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 o
 
 TKICOTRIN 
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 
 
 BY 
 
 "OUID A," 
 
 AUTHOR OF "STRATHMORE," " CHANDOS," "iDALIA,' 
 "UNDER TWO FLAGS," ETC. 
 
 " Better an outlaw than not free." — Jean Paul. 
 
 " Scepterless, free, uncircumscribed 
 . . . . unclassed, tribeless, nationless, 
 Exempt from awo, worship, degree, the king 
 Over himself." — SlielUy. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA : 
 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 
 1869.
 
 f y 
 
 DEDICATED 
 
 TO 
 
 The American People, 
 
 CORDIAL ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF THEIR RECEPTION OF MY WORKS: 
 
 THOSE MEN AMONG THEM, BOTH OF NORTH AND SOUTH, 
 
 WHOSE CHARACTERS I HONOR, 
 
 .AND WHOSE 
 
 FRIENDSHIP HONORS ME. 
 
 785543
 
 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 It was autumn ; a rich golden autumn of France, with 
 the glow of burning sunsets, and the scarlet pomp of red- 
 dened woods, and the purple and the yellow of grapes 
 gathered for the wine-press, and the luscious dreamy 
 odor of overripened fruits crushed, by careless passing 
 feet, upon the orchard-mosses. Afar off, in the full noon- 
 day, the winding road was white and hot with dust; but 
 here in a nook of forest land, in a dell of leafy growth be- 
 tween the vineyards which encompassed it, the air was 
 cool and the sunlight broken with shade, while, through 
 its stillness where the boughs threw the shadow darkest, 
 a little torrent leapt and splashed, making music as it 
 went, and washing round the base of an old ivy-grown 
 stone tower that had fallen to ruin in the midst of its 
 green nest. 
 
 There was no sound except one, beside that of the 
 bright tumbling stream, though now and then there came 
 in from the distance the ring of a convent-clock's bells, 
 or the laugh of a young girl at work among the vims; 
 — no sound except o«e, and that was the quick, sharp, 
 gleeful crack of nuts in a monkey's teeth. There were 
 squirrels by the score there in that solitary place who had 
 right, hereditary and indisputable they would have said, 
 to all the nuts that the boughs bore and the grasses hid; 
 but Mistigri was no recognizer of rights divine; she loved 
 nuts and cared little how she go1 them, and she sal aloft 
 in her glory, or swung herself from twig to twig, crush- 
 ing and eating and flinging the shells away with all that 
 
 1* (5)
 
 6 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 gleeful self-satisfaction of which a little black monkey is 
 to the full as capable, after successful piracy, as any con- 
 quering sovereign. 
 
 "Mistigri, Mistigri!" said her companion, surveying 
 her, " who could doubt your human-affinity who once had 
 seen you pilfer ? Monkey stows away her stolen goods 
 in a visible pouch unblushingly ; man smuggles his away 
 unknown in the guise of 'profit' or 'percentage,' 'com- 
 merce' or 'annexation' — the natural advancement of 
 civilization on the simple and normal thieving. Increased 
 cranium, increased caution; that's all the difference, eh, 
 Mistigri?" 
 
 Mistigri cocked her head on one side, but would not 
 waste time in replying : her little shiny black mouth was 
 full of good kernels. 
 
 " Why talk when you can take ?" she would have asked. 
 
 Her owner did not press for an answer, but sung, care- 
 lessly, snatches of Goethe's Millsong and of Muller's Whis- 
 per, his voice chiming in with the bubble of the stream 
 while he took at intervals his noontide meal, classic and 
 uncostly, of Chasselas grapes and a big brown roll. 
 
 He was a man of some forty years, dressed in a linen 
 blouse, with a knapsack as worn as an African soldier's 
 lying at his feet, unstrapped, in company with a flask of 
 good wine and a Straduarius fiddle. He himself was 
 seated on a fallen tree, with the sun breaking through the 
 foliage above in manifold gleams and glories that touched 
 the turning leaves bright red as fire, and fell on his own 
 head when he tossed it up to fling a word to Mistigri or 
 to catch the last summer-song of a blackbird. It was a 
 beauitful Homeric head ; bold, kingly, careless, noble, with 
 the royalty of the lion in its gallant poise, and the chal- 
 lenge of the eagle in its upward gesture ; — the head which 
 an artist would have given to his Hector, or his Phoebus, 
 or his God Lyoeus. The features were beautiful too, in 
 their varied mobile eloquent meanings ; with their poet's 
 brows, their reveler's laugh, their soldier's daring, their 
 student's thought, their many and conflicting utterances, 
 whose contradictions made one unity — the unity of genius. 
 
 At this moment there was only the enjoyment of a 
 rich and sunny nature, in an idle moment, written on them
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 7 
 
 as he ate his grapes and threw fragments of wit up at 
 Mistigri where she was perched among the nut boughs. 
 But the brilliant eyes, so blue in some lights so black in 
 others, had the luster and the depths of infinite meditation 
 in them ; and the curling lips that were hidden under the 
 fullness of their beard, had the delicate fine mockery of the 
 satirist blent with the brighter, franker mirth of genial 
 sympathies. And his face changed as he cast the crumbs 
 of his finished meal to some ducks that paddled lower down 
 in the stream where it grew stiller around the old tower, 
 and took up his Straduarius from the ground with the 
 touch of a man who loves the thing that he touches. The 
 song of the water that had made the melody to his ban- 
 quet was in his brain ; — sweet, wild, entangled sounds that 
 he must needs reproduce, with the self-same fancy that a 
 painter must catch the fleeting hues of fair scenes that 
 would haunt him forever unless exorcised thus. 
 
 "Quiet, Mistigri !" he said softly, and the monkey sat 
 still on her hazel bough, eating indeed, but noiselessly. 
 He listened one moment more to the stream, then drew 
 the bow across the strings. The music thrilled out upon 
 the silence, catching the song of the brook in harmony as 
 Goethe caught it in verse, — all its fresh delicious babble, 
 all its rush of silvery sound, all its cool and soothing mur- 
 mur, all its pauses of deep rest. All of which the wood- 
 land torrent told — of the winds that had tossed the boughs 
 into its foam ; of the women-faces its tranquil pools had 
 mirrored; of the blue burden of forget-me-nots and the 
 snowy weight of lilies it had borne so lovingly; of the 
 sweet familiar idyls it had seen where it had wound its 
 way below quaint mill-house walls choked up with ivy- 
 growth where the children and the pigeons paddled with 
 rosy feet upon the resting wheel; of the weary sighs that 
 had been breathed over it beneath the gray old convents 
 where it heard the miserere steal in with its own ripple, 
 and looked itself a thing so full of leaping joy and dancing 
 life to the. sad eves of yirl-recluses, — all these of which it 
 told the music told again. The strings were touched by 
 an artist's hand, and all that duller ears heard, but dimly, 
 in the splash ami surge of the brown fern-covered stream, 
 he heard in marvelous poems and translated into clearer
 
 8 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 tongue — the universal tongue which has no country and 
 no limit, and in which the musician speaks alike to sove- 
 reign and to savage. 
 
 There was not a creature there to hear, save the yellow- 
 winged lorioles and Mistigri who was absorbed in nuts; 
 but he played on to himself an hour or more for love of the 
 theme and the art, and an old peasant woman, going 
 through the trees at some yards distance, and seeing no- 
 thing of the player for the screen of leaves, laughed and 
 stroked the hair of a grandchild who clung to her afraid of 
 the magical woodland-melodies : " The wood-elves, little 
 one? Bah! that is only Trieotrin!" 
 
 Her feet, brushing the fallen leaves with pleasant sound, 
 soon passed away; he played on and on, such poetry as 
 Bamboche drew from his violin, whereat Poussin bowed 
 his head, weeping with the passion of women, as through 
 his tears he beheld as in a vision the "Et in Arcadia 
 Ego." 
 
 Then, as suddenly as he had begun, Trieotrin dropped 
 the bow and ceased ; and struck a light and smoked, — a 
 great Arab pipe of some carved wood, black and polished 
 by long use. On the silence that succeeded there came a 
 low laugh of delight — the laugh of a very young child. 
 He looked up and down and among the ferns at his feet ; 
 the laughter was close beside him, yet he could see no- 
 thing. He smoked on indifferently, watching the bright 
 eyes of the birds glancing out from the shadow; then the 
 laugh came again; close at his side, as it sounded; he 
 rose and pushed aside some branches and looked over a 
 broken rail behind him beyond a tangled growth of reeds 
 and rushes. 
 
 There he saw what had aroused him from his smoke- 
 silence: more than half hidden under the moss and the 
 broad tufted grasses, stretching her hands out at the gor- 
 geous butterflies that fluttered above her head, and cov- 
 ered with the wide yellow leaves of gourds and the white 
 fragrant abundance of traveler's-joy, was the child whose 
 laughter he had heard. A child between two and three 
 years old, her face warm with the flush of past sleep, her 
 eyes smiling against the light, her hair lying like gold-dust 
 on the moss, her small fair limbs struggling uncovered
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 9 
 
 out of a rough red cloak that alone was folded about her. 
 The scarlet of the mantle, the whiteness of the clematis, 
 the yellow hues of the wild gourds, the color of the winged 
 insects, the head of the child rising out of the mosses, and 
 the young face that looked like a moss-rosebud just un- 
 closing, made a picture in their own way; and he who 
 passed no picture by, but had pictures in his memory sur- 
 passing all the collected art of galleries, paused to survey 
 it with his arms folded on the rail. 
 
 Its solitude, its strangeness, did not occur to him ; he 
 looked at it as at some painting of his French brethren's 
 easels, that was all. But the child, seeing a human eye 
 regard her, forgot her butterflies, and remembered human 
 wants ; she stretched her hands to him instead of to her 
 playmates of the air. "J'aifaimP' 1 she cried, with a plain- 
 tive self-pity ; bread would be better than the butterflies. 
 
 "Hungry;"' he answered, addressing her as he was 
 wont to do Mistigri. " I have nothing for you. Who 
 brought you there, you Waif and Stray ? Put down there 
 and left, to get rid of the trouble of you, apparently? 
 Well, — D'Alembert was dropped down in the streets, and 
 found a foster-mother in a milk-woman, and he did pretty 
 well afterward. Perhaps some dainty De Tencin brought 
 you likewise into the world and has hidden you like a bit 
 of smuggled lace, only thinking you nothing so valuable. 
 Is it so, eh ?" 
 
 "J'aifaim!" cried the child afresh ; all her history was 
 comprised to her in the one fact that she wanted bread, — 
 as it is comprised to a mob. 
 
 " Catch, then 1" he replied to the cry, dropping into her 
 hands from where he leant a bunch of the Chasselas "rapes 
 that still remained in his pocket. It sufficed; the child 
 was not so much pained by hunger as by thirst, though 
 she scarcely knew the difference between her own sensa- 
 tions; her throat was dry, and the grapes were all she 
 wanted. He, leaning over the lichen-covered rail, watched 
 her while she enjoyed them one by one She was a very 
 pretty child, the prettier for that rough moss covering, 
 out of which her delicate fair shoulders and chest rose un- 
 covered, while the breeze blew about her yellow glossy 
 curls.
 
 10 TRTCOTRIN, 
 
 "Left there to be got rid of, — clearly," he murmured 
 to her. "Any one who picks you up will do you the 
 greatest injury possible. Die now in the sunshine among 
 the flowers; you will never have such another chance 
 of a poetical and picturesque exit. Who was ingenious 
 enough to hide you there ? The poor shirt-stitcher who 
 was at her last sou ? — or Madame la Marquise who was 
 at her last scandal ? Was it Magdalene who has to wear 
 sack-cloth for having dared to sin without money to buy 
 absolution ? — or Messalina who covers ten thousand pois- 
 onous passions with a silver embroidered robe, and is 
 only discreetly careful of 'consequences?' Which was 
 your progenitrix little one, eh ?" 
 
 To this question so closely concerning her, the Waif 
 could give no answer, being gifted with only imperfect 
 speech; but, happy in the grapes, she laughed up in his 
 eyes her unspoken thanks, shaking a cluster of clematis 
 above her head, as happy in her couch of flowers and 
 moss as she could have been in any silver cradle. The 
 question concerned her in nothing yet: the bar sinister 
 could not stretch across the sunny blue skies, the butter- 
 flies flew above her as familiarly as above the brow of a 
 child-queen, and the white flowers did not wither sooner 
 in bastard than in legitimate hands. 
 
 "How the sun shines on you, as if you were a prin- 
 cess 1" he soliloquized to her. " Ah ! Nature is a terrible 
 socialist; what republicans she would make of men if 
 they listened to her. But there is no fear for them, — they 
 are not fond enough of her school 1 You look very com- 
 fortably settled here, and how soon you will get life over. 
 You are very fortunate. You will suffer a little bit, — 
 paf! what of that? Everbody suffers that little bit sooner 
 or later, and it grows sharper the longer it is put off. 
 Suppose you were picked up by somebody and lived, it 
 would be very bad for you. You would be a lovely wo- 
 man, and lovely women are the devil's aides-de-camp. 
 You would snare men in your yellow hair, and steal their 
 substance with the breath of your lips, and dress up lying 
 avarice as love, and make a miser's greed wear the smile 
 of a cherub. Ah! that you would. And then would 
 come age, a worse thing for women like you than crime
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. \\ 
 
 or death ; and you would suffer an agony with every 
 wrinkle and a martyrdom with every whitening' lock, and 
 you would grow hard, and haggard, and painted, and 
 hideous even to the vilest among men ; and you would 
 be hissed off the stage in hatred by the mouths that once 
 shouted your triumphs, while you would hear the fresh 
 comers laugh as they rushed on to be crowned with the 
 roses that once wreathed your own forehead. And then 
 would come the end, — the hospital and the wooden shell, 
 and the grave trampled flat to the dust as soon almost as 
 made, while the world danced on in the sunlight unheed- 
 ing. Ah ! be wise. Die while you can, among your but- 
 terflies and flowers !" 
 
 The child, lying below there in her nest, looked up in 
 his eyes again and laughed: "Viva!" she cried, while 
 she clasped her grapes in her two small hands. 
 
 " Viva ? What do you mean by that ? Do you mean, 
 imperfectly, to ask to live in Italian? Fie then! That 
 is unphilosophic. Take the advice of two philosophers. 
 Bolingbroke says, there is so much trouble in coming into 
 the world and in going out of it, that it is barely worth 
 while to be here at all, and I tell you the same. He had 
 the cakes and ale too, but the one got stale and the other 
 bitter. What will it be for you who start with neither 
 cakes nor ale ? Life's not worth much to a man. It is 
 worth just nothing at all to a woman. It is a mistake 
 altogether, and lasts just long enough for all to find that 
 out, but not long enough for any to remedy it. We always 
 live the time required to get thoroughly uncomfortable, 
 and as soon as we are in the 1 rack 1 o sift the problem — pafl 
 — out we go like a rushlight, the very moment we begin 
 to burn brightly. Be persuaded by me, and don't think of 
 living; - you have a golden opportunity of getting quit- 
 tance of the whole affair. Don't throw it away!" 
 
 The good advice of Experience was, as it always is, 
 thrown away on the impetuosity of Ignorance. The child 
 laughed still over her Chasselas bunch, murmuring still 
 over and over again the nearest approach she knew to a 
 name : 
 
 "Viva— Viva— Viva!" 
 
 "The obstinacy of women prematurely developed.
 
 12 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 Why will you not know when you are well off? ' Those 
 whom the gods love die young.' If you would just now 
 prefer to have your mother's love instead of the gods', you 
 are wrong. What have you before you ? You will be 
 marked 'outcast.' You will have nothing as your career 
 except to get rich by snaring the foolish ; or to be virtu- 
 ous and starve on three-halfpence a day, having a pauper's 
 burial as reward for your chastity. If you live, your 
 hands must be either soiled or empty. I would die among 
 the clematis if I were you." 
 
 But the child, persistently regardless of wise counsel, 
 only laughed still, and strove to struggle from her net- 
 work of blossom and of moss. 
 
 "Your mind is set upon living, — what a pity!" mur- 
 mured her solitary companion. "When your hair is 
 white, how you will wish you had died when it was yel- 
 low, — everybody does, — but while the yellow lasts no- 
 body believes it! You want to live? So Eve wanted 
 the ' fruit of fairest colors.' If I were to help you to have 
 your own way now, you would turn on me thirty years 
 hence as your worst enemy. Were you able to under- 
 stand reason, — but your sex would prevent that, let alone 
 your age. Let us ask Mistigri. Mistigri, is that Waif to 
 live or to die ?" 
 
 The companion and counselor, who lived in his pocket, 
 and was accustomed to be thus appealed to, had swung 
 herself down on to the grass, and was now squatted on 
 the rail beside him. The child catching sight of the mon- 
 key, tried to stretch and stroke her, and Mistigri, who 
 was always of an affable, and, when she had eaten suffi- 
 cient herself, of a generous turn of mind, extended her lit- 
 tle black paw, and tendered a nut, as an overture to an 
 acquaintance. 
 
 " You vote for life too?" cried Tricotrin. "Bah, Mis- 
 tigri. I thought you so sensible, — for your sex ! When 
 a discerning mother, above the weakness of womenkind, 
 has arranged everything so neatly, we should be the most 
 miserable sentimentalists to interfere." 
 
 As he spoke, the little creature, who had been vainly 
 striving to free herself from her forest-cradle, ceased her 
 efforts and looked up in piteous mute entreaty, her eyes
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 13 
 
 wet and soft with glistening tears, her mouth trembling 
 with an unspoken appeal. 
 
 He, who saw a wounded bird only to help it, and met 
 a lame dog only to carry it, was unable to resist that pa- 
 thetic helplessness. He turned and lifted his voice. 
 
 "Grand 'mere Virelois, are you there? Here is some- 
 thing in your way, not in mine." 
 
 In answer to the shout there came out from the low 
 broken door of the ruined tower an old peasant woman, 
 brown and bent and very aged, but blithe as a bird, and 
 with her black eyes as bright as the eyes of a mouse 
 under the white pent-house other high, starched cap. 
 
 " What is it, good Tricotrin ?" she asked, in that sweet, 
 singing voice thai makes the accent of many French peas- 
 ant women so lingering and charming on the ear ; the 
 voice that has in it all the contentment of the brave, 
 cheery spirit within. 
 
 "A Waif and Stray," answered Tricotrin. "Whether 
 from Mary Magdalene or Madame la Marquise is unknown, 
 probably will never he known. Curses go home to roost, 
 but chickens don't. The Waif is irrational, she thinks 
 a mouthful of black bread better than easy extinction 
 among the ferns. Claudine de Tencin has left a feminine 
 D'Alemberl in a moss-cradle; are you inclined to play 
 the pari of the foster-mother?" 
 
 Grand'mere Virelois listened to the harangue, compre- 
 hending it no more than if he had spoken in Hebrew, but 
 she was used to him, and thoughl nothing of that. 
 
 "What is it 1 am to see?" she asked again, peering 
 curiously with lively interest among the leaves. Before 
 he could answer she had caught sight of the child, with 
 vehement aina/.e and ecstatic wonder; the speech had 
 been as Hebrew to her, but the fact was substantial and 
 indisputable. Crossing herself in her surprise, with a 
 thousand expletives of pity and admiration, she bent her 
 little withered bu1 still active form beneath the rail, and 
 stooped and raised the foundling — raised her, but only a 
 little from the ground. 
 
 "Holy Virginl Tricotrinl" she cried, "look here I the 
 child is fastened Help me!" 
 
 He looked quickly as she called him, and .-aw that the 
 
 2
 
 14 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 withes of osiers and the tendrils of wild vine had been 
 netted so tightly around the limbs, tied here and there 
 with strong twine, that the infant could never have es- 
 caped from its resting-place ; it had evidently been so fast- 
 ened that the child might perish there unseen. His face 
 darkened as he looked. 
 
 " Murder, thei ! not mere neglect. Ah ! this is Madame 
 la Marquise at work, not Magdalene I" he murmured, as 
 he slashed the network right and left with his knife, and 
 set the Waif at liberty, while Grand'mere Virelois went 
 into a woman's raptures on the young beauty of the "pe- 
 tit Gesu," and a woman's vehement censures of a sister's 
 sin. 
 
 Tricotrin smoked resignedly, while her raptures and 
 her diatribes expended themselves; it was long before 
 either were exhausted. 
 
 "Don't abuse the mother," he interposed at last. 
 "Everybody gets rid of troublesome consequences when 
 they can. We've done no good in disturbing her arrange- 
 ments. We have only disinterred a living blunder that 
 she wished to bury." 
 
 "For shame, Tricotrin!" cried Grand'mere, quivering 
 with horror, while she folded the child in her withered 
 arms. "You can jest on such wickedness! You can ex- 
 cuse such a murderess !" 
 
 "Paf!" said Tricotrin, lightly blowing away a smoke 
 ring. " The whole system of creation is a sliding scale 
 of murders. All the world over life is only sustained by 
 life being extinguished." 
 
 Grand'mere Virelois, who was a pious little woman, 
 shuddered and clasped the child nearer. 
 
 "Ah — h — h! the vile woman! How will she see our 
 Lady's face on the last day ?" 
 
 " How she will meet the world she lives in is more the 
 question with her now, I imagine. An eminently saga- 
 cious woman ! and you and I are two sentimentalists to 
 interfere with her admirably artistic play. So you would 
 live, little one ? I wonder what you will make of what 
 you have got! A Jeremiad if you are a good silly 
 woman ; a Can-can-measure if you are a bad clever one. 
 Which will it be, I wonder?"
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 15 
 
 "Mon Dieu, it is an angel!" murmured Grand'mere, 
 "such hair, like silk, — such eyes, — such a rose for a 
 mouth ! And left to die of hunger and cold ! Ah, may 
 the Holy Mary find her out and avenge her crime, the 
 wicked one!" 
 
 "The vengeance will come quick if the sinner live in a 
 garret; it will limp very slowly if she shelter in a palace. 
 Well, since you take that child in your arms, do you mean 
 to find her the piece of bread the unphilosophic castaway 
 will want?" 
 
 "Will I not! if I go without myself. Oh the pretty 
 little child ! who could have left you ? Wherever the 
 mother dwells, may the good God hunt her down !" 
 
 " Deity as a detective ? Not a grand idea that. Yet 
 it is the heavenly office that looks dearest to man when it 
 is exercised upon others ! Grand'rnere, answer me. Are 
 you going to keep that Waif?" 
 
 The bright brown wrinked homely face of the good old 
 woman grew perplexed: 
 
 " Ah, my friend, — times are so bad, — it is hard work 
 to get a bit in the pot for one's self, and I stitch, stitch, 
 si itch, and spin, spin, spin, till I am blind many a time. 
 And yet the pretty child, — with no one to care for it! I 
 do not know? — she must be brought up hard if she come 
 1o me. Not a lentil even to put in the water and make 
 one fancy it is soup, in some days these hard times! But 
 do you know nothing more of her than this, Tricotrin?" 
 
 "Nothing-." 
 
 His luminous eyes met hers full, and frankly ; she knew 
 — all the nations where he wandered knew — that the 
 affirmative of Tricotrin was more sure than the truth of 
 most men's oaths. 
 
 " Then she must be abandoned here by some wretch to 
 starve unseen ?" 
 
 " It looks like it." 
 
 "Ah ! the little aii'j-el ! What does the barbarous brutal 
 
 hear! of Stone de.-erve ?" 
 
 "What it will gel if it lodge in (he breast that rags ami 
 tatters cover, — what it will not gel if it lodge in the breast 
 that heaves under silks and laces." 
 
 "True enough! But the good God will smite in his
 
 16 TRICOT RIN, 
 
 own time. Oh, little one, how could they ever forsake 
 thee ?" cried Grand'mere, caressing afresh the child who 
 was laughing and well content in her friendly and tender 
 hold. 
 
 "Then you are going to adopt her ?" 
 
 " Adopt her ? Mother of Jesus ! I dare not say that. 
 You know how I live, Tricotrin, — how hardly, though I 
 try to let it be cheerfully. If I had a little more she 
 should share it, and welcome ; but as it is, — not a mouth- 
 ful of chestnuts, even, so often ; not a drop of oil or a bit 
 of garlic sometimes weeks together ! She would be bet- 
 ter off at the Foundling Hospital than with me. Besides, 
 it is an affair for the Mayor of the commune." 
 
 " Certainly it is. But if the most notable Mayor can 
 do nothing except send this foundling among the others, 
 would you like better to keep her ?" 
 
 Grand'mere Virelois was silent and thoughtful a min- 
 ute; then her little bright eyes glanced up at him from 
 under their white linen roofing, with a gleam in them 
 that was between a smile and a tear. 
 
 " You know how I lost them, Tricotrin. One in Africa, 
 — one at the Barricades, — one crushed under a great mar- 
 ble block, building the Prefet's palace And then the 
 grandchild too, — the only little one, — so pretty, so frail, 
 so tender, killed that long bitter winter, because the food 
 was so scarce, like the young birds dead on the snow I 
 You know, Tricotrin ? — and what use is it to take her to 
 perish like him, though in her laughter and her caresses I 
 might think that he lived again?" 
 
 " I know!" said Tricotrin, softly with an infinite balm 
 of pity, and of the remembrance that was the sweetest 
 sympathy, in his voice. " Well — if M. le Maire can find 
 none to claim her, she shall stay with you, grand'mere, 
 and, as for the food, that shall not trouble you; I will 
 have a care of that." 
 
 " You? Holy Jesus ! how good !" 
 
 " Not in the least. I abetted her in her ignorant and 
 ridiculous desh'e to exchange a pleasant death among the 
 clematis for all the toil and turmoil of prolonged existences; 
 I am clearly responsible for my share in the folly. I cut 
 the meshes that her sagacious mother had knotted so
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. If 
 
 hardily ; I must accept my part in the onus of such un- 
 warrantable interference. You keep the Waif; and I 
 will be at the cost of her." 
 
 "But then, Tricotrin, you call yourself poor?" 
 
 "So I am. But one need not be a millionaire to be able 
 to get a few crumbs for that robin. The creature per- 
 sisted in living, and I humored her caprice. It was 
 mock humanity, paltry sentiment; Mistigri was partly 
 at fault, but I mostly. We must accept the results. 
 They will be disastrous probably — the creature is femi- 
 nine — but such as they are we must make the best of 
 them." 
 
 "Then you will adopt her?" 
 
 "Not in the least. But I will see she has something to 
 eat; and that you are able to give it her if her parents can- 
 not be found. Here is a gold bit for the present minute, 
 and when we know whether she is really and truly a Waif, 
 you shall have more to keep the pot over your fire full and 
 boiling. Adieu, grand'mere." 
 
 With that farewell, he, heedless of the voluble thanks 
 and praises that the old woman showered after him, and 
 of the outcries of the child who called to Mistigri, put his 
 pipe in his mouth, his violin in his pocket, and throwing 
 his knapsack over his shoulder brushed his way through 
 the forest growth. 
 
 "Mock-sentiment!" he said to himself. " You and I 
 have done a silly thing, Mistigri. What will come of it ?" 
 
 The monkey cracked a fair-looking fat nut which she 
 carried, with glee; and cast it forth in disgust: the hand- 
 some shell had dust and a maggot within it. 
 
 "Ah!" thought Tricotrin; taking the nut as a parable, 
 " will that young innocent-looking life yonder ever re- 
 ward us by corruption at its core?" 
 
 2*
 
 18 TRIC0TR1N, 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 There were two leagues between him and the near- 
 est town, and this wanderer little loved any contact with 
 the law or its officers, with the routine and details of citi- 
 zenship and communities. But chance had brought him, 
 and him alone, upon his little castaway. Bohemian 
 though he was, he would not neglect the duty that the 
 trouvaille, accidental and little welcome as it might be, 
 brought with it. An evil thing had been clearly done ; 
 the search for it lay with the administrators of civil laws. 
 He had no liking for them, and no faith in their sincerity 
 or their efficiency, but at the same time the foundling's 
 safety needed their interference. So he betook himself 
 straight through the vineyards across into the white long 
 road, poplar-fringed and without shadow, which led to the 
 small, still, gray town, whose peaked roofs and pointed 
 towers were rising far away out from a mass of autumn- 
 tinted orchards. 
 
 It was a rapid progress with his light swift tread, yet 
 creature after creature stopped him, either of his own will 
 or at their entreaty. 
 
 The women working in the fields; the vintagers at la- 
 bor among the grapes ; the meek-eyed cows looking over 
 the stone fences ; the team of bullocks drawing a timber 
 wagon wearily along; the children filling a pitcher at 
 the roadside waterspout; the old women resting under 
 the wayside crosses; — all had words from him, words 
 which left them brighter, braver, happier, than they had 
 been before those kindly eyes, shining so lustrous in the 
 sun, had fallen on them. Man and child, woman and ani- 
 mal, felt the influence of glance and word, as the languid 
 flowers feel the dew, as the shaded fruit feels the summer 
 warmth. 
 
 "What makes thee so merry, child? Has any one 
 given thee money?" asked an old woman, deaf and 
 blind, sitting knitting in the front of her vine-hung, rock-
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 19 
 
 built cottage, of the grandson, who came bounding to her 
 side. 
 
 The boy laughed gayly. 
 
 "No, grand'mere. Better still. Tricotrin spoke to me 
 as he passed!" 
 
 "Ah, ah! Tricotrin? I wish thou hadst brought him 
 hither. He would have mended thy mother's spinning- 
 wheel — and there are none like him for making dark 
 things look bright." 
 
 "He was in haste, grand'mere. And he had loitered 
 already, to look at Blase Turgot's sick mare." 
 
 "And cured her at a touch, — is it not?" 
 
 " Not quite that. He says he cannot work miracles, 
 though we think he can. But it is certain the beast let 
 him look at her wound as quietly as a lamb, — she who 
 kicks and bites at all who go near ! — and he has told Blase 
 Turgot how to get her well in a week." 
 
 The old blind knitter nodded her head several times, 
 with sapient comprehension. 
 
 "To be sure, to be sure! He can do what he likes. 
 If lie be the Wandering Jew, as they say, it was wise of 
 the jrood Gesu to bid him stay so long on earth." 
 
 "You think he is that, grand'inere?" whispered the 
 boy in awe, that subdued his mirth. 
 
 The old woman nodded her head again with meaning 
 emphasis. 
 
 "It is said," she answered significantly. "And I have 
 seen things " 
 
 "But the Jew was wicked, grand'mere ; and he is so 
 good?" objected the boy, who loved little to think that 
 the hand which had just tossed him a great golden-brown 
 pear was a hand accursed of his Church. 
 
 The grandmother laid her knitting down on her lap, 
 looking out at the sunshine as though her blind eyes saw 
 its beauty. 
 
 "Pierre, — it may well be that a life led in atonement 
 is the life nearest to God, and most blessed to men. Be- 
 sides," — and she lowered her voice as one who speaks 
 sacrilege fearingly, "besides — thou knowest he has no 
 love for the priests, has Tricotrin." 
 
 Pierre nodded, but he remained unconvinced; in his
 
 20 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 secret soul he had no love for the priests himself, finding 
 infinite weariness in his aves ; and, moreover, the true in- 
 stinct of the child felt, without reasoning on its instinct, 
 that the brightness and the strength, the genius and the 
 sweetness, of the life they spoke of were too unshadowed, 
 and too unsaddened, to be the mournful though hallowed 
 offsprings of remorse. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 "You get on ill, friend Turgot ? Of course you do. 
 You are surprised ? I am not. For a sou you give a sou's 
 worth. Ignoramus! how is that compatible with pros- 
 perity? You want a receipt for the philosopher's stone ? 
 I will give you one. Stint the corn to the peasant's mule, 
 and give overmeasure to the rich man's fat stalled beast. 
 Cheat the widow out of an egg every time she sells you 
 poultry, and throw a dainty tit-bit gratis into M. le Cure's 
 dinner. When the woman-tramp sits down famished give 
 her the mouldy bread, and when the Mayor of the Com- 
 mune calls for wine serve him your best and oiliest. As 
 soon as an inundation or a fire breaks out far away in 
 other provinces, let your name loom large in subscrip- 
 tion ; when the ragged children creep in to pick up the 
 odd barley-corns thrown to your barn-door fowls, drive 
 them away with a crack of the whip. Do this and more 
 likewise, Turgot, and you will find the philosopher's stone 
 turn you gold!" 
 
 Tavern-keeper Turgot, thus apostrophized, shook his 
 head pensively in a sorrowful perplexity, standing at the 
 porch of his good inn, the Golden Lion. 
 
 "Ah! it is well to talk, Tricotrin, and your lips ever 
 melt into laughter and irony. But you know me, — my 
 receipts are small, my compassion is enormous ; the 
 money runs, runs, runs, like a scampering mouse, and 
 never comes back again ! — what would you ? I have not 
 the talent to cheat. " 
 
 "And you became an inn-keeper ? Imbecile !"
 
 77777 STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 21 
 
 "An inn-keeper ? Eh, monsieur ! It is not only in an 
 inn one needs that talent to prosper." 
 
 " Oh no ; it is wanted in imperial cabinets as much as 
 in wayside ones ; and the bills of a country want doctor- 
 ing as much as the bills of a cafe 1 If you cannot cheat, 
 my Turgot " 
 
 "What can I do ?" 
 
 "Break stones. It is the general finale of honesty!" 
 
 The landlord, amused if not solaced, laughed a little 
 despite himself, and went within to attend the wants of 
 one of the few wanderers to the unprofitable though ad- 
 mirable Golden Lion, which stood so charmingly, close 
 under the shadow of a noble old brown church, and front- 
 ing the market-place, then all ablaze with rich autumnal 
 color, where the fruit-women sat with piles of melons, 
 and gourds, and late peaches, and early grapes, and heaps 
 of damp, sweet-smelling, gathered herbs. 
 
 Tricotrin left alone watched the market awhile, taking 
 an artist's pleasure in all that glow and glory of confused 
 hues, and thinking of the words of Antoninus, — ''What- 
 ever the seasons bear shall be joyful fruit to me, O Na- 
 ture; from thee are all things, in thee they subsist, to 
 thee they return." 
 
 For Nature was mother, mistress, daughter, deity, 
 idol, teacher, friend, all in one to Tricotrin; and in all 
 her protean shapes he loved her. 
 
 "What is it? All. What has it? Nothing," was the 
 fatuous line anent the third estate which once, through 
 Sieyes, convulsed a nation. 
 
 Much such a line expressed the social status of Tri- 
 cot rin, philosopher, poet, cosmopolitan, artist, democrat, 
 and wanderer. " Many-sided " as ever could be exacted 
 by Greek zeal for mortal perfection, he could be every- 
 thing by turns; but, for possessions, he had naught save 
 his Straduarius, his Mistigri, and a well-beloved At- 
 tavante's Dante. He had the genius of a Mozart, — 
 to make music only to a peasant's festival or his own 
 solitude; the eloquence of a Mirabeau, — to remain a 
 bohemian and lie called a scamp; the sagacity of a Tal- 
 leyrand, — to he worth no more in any pecuniary sense 
 than one of the vintagers at work among the grapes; the
 
 22 TRICOTRIN. 
 
 versatility of a Oichton, — to shed his talents' luster forth 
 on French hamlets' bridal feasts, Italian olive-growers' 
 frugal suppers, Spanish muleteers' camp-fires, Irish cot- 
 ters' wakes and revels, Paris laborers' balls and wine- 
 bouts ; the wisdom of a Boethius, — to laugh at life with 
 the glorious mirth of Aristophanes, to need as little in 
 his daily wants as Louis Cornaro, to love all pleasure 
 with the Burgundian jest of a Piron. Was this the reck- 
 less waste of marvelous gifts thrown away like diamonds 
 cast on a sea ? or was it a brave, joyous, wise adoption 
 of a life without care and warmed by the sunlight of 
 nature, careless of the gas glare of fame ? 
 
 The world thought one way; the bohemian the other. 
 "Judge no life until its close has been seen," says the 
 sage; hence it had not yet been proved whether the 
 world or the bohemian was most right. 
 
 That he was Tricotrin, — a most markedly distinctive 
 personality moreover, — was all that any one knew of 
 him. It was enough for the people who loved him ; and 
 they stretched from Danube to Guadalquiver, from Liffey 
 to Tiber, from Euphrates to the Amazon, while in France, 
 the land of his adoption if not of his birth, the hand 
 which should have dared to touch him would have been 
 bolder than the boldest of the iron hands which have 
 seized and swayed her scepter. 
 
 His life was a poem ; often an ironic, often an erotic, 
 often a sublime one ; a love-ode one day, a rhymed satire 
 the next, now light as Suckling's verse, now bitter as 
 Juvenal's, oftenest a Bacchic chant, or a Hudibrastic 
 piece of mockery, but not seldom a noble Homeric epic. 
 Life was a poem with him: he had as little sympathy 
 with those who made it a wailing Miserere of regret as 
 with those who made it a Monologue of self. 
 
 He stood looking out now on the fruit-market, enjoying 
 its profusion of color as other men enjoy wine; and taking 
 a peach from the basket of one of the girl-sellers, as pretty 
 a little brown creature in the archness of her sixteen years 
 as ever Florian or Greuze caressed ere transferring to 
 eclogue or easel. 
 
 " Have you had a good time all this summer, Ninette ?" 
 he asked her as they loitered in the deep oak porch of the 
 old Golden Lion.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAFF AND STRAY. 23 
 
 "Ah yes!" answered Ninette, ever loquacious, thrust- 
 ing her tanned plump hands deep into the coolness of 
 the vine-leaves as she rearranged her fruit. " You 
 know that the chateau is open — bought by a great for- 
 eign Tord ?" 
 
 "Indeed ? And you have sold much there?" 
 " Oh enormously 1" cried Ninette. " The household has 
 taken so much, though the seigneur is only just there. 
 And they have made the place like a fairy palace, — mon 
 Dieu! It is so beautiful, so beautiful; that old ruined 
 desolate Villiers is now like a dream, Tricotrin! Valen- 
 tin works in the gardens, and I have been over it once, 
 before milord came; — and once since they let me look 
 through a grating, when he was at his banquet, with a 
 king's state all about him. And he is so handsome — 
 that English noble! " 
 
 'O' 
 
 And Ninette gave a little quick sigh as she replaced 
 her peaches in their green nest. Tricotrin smiled, with a 
 slight touch of pity in the amusement of the smile. 
 
 "Leave the noble alone, Ninette! "His hand would 
 only touch your soft cheek to soil it. The kiss of the 
 eagle's beak kills the wild wood-dove. Do not let a 
 glance of the aristocrat make you cold to poor Valentin." 
 
 Ninette flushed ruddily, like one of her own peaches ; 
 but she laughed with a frank, open laugh, that reassured 
 Tricotrin on the fear he had entertained for her peace. 
 
 "Oh! there is no thought of that folly! Do you fancy 
 I am such a little fool ! Milord Estmere has never 
 looked at me even! and they §ay he is so proud, — proud 
 as a Bourbon !" 
 
 "Estmere!" — he repeated the name rapidly with an 
 eager intonation. 
 
 "That is what they call him. He is a great man; he 
 is nothing to me!*' said Ninette, pettishly, shouldering 
 her fruit afresh and going off to her stall in as near an 
 approach to bad temper as the bright brunette could 
 know. 
 
 Tricotrin's eyes followed her, without seeing her, to the 
 tawny leathern awning under which her vivacious face 
 gleamed so prettily: the look of interest and of eagerness 
 was still upon his features, and the smile about his mouth
 
 24 TR ICO TRUST, 
 
 had a certain sadness in it foreign to the careless, happy, 
 humorous laughter common there. 
 
 "Estmere!" he repeated to himself. The name re- 
 called many memories. 
 
 "Estmere at this old chateau!" he thought as he 
 moved away from the Lion d'Or and through the 
 checkered morning light in which the people of the little 
 town were thronging, some to market, some to matins. 
 "That is droll. He comes here in the vintage, — as if 
 Beaumanoir, in those old cool green woods were not 
 enough for one man! Has he aught to do with that 
 little Waif, I wonder ? No ; not wittingly at least. Earl 
 Eustace has none of these follies, and, if he had, would 
 never drive a woman to desperation ; such desperation 
 as must have driven that one, whoever she be, to such a 
 deed. He was betrayed, most foully, but he is no be- 
 trayer." 
 
 As the thoughts, disjointed and vague, passed through 
 his mind, he made his way across the market-place, for 
 once too absorbed in reflection and in memory to bid 
 farewell to Ninette, or laugh an adieu with the dark, 
 handsome matrons, and the old hardfeatured market- 
 women, who were chaffering and chattering over the 
 price of poultry and the ripeness of melons, while the 
 Angelus rang from the belfry. That heavier and graver 
 fit of musing lasted till he was out of the rampart-walls 
 that still circled the small town with their relics of 
 feudal fortifications, their ditches full of bulrushes and 
 great campanula-flowers, their stones covered with lichens 
 and with ivy. Then, when he was once more on the 
 highway, with the noble champagne country stretching 
 in vineyards, and rising in hills, around him, Tricotrin 
 shook himself, as a big dog will shake his curls, and 
 shook the alien depression off him; laughed his own 
 mellow laughter at himself, and walked away at a swift, 
 light pace, singing in the richest and most tuneful of 
 tenors Beranger's 
 
 "Diogene, 
 Sous ton manteau 
 Libre et content je ris et bois sans gene I"
 
 TEE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 25 
 
 till the browsing herds lifted their heads at the song, 
 and the vine-laborers in the distance caught the air and 
 hummed it back again, saying to each other, "Tricotrin 
 must be near; you hear his DiogeneV 
 
 He went back to the place where the day previous he 
 had lighted on the Waif. 
 
 The crumbled tower, so old that its history was lost in 
 the days of Philip the Fair, with all the greenery cluster- 
 ing round its masonry, and the stream splashing under 
 its base, had been abandoned to the bats, the owls, the 
 hares, and to the widowed seventy year old Mauon 
 Virelois, who lived in its shelter very hardly, as she had 
 said, maintaining life in her by sheer dint of the coura- 
 geous, patient, hopeful thrift of her desolate old age. 
 
 The tower was approached by a perilous flight of stone 
 steps which led straight into its interior; Tricotrin 
 mounted them quickly, being as lithe and swift as a 
 chamois, and entered the chamber. It was the only one 
 that could be used for human occupance, but clean, and 
 brightened with French skill, and with the radiance of 
 the autumnal creepers that forced themselves through the 
 crevices and grew profusely over the inner walls. Jn the 
 center of the gray room, moreover, the old woman herself 
 made a point of picturesque color, where she sat with 
 an orange kerchief pinned under her chin, and the sun on 
 the dark blue serge of her gown, as she spun on and on 
 at her spinning-wheel, looking up with a cheery smile as 
 he came to her. 
 
 "Well, my good friend? what news of the little one?" 
 
 " No news,*' answered Tricotrin. " Nobody knows any- 
 thing aboul her, and to the besl of my belief never will. 
 I have told whal we saw to the Mayor— -good, stupid 
 soul — and the police are on the lookout about it, but as 
 yet there is no clew to who dropped her there. She 
 must have been laid down very early at sunrise, before 
 anybody was stirring 
 
 "No doubt! Ali! the wicked wretches"— and grand'- 
 mere whirled her wheel with furious mutterings of hor- 
 ror and imprecation upon the unknown hands of the in- 
 fant's deserters. 
 
 Tricotrin listening amusedly, let her wrath expend it-
 
 26 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 self uninterrupted, while at the same moment an inner 
 door that stood a little open was acting as an oaken frame 
 to the subject of their speech, who stood like some old- 
 world painter's cherub, with a large plume of white lilies 
 in one hand, the other pushing back from her brow the 
 clusters of her golden curls. 
 
 Tricotrin surveyed her in silence, and she surveyed 
 him, — a singularly lovely child, with great, dark, medi- 
 tative eyes, and limbs like a sculptured Cupid's scarcely 
 concealed by the little loose linen shirt she wore, dropping 
 off her snowy chest. 
 
 "Sol there you are, my friend? Are you not ashamed 
 to face me?" said Tricotrin, at length. "How obstinate 
 is your sex! Now, if you were heiress to an empire, or 
 if the fate of some great race depended on you, the first 
 puff of cold wind would kill you, just out of the contra- 
 dictory malice of things. A mere unowned bagatelle, a 
 smuggled trifle of straw, a nameless, purposeless bit of 
 drift-wood, without even your origin marked on you, a 
 spurious coin without date or stamp of the mint, you 
 flourish just because you are wanted no more than a 
 stray mongrel puppy, and are of not so much conse- 
 quence as a lost bunch of keys. Are you not ashamed of 
 yourself?" 
 
 "Tricotrin," murmured the grand'mere reproachfully, 
 "how can you talk so to that little angel, when you know 
 your heart is full of pity for the " 
 
 " Waif," interrupted Tricotrin. "Certainly I pity her. 
 I pity every new creature tumbled, nilly-willy, into this 
 ill-managed world. Besides, she must grow up a bad 
 woman. Born under a contraband flag, there will be 
 nothing for her but to join the pirates. She will not be 
 to blame. The minute she was born the law drew a bar 
 between her and the sunlight. She must, of necessity, 
 steal the very few sugar-plums she will ever get, in the 
 darkness of lawlessness. She is branded w'ithout de- 
 serving it. When she is old enough to see that ugly, 
 unmerited brand, stamped there for no sin of her own, 
 she will be one of a thousand if she do not do something 
 to justify the scorch of the iron." 
 
 The child, who had stood as if listening, gathering
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 27 
 
 confidence, sprang, in a sudden sunny impulse, on to the 
 old woman's lap, and held up her lilies to Tricotrin. 
 
 " 'Garde! si zoli!" 
 
 Tricotrin nodded assent to the lisped words. 
 
 " You would intend to say that though you are born 
 without sugar-plums you contrive to console yourself 
 with flowers; which is symbolical of the fact that nature 
 is often kind to what man kicks? I concede the propo- 
 sition. Nature is a shocking Socialist; that is why she 
 is shut out from forum, school, and pulpit. She is a 
 white-robed Hypatia, whom the saints stone, lest her 
 teachings should unseat them, — and there is no venom 
 like the venom of the Cyrils of the Creeds." 
 
 "Mon Dieu! to bewilder the precious infant with all 
 that wisdom!" murmured grand'mere, concluding that it 
 must be wisdom by a rule that often actuates the world's 
 acceptance of unproved sagacity, — namely, that it was 
 completely unintelligible. "Is she not lovely, the little 
 darling? What a woman she will make!" 
 
 "Humph!" said Tricotrin, musingly; "she is well 
 enough. Beauty, to a woman who has no name, no 
 father, and no money, is much like the bloom to an un- 
 nctted peach — only a signal for the wasps to sting, and 
 the flies to fasten, and the thieves to steal. Had she 
 been ugly it would not have been such a sin against the 
 future to have rescued her. You, and I, and Mistigri 
 did a great wrong. I am afraid we owe her some- 
 thing." 
 
 "And you will help me to keep her, Tricotrin, if 
 nothing is found?" cried the old woman, caressing the 
 child's golden head. 
 
 " What does she call herself?" he asked, parrying the 
 question. 
 
 "Only that one word, Viva." 
 
 "Viva? .Not a bad name for a little pirate, and that 
 is what she will turn, no doubt, out of vengeance for 
 having been smuggled into this rough existence, like a 
 bale of silk smuggled on to a rocky shore." 
 
 Tricotrin smoked in silence some moments, contem- 
 plating the Waif, who. leaving her protectress with all 
 the ungrateful vivacious caprice of childhood, had thrown
 
 28 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 herself down within the doorway, laughing and playing 
 with Mistigri, who had no aversion to a game at any 
 time. She was perfectly happy now, whatever the future 
 held in store. In her young form life was a rosebud just 
 thrust forth into the light of the world; if in the bud a 
 canker festered it would not be seen until leaf after leaf 
 should have unclosed, and fallen beyond recall. 
 
 The old dame glanced first at one, then at the other; 
 and set her spinning-wheel whirling again. She had a 
 certain awe of Tricotrin; holding the credence prevalent 
 in her country that he was the Wandering Jew, could 
 turn dead leaves into gold at pleasure, could heal the 
 sick and smite the healthy, call down storms and call up 
 whirlwinds, become invisible and be always omniscient. 
 So she did not dare attempt an interruption to his musing, 
 but left him to his own thoughts, — thoughts ranging over 
 a career filled with the mirth of Piron, the love of color 
 and of fragrance of Dufresny, the philosophies of Diderot, 
 the adventurous fortunes of Le Clos. 
 
 His erratic, careless, glorious open-air life was mellow 
 as good wine, and radiant as noon; yet he too, like the 
 child, was a Waif and Stray. It moved him with a cer- 
 tain sympathy for her, which tempted him not to cast 
 her forth on chance. For the fragile porcelain of a female 
 child's existence might perish on the rapids of that stream 
 of hazard, where the strong gold-dashed bronze of a bold 
 male life could float and vanquish. 
 
 Suddenly, still with his attention on her, he drew out 
 his violiu and touched the strings. It had belonged to 
 Blanchini, and had often lulled Pauline Borghese to 
 slumber, while its sounds floated over the orange grove 
 at Rome. Tricotrin bent his head over it, aud played one 
 of those divine melodies of Lulli's, such as used to echo 
 down the alleys of Versailles, and breathe over the 
 voluptuous limbs of Coustou's goddesses. 
 
 He was a master of its melody, such as an age sees 
 only once or twice in its generation. Laughing like 
 some troop of revelei*s, — sobbing like some life worn out 
 by pain, — rich as a carol of choristers' voices, — sad as 
 the moaning of winds through the sea-pines, — the music 
 followed his will as the souls that he moves follow tho
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 29 
 
 moods of a great poet, who wakes tears or raillery at his 
 wish, and reaches now to heaven, and penetrates now 
 into the darkness of hell. 
 
 As he thus played, the child, lying in a breadth of sun- 
 shine," glanced up and listened. Gradually the lilies 
 dropped from her hands, her playmate was neglected, 
 her face flushed with wondering awe, her eyes grew 
 humid, her mouth parted in breathless delight. She 
 never moved or made a sound, but heard, spell-bound to 
 the last. 
 
 He laid the instrument aside and looked at her. 
 
 " You have a soul — a good deal of it for a female thing; 
 though I am half afraid you have only just sufficient to 
 get you into mischief. You will never be a saint, a 
 martyr, or a heroine, my friend : but I should not be 
 surprised if you develop into a Pompadour or a Cabar- 
 rus. Well, that was your lottery. If you had gone on 
 playing I would have had nothing to do with you; as 
 you answer to my music I will have something. I do 
 not want you; you will be a nuisance; but saving your 
 life is almost as bad as giving it you, and, after your un- 
 known parents, I am the most guilty person toward you. 
 I have not much for mvself; I shall not have much for 
 you; but, if nothing better come up for you, if nothing 
 be learned of your rights, we will see what we can do to 
 let Ghrand'mere Virelois keep you, since she has such a 
 taste for the trouble." 
 
 "The Holy Virgin bless youl" cried the old woman. 
 "You will adopt her? " 
 
 "Far from it. No wise man binds himself. Though I 
 am here to-day, I may be in the moon to-morrow. Life 
 is a game of chance; so much the better. We should he 
 stilled if chance did not now and then kick a throne into 
 space, and give the accolade to a beggar, to redress the 
 balance and clear the atmosphere. Adopt her? No. But, 
 as I said, I will help you to keep her. She will not cost 
 much vet awhile; and t lit re maybe sillier ways of spend- 
 in-- coins than in floating a Waif. — though I doubt it. 
 And I do not expect much of her future. She has a soul ; 
 but female creatures with yellow locks, and mouths like 
 
 '3*
 
 30 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 scarlet japom'ca buds, always kill any soul in them they 
 may have been born with as rapidly as possible when 
 once they are launched on the world " 
 
 "Ah hush, Tricotrin!" murmured grand'mere, en- 
 treatingly. "All that I can do to teach her aright I will. 
 You know that." 
 
 " Surely I do. But the teachers most likely to get 
 hold of such a woman as the Waif will be, are two devils, 
 — Vanity and the Desire of Riches. If you know how to 
 exorcise them, Amie Virelois, you know what has beaten 
 all the dealers in new creeds since the world began. 
 Mademoiselle Yival — you will not like Life. 'Plus aloes 
 quam mellis habet,' — specially for your sex. All I say is, 
 when you find out how much better it would have been 
 to have embraced a golden opportunity, and died among 
 the clematis, do me the justice to remember that it was 
 your own obstinacy, and no lack of my good counsel, 
 that made you prolong your existence." 
 
 With which farewell address Tricotrin turned to the 
 old peasant, and in a few serious phrases explained to 
 her the total ignorance prevalent through the district of 
 any clew, or even suspicion, that could lead them to 
 identify the deserters of the child, and settled to provide 
 her with the small sum necessary for the young creat- 
 ure's maintenance, so long as nothing occurred to make 
 it possible to enforce her maintenance from those on whom 
 its duty rested. In the absence of this, the foundling, 
 without him, would have gone to public charity. Partly 
 out of the sympathetic compassion instinctive in him, 
 chiefly out of the knowledge of the poor old woman's 
 poverty and desolation, which his assistance would 
 lighten and the infant's presence enliven, he promised 
 to charge himself with the cost of the child, so long 
 at least as nothing should be discovered of her rightful 
 guardians. 
 
 Grand'mere Yirelois knew well that the bond would 
 never be broken, and that the money given her would 
 come as surely as the spring or the autumn came ; 
 though she knew him also well enough to be aware that 
 it was a thousand chances to one if he ever troubled him- 
 self to see again the thing that he protected. She knew
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 31 
 
 his ways, arid knew something also of his life, though it 
 was clothed to her in that garb of fable, with which 
 peasant superstition and exaggeration surrounded it. 
 
 The child, while her destiny was balanced and de- 
 cided, played with Mistigri ; something stilled by the 
 effect the music had taken on her, but carelessly happy 
 as only childhood can be, catching at the quivering sun- 
 rays on the floor with her hands, and burying her bright 
 head in among her abundance of wood-lilies. 
 
 Tricotrin, as he passed away amid the old woman's 
 thanks and praises, paused a moment beside his Waif, as 
 the monkey leaped up to his shoulder. 
 
 "Mademoiselle Viva, — I wonder if you will ever make 
 me repent having taken you out of your clematis 
 coffin?" 
 
 -Mademoiselle Viva laughed where she lay in the sun- 
 shine, pulling the snowy leaves impatiently to pieces of 
 the lilies which she had found so fair, that she might 
 reach their golden stamens. 
 
 "A bad omen!" satd Tricotrin. "You are changeable 
 and you are ungrateful : — of course you are, though, being 
 feminine; you like that gold glitter, and do not care how 
 the lilies die, so long as you get it. How early your sex 
 shows itself!" 
 
 And with that he went out and down the crumbling 
 stairway, singing his Diogine. 
 
 "What fools we are!" he thought. "Love freedom 
 how we will, we are sure to bind ourselves with some 
 unwelcome tie — a mistress or a spaniel, an Art or a 
 Waif! Idiotcy! The child would have gone among the 
 foundlings and grown up into a grisette or a nun; and 
 now — she will look like a princess, ami he reared like a 
 peasant, and lease me I dare say all my life longl" 
 
 But pity, rather lor the Lonely tender-souled old woman, 
 than for the stray child, had moved him to make the 
 promise, and he would not draw hack from it. Besides, 
 one of the few sorrows of his joyous life had been when 
 a young mothei had lain dead in his arms with all her 
 rich gitana's beaut} , colorless and breal bless, like a broken 
 pomegranate flower, and with hi.- son of a day's life dead 
 too in her bosom; for their Bakes he had pity on this de-
 
 32 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 serted thing, who also would be called a child of sin, who 
 also might have vainly striven to find warmth at a heart 
 whose pulse was still. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The woodland nook in which he had found the Waif, 
 and in which the old tower stood, was a piece of outlying 
 forest-land, between the vineyards of one of the finest 
 champagne districts of central France and the park of the 
 chateau of Villiers, the chief, indeed for many leagues the 
 only great demesne in those parts. It was a noble ancient 
 place, that had once belonged to one of the highest races 
 of the country, had passed through many owners' hands 
 since the days of the Eighty-Nine, and had of late been 
 purchased by the object of Ninette's homage, under 
 whose domination it had again arisen to its long lost 
 grandeur. 
 
 The park was like to that of St. Cloud; avenue rising 
 above avenue on a steep hill-side, and Tricotrin ascended 
 its broad winding roads beneath their succeeding aisles of 
 trees, the Beranger chant rising also higher and higher, 
 like the song of a lark, as he mounted the terraced 
 slopes. 
 
 These stretched high and far; the forest and park of 
 Villiers were of enormous extent, with the river flashing 
 through them, on which the chateau itself looked down 
 where it crowned the crest of the hill. ' Some two hours 
 of swift walking brought him to the summit, and into 
 the private gardens and avenues more immediately close 
 to the house, which was itself a gray picturesque Renais- 
 sance pile, with many towers, many angles, much rich 
 carving, much beautiful alternation of light and of 
 shade. 
 
 He pushed open a gilded scrolled gate, looking up at 
 the blazonry on the shield of its archway ; — it was that
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 33 
 
 of the arms of the foreign house of Estmere. He smiled 
 as he saw them; and went through into the gardens. 
 
 A young man 'was at work among their gorgeous 
 autumnal hlossoms. 
 
 "Good day, Valentin," said Tricotrin, loitering a mo- 
 ment. "So you have a new lord'/" 
 
 "A very good one," smiled the youth. "There is no 
 lack of work here now, summer or winter." 
 
 "Good. And you'have given up Paris?" 
 
 "I have, monsieur. I cannot be better than well off; 
 and I am well off here." 
 
 " Quite right. It is a mistake, that over-centralization. 
 Every soul rushing to the capital, and the country left a 
 desert, — it is as if all the blood stayed in the heart: how 
 would the sapless limbs move then? By-the-way, — why 
 do you not marry Ninette?" 
 
 The young man colored, and destroyed a head of 
 azaleas. 
 
 "Ninette is coy, monsieur, — she has seen these grand 
 people here " 
 
 "Pooh! Because you give the child time to think 
 about them] She loves you, Valentin, but she wants to 
 be more entreated to say so. Women scorn a timid lover; 
 though shyness is the best tribute to their own power, 
 you can never get them to appreciate it," 
 
 The gardener laughed and flushed with pleasure. 
 
 "Ah! you know howl adore her,— -the little coquette! 
 You know how my one desire is to win her as my 
 wife!" 
 
 "Well, — tell her that boldly; you will conquer her. 
 Give her a wedding-ring and a hearth of her own, and 
 she will think no more; of the big people up at the 
 chateau." 
 
 Valentin laughed happily. 
 
 "Ah I if 1 only thought she cared for me " 
 
 "Simpleton! a man is not worth his salt who cannot 
 get the woman he fancies. Bu1 if yon let little Ninette 
 think you only like her as well as you like Manon, and 
 Rose, and Jacqueline, and Marthe, and all the girls of 
 the village, why — of course she will begin to ponder on 
 the 'beaux messieurs <l<>rr.<' up here."
 
 34 TRTCOTRTN, 
 
 Having left that suggestion to bear harvest in the good 
 gardener's simple sincere soul, Tricotrin went onward; 
 it was his way to scatter seeds of peace, and content- 
 ment, and reconciliation, and good counsel, in this fash- 
 ion, without seeming to do more than cast light words 
 most idly. 
 
 Valentin was the little peach-seller's first love; her 
 fancy had subsequently been caught by the glitter of a 
 life she could never reach, but Tricotrin knew enough of 
 the village coquette's honest child-nature, through all her 
 vanity, to know that her heart remained true to her early 
 lover, and that she was of the temper, when once under 
 the shade of her own vine, in the house of a husband, 
 never to concern herself but about her fowls, and her 
 flowers, and her Sunday earrings, and her spun linen, 
 and the young children, who would play among the scar- 
 let beans and yellow gourds of her garden. So, — a 
 homely, innocent, pleasant life would be led in the fair 
 grape country, instead of another lost one being added 
 to the shoals -of painted, drunken, ghastly, greedy lives, 
 in the dens of Paris. 
 
 Through the gardens, with their statues gleaming 
 white through groves of yew and cypress, Tricotrin 
 passed on till he came close under the walls of the cha- 
 teau, towering high above him, quaint, majestic, medie- 
 val, while from the peaked roof floated a standard, with 
 the arms and coronet of the Estmeres on it. 
 
 He glanced up at the banner, then looked through a 
 veil of flowering creepers that hung over a window near 
 him; — a mullioned window, partially open, so that the 
 chamber within could be seen. It was the old banquet- 
 ing-room of the building; freshly restored, with rich 
 deep hues of purple, and the soft gleam of dead gold, on 
 panels, and floor, and ceiling; a splendid apartment, with 
 its vast central table furnished forth as meals are set for 
 princes. There were half a dozen servants, waiting noise- 
 lessly, but there was only one guest for them to serve. 
 And he, as Tricotrin first saw him, made a motion with 
 his hand for his attendants to withdraw, and as he was 
 left alone sank back in his seat with a weary languor, his 
 noon-breakfast scarcely tasted. He was a man some few
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 35 
 
 years younger than the one who watched him, very tall, 
 Very fair, of a noble, thoughtful, northern beauty of feat- 
 ure, though his countenance was very grave, and shad- 
 owed with a look that had a restless, bitter, infinitely 
 regretful melancholy on it. 
 
 lie looked like a man on whom some heavy blow had 
 fallen, and on whom its effects still endured, though striven 
 against with all the strength and pride of a haughty and 
 naturally tranquil temperament. 
 
 Tricotrin stood unseen, watching him in his solitude; 
 and his eyes grew full of pity as he did so. He saw that 
 this aristocrat amid his greatness was as weary and as 
 desolate as a royal prisoner of state. 
 
 "Ah, Estinere I" he murmured, half aloud. "After all, 
 how much happier am 1 than you!" 
 
 An impulse moved him to go within, to touch the hand 
 that lay so listlessly beside the dishes of gold, to break 
 the solitude that amid so much grandeur was lonely as 
 peasants never are lone. 
 
 But though of a nature usually impulsive, he restrained 
 the desire now; he remained quiet while gazing through 
 the screen of foliage. 
 
 "I wish I could avenge him," he thought. "Four 
 years have gone by, but the poisoned wound rankles 
 still." 
 
 lie turned away at length, after a long look, through 
 which the man he watched never changed his position, 
 but sat motionless and lost in thought, in the midst of his 
 painted and velvet-hung chamber, on whose magnificence 
 the noon sunlight of France was streaming. 
 
 "Ah, Mistigri !" murmured Tricotrin, as he passed out 
 down the gardens, the one end of his visit thither accom- 
 plished. ".Mine is the better choice. He is a prince in 
 the purples, but under his ermine throbs the jagged nerve, 
 wrenched by a vile wife's dishonor. You and 1 are hap- 
 pier, little one. [fhe have his grapes in a jeweled dish, 
 we take ours out of their own vine-leaves, fresh from the 
 vintage-feast. II' he drink his burgundy under the shadow 
 of costly frescoes, we drink ours under the green roofing 
 of summer trees. If he have delicate patrician cheeks 
 and hair diamond-studded to toy with, we have clicks
 
 36 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 that bloom from the sun and the wind, and hair wreathed 
 with the forest bowers. If he be great — we enjoy ! Ours 
 is the better portion, Mistigri. The only man happy is 
 the man who is free. And the only man free is the man 
 who is at once philosopher and wanderer. ' Sans pays, 
 sans prince, et sans lois!' His country, the world, — his 
 prince, his art, — his law, his conscience and his choice !" 
 
 And he went on, chanting once more the gay chant of 
 the Diogene through the wooded slopes and down the 
 terraces, while the distant joyous echo of his voice reached 
 faintly to the ear of the solitary noble who sat within. 
 
 He heard it ; and drew a deep breath that was almost 
 a sigh. 
 
 "How carelessly that song sounds 1" he thought. 
 " Some vintager or forester, I suppose, — but surely a man 
 who is happy!" 
 
 And the great man in his palace envied the careless 
 singer. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 By the side of the Loire, on a wooded rock, stood a 
 quaint little old building, picturesque, aged, cloister-like 
 yet cottage-like, with an abundance of ivy clothing it 
 from roof to base, in which so manv thousand birds made 
 their home that in the early summer the place seemed one 
 mass of fluttering wings and joyous voices. Half of it 
 had been knocked to ruins in the Fronde; the other half 
 was worth very little, save to artists who loved its quaint 
 nooks and angles, and the splendor of the panorama which 
 stretched before it, of river, hill, and vineyard, with the 
 towers and spires of Blois in the golden distance. 
 
 One of its gables held an oval deep-embrasured win- 
 dow, whose glass had long since perished and been re- 
 placed by coils of ivy hanging down across the aperture. 
 The oval hole was high in air, in the topmost stones of 
 the coping, beneath its red high sloping roof; but it served
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 3? 
 
 like a frame for a young face that looked out from it very 
 often. The face of a woman-child of fifteen ; a face with 
 the richest of fair tints, with a beautiful scarlet mouth 
 whose corners curled upward, with great dark eyes that 
 were black with the soft glowing darkness of the ante- 
 lope's, with a profusion of fair hair tossed backward, and 
 tied with a blue fillet, to fall all over her shoulders at its 
 own will. 
 
 It was a very lonely part of the riverside; Blois was 
 only visible on a sunny day, and there were nothing hut 
 vineyards and peasant-proprieties for leagues around. 
 Yet there had been no lack of the warmest, if not the 
 most flattering, speakers, to tell the child of her beauty. 
 
 The old ferryman who would let her float for hours in 
 his broad lumbering boat; the country people who when 
 they passed her on their way to market would check their 
 mules and give her their largest eggs, brightest fruit, 
 sweetest honey; the vine laborers who would look up to 
 catch a glance from her as they went to their work among 
 the grapes; all who came near her caressed her, spoiled 
 her, lavished on her all the kindliness and enthusiasm of 
 their cation, and christened her wherever she went "Le 
 sourire de la Loire" — " La Fille des Fees." A nd t he smile 
 of the beautiful laughing river, beside whose banks all her 
 short life had passed, seemed caught on her face in its 
 sunlight and beauty where it looked out from the gloom 
 of the oval embrasure. 
 
 She was listening with eager expectant pleasure, in the 
 stillness of the summer afternoon. All was quiet : her 
 friend the ferryman was mending an old brown sail under 
 the shade of his cottage, and the boat itself was motion- 
 less, casting a long shadow across the water. Some way 
 off, some children in little blue blouses were playing under 
 a sycamore with a greal gourd they could hardly roll. 
 Very far down the stream there was a barge, drifting 
 lazily, with a load of hay, on which the men who had 
 mown it were stretched sound asleep in the calm and the 
 heat. 
 
 At every point where her eyes glanced there was a 
 picture of exquisite color, and light, and variety. 
 
 Bui the scene in its loveliness was so old to her, SO fa- 
 
 4
 
 38 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 miliar, that it was scarcely lovely; only monotonous. 
 With all a child's usual ignorant impatience of the joys 
 of the present — -joys so little valued at the time, so futilely 
 regretted in the after-years — she was heedless of the 
 hour's pleasure, she was longing for what had not come. 
 
 Round a bend in the river a rowing boat came in sight. 
 The long straight stroke of oars in powerful hands sent 
 the little thing swiftly forward with pleasant and even 
 pace. At times it loitered while the rower let his sculls 
 lie at rest and gazed in peaceful indolence down the rush 
 of the stream. At times he brought it onward, gently 
 and easily, down the rapid current through the hot and 
 fragrant day, between the landscapes of the vine hung 
 banks. Every now and then, from under the shade of his 
 sombrero, his eyes glanced up at the distant cottage 
 smothered in its chestnuts and its cork-trees; and with 
 the ripple of the waters his voice sung to the rhythm of a 
 Venice barcarolle, a rowing song of Turkish boatmen. 
 The Allah hu! of the Golden Horn went echoing softly 
 over the width of the Loire ; and the bargemen looked up 
 from their indolent rest in the hay, and the children left 
 off their game with the gourd, and the old ferryman 
 dropped the heavy end of his sail to shade his eyes from 
 the sun with one hand, as they heard the song, and saw 
 the boat, and smiled with one accord: — for it was Trico- 
 trin. 
 
 The child saw and heard too ; laughed with delight ; 
 balanced herself with an upward agile spring till her foot 
 rested on the stone coping of her window-seat; and leap- 
 ing lightly down off the jutting stones that formed a sort 
 of crazed and crumbling irregular stairway from her case- 
 ment to the ground, ran as fleetly as a young deer down 
 the slope to the river-bank, and reached it just as the 
 boat-keel grated there. 
 
 "Viva!" 
 
 He passed his hand over her hair with a tender caress 
 as she threw her arms about him with the abandonment 
 and welcome of an ardent, graceful child, lifting her lovely 
 mouth, like a red camellia bud, up for the kiss which he 
 gave it lightly. 
 
 "Viva!" he cried, "of a surety you have the most in-
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 39 
 
 herent pertinacity in living of any creature ever born! 
 Nothing but a chamois — or a Waif — could have sprung 
 down that wall by the jutting stones. You have a mar- 
 velous trick of thriving on what would have killed any 
 other. Still — tant va la cruche a Veau, etc. Take care!" 
 
 Viva laughed up in his face. 
 
 "If I had fallen, you would have been there ! What 
 matter then?" 
 
 "But — I may not be 'there' always! Do not lean on 
 a reed, little one. To depend on another is to walk upon 
 crutches : and the best crutch is but a sorry exchange for 
 sound limbs. Ah ! Mistigri wants to get at you ; take 
 her. And you have been well all this while?" 
 
 "Why! I am always well!" laughed the child in the 
 exultant security of her own perfect strength and health. 
 "I do not think I know what pain is. But for what a 
 long time you have been away ! I thought you would 
 never come I" 
 
 Tricotrin shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 "Mignonne, — I cannot let even a Waif be a tie. I have 
 enjoyed myself; and so have you, I do not doubt?" 
 
 "Oh, I enjoy myself," answered the child, with a cer- 
 tain disdain for the fact. "But Adele says it is 'provin- 
 cial' to enjoy." 
 
 "And who may this kill-joy and cynic of an Adele be, 
 I pray you?" 
 
 "She is at the convent; — a noble's daughter," said the 
 Waif, still clinging to him with one hand, while she held 
 Mistigri with the other. " But I forgot — you must be 
 tired; you must want to eat?" 
 
 "Tired? — no. Hungry? — yes. I have been rowing 
 three leagues, and have had only a draught of red wine 
 on the way. Have you anything in your larder, little 
 one?" 
 
 "Oh yes! There is some -alette, and plenty of chest- 
 nuts; and a guinea-hen, though I am afraid she is a little 
 old, and some fruit." 
 
 '• Enough ! It is a supper for a king." 
 
 " You will come in now ?" 
 
 "To gel it? — yes. To eat it? — passibite! Never 
 spend time indoors when you can spend it out of doors.
 
 40 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 Stay. Run and bring me something, while I fasten the 
 boat. Grand'mere is washing, I see ; that is a sacred 
 and solemn business. Tell her I will see her later on, 
 when the linen shall have reposed in peace." 
 
 The child flew off on her errand, the cloud of her fair 
 hair flying behind her on the wind, to where the little 
 figure of the old peasant woman, older but none the less 
 active, bent over a great washing-tub among the scarlet- 
 flowering beans of her garden. Grand'mere had grown 
 deaf, and the height of the beans had prevented her seeing 
 the arrival. 
 
 Tricotrin dragged his boat up on the bank, high and 
 dry upon the grass, fastened it to a tree, and had only 
 just finished tying the rope when his Waif returned with 
 both hands laden; the sunshine like a halo of gold round 
 her head, her face beaming with delight, and the warmth 
 of the day and the kiss of the wind. 
 
 "This is all I can find. Will that do? That gray cat 
 of Sarazin's has stolen the fowl," she said, as he hastened 
 to take her burden from her, with the courtesy he would 
 sooner have omitted to a queen than to a foundling. 
 
 "Do ? It is a meal for the gods ! But you are femi- 
 nine, Viva ; it is not for you to serve me." 
 
 "I would serve none but you." 
 
 "Verily? Then you are wrong, my child. You should 
 serve all the old and the poor. Nevertheless, I thank 
 you for your preference. And now — let us go to your 
 favorite tree." 
 
 The tree was at some little distance from the cottage 
 where he had placed his Waif and her guardian, — a huge 
 old beech-tree with wide-stretching arms of shelter and 
 welcome, and moss-lined couches in the depths of its 
 great trunk, and abovehead a broad crown of fresh green 
 leaf. The tree stood some way from the river, yet close 
 enough for all the babble of the water to be heard amid 
 the deep-grown woodland wilderness that surrounded it; 
 woodland ending only where the vineyards met it. 
 
 And here, in the hollows of the massive boles, was the 
 Waif's favorite throne; a throne where the child would 
 sit through many sunny hours, watching the birds' flight, 
 and the movement of the insects in the blue depths of
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 41 
 
 the aconite and the purple glories of the gorgeous bella- 
 donna; a throne without one care in its eminence, one 
 cruelty in its embrace. 
 
 Twelve years had passed by since the Waif had been 
 found among the clematis ; and those twelve years had 
 been full of the long, sweet, spontaneous pleasures of 
 childhood. True, she lived simply in a river-side cottage, 
 with an old and unlearned woman for her only compan- 
 ion, whose chief cares were the eternal wants of the pot 
 au feu, and the health of the hens scratching in the gar- 
 den. Hut then that old woman loved her with a passionate 
 and most tender adoration; that cottage, with its little 
 chambers that were like so many interiors of Teniers and 
 Van Tol's, was the only home she knew. Fruits and 
 flowers, and the singing of birds and of waters, and the 
 picturesque life of the vine-fields, and the plenteous joy 
 of the harvests, made up the golden sum of her young 
 days; and from the night-time, when she fell asleep in 
 her little while nest under the eaves, with prayers mut- 
 tered above her, to the sunrise when she awoke, full of 
 eagerness for the unworn innocent hours that the mere 
 sense of existence made sweet to her as they are sweet 
 to the young birds thrusting themselves forth in the 
 spring-tide, Viva had led the pure brighl life of a child in 
 the country, and been happy in it as only children are. 
 
 She had thriven with marvelous perfection, as though 
 in rebellion against 1 he fate | hat had cast her out to perish. 
 She had grown in grace and strength on her hard brown 
 bread and her draught of goat's milk, as kings' daughters 
 will not thrive in palaces. She had sprung up radiant, 
 lovely, laughing, fearless, under the shelter of the crum- 
 bling roof, as a plume of golden-rod will blossom under 
 the leaning wall of a ruin. And he who had firsl taken 
 pity on her, had never since that hour deserted her. 
 
 lie had seen her at intervals, — widely distant ones 
 
 for several years, closer to each other as she grew older; 
 
 but wherever he wandered, however long he was absent, 
 
 the old dame. Virelois, was always certain that twice in 
 
 the year would come, as sure as seed-time and reaping- 
 
 time, the -um which he had promised her, to succor her 
 
 poverty and maintain the Waif. 
 
 4*
 
 42 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 The child knew her history; he forbade her to be kept 
 in secret of it. Nothing had ever been learned that could 
 give a clew to the origin of her birth, or the motive of her 
 abandonment ; and Viva, fed on fairy-lore by her foster- 
 mother, believed herself devoutly the offspring of elfin 
 loves. She delighted to think herself not wholly mortal. 
 
 Any sense of shame, or of desolation, had never been 
 permitted to touch her ; and the kindly-natured peasantry 
 of the district, sharing a little too in her own view of her 
 fairy-parentage, caressed her, admired her, and treated 
 her with a sort of homage that was due, partly to her 
 own exceeding beauty, and partly to the reverent love in 
 which they held her protector; and which did its utter- 
 most to turn her childish head with vanity and willful- 
 ness, and persuade her that she was of very different 
 mould to the common, sun-burnt, toil-marked clay around 
 her. For Viva — a Waif and Stray, nameless and home- 
 less, found wrapped in a bit of red serge, and saved by a 
 monkey stretching out a little horny, black hand — was 
 as proud as though the blood of all the Caesars had 
 warmed her clear rosy cheeks. 
 
 The pride was fostered in her by many things: by the 
 adulation of grand'mere, who incessantly fondled her, as 
 something beyond earth in her loveliness ; by the defer- 
 ence, of the few people whom she ever saw, to the charms 
 and caprices of her graceful infancy; by the ignorance 
 even of her own origin, which left her parentage a blank 
 that could be filled up by imagination with every gor- 
 geous and wondrous picture. This wayward and base- 
 less pride had been nourished by every creature who ap- 
 proached her, save one ; and that one Viva loved better 
 than all others. 
 
 All the child's affectionate, wayward, contradictory little 
 soul spent itself in love for Tricotrin. All she had that 
 pleased her, — the blue ribbon for her hair, the bonbons 
 in their silvered papers, the music that told her of such 
 entrancing fables of unknown worlds, the pretty ivory 
 chain that hung round her neck which was as white as 
 itself, — all came to her from his hands, for though with- 
 out riches himself, he could give what seemed riches to 
 the fancy of a young lonely creature; and he who ab-
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 43 
 
 horred a tie — even a tie of love — had grown to feel an 
 irresistible fondness for the thing whose life he had saved. 
 Such fondness as was but an instinct with the warm, lib- 
 eral, compassionate heart of the man for a being so utterly 
 dependent on him. 
 
 The life that lay behind him had been filled with many 
 loves. His painter's eyes and poet's fancy had seen 
 beauty in many female forms, under the suns of many 
 lands; but nothing purer, and in its way, nothing deeper, 
 had ever touched him than the tenderness that he had 
 given his Waif. lie had saved her as he would have 
 saved a wood-pigeon from the trap, a hare from the netted 
 snare, and had thought to concern himself no more with 
 her than with the pigeon that flew, or with the bare that 
 fled, away from him, rejoicing in release. But in his own 
 fashion Tricotrin, who acknowledged no law but his con- 
 science, obeyed what he deemed duty, even when obe- 
 dience went hardly against him; and, to his own thinking, 
 having brought this existence out from the death that 
 had been assigned to it, lie had a right bound upon him 
 to see how it fared, and into what semblance it grew. 
 
 lb' loved the vine countries well, and with most grape- 
 harvests came to them. Thus he had never wholly lost 
 sight of his foundling; and Viva adored him with a pas- 
 sionate faith and reverence that she yielded to no one 
 else, and which was rather increased than diminished by 
 the rarity of his presence and the uncertainty of his visits. 
 For these invested him in Viva's eyes with 1 he grandeur 
 (if a, king in disguise, and the miraculous advent of one 
 who was not as ol her men are. 
 
 On the whole, the Waif fared better, having fallen to 
 the hands of a vagabond-philosopher, than if she had 
 drifted to those of a respected philanthropist. The latter 
 would have had her glistening hair shorn short, as a 
 crown with which that immoral and inconsistenl socialist, 
 Nature hail no justification in crowning a foundling ; and, 
 in his desire to make her fully expiate the lawless crime 
 of entering the world without purse or passport, would 
 have left her no choice, as .-lie grew into womanhood, 
 save that between sinning and starving. The former 
 bade the long fair tresses float on the air, sunns reb< Is
 
 44 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 against bondage, and saw no reason why the childhood 
 of the castaway should not have its share of childish joy- 
 ousness as well as the childhood prince-begotten and 
 palace-cradled; holding that the fresh life just budded on 
 earth was as free from all soil, no matter whence it came, 
 as is the brook of pure rivulet-water, no matter whether 
 it springs from classic lake or from darksome cavern. 
 
 "A meal for the gods!" said Tricotrin, taking out the 
 contents of Yiva's basket. " Figs, pears, a melon, and 
 white bread! Why, extravagant one, what were you 
 dreaming of, to apologize for such a fair feast ? Horace 
 could not have wanted a better. This is my fiambr eras, 
 as the good Knight of Mancha phrased it. But the Don 
 consoled himself for short commons with a long name and 
 a vast show. We are wiser than that. We have the 
 fruits of the earth, without bombast " 
 
 "I wish there were something better though! That 
 cat is such a thief!" said the Waif with a sigh, looking 
 down on him from where she was sitting aloft in the 
 curved trunk of the huge beech-tree. 
 
 "Better? foolish child! Ask Mistigri. There could 
 be nothing better when I add my flask of wine, which it 
 never does to leave to chance. Here is honey, sweet as 
 that of Hymettus; bread to be the prose of corn to the 
 poetry of fruit; and Rhenish that Schiller loved, with all 
 the Rhine legends steeped in it. I would not change 
 these, for all the cooks whose art consists in leaving you 
 in ignorance as to whether you are eating fish, flesh, or 
 fowl. And now, since it is no fun to look on at others' 
 meals, and you say you have had your own, try some 
 bonbons, ma mie!" 
 
 He tossed upward to her as he spoke several bright- 
 colored packets of sweetmeats, gilded and silvered in the 
 floral French fashion ; and Viva caught each in its tarn with 
 a laugh of delight. She had just fifteen years, but she was 
 a true child in heart, and if her mother had been a fairy, 
 that fairy must have been French. 
 
 "I am glad they please you," said Tricotrin, looking 
 up to catch the smile on her face where it beamed down 
 on him through the beech-leaves. "Up at Blois last 
 night Madame Dentree's daughter was married. There
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 45 
 
 was a grand bridal feast, of course. She has wedded 
 well, to a rich young tanner of Sevres, and I played for 
 them till the dawn. Dieu! how they danced ! — all those 
 young men and maidens. The mother was pleased, and 
 this morning she would have emptied half her bonbon- 
 shop on me for you. She is a good woman, the Dentree, 
 and a rich tanner is a son-in-law to put one in good 
 humor." 
 
 "I have never been to Blois," murmured the Waif, 
 bending over her cornucopias of sweetmeats, which, 
 though she would not have said so, were a little embit- 
 tered to her by being the gifts of a pastry cook. 
 
 " No. Keep out of cities while you can. The range 
 of old Saraziirs ferryboat is far enough for your wan- 
 derings at present. And how do you agree with the 
 Sisters?'' 
 
 "I hate them!" said the child, with flashing eyes. 
 
 "And wherefore?" 
 
 "Oh! — they hate me," murmured Viva. 
 
 "Indeed? Then I fear you musl deserve it?" 
 
 "I dare say I do. They are so silent, so lifeless, so 
 cold, so gray; there is no good in them! I love light, 
 warmth, laughter, color, — you know! — and they talk 
 folly, they say these are all vanity, that life should be 
 one long psalm of humility, and denial, and sacrifice. 
 Bah! it would be like living to wear tight bands of 
 irons!" 
 
 "And you have a preference for rose-chains? Well — 
 you and I he Sisters look at lite with the difference of eyes 
 that have only been open for fifteen years, ami eyes that 
 have ached wearily for forty-five. A great contrast in 
 vision, — that I" 
 
 "But you are forty-live?" 
 
 '•And more. But I am a man, and any man who is 
 not a fool or a criminal, can keep youth in him all the 
 days of his life. But women! — ami women behind the 
 iron bars of a gratingl Hut yon only -■<> in the convenl 
 to learn. Viva; why should you vex your soul at cap- 
 tivity you do m»t share?" 
 
 "Why?" replied 1 he child, her pretty glad voice grow- 
 ing swifter and more eager. "They are forever rebuking
 
 46 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 me, — not for learning; I will learn, though I abhor it, 
 because you wish me, and because you say that knowl- 
 edge is power, — but for frivolity as they call it, and im- 
 petuosity, and willfulness, and giddiness, and pride! 
 They tell me I should be patient, and quiet, and lowly 
 in mind, and as one in servitude always; that I have no 
 right to be proud, and ought to think a vine-dresser as 
 good as myself; that to be plain and virtuous is lovelier 
 to God than to be handsome and wayward as I am ! — 
 that — oh! I could tell you for hours the tedious things 
 that they lecture me on ! " 
 
 "Humph! So you are conscious of beauty, wayward- 
 ness, pride, and frwolity, my friend? A nice quartette 
 of qualities? 'Know thyself,' said the sage; certainly 
 you obey him." 
 
 " But that is not all !" cried Viva, with burning cheeks, 
 and eyes to which proud passionate tears started. " There 
 are two or three children there — that Adele is one of 
 them, a count's daughter! — and they are awkward, and 
 heavy, and ungraceful in everything, yet they think them- 
 selves above me! And they are rude — very rude — 
 grand'mere says because they are jealous of me; and 
 they laughed in my face when I told them my mother 
 was a fairy, and they twit me with having no name, with 
 being only — as they say — a thing that is called Viva, like 
 a cat or a clog!" 
 
 She threw back her head while she uttered the words 
 that had wounded her, as though in haughty repellance 
 of their power to sting. Nor indeed did they pierce with 
 the humiliation which she would have felt had she not 
 been guarded from all knowledge of possible shame in 
 her birth, and had not her fancy-fed imagination genu- 
 inely believed the fantastic story of fairy origin, that 
 grand'mere had woven to satisfy her eager questionings 
 without pain. 
 
 Trieotrin looked up at her, and a smile of tender and 
 infinite pity came on his lips. 
 
 "So soon!" he murmured to himself. " They might 
 let you enjoy your bright brief dawn; it will swiftly be 
 over! So the children cast shame ere they should know 
 what shame is! We cannot wonder at the great world, 
 then."
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 4? 
 
 "Viva mine," he said aloud at length. "As for the 
 Sisters' offenses, they are nothing, — the good women 
 mean well by you, and you have such willfulness and 
 pride, ma mie, that you may well hear with some few 
 sermons on your besetting sin. But for the rest, since 
 you are proud do you not know that the proud never let 
 the barbed shafts of malicious tongues wound them? The 
 words which hurt you are words of jealous mouths, you 
 think; well, do you not know that jealousy is, and lias 
 been from all time, a liar and a slanderer ?" 
 
 The child looked softly at him. 
 
 "But it is true? 1 have no name ? I am not as others 
 are ?" 
 
 The fairy fabric of her elfin birth, although so devoutly 
 and innocently believed in, was not wholly proof againsl 
 the scoff and the taunt which had moved her. Already 
 Viva was beginning to feel the power of thai impalpable 
 tyrant of "the world" — embodied for her in the small 
 form of a little French girl, with a shrill mocking voice, 
 and a "de la" appended to her name in voucher of 
 nobility. 
 
 Tricotrin looked at her with pitying tenderness. 
 
 "Not as others? Why. my Waif? Is your foot less 
 swift, your limb less strong, your face less fair, than 
 theirs? Does the sun shine less often, have the flowers 
 less fragrance, does sleep come less sweetly, to you than 
 to them? Nature has been very good, very generous to 
 you, Viva. Be conient with her gifts. What you lack 
 i> only a thing of man's invention, a quibble, a bauble, a 
 pharisee's phylactery. Look at the river-lilies that drift 
 yonder, how white they are, how their leaves inclose and 
 caress them, how the water buoys them up and plays 
 with them I Well? are they not better off than the poor 
 rare flowers that live painfully in hothouse air, and are 
 labeled. ;i!id matted, and given long names by men's 
 petty precise laws? Von are like the river-lilies; oh 
 child ! do not pine for the glass house that would ennoble 
 yon. only to force you. am! kill you!" 
 
 Viva smihd. following with quick fancy the picturesque 
 metaphor; but she was not wholly content to be a river- 
 llower, she wanted to bloom under the silver .-pray of
 
 48 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 palace fountains: she hung her graceful head on one 
 side, in half arch, half pensive meditation. 
 
 "But — it is not pleasant to have no name. Only a 
 nickname that means nothing; like the kitten Bebe, like 
 the cock Boi Dore? " 
 
 Tricotrin's humorous smile laughed on his lips; he had 
 struck on a vein of amused thought that wandered away 
 from herself. 
 
 "Is it not?" he laughed in answer. "Ask Bebe and 
 Roi Dore; — they will tell you that so long as the voices 
 they love call them, and the name serves to summon 
 them to good food and good drink, it answers every pur- 
 pose that a king's string of titles can do. Bah! "little 
 one! Be more of a philosopher. A name is a handle 
 only ; if the pot go soundly to the well, and if it bring 
 back cool pure water for thirsty mouths, what matter 
 how the handle be fashioned?" 
 
 ViVa, accustomed to follow and catch the fantastic 
 meanings of his phrases, knew well what he meant, but 
 was not prepared to be convinced by it: she had a 
 strongly-developed will of her own. 
 
 "That may be," she said, with a charming mutinous 
 pout of her lovely lips. "Still — when one is a pretty 
 porcelain pot it 'is ugly to have a broken osier handle, 
 and to only go to the well as if one were of brown old 
 earthenware ?" 
 
 Tricotrin laughed more and more. 
 
 "So you think yourself of pretty porcelain, my dainty 
 little bit of Sevres? oh-he! Well! I will warrant you 
 will never be of so much use to others as if you were a 
 homely brown pipkin. But to be proud of your useless- 
 ness is a thing that has not my sympathies." 
 
 The child colored ; conscious of the satire and of the 
 rebuke. 
 
 "There is no pipkin that would not change, and be 
 porcelain, if it could!" she murmured, with a certain 
 pleading petulance. 
 
 "Well — that does not say much for the good sense of 
 the pipkins then, if it be true. But 1 don't think it is 
 true. There is many a sturdy, honest, sensible pipkin 
 that would rather be going to the well twenty times a
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 49 
 
 day, to have the children's thirsty throats, and the hot 
 window-flowers, and the poor chained clogs, and the lit- 
 tle feverish birds in cages, all grateful to it, and made 
 happy by what it brings, than it would be a porcelain 
 trifle, standing all the year round in a velvet-lined cabi- 
 net, only valued for the paint on its glaze, and liable any 
 minute to be bought and sold as a chattel. I would 
 rather be the pipkin, Viva ; but you, I suppose, sigh for 
 captivity and idleness among a collector's brie a brae?" 
 
 The child laughed too, but she gave a little quick sigh, 
 and a hot flush for her chidden vanity and her own sense 
 of its unwisdom. 
 
 "But is it so wrong to be proud?" she asked, dropping, 
 female-like, the pipkin and porcelain symbol, so soon as 
 she found it tell against her own argument. 
 
 "Proud ? In what way, Viva?" 
 
 "Any way! To be impatient of grand'mere's friends 
 because they talk such bad patois, and are only old 
 ignorant women! To burn with hatred, and jealousy, 
 and evil, at my first communion, because that Adele had 
 a wreath on of real silver, and scoffed at my beautiful 
 lilies and lilacs because they were only real flowers!" — 
 
 tlt Only. n " murmured Tricotrin. 
 
 "To be full of wrath with dear old grand'mere because 
 she will bake, and wash, and sweep, though I know it is 
 so good of her to do it! To be wayward and bitter, and 
 long to avenge, when the children talk at me as though 
 I were a peasant! To loathe to confess it when I know 
 I am wrong; to long for sovereignty, and supremacy, 
 and luxury, and power; to feel 1 would die rather than 
 serve; and to disdain anything that is poor, and ugly, 
 and meek, and without grace! Oh, how proud in all ways 
 and al all hoursl" 
 
 Tricotrin smiled as he heard her self-accusation, but he 
 looked at her mournfully. 
 
 "Viva mine, you are not a philosopher: but it is a 
 little early perhaps lor that, and besides, nothing feminine 
 ever was, 1 suppose. Wrong to ho proud, yon ask? No. 
 But then the pride musl lie of a right fashion. It musl 
 be the pride which savs, 'Let me not envy, for that were 
 
 5
 
 50 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 meanness. Let me not covet, for that were akin to theft. 
 Let me not repine, for that were weakness.' It must be 
 the pride which says, ' I can be sufficient for myself. My 
 life makes my nobility. And I need no accident of rank, 
 because I have a stainless honor.' It must be pride, too 
 proud to let an aged woman work where youthful limbs 
 can help ber; too proud to trample basely on what lies 
 low already ; too proud to be a coward, and shrink from 
 following conscience in the confession of known error; 
 too proud to despise the withered, toil-worn hands of 
 the poor and old, and be vilely forgetful that those 
 hands succored you in your utmost need of helpless 
 infancy!" 
 
 The sweet melodious tones of his voice, that grew in- 
 finitely gentle, almost solemn, as the last words left his 
 lips, went straight to the loving, wayward heai't of the 
 child they rebuked. She threw herself down beside him 
 in lowly passionate repentance; her fair face burning 
 with contrition, her mouth trembling, her eyes brimming 
 with great tears. 
 
 "Oh yes, yes! If they would only speak .so, I would 
 listen! I am wrong, I am rebellious, 1 am wicked, and 
 I care too much for the things that are vain ; but indeed, 
 indeed, I am never ungrateful!" 
 
 Tricotrin, who would at any moment have sooner 
 faced a flaming city, or a swarming barricade, than seen 
 the tears of anything feminine, above all of anything he 
 loved, passed his hand over her hair with a caress. 
 
 "To be sure not!" he said cheerily.' "No one sus- 
 pects you of such baseness! As for your desire for 
 sovereignty, — believe me there is none like the royalty 
 of youth. Rejoice in that kingdom while it is yours; it 
 will pass from you all too soon. And, for 'the things 
 that are vain,' — you are feminine, as I say, and must 
 love them I suppose according to your sex. But if you 
 think a wreath of beaten-out metal produced from a jew- 
 eler's workshop equals the lilies and lilacs of a spring- 
 blossoming earth, why, — you arc no artist, my Waif, but 
 a creature of acquired tastes, and innate vulgarities, as, 
 judging by their choice of appareling, I often fear tba,t 
 all women arc!"
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. ' 51 
 
 The child laughed, but her tears were still on her long, 
 curling lashes, and the words he had spoken had sunk 
 into her heart. 
 
 She was silent, and he let her be so while she lay at 
 his feet, her arms cushioned on the moss, and her head 
 drooped on her hands, in the unconscious grace of a 
 young resting stag. 
 
 "Proud as a queen, and among the base-born. Lovely 
 as the dawn, and without a mother or a name. Willing 
 to perish rather than yield, and a woman! It needs no 
 horoscope to cast her fate!" murmured Tricotrin in 
 English to the monkey, the language being one unin- 
 telligible to Viva, though familiar to him. "Ah Mistigri, 
 Mistigri! shall you and I ever be reproached at the last? 
 Had we better have let the thread of life be broken at the 
 onset than have saved it to reel out, all glistening gold at 
 first, all knotted tangles at the end? Porcelain? — yes! 
 Such delicate, dainty, bright-hued porcelain! And how 
 will it come out from the furnace?" 
 
 A certain sadness touched him where he sat under the 
 broad beech-boughs, with the fruit and the bread for his 
 noontide meal. He loved her well, loved her with patient 
 and most gentle tenderness; but he knew neither whence 
 she came nor whither she went — this young life that he 
 had rescued — and it was possible that the time might 
 dawn for both when each would deem it had been well 
 if she had never awakened from her infant's sleep among 
 the clematis. 
 
 "Want a palace while there is a forest ! Little stupid! 
 What a thoroughly feminine animal you are, preferring 
 the artificial to the natural — the lesser thing that is un- 
 obtainable to the greater thing that lies in your path!"' 
 he cried suddenly, rousing himself and the child from 
 their mutual reverie. 
 
 "A wood is very nice!" said Viva, with her head on 
 one side glancing under the boughs that had flung their 
 green and welcome shadows on her through all the sum- 
 mers since she had been firsl trusted to their shelter asa 
 Waif. " Bui — oh! to sec those palaces of Paris! What 
 would I give " 
 
 "Your soul, little simpleton, to learn the madness
 
 52 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 of your barter too late!" he thought, as he answered her 
 aloud. 
 
 "A wood 'nice'? Bah! you are a Goth, Viva mine. 
 Why, there is nothing so beautiful on earth as the rich 
 virgin growth of wild trees. Look yonder! — the squir- 
 rels flitting everywhere, the kingfishers over that pool, 
 the huge boughs all moss-draped, the glimpses of green 
 distance just caught between the branches, the exquisite 
 stillness and freshness and loveliness! What would 
 gilded rooms and marble stairways give in fit exchange 
 for that? Wise was Scipio to leave the heat, and noise, 
 and legions, and tumult, and clangor of the mistress of 
 the world for the cool green shade of his leafy soli- 
 tudes !" 
 
 "Wise? Oh no!" 
 
 "And why 'oh no'? you who condemn Scipio?" 
 
 The child laughed: she had .little historic knowledge, 
 little knowledge indeed of any sort, but she had caught 
 up some stray gleams of classicisms from Tricotrin at 
 intervals. 
 
 " Why? Well! Because I would rather have perished 
 in my prime amid all the dignities of Roman rule than 
 have lived threescore years in retirement " 
 
 " Qui respiciunt ad pauca cli facili pronunciant," inter- 
 polated her companion with Aristotelian terseness. 
 
 "I don't know Latin!" said Viva with the pretty dis- 
 dainful gesture of a spoiled child. "But, — I should love 
 to be great, and I do not believe Philosophy can ever be 
 sweet and grand like Power !" 
 
 "I do not suppose you do. Philosophy never was 
 popular with your sex, who always go by externals." 
 
 "They must be the surest test to go by," said the 
 child quickly. "If a thing look very handsome it is as 
 good as being handsome, is it not?" 
 
 "Oh, you young sophist! So you are content with 
 appearances? A bad indication that. Philosophy, Viva, 
 is the pomegranate of life, ever cool and most fragrant, 
 and the deeper you cut in it the richer only will the core 
 grow. Power is the Dead Sea apple, golden and fair to 
 sight while the hand strives to reach it; dry gray ashes 
 between dry fevered lips when once it is grasped and
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 53 
 
 eaten. Now you, my friend, having tasted neither, de- 
 cide without a moment's hesitation between them; while 
 men who have steeped all their lives in one, or another, 
 die without having- been able to settle the selection!" 
 
 ."Still" — persisted the child with a laugh at herself, 
 and she paused in her sentence, for in the forest-track, 
 which bent round through the trees within sight, came 
 some six or eight riders, who caught the eager fancy and 
 the wondering eyes of the Waif. 
 
 Her river-side home stood in such complete loneliness 
 that save for the craft that passed up the Loire nothing 
 gladdened her sight from season to season save the droves 
 of the cattle or the market-mules of the peasants. Her 
 thoughts of the beauty of power and the charms of mag- 
 nificence were purely innate in her; she had never seen 
 anything whatsoever to suggest them; and she stood 
 now gazing at the party as they advanced, with as en- 
 tranced a delight as though she beheld some celestial 
 vision such as she read of in the books at the convent. 
 
 They were returning from hawking in the woods of 
 Villiers, and were going leisurely, after some successful 
 casts at herons, with all the customary trappings of green 
 and scarlet and gold, of attendants in the picturesque for- 
 ester-costume, of noble hounds panting and triumphant, 
 of, in a word, all the costly panoply of French falconry 
 revived in its utmost magnificence. Breaking suddenly, 
 like a Louis Quatorze hawking picture put into motion, 
 on the woodlawn solitude around her, they looked to 
 Viva like some group called up by enchantment: she 
 stood breathless, ajbeautiful picture herself, with her feet 
 ankle-deep in cyclamen and mosses, her hair flying back- 
 ward in the wind like two golden wings, and her head 
 crowned with a green wreath of oak-leaves and maiden- 
 hair that she hail woven as she had talked. 
 
 With one accord the eves of all the riders turned on 
 her, in amazed admiration, as they passed by through 
 the forest-way. Some called a gay greeting out to her, 
 all gave her the homage of bold ardenl eves; one alone 
 uncovered his head as he passed her and bowed low in 
 deference to her sex. 
 
 He was the last rider of all; a tall, slender, stately 
 
 5*
 
 54 TRTCOTRIN, 
 
 man, with a haughty carriage and a fair-hued face, grave 
 almost to melancholy". 
 
 They were gone like the breath of the wind, lost to 
 sight in a turn of the path ; but Viva stood, still en- 
 tranced ; with a scarlet glow on her cheeks and her eyes 
 full of delight and desire. 
 
 She turned breathlessly to Tricotrin. 
 
 "Who is Tie?" 
 
 " Which he, petite ?"— he had watched the horsemen 
 pass without rising from his leaning posture beneath the 
 beech. 
 
 " The one who bowed to me?" 
 
 " Why that one in especial, Viva ? There were others 
 much younger to pleasure you." 
 
 "But he only did that! Besides, — they all looked 
 noble, but he alone looked great!" 
 
 "Creditable to your discernment, Viva. He is great — 
 and he is as tired as ever Scipio was!" 
 
 "But his name?" persisted the child. 
 
 "His name? Well, — Eustace Estmere." 
 
 "Estmere? And what is he?" 
 
 "You have said — a great man. Repeat your exaudi 
 nos for him, Viva." 
 
 " He cannot want it. He looks strong." 
 
 "The strong suffer." 
 
 "But so proud too?" 
 
 " And the proud suffer more." 
 
 Viva gave a heavy sigh : 
 
 "How I shall suffer then!" she murmured. "But does 
 he live here ? How is it I have never seen him? " 
 
 "He owns Villiers; but he is rarely there; and it is 
 three good leagues away." 
 
 "He owns Villiers!" 
 
 To Viva it made him as a monarch ; once, once only, 
 one fete-day, grand'mere had taken her to see Villiers; 
 one summer-time when the people were permitted free 
 range over the park and the gardens and the terraces, 
 down the dim never-ending splendid galleries, and through 
 the orangeries and the palm houses and the wilderness 
 of flowers; the glories of Villiers had never ceased to 
 haunt her imagination, though it too rarely came within
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 55 
 
 range of her friend Sarazin's boat for her to hare had a 
 second chance of beholding this Versailles of her prov- 
 ince. The man who could own it looked to Viva as the 
 sovereign of France. 
 
 "And he bowed to me/" she repeated softly and exult- 
 antly under her breath. 
 
 "Chut, Viva!" interrupted, Tricotrin somewhat impa- 
 tiently. " In what does the bow of a noble differ from 
 that of a peasant? — it is a chivalry to your sex in both, 
 nothing more ! Your Lord Estmere and I are appropri- 
 ate symbols to accompany my pomegranate metaphor. 
 He is power: I am philosophy. I lie at my ease on a 
 bed of mosses that have not a thorn ; I find their true 
 taste in plain bread and purple grapes ; I am without 
 bond and without burden ; I take no thought for the mor- 
 row ; my mind is my kingdom and mankind are my 
 brethren; where I will there I go, and I have none to 
 dictate to me. Now my lord there ! — he wears the pur- 
 ple robe with the steel corslet heavy beneath; he sleeps 
 on palace-beds and State care lies down with him ; he is 
 the proudest man of his order, and his honor is stung to 
 the quick where he cannot shield it; the garter ribbon 
 crosses his breast, and his heart aches under it with a 
 pain never quiet ; he is a great man, ergo, he is never 
 free, wherever he goes thither comment and curiosity 
 follow him, and no sorrow can be sacred that befalls him, 
 because the chattering world must have it as prey. I 
 have the pomegranate ; he lias the Dead Sea apple. And 
 yet — so eternal is the duello between philosophy and 
 power, and so little will either of those rivals yield to 
 the other, that 1 would wager ho would no more change 
 places with mo than I would ehange places with him I" 
 
 And Tricotrin, who in those words had forgotten the 
 child ho addressed, sank back again among his mosses 
 with a laugh on his lips, — a laugh infinitely humorous, 
 something tender, and a little, ever so little, sad. 
 
 Viva did m>t answer; the young aspirant to Power 
 remained unconvinced.
 
 56 TR1C0TRIN, 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 " You are content with the little angel, Tricotrin ?" 
 asked Grand'mere Virelois that evening in the porch of 
 the river-side house which she owed to him. 
 
 "As little of an angel as may be," said Tricotrin. 
 " But I am as content with her as man ever can be with 
 a feminine thing ; which is not much to say. I am well 
 content with your care of her, if you mean that, good 
 friend. The child thrives as — nothing but a Waif whom 
 nobody wants ever could do." 
 
 "Ah, Tricotrin! everybody wants her who sees her. 
 She is as beautiful as the morning." 
 
 "Oh yes," murmured Tricotrin; "and the young tri- 
 bunes will shout ad leones ! and she will get flung down 
 in the sands of the circus, 'butchered to make a Parisian 
 holiday!'" 
 
 "Paris?" repeated grand'mere, catching but one word 
 she knew. "You mean to take her to Paris?" 
 
 " Certainly not; but she will take herself some day, no 
 doubt." 
 
 Grand'mere sighed heavily. Paris was a word of ter- 
 ror to her. She had never been out of her own grape- 
 country ; but it was there, yonder in Paris, that the mar- 
 ble block, lifted up to adorn a palace, had fallen, and 
 crushed into a shapeless mass the noble young form of 
 her first-born son; it was there also, that, amid the blood 
 and the smoke of the barricades of the Thirty Days, the 
 youngest mouth that had once lisped its prayers at her 
 knee had murmured with its dying whisper, "N'en dis 
 rien a ma, mere.''' 1 
 
 "Paris ! Paris!" muttered the old woman, whirling her 
 spinning-wheel, with the evening light about her in the 
 old oaken doorway; "God forbid the child should get to 
 Paris. What could she do but perish there?" 
 
 Tricotrin smoked in silence. It was never his way to 
 disturb himself concerning the future. It was waste of
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 5? 
 
 thought and time, he considered. Rattle your dice how 
 you would, you could never tell what the throw would 
 be; unless, indeed, you turned gamester, and weighted the 
 ivory of circumstance with the lead of dishonesty: which 
 was not in his manner of dealing. 
 
 "Do you know, Tricotrin," continued grand'mere, "do 
 you know, I often wonder what her fate will be, the pre- 
 cious child! You see, I am eighty-three next month ; I 
 have not very many more years before me ; and she is so 
 young, and you — good as you are — are not really her 
 father. What will become of the little one? I may die 
 any day, and you — you wander so far, you are away so 
 long! What would become of the Viva if I died in your 
 absence?" 
 
 "Never ask what will become of anything, grand'mere. 
 It shows a curiosity highly imphilosophic ; and very im- 
 pertinent, too, in a good woman like you, who thinks 
 Providence looks after every little detail, from an earth- 
 quake that kills ten thousand people, to the nail that 
 tears the slit in your blue gown. What will become 
 of the world? Nobody knows. If it disappear to- 
 morrow it will not be missed in the universe. 'Thcro 
 is a falling star; look at it, my dear!' some man in Ju- 
 piter will say to his wife. That will be all the world's 
 monody." 
 
 "You will ever jest, Tricotrin," said the old woman, 
 with a little shudder over her spinning-wheel. If he 
 were the Wandering Jew, as some said, who knew but 
 what ho might have the mission of the world's sudden 
 extinction to execute! 
 
 " I do not care about the world !" she resumed, "I have 
 lived my time in it, and it is cruel — cruel! I5ut the little 
 treasure has all her time before her; and look you, mon 
 a mi, 1 gel anxious as she grows older. While she was 
 a child it was all right enough. Lei a child have the sun 
 and the air, and sweet milk, and plenty of love, and a 
 child is happy. — happy on a hare floor and in a wooden 
 cradle. Bui a young girl is different; and sometimes 1 
 wonder what will become of her. She is proud, she has 
 the ways of a princess, — she is not a creature yon can 
 set to scrub, and bake, and sew. Among the flowers, on
 
 58 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 the water, singing where she sets in the trees, dancing 
 when she hears boats go by with music, — that is Viva's 
 life. But it will not be a good life for womanhood, when 
 there is no name and no mother." 
 
 There was a pathos in the feeble, aged voice, as the 
 speaker shook her head over her wheel, with the sun so 
 bright on her brown face and her white cap, and the bril- 
 liant child for whom she feared, fluttering like an oriole 
 in the distance among the scarlet beans and the low ap- 
 ple-trees. 
 
 True feeling never spoke in vain to Tricotrin. He bent 
 gently and reverently to the bent old figure, while his 
 eyes glanced to the gay form of his Waif. 
 
 "Nay, grand'mere, do not disquiet yourself," he said, 
 earnestly. " The child is brave, proud, truthful. These 
 are three grand safeguards against evil. She has much 
 vanity, many caprices, too fond a craze for things out of 
 her reach ; but her heart is of gold'; these foibles are but 
 the foibles of sex. For her future, we must leave it. 
 How can we say whither she goes? we, who do not even 
 know whence she came! But I have good faith in the 
 Waif; faith that she will not decline into evil, even if evil 
 tempt her, which it shall never do while I live. For the 
 rest, if aught ail you, tell the good women at the convent 
 to look to her. You know that I love no churches; and 
 I was ill pleased that you steeped the child in the acid 
 and the poison of Creed. While women are nurtured on 
 superstition the men born of them will never reach their 
 full stature. But I let you have your own way in that 
 matter because thus you get shelter for her, and thus you 
 set at ease your own conscience. Let the nuns know if 
 you dread anything for your health ; and for the years to 
 come, we must trust Viva herself. If she choose Luxury, 
 having known Love, she will not be worth a regret!" 
 
 A certain darkness passed over his face as he spoke. 
 There was that which jarred on him in the child's inborn 
 and ineradicable desires for a different life than that to 
 which he had saved her. 
 
 " That is true, Tricotrin," muttered grand'mere. " Still, 
 it is the stars that fall, you know, so fast, so fast, through 
 August nights! And it is just the proud ones who have
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 59 
 
 not gold at the back of pride ; it is just the beautiful ones 
 who have but cottage-roofs over their beauty ; that Paris 
 devours — devours Ah! is she not filled, — that cruel, 
 terrible Paris, — with the flowers of the country, that give 
 their sweetness to her to be trampled dead on the stones 
 of her streets?" 
 
 There was a tragic force in the eloquence of the aged 
 withered lips. Grand'niere was a simple, credulous, in- 
 nocent old woman, who had led her long life ever under 
 the shadows of the vines of her birthplace, but she had 
 suffered, — specially had she never forgotten her youngest- 
 born, whom that beautiful, fearful, resistless Paris had 
 drawn in, in his boyhood, and his ardor, and his fearless 
 faith, and who had been murdered among the children of 
 France, when the streets ran blood in the days of July. 
 
 "True!" said Tricotrin, gently. "Paris is beautiful, 
 and she is terrible, very terrible 1 For in her the highest 
 and the lowest forms of humanity meet ; in her the per- 
 fection of Pleasure stands side by side with the culmina- 
 tion of Vice. She is beautiful, she is terrible: fur she is 
 the epitome of human life. You are right, grand'niere: 
 none can say what flower she may not draw in — to bloom 
 in unnatural brilliance a moment, and perish of the air 
 that forced it, a trodden thing beneath men's feetl" 
 
 "Yes; and therefore the child " 
 
 "Allons done! The child is a child; leave her to the 
 future. Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. Why 
 take thought for her womanhood? Thinking will not 
 avert it. 'If the cucumber be bitter throw it away,' 
 says Antoninus. Do the same with a thought." 
 
 "But it is not possible always." 
 
 "Paf! I think it is. There is no cucumber so bitter 
 that honey will not put the taste of it out ; and no cucum- 
 ber bo heavy that one cannot throw it over some wall. 
 You have reared her well, grand'niere, — barring that little 
 touch of church-superstition, which, woman-like, you 
 could not help giving. You have taughl her to scorn ;i 
 lie; you could not arm her with a better shield. Do not 
 disquiet yourself; you have done your duty, whatever 
 the issue. There i.^ do nobler crown to a life." 
 
 Grand'mere's In-own cheek grew warmer with pleasure ;
 
 60 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 though she was a brave old woman, and cared little for 
 any one, so long as she "did her duty" in her homely, 
 truthful fashion, she yet always held Tricotrin in a cer- 
 tain awe, as of one endowed with occult and omniscient 
 powers, and it was with infinite relief that she always 
 learned that he commended her. 
 
 With these words he left her and joined his Waif, who 
 had just captured a sparkling azure butterfly in her hand. 
 
 "You are not going to kill it, Viva?" 
 
 "Oh no! only to look at it." 
 
 "Good! The Mussulmans treasure every little torn 
 scrap of paper, because on it there may be some line of 
 the Koran. So should we cherish every little ephemeral 
 atom of life, because on it, however small, is the impress 
 of God. Jean Paul has had that thought before me. Let 
 the creature go ; you wound its delicate wings, and you 
 see it far better winging its way through the sunset glow. 
 There!" 
 
 The child lifted her head, and watched it as it flew high 
 through the golden warmth of the young summer even- 
 ing. 
 
 " How I should love to roam like that !" she cried. He 
 smiled a little sadly. 
 
 "Impatient bird, to long to quit the nest! Ah, it is 
 always so with the fledglings ! The old tree is so dull, 
 the home wood so wearisome, and it looks all summer 
 yonder! They know nothing of the plains of snow, the 
 clouds of thunder, the driving winds, the storms of win- 
 ter! " 
 
 "But you roam!" 
 
 " Certainly I do. But I am not a woman." 
 
 "A woman ! Because one will be a woman must one 
 never see the world?" 
 
 The words were petulant and longing. Viva was 
 happy, but she was not so happy but what she was also 
 a little ill-content. She looked over at that sun-steeped 
 distance, to which the butterfly was taking its flight with 
 all the restlessness of curious desire. What could that 
 "world" be which lay beyond? It was inborn in the 
 child — that longing for forbidden knowledge ; that aspira- 
 tion after wider spheres.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 61 
 
 "Was your mother an empress or a gipsy? Certes 
 she must have been one or the other," murmured Trico- 
 trin. "Nothing else could have given you birth. So you 
 want- to roam, Viva? And you do nothing all day long 
 but live very much like that butterfly ? Whatever shall 
 we do with you, little one, in a year or two's time?" 
 
 " Take me with you! Let me roam too!" laughed the 
 child, with her arms flung about him in gay pleading 
 caress. 
 
 Tricotrin laughed also; then a momentary warmth 
 rose over his face, — for the first time it occurred to him 
 that his Waif, though a child now, would, in a year or 
 two more, be no longer a child; and that, although he 
 filled the place of her father to her, he had no kinship with 
 this bright stray thing, whom, as it seemed to him, he had 
 but the other day found left to die among the clematis. 
 
 " That is too much to ask !" he answered merrily, choos- 
 ing his own thought not to touch her too. " I carry one 
 thing feminine indeed, but then she is portable and ex- 
 ceedingly small ; which you, my Waif, who will be tallest 
 among tall women, never can be. Besides, — the essence 
 of wandering is to wander alone. Oh! I dare say you 
 will find some way of yourself to spread your wings 
 when the time comes; but wait till they are full-grown, 
 Viva, if you take my advice. To flutter a little way and 
 then fall, will not suit you." 
 
 "No, indeed! When I soar at all I will keep above 
 earth like a hawk!" 
 
 She tossed her fair head back as she spoke with haughty 
 careless security; she might have been the; daughter of 
 some free victorious deserl king. 
 
 Tricotrin looked al her with earnest scrutiny. 
 
 "And forget the lark's nesl among the field-grasses that 
 first sheltered you," he said to himself. "I dare say! 
 That will be very like youth — and very like woman- 
 hood I" 
 
 Bui he did doI utter the though! loud enough for her 
 to hear, as he gave a farewell caress with his hand to her 
 sunn; brow. 
 
 '• Well; adieu, for to-day!" 
 
 6
 
 62 TRICOTRIN. 
 
 " Must you go ? Must you ?" pleaded the child, with 
 loving entreaty. 
 
 "I must! I have promised Yvon Mascarros to play 
 at his betrothal feast to-morrow, and his place is a dozen 
 leagues from this." 
 
 " But when will you come again ?" 
 
 "When? How can I say? I will not be long with- 
 out coming, — unless, indeed, I go off to the Moon or the 
 Shades, — for you are fair to see, Viva; and since we are 
 both Waifs and Strays it is meet that we cling together." 
 
 " But then — if you love me, you will please me and 
 not go?" 
 
 "Ah, ha! You have so much of womanhood in you 
 already that you count the strength of love by the obedi- 
 ence it gives to your caprices, and exact its confession 
 only also to exact its submission? How true to your 
 sex you are, Viva ! Nay — I love you, though I doubt if 
 it be wise to love anything save Mankind and Doghood. 
 And all I hope, Waif of mine, is, that you will never re- 
 proach me with having helped you to get out of your 
 bed of clematis. Enjoy, mignonne, the utmost you can; 
 the happier you are the" less conscience-stricken shall Mis- 
 tigri and I feel at our connivance with your escape into 
 existence !" 
 
 Viva laughed — she always fancied herself that the little 
 black Mistigri was ajamiliar of her own fairy-mother's — 
 and she threw her arms fondly about him once more. 
 
 " 1 am always so happy when you are here, and so 
 good too ! Oh ! if you never went away I should never 
 have those wicked, envious, wayward thoughts-; you are 
 like my guardian angel !" 
 
 For she did in truth love him warmly ; he stood to her 
 in the stead of father, mother, brother, of home, and of 
 kindred, and of the world ; and though the child was 
 vain, and like most children selfish, she had great affec- 
 tion in her, and spent it all on him. 
 
 Tricotrin's eyes smiled with exceeding tenderness on 
 her, while over the fearless brightness of his face a flash 
 of pleasure passed. So little had he of egotism or exac- 
 tion, so little did he make count of his best actions, so 
 quickly was he moved by any gleam of gratitude to him,
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 63 
 
 that he felt himself the debtor of the child who owed him 
 all, because she paid him in the rare coinage of a pure 
 attachment. 
 
 " f thank you, Viva mine," he said softly. "Make me 
 indeed your guardian angel, by letting my memory exor- 
 cise all evil things from your young soul. I ask no 
 higher reward." 
 
 He touched her bright upturned forehead lightly with 
 his lips, in his accustomed caress of greeting and adieu, 
 and left her to unloose his boat from its moorings, and 
 push it off into the stream, whose waters were flushing 
 to violet, and russet, and golden hues beneath the glories 
 of the setting sun. 
 
 There was a trail of light across the river like sheeted 
 gold, into which the small boat glided; his form was full 
 in its luster, as standing up and wafting it forward with 
 one oar, he uncovered his head to her and laughed a last 
 farewell. 
 
 That brilliance was shed still about the figure of the 
 child, waiting upon the bank, among the scarlet flowers, 
 while the boat passed onward into the shadows of the 
 coming night, where the sun-rays did not follow. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 "Nothing she ilucs or Beems 
 But smacks of something greater than herself, 
 
 Too noble for this place " 
 
 He mused, as his thoughts remained with her, while 
 the strokes of his oars swept liini away. lie had never 
 sought wealth; he was a republican to the core; he loved 
 besl the simplest forms of life; he deemed happiest those 
 whose wants were fewest ; audio! in this foundling whom 
 he had protected was a nature in the strongesl opposition 
 to all his views, requiring by sheer inborn instinct all 
 thai circumstances rendered it totally impossible he could 
 ever give her.
 
 G4 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 Through the years of her brief existence, he had taken 
 no heed of the child beyond the provision of her actual 
 needs, and the kindly careless gentleness he would have 
 shown to a clog or a cat; he had never regarded her in 
 the light of a possible burden, a possible difficulty to him- 
 self in the time that was to come. The joyous and neg- 
 ligent temper of Tricotrin was not one that regarded the 
 future ; to rescue the child had been an impulse with him; 
 that she would ever require more than the few easily 
 granted wants of childhood, that the time would ever 
 come when she would grow impatient of the life she led, 
 had never occurred to him until now that her own words 
 and those of the old woman had suggested the doubt. 
 He was used himself, by choice, to live much among the 
 people ; his time, by preference, was much passed among 
 the peasantries of divers nations. He was habituated to 
 seeing young girls who were content enough if they got 
 a new ribbon for their hair, or rode queen of a harvest on 
 a bullock-drawn wagon : that the Waif would prove a 
 young rebel, with the pride of a princess and fastidious 
 tastes curiously inherent in her, was an additional perplex- 
 ity to the whole dilemma of her maintenance. 
 
 The flower was fair, and was yet only in its bud ; its 
 hereafter had never risen before him as a matter of med- 
 itation and of possible future embarrassment. And even 
 now he threw the fear from him : it was free to float on 
 the air in its own happy fashion, sun-kissed and wind- 
 tossed, it bloomed after Nature's own will with it, and all 
 its fragrance was natural, like the sweetness of roses ; — 
 it was the best thing that could betide any opening blos- 
 som to be left so wholly to Nature. With Nature, there- 
 fore, he left too her future. 
 
 And he sent his boat up the stream with a swift strong 
 impulsion, shaking the care from his thoughts as he shook 
 the water-drops from his oars : he was something late for 
 the feast of Yvon Mascarros, and Tricotrin never broke 
 promises even in so small a matter as a vine-dresser's 
 marriage-feast. 
 
 Care never waited with him ; it will scarcely ever tarry 
 where it is not entertained with welcome; and the rich 
 sunlit nature of the man had no kinship with it as a guest.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 65 
 
 There had been times, inevitable in every life, when he 
 had suffered with the intense passion of all vivid charac- 
 ters; but they had been few and far between, and the 
 gracious gladness of his inherent temper had always re- 
 sumed supremacy. Not for him the feverish unrest of 
 ambition ; the carking thirst of the seekers of wealth ; 
 the vacillating hopes and fears of those whose breath is 
 the breath of the world's applause. He was not pursued 
 by the haunting terrors of the hangers-on of public favor ; 
 he was not pressed by the uphill race of men who pant 
 their hearts out in the struggle for gold ; he was not driven 
 to find no sweetness in sleep, no beauty in summer hours, 
 no charm in women's smile, because greed hunted him on 
 and on, through dark and devious ways, seeking the rivers 
 of gold. He sought neither riches nor renown; he greeted 
 each dawn without regret for its yesterday; he saw. the 
 sun set and the night descend with happy Jean Paul hu- 
 mor, saying in those words of wisdom, "I am content 
 since I have lived to-day!" 
 
 And he loved the people, and was loved by them; 
 making his home wheresoever men enjoyed and suffered. 
 
 Many wondered whence he came ; many wove a thou- 
 sand marvelous histories to account for the anomalies 
 which even the least intelligent could mark in him : none 
 knew anything for truth concerning his origin, his nation, 
 or his history. Old people in this vine-country remem- 
 bered him a bright boy of twenty years, with the bronze 
 of southern suns on his fair skin, and the fire of a pas- 
 sionate youth in his blue eyes; who had come no one 
 knew whence, who laughed, and loved, and played, and 
 worked among them; and left them often for long ab- 
 sences, and returned to them always the same, however 
 many years had passed, however slight the stay he made. 
 He was "Tricotrin;" all was said in that; he came and 
 went whenever it pleasured him, never questioned, ever 
 welcomed, like the swallows df the spring. 
 
 He was not wholly of them, thai even the peasantry 
 
 felt ; but lie was with them heart and soul, and they loved 
 
 him better for that nameless difference, that intangible 
 
 unlikeness, which made them, while he toiled among them 
 
 and feasted among them, \ei perceive a royalty in him 
 
 6 *
 
 6fi TRICOTRIN, 
 
 that he never lost; even as the shepherd-kings of the old 
 east were none less kingly to their people because they 
 lived on pulse and water, because they sheared the fleece 
 and folded the herds, and dwelt under the tents of their 
 wandering people. 
 
 The people loved him in all lands ; especially they loved 
 him in this beautiful France, which he had made his mis- 
 tress in preference over all the fair sisters of Europe. 
 The people caressed him, obeyed him, adored him, with 
 a loyalty that would have rendered him an irresistible 
 power in times of revolution ; and as he rowed down the 
 river he knew well that there was not a cottage on its 
 banks, not a water-mill on its shores, not a cabaret in its 
 villages, under whose roof he would not have been wel- 
 come as is the summer sun in mowing time, when its 
 early smile gives promise of the after-math. 
 
 But he did not care to go ashore in that hot and lus- 
 trous summer night. Three miles down the river he over- 
 took the hay-barge, slowly floating in the moonlight with 
 its load of fresh-cut grasses, odorous as violets. It 
 drifted through the broad, sheeted, silver radiance lazily, 
 charmingly, with its great sail black against the sky, and 
 the fragrant dews on its huge soft mounds of fodder that 
 were tossed loosely together, with the wild clover and the 
 white marguerites, scarcely dead, that had been mown 
 with them. He hailed it, knowing its owner well, and 
 the men recognized him with a shout of delight. The 
 barge was stopped; in a second more he had leapt up 
 among them, received with vociferous delight; they were 
 to sail all night down the stream, and they took his little 
 boat in tow with eager pleasure. 
 
 The skipper was a lithe, handsome, black -browed Mar- 
 seillais, with his broad chest bare, and a red sash knotted 
 round his loins, and great gold earrings in his ears, who 
 had taken the peaceful Loire traffic for love of a Loiret 
 woman. 
 
 The skipper had earned a perilous repute for lawless 
 piratical voyages in the southern waters, and was said to 
 be as hot and as swift and as fierce as his own tramontana; 
 hence the people of the woman he loved denied her to him 
 with bitter words and loud revilings. Margot clung to
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. G7 
 
 her fiery southern lover, and refused to be comforted : 
 there was misery for the child, and feud between her 
 suitor and her brethren. At last, in one evil day, the 
 latter heaped insult on insult till the Marseillais' blood of 
 flame leaped up like a sword from its scabbard ; his knife 
 flashed in the sun, and would have darted down, first to 
 be sheathed in her brother's breast and then in his own, 
 had not an outstretched hand turned the blow, at price 
 of a wound in its own palm, and Tricotrin's voice called 
 out — " Has France no foes that her sons fight together ?" 
 
 The offenders were passionately contrite, they wept 
 like children to see his blood, they implored his pardon, 
 they cursed themselves: he laughed and drew little Mar- 
 got to him with his unwounded arm. 
 
 " Little one ! Are you still not afraid of that sea-lion ? 
 No ? You think he is so sure not to wound you ? Well, 
 then — if they are sorry for my hurt, your brethren must 
 give you to me to give to him. You are the only lion- 
 tamer for this wihl beast of ours 1" 
 
 And they gave her: so he made peace among them, 
 and won for evermore the fierce, ardent, grateful soul of 
 the Marseillais. 
 
 Margot's lion never harmed her; as her lion to Una, 
 was Eudes Caros to the pretty, brown, soft, tender child 
 of the Loire. He gave up the wild night roaming on the 
 shores of the Riviera, for peaceful river-trading between 
 the banks of her native stream ; and now, in the little ca- 
 bin of the hay-barge, where the solitary oil lamp hung 
 above her lovely bent head, Margol sat, with a dreaming 
 happy smile in her drooped dark eyes and on her thought- 
 ful mouth, as she gazed at a picture of Christ hung under 
 the lamp, and looked from that downward on the child 
 that lay asleep ;it her breast. 
 
 "Did Mary know he would be God and yet die on the 
 cross? Ah, how she must have longed that he had been 
 but a mortal child who could grow to manhood, and livo 
 on obscure but unharmed I" thought little Margot, press- 
 ing closer the flushed cheek of her tirst-born ; the thought 
 was wholly a woman's ! 
 
 Better an ignoble safety, an inglorious impunity, for the 
 man that they mould, than the divinity of martyrdom,
 
 68 TRICOTRTN, 
 
 than the crucifixion of genius I Better that the soul, 
 which is not of them, should die out in apathy than that 
 the body they conceive and nourish should perish ! 
 
 So they say — Margot and her million of sisters upon 
 earth : and, of the sons they bear, none go up to Calvary, 
 but thousands cumber the world as swine. Yet these 
 women are good ; their kisses are tender, their hands are 
 pure: it is but their souls that are dead; it is but the 
 souls of their ohildren they kill. 
 
 Whether Margot's son were destined to become poet 
 or swineherd, leader or servitor among men, he slept hap- 
 pily in her arms now, and she dreamt happily over him, 
 while the barge floated in moonlight down the stream, 
 and Tricotrin, nonchalantly cast upon the great sweet 
 piles of hay, talked with the Marseillais, watched the 
 shadowy landscapes drifting by, or touched now and then 
 the Straduarius to fitful cadences full of river-song. 
 
 The night was very warm and profoundly still ; one of 
 the splendid nights of France, with stars innumerable 
 burning through a cloudless atmosphere. The slow, calm 
 passage of the barge with the fresh odor of its freight 
 rising on the air, with the woods and vineyards and vil- 
 lages of the river-banks softened to an inconceivable 
 beauty by the light, with the murmur of the water as it 
 parted and met again, and with the occasional chime of 
 belfry-bells from the land ringing some mellow monotone 
 as they told the flight of an hour, was the fittest method 
 for the passage of a summer night, and held a thousand 
 poems and pictures in its indolent starlit voyage. Such 
 pictures, such poems, as he best loved to fill his sight, and 
 his heart, and his memory with ; such as seen, and felt, 
 and treasured, with the true instinct of pure love, had 
 made his life itself the poem and the picture that it was. 
 
 As the evening wore on, Caros, prouder of the pas- 
 senger his barge bore than he would have been of a king 
 for his freight, went below to his Margot; Tricotrin re- 
 mained stretched on the hay with all the fragrant dead 
 flowers and saintfoin beneath him in a couch that was 
 easier than the down of monarchs' beds. He fell asleep, 
 sleep coming as lightly and as swiftly to him as it comes 
 to a tired, healthy child; a night-bird's wing sometimes
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 69 
 
 softly touching his forehead, a cadence from a monastery- 
 chime sometimes mingling- with his dreams. When he 
 awoke it was night still ; there was a break of dawn east- 
 wards, but the stars were still out, the* barge was still 
 winding its tranquil way down the water. 
 
 Leaning his arms down in the yielding grasses he lay 
 looking awhile, lazily, at the mark where the keel cut the 
 stream, at the dews that had fallen on the grasses, at the 
 heavy black sails swinging idly to and fro. His indo- 
 lence did not endure long; a face near him caught his 
 eyes and his pity; and with Tricotrin human sympathies 
 were very keen and swift, human woe and joy the sure 
 chords to arouse and to move him. The face he saw now 
 was one of infinite pain ; it was the face of a man, who, 
 like himself, had chosen that odorous mountain of grasses 
 and herbs for a couch; and who was lying there looking, 
 with wide-opened eyes, down into the ebb and flow of the 
 water against t he sides of the barge. 
 
 He was a man beyond middle age, with a rugged, 
 homely, weather-Worn countenance, and large, black, pa- 
 thetic eyes that, out of the roughness of the other features, 
 gazed, with a piteous, sightless, yearning look, into va- 
 cancy; — a look as of one; startled and astray in some great 
 agony. He won; the usual blouse of the working-day, 
 and his hair was unkempt, his linen soiled, his hand black 
 with the pitch with which he had that day caulked the 
 sides of the barge; but there was that in the mute, in- 
 tense wondering anguish of the eyes that gave at once 
 grandeur and ex. ■ceding pathos to his aspect. It was the 
 look of a uoble animal who has been struck a cruel blow, 
 and who will not hurt the hand that struck it, even in 
 just vengeance. 
 
 Tricotrin spoke to him gently, on some trifle of the 
 night ; the man started, answered wearily, then lapsed 
 into his former attitude. No questions fared better; he 
 replied to them with a certain oppressive effort, but only 
 an instant afterward to fall afresh into the same apathy 
 and absorption: ho was but a common sailor or fisher- 
 man, with QOthing above the common in him, vet the pa- 
 tient, terrible despair upon his face — a despair as of one 
 incessantly seeking what was lost— lent him dignity, 
 gave him greatness.
 
 10 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 Tricotrin let hirn be ; he knew how cruel is the kind- 
 ness which forces itself in upon the silence and the soli- 
 tude of calamity ; and he saw too that here the mind was 
 not wholly present, that in some sense reason had been 
 dulled by suffering, though sufficient perception remained 
 for the mechanical words and actions of daily existence. 
 He said no more ; but in the still, dark dawn, the music 
 of his violin softly supplied the place of speech. There 
 were many times when, through its manifold voices 
 speaking in a universal tongue, he uttered to himself and 
 others what the words of his mouth could not have 
 phrased. Through it all the genius in him spoke; and 
 in it all the heart of the player went out to the hearts of 
 his fellow-men. 
 
 The music, unnoticed at first, failing at first to pene- 
 trate the profound self-absorption of the seaman, reached 
 his ear gradually, as wave on wave of gracious sound 
 broke on the air like the tide on a shore with rhythmical 
 recurrent music. He did not note it as what it was ; he 
 did not make visible sign that he even heard it; but, grad- 
 ually consciousness of it stole upon him. 
 
 The music filled the quiet of the hour, that was only 
 stirred besides by the lapping of the water as the vessel 
 glided down ; music low, and sad, and sweet ; music like 
 a psalm of consolation, with all the blind hungered yearn- 
 ing of a soul adrift upon a bitter world, told and an- 
 swered in it. It pierced the lethargy that enshrouded a 
 darkened, desolate mind ; where the sailor leaned, with his 
 chin resting on his hands and his eyes gaziDg down into 
 the river, a certain change came over him, like the first 
 quiver of returning life into one half dead through stu- 
 por- . great tears started into his eyes, softening their 
 vacancy; he moved with restless pain, then started from 
 his bed of hay with a gesture of intolerable suffering. 
 
 " Hush, — hush ! It reminds me of her voice !" 
 
 The music ceased even as he spoke ; Tricotrin touched 
 him. 
 
 "Of her? Of whom?" 
 
 The sailor's eyes turned on him with the tears floating 
 in their weary depths. 
 
 "I cannot bear it! It is like her — like her voice as she
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 71 
 
 sung her ballads!" he muttered, regardless of the ques- 
 tion, lost only in the one memory that filled the darkened 
 chambers of his mind to the exclusion of all outward 
 sight. "I have lost her, you know, she went from me 
 so long ago. One morning she laughed in my eyes, and 
 kissed my mouth, and threw her white arms around my 
 neck in play, with the sun all so bright on her face ; and 
 at night — at night, you remember? — there were only 
 ashes on the hearth, silence in the chamber, darkness 
 everywhere. Darkness that no light ever breaks; no 
 light ever will break, — till I find her!" 
 
 He was ignorant that he spoke to one who had never 
 ere then looked upon his face; he had no remembrance 
 that the words he uttered had no meaning to the ear that 
 heard them ; to him his grief filled the world, his loss laid 
 the earth desolate. 
 
 Tricotrin rested his hand gently on the other's shoulder; 
 he saw that his music had broken the stupor of the bruin, 
 and stirred, though but to troubled shapeless motion, the 
 locked thoughts of its solitary musing; he waited with 
 patience to do more. 
 
 "To find her?" he repeated. "Then this one whom 
 you love is not dead?" 
 
 "Dead? No — she is not dead," the seaman answered 
 slowly, while his great eyes searched his companion's 
 with a heart-rending look of search and of bewilderment. 
 "That is it — see you! — she is not dead. Dead women 
 lie cold and motionless, their fair limbs do not stir, nor 
 their eyes unclose, nor their lips breathe, but they are 
 there — you can hold them, though their heart does not 
 lieal on yours; you can caress them, though your kiss 
 strikes on ice; you can wind their hair round your hand. 
 though they know your touch no longer. They are 
 there, though they lie lifeless on. thew bridal-beds. But 
 
 she was gone, and did not leave even the beauty of her 
 body to me. The chamber was dark, still, desolate; there 
 was not even a dead woman to gather the sunbeams 
 about hei - , and to seem to smile with their Hgh1 on her 
 mouth !" 
 
 There was an unutterable tenderness and desolation in 
 the answer; his hearer knew all the meaning of those
 
 72 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 wandering- pathetic words; — there is a loss worse than 
 the loss that death causes. He divined what that loss 
 had been; but he saw that the blow it had dealt had 
 numbed the brain of the man who suffered by it out of 
 all comprehension of its truth. 
 
 " She is not dead?" he said softly. " Then hope is still 
 with you?" 
 
 The puzzled, aching- eyes answered him with a look 
 that struck him to the soul. 
 
 "Hope — hope! Yes — I hope. I suppose I hope, since 
 I live on ; — but the years are many, and I grow weary. 
 It was in my youth that I lost her ; and now I grow old. 
 Ever and again I think I behold her; some girl's laugh 
 on a grape-wagon, some girl's eyes that smile at me 
 through the lattice that opens at dawn, some girl's round 
 limbs where they bathe and float in the summer sea, has 
 something of her, and makes me think I have found her. 
 But it is never so ; — they do not know me; they have no 
 light in their glance when they see me; they have no 
 place in their hearts for me. I wander far and wide ; I 
 go east and west, north and south, I seek her in the cities 
 and forests, I watch before the palaces, I search in the 
 hospital-wards, I look for her in the crowds of the streets, 
 I wait for her in the loneliness of the plains — all in vain, 
 all in vain!" 
 
 "Is it so many years since you lost her ?" 
 
 "It is many. I cannot tell how many. I keep no 
 count. The seasons come and go, but she does not come 
 with them. Ah ! it is terrible that ! — in a throng to see 
 but one face, in a world to hear but one voice, and the 
 face forever eluding, and the voice forever mocking you ! 
 And the earth is so wide, you know; — one may toil on 
 and on and on and never reach nearer 1 The house is 
 ready for her just as she left it; the flowers are dead, I 
 cannot help that, — she is so long away, — but all is as she 
 left it. I try always to keep it so ; I think it will pleasure 
 her when she comes back." 
 
 His head dropped on his chest with a heavy sigh, the 
 lethargy stirred for awhile by the power of the music re- 
 turned ; the brooding patience settled down again on the 
 features which for an instant had quivered and changed.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. f3 
 
 He was not conscious that he had spoken to a stranger ; 
 he had only uttered the ever-present thoughts of his mind 
 with the wandering eloquence born of the intensity of 
 one single and dominant feeling. 
 
 A voice called him to the farther end of the vessel: 
 with the mechanical instinct of obedience he swung down 
 from the piles of the hay and went whither he was bid- 
 den, — become only a common boatman, gone to the coiling 
 of a rope, the reefing of a sail. 
 
 Tricotrin watched him as he passed aft in the dusky 
 dawn that was now faintly reddened by the first approach 
 of day: his heart ached for this man who with his hard 
 life and his deadened reason could yet find strength and 
 greatness for such love as this. 
 
 "A woman!" he thought. "The same old story ever! 
 And the same blow which pierces Estmere's purples 
 strikes through the seaman's canvas shirt! There is no 
 mail against that stroke, either in power or in poverty." 
 
 The dark handsome head of the Marseillais looked up 
 at him at that minute from the cabin stair: Tricotrin 
 signed him to come higher and leant towards him. 
 
 "Who is that boatman of yours, good Caros?" 
 
 Caros raised himself with a sailor's lightness and swift- 
 ness on to the height of the mounds of dry grass; he was 
 a gentle-hearted man, though the wild lire of southern 
 pirates ran in his blood, and to the one who had given 
 him his Loirais' bride he bore a passionate devotion. 
 
 "You speak of poor Bruno, my friend?" he answered. 
 "He is a good sailor on rougher waters than rivers, though 
 his brain is gone for all but his work. 1 knew him well 
 down in the south ; he is poor, and so I gave him a berth 
 and a turn on my barge." 
 
 " Bruno ! Is that his name ?" 
 
 "Jean Bruno: yes. We were lads together. And we 
 were on the same craft for years in the Mediterranean 
 days. He was a fine fellow — a noble fellow — till she 
 ruined him." 
 
 "His wife?" 
 
 "Ay! His wife. We were lads together, though lie 
 looks so old, ami I — I feel as young as Rlargol ! lie is 
 scarce forty, Bruno. 1 remember her well ; she was fifteen 
 
 1
 
 74 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 when she wedded him, and he a lad of twenty-two. She 
 was the bastard child of some noble, a beautiful thing, all 
 yellow hair, and smiling lips, and sunny eyes, and white 
 soft limbs; she bewitched that black strong stalwart fel- 
 low, who was half lion, half lamb. He adored her — ah 1 
 — as those great, brave, mild natures always do love. It 
 was almost terrible to see how that soft little piece of 
 bright-colored life held the whole heart and soul of the 
 man ! Well, — he had one year of happiness, one year of 
 a fool's paradise; he went short coasting voyages, no 
 more, he could not bear to be away from the little cabin 
 where she had everything he could get her — birds and 
 flowers, and quaint Indian things that the Indian ships 
 brought home. She was good enough to him ; a gay, 
 laughing, sweet-tempered, mindless thing; who could 
 have thought she had been so cruel ? One day he bade 
 her farewell at dawn; he was going on a fishing trip to 
 be absent only the day; I was waiting for him outside the 
 cabin; I saw her laugh, and caress him, and wave her 
 hands in adieu. We went out to sea. We were at sea 
 all day. We got home with three boats' load by midnight. 
 The light that always burned in her cabin was out: he 
 flew like a madman the half league down the shore, and 
 burst his door open, — Favette was not there. Ah God! 
 to this day I have never forgotten the sight of Bruno ! " 
 
 The Marseillais paused ; the tide of recollection rushed 
 with painful force in on him; when he spoke his voice 
 was low and full of pity. 
 
 " It killed the mind in him ; — shattered it out of all sense 
 of the truth. We found the truth soon. Favette had 
 gone to shame ; a shame that looked brilliant to her beside 
 the innocent quiet sea-life that she led. The leaven of 
 her mother was in her. She had gone to the stage ; a 
 great actor had made her his mistress. But Bruno never 
 knew this. He could not comprehend when we tried to 
 tell it him. She was lost; that was all he knew; that she 
 had sinned against him he would not, or could not, under- 
 stand. It was horrible! — he thought she had been stolen 
 from him, he loved her so tenderly still ! He has searched 
 for her ever since. Time has not killed that love in him, 
 though her crime has killed his reason. The little cabin
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 75 
 
 down by the south is- always kept ready for her return; 
 
 not a thing is touched; and meanwhile he wanders all 
 
 over France seeking what he can never find ! You know 
 
 who Favette is?" 
 
 "No. She lives then ?" 
 . "She lives. Lives in — Coriolis." 
 "Coriolisl Our great actress! — what? — the wife of 
 that man?" 
 
 "Ay ! How many such women own even as good a 
 past as to have slept on the honest heart of an honest man 
 they betrayed?" said the Marseillais bitterly. "Their 
 nests are mostly fouler than that sea-bird's nest. Yes, 
 she is Coriolis; but he does not know it, mind you. 
 Though he seeks her, still his search is chiefly south- 
 ward ; he has never come on the dazzling sinner of Paris. 
 Pray God that he never may 1 It is fearful enough, his 
 quest for her, his task that can never be ended, his hope 
 that can never be granted; but it is better, at its worst, 
 than the truth could be to him if he ever looked again on 
 the face of his wife !" 
 
 He said no more, but turned quickly, and busied him- 
 self with some ropes of the barge. He loved little Mar- 
 got; he could feel now for his comrade as he had not felt 
 in the years of their youth. 
 
 Tricotrin asked no more. He knew the comedian well, 
 a lovely, heedless, heartless woman ; full of laughter, of 
 coquetry, of caprice; a soulless, brainless, beautiful thing; 
 young still, fair still; with the beauty of the japonica or 
 the azalea — beauty of hue and form, without a trace of 
 the beauty that fragrance lends the flower and feeling 
 lends the woman. Many a time had he seen the theater 
 she graced convulsed with mirth at her gay and mis- 
 chievous follies. 
 
 The story had a great pathos for him: — he who had 
 seen the sparkling gayety of the wife fell the full force of 
 the martyrdom of the husband. The cruelty and the 
 crime had been rewarded by so shadowless a life of triumph, 
 — the devotion and the fealty had been recompensed by 
 so Aveary and endless an agony ! 
 
 "Ah, Waif of mine!" he thought, "will you ever, I 
 wonder, destroy a brave heart like that lor the sake' of 
 your senses and your vanity ?"
 
 76 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 With sunrise the barge passed the village for which he 
 was bound. He was pledged to the bridal feast of Yvon 
 Mascarros, or his heart had inclined to follow the fortunes 
 of that patient desolated life which had been ruined by a 
 woman's infidelity. He went up to Bruno, and bade him 
 gently farewell. The seaman lifted his head from the 
 rough work on which his hands were engaged, and replied 
 with mechanical courtesy; the momentary light and 
 reason that the music had wakened there had died out 
 from his features: the old, darkened, brooding, lifeless 
 pain had gathered there again. 
 
 " There is nothing one can do him ?" he asked of Caros. 
 
 The Marseillais shook his head. 
 
 "Neither God nor man can aid him. Who can give 
 him back his wife, in her youth and without her crime ?" 
 
 It was true. Solace for Bruno could only come with 
 death. 
 
 Tricotrin watched him one moment more, sitting under 
 the black shadow of the sail, with his fingers working at 
 the cordage, and his eyes looking out at the sun, where 
 it rose in all its gloiy. Then, with the hands of Caros 
 grasping him in grateful farewell, and the bright face of 
 little Margot looking, smiling and sunny, over the side of 
 the barge, he dropped himself into his own little boat, and 
 rowed himself straight across the stream to the landing- 
 place. As he moored it to land, he paused a moment 
 looking after the barge where it drifted slowly on down 
 the river, with the glow of the sunrise, amber-hued and 
 ruddy, on the waters around it. 
 
 " To have life killed in one at twenty-three by a woman ! 
 — and men call diseases that slay outright 'cruel,' while 
 there are these blows which murder by means that draw 
 out the torture through a quarter of a century. The 
 plague is merciful compared with a woman without pity I" 
 he thought as he watched the form of Bruno, dark and 
 motionless, under the shadow of the sail. 
 
 That thing he himself had saved yonder, who was 
 chasing the butterflies so joyously, with the sunshine 
 on her fair brow, careless of the pain they felt — she, too, 
 would soon be a woman. Had he rescued her from death 
 only for her to deal death, like this fond, faithless wanton
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 77 
 
 that the sailor had cherished ? The thought came to him 
 — well as he loved the child, well as all his years through 
 he had loved her sex. 
 
 In some sense the weary, lonely, melancholy figure of 
 the boatman, with his strong, massive frame that would 
 not perish, and his jarred aching brain, to which death 
 would have been so much mercy, stood out to him in 
 painful contrast with his memory of the light, gracious, 
 golden presence of the child, as he had left her among the 
 scarlet flowers and the dewy leaves. These were both 
 forms of the same human life 1 
 
 But the thought was a bitter cucumber which Tricotrin 
 threw away in obedience to his favorite Antoninus' coun- 
 sel. He left the barge to pass on her way; and, after 
 bathing in the river, walked through summer woods and 
 green vineyards to the village of his destination, where, 
 already in the early day, the peasantry were stirring, and 
 the young girls and the children going out to gather wild 
 lilies, and honeysuckles, and great branches of roses, to 
 crown the head and strew the path of the prettiest among 
 them, who was to wed with Yvon Mascarros. 
 
 And there, under the low eaves of the farrier's cottage, 
 or under the blossoming boughs of the limes that sheltered 
 the house, Tricotrin, with his mirth and his music, kept 
 these innocent revelers gay from daybreak to nightfall, — 
 gay with a zest they never had unless he were the Lord 
 of Misrule. And the Loirois maidens, with I heir black 
 laughing eyes, and their lithe robust forms, and their feet 
 that flew like the flash of phosphoric insects, danced all 
 through the sultry summer night to the same melodies, 
 touched by the same hand which had awakened to mo- 
 mentary consciousness of its own agtfny the numbed and 
 stricken heart of the boatman Bruno. 
 
 7*
 
 18 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Under the old sign of the Comemeuse there was a gay, 
 after-midnight supper. 
 
 It was not the Comemeuse of Dancourt, of Marivaux, 
 of Piron. It Was not the famous, well-beloved cafe of the 
 poets, the artists, the epigrammatists of the eighteenth 
 century; but it was a Comemeuse as mirthful if not as 
 traditional as theirs. 
 
 A bright, white-painted, gas- glittering little house, with 
 gilded balconies and tri-colored flags, and tiny chambers, 
 and open glass doors, with the perpetual color and move- 
 ment of the Paris crowd under the trees before it, and the 
 vivacious noise and music of a Paris night all around it. 
 It was a resort of the bohemians, — of the painters, and 
 the actors, and the rhymesters, — of those who make the 
 laughter of the world, and of those who limn its manners 
 for the age to come. Chiefly the artists came thither, and 
 within the little building there was scarcely a single white 
 panel, or a single piece of plaster, that was not covered 
 with the charcoal or the chalk, the oil-color or the pen-and- 
 ink of the master hands of France. The Comemeuse 
 had untold gold upon its walls; and the owner of it, a 
 bright, hot-blooded man of the south, loved the pictured 
 wails with all his soul, and had never sold a touch from 
 his guests' brushes save once, when his daughter's dowry 
 could not be found In any other wise, when he had taken 
 down a shutter whose three panels were rich with three 
 great masters' idle fancies, and had parted with it for its 
 weight in francs. For half a century the Comemeuse 
 had thus gathered its wealth upon its walls and timbers; 
 and among its treasures — the treasures its host valued 
 most, though they were but the gifts of an amateur — were 
 some half dozen female heads, with all the grace of Greuze 
 and all the velvet hues of Boucher; — heads that looked 
 out in charming coquetry from quaint dark corners, and
 
 777/7 STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 79 
 
 laughed down from window-nooks, wreathed with flow- 
 ers, — heads under which the brush of their creator had 
 scrawled carelessly, "Tricotrin." 
 
 " You could have beaten us all if you would," had said 
 once to their artist a painter whose name stood as the 
 Velasquez of his modern time. 
 
 "Possibly; but then Art would have been my tyrant, 
 whereas she is now my handmaiden." 
 
 "And serves you well. Yet, if you had let her rule 
 you entirely " 
 
 "I should have been her slave. He is a fool who is 
 subject to his mistress. Can he ever wholly enjoy her? 
 I doubt it." 
 
 "But is it not waste of genius ?" 
 
 The wanderer shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 " I don't say whether it is my weakness or my strength 
 to hate the bondage of anything, — even of Art. I only 
 say — it is my temper!" 
 
 "But if every man had such a temper?" 
 
 "Well, if every bird were a lark we should get no use- 
 ful fowls for the stew; but I do not see that the utility 
 of stews to eat proves any argument against the right of 
 the larks to sin"- ?" 
 
 And the man who loved song, and light, and green 
 meadow lands, and blue sunny skies, like the larks them- 
 selves, had taken up his friend's palette and sheaf of 
 brushes, and had dashed in, in two hours, a female head 
 that had all the brown glow, the voluptuous luster of the 
 south in it, — a head that Titian might have painted. 
 
 lie would create such in the caprice of free impulse; 
 but he would have produced them as a trade no more 
 than his fellow-bohemians, the larks, will sing in cellars. 
 
 It might be strength. It might be weakness. But it 
 Was, as he said, his temper. 
 
 Beneath that same golden, ardent, beaming Hebe face 
 that he had there sketched in nils on the panel, he sat 
 among his brethren now a1 1 he supper of the ( ornemeuse, 
 
 with the light en (he leonine beaut] of his head, and in 
 the sparkling laughter of hi,- eye.-. He was the king of 
 the revelry; revelry of wit and wine, where tho.-e whom 
 nature had anointed with the same chrism that touched
 
 80 TRICOTRJN, 
 
 Rubens's brow and Shakspeare's lips, held joyous, law- 
 less sovereignty; leaning to kiss ripe scarlet mouths of 
 women because they were men, but rising to great 
 thoughts that left far beneath them alike women and the 
 worl'd, because they were also immortals. 
 
 His laugh rang out, tuneful as the music of silver; his 
 wit flashed through the speech like meteors through the 
 night; his improvisations, full of irony, of raillery, of 
 caricature, made the gay shouts of his listeners echo again 
 and again. Ben Jonson odes, Beaumarchais rhymes, Be- 
 ranger songs, and Breton carols, coursed each other off 
 his lips, in a wild tournament of tongues; his own swift 
 satires unhorsed all combatants, and as he drank he 
 chanted Hellenic bacchanal hymns, with all the bright 
 gay grace dT Greece. 
 
 He would have lived as soon without light as without 
 the freedom of unfettered mirth, the abandonment of un- 
 chained gayety, the debonnair enjoyment of the lord of 
 misrule. 
 
 He loved pleasure ; but he loathed debauch ; when the 
 former glided in its riot to the latter he left the Corne- 
 meuse, as the morning dawn began to break, and went 
 out into the air ; the wine having only warmed all his 
 poet's fancies, and only making richer and fuller still in 
 its melody the ring of his voice as he walked through 
 Paris, singing aloud the 
 
 God Lyoeus ever young, 
 Ever honored, ever sung, 
 
 of the wine-mellowed Elizabethan verse. 
 
 Tricotrin knew how to enjoy. His censors — and he 
 had many — said that he deemed this too exclusively the 
 only aim of life. At the least his enjoyment was of that 
 free, liberal, and gracious fashion which sheds its light on 
 all around it, and is never cramped into egotism, nor dis- 
 torted into orgy. 
 
 None the less either because he came freshly from the 
 lavishness of mirth and the pleasures of the senses was 
 he awake to all that is terrible, to all that is horrible in 
 the shame, the crime, the hunger, the agony that were
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 81 
 
 hidden beneath the marvelous night-glitter of the city 
 . through which he went. 
 
 None the less because on his lips the carol was so 
 mirthful of the 
 
 "Stained with blood of lusty grapes 
 In a thousand lusty shap •-, 
 Dance upon the mazer's brim, 
 In the crimson liquor swim. 
 From the plenteous hand divine, 
 Let a river run with wine, 
 God of youth 1" 
 
 did he pause in pity at the sight of a wretched creature 
 who begged his alms, though that pity was not heard in 
 his first words. 
 
 "Charity?" quoth Tricotrin, to the appeal. "You ask 
 for what men want, every one of them, but love little to 
 give. Pass on, my friend " 
 
 "But bread — a morsel of bread at least?" moaned the 
 man, who had stopped him in an obscure street, where 
 there were few other passengers in the lateness of the 
 night. 
 
 Tricotrin looked him through with his brilliant eyes 
 by the light of the summer moon: he had no love for 
 those who begged, and he knew thief from pauper at 
 a glance. 
 
 "Off with you!" he said, amusedly. "If a man cannot 
 get a bit of baked wheat for himself, in a world where 
 there is so much to be done, he is not a fellow worth 
 keeping in the world at all, to my fancy." 
 
 "It is hard to work!" muttered the other, who had 
 the pure accent of education. 
 
 "Oh-he! If everybody worked in moderation, nobody 
 need overwork himself. It is because there are so ninny 
 do-nothings — chiefly so many female drones — that those 
 who do at all do overmuch To say nothing, that the 
 overseer of Greed drives his slaves a1 the devil's par,-." 
 
 " But I am starving," moaned the beggar afresh. "And 
 it is so bitter to die!" 
 
 "Not at all. Mere ignorant error. Hard to die? Is 
 opium-sleep hard after racking pain? What fools men
 
 82 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 are! Writhing in famine and disease, they think it hard 
 to be released from both!" 
 
 "Ah, you have not felt hunger!" — the poor wretch was 
 longing for mere food; to be epigrammatized by a stranger 
 in the desolation of the streets, little appeased the ter- 
 rible desire. 
 
 Tricotrin's eyes softened greatly. 
 
 " Have I not ?" he said, with infinite gentleness. " You 
 mistake, my friend." 
 
 "Then for heaven's sake give me bread!" said the man 
 fiercely; for his growing need made him ferocious, like a 
 desert beast. 
 
 "Tut! Say for humanity's sake. Well— I have not 
 a sou on me. I have spent them all at the Comemeuse 
 yonder." 
 
 Cheated in his hope, the starving creature shrank back 
 with a shrill yell of grief, like a struck clog's; the sound 
 went to the heart of his hearer, and outbalanced the pre- 
 disposition against him, which his voice and his features 
 had aroused. 
 
 He struck the beggar kindly on the shoulder. 
 
 "Unphilosophic man! Blind yet to the advantages of 
 death? Come then — follow me." 
 
 With his quick, light step, and resuming his chant — 
 Beaumont and Fletcher — Tricotrin led the way, through 
 many tortuous turnings, till he reached the quarter of St. 
 Martin, the starving wretch following him in dumb quies- 
 cence, shivering, though the night was warm with all the 
 balmy sweetness of a late French summer. 
 
 An impulse of trust had made him accost this stranger, 
 so utterly unlike himself, who had so dauntless a carriage, 
 and who had on his lips the carol of such careless revelry. 
 All that evening and night through he had vainly sought 
 pity from the crowds of Paris, from the beautiful painted 
 women, the men of wealth, the creatures of delight, who 
 swarmed there in such busy, heedless, glittering throngs; 
 only this one man had given him what he sought. 
 
 Tricotrin let himself in with a pass-key into a house of 
 the poor and crowded quarter, where he had fixed his 
 dwelling for the time. He was never stationary, scarcely 
 for so much as a week ; he was yet freer and more com-
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 83 
 
 pletely unincumbered than the Arabs, for he had not 
 even a tent to bear with him, but made his nest where he 
 would, as fancy took him, like a yellow-hammer in a high- 
 way. . 
 
 He wanted no home as he wanted no nation. Where- 
 ever men dwelt he found both. 
 
 lie went up a high wooden rickety staircase, very 
 high, for he always chose his room nearest the sky, and 
 bade the beggar follow him into the topmost chamber. 
 
 It was a very large attic, for he could endure no cramped 
 space; with bare floor and bare walls; Mistigri curled up 
 on a little straw bed, and his Attavante and his Stra- 
 duarius lying together on the deal table. It was perfectly 
 comfortless; but he was never in it except for slumber, 
 and through the open window there shone the sky, star- 
 studded. 
 
 He wasted no time in words, but striking a light and 
 going to a cupboard in the wall, drew out a great roll of 
 bread, some- cold meat, an apparatus for coffee making, 
 and a flask of Burgundy, all he had in his possession. He 
 set the food before the beggar; made some steaming 
 coffee in five minutes; and poured him out as much wine 
 as it was safe to give him after his long fast. The man 
 devoured as only starvation can, and Tricotrin, turning 
 his back on him to spare him a witness of his voracity, 
 busied himself talking to Mistigri, where she had thrown 
 herself down on the mattress. 
 
 Now and then he cast a look at his guest, and the sur- 
 vey did not please him. There was a wolfish keenness 
 in the way he ate which was of itself repulsive; but it 
 was less this, than the cast and expression of his features 
 that displeased his host. He was very delicately made, 
 and his face was of beautiful type, with the hair cut short 
 over the brow, and falling longer behind; he was not 
 young, but tin' hice remained youthful, though its clear 
 olive skin was livid, and the jet black curls had many 
 threads of white Eandsome he was, handsome as an 
 Antinous, bul the beauty was crafty, feline, cowardly, 
 l'u 1 ! of latent lust and cruelty, though such as would have 
 been dangerously comely to the eyes of sensual women. 
 
 (Something of remembrance came to Tricotrin as he
 
 84 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 watched him : but what the memory was he could not 
 recall. 
 
 His meal over, the man thanked him with all the pro- 
 fusion of southern expletive, and all the grace of southern 
 manner ; there was that both in his speech and air which 
 showed he had once been gently nurtured, though now 
 fallen as low as this. 
 
 Tricotrin seated himself on the straw pallet, and listened 
 silently; he was pondering what he could do for him; it 
 was not his way to give men mere passing aid. 
 
 " No thanks," he said at last. " Sit down again a minute. 
 I have done nothing for you. In Utopia there will be no 
 want. But while we are as far from Utopia as we are 
 now, we are bound to help one another. Tell me, my 
 friend — what have you been?" 
 
 "Nothing!" 
 
 "Nothing! The best thing if you are a philosopher, 
 the worst if you are not." 
 
 " But ' Philosophy bakes no bread,' as Novalis has it," 
 murmured the stranger, with a mirthless and bitter smile. 
 
 Tricotrin eyed him more closely. 
 
 " Well — 1 am not altogether sure of that. At the least 
 she teaches us to be content, in default of bread, with a 
 handful of pulse. That is better than to have discontent 
 and dyspepsia after a banquet. But, you are a man of 
 education. Did your sense never tell you that it does not 
 do to be ' nothing,' unless one has a million to be it upon ?" 
 
 "I suppose it should have told me so, but I thought 
 each day that the morrow " 
 
 "Cras vives; hodie jam vivere Postume, serum est. 
 Ule sapit, quisquis, Postume, vixit heri," murmured 
 Tricotrin ; he who enjoyed existence with the versa- 
 tility of a humorist, the richness of an artist, and the 
 carelessness of a wanderer, felt as much contempt as pity 
 for those who wei*e ignorant of the true secret of happi- 
 ness — living in the present. 
 
 "Martial might have remembered," said the sufferer, 
 quickly, "that there are some people who never get a 
 chance of 'living,' worth anything at all, either yester- 
 day, to-day, or to-morrow." 
 
 " Humph! The wise man compels chance. However,
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 85 
 
 some want a good opportunity, as bad swimmers want 
 an air belt. We will see if we cannot furnish you with 
 one. But first be more explicit with me., What has been 
 your career?" 
 
 The stranger hesitated. 
 
 "A checkered one," he said, bitterly. "Now in sun- 
 shine, now in darkness. I have known what it is to be 
 rich, successful, triumphant; I have known pleasure, and 
 abundance, and women's loves. But — in a word — I have 
 been a gamester ; and the good fortune that crowned me 
 so long has forsaken me for the last score of years, till — 
 till — I have become what you see me!" 
 
 The tears stood in his eyes; he pitied himself with 
 exceeding pity, and regarded his fate, as every gambler 
 does, as the cruel result of a combination of cruel con- 
 spiracies. 
 
 "A gambler!" echoed Tricotrin. "How could you 
 say you were nothing? You are of the trade that ruins, 
 more souls than any other, except the trade that women 
 drive in love. A gambler! Bah! to peril all your brain, 
 and your peace, and your future on the caprice of the turn 
 of a wheel ! Why, to pin them on the faith of a woman 
 is not more foolish, and is far more poetic!" 
 
 "You are pleased to jest at my misery!" muttered the 
 other, sullenly. 
 
 "Nay. I jest at no misery," said Tricotrin, earnestly. 
 "God forbid! But if you have no other resource than 
 play, it is difficult indeed to see how to aid you. Could 
 I give you thousands they would all go in one night of 
 hazard!" 
 
 "I used to have such luck! How could I tell that 
 those devils of cards would only mock me as age came 
 on me?" 
 
 The question was piteous and passionate — he deemed 
 himself wronged as by some base treachery, by the change; 
 of the chance thai used to smile on him. 
 
 Tricotrin looked at him in silence: his compassion for 
 the evident wretchedness and dire want of the man re- 
 strained the scornful satire that rose to his lips on this 
 folly of first trusting, and then recriminating, hazard. 
 
 "In what fashion would } T ou most like me to aid you?" 
 
 8
 
 86 TRIC0TR1N, 
 
 he asked at length. "I am poor myself; yet I could put 
 you in many ways of earning bread, if you were one of 
 those who were willing to labor for it." 
 
 "Yon recommend labor — but you follow pleasure, I 
 believe. That is a common anomaly!" 
 
 The ingratitude of the graceless retort to the one who 
 had just succored him in starvation, grated on Tricotrin's 
 ear ; but he did not suffer it to influence him. This man 
 was in necessity; in Tricotrin's catholic humanity that 
 fact excused all bitterness in him. 
 
 "You judge of what you know nothing," he said, 
 simply. " Pleasure is but labor to those who do not know 
 also that labor in its turn is pleasure. But we have to do 
 with your concerns, not with mine. Can you tell me more 
 of your life, — though you have epitomized it in that one 
 word, Play?" 
 
 "What use would it be?" moaned the other, wearily. 
 "I have said, I had my enjoyments, my conquests, my 
 indulgences years ago — years ago ! Of late — for many a 
 long "day — I have done nothing save hang over the 
 gaming-tables, on which I had often not even a coin to 
 stake! I have been a fool — oh, yes! I know it as well 
 as you can tell it me. And why? Because I had never 
 the courage to be wicked enough! It is the man who is 
 timorous in crime, who alone fails to make crime a fair 
 mistress, and a good paymaster!" 
 
 As he uttered the one-sided warped truth, his delicate 
 face worked and darkened with a spirit of evil which 
 looked as though only the power, but never the will, 
 had been lacking in him to give himself wholly over 
 to sin. 
 
 Tricotrin saw that, but he passed over the speech with- 
 out reply to it. 
 
 "What is your country?" he asked, simply. 
 
 "By birth I am Greek." 
 
 A darkness passed over his hearer's face. 
 
 " Slang has made Greek synonym for Cheat! Popular 
 instincts rarely err. And you are 'noble' by birth too, I 
 suppose?" 
 
 The stranger winced under the ironic and contemptu- 
 ous intonation of the sentence. He made no answer;
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 87 
 
 feeling his host's lustrous eyes were fixed like an eagle's 
 on him. 
 
 "Every Hellenic scoundrel is descended from the 
 Pisistratidse, or the Alcmoeonidae, if we believe his state- 
 ment on the matter!" said Tricotrin, with the same 
 disdainful accent in his phrase. "What may your 
 name be?" 
 
 "Paulus Canaris." 
 
 "What!" 
 
 As the word leapt from his throat he leapt himself on 
 to the Greek, with his hand on the weakly and subtle 
 form, that writhed impotently in his grasp. 
 
 "Thief — traitor — hound!" he cried, with the intensity 
 of passion reiterating through the words, while to and 
 fro in his irresistible grasp he swung the stranger as 
 easily as though he held a dog. Speechless, breathless, 
 paralyzed, the man strove in vain to get free from this 
 fiery and instant wrath, which had thus broken up from 
 the genial and sunny mirth of the one who had fed him 
 and succored him. 
 
 "What have I done?" he gasped. "Is this your hos- 
 pitality?" 
 
 Struck by the last word as by a lash, Tricotrin loosed 
 and shook him from him. 
 
 "You have broken my bread — you are sacred. But 
 for that— by God!"— 
 
 The oath was stifled in his throat; breathing fast and. 
 loud, controlling with strong effort the passion which 
 possessed him, he fell back from the gamester, with his 
 back against the casement, seeking the air by instinct, as 
 a hound after combat seeks water. 
 
 "What is my crime?" murmured the other, halting, 
 panting, blanched with fear. "What do you know of 
 me?" 
 
 "I know you — as the paramour of Estmere's wife!" 
 
 The Greek's features ctcw livid, and all his delicate 
 limbs trembled as with palsy. 
 
 "Estmerel Who are you then ?" 
 
 "No matter thai ! I know all your life; adulterer, liar, 
 betrayer, thief!" 
 
 The furious words coursed swiftly on each other;
 
 88 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 leaning back against the attic window, with his arms 
 crossed on his chest as though to withhold himself from 
 violence against the man made sacred by having eaten 
 of his salt, Tricotrin stood gazing on him, with his eyes 
 aflame like a lion's, and the night wind blowing his hair. 
 
 The Greek cowered under that look as under some 
 physical torture; he had no conception of who the man 
 was who thus arraigned him, he had no conception of 
 why his wrath was thus aroused against the paramour 
 of the wife of another, but he knew that the vileness of 
 his own life had been seen by these eyes that pierced 
 him with their accusation and their scorn. 
 
 "You use bitter words," he muttered at length, in 
 the ague of fear. "Who are you — in God's name, who 
 are you?" 
 
 '"Blaspheme God, you who betrayed man!" cried 
 Tricotrin, his passion once more striving for mastery. 
 "No matter who I am — suffice it I am one who knows 
 you. If you had not eaten of my bread I would choke 
 your crimes down your throat with the vengeance on 
 you that you merit. You are safe with me being under 
 my roof, having sat at my board. But for that " 
 
 He ceased ; his breath came loud and hard, it went 
 sore with him to let this man pass out in peace. But he 
 would not break the bond that made the guest sacred to 
 him, by the old grand law of nomad tribes; and he would 
 not forswear his word. With a swift movement he 
 turned, swept out the few gold coins his cupboard held, 
 and threw them down at his debtor's feet, with a gesture 
 of speechless scorn. 
 
 "I keep my promise even with things as vile as you. 
 There is your 'chance.' Take it, and begone I" 
 
 The Greek cowered and shrank with shame, with ter- 
 ror, with repugnance. He hesitated an instant, the dire 
 fear upon him conflicting with the lustful impulse for the 
 gold, that moved him to take it even at this cost. For an 
 instant even the debased nature of the man recoiled from 
 accepting succor given thus. Then, — so low had he 
 fallen, — he stooped, with a hurried, furtive action, caught 
 the coins in the hollow of his hand, and slunk out in his 
 ravening greed.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 89 
 
 He was ashamed ; but avarice conquered shame. 
 
 He went stealthily down the staircase, up which his 
 preserver had so lately brought him, and out through the 
 narrow door. The owner of the house was just up, in 
 the dawn, and washing down his passages with brooni 
 and water, singing cheerily a rhythm of his old birth- 
 country, Berri. 
 
 "Who lives in your fifth story?" the Greek whispered 
 to him. 
 
 The gay, good-humored Berrois smiled. 
 
 "Ah, ha! The attic has a prince indeed 1 Do you not 
 know him? Why, all Paris knows Tricotrin." 
 
 " Tricotrin!" murmured Paulus Canaris, as he slunk on- 
 ward into the early daylight; the name told him nothing; 
 he had never heard it. It increased his perplexity and 
 his terror. He hastened to forget both in trying his 
 " chance" at the nearest gambling den ; but he registered 
 the name in his memory. 
 
 AVhen he was left alone, Tricotrin stood at the open 
 window, his passion quivering still, hot and bitter, through 
 his blood. It was rarely that rage or grief ever mastered 
 the mellow, happy, and abundant life within him ; but when 
 he gave way to either, the emotion was terrible, the hour 
 of his abandonment to it was very dark. 
 
 Forte e Vaceto di viri 1 dolce. 
 
 For a long time he stood there, combating the hatred 
 and the remembrance that were so heavy on him. Then 
 he shook himself, as lions shake their manes. The dew 
 was wet on his forehead; his face was flushed red with 
 the fury he had restrained; his chest heaved with quick- 
 ened breaths. He stretched his hand out, and dashed to 
 shivers the glass from which the Greek had drunk. As 
 the pieces foil lie smiled sadly, in rebuke of his own un- 
 controlled and boyish action. 
 
 " Mistigri,"he murmured, " a philosopher should be as 
 unmoved seeing his foes as his friends. A philosopher, 
 decidedly, should not keep such a puerility as a Fast. J 
 am disgusted with myself, Mistigri. Scold, scold, if you 
 like; that is a favorite way with your sex of showing 
 sympathy: and I deserve it. Bah, Mistigri I even a phi- 
 losopher is mortal when his personality is touched. I 
 
 8*
 
 90 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 should have been vile enough not to have given that man 
 food if I had known whom it was that I fed. How con- 
 temptible that I A clear human duty broken for a private 
 sentiment!" 
 
 Mistigri made a murmuring, affectionate noise, as 
 though deprecatory of his self-condemnation, and compre- 
 hensive that Man was still too near his progenitor Monkey 
 not to instinctively give blow for blow. 
 
 " Clearly contemptible, Mistigri I" continued her owner 
 with a smile, for his moods passed as' rapidly as April 
 days from storm to sunshine. " Lacedemonian Charellus 
 was perfectly right. ' By the gods, if I were not in wrath 
 with you I would have you slain.' He knew how wrath 
 obscures reason. Wise man ! And we degenerate moderns 
 allege our anger as the very motive to strike ! Let us 
 banish the dark spirit, Mistigri. It is the ruin of all 
 peace, and the foe of all philosophy !" 
 
 And to banish it, Tricotrin took up his perpetual con- 
 solers, — his violin and his meerschaum, and smoking the 
 one drew music from the other. Whenever his joyous 
 serenity was broken he restored its peace by the same 
 spell as gave back sanity to Philip of Spain and Saul to 
 Israel. 
 
 When does the artist ever so wholly escape from the 
 oppression of the world around him as when he enters 
 the world of his own creation? 
 
 The music stole out from the open casement into the 
 warm gray dawn; and as it floated downward and up- 
 ward on the quiet air, it breathed its beauty out over the 
 crowded roofs of Paris. 
 
 Homeless outcasts, wandering footsore, heard it, and 
 turned backward from where their steps were leading 
 them to the brink of the black river. Lost women, des- 
 perate because they could not glean the foul wages of sin, 
 caught the sweet fugitive echoes, and thought with a pang 
 of long dead days, when they had leaned, in innocence and 
 infancy, against their mothers' knees. And one little 
 child in the street below, thrust out to steal with brutal 
 blows, and fearful of returning because his hands were 
 empty, listened where he lay, upon a doorstep, naked, 
 hungry, sobbing, — listened till he fell asleep, with a smile
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 91 
 
 upon his pale bruised lips, and dreamed of flowers and of 
 sunlight, and of the pitying faces of angels. 
 
 Thus Tricotrin soothed other souls beside his own. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 "Grand'mere!" cried Yiva; "there is Sarazin! and he 
 is going up to Villiers ; and he says he will take us both 
 there, if you will come; and we shall see all its glories; 
 and he has a.niece in the dairies, with whom we can stay 
 and sup; and he will bring us back in the evening time. 
 Say yes! oh, do say yes !" 
 
 It was very early morning. Grand'mere was boiling 
 the breakfast coffee, and let the pot fall over on to the 
 burning wood as she started and turned at the Waif's 
 breathless and passionate exordium. 
 
 " Sarazin 1 Sarazin is a good creature, and it would be 
 a pleasure for thee," she said, hesitatingly; "but then — 
 Tricotrin?" 
 
 " Tricotrin I" cried Yiva, with eager impatience. " Tri- 
 cotrin says there is no better soul than Sarazin ; and he 
 always likes me to have pleasure, — you know that, grand'- 
 mere ! And the sail there and back ! and the sight of the 
 chateau I Oh, come, come, come!" 
 
 " Call Sarazin in to breakfast, and I will talk with him," 
 answered grand'mere, evasively, but knowing well in her 
 heart that the child always got her own way. 
 
 Sarazin entered willingly. lie was a little wizen, sun- 
 burnt, hardy creature, with a shell as tough asacocoanut, 
 and a temper as sweet as its milk. He was the only fer- 
 ryman near for leagues, and was devoted to the service 
 of Yiva, who was as capricious and exacting as most fair 
 mistresses are, and who owed the sunniest hours of her 
 sunny life to him and his clumsy old boats. 
 
 One of the peasanl proprietors had hired him to take 
 up a load of wheal thai had been purchased by the stew- 
 ards of Yilliers. He was to leave his grandson in charge
 
 92 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 of the ferry, and himself conduct the corn barge to the 
 great chateau: nothing loth, for it was rarely that he had 
 a chance of quitting his lonely boathouse ; and to go up to 
 Villiers was a great event in the lives of the scattered 
 river people of the neighboring hamlets. 
 
 Grand'mere, troubled with an indistinct remembrance 
 that Tricotrin had once expressed a wish that Viva should 
 never be taken thither, but unable to recall it plainly 
 enough to be satisfied in opposing the child's entreaty, 
 yielded with a certain disquietude, and locked up her 
 dwelling, and went down the towing-path with a worried 
 conviction that if she were not doing rightly he would 
 hear of her action from the swallows that lived by the 
 hundred under her eaves. 
 
 "Why do you always watch the birds so?" she had 
 asked him one day. 
 
 " Because I have found out what Francois d'Assisse 
 did not, that they can talk better to me than I to them. 
 They tell and teach me many things, though the art of 
 flying remains uncommunicated." 
 
 And grand'mere had received his speech literally; and 
 had never since then seen the swallows fly in and out of 
 their nests under the ivy without a certain awed convic- 
 tion that they listened, and saw, and took tidings to their 
 fellow wanderer. 
 
 "However, there can be no harm," she thought now; 
 "the little one is with me and Sarazin." 
 
 The big brown sailing boat, with its load of corn, was 
 ready; the horses of the wagon that had brought the 
 wheat stood half asleep upon the shore, hock-deep in grass 
 and rushes; the little quaint ferryboat peered out of a 
 nest of vines and fruit-laden pear-trees, and tall leafy pop 
 lars. The whole was a lovely study of morning light and 
 peaceful labor. 
 
 But Viva heeded little of that; rejoicing in it, after a 
 vague, unconscious fashion, as a plant rejoices in sweet 
 air, but never pausing to think of it with any poet's deep, 
 inborn delight. This was not in her. She was too essen- 
 tially feminine; too radiantly self-engrossed. What she 
 thought of was, that the peasants who had brought the 
 wheat, and the boys who were in the boat, and the very
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 93 
 
 ferry dog asleep in the sun, all gave her welcome because 
 they found her fair. 
 
 Under the shadow flung by the sail, beneath the yellow 
 pile of the corn, while the old woman sat knitting, and 
 scarce looking up as the shores drifted by, Viva, lying 
 full length on a plank, passed down the river, — slowly, 
 dreamily, as before her Tricotrin had done on the hay- 
 barge. 
 
 She loved nothing better than these long summer sails; 
 and to her fancy, in that lustrous sunshine, the old boat 
 became a gilded galley, the brown wheat golden treasures, 
 the torn tarred sail a silken canopy, the gliding banks her 
 kingdoms, and she a Cleopatra or a Catherine of Cyprus, 
 sailing onward to land at the marble steps of matchless 
 palaces. For she had the one enchanted power — Youth 
 — with which the linen folds seem robes of purple, the 
 chaplet of cowslips becomes a monarch's crown, the 
 wooden bench is as an ivory throne of empire. 
 
 "She dreams, — that child!" murmured grand'mere to 
 the ferry-keeper. 
 
 " The young always dream," answered Sarazin. " That 
 is their kingdom of heaven." 
 
 "Whose end is hell!" 
 
 "Nay, not so. Look you, there are holy dreams, and 
 they end mostly in the cloister ; and there are happy 
 dreams, and they mostly fold their wings in their hus- 
 bands' chimney-corners; and there are " 
 
 " Such dreams as hers," said grand'mere, with a mo- 
 tion of her head toward the child. " And they — if they 
 do not end in an empress's diadem, which cannot be, peo- 
 ple all say, out of fairy stories — they end in misery, and 
 sin, and shame!" 
 
 Little Sarazin looked affrighted. 
 
 "What then?" he whispered; "you think the devil 
 talks at that pretty rosy ear ?" 
 
 Grand'mere shook her head in doubt. 
 
 "Sarazin, how that may be, I know not; but I do not 
 think there is any cause for the devil to talk when a 
 woman-child that is fair dreams of her own face." 
 
 "That is true," said Sarazin: and he went to the steer- 
 ing of his boat, while the old woman drooped her head
 
 94 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 over her knitting; and Viva watched the gliding shores 
 with eyes that only saw the dim and glorious shapes of 
 some imagined future. 
 
 They had started so early that Villiers was reached by 
 noon, for the tide served them, and the wind also. Sara- 
 zin went about his errand ; but he first asked permission 
 for the old dame and the child to wander through the 
 park, and gardens, and building; and, since his niece had 
 some favor in the household, obtained it. 
 
 Through the sunny alleys, the fragrant avenues, the 
 sweet, still, orange-shaded ways, and the beds of gor- 
 geous blossom, the little bent figure of grand'mere, in her 
 white headgear and blue gown, with Viva's bright, gay, 
 ever-moving form at her side, passed in the sultry Au- 
 gust noon. 
 
 The voluble dairy-girl was their guide, chattering end- 
 lessly : but Viva paid no heed to her. She was absorbed 
 in contemplation; in wonder as to the great man who 
 dwelt here; and in fugitive fancies as to the possibilities 
 of her own right to some such superb domain as this. 
 "Estmere — Estmere — Estmere!" she repeated over and 
 over again to herself. " Is he a king, I wonder?" 
 
 She had the haziest ideas as to ranks and habits. There 
 were, to her own thinking, but two classes — the peasants, 
 with whom she was assured she had no link in common; 
 and the princes, with whom she was certain of affinity. 
 
 " Does it not make thee afraid ?" whispered Sarazin's 
 niece, in an awed whisper, as she led them through the 
 splendors of the banqueting-hall. 
 
 Viva tossed back her sunlit head. 
 
 "Afraid ! I am in my native air — that is all !" 
 
 The dairymaid, daughter of very poor and abject char- 
 coal burners of the forest, looked at her and crossed her- 
 self; it was true, then, she thought, that this Waif of 
 Tricotrin's came of no mortal mould. What Viva said 
 was true : although she had never known but the sim- 
 plest mode of existence, though her milk and bread had 
 been served in a wooden bowl, and though her restless 
 feet had danced over a bare brick floor ever since they 
 had first danced at all, the child felt born to greatness: 
 and things of beauty, luxury, or splendor always seemed
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 95 
 
 to her to belong to some native and beloved sphere from 
 which she had been banished. There are daughters and 
 sons o£ cotters who feel thus ; and it is they who give the 
 world its magnificent actresses, its merciless adventur- 
 esses, its heaven-born statesmen, its Russian Catherines, 
 its victorious Rienzis. As likewise there are daughters 
 and sons of monarchs that wear their purples in uncouth 
 clumsiness, and cling to swinish tastes and ways, and 
 look like boors amid their own court circles. 
 
 u He is not here ? not the great lord ?" she asked once, 
 with a pang of disappointment. 
 
 "Silly one!" cried the dairy-girl. "Should we be in 
 these rooms if he were?" 
 
 " Why not ?" said Viva in haughty wrath. "He would 
 let me be at the least : you should have seen how he 
 bowed to mel" 
 
 And little by little she dropped aside and wandered 
 away from grand 'mere and Sarazin's niece : when she 
 glanced at the great mirrors that they passed she saw 
 how utterly unfitting to the place looked the little brown 
 shriveled figure of the good old woman, and the plump, 
 coarse form of the milkmaid, with their serge gowns, and 
 their linen caps, and their heavy, wooden shoes ; and she 
 grew impatient and ashamed of her proximity to them. 
 She liked best to roam through the chateau alone, and 
 when she met any of the household, glide by them unseen; 
 and so she got away by herself and strayed at ease, dream- 
 ing a thousand dreams through the halls, and chambers, 
 and corridors of Villiers. 
 
 Once, twice, thrice, she noticed portraits of its owner; 
 and stood before them with rapt, uplifted eyes and folded 
 hands; his face had a strong fascination for her, but the 
 chief spell of his power lay in the fact that he was the 
 first " great prince" she had ever seen. For Viva, the 
 offspring of hazard, who had no more ancestry than any 
 blue cornflower that opened to the sun, and knew no more 
 whence she came than any gold-spotted moth fluttering 
 up in the starlight, was, by instinct, a passionate aristo- 
 crat ; and adored what she did not possess with all the 
 half-envious, half-generous obstinacy of a thoroughly femi- 
 aine nature.
 
 96 TRIOOTRIN, 
 
 No one interfered with her : she went where she would; 
 and, absorbed in her own thoughts, which were a curious, 
 vague mixture of pain, pleasure, wonder, desire, irritation, 
 and enjoyment, unanalyzed as a child's thoughts are, she 
 never remembered that her "grand'mere" might be un- 
 easy at her absence, or vexed by her abandonment. 
 Things of Viva's type very seldom do think of others. 
 
 Straying about thus by herself, she came at last into 
 the picture-galleries ; she had an instinctive love of pic- 
 tures, born partly of her passion for color, partly of her 
 impulses toward graceful form and fair ideals. 
 
 Except the sketches of Tricotrin she had never seen 
 any paintings save those in the nunnery-chapel; and 
 hour after hour went by with her like enchantment in the 
 presence of the Cuyps and Claudes, Salvators and Titians, 
 Liberis and Tan Horns. To the eyes of a young and 
 imaginative creature the painter is as a magician, and 
 each picture becomes a mirror of gramarye. 
 
 The works that appealed to the soul, the beatitudes 
 and the martyrdoms of spiritual art, of divine aspiration, 
 were dumb to her; but the works that were full of fra- 
 grance, of color, of splendor, of magnificent fancy, the 
 works that appealed to the senses by the highest forms 
 of sensuous beauty, filled her with a rapturous delight. 
 
 A tall, frail, white-haired old man, the custodian of the 
 galleries, seeing her enter, watched her long himself un- 
 seen ; it was so seldom that any footfall was heard in his 
 solitude, that the presence of this vivacious, beautiful, 
 unknown child was very welcome to him. 
 
 He approached her at last, and spoke : Viva, wakened 
 out of her trance, and ever ready with speech, answered 
 him gladly, and told him how she came thither, and all 
 else that he chose to ask of her; while in turn she rained 
 questions upon him. To these he replied cautiously : he 
 was a devoted servant of the house, and there were things 
 in their lord's life of which the servants never gossiped. 
 But of the pictures he discoursed readily: and told her 
 what she would of their histories. 
 
 Though gifted with the "charming facile talents that 
 make, under culture, bewitching and brilliant women, 
 Viva was very ignorant : almost as ignorant in knowledge
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 9? 
 
 as she was intelligent in perception, owing less to the 
 nuns' mode of teaching than to her own radiant idleness, 
 and her incurable hatred of trouble. The old custos was 
 pleased to find a listener for his lore, and she was well 
 amusea with his stories : to the genealogies and histories 
 of the works she lent indeed but a listless ear, to the an- 
 ecdotes he told her of the portraits she gave an eager at- 
 tention. Human life interested her more than any other 
 thing: she had seen so few forms of it; it was environed 
 to her sight with such magical mystery ; and it lay in her 
 hands like an unopened casket from which all the gifts of 
 the gods would one day arise to her. 
 
 One portrait attracted her in especial. 
 
 It was the portrait of a boy, quite young, standing up 
 to his knees in shallow water and flowering "bulrushes, 
 with a wounded water-bird in his hand. The singular 
 charm of the picture lay in the union of his sunlit and 
 fearless radiance of boyish beauty, and the tearful, tender, 
 wistful compassion in his eyes as he regarded the .stricken 
 bird. She was of too heedless a temper to be very piti- 
 ful herself; yet the study moved her and riveted her 
 gaze : it was life-size, the work of a great artist, and bore 
 surety — which some portraits do even to those who know 
 not their subjects — of being a faithful resemblance of the 
 original it re-created. 
 
 " \V r ho is that boy ?" she asked softly, at length. 
 
 The old man sighed: 
 
 "One who died long ago." 
 
 "Died !— oh, he looks so full of life l» 
 
 " The brightest flowers are always the quickest to fade: 
 how long the brown wallflower lives, but the purple con- 
 volvulus withers with its noon." 
 
 She was used to such fanciful speech, and it heightened 
 her interest in the portrait. 
 
 " Will you tell me of him? was he well known to you?" 
 
 "Yes: long years ago, in another land than this. 
 Move you into the shade — there, t he sun fails still on his 
 face. I will tell JOM I he tale if you Wish. There is no 
 shame in it " 
 
 He Stopped; there was one history in his lord's life 
 that was dark with shame, a shame that every soul in his 
 
 9
 
 98 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 great households had felt as their own dishonor when it 
 had touched their master's name. 
 
 " Tell me !" cried Viva, happy in her new companion, 
 eager for a new history, forgetful that the anxious heart 
 of the old woman Virelois would be ere this palpitating 
 in wonder and terror at her absence. " Tell me !" she 
 cried, with her bright eyes fastened on the fair eyes of 
 the boy. 
 
 And the old man told her : 
 
 " It was long ago that yon lad lived. I was young 
 myself in those days. My lord — not this lord, but his 
 father — was a wild and lawless man; proud beyond all, 
 but given over to his passions, which were stronger yet 
 than even his pride. He was always known as the Mad 
 Earl. The world thought his madness surely proved 
 when in his travels he wedded a fisher girl, — from the sea- 
 cabins away to the west, there, by the Biscay Waters. 
 I have heard that they are very proud also — those fishing 
 people of the sands of Olonne ; that she refused to him 
 to be aught save his wife. But you know nothing of 
 these things — I forget. Well, he brought her home ; there 
 were none to say him nay: she was a magnificent creat- 
 ure, daring, beautiful, free of limb, carrying herself like 
 a fleet forest doe. But of course there was a strange dif- 
 ference betwixt her and the women of his own rank. She 
 was as a wild mare of the desert, and they as the stalled, 
 slender, pampered Spanish jennets, and the trammels of 
 splendor were chains on her, and the tyranny of pomp 
 was a curb that forever fretted and galled her. 
 
 " In her own national garb she looked an empress : but 
 in a patrician's robes she was — a noble thing imprisoned, 
 that made one ready to weep. She bore a son in the first 
 year: and I think the only happy moments she knew 
 grew out of the boy. For her husband, repenting his act, 
 took a hatred to her ; and he was passionate and hot and 
 cruel, and would scourge her with many hard words of 
 scorn. And that hatred for her spread to her son : he 
 would scarce bear the sight of the child, — yet a nobler 
 little lad never breathed. The child loved his mother, 
 and felt the cruelty to her, though he was but an infant 
 when it* came to an end : — she died when he was only a
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 99 
 
 few years old, worn out by futile pain and loss of liberty, 
 like a captive leopardess. 
 
 " My lord went into distant lands, and took another 
 wife in her stead, — this time the daughter Qf a Russian 
 prince; and when in time she also brought him a son his 
 bitterness grew greater j^et against his heir who had 
 sprung from a race of French fishers. He would scarce 
 ever see the boy; and never saw him without a mocking 
 taunt or a brutal glance. But the two children grew up to- 
 gether with some seven years between them, and nothing 
 could exceed the love in which they held each other. 
 The difference of age only seemed to serve to draw them 
 closer together. My lord and his wife were seldom with 
 them; they lived in the great world, and the boys were 
 left, with the care of able scholars, in the heart of the old 
 Beauinanoir woods. Only, at such rare times as the cas- 
 tle was filled with guests, it was always the younger that 
 was displayed and caressed and adored, the elder was al- 
 most banished. But no venom came between them ; there 
 was naught of the Cain in the one, there was generous 
 childish love in tin; ether. Lord ChanreUon — that was 
 the heir's title — had much of his mother in him; he was 
 too proud to complain, and he gave back scorn for scorn 
 with his father. One day when he was fifteen, — he was 
 younger when that picture you see there was painted, — 
 my lord and he came in collision. The quarrel was 
 brought about by a noble dog that the Earl commanded 
 to be killed, under some specious pretext, but chiefly, it 
 was well known, because Lord ChanreUon loved the poor 
 brute. Wild words came on that scon; between them:. 
 ChanreUon was mail wiih rage and anguish, and said 
 fiery and furious things in his dead mother's name; and 
 my lord cursed him aloud, and prayed that he mighl be 
 struck dead rather than ever miter into his heritage. It 
 was an awful scene; — but the whole household were for 
 the boy, and pitied him, and honored him only the more, 
 for he was t he beloved one of qs all, and we knew that he 
 was in the right, and mortally Btung, and wounded, and 
 incensed. Well, — the night of thai day some rare jewels 
 were missing: — they -required to be reset, and had been 
 left in a casket : great search and demand were made for
 
 100 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 them : and my lord, blind with wine and with hate, 
 charged his eldest-born with the theft of the diamonds. 
 Ah ! — if you had seen the lad's face in that hour ! I 
 never beheld a thing so beautiful ! its unutterable scorn, 
 its speechless amaze, its luminous truth and honor that 
 any dolt must have read in its gaze ! He never made 
 answer to the foul foolish charge ; — he only drew himself 
 straight as an arrow, with his head proudly poised like a 
 stag's, and looked his father hard and full in the eyes. 
 Then without a word he passed from the chamber. 
 
 " It was near midnight then : — when the sun rose he 
 was missing. We scoured park and forest and hamlet, 
 we hunted through brake and plantation, we dragged 
 water, and we loosed his own bloodhound out on the 
 track. His young brother said that he had been wakened 
 by Chanrelion leaning over him and kissing him on his 
 mouth, and murmuring, ' You shall have it all, my darling 
 — be brave and noble and true ;' but he had been still half 
 asleep, and had thought it only a dream. However, it 
 had been no dream — it must have been a terrible truth. 
 For toward eventide we raked up his cap entangled 
 among the water-lilies on the moat, and a poacher crept 
 forward and confessed that about the dawn he had heard 
 a dull splash in the water and had stolen away — fright- 
 ened, not daring to see what caused it. So then we knew 
 he was dead : — and the young one grieved for him as a 
 lamb for its mother." 
 
 The old man paused ; his voice failed him ; the time of 
 his sorrow seemed fresh to him as that of a day just gone 
 by, and his gaze was fixed on the fair tender face of the 
 boy that looked clown from above in the sunlight. 
 
 Viva listened ; hushed and wondering. 
 
 " Why do you think that he died?" she asked at length. 
 
 "Why? why? Child! does not your own heart tell 
 you?" 
 
 "But to leave such a splendid heritage?" she mur- 
 mured. 
 
 " Well, — there are some to whom there is no heritage 
 worth aught save their own stainless honor. " Lord Chan- 
 relion was one of them. He had the sea-lion's blood
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 101 
 
 of his mother's race, and taunts had lashed that wild, 
 brave, untamable blood into fury " 
 
 Yiva mused awhile wistfully ; the history touched her, 
 and yet she understood the impulse of the dead heir as 
 little as young- Pompeius, with his insatiate and dazzled 
 vanity, could understand the supreme scorn and sacrifice, 
 half contempt half generosity, of the Sullan renunciation. 
 
 "And you never knew more of his fate ?" she whis- 
 pered, with a certain sense of dread as the light died off 
 from the portrait while a passing cloud swept over the 
 sun. 
 
 " What more was there to know ? We searched for his 
 body; but we felt that the search was useless, for the 
 moat was fed by subterranean waters whose channels ran 
 deep, and passed out to the ocean. The child had been 
 pierced to the quick by the scorn cast on his lost mother 
 and the bitterness flung on himself. He had been falsely 
 accused. To tempers like his there is no more unpardon- 
 able wound. He was ever impetuous and warm to pas- 
 sion, though those who knew him aright could lead him 
 by his affections with a cord of silk. Well, — the Earl 
 felt remorse, I know : he suffered keenly for awhile ; but 
 the boy that he loved was heir now, and this soon sufficed 
 to console him. The lad himself— -my present lord — felt 
 far more enduring grief. For a long time he was as one 
 who had lost all the treasure he owned. He had wor- 
 shiped his elder brother: and the tragedy left its sorrow 
 on him for so long that I think his nature never wholly 
 recovered its elasticity; it made him grave beyond his 
 years, though he was so young when it happened." 
 
 " Does he ever think of it now ?" 
 
 "Ah! who can say? My lord is a great man, and 
 lives in a greal world. He may have utterly forgotten — 
 I know not. For thirty years none have ever heard him 
 allude to his dead half-brother. Men as high as lie have 
 fleeting memories. Vet — sometimes 1 fancy he remem- 
 bers his playmate, for when he purchased this place and 
 selected it as his favorite residence, he ordered this por- 
 trait among others to be brought hither. That would 
 look as though all remembrance had not perished? — hovv- 
 
 9*
 
 102 TRICOT R IN, 
 
 ever, that also is many years ago now, and recollection 
 withers under eminence." 
 
 " I saw him once, not long ago," whispered Viva, " and 
 I thought that he looked like a sovereign." 
 
 "He is a great man." said the old servant briefly: — her 
 sympathies were chiefly with the lofty and brilliant life 
 whose power and strength and dominion allured her fancy: 
 his were with the young, rash, noble life snapped in twain 
 so early, like a young pine broken by the first autumnal 
 storm. 
 
 He looked at her half curiously half angrily. 
 
 "You have not much heart, you fair thing!" he mut- 
 tered as he moved away : Viva laughed a little to herself, 
 — she remembered that the Count's daughter at the con- 
 vent had said it was " provincial" to feel emotion, and she 
 accepted his remark as a compliment to her own aris- 
 tocracy. 
 
 The sun was still clouded, and there was a gray shadow 
 lying across the face of the portrait, as she gave one lin- 
 gering farewell glance to it, and fluttered on to gaze in 
 entranced delight at the velvet beauties of Boucher, the 
 pictured pageants of Versailles, the rose-wreathed laugh- 
 ing goddesses of Watteau. 
 
 The old man, disappointed, went back to his nook in 
 one of the embayed casements, and bent afresh over a 
 manuscript catalogue of his beloved collection, which had 
 been a labor of love with him for many years ; he took no 
 more heed of her, but when later on she passed him with 
 a gay farewell, flying with swift feet down the long gal- 
 leries, he murmured after her : 
 
 "You will never harm yourself for another's sake, you 
 handsome, wanton dragonfly, though many may suffer for 
 yours, like enough !" 
 
 Viva did not hear: she was out of the picture-galleries 
 and pursuing her adventures through the building, with 
 her long, fair, tumbled hair flying behind her like a comet's 
 golden train. 
 
 "Oh how foolish he must have been to have given up 
 this!" she thought: the boy's face haunted her, but his 
 history failed to touch her because it seemed to her a mad- 
 ness so absolute and so insensate to fling away such proud
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 103 
 
 inheritances for the mere sake of a stung honor and a dead 
 mother's memory. She had been always caressed, in- 
 dulged, adored; she had a charming innocent vanity that 
 made any doubt of herself impossible ; she was never 
 wounded by any shame at her fate, because she was so 
 perfectly assured that her birth must be royal at least, if 
 not more than mortal. To comprehend the sensitive pride 
 that had refused to accept honors begrudged; the fiery 
 impulse that had refused to remain a burden to a race 
 that had rejected his mother; the childlike chivalry of 
 tenderness that had chosen rather to perish than live, bar- 
 ring out the brother he loved from his heritage; was im- 
 possible to her: their nobility, indeed, she saw; but what 
 she felt far more clearly was their overwrought and head- 
 long self-ruin. 
 
 She wandered on, through the reception-rooms and 
 conservatories, as idly and as gayly as a bird wanders 
 through a rosiery, and paused once more in breathless 
 amaze of wondering delight in the midst of the tropical 
 houses. She who had never beheld any flowers save the 
 flowers of the field and the woods, had never seen aught 
 in her dreams equal to these glorious blossoms of purple 
 and scarlet and amber, these gigantic perfume-breathing 
 lilies, these marvelous parasites with their net-work of 
 color, these palms like the columns of some Solomon's 
 Temple. 
 
 She was in perfect solitude: there was nothing living 
 beside herself save the canaries and lovebirds and cocka- 
 toos that made their home amid the profuse vegetation. 
 She sank down on the marble steps of the entrance, en- 
 tranced ; scarcely breathing, yet almost laughing with 
 ecstasy. As the hues of the Bouchers and Watteaua had 
 enchanted her eyes, so this wilderness of color, this delir- 
 ium of perfume, intoxicated her senses. She clasped her 
 hands above her head in rupture. 
 
 "Ah!" she cried aloud to the wandering birds; "ah, 
 this must have been the world I belonged to! — this was 
 the kingdom of my birth!" 
 
 To her it seemed far likelier that she had sprung from 
 the violet chalice of some superb flower, such as those 
 thai hung by the thousand around her, than that anything
 
 104 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 of want, of humiliation, of human care or human shame, 
 should ever have weighed with her. 
 
 Her origin was a mystery; her existence was dependent 
 upon charity; her only recollections were of the homely 
 hearth of an old peasant woman : but this made no dif- 
 ference to Viva. She believed devoutly in the splendor 
 of her own descent, and gazing down the maze of tropical 
 color, and drawing in the delicious odors of the magic 
 flowers, it seemed to her that she only revisited the place 
 of her birth, that she only breathed the air that she had 
 used to breathe in her native land. 
 
 And whether this was in truth the awakening of dim 
 infant memories and associations long lost but unforgot- 
 ten, or whether it was but the fancied glories of an imag- 
 ination steeped in fairy lore and legendary fantasies, she 
 never asked herself. To her own persuasion, lying on 
 these marble steps, under these wondrous coils of blossom, 
 she was like the slumbering princess of the enchanted 
 forest, who waited for her coming hero, for the advent of 
 her empire. And dreaming thus in the hot atmosphere, 
 in the intense perfume, in the lulling of the fountains that 
 played near, the sultry fragrance overcame her, her head 
 sank down upon the marble, and she fell asleep. 
 
 Lying thus, canopied by the purple-flowering vine of 
 the Pacific, with her flushed cheek on the white stone and 
 her lips lightly parted, and the cambric of her boddice half 
 open, showing the rise and fall of her snowy chest, a 
 youth, coming in through the orangeries, saw her, and 
 started and paused. He was a handsome boy, with 
 brown delicate features, and dark slumbrous eyes, that 
 lighted and smiled as they fell on her. 
 
 "A little peasant with a princess's face! Where can 
 she come from, I wonder?" he thought, as he stooped 
 down from the stair above her on which his steps had 
 been arrested, and looked long and closely at her as she 
 slept. He was moved and thrilled with her loveliness ; 
 but he did not hesitate to study it mercilessly in its un- 
 consciousness : he only hesitated as to whether or no he 
 should waken her. 
 
 He could learn who she was without her aid; and she 
 might raise some alarm if she were startled.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 105 
 
 He guessed that she came from some one of the ham- 
 lets, and had strayed in thither, and fallen asleep through 
 the heat of the day and the hot-houses. He bent down 
 one moment, on an impulse to awaken her by kisses on 
 her cheek; but some look on her face, even in its igno- 
 rance of slumber, repressed the impulse as it rose. He 
 scarcely dared to adventure that mode of calling her back 
 to the sentient world. He gazed at her long, and drew 
 some of her curls through his hands. She was unlike 
 any one of the peasant girls whom he had ever seen among 
 the vineyards or on the river barges : he felt a difference 
 that he could not have analyzed. 
 
 Then, moving very softly, he gathered some of the 
 finest fruit from the grapes and oranges that hung above- 
 head, laid them down on her blue kirtle without wakening 
 her, and drawing off a ring from his hand, slipped it over 
 a branch of yellow jasmine, and left it with the fruit on 
 her lap. Then, laughing to himself, he moved away, and 
 out of the tropical houses. 
 
 "The pretty fool will think they came from paradise 1" 
 he mused. "It will be the best mode to rouse her to in- 
 terest : nothing allures a woman like a mystery ! Who 
 can she be? but that can soon be learned." 
 
 Viva slept on, unconscious of her gazer and her gifts. 
 The day was far advanced when she awoke with a start, 
 as a loriot flying past her brushed her forehead with his 
 wing. Her eyes were barely opened ere she saw the 
 fruit and flower and jewel on her lap; she gave a loud 
 cry, half of terror, half of delight. By her they were be- 
 lieved to be as surely fallen from a supernatural hand as 
 Dorothea's roses and apples which were sent from Eden 
 to convince the scoffer and the skeptic. 
 
 The place filled her with a sudden affright. The birds 
 seemed elves, the flowers seemed like glistening eyes. 
 The odors and' the heat stilled her; the cadence of the 
 fountains sounded like fairies' music, she gathered all 
 the presents up in her linen skirt, and lied headlong out 
 from the winter-gardens, and under the colonnades of 
 orangeries, and forth into the fresh air, hardly knowing 
 what she did, but believing that she bore some fairy's 
 treasures with her; calling aloud on Sarazin and grand'-
 
 106 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 mere, and half delirious with the wonder of her own great- 
 ness, that thus marked her out for such especial favor 
 from this elfin world which was unseen by common eyes. 
 
 She had some recollection of the way she had come 
 from the out-houses where Sarazin's niece had her dwell- 
 ing; and she rushed on and on, across the gardens, down 
 the terraces, over the lawns, along the avenues, all on fire 
 with her marvelous story, panting and thirsting to gain 
 a listener. Instinct took her right, and she dashed head- 
 long into the wide cool chamber, with its blue and white 
 Dutch tiles, and its sweet, wholesome scent of cows and 
 of milk, of thyme and of clover, where the dairy-women 
 were clustered around the old Virelois who was sobbing 
 and wringing her hands, and calling on the Virgin and 
 Tricotrin to aid and forgive her, for she had lost the child. 
 
 Viva, utterly regardless of the woe that she had caused, 
 bounded into their midst, and held the jasmine branch, 
 with its yellow stars, before their astonished eyes. 
 
 "Grand'mere, grand'mere! Look here 1 You and I 
 knew that I was not as others are. See what the fairies 
 have sent me!" 
 
 The old woman, breaking from the circle of her sym- 
 pathizers, threw her arms round her recovered treasure, 
 scolding and caressing her, praising the saints and reprov- 
 ing the wanderer, all in one breath : but Viva shook aside 
 her embrace with a certain impatience. 
 
 "I had a right to go where I chose!" she cried; "and 
 look here! were not these well worth the straying for? 
 Oh, you do not know what I have seen, — such things! 
 such things! And I fell asleep at last in the temple of 
 the flowers; and while I slept it was all changed, and 
 every blossom turned into a fairy, and every bird into 
 a wood-elf; and when I awoke there were these in my 
 lap, and the magic ring hung on the great amber jas- 
 mine !' 
 
 Her audience were dumb with solemn amaze. Viva, 
 unconscious of her own exaggeration, and working herself 
 into the full credence that all had been as she told it, stood 
 in their circle proud with all the pride of one selected by 
 fate for an extraordinary distinction, and smiling on them 
 with contemptuous benignity.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 107 
 
 "Oh ! you have never known such a wonder — you!" she 
 said, with scorn at the mutterings of the awe-stricken 
 dairy-women. " Of course you have not; one must be of 
 that world ere one beholds it. Your cows chew the daisies 
 and buttercups, oDly tasting in them food to make milk : 
 but none the less do fairies and elves live under the grasses 
 for those who have sight that can see them. Yes; it was 
 all as I tell you. The place was full of a glory, and I 
 heard the most exquisite music — so softl so soft! — and 
 you can feel the fruit, and smell it, and eat it, if you doubt ; 
 and you can take the jasmine in your hand, if you like, 
 and watch the ring on it sparkle and flash !" 
 
 " It is very strange !" murmured Grand' mere anxiously, 
 while among the women the myth soon grew into an 
 article of faith, with the giant growth of any popular de- 
 lusion ; but they held aloof from touching either the fruit 
 or the flower. 
 
 " You are afraid !" cried Viva, with more and more cruel 
 disdain. "Do you suppose they would give what would 
 hurt me ?" — and she pressed a peach to her curling red lips. 
 
 Grand'mere caught her hand with a scream. 
 
 "Child! child! If the fruit be unholy !- 
 
 a 
 
 Pooh !" laughed Viva, setting her pearly teeth in the 
 luscious, juicy pulp. 
 
 They watched her, expecting some horrible change ; 
 what they knew not : but all they saw was a child enjoy- 
 ing a fruit. Viva, however, had only done it out of bra- 
 vado. She was not by any means secure herself that 
 some extraordinary transformation might not take place 
 in her, though. she had too much of the Eve to resist the 
 temptation of trying ; and she felt a sense of relief that she 
 would have scorned to have acknowledged when the peach 
 was eaten down to its stone, and no awful results had 
 ensued. 
 
 Encouraged by her exemption from evil, the women 
 ventured at length to stretch timid hands out for the jas- 
 mine bough, and gaze at the ring that hung on it, and 
 babble among themselves with voluble excitability. 
 Qrand'mere's face alone remained wistful and anxious, 
 and her tongue was mute. 
 
 " It is truly a noble bauble," was all she said ; "but how
 
 108 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 canst thou tell, child, whether it will give thee pleasure 
 or pain ? It came to thee for an act of disobedience." 
 
 Viva, infuriated, and full of outraged dignity, seized 
 the jasmine out of her hand, and went off by herself to a 
 distant nook of the dairy, and began counting her grapes 
 and her oranges. 
 
 " You are a set of senseless peasants 1" she muttered : 
 the brown bright mouse-like eyes of the old woman were 
 dimmed a moment with tears she would not shed; but 
 Viva, engrossed in making the sunset rays play on her 
 jewel, never saw that dumb reproach. 
 
 The milk-women were very angered, and called her a 
 spoilt insolent baby, and jabbered hard things of her in 
 under-tones, and began to believe all this magical story a 
 lie. She cast one glance of supreme scorn upon them, 
 then turned her back to them where she sat on her stool, 
 and put the jasmine on her hair, and the ring on her 
 finger. 
 
 There was a pleasant meal set ready in the dairy cham- 
 ber, of honey, and cakes, and coffee, and hard eggs; a 
 meal whose enjoyment her absence and the anxiety it had 
 involved, had spoiled and postponed. Sarazin's niece 
 came kindly though shyly to her and pressed her to join 
 in it; Viva was extremely hungry, having eaten nothing 
 since her forenoon bread and chestnuts in the boat, but 
 she was too proud to deign to acknowledge it, and would 
 have died of starvation rather than have shared in their 
 supper. She shook her head in petulant negative : and 
 sat alone eating her fairy grapes, which were delicious in- 
 deed, but unsatisfactory, save to her pride. 
 
 When the time came to leave the dairy-house for the 
 boat, she vouchsafed them never a word, but swept out 
 through the huge brass pans on the floor with the step of 
 a young sovereign, and passed into the soft gray evening 
 with the jasmine crown glittering like a wreath of golden 
 stars upon her head. 
 
 "If that be how jewels change the temper, they must 
 be the curse of the world," muttered grand'mere. . 
 
 Viva heard: but she would not deign to reply. 
 
 " She is a vain wicked thing : she will bring the Vire- 
 lois to shame," said one of the dairy-maids, standing with 
 arms akimbo, on the lintel of the door.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 109 
 
 " Do you believe in that story ? She told it like the 
 truth ?" asked another. 
 
 "It maybe; such things have been known," said a 
 third, cautiously. 
 
 " But we have lived here all our lives, and never heard 
 of the like at Villiers," responded the skeptic from the 
 doorway. "If the young lord were here, I should say it 
 was one of his tricks." 
 
 The conclave laughed, the suggestion was agreeable: 
 to have traced an envied distinction to a fount of evil is 
 the sweetest palliative to jealous mortification. 
 
 "She called us peasants," continued the cynic in the 
 porch. " I had a good mind to tell her we were not bas- 
 tards, but knew who our mothers and fathers were, which 
 is much more than she can say, and I would have said it 
 too, if it had not been for the poor old grand'mere," — 
 and she plucked a spray of honeysuckle from the outside 
 wall and bit it spitefully, regretting her excess of good 
 nature. 
 
 Over the broad green pastures that stretched around 
 the dairies, two herdsmen came driving up some of the 
 cows to their stalls, pretty smooth-hided lowing creatures, 
 with sweet-toned bells that sounded pleasantly through 
 the evening stillness. Both animals and men were well 
 at Villiers; they were never overtasked, and they were 
 ever gently treated. 
 
 "What news, friend Jourdan?" called out the girl 
 from the doorway, to the cowherd nearer her. There 
 was very little news at Villiers at such seasons as its 
 lord was absent. 
 
 "Piffirie has foaled," said Jourdan, meaning a favorite 
 farm mare. 
 
 "Ah, bah 1 And what else?" 
 
 "The mill people say their son has got a first-class 
 medal at Paris for his painting. Thou rememberest 
 him? — that idle simpleton who was forever chalking over 
 the stable walls, and staring at dirt and stones and 
 mosses';"' 
 
 "A medal! And the fool could not drive a cow 
 Straight!" laughed the woman, with her hands in her 
 side. "What else?" 
 
 10
 
 110 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 "Nothing. Yes, wait, — the bull Georgeo broke his 
 feeding tether, and led us a fine dance this morning ; and 
 they tell me the young seigneur has come back unex- 
 pectedly, and will stay here some weeks. He is in dis- 
 grace for some freak ; so they say " 
 
 And he passed on with his herd to the fresh-smelling, 
 fresh-foddered stables away to the left. 
 
 The dairy-girl in the porch clapped her hands above 
 her head, and shouted with gleeful triumph. 
 
 "I said if he only were backl Do ye hear, Paule, 
 Claudine, Lisette ? He is back ! Ah, ha ! So much for 
 the tale of the fairies ! so much for the worth of her 
 truth 1 The ring, the ring 1 It is not a marriage ring, I 
 guess — ha, ha!" 
 
 And she laughed till the rafters rang where she stood 
 under the honeysuckles ;— for jealousy is cruel as the 
 grave. 
 
 The boat went home in silence. Sarazin was tired; 
 grand'mere full of thought; the child's heart swelled 
 with rage and pride where she sat with her hands full of 
 the magic fruits, and her eyes watching the star-rays 
 play on the jewel she wore. Save their good nights, none 
 of them spoke a word. 
 
 The clog barked, the white cat purred, even Roi Dore 
 woke on his perch to crow a welcome ; Viva took no 
 notice of any one of them. Was she who came back 
 dowered with elfin gifts to heed such common sounds ? 
 
 Moreover, she was not quite at ease with herself. And 
 one must be very much at one's ease to enjoy such tender, 
 homely, innocent things as these. 
 
 Grand'mere got some bread and some honeycomb and 
 some milk, and brought them to her in silence ; but Viva 
 left the food almost untasted, though she needed it : she 
 knew she had been wrong. They went up stairs in the 
 clear moonlight, needing no other light, and the child 
 undressed herself slowly, with the moonbeams falling 
 about her fair round limbs, and shining shower of hair. 
 
 The Virelois, still in silence, opened her book of hours 
 and read — knowing the words by heart, and forgetting to 
 turn over the pages. 
 
 Suddenly Viva sprang to her, and threw her arms about 
 her.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. \\\ 
 
 " Grand'mere, I was wicked! I am sorry!" 
 
 The old woman's firm lips quivered. 
 
 "That is enough," she said, softly; then she laid her 
 hands on the girl's shoulders, and held them there, look- 
 ing- straight down into her face as she knelt. 
 
 " That was a true tale you told us this day?" 
 
 Viva's eyes met hers full and fearlessly. 
 
 "Quite true, grand'mere." 
 
 "It is strange!" murmured grand'mere: then she 
 stooped and kissed the Waif's flushed, wondering, eager 
 face. 
 
 "The saints take thee in their holy keeping! Go — say 
 thy prayers." 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Viva, two days later, was lying wide awake in her 
 little white nest, under the" caves, while still the first tit- 
 tering of her friends, the swallows among the ivy, was 
 the only sound of the coming day, and Roi Dore, in the 
 shell hard by, was giving his first challenge to the yet 
 unrisen sun. Her heart was in a tumult of glad excita- 
 tion : for the first time the romance, befitting such a fairy 
 princess as she, had touched her life: for the first time 
 those long-careless elfin ancestors of hers had bethought 
 them of her, and had sent her a visitant from their im- 
 mortal home. The first page of that bright-sealed book 
 of Fasrie, which she called her Future, had been opened 
 to her gaze; the charmed reading of the mystic volume 
 had commenced. A terrible loss had come to her, which 
 wore to her enchanted eyes the brilliancy of an immeas- 
 urable gain: her childhood had gone forever. 
 
 Viva, lying awake there in the dullness of the dawn, 
 was dreaming of the wonderful things thai had glorified 
 the days gone by; decidedly those fairy progenitors had 
 remembered her, and sent her a Fairy Prince at last] 
 
 It had happened in this wise : 
 
 The previous morning had been very hot — hot to trop- 
 ical fervor, even in the cool old convent gardens, with their
 
 112 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 deep lush grass, their silent darkened flower-filled ways, 
 their noiseless air syringa-scented, and moved by the 
 silent wings of countless birds. 
 
 The child had been in some disgrace, and given a Latin 
 canticle to learn ; and, banished into solitude, had learned 
 her task with random quickness, knowing nothing of its 
 meaning, and then resigned herself to indolent delight, 
 lying half covered with the thyme and plumes of spear- 
 grass, and doing nothing in sublime content. Hours had 
 drifted over her uncounted, when the boughs above her 
 bent, their leafage rustled, and close beside her dropped 
 — a Fairy Prince, as Viva instantly concluded, — a youth 
 of two and twenty years, or somewhat more ; dressed in 
 dark velvet, like an old picture, delicate, gracious, very 
 fair to look at, and with a voice like music. He had let 
 himself fall from the convent wall — climbed by the ivy's 
 aid — and for the first time in her life, Viva, long caressed 
 by the voices of honest affection, heard the dangerous 
 voice of adulation. 
 
 The innocent but supreme vanity of the child made her, 
 though startled, amazed, perplexed, and a little fright- 
 ened, quickly grasp the flattering truth that it was her 
 
 own loveliness — seen on the highway road he told her 
 
 which had incited him to this adventurous experiment; 
 and her visitant commanded a soft, sweet eloquence that 
 won its way at once to her hearing. She did not com- 
 prehend one-half that he said, nothing that he implied; 
 but she knew the one fact: that he thought her very 
 beautiful — and was too well content with it to refuse to 
 hear him ring the changes on it. 
 
 Nature had planted in her an innate coquetry, as thor- 
 oughly instinctive as a bird's flying, and the instinct 
 moved her now without her knowing it. Flushed, star- 
 tled, infinitely fair, half risen from her bed of fragrant 
 grasses, she gazed at her young adorer, and listened 
 breathless to his utterances; but the coy, proud, arch, 
 malicious, feminine nature in her, taught her to parry his 
 words, and play with his worship, in an impulse to defend 
 herself and torment him, that astonished one who had 
 thought to find her some shy, simple, pretty idiot of the 
 peasantry.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 113 
 
 "Viva — by nature wholly free from shyness, and proud 
 of herself from her conviction of her lofty birth — thought 
 nothing more charming than such an interruption of the 
 too even tenor of her days; all the more charming be- 
 cause of the atrocious crime the stranger's presence 
 formed against all the laws of her detested foes, the nuns. 
 She was perfectly aware that she was sinning against all 
 their rules in not fleeing instantly from this intruder ; but 
 the rebellion was just what she enjoyed. His oratory 
 was most silvery sweet on her ear, for it told her only of 
 herself; and, half willing, half reluctant, she listened. 
 
 It was just what suited that old, shadowy, luscious- 
 scented garden, and such an enchanted princess as her- 
 self, to be thus beset under the mulberry shadows by such 
 a wooer ! 
 
 Of love, in men's and women's meaning, the Fille des 
 Fees had no conception; this was only worship, she 
 thought, such as in her fairy stories the captured Prince 
 always gave the sovereign Beauty. The youth was facile 
 of tongue ; in very brief space he had filled her brain 
 with intoxicating images of herself, learned all she had 
 to tell of her short history, and conjured up before her 
 magnificent visions of the world from which she was shut 
 out; he might have progressed yet further, but that the 
 voice of Scaur Seraphine calling for Viva and the Latin 
 canticle interrupted his success. Not caring to be caught 
 in that rookery of women, the youno; stranger murmured 
 his hurried and tender farewell, swung himself lightly by 
 branch and ivy coil up the steep wall, and disappeared, 
 leaving her in a tumult of excitement, which sent her 
 with scarlet cheeks and dancing eyes to the call of Sceur 
 Seraphine, and reduced all memory of the canticle to 
 chaos. 
 
 She awoke the aexl morning, feverish with wonder and 
 expectation; he had begged hertomeel him at the beech- 
 tree, and had promised to tell her of a thousand marvel- 
 ous things. She had told grand'mere, and grand'mere 
 had not been as pleased as she had anticipated; grand'- 
 mere had not taken her view of the stranger ; grand'mere 
 had scornfully suggested that it he wore a fairy prince he 
 would not be under the necessity of climbing earthly 
 
 10*
 
 114 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 walls; grand'mere had finally stated that it must have 
 been he who had had to do with the ring up at Villiers, and 
 declared that she thought Tricotrin would not like her to 
 go to the beech-tree. Whereupon Viva, self-willed, but 
 frank as the day, had declared that she would go, that 
 nothing should prevent, and had been fiery, and wayward, 
 and, as she well knew, naughty. She had gone to bed 
 with naughtiness in her soul, and awoke with it. 
 
 When she threw open her little lattice, close under its 
 sill, where a robin's nest had been made in the spring, 
 and was still there though the young redbreasts had all 
 flown, there gleamed something of all colors with a shim- 
 mer of gold and of silver. It lay on the nest ; trembling 
 with delight she drew it up through the casement; it was 
 a collar of exquisite workmanship wreathed with forget- 
 me-nots in turquoises and opals — ten thousand times 
 more beautiful than the silver wreath of that odious 
 Adelel 
 
 With the self-same action as poor Gretchen's, Viva, 
 laughing, and almost crying with joy, clasped the lovely 
 thing round her own white throat, and gazed enraptured 
 at her own reflection in her tiny glass, and rushed down 
 stairs to where the old woman was busied with the break- 
 fast-coffee! 
 
 "Grand'mere! grand'mere! Look! Was he not a 
 fairy prince after all?" 
 
 Grand'mere looked, and, to Viva's amazement, seemed 
 troubled; even while woman-like she marveled at the 
 beauty of the toy. 
 
 "The only fairy prince the world holds — a rich man," 
 she muttered. " Your throat is more graceful without it, 
 my little one!" 
 
 "Grand'mere!" cried Viva, in supreme scorn, "that is 
 because I am dressed like a child — like a peasant ! If 
 you saw me with silks and laces and all that one ought 
 to have!" 
 
 "Ought to have!" murmured the old woman as she 
 set down the brown rolls and the steaming milk, ", There 
 is no one from whom you could claim even these as your 
 right, Viva." 
 
 Viva did not hear the rebuke; she was standing in
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 115 
 
 ecstasy before a great burnished copper caldron that 
 served as a mirror, watching the sunshine play on her 
 necklace. Grand'mere was very silent during the break- 
 fast, though her cheerful loquacious tongue was generally 
 never still over her coffee. Viva was silent, too, angered 
 that her splendid possession had not met with more 
 enthusiasm. Already the jewels on her throat had cast 
 a shadow on her young soul ; they were so costly and so 
 brilliant that all the dear familiar things of her home — 
 even grancl'mere's brown face in its frame of white linen 
 — looked common and unwelcome. 
 
 " You will go to the beech-tree ?" asked the old 
 woman. 
 
 The child tossed her spirited head. 
 
 " Of course 1 I said so I" 
 
 But when Viva came in the late afternoon to her tryst, 
 under the beech boughs, knitting her scarlet worsted, sat 
 grand'mere. 
 
 Viva could have cried, and her prince, when he came 
 also, could have cursed, with vexation. But he was not 
 so frank as the Waif; he showed no displeasure; on the 
 contrary he talked so softly and charmingly, showed so 
 graceful a respect toward the old age of the Virelois, and 
 evinced such interest in all he had heard of Tricotrin, 
 that even grand'mere's prejudices began to dissolve. 
 
 "She is so lovely; she is tit to be a princess in earnest, 
 the little angel!" thought the latter. " The young man 
 speaks well — he has a fair face — who knows ? " 
 
 And her thoughts drifted on building castles almost as 
 aerial and baseless as Viva's. 
 
 He, when he left them and sauntered away to where 
 his servants and horses waited in the shadow, mused to 
 himself: 
 
 "The old fool will give me more trouble than the 
 young one. But the child is so handsome — I never met 
 with her rival — she will be worth some patience and 
 some strategy !" 
 
 For the boy. with his delicate face and his tender voice, 
 was at heart the coldest of sensualists ; and youth is not 
 seldom the most cruel of egotists.
 
 116 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 "Is he not a prince now, grand'mere?" laughed Viva, 
 in triumph. The old woman mused. 
 
 "He is well spoken," she cried, cautiously. "But I 
 misdoubt if Tricotrin will wish you to keep that pretty 
 toy ; and, — do you like this one as well as that great lord 
 of Villiers that you told me about?" 
 
 "Oh, no!" cried Yiva, fervently, careless of how her 
 confession hurt her present hero. "He looked like a king, 
 a Charlemagne, or a David, or an Arthur, you know. 
 This one is only like a Prince Faineant!" 
 
 And she laughed mischievously at her own merry con- 
 ceit. She was delighted that "this one " should worship 
 her, but she had no inclination to worship him. 
 
 "It is dangerous," thought the old woman, anxiously. 
 "Ah, if Tricotrin were only a man in a house, like a Chris- 
 tian, instead of always wandering, wandering, wandering, 
 like a gipsy, one could let him know, and he would come. 
 M. le Cure would write for me. But he is like the wind, 
 going all over the earth, no one knows why or whither. 
 Well! the good saints have her in her keeping; — though 
 to be sure one does not know whether she was ever bap- 
 tized, which may make them indifferent. But I do not 
 think they would forsake an innocent child for that; and 
 — Tricotrin is a sorcerer, he will come if any real peril 
 touches her." 
 
 So she comforted herself with the remembrance of the 
 occult powers of Viva's guardian, and did not try to dis- 
 cover who the young man was, lest she should find him 
 of a rank that would dazzle with still more fatal effect 
 the eminence-seeking eyes of the ambitious Waif. 
 
 To the best of her power the good old creature tried to 
 screen the child from the sight or approach of this dan- 
 gerous stranger. But the resources that riches command, 
 and the subtilty of such love as the young voluptuary 
 had conceived for the "Light of the Loire," were more 
 than a match for the Virelois' honest and simple en- 
 deavors. 
 
 He made no more trysts since Viva so innocently re- 
 vealed them, but over and over again he waylaid her, 
 in the woods, on the high-road, at the ferry, or in the 
 convent garden when she was condemned to solitude for
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. Uf 
 
 inattention or insolence ; and such faults were now more 
 common than ever. Viva was of necessity often alone; 
 and he had many opportunities to gain her ear. He filled 
 it with many hyperboles about her own loveliness, with 
 many asseverations of his own homage to it, and with 
 what was yet more alluring to her, many pictures of the 
 " world" for which she longed. Cities of Italy all glow- 
 ing with flowers and wild with festivals ; masked balls all 
 a-glitter with rich hues and shining jewels ; summer-fetes 
 with the toy-boats drifting on summer-lakes to palace-steps 
 hidden in myrtle and oranges; Paris itself in its nights of 
 rejoicing, with the churches all domes of sparkling fire, 
 and each street a stream of laughing life — all these he 
 painted to Viva, and, relying on the child's absolute ig- 
 norance, promised her deathless roses, royal power, every 
 manner of glory and delight, if she would go thither with 
 him. But Viva resisted this : she would have dearly 
 liked it she told him for sake of all those wonderful things 
 which he promised her. But then — Tricotrin, grand'mere, 
 Roi Dore, Bebee, all that there were to leave 1 
 
 He could not make her reconciled to flight from them 
 all; and he soon found that in her love for Tricotrin, 
 whom he held in light scorn never having seen, as some 
 vagabond scoundrel — lay the stoutest foe he had to en- 
 counter. AVithout this he might easily have lured 
 her to her own ruin by those chief agents of her sex's 
 destruction, vanity and the desire of wealth. It was in 
 her love for her protector that lay the only shield she had, 
 unconscious as she was of her own danger. It was in 
 vain that her wooer promised to acquaint Tricotrin of her 
 presence in Paris if she once would but go there; Viva 
 would shake her heard and ask him mournfully how could 
 he do that when no one knew where Tricotrin lived? It 
 was no less in vain that he strove to persuade her that 
 Tricotrin could not be angered, but would rather be pleased 
 that she should have any pleasure. Her heart was too 
 loyal to her only friend to let her be induced to go from 
 the home that he gave her. unknown to him. Moreover, 
 Viva w r as rather deterred by her consciousness that 
 grand'mere did not approve of the stranger, or of his 
 jeweled to} r s, or of any part of the business ; and the
 
 118 TRIGOTRIN, 
 
 disapproval of the good indulgent old woman was so rare 
 on any project of the child's whom she loved so well that 
 it had a weight with Viva that none of the sermons of 
 those Sisters, who were always scolding her, would have 
 possessed. Her young suitor was irritated at the slow 
 progress he made, he was used to conquer quickly, and 
 the unforeseen difficulty he had here piqued his pride and 
 his self-admiration. 
 
 " We must come to a climax," he thought one evening 
 as he sauntered to meet her. " It is no use playing the 
 Faust any longer for nothing; and if ever there were a 
 Gretchen whom jewels will tempt and console it is this 
 little vain ignoramus!" 
 
 As he mused he came near her; standing beside a 
 water-spring with the jug she had come to fill hanging 
 empty in her hand, while she dreamed of— not himself, 
 though he flattered himself that she did so— but of her 
 own perfections as he had mirrored them to her. 
 
 They were young ; but both their loves were as ego- 
 tistic and as insincere as though they were two subtle 
 courtiers playing at sentiment for the sake of intrigue. It 
 is not always in youth that the loves are the strongest and 
 purest. The insincerity and the egotism were unconscious 
 in her, in him they were part of his system ; but with both 
 they were there. 
 
 "Viva!" he whispered as he stole behind her. " That 
 is too much Cinderella's work for my Princess!" 
 
 The poor little princess colored angrily: she was only 
 too quick herself to disdain useful errands. 
 
 " Grand'mere is old, and the water is far to fetch," she 
 said, hurriedly, apologizing for doing what duty, and 
 affection, and veneration for age alike demanded. So soon 
 had the poison he had sown borne fruit. 
 
 "You can do these things and look a princess still!" 
 he murmured. "Still, I would see you where slaves 
 should obey your slightest word." 
 
 " Yes !" sighed Viva. 
 
 He always spoke in hyperbole to her, and the child's 
 imagination was intoxicated by it. 
 
 "Well ! Come, then! I must leave your province with 
 to-morrow."
 
 TEE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 119 
 
 "Leave it!" 
 
 She turned a little pale, and looked up startled : she 
 was not prepared to lose this generous eloquent visitant, 
 who had come to break, with the charm of so much mys- 
 tery, the too tranquil tenor of her days. 
 
 " Leave it ? Yes. Will you regret me ?" 
 
 " Oh indeed ! I should miss you so much !" 
 
 Her face grew very sad and earnest. She felt her lips 
 quiver a little. She did not like to think her fairy-story 
 was going thus soon to be broken off without any more 
 wonder-flowers blooming for her. 
 
 " Then you love me, my fairest?" 
 
 " I try to do so, monsieur," said Yiva, softly. 
 
 It was the truth ; she did try. She thought he deserved 
 her love, he was so good to her ; but, in real fact, she did 
 not give him quite so much genuine fondness as she gave 
 Roi Dore. He bit his lip with irritation ; he knew the 
 total absence of love that spoke in the answer. Still, the 
 chagrin and the mortification only made him more resolute 
 in pursuit. 
 
 "All I dare^hope is to make you love me one day !" he 
 murmured caressingly. " To be loved as I love were too 
 much to desire ; but, if you would but trust yourself to 
 me it should go hard but I would win your heart. Come 1 
 Come to that world I have so often painted to you. Come 
 — to be its idol, its empress, its treasure I" 
 
 "I should dearly love it!" sighed Yiva, wistfully; 
 "but " 
 
 " There is no ' but,' " murmured her tempter. "How 
 lost you are here ! A ferryman, a swineherd, a postillion 
 by hazard, the only creatures that see what a king must 
 adore] If this man whom you speak of cared really for 
 you, would he beep you in poverty and obscurity thus? 
 Come with me, my fairest. You shall be queen of Paris, 
 I swear to you !" 
 
 The child sighed again. Her cheeks were burning, her 
 eyes glittering, her whole soul intoxicated. Was he a 
 prince of France? she thought. Why not ? And then 
 to refuse him when he was willing to take her to share 
 all his glories ! 
 
 His arm stole round her, lightly brushing the hanging 
 profusion of her fair curls.
 
 120 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 " Come! come ! to have France for your sovereignty, 
 and all men who look once in your beautiful eyes for your 
 slaves !" 
 
 Yiva glanced up, half vaguely terrified, but still in a 
 trance of incredulous and dream-like rapture. With the 
 next moment she might have said yes, — she might have 
 rushed to her own ruin, blind with the longing for 
 change and for power, — she might have fallen headlong 
 into the abyss opened beneath her ; — but one word was 
 her savior. 
 
 That word was ; — "Viva !" 
 
 Under the trees stood Tricotrin. 
 
 With a bound like a deer's she sprang to him. Her 
 young lover stood, sorely discomfited, gazing in blank 
 amazement, in bitter annoyance, at this man of whom he 
 had heard so much, and whom he had never seen ; who 
 came so unwelcomely, in so untimely a moment, between 
 him and his prey. Tricotrin's bright eyes swept over 
 him, and a great wrath gleamed in them ; but he stro'ked 
 the girl's hair caressingly. 
 
 " Who is your friend, Yiva?" 
 
 " A stranger ; a prince, I think !" she whispered eagerly. 
 " And he has given me beautiful toys, all covered with 
 jewels, lovelier than the gold things they have on the 
 altar ; and he says if I will go with him he will show me 
 Paris en fete, and give me roses that will never die, and 
 diamonds, and riches, and the life of an empress ! May I 
 go ? and will you go too ? and we can make grand'mere 
 so happy 1 And he says that kings' daughters will not 
 be noticed when I pass through the streets I" 
 
 The breathless words, poured out in all their childish 
 mingling of selfishness and generosity, of innocence and 
 vanity ; — Tricotrin listened, then laid his hand gently on 
 her shoulder : 
 
 "Go to grand'mere, Viva. I will talk with this good 
 friend of yours, and hear a little of all "these wonderful 
 things to which he invites us. Do as I tell you, my child. 
 You shall not lose the deathless roses by obedien.ce." 
 
 Yiva looked at them alternately a little wistfully ; she 
 was loth to go. 
 
 " He has been so kind !" she murmured softly; " and I 
 should like to go, if I may !"
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 121 
 
 Then she obeyed, and passed from them toward the 
 cottage, her head turning still wistfully hack to them, with 
 the empty jug still hanging in her hand, her errand to the 
 water-spout forgotten. 
 
 Tricotrin stood in silence, waiting till she should be be- 
 yond hearing. The youth stood his ground, too proud 
 to turn away, but livid with chagrin, rage, and mortifica- 
 tion ; marveling also at the aspect of the man who had 
 come thus between him and his soul's desire. He had 
 thought with light contempt of the wanderer, whom the 
 old peasant deified and the child adored, as of some poverty- 
 stricken, folly-steeped vagabond ; some strolling musician, 
 since they spoke of his art; some half-outlawed eccentric, 
 whom he could quiet with coin. He was bewildered at 
 the royal and splendid beauty, the careless, fearless bear- 
 ing, the magnificent manhood of this bohemian who stood 
 before him in the linen blouse of the people, and with a 
 little black monkey peering, witch-like, from over his 
 shoulder. 
 
 Viva once out of sight, Tricotrin swung round, his eyes 
 like blue lightning in their wrath. 
 
 " So, Lord Chanrillon ! this is the thief's work in which 
 you spend your villegiatura !" 
 
 The young man looked at him in silence, startled into 
 speechless amazement at the sound of the name that he 
 bore, a name he had carefully concealed through the 
 whole of the siege he had laid to Viva. He recovered 
 himself with an effort. 
 
 "Since you know my title, "he said, with chill languor, 
 "you know also the respect due to it. Know still further 
 that I have no wish to parley with you on any subject." 
 
 "That I will warrant you have not 1 But your wishes 
 are not what I shall consult. Do you know that I could 
 kill you where you stand just as easily as I could break 
 that slender sapling asunder; and, — by God! — I have a 
 mind to do it, too, you beardless libertine, you smiling 
 sensualist!" 
 
 His height towered above the young man's slight stat- 
 ure ; his voice rolled out in sonorous passion ; his chest 
 heaved with his quickened breathing. A momentary 
 horror seized his hearer, who shrank back with an invol- 
 
 11
 
 122 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 untary impulse, while his clear, brown cheek turned white 
 like a fainting woman's. Who could tell, he thought, 
 what the vengeance of this lawless republican might be ? 
 
 Tricotrin saw the fear of him, and laughed bitterly in 
 his wrath. 
 
 "Pshaw, child! Men do not kill such things as you, 
 though it is dangerous to spare adders because they look 
 so small ; a wound unto death is one's common reward 
 for the misplaced compassion 1 Well, what plea do you 
 raise in defense of your villainy?" 
 
 The youth laughed coldly and scornfully. 
 
 " I am not accustomed to raise pleas for my actions ; 
 still less should I do so to an inferior. If I needed one, 
 however, the easiest would be found in the overtures that 
 were made to me by your " 
 
 The lie faltered and died unfinished on his tongue. He 
 knew that as little might a lion be enraged with impu- 
 nity as this man be goaded with safety. He replaced his 
 falsehood with a scoff. 
 
 "Pardon me! I can understand your annoyance. The 
 annoyance of losing the one ewe lamb ! But, if I re- 
 member the Bible story aright, the ewe lamb went with 
 much eagerness to the sacrifice. Your Viva does not 
 differ from Bathsheba! Besides, I mean very well by 
 her. The charming little fool is wholly lost here." 
 
 Tricotrin's hands fell on his shoulders, and shook him 
 to and fro, as the jaws of a lion can shake what they 
 seize but forbear to destroy. 
 
 "Another word like these and I will fling you out into 
 that water, to sink or swim as .you may!" 
 
 The youth freed himself from the grasp with difficulty, 
 growing pale with rage and fear. 
 
 "It would do you too much honor to resent your out- 
 rage myself," he said insolently, " I will send my grooms 
 to the task." 
 
 Tricotrin, even in the tempest of his wrath, laughed 
 at the threat with his old ironic amusement. 
 
 " You will ? Indeed ! It will be a mistake — for your 
 grooms ! For the rest, my lord, as you term your- 
 self " 
 
 "I decline any more speech with you!"
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 123 
 
 "Pshaw! You will listen as long as I choose," an- 
 swered Tricotrin, with contemptuous command. " Honor 
 you have none ; good faith you have none ; but your father 
 has both. If you do not swear that from this hour Viva 
 is free from your vile temptations, and keep your oath to 
 the letter, Estmere shall learn what the heir to his name 
 can become !" 
 
 The young man broke in on the words with a laugh of 
 insolent ridicule. 
 
 " The earl will not aid you much 1 He and I are very 
 distant acquaintances. Besides, Estmere has quite youth 
 enough in him to be no saint himself." 
 
 A darker storm swept over Tricotrin's face. 
 
 " Europe reveres your father ; cannot you do so 
 much?" he said sternly. "That you please him ill, I 
 doubt not. Eustace Estmere is a gentleman, a just man, 
 an upright man, a man of noble temper and pure honor. 
 You must degrade him bitterly — you ! — the son of such 
 a mother!" 
 
 The young man's feature's flushed duskily with a flush 
 of shame, even while absolute amaze possessed and held 
 him silent. 
 
 Tricotrin's eyes softened a little as he saw that red- 
 dened, painful shadow on the insolent young face before 
 him. 
 
 " I would not have taunted you by your mother's dis- 
 honor if you had not sought to lure a creature, innocent 
 as the very doves, into dishonored life," he said gravely. 
 " But, — you make me doubt, you make me disbelieve that 
 you can come of Estniere's race." 
 
 "Estmere!" echoed his hearer, in bitter impatience of 
 his father's name; "Estmere ! You prate of Estmere ! 
 What can 1m be to you ?" 
 
 "What he is to all the world, — what his son will never 
 be — a gentleman ! lie bears you no love, my young sir. 
 You outrage, offend, incense him at every turn and every 
 phase of your worthless life. What mercy do you think 
 lie will show you if I tell him of some of your pastimes, 
 of some of your vices ? of your fashion of spending the 
 last night of April, in Paris, this very year?" 
 
 The youth started and grew deadly pale.
 
 124 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 " Good God ! What are you ?" he muttered. " Devil, 
 or sorcerer, that you know these things?" 
 
 " One needs to be neither to know how you steep your- 
 self in the foulness of orgies that many a debauchee 
 would recoil from in disgust 1" answered Tricotrin with 
 the sonorous force of his voice ringing loud in disdain. 
 " Pshaw, boy ! Do you think I cannot tell the truth of 
 even such pitiful things as your valueless years ? I know 
 the shame of your vices — of your crimes — my young 
 Commodus. Your father does not : well for you that 
 that eagle soars far too high to see where you riot with 
 the carrion birds ! Your mother lay in his bosom to rend 
 his great heart with her treacherous talons ; you, fit son 
 of the traitress, claim his race and his name to sully them 
 both and drag both through the mud of the foulest of 
 license 1 He cannot tear his name from you ; he cannot 
 rescue his race from your mother's pollution of it ; he 
 cannot prevent your present rank or your future succes- 
 sion. But you know what, he is, — you know how he can 
 judge and how he can punish, — now, — shall he hear the 
 whole vile truth of his heir's brutal orgies ? Or will you 
 purchase my silence by leaving in peace what I cherish?" 
 
 Yiva's lover stood irresolute, pale, tremulous with rage, 
 with wonder, with baffled hatred, with ignominious sub- 
 mission. Above all the contesting emotions which shat- 
 tered his insolence and broke asunder his self-control, 
 was one supreme all-absorbing amaze at this man who 
 arraigned him with the authority of a king, with the dis- 
 dain of a superior, with the omniscience of a god 1 
 
 Even in that moment of humiliation and powerless 
 passion, a curious dreamy speculation came on him, and 
 made him wonder how, if such men as these were the 
 people, it arrived that the people did not govern and 
 rule ? 
 
 " Choose 1" said Tricotrin simply. "Do I know too 
 much of you for you to oppose my will any longer ? Or 
 must I take sharper means to protect what is innocent 
 from your toils ?" 
 
 He did not answer : he was irresolute. A galled pride, 
 a vacillating fury, combated with him the impulse of pru- 
 dence and fear. He loathed to bend and surrender ; yet
 
 THE STORY OF A WATF AND STRAY. 125 
 
 he dared not provoke vengeance from one who knew h^ 
 worst secrets. 
 
 " Choose 1" said Tricotrin with fiery impatience. "No 
 matter to me the choice that you make ! Do you renounce 
 your pursuit? — or do I go to Estmere?" 
 
 " Were either Estmere or you such anchorites in your 
 youth?" 
 
 The mortified pride, the ignoble fear of the young man's 
 heart took refuge in a feeble taunt and evasion. 
 
 Tricotrin smiled contemptuously. 
 
 "Neither of us. Think you that I blame a boy's ar- 
 dent follies ? — a young man's lawless loves ? Think you 
 I do not know how sweet women's lips are in our youth, 
 and how hard to resist the soft glance of their eyes ? I 
 make excuse for the swift unthinking sins of young years; 
 I can pardon error where warm passion blinds conscience 
 and tempts all the senses. But that is not your crime. 
 You, — cool, cold, and wary; not loving, only desiring; 
 not seeking a heart to beat echo to yours ; but only seek- 
 ing new prey to first seize, then throw away; — you, — 
 weave lie on lie to trap a child in her ignorance, you — 
 with all a boy's cruelty have all the graybeard's slow 
 science, you — are a traitor, a thief, and a liar !" 
 
 The young man, stung beyond endurance, sprang on 
 him to strike a blow for each word ; Tricotrin caught his 
 arm and held it there, the arm uplifted, the blow unstruck. 
 
 " I like you better for that," he said briefly. "There is 
 some touch of the old race in you, though very little. 
 But it is hardly worth while to resent what is true. It 
 were better to admit it with apology and remorse. Now 
 — make your choice. Leave France for a year on any 
 pretext you will; — or stay and see what your father says 
 of the things I can tell him. It is no matter to me which 
 you select. Either course will equally serve me." 
 
 With thai he loosened his hold on the boy's arm, and 
 turned from him, Leaving his foe to an impotent and fever- 
 ish rage — the rage of a proud, self-engrossed, pampered, 
 imperious nature against the only creature who had ever 
 crossed its purpose or arraigned its actions. 
 
 Calmly as he had spoken to his antagonist there was 
 no calmness on his face as he walked on alone ; walked 
 
 11*
 
 120 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 on, away from the river, and toward Viva's home. Tem- 
 pestuous pain, and anger, and many mingling unana- 
 lyzed emotions, had been awakened in him. Wrath was 
 rare with him, and when it awoke was as the wrath of 
 the lions; moreover, many things of bitterness, many 
 memories long buried, stirred in him under the sudden- 
 ness of this peril to the one he had chosen to defend. He 
 had needed to ask no questions ; he had told what the 
 young man's object was, and what her danger, the first 
 moment that his eyes had lit on them together under the 
 trees about the water freshet. And it had filled him with 
 an almost ungovernable passion. The insult, the jeop- 
 ardy, for her, would have been from any one outrage 
 enough to make his blood in flame; but from the son of 
 Estmere, they took a darker color, they dealt a deeper 
 blow. 
 
 "Must they have even her?" he said in his soul. 
 
 At any time it would have been painful to him to know 
 that the risk of womanhood so nearly approached the 
 child who to him was but such a child still; that the cor- 
 ruption of worldly wishes and worldly temptations had 
 so soon found her out in her solitude to assail her ; that 
 the insidious graces of youth and of love had crept in to 
 assault and to taint the young heart, whose transparency 
 and whose pureness from all evil knowledge had been 
 his delight. He had saved her from death, and sustained 
 life in her through all the years of her sunny existence, 
 which, through him, had never been darkened by a single 
 cloud; — and his reward was, that the first beardless 
 stranger who took the trouble could lead her away with 
 a few honeyed words I 
 
 The desertion struck a heavier pang into Tricotrin's 
 heart than he, the laughing philosopher, cared that any- 
 thing should do. He would have given up much for 
 Viva — nay, had given up much many a time to be able 
 to send gold enough to maintain her in ease and in some 
 sort of grace, — and shel She was willing to go away 
 from him to the first handsome heartless youth that en- 
 treated her! 
 
 There was a tinge of jealous pain in him, which made 
 the caprice and the ingratitude in her strike him doubly 
 sharply.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 127 
 
 But as he had done when in wrath with the Greek 
 Canaris, so he did now, — he strove against and shook off 
 the alien regret. He lifted his head and looked at the 
 sunset which was burning, rich and red, low down in the 
 west. 
 
 " So I and his son have crossed!" he murmured. "Ah ! 
 That is droll, Mistigri. What is not droll in this world ? 
 Tragi-comedy everywhere. How we waste our time in 
 wrath ! — and neglect all that might raise our souls. How 
 many men will look at that to-night? Not one in a mil- 
 lion ; the sun sets every day, — who cares ? God has cast 
 beauty broadcast all over the earth, the gentlest teacher 
 we can have; — and who thinks to thank God for it?" 
 
 He stood awhile looking with eagle eyes at the glori- 
 ous spectacle; — the broad field of glowing light, the 
 clouds sun-flushed to scarlet, the blue sky deepening into 
 purple, the shafts of the dying rays slanting upward like 
 golden spears: — stood till all the radiance sank away into 
 the deep peace of the early night. 
 
 Then having thus exorcised his darker spirit, he moved 
 away with his head bowed like one who turns from that 
 which is holier and greater than himself, and from which 
 he has sought both counsel and consolation. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 He went back to Viva. 
 
 At the door of her home she met him, lifting her face 
 full of eagerness. 
 
 " Ma} r I go with him ? Do you like him ? Did he tell 
 you all lie told me?" 
 
 Tricotrin looked a moment away from her. 
 
 "You wish so much to go with this wonderful new 
 friend, then?" 
 
 Viva gave a longing sigh. 
 
 "Oh, yes! To see Paris illuminated I" 
 
 "Ah, capricious and true to your sex! Change — that
 
 128 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 is all you want!" he murmured impatiently. "So! It 
 is for the sake of Paris illuminated, is it? Would you 
 go with him to a desert? To a dreary sun-burnt place ? — 
 to the sand-plains about Marseilles for example ?" 
 
 Viva opened wide her large eyes in horror and sheer 
 perplexity. 
 
 "Oh, monDieu! No!" 
 
 Tricotrin smiled ; his worst dread was dissipated, he 
 saw that love had not even left its first breath here, that 
 what had beguiled her was the city in its festival season. 
 
 "Listen, Viva," he said gently, "you love me well 
 enough to believe what I tell you and to be content with 
 it without asking its reason ?" 
 
 Viva looked up a little stilled and startled. 
 
 "Oh yes!" 
 
 "And to be sure that my pleasure is in your joy, and 
 that if I deny you aught, it is because I know that thing 
 would be hurtful ?" 
 
 Viva's eyes grew graver and less luminous. 
 
 " Of course ! You are so good to me !" 
 
 " Then, Viva, it will pleasure me best that you should 
 not talk more with this friend, and that you should not 
 see Paris till you can go with me. It would not be well, 
 and this young man would not be a wise and fitting guide 
 for you there. JS T ow, if you love me as I imagine, you 
 will be content that because 1 say so, therefore it is true 
 and right. Can I count on your trust thus far ? It is 
 much to ask, for I am disappointing you ; but it is not so 
 much that I think you will deny it me ?" 
 
 There was an infinite sweetness, and a shadow of anx- 
 iety, in his eyes ; that this creature owed him all, to the 
 very saving of her sheer existence, the man was too gen- 
 erous even to remember: — far too generous to base on it 
 any claim to her gratitude or her obedience. He waited 
 for the assurance of her faith and allegiance, as though 
 he were her debtor, and not she his for every crust she 
 ate, and every draught she drank. 
 
 Viva was silent a moment ; the tears were in her eyes, 
 the tears were in her voice, she could not trust herself to 
 speak, for she was very proud, and could not bear to show 
 emotion ; — the disappointment was bitter, very bitter to
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 129 
 
 her. The great world had seemed to open its gates to 
 her, and disclose such gorgeous and untold glories. With 
 the words other tempter such a pageant of splendor and 
 wonder had spread before the vivid dreaming fancy of the 
 child. Such lands of enchantment had riseu before her, 
 all for her sovereignty, and lit with a light that never 
 shone upon earth ! To behold these swept clown sud- 
 denly, as impossible and forbidden, was a trial terrible 
 and poignant. 
 
 Tricotrin watched her mutely. 
 
 She stood quiet, the tears she refused to let fall standing 
 on her long drooped lashes, her face at first very flushed, 
 and then equally colorless, all the keenness of her disap- 
 pointment and something of her haughty willfulness and 
 resistance, spoken on a face eloquent of every thought, 
 with the eloquence of the southern nations. 
 
 She looked up at length and caught the gaze of the eyes 
 which watched her: their look touched and won all that 
 was generous, noble, and loving in her temper, all that 
 was grateful and all that was unselfish ; she saw that he 
 to whom she knew that she owed life, home, protection, 
 her very food and bed, grieved to be compelled to pain 
 her, and asked her allegiance, not as his right, but as her 
 free and gracious gift. 
 
 Then all that was best in her awoke. She threw her 
 arms about him with grateful caressing affection, in 
 a passionate repentance for that moment's disloyalty 
 and hesitance. 
 
 " What could you ask that I would deny ! I would give 
 you my life, and you would have a right to it, since you 
 saved it ! I do not care for the diamonds, or the roses, or 
 Paris, or the Fetes, if you think I am better without them. 
 It is enough that you wish me, your wish is my law I" 
 
 Tricotrin stroked her hair tenderly, where her head 
 leant against his heart ; he was silent for the instant, and 
 his face lighted with the frank warm joy which had come 
 there once before at the expression of her affection; — he 
 was as rejoiced at her faith in him as though he had never 
 done anything to merit, or give him title to demand, it ! 
 
 " I thank you, Viva mine !" lie said, with a force which 
 gave almost a tremor to his voice. " That is generously
 
 130 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 and bravely said. You have given me the best gift there 
 is in this world — Trust. In after-years I will tell you why 
 I seek it now." 
 
 Viva leaned against him, speechless ; she had given 
 her allegiance loyally, and with love, but she was a child, 
 and her disappointment was great ; the tears were still in 
 her voice, and her eyes, and she could not bear to betray 
 them, lest he should be pained to see that the trust which 
 he asked was fraught with sorrow to herself. 
 
 "And now — another point," pursued Tricotrin. " This 
 stranger friend of yours gave you costly golden presents ?" 
 
 " Yes ! — beautiful ornaments !" 
 
 Her voice was very tremulous, and her eyes looked up 
 with pitiful beseeching appeal ; her lovely jeweled toys, 
 with which in a thousand day-dreams she had fancied her- 
 self a Marquise, an Empress, Marie Antoinette in the 
 brilliant days at Versailles, Louise d'Orleans in the gor- 
 geous gatherings of the Palais Royal, anything, every- 
 thing ! — she should not surely have to part with them ! 
 
 Tricotrin read the look ; and smiled. 
 
 "Nay, child; for anything I take from you, you shall 
 have as good. You are feminine, and I would not break 
 your heart by robbing you of your first jewels ! You are 
 a child of the Fairies, but they forgot to dower you with 
 Philosophy — tan t pis ! But the jewels your friend gave 
 you must go back to him, though }^ou shall be no loser." 
 
 Viva's eyes glowed and dropped with shame. 
 
 " Was it so wicked to take them ? I did not know — he 
 said it would be cruel and discourteous to refuse ? I had 
 no one to tell me, and — they were so pretty 1" 
 
 " Wicked ? No !" said Tricotrin, promptly : his chief de- 
 sire in all he said was to conceal from her any hint or 
 glimpse of what had been her tempter's motive and end, and 
 to dissipate in no iota the innocence of her own danger 
 which she enjoyed. " It is nothing to cause you shame, 
 Viva; it was most natural that the pretty toys beguiled your 
 sight ; are you to be wiser than all your generation, or 
 stronger than all your sex? But now that /know, they 
 must be returned to your friend; because I accept obli- 
 gations from no man, and neither must you. We spoke 
 of pride when we were together last ; there is a pride that
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 131 
 
 you may cherish in your heart's heart, Viva ; the pride 
 which will never be laid beneath a debt. There was no 
 one to tell you, and you were a child, pleased with beau- 
 tiful bagatelles, and there is nothing to grieve or to flush 
 for, at all, in the fact that you were won into taking these 
 adornments. But remember in the future that the woman 
 who is proud, and honors herself, must take the gold and 
 the gifts of no man. You would give your cheek to the 
 caress of no stranger ; never take from him that for which 
 he might, were it only in mirth, ask you for a caress as 
 his payment." 
 
 Viva listened, the flush deep upon her forehead, her 
 eyes drooped in humiliation, all the haughty pride of her 
 temper was roused by and followed his words, and the 
 bitterness of the golden ornaments was far exceeding now 
 the sweetness they had given. 
 
 " Send them back to him ! Send them back ! I hate 
 them now!" she said, passionately, while the hot color 
 burned painfully in her face, and her lips quivered. " He 
 wanted to kiss me once, and I told him I was no peasant 
 girl ; but it showed how low I had fallen in his sight, 
 how I had given him the right to despise me by taking 
 his presents !" 
 
 Her voice broke down, she flung herself upon the grass, , 
 and sobbed aloud half in grief, half in rage ; her heart 
 was not even touched by the loss of her tempter, but her 
 pride was wounded to the quick. In the stead of the 
 diamonds and the deathless roses, and all the wondrous, 
 glorious, unknown world, this Waif and Stray of the Loire, 
 who had the- hauteur of a child-queen, had only the ruin 
 of her shattered castles, and the misery, a thousandfold 
 greater, of having lost her own dignity, and stooped to 
 abasement and dishonor ! 
 
 And Tricotrin, who would have gone half across the 
 world, and given a. kingdom if ho had had one, to avoid 
 the sight of anything feminine in sorrow, found himself, 
 all philosophic that lie was, compelled to look on what he 
 hated, and keep by him, for a minute or two at least, a 
 cucumber that, was very acid. 
 
 For ho loved the girl with all the warmth of his gen- 
 erous and ardent nature ; and he was obliged to deal her
 
 132 TRICOTRTN, 
 
 something of this sense of pain and of humiliation, lest a 
 worse thing should come unto her, and the wood-dove 
 fall a prey to some other tercel's beak. 
 
 " Oh, Mistigri, Mistigri 1" murmured he to that insepa- 
 rable confidante, with pathetic regret. " How impossible 
 it is .for a philosopher to remain perfectly philosophical 
 when he has once given way to such a miserable weak- 
 ness as to take an interest in anything that is feminine I" 
 
 Viva lay on the grass in an abandonment of shame and 
 sorrow, not for the golden toys, still less for their donor, 
 but for those glorious castles in the air, that were all 
 hurled down and had vanished like a dream of the night, 
 and far more for the terrible sense that filled her of guilti- 
 ness and shame. 
 
 The forbidden Fruit that had looked so fair had changed 
 to the darkest and bitterest of ashes in the lips of this 
 proud young daughter of Eve. 
 
 Tricotrin let the emotion have its way ; and his own 
 thoughts wandered, in a fiery wrath, from the child to her 
 tempter, and from him to many things and many memo- 
 ries that were dark and heavy, and rarely allowed to cloud 
 a mind which best loved the light of the sun, and the 
 noonday of clear philosophies, and the rich colors of 
 wine-cups, and the aerial hues of a poet's fancies. 
 
 Then — when it had nearly spent itself — he stooped and 
 laid his hand on her bowed head. 
 
 " Viva mine, keep thy tears back : life may want them, 
 thou art a woman ! Do not weep till thou hast erred, and 
 that most surely thou hast not done now. Let none 
 shame thee, save thyself; and let that never be. Thou 
 art a child, and hast a child's love of pretty toys ; that is 
 all ; no harm is done. And remember — if thou grievest I 
 am grieved. It is I who have disappointed thee; and each 
 sigh thou shalt give for thy lost bagatelles and thy ban- 
 ished castles, will be a reproach to me." 
 
 He had judged rightly the chord to touch. Viva could 
 be led thus, though driven never. 
 
 She lifted her head, and smiled at him through her sor- 
 rows, a smile very loving, very wistful, and very proud. 
 
 " Then — I will not give them one regret !" 
 
 And he knew that the word she gave she would keep.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 133 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 " Misttgri ! Can a man be ever certain of his philosophy ? 
 Brntus had served her faithfully all his life, and broke 
 down in his very last hour 1" said Tricotrin, plaintively, 
 as he stood smoking under the starlight in the porch, 
 when Yiva had sobbed herself to sleep under the eaves, 
 with the tears still glistening on her closed lashes. " You 
 and I were wretched sentimentalists in saving the Waif, 
 and I suppose we shall be so to the end, having once con- 
 cerned ourselves with anything so irrational as the upset- 
 ting of her most far-sighted and excellently judicious 
 mother's plans I have been shockingly weak and uu- 
 philosophic to-day ; — contemptible I Sentiment the sec- 
 ond ; and quite as bad as the first. I have interfered 
 between her and the most lucrative trade of all for women 
 who cannot be duchesses. My young lord's introduction 
 would have been an admirable one, and he was right that 
 diamonds would have fallen in her lap by thousands; — 
 she would have ruined her hundreds and tens of hundreds 
 before two years, I dare say. The world would have 
 raved of her, and she would have had a woman's most 
 delicious empire, — the Power of Destruction. That young 
 man was wise and practical, and I — I w r as unworldly, 
 unphilosophic, everything that is contemptible, Mistigri ! 
 What business had I to put my oar in the boat, instead 
 of letting her drift down the stream to the wine-washed 
 roses and Messieurs les Grands Seigneurs? Ah, grand'- 
 mere, hark a moment !" 
 
 The little old brown woman, looking like a figure out 
 of one of Ostade's pictures, as she moved across the broad 
 swathes of moonlight thai checkered her kitchen, came 
 toward him, trembling somewhat, for she had a horrible 
 doubt that something had gone wrong about the Prince 
 Faineant, and that she had acted with an infamous want 
 of discretion and judgment. 
 
 12
 
 134 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 " Grand 'mere, why did you let that young wolf in 
 lamb's clothing get the ear of the Waif?" 
 
 Grand'mere began to tremble more and more, and 
 broke into a stream of self-excuses and of protestation. 
 Tricotrin cut them short. 
 
 " I know, friend Virelois, I know. You are a woman, 
 and he was comely to look at, and you fancied you heard 
 the chimes of bridal bells, and you thought he was a no- 
 ble prince in disguise !" 
 
 " Oh, mon Dieu, Tricotrin! How do you know all you 
 do?" 
 
 "Little birds tell me," responded Tricotrin promptly. 
 " Silly woman ! What do you suppose the swallows fly 
 in and out of the ivy all the day long for, if it be not on 
 messages ?" 
 
 Grand'mere paid no attention ; her eyes were sad and 
 anxious. 
 
 " Is there anything wrong with the young man ?" she 
 asked. "I had my fears; I did what 1 could. But you 
 see " 
 
 " It was the old .story. Love laughing at locksmiths ; 
 and the locksmiths do not exist who can shut in such a 
 thing as the Waif. Well, the young man will not come 
 here any more ; and if you chance to hear he bears a 
 high name, keep the knowledge to yourself, that is all. 
 There are no disguised princes in the world; and as for 
 bridal bells, no man loves them very much, and rich men 
 not at all." 
 
 Grand'mere shuddered, lifting her hands. 
 
 "Ah — h — h! The nobles are so wicked 1" 
 
 "Not in the least," Tricotrin contradicted. "They are 
 no more wicked than other men — not so much so indeed, 
 because tbey are educated. Vice is as ripe in villages as 
 in cities, and to one peasant that 'falls' for a gentle- 
 man's wooing there are tenscore that do so at the asking 
 of Pierre, the postillion, or Jacquot, the cowherd. Well, 
 grand'mere, you loved honor and honesty all the days of 
 your life — what have your deities done for you?" 
 
 " Kept my pot empty many a time, but my conscience 
 clean, thank God." 
 
 Tricotrin looked at her with the smile that was epigram, 
 satire, sunlight, and sadness all in one.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 135 
 
 "Grand'mere! You, the disciple of virtue, are the 
 strongest irony upon her that a satirist could paint ! Your 
 pot empty? — ah! And if you had been a philosophically 
 wicked woman it would have overflowed with fat fowls 
 and good rice ? This Prince Faineant was the wise man, 
 and I the fool. Jeanne, the honest woman, clicks about 
 in wooden shoes, sleeps on a flock bed, lives on black 
 crusts and onion soups, gets withered and crippled and 
 weather-stained before she is at middle age, toils in the 
 snow and the sun to keep body and soul together, and 
 dies in the workhouse to be buried as a pauper. Euphra- 
 sie, the bad woman, has pretty, warm, broidered slippers, 
 sleeps between cambric sheets, lies in cachemires as her 
 carriage rolls along, eats and drinks the best of all lands, 
 laughs through life to a gay opera air, has a happy pa- 
 ganism that makes her quite untroubled with her future, 
 and when she retires on her pirated gains, can buy abso- 
 lution from any church extant, die in the odor of sanc- 
 tity, and have her noble qualities blazoned on a marble 
 tomb. That is what virtue and vice are, grand'mere, and 
 how they pay their servitors." 
 
 Grand'mere stood in the strip of moonlight, her head 
 pensively on one side, her little brown face sad and be- 
 wildered. Then suddenly the old woman raised herself 
 erect, and her still bright eyes took a resolute light. 
 
 " That is true, Tricotrin — that is terribly true. There is 
 not a word of it but is fearfully, horribly, shamefully true. 
 But see here, Tricotrin, though I am old and poor, and 
 but for you most like should be now dead of want, there 
 is something I would not part with fur all that gilded 
 shame ; it is this — -just this: to know, all my life through, 
 that no man ever had the right to scorn me; to know, 
 all my life through, that they were bound to say, 'that 
 woman is miserably poor, but. she cannot be bought.' 
 There is something sweet in that — a sweetness that dues 
 not perish. Yet 1 had my tempters too. I was fair to 
 lobk on when I w as young. And I had wealth offered 
 to me if I would have taken shame. But it wasjusl this 
 which saved me, Tricotrin — not religion, perhaps, and 
 not pride of a surety, but just this: that no man should 
 ever feel the sex of his mother was outraged in me, that
 
 136 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 no man should ever say, ' I can despise you, for have I 
 not bought you?'" 
 
 Tricotrin's eyes grew very soft as he heard her. When 
 her words were ended he bent low with a tender rever- 
 ence to the little, old, wrinkled, white-haired peasant. 
 
 " Grand'mere, you are a good woman ! If that temper 
 were more taught to girlhood there would be little vice 
 for which to rail against men." 
 
 "And that is true, too !" sighed grand'mere as she 
 went back to the fire to boil a pot of chocolate for him. 
 
 Tricotrin stood long in the moonlit doorway alone, 
 while Mistigri swung herself in the ivy after the moths, 
 and the quiet night lay soft and dark upon the country, 
 while now and then the lowing of cattle, the bark of a 
 dog, the chimes of a belfry, broke faintly on the stillness. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 When Viva awoke in the morning with the birds, it 
 was, for the first time in her life, with a certain dull pain 
 at her heart, with a certain dreamy sense of some loss 
 and some sorrow. She sat up in her little bed, and looked 
 at her gold toys where they stood, placed close to rejoice 
 her waking vision, on an oak chest under her casement; 
 and as she looked the tears swam in her eyes, her pretty 
 white chest heaved with a quick sob. It was not alto- 
 gether alone for the things ; she had dreamed such 
 dreams through her Prince Faineant, and those dreams 
 were all dead forever ! 
 
 Moreover, her first disenchantment, her first sense of 
 shame, were bitter to bear, and though she had cared 
 nothing at all for her handsome young wooer, She had 
 cared very much for all that he had offered her: so much 
 so that she might have taken that desire for change to 
 have been love for him, as many girls do, had not her 
 own true and strong affection for Tricotrin preserved her 
 from the error. The homage, the flattery, the sense of
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 137 
 
 her power, the belief in his submission to it, had been so 
 delightful to her ; all the native coquetry in her had so 
 exulted in its first exercise, all the imperious vanity in 
 her had found such charm in its victory, that Viva mourned 
 the loss of her Faust with a poignant regret, which 
 though only egotism made her almost think it was ten- 
 derness. It was not : any other would have done equally 
 well in his place, and with her fancies equally flattered, 
 Yiva would have been equally happy. But as it was, 
 there was no one to substitute for him, and therefore she 
 gave him a generous regret that would have looked very 
 much like love to him had he seen her half risen on the 
 little white couch, with her hair falling over her bare 
 shoulders, with her great eyes swimming, and her lovely 
 mouth swollen with tears. 
 
 But Viva was brave and was true to her word. She 
 had many faults and more foibles ; but she had the one 
 supreme excellence of unerring courage. She had said 
 she would give all her hagatelles up; and she did not 
 once waver. When she had flung the cold bright water 
 over her face and form, and dressed, and knelt awhile 
 under the wooden cross which grand'mere had placed in 
 her chamber, Viva was nerved to sacrifice ; and in one 
 sense she hated the things, — they had wounded her 
 pride, — she had no wish to keep them. 
 
 Yet her tears fell on them one by one as she looked at 
 each for the last time of all, and put them by, one by one, 
 in a basket. Though she did not know it, she had cause 
 to weep, — it was her first faith broken, her first illusion 
 faded, her first trust betrayed. Youth is wise in its pres- 
 cience when it recoils from betrayal as the deadliest thing 
 that awaits it in life. 
 
 When they were all placed in their basket, Viva looked 
 at her face in her own tiny mirror : "I promised him I 
 would not have one regret," she thought; and she knew 
 her face looked very tell-tale of regret indeed. 
 
 The child was frank and honest as the day; she had 
 not learned yet even to dream of concealing what she 
 felt. But she was courageous and she was proud ; above 
 all she was resolute net to give pain to Tricotrin. And she 
 dashed her tears away, and leant out into the fresh niorn- 
 
 12*
 
 138 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 ing air, and tried to sing one of ber river-songs with her 
 old gayety; then ran swiftly down the stairs, and placed 
 the jewels in his hands where he stood smoking, and 
 rushed away without a word into the sunlight. Those 
 pretty bijoux ! — and it was not those alone for which she 
 sorrowed — it was for all the dreams that were gone with 
 them! 
 
 Tricotrin did not seek to follow her ; he comprehended 
 her wish for solitude ; he stood looking at the toys with 
 a curious conflict of emotions on his face. If he had 
 obeyed his impulse, he could have crushed them all into 
 atoms beneath his heel. 
 
 " Pretty things with which to chaffer and barter away 
 a life !" he said in his teeth, as he folded them aside in a 
 packet and addressed it to the young man's name. Then 
 with it thrust into his pocket he went across the fields 
 toward Villiers. 
 
 As he went he softly took from the breast of his blouse, 
 and touched with loving fingers, the Attavante's Dante. 
 
 " I did not think to part ever with you," he said gently 
 to the book as though it were a loving thing. " But faith 
 must be kept with the Waif; she must have her toys 
 back ; and there is no other way. Since you must go you 
 shall go to him." 
 
 He looked long and wistfully at the book's familiar face ; 
 then put it into his breast more tenderly than he would 
 have done had it been a roll of banker's notes for thousands. 
 He loved the thing; it had been his from his childhood, 
 and had accompanied him through so many changeful 
 years ; the only relic he had kept of a long-perished life 
 forever lost. 
 
 But he had promised Viva the equals of her golden 
 toys : wealth he had none : the book must go. He would 
 have worked willingly for the jewels' worth ; but that 
 must have been slow purchase of them, and he would not 
 have the child mourn her playthings for an hour more 
 than was inevitable. The leagues brought him to Villiers ; 
 the same route which he had traversed the day after he 
 had first found her among the clematis. He paused at the 
 little picturesque building that stood in English fashion 
 beside the huge entrance gates. A comely brown-eyed,
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 139 
 
 laughing woman, with children clinging to her skirt, 
 greeted him with delighted welcome as he appeared; it 
 was Ninette, who had long been Valentin's wife, and who 
 was happy in the tender, sunny, graceful fashion with 
 which the French peasant will so often attain happiness 
 even in the midst of poverty: a dragon, however, that 
 never visited the home of the little cmondam fruit-seller. 
 
 "Is the young lord at the chateau, Ninette?" he asked, 
 after submitting to all the greetings of the little brunette, 
 who loved hin>well as the founder of all her wedded 
 peace by his timely counsel to the over-humble Valentin. 
 Ninette shook her head: the young lord had left Villiers 
 last evening. 
 
 Tricotrin put the packet into her hands. 
 
 " Give that to his servant, Ninette; and say nothing of 
 who brought it." 
 
 Ninette's eyes grew grave and anxiods a moment. 
 
 "Surely I will; and be silent as the dead. But — is it 
 true, Tricotrin? — I heard the other day that Milord was 
 seen very often with the little angel at grand'mere's?" 
 
 "It is true," said Tricotrin, curtly. "But he will be 
 seen no more, I promise you." 
 
 " That is well, I am glad you are come," murmured 
 Madame Valentin. " I got a little anxious ; 1 remembered 
 what you told me once about those people's love. And 
 the little one is so young, and so proud!" 
 
 Tricotrin nodded ; he did not care to pursue the subject ; 
 and after a few kindly questions concerning her family 
 and their welfare, he passed onward into the park up the 
 wooded terraces. Ninette knew him too well of old to 
 ask him whither he went. 
 
 But as she turned into her cottage her face was grave, 
 and she stood pensively before her old mother, who was 
 sitting by the sunshiny easement, shelling peas and wash- 
 ing cabbages. 
 
 •• .Mdi her ! I hope the pretty child will never bring woe 
 to Tricotrin '.'" 
 
 The old woman cracked a pea-pod sharply. 
 
 " Viva?" she murmured. "She owes him everything. 
 I dare say she will break his heart some day. That is 
 the way of them all."
 
 140 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 Such was the experience of her own life of eighty and 
 two years ! 
 
 Meanwhile Tricotrin went up toward the castle. There 
 was a graver and more careworn thought upon him than 
 was usual there. There was something of impatience and 
 of pain. He had resolved to keep faith with the young 
 man, as the young man had chosen exile in lieu of expo- 
 sure ; and the former served Viva by far the best, inso- 
 much as it kept the offense against her untold; and a girl's 
 name is like a peach: — the down once brushed off the 
 fruit bears the trace of the rough handling forever. Still, 
 though he did not go to expose Estmere's son, it was Est- 
 mere whom he sought. He had heard yester-eve, as he 
 had come through the country, that the noble had re- 
 turned for a brief time to his pleasure-home. 
 
 He soon found himself in the gardens ; the same gar- 
 dens where he had spoken to Valentin among the aza- 
 leas. Years made no difference here; the turf only grew 
 smoother, the flowers only more abundant, under the cul- 
 ture that wealth commanded. All the old beauty that the 
 place had known in the days of the Regency bloomed 
 afresh over it as though it had never been destroyed under 
 the neglect of long years and an impoverished race : it 
 had looked to Viva like some marvelous chateau of the 
 Renaissance times, fit for the splendid prison of the Sleep- 
 ing Beauty, and for once her extravagant fancy had not 
 led her astray. 
 
 Tricotrin knew that the English earl rose early; and 
 that most early mornings brought him out on the terraces 
 of Villiers before the more indolent throng of his guests 
 had awakened. Though the name of the foreign race 
 never by choice passed his lips, there was little concern- 
 ing their life with which he was not acquainted, down 
 even to the trifling details of their daily habits ; and here 
 his knowledge proved aright. While still far off himself 
 among the labyrinths of roses he saw Estmere ; walking 
 slowly before the chateau with one companion only, and 
 followed step for step, by a great Russian boarhound. 
 
 The sun shone full upon the terrace, and on the tall 
 form of the English nobleman; it looked taller still be- 
 side the diminutive person of the foreign statesman with
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 141 
 
 him, and his face had the same beauty, scarcely aged 
 since Tricotrin had looked in on him in his banqucting- 
 room: the fair, delicate, grave beauty of one in whom 
 pride was stronger than passion, and the intellect domi- 
 nated the senses. The face was calm, cold, full of 
 thought ; the lines of the mouth were musing and some- 
 what disdainful, the eyes were blue, luminous, pene- 
 trating, revealing nothing, save when, in very rare mo- 
 ments of pleasure, a smile would gleam in them that 
 women valued as they did not value the less hardly- won 
 smiles of men more easily amused and more rapidly in- 
 terested. 
 
 There was no smile in them now, but a displeased sur- 
 prise as they glanced over the gardens and saw an in- 
 truder there. 
 
 "A man in a blouse! — a man with a monkey! Come 
 to beg, I presume," murmured the earl. " What can 
 the gardeners and the park-rangers be about?" 
 
 His companion looked where he looked; but with a 
 differenl expression. 
 
 "Why! That is Tricotrin!" 
 
 "And who is Tricotrin ?" 
 
 "A folio could not tell !" 
 
 " I imagine one word could!" 
 
 "And what word would that be?" 
 
 "A scamp," said Estmere, with his eyes still on the 
 man with a monkey. 
 
 "Oh, no!" cried the foreigner, eagerly. "You mis- 
 take; indeed you mistake. Tricotrin has the most mar- 
 velous talents, the most marvelous influence over the 
 populace; he might be anything if he chose, and there is 
 nothing he does not manage to know. He is a charac- 
 ter; — quite a character!' 1 
 
 "I do not like characters,'' said Estmere, chillily. "A 
 man lias lost the fact before he acquires the title. 'A 
 -Teat character,' says the world when it means 'a gnat. 
 rogue !' " 
 
 •Tricotrin is no rogue " 
 
 "No? Then if he be your visitor, allow me to leave 
 you to him." 
 
 "He is not my visitor," muttered the French States-
 
 142 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 man hurriedly, embarrassed between his desire to speak 
 to the new-comer and his fear of his host's courtly con- 
 tempt, "lam not aware how he comes in your gardens, 
 but indeed — Tricotrin is so well with the people, it does 
 not do to incense him. No government dare touch him, 
 though any other man would be proscribed for one-half 
 what he utters. He is a rank democrat; but " 
 
 "A democrat !" echoed the cold musical tones of the 
 owner of Villiers. " With advanced views of ' Progress ' 
 that shall turn the lowest strata topmost ! With too 
 noble a spirit to be restricted by the petty laws of Meum 
 and Tuum ! With a passion for liberty conceived in a 
 wine-shop and nursed at the galleys 1 Thanks, I have 
 no desire for his presence in my grounds. Since you 
 know him, will you be kind enough to order him 
 away?" 
 
 Tricotrin had drawn near enough by this time to hear 
 the concluding phrases, but he had looked so earnestly at 
 Estmere, and as he had looked had been so thoroughly 
 occupied with his own thoughts, that he had not noted 
 the first words ; at the last all his archest laughter 
 gleamed radiantly in his eyes : 
 
 " Order me away ? Ah, M. Pharamonde, what do you 
 say to that ? You know I could bring all my Loirais 
 back with me to sack this dainty place!" 
 
 "Threats?" said Estmere with cold disdain; — and he 
 glanced at his French friend to see how the insolent chal- 
 lenge was received and resented. 
 
 Pharamonde, a minister of timorous policies, — who 
 caressed the people because he feared them, as the hand 
 of a coward caresses the head of a mastiff; — tried to 
 laugh off the embarrassment he felt between his desire 
 to propitiate the Bohemian, and yet hold his dignity with 
 the Noble. But the jest he essayed fell dead. Tricotrin 
 stood unmoved, in merciless amusement at his difficulty; 
 Estmere turned away in a scorn he scarcely encfeavored 
 to conceal. 
 
 "I will leave you, Pharamonde, to converse with — 
 your friend !" 
 
 The minister winced and reddened ; Tricotrin laughed 
 outright.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 143 
 
 "Nay, I claim no friendship with M. Pharamonde ; 
 and my business lies with you, my Lord Earl." 
 
 Estmere surveyed him with the amazement of a great 
 man whom no familiarities ever approach. 
 
 " I never have business with strangers ; and — by what 
 right do you intrude in my gardens'!"' 
 
 " Bah ! The right that I found a door ready open : do 
 you statesmen want any other excuse for intruding into 
 a neighbor's empire? Only you go farther; — you rifle 
 his treasuries — I do not touch even one of your rosebuds. 
 A stranger, am I ? Ah ! Well, M. Pharamonde here 
 will vouch for me ; vouch at any rate that I did not come 
 out of the galleys ; and that I will not dance the carmag- 
 nole yet on your terraces." 
 
 Estmere's eyes rested on him as he spoke; eyes well 
 used to read character keenly, well able to penetrate 
 through the surface of all things. He had never seen 
 any one like the man who thus addressed him, — a man 
 of the people, in a blue blouse, and with a little black 
 monkey peering over his shoulder, yet a man with the 
 head of a sun-god and the rich ringing voice of a gentle- 
 man. 
 
 " Come, M. Pharamonde !" cried Tricotrin. " Stand my 
 sponsor for once ! Assure Lord Estmere that the imper- 
 tinence in me of being original has not as yet led to the 
 addendum of being criminal; which he appears to con- 
 sider is its natural and due development!" 
 
 "Indeed, Tricotrin," murmured the minister, not know- 
 ing very well how to reply. " You mistake entirely; I 
 was about to assure my lord how invariably for good is 
 the singular influence you exercise over the people I" 
 
 "I doubt if 'my lord' will believe that ; he has qo love 
 for democrats. Still it may suffice to make him do what 
 I want — buy this book of me." 
 
 Estmere — who had paused in some interest, and in 
 more distaste, at the interruption which aroused sufficient 
 surprise in him to make him remain a listener and a spec- 
 tator of the unknown intruder on hia privacy — glanced 
 at the volume and thought to himself that the eccentricity 
 of this new-comer was little short of insanity. Yet that 
 mere glance told him, a famed connoisseur in such mat-
 
 144 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 ters, that the book was a most rare one : was it possible 
 that the man had stolen it ? 
 
 Tricotrin, with his swift intuition, read the doubt of 
 him; and the humorous laughter glittered more archly 
 and ironically in his eyes. 
 
 "Look at it, monseigneur !" he said, holding it out. 
 " No thief's hands have soiled it. Will you put it among 
 your treasures at Beaumanoir ?" 
 
 " Beaumanoir!" 
 
 Lord Estmere echoed in some involuntary surprise the 
 name of his old native home : what could a French wan- 
 derer, he wondered, know of it and his world-famous 
 library ? But he took the volume and turned its leaves 
 over in all a connoisseur's interest. 
 
 "A genuine Attavante!" he murmured, "and in per- 
 fect condition." 
 
 The minister beside him glanced over his arm at it : 
 
 "The Attavante's Dante!" he cried. "Why, Trico- 
 trin, that is the very book for which you refused untold 
 gold from the Cardinal last year at Nice !" 
 
 Tricotrin shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 " I did not want the money then: I do now. Besides, 
 I have no affection for Monsignori. I have brought Earl 
 Eustace the book because he has a love of such things, 
 a love more genuine than the mere collector's pride of ac- 
 cumulation and possession." 
 
 Estmere's eyes were lifted to look at him for one mo- 
 ment as the words "Earl Eustace" were spoken: — to be 
 called by his baptismal name ! No such familiarity had 
 ever been taken in his life with him. He said nothing, 
 however ; but continued his examination of the literary 
 treasure. 
 
 " You need the money?" he asked at length. 
 
 Tricotrin gave a gesture of half haughty impatience. 
 
 "My lord, all the questions you need concern yourself 
 with are, — what is it worth, and whether you wish for 
 it. There are hundreds in Europe who will buy it if you 
 do not." 
 
 Estmere was silent : he felt himself to be justly re- 
 buked, and proud as he was, he liked the rebuke, and 
 liked the speaker better for it.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 145 
 
 "It is a perfect copy," he said, turning to the French 
 minister. "What did the Cardinal you allude to offer 
 for it?" 
 
 His friend named the price. 
 
 "Too much by one-half," struck in Tricotrin. "I have 
 no patience for those fools' prices; — after all, what is an 
 'antique?' Only something grown mouldy by age and 
 disuse ! And with a book, like a man, the lack of pedi- 
 gree matters nothing, if the pages within be writ fair." 
 
 The sentiment was too democratic for the person it was 
 addressed to, and he made no reply: but with another 
 look at the miniatures of the Dante he determined to give 
 it a home in his library. 
 
 "If you will accept the Cardinal's very fair price, the 
 book is mine," he said. "It is fully worth it as biblio- 
 poles' treasures go." 
 
 Tricotrin bowed his head: and Estmere thought as he 
 saw the gesture, "that man bows like my equal;— and 
 with infinite grace. What can he possibly be ? Surely 
 no common vagrant." 
 
 He paused a moment, strongly inclined to enter into 
 more converse with this stranger, whose frankness, and 
 whose singularity attracted him: but old habit, natural 
 reserve, and an aristocrat's detestation of democracy and 
 its professors made him resist the impulse: he gave the 
 Attavante back to Tricotrin. 
 
 "I will send you the gold, and be good enough to re- 
 turn the book to the bearer. If you will go within, my 
 people will give you some breakfast." 
 
 Tricot rin's forehead Hushed red. 
 
 "I remain here," he said, curtly. And I do not require 
 your hospitality." 
 
 "Ah, Estmere 1 that man is so proud," whispered Phar- 
 amonde. Estmere took no notice, but passed into the 
 house, through an open window; he half repented that 
 he had bought the Attavante; still, — the man must have 
 wanted the money, or he would qo1 have offered i1 for sale; 
 and it was of genuine worth and authenticity. 
 
 Tricotrin paced up ami down the terrace with restless 
 uneven steps; the French Btatesman approached him. 
 
 13
 
 146 TR1C0TRIN, 
 
 " Tricotrin ! if you needed gold why not have asked 
 me?" 
 
 Tricotrin's eagle glance flashed on him. 
 
 " Gifts to men of my station are bribes : and, if they 
 are not that, they are alms. I take neither 1" 
 
 "But a wage for a fair service? Look you, what ser- 
 vice you might render the government " 
 
 "By making the flocks submit still more passively to 
 be shorn, and the droves to be driven out still more do- 
 cilely to perish in the war-tracks ? It is not my work." 
 
 " Nay, nay !" murmured the facile and courteous states- 
 man. " Not that. But by the use of your influence over 
 the people at the elections " 
 
 " I never interfere in such matters." 
 
 "Why so?" 
 
 " Why ? Because if I did I must show them the naked 
 truth as I see it, and if the nations once saw that of those 
 whom they call rulers, the world would be red with a sea 
 of blood. For the people are long submissive as the 
 camel ; but when once they rise they are tigers. We, 
 who know that, tremble to bid them to throw off their 
 overladen burdens, lest the patient beast that has knelt 
 in pain for so long should rise, transformed, with talon 
 and fang, to destroy both his kind and his drivers." 
 
 He spoke with passion, with more bitterness too than 
 was common with him : Pharamonde looked at him almost 
 with fear, and was silent: 
 
 "That is not the usual hesitation of the demagogue," 
 he thought. 
 
 "I am no demagogue," said Tricotrin, with rapid divi- 
 nation of his musing. " Do you know what the dema- 
 gogue is ? The man who rouses the camels into impa- 
 tience of their burdens, that he may rifle the baggage as 
 it falls to the ground in the strife." 
 
 "Milord sends you this," interrupted a servant, ap- 
 proaching him with the gold for the Dante. 
 
 Tricotrin took it, and gave the book in its stead, with- 
 out a word : Pharamonde eyed him curiously, as though 
 he were some natural phenomenon. 
 
 " You are a strange man! When you might pick up 
 wealth by the handsfull"
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 14 7 
 
 " I do not care to soil ray fingers," he answered, curtly, 
 as he made a gesture of adieu to the statesman, and went 
 down the steps of the terrace. He had not been wholly 
 at ease in the interview: it had galled him, and caused 
 him a certain pain. The Waif's pretty toys were pur- 
 chased, like many another luxury, at the price of a pang 
 to a human heart. He loved the book well : also in one 
 sense he loved the man to whom he had bartered it. 
 
 Pharamonde went within and joined his host, who was 
 standing in the library of the chateau, turning over the 
 leaves of his purchase. 
 
 " You do not understand Tricotrin," said the French 
 minister. " He is as proud, in his own fashion, as you 
 can be in yours. Charity, patronage, hospitality even, if 
 it be such as he cannot return, — pshaw I Tricotrin will 
 suffer them no more than he would suffer the lash." 
 
 " Well — a good spirit that. But who is he ?" 
 
 "Tricotrin!" 
 
 "That is not a name?" 
 
 "It is his name; and no name since Mirabeau's has 
 had more charm for the people. He could have been a 
 second Mirabeau had he cared to be so." 
 
 "And why did he not care ?" 
 
 Pharamonde shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 " He loves his liberty ; and he has no ambition. I have 
 seen much of him at divers times ; he has no love for me, 
 but he is a curious study. lie is a ripe scholar; he has 
 marvelous eloquence when he will ; he has the genius 
 of command in him if ever he choose to exert it; and — 
 he never troubles himself to do anything except to play 
 at a peasant's bridal feast, or a village wine-shop's ca- 
 rousal, with the talent of Paganini and Bamboche !" 
 
 "A bohemian !" said Est mere, with a slight gesture of 
 comprehension and disgust. "He is not the first by 
 many who has wasted a genius that might have ruled an 
 empire, in reigning over a pot-house revelry !" 
 
 The conclusion was unjust, hut it pleased Pharamonde: 
 it was a little revenge for the rebuff that the bohemian 
 had given him. 
 
 "A scholar, you say?" continued Estmere, still look- 
 ing over the Dante. "Pray what were his antecedents
 
 148 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 then: he must have had other domiciles than wine- 
 shops?" 
 
 "Ah, that I cannot tell you," said the statesman very 
 truthfully. " I do not think there is a living soul that 
 knows where he came from. Antecedents ! he would 
 not acknowledge anything so aristocratic. On my honor 
 I think he sprang out of the earth 1" 
 
 " Full-armed, I suppose !" said Estmere, with a satiri- 
 cal inflection in his voice that his guest did not relish. 
 Pharamonde felt that his English friend had a polite con- 
 tempt for both him and his bohemian. 
 
 He changed the subject, and Estmere put the book 
 aside in a cabinet. 
 
 It was late in the evening when Tricotrin returned to 
 his Waif; he had been to Blois, which was many miles 
 distant, and a full day's journey from the little lonely 
 vineyard-shrouded village which lay hidden under green- 
 ery by the waterside, like a lark's nest among the grasses. 
 
 Viva was sitting on the stone stile of the doorway, 
 with the white cat Bebe in her lap : the sun had gone 
 down, but there was just ruddy glow enough left to warm 
 to rich hues her pretty drooped head, and the soft grace 
 of her shoulders and bosom, as she sat with her arms 
 crossed, inclosing Bebe in their clasp, while the quick 
 heave of her chest was shown by the open square-cut 
 bodice she wore : — a dress half like a peasant's, half like 
 an old picture, in which the provincialism of grand'mere 
 and the fantastic fancy of the child had been blended. 
 
 Something in the shadows, or something in the atti- 
 tude, made her look less childlike and more womanlike to 
 Tricotrin than she had ever done. Perhaps it might be 
 because one man had sought her as woman, not child, that 
 the fact of her childhood having well-nigh passed away 
 struck on him for the first time. 
 
 He paused a moment unseen, looking at her ; and for 
 the first time also a dreaming conjecture came over him : 
 he thrust it away with half a smile, half a sigh: 
 
 "Pshaw!" he thought to himself. "She is a child to 
 me, though not to that youth. What should I get but 
 the fate of Bruno?" 
 
 He looked no longer, but softly approached her and
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 149 
 
 dropped the packet he bore into her lap: she started to 
 her feet, upsetting the luckless Bebe, and gave a cry of 
 delight. As the string of the packet had broken, into 
 her hands had fallen the fac-similes of her lost bijoux, 
 with something still costlier and prettier added; golden 
 toys, that glittered with rainbow hues in their gems, 
 under the namelike reflections that still came from the 
 west. 
 
 She threw her arms about him and thanked him with 
 all the vivacity and the frank abandonment of her nature: 
 — and he was repaid for the sale of the Attavante. 
 
 "Will they do as well, little one?" he asked her. 
 
 'As well! A thousand times better! For vou know 
 how dearly I love you, and — " she hesitated a moment, 
 then leaned a little nearer to him, with the most charm- 
 ing confidential and penitent grace in the world, "it was 
 very wrong, perhaps, for he meant to be kind, and he 
 begged me so often to love him, — but I never could care 
 for him as much as I wished to do. He was only a 
 Prince Faineant after all!" 
 
 Tricotrin's face lightened with a brighter gleam than 
 it had worn all the day through. 
 
 "A Prince Faineant, — true! And his offered crowns 
 would have been only of brass, and very heavy on your 
 brows, if you had worn them." 
 
 , "Ah?" Viva looked up into his face with a touch of 
 awe on her; she had some vague impression that some 
 evil of unknown magnitude would have befallen her if 
 she had been enticed into following her fairy prince. 
 "But — Paris would have been real, would it not? 1 do 
 so want to see Paris !" 
 
 "The heaven and the hell of women? Oh, child, you 
 are better here." 
 
 "But just to sec it?" pleaded Viva. "Just to see 
 those wonderful summer Qights he told me of, with the 
 streets like streams of living lire, and the avenues all 
 glittering with lights like a million of stars among a mil- 
 lion leaves! As I grow older, vou will take me with 
 you, will you not? — take me with you everywhere?" 
 
 A radiance shown in his eyes as he looked down on her 
 and laughed. 
 
 13* 
 
 N.
 
 150 TRTCOTRTN, 
 
 "We will see; — when you are older!" 
 
 The evening seemed very fair to him, as he played her 
 favorite airs of Lulli and of Gretry in the moonlit porch, 
 and the girl listened in thoughtful pleasure, thrown down 
 in her young careless grace at his feet. 
 
 The Prince Faineant was well-nigh forgotten; and 
 Tricotrin was repaid for the loss of his long-treasured 
 Dante. 
 
 CHAPTER XIY. 
 
 The next day the vintage began. 
 
 All through the grape country there were mirth and 
 work, and rejoicing and abundance. Grapes on the laden 
 trailing bough ; grapes on the heavy oxen wagons ; grapes 
 piled high in the winepresses under the shade ; grapes on 
 the braided hair of girls where they laughed in the sun ; 
 grapes in the rosy hands of children where they lay asleep, 
 flushed with their feasting; grapes everywhere in lavish 
 plenty, fortbe summer had been splendid, and the harvest 
 was fine in due sequence. 
 
 Tricotrin. loved the vintage month. 
 
 It had been vintage time when he had first come among 
 his Loirois, and laughed and danced, and been crowned 
 like a young Bacchus in the years of his boyhood. It was 
 rarely that he was away from central France in the wine 
 season ; and the good people averred that in his presence 
 the harvest was always more profuse than it was in the 
 autumns he was absent. It was without doubt more gay ; 
 for they never worked so joyously, they never danced so 
 heedlessly, as when he was among them. He would work 
 himself, giving the wage that he gained to the oldest 
 woman in the district, or to some fatherless child. He 
 would make the young girls laugh from sunrise to sun- 
 set ; he would lighten the oxen's toil by bringing them 
 great cool juicy leaves and grasses where they stood in 
 the hot noonday. He would play to the young of the
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 151 
 
 villages half through the sultry starry nights, while their 
 feet flew to the most intoxicating dance melodies that 
 ever were heard even under the skies of France. And 
 of alhthose whose labor he thus lightened with jest and 
 with raillery, and with a sunny mellow laughter, fit for 
 the lips of a Dionysus, there was not one who was hap- 
 pier than he. 
 
 From the first years of her remembrance his Waif had 
 learned to look for him at the vine-gatherings. Wherever 
 he might wander during the three other seasons — and he 
 wandered very far and wide with ceaseless, restless pleas- 
 ure in the' mere sense of motion — he was almost certain 
 to enter France at the late summer-time, to be among the 
 pleasant voices and the brown, bright eyes of the people 
 he loved best. 
 
 The vintage had long been the child's festal month, for 
 there were none for leagues around her but welcomed 
 the stray thing whose history they all knew, and who 
 was hallowed and endeared to them by the fact that he 
 had taken pity on her destitution and abandonment. 
 Among the peasantry the singularity and mystery of the 
 child's appearance in their presence had something of the 
 same enchantment that it possessed for herself. Nothing 
 was too wonderful for them to believe of any creature 
 whom Tricotrin protected; and Viva's own views as to 
 her elfin origin were not so wholly unshared by the 
 country people as might be imagined by those who are 
 ignorant of how deeply struck are the roots of supersti- 
 tion in the primitive places of all countries. 
 
 She unconsciously had fostered the impression by her 
 dainty tastes, her proud ways, her haughty young way- 
 wardness, to which they cheerfully submitted because 
 she belonged to Tricotrin ; and Viva held an undisputed 
 sovereignty over the whole riverside, in which her lair face 
 was ever seen. And now, in the gladness and the gayety 
 of the vintage, she swiftly forgol the love passages of 
 her fairy prince. Her heart had not been touched, and 
 her admiration had not been excited. She now possessed 
 as pretty things as those he had given her, and she en- 
 joyed them more because Bhe enjoyed them openly, with- 
 out the latent fear that she was doing wrong, which had
 
 152 TRTCOTRIN, 
 
 poisoned her pleasure in the young lord's gifts. Beyond 
 a certain gratification, unconscious, but born of the innate 
 coquetry in her, that she had been the object of such an 
 episode, little remained with her of the poison he had 
 sown — nothing sufficient to spoil her enjoyment of the 
 harvest- time, save that she would now and then think 
 that to ride on a bullock-drawn wagon, or to dance on the 
 top of a winepress, was hardly amusement regal enough 
 for such a princess as he had told her that she was. But 
 the amusement was too attractive to be relinquished for 
 that consideration, and she consoled herself by thinking 
 that, at any rate, he was not there to see. 
 
 Tricotrin, moreover, was with her, and Viva, in his 
 presence, was always her brightest, her gentlest, her best; 
 she felt "good" with him, as she never did with any 
 other. He knew the way to the hidden gold in this ca- 
 pricious and thoughtless nature — a way which others 
 continually missed. 
 
 Vineyards lay all about the old place where she dwelt, 
 on either side of the flashing river, and stretching far away 
 into the interior, broken here and there by path or road, 
 by wood or hamlet, but extending widely round on every 
 side, and rich, at this period of the vine's life, with the 
 fruit all ripened and glowing to purple or to gold. Viva 
 wandered in them in joyful idleness all the livelong day ; 
 and he himself asked no better life than this out-of-door 
 life, stripping the laden branches, laughing with the hand- 
 some brown women, aiding the aged who could not work 
 for themselves, and taking the oxen homeward through 
 the cool shaded bridle-lanes. 
 
 " The possessor of an Attavante's Dante should not be a 
 laborer in a vineyard," said a slow, melodious voice behind 
 him one morning as he worked — worked in earnest, for 
 he wanted a day's wage to make up the loss of a poor 
 old woman whose hen-house had been pillaged of all its 
 fowls in the night.. 
 
 Tricotrin looked up and saw the purchaser of the 
 Dante, who, riding by a narrow pathway through the 
 vines, had checked his horse for an instant. 
 
 "Good day, Lord Estmere. Why not?" he returned. 
 " Another poet, Virgil, loved the fields right well. Be-
 
 TEE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 153 
 
 sides, 'to be a husbandman is but to retreat from the 
 citv — from the world as it is man's, to the world as it is 
 God's,'" 
 
 Estmere regarded him earnestly. Here was a French 
 bohemian quoting Cowley in the purest English. 
 
 " You are a scholar and a poet yourself?" he asked. 
 
 Tricotrin laughed : 
 
 " ' Niemand will ein Schuster seyn 
 Jedermann ein Dichter.-' 
 
 " Though it may well be doubted if he who mends other 
 people's shoes is not of more use than he who only tink- 
 ers his own sonnets." 
 
 Estmere's meditative eyes dwelt on those that the rich 
 Aristophanic humors, the brilliant Swift-like irony, the 
 Burgundian Piron-wit of many nationalities, seemed to 
 lighten to their Hudibrastic laughter. 
 
 "You speak three languages with equal purity of 
 accent. Of what country are you, may I ask?" he said, 
 at length. 
 
 "I will speak twenty if you like; and I am a Cosmo- 
 politan." 
 
 "A 'citizen of the world 'then. You have traveled 
 greatly?" 
 
 "I have lived all over the world," said Tricotrin, with 
 a shrug of his shoulders; "it is not big enough to make 
 that much of a boast." 
 
 "And the result of all these experiences is to bring you 
 back to a vine-field?" 
 
 "Well, — Diocletian went back to a cabbage garden. 
 A vine-field is more poetic." 
 
 "But Diocletian had lieen sated with empire?" 
 
 "Well; and if the result of empire and satiety he to 
 conclude that these is nothing equal to cabbages for com- 
 fort, is it not better to take the vegetables at first and 
 eschew the travail altogether?" 
 
 Estmere smiled: despite his prejudices against ihe 
 class of men to which he believed Tricotrin to belong, 
 and his dislike to anything that approached to lawless- 
 ness or democratic sentiment, he could not help feeling a
 
 154 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 certain attraction toward the speaker. His intuition 
 told him that he addressed no common man, though'he 
 spoke with one working like a day laborer among the 
 vines. 
 
 "I imagine," he answered, "that Diocletian's was an 
 affectation of philosophy and renunciation rather than a 
 genuine tribute to the charms of cabbages. Moreover, 
 talent is rare ; it is always a pity that it should be wasted 
 while its possessor does hand-work that any boor could 
 equally well execute." 
 
 "Pardie! May not talent be equally wasted in organ- 
 izing wholesale murders by shot or steel, or wholesale 
 political chicaneries of the people? yet those are what 
 you statesmen call 'glory' and 'state craft.' Zoroaster 
 says that he who sows the ground with diligence acquires 
 more religious merit than he who repeats ten thousand 
 prayers: and I believe he is right." 
 
 " That may be; yet the sowing is only for the body, 
 the meditations may well enrich the mind, or as men call 
 it, the soul." 
 
 " That is true. And a great thought makes the world 
 richer than ten shipments of gold. But, believe me, 
 Earl Eustace, because the hands labor, it does not fol- 
 low that the soul lies barren of tillage. Goethe knew 
 what beautiful things the vines can utter ; he need not 
 have heard those less in working, than in strolling, 
 among them." 
 
 Estmere looked at him curiously, and his voice had a 
 certain haughty cadence in it that it had lost in exchanging 
 these phrases. 
 
 "Why do you change my title thus?" he asked. "It 
 is a singular mode of addi*ess." 
 
 Tricotrin's eyes laughed with the same ironic mirth 
 that had been in them before, when he had heard him- 
 self arraigned for entering the rose gardens. 
 
 "Why so? You are Earl Eustace, are you not? 
 There have been Earl John, and Earl Philip, and Earl 
 Louis, and many more — the Blind Earl, and the Mad 
 Earl, and the Child Earl, and some others, in the chron- 
 icles of your race. Why should not you be distinctive, 
 too, by your name?"
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 155 
 
 "You know much of my family?" asked Estmere, in 
 more surprise than he chose to display. 
 
 "Oh-he!" said Tricotrin, carelessly. '"I know most 
 things; and the Estmeres are not lights hidden under a 
 bushel. Your people have never loved obscurity, beau 
 Sire." 
 
 "We have done our best not to deserve it," said Est- 
 mere, coldly. "Good day to you." 
 
 He rode onward through the vine-fields, astonished, 
 perplexed, a little annoyed ; he did not feel pleasured by 
 the familiarity of this bohemian, and the off-hand allu- 
 sions to his great race went against all his taste, his 
 pride, and his caste ; and yet, — the rnqjj) interested him ! 
 
 And interest was a thing to which he was very rarely 
 stirred. 
 
 Tricotrin looked after him with a shade of thoughtful- 
 ness on his features ; then went on again with his work, 
 laughing with his next neighbor, a noble Murillo-like 
 woman, with all the rich old Gaulois blood in her clear 
 olive cheek. 
 
 "That is a very singular person — your friend, what 
 is he called, 'Tricotrin?'" said Estmere that evening 
 to the French statesman Pharamonde. "A most striking- 
 looking man, — the head of a poet, a marvelous head for 
 beauty and power. What a wasted and misguided life 
 must his be that he should be content thus with an errant 
 bohemianism!" 
 
 "Humph !" said Pharamonde, who did not forgive the 
 wanderer, being accredited to him as his friend. " I am 
 not sure he is not the wisest man in his generation : I 
 am quite sure he is the happiest." 
 
 "Is it possible for a wise man to be happy?" said 
 Estmere, with a smile that was not ironical, but weary. 
 
 Some days later, he and some of his guests rode by 
 the same route through the vineyards below Villiers, at 
 evensong. It was the close of the vintage, and they 
 reined up and drew asitle, some four leagues from the 
 chateau, where they encountered tin' procession of Bac- 
 chus borne along, in its relic of pagan worship, with all 
 the old accustomed honors. 
 
 Patriarchal as the days of Palestine, classic as the
 
 156 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 worship of Dionysus, with a thousand memories of old 
 Gaul, and a thousand traces of the cultus of Greece and 
 of Rome, the crowning- feast of the grape-harvest came. 
 The meek-eyed oxen, with their horns wreathed with 
 flowers, dragged wagons that were laden high with the 
 yellow and violet clusters, while before them, around 
 them, behind them, crowded the laughing throng of girls 
 and youths and little children, reeling under the burden 
 of the fruit, shouting under their chaplets of late roses. 
 It was like some Merovingian or Carlovingian triumph, 
 when the kings of Gaul celebrated harvest, or victory in 
 war; and the pageant moved to the divinest vintage ode 
 that was ever breathed over the fruitful fields of France 
 — music mellow as wine, full of intoxicating joy that the 
 people caught in echoing chorus, and deepening now and 
 then into the grandeur of a Te Deum, as though in 
 thanksgiving to God who made the earth increase. 
 
 Involuntarily the riders paused and listened spell- 
 bound to that harvest chant. It was played by Trico- 
 trin where he walked in front of the oxen, in front of the 
 foremost wagon. 
 
 On that wagon all eyes turned, and in its decoration 
 all the choice blossoms and the gayest ribbons had been 
 employed. For, throned high among the grapes, with 
 a green crown of vine leaves on her head, and half- cov- 
 ered with autumn flowers, sat Viva — gloriously happy 
 and triumphant, the universally-elected queen of beauty 
 and of the grape festival ; all her love of light and mirth 
 and music and homage gratified ; all her childlike adora- 
 tion of display fed to its utmost will. 
 
 Estmere looked at her as the bullocks, nodding their 
 heads under their garlands, drew her slowly past him. 
 
 "What an exquisite face!" he murmured. "That 
 child cannot belong to the peasantry." 
 
 She heard and looked clown from beneath her vine- 
 canopy, a deep delight beaming in her eyes, an exultant 
 pride laughing on her lips ; then a blush of shame re- 
 placed the glow of ecstasy, her head drooped as if her 
 vine-crown were a circlet of lead, her pleasure in the 
 vintage feast was gone ; — she had been seen by a great 
 man among the people 1
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 157 
 
 " More poison for her from them !" muttered Tricotrin, 
 as he saw and heard ; and for an instant there wei*e 
 discord and a break in the delicious melody he gave the 
 villagers. In another instant the music broke forth again 
 in all its silvery sweetness, but to Viva's heart the har- 
 mony was not so easily restored. 
 
 Estmere rode om unconscious of the evil that he had 
 done ; and the procession moved away along the line of 
 the river, while the glad tumult of the multitude echoed 
 down the evening air. 
 
 " What an exquisite face !" thought the earl once more ; 
 and he sighed — a short, quick sigh. The fairness of wo- 
 men had been poisoned to him. 
 
 "Will you not dance, Viva ?" Tricotrin asked her that 
 night, when the vintage ball followed the vintage feast 
 on the green of her little hamlet, and he played for the 
 dancers in airs so bewitching that the stout-built, white- 
 haired old priest could scarcely refrain from joining in the 
 rounds and measures. 
 
 "No!" said Viva shyly and petulantly, with the color 
 hot on her cheeks. She usually danced with all the grace 
 of a fairy and the abandonment of French blood ; — 
 would have so danced all night, all by herself, if she had 
 had the chance ; but this evening the young boatmen 
 and vintagers vainly pressed and entreated her. She 
 was obstinate : she would not join them — nothing could 
 make her ; and the vine-garland pressed almost as heavily 
 on her brows as real crowns on those of real sovereigns. 
 Tricotrin looked at her earnestly several times, but he 
 let her do as she would, and did not seek to persuade 
 her. 
 
 When the innocent mirth of the young and the old — 
 of the lovers who danced on the star-lighted turf, and the 
 children who played at their mothers' knees, and the aged 
 who looked od amused, and recalling the days of their 
 youth — was over, and the planets were growing large in 
 the blue sultry skies, he approached her where she sat 
 listlessly under one of the lime-trees. 
 
 "Viva, what ailed you to-night . ?" 
 
 She lifted her head, and he saw tears swimming full 
 in her eyes. 
 
 14
 
 158 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 " He said I could not be of the peasantry ! And I am 
 not ! — yet I live with them as if I were, and I have no 
 name and no heritage !" 
 
 The words were violently uttered. As he heard them 
 a look of pain went over his face. 
 
 " I have done all I could that you should not feel your 
 loss; but that 'all' is little," he murmured. "Why should 
 a stranger's idle speech move you thus?" 
 
 " Because he is so great 1 And I want to be great too. 
 And he saw me riding among the villagers — among the 
 common people 1 — as if I were some farm girl, some 
 dairy servant 1" 
 
 And Viva, a child still, though something more than 
 childhood had begun to wake in her, pulled the beautiful 
 grape garland off her hair and threw it on the turf, and 
 stamped on it with her feet, as .though it were the badge 
 of ignominy, servitude, and opprobrium. 
 
 Tricotrin caught her arm. 
 
 " Viva, Viva, for shame ! The people whom you 
 scorn strove their best to pleasure you, and the peasant 
 girls you despise yielded place to you without jealousy, 
 and wove you that wreath in simple love and good will ; 
 and at the first light word from a great man you turn 
 against them, and are ungrateful thus !" 
 
 The grave gentle rebuke sunk into the child's heart ; 
 her chest heaved with a sob, her face grew crimson with 
 shame. 
 
 " I know ! I know it is wicked ; but I cannot help it. 
 He thought I was beautiful ; he said so ; and he saw me 
 among all the peasantry ; he can think me no better than 
 they !" 
 
 " If you be as good as they, as single-hearted, as pa- 
 tient, as brave under burdens — you will be nobler than 
 you promise to be now!" 
 
 There was the first scorn and the first severity he had 
 ever shown to her in the words. 
 
 Viva's fiery spirit flashed up under the lash. 
 
 "They are good as the mules are good ! Just so stu- 
 pid, just so plodding ; only content because they know of 
 nothing better than their yoke, and their pack-saddles, 
 and their straw-yards !" she cried, vehemently. "I can-
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 159 
 
 not be of them — I know I cannot, — and that English lord 
 said so. And if he meets me again he will never speak 
 to me because he will always remember me on that grape- 
 wagon !" 
 
 And her tears fell in swift tempestuous emotion as 
 though foreboding some hour when that memory would 
 rise up between her and the aristocrat whose notice had 
 spoilt all the innocent joy of her vintage-feast. 
 
 Tricotrin listened with his face growing darker and 
 more impatient. 
 
 "You are ungrateful! Ungrateful as a woman ; who 
 can say more ?" he said, bitterly. " Why has he be- 
 witched you ? He is a cold man, — he is not even 
 young, — he will never think twice of you 1" 
 
 "But he looks so great!" cried Viva, unconscious or 
 unheeding of the irritated pain in his voice. "And he 
 is beautiful too, like that Arthur of England you have 
 told me the legends of, with his blue grave eyes and his 
 air like a king's!" 
 
 Tricotrin left her side and paced to and fro the grass 
 under the limes; he was deeply wounded, passionately 
 angeled; bul he would show neither wound nor anger to 
 her. The creature that was wholly dependent on him, 
 whom, were it his wish, he could cast back destitute upon 
 the world, should never hear a harsh word from him. 
 
 Viva watched him one moment, pride and rebellion 
 still strong in her: then all the child's better nature con- 
 quered them, she sprang to him and wound her arms 
 about him in caressing penitence. 
 
 "Oh forgive me! I was so wrong — so ungrateful. Do 
 pardon me, — do smile at me. I care for nothing else if 
 yon love me!" 
 
 He gently unloosed her arms from him. 
 
 " I forgive ; 1 am not angered, only regretful — for your 
 future ?" 
 
 " And why for thai ?" 
 
 Were there ever young eyes thai saw clouds on the 
 Future Y 
 
 "Because you know you are beautiful and have no 
 mother; because you are proud yel are nameless; lie- 
 cause you arc among the peasantry and pine for a pal-
 
 160 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 ace ; because you are divinely natured in much, but have 
 faults that may make your misery and your sin. Waif 
 of mine ! better I fear that you had died among the 
 clematis !" 
 
 The words were infinitely tender and solemn in their 
 sadness ; Viva was stilled and awed by their grave sweet- 
 ness. 
 
 " I know I am wicked," she murmured at last. " The 
 people were so good to crown me ; and you, — oh ! how 
 can I ever love you enough ? But — but — was it indeed so 
 wrong to be glad because I had beauty in that great 
 lord's sight ?" 
 
 " Oh ! true to your sex !" cried Tricotrin, impatiently. 
 " The dearest praise comes from the highest lips ! Estmere 
 will never think once of you; why waste thought on him?" 
 
 "I cannot help it," pleaded Viva, musingly. "He 
 looks like a monarch ; I do not know what it is, but his 
 face has a charm " 
 
 " Because you know him to be a great man ! — if he 
 were a vintager, Viva, you would never glance twice at 
 him ! I would have never believed, till I heard you to- 
 night, that the first vain word that a stranger could speak 
 would turn you against all the friends of your childhood. 
 His one light compliment was ill worth your poor vine- 
 garland. Though your future were to crown you as it 
 crowned the slave Catherine, and the Creole Josephine, 
 you would look wearily back from your state as an em- 
 press to the time Avhen that village chaplet was worn on 
 your innocent forehead !" 
 
 Viva's tears fell fast, in remorse and in penitence 
 now. 
 
 " My beautiful vine-crown ! I was cruel — I was mad," 
 she murmured, brokenly, as she lifted up the wreath in 
 contrite tenderness, and touched fondly and regretfully 
 the drooped tendrils, the faded leaves, the crushed fresh- 
 ness of the fair green diadem. 
 
 Tricotrin smiled mournfully : 
 
 " Yes, you were mad as those ever are who yield to the 
 tempters of vanity and ambition. Your remorse can avail 
 nothing. You cannot mend what you have destroyed, or 
 recall what you have crushed. The bloom will not come
 
 TIIE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 161 
 
 back to your grape-garland, nor your childhood come back 
 to you 1" 
 
 Viva lifted her heavy eyes to him ; lusterless and brim- 
 ming still with tears, yet sweeter in their grief than in 
 their radiance. 
 
 "Ah, I hate myself!" she whispered. "I scorn my- 
 self more than you can ever scorn me ! I am so happy, 
 and you are so good, and all I do is to repay you with 
 wicked words." 
 
 He passed his hand gently over her brow : 
 
 "Say no more! All my fear is, your future. The 
 world will not forgive so easily as I. And now — talk no 
 longer, little one. Good night !" 
 
 And he left her, and though the day had been long 
 both in mirth and in labor, walked away into the dusky 
 midnight rapidly and alone. 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 "Viva, will you come to Paris?" 
 
 Ho spoke very quietly behind her the next morning 
 where she stood feeding Roi Dore and all his feathered 
 serail. 
 
 All the barley dropped down in a heap to the hens 
 and chickens: 
 
 " To Paris!" — the ecstasy of her face said the rest. 
 
 He smiled, a little sadly. 
 
 "Well, for a few days. The good woman Blaze 
 McviTt goes up to see her son in hospital; }'ou can go 
 too if grand'mfere can spare you. Ask ber ! -1 
 
 The child flew oil' on her errand: Tricotrin looked after 
 her with a musing doubt in his eyes. 
 
 "It may be for the best," he thoughl ; "here she will 
 only dwell on the boy's memory. There, — well! God 
 knows what will happen. It will he a present pleasure 
 at least for her; and a week can do her no harm. " 
 
 14*
 
 162 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 The future was a thing with which he had never bur- 
 dened himself: he concerned himself with the present. If 
 the fruit in his hand were rich and sweet he never trou- 
 bled himself with fears as to whether next year's orchards 
 would bring equal blossom. It was only now for the 
 first time as the Waif grew nearer womanhood that the 
 question grew perplexing to him: — for it was the ques- 
 tion now, not of his future, but of hers. The future 
 of a girl, nameless, motherless, but for him homeless, 
 proud as though she were the daughter of kings, and 
 passionate in her desire for greatness ! What could its 
 portion be except the darkness of disappointed desire, or 
 the false brilliancy of evil attainment ? That either should 
 become, hereafter, the share of the creature that he loved 
 and sheltered was a cruel thought to him : yet he could 
 not see how to avert both. 
 
 While she had been happy in his country life ; while 
 she had been a child to find her pleasures in a play 
 among new-mown hay, in a sail in a cumbrous barge, in 
 a gift of grapes from the vine, or of a fairy-story from a 
 peddler's wallet, to make her happy had been very easy. 
 Even now, if she had clung by preference to the fresh- 
 ness, simplicity, and freedom of rural life ; if like himself 
 all her sympathies and attachments had been among the 
 people ; if she had been satisfied with the warm and loyal 
 liking of the peasantry who had been about her from her 
 infancy, and — without her vain desire for alien things, 
 for worlds which she had never entered — had found con- 
 tent in her own heart, and in his care of her, it would 
 have been possible to have carried into her future years 
 the sunshine he had shed on her early ones. But he 
 knew well that an unfulfilled aspiration, a strangled am- 
 bition, an ever-struggling, ever-repressed longing, are as 
 poison to the soul in which their stifled fire burns: he 
 knew that to such a woman as Viva would become such 
 poison is worse than death, such fire is an ever-devouring 
 flame of hell. 
 
 Tricotrin, who had led so careless and so rich a life of 
 laughter, meditation, indolence, labor, love, and wisdom 
 intertwined to one harmonious whole, had never had in 
 the whole course of. that life a pain so keen, a fear so in-
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 103 
 
 tangible, as faced him now in the future of what, on the 
 pure instinct of pity, he had rescued and succored with- 
 out thought of the burden it might become to him in an 
 after- time. 
 
 It was possible that some man might behold her who 
 would be won by her beauty to lift her into that blaze of 
 worldly power which she coveted. But he knew that it 
 is not to the foundlings of bastardy, that love which is 
 honor also is offered: and — even love with honor — if ever 
 it were given to her, seemed to him a robber that would 
 steal from him that to which he had the natural right. 
 A right precious to him, though for so long he had only 
 thought of her as a pet thing like a spaniel or a bird. 
 
 He started as the old woman approached him through 
 the yellow leaves of the autumnal gourds. 
 
 " Is it true the dear child is to go to Paris ?" she 
 asked. 
 
 Tricotrin looked down on her with compassionate 
 kind eyes : he knew the pang that it dealt to this aged 
 soul. 
 
 " Well, grand'mere," he said gently. " Is it not best ? 
 Only for a week or two ? — and a week or two will chase 
 away this young hero from her memories. Now he is 
 nothing to her: — but if she have naught else to think of 
 he will gather, from absence, beauty and stature not his 
 own. Tell me, does not your experience of your sex sug- 
 gest the truth of that?" 
 
 Grand'mere sighed, and shook her white head. 
 
 "I dare say, Tricotrin; — you know in my girlhood, 
 among my people, if one had a dream in the head, or a 
 pang at the heart, there was the baking, or the washing, 
 or the beetroot- hoeing, or the grass carrying, or the cow 
 thai was sick, or the calf that was hand-reared, always 
 to occupy one, and thrust one's self out of the way, — 31 e 
 you? With the little darling — it Is different of course. 
 She lias nothing to do but to dream." 
 
 "And such dreams arc the highways to sin 1 It would 
 have been better, — ten thousand times belter, — if she had 
 had the beetroot-hoeing and the farm-house cares. But 
 between us we have spoilt the child." 
 
 " Tricotrin ! She is a little born princess 1"
 
 164 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 "Born princesses without palaces ready for them 
 are in a sorry plight. Viva is only — vain, ambitious, 
 and thoroughly feminine. Those qualities, are not con- 
 fined to palaces " 
 
 " You always jest," murmured grand'mere. " But will 
 you really take her to that terrible city ?" 
 
 "That city is more terrible while it is seen through 
 the mists of her unsatisfied longing. And she shall come 
 back in a fortnight, at the farthest." 
 
 The still bright black eyes of the old woman clouded 
 with the slow painful tears of age. 
 
 "Come back?" she echoed, as she turned away. 
 "Never the same, Tricotrin, never the same!" 
 
 And on her there weighed a bitter foreboding : — she had 
 seen three fearless hopeful young lives pass from her into 
 that furnace of Paris, never again to sit in the light of 
 her lonely hearth. 
 
 " Never the same !" thought Tricotrin. " She will 
 never be the same, though she stay here for year after 
 year. The aged will never remember that the youth 
 which they love will escape from them, — will die out of 
 their sight into its own all-absorbed ego." 
 
 Meantime the Waif herself grew wild with rapture : 
 Paris suggested to her a beatitude that Paradise entirely 
 failed to do. All her elastic and vivacious nature was 
 loosened to ecstatic joy, in which both her young Faust 
 and her King Arthur were alike forgotten. 
 
 True, she was going in a manner very different from 
 her ambition : she was going with the homely wife of 
 the miller, whose mission was nothing more elevated 
 than to seek a sick son, a private soldier, in hospital: 
 she was "going like a peasant" she thought wistfully, 
 into that great blazing whirlpool of sovereignties and 
 splendors. But the delight of it far outbalanced the 
 minor drawback; and moreover her love for Tricotrin 
 was so much stronger than even her ambition as yet, 
 that when she was with him, no want or wish remained 
 upon her. His influence was great on her ; greater be- 
 cause rather suggested than ever forced ; and in .his 
 presence all that was nobler in her awoke, all that was 
 baser waned.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 165 
 
 Besides, she was but a child, a child who had seen 
 nothing, and to whom all the earth was glorious. Paris 
 was the golden land: once permitted entrance to it all 
 things seemed possible to happen to her : — even to its 
 people finding in her the daughter of the old dead races 
 of the throne of Gaul ! To be claimed and crowned in 
 Paris would not have been too wonderful an apotheosis 
 to her triumphs, — as she dreamed of them. 
 
 It is said that earliest youth is so happy because its 
 present is sufficient to it: is it not rather because the 
 future is still an empire as yet uninherited, in whose 
 unentered domain all glories and all ecstasies are pos- 
 sible ? 
 
 It went to her heart, warm though wayward, to give 
 pain to the old woman she loved; to bid adieu to the 
 poultry and the doves, and the pigeons that plumed 
 themselves all day long on the thatch of the shed, and 
 knew her voice and their own names so well ; to kiss the 
 white cat for the last time, and know that for fourteen 
 long days it must miss her when it mewed for its milk 
 and its bread. But the joy of her departure outweighed 
 her regret; and though she felt all that clinging to the 
 only home she had known, which every young thing 
 does when it first goes forth into its new and separate 
 existence, the magnificence of the possibilities that she 
 saw before her in that one word "Paris," stifled the 
 emotion as fast as it rose. 
 
 She went, with scarce a sigh, with scarce a backward 
 glance, away from the home of her childhood. Away — 
 for aught she knew — forever. 
 
 The slow sail, miles down the river, in the early daw n 
 to the tending-place nearest the town whence the dili- 
 gence started. The posting-inn, with its busy noise and 
 movement, its ponderous gilded sign swinging against 
 the wooden grape-wreathed balcony, its chatter of many 
 tongues. The dashing of the cumbrous vehicle along 
 the sunny road, with the incessant flack-crack of the 
 leathern whips, and the jingling chimes of the galloping 
 horses 1 harness-bells. The stoppages by picturesque 
 wayside cabarets, boweivd in pear-trees golden with 
 fruit, or chestnuts full of their spike-armored nuts, where
 
 166 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 the timbers were old as the days of crusades, and the 
 lichens all gray from six centuries' growth. 
 
 The night's sleep in an antique town, where a cathe- 
 dral that was a Kyrie Eleison in stone uprose in the 
 midst, with the low-peaked crowded roofs lying far down 
 about its feet, as the worlds lie around the feet of God. 
 The next day's repetition of the joys of the day past, 
 while the varied scenes flew by like magic, and woods and 
 streams, hamlets and convents, church spires and river 
 bridges, were all left behind in the sunlight. The ap- 
 proach to Paris in the mellow evening time, through the 
 beautiful broad road of Versailles, down the stony slopes 
 of Sevres and Billancourt, past the noble wooded heights 
 of St. Cloud, and so into the city in its gorgeous night- 
 beauty: — all that was tedious or irksome to others to her 
 was one perpetual panorama of delight. 
 
 Viva was in enchantment. 
 
 In that warm, ruddy, luscious autumn, when summer 
 heats stretched over the vintage-month, there were high 
 festivals in the City of the World. Even as Rome be- 
 fore her, she, with her vast proletariate and her vast ar- 
 mies, lulled the hungry cry of the one with the feast and 
 spectacle in which she celebrated the victories of the other. 
 
 There had been war, and successful war. The blood 
 and the treasure of the people had been poured out on 
 the African sands, and the tricolor had been borne aloft 
 over thousands of quivering bodies. France had con- 
 quered, and was rapturous in pride : for the vulture of 
 Greed and the skeleton of Debt were her trophies, and 
 they wore to her eyes the shapes of the archangels of 
 Patriotism and Honor. 
 
 There was a week-long rejoicing and ceasing from 
 labor. The dumb brutes travailed in agony ; the women 
 went down into the depths of bestial vice to find their 
 daily bread ; the patriots and the thinkers were forced 
 into silence in prison or in exile ; the future was 
 pawned to the Gold Devil, that he might gild with its 
 happiness the present. But the song, and the dance, 
 and the laugh, and the trumpet were all that were heard 
 on the air. 
 
 In the first of those nights, when the populace was
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 107 
 
 mad with delight, when the long avenues shone with a 
 million of lights, when the red white and blue banners 
 tossed in the golden gas-glare, when the wings of the glit- 
 tering eagles glowed in the ruby torch flame, when the 
 air was alive with wild melody, and music burst from 
 every nook of the city— in the first of these nights the 
 Waif first beheld Paris. 
 
 She forgot all her woes and all her ambitions ; she 
 cared nothing whether she came as princess or peasant ; 
 she was in a delirium of delight, a trance of magic — this 
 was the world ! Oh, how rapturous a thing was the mere 
 sense of living ! — how endless a pageant the mere suc- 
 cession of years ! So the child thought, wafted into the 
 victory-drunk, flower-crowned joy of the city, and gazing 
 over the throngs with her eyes like two stars, and her 
 cheeks burning scarlet, and the breathless laughter on 
 her happy parted lips. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Lif% had no terrors, no darkness, no sadness, no peril 
 in the sight of Viva ; it was only one moving picture of 
 changeless color and endless charm. There was nothing 
 in her of the poet's melancholy, of the visionary's in- 
 stinctive sigh for woes that are old as the world, and 
 that keep their cruel time with every pulse that beats. 
 Paris and she were like one another — gay, beautiful, vol- 
 atile, vivacious, inconstant, ardent, glittering things, full 
 of fond enthusiasm, yet full of fickle caprice, always will- 
 ing to smile, wvrv willing to weep, ardent in instanta- 
 neous worship, cruel from pure thoughtlessness. The 
 city caressed the child, the child loved the city. 
 
 Her fair bright face, with its greal dark radiant eyes, 
 and the yellow hair pushed back under her little scarlet 
 hood, drew every glance after it, in the crowds of the 
 theaters, in the little wooden booths of the fairs, under
 
 168 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 the trees of the public gardens, or beneath the lamps of 
 the boulevards at evening. He was with her, she was 
 sacred to the people ; and all the flowers and flags and 
 wreaths and toys that form the current of merchandise 
 of such festal times were rained upon her. 
 
 But that which Viva loved the best was to see the 
 throng in a street turn by one impulse to gaze at her. 
 What made her pulse throb highest was to hear the men 
 who looked noble murmur after her, "Is it a child or 
 woman ? — what a perfect face !" 
 
 The air was rife with adulation for her, but it was less 
 dangerous than one voice whispering it in solitude ; even 
 as poisons that neutralize each other injure less than one 
 drop poured alone. She lived with the good woman 
 Mevert, high in a quaint old wooden house on the border- 
 line of the Pays Latin ; but she was with Tricotrin all 
 the day, and all the long lustrous evenings. She was 
 ecstatically happy, and he imagined her content; so she 
 was, because, wandering through the palaces, or watch- 
 ing the grand people in their carriages, Viva already 
 mused, " I have power because I have beauty. I will be 
 great, too, some day." 
 
 He thought her satisfied with the lot he gave her, as 
 she laughed on her buoyant way beside him ; she was 
 only so because, without reasoning why, she felt she 
 should ere long escape from it. 
 
 Tricotrin, for once, was blind, and believed that w r hich 
 he wished to believe. Living in a poor little room with 
 the miller's wife, she was happy, he believed, in the peo- 
 ple's pleasures, in the luxurious sense of young life, in 
 such music, such mirth, such festal sights as he could 
 give her by merely bringing her through streets and gar- 
 dens. There had been nothing inordinate in her desires; 
 they were gratified by such mere change of place as 
 this. Why should she not always be happy thus ? 
 
 The man's own intellect, so richly stored, and his own 
 soul, so catholic in sympathy, made him contented in the 
 simplest form of life, so long as he had liberty, and 
 health, and the beauties of the earth. Forgetful of the 
 difference between a life that draws its pleasure from the 
 mind within and the life that needs to have them sup-
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 169 
 
 plied by the world without, he saw no reason why she 
 should not be happy thus also. 
 
 But Viva was dreaming a different dream. When she 
 had been six nights in Paris, and three of them had been 
 spent at theaters thrown open to the public in the Pa- 
 risian holiday, a new and strong passion took posses- 
 sion of her. It was the passion for the stage. Nothing 
 of all she saw, save the splendid pomp in the courts of 
 the Tuileries, charmed her like the stage. 
 
 Her vine-harvest feast that she had scorned was a 
 million times more poetic, more picturesque, more clas- 
 sic, more full of peace, and mirth, and beauty than aught 
 she saw in the theaters. But to the child, the artificial 
 brilliancy, the mock sovereignties of the drama were far 
 more attractive ; partly because they were novel, chiefly 
 because they represented that phase of life which had a 
 fatal charm for her, and gained that visible and public 
 applause which seemed to her the choicest and the sweet- 
 est of rewards. 
 
 She was all in the wrong. Her imagination, although 
 so fanciful, was barbaric, in its passion for show and for 
 triumph; but her nature had been created thus, and 
 nothing could have eradicated that one evil instinct 
 from it. 
 
 The chief thing that enchanted her with the stage was 
 this : she heard that actors and actresses were people 
 whose origin was either totally obscured or confessedly 
 very low ; she saw them intoxicating a multitude, and 
 receiving a public homage of whose real character she 
 was wholly ignorant. She, who began to suspect that 
 her fairy progenitors would never do very much for her, 
 did not see why to her also this goMen path should not 
 open. She would glance at herself in the mirrors she 
 passed, and would think, "If even I had not genius, I 
 should have beauty 1" ' 
 
 And her feminine instinct told her that the latter was 
 the greater and more potent influence of the two. 
 
 There was one actress who especially influ< need her — 
 an actress who looked almosl as young as herself on the 
 stage, with a gay, innocent face like a cherub's, ami the 
 most graceful caprices that ever adorned the coquettish 
 
 15
 
 HO TRICOTRIN, 
 
 parts that she played. She was a very great actress, 
 very famous, very full of riches, very widely worshiped — 
 one who ruined every fool that loved her with a laugh as 
 light as a lark's song, and who triumphed in the height 
 of her reckless vice as a conqueror in the altitude of his 
 power. Of that Viva knew nothing whatsoever, but she 
 heard the thunder of applause with which the public 
 greeted her ; she saw the crowns, the wreaths, the jew- 
 els that were flung in profusion at her ; she thought 
 nothing on earth could be so glorious as to be this en- 
 chantress whom they called Coriolis. 
 
 Coriolis's eyes — acute, swift-seeing eyes, though so 
 lambent and so blue with their sunny laughter — caught 
 the look of rapt adoration on the handsome young face 
 under its scarlet-hood among the close-packed audience, 
 and, well used as she was to homage, was amused and 
 pleased with the child's rapture at her. She knew that 
 it was the most sincere she could have, and she gave 
 Yiva one night a smile across the house that made its 
 recipient as proud as though an empress had caressed 
 her. 
 
 One day the child — wandering under the boulevard 
 trees with her old friend Mevert, in a morning when 
 Tricotrin had not as yet joined her — was touched lightly 
 by the long white wand of a lacquey glistening in gold. 
 
 " Come to the carriage ; Madame wishes to see you," 
 said the servant. 
 
 Yiva turned, and saw, looking out at her, the lovely 
 cherubic head of her stage-sovereign. Viva — restlessly 
 uneasy because Mere Mevert wore the quaint costume 
 and white cap of her province, and she herself was dressed 
 half like a gipsy and half like a girl of the old ages — 
 went up to the equipage, breathless with wonder at see- 
 ing her cTeity in mere mortal guise and out in the day- 
 light. She felt giddy, and incredulous of her own fortune. 
 Could it be that this potentate, whom all Paris adored, 
 would prove after all Queen Titania ? 
 
 Coriolis leaned over the low door of her carriage. 
 
 " Child ! You are an adorer of mine, are you not ? 
 Where did you come from with your picture of a face ?" 
 
 " The Loire, Madame."
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. l*\\ 
 
 Viva, for the only time in her life, was shy ; she was 
 absorbed in gazing at the matchless tints and graces of 
 her idol." 
 
 " Sprung out of the river ? — a second Venus !" laughed 
 Coriolis. " Do you know what a fortune you have in 
 your face, little one ? Here, take these ; you are young 
 enough still to care for them." 
 
 She put into Viva's hand some silvered, painted, glit- 
 tering bonbon boxes, that were among the many pur- 
 chases piled in her elegant carriage. 
 
 " Would you not like to come on the stage ?" she went 
 on, as the child tried to thank her as well as she could in 
 her amazed enhancement. " You have got it in your 
 face, in your limbs, in your smile. It is a fair life 
 enough." 
 
 And the actress laughed. She — a lovely, soulless, sen- 
 sual, airy thing, with a cherub's face and a kitten's folly — 
 had found it so. She did not mean evil ; she meant kind- 
 ness in her way, in inciting the girl to follow her choice 
 of it. 
 
 Viva flushed crimson to her temples. 
 
 " Oh, M;n lame ! you think that I could ?" 
 
 "Of course you could. Why not ? With a face like 
 yours you may have no more brains than a wooden 
 Punch; ) r ou need act no more than a stick; they will 
 run after you. Look! You are poor, I suppose ?" 
 
 "I suppose so," assented Viva, with a burning sen»e 
 of shame, and a glance at Mere Mevert's costume. 
 
 " Of course- you are ; you were among the populace. 
 Well, come to me to-morrow, at that address, and I will 
 see what I can do to put you in the way and show you 
 to some impresarie." 
 
 " Ah, Madame !" cried the child, rapturously. "And 
 I shall have nil that applause ? I shall have just such 
 homage as yours ? I shall become like you, shall I ?" 
 
 "Become like me? Oh ycsl" laughed Coriolis ; but 
 for the moment a shade of irritation clouded her gay for- 
 get-me-not eyes. 
 
 "If I thought so I would kill her where she stands." 
 
 Viva and the actress both started at the sound of the 
 voice near them. Tricotrin had drawn near as the Last
 
 172 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 words were uttered. He put one hand on his Waif's 
 shoulder, and with the other tossed the costly sweetmeat 
 boxes back into the carriage. The eyes of Coriolis glit- 
 tered with astonishment and wrath ; she was a sovereign 
 in her way, and a, pampered one. 
 
 " Monsieur ! who are you that dare " 
 
 Tricotrin turned his flashing glance on her. 
 
 "A year ago I saw Jean Bruno — a maniac." 
 
 And without another word he forced Viva away ; — far 
 away down under the trees of the street. 
 
 She looked up at him piteously. 
 
 " Was that wrong too ?" 
 
 His mouth quivered with rage. 
 
 " My darling, my darling 1 not wrong in you. Ah, 
 God ! why cannot they let you be ?" 
 
 " But you said you would rather kill me than let me 
 grow like her ? What is she ?" 
 
 " Woe to those who teach you what sin means," he 
 muttered in his beard. " Yiva — that woman broke the 
 heart of an honest man. Would you not rather die, in 
 poverty and obscurity, than do that ?" 
 
 Viva hung her head in silence ; she knew in her own 
 heart" that she would not. 
 
 " But she is so lovely," she murmured, "and such an 
 exquisite life she must lead ; and — and — I do so want to 
 be an actress 1" 
 
 'What !" — he moved from her as if ho were stung ; he 
 seemed to see a bottomless abyss yawn beneath the light- 
 dancing feet of the child that he loved. 
 
 " I do !" murmured Viva. " All those brilliant nights, 
 those beautiful dresses, those jewels that they toss her. 
 Oh! I should be so happy on the stage !" 
 
 His face darkened with hot wrath, with bitter disap- 
 pointment ; he had fancied her happy because she was 
 with him 1 
 
 " I have said; — I would rather see you in your grave !" 
 he answered her. 
 
 " Why ?" asked Viva, awed but undeterred. 
 
 How could he tell her ? 
 
 " I thought you were proud, Viva," he said bitterly. 
 
 Fine pride ! To desire to show yourself nightly for 
 
 <<
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 173 
 
 gold ! to lay bare your beauty to the populace 1 to be one 
 living lie from the hue on your cheek to the passions you 
 simulate 1 to be a thing whose graces, and features, and 
 limbs, and laughter, the lowest cur of the people can 
 gaze at or enjoy if he pay a few coins -to your master ! 
 Noble pride truly !" 
 
 Viva, who had never heard from him that scathing 
 irony of word and tone, was rather terrified than con- 
 vinced. Her head dropped ; she kept silence. 
 
 "But that exquisite woman!" she whispered at last. 
 "She is happy ?" 
 
 " That exquisite woman!" he echoed, with acrid con- 
 tempt. "Happy? Oh yes! Possibly she is happy. 
 Without soul, without pity, without honor, as mindless 
 as any flower that blows in the breeze, but a flower that 
 poisons all who breathe near it, — she is happy doubtless, 
 because things without conscience or brain cannot suffer, 
 because gold makes the paradise of such creatures as 
 she! 'Exquisite?' Pshaw! have you lived amid na- 
 ture not to be able to know what is false when you see 
 it? The red of her lips, the flush on her cheeks, the 
 white of her bosom, the tears and the laughter you by 
 turns deem so divine — they are all lies ! Lies like the 
 life she has chosen to lead. Think of that woman's old 
 age, think of her future ; child though you be, cannot you 
 feel .some of their horror?" 
 
 He spoke with the more vehement bitterness of the 
 things he could speak of to her, because he could not 
 taint her young mind by all the truth of this lamia whom 
 she took for an angel. It awed her, it frightened her ; 
 but it utterly failed to convince her. The actress, and 
 the triumphs of the actress, had taken too deep a root 
 into her fancy. 
 
 "Ah !" said Tricotrin, half fiercely, half tenderly, "you 
 prefer a painted lie to an undecked truth? That is ever 
 your sex's choice !" 
 
 lie walked on in a silence which the child did not 
 break ; she was puzzled and keenly disappointed ; he was 
 won in led and mused to hot wrath with this traitress who 
 must needs seek to taint and allure what he cherished. 
 
 15*
 
 174 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 Yiva took courage at last to speak, though she felt the 
 only fear of him that she had ever known. 
 
 " But the Coriolis asked me to go and see her to- 
 morrow," she whispered, " at the place on this card, in 
 the day-time, you know. May I not even do that ?" 
 
 Tricotrin stopped in his rapid stride, and looked 
 straight in her uplifted eyes. 
 
 " Yes, Yiva. Go if you choose. I coerce no one's 
 liberty. But — I do not share your life with that wan- 
 ton. If you go to Coriolis you will be dead to me." 
 
 The girl's head dropped again ; she was struck with 
 the sharpest terror her fair caressed life had ever known. 
 He waited vainly some moments for answer ; then he 
 asked her, — 
 
 "Which do you choose ?" 
 
 She lifted her face eagerly, and he saw her lashes all 
 wet with unshed tears. 
 
 " Oh you,— you ! What should I do without you ?" 
 
 His face cleared like a landscape from which the sun 
 sweeps away all the storm-mists. 
 
 "That is well," he said simply. "And now,— let us 
 go and look for some bonbons as handsome as those I 
 threw away from you just now !" 
 
 Yiva shook her head with a sigh. 
 
 " I am not a baby!" she said, impatiently, and a grave 
 shadow was over her face, that no pageant of the streets, 
 no passage of the troops, no Polinchinelle chattering his 
 fun, no Dulcamara vaunting his wares at beat of drum, 
 nothing of all the frolic and the glitter of the holiday-noon 
 availed to chase away. In the audaciousness of her su- 
 preme ignorance she disbelieved that this woman could 
 be aught save what the fair cherubic face of her avouched ; 
 and she looked back with passionate vexed longing to 
 those golden gates that he had closed upon herself— the 
 gates of an actress's career ! 
 
 She is not the first, who, saved from hell, have thought 
 that they lost heaven. 
 
 "Is this all that Paris has done?" thought Tricotrin. 
 " To exchange her young Faust for the stage of Paris is 
 a poor mending of evils 1" 
 
 His spirit chafed within him ; all his happy philoso-
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 175 
 
 phies, which loathed anxiety, and sought mirth and 
 serenity as the essence of existence, were jarred and de- 
 throned by this feminine incarnation of Caprice which he 
 harbored. 
 
 He felt a sort of despair before her future ; he to whose 
 strong and sunny nature despair had been unknown. 
 Rich he could never make her; give her the life she 
 coveted he never could ; how then could he make her 
 content, or even perhaps keep her from destruction ? For 
 Tricotrin knew her sex well ; and knew that these pas- 
 sionate propulsions, such as hers, to wealth, and glitter, 
 and luxury, are a hundredfold more likely to be the cause 
 of a woman's fall, than the softer and more generous 
 emotions to which their dishonor is sentimentally attrib- 
 uted. 
 
 He had answered her with a bitterness and a stern- 
 ness wholly unnatural to him, because his powerlessness 
 in this one thing stung him so keenly. For one solution 
 only of the problem rose before him. She loved him with 
 a genuine ardent love, if it were only the love of a child ; 
 she had grown infinitely dear to him in the past year — 
 her loveliness beguiled his eyes, her grace bewitched his 
 senses; and all his heart and his soul had kept so full of 
 youth still through the warmth of his sympathies and 
 the healthfulness of his life, that he, so young still in all 
 the best things of youth, forgot he was not so in her eyes. 
 Forgot it at times when the thought swepl by him, — why 
 should it not be possible for this bright bird to find its 
 best-loved nest in his own bosom, there to be safe-harbored 
 ever from the beat of the storm-wind and the swoop of 
 the hawk? He never drew the thought out into full light 
 from the golden haze of immature resolve and resi I 
 desire in which it lay; bul ii abode with him, and grew 
 daily stronger than he knew. Ii bad moved him to the 
 vehement and caustic satire with which he had retorted 
 on her allurement to the pollution of the stage: — he had 
 indeed scorned the traitress of Bruno, bul it was as the 
 temptress of his Waif that he abhorred Goriolis. 
 
 He had been unable to foresee, when he took the child 
 to the gay follies of the gayesl theater, that this woman, 
 whose triumphs were more than half due to her sins,
 
 176 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 would exercise so instantaneous and fatal a sorcery over 
 the mind of a creature whom he would have thought far 
 too proud to care for the tinsel luster and the false glamour 
 of a dramatic career. To him, knowing the vain, cruel, 
 criminal, sensual life of the lost wife of Bruno, the actress 
 was no more than a marionette set in play to provoke a 
 crowd's laughter: that she could be, by virtue of her 
 smiling eyes and her enchanting grace, an angel in Viva's 
 sight, was incomprehensible to him. Long doubtful 
 whether or no to darken the sunny horizon of her thoughts 
 by the knowledge of evil and misery, he was stung at 
 last, by her persistent regret for her lost deity, to tell her 
 the story that the Marseillais sailor had told him. He 
 did not show her the guilt to which Bruno's wife had fled, 
 but he showed her the heartlessness of that flight, he 
 sketched to her the awful wreck of the man's mind, and 
 the pathetic fidelity of his wronged love. Viva was vola- 
 tile, careless, selfish, though in a soft bewitching fashion : 
 he fancied almost, at times, that she needed to be scourged 
 with pain to become, like Undine, a human creature to 
 feel. 
 
 She listened, where they had stopped by a bench under 
 the great Luxembourg trees, with her eyes full of earnest- 
 ness, her face full of wondering regret. It touched her, 
 this tragedy — if it did not penetrate very deeply. 
 
 " The poor Bruno !" she said softly, with a sigh of pity: 
 she was always pitiful, when — she paused to see pity 
 was needed. 
 
 "Well?" said Tricotrin gently, when the tale had been 
 told. "Well! — which are your sympathies with now, 
 your goddess Coriolis, or the sailor whom she wronged and 
 forsook?" 
 
 Viva meditated wistfully, her head sinking down like 
 a flower with dew in its bells. 
 
 "Of course she was cruel — she was wrong," she mur- 
 mured. "But then,— how could they be happy? He 
 was content with the life, and she was not!" 
 
 Even while the swift instinct of the child fixed with 
 accurate aim on the one secret of the misery of so many 
 wedded lives, she stabbed, in her innocent unconscious-
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 177 
 
 ness, to its core the generous and noble heart that gave 
 her such unrequited tenderness. 
 
 Tricotrin rose quickly from their seat under the chest- 
 nut-tree. 
 
 "So! Discontent is pretext enough for disloyalty!" he 
 said bitterly. " Well — what we allow to nations we must 
 accord to women, I suppose !" 
 
 And he took her home in silence to her little city-nest, 
 high in air, in the Pays Latin. 
 
 She knew that in some way she had vexed him, but 
 she did not seek to find out why, with her customary ca- 
 ressing penitence : she, in her turn, was aggrieved because 
 her fair idol had been cast down from her altar, and 
 proved no longer of soilless ivory and of pure silver, but 
 of common dark-stained clay. The actress had brought 
 the first severance and difference between them ; because, 
 by the lips of the actress the voices of the world, the voices 
 of sins that are sweet, had spoken to Viva. 
 
 Meantime, Circumstance fashioned her fate as it com- 
 monly fashions the fates of all, let prescience, and sagacity, 
 and skill, and care strive how they may to shape them 
 so 1 hat, no chance or accident should ever have power ad- 
 versely to affect them. 
 
 That night Tricotrin's heart smote him ; he thought he 
 had been harsh to the "little one." lie rebuked himself 
 for having so roughly brushed away her happy ideals; 
 fir having so ruthlessly shown her the corruption of wdiat 
 looked to her innocent eyes so divine. He had spoken on 
 the spur of an acute pain, and of the fear that had filled 
 him lot she should fall into the pleasure and passion-baited 
 snares of a courtesan's career. He fancied he had been 
 cruel to her, as he watched lier sitting in the attic window, 
 looking out over the sunset-tinged roofs of Paris with a 
 troubled shade on her face and her hands lying listlessly 
 in her lap. 
 
 Yei — if she deemed him cruel because he would not 
 launch heron that life, he knew that .-he niu-t continue 
 so to think him. He would as sood — or sooner — have 
 aided her to throw herself into the black Seine, flowing 
 3 onder under the old walls of the Palace of Justice. 
 
 He went up to her and laid his hand on her shoulder.
 
 178 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 "Well, Viva! — what good was it for you to set your 
 heart on roaming with me, if the first yellow-haired woman 
 you meet makes you dissatisfied thus?" 
 
 " It is not that," the girl answered slowly. "It is " 
 
 "It is what?" 
 
 " Well — I was thinking if one would be like her through 
 being wicked, it must be very hard work to keep good!" 
 
 Tricotrin smiled, a little sadly. 
 
 " You have found out that common-place? I do not 
 dispute it. Evil thrives ; and honor will not be wooed 
 because she brings plenteousness. It is just this which 
 corrupts the world, Viva, — evil pays well, honor will not 
 be followed by mercenaries." 
 
 She gave a deep sigh. 
 
 "But she looks so happy?" — the question could not be 
 general to her, she argued only from the personality. 
 
 "Happy! As a mollusc is happy so long as the sea 
 sweeps prey into its jaws ; what does the mollusc care 
 how many lives have been shipwrecked so long as the 
 tide wafts its worms ? She has killed her conscience, Viva; 
 there is no murder more awful. It is to slay what touch 
 of God we have in us !" 
 
 Viva was awed, and was silent. 
 
 "Why does God let such things live then?" she asked, 
 at the last. 
 
 "Ah, child! Why does God let the dumb beasts be 
 born only to perish after lives of long torture ? The 
 marvel of creation is one we shall never solve on earth. 
 But come! Those problems are too deep for your age. 
 Let us go and see the last fireworks!" 
 
 The fireworks made her a child again ; they were the 
 end and crown of the long week of festivity, and they fell 
 in golden showers and leapt in fires of every hue, till they 
 were seen by those far away on the distant terraces of 
 Saint-Germain. 
 
 The young uplifted head, with that glow and conflict 
 of color reflected on it, as the sparkling rain of flame 
 sprang upward and descended from the summit of the 
 Arch, attracted many a glance near her far more than 
 did the fire-play. With the lofty stature and the leonine 
 head of Tricotrin behind her, as he guarded her from the
 
 TITE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 179 
 
 pressure of the crowds, she was a picture; — even to the 
 picture-sated eyes of worn Parisians. 
 
 Among those who thus saw her were two whose gaze 
 never left her face, so unconscious of their study of it, as 
 her eyes followed the gay magnificence of the fireworks' 
 display. 
 
 One of them was a man jammed in the dense press, 
 into which he had accidentally been entangled — the man 
 to whom Tricotrin had given his " chance." And he read 
 her face with a hard eager intentness, as one who reads 
 the lines of a book that he must commit to memory and 
 use at need. 
 
 The other was a person looking wearily out from where 
 his carriage was blocked, in a by-street, refused entrance 
 into the Champs Elysees that was consecrated to foot 
 passengers. He was an invalid, a scholar, a nobleman, 
 a recluse of middle age ; and the face of the girl with its 
 brilliant tint, its careless happiness, its marvelous perfec- 
 tion of beauty, youth, and health, stirred him to a strong 
 emotion, half pain, half pleasure. 
 
 The carriage was close to the corner of the street; its 
 object had been to cross the road, but the mounted gen- 
 darmes had interposed. Tricotrin was scarcely a 3 
 from it; its occupant leaned slightly forward and spoke 
 to him. 
 
 "Tricotrin! Let your young companion come hither; 
 she is not safe in that throng." 
 
 Tricotrin looked round, and smiled. 
 
 "Thank you; — you are very kind." 
 
 The offer had been frankly made; he accepted it as 
 frankly, knowing well the speaker. Viva was lifted in 
 an instant upon the seat of the equipage ; and, ;i> she 
 thought to herself, if she had only not had thai scarlet 
 cloak on, with its hood half over her curls, who could have 
 known she was not a young duchess? Her vexation 
 about the cloak slightly spoiled her pleasure in the fire- 
 works; she had not thought of ii on foot, bul in a car- 
 riage' — it was so different. She would nol have been 
 much consoled it' she had known how exquisitely pic- 
 turesque that costume made her look. Viva, like many
 
 180 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 of her sex, well as she loved her loveliness, would rather 
 have looked greater than have looked beautiful. 
 
 She was occupied, too, in glancing at the owner of the 
 vehicle ; he was worn, pale, attenuated, plain of feature, 
 though his countenance was one of great intelligence ; he 
 did not at all look like the knight-errant who was to take 
 a dispossessed princess back to her rightful heritage, but 
 he had an attraction for her because he was visibly of 
 some high rank by his attendants, and because his weary 
 melancholy eyes dwelt on her with so unmistakable an 
 admiration. 
 
 She talked to him, in answer to his questions, with vi- 
 vacious volubility; she was happy, elated, excited, and 
 had an intense enjoyment in being so prominent in that 
 grand carriage — an enjoyment only damped by the hap- 
 less scarlet cloak. 
 
 Tricotrin leaned against the door, and listened to her 
 mirthful chatter — in silence. 
 
 "May I not drive you home?" asked the owner of the 
 carriage, when the last of the fire-show was over. Trico- 
 trin lifted the girl down on to the ground. 
 
 "No — those born to walk had best not learn the ease 
 of equipages. Many thanks for your kindness and your 
 courtesies." 
 
 The Due de Lira smiled wearily. 
 
 "That man is a character," he thought, as Estmere 
 had done before him; "and the child — the child is like 
 a summer-day in one's youth." 
 
 The next afternoon the same elegant equipage entered 
 the Pays Latin, and its master ascended the five flights 
 of rickety stairs to the chamber where Viva, after a long 
 morning out of doors, sat on the boarded floor, cracking 
 nuts, and tossing them uncracked to her old friend Misti- 
 gri, singing to herself a gay opera air of llicci's, caught 
 up from the streets. Mere Mevert was with her sick 
 son; Tricotrin, on a smooth-planed plank of deal, was 
 painting with that rare happy skill he possessed, smoking 
 the while, and thrusting out of sight for the moment that 
 vexed question, "what would become of her?" 
 
 He rose, and welcomed the new comer cordially, though 
 with surprise. Viva dropped her nuts, and sprang to
 
 THE STORY OF A WAFF AND STRAY. 181 
 
 her feet — to be caught sitting on the floor was worse than 
 to have been seen in a scarlet cloak! Bat, his carriage 
 apart, -this stranger had so little of grandeur about him, 
 was so grave, so unassuming, so dumb, as it were, before 
 the dauntlessness and the pretty insolence of her own air, 
 that Viva concluded he could have been nobody very 
 great, after all, and heeded his presence but little. 
 
 Tricotrin, on the contrary, treated him with a regard 
 he rarely showed to men of rank ; he knew the worth of 
 character when he met it, and this character was of pure 
 gold. 
 
 Years before, in the wild, hot days of a midsummer 
 revolution, he had seen it tested. The mob had thundered 
 at the gates of a great hotel, and forced the bronze and 
 brazen scroll-work in. On- to the flight of steps that led 
 to the entrance-door, when the court was filled with seeth- 
 ing human life, there had come one weak and slender form, 
 inspired with all the fire and the dignity of a great race 
 in that one moment. The sickly and suffering Due de 
 Lira had looked quietly down on the infuriated people 
 with a look half contempt and half compassion. "You 
 intend to pass my threshold ?" he had said. " Very well. 
 But it will be over my dead body. Now — advance 1" 
 
 And Tricotrin, whose pulse never beat so high as un- 
 der the wine-draught of revolution, and whose voice the 
 insurgents followed as chargers the trumpet-call, hearing 
 that quiet and gallant defiance, had turned on his own 
 people, and forced them back at risk of his own life and 
 limb, and scourged them with fiery words as pillagers 
 and thieves. 
 
 The nobleman and the revolutionist had rarely crossed 
 each other's paths since then. The career of the ailing, 
 learned, secluded gentleman, and that of the adventurous, 
 erratic, sanny-tempered hohemian, could have few points 
 of meeting; Imt there had been ever since esteem between 
 them, though the enormous divergence of their lives kepi 
 them far asunder. 
 
 Tin- Due de Lira — last of a mighty race — oftentimes 
 envied with a sigh the Buperb health, the careless joyous- 
 ness, the liberty, and the wanderings of the man who 
 
 16
 
 182 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 owned naught but his Mistigri and his Straduarius. He 
 himself had been delicate of frame from his birth upward ; 
 and — for this solitary representative of his old legitimate 
 line — there was but one creed, one king, one flag, possi- 
 ble ; and he had no place nor part in the France of the 
 present. Lonely are the men who are before their own 
 time ; but doubly isolated are the men who are behind it. 
 
 Restrained by a fancied honor from departing ever from 
 the political traditions of his house, he spent his years in 
 charity, in study, in travel, mingling little in the pleasures 
 of his rank, not at all in their ambitions. He had never 
 married; he had shunned the society of women ; he was 
 of a nervous and sensitive temperament, and now, even 
 the presence of the gay and haughty child — foundling 
 though she was — kept the great nobleman almost silent 
 and almost embarrassed. For so long a period he had 
 never heeded the fairness of woman; her beauty, her 
 youth, her pretty audacities were like some startling rev- 
 elation to him of all that he had missed and lost. 
 
 He stayed an hour or more, watching the progress 
 of the painting, talking with Tricotrin as scholar _with 
 scholar, glancing always at the child. Her history he 
 learned in a few words; and he wondered to himself what 
 lordly or princely stock had given to this nameless Waif 
 her royal air and her imperial grace. He offered her 
 many pleasures ; among them he invited her to go and 
 see his house, a palace rilled with the treasures of art that 
 Tricotrin had saved from the mob's destruction. But 
 Tricotrin gently declined all his proposals ; he followed 
 his visitor out down the staircase, and spoke what he 
 would not speak before Viva. 
 
 " See here, M. de Lira," he said, as they stood in the 
 doorway. "You have just heard the little one's history. 
 I have no riches ; she can have none. What avail to give 
 her tastes that cannot be gratified, desires that can only 
 be wormwood ? I let you come near her because you are 
 a man of pure honor — she is safe with you ; but I would 
 scarce do so with any one else. Viva is a foundling ; Viva 
 must be of the people. She is ready enough now to rebel 
 at her lot ; ready enough in her innocence to throw her- 
 self into misery, if the misery have gilded gates that she
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 183 
 
 fancies arc the portals of power. We must teach her 
 content as best we can, or her future will be one of abso- 
 lute wretchedness — if not of disgrace. I know well that 
 you would be the last to push her one step nearer that; 
 so, — understand my sole motive when I say, 'be merci- 
 ful to the child, and do not suggest to her brilliancies she 
 can never justly enjoy.'" 
 
 The Due de Lira listened and bent his head. 
 
 "God forbid she should be harmed; but — such a creat- 
 ure as that — Tricotrin, believe me it will not be possible 
 to teach her contentment in poverty." 
 
 Tricotrin 's eyes darkened with impatience. 
 
 "I saved her life for wretchedness then, or for shame. 
 How can riches come with honor to a nameless, owner- 
 less thing? You forget; men have hard enough work 
 to emerge from the prejudices of your legitimate world, 
 women are crushed to pieces under them!" 
 
 "That is true," said the nobleman, simply, and he went 
 away without more words. 
 
 Tricotrin stood looking out down the narrow street, 
 with. its peaked root's, and the sunset glimmering ruddily 
 in the easeinent-<Hass. A band of blue-bloused workmen 
 were coming along it singing cheerily; some boy-painters 
 were laughing ami talking over their thin red wine in the 
 little cabaret opposite; in a window high above sat a 
 pretty black-eyed girl stitching away at the rose-colored 
 skirt in which she would dance at a barriere ball that 
 night: it was all of the "people," but it was all bright 
 ami contented. 
 
 He crushed, ere they rose, both a sigh and an oath. 
 
 Ninety-nine oul <>f a hundred would have been happy 
 in Viva's place: why must she alone have this restless, 
 ambit ions, incessantly-aspiring, unconsciously-disdainful 
 nature, which made her so ill at ease, so petulant ly impa- 
 tient of the life into which accidenl had thrown her? 
 
 Was it the irrepressible natural instincl of some pa- 
 trician blood in her that thus Worked in her soul and 
 corroded her present peace by it> desire for unattainable 
 power? It mighl he: — who could tell whence she came, 
 this child who thought herself born from the fairies? V>-* 
 that as it might, it was true that she would never be Bat-
 
 184 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 isfied as she was. And his heart was heavy within him, 
 for his love for her grew very great. 
 
 After a while he turned and went within ; he ascended 
 the stairs and called to her: she came thrusting her head 
 out of the gloom like some Old Master's Angel out of a 
 background of bistre shadow. 
 
 "My child, he said gently, "you have seen some of 
 the sights of Paris; but there are some still that you have 
 not. Come and look at those now." 
 
 She came: he was more silent than his wont, and she 
 wondered where he was going. He did not tell her ; but 
 he went first to a building, where within the entrance-way 
 was a little iron cradle that swung on a pivot: just placed 
 in it was a year-old child, naked and crying piteously; 
 the cradle was just turning for the infant to be taken 
 within. " That boy is a foundling, as you were, my 
 Waif," he said softly. 
 
 Some streets farther on he paused again; a group of 
 young students were reading what was written on the 
 door of a hospital. "They are looking what operations 
 take place to-morrow," he said, in the same tone. " There 
 are six: six lives then that will suffer the torment of the 
 knife, suffer it that they may still drag on existence, sweet 
 to them, though they are poor and of no account." 
 
 Viva did not answer; the unusual seriousness of his 
 voice awed and stilled her. He led her next to a long 
 low shed around which a silent crowd was pressing. 
 
 "A dead body lies in there," he said to her. "A young 
 girl not much older than you; who drowned herself last 
 night in the Mare d'Auteuil. People have come all day 
 to see if they could recognize her ; no one has done so 
 yet. There are lives that are quite lonely upon earth." 
 
 The child's face was grave and pale ; she still answered 
 nothing, but he heard her breath come and go quickly. 
 He passed onward to a great dark melancholy pile, where 
 the high casements were barred with iron : he motioned 
 to her to look up at it. 
 
 " That is a madhouse for the poor. Among them is an 
 actress, once as brilliant as your Coriolis. Can you guess 
 what made her a maniac ? she had an accident that spoiled 
 her beauty, and when she first appeared after it the cruel
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 185 
 
 people hissed as loudly as they had adored her. She 
 stood a moment under the storm of execration, then burst 
 into frantic laughter. Her brain was gone from that 
 night. " She had been extravagant and vicious. Such wo- 
 men have many lovers and no friends. There was only 
 the public asylum for her. Yet Coriolis now is not so 
 great as this maniac once was." 
 
 Still, Viva said not a word: but her hands twined on 
 his arm, and clung there closely in the fading evening 
 light. He led her onward in silence through dark, crooked, 
 wretched streets that she had never dreamed of; she had 
 seen the Paris of pleasure, the Paris that was full of light, 
 of wealth, of merciless gayety, of boundless recklessness; 
 this was the Paris of crime, of misery, of famine. 
 
 Fetid odors met her like the blasts of poisonous fur- 
 naces; hideous outcries filled the air; ghastly shapes flit- 
 ted through the gloom, of raving women and oi starving 
 men, and of creatures all unsexed by drink or guilt, who 
 had nor womanhood nor manhood left: standing at the 
 entrance of that Gehenna, where the love of that brutal- 
 ized populace made him sacred, he felt the child, brave 
 though she was, trembling through all her delicate limbs. 
 He passed his arm around her. 
 
 " Viva, look well. Take that picture with you on your 
 memory. This is how the mass of human lives in every 
 city lives; they who of their own will sink to it may 
 merit their hell, but thousands on thousands are born in 
 such a pit of crime, of infamy, of agony as this, breathing 
 its poisons as their first and only breath of life — and then 
 the world can wonder that it reeks with sin !" 
 
 She shuddered, and clung closer to him, and hid her 
 face upon his breast. 
 
 " Take me away ! Oh, take me away!" she whispered. 
 "How wicked I was to ever complain or repine !" 
 
 He led ber borne in the samesilence; and up the stairs 
 to where a wood lire burned cheerily in t be little chamber: 
 
 in its light he saw that she was very pale, her hair was 
 
 heavy with night dew, her limbs shook still. Be drew 
 her to the warmth, and looked down in her eyes. 
 
 " Have 1 been cruel, my child? Your fever of discon- 
 tent needed a sharp cure. Life lies before you, Viva, and 
 
 16*
 
 186 TRIG0TR1N, 
 
 you alone can mould it for yourself. Sin and anguish 
 fill nine-tenths of the world: to one soul that basks in 
 light a thousand perish in darkness ; I dare not let you 
 go on longer in your dangerous belief that the world is 
 one wide paradise, and that the highroad of its joys is 
 the path of reckless selfishness. Can you not think that 
 there are lots worse than that of a guiltless child who is 
 well-loved and well-guarded, and has all her future still 
 before her?" 
 
 Ere his words were done she had thrown herself into 
 his arms, in an abandonment of emotion, — the loosened 
 tide of all her pent-up wonder, grief, and fear. It was the 
 terror of every young life that sees for the first time the 
 hopeless and unnumbered miseries that fill the world. 
 
 " Oh ! how wicked I was !" she murmured, again lifting 
 her tear-laden eyes to the face that ever for her had the 
 compassion and benignity of a god. " I — who am so 
 happy I I — who have you to care for me!" 
 
 A beautiful light shone in his own gaze as it dwelt on 
 her ; he answered nothing in words, but he stooped his 
 head and kissed her. To her it was only the old familiar 
 tenderness & pardon and of sympathy; but for him it had 
 a new sweetness — the sweetness of a new love. 
 
 As children dream by firelight, so he dreamt too in the 
 warmth of the burning logs. 
 
 Her love for him was deep and true ; the unrest of her 
 very early youth would pass away ; her fanciful desires 
 were the caprices of an imaginative and but half-dawned 
 intelligence ; was it not possible that his pity on her when 
 she had been naught to him might be rewarded now that 
 she had grown dear to him? 
 
 Feminine natures were things so mutable ; the fanciful 
 ambitions of women faded so often and so happily in the 
 dawn of their affections ; — could she not find her pleasure 
 as he did, in wandering over fresh lands, keeping ever in 
 eternal summer ? — could she not, as others of her sex had 
 done, forget the desires of pomp and of power, in the 
 sunny eyes and the murmuring lips of offspring that 
 should spring up in her youth, like the white blossoms 
 that encircle the scarce-opened blush-flower? 
 
 It was only a dream ; but dreams, only, are fair, — till 
 the dreamer awakes.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 187 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 The dream remained with him all the following day; 
 a day spent at Great and Little Trianon, where every 
 graceful tree that grew tall and beautiful above the mossy 
 sward, and every water-bird that splashed and floated in 
 the weed-choked pools, whispered to Viva's fancy some 
 mournful warning of the instability of power. She was 
 in the mood to listen to the warning. The Trianon made 
 her very thoughtful; she did not know much history, but 
 she knew that one history which looks from the blue eyes 
 of the portrait on the wall, and speaks in the yellow leaves 
 of the old music, and steals down the gentle winds that 
 stir the same boughs which once screened sun and heat 
 from the white Austrian brow. 
 
 It made her thoughtful; but she was very happy h'ing 
 under the odorous pines, and listening to Tricotrin's 
 Stories of that old dead time. 
 
 The thoughtfulness passed; the happiness remained 
 when she' was back again in the Pays Latin, in the little 
 high cosy chamber, watching the simmering of a wonder- 
 ful sweet soup she had concocted in Spanish fashion, after 
 his directions, of potatoes, and wine, and fruit, and spices, 
 bubbling altogether in a brazen jar. 
 
 "Shall we go to the 1 heater, Viva, when we have tasted 
 that olla podrida?" he asked; — they had gone to the 
 theater each night that she had been in Paris. 
 
 Viva shook her head. 
 
 "And why ? Theaters were your Elysium." 
 
 "They are nothing to me since .s/ie is not true!" mur- 
 mured the child. " 1 could not hear to see her act again I" 
 
 "Chut! How can actresses be true, little one? They 
 arc always representing whal they do not feel." 
 
 Viva shook her head again. 
 
 "1 thought it was all true," she said softly. "Else I 
 should not have cared." 
 
 She had been wounded in her tenderest point — her
 
 188 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 good faith. She had believed in this woman with all her 
 soul; she had identified herself with all that the actress 
 had portrayed; that all this which had so moved her 
 should have been false, made her feel cheated and de- 
 spoiled ; that the sweetness of that angel-face should have 
 been only a painted mask, made her resent the theft, on 
 false pretenses, of her sympathy and love. 
 
 At that moment, happily for the distraction of her 
 thoughts, the soup boiled over; Viva was at once ab- 
 sorbed in its rescue. It was hot, sweet, strong, delicious, 
 and, better than all, of her own preparation. She was 
 just pouring it out when the door opened, and the Due de 
 Lira entered in the twilight. Viva was incensed beyond 
 measure! — ah! how mean a thing of the people she must 
 look, she thought, her cheeks scarlet with the fire, her 
 hands filled with a brass pipkin, her laugh ringing loud 
 and long because the little round apples, stuck all over 
 with cloves, bobbed so drolly up and down in the fragrant 
 mixture! So she fancied; — little dreaming that the 
 stranger was musing what a picture for Hebe she looked, 
 and thinking that he would have given all he owned to 
 be able to find mirth and pleasure in apples dancing on a 
 frothy lake of wine as she did, and as Ben Jonson had 
 done before her. 
 
 She did not attach any importance to the new-comer ; 
 she did not know his rank; she thought him cold, gray, 
 silent, uninteresting, — not the least like King Arthur, or 
 even the Prince Faineant; but he had given her a seat in 
 a carriage, and Viva was of the temper that made her 
 always want to look her very best, even in the eyes of an 
 organ-grinder that she listened to in the streets. More- 
 over, she saw that he admired her and studied her, though 
 he said little to her, but conversed almost entirely with 
 Tricotrin or Mere Mevei-t; and she had that thorough 
 coquetry by nature which made her love homage, whether 
 or no she cared two straws for the one who rendered it. 
 To some, admiration is valueless, unless from those who 
 in turn they also admire : but Viva was not so fastidious. 
 She delighted in even the stupid open-mouthed stare of 
 amazement at her loveliness, that a despised cow-boy 
 would give as she passed the place where he lay among 
 his grazing herds.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 189 
 
 For she was feminine to her heart's core. 
 
 The Duke's advent spoilt her soup, and also spoilt her 
 content. 
 
 Tricotrin saw that, — impatiently. Himself, he had 
 both regard and respect for the grave, gentle, melancholy 
 person whose dignities brought so little joy with them; 
 but he wished the nobleman had not found his way to 
 this attic, and he was perplexed as to his meaning in 
 coming there. With less than his usual courtesy he cut 
 the visit shorter than it would have been by bidding his 
 caller farewell, and taking Viva with him to a Cafe Chan- 
 tant. 
 
 The girl heartily enjoyed these things, and he loved to 
 see her among them, since they were what he could easily 
 bestow. 
 
 The music enchanted her ; and the coarser meanings 
 of some popular songs could not harm her, since she was 
 in absolute ignorance of the construction put upon the 
 phrases that evoked such laughter around her. She 
 laughed, too, because the melodies were so mirth provok- 
 ing in their airy and droll cadences, because the gas-lit 
 scene was so pretty and exciting, because all those stu- 
 dents and grisettes about her laughed so riotously; but 
 the songs might have been in Greek for aught that she 
 understood of them. 
 
 Then, when they were over, she sat at a little round 
 table and ate her ices, and tasted her first champagne, 
 and amused herself with the eternal stream of picturesque 
 gas-lit life that passed before her, and went to bed just 
 tired enough to fall asleep at once and dreamlessly. He 
 bad made her forget her own discontent: she was happy, 
 and found that it was after all possible to enjoy one's self 
 among '• the ] pie." 
 
 Bui fate undid all that ho had done. The next day, in 
 the dusky hour, Viva, Left alone for a little while, sat in 
 the window-seat reading by the Lingering light a histori- 
 cal romance that delighted her — a romance wherein a 
 herdsman's adopted daughter, alter many vicissitudes, 
 was proved to lie sole heiress of the mighty castle thai 
 had frowned upon her from her birth. She was absorbed in 
 it when the door was thrown open by some personage in
 
 190 TRICOT R IN, 
 
 a glimmer of green and gold, and into the chamber, thus 
 ushered but unannounced, came the most exquisite little 
 figure she had ever beheld. The figure of a very small, 
 very old lady, with the most delicate features conceivable, 
 white hair, black eyes that still shone like stars, a profu- 
 sion of laces, a gold-headed stick, and red, high-heeled 
 shoes that clicked a musical patter over the bare floor. 
 
 A fairy at last! Viva rose, transfixed. "It must be 
 Cinderella's godmother herself!" she thought; "there 
 could not be two fairies like that!" And in an instant 
 her imagination leapt back to her home by the Loire, and 
 she saw Roi Dore changed into a beautiful prince, and 
 Bebe into four white horses, and the pumpkins into gilded 
 carriages, and the chestnuts into diamonds, and herself 
 
 into but her dreams were broken by the fairy's voice, 
 
 imperious but kindly : 
 
 "Do you know who I am, my child ?" 
 
 "Yes," murmured Viva, awed by this immortal visitant 
 as she would have been by no mortal empress. 
 
 "Indeed! Who, then?" 
 
 Viva's answer was hushed and reverential. 
 
 "A Fairy! And I have hoped for you so long." 
 
 The lady looked at her in astonishment, then fairly 
 laughed outright. She was not displeased ; her old age 
 being very lovely and delicate, it was neither distasteful 
 nor inappropriate to be taken for a fairy. 
 
 "No, my dear, you mistake," she said, seating herself 
 on one of the hard chairs. "I am no fairy, though I may 
 do as well as one perhaps. I am the Duchess de Lira." 
 
 Viva said nothing; she felt perfectly certain that she 
 was right, that nothing mortal could be so exquisite, so 
 small, yet so awe-inspiring as her visitant; but she knew 
 how dangerous it was to contradict fairies when they 
 wished, to suppress their identity, and remained discreetly 
 silent accordingly. 
 
 " Come here and let me look at you," said her visitant. 
 
 Viva obeyed, a little anxiously ; how did she know but 
 what her guest might change the brass pipkin into a 
 chariot, and whisk her off through the open lattice? 
 
 Madame de Lira turned her gently to the fading light, 
 and looked her "all over with inexorable scrutiny. Not
 
 TUE- STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. l<)\ 
 
 a single flaw could have escaped those ruthless and pierc- 
 ing eyes; but they failed to find one, and softened their 
 gaze ere their inspection was done. 
 
 " Very well, very indeed," she muttered, as she loosened 
 her hold on the child. " Of an exquisite grace, as he said ; 
 and surely not of the people." 
 
 Viva colored hotly as she heard. 
 
 "You are very pretty — nay, you are very beautiful," 
 pursued the old lady, calmly and critically. " With 
 another year or two, when your form shall have fully 
 developed, you will be magnificent, — with culture and 
 dress. I have heard all about you. You call yourself 
 Viva?" 
 
 " Yes, Madame ;" she was still thinking of all that she 
 would get this fairy to do: first and foremost, Tricotrin 
 must be made King of the World, and grand'mere must 
 be given new youth. 
 
 "Viva! It means nothing, but it is not ugly. You 
 could not have been baptized in a Catholic country, for 
 there is no such name in the Saints' Calendar. Well, 
 you are a handsome child; and I pity you, my dear. I 
 will take you home to stay with me." 
 
 "To stay with you!" echoed Viva, in amazement. 
 She had been a little bewildered as to why a fairy god- 
 mother should allude to the matter of a baptism at which 
 she must have been the principal person present, and she 
 did not think it according to elfin creeds to he very par- 
 ticular about the saints or their calendar cither. But 
 to go and stay with her, in her palace; of cloud or of sear 
 cavern, was an instantaneous transformation aboul which 
 there could benodoubt. Did she not know what Cinder- 
 ella had gone to! " But I cannot. I dare not I" she mur- 
 mured, in sudden remembrance. "Imusi bear first what 
 he says. He was so angry about the young Prince; 
 and I cannot vex him again ! " 
 
 "I thank you, my Waif!" said a voice from the door- 
 way. "You have been faithful under trial, which Peter, 
 whom men call Saint, was not." 
 
 The Duchess de Lira put up her gold glasses at the 
 figure she beheld — a figure \<-\-y Btrange to her, with his 
 linen blouse, and his great meerschaum, and his litllo
 
 192 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 black Mistigri, who spoke in this careless fashion, and 
 blasphemed the rock of the Church ! 
 
 "Madame la Duchesse," he said, as he approached her 
 with that courteousness which, frank to all men, was 
 graceful to all women, "you are come to see my Waif? 
 Nay, that is kind and generous. May I ask to what you 
 were tempting her ?" 
 
 The old Duchess gazed at him in silence ; she had 
 heard of him, but she had never seen him. She had ex- 
 pected a man of the "bas peuple," with whom she could 
 have dealt in sublime condescension ; she saw a man to 
 whom even she felt condescension was not possible, and 
 who had, even to her fastidious eyes, an air of race and 
 of breeding undeniable. 
 
 Tricotrin turned to the child. 
 
 "Go to your room, Viva; Madame and I will talk 
 alone." 
 
 Viva obeyed, though very reluctantly, and with many 
 a glance at her fairy. 
 
 "There was no need to send her away," said the old 
 lady, coldly. "My son is interested in her; he begged 
 me to show her some kindness. It is to be regretted 
 that a child of so much promise should be lost in such a 
 life as this. I am willing that she should come and stay 
 awhile in my household, that I may see tf anything can 
 be made of her " 
 
 "Made of her!" echoed Tricotrin bitterly. "You mean, 
 Madame, that you would amuse yourself with her while 
 she is fresh to you, as with some new bird from the tropics; 
 and then, when you have tired of her, have her trained 
 for the opera, or cast off for the theater, as the bird might 
 be given to sing in a public show, no matter whether its 
 first notes were its death-knell?" 
 
 He spoke with unconsidered irony, on the sting of the 
 impatient wrath that he felt that these aristocrats could 
 never leave her in peace, but must ever try to turn her 
 away from him at the very moment her heart seemed knit 
 closest to his. 
 
 Madame de Lira rose with that dignity which, in so 
 fragile a form, had so awed the Waif. 
 
 " Whether it be ignorance or ingratitude on your part,"
 
 TIIE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 193 
 
 she said, icily, "I do not attempt to decide. Your inso- 
 lence is sufficient to frustrate all my efforts for the young 
 girl's welfare." 
 
 Tricdtrin's forehead flushed ; he saw that he had been 
 rude to an aged woman. 
 
 "I was wrong, Madame," he said, quickly. "Pardon 
 me. It stings me to hear her spoken of as a thing to be 
 bartered in, that is all." 
 
 "There is no question of barter," said the slow, gentle 
 voice of the Due de Lira behind him. 
 
 His mother interrupted his words: 
 
 " My son, to comply with your wishes, I have done 
 what has been exceedingly distasteful to me. The mat- 
 ter has concluded as I foresaw: take me to my carriage." 
 
 " Stay, Madame," entreated her son, reverentially. "The 
 matter is but commenced. What has Viva herself said? 
 The Duchess," he continued to Tricotrin, hurriedly, 
 "came to invite the child for a month's stay with her, at 
 my wish. Surely you cannot refuse such a " 
 
 "I leave you to make your entreaty to your — friend !" 
 said the Dueller with her delicate, glacial sneer, that she 
 diil not spare even to her son. "The girl can accept or 
 caii refuse. But I must beg you to take me down stairs. 
 Whether it be ignorance or insolence in this person I do 
 not seek to inquire, at all events it is ingratitude, and 
 strange neglect of that young creature's interests." 
 
 The last sentence struck Tricotrin with a pang. Was 
 his love growing brutal in selfishness? 
 
 " Forgive me, Madame!" he said, rapidly; "I was rude 
 to you. It stings me to have her spoken of as a thing to 
 be traded in; but what is it you mean to her ?" 
 
 The old aristocrat was softened from her wrath. 
 • "A fine man, and gracefully mannered." she mused, as 
 she answered, still coldly. "I mean well, as you may 
 imagine. M. de Lira interests himself in this child.- She 
 is beautiful; she is unl'ort uuate ; she occupies a terrible 
 position in having no friend bul yourself 1 would rescue 
 her from it if it be possible. Si. de Lira affirms that he 
 himself answer.- tor the truth of your story concerning 
 her, — he has perfect faith in your integrity ; and it seems 
 to us " 
 
 1?
 
 194 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 Tricotrin's eyes blazed like a lion's. 
 
 "Madame! I can hear no more words in that tone. 
 Do yori speak of us like paupers? 'A terrible position!' 
 Why does Viva occupy a terrible position ? She has been 
 reared according to nature, and not according to art. Is 
 that terrible? It is rare." 
 
 " It is impossible to converse with any one who de- 
 means himself thus," observed the Duchess, frigidly. " I 
 say ' terrible' advisedly. The position of any female child 
 just growing to womanhood must be so with no friend 
 but a man who states that he is not her, father, and does 
 not purpose to become her husband." 
 
 Tricotrin started, and the blood flushed his forehead as 
 he heard; he paused a moment ere he replied. 
 
 "I am old enough to be the one, too old to be the other," 
 he answered, at length. "But — I thank you for having 
 shown me a danger for her that I had overlooked." 
 
 The old woman glanced at him with her piercing eyes, 
 which had lost little of the keenness of their youth. 
 
 "The girl is beautiful," she said curtly, taking a sweet- 
 meat from a silver box. He felt all that she intended to 
 convey under that simple observation. 
 
 "Madame, I thank you," he said hurriedly. "You 
 have recalled to me the world's skepticism of all inno- 
 cence or honesty, and its ready credulity of all vileness! 
 Forgive my late roughness ; what is it you would offer 
 to the child?" 
 
 Madame de Lira coughed a little : she was hardly pre- 
 pared for so direct a question, so she parried it. 
 
 "I offer her — my countenance. If she come under 
 my roof for a few weeks I can better determine what will 
 be for her real good hereafter. In any case you may be 
 certain that I should do whatever was just, and give 
 whatever social advantages she might prove herself to 
 deserve." 
 
 He repressed a passionate oath at the insolence of patron- 
 age that ran through all the words : they were meant in 
 kindliness, and out of justice toward Viva it was not his 
 right to cast them back with all the contempt and irnpa- 
 tiencethat rose at them in his soul. 
 
 " Do you mean," he said at length, and his voice was
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 1<j5 
 
 hoarse and hard, "that you will play with Viva for awhile 
 as with- some new lapdog, or rare piece of faience, and 
 when you have wearied of her, cast her aside as you cast 
 the dog and the china to the pages or the cabinets ? Or. — 
 do you rneananoble and humane benevolence, which will 
 honor you more than all your charities and bequests to 
 all the churches in the world ? Do you mean " 
 
 Madame de Lira's sparkling eyes were gathering fierce 
 fire, and she would have answered the audacity of such 
 an arraignment by withdrawing, once and for all, her 
 unappreciated condescension, had not the gentle voice of 
 her son interposed. 
 
 " Tricotrin, you misapprehend us, I fear. It is at my 
 entreaty that my mother has come hither to see what it 
 may possibly be in our power to do for your Waif. Will 
 you come aside with me, and let Viva return to the 
 Duchess ?" 
 
 Tricotrin shook himself with a gesture of intolerable 
 impatience. 
 
 , "For what? That she may be made more ill-content 
 still with the life that is simplest, truest, and most inno- 
 cent for her ?" 
 
 Madame de Lira rose from her seat. 
 
 " My son, oblige me by taking me to my carriage. You 
 will be so good as to acknowledge that I was in the right 
 when I predicted the outrage I should receive as my 
 reward for gratifying your wishes against my own judg- 
 ment." 
 
 " Outrage ! By heaven !" cried Tricotrin, with all the 
 headlong impulse of pain. "Would you admit the title 
 of a stranger to claim one of your Iapdogs ? Viva has 
 as much interest for me as your greyhounds for you 1" 
 
 But the old Duchess had passed beyond the reach of 
 his words, and was descending the crooked stairs to her 
 equipage. A few moments later, her son re-entered the 
 room. Tricotrin stood silent on the hearth, with the red 
 blaze of the Stormily setting sun shed full across him. 
 lie did not look up ; he did not speak : the other hesitated 
 a minute, then approached him. 
 
 " Tricotrin, you were surely discourteous to rhv mother?'' 
 
 "Possibly."
 
 196 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 "And you totally misapprehended her." 
 
 "That I doubt." 
 
 " The fault of her visit, if fault it be, lies with me. I 
 have endeavored to interest her in Viva ; I have succeeded 
 in doing so. You must know that she can be a valuable 
 friend if she pleases ; and in this instance I believe she 
 would so please. Are you justified in depriving the child 
 of all the benefits she would derive from such friend- 
 ship ?" 
 
 " Benefits ! What benefits ? To be subject to the cold 
 winds of caprice ? To be the plaything of a fine lady's 
 vagaries ? To see the smile of to-day become the sneer 
 of to-morrow ? To be a patronized thing, on whom great 
 people can vent at their will their variations of ennui and 
 spleen ? I perceive nothing in such ' benefits' deserving 
 either of my acceptance or of her gratitude." 
 
 " You are unjust. We are not the heartless and frivol- 
 ous creatures you would make us us to be. If Viva " 
 
 Tricotrin was not softened by the gentle words ; they 
 tenfold increased the unreasoning, vehement rage that 
 possessed him ; the rage born of pain like that of some 
 gallant animal under a shot-wound. 
 
 "Viva ! what of Viva ? What has any living creature 
 to do with Viva save myself? Because I cannot keep 
 her in the luxurious wastefulness of a palace, can I lay 
 no claim to a life that I saved ? Because I found her 
 nameless, penniless, ownerless, is that any reason why 
 the first stranger that fancies her has stronger claim on 
 her existence than I ? Because a child's heated imagina- 
 tions, and the poisonous whispers of fools, for awhile 
 make her ingrate enough to despise the life that has shel- 
 tered her body, and kept stainless her soul, is that plea 
 enough for me to surrender every right to protect, and 
 every title to guide, her ? ' She is ilbcontent,' say you ! 
 Good God 1 Was there ever a fondled thing that did not 
 bite through the hand that caresses it ? Was there ever 
 a plant reared with care and with tenderness that an alien 
 hand did not break off the flowering-crown when it blos- 
 somed ? « Ill-content !' A fine plea ! Would she have 
 been more Content, pray you, reared in the public nurse- 
 ries, where the children of bastardy are cursed from their
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 197 
 
 infancy up, for the crime of having come to the birth 
 undesirecl and un welcomed ?" 
 
 The fiery torrent of words rushed headlong from his 
 lips; the claims he never breathed to her, he flung out in 
 the face of those who desired to rob him of her; the 
 passion of his temperament, that slept under the sunny 
 vivacity of his habitual nature, broke loose under the 
 unbearable pang that it was to him, to have her thus sought 
 and thus bribed. His impulses were hot and swift as 
 volcanic fire, and he stayed neither to consider nor restrain 
 them. 
 
 The Due de Lira listened with regret, but not in anger, 
 for he knew the provocation that he gave ; and he knew 
 the justice of the resentment it awakened. 
 
 "Will you forgive me if I speak quite plainly?" he 
 said at last. " Of course you have indisputable claim to 
 all her love and fealty; indisputable title to defend and 
 shape her life, howsoever may seem best to you. But 
 what is it that does seem so? What is it you intend to 
 do with her ?" 
 
 Tricotrin's eyes fired like an angered hawk's. 
 
 " I deny the right of any one to ask the question I" 
 
 "Perhaps I have no right," answeredhis hearer, patiently. 
 "Nevertheless, 1 do so. Listen, Tricotrin: if you project 
 to make this girl anything more to you than she is now, 
 say so, and I will not press a single word more on yen. 
 She is yours by right in that ease : and none of a surety 
 have weightier or nobler claim upon her heart or her 
 future than you, who stand in the stead to her of every 
 tie. But, if you have no such intent, and all you have 
 hitherto said implies that you have not, you will scarcely be 
 enabled much longer to continue your present relationship 
 to her? Reflect, you have no parentage to her; can you 
 be the sole companion and protector of her life without 
 exposing her to injurious suspicion ? Will the world give 
 you credit for your disintere.-tedness, or her for her inno- 
 cence ? It has tOO little of either, itself, to do so." 
 
 "Pshaw!" broke in Tricotrin, with imperious scorn 
 "Have I ever lived for the world? Thai bugbear and 
 scarecrow of the millions of fools, the breath of whose 
 lungs is the lies off other men's lips ? The world ! What 
 
 17*
 
 198 TRICOTRIK, 
 
 have Yiva and I to do with the world ? We forget it ; it 
 can afford to forget us — a bohemian and a foundling." 
 
 " You can forget it : she cannot, she will not. For it 
 will not forget her. Hear me out : you are just, you are 
 true. You will admit a truth even when it militate against 
 your desire. If Yiva be not your wife, not your daughter, 
 how shall you persuade others that she is not your mis- 
 tress ? If her love for you be not such as would make 
 her happy in union with you, how shall you render her 
 future content? You said yourself, a few nights ago, that, 
 if ill-content, she must become of all women the most 
 miserable. It is certain she will do so. You will attempt 
 impossibilities if you seek to keep her womanhood in the 
 same solitude that has made her childhood so joyful. She 
 is ambitious, proud, quick to resent, eager to enjoy — is it 
 for the child whom you regard so tenderly that you can 
 determine to prepare a future in which all the darkness of 
 an imputed shame, and none of the solace of an indulged 
 love, will be her portion ?" 
 
 " Oh God !" — the words escaped him with the stifled 
 cry of a fierce suffering, He swung round and flashed 
 his eyes over the speaker. 
 
 "You find strange eloquence ! Are you her lover too?" 
 
 "You know me better than that," said the other, 
 simply, with a gentle dignity that bore an unspoken 
 rebuke in it. " A lover ! — I ! My years may be no more 
 than your own ; but I have none of your youth left in 
 me. Left, do I say ? I never knew it. No ; I speak as 
 I do merely from such interest in her as any one — not a 
 brute or a libertine — must feel for a young creature of such 
 promise. What I say sounds harsh and insolent doubt- 
 less ; — but your justice will acknowledge the singleness 
 of my motive. I have no title to dictate to you, no excuse 
 perhaps for interference with you, but I do repeat this : — 
 you, who are so anxious to guard her from every evil 
 breath, you who have acted with so much nobility toward 
 her in her defenselessness, must, for your own conscience' 
 sake and the sake of her future, choose between one of two 
 things. Take the right of marriage over her life, or do 
 not stand between her and my mother's protection of her. 
 You alone can know which of the two will best advance
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 199 
 
 her happiness and yours. Whichever you decide on, toll 
 me; — and in either rase believe me my friendship is yours 
 if you will have it. A Lira does not soon forget ; I have 
 not forgotten the July night in my Cour d'llonncur." 
 
 He passed quickly through the evening gloom, and out 
 from the little chamber as the words left his lips; he was 
 generous, sensitive, sympathetic, it had not been without 
 fear and hesitation that he had spoken them. 
 
 Tricotrin, in his solitude, never stirred from where he 
 stood before the wood-fire, whose flames were now the 
 only light left in the darkened room. The chimes of a 
 neighboring clock told off two quarters, with the strokes 
 echoing through the open casement, but he did not hear 
 them. He was lost in thought. 
 
 The mercy he had shown was bringing its reward — in 
 bitterness. 
 
 "To have the fate of Bruno!" he muttered, dashing the 
 falling hair from his eyes that looked gloomily down into 
 the leaping (lames. 
 
 To take from gratitude what would not come from 
 love; — to gain through innocent tenderness what would 
 not be given through riper passion ; — to bind to him in 
 its wax-like malleability what, when it changed shape 
 with older years, would recoil perchance from his clasp ; — 
 to claim the sweetness of kisses by the plea that the lips 
 which he sought had been fed by his bread, — these were 
 what he would do if he chose the first of the alternatives 
 presented to him, if he cheated her and himself into the 
 faith that a child's affection was a woman's love. And 
 these done, what would be their end, their sequel ? 
 
 The freshness of winds and waters, (he changes of mo- 
 tion and rest, the sound of a song on the air, the glow of 
 an alp in a sunrise, the lire of toil among vine or olive 
 or millet, the play and the pleasure of sinew ami muscle, 
 the bright Bhock of sea-Water in a leap from the rocks, the 
 careless zesl of free days untroubled with thoughl for the 
 morrow, the frankness of welcome from the grasp of the 
 mountaineer or the eyes of the girl-gipsy, — all these made 
 his life rich, made it happy, because with them also he 
 had the heart of a poet, the liberty of a man. Bui she. _ 
 her fancy panted for power; her scorn recoiled from this
 
 200 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 simplicity of joy which, being far above her, she deemed 
 lay far beneath her; the frail strength, and the languid 
 senses, of a girl's youth could not grasp the warmth, and 
 the force, and the rapture which he could feel from the 
 mere life within him, and the mere life around him. The 
 happiness he had he could not transfer to her. She would 
 lie in his bosom, restless as a bird restrained by a captive 
 hand ; she would ache and sigh and grow weary for the 
 things of wealth and of pomp that he could not bestow; 
 and then — and then — to those sighs some other would 
 answer; and across his life would be the blackness of dis- 
 honor and desolation. 
 
 He beheld her future and his own as in some mirror of 
 prophecy. He could make her his own — yes ; as the hand 
 that has fed and fondled the tame hare can stay the trust- 
 ful creature as a captive when it comes for a caress. But 
 scarce at less cost than the fate of Bruno for him, — of Cori- 
 olis for her. 
 
 And yet — he loved her with all the power of his tropi- 
 cal nature ; loved her with a new and sudden love, since 
 the day that he had flung her young Faust from him. 
 To let her go from him, to let her drift to others, was tor- 
 ture to him. 
 
 With unconscious violence he struck his clinched hand 
 on the iron of the stove by which he stood. 
 
 " My God ! For the first time in all my life I wish " 
 
 The wish died unnuttered in his throat. For the first 
 time in all his laughter-lightened years he wished that a 
 thing done, that a choice made, in his earliest youth could 
 be undone, and be reversed. These were the re wards.that 
 his tenderness to a foundling brought him, — futile regret, 
 and vain desire !
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 201 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 He stood there still, in the darkness, with his clinched 
 hand resting 1 on the iron; alight swift movement came 
 near him, a gay laugh echoed through the silence. 
 
 "I could not stay in the dark any longer. Have you 
 sent my fairy away?" 
 
 The thoughtless words thrilled through his soul as Viva 
 came to him: was the jest symbolical of a terrible truth? 
 Was he, in his own selfish covetousness of her, driving 
 away the influence by which all the colors of glory that 
 she dreamed of might bathe her life in their radiance? 
 
 She, all unconscious, came nearer still, and nut her 
 hands upon his arm. 
 
 " Was she a fairy? I have been thinking since it might 
 be foolish of me to fancy her so; and yet, — she looked so 
 exactly like one, and nothing but a fairy could have prom- 
 ised me all she; did!" 
 
 " What a child you are 1" he said impatiently, with an 
 accent in his voice that she had never heard before. 
 "Fairy? No! Do yousuppose fairies are real things?" 
 
 "Grand'mere does," said Viva, gravely. " But do tell 
 me, why did you send her away? May I go and see her? 
 If she be not a fairy she must be something very ureal ; 
 and — oh, those diamonds on her lingers when she uncov- 
 ered her hand to feel my hair !" 
 
 lie shook her clasp off him and walked to the window: — 
 his heart was full of tenderness, anxiety, yearning, pain, 
 and contest for her sake; — and she thoughl of the glitter 
 of jewels on a stranger's hand.-! 
 
 Viva looked at him with a little sense of fear; then 
 glided down on to the floor, and leant there in fronl of the 
 .-hive, with the light from Its open door playing fitfully 
 all n\ er her picturesque limbs. 
 
 She began to think he was unkind; — he had sent away 
 her Faust, her Coriolis, and now her Fairy.
 
 202 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 It was some time before he spoke to her ; then it was 
 gravely but very gently. 
 
 "You thought me harsh to your actress, Viva?" It 
 seemed an irrelevant question, but it sprang from his own 
 train of thought. Viva looked into the embers. 
 
 "Yes," she said truthfully at last: she wondered how 
 he knew that she was thinking of Coriolis. 
 
 " Do you deem her justified then in the blow she dealt 
 to her husband ?" 
 
 He stood behind her ; and she could not see the intense 
 anxiety that was in his eyes as they were fastened on her. 
 
 She took thought a moment, — then she answered him 
 with her golden head dropped on one side in meditation. 
 
 "Justified? No. You say nothing wrong is that; and 
 it wa*s wrong in her of course. But, — you see I can fancy 
 what she felt. He had the sea, and the storms, and the 
 boats, and the other fishermen, — and he was born for it 
 too, and chose it himself. But she, — she might love him 
 all the same, you know, and yet she might hate the life, 
 might she not? — feel the cabin stifle her, and the days go 
 slowly, and the great waters look dreary, and so, grow 
 half mad, never seeing the world that she wanted to see. 
 It was wrong, because he loved her you say, and did all 
 he could, and could not help being poor. But still for her ; 
 — ah, it is so hard never to do what you want to do 1 It 
 made her wicked I fancy ; and then she grew cruel ; and 
 forgot that he would suffer, because she went to enjoy 1" 
 
 He heard in silence, then moved from her back to the 
 open casement: he was answered; and each word had 
 gone through his heart like the thrust of a knife. 
 
 Her very ignorance of the extent of the sin made her 
 pleading for its excuse more pregnant with meaning to 
 his ear. Unconsciously to her, her sympathy with the 
 actress was prescience for herself. 
 
 Viva sat silent some moments gazing into the fire, too 
 absorbed in her own thoughts to note that he had not re- 
 plied to her. She started as his voice, after awhile, came 
 again through the gloom from where he leaned by the 
 little lattice. 
 
 " You justify infidelity and ingratitude ! Well, they 
 are accursed sins in my sight, but it may be I am too 
 harsh to them ; it may be they grow ingrained in women !"
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 203 
 
 "Ob, no ! I do not justify them !" cried the child, as 
 she sprang to her feet, frightened and grieved. " What 
 do you mean? What can you think? I tried to say — 
 only I 'say it so ill — that what she did was heartless and 
 guilty, but yet she could not help doing it as it were, be- 
 cause the weariness in her life drove her to it. Now look ! 
 — how I love grand'mere, how I long to see the little 
 kitchen again, how fond I am of Roi Dore, and Bebe, and 
 the pigeons, and all. And yet! — so wicked I am, so 
 shameful I am! — that I knoio if you take me back and 
 leave me there month after month, year after year, I shall 
 grow so impatient of them every one, I shall so long for 
 excitement, and light, and music, and applause, and all 
 that one hears and sees here in Paris, I shall so hate that 
 still even life with no change in it save the change of the 
 leaves from green into yellow, that — let me try how I 
 may — I shall long for that glitter and renown on the stage 
 as she did. Do not be angry with me; it is better to tell 
 you the truth; and how can I help what I feel ?" 
 
 He gave a sharp quick sigh as he heard the words 
 poured out in half-penitent vehemence : — how was he to 
 hope to keep happy and innocent, since he could not keep 
 it in riches, this nature that panted so wistfully for for- 
 bidden and unattainable things? 
 
 "I am not angered," he said wearily, "and God forbid 
 I should blame you for truthfulness. But, I see plainly 
 your danger and my duty. You must tread a path, high 
 and bright in the sun of the world's smile; or, — or — my 
 child, you will live to curse me that my feet did not stamp 
 the life out of you when that life was scarce more than a 
 butterfly's among the flowers!" 
 
 Then he stooped, and touched her lips with hot swift 
 kisses, and put her gently from him, and went out alone 
 into the shades of t lie autumn night. 
 
 She, awed ami contrite, stood bewildered in the glow 
 of the burning wood, with a vexed impatience on her beau- 
 tiful quivering mouth. 
 
 "What could he mean? He grows so strange!" she 
 thought, restlessly beating her foot upon the boards. 
 "And he never told me now of the Fairy!" 
 
 " Viva!" said Mere Meverl from t he doorway. " Viva,
 
 204 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 here are some chestnuts the greengrocer below us has just 
 sent you. Look what fine ones !" 
 
 Viva took them without attention, but they were so 
 large and so tempting that she interested herself in setting 
 them on the embers to roast, and as she watched them in 
 their cooking laughed and talked with the good woman, 
 and had forgotten all her wrongs and her woes, as she 
 peeled off the shining brown skins from the white fruit 
 within, and dipped it down into the salt. 
 
 She had no care but what the chestnuts consoled: what 
 did she know of the great soul that suffered for her sake? 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 He did not return all the following, day. 
 
 Viva, accustomed to look to him for all her amusements, 
 and impatient to hear more of her Fairy, grew restless, 
 peevish, wayward, and full of impatience. 
 
 It was a glorious sunshiny autumnal day, and she had 
 to spend it all in-doors. The woman Mevert was with 
 her sick son, Mere Rose busied with a full household. 
 Viva tried all her occupations, to fling each away in dis- 
 content, and spent the chief of her hours beating her rosy 
 fingers on the lattice in petulant wrath at her detested 
 detention. As the day wore on into evening she grew 
 very angry, like the spoilt child that she was ; and deem- 
 ing herself injured by such unwonted neglect, worked her- 
 self into a chafing rage at her captivity ; which at sunset 
 she varied by gliding unperceived down the stairway, and 
 seating herself on the wooden step of the door, — a forbid- 
 den seat that she was resolute to occupy since she had 
 been kept imprisoned from sunrise. 
 
 Some momentary anxiety touched her as to what could 
 have kept him away ; but she believed devoutly in his
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 205 
 
 omnipotence, and her chief sensation was fiery anger at 
 her own disappointment. 
 
 "He is cruel — cruel!" she said feverishly to herself. 
 "He will not let me goto Coriolis, and he sends even that 
 lovely old fairy away I He is cruel !" 
 
 And she felt that for once she could rebel against him 
 without scruple. 
 
 A caged linnet sang above her, shaded by a lime-bough : 
 a pot of autumn roses shed their fragrance near her: the 
 sunshine was playing brightly through the picturesque 
 old alley — but she found no pleasure in anything. IS he 
 was restlessly flinging away the gold treasures of her 
 childhood in reckless eagerness for the mirage of her wo- 
 manhood. 
 
 " If only he would let me go to the stage !" she thought, 
 with wistful vehement longing. "He says I must tread 
 a high path, why will he not let me make one for myself 
 there?" 
 
 The words that he had spoken had made a deep im- 
 pression on her capricious mind : they had startled, touched, 
 and moved her; but she was capable rather of feeling 
 vividly and passionately, than of feeling for any very 
 long duration. She was at once intensely childlike and 
 intensely woman-like; and she had all the fervor of the 
 first, with all the changeability of the latter, temper. 
 
 " Souvent femme varie, fol a que se fie," was never truer 
 in its unmerciful statement than* it was of this bright 
 changeling ; but with her as with most of her sex, though 
 the needle of her fancy veered round so many times and 
 with such swift alternations, it never long ceased to point 
 to the one pole star of her own vanity. 
 
 The pageant of the stage had allured her with fatal 
 power: the blaze of a public recognition wore to her all 
 the Luminance of a heavenly apotheosis ; sin • panted to he 
 great: — as a young leopard, captive since it was a cub, 
 
 pants for the freedom of the foresl and the riot of the 
 
 chase: — and she could see no other way to greatness. 
 
 He told her that the w;i\ was thom-set, and ended in a 
 
 Lake A vermis ; but she disbelieved him with all the as- 
 sured audacious obstinacy of young ignorance, and she 
 
 18
 
 206 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 thought, — if only she could find it out, and pass up- 
 ward by it, and smile at him from the eminence to which 
 it led ! 
 
 The poison had entered her soul : and although he had 
 thought that he had drawn out all its virus, it had sunk 
 too deeply for any antidote wholly to act against it. More- 
 over, the face and the grace of Coriolis had seduced her 
 imagination ; and no warning, no counsel, no statement 
 of fact could dethrone this sovereign of her fancy. Through 
 Coriolis she had had a glimpse into the one world that at- 
 tracted her; the one life that to her looked well worth the 
 living: her thoughts recurred to her lost paradise again 
 and again and again. But now with more dangerous 
 force : for they were nursed in silence. She had learned 
 not to speak of the thing that lay nearest her heart : — there 
 is no surer sign with any youthful thing that its conscious- 
 ness has come, and that its innocence is in peril. 
 
 A few noons before she had sat on the sill of the little 
 window, impatient to go out into the sunny noisy street 
 below. She had wondered why the grisette, who a few 
 days before had been sewing so merrily that rose-colored 
 skirt, now worked without song and with her head drooped 
 so low. 
 
 "What ails thee, Therese ?" She had heard the girl who 
 leaned out beside her : and the dark-eyed worker had 
 dropped her head lower over her labor. 
 
 " Lulu is gone to study in Romel" 
 
 "Ah, bah !" the consoler had cried. " There are plenty 
 more students as good as Lulu: and besides — he will 
 come back." 
 
 The grisette had shaken her glossy head with a smile 
 as sad as tears. 
 
 "They come back from Rome — yes: but back to what 
 they left — never." 
 
 And Viva, with a dim perception of what her meaning 
 had been, felt her heart ache for the speaker, and had 
 watched her with a dreamy interest, half sympathy, half 
 scorn. 
 
 "Why care for a student? — if it were a king now!" 
 thought the patrician foundling. " Still ! — it must be 
 very sad to love like that, a creature who does not care,
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 20? 
 
 but only goes away, gayly, to his Rome and to his 
 pleasures !" 
 
 She was being quite as cruel as the painter Lulu: but 
 she did not dream of applying the lesson to herself. 
 
 As she sat there, fretting at her durance, doing nothing, 
 thinking herself cruelly used because she had missed one 
 day of sunlight in the streets and gardens of Paris, she 
 looked now and then up at the opposite window, where 
 the grisette sat at work. She saw how tearfully the 
 stitcher's eyes drooped over the heavy work ; how wearily 
 yet how tenderly the sewing-girl stooped ever and again 
 to a little wooden cradle at her feet; how listless and full 
 of pain was the wan faded look of the face that the sunset, 
 light only lit to make paler still: and she felt vaguely 
 sorry for the sorrow that never had touched herself. Yet 
 she thought, half in contempt, half in compassion: 
 
 " I would not sit weeping there ; — I would go to a 
 Rome of my own, and make myself happy with somebody 
 else !" 
 
 Of the love that sees all the world centered in one single 
 life, Viva had no conception. It looked as foolish to her 
 as a bee would have looked, which, finding one dower 
 yield it no fragrance, yet should have; clung persistently 
 to the oik; cruel and sterile blossom, rejecting all the 
 thousand odors of the thousand other roses round it. 
 
 Instinctive egotism is ever instinctively philosophical. 
 
 As she sat there in the sun, with tin; striped awning 
 over her head, and tin; carol of the linnet on her ear, there 
 came to her a dainty litile page, all scarlet and gold, like 
 a little gallant from the galleries of Versailles, with his 
 hat, in his hand, and a profound obeisance that woul 1 
 have done honor to a prince Viva started and colored 
 at the sight of him: then, mindful of her dignity, sat still 
 and regarded him with a mingling of curiosity and com- 
 mand,— her memory wenl to her lost Faust: thisdazzling 
 baby-servitor looked just like such an emissary as he 
 
 WOUld have sent. 
 
 lie bowed again, very low to her. 
 
 "Mademoiselle, my mistress entreats to see you once 
 
 more." 
 
 "Your mistress!"
 
 208 TRICOTRIST, 
 
 Viva's heart beat loud ; her cheeks flushed crimson, her 
 thoughts sprang instantly to the truth: — earth held for 
 her but one woman. 
 
 "Madame Coriolis, — she begs to speak to you," con- 
 tinued the little page. " Her carriage waits — at the end of 
 this passage-way, — she trusts you will do her this honor ?" 
 
 Viva pressed her hands to her heart, to still the choking 
 sob that rose in her throat at the recollection that she 
 must refuse this by every law of duty, of love, and of obe- 
 dience. 
 
 " I cannot, I must not!" she murmured. " It would be 
 so wicked I" 
 
 The page, regardless of her words, pressed his message 
 on her: his mistress only craved a word, his mistress 
 never was answered by a refusal, his mistress was accus- 
 tomed to have her own way and will at all times. 
 
 "I cannot, I dare not!" pleaded Viva, losing all the 
 memory of her own dignity, and ready at every word to 
 burst into tears. "He has forbidden me: he will never 
 speak to me again if I go to her. I long to come, — I do 
 indeed, — but how can I disobey him ? He is all I have 
 in the world, — he is so good, so noble, so generous ; — it 
 would be so hideously wicked to rebel against him !" 
 
 The baby in scarlet and gold suppressed the immeas- 
 urable scorn that he felt, and proved himself a delicate 
 tactician. To live in the service of the actress was to 
 live to do her desire, by fair means or by foul. He en- 
 treated, he beguiled, he argued, he begged for his own 
 sake, and he counseled for her own, in language so well 
 chosen, that, when backed by the seduction of her own 
 wishes, it proved only too powerful with Viva. 
 
 "It is only to speak to me, it cannot be much harm?" 
 she pleaded with her conscience, as she cast a hasty glance 
 back into the house. The two women were not there to 
 see ; Tricotrin was away, there was no fear of detection ; 
 and, — who knew what she miffht miss forever if she flung 
 this chance away untried, if she threw this offer away 
 untested ? 
 
 "I will go !" she said breathlessly, casting her red cloak 
 that lay behind her over her head, and fleeing fast down 
 the street, as fast as though she fled from temptation.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 209 
 
 She knew that she was committing a great sin ; sin- 
 knew that she was doing what was base, disloyal, and 
 cowardly, since she would not have disobeyed him thus, 
 save in his absence; she know that she was false to 
 every better thing within her. But the temptation was 
 too strong, the allurement was too glorious in hue to be 
 rejected; she felt vile in her own sight, yet, nevertheless, 
 she went. 
 
 It was the transgression of every law of love., and 
 honor, and duty, and pure faith, that bound her life: it 
 was the casting away by deliberate act of all the sweet- 
 ness and the safety of the guardianship which environed 
 her; it was the oblivion of his gravest counsel, and the 
 defiance of his tenderest desire: but the passion for glory 
 that possessed her, for the glory that to her was embodied 
 in the form of Coriolis, was stronger than every other 
 feeling in her. She blindly followed where that ignis 
 fatuus led. 
 
 Panting, trembling, growing pale and scarlet by turns, 
 with expectation and her own consciousness of evil doing, 
 she stood by the closed carriage from which the face of 
 her angel looked out, in the little antique darkened street, 
 through which the evening light was wandering in rich, 
 deep rays of blended color. 
 
 "You sent for me?" she ask"d tremulously; and look- 
 ing up in this woman's sweet azure eyes, she thought with 
 all the noble, senseless, vain, generous obstinacy of youth 
 thai her intuition must be more true than all the expe- 
 rience of others, that with this fair bright face no sin could 
 
 go! 
 
 "You little fool!" said Coriolis with a smile. l 'W hy 
 did you let that man take you away from me the other 
 day?" 
 
 Viva grew very pale; but she gave an honest answer. 
 
 "He says you are very wicked, and he would rather 
 see me dead than like you!" 
 
 Coriolis laughed aloud; a silvery musical laughter, 
 happy as a child's. 
 
 "He is complimentary — your friend! Well! do you 
 believe him ?" 
 
 18*
 
 210 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 "I ought," murmured Viva, wistfully and piteously. 
 "But I cannot! I think you are an angel." 
 
 Coriolis laughed afresh: the ingenuous simplicity of 
 reply did not touch her to pity, merely to amusement. 
 
 "Think so if you like," she said, "and I will be your 
 good angel. See here, little one, I was in earnest when 
 I offered to help you to a career. I can make you the 
 fashion in a night, and I will do it if you have any sense, 
 and are any way tractable. You have a splendid head — 
 I tell you so — I was not handsomer myself, I verily be- 
 lieve. A creature with a face like yom*s can always have 
 the world at her feet. But not if she be shut up in a gar- 
 ret where no eyes see her. One may as well be a spar- 
 row as a kingfisher, if one never glitters in the sun under 
 men's sight. You are a kingfisher. Well, come and fly 
 in the light, do not mope in a wicker cage. I will take 
 you with me, and show you my world, — cornel" 
 
 Viva, white to her lips, and trembling sorely, looked up 
 with appealing eyes. 
 
 "Do not ask me, do not ask me 1" she cried, piteously. 
 " He says he will never share me with you, that he will 
 never look on me again if I go with you I I would give 
 all the world if I had it, to come — but I dare not grieve 
 him; I dare not!" 
 
 "Pooh !" cried the comedian. " What are women made 
 for but to plague the souls of men ? It is our empire, that 
 — of course he likes to keep you in prison, all jailers love 
 power." 
 
 Viva shook her head. 
 
 " Oh no, no ! You do not know him ; he is so good, so 
 generous, so gentle. He would never tell me anything 
 but for my happiness. He fears you because he thinks 
 you are so wicked, and he says that you broke that poor 
 sailor's heart with your cruelty." 
 
 Coriolis set her delicate teeth, and a slight flush height- 
 ened the bloom of art on her cheeks ; but she smiled with 
 amused negligence, and took the means which she saw 
 would be the surest to blind the child's instinct of right. 
 
 "Your friend calumniates me: a very general crime. 
 It is the penalty we pay for our eminence," she answered. 
 "Sailors! have I aught to do with common seamen? He
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 211 
 
 errs strangely: but wc will show him his error. Come yon 
 only with me,— just for these next i'ew hours, — and I will 
 make a princess of you. He shall see you on the throne 
 of the world; for is not the applause of all Paris thai ? 
 and he will thank me, and worship me as your best friend. 
 Look you, little lady ; — ho is poor, this Tricotrin of yours ; 
 you are a great tax upon him, you are a burden that serves 
 him in nothing. Have you ever thought of that?" 
 
 " Never !" — her head drooped, the remembrance was a 
 deadly blow to her pride. 
 
 " But it is the truth nevertheless. Now, if you will trust 
 me, I will make you great, applauded, courted, powerful, 
 above all, independent. And what is there so sweet as 
 independence ? To go where one will, to do as one chooses, 
 to have to ask naught except one's own fancy, to scatter 
 money where and when and how one pleases! Ah, try 
 that! you will never endure dependence after it. You 
 have a proud face : how can you bear to eat the bread of 
 charity ?" 
 
 The child was stung to the quick; the merciful hand 
 that had saved and sheltered and succored her, looked 
 now like a glove of iron, whose clasp froze her blood. 
 
 Coriolis saw the pain that she inflicted, but she was 
 pitiless to it. 
 
 "You are nothing but a young pariah, a young pauper 
 now," she continued. "If you will come with me we 
 will change all that. You will leap at a bound into your 
 proper sphere; you will become rich as well as famous; 
 think then how you can repay this man whom you love, 
 whereas now you are only a care, a weight, an expense, 
 an onus upon him. Have you remembered all this? 
 Come ! — just to see for two hours what my empire, what, 
 my world, an; like. You shall return at nightfall: I will 
 send you home; and I will take care I hat he bears at once 
 that you are with me, — I know where he is.— and he will 
 be too just, I trust, when he sees my desire to serve you, 
 to continue to think such false and Buch evil things of 
 me." 
 
 "Oh, yes! I know well thai he would, if he would 
 bul believe !" sighed Viva; and a beautiful vision ai 
 before her, of her idol purified in the sighl of her friend,
 
 212 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 cleansed of calumny, and beloved by him as well as by 
 herself, in all the radiance of that new world for which 
 she pined. It was a child's vision, all glorious with 
 colors never seen upon earth, generous with all the fa- 
 naticism and chivalry of youth, vain and self-confident 
 with all youth's headstrong bigotry and ignorance. 
 Every warning had died out from her remembrance. 
 Coriolis was in her belief at once the noblest empress, 
 and the noblest martyr, that the world could hold. 
 
 "You shall make him believe," said her temptress, in- 
 different what she averred, so that she became successful 
 in her caprice of divorcing from the man who had offended 
 her, and aroused her hatred, the only creature that was 
 dear to him. " Come with me, — at least for an hour or 
 so? You are no baby, that you must have no will of 
 your own. You are old enough to act for yourself; and 
 you must act if ever you desire to be great. The years 
 are few that a woman reigns : she cannot afford to waste 
 one. Come with me ; and you shall see what my life is 
 like. I will give you a glimpse of it to-night. I will 
 metamorphose you into a young sovereign, — you are 
 nothing now but a little peasant. You want costume, 
 jewels, lace, trailing skirts, everything ! All those em- 
 bellishments are to a creature like you, as its gold setting 
 .is to an emerald. Without them you may be a gem in- 
 deed, but you are unpolished, and will glitter in no 
 regalia. Come! you cannot be afraid? You look brave 
 enough to take your own way, and adhere to it. If you 
 listen to him you will pass your whole life in an attic like 
 the one that imprisons you now; you will never be seen 
 except by some clowns on a farm, or some boors in a 
 tavern ; you will never wear anything better than linen 
 and serge ; you will always go on foot and have others 
 splash you with the mud of their chariot wheels; you 
 will always sit at your lattice window to see the world's 
 processions pass by without you ; you will always be ob- 
 scure, obscure like a wretched mole under a tree, when 
 with one effort of will, one touch of sense, you might 
 have changed all that, and been as great as I am. Only 
 think, little fool, — only think what it is that you do 1" 
 
 Viva's color had changed many times during the utter-
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 213 
 
 ance of the actresses's conjuration ; her breath came and 
 went rapidly ; her whole form was tremulous with emo- 
 tion and desire. "To be obscure!" It was the one hell 
 that she dreaded. "To be great!" it was the one heaven 
 that she craved. To be one of those who " sat at their 
 lattices " in the quietude of an humble home, while the 
 great pageantry of life swept on below her window with 
 no place in its carnival crowds for her, no voice of hers 
 in its laughter, no banner amid its proud standards up- 
 held by her hand, was the future that she feared with a 
 passionate terror — the terror of inborn ambition, of pre- 
 dominant vanity. 
 
 With a single bound her foot was on the carriage steps, 
 her hand upon the carriage cushions. 
 
 "I will come!" she cried, breathlessly; shame was on 
 her, and all the consciousness of sin against the one to 
 whom her lifelong allegiance, and her uttermost sacrifice 
 were due. She felt the burning horror of some great 
 wickedness consume her, she knew that she wronged 
 him in his absence — a crime and a cowardice in one. 
 But the temptress prevailed with her ; the desire for the 
 unknown conquered her; her idolatry of this one forbid- 
 den thing was stronger with her than all ties of grati- 
 tude. 
 
 " I will come!" she cried; while in her ear there 
 seemed to sound the words that he had spoken: " Share 
 your life with that wanton, I will not." 
 
 '.'That is right, that is wise," said Coriolis, with a smile, 
 as she drew her up into the carriage. " You are a baby 
 no longer; you have a woman's divine right — Sell-Will.'' 
 
 Viva did not hear; her eyes Celt blind, her senses grew 
 dizzy, her ears had a singing sound in them. She could 
 have sobbed aloud with remorse, and fear, and contri- 
 tion; but the guilty joy of victorious rebellion, the guilty 
 sweetness of unlawful longing near to its fruition, the 
 guilty liberty of selfremancipation, were in her vein-. 
 and there was too much in her of the leaven of Eve for 
 her not to deliver herself up to their usurpation. She 
 knew herself treacherous, faithless, cowardly ; but curi- 
 osity, vanity, and the desire of pleasure conquered her 
 conscience. She elected, as millions wiser have chosen,
 
 214 TRIC0TR1N, 
 
 to turn her face aside from duty, and follow where her 
 sorceress led. 
 
 ^.The equipage dashed off with her; and if conscience 
 spoke, it could not be heard in the noise of the flashing, 
 whirling, azure wheels that swept her down white roads 
 and under green avenues through the gold and bronze 
 gates of the actress's villa. 
 
 Coriolis was not without her kind impulses; she was 
 of a sunny temper, and could be generous when to be so 
 did not interfere with her own supreme selfishness. The 
 rapt adoring face of the child had attracted her, and she 
 had felt a fancy to see it closer. But beside these she 
 had motives less innocent: one, on whom her own 
 charms had palled, but whose contentment and patron- 
 age were essential to her, had also seen that "flower-like 
 face " under its scarlet hood, and had bade her let him see 
 it once more, and more closely. And Coriolis was one 
 of those women who own but one cultus and one passion 
 — those of gold. 
 
 Yiva's heart was beating at fever heat as she followed 
 her enchantress through the exquisite miniature palace, 
 in which the stage- sovereign reigned. The knowledge 
 of her own sin in coming thither, her terror for the rebuke 
 her flight would draw down on her head, the sharp sting- 
 ing sense of a criminal action that seemed to prick her like 
 an iron goad, served yet, in some fashion, to render her 
 ecstacy in her own transgression wilder, and sweeter, and 
 stronger. She had done very wrong, she knew that ; but 
 she had rushed forth into perilous liberty ; she had seized 
 the forbidden fruit ; she had entered into the unknown 
 land ; she had too much of the spirit of Eve in her not to 
 take delight in her daring deed. Moreover, glancing around 
 on all the luxurious beauty that blinded her, she thought: 
 "She was unknown and penniless once, they say; why 
 should I not become like her, too?" 
 
 In this lay Coriolis's charm for her: — that the actress 
 was to her the incarnation of all that may be accomplished 
 by the force of beauty alone, against every antagonism of 
 origin and of circumstance. And of the price at which 
 such accomplishment was attained, Viva knew nothing. 
 
 " Come in hither," said Coriolis, leading her into the
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 215 
 
 daintiest of dressing-chambers, that made the child think 
 of an empty bird's-nest she had once seen in an elder 
 bush, all silvered over with glistening hoar-frost inside 
 and out. 
 
 " Let us look at you," pursued her hostess ; and she re- 
 morselessly pulled off the red cloak, and shook down all 
 Viva's hair, talking in a pleasant little murmur like a sing- 
 ing-mouse all the while herself. Coriolis was a woman 
 without any sort of mind; she was almost as absolutely 
 brainless as any parroquet ; but she knew human weak- 
 nesses well, and she knew how to flatter them ; and those u 
 two forms of knowledge suffice to conquer a child. They 
 suffice, many times, to vanquish a man. 
 
 " Have you sent to tell him, madame?" asked Viva, a 
 pang of conscience stirring amid the bliss of her intox- 
 icated vanity. 
 
 "Your friend! oh yes," said Coriolis; and Viva did 
 not know that the daily bread of such women as this lies 
 in falsehood. 
 
 Coriolis asked her all her history, and Viva told it ; the 
 sense of shame at her costume, and her homely dwelling, 
 striving with her own conviction that she belonged to 
 some lineage of special though hidden splendor. 
 Coriolis heard and laughed. 
 
 "Ah, ha! It is always out of such as you that women 
 like me are made." 
 
 " Is it?" asked the child, breathless with hope and joy, 
 unwitting the frightful truth that lav in tin; words. 
 
 " Is it? Of course it is!'' cried her temptress. "The 
 world is against us as we start, and we have out revenge; 
 we trap it, and strip it, and make it our laughing-stock 
 and our golden-granary both in one. Y<>n do nol under- 
 stand? Pooh, little one! You will learn all this fast 
 enough. Oh, life is a pleasant thing! — you may believe 
 that. Look here! since I — since I came on the Btage, 
 have I not lived like an empress, and eaten like a Stras- 
 burgduek, and dressed like a fashion-plate, and had jewels 
 that outshone the duchess's diamonds, and seen all the 
 world turn after me as I drove or as 1 walked? To lie 
 sure! It is hard work at Brst, perhaps; — bul not tor a 
 beautiful woman. 1 am beautiful ; you will be so. When
 
 216 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 a woman can look at her face in the mirror, and say 
 honestly, 'I am handsomer than one in a million/ it is as 
 good for her as if she said, ' I am born to a crown.' Bet- 
 ter, indeed — because it is a much gayer time that waits 
 for her. Do you see?" 
 
 " Yes,"-said Viva, drinking the poison in as though it 
 were the water of life. 
 
 Coriolis believed what she said. To a creature without 
 soul and brain, the lusts of the flesh, and the joys of the 
 palate, and of the vanity, are all in all. 
 
 Coriolis was honest; — she enjoyed. 
 
 "Stay an instant, and you shall behold yourself as you 
 will be," she pursued, as she threw open the door of one 
 of her cabinets, and pulled out laces, and silks, and velvets, 
 and gems, till the girl's eyes were dazzled. 
 
 Viva felt none of the prescience which usually awakes 
 in innocence that is brought into the presence of vice. 
 There was nothing of warning mingled with the allure- 
 ments exercised over her. She had no idea of aught of 
 evil or of clanger in her sorceress ; she saw an exquisite 
 Udng with a cherub's face, and the power, it seemed to 
 her, of a magician ; and every one of Coriolis's movements 
 fascinated her with a sense of wonder, attraction, and de- 
 light. 
 
 " A"s this woman was, she might herself be one clay 1" — 
 this was the one thought that enchained her. 
 
 Laughing, and keeping up her silvery, mirthful babble 
 that was like the ring of sleigh-bells over snow, Coriolis, 
 who had much of the infant in her and much of the fool, 
 and who had as many caprices as a spoiled marmoset, 
 loosened and tossed aside with disdain Viva's white linen 
 dress, and threw over her one of her own costly trailing 
 robes, and all the fantasy of a jeweled court costume. 
 Her hands were quick and agile at such transformation; 
 and she changed her in fifty seconds from a little pictur- 
 esque bohemian, to a magnificent young beauty ; while 
 gazing at the alteration in the long mirrors that 
 fronted her, touched herself to know if she were awake, 
 and gazed, with parted lips and throbbing temples, at her 
 own apparition. 
 
 " There!" cried Coriolis, laughing more and more. "Look
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND ST I! AY. 217 
 
 there! See what Dress — the god and the devil of wo- 
 men — can do for you. Dress — dress! Why, child, your 
 beauty, without the aid of costume, is uothing better than 
 the pearl before it leaves the oyster-shell. Will you go 
 back to your shell, you pretty pearl? Not if 1 know 
 aught of your heart." 
 
 Viva made her no answer. All *he self-love of Nar- 
 cissus held her entranced. 
 
 " I am as beautiful as you !" she cried, at last, aloud, 
 in ecstasy, throwing her arms above her head. 
 
 Coriolis turned away, with a cloud for once over her 
 smiling azure eyes. 
 
 " More so !" she said, shortly, with the impulses of 
 frankness at times natural to her. "More sol You 
 have what I have lost 1" 
 
 Viva did not ask what this was ; — she did not inquire 
 at the price of what loss this celebrity, and this wealth 
 that she coveted, had been acquired. ' She was absorbed 
 in contemplation of herself. The actress looked at her, 
 and smiled; her own passing emotions had swiftly van- 
 ished. 
 
 " How it runs through us all !" she cried. 'With all 
 the love one has. one never loves anything like Wie's self! 
 What a supreme joy it is — that knowing one's self fair! 
 But there is a still greater joy than thai : it is to hear 
 the world say so. Do you see, you charming bagatelle, 
 how happy you are? — you are beautiful ! You can scoff 
 at all the Caesars; their power is nothing to yours. To 
 be handsome while one lives, and to die before any of 
 that fades: if one can do this, one can laugh at all the 
 priests and all the sages !" 
 
 And she laughed yet again, and Viva joined in her 
 laugh. The airy paganism suited the child's temper, 
 and Goriolis was that mosl persuasive of proselytizers— 
 a disciple who believed implicitly in the doctrines she in- 
 culcated. To he fair all her years through, and to dje 
 before any of "that" waned and withered, was to Corio- 
 lis the perfection of human existence ; ami the only form 
 of dread that ever weighed on this can thought! 
 
 mindless, shameless thing, was the terror thai th< day 
 should ever emne w hen she Bhoulddash her hand through 
 
 19
 
 218 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 her mirror in despair at the lusterless eyes, and the lined 
 brow, and the dulled tresses it should give back to her 
 vision. 
 
 Viva gave a deep sigh as she heard. 
 
 "Ah I" she murmured, "if I could only have ten years 
 of a life like yours I should be content!" 
 
 " To resign it ? Not you. Little one, — when we have 
 tasted triumph we have fed on a fruit of Olympus, that 
 makes all mortal food flavorless, and leaves us with a 
 cruel craving appetite, never still 1" 
 
 Coriolis had heard a poet say this : and used the an- 
 swer, as one picturesque and likely to be persuasive to 
 this young listener and tyro. 
 
 "What matter!" cried Viva, in the magnificent reck- 
 lessness of ignorance. " I would rather taste it once 
 and hunger forever, than never know its flavor all the 
 days of my life !" 
 
 Coriolis, with a curious fancy for this daring, vain, 
 lovely creature, who made her think of her own child- 
 hood, laid both hands on Viva's shoulder, and looked at 
 her with a gaze that was more earnest than her volatile, 
 sparkling, wandering eyes had ever given. 
 
 "Are jovl too good for it ?" she murmured to herself. 
 " No. Not a whit. You are just what I was ; — cleverer 
 perhaps, and of more wit, but just like me. You would 
 only break an honest man's heart, if you were to begin 
 with one: it is better to commence as you will end, with 
 pillaging fools and knaves. Pooh ! you don't under- 
 stand," she cried aloud, with all her gayety. " You are 
 a little simpleton. Listen ; I will put you on the stage. 
 You will have talent, I can see. If you have not, it will 
 matter nothing. Walk well, dress superbly, do strange 
 things — the odder the better, and with your features you 
 can make your fortune, though you can say no more than 
 a squeaking doll at a fair." 
 
 " But I want to be great!" cried Viva, dissatisfied with 
 her future prospects. 
 
 " Nonsense 1 When a woman passes down through a 
 crowd, and the people look back after her and call out, 
 ' that is she /' has she not greatness, the best greatness ? 
 Some Latin idiot says, they have told me, that the
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 219 
 
 'pointing finger' is no sure sign we are great — Ridicu- 
 lous! When it points our way we may be pretty sure 
 we are on the highroad to fame. Besides 'great, great, 
 great !' What does that matter ? . What matters in this 
 world is to eat and drink well, and dance, and play, and 
 laugh, and see others perish in envy of us, and have 
 more gold than we can take up in both our hands, and 
 enjoy ourselves while we are living. That is what 
 matters. And no one can do all those better than a 
 beautiful woman. Now go you in there, and wait till 
 I dome to you. I will not be long." 
 
 She pushed Viva gently through a door that opened 
 into a small cabinet, and closed the door upon her. It 
 had been very late in the day when she had met the ac- 
 tress ; it was now evening ; the little chamber was softly 
 lit, and full of the perfume of flowers and the luxuries of 
 wealth. Viva dropped down on a couch, and wondered 
 whether she were awake or dreaming; a sense of fear 
 and a great remorse stole on her; she knew she had 
 done wickedly, and a vague, indefinable dread of some 
 unknown evil came over her. She began to grieve for 
 her disobedience, and to longtobe safe in (he little attic 
 with Tricotrin. What would he say! what would he 
 think! 
 
 Her throat swelled ; she felt as if she must scream out 
 loud; even the elegance and the fragrance of the place 
 added to its strangeness and her own fears: — instinct- 
 ively her hand wandered over the rich silk of her robe, 
 and her eyes watched the glisten of its gold embroideries, 
 seeking consolation in these. They brought a certain 
 solace. 
 
 "If I could only wear 1 hem always 1" she thoughl : and 
 the vision of herself upon the stage, before the world, cov- 
 ered with flowers, welcomed with tumults of applause, in- 
 toxicating multitudes with her grace and her glance in all 
 the triumph thai she had seen attained by Coriolis, ar ise 
 before her, and numbed all her repentance. 
 
 The desire to be "great" possessed her: when thai in- 
 satiate passion enters a living soul, be it the soul of a wo- 
 man-child dreaming of a coquette's conquests, or a crowned 
 hero craving for a new world, it becomes blind to all i Ise.
 
 220 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 Moral death falls on it ; and any sin looks sweet that takes 
 it nearer to its goal. It is a passion that generates at 
 once all the loftiest and all the vilest things, which, be- 
 tween them, ennoble and corrupt the world ; even as heat 
 generates at once the harvest and the maggot, the purpling 
 vine and the lice that devour it. It is a passion without 
 which the world would decay in darkness, as it would do 
 without heat; yet to which, as to heat, all its filthiest 
 corruption is due. 
 
 "I shall be great!" thought Viva, to whom the great- 
 ness of the stage looked as the greatness of an empire: 
 and remorse ceased to touch her. They must suffer that 
 she might ascend: — this was the reckless reasoning of the 
 human and female egotism within her. 
 
 A flood of light startled her as the door was flung open 
 and Coriolis entered ; freshly arrayed, and with her fair 
 feathery hair lying lightly on her shoulders, diademed 
 with flowers and with gems. She floated to the child 
 with her soft swift undulating movement — the movement 
 of the born alm&h, in whom motion is poetry, and in 
 whose limbs lies eloquence. 
 
 "Thou art in the twilight, little one!" she cried, using 
 the familiar and caressing "thou" for the first time. 
 "Come; — I have a better light for thee than that; and 
 one in which there are eager eyes to behold thee. Come!" 
 
 " Where ?" asked the tempted one, with wistful wonder. 
 
 Coriolis smiled a little bitterly. 
 
 "Hush! We never ask 'where' in our world, 
 
 On va oii va toute chose 
 Ou va le laurier et la rose!" 
 
 And she drew the girl from the chamber, with her soft, 
 white, dimpled hand clasped on Viva as though it were 
 a glove of steel. 
 
 The roses had all cankers at their cores, and poisoned 
 the lips that kissed them; the laurels were all twined in 
 with thorns, which drew blood from the brows that they 
 wreathed: — what of that? Cankerless roses die also ; and 
 there are no laurels whose fruit is sweet. 
 
 She led the child in its ignorance to perdition : but she 
 did not think so: vice was fair in her own sight, and the
 
 THE STORY OF A WATF AND STRAY. 221 
 
 devil of gold was her god ; — a good god who enriched 
 those that served him: six' thought she could do no better 
 than bring a neophyte to believe in her cultus, and- serve 
 in her temple. 
 
 "Enjoy — enjoy — enjoy," her heart had whispered in 
 her own childhood, when she had sat on the lonely sea- 
 shore and longed for a world that was unknown: and she 
 had enjoyed, and it seemed well to her still, and the sole 
 thing that it was worth while for a mortal to do. In 
 tossing the fruit of desire into the child's young bosom, 
 she only gave that which had been luxuries to her own 
 lips, and which seemed to her still the one apple of life 
 worth the plucking. She was wicked, because things all 
 sense and no soul must be so; but she was honest, and 
 she only led where she herself had ever gone, with tune- 
 ful swift feet, rejoicing. 
 
 "Evil, he thou my good," she had said, in her fair, wan- 
 ton, indolent, careless fashion, and evil had been her good; 
 it had served her well, heaped wealth on her, made the 
 air she lived in full of laughter, and the lovers she sought 
 facile to their yoke, and the years that flew over her head, 
 sunlit and short and radiant with mirth. Evil had been 
 prodigal of gilts and graces to her, and had recompensed 
 her as kings recompense; she deemed that there was no 
 better master upon earth. Virtue was a uiggard tyrant, 
 who left his servitors to starve: but Evil was a prince, 
 who scattered gold and flowers with both hand-. 
 
 There be those who in their gilded shame feel the 
 shrinking scornful passion, at their own fall, of the poet's 
 Egyptian harlot, — 
 
 " What is Lite without Honor? 
 And what c;>n the lit''' thai I live 
 Q-ive to Hi'- I shall care to continue, not caring for aught it can 
 
 give? 
 I, despising the fools that despise me, — a plaything not pleasing 
 
 m\ self, 
 Whose liiv for tin' pelf that maintains it, must sell what is paid 
 
 Hot l'\ ( 
 
 And the fancies of men change. An. I bitterly bought i- the 
 
 bread that I eat. 
 For, though purchased with body and spirit, when purchased, 
 
 't is yet all un.-weet." 
 
 19*
 
 222 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 But there be also many others in whom this sting of 
 scorn is dead, this ache of conscience is lulled to rest by 
 the opiates of vanity and of pleasure; there be those to 
 whom the life that they lead looks the best life, and to 
 whom license is precious, to whom enjoyment is the Alpha 
 and Omega of existence, and to whom the chime of golden 
 coinage is the only music of the spheres. 
 
 And Coriolis was one of these. She had been very 
 weary, and fretful as a caged bird, in innocence ; in vice 
 she rejoiced and was free ! A future might come indeed 
 when she would perish of famine on the stones of the 
 streets: — what of that? They must have some soul in 
 them who dread a future; and there was no soul in this 
 gay airy thing, though her dancing feet trod the souls of 
 men down and killed them. 
 
 Like Dorat she had gathered every flower except the 
 Immortelle : and the one that she had passed over she 
 never missed. 
 
 Immortality ! — the word is ridiculous named in the same 
 breath with such things as Coriolis; what has eternity to 
 do with women such as this, too foul for heaven and too 
 frail for hell ?- 
 
 She led the child through dusky fragrant passages, aro- 
 matic in odor, with the sheen of silk and satin glimmering 
 in the shadow from their walls. 
 
 Then she drew back, and sweeping aside a curtain that 
 hung before an arched and opened door, motioned to Viva 
 to pass within before her. 
 
 It was the entrance to a banqueting-room. 
 
 Viva, touched for the first time with a chill of timidity, 
 a throb of fear, hung back, wistful yet longing. 
 
 Through the arch of the gilded portal there were a 
 blaze of light, a glisten of rose color, a splendor of gold, a 
 wilderness of flowers, an odor of wines and spices and 
 burnt incense, a gay laughter from young men's throats, 
 that all blazed and whirled together upon the girl's won- 
 dering eyes and ears. 
 
 She paused, hesitating and half frightened before that 
 paradise of forbidden evil. 
 
 "Is it a temple?" she murmured breathlessly.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 223 
 
 Coriolis laughed ; a more cruel laugh than any that had 
 rung from her mocking lips. 
 
 "A temple 1 yes 1 Go in, — and worship our god." 
 And she thrust the child through the opening. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 It was toward the close of the day when Tricotrin re- 
 turned. 
 
 He was tired out, heated, exhausted ; as his habit was 
 when in pain, he had wandered far, walking on and on 
 through the open country, seeking solitude on the same 
 impulse as the stricken stag. In the red woods of the 
 late autumn, in the wide fields, with their arc of purple 
 angry sky, in the bleak plains swept by equinoctial gales, 
 he could breathe, think, resolve, kill passion in him, and 
 call back his strength. In j<>y, this Arab little loved the 
 oppression of cities, the pent confines of chambers, the 
 close atmosphere of crowded roof's ; in suffering, t hey mad- 
 dened him. They were like t he bars of his den to a caged 
 lion whom his jailers wound and taunt. 
 
 By evening-fall he returned; the linnet had ceased to 
 sing under its plume of lime; the sunbeams had cea 
 to play through the little brown dusky street ; in the door- 
 way stood the woman of the house looking up and down, 
 with her head op one side like a robin's, and the bright 
 dress of her native Basque province glowing in the shade 
 like a poppy growing out of a pile of black timber in a 
 wood-yard. 
 
 "Is the child not with you?" she cried, as he drew 
 near. 
 
 He lifted his head wearily. 
 
 " With me? No. I left her at home." 
 
 Mere Rose turned pale under her ruddy southern skin. 
 
 "Left her here! Where is she then ? She is not gone 
 with the Mevert — that I know — we have not seen her
 
 224 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 all the last half of the day, and we made certain that you 
 had taken her." 
 
 He said nothing, but pushed past her and sprang up 
 the staircase. 
 
 He threw door after door open, the house ringing with 
 his voice as he called her name aloud from cellar to attic; 
 — there was no answer. Her books, her bonbons, her 
 knot of autumn daisies, lay on the table in the little cham- 
 ber; but of Viva there was no trace. 
 
 The woman, joined by two or three of her neighbors, 
 stood listening below, frightened and bewildered. They 
 had no love for this fantastic child, "la demoiselle," as 
 they called her ironically, who held herself so haughtily 
 with so much airy scorn above them and theirs ; and who 
 either sat aloft in her casement like a framed picture, or 
 glittered out in the sun, with the negligent grace of some 
 elfin thing far too good for the earthly shrine that inclosed 
 her. But they loved Tricotrin with the faithful impas- 
 sioned love that all the populace gave him ; and for his 
 trouble they sorrowed themselves. 
 
 They felt a certain fear of the look on his face as he 
 descended the stairs and came to them. 
 
 " When saw you her last ?" he asked them. 
 
 They had seen her at the doorway some hour in the 
 afternoon, they told him ; they could not be sure of the 
 time; they were busy people, occupied with their wash- 
 ing, their ironing, their cooking, their flower-making, their 
 sweetmeat-baking ; they had had no time to take further 
 note. 
 
 The grisette, sewing still by the fast fading light at her 
 lattice, looked down; moved by that sympathy which 
 makes strangers become in a second as friends of a life- 
 time. 
 
 "You ask for the child?" she said to him. "I can tell 
 you, — the little one sat there on the doorstep as four 
 o'clock sounded; a little page/a creature all red and gold, 
 came up to her and took her away They went together 
 down the passage to that first corner yonder; and after 
 a little while I heard the noise of fast wheels and the 
 trotting of horses. She is gone, — that I know, — for she 
 never came back to the doorway."
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRA V. 225 
 
 Then, without interest to see how her news was taken, 
 she bent again over her work, to save the few precious 
 moments of dying light; rocking the wooden cradle with 
 her foot, and coughing, painfully, a short hard feverish 
 cough. A month before she had sung, as blithely as the 
 linnet under his lime-bough, the mischievous students' 
 wine-songs that had served her as cradle-ballads. 
 
 Tricotrin heard: — and he drew a deep shuddering 
 breath, as a soldier will do when the bullets have struck 
 him. 
 
 "It is Coriolis." he said in his throat, — then without 
 another word ho swept the eager women aside, and passed 
 down the street with the speed of the wind. 
 
 At the turn of the alley into the breadth of the street 
 adjoining there came at a quick pace a string of young 
 horses: they were from Normandy, and were wild and 
 strong, and, being young, fleet of foot. 
 
 He knew the man who rode their leader; a sturdy Nor- 
 man breeder of cattle; — they had been friends for many 
 a year, smoking and sauntering and laughing together, 
 under the Bpring-blooming apple orchards of the pleasant 
 farm-country. 
 
 Tricotrin caught at the rope bridle of one of the fore- 
 most colts. 
 
 "Will you lend him to me?" he asked, breathlessly. 
 "I am in sore need of haste: he shall lie back bj dawn.'' 
 
 "Take him!" cried the Norman, startled, like the wo- 
 men, by the look which he saw on a lace that he had 
 never beheld before clouded with aimht of care. "Take 
 him; and keep him as Ion ^ as you need; — I am at my 
 old stables; you will bring him there." 
 
 "Surely," — he stayed for no more words, bul threw 
 himself across the colt's hare hack, and urged it at a 
 stretching gallop through the crooked streets of the quarter. 
 
 The young horse, nothing loth to he free of the string, 
 Hew fast wit hoiit urging. 
 
 Tricotrin turned its head straight southward, to where 
 the actress rested in her gilded harbor, rich and soft with 
 the plunder of many lofty galleons that had .-truck flag 
 and foundered under the pirate'.- prow. 
 
 lie had spent no time in speech; he had wasted 1 1 « * t a
 
 226 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 single moment in self-abandonment to the anguish that 
 possessed him. But as he rode his heart was a hell 
 within him: he was not alone a man who went to rescue 
 from his spoilers a child that he cherished, he was a lover 
 who went to save from dishonor the creature that he 
 idolized. 
 
 And he knew that he might reach — too late. 
 
 The Norman colt, with its rough mane flying and its 
 bright eyes full of flame, asked no more welcome task than 
 to be let loose to its fullest speed, as though it were once 
 again at play in its own native pastures. Buildings and 
 throngs, and all the varicolored evening life of the city 
 were passed by as fast as a summer breeze sweeps by 
 over the corn ; yet night was down ere he reached the 
 outlying woods and gardens amid which the toy-palace 
 of Coriolis reared its gilded cupolas and shining roofs. 
 
 The colt was panting and tired out by the pace at which 
 it had been ridden ; it stood passively while he flung him- 
 self from its back and tied the halter to the post of an 
 entrance gate. The gates were unfastened ; he passed 
 through them, and up the grounds of the villa, strewed 
 with the damp odorous leaves of the late autumn. Lights 
 glistened through the interstices of the shutters all over 
 the frontage of the dainty dwelling, bosomed in its shrubs 
 and trees. 
 
 He cursed it as he looked. 
 
 Yice lived like this, while innocence died daily in the 
 streets I 
 
 As the velvet curtain fell behind her, Viva found her- 
 self within the chamber. 
 
 The fear died away in her; curiosity, wonder, eager- 
 ness, a thrill of triumph and a throe of delight at her own 
 rebellion all conquered it, and were stronger than the in- 
 stinctive and nameless dread within her a moment earlier. 
 
 Six or eight young men all rose and all turned their 
 eyes on her, and all came to her with words of admiring 
 greeting, which fell in a confused but delicious sense of 
 homage on her ear. She shrank back with all a child's 
 innocent shyness; she went forward with all a coquette's 
 innate impulses.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 227 
 
 She know that she looked very lovely; she know that 
 this exquisite sorceress at her side was content to be 
 eclipsed by herself; all the weakest and the worst things 
 other nature were appealed to and inflamed. The room 
 whirled round her in a blaze of color; the heavy perfume 
 on its air seemed to float round her in clouds of odor ; the 
 dazzle of the jewels and the precious metals on the ban- 
 queting table looked to her like the riches of an India — 
 she drew a deep breath, and laughed a little soft quiver- 
 ing wondering laugh, that yet had half a sob in it. 
 
 This was the world at last then. 
 
 The world! — this paradise of brilliant hues, and price- 
 less gems, and subtle perfumes, and honeyed words, and 
 ardent adoring eyes! The world! — ah ! how she mar- 
 veled that there could be found lives holy enough to sigh 
 for heaven if this elyshim were to be found od earthl 
 
 She had never a clear memory of all that followed on 
 her entrance into that enchanted room. All distinct re- 
 membrance was lost in a chaos of splendid images. For 
 splendid this false glitter, this glory of meretricious color, 
 this joyless joy, this hackneyed revelry, looked to the 
 youthful eyes which only saw its surface. For Viva, 
 reared amid the truth and the beauty of nature in inno- 
 cent solitude, was too essentially a slave to the feminine 
 soul within her to be poet enough to recoil from the false- 
 hood of pleasure, poet enough to cling to the severity and 
 simplicity of nature. The higher life escaped, — the lower 
 allured her. It was the beaten-oul gold of the jeweler's 
 laboratory, which was still far more beautiful in her sight 
 than the sun-fed lilies and lilacs of the spring. 
 
 She had a confused knowledge of being led to the firsl 
 seat at the table under the dome of light, that seemed to 
 her like the noontide sun. Of seeing some handsome 
 courtly faces bent toward her with that delighl in their 
 regard which she already knew so well as the tribute to 
 her charms. Of hearing such flattery t hal her brain grew 
 
 dizzy with it, and she fell stupefied, like a l> rercloyed 
 
 with honey. Of catching the vision of herself repeated 
 on every side, in mirrors, till she saw that one best-loved 
 image wherever her eyes turned. Of being moved to her 
 gayest, words and brightest laughter, till the audience an-
 
 228 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 plauded her idlest phrase as wit, and she felt herself a 
 sovereign, whose words were precious, as pearls and dia- 
 monds. Of tasting strange fruits, and wondrous confec- 
 tions, and wines that shone like so much sunbeam, till she 
 seemed to float on air and to lose all sense of earth, and 
 to dream that she was among the gods of the Greek fable. 
 
 She was drinking in poison — the poison of a hideous 
 evil — with her lips, and ears, and eyes, and thoughts; 
 but she did not know it; she was happy, she was victo- 
 rious, she was exultant, and she was too innocent to be 
 conscious that sin was encircling her on every side. 
 
 They were heedful not to affright her, but only to al- 
 lure ; they wreathed the death's head in summer flowers 
 for her; they drew her to the abyss with sweet careless 
 joyous music; they killed her with a poisoned rose. And 
 she did not know ; she was still a child, and still only 
 happy. 
 
 As she reigned there proudly and joyously, the actress 
 Coriolis looked at her once with a throb of remorse in her 
 dead conscience ; but she hunted it away as it arose. 
 
 "Pshaw!" she murmured. "What matter? A little 
 earlier? — a little later? Things like her are made to 
 slaughter and to plunder. She would end like me — it is 
 better to begin so. She will thank me one day that she 
 has wasted none of the years of her youth!" 
 
 As she thus thought, a door at the farther end of the 
 chamber opened; through it, facing her and behind the 
 child, came softly the graceful, slender shape of a hand- 
 some boy — a boy with dark eyes that gleamed with malice 
 and triumph. 
 
 He stole gently across the room and up to Yiva, and 
 as gently his arm stole round her fair throat, and his lips 
 brushed her curls. 
 
 "Yiva!" he whispered, "I have thee at last — oh, my 
 truant ! And here are the deathless roses, the fairy pa- 
 geants, the wines of the gods, that I promised thee!" 
 
 With a scream, as though a snake had touched her, she 
 sprang to her feet. 
 
 The spell on her was broken; the netted dove soared 
 from the snare. 
 
 "Let me go !" she cried aloud, as though by some in-
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRA V. 229 
 
 stinct the full sense of her peril flashed on her. " Let me 
 go 1 Oh, how vile I have been to come here! It is you ! 
 — you whom he forbade me ever to sec, ever to speak to, 
 ever to think of again; you who gave me your toys, and 
 deemed me some peasant girl you could kiss at your fancy ! 
 It is you! How could I tell it? How could I dream it ? 
 Let me go — let me go! I have sinned once against him; 
 I will not disobey him again — never again, never, never!" 
 
 The childlike words rang out loudly through the cham- 
 ber; she stood with her face flushed, scarlet with rage, 
 and shame, and outraged pride; her eyes flashing with 
 scorn on her boy-lover ; her mouth trembling with grief 
 for her own disobedience. 
 
 In an instant, by the voice of her young Faust, the 
 full knowledge of her own error had burst on her, piercing 
 through the mists of vanity, and delight, and wonder, and 
 intoxicated triumph. 
 
 She stretched her hands out in a piteous appeal to 
 Coriolis. 
 
 "Oh, take me back to him; take me back. You said 
 you would; and I feel so frightenedl" 
 
 Coriolis looked at her, and laughed. 
 
 The devil is never so brutal as when he comes into a 
 woman's form. 
 
 The cold, cruel, mocking laugh stung all the child's 
 proud spirit into life. 
 
 "Oh, I see now!" she cried out, in a mortal anguish 
 that no man there heard unmoved. "I see now how true 
 lie was — how wicked you are! You laugh! — you laugh 
 because you have made me disobey him. It is Satan 
 who laughs just so when men disobey God. oh how 
 mad 1 was to hearken to you! — oh, take me back, take me 
 back! Has not one of you all a heart to pity me? I 
 never meant to grieve him! 1 only meant to grow great, 
 and to pleasure him, and to he his glory. And I loved 
 her so — t hat woman !" 
 
 Her voice died in a sob. It was a bitter suffering to 
 her, the fall of her sovereign, the death of her ideal. 
 
 Her young lover smiled. . 
 
 " Love her still 1" he murmured. "What is her guilt? 
 — to have brought you to met" 
 
 20
 
 230 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 He stooped as he spoke, and sought to draw her into 
 his embrace, — the door was burst open, the curtain dashed 
 aside, a strong hand fell on him and forced him from her, 
 and tossed him like a broken bough across the chamber. 
 
 With a shriek of joy she threw herself into the arms of 
 her savior. 
 
 The voice of Tricotrin rang like a trumpet-call through 
 the silence. 
 
 " What! — had men need to dream of a Devil when the 
 world held Woman!" 
 
 Holding her to him with both arms he faced the baffled 
 and silence-stricken revelers ; and a great awe fell upon 
 them, such as fell on the dissolute patrician mob of Rome 
 before the passion of Virginius. 
 
 "One cannot kill such things as you — the vilest things 
 that breathe!" he cried, as his eyes blazed upon Coriolis. 
 "You murder — body and soul! — and yet we must let ye 
 go free because ye are women, because ye can crouch and 
 shelter behind the shield of the sex that ye outrage ! God! 
 if I set my heel on your throat I should do no more guilt 
 than if I strangled the life from an adder. Yet I must 
 leave you free because you are 'woman'! — because you 
 are the sole thing living on earth that can slaughter yet 
 break no law ; that can slay yet be left to smile on ; that 
 can make men curse the mothers that bore them, yet be 
 safe in the safety of feebleness ; the only thing living on 
 earth that has the strength of the giant for crime, and the 
 weakness of the coward for shelter. Had Israel no courte- 
 sans in her camps, that, in the parables of her Scriptures, 
 she made the chief leader of hell a male creature ?" 
 
 A dead stillness followed on the scathing fury of his 
 words. 
 
 The banqueters drew aside, and gathered together, 
 and left the woman alone. 
 
 Men feast with Coriolis, but none will fight for her. 
 
 They drain her wine-cups, for their own gold fills them; 
 but no sword leaps from its scabbard for her sake. 
 
 In pleasure she has many followers ; in need she is 
 ever alone. 
 
 Then with hands that were, for that one time alone, 
 ungentle to the child he loved, he tore from off her the 
 
 *
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 231 
 
 jewels, the flowers, the laces of her festal robes, and flung 
 them all crushed and torn down at the feet of her temp- 
 tress. 
 
 "Great God!" he cried aloud in the bitterness of his 
 soul. "The tigress and the leopardess arc tender beside 
 Woman. Brutes though they be they do not drive the 
 young of their own kind down into the nets and the knives 
 of the slaughter! That work is spared for Iter — Man's 
 helpmeet, God's best work!" 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 What followed she never remembered. 
 
 When she recovered consciousness the cool autumn 
 wind was blowing on her, and the starless rainy night 
 skies were above her ; she was lying on the turf thai edged 
 the highway, under a knot of roadside trees; beside her 
 in the gloom stood the dim .shadowy form of a man and 
 of a horse. 
 
 The former leaned over her and touched her lips with 
 his hand as she Strove to speak. 
 
 "Say nothing; there is no need." 
 
 The old familial' sweetness of the voice struck through 
 her heart; she raised herself and gazed into his eyes; 
 then trembled and hid her face in her hands, and sobbed 
 bitterly: she felt unutterably ashamed, though the shame 
 on her was vague and withoul name. 
 
 She sank hack 11)1011 the turf, and turned, and rested 
 her forehead upon the wet shorl grass, moaning a little 
 like a wounded fawn. 
 
 He >aid no word, and his eves were dry, as he sto.nl 
 over her in thai attitude of abasement and humiliation, 
 liui lie suffered a greater torture 1 han had ever \\ rung his 
 bright and happy life. 
 
 lie had come, indeed, in time to save her from more 
 than a child's broken ideal, a child's sorrowful disenchant-
 
 232 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 rnent; but nevertheless was she to him as utterly killed 
 as though he stood beside her dead body. His rage had 
 spent itself upon her temptress ; he had none for her. 
 
 It had an exceeding pathos for him, this frailness that 
 had been seduced by such fictitious greatness, this inno- 
 cence and folly welded into one, which had been allured 
 by such a painted, worthless, wooden shape, mistaking it 
 for the goddess of loveliness and pleasure. 
 
 He saw it with the pitying tenderness with which a 
 gentle shepherd would see his youngest lamb allured by 
 poisonous and gorgeous blossoms, sweet to the taste, and 
 splendid to the eye, on to the edge of a volcanic pit. 
 Anger against her he could not feel ; she was too young, 
 too blind, too well-beloved. But the thing that he had 
 cherished seemed forever dead to him ; and a great blow 
 smote him in the knowledge that the first hand stretched 
 out to her with the world's golden bribes had been strong 
 enough to lead her away without a thought of him. 
 
 He had said that if she forsook him for that wanton he 
 would leave her alone to her choice ; but when the test 
 had come he had been governed by no impulse save that 
 of saving her from peril and pollution. Yet the same 
 feeling which had made him say that, were she faithless, he 
 would never seek to coerce her to fidelity, moved him now, 
 and made him hold her forever as utterly lost to him as 
 though her will had had its way, and she had gone to the 
 career which to her ignorance and her credulity looked so 
 fair. 
 
 He was struck the deadliest blow that life could have 
 dealt him. 
 
 In the same sense that the sailor of the Riviera had 
 been robbed and deserted by the flight of the wife he 
 adored, so was he by the abandonment of the creature 
 that had been made his own by every tie of human grat- 
 itude. 
 
 He had reached that sublime self-sacrifice which speaks 
 in the words — "If I love thee what is that to thee?" 
 But he knew the bitterness which goes with those words, 
 in the knowledge that the love which is given is counted 
 as naught by the one on whom it is lavished ; that it is 
 of so little account that the life which it cherishes passes
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF A. YD STRA V. 233 
 
 heedlessly on, with no more thought of it than a laughing 
 child on the first day of spring takes of the shy primrose 
 and the purple bells of thyme, which his foot crushes as 
 he runs. 
 
 " If I love thee what is that to thee ?" — it is the supreme 
 utterance of the passion which can withstand absence 
 and neglect, and oblivion, and opprobrium, and scorn, and 
 thoughtless cruelty, and still live on, strengthened by 
 every year, and purified by every stroke. But none the 
 less is it the supreme martyrdom of love. 
 
 And it was in this wise that his good deed returned to 
 him; and the bread that he had flung upon the waters 
 came back, and was as ashes in his teeth. For of all 
 things that are true upon this earth this is most true, — 
 that the recompense of our holier acts comes not in this 
 world, ami is not given by the hands of humanity. 
 
 " Rejoice, oh ye faithful servants," is not uttered under 
 the sun; for Life is merciless, and in its many agonies 
 and in its many evils there is not even the wild justice 
 that belongs to vengeance; there is but tin- sound of a 
 mocking voice through all the desolation, laughing ever 
 at the travail ami the cheated hopes of men. 
 
 Suddenly she lifted herself, and caught hold of him, and 
 gazed up in his eyes again; she did not ask for pardon 
 with her lips, but her gaze prayed for it with the mute 
 touching prayer of a dog's. 
 
 He turned from her with an irresistible shudder; she 
 was a child still ; she did not know what she had done; 
 she was conscious of her error, bul not of its effeel ; she 
 knew she had done wrong, but she did not know that she 
 was, in his siuht, lost to him forever. 
 
 'Idic creature thai hud forsaken him must go from him; 
 the love thai paid its fealty only to coercion, was worse 
 to him than hale. 
 
 " Hush !" he said gently, as she strove to speak. " You 
 arc not wdl enough for words! There is no need of them 
 — I know all." 
 
 lie knew all — without her shedding one ray of li-ht 
 upon the tale; knew all the weakness, the folly, the inno- 
 cence, the willfulness, the vanity, thai had hired her down 
 a flower-sown path, on to the very brink of ruin; knew
 
 234 TRIC0TR1N, 
 
 all the insufficiency of the affection borne to himself, and 
 given by himself, to hold her back from the sweet insidious 
 seductions of riches and of flattery ; knew that he had 
 been deserted and betrayed with none the less cruel, the 
 less merciless infidelity, because that infidelity was the fault, 
 of a child's selfishness, in lieu of a woman's passion. 
 
 Then, still with the same gentleness that had more 
 terror for her than his heaviest anger could have borne, 
 he lifted her into a covered cart that he had summoned, 
 as it rolled slowly toward Paris with a night freight of 
 autumn flowers, and leading the Norman colt by its haltt p, 
 walked slowly toward the city by the side of the littlg 
 wagon, in whose shelter Viva crouched, sobbing bitter 1 
 with her rich silk robes covered by a leathern rug, and 
 her face buried in her hands. 
 
 For the hour the bitterness of her chastisement equaled, 
 the cruelty and the weakness of her fault. 
 
 To the child — proudest among the proud — no punish- 
 ment could have been so great as this intense humiliation, 
 this passionate shame, that seemed to her scorching hef 
 very life up with its ignominy. 
 
 The way into Paris appeared one endless road of mar- 
 tyrdom ; only two brief weeks before she had passed along 
 this self-same highway, in the luster of the illuminated 
 night, dreaming that the city would receive her as some 
 royal creature, some daughter of Carlovingian or Cape- 
 tian races, born to wear their diadem, and sway their 
 scepter! And this was how she returned from her first 
 flight toward greatness. 
 
 No discrowned queen ever went with heavier heart 
 from her palace than she went now, back from the first- 
 fruits of her own will, the first reward of her own ambi- 
 tion. 
 
 "Shall I never be other than I am?" she thought in 
 desperation ; the dread was stronger on her, even in that 
 hour, than any other fear,' stronger still than gratitude, or 
 repentance, or love for her redeemer, though these were 
 all startled to vivid existence in her. 
 
 He, himself, walked in silence, wearily and slowly 
 through the dark and chilly night, the tired steps of the 
 colt keeping pace for pace with his own.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 235 
 
 Passion had spent its first outburst of mad fury ; a dull 
 hopeless anguish remained. 
 
 For- she was dead to him as utterly as though he had 
 slain her like Virginius, to save her from the arms of her 
 spoilers. 
 
 The life that was faithless to him, could stay by his 
 side no longer. 
 
 He spoke nothing as the wagon rolled tediously on 
 its way; nothing as it paused before the door of Mere 
 Rose, and he lifted her out from its shelter and led her 
 within the house. 
 
 As the women rushed to her, with tearful cries of wel- 
 come and of joy, he motioned them away. 
 
 " She was lost. Let her be — she is tired." 
 
 The mingled love and fear in which they held him sub- 
 dued their curiosity; they herded together in the passage 
 hushed and afraid; and she, — with her head hung down, 
 and her face hidden from them, crept up the wooden stairs 
 in the dull oil light with slow sad steps, from which all 
 the clastic buoyancy of her youth was banished. 
 
 Once within the little attic that served her as her bed- 
 chamber, she thrust the rusted iron bolt within its socket, 
 put out the oil (lame with a quick gesture, as though she 
 dreaded still that there were some to look on her, and 
 flinging herself down on her straw pallet, wept with heart- 
 broken Belf-pity; half like a child from whom his favorite 
 playthings have been taken, half like a woman from whose 
 passions an ever-abiding shame has sprung. 
 
 " If I could only be great 1" she prayed ; — and fell asleep 
 with that prayer on her lips. 
 
 Without — through the heavy rains that were falling 
 through the dark and weary streets — he went slowly, lead- 
 ing the colt homeward. 
 
 He had received his recompense.
 
 236 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 At midnight, and till midnight was long past, he waited 
 in the great court-yard of a great building. 
 
 The rains beat' fiercely on him, but he did not heed 
 them. 
 
 It was almost dawn when the lights of a carriage flashed 
 red through the mists ; he sprang forward between it and 
 the gateway. 
 
 Its occupant alighted, and was stopped by him. 
 
 "One word with you?" he asked. 
 
 The Duke de Lira started, turned, and paused. 
 
 "Now! — yes, if you desire it." 
 
 They went within, out of the wet black night, into a 
 great lighted frescoed chamber, like the chambers of the 
 palaces of Rome. 
 
 His hair, his garments, his beard were dripping with 
 rain; he was splashed and jaded, and pale with exhaus- 
 tion and pain; he observed no ceremony, and heeded no 
 form ; he stood facing the man he had sought, and spoke 
 without preface or address. 
 
 "You were in earnest to-day?" 
 
 "I was." 
 
 " Then I come to take you at your word. You were 
 right — I was wrong." 
 
 The noblest words that can be uttered by human lips 
 cost him a great pang in their utterance. 
 
 The other looked quickly at him, and said nothing. 
 
 "I was wrong," he pursued, rapidly. "I mistook self- 
 ishness for justice, and was led astray by my own desires. 
 I threw aside a great good for another, because I consid- 
 ered and studied myself. I was rough in anger with you, 
 and ungrateful for the benefit that you offered. You 
 stung my pride and my heart, and I was blind — blind to 
 duty and justice. Stay! hear me out — it was so. To- 
 night I have had my punishment."
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 237 
 
 He paused abruptly. He breathed loud and fast ; but 
 his eyes never left their straight and keen regard into hia 
 companion's, and his words were spoken unflinchingly. 
 
 "You said rightly. No duty can hold a female thing, 
 no tenderness can content her, when once the passion of 
 her vanity has been fired. Look you, — that child is inno- 
 cent as any lamb in the meadows, any dove in the woods, 
 and yet the leaven of her womanhood is in her, and will 
 urge her on to destruction. I thought, in my folly, that 
 not to sin, not to suffer, not to know the meaning of evil, 
 not to want any more than a bird wants in spring, just to 
 live the free harmless life of a country-born creature, would 
 suffice to make Jchild's joy, and a woman's content. I 
 erred; many men have erred like me. There is a devil 
 thrice as strong as we are — the devil of Discontent. There 
 is the tempter that lures away from us our wives, ami 
 oar mistresses, and our daughters, — there is the huckster 
 that buys a soul with a string of seed-pearls, and chaffers 
 away honor for a knot of sapphire stones." 
 
 \\\< listener grew paler as he heard. 
 
 " What, lias chanced to the child?" he asked, hurriedly. 
 .She had touched his heart more deeply than Ik; knew. 
 
 " This has chanced to her, — that the word of a strange 
 woman had more sway with her than mine; that the eyes 
 of men have found out that she has loveliness; that the 
 snares of the city have been spread for her, and have 
 caught her, and have maimed her. Two hours since I 
 brought her out from the house of Coriolis." 
 
 " Coriolis ! — the actress!" 
 
 "Coriolis — the courtesan. Why be choicer in names 
 than she is in her sins? She lured the child thither by 
 specious words and gracious promises. In the eyes of 
 Viva she was an empress — an angel! Coriolis caughl 
 her fancy as the light takes a moth's. She In I her where 
 she chose, for she promised to give her greatness! She 
 decoyed her there toward evening. 1 had left her alone. 
 When I returned she u a> lost : .-he had been absent SOme 
 hours. I knew at once where Bhe WUB sure to have wan- 
 dered. I forced my entrance into the villa — into the 
 chamber where thej sat at their banquet They had 
 throned the child there as a queen, and a terror of her
 
 238 TR ICO Til IN, 
 
 reign had just commenced to touch her. I was in time 
 to save her. What I said, what I did, I have forgotten." 
 
 The broken, abrupt sentences escaped him harshly and 
 in haste; the recital was terrible to him. Honor and 
 honesty demanded it from him ; but none the less was it 
 bitter exceedingly. 
 
 " Stay! Hear me out," he said, quickly, as his listener 
 interrupted him. " Let me end what I have to say. I 
 rescued her from that accursed place ere she had learned 
 more than a vague fear and a wakening horror of the 
 world into which she was flung. But what use is it to 
 rescue the goat from the pit, if it return again and again 
 to eat the poison-flowers that grow on its sides ? And 
 that is what Viva will do. She is innocent — yes; but 
 how long can innocence grow side by side with vanity 
 and ambition ? The eyes of libertines have beheld her ; 
 the brutality that christens itself love has fastened on her; 
 the powers that lie in wealth are arrayed against her — 
 she is not safe one moment longer. If her own heart 
 were content, indeed, all these could with ease be defied. 
 But against the foe in her own soul I can bring no army. 
 I may restrain her from sin, — she is brave, and proud, 
 and pure of thought — vice once unmasked to her would 
 be loathsome. But I cannot keep her in peace; and — 
 and — I dare not keep her in misery! Now, I have told 
 you this. It was your due to know it. It may well be 
 that you will withdraw the offer you made her two even- 
 ings ago. You will be justified in so doing. She does 
 not know the evil she has wrought herself; but I know- 
 it, and I know that a woman-child that has been once be- 
 neath the roof of Coriolis may well be marked as dishon- 
 ored forever." 
 
 "Hush, hush! Would you deem me so brutal, so 
 harsh ? — for a young girl's unthinking rashness, a play- 
 ful creature's foolish fault?" 
 
 "It would be no harshness; it would be justice. A 
 woman's fair repute is like a blue harebell — a touch can 
 wither it. What she did to-day — in rashness, in folly, as 
 you say — may rise up in future years, and bring her bit- 
 ter chastisement. Yet — it makes no difference with you, 
 this thing that I have told ?"
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 239 
 
 "None. I desire to serve her as greatly as I ever did." 
 
 " That is very nobly said. Then I accept your oiler. 
 I do not dare to thrust it aside." 
 
 He stopped abruptly; his voice was hoarse, and died 
 away in a whisper. The other made no answer; he di- 
 vined the suffering that accompanied this adhesion to his 
 will. 
 
 "Let her come," he said, softly, at length. "For a 
 brief space, at least. At its close — who can tell ? Early 
 impressions have great force, and what we arc nurtured 
 in we commonly prefer; her absence may show her how 
 strong her love for you is, and how needful to her is the 
 life of which her ignorance now wearies." 
 
 "There is no likelihood of that, She is a hawk that 
 once cast down tin; wind will never come back to the 
 wrist of her keeper." 
 
 " Why so ? She loves you ?" . 
 
 "Ay, as children love. Where is the child whom some 
 costlier bauble than what you can give will not lure away 
 from vonr hold soon or late? Xo — if she come to you 
 
 once, she '.iocs fi i me forever. But — there is no need 
 
 to speak of myself." 
 
 "There is great need. Look what an immeasurable 
 debt she owe.- to you." 
 
 "I do not count it, Neither need she nor any one. I 
 desire her to be happy, that is all. There is another 
 matter which concerns her. The youth of whom I spoke 
 io you, that young iordling, was one of the accursed crew 
 to-night. Doubtless it was his gold that bribed Coriolis 
 to the setting of her snare. He has hail his punishmenl ; 
 he will not stir his bruised frame for months. When he 
 docs arise, shame will tie his tongue, and I ran drive him 
 from the country, for a season, by a power 1 have over 
 him — the power of the knowledge of his own vires. But 
 if you have aught to do witli Viva, it is needful that you 
 should he aware of hint — lie is the son of Estmere. Ho 
 
 lias broken faith with me; he is traitor a.- well as tempter; 
 
 bul 1 care not to wring his father's great laari with tin' 
 tah' of his shame; cowardice and falsehood never before 
 touched his race."
 
 240 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 " You spare the child's tempter ! You are generous 
 indeed!" 
 
 " I spare Estmere — not him." 
 
 " Lord Estmere ! What is he to you ?" 
 
 " He is a man who is honored ; he is a man who has 
 suffered. They are titles sufficient to forbearance. Be- 
 side a girl's innocent name, a girl's stainless youth, they 
 are things that will no more bear men's handling than 
 will a snowflake as it falls ! Is there any other thing to be 
 said ? Tell your mother what I have told to you ; Viva 
 enters no home under the shelter of falsehood. But — do 
 you know that the world will call you a madman ?" 
 
 "Wherefore?" 
 
 " For believing the word, and recieving the Waif and 
 Stray, of — a bohemian!" 
 
 " The world can do so. I have attended to it as little 
 in my fashion as you in yours. I know that I have the 
 truth from your lips ; I have been, also, at the pains to 
 verify the facts that you have related to me ; and I be- 
 lieve that I see my way to rendering another life happy. 
 As for my being deemed a madman, — it is ever the better 
 things in us that the world calls our insanities." 
 
 Tricotrin gave no reply ; his eyes dwelt on those of 
 the speaker with a long searching, penetrative regard, 
 that seemed to seek to pierce the secret thoughts of his 
 innermost mind. Then, with an abrupt movement, he 
 turned away. 
 
 "You have a noble nature, and you do a noble act," he 
 said, briefly. "But — I cannot thank you till, in the years 
 to come, I see how it is with her." 
 
 Then, without farewell or obeisance, he quitted the 
 chamber swiftly. He was even as the shepherd who had 
 left the ewe lamb that he had saved through storm and 
 drought, and warmed in his bosom, and fed with his hand, 
 at the threshold of the rich man's palace 
 
 The Duke de Lira started as the door closed, and leant 
 in perplexed meditation against the bronze reading-stand, 
 on which the great volumes that he usually studied lay. 
 
 He was a man of pure intent, of gentle heart, of noble 
 nature, untouched by pride, untainted by evil desire. He 
 earnestly desired to benefit this beautiful young thing,
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 241 
 
 whose bright youth fascinated him. He was wholly un- 
 conscious that any selfish impulse prompted the determ- 
 inate effort with which he had vanquished his mother's 
 disinclination to take a foundling beneath her roof. Be 
 was incapable of cruelty, incapable of a base egotism ; he 
 believed himself only actuated by a genuine compassion; 
 he had in no way awakened to any perception of the at- 
 traction that Viva's personal loveliness possessed for him ; 
 he had been entirely honest in all that he had said. 
 
 Yet, as he leaned there, a certain sense that he, with 
 every sincere and good intent, had still done that which 
 was cruel and unjustified, stole on him. lie had consid- 
 ered only her welfare; he had been callous to the pain 
 that her loss mighl cause to the only one who hit In rto 
 had set any value on her undefended and unclaimed life. 
 He had thought only of gratifying the wistful desires that 
 shone in her radiant eyes ; he had forgotten thai her trans- 
 lation to new spheres might leave a void, never to be Idled 
 again, in the hearl that had grown to hold her as its 
 treasure. 
 
 He had known Tricotrin to be a careless, fearless, high- 
 couraged, laughter-loving wanderer, imprisoned by no ties, 
 bound liy no creeds, chained to no home It had never 
 seemed possible to him thai such an one could love as 
 tenderly as he loathed bondage passionately, or that his 
 affections could strike deep root, though his temper Hung 
 off all fetters. It was only now; now when to perceive 
 this was useless, that any glimpse of its truth flashed 
 upon him. 
 
 " I hoped to do good," he thought wearily. " What if it 
 end in evil ?" 
 
 21
 
 242 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 Viva slept all the noon of the next day. 
 
 When she awoke, rest and slumber had healed all the 
 harm that the night's terror and fatigue had wrought 
 on her: to the health and the strength of her youth ill- 
 ness was impossible. But the wound to her pride and 
 her conscience had struck more deeply; it was with a 
 dull, heavy sense of pain and of shame that she arose and 
 dressed herself, and went to her accustomed seat in the 
 attic casement. For the first time fear — the sure shadow 
 of all evil doing — possessed her: for the first time, she 
 felt afraid of meeting the eyes of the friend whom she 
 had wronged. 
 
 Moreover, there was the old leaven still working in her, 
 despite all her loathing of her temptress, despite her 
 instinctive consciousness of having escaped some terrible 
 danger. The old desire and discontent still murmured 
 in her soul as she gazed at her white linen dress, and 
 thought of those pearls and sapphires she had worn, as she 
 looked round the wooden walls of her attic, and thought 
 of the soft scarlet hues and silver glisten of the actress's 
 banqueting-c h amber . 
 
 " Ah ! why does wickedness have all the beauty and 
 all the pleasure?" she wondered with an aching heart, 
 perplexed by the question that mocks divines, and scoffs 
 at philosophers, and baffles at every turn the efforts of 
 moralists and teachers. 
 
 Virtue gives her children so often but stones when 
 they ask of her for the bread of life: wickedness casts the 
 golden apples by thousands to her followers. And false 
 is the preacher, who, denying this, bribes to the allegiance 
 of the first by promise of her crowns, and seeks to affright 
 from the palaces of the last by oaths that her festivals and 
 banquets are Barmecide feasts held above an oubliette of 
 death.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 243 
 
 The poignant grief of the past night had somewhat 
 softened with the waking day; had somewhal changed 
 into the flattered sense that her very error, her very de- 
 ception, her very* peril, were befitting the romance that 
 belonged to such an enchanted princess as herself. Al- 
 though the natural conscience and impulse of the child 
 had made her recoil from her disobedience, and repel, in 
 an instinct of loathing, the overtures of her young lover, 
 now that she was safe and was alone, a certain sweetness 
 lay for her in the remembrance of such an episode, a 
 certain delight existed in the sense that she had been 
 deemed worth the weaving of such a web to entrap her. 
 
 The dominant thing in her was pride, and her pride 
 had been up in arms against her tempters: but the next 
 strongest thing in her was vanity, and vanity found a 
 charm in the remembrance that she had passed through 
 such a proof of her power. 
 
 At night she had wept with joy to be given back to 
 the safe, familiar, innocent life of her childood : but with 
 the morning she grew well-nigh ungrateful for safety, and 
 thought in all the restlessness of nascent ambition: "Shall 
 I always stay thus, like a wood-dove in a wicker-work 
 cage, when the world holds so many palace gardens 
 whence such paradise-birds as I can spread their golden 
 plumes in the sun ?" 
 
 She had escaped from Coriolis ; but she had not 
 escaped from the poison that Coriolis had breathed over 
 her. 
 
 It was well, she knew, to be safe in her haven ; but it 
 was tedious, it was monotonous, it had no picturesque 
 color in it: and she began to sigh again, though ashamed 
 of her sighs, for those glittering pleasures that she had 
 just tasted, as a humming-bird just tastes the houev in 
 a flower which a cruel wind shatters down into a heap of 
 braised petals. 
 
 The poison had touched her lips; though she had shud- 
 dered at its baneful sweetness, yet the tbirsl for more of 
 
 its lusciousness had l n left awakened and unappeased. 
 
 She thought, with a sori of despair, of her future : it was 
 
 the first time that ever she had dreaded this unknown 
 thing, which, ever ere now, had been enfolded in the gold-
 
 244 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 spangled mask-dress of so mysterious and royal a new- 
 comer ; for the first time she now remembered that under 
 its gay domino there might be seen, perchance, a skele- 
 ton, — a death's-head. She had no accurate knowledge of 
 what it was that she felt : but she had a vague nameless 
 terror of herself, as though she were conscious that if in- 
 nocence must be leashed with obscurity, the wild desire 
 for greatness that lay in her would hurl her, sooner or 
 later, into the dominion and the power of evil. 
 
 The full noon light was slanting through the lattice 
 when the step which she knew and loved the best came 
 up the wooden stair. She cowered down and buried her 
 face in her hands : she felt heart sick with humiliation, 
 and all the love she bore him smote her with its remorse. 
 
 One thing alone had he ever forbidden to her ; and that 
 one thing she had seized in all the willfulness of rebellion 1 
 
 She never looked up as he crossed the chamber ; she 
 trembled as she felt that he drew near ; she heard him 
 pause beside her, and she shrank farther and farther back 
 — in silence. 
 
 He stood near, silent also. 
 
 Then by a swift impulse, she caught his hands and 
 gazed up in his face. 
 
 " Forgive me ! Oh do forgive me !" she cried, while her 
 voice was choked with tears. " I was so wicked ! and 
 yet I meant no harm ; she said you should know, and 
 that you would learn to see you wronged her, and that I 
 was a burden to you when I might grow great and be 
 your glory 1 I never knew that young prince would be 
 there — I never did indeed 1 Believe me — oh pray, be- 
 lieve me!" 
 
 " I believe you. If I had thought that you could lie, I 
 would have left you to live and die in that hell you had 
 chosen." 
 
 The words were stern and chill, and perfectly calm : 
 she shuddered under them, yet she took courage to look 
 up in his beloved familiar face. And she saw that his 
 eyes were fixed on her with a look that smote her to the 
 heart ; the look that tearless eyes will give to some 
 treasured thing that lies cold in death. She gave a cry 
 as of irrepressible pain, and flung herself at his feet, all
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STlA r - 247 
 
 the force and fervor of her variable nature roused T have 
 accusation and self-hate. ome 
 
 "Biam&ine — heat me — kill me! but do not look at el 
 like that ! I was wrong — oh, I know it so well I 1 was 
 vain, and foolish, and mad, and wicked, but throw me 
 out on to the stones of the streets. Do not look at me 
 again like that !" 
 
 A great pity changed and softened his gaze as he heard ; 
 he stooped and raised her gently. 
 
 " I was harsh — forgive me. I forgot how weak and 
 young a thing you are. Hush 1 — do not sob so bitterly. 
 You were tempted, and you had not strength to resist. 
 Well, it is oftentimes so with all. You are not alone my 
 little one." 
 
 There was an intense compassion, a passionless sadness 
 in the words, which awed her as no words of upbraiding 
 could have done. 
 
 "But I am vile!" she murmured. "So vile to have 
 ever disbelieved you, and disobeyed youl Let me tell 
 you all, and then " 
 
 He stopped her. 
 
 " No. I know all I need to know. Spare me the tale 
 of how much dearer than I, were the world and thai 
 wanton to you." 
 
 He turned from her, unable to hide the anguish that 
 this one disloyalty had wrought liini : the child hung her 
 head and said nothing. She blushed for the thoughts 
 which a moment before had haunted her; she was dis- 
 loyal to him still, the world still dethroned him. 
 
 He paced to and fro the chamber awhile, conquering 
 the fierce longing which possessed him to seize tor his 
 own, let it cost what it would, this fair faithless lite that 
 already seemed so wholly his own. When he came again 
 to her it was with that tranquillity in his look and in his 
 voice, which he had striven, so many hours through, to 
 attain ere he had < ie into her presence. 
 
 "We will never speak again of this.'* he said gently. 
 "Von disobeyed me, indeed, but you were sorely 
 tempted; you were wooed through yum- weakest follies; 
 and you were moved by a noble thought even in the 
 midst of your selfishness. 1 forgive it. I do not sa\ for- 
 
 21 *
 
 24G TRICOTRIN, 
 
 give yourself: for you were very wrong, and I would 
 fain have the remembrance of your error wound you 
 sharply awhile, so that the cicatrix it leaves be a warn- 
 ing to you forever. But we will never speak again of 
 your action, or of your tempters. As you grow into 
 womanhood you will see, as you cannot see now, the full 
 extent of their wickedness and of your peril. I have 
 other things to say to you. Listen." 
 
 Viva, stilled and vaguely half affrighted, half consoled, 
 raised her tear-laden eyes to his, and held her breath, and 
 waited with an indefinite prescience that the time was 
 near at hand when he and she would be no more as they 
 so long had been in this joyous and unshadowed life, 
 which to her impatient ignorance had grown so wearisome. 
 
 " Listen," he went on, speaking still with that calmness 
 which he had taught himself to wear before her. "Your 
 act last night has taught me what I had feared before ; 
 that I have not the means nor the power to make you 
 happy any longer. No 1 hear me out. It is not ingrati- 
 tude in you ; it is your woman's nature. You pine and 
 pant for things that are not in my hands to bestow on 
 you. A female soul that chafes, and longs, and harbors 
 discontent is ever on the balance toward evil : for sin 
 has already its surest forerunner and ally fastened upon 
 the life that is at war with itself. Therefore, since I 
 cannot provide the gratification of your desire, others 
 must do so." 
 
 He paused, and his breath came with a short, sharp 
 sigh : she listened, moved with keen repentance, yet also 
 moved to a vague and eager expectancy. 
 
 " I should have told you yesterday," he continued, with 
 an effort, "that your fairy was no fairy, as you may be 
 sure ; but what is quite as potent in this world, a rich and 
 nobly born person. She is the mother of that gentleman 
 whom you have seen here some few times ; the Duchess 
 de Lira. She is very aged, but very powerful, very emi- 
 nent, very wealthy : and she is filled with excellent intent 
 to you. She invites you to pass a brief season with her, 
 as her guest. Yesterday I refused ; perhaps selfishly, but 
 deeming that it was best for you not to enter and enjoy 
 a mode of life that I cannot continue to you. Now, I
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 247 
 
 know that some change must be made for you, and T have 
 accepted this offer : because otherwise much evil will come 
 unto you." * 
 
 "Ob no, oh no !" she murmured. "I will be good, I 
 will be content, I will try, indeed I will try, never to long 
 for anything save what I have." 
 
 "That will be vain," he said bitterly. " The dog that 
 is only held by her chain will be faithless the first instant 
 that she tears her neck from her collar! No, I do not 
 mean to be cruel to you, my child. I mean only, that 
 though you should honestly intend to be contented, 
 and strive to be so, the content which requires to be 
 striven after, is a hollow thing which embitters and de- 
 ceives alike the one who seeks for it and the one who 
 lives near it. The moment that love or content need an 
 effort to keep, both are valueless; both are dead bodies 
 from which the spirit has flown. I have been your guar- 
 dian, I will not be your jailer." 
 
 lie stopped once more; the child said nothing; sin- 
 could not have promised him honestly a content that 
 should have been spontaneous and shadowless. 
 
 .After awhile he spoke again. 
 
 "The change that your temptress offered you, was to 
 woo you from health and peace to the plague and the 
 horror of a lazar ward; but the change that this great 
 lady holds out to you may be, as in all Likelihood it will 
 be, splendid. At any rate it is a chance: a chance for 
 you that I dare not put away untried, since the pasl 
 night showed me how easily to be led into peril you are, 
 and how hard to be weaned from evil. At your years. 
 Coriolis was no worse than yon are now, a young thing, 
 an innocent thing, a thing gay ami careless, and full of 
 play on a sunny seashore; but vain and restless, and full 
 of vague ambition and sect hing discontent, and impatience 
 at her lot and at her home. Lest the time should ever 
 come when looking on you I should curse you— as every 
 mouth that is pure with truth curses hers that is one lie 
 incarnate — I know that you must go from me, I know- 
 that you must pass out of my life and oul of my love, 
 now, and it may be forever." 
 
 His voice sank very low, and grew Unsteady over the
 
 248 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 last words ; but there was in his accent that which struck 
 her with an intense fear, and moved her with a strange 
 dim horror of the thing she might become — as though in 
 some glass of sorcery she beheld the fair face of her 
 beaming youth, gray, and shrunken, and sightless, and 
 ghastly with the corruption of death, with the ashes of 
 age. 
 
 She seemed to behold, as in some vision, the power of 
 evil that lay slumbering in her : the weakness that would 
 grow to guilt, the dream that would fructify in sin, the 
 ambition that reaching up to heaven would recoil and 
 fall to hell ; the nascent passions hushed under the calm 
 of youth, like painted snakes asleep beneath the leaves of 
 roses, that would arise and coil, and sting, and slaughter, 
 and die at last of their own poison. She shuddered where 
 she stood, and her lips grew pale, and she stretched her 
 arms out to him with a blind piteous gesture. 
 
 "She said that such things as I were always born for 
 evil ; it seemed her glory, and she bade me make it mine ; 
 ah ! why did you not set your foot on me and crush me 
 when you found me among the grasses ? It had been 
 better so." 
 
 Ho quivered as though she had pierced him with a 
 knife ; the reproach that he had so long foreseen and feared 
 rebuked him; he had his reward at last. 
 
 But his thoughts chiefly, even in that moment, were 
 for her. He took her hands, and looked down on her 
 with pitiful gentleness. 
 
 " My child, I knew the time would come when you 
 would utter that plaint against me. You are a woman, 
 and born of a woman ! But you are, for all that, of a brave 
 spirit; and your reproach to me is the reproach of a 
 coward. It rests with you to live your life nobly or 
 vilely. We have not our choice to be rich or be poor, to 
 be happy or unhappy" to be in health or in sickness; but 
 we have our choice to be worthy or worthless. No an- 
 tagonist can kill our soul in us; that can perish only 
 from its own suicide. Ever remember that. Indeed, to 
 (•natures like you, the way to evil is perilously easy; 
 but none can force you down its incline unless your own 
 vanities and passions first impel you. You have re-
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 249 
 
 proached me, for the first time, with having saved you to 
 run your course ol'life ; it is that you may not have to utter 
 that reproach in far more deadly earnestness in year- to 
 coined that I shall send you from me now. Frail flowers 
 such as you need fence, and shade, and culture, and 
 training toward the sun. You cannot soar upward and 
 grow straightly in storm, and cold, and drought. I was 
 to blame that I forgot this. But I shall never again for- 
 get it. I was unwise enough to dream that I might graft 
 on you some of my philosophy; — I forgot that yon were 
 not of my sex! The life that has been so good to mo 
 would not suffice to you. I should have known it ear- 
 lier " 
 
 " Yet my life has been so happy 1" she cried, in invol- 
 untary self-reproach. 
 
 '• Ah — so you will remember and realize, years hence, 
 with vain regret, hut it is no longer happy to you now. 
 The desire for the unknown has come on you. Let us 
 speak of it no more; I have fair news for you. This 
 great lady seems willing to befriend you ; go to her for a 
 short season. It will be something fresh at least." 
 " But what will grand-'mere think?" 
 "She has not lived through eighty-three years to ex- 
 pect gratitude in the young, or memory in the absent. 
 You were angered with me yesterday that I told you no 
 more of your 'fairy.' I ought to have done so. It 
 might have saved you from one harsh experience. Hut — • 
 I was selfish. I waited on my own wish, ami I forgot 
 your welfare." 
 
 Ami to the breadth and the depth of the man's gener- 
 ous nature it seemed, indeed, that he had been guilty of 
 an ungenerous and of an illiberal thing in counting, before 
 the benefil of this foundling whom he had harbored, tin; 
 wish and the peace of his own future. It seemed to him 
 that to. lay a claim to this existence which ho had aa 
 because it bad been thus saved by him. was a mono 
 and a cowardice that deserved its chastisement. 
 
 •• l rejected the offer for you," he pursued, with effort. 
 "I did wrong; I see that now. I can only hope my 
 error can lie repaired. Lasl night I soughl oul the Duke 
 de Lira, L told him this; I told him also what you had
 
 250 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 done. Nay — do not shrink at that. You might shrink 
 indeed if I let you go under his roof with a lie in your 
 mouth. I told him — all. Of your passion for the stage ; 
 of your idolatry of this dazzling sinner ; of the scene in 
 which I found you ; of the allurements that had tempted 
 you. He knows everything. But your folly does not 
 change his desire to befriend you. I have seen him 
 again this morning. You can go — at once — to the exist- 
 ence he offers you." 
 
 Viva drew a deep breath. 
 
 " They are great people ?" she asked wistfully. 
 
 " They are of great rank, — do you mean that? There 
 are great lives spent in garrets, in mines, in beds of agony, 
 in galley slaves' benches. But ' great' in your sense 
 means only affluent and arrogant!" 
 
 A feverish bitterness in his tone, altogether foreign to 
 him, arrested her attention. 
 
 "You do not wish me to go?" she asked, with the 
 same wistfulness. " Tell me, you know I will never dis- 
 obey you again ?" 
 
 "Disobey! Am I your taskmaster?" he said fiercely, 
 the fierceness that pain arouses in man as in every other 
 animal. " If you loved me, would you talk of obedience ? 
 In love, two wills move together, inspired by one soul, 
 as the two wings of a bird move, ever apart yet ever in 
 union. But — that love is not between us. Your wings 
 are your own ; let them bear you where you will. What 
 pleases you pleases me. Be free as air to follow your 
 fancies. It may be for your good that this thing- opens 
 to you ; it is not for me to close the door " 
 
 " But what do you wish? It is that which I want to 
 know !" 
 
 "What you wish is the question here. You wish for 
 riches, rank, luxuries, prominence, all sorts of vanities 
 and indulgences : well — you will see them nearer at least 
 by this visit. That is something. It may be that they 
 will lose their enchantment ; and then " 
 
 The sentence broke off abruptly ; he could not put into 
 words the hope which rose in him that, closely seen, these 
 things which looked to him so idle and so artificial might 
 lose their glittering bewitchment for her; and that in
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRA P 251 
 
 their hot-pressed atmosphere her young- free heart might 
 spring back at a rebound to the liberty, and the fresh- 
 ness, and the sincerity, of the life in which she had been 
 reared. 
 
 " And then what ?" asked Viva, anxiously. 
 
 "No matter! They may only gain surer sorcery over 
 you ; I forgot that you were feminine, my Waifl At 
 any rate, your new friend means well ; she can be of use 
 to you, as poor old grand'mere never can ; she shows 
 great kindness in the mere interest she takes in you, be- 
 cause you are — what you are. You have grown impa- 
 tient of the life you lead, — yes, and will grow more so, 
 despite all your promises, which I know, for all that, 
 were sincere. In the household of Madame de Lira you 
 can see a little for yourself what the greatness you covet 
 is like. You can measure for yourself the differences be- 
 tween the existence you lead through me, and this existence 
 in wealth and in pomp which you imagine can have no 
 cares. The opportunity offers: it is but right you should 
 take it. Come — there is nothing to wait for; I will leave 
 you there, and in eight days I will return for you." 
 
 Viva stood irresolute; something in his words, colder 
 and mom brief than they had ever been to her, though 
 still so gentle, moved her with a certain fear, that dashed 
 a dullness over the prospect before her. 
 
 " But if I am not happy there?" she murmured, with 
 a sudden terror. 
 
 In an instant she saw the smile she knew so well beam 
 in its brightness, and its tenderness, over the face above 
 her. 
 
 " Well! — you will know your refuge ! Come to me in 
 your sorrows, if you forgel me in your joys I" 
 
 For the first time some conception of the depth and 
 magnitude of this priceless love which succored her in 
 all things, and claimed nothing at her hands in recom- 
 pense, stole on her senses with a vague emotion of her 
 own absolute unworthiness of iis sublimity. She could 
 not measure its height, more than the unaccustomed sighl 
 can gauge the heighl of mountains; bu1 in some wa\ ii 
 moved and awed her as the majesty of the everlasting 
 hills will do those who gaze upward to them.
 
 252 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 She looked at him one moment, then threw herself into 
 his arms with all her childhood's abandonment. 
 
 "Ah ! How selfish you must think me! If you had 
 only let me die when you first found me, what burden 
 and what trouble you had been spared!" 
 
 "Chut!" he said softly, though there was an infinite 
 sadness in his eyes as they lookod down on her. " Where 
 two love, one of them is always selfish. And — as for the 
 other thing — not till you regret your life, my Waif, shall 
 I ever regret it for you. If you stain it, or learn to feel 
 it wearisome to bear, then indeed, but then only, shall I 
 lament the hour in which I saved it." 
 
 " But I nave been only a care, a cost, a trouble to you ? 
 I have done nothing to repay you?" 
 
 "Pooh ! little one!" he said lightly, for in that moment 
 he felt too keenly to dare trust himself to earnest words. 
 " Floating a Waif is a more innocent indulgence than most 
 of our masculine extravagancies ; and as for payment — - 
 when I hear you laugh that is quittance enough. And 
 you have laughed often, I think, in your fifteen years of 
 existence." 
 
 "Ah, yes!" sighed Viva; aud for the moment that old 
 life by the river side, that she had grown so impatient to 
 get rid of for the "great world," looked wonderfully fair 
 to her — transfigured as the golden light of distance alone 
 can transfigure either the landscapes or the years we leave 
 behind us. 
 
 " That is right," he said, briefly. " Whatever the future 
 brings you, it will be well to have had that laughter. 
 And now, make yourself ready; since this thing is to be 
 done, do it quickly." 
 
 He moved to the window as he spoke ; he was im- 
 patient of all bitter moments ; his philosophies and his 
 instincts alike rebelled against pain as the great foe of 
 animal life and of mental peace ; he was intolerant of de- 
 pression, and resisted all calamity that strove to weigh 
 him down; as he would have resisted a physical disease. 
 
 Opposite him, in the little casement under the gable, 
 sat the grisette; her work had fallen in her lap; her 
 tearful eyes were gazing vacantly out into the street. 
 
 Much the same pang ached in both their hearts; the
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 253 
 
 woman brooded fondly over hers, the man thrust his 
 passionately away. To her there was a Lingering sweet- 
 ness in it that she clung to; to him there was an in- 
 tolerable weakness in it that he strove with all his force 
 to uproot. 
 
 They both knew that they who go to the Rome of 
 their desires never return to those whom they have loved 
 and left in the old deserted land. 
 
 Viva was quickly ready, and at his side; she was in 
 eager, tremulous excitement. She was glad that her 
 desires had been granted thus; and yet she was fearful, 
 after her past night's deception, of what vipers might lie 
 curled in the purple passion-flowers of the world's pride 
 and pleasure. 
 
 Tricotrin said little on their way, a way that led 
 through country fields and the fragrance of the Ville 
 d'Avroe woods, out toward where a summer villa stood, 
 sheltered under reddening foliage that joined the forests of 
 Versailles. 
 
 1 Ic: lifted her from the covered wagon in which they 
 had driven, and walked with her some little distance 
 down a broad tree-shadowed lane. It was now almost 
 dark. At the end of the road were the gates of her desti- 
 nation. In this sunny autumn weather the Duchess de 
 Lira preferred this light and pleasant place to either her 
 great palaces in the Faubonrg, or her chateau under the 
 shadow of the eastern Pyrenees. Outside the gates he 
 paused a moment; there was no one in sight save an old 
 man sitting under one of the sycamores resting with a 
 load of wood. He laid his hand on Viva's shoulder, and 
 looked down into her eves. 
 
 "My child, you have your heart's desire; you go 
 among 'greal people.' It may make your happiness; 
 it may make your misery. Granted wishes are some- 
 times sell-sown curses. Whichever it be, remember — 
 go where you will, do what you may, you can always 
 come back to me !" 
 
 The infinite tenderness of the words raised something 
 akin to terror in her; her color went and canfe in rapid 
 changes. 
 
 22
 
 254 TRICOTRTN, 
 
 " But it is only for a little time !" she said, rapidly. 
 "It is no separation? I shall be with you again so 
 soon?" 
 
 He smiled: the smile that smote her heart with re- 
 morse, though why she could not tell. 
 
 "A week is an age sometimes at your years. I hardly 
 think you will remain or return to me — the same. But 
 that we must chance, grand'mere and I. Anyhow, love 
 that has not been put to the test is no love ; and the 
 young bird that has never been allowed to fly, likes its 
 cage from habit, not choice. Go within. I have rung; 
 they will come to you. In eight days you shall see me 
 
 again." 
 
 Before she could reply or resist he had closed the gate 
 gently on her, leaving her standing within the enchanted 
 ground of her new paradise, and had gone back, alone, 
 through the checkered twilight shadow of the road. The 
 echo of his steps upon the gravel, growing fainter and 
 fainter as he passed away, filled her with a sudden sense 
 of loneliness and of ingratitude. 
 
 " Oh, come back, come back!" she cried. " I do not want 
 any one but you; — I do not wish to stay." 
 
 But the words did not pierce the metal gates that were 
 now closed between them ; and a servant, waiting for 
 her, approached her with so courteous a deference, that 
 she forced back her tears, and began to dream again that 
 this was the commencement of that living fairy-tale, in 
 which she, from the obscure chrysalis of a Waif and Stray, 
 would change into the winged and glorious butterfly of 
 an omnipotent Princess. 
 
 Through a wilderness of floral beauty, through gor- 
 geous autumn flowers, blooming and blazing around 
 snowy statues and sparkling fountain-spray, through 
 aisles of scented bushes and of orange-trees powdered 
 with their yellowing balls, she was led into the house. 
 For the third time she was in an abode made luxurious 
 and elegant by wealth ; for the third time, the glow and 
 shadow and subdued brilliancy of gold and silver, paint- 
 ings and statuary, velvets and marbles, were about her' 
 as she moved ; for the third time, the fragrance, the grace, 
 the stillness, the indescribable beauties of good taste, and
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 255 
 
 of choice art, filled the chambers through which she wen I. 
 And they had lost none of the unutterable delight which 
 at the chateau of Villiers and the house of Coriolis they 
 had possessed for her. She drew a deep breath as she 
 saw and felt their sorcery; she already forgot the echo 
 of the steps, at whose retreating sound her tears had 
 started but a few moments earlier. 
 
 She saw no one in any of the rooms and galleries she 
 traversed. Her conductress, a Creole woman, took her 
 in silence through them, and only spoke when, at length, 
 she threw one door open. 
 
 " Mademoiselle will wish to rest ; this is Mademoiselle's 
 chamber," she said, with one hand lifting up the silk 
 curtains before the entrance. 
 
 Viva gave a cry of delight — the same childlike, eager, 
 rapturous cry, as when in the wine country she had found 
 a purple butterfly, or heard a new legend from grand '- 
 mere. 
 
 The small octagon chamber glistened with azure and 
 white; a silver-winged angel hovered over the little se- 
 cpiestered bed; flowers in profusion filled each nook and 
 corner; a little fragrant fountain played in a jasper basin; 
 between the mirrors was a single picture, a Proserpine 
 wandering among lilies and asphodels; beyond, through 
 the open window, lay the gardens, and avenues, and or- 
 angeries. 
 
 Viva stood in a trance of enchantment, flushed, mute, 
 beatified. 
 
 The curtain fell behind her; she was left alone. Her 
 lirsl impulse was to turn to the mirror; her next to gaze 
 around the chamber that was "hers." 
 
 The little wooden chamber under the ivy-covered eaves 
 in her old home had been kept lor her at t he cosl of many 
 a personal sacrifice, and the trifles that adorned it of 
 quaint carving, or of oil sketches, had been the gifts of 
 most tender pity or mosl generous love. This room, bo 
 fair to her si»-ht, was but one among many similar in 
 the bonse of a great personage, and all its beauties had 
 been prepared, not for her, hut for any other visitant who 
 might be guesl there. 
 
 Yet, how mean and poor looked that little room of
 
 256 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 grand'mere's! how exquisite and luxurious a nest was 
 this! 
 
 "The fairies have remembered me at last!" she cried 
 aloud, with her hands clasped above her head in breath- 
 less ecstasy. 
 
 And she — had forgotten one who never had forgotten 
 her through all the years wherein the fairies had been 
 silent to her call. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIY. 
 
 When he went thither again at the end of the eight 
 days, the servants brought him a little note. It was very 
 short, and like a child's. 
 
 "My best Friend, — I am so happy ; I never dreamed 
 that any life could be one-half so beautiful. They take 
 me to-day to see a great review of soldiers. I fear that I 
 shall miss you. If I do, will you leave word whether I 
 may stay here three months ? The duchess has asked me, 
 and I hope very much you will .say — yes. Your own 
 
 " Viva. 
 
 "My love to grand'mere and Mistigri. The duke is 
 so good to me; and has bought me such magnificent 
 things." 
 
 He read it, crushed it in his hand, and asked them for a 
 pencil. Then on its little, torn envelope he wrote the one 
 word of assent required. 
 
 "Give that to — Mademoiselle," he said simply, as he 
 left it in the servant's hand, and went out from the gates. 
 
 Mistigri trembled as she looked up in his face that was 
 white as with the whiteness of death. 
 
 The months went by, and Tricotrin might have been 
 numbered among the dead for any sign that came to her 
 from him. Where he went no one knew. The fishers of 
 the western coast could have told, and they only.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 25? 
 
 The weather was wild and fierce ; storms dashed the 
 shores and beat the boats to pieces ; the nights were filled 
 with hurricanes, and the beach was strewn with drift- 
 wood and the flotsom and jetsom of barks broken on 
 the rocks. All through that bitter time of the early win- 
 ter he was with them. It was no new thing ; and they 
 were well used to see him in the driving gales, — with the 
 winds tossing his hair, and the rains beating on his bare 
 chest and shoulders, and the breakers leaping on him as 
 on a granite block, — bring in some fishing-boat, whose 
 load would be the sole support of some drowned sailor's 
 widow, or launch some life-raft through the surge to reach 
 the stricken vessel that, reeling and dismasted, plowed 
 the blackened sea. 
 
 Few winters passed but brought him, in the time of 
 peril, to the Biscay-beaten coasts. He loved sea and 
 storm like some Norse viking of the old wild years; the 
 rising of the sullen winds was to him as the trumpet -note 
 to the war-horse; the exultant courage in him delighted 
 in the contest with the waves; and he loved the brave, 
 rough, patient, melancholy, great-souled people who lived 
 beside the everlasting waters, and gained something of 
 the grandeur and the poetry of those waters in the niiilst 
 of so much rugged poverty, so hard a conflict for the hread 
 of life. For many years he had appeared among them 
 at such seasons ; and in the superstition engendered by 
 t he mingled tragedy and simplicity of their existence, I hey 
 looked upon him as on one of more than mortal strength 
 and power, at whose bidding the seas released their prey, 
 ami delivered up their dead. 
 
 That lie made music at their feasts, that he flung their 
 nets over his shoulder, that be stacked sea-weed for their 
 aged and infirm, thai he mended their sails singing as he 
 sat on the sands some of their old-world romances, that 
 lie laughed with their handsome fisher-maidens pushing a 
 boal through the surf. — all these things had not made 
 them the less deem him half a <j<»1. though his vigorous 
 limbs were clothed in their garb, and he had been more 
 than once dashed, bruised and senseless, on their rocks in 
 vain effort to succor Borne sinking vessel, 
 
 These months in the late autumn he had passed among 
 
 09*
 
 258 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 thein, in the salt, hard, fresh seafaring life. If pain were 
 on him he never let it brood on undisturbed; if regret or 
 desire haunted him he exorcised them by some means or 
 other ; his whole temperament rebelled against the weight 
 of care or sorrow, and sought light as instinctively as do 
 the sunflowers. 
 
 Yet, against all his efforts and all the happy philoso- 
 phies that had kept youth so bright and ardent in him 
 through years that bring the burdens of age to many men, 
 against his will and his endeavor he could not turn his 
 thoughts from Viva. He could not tear out from him the 
 jealous, carking care that filled him when he thought of 
 her in strangers' hands, the hot, senseless hope, which 
 lived in him against all reason, that she would cling to 
 him still in preference to the things of pomp and power. 
 He grew to hate his love for her — but never to hate her. 
 He knew that it had lost the purity and the peace which 
 had sanctified it for so long ; he knew that it was the love 
 of a man for the fair eyes, and the smiling mouth, and the 
 white limbs of the woman's beauty that tempts him. That 
 love he had known oftentimes ; but it had never been a 
 gay, wind-tossed, chance-sown flower in his path ; not a 
 long-cherished blossom like this, with thorns hid in the 
 heart of its sweet white leaves to wound the breast upon 
 which it was clasped in cai'esses. 
 
 He hated the passion that had sprung up in him from 
 out of the kindly and pitying care he had given her: it 
 seemed to him to poison all the tenderness he had felt for 
 her in the time when his hand had played with her hair, or 
 his lips had touched her cheek in the unthinking and negli- 
 gent fondness that he might have felt for a favorite dog. 
 It was on the impulse of that hate for his own instinct of 
 jealous possession that he had embraced the offer of a new 
 life for her, dreading lest his love made him blind to what 
 was best for her, dreading lest it warped him to injustice 
 and to egotism. 
 
 He, careless and heedless in so much, watched with 
 keenest scruple his own nature, lest, under the angelic 
 guise of tenderness for her, there should be the hellish 
 snake of envious desire. He had served her ; all she had, 
 and all she was, she owed to him ; at his will he could
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 259 
 
 have cast her out to the starvation of an unowned beg- 
 gar-girl: for this cause he held himself debarred by all 
 common law of honor from any shape of tyrannous 
 usurpation over that which lay thus wholly at his mercy. 
 The titles that other men might have thought gave him 
 the rights to do with her as he would, were in his sight 
 the strongest forbiddance from all such rights' despotic 
 exercise. 
 
 Once he had saved a bird whose wing was broken ; it 
 had been in his earliest boyhood, and he had grown to 
 love fervently the creature he had succored, whose shat- 
 tered pinion he had bound, and whose food and water 
 and sod of grass had been his daily care for mouths 
 through a keen snow-laden winter. With the spring, 
 just as its song grew music on his ear, and the brightness 
 of its pretty eyes rewarded him, the little lark fluttered 
 its feathers in impatient longing, and beat its beak against 
 the cage that had so long been its sanctuary from the 
 winds and the hail that had struck so many birds down, 
 frozen, on the ice-bound earth. 
 
 He, a mere child, had wept grievously as he saw that 
 feverish fretting of the lark which wished to leave him; 
 some others standing by laughed to see his tears: " Silly 
 lad!" they cried, " can the bird escape you ? Bend its 
 cage-wires closer ; so shall you always have it with you." 
 13ut the boy had shaken his head. 
 
 " I have done it good, shall 1 do it evil ? It must be 
 free to stay or to go, else what is its love worth ?" 
 
 And he had opened the door of the cage, ami turned it 
 toward the west where the sun was setting: then he 
 waited ami watched. 
 
 The lark saw the glow of the sun, and moved, ami 
 lighted awhile on the edge of its prison-house; then with 
 one glorious hurst of song soared upward, higher ami 
 higher, toward the golden radiance of the skies. 
 
 He looked alter it as it Hew, with the ureal tears blind- 
 ing his eyes; but he smiled as lie heard the hymn of its 
 
 joy. 
 
 " It is happy," he said gently, as he hung the cage on 
 the bough of' an oak. "And— when the winter comes 
 back perhaps it will he glad to come to,,."
 
 2G0 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 But the bird never returned, though the empty cage 
 stood open all the seasons through. 
 
 The same impulse as had moved him then, moved him 
 now. As he had given his lark its liberty, so he gave 
 her freedom to his foundling. What was fidelity worth 
 only born of coercion ? The song of the lark had beeu 
 sweet to him ; but its melody would have been jarred for- 
 ever had it come from the throat of a captive. The love 
 of the child had been sweet to him ; but its caress would 
 have been embittered to him forever had it come from 
 lips on whose breath there had hovered a sigh. 
 
 Let her go ! — the child like the lark. 
 
 If the summer of other lands seemed fairer to her sight 
 she must be free to take flight to them ; if the old foster- 
 ing care seemed dearer than the glow of foreign suns, 
 then only would the love be willingly given, and not 
 prison-born. Any way, the door was opened ; and 
 though the ingrate should wing swift way to vapor- 
 palaces of sunlit cloud, still would the deserted refuge 
 wait, unclosed; in case that storm, and snow, and driving 
 blasts should ever bring the wanderer home, with droop- 
 ing wing and breaking heart. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 The thirtieth day of the last month came. He passed 
 once more up the linden-lined road. The bounteousness 
 of color that had so late made the earth beautiful with 
 fruit and flower had shriveled, dropped, and perished. 
 Wild winds were tossing the russet leaves, and the great 
 woods were bare and brown. There was winter in the 
 air ; and all the spikes of grass were white with frost. 
 In so brief a space all the brilliancy and wealth of autumn 
 had died away as though it had never been. Was the 
 brief time long enough likewise to kill the young warmth 
 of a girl's heart as it had killed the color of the earth ?
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AXD STRAY. 201 
 
 He traversed the grounds unobserved ; it was a wild 
 and gloomy day, and no one was at work in the gardens. 
 The house itself was long and low, with broad windows 
 that nearly touched the ground, and had a terrace run- 
 ning beneath thetn. The rooms within, at all times 
 visible, were doubly clearly seen from the bright light of 
 wood fires inside them that glowed through their lozenge- 
 shaped panes. 
 
 Instinctively before one he paused. 
 
 In the full illumination of ruddy color that was re- 
 flected back from the mirror-lined walls of the room, and 
 glowed upon the rose hue of its velvet hangings, he saw 
 her; and his heart beat thick with longing and with fear, 
 with hope and with despair. 
 
 She stood upon the hearth, in the full warmth of the fire- 
 flames, and was laughing, with her head thrown back, as 
 she tossed to and fro in the air a pretty golden toy, a Pro- 
 tean A rlecchino jeweled and enameled, that went through 
 changeful antics, as he was tossed or poised. Her face was 
 radiant with laughter at the puppet's evolutions; dainty 
 nobes clothed her tall slender limbs, and trailed behind her 
 on the floor; gold buckles glittered on her pretty feet; 
 and her hair, turned backward in the Louis Quatorze 
 fashion, was fastened by an arrow of gold half hidden 
 in its rippling clusters; wealth and rank had set their 
 seals on her; she looked no more a child, but a beautiful 
 woman. 
 
 What need had he to enter? His question was an- 
 swered by his first glance at her face. 
 
 Had the lark come back from its flight through the sun- 
 light ether? Would the girl come back from her ascent 
 into the luxury of riches ? 
 
 His heart stood st ill, his hope died out, as he beheld her. 
 With all that radiance on her face, where was the shade 
 of one regret? With all that mirth upon her lips, where 
 was the sigh of one remembrance 1 He bad losl her for- 
 ever. And he knew his loss as well as though he had 
 seen her laid down in her grave. 
 
 Slowly, and with one long backward look, he turned 
 and moved away toward the dark cold shelter of the 
 woods; .and she, unconscious all the while — laughed oft,
 
 262 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 tossing her Arlecchino upward in the fire-glow till his 
 jewels sparkled and his silvered bells rang again. 
 
 It was two hours later when Tricotrin returned, and 
 the dark clay was waning. 
 
 He desired, then, to see the Duke de Lira. He was ad- 
 mitted at once, and conducted to where the nobleman 
 spent most of his hours when in his mother's villa ; a 
 small, lofty, book-lined room, dusky even at^midday, yet 
 rich • in bronze, and statuaiy, and antique things that 
 gleamed curiously from out the twilight. 
 
 Tricotrin went quickly forward, and spoke ere his host 
 could speak. 
 
 " I have kept my word : keep you yours. Let me see 
 Yiva. No ! do not speak. Have patience with me. I 
 desire to see her first and hear you later. I address the 
 request to you since she is beneath your roof, but my 
 right to her is not wholly gone ; by it I come to claim 
 her." 
 
 The Duke de Lira looked at him in silence ; his face was 
 pale, his blouse was wet with night dews, his eyes were 
 full of speechless woe, like the dumb woe of a dog. There 
 was that in him which made his hearer obey the abrupt 
 and fiery discourtesy of the command. 
 
 " I will send her to you here," he said as briefly as he 
 rose, and passed out through the door of his chamber, 
 and closed it behind him. Some moments drifted by, 
 whether many or few he who waited could not have told ; 
 then the door reopened, and, with a light swift bound, the 
 gay grace of her form came toward him, all luster and 
 light in the gloom, with the shining Arlecchino still in her 
 hand. It was with a cry of welcome and delight that 
 she sprang to him ; and it thrilled through him as the 
 song of the lark had thrilled through his heart as a child. 
 
 He caught her with unconscious passion in his arms, 
 and kissed her with kisses that burned her cheek like fire ; 
 then as suddenly he loosened her from his embrace and 
 put her from him. He remembered that he had no right 
 to force on her caresses, for which in a brief while she 
 might blush with shame, no right to steal their virginity 
 from lips that another might soon seek with a lover's or 
 a husband's title.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 263 
 
 She, all innocent of his thoughts, laughed up in his 
 eyes: her hair had been ruffled by his touch, and her deli- 
 cate dress stained by the night dews on his own ; and the 
 toy she held bruised and bent by the violence of his cm- 
 brace. 
 
 " Oh the poor Arlecchino!" she cried, "how you have 
 hurt him 1 And he cost a thousand francs in the Palais 
 Royal yesterday." 
 
 With an inexpressible impulse he dashed the puppet 
 from her hold on to the ground. 
 
 "That is how you greet me !" 
 
 She, who had never heard that bitter, burning passion 
 in his voice before, stood silent, trembling, afraid, amazed, 
 gazing at him with her bright large eyes. She did not 
 know what she had done. 
 
 " I did not mean anything," she murmured, " it is only 
 — the Arlecchino amused me so, and he is broken." 
 
 The words recalled him to himself, and roused him from 
 the delirium of wounded love that had found its violence 
 an issue in the toy's destruction. lie stooped for the 
 puppet, and raised it; his rival of tinsel and clockwork 
 that was before liim in the thoughts of the creature who 
 owed him her salvation ! His voice trembled, but was 
 very gentle as he answered her. 
 
 "Forgive me, Viva: I erred greatly. I had no right to 
 bruise your plaything, above all as 1 have not a thousand 
 francs to give for any toy! But I have skill at these 
 things, and I will mend his injuries; and — for my vio- 
 lence give me your pardon." 
 
 The words found their instant way to the still fond 
 heart of the child. 
 
 "Oh, what do I care for the toy ?" she cried. "The 
 duke will buy me another. I was only afraid I had 
 angered you ; and — I am so glad to see yon once more I" 
 
 He answered her nothing, but stooped his head over 
 the Arlecchino. The welcome was little worth, H wae 
 the welcome of a playful unconcerned affection; and. 
 already she looked to a rich man for the solace of her 
 woes, the provision of her pleasures ! 
 
 "Viva looked at him earnestly, in some perplexit} ; she 
 was afraid that she had pained him, bu1 also Bhe was
 
 264 TR1C0TRIN, 
 
 irritated that he should have acted so strangely. Three 
 months had been sufficient space for her to have learned 
 to look upon herself as a thing of beauty and of witchery 
 to whom all should bow and give way. 
 
 There was a long silence between them ; a silence that 
 she spent, almost instinctively in noting the stains of the 
 grasses and the rains upon his linen, and thinking how 
 much nobler he would look if he wore velvet, like the 
 men whom she had seen of late. The feminine mind 
 played with frivolities and caprices while the masculine 
 soul suffered a mute martyrdom. 
 
 At last he looked up, laying the puppet down. 
 
 " The toy will be none the worse ; I will remedy what 
 is amiss. And now, have you forgotten, Viva, that this 
 day is the last of those which you were asked to pass 
 here ?" 
 
 She started; and a flash of remembrance and of terror 
 came over all her face. 
 
 " I had forgotten it," she murmured. 
 
 " And — you regret it ?" 
 
 She looked down ; and he saw her mouth quiver. She 
 said nothing. 
 
 "You have been happy here then?" he asked. 
 
 " Oh ! — happy ? — yes 1" she murmured, the flood-gates 
 of her enthusiastic speech opened at last. "Happy? 
 Why ! it is like enchantment I You do not know how 
 beautiful the life is 1 They have been so good to me. 
 They have given me a little horse, snow-white, and a 
 hundred pretty things like Arlecchino, and many dresses, 
 all as beautiful as this, and some more so; and then every 
 nook and corner of the house is like a picture ; and one 
 has never even to pour out a glass of water for one's self; 
 and my own room is so exquisite, and the duke is always 
 giving me some new surprise or pleasure ; you do not 
 know what it is I And then one feels so great too — like 
 a princess — among it all !" 
 
 " And who loves you — whom do you love in it?" 
 
 The question was passionate in its scornful demand, its 
 vehement reminder of the one thing lacking. 
 
 "Love?" she echoed. "Oh, no one! But then — it 
 is all so magnificent ; it does not matter about that."
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 265 
 
 "You have learnt the world's lesson swiftly!" he mut- 
 tered, as he swung from her. 
 
 The .heartless creed couched in the guileless words 
 struck him with an intolerable suffering. What avail to 
 have given her care and tenderness for all these years ! — 
 a month of luxury outweighed them all ! 
 
 "I am very different to what I was!" Viva retorted, 
 with a certain petulance and offended pride, as instinct- 
 ively she glanced at herself in one of the mirrors. 
 Although it was twilight she could see the gleam of her 
 gold arrow in her hair, and the trailing grace of her azure 
 skirts. 
 
 " You could not speak a sadder truth !" 
 
 The words were hoarse in his throat with the acuteness 
 of disappointed mortification. Unconsciously he had 
 Imped, far more than he knew, that the ties of old asso- 
 ciation and of gratitude mighl have been strong enough 
 to withstand the temptations that sought to break them 
 asunder. Unknown i<> himself' the idea that the gilded 
 restrictions of a lofty station would gall her, much as 
 they would have galled him, had misled him ; and, rely- 
 ing on the free-born temper of the child, he had forgotten 
 the ambitious vanities that ran with it. 
 
 "A sad truth!" echoed Viva, with all her graceful 
 petulance in arms against the attack upon her vanity. 
 while her eyes soughl the beloved reflection of herself in 
 the mirror. ''A very happy one, surely 1 You mighl as 
 well say ih at it is sal that the exquisite little old duchess 
 here, who is jusl like one of her own porcelain figures, 
 does not resemble grand'mere clicking over the snow in 
 her wooden shoes, or peeling onions to put in the soup- 
 pot ! • 
 
 "For shame, Viva !" he cried, vehemently. "Have 
 you less gratitude than the straj Iambs feel \'<<r the bands 
 that fed the in when tbey were motherless ? Four duchess 1 
 1 know little of her ; Inn I know tie, t if all her life through 
 she have had the truth, and courage, and charity, and 
 chastity of the brave old woman you despise, it will be 
 well for her when her lasl hour comes. What think \ m 
 the noble old soul, who wearies for a sight of your face as 
 
 2 I
 
 2(36 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 she sits by her lonely hearth, would feel if she had heard 
 your woi'ds now ?" 
 
 The rebuke was passionately uttered ; it touched her 
 to remembrance, contrition, and all the affection still 
 strong in her beneath the selfishness that stifled it. She 
 sprang to him with all the charming impulsive grace of 
 her childhood. 
 
 " She would call me wicked and worthless, as I am. 
 My tongue should have been cut out before it should have 
 breathed a word against her. Dear, old grand'mere ! I 
 care for her so much, I do indeed. It is only everything 
 here is so different : it makes me forget, I think ; it turns 
 my head dizzy like wine I" 
 
 " The wine of flattered vanity — yes ! Heads wiser 
 and older than yours grow drunk on it," he said, with a 
 quick, impatient sigh as he turned slightly from her. 
 
 " You think me cruel and foolish then?" she murmured, 
 with a touch of piteousness ; her reverence and love for 
 him were stronger than anything else as yet in her, and 
 were making her odious in her own sight if she were 
 unworthy in his. 
 
 He looked down on her with a smile, whose sadness 
 and whose tenderness she could not measure, for they 
 were beyond her knowledge. 
 
 "A little cruel — youth always is in its own intense self- 
 absorption ; and — as for foolishness, we cannot look for 
 you to be very wise : but you follow the world's wisdom 
 in choosing the things of the world. But — how will it be 
 with you, Viva, if you be obliged to come back to the 
 only life I can give you V 
 
 He saw her turn pale, and she gave a swift, upward 
 glance of alarm. 
 
 " I will try and be content," she said, softly; and her 
 promise was sincere. 
 
 But scarcely any answer could have stung him more. 
 He knew what content that has to be striven for is worth ; 
 he felt all the bitterness of such niggard return for the 
 lavishness of his own donations. He repressed the words 
 that rose to his lips. She had been so utterly and entirely 
 his debtor that he would not bring against her the charge 
 of her ingratitude, lest it should seem like a citation of his 
 own benefits.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 267 
 
 "You mean," he said, calmly, at length, though the 
 calmness was very hard to attain, "thai you could Dot 
 be siinpjy and sincerely happy in your own life, having* 
 once tasted the luxury and brilliancies of this? You 
 mean, that if you have to return to grand'mere and her 
 cottage vou will rebel with ceaseless regret against them 
 both?"* 
 
 Viva hung her head, and her eyes went instinctively 
 to the gleam of her golden arrow in the mirror. 
 
 "'No, no," she said, with the tears trembling in her 
 voice. " It is not that — I love you so dearly, and 
 grand'mere; too — but it is only " 
 
 "Only what?" 
 
 " That I think I am born for this life ! I always 
 seemed, somehow, to want it so much, even when 1 did 
 not know what it was like! The duchess herself, who is 
 so terribly proud, says that she is sure I come from some 
 great race or another. And it may be, you see, — why 
 should it not be, when all this that is great seems to come 
 to me by nature? You remember, that English lord 
 with the beautiful face said just the same thing when he 
 passed me ?' 
 
 Tricotrin made no answer. 
 
 He stood in the shadow, where she could not tell what 
 changes swept over his features. It cost him a long 
 efforl ere he could reply to her as he desired to do — with- 
 out trace of the conflict that raged in him. It was a 
 strange caprice of accident by which, in the vevy words 
 with which she endeavored to exculpate herself, she 
 thrust deeper into his soul the iron wherewith .-he so all 
 
 unconsciously stabbed him. 
 
 "You may lie right," he said, at length. " Though 
 beware how you lean on the thoughl of some lofty origin ; 
 it will he but a broken rrci\ at best. I see, however, 
 plainly one thing, — that whether you come of prince or 
 peasant, you will never again lie happy in obscurity. 
 You would sooner go away to Coriolis than hack to 
 grand'mere !" 
 
 Viva colored hotly. 
 
 "Only to Coriolis' fame: it has greatness in a way at 
 
 least."
 
 268 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 " Greatness! Good God ! how irresistibly what is vile 
 looks fair in the eyes of woman ! Pshaw ! What avail 
 to rear you fickle exquisite things in innocency and soli- 
 tude ; you find your way to sin and its pomps as instinct- 
 ively as mice steal out to honey !" 
 
 The violence of the words escaped him ere he knew it, 
 in the insupportable anguish that it was to him to find 
 her thus wedded to vain things, and turned from all that 
 he had thought would grow but dearer to her by their 
 absence. 
 
 She — ignorant of his meaning, but comprehending only 
 that he deemed her inconstant and unworthy — stood with 
 the tears in her eyes, half of sorrow, half of offense. She 
 knew that she had been heartless and wrong, but also she 
 felt herself aggrieved. 
 
 She could not tell that the feeling which moved him 
 was the consciousness that she, unless lifted from tempt- 
 ation and encircled by the safeguards of a sure and lofty 
 position, was precisely of the nature that would be swiftest 
 drawn down to gilded evil, that would be easiest lured to 
 drink of the perfumed wines which poison as they intoxi- 
 cate. The very ignorance and purity of her mind would 
 lay her open and unguarded to the seductions which 
 would come to her with every appeal to her vanity and 
 her tastes, and with all the darker traits veiled from her 
 and unguessed. He saw that, had the desire of his heart 
 been given him, and the creature of his love been his, 
 there could have waited for him in the future no other 
 fate than the fate of Bruno. 
 
 She did not know this. 
 
 The lovely, careless, graceful thing, thinking of her 
 golden arrow in her hair, and the azure glisten of her 
 dress, never even dreamed of the sharp despairing torture 
 of the man. And he took heed, even in his torture, that 
 she should not. Why vex the thoughtless heart of a child 
 by letting her behold a wound which she could neither 
 measure nor comprehend ? 
 
 Not to pain her was his first thought ; and he crushed 
 the thorns into his own breast unseen, rather than let 
 them touch the hand which she might have stretched out 
 in pity, had she known that they were wounding him.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 2P>9 
 
 There was a long silence between them ; when he spoke 
 it was gently and gravely. 
 
 " I seem harsh to you, my child. I am not so, God 
 knows. You have the foibles of your sex in a strong 
 degree; but we should scarce expect you to be free from 
 them, — with such a face as yours, and barely sixteen 
 summers over your bright head ! You are enamored of 
 your life here, doubtless, though to my thinking the life 
 you have led was far simpler, and freer, and happier. But 
 there is one thing you seem to have forgot, Viva; your 
 sojourn here was but for a visit. Though you have been 
 given so many gifts, you are but a stranger ?" 
 
 She was silent. He saw once more the quiver of dis- 
 appointment on her mouth. She had never thought of 
 this — to her belief it had been the fairies who had brought 
 her to her rightful heritage. 
 
 "You have forgotten that?" he pursued. "You have 
 forgotten then, also, that to-day you were to go back with 
 me to your own old home; since no guest can outstay 
 the limits of her invitation ?" 
 
 Viva lifted her head, with an impetuous passion in the 
 gesture. 
 
 " Oh, wait, wait! — hear me 1 It is not because T am 
 ungrateful, not because I do not love you and grand'mere 
 with all my soul; but, indeed, I must be something greal 
 somehow. If it be only charity here, I will nut stay. I 
 know I was born an aristocrat like themselves. I will 
 not remain for their alms, however splendid they be. Hut 
 do let me go on the stage. I need not be wicked, as that 
 cruel Coriolis is. I will obey all yon wish; I will do ;ill 
 you say ; but there I could conquer the world, — or what 
 is the use of the beauty you all tell me 1 have? It is not 
 because I am heartless, not because 1 do not feel all thai 
 you ami grand'mere have done for me ; but 1 know thai 
 
 if I »'0 back to be shut up, all the long winter through, ill 
 our little room by the river, 1 shall die jusl with longing 
 for some other world, like the Mexican bird thai the 
 sailor sou of Sarazin brOUghl hi- mother from oveT the 
 m;is |» 
 
 The whole pent-up pa. --ion of the girl's heart broke oul 
 
 in the vehement words. Under the lermrjhat Bhe WOtild
 
 270 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 have to return to the monotony and peasant companion- 
 ship of her home, the flood-gates of her impetuous de- 
 sire were unloosed ; and there poured out before him the 
 turbulent stream of her long-repressed thoughts. 
 
 Of what the stage was in reality she had even yet little 
 notion ; it was only in her sight a means whereby women 
 of beauty and genius soared their way from obscurity and 
 poverty into the light of the world's adulation. Every 
 sentence she uttered pierced him to the heart with the 
 sharpness of steel; but she knew naught of that. She 
 knew only that he loved her. Why, then, should he deny 
 her this one yearning of her nature — to be great? 
 
 He let her speak on, answering her nothing. To 
 answer her must have been to either condemn or affright 
 her ; and he dreaded lest she should see the tempest that 
 raged in his heart of grief, and despair, and desire. 
 
 This was all that he had reared her for — to hear her 
 speak of the river-nest that had sheltered her as of some 
 prison-house, and beseech his permission to follow the 
 steps of the vilest women of Paris ! 
 
 But of what he suffered there was no trace in his voice 
 when, at length, he replied to her, 
 
 " I have told you — I would rather see you in your 
 grave than on the stage. But that may be a prejudice. 
 You are right, an actress may be as noble and pure a 
 woman as any other of her sex, but, — if she be, she is 
 hissed off the boards ! I see well that your heart is set 
 on some far different life than any I can give you. I 
 will think awhile on all you have said, and see you again. 
 Meantime, go ; and if you can, bid your host come to me." 
 
 She paused before him, wistfully. 
 
 " You are angered against me?" 
 
 He stooped to her, and there' was an emotion in his 
 voice that she had never heard before, as he answered 
 her. 
 
 " Child — if with years you grow the guiltiest woman 
 that ever shamed her sex, / shall have pardon for you. 
 Can you not even dream what love is?" 
 
 She looked at him half fearfully, her great eyes wide- 
 opened like a startled stag's. Of such a tenderness as 
 this she had no conception ; yet it stirred her to a vague
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRA )'. 271 
 
 terror and an intense souse of worthlessness and weak- 
 ness beneath the divine greatness of such a gift. 
 
 With a sudden wild awakening to its strength and her 
 own blindness, she stretched her hands out to him with 
 a broken cry. 
 
 "Ah ! Who will ever care for me like thai again ?" 
 
 For this one instant the supreme value of this priceless 
 benediction outweighed with her all lower and baser 
 things. She saw, in that one moment, that never, so 
 long as her life should last, would such a love as this be 
 hers again. 
 
 A delirious hope flashed on him. He caught her hands 
 against his breast, and held them there with convulsive 
 force. 
 
 " Would that love suffice to you, Viva? If you wan- 
 dered witli me -always — were never severed from me — 
 would you sigh then for the golden gifts of the rich, or 
 the triumphs of Coriolis?" 
 
 His eyes fastened on her face with feverish longing, 
 with thirsty dread and desire mingled, to read hi- answer 
 there. She hesitated a moment, looking up at him with 
 innocent wonder, knowing no meaning in his question 
 save that she should go whithersoever he went in his 
 wanderings, as, when a child, she had so often begged 
 to do. 
 
 " 1 do not know,'' she said, tenderly, and with a tremor 
 in the answer, for she loved him in return very fondly, 
 though with a hive, to him, well-nigh more cruel than 
 her hate would have been. " 1 am always so happy when 
 I am with you; only — only — it is to lie great, too, that 
 I want !" 
 
 He dropped her hands, and turned away. The hope 
 of a moment's span was gone. 
 
 "Send your host to me," he said, briefly. 
 
 She went as he bade her slowlj . musingly, with a cer- 
 tain (error and yague sense of loss and of remorse upon 
 her. She forgol the errand on which lie had -cut her; 
 
 lint went almosl mechanically to her own r< i. and 
 
 curled herself among its velvet cushions, and buried her 
 face among its hot-house flowers, ami cried as if her heart 
 would break — why she could scarce have told.
 
 272 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 She had said the truth sincerely, yet she felt that she 
 had been heartless and ungrateful ; she felt too, though 
 indefinitely, that in the answer she had given, she had in 
 some way or another divorced her life from that of the 
 one she loved best. Best, although it was the thought- 
 less and half-cruel child's love that she rendered him; 
 best, although the riches and glamour of the world were 
 before him in her sight. 
 
 In her solitude she thought more sadly and more 
 gravely of him. To go with him in his wanderings as 
 she had used to pray to do, — she wondered how it would 
 be with her if she did so ? She remembered many happy 
 hours spent with him in careless freedom ; among the 
 yellow wheat or the ripened vines ; drifting down the 
 river in some great cumbrous boat, that was yet so darkly 
 picturesque, with its heavy tawny sails and loads of corn 
 or fruit ; or sitting under the broad-leaved chestnut-trees 
 before some farm-house door, listening while the delicate 
 delicious music of the Straduarius echoed through the 
 evening air, and made the very watch-dog lift his head 
 to listen. She remembered so many of those joyous sea- 
 sons — life made up of them would surely be fair to the 
 sight and the senses ? 
 
 And then with him she knew her better nature reigned 
 as it never did in his absence : she was purer, simpler, 
 braver, nobler, beneath his influence than under any other. 
 She knew as well as he that in this life that she now led 
 she had deteriorated. She knew that for sake of every 
 better and higher thing in her she should cast off all these 
 desires for a fate he could not give her, and surrender 
 herself in innocence and contentment to the safety and 
 simplicity of her old life beneath his will. He had been 
 to her in the stead of country, parentage, home, and 
 brethren : he, he alone, as far as her memory could reach, 
 had bestowed on her everything she had received, from 
 the very bread that had appeased her daily hunger. And 
 all the reward that she had given him had been to pine 
 for an alien greatness, and to refuse to follow him through 
 the years to come ! She was hateful in her own sight ; 
 hateful and full of guilt. Her heart went out to him in
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRA >. 273 
 
 childlike contrition and longing tenderness ; bul her pride 
 and the lusts of her vanity drew her from him. 
 
 To wander with him always — -what would it be but to 
 be always among the people? True, they loved and 
 honored him, and his step brought gladness and mirth at 
 his coining, as the foot of the wine-god sowed thyme and 
 flowers wherever it fell. . 
 
 But it was ever among the homes of the poor that he 
 dwelt, in their fields that he labored, in their festivities 
 that he shared. He laughed to scorn the palaces of the 
 rich, and would never break bread beneath a great man's 
 roof. The dome under which he worshiped was the blue 
 of the starlit sky; and the ears for which his melodies 
 were breathed were the ears that through long labor had 
 only heard the moving of scythes, or the beating of oars, 
 or the whirling of steam-wheels, and had been deadened 
 and deaf to the sweet sermons of music. To be with 
 him was to be "of the people" forever; forever to be 
 banished from the triumphs of greatness, from the lux- 
 uries of wealth. 
 
 And though the graciousness of love, and courage, 
 and poetry, and charity, and tolerance, and peace, would 
 be with her in the life, she still recoiled from it because 
 it would be without the dreamy splendors and sensual- 
 ities of riches, and without brilliancy in the sighl of men 
 to whom she would still be but a Waif and Stray. 
 
 "I must be great!" she murmured, vehemently, "I 
 am sure 1 came from greatness!" 
 
 She could not doubt it, as she raised her head and 
 looked at her face in the mirror opposite; there were 
 patrician pride and patrician blood in every line and hue 
 of it, flushed though its hot cheeks were, and tear-laden 
 its brimming eyes. 
 
 She fell herself the offspring of -"me mighty race, and 
 destined to some mighty sovereignty : should she be false 
 to these? No! — rather musl she be false where every 
 common bund <>l gratitude claimed fealty.
 
 274 TR1C0TRIN, 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 Tricotrin remained long where she had left him, his 
 arms resting on a marble shelf beside him, and his head 
 bent down on them. 
 
 The torture of doubt was ended ; there remained in its 
 stead the dullness of despair. 
 
 The bird chose to spread its wings toward the glisten- 
 ing golden roofs of kings' palaces; — let her go! If she 
 came not of her own will to find her repose and safety 
 in his bosom, not by lure nor by prayer would he recall 
 her. 
 
 Nevertheless, the corpse of a dead hope lay heavy on 
 him, and its coldness chilled to ice the strong and vivid 
 blood within him. 
 
 Yet not now, even in his own heart, did he reproach 
 her. It had been his own folly, he deemed, to think that 
 the free, wandering, homeless life of a man who was poor 
 could suffice to the fancy and needs of a fair woman-child. 
 Yet not once did he wish he were rich or were great, — 
 the love that would not cling to him because he could not 
 strew its path with roses, and fill its hands with gold, 
 was love worse than indifference in his eyes. Indiffer- 
 ence might have been cold, but love such as this was 
 cowardly. 
 
 An hour passed, unwittingly to him ; then the door 
 once more unclosed and his host entered. Tricotrin 
 started and raised himself erect; in the dusky ruddy 
 light of the declining day the agitation on his face was 
 veiled. 
 
 "I only this moment learned that Yiva had left you," 
 said the Duke de Lira. " It seems she forgot your bid- 
 ding until now. You find her " 
 
 He paused ; hesitating how to put the question that 
 was on his lips. 
 
 Tricotrin filled up the blank.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF A. YD STRAY. 275 
 
 "Changed? — or well? Which would you ask? I find 
 her — as I thought to find her — ruined for the life with 
 which she had been hitherto content, and ready to hurl 
 herself to any depths from which it should be promised 
 her she would rise enriched and greal ! 5fou have done 
 what I foresaw would be done: I do not blame you. 
 You have only brought out, under hot-house heat, the 
 native evil that always sleeps in such fair frail things as 
 she. You have thought to do well by her, doubtle 
 but how is it well to make a creature, half infant and 
 half woman, loathe all that is honestly hers, and crave all 
 that can never be hers except with dishonor? — how is it 
 well, to make the pure bread of life taste coarse and ab- 
 horrent to her, and only the honeyed gilded confections 
 that poison and cloy become the sole food she will feed 
 
 01) with appetite ?" 
 
 He spoke with the swift eloquence that was always 
 natural to him under emotion; what arrests the speech 
 on mosl men's lips brought it, burning and rapid as fire, 
 to his. His hearer listened without anger, though it was 
 a bohemian who relinked him for what the world would 
 have called a generous and most marvelous charity. 
 
 "You do us some wrong, 1 think," he said, patiently. 
 "Here, the tastes thai were inherent in her have de- 
 veloped; that is all. Is it not better they should do so, 
 while yet her future is undecided and malleable, than 
 that they should be discovered by herself and l>v others 
 too late?" 
 
 "Too late 1" echoed Tricotrin, with unconscious vio- 
 lence. " It is always too late for a child to discover that 
 she is made for riches, and rank, and honor, when she is 
 motherless, fatherless, nameless, and penniless! What 
 avail is it ever for such an one to discover thai she pines 
 for a palace, and has the graces thai empresses have ool ? 
 What avail ever, except to lure her out ward to >he road 
 where vice dresses itself as splendor, and disgrace I hrones 
 itself as a sovereign, and the woman who counts the 
 mosl honors is the woman who counts the most - ' I 
 see no end that is served, except such an end as this, by 
 her learning thai Bhe passionately craves whal is not hers 
 by birth or by title, and can never be hers by purchase 
 unless she barter her beauty for it !'
 
 276 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 "You forget our covenant, " interrupted the Duke de 
 Lira, still gently, for he interpreted aright the despair 
 and the dread which inspired words in themselves so 
 pregnant of offense for him, had he so chosen to read 
 them. "You cannot think us such barbarians that we 
 can forsake this lovely child when once she has been 
 under our roof? I gave you my word to provide in such 
 measure as I could for her happiness. It is I who am 
 her debtor for having brought so much of youth, of glad- 
 ness, and of freshness into my own somber existence." 
 
 Tricotrin flashed a searching burning glance upon him : 
 he said nothing, but in that glance he read the other's 
 heart like a book, — his suspicions were confirmed. 
 
 "My mother has grown to attach herself to Viva," the 
 nobleman pursued. " She would part from her with re- 
 gret ; of the girl's own contentment you can judge for 
 yourself. This life suits her well — let her lead it." 
 
 "How?" — his teeth were set hard as he put the 
 question. 
 
 "As she does now. I have no — absolutely no— kin- 
 dred. I can do as it pleases me with my wealth without 
 wronging any. I will guarantee to her such a fortune as 
 shall raise her above all possible neglect or need. For a 
 year or more she can spend her time in such studies as 
 are pleasures to her ; then when she is some few years 
 older she shall enter the "great world" that she longs for, 
 in such fashion as shall show to her only its brightest 
 side. I know that for her to do this is for you to surren- 
 der all the claims on her which you justly hold as her 
 sole friend and protector ; but it is for her own happiness, 
 which, I think, can ill be made in any other way. If I 
 wound you by what I say you must remember that in 
 saying it I only keep my word." 
 
 "I thank you; you are very generous." 
 
 That was all he answered as he turned and paced to 
 and fro the length of the chamber. He knew that the 
 words addressed to him were spoken in honor and liber- 
 ality ; the acknowledgment of them was wrung from his 
 justice; yet he could have leapt on the man that uttered 
 them and have strangled him, as wild beasts do their foes. 
 
 " You will prefer the assurance of her future from a
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 277 
 
 woman than from a man," pursued the other; his sympa- 
 thies were too true to let him misconstrue as offense to him- 
 self the pain that he knew his words caused. " My mot her 
 will say to you all that I say; in her name, not in mine, 
 if you deem it better, can the conveyance of such wealth 
 as we may decide on be made over to Viva. She has at- 
 tached herself to the child: it will lend a charm to her 
 last years to see so graceful a creature about her in all 
 the brilliance of youth. What more can I add? Any 
 pledge, any security, any bond you may wish I will give, 
 and that life will go well with her I cannot doubt. She 
 is not one of those formed to suffer; under calamity, or 
 poverty, or shame, she might kill herself like enough, but 
 exist in pain or want she would never." 
 
 "That is true," — he paced still to and fro the chamber, 
 his head sunk down on his chest. Pie knew that it was 
 true ; that this child whom he had rescued from the drear- 
 iness of death by hunger, thirst, and the chills of the 
 niui\t, was of that temperament to which existence musl 
 be sweet, rich, uncheckered, or else, — is cast off by rash 
 passion in the first hour of desolation. 
 
 He knew that with himself happiness could not come 
 to her, since in her sighl that magic gifl could only be 
 summoned by ;i wand of gold. She desired these things 
 which now were offered to her: though the effort were 
 to kill him he would not seek to hold her through her 
 gratitude, nor permit pity to approach him from those 
 whom she selected in his stead. His pride arose to re- 
 press the evidence of pain before the man to whom her 
 allegiance would henceforth be given, by choice and pref- 
 erence. 
 
 He came and stood before her host, grave, calm, with 
 a haughty and patient composure, beneath which all pas- 
 sion and all pain were alike held down in silence. 
 
 "You make a greal offer; a generous offer," be said 
 briefly. " Prom you, moreover, it is dictated by no de- 
 sign of a libertine, no desire of a voluptuary. 1 compre- 
 hend your intention, and I honor it- charity. It- accep- 
 tation or its refusal lies with her whom it concerns; nol 
 with me. It were idle to affecl to doubl which it will 
 receive. Were she my daughter 1 should refuse, in her 
 
 24
 
 218 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 name, a liberality which, however nobly tendered, must 
 still be an alms. But, having no sort of title to her life, 
 I can have no justification in forcing her away from your 
 charity, which can bestow on her the magnificence she 
 covets, to retain her under mine, which can scarcely at 
 its best lift her above poverty. Let your mother state 
 to her to-night what you have stated to me ; let her, then, 
 weighing well the two, choose betwixt you and me. A 
 thing of so much moment should not be hastily adopted 
 or rejected. I foresee many objections to your plan: 
 many reasons why much trouble may come to you through 
 it; we do not know whence she comes, nor who may 
 some day claim her. But this is for your judgment; not 
 for mine." 
 
 The Duke de Lira answered nothing. He stood, look- 
 ing earnestly and with a curious wonder on the man who 
 thus addressed him with all the tone of one gentleman to 
 another, though speaking of poverty and clad in the guise 
 of a laborer. With a sudden impulse he spoke aloud the 
 perplexity that had baffled him from the hour when he 
 had first seen the revolutionist, with the hymn of the Mar- 
 seillaise in his lips, and the red flag above his head, drive 
 back the plunderers from out his court of honor. 
 
 " Tricotrin ! ivhat are you ? Forgive me the insolence, 
 if insolent it be, for sake of the friendship I would bear 
 you if } r ou let me. A bohemian, a genius, a scholar, 
 a democrat, a wanderer, a man who might be everything, 
 and who chooses to be nothing. What can one make of 
 you?" 
 
 Tricotrin's fine delicate lips laughed slightly. 
 
 " Sir — the people do not share your perplexity. I 
 would make myself intelligible to your Order, if I cared 
 for their comprehension. I am no mystery that I know 
 of; save that truly a man who does not care for greed or 
 for gain is an anomaly in this day ! But I do not care to 
 speak of myself. I thank you for your offer of friendship ; 
 but I make no friendships. And from your order to mine 
 they would savor too much of patronage for my taste. 
 Let us rather conclude the matter which alone unites us, 
 — for a season. You desire absolutely to adopt Viva into 
 your family and your station ?"
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRA V. 219 
 
 "I do so." 
 
 "You remember that contingencies may arise that I 
 cannot avert? No one knows whence she came, uor by 
 whom she was born or begotten; there is the possibility 
 at any time of claimants arising; specially so when she 
 is of prominence in the world." 
 
 "That we must hazard. I think that there is little. I 
 have hadfresb inquiries instituted whence you discovered 
 her ; but there appearsno clew whatever to her parentage 
 or her abandonment. And the crime of such abandon- 
 ment will keep silent its perpetrators. Moreover, — who 
 has seen her in that little chalet by the Loire? A few 
 peasants only. There are indeed Coriolis and her youn«' 
 lover, but we can guard her from their sight until such 
 time as, with her womanhood, she shall have so changed 
 that they would never dream of her identity. tJnless 
 you choose to reveal it, none need recognize her in the 
 new life she w ill lead." 
 
 "I shall not do so. At the same time let it be under- 
 stood that I cannot guard you or her from such possibili- 
 ties. And I deem them more perilous than yon do. 
 Women like ( loriolis never forgel aughl — save their God. 
 Nor on the other hand will I surrender my righl to have 
 fret.' access to her whenever 1 may deem lit. Accountfor 
 my connection with her as you please: bul 1 will not lie 
 debarred from some watch over her life." 
 
 "Heaven forbid you should he. Jf she ever forgel 
 
 what she owe to you " 
 
 " She will forget it. [t is not remembrance of thai kind 
 that 1 need. But 1 desire to have, always, the power to 
 judge for myself of how far from, or how near to, happi- 
 ness she be. You may trust me to exercise the power in 
 such wise as will lie lies) for her. As regards wealth. — 
 it would not he just, that takiug her to a glittering life, 
 she should be abandoned to the chance- of caprice; or 
 left to poverty if your mother die. Therefore, lei the 
 Duchess de Lira settle on her such sum as she shall d< 
 just, if Viva decide — ami there can in' no question hut 
 she will so decide — on acceptance of your offer. Let her 
 ponder well, understand fully, whal it is she does \ 
 she selects, then so he her future. If I do not thank you 
 
 a
 
 280 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 as you may deem you deserve, believe that I do not the 
 less appreciate the gentleness and benevolence which 
 move you. I leave you to acquaint her yourself of your 
 will with her. You can then propose to her all that you 
 desire, and see if she accept your guardianship: there 
 can be no doubt that she will do so." 
 
 As he turned to move away, his host stretched out his 
 hand to arrest him. 
 
 " Stay ! Tricotrin, if it give you pain, if it cause you 
 regret, to part with her to our keeping, I do but ill repay 
 the debt I owe to you ?" 
 
 " You owe me none. I forced my people from plunder 
 and incendiarism : think you I should have done other- 
 wise if they had attacked the house of my enemy?" 
 
 "No matter, I do not hold what you did so lightly. 
 Well as they loved you they were nigh turning on 
 you for thwarting them, like tigers balked of their spoil. 
 And if to lose the child you have cherished cause you one 
 pang of regret " 
 
 Tricotrin stopped the phrase on his lips with a smile 
 that had an irony more mournful than tears. 
 
 "Pshaw! Is there aught that we love that does not 
 stab us, somewise, soon or late? There is no serpent 
 without, that can sting half so hard as the tenderness 
 in us!" 
 
 Then, his pride forbidding him even so much as these 
 words of reproach and lament, he laughed as he passed 
 to the door. 
 
 "I am a wanderer, and have no ties to be ruptured. 
 You solve a problem that began to grow knotted and 
 vexatious in my hands. I should thank you more than 
 I have done. Without you Viva would most likely have 
 passed to the path of Coriolis. Her rescue is my obli- 
 gation. Adieu ! " 
 
 He was gone as the farewell was spoken: in his hand 
 was the injured Arlecchino. Even a trifle that pleasured 
 her had worth in his eyes; and a promise concerning a toy 
 had its bond on him, even though the toy were his rival. 
 
 As he passed an open door, a soft, silvery, luminous 
 thing sprang through it toward him ; it was the form of 
 Viva, in the airy grace of her evening appareling.
 
 THE STORY OF A WATF AND STRA V. 2«1 
 
 "You are not going?" she whispered. "Madame re- 
 ceives to-night, and they have dressed me early — I want 
 you to look at me I" 
 
 His breath came and went, swift and hard. While his 
 heart was breaking over her, this frivolous thing only 
 heeded the sweep of laces and the shimmer of silksl 
 
 "You were fairer in your vine garland," he said briefly. 
 
 She gave a sigh of impatience. 
 
 "Oh! how can you say so? Just look at me, I am all 
 snow and silver, like a fairy." 
 
 And she shook herself, and whirled round lightly, that 
 the gossamer tissues might gleam in the light and float 
 on the air. A strange dreamy memory of the German 
 Willis of legend, who dances in the midsummer moon- 
 light, and with whom whosoever dance also must perish 
 ere dawn, came to him in the moment, as such weird fan- 
 cies will come to minds of the; strongest. 
 
 "Nature has given you beauty. Take heed how you 
 use it," he said wearily. "But you are too young for 
 these pleasures, Viva." 
 
 "Oh! They only let me go for one hour, just to see 
 and he seen," she murmured, with the tears .-till wel on 
 her flushed cheeks. "And it is so beautiful there! and 
 the great ladies caress me, though I think that they hate 
 me in their heart,-! and the greal nobles tell me they 
 never saw anything half so lovely as I am. And I think 
 it is true when I look in the mirrors: there is no one 
 like me !" 
 
 The confession was .-.> naive ; the vanity, as yet so inno- 
 cent ; even in that hour he could not choose bul .-mile at 
 them, though the smile was very mournful. 
 
 "From the world they prepare you Wn\ and the world 
 of Coriolis there is little difference, save a glazing of lip 
 
 honor! Bui — what can they call you in this bouse to 
 their guests?" 
 
 "Only Viva: there is mystery kept up aboul me. It is 
 thought that I am the grandchild of a ile.nl friend of 
 madame's, whom she has discovered in an obscure posi- 
 tion. Nothing definite is told. Madame like- t,, have it 
 all shadowy ami vague, and to excite people's interesl 
 without conceding anything to their curiosity." 
 
 _• f
 
 282 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 "So! You take kindly already to thejies of the great 
 world?" 
 
 Viva colored: the dauntless haughty nature of the 
 child was instinctively aud inherently truthful, and he 
 had trained her to look on falsehood as the disgrace of 
 the coward. 
 
 "I do not say anything," she murmured. "It is sup- 
 posed so, and I am not to contradict it. Madame tells me 
 that it would never do to allow it to be divined that I am 
 — a foundling." 
 
 The last abhorred word was very low; it could not be 
 consoled to her even by her own convictions of her splen- 
 did though hidden lineage, which she never doubted would 
 soon or late blossom out into some magnificence of her- 
 itage and celebrity. 
 
 "No !" he said, with a grave tenderness in his tone that 
 moved her strangely. "And yet, though you will deem 
 me cruelly harsh to say so, I doubt if it would not be 
 better for your future if that one memory of what you 
 were could be kept ever before you ! I see you to-morrow 
 — farewell." 
 
 She stood irresolute and remorseful as he passed away; 
 then, a strain of music caught her ear, and she turned to 
 a mirror near. 
 
 "I shall have no beauty if I cry!" she thought, and 
 she choked back the sobs which were fast rising in her 
 throat as she looked at her own reflection. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 "She has accepted. It is quite natural she should 
 have done so." 
 
 He spoke quietly, with a grave courtesy, where he 
 stood on the morrow in the chamber of the Duchess de 
 Lira. He was quick to conceal all emotion, impassioned 
 and impulsive though his nature was; and he came before 
 them calm, careless, full of the ready wit and of the easy
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 283 
 
 negligence of his habitual manner. His temper made 
 
 him fling off pain; and, having once resolved to surrender 
 ner up to those who virtually purchased her by superior 
 wealth, he was none the less resolved to conceal from 
 them that the surrender cost him aught. The intelligence 
 that she had thus chosen was no blow to him: he had 
 not dreamed that she would choose otherwise. All thai 
 she desired they could bestow ; nothing that she desired 
 could he accord her; and he knew well how the affections 
 of such feminine Caprices as Viva were guided by their 
 sunny and unconscious egotism. 
 
 The old aristocrat studied him with well-concealed 
 wonder. She knew of the debt that her son had owed bo 
 him in the times of the revolution; but she abhorred 
 every form of revolution, and had imagined him a coarse 
 eccentric man of the people who could be dismissed as 
 soon as his Waif were purchased from him, as easily as 
 the husk of a client mil is thrown away, when the sweet 
 snowy kernel is extracted. She was lost in the same 
 amazement and wrath as had at the first moved her at 
 finding in t he bohemian whom she had thought to relieve 
 by taking u burden from his hands, a- man who dictated 
 terms to her, and made the presence of a foundling in 
 her house as grave a matter as the betrothal of a prim 
 and spoke to her with all the dignity and power of an 
 equal, while he fascinated her by an irresistible charm 
 she could neither analyze nor dispute. 
 
 Though worldly-wise and haughty to coldness, the 
 aged duchess had a certain gentleness of heart, and a 
 great generosity. The desire of her beloved and only 
 living son was law to her ; and although she had \ iewed 
 at first with aversion and disgust his attraction toward 
 a nameless, and doubtless bastard child, she had ended 
 by feeling a woman's tenderness for the child herself; 
 whose native grace, pride, and refinement, assimilated 
 themselves so rapidly to her own. Her son's desire had 
 been at first inexplicable and most unwelcome to her: 
 but now, there had come into her thoughts ;i vague c 
 ception which she did uol like to brood upoq which 
 
 asibly served to reconcile her to In- wi the 
 
 threatened extinction of hi- race was a greal misery to
 
 2S4 TRTCOTRTN, 
 
 her, her craving for its perpetuation still stronger than 
 her pride ; as it seemed he could never be wooed by those 
 of his own rank, — since the days of his earliest youtn 
 when a cruel treachery had taught him his alienation 
 from their sex, — would it not be better that he should 
 wed even with a peasant than leave his name to perish ? 
 If this were ever to be so, the preparation and com- 
 mencement for it must be, she resolved, the absolute and 
 unalterable banishment of all things connected with the 
 girl's past life. Therefore her chagrin and her wrath 
 were great, when in the man whom she projected to dis- 
 miss forever, she encountered as proud a spirit, and as 
 resolute a will as her own, one who scarcely thanked her 
 for her splendid offer, and who dictated conditions as 
 though he, not she, were the patron and the donor. 
 
 At his last stipulation, she, had it not been for her son, 
 would have bade him take back his foundling and make 
 a servant, a gipsy, an actress of her, what he would : 
 yet the last stipulation which offended her so deeply was 
 but this : 
 
 " I have only one thing more to add," said Tricotrin, 
 when their interview drew nigh its end. " It is to stipu- 
 late that I, myself, shall never be denied access to her. 
 You can account for my knowledge of her as seems best 
 to you. I have spoken my desire that she should never 
 be painfully reminded of her past, or led to feel that she 
 is deemed of an inferior class to that in which she will 
 henceforth move ; you may be certain therefore that my 
 presence will never be forced on her, unadvisedly or in- 
 opportunely. But I will not surrender the right to judge 
 for myself of her happiness or unhappiness. I will not 
 relinquish the power of ascertaining the truth concerning 
 her welfare. I will not consent to become as a stranger 
 to her." 
 
 " It is impossible," commenced Madame de Lira; but 
 her son, standing beside her chair, laid his hand on hers : 
 
 " Nay, madame, it is but just," he said quietly. 
 
 " It is hut just," repeated Tricotrin, calmly, "to myself 
 and to her. All that I know of her history you know ; 
 and that all is nothing. But I have taken, of my own 
 will, the maintenance and direction of her life. Having
 
 TIIE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 285 
 
 once assumed those, I should err to her if I did not con- 
 tinue to hold, at least, the ability to know how life goes 
 with her in her future. 1 have said, and I repeal it if 
 that be needful, that I shall exercise the right with all 
 due regard to her position or your prerogative; but the 
 right itself I shall not relinquish She will see me very 
 rarely, very rarely indeed, if she be happy; but when- 
 ever she needs me — if ever she needs me — I shall be 
 there." 
 
 "Surely !" interposed the duke, still with that gentle 
 touch of his hand on hers, entreating- silence from his 
 mother. " Do not think that we seek to teach her either 
 ingratitude or oblivion." 
 
 "There will be no need to teach them. Both will 
 come self-sown ! Nay! Do not think I say this either 
 in irony or blame. She is human ; why should we ex- 
 pect her to be above, humanity? I thank you for your 
 kindness toward her. I see in it a beneficence to my- 
 self. For evil would have touched her in obscurity and 
 want of riches. You have saved her from the chance — ■ 
 the certainty — that in the only lite she could have led 
 through me she would one day have cursed me that 1 ever 
 came between her ami the death that was allotted to her 
 in her infancy. To you, madame, I need say nothing. 
 You are a woman, — 1 need not, remind you thai she is 
 worse than motherless? You are of gentle blood, — I 
 need not bid you remember that a scornful word, which 
 is a jest to the well-born, can sting like a serpent what is 
 desolate and dependent ? You are aged, — I need not 
 solicit from you sympathy and patience with the fanciful 
 enthusiasms and way ward ways of youth ? The gifl of 
 your gold will be the generosity thai the world will 
 appraise. It is the gifl of your love and your gentleness 
 that 1 would bespeak for Viva. An old peasant-woman 
 
 gave them ; they were all she had to give. Bui — Unless 
 they be added to your treasures likewise, the child, amid 
 riches, will remain poor indeed. I will hid her farewell 
 now ; and then — she has her will, she is yours."' 
 
 His voice was calm and unbroken throughout the words, 
 yet there was an accent in them that thrilled through the 
 hearts of his hearer.-; and, as Bhe heard, dimmed with a
 
 286 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 strange unwonted emotion, the keen eyes of the chill, im- 
 perious, disdainful protectress of what had forever aban- 
 doned him. 
 
 " He dictated to me/" she murmured, as he quitted the 
 chamber, moved as she had never been through many 
 years, beneath whose ice the love she had borne her son 
 had been the only living thing of warmth. "And you 
 called him a man of the people, my son !" 
 
 " He calls himself so " 
 
 " Of the people ? Of the mob ? Ridiculous ! He has 
 the voice of a man born to rule ; he has the grace and 
 the negligence of courts. What is there of the populace 
 about him ?" 
 
 " Nothing save his sympathies. They are wholly with 
 the people." 
 
 "Bah! that is no rule. One is sometimes tired of one's 
 self — of one's order. How else would you get your 
 Egalites, your Mirabeaux ? There are conservative work- 
 people ; there are democrative princes. You know nothing 
 else of him ?" 
 
 "Nothing. No one knows anything of Tricotrin." 
 
 "Tricotrin! Pshaw 1 Tricotrin! Is that a name? It 
 means nothing !" answered the old patrician, with impa- 
 tience. " That man has borne some other name ; that 
 man must have been noble once !" 
 
 " Why so ? He is a scholar, an artist, a genius, but a 
 bohemian, nevertheless, to the core. For the twenty 
 years and more that I have heard of him he has been sim- 
 ply what he is, a lawless wanderer of the ' ecole buisson- 
 niere. ' " 
 
 Madame de Lira shook her silvered head. 
 
 "No matter! He must have race in him. Heraldry 
 mnylie; but voices do not. Low people make money, 
 drive in state, throng to palaces, receive kings at their 
 tables by the force of gold ; but their antecedents always 
 croak out in their voices. They either screech or purr; 
 they have no clear modulations. Besides, their women 
 always stumble over their train, and their men bow worse 
 than their servants. But this man, look you, — he has 
 high blood in his veins, however he come by it. And — 
 he suffers "
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 28 if 
 
 Her acute, penetrative acumen had pierced to the truth, 
 though with it she had never onee seemed to have a pulse 
 of sympathy. Her son paced slowly and musingly to 
 and fro her chamber, with an anxious shadow on his face. 
 
 " I hope not," he said, with a pang of self-remorse. " I 
 hope to heaven not! I have done for the best " 
 
 "Bah!" murmured the duchess, with her delicate 
 irony. "Do not use those words. Nobody ever takes 
 refuge in them except when they divine they have — done 
 wrong. Half the misery of this world is made by per- 
 sons 'doing for the best,' instead of leaving others alone 
 to do just as they choose I It is 'best' for her, of 
 course — the pretty, heartless thing But for the man, — 
 it -is a little bitter. Your silver Harlequin and my gold 
 shoe-buckles outweigh him, and all his years of care, with 
 her ; it is a little bitter — that I" 
 
 "It must be so — indeed!" murmured her son ; and for 
 his good deed he felt a deeper remorse than many feel for 
 brutal crimes. 
 
 He had gone to her where she had stayed during the 
 hour of their converse, in a dainty, radiant, little room that 
 was called hers. She was kneeling byoneof its couches, 
 with her head bowed down upon the pile of cushions, as 
 he entered. She had chosen as her desire and her ambi- 
 tion dictated, chosen as her vanity entreated, chosen as 
 the evil spirit that her Prince Faineanl had awakened in 
 her, tempted and urged her to do. And yet there were 
 sorrow and shame on her; she fell unworthy in her own 
 sight. In the moment of her triumph she fell humili- 
 ated; in the very seizure of her wishes she fell disap- 
 pointed. 
 
 Though vain things too often obscured it, the core of 
 her heart was pure and brave; its fibers were of nobler 
 stuff than the egotisms and the frivolities that Burrounded 
 it. There were dauntlessness and truth enough there 
 still to make her know that she had acted basely; that 
 the humblesi peasant-girl working in the vineyards in 
 summer droughts for her own existence, was more near to 
 trui' dignity and freedom than was sh< ; that the coar 
 shepherd or swineherd, keeping hi- herds upon the 
 plains, and giving of his poor wage to the parenl or the
 
 283 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 benefactor who had reared hini, was nobler and more 
 grateful than herself. 
 
 Her pride told her that she should refuse all alms how- 
 ever disguised in a magnificent liberality ; her conscience 
 told her that she should reject all temptations, however 
 glittering and alluring, which would banish from her the 
 lives that had sheltered and succored her own. She was 
 well aware that she was won by the purples and fine 
 linens, the brilliancies and the aggrandizements of the 
 bribe by which she was enthralled ; and she was worth- 
 less in her own eyes. 
 
 For the second time in her life she shrank from the 
 presence of the only living creature that she loved ; in his 
 gaze she felt an accusation ; in his voice she heard the 
 accents of a judge. Though she had done naught against 
 him she felt as though she had betrayed him; she had 
 forsaken him ; she had denied him ; she had been ashamed 
 of her allegiance to him. She knew that she had sinned 
 as sinned the faithless disciple who denied his master. 
 
 The bread of life, and the food of the spirit, had alike 
 come to her from his hand and from his voice ; he had 
 bestowed on her daily bread through his charity, and had 
 raised her soul toward high imperishable things by his 
 words. She owed him a greater debt than the nourish- 
 ment of her mortal form ; she owed him the rescue of her 
 mind from the sloughs of ignorance and vice; — and the 
 way that she paid this debt was to desert him for 
 the bribes of wealth ! Her truer nature told her that, 
 although following in its flight the gilded arrow of ambi- 
 tion, she had in that desertion left the greatness which 
 was pure and lofty for the greatness which was a toy of 
 tinsel. 
 
 To be true, to preserve truth unstained at any cost, had 
 been the one lesson he had ever taught her; and she 
 would be henceforth a lie — delicate, sunlit, harmless 
 indeed, but still a lie to herself and the world. 
 
 When the vine wreath had dropped, crushed and 
 broken on the floor, Viva would have given the world, if 
 she had owned it, to bring back the bloom and the fresh- 
 ness to the bright crown that she had scorned because the 
 people had woven it, and a great man had seen her wear
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF ANT) STRAY. o s <j 
 
 it. Her old child-life that she had despised and rebelled 
 against because it was obscure and simple, and led amid 
 peasantry, — would she sigh as vainly for it, sin: won- 
 dered," as she had done for the lost grape garland ? 
 
 Yet she cast it from her heedlessly and willingly. 
 
 Until the vine leaves of youth are faded, who knows 
 their value or sweetness? None, alas! while yet the 
 violet clown is on the grapes, while yet the hair that 
 they crown is unsilvercd by time. 
 
 Some vague sense of the bitter fact that corrodes all 
 human life — the fact that desire is everything, fruition or 
 possession but little — came to Viva, in the granting of 
 her wish, as it comes to the lover, the monarch, the bride, 
 the hero, the statesman, the poet, all alike, when that, 
 which they have sighed for, and thirsted for, lies feasted 
 on to satiety within their tired grasp. 
 
 Viva had gained the " great world ;" and because she 
 had gained it all the old things of her lost past grew unal- 
 terably sweet to her now that they no longer could be 
 hers. The brown, kind, homely, tender face of grand'- 
 mere; the gambols of white and frolicsome Bebee; the 
 woods where, with every spring, she had filled her arms 
 with sheaves (if delicate primroses; the quaint little room 
 with its strings of melons and sweel herbs; its glittering 
 brass and pewter, its wood-lire with the soup-put simmer- 
 ing above the (lame; the glad free days in the vineyard, 
 and on the river, with the winds blowing fragrance from 
 over the clover, and flax, and the acacias and lindens ; 
 nay, even the old, quiet, sleepy hours within the convent- 
 walls, lying on the lush unshaven grass, while the drow -v 
 bells rang to vespers or compline ; — all became suddenly 
 precious and dear to her when once she knew that they 
 had drifted away from her for evermore. 
 
 But never yet so dear or so precious that they made 
 her waver in her choice. The young wood-dove Buttered 
 her white wings in impatience for their flight from the 
 forest-covert to the rose aisles of kings' gardens. 
 
 And he — thanked God that he had found Btrength, 
 against himself, to bid her go where heart, and fancy, and 
 desire had already taken flight, as he beheld her on thai
 
 290 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 morning in which, for the last time, he was with her as 
 the guide and guardian of her life. 
 
 She had been robbed from him, less by the tempting 
 of others than by the discontent of her own soul. It 
 was cruel as the serpent's tooth to relinquish the grace of 
 her caressing ways, the fairness of her perfect loveliness, 
 the watch of her bright and wayward intellect, to others. 
 
 He who loved Mankind, but who had long had no spe- 
 cial love within his heart, had grown in the last few 
 months to passionately cherish and desire her. Yet to 
 hold by force, what he could not gain from fidelity, would 
 have been an egotism and a baseness impossible to him. 
 
 "You think me wicked!" she murmured, as he stood 
 beside her. "You think me ungrateful — selfish — full of 
 greed? I told you the other night that I would not 
 take their charity, however splendid it might be — and I 
 have taken it. I have " 
 
 "Hush!" he said, gravely. "Speak of it no more — 
 never more. You have chosen — chosen where your de- 
 sire already had run before you. You have not known 
 when you were happy ; such ignorance is ingratitude to 
 fate. You are happy now, with such happiness as comes 
 from granted wishes; be wise enough to know it." 
 
 "Ah, yes!" she said, with a sudden vibration of pas- 
 sionate repentance in her voice. "I have my wishes ; 
 but I feel weak and guilty in the joy of them. Just so 
 I longed for jewels ; but when that young prince gave 
 me them, although I loved them, I never felt at peace. 
 And it is just so now !" 
 
 " Child, — what title have you, do you think, to escape 
 the doom of all humanity ? You desire — you possess — 
 and you find repentance and satiety already lying, in wild 
 justice, at the core of the thing you have coveted. You 
 are no exception ; you have the common fate of all mor- 
 tality." 
 
 "But then it is because what I desired was wrong! 
 When I wished for the vine-feast, when I wished for your 
 coming, when I wished for the swallows' return, when I 
 wished for a sail on the water, it was not so ; — I was so 
 happy when my wishes came " 
 
 " Because your desires then were innocent. Nay, they
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 291 
 
 are now no guilt, but they are corroded, they arc born of 
 envy and the lusts of wealth; and their advent is not 
 peace t because your conscience is in unrest at their pur- 
 chase." 
 
 "Because I know myself so false to you!" she cried, 
 in that breathless terror of a sudden remorse. " Because, 
 while I love all these things that I gain, I know myself 
 so base, so unworthy, so unfaithful to you who have been 
 to me in the stead of father, mother, brethren, friends, 
 and home! Because I know that all my lifetime spent 
 in service and fidelity to you could not repay you all the 
 long years debt I owe ! I choose the life they offer me, — 
 I cannot help but choose it, it draws me to it with a sor- 
 cery. I pine, I long, I thirst to be in greatness, and if I 
 had refused it and had gone hack with you, the evil in 
 me would have made me vile, the longing in me would 
 have made me restless, the discontent in me would have 
 made me your torture, not your blessing! 1 cannot help 
 what I do. Forgive me for it if you can I" 
 
 The impetuosity, broken and vehement, of the words, 
 but ill told the conflict in her heart ; the conflict betwixt 
 the irresistible delights of thai new world which tempted 
 her. and the remorseful clinging of her old affections to 
 
 their severed ties. He heard in silence; the ti was 
 
 past when it could give him either hope or dread ; when 
 it could move him to expectation or disappointment. 
 
 Thronirh all these years he had taken thoughl of her, — 
 the young forsaken creature for whom no other eared, — 
 he had denied himself that she mighl enjoy ; he had put 
 down the wine-cup untasted thai she mighl have bread, 
 oftentimes; he bad broken in the careless laughter-loving 
 indolence of his temper to the deliberate acceptance of 
 labor, that the trust he had self-assumed mighl be borne 
 
 out by her maintenance. And all this was i nted as 
 
 naughl ; all this was swept aside as though it had never 
 been, by the firsl proffer of a rich man's void ! 
 
 Bui it was his nature to give lavishly and royally; it 
 was his nature to appraise as nothing the good that he 
 did to others ; therefore no word of reproach escaped him 
 where he stood alone with her, on t hi- morning when Bhe 
 iieeepted as a charmed gift from a beauteous fate the life
 
 292 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 that would sever her from him forever. One thing only, 
 in which would have been for her the deepest reproach 
 of all, had not her self-absorption prevented her being 
 stung by it, did he ask her. It was simply, 
 
 " Viva, — do not wholly forget me!" 
 
 As it was she felt in that one moment of its utterance 
 a pang such as rarely struck through the playfulness and 
 pride, the vanity and airy willfulness of her nature. 
 
 She looked upward with impassioned feeling. 
 
 " Forget you ! If ever I do may God himself forget 
 me!" 
 
 He shrank slightly, as though the future veiled from 
 her was clear to him ; as though oblivion of himself were 
 so sure and so inevitable that in her words he heard her 
 self-invocation of abandonment by her God. 
 
 " Make no rash vows," he said gently. " Do not touch 
 the future ; let it come as it will. Though you do utterly 
 forget me may all that I wish for you be with you to 
 your life's end." 
 
 " But how could I forget you 1" she cried, as if in terror 
 at that doom which to him seemed so certain, and to her 
 so impossible. " Could I grow so base, so cruel, so vile, 
 so brutally unworthy of all your love and pity?" 
 
 He smiled : the smile she had so often seen of late ; of 
 a sadness she could not gauge, of an irony she could not 
 comprehend, of a bitterness she could not fathom. 
 
 "Nay; you will only grow — a beautiful woman and 
 worldly. No more! An ingrate? Well! are you not 
 that, my little one, to the good old creature you call 
 grand'mere ? Her heart hungers for you, you know that 
 well, yet for sake of Madame la Duchesse, and the dresses, 
 and the pleasures, and the jeweled toys, you will leave 
 grand'mere to sorrow alone, and be solaced as best she 
 may !" 
 
 Viva's face crimsoned. 
 
 "It is selfish, I know. It is wicked!" she murmured. 
 " But grand'mere always said 'never mind me, my child; 
 do what pleases you;' and in a little while I will get them 
 to let me go and see her, and I will show her all my 
 pretty things, and take her some presents, such as she 
 would "
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 293 
 
 "No!" he interrupted her with an accent that was 
 almost savage in its intensity. " Do not insult what you 
 desert ! Your absence will shut the lasl lingering light 
 out of her life; do not think to heal the wound that you 
 have made by gifts bought with rich people's gold!" 
 
 She was frightened and stilled by his sudden violence; 
 with it there seemed to break on her all the strength and 
 the value of this great love, all its grandeur and its rarity, 
 with which she had played, knowing no more of its force 
 and its beauty than a little child playing with sapphires 
 and diamonds knows of their worth. With a sudden 
 impulse of remorse, and fear, and repentance, she nerved 
 herself to sacrifice all her ambitions and all her delights. 
 
 " If you wish it let me go home!" she cried, in sudden 
 and sincere renunciation. " If it pain you let me stay 
 there always! I would not give you an hour's sorrow 
 for all the bribes of France !" 
 
 But in the cry there was only a love that entreated to 
 stay near him for his sake, not its own; a love as of a 
 child's petulant pliant afi'ection; a love that to the burn- 
 ing passions of the man was well-nigh worse than none; 
 a drop of dew when lit; thirsted for the ocean, a gleam of 
 light, making the darkness greater, a Tantalus touch upon 
 the lips of the fruit denied to them, a, ray of the pale 
 moon when he longed for the full rich glow of southern 
 suns. 
 
 But all that he felt he restrained. 
 
 " Not so," he answered her. " The die is cast and you 
 must go, Viva. And — to wish for the time to come when 
 you should desire to ret urn would he to wish your dreams 
 false, your faith betrayed, your paradise poisoned by the 
 serpent, your glorious hopes all cheated and misled. It 
 were to love you ill to wish you back at such a <■ 
 No! As you are happy in your new life so will you 
 forget your old; as you go nearer the fruition of your 
 prayers so will you go farther from me. So he it, [f for 
 your joy." 
 
 Once again there stole upon her with a sense of terror, 
 and of guilt, in her own unworthiness, Borne perception of 
 the majesty and the purity of this martyred love passion 
 whi(d) asked nothing for itself bul all lor her. She trem- 
 
 25*
 
 294 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 bled greatly, like one who leaves hold of some long-tried 
 and never-failing support to plunge .down into an un- 
 known abyss. 
 
 He saw that, and in his infinite self-sacrifice hastened to 
 comfort her, and to lead her thoughts from what he suffered. 
 
 " Now listen to a few last words," he said softly, with 
 an effort, so successful, at his old familiar tone, that she 
 was stilled and reassured. " You go to what you desire : 
 you will have riches, luxuries, gayeties, brilliancies, all 
 around you ; you will have indulgence, and in a year or 
 two more, homage. But, Viva, none of these things will 
 suffice to you unless your own heart be at peace. You 
 have a noble nature in much ; but you have grave errors 
 that will mar all the rest if they be allowed to grow and 
 to strengthen. You have delight in your loveliness, — 
 that is natural : but the illness of a week, as I have re- 
 minded you ere now, may sweep it away forever. How 
 will it be with you, then, if your soul has been anchored 
 on the allurements of your face ? Win regard and attach- 
 ment on something surer. You are too proud, and every- 
 thing in your new existence will tend to heat and to 
 pamper that fault. If you have any tenderness for me 
 you will strive against that besetting sin of yours, or it 
 will make you very cold, very cruel, very arrogant, very 
 avaricious ! It will kill all the divinity in you as surely 
 as the frost kills the flowers. Nor will it, like the frost, 
 leave the good root below unseen, but still not slain, to 
 blossom out again. For the nature frozen by the ice 
 of greed, and vanity, and unscrupulous ambition, there 
 comes no spring: but all is night and winter there. Keep 
 only such pride as shall ever rise above all taint of false- 
 hood or of meanness, and gain you that true dignity, a 
 stainless name. To Madame de Lira, who henceforth 
 will have authority over you, you will be gentle, grateful, 
 with such reverence as becomes the young to the old, and 
 never forgetful that you owe her very much more than 
 it will be in your power ever to repay. And for the rest, 
 — well ! — the future must bring you what it will, but you 
 will have the surest shield to meet it, if you gain for your- 
 self that temper which adversity cannot appall, and pros- 
 perity cannot exalt, which knows not fear as it knows not
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 295 
 
 vanity, and which in trial is dauntless, as in happiness it 
 is gentle and pitiful of others. I have read you a homily, 
 Viva mine, but I do not think it will be altogether for- 
 gotten; and if, — as you have said, — you deem that there 
 is any question of debt betwixt you and me, and you 
 would care to reward me, and to pleasure me for the 
 little I have done for your childhood, show me thus thy 
 sincerity and fidelity ; — by curbing- what I who love you 
 best have blamed, and by keeping your glorious nature 
 uncorrupted from the world. When you are tempted, 
 Viva, by your beauty, and glad pride, and brilliant be- 
 setting sins, that seem to have no evil to you, because 
 they are masked in such proud and witching disguises, 
 think of this that I have asked of you; — if I have had place 
 in your heart one hour you will have strength to resist 
 temptation then." 
 
 His voice had deepened from the playfulness with 
 which ho had at first spoken, into a grave and earnest 
 softness, but into no other tenderness than that which lie 
 had ever had of old with her; the}- were wise ami gentle 
 counsels, and all that he called, not unjustly, her inure 
 glorious nature awoke and stirred in instant and ardent 
 response. 
 
 "I will, I will!" she murmured passionately. " I will 
 remember every word; every time that I am proud, and 
 wayward, and wicked, 1 will think of you; 1 will try to 
 be all you will ; 1 will pray Qighl and day to God to make 
 me so! And, — as for forgetting you, — Viva will never 
 lo\ e any one in the wide worldas she lo\ es you. Never, 
 never, never !" 
 
 Tricotrin did not answer, but he laid his hand on her 
 lair, bowed head, with a smile infinitely beautiful, infi- 
 nitely mournful. 
 
 Be foresaw the future more clearly than she. There 
 was a long silence in the little luxurious chamber ; while 
 the winter sun tell through the deep-hued painted panes, 
 and touched them where 1 1 1 < y stood with light; then 
 clung to him with her old caressing grace: " Play to me 
 once —once !" 
 
 lie looked <m her, still with the same .-mile. 
 
 " Child, however thy new life indulges thee, and .-trews
 
 290 TRICOTR1N, 
 
 thy path with roses, thou wilt not be more spoilt than 
 thou hast been as a Waif!" 
 
 Then he bent his head, letting her desu-e be his law ; 
 and that music, which had given its hymn for the vintage 
 feast of the Loire, and which had brought back the steps 
 of the suicide from the river-brink in the darkness of the 
 Paris night, which sovereigns could not command, and 
 which held peasants entranced by its spell, thrilled through 
 the stillness of the chamber. 
 
 Human in its sadness, more than human in its elo- 
 quence, now melancholy as the Miserere that sighs 
 through the gloom of a cathedral midnight, now rich as 
 the glory of the after-glow in Egypt, a poem beyond 
 words, a prayer grand as that which seems to breathe 
 from the hush of mountain solitudes when the eternal 
 snows are lighted by the rising of the sun, — the melody 
 of the violin filled the silence of the closing day. 
 
 The melancholy, ever latent in the vivid natures of men 
 of genius, is betrayed and finds voice in their Art. Goethe 
 laughs with the riotous revelers, and rejoices with the 
 summer of the vines, and loves the glad abandonment of 
 women's soft embraces, and with his last words prays for 
 Light. But the profound sadness of the great and many- 
 sided master-mind thrills through and breaks out in the 
 intense humanity, the passionate despair of Faust; the 
 melancholy and the yearning of the soul are there. 
 
 With Tricotrin they were uttered in his music. 
 
 Other arts Earth still mingles with and profanes ; pas- 
 sion is in the poet's words, the senses wake with the 
 painter's voluptuous hues, and the sculptor dreams but 
 of the divine beauty of a woman's form ; but with music 
 the soul escapes all bondage, and rises where the world 
 has no share, unclogged and uncompanioned. His heart 
 spoke in those wild, pathetic, nameless, melodies as it 
 never spoke in human language: he who should have 
 read them aright would have read this man's life by its 
 master-key. 
 
 As Yiva listened to the harmonies which had been her 
 dearest delight from her earliest years, the slow tears 
 gathered in her eyes, the flush faded from her face, 
 leaving it very pale, she pushed back the shining masses
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AXD STRAY. 297 
 
 of hair off her brow, and stood as she had stood long be- 
 fore in her infancy, when the Straduarius had decided 
 her- destiny. 
 
 Her future seemed to float before her in the rich fan- 
 tastic passionate waves of sound that filled the stillness, 
 — that future of sunlight, that future of sovereignty! — ■ 
 and still ever, through all the glory of the melodies, one 
 under-note of deepest sadness seemed to whisper that in 
 all the life to which she went, she should find no love that 
 would equal, in its measure and its sacrifice, this love that 
 had sheltered and shone on her childhood, this love which 
 she had now forsaken. 
 
 Then suddenly, the wondrous magic of the music ceased, 
 and dropped, and died ; and she threw herself on her knees 
 before him. 
 
 "Ah ! if I heard that music always, I should never be 
 proud and vain and wayward; I should love and pity all 
 the world ; I should do your will, and God's !" 
 
 Tricotrin smiled, and the smile was like his melodies. 
 
 "Viva mine, were we all what we are in our holiest 
 moments, we were all godlike! Treasure the music in 
 thy heart then ; so will it be thy guardian-angel. So shall 
 I have one gift to give thee ! And now — farewell !'* 
 
 At that one word, all the anguish of severance came 
 on her; she loved him with fervent, tender, clinging affec- 
 tion, though she loved yet more dearly her vanity and her 
 pride. She had dwelt joyously away from him because 
 she had been so sure she could go back to him ; but now 
 that she had to part with him, and from the home that he 
 had given her, without power to return to them, the fond- 
 ness that she bore for both conquered every other feeling, 
 and she sobbed as though her very heart were breaking, 
 her head bowed on his breast, her hair flung over his 
 arms. 
 
 She did nol feel the shudder that ran through him at 
 her touch; she only heard the gentleness of the voice 
 upon her ear. 
 
 "My child of chance ! The fairies call thee to their 
 Avillion where are no toil, no pain, no shame, i<> gall thy 
 heart and fret thy pride. No poor grape garland to lie 
 heavy on thy brows, no lives of labor about thee to make
 
 298 TRICOTRJN, 
 
 thee dread a great man's sneer. Go with a happy heart, 
 and spoil not thy present by looking- backward at thy past. 
 The past, however bright when it was 'present,' is ever 
 dark with vain desire when it lies behind us, like the lands 
 from whose sky the sun has long gone down. Remember 
 that!" 
 
 She made him no reply; but silently clung to him 
 weeping in a very convulsion of love and of repentance; 
 a summer tempest soon to pass, yet none less vivid and 
 desolating, because fated to be evanescent. 
 
 He looked mutely down upon her ; and where her 
 head was hidden on his breast she could not see the 
 yearning passion that his eyes spoke, for one moment 
 unrestrainedly, because it knew itself unread and unsus- 
 pected. 
 
 " Ab, true to thy sex 1" he murmured bitterly. " Thou 
 mournest me now, a day hence and I shall be forgotten!" 
 
 A burning flush dyed her face as she lifted it with 
 impetuous eagerness of denial. 
 
 " Never, never, never ! I shall never forget you till I 
 die!" 
 
 The smile that made her tremble, why she could not 
 have told, was still upon his lips — the smile of so much 
 tenderness, of such little faith. 
 
 "You will die early then! Nay! live in joy ever, 
 though not a thought of me pass over thee. My child — 
 my love ! Farewell !" 
 
 He held her one moment longer in his embrace, one 
 moment longer pressed his lips on hers : then, ere she 
 knew it, drew her still closer yet, once more, thrust her 
 quickly from his arms and left her ; their lives were cut 
 in twain forever.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. J'i!) 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 Wild winds were driving snow across the vineyards 
 and the plains in blinding white sheets of powder; the 
 swollen river was black and angry, rushing in stormy tide 
 and eddy between its brimming banks ; in spots where 
 its torrent had overflowed, a dark sullen sheet of water 
 spread over submerged meadows or ruined gardens ; the 
 night was tempestuous, starless, heavy-laden with snow ; 
 through it Tricotrin passed, insensible to the furious 
 blasts, the icy cold, the perils of the flood, the fatigue of 
 every step. 
 
 When here and there the dim reflection of some lan- 
 tern, hung upon some wayside cross to guide the way of 
 travelers, fell upon his face, it was very pale, and his 
 eyes looked straight forward into the unbroken gloom, 
 unblinded by the sleel that drove against them: in his 
 breast curled Mistigri, and with one arm he held her 
 there and sheltered her from the night. 
 
 He made his way, by instind and by habit, to one 
 familiar place ; thegreal chestnul branches were groaning 
 in the gale, the rush of the river below the rocky slope 
 was like the swelling hoarseness of the sea, the wind was 
 tearing the ivy from the stones where it had dung so 
 long, and scaring the birds in terror from its shelter. 
 
 There was a ray of yellow lighl streaming from an 
 oval hole in the shutter; through Li the homely interior 
 was visible, ruddy with the cheerfulness of burning wood, 
 and with the form of an old peasant-woman alone within 
 it. Srand'mere sat, by the wood fire on her hearth, half 
 asleep in the twilight, her high white head-dress nodding 
 to and fro, the chestnuts cracking in the embers, the 
 white cal Bebee purring in the warmth. 
 
 She started, and clicked across the Boor in her wooden 
 shoes, as a knock came on i he door of her dwelling. She 
 
 threw it wide open with her oil lamp held above her
 
 300 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 head, and gave a loud glad cry ; then she trembled till 
 the lamp rays flickered like a candle flame blown about t 
 in the wind. 
 
 " Where is the child ?" she asked. 
 
 " The child is well, grand'mere." 
 
 Then he entered and shook off the snow that had 
 fallen on his beard and blouse ; and took the little shiver- 
 ing Mistigri from his bosom, and put her kindly down 
 beside Bebee, and unstrapped his knapsack and laid it on 
 a wooden settle. At last with an exceeding gentleness 
 he turned and took the two old withered hands within 
 his own, and looked down into the eyes that had watched 
 him with such mute pathetic entreaty. 
 
 "You can bear pain, grand'mere?" 
 
 She gazed at him with a hard, fixed, agonized regard 
 that searched his very heart. 
 
 "Paris has taken her 1 " she said slowly, with a terrible 
 bitterness. "I have known it long. Paris is fed with 
 all our blood, all our beauty, all our youth, all our inno- 
 cence : Paris is never quieted. The children come to the 
 birth and lie at the breast only to be devoured by her 
 when they have fairness or strength in their frame!" 
 
 Then casting her serge gown over her head as a matron 
 of Rome cast her robes, she turned from him and leaned 
 against the wall, silent. To her there was no need to say 
 more: Paris, that fatal, beautiful, cruel, pitiless thing that 
 drew all lives within its murderous embrace, had taken 
 the child — all was told. 
 
 Tricotrin laid his hand on her shoulder. 
 
 "Grand'mere, it is not so bad as you think. Believe 
 me, it is well with Viva." 
 
 The old woinan uncovered her head, and looked at him 
 with all the fire of her youth flashing through the slow 
 salt tears of age. 
 
 "So they said, — each one of them! My noble boys! 
 It was well with them they thought — the city was so 
 grand, and the wage so good, and the mirth so gay, how 
 should they have deemed otherwise? Paris wore a smil- 
 ing front to them; she smiles always, until she sucks the 
 life out of their veins, like the bat that fans men to slum- 
 ber to kill them. Antoine wrote me it was so well with
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 301 
 
 him ! He fought for liberty, he was kissed on the mouth 
 by fair women who called him a hero ; he dreamed of 
 freedom for all France, and of the love and the patience 
 of God breathed into the hard souls of men. That was 
 how she lured him, that Paris, whose stones drank his 
 blood. And he died in his youth, with the balls fired 
 into his breast!" 
 
 "I know — I know! But Viva " 
 
 "She has gone where he went! — where his brethren 
 went !" she interrupted him fiercely, every line of her 
 brown withered face quivering with grief aud with pas- 
 sion. "They could never come back; nor could she, I 
 know well. It is ever the same with Paris — she draws 
 them all in, the youths and the maidens, and when she 
 has got them, she pits them one against each other to ruin 
 them all — the men to tempt the maidens, breathing lust 
 in their ear, and pressing gold in their hands; the women 
 to lure the youths, kissing them blind with bought kisses, 
 and teaching them the pleasure that kills! How should 
 she come back? Can the clay come unburnt from the 
 furnace? Can the callow-bird return from the throat of 
 the squirrel that lias drawn down and devoured it? Why 
 did you not Blay her with your own hand rather than 
 take her to that gilded and honeyed death that steals the 
 soul with the body?" 
 
 Then, once more she turned her head from him, and 
 wepl — wept as the aged weep, without hope. 
 
 He waited awhile till her grief, wrought almost to 
 frenzy, should have grown calmer. 
 
 In the light of the hearth Mistigri trembled, and watched 
 
 them with her black and melancholy eyes, and stole closer 
 
 to Bebee, who, himself, slept and purred on. indifferent, 
 
 so loDg as the fire burned bright to warm him. 
 
 After awhile, Tricotrin spoke, and told her the truth 
 as it stood, ami .-trove to soften the blow, a.- besl it could 
 be softened, by tidings of tin' child's joy and safety. 
 
 Grand'mere heard him in unbroken silence; her gaze 
 never leaving his face, and reading there that she did 
 not. suffer alone. 
 
 Of his own trial he -aid naught ; he dwelt only on the 
 brightness, on the security, on the eminence of the future 
 
 26
 
 302 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 that Viva had chosen. What was heartless in her con- 
 duct he left unrecorded; what was tender and generous 
 he lingered over. Yet, despite himself, the story was told 
 in weariness, and had the chill of grief in it, as the snow 
 drifted up against the lattice-window, and the red flame 
 grew low in its socket. 
 
 They knew that never again would the child's form — 
 that had lent such light and grace to the little homely 
 chamber with its blackened elm wainscots and its white- 
 washed walls, and its pendant strings of thyme, and 
 onions, and pumpkins swaying from the rafters — come 
 thither to dance upon the bare floor, and mirror itself in 
 the burnished coppers. 
 
 The old peasant heard without answering a word; her 
 face did not even change when he spoke of the offer which 
 the duke, in considerate kindliness, had sent for her to 
 make her home near Viva's new resting-place. 
 
 " You need feel no sorrow, no separation," Tricotrin, 
 giving the message, pursued. "They wish that you 
 should live in all comfort and peace near her. They 
 desire that you should go where she will go, and dwell 
 on the Lira estates, where you will see her most likely 
 with every succeeding autumn of each year. You " 
 
 She rose and stopped him, and spoke for the first time 
 since her paroxysm of dread and of despair at Paris had 
 broken forth, in eloquent, quivering invective. 
 
 "Tricotrin — I am an old woman, and poor, and the 
 time for my hand-labor is well-nigh passed. But — if so 
 it be willed that I live on and on through other desolate 
 years, I will go out and wash linen in the river, clear in- 
 sects from the vines, gather fruits for the markets, weed 
 stones from the trefoil, and beetroot, and sainfoin, ere ever 
 I will take bit or drop, log of wood or roof of house from 
 those who have robbed us of her!" 
 
 "Nay, it is no robbery. They mean aright " 
 
 " Aright ? Can it be aright to build the pile of her 
 glories on the stone of her ingratitude ? Can it be aright 
 to bid a young child forget the one debt of her life ? 
 Can it be aright to take her into high places, where she 
 shall learn to blush to tell truth of herself? But let that 
 be ! I have no wish to say ill of her. She has been as
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AN/) STRAY. 303 
 
 the core of my heart for too long;. Only let them know 
 this, — though I shall hunger like one in fa mine for the 
 sigh.t.of her face and the sound of her voice, I will never 
 go nigh those who have led her astray. I have no title 
 to dwell longer under this roof, which was only kept for 
 her sake; but I have strength still, and I will go ami lie 
 down with the oxen, and ask the fowls for their corn, be- 
 fore I will take alms at the hands of your spoilers. I 
 have spoken I" 
 
 There was resolve, so strong and so proud, on her 
 face, that it rendered almost beautiful the aged, weather- 
 beaten, sun-bronzed features ; her eyes kindled, her mouth 
 set, her voice grew clearer; all the bold, hardy, peasant 
 blood in her rose as it had risen when she was offered 
 the government-alms she Hung back, to the rulers who 
 had sent out her firstborn to perish in Africa. 
 
 Tricotrin saw and heard ; and he benl his head with 
 the reverence he ever gave to the pure honesty of this 
 simple ami undaunted nature. 
 
 " Grrand'mere ! There is no need to think of that. 
 This place is yours so long as you shall will to have it so. 
 You cannot deem so ill of me as to think that " 
 
 "Tricotrin, you are a generous man; we know that 
 well,'' she 'answered him. with the anguish ami the wrath 
 in her eyes softening away. "I have never been two 
 leagues outside my own vine country, and shall not begin 
 my travels now. But neither have I ever lived on alms, 
 nor will I now. While I could serve — her, it was just 
 that J should take your bread; but now thai 1 am of no 
 use, how should [justify myself to eal it ':" 
 
 "Hush!" he said, gently,, and his voice had an unut- 
 terable sweetness in it. "Every man owes a debl to his 
 mother; mine died ere I knew her. 1 can only pay ii t< 
 her sex. Do not fly from my shelter. Your hearth is 
 the only home that 1 know. Keep it. — lesl ever I wander 
 to it weary and maimed. Keep it. — lesl ever the child 
 that you lose should find her visions lade as she pursues 
 them, and learn to long for its refuge and pine for its 
 peace." 
 
 As he spoke, the brave. strong, sunburnt lace, on which
 
 304 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 the light from the fire played, grew paler and more tender, 
 till all the passion died from it. 
 
 " Tricotrin, — you are a noble heart," she said, slowly. 
 " You know how to cover your charities with the grace 
 and the goodness of souls that give as God gives the sun 
 and the fruits and the harvest. But think you she will 
 ever come back? — nay, listen. I thought so too when 
 my lads went forth ; they flung their glad arms round me, 
 and they kissed me with their honest lips, and they all 
 whispered in my ear 'we shall be back so soon!' And 
 the one would come as a great soldier with crosses on his 
 breast ; and the other would come as a rich man to wed 
 the little yellow-haired girl at the water-mill, and rear up 
 his young children around me ; and Antoine — my hand- 
 some Antoine ! — would come as a liberator, as a redeemer, 
 as a chief of the people, to bind France in one vast 
 brotherhood of peace. Well ! one was slaughtered in 
 African raids ; and one was crushed by a building stone ; 
 and one was shot down by his countrymen's carbines. 
 That is how they ' come back' to us — the children of our 
 love!" 
 
 She turned away, and employed herself in her homely 
 household cares, heaping the wood upon the flames, scald- 
 ing some red wine in a copper stoup, brushing the snow 
 down from off his outer garment. The peasant instinct 
 and habit of her life led her to labor as the only palliative 
 of woe. 
 
 " It is an awful night, Tricotrin," she said, spreading 
 bread and chestnuts before him. " You must have felt 
 the storm bitterly." 
 
 He bent his head in silence. The food and the steam- 
 ing wine stood untouched beside him. "Looking at him 
 earnestly, as in the first hour of her anguish she had been 
 too blinded by her grief to do, she saw that the fairness of 
 his face had lost all color, and that the sun-hued waves of 
 his hair were whitening with other silver than the silver 
 of the snow. 
 
 And her heart hardened against the child whom she 
 had nurtured and cherished from that early time when 
 the tearful smiling eyes of the forsaken thing had first
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 305 
 
 looked up at her from the ferns and the blue fraxinella. 
 She laid her brown, wrinkled hand gently on his shoulder. 
 
 "Tricotrin, — when my sons went forth, one spoke of 
 duty to his flag, and one spoke of duty to his betrothed, 
 and oDe spoke of duty to his country ; but not one of the 
 three remembered that duty might lie nearer his own 
 hearth; not one of the three remembered that I hud 
 endured the pangs of their birth, the woes of their infancy, 
 the fret of their passions, the evils of their maintenance. 
 The children never remember — they live in themselves. 
 But when in turn they grow heart-sick, and are betrayed, 
 and hunger and thirst, desolate amid the wealth of the 
 world, then they remember us, and yearn for us — then we 
 are avenged. She forgets you now. In the day of her 
 necessity she will pray for you, and, it may be, pray 
 vainly." 
 
 A shiver, that was not of the cold of the night, shook 
 him as he heard. The deep quivering voice of the speaker 
 had the terror as of prophecy in it. 
 
 "God forbid," he answered her, "that ever my ven- 
 geance should come so I" 
 
 " It would be but justice," she muttered. "But the 
 only justice we get upon earth breaks our own hearts 
 when it falls." 
 
 And she left him, and went into her own chamber, and 
 wept bitterly, as the aged alone weep, when the light of 
 their eyes has passed from them for evermore, and none 
 other can ever illumine the brief dark space that parts 
 them from the grave. 
 
 2fi*
 
 306 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 " Write to me to the care of Mere Rose," he had said, 
 when he had parted from her. "If thou art happy — keep 
 silence. But when aught pains thee, write." 
 
 To the house in the Pays Latin, where she had once 
 heard the grisette sigh for those who went to the Rome 
 of their desires, her letters flew, for awhile, swiftly as 
 carrier-pigeons. For the heart of the child was at un- 
 rest, and full of love, and therefore full of love's twin- 
 brother, pain. 
 
 When the spring deepened to summer, the winged 
 words came more seldom. They were carrier-birds made 
 laggard by the tempting of warm suns and luscious fruits, 
 and by the luring melody of winds and waters. 
 
 With the autumn but very few ever came. They were 
 as doves that would not answer to those who murmured 
 their old familiar names, because they better loved the 
 peace and the abundaflce of the palm-groves in a new 
 and brighter land. 
 
 Through the year that followed they almost ceased ; 
 one, here and there, in a stretch of many months, still 
 coming, like the single bird that bore the olive-branch of 
 hope. 
 
 Not seldom he would make long pilgrimages from north 
 or south, from east or west, to ask that single question : 
 "is there any letter, Mere Rose?" 
 
 And when she, leaning from her lattice, would shake 
 her head, with tears in her brown comely eyes, he would 
 turn away. 
 
 " So best: it is well with her then." 
 
 But the woman would murmur fiercely and sadly, in 
 her throat : " Nay ! it is ill." 
 
 And he knew that she was right. 
 
 With her body, with her beauty, with her youth it was 
 well : but with her soul ?
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 307 
 
 At length, one day in a fragrant spring time, when all 
 the city blossomed and laughed with flower and song. 
 Mere Rose reached down from her casement, and in her 
 hand lay a letter, like a little, white, tired bird. 
 
 lie took it with a light in his eyes that was not from 
 the bright noon sun: and when he had read it, and an- 
 other one that lay within it, he reeled slightly like a man 
 under a blow, and his lips grew white, and he stood stain- 
 ing blankly up at the bright sun and seeing naught. 
 
 "Is she dead ?" cried the woman, from the lattice above. 
 
 He looked up at her with blind eyes, and answered 
 nothing, but went slowly away down the long street, 
 with heavy staggering steps, as of one in whom there is 
 no life left. 
 
 The city was filled with buds, and blossoms, and green 
 leaves, and with the singing of students and maidens, 
 and with the joyous laughter of children, and with the 
 fragrance of tossing lilacs, blue and white, that were 
 flung upward by boyish hands in the sunlight of the feast 
 day. 
 
 But Merc Rose, leaning at her casement, heard nothing, 
 and saw nothing of these. She was looking down the 
 street after the man in whose hand the letter was hidden 
 like a snake that stings the hand%hieh fed it ; and from 
 his form, as he passed away into the shadow casl by a 
 dim old gothie church, her eyes wandered into the cham- 
 ber of the opposite house. The casement stood open; 
 and in the darkness stood the coffin of a woman within. 
 
 It waited for burial until the festal time of the May- 
 day had come and gone. 
 
 ''Ah, thou saidst truly, poor little one!" murmured 
 Mere Rose, gazing into the chamber of death, so quiet 
 and so dark, amid the light ami the song and the blos- 
 som of the world around. "They come back from Rome 
 — yesl But back to those whom they lefi — neverl"
 
 308 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 (i 
 
 'Is the child dead, grand'rnere?" the people of the 
 vine country asked with bated breath and anxious eyes. 
 
 "Yes — she is dead," the old woman answered ever: 
 and would say no more to all the eager, curious, unceasing 
 questions that were put to her by those who met her at 
 the little chapel in the fields, or in the woods where she 
 gathered her fuel; on the straight road across the plain, 
 as they rode their mules to market, or by the towing- 
 path as they walked above their slowly-laboring boats. 
 
 "She is dead," was all she answered: and they knew 
 that it was just thus that she had spoken when the story 
 had come from Paris, creeping tardily and terribly through 
 the awe-stricken country in its hot hush of midsummer 
 silence, that her youngest-born had fallen under the bul- 
 lets, with the hymn of liberty on his lips. 
 
 "The child was de^cl," they murmured among them- 
 selves : they did not feel much wonder ; she had never 
 been one of them ; she had never seemed of their mould 
 and of their kind ; she had always been invested to their 
 sight with something rare and strange, and not of mortal 
 birth. They had watched her careless, useless, cloudless 
 life among the sunshine and the flowers, so unlike to 
 their own hard, toilsome, and unlovely lives, as they might 
 have watched some paradise-bird, had one flown, of a 
 sudden, down amid the swallows of the hamlets, and 
 the plovers of the fields, with all the colors of the east 
 upon its gorgeous wings. " She was dead," they repeated 
 among themselves; and broidered on the naked barren 
 fact a thousand tales woven at evening with their wo- 
 men's flax upon the wheel, or passed from mouth to mouth 
 with the stone-picking in the cornlands, and the insect- 
 seeking amid the vines 
 
 Louis Sarazin, at the ferry, knew the truth ; but Sarazin 
 never spoke of it. He only covered over with a piece of
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 309 
 
 tarpaulin, the bench on which she had used to sit in the 
 stern of his old black boat, and let no passenger be seated 
 there. And he would stand very quietly a1 the door of 
 his cottage, looking wistfully down the stream, hour after 
 hour, if none disturbed him, with the broken oar or the 
 torn sail in his hand, unniended. 
 
 "They all go down that river, see you?" he would 
 mutter to bis dog. "But none of them come back; I 
 suppose they never want the old landing-place any more. 
 Is it all smooth water there? Ai*e there no shallows and 
 no speats ? Do they not have to row against the incoming 
 tide at any time, I wonder? I suppose not, for they never 
 want the old landing-place any more." 
 
 Those who heard him, said that in his great age his 
 brain wandered, that his senses were gone, that he saw 
 in his silent highway the highroad of human life, and 
 grew mad thereon. Only his dog was wiser; his dog 
 only knew his meaning, and pressed more closely, and 
 licked his withered bony hand in tender consolation. 
 
 "She was dead:" to all her little native world about 
 the river, on which her glad eyes had opened with so many 
 summer dawns. A few among them said prayers for her 
 departed soul when they kneeled down at the wayside 
 cross, from which the thatched roof of the home that she 
 hail shared with the swallows was visible where ii thrust 
 itself through its cover of green leaves. Bui the greater 
 number took the words as holding but a figurative mean- 
 ing, and believed that tin- child of the fairies had gone to 
 that strange land whence she came, and whispered mar- 
 velous thiugs of her, where they sat by the lighl of the 
 oak log of Noel, or brought the wagons of grapes to 
 the wine-press in the shade of the autumn-browned 
 boughs. 
 
 I'.ut away southward, when gossips met in the porch 
 of the dairy-house I hat looked out over the broad, low-lying 
 water-threaded pastures about Villiers a great-limbed, 
 brown-faced, tawny-skinned milkwoman, wiih her arms 
 akimbo, and a brutal laugh on her mouth, scoffed al her 
 neighbors' regrel and mocked at their idiotcy. 
 
 "Dead? Dead? That is what ihey alway- -:iv when 
 one of their angels has fallen! Dead? She is no more
 
 I 
 
 310 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 dead than we are. She is gone to riches and shame, that 
 I warrant you. Oh ho ! have you forgot the little liar's 
 story of the magic fruit and the sorcerer's ring on the 
 Indian jasmine? And who was the sorcerer except 
 our young lord? — and what do his dainty jewels always 
 betoken ? How blind ye are, blind as bats that butt 
 themselves against a barn door when they are driven out 
 of their nests at noonday 1 Dead ? If she be dead, then 
 are my cows dead where they graze yonder. She was 
 bad, I tell you; bad, core through, like a gourd that has 
 the worm. Did she not call us a set of senseless peasants ? 
 and she a bastard too, a bastard most like of the man that 
 fed her ! Well — I shall know that lily-white face of hers, 
 with its mouth like yon carnation, and its hair like ripened 
 wheat, a score years hence if ever my eyes light on it. 
 Dead ? she is no more dead than that mouse that skirries 
 over the floor. She is only — gone to Paris !" 
 
 And she laughed again, cruelly, in the mellow waning 
 evening time ; for jealousy is lusty of life, and tenacious 
 of it, and is as the toad which can lie stirless under a 
 stone through many seasons, yet keep its sight and its 
 venom unspent, to use when the stone that has held it 
 down is rolled off it. 
 
 Now, which was the truer version, hers, or that gentler 
 belief which mourned the child as innocent and lost, none 
 could tell: for to all questions grand'mere answered ever, 
 "She is dead." 
 
 And Tricotrin came no more into the vine country at 
 the harvest-time. 
 
 The pipers piped, and the maidens danced, and the oxen 
 drew their loaded wains crowned with green branches, 
 and the ruddy blossoms of the declining years ; but no 
 more was heard that sweet, wild, rapturous music that 
 had caught in it all the cadences that the fauns of old had 
 danced to in the virgin foi'ests, while yet the world and 
 the gods had been young. 
 
 And to the people who had loved him, there seemed a 
 silence through the land.
 
 TIIE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 31 1 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 On the wild western seaboard, a little hamlet hung 
 upon the rocks like a curlew's storm-swept nest, high in 
 air, and overlooking the wide Biscayan waters. 
 
 The great black cliffs were dark as night; the chasms 
 between them were yawning pits, of which no men living 
 told the depth; the land for leagues on leagues inland 
 was a desolate heath, a wilderness of thorny gorse, broken 
 only by gray stones of shattered Druid altars. 
 
 Life was hard there; a long incessant struggle with all 
 the forces of the earth and elements, a never-ending con- 
 test with the winds and waters to snatch the scant) bitter 
 bread of bare subsistence from out the fishers' mouths. 
 In the long, tempestuous, cruel winters, death entered 
 well-nigh every bousehold, and few boats returned with 
 all those who, at their setting forth, had manned them. 
 The children were early braced to peril, and scourged 
 with the stripes of the sharp sea foam. The aged were 
 old long ere their time, and toiled like nudes up and down 
 the steep stairs of rock, laden like mules with driftwood, 
 or with weed dung upward by the storms. 
 
 There was a little chapel on one of the highest ridges 
 of the rocks, where a light burned steadfastly all through 
 the blackest nights of hurricane. There were a few buts 
 thai formed the village, all huddled together in the hollow 
 oft he cliff, like callow-birds fearful of coming rain. There 
 were men, melancholy, taciturn, rugged, of a hard sim- 
 plicity, of a doglike fidelity, like mosl duellers of the 
 mountains or by the ocean. There were women with the 
 old, iron heroism of amazonian times, whose naked limbs 
 were beaten by the billows, and whose massive arms 
 w reached drowning bodies from the breakers, till nothing 
 of womanhood remained in their asped exc< pi in the .-ad 
 .steadv gaze of their large brooding eyes. 
 
 They were a rough, and sometimes a brutal people.
 
 312 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 They were often beset with the torment of famine ; their 
 pitiless stony shores would yield them little, and in 
 revenge they were, in many seasons, without mercy to 
 those who were cast away upon their rocks. There were 
 men among them who thought little of drawing a knife 
 across the neck of a wrecked sailor, and robbing the dead 
 of the gold rings in his ears. They were very lonely in 
 their wind-beaten fastnesses, where their only mates were 
 the seagulls and eagles ; they grew half savage, as those 
 who live in such isolation will. Hunger bit them sharply 
 at times ; and when they were famished they turned on 
 any prey like lions. 
 
 There were higher natures among them, on which 
 solitude and privation had not this influence, on which 
 the noble sublimity and terrific grandeur of their shores 
 produced only gravity and sadness ; but there were 
 others — and these were the larger number — who would 
 fight over a drowned corpse, for the sake of the purse 
 belted round its body, like wild beasts over a heap of 
 offal, and who looked on the flotsam and jetsam of the 
 seas as their own right divine, with which no living 
 thing from the doomed ship should be left to dispute their 
 title. 
 
 And, — yet darker deeds than- these made their wild 
 crest of rock a name of terror to mariners. Sometimes it 
 was utterly in vain that the light of Mary and her Angels 
 gleamed in the high spire of the chapel. Sometimes, on 
 the darkest and dreadest nights of late autumn and mid- 
 winter, round a headland where the chapel lantern 
 could not be discerned, high up among the blackest and 
 steepest cliffs, a tar blaze would break into the darkness 
 and send forth a flame that could be seen for leagues 
 across the waters. So that any hapless vessel, laboring 
 in the trough of a heavy sea, beholding the false .signal, and 
 by evil fortune mistaking it for that of the Church, came 
 straightway to her ruin, and was dashed keel foremost on 
 the pointed submerged rocks, and impaled upon them ; 
 and never again saw the light of daybreak steal over the 
 seas. 
 
 Those who lit that beacon of murder were never 
 brought to justice ; safe in their caverns and defiles, the
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 313 
 
 assassins crept safety, by subterranean ways, back to 
 their hamlet and amid their people. It had been safer 
 to thrust a hand into a hornet's nest than to follow 
 and arraign them there. Even their comrades did not 
 rightly know who did the work. It was only when some 
 rarer jewel than common glittered in some fisherman's 
 ear, or some richer-hued scarf was wound about the hips 
 of his mistress, that the rest whispered together, half en- 
 vious, half abhorrent, that he must be one of those who 
 final the flame. 
 
 In the beginning of one winter food was very scarce in 
 this sca-den. The fisheries had brought little in ; the 
 weather had been calm though dull; there had been no 
 wrecks; and though it was known in the hamlet that the 
 death-beacon had thrice been lighted aloft, it had failed 
 to lead any ship astray. They became fearf ally impover- 
 ished; famine visited them; and the men were forced to 
 bite the salt twine of their nets in their longing to 
 devour something, and the children wasted to skeletons, 
 and died, and were thrust hastily away into holes in the 
 sand. 
 
 A horrible longing for the signs of the storms came on 
 them. A murderous prayer for the rage of wind and 
 water often rose to their tongues — a prayer reckless and 
 
 godless. 
 
 At this season one of the wreckers, he whose brain and 
 who.-e hand had first devised this thing, stole up one mid- 
 night through the crooked crevice, on t he hare stone of the 
 cliff, that served him as a stairway. His torch was in his 
 hand, and his soul was set on murder. There were bitter 
 north winds driviDg over the ocean; (here were gray 
 fogs and starless skies ; there was a single ship striving 
 heavily through a churning sea. It was a lair chance, as 
 he muttered to himself. 
 
 In his shingle hut, in the village yonder, no fresh food 
 had touched iho lips, lor month s, of a woman whom he 
 loved. The leather} >kin of some salted 6sh had become 
 too great a luxury for them to obtain; she had been 
 driven to chew the broad ribbon of the seaweeds, mid 
 grind the fishbones into the likeness of flour to make 
 bread : and never made murmur or moan at her privation, 
 
 27
 
 SU TRICOTRIN, 
 
 but only showed the gnawing of famine by the wolfish 
 glance of her eyes and the drawn lines of her mouth. 
 
 There rode the ship, — doomed, surely, to perish, if lured 
 here by the light. The rocks, sharp as needles, hard as 
 iron, over which the sullen waters floated, would do his 
 work for him unerringly. Refuse, that to him would be 
 treasures, would be swept up on the in-flowing tide. 
 Food, fuel, most likely raiment, possibly gold, would be 
 hurled up on the foam : human creatures, too, dying or 
 dead, who would, in the mad clinging of men to the riches 
 that they cannot take with them beyond the grave, have 
 bound about them some belt of value or some bag of coin. 
 There would be wherewithal to eat, and to drink, and to 
 be clothed in his darksome and desolate cabin. What 
 matter a death wail the more on the wind ? What matter 
 the ship sinking an hour soon, or an hour late, to her 
 doom ? 
 
 Ere now he had thrust back a shivering, striving frame 
 into the blinding spray, from which it had well-nigh 
 struggled ; ere now he had stunned, with the blow of his 
 club, a girl whose face had risen out of the breakers, with 
 wide-opened eyes of awful appeal in the glare cast upon 
 it from the lightning. He had done such things before, 
 he could do them again, for the sake of an ounce of gold 
 from a finger-ring, of a necklace, of beads off a maiden's 
 throat. Gold would buy brandy, the hot, strong, blessed, 
 accursed drink of forgetfulness ; and the necklace would 
 show rarely on the long, stately, brown throat of his 
 bona-roba. And in his fashion — tiger's love for tigress — 
 he loved the woman who starved in his hut on the beach. 
 
 So he stole through the tortuous, narrow, cavernous 
 way, winding upward, steep as a ladder, cramped as a 
 coffin, going higher and higher, up and up, into the bowels 
 of the rocks above. And every now and then, where he 
 went creeping like a lizard, with the torch between his 
 teeth, he stopped, and softly blew upon the flame that 
 was dying down in the damp and noxious air of the chasm. 
 It was the spark of life to him. 
 
 He felt a latent fear, that never before had touched him, 
 of setting light to his bonfire. There had come one among 
 them who had set his face steadfastly against this evil
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 315 
 
 trade; who had sworn that if the false beacon blazed 
 afresh he would unearth the man that fed and Gred it, or 
 perish like th<' ships himself; and these men of the west- 
 ern coast knew that their visitant would keep his word. 
 Therefore the wrecker went with a certain terror at his 
 heart, drawing himself slowly upward, as serpents crawl, 
 through the perpendicular cliff toward his goal that hung 
 two thousand feet and more above the level of the sea. 
 
 The fire was ready piled there. It was safe from all 
 discovery. None, save those to whom the secret of those 
 passages through the body of the solid rock was known, 
 could ever attain that height, which rose, a sheer straight 
 wall of stone, up from the shore, and was severed by deep 
 abysses on either side from the adjacent rocks. 
 
 He raised himself tediously and painfully up the ascent, 
 in whose narrowed space and fetid air he could scarcely 
 breathe. His hands at last grasped the topmost ledge; 
 he lifted himself gradually on to the highest point, where 
 his beacon was set. The ridge of all the other eliffs, lofty 
 though they were, sunk far below him: countless fathoms 
 downward there rolled the gray sullen mass of water. 
 The roar of its waves ascended in a faint hoarse sound, 
 and a dense mist covered all the surface of the sea. 
 
 There was no light except the glimmer of the slow 
 match that he bore; no movement save his own, except 
 when a night-bird flew by on the rushing of the north 
 wind. He took sure footsteps on the jagged uneven peak; 
 then set his match to tin; oil-soaked tow of the torch that 
 he had carried in the grip of his teeth. 
 
 The tow caughl and flared aligb.1 ; he lifted his hand to 
 fling the burning flax upon the piled dry touchwood, and 
 the tar barrels of his beacon: — ere he had ca-t it his arm 
 was seized, the torch was wrenched out of his hand, and 
 thrown flame downward over the cliffs: a man closed wit h 
 him. 
 
 The wrecker was supple and vigorous, sinewy of frame, 
 and skilled in physical exercise, — a giant, whose limbs were 
 braced by the strength of the waves, and whose nerves 
 were trained in the daily habit of peril: but he had met 
 his match in Ins unknown foe who wrestled with him in 
 the blackness uf the night. Witli tin' quenched (lame of
 
 316 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 the torch all light had gone: the sailor struggled by sheer 
 instinct, like a wild beast attacked when it is blinded, and 
 strove to fling his opponent off him and over the rock, 
 into the wailing waves below. The part on which they 
 stood was narrow; a single overpoise would have thrown 
 them down into the gulf beneath, locked in each other's 
 grasp ; yet neither thought once of letting loose his hold ; 
 both struggled for the mastery. 
 
 No word was uttered: it was an even combat of sheer 
 strength, fought on that slender, jutting, slippery ledge, 
 that overhung at such vast height the bottomless pit of 
 the devouring sea. 
 
 Thrice the wrecker all but gained ascendency, and had 
 his arms locked round his opponent's waist, and well-nigh 
 lifted him up from the stone on which they stood, to fling 
 him over the edge to meet his death. Thrice his antago- 
 nist resisted him, and kept his feet as though they had 
 been rooted into the rock itself. 
 
 It was a darkness in which both were blind : both knew 
 that with every moment they might be hurled down two 
 thousand feet of air. Yet still,— neither loosened their 
 grip one instant. 
 
 The curlews flew round their heads with shrill outcry; 
 the noise of the sea boomed louder as the spring-tide 
 rushed in ; the bitter north wind howled around the peak ; 
 
 they strove together for dear life on a shelf of granite 
 
 scarce wider than a horse's back. 
 
 The sailor, maddened and brutalized by rage and fear, 
 at length made frantic effort to get free his arm, and draw 
 the knife at his belt from out its sheath His foe felt the 
 movement that he could not see. With swift, keen sci- 
 ence the foe closed in, nearer still, with the wrecker ; 
 twisted his arm backward as men twist a bough to break 
 it ; and seizing him round the loins with the true athlete's 
 skill, shook him, swayed him, lifted him, and stretched 
 him prostrate. 
 
 The sailor was stunned : his head had struck upon the 
 granite. His antagonist stood awhile breathless, ex- 
 hausted, with the sound of the winds and waters surg- 
 ing dully on his ear, and the blood in his veins beating 
 like pulses. He could not tell whether he had dealt
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 317 
 
 death or no : till he stooped, and passed his hand over 
 the motionless body, he could not tell whether it had not 
 swayed forward and been dashed into pieces on the rocks 
 below. 
 
 The darkness was impenetrable : even the white flash 
 of a roused seagull's wing could not be seen ; he could 
 not move a step lest he should out-tread the narrow limits 
 of the ledge on which he stood. There was not even the 
 ray of a single star through the storm-wrack of the clouds. 
 
 He had no means of lighting any of the touchwood 
 that lay near; and if he had possessed any could not 
 have used his means, lest the light should have lured the 
 vessel to that very destruction which he had risked his 
 own life to avert from her. He had no choice but to rest 
 where he was ; with his back against the pile of the bea- 
 con-timbers, and the northern blasts raging around him. 
 
 It had been past midnight when the wrecker had gone 
 forth to his errand: he knew that a few hours would 
 bring the dawn. 
 
 Therefore he waited, with the man who, for aught he 
 knew, was dead, lying at his feet, and the hungry sea 
 fretting and raging far down beneath, as though in fury, 
 because cheated of her prey. 
 
 The moments seemed as years, bathed in that gloom, 
 knowing that an unfathomable abyss yawned beneath his 
 feet, with no sound but the thunder of the wind among 
 the cavernous cliffs, with no companion save a creature 
 whom he might have slain, or who, if living, might yet 
 arise and fly at his throat. 
 
 As he stayed there, a faint spark dropped from the 
 torch among the lighl pine-boughs thai helped to make 
 the beacon, blown by the wind gathered brilliancy, and 
 increased into a flame. 
 
 The brighl spot caugbl his eve; with cautious move- 
 ment he leaned and caught the branch thai was on fire; 
 ii burned Blowly, bul gave a dull ruddy glimmer, insuffi- 
 cienl to be seen by those a1 sea, bul enough to throw 
 liii'lit on the place Immediately around bim. 
 
 He held it to the wrecker's lace: the man's eves 
 changed and glared, his senses had revived, though he 
 
 had not yet power to move. 
 
 27.*
 
 318 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 " It is you !" he gasped. 
 
 " It is I, — move a limb, ami I will shoot you dead." 
 
 The sailor, lying there half stunned yet, and dazed by 
 the nicker light that was held against his sight, stared 
 stupidly at the glitter of the pistol. 
 
 " Why did you not use that before ?" he muttered, half 
 conscious, half senseless. 
 
 "We should not have been equal: you had no fire- 
 arms." 
 
 The man said nothing : he looked in sullen wonder at 
 the face above him, on which the dim red gleam shone 
 faintly. He was awed ; and filled with a vague super- 
 stitious terror. He did not believe the foe that he had 
 dealt with could be mortal. 
 
 "Can you rise?" his conqueror asked him. 
 
 He tried to lift himself, obediently : the fall had bruised 
 him, but had broken no limbs. He moved his head with 
 a gesture of assent ; his eyes incessantly fastened on the 
 steel glisten of the weapon that covered him. 
 
 " You can stir ; — very well. Then rise up and lead 
 the way down your accursed passages. Attempt to re- 
 sist me, — attempt to escape me, — and I will send a bullet 
 through your brain. You know me : you know that I 
 keep my word : — as I kept it to-night. " 
 
 The wrecker stared at him with the same stupid amaze ; 
 as of one who beheld some being of another world than 
 his own. Then, docilely as a dog, he gathered his ach- 
 ing limbs together, and crept slowly along the ledge, 
 down to the aperture by which he had ascended, and 
 into the hollow space that ran through the substance of 
 the rock. 
 
 He dared not disobey; he essayed neither resistance 
 nor evasion ; he knew that the pistol was leveled at his 
 head, and that its shot would pierce his brain if he at- 
 tempted to go astray or to turn upon his victor. 
 
 The pine branch gave light enough to illumine the tor- 
 tuous crevice as they dragged themselves through it; he 
 could not turn aside because its narrow twisting tubes 
 had no crannies, no outlets, no hiding-places, and he dared 
 not endeavor to outstrip his pursuer, because he knew 
 that his instant death would be the penalty of any attempt
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 319 
 
 at flight. Once, pausing to take breath, he stole a hasty 
 glance backward. 
 
 " How did you come there ?" he muttered iu his 
 clinched teeth. 
 
 "I scaled the cliff." 
 
 " You could not ! The face of it is as bare as a man's 
 hand." 
 
 " That may be ; but it is not more bare or more steep 
 than the wall of an Alp." 
 
 " God ! No living soul ever tried it, but one, and he 
 was dashed to pieces on the shore below." 
 
 "So I have heard." 
 
 "You had heard that when you ventured it?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " And yet you came ?" 
 
 " To stop you from doing fresh murder. That is words 
 enough. Pass on." 
 
 The wrecker's breath came hard and fast; his great 
 frame shook slightly with a tremor as with cold; he spoke 
 no more, but crept on his downward way, marveling 
 greatly, and ashamed. 
 
 The way was long; the pine-branch had burned down 
 to its last inch, the gray of the earliest dawn was break- 
 ing in the rain-swept stormy skies, when they emerged at 
 length from the subterraneous path, and came out upon 
 the low-lying level shore, on which the high tide <>f the 
 sea was breaking. The dawn was misty, bitterly cold, 
 ushered in by the wild north winds, that drove the sand 
 along in clouds, and hurled the foam of the waves in their 
 faces. 
 
 The sailor turned suddenly on him as they came forth 
 into the open air. 
 
 " How did you tell I went to fire that thing to-night?" 
 
 "I saw you take a slow match in your hand as you 
 lel't your hut: 1 bad often thought you were the crimi- 
 nal?*" 
 
 The man hang his head : his eyes >\\\\ glancing like a 
 cowed wolf's at the weapon that held him to obedience. 
 
 " 1 should not have done it if she hail not beeo starv- 
 ing," he swore with a blasphemous oath. " You do not 
 know what famine is !"
 
 320 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 The gaze that kept such stern watch over him softened 
 wistfully. 
 
 " Do I not ?" he said gently. 
 
 Then without more words he went over the league's 
 length of sand and stone that severed them from the fish- 
 ing hamlet ; driving the wrecker before him as a moor- 
 dog drives a sheep. 
 
 " Where would you take me ?" the man muttered, as 
 they drew nigh the rugged stairway cut out of the face 
 of the cliffs which led to the group of cabins. 
 
 " To your fellows ; — for judgment." 
 
 " They will not let you touch me 1" 
 
 "That we shall see." 
 
 With a quick agile movement, before the fisherman 
 could resist, or scarce knew what was done, he had seized 
 his elbows, drawn his arms behind his back, and bound 
 the wrists tight in the knots of a strong rope he had car- 
 ried : — the man was powerless. 
 
 "You do not know me quite well yet, Rioz," he said 
 quietly: Rioz, gnashing his teeth in baffled fury, and 
 cursing his own folly in letting himself be netted like a 
 lassoed bull, looked at him with a look that through its 
 sullen passion had something of admiration and of rever- 
 ence. 
 
 "Know you I" he muttered. "How should one know 
 you? Are you man, or devil, or god ?" 
 
 " A little of all, perhaps ; like everything else that is 
 human." 
 
 Then with the rope in his left hand, and the pistol in 
 his right, he forced the wrecker up on to the heights on 
 which the cabins of his people hung. 
 
 In the early dawn the population — in all some hundred 
 souls, not more — were stirring, though the raw mists of 
 the* late autumn night still hung over land and water, 
 wrapping both in its dusky and icy shroud. As they 
 were seen, there was a rush, a shout, a tumult, a shrill 
 outcry, from men's and women's and children's voices ; 
 the boats, the nets, the huts, the rude beds of dried weed 
 were all abandoned as by one single impulse ; the little 
 cluster of dwellings broke into agitated life, as a hive of 
 bees breaks into violent movement when its swarm is
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 321 
 
 stirred. A score of men were round them on the instant, 
 naked knives flashing in their hands, yells and curses on 
 their lips, wonder and eagerness and fury in their eyes. 
 
 The conqueror of Rioz stood unmoved in the din, hold- 
 ing the wrecker like a chained beast. 
 
 " This man is the assassin," he said briefly. " If there 
 be any among you who would say fair words for a mur- 
 derer, let him speak them. I will hear." 
 
 The tumult of the blaspheming and threatening voices 
 sank on a sudden as a storm-wind lulls : hardened, bru- 
 talized, strong in clannish loyalty, and indifferent of 
 bloodshed as they were, they did not care to take this 
 guilt upon their own heads thus. 
 
 The man himself never spoke: he only watched, with 
 intent and thirsty eyes, first the faces of his comrades, 
 then the face of his "accuser. There was a dead silence 
 for a moment ; then the force of tribe-love and the brother- 
 hood of common habit, common need, common peril, got 
 stronger than their shame ; they clamored in unison for 
 his release. One of their brood should not be bound, not 
 be arraigned, not be chastised; one of their race should 
 not be subject to the laws of other men. They were free ; 
 they owned no ruler; they acknowledged no code ; one of 
 themselves should not be fettered while they had knives 
 to free him. So they shouted, pressing forward in the 
 white sulphurous mist, a throng of reckless, fearless, free- 
 born animals, who owned no kingdom save the ocean, 
 and no master save the storm-wind. He heard them, 
 in peace; knowing nothing more likely than that their 
 knives would be sheathed in his own breast, but never 
 letting loose his grasp on the bound wrists of his captive. 
 
 After awhile the rage of words died down once more 
 into an ominous sullen muttering; in that instant's pause 
 he spoke. 
 
 "You have had your speech; now give me mine. 
 Night after Qlght, lor three winters, a lying light has 
 blazed ii] .on your coast to lure good ships to their destruc- 
 tion. You told me you were ignorant of which among 
 you was the criminal. I believed you. You are brave 
 men ; and brave men do not lie. A blacker sin, one more 
 treacherous, one more cowardly, never stained a human
 
 322 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 life. It was a reproach to your seaboard ; a shame on your 
 manhood, that such a guilt was harbored, and allowed 
 to grow, and thrive, and continue, undetected and una- 
 venged, among you. You did naught in it — whether 
 from fear, whether from conspiracy, I leave to your own 
 consciences. So the work seemed left to my hand, and I 
 did it. I have watched many nights; in vain. To-night 
 I seized Rioz, red-handed in the act ; putting his flame to 
 that infernal pile. That his greed might have some 
 miserable spoil — some keg of wine, some bale of wool, 
 some sack of wetted corn, some case of rotting fruit, he 
 was about to light the blaze that would have brought a 
 helpless vessel to her shipwreck, and murdered all the 
 human lives she bore. It has been done many times 
 ere this: more deaths than he could count lie on his soul. 
 For sake bf some wretched pillage to sate his hunger or his 
 wine lust, for sake of some glimmer of gold to satisfy the 
 miser's avarice within him, he has doomed men and women 
 and children to death under your waves. You can be brutal 
 enough ; you can have scant pity for the fleeting life ; you 
 can strip the gold off a woman's throat ere yet her corpse 
 is cold ; but if you sanction such murders as these, you 
 are fiends and not men. By this crime you are all dis- 
 graced. It is not enough that you may not have set your 
 own match to the wood, thrown your own beam to the 
 pile. That this thing. has been done, and been pardoned, 
 and been protected among you, is sufficient to brand you 
 all with its infamy. The blood-thirst of Rioz must run 
 in your veins, though his arm alone had nerve to raise 
 the torch and awake the fire. There are noble souls 
 among you ; are they all dead or sleeping, that this dis- 
 grace raises no wrath ? that this murderer has lived with 
 his sin unvisited in your midst ?" 
 
 They were silent, touched with remorse, and burnt with 
 shame ; knowing that this sin had been harbored among 
 them, half in sympathy, half in desperation; knowing 
 that they had been willing that it should be sheltered in 
 secrecy ; knowing that there were others in their com- 
 munity who had shared its guilt and shared its spoils. 
 They dared not claim the murderer again from the hands 
 of his accuser: they dared not either denounce the blood-
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 323 
 
 guiltiness from which their own souls were not pure. 
 They hung together, stilled, enraged, ashamed, uncertain 
 — Rioz looked at them, and laughed. 
 
 "Ye are bold comrades at need ! Well — I say naught. 
 It was an evil deed : but I am willing to bear its brunt. 
 It was my thought and my act ; it was only the plunder 
 ye shared ! Kill me, — and ye shall, in justice, kill also 
 every man that ever drank of my wine or borrowed my 
 gold. There ! Will not that thin your numbers ?" 
 
 The accusation and the irony, bearing the sting of 
 truth in them, inflamed against him every creature of the 
 throng, which a moment before had been clamorous to 
 recriver him from chastisement. They rushed at him to 
 strike their knives at his half-bare body; they cried aloud 
 for him to be given to them ; they hooted him, and reviled 
 him, and demanded that he should be theirs, that they 
 might cast him down from the peak where his bontire 
 had blazed ! 
 
 His captor beat them off, and flung them back; and 
 smiled where he stood at bay. 
 
 "Rioz! I brought you for their judgment. You be- 
 lieved that they would not let a hair of your head be 
 injured: see now what the fellowship of guilt is worth! 
 Will you have my judgment or theirs ?" 
 
 The wrecker ground his strong white teeth, and faced 
 the brethren on whose loyalty he had counted. 
 
 "Ye curs ! ye were willing enough to take a stoup of 
 my rich red drinks for yourselves, and a roll of my bright 
 silks for your light-o'-loves; ye were willing enough to 
 have barn-Is of rice and tubs of salted meat rolled from 
 the caves to your cabins, in the hard days of your hun- 
 ger: ye were willing enough to have all that the beacon 
 brought, and ye fed it, and fanned it, and called it a devil 
 thai w as better than a god, many and many a time. And 
 now ye are gone against me: now ye are clamoring for 
 my* body, that ye may fling it down on the rocks! Ye 
 sharks! there is bul one man mi this shore this dawn. 
 It is this man who has broughl me rope-bound like a 
 netted calf. Look you — he scaled that cliff that has no 
 footing lor a goat, just to stand between me and that 
 ship ; he periled his life fifty times because he had sworn
 
 324 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 that ray bonfire should never redden the skies again; he 
 could have shot me and flung me into the sea, and he never 
 used his pistol, because I had no arms of that like about 
 me. That was what he did — Tricotrin. And I say that 
 I give ray life to him ; and I will be judged by him and 
 not by you — ye spawn of the devil-fish, that will suck the 
 dead men's bones but will cry out that ye never took life 1 
 He may throw me oif the rock, if he will : but ye — come 
 one inch nearer to me, and, bound though I be, I will find 
 a means to brain the best among ye !" 
 
 They were men as bold as he, and of like passions ; but 
 for once they hung back in silence, and for once>.fiieir 
 knives were never lifted : conscience made cowards, of 
 them. 
 
 "Tricotrin," they muttered. "You have taken him, 
 you must deal with him as you will." 
 
 Tricotrin looked at them awhile, and answered them 
 nothing: then he turned to the wrecker. 
 
 " Follow me, Rioz." 
 
 The fisherman followed him without a word; he went 
 down the side of the cliff and on to the flat yellow shore. 
 The day had now broken, with a faint red flush changing 
 the gray of the sky: in the tender shadowy light a single 
 ship was gliding. The wild winds of the night had sunk 
 to silence ; the sea, though heavy still, rolled quietly; the 
 vessel moved unharmed over its waters. 
 
 lie looked at it, then looked at Rioz : the wrecker 
 turned away with a shudder. 
 
 He was not altogether vile ; though he had steeped his 
 soul in murder he had not burnt out his conscience : if the 
 woman he had loved had not hungered he would not have 
 sinned. 
 
 His captor let him stand there awhile, with his hands 
 bound in the knotted cords, and his head sunk on his 
 breast, and his eyes afraid to look upon that innocent 
 thing, afar there on the waters, which, had his guilt had 
 its way, would now have been a shattered, shapeless, 
 sinking mass, with the billows breaking over the place of 
 its nameless grave. 
 
 Then he spoke. 
 
 " Rioz — you are content to abide by my judgment?"
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 325 
 
 The wrecker gave a motion of assent. 
 " You heard what jour comrades' sentence would have 
 been. They were willing to shelter your sin while it was 
 safe in secrecy ; but when it had been dragged to the 
 light of day they would have cast your body from the 
 rocks. That is ever the fellowship of sin ; a parasite 
 when the sin is successful, a traitor when the sin is dis- 
 covered. If they had been just men, and stainless, their 
 sentence on you had not been too severe: you have 
 doomed others to perish, you could not deem it unjust if 
 you suffered by the same death as your victims. If there 
 had been no guilt among them there had been no marvel 
 if they had cast you forth from them, and slain you, in 
 loathing and in vengeance. But they have not the right 
 to deal thus with you: their own hands are not unsoiled, 
 their own souls are not pure. You have said that you 
 would not rebel if I bade you leap from your beacon- 
 point into the sea ; that is to speak idly : you know I am 
 not a murderer : but will you obey as passively if I send 
 you to your rightful due — the galleys?" 
 
 The wrecker made no answer. He did not lift his head 
 from his breast; but under his dusky, weather-beaten 
 skin, the blood came and went in rapid flush and pallor, 
 and his teeth were set like a mastiff's. 
 
 " So long as the galleys are the means whereby your 
 country visits a criminal for his acts, you cannot claim 
 exemption from them," pursued the grave, gentle accents 
 of his judge. "For less than you have done, men have 
 forfeited their lives upon the scaffold. If for one murder 
 done, in rash passion or jealous wrath, the murderer per- 
 ish, how shall you escape? You who cannot number 
 the creatures that through you may have been stifled in 
 those waters ! you who have doomed the young with the 
 old, the innocent with the guilty, to perish by a hideous 
 death for this sake only: — that your hearth might have 
 fuel, that your trencher might have bread ! [f your hand 
 have aever thrust any struggling body hack into the 
 waves — it' 3 our steel have never ended i he throes of some 
 quivering wretch, — none the less have you bloodguilti- 
 nesa upon your soul; unredeemed even by such motive 
 as the tyrannicide or the fanatic may plead for his crime. 
 
 28
 
 326 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 If I deliver you up to the tribunal ; if I take you to the 
 sentence of the galleys ; if for all the rest of the years 
 you shall live you shall toil in chains, eat and drink the 
 bread and water of bitterness, be branded to every eye 
 that looks on you, labor like the mill-horse under the 
 threat of the whip, live in a hell of foul utterance and 
 evil passion, never again see the leaping gladness of the 
 ocean, never again breast the winds and the waves in all 
 the exultation of your strength, never again look into the 
 eyes or kiss the mouth of a woman you love, — tell me, 
 will my judgment be more than justice ?" 
 
 A great shudder shook the mighty limbs of the fettered 
 man. 
 
 He was silent many moments. Then at length he an- 
 swered — the truth, sullen yet resolute. 
 
 "No. It will be just." 
 
 Tricotrin looked at him long and earnestly. 
 
 " Brute and. fiend though you are, you have greatness 
 in you," he muttered. " For you have courage, and you 
 have truth." 
 
 The wrecker did not hear ; his eyes were fastened on 
 the receding ship sailing through the soft, young light ; 
 his thoughts were fastened on the dull, drear, endless years 
 that waited for him in the galley-slave's doom. 
 
 Tricotrin waited awhile, letting this thought fasten on 
 and penetrate the long-brutalized conscience of the man 
 with whom he dealt. 
 
 "If you had gone back from your word, and disputed 
 the fairness of that doom, I should have abandoned you 
 to it as a worthless and hopeless ruffian," he said, curtly. 
 " But you are brave enough, true enough, to confess its 
 justice. There must be some core of honesty in you yet. 
 If the guillotine came down on your neck, you would 
 have no more than justice still. But — I believe that there 
 is that in you which may be worth the saving. The gal- 
 leys will not save you ; they will only cage you in, as a 
 wild beast is caged, and deprive you of the power to do 
 evil. It is a hard question, — how to disarm and punish 
 crime ; made so hard by such as you, that we cannot 
 wonder that the world's wisdom utterly fails at solving 
 it. The galleys will withhold you from doing added
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 327 
 
 crime; but that will be all. They will make a sullen, 
 venomous, half-mad, blasphemous outcast of you, with 
 nil the will to do tenfold worse than you have done, aud 
 only held back from action by the irons on your ankles 
 and the scourge on your back. If I see you a score years 
 hence, I shall see in you a man whose last state is a mil- 
 lion times darker than his first. You will be a tiger, 
 whose claws are cut indeed, but whose lusts to kill are 
 fiercer than ever. They will paralyze your limbs, but 
 tbey will only inflame your passions. Well — if you have 
 had no care for the better powers that are in you, why 
 should your rulers have care ? If you have chosen to 
 strangle the higher life in you, why should they heed 
 aught save your animal instinct to slay that it is their 
 office to stifle and prevent? You will he treated like a 
 caged wild-beast. Well — why not? since you have far 
 viler savageness in you than the poor beasts, who never 
 slaughter tJieir kind ?" 
 
 Rioz heard — with dogged patience. 
 
 " I do not resist," he said, slowly. " It is right, I dare 
 say. And I said thai you should do as you would."' 
 
 Tricntrin's eyes filled with a great pity. 
 
 "Do as I would? Well, then hear what it is I would 
 do. It is this: 1 would save you from yourself. The 
 galleys would save others from you; but 1 would go 
 further than that if I could. What lives you have 
 wrecked you alone can tell ; I know only that your false 
 beacon has flamed many times, and would have broughl 
 yon ship to her death-throe to-night. Therefore I know 
 you — a murderer. In full intent, if nol in actual deed. 
 There can be qo plea, no palliation, for the vileness of 
 your guilt. Viler, I think, there cannot be upon earth. 
 Bui even for your deeds there can be atonement; even 
 for your ollcnses there can be expiation. One life saved 
 \>\ you from those waters will be better amend for your 
 crime than twenty years spent al the galleys. The gal- 
 leys would simply waste your life, and render it power- 
 less for evil. 1 would employ your life, and render it 
 powerful for good. There is truth in you, and courage. 
 They must be lit for other things than murder and pil- 
 lage. Therefore, I will not drive you out to the doom
 
 328 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 that bylaw would await you. I will sentence you other- 
 wise ; if you have the force in you I think, you will bear 
 it ; if not, you must carry the galley-chain. You will 
 live alone on that rock where your fire has blazed ; you 
 will hold no communion with your fellows; you will 
 subsist as you may on the bare food you can glean from 
 the shore and the sea ; you are a strong swimmer, a bold 
 sailor, you will do your uttermost to succor and to save 
 all life that comes in peril off your headland. I give 
 you — solitude, hardship, travail, atonement. Being of a 
 brave temper, you will not flinch from the working out of 
 your doom. Go, — you are free. " 
 
 And he severed the cords that bound the wrecker's 
 strong wrists together. 
 
 Rioz had lifted his head, and looked him hard in the 
 eyes, as his condemnation was uttered. As the rope fell 
 from his arms and left him at liberty, a great change 
 passed over his face ; its savage gloom passed away, its 
 wolfish glance softened and lightened. 
 
 " You trust me ?" he muttered. " You shall see, then, 
 — I will do your bidding. It is bitter; yet it is just. I 
 may go mad on that rock ; it is like enough. Loneliness 
 kills men's brain, they say. But while I have sense I 
 will be true to you. And you are merciful, too — you 
 leave me the sea, and the wind, and the air." 
 
 His voice died in his throat ; he turned away to go 
 out to his doom. 
 
 But the man who had judged him followed him, and 
 laid his hand on his shoulder gently, yet with firm and 
 tenacious touch. 
 
 "Nay — I give you not utter solitude. That were to 
 be more brutal than the galleys. Nor will I leave you to 
 work out my sentence unaided. We will dwell on that 
 rock together." 
 
 Rioz stared blankly at him, with glazed, burning eyes 
 wide open. 
 
 " You ! — you ! You have done no evil ? Why should 
 you care whether I drown, or rot, or go mad ? Why 
 should you suffer to save me?" 
 
 Tricotrin smiled ; the smile was weary, and more sad 
 than tears.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 329 
 
 "Chut! When you have famine, you cure it in oue 
 fashion ; when I have famine, I cure it iu another. There 
 are two treasures we may both find on that bleak, wind- 
 beaten headland — yours expiation, and mine peace." 
 
 And for three long years he dwelt there — sole compan- 
 ion of an assassin. There were many lives that he saved 
 from the pitiless "waters ; but there was one life that he 
 saved from a deeper abyss than the lowest depths of the 
 ocean. 
 
 It was thus that he dealt with the sorrow within him. 
 It was thus that he wrenched the iron from out his own 
 soul, by wringing the blackness of guilt from the soul of 
 another. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 In midwinter all Paris was dancing. 
 
 Paris dances as nothing else can under the sun or the 
 stars. Did she not dance when her stones ran blood ; 
 dance when dynasties fell at her word ; dance on the icy 
 glacis of Breda ; dance while the steel cut down through 
 her loftiest throats ; dance when the bastard son of Louis 
 Quinze drowned with the roll of his drums the dying 
 words of Louis Seize? Paris dances ever: beautiful, 
 terrible thing, half child, half wanton, twin angel and 
 assassinatress that she is; dances on under the million 
 lights of her winter-nights as under the glorious suns of 
 her Bummer-eves, under the fetters of tyrannies as under 
 the banners of freedom. 
 
 They danced in the palaces, they danced in the man- 
 sions, they danced in every hall, and coffee-room, and 
 concerl place, and singing-booth, and covered garden, in 
 this winter-time. In every spot feet flew, like autumn 
 leaves blown by wild breezes; and laughter echoed like 
 the chimes of sleigh-bells; and men and women went 
 mad with the joyous delirium of motion. Specially they 
 
 28*
 
 330 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 danced in an abandonment of revelry in the great hall of the 
 Elysee Montmartre ; grisettes, and students, and fruit- 
 girls, and working men, and all that was maddest and 
 brightest of the labor-world and the student-world of 
 Paris. They lost all sense save that one sense of the 
 hot, intoxicated delight of boundless, leaping, whirling, 
 spinning, unceasing motion; like the whirlwind in its 
 speed, like brandy in its strength, like tigers' frolic in its 
 play. They danced as not even in Paris that night did 
 any dance elsewhere. For above the noise of the hired 
 bands, which, indeed, did sink hushed and abashed in ri- 
 valry by it, was the music that Paris loved best, the 
 music that had in its marvelous melody all the color of a 
 Titian, all the glow of strong wine, all the rush of a 
 swift-running river, all the revelry of a royal carousal. 
 One played for them who would not play at the bidding 
 of monarchs; but who cast out, to those who had not 
 gold to purchase pleasure, the lavish treasures of his 
 genius. 
 
 That music could do with tbem -as it would ; and now 
 it bade them dance on through the long winter's night, 
 and forget that cold, and pain, and hunger, and toil and 
 envy were their daily portions in the world that was 
 white with its new year's virginal snows. 
 
 The player laughed oftentimes as he played, with rich 
 gay laughter ; but oftener still there came the look in his 
 eyes as of the dreamy deep meditation, the awed surprise 
 and yet serenity of one who beholds visions that none 
 around him see. His face was the face of a poet ; and it 
 had but more fire, more force, more beauty for the silver- 
 white waves of the abundant hair, dashed back like a lion's 
 mane. Hour after hour the music pealed out, untiring, 
 exhaustless ; music for which kings would have rained 
 down their wealth, for which these dancers of the popu- 
 lace could only give their love. But this one gift they 
 gave in lavish measure ; and when at length the melo- 
 dies ceased, the vast crowd pausing, shouted as with one 
 throat such a cheer as years before had rung out for the 
 great and beloved tribune of the people, when Gabriel 
 Mirabeau had paused among them. 
 
 Such welcome, the cannon of royal entries, the troops
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 331 
 
 of Imperial guard, the magnetized fear of a subject nation, 
 cannot give, though trumpets call, and drums roll, and 
 artillery thunder from dawn till sunset. 
 
 He could have led them where he would — these bright, 
 wild, tender, ferocious children of Paris, so idolatrous in 
 worship, so merciless in hate. He could have led them 
 where he would, to hurl down the gates of palaces, to 
 dash aside the serried ranks of guards, to scatter princes 
 as chaff before the winds, to steep new-born liberties in a 
 fell baptism of blood. 
 
 They tossed flowers high in the air ; they flung up their 
 arms in the bright light ; they thronged about with pas- 
 sionate eagerness ; the breasts of the women heaved like 
 waves under a storm, the brows of the men burned red 
 with the fires of freedom struck alight by his art in their 
 souls. He looked down on their upturned faces and on 
 their breathless, tumultuous homage, and smiled; — the 
 smile whose meaning lay far beyond them. 
 
 "My children! No gratitude between us. Is there 
 not love ?" 
 
 Tricotrin — bohemian and wanderer, nameless and 
 homeless among men — 5 had a kingdom greater than 
 monarchs held, a power greater than the scepter can 
 command. 
 
 Through the bitter brilliant wintry night he walked, 
 later on, straightly and swiftly, with the free long step of 
 a forest animal, along the chill snow-covered streets of. 
 Paris. As he went he sang, in a voice that rang through 
 tin stillness, and made the sullen frozen patrol listen, with 
 a smile on his face, to that joyous, drinking, ami amorous 
 carol, "Sar deux levres roses:" 
 
 " I unlearn all my Latin 
 On two red lips of satin, 
 
 Ami study nighi ami morning, * 
 
 All other science Booming, 
 The art of those twin roses ! 
 
 High in air t lie sky-lark sings, 
 As to me a maiden brings 
 Fruit ripe as her breast is white, 
 Ami wine that is full of light, 
 'And red as her cheek's roses !
 
 332 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 »• 
 
 No chair of state can lure me, 
 No classic bribe insure me, 
 But all the lore of ages 
 I gleam from those sweet pages, 
 Of Love's own leaves of roses !" 
 
 The snow was falling heavily, and was deep upon 
 the earth : he went through it, and over it, with a step 
 firm as a soldier's, light and free as a gipsy's. An old 
 man dragging himself wearily and painfully along, shiv- 
 ering, glanced wistfully at his lighted meerschaum. He 
 stopped, pulled a knot of tobacco and a pipe from his 
 pocket, filled the bowl and lit it ; then gave it to the aged 
 creature. 
 
 " Smoke and forget, my friend ! The pipe is our best 
 comrade after death 1" — then he went on chanting his 
 rose-song. 
 
 A little child lay curled on a doorstep, blue, numb, 
 almost frozen, quite heart-broken, sobbing himself into a 
 fatal slumber. Tricotrin paused again, lifted up the boy, 
 and shook him from his trance : in the little, weary, 
 whitened face there were exceeding innocence and grief. 
 
 " Have you no home ?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 " No mother?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 " How old are you?" 
 
 "Six, I think." 
 
 " And all alone ?" 
 
 "All alone." 
 
 "Not of Paris?" 
 
 " No. My father came from the west — very far away, 
 — to get work ; and there was none : they are ceasing to 
 build, they say. So we starved ; and my father killed him- 
 self. He is in that terrible black house by the river " 
 
 "And has left you and Paris a legacy to one another? 
 Scarcely fair ; since without him you would have re- 
 mained in the peaceful regions of the Unarrived : and 
 disembodied souls neither want bread nor get blue with 
 cold. Well ! you see that passage, and the door under 
 the third lamp ? Run quick there ; ask for the woman 
 of the house. Tell her that Tricotrin has sent you : that
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 333 
 
 you are to sleep on his bed, be warmed at his fire, have 
 some milk and some bread, and forget yourself in dream- 
 land till the morning. Then — well then we will see what 
 substitute we can discover for this impolite father of 
 yours, who sent you into this best of all possible worlds 
 and never had the decent complaisancy to secure you a 
 crust in it. Off, little one — quick!" 
 
 The child stared up at him through the falling snow 
 with wide-opened wondering eyes, thinking of the figures 
 of the angels Gabriel and Michael that he had seen in 
 churches, and marveling which of the twain this was 
 thai now had mercy on him in this bleak and brutal night. 
 Then, — remembering him of the milk and bread of which 
 this grand and pitiful angel had spoken, and moved by 
 his famished desolate heart, — he looked up once swiftly, 
 half afraid, then threw his arms about his benefactor's 
 knees and covered his feet with kisses. Tricotrin shook 
 him softly away. 
 
 " Chut ! I am no god — only a stray thing like your- 
 self. Go quick 1 you want the bread and milk, and the 
 wood fire." 
 
 The child ran, with fresh life put in his chilled starved 
 limbs: Tricotrin went on, singing his drinking-song. 
 
 A little way farther down the street there sat a small,, 
 brown, shaggy, shivering dog, of no value, of no beauty, 
 shaking all over with the cold and howling piteously. 
 He paused once more, and stroked it, and talked awhile 
 to it, and its grief fell into a lower key, and became a 
 plaintive sighing sound. Its bones were almost through 
 its skin, its eyes were bleared and blind, its misery was 
 great. 
 
 " Get out, you moaning brute !" cried a woman from a 
 garret-lattice above, as she thrust her head into the dark- 
 ness and aimed at the little dog a heavy billet of w 1. 
 
 Tricotrin caughl the wood as it came, and saved the 
 cur the blow. 
 
 "Friend," he said, quietly glancing up, " if you had 
 sent the famished thing a piece of a loaf, it had been 
 Softer to his Stomach and to my hand '."' 
 
 The woman peeped at him by the faint gas gleam. 
 
 "Is it you, Tricotrin?" she said, half sullenly, half
 
 334 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 ashamed. "I would not grudge the mongrel a bone; 
 but it is such a wretched beast to howl. Look you : it 
 belonged to a young man that lived here ; a fool who was 
 forever scribbling over every scrap of paper he could 
 find, and thinking he was born to be a poet — God's 
 mercy ! Well — he could not buy a leek for his soup at 
 last, and he had no shirts but the one he had on, and he 
 could do nothing but scribble, scribble, scribble. So the 
 other day we had to break his door open, and we found 
 him stark and stiff on the mattress, — there was a char- 
 coal pan just burned out, and all his poems were a little 
 heap of rent paper. Now that cur you see there belonged 
 to him : and drive it away how we will, it always comes 
 back, and sits under his wiudow, and howls like that. 
 Who is to bear such a noise ? It will not go away. And 
 who is to feed it, a thing worth nothing ? I will have it 
 flung in the river, or sell it to a student to cut up with 
 his dissecting knife." 
 
 Tricotrin took the little animal up in his arms, and 
 stroked afresh the matted broken hair. 
 
 " Fidelity pays thee ill, poor little wretch !" he mur- 
 mured. " Ah ! thou art not alone !" 
 
 " You have none of that dead lad's writings ?" he asked 
 tiloud. 
 
 " Not I," the woman answered from above. " He had 
 torn them to bits, I tell you. There was one roll indeed, 
 one on which he had writ that he had not had the courage 
 to destroy it — he believed it would make his name live, 
 though his body had been killed by hunger. But I burnt 
 it in my stove as soon as I could : how could I tell it was 
 not what would get me into trouble with the police ?" 
 
 She shut her lattice sharply, unwilling to squander 
 more time and more words on such poor things as a 
 mongrel dog and a dead poet. Tricotrin again went on 
 his way with the little shivering beast in the folds of his 
 loose fur coat. It had ceased to moan, and was trying 
 to lick his hand. 
 
 " So !" he murmured, half aloud. " The creature that 
 thrusts the boy-poet's trust into her stove for fuel is called 
 the immortal being, and you, who have a tenderer memory 
 and a loyaler love than one woman in ten thousand, get
 
 TUB STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 335 
 
 kicked aside as a cur ! How enormous is the vanity of 
 humanity ! The river or the dissecting knife — that is the 
 only choice they give you. Little fool 1 you elected to 
 love a man who had only intelligence, no gold; you 
 elected to serve a life that had only high hopes, no prac- 
 tical pelf; you fastened your heart on a creature who 
 knew the world so little that he fancied the legacy of a 
 dream would be treasured like the legacy of a fortune : 
 few women are so unwise as you were, my dog. And 
 now, because you are a mongrel you are beaten ; because 
 you are faithful you are cursed; because you are only a 
 thin, rough, ugly, hapless morsel, with a noble heart 
 beating iu your little hairy breast, and an immeasurable 
 love consuming you, you are to be flung into the water 
 with a stone round your neck, or quiver, and thrill, and 
 gasp in torture, under the brutality men call Science! 
 What magnificent justice we have 1 What appreciation 
 of fidelity ! Well — you shall come and have a share with 
 Mistigri : and by-and-by when the chill of the winter has 
 passed, you shall go into the green country places, and 
 live on a Normandy farm that I know of, and blink your 
 eyes all day in the sun, and roll in the long sweet gras&, 
 and sleep under the apple-tree boughs. If your master 
 was really a poet, it must have been an added pain to 
 him to think that he left you alone. Had he the divine 
 afflatus, really, in him? Surely not, or he had never left 
 a little desolate thing like you to starve and to pine in the 
 streets. And yet — I do not know — poets are but men, 
 men a little nearer to God and the Truth than are other.-; 
 and when hunger is keen, and the world is cruel, the 
 truth gets obscured to their sight, and they say thai (Jod 
 is dead also — since he will not hear or give answer!" 
 
 The little dog oestled closer, comforted; and Tricotrin 
 passed on through the network of the streets. 
 
 Ere long he drew near one which, in the late night, 
 was still partially Idled wii h vehicles and with foot-pas- 
 sengers, hurrying through the now fast-falling .--now. mid 
 over the slippery icy pavements. In one spot a crowd 
 had gathered; of artisans, women, Boldiers, and idlers, 
 under the light of a gas-lamp. In the midst of the throng 
 some gendarmes had seized a young girl, accused by one
 
 336 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 of the by-standers of having stolen a broad silver piece 
 from his pocket. 
 
 She offered no resistance ; she stood like a stricken 
 thing, speechless and motionless, as the men roughly laid 
 hands on her. 
 
 Tricotrin crossed over the road, and with difficulty 
 made his way into the throng of blouses and looked at 
 her. Degraded she was ; but scarcely above a child's 
 years ; and her features had a look as if innocence were 
 in some sort still there, and sin still loathed in her soul. 
 As he drew near he heard her mutter, — 
 
 "Mother, mother! She will die of hunger! — it was 
 for her, only for her !" 
 
 He stooped in the snow, and letting fall, unperceived, 
 a five-frank piece, picked it up again. 
 
 " Here is some silver," he said, turning to the infuriated 
 owner, a lemonade seller, who could ill afford to lose it 
 now that it was winter, and people were too cold for 
 lemonade, and who seized it with rapturous delight. 
 
 " That is it, monsieur, that is it. Holy Jesus ! how can 
 I thank you ? Ah, if I had convicted the poor creature — 
 and all in error ! — I should never have forgiven myself! 
 Messieurs les gendarmes, let her go ! It was my mis- 
 take. My silver piece was in the snow !" 
 
 The gendarmes reluctantly let quit their prey: they 
 muttered, they hesitated, they gripped her arms tighter, 
 and murmured of the prison-cell. 
 
 "Let her go," said Tricotrin, quietly: and in a little 
 while they did so, — the girl stood bareheaded and motion- 
 less in the snow, like a frost-bound creature. 
 
 Soon the crowd dispersed : nothing can be still long in 
 Paris, and since there had been no theft there was no 
 interest: they were soon left almost alone, none were 
 within hearing. 
 
 Then he stooped to her : she had never taken off him 
 the wild, senseless, incredulous gaze of her great eyes. 
 
 " Were you guilty ?" he asked her. 
 
 She caught his hands, she tried to bless him and to 
 thank him, and broke down in hysterical sobs. 
 
 " I took it — yes ! What would you have ? I took it 
 for my mother. She is old, and blind, and without food.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 337 
 
 [t is for her that I came on the streets: but she does not 
 know, it would kill her to know ; she thinks my money 
 honest ; and she is so proud and glad with it ! That was 
 the first thing I stole ! Oh God ! are you an angel ? 
 If they had put me in prison my mother would have 
 starved!" 
 
 He looked on her gently, and with a pity that fell upon 
 her heart like balm. 
 
 " I saw it was your first theft. Hardened robbers do 
 not wear your stricken face," he said softly, as he slipped 
 two coins into her hand. "Ah, child! let your mother 
 die rather than allow her to eat the bread of your dis- 
 honor: which choice between the twain do you not think 
 a mother would make ? And know your trade she must, 
 soon or late. Sin no more, were it only for that love you 
 bear her." 
 
 Then he passed from her swiftly, chanting still the 
 burden of the roses. 
 
 The girl-criminal, the child-courtesan of sixteen sum- 
 mers, stood mute and paralyzed ; her hand mechanically 
 closing on the gold ; her large dark heavy eyes gazed 
 over the white stretches of the snow, and up at the black 
 star-studded skies: hot tears rushed under her swollen 
 lids, and she flung up her arms to the heavens with a sob 
 that was prayer and oath in one. 
 
 He had ransomed her from more than the prison cell : 
 he had bought her soul from sin. 
 
 And the joyous amorous song rang gayly through the 
 night; for these were daily things that he did, ami were 
 nnthing new in his life, which, if like the life of Desaugiers 
 it was <>ne perpetual fete, was also one continual benedic- 
 tion. Turn by turn, his life had been full of mirth, and 
 passion, ami poetry, .mil revelry, and pain, and all the de- 
 lights of the senses and the soul in changeful sequence; 
 but in it one thing reigned ever, never sleeping, never 
 shallowed, never silent, never cold, a, thing of w hich men 
 have little, ami saints have less, — charity. 
 
 r>\-and-l>v. through the streets of theold city ami across 
 the river, lie came to where the ureal front of the Tuilo- 
 ries glittered all alive with light. 
 
 "Ah! 1 remember they are dancing here too," he 
 
 29
 
 338 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 murmured, as he glanced at the illumined palace. " So 
 there is the eldest son of the church spending half a mil- 
 lion to entertain the princes of the earth, while out in the 
 street yonder filial piety must turn harlot to get a crust ! 
 Sublime crown of civilization!" 
 
 And he walked through the Carousel to the Court of 
 Honor. 
 
 " No one passes," said one of the Cent Gardes, bringing 
 his bayonet level, while his sky-blue and silver harness 
 glittered in the gaslight. 
 
 " Bah! I pass; you know me, Petit Jean." 
 
 The guard looked, smiled, and let him enter. He knew 
 that Tricotrin was privileged, by right of that love which 
 the people openly bore him, and the fear which their rulers 
 secretly felt of him. 
 
 He stood in the entrance among the fretting horses, 
 shouting lackeys, flaring torches: they filled the vast 
 court with movement and with color, while above-head 
 the heavy snow whitened the roofs of palace, pavilion, 
 and gallery. 
 
 The guests of the court were then leaving in the gray 
 of night that met morning: hundreds passed by him, wo- 
 men of beauty and birth, and men of every nation's nobil- 
 ity, the brilliant throng of a new-year ball, passing out to 
 their equipages in the red tossing flamelight of ten thou- 
 sand torches. 
 
 Among them came one whose loveliness had had no 
 peer even among all that was loveliest in Europe : — a wo- 
 man of a perfect beauty, moving with slow sweeping step; 
 a woman of lofty slender stature, like a palm ; of voluptu- 
 ous and exquisite grace ; with eyes dark as night, full of 
 languor and luster, and a skin like the snow, and hair of 
 lightest gold, in which stars of diamonds shone ; a woman 
 with the dignity of an empress, the glance of a sorceress, 
 the face of an angel. 
 
 And the running footmen, with their torches blazing, 
 cleared a wide way before her, and called aloud for the 
 carriage of, — " Madame la Duchesse de Lira." 
 
 He, standing there beyond the torch-glare, started and 
 went forward, the blood flushing his forehead, his eyes 
 lighting to eager passion.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 339 
 
 Once this beautiful sovereign had said, " If I forget 
 you then may God forget me ;" — now her careless impe- 
 rial glance sweeping over the throng passed over him and 
 did not even see him. 
 
 His head dropped as if he had been struck a sharp 
 blow ; a keen anguish, like the anguish in the bold faith- 
 ful eyes of a hound wounded by the hand that it loves, 
 came into his : not without need and prescience had he 
 once answered her, — "thy sins to me I shall forgive 
 thee : for what else have I given thee love ?" 
 
 The carriage rolled away with noise and royal cere- 
 mony ; bearing her from the scene of her victories ; and 
 he went slowly forth back over the river into the haunts 
 of the old city with the stray dog in his bosom. 
 
 With the riches of his genius had he made the hearts 
 of the poor and heavy-laden to rejoice that night in inno- 
 cent and natural delight: with the stripes of human in- 
 gratitude and oblivion was he scourged that night him- 
 self. 
 
 "What matter? what matter?" he murmured, as he 
 went through the driving sheets of snow. " What 
 matter ? — she is happy." 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 In the little kitchen of the river-house in the vine coun- 
 try an old woman sat beside her fire. 
 
 Her home had everything that her hardy habits stood 
 in need of; there was abundance of wood in the log closet, 
 there was abundance of brown sweet loaves in the bread- 
 pot, there was ample winter provision in the red earthen 
 pans and the shining brass dishes; there was a bright 
 and pleasant comfort in the fire-glow, in the scent of the 
 herbs, in the purr of the cal ; and a sturdy, bright-visaged 
 peasant girl of sixteen, a grand-niece of ber own from a 
 distant province, never left her day or night. Yet in the
 
 340 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 worn, brave, patient, sunburnt face, so old, so still, so 
 dark, there was an abiding, unutterable grief, — a grief 
 that never spoke. 
 
 In the long summer days she would creep slowly into 
 the porch, under the great flowering boughs of the chest- 
 nuts, and stand for hours shading her eyes with her hand, 
 and looking out to where the distant road ran through the 
 vine-fields, — the road that led to the great world. 
 
 In the long winter nights she would move toward the 
 window, and draw aside its little red curtain, and sit for 
 hours looking out to where the swollen river roared be- 
 tween its banks, — the river that swept westward to the 
 sea. 
 
 Summer and winter she watched for that which never 
 came : the earth holds no greater agony. 
 
 At times she would go up the stairway to a great, 
 heavy walnut-press, full of curious doors and dim re- 
 cesses, and unlock these, and draw them forth, and gaze 
 at their contents ; — linen and woolen stuffs, and furs, and 
 many different heaps of gold : she never touched them, 
 but she would gaze at them very long. And at other 
 times she would sit under the chestnuts, or over the 
 warm hearth, as the seasons of the year went by, with 
 only that mute and hopeless pain upon her face, saying 
 nothing, but only stroking the white head of the great 
 cat, Bebee. 
 
 She knit, and spun, and eat, and drank, and sliced the 
 onions, and washed the lettuces, and dried the thyme, 
 and worked on, and served herself with industrious tra- 
 vail, as all the temper and the teachings of her life had 
 made her do, while there was one lingering pulse of 
 strength in her aged limbs. But she scarcely ever spoke; 
 and the look in her eyes never changed. 
 
 It was only when she sank to sleep in the warmth of 
 the sun, or the heat of the fire, that in her dreams words 
 stole brokenly through the lips, whose sternness relaxed, 
 and whose silence was broken. And the little Lorraine 
 peasant maiden, bending over her, with pity, and with 
 wonder, found those dream-murmured words to be ever 
 the same: 
 
 " They never come back ! They never come back !"
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 341 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 "I have not sold one 1" said a little Italian lad, with 
 his soft brown eyes brimming over with tears: he was a 
 half-starved delicate child of some ten or twelve years, 
 with a tray of white images. 
 
 He was one out of the many thousands, bartered for a 
 few coins, from their homes on the slopes of the Abruzzi 
 or Apennines. A miserable home, sheds shared with 
 the goat and the ass, with dried forest- leaves for a bed, 
 and a piece of sheepskin for a garment, and a draught of 
 sour milk for a meal : but which yet looked so happy and 
 so fair with its sweet-smelling mountain air, and its long 
 summer days, with the herds at pasture, and its play at 
 eventime under the broad cork-tree, and its deep still hush 
 of solitude, with the spring-loosened snows stealing down 
 through the silence, — when the child had been torn from 
 them all forever, and carried northward and westward, to 
 sull'er the anguish of cities, the desolation of the streets, 
 the famine of home-sickness amid alien crowds. 
 
 He had not sold one : standing there all the day through 
 in the gay, changing, thoughtless throngs of Paris. And 
 he knew that if he went back to his taskmaster without a 
 coin for all his wasted day, the blows would rain down 
 on him like hail, and he would be flung into the noisome, 
 pestilential darkness of the cellar that he lived in, without 
 even the mouldy crust of bread that was by right his 
 supper. Worse things even than this were done to him, — 
 a young child in a strange land, with the seeds of mortal 
 disease in him, sure to die and tell no tale: and he wept 
 bitterly in the springtide sunshine that quivered through 
 a million leaves in a million threads of glory on his head. 
 
 He had sold nothing, eaten nothing', uol drunk even a 
 drop of water since the sweel balmy April day had com- 
 menced; and on an organ near they had played an old 
 Lombardic tunc that his mother had used to sing to him 
 
 2<J*
 
 342 TRIC0TR1N, 
 
 in the little cabin under the rock, while the evening mists 
 grew white and hid the valley below. And the air had 
 made the tears start in his eyes, and the great sobs rise 
 in his chest: that time seemed so long — ah, God! — so 
 long ago ! For a childhood that is unhappy is as a mar- 
 tyrdom without an end. 
 
 " I have not sold one !" he cried to the only living creat- 
 ure who that day paused beside him, to ask why a little, 
 pale, thin, wretched child was in sorrow in a foreign city. 
 
 "Ah 1 You grieve because the world will have none 
 of your toys?" cried his questioner. " Well, — that is the 
 grievance of all of us. The woman will not have our 
 love, — the public will not have our science, — the galleries 
 will not hold our art, — the nation will not accept our 
 policies, — one way or another everybody chafes because 
 every one else will not take to his playthings. And the 
 successful man is the man who knows how to turn his 
 toys to the tastes of the moment." 
 
 The boy looked up, shrinking from the jest that seemed 
 to him so untimely and so unmerciful ; but as he met the 
 eyes bent on him, he took hope from their sunny compas- 
 sion. There was no pity in the words, but there was in- 
 finite pity in the look ; and children and dogs regard the 
 glance far more than the speech. 
 
 "I have sold nothing!" he repeated once more, wist- 
 fully, with the sobs stifled in his throat. "And you do 
 not know what the Patron is when one goes back without 
 money!" 
 
 "He beats you — eh?" 
 
 "Ah!" — the child gave a great shudder, a shudder of 
 remembrance and foreboding intermingled. 
 
 " Of course he does. He sees the world thrash all who 
 have not the knack of getting gold in it. He only follows 
 the fashion. He would not beat you if you stole ? — to 
 be sure not; he follows the fashion there too. But you 
 do not steal ?" 
 
 "No! I am afraid." 
 
 " Well, — not a noble motive for abstinence, but a whole- 
 some one in the absence of a sturdier. Retain it. And 
 you have not taken a sou all this day through ?" 
 
 "Not one!" sobbed the child, in a loud wail of terrified
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 343 
 
 misery. "Not one ! and he will thrash me till I cannot 
 stand." 
 
 "Most men are in your predicament, save a few happy 
 hawkers who know well how to trim their wares, and a 
 few wise men like myself, who, having nothing to buy or 
 to sell, contrive to live at our ease. Well, if I had the 
 money to purchase your trayful, you should have it ; since 
 I have not, let me see if I can get rid of some of that 
 trumpery for you." 
 
 Before the astonished and sobbing child had recovered 
 his amaze at an address that rang on his ear as so wan- 
 tonly cruel, his companion had caught up the board full 
 of white images, sprang on a bench under one of the 
 linden-trees of the boulevard, and, raised thus above the 
 passing populace, arrested its attention by his attitude 
 and his challenge. 
 
 "Stop! all you who are useless drones in the city!" he 
 cried aloud. "The industrious men maybe off, they will 
 not diminish the crowd very much!" 
 
 By "uc accord all the throng paused under the limes, 
 careless how their stoppage incriminated themselves into 
 his first category. 
 
 "Listen!" cried several voices. "That is Tricotrin 
 there — all! he is better than the theaters any day !" 
 
 And they gathered nearer about the lime trunk, curious 
 to know what he could be doing there, with his board of 
 plaster casts held in air, and his eyes laughing down 
 on their upturned faces. They were used to him in many 
 phases: from a Harlequin dancing at their barriere balls 
 to a Gracchus leading them in years that were red with 
 iv\ olution. 
 
 Whether he danced with them, fought with them, 
 laughed with them, or suffered with them, he was still 
 1 hen- own — Tricotrin. 
 
 Rapidly one and another joined the first speaker, and 
 the group grew, and grew, with the marvelous celerity 
 of a city throng, and loitered about the linden-tree that 
 sheltered the bench where their favorite stood, — the board 
 of plaster toys resting on his lefl arm, and the broad blos- 
 soming boughs flinging their shadows upon him. 
 
 "Ah, my people of Paris!" he cried to them. "Look
 
 344 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 at these things,— the little lacl who owns them has not 
 been able to sell one of them among you. How is that ? 
 You are not commonly loth to buy new toys; no nation 
 spends its money sooner or wider upon playthings. The 
 world knows that. Why, — we are the great toy-shop of 
 Europe. 
 
 " These are brittle, you say ? Well, there is no gain- 
 saying it. And they soil with a touch 1 I admit it. 
 And they are hollow within, only masks at the best ? — ■ 
 there is no question but that is true too. I grant every 
 one of your objections. But are they anything new 
 against playthings ? I guess not. 
 
 "Look at your pet toy 'prestige.' Is not that brittle 
 enough ? What a glittering, inflated, gold-bedizened, 
 empty-stomached bladder, that a single blow from the 
 cudgel of adversity breaks and shrivels into naught 1 Can 
 you eat such a bladder, can you drink from it, can you 
 feed hungry mouths on it, can you take voyages in it, can 
 you trust it to be as sound and as solid as a nugget of 
 ore, or as a loaf of brown bread? — of course not. Yet 
 nine times out of ten you spend all your wealth on it, and 
 you are so busy blowing with all your breath into it to 
 send it higher, that you never notice the grave being dug 
 at your feet, and your children being sucked down into 
 it. Then how in justice can you urge that you will not 
 purchase this plaster bust of Homer, because a crack will 
 make it worthless ? 
 
 "But they soil so soon, you say; — what is the thing 
 you love best to play with at your leisure, whether you 
 be a noble drinking his wines, or a cobbler stitching his 
 leather, a duke yawning in a palace, or a lemonade seller 
 lying in the sun? Why — a woman's name, I fancy. 
 How you toss it up like a ball in the smoke-clouds of slan- 
 der: how you pull the dainty down off it, as off a but- 
 terfly's wings ; how you fling it from one to another, care- 
 less of everything except how you get your sport out of 
 it ! Well, I warrant you that not one of these little 
 white vases, not one of these little white statues, can be 
 smirched one-half so swiftly as can a woman's fair fame. 
 And off these you can scrape the soil ; but off that you can 
 never again remove the stain you once have made on it.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAfF AND STRAY. 345 
 
 " But they are hollow inside, you still urge ? — fie, for 
 shame 1 What a plea that is 1 Have you the face to 
 make it? If you have, let me bargain with you. 
 
 " When all the love that is fair and false goes begging 
 for believers, and all the passion that is a sham fails to 
 find one Tool to buy it: — when all the priests and politi- 
 cians clap in vain together the brazen cymbals of their 
 tongues, because their listeners will not hearken to brass 
 clangor, nor accept it for the music of the spheres : — when 
 all the creeds, that feast and fatten upon the cowardice 
 and selfishness of men, are driven out of hearth and home, 
 and mart and temple, as impostors that put on the white 
 beard of reverence and righteousness to pass current a 
 cheater's coin: — when all the kings that promise peace 
 while they swell their armories and armies ; when all the 
 statesmen that chatter of the people's weal as they steal 
 up to the locked casket where coronets are kept; when all 
 the men who talk of 'glory,' and prate of an 'idea' that 
 they may stretch their nations' boundary, and filch their 
 neighbors' province, — when all these are no longer in the 
 land, and no more looked on with favor, then I will be- 
 lieve your cry that you hate the toys which are hollow. 
 
 "Empty indeed these are, — these little heads of Cupid 
 and little groups of the Madonna, — but empty as they 
 may be, they cannot be so hollow as those things that I 
 have quoted, that you cherish, and adore, and purchase, 
 and have faith in! Brittle, quick to soil, and a mere 
 shell, with nothing in it! Why, my plaster cast lias 
 copied most exactly all your toys of love and ambition 1 
 Come buy them, then! No excuse is left you. 1 have 
 broken your excuses one by one, like the fagots in the 
 falile!"' 
 
 " We will buy them, Tricotrin ! We will buy them at 
 your own price!" cried twenty voices from the laughing 
 throng below him. 
 
 He knew well how to deal with them, with that Paris 
 crowd, sip quickly moved to raillery, to wrong, to tears, to 
 sympathy, to rage, with swifter mutations than any other 
 crowds ever know. 
 
 " We will buy them ! Throw them down to us !" they 
 shouted, thronging closer ahout the lime-tree, and look-
 
 346 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 ing upward to his face on which the mellow sunset glow 
 was falling. 
 
 He held up his hand with a gesture to them to pause 
 an instant; and the ironic gay scorn in his eyes softened 
 and a graver tenderness of regard shone on them. 
 
 " Wait an instant : not for my sake. For the sake of a 
 better thing — humanity. See here, — this is one of the 
 shameful scandals of our cities. A child torn from his 
 home, divorced from honest labor, set to a pretended 
 trade, that by it he may cloak theft; spoiled for an honest 
 citizen, that he may pander to the greed of an overseer too 
 idle to labor for himself. If it be thus with the green 
 wood, what will it be with the dry ? If it be thus that 
 the young children are reared, of what sort will their fu- 
 tures be ? Ah — we enlarge the prisons, and we multiply 
 the law courts, and we leave the school and the cradle to 
 chance ! We let the spawning beds multiply their poison ; 
 and we wonder that devil-fish are all that swarm in our 
 seas ! This boy is innocent — as yet. But the choice is 
 given him betwixt blows and theft, starvation and dis- 
 honesty. Who shall look for moral courage in a child to 
 enable him to withstand where men succumb ? Buy 
 these toys at their own fair prices. You will do a good 
 deed. But do it for the sake of the young thing that is 
 in need and in hunger, — not for mine." 
 
 Their answer was a shower of silver on the bench 
 where he stood, and twoscore hands were eagerly out- 
 stretched to seize and share the little casts and busts. 
 
 He parceled them out among the throng, and took 
 the coins from each, that from each was due, for the 
 plaster thing that had been given in exchange for it. The 
 surplus he forced back upon the buyers. 
 
 " No," he said, as they pressed it upon him. " Give 
 him his proper wage, — no alms. I asked for a kindly 
 act, and you have done it. We will not teach him to 
 look on sympathy as a mere goose with golden eggs, or 
 he may one day kill the bird that now has saved him." 
 
 Then, as rapidly as he had mounted the seat under 
 the lime, he sprang down from it, thrust the money in the 
 image boy's hand, aud was lost to sight within the doors 
 of the wine-shop close behind his lime-tree.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 347 
 
 The throng- broke up. The people went on their ways ; 
 those who had obtained one of the white images, holding 
 it tenderly as a precious relic. One very old woman from 
 the seaboard of the west, fondled with rapt adoration a 
 little plaster medallion of which the value was, at utter- 
 most, two copper pieces. 
 
 "I will put it over my bed," she muttered. " It will 
 keep disease away." 
 
 She was close beside the door of a carriage as she 
 spoke ; a carriage that had been checked by the throng 
 at but little distance from the linden-tree; its occupant 
 heard her and leaned forward. 
 
 " I will buy that medal from you, — here is a gold 
 piece." 
 
 The old Vendean, stupid and purblind, stared up with 
 dazzled eves. She had all the avarice of the French 
 peasant strong in her; she was but a rag-picker grueling 
 in perpetual filth; she lived miserably that she might 
 have the miser's delight of hoarding a few silver pieces 
 in an old earthen pot under the bricks of her stove. She 
 had never owned so much as a broad golden piece all at 
 once in her life; but she hugged her medallion closer, and 
 shook her bend in sturdy denial. 
 
 "I will not sell it,— no !" 
 
 " And why ?" 
 
 The question was imperious and impatient, asked by 
 one who was little used to brook or hear refusals. 
 
 "Because it came from Tricotrin," muttered the tooth- 
 less, withered, palsied crone, as she tottered on her way 
 through the crowd. 
 
 She did nut ask or heed who had spoken to her; she 
 haled nil those who drove in chariots. It had been just 
 such a carriage a.- this, rolling rapidly to a king's festival, 
 that had passed over the fair, slender body of the daughter 
 of her youth, and crushed to pulp the delicate brown limbs, 
 — and led her in her old age no better love than the 
 earthen pipkin under the stove-bricks. 
 
 The greal lady who had proffered her the gold for her 
 plaster bas-relief, drove onward with a pang at her heart. 
 
 'A 11 old creature, thai -leans her food from the gutters of 
 the streets, is truer to him than 1 have been !" she thought.
 
 348 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 In a great palace of Rome a man lay sick unto death. 
 
 Unto death ! — though none were suffered to know it 
 save himself, though he made no moan at any one of the 
 inward tortures that consumed him, though he reclined 
 by his lofty casement watching the rising of the moon, 
 in what his household deemed the mere lassitude of long 
 weakness. 
 
 He knew that he must die ; whether in this night, or 
 not for another year, he could not tell, nor science tell for 
 him ; out he knew that his doom was certain — as certain 
 as that the moonlight was streaming, white and limpid 
 and clear as morning, through his vast, painted, silent 
 chamber. But it was his own secret, and he had kept it. 
 He meant thus to keep it until such time as the dumb- 
 ness and grayness of dissolution should disclose it for 
 him. 
 
 He was oftentimes racked with torment. The disease 
 that had fastened on him is ever merciless, sparing not 
 prince nor peasant; a vampire which, when once it has 
 made fast its fangs, never leaves hold till its prey is slain. 
 But he never suffered a complaint or a lament to escape 
 from him. He was of delicate frame, of fragile strength ; 
 he had long been a scholar, an invalid, a recluse ; none 
 deemed it more than some slight increase of feebleness 
 that bound him to his couch. 
 
 Into the mournful shadowy hues of his chamber, where, 
 by his will, only the moonbeams shed radiance, there 
 came a sudden golden blaze of light, a sudden odorous 
 waft of perfume, a sudden flash of glorious beauty, that 
 came out from the gloom as the sun from a cloud. 
 
 These came with the entrance of a woman, behind 
 whom two little pages bore two silver branches of wax- 
 lights. 
 
 She swept over the room as a swan sweeps over the
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 349 
 
 water, and came to him, noiselessly, save for the soft 
 shiver of her silken robes. She was beautiful, exceed- 
 ingly ; and on her face shone all the victory and proud 
 security of a supreme power. As she moved, her dia- 
 monds gleamed on her breast and in her hair and in the 
 folds of her skirts ; she was attired for a costume-ball at 
 the Palace of the Doria, and had robed herself as Marie 
 Antoinette de France, diademed and ermined in the full 
 ceremonial of royalty. 
 
 She came to him and laid her white hand on his. 
 
 " I trust you are better this evening ?" 
 
 His eyes dwelt on her with an unutterable adoration. 
 
 " I believe so," he answered simply. " I think I shall 
 soon suffer nothing." 
 
 Some accents in his voice attracted her ; she regarded 
 him more earnestly. 
 
 " You do suffer, I fear ?" she asked. 
 
 "A little — perhaps. In not being able to go with you, 
 for instance. But I am weak, that is all." 
 
 There are lies nobler than truth. 
 
 "How magnificent you look to-night, my empress I" 
 he continued, while his large, dark eyes gazed on her 
 with rapt worship. "You grow more beautiful every 
 hour ! But why have you taken that part for yourself? 
 A discrowned queen has nothing in common with you J" 
 
 She laughed slightly, glancing at her own splendid 
 vision in the opposite mirrored wall. 
 
 "No, indeed! But I am Marie Antoinette in her om- 
 nipotence, in her glory. Nay! I am more than she. I 
 am France personified ! My costume is perfect?" 
 
 " Vim are perfect — yes." 
 
 He deemed her so : this exquisite thing, whom he 
 called wile, and in whose heart there was no throb for 
 him, but only one passionate, all-absorbing love for his 
 great rival of the world. 
 
 "Yon Bee this diamond arrived in time?" she con- 
 tinued, touching the center stone of her necklace of un- 
 usual size and brilliancy. "I was so alia id it might be 
 retarded on its way through the east, though a courier 
 traveled night and day with it." 
 
 He smiled indulgently — as to a spoiled child. 
 
 30
 
 350 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 a 
 
 I bade them get it here, if any way possible, by this 
 evening. You have now the largest jewel out of the 
 European regalias. Those trifles are a woman's pride, I 
 know." 
 
 A spasm, whose suffering he could not entirely conceal 
 with all his fortitude, changed his color and caught his 
 breath a moment as he spoke. She looked at him quickly. 
 
 "I am afraid you are more ill than usual? Had I not 
 better stay with you ?" 
 
 There were compassion and the desire to testify it in 
 the offer; but he knew well that it was the accent of 
 duty, not of affection, that spoke in it. He strove to 
 smile again as he replied to it. 
 
 "Stay! — and leave the Dorian ball? Stay! — and 
 sacrifice that superb costume for which your diamond has 
 traveled, expressly, the whole way from Benares ? Nay 
 — I am not so selfish, my beautiful one. You are not 
 made to be chained clown to a sick couch in all your 
 youth and all your loveliness " 
 
 " It is I who am selfish — not you," she said, hurriedly, 
 in a momentary pang of conscience and of self-accusation. 
 
 " Selfish ? Oh, no, — wait until I reproach you, to re- 
 proach } r ourself. Is it not one of the few pleasures that 
 my life has known to be certain that you are happy ? 
 Go — you are late as it is ; and make the world say once 
 more, what it has so often said already, that all its king- 
 doms do not hold a creature so victorious and so beautiful 
 as my wife !" 
 
 She smiled ; her life was so steeped in flattery, that it 
 seemed only the daily utterance of what was her natural 
 due She was rejoiced to go ; she had felt fearful lest he 
 might accept the offer that her duty had wrung from her. 
 She stooped, and lightly touched his forehead with her 
 lips, and turned with her soft, languid grace from his 
 couch. 
 
 " You are right; it is late," she said, as she glanced at 
 a timepiece, and floated away through the length of the 
 chamber, the lights which her pages bore falling on the 
 flashing jewels of the royal dress of France. 
 
 The world waited for "her, the world and all its homage. 
 And — for the husband whom she left there, — had he not
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 351 
 
 his reward? Would not every man whose sight beheld 
 her .beauty to-night, envy his possession of herself? 
 
 It was enough; she had repaid him. 
 
 His eyes followed her with a terrible yearning love 
 that hungered for one backward glance, one farewell word ; 
 — none came, she passed out without one lingering look, 
 one last good-night. She was thinking of the world that 
 waited for her in the Palace of the Dorias. 
 
 The lights passed away, the curtain fell behind them, 
 the trailing of her train upon the marble floor ceased to 
 break the silence. He was left alone. And he covered 
 his face with his hands, and shuddered as with cold, the 
 dews of anguish standing on the brow that her lips had 
 brushed as lightly and as carelessly as the wings of a but- 
 terfly brush the face of a corpse. He would have borne 
 the throes of ten thousand deaths to spare her one throb 
 of pain, — and he was no more to her than the glittering 
 stones that shone on her fair bosom; nay, not one tithe 
 so much! Honor, affluence, gladness, luxurious ease, im- 
 perial pomp, and all the homage that the world will only 
 render to those; who can command it, had come through 
 his hand to her. Through him she was throned on high, 
 where perpetual summer and everlasting suiftight were 
 her portion, where the storm of calamity, and the chill of 
 poverty, and the scorch of shame never more could touch 
 her. Through him, the desire of her soul was given unto 
 her; and the crown of greatness was set on her proud 
 brows in lieu of the brand of bastardy, and of the thorn- 
 wreaths of vain ambition, and of disappointed effort. 
 Through him all things that she had craved had become 
 hers without price or penalty. And his reward was that 
 men grudgingly counted the years of his life thai were set 
 a- a barrier betwixt them ami her loveliness! And that 
 
 to this exquisite thing, — cruel withoul intent and unwit- 
 ting of the pain that W-d her pleasure, as infants when 
 they catch at butcerflies, — he was only as the treasury 
 from which the gold that was needed for her triumphs 
 came, :is the mine whence the jewels of ner regalia were 
 drawn, as the magician whose wand summoned around 
 her the splendors of an enchanted world. 
 
 He lavished all that the earth held upon his idol. And
 
 352 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 she — she was not so much moved by all his priceless gifts 
 as in the days of her childhood she had been moved by a 
 single branch of dog-roses, a single horn of silvered sweet- 
 meats, from another's hand. 
 
 She was radiant, thoughtless, mutable, capricious, sur- 
 rendered to the indulgence of every whim, and forgetful 
 of the hand from which the power of such indulgence 
 came, — it is ever on natures such as this that love is 
 poured out most abundantly; natures that rejoice in its 
 effect, but no more heed its root than the bee heeds the 
 roots of the flower-bell that it despoils of its honey. 
 
 In her heart he knew not one pulse beat for him. 
 
 In her absence he knew not one thought turned to him. 
 
 In her future he knew not one memory would be faith- 
 ful to him. 
 
 And this bitterness was greater to him than all the bit- 
 terness of death. 
 
 For he suffered also that jealousy which, arising in 
 noble natures, will never stoop to suspicion, but yet it is 
 the inevitable offspring of that possession of a beloved life, 
 which is not also possession of the soul within that life. 
 
 He did not fear the safety of his honor. She was 
 proud, she was truthful, she was of high courage ; such 
 women do not carry shame to their husbands' hearths. 
 But — she was so young, she was so beautiful, she was so 
 hourly besieged by all the honeyed eloquence of passion, 
 and he — he was left here, old ere his time, powerless to 
 attract or enchain her, gray, weary, hopeless, paralyzed 
 with a piteous disease. When he bade her go forth into 
 the world where her lovers wooed her ear, and every 
 whisper that stirred the air was a whisper to forget him- 
 self, he reached that martyrdom of the soul of which the 
 world knows naught, but which surpasses in its fortitude 
 and in its torture every martyrdom of the body. 
 
 The night was very still ; through the lofty casements 
 the lustrous Roman moon shone white ; the great chamber 
 was hushed like a grave. He lay there long with his face 
 hidden, and no sign of life within him, save now and then 
 a quiver of his limbs as the canker of death within him 
 dealt him some sharper blow. 
 
 A dreamy sense of exhaustion and of peace slowly
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 353 
 
 stole on him, stilling his suffering, but stilling with it the 
 life in his veins. His attendants, alarmed at his long si- 
 lence, drew noiselessly near, and fearing to disturb what 
 might be merely peaceful sleep, stood inactive round his 
 couch. His physicians, hastily summoned, saw that it 
 was sleep indeed, the sleep that knows no awakening. 
 They raised him, and his eyes unclosed with the old, gen- 
 tle smile they knew so well. 
 
 " This is death ?" he asked. 
 
 " Seek the duchess — quick 1" they whispered low ; but 
 not so low that the words failed to catch the ear of the 
 dying man. 
 
 " No, no !" he murmured. " Tell her nothing. It 
 would spoil her pleasure !" 
 
 And his last breath faded from his lips in that last 
 thought for her. 
 
 He lay dead in the moonlight that streamed about him — 
 fair, cold, pitdess, radiant as the life that he had cherished. 
 
 In Rome, on the morrow, men, speaking together of the 
 last of the once-famous Dukes of Lira, said that he had 
 made no mark upon the world save by his strange mar- 
 riage with his beautiful wife; and laid many wagers as 
 to who in Europe would be likeliest to marrv his fair 
 duchess. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 The noon sun shone on some few breadths of corn-land 
 lying cm a southern hillside above a winding road, where 
 one little white, brown-roofed chalet alone stood looking 
 down into the small, cool, dark-blue lake thai slept below. 
 
 The com was brown and ripe; thecircle of the seasons 
 had brought the harvesl time again; the wheat was lull 
 in ear: ami, with the yellow riches of the neighboring 
 gourds and the fruit, of some goodly olive-trees hard by, 
 would give wealth enough for a peasant of the Pyrenees 
 
 30*
 
 354 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 to be well content withal. Yet the owner of the nook of 
 arable land upon the chestnut-clothed slope was weeping 
 piteously, like Rachel refusing to be comforted, like 
 Rachel having lost her son into the twilight of an un- 
 known fate. 
 
 It was the grief of grand'mere for Antoine ; it was the 
 grief of a million mothers when the sickle of State-Lust 
 gathers in the budding corn of the young lives they love; 
 it was the grief of which Theroigne de Mericourt was ig- 
 norant when in answer to the reproach — " Why will ye 
 women breed in servitude, why are ye not as the desert 
 beasts, that losing liberty are fruitless ?" — she replied, 
 " Did not the child smile in his mother's face for all that 
 Nero or Tiberius reigned?" 
 
 Under Tyrannies the children may smile, because they 
 know not what Birth has brought them; but under Ty- 
 rannies the mothers weep. And in revolution the reddest 
 hand, the voice most shrill and pitiless, are the hand and 
 voice of a woman. 
 
 This woman, old and feeble, lamented for the son of 
 her elder years whom the conscription had taken— t-taken 
 from his peaceful mountain home, and his pastoral games, 
 and his corn raised with so much labor on the arid soil 
 just as its harvest crowned his toil. 
 
 She stood on the stone sill of her little dwelling, and 
 beside her stood a man in the loose linen shirt of the 
 people, with a violin under his arm and a little black 
 monkey playing at his feet. 
 
 " It is the conscription !" she cried, wringing her hands 
 — slender hands, for she had been city born, and could 
 not aid herself as could the sturdy women of the southern 
 land. " The conscription 1 See how the government de- 
 vours us. All the youngest, and bravest, and best, drawn 
 away to rot in the battle-fields !" 
 
 "Chut! good friend," said her companion's mellow 
 voice, that was in itself a sound of consolation. " Blame 
 not the government. Blame the war-lusts of men's souls. 
 Look you, — if the people governed, I doubt not but they 
 would be as cruel. A republic and peace we say — ay, 
 we shall get them, perchance, in paradise. Not here. 
 The people everywhere are hot and hasty and blind in
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 355 
 
 judgment ; they would rush into wars the instant that 
 their jealousy or their vanity smarted. And then the 
 youths would go to the slaughter. See how it was with 
 them in the days of Argonne and Jemappes." 
 
 " That may be," moaned the bereaved mother. " But 
 they would not take the lad from the plow, the boy from 
 earning his grandam's bread, the child with the down on 
 his cheek from the herd of goats that was all his store. 
 They would have pity " 
 
 " On their own class ? Possibly. They would stay at 
 home themselves, and send the poet, the scholar, the 
 artist, the statesman, out to the storms of the grape- 
 shot ? Oh, yes ! But would that come nearer justice, 
 my friend ?" 
 
 " I do not know !" sobbed the woman, inconsolable. 
 " I only know Bernal is gone !" 
 
 "Ah !" murmured Tricotrin. " That is all most of you 
 know of justice, — how she looks through your own little 
 eyelet-hole 1 Listen here, Aiinee Herbalez, we all have 
 our burdens; but it depends on ourselves how long we 
 carry them. The conscription is hard, that I grant you; 
 and were the bodies of men well trained to arms, and 
 their minds to tolerance, there need be no conscription, 
 because there would be no war. But while the world 
 wags as it does, men must be patriots, and every patriot 
 must be a soldier if necessity arise. And Bernal was a 
 lad of spirit; he would not have been easy in your little 
 nook all his days. Who knows? — he may carry the 
 Baton in his knapsack ? There was a rough peasant boy 
 once, down in the south, in whose fate it was written to 
 sit on the throne of the great Gustavus, — and his race 
 reigns to-day. Who can tell what Bernal may not 
 reach ?" 
 
 " He would be as far from me if he were a king !" mur- 
 mured the despairing Herbalez. "It is good of you 
 to talk so. and it is true thai the boy was well pleased to 
 go into the army, promising to gel covered all over with 
 orders, lint , ah! — they talk of the stars and the crosses, 
 and t hey die in a ditch !" 
 
 " Supreme truth ! Thousands rot at an Austerlitz, and 
 one man goes home a conqueror. If I kill a single
 
 356 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 creature for a bag of gold coins, I am guillotined as a 
 murderer; if I kill a million creatures for a diadem of 
 gold, I am worshiped as a hero. Singular arithmetic 
 and ethics! But hark you " 
 
 " They die in a ditch I" wailed the woman. " My bright 
 innocent boy ! — he is gone into the hell of Paris, where 
 he will forget his God and me ; and they will draught 
 him out to that hideous Cayenne, where they say no 
 strong man can breathe and live." 
 
 "What regiment have they drafted him into?" 
 
 She told him between her sobs. 
 
 "All right! Only the second battalion will go to Cay- 
 enne. I know something of that regiment's command- 
 ers, — for that matter I did them a turn one night down 
 an African defile, when it went hard with them against a 
 band of plunderers. I will see what I can do to get Ber- 
 nal left with the first battalion at Toulouse. Toulouse is 
 not so far but you can look at him now and then. So 
 take heart ! The boy shall come back here with his lieu- 
 tenancy if we can get him one; and — meantime, your 
 corn is spoiling !" 
 
 "What matter the corn!" she cried, impetuously. 
 " What matter the corn, if you can save my boy ? God 
 reward you ! You are ever like sunshine in a desolate 
 place. You are ever full of generous thoughts !" 
 
 " Chut ! In my own life I suck the sweetness from my 
 cocoanuts, and only eat the flesh of my dates, like the 
 wise Arabian lad; but when I see my fellow-creatures 
 persistently eating their cocoa-husks and their date-stones, 
 and getting no other nourishment, I do my best to set 
 them right. And the corn ?" 
 
 "Ah, it is a terrible thing about the corn," sighed the 
 woman, losing her ideal grief in her practical care, 
 through that necessity which is at once the slave-driver 
 and the solacer of -the poor. " Bernal was just going to 
 reap it ; and the neighbors in the valley have their own 
 business, and I am a weak, useless thing, and one night's 
 storm would lay it and kill it " 
 
 "Assuredly. I will get it in by sunset." 
 
 "You!" 
 
 "Well ! Why not? Have I not worked in the fields 
 before now ?"
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 35 f 
 
 " But that was in play ?" 
 
 Though he lived with them and like them, felt with 
 them and like them, there was about him that which the 
 people of every land instinctively obeyed and yielded to 
 as the sovereignty of one above them. Superstition, 
 growing out of reverence and love, gave him many strange 
 attributes and lofty antecedents; and to behold him one 
 day claim the kingship of the world would not have been 
 too great a glory for him in the sight of the peasantry 
 that worshiped him. 
 
 "In play? Indeed.no. I worked for a wage. I am indo- 
 lent enough, good Herbalez, as you know ; how many hours 
 I lie in the sun as lazy as a lazzarone 1 It will do me good 
 to get in your wheat. Corn will talk to us, if we listen, 
 better than most men, — what sermons in the full ripe ears 
 that have sprung out of a seed that had looked dead; 
 what poems in the blue cornflower that grows among the 
 wheat like the poetry that springs through the busy lives 
 of men; wlial rebukes in the brave, patient lark that 
 builds so boldly, though the reaping-hook may cut her 
 little body in two ! Come, give me the sickle, there is no 
 time to lose; by the violet of the skies there is a rain- 
 storm due before to-morrow." 
 
 With fervent thanks she gave him the classic tool, and 
 stood awed and wondering as he went to the work. To 
 the literal mind of the woman, which was unpoetic but 
 yet superstitious, it was easier to believe that miracles 
 happened, and that the wheat and the blossoms really 
 had tongues for him, than to follow the fantastic fancy 
 which for him filled them both with meaning. 
 
 He was soon in the little field, — belted in by the chest- 
 nuts, and sultry with the ardent sun of August, — in a 
 corner of which he put, down his knapsack, his blouse, 
 ami Mistigri, who being a spoilt little epicurean, sat 
 among the cornstalks, disdainfully biting a wheat ear 
 now ami then, and making a grimace at it. 
 
 "This is the way, Mistigri," he murmured to his single 
 confidant ami companion. "When dark hours are down. 
 work through them. No exorcism charms like labor. 
 Men's souls were never made to dwell in nighl shadows 
 like the owls. To repine for one's self is something so nar-
 
 358 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 row and mean. While one has health, and strength, and 
 sight, and liberty, is it not rank blasphemy to say one 
 has not happiness ? Ah, Mistigri, there was a beauty in 
 the Mexican's cultus that is missing from the modern 
 creeds. To toss wine heavenward, with kisses, when the 
 sun rose — that meant Gratitude and Rejoicing. And then 
 Christians went with fire and sword, with the Bible of 
 the Jews and the Inquisition of the Spaniards, to mas- 
 sacre all those bright worshipers by way of teaching 
 them a better religion! Paf] Give me the Pagans !" 
 
 Mistigri nodded assent, being a little Pagan herself; 
 and Tricotrin bent himself to his w r ork, the hot sun shin- 
 ing on the brown corn, the yellow-winged orioles flying 
 through the light, the poppies and cornflowers bow T ing 
 under the sickle, the little bright-eyed mice scampering 
 off, as their nests were laid bare, into the chestnut wood 
 belting the field. 
 
 He worked fast and unremittingly ; he was glad of the 
 labor. Down below there, far aw T ay in the valley, were 
 some delicate spires and mighty towers bowered in 
 wood. They were the spires and towers of the Chateau 
 de Lira. 
 
 As he worked, four gay equipages, with outriders all 
 aglitter in scarlet and silver, passed at a rapid pace below, 
 along the road winding at the bottom of the slope. He 
 paused to gaze at them, shading his eyes with his hand. 
 
 " That is our Chatelaine," said the widow, who had come 
 out tp bring him a jug of red wine and a roll of bread. 
 " That is the beautiful creature I told you of — the great 
 duchess " 
 
 "Yes;" he answered her simply; and he took up his 
 sickle, and went to work afresh, while the sound of the 
 horses' feet still rang on the rocky road below. 
 
 " This is the first summer season she has been here," 
 resumed the woman, sitting down with her knitting on 
 the ledge of the wooden pale. " The duke never came 
 here after his marriage: that took place far away south, 
 out of France. We heard of it, and the people were 
 well pleased; they hoped to have great gayeties at the 
 chateau once more. But it was not so ; they were always 
 in Paris, or in foreign countries : we heard that he died
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AXD STRAY. 359 
 
 abroad, and she did not come at all; never until this 
 summer, and now, — now, — she makes up for the long 
 absence! Such extravagance, such pleasures, such hun- 
 dreds of guests, such a life — such a life ! They do nothing 
 but feast themselves like princes, and my boy Bernal is 
 drawn for the wars !" 
 
 She dropped twelve stitches in her knitting-work, — like 
 many other democrats who leave long gaps in their own 
 work, because they must stay away from it to rail at an 
 Order. 
 
 '• She is not generous to those that are poor, then ?" he 
 asked, bending still al his work. 
 
 Bernal's mother shrugged her shoulders. 
 
 "I do not suppose she ever remembers that there is 
 anybody living who has not cakes, and wine, and oil, 
 cwvy day! Generous? What do you call generous, 
 Tricotrin? They mast a hundred fowls, I have heard 
 tell, in her kitchen every day; they drink wine that has 
 real sparks of gold in it ; they laugh, and sing, and saun- 
 ter all their hours away; they sleep in satin sheets — so 
 they say: what good is that to us? If you were to go 
 up and ask, for your very life, you could not see her. I 
 did try, when my hoy was taken: well! how was it? A 
 servant spoke to another servant, and that servant sent a 
 page, and the page mocked me, and sent another, and 
 that other went to some great man with a silver chain 
 on him, who rebuked me. and told me I was a rude woman, 
 but I might go to the kitchens and ask for food. Food! 
 they would have given me broken hones when I had lost 
 Bemal to the army! No, — she is a fair thing; she has 
 a face like the sun. hut she is cold, she is hard, she has 
 no thoughl for the people. Tricotrin — if the Revolution 
 came again, 1 could find it in my heart to see her stripped 
 and scourged, and made to eat the bread of bitterness. 
 Look how she enjoys while we .-idler I" 
 
 The old rankling jealousy, natural, yet so cruel, that 
 lies at the root of all social antagonism, was acrid and 
 almost savage in the words : he did not answer her, but 
 reaped the corn in silence, while she knitted on, striving 
 to recover her lost stitches; bul the gap that hail been
 
 360 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 made would not close, — in eagerness for a revolution of 
 the future she had spoiled her labor of the hour. 
 
 There are many reformers like the Widow Herbalez. 
 
 By sunset the little golden store was reaped and set 
 in sheaves, — the graceful sheaves of English form, with 
 withes of wild convolvulus, and scarlet heads of poppy, 
 bound up within the wheat. He was free from his self- 
 imposed duty ; he left the great white Pyrenean dog of 
 the place on guard among the little harvest, and went 
 down the hillside, pursued by the blessings and the thanks 
 of the conscript's mother. " Gratitude is a lively sense 
 of favors to come;" and she knew that she must look to 
 him to carry it for grinding to the water-mill in the vil- 
 lage down below, where the foaming mountain river grew 
 quieter, and watered peacefully green stretches of meadow- 
 land. 
 
 There, in the valley, beneath his feet, not more than a 
 league off, were the towers of the chateau, and the wide, 
 dark masses of park and forest woodland ; with lakes, 
 and islets, and rocks, and streams amid them, and in their 
 front the glorious panorama of the mountains. 
 
 From the center tower of the pile was floating the 
 scarlet standard of the Lira; with the golden hawk, with 
 outstretched wings, of their insignia, glittering in the 
 rays of the setting sun. 
 
 He descended the hillside with the lithe swiftness of 
 the mountaineer, and passed through the scattered home- 
 steads of the little hamlet, that were chiefly gathered 
 about the side of the river, and had their white walls 
 hidden under thickets of myrtle and olive. 
 
 The day's toil was over : the young men and maidens 
 were playing the rough wrestling games of the district, 
 or dancing the Moresco dances, that still linger there as 
 the sign of the Saracenic days of yore : the old women 
 were sitting spinning, nodding their gray heads together, 
 amid the babble of their grandchildren ; they were all 
 very poor; they all led simple, homely, patriarchal lives; 
 but they were happy, their youth had the gay grace, and 
 their old age had the smiling content, that belong to 
 France alone. 
 
 He scattered among the children a basketful of cherries
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 301 
 
 that he had bought on the hillside, of an old woman who 
 was seeing her ruddy store likely to rot away for want of 
 a buyer in that lonely place: then he went from one group 
 to another with cheerful words, as his habitude was, and 
 gathered the wishes and wants of the little community. 
 Both were humble enough: — a goat for the sake of its 
 milk; a hank of flax for the spinning; a purchaser for 
 the overripe melons; a necklace of priest-blessed beads; 
 a smile from the bishop as he passed on his mule through 
 this, his far-distant, and rarely visited flock ; an acre more 
 ground to some young lover's small patrimony, so that he 
 could wed where he loved : all these in the little world 
 played the part that crowns, and honors, and riches, and 
 fair fame, and fierce passion played in the great world 
 unknown to them. 
 
 One young child, beautiful as some medieval painter's 
 seraph, with that angelic spiritual regard which belongs 
 to southern climes, pouted with a pretty scorn at her 
 playmate's cherries, and came and leaned in grave dis- 
 dain over her mother's knee. 
 
 "Dost thou not care for the fruit, Angelique ?" asked 
 the mother, reproachfully, smiling the while at Tricotrin, 
 who stood by. 
 
 The child's fair face clouded with petulant disdain. 
 
 " No ! 1 want more gold toys, mother !" 
 
 "Ah!" said the woman, half smiling still, but sadly. 
 "Thy chain has spoiled all thy pleasures! A week ago, 
 look you, our duchess up yonder saw Angelique as she 
 passed, and laughed and tossed her a gold jewel oft' her 
 wrist. It just fitted the baby's throat; but it has made 
 her so vain, there is no telling how to please her now." 
 
 Angelique lifted proudly her little fair throat with the 
 gold links glitteriug round it, her eyes shining and rap- 
 turous. 
 
 "I will not play with them /" she said, tossing her bead 
 toward her playmates. "They have only strings of yew 
 berries or dried peas ! — and she never called them beau- 
 tiful !" 
 
 "Hush, hush! A careless word does mischief," mur- 
 mured her mother, deprecatingly, to Tricotrin. "To give 
 
 31
 
 362 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 it to the child was very good, very generous, but the 
 gifts of the great are " 
 
 "Honey that moulds into poison! Your Angelique 
 was happy in her necklace of yew berries, aDd now, the 
 lust of gold is grown, and gold does not grow like the 
 yews. She gives much, — your Chatelaine?" 
 
 An old woman — very old — lifted blind patient eyes 
 where she sat under the chestnuts. 
 
 "She saw me sitting in the sun, in the park, the other 
 day, and she spoke softly to me, and she shook her purse 
 into my lap, — I counted twelve pieces, and Vevette found 
 them every one of gold! She is an angel." 
 
 "Caprice!" muttered an old charcoal-burner. "Only a 
 caprice, like the chain to little Ange. Her stewards tax 
 us for every rotten twig of wood, till we can scarce keep 
 body and soul together. She is a tyrant." 
 
 "We have only gourds and a stray onion to chew," 
 muttered a herdsman, "and her dogs eat the fat of the 
 land. " She is an aristocrat." 
 
 "Her flowers have fires all winter, and we shiver and 
 starve." 
 
 " Her life is a fairy tale ; how should she know what 
 it is to have only a knob of black bread once in twenty- 
 four hours ?" 
 
 " She spends all her substance in Paris; and then her 
 foresters grudge us a quail we have killed with a stone!" 
 
 " Her outriders lamed Bertrand's child for life, and she 
 was laughing in her carriage, — she never saw, she never 
 heard." 
 
 " Her fetes cost a million francs a night, every night of 
 last week, and they say each tree that was lit up cost as 
 much as would keep a man for a twelvemonth." 
 
 "But it was beautiful; we could see the light here!" 
 pleaded a handsome young goatherd. " And she has a 
 face like God's own people !" 
 
 " She gave me my chain !" cried little Angelique. 
 
 "And my twelve pieces!" muttered the blind woman. 
 
 "All that will not put a slice of beef in our pots, with 
 the garlic ; nor yet mend Bertrand's boy's broken knee," 
 said the charcoal-burner, gloomily, in summary and con- 
 clusion.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 3G3 
 
 Tricotrin, standing under the chestnut, heard in silence; 
 then wished them good-night, and walked on as Mistigri 
 leaped to his shoulder. 
 
 "Ah! little one," he murmured to her. "How the 
 hotbed of the world has heated and strengthened the 
 faults and the follies 1 — yet the higher nature lives still, 
 and the gift goes to the child, the gold pieces to the blind 
 woman. "Will it ever wake wholly and reign again? 
 Yes, perhaps: — if ever she love!" 
 
 Meanwhile, under the chestnuts, the blithe talk of the 
 aged women grew silent: the little Angelique pouted 
 apart, vexed with herself for having scorned her share of 
 the cherries ; the charcoal-burner sat moodily musing of 
 things of the old Revolution of which his grandsire had 
 told him; the young herdsman would not join in the 
 Sarabande, but wandered away thinking of the face •' like 
 one of God's people," that belonged to his proud Cha- 
 telaine, and gazing wistfully upward at the lights that 
 began to gleam through the wood of the chateau. 
 
 The brighl and Light-hearted content and communion 
 of their lives had been dimmed and been broken : — the 
 world had sent amid them the visible presence of its 
 devil-empress, wealth. 
 
 He, himself, went onward through the valley, through 
 the deep belt of the woods, through the avenues of the 
 park. The whole front of the antique building was lighted, 
 and the painted oriels gleamed ruby, and amber, and soft 
 brown, in the dusky evening, through the green screen of 
 foliage. 
 
 The fragrance of the orange alleys, and of the acres of 
 flowers, was heavy on the air; there was the sound of 
 music borne down the low southerly wind; here and 
 
 therethrough the 1 ghs was the dainty -'listen of gliding 
 
 silks: — it was such a scene as once belonged to the ter- 
 races and gardens of Versailles. 
 
 From beyond the myrtle fence and gilded railings which 
 severed the park from the pleasaunce, enough could be 
 scon, enough heard, of the brilliant revelry within to tell 
 of its extravagance, and its elegance, in the radiance that 
 streamed from all the illumined avenues. 
 
 He stood and looked long; hearing the faint echo of
 
 364 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 the music, seeing the effulgence of the light through the 
 dark myrtle barrier. 
 
 A very old crippled peasant, searching in the grass for 
 truffles, with a little dog, stole timidly up and looked too. 
 
 " How can it feel, to live like that t" he asked, in a 
 wistful tremulous voice. 
 
 Tricotrin did not hear : his hand was grasped on one 
 of the gilded rails with a nervous force as from bodily 
 pain. 
 
 The old truffle-gatherer, with his little white dog pant- 
 ing at his feet, crossed himself as he peered through the 
 myrtle screen. 
 
 "God!" he muttered, "how strange it seems that 
 people are there who never once knew what it was to 
 want bread, and to find it nowhere, though the lands all 
 teemed with harvest ! They never feel hungry, or cold, 
 or hot, or tired, or thirsty : they never feel their bones 
 ache, and their throat parch, and their entrails gnaw : — 
 these people ought not to get to heaven, they have it on 
 earth !" 
 
 Tricotrin heard at last ; he turned his head and looked 
 down on the old man's careworn hollow face. 
 
 " 'Verily, they have their reward,' you mean? Nay, 
 that is a crael religion — which would excruciate hereafter 
 those who enjoy now 1 Judge them not ; in their laurel 
 crowns there is full often twisted a serpent. The hunger 
 of the body is bad indeed, but the hunger of the mind is 
 worse perhaps ; and from that they suffer, because from 
 every fulfilled desire springs the pain of a fresh satiety." 
 
 The truffle-hunter, wise in his peasant-fashion, gazed 
 wistfully up at the face above him, half comprehending 
 the answer. 
 
 " It may be so," he murmured. " But then — they have 
 enjoyed! Ah, Christ! that is what I envy them. Now 
 we, — we die, starved amid abundance ; we see the years 
 go, and the sun never shines once in them ; and all we 
 have is a hope — a hope that may be cheated at last. For 
 none have come back from the grave to tell us whether 
 that fools us as well." 
 
 So saying, he heavily shouldered his creel of truffles, 
 and turned away sadly.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 305 
 
 Tricotrin turned also, and laid his hand on the rush 
 basket and swung it over his own back. 
 
 "'I will carry it home for you," he said to the feeble 
 old cripple. " We will have some more words together : 
 and you shall give me a night's lodging." 
 
 " Willingly ! But I have only a wattle hut in the for- 
 est ! " 
 
 " What matter ? I can sleep outside it, under the pines. 
 I have done that oftentimes. There is no more fragrant 
 bed-chamber, — not even where great ladies rest." 
 
 lie glanced back at the distant gardens where the 
 lights, and the music, and the guests of the evening festi- 
 val were. 
 
 "She is happy: what matter that she forgets?" he 
 thought, as he went back with the old woodsman into the 
 shadow of the pine and the chestnut forests. 
 
 The little hut stood hidden in one of the deepest re- 
 cesses of the great sylvan growth which, watered by 
 innumerable subterranean branches of the river, that was 
 fed with every spring-tide by the melted snows of the 
 mountains, resisted the withering scorch of the southern 
 suns. It was a small rough place, bare as a hermit's cell, 
 and strewn with dried water-rushes; truffles were scarce 
 in the district, and for them there were swifter and abler 
 seekers than the cripple of eighty years. 
 
 lie had been born in the Lira forests, and had lived in 
 them all his days, first as a charcoal-burner, then, when 
 his strength failed him, and he had broken his knee down 
 a ravine, by seeking for the dainty root that savors the 
 rich man's banquet. Of any world lying beyond them, 
 he had but the vague conception of a child: days and 
 ni-lits, and months and years had all gone by with him 
 under the broad fans of the pines and the chestnuts, the 
 seasons only measured to him by t he budding of t lie rosy 
 leaves and the falling of the golden cones. Yet he was 
 patient, ami laborious, and wise in his own way, like one 
 of the gentle beavers that built their wooden cities in the 
 lake beside his home. 
 
 "You have always lived alone?" Tricotrin asked him, 
 as he sat at the hut door, smoking, as the moon rose and 
 silvered all the delicate colonnades of the pine stems. 
 
 31*
 
 3G6 TR1C0TRIN, 
 
 " Not always." 
 
 " Not always ? How is it then that you arc so now ?" 
 
 "How does it always happen when we outlive those 
 we love ? Men are foolish who grow old." 
 
 " Rather, — men are foolish who hang on other lives ! 
 You had children once ?" 
 
 The old man came forward into the moonlight, and sat 
 himself down on a broken tree-root ; he was very grate- 
 ful to the stranger who had pitied him, he was glad to 
 break his accustomed loneliness and silence by speech. 
 
 "I had one child; and I had a young wife whom I 
 loved well. How many years is it since then ? I cannot 
 tell : another life, surely, — it looks so long ago. Madelon 
 lived here, — yes, here. It seems strange to think of now. 
 She was so pretty, and so brown, and so blithe ; just like 
 one of the robins. And she was always singing ; some- 
 times I hear her voice among the leaves still. We buried 
 her under that pine, — the one with a cross cut out on the 
 bark, — but I always fancy myself that her soul passed 
 into one of the birds. She was always fond of them; 
 they were always fluttering about her. Is it possible, 
 think you ?" 
 
 He did not wait for an answer : he did not wish his 
 fancy disturbed. 
 
 "Madelon had a little daughter ; I did not care so much 
 for her. It seemed cruel that when she died that life 
 stolen from hers lived on ? — you know what it is that I 
 mean? Well, — the child, — Madelon, too, she was named, 
 — grew up ; and I was very gentle with her because she 
 had no mother. They said in the forest here, and up at 
 the chateau, that she was much lovelier than my Madelon 
 had been : it might be so, — she was not so fair in my sight. 
 The child was always happy, singing, too, making chains 
 of berries and flowers, and looking at her own face as 
 she saw it in the lake water. The great people up at the 
 chateau — this was forty years ago, and more, what I 
 talk of now, and they were very gay and brilliant there 
 then, just as Miladi is now — took a fancy to her, and 
 she went away with one of the princesses, in her service 
 they told me. I was very loth, — I was all alone, — and 
 she had the voice of my Madelon. But she wept, and
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 367 
 
 fretted, and raved, and said she should die in the forest : 
 what could I do? She was just like a bird in a cage; 
 and if I had kept the cage closed she would have given 
 me no song, and men would have said I was cruel. So 
 she went, — pretty volatile thing. Went where ? — that is 
 what I cannot tell. She was as blithe in her flight as 
 any young pigeon. I suppose she was happy. The sea- 
 sons went by; those chestnuts four times were all pink 
 with their buds ; four times the brown fruit dropped out 
 of their pods. I never saw Madelon all that time. Day 
 after day I went to the chateau ; I could hear nothing : 
 she was with the princess, they said. I suppose the 
 world is very large, is it not? By-and-by that great lady 
 came again to stay at the chateau ; I saw her face as she 
 rode past one day. By dint of much prayer and entreaty 
 I got to see her, — it was hard work fur weeks to do so, — 
 when I spoke with her she could not understand- me ; 
 those great people have a different tongue to ours ; but 
 she was very gentle, and I could see she grieved for me, 
 and she told me through her servant that she had lost 
 sight of Madelon some years : that the girl had been 
 with her but a brief season, and then had grown bad, — 
 bad, — bad, — and had gone to be a rich, wicked woman, 
 with the gold of the nobles. I do not know what I did, 
 what I said, I have forgotten ; it is long ago. But they 
 told me I fell down in some fit; and it is true that after 
 that time I was never strong, and my left arm, I could 
 not lift it again. I never blamed the man that misused 
 Madelon, look you ; if a woman-child have no heart and 
 no soul, and longs to be vile because she is dull in her 
 home, why, — she is like the nightshade flower, she will 
 bear poison let you plant her where you will. I never 
 blamed him; but I was glad thai her mother was dead. 
 And —do you know one thing? — the birds have never 
 sung blithely since." 
 
 ■• Never to you," Tricotrin answered him softly. " And 
 you have he. nil no more of her?'' 
 
 " No more. She never came back. "Why should she ? 
 T am only an old lame man, and for the birds and the 
 trees and the (lowers the girl never eared. She was not 
 like my Madelon, who loved them. Yet I am wrong to
 
 3G8 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 say I never heard again: I did hear once, twenty or 
 more years after. There came a letter to me ; I cannot 
 read, I took it to the cure down in the village yonder, not 
 the one that is there now, — the dead one. He read it 
 out to me : it was from a sailor somewhere in what they 
 call the Riviera. It was a simple kindly letter, to tell 
 me that he was going to wed a pi*etty child ; who he 
 thought was my grandchild by what he knew of her 
 mother's history. The letter had been ten months in 
 finding me; it was ill addressed; the priest replied to it 
 for me, but I never heard again. So whether it was true 
 or not I cannot tell." 
 
 "Might I see it?" 
 
 " Surely. I have kept it by me." 
 
 He went into his hut, and after some minutes absence, 
 returned with an old yellow paper. 
 
 "Here it is. You can read, I dare say?" 
 
 Tricotrin took it ; and read : it was barely a decipher- 
 able scrawl, very clumsily and laboriously written ; pa- 
 thetic through its gentle and homely simplicity. It set 
 forth in few words that the writer was about to become 
 the husband of an orphan girl who was known to be the 
 bastard-daughter of one of the nobles of France, though 
 brought up among the fishing people ; it went on to say 
 that her mother had never been seen on that shore, but, 
 dying lately in Paris, had bequeathed her some jewels, a 
 little gold, the declaration that she was her offspring by a 
 princely lover, and the injunction to endeavor to learn 
 whether an old man of the name of Aubin Ralcor was 
 still living in the forests of Lira; this was signed Maclelon 
 Ralcor, commonly known as Pearl Rosalba, and had been 
 dictated from the dying bed of the testatrix. The sailor 
 also wrote that he would die of starvation ere ever he 
 touched the store of gold and gems ; but that he earnestly 
 desired to seek out, and be as a son to the old man Aubin 
 Ralcor, whom he supposed the grandsire of his beloved: 
 he subscribed himself in kindly appearing phrase — Jean 
 Bruno. 
 
 The letter fell from Tricotrin's hand upon the mossy 
 ground : he sat in silence, gazing out down the silvered 
 avenue of pines: this homely tragedy touched him at
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 369 
 
 every turn, and moved him with its deep-rooted sadness 
 that had darkened three generations. What cruel play of 
 fate's caprices had thus lodged the peace of these men of 
 simple soul, and honest love, in the hands of these women, 
 whose impulses led them from innocence, whose instincts 
 launched them toward vice: — who saw only a weari- 
 some sameness in the passion that clung to them too 
 fondly ; who had no other thought than to cheat it, be- 
 tray it, forsake it? Born from the simple peasant-girl 
 whose grave was made under the cross-marked pine, they 
 had uprisen, like upas-trees, destroying all who rested 
 near them : the old eternal mystery of guilt begot of inno- 
 cence, of Commotlus begot of Antoninus. 
 
 He folded up the page and gave it back to Ralcor. 
 What avail was it to deal him the fresh pain of such a 
 story as the sole one he could tell of Bruno's wife — of 
 Coriolis ? 
 
 " A well-meant, tender letter," he said. " Did you 
 never hear more from him ?" 
 
 "Never. The priest answered for me, as I say, for I 
 would willingly have seen Madelon's daughter. But 
 whether he ever had the reply or not I cannot tell. No 
 Dews came from him. It is best so, perhaps. I would 
 rather be left alone with the forest. It knows me as they 
 never could do." 
 
 "And is there nothing you desire then?" 
 
 "No. I shall be glad to die, that is all." 
 
 "And leave your forest?" 
 
 "I shall not leave it, They will bury me there by the 
 pine. Tt will be the same thing, only quieter. To live 
 hardly is all well enough when one is young; — only a 
 crust — what matter? One has the spring of the deer, 
 the heart of the eagle, the speed of the hound. But 
 when one is old, — it is not worth while. The mill 
 takes so much labor to turn; and so little corn comes 
 from it.*' 
 
 With these words he rose, and bade his stranger friend 
 good-night, and went within, and fell upon his knees before 
 his Utile wooden crucifix, roughly made from two pine- 
 branches, and prayed with the guileless faith of child- 
 hood; — half senseless, half sublime.
 
 370 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 Tricotrin remained without, in the bright calm moon- 
 light of the forest aisle. 
 
 The belling of the deer sounded down the wind ; the 
 soft owls flitted through the dusk, the glow-worms glim- 
 mered underneath the moss : and far beyond across the 
 woods in the great chateau, the light, the laughter, the 
 dance, the song, the love-jest passed the hours away as 
 though there were no such memories as crime, or grief, or 
 shame, on earth. 
 
 "She is happy," he said, half aloud, to little Mistigri, 
 as he looked at the far-off towers of the mighty place, and 
 mused at the tragedy hidden beneath the simple and ob- 
 scure lives which on their surface bore only the rough 
 illiterate homeliness of a sailor's and a woodman's toil. 
 " She is happy ; what matter the rest ? She would have 
 gone to the evil of these women, Mistigri, if she had 
 stayed with us ; not for love of the sin or the shame, but 
 for love of the ' great world ' she craved, for escape from 
 the peasant-life she detested : she would have been like 
 Madelon, like Coriolis. True : there is scant worth in an 
 honor only reared into growth under the hothouse shade 
 of fair circumstance. But those frail things of woman- 
 hood are no stronger than flowers : they grow straightly, 
 or crookedly, as they blossom in fresh air, or foul ; and if 
 we only care for a rose we lead it up to the sunlight, we 
 do not stamp it down into the swamp in its bud. I was 
 a coward, perhaps ; I feared that her life should ever re- 
 proach me. If we had seen her fallen, wretched, cursing 
 men, and by them cursed, what remorse we should have 
 felt — you and I — Mistigri ? And yet " 
 
 And yet ? 
 
 Were the pomp, and the pride, and the careless glory, 
 and the graceful contempt, of the life that she led, so 
 much nobler after all than the sin of Madelon, than the 
 shame of Coriolis ? Was not their root the same passion 
 though their blossom was triumph where the other fruit 
 had been bitterness ? The one grew as the palm, whose 
 stately height and lordly crown of greenest leaf towered 
 in perpetual summer, the idol of every passer-by : the 
 other grew as the belladonna, whose purple brilliancy of 
 flower turned into the poison that bore death to all toyers
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 3?1 
 
 with it, cursed aloud as men left it on the highway to be 
 trodden down by each strange foot: but they sprang alike 
 from the same soil of ambitious desire, they were alike 
 fanned by the same winds of impatient and feverish 
 longing. 
 
 The one carried a green crown of honor ; the other but 
 acrid berries of slaughter ; yet the sap feeding their veins 
 was the same — it was the passion of the feminine instinct 
 for pleasure, for gain, and for homage. 
 
 The passion that has cursed the earth since the prime- 
 val age ; as the Hebrew poets saw, even in the days of 
 the world's youth, when they created its parallel and 
 parable in the metaphorical poem of Eve, in the allegori- 
 cal picture of Eden. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXYII. 
 
 At noon the following day he went up the vast flight 
 of steps that led from the gardens to the doors of the 
 magnificent feudal pile, palace and fortress in one, that 
 crowned the brow of the hill throned amid its darkling 
 pine woods. 
 
 "The Duchess de Lira is within?" he asked of a group 
 of footmen, clad in scarlet aud white; and gold, lounging 
 inside the courts, that were like the great courts of Ver- 
 sailles. 
 
 One of them raised his insolent head with alow laugh. 
 
 " The duchess left here early to-day ; she is gone to the 
 royal marriage at Madrid." 
 
 Ilr turned and passed away down the great marble 
 stairs, withoul answer. 
 
 'What could that fellow want with our Jady?" said 
 the footman to his peers. "If she had been here she 
 would never have seen him — a strolling player with a 
 fiddle at his hack.''
 
 312 TEICOTRIN, 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 
 The snow fell once more thickly over the roofs and 
 streets of the City of Paris. 
 
 In the little by-lane of the Latin quarter wherein Mere 
 Rose had dwelt, all the quaint angles and gables and jut- 
 ting angles were white with the fallen flakes ; all the 
 leaded dusky panes were glittering yet dim with frost ; 
 the empty linnet's cage had icicles around it, in lieu of the 
 'lime or the lilac bough that had used to hang above it. Mere 
 Rose was dead ; and the linnet was dead also. The case- 
 ments of the coffee-house were closed against the sharp- 
 ness of the cold ; there were no music in the streets, no 
 laugh on the crisp air, for the populace of this quarter 
 were exceeding poor, and suffered greatly in the winter- 
 time ; across the road at the window where the grisette 
 had been wont to sit, sewing her rose-colored skirt for a 
 students' ball, the shutters were fastened, the owners of 
 the dwelling were gone to prison for debts that they 
 owed for bread and vegetables. 
 
 Though it was the first morning of a new year, there 
 were no mirth, no gayety, no greetings, little movement, 
 in the passage way : there were only a ragged child raking 
 in the snow for bits of offal, and a fat, pampered cat, the 
 savage pet of a butchei*, watching to seize a bird, whose 
 half- frozen, heavily- weighted wings dragged it slowly 
 through the descending snow. 
 
 Tricotrin stood at his garret lattice and looked down 
 awhile upon the desolation. It was the day of the city's 
 uttermost rejoicing; but there was no rejoicing here. 
 
 Even the elastic mirth of the national temper was killed 
 under the cold and the hunger, that came with a season 
 of almost unexampled severity. - 
 
 Like the attic of Teufelsdrockh, " in the highest house 
 of the Wahn2rasse," it was his watch-tower whence he 
 " could behold all the life circulation of the city." With
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 373 
 
 Teufelsdrdckh he could say, " I look down into that wasp 
 nest, or beehive, and witness their wax-laying, and honey- 
 making, and poison brewing, and choking by sulphur. 
 From the palace esplanade where music plays while se- 
 rene highness is pleased to eat his victuals, down the low 
 lane, where, in her door-sill, the aged widow, knitting 
 for a thin livelihood, sits to feel the afternoon sun, I see 
 it all" 
 
 Saw it — with that far-reaching, clear, penetrating vision 
 which belongs only to that mind which men, for want of 
 a better name, have called the poet's ; which by the infini- 
 tude of sympathy attains to the infinitude of comprehen- 
 sion ; which understands all, because it feels all things; 
 and which withholds the largeness of its justice, and the 
 insight of its tenderness, as little from the palace as from 
 the hovel, from the throes of ambition as from the travail 
 of poverty. 
 
 He looked out, from his attic window, upon the snowy 
 morning: — the ragged child fled away with a scream as 
 an old tin pot was flung at his head from a doorway 
 near, with a shower of curses ; the cat bounced on the 
 frozen, fluttering bird, that gave its life up with scarcely 
 an effort at resistance. 
 
 A little way farther on, the child, having been punished 
 while innocent, deemed it as well to be guilty, and snatched 
 a roll from a baker's stall unperceived, and darted out or 
 Bight with his theft ; the cat having been successful in 
 killing her prey, choked herself with t he broken bones and 
 bloody feathers, yet beat off with tooth and talon a weakly 
 kitten thai crept timidly near her for the scraps of ruffled 
 plumage that wen- left. 
 
 " So the year begins I" he thought, "with two fables 
 set in motion, — the famine thai is turned to guilt by mi- 
 jusl punishment, the greed that success makes savage 
 ami venomous. Between them they make up the world! 
 A ml here, one pities the lad, one is enraged with the cat, 
 Inn neither our pity nor out rage will make up the losl 
 loaf to the baker, or the losl life to the bird. There is 
 the toughesl puzzle of the problem. Neither our com- 
 passion nor our anger are of much use after all." 
 
 The half-entangled metaphorical fancies drifted idly 
 
 32
 
 3U TRICOTRIN, 
 
 through his brain, as the baker discovered his missing roll 
 with outcries and lamentations, and the cat dealt its feeble 
 fellow a final stroke that sent it shrieking into a cellar. 
 
 Thus the year commenced on the chill, bleak, biting 
 morning of its first day. 
 
 He turned from the lattice as a small, pale, black-eyed 
 maiden brought him his coffee and roll. He gave her a 
 little piece of silver. 
 
 "Here, Flore — take that to your friend, Rene, over the 
 way. Tell him I saw a lad run off with one of his loaves 
 just this moment ; and I know he can ill afford to lose it 
 with wheat at the price it is, and his two old people to 
 keep all the winter through." 
 
 The girl nodded, and went off, willingly and with a 
 bright laugh : the baker was a favorite with her, a good- 
 hearted laborious youth from the Cevennes, who had 
 hard work to maintain, singlehanded, two helpless aged 
 women, one blind, the other paralyzed, — his mother and 
 grandmother, who, if ever his breadshop should be closed, 
 would be turned out upon public charity. Rene loved 
 the black eyes of the little Flore right well : but there 
 was no chance that he could many her, while those two 
 old women should sit on either side of his stove, needing 
 all the warmth its scanty fuel could yield. He got no 
 gratitude, and no thanks for it : the two women muttered 
 and crooned against him, day and night, because the room 
 was so small, the tiled floor so cold, the coffee so rough, 
 the sugar so scanty, the bread so stale, the soup so flavor- 
 less: but he went on uncomplainingly with the execution 
 of his duty to them, in that almost unconscious self-sacri- 
 fice which is one of the best and purest things found under 
 the "sulphur-chokings" of the lives of the poor. 
 
 When the girl was gone, Tricotrin broke off a great 
 piece of his own roll, and scattered it in crumbs upon his 
 window-sill, and on the stone ledge that ran beneath it : 
 the robins and the sparrows soon fluttered to the feast. 
 
 "There!" he said to Mistigri, with a laugh. " Do you 
 see, little one ? That is just about the measure of all we 
 social philosophers ever contribute to the redressing of the 
 world's wrong-doings — save one starving songster out of 
 a million, and amend one theft out of ten thousand mil-
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 375 
 
 lions I A fine thing to crow over and be proud of, truly! 
 Perhaps the cat is the wiser moralist of all of us, after all, 
 — •' I am fat, I have talons, I can be cunning and strong 
 at once, and therefore I can be successful,' she says. 
 1 Why should a little wretched bird, half dead already, 
 with drenched wings, and maw empty of food, not perish 
 to give me a succulent morsel ?' That is the cat's argu- 
 ment: it is the argument of the tyrannis everywhere. 
 And the birds, somehow or other, always leave the 
 safety of their high roof-tops, and their ambient air, to 
 come down where the cat sits; because, though within 
 reach of her claws, they thus get warmth, and crumbs, 
 and wool for their nests, where she is. And so the na- 
 tions ever leave their liberties, and their simplicities, and 
 their hardy freedoms, and the roof-tops of their republics 
 if by chance they have ever flown so far, to cluster round 
 some fierce tyrannis, subtle and strong in one; because 
 though they are pecked and slain by talon and fang to 
 sate insatiate greed, they find food easier to be got, and 
 the wherewithal to line their nests more abundant, where 
 a despot feeds his mob into a proletariat, than where 
 there were only the freedom of the air ami the elevation 
 of the mountain-tops. Thecal kills, aye; but each foolish 
 bird deems that he himself will have the good luck to es- 
 cape her, and each comes down to fatten on the refuse she 
 has left on her plate as a lure for him. There is always 
 the cat for the sparrow — the tyrannis for the republic, — 
 that once has learnt to covet!" 
 
 And with that piece of political apologue to Mistigri, 
 he gave her a cup of hot milk, from which she drank with 
 dainty lady's ways, and which she enjoyed more than 
 she did the political moralizing, and betook himself to his 
 own breakfast. 
 
 Ii was noon; and he had long before given his new- 
 year greet iiiLT to t he household, and tendered and received 
 
 the simple gifts which, in this quarter, carried alike a 
 pleasure and a sincerity unknown where gold went by 
 handfuls to the buying of treasures made worthless and 
 wearisome by hackneyed custom. 
 
 There was one gifl that had made his own heart 
 quicken with throb of rejoicing.
 
 376 TRICOTRFN, 
 
 It had come to him late on the previous night, brought 
 by the hands of a sturdy youth of the shores of Finis- 
 terre, who had wandered, in self-will, and on the spur of 
 a young man's vague ambitions and discontent, up to the 
 great city; with some such seething impatience and aspi- 
 ration in his soul as were once in the lion-heart of the 
 farmer's son from Arcis-sur-Aube. It stood now above 
 the stove, in the lofty whitewashed barren garret, wherein 
 the Greek Canaris had once been fed and succored, and 
 the Waif of the Loire had once dreamed her dreams over 
 her roasting chestnuts. It was the model of a ship, cut 
 out of oak that was dark as ebony from long burial 
 beneath sea-water : it had been carved with exceeding 
 skill and patience, with no better instruments than a rude 
 clasp-knife and an oyster-shell ground to a fine edge; and 
 had been polished with the sands of the shore till it shone 
 like black marble, where it stood against the whitewashed 
 wall. 
 
 On it was cut : 
 
 "Rioz to Tricotrin." 
 
 It had been the work of several long winters, shaped 
 to the measure of the beating sea, fashioned to the dies 
 irse of the storm wind. 
 
 To every other eye it was a toy, something clumsily 
 made, perchance, as by a fisherman's rough hands and 
 ill-suited tools ; the mere model in old wreck-wood of a 
 fishing-smack. But to him it bore a story of a life re- 
 deemed, of a life conquered, of a life saved from the hell 
 of its own passions by justice and by patience — a story 
 of self-conquest as great, of self-denial as strong, of travail 
 with temptation as bitter, of expiation in pain as long- 
 enduring, as were ever symbolized by the white crucifix 
 above cathedral altars. 
 
 It had come far to him; come from that iron-bound, 
 furious, terrific coast upon the western waters, where he 
 had dwelt for three years asunder from the world, and 
 away from all its beauty and its joy, that he might drag 
 one human life from the blackness of its guilt as he would 
 have dragged it from the seizure of the waves. 
 
 It had come far to him from that old Armorican shore ;
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 37? 
 
 and it had moved him strangely ; speaking to him with a 
 voice that he alone could hear. 
 
 " Chut! Mistigri," he said softly, as his eyes fell on it 
 where he sat. "I was wrong to say there are only the 
 cat and the sparrows, only the tyrannis and the prole- 
 tariat ; — are there not ever, if we will only look for them, 
 some battle to be fought, some patience to be needed, 
 some vileness to be wrestled with, some greatness to be 
 rescued ? Bah, little one 1 If we only all remembered 
 that, and occupied ourselves with that, we should be 
 doing more good than by raving about the cat's talons, 
 and blaming the sparrows for not living on hill-tops like 
 eagles !" 
 
 Mistigri finished her milk, inattentive to his discourse; 
 in her secret heart she sympathized much with the cats, 
 little with the sparrows, not at all with the eagles. Mis- 
 tigri had been reared in the atmosphere of republicanism ; 
 like many democrats by education, she only really ad- 
 mired the "tyrannis," and had she lived in the days of 
 Dictatorship, would have sat upon Sulla's shoulder. 
 
 Tricotrin rose, put on his loose coat of furs, thrust her 
 gently into its breast pocket, and went out into the snow. 
 
 The kitten which had been driven away had returned, 
 and having eaten up the blood-flecked feathers had set 
 itself to watch upon its own account. 
 
 "There!" murmured Tricotrin to the monkey. "You 
 see that is always the way — it is never the tyrannis that 
 is the sole evil; there are always the blood-suckers that 
 seize what the chief talon has spared, there are always 
 the followers and imitators who multiply one evil into a 
 hundred. The hill-tops are cold, my good friend-spar- 
 rows, hut believe me they are far better." 
 
 The proletarian sparrows, however, disregarded him, 
 and continued to put themselves within cats' reach, for 
 sake of the crumbs of food lefl on the platter, as he turned 
 out of the passage-way and took his road la cross the 
 river into the aristocratic quarters of Paris. 
 
 These were thronged, busy, mirthful, glittering, with 
 the gay crowds of holiday-makers and gift-buyers; he 
 paid do heed to anything he saw upon the way, not 
 loitering as his habit was for jest, or act, or indolent 
 
 32*
 
 378 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 amusement with the humorous of the town, but pressing 
 straight onward into the patrician parts he sought. 
 
 His eyes were eager, anxious, clouded, sunlit, all at once : 
 like the eyes of one who goes to what is half anguish 
 and half ecstasy. 
 
 He paused at length before the massive metal gates of 
 a great court. 
 
 In years long gone by, when, in scorching midsummer 
 weather the blood of men had been heated to fever-heat, 
 and broken into sanguinary act as over-ripe grass breaks 
 into flame, a great mob had beaten in with maddened 
 blows those strong-wrought brazen gates, and forced 
 themselves into the court within, and spread over it like 
 a flood, and sworn to sack and burn all that they beheld. 
 And they had been driven back by him, scourged with 
 his scornful rebuke as with the stripes of a whip, as he 
 saved the Lira Palace from destruction. 
 
 Now he went thither — doubtful how he should gain 
 admittance through the flippant, idle, insolent herd of 
 lackeys and of pages that lounged through their indolent 
 days in its halls and corridors. 
 
 " Your duchess is visible ?" he asked of them, as cross- 
 ing the great court he entered the first hall, lofty, vaulted, 
 all of white marble, with only touches of dead gold and 
 of deep purple to break its purity and vastness. 
 
 " She is come from Spain ; but she will not be likely 
 to receive you!" said one of the group of pages, with 
 sneering impudence, glancing at the new-comer, whom he 
 recognized as a mad bohemian, whom the people cherished, 
 but who was never seen anywhere save in hovels, and 
 wine-shops, and thieves' haunts, and artists' attics. 
 
 " That question is not for you to ask or to decide," said 
 Tricotrin, tranquilly. " Go — and tell your mistress that 
 I am here." 
 
 "And who may ' I' be ?" scoffed the page, incensed at 
 the tone and at the words. 
 
 "Tricotrin," he answered simply. "Play no longer 
 with phrases ; do your errand, and bring me word what 
 her pleasure is." 
 
 The page loitered, sorely inclined to test the patience 
 of his adversary under insolence and torment ; but some-
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 379 
 
 thing fearful of such self-indulgence, sent the message 
 through other servants to her chamberlain, who took it 
 sullenly, not without reluctance and wonder ; though he 
 was aware that the new-comer had been held in high 
 esteem by his late master, and had done him great service 
 in days of revolution. 
 
 The chamberlain passed through several chambers, 
 picture-cabinets, and reception-rooms, and entered at 
 length an apartment looking on the gardens at the back 
 of the hotel ; an octagon, all azure, and silver, and tem- 
 pered light, and delicate fragrance, with walls after Boucher, 
 and the laughing Hours imitated from Coreggio dancing 
 in a joyous band around the ceiling. 
 
 Sunk among cushions was the most lovely woman of 
 her time and of her court. The fire gleams flashed on 
 the silk folds of skirts, whose negligence was the supreme 
 perfection of art: her fair hands glowed with rings; and 
 as she glanced at a book that lay upon her lap, she toyed 
 with a Polichinelle, whose bells were of gold, whose 
 tambourine was circled with pearls, and who had cost 
 thai morning seven hundred francs. 
 
 Around her were strewn jewel caskets, bonbon boxes, 
 bouquets, playthings, marvelous in ingenuity and extrava- 
 gance, fans of every make and of inconceivable costliness, 
 all that fancy could fashion, and riches be wasted on ; as 
 though every shop in Paris had been emptied there, in 
 the lavishness of the new-year offerings. And at a third 
 of them she had not looked. 
 
 There is a wild and wavward destinv in life which ever 
 
 s. J 
 
 loads fruition \\ ith sat iety. 
 
 Lost in languid, sunny, victorious musing, she did not 
 hear her servant's entrance until he had approached her, 
 and spoken the few words of the message with hesitating 
 deference, and scarcely concealed expectancy of a refusal. 
 
 She Started slightly, and over her face swept for a 
 
 1 nent a shadow of annoyance, mingled with another 
 
 feeling that her astute attendant could no1 analyze. Both 
 Mere instantly banished; she answered with tranquil in- 
 difference. 
 
 "Certainly. Admit him here." 
 
 Her chamberlain backed out from her presence, filled
 
 380 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 with a curiosity that he dared not utter. A few minutes 
 went by, then into her chamber was ushered, — one, who 
 to her conscience, her memory, and her life, was a Re- 
 proach. 
 
 He bent his head before her, and stood still, without 
 advancing, while the attendants closed the door behind 
 him. 
 
 She, with a flush over the fairness of her brow, rose 
 with her hands outstretched, her rich silks and laces trail- 
 ing round her, her loveliness shrined in the dazzling heaps 
 of her strewn new-year gifts. Her first impulse was of 
 proud shameful pain ; her next of conscience-stricken and 
 awakening loyalty. 
 
 He shaded his eyes one moment with his hand with 
 the gesture of one whom the sun blinds, then came to 
 her and took her own hands in his in silence. There was 
 no one near to witness how a bohemian was received by 
 a great lady. 
 
 "Viva!" — that was all he said ; but in the single word 
 was a caress and a benediction beyond all that longer 
 utterance could have given. 
 
 She, a proud and splendid woman, in the plenitude of 
 power, and the dauntlessness of empire, shrank slightly 
 as she heard it ; it was fraught with all that she would 
 have buried in oblivion forever; it recalled all that galled, 
 and fretted, and embittered her cloudless and haughty 
 life. With that word came back to her all the shame" she 
 burned to ignore and forget, as though it had never been ; 
 it brought with it all the echoes of that early and inno- 
 cent affection to which she had so long been faithless and 
 disloyal. 
 
 She was cold, while she knew coldness so base ; she 
 was restless under his gaze, though she knew that so 
 much love looked on her in it ; she was stung with impa- 
 tience and with false pride, though she knew that in him 
 she saw the savior of her existence. 
 
 It had been years since she had beheld him, and in 
 those years the power of the world and the poison of 
 vanity had eaten far into the purer gold of her nature. 
 
 " It is so long since I have seen you!" she murmured, 
 as she drew her hands from his hold gently, and sank
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 381 
 
 among the cushions of her couch, turning her eyes upon 
 him. 
 
 "Nay, — not longer than is best," he answered her, 
 with a tremor in his voice. "You had seen me oftener 
 had you missed the sight of me. But that was not prob- 
 able; not possible." 
 
 She hurriedly began to utter the denial that courtesy 
 compelled and gratitude required. 
 
 He stopped her with a gesture, slight, but of authority. 
 
 " Hush ! No disclaimer against truth out of courtesy 
 to me. Think you I cease to know your heart better than 
 you know it yourself ? You forgot me; it was natural, 
 inevitable. Why not? — why not?" 
 
 There was an unconscious pathos and wistfulness in 
 his accent; as though, against himself and his rights 
 which arraigned her, he pleaded excuse for the negligence 
 and the ingratitude of the one who owed him her rescue 
 from the grave. 
 
 Her eyelids fell; her forehead flushed; the imperial 
 coquette felt humbled in her own sight. 
 
 " You deem me very base," she murmured. 
 
 " Base ? No. Only, — a woman 1 Long ago did I not 
 tell thee how it would be with me and thee? I knew 
 the world's work. Thou didst not, — then. But / do not 
 blame thee, Viva." 
 
 His phrase had changed insensibly into the familiar 
 "thou;" and his eyes, as they dwelt upon her, had the 
 yearning love of lover, husband, father, poet, all blended 
 in one passion, — a passion mighty as death, and which 
 would live and die, holding eternal silence. 
 
 Her cheeks burned as she heard, she breathed quickly 
 with agitation : at the sound of his voice the old, warm, 
 reverent tenderness stirred from its embers in her heart; 
 and yet, — it seemed so hard that one should live who 
 knew what she had been, it seemed so bitter that one 
 should look on her who could remember her the child of 
 charity ! 
 
 He watched her, reading well her thoughts ; and gazing 
 at the marvelous change wrought in her ; at the perfec- 
 tion, as of some superb tropical flower, to which her early 
 promise had expanded, at the magic whereby the fair
 
 38^ TRICOTRIN, 
 
 child that he had known had altered into this magnificent 
 patrician. 
 
 A young girl, lovely as a poet's ideal of Gretchen, had 
 been crowned by the Loire-side queen of the vintage- 
 feast: but a woman, superb as a sculptor's dream of As- 
 pasia, was before him now. He gazed at her long, then 
 turned away as with a sudden pang of unbearable agony. 
 
 " Good God ! How changed you are !" 
 
 She smiled, a dreamy, haughty, careless smile. She 
 knew it well, and was proud of the change that to him 
 was so bitter. Yet something in the phrase jarred on 
 her : she had so long tried to forget that she had ever 
 been otherwise than what she was now, that the trial had 
 brought success with herself, and self-persuasion had 
 almost induced self-deception. 
 
 And she did not heed, or did not even divine, the an- 
 guish that change bore for him. 
 
 It was never betrayed. She knew well that he loved 
 her : but she never dreamed how he loved her. It was a 
 martyrdom, without even the reward of recognition. 
 
 "I could scarcely be otherwise than changed," she 
 answered him musingly. " Do you know — do you know 
 — it seems scarcely possible to me that I could ever have 
 been the child you knew and succored?" 
 
 " Does it?" he replied, gently; for he never lost gen- 
 tleness to her, however deeply she might wound him. 
 "That is very natural, I dare say. Yes: it is inevitable 
 you should be changed; and in much more than mere 
 form. You have a lofty station, Viva ?" 
 
 "Yes," — her delicate brows contracted; the Duchess 
 de Lira, whom none ever addressed save by titles of 
 dignity and reverence, could have wished that familiar 
 pet-name of her childhood, that relic of her foundling's 
 estate, dropped out forever into oblivion. 
 
 "You have the whole of the Lira properties?" he 
 asked. 
 
 " Every acre ; every sou. He had not a living relative. 
 He could will them where he would." 
 
 " His was a great nature — a noble nature." 
 
 "He was most generous, — yes." 
 
 "Did he suffer much?"
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 383 
 
 "Not much — I trust. He died in ruy absence; but 
 . calmly, and painlessly, they assured me." 
 
 " You regretted him ?" 
 
 The color flushed her face again. 
 
 " Not so much as I ought ; I knew that well at the 
 time. I regretted his mother's death far more. I grew 
 to love her well, and she loved me " 
 
 " But so did he — God knows!" 
 
 "Ah, yes ! — far more than I merited, you would say. 
 That I am sure. But one cannot love merely because 
 one is loved, you know ? He was most good, most 
 gentle, most thoughtful for me, and I owed him very 
 much ; but " 
 
 "He was nothing to you! No; you have had too 
 much tenderness in your life to know its worth. You 
 are surfeited with it, and it is valueless. Had you had 
 but a few crumbs instead of such abundant banquets, you 
 would feel very differently. Bread is tasteless to the rich 
 man; but bread to the poor man is as the apples of para- 
 dise. He was aware that you cared nothing for him?" 
 
 " He must have been so. I never used dissimulation. 
 They made me very happy, and 1 liked them — thus; but 
 I never professed attachment I did not feel. Besides — I 
 have no belief in that idyllic folly they call 'love!'" 
 
 "You have not?" she had no belief in love, while 
 
 over her life watched a love exhaustless, unrepaid, purified 
 to sublimity, and free from one murmur of reproach 
 against her! 
 
 She looked quickly up at him. 
 
 "Of what are you thinking?" 
 
 "Shall I tell you?" 
 
 "Surely." 
 
 "Well — I thought thai the foundling, who was mine, 
 would have flung back, as disgrace and insult, the bribe 
 of a silver coin that should have been offered her to pur- 
 chase a single kiss from her lips. Bu1 the aristocrat, with 
 whose life 1 have nothing to do, had so little of that true 
 pride left, that she saw qo shame in bartering for gold 
 and rank all her youth, all her beauty, all her soul !" 
 
 The simplicity of the words had a grand rebuke, a re- 
 buke that stung her keenly. She had enough still in her
 
 384 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 of the temper which had made her loathe her young 
 lover's golden toys, to make her now feel every barb of the 
 censure to the quick. 
 
 " You blame me because I am married !" she murmured, 
 with an impatient irritation. 
 
 " Because you married without love. The woman who 
 does so sells herself as utterly as, and little less basely 
 than, the courtesan." 
 
 She gave a languid gesture of offense. Truth lay in 
 his words; and unwelcome truth, with its severity and 
 its nakedness, was an outrage that never approached her 
 graceful presence. 
 
 "You speak strongly on a singular subject," she 
 answered, coldly. " I am not accustomed to such lan- 
 guage. I view marriage as the world, I believe, views 
 it; and at the time of my own you were informed of it, 
 and you offered no objections " 
 
 " I bade you do as you desired. It was not for me to 
 stand between you and the magnificence you coveted and 
 could obtain. You knew what I thought, full well. But 
 I have not come hither to upbraid you for that which is 
 past. I pitied the man who spent his whole soul on you, 
 and bought your loveliness through his wealth, and found 
 that, squander what he would, he could not buy one throb 
 of tenderness, one pulse of warmth 1 I pitied him from 
 my heart " 
 
 " Others envied him !" 
 
 There were all the insolence of supreme vanity, all the 
 sovereignty of supreme triumph, in the accent with which 
 the brief phrase was uttered. 
 
 " They might do so. I was not among them," he an- 
 swered, gravely. " He purchased a bird without a song, 
 a rose without fragrance, a sun without warmth. For — 
 he bought your beauty without a soul 1 And you left 
 him to die in your absence !" 
 
 Her white/delicate teeth bit the lower lip of her bow- 
 like mouth. She moved impatiently, contemptuously. 
 She,— whom none ever erossed or contradicted in her 
 slightest whim or caprice,— to be arraigned and censured 
 by a wanderer, a bohemian, an outcast ! For thus in her 
 thoughts she classed now the redeemer of her life.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 385 
 
 "You are angered because I say this thing," he pur- 
 sued. "I will say more. You chose to wed with him 
 because he was noble, he was of great riches, he could 
 give you a lofty station " 
 
 •' Who else would have done so?" she interrupted him 
 passionately. " You forget! I had no name, no parent- 
 age, though means were found to hide this, and give me 
 in semblance foreign origin ; there was not another of 
 such rank as hjs that could have wedded one under such 
 social ban as mine without exposure of it; there was not 
 another who could have concealed the truth from the 
 world as he could, nor from whom it could have been 
 withheld." 
 
 " No ; and therefore for that cause you sold yourself 
 to him. I repeat the word that galls you so greatly. 
 But it is precisely because this man loved you so tenderly, 
 so generously, so patiently, that your sin against him was 
 so dark. You took all, and repaid him nothing in the 
 only coin you had to give; and when he died you were 
 only — in your heart — content to be so soon left free, to 
 be so soon unchained to enjoy all the possessions that he 
 gave without the burden on them of their giver's life." 
 
 She was silent; but the hand which had let fall the 
 Polichinclle beat impatiently on the mosaic table beside 
 her couch, and a shadow of vehement offense, mingled with 
 something of repentance and of consciousness, darkened 
 her fair and serene face. She knew that he read her soul 
 with all his olden accuracy; she knew that he spoke what 
 was but the simple truth. 
 
 She glanced at him, and felt steal on her the wonder 
 which, since she had known the world, had often come 
 across her mind, as to whence arose that strange and 
 strong tmlikeness betwixt his fortunes and his bearing. 
 
 She — grown keenly critical, scornfully indifferent, and 
 very difficult to impress — was struck as she had never 
 been with the authority, the dignity, the kingliness of his 
 manner, the pure accent of his voice, the careless grace 
 of his movements. In her early years this question had 
 never occurred to her. She had had no standard with 
 which to compare him: now she wondered, in this first 
 moment of his entrance to her, whence he came, how he 
 
 33
 
 386 TRIOOTRIN, 
 
 had become what he was, — this man who was without 
 grade and without home, who lived among the peasantry, 
 the populace, the fisher-people, who was an itinerant and 
 a socialist, yet who had about him a command monarchs 
 might have envied, and a beauty that painters might have 
 given to an Agamemnon. 
 
 Once, when she had still been his, the story of his life 
 had been upon his lips to tell her. The impulse had been 
 repressed, the tale remained untold forever. 
 
 "Why did you never come to me while my husband 
 lived ?" she asked him suddenly. 
 
 Now and again she had seen him ; seen him as he sold 
 the Italian boy's images to the populace, as he stood out- 
 side the gates of the Tuileries that she quitted, as she 
 rode through a German pine-forest, as she drove through 
 a Lombardic city, as she watched the Roman Carnival 
 from her balcony, as she glided over the ice of Neva to 
 the music of her silver sleigh-bells. She had seen him 
 often — ever with a strange flush, a strange pang, a strange 
 emotion of mingled sorrow and delight, tenderness and 
 shame. But from the time that he had heard of her 
 marriage, he had never approached her. 
 
 The unloved lord who, heaping all his treasures on her, 
 yet could not win one soft thought from her, divined 
 through sympathy the reason of this absence. She never 
 did. So little did she comprehend his motive that she, 
 in all her eminence, in all her brilliancy, felt oftentimes a 
 pained and passionate anger that this man, whom still in 
 her soul she loved as she had loved no other living creat- 
 ure, should thus withhold himself from witnessing her 
 glories. 
 
 "Why did you never come?" she repeated, with im- 
 perious persistency. "The duke held you in warm 
 esteem, in high honor — you know that!" 
 
 "I do not think my absence lessened either his esteem 
 or his honor. I never came to you because — because — 
 no matter why ! I acted as I deemed best. You need 
 not question that." 
 
 She was stilled and vaguely disquieted by the reply. 
 Even yet, despite the lapse of years, he possessed an in- 
 fluence over her that no other had ever attained.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 387 
 
 "You lead a brilliant life?" he pursued, desirous to 
 turn aside from the subject on which she pressed him. 
 
 "I lead the customary life of my station:" 
 
 She hesitated a moment ; the thought crossed her mind, 
 could not she pay by Power the debt that Gratitude had 
 left unpaid ? Was there no benefit possible from her high 
 position and vast influence that might strike the balance 
 between them, and do something to lessen that weight of 
 obligation which it so galled her proud throat to bear ? 
 
 But the mere thought looked insult to him. She did 
 not dare to utter it aloud. 
 
 " I saw something of the fashion in which you seek to 
 make the hours fly, down at your castle in the south," he 
 continued. " I arrived there too late to have an inter- 
 view with you there. You were gone to the royal mar- 
 riage in Spain; but I heard much of you on your estate, 
 much of the magnificence of your hospitalities " 
 
 She turned her head with that smile wherewith she 
 was accustomed to deal as she chose with the souls of 
 men. 
 
 " Do not be content with hearsay of them. Let them 
 be shown to, and tested by, yourself. That will give me 
 far more pleasure." 
 
 It was a courtly, graceful, elegant utterance ; but it 
 struck cold as ice to his heart. There was no warmth in 
 it; there was only the polished suavity of conventional 
 courtesy. 
 
 " I have never sat at any gold-laden table. I shall not 
 commence with yours," he said curtly. "Why let us deal 
 in this hypocrisy? You know as well as I — I as well as 
 you — that it would only be irritation and ignominy to 
 you to see me among your guests. You could not account 
 for me : you would have to present me as 'Tricotrin, the 
 bohemian,' you would be compelled to admit that I hail 
 no friends except the People. — no, I know your nature far 
 too well, and that of the world you live in. to impose any 
 such penalty and penance upon you. You see — I can 
 have some sympathy with the class to which you belong — 
 I can even sympathize with its false shame!" 
 
 The contemptuous bitterness of his answer stung the
 
 388 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 latent truth in her into life ; she was pained by it, and 
 the natural frankness of her temper broke into speech. 
 
 "Ah 1" she said, with involuntary self-scorn, " there you 
 do them wrong, not me. If I had been born and reared 
 in their rank, I should not know that 'false shame.' 
 The Order never has it: it is far too proud of itself. An 
 hereditary prince may shake hands with a beggar, he can- 
 not lose rank thereby : it is the new-comer into honors and 
 splendors who dares not imperil his fresh titles by touch- 
 ing the beggar, lest the world cry, 'see — he runs to his 
 brother!'" 
 
 He looked at her earnestly. 
 
 " You have the acuteness and the sarcasm in you to see 
 this," he said, "and yet " 
 
 " And yet I am no better than what I satirize ! Is that 
 an uncommon fault in your Juvenals and Voltaires and 
 Swifts? So — you heard of me in the south. What do 
 my people say ?" 
 
 And despite the momentary self-dissection in wliich 
 she had lashed herself scornfully as an alien, and adven- 
 turess, in the great order to which she now belonged, 
 there were all the royalty of possession, all the negligence 
 of command, in the intonation of those words, "my peo- 
 ple." In such a tone might Maria Theresa have spoken ! 
 
 "Your people?" he echoed, with a certain ironic dis- 
 dain that cut her pride hardly. " Well, they talk of your 
 splended entertainments ; you do not give them much else 
 to talk of, I believe, except it be of the extortions and op- 
 pressions of your stewards." 
 
 "Extortions ! Oppressions 1 I never heard of any." 
 
 "Doubtless. How should you hear? If a wood-cut- 
 ter or a charcoal-burner, grimy, starved, and half clad, 
 found his way on to your terraces to accuse your great 
 servants of peculation and tyrannies, which would he be 
 likeliest to get — a blow from a lackey's wand if he did 
 not shuffle away quickly enough, or a polite ushering in 
 to your audience-chamber ?" 
 
 She smiled a little, but vexatiously. 
 
 " Well ! Would you have my rooms thronged all day 
 with a mob of foresters and burrowers in the earth ?" 
 
 " There is a time for all things. There can be hours
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 389 
 
 set apart for such hearings. It is just that barring out 
 of the unjustly-oppressed from the audience-room, when 
 they are only armed with an appeal, that brings, sooner 
 or later, the clamorous mob, armed with clubs and pikes, 
 into the banqueting-hall. It is not the nobles' fault, it is 
 the fault of their hirelings : for none are so brutal to the 
 poor as those who have once been of them. You have 
 the same stewards that the Duke de Lira employed, I 
 suppose ?" 
 
 She colored a little. 
 
 " Not in the south. The person he had left in office 
 there opposed my will in one or two matters : one does 
 not pay servants to have them dispute, discuss, advise, 
 and finally disobey. I discharged him ; and obtained 
 one who knew his place better." 
 
 " Who gives yon lip-service and the form of obedience 
 that lies in servility; and makes your name hated 
 throughout your estates, by wringing subsidies from the 
 poverty-stricken for his own private purse : yes — I dare 
 say that is knowing his place better 1 As modern en- 
 lightenment goes. But — despite your sanction of his 
 reign — I shall be glad if you will take some pity on an 
 old truffle hunter in your woods. He is very old, and 
 lame; can live only a few years at most; and having 
 dwelt on the Lira estates from his birth upward, may 
 claim to have the trouble of keeping his body and soul 
 together made somewhat easier to him. Besides, he 
 lias a piteous story." 
 
 "Assuredly. I will direct them to see that he wants 
 for nothing. Will you give me his name?" 
 
 " It is Aubin Kalcor." 
 
 She noted it down on the little ivory tablet hanging by 
 its gold chain at her side. She did nut ask the old man's 
 history, so he left it unrelated. He felt that the memory 
 of Coriolis must si ill be painful and unwelcome to her. 
 
 " You know, I lia\ e been but little in our own country," 
 she pursued, as though in apology for her ignorance of 
 the necessities of the poor upon ber lands. "We were 
 occasionally in Paris, but far oftener abroad. The year 
 after the duke's death 1 passed in retirement in my villa 
 upon Como. The only time I have been at the castle I 
 
 33*
 
 390 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 have been surrounded for a few weeks only with a circle 
 of guests that left me little time for thought. This sum- 
 mer I entertained the king of but you know all these 
 
 things ?" 
 
 She broke off somewhat hastily, with a sense of anger, 
 that nothing in her dignities or in her splendors could 
 move him to surprise at, or to veneration of them. 
 
 " Yes," he answered her. " There is nothing in your 
 life I do not know." 
 
 " But how ? I have met you so rarely." 
 
 " That may easily be. You would probably have dis- 
 cerned me, had your thoughts been of me. Anyhow I 
 have watched you — many times. But I do not want to 
 talk of myself; here is your oldest friend whom you have 
 not yet seen." 
 
 She started as the monkey sprang forth from where it 
 had slumbered in his pocket : the sight of the little animal 
 recalled so many memories in such vivid intensity. 
 
 She covered her eyes with her hand for awhile, and 
 breathed rapidly and with emotion. She was once more 
 a child on the banks of the sunny Loire : she saw once 
 more the innocent and lowly home from which she had 
 gone without one backward glance of gratitude or of re- 
 gret. She was moved more keenly than she had been 
 for many years. 
 
 But her life had taught her to conquer and conceal all 
 agitation ; she was quick to recover her habitual calm 
 and negligence. 
 
 She stretched out her jeweled hands full of sweetmeats 
 from the new-year boxes. 
 
 "Ah, little Mistigri! She is still alive I How old she 
 must be by now 1 Mistigri, will you not eat my sugared 
 almonds ?" 
 
 Mistigri was either shy or cross: she would not be 
 cajoled into touching one of the dainty, pretty, colored 
 crystals of sugar : she did not recognize her old playmate, 
 for whose rescue she had once voted with her filbert, in 
 this brilliant aristocrat who held her out these bonbons. 
 
 " Mistigri does not know you," he said quietly, stroking 
 the little black averted head. " Well ! the world of Paris 
 has emptied itself upon you in your new-year gifts. And
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 39 1 
 
 what pleasure do they give you — all these jeweled cases, 
 all these splendid trifles ?" 
 
 She smiled : the smile that in his eyes had no light. 
 
 " Pleasure 1 Do you think me a child still, to take 
 pleasure in those bagatelles ; they are only custom." 
 
 "Ah ! And yet to have such things of custom, or the 
 like, men will barter their honesty and women their 
 honor. That is droll I Which is the richer? he who has 
 but little but enjoys all, or he who has much but with all 
 is sated ? A few years since how your heart panted for 
 such ' bagatelles.' Yet, then a wreath of river-lilies, a 
 leaf full of wild strawberries, made you glad. Which was 
 the richer — your present or your past?" 
 
 " Which ? How strange a question ! There can be 
 little doubt, I imagine. Though I have lost a child's love 
 for new-year presents, there are many " 
 
 "Costlier toys? Men's love and peace and honor? 
 Yes : there are, for women snch as you. But, Duchess 
 Viva, once you broke and trod upon a grape garland, and 
 when you had destroyed it, wept vain tears over the 
 bruised leaves. Take heed you never do so with a life." 
 
 " The poor grape garland 1" she said, with a careless, 
 low laugh, avoiding the rest of his speech. " I remember 
 it, and my foolish passion, too ; but it reminds me to ask 
 you — the dear old woman — 'grand'mere,' — is she well ?" 
 
 " Yes. She is well," he answered gravely. 
 
 "She has always had my money — my presents?" she 
 asked hurriedly, a hot flush coming and going on her 
 face. 
 
 "Yes: she received them." 
 
 "And was pleased with them ? I sent them regularly, 
 but she could not write to tell me whether she liked 
 them." 
 
 "You remember the walnut press in her little bed- 
 room?" 
 
 " I think I do— yes." 
 
 " Well ; in it lie all your gold and all your gifts. She 
 would not pain } r ou by returning them: but neither would 
 she use alms from oik; who, for so many years, has never 
 cared to look upon her face. You have yet to learn that 
 money cannot heal a wound that negligence has dealt;
 
 392 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 and that there are some debts which cannot be repaid in 
 coin." 
 
 The color deepened in her face, conscience in her warred 
 with irritated pride. 
 
 " That is absurd," she murmured. " I never forgot to 
 supply her with what she needed " 
 
 " She needed nothing, except the one thing you never 
 gave her " 
 
 " 1 should have gone to see her," she said rapidly, with 
 an unconscious accent of apology and self-excuse. " But 
 — so many things engaged me ; at first I was so entirely 
 under their rule, and latterly I have been abroad so very 
 much. I will go down and visit her soon — as soon as 
 the days are somewhat brighter." 
 
 "You have said that long: and — she has eighty-nine 
 years. The spring does not always bring new life to the 
 old and leafless trees." 
 
 She was silent : he had stirred her heart, but he did 
 not move her pride. 
 
 He took up the Polichinelle, true to his habits of saying 
 no useless words ; and he was reluctant to seek for the 
 brave old woman the remembrance that was not instinct- 
 ive and born of gratitude. 
 
 "My old friend Punchinello?" he said, "all jeweled 
 and gold-laden, too: well, puppets as empty, and less 
 harmless and mirth-giving than he, have eaten up the na- 
 tion's gold often ere now. A handsome puppet, moreover, 
 which all crowned marionettes are not." 
 
 "I bought it for a little Russian prince — the son of 
 great friends of mine." 
 
 "Ah! And it cost?" 
 
 "Seven hundred francs." 
 
 Tricotrin shook the toy lightly, till the little turqtioise- 
 studded bells rang a chime. 
 
 " So, Punch ! — you lie in a silk and eider-down box, 
 and cost seven hundred francs. Pie, fie ! Why, you are 
 almost as costly and useless as a king ! — you, too, who 
 have made fun for the people everywhere ever since the 
 days of Rome. Punch — the Russian boy will break you 
 in ten minutes ; and outside the gates yonder I met a 
 girl, once your mistress's playmate, Edmee Roxal, whose
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 393 
 
 son lies dead in her arms because she had not money to 
 buy him a loaf. Contrasts are sharp in this world, Punch ! 
 and the populace that you have wagged your head for 
 through so many generations has always got steel or 
 shot if it ventured to find that out, and object to it once 
 in awhile." 
 
 She looked up ; and shook hurriedly out a shower of 
 gold from her purse. 
 
 " Edmee Roxal? — her child dead of want ? How fear- 
 ful ! Give her those !" 
 
 He put them gently back. 
 
 "No. They are not wanted now. Money will not 
 buy back from King Death. And— for Edmee herself; 
 she lies in hospital, delirious, clinching the stiffened limbs 
 of the infant to her breast. Neither you nor Polichinelle 
 can help that: only — when you give so much for him and 
 bis kind, — think of these things, and of your safe haven 
 from them !" 
 
 "But we never do think of these things!" 
 
 There were carelessness, regret, impatience, apology, 
 all in the words: she, beautiful, luxurious, adored, had 
 wholly ceased to rem ember that a time had been when 
 "these things" would have been her portion also, in all 
 their cruelty and nakedness, had not his hand been 
 stretched to rescue her. 
 
 "True," he said, simply, "you never do." 
 
 To him it was not possible to recall that time to her; 
 since, to awaken her soul to gratitude for the mercies of 
 ber fate, he must also have called on gratitude for himself. 
 
 "But when this girl— Edmee — is well again, let me 
 give her all that can comfort her? — give it through you?" 
 she said quickly. "You will say nothing of who I 
 tun " 
 
 "I promised you silence long ago. I never justified 
 you in supposing that my promises were given to be 
 broken." » 
 
 There was a sternness in the answer that moved ber 
 with a certain sense that was almosl ns of fear: the 
 greatness, the singularity, the mysteries of this lite, thai 
 had so long been interwoven with her own, bewildered 
 her: she could not comprehend them.
 
 394 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 He rose ; and stood before her, gazing at her with a 
 look under which her eyes sank. Little by little she had 
 been drawn away from him, till between them scarcely a 
 bond remained. The thought crossed him — would he 
 after all haye been so selfishly in error, so blind through 
 the mists of passion, if he had kept her, through her 
 ignorance, in his own hands, under his own law and love? 
 Would he not have made her happiness purer, her life 
 truer, her future safer, because nearer God, than they 
 now were ; brilliant, imperious, pampered, exquisite creat- 
 ure though she was? She was great, she was lovely, 
 she was content, she was unrivaled ; but where was that 
 "divine nature" wherewith he had once believed her 
 dowered ? 
 
 " Where are your thoughts now ?" she asked him once 
 again ; restless beneath that fixed and melancholy regard 
 which she could not meet. 
 
 A sigh escaped him as he answered : 
 
 " Pondering whether the Duchess de Lira, great in all 
 magnificence though she be, may not after all be poorer 
 than was the child Viva, happy in the simple wealth of 
 the honey, and the chestnuts, and the violets from the 
 woods !" 
 
 " I could wish you could permit me to forget that such 
 a child ever lived !" 
 
 The impatient and cruel words were uttered, heedless 
 how they struck him, in a moment of haughty wrath that 
 this obscure and nameless past could be quoted against 
 her, that in her path of roses this one thorn should be 
 still beneath her feet. She had ever clung passionately 
 to the belief of some mighty origin having given her 
 birth : for the last years she had shut out from her own 
 sight the remembrance that she had ever been other than 
 she now was. She spoke on the spur of pride, selfish- 
 ness, offended dignity : she did not feel the baseness and 
 the cowardice of her utterance. * 
 
 His mouth quivered under the fullness of its snowy 
 silken beard. 
 
 "Have I seemed to remind you of it? Forgive me. 
 There is nothing for you to remember; — farewell !" 
 
 He bowed his head ; and laid down upon her hands a
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 395 
 
 cluster of white and purple violets; lovelier amid the 
 darkness of their broad round leaves, than all the jeweled 
 trifles of art and fashion strewn about her. 
 
 " Others give you gold and diamonds," he said wearily. 
 "I have nothing but these. Only, — remember for once 
 enough of your childhood to take them from me as I 
 give." 
 
 He turned quickly from her to spare himself and her 
 all need of answer; but the love which had once lived so 
 strongly in her heart was not wholly petrified into death ; 
 the nature which bad been so long attuned to his, could 
 not but vibrate in some measure to his touch. 
 
 She rose swiftly ; the look of bygone years in her eyes, 
 the accent of bygone years in her voice. She stretched 
 her hands out to him with all the sweet and contrite 
 grace of her early penitence and supplication. 
 
 " Oh ! do not think me so vile as I make myself seem ! 
 I have not forgotten ; I never forget in my heart. It is 
 the world that makes me sin against you ; the coldest, 
 vainest, basest, weakest part of me. I know how cold, 
 how false, how guilty I must seem to you ; and I have 
 been so I But these flowers are dearer to me than all 
 their jewels, and for my crimes to you I hate myself. To 
 meet you thus, — to be severed from you thus, — to live as 
 though I owed you nothing, — as though I had forgotten 
 your matchless goodness, your infinite mercy, — I think 
 that I must be the guiltiest thing on earth !" 
 
 All the ingenuous contrition, all the wayward inconsist- 
 encies, all the native tenderness, all the warm and sud- 
 den self-reproach, which had been characteristic of her 
 childhood, were on her now, shattering down the pride of 
 an imperious egotism. For the moment she forgot all 
 that had divorced them, for the moment she was to him 
 all that she once had been. For that moment an ecstasy 
 glistened in bis eyes, — to die the next. 
 
 He took her outstretched hands, and touched them once, 
 lightlj . willi his lips: 
 
 " You have do sins to me. And — if you had, did I not 
 long since promise you pardon '( Your better nature is 
 DOf dead in you; cherish it still, it will be greater riches 
 to you than your gold."
 
 39G TRICOTRIN, 
 
 And then, he turned and left her. 
 
 With the violets lying in her lap she sat long, motion- 
 less, and alone. 
 
 " Have I deserved to be what I am?" she questioned, 
 the rare voice of remorse speaking in her soul. She knew 
 only too well that she had not. 
 
 Yonder, in the vine country, in the little river-house, 
 the woman who had nurtured and fostered her in her in- 
 fancy was left to loneliness, and sorrow, and old age, un- 
 solaced. 
 
 Across the Alps, in the City of the Dead, was the soli- 
 tary mausoleum of the husband to whom she owed every 
 renown, pleasure, and glory that now illumined her life, 
 and whose vast, mute, boundless love had served her in 
 tenderness and in humility, unrecompensed even by a 
 caress as fond as that she gave her dogs. 
 
 And out from her presence had just passed the man to 
 whom her whole existence was one long ingratitude. 
 
 " Have I deserved to be what I am ?" she thought. 
 " Have I not been base — base — base ?" 
 
 And she knew herself to be so. 
 
 All her life, since the time that she had voluntarily gone 
 from him, had been one long ingratitude against him. She 
 knew it whenever she paused to think ; but thought had 
 so little place in her shadowless life. 
 
 All things had gone well with this fairest daughter of 
 Hazard. Accident, which seemed her progenitor, bad 
 been ever her protector. Fortune and all its chances had 
 been gracious to her. 
 
 She had left her early life as far behind her as the beau- 
 tiful, glittering, ephemeral winged insect of a tropic sum- 
 mer leaves its larvae bed, in the closed cup of a poppy or 
 a lotus, as it wings its way high into air and sunlight. 
 That she — she so great, so worshiped, so irresponsible, 
 so widely courted, so habituated to idolatry and power 
 and all the ways of wealth — could ever have been that 
 Waif and Stray whereof he spoke, seemed as impossible 
 to her as it is to the full-plumed aphis glancing in the sun 
 to recall the season of its chrysalis slumber. 
 
 She ! — the most beautiful woman of her world and of 
 her age — had once been that foundling child, reared by a
 
 TITE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 397 
 
 peasant, succored by a bohemian, dwelling under a cot- 
 tage roof, and made happy by a gleaner's treasury of 
 scattered cornstalks, by a peasant's gold of honey and 
 yellow gourds, by an infant's jewel store of morning dew- 
 drops and of blue forget-me-nots! 
 
 It was bitter to her to think it ; to have the memory 
 of it forced upon her ; and she paced to and fro the 
 length of her chamber, with restless, uneven steps, as 
 she remembered that, thrust this fact away far down into 
 oblivion as she would, the fact still lived, and could not 
 be destroyed : with all her wealth, with all her empire, 
 this fact was stronger than herself, and could not be abol- 
 ished by her will. 
 
 It was the one canker in her ever-blossoming roses; 
 the one ghost within her joyous palaces; the one bitter 
 drop in her wine--cup's ruby light. 
 
 The canker was at her heart, the ghost within her walls, 
 the bitterness upon her lips, in this moment when the odor 
 of the snow-born flowers wafted the memories of her buried 
 childhood to her. 
 
 Life had been so fair to her. The years had gone by 
 in one continual blaze of triumph, in one continual hymn 
 of rejoicing. She was great ; she was unrivaled ; she was 
 satiated with offered love. What else could make the 
 paradise of a woman? From the hour when she had 
 cried, " The fairies have remembered me at last 1" the 
 fairies had never again deserted her. 
 
 From the hour in which her selection had been made, all 
 things had led her to her new existence, all things divorced 
 her from her old: and no sigh for all she had abandoned 
 ever grated on the ear of those who had made her what 
 she had become. 
 
 The haughty temper and far-reaching vision of the aged 
 aristocrat had environed with scrupulous care this child 
 of Chance, in whom her prescience foresaw the future 
 bearer of her oame. 
 
 She bad bent all her skill and all her energies to con- 
 ceal from the world that the creature she, adopted was 
 the offspring of Hazard, nurtured on alms; ami to make 
 of her a woman so perfect that the mosl critical should 
 discover no flaw in her grace or her beaut v. in her acts 
 
 34
 
 398 TRIC0TR1N, 
 
 or her thoughts. And she had been perfectly successful. 
 Swiftly and easily, all the precepts that an unyielding 
 pride could teach, all the impress that an exquisite ele- 
 gance could make, were stamped on the facile wax of a 
 temperament already akin to them. To Viva, nothing of 
 greatness seemed either new or strange. Rank was no 
 King Cophetua to her, and she no beggar maiden. She 
 was only a long-dethroned princess rightly reinstated in 
 her sovereignty. There was no need to dread her self- 
 betrayal. She wore her purples as though born to them; 
 and even her patrician instructress was compelled to 
 murmur to herself, " If a bastard — surely one of some 
 imperial race, such as there sits not in these days on the 
 fool-filled thrones of Europe." 
 
 Travel, culture, change of scene, learning made graceful 
 and alluring, all that could be brought to the moulding 
 of her mind and tastes were given her. She was kept in 
 seclusion and in foreign countries some few years ; she 
 was baptized by the Church with a long bead-roll of 
 saintly names, the priests not questioning their liberal 
 patroness ; she was changed into that brilliant empress 
 which education and wealth, and an artificial atmosphere, 
 and all the pomps and graces of wealth, can make out of 
 any lovely, vivacious, and impressionable child. 
 
 At times, even the cold, and courtly, ever-sarcastic old 
 woman could have wished for a shade more warmth, a 
 touch more earnestness in this glittering volatile thing 
 that radiated round her, and seemed never to be moved 
 to any sense of debt or gratitude, but only to the buoyant 
 exultant sense of victory and of fair fortune. But she 
 wished for them in vain : the only one who could have 
 wakened them was banished. 
 
 And, unconsciously, in her sedulous destruction of that 
 one pure, ardent, early tenderness in the young girl's 
 heart, she shaped the weapons of her son's martyrdom. 
 
 When at length the silent passion that he had struggled 
 against so long as mere selfish and vain desire was con- 
 quered, and spoke, and offered all its matchless posses- 
 sions, its magnificent gifts, they were accepted with the 
 smiling indifference of a fair, pampered, ambitious creat- 
 ure, who conceived that the donation of her own loveli-
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 399 
 
 ness balanced all debt between them, yet who, insecure 
 in her singular fate, saw in this alliance the sole possible 
 passage to the security of power. 
 
 " I shall be the Duchess de Lira!" she thought, with a 
 haughty smile ; if she thought also with a shuddering 
 sigh, "And I must be his Wife 1" 
 
 The sudden illness and death of her protectress hast- 
 ened this union to which she willingly consented, instinct- 
 ively grasping the sole scepter that was stretched out to 
 her ; only seeing the kingdom that lay before her of om- 
 nipotence and pleasure, and triumphant vanity, and sure 
 deliverance from all future chance of obscurity or humili- 
 ation. The marriage sacrament was administered beside 
 the death-bed of his mother, that no breath of slander, no 
 rumor of injurious wonder, might ever touch the fame of 
 the one who henceforth was to bear a title illustrious for 
 centuries among the princes of the earth. 
 
 And the tidings, traveling far from the Austrian city 
 where they tarried, went in the sweet spring evening to 
 the house of Mere Rose. 
 
 Attained ambition on her lips was no Dead Sea fruit; 
 but an enchanted apple, ever fresh, ruddy, luscious. 
 
 For her sake her lord went forth from the seclusion 
 he had so long preserved, and even approached a court 
 which he abhorred as the court of an usurper, that he 
 might show her to that great world for which she so 
 long had pined. She became the idol, at once the leader, 
 the reigning beauty of her sphere. 
 
 Her husband, content onlv to minister to her wishes 
 and her will, grew the slave to her idlest caprice, and was 
 grateful for her slightest smile. For a second time an im- 
 measurable devotion was laid subject to the rule of her 
 mutable fancies; this time, yet more than the first, it ut- 
 terly failed to move her to any sense of its priceless value, 
 it was only regarded as a means to the end of her own 
 gratification. 
 
 Intoxicated with homage, applause, indulgence, ex- 
 travagance, pleasure, she did what to few it is given to 
 do, — she realized her wildest dreams. She had but to 
 wish, and she possessed. She had but to look, and she 
 vanquished. Her conscience was stifled, her memory
 
 400 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 was killed, her heart never beat but with the throbs of 
 vanity and triumph; love had no peril for her, for she had 
 against it the shield of an all-absorbing self-love. 
 
 She lived as exclusively in the present, and as abso- 
 lutely for herself, as the brightest humming-bird that 
 ever wantoned above roses. 
 
 She had once had purer visions: these had all perished. 
 Her moral ruin was not less rapid and complete than 
 were her social ascent and her absolute domfnation. 
 
 So she lived her life; and on the night of the Dorian 
 ball her husband died, in silence and in solitude. 
 
 For the hour the impression which that death made on 
 her was vivid, and her self-reproach poignant. 
 
 But then she was free, — absolutely free. 
 
 "Light-wedded, and light-widow'd, and unaware of any 
 sort of sorrow." 
 
 She passed out once more, after the briefest retirement 
 that custom could sanction, into the noonday blaze of the 
 world she had quitted, tenfold more potent now than ever ; 
 for now to the sorcery of her smile was added the sorcery 
 of her gold, which men were also free to strive and win. 
 
 No living creature dreamed that in the great French 
 aristocrat there beat the same pulses that had throbbed in 
 the young limbs of the Waif and Stray. 
 
 To keep her unseen until time and culture had so 
 changed her that there was no fear of her recognition by 
 the keenest eyes that had ever beheld her, had been the 
 first care of her powerful guardians. Estmere, and the 
 son of Estmere, she had never met ; and when one or 
 two of the young nobles who had been at the banquet of 
 Coriolis, and might have recalled some likeness in her to 
 the child whom they had there beheld, — their memories 
 had been too filled with the fair forsaken faces of women 
 for them to heed the resemblance, or to suspect the secret 
 of the one before whom they bowed so low in homage. 
 
 Vague mystic rumors did indeed float about concerning 
 her: but the hand of her imperious protectress had been 
 strong enough to lift her high above suspicion; and many 
 expedients had been found and used, with keenest tact,
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 401 
 
 to supply all flaws, and smooth all strangeness, in her 
 story. 
 
 Yet, although all others had so completely forgotten, 
 she could not utterly forget ; — not utterly, with those 
 white and purple flowers lying in her hands. 
 
 That time had been, when these things, and such things 
 as these, gleaned from wood and pasture, had been her 
 only treasures ; when she had owned no more home, or 
 heritage, or food, by right, than such as the bird, forsaken 
 of its flock, can make and find from tufts of grass, and 
 pods of seeding flowers, and any wind-blown alms of na- 
 ture. That time had been ; if she had kept its memory 
 in her heart in gratitude, an amulet against all evil 
 thoughts, a cross to recall to her all those who suffered, 
 a rosary whereby she had counted her faults, her follies, 
 and her better deeds, it had been blessed to her. 
 
 As it was, — cast scornfully and cruelly aside, as some 
 detested thing for which she prayed oblivion and annihi- 
 lation, — it might some day rise up afcd have its vengeance 
 on her. 
 
 And at rare times she feared this, with a fear wholly 
 foreign to her high-couraged and imperious temperament. 
 
 The fear was kindred to that which will pursue and 
 move a monarch, whose passage to his throne has been 
 hewn with an iron blade through the granite of gigantic 
 crime, and whose steps have waded through the blood of 
 a murdered people to reach the diadem of his desire. 
 
 Was it not over the lifeless bodies of slaughtered loves 
 that she, also, had passed to her victories, and to her 
 kingdom ? 
 
 34*
 
 402 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 
 That night, at one of the greatest houses of Paris, the 
 most exquisite woman of its courtly assembly bore in her 
 hand a massive cluster of simple blue and white violets — 
 violets, full of a wild forest fragrance, amid the exotics 
 blossoming there. 
 
 "Are they for the sake of the Past madame?" asked 
 of her an old marshal, whose youth had known Marengo 
 and Jena, seeing in them the emblems of his Chief. 
 
 She turned her eyes on him with a look her lovers had 
 never seen in them. 
 
 "Yes ! They are for the sake of the Past!" 
 
 Those around her^wondered eagerly and in surprise 
 what Past this could be of which a creature so young 
 still and so eminent could think with such regret; with 
 her it could not be they knew a Bonapartist memory. 
 
 When she went forth to her carriage, one watcher 
 standing by, unseen, among the crowds, caught a glimpse 
 of his violets in her clasp of jeweled gold. And summer 
 dawns had not been sweeter to him than the bleak and 
 stormy night became, — she had enough of the love of her 
 childhood to treasure his flowers thus 1 
 
 The remembrance of him, slight though it was, sufficed 
 to send back warmth and gladness to his heart ; he gave 
 a martyrdom of tenderness, accounting it as naught, — 
 he was touched to passionate thankfulness by this one 
 trivial act. 
 
 Thus great natures ever give, and ever receive : — pour- 
 ing out their gold like water, and into their garners re- 
 ceiving dross in exchange.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 403 
 
 CHAPTER XL. 
 
 When her carriage had rolled away, Tricotrin also left 
 the gates, and went far away through the Quarter of St. 
 Martin, up toward the thieves' nest of Chaumont. 
 
 The thrill of joy which had quivered through him as 
 he had seen the violets in her hand and in her bosom, 
 faded into the depression which ever follows a hope that 
 is unutterably sweet, yet wholly baseless, and which 
 springs up only to perish in all the glory, and all the fra- 
 gility of the evanescent flower that only blooms for a 
 single day. 
 
 She remembered him and her childhood, — that was 
 something. But she was divorced from him forever; and 
 could no more return to him than the fruit, gathered in 
 for a prince's table, can return to the moss-covered branch, 
 where once it hung in a country orchard. 
 
 He had known that this would be so; he had foreseen 
 it as the inevitable sequel of that choice which had re- 
 moved her to the world for which she had longed. Not 
 now for the first hour was its truth before him. He had 
 seen it with each time, through the many years of her 
 separation from him, that he had looked upon her and had 
 watched the actions of her life. But it had never struck 
 on him so strongly or so vividly as when he had beheld 
 her that morning; as when, in every gesture, and smile, 
 and glance, in every languid movement, and contempt- 
 uous reply, and negligent grace, he had seen how wholly 
 the gay, wayward, innocent, transparent child, that he 
 once had sheltered, was lost in the patrician woman of 
 the world. 
 
 He bad kept aloof from her. It had been too keen a 
 suffering for him to provoke it. He, who cast all pain 
 from him on the impulse of a joyous nature as he would 
 have cast an adder from his arm, could not voluntarily 
 seek the torture that her presence was. He took heed
 
 404 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 that she was content ; he assured himself that her own 
 desires were the guide she followed ; he kept vigil, how 
 constant and how deeply penetrating she did not dream, 
 over all the changes of her life. But, once having seen 
 that it was well with her, once having learned that in her 
 servitude to ambition she only embraced the success that 
 she craved, he sought her presence little. 
 
 During the years that her husband lived she never saw 
 the face of the man she had forsaken, though, once or 
 twice, amid deep garden ways in Italy, or on the waters 
 of old Teutonic streams, she had heard — or had thought 
 that she heard — the music that she had loved in the days 
 of her childhood. And in such moments, under the spell 
 of that sweet and distant melody, her eyes had filled with 
 sudden tears, and her heart with sudden yearning, and 
 the vague sense of a loss, irrevocable and endless, had 
 come over her. 
 
 Their lives had drifted asunder, as two boats drift north 
 and south on a river, the distance betwixt them growing 
 longer and longer with each beat of the oars and each 
 sigh of the tide. And for the lives that part thus, there 
 is no reunion. One floats out to the open and sunlit 
 sea; and one passes away to the grave of the stream. 
 Meet again on the river they cannot. 
 
 His heart was weary as he went. 
 
 Could he have served her he had been content. But 
 what need or what call for service could there be in this 
 fate so royal, so shadowless, so eminent, so coldly and so 
 radiantly clear ? She had wealth, and had the world at 
 her feet; she had empire, and had no wish unfulfilled; 
 she had youth, and had all things that render youth glo- 
 rious. What space in such a life was there for love to fill ? 
 She had need of nothing. She had the armies that con- 
 quer, she had the sorcery that transmutes, she had the 
 smile that makes fate smile back in answer. What appeal 
 in such a life was there for aid or succor? 
 
 Once he had promised her that though she should return 
 to him sin-stained, wretched, broken-hearted, driven from 
 every refuge, and shrinking from every glance, yet would 
 he not forsake her, but would shelter her with his tender- 
 ness still. But a sterner trial than this tore the strength
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 405 
 
 of his love at its roots. He had to stand outside the 
 golden gates of her paradise, — forgotten. 
 
 Not rare on this earth is the love that cleaves to the 
 thing it has cherished through guilt, and through wrong, 
 and through misery. But rare, indeed, is the love that 
 still lives while its portion is oblivion, and the thing which 
 it has. followed passes away out to a joy that it cannot 
 share, to a light that it cannot behold. 
 
 For this is as the love of a god, which forsakes not, though 
 its creatures revile, and blaspheme, and deride it. 
 
 His heart was weary within him as he went through 
 the dreary way; the night was bitter and full of storms. 
 The snow-clouds hovered unbroken, but the wind was 
 wild and chill as ice, and ever and again a gust of rain 
 swept with shrill passion over the half-frozen ground, and 
 dulled the few lights burning. 
 
 lie had come into the quarter of the poor, and into the 
 hotbede of crime, through the maze of crooked streets and 
 swarming tenements that were alive with guilt as an ant- 
 hill with its insect-swarm, while, furthermost, the cavern- 
 ous rocks of Chaumont sheltered every sin and every lust 
 in their hideous recesses.* It was ever thus that he ex- 
 orcised his dark hours. Yet, to-night, the heart-sickness 
 of every poet and every leafier of the world was on him, 
 too heavily for even the justice of truth, or the purity of 
 labor, to have worth in his sight. 
 
 " What avail ?" he thought. " What avail to strive to 
 bring men nearer to the right ? They love their darkness 
 best, — why not leave them to it? Age after age the few 
 cast away their lives striving to raise and to ransom the 
 many. What use? Juvenal scourg-cd Home, — and the 
 same vices that his stripes lashed then, laugh triumphant 
 in Paris to-day I The satirist, and the poet, and the 
 prophet strain their voices in vain as the crowds rush on ; 
 they are drowned in the chorus of mad sins and sweel 
 falsehoods! Oh God! the waste of hope, the waste of 
 travail, the waste of pure desire, the waste of high 
 ambitions ! — nothing endures but the well-spring of lies 
 
 * It is Deedless t<> recall that thia vile place has been by the late 
 
 imperial works changed into a .spot of healthful rccrcution and 
 great beauty.
 
 406 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 that ever rises afresh, and the bay-tree of sin that is green, 
 and stately, and deathless !" 
 
 Yet — though in that hour he saw the vanity of labor, 
 the futility of effort, the helplessness of truth against the 
 massed evils and armored insincerities of the world, as 
 men in their hours of loneliness must ever behold them, — 
 yet, he went onward into the Gehenna whither his steps 
 tended. 
 
 Above, and hidden in the huge dens of the rocks, 
 assassins, and brigands, and ravishers brooded and glut- 
 ted over their golden spoil or their writhing prey ; and in 
 tHe horrible streets that lay below, naked children and 
 half-naked women fought and tore at each other like mad 
 dogs, songs of riotous blasphemy were crossed by the din 
 of drunken combatants, and hideous misery with hideous 
 obscenity struggled which should be king regnant there. 
 
 The rocks towered up against the black starless skies, 
 silent because, screened in their caverns, men, who had 
 changed to devils, hoarded stolen treasure, and stifled tell- 
 tale shrieks, and crushed out panting life all noiselessly, 
 and strove to find some new variety of lust. But in the 
 quarter of the town beneath them there was a loud tumult- 
 uous hell, in which sex and age were alike forgotten, and 
 confounded in one pit of shameless shame : — a pit where 
 human lives were pent together in gasping droves, as if 
 they had lost all semblance of humanity ; where one vast 
 caldron of iniquity seethed on and on forever, forever 
 fed afresh. It is in such social bodies as these that the 
 cancer of the world throbs and poisons all that it infects, 
 and taints even that which is in health — a cancer whose 
 sole attempted cure is now and then a random cut from 
 the knife of evil power, that leaves it wider spread than 
 ever, covered, insidious, deadly with the germs of an 
 eternal death. 
 
 As the imprecations, the screams, the yells, the laughter 
 worse than any curses, the songs that had so utter a' 
 depravity m them, the cries of young children under 
 brutal blows, beat on his ear where he approached Chau- 
 mont, a great softness, a great pity came into his eyes. 
 
 " God-forgotten, they call you 1" he murmured. " Rather 
 man-forsaken."
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 401 
 
 He was unarmed ; he penetrated into a quarter where 
 death waited for any honest man who durst venture his life 
 there ; he came among ravening wolves, to whom murder 
 was pastime, and cruelty joy. But he walked on, with 
 the careless courage of his nature. Fear was as far from 
 him as from any eagle of the Engadine ; and, moreover, 
 these wolves were as faithful dogs to him, caressing his 
 hand where they bit through to the bone of every other. 
 To him they were tame, and were loyal. He lashed them 
 with scorn ; he scourged them with reproach ; many a 
 time he seized their prey from out their very jaws ; he 
 stood between them and their passions ; and he braved 
 them openly in their maddest rage. But they never lifted 
 their weapons against him, and in their most furious 
 moods he was sacred to them. They knew well that 
 there was love and not hate in his soul ; and they uncon- 
 sciously revered what they could not comprehend, — this 
 courage which only feared sin, this pity which could em- 
 brace even guilt, this manhood that had every strength, 
 and boldness, and liberty that they honored, and yet was 
 so pure from crime, and so stainless from shame. 
 
 He knew that he was safe amid them. Had he not 
 known it he would have gone thither just the same. It 
 was not in his blood to study caution, or dread peril ; 
 many a time, with his back against a wall and the haft of 
 a knife against his chest, he had kept a score of desperate 
 brutes at bay, refusing to relinquish them their victim. 
 Aud he who loved sunlight, and mirth, and the smile in 
 women's eyes, and the gay recklessness of artist life, and 
 the beauty of a summer world, came into the hells of gnat 
 cities on that simple, unflinching duty to humanity, which 
 was a law tin' bohemian and the wanderer never broke. 
 Those whom the world east out he made; his brethren; 
 and, if once in a thousand times of trial it was giveD him 
 to raise a sinking soul from the abyss into the purer 
 upper air of earth, he was content; he earned the only 
 wage he asked. 
 
 "They shudder when they read of the Huns and the 
 Ostrogoths pouring down into Rome," he mused, as he 
 passed toward the pandemonium. "They keep a horde 
 as savage, imprisoned in their midst, buried in the very
 
 408 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 core of their capitals, side by side with their churches and 
 palaces, and never remember the earthquake that would 
 whelm them if once the pent volcano burst, if once the 
 black mass covered below took flame and broke to the 
 surface ! Statesmen multiply their prisons, and strengthen 
 their laws against the crime that is done — and they never 
 take the canker out of the bud, they never save the young 
 child from pollution. Their political economy never studies 
 prevention ; it never cleanses the sewers, it only curses 
 the fever-stricken!" 
 
 A hideous clangor broke in on his ear as he went, lost 
 in thought, and unheeding the din that he knew so well, 
 worse than the roar of a million wild beasts. This clamor 
 was shriller, viler, more horrible than common ; it caught 
 his attention, and lifting bis head, he saw at some little 
 distance a red resinous glare. 
 
 " Murder is being done ; they are never so joyous over 
 aught else," he muttered, as he hastened his steps. He 
 was no optimist to deem his wolves slandered sheep ; he 
 knew them as they were, in all their blackest, hardest, 
 most hopeless guilt. 
 
 He soon came within sight of the fire ; a bonfire blazing 
 in a pent dark court, and throwing its glow on the rocks 
 beyond, while about it hundreds of living creatures 
 swarmed, and shrieked, and sang, and raved, and danced 
 in a saturnalia of devils' joy. A rabble of brigands with 
 bare chests and great arms black with filth, of women 
 disheveled, unclothed, yelling like furies, of gaunt beggars 
 with their filthy rags flying in the wind, and their long lean 
 knives glancing in the air, of children leaping and scream- 
 ing with delight, surrounded the pile of blazing wood that 
 burned only the fiercer for the falling hail that hissed in 
 its smoke. And above it, hung there to consume by slow 
 degrees, suspended by an iron chain knotted about his 
 waist, and fastened to an iron spout in a wall, swaying 
 in the wind, and uttering awful cries, swung a living 
 human figure. 
 
 This was the bacchanalia they enjoyed in the bitter 
 wintry night. 
 
 "Ah-ah! How bright he will burnl" screamed a little 
 five-year child, dancing in ecstasv at the finest firework 
 she had ever beheld.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 409 
 
 Tricotrin gave a glance at the blackened form, as its 
 chain-halter cracked and shook in the wind: then threw 
 himself with a leap like a stag's among the throng, seized 
 a knife from the hand of a boy ere the lad could resist, 
 sprang on to a broad stone coping on the wall, stretched 
 up, seized the wretch by his waist-chain, cut the cord that 
 knotted the iron links to the projecting spout, and dragged 
 him down on to the ledge where he himself stood. All 
 was clone in an instant, ere they knew what he did: they 
 were silent in supreme amaze. 
 
 Then a roar broke from all the crowd as with one voice ; 
 a roar like a herd of hyenas cheated of their carcass-prey ; 
 they loved him in their own fashion, but they loved 
 slaughter more, and they hungered fiercely for that 
 splendid human bonfire. 
 
 " Give him to us!" they yelled, while twice a hundred 
 knives glittered in the glare. 
 
 He stood above them, on the stone, above the stifling, 
 resinous, scorching pyramid of flame: the creature he 
 had rescued lying at his feet. All his life and ardor had 
 flashed back into his face with the need of action ; his eyes 
 blazed with scorn and passion ; his white abundant hair 
 blew backward in the wind; his fearless gaze unflinching 
 met the glare of the upturned, bloodshot, thirsty, mur- 
 derous eyes. 
 
 "Give him to you!" he echoed in their own parlance, 
 which he spoke with rapidity and ease. "Am I vile as 
 yourselves, think you ? What was his offense ?" 
 
 The rush of thundering voices hissed out, as with a 
 single breath, the story of the criminal; a new comrade, 
 a puny creature, stealthy as the cat, timid as the hare, 
 who had joined them for awhile, only to spy on them and 
 to betray them to the law: a traitor that deserved ten 
 thousand deaths drawn out in years of torture. 
 
 Tricotrin heard: the red light fell upon him as he looked 
 down on the riot that seethed beneath him, and on the 
 knives that menaced him it' he did ool yield. 
 
 "A dark guilt, truly," he said with brevity, as his mel- 
 low voice rang clear through the din. " Bui you are not 
 fit for its judges. Fine fellows, indeed, to sit in the judg- 
 ment-seat — you who would be shot or guillotiued, every 
 
 35
 
 410 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 one of you, if you but had your deserts. What do you 
 call yourselves — devils, tigers, or men? You have no 
 claim to the last name! A spy is a thing as foul as a 
 viper, I grant; but not to be burnt alive for all that, and 
 you are too utter blackguards yourselves to have any right 
 left in you to punish. Two hundred men, too, against 
 one — glorious equality ! For shame, you hellhounds ; I 
 knew you were brutes when the bloodthirst was on you, 
 but I did not guess till now you were cowards !" 
 
 He knew how to deal with them, — as Dumouriez dealt 
 with his mutinous battalions. The fiery scorn, the con- 
 temptuous invective, the dauntless censure struck them 
 dumb, where other words would have excited their mock- 
 ery, or inflamed their passions. The silence did not last 
 long ; they were in furious hatred of their prey, they were 
 in ravening longing for their sport ; they closed nearer 
 and nearer, stretching out their gaunt hands to seize, and 
 lifting their knives in the air. 
 
 "(live him to us!" they shouted again, with awful 
 blasphemy upon their tongues. Any other than himself 
 they -would have hurled down and torn in pieces, as 
 hounds tear offal. 
 
 He laughed aloud ; with haughty defiance flashing on 
 them from his eyes. 
 
 "Give him to you? You think I am a huntsman, to 
 fling the fox to the pack? Off, you scoundrels! — sheathe 
 your knives, I tell you; do you hear? You want my 
 life ? — I dare say ! You are murderers, and that is your 
 trade. But I do not mean to die in your hell : I should 
 find no worse where devils rage, if the priests' tales be 
 ever so true. This man shall be mine. I say it. You 
 know I never break my word." 
 
 The tumult raged higher and higher, swelling out like 
 the hoarse roar of the sea. 
 
 "Give him to us!" they screamed. "The fires shall 
 have him, and not you !" 
 
 He stood unmoved ; a brawny giant flung himself 
 across the flames, leaped up by the stone ledges, and 
 made a lunge at the body of the spy. But Tricotrin was 
 too rapid for him ; he dealt the brigand one blow, straight 
 in his chest, and the man fell like an ox under the pole-axe.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 41 1 
 
 There was a moment's pause of stupefaction ; they 
 were superstitious of his power, they endowed him with 
 rnor.0 than mortal force. But the women, ever foremost 
 in cruelty and riot, ever hounding- on to war the men who 
 might choose peace, mocked and mouthed at their males 
 for cowardice, and yelled with shrillest oaths their hor- 
 rible cry. 
 
 " Give him to the flames ! His blood or yours !" 
 
 He looked with changeless calm upon them still; the 
 hot llickcring glare of the fire lighting up the majestic 
 height of his stature, and the dauntless, scornful grandeur 
 of his face, on which there stole a certain wistful saddened 
 pity. 
 
 He had thought that these brutes loved him. 
 
 "Poor mad wild beasts!" lie murmured. "You know 
 not what it is you do. Von can kill me. doubtless, if you 
 will; hut you cannot make me look on to .-re you steep 
 yourselves in slaughter." 
 
 The roar hushed, like the roar of sea waves sinking 
 down into calm: silence fell on them with a, great and 
 sudden awe. A sublimity that their minds coruld not 
 reach stirred their souls from this serene courage, this 
 offered sacrifice, this refusal to forsake them, though they 
 forsook themselves. A gaunt, bull-throated, sanguinary, 
 brutal brigand, — type of the populares of all time, from 
 the mobs of Marius to the mobs of Marat, — thrust his 
 knife down into his girdle with a, curse. 
 
 " Let him have his way ! lie may thrust a pike through 
 me and I will not say him no." 
 
 There \\;i- a throb of human blood under the bullock 
 hide, there was a pulse of manly softness under the wolf 
 skin. He was ;i butcher of men : he had drawn his knife 
 across more than one panting throat; he lived by riot, 
 and pillage; bu1 hi- temper answered to courage, and he 
 had an instincl that reverenced greatness. 
 
 Hi' was the leader anion-- them, whose word was law. 
 and whose argumenl with rebels was a rope: the crowd 
 dared no1 revolt by more than a sullen savage groan. 
 Tricotrin flung his bright glance over them. 
 
 "Patron Mj-Minoux, thai was generously spoken. You 
 give me this man ?"
 
 412 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 A roar of baffled rage broke from the throng, in which 
 the loudest voices that led were the voices of women. 
 But Mi-Minoux stayed it with a gesture. 
 
 "A thousand devils seize you ! He deserves more than 
 this from us," he shouted. " Tricotrin— take the damned 
 beast's life ; for your sake I say, not his, the hound!" 
 
 " For mine — and for your own." 
 
 He stretched out his hand to Mi-Minoux; the soilless 
 hand that had never been stained with bribe or blood, or 
 even the insincerity of a false greeting, meeting the one 
 that was black with a thousand crimes, and red from 
 murder's work. Over the Patron's dusky brutal face a 
 tremor and a light passed quickly ; he drew his own hand 
 away as though it were burnt with fire. 
 
 "Hell and fury ! Mine is not fit !" 
 
 Tricotrin looked on him with the smile that had such 
 infinite pity. 
 
 " Chut ! Why not ? We are both men 1" 
 
 Then, standing still on the stone ledge, with the droop- 
 ing, huddled figure of the spy lying in a shapeless mass 
 at his feet, while the bonfire burned dully in the rushing 
 hail, while the flames and the wind sank together, and 
 the people grew very quiet, hushing the children who 
 cried aloud for the spectacle they had lost, his voice rang, 
 clear and sweet as a bell, through the thieves' quarter, — 
 
 " Children 1 You give me, to-night, gifts more precious 
 than silver and gold. I thank you from my soul. I 
 would not barter this single life that you spare to me — 
 vile though it be— for all the coins of monarchs' treasuries. 
 You were wild beasts when I found you. Nay ! a mil- 
 lionfold worse. For the beasts do but slaughter for 
 hunger, as we kill the calf and the lamb ; and the beasts 
 never slay their own kind. You were worse than the 
 tigers are; but still— my tigers were human. They let 
 go their prey out of love for me. Ah ! Why will ye not 
 have as much love for yourselves ? You are fools, though 
 } r ou deem yourselves wise : fools in the election of Crime 
 for your god. Does that god bring you aught but blows ? 
 Will he feed you with aught but ashes ? Will he clothe 
 you with aught but fear, and shame, and fever, and fire ? 
 Ye are fools in the god that ye serve. Ye are slaves,
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 413 
 
 though ye deem yourselves free. What life does your 
 deity give ? To fear like wolves ; to burrow like moles ; 
 to be hunted like foxes ; to be shunned like lepers ; to en- 
 dure months of famine for sake of one hour's gorged and 
 loathsome debauch, like the vultures that only find sweet- 
 ness in carrion. To be netted at last like a fox in a gin; 
 to have your limbs cramped in irons ; to be fettered, 
 scourged, shaven, yoked together like coupled hounds ; 
 working like the mill-horses for no reward in one endless 
 circle ; sleeping on a plank, growing old in a cell, without 
 the chance of a hope, without a woman's kiss, or a man's 
 laugh, without a draught of wine, or an hour of liberty: — 
 that is the life your god gives you 1 That is the fate you 
 deem freedom ! How long will you worship so blindly ? — 
 so long as you are born in darkness ; so long as you are 
 begotten and bred and reared In ignorance and iniquity. 
 You lay your children, new-born, in the red iron hands of 
 your Moloch. You fill their mouths with curses ere yet 
 their milk-teeth are shed. You snatch them from their 
 mothers to send them out to your god's hideous service. 
 You give them life, only that you may cause to be brought 
 forth fresh spawn of sin to curse the world that yon hate. 
 You bring the young children your women have borne 
 to see a man burn for their sport : if they kill you when 
 you are old and useless, and cumber their path, will it be 
 the children's fault or your own ? Slaves yourselves, 
 Why will you bring the new lives into bondage ere yel 
 they can tell what the liberty of innocence means? 
 Pooled Berfs of a false god, w horn you worship because 
 his altars glitter with the tinsel of vice, why will ye hind 
 your offspring down beneath the tyranny of your vile 
 religion? Fou think I use; language too harsh ? Oh, my 
 people ! You would have taken my life a moment since 
 because I would not stand by to see you steeped afresh 
 [n blood; will you never believe how gladly 1 would lay 
 it down for you if it would ransom you from suffering 
 and s;n ?" 
 
 They were silent as they heard. 
 
 The passionate eloquence of the poet, winged with 
 living truth, pierced their bouIs as be spoke to them. 
 
 35*
 
 414 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 Vaguely the meaning and the greatness of his words 
 reached the dullest and Vilest life that, cowered there. 
 Women, sexless and shameful, shuddered and beat their 
 breasts that had nourished thieves, and cursed aloud 
 their kisses that had rewarded murderers with kisses sold 
 for stolen gold. Men, dogged and brutal, dropped down 
 their heads, and shivered where they stood, and wondered 
 in their poor untutored brains, that struggled against 
 such mists of poisoned ignorance, whether indeed he 
 who arraigned them thus were man or god. 
 
 It was only the little children who crouched beneath 
 the flame pillars of the fire, who murmured in their baby- 
 throats against him, because he had cheated them of the 
 burning, and had not left them hear the music of the 
 death-sbriek. 
 
 He heard, and stooped, and raised up one of those who 
 muttered in lisping revolt against him. The child was only 
 a few years old ; but from out its elfin eyes the thirst of 
 inherited lust already glistened, and on its parching 
 mouth the heat of the drunkard's desire was already set. 
 
 "Lookl" he said to the silent people, while his eyes 
 rested on them with a regard of tenderness and of compas- 
 sion unutterable. " The child hungers for the sight of a 
 death agony : your blood is in bis veins, and he can have 
 no choice but to be vile, for have you not made his pastime 
 murder, and his cradle-song a curse ? You have created 
 him only to slay him, — are not the beasts of the desert 
 holy and full of mercy beside you ? Women — as these 
 creatures come to the birth, it were better to tear them 
 from your breasts, and dash their brains out upon the 
 stones of your streets, than have them become like this. 
 He is not a child — this thing that clamors to see a living 
 creature burn. He is a budding seed of awful crime, to 
 which your passions had dared to give the breath and 
 force of life. And through him your sin will pass down 
 through generation after generation. Have you ever 
 thought what it is that you do when you beget these lives 
 that grow up, like rank grass, from corruption ?" 
 
 The great multitude was silent : even the hellish creat- 
 ure that had mouthed and mocked at his feet, was quiet 
 and touched with awe, not knowing the meaning of the
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 415 
 
 words, but moved, unwittingly, by the solemn and dread 
 sweetness of the voice above him. 
 
 Through the mob of murderers, and ravishers, and 
 thieves, and forgers, a shiver ran like one deep sob. 
 
 Without another word he went down from the stones 
 where he stood, and passed away through their midst, 
 leading the condemned with him. 
 
 CHAPTER XLI. 
 
 Curysostom, when he protected Eutropius under the 
 shield of his eloquence, could not have had more disgust 
 for the vjleness of the one he had saved than had he now 
 for the spy that he had rescued from the fire. Without 
 asking he guessed his guilt ; the guilt of a criminal turned 
 informer, and chastised by those he had endeavored to 
 betray. 
 
 At him, he had not even glanced; and the unhappy 
 creature had not once lifti d his aching lids, but moved on 
 with trembling steps through the furious driving of the 
 sleet and wind. 
 
 When at length they had reached a solitary place where 
 none were in hearing, his protector loosened him, and 
 faced him. 
 
 " If Iscariot had lived, he might have redeemed his 
 crime. There is no sin that shuts oul hope. What are 
 you? and how came yon there? It may be 1 can aid 
 you." 
 
 Th traitor he had rescued looked up at him with blank 
 scorched eyes, that still saw nothing save the glare and 
 ebb of the flames from which he had escaped. 
 
 Tricotrin scanned hi.- face; ami his own changed. He 
 Stood motiotdess, looking on the charred, shrinking, half- 
 naked form l" im. 
 
 "Again 1" he murmured. " A.gain I" 
 
 The other did not hear or note him ; feeling, beholding,
 
 416 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 listening to naught save that roar and leap of the bonfires 
 which seemed still winding around his limbs, and crush- 
 ing his breath with their clouds of smoke. Of his* rescue 
 he was scarcely conscious ; he had followed the hand that 
 had guided him, by a dumb instinct : he was senseless 
 and paralyzed with the past fear ; he was like a moth 
 caught by some gentle hand from out a flame, and loosed, 
 maimed and blinded, upon the darkness and coldness of 
 the night. 
 
 "Again !" murmured Tricotrin ; " how vile we are at our 
 best ! If I had known I might have left him to his fate !" 
 
 All the light, and the pity, and the sublimity that had 
 been upon his face when he had addressed the multitudes, 
 and driven them back from slaughter, had faded ; it was 
 dark, and gray, and weary, the fatigue of rising passions, 
 and the despair of a soul that could not reach the heights 
 it strove for, following the inspiration and the tenderness 
 and the strength that had been on it as he had arraigned 
 the murderers. 
 
 He uttered not one word, but stood gazing down upon 
 the blackened, quivering, helpless thing, whose life would 
 have gone forth in fire but for him. 
 
 They were alone : dark leaning roofs of empty buildings 
 rose upon either side, like the steep slopes of caving cliffs ; 
 the winds shrieked through the narrow passages ; the sky 
 above was leaden and starless. The creature, looking 
 upward, — with his sight still dazzled, and hot as with the 
 horrible scorch of the flame upon it, and with his brain 
 still maddened from terroi', — caught the eyes that rested 
 on him, and knew them, and trembled, and covered his 
 face with his bruised, bleeding hands, and cried out that 
 the dead had arisen. 
 
 Above him, like the Saint Michael of Guido, stood the 
 form of his savior ; the shadows changing on his face, 
 fiery, fleeting, lightened, darkened, swift and varying as 
 the thoughts at conflict in his heart. 
 
 On the earth, the Greek, Canaris, writhed senseless ; 
 Shuddering in epilepsy, foaming at the mouth, beating the 
 air with frantic gesture, struck down, as by a stroke from 
 some avenging angel, by the gaze that had looked at him 
 with the look of the dead.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 41? 
 
 The night had grown still more inclement. The pat- 
 tering hail had changed to a storm of rain, whose gnat 
 drops froze as swiftly as they fell. The air was ice ; the 
 winds were hurricanes ; the cold was growing with every 
 instant more intense. Left upon the frozen ground, half 
 nude, convulsed, insensible, the wretched creature lying 
 there must have perished no less surely than had the 
 Haines consumed him. 
 
 He was beyond the pale of human kinship, beyond the 
 right of human pity, — a traitor who had turned against 
 his comrades, and striven to betray them to the law, so 
 that his own wretched life should be, by the law, set free. 
 
 To the man who looked on him, he was yet more than 
 this; he was a foe whose poisoned fangs had bitten deep 
 into the frank, free faith of boyhood. 
 
 Yet, with the same mercy as lie would have raised a 
 dying, leprous-eaten wretch, Tricot rin lifted up the crimi- 
 nal from the earth, and passed onward. 
 
 "Doing otherwise — how were I better than they?" he 
 thought. 
 
 Prom the active deed of murder he had that hour with- 
 held the people. It was not for him, whose lips had 
 spoken t heir rebuke, to yield himself up to the inst incts of 
 their vengeance. He went on 1 lirough the ice-storm, over 
 the whitened, frozen ground, heavily cumbered with the 
 convulsed limbs and twisting body of the unconscious 
 burden that he carried. 
 
 Once, ere this, he had given this man the " chance" that 
 he had coveted; and out of that chance he found to-night 
 that the lost wretch had coined only deeper crime, viler 
 ruin, lower degradation. Yet. he gave him still another. 
 The baser, the weaker, the guiltier this life, the more need 
 was there that it should have breath and space left to 
 change and become cleansed if such amend were possible. 
 
 There was oothing stirring in the howling winter night 
 thai already trenched on dawn : he me1 aone to aid him 
 in his errand; the only sound was the steps of the half- 
 frozen patrol some way from him, and the soldier be could 
 not summon. To give up this thing, that lay insensible 
 and rigid across his shoulder, to the hands of the law was 
 not the reading of duty that he followed.
 
 418 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 Painfully, and by slow degrees, he toiled on through 
 the beating storm that turned to ice as it fell upon his 
 face and form. At length he reached the gaunt walls of 
 the nearest hospital, with its lamp burning over the en- 
 trance-way, the flame dashed to and fro by the fierce 
 eddies of the gusts that shook its iron cage and blew the 
 ice rain past it in white clouds. 
 
 Jle knew the religious refuge well : as one of those few 
 places upon earth where to suffer is deemed sufficient 
 passport into pity, and where no other title of admission 
 is required than the canker of disease and the woes of 
 necessity. 
 
 He rang ; the great bell boomed mournfully through 
 the stillness. He leaned the figure of the man against 
 the porch, and gazed on it with an intinite pain in his 
 eyes. It was huddled together, sunk in the swoon that 
 had succeeded the convulsion, helpless, pitiful, miserable 
 bevond all words. 
 
 " Had you been true in the j^ears of our youth, how 
 would it have been with us both now?" he thought; — 
 and all the strange, wild, cruel dreams, which rise with 
 the memory of a fate that has been within our grasp, and 
 has been seized from it, and broken asunder, and cast into 
 the abyss of irrevocable losses, arose before him as he 
 stood outside the walls of the hospital with the senseless 
 body stretched in the gray shadow at his feet. 
 
 The boom of the bell died on the silence. The iron 
 dour slowly unclosed. He was familiar there; and the 
 Brethren were wont to call him, in the bitterness of win- 
 ters such as this, their Alpine dog, their St. Bernard of 
 search and of succor. 
 
 "I brought him from the thieves' quarter. He is not 
 dead," he said, briefly. 
 
 They took the ghastly burden within, to where were 
 warmth, and science, and care, and rest; and he turned and 
 went backward into the storm, refusing to enter there. 
 
 He was not conscious of the violence of the winds, or 
 of the perilous ice-blasts of the rain. His memory was 
 with the past; he wondered how it would have been with 
 him had one lie from the lips of that dying wretch not 
 changed the current of his life in boyhood — one act of
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 4 ] 9 
 
 baseness from the traitor, who had come at lasl to the 
 burning play of the thieves' awful mirth, not driven him 
 in youth to exile. 
 
 Greatness, and power, and the treasuries of wealth, 
 would have been his. The laurels of fame would have 
 filled his hands in lieu of the wild flowers of gipsy wan- 
 dering. His pleasures would have been taken in palaces 
 instead of under the tawny roofs of fishers'-cabins, of vil- 
 lage-hostelries, of painters' sketching-tents. His wine 
 would have been poured from chalices of gold or silver in 
 place of the drinking-horns of careless artists, and the 
 brown jugs of bright-eved maidens. His name would 
 have been on the lips of the world instead of in the hearts 
 of the people; and honor would have blown loud clarions 
 in his path where love now laugned in his eyes and song 
 now rang on his car. 
 
 Regret had never touched him. 
 
 Those heights which he had left, had ever looked to the 
 gaze thai was hoid and true as the eagle's, only as the 
 sand mounds which the children of the \\ orld held in their 
 ignorance to be golden thrones. 
 
 The diadem which he had laid down had ever seemed 
 to the forehead that was warm with the suns of the south, 
 and proud with an unstained truth, and caressed with the 
 Bweel lips of women, but a leaden fardel of weary weight, 
 that men only bare because fools called it a crown. 
 
 The ambitions thai he had forsaken had ever appeared 
 to the mind that was steeped in the colors of the poet, in 
 the passions of the lover, in the indolence of the wanderer, 
 in the gayety of the reveler, but as ropes of sand, whereby 
 those who deemed that they climbed to the stars fell back 
 into the pit of oblivion. 
 
 lie would not have exchanged his life for a kingdom; 
 and envy of those whom men called greal had never left 
 its evil breath upon him. lie knew too well the penalties 
 
 thai ke the air in which such men soar so arid, ami 
 
 drench so weightily with the dank dews of satiety the 
 wings of all those who fly on high. 
 ■.■•ret had never touched him. 
 
 Never — until this nighl when he had beheld the violets 
 he had given in the while breast of a woman.
 
 420 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 CHAPTER XLII. 
 
 Lost in deep thought he noted nothing as he moved 
 homeward from the hospital, until in one of the lonelier 
 passages his eyes were drawn to a dark strange figure 
 coming through the drifting snow, that froze as fast as it 
 fell; wandering with a dreamy uncertainty in the gait, 
 yet advancing with a curious resolve and swiftness. The 
 man was dressed in heavy blue fisher's clothes, his beard 
 was very long and rough, and blew in the strong wind, 
 his eyes gazed out into the darkness, painfully bright and 
 yet unutterably weary. 
 
 Tricotrin had seen that same form oftentimes since he 
 had seen it first under the tawny sail of the Loirais hay- 
 boat. In dark, quaint, old-world nooks of man-forgotten 
 towns ; in the hot yellow glare of southern cities at noon ; 
 on the olive-shadowed roads of the Riviera ; in the great 
 brown cumbrous barges, ou rivers crowded with summer- 
 soil ; in the deep glow of cool, dim, silent churches with 
 the amber shadows and the yellow lights sleeping on 
 their noiseless footways : seen it ever in the same wan- 
 dering quest, ever in the same mute solitude. 
 
 His voice rang through the frosty air: "Bruno ?" 
 
 The sailor paused, and looked around, with a vague 
 memory in his eyes : in a certain sense he had grown to 
 recognize that voice better than any other's, though he 
 would glide away from all companionship, and suffer no 
 pursuit He knew it, something as the dog, whose heart 
 is in his own dead master's grave, will know a voice that 
 ever speaks tenderly to him, and never seeks to draw him 
 away from the tomb. 
 
 Tricotrin laid one hand on his shoulder. 
 
 " You have not found her ?" he had learned that it was 
 more merciful to treat the delusion as a truth. 
 
 The sailor's eyes turned on him with a look as bewil- 
 dered and as utterly heart-broken as the eyes of the dog 
 at the grave of his master.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 42j 
 
 " Not yet. It is long- ; — it is long !" 
 
 A great sigh shook him as he spoke. It was long ; — 
 it was over twenty years. 
 
 "The years pass swiftly," Tricotrin answered him with 
 the grave gentleness which had won him something like 
 trust and love even from this poor, hunted, stupefied 
 mind. " The years bring us age. May it not be she is 
 dead?" 
 
 "No. That is not possible. If she were dead her 
 soul would come to me." 
 
 Bruno's eyes were bright with this strange faith which 
 lived in him and could not be stirred; this faith which 
 was the tempest-tossed relic of that barbaric creed of his 
 childhood, which drew his tired steps to the altars of the 
 churches in a vague worship, half superstition, half heart- 
 sickness. 
 
 Tricotrin looked on him in silence ; what words would 
 allay this hopeless grief, or dull this endless loss ? Her 
 soul ! — the soul of that soulless thing who had hut senses 
 and passions, and who had no god but the gods of gold 
 and of lust! 
 
 " I thought I saw her — look you!" whispered Bruno, 
 suddenly, while bis voice sank very low. "Last night, 
 — a \'v\\ hours agone, — I came on a place where the men 
 and the women dance on the ice, and the torches burn, 
 and the sledge bells ring, and the great trees are all alive 
 with tire and silver. Yon call it the wood of Boulogne? 
 Well, — I thought that I saw her. Through a casement, 
 in i hat wooden house on the lake, where the lights glitter 
 all night, where the devil .-its laughing to .-oc men do his 
 work. It was her face ! — it was among many ; they were 
 shouting, ami singing, ami pouring red wine down their 
 throats, and the face turned and looked at me with her 
 eyes — oh, yes! — with her eyes. Bu1 do you know- what 
 looked through them? — adevil. Through her eyes he 
 
 jibed me, and mocked me, and vaunted his vice and his 
 lusts. Then I knew that Satanus had bade him take her 
 likeness to tempi ami to torture me. And I had strength 
 to Hcc; I (led all night through the woods, through the 
 darkness, through the ice ami the snow. Will it he so 
 
 36
 
 422 TRICOTRJN, 
 
 in hell ? Will they curse us by putting their vileness in 
 the shapes we know purest and loveliest?" 
 
 He paused abruptly ; the man who heard him stood 
 silent, touched with a pity beyond all words. 
 
 The devil the forsaken husband had beheld had been 
 the woman whom he believed pure and unsoiled as the 
 snow that fell round them ! 
 
 " Come with me, Bruno," he said softly. " Come with 
 me if for to-night only; you are cold, and fevered, and 
 worn out ; you are ill, though you know it not. Come !" 
 
 The sailor shook his head; with the dogged dreamy 
 resolve settling over his gaze. 
 
 " I am not ill. And I must seek her." 
 
 " But you have sought her so long ?" 
 
 " Yes. It is long — how long ! I cannot count. But 
 that is no matter, you know ; when I find her we shall 
 forget that. I must not rest. I would not sleep ; but 
 that sleep comes on me at last and kills me, body and 
 brain. I never sleep but just at the dawn. I cannot tell 
 why, but I feel she is in less peril when the sun first 
 breaks. All things are waking, and they are merciful, — 
 the beasts and the birds. There is mercy in their eyes 
 that no men have, — but you ; and they suffer : that makes 
 them pitiful!" 
 
 He paused once more ; the strange, wild, tender 
 thoughts straying through the chaos of his shattered 
 reason. 
 
 " Come !" urged Tricotrin gently. " We will seek her 
 together ?" 
 
 But Bruno drew away. 
 
 "No — no — no," he said absently. " I must be alone ; 
 always alone. You see ; — we do not know where she is ; 
 she may be ill, and desolate, or a beggar mayhap ; she 
 must be like a stray lamb on a bleak mountain side, alone, 
 in the width of the world. And you know the lamb will 
 only come to the shepherd's voice ; another's scares her. 
 And something tells me I am near to her now : the end 
 will soon come." 
 
 There was a light like the pale radiance from stars 
 upon his brown attenuated features ; but the stars were 
 not shining, the sky above-head was black with leaden
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 423 
 
 snow-burdened clouds: the light was the light of a mar- 
 tyr's hope ; holy, pure, divine. 
 
 Ee moved swiftly away, with a backward gesture of 
 the hand, mournful, appealing, commanding, thai entreated 
 not to be followed, and that could not be disobeyed. His 
 footsteps fell silent on the softness of the snow; his form 
 glided away like a wraith, soon lost in the hush and the 
 gloom. 
 
 Tricotrin stood long and looked back at the vault of 
 darkness into which he had passed. 
 
 "Twenty-four years 1" bethought. '-And hehasnever 
 weariedl What is my bitterness beside his?" 
 
 Then he went onward, back to the gayer quarters of 
 the town; and, as be went, be passed the open portal- of 
 a world-famous theater. The flood of gaslight streamed 
 out upon the dazzling snow; the audience poured out 
 with it, in a flood of glowing color; the throng was lull 
 of laughter, and all their voices were singing snatches of 
 a new mirthful carol of Auber, heard within that nigbl 
 I'm' the firsl time, and bright; as the wines and the loves 
 that il chanted. 
 
 "How she sang, how .-he acted, how she danced!" 
 shouted a .-indent. "She is as lovely as ever she was, — 
 is Coriolis I" 
 
 CHAPTER XLIII. 
 
 " Love! Love ! always of love [—how tired I am of it I" 
 she thought, casting aside the latesl of the many letters 
 that vainly wooed to new nuptials the Duchess de Lira. 
 
 A poel dying in a garret, a revolutionist pining in a 
 
 dungeon, a man heart-sick with foiled ambition, a woi 
 scourged IV. mi the world'.- pleasures by the world's oppro- 
 brium, a wile with no sphere save the narrow space thai 
 ber hearth-lire lit— these might need it, these mighl glorify 
 it. Uui she ! — "What had she |i» do with this comrade of 
 ars. this consoler of transgressors ? It was an incense
 
 424 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 that perfumed her path, a wreath that her foot trod in 
 passing, a passion-flower that was twisted among the gold 
 and gems of her diadem : — no more. What cause had she 
 to stoop and share a thing so common, and so common- 
 place, that touched the lips of gipsy-girls, and smiled from 
 the eyes of artists' mistresses, and sang its songs under 
 cottage eaves, and made fair the dreams of toil-worn peas- 
 ants ? This tale told so continuously on her ear, grew 
 very wearisome : it was a melodious monotone, but its 
 changeless monotone was tiresome. 
 
 Love had indeed done all things for her. It had been 
 around her all her life : her servitor who ministered 
 uncomplainingly to all caprices, her treasure-house from 
 which she drew what she would, her wishing-ring where- 
 by all the powers and joys of an exceeding greatness had 
 become hers, and overborne the accident that had cast 
 her, a bastard or a changeling, upon fate. But she held 
 it in gay, languid, light contempt. It was a thing so 
 easily won with a careless smile, it was so easy to retain 
 by an indolent word, it was a spaniel so fawning and 
 faithful under blows as under caresses — in fine, it was 
 such a fool, that she held it in scorn, like all things cheaply 
 purchased ; and although it was her one great creditor, 
 without which she had been bankrupt and a prisoner in 
 the jail of bitter circumstance and hard destitution, she 
 scarcely gave it a grateful memory, never a reverential 
 thought. 
 
 She esteemed it, as his mistress, — beautiful, callous, ex- 
 acting, avaricious, contemptuous, — will esteem the man 
 who gives her all she has, and is content with all her 
 wayward moods, and adores her so blindly that he never 
 perceives that he is only her tool, her purse, her dupe I 
 To need love one must need sympathy. Sympathy was 
 indifferent to her : she was perfectly successful, and suc- 
 cess is sufficient for itself. 
 
 The lying murmurs of the slanderous world had attrib- 
 uted many loves to this woman, so magnificent, so young, 
 so seductive, so tempted, so negligent of her lord, and so 
 early widowed. But that world was at fault as its con- 
 clusions most often are : she had never loved. She only 
 loved — herself: and so fair was the sovereign whom her
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 425 
 
 mirrors displayed to her that she had never once felt in- 
 clined to change the allegiance. In one sense, indeed, 
 she had loved the man whom she had voluntarily for- 
 saken : loved him with a fondness and a strength she had 
 never otherwise known ; but that affection had never been 
 strong enough to combat the sunny selfishness in her ; 
 and for several years it had been so commingled with self- 
 reproach, distasteful humiliation, remorse, and the con- 
 sciousness of ingratitude, that she had grown to thrust it 
 away from her as often as it moved her. 
 
 She was dreamily but entirely content where she re- 
 clined, with the fire and the wax-light playing on her: 
 they who are thus, but seldom recur to the past. The 
 fruit we have eaten is only sweet in its recollection when 
 thai which our hand holds is bitter and rotten, and on the 
 boughs of our orchard there is no blossom that promises 
 fresh wealth for the spring. 
 
 She had so many things of which to think. Past scenes 
 of triumph in gorgeous old palaces of Vienna and of 
 Rome; present days of empire in this peerless Paris 
 where she reigned. Treasures of art, and of beauty; of 
 the looms of India and the jewels of Asia; of painter and 
 poet and musician ; of laud and water and eastle-erowned 
 landscape, that were all inalienably hers. Caprices 
 which, if she had them to-night, would become the fashion 
 to-morrow. Ambitions for rule, for dominance, for the 
 celebrity of the State as well as of the salon, which were 
 sufficient to give zest and pleasure to the passing of life 
 With the aroma of someone thing attainable though as 
 yet unattained; All these floated in gorgeous hues 
 through her thoughts; as, when she had been a child, 
 had done the tales of the fairies when she had watched a 
 (lock of blue-warblers flash in azure through the sunshine. 
 
 She had youth, she had wealth, she had power, and 
 dominion, and freedom, and BUCCeBS: what room could 
 
 there be for remembrance of a long-buried time when she 
 had been nameless, and homeless, and motherless, and 
 
 friendless also, save for otic friend who never begrudged, 
 ne\ er reproached, never wearied. 
 
 Once, in the allurement that the actress possessed for 
 
 3G*
 
 426 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 her, he had dreaded for her with a terrible fear the life of 
 temptation, of seduction, of diamond-crowned evil, of 
 those women whose loveliness is as the curling snake 
 which clings but to destroy, and whose sweetness is as 
 the poisoned honey culled from the brilliancy of African 
 flowers. If she had gone to it; — gone through its glit- 
 tering portals to its bitter end, and known shame and 
 starvation, and the painted misery thatshriuks even from 
 the pitiful eyes of the street-dog ; — she would have re- 
 membered better far, and the days of her childhood would 
 have been to her even as a paradise whose closed gates 
 were guarded by a flaming sword, and whose light would 
 have looked as the light of eternal suns that could never 
 again stream on her. In her wretchedness and desolation he 
 would have been remembered and avenged, — in her joy 
 he had no place. 
 
 Beside these letters of the passion which she mocked, 
 she had much correspondence to glance through where 
 she sat in her dressing-chamber resting for a half hour, 
 ere she should attire herself for a costume-ball at one of 
 the embassies : — from the last of such entertainments she 
 had been summoned to find a husband lying dead in his 
 great Roman palace whose latest word had been, " do not 
 spoil her pleasure." 
 
 But of this she did not think. 
 
 One letter she perused a little more earnestly than she 
 did those of honeyed flattery, or eager worship ; it was from 
 ber steward at her chateau in the south. It was full of 
 humble apology and regret at having been unable to 
 execute her most august commands. 
 
 " Unable to make my theater in the south court !" she 
 murmured aloud, as she read. " Intolerable !" If he 
 cannot obey me in the possible, and the impossible, I will 
 displace him with some one who will." 
 
 A line farther down caught her sight: she saw that the 
 command he herein referred to was touching-, not the 
 new theater fur her autumnal gathering, but the old 
 truffle-hunter, Aubin Ralcor. The steward wrote that 
 he had been found dead on his bed of leaves that morn- 
 ing ; the steward regretted that death should have been 
 so discourteous as to precede and prevent madame's
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 42T 
 
 wishes : but death was such a democrat — it would not even 
 respect madame's orders. The steward proceeded to say 
 that the theater in the south court should assuredly he 
 ready in the autumn, as madame desired: death could 
 not interfere in this case, for if it carried off a workman, 
 he would with ease be supplied: — Providence was boun- 
 tiful and made laborers invariably in excess of work. 
 
 " Poor old man, — it is a pity!" she thought. " But I 
 am glad the theater is sure to be ready, — there are glass- 
 houses by millions, but no one has had a glass theater. 
 It will illuminate so well, and sparkle all over like a crys- 
 tal." 
 
 She cast his letter after the others, and went to the 
 appareling of her charms, on which she expended so 
 many hours of her time, so many seasons of her medita- 
 tion, in the same pleasure with which she had gazed at 
 the necklet of the Prince Faineanl when all the little, 
 chirping, waking birds beneath the caves had seemed to 
 tell her there was naught so fair as she on earth. 
 
 Princes and nobles told her that sweet story now: but 
 it had lost little of the charm it had possessed in the 
 swallows' first telling. 
 
 She was neither ignorant nor of slight intellect, as 
 mosl Vain women are; she had alike intelligence and wit 
 of an unusual keenness, but she was for all that the vain- 
 est of all living things. She adored herself; she delighted 
 in that exquisite lac of hers to which she owed all her 
 captivity of the world ; she would draw the heavy burn- 
 ished irold of her tresses through her hands; she would 
 turn her head over her shoulder and glance at herself, 
 Narcissus-like : she would gaze into the slumbrous night- 
 like depths other eyes, with a never-ceasing pride and 
 rejoicing in her own Loveliness. 
 
 Painters and sculptors had reproduced it in every 
 manifold phase ; hut it was the one thing of which -he 
 never wearied : — the only thing. 
 
 And she required ii this oighl to be al itsutmosl heighl ; 
 she desired it to lie beyond even its accustomed measure: 
 she wanted it to dazzle, enchain, -ul. due. appeal, inflame, 
 astonish, and subjugate al :e, and in even an un- 
 wonted force. For — this niuhi alone for the firsl time —
 
 428 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 she knew that she would meet the man who, looking at 
 her on the grape wagon of the harvest-feast, had said, 
 
 " She cannot be of the people !" 
 
 She had never met him hitherto, although the repute 
 of his fame had often come to her. Those who had 
 guarded her life had avoided him, not allowing her to 
 divine any intent or perceive any purpose in their so 
 doing. She had been little in her own country, not at 
 all in his ; and for several years he had been absent in 
 the gilded exile of a great state duty, that he had ac- 
 cepted and executed in onerous service to his nation. 
 
 But she had remembered him with a curious tenacity 
 of remembrance, in a creature so prone to swiftest ob- 
 livion of all things. She had listened with eagerness to 
 whatever rumor had said of him, playing with his name 
 as it will ever do with names once made of mark. She 
 had often wished, with a curious mingling of fear and of 
 desire, that he should return from his rule in the East, 
 and cross her path once more. 
 
 She had no fear that recognition of her would ever 
 awake in him. She was too utterly changed ; even if it 
 had been possible that any memory of a child seen once 
 on a summer evening could remain with a man who was 
 occupied with the full, earnest, arduous and lofty career 
 of a statesman and diplomatist. 
 
 But she knew that she herself could never entirely 
 banish the remembrance of how he had seen her; of how 
 she had wandered through his picture-galleries, a name- 
 less child ; of how she had sat in his farm-servants' 
 dairy chambers, and eaten of their honey and their bread, 
 like any cowherd's daughter. 
 
 She knew that she could never wholly forget this ; and 
 the remembrance was acute suffering to her. 
 
 She would go into his presence the sovereign of his 
 world, his equal, nay, his superior in rank, a beautiful, 
 haughty, courted, idolized woman : and she would al- 
 ways remember. that if only one of the lowest laborers 
 on his land could recognize her and tell him the simple 
 truth, he would know that in all her omnipotence and 
 with all her attainments she was little better after all 
 than a living lie to the world that adored her.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 429 
 
 They had never met; they were to meet this night, 
 And for that cause she aspired to make her beauty look 
 even more than mortal, and for the sole time since she 
 had seen her child's face mirrored in the brown depths 
 of the Loire, was tempted to be almost discontented with 
 that gracious and prodigal gift, and to desire that it 
 should even be something yet more splendid than it was. 
 
 W hy did she want this ? — she could not have told. He 
 would not know — never could know — that when he should 
 look upon her now lie should see the same features that 
 he had once praised when he had ridden at evening among 
 thevine-fields of his own lands. But she knew: — and she 
 wanted to come with all the glory and magnificence of an 
 empress before the man who had seen her last as a peasant 
 child upon a vintage-wagon. 
 
 Proud as she was, Viva's was only half the pride of 
 the born patrician; the other half was the pride of the 
 Pompadours, of the Cabarus, of the Theodosias, who 
 have sprung from tin 1 darkness of obscurity into the blaze 
 of power. Her rank had grown as natural to her as it 
 is to any legitimate sovereign; yet it was perpetually 
 marvelous to her as it never can be to those who have 
 enjoyed possession and dignity from their birth upward. 
 
 In one of the reception-chambers of the palace to which 
 she went that night, a knot of those who guide the des- 
 tinies of nations were standing conversing, at the moment 
 of her entrance. 
 
 One of them leaned his arm on an ebony cabinet, and 
 was turned slightly away from the brilliancy of the 
 thronged rooms. lie was of lofty and slender stature; 
 very fair, with a grave, passionless beauty oi feature, and 
 an exceeding serenity and pride of bearing: a man to be 
 singled out by the mosl careless spectator, whether in the 
 press of a street crowd or the glitter of a throne-room, — 
 a man who bore all the impress of one who had played a 
 high part, and held a high name among the World's 
 leaders. 
 
 The ministers speaking with him paused and broke oil' 
 their discourse, and glanced through the rooms. 
 
 "There she is," said one of them. " hid you ever see 
 so magnificent a creature?"
 
 430 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 "I cannot tell. Her beauty remains only a rumor to 
 me." 
 
 " What ! You have never met her?" 
 
 " Never. I have heard so much of her that I have, I 
 confess, somewhat avoided this marvel, the catalogue of 
 whose charms has so often wearied me, and whose ca- 
 prices I have known to interfere with the most serious 
 deliberations." 
 
 " You are prejudiced. Wait until you have seen this 
 sorceress. You do not know until then how beautiful a 
 woman can be." 
 
 "Surely? I have seen so many beautiful women." 
 
 He spoke with a smile, but with a certain incredulous 
 indifference to the subject which he was too courteous to 
 express. Also, it was true that he had avoided, at such 
 times as he had been near her presence, this woman of 
 whom they spoke. He had heard nothing of her that at- 
 tracted him ; much that repelled. Her coquetry, her cold- 
 ness, her neglect of her husband, her imperious volatile 
 caprices, her wayward exercise of her wide power, her 
 absolute abandonment to the utmost extravagance of 
 pleasure : all these repulsed his taste in women. 
 
 "You are skeptical," said one of the statesmen beside 
 him. "Look there, then — and believe." 
 
 He turned his head, and looked as they bade him. 
 
 Among the brilliant throng he saw her, diamond- 
 crowned, diamond-winged, with a troop of little children 
 of the highest races in the land playing before her and 
 behind her as elves and fairies, as Pucks, Peas-blossoms, 
 Cobwebs, and all the joyous band of Oberon, scattering 
 lilies and laburnums, carnations and camellias in her path. 
 It was summer still for her and them, though out in the 
 streets an aged woman froze to death in an archway, from 
 snow and from starvation. 
 
 "She is beautiful, indeed !" said Estmere, under his 
 breath. At that moment she passed close by him, in the 
 midst of her laughing cherubic fairies, — and their glances 
 met. 
 
 She saw once more the blue, tranquil, thoughtful eyes 
 that she had likened in her childhood to those of Arthur 
 of England — eyes that she had never forgotten. And in
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 4;»1 
 
 her own there came a look of recognition, over her face 
 passed a flush of surprise, of pleasure, and of apprehension 
 all commingled. The look was gone, the warmth was 
 faded, almost as soon as they had come, but he had caught 
 them, — he who, to his own knowledge, never had beheld 
 her. Others saw them also, and thought, — "Is it true 
 that they have never met before?" 
 
 She Heated past him in all the magnificence of her pa- 
 geant: he never dreamed that, once ere then, looking at 
 her when she had sat crowned with grape-leaves by the 
 -antry upon his lands, he had said other — "She cannot 
 be of the people." 
 
 The air of the world she dwelt in transfigures like the 
 breath of the frost, and changes the wild-flower spray as 
 though by magic into a glittering, chill, exquisite thing, 
 dazzling as diamonds. But is the flower's fragrance any 
 longer left ? 
 
 Awhile later, and his presentation to her was offered in 
 such fashion that he had no power left for the discourtesy 
 of refusal: and as lie bent before her and spoke in the 
 melodious chill tones that she still remembered, she could 
 not, with all her self-command, retain the perfect calm 
 and negligence of her accustomed manner. And be, a 
 man far too high-souled fur vanity, and far too wearied to 
 seek for conquest, wondered to himself what interest he 
 could possess lor this patrician coquette, to whom he was 
 wholly a stranger. 
 
 lie lingered a very brief while beside her; and passed 
 onward, resigning his place to her more eager courtier-: 
 for tin' fu-i time she had failed to see admiration in the 
 glance that had fallen on her, for the firsl time a chilliness 
 of. disappointed expectation touched her. 
 
 " The instincl of my childhood was a just one : he alone 
 looks 'great,'" she thought, and in her soul she felt with 
 bitterness, "And he alone sees no beauty in me!" 
 
 She often looked \'<<v him that night, bul she saw him 
 no more, lie had quitted the palace very early. 
 
 "Is she t i ' • t perfect '. /- ' f his acquaintance had asked 
 
 him that night 
 
 Estmere had answered, " No." 
 "No! What does she lack, then?"
 
 432 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 "Feeling. That woman lives only for herself." 
 
 And clay after day, night after night, they met thus : 
 and he greeted her and avoided her thus, with that cere- 
 monious courtesy which is chillier than any rudeness or 
 bitterness. Seeing him continually she yet saw nothing 
 of him. If he had any sentiment toward her, it was 
 aversion rather than homage; yet, from the high-bred 
 serenity of his habitual manner, she could not extract so 
 much flattery as would have even been found in censure 
 or in insolence. He simply neglected her : keener affront, 
 harder offense, there could scarcely have been against 
 her. 
 
 The exception of this one man from her subjugation 
 moved her to more interest in him than she ever felt for 
 any of those who had been fooled by her glance and 
 made wretched by her word. Although she, from a cer- 
 tain lofty pride in her, had been utterly untouched by 
 any of the passion she inspired, she had never restrained 
 herself from the fullest exercise of her sway over men's 
 souls ; she had never forborne from using the power 
 that her beauty bestowed on her, using it with the utter- 
 most witchery and enhancement that were possible. She 
 had seen the extremes of passion, of devotion, of despair : 
 she had studied the natures of her many lovers, till she 
 had gained as deep an insight into their weakness as 
 Coriolis herself could have attained. And Estmere alone 
 escaped her, — the only man whom she had been tempted 
 to meet with interest, to treat with reverence ! 
 
 Nor could she have her vengeance for his neglect by 
 mockery of him, by disdain for him. He was as far re- 
 moved from her satire as he was from her seductions. 
 There was that about him which hushed the vengeful 
 ironies that rose to her lips. He had an influence over 
 her that she could not resist, even while his studious 
 avoidance of her most deeply incensed and mortified her. 
 
 He was "great," as her childish fancy had felt. Not 
 by rank, or wealth, or honor, in which very many of her 
 present world could far excel, and almost all could equal, 
 him ; but by the force of natural character, which gave 
 an unstudied greatness to all his thoughts, motives, and 
 actions ; which lent a perfect and harmonious repose to
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 433 
 
 his slightest words and movements ; which rendered every- 
 thing that was unworthy, insincere, untrue, or exagger- 
 ated, impossible to him ; and which made base things 
 show their baseness, lying lips halt in their falsehood, 
 and unreal pretensions sink to their due insignificance 
 before him. He was a statesman, an orator, a leader; 
 and was great in all these; but greater in nothing than 
 in the dignity and simplicity of his life, public and pri- 
 vate : just, sincere, incapable of time-service, indifferent 
 to every splendid bribe, gentle of temper, if severe in judg- 
 ment, he won the reverence of all who came near his 
 influence, and was honored even by the foes who resented 
 the proud silence of his temperament and the patrician 
 tenets of his code. 
 
 And it was precisely this character which attracted the 
 mutinous, brilliant, uncertain, and imperious nature of 
 this capricious and wayward woman. She was in her 
 sweetest moods when he was near; she gave him her 
 gayest wit, her airiest grace, her fairest smiles, and her 
 most dazzling radiance; — all in vain. 
 
 Not the coldest word of admiration ever passed his lips 
 to her ; and she never once could change the calm, pas- 
 sionless, grave regard of the deep-blue meditative eyes 
 that were like the eyes of the Roman Augustus. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIV. 
 
 In a miserable garret in the Quarter of the Odeon, a 
 boy of eighteen lay on his little truckle-bed, prostrate 
 wii It ague ami with fever. 
 
 Although the winter had stolen into earliest spring, the 
 weather was still hitter, and full of bdow and lee, and 
 sweeping northern winds. The yonth Buffered greatly. 
 
 lie was an arl-stndent ; the seventh son of a pour wid- 
 owed woman, who kept a wretched wine and tobacco 
 shop in the extreme east of France. lie could have had 
 no help from her if he had asked for it, and he was too 
 
 37
 
 434 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 proud and too tender of heart to ask, choosing rather to 
 perish in this Paris, that had been the Eden of his de- 
 sires, than to take one copper fraction from that scanty 
 store of his helpless mother. He dreamed divine dreams 
 of his own future, of the honors he would win, of the 
 medals he would bear off, of the pictures he would paint, 
 of the prize he would earn that would send him to study 
 amid the greatness of Rome ; and, meantime, he orna- 
 mented sweetmeat-boxes, as a means of livelihood in such 
 days as his tertian ague left him free, and endured the 
 daily agonies that killed Gilbert and Hegisippe Moreau, 
 and still kill their kind — lads that an imperial nation has 
 no time to count. 
 
 He was very ill, very miserable, very lonely; he was 
 of a shy and silent temper, and had made no friends. 
 His last coin was gone ; he was too tortured by his dis- 
 ease to work. He thought he should die, and die alone. 
 And at eighteen both death and solitude are hard. 
 
 He was glad to hear a knock at his door — glad even 
 though it were but his landlord, to whom he owed rent, 
 come again to curse him for a sickly beggar. When he 
 saw who it was that entered, his hollow eyes lightened 
 with an exceeding joy. 
 
 "It is you !" he said, softly, with a sigh of infinite con- 
 tent and gratitude. 
 
 His visitant came up to him, and smiled, and spoke 
 pleasant, soothing, cheerful words, and let a little black 
 monkey leap out of his arms and play her antics on the 
 pallet till they brought a wan laughter on to the boy's 
 white cracked lips. Then he thrust some billets of wood 
 that he had brought under his arm into the empty stove, 
 and set light to them, and flung open the lattice for the 
 cold but crisp air to enter ; he poured some rich wine out 
 of a flask he had in his pocket into a tin pot, and heated 
 it when the wood had caught flame ; he gave it to the lad 
 upon the bed, with spices simmering in it, and a fresh 
 roll of white flour to eat with it. Finally, be sat himself 
 down beside the one little deal table, on which the 
 brushes, and colors, and boxes waiting for ornamentation 
 stood, and drew one of the sweetmeat- trunks to him, and 
 began to paint on it, and gild its sides, and make it gay
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 435 
 
 with flowers and fruits and birds, expending on it all the 
 fair conceits of a luxuriant fancy. 
 
 The youth lay still and watched him with all the grati- 
 tude he was too weak to utter in speech. 
 
 Seven times in two weeks had his savior come thus; 
 and restored life to him ; had done his labor for him ; and 
 brought him the coins of his wage; had silenced the 
 wrath and the complaints of the landlord; and spoken of 
 the coming spring, and of the healing it would bear upon 
 its wings. Spoken, too, of a cottage that he knew in the 
 village of Barbizan, where, for a trifle a week, a lad might 
 be housed and fed, and watch the great painters iu their 
 holiday, and have around him all the sweetness of the 
 forest air, and see the primroses hud forth from among 
 the moss, and the rabbits steal among the fern, and the 
 tender leaves of the oaks unfold in the bright young year. 
 
 And when he had tried to thank him, and to ask him 
 who he was and whence he came, his redeemer had 
 laughed a little, and answered only: 
 
 "Tut!— I am Tricotrin." 
 
 A ml the boy, though but a new-comer into the city, had 
 known all that the name spoke ; and had asked no more. 
 
 His friend sat there through half the day, painting the 
 lids of the boxes, wasting on them a hundred deiicate 
 graces, a hundred grotesque fancies, a hundred forms of 
 loveliness and picturesqueness: because when genius 
 abides in a man it will never let him do aught ill, but will 
 ever thrust itself oul in any work of his hand, be it of the 
 simplesl or the slightest. 
 
 He was only painting on sugar-boxes that would be 
 sold for tenpence a piece. Bui 1 he creative power in him 
 called beauty into these common things, and he sketched 
 on them as a king's painter sketches on a palace-cornice. 
 
 Twice or thrice he paused to give some food or some 
 wine to the lad. Sometimes he went on with his labor 
 in unbroken silence. Sometimes he called boyish laugh- 
 ter on to the youth's pale lips by -ay drolleries of story 
 or airy vagaries of wit. Sometimes he spoke— and this 
 was oftenest— of that little oesl in Barbizan, where so 
 soon the hreath of the spring would be bringing the birds 
 from their nests, the foliage from the boughs, the roses
 
 436 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 from the briars, the wild hyacinths from the grass ; and 
 where he said that the boy should go. 
 
 Then, when he had done all the work that was there, 
 he bade the lad a cheerful good night ; left him with a 
 big jug of milk beside him to ease his thirst ; piled more 
 wood on the stove ; and went carrying the boxes with 
 him, that he might get the payment for them, and put it 
 in the hands of the landlord, who had sworn that if the 
 rent went unpaid the youth should be turned out in the 
 street. 
 
 As he went down the stairs a child met him, sent from 
 the house that he dwelt in, with a letter received in his 
 absence. 
 
 His face changed color as he broke the seal and read 
 the one line within it— — It was simply: 
 
 " Can you come to me during the day ?" 
 
 He knew in whose handwriting that brief summons 
 was penned — knew it, without the armorial bearings and 
 the cipher that decorated the glossy sheet. 
 
 A thrill of hot delight ran through him. His heart 
 beat quickly and joyously ; his eyes flashed and lightened 
 with pleasure. 
 
 She had not wholly forgotten ! 
 
 He watched her life ; but he scarce ever went into 
 her presence. He had accepted oblivion, and he was too 
 proud to assert a claim that she had forgotten. She was 
 happy, — he let her be. If ever the time came when she 
 knew what grief was, he would then go to her, not before. 
 
 But with her summons fresh joy flashed through him. 
 He did not pause to speculate, to wonder, to doubt ; he 
 only cared for the fact that once more he had become a 
 desire and a necessity in her life. 
 
 He did the duty to which he had pledged himself first. 
 He turned down the street in which the bonbon box-maker 
 dwelt, sold his merchandise, received a gold piece in ex- 
 change, and appeased with it the landlord's avaricious 
 greed. Then he was free ; and went with the swiftness 
 of a greyhound whither she had called him. 
 
 His pulses were throbbing and his brain was dizzy as 
 he w T as ushered into her presence. He did not know 
 what he hoped, yet hope was strong in him. He gave
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 43 1 
 
 joy away so often, with such lavish hands, to others, it 
 could not seem strange to him one day that gift might be 
 returned back into his own breast. 
 
 "You sent for me?" he asked, eagerly, with that 
 radiance still on his face, as he approached her. 
 
 She turned to him with the instinctive coquetry of her 
 nature. 
 
 "You never come to see me unless I do !" 
 The reproach was very sweet to him; the tone was 
 like the accent of her early years. 
 
 "Why do I not?" he said, gently. "It is because 
 such women as you do not have one want left for thoso 
 who can only bring them love to fill up. You know too 
 
 well that if you ever thought of me " 
 
 He paused abruptly ; in his code the one who stood as 
 creditor for an unpaid debt of gratitude must never urge 
 a claim forgotten by the debtor. Moreover, he who had 
 loved ber all her life through was too proud to speak to 
 her of a love she had chosen to cast away, undesired, un- 
 recalled. 
 
 "I do often think of you," she murmured, hurriedly. 
 " Can you deem me so dead to all feeling? You ! who 
 were all the world to me oncel" 
 
 " There is no need to remember that. Others have 
 done much greater things for you since. But is there 
 any service I can render you now ?" 
 
 The unintentional reproach which lay in the inference 
 that she must have some need of him or she would not 
 have remembered him, escaped her. 
 
 "Service? — no," she answered, with a tinge of embar- 
 rassment, " Do you recollect Lord Estmere?" 
 
 lie started, ami moved slightly away ; all the glow, 
 and light, and warmth died from oil' his face ; his eyes, 
 which hail dwell on ber with such gladness and such fond- 
 ness, Iosl i Inir radiance. 
 
 " [s it of him you desire to speak to me?" 
 "I have seen him again, that is all," she answered In- 
 differently, conscious how insufficient must seem the cause, 
 for the action. "Ami — if I remember rightly, you seemed 
 to know much of him. Is it so ?" 
 "I know of him — yes." 
 
 37*
 
 438 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 "Then — do you know anything of him that the world 
 does not?" 
 
 "Why do you ask that?" 
 
 "Why?" she said, impatiently, while, in her own de- 
 spite, a flush of shame for the interest she had allowed 
 herself to show for a man who gave her no homage and 
 no admiration, passed quickly over her face. " It seemed 
 strange to meet him in the world — that is all." 
 
 " You fear his recognition ?" 
 
 "Oh, no! What have / in common with the child 
 crowned in that village-wagon I" she interrupted him 
 with capricious impatience ; forgetful of the cruelty to him 
 that lay in the scornful sentence. " I was only curious 
 to hear anything you could tell me of him ; because " 
 
 " He interests you ?" 
 
 She laughed with careless, contemptuous indifference; 
 but he saw that her eyes fell, and that the flush was still 
 on her face. 
 
 " Interest ! I think nothing interests me, — except new 
 diamonds! I mean, because, — I imagined, you must 
 some time or other have come in contact with him. Was 
 I right?" 
 
 " Lord Estmere and I are total strangers." 
 
 " Do you think any ill of him ?" 
 
 " I believe him to be one of the noblest and most high- 
 souled men on earth." 
 
 The answer was sincere, and given in the purity of 
 truth ; but it went hard with him, for all that, to give it 
 utterance. 
 
 She looked at him silently a moment; swift in penetra- 
 tion, when she was not too careless to exercise the power, 
 she saw that there was something withheld from her. 
 
 " Then — do you know anything of his life that the 
 world does not ?" 
 
 " Of his life ? Nothing." 
 
 " There was some terrible story of his wife, was there 
 not?" 
 
 " She was false to him — yes. The story is known to 
 the whole world. She was a high-born woman, an ex- 
 ceedingly beautiful woman, and as sensual and as vile as 
 any courtesan, at soul. He wedded her when he was but
 
 TIIE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 439 
 
 a youth ; he adored her, I believe ; and she — lived with 
 him a few years only to dishonor his name forever for 
 sake of a Greek slave in their household!' 
 
 "A Greek slave!" 
 
 " Well — with the nature and the vices of a slave ; cow- 
 ardly, timorous, false, and vengeful. The creature had 
 owed all to Estmere's race, — a handsome boy of Athens, 
 made first page and then secretary; an Adonis, pam- 
 pered and caressed for his girlish loveliness ; a graceful 
 hound that first fawned and then bit! That was the 
 paramour for whom Eustace Estmere was abandoned ; — 
 abandoned, I say ! The sin was not half so openly sinned. 
 Ii was the old tale of treachery and dishonor which did 
 not hesitate to taint his own hearthstone!" 
 
 "But she is divorced from him ?" 
 
 " Of course ! But do you think that such a stain can 
 ever leave a man's life as it found it? do you think the 
 publicity of so close a shame can even pass away from a 
 proud and a sensitive nature ?" 
 •That is true; I forgot." 
 
 She thought of the grave fair face that she had once 
 likened to the ''King of the greal Pendragonship," and of 
 the anguish which in youth had gnawed at the heart of 
 the man now so passionless and so tranquil. 
 
 She perceived that some chord she could not trace con- 
 nected Tricotrin with the dishonor for which he felt so 
 keenly. She remembered too. more vividly than she re- 
 membered most things of that forgotten time, the impa- 
 tience with which he had heard her quote Estmere's 
 praise of her after the yine-festival. She did not know 
 that her young Faust of the golden toys had*been the 
 Bon of this dishonored wife. She did not know that he 
 withheld that fad from her lest its disquietude should 
 haunt and disturb her peace. 
 
 •• Then you can tell me no more of him than this ?" she 
 .-aid at last, with a certain disappointment in her voice. 
 
 1 [<• looked quickly at her. 
 
 "Of Estmere? No," he -aid. with bitter impatience. 
 "Whal is it you can wanl to be told ? His career. lies 
 before the world; he is a greal man; and pays the pen- 
 alty of such greatness in having the .--tare of a million
 
 440 TRICOT R IN, 
 
 curious eyes fastened on every dearest secret of his pri- 
 vate life. Love betrayed him ; he wedded himself to 
 public ambitions. You can tell better than I whether 
 they content him : if you take interest sufficient in him 
 to make the matter your study." 
 
 She gave a restless movement. 
 
 " I imagine Lord Estmere has other aims beside hap- 
 piness. I scarcely think any great man is likely to be 
 happy ; that belongs to peasants, to students, to youth, 
 and provincialism. It is not much known in his world 
 and in mine. If we are amused it is the utmost we ask. 
 You do not think it possible that he should recognize 
 me?" 
 
 "You fear it?" 
 
 " Fear itl" she echoed, as she rose with an impetuous 
 movement, and turned her head instinctively to the mir- 
 ror. " Fear it ! Good Heaven ! Of course I fear it — I 
 should die of shame! " 
 
 " You live on falsehood, then ? A dangerous food — 
 one sure, soon or late, to end in utter famine. But you 
 need have no dread on this score. You were but a fair 
 child then ; now " 
 
 "Now ?" — she laughed softly, a low, victorious laugh 
 of <;onscious power. 
 
 "Now — you know well enough what you are. Every 
 man tells it you in eloquence that would be the most sick- 
 ening tale you could hear were not vanity the sole passion 
 that knows no satiety!" 
 
 She made no reply ; a flush of resentment gleamed in 
 her brilliant eyes, and unspoken words trembled passion- 
 ately on h'er lips. She held them back by the lingering 
 remembrance of the gratitude she owed him ; she knew 
 that she could not deny him the right of a speech that 
 none else would have dared to utter to her. 
 
 He looked at her in silence many moments. 
 
 "You never think of a second marriage?" he asked, 
 suddenly. 
 
 " Think of it ! — I cannot choose but think of it ! It is 
 always being forced upon my thoughts! But if you mean 
 do I intend one, — no !" 
 
 "And wherefore?"
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 441 
 
 "Ask me rather why I should 1" she said, with a care- 
 less laugh. " What is there I could gain by it?" 
 
 " Gain is your only god, then ?" 
 
 " That is very harsh! I do not think I am avaricious. 
 But I have absolutely all that I can desire; I should risk 
 jarring the harmony of my life, and I should add nothing 
 worth adding to it by any other alliance. Besides, — my 
 liberty charms me. I might marry for a throne perhaps ; 
 but there are none vacant just now 1" 
 
 The levity and negligence of the reply grated cruelly 
 on him : — she spoke of wedding with the sovereigns of 
 the earth as though she were imperial born, to the man 
 but for whose charity she would have been left to beg- 
 gary and bastardy ! 
 
 " You speak in jest," he said gravely. " Such jests are 
 well enough in such a youth as yours, but if you have no 
 other creed with which to meet the weariness of waning 
 years and the loneliness of age, I pity you !" 
 
 " Pity me /" 
 
 She laughed in all the glory of her beauty, all the pleni- 
 tude of her power, all the rich and full sufficiency of her 
 existence ! 
 
 " Yes, I pity you," he answered her, with that accent 
 in his voice which had always stilled and moved her in 
 her childhood. " Even from women as beautiful as you, 
 time steals their charms; time brings satiety, lassitude, 
 envy, and the disappointment of dead hopes; time con- 
 fronts them with rivals, and takes the bloom from the 
 cheeks, and the light from the eyes, and t he gladness from 
 the soul: in those days of darkness it will be ill with you 
 if in the days of your youth you have only gained vani- 
 ties thai wither and ambitions thai cloy, if you have not 
 learned the sweetness and strength that lie in unselfish 
 love and impersonal thought. You reign now — ah, yes! 
 And 1 can well understand how your kingdom is so fair 
 that you never remember how time like the sea eats away 
 its bright shores, and how with each year it will grow less 
 — and less — and less, — when once the season of your 
 youth is passed. Hut what I fear for you, in your future, 
 are the bitterness and the solitude thai you will know, 
 if — having disdained the anchorage of love — you shall be
 
 442 TRICOT R IN, 
 
 left alone on the rock of your pride, when your kingdom 
 of beauty has sunk out of sight beneath the tide of the 
 devouring years." 
 
 The voice that she had known so well ; the poetic lan- 
 guage that had used to move her heart like music had 
 still their spell for her ; she listened, incredulous and un- 
 willing to be touched, yet stirred by the words against 
 her own desire. 
 
 But the spirit of rebellion, the habits of mockery in 
 her would not let her own to that reluctant emotion. 
 
 "You mistake very much, I think!" she said, negli- 
 gently. " I do not believe a woman's power so evanes- 
 cent ; when youth goes there is intellect left. J am little 
 of a student, — but the play of political power amuses me 
 well. As for love, — pray credit me! that may be the Al- 
 pha and Omega of provincial life, it is merely one among 
 a ) liousand other arts and distractions in the world that 
 I live in. You may hear it made the be-all and end-all 
 of existence at a peasant's bridal ; but it wears another 
 aspect in our drawing-rooms." 
 
 " I know. It is represented by vice, intrigue, ambi- 
 tion, and avarice! Madame de Lira — think me as harsh 
 as you will, — I confess that the courtesan, who dances in 
 the paint and tinsel of her wretched trade, is not in my 
 sight much the inferior of you great ladies, who wed 
 yourselves for gain, and intrigue for aggrandizement from 
 your bridal to your death-hour ! I am not sure, after all, 
 that when in your childhood I dissuaded you from en- 
 trance on an actress's career, I did not withhold you from 
 the more honest, if the less lucrative, position of the 
 two." * 
 
 She heard him in mute amaze, her eyes surveying with 
 a grand wrath the man who dared bring such bare truths 
 as these into her presence : who dared force the naked- 
 ness of an unpolished fact upon the elegant artifices of her 
 daily life. She said nothing ; but with a bow, in which 
 all her anger and all her dignity were mutely uttered, she 
 swept past him and out of the chamber. 
 
 " Can nothing teach him what I have become !" she 
 thought, with passionate forgetfulness of every other 
 thing than of her own eminence and sovereignty.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 443 
 
 It seemed to her almost a crime against her that a man 
 should live who held it in his power thus to arraign and 
 to insult her. 
 
 She forgot thai she had summoned him; she only, re- 
 membered that be had dared to speak to her — the truth. 
 
 When she had left him, he paced to and fro the deserted 
 room, with his head sunk upon his chest, and his heart 
 sick within him. 
 
 She had stung him far more deeply than she had 
 dnamed: she had dealt him a blow she had been all un- 
 conscious of striking. He had come to her bidding with 
 the gladness of a love eager to spend its loyalty in service, 
 with the unselfishness of a tenderness, oblivious of its 
 own claims, and grateful for mere remembrance; and he 
 had been only met with the name of Bstmere! 
 
 " Must he have all — even her thoughts!" he said, in 
 the bitterness of his soul. The time had been, — nay, the 
 lime was still, — when, thinking of tin career of the great 
 noble, lie had balanced its pain, its toil, its fretting ambi- 
 tions, its early dishonor, its surrender to the fetters of 
 public service against the freedom and the careless joys 
 of his own life, and had laughed as he felt how free was 
 the one from the cares of the other. Now for the first 
 time there arose that which he envied Estmere. 
 
 For, the love with which he had loved t he fair child who 
 had wandered with him through the illuminated streets 
 of the rejoicing city, — who had laughed with him among 
 the vineyards of her river-home, and danced for him with 
 the wild poppies in her hair, and sung to him as she 
 bounded aloft, upon the grape-press, — was love tenfold 
 more passionate, because tenfold more hopeless, for this 
 imperious ami peerless woman who would almost have 
 .-corned to yield her beauty even to a monarch's em- 
 brace.-. 
 
 A - he led her palace, the song so often on his lips was 
 silent ; his head, always so gallantly civet, was .-link; his 
 heart u a- heavy within him. 
 
 lie thought he had controlled this^weakness in him; — 
 but though passion when blessed with possession flic.- as 
 fast as the hues of tin' rainbow, — passion, whose only 
 food is pain, glows on and on, unblenched, like the red in
 
 444 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 an Egyptian sky, through the long years of di ought and 
 famine. 
 
 He bent his steps toward the religious hospital, where 
 a few nights before he had left the dying frame of his 
 enemy. 
 
 The words that he had lately spoken had recalled to 
 him a forgotten duty. 
 
 "Is it better with him?" he asked at the entrance- 
 gate. 
 
 " Scarcely. He will never recover, we think." 
 
 "I have three gold pieces on me ; all I have : will you 
 take them ?" 
 
 " Take them ? For this man ?" 
 
 "Yes — spend it for him in such fashion as seems 
 wisest to you ; I will bring more shortly. If it be possi- 
 ble, employ what I can bring, so that when he goes forth 
 once more to the world he may have a chance of purer 
 life, — if that can be." 
 
 " You know him ?" 
 
 " I know of him. " 
 
 "And you are his friend?" 
 
 "No. His foe." 
 
 " His foe ? And yet ? Well, it shall be as you 
 
 say." 
 
 "I thank you. All I desire is, — never let him learn 
 that it was I who brought him here, or that it is I who 
 do this thing. Give him no burden of gratitude save to 
 yourselves." 
 
 Then he turned away, and went on through the night 
 once more. 
 
 They were well used to him, and asked him no ques- 
 tions. 
 
 Since he had saved this miserable life from dissolution, 
 he deemed that he had a right to give it one added chance 
 to cleanse itself from crime. But the hate that he bore to 
 him as his enemy was none the less keen and burning, 
 because justice to him as a fallen wretch outweighed it. 
 " The thing which I should have done as just to a stran- 
 ger, must I do as none the less just to my foe," was the 
 principle which his actions followed. The laws of men 
 were not the laws of life. Yet, nevertheless, he could
 
 TIIE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY 445 
 
 have slain the Greek who lay yonder had he given rein 
 to his passion. 
 
 "And the woman lived who could forsake Estmere for 
 that Judas!" he mused as he paced the gloomy streets 
 backward to the gayer quarters of the city. "Truly 
 there are women who turn to evil as the swine to filth ; 
 and know no more than swine the pearls that lie beneath 
 their feet 1" 
 
 CHAPTER XLY. 
 
 In a by street, in an obscure quarter of Paris, there 
 dwelt an artist who had suddenly achieved fame — so sud- 
 denly that he had had no time to change his abode, to meet 
 his new visitant, Fortune, — a guest who has ever had 
 a carious habitude of changing the broken chairs, the 
 chipped pipe-trays, the lame- legged table, the lumber and 
 the poverty of a painter's work-room, into costly couches, 
 antique bronzes, ebony cabinets, eastern embroideries, 
 picturesque color, and luxurious ease, but who not unfre- 
 quently turns out with the old rubbish, a witch-stone that 
 she found there, called genius. Critics and connoisseurs 
 rarely, however, detect its absence. 
 
 This artist, Paul Lelis, was not young w r hen Fortune 
 suddenly bethought herself of him; and he clung to his 
 witch-stone; and he did not care to leave that old famil- 
 iar oook high under the roof, where he had spent so many 
 bohemian years — where he had known what it was to have 
 to lie in bed all day in winter to keep from perishing of 
 cohl, to have to scratch lilt le pictures for sweet in eat -ho xes 
 to -jet a mouthful of onions and bread ; to have to face a 
 
 dish without bread, a stove without warmth, a pipe with- 
 oul smoke, and still to keep the soul to create, alive and 
 annumbed, — where too he had known what it was to love 
 and have love, and see the brown eyes of his mistress 
 shine tenderly, though in a garret ; ami where, through 
 his lattice, he possessed so glorious a view over the roofs 
 
 38
 
 446 TRICOTRTN, 
 
 and the spires and the crowns of the trees, of the red gold 
 of the sunsets, and the pale gold of the dawns, and all 
 the marvelous, mystic, eternal loveliness of the 'ever- 
 changing clouds. 
 
 Lelis clung to his attic; being a strange man, and a 
 man of tenacious attachment, and a man of stubborn 
 will ; and since the world had taken the fancy to adore 
 him, he made it toil wearily and pantingly up the hun- 
 dred and twenty-two stairs to his room. Lelis had tar- 
 ried long enough in his time on the threshold of great 
 men's antechambers; it was his turn now to wait and 
 refuse to stir, and see them labor up his crooked, unsa- 
 vory, oil-lit stairway. And he would laugh grimly, stand- 
 ing at the top. 
 
 "I painted as well twenty years ago; why did you 
 not see it then IV was all that he said to his patrons. 
 
 Why did they not ? — and those tender brown eyes of 
 the mistress of his youth had grown dim and tired, and 
 closed in never-ending slumber, just because they had 
 never seen it, and there had been no food on the naked 
 shelf. 
 
 The world had come to him at last, because a great 
 man, chancing to fall on a little study of his, had recog- 
 nized the worth in it, and had groped his way through 
 the darkness to the attic; and, being one whose word was 
 powerful, and whose knowledge of art was undoubted, 
 had in time been followed to the garret by the world. 
 
 Lelis was grateful as a dog to the man ; but he was 
 cynical to the world. 
 
 "You are bitter, Lelis," said the personage who had 
 thus brought the world to his door. 
 
 "No; I am just," said the artist. "For you — you 
 had not seen my pictures till you lit on that little thing, 
 and came straight to me. But Paris — look you — Paris 
 has seen them through a score of years, and would find 
 no color in them, and no form, because her critics swore 
 that there were none. If it be the truth now that I can 
 paint, why have they lied all through these years ? tell 
 me that." 
 
 "Why? Because it is so much easier to repeat a par- 
 rot cry than to use the faculties of vision and judgment:
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 44 7 
 
 so much easier to damn with facile unanimity than to 
 bend the brain and the sight to the patience of investiga- 
 tion and appreciation!" 
 
 "That is true, whoever says it. "Who is with you, 
 Lelis ?" a voice called from the doorway. 
 
 Without awaiting an answer the new-comer pushed 
 the atelier door open, and entered. On the threshold he 
 paused, 'as though inclined to draw hack; hut the im- 
 pulse was conquered, and he came forward to where the 
 artist and his patron stood. 
 
 "It is my Lord Estmere," said Lelis, turning with 
 warm familiar greeting. 
 
 "So you have brought Fame to Lelis, my English 
 lord?" said Tricotrin, without ceremony. "That was a 
 good work of yours. She is a comet that has a strange 
 fancy only to come forth like a corpse-candle, and dance 
 over men's graves. It is her way. When men will have 
 her out in the noon of their youth, she kills them; ami 
 the painter's bier is set under his Transfiguration, and 
 the soldier's body is chained to the St. Helena rock, and 
 the poet's grave is made at Missolonghi. It is always 
 so." 
 
 Estmere bowed his head in assent; he was endeavor- 
 ing to remember where he had once met this stranger 
 who thus addressed him— where he had once heard these 
 mellow, ringing, harmonious accents. 
 
 "Was it because you were afraid of dying in your 
 prime, that you would never woo Fame then yourself?" 
 asked Lelis, with a smile. 
 
 "Oh-he!" answered Tricotrin, seating himself on a 
 deal box that served ;is a table, and whereat he and the 
 artisl had eaten many a meal of poasl chestnuts and black 
 coffee. "I never wanted her; .-he is a weather vane, 
 never still two moments; .-he is a spaniel that quits the 
 Plantagenel the momenl the battle goes againsl him, and 
 fawns on Bolingbroke ; she is an alchemist's crucible, that 
 has every fair and rich thing t brown into it. but will only 
 yield in return the calcined stone- of chagrin ami disap- 
 pointment ; .-he is a harlot, whose kisses are to lie bought, 
 and who runs after those who brawl the loude.-t and 
 swagger the finest in the world's market-places. No! I
 
 448 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 want nothing of her. My lord here condemned her as I 
 came in ; he said she was the offspring of echoing par- 
 rots, of imitative sheep, of fawning hounds. Who can 
 want the creature of such progenitors ?" 
 
 Estmere smiled. 
 
 " I do not think that I said anything of the kind. You 
 accredit me with your own ironies." 
 
 " Did you not ? Well — it was the deduction from your 
 words, at any rate. How fares my Dante?" 
 
 "The Dante!" echoed Estmere in surprise, and with 
 sudden remembrance. "Ah! I surely remember now; it 
 was you who made me the fortunate possessor of that 
 rare specimen of Attavante ?" 
 
 "A very polite phrase ; it was your own gold that 
 made you the possessor of it. Yes; I sold it to you. I 
 wonder you recollect it ; but great men have clearer 
 memories, I believe, than little busy-bodies. The book 
 lives still ?" 
 
 "Certainly; in my library atVilliers." 
 
 "He sold his Dante?" asked Lelis. "He and I have 
 known what hunger and cold mean, both of us. The 
 kingdom of Bohemia has other sides to it than the side 
 that humorists sketch, and that poets portray. The 
 dance, the song, the laugh; the holiday in the woods, 
 waltz in the cabaret, the romp in the orchard, — it has 
 them indeed ; but then no less has it also the tireless 
 stove, the soupless platter, the winter nights of starva- 
 tion, the dull stupid misery staring out of a garret win- 
 dow to watch the lights being lit in the palace over the 
 
 river." 
 
 "Bagatelle!" cried Tricotrin, "if we are true bohe- 
 mians we stamp our feet in the snow till we are warm, 
 we read Rabelais till we forget to be hungry, and we look 
 up at the winter planets, and think how pale they make 
 the palace gas look. Bah, Lelis! — has fame already 
 turned you renegade ?" 
 
 "If Bohemia do indeed make such philosophers of its 
 subjects, it must have been as deeply wronged by the 
 world's construction as the Epicurean doctrines !" said 
 Estmere, with that mixture of contempt and wonder,.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 449 
 
 which a man of his character and of bis order feels for 
 the disciples of the religion of "rire, et ne rien faire." 
 
 "Nay," said Tricotrin, "I will not profess for it as Lu- 
 cretius does of Epicureanism, that in reality it consists of 
 renunciation. But I believe, on the whole, its followers 
 bear deprivation better than most followers of other 
 deities, — which may be the second best thing perhaps. 
 But you can know and tell nothing of it, Lord Estmere ; 
 it is a world you have never entered 1" 
 
 "I can endure my exclusion 1" 
 
 " I will warrant you can ; but, nevertheless, if you had 
 entered once in awhile, you might have learned a few 
 things useful perhaps; and you might have unlearned the 
 only thing that mars your character and your career, to 
 my fancy." 
 
 "You do my character and my career much honor by 
 making them the objects of your study." 
 
 Tricotrin smiled: the sarcasm did not sting him. 
 
 "I study most things, after my own fashion," he said, 
 carelessly. "Though, to be sure, an English Eupatrid 
 like you is a little too cold and costly a crystal, may be, 
 and comes from too high a glacier to lit well into a bohe- 
 mian's microscope. And. in truth, I like you better for 
 your loyalty to your Order; it becomes you. The Opt i- 
 mate flattering the Populares, because he fears the deluge, 
 is the most pitiable spectacle that the world holds. I like 
 your exclusivism better." 
 
 " I am happy to merit and receive your approbation 1" 
 said Estmere, with his delicate < tempt. 
 
 "You think a bohemian should not even venture to 
 praise a Btatesman?" laughed Tricotrin. "Oh, I know 
 tin! temper of yours so well ; — it just does what it sees 
 lit and deema becoming its royalty; and cares not two 
 straws whether 1 he nations shoul exultation or execration 
 after its acts. You would go to the guillotine as yon 
 would receive your country's stars ami crosses, — with 
 jii-i the same indifference, with jusl the same conviction 
 thai neither decapitation nor decoration could add any- 
 thing to, or take anything from, your dignity!" 
 
 Estmere glanced at him with some wonder, and with 
 
 38*
 
 450 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 more distaste ; and, without reply, turned t® examine 
 some sketches that leaned against the wall. 
 
 Among them was a little pine wood panel, on which 
 was painted the head of a child of some fourteen years, 
 with a red hood half over her curls, and her eyes gazing 
 out, as if into the future, half smiling, half awed, with 
 eagerness, with rapture, and with a tinge of fear. 
 
 " That is very lovely," he said, as he turned it to the 
 light. " It is yours, Lelis, of course ?" 
 
 " The thing belongs to me," interrupted Tricotrin, 
 quickly. "And it is not for sale." 
 
 " Perhaps you can oblige me with the name of the ar- 
 tist ?" 
 
 " No I He wants no patronage." 
 
 The answer was curt and ungracious. Estmere laid 
 the panel down as he heard. 
 
 " Whoever painted it must have genius." 
 
 " Genius !" interrupted Tricotrin. "Pooh! What is 
 genius ? Only the power to see a little deeper and a little 
 clearer than most other people. That is all." 
 
 " The power of vision ? Of course. But that renders 
 it none the less rare." 
 
 "Oh, yes, it is rare — rare like kingfishers, and sand- 
 pipers, and herons, and black eagles. And so men al- 
 ways shoot it down, as they do the birds, and stick up 
 the dead body in glass cases, and label it, and stare at it, 
 and bemoan it as ' so singular,' having done their best to 
 insure its extinction I" 
 
 Estmere looked keenly at him. 
 
 " Surely genius that secretes itself as your friend's 
 must do," he said, touching the panel afresh, "commits 
 suicide, and desires its own extinction ?" 
 
 "Pshaw !" said Tricotrin, impatiently, and with none of 
 his habitual courtesy. " You think the kingfisher and the 
 black eagle have no better thing to live for than to become 
 the decorations of a great personage's glass cabinets ? 
 You think genius can find no higher end than to furnish 
 frescoes and panelings for a nobleman's halls and ante- 
 chambers ? You mistake very much ; the mistake is a 
 general one in your Order. But believe me, the king- 
 fisher enjoys his brown moorland stream, and his tufts of
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 45 1 
 
 green rushes, and his water-swept bough of hawthorn ; 
 the eagle enjoys his wild rocks, and his sweep through 
 the air, and his steady gaze at the sun that blinds all hu- 
 man eves ; — and neither ever imagine that the great men 
 below pity them because they are not stuffed, and labeled, 
 and praised by rule in their palaces ! And genius is much 
 of the birds' fashion of thinking. It lives its own life ! 
 and is not, as you connoisseurs are given to fancy, 
 wretched unless you see fit in your graciousness to deem 
 it worth the glass-case of your criticism, and the straw- 
 stuffing of your gold. For it knows, as kingfisher and 
 eagle know also, that stuffed birds nevermore use their 
 wings, and are evermore subject to be bought and be 
 sold." 
 
 An answering sarcasm rose to Estmere's lips — he had 
 seen the vultures of genius, deeming themselves eagles, 
 ofttimes so ravenous for his gold! — but he checked it, 
 for he remembered that both these men were poor, that 
 neither was his equal. lie laid aside the panel once 
 more in silence, and, with a farewell to the painter Lelis 
 and a bend of his head to the stranger, passed from the 
 room. 
 
 "You were surely rude to him, Tricotrin," said the 
 artist, as the door closed. 
 
 " I might be so." 
 
 " lint why should you be so ? He is a man whom one 
 can honor with sincerity ; he is generous without osten- 
 tation, full of infinite thought for others, and has the ten- 
 derness of a lover, not the condescension of a patron, for 
 all Art." 
 
 " I do not dispute his high qualil ies ; but he is safe to 
 lie surfeited with sycophants, a rough word can do him 
 no harm. As Car a- I know aught of him, he prefers an 
 acid truth to a sugared lie." 
 
 " lint why V70uld you qo1 let him learn thai you painted 
 that little Stud} '."' 
 
 "To what use? 1 once Mild him a book. He would 
 never have understood that 1 would not .-ell him a pic- 
 ture. .Moreover — you know well enough I am a king- 
 fisher, and 1 like m\ brook to lie quiet. It' m\ lord there 
 once took it into his fancy to point me out to his world.
 
 452 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 my brook would be forever muddy with the feet of 
 gazers, and forever choked up with the purses they 
 would fling at me. Art is my tuft of rushes, my wild 
 hawthorn bough, that lend me shade and sweetness. I 
 do not want to be asked to vend them at so much a blade, 
 at so much a blossom !" 
 
 And he threw a cloth over the panel, and put it under 
 his arm, and crossed over to the easel. 
 
 Lelis said no more. He knew the temper of his friend ; 
 and he did not know that any memory endeared this lit- 
 tle portrait of the child in her scarlet hood. He had 
 been away in Egypt at the autumn season when the 
 bright eyes of the Waif had first gazed upon Paris ; and 
 of her Tricotrin never spoke. 
 
 Estmere meantime went out to where his horse waited, 
 and passed on to pursue his visits to various houses 
 where painters, obscure, poor, some young, some old, but 
 all unable to seize the world in that mood which gives 
 fame to those who know how to strike the hot iron aright, 
 lived in that misery of the physical life, and that su- 
 premacy of the mental life, which are at once the curse 
 and the blessing of such men's existence. 
 
 Estmere was well known to the whole art-world for 
 the patience with which he would seek out buried talents ; 
 for the delicacy and discrimination which tempered in 
 him the connoisseur's ofttimes too pitiless science ; for 
 the munificence and graceful generosity wherewith his 
 gifts and his aids were invariably given. Though cold, 
 contemptuous, negligent, and keen of satire, with his 
 equals, to men of genius who lived in poverty he was 
 ever gentle, cordial, tolerant of all prejudice, and skilled 
 at rendering his assistance in such fashion that he never 
 made them conscious of their debt. 
 
 Some time elapsed in the visits that he paid; it was 
 much later in the day when he rode through the quarter 
 on his homeward way. In one of its tortuous streets his 
 farther passage was blocked by a throng of people who 
 had poured out from the wineshops, the masons' yards, 
 the miserable houses near, and congregated in one nar- 
 row way before a stone-worker's little court, which in its 
 turn was filled by a dense, close-packed, screaming mob.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 453 
 
 It was the fashion to flock to Lelis, who was at that 
 moment the chief theme of Paris; and two or three 
 equipages were arrested, like himself, by this frantic and 
 tumultuous crowd, against which outriders and equerries 
 vainly thrust their animals, and lifted their whips. 
 
 "What is it?" he asked : his servants answered him 
 that it was a mere nothing: — a rope had given way in a 
 well which they were clearing, and had precipitated a 
 workman seventy feet into the choke-damp and water: — 
 that was all: the populace was always so excitable, so 
 noisy about nothing. That their lord should be delayed, 
 merely because a stone-mason was drowning in a dead 
 well, was intolerable, was ridiculous. 
 
 " It is you who make revolutions!" thought Estmere, 
 as he heard his attendants' mockery of their own class, 
 and strove in vain to force his horse against the press. 
 There was a louder cry going up from the throats of the 
 street crowd: in its uproar he could hear the words — 
 "Tricot rin I" 
 
 "Who is it that is hurt?" he asked of an art student 
 nearest him: the lad replied readily: 
 
 " The stone-mason has fallen — of course: but it is Tri- 
 cotrin who is gone down to save him; it is Tricotrin we 
 are anxious about." 
 
 " He will find but a corpse; and he will never come up 
 alive himself!' cried a black-browed woman of the fish- 
 marts: her dark, hard, coarse features working with 
 Btrong emotion. "1 know what that well is: — my father 
 was killed there thirty years ago. It is full of poison." 
 
 "They wanted to lower a dog down to see if the beast 
 could live in the air!" cried the shrill piping voice of a 
 linker's boy. "But Tricotrin would not have it so; he 
 said we had no business to imperil a poor brute that 
 could not Bpeak for itself; he called it cowardly to put a 
 cur in a place we were afraid of ourselves 1" 
 
 " Silence, silence 1" shouted a score of voices. " Wc 
 cannol hear what they are Baying in the yardl" 
 
 What they were saying in the yard, — in broken tem- 
 pestuous outcries, — was that they hail left fifty yards of 
 cord out over the windlass, and both men were still at 
 the bottom.
 
 454 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 "Is he dead?" shrieked the mob outside, in a frantic 
 paroxysm of terror. 
 
 " Is he dead ?" echoed a woman's voice, with a thrill 
 in it that froze the hearts of every hearer of it. Estmere, 
 absorbed, like the people, in listening for the answer from 
 the little courtway and in watching the violent gesticula- 
 tions and useless movements of the throng within it, 
 started and turned his head. At his side stood an open 
 equipage, glittering in all the panoply of rank ; in it its 
 owner had risen, and the haughty beauty of her face was 
 rigid and colorless and strained with horror. He rec- 
 ognized the face of the Duchess de Lira. 
 
 " She has a soul in her, — for she has pity," he thought, 
 touched by that terror on a countenance commonly so 
 dazzling and so chill — a terror for the physical hazard of 
 an unknown man, for the beating hearts of a plebeian 
 crowd, for simple tragedies of daily life, as he believed it. 
 
 At that moment a loud moan came from the throng 
 within the little court. 
 
 " Do ye hear?" cried the fishwoman, mad with emo- 
 tion, and struggling upward till she had set her bare feet 
 upon the motionless carriage-wheel in such fashion as 
 gave her nearer sight. " That was how they moaned 
 when they dragged my father up dead! Hark what they 
 say, — all the rope is run out, and it is as dark as pitch in 
 the pit, — the choke-damp has killed the light that he 
 carried !" 
 
 The cry shuddered through the people. 
 
 The light was out ! Was all hope over ? 
 
 The slender fair hand of the patrician woman clinched 
 the brown, brawny arm of the fishgirl in an unconscious 
 gesture : in the instinctive sympathy of the same fear, 
 the same love, the same anguish. 
 
 An awful hush fell upon the crowd, — alone, and raised 
 above the others, the two women stood side by side, with 
 scarcely one touch of common sex or common humanity 
 betwixt them in their vast divergence, yet made as one 
 in that brief moment by the unison of dread, by the lev- 
 eler of grief. 
 
 Then from the press within the yard a shout of wild 
 joy echoed : joy hysterical, triumphant, adoring. The
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAT. 455 
 
 rope had curled a hundred times back again over the 
 windlass ; they had drawn him upward to the fairness of 
 the day; he was living, — he was unhurt, — he had spoken 
 to them, — his light was out indeed, but it had only fallen 
 in the water, because he had loosed his hold on it to seize 
 the lost man's body, and bear it up to the living world. 
 He was safe ! — and even the mason whom he had rescued 
 might still live also. The crowd went mad with ecstasy, 
 and all the infectious strength of heroism ; as it had gone 
 mad a moment earlier with pity and with fear. 
 
 Thus ardently will the high daring of one man w r ork on, 
 and fuse, and melt, and set alight tha sluggish, apathetic, 
 selfish mass of human lives. 
 
 The aristocrat in her carriage sank silently downward 
 among her cushions, her face was white to the lips; and 
 she trembled violently. 
 
 The fish woman flushed a deep red over her tawny 
 skin, and muttered a curse in the jargon of her tirade, and 
 bent over her creel that had got shaken and half emptied 
 in the crush* 
 
 Estmere had never withdrawn his gaze from the face 
 of the woman whom he had condemned as so cold an 
 egotist, so heartless a coquette; and whom he now lie- 
 held thus moved by what he deemed were sympathy and 
 compassion for unknown and imperiled lives. Some 
 wonder touched him at the strength of the emotion that 
 he saw in her : but it was outweighed by the attraction 
 which tin- pain, and pity, and infinite fear, softening thai 
 dazzling countenance, possessed for him; imagining 
 t In in as he did to be horn from that mere human sorrow 
 for human suffering' which erentle-natured women feel for 
 the calamity of a stranger, for the pang of the lowest 
 creature upon earth. He Went to her, and addressed her 
 with a more tender accenl in his voice than she had ever 
 heard: >\^ started as his word.- fell on her ear, and 
 answered him hurriedly, — 
 
 "111? No, 1 ail nothing. I thank you much. This 
 sceue has shockedme: thai is all. Can you learn for 
 me, — how it is really with him? " 
 
 '• With the man who fell ?" 
 
 "No! With the man who saved him! Is heroism
 
 456 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 so common in this self-absorbed and brutalized age of 
 ours that we shall do it no homage, show it no interest ?" 
 
 " I honor it as greatly as .you can do," he answered 
 her gently, and with some surprise. " I will go at once, 
 and see him myself, if possible." 
 
 He went, and as quickly as he could, having dis- 
 mounted, forced his way into the court. She sat breath- 
 less and motionless ; her mouth was parched, her brain 
 throbbed, her limbs quivered, — in that hour all the long- 
 buried, long-forgotten memories of her childhood, and all 
 the love she had once borne the savior of her life, awoke 
 in passionate remorse. She was so base, so low, so cow- 
 ardly in her own sight : — these people, these creatures of 
 the cellar, and the wineshop, and the fish-mart, and the 
 timber-yard were true to him, were loyal to him, dared 
 show their fealty to him and their fears for him. But 
 she! — she who scorned dastards, and loathed liars with 
 all the force of a proud and fearless temper, sat silent, and 
 motionless, and stirred not to welcome him from out the 
 jaws of death! ( t . 
 
 The fishwoman, shouldering afresh her huge creel, 
 looked curiously at this " aristocrat," who had been joined 
 with her for one instant in the communion of terror. 
 
 " She must care for him, — in some fashion," she mused. 
 " Her great eyes looked all blind and mad. They say 
 these cold, dainty things in their palaces, sometimes, — 
 well ! she is the first of them I have not hated." 
 
 The subject of her thoughts, with a sudden impulse, 
 leant to her with a score of gold pieces in her hand. 
 
 " Your merchandise is half lost," she said hurriedly. 
 " Let me put these in your basket in their stead." 
 
 The fishwoman fastened her black ruthless eyes on 
 her as the eyes of her ancestress might have fastened on 
 the white, haughty loveliness of Marie Antoinette. 
 
 " I have not earned your money. I do not want it," 
 she said, curtly. " But I like you, though you are one of 
 them; — you care for Tricotrin." 
 
 She shouldered her creel and went. 
 
 The Duchess de Lira leaned back in her carriage very 
 pale still, and with a quiver in her curling, haughty
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 457 
 
 mouth. The words struck to her heart like a blow of 
 steel. 
 
 "That woman is nobler than I!" she thought, bitterly. 
 " She is not ashamed of what she feels for him, — she can 
 dare to have sincerity!" 
 
 Estmere returning, approached her again through the 
 swiftly-dispersing crowd. 
 
 " You have seen him ?" she asked, feverishly, with a 
 curious apprehension of what evil she scarcely could have 
 told. 
 
 " No : I regret to say I found it impossible to obey 
 your wishes and my own," he answered her. " This 
 hero of the populace must be of a strange temper, and of 
 a very noble one. lie was no sooner safe above ground, 
 they say, than he dived into a house, and disappeared 
 through its back ways into some adjoining lane, to escape 
 the eulogy and the adoration of the people. The mason 
 whom he went down to save is breathing and can speak; 
 there is no doubt of his recovery. It was a noble rescue : 
 I regret more than I can say, not to have been in time to 
 arresl the actor in it." 
 
 "If he be gone so swiftly he can have no hurt?" she 
 asked with a deep quick breath. 
 
 " None. It seems that he is of a singular strength and 
 agility: such men escape where weaklings or fools would 
 perish. And now, shall we move from this throng? 
 Where is it that you desire to go?" 
 
 She endeavored to smile as she answered him : 
 
 "I was about to visit your wonderful Lelis. But the 
 noise of this crowd has made me disinclined for any- 
 thing save quietude. I will return to my hotel, if you 
 please." 
 
 lie assented, and rode beside her carriage through the 
 long and various roads that led from that poor and ob- 
 scure neighborhood to her gates. 
 
 The color was still blanched from her face, and she was 
 both graver and gentler than her wont; hut to him she 
 had never been so Beducl i\ e. 
 
 "She has feeling in her. I did her wrong," he mused; 
 and his najturc was one which ever led him, in view of an 
 
 39
 
 458 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 injustice done, to make even too full and too generous an 
 amends. 
 
 As he left her at her own residence, and went home- 
 ward himself, his thoughts lingered over the scene which 
 had touched her thus deeply. 
 
 " Tricotrin ? — Tricotrin?" he murmured. " Tricotrin ? 
 I have heard that word somewhere. Surely it is the 
 name or the pseudonym of that man whom I spoke with 
 to-day ; of that man who once sold me my Dante ?" 
 
 And he felt a certain regret jffor, toward the hero who 
 had gone down into the foul air and poisonous perils of 
 the well in the stone-yard, he felt the attraction of one 
 courageous temper to another ; but toward the bohemian 
 who had treated him with such unceremonious familiarity 
 on that morning, he felt the aversion of a haughty and 
 exclusive Order for a class in which all that it deems 
 most perilous and most lawless are embodied. 
 
 " They are strange men — these Ishmaels of social life," 
 he thought. " They will plunge into all the chances of a 
 horrible death to rescue some fellow-creature from a tomb, 
 or share it with him if his delivery be impossible ; and 
 yet they will beguile, and lead, and drag, and goad hun- 
 dreds of those poor, ignorant, blind wild-beasts of the 
 populace to be mowed down at barricades and in street 
 riots, on the mere impulse of a rabid hatred of Class, on 
 the mere chimera of that ' Universal Equality' which 
 every law of nature and of science proves an impossibility 
 — a monstrosity that would be found utterly untenable if 
 it ever could even be reached and essayed!" 
 
 As he thus mused of a theme so different, there drifted 
 back into his thoughts, by some untraceable connection, 
 the memory of the little portrait he had seen of the child 
 in the scarlet hood. 
 
 He recollected what fugitive intangible likeness it had 
 been which had attracted him in the golden, bright, 
 tender-hued picture — it was a likeness to the woman from 
 whom he had that hour parted. 
 
 Though the face of a gipsy child, yet surely it had a 
 look like this scornful court beauty, this omnipotent 
 Duchess de Lira
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 459 
 
 "That man must have, himself, been the artist," mused 
 Estmere. " J will ask Lelis of him." 
 
 Cut when he asked Lelis he found that the painter 
 could tell him bu1 little. 
 
 " Tricotrin ?" said Lelis, " Tricotrin ? Yes : it is surely 
 his name, my Lord Estmere. And why should it nol be? 
 We have odd names among- us; odder than that. Of 
 Tricotrin I know nothing: except the one thing — that I 
 have loved him for far over twenty years. We are not 
 given to the asking of credentials, to the taking of pass- 
 portoS; we ofBohemia. Be may spring from sovereigns; 
 he may come from cobblers; 1 cannot tell you. Of a 
 surety I never asked him. 
 
 " We mei firsl of all at a Wirthaus in Bavaria. 1 forget 
 where exactly ; but in one of those pretty quaint villages 
 toward the Tyrol. There was a big brawny man \ 
 a box of fantoccini, and there was a slender dark girl, 
 with a tambourine, whose duly it was to play while the 
 puppets danced. There was a little black monkey, starved, 
 frightened, miserable; ordered to dance also, and shiver- 
 ing and moaning piteously, instead of dancing 
 
 " The bigman thrashed the little monkey till il shrieked; 
 the girl wept, and then the man heat her. Tricotrin and 
 1 were sitting in the wooden gallery over the door, taking 
 our wine. Be saw all this, and down he leapt from tin; 
 porch, right over the rails and the vine; got the stick 
 from the man, and collared him, and belabored him till 
 he swore and screamed as onh a Roman could do. Then 
 he Hung the wretch into the river; a brawling, foaming, 
 shallow stream, that wetted him to the skin. Then he 
 lifted the monkey up in his arms, caressed it, talked to it. 
 took off its little dress, and came up again t>> the gallery, 
 and .-at down lo his walnuts and wine. 
 
 ''The Roman made a horrible outcry below ; Tricotrin 
 looked over the wooden rail and threw him a doubloon. 
 
 "• Brute, 1 aid lie. ' 1 will come down and give you 
 another beating, il' you desire it; also another ducking, 
 with readiness. Hut have your monkey again you never 
 will. There is its value as a marketable thing; of any 
 other value you know naught • II' you have wisdom you 
 will betake yourself to some other hostelry.'
 
 4G0 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 " The man slunk off, pocketing his doubloon, and Trico- 
 trin kept his monkey. That is how I came to know him 
 first. I thought that scene better warranty of his char- 
 acter than a banker's certificate. But then we bohemians 
 have queer notions." 
 
 CHAPTER XLVI. 
 
 The stone-mason, lying in the narrow hospital bed, 
 with broken limbs and bruised body, unhappy in his 
 thoughts, and fast fretting himself to fever over the 
 coming destitution of his wife and children through the 
 many weeks wherein he would be unfit for labor, was 
 made happy by news which came to him. News that a 
 great lady, who had chanced to witness the accident from 
 her carriage, had sent her people to say that she would 
 charge herself with all the needs of his family during 
 such time as he should be incapable of labor, and after 
 also if they needed it. 
 
 The man was a tough republican, a communist to the 
 core, one who had been in troubles of the barricades, and 
 who had tasted prison fare more than once for the too 
 trunk and sturdy utterance of his opinions over the black 
 coffee and the domino-table of his evening haunt. But 
 he swore a great oath, with the tears falling like rain down 
 his cheeks, and muttered : 
 
 "I will never say one word against the aristocrats 
 again 1 They will have bread, do you hear? my little 
 ones will have bread!" 
 
 For the great revolutionist of Hunger, who preaches 
 with a force so frightful and an illogical eloquence that 
 the dullest can comprehend, had been his chief political 
 teacher : and had bade him take a pike because he could 
 not lay his hand on a loaf. 
 
 The servants of Estmere, sent to inquire what could be 
 done for the family of this injured workman, brought him 
 word that they had been forestalled by a few minutes
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 4fil 
 
 only; all that the poor people wanted would be supplied to 
 them by the Duchess de Lira — a support much needed, for 
 the wife was infirm of health, and lame, and there were 
 more children than generally crowd around a French labor- 
 er's table, to share its sour bread and meager onion soup. 
 
 "She must have a noble temper ; I may have done her 
 wrong," he thought once again. 
 
 Was it possible that behind this woman's dazzling ex- 
 travagance, and egotism, and vanities, and vagaries, and 
 semblance of utter heedlessness and heartlessness, there 
 were hidden such gracious and generous things of mercy, 
 and of pity as was this? 
 
 It seemed only just to think so. lie was willing to 
 believe i\ ; he did believe. And a danger that had never 
 been in her before for him, gave her peril for him now. 
 
 She might be callous only because none had known 
 how to awaken her heart. She had been wedded so 
 young to an unloved lord: (his in itself was so dire a 
 temptation. She was flattered by fools, who weakened 
 her reason, while i hey heated and si rengthened her errors 
 and her foibles. She was surrounded by an atmosphere 
 so artificial, by a homage so deteriorating, by influences 
 so dangerous both morally and mentally. 
 
 There was so much excuse for her faults and follies, 
 for her cruelties and egotisms; who could tell how fair 
 and sweet a nature might not wake into life, if — she 
 loved ? 
 
 So he mused, with fanciful conjectures; fancies wholly 
 unlike his grave, sarcastic, and skeptical intelligence, but 
 characteristic of every man attracted by a woman, whose 
 sorceries charm him while his reason condemns her. 
 
 He commenced a study thai was the mosl hazardous 
 tribute to her power he could haw rendered; he com- 
 menced the study of her temperament, of her action 
 her heart. Oftentimes when she resented the neglect he 
 was guilty of toward her. the silence he preserved in her 
 presence, the indifference with which he remained apart 
 while others crowded around her, .-he. and she alone, oc- 
 cupied his thoughts that were intenl on analyzing her 
 ironies, scanning her coquetries, ami weighing the chaj 
 ful indices of her anomalous vagaries. 
 
 3!)*
 
 402 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 He saw much that repelled, much that offended, much 
 that alienated him, in her: but he also saw much that 
 irresistibly beguiled him, and much that seemed to him 
 to tell of a dormant soul, which only slumbered because 
 none had known' aright how to stir it from its indolent 
 sleep. 
 
 "There should be a fine nature there; with such eyes 
 as those no woman, surely, can be soulless," he mused, 
 as he glanced at her one night, at one of the many houses 
 where they were in the habitude of meeting. 
 
 "Of what were you thinking, Lord Estmere, when 
 you looked at me so keenly an hour ago ?" she asked of 
 him, later on, when he took for a moment a seat beside 
 her. 
 
 "It would be to risk your anger to answer frankly." 
 
 "And any other than a frank reply you would not give? 
 Of how few of the men that I know could I say the same ! 
 Well, — answer me candidly then: hazard my anger." 
 
 He leaned slightly nearer to her : a cantata that was 
 being sung by the most famous singers of Paris prevented 
 their words reaching the ears of any around them. 
 
 "My thoughts then were — could a woman with so 
 much poetry in her face as Madame de Lira carries in 
 hers, be as utterly given over to the vanities, the artifices, 
 and the egotism of her world, as the whole tenor of her 
 life, acts, and words, would lead one to infer?" 
 
 "You but wonder what I wonder, also!" she said with 
 an accent in the answer which left no doubt of its sin- 
 cerity. "We women, I think, have poetry on our lips, 
 poetry sometimes in our faces; but we have hard, bitter, 
 bad prose in our hearts — the passionless calculating prose 
 of avarice, of self-love, of insatiable ambition!" 
 
 "Nay — you at least must have something higher than 
 this, or you would not lay blame to yourself?" 
 
 "Why? May not one see one's own sin, even when 
 one is saturated through and through with it? A man 
 murders ; but 1 do not believe he ever ceases to see 
 bloodshed as hateful. So we murder our higher natures, 
 but, if we have anything of conscience left in us, we know 
 that the slaughter is criminal." 
 
 "You have not killed yours if you still regret it ?"
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 4G3 
 
 "How can you tell? I can scarcely tell myself. I have 
 not killed it? No! By such a subtle euphuism as thai 
 by which Byzantine sovereigns swore they had not killed 
 their predecessors, when they had only smote their eyes 
 to blindness, and sealed their lives down in dung-eons! 1 ' 
 
 He regarded her earnestly. 
 
 "You have not killed it. With you the prison-bars 
 will be loosed, and the blinded eyes will see the light, 
 when " 
 
 "When what?" 
 
 " When you shall love." 
 
 The graveness and the sadness of his voice made the 
 words far more impressive than if they had been uttered 
 in the accenl of a lover. They were passionless and 
 melancholy, strangely contrasting with the gayety, the 
 brilliancy, and the levity of the palace-scene around 
 
 them. 
 
 She heard, with a sense of proud joy, that she had 
 thus compelled even from him the homage of interesl and 
 warning; also with a vague sense of wonder why the 
 speeeh of this man — who in all things was most utterly 
 dissimilar to him — brought hack on her thoughts, and 
 carried with them the same influence as the utterances 
 of Tricotrin. 
 
 " Pardon me the freedom of speech.*" pursued Estmere, 
 with a slight weary smile. "By the years which are 
 between us, I may use a latitude of phrase that would 
 be denied to others younger and more fortunate, although 
 privileged. You asked for my candor; I have given 
 it. 1 believe that much softness, which you now abjure, 
 will awaken in you when love shall have been taught to 
 you." 
 
 Ber eyes clouded, and gleamed impatientlj under their 
 languid lid- and curling lashes. She was incensed at the 
 care with which he had hastened to disclaim for his words 
 the look of any amorous meaning, ami to indicate that 
 he left the sweet task of teaching such lessons of h>\ e to 
 all others who might choose to take it. 
 
 "Love!" .-he echoed, with a lighl laugh. "1 have 
 said often before, — 1 am tired of only hearing the word ! 
 I ha\ ( no want of it, no belief in it !"
 
 464 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 ♦'That was my conclusion." 
 
 "And you tell me so in a tone that is in itself a rebuke! 
 Love ? — the gipsies of Hugo, the sentimentalists of Goethe, 
 the rhapsodists of Shelley, may make it the god of their 
 being; but we — we who have the world — can look on it 
 at most as only a toy, a distraction, a thing to blow with 
 each breeze like the child's paper windmill !" 
 
 His eyes never changed from their grave study of her. 
 Jle answered her calmly: 
 
 "I imagined you held those views. What I said was 
 that, when you think differently, then, and then only, will 
 that higher and gentler nature I spoke of arise in you ; 
 if — you possess it. But since you look thus upon love, 
 is it well or merciful on your part to do your very utter- 
 most, as you habitually do, to awaken it everywhere, and 
 everywhere inflame it to its greatest strength, and devo- 
 tion, and folly ?" 
 
 She tossed her golden head backward with a magnifi- 
 cent audacity of consciousness. ■ 
 
 "Would you have me veil my face, then, in pity to 
 mankind ?" 
 
 He smiled at the arrogance of this vanity: a smile that 
 she could not translate. 
 
 " Perhaps, you save some as effectually as though you 
 veiled it, when you succeed in proving to them that with 
 that beauty there goes no heart ! If I be discourteous, 
 pardon me; you desired candor." 
 
 "And your candor, like most other candor, appears to 
 be only — Condemnation !" 
 
 She spoke with bitterness ; she was so deeply galled 
 by this second sentence, in which he had conveyed to her 
 that, however perilous to others, she was free of peril 
 to him. 
 
 Estmere smiled again. 
 
 "Poor candor! It is never right. If agreeable, it is 
 denounced as flattery; if distasteful, it is slighted as 
 censure !" 
 
 He left her side soon afterward at the conclusion of the 
 cantata; left her to a vivid, heartsick, impatient sense of 
 powerlessness to move, or touch, or win him, such as 
 never before had been known among her countless and
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 405 
 
 effortless victories: a restless, angered, despairing knowl- 
 edge thai he held her in doubt, in condemnation, almost 
 in contempt, and that he had told her, almost openly, that 
 for him she possessed no allurement. 
 
 Ee had humiliated her, and deeply angered her; but 
 he had attained more influence over her, more attraction 
 for her, than he had exercised before; and, despite the 
 limitless faith she felt in her own omnipotence, she did 
 not divine that Estmere himself had thought — 
 
 "She is right perhaps! To have love withheld from 
 her, even bv the coldest and the wisest, her face had need 
 to remain unseen !" 
 
 Nevertheless, although he acknowledged this, he lin- 
 gered in ill' 1 place where that face me1 his sight or was 
 recalled to his memory, with every day which brought 
 the sea of carriages rolling through the sunlight of the 
 st reets. with e\ eiy night which filled the elm in hers of the 
 palaces with banquet, or ceremonial, or festivity. 
 
 And he saw her beauty at its height, her nature at its 
 w orst. 
 
 Unguarded now by the care of her lost husband's ten- 
 derness, which had in other years so sedulously sheltered 
 her from any peril, she was free to follow to their wildest 
 extravagance her own caprices and desires. 
 
 She had been left at perfect freedom; no rein remained 
 on her will or her Fancy. 
 
 Those who had the trust of her properties were two 
 aged men of high rank and courtly breed, who were 
 speedily contenl to see all things through her e\ 
 There was no sort of check upon the indulgence of that 
 intense passion for gorgeous display, sensuous pomp, and 
 ever-varying distraction, which she — with the soul in her 
 of the Wait' and Stray — never wearied of enjoying to its 
 rmost abandonment. They told her, in some alarm, 
 that with ten years of such expenditure of hers even the 
 
 massive fortunes, on which she had entered, would be 
 
 dissipated by the ceaseless .-train. She laughed. To a, 
 
 woman, who knew I hat she could select auot her lord from 
 princes it she chose upon the morrow, the threat of future 
 ruin was only a gay grotesque jest. 
 
 All that she did was done in an exquisite harmony, re-
 
 406 TRICOT1! 1 X, 
 
 finement, and elegance of taste; because there was in her 
 that innate sense of fitness, and of beauty, which had in 
 her childhood made every coarse tone, or motley hue, 
 irritating- and painful to her; and which had led her, un- 
 consciously, to arrange her very wild flowers in blending 
 colors that would have charmed a painter's love of pure 
 and sympathetic tones. 
 
 Though reared in poverty, she had been reared in such 
 a manner as cultured and fostered all this delicacy of ar- 
 tistic feeling, and instinct for symmetrical form, to its fall 
 development. Where this sense once lives, it is imper- 
 ishable ; and makes the mind which it pervades incapa- 
 ble of doing it an outrage. It forces the Roman beggar 
 te fling his rags around him with the dignity of a toga; it 
 impels the Campagna model to fold her nude limbs into 
 the sublime repose of a Phydian statue. 
 
 But for all that, she loosed herself to the sweet exercise 
 of her power in every imaginable form of extravagance 
 and of display. The exaggerated luxuries, the inordinate 
 splendor, the wanton waste that are characteristic of the 
 age, of the world, of the city, in which she lived, reached 
 in her their greatest height. The old half-barbaric pas- 
 sion for the visible witnesses of wealth and sovereignty, 
 native to her, evinced itself now that she possessed the 
 license to indulge it. 
 
 She had the oriental love of glow, and glitter, and 
 pomp, and sound ; she had all that temper of the present 
 century which inclines it to scenic effects in the lieu of 
 poetic beauty, to lustrous color in the lieu of accurate pro- 
 portion, to intoxicating choruses in the lieu of classic ca- 
 dence. And she launched herself into such extremity of 
 magnificence as gives to such an instinct as this an ever- 
 changing and perpetual delight. 
 
 Unconsciously to herself, through all her dullness of 
 pride and arrogance of scorn, there shone out in her mode 
 of life the impulse and evidence of one who has not from 
 birth upward inherited power: and to whom its posses- 
 sion is therefore as a sorcerer's wand, whose magic is un- 
 ceasingly wondrous to the one brought within its mystic 
 circle. 
 
 None noted this ; for her artistic taste was so unerring
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 4 (IT 
 
 that no false note, or coarse color, in the pageantry of her 
 existence ever betrayed it. But it was there 
 
 The born-empress is very weary of those hoars in which 
 she must wear her state-robes, and receive the formality 
 of homage. The woman, raised from privacy, into the 
 blaze of a monarch's glory deems no hours so exquisite as 
 
 those in which the people k 1, submissive, at her feet, 
 
 and the crown rests on her brow. 
 
 Viva disclosed thai she was not an hereditary sovereign 
 bv this one trail alone — that she was never willing to lav 
 her scepter aside, never desirous of being quit of her pur- 
 ples, never so perfeel ly content as when t be full luster and 
 luxury of her royalty attested to its power. 
 
 Were some rare jewel on sale, at whose cost even 
 princes hesitated, she purchased it ; were some picture in 
 ih. market at a fabulous price, she made it hers; were 
 there some tropical flower rare beyond all others, she 
 would spend thousands to add it to her conservatories; 
 were some entertainment spoken of, which had been sig- 
 nalized by some unwonted thing, she would eclipse it with 
 Mime marvel a' hundredfold more beautiful, eccentric, or 
 extravagant, furnished converse for the world. 
 
 The jewel might be utterly superfluous, the picture one 
 which did not please her taste, the (lower might have no 
 special loveliness, ami the festival no special charm, to 
 her own thinking. Bu1 merely to possess them, to dis- 
 play t hem, to furnish (' 1 for I he world's speech by them, 
 
 was an unfailing delighl which never palled on her, be- 
 cause it gratified her sense of empire, her consciousness of 
 being without rival. 
 
 in no manner could she attain this delight more easily, 
 more constantly, or with more publicity, than by the pleas- 
 ures with which she filled her own time and that of the 
 society she gathered about her. Her inventive wit found 
 field, and interest, in the conception and execution of 
 countless fresh fashions of distraction and of excitement. 
 
 The graceful fantastic fancy that hail once made her 
 dance like an alniah among tin'' scarlet bean- of the c it- 
 garden, and believe herself a queen when .-he sat in 
 the old beech-tree with a tall sword-lily for her scepter, 
 DOW made herdevise a 1 bousand way- ol adding brilliancy.
 
 468 TRICOT R IN, 
 
 and variety, and surprise, and cost— that great modern 
 gauge of every merit, — to her amusements and entertain- 
 ments. Exclusive with all the haughty exclusivism of an 
 earlier nobility, lavish with all the profuse prodigality of 
 present imperialism, reckless with the levity of the age, 
 and dazzling with a seduction all her own, her fetes and 
 her banquets were the theme of the world of pleasure, the 
 paradise of her associates, the despair of all outside her 
 chosen pale. She ruled pleasure, and was ruled by it : 
 and no other thing was the object, or the idol, of her 
 days. 
 
 Generous, indeed, she was ; whoever asked her for 
 money had it. In moments of remorse she would strive 
 to still her conscience by some such large charity as that 
 with which she succored the stone-mason's desolate family. 
 But these were fitful, unguided, the offspring of impulse 
 always, never of principle. 
 
 She- had delivered herself wholly over to the wor- 
 ship of egotism, and extravagance, and the joyous re- 
 ligion of pleasure; and she abandoned herself all the 
 more completely, and violently, to the pursuit of these 
 when the sting of one man's neglect pierced through the 
 velvet folds of her exultant vanity, when one thorn amid 
 all her innumerable roses thrust itself into her bosom, 
 and reminded her that she was mortal. 
 
 Thus he saw her empire at its height — her character 
 at its worst; and still, despite these, he lingered near her, 
 and still doubted if, in this woman, there were not some- 
 thing higher and nobler latent, that her sycophants never 
 roused and her lovers never wakened. 
 
 And one night when he chanced to be in her presence, 
 an incident again arose which again made him ask him- 
 self: " Since she has the emotion of pity, will she not 
 have also one day in her heart its twin-divinitv of love ?"
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 469 
 
 CHAPTER XLVII. 
 
 There was a new piece at one of the most famous and 
 most sparkling of the theaters of Paris — one of those 
 gay minglings of music, travesty, beauty, burlesque, and 
 wit, which are half opera, half comedy, wholly spectacle, 
 to which the world will run, leaving the grave decorums 
 of legitimate art as the Komans would run to the gladia- 
 tors and the rope-dancers, leaving the stage of Terence. 
 
 "Let me be but amused ! Lei me only laugh if I die!' 1 
 cries the world in every aire. It has so much of grief 
 and tragedy in its own realities, it lias so many bitter 
 tears to shed in its solitude, it lias such weariness of labor 
 without end, it has such infinitude of woe to regard in 
 its prisons, in its homes, in its battle-fields, in its harlot- 
 ries, in its avarices, in its famines; it is so heart-sick of 
 them all. that it would fain be lulled to forgetfulness of 
 its own terrors; it asks only to laugh tor awhile, even if 
 it laugh but at shadows. 
 
 "The world is vain, frivolous, reckless of that which 
 is earnesl ; it is a courtesan who thinks only of pleasure, 
 of adornment, of gewgaws, of the toys of the hour!" is 
 the reproach which its satirists in every age hoot at it. 
 
 Alas ! it is a courtesan who, having sold herself to evil, 
 strives to forgel her vile bargain; who, having washed 
 her cheeks white with saltesl tears, strives to believe that 
 tin- painl call.- the true color back; who, having been face 
 to face for bo long with blackesl guilt, keenesl hung 
 dreadesl woe. Btrives to loose their ghosts, thai in 
 santly follow her, in the tumult of her own thoughtless 
 laughter. 
 
 •• l.i I me he hut amused !'* — the cry is the aching cry 
 of a world that is overborne with pain, and with longing 
 for the golden years of its youth; that cry is never louder 
 than when the world is mosl conscious of its own in- 
 hm\ . 
 
 In the Roman Empire, in the Byzantine Empire, in the 
 
 10
 
 470 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 Second Empire of Napoleonic France, the world, reeking 
 with corruption, staggering under the burden of tyran- 
 nies, and delivered over to the dominion of lust, has 
 shrieked loudest in its blindness of suffering — "Let me 
 only laugh if I die !" 
 
 The piece commenced with gay, airy, mirthful music; 
 extravagant, sparkling, indecent, ironical, spectacular, 
 voluptuous, as suits the temper of this modern age; suits 
 its fatigue, its languor, its fever of discontent, its exhaus- 
 tion of speculation, suits it because, being full of despair, 
 it desires distraction, and, ail its thoughts being doubts, 
 it strives so hard not to think. 
 
 As the first silvery notes of the chief actress rang on 
 the air, the audience welcomed them with tumultuous 
 delight. 
 
 She was a great artist in her fashion ; in the by-play, 
 the trivialties, the amorous glances, the sensual graces, 
 the union of elegance and lasciviousness, the eloquence 
 of smile, of word, of gesture, which are needed far more, 
 on the modern stage, than is tragic passion or scholarly 
 comprehension. She was a great artist; she seemed to 
 have the gift of eternal youth and of everlasting fame; 
 her public had never wearied of Coriolis. 
 
 The night was a new triumph, many as had been the 
 nights of triumph which she had numbered. 
 
 But there had come a certain weariness to her in this 
 public festival ; a certain toilsomeness had stolen into the 
 perpetual play of the mime; a certain impatience of this 
 endless robing, and singing, and laughing, and dancing, 
 and wearing of smiles, had entered into her, well as she 
 had long loved her life. 
 
 There came hours now in which she wanted rest; 
 hours in which she felt her head ache and her limbs grow 
 tired; hours of satiety, of exhaustion, of fretful fever; 
 hours, inevitable, that come to the empress as to the 
 act less, to the statesman as to the stage-clown. And 
 now, as she frolicked on the boards, and moved like a 
 sylph, and caroled like a bird, her eyes, wandering over 
 the great semicircle of the house, rested on one woman 
 who sat regarding her, — a woman young, of exceeding 
 beauty, appareled like a sovereign, and with her court-
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 171 
 
 iers surrounding her in a group thai was inattentive to 
 the spectacle, and only attentive to her face and to her 
 
 words. 
 
 "Who is thai piece of splendor yonder?" had asked 
 Coriolis once, firsl seeing this Woman. 
 
 "It is the Duchess de Lira," they had answered. 
 
 Coriolis ever looked at her closely when she herself 
 passed to the front of the stage. 
 
 "You are a Duchess — a great lady of France, — you 
 are in the flower of your youth and the flush of your 
 beauty, — you can have all I have had without taking 
 thoughl for it or toil for it. — you are an aristocrat ; — and 
 I hate you!'' she said in her soul, this night, watching 
 this spectator, whom she envied, as she played on in her 
 new extravaganza, and heard the thunders of the theater 
 hail it as the greatesl of all her successes. 
 
 She herself had enjoyed, indeed; hut time was stealing 
 the elasticity from her limbs, the buoyancy from her 
 spirit, the bloom from her skin, the gloss from her hair, 
 the spontaneity from her laughter : and from such women 
 die Time robs all, and to them brings nothing. She 
 had her scepter, indeed; hut the passage of the years 
 had loaded its ivory and gold with lead, and ^\\v began 
 to grow tired of the Lncessanl exertion which was needed 
 to hold it in her own grasp, ami prevenl it from passing 
 to the outstretched hands of her rivals. 
 
 Meanwhile, t he one whom .-he envied watched her in 
 turn wdth a curious emotion. 
 
 Viva never heard the actress's name without a thrill 
 of horror. She never saw it lettered on the walls of a, 
 city without ;i throb at her heart, as though she saw a 
 snake's eyes watching her. It was ever an agony to her 
 to recall that nighl of her madness. As she hail grown 
 to know the ways and the wisdom of t he World, and had 
 
 beheld the danger through which she had passed by the 
 lighl of that world's knowledge, she knew what the pre- 
 cipice had been on which she then had stood in such 
 laughing and trustful security. At times when its mem- 
 
 * 
 
 ory rushed over her, she felt the hot blood flush over her 
 brow and b< -'in at the mere thoughl that such a peril had 
 ever touched her, such an ignominy ever approached her.
 
 472 TRICOTRTN, 
 
 Who her boy-wooer had been she never knew ; she 
 wondered often. And when she mused on him, and on 
 her temptress, a deadly hatred, alien to all the negligent 
 gayety of her temper, woke in her ; a scorching shame 
 consumed her. 
 
 All the fair, sweet, harmless things of her early life 
 were well-nigh forgotten; all that sunny, serene, inno- 
 cent existence, while yet she had taken no more thought 
 than the lilies of the field, or sinned more sin than the 
 birds of the air, had faded into one soft haze of dim, pure, 
 confused color. That perfect peace in which she had not 
 known that she was happy, — because she had not then 
 known what sorrow meant, and thus had found no meas- 
 ure of her joy, — was all far distant to her, scarce remem- 
 bered more than is the sunlight of some tranquil un- 
 memorable summer-day of long ago. But that one night's 
 memories were branded forever as with fire on her brain. 
 
 That men should still live who, if they only knew what 
 she once had been, could point at her as one whom they 
 had beheld at the house of a courtesan ! 
 
 If she were alone when this remembrance came on her 
 she w T oulcl pace her chamber like a magnificent leopardess, 
 and set her teeth in wrath that a woman, who could com- 
 mand the world, could not yet purchase the oblivion of a 
 few brief hours ! 
 
 It maddened her the more because she knew that, but 
 for the guardian hand which had seized her from the 
 flower-hidden abyss, she would have entered this king- 
 dom of evil to which she had been tempted, in all her 
 supreme faith and ignorance and guileless vanity. She 
 knew that — but for him — she would have fled to the pol- 
 lution of the stage, which had looked to her such immor- 
 tal glory. 
 
 She knew that now she would have been even as 
 Coriolis: — even as all those women who concealed the 
 leprosy of sin with the satin domino of the masked ball; 
 who avenged their own outlawry by pitiless plunder, by 
 merciless dupery, of the world which had proscribed 
 them; who dressed, and danced, and feasted, and had no 
 future ; and secure of a banquet to-day, might be left to 
 starvation to-morrow. The women of whom she thought
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 473 
 
 with all the horror of a haughty and untempted soul, 
 with all the scorn of an imperial and lofty life. 
 
 She would have been of them, — must have been of 
 them, she knew, — unless, indeed, in the first moment of 
 despair, when the truth of her fate should have broken 
 on her, she should have hurled her young form into the 
 depths of the river. And the sound of the name of her 
 temptress ever smote on her ear with a throb of shame, 
 with a pang of guilt, with the stealing hiss, as of a ser- 
 pent whose fangs had once been in her flesh, and whose 
 wound, though it had left no scar, might even yet prove 
 mortal. 
 
 Still — she had often gone to sec Coriolis. Gone, on 
 that Indefinable impulse which sometimes draws men and 
 women to the presence of their foes; on that mysterious 
 attraction which deadly injuries, or deadly rivalries, will 
 make more potenl still than the attractions of love or of 
 sympathy. Though it wounded her so poignantly to re- 
 member that night of her wicked folly, yet she went 
 where that remembrance was most vividly forced on her. 
 Such anomalies are strong in all human-nature; they 
 are especially strong in woman-nature. 
 
 "Could /ever have been t hat Little fool who was allured 
 by her specious promises, who saw heaven itself in the 
 tinsel of her stage I" she t nought as she gazed at Coriolis. 
 It seemed incredible to ber thai the same soul should 
 live in both, that the same personality should exist in 
 both, — in the little bohemi an with the scarlet hood over 
 her fair curls, who had listened to a lie as to a voice from 
 heaven; and in the superb duchess whom her mirror por- 
 trayed, who had so indolent and ironic a disdain lor all 
 words thai were breathed to her, and who had all her 
 world beneath ber foot. 
 
 "She is not changed!" she murmured unconsciously 
 aloud. 
 
 "Changed I" echoed the one nearest to her in her box, 
 "from what?" 
 
 "From the time I hat I .-aw her first, — and I was very 
 young then." 
 
 Her eyes never left ( 'oriol is as she spoke. NOW, ill the 
 
 supremacy of her power and possessions, in the full] 
 
 ■pi*
 
 4U TRICOTRIN, 
 
 of her knowledge and experience, in the security of her 
 rank, it filled her with a strange wondering pity to think 
 of the foolish, trustful, credulous child that she had been, 
 and of the pathetic senseless love that she had once borne 
 this sovereign of the stage. A fierce hate thrilled in her 
 also as she watched her temptress. Through this woman 
 that one ineffaceable memory was burned into her haughty 
 life ; that one intolerable shame had been drawn down on 
 her proud head ; that one loathsome hour had been lived 
 through to pollute her past ! 
 
 "Actresses never change, — till we see them by day- 
 light!" Estmere answered her, ignorant where her 
 thoughts wandered. " Look through your glass ere you 
 judge." 
 
 She did so : — looked long, then dropped it with a 
 shudder. 
 
 "It is a death's-head under a mask of roses and lilies ! 
 And yet how lovely that woman still is !" 
 
 "She seems to move you ?" 
 
 " She does ; for, — when I saw her first I longed to be 
 an actress too !" 
 
 "You! — an actress ! Is it possible ?" 
 
 "Yes, I. Perhaps I am one, as it is. How can you 
 tell?" 
 
 He did not know the spring of the half-remorseful 
 words; he thought she implied some consciousness that 
 her coquetry was hut a cruel acting, since her heart was 
 never touched to feeling. 
 
 "Let your higher nature speak, and follow what it 
 says. You will never be one then," he murmured in 
 her ear. 
 
 She was silent; unwittingly he had rebuked her. 
 
 "If he knew!" she thought, meeting the clear, grave 
 eyes of the man whose one idol was inexorable Truth, 
 whose one unpardonable sin was specious Falsehood ; 
 and she drove the thought from her as fast as it arose. 
 She had had no need to think all through the years of 
 her fortunate life : she left that travail to the weary, the 
 unlovely, the wretched, the solitary. Thought was their 
 sentence, their solace: with her it had naught to do. 
 
 Outside the theater it was a cold, dark, ghastly night.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 4*75 
 
 Although late in the spring, it was very cheerless and 
 rained heavily. 
 
 About the end of the second act, while from within 
 the hursts of music; came, now faintly, now fully, out into 
 the street, a wanderer, who had moved restlessly all day 
 and night to and fro the labyrinth of the lighted town, 
 strayed near to the play-house and paused ; — he could not 
 have told why. except that others paused with him ; — 
 opposite the huilding and its glittering arc and stars of 
 gas-jets. 
 
 The wanderer was Bruno. 
 
 He stood, without knowing what he did. looking up at 
 11. e crescent of lights; and hearing, without knowing 
 whal he heard, the distant cadence of the joyous and airy 
 music. 
 
 Close at his elbow pressed a sailor of his own southern 
 seaboard, a. great, fierce, black-browed barbarian, half 
 smuggler and had' pirate, who yel had softness sufficient 
 in him, — because that day he had met his whilom com- 
 rade, and had been scared by tin' haggard lace which he 
 had once known so brigb.1 and brown under the shadow 
 of their tawny sails, — to .-lay staunchly by the side of the 
 stricken man, though in t he eyes that turned on him t hen; 
 was no recognil ion, hut only t he mute dull suffering of an 
 animal spent by the hunters unto death. 
 
 "What would you do, Bruno?" he asked hastily, as 
 the fisherman seeing persons enter through the glittering 
 doorway, moved forward with them to enter also. 
 
 lie paused, and looked for the lir.-t time with a gleam 
 of consciousness on the features of his ancient sea mate. 
 
 "It is yon. Royalle ?" he murmured wearily. "Are 
 1 lie boats ready ? You musl go u ithout me ; — she is not 
 come home." 
 
 The streets, the gas-lights, the throng, the music, were 
 naughl !■> him; he thoughl he was on the yellow sands 
 of his old home with the fishing-smacks standing: ou1 to 
 sea in a lair wind, and his little cabin high up upon the 
 rocks above the silvery plumes id' olive. 
 
 " There are no boats," muttered Royalle". " We are in 
 Paris, and this is no place fur \ oil." 
 
 "Paris? Paris?" the other echoed, the dulled drain
 
 476 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 playing with the word. " Is it Paris ? She used to wish 
 for Paris. May be she is here, — I have sought every- 
 where." 
 
 And he forced his way nearer to the open door. 
 
 Iioyalle seized him and sought to force him back. 
 
 " Not there, not there, Bruno I" he murmured. " What 
 avail to seek her in scenes of pleasure ?" 
 
 The sailor shook him off, and went forward with the 
 dogged resolve of the insane. 
 
 " Losing gold ye seek hither and thither," he muttered. 
 " Shall I do less by my treasure ?" 
 
 Ere he could be stayed, he had flung clown a coin as he 
 saw others doing, and had thrust himself into the throng 
 that was forcing itself through the mouth of the pit. 
 They were separated ; Royalle could do nothing except 
 follow him. 
 
 The glare of light, the din of music, the blaze of gold 
 and of color seemed to blind and to stupefy him. He 
 stood wedged in by the' crowd into whose center he had 
 thrust himself; his gaunt, tall form towering above 
 theirs ; his wild pathetic eyes glancing from side to side 
 like a hunted dog's; his blue canvas shirt flung back 
 from his chest ; his long dark hair streaming backward 
 from the bronzed southern grandeur of his hardened 
 features. He was like a desert animal suddenly strayed 
 in among a laughing human crowd. 
 
 There was a scene of fairy-land on the stage which the 
 audience were applauding till the roof rang again ; a 
 scene of wood and water, and silver cascades, and aisles 
 of roses, and white-winged sylphs that fluttered on the 
 branches, and troops of girls, arrayed like every flower 
 that bloomed beneath the sun, who danced in airiest 
 measures to the music sounding through the house. 
 
 To the fisherman of the Riviera it was all real; his 
 great brown eyes gazed on it with wondering awe ; 
 through his dimmed brain there, wandered weird tales, 
 heard in his childhood, of enchanted lands where no 
 mortal foot might wander. He stood erect, amazed, 
 motionless ; dizzy with the riot of sound and the modula- 
 tions of motion, and the radiance of color that had broken 
 on his vision as he came out from the darkness of the 
 night.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 477 
 
 And iill 1he while his eyes were seeking out each sepa- 
 rate face in the massed loveliness of that myriad of danc- 
 ing girls; — seeking out hers which he could not find. 
 
 From the hack of the flowering glades there came the 
 graceful, swaying, Boating form of a woman arrayed like 
 a lotus-lily. Her form was scarce clothed in the white 
 and green that fashioned the leaves of the lily ; her suuny 
 hair, chaplet-crowned, streamed behind her; her azure 
 eye- laughed with arch gayety; — Coriolis looked in the 
 spring of her earliest youth as she bounded into the circle 
 of girl-flowers, and poured out her song with the easy 
 sweet mirth of the lark. 
 
 Across her song a wild cry rang: 
 
 "It is she!" 
 
 lie stood erect a moment, his eyes blazing with light, his 
 arm stretched out, his chest heaving with deep-drawn 
 breaths; then with a leap like a deer's he sprang from 
 seal to sent over the head.- of the people on to the stage 
 where she stood, 
 
 'Idle music mi her li]>~ was stricken mute; the band of 
 living flowers fell from around her ami left her alone. 
 Criminal fear came into her radiant eyes. She stood 
 powerless, motionless, gazing on the man she had dis- 
 honored, while on the players and their public a horrified 
 
 silence fell. 
 
 lie stretched his arms out to her, while his voice 
 thrilled through the stillness. 
 
 "Madelonl Madelon! Thou art in paradise, and hast 
 forgol me ! — is it so ?" 
 
 His whole frame drooped, his limbs lost their strength, 
 
 he shuddered, ami st 1 gazing at her: — the rising 
 
 tumuli of the house, the confused clamor of the amazed 
 multitude had no power to reach his ear: he only saw 
 the woman whom he had sought through the desolation 
 of the world ; — the woman who, found, shrank from him, 
 and w as afraid. 
 
 That guilty fear which he met in her look pierced him 
 like a dagger's thrust; reason seemed to comeback to 
 him with the shuddering horror that ran through his 
 Benses. He lifted his head, a- the li,,ii mortally wounded 
 will raise it to look once more aJ his foes and gazed 011
 
 4*78 TR1C0TRIN, 
 
 that heated, breathless, motley multitude below, then 
 gazed again on her; — on the snowy bare limbs, on the 
 bosom that panted above its vesture of gold, on the 
 painted loveliness which, near, had no youth and no 
 bloom. 
 
 Then he knew that this was not heaven, but hell ; and 
 the blindness of half a lifetime was pierced in twain by 
 that terrible light. He seized her, and gazed into her 
 eyes, and crushed her soft frame against him, and flung 
 her from him with a cry that smote the listening people 
 as though they had but one ear and one soul. 
 
 "You are not mine, though you live in her form! Ah! 
 vile thing, cruel devil, that mocks me! What have you 
 clone with the creature I loved? You give her limbs to 
 the eyes of the lewd ; and her loveliness to the lust of the 
 mob; and the lips that I kissed to the crowds that de- 
 vour her! — but where is the soul that I worshiped? 
 where is the life that was mine ? They were God's ; you 
 could not take them? They lie in His hand : you could 
 not steal them with her body?" 
 
 He stood erect one moment, as men will stand when a 
 death-shot has struck them ; his eyes- gazed out over the 
 risen throngs, burning and blind; on his face was the 
 majesty of an unutterable despair. Then, with one great 
 cry from a broken heart, he flung his arms above his 
 head and fell — his forehead striking on the fallen limbs of 
 his wife, the life-blood welling from his mouth, and stain- 
 ing purple the white lilies on her breast. When they 
 raised him he was dead: — he had been dying more than 
 twenty years. 
 
 And on the silence of the horror-stricken throngs the 
 voice of the sailor Royalle rang as he turned and faced 
 them, lifting up the lifeless body in his arms. 
 
 " She was his wife, look you. Yet God made women, 
 — God made women and gave them to men !" 
 
 A shudder ran through all the listening multitude. 
 For once the people of Paris saw no mirth in the tragedy 
 of a man's dishonor. 
 
 And in the tumult, and the terror, and the stupefaction 
 of the great crowded house, the proudest and coldest
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 47 !> 
 
 woman there staggered to her feet, ami, blind and faint, 
 stretched out her hands to the one nearesl her. 
 
 "Take mo away!" she murmured. "Oh, take me 
 away. I heard their story once, and saw no sin in her!" 
 
 CHAPTER XLVIII. 
 
 Until the latest hoars of that night Estmere sat in 
 the loneliness of his great apartments, with his hound's 
 head lying on his knee, and his thoughts sunk far into the 
 past. 
 
 The scene which he had witnessed had opened afresh 
 a long-closed wound. The wound had pierced too deeply 
 for the jarred nerves ever tfl close again impervious to 
 pain; and the tragedy of the theater had broughl back 
 on his memory, with all the freshness of a recent blow, 
 the time when he had himself surprised the sin of the 
 wife whom his root' had sheltered and his honor crowned. 
 
 On the autumnal day when Tricotrin had gazed upon 
 him in Ids solitude at Villiers, that wound had been 
 soothed only by the passage of a few years. Betwixt 
 then and now there had stretched a long interval of pub- 
 lic life, tilled with a long succession of public honor, pub- 
 lic services, public ambitions, public dignities and labors. 
 The early treachi ry lay far away, folded under the sealed 
 pages of his losl youth. 
 
 The throb of its horror had been soothed by the ano- 
 dynes of greal attainments; the ache of its shame had 
 been stilled by the balm of a nation's trust. Many sea- 
 - would now pass by, and leave its memory una- 
 wakened. Bui there were times when thai memory was 
 still roused in all its suffering ; and this was one of them. 
 
 All thai passage of his life was stamped into his mind 
 with letters i<\' lire. 
 
 The idolatry with which he had loved the woman who 
 had betrayed him; the intoxication of their Qrst hour- of
 
 480 TRICOTR1N, 
 
 union; the slow-dawning consciousness, so long thrust 
 back from sight, that this creature, so exquisite in form, 
 was mindless and soulless as any beautiful cheetah gam- 
 boling under Indian suns. The loyalty to her, strong in 
 him as a religion, which, because she was his, forbade him 
 to insult her with so much even as suspicion ; the proud 
 chivalry which withheld from him by its noble blindness 
 a thousand signs that to meaner natures would have suf- 
 ficed as warning. The unutterable horror which over- 
 whelmed him, when chance revealed his own dishonor to 
 him, and he found his spoiler in his household hireling, 
 in the creature of his bounty, in the pampered, trusted, 
 caressed debtor of his race and of his purse — all these 
 seemed to him as things of yesterday, as their memories 
 arose with the death scene of Bruno. 
 
 That treachery had colored all his life. It had killed 
 happiness in him with one blow. It had left him with- 
 out aught of the colors of joy upon his life, though he 
 had in their stead wide command and passionless peace. 
 Suspicion it could not teach to a temper too generous, 
 too fearless, and too proud for suspicion's timid meanness. 
 But it made the fair faces of women without beauty in 
 his sight; and it left him in his lofty loneliness without 
 companionship and without sympathy. 
 
 The passion which to other men was so fair, was only 
 to him as the deadly poison which counterfeited the bread 
 of life. 
 
 The law had freed him; his betrayer, for aught he 
 knew, was dead ; the world never paused to recall that 
 early tale of a life whose maturity it honored ; but he 
 could never forget — he could never live as though this 
 thing had never been. 
 
 And its remembrance was sharp as iron in his soul this 
 night ; for he knew that he loved again. 
 
 "Love, love! What have I to do with love?" he 
 mused. "It betrayed me in my youth ; it can only fool 
 me more fatally still, now that my youth is gone I" 
 
 Yet, while his reason spoke thus, his impulse thirsted 
 for that old, sweet, wild folly of his forgotten years; his 
 heart ached for all the long-lost joys so free to every com- 
 mon fate; his passions wakened from their sleep, and
 
 TIIE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 481 
 
 longed for the sunlight that lies in a woman's eyes, for 
 the paradise that lies in a woman's lips; his solitude 
 grew colli, cheerless, unutterably desolate. 
 
 "Am I mad, that after all these years I dream thus?" 
 he asked. 
 
 But the madness was upon him ; and ambition, and 
 renown, and honor, and the tribute of men, and the peace 
 of the past, all grew worthless and bitter, and even as 
 empty mockeries of his pain ; for in his loneliness he knew 
 that he would give them all, only once more to lose him- 
 self in the delirious sweetness of his youth, only once 
 more to murmur in a woman's ear — 
 
 "I love!" 
 
 CHAPTER XLIX. 
 
 With dawn the next day vast throngs poured to a 
 small house beside the theater, in the pearly light of the 
 spring morning. 
 
 There was only a dead sailor lying there: with the 
 look upon his face of one who had died seeking what he 
 could never find on earth ; and with a little knot of dried sea- 
 grasses, tied around by a woman's azure ribbon, lying on 
 his broad, brown, emaciated breast, where the coarse blue 
 linen of his shirt fell asunder. Butthey came all the day 
 through, throng upon throng, ever succeeding each other 
 into the chamber where he lay .-—-then at nightfall they 
 flocked to the i beater. 
 
 "She acts?" they asked; and they were answered, 
 " Yes, she acts." 
 
 And they poured in faster and faster, till there was no 
 standing-place in the building, and the waiting crowds 
 stretched far down the street. 
 
 she. herself, sal in her chamber, with the diamonds in 
 her bosom, and the white wings on her shoulders, Ber 
 face was ashen-hued, and hereyes, so blue and laughing, 
 had a startled horror in them as of one who sees some 
 
 41
 
 4S2 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 ghastly shape: — but she would act. She was thinking, 
 with her cheek resting on a jeweled fan that had been an 
 emperor's gift. She was thinking, — this thing that had 
 no thought. 
 
 She saw the yellow level shore down by the south ; the 
 sea glancing in the sun; the rocks covered with olive and 
 myrtle and aloe ; the blue distance severed here and there 
 by the tall slender shafts of a palm. She saw a child of 
 fifteen, with the fairest of faces, rosy and pearly as the gum- 
 cistus blossoms ; idling away all her days under the brown 
 shadow of a boat, or dappling her pretty feet in the play 
 of the surf; listening to the love words of a handsome 
 black-browed sailor, half seaman, half fisherman, and 
 laughing as she took with graceful greed his corals, his 
 shells, his pieces of silk, his little golden crucifix, his ear- 
 rings of silver. 
 
 She saw a cabin high up among the luxuriance of Ri- 
 viera vegetation on the sunlit slope of a rocky shore, 
 where, when the sails of the lateeners grew smaller 
 and smaller as they went coasting westward, a young 
 girl, full of petulant discontent, would bite her scarlet lips, 
 and ruffle her hands among her yellow hair; and wonder 
 what life away from these endless seas was like ; and 
 break the coral necklet of her husband's gift because she 
 was so weary of the giver ; and throw the beads away, 
 one by one, into the water-spring bubbling from the 
 rock, counting, "Je reste — je m'en vais! — je reste — je 
 m'en vais!" in a Gretchen-like fashion of forecasting 
 fate. 
 
 She saw a young child sleeping in a cradle shaped like 
 a boat, and a seventeen-year-old mother who stooped over 
 it, and kissed it once upon the mouth, and then went from 
 it slowly, looking her last farewell, and thinking, " Ge- 
 rant will have it cared for — the child will not be harmed ;" 
 and so passed swiftly across the threshold never to return; 
 fleeing faster and faster as she heard that the lateen craft, 
 returning, were in sight. 
 
 She saw all these things, pictures of dead years ; where 
 she sat with the diamonds glittering in her bosom, aud 
 the music of the overture floating dreamily into her cham- 
 ber from the theater beyond.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 483 
 
 The years since had been mirthful and glittering : re- 
 morse had never touched this light mercurial nature, sin 
 had never weighed upon this volatile skeptical temper. 
 She had done well for herself, she thought; she had 
 gained riches, and fame, and lovers, and pleasures; she 
 had had thousands of days of delight, thousands of nights 
 of triumph. She had worn the jewels kings gave, and 
 she had heard the tumult of nations' applause. She had 
 feasted her sight and her senses ; she had reigned in her 
 way as queens reign. She had laughed on all her life 
 through ; and had drunk the secret joys of the passions. 
 She had roved as the butterflies rove ; and the flowers 
 had all borne her honey. She had been glad, — glad, — 
 glad ever; as things soulless and sensuous are. And 
 only to-night did she hear the hush of the seas in the 
 south ; only to-night did she hear the sound of the voice 
 of the dead. 
 
 The man sinned against, had suffered, dying hard, 
 through a score of years ; but the woman who had sinned 
 had rejoiced through a score of years of light, and of 
 laughter, and of life. Yet men say that remorse strikes 
 the balance between the lives that endure and the lives 
 that offend! Remorse 1— thai steals in for one hour out 
 of a million, and thrusts one thorn amid a long season 
 of roses, and furls one leaf beneath the lied of pleasure, 
 and cries "Lo! I am Compensation!" 
 
 There was a deafening shoul without; she did not hem- 
 it. She heard only the music of the Mediterranean as its 
 waves washed upon the strand. . 
 
 They came to her; the public clamored for her; the 
 stage Waited. 
 
 She rose, with the startled glazing look in her eyes as 
 of one who beholds a horror not of the visible world. 
 
 Some, more merciful than the rest, bade her wait ; the 
 penalty could be but forfeit. As they spoke, from the 
 body of the house there ran a loud hoarse roar, as of a 
 lion Bavage for its prey; the Public knows no pity. 
 
 The old familiar sound aroused her; she laughed, toss- 
 ing some more gold dusl upon her sunny hair: 
 
 "Do you hear it? [t is a beast thai musl be fed, or il 
 will tear. I sold myself to it long ago. Besides — half a
 
 484 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 million francs! — I cannot lose them, though I have spent 
 them in a clay 1" 
 
 Then with an airy antelope-like spring she bounded on 
 the stage. 
 
 The theater was closely filled from pit to roof. They 
 welcomed her with a tempest of applause. 
 
 Its director smiled content. 
 
 " The piece will hold the stage a year," he said ; for he 
 knew that the Public is as the dragons of old legends, and 
 asks not what perishes, so that only its greed for new food 
 be appeased. 
 
 And she played on : — her gay feet gliding, her rich song 
 rising, her airy laugh echoing, over the place where Jean 
 Bruno had died. 
 
 CHAPTER L. 
 
 In the late spring-tide, verging upon summer, Paris 
 was once more rejoicing: — rejoicing as her fashion is, 
 with laughter on her lips, and war within her heart ; with 
 gold eagles gleaming on her arches, and wealth stagna- 
 ting in her coffers; with flowers blossoming in all her 
 corners, and exiles barred from her shores for the dread 
 crime of uttering truth ; with the word of Peace blazoned 
 on her pyrotechnic showers, and half a million of her 
 soldiers armed to the teeth, and waiting for their work. 
 Rejoicing with infinite gayety, and wit, and song, and 
 color; rejoicing with cartridges hidden in her soldiers' 
 accouterments, that the hail of the shot might sweep clear 
 her boulevards, if amid all her festivities she once dared 
 to remember that Liberty was missing. 
 
 Foreign sovereigns had traveled thither; there were 
 feasting, and singing, and marshaling of troops by day, 
 and illuminating of streets by night, and all the various 
 beguilements and intoxications by which France is per- 
 suaded to forget that she is in fetters. 
 
 Under the green aisles and avenues of her pleasant 
 places, there were the glitter of arms, the bright hues of
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 485 
 
 flags, the flutter of banners, the sounds of ceaseless music, 
 the constant roll of drums and challenge of cannon, and 
 an ever-flowing sea of dainty equipages rolled from noon 
 till sunset through the streets and squares, and under the 
 rich foliage of the woods of Boulogne. 
 
 Among those thousands of carriages there was one which, 
 for its mingled pomp and elegance, its ermine, and its velvet, 
 and its gold, its fiery fury of speed, and its outriders like 
 a guard of honor, drew all eyes upon it: and the mistress 
 thereof, lying back w T ith her little dog beside her, was so 
 marvelously fair, that the beauty-loving senses of the 
 inflammable crowds made them rush, and press, and tear 
 headlong to gaze at her ; and uncover their heads to her, 
 as though she were a sovereign, and hail her with a sud- 
 den spontaneous acclamation. She, — accustomed to that 
 homage of the mondrari digito, and amused by its 
 unwonted manifestation from the echoing shouts of the 
 throngs — smiled, and bowed to the people, as though she 
 were in truth their empress, and looked and laughed at 
 the two persons who were seated opposite her. 
 
 " I am dangerous to the peace of France," she said, 
 with light amusement. " They will want to crown me 
 next !" 
 
 As she spoke her horses were perforce detained by the 
 passage of cavalry, going at full speed, with their lances 
 gleaming in the sun, to their place in the field of manoeu- 
 vre ; and her glance, idly straying around, over the heads 
 of the closely-packed multitude, met the eyes of Tricotrin. 
 
 He alone of all the men in that crowd had not uncov- 
 ered his head to her in homage; his gaze was fastened 
 on her with a look in which, for the first time in her 
 whole existence, she saw gloom, and rebuke, and passion- 
 ate scorn. 
 
 Eer gay laugh died on her lips ; her face was shadowed; 
 over her there stole a certain fear. 
 
 She remembered her li; - st entry into Paris; — she re- 
 membered the hour when he bad led her to look upon the 
 miseries and agonies that hid beneath the brightness of 
 the city's surface life ; — she remembered the niuhl when 
 she had returned from the dwelling of her temptress, ;i 
 trembling, tired, heart-sick child, who, but for him, had 
 
 41*
 
 486 TR1C0TRIN, 
 
 perished in that death of honor and of conscience which 
 the world for lack of a better word calls sin. 
 
 Then the petulance of her stung pride rose and ruled 
 in her. 
 
 " Must I ever be pursued by his memory, like some 
 murderer by a ghost!" she thought, with cruel merciless 
 impatience ; and she turned her eyes from him, and 
 laughed in all her airiest and most negligent levity, and 
 tossed her little jeweled sweetmeat-box to a pifferaro's 
 monkey, in the wantonness of waste. 
 
 Above, in one of the white spacious mansions fringing 
 the broad road, were spectators, filling every balcony and 
 casement to watch the court, and the troops, and the 
 equipages of fashion and of rank sweep by in the summer 
 afternoon. 
 
 In the window immediately above her, a window, vel- 
 vet-hung, veiled with lace, filled with flowers, there was 
 a gilded balcony, with exotics, and china vases, and stands 
 for parrots ; a balcony hung and cushioned on such days 
 as these with crimson satin, powdered over by golden 
 butterflies. 
 
 With her arms sunk in the cushions' ruby depths, and 
 her cherubic face leaning on them, laughing as she watched 
 the pageantry go by, and turning now and then to tease 
 a parroquet, was the woman to whom that gilded balcony 
 belonged, of whom those gilded butterflies were the self- 
 chosen emblem. 
 
 The throngs as they moved below looked up often- 
 times ; and laughed also ; and called out to each other, 
 " There is Coriolis !" 
 
 For that night when they had asked breathlessly, 
 "Does she act?" and had seen her act as gayly as ever 
 on the stage, where the fisherman of the Riviera bad 
 dropped dead, had endeared her afresh to the people of 
 Paris : — had made some touch of that seduction of assas- 
 sination, which so strangely beguiles the modern mind, lie 
 for them in those serene azure eyes, those rosy childlike 
 lips, of their play-idol. 
 
 Coriolis, leaning there, with her arms on her cushions, 
 and her hand toying with a knot of bright roses, looked
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 48? 
 
 down, and noted that equipage, checked by the passage 
 of the squadrons. 
 
 "Those horses are more perfect than mine," thought 
 the actress, whose glory it had ever been to excel the 
 aristocrats. 
 
 As her hand hung over the balcony it accidentally let 
 fall one of the roses. It was caught by a puff of wind, 
 and wafted into the carriage. Its occupant looked up: 
 perceived whence it came — then with a gesture of shud- 
 dering aversion, threw the rose out, to fall where it would 
 among the multitude. 
 
 Coriolis, leaning above, saw the action, and saw the 
 gesture of loathing which accompanied it. 
 
 " It is that Duchess de Lira!" she thought, while her 
 teeth set in that bitter rage which is ever the wrath of 
 such mindless and soulless things as she, if hate once 
 break through the sunny placidity of their profound ego- 
 tism. " She flings my rose away as though the plague 
 were in its petals. She is as beautiful as I was a score 
 of years ago. She has ymith, she has rank, she has 
 splendor, and love, and pleasure, and triumph, all in their 
 prime. Ah ! how sweet it would be if the days of the 
 revolution came again, and we could make her come 
 down from that princely chariot to ascend the tumbril of 
 the guillotine !" 
 
 So she mused, gazing into the street beneath, with her 
 arms imbedded in the sofl rose satin. A vague yet acrid 
 hatred of the women who lived in honor had ever moved 
 her, although she bad ever affected to hold them in light 
 and insolent contempt . 
 
 The cavalry left the street free; the carriage dashed 
 away with speed, and "■litter, and noise. 
 
 Coriolis quitted her balcony, and went into the luxuri- 
 ous chamber it adjoined, and pushed her hair off her 
 temples, and stared fixedly at herself in a hand-mirror. 
 
 " I hate her ! 1 hate her ! She has youth ; and I " 
 
 She flung the mirror aside, with a violence that shiv- 
 ered to atoms its glass and its ivory frame. 
 
 The onl\ vengeance which ever overtakes such women 
 as she stole, with slow sure steps, upon her.
 
 488 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 CHAPTER LI. 
 
 In the house where Mere Rose once lived with her 
 linnet, there was now a young carver of ivory. In that 
 little ancient, unfrequented lane, few buyers of his pretty 
 toys ever wandered. He managed to live by letting all 
 his rooms to other people, and by keeping only the small 
 shop, and the dusky den behind it, for his fair fond wife, 
 and for his white Liliputian wares. 
 
 The former carried grace and beauty even into the 
 cobweb-hung, pent-up place, where, in another time, the 
 green-grocer had sold his herbs and vegetables, and 
 picked out his largest chestnuts to do pleasure to the 
 Waif and Stray in the attic. The latter gave the bright- 
 ness of her own youth, and of her own still unladed 
 hopes to the dark prison-like room, where she sang all 
 day long like a bird. 
 
 The clay after the great military fete, Leon Clerot, the 
 carver, having taken down his shutters, was flecking the 
 dust from his ivory treasures with a feather-brush, and 
 talking meanwhile to his wife within. She, having 
 brightened and lightened her chamber with the old happy 
 grace of Gaulois blood — with a ribbon here, an atom of 
 gilding there, a pot of common flowers, a bough of blos- 
 soming lime, — answered him gayly, sewing all the while 
 at one of his coarse gray shirts. 
 
 It was the early forenoon ; and both started as they 
 heard the roll of a carriage, and saw one stay at their 
 door. In that out-of-the-world by-way, there was scarce 
 anything upon wheels seen, save the baker's cart, or the 
 hot-chestnut seller's barrow. 
 
 Leon stood stupefied as a great lady entered his little 
 domicile ; and asked the cost of his crucifixes, his prayer 
 books, and his miniature cabinets. 
 
 He confused the prices sadly in his answers, so bewil- 
 dered was he at the presence of such a patroness ; but 
 she seemed scarcely to attend. She chose some dozen
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 489 
 
 ivory works, of the highest value in his collection ; paid 
 for them with two big rolls of gold, which dazzled his 
 sight, and made his hand shake as he took them; bade 
 him give the purchases to her footman waiting without; 
 and then lingered — looking at a cross. 
 
 '• My carving must be very wonderful then, it seems ?" 
 thought the poor Dieppois, who had never had the vanity 
 to think so before. 
 
 " You live here with your wife ?" asked his visitant, 
 suddenly. 
 
 " "We do, madam." 
 
 " You have a good trade?" 
 
 "A very bad one, madam." 
 
 " You must be very wretched ?" 
 
 " No, madam ; we are happy." 
 
 " Happy !" 
 
 She threw her glance into the dusky little den where 
 the Picardy girl was sewing, with the little pot of com- 
 mon flowers, mary golds, and lavender, and mignonette at 
 her elbow. 
 
 " Happy !" she thought. " He must speak in derision 
 of his own misery !" 
 
 She swept up to the girl with her soft languid grace of 
 movement. 
 
 "It is impossible; your husband mocks you. You 
 cannot be happy here ?" 
 
 " Oh yes, madam: we are !" 
 
 The aristocrat stood and gazed at her with supreme, 
 incredulous, musing wonder. 
 
 " Happy ? But how ? — why ? — on what ?" 
 
 The girl smiled softly, with a flush on her cheek. 
 
 "Ah, madam ! We love one another." 
 
 Ber visitant moved away, will) an impatient shadow 
 on her fare Love! Must this word meet her at every 
 turn' musl men and women ever have the audacity and 
 insincerity to pretend thai it could do for them all that 
 her rank, and riches, and celebrity, and conquest, did for 
 her ? 
 
 "You have in your house one who calls himself Trico- 
 trin?" she asked quickly of the young bride, whose lace 
 beamed brightly as she answered that they had.
 
 490 TRICOTRIX, 
 
 "Is he within now?" 
 
 "I cannot tell, madam. He is scarce ever at home. 
 But I will see." 
 
 " Do so. Tell him that I — Ask him to have the good- 
 ness to come hither." 
 
 The girl went. 
 
 The great lady sat alone in the little room, indifferent 
 how strange her visit might appear to these poor people 
 
 Clerot remained in his outer shop, gazing at his gold, 
 and dreaming of all possible and impossible glories that 
 would arrive for him from the patronage of this stranger, 
 in whom he believed he saw, at the least, some foreign 
 empress. 
 
 He had been but a brief while in Paris ; he was inces- 
 santly occupied on his carving; and he knew few of the 
 celebrities of the city either by sight or name. 
 
 His visitor sat gazing, through the little, dusty, cheer- 
 less place, out on to the threshold of the door; where, so 
 many years ago, she had once sat under the green-grocer's 
 canopy of thyme, and marjory, and lemons, and grapes, 
 and had listened to the messenger of Coriolis. 
 
 Ere long the little Dieppoise, picturesque in the sea-side 
 dress she still retained, returned and approached her with 
 shy deference. 
 
 "He is within, madam, for a miracle; he stayed 
 awhile with old Benoit, the cobbler, who is ailing. He 
 will be here at once;" — then, with the quick tact of her 
 nation, she glided away to her husband's side, and left 
 her little den to her guest's sole use. 
 
 At that moment Tricotriu entered; with gladness and 
 anxiety at once in his eagerness of regard. 
 
 "Is there aught ill with you ?" he asked, hurriedly, in 
 a low murmur, as he greeted her. "Speak some foreign 
 tongue ; they know no language save their own." 
 
 "You think some ill must befall me ere I can remem 
 ber you !" she said, bitterly, in Italian. "Ah ! I merit the 
 satire ! Nothing has happened ; but I — I was near you 
 the other day in that fearful danger. I have never been 
 at ease since then. And — yesterday you looked so 
 sternly on me ; I felt afresh the whole guilt of my life to 
 you. I come to you to say — forgive me!"
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 491 
 
 All the uncertain impulses, the unregulated instincts, 
 the variable emotions of her better nature were uttered 
 in the words. 
 
 She would live again as if this repentance had never 
 touched her : but despite this, the repentance was sincere 
 and ardent while it lasted. 
 
 His voice was unsteady as he answered her : 
 
 "You have no need to use that word to me. You had 
 my promise long ago to pardon any sin that you might 
 sin against me. But — is this visit prudent ? is it not an 
 error against your usual codes and caution ?" 
 
 " Such prudence is shameful selfishness, and as cow- 
 ardly as it is shameful I" she murmured, passionately. 
 " But, here, there is little fear. The shop is an artistic 
 one, such as I often visit. My servants will suspect 
 nothing. ' Suspect !' Good Heavens ! — I dare speak thus 
 to you, in this house where I lived upon your charity — 
 as though the boundless goodness of your past to me 
 were some dark crime which needed to be screened and 
 hushed !" 
 
 She covered her eyes with her hand where she sat lean- 
 ing her arms on the table. In such moments as these all 
 the arrogance and dullness of her pride vanished, and all 
 the greatness of her debt was alone remembered. 
 
 Yet — to the woman who through long years had only 
 known the sweetness and the omnipotence of riches, rank, 
 and power, it was unutterably galling to recall that she 
 had once dwelt under this lowly roof a child of the peo- 
 ple, happy in the gifts of chestnuts from the fruit-seller 
 below, happy in the mirth of a charlatan with his noisy 
 drum, happy in wandering out, to gaze at the gas-lighted 
 simps, and listen to the bands of the streets! 
 
 If there had only been some means whereby she could 
 have repaid her debt — some gift and grace such as sov- 
 ereigns bestow upon those who loyally have served them, 
 — she could better have borne the memory of her obliga- 
 tion. She could have succeeded in banishing the past, 
 or in retaining bul such remembrance of it as that wiih 
 which such sovereigns, when seated on their thrones, 
 recall the season when they were discrowned wanderers 
 and exiles. But this was not possible.
 
 492 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 With all her longing to give some magnificent quit- 
 tance of her debts, with all her warmer and holier desire 
 to pour some of her golden treasure into the hands which 
 had lifted her from the grave in her infancy, she had never 
 ventured to offer gifts to him ; she had never ventured to 
 tender to him a portion of those things for which she had 
 abandoned him. 
 
 Unconsciously, she felt that it would be as vile an out- 
 rage as for the faithless wife to tender to her forsaken 
 lord, the gold, and the lands, of the lover for whom she 
 had deserted him. 
 
 "I spoke to you the last day you were with me as I 
 had no right to speak," she murmured, her eyes shaded 
 by her hand. "I should have remembered that you had 
 a title to address me with what severity you would. 
 Sometimes — I wonder that you do not denounce me, 
 before all the world, as the basest and weakest thing that 
 ever lived." 
 
 "Why?" he said, gently. "I should have no justifica- 
 tion, even if I had desire, to do so. When we toss a 
 bird up in the light, free to come or to go, we are foolish 
 and unjust, indeed, if, because it sail away from us on 
 high, we cast a stone after it to bring it earthward in 
 punishment for its abandonment of us. You were just 
 such a bird — you chose the sunlight. Well — so best — 
 you would never have borne storms." 
 
 "You think, then, that in the lack of riches I should 
 have been delivered over to evil !" 
 
 "I have said: I think you — a woman, nothing less, 
 nothing more." 
 
 "I am unlike most women !" — involuntarily she turned 
 and glanced at the little broken piece of mirror that hung 
 above the stove. 
 
 "In your beauty you excel them — yes. But in all else 
 you are most essentially feminine." 
 
 She played impatiently with an ivory chain that she 
 retained in her hand. She had conceded his right to say 
 to her what he would ; but none the less did she resent 
 the total absence of that homage which was as the very 
 daily bread of her existence, and the relegation of her to 
 the vast community of that sex which, in her soul, she
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 493 
 
 disdained with all the glad contempt of a woman whose 
 friends are men, and who is independent of all female 
 sympathies. 
 
 "Were you not hurt that fearful day in the stone- 
 worker's court ?" she asked him quickly. " OhHeavens ! 
 I can never tell you what I felt " 
 
 He smiled: if she heard of his death on the morrow, 
 would it hold her hack from a state-ball at night? 
 
 "Hurt? No. I am never hurt. I bear a charmed 
 life, I think, for I come safely out of strange perils." 
 
 " But you may rely on that once too often?" 
 
 "Well — if I do? A quick death, a death while one is 
 of use, is a thing to be desired. The only thing I ever 
 dread is slow sickness that might keep me long in dying. 
 But how could you come amid so rough a crowd, and in 
 so poor a quarter ?" 
 
 " I was about to visit Lelis." 
 
 " Lelis ! My Lord of Estmere's new-found Velasquez!" 
 
 A slight flush came on her face ; his eyes watched her 
 with earnest, keen scrutiny. 
 
 "He is a great artist?" she said, hurriedly. 
 
 "Oh yes! He has been a great artist. for twenty years ; 
 only, for want of great nobles saying so, the world has 
 never seen it!" 
 
 " There is a use, then, at least, for the great nobles !" 
 
 "You fancy I deny their use? You are wrong. To 
 do so is to sink to the demagogue's class-hatred. I am 
 well aware of how much art, and manners, and learning, 
 the grace, and the scholarship, and the refinement of life, 
 all owe to the aristocracies of all ages ! It is as illiberal 
 to hate a nobility as it is to despise a people." 
 
 " In a democracy they would call you an aristocrat, 
 then ?" 
 
 "Perhaps; as in an aristocracy they call me a demo- 
 crat. A man who is universally tolerant is sure to 
 be antagonistic to whatever is absolute and in the ma- 
 jority. As politics stand, we dream of the idealic ison- 
 Omy of the Greek vision ; and — find no better reality than 
 a military despotism or a mob-anarchy] You see much 
 of Lord Est mere ?" 
 
 42
 
 494 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 The question was irrelevant and abrupt. She answered 
 it coldly : 
 
 " We move in the same world ; I meet him contin- 
 ually." 
 
 " And have you solved the questions that interested 
 you — whether attained ambitions and public honors con- 
 tent him ? — whether there is any place in the eminence of 
 his life for the weakness of passion ? — whether there is 
 any chance of his strength and his peace falling earth- 
 ward to be the toys of a woman ?" 
 
 Despite all her self-command, her face flushed, her 
 hands played hurriedly with the ivory chain. His words 
 pierced to a secret which she had striven to hide even 
 from herself. 
 
 "I am not aware that such questions ever occurred to 
 me," she made answer, negligently "I scarcely suppose 
 their investigation would repay me." 
 
 " What ! You admit that you cannot alter his indiffer- 
 ence ?" 
 
 The words stung all her arrogant vanity into being. 
 
 " Do you suppose any indifference could endure one 
 hour longer than / chose to grant it lease of life !" she in- 
 terrupted him, with all her most superb scorn and self- 
 consciousness in arms. 
 
 " You have conquered his, then ?" 
 
 She was silent ; her eyes clouded with anger, her hand 
 beat impatiently on the low deal table. She was truth- 
 ful by nature ; and she knew that the one victory alone 
 lacking to her was victory over the man of whom they 
 spoke. 
 
 " You are uncertain ?" he said, abruptly. "And in that 
 uncertainty lies his chief interest for you ! Whether his 
 indifference to you will endure I cannot tell; he is mortal, 
 and you have more than mortal seduction in you! But 
 watch your own heart, ere you attempt to play with his. 
 If you have, indeed, the soul in you to feel the force and 
 truth of his nature, it will be well for you that you have 
 ever known him. But if, in the mere wantonness of 
 vanity, or the mere impulse of irritation because he has 
 not fallen before you, you seek to change his coldness
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 495 
 
 only that you may triumph in his weakness, you will do 
 an accursed work, an unpardonable sin." 
 
 Her delicate teeth set, her breath came quickly, as she 
 heard ; she looked up suddenly in his eyes. 
 
 " Why have you this compassion for him ? I have 
 dealt cruelly and inconstantly enough with many ; you 
 never interfered to avert their fate?" 
 
 He paused a moment ; then he answered her with an 
 effort, 
 
 " There are not many such men as he. Moreover, — he 
 has been once forsaken and betrayed ; this should be 
 sufficient to make him sacred to the most wanton coquette 
 that ever found her playthings in the ruin of men's lives." 
 
 "You are right," she said gently — and asked no more. 
 
 "You Avill leave him untempted, then ?" — there were 
 vivid eagerness, imperious authority, in the demand. 
 
 A soft smile, half cruel, half tender, played about her 
 mouth ; her glance stole away once more to the mirror. 
 
 "Is that wholly in my power to promisor' she said, 
 as she rose. 
 
 He knew all the conscious power which was uttered in 
 the vain-glorious question; and he knew that it was as 
 idle to ask her to forego its exercise as it were to ask a 
 brilliant gerfalcon to forego her quarry. An impulse 
 woke in him to tell her of what race her first young lover 
 had come ; to tell her that it had been the son of Est- 
 mere for whom she had been tempted into the house of 
 Coriolis. But he held his peace; it could avail nothing 
 save to disquiet her and to alarm her; it could only serve 
 to make her more likely to betray herself whenever the 
 time should come that she should meet again the "Prince 
 Faineant" of her childish fancies. 
 
 " Wholly in vour power?" he answered her. " Mav be ' 
 it is not so. You have the charms that befool men. Ibtt 
 all that I say is, spend your seductions elsewhere, sate 
 your passion for triumph otherwise than in misleading, 
 and mocking, and wounding a noble nature thai has 
 already been branded, through too frank a faith in the 
 honor of women, lie has stung your pride by his neg- 
 lecf — I know! — deadlier crime no man can have against 
 such a trifler as you. But, if there exist in you one lin-
 
 490 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 gering touch of the nature that once lived in the child 
 that I cherished, you will have mercy enough, purity 
 enough, generous strength enough, in you to renounce 
 one effort for triumph, to abstain from one indulgence of 
 vanity, to hold back your hand from thrusting fresh 
 thorns into the old, deep, cruel wounds of a husband's 
 dishonor. I have asked nothing of you since the years 
 that we parted. I ask this now. Do with others as 
 you will. But spare him." 
 
 Ere she could answer, he had turned away and gone 
 from her, and passed up the dim, narrow stairway, with- 
 out farewell. 
 
 She stood, moved, silent, wondering, with a mist of 
 unshed tears gathering over her haughty eyes. All the 
 latent tenderness in her had awakened at his words ; for 
 — she loved the man for whom he had pleaded thus. 
 
 " He and Estmere are strangers!" she mused. " Stran- 
 gers — and yet the one can feel, and can sue, for the other 
 like this ! A time there must have been when their lives 
 touched, and were the lives of friends ? And yet " 
 
 And yet he had said this was not so; and she knew 
 well that no lie ever tainted his lips. 
 
 She went to her carriage, giving orders to the carver, 
 Clerot, that in twelvemonths' time he could scarce have 
 space to execute; and, as she drove through the streets 
 in the bright noonday, her face was pale, and grave, and 
 troubled. 
 
 Tricotrin went to the little dull chamber, high in the 
 roof, where the old cobbler lay, slowly dying ; and he 
 read aloud the gayest wit of the journals of irony and of 
 caricature, till the cobbler, with the Gaulois temper still 
 in him, laughed again and again where he was stretched 
 ' on his bed, and half forgot his suffering, and never 
 dreamed that his friend, who thus brought the mercy of 
 mirth and oblivion to his couch of torture, had a bitter- 
 ness in his own soul surpassing that of death.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 497 
 
 CHAPTER LII. 
 
 A few weeks later, one sweet moonlit night in the 
 month of roses, a man and woman wandered through the 
 orange aisles of the Palace of the Abdication. They 
 were alike guests of the court, and had strayed some- 
 what away from the torchlight curee, and the illumined 
 waters, and the gardens and galleries fdled with the 
 pomp of imperial festivity. 
 
 "You will come to Villiers ?" be asked, bending low 
 his stately head ; he had spoken of her approaching de- 
 parture, and had entreated for her presence at the sum- 
 mer gathering which was about to fill his own chateau. 
 
 She looked at him with a startled, wistful, doubting 
 look, and hesitated some moments ere she answered. 
 
 " To Villiers V she said, at length, with a strange soft- 
 ness and sadness in her voice. " To Villiers ? Yes — I 
 will come to Villiers " 
 
 And he, noting that strange intonation, that unusual 
 emotion, thought, in a dreaming wonder, that made his 
 pulses beat with the fever-heat of youth — 
 
 " Is it possible that my love would ever be welcome 
 to her ?" 
 
 CHAPTER LIIL 
 
 TriE park-gates of Villiers were opened wide in a 
 mellow summer evening; carriage after carriage passed 
 through them, bearing guests to the greal chateau. 
 Torches flared, though the sun was scarce set, the silken 
 standard flowed broad upon the breeze, the wide courts 
 were filled with princely pomp, its lord, long absent, had 
 of late returned. 
 
 12*
 
 408 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 At the lodge a brown-eyed woman stood, smiling to 
 see the equipages sweep by, and holding back the too 
 eager delight of her youngest born — a ruddy boy of but 
 a few years old. They were people of a sunny, loyal 
 temper in the little gate-house, and had no grudging 
 envy of the " aristocrats." They liked the pageantry and 
 the vivacious life that came with these gatherings of the 
 " noblesse." 
 
 " Look, look, mere! — quick!" whispered an elder daugh- 
 ter of some fifteen years. "Paulin told me I should know 
 her, because he would put the ermine rug in her carriage 
 and sables in all the others. Look !— that must be the 
 Duchess de Lira!" 
 
 The mother looked, shading her eyes from the glare of 
 the sunset and torchlight. 
 
 The horses slackened their pace as they came through ; 
 the great lady, of whose advent there had been much 
 converse among the household of Villiers, for the fame 
 of her beauty had spread even through the provinces, 
 leaned slightly forward, and stretched her hand with a 
 coin to the little boy, looking into his parent's face. 
 
 "You are well here, and happy?" she asked. 
 
 There was a great sweetness in her voice as she asked 
 the simple question. 
 
 "Ah, yes, madam — thank God!" the mother answered 
 to the unlooked-for mark of interest, as the carriage dashed 
 on through the avenue. 
 
 "What hast thou, Raoul?"she said to the child. "Holy 
 Mary! what a great gold piece. She must have a tender 
 soul — that proud duchess." 
 
 "And how beautiful she is!" sighed her daughter. 
 "Paulin was right." (Paulin was an equerry, who had 
 been in Paris with his lord.) "Paulin says," the girl 
 murmured on, "that she will be chatelaine here ere long. 
 Think you, mere, it is likely ?" 
 
 "How can we tell?" rejoined her mother absently. 
 
 Awhile later, as she moved to and fro, getting his 
 evening meal for her husband, who had come from his 
 labor in the gardens, he asked her what made her so 
 grave and so silent. 
 
 "I do not know," she said, with a smile. " Dost thou
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 499 
 
 remember at all, Valentin, that pretty child that lived 
 with the old Virelois, and died, they say, far away?" 
 "Trieotrin's Waif? Ay — what of her ?" 
 " Naught of her. But that great lady had a look of 
 her in her face, and set me thinking of her — the pretty, 
 nameless thing — that is all." 
 
 Valentin laughed, a man's good-natured contemptuous 
 laugh at a woman's imaginations. 
 
 "The Duchess de Lira like that little foundling! Ah, 
 wife, what a woman thou art for fancies! Do not tell 
 them aloud, for they say that our lord will wed with 
 her." 
 
 "I have no fancies to tell," said Ninette, giving him 
 his salad. "She made me remember the child — that is 
 all. It is the dark eyes and the light hair, I dare say. 
 The child had them." 
 
 Meantime, in the great vaulted hall of the chateau, the 
 Duchess de Lira was welcomed by her host beneath his 
 roof. 
 
 She answered him with her accustomed grace and 
 ease; she smiled on him with her accustomed witchery 
 and eloquence; she conversed lightly of the trifles of her 
 travel ; she looked in his face without a fear in her eyes 
 or a (lush on her cheek for that bygone time, so ever 
 present to her sight, and so deeply buried from his ; but 
 when she reached her own chamber she bade her attend- 
 ants, with imperious haste, leave her alone — she was fa- 
 tigued — she desired rest. And, locked in her solitude, 
 she flung herself upon her couch, and sobbed bitterly. 
 
 The place moved her with strange passion. The dead 
 days thronged like "hosts around her. She felt guilty 
 ami ashamed, and filled with a vague terror. 
 
 If the pictured walls, the storied chambers, the dumb 
 statues could find voices, they could tell their lord that 
 the woman whom he welcomed as nobles receive their 
 monarchs, had once been a nameless, penniless, alms-fed 
 child, wandering wilh his peasants in his halls! 
 
 "But 1 have greatness; Ihai is no lie I" she thought, as 
 she rose and gazed at herself in those mirrors, whose 
 solace never failed with Btormy longing and disquiet at 
 her heart. "I have fulfilled my dream ; I have borne out
 
 500 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 my ambitions ; I return with riches and honors, and tri- 
 umphs in my hands. I have won my empire, and I am 
 crowned. Men wear their diadems forgetful of their 
 pasts : why may not 1 ? I am his equal ; what need to 
 remember that any other time has ever been ? My king- 
 dom is real : as real as his!" 
 
 Then she smote the tears from her eyes, and smiled at 
 her own loveliness, and called her tire-woman, and bur- 
 nished to threefold brilliancy the weapons of her charms ; 
 and descended the great staircase — proud, radiant, im- 
 perial, conscious that she was beyond all rivalry. 
 
 His hand shook slightly, and his grave weary eyes 
 softened with a new light — the light of his lost youth — 
 as he bowed before her, and led her to the banqueting- 
 chamber, w T here, in the autumnal day of a long- forgotten 
 time, the song of the Diogene had echoed from the forests 
 on his ear, and the great man in his solitude had envied 
 the careless singer. 
 
 CHAPTER LIV. 
 
 "It is you! Ah! how glad we shall all be!" cried 
 the wife of Valentin, in her lodge-house, dropping to the 
 ground in her joy, a kirtle full of purple plums which she 
 had just gathered from her sunny south wall. Her wel- 
 come was given to Tricotrin, as he came across her 
 threshold in the fresh hour of earliest day. 
 
 " It is like a summer rain after drought to see you here 
 again. You come so seldom now, and the people all 
 hunger for you, ever," she pursued, laying her hands on 
 his knapsack, and sending her children in all directions 
 to get eggs from the hen-house, fresh honey, fresh fruits, 
 and fresh salad, to do honor to his breakfast, with many 
 lamentations that her husband should be already gone off 
 to his work in the gardens, and should thus miss the 
 pleasure of seeing the man he most loved and revered. 
 
 In the later years, Tricotrin had returned at intervals
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 501 
 
 to his once-cherished vine country; but still be came far 
 more rarely, and for far briefer sojourn than of old. 
 
 The old familiar places had a cruelty in their Deauty, a 
 sting in their peace. And there was little save pain to 
 be found at the river-home which he kept for grand'mere 
 and the swallows. She derived no solace from his pres- 
 ence, she understood naught that he said, she would only 
 grasp his arm with a hard nervous grip, and look straight 
 in his eyes, with a look that made his heart ache, and 
 mutter in his ear, "Will she never come back? will she 
 never come back ?" 
 
 Of the lost child, the people never spoke to him. Most 
 believed her dead; some believed that worse than death 
 had befallen her ; all understood, that of her they must 
 not question him. 
 
 lie accepted the eager hospitalities of Ninette, and 
 took a seat in the deep embrasure of the wide oak-lined 
 window; and listened to her rapid babble of things that 
 had chanced in the country-side since last he had been 
 seen there; and glanced, ever and again, as he drank his 
 coffee, at the blazoned arms and the gilded coronet with- 
 out on the great gateways. 
 
 " How is it with grand'mere V he asked her, in one of 
 the pauses betwixt her gossipries. 
 
 Ninette shook her still comely head. 
 
 "Ah, you see it is so far, I can rarely go myself, — 
 never, indeed, unless I have something to take down the 
 river. When one has children! — But, indeed, one can 
 do her no good, and she knows no one now. Manon 
 Rixe saw her last week — so she stopped her mule to tell 
 me, — and Manon thinks she is breaking fast. You see, — " 
 she hesitated, she was about to add that grandniere had 
 never recovered the loss of the ch Id; but she changed 
 her phrase, — "you see she is wonderfully old ; and when 
 people have been so strong up to that age, they break all 
 ;ii once — so !" 
 
 And she cracked a rotten stick sharply across her 
 knee, lie was silent. 
 
 "She ha- everything she can wish for," pursued the 
 wife of Valentin, in whose eyes creature-comforts made a 
 paradise upon earth. " She is well oil', — you are so good
 
 502 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 to her. It has been a brave, tough, tender soul, — hers. 
 Those people that were children in that old revolutionary 
 time, have something in them greater than we have, I 
 think." 
 
 " They may well have. The Marseillaise was their 
 cradle-song." 
 
 " I sing that to my children, when the doors are shut 
 at night," whispered Ninette. 
 
 She had something of republican blood in her, and her 
 great-grandfather had been slain by a Black Brunswicker 
 in Champagne-Pouilleuse. 
 
 " Aye ? Hymns forbad at noonday, are ever so sung 
 at night; and oftentimes, what at noon would have been 
 a lark's chant of liberty, grows at night to a vampire's 
 screech for blood!" he murmured. " They are gay at 
 your chateau up yonder?" 
 
 " Gay, indeed," assented Ninette, who, — with all her 
 touch of republicanism, liked her own aristocrats. " The 
 English lord always has kept a splendid house whenever 
 he has been here : though he look so grave, and so tired, 
 I do not think it can pleasure him much." 
 
 " He is well loved by all your people ?" 
 
 "He is so. He is of few words, and proud ; but he is 
 generous and just." 
 
 " His son is not here ?" 
 
 " No. The young lord is never here. Of Estmere 
 himself they do say " 
 
 "Say what?" 
 
 " Well — have you ever seen a wonderful creature whom 
 they call the Duchess de Lira ?" 
 
 " I have seen her. Why ?" 
 
 " She is staying up at the chateau. She is a very great 
 lady, is she not?" 
 
 " She is of high station. What is it they say ?" 
 
 " Oh, it may be nonsense. I do not see how we can 
 tell. But they do say that my lord will wed with her. 
 Paulin, the equerry, told us first; and now every one is 
 repeating it. It may well be : she is most lovely, and his 
 horse is always beside hers as they ride through the gates. 
 
 Tricotrin put out his hand, and thrust the half-shutter 
 against the window.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 503 
 
 " The light is strong," he muttered ; and he continued 
 his meal, sitting backward in the shadow, in silence. 
 
 " It maybe folly," continued Ninette. " I know nothing 
 of her, of course ; she spoke gently to me, and she gave 
 little Raoul a great gold piece. But they do say that 
 she will only break his heart if ever she gets it. She 
 loves to see men mad for her, they tell me. But it may 
 be only gossip, very likely. I remember in the old time, 
 when my lord was so much here, before he went to that 
 kingship in the east, they were always saying he would 
 marry this princess or the other when the great ladies 
 visited at the chateau. People must talk. Do you like 
 that shutter shut ? You were always so fond of the sun." 
 
 She was absent awhile, busied in rescuing a pumpkin 
 from the too vigorous play of her four-year-old son, on 
 the strip of turf outside her door. When she came back 
 she stood silent, with her hands in her sides a little while, 
 surveying her guest; then she spoke very softly : 
 
 " Tricotrin — I wonder if you would be angered if I 
 asked you something ?" 
 
 "I am not likely to be. Try." 
 
 "Well — did you ever see in that great duchess a look 
 of that pretty dead thing you were so good to, — of the 
 child Viva?" 
 
 " There is a look — yes." 
 
 "Ah! I am glad to hear you say that. Valentin 
 mocked at me. There is an enormous difference, of 
 course ; but there is a look " 
 
 "Valentin is the wiser of the two," said Tricotrin, as 
 he rose from the table, with a smile. " A great lady 
 would be ill pleased to be likened to a foundling. And 
 now, farewell. I will come back at evening to see your 
 husband. For the present I must go visit grand'mere, 
 since you have heard it is worse with her." 
 
 Ami lie wmt, dropping into Raoul's hands, as he 
 passed, a toy he had taken out of his knapsack— a clock- 
 work cuirassier, who went through wondrous evolutions, 
 and completely eclipsed the pumpkin. 
 
 An ingenious toyseller and mechanist had pressed it 
 upon him a few days earlier, as the sole return it was 
 in his power to render for services done, on a hot
 
 504 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 summer night, to him in a fire that had broken out on 
 his premises. 
 
 " Take it, I pray you," had urged the toymaker. " It 
 is a clever puppet, and you can bestow it on some child ; 
 — you always like to give pleasure." 
 
 And Tricotrin had put it in his knapsack, knowing that 
 >to refuse were to deal pain. 
 
 Ninette stood thoughtfully regarding his shadow as he 
 lengthened on the sunlit road. It was the first time he 
 had ever spoken of his lost Waif. 
 
 " If the child should not be dead after all !" she mused ; 
 and she remembered that the belief in this death had 
 gone abroad alone from what the old grand'mere had 
 said, and that Tricotrin himself had never once spoken 
 of her fate. 
 
 CHAPTER LY. 
 
 In the indolent summer day, some hour or more ere 
 the fall of evening, a riding party paced slowly through 
 one of the wooded valleys beyond Villiers. 
 
 They were above, on a steep rocky road that wound 
 down toward the deeply-scooped dell, where a little 
 hamlet lay ; unseen under its dense chestnut and syca- 
 more cover, and only betrayed by its roofs thrust up here 
 and there, gray and soft in hue with the lichens, or red 
 with their tiles that glowed under the leaves, bright as 
 poppies underneath ferns. 
 
 The horses were somewhat tired; the dogs paused to 
 drink thirstily from the hillside brooks ; the riders went 
 downward over the dangerous picturesque way, with 
 that pleasant sense of languor, and content, which comes 
 from such slight fatigue as only makes the ear more 
 grateful for the soothing sound of falling water, and the 
 eye more grateful for the perfect rest of dark cool green. 
 
 Their voices sank ; their laughter was hushed; through 
 the odorous scent of the dying day, heavy with the open-
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 505 
 
 ing buds of night-blossoming flowers, and t lie crushed 
 heart of wild fruits, fallen overripe, they rode on silently. 
 
 As they went, from the valley far down below there 
 rose the faint echoes of music, as a song rises up from 
 the leafy hedge- sheltered nest of a bullfinch. Aerial, 
 subdued, exquisitely delicate, it mingled, as its notes 
 ascended, with all the sweet sounds of the earth; the 
 brook's bubble, the leaves' murmur, the chime of sheep's 
 bells, the singing of grasshoppers ; blending with all, 
 broken by none. 
 
 Involuntarily they checked their horses ; and listened, 
 midway down the descent. 
 
 " A French Rubezahl !" said one. 
 
 "An Orpheus of the Loire," added another. 
 
 " Hush, hush !" said the foremost of them. " It must 
 be the Straduarius !" 
 
 "Whose?" they asked 
 
 She struck her whip with a gesture of annoyance 
 against the bole of the tree she passed. 
 
 "A Straduarius, or, — some other perfect violin. One 
 can tell thai even here." 
 
 " But you said the Straduarius, madam? Who is the 
 marvelous player?" 
 
 " 1 have no telescope to ascertain ! We shall see in 
 the valley." 
 
 Her host riding by her side, looked at her in a certain 
 perplexity. 
 
 "It is Tricotrin, I will wager," said the Marquis de 
 Valdanha farther behind. "Who else would play so to 
 those villagers at our feet?" 
 
 "Tricotrin?" murmured Estmere, "Tricotrin? I have 
 heard that word of late " 
 
 "Who has not?" laughed the other. 
 
 " Tricotrin ?" repeated Estmere, thoughtfully. "That 
 
 is DOJ a real name ?" 
 
 " Is it not ? Et is one the people love as they love the 
 Marseillaise. He is well known hereabouts: you mu-t 
 have met with him." 
 
 "I have done so. He is an ally of L^lis A man of 
 peculiar life, if I were told arighl ?" 
 
 "A man with the wit of a Piron, the politics of a Jean 
 
 43
 
 506 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 Jacques, the eloquence of a Mirabeau, the Utopia of a 
 Vergniaud ! — a man with the head of a god and the 
 blouse of a workman, the brain of a scholar and the life 
 of a scamp, the soul of a poet and the schemes of a 
 socialist. " 
 
 "I see!" 
 
 " A cosmopolitan " 
 
 " That is — speaks the tongues of all nations, and keeps 
 the laws of none !" 
 
 "A character " 
 
 " Who has lost the fact ere he gains the title 1" 
 
 "An universal genius " 
 
 " Who is of equally universal inutility !" 
 
 "A republican " 
 
 "Who finding labor distasteful preaches the commu- 
 nity of goods, and the equalization of riches ! Thanks : 
 you have sketched me the man in four phrases." 
 
 "And you have slandered him, my lord, in four epi- 
 grams !" said the Duchess de Lira beside him, interrupt- 
 ing their converse. 
 
 He glanced at her with increasing surprise. 
 
 " I would slander no one, even in jest," he said gravely. 
 " You know this — musician ?" 
 
 " I know something of him, — all France does," she an- 
 swered him ; and the woman of the world felt her cheek 
 redden and her conscience smite her, at the first evasion of 
 truth made to the first man she loved. Such semi-false- 
 hoods she and all her kind used by the score every day, 
 dainty masks in the masked ball of life ; but — to lie, to 
 touch the shadow of a lie, with him ? She felt as though 
 she had sinned against him. 
 
 " I must know something also, since he has interest for 
 you," he said, with a certain wonder still on him as to 
 what this interest could be. " I confess to have no spe- 
 cial regard in usual for enthusiasts and eccentrics ; the 
 brass slipper, abandoned on the brink of the volcano of 
 originality, is commonly typical of the forsaken common 
 sense that is left behind in the plunge of your Empedocles 
 of Fanaticism ! And the man who turns his back on the 
 world, has generally seen the world's back ere he does 
 so!"
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 50 T 
 
 "You are unjust," she said, curtly. "It is precisely 
 these men who free the world!" 
 
 " What! Must one have rent the decencies of moral 
 order ere one can cut the withes of illiberal thought?" 
 
 " That is a satire ; not an argument. Does he of ne- 
 cessity violate moral order, because he breaks through 
 social conventionalities ? Yours is an assumption, not a 
 deduction." 
 
 " Possibly : but I confess that I fail to see the inevita- 
 ble relationship of a coat out at elbows with a mind out 
 of the common ; and I do not admire emancipators, whose 
 first emancipated captives are their own passions and fan- 
 cies from the limbo of law 1" 
 
 " There spoke all the prejudices of your Order !" 
 " Prejudices in favor of social decencies? — they are like 
 prejudices in favor of cleanliness; — beggars marvel that 
 we care for our baths, but is that an argument against 
 ablution?" 
 
 " Prejudices! — because you assume that a man who is 
 eccentric must needs be likewise immoral ; as you would 
 assume, I suppose, that a man who is poor in purse must 
 of necessity bo also filthy in person. I do not perceive 
 the inevitable connection." 
 
 The path had suddenly narrowed so that but one rider 
 could pass at a time ; her horse preceded his, and the dis- 
 cussion was broken. 
 
 " She betrays an almost personal interest in this vaga- 
 bond,'' meditated Estmere, restlessly. "What can she 
 know of him ? — what link can they possibly have in 
 common ?" 
 
 It was this wonder which, unknown to him, had lent 
 an unaccustomed acerbity to tin; enunciation of his patri- 
 cian distaste for the levities and laxaties of eccentric 
 genius. 
 
 For the first time she had differed with him: fur tin- 
 first time she had flung at his Order a phrase that spuke 
 of it as kindred to him, bul as alien to her. 
 
 " It must be but a woman's caprice," lie mused, as he 
 followed her. "What tie can thai brillianl creature have 
 with the vagaries of bohemianism ?" 
 
 She, herself, went onward with a strange emotion at
 
 508 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 her heart : she felt as though she were, in some sort, 
 traitress to them both; she recognized even at that dis- 
 tance, with unerring instinct, the silvery melodies of the 
 violin ; she thought of the time when that music had pre- 
 ceded the grape-laden wagons of the vintage-feast, and the 
 great noble who was now her host had cried, " She can- 
 not be of the People!" 
 
 The music still stole up from the valley, toward which 
 they drew nearer with every step that their animals set 
 into the deep wet moss of the hillside. 
 
 On her face an unusual softness, an unwonted regret 
 deepened as she heard. She knew that she had two sins 
 upon her, sins of the coward and of the traitor : — false 
 shame and long ingratitude. Sins low, and dastardly, and 
 unworthy of her ! — sins for which her conscience smote 
 her heavily. 
 
 Since the eyes of Estmere had met hers, new thoughts 
 had stirred in her: the ice of the world's frost had melted 
 in great part from her; she had been moved to deeper 
 thought, quickened to warmer feeling, than she would 
 have imagined it possible she could stoop to from the 
 elevation of her superb disdain. 
 
 Because she herself had learned the meaning of love, 
 she had felt wherein to love she had been traitress. Be- 
 cause she herself had learned to desire a tenderness with- 
 held, she had seen where to tenderness she had been false 
 and full of cruelty. 
 
 All things had fallen to her hands in lavish gifts, save 
 this one thing she craved ; in its denial it taught her a 
 mercy that her life had been without from the earliest 
 days, when she had torn down with childish hands a score 
 of summer lilies that she might triumph in the mock 
 wealth of gold their broken stamens yielded her. 
 
 Yet the nobler feeling was not without its baser to 
 alloy it. There was shame — of which in turn she was 
 ashamed — that this bitter past she loathed could never be 
 effaced. There was the intolerable dread lest when she 
 passed — as pass she must — through the valley where he 
 played, one look upon her face should show old memories 
 of the player. And in her uwn wayward fashion she had 
 deep attachment to him still : his voice could move her,
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 509 
 
 his regard could touch her still, as those of a deserted 
 husband stir the half-dormant soul of a woman who has 
 long forsaken, and forgotten him, in the dazzling oblivion 
 of a far-distant life. 
 
 As the wife loves no more, yet still half vaguely re- 
 grets ; would abhor to return, yet half wistfully repents 
 of desertion ; so did she, whenever she met the gaze of 
 the savior whom she had denied. 
 
 She shuddered as their cavalcade wound down into the 
 hollow of the valley, and the little hamlet lying in it came 
 into their full view. 
 
 "Ah-ha! There is King Tricotrin!" cried the rider 
 who had spoken of him. "I thought so; with all his 
 Court about him — look well, Estmere, you will see the 
 happiest man on earth." 
 
 Estmere glanced at the Duchess de Lira as he an- 
 swered: 
 
 "Then I shall see the man who has fewest responsi- 
 bilities. Possibly your hero recognizes none ? It is the 
 way of his fraternity." 
 
 "You forget the dead well in the stone-mason's court, 
 my lord; and what you were pleased then to grant was 
 ' heroism.' " 
 
 She spoke quickly, and with bitterness, stung by his 
 tone into recalling the scene, whose recollection had es- 
 caped him at the moment. 
 
 lie started, and bowed his head. 
 
 " I had indeed forgot it. I thank you for the reminder. 
 The man who could so imperil his life; fur a fellow-creature 
 must have courage, and therefore nobility, in him." 
 
 "l>ut it cannot be allowed", I suppose, for nil that, to 
 counterbalance the misdemeanor of being a bohemian! 
 A decorous citizen would have probably stood on the 
 brink, and not have presumed to interfere so rashly with 
 tin- designs of ' Providence !' " 
 
 ■■ You arc pleased t" be sarcastic," he replied to her, 
 with some tinge of impatience. '' 1 trust thai I should 
 he t he ia -i i.i depreciate so generous, so grand an action; 
 but. at the same lime. I admit thai 1 have known very 
 high deeds of courage, even of self-devotion, dune by men 
 who had very little sterling worth in them. Are all the 
 > 43*
 
 510 TRICOTRIN. 
 
 private soldiers of an army heroes, with martyrs' souls, 
 think you ? Indeed, we know them as the dregs of the 
 worst part of a nation; yet, is there a battle-field or a 
 campaign that does not yield us hundreds of examples 
 of splendid daring, and even of infinite self-sacrifice ? It 
 seems, then, that the deliverer of the stone-mason was 
 known to you at the time of that accident? I was un- 
 aware of that, or I should still better have comprehended 
 your fear for him." 
 
 She understood the surprise, the bewilderment, the 
 vague sense of suspicion and of wonder which spoke in his 
 words. She could have bitten her lips through for having 
 recalled this incident to him. 
 
 "Better have comprehended them ?" she repeated, with 
 an effort that was successful to answer him with no trace 
 of embarrassment. "What! Is it so unintelligible, then, 
 that one can have some feeling in our world for those in 
 peril, some sympathy in our own empty egotism, with 
 honor, energy, and endurance ?" 
 
 He regarded her earnestly. 
 
 "If the Duchess de Lira," he replied, at length, "have 
 too well succeeded in persuading the world that she is 
 heartless and pitiless, she cannot complain. She has 
 striven studiously to misrepresent herself. I, for one at 
 the least, shall rejoice to believe her self-slandered." 
 
 She made no response. 
 
 At that moment another sharp bend in the path brought 
 them in full view of the village, and the young nobleman, 
 who had called him "King Tricotrin," challenged their 
 attention afresh, and pointed out, with his riding-whip, 
 the high red roof and the brown wooden gallery of the 
 village tavern, half-buried in hollyhocks, and cherry-trees, 
 and climbing gourds, where Tricotrin was playing to the 
 crowd. 
 
 A small hushed crowd of villagers, old men and old 
 women, maidens and mothers, strong men and little 
 children ; all the dwellers of the valley, who, at the first 
 notes of the violin, bad left their spinning-wheels, their 
 house-work, their seat in the sun, their play with the 
 dogs, their love-whispers under the boughs, and had gath- 
 ered about him hushed and entranced.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 51 1 
 
 The valley was full of loveliness, of poetry, of pastoral 
 peace; it was as a Theocritan idyl, as a Cuyp's concep- 
 tion, in the full luscious light of the declining day. But, 
 there were in the lives that peopled it, exceeding labor, 
 infinite pain, pressure of hunger oftentimes, continual 
 toil that dulled the senses to the beauty around, fatigue 
 that had no haven of rest to which to look. 
 
 Therefore they needed him, therefore they needed his 
 music to raise their hearts from the earth that they tilled, 
 to give them ears for the voices of winds and of waters, 
 to translate to them the unknown tongues of the flowers, 
 to pierce the deadened heaviness of souls slumbering from 
 the stupor of overconstant travail. Therefore they needed 
 him ; and he gave them what they needed, as he had 
 given to the people who loved him through so many 
 seasons of so many years. 
 
 Vainly had kings, and those who served kings, sought 
 to win him to bring that melody to palaces. He would 
 not take it thither. He kept it for those in whose gray, 
 hard, aching lives the pulse of joy was still, the sense of 
 beauty numb ; till, beneath its spells, those pulses quick- 
 ened once again, that long-dolled sense revived. 
 
 The thyrsus of Dionysus was not wanted where the 
 roses, and the lilies, and the myrtles blossomed; where 
 the young goat browsed off sweet thyme shoots, and the 
 earth was purple with trailing vines. It was the black 
 sea-circled rock, the salt-marsh, where the water-bird 
 moaned in loneliness, the parched plain, on whose sands 
 the slave sank dead, that the wand of the Wine-God 
 touched, and made laugh out in loveliness. 
 
 The only road through the valley homeward to Villiers 
 led directly past the doorway where the player stood. 
 She would have given years of her life not to have passed 
 him there and thus; but she was a woman of the world, 
 she was a graceful actress; she chose rather to trust to 
 her own power of self-control, than to risk exciting com- 
 ment and surprise— perchance suspicion — by any evidence 
 of the reluctance that slit; felt. 
 
 "Let us see this marvelous musician ; let us hear him 
 nearer still,'' urged one of the great ladies of the party to 
 the young Marquis de Valdanha : and with one consent
 
 512 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 the band of riders reined up as they passed the sign of 
 the Silver Stag, swinging above its gourds, and fruit-trees, 
 and blossoming syringa. 
 
 Tricotrin played on as though he saw none of them, 
 with his head bent over his bow, and his face shaded by 
 the broad leaf of his hat. He had recognized them even 
 while they had been far distant on the hillside path. 
 
 "Good day, Tricotrin!" cried Valdanha, with careless 
 good humor. "You have played for the villagers. Now 
 pl-ay for their seigneur '' 
 
 The music ceased Tricotrin lifted his head with a 
 smile. 
 
 "Good day, Valdanha! I play for the millions — not 
 for the units!" 
 
 And he laid his fiddle down behind him, on the oak 
 settle of the porch. The people fell aside ; the horses 
 grouped around the doorway ; he uncovered his head to 
 the women, where he stood with the careless grace that 
 was as natural to him as it is to a noble untamed forest 
 beast. 
 
 "Nonsense !" cried the young noble, pressing forward, 
 not knowing with whom he had to deal. " Your music 
 is worthy of Paganini, of Bamboche ; do not deny it to 
 us!" 
 
 And he cast his purse at the feet of the violin player. 
 
 "You have dropped something," said Tricotrin, quietly, 
 lifting the purse up to its owner on the end of his bow. 
 
 Valdanha laughed, a little discomfited. 
 
 "Pooh ! Keep it," he said, with a certain embarrass- 
 ment. "We give a hundred times what is in it every 
 week to an opera-singer, who has not a hundredth part 
 of your genius." 
 
 Tricotrin laughed in answer — a scornful amusement 
 in the laughter. 
 
 "You of the imperial court think everything is to be 
 bought and sold ? — even your own wives ! Well, my music 
 is out of the fashion ; it is not to be had for coin. Take 
 your purse up, my young sir." 
 
 "Not I!" said the marquis, pettishly, as he reined his 
 horse back, angered to be made absurd in the eyes of his 
 companions.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF A .YD STRAY. 513 
 
 " Very well, then ; take it, old Yetta," said Tricotrin, 
 tossing it to the oldest woman in the village group, an 
 octogenarian, whose sons had all been slaughtered in 
 Africa. "It is not the first time alms-giving has been 
 born out of pique. I suppose one need not quarrel with 
 the root in face of the result. The edelweiss springs 
 out of Alpine ice " 
 
 They were silent; regarding him with the languid 
 wonder, the serene curiosity, of men and women ill used 
 to any failure in deference shown to them, yet attracted 
 by the promise of some new and singular thing. 
 
 The Duchess de Lira alone kept aloof, letting her horse 
 nibble at the shunts of the drooping lime-boughs, and 
 looking herself upward to their pyramids of starry blos- 
 som. 
 
 "But will you only play for the peasantry or for the 
 populace?" asked Estmefe, drawing nearer, remembering 
 his latest interview with the man whom he mistrusted 
 as a character, ami regarded as a vagabond, yet who in- 
 terested him despite himself. 
 
 Tricotrin, at length, mel his eyes; — in his own laughed 
 his brilliant enigmatical smile. 
 
 " Will you tell me who want to he played to more? 
 Music is education." 
 
 "Certainly. But — noignorant mind, no untrained ear, 
 can appreciate melodies as perfeel as yours seem to be?" 
 
 "Can an ignorant, or an untrained brain follow the 
 theory of light, or the metamorphosis of plants '/—yet it 
 may rejoice in the rays of a summer sun, in the scent of 
 ;i nesl of wild flowers! So may it do in my music. Shall 
 I ask higher payment than the God of the sun and the 
 violets asks f< r himself ?" 
 
 Estmere looked at him with an increasing interest. 
 
 "A noble answer,' 1 he said, with a he ml of his haughty 
 head. "Bui still, despite this, you must sometimes 
 desire a more appreciative audience ?" 
 
 "Appreciative! Oh-hel how shall we call that? 
 Then: are many kinds of appreciation. The man of 
 science appreciates when he marvels before the exquisite 
 structure of the sea-shell, the perfeel organism of the 
 flower; hut the young girl appreciates, to,,, when she
 
 514 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 holds the shell to her ear for its music, when she kisses 
 the flower for its fragrance. Appreciation ! It is an 
 affair of the reason, indeed ; but it is an affair of the emo- 
 tions also." 
 
 " And you prefer what is born of the latter ?" 
 
 "Not always; but for my music I do. It speaks in 
 an unknown tongue. Science may have its alphabet, but 
 it is feeling that translates its poems. Delaroche, who 
 leaves off his work to listen ; Descamps, in whose eyes 
 I see tears ; Ingres, who dreams idyls while I play ; a 
 voung poet whose face reflects my thoughts, an old man 
 whose youth I bring back, an hour of pain that I soothe, 
 an hour of laughter that I give ; — these are my recom- 
 pense. Think you I would exchange them for the gold 
 showers and the diamond boxes of a Farinelli ?" 
 
 " Surely not. All I meant was that you might gain a 
 world-wide celebrity did you choose ." 
 
 " Gain a honey-coating that every fly may eat me and 
 every gnat may sting ? I thank you. I have a taste to 
 be at peace, and not to become food to sate the public 
 famine for a thing to tear." 
 
 Estmere smiled ; he did not understand the man who 
 thus addressed him, but he was attracted despite all his 
 strongest prejudices. 
 
 "You are right! Under the coat of honey is a shirt 
 of turpentine. Still — to see so great a gift as yours 
 wasted " 
 
 " Wasted? Because the multitudes have it, such as it 
 is, instead of the units? Droll arithmetic! I am with 
 you in thinking that minorities should have a good share 
 of power, for all that is wisest and purest is ever in a 
 minority, as we know ; but I do not see, as you see, that 
 minorities should command a monopoly — of sweet sounds 
 or of anything else." 
 
 "I spoke to the musician, not to the politician," said 
 Estmere, with the calm, chill contempt of his colder man- 
 ner: — the cold side of his character was touched, and his 
 sympathies were alienated at once. 
 
 Tricotrin, indifferent to the hint as to the rebuff, looked 
 at him amusedly. 
 
 " Oh, I know you well, Lord Estmere; I told you so 

 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 515 
 
 not long ago, to your great disgust. You and your Order 
 think no man should ever presume to touch politics unless 
 his coat be velvet, and his rent-roll large, like yours. 
 But, you see, we of the ecole buissonni&re generally do as 
 we like; and we get pecking at public questions for the 
 same reason as our brother birds peck at the hips and 
 the haws — because we have no granaries as you have. 
 You do not like Socialism ? Ah! And yet affect to fol- 
 low it." 
 
 " I!" Estmere looked at this wayside wit, this wine- 
 house philosopher, with a regard that asked plainly, "are 
 you fool or knave?" 
 
 " To be sure," answered Tricotrin. " You have chapel 
 and chaplain yonder at your chateau, I believe ? The 
 Book of the Christians is the very manual of Socialism: 
 'You read the gospel, Marat?' they cried. 'To be 
 sure,' said Marat. ' It is the most republican book in 
 the world, and sends all the rich people to hell.' If you 
 do not like my politics, beau sire, do not listen to the 
 Revolutionist of Galilee." 
 
 What Estmere would have answered was never heard. 
 At that moment the Duchess de Lira turned her horse's 
 head quickly, and glanced at Tricotrin with a swift flash- 
 ing regard, that conveyed all to him, naught to others. 
 
 "Have you no word for me?" 
 
 She spoke on an impulse, half of remorseful shame for 
 her own silence, half of unreasonable feminine impatience at 
 the absence of all recognition from him. She knew that 
 his abstinence from it was out of noble delicacy toward 
 her, generous submission to her will and to her welfare; 
 she would have been incensed had he claimed intimacy 
 with her, yet she was irritated that he could thus ignore 
 her presence. 
 
 With the remorseless vanity of a beautiful wayward 
 woman, she could not bear to Bee indifference even in one 
 to whose peace it was indispensable, and in whom her 
 pride refused to acknowledge before the world a friend. 
 This alienation between them had been from her own 
 wish, liy her own work: yet his acceptance of it always 
 stung her with a vivid sense of humiliation. 
 
 Therefore, though to pass him as a stranger was what
 
 516 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 she had desired, her self-love and her remorse forced her 
 to break through the barrier she had herself imposed: 
 she voluntarily drew all eyes upon her, as with some- 
 thing of the enchanting petulance of her early years she 
 asked : 
 
 "Have you no word for me ?" 
 
 He uncovered his head to her again, and smiled. 
 
 "Many words, madam, if you wish for them; but my 
 phrases are not the chocolate-almonds palatable to great 
 ladies. Besides 1 are you so unaristocratic as to remem- 
 ber an old debt? What will these noblemen think of 
 you ?" 
 
 Estmere's regard was fastened on them both with a 
 surprise he did not attempt to veil ; what she did, what 
 she said, had an interest for him no other living being's 
 acts and words possessed, and he beheld with no less dis- 
 quietude than amazement this address, to a lawless bo- 
 hemian, from a woman whom even her own society found 
 so languidly cold, so mercilessly scornful. 
 
 She, a patrician, as proud as himself, far aloof from all 
 weakness of her sex or derogation to her dignity, yet had 
 some close bond in common with a strolling musician, a 
 roaming eccentricity, a scamp in a linen blouse, with a 
 monkey in his pocket, and the salt of a lawless wit on 
 his tongue ! 
 
 Tricotrin divined the thought in his mind, and turned 
 toward him. 
 
 "I said so! Madam, you will lose my lord's esteem 
 forever if you do not take care. Earl Eustace, see here ; 
 long years ago, when this fair empress, whom you know 
 now, was childish enough to object to a premature death, 
 I chanced to save her life one summer's day ; by mere 
 accident and without risk, so that she has nothing to 
 thank me for, — still, she remembers it. She errs to her 
 Order in harboring such a plebeianism as gratitude ; but 
 in consideration that her life has turned out worth having, 
 you may perhaps be brought in time to understand and 
 to pardon it!" 
 
 The light sarcasm, the easy disowning of all his vast 
 claims, the swift desire to save her even from the passing 
 suspicion of her companions, touched all her latent con-
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 5H 
 
 science, stung all her latent generosity, touched and stung 
 them as no assertion of his rights and of her debt could 
 ever have done. 
 
 Her higher nature flashed out in the reply she gave, as 
 she glanced from the one to the other : 
 
 "Were it possible that I could incur my Lord Est- 
 mere's censure for a sentiment that the very beasts and 
 birds can feel toward their benefactors, I could not lose 
 his esteem so utterly as he would assuredly lose mine !" 
 
 She paused suddenly, her face hot wit h shame ; she felt 
 the poverty, the futility of any acknowledgment to him, 
 while still actually she denied him, like the apostle who 
 was ashamed of his Master, — while still, untold, un- 
 guessed, the width and the depth of his benefits to her 
 lay buried for sake of her pride. 
 
 Estmere bowed to her, — in his heart dissatisfied and 
 perplexed. 
 
 "The duchess is right ; I should indeed merit her dis- 
 dain were 1 capable of such baseness. In her childhood 
 you saved her life? The world is greatly your debtor. 
 May I ask how it chanced '."' 
 
 '•Oh!'! nothing to speak of; she was lost in a wood. 
 and would have made a choice meal for a wolf; that is 
 all. Mistigri here had more to do with the rescue than 
 I. The world my debtor ! A pretty phrase from a great 
 lord's lips ; hut was it the debtor of A.ntiochus for Cleo- 
 patra ? These beautiful women are no good to the world, 
 they are what the peasants here think comets arc: — 
 dazzling messengers of evil, thai bring lire, and war, and 
 pestilence in their train. The beauty of woman. — it is 
 the passion-flower of our lives; but it has poison in one 
 leaf of it. and healing in another. Madame de Lira is 
 your guest ?" 
 
 In the quick transition there was a sequence of thought 
 which Estmere caught, though il was unuttered ; his own 
 impulse to lei himself be beguiled by this beauty, whether 
 it brought him the poisoned or the healing touch, spurred 
 his comprehension. 
 
 lie gave a cold assenl to the question, wondering .-till 
 what manner of man this could be who talked thus at t he 
 door of a peasant's ale-house, and who presumed to con- 
 It
 
 518 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 vey to himself a veiled warning against a passion whose 
 existence no sign even had ever betrayed to its object. 
 
 "You stay in the valley yourself, Tricotrin ?" asked 
 Valdanha, at the same moment. 
 
 "Pardieu! I never stay anywhere!" laughed Trico- 
 trin. " The peregrinomanie, as sturdy Guy Patin styled 
 it, is the only salt of life ; always on the wing, like a 
 swallow — it is to keep perpetual youth, perpetual spring. 
 You flee from the winter, and follow where the sun goes. 
 Do you know, to my thinking, the Peruvian's notion of 
 paradise eclipses every other; — endless, buoyant move- 
 ment, through never-ending fields of light! There is a 
 grand conception ! — how vulgar beside it is the Christian, 
 how unpoetic even the Hellenic, picture of immortality!" 
 
 "You are always a wanderer?" asked Estmere, im- 
 pelled, against his own will, to interest himself in one 
 who half offended, half pleased, half alienated, half at- 
 tracted him. 
 
 " To be sure I am. Why not?" 
 
 " There would be scant obedience to the duties of citi- 
 zenship if all men were like you," said the other with a 
 smile. 
 
 "And no opportunity for an Oligarchy, which you 
 would resent still more ! Well — see you here, my Lord 
 Earl. You are born in the purple, you have the scepter 
 of power, the Aaron's rod of wealth, you can summon all 
 fair things about you, you can have all the delights of the 
 soul and the senses ; and if Satiety curse them all for 
 you, it is only because you begin them too early, and ask 
 more of them than it is reasonable to ask of any things 
 of earth. You possess all you desire ; and have no foe 
 to rob from you: save the devil of disgust, that hides 
 underneath all possession. But if you were a poor man, 
 with your soul and your senses all quickened, but no in- 
 cantation rod of gold in your hand, it would be different 
 with you ; you might like then to find your kingdom in 
 your liberty, your treasure-house in the light of the sun, 
 your artists in the colors of the sky, your empire in the 
 stretch of forest, sea, or desert ; your poem in a flower, 
 your music in a torrent, your temple in a palm grove. 
 Have you ever thought of that ? Have you ever thought 

 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 519 
 
 how dear, to men who have not wealth, are color, sound, 
 and sense and dreams? — the miraged cities that only 
 those who travel in long drought behold as compensa- 
 tion. You need them not — you live in palaces." 
 
 Estmere listened, in a grave wondering courtesy: the 
 poetic nature scarcely belonged to him ; he had led the 
 life which kills it, his temperament was that of the states- 
 man, not of the speculator, of the lawgiver, not of the 
 visionary. He could not wholly comprehend the tenor 
 of the fantastic, vivid, half-metaphorical answer given 
 him ; ) r et there was too much sympathy in his mind — 
 from which no noble thought was alien — for him to ridi- 
 cule or slight it. 
 
 " You are happy," he said, with a sigh that was almost 
 of envy. " There is no wand of gold that summons such 
 fair shapes as can the poet's power of fancy. Only — I 
 incline to think you live twenty centuries too late, or — 
 twenty centuries too early." 
 
 Viva turned on him a swift and eager glance. 
 "Of course!" she said, with a certain emotion, whose 
 meaning he could not analyze. "Was there ever yet a 
 man of genius who was not either the relic of some great 
 dead age, or the precursor of some noble future one, in 
 which he alone has faith?" 
 
 "Chut!" said Tricotrin. rapidly; he could not trust 
 himself to hear her speak in his own defense. "Fine 
 genius mine! To fiddle to a few villagers, and dash color 
 on an ale-house shutter! 1 have the genius of indolence, 
 if you like; as to my belonging to a by-gone age,— well ! 
 I am not sure that 1 have not goi the soul in me of some 
 barefooted friar of Moyen Age, who went about where 
 he listed, praying heir, laughing there, painting a missal 
 with a Pagan love-god, and saying a verse of Eorace 
 instead of a chant of the Church. Or, may be, I am 
 more like some Greek gossiper, who loitered away his 
 days in the sun, and ate his dates in the market-place, 
 and listened here and there to a philosopher, and— just 
 by taking no thought — hit on a truer philosophy than 
 came out of Porch or Garden. Ah! my Lord of Est- 
 mere, you have two hundred servants over there at Yil- 
 liers, I have been told; do you not think I am better
 
 520 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 served here by one little brown-eyed, brown-cheeked 
 maiden, who sings her Beranger like a lark, while she 
 brings me her dish of wild strawberries ? There is fame 
 too for vou, — his — the Kins? of the Chansons ! When a c,ii*l 
 washes her linen in the brook, — when a herdsman drives 
 his flock through the lanes, — when a boy throws his line 
 in a fishing-stream, — when a grisette sits and works at 
 her attic lattice, — when a student dreams under the lin- 
 den leaves, — he is on their lips, in their hearts, in their 
 fancies and joys. What a power ! What a dominion ! 
 Wider than any that emperors boast!" 
 
 "And," added Estmere, with a smile, "if you were not 
 Trieotrin you would be Beranger?" 
 
 "Assuredly. A lyric poet, if he have art, or rather 
 nature enough in him, to wind himself into the lives and 
 the souls of the people, reigns as no Alexander, no Cassar, 
 no Sulla ever did yet. A statesman rules, — ay, for a life- 
 time ; but it is only the poet whose scepter stretches over 
 generations unborn. But good day to you — or rather 
 good night. I have no business to weary you with words, 
 if I do not give you music." 
 
 "But will you not give us both ?" 
 
 " No," he answered abruptly, and, lifting his hat to 
 the women of the group, he turned with a rapid move- 
 ment and went within. The memory was keen in him of 
 the day when he had played to the little child that had 
 dropped her lilies and forget-me-nots to listen. 
 
 Sim who once — so long ago! — had been that child, 
 happy in her floral wealth, let him go from her in silence, 
 with only a courteous gesture of farewell. Conscience 
 was not dead in her ; but it was numb, vacillating, be- 
 wildered ; it allowed her passively to accept the tacit sacri- 
 fice made to her. It allowed her to acquiesce in his 
 acceptance of her abandonment, in his self-negation for 
 her sake. 
 
 Yet she felt debased, unworthy, a coward to the core ; 
 she started like a guilty creature when her host addressed 
 her as they rode away from the tavern porch, whose 
 golden sunflowers the evening sun was just commencing 
 to redden into stars of fire. 

 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 521 
 
 "A strange character, — this man?" he said to her. "A 
 genius, no doubt; but a genius wasted." 
 
 "No doubt," she answered, with a certain contemptu- 
 ous satire, in which her own emotions found alike mask 
 and refuge. " He makes no money by it !" 
 
 " That was not my meaning," replied Estmere, annoyed 
 at the misconstruction. " It is not for gold that the high- 
 est intelligences labor in any age. But talents thrown 
 away upon a wineshop audience are still less profitably 
 employed than wrapped in the napkin of the parable." 
 
 "The wineshop audience feels!" she answered, with 
 that occasional ironic scoff at the patrician order which 
 would now and then break out in her, and seem to show 
 some latent though repelled sympathy with the bohe- 
 mianism of another class. "Can we say so much for 
 the vapid circle of a palace drawing-room, murmuring 
 scientific jargon, and tapping faint applause with fans and 
 gloves!" 
 
 "I think we may, — sometimes," -aid Estmere, coldly. 
 "I cannot myself perceive why educated faculties in the 
 admirer, make discriminative admiration less honorable 
 to its object than a clown's grin, or a milkmaid's tears. 
 It is the cant of the age to presuppose the monopoly of 
 all sympathies by the uncultured classes; now, I believe 
 that there are no classes more utterly unsympathetic on 
 the earth. Sympathy has its birth in the mind yet more 
 than in the heart ;— the sympathy of the boor is restricted 
 to his own hearth; it is only the sympathy of the scholar 
 that extends to things totally opposed, and persons en- 
 tirely alien, to him." 
 
 "Yet there are scholars who, if they climb the ice- 
 mountain of their own ambition, care not whom the ava- 
 lanches slay in the villages below." 
 
 "Well, — that is not a worse.it is to an extent a higher, 
 form of egotism than the peasant's, who. if his own hay- 
 rick be not in flames, cares not what torch of war d< 
 lates t he neighboring plain. Bu1 can you tell me no more 
 of this man— Tricotrin ? Tricotrin ! it is not a name." 
 
 " 1 have never known him go by any other. No, — I 
 can tell you very little of him. lie is a logogriph, whose 
 leading word 1 have never guessed." 
 
 n
 
 522 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 "Yet he saved your life, it appears?" 
 
 " That is a sarcasm ! He saved my life certainly; but 
 I was an infant, I have no recollection of the circum- 
 stance ; I have merely heard of it " 
 
 "And you know nothing of him ? — I mean of his ante- 
 cedents, his modes of life, his pursuits, of what first 
 made him the bohemian and the eccentricity that he is 
 now ?" 
 
 " I have no idea. I have never had any means of 
 ascertaining. I know that the Duke de Lira held him in 
 high esteem for some great service rendered in an insur- 
 rection ; I know that he is a man of infinite wit, infinite 
 resources, infinite nobility of feeling, — that is the extent 
 of my knowledge. I greatly doubt, also, if any one's 
 influence is greater. He is ' Tricotrin,' the people say. 
 Both he and they seem to consider all uttered in that 
 word which you find so singular." 
 
 " I find it singular because it is so evidently but a pseu- 
 donym " 
 
 " I never thought of it as such. There are strange 
 names among the French bas peuple." 
 
 "But that man does not belong to the 'bas peuple ' of 
 any nation." 
 
 "By his look — no. Yet — I never heard anything that 
 suggested his belonging to any other grade than that 
 which he assumes ; although " 
 
 "Although what?" 
 
 "Although, — is not his tenderness for the people rather 
 that of one who has voluntarily associated himself with 
 them than that of one who naturally belongs to them?" 
 
 " This was my own thought. Would it not be possible 
 to learn something of him ?" 
 
 " I do not think so ; I imagine no one would more 
 acutely resent any attempt to penetrate his past." 
 
 She spoke hurriedly, for the first time losing the easy 
 and negligent self-possession she had preserved through- 
 out the conversation. She felt an intense anxiety to di- 
 vert his thoughts from the subject, and his inquiries from 
 the fortunes, of Tricotrin ; and she allowed her anxiety 
 to overcome the tact and facility of her assumed indiffer- 
 ence. To penetrate his past was to penetrate hers !
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 523 
 
 He perceived that restless fear ; but he said nothing of 
 it. He accepted her words in their surface-meaning, and 
 assented to them. 
 
 "Those men," he added, " who fling away great gifts 
 in gipsy-camps, and dash their Castalian water with pot- 
 house drinks, are usually the heroes of adventures as 
 amusing as, but not more reputable than, those of Gil 
 Bias ; and, though they censure the world and laugh at 
 mankind, they have generally first been shown a jail by 
 the one and the door by the other. 'A great Charac- 
 ter !' says Society : when it means — ' a great Scamp !' " 
 
 A hot flush of color passed over the fairness of her face; 
 her teeth set. 
 
 "You love to turn an epigram, Lord Estmere ! — and 
 care little what you sacrifice to its points. Look in the face 
 of that man we have left, and say — you who pride your- 
 self on your knowledge of men- — whether any single thing 
 of shame, or of crime, or of dishonor, could go with the 
 features you see, with the bearing that defies you, with 
 the lion's regard that meets your own !" 
 
 lie bowed his head. 
 
 "This person is fortunate in his interest for you — 
 proud in his defender." 
 
 Then silence ensued between them ; and lasted until 
 they rode up to the doors of Villiers. 
 
 CHAPTER LVI. 
 
 "I have lied to him !" she thought, dropping her head 
 on her hands when she reached her own chambers. She 
 had been ashamed of the sin of ingratitude, of tin; sin of 
 cowardice, but she was far more bitterly ashamed of the 
 sin of falsehood, — because this last sin was against the 
 man in whose sight she desired not to have only the sem- 
 blance, but the reality, of perfect truth, and purity, and 
 honor. 
 
 She had said no absolute word of untruth to him, per-
 
 524 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 haps ; it was true that she knew nothing' of the whence 
 and the whither of the one of whom they had spoken. 
 While protected by Tricotrin she had been too young to 
 question the life that seemed almost divine in her eyes; 
 since she had quitted him the memory of it had been 
 blotted out by a thousand more vivid interests and more 
 selfish pursuits. It was true she knew nothing — never 
 had asked aught — of this fate which from her childhood 
 upward had been too familiar in her eyes to have any 
 aspect of strangeness or of mystery. 
 
 She had adhered to the letter of the truth ; but that was 
 all ; — in spirit, in effect, in purpose, she had lied to Est- 
 mere ; lied to the man whose regard pierced the coldness 
 and the vanity of her life, as the sun's rays of the mature 
 year pierce the snows and the ice of the mountain-peaks, 
 and who called the long-buried beauties of her gentler 
 nature into fresh existence, as those rays recall to blos- 
 som the crocus, and the gentian, and the edelweiss. 
 
 Her sin against him, as weighed with her sin against 
 the other, was as a grain of wheat beside a millstone ; 
 yet the life-long guilt had left her without remorse, with- 
 out regret, almost without moral consciousness of it ; the 
 guilt of the evasion, the concealment, made her feel covered 
 with shame, and forever without fitness for him. 
 
 He had no right to her confidence; she owed him no 
 allegiance ; he had no title to search out her past ; — but 
 these sophisms availed nothing to reconcile her with her- 
 self. 
 
 In that moment she was utterly base in her own judg- 
 ment; she had lost dignity, and purity, and truth, and 
 even courage ; she had been a coward ! There was no- 
 thing viler or lower in her esteem ; and in that one hour 
 she saw down into the depths of her own heart, and saw 
 there weakness and worthlessness, that made the haughty 
 duchess, who exercised so superb a power over the souls 
 of men, immeasurably beneath the child that had learned 
 her simple lessons of loyalty and justice from the lips of 
 an old peasant woman. 
 
 " I cannot deceive him /" she thought, " and yet, he 
 must never — he shall never — know I" 
 
 A more poignant shame than even that of falsehood
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 525 
 
 smote her as she mused thus ; a shame that made her 
 ready to tear her very heart out of her living body, — the 
 shame that she gave her love to a man who had never 
 uttered to her one word of passion or of tenderness. 
 
 "I fascinate him, — I perplex him, — I gain his ecu- 
 sure, — I excite his scorn, — I force his admiration ; — but are 
 any of those love '<"' she thought, in the bitterness of her 
 soul. 
 
 And her head sank, and her eyes grew blind with tears, 
 and her life ached with vain vague longing. 
 
 Then the imperious coquetry in her rose, and she 
 looked at her own face ; and her eyes flashed, her mouth 
 laughed in proud resolve and consciousness of power. 
 
 " Hi' shall love me !" she said half aloud, in her closed 
 teeth: it was as much a menace as avow. She had said 
 it often, when but vanity alone had been involved in its 
 realization ; she said it now with all her soul set upon its 
 fruition She drove aside her repentance, her self-con- 
 demnation, her sickening sense of danger and of error: 
 and summoned her women about her, and gave herself 
 into their hands, and had the gold powder scattered over 
 tresses brighter than itself, and gossamer laces cast over 
 beauties which they half veiled only wholly to enhance, 
 and the diamonds girdle a form lit for the cestus of Venus, 
 and a single scarlet flower set to glow against the white- 
 ness of her bosom. 
 
 " lie shall love me!" she thought, as site glanced at 
 the mirrors ere she swept from her chambers, voluptu- 
 ously lovely as any goddess that ever passed through 
 the Ivory Gate to haunt the dreams of poet or of painter. 
 Bui — Estmere never hail feared her a- he feared her 
 sensuous grace, her intoxicating charm, that night. 
 
 It was the scarlet llower of passion, of pride, of vic- 
 tory, of delirium, that glowed within her breast: — not 
 the white [lower of purity and of truth. 
 
 The one had already betrayed him ; the other he hail 
 sought as the knighl sought 5folande with the Yellow- 
 Hair — in vain. 
 
 Still he loved her, though he withheld the knowledge 
 of his subjection from her; though he resisted, and 
 scorned, and feared the emotion that possessed him. lie
 
 528 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 concealed it jealously, because he mistrusted her ; mis- 
 trusted that she might fool him as she fooled all men ; 
 that she had danger, and evil, and cruelty in her, as have 
 all things dominated by vanity. 
 
 Also, he mistrusted himself; he was no longer young : 
 with this boy's play of love he had had naught to do, 
 since it had dealt him back the gray ashes of a desolated 
 honor, in return for his fair gold of faith. It seemed to 
 him as a madman's folly to suppose that he alone could 
 succeed, where all others had failed, in awakening ten- 
 derness and fealty from such a woman as this. He had 
 distrust of her ; distrust of himself. 
 
 The proud noble could not sue to be rejected ; the grave 
 statesman could not bend his neck in an unvalued hom- 
 age ; the superb gentleman could not stoop in vain, and 
 give himself to the gay languid disdain of a successful 
 and sated coquette. 
 
 He loved her with a passion only stronger and deeper 
 for its suppression ; but still stronger than itself were 
 his fears of hers, and his own self-respect. He would 
 not give up his honor for her wanton play, his dignity 
 for her captious triumph. 
 
 Moreover, a certain vague but painful suspicion had 
 arisen in him with the reticence that he had noted in her 
 on the subject of that tavern-musician whom she de- 
 fended, yet ignored. No single trace of embarrassment 
 and of reluctance that she had displayed had been lost 
 upon him. He perceived that there was here some 
 memory, or some circumstance, that she desired to thrust 
 away; some bond between her and this wanderer that 
 she wished unrevealed, undivined. His own mind was 
 too lofty, his own thoughts too noble, for any coarse or 
 base suggestion to present itself to him as the reason of 
 this ; still the fancy — for it was scarcely more — haunted 
 and troubled him. 
 
 He loved her: — hence he would have had her life stain- 
 less as the driven snow, and open before him as the 
 leaves of a book. And he felt instinctively that it never 
 would be thus. 
 
 Ere he had met her, she had lived through many sea- 
 sons of victory, of brilliancy, of luxury, of celebrity ; in
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 527 
 
 them how many dead passions, dead joys, dead pleasures, 
 dead pains, might lie of which he could never know? 
 They said that she had never loved : but who could tell ? 
 — who could be certain that her scorn for all her facile 
 conquests might not be born from some secret and silent 
 emotion of which she was ashamed ? some impulse that 
 could not be indulged without derogation from her code, 
 degradation to her rank 1 This well might be, without 
 shame to her : — this stranger might hold the clew to 
 whatsoever the secret was ; might, even, have been the 
 object of such an attachment. Thus he mused in the 
 self-torture with which the wisest torments himself when 
 once the love of woman has entered into him. 
 
 He was riding slowly through the outlying woods of 
 his estate, in the freshness of the very early day. Some 
 forest question had needed his presence there, and he had 
 been glad of the stillness, the loneliness, the freedom from 
 his duties as a host. 
 
 " What he would have given for youth 1" he thought, 
 " for the years of his son's youth !" 
 
 That futile desire had never touched his life before ; it 
 was spent in grave ambitions, high pursuits, fair fame ; 
 it was too lofty for envy, too serene for regret: — it was 
 only dow, when the weakness of passion undermined it, 
 that he felt, with a restless weariness, sorrow for the 
 many years that had slipped by and never brought him 
 a joy ; desire for the glow and glory of the hopes which, 
 with hiin.'had died out so long ago, crushed like bruised 
 asphodels in the white false hand of a woman. 
 
 A sigh escaped him; a quick, low, impatient sigh of 
 pain: — had he dwelt in peace through all these many 
 seasons only to fall before this sorceress at the last 1 
 
 He started, as in answer to that sigh a voice chal- 
 lenged him in what he had believed to be so perfect and 
 profound a solitude 
 
 " You are weary, Ear] Eustace, and on a midsummer 
 morning, too ! For shame I Ah! the grass-wreaths of 
 the Scipii and the Julii were searer in all their honor than 
 the fresh Campagna grasses that boy ports wove for 
 Nffivia's or for Flora's hair; it is so to this day, is it 
 not?"
 
 528 TRICOT R IN, 
 
 Estmere checked his horse, and glanced around in the 
 sun-lightened woods. 
 
 Beside him, knee-deep in flowers and ferns, with a 
 wounded quail in his right hand, stood Tricotrin, under 
 a group of pines, from whose boughs Mistigri was 
 swinging. 
 
 "I have been bathing in one of your pools," pursued 
 his trespasser, whose hair and beard still glistened with 
 water-drops. "A little man-forgotten lake there, under 
 the trees, that no creature ever sees save the water-fowl. 
 You bathe in a dainty marble bath, with a fresco of Leda 
 on the walls, I believe ; — bah ! my teals' and widgeons' 
 and wild swans' Jordan is far better." 
 
 Estmere did not answer him at once ; surprise at his 
 presence there, annoyance at the audacious freedom of 
 the address, and the latent attraction that this man pos- 
 sessed for him, all holding him silent. He had desired 
 to meet with Tricotrin again ; but he was scarcely pre- 
 pared for so unceremonious a greeting. 
 
 " Good day to you," he said at length, with that cold 
 and gentle courtesy which marked, far more definitely 
 than other men's insolence, the differences of rank. 
 " You have a bird there ? — is it dead ?" 
 
 Tricotrin looked up and laughed in his eyes, touching 
 the little quail softly. 
 
 "You think I look like a poacher? No — the thing is 
 living ; but I found it with its wing broken — by a blow 
 from a stick or a stone, most likely; and I sha^ll keep it 
 with me and cure it. ' Fr aires mei,' said Francois d'Assis 
 to the birds : he was a bold man to claim brotherhood 
 with the innocents? And he talked to them — the fool ! — 
 instead of listening. What presumption!" 
 
 "You are fond of birds and animals? you are a natu- 
 ralist?" 
 
 "God be praised, no! I am fond of them, yes. How 
 honest they are, how tender, how grateful ! They do not 
 take your benefits as so many reasons why they should 
 cut your throat lest you should ever claim a debt against 
 them, which men are apt to do. But a naturalist! A 
 man who thinks himself justified in making all creation 
 groan, if he can tickle his own vanity with one straw of
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY, 529 
 
 knowledge ; who will give the tortures of hell to the dumb 
 meek brutes, if so be that thereby he may gain some scrap 
 of false science, which the future will laugh at as the 
 present now laughs at Aristotle ! No ! For what do 
 you take me?" 
 
 "For what do you bid me to take you ?" 
 
 He asked the question on an impulse : he ardently de- 
 sired to learn something, were it ever so little, of this 
 wandering life, that was the entire antithesis of his own. 
 
 Tricotrin's eyes laughed again at him with their amused 
 and sunny irony. 
 
 " Rather tell me what you select for me ; I am three 
 abominations in your sight, I fancy: a cosmopolitan, a 
 democrat, and a vagabond — eh?" 
 
 " Surely, the cosmopolitan is a man of too high powers 
 and gifts to be fitly associated in designation with the 
 other two appellatives?" 
 
 "Pooh! What is there to object to in the other two, 
 pray? David, Mithridates, Artaxerxes, Nezahualcoytl, 
 Viriathus, scores of great kings, were vagabonds and 
 wanderers in their novitiates; and as for democrats ? 
 well, one may have worse company, 1 fancy, than Buzot, 
 Vergniaud, Milton, Hampden, and all their like, stretch- 
 ing up to Caius Gracchus. Not thai 1 altogether hold 
 with him for his bribes, his rancor, his corn proletariat, 
 and other such mailers " 
 
 "You cite honorable names," answered Estmere, with 
 a smile, unconsciously falling into his companion's vein 
 of speech. "You forget that, for the few kings errant, 
 there are a million of thieves and gipsies; and that for 
 one Gracchus we get a China, a Critolaus, a Glaucius, 
 more or less miserably repeated a thousand times in every 
 nation." 
 
 "Ay, — as for one Drusus, one Scipio, one Sempronius, 
 and one Estmere, i<> whom 'nobility is obligation,' there 
 are a million petty patricians who play at a paper-tyrannis, 
 and disgrace the order, while they ape the way- of the 
 great Eupatrids. Hut I do nol see, myself, that tin- dig- 
 nity of the original type is harmed because it is unwor- 
 thily imitated, fur the real palina of a true Correggio, 
 you get the false glaze vi' ten thousand copies from the 
 
 45
 
 530 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 schools ; but that does not change the true Correggio's 
 value." 
 
 Estmere bent his head in acknowledgment of the trib- 
 ute to himself, which he saw was no lip service, but the 
 offspring of a cordial sincerity ; while increased surprise 
 came on him : this man, with a democrat's codes, had 
 none of the democrat's blind class-hatred. 
 
 "You have a silver tongue," he said, resting his eyes 
 on his companion in grave speculation. "You, yourself, 
 I believe, with all your professions of lawlessness, admit 
 that 'humanity is obligation,' a law still more stringent, 
 and far more wide-spreading. I was present when the 
 Paris crowd worshiped you for your noble rescue of the 
 stone-mason from the dead well." 
 
 Tricotrin gave an impatient gesture, and almost an 
 embarrassed laugh. He hated such things as these in his 
 life to be known or be quoted. 
 
 "Pshaw! What was that?" he cried lightly. " I did 
 not get even a sprain. To those poor, sickly, effeminate, 
 city-mewed Parisians, who scarce ever stir outside their 
 barrier-walls, it might look a great feat ; but to any one 
 who knows anything of mountaineering, to any one who 
 has hung by a -rope over an alpine precipice, the mere 
 going down into a well was a nothing at all." 
 
 Estmere smiled. 
 
 "You may undervalue the action ; no one else is likely 
 to do so. It was a very splendid result of such a union 
 of courage and coolness as we do not very often find ; 
 and it was a great self-devotion also." 
 
 " Self-devotion? Paf ! Not a bit of it. Is death such 
 a terrible thing that we are such wonderful heroes for 
 risking it? I am Pagan enough to deem it no such 
 awful visitant. By-the-way, it is a sufficiently droll 
 affair, that Christianity, which professes itself so sure of 
 the justice of Divine judgments and of the possession of 
 an eternal Hereafter, should be the one religion whose 
 followers have most assiduously dressed up Death as a 
 Xing of Terrors? Anomalous, assuredly." 
 
 Estmere still regarded him with earnest interest, pay- 
 ing little heed to what he uttered, so intent was he him-
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 53 1 
 
 self in speculation as to what this wanderer could pos- 
 sibly be. 
 
 " It was certainly you," he said, at length, " whom I met, 
 not very long since, in Lelis' atelier, and who reminded 
 me of my having once purchased the Attavante?" 
 
 "Yes; it was I.'' 
 
 " Lelis spoke of you to me with the deepest attachment, 
 and told me the tale of that little black familiar which 
 swings yonder. Yours is a peculiar name." 
 
 Tricot rin's eyes laughed a little. 
 
 "Is it? It is a simple oue enough." 
 
 "Of what part of the country, may I ask?" 
 
 "A cosmopolitan has no country." 
 
 "Bat even a cosmopolitan must have parentage — race 
 — birthplace ?" 
 
 "Must he? Well, a bohemian need have none of the 
 three. He is a great deal freer than his prototypes, the 
 gipsies; for they are the slaves of tribe-law and blood- 
 intluence. Like Micha Hall, of Mam Tor, he can write 
 on his tombstone, if, indeed, he care for one: 
 
 Quid eram, nescitis; 
 Quid sum, nescitis 
 Ubi abii, 11 ostitis. 
 Valetel" 
 
 Estmere smiled at the epitaph; and felt himself com- 
 pelled to admit the hint to discontinue his inquiries. He 
 turned to another subject. 
 
 "The Dante had been long yours?" 
 
 "Yes. Why do you ask?" 
 
 "Only t<> know if you have regretted its loss." 
 
 "I never regret anything Whal is the use?" 
 
 "I merely meant, that — it would give me pleasure to 
 restore it 10 you if you would permit me?" 
 
 "I never take shifts. I thank you for your intention, all 
 the same." 
 
 "Well — will you purchase it, then, by allowing the 
 chateau to hear that music which you bestow so lavishly 
 on the tavern ?" 
 
 "No," said Tricotrin, more briefly still. " I do not play
 
 532 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 for any wage, nor in any chateaux. I play when the 
 spirit moves me ; not when men dictate." 
 
 " That is the waywardness of all genius," thought Est- 
 mere, as he answered aloud : 
 
 " It is our misfortune that you are so antagonistic to 
 the chateaux ; and — you surely find no debtor such an 
 ingrate, no master such a tyrant, as the People?" 
 
 " Perhaps. But, rather I find it a dog, that bullies and 
 tears where it is feared, but maybe made faithful by gen- 
 uine courage and strict justice shown to it." 
 
 " The experience of the musician, then, must be much 
 more fortunate than the experience of the statesman." 
 
 "Why, yes. It is ungrateful to great men, I grant; 
 but it has the irritation of its own vague sense that it is 
 but their tool, their ladder, their grappling-iron, to excuse 
 it. Still — I know well what you mean ; the man who 
 works for mankind works for a task-master, who makes 
 bitter every hour of his life only to forget him with the 
 instant of his death ; — he is ever rolling the stone of hu- 
 man nature upward toward purer heights, to see it 
 recoil and rush down into darkness and bloodshed. I 
 know " 
 
 Estmere's eyes still dwelt on him with keen, grave 
 study. The desire he had to become acquainted with 
 this man's past, and present, overcame the reluctance in 
 him to betray what might seem curiosity or intrusion. 
 
 "I wish that you would tell me," he said, with a cer- 
 tain hesitation, "tell me without epigram or argument, 
 simply how it arrives that a man of your talents and cul- 
 ture — as they appear to me — occupies with content a po- 
 sition where the world can so little perceive those powers, 
 or offer them their due honors and awards ?" 
 
 " You wish to know thalV 
 
 The question was rapid and stern : a look of impatience, 
 of anger, of contempt, swept stormily over his features ; 
 but its duration was brief, his careless serenity returned 
 again, as he answered with a laugh : 
 
 "Is there aught so wonderful that a man likes his lib- 
 erty, likes to wander at his ease, likes to get riddance of 
 the trammels of a civilization which, in multiplying wants 
 and desires, has multiplied envy and greed ?"
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 533 
 
 "That is the vagrant's excuse for preferring license to 
 law, and theft to honest labor," said Estmere coldly. 
 His inherent distrust of a " Character" began to revive. 
 
 Tricotrin shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 " Fardie ! so it is, poor simpleton. If he do not know 
 that he who enters into crime subscribes subservience to 
 the weightiest bondage on earth, it is because his igno- 
 rance is as strong as his lusts. And who teaches him 
 otherwise ? He beholds so many successful sins throned 
 on high and rolling in their chariots !" 
 
 " To accuse the world of dishonesty is always the out- 
 law's defense of his own stolen goods," answered Est- 
 mere, in his chillest tones. " But I started no general 
 proposition. I asked you a personal — perhaps a too cu- 
 rious — question. I may seem rude, I have no title to ask 
 an answer; nevertheless, I must repeat, it is impossible 
 for me to reconcile the great gifts you undoubtedly possess 
 with the career you are content to pursue." 
 
 Tricotrin's eloquent eyes changed their expression 
 many times through the few sentences. As they were 
 concluded, his regard grew graver, though in it there still 
 laughed the delicate, line irony of his careless scorn. 
 
 " Well, — I will answer you, though I would not any 
 one else. Tell me first, though, what it is you find so 
 reprehensible in my career ? Is it my consorting with a 
 little animal who bears too close token of his relationship to 
 us to be an agreeable object of contemplation to man ? — . 
 is it because there is only virtue in your velvet, and gross 
 guilt in my linen blouse ? — is it the telling of plain truths, 
 the calling <>(' things simply by their names, a sin that 
 blackened Sulla's name far more than the blood that he 
 shed? — is it because I play to those who want amusement 
 instead of to those who can pay for it? It is all these, I 
 SUppOSe : but what else ?" 
 
 « Simply — that having genius you do not care to bo 
 worthy of it, and to Worthily bestow it. An insolent 
 answer, you will say; but you have demanded my 
 opinion." 
 
 "Certainly. Well — lei us see. What is bestowing it 
 worthily? I will tell you a story. 
 
 " Once there were three handmaidens of Krishna's; in- 
 
 45*
 
 534 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 visible, of course, to the world of men. They begged of 
 Krishna, one day, to test their wisdom, and Krishna 
 gave them three drops of dew. It was in the season of 
 drought, — and he bade them go and bestow them where 
 each deemed best in the world. 
 
 "Now one flew earthward, and saw a king's fountain 
 leaping and shining in the sun ; the people died of thirst, 
 and the fields and the plains were cracked with heat, but 
 the king's fountain was still fed and played on. So she 
 thought, ' Surely my dew will best fall where such glo- 
 rious water dances ?' — and she shook the drop into the 
 torrent. 
 
 " The second hovered over the sea, and saw the Indian 
 oysters lying under the waves, among the sea-weed and 
 the coral. Then she thought, 'A rain-drop that falls in 
 an oyster's shell becomes a pearl ; it may bring riches 
 untold to man, and shine in the diadem of a monarch. 
 Surely it is best bestowed where it will change to a 
 jewel '?' — and she shook the dew into the open mouth 
 of a shell. 
 
 " The third had scarcely hovered a moment over the 
 parched white lands, ere she beheld a little, helpless, 
 brown bird dying of thirst upon the sand, its b,right eyes 
 glazed, its life going out in torture. Then she thought, 
 ' Surely my gift will be best given in succor to the first 
 and lowliest thing I see in pain V — and she shook the 
 dew-drop down into the silent throat of the bird, that 
 fluttered, and arose, and was strengthened. 
 
 " Then Krishna said that she alone had bestowed her 
 power wisely; and he bade her take the tidings of rain to 
 the aching earth, and the earth rejoiced exceedingly. 
 Genius is the morning dew that keeps the world from per- 
 ishing in drought. Can you read my parable?" 
 
 Estmere bowed his head ; touched and rebuked by the 
 poetic reproach. 
 
 " I do ; — forgive me that I ventured to pass judgment 
 on you." 
 
 " I forgive !" answered Tricotrin, simply ; then, with the 
 light and rapid movement that was common with him, he 
 sprang like a deer across the fresliet of water by which he 
 stood, and, plunging into the depth of wood that lay on
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 535 
 
 its farther side, was lost from sight before the other could 
 arrest him. 
 
 Estmere sat and gazed at the green dense wall of foli- 
 age that the young and old oaks of the forest placed be- 
 tween them. He was astonished, attracted, perplexed; 
 a feeling he could not account for moved him, and filled 
 him with a vexed impatience at his own failure, and a 
 deepened interest in the one who had vanquished him. 
 
 There was that about this fearless grace, this poetic 
 eloquence, this mingled pride and carelessness, the one as 
 of a king, the other as of a gipsy, that fascinated him, 
 were it only by sheer force of contrast ; and wrung from 
 him a reverence that he was almost tempted to ridicule, 
 yet which he could not resist despite his own resentment 
 of it. He was accustomed to control, to command, to 
 dominate, to criticise men, as he who is born to rule them 
 must ever do if he would hold a leader's place ; but here 
 was one man with whom ho could do none of these, — 
 one man who excited all his strongest prejudices, who 
 called up all his haughtiest creeds, but who won on him, 
 and who challenged his attention as none of his own order 
 ever had done. 
 
 Set he was impatient with himself for having yielded 
 to such an influence. 
 
 " Because he has the gift of a fair tongue, and evades 
 a direct inquiry by a poetic and fanciful allegory, is he 
 any the truer and safer? is he any the worthier of cre- 
 dence ?" he thought, as he rode slowly homeward through 
 the only road intersecting l ho oak glades. 
 
 But, although lie argued with his impulse of faith as a 
 weakness, although he repeated to himself that the charm 
 which had lulled his suspicions had lieen but the charm 
 of an adventurer's facile and valueless eloquence, an in- 
 stinct stirred in his heart — the instinct of one truthful 
 nature's loyalty unto another — which told him still that 
 the doubt was dishonor to the one whom it attaindered 
 with suspicion. 
 
 " A clever actor — what more? A scholarly outlaw, 
 cunning of fence, and with a winning tongue — that is all,'' 
 he mused, and strove to believe. 
 
 But the memory of the heroism in the stone-cutter's
 
 536 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 court rebuked him ; and the skepticism engendered by the 
 world was conquered by the native generosity within 
 hiin. Instinct trusted where reason had condemned. 
 But whether reason or instinct were the truer guide, both 
 alike impelled him to know far more of this wanderer : 
 both alike made him think, with the old Homeric line : 
 
 " He only is a living man ; the rest are gliding shades." 
 
 
 CHAPTER LVII. 
 
 In the balmy rose-gardens of Villiers a group like one 
 from the Decameron strolled, and sat, and loitered, in the 
 warmth of a summer day. 
 
 Among those high-born, languid, amorous idlers, slay- 
 ing their hours with lightest love and lightest wit, a little 
 rabbit, white, and with fleecy hair, ran rapidly, half 
 frightened at the novelty of its intrusion, half enchanted 
 with the low-hanging roses, at which it nibbled hurriedly, 
 to flee, as hurriedly, with its mouth full of rose-leaves. 
 No one noticed it ; it had its way among the buds ; and 
 ventured at last to sit demurely still, a ball of snow 
 among the crimson blossoms. 
 
 Suddenly, and with clumsy vehemence, there rushed 
 to chase it a large-limbed, brawny, bronzed woman of the 
 farms, breaking in where none of her class had ever dared 
 to stray. She caught the terrified thing, and shook it 
 angrily ; and turned her eyes, as though she also were 
 stupefied at her own temerity, on the face of the great 
 lady nearest her. 
 
 " Pardon, madam," she stammered, with uncouth, 
 embarrassed eagerness. " I should lose my place if it 
 were known I dared come in here: — but this little beast 
 skipped from my arms as I passed the gates, and I thought 
 it would damage the roses, and so I ran — and ran, — and 
 I never saw where it was I came. Will you say some- 
 thing for me if they threaten me ?"
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 53 Y 
 
 The Duchess de Lira smiled. 
 
 " Oh, yes ; meanwhile I would say — do not swing that 
 poor rabbit by its ears." 
 
 The woman shifted the rabbit at once to an easier mode 
 of detention. 
 
 " It is very good of madam to think of the dumb brute !" 
 she muttered, with awkward courtesy. " I should be 
 loth to lose it; it belongs to old Virelois, and she is 
 lonely, and makes friends of these things — but I forget, I 
 have no business here — forgive my rudeness, madam." 
 
 And she thrust her huge coarse form through the 
 delicate loveliness of the rose aisles ; her wooden shoes 
 clattering over the velvet sward, the white rabbit trem- 
 bling in the hard grasp of her hand. She went over park, 
 and meadow, and the stepping-stones of a brook ; and 
 threw her rabbit aside in a hutch ; and entered the cool 
 dairy-house, and sat herself down on a stool. 
 
 There was a sullen savage pleasure, and a coarse 
 cynicism, on her face ; and her wide mouth laughed with 
 a broad hoarse laugh. 
 
 " I thought so — I thought so, when she swept past me 
 in that carriage!" she muttered; in a brutish glee, with 
 which envy mingled. "I said I should know that dainty 
 face out of a million, — there was a look that knew, in her 
 eyes, when I said the old granddam's name. God's 
 mercy I that bastard a duchess! — how can it have come 
 to pass? They said she was dead. — and we thought her 
 in shame, — and all this while she has lived among 
 princes. Well — I will keep my tongue till the young 
 lord comes; but it shall go hard if 1 do not hurt her 
 somehow. She to be an aristocrat — that nameless, use- 
 less, wanton, insolent thing! — it kills one with laughter 
 only to think on it !" 
 
 And she laughed again, her hard, rough, riotous laugh, 
 sitting there in her solitude; and she thrusl over, with a 
 savage 'urn of her foot, the wooden stool on which, one 
 summer evening, the child whom she had hated had sat, 
 and counted her magic grapes, and crowned herself with 
 her magic jasmine. 
 
 While she thus mused, the Duchess de Lira had gono 
 within, for the heat grew oppressive even in those cool,
 
 538 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 shadowy, fountain-filled rose-gardens, and was moving 
 slowly up and down the picture-galleries, accompanied 
 by her host. 
 
 His galleries were of great extent and value ; year by 
 year he had added to his collections, until their excellence 
 was scarce to be surpassed ; and since the early dishonor 
 of his wedded life had made his old hereditary home dis- 
 tasteful to him, he had gathered together all that was 
 richest and rarest of his possessions in this, his favorite, 
 dwelling-place of Villiers. 
 
 As she swept to and fro them, she conversed of art, and 
 of many things beside art, with the airy subtleties of wit 
 that a woman of the world gains from society, as a flower 
 gains its hues from the bees which lend it brilliancy 
 while they steal its sweetness. With her, indeed, it was 
 rather inborn than acquired. Without any touch of 
 genius, — which could not arise from a temperament so 
 volatile, so self-centered, so full of gay levity, and so de- 
 void of impersonal sympathies as was hers, — she yet had 
 talents of the brightest and most facile kind. 
 
 Unconsciously to herself, and unknown to others, there 
 was sufficient of the instinct of the bohemian in her to 
 make her quick- sighted to the weak points of the order 
 to which she now belonged, and to supply her with deli- 
 cate barbed shafts of satire to aim at them. The influence 
 that had been so long upon her childhood had not wholly 
 lost its effect upon her womanhood. Though all her tastes 
 and attachments were with the rank to which she had 
 attained, there remained sufficient in her of the temper 
 she had caught from her earliest teacher, to lead her into 
 wayward rebellion against some of its codes and exac- 
 tions. Something of the salt of the gay trenchant sar- 
 casms she had been fed on in her early years remained 
 upon her lips, and not seldom seasoned what they spoke. 
 
 The diversity, the contradiction, lent a special charm 
 to her speech, whenever her hauteur and her coquetry 
 were both in abeyance ; as they both were with Estmere. 
 
 "What golden wit she possesses!" he thought: and 
 he was ignorant that it was but the reflex of the wit that 
 he had once encountered in a bohemian working among 
 the vintagers of France.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 539 
 
 Minds like Tricotrin's scatter their gold broadcast, 
 careless who gleans it: minds like Viva's catch it up as 
 it falls, and wear it gracefully, as a beautiful woman her 
 diamonds, making more brilliant still what was brilliant 
 already. 
 
 She was moreover of a temper like that of many who 
 attain to an eminence not theirs from birth; she had only 
 contempt for the class from which she had come, but 
 she had none the less contempt for the class of which a 
 victorious chance had made her one. And, although her 
 mature reason rejected in ridicule the folly of her childish 
 credulity, still something of the beliefs instilled into her 
 in her infancy as to her fairy origin, lingered with her; 
 and when she allowed herself to deal in a touch of Beau- 
 marchais-like epigram on those who "had taken the 
 trouble to be born," it was half with the latent conviction 
 that she had never been born of mortals at all ! 
 
 She was at no time more seductive than in one of these 
 moods of fantastic rebellion and satire; and her com- 
 panion allowed himself to be beguiled. If in her absence, 
 analyzing her words, he often wondered wherein the se- 
 duction of them had lain, none the less when he entered 
 her presence would their charm become irresistible to him 
 again. 
 
 As their converse at length ceased, he bade her seat 
 herself where he pointed, to note the effect of light on 
 the heads of a Liberi opposite. 
 
 She obeyed; and as her eyes went to the Liberi they 
 rested also on the picture hanging next it, — the portrait 
 of the boy with the dead water-fowl. She saw that 
 they were now on the same spot where once the old cus- 
 todian of the galleries had told her the story of that 
 painting. 
 
 "You regretted him so much in your childhood — did 
 you not?" she said softly, forgetful for the moment that 
 she ought not, in wisdom, to show any prior knowledge 
 of these galleries; and that the narrative was one never 
 heard in the world of her own present station. 
 
 Estmere started. 
 
 " Regretted whom?" he asked. 
 
 She colored with annoyance at her own unconsidered
 
 540 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 "s. 
 
 impulse and unthinking folly, but it was now too late to 
 recede. 
 
 " Your young brother — that boy there with the water- 
 bird in his hand," she made answer. "I heard his story 
 once : long, very long, ago." 
 
 " His story 1 Who could tell it you ?" 
 
 "An old servant of yours ; when I was a mere child. 
 But the tale and the portrait impressed themselves on 
 me; as such things will upon children's malleable minds." 
 
 " I never knew that your presence ever before now 
 honored Villiers ?" . 
 
 " Oh — it was but for a few hours. I was brought to 
 see the chateau : you must have been absent, of course. 
 I was quite a child; but that picture's story stamped it- 
 self on my memory." 
 
 " I wonder you heard it. I had hoped my servants 
 had known my wishes too well for them to have gossiped 
 of my family histories." 
 
 "It was an old white-haired man who narrated it. I 
 dare say because I pressed eager unscrupulous questions 
 upon him — it is so long since then ; I have forgotten." 
 
 "I can divine whom you mean. He is dead. Blame 
 is useless." 
 
 "Yet you are angered ?" 
 
 " Well — it is always cause for annoyance to find that 
 those who held a trust could not keep it; and I am, per- 
 haps, inclined to be as severe on those who speak blab- 
 bing words as on those who speak false ones." 
 
 The color left her cheek a little where she leaned it on 
 her hand, as she sat in the Louis Quinze chair that he 
 had wheeled for her use. 
 
 " Bwt the history is a noble one for any to tell or to 
 hear ?" she said at length. 
 
 "It is so indeed; of a most noble madness. But can 
 you not well conceive that the pain of having inherited 
 my lands and title at the cost of my brother's death — a 
 death self-sought — has never wholly passed away from 
 me, has never wholly ceased to taint them with a certain 
 sense of wrong and usurpation ?" 
 
 " Yes. I can comprehend that." 
 
 Her eyes answered him better than her words ; he had 

 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 541 
 
 the power which only one other possessed, of awakening 
 thoughtfulness, emotion, and sympathy, in this careless 
 and vivacious nature. 
 
 "And there was yet more than this," pursued Estmere, 
 the ice of reserve unbroken for so many years melting at her 
 touch. " There was the sense of my father's brutal injus- 
 tice, his inordinate favoritism to myself, his most culpable 
 cruelty to his first wife, and to her son, all of which drove 
 the boy to his abandonment of his just heritage. It was 
 a great crime — a crime that in my sight still stains my 
 race. If the boy had given any ground for the hate 
 borne to him, it might have been more pardonable ; but 
 he gave none. lie was of exceeding comeliness and 
 grace, as you see there ; full of high courage, of high 
 genius, of high promise; such an heir as the proudest 
 and most fastidious might have regarded with pride and 
 pleasure. He was almost perpetually neglected; when 
 remembered, remembered only to be taunted, goaded, 
 driven wild with bitter ironies cast at his dead mother. 
 I was many years younger than he; but I can still recall 
 the scenes that I witnessed in infancy, and the terror I 
 felt at seeing my father's fury fall on the head of my be- 
 loved companion ; for I loved him well indeed. Tome 
 he was always gentle, generous, most infinitely patient, 
 as youths of his age are very rarely with children. My 
 early life was literally made desolate by his loss " 
 
 He paused, and shaded his eyes with his hand as he 
 gazed at the portrait. 
 
 " I grieve that I awakened a memory so painful," she 
 murmured. " Is it certain that he perished ?" 
 
 "Ascertain as any death can be where the body can- 
 not be found for burial. There was no doubt left, indeed. 
 The words he murmured over my bed, and which I, half 
 asleep, thought the words of a dream, proved what his 
 intention had been. It would never be possible to re- 
 cover anything from the ring of water around Heauina- 
 noir. It has deep clefts and bottomless boles, and sweeps 
 out away to the western seas. Moreover, an old wo man- 
 servant bore witness to having seen him by twilight 
 plunge in; but she missed him from sight, and thought 
 
 46
 
 542 TRIC0TR1N, 
 
 nothing of it, as he was accustomed to swim, and dive, 
 and almost live in the waters, like any bittern or gull. 
 Immediate search was made in every direction for him ; 
 inquiries were everywhere instituted ; but it was con- 
 sidered as conclusively proved that he must have been 
 drowned in the moat. A mausoleum, inscribed to that 
 effect, was erected by my father. His remorse, though 
 utterly unavailing, was sincere. Remembering what I 
 do of Chanrellon's nature, I can well imagine how insult 
 and false accusation hurled him headlong to that insane 
 self-sacrifice." 
 
 " He was accused of taking jewels, was he not?" 
 
 " Yes ! such a senseless, coarse, frantic suspicion ! — as 
 if a boy who came of our race, and of his mother's bold, 
 sea-born, free people, could have turned thief!" 
 
 " Were the diamonds ever found ?" 
 
 " Never. Their loss was heavy, for they had historical 
 as well as an enormous pecuniary value." 
 
 " Did you ever suspect any one ?" 
 
 He gave a quick, broken sigh. 
 
 "In later years I have thought that the criminal was 
 most likely a Greek youth in the household; a penniless 
 Athenian, pampered by my father's caprices; a scorpion 
 who stung the hands that fed and befouled the hearth 
 that warmed him ! But I might be in error — it was but 
 conjecture." 
 
 He spoke with effort. She was silent, knowing how 
 deeply and in how cruel a wound this scorpion had thrust 
 its sting. 
 
 " Your son bears that title of Chanrellon now ?" she 
 asked, seeking refuge in a commonplace. 
 
 " It is the second title of the house." 
 
 " Does he resemble your brother in the least ? There 
 is no portrait of him here ?" 
 
 " None. There are some at Beaumanoir. He has a 
 womanish beauty." 
 
 " I have heard that he is not all that you desire; is it 
 true ?" 
 
 " He is nothing that I desire ! But — we live almost 
 as strangers." 
 
 " That seems terrible ?"
 
 THE STORY OF A WAFF AND STRAY. 543 
 
 " It is terrible. It is terrible to me that bis mother's 
 
 son should bear my name." 
 
 His voice had passion and emotion in it ; and his head 
 was turned from her as he spoke. She was the only liv- 
 ing creature to whom he had ever spoken of his dishon- 
 ored wife. She — the woman whom he loved. 
 
 "And there ever lived one who could forsake you /" 
 she thought, as for one moment she beheld all tbe secret 
 torture which his pride and his dignity had so long kept 
 veiled from the gaze of any human eyes. Ere she could 
 answer him, others approached them from the western 
 end of the gallery. He took his hand from the back of 
 her chair and moved slightly away. 
 
 " I am not sure, madam, now, that I have placed you 
 right for the St. Catherine," he said, with his habitual 
 tone. " Liberi is a favorite with me; there is so exqui- 
 site a softness about his female heads." 
 
 They were no more alone that day, and he sought no 
 other opportunity to be in solitude with her; but the 
 words that had been uttered had formed a link between 
 them. She felt nearer to him than she had ever done. 
 She felt that lie had said to her what he would have 
 Uttered to DO other. 
 
 A few days later, a young man, in his favorite summer- 
 villa, among the Austrian woods of a fashionable mount- 
 ain-side resort, whither he had brought all the levities, 
 the extravagancies, the vices, and the ennui of his life, 
 received a coarse, ill-spelt missive, of a few lines only. 
 It looked the clumsy scrawl of a cowherd, or a charcoal- 
 burner; yet he read it with an attention which he (lid not 
 concede to many elegant, perfumed, neglected letters that 
 came with it; for the writer had been a panderer to his 
 worst sins; a she wolf, who would bring him any lamb 
 within her range; a brute, who served hi.-- crimes faith- 
 fully for sheer greed of gold ; and she wrote in the patois 
 of her province: 
 
 " My Lord, — [f you have not forgot that fair fool that 
 escaped \ on here year- ago, — 1 hat t bing they called Viva, 
 
 — come hither, and let me have speech with you. There 
 is up at the house a grand aristocrat, who they say will
 
 544 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 wed with the Earl, your father ; and if ever that bastard 
 whom you fancied lived, she lives still of a surety in this 
 duchess. She carries herself like an empress ; and it 
 seems a mad freak for me to be bold to write this of her ; 
 but I found her out by a look in the eyes, and I dare swear 
 I am not mistaken. 
 
 " I am at my lord's service ever, 
 
 "Annette Veuillot. 
 "Writ at this dairy of Villiers, on the 10th day of 
 June." 
 
 CHAPTER LVIII. 
 
 The afternoon sun was hot and cloudless over all the 
 country by the Loire. The barges and the rafts dropped 
 lazily down the stream, with loads of fruit, of vegetables, 
 or of fresh-mown hay. The women were washing their 
 linen in places where the rocky shore made a shallow 
 creek, or the grass grew lush and long, sloping to the 
 water's edge. The laborers were at work among the 
 vines, whose blossoms were just set, and changing into 
 grape-buds. The horses of the towing-boats plodded 
 lazily on in the warmth, while the drowsy hum of insects 
 filled the air. 
 
 There was nothing changed in the out-door life, since 
 the time that a child of fifteen years had sat dreaming 
 among the swallow-swarming ivy, and weaving fancies 
 of an unknown world, while she watched the old boat- 
 man mend his striped tanned sail. 
 
 The boatman was dead, and the sail, by his will, had 
 enwrapped him as his shroud, where he lay, under the 
 orchids and the vervain that blossomed over his grave: 
 but the song of the birds, and the laugh of the raftsmen, 
 and the noise of the water-wheel, and the voices of the 
 washing-women, bubbled on unaltered, through the length 
 of the dreamy, sultry, fragrant, summer day. 
 
 Above one curve of the river, where the old dead boat- 
 man had used to sit and mend the rents of his sail in the
 
 TEE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 545 
 
 shade, a thrush was singing its little heart out upon a 
 plume of pear-tree blossom. The house-door stood wide 
 open, with the sun streaming in over the bare, clean, 
 wooden floor. A cluster of pigeons was balanced on the 
 edge of a brown earthen dish, eating its grain undis- 
 turbed. A great knot of white lilies, and moss roses, 
 thrust in a broad pan of water, filled the house with per- 
 fume ; all was still, and bright, and warm, and full of 
 peace : and above in a little chamber an old woman was 
 dying, the death that to age is release. 
 
 She had been born here, in these vine countries, when 
 the tocsin was the only chime that the church-bell rang, 
 and when the waters of the Loire were choked with the 
 corpses they floated to the sea. She had lived here 
 through childhood, and girlhood, and womanhood ; work- 
 ing hardly, in field and vineyard, through the changes of 
 the season ; bronzed in the torrid noons, and bitten with 
 the winter blasts; bearing burdens with the patience of 
 the mule, and brightening beneath the slightest touch of 
 mirth, like crocuses beneath the first spring sun. She 
 had been wedded here, and here borne her three sons; 
 and here been widowed, and of her sons bereaved ; mid 
 here beheld her eldest-born's sole child die, in a weakly 
 infancy, of the hard food that alone, stood betwixt her 
 and her starvation. 
 
 And here, also, the long, heroic, patient, unrewarded 
 life was ended: a mystery of pain, and conflict, and 
 courage, and endless labor, and ceaseless effort, all passed 
 away in silence, and unrecognized^ of men. 
 
 She lay dying in the little darkened chamber, while tho 
 bird sang among the fruit-trees. 
 
 Each morning, in the luscious summer-time, she had 
 made her slow way out into the porch, and sitting there 
 had gazed with dim eves out into the sunshine, with the 
 expectant look of one who wait- and watches ever on her 
 face. Each day in the still cool spring-time, when tin 1 
 pink Kud.- of the chestnuts were thrusting through the 
 bark, ami the violets made purple every waste space of 
 ground, she had sat by her open casement, looking up the 
 
 reach of the river, with the unrest of a baffled hope told 
 in the nervous movement of her withered hands. Bach 
 
 411*
 
 546 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 night, when night fell at length, she had suffered herself 
 to be led away, looking with a piteous appeal ill the face 
 of her handmaiden, as she muttered, " To-morrow ?" And 
 the little girl, ill knowing what she meant, but desiring 
 to give comfort, had always smiled, and murmured back, 
 " To-morrow ! oh yes — to-morrow." 
 
 But the morrow had never come ; and the few river- 
 people and vine-laborers who alone knew her had said 
 among themselves that it could never come : — would Paris 
 give back its prey? 
 
 Grand'mere sought the sight of one whom Paris had 
 devoured ; what avail was that. ? 
 
 The little silvery cadence of the bell that rang before 
 the coming of the host had sounded over the threshold, 
 and across the breadth of the stream, until the bargemen 
 and the rowers on the river heard the faint musical herald 
 of a passing soul, and crossed themselves, and murmured 
 an Ave in the hushed hot day. 
 
 The golden rod had touched with its anointed oil the 
 breast, and brow, and feet, of the old dying woman. The 
 blessed bread and wine had been placed to the withered 
 lips which the religion that they symbolized had never 
 fed during the famished hours of many bitter winters. 
 The priest had gone once more across the threshold, with 
 the silver bell shedding its soft cadence over the river and 
 the vine-fields. 
 
 The ebbing and exhausted life was left in solitude once 
 more, with no other watcher than the little peasant 
 maiden, weeping sorely because she had no answer with 
 which to respond to the one prayer, sounding ceaselessly 
 upon the silence: 
 
 " Will she not come ? — before I die ?" 
 
 With blind wide-open eyes, that had a mute and terrible 
 appeal within them, grand'mere, seeing no more the light 
 through the open lattice, hearing no more the song of the 
 thrush in the pear-blossom, but with one memory only 
 living, still muttered this ever and ever where she lay : 
 
 " Will she not come ? — before I die ?" 
 
 For, through the paralysis of death, the longing of the 
 heart still lived. 
 
 Through all the length of the years she had been
 
 TITE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 547 
 
 patient, with the infinite hopeless patience of old age, that 
 sinks ever deeper and deeper into the frozen desolation 
 of its winter, and for which no spring can ever dawn, to 
 change and beam on the eternal cold. 
 
 But now, — dying, — the long silent, uncomplaining 
 agony broke out in one great desire, that was all the 
 wandering senses knew : lying there, blind and confused, 
 and stricken motionless, and chilled with the bitter frost 
 of death, she yet retained memory for this. . 
 
 Would her eyes never behold, nor her ears hear, the 
 ouly life that she loved ? — would she die thus, as she had 
 been left to live, alone ? 
 
 CIIAPTER LIX. 
 
 At the Chateau of Villiers, among the summer luxuri- 
 ance of blossom, the snow-white statues "listened; on the 
 rapid waters, gayly-painted boats floated under vine-hung 
 branches; do wn the terraces music and laughter sounded ; 
 in the orange-aisles and the rose-gardens men and women 
 passed their idle hours in gayety and indolence, and airy 
 languid loves that beguiled the fancy and never roused 
 the passions. 
 
 Among them Viva sat, playing listlessly with a gor- 
 geous Indian bird, and easting careless words among her 
 court, to be treasured as though they were pearls of 
 precious wisdom. 
 
 A great fountain sent up its column of radiance near 
 her; a mass of dates and palms screened her from t ho 
 sun; the half-score of lovers round her heard her, when 
 she chose to speak, with the charmed deference which, 
 often denied to the sayings of Bages, is ever awarded to 
 the fair follies of a beautiful woman. 
 
 She was supreme — she was absolute sovereign here; 
 every rival paled before her; the envy of one sex and 
 the passion of another gave her endless assurance of her 
 supremacy. Life was perfect to her: pleasures, glories,
 
 548 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 vanities, luxuries, votaries, all were accumulated in her 
 path ; and the new spell of a love, which she had long 
 only laughed at, was thrown around her at last, giving 
 fresh allurement and fresh fascination to the exercise of 
 that sorcery which otherwise had threatened soon to pall 
 and to satiate out of its too great facility, its too easily- 
 acquired dominion. 
 
 Life was perfect in her hands ; a scepter that the " gay 
 liar youth" made her credit would never be broken, never 
 cease to have power to summon all charms from all ends 
 of the earth to her usage and service. 
 
 Pain — calamity — poverty — age ; these existed, she 
 knew, when she paused to think of them. But they 
 were only words ; words to her soundless and bodiless. 
 With her they had naught else to do. Certain sums, 
 set aside from her wealth, her stewards disposed of in 
 charity ; so much clone for the sake of her conscience, all 
 else was dismissed from her mind : — she laughed here in 
 the midst of her reses. 
 
 Down the river, which beneath the slopes of Villiers 
 flashed in its broad silver band, a little boat glided ; with 
 it there came the ringing of a gentle bell, and in the stern 
 knelt a white-robed chorister, bearing a glittering star 
 aloft. 
 
 It was the Host, being borne backward reverently to 
 the distant township whence it came. 
 
 "How prettily the bell sounds!" she said, forgetful, 
 or careless, of the fact that the little procession must 
 have traveled to, and from, some dying-bed. 
 
 The boat passed out of sight; the tinkle of the bell 
 passed off the air; the laughter and the languid wit re- 
 sumed their reign around her. 
 
 Awhile later, a sealed paper was brought to her; a 
 faint flush of annoyance went over her face as she saw 
 the superscription. Her host alone noted it, and won- 
 dered what the cause could be. In that dazzling, unworn 
 life, secure upon the heights of riches and of rank, there 
 could be no mystery, no canker ? 
 
 Some time afterward, she took an opportunity to pass 
 into the house unobserved. There she opened the letter. 
 It said, briefly :
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 549 
 
 " Grand'mere will not live till evening; she must see 
 you to die in peace. I wait for you at the old ferry." 
 
 As she read, all the ice of pride, and coldness, and 
 egotism melted from her heart. She gave a piteous cry 
 as though death struck herself. All base and selfish 
 thought died out from her ; she only remembered the old 
 creature she had loved through the .years of her child- 
 hood, and whom she had left to live and to perish in 
 solitude. 
 
 "Grand'mere!" — with the tender homely word there 
 came, in a rush of countless memories, a thousand ties 
 of infancy and girlhood — ties broken by her with the gay 
 scorn of a liberated youth, — ties ruptured, but aching 
 forever, in the solitary heart of a forsaken age. 
 
 In that moment a tumult of remorse awoke in her; 
 transient it might be, but violent in its truth and in its 
 horror, with all the heat and force of her native impulses. 
 She forgot self, pride, the peril of exposure, the difficulty 
 of compliance ; she forgot all except the debt whose pay- 
 ment had so long been driven off and might now be 
 offered but too late. She forgot her station, her domin- 
 ion, her distance from the peasant who was dying yonder, 
 her cold contempt for all creatures less fair and fortune- 
 favored than herself. She only remembered the days, so 
 long gone by, which the brown, withered, noble face of 
 the old Loirais had been the first on which her eyes un- 
 closed at dawn, and the last that bent over her as she 
 sank to Bleep. 
 
 " Grand'mere !" — the time had been when lisping out 
 the word she had clung round the Deck of the only creat- 
 ure who had ever filled to her in any sense a mother's 
 place, and had loved her with all a child's careless, capri- 
 cious, fond, unthinking love. 
 
 The place was three leagues off; the old ferry, long 
 unused, was one; the way w;is long, the sun was burn- 
 ing; she (hired not order horse, or carriage, or attendant, 
 lest it should be learned whither and with whom she 
 went. Trusting to chance for the avoidance of all notice, 
 and acting only on the spur of inconsidered impulse, she 
 threw a long cloak over her dress, concealed her lace in 
 a thick veil, and assured herself that none of her tire-
 
 550 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 women were in sight. Then she passed swiftly down an 
 outer staircase which led from one of her balconies into 
 an unfrequented portion of the grounds, and went on 
 through the sunlit park in all the tremulous haste of one 
 whom remorse drives and fear of detection wings. 
 
 Once, all the haughty blood in her flamed in hot revolt 
 at this secrecy, which seemed so kin to shame. Once 
 she was tempted to turn back and order out an equipage, 
 and let all the world know where she went. Her errand 
 was a righteous one ; why hide it as a shame ? 
 
 But the nobler impulse was beaten back by the dread 
 lest any of her world should know that story of her past. 
 She felt that she would rather die a thousand deaths than 
 that those who held her now in such high honor should 
 ever learn that she had once been found under those 
 river-woods — a nameless foundling child. 
 
 The summons had fallen like a thunderbolt upon her, 
 smiting her conscience from its sleep. But though she 
 obeyed it, through all that still survived in her of the 
 purer faiths of her earlier days, she still recoiled with 
 loathing from the mere thought that those who knew her 
 as she was should ever dream that she was not of their 
 order, — should ever dream the time had been when she 
 had owed bread to a bohemian's alms. Rather than that 
 the truth should ever dawn upon the world where now 
 she reigned, she took the stain of secrecy upon her, and 
 fled on through the sunny glades, not as one who went 
 to do a deed of mercy, but as a criminal who dreaded 
 lest the passing of her footsteps should be tracked and 
 followed. 
 
 Once she thought of Estmere ; the soilless greatness, 
 the integral truthfulness, of his life seemed for the mo- 
 ment to rebuke this falseness of base pride that screened 
 a just, act like a treacherous crime. But, with that 
 thought, rose also the memory of his absolute and un- 
 bending pride, the pride of an Order, the pride of the 
 Roman Optimate; and this sufficed to drive back once 
 more the wavering impulse in her. 
 
 The large startled eyes of the grazing deer seemed to 
 her like the eyes of the world fastened on her ; the sight 
 of a distant charcoal-burner passing down a far-off avenue
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 551 
 
 made her dread recognition and pursuit. But the tract 
 of the park through which she passed was wild and un- 
 frequented; and the way through the vineyards and 
 win ids to the river, the instinct of early impressions made 
 plain to her. 
 
 The winding paths down the terraced slopes, the scarce- 
 seen roadway through vine-fields that seemed endless, the 
 old broken hut, brown and roofless, and climbed all over 
 with green flowering weeds, that marked the spot where 
 a ferry, long shifted higher up the waters, once had stood, 
 — all these things, utterly forgotten for many years, be- 
 came familiar to her with that pang of remembrance, vivid 
 almost to horror, with which the haunts of childhood 
 startle the mind from which they have faded until they 
 arc revisited. 
 
 Against the ruined boat-house was a sailing-boat; in it 
 a man stood erect with an oar in his hand thrust against 
 the long grasses and reeds of the bank. 
 
 The landscape swam in mist before her sight; just thus 
 had she seen him so many times in other years, when the 
 hour of his coming was the golden hour in her summer, 
 and -she could have dreamt of no joy on earth or water 
 so great as to sail with him down the long, calm, lumin- 
 ous reach of the river. 
 
 How near, and yet how 7 far, that time looked to her! 
 It seemed to kill in her all her own identity. 
 
 Which was in truth she? — that Loirais child who had 
 basked in the sunlight, bathing her laughing face and her 
 bright tresses in the stream; or the proud, courted, un- 
 rivaled woman, received in all the palaces of Europe? 
 
 Seeing her, he sprang on shore, and threw a rough 
 plank betwixl the hank and boat, and held his hands out 
 to her to aid her. 
 
 "You are come; that is well,'' he said, gravely, with 
 no token of surprise, with the air of one whose command, 
 being given, was of necessity obeyed. She, even in that 
 moment, noticed ii ; ami dreamily wondered whence this 
 man, who was in social >iaius lint a wanderer, a vaga- 
 bond, had gained thai calm and kingly authority to which 
 even she unresistingly succumbed. 
 
 She sank down at the bottom of the boat, worn out
 
 552 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 with the heat, the haste, the toil in the sultry day to which 
 she was so little used. 
 
 "I am in time?" she asked him breathlessly. He 
 spread a loose sail on a spar so that it sheltered her wholly 
 from the sun, and from the sight of any passing on the 
 shore or in river craft. 
 
 " I cannot tell,"' he answered her gently ; "I trust so." 
 
 She said nothing. The old influence that he had used 
 to possess stole over her again ; she felt heart-sick, 
 ashamed, covered with remorse. She, with all her terri- 
 tory, her treasures, her influence, felt humiliated and 
 stricken with contrition in the presence of the man to 
 whom she owed a debt that she had never paid, and that 
 she never could pay. 
 
 He was silent also, setting the little sail to catch the 
 faint flutter of the soft south wind, and steering down the 
 golden gleaming brilliance of the river, running with the 
 tide. The shore glided slowly past them ; the brown sail 
 caught colors of glory from the sun ; the sweet odors of 
 new-cut hay filled the air from grass-laden barges ; the 
 women, sitting in the rock-hewn grape-hung cabins of the 
 banks, looked up as they drifted by, and laughed, and 
 called across the great breadth of the stream, "Ah-ha, is 
 it thee, Tricotrin ?" 
 
 But he for once never answered where he sat at the 
 helm. He sailed his race with death, and with every 
 beat of the tide there went a beat of a human heart that 
 would soon be still forever. 
 
 And thus she went back to the home of the swallows. 

 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 553 
 
 CHAPTER LX. 
 
 Ever and anon the old, dark, eager, noble face was 
 lifted from its pillow, and the withered lips murmured 
 three words : 
 
 " Is she come ? 
 
 For Tricotrin had bent over her bed, and had mur- 
 mured, "I go to seek her, she is near;" and grand'mere 
 had believed and been comforted, for she knew that no lie 
 passed his lips. And she was very still ; and only the 
 nervous working of the hard, brown, aged hand showed 
 the longing of her soul. 
 
 Life was going out rapidly, as the flame sinks fast in a 
 lamp whose oil is spent. The strong and vigorous frame, 
 the keen and cheery will, had warded oil' death so long 
 and bravely; and now they bent under, all suddenly, as 
 those hardy trees will bend after a century of wind and 
 storm, — bend but once, and only to break forever. 
 
 The red sun in the west was in its evening "lory ; and 
 through the open lattice there were seen in the deep blue 
 of the sky, the bough of a snow-blossonied pear-tree, the 
 network of the ivy, and the bees litiiiiiijlii i^- among the 
 jasmine flowers. From the distance there came faintly 
 the musical cries of the boatmen down tin: river, the 
 voices of the vine-tenders in the fields, the singing of a 
 throstle on a wild grape-tendril. 
 
 Only, in the little darkened chamber the old peasant 
 lay i|iiite still, — listening, through all the sweet and busy 
 sounds of summer, for a step that never came. 
 
 And little by little all those sounds grew fainter on 
 her ear: the dullness of death was stealing over all her 
 
 senses; and all she heard \\ as the SOng of the thrush 
 where the bird swayed on the vine, half in, half out, of 
 the latt ice. 
 
 But the lips moved still, though no voice came, with 
 the same words: "Is she come?" and when the lips no 
 
 47
 
 554 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 more could move, the dark and straining wistfulness of 
 the eyes asked the question but more earnestly, more ter- 
 ribly, more ceaselessly. 
 
 The thrush sang on, and on, and on ; — but to the 
 prayer of the dying eyes no answer came. 
 
 The red sun sank into the purple mists of cloud ; the 
 song of the bird was ended ; the voice of the watching 
 girl murmured — " They will come too late !" 
 
 For, as the sun faded off from the vine in the lattice, 
 and the singing of the bird grew silent, grand'mere raised 
 herself with her arms outstretched, and the strength of her 
 youth returned in the hour of dissolution. 
 
 "They never come back!" she cried. "They never 
 come back ! — nor will she ! One dead in Africa, — and 
 one crushed beneath the stone, — and one shot on the bar- 
 ricade. The three went forth together ; but not one re- 
 turned. We breed them, we nurse them, we foster them ; 
 — and the world slays them body and soul, and eats the 
 limbs that lay in our bosoms, and burns up the souls that 
 we knew so pure." And she went where they went: — 
 she is dead like them." 
 
 Her head fell back ; her mouth was gray and parched, 
 her eyes had no longer sight ; a shiver ran through the 
 hardy frame that winter storms and summer droughts 
 had bruised and scorched so long ; a passionless and 
 immeasurable grief came on the brown, weary, age-worn 
 face. 
 
 "All dead !" she murmured in the stillness of the cham- 
 ber, where the song of the bird had ceased, and the dark- 
 ness of night had come. 
 
 Then through her lips the last breath quivered in a 
 deep-drawn sigh, and the brave, patient, unrewarded life 
 passed out forever. 
 
 A moment later, swift uneven steps sprang up the nar- 
 row stairway, and into the gloom of the little room came 
 the glory of a woman's loveliness. 
 
 "Grand'mere! grand'mere!" she cried, as she threw 
 herself on her knees against the couch. 
 
 The cry, for which the dying senses had been so long 
 strained in yearning and vain desire, fell unheard on the 
 ear which could no more be vexed with the toiling sounds
 
 THE STORY OF A WAFF AND STRAY. 555 
 
 of the travailing world. Calm, responseless, unutterably 
 sad, the dead face looked upward in mute reproach. 
 
 The prayer of nine long years was answered at the 
 last, and the answer came too late. 
 
 " Grand'mere ! grand'mere !" she cried. " I am come ! 
 I am here ! Oh, look at me once ! — only once !" 
 
 But the eyes had no light, the lips had no reply. What 
 avail was remorse? — its anguish could not reach the soul 
 that had passed away from all earthly pain and from all 
 mortal love. 
 
 She came too late. 
 
 CHAPTER LXI. 
 
 "Ah ! How T Ion the myself!" 
 
 She spoke in agony, with the tears falling fast from her 
 eyes, and her heart aching in vain Belf-reproach, where 
 she stood in the quaint, dark kitchen-chamber that she 
 had known so well of old. All her .wanner, richer, 
 sweeter, holier nature had awakened, and quivered under 
 the branding iron of remorse. She looked to herself so 
 base, so cruel, so worthless of every thought of tender- 
 ness that had been given her by the dead. 
 
 The unuttered rebuke of that colorless face, so livid, so 
 old, so still with its own sublime peace, ha/1 pierced 
 through all the vanities and pride and egotism of her life 
 down to the heart of her youth, which still beat there he- 
 neat h them. 
 
 Every trifle in the little room around her, every homely 
 and familiar cottage thing of use, came back on her 
 memory wit h a ]»ang. 
 
 The place was so utterly unchanged : the burnished 
 coppers, the clean brass utensils, the strings of drying 
 herbs and melons, the black pol simmering over 1 he wood 
 embers od the hearth, the white ca1 sleeping in the win- 
 dow, the oil-lamp burning on the low oak settle, all the 
 common things of daily life that .-he had known so well,
 
 556 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 were all there unaltered since the days when in her in- 
 fancy her feet had danced upon the wooden chairs in glee 
 because the hot milk foamed ready for her morning pot- 
 tage. 
 
 Not one of them was changed ; but she ! — —she burst 
 into passionate tears as she thought of the little, gay, 
 nameless child that once had lived and laughed amid 
 these lonely things, and of the face, now set in death, 
 whose brown worn features had softened to such tender 
 grace in the light of the summer morning and at the 
 mirth of the infant's play. 
 
 Countless memories thronged on her ; — of childish pains 
 and angers, of feverish hours of illness, of petulant out- 
 bursts of willful wrath, of April storms of passing griefs 
 over a dead bird or a stray kitten, and, through all these, 
 of the patient, gentle, cheerful endurance of a love that 
 never complained and never wearied. For such a debt 
 what payment had been great enough ? — and all that she 
 had given had been silence, neglect, oblivion, — the triple 
 coin wherewith Love oftenest is paid. 
 
 He let her passion spend itself silently. 
 
 It was a caustic that might, perchance, burn out the 
 cankers of the world within her soul. With her he had 
 no bond in that instant. All his sympathy, all his pity, 
 all his reverence, were with that aged, lonely, dauntless 
 life that had been left to ebb out in solitude ; the life lived 
 only to see all that it cherished perish. 
 
 The first words he spoke were brief, as he raised the 
 drooping wick of the lamp. 
 
 "Madam — it were best you went homeward. Your 
 host and your Order must not know that you weep for a 
 peasant!" 
 
 "Ah, hush ! I merit the lash of your sarcasm and of 
 your scorn, God knows, yet — spare me them now. I 
 cannot bear them I" 
 
 He placed the lamp back on its settle. 
 
 "I but remind you, — would you have it known that 
 you are here ?" 
 
 She started with a throb of terror. 
 
 "No — no! Surely there may be means, — but, — I have 
 thought of myself, alone, so long, so selfishly, so remOrse-
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 557 
 
 lessly. I can only think of har now ! I have been so 
 cruel, so heartless. If I could only have heard her speak 
 to me, and only have begged once for her forgiveness !" 
 
 He smiled, very wearily, and made no answer. He 
 knew that to himself she repeated, and would continue 
 to repeat, the ingratitude and the neglect that, given to 
 the dead, now caused such futile and vehement remorse. 
 But of this his own lips never reminded her. 
 
 He stood silent, with the dusky lamplight behind him 
 so that he could see her face, while his own was screened 
 from her, watching her with a strange pain; wondering 
 vaguely and incredulously if this exquisite and imperial 
 woman, who moved slowly to and fro the narrow room, 
 could be in truth but the developed life of the young child 
 whose dancing naked feet had moved in such gay measure 
 to the old peasant's crooning country-songs. 
 
 He had suffered much, and often, since the last day 
 when she had passed out from under the low brown porch 
 to go to the "great world" for which she pined; but he 
 had never suffered as he did now, beholding her, for the 
 first time, under that roof where her infancy had been 
 sheltered by him. 
 
 Once she paused in her restless passage up and down 
 the chamber, and turned her lustrous eyes lull on him. 
 
 "Ah ! Tell me the truth ! — you think me base beyond 
 redemption?" 
 
 " No," he answered her, where he stood in the deep 
 shadow. "1 think you — very human." 
 
 "To be human, then, is to be lower than the dogs that 
 love what feeds them?" 
 
 " Perhaps 1 The dogs will love the hands that beat 
 them. There is none of that love among such fair things 
 as you." 
 
 Her head sank, with the hot blood burning in her face. 
 
 "Why did you not keep me here?" she said, with im- 
 petuous emotion. "Why did you not tell me what I 
 should become? I should have been poor, nameless, un- 
 known; hut I should have been innocenl at least, I 
 should have done the duty that 1 owed, I should have 
 helped her in her age, and soothed her in her death- 
 agonies 1" 
 
 47*
 
 558 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 A breath that was almost a sob caught the words as 
 she spoke them : she little heeded the blow which each 
 dealt to the heart of their hearer. 
 
 The answer which sprang, hot, eloquent, upbraiding, 
 bitter and tender at once to his lips, he restrained ; he 
 answered her briefly, gently, — 
 
 " I did not keep you against your will, because, — you 
 would not have remained innocent, you would have i'e- 
 fused to accept duty, you would have broken into peril- 
 ous revolt, in such a life as the life you alone could have 
 led here. The greatness you have gained would not now 
 have sown evil in your nature, had none of the seeds of 
 evil been latent there ; such evil is sinless to the world's 
 creed, in a patrician woman ; it would have been evil 
 accursed, and shameful, and wretched, in a woman name- 
 less, and penniless, and motherless, and consumed with 
 the corrosion of discontent. I knew you better than you 
 knew yourself. If the Duchess de Lira be heartless, 
 merciless, conscienceless, what would the actress, the ad- 
 venturess, have been ? Once I bade you repay me what 
 you deemed you owed, by keeping ever in you the higher 
 things of your love, and truth, and courage. I was 
 unwise enough to dream that my one desire would be 
 obeyed, against all the commands of your passions, your 
 prides, and your vanities. Once also you prayed that 
 death might come to you if ever you forgot me : the grass 
 would have grown through many seasons above your 
 grave if that prayer had been granted 1" 
 
 A cry of intolerable suffering broke from her. 
 
 " Say a41 you will !" she cried. " Your hardest words 
 cannot scourge me so sharply as my own conscience does. 
 I have forgotten ! — more brutally, more shamelessly than 
 the very cattle ever forget a master that has fed and 
 tended them. And, yet, I have remembered too, — re- 
 membered more than you can ever dream. At times my 
 thoughts of you have been an agony. At times my 
 childhood has come back to me with such reproach that 
 I could have found strength to kill myself. At times — 
 in all the intoxication of the world — the sound of your 
 voice has seemed to steal on my ear, the gaze of your 
 eyes has seemed to haunt me as I went, till I longed for
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 559 
 
 the peace of your presence with a lost child's longing 
 for its home ! This is the truth ; though how shall you 
 believe me in witness of all the false shame, the mad 
 vanity, the infamous ingratitude of my life ? You say 
 that I should have been far worse than I am, had I re- 
 mained with you; can anything be worse than such self- 
 ishness and such oblivion as mine ? Besides, — you are 
 so great, so true, of a simplicity so noble, of a justice so 
 divine, your influence would have been too strong on me 
 for me to have sunk to evil : you could have made of me 
 what you would, had 1 but stayed by you !" 
 
 And in the remorse of the hour it did indeed seem thus 
 to her ; and in that hour she beheld, as by a vision, all 
 that her life would have been, if never fevered by thirst 
 for gold and rank, if never touched by the fast-lengthen- 
 ing shadows of falsehood, if never drawn into that fur- 
 nace of ambition where all impulses and instincts are 
 fused into one passion ; if lived in peace and in content- 
 ment, purified, and strengthened, and raised high by the 
 loftiness of truth and of self-sacrifice, beneath his love 
 and law. 
 
 In that one hour she saw that she had forsaken the 
 gold for the dross, the rock for the reeds, the greater for 
 the lesser, as men do oftentimes, and women yet more 
 surely in their headlong and blind choice. 
 
 He heard; and a great shudder shook him. 
 
 lie had condemned himself to endless and unrequited 
 martyrdom, that she might pass to the fate she desired, 
 and never have aughl wherewith to reproach him; and 
 evrn out of this she wove a I ; 1 - 1 1 that scourged him with 
 deeper stripes than any he had borne! 
 
 "Wait, wait! or you will kill me I" hecried. '"Stayed 
 by me !' Oh, God ! if you had done so ! But your heart. 
 was disloyal, and lost to me; could 1 hold captive your 
 body? You see now a worth you have missed, in thai 
 life that you would have led by my side ; but then, — who 
 could make you believe? And you forget — vou forgel 
 a creature of your sex and your loveliness could not have 
 abode with me without a chain that you would not have 
 taken, unless gold had gilded the fetters: you must have 
 been my mistress, or my wife !"
 
 500 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 She started violently ; and the blood crimsoned all her 
 face; she bad spoken in the impulse of the old love and 
 reverence she had yielded him in her girlhood ; she had 
 never dreamed of any other life with him than that of 
 the by-gone familiar communion which they had known 
 in this lowly place when she had been a child, and he 
 had been all the world to her. 
 
 In this hour her pride had been dead, her rank forgot- 
 ten, her self-love abhorred ; in this hour conscience, and 
 memory, and the veneration she had borne him, had 
 alone reigned with her. 
 
 Now, his indulgence of that moment's hot and un- 
 checked utterance, recalled to her the many times that 
 she had wept in his arms, clung to his embrace, been 
 kissed by his lips, in that long-perished time; in this 
 moment it seemed to her that the tie between them was 
 nearer, stronger, more indissoluble, than the ties betwixt 
 father and daughter, wife and husband, master and 
 slave ! 
 
 Even while these memories burned her with an ab- 
 horred sense of debt and shame, the height and depth, 
 the might and beauty, of this life-long love that she had 
 flung away, smote her with its greatness and its divinity 
 as it had never done in earlier years, never done through 
 all the self-absorption of her life-. It appalled, it amazed, 
 it affrighted her : — such a debt as this could never be paid ; 
 and, while it remained unpaid, how could any woman 
 owing it be free ? 
 
 He, divining all her thoughts, with that knowledge of 
 her mutable nature which he had so long possessed, hast- 
 ened to cover from her sight that passion which for one 
 instant had been near its betrayal to her. She was his 
 debtor ; naught could cancel such a debt ; therefore he 
 forced himself to calmness, and hastened to repair what 
 might have seemed a claim laid through that debt. 
 
 " You are of the world ; you know its tenets now," he 
 said, tranquilly. " You know, therefore, how idle it is to 
 dream you could have remained with me without re- 
 proach. Unless, indeed, your whole life had been mine. 
 But — you remember? — I asked you once if my love would 
 suffice to you ; and your answer was, that you craved
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 501 
 
 greatness also. I had not greatness; how could I con- 
 tent yon ?" 
 
 " Yes ! When I answered you I was vain, and worth- 
 less, and full of avarice, as I am now!" 
 
 The words were muttered low in her throat ; she moved 
 with feverish unrest to and fro the little chamber ; she 
 wondered, with that curious dreamy wonder that comes 
 on us when, having chosen one path, we marvel whither 
 the other would have led, how it would have been with 
 her if she had loved and followed this redeemer of her 
 life. And her heart told her — knowing its own passions 
 and its own weakness — that she, with her thirst for 
 power, and her greed for homage, and her worship of 
 eminence and of magnificence, would have only dwelt 
 with him in the unceasing cruelty of discontent, or have 
 left him, to deal him the fate of Bruno. 
 
 And she was very base in her own sight ; for she knew 
 likewise that, for this very cause, she had ever been 
 utterly beneath this great life that she had elected to de- 
 sert for things, compared with it, so mean, and vain, and 
 worthless. 
 
 She paused once and looked at him, with all the old 
 look of her childhood back in her uplifted eves. 
 
 "Such men -as you," she murmured, "need nobler 
 things than women to love you and to value you ! We 
 are beneath you — we know nothing of greatness such as 
 yours I" 
 
 lie smiled : the smile of such infinite sadness. 
 
 "Rather you see it not, unless it wear the purple, and 
 bear the orb, of visible power. But 1, indeed, claim none ; 
 have none; unless it maybe such as may grow out of 
 
 freedom." 
 
 "You have the highest — the best — the only greatness!" 
 And in that moment she saw 1 his tnit h t hal she had SO 
 long neglected or derided ; saw that the liberty, the self- 
 mastery, the simplicity, the courage, and the Bupreme 
 SCOm for the insincerity, the artifice, and the bondage of 
 the world, which were in this man's life, had a greatness 
 
 thai surpassed all other the earth held, though a great- 
 ness unrecognized and unrewarded of men. 
 • lie answered her nothing.
 
 562 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 Though she spoke thus, saw thus, felt thus, he knew 
 well that she would make again the choice she then had 
 made, were the election again offered her : — that now, as 
 then, could the choice be afresh set before her, would she 
 forsake him, and go from him to the pomps of the world. 
 
 While she owned the greatness of the truths, the liber- 
 ties, and the simplicities whereon his life was founded, 
 she would yet shrink from holding out her hands to him 
 in her palace as her friend, from bidding her compeers and 
 her lovers behold all that she owed to him ! — and there 
 was unuttered scorn in him, as well as unutterable sad- 
 ness, as he looked on her in silence. 
 
 " It grows late," he said briefly, at length. "I must 
 remind you once more — do you desire your absence dis- 
 covered ?" 
 
 She started, and glanced at the clock ; with whose 
 hands her own childish ones had so often played in mis- 
 chievous fancies to retard, or to advance, some dreaded 
 hour of study or some desired moment of playtime. 
 
 " It is late indeed ! I shall be missed : — he has theat- 
 rical pieces to-night on purpose for my pleasure ; my 
 absence must not be known. How quickly can I re- 
 turn ?" 
 
 " In two hours ; scarcely sooner. You will do best to 
 lose no time." 
 
 " I must go there, — once more. Then I will come," 
 she murmured. "Stay! tell me, — there is no fear that 
 peasant child who is with her can suspect, — can recognize 
 me, — can speak to others ?" 
 
 "No fear. That girl is from Lorraine — a grand-niece 
 of grand'mere. She never heard of you, and she will now 
 return east to her own people, deeming you some great 
 princess who came out of charity to see an old peasant 
 who once nursed you." 
 
 She shuddered a little as she heard. 
 
 "But — but, I cannot bear to think that this place may 
 pass to strangers — that all these things of hers may be 
 scattered, — that the animals, and the fowls, and the swal- 
 lows may be ill treated or killed. Can you not purchase 
 it for me without my name appearing, and place some one 
 in it who will be good to all the creatures?"
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. f,fi3 
 
 She stroked the cat as she spoke; it seemed a link be- 
 twixt her and the dead. 
 
 " The place — such as it is — is mine," he made answer. 
 "You need have no fear; care shall be had of it." 
 
 He did not remind her that to rent it, and fill it with' 
 its cottage things, and keep it for her with some sort of 
 picturesque grace about it, he had sacrificed much, toiled 
 hardly oftentimes, its slight costs heavily taxing his own 
 means. 
 
 She felt what he had not uttered, and moved in silence 
 from the chamber. 
 
 More than an hour had passed ere she returned from 
 her last look upon the face that had been first among her 
 earliest memories ; her eyelids were swollen,*and her lips 
 white, as she came to him. 
 
 "I am ready," was all she said. 
 
 They did not speak as they left the cottage, and went 
 down through the scarlet beans and the wild-growing 
 gourds to the landing-place in the garden, and drifted 
 away in the boat down the river. 
 
 Her eyes watched, as long as they could follow.it, the 
 little light burning in the chamber of the dead. 
 
 The proudest and most ambitious dreams with which 
 she bad last left that innocent home among the swallows 
 had attained their fruition: — but remorse and repentance 
 were with her. 
 
 No words passed between them as the boat slowly 
 labored against the stream. 
 
 When I hey reached the place of the ferry, he aided her 
 in silence to land. 
 
 "I will follow you." he said simply, "near enough to 
 be at hand if you need me." 
 
 " That is how you have ever followed my life !" 
 " Well ! the time may yet come when I may lie wanted, 
 wild as the thoughl seems of sueh an omnipoieii! life as 
 yours. Pass onward — unless you would have your bosl 
 disquieted by your absence." 
 
 " Would he care it' 1 w ere dead in that river !" 
 The murmur was hitter ami doubting, li betrayed the 
 one victory on which she alone was uncertain, the one
 
 564 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 desire that alone was ungranted to her, the one douht of 
 her own power that alone had ever humiliated her. 
 
 He gave a short, sharp sigh. It had told him all. 
 
 " You still desire his love !" — the words were almost 
 savage in their vehemence. 
 
 She was silent. She could have bitten her tongue 
 through, that ever it should have betrayed her thus. 
 
 He let her pass on ; and she went swiftly, with pas- 
 sionate movement, through the darkness of the forest- 
 lands. 
 
 When the lights which illumined the terraces glistened 
 in view, he gained her side with a few rapid steps. 
 
 "You are in safety; yonder is your entrance. The 
 heart of your childhood has awakened in you to-night ; 
 keep it waking, or its next sleep will be death. And — if, 
 in your cruel caprices, you set your soul on the man who 
 lives yonder, — remember that a lie is accurst in his sight, 
 and that he has once suffered betrayal. I forbid you to 
 play with his peace, or to trifle with his honor." 
 
 "You forbid me !" — even in that moment, as she faced 
 him in the moonlight, the chief emotion in her was her 
 arrogant pride, that defied all dictation and authoritv. 
 
 "Yes— I." 
 
 His eyes met hers with a look in them that compelled 
 and "awed her, as a master's look his dog — a look which 
 made her subject to him. 
 
 Without another word he turned away. She went 
 onward, confused, breathless, vaguely afraid, filled with 
 tumultuous emotions. 
 
 The lesser terror of her own discovery died away in 
 her. It was eclipsed by a greater — the terror lest that 
 vast granite mass of reckless and merciless ingratitude 
 that she had piled higher and higher with every year of 
 her life, till it had shut out the holy light of heaven, 
 should one day fall and crush her. 
 
 She gained the terrace with swift trembling steps, 
 passed through the entrance-door unobserved, and glided 
 up the staircase leading to her apartments, without detec- 
 tion. This portion of the building was forsaken ; but 
 through its casements on the farther side, which looked 
 out away to the great south court adjoining the stables,
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 5fi5 
 
 she saw the forms of men and horses moving to and fro 
 by torchlight. She divined the truth, that they had 
 missed and were about to search for her. 
 
 There were none of her own attendants in her cham- 
 bers; she was thankful for an absence that best befriended 
 her. She went first to her mirrors to see how her face 
 betrayed her ; all her color was gone, and her eyelids 
 were "swollen with tears; but she was one of the few 
 women in whom emotion increases, because it chastens 
 and softens, beauty. She bathed her face in water; 
 coiled up her hair which had fallen ; dropped down on 
 to a couch in all her accustomed grace and indolence of 
 repose, and rang for ber women, who, entering hur- 
 riedly, could ill conceal their amaze at sight of her, and 
 recounted breathlessly that her host, on missing her from 
 the drawing-rooms, had found that no one had seen her 
 for several hours, had then become alarmed as night had 
 fallen, and was at that moment about to start in quest of 
 her with his horsemen. 
 
 She sent him a message of graceful thanks ; adding 
 that she had wandered somewhat too far in the forest, 
 and been belated. That was all. 
 
 Then, with haste yet especial care, she arrayed herself 
 in her uttermost brilliancy, — in a misty cloud of black 
 and silver, with sapphires gleaming here and there, ami 
 a knot of passion-flowers in her bosom. The slight ex- 
 haustion and loss of bloom from her loveliness only added 
 to its charm; she looked, and was reassured that none 
 could trace any touch of sorrow or of apprehension on 
 her. 
 
 "He feared once that I should be an actress like the 
 woman Coriolis. Ah, heaven! what else am I now?" 
 she thought, as she turned from the mirrors. 
 
 When she entered I be drawing-rooms, none of the many 
 personages then gathered at Villiers looked deeper than 
 the surface of her words, or supposed that there had been 
 any other cause for ber absence than this which she al- 
 leged — that -he had strolled far in the forest, and been 
 benighted. None — save ber host, who, as he welcomed 
 her safety, and apologized for bis own needless anxieties, 
 
 ts
 
 566 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 regarded her with a look she could ill meet, and recalled 
 that letter which had come to her in the rose-gardens. 
 
 Yet the terror of that past hour, when he had been 
 haunted by the thoughts of countless accidents that might 
 have chanced to her, had told him, in the sharp eloquence 
 of anguish, that his life were valueless without this 
 woman. 
 
 Although he studied her keenly, he could see no trace 
 of emotion, no sign of abstraction in her through the 
 hours at the dinner-table, and in the bijou theater, to 
 which, to do her pleasure, he had summoned a choice 
 stage-troop of Paris. She was slightly more languid, 
 and had little of her accustomed wit — that was all. 
 
 He could not tell that all she saw, throughout that 
 evening, was a little low bed, in a small dark chamber; 
 and an old, storm-beaten, patient, heroic face, with the 
 stillness and the grandeur of death set on it. 
 
 He longed to question her, but the delicacy of his high 
 breeding, and his courtesy as a host, both sealed his lips: 
 
 "I grow a madman," he told himself. "Mystery! 
 what mystery could there be in the life of a woman 
 young, proud, eminent as she is ? I dream ; and because 
 the strongest love of my youth betrayed me, my dreams 
 are only suspicions !" 
 
 And suspicion was a foul and a craven thing in his 
 sight — a spy that could have no lodgment in the frank, 
 just, high thoughts of a gentleman. 
 
 As he mused thus, he was standing, after the dramatic 
 representations, alone in the embrasure of a picture cab- 
 inet, that led out on to the head of the grand staircase. 
 He had drawn the curtain back, and was gazing on to 
 the moonlit terrace and the oak forests below, without 
 thinking of what he beheld. He started as he heard the 
 sweep of a woman's robes near him, and saw the object 
 of his thoughts crossing the little chamber. She paused, 
 with a certain hesitation. She had been ignorant of his 
 presence there ; she was leaving the reception-rooms to 
 seek her own apartments. She was worn out with the 
 self-command she had attained, and both fatigue and sad- 
 ness were visible on her face as she passed through, 
 deeming herself in solitude.
 
 THE STORY OF A WATF AND STRAY, 5G7 
 
 On a sudden impulse, she approached him. 
 
 '• I have not thanked you, I fear, for your concern for 
 my safety to-night," Bhe said, hurriedly. "I must tell 
 you that the reasons I gave for my absence were only 
 partially true. The fall of evening overtook me, indeed, 
 in your forests, but it was no accident by which I was 
 delayed." 
 
 His eyes lightened with surprised pleasure : 
 
 " Any confidence you may place in me will be cherished 
 and sacred, you are sure. But, — do not deem yourself 
 called on to give it simply because I enjoy the privilege 
 of being your host." 
 
 For the moment, a desire came over her to tell him the 
 whole unwarped and unvarnished truth. But the desire 
 was not strong enough to conquer the false pride within 
 her, and the terror she felt of being lowered and humili- 
 ated in his sight. 
 
 She hastened with all her most graceful arts of speech 
 to thank him, to assure him that this was but a slight 
 matter: — she did not wish it spoken of, lest she should be 
 wearied with inquiries. She had heard in tin- latter half 
 of the day that a noble old woman — a peasant who had 
 nursed her in her infancy — was lying in the extremities 
 of death in a cottage by the l'ivcr-side, and was praying 
 earnestly and piteouslyto see her once again. She could 
 not refuse such a request; she had gone thither by her- 
 self, preferring not to make her errand known. She had 
 been unaware that her absence would be of such duration. 
 
 So the delicate polished semi-falsehoods ran, with soft 
 successful fluency. But while she uttered them, Bhe was 
 degraded in her own eyes. She told him no lie, indeed : 
 yet none the less did she deceive him. 
 
 Keen of vision though he was. and difficulf to content 
 in aught that savored of evasion, or challenged the 
 acuteness of his judgment, ho was thrown oil' his guard 
 by the joy he felt at finding so much pity in the woman 
 \\ bom he hail dreaded as an unscrupulous, heartless, and 
 self-absorbed coquette. It seemed nothing strange to him 
 thai so Budden memory and compassion had moved her, 
 and senl her forth on an anweighed impulse; for he had 
 seen the sympathy and the agitation with which she had
 
 568 TR.ICOTRIN, 
 
 watched the perils of human life in the stone-yard. And 
 he accepted, unanalyzed and unquestioned, a narrative 
 which at another hour, and from other lips, he would have 
 deemed strange, involved, and insufficient. 
 
 " I honor you for your noble charity and for your gen- 
 tleness of heart," he murmured. "If you have that 
 divine pity in you, why will you stifle it so often, and " 
 
 " Hush, hush !" she interrupted him, passionately. 
 " Do not you praise me ! ' Noble charity' — mine 1 If 
 you only knew the selfishness, the cruelty, the baseness 
 of my life ! When I have a touch of holier feeling, of 
 higher thought in me, it comes too late, as it came too 
 late to-night !" 
 
 "Too late?" 
 
 " Yes, she was dead. My words fell on ears forever 
 deaf to the voices of earth. I reproach myself more than 
 I could ever tell you !" 
 
 " How was it fault of yours ? You knew that this old 
 creature lived on this country side ?" 
 
 " Yes, I knew; and I had promised so often — through 
 so many years — to go and let her look upon my face once 
 more, and yet I never went. I let summer and winter 
 glide away again, and again, and again ; and I never re- 
 membered that time brings death to the old. I had leisure 
 for all the pomps, and the pleasures, and the frivolities, 
 and the caprices of my life ; but I never had leisure for 
 this one simple duty. And when I reached her side, she 
 was dead I" 
 
 The tears gushed into her eyes afresh ; her lips quivered. 
 This was real, and sincere, and unstudied. On this she 
 could utter the truth to him. 
 
 His thoughts were not with the obscure lost life of 
 which she spoke, but with this exquisite, wayward, 
 changeful, imperious, incomprehensible woman, whose 
 moods varied like the sun and shade of a spring day, and 
 whose tenderness and remorse were as passionate as her 
 vanity and her egotism were cold. Fear and doubt, sus- 
 picion and wisdom, all faded away in him as though they 
 had never been ; he only remembered that she beguiled 
 him as no temptress had done since the days of his youth. 
 
 "If you have so much pity for the dead, who cherished
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 509 
 
 you in your infancy, have you no pity for the living, who 
 worship you in your womanhood ?" he said, suddenly ; 
 with a sound in his voice that she had never heard, a look 
 on his face that she had never seen, as the white moon- 
 light fell about them where they stood by the opened 
 casement. 
 
 " It is the common reproach against me that I have had 
 too little," she murmured, in answer. 
 
 "A reproach you deserve only too well ! But — but — 
 will you find mercy at last ? Passion has no place on 
 my lips. It betrayed me in my youth ; it has no fitness 
 in my present years. And yet, you have won my secret 
 from me to-night; you must hear what I thought never 
 to tell ; you must know — that I am mad enough to love 
 you !" 
 
 He spoke, almost without hope. He spoke to a co- 
 quette who had never spared, to a sovereign who had 
 never stooped, to a woman who had never pitied. Yet, 
 as she listened, her face changed with a marvelous light, 
 and flush, and tenderness thai no eyes had ever beheld on 
 it. She was silent, but she raised her head, and turned, 
 and looked at him: — one look only, still, by it he was 
 answered. 
 
 And as her proud head dropped down upon his breast, 
 and his lips sought hers to find there all the lost joys of 
 his dead youth, he felt her whole frame thrill in his em- 
 brace,- and heard her broken words: 
 
 "I am not worthy of you! I am not worthy 1" 
 
 CHAPTER LXII. 
 
 "Imperil hi- peace — trifle with his honor. Ah. heaven! 
 There will be no Deed to forbid me that I" she thought, in 
 
 the solitude of her chamber an hour later, while the touch 
 of his firsl kisses seemed still to linger on her lip-, and 
 the fervor of passion aeemed .-till to gaze on her from tin; 
 eyes which she had thought would never soften in their 
 
 regard. 
 
 48*
 
 570 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 A joy had come to her, beside which all the joys of 
 her victorious years looked faint of hue and poor of treas- 
 ure. From its long opium-sleep of deep-drugged vanity 
 her soul had stirred at last; and the love which she had 
 so long derided and disdained, had awakened in her for 
 the one who alone, amid throngs of crowding flatterers, 
 had neglected, condemned, and distrusted her. 
 
 She loved him — with a vivid force, a reverent humility, 
 an impassioned tenderness, that a year earlier she would 
 have mocked at as lowest weakness, wildest madness. 
 She loved him — with a love that set its heel upon her 
 pride, and bent her strength beneath it. She loved him — 
 and this one missing jewel from her triple diadem of 
 youth, and power, and loveliness, was found and added to 
 her crown. 
 
 Love had had cruel usage at her hands. It had watched 
 over her from the hour when her young eyes had opened 
 at the music of the Straduarius, to gaze at the purple but- 
 terflies dancing in the sun ; it had been lavish of every 
 richest thing to her, and had waited upon her with a slave's 
 submission ; its chaplets were wound on her brows, its 
 blossoms strewed her path, its wings had lifted her up 
 to loftiest heights, and its smile had ever shed sunlight 
 upon her. But she, in answer, had only cast to it some 
 gay scorn, some light irony, some child's cruelty, some 
 woman's contempt. 
 
 Yet even now it was not weary; it was not driven 
 away; it brought to her the latest and the holiest of all 
 its countless gifts, it nestled in her bosom like a dove that 
 bears glad tidings, it changed even the pangs of remorse 
 into the throbs of joy. Love had been forsaken by her in 
 a thousand careless seasons, yet it remained with her, and 
 was faithful ever. 
 
 Even from this death-hour, when the sin of her ingrati- 
 tude had dealt its deadliest stroke, there had sprung, 
 through Love, the fullest sweetness that her life had 
 known : and a vague fear came on her of this giver so 
 prodigal, of this slave so patient, of this friend so con- 
 stant and unwearied. 
 
 " Oh God 1" she murmured in her solitude. " I have 
 been so base, so faithless, so guilty to all love. If his,
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 511 
 
 the only love I treasure, should take its vengeance and 
 forsake me !" 
 
 She had cast one great life away from her as idly as a 
 child casts balls of cowslips on the air, as selfishly as a 
 falconer casts hawks down a south wind, as cruelly as a 
 murderer casts dead limbs upon the sea: was it just that 
 another should become hers also ? 
 
 Was no retribution near ? Its terror seemed to touch 
 her, and daunt her strength, and wither her pride, and 
 freeze her new-born joy with its breath of ice, where she 
 stood in her loneliness, and gazed at that beauty of her 
 face and form which had so late been to her all she heeded 
 upon earth, yet which now would have grown worthless 
 and without radiance in her sight, unless fair in his eyes, 
 and given to his arms. 
 
 For the voice of conscience spoke in her, and ques- 
 tioned ceaselessly — 
 
 "Will you go to his heart with a shame concealed? 
 Will you lift your lips for his kiss, with a lie hovering 
 on them? Will you answer his faith with your false- 
 hood r 
 
 A day since, an hour since, she had said to herself that 
 he should never know; that though she should heap lie 
 on lie upon her head, the truth should be concealed 
 from him and from the world. An hour ago her pride 
 had been holier to her, her eminence dearer to her than 
 any other thing. 
 
 But with the touch of his lips, with the possession of 
 his love, all that was still noble in her nature had sprung 
 to life once more. Now that she knew his peace, and 
 honor, and future all were hers, she knew that she might 
 with less baseness strike a knife into his heart than be 
 his wife with one treachery between them. 
 
 She knew that to take his love, leaving him in blind- 
 ness, was treacherous as any assassin's thrust, she 
 knew thai by reason of that very guilt which had de- 
 ceived him in his youth, to deceive him afresh was the 
 foulest cowardice that ever stained a woman's life. 
 Better, she knew, be forever severed from him, than 
 
 glide into his life through the channels of falseh 1. than 
 
 live in union with him with one act in her past untold,
 
 572 TRIC0TR1N, 
 
 than sleep in his bosom with a single secret to haunt the 
 hours of the night. Better to summon all the world 
 about her, and fling her story to the winds, and stand 
 before him, without pride, without power, without any 
 single thing of greatness or of dignity or of possession 
 left, but able to look into his eyes without one fear of 
 what they should there read ; able to say to him in hon- 
 esty and strength — "there is no lie on the lips that you 
 kiss : there is no secret in the life that you make one with 
 your own." 
 
 Her heart and her conscience had been startled from 
 their long sleep that night. She was awakened from the 
 deep dreams of that supreme selfishness which had 
 drugged her like an opiate ; the courage, the truthful- 
 ness, the spirit of her childhood were once more roused. 
 
 " What is it I do !" she thought in horror. " Win 
 love, and trust, and honor, on a lie !" 
 
 She knew that it was possible, — nay, likely, — that, 
 knowing all, he would put her from his life forever. 
 She knew the pride of birth that was in him ; the patri- 
 cian contempt that shone forth so often in his slightest 
 words ; the intense dread of any shadow of dishonor that 
 the early infidelity of his wife had left perpetually on 
 him. She knew that with all the passion he bore her, 
 he loved his honor, and the dignity and purity of his 
 name, far more. She knew that if she told him the bare 
 bitter truth, it was well-nigh a surety that she would 
 never look upon his face again. And this — not alone 
 from the mere impulses of pride, but from the doubt in 
 his soul which would say — "faithless in her childhood, 
 and a falsehood to the w T orld, what warrant have I that 
 she will be truer and more loyal to me ?" 
 
 And yet all that ever had been nobler in her was 
 aroused and in tumult that night. The dead face of the 
 woman whom she had deserted ; the burning rebukes of 
 the man she had abandoned, had withered up the vani- 
 ties and arrogancies of her life ; and beneath them the 
 living heart beat still — beat faster and more loudly be- 
 cause it throbbed in pain. 
 
 She gazed at her own loveliness with the old rapt wor- 
 ship of it still in her regard.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 573 
 
 "I shall give him all this!" she thought, while a hot 
 flush stole over her face. " It is enough I" 
 
 But in her conscience she knew that this beauty would 
 be the most cruel, the most fatal gift that ever woman's 
 beauty was to man, unless with it she gave also — truth. 
 
 There stole on her the memory of a day, — long, very 
 long, ago, — when one, against whom her past had been 
 an endless sin, had murmured to her in the words of his 
 farewell : — " Let my memory stand between thee and thy 
 temptations, so shall I have no gift to give thee." 
 
 And she fell on her knees, and wept in an agony of 
 grief, and prayed in passionate, inarticulate, wild prayer, 
 " Oh, God, make me for one hour worthy of the mighty 
 love that I forsook !" 
 
 When she arose, her face had a weary, hopeless, rigid 
 look, as of one who has striven and conquered, indeed, 
 but with such strife and such conquest as leave the vic- 
 tor broken, exhausted, well-nigh slain. 
 
 " He shall know all," she muttered through her color- 
 less lips. She turned, and moved through the lone- 
 liness of her chambers, and passed out in the deserted 
 corridor. 
 
 The great building was silent; she knew that he was 
 alone in his library, since, when they had parted, he had 
 spoken of letters of import that would occupy him until 
 daybreak. She went to seek him that night, that hour, 
 dreading her own weakness of shame and of self-pity, 
 dreading lest her strength should fail, and this martyrdom 
 pass from her. 
 
 The two white lines of marble stairs ran parallel with 
 each other, severed by the vastness of the hall below. 
 All the lights still burned and "littered on them. As she 
 stood on the head of one, up the ascent of the other there 
 came a swift, silent step, like the light tread of a grey- 
 hound. 
 
 She glanced across, — the stranger glanced at her. It 
 was but one instanl thai their eyes met. He passed on- 
 ward, with his eyelids lowered, and his swift step un- 
 changed. She stood as though rooted to the ground, her 
 whole frame shivering like that of an antelope which 
 sees the panther alar off.
 
 574 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 "Chanrellon! Are you coming?" cried a laughing 
 voice from above. 
 
 "I am coming!" answered the stranger, as a young 
 man answers a young comrade. 
 
 She turned and crept back into her chamber like a 
 creature numb with cold, and cast herself across her 
 couch, and lay there in a stupor. 
 
 What avail to take confidence to him now ! 
 
 Truth now could look but Fear. 
 
 When her women, awhile later, entered her apartments, 
 they found her cold and stupefied, the passion-flowers 
 crushed upon her hair, her bosom cut with the sapphires' 
 sharp facets ; and when consciousness revived in her 
 under their terrified efforts, they heard her murmur — 
 
 "My sin has come home to me 1 It is just, it is just !" 
 
 CHAPTER LXIII. 
 
 Midway between the park and the dairies there was a 
 cluster of acacias, now in blossom, and luxuriant as they 
 only are south of the Loire. They parted two water- 
 threaded meadows, and formed a thicket of foliage and 
 blossom. 
 
 Under their boughs stood Annette Veuillot, with one 
 hand on her hip, and the other balancing on her head the 
 milk-pail that served to disguise her errand. Beside her 
 stood the man whose feminine and languid grace had 
 been so fair in her eyes, because of its utter unlikeness to 
 her own coarse, robust, weather-beaten strength and ugli- 
 ness. Her mouth laughed wide, her tawny skin was 
 flushed with eagerness, her breast heaved against her 
 leathern bodice. 
 
 " It was not madness in me, then !" she muttered ex- 
 ultantly. " Why were you so loth to believe ?" 
 
 " I was not loth!" answered her companion, unable, 
 through the bond between them, to resent her familiarity.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 575 
 
 " I was incredulous, indeed. The Duchess de Lira ! — I 
 have heard through so many seasons of her beauty, her 
 fame, her extravagance. I could not credit that a creat- 
 ure so proud and powerful could be " 
 
 " That bohemian's brat !" said the woman, with fero- 
 cious glee. " But she is, she is, I will wager ; whatever 
 millions of lies they may have told to screen her. You 
 saw her well, my lord ?" 
 
 " Twice. Once, — as long as I chose to look, — from the 
 musicians' gallery, before any knew of my arrival ; and 
 again on the staircase. I do not think there is a doubt, 
 though — Heaven 1 — who could have believed in such a 
 change !" 
 
 " Fine feathers make fine birds ! I knew her at a 
 glance. Women never forget. Would you have known 
 her, my lord, if I had not put this thing in your 
 thoughts?" 
 
 " No ; I doubt if I should. I should have been per- 
 plexed with some resemblance, but no more. The child 
 was lovely, but the woman is magnificent as a goddess!" 
 
 There was a fervid longing in his tune that caught her 
 ear, that told her with what quickness the died-out fancy 
 for the child would revive in passion for the woman. 
 
 " Will she wed with your father V she asked, savagely. 
 
 He broke a cluster of blossoms off the acacia with a 
 gesture of impatience. 
 
 " He says so. I had speech with him late last night, 
 concerning a question of some property, which he sup- 
 poses is the object of my visit. I saw a change in him — 
 there is a look in his eyes which is new there. I made 
 allusion to his marriage as a rumor that I had heard. I 
 asked if it were a true one. He answered, very briefly, 
 that it was. No more words passed between us. I let 
 him see that J was surprised and ill pleased, that was all. 
 And 10 this In- was indifferent, Now, you have n<> proof 
 to give me that this persuasion of yours is a certainty?" 
 
 "None," she said, sullenly. "Bui if yon are not an- 
 swered, name old Virelois to her as 1 did; you will see 
 then!" 
 
 '■That is not what I mean. Myself, I have no doubt. 
 But on anything less than some actual doubt, 1 cannot
 
 576 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 say to the Duchess de Lira, to the betrothed wife of Est - 
 mere, 'You are a foundling and a bastard; you are an 
 imposture on the world you rule ; you are the little fool 
 that once took my jewels and toys, and was tempted, for 
 my sake, to the house of Coriolis.' I cannot say this to 
 her on mere conjecture, mere supposition?" 
 
 She understood, and stood thinking awhile ; her strong 
 teeth gnawing her nether lip. Then suddenly a dull, 
 cruel gleam shot over her face. 
 
 "See here; there is one of her men who came down to 
 Villiers with her, who has got into love with little Laure 
 at my dairy. He is always there ; after no good, but I let 
 him come ; I have heard a great deal of her so. And he 
 told me one thing. There is a steward very bitter against 
 her because she dismissed him, an old man who lives now 
 with his son-in law, Lobesq, the jeweler, in Paris. He 
 might tell you somewhat ? It is possible, my lord. I 
 know Laure's lover said once that he believed the old 
 man would hurt his mistress if he could, though he did 
 not see what means he ever would be able to find." 
 
 He heard her thoughtfully. 
 
 " Lobesq ? I have had dealings with him. I can learn 
 this with ease. You are a wise woman, Veuillot. You 
 see — since the honor of my house will be involved in 
 both the past and the future of this dainty duchess whom 
 my father loves — it is needful, as it would not otherwise 
 be, that I should reach the truth, the whole truth, of her 
 history." 
 
 She laughed grimly, with a sardonic appreciation of 
 the sophistry in which he veiled his own vengeance in 
 solicitude for the dignity of his race. 
 
 "No doubt, my lord," she said, curtly. "As for me — I 
 am a woman — I want only to taste a drop of revenge for 
 the pretty fashion in which that bastard called us once 
 a set of senseless peasants ! You great aristocrats are 
 careful of honor, of course ; a little vengeance does for 
 us ! And what is it you will do now ?" 
 
 "I will go to Paris. I must leave my regrets and 
 apologies to the fair duchess for quitting Villiers so hastily 
 ere she has risen, and without presentation to her." 
 
 She smiled at the smile on his lips.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 577 
 
 "When she is your father's wife you will see her often- 
 times enough — you will be so welcome, my lord!" 
 
 Low, coarse, debased though her intelligence was, she 
 had the shrewdness which took her straight to the means 
 by which she would most surely awaken the worst in- 
 stincts in this nature, which had long been her study. 
 
 "She will never be his wife," he made answer, with a 
 sound in his voice that caused her fierce heart to leap 
 with joy. 
 
 Then he slipped a roll of gold pieces into her palm and 
 went his ways through the acacia-thicket. She looked 
 after him with a hard, strange look in her eyes as she 
 thrust the gold into her bosom. In her own brute-fashion 
 she loved this delicate, indolent, womanish aristocrat, 
 though she loved his gold still more ; and her heart beat 
 with great dull throbs against the leather of her bodice. 
 A sudden fear touched her. 
 
 " Had I better have left her alone ?" she muttered. 
 "He will only love her again; and — who can tell? — he 
 will have her secret, he may only use it to sever her from 
 his father, he may wed with her himself, — who can tell ?" 
 
 And she strode out from the acacia shadows, breaking 
 their blossoms down with the swing of her great arm, and 
 went across the meadows and through the lowing cattle 
 with the glow of triumph faded, and the cloud of hatred 
 settled on her face. 
 
 "Anyway, I have the gold," she thought, thrusting 
 her hand into her bosom. 
 
 She did not notice, in a little shallow runlet of water 
 thai pierced the grass by the acacias, a child who was 
 gathering water-cresses, and who hid himself among the 
 reeds and bracken as she passed. 
 
 "Mother, I did evil to-day," said a lad of twelve, with 
 soft, shy. brown eyes, and a tender, awed face, standing 
 bi 3ide Ninette, who was busied counting the young apri- 
 cots on her garden-wall. 
 
 She turned and looked crently on her sou. 
 
 "Nay. thy crimes cannot be \oi\ dark, my Victor. 
 Wha1 is this thing?" 
 
 " 1 did a shameful thing, mother. I was a spy I" 
 
 "A spy!" — she echoed the word in horror, thinking in 
 
 49
 
 578 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 an instant of the chevaliers of the poniard, of whom her 
 grandsire had told her in her infancy. 
 
 "Yes," murmured the lad, "I did not mean it, I had 
 no thought ; but I could not help listening. I heard with- 
 out hearing, — you know ? — and then I stayed and heard 
 more, because I wished. It was very shameful, I know. 
 But what they said seemed so strange." 
 
 "What who said?" 
 
 "Annette Veuillot and the young lord." 
 
 His mother's face darkened. 
 
 " The young lord ? Is he come back ? It was his car- 
 riage, then, that came through so late ; your father had 
 to get up for it. Veuillot — she was never a good woman. 
 But what can she have to do with dainty aristocrats like 
 Chanrellon ?" 
 
 " I do not know, rightly. But I can tell you every 
 word I heard, mother." 
 
 Ninette hesitated — spurred by intense inquisitive desire, 
 withheld by a sturdy sense of honor. 
 
 "It seems wrong for me to listen," she said, at length. 
 " Yet children should keep nothing from their mothers. 
 Well, tell me, then ; I can tell Tricotrin afterward. He 
 always knows what is best." 
 
 " It was just this," pursued the boy, in a rapid whis- 
 per. " You know the little brook that runs all through 
 the dairy meadows ? I was getting water-cresses in it 
 at sunrise this morning. You know that great cluster of 
 acacia-trees just behind the dairy-houses ? They are so 
 thick with bloom now, they would hide a hundred men. 
 Well — as I was stooping in the brook after the cress, I 
 heard Veuillot's voice. I crept nearer, — the rushes and 
 the burdock grew so thick there that they hid me, — and 
 I saw her, and my lord Chanrellon also. They were 
 talking, and Veuillot had got her pail on her head. She 
 is so ugly, mother, I wonder he does not talk instead to 
 Laure ? Laure is so pretty " 
 
 "But what were they saying?" asked Ninette, impa- 
 tiently, taking a slug from the wall. 
 
 " Well — all this," answered her son ; and he told what 
 he had overheard, confusedly enough, but giving it all 
 the weight and emphasis he could in his wonder.
 
 THE ST6RY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 5*79 
 
 " And then he turned away," ended Victor, at the close 
 of his long recital. "And she went too, — passing me 
 quite close ; and I heard her mutter, ' Anyway, I have 
 the gold.' But is it not strange ? What could it mean? 
 Who is it they can think that splendid duchess is ? " 
 
 "I do not know," murmured his mother, while her 
 ruddy face turned pale. She did not know, but she 
 guessed. 
 
 " He never said the child was dead," she thought to 
 herself as she stripped a leaf off, so that a young apricot 
 might get "gilded," as the people call it. 
 
 Then she turned and laid her hand on her son's forehead. 
 
 " Victor — promise me to speak of this to no living 
 soul ; not even to your sisters." 
 
 " I promise, mother." 
 
 " Right," she said, simply. " I fear there is wickedness 
 afoot That Veuillot was never a good woman. In the 
 evening }^ou get me the mule saddled, and I will go see 
 Tricotrin." 
 
 But when in the evening she rode the mule down into 
 the little hollow, where the sign of the Silver Stag swung 
 above its hollyhocks and its fruit-trees, the keeper of the 
 tavern lamented, with many regretful phrases, that his 
 beloved guest was gone. 
 
 " Where is he gone f" asked Ninette, anxiously. 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 "Ah ! who ever knows where Tricotrin is gone, or is 
 going? lie took his knapsack, and when he takes his 
 knapsack he commonly goes for good. Besides, you 
 know,"' he pursued, sinking his voice to a low whisper, 
 and glancing around as though his straight, tall hollyhocks 
 were officers of the law, "you know, — they say, — the 
 students are up again in Paris; and when there is any- 
 thing of that sort, Tricotrin is sure to be there ready 
 for it." 
 
 Ninette turned the head of her mule sadly homeward, 
 thinking nothing of the students and their riots, but 
 thinking much of her toiled purpose. In her own heart 
 she was certain of what the drifl of the talk thai her boy 
 had overheard musl have been. She bad nol forgotten 
 the days when the Prince Faineant had taken his golden
 
 580 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 gifts under the beechen-tree, — aDd she felt that when the 
 Waif of the Loire had died to the peasantry, she had 
 been translated to that marvelous sphere whereof they 
 had only far-off glimpses, and vague, intangible, hazy 
 conceptions. 
 
 " Tricotrin should have known," she said to herself 
 over and over again as the mule paced slowly homeward, 
 nodding his lazy head, and shaking his belled bridle, and 
 stopping to graze at his pleasure on the wayside grasses. 
 
 Once she thought of going straight up to the great 
 house, and begging audience of the one whom that wicked- 
 ness of the woman Veuillot's menaced, and telling all to 
 her with frankness and without fear. But she did not 
 dare. 
 
 This duchess was so great a personage ; she had no 
 surety of her own suspicions being right, they were mere 
 wild conjecture ; she had but the word of her son, a child 
 of twelve, with which to bear up her statement. And 
 moreover, who could tell how her lord would resent such 
 insults to his guest, such accusation to his son ? 
 
 And Ninette, though generous and honest as the day, 
 and in many things courageous, was a true woman. She 
 thought of ber husband's employment, of her children's 
 welfare, of her happy home in the little, bright, ivy-hung 
 lodge, — she could not endanger all these. 
 
 So she held her peace, and went sadly homeward in 
 the hot, late evening time. In the porch there was a gay 
 group, Victor and his sisters, and little Raoul, with his 
 wondrous cuirassier, and Paulin, who, although an 
 equerry, deigned to be not a little in love with the black- 
 eyed elder daughter of the lodge. 
 
 The girl turned to her mother in unaffected concern — 
 
 "Oh, mere, — that beautiful duchess is ill." 
 
 " Hi J" — Ninette's eyes met her son's. 
 
 "Yes," interposed the equerry. "Her women found 
 her in a swoon last night, and she has not risen to-day ; 
 though she will insist, I dare say, on going to Paris for 
 that fete she is to give to the princes. The physicians 
 speak of fever. Mademoiselle Marie's kind little heart is 
 quite distressed for Miladi." 
 
 " Dost thou think because a woman is a duchess she
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 581 
 
 must never suffer, Marie?" said Ninette, somewhat 
 roughly, going within to lay aside her great cloak. 
 
 "There is evil against her, mere ?" whispered Victor. 
 
 "Yes, I fear there is evil,'' said his mother, with a 
 sigh. "And I could not see Tricotrin 1" 
 
 CHAPTER LXIV. 
 
 While Ninette sought for him at the tavern, and rode 
 her mule back in sorrow and perplexity, he was sitting on 
 the oak settle within the porch of the little river-house, 
 looking out down the reach of the stream. 
 
 All things were still. The cat slept, curled among 
 violet-roots. The fowls and pigeons were gone to roost. 
 The swallows had ceased their fluttering and murmuring 
 among the ivy. The little Lorraine girl had gone to her 
 own people. The dead had been borne out, by tender, 
 reverent hands, through the green garden ways, and 
 down the water-steps, and into the waiting boat ; and 
 grand'mere had been left to her last resting-place under 
 vhe blossoming acacias of the vine country other birth. 
 
 In the deserted house there was no sound ; the gathered 
 roses had withered, and hung their heads ; the clock had 
 stopped, for none had remembered to wind its works; on 
 the brick hearth there was no fire ; the evening shadows 
 stole softly through all the little desolate chambers. On 
 a chestnut-bough outside the door even Mistigri was 
 silent, and very quiet, watching with her black sad eyes 
 the flitting of the bats and owls. 
 
 ilis own gaze never wandered from the river, which 
 was half in shadow, half in light, as the sun went down. 
 Eia thoughts were with the old lost years. 
 
 Before his sighl there hovered the gay and graceful 
 shapes of a child at play among I he tall scarlet bean-flow- 
 ers ; of a child swaying on the lit he earth-drooping branch 
 of a beech-tree; of a child leaning over the side of a 
 
 49*
 
 582 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 brown boat, and dipping her arms down into the water, 
 and laughing when the keel grated on the rocky shore, 
 and singing — singing ever like the birds at spring-time — 
 from early dawn all through the day, till nightfall ; of a 
 child with the glad swift voice of childhood and the dark 
 dreaming gaze of a woman, and all the fond, fair, innocent 
 freedom of a forest-creature taught human love, but 
 knowing naught of human fear. 
 
 The time had been when he, in his madness, had once 
 dreamed that she like the young forest-thing would have 
 returned to the hand that had fed and to the home that 
 had sheltered her, as the fawn returns affrighted by the 
 noise of the hunters, and by the bitterness of the water- 
 springs, and by the gall of the collar, and by the width of 
 the great plains in the new lands of its wandering. 
 
 But he had been in error. His fawn had gone where 
 the pastures were palace-gardens, and the brooks were 
 the well-springs of pleasure, and the thickets bore the 
 honey-laden buds of triumph, and the gilded collar was 
 but a jeweled bauble by the chimes of wljose bells she 
 could lure all other herds to follow her. 
 
 And he sat alone in the little house by the river. 
 
 The sun set; the glow faded off the water; the dream- 
 ing hum of night-gnats was the only sound on the air ; 
 the dews fell thick on grass, and leaf, and blossom. He 
 never stirred ; he never took his gaze from off the gliding 
 current. -For him the hushed night-air was filled with 
 the echoes of a young voice that never more would sound 
 through that familiar place ; for him the shadowy solitude 
 was haunted by the vision of a young face that never 
 more would smile on that deserted home. 
 
 And thus his recompense came to him; thus her debt 
 was paid, in that common wage of bitterness and suffer- 
 ing whereby woman often requites the love of man, and 
 fate ever requites the life that follows the law of mercy 
 and forgets itself. 
 
 A step sounded on the rocky landing-stair. He started, 
 and slowly arose ; in the full, lustrous moonlight that 
 now streamed over land and stream, he saw the one for 
 whom he had waited. 
 
 He motioned his hand behind him.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 583 
 
 "Go within, Gervase; all is yours." 
 
 The young peasant, hardy, sun-bronzed, strong as an 
 ox of the field, trembled like a child. 
 
 "Ah! What can I say? — how can I thank you? 
 Such priceless goodness ! " 
 
 "Chut! Goodness to enable a man to marry 1 I never 
 heard that before. Were it goodness to give you a knife 
 whereby you could cut your throat?'' 
 
 Gervase smiled ; but his mouth quivered with strong 
 emotion, which, save for his five-and-twenty years of man- 
 hood, would have found relief in tears. 
 
 " It is goodness that gives heaven upon earth!" he mur- 
 mured. " You know — all her youth must have gone by ; 
 I am so poor, and she is only a little servant-maiden ; and 
 when one works so hard, so hard, the eyes get dim, 
 and the hair gets gray, and the time of age comes so 
 SQon ! " 
 
 "I know ! And you — you think there is naught upon 
 earth like that little servant-maiden 1 Well — so best. 
 Let it last." 
 
 "But how can I ever repay you?" 
 
 " Hush ! Think you not that, when Napoleon Bona- 
 parte lay dying, the memory of that Alpine shepherd 
 whom he made happy with the gift of a meadow and a 
 homestead, was sweeter to him than the memories of all 
 his victories? Besides — you will pay me by taking heed 
 of all these dumb things, all these birds, all these trees." 
 
 The young man bent before him, with tender, tremu- 
 lous reverence. 
 
 " They shall be as sacred to me as she!" 
 
 " That is enough ! And now — go within. I am late, 
 and must lose no more time." 
 
 " Is it true, then ?" the peasant asked, wistfully, " true 
 that the boulevards have risen ?" 
 
 "No. But it is true that the students may rise. Rise 
 — to be massacred. Go within, Gervase — I would start, 
 alone." 
 
 "But — if there be massacres?" gasped the youth, mis- 
 taking his answer. "If harm come to you ? If we see 
 \ ou do more ?" 
 
 "Pooh! Do you not remember? — I am the Wander-
 
 584 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 ing Jew! Well — if harm do, if even Ahasuerus be given 
 the divine gift of death, I have had a care that all this shall 
 be for thee and thine. For you are gentle-natured and 
 worthy of trust, Gervase. And when I die — if I die — 
 make my grave yonder, under that great old beech, where 
 I shall hear the singing of the river forever, and my people 
 will know where I lie." 
 
 He smiled as he spoke ; but there was that in the smile 
 which only deepened the lingering and wistful melancholy 
 of the words. 
 
 Gervase glanced up, and caught the look upon his face, 
 and trembled with a vague sense of near calamity. 
 
 "Farewell," said Tricotrin, with another backward 
 gesture of his hand toward the house. 
 
 The young peasant obeyed it, as a dog obeys a sign. 
 He himself went down by the stone steps to the water's 
 edge, and entered the little boat which waited there among 
 the sand and sedges. He paused, with the oar resting on 
 the bank, and looked long — as men look on what they 
 leave forever — at the familiar homely place, with the stars 
 of the midsummer-eve shining above its ivy-covered roof 
 and on its ivy-shrouded easements. 
 
 He looked long : then let his oars fall, and drifted down 
 the stream. 
 
 When the youth stole forth under the cover of the 
 boughs, and gazed out down the course of the river, the 
 little boat was far away, floating darkly, like a leaf adrift, 
 upon the broad, white, starlit reach of the river. 
 
 He was gone — nevermore to return to the home which 
 the Waif once had shared with the swallows. 
 
 CHAPTER LXV. 
 
 In the dusky hot close of the late summer day in which 
 he reached Paris, there met him one of the brethren of 
 that religious community, who commonly called him their 
 Alp-dog of travail and trouvaille, who brought them so 
 many well-nigh lost lives, found, half frozen, under the
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 585 
 
 snows of abject poverty, or in the crevasses of bottomless 
 crime. Of creeds he had no love ; of priests he had as 
 little; but he knew that these men were of pure zeal, of 
 sincere faith, and of a charity which labored unceasingly, 
 and gave its ministrations without boundaries of code or 
 cadence. Tie honored them, and aided them, and they — 
 loved him in return, and felt before him something of that 
 wonder with which the early leaders of their church saw 
 the virtues of their own evangel surpassed in the pagan 
 Julian. 
 
 In the sultry angry evening the monk paused to greet 
 him. 
 
 " It is you, Tricotrin?" he said, with welcome shining 
 
 in his sad sunken eyes. " You have been long absent?" 
 
 " Yes: who would stay beneath tile and slate, in this 
 
 weather, if ho could have the roofing of green leaves and 
 
 pine-branches ?" 
 
 " Well — there is ever work to be found and done in the 
 cities." 
 
 "Doubtless; but there ought not always to be the 
 doing of work in this life of ours; Nature gave us beauty 
 and pleasure, we have a right to be still, and idle, and 
 enjoy the twain sometimes. But — here you and I do not 
 think alike. Tell me, how has it been with that poor 
 wretch I brought to your doors, after the thieves' burn- 
 ing ?" 
 
 " It is very ill with him. He has never recovered ; he 
 dies by inches. He has never left the bed on which we 
 first laid him His lower limbs arc dead. But his brain 
 is clear enough ; he talks at times with a terrible wit and 
 irony. He must some day have known the glittering 
 side of the greal world's vices. He has asked often for 
 you, — not by name, indeed, but for the one who saved 
 him. I have sought for you often ; lor at times he is 
 hard to pacify, because we do not take you to his side. 
 We have sent to all your usual haunts, bul we could not 
 hear of you. You will come and see him — now?" 
 Tricotrin made qo answer. 
 
 " He cannot live," (he monk pursued. " A few days 
 — or weeks at uttermost — will close his life. You will
 
 586 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 come to him ? It seems to me that he has somewhat on 
 his mind that he desires to impart. You will come ?" 
 
 " You are certain he cannot survive ?" 
 
 " Certain. It is impossible." 
 
 Tricotrin paused some moments, silent still ; then he 
 raised his head. 
 
 " Yes : I will come to-morrow afternoon." 
 
 Then he bade the brother farewell, and went on his 
 way with his knapsack on his shoulders, and the dust on 
 his feet, and the monkey on his wrist ; but, for once, with 
 no song on his lips. 
 
 On the morrow he kept his tryst. 
 
 The great, dark, frowning pile of the hospital loomed 
 through the gay sunlight of a lustrous and cloudless day. 
 The bell rang dully through the stillness like a toll for a 
 passing soul. The small postern door within the entrance- 
 gates slowly unclosed. The brethren welcomed him with 
 few, terse words, and led the way to the quaint, noiseless, 
 cloistered nook where Paulus Canaris lay dying — a little 
 naked cell, looking out upon a court where a single grape- 
 vine, thrusting forth green leaves and green clusters, 
 alone recalled the light and loveliness of the year's rich 
 summer-time. 
 
 The Greek was stretched, exhausted and with his lower 
 limbs paralyzed ; maimed and disfigured still from the 
 flames, yet killed, less by the fire than by the vices of his 
 own past. The monk went to him, and said a few words: 
 then left the cell, closing the heavy door behind him. 
 The gaze of Canaris fastened with a great amazement, 
 with a great awe, upon the face of his visitant. All his 
 emaciated frame trembled like a leaf. 
 
 On Tricotrin the sun shone full. 
 
 " Great Heaven 1" cried the Greek, with the dews stand- 
 ing on his brow. "Speak tome: — speak! — are you a 
 living man, or only the wraith of the dead?" 
 
 " I was once the boy whom you wronged," he an- 
 swered, simply ; there was no passion in his voice, only 
 an unutterable scorn — the scorn of truth and of courage 
 — for a traitor. 
 
 " I knew — I knew!" muttered the dying wretch. " I 
 knew that night when you dragged me from the fires ; I
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 587 
 
 never dreamed it uutil then. It was the look in your 
 eyes that told me — that look ! " 
 
 Tricotrin answered nothing ; he stood at the foot of the 
 pallet, while the midsummer light shone like an aureole 
 on his head. 
 
 What could he say to this man ? — whose whole life had 
 been one long perfidy, whose whole existence had been 
 one long assassination of peace, and faith, and honor ? 
 
 The Greek shivered, and buried his face, and lay silent 
 and sore afraid. It was to him as a resurrection from the 
 grave 
 
 "You know that I stole the jewels?" he cried, sud- 
 denly, looking upward at that sun-circled head as at an 
 avenging angel. 
 
 " I did know it — I saw you in the act." 
 
 "Yet you never exposed me? — you never declared 
 your own innocence ?" 
 
 " I was falsely accused. Those who could so accuse 
 me were unworthy of proof of their error : — as you were 
 beneath vengeance when you stood by silent in your sin. 
 Oh, my God!"' he cried, a thousand memories awaking in 
 him, am! breaking forth in rapid, burning words. "I 
 was a youth; I remembered only thai I came of free 
 races and bold blood, that I would never live beneath the 
 roof where my honor had been outraged, that I would 
 never bear the titles of a father who insulted and who 
 hated me. 1 was too proud to clear myself of that foul, 
 felonious charge ; I was too full of scorn to harm so vile 
 a thing as you; — I only longed for the sweet wild liberty 
 of my mother's shores, for the sea-breezes of freedom and 
 danger, for the joy of life untrammeled by pomps and un- 
 tainted by haired. 1 was only a boy ; a boy full of chival- 
 rous love of wounded faith, of thirst for a forest-animal's 
 innocent, dauntless, wandering days. 1 never remem- 
 bered that, in leaving you beside my brother, 1 left an 
 adder in the purples I abandoned to him; — I never 
 thoughl that, knowing how I ,-|>ared yon, you would feed 
 and fatten on the bounty of my race in pampered luxury 
 for years, and stain its honor, in return, by stealth, at the 
 very hearth whose fires had warmed you. 1 never 
 thought — I was a child, and acted in a child's headlong
 
 588 TR1C0TRIN, 
 
 sacrifice and passion — I spared you, and you rewarded 
 me a score years later by stabbing 1 in the dark the only 
 creature that I loved I" 
 
 The words died in his throat. Looking on this man, 
 the bitterness of hate consumed him ; the dead wrongs 
 of his boyhood rose up from their distant graves. 
 
 The Greek cowered down, shuddering as under a rain 
 of blows. He knew well what his sins had been against 
 that lofty, generous, unsuspecting, northern race, which 
 had fed, and clothed, and sheltered, and trusted him : — 
 sins which, budding first in thefts of gems to sate the 
 boyish avai'ice of a born gambler, had found their latest 
 crown in thefts of a wife's love and of a husband's honor: 
 — sins born at their earliest and their latest from one 
 root, a devil's envy of the power and wealth and ease of 
 those who had succored, and pampered, and lifted him 
 from a hireling's servitude to a friend's estate. In that 
 hour all the vileness of his life came out before his sight, 
 and appalled him with an exceeding horror. His brain 
 was giddy ; his soul sick ; he could only stare blankly at 
 the face above him, and at the blinding light of a summer 
 day's sun. 
 
 "You have lived like this!" he gasped. "And all 
 deemed you dead, — dead in that ring of water. I 
 wronged you — yes, heavily. I dared not say I stole 
 the diamonds to pay a debt of the dice ; and your father 
 always smiled most on me when most I hurt you — so I 
 kept silence. Tell me, — you have been content?" 
 
 A smile, that blinded him like the sunbeams, came on 
 his listener's face. 
 
 "Content! There are greater things than content- 
 ment." 
 
 " But have you never regretted ?" 
 
 "Never." 
 
 "What? Is it possible? Christ! how strange you 
 are ! All that men covet lay in your hands ; and you — 
 you flung them aside thus ! Yet— since you do thus 
 live, — he cannot justly own his lands, his gold, his earl- 
 dom?" 
 
 "Silence! Dare you to speak his name ? — you — the 
 vile paramour of his accursed wife !"
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 589 
 
 The Greek made no reply : still staring at him with 
 the same half-senseless, half-incredulous stupor of amaze. 
 
 To the Athenian — who had been born in servitude, 
 and stolen his way to pleasure through secret sin, and 
 sold his soul for the mere touch of gold, and risen by 
 foul means into the light of affluence, and fallen again 
 through the gambler's avarice and the traitor's crimes 
 into that lowest deep wherein Death now had found him 
 — this renunciation, this contentment, this abandonment 
 of honors and riches for the mere sweet sake of freedom, 
 were mysteries that bewildered and appalled him, half 
 sunk in the stupors of dissolution as were his memories 
 and his senses. 
 
 " And you have never regretted 1" he murmured over 
 and over again. 
 
 Tricotrin turned from him, and gazed out to where 
 the late vine budded in its deserted home. lie had 
 never regretted — never save once, when he had seen the 
 white and purple violets in the bosom of a woman. 
 
 His thoughts wandered far back, over the length of 
 many years, to that long-perished time when of his own 
 will he had forsaken the treasures, and the honors, and 
 the luxurious ease, of his high heritage, to go forth to 
 the freedom of his mother's people, to the simplicities of 
 a life without ceremonial and care. 
 
 It had been a boy's wild generosity, a boy's vivid pas- 
 sion, a boy's headlong impulse, which had sent him forth 
 from the home of his birthright, sO that the child whom 
 beloved might reign there in his stead ; so that he should 
 owe naught to a race which had scorned and had wounded 
 his mother; so that he should be delivered forever from 
 the trammels of greatness which galled the sea-lion's spirit 
 within him; so that he should be freed forever to live his 
 own life, and to roam wheresoever he would, unchained, 
 unarraigned, uncrowned 
 
 The daring, hardv blood of the sea-born Armorican 
 races had been iu him. There had lived in him the old 
 
 dauntless hardy pride of the Breton peasants, "Me to 
 deuzar armorig," when they stood, loyal but equal, be- 
 fore their haughtiest seigneur of Rohan, Rochefort, or 
 Rochejaquelin races. He had scorned the gilded cages 
 
 50
 
 590 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 of riches and of rank, and broken his silken bonds as a 
 young lion-cub breaks its cords, disdaining 1 to hold what 
 was begrudged to him, craving only the open air, and 
 the breath of the forest, the salt waves, and the sweep 
 of the winds. 
 
 He had gone, leaving his crowns to other brows, his 
 gold to other hands; gone, while they deemed him 
 dead, to the liberty for which he was athirst. Gone to 
 the shores where his mother's fleet feet had raced with 
 the incoming tides, where her eyes had gazed at the sun 
 like the eagle's ; where the waves, and the breeze, and 
 the storms had given her beauty their grandeur, and her 
 courage their strength, and her soul their liberty, which 
 lived again in his. Gone to those years of freedom, and 
 gladness, and love, and mirth, and charity, which were 
 uttered in one word to the people that loved him — the 
 word of his self-chosen title — Tricotrin. 
 
 Poor, indeed, he ever had been in the coinage of worldly 
 wealth. Some little gold stored away in the hollow of 
 a rock, and bequeathed to him by one of his mother's 
 brethren, to whom he was dear, and who alone knew 
 whence the boy, who wandered to their western shore, 
 had come, made all his portion. But he had been rich 
 in every other thing beyond compare — rich as with the 
 golden light of suns that never set. 
 
 A king without a diadem, a priest without a stole, a 
 soldier without a sword, a leader whose hosts were unseen 
 of the world, a poet whose melodies asked no answer 
 from the trumpet of fame, a sovereign whose territory 
 was meted by no measuring-rod, but stretched wherever 
 men enjoyed or suffered, — he had lived his life. 
 
 And regret had never touched him. His years had 
 been sweet and mellow, and full of color and melody, and 
 fair to his sight and his senses. He had never regretted 
 — never save once, when, out of the purest and holiest 
 of his acts, there had arisen the greatest bitterness that 
 he had ever known. 
 
 The Greek, still gazing at him like one half blinded, 
 strove to raise his feeble frame and husband his sinking 
 breath. He was not repentant, not remorseful ; he had 
 long ere then killed his conscience, and the sins he had
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 591 
 
 sinned seemed precious to him ; they were the relics of 
 his youth, the laurels of his prowess, the things that told 
 him all he had once been. But, in some dim sense, he 
 felt the wonder and the greatness of this abdication, as 
 he felt those of that mercy which, knowing him a foe so 
 vile, yet bad dealt with him as with one innocent. 
 
 "Are you a madman ? or a god?" he muttered. "You 
 must be one or other. And you have never regretted 1 
 — you must be made of other stuff than mere humanity. 
 To lose all that — to lay it down — and never long to seize 
 it once again 1 You must be more or less than man I 
 Such a heritage! such a heritage!" 
 
 His hearer's voice crossed his words, with a grave elo- 
 quence of scorn in it. 
 
 "Whatever I be, you, of all men, can least appraise 
 my act or motive. Speak no more of that dead time; all 
 the issue of it lies with you. I do not care to raise re- 
 proach against a dying wretch ; nor do I care to linger 
 with you You desired to see me: — wherefore, if there 
 be no remorse in you toward Estmere?" 
 
 "There is none in me!" said the Greek, with sudden 
 fierceness. "I hated him always! Oh, he was liberal, 
 gracious, full of generous gifts, — 1 know that, — but I hated 
 him. lie was so just, so proud, so calm, so far above 
 me, so wedded to stern truth, lie was a living rebuke; 
 I hated him. I stoh; his wife's love — yes; I stole her 
 beauty, I made that high-born Austrian woman mine. 
 But though I dishonored his name, I could not dishonor 
 him : that was what went so bitter with me." 
 
 " Peace 1 If you cannot speak his name for pardon 
 and repentance, do not dare to breathe it in my hearing!" 
 
 "You love him still? when he reigns in your stead, 
 when he sits in your throne! But wait — wait an instant 
 
 — and hear me. You have twice done good toward : 
 
 you, to whom I ever did evil in the time of your child- 
 hood. I have no remorse in me Willi my last breath 
 I shall curse the world ami all in it, Bui I would tell 
 you one thing ere I die; it may serve you. That child 
 whom \ on reared " 
 
 His hearer turned swiftly, struck as bv a sharp blow. 
 
 "What of her?"
 
 592 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 A cynical smile flitted over the blackened, haggard 
 face of Canaris. 
 
 " Ah, there is one thing you regret, is there not ? Well, 
 that child is now Duchess de Lira. How have I known 
 it? Men, that live in the depths of infamy I have lived in, 
 know all things. We are sewer-rats — yes — but we under- 
 mine palaces ! Look you ! after you gave me my ' chance' 
 I watched you. I did not dream you were anything save 
 what I heard ; but I did not lose sight of your life. I 
 saw that fair thing by your side one night in Paris. 
 There was a look in her face, a glance, a smile, no matter 
 what, that brought a fancy to my thoughts, a memory to 
 my mind. I saw a likeness in her. It set me to seek 
 out her history ; more in idleness than aught else. I 
 was miserably poor, and had not then taught myself the 
 trades of coarser crime. I played long with this fancy; 
 at length I learned its secret. When I had learned it, it 
 was of no use to me. The child was gone from you ; I 
 could not tell where. Years went bv ; I have been in 
 the prisons, in the galleys. One day this winter, a great 
 lady gave me a silver piece for lifting her little dog out 
 of the mud as she went to her carriage ; the face was the 
 same face, the same fancy struck me. I watched and 
 waited, and strung this and that hint together ; I saw 
 you once admitted to her hotel; I guessed the truth, 
 though I did not know it till your look a moment since 
 told me I had guessed aright. This Duchess de Lira is 
 the foundling you harbored — is it not so ? Well, and of 
 what stock did that stray child come? 
 
 "If you know, say! say, for God's sake!" 
 
 "Stoop your head to my ear, then. Ah, what wealth 
 this had been to me if I had lived, and owned my old 
 cunning, and held it as a sword that might fall at any 
 moment above that proud, delicate head! Bend nearer, 
 that I may whisper it ; a great lady's honor must not be 
 tainted aloud ! Now, listen ; will you curse her, I won- 
 der ?" 
 
 "Speak out!" cried his hearer, in an unendurable tor- 
 ture. " If, for once, you do not lie — speak out, and say all 
 you know." 
 
 "All I know!" echoed the Greek, with a dreary cyn-
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 593 
 
 icism upon his lips. "Nay! I know so much — I was a 
 slave, that mastered more than my lords ; I was a pam- 
 pered spaniel, that nestled in patrician bosoms ; I was a 
 thing that they spurned with their speech in the world, 
 but caressed with their lips in their privacy: those lofty, 
 languid, fair, sensual women ! All I know ! — pshaw ! — ■ 
 would you have me tell lords they are bastards ; would 
 you have me tell virgins they are harlots ? Well, well ! 
 be not angered, nor in haste. I would gather my memo- 
 ries, — let me think, — in peace. We spoke of the dainty 
 duchess ? — this foundling you fed on brown loaves and 
 goat's milk, and who pays you by scattering the mud of 
 her chariot-wheel upon you as she sweeps by ? You 
 would be told of the woman who bore her ? Well, that 
 woman is called Coriolis." 
 
 A loud cry rang across his words — the cry of an unut- 
 terable horror. The hands of Tricotrin seized him where 
 he lay. 
 
 " You lie ! you painted snake ! When ever yet did 
 you stir save to poison ? You lie ! — oh devil ! that you 
 stood in health and in strength before me, that I could 
 deal with you as you merit!" 
 
 The white lips of the Athenian grew paler still with 
 fear as he heard ; but for once he had spoken truth, and 
 he had that courage which all truth confers. 
 
 " I have not lied," he said, slowly; "at the least, not 
 willingly. She is the daughter of Coriolis. Take thought. 
 Is there; no kinship in their regard ? They have likeness 
 in unlikeness, — that bright glitter of hair, that mouth like 
 a scarlet blossom, that smile that is so sunlit, yet so cold. 
 They are dissimilar also, indeed, as are the water-lilies of 
 regal lakes and the poisoned lilies of Indian swamps ; 
 but, like them, they have likeness." 
 
 His listener's grasp fell from him; Tricotrin covered 
 his face with his hands, and shuddered, and was still. 
 
 The vision of Coriolis rose before him as he had be- 
 held it in her youth ; and he remembered the enchant- 
 ment of its smile, and saw in it what he had never seen, 
 and knewthal the truth had been uttered, — the abhorred, 
 polluted, ghastly truth which broke in on him with the 
 merciless Hash of the electric Light, that breaks the dark- 
 
 50*
 
 594 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 ness only to leave it tenfold blacker, thicker, more hideous, 
 than ere its gloom was pierced. 
 
 But still he strove for blindness, still he would not be- 
 hold what that flash of light had revealed. He was as 
 one to whom the glare of the lightning has shown some 
 beloved and lovely face, stricken white and lifeless, float- 
 ing on some deep and caverned pool. 
 
 "Likeness! likeness!" he echoed, wildly. "You dare 
 say this thing on your mere sickly fancy, your mere de- 
 lirious delusion ! Your brain teems with vague shapes 
 as you lie in your loneliness ; and you dare thrust these 
 forward as facts and as truths ? Gold threads in the 
 hair — a rose-bloom on the mouth — fine things indeed to 
 be pointed to as warrants of kinship, as registries of 
 birth !" 
 
 " Wait," said Canaris, with his old malice gleaming in 
 his eyes, tempered by a new emotion of pity and regret. 
 " Do not think that I speak so idly, or that I give voice 
 to death-bed vagaries. I tell you a fact that I learned, in 
 case that fact ever may serve you The likeness I saw ; 
 but that is nothing. How I know the truth came by 
 pure hazard, as most things do after all, despite men's 
 prescience and scheming. I knew Gerant, Coriolis' first 
 lover, — you remember his fame on the lyric theaters? — 
 knew him well. I was his confidant at the time when 
 he took that pretty thing from her sea-cabin to bring her 
 out on the stage. I thought her a lovely fool, and scarce 
 saw, myself, what he would do with her ; but Gerant knew 
 better. He discerned genius, and — half a million of francs 
 yearly, in her. Well, there was only one obstacle to her 
 flight with him: her child by Bruno. Coriolis half loved 
 and half hated it, so Gerant told me. He cursed it often 
 enough, himself, and would have thrown it in the sea for 
 his part. But she had a curious reluctance to leave it to 
 her husband; she thought he would murder it in his first 
 passion. She wished to be rid of it, but she wished to 
 know all was well with it. It was a female child, called, 
 I think, like her, — Madelon. Gerant, to content her, 
 arranged with a woman he knew, — a chorus-singer, hor- 
 ribly poor, and who had a throat-affection, so that she 
 could no longer sing, — to steal the infant herself when
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 595 
 
 the house should be empty, in the first excitement of the 
 fisher-folk over the disappearance of Bruno's wife, and 
 get away with it out of the province. That was done. 
 The simple people supposed the child was gone with its 
 mother. Gerant gave the woman a large sum to do it, 
 for it would have stood, of course, as a crime in the law. 
 Some year or so afterward, when Madelon Bruno had 
 made her mark upon Paris, and had become Coriolis, I 
 asked Gerant how his contrivance had answered. He 
 swore bitterly, and said the little wretch had died of fever, 
 and he wished its mother was dead also ! She had just 
 broken with him for Prince Anatole, and made mirth of 
 him for all the money he had expended in insuring her 
 staa;e-successes — money which he never saw back again. 
 Now, I never once remembered this story of the child 
 until I saw the face of the girl by your side one festival- 
 night in Paris, and learned she was only a foundling 
 whom you had taken the caprice of protecting. Then I 
 said in my soul, 'That girl is Madelon Bruno: and the 
 daughter of Coriolis did not die.'" 
 
 He paused, exhausted by his lengthened speech : Trico- 
 trin's hard convulsive breathing alone stirred the silence. 
 
 "This is no proof!" he muttered, fiercely, at length. 
 "This is but suspicion, conjecture, imagination. The 
 child died; you heard that from Gerant; why should 
 you dream that she — she " 
 
 " 1 do not dream ; I know," resumed Canaris. "IV11 
 it slowly, for I am feeble. But patience — you will lie 
 contented! When 1 saw that girl in Paris. Gerant had 
 been long dead. But I remember the name of the chorus- 
 singer: it was Rose Leroux. I always taught myself to 
 remember Dames: they are so useful. I inquired fur her; 
 I heard with difficulty, for people so soon forget, that she 
 had been along while out of the country, had returned, 
 had committed a- robbery with violence on an old woman, 
 and was then at the galleys. Well — 1 went thither my- 
 self, not long after, for a more intellect mil crime. 1 have 
 not been many months released. 1 saw yon one day this 
 winter go into the Lira palace; and 1 saw the face of its 
 duchess. 1 -ani to myself, though it seemed like insan- 
 ity, — is that his foundling throned there '( is that Madelon
 
 596 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 Bruno among the sovereigns of the earth ? I could not 
 tell ; but I sought out the woman Leroux. She was 
 among the herd at Chaumont. We had manj talks to- 
 gether. There were no secrets between us; we had the 
 one bond of sympathy — we had both known the Bagne. 
 By degrees I brought her to the subject of that child of 
 Jean Bruno's. She laughed — she is horribly ugly, and 
 ugliest when she laughs — and told me that the child 
 might be dead, but had not died with her. When she 
 took it she never meant to be at the burden of keeping 
 the child; but she wanted Gerant's money; and she 
 always obeyed what he told her. She did not know well 
 how to get rid of it ; she kept it a year, as Gerant sent 
 plenty of gold, storing the money up to enable her to get 
 off to America, for she had even then done what made 
 her uneasy of the law. Then, as he wrote her sharply 
 word that she might look for but little in future, she 
 tramped through half France on foot, with her gold and 
 the child. She wrote back to Gerant that the little 
 Madelon was dead of scarlet fever, and had been buried 
 as her own natural daughter; but in truth she laid it 
 down in the dawn one day, in the loneliest part of a 
 wooded place by the Loire. Then she made her way 
 swiftly to a seaport, and crossed the ocean westward. 
 She said she should have sent the child to Coriolis ; but 
 she was afraid of rousing the wrath of Gerant, who had 
 great power over her. She thought it no harm to leave 
 the child in the wood; she had abandoned in like' fashion 
 one of her own, who had been picked up by a carrier and 
 had thriven well. I asked her why she did not leave it 
 at the foundling hospital ; she said she had cause even 
 then to shun cities; and besides — she hated Coriolis, 
 she had loved Gerant — she desired the baby Madelon 
 to perish, though she said she could not hold it under the 
 water to kill it, its eyes were so pretty. I asked her what 
 name the child bore with her : she said it could barely 
 speak, but called itself Viva, from hearing the woman of 
 the cottage, where she had hid all the year with it, call 
 a -spaniel dog by that name continually. I asked her 
 also if she knew the fate of the child : she said no — she 
 had not given it two thoughts since that time, until I re-
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 59 f 
 
 called Gerant's name to her. That is all. Are you satis- 
 fied? If you want more, go to Rose Leroux up at Chau- 
 mont ; they know you there, though you have committed 
 none of the crimes that are the common passports to its 
 community. You see,— I spoke of no dream, no delu- 
 sion. Well! — from Madelou Bruno the actress to Made- 
 Ion Bruno the duchess, it is but a step ! Both have sold 
 their beauty, and one has her diamonds set round a mar- 
 riage-ring, and the other her diamonds set round a drink- 
 ing-cup; one has a little higher price than the other; that 
 is all! It is a pity I lie here useless and helpless; what 
 wealth I would have made out of this history ! And you 
 — and you — will do nothing, save strive with all your 
 might to spare her its knowledge. You are the great 
 spendthrifts of the world: — you men who throw away 
 your opportunities to do evil. What fortunes you miss I" 
 
 CHAPTER LXVI. 
 
 The doors of the monastic refuge once more unclosed, 
 and Tricotrin passed out into the world of living men. 
 
 The full ardent light of the late day was about him as 
 he went; but his eyes were blind to it, and he moved 
 onward like one drunk and stupefied with wine. 
 
 There was no hope left in him that this thing were 
 false. The words of the dying Athenian had carried the 
 incisive force of truth with thorn, lie had spoken as men 
 do not speak when they lie, and his utterances had fallen 
 deep into his hearer's heart, as aquafortis into metal. 
 With less circumstantial precision than that which his 
 narrative had borne, his Listener would have felt that it 
 was true, by the same ghastly sense of hopeless certitude 
 wherewiih the one who loves hears tidings of the death 
 of what he loves. 
 
 A thousand memories, moreover, flashed on his mind 
 that bore witness to their veracity; the strange dread 
 witness of forgotten trivialities, from long-perished hours,
 
 598 TRIGOTRIN, 
 
 which arise from their graves in the past to bear testi- 
 mony that kills the peace of the present. Memories of 
 sounds, and glances, and echoes of laughter ; of a cadence 
 in the voice, of a smile on the lips. Of a child's innocent 
 nonsense among the wild gourds of a garden, and a 
 woman's airy frivolities on the glittering stage of a thea- 
 ter. Of a girl's gay form fluttering over the clover and 
 seed-grasses of a field, and an actress's radiant figure 
 floating before the footlights. Of a young singer who 
 sang like the goldfinch swaying high on a broken bough, 
 and of a great singer who sang like the mocking-bird, 
 delighting the ears of monarchs and princes: — all that 
 likeness in unlikeness whereof the dying man had spoken 
 in his cynical truth started out to his sight in witness 
 that could not be denied, or disproved, or any longer 
 doubted. 
 
 The bread that he had thrown upon the waters in pity 
 for the stray fledgling bird left helplessly to drift upon 
 their salt sea-tide, came back to him, aud was bitter as 
 ashes on his lips. 
 
 There could scarce have come to him a thing deadlier 
 than this. He was even as a man who, gazing on the 
 fair, sweet, gracious beauty of a woman he adores, sees, 
 beneath it, the canker of a mortal and accursed disease, 
 doomed, soon or late, to make it hideous in the sight of 
 men, and draw it downward to the grave. 
 
 He had no hope. Every memory that returned to him 
 was fraught with testimony of the truth of this his- 
 tory, whereby his enemy had recompensed him for rescue 
 from the thieves' wild justice. Once when in the press 
 of the populace at the theater of Coriolis, he had glanced, 
 from the face of the dazzling mime whom the public ap- 
 plauded, to the face of the child in her little bright ruddy 
 hood at his side. A certain sense of resemblance be- 
 tween them — vague, changeful, intangible — had stolen 
 upon him, and he had thrust it away with repugnance 
 and in contempt. The face of the woman was lovely 
 indeed ; but it was soulless and mindless as the face of a 
 waxen, scentless, glowing-hued flower. The face of the 
 child was careless indeed; but there was a soul in it, a 
 soul dormant, dreaming, half awake, half lost in laughter ;
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 599 
 
 but still there, — in the great, soft, shadowy eyes, on the 
 breathless, fragrant, caressing mouth. And be had chosen 
 then to see only the difference, — it was the likeness now 
 that recurred to him. 
 
 And was that likeness only of feature ? — only of such 
 slight surface-things as the hue of the hair, and the arch 
 of the lips, and the tint of the skin? Was there none 
 in the heart and the thoughts, in the passions and im- 
 pulses ? in the barbaric worship of gold and color, and 
 sensuous pomp, and arrogant display? in the cold slight- 
 ing scorn for all ways save the ways of pleasure and 
 power ? in the gay merciless mockery of all love that bore 
 not its bribes of silver and gold ? 
 
 The leaven of those women who had turned aside from 
 innocence, and honor, and obscurity, to force themselves 
 forth into the affluence of enjoyment, the furnace of pas- 
 sion, the paradise of wealth, was in her. It had been in 
 her from her earliest hour, when she had broken aside the 
 lily-leaves in eagerness for their yellow stamens ; it had 
 been, unknown to him, his subtle antagonist, his secret 
 conqueror, when she had refused to dwell with him be- 
 cause he dwelt not among princes, and could not give her 
 the gifts that her ambitions and instincts craved so blindly 
 and so violently. Their desires, their impulses, their evil 
 — the evil that had made no kiss sweet to them unless a 
 jewel purchased it, no flower fair to them unless it were 
 the poisonous laurel of notoriety, — had been ever in her, 
 his foe, his rival, his betrayer, driving her from him on 
 the spur of a vague discontent, seducing her from his 
 arms with the whispers of that tempter which does the 
 chief portion of Mephistophiles' work, — the tempter of 
 feminine vanity and unrest. 
 
 These had been in her, as there had also been the poetic 
 fancies of the peasant-girl who had made her friends 
 from the robins of the pine-forests of Lira, and the loyal, 
 lender, generous temper of the sailor of the Riviera, These 
 were in her also. And, — as in her physical loveliness, 
 the fair hues, and laughing mouth, and dazzling graces of 
 her mother were heightened and ennobled by the dark 
 lustrous eyes, lull of the sleeping lires of the south, that 
 had ouce gazed from the pain-worn, sunburned face of
 
 600 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 Bruno, and told the tale of his desolated life, — so in her 
 moral nature the higher and the baser instincts, the cru- 
 elties and the nobilities, the wanton weakness and the 
 truthful courage of these conflicting and contrasted tem- 
 peraments abode, ever in union and in disunion, forming 
 the anomalous fluctuations of her life. The haughty- 
 blood of that patrician race of which Coriolis was the 
 illicit offspring; the passionate, gentle, ignorant, heroic 
 soul of the southern mariner ; the instinctive poetry of 
 the simple, harmless lives passed under the lonely skies 
 of the mountain pine-woods; the ruthless greeds, the 
 restless aspirations, the thirsty vanities of the women 
 who had forsaken sinless love for gilded infamy; — all 
 these lived in her. All these inspired her with those 
 gifts, and graces, and sins, and follies, that she had once 
 believed came from that more than mortal origin on which 
 she had loved to muse in still sweet summer nights when 
 her childish eyes had sought beneath broad burdock- 
 leaves, and in dew-laden chalices of flowers, for the com- 
 ing of the people of her nation, for the reign of the fairies 
 upon earth. 
 
 He knew it ; and there was no hope in him, as he went 
 toward the dens of vice and misery at Chaumont : yet 
 his chief thought still was of her. 
 
 If ever this truth came to her she would cry out that 
 it would have been better that she should have been left 
 to perish in the blindness and unconsciousness of her in- 
 fancy than have lived for this shame to bow her proud 
 head to the dust ! 
 
 That absolute despair which paralyzes the courage, the 
 faith, the strength of a man when he beholds his holiest 
 acts change into his foes, and all his efforts as of no avail 
 against the force of a cruel mockery of accident, came on 
 him now, and broke the heroic temper in him, and killed 
 the bright and clear philosophies which had withstood all 
 lighter blows. 
 
 "He had never regretted," he had said to the man who 
 died yonder ; and he had spoken, not in the language of 
 a sophist's hyperbole, but in the language of pure, 
 straight, simple truth. He had never regretted, from 
 the hour when a boy's ardent impulse for freedom and
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. G01 
 
 peace, and the joy of becoming his own law and his own 
 leader, had made him abandon the heritage that was be- 
 grudged him, for the simple birthright of liberty that 
 came to him from his mother's people. Chance had 
 favored him, circumstance had befriended him ; he had 
 cast greatness behind him, and he had found love ; he 
 had flung away dignities, and he had lighted on laughter ; 
 he had refused the rich savor of costly banquets since 
 they were seasoned with gall, and he had discovered that 
 glad contentment which gives sweetness to a cake of 
 meal, and brings lotus-dreams with a draught of spring- 
 water. He had owed no debt to any man ; he had bound 
 his will by no fetter ; he had paid no slavery to custom ; 
 he had been yoked to no gilded chain of possession; he 
 had shaped his own life, and had rejoiced in it; he had 
 steeped it in the poet's idealism, the artist's color, the 
 lover's passion, the gipsy's freedom, the scholar's medita- 
 tion, and had found it exceeding fair. 
 
 It was not a life fitting for the multitude of men, but it 
 had been fitting beyond all others for him. Because a 
 million of field sparrows, and street sparrows, and reed 
 sparrows build, and eat, and breed, and multiply in their 
 low-lying nests, asking nothing better than food and wool, 
 and all the small attainments and contentions of their 
 communities, they will not understand that, because this 
 is good and sufficient to them, it would be captivity and 
 death to the bold, white-winged sea-bird that finds its joys 
 in endless shores and houndless seas, in wild west winds 
 and sun-flaked clouds, in rocky heights and ocean dawns, 
 and would not change these even though famine, and 
 peril, and tempest, be oftentimes its lot. For other men 
 he left the city, or the field, or the duck-pool of the spar- 
 rows; for himself he look the sea-life of the gull : and ho 
 had never regretted, lie had spokm the truth ; never even 
 though want, and conflict, and danger, and labor had 
 been at times his portion ; even though he had lived 
 nameless and homeless among men. His life had been 
 fail 1 to him, infinitely fair; looking backward on its many- 
 colored years he would no1 have exchanged it for any 
 other, and he would not if he could, have undone the 
 deed of his youth. 
 
 51
 
 602 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 Repentance, or disquiet, or ambition had never once 
 moved him to desire the things that he had forsaken, to 
 lament the act of his childhood, to desire to return to 
 those pleasant places from which he had issued self-exiled 
 forever. He had never regretted. 
 
 It was only now, when out of the gentle pity which he 
 had felt for a stray child, his deadliest anguish came, 
 that the desolation of dead hopes chilled his veins ; and 
 that he thought in the bitterness of his soul, "it was well 
 said — call no life happy until its last day is seen." 
 
 The early evening had come by the hour he reached 
 Chaumont; a stormy, crimson close of a midsummer day, 
 with thunder-clouds rolling, unbroken, over the city. 
 
 " Where is Mi Minuux ?" he asked of the people, giving 
 them the password of their community. They answered 
 him that their chief was there, in his own den ; a lion 
 whom no foe durst beard in his lair, a ruler whose word 
 was as omnipotent, and vengeance as terrible, as though 
 in lieu of his rage he had worn purples. 
 
 To that den he went straightway. 
 
 The Patron, heavy and spent from a night-long debauch 
 to which a great robbery of alcohol and wine had given 
 a rare power of furious indulgence, was stretched half 
 asleep on a pile of sacks ; his enormous limbs motionless 
 like a gorged hyena's, his naked arms knotted above his 
 head, his bloodshot eyes half closed. His cave was his 
 audience-hall, his banqueting-room, his treasure-house, 
 his shambles, his sleeping-chamber, his hall of judgment, 
 all in one. Here and there gleams of smelted gold or 
 broken jewels glistened out of the straw and ashes that 
 strewed the ground ; here and there a stain of blood 
 darkened the bare rocky floor ; a slaughtered lamb lay in 
 one corner, a keg of wine stood half emptied in another. 
 Watching him, there crouched, ready to spring up in 
 obedience to his slightest sign, the half-nude form of the 
 youngest of the women that he loved, with an Eastern 
 look in her deep dark eyes, and a string of gold coins on 
 her raven hair, and a jewel hung on her brown bosom. 
 She was a greyhound that her master's whip lashed into 
 abject submission, yet round whose throat he would lock 
 a gilded collar.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 603 
 
 He sprang to his feet as he heard a strange step ; awake 
 and alert on the instant with the vigilance of one who 
 knows that his whole life is a crime, and that with every 
 moment he lives free he robs the law of its rightful prey. 
 As he saw who came he cast aside the knife that he had 
 seized, and over his bloated face a gleam, that was a 
 smile, passed for the instant. He raised himself almost 
 on his elbow from his bed of sacks with a laugh. 
 
 " It is you ! Do you come to beg another life ? I will 
 not promise you to let the next off so easily." 
 
 Tricotrin uncovered his head to the crouching girl 
 with a grave courtesy, that made her eyes dilate in 
 wonder. She was a tiling that was alternately beaten 
 with a whip and loaded with the fruits of theft ; she 
 knew only brutal blows, and as brutal caresses. 
 
 " Do not belie yourself, Mi Minoux," he said, quietly. 
 " Do not be ashamed o'f the one better action of your life. 
 No: I come for a simple thing — to ask you if you have among 
 you, as I have heard, a woman called Rose Leroux?" 
 
 Mi Minoux gave an indolent kick of his foot to the 
 wanton beside him. 
 
 " Think for me, fool," he said, roughly. " Have we 
 tiiat name ?" 
 
 "You call her fool?" said Tricotrin. "Well— truly 
 she is one. To submit to your brutalities when she 
 could steal out any day and sell your life to the law. Of 
 such fools such men as you find many; — fools who love 
 their tyrant, and are loyal, though their life is a hell." 
 
 Mi Minoux stirred uneasily. If any other living being 
 had said this thing to him, his reply would have been to 
 have lifted his club or drawn his pistol from his belt. 
 Now, he felt a certain reluctant touch of shame. 
 
 "Oh, 1 am good enough to her — in my way," he mut- 
 tered. " You would not leave me, Nera, because 1 kick 
 you sometimes, or curse you a little?" 
 
 '• Never!" she said, timidly and softly. 
 
 She did. indeed, love this man, whose wooing had 
 been a union of violence and fraud, and whose kiss was 
 commonly followed wit h a Mow. 
 
 "Well — well!" he said, hoarsely, moved despite him- 
 self. "I never want to hurt you; you know that. It is
 
 604 TRICOTRrN, 
 
 only — you see, Tricotrin, it seems natural to beat dogs 
 and women. They will not do well without. If they 
 have not the stick, they want their own way. Leroux, 
 you ask me? — Leroux? Yes; we have her, I know. 
 What has she done ?" 
 
 " I wish to speak with her ; that is all." 
 
 " You do not want to give her up to the tribunals ? " 
 
 " No, I do not want to do so." 
 
 " It must be for something bad she has done, that you 
 'ask after her ? The brute has no friends." 
 
 "Poor wretch! Yes; it is for a wrong that she did 
 once, but very long ago. I only require to question her; 
 and I shall be glad if you can force her to tell me only 
 the simplest truth." 
 
 " It is a hard matter to get them to tell the truth. You 
 see — it is so much easier to lie ; and they all get in the 
 way of it. But I could order her, and she would hardly 
 disobey, to be frank with you. You are sure it is nothing 
 that will bring one into trouble ?" 
 
 " Nothing. It cannot possibly concern you." 
 
 " Then I will take you to her. It will do me no harm 
 to stretch myself; I am as sleepy as an owl." With 
 many curses on the brandy that had made his eyeballs so 
 hot and his throat so parched, he shook his ragged dress 
 together into some sort of order, and went forth from 
 his den to seek the lower part of Chaumont, where the 
 woman, asked for, abode. 
 
 Mi Minoux knew all who came into this hive of crime 
 whereof he was the center. 
 
 " You ask what Leroux is ?" said the Patron, as they 
 went along. " She is a dull, uninventive beast, with a 
 tough will and a hard courage, but a stupid head ; a 
 woman that robs at mid-day, and lies drunk on cburch- 
 steps, and is never two months out of the hands of the 
 police. A chorus-singer? — oh, I dare say she was once; 
 all the brains of those people lie in their lungs. Up yon- 
 der — to the right of the stair — where the red shirt hangs 
 to dry." 
 
 Up where the tattered shirt hung on an iron spout that 
 served as a linen-pole, was a wretched black den, full of 
 squalor and filth ; the recent rains had beaten through the
 
 THE STORY OF A WATF AND STRAY. 605 
 
 hole that served as window, and drenched the floor. The 
 only seat was a heap of rags; there was some water in 
 a cracked pitcher, scores of mice were scampering' to and 
 fro, scores of spiders wove their gray webs in every nook, 
 a toad squatted in a corner ; blowing on some sticks to 
 get lire was a disheveled, scarce-clothed, black-browed 
 woman. 
 
 " Leroux, he wants to hear something ; tell him all he 
 wishes," said Mi Minoux, in their own tongue. "This 
 is Tricotrin ; answer him as you would answer me, with- 
 out lies, or it will be worse for you. If I find you tell 
 him one falsehood, you shall have a bullet down your 
 throat," 
 
 The woman muttered a promise of obedience. The 
 Patron's word was law at Chaumont. She stood staring, 
 with her black eyes lusterless but savage. She had no 
 apprehension; she was in the lowest deep; there was 
 nothing worse to come. 
 
 Without preface he asked her straightly, when Mi 
 Minoux had left them : 
 
 " You are Rose Leroux, to whom the child of Madelon 
 Bruno was confided ?" 
 
 " Ninie spoke of that to me this winter," she muttered, 
 calling the Greek by his name in that quarter. " Ninie, 
 whom they tried to burn as a spy. What is that thing 
 coming up for now? — it is long enough ago!" 
 
 "You are the woman who took the child? Answer 
 me that." 
 
 "Yes : I took the child," she assented, sullenly, mindful 
 of her chiefs injunction. 
 
 "A nd abandoned her ?" 
 
 " I left it in the wood; that was nothing. Somebody 
 always finds them." 
 
 " Where did you leave her ?" 
 
 "In a knot of trees, aside from habitations,' in the 
 Loire valley. I have forgol what village it was near. It 
 was distani from the highroad and the plain. I tied the 
 child down, so thai it should not crawl about for any- 
 body to notice it until I had gol away some leagues. 
 That was nothing; that did not hurt it."" 
 
 The sullen self-extenuation was half-ashamedly, half- 
 
 51*
 
 606 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 ferociously urged, — pleaded against accusations that had 
 not been made. 
 
 " What was your motive in her exposure?" 
 
 "To get rid of it." 
 
 " Why did you wish to be rid of her V 
 
 " I wanted to get off to the west with all the money I 
 had had for it. I could not be burdened with the little 
 brute. If it had been Gerant's child, it would have been 
 different; I would have done well for it ; but he would not 
 pay me more for this thing of Jean Bruno's ; and I would 
 not go to Coriolis. I hated her — the yellow-haired, lily- 
 skinned, laughing thing! Gerant had told me she cared 
 for the child ; and I thought it might sting her to think it 
 was dead. I had thought of that some time before ; but 
 where I kept it the woman of the house was a fool over 
 it, and would have made an outcry if it had been missing. 
 She thought I was miserably poor ; and she fed the child 
 almost for nothing. I had to spend none of the money 
 on it. Else I should not have kept it a whole year. It 
 was pretty, very pretty ; I remember it. It had great 
 black eyes like that sailor — its father : and all her yellow 
 silk of curls. I remember it. What can you want to 
 ask about it now? this is a score years ago, all I tell you. 
 I never starved it, nor beat it ; it was well enough with 
 me. And as for leaving it in that wood, — it was warm 
 weather, and I knew some one would find it ; it was 
 reaping-time, and there were people about. What have 
 you come to me for when the thing is so old ?" 
 
 She spoke with a restless, dogged, smothered dread 
 and impatience, which, but for the command of Mi Mi- 
 noux, would have found vent in wild ferocity and brutal 
 defiance. She smote one of her bits of wood upon a 
 mouse, and killed it ; it was a relief to the violence in her, 
 which she dared not let loose on her questioner. 
 
 He stood silent. The vague hope he bad cherished 
 was dead in him. The words and the accent of the 
 woman bore the impress of truth. He could doubt no 
 longer. And his heart was sick within him. 
 
 She looked at him, and spoke again, in irritation at his 
 long silence. 
 
 " What is there to tell of that baby ? You cannot have
 
 THE STORY OF A WATF AND STRAY. C>01 
 
 come here for nothing. I did not think any creature knew 
 its name. It could hardly talk when I left it: and it 
 called itself Viva — after a dog that it liked. It lived, I 
 suppose ; or this noise would not be made. I always 
 thought it would live ; it was a child that always laughed 
 — laughed all day long, — never whimpered and whined. 
 Those children always fare well; they are born with sil- 
 ver in their mouths. That is why they smile. What do 
 you want of me ? I have done things much worse than 
 that since." 
 
 He roused himself from his silence, and resumed his 
 examination of her. She told the same tale in all points 
 that the Greek had given, more fully, and with many 
 touches that proved its veracity. There was no .false- 
 hood, no contradiction, in the narrative; it was brief, 
 strong, naked in its wickedness ; — the wickedness, old as 
 the world, of jealous hatred, and penurious greed, inter- 
 woven and reacting one on another, and bearing their 
 common fruitage in crime. She felt no remorse, and but 
 scant shame. To herself it seemed as a virtue that she 
 had not drawn a knife across the child's throat, or held 
 its head down in the mill-stream. All things are com- 
 parative; and, by comparison, this abstinence was mar- 
 velous and deserving of praise in her sight. 
 
 He endeavored vainly to shake her statements, or con- 
 fuse her memories. She was speaking the truth, and he 
 saw it:— saw that all hope was (lend; and that for the 
 life that he loved, there was no birthright save the dis- 
 honor of Coriolis. 
 
 "You xx Til not harm me for this?" said the woman, 
 doggedly, when she had ended. "I have told you the 
 truth, as Mi Minoux hade me; you will not go and use it 
 againsl me?" 
 
 lb' sighed in weariness and sickness of heart : 
 
 "Poor wretch! Is treachery so common with you? 
 
 No; you arc safe with me. You did a greal crime, 
 
 w hose roots and branches stretch where you oever dream, 
 — but you shall have no chastisemenl for utterance of the 
 truth." 
 
 She regarded him with curious, dull wonder. She did 
 not understand, hut she fell vaguely that the law would 
 not be summoned to deal with her.
 
 008 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 "Does the child live?" she asked, abruptly. 
 
 "Yes — the child lives." 
 
 "And it is well with her?" 
 
 " Very well." 
 
 She bit her stick, that had killed the mouse, savagely 
 with her strong teeth. 
 
 "Ah! — she thrives; she has Madelon's blood in her. 
 Look, — Madelon drove that sailor mad; and sent her 
 child away to perish ; and fooled Gerant, and cheated 
 him of all his wealth, to make her triumphs ; and robbed 
 her lovers in a day of more than I robbed from the streets 
 in a twelvemonth; and all she does prospers. She is 
 called Coriolis : she is rich ; she eats, and drinks, and 
 laughs, and takes her pleasure ; she is wooed by princes, 
 and fingers the purses of kings. She thieves, and she 
 cheats, and she murders; — but she prospers. And we — 
 we go to the galleys !" 
 
 And she slew another little brown mouse with her 
 billet . of wood ; the contrast of crime proscribed, and 
 crime rewarded, was bitter. 
 
 What made the difference? 
 
 She herself had been handsome in the time of her 
 youth, though now disfigured by drink and disease; she 
 had been willing to sin in any fashion that came to her ; 
 she had been without scruple, without mercy, without re- 
 morse ; she could not lay to her charge one fault of the 
 weakness of virtue, whereby she had deserved less the 
 successes of vice. Why then had life buffeted, and pro- 
 scribed, and scourged, and starved, and imprisoned her, 
 while it had lavished all fair things upon her rival? 
 
 She did not remember that she had ouce had one fault 
 from which Coriolis had ever been free : — with all her 
 brute nature she had been unwise enough to love. 
 
 She had loved the actor Gerant with a blind, furious, 
 once generous, once unselfish, passion, that had borne her 
 to wreck and ruin; and which, when it had been cast 
 aside upon itself, had made her savage, and dull, and 
 brutalized, and cunning. 
 
 She had been at one time his devoted mistress. The 
 weakness had brought its vengeance. She dwelt here in 
 squalor and horror, in ignominy, in starvation : it was
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AXD STRAY. G09 
 
 only the woman who had never loved aught save herself 
 who lived in perpetual ease, perpetual laughter, perpetual 
 delight. 
 
 And she slew the little creeping mouse in the violence 
 of her envy. When life has become unutterably horrible, 
 unutterably irredeemable, unutterably hopeless, it finds 
 its only luxury in cruelty. 
 
 A beggar can wield the same terror over his, chained 
 dog as an emperor can wield over his fettered nation; 
 the equality in dominion has its sweetness for the fallen. 
 
 A fox, pursued by the hounds, once turned aside as it 
 fled for its life, to seize a barn-door fowl by the throat: — 
 the hunted human creature, with the baying of the law 
 behind it, will also pause in its flight to enjoy the sweet 
 sense of power that lies in the action of slaughter. 
 
 CHAPTER LXVII. 
 
 Tfie den above that which the woman Leroux tenanted 
 in this hive of criminality — honeycombed with innumer- 
 able cells, that were filled with wretched famished idle- 
 ness, or with the industry that only labors for guilty 
 ends— was occupied by an old, feeble, sickly man', who 
 was by trade a forger of false coin. lie was a timid 
 creature, who trembled if a leaf -blew against him; he 
 scarcely dared to pass his portion of the base money that 
 he had worked; ami he was very poor and miserable. 
 
 It had not always been thus with him: there had been 
 a time when he had been a dramatic author and musical 
 composer of no mean merit ; when he had heard the 
 sweel music of public applause; when the fair eyes of 
 is had smiled on him ; when his little, slight, airy, 
 fantastic pieces, full of a sparkling mirth, which passed 
 as wit, had been very popular in Paris. 
 
 There had been a time when the world had held for 
 him pleasure, and love, and ease, and years of bright
 
 CIO TRICOTRIN, 
 
 folly, and childlike glee, and ignorant extravagance ; and, 
 in a certain sense also, the charmed delusions of fame. 
 
 But then, on that time had followed another, when the 
 tastes of the volatile public altered: when the weather- 
 cock of popularity no longer pointed his way ; when the 
 same audience that had applauded with so much enthu- 
 siasm, hissed with equal acerbity; not because there was 
 change or was fault in the thing that he gave them, but 
 because thev had tired of it themselves. 
 
 And then he, being weak and heart-broken, and ill 
 made to do combat with the stern foes of censure and 
 ridicule, of bankruptcy and ruin, had succumbed to his 
 fate, and had sunk gradually down, step by step, into 
 wretchedness, and at length into crime. 
 
 He never ceased to abhor the evil ways to which he 
 had yoked himself, the evil comrade-ship to which he had 
 become bound. He was never anything save a pitiful, 
 trembling, faint-hearted servitor of sin. He had been 
 harmless, generous, and of innocent though inordinate 
 vanity, in the season of his successes; he was scarcely 
 more harmful now, though the degradations of poverty 
 had driven him into the acceptation of crime. For the 
 rest, the world had forgotten even his name ; none re- 
 membered it, save when some restless young tyro of the 
 theaters turned over a repertory of old theatrical pieces ; 
 and he would have killed himself if he had only had 
 the courage to inflict the one final, unknown, dreaded 
 pang. 
 
 As he sat now, huddled on his bed of straw, and shiver- 
 ing, though the evening was sultry and full of storm, he 
 heard the voices below him. A rat had gnawed a hole 
 through one of the beams of the floor; and through the 
 chink the sounds ascended distinctly to his ear. An 
 instinct, that was the remnant of his earlier and higher 
 life, moved him to plug the hole, and shut out the sounds; 
 but as he was about to thrust a piece of wood in it, a 
 word caught his ear that made him pause, and listen 
 eagerly. The word was Coriolis. 
 
 He had been at the height of his own renown when 
 the yellow-haired mistress of the singer Gerant had first 
 appeared to the world of Paris. Her first effort had been
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. fill 
 
 made in one of his own slender, graceful, burlesqued 
 comic operas. He remembered the nighl so well. He 
 had the name of Coriolis interwoven with all his sweetest 
 successes; and in a fond feeble fashion he had loved this 
 gay creature from the far southern sea-shore, who had 
 mocked him, dazzled him, and made him ridiculous in her 
 boudoir, but who, on the stage, bad conceived and repre- 
 sented to such perfection his own fancies. In bis way- 
 he had a tenderness for her yet ; though she still basked 
 in the sunlight, and he had sunk into nethermost dark- 
 ness. 
 
 Moreover, a few years earlier, ere he had lent himself 
 to the forgeries which now made him fearful of venturing 
 out in the daylight, he had timidly stolen to her one day, 
 as she loitered in her villa gardens, and recalled himself 
 to her recollection, and begged alms of her, weeping pite- 
 ously at his own abasement as he did so. 
 
 Coriolis, who would be very generous with gold not her 
 own, and liked to play patronage, had been good to him, 
 and given him the contents of her purse, and sent her 
 servants to him with choice meats and wines; and lie had 
 never forgotten these gifts. lie had never gone to her 
 again, for some touch in him of his better life had made 
 him shrink from trading on a liberality that had so will- 
 ingly befriended him. But he had never forgotten. There- 
 fore he listened eagerly, setting his eyes also to the rat- 
 hole, and peering down into the den below. 
 
 lie recognized Tricotrin ; and he heard all that was 
 spoken. 
 
 And he remembered, as he heard, one night in the au- 
 tumn of a year that had long died oul from his memory, — 
 one night, when he had been full as poor, but not as 
 criminal as be had now become, and could move as he 
 chose among his fellow-men at liberty, and had joined the 
 throng of a ('ale Chantant; all I lie old inborn love of 
 
 melody thai he possessed urging him to spend one of his 
 few copper-pieces on the hearing of song. Now, his own 
 music had almost, b] thai time, ceased to lie beard in 
 
 Paris; it hail not po i the strength thai lives; it 
 
 had caughl the crowds for awhile, hut had speedily died 
 
 off their lips and their ears. Still, here and there a
 
 612 TFICOTRIN, 
 
 chorus, a burden, a snatch of its tones, was sung by 
 many who were ignorant of their author ; and this night 
 they had been sung at the cafe. 
 
 He had listened to them with the tears hot in his eyes ; 
 and at the light, buoyant mirth of their melodies, he had 
 seen a child near him laugh, and clap her hands, and 
 move with delight and ecstatic sympathy. 
 
 She had recalled to him the many faces that he had 
 once seen reflect his harmonies thus. He had turned to 
 her as it ended, and asked her, gently, " This pleases you?" 
 She had answered, " Oh, yes ! I never heard lovelier 
 music I" and he had felt grateful to her. The people had 
 begun hissing the song as old ; and clamoring for a new 
 favorite. 
 
 He had noticed the child, and the man who had been 
 with her. The man he knew by sight as a friend of the 
 artists, a peripatetic of the boulevards, an idol of the 
 people; and he had asked who the young girl was that 
 was with him. "Oh, that is only Tricotrin's Waif," had 
 answered the painter whom he had questioned. "A 
 foundling, I think they say; — his daughter most likely." 
 
 The memory of that night came back to him as he 
 leaned over the rat-chink, watching and listening. With 
 the subtle penetration which the suspicions and the expe- 
 dients of his present mode of life had developed in him, 
 he connected his remembrance of the girl who had then 
 listened to his music, with the inquiries which he now 
 heard asked. 
 
 "That Waif of his was the child of Coriolis," he said 
 to himself, where he cowered on the floor. " Else why 
 should he ask this of Leroux now ? She is well in the 
 world — that is all he will tell to this woman. It is well 
 with her ; she lives in happiness then, in greatness even, 
 perhaps, who can say? Would Coriolis feel aught at 
 that ? — aught of regret or rejoicing ? — if she knew ?" 
 
 The sound of Tricotrin's footfall as it passed away 
 down the crazy stair; the sound of the woman voice as 
 it raised a tempest of oaths in fierce feud with her neigh- 
 bor; the sound of the sullen heat-drops of the coming 
 tempest beating on the broken roof; the sound of a young 
 child's shrieks as some one beat it with furious blows in
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. ('.13 
 
 the court below; — all these came on his ear where he sat 
 by the rat-hole, huddled in his rags, and thinking. 
 
 "Would it be any service to tell her that her child 
 lives?" was the thought which revolved to and fro in his 
 feeble; tired, vacillating mind. And the hunger of his 
 body, and the extreme wretchedness of his estate, made 
 a baser, meaner, lower thought, from whose coarseness 
 and selfishness he shrank, intrude itself, and twine in with 
 the first. 
 
 It was : — telling her, would he he likely, or unlikely, to 
 receive some gratitude, some gift, some [date of food, 
 some coin of gold ? 
 
 CHAPTER LXVIII. 
 
 A myriad of lights were glittering under the trees and 
 upon the waters, in the place where the sailor of Riviera 
 had lied, as from a devil, from the face of the woman 
 who had dishonored him. 
 
 Gilded gondolas and boats, like many-colored shells, 
 floated over the litth; lake. Lanterns of every hue glowed 
 and beamed under the branches, and at the prows of the 
 miniature vessels. Music, and laughter, and soul;-, and 
 the murmur of the cascade crossed each other on the 
 stilly niirht air. The roll of carriages sounded ceaselessly 
 through the darkness of the avenues beyond. In the 
 houses on the lake there were crowds of gay idlers, and 
 of women in their richest appareling, jesting, eating, 
 making love, in the coarse and witless fashions of modern 
 dissipation. There were color, blaze, luxury, extrava- 
 gance, pleasure, every where ; even amid the deep, green, 
 quiet woods, where ever and anon there broke the chorus 
 of a song, or t here flashed t be sparkle of a lamp, or there 
 glistened in a break of moonlight the hues of a woman's 
 robi 
 
 In one of those little caiques, with Chinese lanterns 
 suspended at its prow, was a woman who leaned over 
 
 52
 
 6H TRICOTRIN, 
 
 the cushions of the boat's side, as she had leaned over 
 the balcony of her mansion to watch the passage of the 
 troops. 
 
 A glitter of green and silver enfolded her ; there were 
 huge gold serpentine coils upon her arms ; there was a 
 wondrous bloom of art, delicate as any sea-shell's, upon 
 her face ; she was smiling, and listening to a lover, in 
 whose hand the oar rested idly. And she was pondering 
 how little or how much he would be likely to pour into 
 the bottomless pit of her debts ; and thinking of the fla- 
 vors of new sauces, and of the strange old wine a prince 
 had sent to her ; and of an oriental burnous, all inter- 
 woven with pearls and turquoises, that an oriental am- 
 bassador had given her at her asking ; and of a torch-lit 
 fete wherewith she had astonished the eyes of nobles at 
 her villa the night previous. 
 
 For these were the things for which she had fled from 
 Bruno ; these were the things that to her made the para- 
 dise of life ; these were the things which to her filled the 
 whole soul and sense of a woman with never-ending, 
 ever-renewing delight. 
 
 To Ninette, the gardener's wife, it was the fatness of 
 fowls, the plenteousness of bread, the ripe abundance of 
 plums and of gourds, the presence of many gold pieces 
 in the earthen pot buried under the^apple-tree, that made 
 the measure of life's perfect peace. To Coriolis, the 
 actress, it was the worth of the emeralds on her arms, the 
 cost of the yellow wines in her ice-pails, the gigantic size 
 of the mirrors in her supper-room, the weight and worth 
 of her lovers' ability to bear her share in their fortunes. 
 To Madame de Lira, the Duchess, it was the magnitude 
 of her proud estate, the supremacy of her power at the 
 courts of the nations; the perfection of her diamonds,, 
 of her lace, of her horses, of her palaces ; the extent of 
 her subjugation of all the coldest and haughtiest that 
 came near her sway. 
 
 But it was the objects alone that differed ; the passion 
 in all was the same ; the one dominant feminine passion 
 to possess, to surpass, to be rich in the possessions of 
 life, to be content with the sweetness of the senses. The 
 passions that kill their own souls, and make them kill
 
 THE STORY OF A WAFF AND STRAY. 615 
 
 the souls of their lovers and of their children — strangling 1 
 them with a noose of satin, stifling- them on a bed of 
 roses. 
 
 The boat glided across the lake that is in summer so 
 gay with its plaything freight, and in winter so gay with 
 the evolutions of silver-heeled skaters ; the spherical 
 Chinese lanterns glowed rosily through the gloom; the 
 answering laughter of challenged friends came mirthfully 
 across the water from other lamp-lit vessels ; the little 
 skiff came lightly to the shore, touched by acacia-branches. 
 She threw aside her green and silver covering, and 
 stepped with careless feet on to the land, and went up, 
 still with laughter, and love- words, and malicious jests, 
 all intermingled, to their midnight dinner at the house 
 beneath the trees. 
 
 There were crowds of guests, of equipages, of men 
 and women sauntering to and fro. It was midsummer; 
 the theaters were about to close; foreigners formed the 
 chief part of the throng; but there were still thousands 
 who thought nothing so well became those balmy night- 
 hours under the blue starry skies, in the full beauty and 
 fragrance of the year, as colored lanterns, and brandy, 
 and high-seasoned dishes, and loud laughter, and music 
 taken from tin; Taverns, and women begotten on the Wal- 
 purgis-Nacht. 
 
 Out of the gay, amorous, motley crowd, a young man 
 glided, and came to the side of Coriolis, and murmured 
 in her ear. 
 
 She left her own group, and went with him up the 
 staircase and into a little chamber looking on the wooden 
 balcony id' the bouse: a chamber all gilding, and mirror. 
 and velvet, and color, Idled with the scent of burning 
 perfumes. 
 
 She east herself down on one of the couches, ami 
 folded her hands on its carved back, and looked up with 
 hoi' blue innocent eves. 
 
 "What is i; ';■• she asked. 
 
 There Inn! been love once betwixt this man and woman : 
 "low," as in lack of better language that is called 
 which is, on 1 he one side, a youth's ambition to lie named 
 in the mouths of gossipers with one of the loveliesl and
 
 616 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 most notorious women of her day; and is, on the other, 
 an adventuress's amusement in entangling and despoiling 
 the boy who is, for the hour, as a gold-mine to her pil- 
 laging hands. There had been this love betwixt them ; 
 but, when its season had passed, there had come u either 
 alienation nor distrust. 
 
 Neither had, in love, ever believed the other; but each 
 bad served the other, love having passed, with as much 
 sincerity as was possible to their natures. He had heen, 
 indeed, a child in years to her, but she had found him no 
 child in subtlety. She had seen that it was best to be 
 well with him, a pretty snake, that had learned how to 
 sting mortally ere he had reached maturity. He had 
 seen that this woman, without principle, or conscience, 
 or weakness of any sort, save the weakness of her own 
 vanity, could serve him in fashions wherein he often 
 needed service. They had been friends ever, in that un- 
 acknowledged bondage to each other which the knowl- 
 edge of mutual sin and mutual use makes binding and 
 inviolate on those who smile at oaths and laugh at loy- 
 alty. 
 
 Leaning against the window, he answered her now : 
 
 "You know the Duchess de Lira?" 
 
 A steel-like glitter came into the blue serenity of her 
 watching eyes. 
 
 " By sight — yes." 
 
 " My good Coriolis! — you only can know duchesses by 
 sight. The gulf is so wide betwixt your practices and 
 theirs ! You seem to hate her by that look ; do you, and, 
 if so, why?" 
 
 " I hate them all ? — w T hy ! — pooh ! how can I tell ? I 
 hate them — just as cats hate dogs — so ! The dog goes 
 grandly past as if no cats were in existence, — well ! the 
 cat spits and scratches just to show it is not safe to ignore 
 her, even though he may be a dog, legally registered and 
 honored by men, while she is down in the law as vermin, 
 and can only mouse for a living!" 
 
 "You are very candid." 
 
 Coriolis laughed again, her rich, light-hearted, con- 
 temptuous laughter. 
 
 " I always am. I do not mind being a cat at all; it is
 
 TTTK STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. ft 17 
 
 generally well with cats. They get the cream, and the 
 butter, and the warm fire, and the soft cushions, if they 
 get them surreptitiously; now your dog, — if it be legal- 
 ized, it is taxed and muzzled, and if ir, have a place in the 
 laws, it lias seldom bones in its platter! As tor the 
 'grandes dames' — pshaw! they are only copies of us; 
 they copy our slang, our costume, our manners, every 
 one of our amusements ! One always scorns a replica/ 
 And now and then they give one a look — ah! — a look in 
 the passages of the opera, in the crowd of the carriage- 
 drive, the dog's look at the cat, see you; and then one 
 could kill them! As for this do Lira — this daintiest of 
 duchesses I— 1 have hated her ever since she was first 
 pointed out to me years ago at the theater. She looks so 
 insolent, so cold, so arrogantly well-content! The other 
 day a rose fell from my balcony into her carriage — ouf ! 
 she cast it from her as though it were plague-stricken! 
 She shall eat of that rose someway ere long; and it shall 
 be death to her I" 
 
 A look of cruel meaning passed over the mirthful clear 
 radiance of her seraphic face, changing all its happy in- 
 difference, its sea-shell bloom. It was scarcely ever that 
 this hitter passion disturbed the easy sunny tempera- 
 ment natural to her. but she had the feline instincts in 
 her. She could resent, and wait:, and deal her vengeance 
 with sure aim. 
 
 He smiled. 
 
 "You have studied this duchess well, il \\ould seem," 
 he said to her. " Do you see no likeness in her ?" 
 
 ' No." 
 
 She saw none; she was not swift to combine indica- 
 tions; and «he had that curious torpor of the imaginative 
 powers which appears so often to characterize those whose 
 career lies in the embodimenl on the stage of the imagina- 
 tions Of ot hers. 
 
 " Think twice," he urged, softly. 
 
 She obeyed him, ruffling her pretty yellow hair as her 
 habil was in the torment of thought, and beating i 
 
 lessly with her fan on the gilded W I of her sofa. She 
 
 did nnt see,' she did not guess; the resemblance which 
 had sufficed lor the coarse hatred of t he dairy woman, and 
 
 52*
 
 618 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 for the subtle intuition of the Athenian, escaped her. 
 Coi'iolis had lived without thought, and she had little 
 power of mental conception 
 
 "Think twice," he urged, once more, "of a stray bird 
 that once escaped you and me !" 
 
 She started. 
 
 " What 1 what ! The child Viva !» 
 
 "Yes— the child Viva!" 
 
 "It is impossible ! This woman is an aristocrat by 
 birth ! " 
 
 " By marriage only. The duchess who cast out your 
 rose from her carriage is the foundling who befooled and 
 escaped us both at once." 
 
 Coriolis gazed at him with utter unbelief. 
 
 " It is impossible," she cried, afresh; "she came from 
 north Europe, the daughter of noble people. She was an 
 orphan in her infancy, and was adopted by their friend, 
 the old dead duchess — so the story runs„as I have heard; 
 and that man — half-fool, half-hermit — married her " 
 
 "Oh, yes, he married her. I do not deny that. She 
 is all that he could make her, and — she has forgotten that 
 she was ever anything else. Nevertheless, it is true. 
 This magnificent Cleopatra is the young fool that fooled 
 us. How have I learned this ? — never mind how, at first. 
 When I saw her, I knew her ; just one look on the stairs, 
 and I read her face, and she mine. We have met with 
 courtesy, parted with compliment; my lady is almost as 
 fine an actress as you 1 But I know, and she knows that 
 I know. Do you think she has slept in peace one hour 
 since ? I do not ! 
 
 "I should have only suspicion in the stead of certainty, 
 save for one false step of hers. It is this. It seems a 
 year since she dismissed a steward of her late lord's from 
 his rule at Lira. He had been trusted, respected, well 
 treated by the family for near thirty years, but — he dis- 
 pleased miladi. These hereditary sovereigns are so used 
 to implicit submission, they cannot brook disobedience ! 
 He differed with her, and neglected a command; she gave 
 him his dismissal — carelessly, as she would have brushed 
 off a fly ! 
 
 The old man took it ill. But fair spoiled women 
 
 <<
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 619 
 
 never heed how they make such an enemy. People I 
 have, who are skillful, told me this when I hade them 
 gather all histories of miladi's victorious reign. The old 
 man dwells now in Paris with his son, a jeweler. I have 
 seen him. You can believe how little love he bears to 
 this new mistress, who banished him from a thirty years' 
 well-feathered nest because he combated one out of her 
 thousand caprices. 
 
 " With some persuasion, and some payment, I got the 
 truth from him. lie told me, when I asked him straight ly 
 if it were not so, that she was what I thought. There 
 had been only three persons of the whole Lira household 
 who had known whence she came — himself, his wife, and 
 one of their sons, who was chasseur to the duchess. All 
 three were devoted to their master, and would have 
 perished rather than have displeased or babbled of him. 
 The wife and son both died some years since; the old 
 man only lived, to be subject to all the vagaries of his 
 Dew mistress's will. She dismissed him; and the thorn 
 rankled in him. Miladi was wise when she turned him 
 away ; those servile worms never turn ! Well I— you see 
 I speak on no fancy ; 1 tell you a fact. This woman who 
 gives you a 'dog's look' on the opera-stairs, this greal 
 lady who flings your rose into the dust, this duchess who 
 goes to stare at you as a spectacle, is Trieotrin's Waif and 
 Stray — is the baby Viva, who has proved herself wittier, 
 wiser, keener in the strife of life; than you 1" 
 
 Corioli.- heard him, breathless, and with her hands tight 
 clinched. The treacherous, murderous glitter in her for- 
 get-me-not-hued eyes grew colder ami more brilliant ; the 
 soft curve.- of her mouth straightened and grew hard ; the 
 laughter on her lips was merciless. Scathing, mocking 
 words of hatred rushed to her utterance. It was bitter 
 a- gail to her — this thing thai lie told. 
 
 That child who had once gazed at her with such rapt 
 admiration; thai little bohemian in her red gipsy hood, 
 that nameless creature that she had played with, and 
 dressed up, and tossed sweetmeats to. in careless patron- 
 
 . that you Dg fool who had fallen so readily into her 
 nets, and who had worshiped her as some divine being, 
 was qow this haughty woman, this superb patrician, this
 
 620 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 leader of fashion, who gave her the glances that kill, who 
 swept past her as though naught of the same humanity 
 could be in tbem ! 
 
 " What — what !" she cried, aloud, while her sweet sil- 
 very voice became harsh and dissonant. " What ! that 
 
 beggar-child a great duchess ? that thing of hazard a court 
 beauty? that golden-curled bastard a lawgiver of fashion ? 
 It is not true — it cannot be true. It is ridiculous to talk 
 of rank in the same breath with her ! What ! a creature 
 that a vagabond picked up on the highway, lifted on high 
 like this ? A baby that should have gone to the found- 
 ling houses, to the public charities, a Duchess de Lira? — 
 a little wretch that should have been reared in the hospi- 
 tals and made into a sempstress, a fruit-seller, a flower- 
 girl at the best, turned into a millionnaire, a lady-of-honor, 
 a glittering princess like this! Pshaw! you talk fables. 
 We are not in fairy-land, to see such transformations !" 
 
 He smiled, and waited in patience till the tempest had 
 spent itself. 
 
 "Am I like one who speaks idly?" he said, at length. 
 " No : what I say now is true. It is the same face ; 
 only, what was Gretchen then, is Cleopatra now. That 
 is all. Transformation! Is there any transmuter like 
 the magicians of wealth and ambition ? Down at Vil- 
 liers, a woman — stupid, heavy, and coarse as any one of 
 the cattle she tends — knew her ; knew the features that 
 failed to tell you their story. If I had no proof, I should 
 not be less sure of the past that belongs to her. It is 
 true, however much you may doubt it. And I fail to see 
 why you should doubt. Is the story of a man's infatua- 
 tion, of a girl's ascendency, so rare? She had beauty, 
 pride, tact, ambition, — these have kept her feet sure on 
 the giddiest heights." 
 
 "But a duchess! — a duchess! It is ridiculous — in- 
 credible — intolerable!" she muttered, with something of 
 that childish petulance with which she ever opposed what 
 displeased her, deepened by an acrid envy and hate against 
 this life that had once been in her hands like a fluttering, 
 unfledged, caught bird, and now had soared to such vast 
 heights above her. "A duchess ! — that little, friendless, 
 vanity-eaten, ignorant, superstitious, insensate fool, who
 
 TEE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 621 
 
 adored me first as an angel of light, and then thought me 
 a fiend out of hell ! What ! You tell me that imperial 
 woman; who carries her head like a stag, and has a glance 
 like an eagle's ; that woman who sits at the opera covered 
 with jewels like an empress out of the old world of fable ; 
 that woman who has every man who looks on her, her 
 lover; and has palaces, and castles, and lands, and all 
 that her soul can desire— is the child that I robed in my 
 laces, that you sought as your mistress, that lived in an 
 attic with a republican vagabond, that asked no better of 
 heaven than to tread in my steps !" 
 
 And she laughed aloud," her eyes shining like the steel 
 of a sword. 
 
 She no longer disbelieved, though disbelief*was on her 
 
 lips. 
 
 She had ever hated the child who had been tempted by 
 her, with the hate that the wrong-doer ever bears to the 
 wronged*; hated her, if only for the sudden force, and 
 loathing, and perception of her own evil life, that had 
 broken in upon Viva at the last hour of her temptation, 
 and released her from the fatal bewitchment of her sor- 
 ceress. 
 
 Coriolis had supposed that swift punishment in the 
 shape of poverty, and privacy, and hardship, and heart- 
 sickness had overtaken the venturesome creature that had 
 dared to defy and resist her. She had supposed so— 
 whenever she had given thought to the matter: audit 
 was like iron in her soul to believe that in the stead of 
 these, all gracious things, and all proud glories, had fallen 
 to the lot of this life in whose pollution and betrayal she 
 once had failed. 
 
 "I tell you this," he said, slowly, in answer. " Do you 
 imagine it is so welcome to me thai I should dream it out 
 of pure desire for her good ?" 
 
 " You told me she was dead,'' she said, with a certain 
 ferocity that crossed strangely the soft mid even tran- 
 quillity of his own tones. 
 
 "I told you as 1 believed : they said so about Villi' 
 it was the popular belief in all the southern country of 
 the Loire. It was certain, too, that she had disappeared 
 from her home, and was no more seen by the side of that
 
 622 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 man, Tricotrin. I did not doubt what I heard ; more- 
 over, I was scarcely in the country — I lived chiefly at the 
 Austrian court — I was soon consoled. I soon forgot her 
 existence, although I did not forget " 
 
 "That you would have your vengeance one day on 
 the man, if the girl had perished," said Coriolis, with a 
 certain impatience of his discourse. "No ! we forget to 
 love very rapidly : but I doubt if we ever forget to hate 
 as long as there is any breath in us! Then you believe 
 that when she fled from us, and disappeared from her 
 garret, she went in all honor to those Lira ?" 
 
 "I do not believe. I know," he made answer: and 
 recounted to her all that the steward had told him, which 
 was a simpfe history enough, and essentially truthful. 
 
 Coriolis heard him, stdl impatiently; beating her fan 
 upon the gilding, loosening and tightening the gold coils 
 on her wrists, leaning restlessly out over the wooden rail 
 of the gallery, and breaking off the white clematis buds 
 and throwing them out into 'the moonlit shadowy gulf 
 below. 
 
 She could doubt no longer : and where the rays of a 
 lamp from above caught her face, and made bright the 
 gleam of the eyes and the smile, both were cruel as men 
 never are cruel — cruel with the cold, slow, wakeful, death- 
 less, unsparing hate of a woman. 
 
 For some moments when he had ceased to speak she 
 was silent ; only the rapid working of her hand, as it 
 tore up the stars of the clematis, and scattered them out 
 on to the darkness, told the fret and the rage of her soul. 
 
 Suddenly she flashed her glance on him. 
 
 "Look you!" she said, between her set teeth, with a 
 violence he had never seen wake from under her sunny 
 indifference. "I might have been greater than she, once. 
 Anatole was all mine; a fool who adored me, and who 
 was in my power, and who would have wedded me, all 
 prince though he was, because I know so much, — so 
 much that he feared the world ever should know ! And 
 I lost all that because I was the wife of the madman who 
 died at my feet, — on my stage, — this winter-time only, 
 while this duchess of yours sat on high and looked on ! 
 I had as much beauty as she, — ah, God, there was no-
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 023 
 
 thing on earth so fair as I was ! — I had in me the blood 
 of the noblesse; I had the skill that holds a populace 
 spell-bound ; I had the charm that drives men to mad- 
 ness. And yet this bastard, found stray in a thicket, is 
 throned in honor because she had the wit to be earlier 
 faithless than I ! — this nameless thing who was reared on 
 the bread of an old peasant's alms passes me by in the 
 passages of the opera-house with the cold calm of the 
 aristocrat who does not even deign to perceive that such 
 women as I are near, though the same hands make our 
 robes, the same workers fashion our jew.els, the same 
 purses feed our fancies, the same lips caress our cheeks !" 
 
 In the passionate utterance of the words, Coriolis was 
 transformed ; she was for one solitary moment of her 
 actual life possessed and moved by the emotions which 
 she so long had counterfeited on the stage. 
 
 Her eye gleamed, her mouth trembled, her voice rang, 
 under the inspiration of hatred, ami envy, and of a vague 
 shame that fought against her life-long repulsion of it; 
 some feeling wakened in this careless, callous, mindless 
 thing, some inarticulate pain stirred in her and found 
 voice. 
 
 It was low, it was venomous, it was born of envy, and 
 bitterness, and many an evil thing; but it was pain, — the 
 first that Coriolis had ever known, save that which had 
 dully smote her conscience on the night when a dead 
 sailor lay in the house by the theater with a knot of sea- 
 grasses and a woman's azure ribbon on his breast. 
 
 He who heard her now had perception of this; but no 
 pity. He mused how best this would further his own 
 desires. 
 
 "Well," he said, slowly; "well — if you have this 
 against her, you can repay it now."' 
 
 <f How so'.'" she muttered, restlessly, breaking down 
 the clematis flowers. "How can thai ever be? She is 
 what she is by law. you say: how can one touch her. or 
 despoil her, or hurl her down ?" 
 
 lie leaned over the wooden railing by her side, and 
 looked down into the gray soft night shadowbroken with 
 gleams of color and ray.-- of light where the people moved 
 below.
 
 624 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 "You can do none of these; true. Her possessions, 
 her titles, her dignities she must keep all her life through. 
 But you can do almost as much as though you stripped 
 her of these ; you can make her subject to the world's 
 contempt. You can fling her story to the hounds of 
 slander, you can give all the women whom she has rivaled 
 a poisoned dagger against her ; you can leave her in soli- 
 tude among her splendor." 
 
 Coriolis gave a fierce gesture of denial. 
 
 " If we leave her her riches and her titles, we leave her 
 a herd of lovers, a crowd of friends ! Does the world ever 
 forsake what can feast it?" 
 
 " That is true. Nevertheless, you can deal her such 
 bitterness that she will be lonelier in her eminence than 
 any famished beggar that has ever asked her alms. She 
 loves at last ; — she is again about to wed : — one breath 
 of disgrace cast on her, and the man she worships will let 
 her die rather than ever trust her with his honor." 
 
 Coriolis looked quickly up: her eyes caught their look 
 from him, her mouth laughed with ruthless ]oj } her breath 
 came eagerly. 
 
 "Ah ! that is well put. This man is ?" 
 
 "Estmere." 
 
 She laughed softly still, under her breath. 
 
 " I see! I see ! How strange it is ! Yet if he love her 
 will he care ? ■ Men are such fools !" 
 
 " For her story ?* No. But for her shame he will leave 
 her forever." 
 
 " Her shame ! What is it ?" 
 
 His smile was slow and very full of meaning, as he 
 auswered her. 
 
 " Forgive me ; but — can we not say she was once be- 
 neath your roof? you see ?" 
 
 She crushed a snowy cluster of the clematis blossom 
 violently in her palm, and flung it forth into the gloom, 
 and laughed still, — with her teeth hard set, and a warmth 
 of sudden color on her face. 
 
 "I see," she murmured back to him. "Yes. It will 
 serve — it will serve! She lies in the hollow of your 
 hands ; and — only the other day, I thought if I could see 
 her mount the guillotine 1 For she threw my yellow rose 
 in the dust — in the dust under her carriage- wheels!"
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 625 
 
 CHAPTER LXIX. 
 
 As the light silvery robes of Coriolis swept through 
 her moonlit garden toward dawn, a frail tremulous creat- 
 ure, hiding beneath the myrtles and hydrangeas, stole 
 forth and touched her timidly. 
 
 " Madelon — Madame — may I have one word with 
 you ?" 
 
 She turned and gazed at him in surprise. None save 
 those who had known her in her earliest years ever called 
 her by that name. 
 
 " It is you, Fleurus ! Hiding there like a thief! What 
 is it you want ? money ?" 
 
 He quivered a little. The time had been when his aid 
 and his heart had been passionately craved by the young, 
 unknown, ambitious mistress of the actor Gerant. 
 
 " I am no better than a thief," he whispered. " Still, I 
 do not come for alms. I come to tell you something that 
 may be of service. For the sake of the pasl — — " 
 
 If is voice broke down. Thai past was so sweet, so 
 irrevocable, so utterly forgotten by the world ! She 
 smiled, and carelessly motioned him to follow her through 
 the glass doors of a lighted chamber that looked on the 
 gardens. 
 
 ■• Speak quickly." she said, casting herself on a couch. 
 
 " I am tired, and it is al si daylight. 1 will do what I 
 
 can for you — short of reviving your little operas!" 
 
 lie winced under the contemptuous laugh. Those 
 Blight, airy, sparkling, world-forgotten pieces had been 
 
 the stepping-stones to her fame ! 
 
 "It is not that, - " he .-aid, hurriedly. "It is — do you 
 ever think of your child ?" 
 
 I [er eyes opened in amaze. 
 
 " What child '.'" she muttered. 
 
 "The child of dean Bruno." 
 
 She started slightly, and her face clouded. 
 
 53
 
 626 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 "Fool! what do you talk about ?" she said, with im- 
 patient contempt. "A child dead a score years ago !" 
 
 " She is not dead " 
 
 " She is. What are you driving at? — I do not under- 
 stand — speak out plainly." 
 
 " I do. She never died. She lived to womanhood — 
 
 she lives still " 
 
 " That is folly ! What impostor has cheated you into 
 this nonsense ? Why do you bring these stupid things 
 up ? — I hate them. They make me feel old !" 
 
 A certain sense of remorse stole on her. She had 
 never thought of this child twenty times in as many 
 years ; but she thought of it now, as she had last looked 
 on it, asleep in its boat-shaped cradle, with a plume of 
 sea-weed in one hand, and its fair curls tumbled and tossed 
 in the summer heat. 
 
 The wretched Fleurus was frightened ; he had hoped 
 to pleasure her. 
 
 "It is true, indeed," he murmured. "I thought you 
 might wish to know. And all is so well with her, they 
 
 say " 
 
 "Who say?" she said, fiercely, for the bitter passions 
 awakened in her that night were still in the ascendant. 
 " You are a fool, and have been told some ludicrous lie 
 to chicane you. Who has been talking to you of these 
 by-gone things ? Answer me!" 
 
 And he told her: omitting no word that he had heard 
 by stealth in his garret at Chaumont. Coriolis listened, 
 with a tempestuous shadow on her face, and her eyes by 
 turns incredulous, contemptuous, startled, angered, and 
 wondering. She felt neither joy nor sorrow ; she was 
 only moved by a restless sense of impatience against 
 these things of her long-buried past, that would thus 
 arise and pursue her, and force her to think, and remem- 
 ber, and, in a vague sense, to regret. 
 
 In a vain, gay, childish fashion she had been pleased 
 with her infant's beauty. She had been amused to put 
 its fair face and limbs in contrast with the brown sun- 
 burnt children of the neighboring cabins ; she had been 
 willing to toy with it, and be painted with it as Venus 
 and Love, Mary and Christ, by traveling painters. But,
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. G27 
 
 in a seuse, also, she had bated it as an emblem of her 
 bondage, as a type of her obscurity, as a constant re- 
 minder of the passion of which she wag so unutterably 
 impatient. She had forsaken it willingly; she had never 
 thought twice of its fate. She listened in indifference, 
 touched with anger, and with scorn. 
 
 "So!" she said, with a laugh that was bitter; "the 
 woman lied to Gerant, and Ge rant lied to me, and the 
 child was left to grow up a living lie — if your talc be 
 true. Well! that is all very fitting as the world goes. 
 She ought to have prospered. Where is she now ?" 
 
 " Ah ! that is more than I can tell. The man did not 
 tell that to Leroux." 
 
 " But who is the man ? You saw him ?" 
 
 "Yes, I saw him. He is a bohemian. The people 
 care for him. They call him Tricotrin." 
 
 • My God!" 
 
 The cry of habit broke from lips which ever mocked in 
 their sport at all deity and all faith. She rose impetu- 
 ously from her indolent rest; there was a look on her 
 face thai terrified the timid soul of the old dramatist. 
 
 "You lie!" she cried, with that ferocity which had 
 only arisen in her that night, transforming all her soft, 
 gay grace. " You lie ! XTou are sent here to Mind me 
 with this story, to disarm me againsl her, to seal my lips 
 as to her pasl ! lie lias put his wretched stray thing on 
 high among princes ; ami because I know and can ruin 
 her, he semis you to baffle me, ami unnerve me with this 
 fable about Bruno's child. You are his tool — h ; s mouth- 
 piece—confess it! This is a wretched, senseless, hase- 
 
 less lie ! " 
 
 The old man quailed before her ; bewildered and wholly 
 ignorant of her meaning. 
 
 "As Heaven is my witness," he cried, desperately, " I 
 tell you the simple truth; I have never spoken with him 
 in all my life. And as fur her — I know nut what she is; 
 whether princess or beggar. It seemed bitter to him; 
 and only freshly learned by him. 1 tell yon ouly that 
 which 1 heard. Why do yon doubt, only because I have 
 said the man's name '( Yon did no1 Seem to doubl while 
 I told you. You seemed to know thai it was to the
 
 628 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 woman Leroux that Gerant gave the child when you fled 
 with him." 
 
 " Silence!" hissed Coriolis. " What if I knew — what 
 if I knew ? I thought the child dead. I believed the 
 tale that they told me. Why have you stirred my belief? 
 Why have you brought me this accursed truth now ? 
 Why have you not told me this thing either sooner or 
 later ? She — she — that woman who loathes me, that 
 creature I hate, is the child that I bore, and suckled, and 
 held to sleep in my bosom ! The daughter of Bruno that 
 cold empress, who passes me by in the height of a great 
 lady's scorn ! Ah, devil ! — beast ! — that you are to have 
 told me! Out of my sight — out of my house! or I will 
 give your body to the tribunals, and your soul to hell, if 
 a hell there be ! Off — do you hear me ? My child — 
 mine ! Great Heaven, if only you had held your peace 
 for one day later !" 
 
 The miserable Fleurus, gathering his rags about him, 
 gazed at her trembling still, but with a dignity in his 
 look, a passionless rebuke in his eyes. 
 
 " I might have known it," he said, slowly. " The 
 woman who dishonors her husband, forsakes her lovers, 
 and forgets her friends, can have nothing of womanhood 
 left in her save its passions and its cruelties. I have told 
 you the truth ; seek Leroux if you doubt." 
 
 And without another word he turned and passed 
 away. 
 
 When the morning came, a dead body was found float- 
 ing in the river above Surennes, in which none of those 
 who saw it recognized the man whose melodies once had 
 echoed from all the laughing crowds of Paris. 
 
 Coriolis stood motionless where he had left her ; she 
 had no memory of him, she was paralyzed by the truth 
 which had come to her from his lips. She strove to doubt, 
 but she could not. Truth for once was stronger than this 
 fair liar, whose art it had been through so many years to 
 breathe life, and substance, and power, into the falsehoods 
 of fictitious woes, fictitious joys, fictitious passions. 
 
 That vague horror which had moved her when her 
 husband had fallen lifeless at her feet, returned on her 
 now. She did not feel remorse, nor regret, nor yearning,
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. G29 
 
 nor shame. But she felt fcar, — a shapeless and nameless 
 fear, — a fear of her own sins. 
 
 In her lighted chamber, in her festal robes, in all the 
 gay costly glitter of her summer-night's appareling, she 
 stood cold, numb, stricken — appalled by the specters of 
 her past. 
 
 There was not in her tenderness, or pity, or repent- 
 ance. There had been no place for them in the supreme 
 egotisms of her youth ; there could be no place for them 
 in the seared sensualities of her maturity. She had never 
 loved aught save herself. Husband, or lover, or child, 
 had never been more to her than the flower worn in her 
 bosom one day, to be tossed aside unremembered the next. 
 She hated with deadliest hate the woman who bad passed 
 by her with that cold disdain, who had thrown her rose 
 into the dust of the street with that gesture of loathing 
 aversion : — hated her but the more because the tie of this 
 close union was between them, because the blood of 
 Bruno flushed those scornful lips, because those eyes that 
 had swept over her in that chill scorn were eyes which 
 once had smiled in hers the dreaming smile of infancy. 
 
 She hated her but the more; she had cried nut in her 
 fury against the accident which had revealed this truth 
 to her ere her vengeance had struck its blow; she had no 
 mercy in her heart, no yearning for the pardon of the 
 creature she had wronged, — only hate, hate — the bitter- 
 ness of hate, for the little child she had forsaken when it 
 had been sleeping in the hot summer noon down by the 
 southern shore, as for the superb patrician who had smit- 
 ten her with the pang of dishonor by a look. Yet there 
 was that in the horror of t his, — their mutual fate, — which 
 daunted and terrified even her hard, light, wanton nature. 
 There was that in this destiny which brought her face to 
 
 face with the guilt of her earliest youth, thai froze the life 
 even in this frivolous, inconsistent, mindless, merciless 
 courtesan. 
 
 In this very chamber she had spread her nets fur the 
 unwariness of innocence, and tempted the guileless faith 
 
 that .-aw in her such divinity, and BOUghl to draw down 
 to destruction this soilless life that had sprung from her 
 
 53*
 
 630 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 own, as the purity of the lotus springs from the corrup- 
 tion of the river. 
 
 She had been the temptress of her daughter's soul. 
 
 And there was that in the unnatural horror of her sin 
 which overcame her, and was stronger than all her levity 
 and all her wit, and cowed her with a ghastly sense of 
 crime that made her crouch as beaten hounds crouch to 
 the lash. She had no fear of chastisement, no fear of a 
 future life, no fear of man or God ; but this at length she 
 feared, — the infamy of her past. 
 
 Suddenly she started, and looked up at a clock above 
 her ; it was not yet dawn. 
 
 "There may be time — it is a chance," she murmured, 
 and she threw her cashmeres over her, and bade them 
 bring forth her night-horses once more, and drive back 
 whence she had come. 
 
 There was scarce a league betwixt her gardens and 
 the park-gates of Boulogne. They took her swiftly as 
 the winds. In the house by the lake there were still 
 liglits, and music, and noise, and carriages rolling away 
 in the gray of the breaking morning. The last embers 
 of its revelries still glowed. 
 
 She alighted and moved toward it, her eyes glancing 
 hither and thither; a group of men and women, wild 
 with hot wines and mad vice, reeled out in the soft 
 shadows, chanting boisterously a chorus of a new opera: 
 she saw among these rioters the one whom she needed, 
 and went among them and drew him away. He was 
 not drunk like his companions; he understood and obeyed 
 her. He went passively where she led, — into solitude, 
 under the trees by the lake. They were as utterly alone 
 a« though they had stood in the heart of a western forest. 
 A wall of green enshrouded them, the still water lay at 
 their feet; the only sound of the life that was around 
 them was the sound of the rioters' chorus growing fainter 
 as they passed farther away. 
 
 " What is it ? Why are you come back ?" he asked, 
 hurriedly, noticing the strange colorless intensity upon 
 this face that had never kuown grief, nor shade, nor 
 thoughtfulness. 
 
 Her hands clinched on his arm.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. G31 
 
 "We must lot her be !" she said, sullenly. "We must 
 leave her to her honors and glories ; we cannot touch 
 her — we cannot. " 
 
 He looked at her iu amaze. 
 
 " And why not ? A woman's vacillation in yon ?" 
 
 She laughed ; and the laugh was as mirthless as the 
 dreary dull mirth of the singers. 
 
 "We cannot!" she echoed ; and there was an accent 
 in the word that told him the renunciation was very 
 bitter to her, wrung from some other power in her than 
 her will or her pity. " We have wronged her enough — 
 you and I. We must let her be." 
 
 He gazed at her, in incredulous scorn. 
 
 " Coriolis ! — are you mad ? An after-thought of re- 
 morse from you!" 
 
 "Pshaw!" she said, fiercely, in her shut teeth. "Re- 
 morse? Who talks of remorse? I am not a fool. There 
 is nothing to repent of ; — I have enjoyed, I have always 
 enjoyed. I would not change any of it if I could. It 
 has been sweet enough all these years. Remorse! you 
 prate like a poet ! There is none in me. But we must 
 leave her alone, I tell you. Listen, listen: — she is the 
 child of Bruno 1" 
 
 "Of Brunol" 
 
 He repeated the name without comprehension. In his 
 world the past of Coriolis was scarcely known. She had 
 abandoned some husband for Geranl ; she had come from 
 obscurity; she had been once the wife of the mad fisher- 
 man who had died on her stage; this he knew, but in- 
 differently, and with indifference. What to him or the 
 world was the early life of a woman who, having none 
 who cared for her future, had none who asked of her 
 past ? 
 
 "Well! do von not knownow?" she muttered through 
 her teeth that were -till shut. "I was his wile! " 
 
 lie started from her side as the lighl broke on 1dm, 
 and stood gazing at her by the clear rays of the morning 
 stars. CoM and cruel though his nature was, it wa- a 
 shock thai went home to him. 
 
 ■• Ynii are her mother!" he .-aid. breathlessly, while 
 his voice was drowned in the drunken song of the
 
 632 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 revelers that came to them through the depth of the 
 trees. 
 
 She laughed, that laugh which made even him shriuk 
 and feel a sense of fear. Not because there was in it 
 any great grief, or any sort of despair, — these were not 
 possible to her, — but because it was so utterly without 
 these; so entirely the laugh that rang over her wine, her 
 wit, her lovers' flatteries. 
 
 " Her mother — yes! It makes one feel old. That sea- 
 cabin down in the south, so dark, and narrow, and 
 wretched, — ah ! it was all very well for an actress's nest, 
 you think, but unfit for the birthplace of that great 
 duchess! I can smell its salt scent; I can see its nets 
 and its creels; I can remember its steep leaning roof, 
 and its path cut in the rock, and the eternal sough of the 
 waves down below. Ah, God, how I hated them all! 
 He was her father — Bruno. She has his great, dark, 
 dreaming eyes. I ought to have known them when they 
 looked at me first ! " 
 
 " But — great Heaven ! — how have you learned this ? I 
 cannot comprehend " 
 
 She told him. He heard in silence, as she had listened 
 to Fleurus. 
 
 "There is no doubt, then!" he said, at length, with 
 lingering doubt in his accent. 
 
 "No doubt!" she said, as she stood looking straight at 
 the still starlit water, with that curious look of scorn and 
 of pain, of passion and of levity, on her face. " It is the 
 daughter of Bruno that gave me that look in the opera! 
 Things are strange ? When I first saw her face in the 
 gray dawn, on the day of her birth, I did not think ; — • 
 pshaw ! if women ever did think of their children's future, 
 they would strangle them the same hour that they are 
 born ! I left her — oh, yes ! She was his child, and I 
 was so weary of him ! So it comes back, you see — things 
 do. I do not hate her less ; I think I hate her more. 
 She is on such heights ; she is so cold, so proud, so pure, 
 so great — and she shudders when a rose that has touched 
 my hand touches hers !" 
 
 'When she had sunk down on a bench by the lake, she 
 gazed fixedly at the gleam on the water ; forgetful of her
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 633 
 
 companion. Some sense of the dreary unnatural horror 
 of this destiny that had thus enfolded these women held 
 him silent. 
 
 The chorus of the rioters had ended, the lights were 
 out in the pleasure-places, there was no sound save the 
 sighing of the trees, the trembling of the wind upon the 
 water. 
 
 " I hate her more," she muttered. " That creature is 
 mine, and yet scorns me I I hate her more. But I can- 
 not hurt her. I dare not. She must never know what 
 I know — never. She was in the theater that night when 
 he died ; she was laughing, and covered with diamonds. 
 God 1 how strangely things work 1" 
 
 Her voice fell again ; he said nothing. A sense of 
 terror oppressed him at the ghastly fate which thus had 
 brought, in her utter unconsciousness, the daughter of 
 both to be witness of the death of the one, of the shame 
 of the other; yet a sense of exultation moved him also 
 at the added vengeance given to his hands. 
 
 " You will keep this secret?" she said, fiercely, as she 
 suddenly looked up. "I have many of yours in my keep- 
 ing! Answer me: you will leave her in peace — now?" 
 
 lie made no answer. 
 
 " You will leave her in peace; ?" she said, again. " We 
 owe her that — you and I. How we strove to net her, 
 and chain her, and drag her down to our depths ! And 
 she was mine all that while ! Is there really a devil, I 
 wonder? You will let her be — now? Answer me — \ou 
 will let ber be?" 
 
 The slow, soft smile she knew so well stole over his 
 face. 
 
 "Coriolis: — if you have your daughter's honor to keep, 
 I have inv lather's honor to save." 
 
 And almost ere the words were breathed, ho had 
 glided quickly from her, and was losl in the blackness of 
 the woods. 
 
 She did not stir, she did not cry out; she sal still, 
 with a scared look in her eyes. For the first time in all 
 
 her many seasons of success, 8be had been deceived. Ber 
 seen! was his, to deal with as he would. She had only 
 brought to his hand the poison wherewith he could
 
 634 TRIC0TR1N, 
 
 make mortal the dagger-thrust he already was free to 
 deal! 
 
 "Oh, fool — fool — fool!" she said in her soul. "When 
 did you ever know him spare !" 
 
 An hour earlier, she had mourned that her vengeance 
 was stricken from her grasp ; now a sickly horror of what 
 she had done possessed her. Husband and child — had 
 she not wronged these both enough already? 
 
 The gloom of the trees inclosed her ; the wind sighed 
 wearily over the water ; the stars faded, and the dawn 
 came. AVhen the morning broke, Coriolis still sat there, 
 with her eyes still fastened on the stillness of the pool, 
 aud the red flush from the east tinging as with blood the 
 opals in her bosom. 
 
 She had not remorse ; she had not pity ; she had not 
 grief; but she had fear — fear of the dead sins of her dead 
 years, that broke from their graves, and came and faced 
 her here. 
 
 CHAPTER LXX. 
 
 That night there were tumult and tempest in Paris. 
 Though the jests passed, and the jewels glittered, and the 
 buffoonery rioted, and the equipages rolled in all her light 
 places of pleasure, none the less in the dark lairs of want, 
 and of woe, of restless thought, aud of fretting passions, 
 was the lust of revolution making keen the eyes of men, 
 and heating their blood as flame. 
 
 Children glowing with the stories of Hellas; youths 
 burning with youth's noble madness ; men lashed to fury 
 and blindness by some friend or some brother's prison- 
 agonies ; students sick with the dire disease of the old 
 world's endless corruption ; these agaiu, as times count- 
 less before, were eating their hearts out in weariness, and 
 feeling helplessly in the darkness for truth, and countiug 
 no possible wrong in the future could be so great as the 
 wrong of the present, aud willing to cast their lives in 
 the dust under the wheels of the cannon, if only from out
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 035 
 
 of their death deliverance for their people might come. 
 And again, as times countless before, these — the world's 
 divine madmen — were foiled, and spurred on, and be- 
 guiled, by the brutes of sleek tongue and strong sinew, 
 who desired to light the torches of freedom, only that 
 they might toss them into the stores of the rich, and who 
 crazed with their lips for the seizure of tyrants because 
 in their hearts they were thirsting for the seizure of 
 treasuries and granaries 
 
 It was the story, so old and so weary ; the story that 
 would break the strength and the spirits of men if they 
 paused too long to muse over it; the story of high 
 thoughts, and pure dreams, and impossible hopes, fused 
 in with base greed, and base cant, and base envy ; the 
 story of idealic ambitions, soilless as snow on the mount- 
 ains, finding no better comrade and issue than the char- 
 latan's screech to the mob, and the demagogue's rage 
 against power. The eternal story, without an end — 
 young as the days of Mentana, old as the Hellenic ages. 
 
 "There will lie work to-morrow," said Mi Minoux, 
 showing his great wolfish teeth with a laugh of grim joy, 
 as he passed down, through the evening shadows, from 
 the den where Rose Leroux dwelt. 
 
 "Work?" Tricotrin echoed, wearily, not thinking at 
 that hour of his meaning. 
 
 The Patron touched the knife that hung at his waist- 
 band. 
 
 " They say the students are rising !" he said, with in- 
 difference as to who mighl hear; in his own kingdom he 
 was above the law. " They will be shot down, of course. 
 The governmenl is strong, and they are fools; but while 
 they arc up, it is high jinks for us. We have always a 
 good time of it. For m\ part. I wish they would have 
 me of barricades every week.'' 
 
 And lie drew his hand across his throat with a signifi- 
 cant gesture; he had drawn it across other throats than 
 those of lambs 
 
 •■ It will lie an affair of children." continued .Mi Minoux, 
 his tongue still loosened by the lasting fumes of the alco- 
 hol. " Nothing else. They are wild because their darling 
 bas been arrested for thai demonstration at the Lycee.
 
 636 TRICOT R IN, 
 
 They are fools! The government knows of this — oh, 
 yes — but it lets them go on a little while. They will 
 rise, and they will arm, and they will sing the Marseil- 
 laise — all very fine for a few hours, — and then — ponz ! 
 the cannon will clear the streets of them. It is always 
 so. And meantime we — we shall plunder the houses ! 
 Oh, I like that trade of yours, Tricotrin — what you call 
 it — patriotism ? It is very much like ours — when every- 
 thing is said. They work together amazingly well !" 
 
 Tricotrin made him no answer; his heart was heavy 
 with a bitter sense of utter weakness against the mailed 
 might of circumstance, the merciless cruelties of chance. 
 
 He knew well that the rough reasoning of Mi Minoux 
 had its germ of a terrible truth in it ; he knew well that 
 the coarse wisdom of the law-breaker foresaw the sure 
 issue of the unequal conflict with which the time was 
 pregnant. But he heard only dully ; he had not the 
 strength left in him to reply. 
 
 The dead weight of his own pain numbed in him all 
 other sorrow for all other things. The power of sym- 
 pathy was numbed in him by the deadness of hopeless 
 regret. The impersonal was for once killed in him by the 
 force of the personal ; as it is oftentimes killed, from birth 
 till death, in many lives. 
 
 He gave the Patron a brief good night, and went down 
 through the long steep road that led back into Paris. Even- 
 ing had just fallen, and the first drops of the coming rain- 
 storm, the first sullen roll of the thunder, gave their 
 warning of the tempest that was gathering slowly in the 
 west. It might break that night, it might drift away for 
 a brief season and leave the skies in semblance clear 
 again ; but it was in the atmosphere — hot, sickly, terri- 
 ble ; making the air troubled, and the wind winged with 
 pestilence, keeping the parched earth waiting like a cap- 
 tive bound and athirst. 
 
 As he passed through the quarter, the people stood in 
 groups before the doors of their wretched dwellings. The 
 women, ragged and filthy, leaned out of their windows 
 with their eyes gleaming in exultation from under their 
 shaggy brows. Here and there, one had twisted up her 
 unkempt hair under a red kerchief; here and there, one
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 631 
 
 shrieked fierce, foul invective against the decent and the 
 rich. In general they were very quiet, and had the still, 
 dogged, watchful look of those who pant for action but 
 wait perforce for a word of command. 
 
 They were the terrible daughters of terrible mothers, — 
 offspring of those women who once rose at the beat of 
 the drum in the quarter of St. Eustache, and poured out 
 down the roads of Versailles, till even in the voice of the 
 lion there was fear as Mirabeau muttered — " Paris marche 
 sur nous." 
 
 He never looked up at them ; he never noted them, as 
 he passed through their streets and their lanes. His head 
 was sunk, his eves saw nothing; his thoughts were filled 
 only with this lineage of evil, this heritage of shame, 
 that were all the birthright of that proud, scornful, fear- 
 less life which believed that it had sprung from the purple 
 bed of a Porphyrogenitus. 
 
 One of them placed herself in his path, a woman of 
 thirty years, with a head fit for Pallas Athene, and a 
 body strong and sinewy as the frame of a cart mare, with 
 her bosom bare, and her arms akimbo, and her garments 
 all in rags. 
 
 " Trieotrin !" she cried. " What ails you ?" 
 
 lie started, and gazed at her like one awakened from 
 a trance. 
 
 "Your own malady — unrest," he answered, curtly, 
 and strove to pass her. But she would not let him go. 
 
 " Trieotrin 1" she muttered, with her lips close to his 
 ear as she readied up to whisper, "you know? — you 
 know ?" 
 
 '• Fes. I know." 
 
 He knew that she spoke of the Insurrection seething in 
 embryo in the minds of many. 
 
 "And yon are with u^ as of <>ld ?" 
 
 ■• I can never be againsl you." 
 
 " Bui you will imt take leadership, they aay ?" 
 
 ■■ No. I will not. No1 to lead children into a pit of 
 hell-tire. Bu1 why are you in it — you, — a woman'.'" 
 
 Ber eyes glowed like those of a lioness. 
 
 ■• Women have made many revolutions!" 
 
 "Ay; they have. Revolutions merciless, murderous, 
 
 54
 
 638 TRIGOTRIN, 
 
 narrowed to personal wrongs, mad with the rabies of 
 hate, inspired by the lack of bread on their platters — revo- 
 lutions that recoiled in the end on themselves ; like all 
 revolts on all women !" 
 
 Her dark face grew full of rage. 
 
 " Why should not women be patriots as well as men ?" 
 she muttered. " We can stab!" 
 
 "Ah, truly ! And you never think that when the stab 
 lets the life out of a tyrant, it gives him in return all the 
 might of martyrdom. Women can be patriots ? — yes. 
 By other ways than the dagger. You are a patriot — you 
 — Athenais Var ?" 
 
 " To the death !" 
 
 Her black eyes flamed ; her mouth set. She believed 
 what she uttered ; she was drunk with desire to be one 
 with Corday and Theroigne in the memories of the people. 
 
 " That is well. And what is } r our calling ?" 
 
 She flushed under her dark skin ; her infamy was in 
 rags, but it was the same that Coriolis covered with 
 satins. 
 
 An infinite sadness, half pity, half scorn, wholly sor- 
 row, was in his gaze as it dwelt on her. 
 
 "Ay! A patriot ! — and your trade to lead your coun- 
 try's sons into evil ! Can you give tyrants better mockery 
 of patriotism than that ? When women gather no more 
 in the bagnios, and drink no more in the taverns, and 
 flaunt no more in the ways of vice, and no more lure and 
 lead the youths down into ruin, then will it be time for 
 women to talk of politics and patriotism." 
 
 A strange emotion flitted over the woman's handsome 
 face. 
 
 " Theroigne was vile," she muttered; "and she helped 
 shatter the Bastile ! That was something?" 
 
 " It was. But to purify and make honest her own life 
 had been something also, — something greater and some- 
 thing harder. Having some germ of genius in her, she 
 would do something — poor wretch ! It was easy to in- 
 flame the mob ; it would have been severe to bridle her 
 license. So she rode astride of a cannon ; and left all her 
 vices to flourish. Do you the other way ; — leave the can- 
 non to soldiers ; and go combat your passions. Be not a
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 639 
 
 coward who leaves the near duty, that is as cruel to grasp 
 as a nettle; and flies to gather the far-off duty, that will 
 flaunt in men's sight like a sunflower." 
 
 She looked at him with a look like the loojv of a dumb 
 beast that is half savage, half timid, and hung her head. 
 
 " You are right," she said, sullenly, as she turned away. 
 "Women are cowards; they are afraid to starve !" 
 
 He went onward, losing all thought of her as his 
 memory drifted back to the fate of the creature he loved. 
 Many strove to arrest him ; but he waited with none any 
 more. Yet he walked on without aim, without destina- 
 tion ; walked on merely in that wanderer's impulse that 
 was in him to find his way out into the open country, and 
 to lose all pain in motion, and air, and the sweep of the 
 winds, and the width of the heavens. 
 
 The streets were crowded. The lamps were hung for 
 the festival of the morrow. The populace were taciturn, 
 feverish, gloomy ; watching the preparations with angry, 
 sullen eyes. Every face wore a look of hushed, vague, 
 unquiet expectation, save the faces of the indolent idlers, 
 whose carriages swept in endless motion through the 
 gaslit avenues. Every now and then, there passed some 
 student, or artist, or workman, who wore in his shirt a 
 spray of the gray lavender that was piled in such odor- 
 ous heaps in the flower-markets: — it was the rallying 
 sign of t he morrow. 
 
 He went through them, on and on, noting nothing 
 until; as he took his way without thought, he came close 
 to two bronze .nates se1 in a massive wall. He looked 
 up, and shuddered. They were the gales of the great 
 Lira Palace. 
 
 There were many people about them, many laced live- 
 ries, many hurrying pages; and men were lighting the 
 lamps that would make the frontage one blaze of light. 
 
 "Is your mistress in Paris?" he asked of our thus 
 busied. 
 
 The man, garrulous and good-tempered, turned and 
 laughed. 
 
 "She came an hour or two ago. It is her fete to-night 
 to the princes. 1 thought every one knew that. Look 
 at these lamps, three thousand of them. And each one
 
 640 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 cost five francs a piece ! Fine times, are they not ? — for 
 the lamp-makers !" 
 
 " Is she well ? — your mistress ?" 
 
 " Well ? I suppose so. She can eat and drink silver 
 and gold if she likes ! I saw her go through to-day. She 
 was very pale, now you speak of it. You know she is to 
 wed with that foreign lord — what is it? — Estmere ? So 
 her women tell me. They say it is a love-marriage ; 
 that is rare among these people." 
 
 And he turned again to the lighting of his three thou- 
 sand lamps. 
 
 Tricotrin went onward. 
 
 The lamplighter looked uneasily after him. 
 
 " Look you," he said to his comrade, "that man moves 
 like a man I once saw struck by a bullet ; he walked like 
 that, with the ball in him ; but twelve hours after he was 
 dead." 
 
 CHAPTER LXXI. 
 
 "The storm passed?" said the carver of ivory, stand- 
 ing out in the hot sulphur-scented night before his 
 threshold. 
 
 Tricotrin glanced at the skies ; they were starlit and 
 very clear. 
 
 " For a season," he made answer. "It will be but the 
 heavier when it falls." 
 
 The carver regarded him in anxiety. 
 
 "Is it true," he murmured; "true that the students 
 to-morrow ?" 
 
 Tricotrin pointed to the skies. 
 
 " Who cau say when the tempest may break? It is in 
 the air. It may pass — it may come." 
 
 Clerot shuddered. 
 
 " Tempests kill ?" 
 
 "Ay. They kill. But more mercifully than the cor- 
 ruption-born plagues that they sweep from the earth. Is 
 it worse with Jacques Benoit?"
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 641 
 
 " It is worse. lie sinks surely, and he is light in the 
 head; he talks foolishness." 
 
 He asked no more; he went up the dim stairway to 
 the place where, high in air, punt among the peaked 
 masked roofs, was the attic where the old man lay, slowly 
 dying, and muttering foolishness, — of the old mill-stream, 
 and the sweet pine-woods, and the shining yellow sands, 
 of his birth-country. These wen; all that he saw now; 
 though for sixty years he had stitched, and stitched, and 
 stitched, till his eyes were blind, over the black foul- 
 smelling leather in the garrets and workshops of Paris. 
 
 His mind was gone ; but over his face glimmered a 
 smile as he heard the voice of his only friend, and his 
 withered hand crept feebly forth to meet a grasp that it 
 could return but for a moment. 
 
 "Thou comest from Leuzarch," he muttered, thinking 
 still of his birth-hamlet in the west. "Thou hast the 
 scent of the pines, and the song of the lories, with 
 
 thee ;" and with that he ceased his feverish babble, 
 
 and was very still, with the smile yet about his mouth, 
 and a curious, listening, happy brightness on his face. 
 
 Tricotrin watched l>y him through all the hours of the 
 night; — a heap of straw his couch; the only light a 
 wretched (lame upon the hearth that warmed a little iron 
 pol of soup for t he sick man ; above, in the sloped ceiling, 
 the narrow space they called a lattice, through which the 
 blue and .-.tarry skies gleamed curiously. By instinct — 
 the instinct taught by many such vigils as this, which 
 had been common in a life that men had deemed wholly 
 of pleasure — he served all the few sad needs of this death- 
 bed, whose disease was simply age. But, for himself, he 
 had no other consciousness than that of the keen, hard 
 agony within him, that still dulled all his senses to all 
 oi her i hings. 
 
 To that little garret, so high in air, so far from the 
 lighted streets, so near to the starry skies, there came no 
 sound of traffic or of speech to call his thoughts to the 
 Ways and the wants of men. All the day, and the night 
 preceding the day, he hail spent among the attics, and 
 the cellars, and the painting-rooms, ami the Secrel haunts 
 
 of Paris, arguing with those whose young souls were 
 
 54*
 
 642 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 set on impossible dreams, whose young lives were eager 
 to be thrust forward to the slaughter. All the night and 
 all the day, until he had heard the Greek's tale, he had 
 bent all the strength, and the mind, and the suasion, and 
 the genius in him, to hold back from their madness these 
 children who dreamed of a millennium, and rushed on to 
 the mouths of the cannon; who murmured of Harmodius 
 and Aristogiton, and stumbled blindfold to the bench of 
 the galleys. 
 
 But now, — where he sat in the narrow, dusky, moonlit 
 garret, with no sound on the silence save the slow, gentle 
 breathing of the old man, who had ceased to babble of 
 the pine-wood and the lories, and who slept on his hard 
 knotted bed as he had used to sleep in childhood on the 
 moss under the firs, — he had forgotten these; he had for- 
 gotten the things that had been nearest and holiest to him 
 through all the years of his life; he had forgotten all ex- 
 cept the passion which consumed him. 
 
 When she had gone from him in her youth, his rivals 
 had been riches, and vanities, and all the manifold tempta- 
 tions of the senses — rivals he had scorned while he had 
 cursed them. But now — in her womanhood — his antago- 
 nist was that love which he had bade her follow ; his 
 spoiler was the man whom he had bade her honor. 
 
 All his life long no taint of greed had darkened his 
 thoughts against the possessor of his heritage ; no pang 
 of grief had stirred in him for all that he had forfeited. 
 When the calm wisdom of maturity had surveyed that 
 rashness of boyish chivalry, no single desire, no solitary 
 envy, had made him wish the past undone. There had 
 been but one regret in him — the regret that with all the 
 affluence and power which his act had conveyed away to 
 Estmere, it had not been his also to give with them the 
 four-leaved shamrock of perpetual joy. 
 
 The passage of the years — which kills all things — had 
 never killed in him the tenderness of early memories, the 
 nobility of early impulse. Envy had never touched him 
 — can the king who voluntarily abdicates, envy the suc- 
 cessor whom he has of his own will lifted to a throne, 
 that he, himself, may roam the earth unchallenged, and live 
 in the sweet peace of unwatched freedom ?
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. G43 
 
 It was only now, — now when the beauty of a woman 
 was the thing of his desire — that he cried out against this 
 fate which made the holder of his heritage, the owner of 
 his treasures, lord even of this also. 
 
 Above the little casement, in the roof, the stars grew 
 larger with the coming- of the dawn; the flame of the cold 
 hearth died down, and left but the gray sickly ashes there; 
 the rats, growing bold in the silence, stole forth and rustled 
 beneath the straw on which he sat. There was not even 
 on the stillness the breathing of the old man in his slum- 
 ber. 
 
 For, once, when he himself had arisen, and had gone 
 to the pallet where the cobbler lay, he had listened and 
 heard no sound, he had put his hand to the sleeper's lips 
 and felt no warmth, Ik; had looked closer by the clear light 
 of the moon, and had seen that the deep tranquillity of 
 death had stolen over the grim, dark, wasted, withered 
 face, which had a smile upon it as though in his last hour 
 he had heard the lories singing. 
 
 I [e had dosed the lids softly over the old dim eyes that 
 through the mists of dissolution had once more seen the 
 purple hills and the wide woods of the country of their 
 youth; and he had gently folded together on the breast 
 the aged hardened hands that had worked on in ceaseless 
 toil for the bare needs of life, but never had been out- 
 stretched for alms since their palms had been sofl and 
 rosy in an infant's years, catching in mirth against ;i 
 mother's skirts. Then he had gone hack to his place, 
 beneath the roof-hole, where the stars shone through ; and 
 thus he still kept vigil there, — alone with the dead old 
 man, and with the knowledge that was bitterness passfng 
 that of death. 
 
 lie held in his hand the truth that would tear these 
 lovers asunder. 
 
 But — to use it? He recoiled from the power as men 
 recoil from thoughts of murder. 
 
 A season earlier, truly, he would have forbade her to 
 enter the life of a man with any lie left in her own. When 
 she had been his, he had not suffered her to go In her 
 chosen future with one false thing to Stain her innocence. 
 By every law that binds the consciences of men, he knew
 
 G44 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 that to withhold her history from one who should stand 
 to her in a husband's place was to do dishonor, treachery, 
 and a craven wrong. He knew this ; — a day sooner he 
 would have forced its truth on her without mercy, and 
 compelled her to obey its dictates. But no w, — this severity 
 of justice looked no better than the brutality of vengeance. 
 
 The stern simplicity of perfect truth which he had ever 
 followed, as men lost at night upon the moorlands follow 
 the polar star, was leading now to that way whereby the 
 baser part of passion in him would be likewise obeyed ; 
 and he no longer dared to yield himself to its guidance, 
 lest desire clothed itself in honor, and the longing of 
 jealousy made itself look fair in the guise of duty. 
 
 He was even as the Syrian who beheld his single vine- 
 yard seized by the monarch in whose hands were all the 
 breadth, and beauty, and plenteous increase of the land; 
 and he had more than the Syrian's pain. For he had of 
 his own will given the scepter from his hands, and of his 
 own will descended to a wanderer's estate ; and because 
 it refused to bloom and ripen in the shade, he had turned 
 his young vine toward that sun-glow which, gilding it, 
 had drawn upon its luster and loveliness the robber's 
 sight. He held in his hand, indeed, the power by which 
 he could lay bare the canker at the root of this fair vine, 
 and make it worthless in his spoiler's eyes, even as a plant 
 poison-fed and breathing poison. But the strength and 
 the love in him alike forbade him that power's usage. 
 
 The vine had once been his, — the vine was now so ex- 
 quisitely fair, so laden with all golden fruitage, — should 
 his be the vengeance that should tear it up by the roots 
 because it blossomed within the walls of palaces, and his 
 hand no more could touch its glories ? 
 
 The worm was at its root, indeed; but none knew this. 
 The vine might flourish, and grow exceedingly, and die 
 at last in age and honor, with rich rare fruit borne by it 
 and begat on it : and the worm might never waken, never 
 gnaw, never be discerned. 
 
 The worm might be forever mute and numb : the vine 
 live on, — if left in peace. 
 
 He could not, of his own hand, break down its glorious 
 crowns of bloom, even though these bloomed for a prince's 
 pleasure, for a despoiler's delight.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 645 
 
 CHAPTER LXXII. 
 
 What he would have seen could his gaze have pierced 
 through the dark mass of crowded houses, and across the 
 reach of the river, into the Palace of the Lira, would have 
 been a woman standing in the midst of a vast painted 
 chamber, that was all aglow with gold and silver, and 
 white and amber, and the marvelous chromatic hues that 
 stole from a million blossoming flowers — standing, amid 
 that luxury and wealth, as a stag upon the bare gray 
 moorland, in the raw winter dawn, stands at bay for life. 
 
 A woman, erect as a desert-palm, fierce as a desert- 
 beast, with one hand clinched against her breast, as 
 though she drove a dagger into it to end a life made un- 
 endurable hy shame; with her head drawn hack, and her 
 face bloodless, and in all her limbs the frozen horror that 
 sculptors give to those who gaze at the Kumenides. 
 
 What he would have heard, could anv sound have 
 stolen on the air from the mansions of the princes to the 
 attic where he watched, would have been a soft, smooth, 
 cruel voice, that murmured : 
 
 " You tell me that I lie ? Look ! is there no memory 
 in her face ? Ask her, my lord, if this thing lie nol true? 
 if she never lived on the mercy of alms, if she never was 
 astray thing of shame, if she never took my gold toys one 
 glad summer; if she never owed bread to the man she 
 forsook ; if she never laughed under i he roof of the actress 
 whom she and you call Coriolis ? Ask her! — only ask. 
 See! how her eyes answer you, though her lips are as 
 dumb as t he dead. She is a greal duchess, no doubl : 1 he 
 world has done her honor to-night; there is no beauty 
 to compare with her beauty; and there is no pride so 
 proml as her pride! She will be also your wife, yon have 
 said? — then her honor musl be pure as the snow I — is it 
 I who am dreaming these things? Nay, ask her — she 
 surely must know! And her birth-name, too ; you would
 
 646 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 wish to hear that. Can she tell it ? I fear not ! She 
 was a foundling, you see ! Well, I — I who thought of 
 your honor, over-much, it may seem, — learned this also 
 an hour ago. Marriage made her a duchess, — the world 
 has made her a queen, — and you, you would make her 
 wife, as you say. But birth (a mere accident this, as 
 democrats show us!) — birth only made her, — Madelon 
 Bruno. Madelon Bruno ! — the world knows that name ; 
 the world thought it scarcely poetic enough for her mother 
 who bore it. Madelon Bruno, the daughter, is the Duchess 
 de Lira : Madelon Bruno, the mother, is — Coriolis." 
 
 CHAPTER LXXIII. 
 
 The night slowly waned, and grew into morning. He 
 never moved, but sat there with his eyes fastened on the 
 ground, and his teeth ground upon each other, and his 
 face gray, and dark with bloodless shadow like that of 
 the dead man, yonder, on his narrow bed. 
 
 In a sense there seemed a fitness to him in this com- 
 panionship of Death. He, who had so often loved the 
 fullest crowds of men, the laughter of the fair and wake, 
 the humors of the streets, the gay eccentric follies of hu- 
 manity in herds, found, in a measure, sympathy and 
 friendship in that old, worn-out, lifeless frame that rested 
 there — at peace at last, — after its fourscore years of trav- 
 ail, pain, and want, and thankless labor. 
 
 Death ! — was it, after all, the only mercy that life 
 brought ? 
 
 Surely; — since those whom the gods love, die young; 
 and they who live, live to cry wearily, soon or late, " 
 that we were dead !" 
 
 Life, to him, had been sweet, and luscious, and ever 
 pregnant with flavor, like a paradise-apple, God-given ; 
 but now at its close it grew hateful, and bitter as worm- 
 wood, and empty as ashes; and he would fain that he 
 had died in the years of his youth.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. (547 
 
 As the first beams of the daybreak stole through the 
 lattice in the roof, and the warmth from the sunrise 
 awakened the street swallows under the eaves, there came 
 a swift soft movement like the brushing wing of a hasten- 
 ing bird. Through the unlatched door, into that shadowy 
 place, another shadow came, the shadow of a woman that 
 glided to his feet, and fell there. 
 
 " Is it true ?" she cried. " Oh, God !— is it true ?" 
 
 Her voice had no likeness of itself; her face had the 
 startled ghostly horror of those who have beheld un- 
 natural crime; her whole form sank and crouched like (he 
 body of a spent and dying stag. All the rich color and 
 undulation of robes fit for an empress swept about her, 
 crushed and torn; on her breast and among her hair 
 great jewels glittered; beneath her bosom a girdle of pre- 
 cious stones coiled like a serpent; and all their glow and 
 splendor made only deadlier by their contrast the white- 
 ness of her gasping mouth, the stricken horror in her 
 eyes, the convulsive helpless trembling of her limbs, as 
 she dropped there. 
 
 " Is it true ?" she cried, clasping him with her arms 
 as though in him only were her strength against this 
 shame which killed her. "Is it true?" 
 
 "Is what true?" 
 
 The woid- died almost as they passed his lips; his 
 face was bloodless as her own ; his hands shook like hers 
 as he strove to raise her. To gain time — breath — thought 
 — he asked her this; but without answer he knew what, 
 this thing was which drove from her all her glory and 
 her power, and senl her here to crouch like a fallen and 
 accursed creature 1 1ms. 
 
 "You know! — you know I" she gasped, reading that 
 
 knowledge in his face. "Look at me,— meel my eyes, 
 
 if it he a, dream, a lie, a hideous device of hatred, look 
 at me ; look long and pityingly as you used to look, and 
 toll me so that it is false I" 
 
 She clung to him as she used to cling in the brief sor- 
 rows of her childl I. and gazed up in his face with eyes 
 
 that SOUghl to pierce his very heart. 
 
 There was a -real agony in his own ; and they looked 
 OUt.nol at her, but at the morning .-tar.- that -lion, he 
 yond the lattice
 
 648 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 She was answered. 
 
 Her head dropped; her arras let go their hold; she 
 fell as the dying stag falls beneath the last death-shot. 
 
 He stooped and raised her, and bore her into the empty- 
 attic near, which had been the dead cobbler's place of 
 labor, and laid her down upon the heap of leathern shreds, 
 that served there as a couch of ease. 
 
 She lay like an animal stunned ; her arms flung out, 
 her head bowed on them, her hair unloosened, with the 
 jewels braided in it, sweeping the bare boarding of the 
 garret-floor. 
 
 He stood above her, his eyes filled with an infinite love, 
 an infinite pity, an infinite love such as never again would 
 be hers, let her lovers gather by thousands as they would. 
 
 In the years of her gladness he had been forgotten ; 
 in the hour of her misery she had remembered him. He 
 had his vengeance. 
 
 There was silence in the chamber ; the city still rested 
 from labor ; the sun had barely risen ; the shadows of 
 night still hovered where she lay. He never spoke, he 
 never touched her, he never wondered why she had come 
 to him thus, or who had borne to her that secret which 
 he thought was his own alone. He only gazed at her 
 with an unutterable yearning love ; — and, as the diamonds 
 on her robes glittered in the gloom, he shuddered as 
 though he saw in them the smile of those devils of vanity 
 and desire, who had been his rivals, and her tempters, in 
 the old years that were gone. 
 
 Suddenly she lifted herself, and looked up at him with 
 blind eyes. 
 
 " Is it true, then ?" she asked, still. 
 
 He stooped over her, and his voice had that tenderness 
 which had survived in him through all the wrongs and 
 all the cruelties her wanton, thankless egotisms had dealt 
 to it. 
 
 He bent over her and laid his hand with the pity- 
 ing touch of old upon her head. He was silent ; he could 
 not answer her in any other wise. 
 
 " Oh, my God, my God !" she moaned, aloud. " If only 
 you had left me to perish in my infancy 1" 
 He still answered nothing.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 649 
 
 The bitterness of this reproach was all that paid him 
 for his martyrdom ! 
 
 She raised herself with the fierce gesture of a wounded 
 leopardess. 
 
 " And you knew this ? Always ? " 
 
 " Never till yesterday." 
 
 " Yet it is true, you say ? Speak ! answer me ! Tell 
 me all you know, — all, — no matter how hideous or how 
 vile!" 
 
 " But what brutes have borne it to you ? " 
 
 "No •natter! Tell me all — worse than I have heard 
 there cannot be. Quick, — for the love of Heaven, or you 
 will drive me mad!" 
 
 Half risen from the floor, with her hands clinched on 
 his wrists, and her dilated eyes gazing up into his face, 
 she forced the truth from him with imperious, delirious 
 command. Resistance maddened her, as she had said ; — 
 this woman who awoke from dreams of the heritage of 
 kings to find her parentage in poverty and shame. 
 
 He obeyed, and told her all. 
 
 She heard in unbroken silence ; crouching, as the mag- 
 nificence of the leopardess crouches under the throes of 
 pain, a dumb, passionate, breathless terror on her droop- 
 ing face. 
 
 "And I saw him die — die at her feet!" she muttered. 
 
 The horror of her fate consumed her as with fire — fire 
 wherein that staff of life, her pride, withered, and fell in 
 ashes, as a reed held in a flame. 
 
 The shame of her mother w as upon her like the weight 
 of her own shame; the foulness that was her inheritance 
 seemed to taint her like a plague; all the haughty, re- 
 joicing scoru of her high estate had vanished as the 
 prophet's gourd vanished in the space of a fleet summer 
 night. 
 
 In all her glory she was desolate. 
 
 And in her desolation it was not to her friends, or her 
 lovers, or her courtiers, thai she turned, but to the man 
 whom she had forsaken, and forgotten, and abjured. 
 
 "It Is just," she murmured, dreamily, gazing at him 
 with her hot, wild, tearless eyes. "1 sinned against 
 you; — how could I choose but sin, having been burn of 
 
 55
 
 650 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 her ? This is just vengeance on my crime to you, venge- 
 ance sent of God !" 
 
 "Hush! Are His weapons a frail woman's vices? 
 And what vengeance have I ever asked of God or man 
 on you?" 
 
 The grave, sweet patience of his voice stilled the pas- 
 sion in her as it had once stilled the wayward and rebel- 
 lious spirit of her childhood. 
 
 She was silent, lying there with her head still bowed 
 down on her arms, her eyes still hidden from the rays of 
 day. 
 
 His face grew dark with wrath — wrath against her 
 destroyer ; his breath came sharply and hardly, as he 
 bent over and asked : 
 
 " What devil was pitiless enough to tell you ?" 
 
 She lifted herself upon her elbow, and under their 
 swollen lids her eyes flashed with a blue light like flame. 
 
 "A devil? yes; a devil who came in angel's guise to 
 save his father's honor ! My young lover whom I thought 
 the fairies sent me — the tempter to whom she would have 
 sold me, body and soul, in my child's ignorance." 
 
 "What! his son ?" 
 
 " His son. You know it, then ? Oh, Heaven, why not 
 have warned me ? Ah ! hush ! I dare to reproach you — 
 I ! — when my whole life has been a crime which you have 
 never wearied of forgiving! Listen! I saw him once, 
 five nights ago, at Villiers, only for one instant as he 
 passed me by. I knew him then, and he knew me. On 
 the morrow he was gone, leaving a gracious message of 
 regret. That very night I promised to be Estmere's 
 wife ; that very night I had sworn to myself that nothing 
 on my part should be hidden from his sight. But where 
 was the use to take him truth that only could have seemed 
 to him a fear ? Once having looked on his son's face, I 
 held my peace. I let my doom come as it would. I 
 kept, so long as fate would leave them to me, his love, 
 his trust, his honor. I knew how soon they would be 
 struck and perish. This was madness ? I think I have 
 been mad since the night I saw that smooth, soft, devilish 
 face ; I have been like a creature in a dream ;— the dream 
 has broken ; I am wakened now — wakened to see, and
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 651 
 
 hear, and feel all things — my misery, my wickedness, my 
 shame." 
 
 Her hands clinched on him as she spoke, and drew him 
 down to her, seeming thus to keep hold upon some 
 strength, some reason. 
 
 He shuddered as he gazed on her. 
 
 " Those are wild words," he murmured. " The shame 
 is another's, not your own, and — you forget. Your 
 father was poor indeed, but he had honor in his simple, 
 bitter, martyred life that no wife's sin could touch. You 
 are his, no less than you are hers. He was a rude, un- 
 learned seaman, it is true, but he had in him honesty, 
 heroism, truth. Are these mean birthrights ?" 
 
 A shiver ran through her crouching frame. To the 
 woman who had believed herself born from the secret 
 nuptials of some Porphyrogenitus, the sea-bird's nest 
 looked foul as any vulture's ; and the strength and the 
 simplicity of this compensation to which he bade her 
 turn were on heights beyond her reach. 
 
 The man, nobly bred, could recognize the nobility that 
 lies in character apart from all circumstance and all 
 chalices. The woman, basely born, could measure by 
 nothing save the visible symbols of dignity and great- 
 nesa, of poverty and shame. 
 
 " Birthright I" she echoed, with a laugh that had in it 
 the sound of the laughter of Coriolis. " Do not say that 
 word, if you would bid me keep my senses. To night, [ 
 was in al! my glory. Kings and princes were under my 
 roof. I had his love and the world's honor. In all Paris 
 then: was not a creature greater or more envied than I. 
 All splendors, ami all follies, and all graces that my 
 wealth could give, I gathered there. I knew that some 
 evil would fall ; I knew that his son would come there; 
 I knew that the days of my peace were numbered. I 
 chose that he should behold me at my greatest, my high- 
 est, my proudest ; I chose so to score myself into his 
 heart and his soul thai he should never lie able to put me 
 away from them, strive, how he would. I had my vic- 
 tory — sof'ar. Be loves me; oh, God, he loves me; but 
 it is passion only; not such love as yours. Listen! lo- 
 nighl has beeo the mosl brilliant night of my life, and 
 this is how it has ended."
 
 652 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 Rising-, and pacing to and fro, like a chained leopardess 
 infuriate with its wounds, or cast down upon her rude 
 couch in the exhaustion of despair, shrinking from the 
 light of day, she told him how its horror had come to 
 her, stealing like a thief in the night into her palace. 
 
 Every word that had been uttered had cut her like a 
 scourge ; she could number them as the quivering creat- 
 ure numbers his stripes by their separate sharp agonies. 
 
 He heard her in silence, his face hidden in his hands. 
 What solace had he to give this woman to whom his love 
 was nothing ? 
 
 Once only be asked her — 
 
 "And he — he whom you are to wed ? he loves you 
 still?" 
 
 She laughed once more, the laugh that was so terrible 
 in that silent place. 
 
 " Still 1 Is he like you, that evil and shame should only 
 be titles to his pity and his pardon ? No woman is loved so 
 twice. He forced his son from my presence ; he refused 
 to believe, while others hearkened; he was generous, 
 noble, great. It is his nature. But, once in solitude, I 
 saw the look upon his face. How is it I live yet? It 
 maddened me; I knew that I was dead to him — worse 
 than dead — forever 1 I told him the truth of you and 
 of myself. I told him everything my life had known. I 
 prayed, I begged, I knelt to him, — not for his love, or his 
 forgiveness, but only for his belief. It was his doubt 
 that killed me." 
 
 " He doubts still ?" His voice was stifled as he spoke, 
 his hands were locked over his eyes. 
 
 " Doubt ! oh, God, what is there for him to believe ? I 
 am a living lie to him and to the world. I implored, I 
 conjured, I tempted him. Again and again he almost 
 yielded ; again and again I saw love, and love only, in 
 his eyes ; and yet I knew he would never yield utterly. 
 There was such scorn in him, such dread of me, and such 
 disdain. ' Not for your birth,' he cried to me; 'not for 
 your mother's shame would you be less pure, less honored 
 in my sight. It is your life, your lie ! You tell me the 
 truth now ? it may be so. But it is told too late !' And 
 then I grew mad, I think, and broke from him, and got 

 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 653 
 
 out into the street unseen, I know not how, and came to 
 you, as beaten dogs come to the only creature that has 
 pity for them." 
 
 And the love which she had slighted, and mocked, 
 and trodden on so long, had vengeance on her, and grew 
 in might and majesty before her sight, and was her only 
 refuge now, her only friend, her only mercy. And yet ! 
 more dear than this, was that love which had disbelieved, 
 which had scorned, which had repudiated her. 
 
 "What is my life worth if he be lost to me?" she 
 cried. " What are my rank, my lands, my titles, my dig- 
 nities, to me without him?" 
 
 In the intense self-absorption of her anguish, she never 
 heeded what blows her words might strike upon the heart 
 of her hearer. 
 
 All she remembered was that one great horror which 
 enfolded her — the horror of that destiny which had hung 
 over her when in the fair fancies of her infancy she had 
 dreamed herself the daughter of the old dead kings of 
 Gaul ; the destiny which had seized her in the attained 
 ambition of her womanhood, while she laughed in her 
 glad scorn at fate, and love, and death; the destiny 
 which clung around her, stilling her life as the tire web 
 of sorcery clung around Glance. 
 
 He never spoke, where he stood against the open lat- 
 tice, through which the hot air of the stormy and oppress- 
 ive dawn poured like the fumes of a slaughter-house. 
 
 She, flung down upon the heap of leather, with her 
 arms outstretched, and her face hidden on them, longed 
 to bury herself from that searchini'- light of eouiinir 
 day. 
 
 She thought that never more could she go forth into 
 the sunshine, and meet the eves of men, and be as she 
 had been. Her past was branded, her present was laid 
 waste ; her future was accursed: the greatness that she 
 had said could never pass away, was polluted and with- 
 out, worth ; her dignities and her possessions, and all her 
 glories in which she had exulted, as in a strength that 
 made her godlike, were now of no avail. 
 
 They endured indeed, they were unchanged, unchange- 
 able: but they could not cleanse the life whence hers had 
 
 55*
 
 654 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 sprung; they could not give her back the pure and fra- 
 grant peace of honor. The shame of her mother was 
 upon her — upon her for evermore. 
 
 CHAPTER LXXIV. 
 
 Above the million roofs of the city, the flush of the 
 full clay came. From out its nook the little monkey 
 crept, and gazed at her with wondering, sad eyes. In 
 the stillness, the great black door of the garret was 
 thrust open — in its embrasure her lover stood. 
 
 He had tracked her hither. 
 
 The fairness of his face was livid, his voice was 
 strangled in his throat, his eyes had the fury and the 
 woe that men had seen once in them, — once — in the 
 days of his youth, when the dishonor of his wife had 
 been revealed to him. 
 
 He threw one glance on her, — one glance of unutter- 
 able horror, — then went straightway to the place where 
 Tricotrin stood. 
 
 " She has fled to you !" 
 
 Tricotrin shook off his grasp; and stood silent: facing 
 him, with the light of the dawn upon them. 
 
 She had fled to him! — well, who to her had so great a 
 right, so high a title? All the hatred he bore to this 
 man, as to her owner and his spoiler, stirred in him, and 
 prevailed, and killed the old soft tenderness of early 
 memories and of boyish love. 
 
 She, with a great cry, sprang from her wretched couch, 
 and dragged herself to her lover's feet, and threw herself 
 there in piteous abandonment, calling out to him to be- 
 lieve — to believe — only to believe. 
 
 He did not heed her, even while all his frame thrilled 
 at her touch and burned under her beauty ; he did not an- 
 swer her; he did not raise her; he only looked still at the 
 man in whom he saw her closest friend, his deadliest foe. 
 
 "What have you been to her?" he cried, aloud, — "her
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 655 
 
 husband, her father, her paramour ? Answer me ! What 
 tie binds you? What bond unites you? Is it sin, or 
 secrecy, or marriage, or blood ? Answer me ! What is 
 this woman to you?" 
 
 Tricotrin, standing erect, with the gleam of the dawn 
 on his face, and the darkness of evil passions in his soul, 
 looked him in the eyes with a keen, hard, changeless gaze, 
 and still kept silent. 
 
 "Answer me!" Estmere cried, again. "Answer me ! 
 or " 
 
 She sprang up and caught his lifted arm, and drew his 
 hands into hers, and clung to him so that he could not 
 move unless he cast her off from him with violence, and 
 trampled her aside. 
 
 "Wait, wait!" she muttered. "Strike me, not him. 
 What guilt there is, is mine — mine, to you and to the 
 world. There has never been anything on earth greater, 
 gentler, more long-suffering, than his life to mine. I have 
 been base to him, faithless, cowardly, unworthy; hut he 1 
 — he has never once reproached me, never once deserted 
 me. I was a wretched stray thing — you know, you 
 know! — nameless, homeless, desolate, utterly; and he 
 had pity upon me, — pity, when I was a little lost child 
 dying of hunger save for the bread he gave me. Ah, 
 God! call my crime what you will ; curse me, loathe me, 
 leave me, — that is just; but believe, — only believe. Give 
 him justice, and give him honor. In my vanity and my 
 sin I have refused him both so long." 
 
 The evil of the world had fallen from her, the false 
 shame of her false pride had perished; truth and courage 
 revived in this soul, wherein they had so long been dead; 
 her voice rang clear and Btrong in all its suffering. lie, 
 whom six 1 conjured, shuddered under that passionate ap- 
 peal, and gazed down into her eyes, staggered, confused, 
 unmanned, knowing not what to doubt, nor what to 
 belie\ e. 
 
 "If this he true," he hi n nmi n ■( I, "your sili to me 
 weighs nothing beside your .-in to him." 
 
 "No!" she cried, aloud, as Bhe loosed her arms from 
 aboul him, and sank down at his feet with the hot blood 
 burning over all her drooping face.
 
 656 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 u 
 
 No. To you I sinned indeed, because I gained your 
 love upon a lie ; but you were a stranger ; I owed you 
 no debt, I bore you no allegiance : you were free to seek 
 me, and as free to leave me. But to him my whole life 
 has been a crime — a crime when I forsook him because 
 ambition bribed me ; a crime when I repaid him for his 
 charity with discontent and with ingratitude; a crime 
 when I was too base to let the world know all I owed 
 him ; a crime when I heard you slight him with your 
 satires, and held my peace because I was too base a 
 coward to dare lift up my voice in his defense and honor. 
 It is hard for you to believe me, — yes! — I have forfeited 
 belief. But, as God lives, I will not cease to kneel to 
 you till you believe in him." 
 
 He looked down on her, blinded, bewildered, pierced 
 to the heart, confused with a crowd of half-formed 
 thoughts. 
 
 " Your love is so great for him ?" he asked, the passion 
 in his own soul jealously seizing on that which smote it 
 the most cruelly. 
 
 Her eyes met his in one long look, then turned and 
 rested on the man whom she had wronged. 
 
 "Yes, my love is great, now," she said, slowly; "but 
 what is great, — great as eternity, — is my remorse." 
 
 He was silent; the force that lies in perfect and un- 
 flinching truth was iu her now ; it conquered him, it was 
 stronger than he, it bore in on him with a witness he 
 could no longer doubt, the purity of this passionless love, 
 the intensity of this vain remorse. He knew that there 
 was nothing in this love w T hieh he, as her lover, as her 
 husband, need envy, or could suspect ; he knew it, as men 
 in such hours know truths that their colder reason would 
 mock, their worldly skepticism would scorn. But he saw 
 also that this remorse was for a guilt none the less base, 
 none the less craven, because in its shame it was still 
 chaste as ice, because in its selfishness no sensual stain 
 was found. 
 
 He believed ; but belief was as deadly to him as his 
 doubt had been. She w r as as worthless, in his sight, as 
 though she had been the faithless and dishonored wife of 
 the man whom she had forsaken — of the man who stood
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 657 
 
 there, in the radiance of the dawn, motionless, wordless, 
 urging no claim, seeking no justification, giving no sign 
 that he heard or that he saw under all the passionate 
 invocation, the violent despair, of this woman who had 
 abandoned him for the treasures and the triumphs of the 
 world. 
 
 It was at him, and not at her, that he himself looked, 
 as he spoke. 
 
 " This is true?" he asked of him. 
 
 The eyes of Tricotrin met his own with a strange 
 weariness, and scorn, and pity, all in one, in their re- 
 gard. 
 
 " It is true," he answered, briefly. His voice was cold 
 and harsh, and all its melody was gone. For once he did 
 not seek to aid her; for once he did not stir to lift her 
 burden from her; for once he left her, alone, with the love 
 that she had chosen in the stead of his. If it failed her, 
 if it scorned her, if it repudiated her, it had been her 
 choice. He left it to deal with her as it would. 
 
 She, kneeling there at the feet of her lover as a criminal 
 at the feet of her judge, looked upward in his face. 
 
 " You believe now ?" she cried to him. 
 
 He bent his head. 
 
 " Yes, I believe." 
 
 In the assent there was a colder, a more hopeless, a 
 more unyielding condemnation of her sin than could have 
 spoken in the uttermost ferocity and abandonment of up- 
 braiding. He believed; and because he believed in the 
 truth of her history, he believed also in the cowardice and 
 the falsehood of her life. 
 
 She rose up, slowly, and stood before him; her arms 
 were crossed upon her bosom that heaved ami swelled 
 beneath their pressure ; her face was like the marble mask 
 that sculptors take from a dead loveliness; her eyes were 
 full of an unutterable woe. 
 
 Bu1 Bhe. prayed no more for mercy, she implored no 
 more for pardon ; she had asked lor belief, and it had been 
 q her ; it was all. she knew, i hat she could claim ; and 
 thi' superb pride which had been her idol for so long, and 
 which that nighl had been stricken down as a Stately 
 palm is struck by lightning, was in her still, though broken
 
 658 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 and stilled by the bitter shame, the abject humiliation 
 that her birth had brought. 
 
 All her life through, she knew, she had wronged Love. 
 If now Love had its vengeance, and had forsaken her, 
 was the crime hers, or Love's ? 
 
 It was only from his look that she cowered and shrank, 
 as from a thing unbearable. 
 
 "Have you no pity?" she cried, suddenly, the one 
 appeal wrung from her by her utter desolation. " My 
 mother's shame I knew as little as you until to-night. I 
 wronged you; yes, but not one tithe as I wronged him. 
 He has forgiven — shall not you forgive?" 
 
 Estmere turned from her with a shudder, as men turn 
 from the dead disfigured body of the beauty they have 
 loved. 
 
 "Forgive! forgive!" he echoed; "what is it to for- 
 give? My pardon cannot give you back your honor and 
 your truth." 
 
 " Oh God ! you said you loved me !" 
 
 " Loved you ! Men love women that are foul as they 
 are fair. I gave you tenfold more than love ; I gave you 
 —trust !" 
 
 A shiver shook her all down her slender, supple, lofty 
 frame. She knew that never more could this man trust 
 her with the one sweet, full, idolatrous, and perfect faith 
 with which he had believed in her when his first kiss had 
 touched her lips. For faith is as the white pure crown 
 of the century aloe, which, once cut down, can bloom 
 no more within the space of the same lives that first 
 rejoiced in it. 
 
 He, drawing his gaze from her as one tempted beyond 
 his strength draws it from the loveliness that assails him, 
 moved away slowly, with his head sunk on his chest. 
 
 " The woman false once is false always," he said, briefly, 
 with a quiver iu his proud clear voice that no manhood 
 and no pride could stay. " Men, younger, happier than 
 I, might give you their faith still — I cannot. You have 
 killed my life, you shall not beggar me of honor." 
 
 And without one backward look at her — one look 
 whereby that exquisite and sensuous loveliness might 
 steal his strength and make him the mere slave of pas-
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. G59 
 
 sion, — he thrust the great door backward heavily, and 
 passed the threshold of the chamber. 
 
 She let him go without a word, a cry, a gesture. She 
 never changed her posture, but stood there, drawing her 
 costly gem-sown robes together, as a beggar, perishing 
 in winter cold, draws his rags around his frozen limbs. 
 
 Only once she looked at him whom she had wronged — 
 at him by whom, even yet, she had not been forsaken. 
 
 "You have your vengeance," she said, slowly. " It is 
 just." 
 
 He had his vengeance, — the vengeance which the old 
 dead Loirois woman had foretold, — the vengeance which 
 broke his own heart as it fell. 
 
 She stole backward with slow numbed movement to 
 the rude couch of skins, and crouched on it once more. 
 She had no memory of her home, her rank, her house- 
 hold, her dignities ; she had no memory save for this one 
 thing, — that she was the daughter of Coriolis. The hours 
 passed ; time was nothing to them ; the noon came ; she 
 still lay there, as Magdalen beneath the cross; and he 
 hail never stirred from where he stood beneath the lattice, 
 with his arms resting on the wooden sill, and his head 
 bowed down upon them. 
 
 Since the sun had risen there had been a low, hoarse 
 murmur on the air : a sound like the sound of the depths 
 of the sea. But here it was dulled by distance, and it 
 smote their ear, — unheard. 
 
 It was the sound of conflict: — it was the sound of the 
 hymn of blood. 
 
 Suddenly it deepened, and came upon the silence in 
 loud fitful gusts, and pierced his lethargy as the war-note 
 rouses the stupor of the wounded charger. 
 
 He heard t he Marseillaise. 
 
 "God forgive me! I forgot them !" he cried, aloud : for 
 the only time in all the many years since first he had 
 elected to be one with them, and make their dwelling 
 and their portion, their pleasure and their Buffering, his, 
 he hail forgotten i he people. 
 
 "Wait you lure," he murmured In her. "It is (he 
 children only who have risen. Ion t here is danger, t hero 
 is slaughter. (;<>d forgive me, — 1 forgot!''
 
 660 TR1COTRIN, 
 
 And he left her, and went swiftly through the house, 
 that was deserted as though pestilence had swept it bare, 
 and passed out into the hot noontide — into the streets 
 where the students had risen. 
 
 It was a revolt of the children, — an outbreak of youth's 
 noble madness, a passion of boys' futile frenzy; but the 
 massacre of the children had begun, and would not cease 
 till the sun had its setting. 
 
 A woman, weeping and frantic, threw herself in his 
 passage : 
 
 " Oh, friend ! save my son !" she cried to him. " You 
 are as a god to these children ! He is all I have upon 
 earth, — you know ! A creature of seventeen summers. 
 And he is there at the barricades ! Ah ! — they die in 
 their madness, proud of it. It were harder to live for 
 mere duty 1" 
 
 He put her aside ; and went onward. 
 
 " God forgive me !" he said, still in his heart. " I had 
 forgot them — I had forgot them." 
 
 CHAPTER LXXV. 
 
 In one of the streets of the city, in one of its white 
 and golden palaces, there was a balcony hung with scarlet 
 draperies for the festival that had been a baptism of blood. 
 
 Many a time there had come thither a woman, sunny- 
 haired, laughing, full of gladness, tossing sweetmeats and 
 flowers to the crowd, leaning there with roses in her 
 breast, and her arms indolently folded, to watch the spec- 
 tacle beneath of military pomp, or of imperial entry, or 
 of the masked fooleries of the idle carnival time. And 
 many a time the passing multitudes had looked up, and 
 laughed back to her, and shouted their acclaims, and 
 caught her tossed flower-buds and kissed them : for they 
 had loved her, since she had been clothed with the divinity 
 which this age beholds in Vice.
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 661 
 
 The scarlet folds hung stirless on the breeze ; the gilded 
 butterflies upon them sparkled in the sun; the Eastern 
 birds murmured merrily; the exotics bloomed in every 
 hue, above in that bright balcony, while the slaughter 
 raged beneath. 
 
 But on its marble floor the woman lay lifeless, with the 
 slow blood welling from her breast — a stray shot had 
 found her where she leaned to watch the pageantry of 
 strife, and she had fallen here among her flowers. Below, 
 the populace had paused one instant in the tumult of their 
 passions, and had murmured — 
 
 "It is Coriolis— killed !" 
 
 For fate was still merciful to this woman, who had 
 been merciless to all, still tender to this spoiler, who 
 knew not tenderness, still full of gifts to this assassin- 
 atress, whose hands had ever been outstretched for gold. 
 It slew her when fear had begun to touch her; it slew 
 her when her past sin rose against her; it slew her ere 
 her beauty perished, ere her power waned. And Coriolis 
 — a creature soulless as the butterflies that were her em- 
 blem — had the noblest requiem that a human soul can 
 have ; — she had the sorrow of a people. 
 
 Verily, men are just. 
 
 CHAPTER LXXVI. 
 
 In a dim, gray, ancient street, outside the passage-way, 
 where I lie town was still old, in the heart of I lie si lldents, 
 win-re no cannon could sweep and no squadrons deploy, 
 but each combat perforce was foutrht out hand to hand, 
 in the old fierce, fair fashion, — there the first barricade 
 had been thrown. A barricade barring the entrance; a 
 barricade that already had served to repulse the soldiery 
 sent up against it. though held only by youths, — goaded 
 on by their comrades' imprisonment ; blind with dreams 
 of impossible worlds; lashed to action by agitators and 
 demagogues ; beholding only the excellence of liberty, not 
 
 56
 
 662 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 seeing the excellence of patience. Youths of all ages, all 
 tempers ; some gay with zest for the devil's dance of a riot, 
 some grave with a purpose too hard for their years ; some 
 drunk with their own evil passions, some with pure longing 
 for freedom ; some the ignorant poor tools of conspirators ; 
 some the ardent young prophets of truth. 
 
 They tilled the narrow windings of the street; they 
 climbed upon its roofs, and its ironwork, and its lamp- 
 posts ; they knelt at its windows with their muskets at 
 rest on its ledges; they defended its stones as though 
 they were the altar-stones of their holiest temple. They 
 shouted; they sang; they dealt death and they took 
 death; they fought shoulder to shoulder ; they mounted, 
 and dived, and hid, and charged ; they swarmed over the 
 timber mountain that they had cast up betwixt them and 
 the w r orld ; they tasted blood, and were even like young 
 hounds whose tongues are whetted by a dead deer's gore. 
 
 And ever and again as one among them was shot down, 
 they lifted his corpse upon the timber to raise the pile 
 higher, and sang more loudly their Marseillaise. 
 
 Above the hiss of the bullets, above the cries of the 
 women, above the roll of distant volleys as the musketry 
 sought their quarter, above the din and the tumult of 
 carnage, the great chorus rang out, dominant and triumph- 
 ant: as it first rang over the crowds of Paris, and over 
 the battle-plains of Europe, while its creator fled through 
 the mountains, proscribed, and desolate, and friendless 
 The chorus of the hymn that is deathless, because, while 
 men shall live, its passions, and its woes, and its agony 
 of vain desires must live also, unquenched, unstilled, and 
 unattained, — born half of hell, born half of heaven. 
 
 Yet above even that divine and devilish chant of the 
 nations' liberties, his own voice rose as he forced his way 
 through amid them, and sprang up on to their topmost 
 pinnacle of the jammed mass of wood and stone. A 
 great shout welcomed him: — ever since the day had 
 broken, men in the paroxysms of fear, or in the heat of 
 conflict, had asked of one another, Where was he? 
 
 "Ah! faithless and strengthless !" he called to them 
 " And only a day since you pledged me your word to 
 keep peace ! '
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. G63 
 
 They were the people of his own quarter ; the youths 
 that came round him like dogs round their keeper ; only 
 a brief space earlier, he, who had come to save them if 
 they would be saved, had spent the days and the nights 
 among them in their cellars, and clubs, and workshops, 
 and painting-rooms, striving to hold them back from de- 
 struction, striving to make them wait, for the dear sake 
 of that liberty in whose name they were mad for war. 
 And these, — these few at the least, — these two hundred 
 and more who fought here, had listened, and given way, 
 and vowed to keep from the snare spread for them and 
 their kind by men to whom rivers of blood were as the 
 waters of Pactolus. 
 
 They had promised: and thus they redeemed their 
 word. Thus, with the knives at their waist, and the steel 
 in their hands, and the lust to slay in their eyes. 
 
 He stood unarmed in their midst; on the highest place, 
 where the sun's rays came fullest and the bullets fell 
 fastest. His eyes swept the crowd as the eagle's the 
 earth ; all the warmth, and the light, and the passion had 
 flushed back on his face at the sight of the gleam of the 
 steel, at the sound of the anthem of revolution. 
 
 On them a sudden hush fell — a sudden humiliation 
 smote. 
 
 They had promised him peace, — and at his feet the 
 dead already lay three deep! 
 
 "Could you not be faithful one day through?" he 
 cried to them, in the reproach which all those who love 
 and serve humanity are driven to cast against it. by the 
 weight of its own measurelo- ingratitude. " You prom- 
 ised me — you, my own people! — and your promise is 
 kept thus! I knew that you were betrayed ; 1 knewthat 
 you were drawn down into a pit ; I knew that they left 
 your sting in you. only that by it you might slay your- 
 selves, like the scorpion in the flames. I warned you, 
 and you heard, and you swore to keep in your homes and 
 beuntempted. And this is the fulfilling of your oath I " 
 
 Tin' youths, pausing, and taking breath, ami crowding 
 one on another about the barricade, heard him, and were 
 ashamed. One lad, the youngest of them all, the child 
 of whom his mother had spoken, lifted his fair and glow-
 
 664 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 ing face with reverent love upon it, and gripped his rifle 
 closer : 
 
 "It is for liberty!" he murmured. "Have you not 
 taught us, — without it life is worthless ?" 
 
 The eyes of Tricotrin rested on his with infinite ten- 
 derness, infinite anguish : 
 
 "I have taught you that? No 1 Life without it is 
 joyless ; but life without joy may be great. The great- 
 ness of life is sacrifice; is sacrifice liberty, think you? 
 Oh children, you are blind and astray ! You spend your 
 strength following shadows. This is love of your country, 
 you call it ; and heroism, and all things that are noble ? 
 It is but the froth of your passions, the rage and the fret 
 of your boyhood." 
 
 A storm of hisses broke across his words. They loved 
 him, indeed, but in that moment of exultant fury, of un- 
 appeased bloodthirst, they would not hearken even to 
 him. He waited, patiently and unmoved, until their fury 
 had in some measure died out from its own violence. 
 
 Then again he spoke, with a gesture that awed the 
 loudest, the fiercest, the most turbulent, to silence. 
 
 'You lift your hands against me? — you think your 
 yells and your threats will make me deal you a dema- 
 gogue's flatteries ? Pshaw ! men who dread death scarcely 
 come hither. All this while have you known me so 
 little ? Demagogues, to delight you, would lash on your 
 passions. I displease you because I bid you have pa- 
 tience. 
 
 " To die, when life can be lived no longer with honor, 
 is greatness indeed. But to die because life galls, and 
 wearies, and is hard to pursue : — there is no greatness in 
 that! It is the suicide's plea for his own self-pity. You 
 live under tyranny, corruption, dynastic lies hard to bear, 
 despotic enemies hard to bear — I know. But you forget, 
 what all followers of your creed ever forget, that without 
 corruption, untruth, weakness, ignorance, in a nation 
 itself, such things could not be in its rulers. Men can 
 bridle the ass and can drive the sheep, but who can drive 
 the eagle or bridle the lion ? A people that was strong 
 and pure, no despot could yoke to his vices. 
 
 " Against the foreign foes of your country die in your
 
 TITE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 665 
 
 youth if she need it. But against her internecine enemies 
 live out your life in continual warfare. When I tell you 
 this, do you dream that I spare you ? Children — you 
 have yet to learn what life is ! Who could think it hard 
 to die in the glory of strife, drunk with the sound of the 
 combat, and feeling no pain in the swoon of a triumph ? 
 Few men whose blood was hot and young would ask a 
 greater ending. But to keep your souls in patience ; to 
 strive unceasingly with evil ; to live in self-negation, in 
 ceaseless sacrifices of desire; to give strength to the 
 weak, and sight to the blind, and light where there is 
 darkness, and hope where there is bondage ; to do all 
 these through many years unrecognized of men, content 
 only that they are done with such force as lies within 
 you, — this is harder than to seek the cannons' mouths, 
 this is more bitter than to rush, with drawn steel, on 
 your tyrants. 
 
 " Your women cry out against you because you leave 
 them to starve and to weep while you give your hearts 
 to revolution and your bodies to the sword. Their cry 
 is the cry of selfishness, of weakness, of narrowness, the 
 cry of the sex that sees uo sun save the flame on its hearth : 
 yet there is truth in it, — a truth you forget. The truth, — 
 that, forsaking the gold-mine of duty which lies at your 
 feet.^ou grasp at the rainbow of glory ; that, neglectful 
 of your own secret sins, you fly at public woes and at na- 
 tional crimes. Can you not see that if every man took. 
 herd of the guilt of his own thoughts and acts, the world 
 would be free and at peace? It is easier to rise with the 
 knife unsheathed than to keep watch and ward on your 
 own passions; but do not cheat yourself into believing 
 that it is nobler, and higher, and harder. What reproach 
 is cast against all revolutionists? — that the men who 
 have nothing to lose, the men who are reckless and out- 
 lawed, alone raise the flag of revolt. It is a. satire; but 
 in every satin: there lies the germ of a terrible fact. 
 
 "You, — you who are children still, you whose man- 
 hood is still a "old scarcely touched in your hands, a gold 
 yon can spend in all great ways, or squander for all base 
 uses; — you can give the lie to that public reproach, 
 
 jii*
 
 666 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 if only you will live in such wise that your hands shall 
 be clean, and your paths straight, and your honor un- 
 sullied through all temptations. Wait, and live so that 
 the right to judge, to rebuke, to avenge, to purify, become 
 yours through your earning of them. Live nobly first ; 
 and then teach others how to live. 
 
 " Lay down your arms — you have not won the title 
 for their usage — lay them down, I bid you ; and when 
 you shall be able to point to high deeds done by you, 
 and high thoughts born from you, then come forth so 
 armed again ; and none shall dare to cast at you the jibe 
 that because you knew not how to live, therefore, and 
 therefore only, you would die!" 
 
 They heard, and were very still ; and paused, half 
 sullen, half afraid. They knew that he spoke truth, but 
 that truth was cruel to their pride. Their souls were 
 moved and disquieted ; but their self love was stung into 
 rage. They could not hear his voice without the in- 
 stinct of honor and obedience, as children hear the voice 
 of their father. But they were hardened against him, 
 and they murmured loud and deep. 
 
 One young boy alone, standing by his side, — the son 
 of the woman who had besought him in the street, — lifted 
 his bright, flushed, kindling face. 
 
 " Do with us as you will," he said, softly — and he laid 
 down his musket, and loosened from his breast the badge 
 of insurrection. • 
 
 Tricotrin smiled on him. 
 
 " That is well. Remember your mother now — in the 
 days of your youth — you will not serve your country 
 less, but more, when manhood conies to you." 
 
 The action broke the spell of awe and reverence that 
 had held entranced the throng around them : as baffled 
 hawks, missing the heron, swoop on fieldfares harmless 
 among the corn, so their baffled, stifled rage turned upon 
 the lad. 
 
 " He would forsake us ! He turns traitor !" they hooted 
 against him, and they rained the stones of the streets at 
 the child. One — more drunk than all with the passions 
 of the hour — heaved up a great block of granite, dis- 
 lodged from the edge of the pavement, and hurled it
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 667 
 
 hurtling through the air to strike to earth the slender 
 figure of the boy. 
 
 The square gray block sped on its way as from a cata- 
 pult; winged by the force of hate. 
 
 Tricotrin looked upward : he saw its darkness betwixt 
 him and the sun, he seized the boy and drew him back- 
 ward, backward into his own place. The stone de- 
 scended : — the boy stood erect, unharmed ; his deliverer 
 fell with the weight upon him. 
 
 The wail of a people's agony broke from all the multi- 
 tude below, then hushed into a dead dread silence, — the 
 silence of a speechless terror. 
 
 lie lay there with the great stone upon his chest, 
 where it had struck him, and had felled him at a stroke, 
 as lightning fells the tree. From beneath it the blood 
 slowly welled : the bones of his chest were crushed in, 
 and bent, and broken. 
 
 The boy, for whom he had thus met death, sank on his 
 knees, and covered his eyes with his hands, and cried out 
 to God to slay him also, since through him this martyr- 
 dom had come. Those about him, youths likewise, trem- 
 bling, and weeping, and afraid as with the fear of crime, 
 thrust off the brutal weight, and raised him, and called on 
 his name with piteous outcries, and forgot every other 
 thing on earth, save that this man who loved them had 
 died for them: — died thus; in the hour that they had 
 revolted from him, and disobeyed him, and refused to 
 hearken to his voice. 
 
 Then all that breathless stillness broke up into an awful 
 tumult: — the multitude, mad with grief, and with rage, 
 and with remorse, flung themselves on his destroyer, and 
 seized, and choked, and tore him limb from limb, while 
 through the crowded quarter there rang, from mouth to 
 mouth, the cry that Tricotrin was dead. 
 
 On 'he pile of the barricade the noontide sun poured 
 down. They lifted him up on a shelf of timber, beneath 
 the drooped folds of their flag of liberty. His head was 
 sunk, his eyes were BightleSS, the blond Welled slowly 
 from his breast : — for the firel time in all his life amid 
 them he gave no answer to their prayer, do pity to their 
 anguish.
 
 668 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 Yet, even now, voiceless, motionless; senseless, he was 
 still their deliverer from evil; for, farther onward, as the 
 troops came up to the massacre, to the ruthless mowing 
 down of all these lives that were as ripe corn for their 
 sickles, the artillery were checked and forbidden to advance, 
 and dimly heard those in authority above them murmur 
 that the people would no more have soul or strength for 
 combat, since Tricotrin was dead. And the soldiers halted, 
 afar off in the noontide heat, and came no more against 
 them, but left them alone with their remorse. 
 
 They trampled under their feet, in the insanity of ven- 
 geance, the body of his murderer ; and spat upon the 
 corpse ; and stamped its features into a hideous mass ; 
 and left it, battered and shapeless, in the gutter of the 
 street. Then, raving, weeping, tearing their hair, shriek- 
 ing his name aloud, they closed once more upon the bar- 
 ricade. They were as children whose father had per- 
 ished ; — he had loved them so well, death would have no 
 power to make him deaf to their cries, merciless to their 
 despair ! 
 
 As though their voices called him, indeed, back to this 
 earth on which they lingered, desolate and bereaved, his 
 consciousness returned, his blindness passed, his eyes 
 unclosed and rested on them. Each breath was torture, 
 each moment numbered ; but his thoughts were for them, 
 not for himself. 
 
 He signed to those who strove to rouse him, to let him be, 
 to let him lie in such peace as was still left him. He knew 
 that before the sun should have declined from its zenith he 
 would be no more amid the world of men ; no more live 
 this life that to him had been ever so fair, and so rich, 
 and so worthy the living. His bloodless lips smiled still 
 as he looked on them. 
 
 " Children — do not grieve for me. Death is gentle and 
 generous. See! it spares me sickness and age " 
 
 His voice sank ; each word was a pang, as he drew 
 breath through the lungs on which the crushed breast- 
 bone pressed as with the pressure of an iron vice. The 
 throngs around him only answered with a great sob that 
 came as from one heart. The tears rained down their 
 cheeks, they stretched their arms to him as though to 

 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 669 
 
 seize him from the hold of death. The women rent their 
 robes and wailed as the women of Rome at the tomb in 
 the Campus Martins ; their little children were trodden 
 under their feet forgotten ; from mouth to mouth, from 
 house to house, reaching those that fought in distant 
 streets, reaching those that crouched in vaults and cata- 
 combs, this one cry rang — that they had slain him. 
 
 The full sun was upon his face; he looked upward at 
 its noonday glory: — and the smile that had come ever on 
 his lips when he had beheld the gladness of its rising, 
 over plain, and lake, and forest, came there still, in this, 
 his death-hour. 
 
 "It is well," he murmured. " Why will you grieve? 
 It is well. 1 die at noon ; — ere the darkness of night sets 
 in; ere the night of age overtakes me. My people — if 
 you will that I die content, let my life purchase yours; 
 leave bloodshed, and go in peace Shall it be that you 
 will refuse me this, the last thing that I shall ask of you ?" 
 
 With the strength that so long had been in him, he 
 lifted himself on his arm, and conquered the physical 
 pangs that devoured him. His voice was low and stifled ; 
 yet never in all the hours of its eloquence had it reached 
 so far to the hearts of the people, had it stirred their in- 
 nermost souls so deeply, as the wind stirs the depths of 
 the ocean. 
 
 "Answer me I" he cried to them, strong in that moment 
 through the love he bore them, and victorious over the 
 power of death. "Answer me! Will you grant me this 
 because you have killed me? Will you go in peace, and 
 save your bodies from fruitless slaughter? Answer me, 
 if ever you loved me !" 
 
 They were silent, pierced to the quick; then, still as 
 with one mouth, they lifted up their voices. 
 
 " We say as he said, — do with us as you will !" 
 
 A glory that was greater than the glory from the sun 
 shone in his eyes as he heard. 
 
 " It is well," he said, softly, once more. "Forget not 
 your word when I lie dead.'' 
 
 Ami they casl down their weapons, ami broke them 
 asunder, and wept sorely; as children weep, refusing to 
 be comforted, because their hearth is cold, their bodies
 
 670 TRTCOTRIN, 
 
 are famished, their hearts are desolate, their lives are 
 fatherless and friendless. 
 
 His eyes wandered dreamily over the crowd, seeking 
 hither and thither, seeking for a face that was not amid 
 them. Then, suddenly, they rested on a far-off gloomy 
 place, where, in the shadow of an arch, one watcher stood 
 aloof, and gazed upon the conflict. He stretched his hand 
 out, and pointed thither. 
 
 " Bring him 1" he muttered to them. "Bring him, — 
 yonder, — do you see?" 
 
 The throng surged closer together, then rolled asunder, 
 and parted, and left a passage free. 
 
 He whom he had summoned came, and stood, with the 
 light on his fair, cold, weary face, against the black piles 
 of the timber of the barricade, against this death-bed of 
 wood and iron whereon the man who had died for the 
 people rested content, — as on a prince's nuptial bed. 
 
 Tricotrin, leaning still upon one hand, stretched out the 
 other to him. 
 
 " Brother, — you may know now.'''' 
 
 Death, ere it laid the seal of eternal silence on his lips, 
 let them breathe once more the name that by Life had 
 been forbidden them. 
 
 And the people drew back, and left them alone, and 
 
 gathered together, hushed and frightened, as dogs that 
 
 gaze, helpless, at human passions and human woe, and 
 
 vaguely thrill with the despair and the divinity of both. 
 ****** 
 
 The words that passed their lips none heard. That 
 recognition in the shadow of death none watched. The 
 people stood aloof, wondering, and still afraid. 
 
 All that they saw was the proud head of the great noble 
 bent down lower, and lower, and lower in reverence and 
 awe : all that they heard was one futile reproach that 
 broke from him and pierced the stillness. 
 
 " Oh God 1 Why have you been lost to me so long?" 
 
 The voice that answered him was too faint to reach 
 their straining ears : 
 
 " Why ? why? Because I loved my freedom ; because 
 I knew that not one hour would you have kept your 
 state and station if you once had known. It was a child's
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 6U 
 
 quixotic folly — yes; but it never brought me one regret. 
 Let no regret be with you. That old Dante — you had 
 forgot it. Yet you might have remembered ; — it was the 
 priest's gift to me for my quick learning of the Latin that 
 he loved. Ah ! — you recall the day now? You believe ? 
 — yes ; you believe. If you doubted, there are papers in 
 the attic yonder, that would vouch to you. Is my life 
 strange in your sight now ? Do you see mystery in it, 
 or shame ?" 
 
 His brother's hands closed upon his. 
 
 " I dared to judge you I I dared to condemn you in 
 my pride and my blindness. Oh Christ, if only I had 
 known !" 
 
 He smiled ; the old soft ironic humor laughed still in 
 his eyes, even through the mists that dimmed them. 
 
 "Ah! You thought me astray in my ways and my 
 creeds, you thought me a wanderer and a profitless idler. 
 You were right, — from your view. Dignities have be- 
 fitted you well: I would not have borne the burden and 
 heat of the ermine ; I could not have lived unless free. 
 My mother was sea-born, you know, and perished, — sti- 
 fled under your pomp." 
 
 His listener's frame shook like a woman's. All the 
 chillness of long habit and of social eminence was shat- 
 tered in him as a glacier shatters in its fall. The bitter- 
 ness of this hour was infinite; and, by its very force, 
 burned out that canker of a too hard scorn, of a pride 
 too pitiless and too incredulous, which so long had marred 
 the nobility of his temper. 
 
 His justice, that Ik; had deemed so pure, had proved 
 but warped opinion. His vision, that he had deemed so 
 clear, had been but purblind prejudice. He scorned him- 
 self; and was crushed under that anguish of self-reproach 
 will) which he surveyed his own fallibility and condemned 
 his own injustice. And there was no atonement possible 
 lor him; he learned all that he had lost, all that he had 
 misread, all that he had missed, only in the moment when 
 to learn them was too late, only when they passed away 
 from him forever. 
 
 •'And all these years I have but thieved from you!'' 
 he muttered. "All I gave you when we met were sus-
 
 672 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 picion and derision ! One look — one accent — should have 
 sufficed to me." 
 
 " Nay — reproach not yourself thus. What remorse 
 can there lie at your door ? Yet if you think that you 
 owe to me aught — pay it in one fashion." 
 
 " Demand of me what you will 1 Is not all that I pos- 
 sess your own ?" 
 
 " No ! you possess your will and your pride — those 
 are not mine to bend. If you will indeed give me what 
 
 I desire, vield me these " 
 
 "Yield" them? You have killed them! Before your 
 life, how can I see any other thing save a usurper's fraud 
 and falsehood in my own ?" 
 
 " Hush ! you were in ignorance. If you had known, 
 you would have beggared yourself in an hour, sooner 
 than have continued to enjoy. Give me these — your 
 passions — nevertheless. Give me them, and take her 
 back to your pardon, to your love, to your life. You will 
 not ?" 
 
 " Will not ? I dare not 1" 
 " Because she is the child of Coriolis ?" 
 " Because she is faithless, and without truth." 
 " She will be true to you, and to you faithful. I have 
 forgiven ; shall not you forgive ?" 
 
 His brother was silent: his face was hidden on his 
 hands. 
 
 " I have forgiven," he who pleaded for her urged again, 
 " and what is your wrong to mine ?" 
 
 " As she wronged you, so will she wrong me." 
 " Not so : you have her love. I never had it " 
 " That you had not is her guilt?" 
 " No. She loves me as a gay child loves — no more. 
 To you she gives the love no woman gives save once. 
 Dying here, I swear to you that she has purity, and 
 honor, and a soul that through you may be lifted to all 
 high things. If you heed not the shame of her birth, no 
 other shame is on her. In my letters you will find her 
 dead husband's witness to her perfect innocence — men, 
 dying, do not lie. She suffers, she is crushed under brutal 
 humiliation ; shall you also strike her, now that she is 
 prostrate? Great God !— how shall I plead with you?
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 673 
 
 You tell rne your pride is broken, and you resist me thus ? 
 Look ! all her years through I have guarded her from 
 pain, and found her joy. Will you make my life a failure 
 at the last, because you will condemn and put away from 
 you this only creature that I love? For my sake — not 
 for hers — give her your pardon! I have forgiven, — I! — 
 I tell you that you shall not refuse to her what I have 
 yielded. I tell you that you shall not dare to judge when 
 I already have declared her sinless!" 
 
 He lifted himself upon his arm; his voice l'ose strong 
 and sonorous; his eyes flashed with the passions of other 
 days. He spoke no more as a suppliant ; he spoke as a 
 sovereign speaks, against whom there is no appeal. 
 
 There was a long silence. 
 
 Then, at last, his brother raised his head and looked 
 at him with one long, weary, reverent gaze. 
 
 " For your sake be it," he muttered, while his proud 
 lips trembled. "I believe — I will strive also to forgive." 
 
 Tricotrin smiled: the smile of one victorious, but whose 
 victory is wrested from the grave. 
 
 "You have paid me all your debt. Be merciful to her; 
 keep her in gladness and in honor. This legacy 1 leave 
 you — Viva's life." 
 
 His head fell back, his lungs bled inwardly, exhaustion 
 overcame him ; and through the throngs a loud wail went, 
 and echoed once again through all the passage-ways, and 
 over the close-standing roofs; till its reverberation shook 
 all silent inmost places into sound, and startled sleeping 
 infants in their cradles, and awakened old and helpless 
 men from their shivering lethargy by their dull hearths. 
 
 There were movemenl and agitation in the crowd be- 
 low; through them there forced her way, in blind, fierce 
 passage, the lofty, slender form of a woman, who lieu- 
 wit h swift sure feet up the Bide of the barricade, and 
 came, and threw herself beside him where he lav. She 
 saw no other face than his in that burning glow of sun- 
 light; she heard no other sound in all thai tempest of 
 emotion, save the cry that he was dead. 
 
 "1 am too late! too late again — my God!" .-he cried, 
 in her delirium. "Oh people of Paris! — have you no 
 shot, no steel for me? What was 1 once among you! — 
 
 57
 
 674 TRICOTRIN, 
 
 a stray and homeless thing, fed on his alms, saved by his 
 mercy, reared in honor and in innocence through him 
 alone. And I forsook him, I denied him, I was ashamed 
 of my debt, I was apostate to his love. Kill me with 
 him if you have pity in you. I am viler than the vilest 
 in your streets 1" 
 
 In her madness, the truth seemed to her all the atone- 
 ment that was left; in her remorse, the vengeance that 
 she forced upon herself was wider, deeper, more cruel, 
 than any vengeance that men take on guilt. There was 
 a terrible justice in her expiation: — to the people whom 
 she had scorned with all the gay scorn of her proud life, 
 from the childish days when she had trodden on her vine- 
 crown, her confession and her humiliation were now ren- 
 dered. 
 
 To the multitude the words bore no meaning; and her 
 voice was drowned in the moan of their own lamentation, 
 that was loud as the moan of the sea. But he heard, and 
 his eyelids unclosed, and his gaze dwelt on her in that 
 speechless and immeasurable love of which never in one 
 hour of her life had she once been worthy — until now. 
 
 " Viva mine," be murmured, in the old, sweet, familiar 
 phrase of other days, "thou dost wrong to thyself. 
 Thy sins have been but a woman's foibles. I forgave 
 them long ago. Truth is with thee now, let it abide with 
 thee forever. Where truth is not, how shall there be 
 peace? In his love thou wilt have no need of mine. 
 Have no memory of my life save such as may be glad to 
 thee. I made thy happiness — once. Remember only 
 that. I die content. I have saved all these from slaugh- 
 ter, — these children, — they may yet be great men, and 
 free. Life has been sweet, — ah, God! — but death is wel- 
 come. Stoop down and kiss me once — once — it will leave 
 no shame on thy lips for him." 
 
 For awhile he rested, motionless, breathless, with his 
 eyes blind to the light, and his ear hearing no more the 
 wail of the anguish beneath him. 
 
 Then suddenly he raised himself erect, and looked upon 
 the great, still crowd below, and upward at the summer 
 skies. 
 
 Earth had been ever so fair to him, and men so well-be-
 
 THE STORY OF A WAIF AND STRAY. 6T5 
 
 loved : and never again would his sight behold the green- 
 ness of the summer world, or the faces of his brethren. 
 
 " Let my death be the ransom of your lives," he cried to 
 them, while all the strength and sweetness of his voice 
 returned, and rang over the stricken multitude. "Keep 
 my memory in your hearts a little while. If it come ever 
 between you and any guilt, I shall not have lived my life 
 in vain. You suffer for me now ? — ah ! how soon will 
 you forget? Stand back, and let me see the sun once 
 more — once more: it is the smile of God." 
 
 And, looking upward to the last, he died. 
 
 Over the whole city a great silence fell ; and with that 
 hour the slaughter ceased. Even as he had loved them 
 in his life, so in his death he saved them. 
 
 And the people mourned, refusing to be comforted. 
 
 ME END.
 
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