and lads who called
him " Joomboa," and pressed Chips and Marty for bio-
graphical details about him, and were not disappointed.
And I smoked a pipe of pipes with some splendid old salts,
and shared my Honeydew among them.
Nous etions bien, la !
So sped those happy weeks with something new and
exciting every day even on rainy days, when we wore
waterproofs and big india-rubber boots and sou'westers,
and Chucker-out's coat got so heavy with the soak that
he could hardly drag himself along : and we settled, we
three at least, that we would never go to France or Scot-
land never any more never anywhere in the world but
Whitby, jolly Whitby
Ah me ! 1'homme propose. . . .
Marty always wore a red woollen fisherman's cap that
hung down behind over the waving masses of her long,
thick yellow hair a blue jersey of the elaborate kind
women knit on the Whitby quay a short, striped petti-
coat like a Boulogne fishwife's, and light brown stock-
ings on her long, thin legs.
I have a photograph of her like that, holding a shrimp-
ing-net ; with a magnify ing -glass, I can see the little
high-light in the middle of each jet-black eye and every
detail and charm and perfection of her childish face. Of
all the art-treasures I've amassed in my long life, that is
to me the most beautiful, far and away but I can't look
at it yet for more than a second at a time . . .
448
"O tempo passnto, perchd non ritorni ?"
As Mary is so fond of singing to me sometimes, when
she thinks I've got the blues. As if I haven't always got
the blues !
All Barty's teaching is thrown away on me, now that
he's not here himself to point his moral
"Et je m'en vais
Au vent mauvais
Qui m'emporte
De<;a, deI4,
Pareil & la
Feuille morte ..."
Heaven bless thee, Mary dear, rossignolet de mon ame !
Would thou wert ever by my side ! fain would I keep thee
for myself in a golden cage, and feed thee on the tongues
of other nightingales, so thou mightst warble every day,
and all day long. By some strange congenital mystery
the native tuning of thy voice is such, for me, that all
the pleasure of my past years seems to go forever ringing
in every single note. Thy dear mother speaks again,
thy gay young father rollicks and jokes and sings, and
little Marty laughs her happy laugh.
Da capo, e da capo, Mary only at night shouldst thou
cease from thy sweet pipings, that I might smoke myself
to sleep, and dream that all is once more as it used to be.
The writing, such as it is, of this life of Barty Josse-
lin which always means the writing of so much of my
own has been to me, up to the present moment, a great
source of consolation, almost of delight, when the pen
was in my hand and I dived into the past.
But now the story becomes such a record of my own
449
personal grief that I have scarcely the courage to go on ;
I will get through it as quickly as I can.
It was at the beginning of the present decade that the
bitter thing arose medio de fonte leporum ; just as all
seemed so happy and secure at Marsfield.
One afternoon in May I arrived at the house, and no-
body was at home; but I was told that Marty was in the
wood with old Chucker-out, and I went thither to find
her, loudly whistling a bar which served as a rallying sig-
nal to the family. It was not answered, but after a long
hunt I found Marty lying on the ground at the foot of a
tree, and Chucker-out licking her face and hands.
She had been crying, and seemed half-unconscious.
When I spoke to her she opened her eyes and said :
"Oh, Uncle Bob, I have hurt myself so! I fell down
that tree. Do you think you could carry me home ?"
Beside myself with terror and anxiety, I took her up as
gently as I could, and made my way to the house. She
had hurt the base of her spine as she fell on the roots of
the tree ; but she seemed to get better as soon as Spar-
row, the nurse, had undressed her and put her to bed.
I sent for the doctor, however, and he thought, after
seeing her, that I should do well to send for Dr. Knight.
Just then Leah and Barty came in, and we telegraphed
for Dr. Knight, who came at once.
Next day Dr. Knight thought he had better have
Sir - , and there was a consultation.
Marty kept her bed for two or three days, and then
seemed to have completely recovered but for a slight in-
ternal disturbance, brought on by the concussion, and
which did not improve.
One day Dr. Knight told me he feared very much that
this would end in a kind of ataxia of the lower limbs it
might be sooner or later ; indeed, it was Sir - &
29
450
opinion that it would be sure to do so in the end that
spinal paralysis would set in, and that the child would
become a cripple for life, and for a life that would not be
long.
I had to tell this to her father and mother.
Marty, however, recovered all her high spirits. It was
as if nothing had happened or could happen, and during
six months everything at Marsfield went on as usual but
for the sickening fear that we three managed to conceal
in our hearts, even from each other.
At length, one day as Marty and I were playing l;iu n-
tennis, she suddenly told me that her feet felt as if they
were made of lead, and I knew that the terrible thing
had come. . . .
I must really pass over the next few months.
In the summer of the following year she could scarcely
walk without assistance, and soon she had to go about in
a bath-chair.
Soon, also, she ceased to be conscious when her lower
limbs were pinched and pricked till an interval of about
a second had elapsed, and this interval increased every
month. She had no natural consciousness of her legs
and feet whatever unless she saw them, although she
could move them still and even get in and out of bed,
or in and out of her bath -chair, without much assist-
ance, so long as she could see her lower limbs. Often
she would stumble and fall down, even on a grassy
iiiwn. In the dark she could not control her movements
at all.
She was also in constant pain, and her face took on
permanently the expression that Barty's often wore when
he thought he was going blind in Malines, although, like
him in those days, she was always lively and droll, in spite
451
of this heavy misfortune, which seemed to break every
heart at Marsfield except her- own.
For, alas ! Barty Josselin, who has so lightened for us
the sorrow of mere bereavement, and made quick-coming
death a little thing for some of us, indeed, a lovely
thing has not taught us how to bear the sufferings of
those we love, the woful ache of pity for pangs we are
powerless to relieve and can only try to share.
Endeavor as I will, I find I cannot tell this part of my
story as it should be told ; it should be a beautiful story
of sweet young feminine fortitude and heroic resignation
an angel's story.
During the four years that Martia's illness lasted the
only comfort I could find in life was to be with her
reading to her, teaching her blaze, rowing her on the
river, driving her, pushing or dragging her bath-chair ;
but, alas ! watching her fade day by day.
Strangely enough, she grew to be the tallest of all her
sisters, and the most beautiful in the face ; she was so
wasted and thin she could hardly be said to have had a
body or limbs at all.
I think the greatest pleasure she had was to lie and be
sung to by Mary or her father, or played to by Eoberta,
or chatted to about domestic matters by Leah, or read
to by me. She took the keenest interest in everything
that concerned us all ; she lived out of herself entirely,
and from day to day, taking short views of life.
It filled her with animation to see the people who came
to the house and talk with them ; and among these she
made many passionately devoted friends.
There were also poor children from the families of
laborers in the neighborhood, in whom she had always
taken a warm interest. She now organized them into
regular classes, and taught and amused them and told
459
them stories, sang funny songs to them, and clothed and
fed them with nice things, and they grew to her an im-
mense hobby and constant occupation.
She also became a quite surprising performer on the
banjo, which her father had taught her when she was
quite a little girl, and invented charming tunes and
effects and modulations that had never been tried on
that humble instrument before. She could have made
a handsome living out of it, crippled as she was.
She seemed the busiest, drollest, and most contented
person in Marsfield ; she all but consoled us for the
dreadful thing that had happened to herself, and laugh-
ingly pitied us for pitying her.
So much for the teaching of Barty Josselin, whose
books she knew by heart, and constantly read and re-
read.
And thus, in spite of all, the old, happy, resonant cheer-
fulness gradually found its way back to Marsfield, as
though nothing had happened ; and poor broken Marty,
who had always been our idol, became our goddess, our
prop and mainstay, the angel in the house, the person for
every one to tell their troubles to little or big their
jokes, their good stories ; there was never a laugh like
hers, so charged with keen appreciation of the humorous
thing, the relish of which would come back to her again
and again at any time even in the middle of the night
when she could not always sleep for her pain ; and she
would laugh anew.
Ida Scatcherd and I, with good Nurse Sparrow to help,
wished to take her to Italy to Egypt but she would
not leave Marsfield, unless it were to spend the winter
months with all of us at Lancaster Gate, or the autumn
in the Highlands or on the coast of Normandy.
And indeed neither Barty nor Leah nor the rest could
454
have got on without her ; they would have had to come,
too brothers, sisters, young husbands, grandchildren,
and all.
Never but once did she give way. It was one June
evening, when I was reading to her some favorite short
poems out of Browning's Men and Women on a small
lawn surrounded with roses, and of which she was
fond.
The rest of the family were on the river, except her
father and mother, who were dressing to go and dine with
some neighbors ; for a wonder, as they seldom dined away
from home.
The carriage drove up to the door to fetch them, and
they came out on the lawn to wish us good-night.
Never had I been more struck with the splendor of
Barty and his wife, now verging towards middle age, as
they bent over to kiss their daughter, and he cut capers
and cracked little jokes to make her laugh.
Leah's hair was slightly gray and her magnificent
figure somewhat matronly, but there were no other signs
of autumn ; her beautiful white skin was still as delicate
as a baby's, her jet-black eyes as bright and full, her
teeth just as they were thirty years back.
Tall as she was, her husband towered over her, the
finest and handsomest man of his age I have ever seen.
And Marty gazed after them with her heart in her eyes
as they drove off.
" How splendid they are, Uncle Bob !"
Then she looked down at her own shrunken figure and
limbs her long, wasted legs and her thin, slight feet
that were yet so beautifully shaped.
And, hiding her face in her hands, she began to cry :
"And I'm their poor little daughter oh dear, oh
dear !"
455
She wept silently for a while, and I said nothing, but
endured an agony such as I cannot describe.
Then she dried her eyes and smiled, and said :
" What a goose I am," and, looking at me
" Oh ! Uncle Bob, forgive me ; I've made you very
unhappy it shall never happen again I"
Suddenly the spirit moved me to tell her the story of
Martia.
Leah and Barty and I had often discussed whether she
should be told this extraordinary thing, in which Ave
never knew whether to believe or not, and which, if
there were a possibility of its being true, concerned
Marty so directly.
They settled that they would leave it entirely to me
to tell her or not, as my own instinct would prompt me,
should the opportunity occur.
My instinct prompted me to do so now. I shall not
forget that evening.
The full moon rose before the sun had quite set, and I
talked on and on. The others came in to dinner. She
and. I had some dinner brought to us out there, and on I
talked and she could scarcely eat for listening. I
wrapped her well up, and lit pipe after pipe, and went
on talking, and a nightingale sang, but quite unheard by
Marty Josselin.
She did not even hear her sister Mary, whose voice
went lightly up to f heaven through the open, window :
" Oh that we two were maying!"
And when we parted that night she thanked and
kissed me so effusively I felt that I had been happily in-
spired.
" I believe every word of it's true ; I know it, I feel it !
Uncle Bob, you have changed my life ; I have often de-
456
sponded when nobody knew but never again ! Dear
papa ! Only think of him ! As if any human being alive
could write what he has written without help from above
or outside. Of course it's all true ; I sometimes think I
can almost remember things. . . . Fm sure I can."
Barty and Leah were well pleased with me when they
came home that night.
That Marty was doomed to an early death did not very
deeply distress them. It is astonishing how lightly they
thought of death, these people for whom life seemed so
full of joy ; but that she should ever be conscious of the
anguish of her lot while she lived was to them intolerable
a haunting preoccupation.
To me, a narrower and more selfish person, Marty had
almost become to me life itself her calamity had made
her mine forever; and life without her had become a
thing not to be conceived : her life was my life.
That life of hers was to be even shorter than we
thought, and I love to think that what remained of it
was made so smooth and sweet by what I told her that
night.
I read all Martia's blaze letters to her, and helped her
to read them for herself, and so did Barty. She got to
know them by heart especially the last ; she grew to
talk as Martia wrote ; she told me of strange dreams she
had often had dreams she had told Sparrow and her
<>\vn brothers and sisters when she was a child wondrous
dreams, in their seeming confirmation of what seemed to
us so impossible. Her pains grew slighter and ceased.
And now her whole existence had become a dream a
tranquil, happy dream ; it showed itself in her face, its
transfigured, unearthly beauty in her cheerful talk, her
eager sympathy; a kind of heavenly pity she seemed to
feel for those who had to go on living out their normal
457
length of days. And always the old love of fun and
frolic and pretty tunes.
Her father would make her laugh till she cried, and the
same fount of tears would serve when Mary sang Brahms
and Schubert and Lassen to her and Roberta played
Chopin and Schumann by the hour.
So she might have lived on for a few years four or
five even ten. But she died at seventeen, of mere influ-
enza, very quickly and without much pain. Her father
and mother were by her bedside when her spirit passed
away, and Dr. Knight, who had brought her into the
world.
She woke from a gentle doze and raised her head, and
called out in a clear voice :
"Barty Leah come to me, come!"
And fell back dead.
Barty bowed his head and face on her hand, and re-
mained there as if asleep. It was Leah who drew her
eyelids down.
An hour later Dr. Knight came to me, his face dis-
torted with grief.
"It's all over?" I said.
"Yes, it's all over."
"And Leah?"
"Mrs. Josselin is with her husband. She's a noble
woman ; she seems to bear it well."
"And Barty?"
" Barty Josselin is no more."
THE END
GLOSSARY
[First figure indicates Page; second figure, Line.]
3, 26. odium theologicum theological
hatred.
3, '27. sfcvu indignatio fierce indigna-
tion.
5, 1. " De Paris a Versailles" etc.
"From Paris to Versailles, Ion, la,
From Paris to Versailles
There are many fine walks,
Hurrah for the King of France !
There are many fine walks,
Hurrah for the schoolboys !"
5, 2. salle deludes des petits study -
room of the smaller boys.
6, 11. parloir parlor.
6, 14. e da capo and over again.
6, 16. le Grand Bonzig the Big Bon-
zig.
6, 17. estrade platform.
8, 2. a la malcontent convict style.
8,5. ceinture de gymnastique a wide
gymnasium belt.
8, 16. marchand de coco licorice-
water seller.
8, 17. Orpheonisles members of musi-
cal societies.
8, 32. exceptis excipiendis exceptions
being made.
9, 10. " Infandum, regina, jubes reno-
vare " (" dolorem "), etc.
"Thou orderest me, O queen, to re-
new the unutterable grief."
9, 17. " Mouche-toi done, animal! tu
me degoutes, a la fin!' 1 '' " Blow your
nose, you beast, you disgust me !"
9, 20. " Taisez-vous, Maurice ou je
vous donne cent vers a copier!"
" Hold your tongue,Maurice, or I will
give vou a hundred lines to cop} 7 !"
10, 20. " Out, ni'sieur /" " Yes, sir !"
10, 25. "Mot, ni'sieur?" ' I, sir?"
10, 26. "Oui, vous.'"" Yes, you!"
10, 27. "Bien, m'sieur!" "Ver} r well,
sir !"
10, 31. " Le Roi qui passe /" " There
goes the King !"
12, 3. "Fermez les fenetres, ou je vous
mets tons au pain sec pour un mois /"
" Shut the windows, or I will put
you all on dry bread for a month !"
13, 1. " Soyez diligent et attentif, man
ami; a plus tard /" "Be diligent
and attentive, my friend ; I will see
you later !"
13. 6. en cinquiemein the fifth class.
13,11. lenouveau the new boy.
14, 8. " Fermez votre pupitre " " Shut
your desk."
14, 34. jocrisse effeminate man.
15, 1. paltoquet clown.
petit polisson little scamp.
15, 32. lingere seamstress.
16, 13. quatrieme fourth class.
16, 21. " Notre Pere, , . . les replis les
plus profonds de nos cceurs " " Our
Father, who art in heaven, Thou
whose searching glance penetrates
even to the inmost recesses of our
hearts."
16, 24. " au nom du.Pere, du Fils, et
du St. Esprit, ainsi soit-il!" "in
the name of the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Ghost, so be it !"
18, 21. concierge janitor.
croquets crisp almond cakes.
18,22. blom - boudingues plum pud-
dings.
pains d'epices gingerbreads.
sucre-d'orge barley sugar.
462
18, 23. iionyat almond cake.
jxite de yninuiuce marshmal-
low paste.
praline* burnt almonds.
dragee* .sugar plums.
18, 30. If peri- et la mere father and
mother.
19. 2. corps fie logis main buildings.
19, 13. In tultlf des grands the big
hoys' table.
la table des /.///- the little
boys' tatle.
19,27. brouet noir des Lacfdemoniens
the black broth of the Spartans,
20, 25. A la retenue To be kept in.
20, 29. barres trarertieres crossbars.
20, 30. la rate leap-frog.
21, 14. rentiers stockholders.
21, 20. Classe fllistoire de France au
nuiyen age Class of the History of
France during the Middle Ages.
21, 27. trentc-septieinr. legere thirty -
seventh light infant rv
22, 13. nous avons change foul cela!
we have changed all I hat !
22, 16. rrjyresentant du jxuple repre-
sentative of the people.
22, 19. let nobles the nobles.
22, 27. par pnreittkese by way of
parenthesis.
22, 30. lingerie place where linen is
kept.
24, 30. Berthe aux grands pieds
III Tilia of the big feet. (She was
the mother of Charlemagne, and is
mentioned in the poem that Du
Maurier elsewhere calls "that never
tn be translated, never to be imitated
lament, the immortal ' Ballade des
Dames du Temps Jadis '" of Fran -
cx>is Villon.)
_'.">._':!. Mlfc il>/ Hois de Boulogne
Lane of the Bois de Boulogne.
25, 28. pensionnat boarding-school.
28, 4. la belle Madame de Ronsvic
the beautiful Lady Kunswick.
28, 33. deuxieme Spahis second Spahi
regiment.
30,4. Mare aux Biches The Roes
Pool.
30, 14. la main si malheu reuse such
an unfortunate hand.
31. 2. La Dieppoixe a dance of
. Dieppe.
31. 5. " Keuvons, done" etc.
'Let's drink, drink, drink then
Of this, the best wine in the
world. . .
Let's drink, drink, drink then
Of this, the VTV ln-.-t wine!
For if I didn't ilrink it.
I might got tin- pip !
Which would make me. . . ."
31,13. '"Ah, man Itiiu! quel amour
J. /,/;/;,// Oh! gartluns-le !" "Ah,
my Lo/d ! what a love of a child !
Oh! let us keep him !"
32.5. cieteris paribus other things
being equaL
34, 19. apropos seasonable.
35. 3. chaire master's raised desk.
35, 6. recueillemenl contemplation.
35. 11. " Non, m'sieur, je n'tlors pas.
./' travailie." "No, sir, I'm not
asleep. I'm working."
36, 1. a la porte to leave the room.
36, 14. On dt-maiide Monsieur Josselin
mi iKirloir Mr. Josselin is wanted
in the parlor.
36, 24. pensum a task.
36, 31. maitre de math&matiques (et de
cosmographie) teacher of mathe-
matics (and cosmography).
37, 17. Mfs compliments My compli-
ments.
38, 5. " Quelquffois je sais ....;/ ;/'//
(( jia.f a f'y tromper !" " Sometimes
I know sometimes I don't but
when I know, I know, and there is
no mistake about it !"
38, 18. A Pamandier !" " At the al-
mond tree!"
38, 21. la bulle au camp French
baseball.
39.6. aussi simple que bonjour as
easy as saying good -day.
40, 17. " Cfitait pour Monsieur ./nx.<i -
lin!" " It was for Mr. Josselin !"
41,11. quorum pars magna fui of
which I was a great part.
41,16. bourgeois gentilhommt ciii/.cn
gentleman. (The title of one of Mo-
liere's comedies in which M. Jour-
dain is the principal character.)
463
42, 29. l)is done Say now.
43, 4. " Ma foi, non ! c'est pas pour
ca ! " " My word no ! it isn't for
that!"
43, 5. " Pourquoi, alors ?" " Why,
tlien ?"
43, 21. Jolivet trois the third Jolivet.
41. 2. au rabais at bargain sales.
4-1. I!2. " Comine c'est bete, de s'battre,
hem?" " How stupid it is to fight,
eh V" .
45. 9. fuujii et meum thine and mine.
45, 19. magnifiqtte. magnificent.
45, 32. La quatrieme Dimension The
fourth Dimension.
46. 14. Etoiles mortes Dead Stars.
46. 15. Les Trepassees de Francois
Villon The Dead of FranQois Vil-
lon.
46, 29. Ecole des Ponts et Chaussees
School of Bridges ami Roads.
47, 8. en cache/If in hiding.
Quells sacree, pose I What a
damned bluff!
47, 12. " Dis done, Maurice,! prete-
inoi ton Ivanhoe /" " Say now,
Maurice! lend me your Ivanhoe!''''
47, 20. " Rapaud, comment dit-on 'pou-
voir ' en anglais ?" " Rapaud, how
do they say ' to be able' in Eng-
lish ?" ,
47,21. " Sais pas, m'sieur!" "Don't
know, sir !"
47, 22. " Comment, petit cretin, tu ne
sais pas /" " What, little idiot, you
don't know !"
47, 26. " Je n' sew pas!" "I don't
know !"
47, 27. " Et toi, Maurice?" "And
you, Maurice?"
47, 28. " Ca se dit ' to be able,' m'sieur /"
" They would say ' to be able,'
sir I"
47, 29. "Mais non, man ami . . . 'je
voudrais pouvoir'?" "Why no,
my friend you forget your native
language they would say ' to can ' !
Now, how would you say, ' I would
like to be able ' in English V"
47, 32. Je dirais I would say.
47,33. "Comment, encore.' petit can-
cre! allons tu es Anglais tu sais
bien que tu dirais /" " What, again !
little dunce come, you are English
you know very well that you
would say, . . ."
48, 1. A ton tour You/ turn.
48, 4. " Oui, loi comment dirais-tu,
'je pourrais vouloir ' ?" " Yes, you
how would you say ' I would be
able to will ' ?"
48, 7. U A la bonne heure! au mains tu
sais ta lanffiie, toi!" "Well and
good ! you at least know your
langiiage !"
48, 17. lie des Cyr/nes Isle of Swans.
48, 18. Ecole de Natation Swimming-
school.
48, 26. Jardin des riantes The Paris
Zoological Gardens.
49, 1.
" Laissons les regrets et les pleurs
A la vieillesse;
Jeunes, il J'aut cueillir les fleurs
De la jeunesse .'" Bait'.
" Let us leave regrets and tears
To age;
Young, we must gather the flowers
Of youth."
49, 13. demi-tasse small cup of coffee.
49, 14. chasse-cafe drink taken after
coffee.
49, 19. consommateur consumer.
49, 21. Le petit mousse noir The little
black cabin boy.
49, 24. "Allons, Josselin, chantenous
fa /" " Come, Josselin, sing that
to us !"
50, 7. "Ecoute-moibien,ma Fleurette"
" Listen well to me, my Fleu-
rette."
" A mis, la matinee est belle "
" Friends, the morning is fine."
50, 12.
" Conduis ta barque avec prudence" etc.
"Steer thy bark with prudence,
Fisherman ! speak low !
Throw thy nets in silence,
Fisherman ! speak low !
And through our toils the king
Of the seas can never go."
52, 21. Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle
Boulevard of Good News.
52, 24. galette du gymnase flat cake,
464
sold in booths near the Theatre du
(ivmnase.
52,26. yashmak a double veil worn
by Turkish women.
52, 34. queue ^n a line.
53, 5. chijfonniers rag-pickers.
53, 33. Acctlerees (en correspondance
avec les Constantines) Express
omnibuses (connecting with theCon-
stantine line).
54. 3. comme OH ne Test plus as one is
no longer.
54, 6. distribution de prix prize dis-
trihution.
54, 19. "Au dair de la lune!" "By
the light of the moon !" (A French
mir-cry rhyme. Readers of" Trilby "
will remember her rendering of this
song at her Paris concert.)
54,20.
\'irent les racances . . .
<!<indio nostrb."
" Hurrah for the vacations
Come at length ;
And the punishments
Will have ended !
The ushers uncivil,
With barbarous countenance,
Will go to the devil,
To our joy."
56, 20. MI i. t<i- ill Marine Marine
Museum.
r>tl. _'*. ennui tedium.
57. 7. en rhetorique et en philosophic,
in the rhetoric and philosophy
classes.
57, 9. cerf- dix - cars ten - branched
stags.
57, 13. venire it terre at full speed.
57, 17. Toujours au clair de la lune
Always by moonlight.
58, 2. hommes du monde men of the
world (in society).
58, 4. Splendide mendax Nobly false.
58, 18. salle ff eludes school-room.
58, 22. en cinquieme in the fifth
class.
59, 16. de service on duty.
59, 17. lit suite au prochain numero
to be continued in our next.
59, 19. Le Tueur de Daims The Deer-
slayer.
59. -_>0 /.- L,ic (tntnno The I.ake
Ontario.
/. Dernier des Mohicans
The Last of the Mohicans.
/.- .< I'iomiiers The Pioneers.
59, 31. Mas - de - cuir Leather stock -
ing.
60, 10. la flotte de Pasty the Passy
crowd.
voyous blackguards.
60, 13. Liberte etfalitefraternite !
<nt In mart! Vice la republique
Liberty equality fraternity ! or
death ! . Hurrah for the republic !
60, 22. le rappel to arms.
la generate the fire drum.
61, 11. Krigand de la Loire Brigand
of the Loire.
62, 3. en pleine revolution in the
midst of the revolution.
62, 5. piou-piou the French equiva-
lent of Tommy Atkins. A private
soldier.
62, 17. Seniinelles. prenez-garde a vous
Sentinels, keep on the nlert
<'>_'. .'_'. feu de peloton platoon fire.
63, 6. "Ce sacre Josselin ilarait tout
les talents!" "That confounded
Josselin he had all the talents!"
64, 10. lebewohl farewell.
64, 11. bonsoir. le bon Mozart good-
night, good Mo/art.
64, 13. Chateau des Flturs Castle of
Flowers.
65, 5. Tout vient a qui ne sail pas at-
tendre Everj'thing comes to him
who does not know how to wait.
65, 13. revenons let us go back.
i;."i. _'! imperiale outside seat.
65, 26. saucisson de Lyon a I' nil a
Lyons sausage flavored with garlic.
65, 27. petits pains rolls of bread.
65, 28. biere de Mars Mars beer.
66, 12. entre les deux dyes between
the two ages.
66, 18. Le Cue des Aulnes Alders
Ford.
67, 1. Si vis pacem, para btllum If
you wish peace, prepare for war.
67, 13. tutoyees addressed as "thee"
and " thou," usual only among fa-
miliars.
465
67, 16. bonnets de colon cotton caps.
68, 19. aVaffutan the watch.
68,28. '''Cain! Cain! qu'as-tu fait
de ton frere?" "Cain! Cain!
what hast thou done with thy
brother ?"
69, 8. le saut perilleux the perilous
leap.
G9, 20. que f n'ai jama-is vu whom
I've never seen.
69, 29. "Dis-moi que'q 1 chose en an-
glais." "Tell me something in
English."
69, 32. " Que'q' f veut dire?" -
" What's that mean?"
69, 33. " II s'agit d'une eglise et d'un
cimetiere /" " It's about a church
and a cemetery !"
70, 5. " Demon/re - moi un probleme de
geometric " " Demonstrate to me a
problem of geometry."
70, 13. " Demontre-moi que A + B est
plus grand que C + D" "Demon-
strate to me that A + B is greater
than C + D."
70, 17. " (Test joliment beau, la geome-
tric!" "It's mighty fine, this
geometry !"
70, 24. brule - gueule jaw-burner (a
short pipe).
70, 31. " Mange-moi fa fa t' fora du
bien!" " Eat that for me ; it '11 do
you good !"
72,1. Sais pas Don't know.
72, 4. Pere Polypheme Father Poly-
phemus.
72, 12. ces messieurs those gentle-
men.
:_'. -2-2. "//'/ ma femme!" "Hey!
my wife !"
72, 23. " Voila, voila, mon ami!' 1 ''
" Here, here, my friend !"
72, 24. " Viens* vite panser mon cau-
tere .'" " Come quick and dress my
cautery !"
72, 27. cafe coffee.
72, 32. " Oui, M'sieur Laferte " " Yes,
M'sieur Laferte."
72, 33. " Tire moi me gamme " " Fire
off a scale for me."
73,3. "Ah! <f fa fait du bien!"
"Ah ! that does one good !"
73, 20. ' " Colin,' disait Lisette," etc.
" ' Colin,' said Lisette,
' I want to cross the water !
But I am too poor
To pay for the boat!'
' Get in, get in, my beauty !
Get in, get in, nevertheless !
And off with the wherry
That carries my love ! ' ''
75, 18. le droit du seigneur the right
of the^ lord of the manor.
75,27. Ames enpeine Souls in pain.
75, 28. Sous la berge hantee, etc.
Under the haunted bank
The stagnant water lies
Under the sombre woods
The dog-fox cries,
And the ten-branched stag bells, and
the deer come to drink at the Pond
of Respite.
"Let me go, Were-wolf !"
How dark is the pool
When falls the night
The owl is scared,
And the badger takes flight !
And one feels that the dead are awake
that a nameless shadow pursues.
"Let me go, Were-wolf !"
76, 29.
' ' Prom'nons-nous dans les bois
Pendant que le loup r?y est pas."
" Let us walk in the woods
While the wolf is not there."
77, 7. pas auC chose nothing else.
77, 10. C'est plus fort que moi It is
stronger than I.
77, 20. " II est tres mechant /" " He is
very malicious !"
77, 26. " venez done! il est tres mauvuis.
le taureau /" "come now ! the bull
is very mischievous !''
78, 1. Bon voyage ! au plaisir Pleas-
ant journey ! to the pleasure (of see-
ing you again).
78,8. "le sang-froid du diable! nom
d'un Vellington !" " the devil's own
coolness, by Wellington !"
78, 15. diable^devil.
78,17. "ces Anglais! je n'en reviens
pas ! a quatorze ans .' hein, ma fem-
me ?" " those English ! I can't get
over it ! at fourteen ! eh, my wife ?"
466
80, 10. enfamitteat home.
80, 18. charabancs wagonettes.
80,32. deschiens anglais English dogs.
81, 1. charmilles hedges.
pelouses law ns.
quinconces quincunxes.
81, 13. Figaro qua, Figaro la Figaro
here, Figaro there. ,
81, 1 7. charbonniers charcoal burners.
81, 25. depaysi away from home.
desoriente out of his bearings.
81, 26. perdu lost.
81 , 27. " Ayez pitie d'un pauvre orphe-
lin!" " Pity a poor orphan !" *
82, 19. " Pioche bien ta geomilrie, mon
bon petit Josselin ! c'est la plus belle
science au monde, crois-moi /" " Dig
away at your geometry, my good
little Josselin ! It's the finest science
in the world, believe me !"
82, 26. bourru bienfaisant a gruff but
good-natured man. .
82, 34. " Knfin .' Ca y est ! guelle
chance /" " At last ! I've got it !
what luck !"
83. 1. quoi what.
83. 2. "tenord c'ett revenu /" "The
north it's come back !"
83, 7. une bonne fortune a love ad-
venture.
83, 10. Let Latteries The Dairies.
Les Poteries The Potteries.
Let Crockeries The Pitch-
cries (also The Stupidities).
83, 26. toi thou.
83, 27. vous you.
83, 28. Notre Pert, etc. See note to
page 16. line 21.
83, 30. A insi soit-ilSo be it.
84, 4. au nom du Pere in the name
of the Father.
84, 31. pavilion des petits building
occupied by the younger boys.
86, 4. cancre dunce.
86, 5. cretin idiot.
86, 6. froisieme third class.
86, 7. Rhftorique (second*) Rhetoric
(second class).
86.8. Philosophic (premiere*) Philos-
ophy (first class).
86, 10." Bacculaureat-es-UUres Bach-
elor of letters.
87, 27. m'amour (mon amour) my
love.
87, 33. en beautea.t his best.
88,8. "Le Chant du Depart" "The
Song of Departure."
88,10.
" La victoire en chantant nous ouvre
la curriere!
La liberte-6 yui-i-de nos pas "...
" Victory shows us our course with
song!
Liberty guides our steps" . . .
88, 25. " Quel dommage . . . c'est tou-
jours fa /" " What a pity that we
can't have crumpets! Barty likes
them so much. Don't you like
crumpets, my dear? Here comes
some buttered toast it's always
that!"
88, 29. " Mon Itieu, comme il a bonne
mine . . . Jans la ylace " " Good
heavens, how well he looks, the dear
Barly ! don't you think so, my love,
that you look well? Look at your-
self in the glass."
88, 32. ".S'i nous allions a V Hippodrome
. . . aussilesjoliesfemmesf" "If we
went to the Hippodrome this after-
noon, to see the lovely equestrian
Madame Richard? Barty adores
pretty women, like his uncle ! Don't
you adore pretty women, you naugh-
ty little Barty ? and you have never
seen Madame Richard. You'll tell
me what you think of her; and you,
my friend, do you also adore pretty
women ?"
89, 5. " O oui, allons voir Madame
Richard " " Oh yes ! let us go and
see Madame Richard."
89, 9. la haute ecole the high-school
(of horsemanship).
89, 14. Cafe des At-eugttsCafi of the
Blind.
90, 4. " Qu j est-ce que vous avez done,
tous ?" " What's the matter with
you all?"
90, 5. " Le Pere Brassard est mort .'"
" Father Brossard is dead !"
90, 10. " // est tombe du /unit ami "
" He died of the falling sickness."
90, 13. desceuvrement idleness.
467
91, 8. de service as maitre d 'etudes
on duty as study-master.
93, 27. " Dites done, vous autres "
" Say now, you others."
93, 29. panem et circenses bread and
games.
94, 19. "Allez dona ... a La Salle
Valentino " " Go it, godems this
is not a quadrille! We're not at
Valentino Hall!"
95, 1. " Messieurs . . . est sauf "
" Gentlemen, blood has flown ; Bri-
tannic honor is safe."
95,3. "./'a* joliment faim!" "I'm
mighty hungry !"
96, 1. " Que ne puis-je alter" etc.
" Why can I not go where the roses go,
And not await
The heartbreaking regrets which the
end of things
Keeps for. us here?"
96, 8. " Le Manuel du Baccalaureat "
"The Baccalaureat's Manual."
96,24. un prevot a fencing- master's
assistant.
97, 5. rez-de-chaussee ground floor.
97, 9. " La pluie de Perks " " The
Shower of Pearls."
97, 12. quart d j heure quarter of an
hour.
97, 17. au petit bonheur come what
may.
97, 26. vieux loup de mer old sea- wolf.
98, 2. Mon Colonel My Colonel.
98, 6. mdimanche Sunday tied (dressed
up).
99, 11. chefs-d'oeuvre masterpieces.
99, 24. chanson song?
99, 27. " (?etuit un Capucin," etc.
'It was a Capuchin, oh yes, a Capu-
chin father,
Who confessed three girls
Itou, itou, itou, la lii la !
Who confessed three girls
At the bottom of his garden
Oh 3'es
At the bottom of his garden !
He said to the youngest
Itou, itou, itou, la la la !
He said to the youngest
. ' You will come back to-mor-
100, 7. un icho du temps passe an
echo of the olden times.
100,11. esprit Gaulois old French
wit.
100, 20. " Sur votre parole d'honneur,
avez - vous chante ?" " On your
word of honor, have you sung ?"
100, 22. " Non, m'sieur /" No, sir !"
100, 32. " Oui, m'sieur /" " Yes, sir."
101,5. " Vous etes tous consignes!"
" You are all kept in !"
101, 10. de service on duty.
101, 19. " Au moins vous avez du casur
. . . sale histoire de Capucin !"
" You at least have spirit. Promise
me that you will not again sing that
dirty story about the Capuchin !"
102, 24.
" Stabat mater," etc.
" By the cross, sad vigil keeping,
Stood the mournful mother weeping,
While on it the Saviour hung "...
102,30. "Ah! ma chere Mamselle
Marceline .' . . . Et une boussole dans
Festomac!" "Ah! my dear Miss
Marceline, if they were only all like
that little Josselin ! things would
go as if they were on wheels ! That
English youngster is as innocent as
a young calf! He has God in his
heart." " And a compass in his
stomach !"
104,29. "Ah! mon cher! . . . Chan-
tez-moi $a encore unefois!" "Ah !
my dear! what wouldn't I give to
see the return of a whaler at Whit-
by ! What a ' marine ' that would
make ! eh ? with the high cliff and
the nice little church on top, near
the old abbey and the red smoking
roofs, and the three stone piers, and
the old drawbridge and all that
swarm of watermen with their wives
and children and those fine girls
who are waiting for the return of
the loved one! by Jove! to think
that you have seen all that, you
who are not yet sixteen . . . what
luckl . . . say what does that
really mean ? that
' Weel may the keel row !'
Sing that to me once again I"
468
105, 21. "Ah! vous rerrez . . . voug y
etes, enplein!" "Ah! you will see,
during the Easter holidays I will
make such a fine picture of all that !
with the evening mist that gathers,
you know and the setting sun. and
the rising tide, and the moon coin-
ing up on the horizon, and the sea-
mews and the gulls, and the far-
off heaths, and your grandfather's
lordly old manor; that's it, isn't it?"
'' Yes, yes, Mr. Bonzig you are
right in it."
106, 29. " Cetait dans la nuit brune," etc.
" Twas in the dusky night
On the yellowed steeple,
The moon,
Like a dot on an i !" .
108, 17. en flagrant d&it in the very
act.
10!), 4. la perfide Albion perfidious
Albion.
HK.I. x. -O l>as DumoUard!" "Down
>viili DumoUard !"
l<>!>, 17. fetude entiere the whole
school.
109, 19. " Est-ce toi ?" " Is it thou ?"
109, 23. " Non, m'sieur, ce n'est pas
mot .'" " No, sir, it isn't me !"
110, 17. " Parce qu'il aime les Ant/fai.*,
ma foi affaire de gout .'" " 1k'-
cause he likes the English, in faith
a matter of taste!"
110, 19. " Ma foi, il n'a pas tort /"
" In faith, he's not wrong !"
110, 24. "Xon! jamais en France,
Jamais Anglais ne regnera .'"
"No! never in France,
Never shall Englishman reign!"
111, 5. au piquet pour une heure in
the corner for an hour,
a la retenue kept in.
Ill, 6. price de bain not to go swim-
ming.
consign^ dimanche prochain
kept in next Sunday.
111,9. de morlibus nil degperamliim
an incorrect version of de mortnis
nil nisi bonum: of the dead nothing
but good.
Ill, 27. avec des gens du monde with
people in society.
111, 34. et, ma foi, le sort a favorite
M. le Marquis and, in faith, fort-
une favored M. le Marquis.
112,9. vous etes un palloquet it >n<
rustre you are a clown and a lx>or.
112, 18. classe de geographie ancienne
class of ancient geography.
112, 25. " Timeo Danaos et donafer-
entesl" "I fear the Greeks even
when they bear gifts !"
1 14, 3. " f^e troisieme coup fait feu,
vous savez" "The third blow
strikes fire, you know."
114, 23. tisanes infusions.
114,31. " (Test inoi qui voudrais . . .
comme il eat poli" " It's myself
that would like to have the mumps
here. I should delay my convales-
cence as much as possible !"
" How well your uncle knows
French, and how polite he is !"
116. 13. .\IHIH a runs tous passe par la
We have all been through it.
116, 33. " Te rappelles-tu . . . du pere
Jaurion ~t ' ' Do you recall Her-
Itiin's new coat and his high-hat?"
" Do you remember father Jau-
rion's old angora cat?"
118, 7. "Faille a Dine," etc., is liter-
ally :
" Straw for Dine straw for Chine
Straw for Suzette and Marline
. Good l>ed for the Dumaine!"
119,1. " Pourqitoi, m'sieur?"
" Parce que fa me plait .'"
What for, sir?"
" Because it pleases me !"
119.18. un point, etc. a period
semi - colon colon exclamation
inverted commas begin a paren-
thesis.
119, 31. " Te rapptlles-tu cette ome-
lette?'" "Do you remember that
omelette?"
120, 1. version ecrite written version.
120,15. que malheur! what a mis-
fortune !
120. 19. " Ca Jim rin/H.'i/ic,: ;,; r it
stinks of injustice, here!"
120,25. ' .1/iV/c francs />tir an! r'. .</
le Paclole'" "A thousand francs a
year ! it is a Pactolus !"
4G9
122, 7. " Je fen prie, mon garq on /"
" I pray you, my boy !"
123,24. La chtisse aux souvenirs d'en-
fance! Hunting remembrances of
childhood !
1 24, 3. " Je marckerai les yeux fixes
sur mes pensees," etc.
' : I will walk with my eyes fixed on
my thoughts,
Seeing nothing outside, without
hearing a sound
By myself, unknown, with bowed
back and hands crossed :
Sad and the day will for me
be as night."
125, 4. beau comme le jour beautiful
as day.
125, 6. la rossignolle the nightin-
gale (feminine.)
125, 15.
" A Saint - Blaize, a la Zuecca," etc.
" At St. Blaize, and at Zuecca . . .
You were, you were very well !
At St. Blaize, and at Zuecca . . .
We were, we were happy there !
But to think of it again
Will you ever care ?
Will you think of it again ?
Will you come once more?
At St. Blaize, and at Zuecca . . .
To live there and to die !"
125, 32. fete de St.-Cloud festival of
St. Cloud.
125, 33. blanchisseuse laundress.
133, 30. " Roy ne puis, prince ne daigne,
Rohan je suis!" "King I cannot
be, prince I would not be, Rohan I
am !"
133, 34. " Rohan ne puis, roi ne daigne.
Rienjesuis .'" " Rohan I cannot be,
king I would not be. Nothing I am!"
135, 10. yrandes dailies de par le
monde great ladies of the world.
137, 6. " lachrymarum fans .'" " O
font of tears !"
140, 28. Jewess is in French, juive.
141, 10. " Esker voo ker jer dwaw la ft
vee ? Ah! kel Bonnure .'" Anglo-
French for " Est ce que vous que je
dois laver. Ah! quel bonheur !" j
" Is it that you that I must wash ? i
Ah ! what happiness !"
142, 12. Pazienza Patience.
143, 8. " Ne sutor ultra crepidam !"
" A cobbler should stick to his last !"
145, 1. " La ciyale, ay ant chante," etc.
" The grasshopper, having sung
The summer through,
Found herself destitute
When the north wind came." . . .
146, 20. " Spretce injuria forma "
" The insult to her despised beauty."
146, 31. billets doux love letters.
152, 8. li La plus forte des forces est
un cceur innocent " " The strongest
of strengths is an innocent heart."
154,3. " Tiens, tiens ! . . .ecoute!"
" There, there ! it's deucedly pretty
that listen !"
154, 8. " Mais, nom d'une pipe die
est divine, cette musique - la .'"
" But, by jingo, it's divine, that
music!"
155, 26. bourgeois the middle class.
155, 34. nouveaux riches newly rich
people.
158, 2. "Z/a mia letizia .'" " My Joy !"
160, 17. " Beau chevalier qui partez
pour la guerre, " etc.
" Brave cavalier, off to the war,
What will you do
So far from here?
Do you not see that the night is dark,
And that the world
Is only care?"
160, 23. "La Chanson de Barberine"
"The Song of Barberine."
160, 28. cascameche nightcap tassel.
moutardier du pape pope's
mustardman.
tromblon - bolivard broad-
brimmed blunderbuss.
160, 29. vieux coquelicot old poppy.
160,31. " Voos ayt oon oter .'" Angio-
French for " Vous etes un autre!"
' ' You are another !"
162, 10. (Test toujours comme ca It's
always like that.
163, 17. a ban chat, bon rat a Roland
for an Oliver.
166, 14. poudre insecticide insect-
powder.
mart aux punaises death to
the bugs.
470
166, 22 pensionnat de demoiselles
young ladies' boarding-school.
166, 28. Je connais fa I know that.
168, 8. euu sucrie sweetened water.
168, 18. Cceur de Lion Lion Heart.
le Pre aux Clercs Parson's
Green.
169, 17. raping art students.
170,14. " Bonjour, Monsieur Bonzig !
comment allez-tous f" " Good-day,
Mr. Bonzig! how do you do?''
170,17. " Purdonnez - moi, monsieur
mats je w't/f pas fhonneur de vous
remettre .'" l> Pardon me, sir but
I have not the honor to remember
your face!"
170,19. " Je nCappelle Josselin de
chez Brassard!" "My name is
.losselin from Brossard's !"
170, 20. " A h ! Moil Dieit, mon cher,
man tres-cher .'" " Ah ! My God,
my dear, my very dear !"
170, 23. " Mais qnel bonheur. . . . Je
n'en reviens pas /" " But what good
luck it is to see you again. I think
of you so often, and of Whitby ! how
you have altered! and what a fine-
looking fellow you are ! who would
have recognized you ! Lord of Lords
it's a dream ! I can't get over it !"
170,34. " Non, mon cher Josselin "-
" No, my dear Josselin."
172, 4. unpeiiitre de marines a painter
of marines.
172, 16. garde champetre park-keeper.
17'J, 27. ministere public office.
172, 31. "Cheureou lejaune de Xaples
renire dans la nature" " the hour
when Naples yellow comes again into
nature."
173, 31. bonne friture good fried fish.
173, 32. fricassee de lupin rabbit
fricasee.
pommes sauiies French fried
potatoes.
soupe aux choux cabbage
soup.
174, 1. cafe chantant music-hall.
bal de barriere ball held in the
outer districts of Paris, usual-
ly composed of the rougher
element.
174, 3. bonsoir la compagnie good
night to the company.
174. I'd prix-fixe fixed price.
175, 6 aile de poulefi chicken's wing.
peche au vin peach preserved
in wine.
175, 9. entre la poire el le fromage
between pear and cheese.
175, 15. jftaning from Jldner, to
lounge.
175, 28. " Mafoi, mon cher /"_ My
word, my dear !"
176, 3. ma mangeaille my victuals.
176, 18. Mont de Piete pawnshop
176, 24. moult tristement, a Fanglaise
with much sadness, after the Eng-
lish fashion.
177, 12. un jour de. separation, rottx
comprenez a day of separation, you
understand.
177, 14. a la vinaigrette with vine-
gar sauce.
177, 16. nous en ferons ^experience.
we will try it.
177, 19. nuiillot bathing-suit.
peignoir w rapper.
177,21. "Oh! la mer ! . . . chez
Bubet!" "Oh! the sea, the sea!
At last I am going to take my
header into it and not ln/ir than
to-morrow evening. . . . Till to-inor
row, my dear comrade six o'clock
at Babet's!"
177,27. piquant sa tele taking his
header.
178, 1. sergent de ville policeman.
178,4. " un jour de separation . . .
nagerons de conserve" -"a day of
separation ! but come also, Josselin
we will take our headers together,
and swim in each other's company."
178. 13. " en signe de mon dtuil " " as
a token of my mourning."
17M, '23. plage beach.
178, 30. dame de comptoir the lady
at the counter.
178, 33. demi-tasse small cup of cof-
fee.
petit -verre small glass of
brandy.
180, 13. avec tant d'esprit so wittily.
180. 14. rancune grudge.
471
181,14. ban raconteur good story-
teller.
181, 16. " La plus belle file . . , ce
qu'elle a !" " The fairest girl in the
world can give only what she has !"
182. 5. comme tout un chacun sail as
each and every one knows.
182.24. Tout $a,c'est de Vhistoire an-
cienne that's all ancient history.
183, 8. " tres bel homme . . . que joli
r/iiryon hein?" "fine man, Bob;
more of the fine man than the hand-
some fellow, eh ?"
183,12. Mes compliments My com-
pliments.
183, 19. " Ca y est, alors .' . . . a ton
bonheur /" "So it's settled, then !
I congratulate 'you beforehand, and
I keep my tears for when you have
gone. Let us go and dine at Ba-
bet's : I long to drink to your wel-
fare !"
184, 1. atelier art studio.
184.6. le Beau Josselin the hand-
some Josselin.
184, 33. serrement de cceur heart
burning.
185, 22. Marche aux (Eufs Egg
Market.
186, 4. " Malines " or " Louvain "
Belgian beers.
186.25. " Oui ; un nomme Valteres"
" Yes ; one called Valteres "
(French pronunciation of Walters).
180, 28. " Parbleu, ce bon Valteres je
I'connais bien .'" " Zounds, good old
Walters I know him well!"
188, 26. primo tenore first tenor.
188, 29. Guides a Belgian cavalry
regiment.
188,32. Cercle Artistique Art Club.
191,1. " celeste kaine," etc.
" O celestial hate,
How canst thou be appeased?
O human suffering,
Who can cure thee ?
My pain is so heavy
I wish it would kill me
Such is my desire.
" Heart-broken by thought,
Weary of compassion,
To hear no more,
Nor see, nor feel,
I am ready to give
My parting breath
And this is my desire.
"To know nothing more,
Nor remember myself
Never again .to rise,
Nor go to sleep
No longer to be,
But to have done
That is my desire !"
191, 23. Fleur de BU Corn-flower.
192, 31. " Vous allez a Blankeriberghe,
mossie?" "You go to Blanken-
berghe, sah ?"
193,1. " Je souis bienn content nous
ferons route ensiemble /" (je suis
Men content nous ferons route en-
semble) " I am fery glad ve will
make ze journey togezzar !"
193, 5. ragazza girl.
193, 7. " uri prodige, mossie un 1 fe-
nomeno .'" " a prodigy, sah a phe-
nomenon !"
193, 24. Robert, toi quefaime Robert,
thou whom I love,
193, 29. " Ma vous aussi, vous etes
mousicien je vois fa par la votre
jigoure .'" (Mais vous aussi vous etes
musicien je vois fa par votre Jig-
ure !) " But you also, you are a
moosician I see zat by your face 1"
194, 4. elle et moi she and I.
194, 5. bon marche cheap.
194, 34. enfamille&t home.
195, 7. " Je vais vous canter couelque
cose (Je vais vous chanter quelque-
chose) una piccola cosa da niente .'
vous comprenez Vltalien ?" "I
vill sing to you somezing a leetle
zing of nozzing! you understand
ze Italian?"
195, 12. je les adore I adore them.
195, 16. " II vero amore" " True
Love."
195, 17.
" E la mio amor e andato a sog-
giornare
A Lucca bella-
diventar sign-
472
"And my love has gone to dwell
In beautiful Lucca and become
a gentleman. ..."
195,29. "0 mon Fernand!" "O my
Fernand !"
196, 13. " Et vans ne cantez pas . . .
comme je pourrai."
" And you do not sing at all, at all ?"
" ( h yes, sometimes !"
"Sing somezing I vill accompany
you on ze guitar ! do not be afraid
ve vill not be hard on you, she and
j
" Oh I'll do my best to accompany
myself."
196, 21. "Fleur des Alpes" " Flower
of the Alps."
199, 23. medaille de sauvetage medal
for saving life.
200,2. Je lew veux du bien I wish
them well.
200. 17. Lanjo al factotum Make
way for the factotum.
201,24. bit! ter! a second time! a
third time!
201, 26. " Het Roosje uit de Dome "-
" The Rose without the Thorn.''
202, 15. sans tambour ni ' troin/x //<
without drum or trumpet (French
leave).
202, 29. Hotel de. ViUe Town -hall.
203, 4. " Una sera <f amore " " An
Evening of Love."
203. 16. " Guarda che biancu luna "
' Behold the silver moon."
204, 15. boute- en- train life and soul.
205, 10. " A vous, monsieur de la garde
. . . tirer les premiers .'"
" Your turn, gentleman of the
guard.''
" The gentlemen of the guard should
always fire the first!"
205, 20. " Je ne lire plus . . . main
malheureuse unjour /" "I will fire
no more I am too much afraid that
some day my hand may be unfortu-
nate !"
205,33. " Le cachet . . . je lui avais
demande '" " Mr. Josselin's seal,
which I had asked him for!"
206,4. Salle d'A rmes Fencing
school.
206, 10. des enfantiUages child's play.
206, 15. " Je rous en prie, nwnsieur de.
la t/arde .'" " I pray you, gentle-
man of the guard !"
206, 17. " Cetle fois, alors, nous ullm/.-t
tirer ensemble .'" "This time, then,
we will draw together!"
206, 23. iittiitrt- irannes fencing-mas-
ter.
Jiiii. :.".. " Vousetes unpayable . . .pour
la vie'" "You are extraordinary,
you know, my dear fellow ; you have
every talent, and a million in your
throat into the bargain ! If ever I
can do anything for you, you know,
always count upon me."
208, 1. " Et plus jamais . . . qutind
vous ni'ecj-irez .'" "And no more
empty envelopes when you write
to me !"
208, 10. la peau de, chagrin the sha-
green skin. (The hero of this story,
by Balzac, is given a piece of sha-
green, on the condition that all his
wishes will be gratified, but that
every wish will cause the leather to
si i rink, and that when it disappears
his life will come to an end. Chagrin
also means sorrow, so that Barty's
retina was indeed " a skin of sor-
row," continually shrinking.)
208, 29. " Les miseres du jour font A
bonheur du lendemain .'" " The
misery of today is the happiness of
to-morrow !"
210, 23. dune a low sand-hill. (They
are to be found all along the Belgian
coast,)
214, 22. par by.
214, 32. dit-on they say.
216,22. bien d'accord of the same
mind.
217, 1. jiee by birth.
217, 29. moi qui vous parle I who
speak to you.
219, 3. Kermesse fair.
219, 6. estaminet a drinking and
smoking resort.
219. 10. a la Tenters after the manner
of Teniers, the painter.
219, 34. in sectila seculorum ! for ages
of ages!
473
220, 3. Rue des Ursulines Blanches
Street of the White Ursulines.
220, 5. des Saeurs Hedemptoristines
Sisters of the Redemption.
220, 11. Frau Mrs. (This is Ger-
man ; the Flemish is Jitffrow.")
220, 26. " La Cigogne "" The Stork
Inn."
221, 9. salade aux fines heroes salad
made of a mixture of herbs.
222, 28. afleurde tete on a level with
their heads.
223, 6. savez vous ? do you know ?
223, 26. chaussees roads.
224, 26. Les Maitres Sonneurs The
Master Ringers.
La Mare au Diable The
Devil's Pool.
225, 21. seminaire clerical seminary.
225, 29. " Mio caro Paolo di Kocco /"
" My dear Paul de Kock !"
225, 32. " Un malheureux," etc.
" An unfortunate dressed in black,
Who resembled me like a brother."
(Du Maurier himself.)
228, 14. mein armer my poor.
228, 17. Lieber dear.
229, 5. Bel Mazetto Beautiful Ma-
zetto.
229, 7. " Ich bin ein lustiger Student,
mein Pardy " " I am a jolly Stu-
dent, my Barty." ,
229, 15. Katzenjammer sore head.
229, 18. Liebe love.
230, 2. tout le monde everybody.
231, 18. autrefois the times of yore.
231, 21. "Oh, non, mon ami" "Oh,
no, my friend."
231, 29. " Petit bonhomme vit encore "
"Good little fellow still alive."
232, 1.
" Hequoi! pour des peccadilles," etc.
" Eh, what ! for peccadilloes
To scold those little loves?
Women are so pretty,
And one does not love forever !
Good fellow
They call me ...
My gayety is my treasure !
And the good fellow is still alive
And the good fellow is still alive !"
233, 10. Soupe-au-lait Milk porridge.
234, 2. muscce volitantes (literally)
hovering flies.
242, 1. " Mettez-vous au regime des
viandes saiynantes !" " Put yourself
on a diet of rare meat !"
242, 4. " Mettez - vous au lait !"
" Take to milk!"
242, 9. desceuvrement idleness.
242, 16. " Amour, Amour," etc.
" Love, love, when you hold us,
Well may we say : ' Prudence, good-
bye !' "
244, 1. "II s'est conduit en homme de
cceur!" "He has behaved like a
man of spirit !"
244. 3. "11 s'est conduit en bon gentil-
komme!" "He has behaved like a
thorough gentleman !"
247, 9. Les Noces de Jeannette Jean-
nette's Wedding.
247, 13.
" Cours, mon aiguille . .. de noire
peine /"
" Run, my needle, through the wool!
Do not break off in my hand ;
For to-morrow with good kisses
Jean will pay us for our trouble !"
249,3. " Ilelas ' mon jeune ami!"
" Alas ! my young friend !"
252, 1. Sursum cor ! sursum corda .'
Lift up your heart ! Lift up your
hearts !
252, 11. coupe-choux cabbage-cutter.
252, 13. " Ca ne vous regarde pas, . . .
ouje vous . . ." " It's none of your
business, you know ! take yourselves
off at once, or I'll ..."
252, 19. " Non dest moi qui regarde,
savez-vous !" "No it is I who
am looking, you know !"
252, 20. " Qu'est-ce que vous regardez ?
. . . Vous ne voulez pas vous en
alter?"
" What are you looking at ?"
" I am looking at the moon and the
stars. I am looking at the comet !"
" Will you take yourself off at once?"
" Some other time !"
" Take yourself off, I tell you !"
" The day after to-morrow !"
"You . . . will . . . not . . . take
. . . yourself . . . off?"
474
252, 32. " Non, sacre petit . . . reslez
ou v'ous etes /"
" No, you confounded little devil's
gravel-pusher!"
" All right, stay where you are !"
254, 16.
" . . . du sommeil au songe
Du tonge a la mart."
"... from sleep to dream
From dream to death."
254, 21. "It eft dix keures . . . dans
ro/rf chambre?" "It's ten o'clock,
you know ? Will you have your
coffee in your room ?"
'_'.">."). 1 1 fa dale de loin, man pauvre
ami it goes a long way back, my
poor friend.
256, 8. punctum citcitm blind spot.
'_'">7. _'?. HIGH beau somnambule my
handsome somnambulist
257, 33. On ne suit pas ce qui pent
arrieer One never knows what
may happen.
258, 17. tiens look.
2fi2, 10. sans peur et sans reproche
without fear and without reproach.
262, 1 5. " Ca s'appelle le point cache
c'est une portion de la retinr ure*
liHjiit'lle on ne pent pas voir. . . ."
" It is called the blind spot it is a
part of the retina with which we
cannot see. . . ."
263, 13. c'est toitjoursfa that's always
I lie way.
263, 23. plus gue coquette more than
coquettish.
269, 8. pere et mere father and
mother.
271,31. more Latino in the Latin
manner.
272, 12. pictor ignotus the unknown
painter.
273, 6. " Que me voila ... Ote ton
chapeau /"
" How happy I am, my little Barty
and you? what a pretty town,
eh?"
" It's heaven, pure and simple and
you are going to teach me German,
aren't you, my dear?"
" Yes, and we will read Heine to-
gether ; by the way, look ! do you see
the name of the street at the corner?
Bolker Strasse ! that's where he was
born, poor Heine ! Take off your hat !'
273, 19. Maitrank May drink. (An
infusion of woodruff in light white
wine.)
273,34. "Johanna, mein t'riih.ttuck,
bitte !" " Johanna, my breakfast.
please !"
276, 27. la barre de bdtardise the bar
of bastardy.
279, 15. der schone the handsome.
280, 24. Speiserei eating-house.
283, 5. " HI for ni la grandeur ne nous
rendent heureux" "neither gold
nor greatness makes us happy."
-'".">. _'_'. nies premieres amours my
tii>t loves.
286, 3. " Petit chagrin . . . un soupir 1"
" Little sorrow of childhood
Costing a sigh !"
286, 9. // avail lien raison He was
quite right.
289, 15. rieiiyuefa nothing but that.
290, 29. " // a les qualites . . . sont ses
meilleures qualites."
"The handsome Josselin has the
qualities of his faults."
(i My dear, his faults are his best
qualities."
297, 4. Art et liberle Art and libr-rtv.
299, 11. " Du bist die Ruh\ der /V,W,
mild!" "Thou art rest, sweet
peace !"
300, 19. c'ett plus fort que moi it is
stronger than I.
304.2. dans le blanc des yeux straight
in the eyes.
306, 20. damiyella maiden.
308, 27. " Die Kuhe b/,,,/ mi,- ~.,iruck "
1 ~ 1'eace comes back to me."
308, 30. prosit omen may the omen
be propitious.
309, 5. prima donna assoluta the ab-
solute first lady. (Grand Opera, the
"leading lady.")
310, 32. gringalet-jocrisse an effemi-
nate fellow.
312.3. faire la popotte ensemble au
coin dufeu; c'est le del to potter
round the fire together; that is
heaven.
475
312, 29. Amstellung exhibition.
314, 8. loch a medicine of the con-
sistence of honey, taken by licking
or sucking.
318,10. u Et voila comment fa s'est
passe" "And that's how it hap-
pened."
320, 14. et plus royalists que le Roi
and more of a royalist than the
King.
321, 13. cru growth.
323, 32. L'amitie est I'amour sans
ailes Friendship is love without
wings.
325, 9. En veux-lu ? en voila ! Do
you want some ? here it is!
327, 10. kudos glory.
328, 9. Dis-moi qui tu hantes, je te
dirai ce que tu es Tell me who are
your friends, and I will tell you what
you are.
331, 20. si le cceur fen dit if your
heart prompts you.
335, 5. esprit de corps brotherhood.
335, 8. Noblesse oblige Nobility im-
poses the obligation of nobleness.
336, 15. betise pure et simple down-
right folly.
337, 15. Je suis au-dessus de mes af-
faires I am above my business.
338, 11. Maman-belle-mere Mama-
mother-in-law.
338, 30. vous plaisantez, mon ami ; un
amateur comrne moi you are jok-
ing, my friend ; an amateur like
myself.
338, 81. Quis custodiet (ipsos custo-
des)? Who shall guard the guards
themselves ?
339, 2. monsieur anglais, qui avail mal
aux yeux English gentleman, who
had something the matter with his
eyes.
340, 5. La belle dame sans merci The
fair lady merciless.
342, 4. de par le monde in society.
242, 18. je tacherai de ne pas en abuser
trop! I will try not to take too
much of it!
344, 15. fe dernier des Abencerrages
the last of the Abencerrages. (The
title of a story by Chateaubriand.)
347, 24. a mon insu unknown to me.
354, 11. On a les defauts de ses qimK-
tes One has the faults of one's
virtues.
354, 15. joliment degourdie finely
sharpened.
358, 10. La quatrieme Dimension
The Fourth Dimension.
360, 25. nous avons eu la main heu-
reuse we have been fortunate.
360, 28. smalah encampment of an
Arab chieftain.
363, 19. Je suis homme d'affaires I
am a man of business.
373, 28. un conte a dormir debout a
story to bore one to sleep.
374, 23. Oil avions-nous done la tete et
les yeux ? What were we doing
with our minds and eyes ?
377, 1. " Cara deum soboles. magnum
Jovis incrementum" "The dear
offspring of God, the increase of
Jove."
378, 22. Tous les genres sont bons, hor-
mis le genre ennuyeux All kinds are
good, except the boring kind.
380, 3. C'etait un naif, le beau Josselin
He was ingenuous, the handsome
Josselin.
381, 9. A rma virumque cano Arms
and the man I sing. The
first words of Virgil's ^Eneid.
Tityre tu patulce (recubans sub
tegmine fagi) Thou, Tity-
rus, reclining beneath the
shade of a spreading beech.
The first line of the first
Eclogue of Virgil.
Maecenas atavis (edite regibus)
Maecenas descended from
royal ancestors. Horace,
Odes, 1, 1, 1.
381, 10. Mijviv deiSe Sing the wrath.
The first words of Homer's Iliad.
381, 21. DebatsLe Journal des Debate,
a Parisian literary newspaper.
386, 3. sommite litter air e literary pin-
nacle. .
386, 16. Bouillon Duval a class of
cheap restaurants in Paris.
386, 30. Etoiles MartesDenA Stars.
388, 6. la coupe the cutwater.
476
388, 11. a la hussarde head first.
389, 2. In tres-sage llfloise the most
learned Heloise. (Another of the
ladies mentioned in Villon's " Hal-
lade of the Ladies of Olden Time."
See note to page 24, line 30.)
389, 5. nout aliens arraniji-r tout fa
we'll arrange all that.
389, 20. C'esl la chasMt ineme, mais
ce n'est pas Dejanire It is chastity
itself, but it is not Dejanire.
390, 20. tres elegante very elegant.
390, 22. fun noir de jais, cFune blan-
cheur de lis jet black, lily white.
391, 1. ah, man Dieu, la Diane chasse-
resse, la Sapho de Pradier ! ah,
My God, Diana the huntress, I'ra-
dier's Sappho !
391, 8. un vrai type de colosse bon en-
fant, d'une tenue irreprochable a
perfect image of a good-natured
colossus, of irreproachable bearing.
391, 15. tartinei slices of bread and
butter.
391. 17. une rraie menagerie a per-
fect menagerie.
392, 7. belle chatelaine beautiful chate-
laine.
393,1. gazebo summer-house.
393. 18. le que retranche name given
in some French -Latin grammars to
the Latin form which expresses by
the infinitive verb and the accusa-
tive noun what in French is ex-
pressed by " que " between two
verbs.
394, 32. alma mater dolorota the
tender and sorrowful mother.
394, 33. mardtre au caur de pierre
stony-hearted mother.
396.19. Tendenz novels novels with
a purpose.
396, 28. nouveUe-ricke. newly rich.
404, 11. on y est tres bien one is very
well there.
406, 26. " // est dix heuret" etc. See
-note to page 254, line 21.
406, 30. riluin mangeur de cceurs que
vous etes wretched eater of hearts
that you are.
407,30. Un vrai petit St. Jean! il
nous portera bonkeur, bien sur A
perfect little St. John ! he will bring
us good luck, for sure.
408, 27. nous sarong not re orthographie
en musique tit bus we know our
musical a b c's over there.
412, 8. in-medio-tutissimus (ibis) You
will go safest in the middle.
412, 20. diablement bien conserve
deticedly well preserved.
413, 11. me fortunatum, mea si bona
ntirim! O happy me, had I known
my own blessings!
414, 23. un malheureux rate an un-
fortunate failure
415, 9. abnttissant stupefying.
416, 15. affaire d'etfomuc a matter of
stomach.
418, 1. " Je sttis alle de bon matin," etc.
"I went at early morn
To pick the violet,
And hawthorne, and jasmine,
To celebrate thy birthday.
With my own hands I bound
The rosebuds and the rosemary
To crown thy golden head.
" But for thy royal beauty
Be humble, I pray thee.
Here all things die, flower, summer,
Youth and life:
Soon, soon the day will be,
My fair one. when they'll carry thee
Faded and pale in a winding-
sheet."
418, 19. perissoires paddle-boats.
pique-teles diving-boards.
418, 21. station balneaire bathing
resort.
419, 25. ulile dulci the useful with
the pleasant.
420, 9. la chasse aux souvenirs the
hunt after remembrances.
420, 25. s'est encanaille keeps low
company.
422, 25. porte-cochere carriage en-
trance.
423, 1. " A h, ma foi ! ... la balle au
camp " " Ah, my word, I under-
stand that, gentlemen I, too, was a
school-boy once, and was fond of
rounders."
477
423, 11. Le Fils de la Vierge The
Virgin's Son.
423, 12. mutatis mutandis the neces-
sary changes being made.
423, 34. " Afoi aussi, je fumais . . . n'est
cepas?" " I too smoked when it
was forbidden ; what do you expect ?
Youth must have its day, musn't
it?"
424, 3. dame indeed.
425, 30. cour des miracles the court
of miracles. (A meeting-place of
beggars described in Hugo's " Notre
Dame de Paris." So called on ac-
count of the sudden change in the
appearance of the pretended cripples
who came there.)
42(5, 1G. " dis-donc, Hortense" etc.
"Oh say, Hortense, how cold it is!
whenever will it be eleven o'clock,
so that we can go to bed ?"
428, 5. nous autres we others.
428, 22. Numero Deus impure gaudet
The god delights in uneven num-
bers.
430, 22.
" A us meinen Thranen spriessen," etc.
" Out of my tear-drops springeth
A harvest of beautiful flowers;
And my sighing turneth
To a choir of nightingales. "
Heine.
435, 24. A k, mon Dieu ! Ah, my
God!
437, 34. Etabltssement establish-
ment.
439, 31. Pandore et sa Boile Pan-
dore and her Box.
441, 12. " (Test papa qui paie et ma-
man qui regale " " Papa pays and
mamma treats."
445, 8. au grande trot at a full trot.
447, 12. Nous etions bien, la We
were well, there.
447,21. I'homme propose man pro-
poses.
448, 1. " tempo passato, perche non
ritorni?" "O bygone days, why
do you not return ?"
448, 7. " Et je m'en vais," etc.
" And off I go
On the evil wind
Which carries me
Here and there
Like the
Leaf that is dead."
448. 13. rossiguolel de mon dme little
nightingale of my soul.
448, 23. Da capo, e da capo Over and
over again.
449, 4. media fie fonte leporum (surgit
amari aliquid) from the midst of
the fountain of delights something
bitter arises.
TKILBY
Written and Illustrated by GEORGE DU MAURIER. Post
8vo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 75 ; Three-quarter Calf,
$3 50 ; Three-quarter Levant, $4 50.
It is the secret of the extraordinary charm of this story that it does
not appear to be a story; it lias almost no marks of artifice; it hardly
appears to have been planned ; it affects us as a record, kept in the sim-
plest and most informal way, of certain very interesting events and per-
sons. Outlook, N. Y.
A book that every one will like because it has the essential qualities of
wit, passion, character, and human nature; a book that has the grace and
charm of a finely artistic style all through, and that is likely to rest on our
shelves long after most of the novels of this year of grace have passed out
of our remembrance. St. James's Gazette, London.
PETER IBBETSON
With an Introduction by his Cousin, Lady *****
("Madge Plunket"). Edited and Illustrated by
GEORGE DU MAURIER. Post 8vo, Cloth, Ornamental,
$1 50; Three-quarter Calf, $3 25; Three-quarter
Levant, .$4 25.
There are so many beauties, so many singularities, so much that is fresh
and original in Mr. Du Maurier's story that it is difficult to treat it at all
adequately from the point of view of criticism. That it is one of the
most remarkable books that have appeared for a long time is, however,
indisputable. N. Y. Tribune.
PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK
The above works are for sale by all booksellers, or will be sent by the publishers,
postage prepaid, on receipt of the price.
ENGLISH SOCIETY
Sketched by GEORGE DU MAUBIEK. 4to, Oblong, Cloth,
$2 50.
In it a searching observer of many phases of humanity, charming in
his wit and without the blemish of malice, presents with* his pencil us
much of his social philosophy as he could give with his pen in a hundred
novels. In spite of its title and origin, a collection of Mr. Du Manner's
sketches covers any society; and in looking it over one is only too content
that the artist chose to exploit a society which affords the beauty and ele-
gance of the Du Maurier type. .V. }'. Sun.
The kindly humor of Du Maurier, the quiet incisiveness of his satire,
and his inimitable skill at the portrayal of social types are delightfully
manifested in this series of one hundred plates, ending up with the
melodramatic death-bed scene of Trilbv. Boston Beacon.
By FELIX MOSCHELES. With Sixty-three Illustrations
by GEORGE DU M.UKIKR. 8vo, Cloth, Gilt Tops and
Uncut Edges, $2 50.
For these, and for a few references to the originals of the characters
in the novel, and to the hypnotic experiments in which Du Maurier was
interested in his youth, the book will doubtless be bought. But he must
be a dull person who does not find another charm in Mr. Moscheles's art-
less narrative, mostly about nothing at all, or about the nothings that
make up the joy of living to madcap boys. N. Y. Mail and Express.
It possesses the literary quality that marked his more mature illustra-
tions, and evinces the quality of reticence that preserved his humor from
becoming caricature. He has often been compared to Thackeray; this
work suggests Hood, and it would be interesting to know how much he
cared for his English predecessors and assimilated. Philadelphia Press.
PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK
The above works are for sale by all booksellers, or toill be sent l>y the pulil
by mail, postage prepaid, on receipt of the price.
DC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY
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