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LI. '-^ARY
UHIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
RIVERSIDE
[l S H M A^E
% llofad
t^laxujc//^ Alan/ Blizab^ (Sf^a^cldo^)
BY THE AUTHOR OF
"LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET," "VIXEN," "MOHAWKS"
ETC ETC
St8«0tiiiJcO (!POit(0ti
LONDON :
61MPKIN, MAESHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & CO.,
UMITED.
STATIONERS' HALL COURT.
1891.
[4Ii rigUi rwerrecj,]
MISS BRADDON'S NOVELS.
Now Ready at all EooKSELLicr/j' and Bookstalls,
Price 2s. Gd. each, Clotu gilt.
THE AUTHOR'S AUTOGEArn EDITION
OF MISS BRADDON'S NOVELS.
" No one can be dull who lias a novel by Mips P.raddon In hnnd.
The most tiresome jouniey is b"gtiiled, and the most wearlsouie
Uliie-s lo brij^litened, by any one ol her books."
"iliss Braddou Is the Qneen of the circulating libraries."
The Woild.
LONDON!
SIMPKIN & CO., Limited,
Stationers' Uall Court.
Aivi at all Railway Bookstalls, Booksellers', and Libraries.
~r
CONTENTS
CHAP.
I. ' The Harvest is Past, the Summeu is Ended
11. 'Her Teet go Down to Death'
III. 'Cruel as the Grave' • • •
IV. The Furnace for Gold ,
V. 'Sweet to the Soul, and Health to th
Bones'
v;. *TnE End of that Mirth is Heaviness'
viL 'The Crown of Old Men'
VIII. ' She Stretcheth out her Hand to the
Poor'
IX. ' As Snow in Summer ' ...
X. 'My Soul Failed when He Spake' «
XI. 'The City is Full of Violence'
xn. 'Death is Come up Into our Windows'
xiiL 'The Breaker has Come up Before Them'
XIV. 'She is More Precious than Eubies'
XV. 'As a Eoe from the Hand of the Hunter
xvL 'Cau the Flag Grow "Without Water?'
XVII. *A Man's Heart Deviseth his Way' .
:^iii. ' Marred in the Hand of the Potter '
XIX. 'Set Mb as a Seal Upon Thine Heart'
XX. 'Behold, Thou art Fair, my Love'
XXL 'And it Brought Forth Wild Grapes'
XXII. ' How Weak is Thine Heart ! '
xxni. 'As A Bird that Wandereth from her Nest
PAGE
5
14
22
35
44
54
G4
74
84
99
113
122
13G
147
155
ICl
172
178
183
194
201
208
219
iv Contents
CHAP. PAGB
XXIV. 'As Messengers of Death* , , ^ , S.'U
XXV. 'Scattered toward all Winds' . , , 240
XXVI. 'Their Roots shall be as Rottenneso'. . 251
XXVII. 'The Rod hath Blossomed, Pride hath
Budded* 2G3
xxviii. 'Until the Day Break and the Shadows
Flee' 280
XXIX. 'My Beloved is Mine, a>'D I am His' . . 293
XXX. ' Tnouan Tnou set thy Nest Among the
Stars' 30G
xxxL 'These are the Men that Devise Mischief' 314
XXXII. 'And the Great Man IIumbletu Himself' . 324
xxxin. 'And the Day shall bk Dark over Them' 340
xxxiv. 'The Kingdoms of Nations Gathered To-
gether' 349
XXXV. 'And the Firstborn of the Pooe shall
Feed' 363
XXXVI. • For, lo ! the Winter is Past ' . . , 377
xxxvii. 'Let him Drink and Forget his Poverty' , 389
xxxviiL 'Darkness for Light, and Light for Dark-
ness' 396
XAXix. 'Thou dost Dwell among Scorpions' , , 401
XL. 'And a Stormy Wind shall Rend it' . , 421
XLi. 'The Morning is Come unto Thee' . , 433
X«iL * Ib the Midst of Babylon He shall Di«' , 44}
ISHMAEL
CHAPTER I
*THE HARVEST IS PAST, THE SUMMER IS ENDED*
Pen-Hoel, the old chdteau of Pen-Hocil, reared its steep roof
and conical turrets in the midst of a laud of orchards, and hill-
Bides, and marshy, fertile meadows populous with cattle, and
narrow lanes, with here and there a cluster of old stone cottaG^os
and a dingy old inn, which called itself a village. The cottag 'h
were substantial and roomy, the banas and rickyards had a
wealthy air. Here there was a flock of turkeys in a held, there
A procestion of gray-brother geese marching along a lane.
Yonder, across the salt meadows, the shallow winding stream-
lets, shadowed by the gray foliage of many a willow — a broad
stretch of wet sand glistened in the light, aud far away beyond
the level sands glimmered the gray of a distant sea.
This was Brittany ; and the house of Pen-Hoiil was one of
the oldest chateaux in the province, and the man who owned it
counted himself one of the best in the land. He was the
descendant of a good old Breton family — a race that had never
been rich, and wliich had been going downward tinancially for
the last hundred years. But Raymond Caradec, of Pen-Uoiil,
did not value himself by the length of his purse. The traditions
of his family were to him as gold and silver are to other men.
He never forgot to assert his superiority to the common herd.
It seemed to him that all the honours and achievements of his
race, from the days of St. Louis, had been lying by and accumu-
lating at compound interest to swell his dignity.
Hard for such a man as tliis to taste the flavour of dis-
honour! And yet such a cup, bitter as gall, had been given to
him to drink in days gone by, when the tall stalwart lad
yonder, dark-haired, dark-browed, sullen, was a little chilvl.
The boy looked a somewhat difficult subject to-day as he
6 Ishmael
lour.gtil in a moody attitude against the gray old stone parapet,
clothed with ferns, coloured with lichens, rich with the slow
growth of ages. He leant with folded arms resting upon the
stone, and his handsome dark eyes looking far away to that
silvery light upon the sea beyond the barren waste of wet
brown sands. Tar away on his right the fortress of Mont St.
Michel frowned against the sky, a conical mass of granite rock
and granite towers, looking like an Egyptian pyramid in the
distance. Along the green valley wound the shallow, sluggish
Couesnon, the stream which divides Normandy from Brittany ;
and on an inland summit the white houses of Avranches flashed
in the sunlight, reminding the lad yonder of a city that is set
on a hill and cannot be hid.
The chateau of Pen-Hoel stood upon a picturesqiTe height, a
green cliff which rose abruptly from the fertile level below, and
thus commanded a wide view over the pastoral country ; and
away to the rocks and the sea, Tombelaine, Mont St. Michel,
Cancale. That broad gravel terrace on the height was a
delightful walk for a September afternoon such as this — .the air
clear and mild, ^h.e eky a soft, mournful gray, touched with
sunlight towards the vrcst, an odour of dead leaves and burning
turf from the village in the green valley below.
Between this broad terrace and the chateau there was a
garden, a garden rich in such flowers as flourish abundantly in
that genial climate. The nine long windows and glass door of
the ground-floor, the ten windows of the upper story, looked
upon this garden from the gray stone front of the chateau. At
each end of the building there was a Norman tower with a
conical roof, and in the middle of the fa9ade over the glass
doorway there was a cupola surmounted by a gilded vane.
Under the cupola hung the big bell of Pen-Hoel — a bell that
had sounded many a call to arms in days gone by, but which
now rang only for breakfast and dinner.
In days gone by — days of adventure, danger, honour, fame.
But the days upon which Raymond Caradec brooded with sad
and bitter memory this afternoon as he paced slowly up and
down the terrace were days of trouble and vexation, pain,
grief, shame, dishonour — days which he would fain have for-
gotten, which he might have forgotten, perhaps, had not the
presence of this overgrown, idle, sullen youth of eighteen for
ever reminded him of that miserable period of his life.
Monsieur Caradec had been married twice. His second
wife was in the salon yonder, a pretty, fragile-looking young
woman, sitting at an open window reading a novel, and looking
up every now and then to talk to her two children, who were
playing together one minute, squabbling or fighting the next,
' The Harvest is Past, the Simimer is Ended ' 7
now rushing out upon the terrace, now running back into the
salon.
His second wife was pretty, fair-haired, delicate, somewhat
insignificant in face and Hgure. His first wife was superbly
handsome— a Judith, a Cleopatra, a queen among women — tall,
moulded like a statue, every line and curve perfection ; eyes of
darkest lustre, raven hair, classic profile, peerless complexion.
She had all these charms of face and figure, but she was unfor-
tunately the possessor of a diabolical temper ; and after leading
her husband a life of unspeakable torment for three years, she
ran away from him with his treacherous friend and her lover
just as Caradec of Pen-Hoel began to flatter himself that he
had got the mastery of that j^assionate nature, that he had
schooled the wildling to endure restraint and domesticity.
Guilt soon learns to lie. Coralie d'Estrange was all candour
and innocence when she was given to Monsieur Caradec— a girl
fresh from the galling restraints of an enclosed convent, glad to
mai-ry anybody who would give her liberty of speech and
action, fine clothes, and a little gaiety ; but, educated by her
seducer, the frank and too-outspoken girl became the sullen,
crafty woman, cunning enough to hoodwink even keen>eyed
liaymond Caradec.
Thus it was that, although there had been much bitterness
between husband and wife, and although Raymond knew that
his wife hated him, her flight with his false friend was a
thunderclap. He had believed in his friend's honour in the
abstract, and the seducer had played so deep a game, had so
steeped himself in hypocrisy, and had so coloured his every
word and every act with falsehood, that he had appeared to
the husband as that one man whom his wife most detested.
There had not been a flaw in the acting of their comedy. And
one fine morning they vanished, slipped quietly away in the
broad noon, carrying the three-year-old boy with them. Before
Raymond knew that this triple disappearance, which might
mean an accident by land or sea, really meant an elopement,
Lucien Rochefort and his mistress had sailed for the Isle of
Bourbon, where the traitor had an estate.
At this distance the lovers may possibly have considered
themselves beyond the reach of Raymond Caradec's vengeance.
If so, they poorly understood the master of Pen-Hoel. He
followed them to their voluptuous retreat in the Indian Ocean,
their fairy palace in a land of volcanoes — a white- walled villa,
with its back against the mountains, and its feet in the sea.
He followed them there as he would have followed them to
the farthest confines of earth. "Within an hour of landing he
challenged his false friend, met him next morning at B'lnrise,
8 Ishmael
and ran him througli the heart in a romantic dell on the shord
of that tropical ocean. He left the island by the next steamer
with the traitor's blood hardly dry upon his sword, and he left
his wife and son without ever having seen the face of either, or
made a single inquiry as to their circumstances.
It was only when the island was a vanishing speck upon the
horizon line — a spot of darkness on the blue of the ocean, which
might be earth or cloud— that Eaymond Caradec remembered
the existence of the child, and that, in so leaving the island, he
was leaving the boy in his mother's keeping, and leaving him to
all the chances of evil naturally involved in such companionship;
but even this consideration did not soften him,
' She chose to steal him from me,' he said to himself, with a
scornful shru^ of his shoulders. ' Let her keep the viper she
hatched. Wliat should I have to do with him ] '
He included the unoffending child in his savage hatred of
the woman who had deceived him. She was pure and innocent
when she bore him that only child ; but there had been no love
between them even in those early days, and he had never loved
the boy. Six months after the child's birth Eochefort returned
from the Isle of Bourbon, where he had been summoned to his
father's death-bed soon after leaving college, and where he had
lived for some years. He appeared unexpectedly one day at Pen-
Hoel, was welcomed warmly by its master ; and in the com-
panionship of his old college friend Raymond found a resource
against the gloom and dreariness of a loveless home. He talked
of his wife's faults freely to his friend, made him arbiter in their
disputes ; and he was secure in the belief that the two hated
each other. And now love and friendship had both proved
false, and the man who had been to him as a brother was lying
in his early grave on yonder tropical shore, and the woman who
had been his wife was an outcast.
What was the after-life of the woman and the child so for-
saken by their natural protector, so given over to evil destiny —
a prey for the gods 1 Yonder dark-browed boy, Sebastien, could
tell what that life was like if he cared to unlock those firm
lips of his to tell the story of immerited sorrow, unmerited
shame.
Madame Caradec did not remain long in the Isle of Bourbon
after her lovei-'s death. Sebastien had only the faintest,
dimmest memories of that volcanic island— a vision of lofty
mountain-peaks, snowclad and dazzling ; a fertile shore, fruits,
flowers such as he never saw in his older years ; a blue, bright
sea, and curious black faces, friendly and smiling, with flashing
teeth and strange rolling eyes. It was all as a dream. Such
things had been a part of his life, and he a part of them,
The Harvest is Past, the Summef is Ended* 9
enjoying the sea and the flowers and the hot blue sky with a
kind of half-conscious, sensuous existence, like the life of any
other young animal rolling upon the sunlit sands.
Then came a long experience of a ship — storms and fine
weather, rain and sunshine. He remembered that part of his
life vividly. The sailors, and how good they were to him ; and
how he loved a certain three — two blacks and a white — who
were his special friends and protectors.
His mother ? "Well, he hardly knew of her as his mother in
those days — had never been taught to call her by that name.
He knew that there was a handsome lady on board, who wore
fine gowns and sparkling rings, and who lolled all day in a low
chair on deck, under an umbrella, fanning herself, and talking
to a gentleman who was always smoking. The lady spoke to
Stibastien sometimes, the gentleman never. The lady's French
maid looked after Sebastien : dressed and undressed him, put
him to bed in a berth on the top of her own — a funny little
berth, with a round scuttle port staring in at it like a giant's
eye — an eye that watched him sleeping or waking, and of which
he felt sometimes a strange, indescribable fear, as if it were
alive and a thing of evil.
The ship was a steamer. A horrible monster in a black and
fiery pit — a monster with gigantic arms and legs of shining
steel, a living thing that throbbed and plunged by day and
night — drove the great ship through the water, and very nearly
drove Sebastien out of his mind when he tried to understand
what the great fiery thing was and what it did. Even in those
days he had a passionate yearning for all kinds of knowledge,
to understand the meaning of all things : why the stars shone
and what they were ; why the waves rolled and rose in this
way or that, and the nature of that strange white light which
gleamed and flashed upon the ever-moving waters ; where the
world ended, and where dead people went.
He questioned the sailors upon all these subjects ; and his
favourite Blackie, who had a vivid imagination, answered him
very fully out of his own African inner consciousness, enriched
by the superstitions and traditions of his race ; so that, when he
landed at Havre at four years old, Sebastien Caradec was steeped
in Malagasy folk-lore, and knew very little else.
His next memories were of a house among trees and flowers
—not such trees or such flowers as he had known yonder, by
the Indian Ocean. Everything here was on a smaller scale and
of a less lavish loveliness. The house was small, but it was full
of prettiness and bright colour. The garden was only a lawn,
with a bank of flowers and a belt of foliage surrounding it, and
a fountain in a marble basin in the middle of the grass ; it was
10 Ishmacl
eo small that Subastien liad explored its innermost recesses in
ten minutes, and had to begin again and go on beginning again
all day long, since his sole amusement was to be found in this
garden; save on those rare occasions when Lisette,the maid, took
him for a long walk in the big, wonderful city a little way oif —
a city of streets that had no end, of houses that seemed to reach
to the skies — horses, carriages, fountains, endless shojDS, number-
less peofjle, a perpetual trampling to and fro, and the sound of
trumpets and drums, a bright vision of helmets and prancing
steeds, or a little troop of foot soldiers marching by, with a giant
in front, swinging a gilded staff, and strange-looking men in
white leather aprons, marching two and two. Then came the
splendour of carriages flashing past, carriages drawn by four
horses. The Citizen King was ruler in that old-fashioned Paris,
and Prince Louis Napoleon was still beating the j-iavements of
West-end London, and hatching the policy of the future —
dreaming of a new Paiis, in which he should be master, a Paris
all beauty and luxury, vivid, glorious as the crystalline city of
the Apocalypse. Who shall say how glorious were the dreams
behind that inscrutable brow, which had faced failure and
defeat, a father's stigma, the world's contempt, prison and exile,
and which still pressed steadily forward to the goal ?
The handsome lady who had been on boai'd the ship sat
among the flowers iit the verandah, and fanned herself, and
talked to the gentleman who smoked, just as she had done on
the deck of the steamer. He was a stoutish man, very dark,
with blue-black hair, and black, almond-shaped eyes ; and
Sebastien hated him without knowing why. The man was
never absolutely unkind to the boy. He only ignored him.
The woman was sometimes kind, sometimes cruel. She would
play with the child, and caress him passionately in the morning,
and fling him from her in the evening, in a bluest of anger, for
which he had given her no cause.
Lisette said Madame was a good soul, but was not always
herself. Sdbastien wondered what it was to be not oneself, and
why this mother of his changed so curiously— soft and fair, and
gentle and caressing in the morning ; red and angry, with eyes
that flashed fire, at night.
She went out very often in her carriage with the dark
gentleman ; after midday it was more usual for her to be out of
doors than at home. She went to races, to drive in the Bois,
to dine at a fashionable restaurant, and almost every evening
to the opera or theatre. Her toilet was a solemn business,
which occupied her and Lisette for an hour and a half at a
stretch ; and then she came downstairs rustling in silk or satin,
with an Indian shawl upon her shoulders, a plume of feathers
* The Harvest is Past, the Summer is Ended * 11
in her bonnet. Everytliing about her was ricli and beautiful.
The sheen of satin, the glow of colour, caught the child's eye
and fascinated him.
' Mamma, how pretty you are ! ' he cried one day ; and
then she caught him up in her arms and kissed him, and called
him her little angel, and took him out to look at her horses,
the beautiful golden bays, nodding their thoroughbred heads in
glittering bright harness, champing their bits.
Sdbastien had often patted the horses and admired the
carriage, but he had never ridden in it, had never sat by his
mother's side upon those brocaded cushions.
One day he asked her to take him with her, pleaded to her
piteously as little children plead for trifles — as if this one thing
were a matter of Kfe or death.
The dark man was standing by, and she turned to him with an
entreating look — looked at him as a slave looks at her master.
' May not I take him ? ' she asked. ' Why shouldn't 1 1 '
' Why shouldn't you ? Because I did not buy that carriage
for another man's brat to sit in. Take that little howler
indoors, Jean' (to the servant), 'and strangle him if he doesn't
hold his tongue. You ought to have left him in Bombon with
his darkeys, as I advised you. He would have done very well
there, and he is in everybody's way here.'
In everybody's way. That was a hard saying, and although
Sebastien was not quite seven years old when he heard it, the
full meaning of the speech went home.
He never asked to go in his mother's carriacre after that
unforgotten day. He never again went into the portico when
she was going to her cariiage ; never loitered in front of the
steps to pat the horses' satin coats, to look into their full,
brown eyes— brown under a violet film, large kind eyes which
he had loved to contemplate. He shrank away from that
pompous equipage and the smart livery servants as fiom an
unholy tbing. The men had a way of grinning, of muttering
confidences to each other, which he hated. Lisette was the
only person in the house whom he liked, and the time was fast
coming when he should cease to trust even her.
It seemed to him that he had been living for summers and
wintei-s innumerable in that house in the Bois de Boulogne.
The geraniums, and verbenas, and heliotropes, and calceolarias,
a mass of scarlet, and purple, and gold, being renewed again and
again ; the leaves falling and returning again ; and yet he was
not nine years old. Days so idle and empty, a life so mono-
tonous, seemed endless. He was nearly nine years old, and he
was only an idle little vagabond in fine clothes. He could
hardly read, although Lisette pretended to teach him — and
12 lahmael
Lisette was eiipposed to be a superior person, quite above the
average lady's-maid. But in a house where the mistress lived
only for dress and pleasure, and had, moreover, a certain
failing which was only spoken of in whispers— that terrible
failing of being sometimes just a little ' out of herself' — it was
not to be supposed that the maid would be orderly or indus-
trious. Lisette dressed like a woman of fashion in Madame
Caradec's cast-off clothes, and her favourite occupation was
to stroll in the Bois, or to roam the streets of Paris under the
excuse of giving the boy an airing. S6bastien had many such
airings, and grew to hate the streets of Paris, where Lisette
indulged all the instincts of the true fidneur, looking into
print-shops, jewellers', booksellers', milliners' ; looking on at
street row^ listening to street music, reading the bills of the
theatres.
The house in the Bois was the kind of house which agents
always call a hijou house, and was much better worthy that
qualification than many houses so called. It had been built by
a famous opera-singer in the zenith of her career, and sold by
her in her decline. It was a thing of beauty in the genre
Louis Quatorze, for people had not then discovered that
your only true loveliness lies in the genre Louis Seize.
It was a small house, on two floors ; the rooms panelled
in white and gold ; ceilings and doors painted with Cupids
and rose garlands ; looking-glasses wherever they could be
introduced ; gilding everywhere ; sofas and chairs andportihes
of Gobelins tapestry.
The rooms on the upper floor all opened out of a spacious
central landing, lighted from the top ; the staircase descended
in a circular sweep from this gallery, and every sound on the
floor below travelled vipward through this wide opening, and
was distinctly heard upon that upper story where Scbastieu
slept in a little room next to Lisette's bed-chamber.
Thus it happened that he was startled from his sleep one
night by the sound of voices below — loud, angry, menacing ;
and then cam-e a peal of bitter laughter, and then a woman's
shriek. He leapt from his little bed, and rushed to the
gallery, and looked over the gilded balustrade. There was
no one in the hall below, where the lamp shed a soft light
tempered by ruby glass — a light that tinged the marble pave-
ment and the white bear-skin rug at the foot of the stairs with
roseate gleams. The hall was empty, but those angry voices
were still sounding in the drawing-room.
' Why did I ever trust my life with such a brute 1 What
could I see in you to like ? '
'You saw plenty of money : that is what you like !'
'The Harvest is Fast, the Summer is Elided' 13
'The meanness— to remind — obligations — insufferable vul-
garity ! '
The words came in gasps like javelins hurled in the face
ii a foe.
' You are insatiable — a bottomless pit for money I '
* A gambler — a profligate ! '
* You di'ink like a fish ! '
* Drink — oh, execrable liar — drink t Not an hour, not a
day, will I live under sucli insults. Here, and here, and here —
take them back— every one ! Take your diamonds ! Do you
suppose I vahie such dirt from a man capable V
And then came a burst of hysterical sobbing, a muttered
oath in the man's bass voice, a door flung open below, a stag-
gering, uncertain rush up the stairs, the swirl and rustle of
a woman's satin gown, a figure lurching against Sebastien as he
clung to the balustrade, pushing past the poor little trembler,
unconscious of that childish presence.
' Adieu 1 ' called the bass voice from below ; * remember,
when / say adieu, it means for ever.'
There was no reply from above. The swaying, tottering
figure had vanished through the open door of Madame's bed-
chamber. Stifled sobs, angry mutterings sounded faintly from
within ; but there was no reply to that voice below.
' Very well, then, it is adieu,' said the voice, and then came
the sound of footsteps crossing the hall. The heavy outer door
was opened and slammed to again with a reverberation that
sounded like the closing of a chapter in a life-history.
CHAPTER II
*UER FEET GO DOWN TO DEATH*
"WnEN that outer door sliut with its sonorous clang, Sdbastien
had a feeling as of freedom and safety suddenly recovered. The
dark man was gone. Those sinister eyes, which had so often con-
templated him with a moody look, were on the outside of the house.
While the man was inside, the boy had lived in ever-j)resent
dread of him and of that darkling look. He was gone now, and
the manner of his departure meant that he was gone for ever.
Sdbastien crept through the half-open door into his mother's
bedroom, a little white figure in a nightgown. He crept across
the thick Aubusson carpet, and squatted down on the edge of
the estrade iipon which his mother's bed stood — a regal bed, tall,
splendid, draped with amber satin and heavy old Flanders lace.
How beautiful the room was in the soft light of the shaded
lamp ! Sebastien had never entered it till to-night. Among the
mysteries and secrets of that house this room had been the
most mysterious. Sebastien had never dared to cross the
threshold of that door. He had seen his mother emerge, radiant
and beautiful, like a goddess from a temple ; but the temple
was not for his feet to enter, and the boy — petted in one hour,
thrust angrily aside in the next — had lost all the natural
audacity of childhood.
But to-night his mother was in trouble, and he wanted to
comfort her if he could. He clambered upon the bed, and put
his arms round her, and kissed her wet cheek. She murmured
some broken words, and then dropped into a heavy sleep, dis-
turbed now and again by a groan or a little cry as of pain.
The boy slipped gently from her side, and sat on the estrade,
with his head leaning against the bed, and looked wonderingly
round the room.
Yes, it was very beautiful : a room modelled upon that old
stately pattern of Versailles in the days of the great king ; a
miniature reproduction of that room in which the mighty Louis
lay dying, with Madame de Maintenon and all his courtieia
watching the la-st flicker of that expiring light. Dressing- tabl^
with scattered trinkets amidst a litter of ivory brushes, silvei
hand-mirror, cut-crystal bottles, fans, jewel-caskets, sachets
wardrobe with doors of marqueterie and ormolu, one door half
o}>en and revealing the heaped-up satins and cashmeres on the
shelves within. Everything was costly and more or less artistic,
and the mistress of all this 'mery lay Ihcre like a log, sleeping
off the fumes of wine.
'Her Feet go down to Death* 15
The days that followed that night were the happiest days
of Scbastieu's childhood. His mother and Lisette went off to
the sea next morning, carrying the boy with them. It was
August, and divine weather. They stayed at Dieppe, at an
hotel facing the sea, and sat upon the beach half the day, and
drove about the country the other half, and dined together in
a pretty little room with a balcony overlooking the sea ; and
after dinner Sebastien went to bed and slept soundly, steeped
in fresh air and sunjhine, and the bliss of fancjing himself
beloved by his mother ; while Madame Caradec and Lisette
went to the casino, where the lady gambled and the maid
looked on.
These halcyon days lasted for about a fortnight, by the end
of which time Madame Caradec had spent or lost all her money.
She went back to Paris, expecting to find her lover subjugated
by this hard treatment, unable to endure life without her, and
ready to grovel at her feet for pardon. Instead of this state of
things, she found an auctioneei-'s bill posted against the walls
of her bijou villa. Minions of the law were in possession of the
splendours that had been nominally hers. The door of the fairy
palace in the wood was shut against her for evermore.
The blow was sharp, and went home. Still in the zenith of
her charms Madame Caradec had believed until this moment
that her power over her slave was limitless. From the day of
her arrival at Bourbon, beautiful, triumphant, happy in her
escape from a husband she hated, and in her union with a lover
she adored, Laurent Deschanel, the rich creole, had been her
devoted admirer. He had followed her like her shadow, had
endured all the arrows of an insolent tongue, and all the
outrages which a proud and passionate woman, doubly sensitive
on account of her false jjosition, her blighted name, could heap
upon the man who dared to assail her constancy, to try to tempt
lier from the lover for whom she had sacrificed home and
country. She had laughed at his love, and tlie sordid tempta-
tions which he offered — a settlement — jewels — a position such
as Lucien Eochefort could never give her.
Then came the bloody close of her brief day of bliss ; and
she was alone in a remote colony, without a friend, without a
counsellor, outlawed by her sin, and almost penniless. Laurent
Deschanel seized his opportunity. A month after Lucien's death,
when Madame Caradec had tasted the cup of bitterness and
desolation, he came to her in a new character — he came as
consoler, adviser, friend. He offered her his purse just as she
was beginning to feel the horror of being penniless in a strange
land. She received him with scant civility, but accepted
the use of his purse ; and six months afterwards she left the
16 Ishmael
island wliei-e her presence was a scandal, as Laurent Deschanel's
mistress. The man adored her, but he was a Creole, with all
thft Creole vices. They led a life of sensuous ease, of frivolous
pleasure, recognising no higher law than their own fancy, no
higher aim than the enjoyment of the hour. Their life, for the
most part, had been made up of quarrels and reconciliations, and
many of those quarrels had been every whit as violent as that
last dispute after which Monsieur Deschanel had cried ' Good-
bye for ever.' Coralie fancied this quarrel would end as the
others had ended, and that Laurent would be all the more her
slave because of that fortnight of severance. He would have
discovered the emptiness of life without his idol,
Madame Caradec did not know that her slave had for some
time past been somewhat weary of his chains, and that an ido
who takes too much fine-champagne and chartreuse, and has fits
of floom and nervous crises of passionate despair in her cups,
bewailing the bitterness of Fate and the loss of honour, is apt
to pall upon her worshipper. She woke from a dream of despotic
power to find herself an outcast, friendless in the streets of Paris,
face to face with stem reality for the first time in her life.
Mistress and maid put their heads together, and, after much
driving to and fro in a hired carriage, they found lodgings in a
somewliat tawdry hotel in the rue St.-Honor6. The rooms were
expensive, the furniture was gavidy, and Sebastien saw his small
fif^ure, in a velvet tunic and lace collar, reflected at every angle
in the tall looking-glasses which adorned the room. It seemed
to him as if the cliief furniture of the apartment consisted of
looking-glasses and ormolu clocks. He heard the monotonous
tick, tfck, tick on every side, go where he would. _ The street
was narrow, and the heavily-draped windows let in the gloom
of a dull, gray evening. Everything was difi'erent from the
lovely little house in the wood yonder.
'Mamma,' cried Sebastien, hanging on his mother's satin
gown, 'when are we going home again i'
' Never 1 ' she answered, angrily, with hoarse, thickened
accents, which the boy knew too well— her evening voice, ' We
have no home,'
After this came other changes. They seemed to be always
removing to new lodgings. Lisette managed everything.
Madame seldom left her room till late in the afternoon. At
one time they occupied an apartment in the Champs-Elysdes —
pretty little rooms with low ceilings, an entresol looking into a
small garden where Sdbastien could play in his lonely, dreary
fashion, very tired of solitude and confinement. On fine even-
ings he went out with Lisette, and saw the lamps and heard the
music in a garden near, and played with strange children, while
' Her Feat go doion to Death ' 17
Lisette conversed with her numerous friends. His mother was
seldom at home of an evening. He saw less of her now than eveu
under the Deschanel dominion, severe as that regime had been.
Strange faces came and went across the shifting scenes of
Si^bastien's life at this period— faces which never grew friendly
or welcome to him. There was a stout elderly man, with a
gray moustache, who seemed to have some kind of authority,
and with whom Scbastien's mother had terrible quarrels, which
recalled the acene in the villa. He disappeared when they left
the Champs-Elys^es ; and now their lodgings got shabbier and
shabbier, until Sebastien, after having been awakened suddenly
out of his sleep one night, hudilled hastily in his clothes, and
hurrird off in a fiacre, awoke in the gray winter liglit to a
wretched, bare-looking little room with whitewashed walls. He
had never seen such a room in his life before. It was like a cell
in a prison. There was no furniture but a narrow iron bed-
stead and a rash-bottomed chair. He got up and stood upon
the chair to look out of the window, and turned sick and
cold at the sight of the yard below him. He was ona sixth
story. Long rows of windows faced him on the other side of a
quadrangle : shabby windows with every variety of blind or
curtain— with clothes hanging out to dry— with all those signs
of humble poverty which were new to Sebastien.
He took fright suddenly. Why had he been brought to
such a place 1 A\)\n\\.Vmg stories of child stealers, wherewith
Lisette had beguiled the weariness of long winter evenings,
flashed across his mind. He had been stolen— last night when
he was too sle&py to be quite sure who carried him downstairs
and put him in the fiacre— axiA brought to this dreadful place,
a prison for stolen children. He was going torush out of the
loom in a panic, when he heard a familiar voice close b}'. It
was Lisette singing the last popular refrain, ' Fautpas fermer
Vceil,^ in her Porte St.-Martin voice, close by. Yes, Lisette
was in the adjoining room, with which the door of his little
cell, or closet, communicated. He rattled at the door, which
was bolted, and Lisette opened it and admitted him to a bare-
looking room with a few poor sticks of furniture, a chest of
drawers with a cracked marble top, a tawdry gilt clock that
bad long left off going, a round table, and a wretched little bed
in a corner. There was a smaller room within, for INIadame
Caradec, who must have her den ia which to sleep half the day.
There was a coffee-pot on a black ii'on stove, which projected
into the room, and there were some preparations for breakfast,
scanty enough, on the table. Everything had a barren,
poverty-stricken look. Sebastien did not know that his
mother and her confidential servant had lived on credit aa long
c
18 Ishmael
as tradesmen would trust them, and that this sudden plunge
into abject poverty was the natural result of exhausted credit
To S^bastien the change appeared unnatui-al. But Sebastien
was not a pampered child. He was not accustomed to have his
comfort studied, his wishes gratified. He had been flung about
like a ball all his little life, put here or put there, caressed or
thrust aside, as suited the convenience of his owners. And
now he ate his breakfast of a roll without any butter, and a
cup of coffee, without venturing to question Lisette about the
sudden change in his surroundings.
As the time went on the boy grew accustomed to tliia
squalid life. It was a long, long winder— joyless days, dismal
ni"hts, for his mother and Lisette were never at home of an
evening. He spent those long evenings in utter solitude,
locked ''in the bare, cheerless room, listening to all the sounds
of the huge, uncleanly barrack in which he lived— sounds of
brawling, strife, drmiken fury, drunken mirth ; cries of murder
sometimes, and the crash of funiiture thro-um over, the dull
thud of a cruel blow ; children squalling, naked feet pattering
along the brick-floored passage; vulgar voices singing vulgar
songs, whistling, screaming, laughter; and now and then, for
variety, a visit from the police.
So the boy passed his tenth birthday, steeped in ignorance
—for Lisette had long ago abandoned her feeble attempts at
tuition— and very weary of his first decade of existence.
J^is mother and her companion had found an occupation
for their evenings at a theatre in this wretched quarter — a
theatre frequented by workmen and their womenkind, and
v'liere the entertainment was of the strongest order. Madame
Caradec's beauty and Lisette's impudence were their only
Cfconmiendations for the dramatic profession. Madame waa
engaged as a showy figure in a fairy spectacle. She had but
to "stand where slie was put— a nymph draped in spangled gauze
in a tinsel grotto. Lisette, the brighter and cleverer of the
two, was entrusted with a speaking part, and sang her hall
dozen couplets, in the approved style, ' with intention.'
Sebastien was not allowed to go to the theatre where his
mother was engaged. It was to him a mystery, but he heard
the two women talk of it as they sat late into the night
drinking some yellow liquid, which looked like melted gold, in
their glasses, and which they spoke of laughingly by all kinds of
strange names. S(5bastien used to hear them talking late into the
night^'from the little iron bedstead in his cell. He had toolittle
ai»r and exercise in the long dreary day to sleep well at night.
Life went on after this fashion all through the winter. On
? atidaya Madame Caradec slept till evening, or else rose rather
*EeY Feet go down to Death* 19
earlier than nsiial and went out ■with Lisette, dressed in her best
gown, for a day's pleasure. Sdbastien never knew where they
went, or what their pleasures were, save from their disjointed
talk after these revels about the dishes they had eaten and the
wine they had drunk. His mother's best gown and bonnet
had a slovenly air now. The satin was frayed, the sleeves were
worn ragged at the edges. The Indian shawl had lost ita
beautiful coloui-ing, and had been darned in ever so many places
by Lisette, who now dressed as well as her mistress with the
cast-oflF finery that had been flung to her in days gone by. A
good deal of this finery had gone to 'my aunt,' but enough
was left to make the maid as much a lady as Madame.
Spring came. March winds — bitter, biting winds, which
seemed to work their own will in the great bare barrack, with
its endless corridors and its hundred rooms, cai-]5etless boards,
bricked passages, a house that was old before it had lost its air
of raw newness, woodwork shrunk, panels of the doors split,
staircase walls green with dirt and grease. Every one who
rubbed against the wall seemed to leave the taint and smear of
a sordid existence behind ; every one who mounted the stairs
left the print of dirty boots.
There were no shutters, no curtains, no draperies to shut
out the cold. The east wind shrieked and whistled in the
passages as in a mountain glen. Madame Caradec complained
that a villainous cough, which had fixed its claws upon her
at Christmas, would never be any better so long as she lived
in that infected hole. She was very angry when Lisette
suggested that the cough might go if she would leave off
di'inking brandy.
' Why do you drink it yourself if it is poison ? ' she asked.
'I only take a taste now and then to keep you company,'
answered Lisette ; which was not true, although there is no doubt
the maid was much more sober than the mistress.
The bleak March made Madame's cough much worse. It
grew so bad that she was obliged to give up her engagement —
her twenty francs a week — at the theatre, her Sundays' feastings
on the boulevard or in the suburbs.
Her cheeks were hollow, her eyes brilliant with hectic light.
She was no fit occupant for a tinsel grotto, for Juno's jjeacock
car, or the palace of the fairy queen. Lisette, wlio had developed
some talent in the soubrette line, was now the only bread-winner,
and her thirty francs a week did not go very far. Before that
month of March was over everything that could be taken to my
aunt had been so taken, even to Madame Caradec's last satin
gown and Indian shawl, and the large Leghorn bonnet with
its marabout plumage. She had only a peignoir left ; but aa
20 Ishmael
she hardly ever rose from her bed n-^w, this did not much
matter.
She was sorely ill, and suffered a great deal. AVhile Lisette
was at the theatre, Sebastien used tx) sit by his mother's bed for
hours, deeply sorry for her, full of silent pity. He gave her
brandy when she asked for it if there was any there to give.
"Who could refuse her the only thing that seemed to give her
relief from that terrible oppression, that labour and pain in
every breath she drew ? The boy understood dimly, from
Lisette's talk, that it was wi'ong to drink brandy ; but he knew
that sick people must have physic, and this yellow stuff, which
shone and sparkled in the glass, seemed the only physic that
was of any use to his mother. A doctor came in once or twice
a week and looked at her, and went through ceilain formalities
with a stethoscope, and took his fee of a couple of francs, and
went away again, without having been of any more use than the
organ-grinder down in the street below, grinding the same aira
from the ' Dmne Blanche ' and the ' Domino Noir ' over and over
again on certain days of the week.
One day, when the doctor had paid his visit, Lisette followed
him into the corridor, and came back a few minutes afterwards
with her wicked little Parisian face all blotted with tears — that
nndacious countenance which nad so many grimaces for the
blouses in the pit and galler}' yonder. Sebastien asked her why
she was crying, but she frowned at him and pointed to the bed
for her only answer ; and he knew that she was sorry for his
mother, whose breathing was so painful, and whose hands and
face scorched him when he caressed her. There were two red
fever-spots on her hollow cheeks, and her eyes shone like
glass.
Later in the evening, when Lisette had put on her cloak and
bonnet to go to the theatre, Sebastien heard her talking with
one of her gossips in the corridor.
• She will die,' said Lisette, ' and who is to pay for her funeral ?
She was born a lady, poor thing. It would be hard if she were
taken away upon the poor people's common bier to be flung into
their common grave.'
' Is there no one 1 ' asked the neighbour.
* There are three or four. I have written to them all. One
answered — he who once thought gold too common for her — that
she might starve or rob for ought he cared. Another sent me
twenty louis at the beginning of her illness, but told me not to
trouble him again. Ajnother gave no answer. There is only
the husband left. I think, perhaps, he would pay for the
funeral for the sake of being sure he had got rid of her,'
♦ Why don't you write to him 1 '
'Her Feet go doion to Death' 2l
' She would be so angry,' murmured Lisette.
•How can that matter 1 She will be dead before lie can
answer your letter.'
The neighbour was right. Lisette wrote to Raymond
Caradec, of Pen-Hoel, by the next day's post ; and Coralie was
dead before her husband came in person to answer her hand-
maid's letter.
She was lying on her shabby bed in the wretched lodging,
two tall wax candles burning on the little table beside her
pillow, and a little spray of box lying between them. They
had folded her hands upon her breast, and laid a cheap little
metal crucifix and a tv/enty sous rosarj'' above them. All the
taint and soil of her sins had vanished from the marble face.
It was almost as beautiful as the day she came out of her
convent school to plight her faith to Raymond Caradec. His
youth came back to him, all the fervour and hope of that day,
as he stood looking down at his dead wife in the chilly, gray
March afternoon, amidst the sordid suri'oundings of the work-
man's quarter, bare walls, dirt, squalor. He, the proud bearer
of a good old name, the dishonoured husband, knelt down and
touched the marble hand with his lips. He had hated her while
she lived ; but pity melted the ice at his heart ; the awfulness
of death was stronger than anger or revenge.
He said a prayer, dipped his finger in the holy water beside
the bed, crossed himself, and went back to the sitting-room,
where Lisette and Sebastien stood waiting for him. The boy's
pale face turned towards him wistfully as if entreating for a
father's kindness.
Caradec hardly glanced at his son. He took out his purse
and unfolded three or four bank-notes, which he handed to
Lisette.
' There is money for the funeral. Let it be simple but
decent,' he said ; ' and let there be no name on the coffin or the
headstone. Initials and a date will be enough. She will be
buried at Montmartre, of course 1 '
' That is nearest,' said Lisette.
' And the nearest is best. Why loiter on the last stage of
a journey?' said Caradec, with a saturnine smile. 'The boy
will go back to Brittany with me.'
Sebastien put his arms round Lisette's neck. After all, she
was the only friend he had ever known since he parted from his
eailor friends on the steamer — she had nursed him when he was
sick, she had amused him when he was well : all he had ever
known of motherly care was that which he had received from
her.
* May not she go with us 1 ' he asked.
22 Ishnael
• No, child ; there is nothing for Mademoiselle to do at)
Pen-Hoel ; and such an accomplished young person would not
like to be buried iu a country chateau,' answered the Count,
Bcoffingly.
He had a carriage at the door. Lisette put S6basticn's poor
little wardrobe into a small valise, and the three went down-
Btairs together, the workmen whom they met on the stairs, the
women and children at their open doors — all staring at the tall,
dark gentleman who had such a grand look, and who was leading
the shabby, out-at-elbows little lad down the dirty stair by the
collar of his threadbare jacket. Everybody wanted to know
a hat it all meant. Lisette had ample entertainment offered
;r by her gossips when she went upstairs again. A'goutie'
here, and another '■ goutte' there, would she but only talk her
fill, and tell all that could be told about the handsome corpse
lying in the candle-lit room yonder, and the handsome gentlemau
who had just go:ve downstairs.
CHAPTEE III
* CRUEL AS THE GRAVE'
Monsieur Caradec and his son left the rue Jean-Jacques
Rousseau that evening by the Malle Poste for Brest, quite the
rapidest way of travelling in those days. They sat side by side
IE. the coupe, with one other traveller, and travelled all that
night and all the next day. It was in the twilight of a cold
spring evening that Sebastien saw the towers and pinnacles of
Mont St.-Michel stand darkly out against the yellow simset
sky, and the gray sea deepening to purple towards the distant
horizon. The whole of the journey had been full of interest to
him. His young limbs had been cold and cramped half the
time ; but his yo\;ng eyes had devoured the landscape, his
young soul had dnmk deep of delight. The trees and fields,
the hills and valleys, the winding streams and dark mysterioua
woods — all these were new to the young captive of the city, who
had longed with a passionate longing for escape from the blank
and drear monotony of stone walls, dirt, and squalor. Tha'%
house in the Faubourg INIontmartre had hung upon him like ft
nightmare, had crushed his young spirit, dulled his yo\mg blood.
Whast ineffable rapture, then, to be borne swiftly along theaa
dewy eo» JSisj roads to see the rivsr shining uudsr the stars. te>
• Cniel as the Grave ' 23
•watch the moon rushing among tlie clouds — l;e never snspecte({
it was the clouds that went so fast, and not the luonn — to hear
the kine lowing in their willowy pastures — the village cock
crowing as tlie mail-cart drove past farms and cottages in the
sunrise ! What a delight to descend at the village inn for a
hasty snatch of food, a cup of coffee, a crust of bread and butter,
and then up again and away ! — the post-cart stops for neither
king nor kaiser — and so, and so, till in the deepening dusk they
alighted at the bottom of the hill crowned by the turrets and
gable ends of Pen-Hoiil.
After this came a life of solitude and abandonment almost as
rjomplete as that of the fairy palace in the wood near Passy.
The Count had taken his boy back to the chateau because it
was the easiest way of disposing of him, not for any love that
he bore to Sdbastien. What love could he feel for a boy wha
seemed to him the incarnation of past wrongs ? His own son,
yes ; but it was of Coralie he thought when he looked at the
boy, albeit St^bastien was a true Caradec — dark-eyed, tall, broad-
shouldeied, with marked features, and a proud carriage of the
head.
Raymond let his son run wild, saw as little of him a>- possible,
and thought he had done his duty to the boy in the way of
education when he had engaged the services of the village
priest — a benevolent old man, born in the peasant class, and no
marvel of erudition — as Sdbastien's tutor, father Bressant was
horrified when he found that, at eleven years of age, Sebastien
could neither read nor write, and the first year of his tuition
was devoted to these elements of all learning and the Church
catechism. In the second year the cur6 taught his pupil a
little Latin, and the histoiy of France as made and provided by
the historians of Port-Royal. The hours given to study were
of the shortest, for StSbastien chafed against the confinement
within four walls. Ilis wild, free life satisfied all the longinga
of his nature. He rode, he fished, he shot and hunted with the
mstinct of a born sportsman. He had hardly a friend of hi.s
own class, but he made friends for himself of gamekeepers and
peasants, of peachers and fishermen, of smugglers and coast-
guardsmen. He spent many a night far afield under the stars,
engaged in some kind of sport, and crept into the house ac
daybreak before any of the servants were astir. The wanderers
of the countryside, the pUlawer with his little cart of foul rags,
the peddler with his pack, the colporteur with his case of books — •
he conversed with all these, and was at home with them at
once. He talked with them of that great city which they
visited now and again, full of wonder and respect for its splen>
dours, and which he knew and loathefh
24 Ishmael
By the time be liad been two years at Pen-Hoiil he loved the
place and its surroundings with an intense love. There was
not a bank or a coppice, a willow or a waterpool, a clump of
Spanish chestnuts or an old wall feathered over with fern-fronds,
which S^bastien did not know by heart. The gardeners and
farm labourers, the grooms and gamekeepers, and all the villagera
around loved him. He was as a king among them. If there
had been need of a new Vendee, Sebastien Caradec could have
raised a regiment. All the countryside would have flocked to
the sound of his drum. Everybody loved the bold, frank,
handsome, open-handed boy, except his father. Eaymond
Caradec could not forgive his son for the traitorous blood in hia
veins, for his involuntary share in the past. He had been his
mother'a companion in her vicious career — in her degringoladc.
He had drunk of the cup of her pleasures, pei'haps basked in
the luxury of sin. The Count had never dared to question his
son as to that past history. There were hideous pages in the
boy's life which he shrank from opening. But sometimes, on
those rare occasions when the father and son were alone together,
Raymond Caradec would fall into a reverie, seeing with his
mind's eye that past life with all its loathsome details — feasting,
revelry, fine clothes, a thick, hot mist of wine-fumes and lamp-
light clouding the atmosphere of a gaudily-furnished saloon.
Friends had told him something of his wife's existence in Paris
— the money she had squandered, the train she had led. He
asked no questions ; he winced at the sound of his wife's name.
But there are people who will put their finger-tips upon gaping
wounds by way of friendship ; and Raymond Caradec knew
what manner of life the dead woman had lived. He associated
his innocent son with all that horror and shame. What blessing
could he hope from a boy reared in such iniquity ? Yet there
were times when the boy's frank o:-tlook and noble face impressed
him in spite of himself, and he was almost kind to his son.
Unhappily, these intervals of fatherly feeling were of the rarest.
When Sebastien had been about a year and a half at Pen-
Hoel, and had become, as it were, a living part of the hills and
■woods, forgetful of all the life he had known before he came
there, the Count went to Paris with an old college friend who
had dropped upon Pen-Hoel unexpectedly — from the stais as it
were— one autumn night, and who, after staying three days at
the ch&teau, tempted IMonsieur Caradec to accompany him to
the great city, where he had a wife and an apartment in the rue
St.-Guillaum*e. It was late in October : the hops were picked,
the apples were garnered, the sarrasin fields were brown and
bare, autumn winds shrieked and howled round the old house
as if they would have blown down its quaint old turrets, the
' Cruel as thi Grave ' 25
Lrazon wcatliercnck groaned and scrooped in its iron socket, llie
solid old caseiiieiits rattled and shook — a dreary season for the
master of Pen-Hoel, who had long ceased to care for sport.
Everybody would be coming back to Paris after the season of
villegiatura. The theatres were opening. The town would be
at its best. Raymond Caradec, who felt himself becoming
prematurely old, a creature sunk in gloom and hopelessness,
accepted the invitation, but with reserve.
' You and your wife wnll find me sorry company,' he said.
* I have let myself rust too long.'
'Never too late to rub the rust off,' answered Monsieur
Lanion, his friend. ' My wife is a very good little person, and
will do her utmost to enliven you.'
Thus urged, Raymond risked the experiment. He felt a
little d<fpays4 for the first day or so amid the bourgeois comfort
and home-like air of the apartment in the rue St.-Guillanme.
lie had never knov/n what it was to have a home since his
mother's death, and these handsome old rooms, in which the
substantial Empire furniture was brightened by the graceful
additions of womanly taste— lamps, flowers, books, piano, harp
—had the air of a newly-discovered country, a hitherto un-
imagined paradise. The piano was Madame Lanion's particular
function ; the harp belonged to her sister, a delicate, fair-haired
girl of twenty, who had been left an orphan within the last
three years, and had lived with her sister since her bereavement.
The sisters were both musical. They sang and played duets for
harp and piano.
Adele de Guirandat was not a beautiful woman. She did
not impress the stranger with her charms at a glance, or lead
hira captive with a smile and a word. She had a fragile elegance
which pleased his fastidious tastes. She was reserved, without
shyness, and after a little while, when he became interested in
her, she seemed to him the fair embodiment of feminine purity.
Her manners, her movements, her dress were all distinguished
by that gracefulness which is the highest charm in a woman.
Caradec did not ask himself whether she was good-tempered,
warm-hearted, frank, brave — of those grander qualities which
make the nobility of woman's character he thought but little
before this quiet perfection, these outward graces of a young
lady educated in a convent, polished and refined in the society of
all that was most intellectual in Paris. Monsieur Lanion
occupied an ofiicial post of some importance, was a man of soma
culture, and knew all the best people in both parties — Legitimist
and Orleanist. Politics were tolerably smootli in Paris just now.
The people were satisfied with their Citizen King, although
they made their little jokes about him— his pear-shaped
26 Islwiael
countenance, liis trick of bidding for clieap popularity, hi*
little atl'ectations of bourgeoisie, and that strain of avarice which
is, after all, the universal fellow-feeling that makes the whole
world kin.
Possibly, when Monsieur Lanion urged hia old friend to take
np his abode in the rue St.-Guillaume for a while, he may
have had some dim notion of the thing which had come to pass.
He may have told himself that the proprietor of Pen-Hoel,
with his fine old chateau and an income which, although modest,
was all-sufficient for the comfort and conventionalities of life in
Brittany, would be no unworthy alliance for his sister-in-law.
Adcle had been three years in Paris. She had been generally
admired, but she had attracted no eligible suitor ; and Lanion,
who adored his wife, was beginning to be a little weary of this
domicile d trois. He wanted to have the family hearth for him-
self and his Laure. They had no children, and were all-in-all
to each other. Adele was very sweet, but she was an incubus.
So when he saw Caradec interested, charmed, growing
daily fonder, he did his uttermost to fan the flame. Yes, Ad^le
was quite the most amiable girl he had ever met with. She
had all the perfections of Laure, with additional graces which
were quite her own. There were not half a dozen young
women in Paris who could play the harp as well as she did. A
difficult, ungrateful instiixment. And then, how she sang ! Man
Diev, what finish, what expression ! Garcia had given her lessons
after she came to Pai-is, and had almost wept at the thought
that such a voice should be wasted in drawing-rooms, half
appreciated by senseless people who knew nothing about music.
Caradec agreed with every word of this praise. He had
listened with rapture to the hai-p which brought the white
arms and slender waist of the player into such prominence.
The voice in which she sang a ballad of Hugo's, or of Musset's —
a little thing in Italian by he knew not whom — was sweetness
itself. But was it possible that such an accomplished young
lady would endure the monotony of c chateau on the edge of
Brittany, would receive the addresses of a widower — a man
grown old before his time, broken down by the burden of past
sorrows, of intolerable memories '?
' My dear fellow, I admit you were rather dismal when you
first came among us,' answered Lanion, laughing at his friend's
gravity ; ' but you are improving daily. Stay a week or two
longer, and you will be as young aa the youngest of us.'
Caxadec sighed and shook his head. But he yielded to his
friend's urgency, and stayed in the rue St.-Guillaume. There
was plenty of room for him in that spacious second floor entre
cour et jardin. His host and hostess made much of him. They
* Cruel as the Grave' 27
took him to tlie Opera House, where * Robert the Devil ' waa
Btill a novelty. They took him to see Rachel, then in her
zenith. She had just revealed the depth and grandeur of her
powers in Phedre, that one character which all the critics had
vowed she would never be able to play. It was a less brilliant
Paris than the glittering city of the Empire ; but it was a very
delightful city, nevertlieless, and Cai'adec lingered there as
amid scenes of enchantment.
One evening he took courage, and offered himself to Adele
It was Madame Lanion's Tuesday, when all tlio nicest officials
and a few of the choicest people in the world of art and litera-
ture came to drink weak tea, served at ten o'clock, and nibble
sweet cakes, in the rue Saint-Guillaume. Adule had perfor«ied
upon her hai'p, had sung three of her little songs — her whole
repertoire consisted of about six — and now they two w-ere alone
in the smaller salon, which was half a library, while the com-
pany were gathered round the wood fire in the larger room,
talking politics. That inner room was dimly lighted by a pair
of wax candles on the velvet-draped mantelpiece, and in that
half-obscurity Raymond took heart of grace, and drew a little
nearer to Adele as she stood in one of her graceful attitudes,
her elbow resting on the low mantelj^iece, the beautiful arm
shining like alabaster under the large gauze sleeve, the slender
figure exquisitely set off by the broad waistband and buckle
which girdled her white satin gown.
He asked her, in all humility, if she could marry a man with
whom the freshness of youth was passed ; if she could be con-
tent with life in a solitary country house.
* We are not quite in a desert,' he said apologetically ; * we have
neighbours at Avranches, which is not ten miles off — rather au
important to\vn.'
She looked down, blushing a little, listening with an amused
smile to his faltered apologies. She was no more in love with
feim thafi with yonder statuette of the Belvidere Apollo ; but
she was tired of making a third in her sister's household, and
she had an inkling that her brother-in-law was getting tired of
her. That sort of thing ought to finish, and there had been no
one else to offer a speedy den(fU,ement.
' You would bring your wife to Paris at least once a year, I
hope. Monsieur,' she said, smiling, with lowered eyelids.
He caught her hand in his, and kissed it passionately.
' That means yes,' he said.
French people have no idea of long engagements. They
despatch the doomed with an alarming promptitude. The
Comte de Pen-Hoel left Paris next day to regulate his affairs in
Brittaaiy returned to the metropolis in three weeks to sign the
28 Ishmael
mariia!;'c contract, and to be married at the churcli of St. Sul-
pice with all befitting solemnity. His wife's harp was packed
and ready with her trousseau, and the corbeille containing the
usual cashmere shawl, a set of amethysts and diamonds which
had belonged to Caradec's mother, and some more modem
jewels newly purchased, notably a gold bandeau for the hair
set with emeralds, such as they had seen Eachel wear in Zaire,
below her gauze turban.
Eaymond Caradec was a proiid man the day he carried his
young wife home to the old chateau — proud of having won a
pure and perfect creature to be his companion, a being beside
whose purity the sins of the dead woman lying in the cemetery
at Montraartre were dark as the crimes of the Princess Dahut,
guilty daughter of the good king Gradlan, the Arthur of
Brittany.
They posted all the way from Paris to Pen-Hoel, and the
■ioumey was slow and costly. The fair young bride had a weary
look when the cari'iage crossed the little bridge under the
Noiman portcullis which still guarded the chateau. Wintry
mists veiled the country side. AH was gray and chill save for
the faint yellow light of a December sunset, with a gleam of red
here and there upon the steel-gray river. Adele shuddered.
She had never been further from Paris than Fontainebleau in
her life before, and Fontainebleau was Paris in miniature as
compared with the villages through which she had passed oa
this long dismal day — queer old stone cottages, ancient crones
spinning in doorways and windows like the wicked fairies in old
story-books, peasant boys riding on cows, magpies, priests, a
girl astride a donkey between a pair of heavily-laden panniers.
Was she to live the greater part of her life among such bar-
barians ? Already she had begun to speculate whether it would
be possible to persuade her husband to sell Pen-Hoel and take
an apartment in the Eue St.-Guillaume, or the Eue de Lille.
Paris — her beautiful Paris — with its theatres and churches, its
music and splendour ! It was but a few days since she had left
that lovely city, and she was pining to go back already.
Caradec had been observant of her all day, and had seen
that she was neither pleased nor interested in anything she saw.
They had breakfasted at Coutauces, and spent an hour in the
cathedral. They had stood on a height to see the Channel
Islands yonder— Hern, and Sark, and Alderney—gray in a gray
sea. They had stopped at Granville— another old church on a
height, solitary sands, a shabby town ; but the drive from
Granville to Avranches, the ascent to the town on the hill, w.tjb
lovely. Yet Adele had admired nothing.
* I am afraid you are very tired,' said her husband.
* Cruel as the Grave ' 29
•I have one of ray bad headaches,' she answered languidly ;
and he learned fur the first time that she was subject to a
chronic headache.
From this time forward the headache was established as a
domestic institution. When Madame Caradec had her headache
no one was to say anything to her, or expect anything from her.
She was to look as miserable or as ill-tempered as she pleased.
Nobody was to complain. It was only Madame's headache.
' I should have liked you to be well enough to enjoy the
approach to Avrauches,' said Caradec ; ' it is such a picturesque
drive.'
And now they were in the little park of Pen-Hoel. The
carriage wound slowly up the hill, and there was the chateau in
front of them. There had been a castle in the days of Charles
of Blois — a feudal castle— in that fine position ; and there were
old walls and an old tower interwoven with the existing building,
which dated from the time of Henry the Fourth. Adele gave
a piteous look when she saw the low ceilings and thick walls,
the deeply-sunk windows and stone mullions. She detested
an old house. Her only complaint against tlie Faubourg
St.-Germain had been that it was not built yesterday.
But the old house with its dingy colouring, and ponderous,
worm-eaten furniture of carved oak or walnut, was not the worst
thino- at Pen-Hoel. The appearance of that tall handsome lad
who came forward shyly to greet his father and his father's
bride was a much greater trial for Madame Caradec's somewhat
difficult temper. She knew that there was a child of the former
marriage ; but she had pictured to herself a little fellow iu the
nursery, a baby that could give her no trouble. This tall, broad-
shouldered, dark-eyed boy was a personage.
'J/o?i Dieu ! ' she muttered to herself j ' am I always to live in
a trinity 1 '
She gave Sebastien the tips of her gloved fingers, and he
looked at her with dark eyes full of doubt. The idea of his
father's second marriage had been distasteful to him in the
abstract : it was more than ever obnoxious now that he aaw
the lady.
' You can go to your usual amusements,' said Caradec, when
he had shaken hands with his son, who had been waiting in front
of the chateau for the last two hours to give his father a
respectful greeting, inspired to this politeness by the good old
priest, his tutor.
The boy perfectly understood the permission. He was not
wanted in the newly-organised home any mor(? than he had
been wanted in the old one. He went off to his companion, the
gamek«^«per, and planned the next day's sport. He had his
80 Ishmael
supper in the kitchen that night, feeling too shy to enter the
rooms occupied by the new mistress of Pen-Hoel. The kitchen
was a mighty stone hall, with a fireplace as big as a room;
gamekeepers, gardeners, and farm-servants had their meals
there, and Sebastien was like a king among them. At his
bidding the old men told their stories of gnomes and fairies, and
crooned their old ballads, thirty or forty verses long, about the
heroes and scourges of Brittany. The fare was of the roughest
— hard cheese, harder cider, black bread ; but the meals were
gayer than in the stately old room yonder, with its dark oak
panelling and carved furniture, its vessels of shining brass and
silver, its old Eouen pottery.
Little by little it grew to be an accepted fact that Sebastien
should take his meals with the servants. ' He liked it better,'
his stepmother declared, when the old cur^ complained of this
lapse into ignoble habits. He lived the best part of his life
out of doors, and came home at all hours, his clothes be-
spattered, his boots coated an inch thick with mud. He was
never in a condition to appear in the drawing-room or dining-
room. 'And he has no more manners than one of those
horrible cows which I am always meeting in your detestably-
muddy lanes,' said Ad^le.
The curd sighed and shrugged his shoulders. He had no
faith in a woman who could let her husband's only son eat with
the servants, and who did not love the cows and the deep rustic
lanes of that romantic land. He took an early occasion to
remonstrate with the father. But here he met sterner treat-
ment. The Count looked black as thunder at the mention of
his son's name.
' The boy is a born vagabond, a young savage, whom even
my wife has failed in taming,' he said harshly. ' Let him go his
own way.'
' Do you think JIadame la Comtesse imderstands the boy, or
has really tried to tame him ? ' asked the priest. ' I find him
gentle enough.'
Monsieur Caradec smiled with his haughty, self-complacent
air. The cur6 was too near the peasant class himself to be
OA'er-critical in matters of re^nement.
' My dear Father Bressant, if you like the boy, so much the
better,' he answered. ' Let him have his own way and live
among the people he likes. 1 supj^ose he will be a soldier in a
year or two, and the discipline of a barrack will take off his
lough edges.'
This speech, faithfully interpreted, meant that Oounfc
Oaradec cared very little what became of his eldest son so that
he and his fragile wife were not plagued about him.
' Cruel as the Grave ' 51
Wliile Count Caradec's eldest son was growing up in solitude
and neglect came the historic year of forty-eight. Behold, the
good Citizen King and that saintly woman his Queen were cast
out of their palace by the broad, bright river like a guilty Adam
and Eve out of Paradise, and were fugitives on the face of the
earth, flying as for their lives : King and Queen in hiding for
tight days in a little pavilion yonder by Havre de Grace, waiting
jv^hat time winds are unruly and captains doubtful for the
©pportunity of getting across to quiet England ; fair young
princess and her children hastening to Avranches with a view
to sailing for Jersey ; Duke de Nemours flying to Boulogne
and crossing — at peril of his life in the teeth of a terrible gale
—by the very steamer which has just brought over Caesar and
his fortunes in the form of Prince Louis Bonaparte, this time
without the tame eagle.
Then followed a year of doubt and indecision, gloomy time
for France, and gloomiest for Paris, where all along the Boule-
vards there was scarcely a balcony without its placard of
apartments to let ; where every one was dubious, not knowing
wliat might happen next — sheep without a shejiherd.
With November came the election of the President, and
Prince Louis Bonaparte was proclaimed the chosen of the
French people by five million votes, his most powerful rival,
General Cavaiguac, only scoring a million and a half.
It was the country, and not the town, which made Louis
Napoleon master of France. And the magic of his name was
the spell which brought the rural population marching to the
sound of the drum — the mayor and the parish j^riest at their
head — to cast their lot into the urn for the nephew of the Great
Emperor. Horace Vernet and Beranger were the advocates
who pleaded his cause with these simple hearts. There was
scarcely a cottage in France that had not its cheap engraving of
the ' Farewell at Fontainebleau ' ; scarcely a cottage fire by
which had not been recited those pathetic verses wherein the
grandmother tells her grandchildren the story of the great
Emperor and his battles. Even in Brittany the sacred memories
of La Vendue were as nothing compared with the magical
name of him who made France famous among the nations.
Her little corporal, her invincible captain, her chosen and
beloved of the long-vanished years when those who were old
and dull to-day were young and glad.
In the little village of Pen-Hoel all the jieasants went gaily
to vote for the nephew of their hero, while Raj^mond Caradec
came to the voting-place with grave and solemn countenance
to cast in his solitary vote for [lenri de Bourbon.
And thus Louis Bonaparte became master and rul(?r of
52 Ishnael
France in the teetli of the National Assembly, which had done
its best to discredit his claims ; and in the chill December
twilight of that year of forty-nine, the lamps upon the tribune
newly lighted and burning dindy, a man of middle height
suddenly emerged fioiu the crowd of senators and advanced to
the tribune — pale, with marked features, heavy moustache, and
the shadowy eyes of the fatalist and dreamer — to take the oath
of fidelity to the Republic.
How sacred he deemed that oath, and how loyally he kept it
was to be seen later.
Adule had been married five years, and had borae her
husband two sous ; and she had been more or less an invalid
during the whole period of her wedded life. There was nothing
specific the matter with her. Slie harl consulted learned physi-
cians at Rennes and Paris. She had the frequent attendance of
a family doctor from Avranches. Her malady was nameless.
The faculty proclaimed her organically sound, heart excellent,
lungs all that could be desired, liver conscientious in the per-
formance of all its functions. Her only complaint was to fancy
herself always ill. ' Madame s'dcoute trop,' the Avranches
doctor said. She was peipetually feeling throbbings and
flutterings, sinkings and tremblings. Finding herself sole
mistress of a fine old chateau in a solitary land, with twice too
many servants and a devoted husband, the elegant Adcle had
taken to hypochondria as the only amusement possible in such
a situation. She wore expensive morning gowns, and lolled oa
a sofa all day. She trained her husband to wait upon her, to
fly for her smelling-bottle, to spend a considerable portion of
his life in carrying fans and footstools, down-pillows for the
aching head, medicine bottles and glass measures. She was
Virtue's self, a wife without a flaw ; but she was not the
pleasantest partner a man could have had. She was never out
of temperj but she was often so ill that she must not be spoken
to ; her nerves were sometimes so highly strung that a step upon
the parquetted floor caused her exquisite agonies. It was not
to be supposed that such a sensitive creature could endure the
presence of a hulking step-son smelling of badgers and other
noisome beasts.
To hear Adule discourse to her chosen friends upon the
pains and perils of maternity made it seem a miracle that th«
world had ever been peopled.
' But then, I am such a fragile creature,' she added depre-
catingly ; ' you might blow me away with a breath.'
Slie v/as much too fragile to nurse her boys, or to perform
any of those little services for them which are the delight of
ordinary mothers. Madame Lanion sent her a nurse who had
• Cruel as the Grave * 83
nursed the infant oi a duchess. No rough poasant woman of
the district must be allowed to be foster-mother to Adcle's
ofl'spring lest they should grow up as coarse and eommon as
flieir half-brother. The Parisian nurse was a fine lady, and
gave herself intolerable airs in the Pen-Hoel kitchen, and
talked of the Paubourg — meaning St.-Germain — as if there
were no other quarter in Paris. Pi,aymond Caradec saw all the
arrangements of his home altered, liis expenses nearly doul/Cl*'
by the more elegant manner of life which his wife insisted
upon ; but he made no complaint. He worshipped Adcle for
those qualities which made her unlike the woman who ha<l
betrayed him. He accepted his life as she ehose to make it,
indulged her morbid, selfish fancies, idolized the children she
had brought him, and was in all things admirable except in his
neglect of Sebastien.
The time had come when his son felt that neglect in all its
bittemess. The wild, free life, the woods, the sands, and rocks
and sea, the peasantry, the priests, the custom-house officers,
had lost none of their delight. He had no wish to be the pam-
pered inmate of a drawing-room, to sit by a wood-fire reading
a novel, or to listen to Madame Caradec's rare performances
upon the harp. He wanted none of the indulgences or luxuries
of a rich man's son. But he yearned passionately for a father's
love. Ha wanted his rightful place at his fathei-'s side. He
asked himself bitterly what sin he had committed to justify a
father's contempt.
He had the pride of his race, the offended pride of one who
has done no wrong, and who feels the sting of injustice. He
could not fawn or flatter. He waited, with a kind of dogged
patience, for the day when his father should awaken to the
knowledge of the wrong he had done his son, and of his own
accord should seek to make atonement.
While he was waiting in this spirit, half patient, half
sullen, a catastrophe occurred wliich shipw^recked all his
hopes and made the breach between father and son
impassable.
The four-year-old boy and his three-year-old brother adored
Sebastien. It was a horrible fact, the cruellest turn which fate
could have played Madame Caradec ; but this evil thing had
come to pass. Her sons were ever so much fonder of their step-
brother than of her. Vain that she clad them in velvet and
lace and set them to play with ivory letters on the Aubussoii
carpet. They scampered off to the stables at the first oppor-
tiuiity, played liavoc with velvet frocks and lace frills, and
came back smelling of badger. Vain that she foibaile donkey?
and ponies as dangerous, denounced ladders and haylofts iC
D
84 Ishmad
ungcntlemanlike. They rode bare-backed at three years old,
and were always climbing ladders when they were not climbing
trees. The invalid mother seldom left her bed-room till noon,
and rarely left her sofa in the drawing-room except to go back
to her bed-chamber at night. The Parisian dry-nurse, who had
succeeded to Parisian wet-nurse, was much too fuie and much
too lazy to run after her charges ; so the boys did as they liked,
and their liking was to be with Sebastien, who returned their
love in liberal measure. lie made them fishing-rods, being
marvellously expert in all mechanical arts, and they went on
long expeditions with him, and came back with laden baskets,
which they fondly believed they had helped to fill. They were
his companions in all his occupations, loved to stand at his
knees when he was at work at an}^ of those constructions in the
way of dovecotes, rabbit-hutches, tumbrels, bird-traps, for
which, in the opinion of the peasantrj^ he had a heaven-given
genius. He built a windmill for one cottager, who had been
saving up the necessary timber for many years, and who
had grown too old and feeble for that great work in the mean-
while. Sebastien's windmill was one of the marvels of the
village. His popularity wa.s doubled by the achievement, and
Raymond Caradec heard his eldest son's praises from every
villager with whom he condescended to converse. But these
were not many, as the lord of the soil held himself mostly aloof
from his serfs.
Madame Caradec gave way to much feeble and fretful
lamentation upon the half-brother's evil influence upon her
sons. They would grow rude and rough like Sebastien — mere
village boors like their brother.
' You see so little of Sebastien that jon can hardly know
whether he is rude or courteous,' answered Caradec, stung bv
these peevish comiDlaints.
At the cruel answer AdMe melted into tears, and sank back
almost fainting among her down pillows. She was not made
to endure unkindness from one she loved ; she might be as
cruel as she chose to other people, but breathe one harsh word,
and she drooped and languished like a delicate flower bending
before hurtling winds ; and Raymond Caradec, being stern
truthfulness himself, was the perpetual victim of these small
hypocrisies, and always ready to apologise for a rough word,
liis weak, selfish wife had boundless power over him. In vain
did he argue with himself that his eldest son was not altogether
lairly treated, that tliere were faults on both sides : a few tears,
a little plaintive look from the fair young wife, quashed all
his objections.
*you are r\ot always i>ere — you do rot see' — she murmured
The Furnace for Gold 85
significantly ; and on the strength of such vagno hints, Baymond
grew to believe tliat his sou was brutal t(; the invalid step-
mother whenever he, the master, was out of the way.
CHAPTER IV
THE FURNACE FOR GOLD
Thus it cane about that, although the little brothers throve
and greW^rosy in their companionship with the tall, dark lacj,
Ivaymond Caradec was willing to admit that Subastien's society
was dangerous to the children ; and when, one autumn after-
noon towards dusk, he found his wife in tears on account of the
jtt'olonged absence of her babies, he was quite ready to be angry
with his eldest son as the cause of those tears.
' Sebastien took them out directly after breakfast, although
Marie told him the morning was too cold for them,' whimpered
Adcle.
'Cold ! Why, my child, the ■weather is lovely.'
' I only know that I have been shivering all the afternoon,
answered his wife, leaning out of her easy chair to spread her
thin white hands above the wood fire. 'But cold or not,
Sebastien has kept those dear children out all day, and no one
knows where he has taken them or what he has done with
them.'
Here she broke down altogether and sobbed hysterically
as if it were as likely as not that Sebastien had gone far afield
on purpose to lose the little ones in a wood like the wicked
uncle in the story. It was the season of failen leaves and robin-
redbreasts.
' My cherished one, pray don't distress yourself ! ' imjilored
Caradec, bending over his wife's chair. ' I have no doubt tho
boys are amusing themselves in the village, or in some orchard
within half a mile.'
' They are not to be found within miles. I have sent all
about the country in search of them — men on horseback. It
seems that Sebastien harnessed the two donkeys to the little
cart, and took a basket of provisions from the kitchen, and a
bottle of wine, and cloaks and things, just as if he were running
away with my darlings. Never, never, never to see their
mother's face again.' More sobs with increasing symi>tom3 of
36 Ishmael
hysteria ; and hysteria with Madame Caradec was an awfol
thing — a thing to be dreaded by all about her.
* He has taken the boys for a picnic, of course,' said Caradec,
when he had soothed his wife into brief tranquillity. ♦ It is not
the first time he has taken the cart.'
' A i)icnic in such weather — nearly the end of October 1 *
gasped Adcle ; ' and they tell me he took wood and matches, aa
if to light a fii e. He is the very spirit of mischief.'
More followed to the same tune in the deepening dusk.
Matters grew worse when the lamps were lighted ; and as the
night grew late Raymond himself became seriously alarmed.
Scouts were sent in every direction ; but it was not till the late
autumn dawn that the sleepless household were in anywise
enlightened as to the fate of the three boys. At that bleak
hour one of the mounted gamekeepers came back with the news
that the little donkey-cart had been seen crossing the sands to
Mont St.-Michel early in the afternoon of the previous day.
The boys had doubtless slept at the little inn within the fortress
walls. The tide was full when the gamekeeper received this
information, and, instead of crossing to the rock in a boat to
follow uj) the trail, he deemed it his duty to return and tell his
master what he had heard.
Madame Caradec had been hysterical all night. Nurse and
lady's-maid had had their hands full in attending upon her ;
but she grew worse on hearing that the cart had been seen on
those ])erilous sands. Her darlings had been swallowed alive in
a quicksand. It was a hideous vengeance of Sebastien's. He
was jealous of her children. He hated her. He was just the
kind of boy to commit murder and suicide. He had it all in
his face.
Raymond Caradec ordered his horse and rode off to the
Mount, galloping across the low, level fields beyond Pontoi'soD,
past the waggons laden with sand from the spongy shores of the
Couosuon, and picking his way over the sandy flats, out of
which the rock rose like an Egyptian pyramid. There was no
causeway between solid earth and the Mount in those days.
The citadel stood solitary, aloof, girt by blue waves or shining
Band. At this time in the morning the tide was going out, and
Raymond's keen glance explored the sandy flat, from which the
waves were slowly crawling, in search of the little donkey-cai't
with the three boys. If they had been prisoners at the Mount
last night, overtaken by the tide, they ought to be on their way
home now.
There was no sign of the cart on the sands, but Monsieur
Caradec found it in the inn yard, and the donkeys in the inn
stables. The boys had arrived there at two o'clock yestei'day,
The Furnace for Gold 8?
had explored tlie monastery and little town, and had picnicked
on the sands. They had been seen making their wood fire and
boiling their coffee while the tide was still far out, and this was
the last anybody had heard or seen of them. And now it was
time for Eaymond Caradec's heart to sink and grow cold with
an awful fear. Of all places on this earth that he knew there
was no spot more dangerous to the rash or inexperienced rover
than this sandy waste around St. Michel. Not a year passed
but the sea had its victim in some imprudent traveller ; and
now his little children, the fair-haired babies he loved, had been
devoured by that murderous sea. Of the eldest one he thought
with only anger — bitter rage against the boy whose crime or
whose folly had sacrificed the children he loved.
He talked to a dozen natives of the rock, all of whom told him
the same story. The boys had been seen in the street, on the
ramparts, and at the inn ; but after four o'clock, when they
picnicked on the sands, no mortal eye among the dwellers at
Mont St. Michel had beheld them. They were to come back
for the donkey-cart ; but cart and donkeys were there to show
that the tall youth and his little brothers had not returned.
The natives shrugged their shoulders, and evidently appre-
hended the worst. It was a sad story. The lad was so good to
his little brothers. He carried the youngest on his shoulder
across the sands, a rosy-cheeked cherub, with golden curls
flying in the wind. Those terrible Uses I It was not the first
time.
Raymond Caradec turned from them with a face white as
death. He guided his horse out of the inn yard and through
the citadel gate mechanically. Whither was he to go next, or
what was he to do 1 He knew not ; but with a vague notion of
doing something, he rode slowly on to the sands as if to seek
the particular spot which had engulfed his children. He knew
not if they had been swallowed by one of those quicksands —
the Uses, as the natives called them, which abound on this
level waste — or overtaken by the rising tide.
A barefooted peasant, a man who earned his living in tha
Bummer-time as a guide to travellers, and gtarved and idled in
the winter, ran after the horseman.
*Sir,' he said, 'there is Tombelaine. The lad and his
brothers might have gone there.'
' Not likely ; but there is just a chance.'
Tombelaine is the twin islet which rises a little way from
the Mount — a barren rock — the resort only of fishermen and
the rare smugglers who attempt the perils of this most unpro-
pitious shore. " Tombelaine ? Yes, the rock rose yonder, to the
right its base still washed by the tida Haymond spurred his
38 Ishmael
horse to a gallop with his face towards that harren isle. The
man rushed after him, shouting to him at the top of his voice to
beware of the Uses, to take the sand where it was hard and
wrinkled, to avoid the soft ground, at peril of his Ufe. The
Count neither heard nor heeded, but galloped on towards the
rock. Providence was kind to him as to drunken men in their
t)eril. The waves washed against his stout charger's bi'east as
le stood close beside the rock. Thank God ! His call was
answered by his eldest boy's deep baritone, and by two little
piping voices that sounded like the treble cry of the seagulls.
They were alive. They stood shivering on the rock waiting
for the tide to go do's\'n. They were very cold, those two little
ones, and, oh, so hungry. The father took them from their
brother's arms without a word, and clasf^ them to his breast
there, with the water dashing about his horse's flanks and the
salt sea wind blowing over him. He rode off with his children,
hugging them, sheltering them with his strong right arm as
they squatted in front of his saddle, and guiding his horse with
his left hand. This time he took heed of the guide's warning.
He walked his horse slowly, picking his way across the flat,
choosing the long stretches of sand upon which the waves had
left their print, crossing the river at a spot where the footsteps
of the fishermen who had passed but a little while before served
as a guide. Of the other son left behind on the rock he was
hardly conscious. He did not draw rein till h% was in front of
the chateau of Pen-Hoel, where Ad^le was standing watching
for his return — a fragile figure robed in white, and wrapped in
the Indian shawl that had been his wedding gift.
Never had he been so completely her slave as in this
moment, when, in her joy at seeing her children, she flung
her arms about her husband's neck and kissed and blessed
him with an impassioned affection which she had never given
him till to-day. They all went to the salon together, and
mother and father sat in front of the wood fire, warming,
comforting, and feeding the cold, hungry children. Then,
when the treasures of a foolish woman's love had been poured
out upon the restored children, came the bitterness of a weak
woman's hate and jealousy for the eldest son. Why had he
done this thing? Why had he exposed her darlings to the
peiils of cold, sickness, death — kept them starving all night
upon a bleak unsheltered rock ? Why, except to torment and
torture her, whom he had always hated, of whom he had
always been wickedly jealous.
'I have not forgotten the look he gave me when first I came
here,' she said, vindictively.
The stepson came into the room while the stepmother was
The Furnace for Gold 39
bewailing his wickedness. Pale, haggard, -with wild eyes and
disordered apjiarel, he stood before his father.
* S6bastien, you have given my wife and mi? a night of
agony,' said Raymond Caradec. 'What in the name of all that
is evil was your motive for endangering the lives of these
children ? '
' If their lives were in danger, mine could not be particularly
safe,' answere^i the young man bitterly.
lie felt the slight implied in his father's speech. Ilis owa
peril was ignored ; he counted for nothing.
' If my brothers had perished, I must have perished with
them,' he said. ' You don't suppose I took them to that ro'/^'c
with the intention of passing the night tliere V
' But I believe you did,' cried Adele, pale with passion ;
*I believe you capable of any wickedness against me and mine.
You would" have left my innocents there to be drowned while
you got away in a boat to Jersey or somewhere ; only your
villainous scheme failed, thank God ! '
'Father,' exclaimed Scbastien, with his eyes aflame, 'do
you believe this infamy of your son ?'
'I believe nothing. I understand nothing, upon my soul.
I don't know whether to think you a villain or a fool. I know
what your mother was, and that the blood in your veins is bad
enough.'
'Stop!' cried Sebastien, with a voice whose indignant
power quelled even an angry father. ' Not a word about my
mother. She is in her grave, and God is the only judge who
shall pass sentence on her sins. AVe have been living very
unhappily in this house for a long time. I have been in
everybody's way. I am an outcast in my father's house, as
Ishmael was in the house of Abraham — although, heaven
knows, I never mocked at my stepmother — and I should be
happier and better in the wilderness of the outside world. I
should have turned my back upon Pen-Hoiil before now if it
were not for my little brothers, who love me.'
His proud young face softened as he turned to the little
ones. They were looking on with eyes that had grown large
with wonder, listening to every word, but understanding very
little, oidy scai'ed by a vague sense of unhappiness, the panic of
an atmosphere charged with all bad feelings.
At the word 'love' from the elder brother's lips the childish
faces flushed, and the eyes of the youngest brimmed over.
' Yes, yes, S6baetien, we both love you.'
'As for yesterday's business, it was an accident which might
have hai^pened to any one. We had our picnic on the sands,
and were turning to go back to the Mount, when Frederic saw
40 • Ishmael
TomLelaine, and asked rae to take Iiim and his brother there-
was it not so, my child ?'
' Yes, yes,' answered Frederic, tlie elder boy.
•At first I refused, for the tide w;ls rising, aiid there was
not much time for exploring the rock ; but they both begged
nie. So we ran to Tombelaine, and the children went
scrambling over the islet until they found a seagull's nest, and
when they were tired of looking at the nest and the birds, they
made me take them into the cavern, and while we were groping
about in the dark there, playing hide and seek '
' I wasn't frightened, was I ? ' cried Louis, the younger boy,
* though it was so dark. Frederic was, though.'
'While we were at play the tide was rising, and when we
came out of the cave the rock was hemmed round with water —
no escape except by a boat. It was growing dark too, though
it was not six o'clock, a mist rising. I shouted with all my
tnight, stood on the highest point of Tombelaine, and shouted
as long as i had any strength left — shouted at intervals of a few
minutes until it was pitch dark, and then — well, my poor Uit^
pets were cold and hungry — we had left our basket with tha
remains of our dinner within reach of the tide. I had not so
much as a bit of bread to give them. We crept into the cave,
and I held them in my arms all night, and tried to keep them
warm ; and I sang to them and told them stories, and they
managed to sleep a good deal in spite of the cold ; and we heard
the wind roaring and the waves sobbing. It was the middle of
the night when the tide went down, and there was a thick
white fog over sea and land. I knew the danger of attempting
to cross the sands in such a fog, so I waited till morning,
though it was a weary thing to sit there and hear the waters
slowly creeping around us again in the winter dawn. The tide
had not long turned when you rode out to us,' he concluded,
addressing his father.
He had never taken his eyes from his father's face while
he told his story. Not once had he glanced at his stepmother.
He treated Madame Caradec and her accusations with scathinor
indifference.
But Raymond had not been unmindful of his wife while his
son was speaking. He had noted her sighs and stifled sobs, her
writhings of silent agony, her clutches at her children, clasping
them to her breast convulsively as if to save them from a human
tiger ; and he knew that, if he forgave his son too readily for the
folly that had cost a night of agony, he would be made to rue his
indulgence. Hereafter he would be told that he had no real love
for his wife or her children, that tlie son of his dead and gone
Hagar was more to him than the offspring of this spotless Sarah.
The Furnace for Gold 41
Tlie strong man was so completely under the dominion of the
weak woman that in this crisis of his life Eaymond Caradec
thought not of what was just and right, but only of how he
must needs act to save his wife's tears, to heal her wounded
feelings. She had flung her arms round his neck an hour ago,
in the hysterical joy of her sons' return, and had laid her pale, fair
cheek against his as she had done but few times in their wedded
life. His whole being was moved by the tenderness that little
gush of love had awakened. It was of her, and her only, he
thought as he turned coldly from his first-born.
' It was a foolish business, and you have given us an infinity
of trouble,' he said.
Sebastien took up his hat and left the room without a word.
His teeth were chattering, his lips were blue, his limbs ached
from the constrained position in which he had sat half the night
through. Nobody had oflfered to chafe his hands and feet before
the wood fire yonder, or to administer wine d la fran^aise and
warm food. The little children had been ^ed and comforted
with luxurious fare, and had basked in their mother's lap before
the merrily-blazing logs ; but for this first-born — this Ishmael —
well, there was the kitchen hearth, wider and warmer even than
that of the salon, and as much food and wine as he could want.
He had but to ask for it. There was all the difference. On one
side, mother and father devouring their children with kisses, on
the other the kitchen and the old servants, rough peasants for
the most part, who could neither read nor write, but who were
devoted to Sdbastien.
Sebastien did not go to the kitchen for warmth and food.
He went out of his father's house cold and hungry as he had
entered it. He shook the dust of Pen-Hoel off his feet. * Cest
fini, fct,' he said to himself. * Va poiir le desert.''
_ The wilderness he thouglit of as he walked downhill to the
bridge that spanned the moat was that great wilderness of which
he had known something in his childhood — that stony-hearted
stepmother, Paris, who could be hardly harsher to him than the
fair-faced fragile being who had sobbed and sighed him out of
his father's house and his father's love. Yes, he would go back
to Paris, and work for his bread — work among common labourers
if need were, and eat dry bread and drink sour wine ; but the
bread and wine should be of his own earning. By the sweat of
his brow would he live, as his father Adam lived before him,
by the work of his own strong arms and dexterous hands, rather
than be a debtor for the decencies and luxuries of a gentleman'a
life to those who loved him not.
He walked quickly down the chestnut avenue, his heart
beating loud with anger and wounded love ; but when he had
42 Ishnacl
crossed tbe old Norman bridge under the portcullis, lie slackened
his steps, and began to think more deliberately of his position.
He explored his pockets, and found that his whole stock of
worldly wealth consisted of a franc and a half — not a large
amount with which to begin the battle of life. He was prepared to
walk to Paris ; but he knew that he must eat on the way there,
and to eat he mubt have money. He could live on the humblest
fare, sleep in the humblest shelter that offered itself ; but even
for black bread and a pallet under a peasant's thatch he must
have money.
Father Bressant was the only man to whom Sdbastien cared
to apply in his need, and the village priest was not so rich as a
village innkeeper or a peasant who had saved money ; but he
knew that the good cur^ loved Lim and would trust him, and
that he had been for a long time secretly indignant at the scurvy
treatment his pupil received from father and stepmother.
S^bastien went straight to the presbytery and told the priest
his story unreservedly. The time had come at which he mu. t
leave his father's house. There had been no quarrel — he had
used no hard words to his father or his fathei-'s wife ; but there
was bad blood between them, and it was best for all that he
should go.
Father Bressant argued against this decision. It was a sin
for a son to desert his father's house— to take upon himself to
choose a life below his own rank in the world.
'It is the life to which my father has degraded me,' an-
swered the young man. ' He has let me eat and drink wnth hia
s«rvants ; he has left me dependent upon servants for kindness.
You know what kind of home I have had up yonder. Can you
ask me to go back to it ? '
The priest could and did so ask him, considering it his priestly
duty ; but when he found that the lad's will was iron in this
matter, that he would go to Paris if he starved and begged upon
the way — if he arrived there famished, and with bare, bleeding
feet — the kind old man opened his purse and gave all its con-
tents to his pupil, a sum of nine and a half louis. He forced the
whole amount upon Sebastien, who declared that a quarter of it
would be enough.
' You don't know how long it may be before you get work in
Paris,' he said. * Food and fuel are dear there ; you will find it
difficult to live. Why not try St. Malo, or Eennes 1 '
* Too near home ; too cramped and narrow,' answered Sdbastien.
' I want to be lost in a great crowd, forgotten in the wilderness
of working-men, until I can make myself beloved and respected
for my own sake. You know that, though I am no Solomon,
Ian pretty clever with my hands. I can use a carpenter's tooia
The Furnace for Gold 43
or a mason's hammer. I shall get work in Paris, yon may be
sure, and shall learn more there in a week th^n I could learn in
a year at Pen-IIoel. I shall disgrace nobody, I shall vex nobody,
1 shall be in no one's way. They set me down as a boor, an
ignoramus, up yonder, Father Bressant,' with a jerk of his head
in the direction of Pen-IIoel, ' because I have kept company with
gamekeepers and fishermen, having no better company offered
me, mark you ; but I feel that it is in me to be of some use in
the world, and I would rather dig for sand on the shores of the
Couesnon than lead the life I am leading now.'
' If you go to Paris, you will fall in with Eepublicans and
Freethinkers ; you will forget your God.' sighed the priest.
' I think not, father. My belief in the God of truth and
justice, of mercy and love, lies pretty deep in my heart. That
faith has comforted me often v.-hen life went hard with me. I
don't think it will be plucked out by the first bad company I
may fall among. I have heard men sneer at all those things you
have taught me before to-day, and have let their words go by me
like the wind. I am not afraid of what Paris can do to me.'
Father Bressant sighed again and shook his head dolor-
ously. He was an old man, a believer in Papal supremacy and
the elder Bourbons. He hated Eepublicans and Bonapartists.
And Paris was just now a divided camp, occupied by these two
heresies, the Red Eepublicanism of Louis Blanc and Changarnier,
the masked Imperialism of the Prince-President.
The priest gave Sebastien a kind of testimonial, or certificate
of identity and good character, which might serve him in default
of other papers when he went in search of employment ; and
then the two, master and pupil, walked together for a mile or so
on the first stage of the young man's joui-ney ; and then they
parted with eyes not innocent of tears. The outcast stood on a
Mttle knoll beside the road, looking back at the kind old man's
bent shoulders and white hair falling upon his rusty black
cassock. Sebastien watched the stooping figure until it vanished
in the perspective of tangled bi'amble and chestnut and ash as
the parallel lines of high unshorn hedges melted into one. Never
till this moment had it occurred to him what an old man his
tutor was. Should they two ever meet again 1 he wondered. He
must work his hardest, and make haste to restore the money
borrowed to-day, lest the good old priest's declining days should
be made harder for the lack of that little store. He must be
sparing, too, and live on bread and water rather than impose
upon his old friend's generosity.
Having this in his mind, he denied himself the indulgence
of the diligence, when, on inquiring at Avranches, he discovered
that the journey to Paris would cost him something over three
44 hhmael
louis. The autumnal weather was capital for walking — albeit
the sliortness of the hite October dajs was an inconvenience ;
but Sdbastien was fearless and hardy, and was used to roaming
after nightfall. He tramped somewhat wearily into the narrow
streets of Villedieu, luminous with its furnaces and copper-mills,
when the church clock was chiming the first quarter after ten,
looking about him for a shelter which should be cheap and
decent. It was nearly eleven before he found such a lodging ;
but later, as he advanced upon his journey from Villedieu to
Thorigny, and that wooded heart of Normandy known as the
Bocage, thence to Caen, and from Caen to Lisieux and Evreux,
he grew cleverer in finding quarters for the night, and contrived
to spend very little of Father Bressant's money ; and he had only
spent five-and-twenty francs in all when he entered the great
city in the wintry twilight, friendless, houseless, unknown, but
liis own master, and possessed of the infinite riches of youth and
hope.
CHAPTER V
*BWKET TO THE SOUL, AND HEALTH TO THE BONES*
Raymond Caradec's runaway son stood in the midst of the
great city, where the river flows between the old Palace of the
Medicis and the new Palace of the Legislature, spanned by
historic bridges, darkened by the shadows of historic towers — a
river whose waters, lapping against the granite quay with a
little babbling sound like the prattle of a child, could tell of
tragedy and comedy, death, sin, vice, hate, love, mirth, woe,
were it a little more articulate — a river which, to the mind of the
man who knows Paris, does recall a world of strange and terrible
memories — a river which has run red with blood in the days
that are gone. On that fatal vigil of St. Bartholomew, for
example, when the streets were heaped with Huguenot corpses,
and King Charles's cut-throats held their obscene orgies amid
the slain, while the king himself looked out of his window in
the Louvre yonder, arquebuse levelled, animating the butchery
with his shouts, shoo!:iiig at the fugitives who tried to swim the
stream. The river will be flecked with sanguine stains once
again before he who looks across the water to-night in this
October of ISIJO is much older.
* Sweet to the Soul, and Health to the Bones* 45
To the young man from the green hillside across the quiat
Coucsnon Paris to-night seemed altogether a strange city, lie
had never taken kindly to the long, narrow streets of tall
houses, or even to the glittering boulevard with its formal
avenue of young trees. But he had come to Paris for apurpose —
come to win his independence, to earn freedom, fearlessness, and
the right to hope. He had fed for the last year or so upon
stories of men who had entered Paris shoeless, shirtless, carrying
a few rags in an old cotton handkerchief, a few sous for total
reserve fund against starvation, and who, years afterwards, had
become men of mark, a power in the city. He came stuffed to
the brim with ambition ; believing in himself, without conceit
or an-ogance, but with that unquestionable faith in his own force
and his own capacity which cannot be plucked from the breast
of the conqueror elect in the world's strife.
One who has studied the philosophy of Bohemianism has
Baid that, from the hour in which the penniless man leaves off
trying to get work and sits down in his hunger and his shabbi-
ness, that man is lost. And in every gi-eat city there are two
classes of men, the workers and the loungers ; the latter with a
natural bent towards the gutter ; the former, brave, patient,
heroic, and bound to win. The idler talks of bad luck. ' Pas
de chance ' is hia favourite motto. The worker seizes the twin
demons of poverty and obscurity as the infant Hercules throttled
the snakes that beset his cradle. The struggle may be long and
weary. Life is a waiting race, in which the best horse is bound
to win.
And now night was closing in, and the traveller had to find
himself a shelter before the police grew troublesome. He was
travelling at a disadvantage, without papers save that certificate
of the parish priest's ; and he had been sharply interrogated an
hour ago at the Octroi. He remembered the names of two
epots in Paris — the theatre at which his mother acted, and the
rue de Shelas, the dreary street of tall, stone, barrack-like
houses, a new street beyond the rue Poissonifere, where his
mother had died. He had hated the street with a deadly
hatred ; and yet to-night, friendless and alone, he turned hia
face automatically towards the last home he had known in
Paris,
The Rue de Shelas seemed at the other end of the world to
this tired wanderer, who had tramped so many weaiy miles
under good and evil weather within the last week. He had
made this last day's march longer than that of any previous
day, and he was thoroughly beaten. He had bought himself a
blouse and a coloured sliirt at Caen, and his coat aud fine linen
were tied in a little bundle slung across his shoulder. He WAd
46 Ishmael
dad as workmen are clad, yet lie did not look like a workman ;
and the blouses he met on his way glanced at him suspiciously
jis at a wolf in sheep's clothing. He left the glitter and dazzle
of the lighted boulevard as soon as he could, and plunged into
the labyrinth of murky streets, through which the interminable
rue de Lafayette now pierces, a mighty artery leading from
weal til to poverty, from idleness to labour, from daintiness and
delight to hard fare and anxious hearts, from the ffommevx to
tire blouse. It was long before Sdbastien turned into the well-
remembered street, which stood upon the verge of civilisation
in those days — dreary waste places and houses newly begun
surrounding it on all sides.
It was only eight years since Sdbastien had looked his last
wpon that sordid quarter from the fly in which he sat, timid
unquestioning, at his fathei's side. And yet he had an idea that
everybody he had known in that period of his exisitence would
be dead and buried, lie expected to find old landmarks swept
away. The eai-ly years of life are so long, heart and brain so
ai'dent, outpacing Time the plodder, who becomes Time the fjal-
loper in after-years. The street was there ; the house was there.
Sebastien remembered the number, a big black figure of seven,
painted upon each side of the doer. He looked up at the front
of the house, ami it seemed to him like the Tower of Babel :
windows above windows, lighted and dark, curtained, uncur-
tained. The house was there, but the people he had known were
dead most likely — dead or gone away. He rang the bell, and
the door w;is opened by some invisible means, whereupon he
entered, and beheld a short, middle-aged, slatternly woman sitting
at a table in a little room on the left of the stone passage. It
was exactly the same figure he used to see there iu days gone
by^the same face, not older by an hour, it seemed to him — the
greasy black gown, the large sallow face surmounted by a red cotton
kerchief arranged as a cap, the long brass earrings. It was the
same fat Jewess who had kept the house and tyrannised over
the lodgers. But although Sebastien remembered Madame Eigol,
the portress, that substantial matron had utterly forgotten him.
The gamin of eleven, too frail and small for his years, had
developed into a broad-shouldered youth of nineteen, six feet
two, with the limbs and carriage of an athlete.
' Can I have a room here 1 ' the young man asked ; where-
upon Madame Uigol, as in duty bound, took out a greasy ledger,
and ])ut the stranger through a kind of catechism before she
would allow him the privilege of admission to that stony paradise.
He answered the questions exactly as he liked, drawing
freely upon his imagination ; and Madame Rigol put down
what he told her in a purely mechanical way. His namel
* Sioeet to the Soul, and Health to the Bones * 47
Ishraael. Christian name? Ishmael also, Ounoas! but
Madame Hijiol was used to queer names in that greasy register,
and she put down ' Ishmael Ishmael' wUhout a word. \Vhen
it came to the question of papers, slie put ' S.P.' (sans papicrs),
and the business was settled. But her face and manner became
keen and eager when she asked him for a month's rent, eighteea
francs, in advance ; and this given, she was perfectly satisfied.
■ fihe took a particular key from a board adorned with almost
as many keys as a pianoforte, and went j>antiiig up the winding
stone staircase to show the new lodger to his room. The odours
ni)on that greasy stair were almost unendin-able to the young
man whose noatVils still remembered the fiesh, sweet air of fields
and hedgerows, the salt breath of the sea. lie felt that life must
be terrible in such a den. But he need come there only for the
night's rest, he argued with himself. He would have the whole
of Paris for his dwelling-place by day. A man must have a
shelter wei'e it never so bad. And he had made up his mind
to be sparing of good Father Bressant's cash. Poverty must
not be over-nice.
Madame Rigol panted on, getting more asthraatical with
every stair, till she ojjened a door on the fifth story, and ushered
the new lodger into a bare little whitewashed den, with an old
wooden bedstead and the sparest provision in the way of furni-
ture. But there was a stove, on which the portress put_ some
stress, as indicating an excess of luxury, and there was a window
through which the wintry stars were shining. Tiie room had
not been occupied for some time, and felt cold and damp ; but
there were no foul smells here, and ISIadame Ptigol volunteered
to light a fire for the traveller, and even to make him some
cofTee. The lad's handsome face and frank manner made her
kindly disposed to him. She went downstairs to fetch materials
for fire and coffee while Sebastien surveyed the dark outside
world from the window.
Lamps fjdimmered here and there in the darkness below.
lie saw the external boulevard yonder— a long gray line— a,nd
beyond lay tliat dreary border-land of waste and squalor which
in those days stretched between the outskirts of the town and
the fortifications — that master-work of the Citizen Ktag's reign.
masLer-work which had cost the king his popularity. It was a
dismal quarter of the town. Yonder, folded in the shadows
of night, lay the cemetery of Montmartre, the field of rest,
Sdbastien could only distinguish the spot afar off by the
(tarkness whicli brooded over the place of graves. She was
lying under those shadows — that unhappy mother, the sinner,
lost on earth, to be redeemed, he hoped, in heaven : for if a future
state be needed for the good, how much more for the sinners —
48 Ishmael
not for their punishment, but for their reclamation ? S^bastien
thought of his dead mother to-night with deepest sadness. She
had sinned; she had oulwaged her husband, the common lav of
morality. Yet, in her first fall, might there not have been soma
blame due elsewhere? His father was a hard man. There
"vrere times when Sebastien had told himself that the master of
Pen-Hoel had a stone instead of a heart. lie was tender enough,
nevextheless, to the weak, self-indulgent second wife. He had
grown senile in middle age, the slave of a selfish woman's feeble
prettiness.
Madame Rigol came in presently pufiing like a steam-engine,
but beaming with good nature. She was of the college-bed-
maker's temper, and liked a young bachelor, for whom she coul(l
perform those small services which are rarely unremunerative.
She explained to Sebastien as she lighted the fire and brewed
the coffee that any service she rendei'ed him in this way would
be a question apart. The rent was paid to the landlord ; that
was a fixed sum ; no profit accrued to her therefrom. But if it
were in arrear, by all the sacred names in the calendar, was not
she (Madame Rigol) made to suffer ] As a stranger in Paria,
perhaps Monsieur would like her to provide his breakfast every
morning. It would be but a matter of a few sous.
Sebastien thanked her, but declined the favour,
* I shall have to live aa other workmen live,' he said, ' and I
must go out at daybreak. I shall breakf;»st anyhow — anywhere.'
She asked him what his trade was.
* A mason,' he answered boldly.
' Monsieur is a gdcheur, no doubt ; he is too young, surely,
«o be a limousinant,' ejaculated Madame, scrutinising him
jharply.
His hands were bronzed and roughened by an outdoor life,
oroadened by a good deal of amateur carpentering, but they were
not the hands of a stonemason.
He had not the faintest notion what these technical distinc-
tions meant, so he only nodded his head and knelt" down by the
stove to warm his hands.
' There was a theatre somewhere hereabouts — the Escurial I '
he said.
Madame Eigol threw up her hands. A theatre ! but yes, an
altogether admirable theatre ; but it had failed three years ago.
The manager had spent too much on his fairy spectacles, people
said. And there had been lions, tigers, rope-dancers, a circus,
what you will Pas de chance t The poor man was now at
Clichy, and the Escurial had become a cafe'-chantant.
' Ah 1 ' Madame sighed, and stuck her arms akimbo, * the
loveliest woman that ever walked those boards lived and
* Siveet to the Soul, and Bealth to the Bones ' 49
died in this house. She had but one fault, tho p*or, dear
Boul ! '
S^bastien bent his head lower over the little black stove,
and said not a word. But when once Madame Rigol was fairlj
launched on the flood of talk, she requiied no assistance to keef
her going.
' Oh, but she was a lovely creature, a magnificent woman ! '
she exclaimed. 'A \iii\e passee, perhaps, when she came to this
house. She had lived. She had occupied a palace in the wood
beyond Passy. Her carriages, horses, diamonds, laces, cash-
meres — splendid ! fit for a princess I And then there came a«
end of all that. She was of a passionate nature, and wine
maddened her. She quarrelled with a laillionaire — twio)
millionaire — who adored her ; and when she came here she
could not live without her little taste of cognac. It was a slow
poison, and I saw her die by inches.'
' What became of her maid \ ' asked S^bastien.
' What, you knew them ? ' exclaimed the portress.
'She must have had some kind of servant,' answered
Sdbastien, neither admitting nor denying.
'Naturally. She had a companion — a servant, if you will —
LJuette Fontaine. Lisette acted souhrettes at the Escurial. She
was the delight of all the gamins in the faubourg. They called
after her as she walked along the street. That is popularity,
mark you. She left this house soon after Madame's death, and
took a smarter lodging nearer the theatre, and afterwards she
went to the new theatre at Belleville.'
'Is she there now, do you suppose V asked Sebastien, eagerly.
lie would have given a great deal to see Lisette — not
altogether a perfect woman, perhaps. But she had been almost
his only friend in those sad early days which ended in the gloom
of death within these walls.
' No. She left the theatre a year ago. Some say that she
married a clcarcutier in the quarter, otlieis that she eloped with
a nobleman. ' I have never been able to fiiid out what became
of her.'
Sebastien left his coffee-pot on the stove, and went out into
the streets to buy himself some supper. He would not be
treated like a fine gentleman by Madame Rigol. He wanted to
cater for himself, and rough it like the commonest labourer in
Paris. That rough begmui ng was a feature in the programme
of all those successful careeis which he had heard of.
It was growing late, but there were shops still open in this
squalid qnarter^a wine shop among others, which was also an
ordinary at which workmen dined oil' a substantial meal of soup
and meat, with bread included, for seven sous. S^ba^tien —
B
CO Ishmael
henceforth Ishmael — went into this little eating and drinking
house, and took a supper of bread and cheese while he listened
to the conversation round him. Presently he ventured to talk
to some workmen who were smoking and drinking cheap red
wine at the table where he sat. Could they tell him anything
about the masons of Paris ? Where could a man get work I
'Are you a skilled mason 1 ' asked one of them.
* No ; but I am strong, and I am not afraid of work.'
' That means you have never handled a hammer in your life,
said the man, inclined to sneer. ' You may get employment as
a bricldayer's labourer, perhaps, to hand the bricks or to mix
mortar — gdcheur or gur^on they call him. A gari^on earns aa
much as three francs a day. But even that is difficult for -a
stranger.'
' I am not afraid of difficulty,' answered IshmaeL
The man told him where to look for work; and he was out
next morning at daybreak, visiting all the new constructions of
the quarter. It was not till he had wandered as far aa
BelleviUe that he got a promise of employment. There were
hands enough for the job at present ; but the foreman liked the
look of the young stranger's broad shoulders, and he should take
the place of the first guckeiir who chose to chomer. Ishmael
waited about all day, looking at the work going on, and
familiarising himself with the duties of a gdclieur. lie dined
on the ordinaire at the little wine shop, sitting at the saa\e
table as before, and beginning to feel accustomed to the place.
It was not so teirible an ordeal to him to descend into this
lower grade, as it must have been to a spoiled favoui-ite of
fortune. He had associated with peasants in his own home ;
but these Parisian workmen seemed to him creatures of a
coarser clay. They were infinitely cleverer ; but their clever-
ness was unlioly, devilish. They believed in nothing — neither in
the goodness of God nor of man. They scotfed at all sacred
thjngs in the past and the present.
Political feeling ran high. The Republic was not Republican
enough to please the majority. There were a few Bonapartista
who would like to see the old Imperial eagle spread his winga
over the greater part of the civilised world once more — who
wanted the wars of Italy and Egypt, Germany and Spain over
again. But these were in a weak minority. There were
malcontents who had never forgiven the closing of the national
workshops ; others who abused Louis Blanc for having promised
a millennium which he was unable to realise.
* Charlaians all,' said one. ' What can these white-handed
gentry know of the rights of labour 1 Working men will never
be propeily governed till a working-man is President.'
* Sweet to the Sotd, and Health to the Bones* 51
'Down with- Presidents! What do we want with a
President 1 ' cried another, growing husky over his quart of
wine at twelve sous and his garlic sausage. ' Your Piesident
is only a monarch in disguise. He is a leech who sucks tho
blood of the working-man. To-day his ministers modestly ask
for two million francs out of the public purse — to-morrow they
will ask twice as much. A few years ago he was an adventurer
in America, dependent upon Louis Philippe's bounty ; after
that a prisoner at Ham ; and then a gentleman at large in the
streets of London, waiting upon fortune. And now he and his
friends — Morny and Fialin, soi-disant Persigny — have all the
trump cards in their hands. He has the army at his orders —
can shoot us all down whenever the fancy seizes him. The
Government of Prance should be a great confederation of
working-men — a small minority of men who work with their
brains^ an enormous majority of men who work with their
hands — every man to have a direct influence upon the legis-
lature, every man '
' If there were no Court, the higher branches of trade would
stagnate,' said a cabinet-maker. ' Whether it is at the Elysee, or
the Tuileries, we must have a Court. They say that, if the Prince-
President were Emperor, and had things his own way, trade
would be better than it has been since the time of Louis XIV.'
This provoked unanimous derision. It was the bourgeoisie
who had a hankering for the glitter and swagger of an empire,
not the working classes. What they wanted was trade union,
otherwise trade despotism, international societies, syndicates,
co-operation, the power to dictate terms to their employers.
Sebastien, otherwise Ishmael, sat still and heard everythino-.
His eager, receptive intellect caught the spirit of the present
moment, steeped itself in the surrounding atmosphere. He was
of good blood, bore an ancient name ; but pride of race had
shown itself to him on its darker side. He was ready to be as
much a leveller as the strongest Democrat there. He listened
and believed the worst that was said against the man who held
the reins of the state chariot — always a hated personage witli
one particular section of the Parisian world. He, who had
nothing to look to but labour to win him a place in the world,
friends, fortune, fame, was ready to exalt the nobility of labour,
to assert the rights of the working-man as against heaven-bom
generals and senators paid by the state.
Ishmael was on the ground at Belleville at six o'clock next
morning ; and before ten he was taken on to the works in the
capacity of a gdcheur, the foreman instructing him in the rudi-
mentary arts of that office. The Pai'isian workman is given to
chomage, rarely works more than four days a week, and a
52 Ishmael
vacancy of llils kind is not long in arising. Thoa, before he had
been three days in the great city, Scbastien found himself in the
way of earning his bread. He was to be paid two francs and a
half a day for his labour, and he was to give one franc out of
the two and a half to the foreman for his bounty in taking on an
untried hand, a youth without recommendation or papers. But
the gain of thirty sous a day was a solid fact, and Sebastien felt
that he had passed the first mile-post on the long high-road that
leads to fortune.
Had he come to Paris crowned with laurels from a provincial
university, rich in medixls and diplomas, the writer of a prize
poem, the discoverer of a new phmet, tlie inventor of a new
mode of locomotion, charged with science or poetry as with the
electric current — in a word, a genius, he would inevitably have
Bpent the first few yeai's of his city life in rags and starvation ;
perhaps to end his days untimely by a few sous' worth of charcoal,
or a leap from one of the bridges. But as he was passing
ignorant, and brought only his youth, hia strength, and the
cunning of liis hands to the great labour market, he obtained
employment immediately.
He not only found a place in the mighty wheel, but he kept
it. He was sober where other men were given to drink — he
was earnest, patient, industrious, ambitious, among m^ who, for
the most part, were idle Jiuneurs on the boulevard, or loungers in
the street — for the Boulevard de la Chapefle and the Passage
Mdnilmnntant have their idlers as well as the Boulevard des
Capucines, or the Place de la Madeleine.
He was scoffed at for his virtues, suspected for his superior
air and manners, his reserve as to his antecedents. He was
called Mouchard, Orleanist, Chonan in disguise ; but he held
his peace and went his way, offending no one, yet with a look
of reserved force whiuh indic-ited that it wei-e not over-safe to
be offensive to him. To the fellow-workmen who were inclined
to be friendly he was civil, listened to their wrongs and discussed
their claims and the privileges for which they clamoured. Little
by little he caught the tone of his surroundings, and was almost
as Parisian as his companions ; but he never sank to tlieir level.
Instinctively, without a hint from the man himself — save that
implied in the name which he bore — they penetrated the secret
of his existence. He was a gentleman by birth, the cast-off son
of a noble father. They called him the marquis, not in derision,
for at nineteen he had the tone of a man born to be the leader
of men. He did not long remain a gdcheur, condemned to stir
lime and sand in a smoking heap. He showed himself skilful
enough to be set to better work before he had been three weeks
in the employment of the Belleville builder. The work upon
* Sioc&t to the Soul, ami Health to tlic Bones ' 53
which he was engaged wa.g the erection of a block of workmen's
houses, tho beginning of a p:;ighty boulevard, great white stone
mansions rising gigantic from the midst of a broad plateau,
fringed on the further side by the squalid courts and alleys of
INIenilmontant ; wooden sheds, housns of plaster and canvas,
the d,ens and lairs of abject poverty and reckless crime — seething
boil-pot of want, vice, disease, misery, into which the police
made an occasional raid in pursuit of some arch-ofi'euder at peril
of their lives.
The builder was not slow to notice a youth who would work,
who worked as if his muscular arm delighted in its labour, as if
the choral swing of the hammer were to him as the melody of a
bridal song. He picked Sebastien out from the ruck, heard his
Btory — hypothetical story — from tho foreman, and observed him
afterwards with a keener interest. After all, there is something
in good blood, and when a gentleman does take it into his head
to work, Jacques Bonhomme is handicapped against him. This
was what the builder said to himself as he watched the muscular
form — straight, slim, and tall — the finely-shaped head so loftily
posed upon the neck of a young Alcides, the clearly-cut yet
massive features, marked brows, aquiline nose, falcon eye, a
mouth firm as if moulded out of marble. No common workman
this, assuredly, and yet he lived as the other men lived, went to
his seven-sous ordinary, or his tapis franc, after his work, and
had a nest high up in one of those dreary barracks yonder, near
the new hospital, which had been built with the bequest of a
benevolent lady, by name Laborissiure.
One of Sebastien's first acts on finding himself in the way
of earning his bread was to send Father Bressant the bulk of
his money. There was a deficiency of two louis and a half for
the month's rent and the expenses of the journey, but this sum
Sebastien meant to make good out of his savings before he waa
many months older. Life is passing cheap in a gi-eat city to
vigorous, temperate, Felf-denying youth. Nasmyth, a young
man reared in the comfort and <-le2:ance of a successful artist's
household, had the courage to live the first year of his London
life upon ten shillings a week — a voluntary sacrifice to the
spirit of manly independence, since larger means were well
within his reach — and, in so doing, set an example to industrioua
youth which should endure for all time — a nobler thing than
even the hammer wljjch made his name for ever famous. And
Sebastien Cai-adec had the Nasmyth temper, the love of
mechanical work for its own sake, the eye and the hand of thp
anist in stoue or in iron.
CHAPTER VI
'the end of that mirth is heaviness*
Time oxit of mind the Faubourg St.-Aiitoiue lias been the quarter
of furniture dealers and furniture makers. Of late years there
has been an invasion of German workmeu in the quarter, to the
detriment of native talent; but in 1850 the ebcnistes of Paria
■were, for the most part, Frenchmen who had succeeded to the
pi'imitive and scarcely improved tools of Boule and his sons.
Here and there, even in these latter days, a native of P;ms holds
Lis own against the thrifty hard-working and hard-living square
heads, and, by the delicacy of his workmanship and the grace of
his designs, demonstrates that the glory of the French eMniste,
the artist-artizan, whose work was once renowned all the
civilized world over, has not utterly departed.
Such an one was Pere Lemoine, a man well on in his seventh
decade, more or less of a drunkard always, and betimes an idler,
but an artist to the tips of his finger nails. Had P5re Lemoine
abjured the bottle and worked steadily in the yeara that were
gone, he would have occupied a very different lodging from that
wretched gi-ound-lloor den looking into the yard of a huge
ban'ack-like pile between a patch of waste land and a little
cluster of filthy courts and alleys, the remnants of a ])ast age —
alleys that had seen the fall of the Bastille and the days of the
Red Terror ; alleys in wliich the glorious memories of July were
still fresh, and which had sent forth their contingent of revolt
in '32 and in '48. Ptire Lemoine might have been at tlie top of
the tree, an illustrious ornament to the fm-niture trade, said the
dealers and the middle-men who knew the man and his work.
But for that man who will oniy work when driven by absolute
■want, who loves not his art for its own sake, and who would
rather wallow among a herd of other wallowers in some low
drinking cellar than sit beside the cheery hearth of a prosperous
liome, there is no hope. Upon the downward path which that
man treads there is no end but the pauper's grave.
Pure Lemoine might have been a master in the trade, and he
■was a slave — a rich man, and he w^as a beggar ; but he had
taken his own way of living, and he was wont in his cups to
defend his choice between the two great high roads of life.
Well, he would argue, he was as poor as Job. There were men
with not a tithe of his talent who had made fortunes; but what
would you ? — it! was not his nature to be a drudge. Tlie man
' The End of that Mirth is Heaviness ' 65
who makes a fortune by his trade is yonr stolid, mindlesa
mechanic, your mere machine of a man, your sordid plodder,
who never shares a measure of vitriol or a litre of little-blue with
a friend, or takes a night's pleasure — a fish-blooded creature,
content to starve and pinch himself and his family, and to toil
early and late for thirty years or so in order to be rich at the
dull end of his dreary life, when such poor senses as he possessed
at the beginning are half-dead within him.
' I don't envy such a slave his frock-coat and his fine house
at Asnieres, or his money in the funds,' exclaimed Pere
Lemoiue contemptuously, lolling over the stained old marble
table at his favourite brasserie, ' The Faithful Pig.' ' A man
who has not enjoyed friendship, good company, a song or a
dance, good wine, and his polichinelle of cognac now and then
at a merry rendezvous like this — such a man, I say, has never
lived. Nom d'un caniche I what should I do with a frock-coat
or a villa in the suburbs ? I detest the country, and I love to
take my ease in my blouse and my slippers. I have worn a frock-
coat in my day — I who talk to you ; and I tell you that the day
is not far distant when we shall all wear blouses, when there
will be no more fine gentlemen, and the fi'ock-coat will go the
way of red heels and hair powder — to the gutter, to the rag-
heap, with all such trumpery ! There is no true nobility but in
the ma,n himself. Thews, sinews, heart, brains — there is your
only patent of rank.'
Not much nobility in the speaker sprawling across the table
in that low den of 'The Faithful Pig' — an inner and sacred
apartment devoted exclusively to regular customers. And such
customers ! There were men in dubious linen and sham
jewellery, tawdry, fine, audacious, whose only trade was iniquity.
There were girls still in the very dawn of girlhood, yet steeped
to the lips in the knowledge of evil, hovering near the crowded
tables and exchanging infamous jests with the drinkers: shabby
finery, slipshod feet, glassy eyes, a hectic flush upon hollow
cheeks — the livery of vice, the stamp of early death ; and
amidst the Babel of voices, the crescendo of oaths, the reek of
coarse tobacco and coarser spirits, there sounded the melancholy
strains of a cracked tenor, as an old cahotin, at a table in the
corner — thirty years ago a famous opera-singer and spoilt
darling of duchesses — sang a sentimental ballad about the old
house at home and the mother's grave to a little circle of half-
tipsy amateurs. The fouler the atmosphere, the viler the place
and the people, the more certain was the success of that plaintive
ditty. "The old cahotin had lived upon it for the last seven
years, ever since he left off trying to exist res})ectably as a teacher
of singing — coureur da cachets — in the Faubourg St.-Germain.
66 Ishmael
It was in this low haunt that the troHeur spent his evenings
— for hira veritable nodes ambrosiann. After all, the atmo-
Bphere of man's happiness does not depend upon the laws of
abstract beauty, or who would not set sail for the spicy isles of
the Indian Ocean, or the silent forests beside the Amazon 1 A
man's idea of hajipiness is the life which suits him best ; and to
drink, and talk, and laugh, and denounce the powers that be
in a low tavern was Pere Lemoine's ideal existence. He came
to 'The Faithful Pig' wMth alacrity every evening, in fair
weather or foul. He left late in the night with fond regret.
There were nights, indeed, when he never left at all, but lay all
his length among the sawdust beside the pewter counter, ciivant
son via, till the cold, gray dawn stared at him through the holes
in the shutter, and the gar^on came, sleepy and unwashed, to
open the windows and broom away the traces of last night's
orgy-
Pere Lemoine, taking his life thus easily, had never yet been
able to extricate himself from the clutches of the middle-man.
He worked as he liked, when he liked, in his own den. Wheu
he had finished a jiiece of furniture — cabinet, escritoire, honheur
dujour, as the case might be — he summoned his agent and ally,
an Auvergnat, known in Parisian slang as a charabia, who jiut
the article on his truck ar.d carried it round to the furniture
dealers, to di.*;pose of it for the best price he could get ; and then
there was ])layed, over and over again, a neat little comedy in
three acts, wherein the trolleur enacted the pigeon and the
charabia the hawk — a little plot so transjxarent that old Lemoine,
who was no fool, must have seen through it after very few
repetitions ; only it suited his temper better to be duped over
and over again, to be the prey of an ignorant peasant who had
l>egun life as a shoeblack on the Boulevard du Temple, than to
work hard and live temperately.
The first act of the comedy consisted of two scenes. Scenfc
1, the departure of the charabia in the morning with the piect
of furniture, cheery, jocund, full of hope ; scene 2, the return ot
that faithful Auvergnat at eventide, gloomy and despairing.
The furniture trade is going to the dogs, he declares. France
is on the eve of a revolution, and people are afraid to furnist
houses -which may be consumed in the general bonfire next
week. He has hawked that escritoire, a masterpiece, all ovei
Paris, and not a dealer would bid for it. End of act i.
Act ii. consists of a single scene : return of the charabia
three days after to say that he has found a dealer who will
give just half the price Lemoine has asked for that escritoire.
Lemoine, in low water, but not quite run dry, declines.
Act iii. occurs a, week later. By this time Lemoine haa
*The End of that Mirth is Heaviness* 57
exchanged his last sous for cheap cognac, alias vitriol, and is an
easy prey for the Auvergnian hawk. The benevolent ckarahia
comes to offer a kindness. He is only a poor messenger, o.
hewer of wood and a carrier of water; he cannot pay as the
rich merchant would pay, he does not want the furniture at all,
and if he offers anything for it, he does so out of pure good
nature, to oblige his employer. He will not offer as little as
that miserly dealer in the Rue Vivienne, a man who has half the
nobility for his customers ; no, he will give ten per cent, more
than that Harpagon offered. Lemoine, languishing for more
vitriol and the intellectual society of ' The Faithful Fig,' accepts
the offer, parts with his handiwork for half its value, and thus
affords the charahia the opportunity of growin:> /ich and
blossoming some day into a prosperous furniture-dealer in the
Faubourg St.-Antoine.
Naturally, this little comedy cannot be played too fre-
qiiently. The charahia must sometimes perform his commissioa
with aj^proximate fidelity. But the game may be played a good
many times in the course of a year with such a man as P5re
Ijemoine, whose alcoholised brain has long lost the capacity for
remembering the details of a year's existence. ' Vogm la galere '
is the drunkard's motto.
The Lemoines, husband and wife, had lived in that ground-
floor den in the rue Sombreuil for nearly forty years. The house
had been built not long after the Terror, while the fail of the
old fortress prison-house yonder was yet green in the memory of
those who watched the barrack-like pile rising from the dreari-
ness of a level waste. Pere Lemoine couid ]ust remember the
wreck of the Bastille. The roar of cannon and the cries of a
maddened crowd were the earliest sounds he could recall as he
looked backward along the cloudy avenue of the past. The
picture of those days wlien he was a barefooted little galopin at
his father's knees seemed far more vivid than that of ten years
ago. He was a married man and a father long before the
Revolution of July, 1830, which drove Charles X. into exile and
gave France her Citizen King. He and his wife were among
the crcTrd at the review on the Boulevard du Temple, when
Fieschi's infernal machine exjiloded and Marshal Mortier fell
dead by the side of his king.
There was nothing that Pere Lemoine remembered in his
life better than the building of the Rue Sombreuil. He had
played as a barefooted gamin among the builder's rubbish, the
stone-dust and shavings, had "watched the carpenters at work
and the gdcheur mixing his mortar, had seen the tall white
houses rise stone by stone out of the ground. His -father was
an eb6iiste like himself, working independently at hia ov/n
58 Ishmael
goodwill, just as Pere Lemoine worked now ; and as soon as the
boy was old enough to hold hammer or chisel, he began to learn
his father's trade. There was an elder brother, a soldier,
following the fortunes of the First Consul, and there was a
sister who woi'ked at a great military outfitter's in the Faubourg
du Temple, and who came home at night with arms and
fingers aching after ten hours' stitching at serge coats and
trousers.
It was a great epoch for the Lemoine family when they
moA'ed into the ground-tloor rooms on the south side of the big
white house. It was all so clean, so white, so dazzling, such a
contrast to the narrow alley from which they emerged — a dark-
some passage where all the houses looked as if they were on the
point of falling into each other's anus, a passage steeped in the
foulness of centuries, reeking with indescribable odours. In
this new white barrack all the sanitary conditions were as vile
as they could be, no one knowing or caring about sanitation in
those days. But the house was new, and foul odours had not
had time to grow.
The Lemoines were prosperous in those early days of Con-
sulate and Em]iiie, prosperous because industrious and tem-
perate. Pierre's father was a first-rate workman, and although
it pleased him to be independent and to supply the dealers at
his own pleasure, he was regular in his habits, and turned out
plenty of work in the year. At twenty young Lemoine married
a neighbour's daughter, and took his wife home to the family
nest. There was a slip of a room off the living room, which did
well enough for the j'oung couple. The elder brother was
otherwise accomraoilated far off in a foreign grave. He liad
fallen at Auer.stadt, and his sword and a smoky wreath of
immortelles hanging above the chimneypiece, amidst Mere
Lemoine's battet'ie de cuisine, were the only tokens left of his
existence. The mother owed her dead boy's sword to the
thoughtful kindness of a young ofiicer, who had since that time
trodden the same dark road, and found a grave on the great
highway to Russia.
When the Citizen King came to rule over his loving subjects,
P^re et Mtjre Lemoine the elder were both dead, and Pierre and
his wife lived in the liue Sombreuil with their only child, a pale,
graceful girl ot nineteen, with large violet eyes, and chestnut
hair which was the admiration of all the gossips in the neigh-
bouiliood. Pierre and his wife were known &s phe et m^re, and
the last generation was forgotten.
Mere Lemoine and her daughter did not get on very happily
together. The mother was a pffl'son of fretful dis].>osition, given
to tears, and not innocent of a liking for wine and spirits. She
• 'fhe End of that Mirth is Heaviness ' 59
was not a confirmed drunkard in those days, but was just
beginning a system of secret tippling which must inevitably
lead to a bad end. Jeanneton, the daughter, was fond of
!)leasure, and somewhat vain of her pale, fair prettiness, which
lad won her too many outspoken compliments from students
and clerks as she went to her work across the river yonder, in
the Quartier Latin, a dangerous neighbourhood for youth and
beauty in those days.
Pore Lemoine had ajiprenticed his daughter to a clear-
starcher in a good way of business in a dull, shabby street near
the Rue de Fleurus ; but dull and shabby as the street was, it
boasted one of the most popular restauiants in the students'
quarter, a house called ' The Pantagruel,' in which all the quick-
witted dare-devils of the Sorbonne and the Maison Dieu loved
to assemble, and where they made and unmade dynasties and
governments, or fancied they did, which was almost the same
thing.
At first Jeanneton rebelled sorely against her apprenticeship
to the art of clear-starching ; it was killing, cruel, abominable,
she told her parents. There was no other trade in all Paris
that would have been so hateful. It was spirit-breaking
drudgery to stand stoojung over an ironing-board all day iron-
ing shirt-fronts and golfering frills. In 1832 the frilled shirt-
front was not yet altogether ex])loded. There were elderly
gentlemen who still wore those decorations. The whole busi-
ness was distasteful to Jennneton. She complained of the heat
of the stoves, the weight of tlie irons, the smell of the starch ;
and she came home of an evening white as the shirts she had
ironed, and dissolved into tears at the Kast word of reproach.
Her appetite was wretclied.
Moved b^' the^-e complaints, Jlcre Lemoine herself began to
make a trouble of her daughter's avocation, and had more than
one violent quarrel with her husband on the subject. P6ie
Lomoine was well started upon the downward course by this
time, and spent half his earnings upon cheap brandy. The girl
was d3'ing by inclies, Mtre Lemoine told her husband ; it was
a blackamoor's slavery to which he had sold her yonder, and
they were not a penny the richer for her sulfering.s.
' Pei'hiips you would I'ather i-he wei'e in the stieets,' growled
Lemoine, who thought cleiir-starching a genteel ti-aJe, and that
be had done very well for his daughter when he got her accepted
•-ts pupil of Madame Eebciiue, at the sign of the ' Garden of
Eden,' witliout a sous of premium. AVhen she had worked for
INladame a year gratis, she was to receive twelve francs a week,
which was to be increased six months afterwards to eighteen.
At the outfitters in the Faubourg du Temple his sister had
60 Ishmael
never earned more tlian two francs a day, toiling early and late ;
and the stooping over her work all day had given her a chest
complaint, which carried her to Pere Lachai.se before she was
thirty.
Lemoine would hear of no complainings. He was not a duke,
or a millionaire, he protested savagely, but an honest mechanic,
and his daughter must work as he worked ; which comparison,
seeing that Pere Lemoine seldom laboured more than three
days out of the seven, hardly bore upon the case of a girl who
had to go to her work every morning except Sunday at six
o'clock, and was seldom free to come home till seven.
The tears and sullen looks went on for about six months.
Then came a change : smiles, alacrity, a more careful toilet, the
poor little cotton gown and grisette's muslin cap adjusted aa
jauntily as if they had been the satin and leghorn of a countess.
Tlie mother and father heard the girl singing as she went to her
work in the cold early morning, long before they thought of
leaving their dingy pallets.
' She has got the better of all that nonsense, and is growing
fond of her trade,' said P5re Lemoine. ' See how wise we were not
to listeu to her rigmaroles ! That is the only way to manage a
girl of her age. They are as full of fancies as the great ham fair
is full of mountebanks and pickpockets.'
After this period of joyousness and alacrity there came
another change. Jeanneton was gay and sad by turns — to-day
in tears, to-morrow full of wild spirits, laughing, chattering at
the humble supper table, cheeks flushed, eyes flashing. At such
times she looked her handsomest, and Mere Lemoine sighed to
think so much beauty was being wasted in a clear stai'cher's
workshop.
Neither father nor mother was thoughtful enough or careful
enough to read all these signs and tokens, which would have had
a very clear significance for wise and loviijg parents. Neither of
them ever thought of following Jeanneton to her work, or asking
any questions of Madame Eebeque. There had been no com-
plaints ; therefore, it might be supposed the girl did her duty.
She left home at the same hour every morning ; and if she had
taken to being much later at night, it was because there waa
overtime work to be done, for which she was paid liberally, in
proof of which there were the four or five francs she handed her
mother at the end of the week.
One bright spring morning Jeanneton left the Rue Sombreuil
at the usual hour, carrying all her wardrobe neatly packed in a
birge red cotton handkerchief. Neither father nor mother was
astir to see her depart, and it was late in the forenoon that
Mere Lemoine, by no means a notable housewife, went into the
• The End of that Mirth is Heaviness ' 61
darksome closet whei-e the girl slept to give a stroke of the
broom, and discovered a little bit of a note pimied on to the
patchwork counterpane : —
' I am going away with the man of my choice for good
fortune or eviL Don't fret about me, poor old mother. I
should have died at that odious laundry business if it had not
been for my Rend. I shall come back some day, perhaps, a lady,
in a bonnet and an Indian shawl, and then you and the father
will be pleased with me. If ever my Een^ is rich, I will send you
money. God bless and keep you, poor little mother ! Rene is
a follower of a person called Voltaire, and says there is no God,
and that we are all fools to believe in justice and mercy up in
the skies, where there are only the stars and millions of miles
of empty space. But I like to think there is Someone up there
above all those dear little stars. Adieu, and forgive your poor
Jeanneton.'
The damsel's parents were as furious as if they had guarded
and treasured this one daughter as the apple of their eye. Not
Shylock himself stormed and chafed worse at the elopement of
Jessica, albeit she carried off good store of ducata to her lover,
thai) Pere Lemoine at Jeanneton's evanisliment. lie rushed off
to Madame Eebuque, half stupefied and wholly savage with
strong drink, to demand of her what she had done with his
daughter.
The laimdress treated his angry interrogations with the high
baud.
'My faith, what do I know of your daughter? She is no affair
of mine. It was for you and her mother to see that she conducted
herself wisely. Name of a name ! she has been troublesome
enough for the last three months : coming to her work late —
alwayu wancuig to leave early for some excuse or otlier.'
• Leave early ! ' echoed Pore Lemoine. ' Why, she has been
working till ten o'clock at night, she told us. She brought ua
the money she was paid for oveitime.'
' I pay for overtime ! What a farce ! ' cried the laundress.
* If she has brought you money, it was for no overtime with me.'
There was no more to be got out of Madame Eebeque, who
did not want to say all she knew le=it the matter should be
made troublesome to herself in any way. One more apprentice
gone to the bad made no difference to her. It was the way
that half of them went. What would you have ?
Father Lemoine went out of the clear-starcher's shop
sobei'ed, quieted, crestfallen. La Eebcque's black eyes and
fiery-apple cheeks, grenadier bust and shoulders, bare arms set
fiercely akimbo, had been too much for him. He went slowly
along the shabby little street, and, halfway down, encountered
62 Ishmaet
a band of noisy students, long-liaired, sallow, lanlf, with Byronfc
collars and short ])ipes, issuing out of the Pantagruel, where
they had been eating their midday breakfast merrily.
Lemoine turned and followed them as they strolled off
towards the Luxembourg. These were the wolves his poor lamb
had met every day, and among such as these her seducer was
doubtless to be met. ' Eeue ' — he was not likely to forget that
name. He did not know that it was a name just then made
popular by a famous poet, and therefore likely to be chosen as
an alias by aspiring youth.
The students had to pass Madame Rebeque's window, with
its smart muslin curtains and hyacinths in dark blue glasses.
A couple of them stopped in front of the window and peered
inside.
' Take care that the JReboque does not see you looking after
her chickens,' said a third. ' She is the kind of woman to throw
a bowl of dirty water over you if she caught you peeping. You
would not be the first to be so baptised.'
' I was looking for that pretty pdlotte, that little gentUle
Jeanneton^ said the other.
' Lost time, my friend. The pdlotte has no eyes for any of
us,' said the other. ' She is devoted to that unknown with the
black moustachios, who breakfasts twice a week at the Pan-
tagruel.'
' The Prince Rend. Ah, I know the gentleman. A regular
lion of the Boulevard du Temple.'
They passed on merrily, with much fooling as they went.
Ptire Lemoine turned upon his heel. It seemed to him that
these students had told him all they had to tell. They admired
his daughter as one of the belles of Madame Reb^que'a
establishment ; but Jeanneton's lover was not one of them.
He felt in his trousers-pocket, and *ound a franc and a few
sous, quite enough to warrant his entrance into a cafe restaurant
such as the Pantagruel. He went in and took his seat in a dark
little corner, where a blouse of dubious cleanliness would not
offend the eye of customers of a superior class, notwithstanding
which laudable delicacy, the waiter looked askance at Monsieur
Lemoine's unshaven chin and greasy blue raiment.
He ordered a bouillon and a fine champagne, otherwise
best cognac. The tables were all deserted after the breakfast
hour ; and he had the place to himself, which was exactly what
he wanted. The waiter brought him his soup and the brandy
bottle. He helped himself in a leisurely way, and then filled a
second glass.
* Let us chat a little,' he said, pointing to the glass, which
the waiter accepted with a gracious bow. The lady of the
• The End of that Mirth is Heaviness ^ 63
counter had gone to some obscure den in the background to eat
her own breakfast, and there was no one to object to the waiter's
hobnobbing with this very dubious-lool-cing customer. The big
sandy cat, a well-known character, was prowling in a foi-est of
table legs, picking up a savory morsel here and there, and
rubbing herself against one of the legs as if in a vague ex-
pression of gratitude to the universe in general.
' There is a gentleman who breakfasts here sometimes, the
Prince Rend — a gentleman with a dark moustache ? '
' Connu,' answered the man, sipi>iug the bright yellow spirit.
* I have the honour to wait upon him.'
' Do you know who and what he is? '
' There are wiser than I who would be glad to know that,
answered the waiter, shrugging his shoulders. * He is not a
student, and he is not a mechanic. He is pretty free with his
money, whatever he is. Some take him for an author, or a poet
— one of the new romantic school, which -wasjoliment hissed the
other day at the Theatre Fran(;ais ; others say he is a nobleman
in disguise. There was one who hinted that he is a thief, like
Mandi'in, or Cartouche.'
' That man spoke the truth, whoever he was ! ' cried Pfere
Lemoine savagely. ' He is a thief, this villain, for he has stolen
my only daughter — as good a girl as ever lived — the staff and
comfort of my life ; ' and here the ebpniste broke into a passion
of sobs, burying his head in his folded arms upon the table of
the Pantagruel.
He went back to his hole in the Rue Sombreuil at nightfall,
steeped in fiery liquor, having idled away the afternoon among
the lowest brasseries in the Quartier Latin ; bat he made no
further efFort to discover the true character of the persou known
■>a Prince Roue, or the fate of his oiUy d;iu;,diter,
CHAPTER VII
'the crown of old men*
TnnEE years and more had gone by since Jeanneton'a elopement,
and it was Aiuaist — the season at which Paris is at its worst.and in
which sultry period the Rue Sombreuil was a place to be avoided
as carefully as the Jews' quarter in Rome or Frankfort. A
heavy stagnant atmosphere of heat brooded over the Place de la
Bastille and the Faubourg St.-Antoine, and hung like a ragged
veil upon the cemetery yonder, and the wild crags and precipices
of the stone quarries by the buttes Chaumont. The crowded
population of the big house which the Lemoines inhabited
existed as best they might upon the scanty allowance of fresh
air which found its way into their rooms from the deep well on
which their windows looked, or came down into the yard below
for coolness. The very Uowers which here and thei-e decorated a
window-sill languished in their eartlien pots. The very scarlet-
runners drooped upon their strings. Only the foul smells
flom'ished and fattened in this sickly, sufibcating August heat.
An odour of stale cabbage and sour dish-water was in the very
air men breathed. People talked of last year's awful visitation
of cholera, and predicted a return of the scourge, gloating ghoul-
like over the picture of greater horrors to come, a more terribla
cup of atUiction to be drunk than the death-chalice of the year
gone by. There had been a long drought, which promised well
for the cornfields and the vineyards, but which was felt as an
actual scourge in the crowded neighbourhoods of Paris — no
welcome rain to wash the gutters, to flush the primitive sewers
of that period, to cool the hot pavements, and splash with
refreshing sound upon the stony roads. All was fiery and dry,
as if Paris had been one huge furnace.
Father Lemoine carried his cabinet work into the yard, and
woiked just outside his den, using the window-sill as a shelf for
his tools. The children came and stood about him as he worked^
and made their remarks upon the mysteries of his craft — his
glue-pot, his chisels, his gouges, and fine little nails. But the
work stood still a good many hours of every day, sometimes fot
days together, with a piece of old sacking over it, while P6re
Lemoine amused himself at * The Faithful Pig,' reading the
news, playing dominoes, talking politics, grumbling against the
new king and his miuistera. Paris had uatuially expected the
« The Croion of Old Men * 65
toilienninm after the glorious days of July ; and tlie reign of
the elected monarch had as yet fallen some way short of the
Parisian idea of a millennium. The old faubourg of St.-Antoine,
populous as an ant-hill, was the seething hot-bed of revolu-
tionary feeling ; and men who drank in those historic wine-shops
were more drunken with strong words than with strong wine.
Lemoine, the trolleur, was an ardent politician in these days,
a member of the society of the Eights of Man, and full of
undisciplined eloquence about his own right to work as little
and to drink as much as he liked.
M^re Lemoine was not always at home iu this sultry
weather. Her husband's earnings had been a diminishing
quantity during the last year or so, not because he worked
worse or was worse paid for his work, but because he worked
less than of yore. Drunken habits were beginning to exercise
their usual effect. He was idle and irregular in his life, worked
with fury for a couple of days, and then left off for three, or
worked like a demon for a morning, and spent the whole
afternoon out of doors. M^re Lemoine found that she must do
something for her own part to swell the family budget, or eke
go very often without fricot, or a morsel of meat in the pot-au-
feu. She had been educated in all the arts of fine laundry
work, and to that kind of work she naturally returned. She
went to Madame Rebfeque, and engaged herself to that person
as ironer for four days a week ; the other two days would be
Quite sufficient to devote to the menage in the Eue Sombreuil,
which already left much to be desired in the way of purity,
and fell far short of a Dutch interior in neatness and polish.
At Madame Reb^que's the bereft mother heard various
details of her daughter's lapse from good ways. How la
pdlotte, as she was called in the laundry, had first been seen
walking with a tall man in a frock-coat in the gardens of the
Luxembourg ; how she had been observed to wear a blue bead
necklace and a pair of real gold earrings ; and how she had been
seen at a later period driving with the same man — a handsome
man with a thick black moustache — in a fort^/ sous (hired
carriage) ; how she was known to have gone to dances at the
Pr^ Catalan ; how she had told Herminie, that stout girl in the
blue cotton frock, that her lover was a nobleman's son, and
that she had no cause to be ashamed of him. His family lived
eit a ch&teau near Nlmes, and he was to take her to live there
with thera. She was to live like a lady, learn to play the
piano, and she was to wear silk gowns with gigot sleeves. All
this Merte Lemoine heard from the workwomen. Madame
Kebeque still pretended to have had no hint of her apprentice's
danger.
s
66 Ish7nael
' VVlio knows if the poor child was not telling the truth all
the time ? She may be living as a lady in a grand chateau,
and her husband may have made her promise to hold no
communication with her parents,' said M^re Lemoine, who
would fain have induced the laundry to look at the sunny side
of the picture.
The laundresses laughed aloud over their ironing-board.
'They all tell the same story, these fine gentlemen,' said
one — ' a stern father, a grand chateau, the family name, impos-
sible to make a marriage of inclination until the father dies,
and then she will be mistress of the chateau and tout le trem-
hlement. And most likely your fine gentleman is only a clerk
at ninety francs a month, or a student in law or medicine, with
a father keeping a shop somewhere in the provinces. It is only
fools who believe such stories ; but the pdlotte was a born
innocent — always moping by hei-self, or crying in corners,
never taking kindly to her work or to our company. Such a
girl is an easy prey for a scoundrel.'
No one was able to tell Mere Lemoine anything more about
the Prince Rene than that he was tall and good-looking, with
a black moustache and a military walk. He had not been seen
in the quarter since Jeanneton's elopement.
And now it was more than three years since the girl's flight,
and not a line had come from her to tell whether she was still
among the living.
' She is dead, I hope,' said Jacques Lemoine, brutally ; but
the mother still kept a tender corner in her heart for the girl,
to whom she had not been over-kind when they two were
together.
It was the end of August, and the evening air was heavy
with an impending thunderstorm. There had been many
thunderstorms during that month of sultry weather, and the
leaden-hued skies seemed charged with electricity. To-night,
as M6re Lemoine walked home from her laundry, there was
that terrible stillness which comes before the warring of tlie
heavens. Lights were burning dimly in some of the windows
of the Sombreuil barrack ; but the general impression of the
courtyard as Mfere Lemoine went in through the archway was
one of cavernous darkness.
Her own room was dai ker still, and she had to grope upon
the chimney-piece for matches and a tinder-box. While she was
fumbling about among dirty brass candlesticks and saucepan
lids, something stirred upon the hearth and startled her
violently — something which she touched with her foot presently,
•while her trembling hands struck a light. What was it — a dog,
»The Crown of Old Men* 67
It was very Imnian. A wliite face looked up at her, passive,
ghastly in the blvie liglit of the sulphur match.
' Mother ! ' came like a cry of pain from pale, quivering lips.
*Mon Dieu !' cried the mother, falling on her knees beside
that crouching figure, while the match fell and expired upon
the cold hearth by which the wanderer squatted. ' My child
Jeanneton, and alive ! '
' Not very long to live, mother, or I should not be here
to-night,' the hollow voice answered.
It was not Jeanneton's old voice. Something told M6re
Lemoine that it was the voice of one whose life was fading, just
as the match had flickered out upon the hearth a moment before.
' No, no, fillette ; don't say that. Suppose there has been
trouble — let that pass. Our hearts are not stone ; we know
how to forgive. Wait while I strike another match. You ai-e
tired and faint. There is a drop of wine in the cupboard, I dare
say, and that will revive you.'
The tinder-box flashed again ; another match was struck,
and the candle lighted. The mother set it on the table, and
then turned to look at her daughter, who still crouched on the
hearth, with her head and shoiUders resting against the side of
the chimney-piece.
Alas ! what a change was there I La pdlotte, as they had
called her at the laundry, had been once of a lily-like fairness.
She had now a yellow tint, as of a face moulded out of wax.
Her cheeks were hollow, her lips had a purple tinge ; her eyes
had that awful lustre which tells of lung disease ; her shrunken
hands were almost transparent, and the shoulders — the jX)or
bent shoulders — and hollow chest indicated the extremity of
weakness.
^ Pauverette,' sobbed the mother, lifting this vanishing
creature in her arms, on her lap, as when she was a child of
ten or eleven. Alas ! as light a burden now as in those earlier
days. ' My pet, what has befallen you ? '
' Only misery, mother ; the fate that befalls every womaai
who puts her trust in an idle-r. No, I will not speak evil of
him. It was Destiny more than he that was unkind. If the
world were more just, men more merciful to each other, my life
would have been different.'
' Tell me everything, chdrie ; fear not your poor old mother.
The father will be home presently, and we will tell him any
story you will ; but have no secrets from me.'
' I will not, mother,' she answered faintly. ' Oh, how good
you are ! I thought you would thrust me out of doors — spurn
me with your foot when you found me on your hearth. I wilj
tell you by-aud-by — everything — but not yet.'
68 Ishnael
The dry lips faltered as if the speaker was going to faint }
then Mere Lemoine placed the girl in an old arm-cliair — a
Voltaire — whicli the ibeniste occupied in his hours of leisure.
She rushed to the cupboard and brought out a bottle with a
remnant of -wine left from last night's supper — another bottle in
a secret corner on the shelf above held a few spoonfuls of brandy.
She mixed the two in a tumbler, and gave it to her daughter,
who drank greedily.
' My mouth was parched,' she murmured, putting down the
glass with her tremulous hand, while her mother brought
out some fragments of charcuterie — the remains of an assiette
assortie purchased for the morning's breakfast — odd pieces
of pork and sausage. M6re Lemoine put these on the table
with knife and fork, aa«l plate, and a loaf of bread.
' I have walked a long way since daybreak,' faltered Jean-
neton 'The roads were hot and dusty — my feet burnt like
fire. It was like walking on red-hot iron.'
' Where have you come from V
' Toulon,' answered the girl.
' Toulon ! What took you to Toulon ?'
' Fate ! Don't ask me anything to-night, mother. Let me
have one night's rest under a roof — in a bed. I have not slept
in one for nearly a month.'
' JMy poor child ! And the chateau near Nlmes, and the
rich father ? '
' What ! you heard of that ? '
' Yes, I am at work with La Eebbque. Your father does
not earn so much as of old ; one must help a little.'
' Poor mother ! Yes, the chateau, the noble father, the silk
gowns, and carriages, and piano : the life that I was to lead far
away. AD. lies, mother ; lies which only a baby or an idiot
would believe. But that is past and gone. Mother, I have
come to bring you trouble.'"
' Never mind the trouble. Eat something, my pet ; try
to eat.'
Jeanneton made an attempt, but those savoury morsels of
pork had no flavour for her dry lips. The wine had comforted
lier — she drained the glass — but she had no appetite — her
throat seemed thick and swollen — she could with difficulty
swallow two or three mouthfuls of bread.
'I am not hungry, mother ; I think I have got out of the
way of eating. Come, let me show you something.'
She rose with an agitated air, took up the candle, and led
the way to that narrow closet of a chamber in which she Ivid
slept as a girl — the room where she left the letter pinned on her
coverlet on the morning of her fii-iht-
*The Croion of Old Men' 69
Jeanneton leant over the bed and held the candle, shading
the light with h«r too transparent hand. A child of two years
old, with a shock of curly flaxen hair, was sleeping placidly on
the tattered patchwork counterpane, wrapped in a ragged shawl
• Yours V said the mother, and not another word.
' Mine,' answered the daughter. ' Will you take care of
her, and bring her up as your own wlien I am gone V
'Oh, but you are not going to die,' remonstrated M6re
Lemoine, kneeling down to caress the child. ' With a bed to
sleep in and gootl food, you will soon get str'^ng again and
recover your pretty looks. And — who knows? — jOu may find
a kind husband yet who will provide a good home for you and
this gamine here.'
'Don't talk nonsense, mother. You know and 1 know
that I am dying. I have known as much for the last three
months. It has been a slow death ; but the end is coming.
Promise me not to send this little one to the Enfants Trouves.
I could not rest in my grave if I thought she was to be sent
there.'
' Never, my Jeanneton : I swear it.'
* God bless you, mother, for that promise.'
'Perhaps her father may come to claim her some day,'
suggested Mtjre Lemoine, dying with curiosity about her
daughter's past now that she was recovering from the shock
of the meeting.
'Never. He has other business in life than to claim his
child. She must be your own, mother — yours only. And you
will take care of her — watch her better than you watched me —
you will be wise by exjjerience,' said Jeanneton with a hys-
terical sob.
She seemed half-sinking with fatigue ; she had walked
fifteen miles under the burning August sky on the sun-baked
roads, carrying her child the greater part of the way, obliged
to stop to rest every half-hour or so by the roadside, in shade
or sunlight. Her mother undressed lier, taking off the dusty
raiment, which was tidier than might have been espaoted
under the circumstances, and supplying a ragged old petticoat
and camisole of her own for night-gear. And then Jeanneton
sank wearily down upon the bed beside her baby girl, the b«d
upon which she had slept lightly enough in days gone by.
'Oh, how sweet it is to be in a bed !' she murmuied ; 'and
yet all my bones ache.'
She was asleep in a few minutes, the child's head nestling
against her bony shoulder, her wasted arm ; but her breathing
»pas laboured, and she started every now and then in her sleep
with a murmur of pain,
70 Ishmael
Happily this was one of Pore Lemoiiie'a late nights. It
was tweh^e o'clock when he came in from ' The Faithful Pig,'
and he was too far gone to be told of Jeanneton's return.
That must wait till next morning.
When morning came poor Jeanneton was in no condition
to plead her own cause with an offended father upon earth.
Only the lieavenly Father of us all could understand the
language which those dry lips babbled to-day in the delirium
of high fever. The glassy eyes gazed upon Mere Lemoiiie and
knew her not : they seemed to see things and people far away.
The trolleur, in a sombre mood after last night's revelry,
inclined to see life under the bhickest hue, was grimly pitiful
of his daughter's dying state, and did not urge that she should
be flung out of doors. But he spoke of her, even in her sick-
nefis, with undisguised bitterness. This is what such creatures
bring upon themselves when they forsake a good home and
a loving father and mother to follow a villain. He was furious
at the idea that his wife had sworn to rear the child — not to
send her to the Enfants Trouvcs, the only natural home for
such canaille.
' To the hospital she shall go,' he said, * before we are many
hours older. Cr^ nom I is it not enough to have reared one
vijjer ? Would you let another of the same brood warm itself
in our bosoms to sting us by-and-by, when we are old and
feeble ?— and this one has a villain's blood in her veins. From
Toulon she came, vou say, that trash yonder 1 No doubt she
has left her Rene there in the prison. That would be his
natural end. To the hospital with that base-born brat? I
shall take her there myself after dark.'
His wife began to cry. What was she that such shame
and misery should befall her 1 she demanded. An honest
working woman, able to earn her pdtee as well as ever her
husband earned his. She worked four days in the week, while
he worked scarcely three, and half his earnings were spent at
'The Faithful Pig.' Suppose she chose to bring up her
d3-ing daughtei-'s child ? She had a right to spend the few
pence the child's maintenance would cost out of her wages
at the laundry. And by-and-bj^, when she was old, the grand-
daughter would be a help to her. She defied her husband,
and bade him take the little one to the Foundling Hospital at
his peril. If he did, she would make the faubourg ring with
the story of his cruelty. She stormed with such vehemence
that Jacques Lemoine was fain to sneak out of the house and
repair to a little restaurant in the Rue de la Roquette, famous
for its piecls de mouton roidette at seven sous, and its Bordeaux
at twelve sous the litre,
*The Crown of Old Men* 71
When he was gone Mfere Lemoine borrowed a pinch of
tllleul from a neighbour and brewed a tisane for her sick
daughter, which powerful remedy had, strange to say, no effect
on the galloping pulse or dry, hard skin. The grandmother
washed and dressed the child, and let her toddle about the
livii>g-room, and even into the yard. She was a pretty little
thing, as like what the mother was in her girlhood as the bud
is like the flower, yet with a more exquisite delicacy of feature —
pale, and with large blue eyes. She had a sorrowful look, as if
the dreamy, half-unconscious first years of life had brought her
few childish joys ; yet betimes the little face broke into smiles,
and the wide blue eyes laughed merrily, as children's eyes do
laugh, at the wonderland of childish fancies and dreams. She
coukl talk a little after her baby fashion, and toddle about tli6
ard, pointing to rays of sunlight flickering on the wall, and
erying, 'Pretty, pfetty,' enraptured with a kitten which
graciously suffered the caress of her soft little arms.
In the afternoon, the tismie having proved ineffectual, Mero
Lemoine called one of her gossips in to look at her daugliter.
The gossip opined that the poor young woman was in a desperate
way, and recommended Madame Lemoine to fetch an apothecary
whom she knew of in a street hard by. The apothecary was
out when Mere Lemoine went in search of him, and it was not
until nightfall that he came to look at Jeanneton. He knelt
down beside the pallet, felt the sufferer's pulse, loc)ked at the
large dim eyes, so bright yesterday, so dnll to-day.
'I can do nothing,' he said. 'She is sinking fast. You had
better go for a priest at once. You should have called me
sooner.'
Mere Lemoine, in self-justification, told the circumstances of
her daughter's home-coming.
'Poor thing ! To walk fifteen miles in her state was simple
suicide. It could only be wonderful energy of mind which
enabled her to accomi)lish it. Her case must have been hopeless
a month ago — gallojjing consumption.
Ptie Lemoine had been so disturbed by his wife's vehemence,
that work was naturally impossible, and it was the usual mid-
nio-ht hour when he came home, not drunk, but alluine, as he
and his friends called it.
He roared out an angry greeting as he crnsse<l the threshold
and saw his wife sitting up for him with the haliy-girl asleep
on her knees ; but Mere Lemoine pointed to the door of the
little bed-chamber where her daughter lay.
'Did you not see the taper burning in the window as you
came across the yard?' she said. 'Could you not guesa?'
•DeafU' he faltered hoarsely.
72 Ishmael
• Dead ! She was sensible just at the last, after the priest Lad
been praying over her, and she asked for you. ' Ki.ss him foi
tUQ,' she said with her last gasping breath, 'and tell him to
foT«ive.'
The father opened the door softly, and looked in at that poor
lay, marble white in the faint light of the consecrated taper.
There was some holy water in a saucer on the rush chair beside
the, bed, and a little spray of box. Lemoine knelt beside tbe
corjjse, dipped the spray in the holy water, and made the sign
of the cross on that ice-cold brow. It was years sinco he had
made that holy sign — not since his mothei-'s death. A husky
sob bi'oke from his labouring chest, his heart beating heavily
with the sense of a new pain — remorse— the sense of eternal
bereavement.
' He went back to the living-room, and sat down opposite his
wife without a word. Slie leant across and took his hand with
a tenderness which was a thing of the past between them, and
laid tliat horny hand upon the child's satin-soft brow.
• Swear that you will not send this nameless orphan to the
hospital ! ' she said. ' Swear ! '
' I swear it,' he answered, bending down to kiss the baby-face.
He had not had courage to kiss that mai'ble brov/ yonder, though
he had longed to do it.
And so a young life began to grow, and bud, and bloom in
that dingy dweliiug-place amid foul odours which grew fouler
with the passing years, witliin the sound of loud tongues which
changed one slang for another, and one form of blasphemy for
another, as time went by, but which never ceased to offend earth
and heaven. 1 he child's life was not one of sunshine in that
shady place. For the first years — while the memory of the
mother's early death was still fresh, a softening influence up»n
the minds of Pure and Mere Lemoine, while the fairy-like
loveliness and beguiling ways of childhood made the grand-
daugliter a kind of plaything — the little one was treated with
indulgence, was kissed and fondled, fed on the best morsel out
of the dish, allowed to occupy the warmest corner of the hearth,
and had the softest pillow for her golden head. The child was
completely happy in those days, knew not that there was any
fairer place on earth than the Rue Sombreuil, loved the murky
old house — passing old after forty years' occupation, the cosy
hearth, the narrow little room in which her mother had died,
the neighbour's children, her playmates. She was a bright,
joyous little creature in her childhood, but always slim and
delicate in form, and of a snowdrop fairness. She had been
baptised Jeaamctte, but li^ grandfather- called her Paquerette,
• T1l& Croion of Old Men * 73
Fiis Easter daisy, on accoixnt of her pale clieeks, blaiicheJ In that
Ftony well where her life was spent. She came very soon to be
called P^querette by every one. As she grew to girlhood it was
the only name she knew.
When she was seven years old, she was sensible enough to be
trusted upon an errand, handy enough to dust the room and
sweep the hearth. By the time she was nine, she had learned to
be very useful ; and then a change came o'er the spirit of her
dream, and the pains and penalties of life among the ])Oor began
in real earnest for this little pale child call Paquerette. Once
accustomed to make her useful, the grandparents very soon
began to treat her as a drudge, and to lose their temjjer with
her at the slightest provocation. Any little mistake in an
errand, any neglect of an order from her elders, brought upon
her the harshest treatment ; nay, errors that were none of hers
brought punishment upon her guiltless head. If the grocer
gave her a quarter of a pound of bad coffee, or the woman at the
cremerie supplied a pat of rank butter, it was Paquerette who
Buffered. She should not be such an imbecile as to take what-
ever those thieves chosa to foist upon her. She had a nose,
had she not, to smell butter so rancid that one could have
detected it a street off? Was she to be a fool all her life? — for
example.
Sorrows there were many in that orphan girlhood ; joys there
were none. Aged by anxieties, Paquerette, at eleven, cared no
longer for the play of the common troup of children who made
one band in the big house. It was no longer a delight to her
to play hide-and-seek on the winding-stone stair and in the long
narrow passages with noisy boys and girls — to race about the
yard dragging an old st.ew-pan or a wooden shoe for a cart, or to
play at being the postilion de Lmigjumeau, with four small boys
for her team. She had taken upon herself all the cares of life
at twelve years of age, and had bidden farewell to childhood and
its fancies, its sweet imaginary joys, its cheap blisses, in which
a dirty, common stair can do duty for a mountain-pass, the
embrasure of a door for a feudal- castle, a saucepan-lid for the
shield of Bayard or Achilles, an old broken chair for a royal
carriage, and a broomstick for a prancing thorough-bred.
Nothing moved PS,querette iiow except music, and for that
she had ever a greedy ear. Let a brown-faced Savoyard stray
into the yard and grind a waltz upon his Barbary organ, and
Paquerette would throw aside her broom, or leave her tub of
dish-water, and go waltzing round the dirty courtyard on the
points of her slim young feet — light as any fawn in the glades of
St. Germain or Fontainebleau. But even such a joy as this
was of the rarest. Pajis was not rich in barrel-organs in tho39
71 Ishnael
da3-a, and the gvlnclers knew that the Rue Sonibreuil was not
likely to give them a plenteous harvest.
It never occurred to Pere or Mere Lemoine that the sordid,
monotonous existence which was good enough for them was
tardly suitable for the dawn of life ; that this pale flower which
thej had sworn to rear was languishing and fadinj^f in their
charge. In sober truth, Paquerette would have been far better
oif at the hospital for nameless children than she was in that
ground-floor den in the Rne Sombreuil. State charity would
liave lodged her better, clad her better, taught her better, pro-
vided her with more recreation, and in every way been a better
parent to her than these of her own flesh and blood, who let
her wallow in ignorance, shutting her otf alike fiom all know-
ledge of the glorious beauty of earth and from all hope in the
infinite joys of heaven.
And thus, a drudge and a scapegoat for two elderly people
with whom the world did not go over well, and who grew a little
less amiable with the passing of the years, Paquerette endured
the monotony of a joyless existence till she was seventeen. Very
child in ignorance ot all good, very wuiuan in knowledge of evil.
CHAPTER VIIT
*SHB STRETCnETH OTTT HER HAND TO THE POOR '
It was Sunday, and all the world of the Faubourg St.-Antoin^
was drifting towards that wider world outside the walls of
Paris whei-e there were fields and gardens, parks and woods,
and where the river seemed to take a new colour as it flowed
between verdant banks under the shadow of spreading willows.
Everybody was holiday-making except that one little family in
the murky ground-floor looking into the pent-up yard — every-
body else in the world was happy, and idle, and gay, as it seemed
to Paquerette ; but for her Sunday made no difference. Neither
the trolleur nor his wife ever went to church, or put on Sunday
clothes, or went holiday-making in the afternoon, like their
neighbours. They had no Sunday clothes, nor had Pdquerette.
The troUevr's only notion of a holiday was to go earlier than
usual to 'The Faithful Pig,' and to stay later, and drink more.
His wife sat at home, and hugged her misery, and drank secretly.
So that when Pore Lemoine came home from his noisy revelries,
* She Stretcheth out her Hand to the Poor' 7o
BteepeJ fh vitriol, but as firm on his legs as a granite pillar, h©
found the wife in a silent and stony condition, which mighv
mean a dignified siillenness, and which the trolleur never troubled
himself to interrogate. It was enough for him that there were
no wearisome remonstrances — that no vessels of hot or cold
water were ever flung at his head, as was the fashion in som.-\
domiciles he knew of under that very roof ; that he was allowed
to roll into his wretched straw bed and court slumber in peace.
If any one had questioned him about his wife, he would have
replied that she was one of the soberest of women — only a little
given to sulks when he stayed out after midnight.
Paquerette knew better, or knew worse, about her grand-
mother. She had been sent too often to replenish Mere
Lemoine's brandy-bottle at a little wine-shop in the close and
foetid alley round the corner — the wretched lane where the waste
from the dyer's workshop made pools of crimson water that lay
like blood-stains in the muddy hollows beside a gutter half-
choked with refuse, cabbage-leaves, egg-shells, and an occasional
dead cat. In this unholy place, at a dark little den down a
couple of steps, Pdquerette was a familiar visitor. The patron
filled her bottle without waiting for her to ask for what she
wanted. Sometimes she had the money ready to hand him^
sometimes she had to ask for indulgence till the next time, and
the patron was fierce and expressed himself harshly. Once she
had trembled at that wolfish ferocity of his — the deep, harsh
voice and strong language ; but custom hardened her, and she
came to understand that those terrible oaths, that bass thsnder,
only meant that she must not go there too often without the
money in her hand.
It was Sunday, a brilliant morning in the middle of May,
and Paquerette sat on a broken-down wooden stool in the yard,
ju5t beside the door of that room which was workshop, kitchen,
And living-room all in one for the trolleur^s family. It was
between ten and eleven o'clock. The bells of Notre Dame were
ringing, and Pere Lemoine and his wife were still asleep in the
den at the back of the sitting-room. They always slept later
on Sunday mornings. That was the one difference by which
they honoured the Sabbath. Paquerette had been to fetch a
loaf from the shop on the other side of the street, and had
brought from the cupboard the remains of an arlequin bought
overnight in the mai'ket-place, a curious assortment of broken
victuals, the refuse of the fashionable restaurants, piled together
artistically, a lottery of comestibles in which a lucky venturer
might gain half a truffled pheasant, or the tail of a fine lobster
— a hodge-podge of good things, where fish and flesh, confec-
Ijoneiy and vegetables jostled each other. Paquerette looked
70 Ishmael
longingly at the wall of a vol-au-vent half full of chocolate
cream as she set out the table for her elders, but she did not
presume to begin her breakfast without them. She had made
the coffee, which was simmering in a chauffrette, and now she
was sitting listlessly in the yard, looking up at the blue bright
sky as out of a well, hardly hoping to see more of its beauty
than she could see thus, sitting at her door, pent in by walls
which were as the walls of a prison. Had not her whole life
been spent iu a prison hemmed round and shut in by poverty,
ignorance, neglect, cruelty, helplessness ? The girls in prisons and
reformatories are better cared for than ever Paquerette had been.
She sat gazing up at the sky. Sometimes her eyes fell lower,
and she looked at the many windows staring down at her from
the four sides of that stone well like so many eyes. Each
window was alive, as it were, and had its peculiar significance.
The tall, dilapidated old house teemed with human life. At
some windows clothes were hanging out to dry ; at some — these
only the few among the many — there were flowers. Here and
there hung a bird-cage. Those windows were the cleanest which
had birds or flowers, and Paquerette fancied life must be
sweeter and more peaceful in the room that was shaded with
yonder box of wallflowers, dark-green leaves, and blossoms of
gold and crimson. Some windows were screened by a bright-
coloured curtain, across another hung a limp and dirty rag,
which hinted at a filthy interior. Children were hanging out of
some windows, women wee looking out of others. Before one
a man was sha\ang himself in an airy costmne of shirt and
braces. At another a girl was peeling potatoes. Fragments of
song, fiagments of speech, fell into the silence of the yard
below ; and from an open window high up came a gush of
melody, the serenade from ' Don Pasquale,' whistled divinely by
a young house-painter who lived under the tiles. Paquerette
knew hardly any one to speak to in the thickly-peopled barrack.
There were some who were old inhabitants like the Lemoines,
who had squatted down in their one or two rooms among their
poor scraps of second-hand furniture, or their heirlooms brought
from some far-away coimtry village a quarter of a century ago,
and had been content to grow old with the house, which was
rotting visibly, no one spending any money upon its repair.
Others came and went, and were like the shifting figures in a
kaleidoscope, alike and yet not the same. Pdquerette was too
shy to make friends. Tliere were merry girls in some of the
rooms — girls who worked hard all day, yet were full of talk and
laughter when they came home in the evening. T^-o, three,
sometimes four, lived together in a small apartment — sisters^
cousins, friends,
' She Stretcheth out her Hand to the Toor ' 7?
Tliere were a pair of sisters who lived behind that window
with the wallflowers, and who shared their room with a cousin
older than themselves. This little menage P^querette had ob-
served with peculiar interest. The three girls seemed so happy.
Th«y had such an air of perfect contentment in their work and
their lives, their simple pleasures and humble home. She saw
them go out in the morning when she was doing her houseworls,
before grandmother or grandfather had emerged from the innei
den yonder. She saw them go to mass in the early morning,
she saw them run in again for a hurried breakfast, and then
off to work. The two sisters worked for a tliird-rate dressmaker
in the Marais ; the cousin worked in a bedding warehouse in the
Rue Ste. Honord, and spent all her days in Kta,bbing mattresses
with a big needle. They were alwaj^ neatly clad. On Sundays
they looked like younff Udies, and, if the weather were fine, they
always went out ^ the afternoon with their friends, coming
home after dark under masculine escort, but in a sober, respect-
able fashion that gave no ground for scandal.
On some rare occasions, gratefully remembered by Paquerette,
these girls had stopped to speak to her as they passed by.
Pauline, the youngest and merriest, had asked her why the old
people never took her out, at Christmas time and the new year,
for instance, when the Boulevards were well worth going to see.
One need not have any money to spend. Only to look at the
stalls of toys and jewellery, and the lights and the people, was
an evening's pleasure. Paquerette shook her head sadly. The
grandfather and grandmother would not walk so far. They had
seen all that, and it was worth nothing ; the same thing year
after year, they said.
'Ah, but you have never seen it,' cried Pauline. 'Can old
people forget that they have ever been young ? Besides, it ia
not the same every year. There are always new toys, nev/
trinkets, new bonbons, new words, new jokes. No new year is
quite the same as last year. And if it were, there is time to
forget between whiles. Lights and music and happy faces
are always fresh. You shall go with us next Christmas.'
Paquerette gave a sigh of rapture.
' Oh, I should so like ! ' she said ; ' but you would be ashamed
of me in my old clothes.'
'But your clothes cannot always be old,' answered Paulii)?
with her bright laugh. ' You can save your next new gown foi
Christmas.'
Paquerette crimsoned, and hung her head, but said never a
word. The truth was, that she had never had a new gown in
her life. Mfere T^moine had amicable relations with a snufiy
okl woman in the Temple, who dealt in second hand clothes,
78 ishmaet
and it was from the very refuse, the offal of this old hag's stock*
in-trade, that Paquerette's wardrobe was occasionally reijlenished.
The two old women drank their litre of little-blue or their
measure of three-six together, and over their cups debated
the price of those few rags which Madame Druge, the dealer,
flung together in a dirty heap upon the iioor. Paquerette wore
anything — a wine-stained velvet jacket, the nap crushed and
the edges frayed, a garment that had grown old before its time,
like its first owner, now riding in a carriage, anon rolling in
the gutter, the cast-off livery of vice — or a cotton skirt that had
grown thin in the wear-and-tear of honest labour. Paquerette
had neither voice nor choice in the matter.
'Why do you never mend your clothes, child ? ' asked the
eldest of the three girls one day, a tall, stout young woman, wlio
was called big Lisbeth — a broad-shouldered, strong-minded, out-
spoken damsel of eight-and-twenty, the soul of honesty and
good-nature. She gave Paquerette a little friendly tap upon tlie
cheek. 'My child, why are you always in ragsl' she asked
reproachfully ; and then Paquerette owned with tears that she
had no needles and thread, and *hat she had never been taught
to sew. This state of things was too horrible. Big Lisbeth
took the girl straight to her apartment, the room with the wall-
flowers in the window, a room with two beds in alcoves, shaded
Ijy white muslin curtains, everything neat and clean as the
palm of your hand. Paquerette looked about her, dazzled by
the prettiness of the room. It was the first decent or oi'derly
loom she had ever entered. She could not imagine that a
duchess would have anything better. The mahogany chest of
drawers shining with polish, the white jug and basin, the
bunch of flowers in a glass vase on the mantelpiece, the portraits
of Louis-Philippe and Mai^ie Amelie neatly nailed against the
whitewashed wall, and between them a coloured print of the
Holy Family, with a white and gilt china henitier just below ite
On a shelf by the fireplace there were white cups and saucers — .
aa, how clean ! — and an old copper coffee-pot, which shone like
a jewel. As compared with that wretched kennel on the ground-
floor, this room was as the Heavenly Jerusalem, with its jasper
walls and gates of pearl, compared with the foulest city on earth.
Lisbeth took out her needle-case and gave Paquerette her
first lesson in sewing. Tlie girl was very awkward. Her
fingers were unacquainted with the use of a needle, and the
cotton skirt was like tinder — the stuff broke away from the
needle. But Lisbeth was vei-y patient, and the long slit which
had attracted her attention in the yard below got cobbled
together somehow, while Paquerette acquired some rudimentary
ideas as to the use of a needle and thread. Lisbeth ma<ie her
'She Si/retciieth out her Hand to the Poor* 70
a present of half a dozen needles, an old brass thimble, and a
reel of cotton — the first gift of any kind which the girl had ever
received from any one outside her own family. She promised
that she would use the needles, and mend her clothes always in
future. The thimble was a difficulty. She doubted if she
should ever accustom herself to the use of that cuiious instru-
ment, but she promised to try.
'Wliy do you wear a velvet jacket and a cotton skirt?
asked Lisbeth, bluntly. ' That does not go well together. Be-
sides, velvet for working-people I It is scarcely respectable 1 '
Pdquerette hung her head. It was a small, pretty-shaped
head, like a rosebud on its stalk, and had a trick of drooping
when Paquerette was troubled or confused.
' Grandmother buys them,' she falte.red.
'Grandmother is an old fool,' exclaimed Lisbeth, angrily.
She was indignant with that old trollcur and his wife for
bringing up their grandchild so vilely. They taught liur
nothing. She satin the sun half the day rolling her thunil>s
and looking up at the sky. She had growTi up as a pagan in
a Christian city, with the bells of Notre Dame ringing within
earshot. She could do nothing useful for herself, or for other
people, except cook and clean up a little, in her poor untaught
way, for that wretched old man and his wife. She was a regular
Cinderella, and there are no good fairies nowadays to come to
Cinderella's relief.
Paquerette had never heard the story of Cinderella, or she
miglit have thought of her to-day as she sat gazing idly up at
the sky while all the world was going forth to its pleasure. She
liad MO hope of going any further than the yard, or of seeing
any more of the sky than she saw now. Iler hands hung list-
lessly at her sides ; her head leant wearily against the dirty
stone wall behind her. She was slipshod, slovenly, with her
hair rolled up in a loose knot that seemed too big for her head.
She was sitting thus, hopeless, idle, unfriended, when the three
young women — the demoiselles Benolt — came back from mass.
This picture of forlorn girlhood struck them all three at once.
' That poor child I Just look at her ! I should like to
massacre those wicked old people,' muttered Lisbeth, who
always used strong language.
' She looks the picture of misery,' said Toinette, vdth a com-
pasionate sigh.
'If we coidd only do anything to cheer her a little,' mur-
mured Pauline.
After all, the race of good fairies is not quite extinct. Thoy
are human, the good fairies of the present, and their power is
limited. They cannot tairn a melon into a Lord Mayor's coach
^6 tsJunaei
or a lizard fnto a prize ft)Otman ; but there is much that caa hi
done, if people will only do it, with the wand called charity.
The good Samaritan who went out of his way and took soma
trouble to help his fellow-creature is a grander ideal than
Cinderella's fairy, who had the command of all "Wonderland,
and never took any trouble at all.
'What a fine day, Paquerette ! Are not your old people
going to take you out this afternoon 1 '
The girl shook her head.
• They never go into the country, and grandmother never
goes out till after dark,' she said piteously.
' What foolish people ! We are all going to Vincennes for a
picnic. Have you ever been there t '
'I have never been anywhere,' said Pdquerette, with a
reproachful air.
There was a kind of cruelty in asking her such a question.
Surely they must know that she was never taken out for J;er
pleasure.
' And you have never been to a picnic 1 ' asked Pauline.
Paquerette answered dumbly, only by a shake of her head.
The tears came into her eyes. Wliy did they tease her by such
silly questions ? Why could they not take their pleasure and
let her alone 1
The three girls lingered in the yard a few paces from
Pdquerette, putting their heads together and whispering.
' We could lend her a gown and a cap,' said Pauline.
' It would not cost much to take her. Ten sous for the
omnibus there ancl back. There is enough in the basket for all.'
' If Madame Morice would not 3iind,' speculated Toinette.
' Why should Madame Morice mind 1 The girl L-j well-
behaved : she wiU interfere with nobody.'
A little more whispering, and then Pauline, the youngest
of these three lowly graces— she who had been the first to speak
to Paquerette — went over to the lonely child and said :
' Would you like to go to Vincennes with us this afternoon ?
We'll take you, if your people will let you go. I can [end you
a gown. We are pretty much of a size, I think.'
Paquerette started up from her rickety little stoiil crimson
with wonder.
'You don't mean it ! ' she cried, clasping her hands. 'Oh,
you couldn't be so kind ! '
' Nonsense, child, it is no great matter,' answered Lisbeth, in
her frank, loud voice, 'We shall be very glad to have you with
as, poor little thing. Run and speak to your old people ; there
is no time to be lost, and then come up to our )'oom. You
know the way.'
* She Streichcth out her Hand to the Poor' 81
•Oh, yes, Mademoiselle. I have not forgotten your goodnesa
in teaching me to sew.'
The three girls went indoors while Ptiquerette ran into the
den where her grandfather was taking his cotfee at the table
near the fireplace in his morning dress of shirt, trousers, and
slippers. lie looked as if he had not washed or combed his liair for
a v/eek ; but he was only saving himself up for a swimming-bath
by the Pont Neuf, an indulgence which he generally gave himself
on a Sunday afternoon. He was not quite so bad as he seemed.
He lolled at ease in the dilapidated old Voltaire, his naked
feet half out of his tattered old slippers, and reposing on a chair
opposite. He sii:)ped his coffee and gazed dreamily at his work
— a bonheur-du-jour in amboyna wood, richly inlaid — a work of
art. The charahia was to come for it to-morrow morning, and
take it about to the dealei'S till he got Pcre Lemoine his price,
out of which Monsieur Charabia naturally took a handsome com-
mission. There were about half a dozen hours' work still wante 1
for those finishing touches which would make the little bureau
perfect, and that labour would most likely be put off till tl e
very last. Pure Lemoine would dawdle away his Sabbath in
luxurious idleness, and stroll homeward after midnight, trh
hon-zig, to snatch two or three hours' feverish sleep, and then
up and to work at earliest dawn, by the light of a tallow candle,
so as to be ready for the Auvergnat.
The coffee was good, the arlequiii suggested a dejeilner at the
Rocher de Cancale, and the grandfather was amiably disposed
to poor little Cinderella.
'Come and have your breakfast, child,' he said. 'I begaji
to think you had taken the key of the fields.'
'I shouldn't know where to look for the fields if I had the
key,' she answered ; and then she came round to the back of
the old man's chair and leant over him. 'Grandfather,* the
demoiselles Benoit have asked me to go to Vincennes with them
this — afternoon — directly. May I go T
The old man shrugged his shoulders and gave a long
whistle, expressive of surprise. He knew of the three girls ov
the fourth floor, and that they were very respectable young
persons. He wondered that they should take any notice of such
a ragamuffin as his granddaughter.
'Will it cost any money?' he asked, cautiously ; 'for if it
will you can't go. The bag is empty — not a sous till the charahia
gets me a price for my bureau yonder.'
' They did not -say anything about money. They offered to
take me to a picnic, that was all ; and Mademoiselle Pauline
will lend me one of her gowns.'
'One of her gowns ! What a duchess ! If I had two coats
52 Ishmacl
one of them would be always au clou [with the pawnTDroker"}.
"Well, you can go, child. If those girls are simple enough to pay
for you, I see no objection to your having a day's pleasure.
Your pocket will be empty ; so there is no chance of your being
swindled by any of your co-operative dodges ; or else the word
picnic has a sound I don't like. It means handing round a plats
after dinner, and for every man to pay his scot.'
^ Bon jou7; ph'e,' cried Paquerette.
She did not give the troUeur time to change his mind. She
ran across the yard to the steep black staircase upon which the
Eenolt apartment opened ; a terrible staircase in truth, an air-
shaft for all insalubrious odours, a dark well whose greasy walls
were thick with the grime of half a century, an atmosphere of
infection, rank, sour, musty, tainted with every variety of
foulness, animal vegetable, mineral.
Paquerette was inured to such odours. She took bold of the
greasy rope which hung against the slimy wall and served as a
banister-rail, and ran lightly up the corkscrew stair, hustled by,
or hustling, three or four blouses and one frock-coat who were
hurrying down, eager to be off and away for their day's amuse-
ment. The door on the fourth landing was open, and the
demoiselles Benoit were waiting for her.
'Come, Paquerette, we want to catch the one o'clock omni-
bus,' cried big Lisbeth ; and then the door was shut, and the
three girls began their protegee's toilet.
They meant to do the thing thoroughly, having once taken
it in hand. Lisbeth was one of the most thorough-going young
women in Paris, a workwoman such as there are few, and
everything she did was done well and earnestly. She had
trained the two young cousins in the same spirit. In the midst
of poverty, surrounded by dirt, slovenliness, drunkenness, and
all evil habits, they had kept their lives pure and clean ; and
the place they inhabited was an oasis of purity in the murky
old house.
All three girls stood for r. minute or two looking at Pdque-
rette as if slie had been a work of art. Was she pretty ?
They hardly knew ; but they knew that she might be made to
look gentille. There was an air of elegance in the slim, fragile
figure, the swan-like throat, the slight droop of the head, which
the Benott damsels, substantially built, felt rather than under-
stood. But of that order of beauty which was appreciated iu
the Faubourg St.-Antoine PAquerette had not a trace. The
sparkling eyes, the beauU du diable, fresh complexion, girlish
plumpness were not here. There was rather a look of sickli-
ness a waxen pallor, and an attenuatinn whiL-h, froiu a cun . c>i-
tioHRl point of view, was fatal to beauty.
*Shc SirctcJiclh out her llau'l to tJic Poor' S'i
Instructed by ber friends, Paquerette plunged ber bead and
sboulders into £•, shallow wooden tub, and made sucb use of soaj)
and water as sbe bad never done before, emerging flusbed and
breatbless from tbis novel ordeal to scrub berself vigorously
witb a lar<Tje buckaback towel, a very coarse, common towel,
but, oh ! bow deligbtfully clean. The Havour of cleanliness,
the fresh odours of abundant soap and water, were new
things in Pfiquerette's experience.
' Sit down, child, and let me do your hair,' said Lisbeth
with bluff authority.
'Oh! Mademoiselle,' murmured the girl, overcome with
shame at llic tliougbt of her unkempt locks.
Happily, she had a habit of di|)ping her head in the wretubod
cracked little basin every morning wlien she washed ber face,
for coolness sake, so the rough bead was fairly clean. What a
mass of soft brown hair fell about the child's shoulders when
Lisbeth had drawn out two rusty spikes of hair-pins— a soft,
palish brown, not auburn, or golden, or chestnut — a shadowy
veil of fine soft hair, which fell round the thin wan face like an
evening cloud.
While Lisbeth brushed and combed the long thick mass of
liair Pauline and Toinette consulted in a corner as to the gnw u
they would lend the orphan, and finally decided on a white
cotton with little pink spots, clean and fresh from the ironing
board. Girls who are good starcbers and ironers and not
afraid of the public laundry can afford to wear clean clotlies.
The hairdressing was finished by this time, the soft brown
tresses were brushed back from tiie foiebeail and rolled into a,
large knot at the back of the small head ; and now Paquerette,
casting the slough of her poverty, put on a petticoat of
Toinette's, and over it Pauline's pink-spotted cotton.
Pauline had prided herself on ber small waist until to-da; ,
but her gown was ever so much too big for Paquerette. It
Lad to be taken off, and the bodice taken in nearly three inchc.j
with a few vigorous stitches on each side of the waist ; and
then the gown was put on again and finished off wiiti a neat-
linen collar. A dainty little muslin cap was ])inned on the
smooth brown liair, and Paquerette, who had submitted very
patiently to be turned and twisted about like a doll in the
jirocess of dressing, was to be rewai-ded l)y the sight of her
transformed image in the little looking-glass. Not until the
final touch was given to the j)icture would the three girls allow
so much as a peep at the glass. But now, when the last pin
had been adjusted, Pauline brought the glass and held it bebuc
I'ainierett^'s astuuishcd eyes.
What did she see there 1 AVhat kind of iiua'^e gi-eeted Iier
84 Ishmael
curious ggnze 1 A grisette ? A grisette only as for cotton frock
and -white cap. That shy, slender, fragile, ethereal creature
had nothing else of the grisette. The type was patrician.
That kind of face marked the vanishing point of an aristocratic
line— 1^ race dying out, attenuated, but lovely in its decay.
This was beauty assuredly, but the beauty of a white wood-
land flower — frail, faint — the brief bloom and glory "of a day.
The soft, gray eyes— dark, pensive— the small Greek flose, and
delicate chin, with that receding slope which means weakness of
character, the pallid complexion, just relieved by the blush-roae
tint of the lips aad the penoilling of the eyebrows— all these
made up a kind of beauty, but not a type to strike the vulgar
eye. Paquerette was just good-looking enough to pass in a
crowd, as the vulgar say, and just the kind of girl to be passed
unmarked and unadmired by the crowd. Yet the demoiselles
Benoit felb that there was a charm in that pale face and slender
form — a charm which was better than vulgar beauty.
'What do you think of yourself now, Paquerette?' asked
Pauline.
But the girl would not express any opinion on this point.
She had only words of gratitude for the three good fairies.
CHAPTER IX
*AS SNOW IN SUMMER
The Benott girls and their prot^g^e set out for the omnibus
office, talking, laughing, intensely happy. Paquerette had
never ridden in an omnibus till to-day. Cinderella could not
have been more delighted with her enchanted coach than this
waif of St. Antoine with the heavy red omnibus which jolted
and rattled over the stones of the shabby boulevard. There is
not much beauty in the road from the Place de la Bastille to
Vincennes ; but to Paquerette it was rapture to feel the rttbve-
meut of the carriage, and to see the happy-looking people in
their Smiday clothes — the children, the mothers, the working
men ; the noise and bustle and ferment of a fine warm Sunday,
the first Sunday of summer, when all the world was at its best,
and when all the ants in the ant-hill of St. Antoine had come
out of dark holes and corners to bask in the sim.
As they were jolted along Pauline told Pdquerette what
^As Suow in Bummer* 65
they were going to do. They were to meet their friends at the
Forfe — Monsieuj? and Madame Morice — old friends who had
known the departed Monsieur Benoit, and Gustave his brother
Lisbeth's father in yeara gone by, when they all lived in a
little bourg in Normandy, about twenty miles from the fine old
city of Eouen. Madame Morice had succeeded to a small
inheritance left her by a bachelor uncle, a well-to-do black-
smith ; and with this motiest fortune she and her husband had
come to Paris and set up a small grocery shop at Menil-
montant. The rents were so high in all the good quarters of
Paris, that they had been constrained to establish themselves in
a, district which left much to be desired. But these Morices
were exceptional people. They brought the temperate and
industrious habits of the province to Paris, and did not allow
themselves to be corrupted by the great city. Their little shop
at M^nilmontant flourished exceedingly. The two rooms
behind the shop were the pink of neatness, and their one child,
a boy of seven, was a model of obedience and good manners.
Sirrrounded by so much that was foul and evil, they had con-
trived to keep themselves untainted by the infection of vice.
They were the only intimate friends the Benott girls could
reckon upon in Paris ; but for acquaintance — the come-and-go
society of Sundays and holidays — the Benolts had all Madame
Morice's circle, which consisted of the most respectable citizena
of her quarter.
The Morices were sauntering up and down with half a
dozen friends in front of the Fort when the four girls arrived.
There was Mademoiselle Gilberte, the dressmaker, a stylish
young person of five-and-thirty ; and there was Madame Beck,
the clear-starcher, a matron whose purity of attire spoke well
for her laundry-work ; also Madame Beck's son, a flaxen youth
of nineteen, with not a word to say for himself, and with aii
embarrassing habit of blushing violently and goggling his eyes
if he were looked at. There were Monsieur and Madame
Callonge, from the smart little boucherie opposite Madame
Morice's shop ; and lastly, th.ere was a tall, broad-shouldered,
and very handsome Monsi-eur whom the Benoit girls had never
seen till to-day.
He were a blue blouse and a workman's cap ; but one could
8^ at a glance that his outer gai-ments were spotless, and that
his linen, as indicated by the white collar and wristbands, was
that of a gentleman. Morice and Beck were both in broad-
cloth and stove-pipe hats, and Morice had gone so far as to
encase his fingers in a pair of stilT yellow leather gloves; and
yet this man in the blue blouse looked more like a gentleman
than eitlicr of them. His movements had an ease his head waa
8S Ishmael
canie<l with a lofty giace, ■which those otliers had tir.)-. He wna
stroliiug by Madame Morice's side, silent and thoughtful, as the
four girls approached.
There was much cordiality in the greeting given to the
Eenolt girls by all the company except the man in blue, who
was evidently a stranger. Lisbeth presented Paquerette to
Madame Morice as a little neighbour she had brought with her,
and that was all the introduction needed. The grocer's wife
smiled at her with a comfortable, protecting air, and murmured
to Lisbeth that the child was t7-h gentille; and then the gentle-
men of the company took the baskets, and they all strolled off
to find the prettiest part of the wood. It was a gay and busy
world through which they went, a world of humble pleasure-
seekers, somewhat loud in their mirth, but passing merry.
There were wedding-parties among the crowd, couples who had
been wedded on Saturday in order to secure Sunday for a
second day of revelry. There were circles seated on the gra-ss
at their picnic breakfast ; youths and lasses playing hide and
seek or blind-man's buff among the stunted bushes in an
atmosphere of dust and sunshine. Blue blouses, crimson
trousers, white bridal gowns made a vivid variety of colour
against the turf, which looked green in the distance, although it
was rusty and trodden almost to extinction by the multitude of
feet. Yonder- glanced blue water under the bright spring sky.
Paquerette thought the whole scene bewilderingly beautiful.
AVhile they were walking in quest of a retired glade
Madame Morice, who was a great gossip, told big Lisbeth about
the stranger in the blue blouse. He was from Brittany, a
etone-mason, engaged on the fortifications yonder, and he had
lately moved into an apartment on the top front floor above her
shop. He was a very superior person — sober, saving, and
almost a gentleman in his ways. He sat up late at night
studying sometimes. She ha.d seen his lamp from the road
when she and her husband came home from a theatre ; but let
him study never so late, he was always off to his work in the
early morning. She had heard that he was a staunch
Republican, and had grand ideas about the equal rights of
man. She had made his acquaintance through her little boy
Adolphe, who had been nearly run over, when this good fellow,
Ishmael, picked hftu up from under the very feet of a pair
of waggon-horses.
' Can you wonder that I have liked him ever since ? ' she
said. ' Morice cultivates his society for the sake of hia
conversation — they are of the same waj' of thinking, and
neither of them trusts too securely in the Prince President,
or this new law which the Chamber passed the other day.'
^ As Snow in Summer'' 87
Lisbeth was lo Republican. She had likuJ and admired the
Citizen King and his family — that pious, charitable queen, those
princesses, fond of sculpture and poetry, needle-work, and all
])ure feminine arts. The revolution of '48 had seemed to
Lisbeth an unmitigated calamity, and the people who made it
were devils in her eyes. She admired Prinae Louis Napoleoa
for the sake of those glorious traditions which are as fairy tales
to tlie children of France. She knew her B(5ranger, and, in the
sonj'js of the national poet, had learned the history of the
Empire that was gone. If those people who prophesied the
coming of a new Empire were right, so much the better.
Anything was better than a Republic, which seemed a
colourless, hopeless kind of Government — a Chamber always at
logger-heads, a flock without a shepherd.
Madame Morice and her party found a little glade, a
somewhat secluded spot, in which to picnic, and as everybody
seemed pretty sharp set by five o'clock, they all sat down at
that hour to open the baskets and arrange the meal. The
gentlemen of the party provided the wine, and some limonade
gazeuse had been brought by the thoughtful Morice for those
ladies who might not care for such strong drinks as macon or
oi'dinaire. It was a very sober party, but very cheerful not-
withstanding, with much talk and laughter ; and the paucity of
accommodation in the way of knives and forks, plates and
glasses, gave occasion to many small jokes of an ancient and
innocent character. Thus big Lisbeth and the stone-mason, on
sharing their meal off a common plate, were called the menage
Ishmael, and various insinuations of a matrimonial kind were
levelled at them, all which Lisbeth bore with strong-minded
placidity. But when Paquerette presently sij^ped a little wine
out of the stone-mason's glass, the first jesting remark made the
pale face flush crimson.
' She is so shy, la pauvrette,' said Pauline to Madame Morice.
' A word frightens her.'
' She is rather pretty,' said Madame ; ' and she has the air of
a demoiselle.'
' You wotdd not have said that if you had seen her this
morning before we took her in hand.' replied Pauline, with
a natural pride in her work.
Before they had fiiiished dinner, a gray-haired old organ-
player came aud perched himself near them, and began to drone
out his old airs — The Carnival of Venice,' ' La ci daremj
' Non piu mesta^ and a waltz or two. The waltz tunes inspired
the little party. Why should not one have a dance ? — just for
digestion. A word, and the thing was done. The plates were
thrust into the empty baskets j eveiy one was on foot; partners
S8 ishmaet
Mere chosen ; Paquerette fouiid herself, she hardly kiieW lioW,
gliding round in a circle, supported by the strong arm of
Monsieur Ishmael. The shy youth with eyes a fieur de tete
summoned coui-age to invite Pauline.
The copper-faced, weather-beaten old organ-player ground
on, a villainous music, but with a swing and a rhythm which
guided the feet of the dancers, and seemed to them, in the
inspiration of the moment— summer air, blue sky, youth, hope,
and freshness — as the music of the spheres. It was in their
own pulses, in their own young hearts, the melody was
sounding ; the rhythmical drone of the organ was only the
outer husk of that inner and spiritual melody, the mere
mechanical beat which kept time with the music of newly-
awakening hojies and loves.
_ Paquerette had never learned to dance ; but in these light,
slim slips of girlhood dwells the very spirit of motion. Like an
-^olian harp which has hung in the stillness of a closed
chamber, silent for years, but, let a summer wind breathe on
the strings, and the music comes ; so with Paquerette ! At the
sound of the Savoyard's organ, with the sense of a strong arm
encircling her waist, her feet slid lightly over the dry, close
turf, and every movement of that slender figure and those little
feet was supple, graceful, harmonious, as in a dancer of highest
artistic training. There are some arts that come by instinct
to certain jieople, and Paquerette was a born dancer.
' Hurrah ! ' cried the middle-aged lookers on, ai">plauding the
three couples, but with their e^-es on Ishmael and his partner ;
and ' Hurrah ! ' echoed Ishmael, drawing his partner a little
closer to his breast, light-hearted, elated, he scarce knew why.
The other- two cou])les stopped breathless and panting, and
stood .1 oof out of the little circle of sunburnt greensward ;
but Ishmael and his partner waltzed on, unconscious that they
were alone, unconscious of spectators, feeling like two birds
with outspread wings hovering in a world of light and air,
steeped in blue sky and sunshine, far above this common earth.
When they at last came to a stop, the girl's head dropped
upon her partner's shoulder in a sudden giddiness. It seemed
to her as if they had swoopofl down from that blue, bright
world, and that it was the shock of touching the earth again
which made her senses reel and her sight grow dim.
She recovered herself almost immediately, and released
herself from Ishmael's supporting arm.
' Thank you,' she said naively. ' How delicious dancing ia ! '
• And how exquisitely you dance ! ' answered Ishmael,
looking at hor with eyes which seemed to her to glow and dazzle
like the sun-rays that meet on a burning glass.
^ As Snoiv m Smnmer' §0
'Please do not laugh at nie, Mousieur ; 1 never danced with
any one in my life until to-day. I have danced by myself in
the yaid sometimes when there was an organ ; but, of course,
that is different.'
* I am very glad of that,' said Ishmael.
'Glad of what?'
* That I am the first partner you ever danced with. That
makes a beginning in life, does it not ? — a kind of landmark.
And now shall we go for a little walk ? You are breathless
still. We must not dance any more just yet.'
He offered his arm, through which she slipped her little
ungloved hand after an instant or so of hesitation. She had
never taken any man's arm before. Miranda, in her desert
island, could hardly have been more innocent of the manners
and ways of the outer world. Ishmael looked down at her
wonderingly, admiringly. He had seen many more beautiful
women since he had lived in Paris : the women at the theatres,
for instance — dazzling, gorgeous creatures, with eyes that
flashed liquid light, complexions of ivory or alabaster. He had
seen aristocratic loveliness go by him in carriages — patrician
beauty innocent of the actress's art ; for in those days ladies of
rank had not taken to rouge and enamel. This slender thing,
stealing a little upward glance at him now and then, tremu-
lously, was splendid neither in form nor colour. Yet there was
an aristocratic refinement in the almost too delicate features —
the little nose so finely chiselleil, yet undecided between the
Greek and the retrouss^, the small round chin sloping somewhat
weakly at the base, and the pure half-tints of the pale com-
plexion, the violet blue of the large dreamy eyes, with their
long auburn lashes and i)encilled brows. No Joan of Arc or
Agnes Sorel type of woman this, but rather of the Louise de
la Vallifere mould — a woman to sin, her heart being tempter,
and to be sorry for her sin for ever after.
' Paquerette,' murmtued Ishmael, thoughtfully, perceiving
the relation between the white spring flower and this pale
fragile prettiness ; ' were you christened Paquerette 1 '
'I don't know,' she answered, cliildislily ; 'I don't
remember.'
' Of course not,' he said, smiling at her simplicity ; ' one does
not usually remember one's baptism. But have you no other
name 1 '
'Not that I know of . My grandfather once said that he
called me Paquerette because I was such a poor white little
thuig when he first took care of me.'
' And you have neither father nor motl>er living 1
* Neither,' sighed Paquerette
90 Ishnaet
'Can you remember your pareiit3, or did they boui die
while you were a baby ? '
He was not questioning her out of idle curiosity, or with
the idea of making conversation, while they strolled by the
shabby, dusty trees in the people's much-trampled wood. He
wanted to get rearer to this pale flower-like creature ; to know
how this delicate spray could have shot forth from the rugged
tree of hard-working humanity.
' I never saw either father or mother,' the girl answered,
eadly. * I used to think till a year ago that my grandfather
and his wife were my father and mother, only a good deal
older than other girls' fathers and mothers. And then some
one in the house — the old tinman on the filth floor, who lived
there before I was born — told me that my mother died while
she was young. She was very pretty, he said. He remembered
her when she was smaller and younger than I am now. I
asked him why she died so young, but he did not know. She went
away, and then she came back with me, and then she died, and
M'as buried among the poor people at Pfere Lachaise. There is
no cross to tell where she lies. I have gone there sometimes on
a Sunday afternoon, and walked about over the long grass imder
which she is lying with so many otliers, all nameless. And
after a few years the great common grave will be opened again,
and more collins will be put in till it is full — the dead lying
above and below each other in crowds, just as the living are
crowded story above story in the big houses like ours.'
' It is hard,' said Ishmael, setting his teeth, for to this
staunch Republican all inequalities of rank and wealth seemed
liard, ' but it will not always be so. The living and the dead
will have their rights by-and-by. The hewers of wood and
di'awers of water will not always be flung into a common grave.
I remember hearing something of a new law made last winter,
which was to secure decent burial for the poor. And so you
live with your grandfather and grandmother, Mademoiselle
Paquerette,' be went on. ' I suppose they are very fond
of your
He fancied that the love of an old couple for an orphan
grandchild must be something over and above the common love
of parents — tenderer, more blindly indulgent.
' They are not always unkind,' Pdquerette answered, inno-
jently.
' Not always. Are they ever unkind to you ?'
* Sometimes. They are very poor. Grandfather works very
hard — now and then. He makes beautiful things — bureaux or
escritoires for the furniture-dealers. But he cannot always sell
what he has made for a good price ; and then he gets uahappy
^ As Snoiu in Summer 91
flf'j \'(M'y niigry with grandmother and me. And tliey both
li.i\e to take a good deal of wine and brandy for their rheu-
matism : and when one is old that gets into one's head, and one
does not know what one says or does.'
' I hope you never take wine or brandy, Mademoiselle
Paquerette,' Ishmael said earnestly.
' They never give me any — they have none to spare,' the gir
answeied with child-like simplicity ; ' and I hate the smell of the
stuff. I have to fetch it for grandmother from the winesliop.'
* I hope you will always hate it,' said Ishmael. ' Strong
driwk is the curse of gi-eat cities. In Brittany nobody gets
drunk ; we drink only cider. But there we are always in the
fresh air — our brains are not dulled by the stifling atmosphere
of small crowded rooms,' he continued, recalling that crowded
wine-shop near his lodging where the men heated themselves
and maddened themselves as they sat in the oven-like room,
under the low blackened ceiling, drinking their coarse spirit and
smoking their rank tobacco, and holding forth to one another
with an eloquence that was ranker and coarser than potato
brandy or cabbage-leaf tobacco, could Ishmael but have under-
stood it aright.
He had to explain to PAquerette where Brittany was, and
what kind of a place. Her ignorance upon all possible subject'?
was of the densest. The whole world outside the Faubouig
St.-Antoine and Pfere Lachaise was a blank to her. The faubouig
was her only idea of town, the cemetery her sole notion of
country. She listened to Ishmael's description of his nativo
province Avith eyes that grew wider and wider with wonderment.
The sea, what was it like % And rocks, what were those ?
Hills, valleys, orchards, windmills, river, willow- shaded, flocks
of turkeys, processions of geese, broad stretches of yallow sand :
everything had to be explained to her. Ishmael grew eloquent
as he went on, full of enthusiasm for that dear land which he
had left ; not for lack of love on his part, but because parental
love was lacking there for him. He told Paquerette all about
the village of Pen-Hoel and its surroundings, and his own wild,
fi-ee life there ; but he never mentioned the name of the place,
or the ch&teau, or uttered a word which could indicate that he
had been anything higher than a peasant in Iiis native place.
His past life was a profound secret, which he had no intention
of revealing to any ont. His youth and its belongings were
dead and buried, and he stood alone — a young Caesar who had
just passed life's Rubicon, and had taken up arms against fate.
By-and-by came more dancing, while the sun went down in
a sky of crimson and gold behind a meagre avenue of shabby-
limes, their spring foliage already tarnished with the dust of
9§ hhnad
the cit}", and while umber shadows stole across the scattereo
patches of scrubby wood and copse. Tlie old Savoyai-d hadl sent
his dog round among the company with a hat in his mouth,
and had been so satisfied with the result, that he was smiling
over his barrel-organ, and grinding away with renewed energy,
while his faithful mongrel sat beside him, wagging a poor stump
of a tail, the moie ornamental half of which had been demolished
piece by piece in various fights with other mongrels.
Again Paquerette and Ishmael waltzed together to the old-
fashioned 'Due de Reichstadt' waltz, which enjoyed a revival
of popularity just now on the organs of Paris, as a delicate
compliment to him who called the dead boy cousin. Again the
fair small head reclined against the stone-mason's stalwart
shoulder, and the strong arm sustained the girl's slim figure,
so that her little feet seemed to skim rather than to tread the
dusty turf. They were dancing still when Paquerette's friends
began to urge the prudence of turning their faces homewards.
Spring da,ys may be ever so delicious, but spring evenings are
always chilly. A cold wind was creeping up from the unseen
river, the last gleam of gold and red had faded in the west.
The world was a misty gray world under silvery stars, that
were just beginning to glitter in a cold gray sky. The baskets
had been packed with empty plates and glasses ; the empty
bottles — alias negroes — given as a perquisite to the old Savoyard.
The day of rest and pleasure was over. Throughout the wood
little parties of holiday folk were tramping homeward — fathers
carrying sleepy children on their shoulders, mothers dragging
babies in little chaise carts ; lovers with arms wreathed round
maidenly waists ; here and there the red legs of a soldier striding
towards the barrack ; everywhere departure save where, silent
and stealthy in the darkness of copse or grassy hollow, some
homeless wretch watched the departing multitude, hopeful of
being able to pass a quiet night under the stars unassailed by
the authorities of the city.
Ishmael stopped reluctantly when the organ-grinder ground
his last bar. He had danced many a waltz in the least disrepu-
table dancing places of the workmen's quarter ; but never had
he felt the very inspiration of the dance as he had felt it tct-day
on the disadvantageous turf under the open sky. The has-
tringues yonder, even the best of them, reeked with odours of
cheap wine and brandy, and a vile decoction of wine and spices
known as sang de boeuf. Their very atmosphere was poisoned
by bad company and evil language. Ishmael had always left
such places disgusted with himself for having been induced to
enter them ; but to-day he had felt himself in respectable
company ; he had heard not one foul word. He felt that he
* As Snow in Summer' 03
would like to see more of his little partner of to-day, of those
three candid-looking, decent girls, her companions.
' Your little friend dances exquisitely,' he said to big Lisbeth.
• I think you must have taught her.'
* Not I, indeed,' answered Lisbeth, laughing at his implied
compliment, so evidently meant to conciliate. ' She has taught
herself, poor little thing, skimming about the yard, like a bird
or a butterfly. The only joy she has had in life, I believe, has
been to dance to the sound of an organ when one has chanced
to come our way, which has not been often.'
' She seems to have had a very unhappy childhood, poor
little thing ! ' said Ishmael, walking beside Lisbeth as they
made their way towards the point at which the party was to
disperse. He had no intention of leaving the four girls at that
point, but meant to offer them his escort to their home.
'The old trolleur and his wife are an ogre and ogress,
answered Lisbeth, indignantly. 'Figure to yourself, then,
Monsieur, this is the first day's pleasure that poor thing has
ever known ; and if it were not for my cousin lending her a
gown — but I ought not to speak of such things ; only when one
is angry *
' You are right to feel angry. Poor child, poor child ! '
So even the neat pink cotton frock, the modest muslin cap,
were borrowed plumage. Poor little Cinderella ! Hitherto
Ishmael had believed his own unloved childhood to be altogether
exceptional — a kind of martyrdom unknown before in the story
of mankind. And here was this fragile girl, ever so much un-
happier, steeped to the lips in squalid poverty, the drudge of a
drunken old man and woman. The very thought of Fate's
injustice towards this weakling made his blood boil. He looked
down at the girl pityingly, tenderly almost, as he walked by hor
side along the dusty road. So pale, so delicate, wan and
wasted even, in the very springtime of life ! The bud had not
unfolded into the blossom, and yet it was already faded. Such
a faint snowdrop prettiness ! He had admired women before
to-night, had dreamed more than one dream of the passing
moment ; but he had never before been deeply interested in a
woman's character, or a woman's fate. And Paquerette interested
him both ways. He wanted to know^what kind of girl she was :
he wanted to know all that could be known of her sad story.
' Let me see you home. Mademoiselle,' he said to Lisbeth, in
whom he recognised the head of the Benoit family.
' Monsieur is very good. We thought of returning by the
omnibus.'
' On such a lovely spring night ? The omnibuses will bo
crowded to suflfocation. It will be an affair of waiting till mid-
04 Ishmaei
night for places. Don't 3'ou think it would be much pleasanter
to walk home 1 '
' It is a long way,' said Lisbeth, pleased at the idea of saving
so many sous ; ' but if the others are not too tired '
' Not at all,' protested Toinette. ' The night air is so fresh,
I could walk to Asnieres, or Bougival.'
' But Pdquerette, she has danced so much, she must be very
tired,' said Pauline.
' Tired ! Oh, no, not in the least,' cried Paquerette. * It
will be delicious to walk home ; although the omnibus was
heavenly,' she added, gratefully remembering her first drive.
So they all set out along the dusty road, which was less arid
now under the cool softness of night. Paquerette found herself
liancfing upon Ishmael's arm somehow, just as in their first dance
she had seemed to glide unconsciously into his arms. He had taken
the little hand in his and slipped it through his arm with an
air of mastery which implied protection, friendship, shelter, the
guardianship of the strong over the weak.
He asked Paquerette no questions about herself or her life
as they walked back to the Faubourg St.-Antoine. After the
story he had heard briefly from Lisbeth Benolt, he felt that it
would be almost cruelty to touch upon the poor child's sur-
roundings. He wanted to know more of her story ; he was
moved and interested as he had never been till now ; but he
felt that he must make his discoveries for himself, not from
those delicate lips with their tint of pale rosebuds.
He spoke of himself, or rather, of his province, which was
another part of himself, the orchards and fields, and winding
river, the sea and rocks of that land where the borders of Nor-
mandy and Brittany almost touch across the narrow boundary
of the Couesnon. He told her of that land of legends ; of
fairies, and of poulpicains, the impish husbands of fairies ; of
Druid monuments and haunted fountains ; of Christian miracles
and pagan shrines ; told her of that good King Gradlon, of
Cornuailles, who is to the Breton a? King Arthur to the Cornish-
man. Never had Paquerette been so interested. Her eager
questions led the speaker on. Fairies, what were they 1 She
had never heard of them. The sea 1 Ah, yes, she had heard
often of the sea, and she longed to know what it was like — how
big, what colour, and did it really roar in stormy weather, as
her grandfather had told her, as if with the might of ten thou-
sand lions ? and did the waves really, really, rise mountains
high, glistening walls of white water ? and were there silvery
shining lights upon the waves, which looked like enchantment,
and only meant rotten fish ? She longed, of all things, to behold
the sea, and the country, and the vineyards and mountains
* As Snoto in Summer* 05
which the charahia had told her about when he sat smokinc: hia
pipe with her grandfather.
Ishmael inquired who this charahia was of whom slie spoke
as a familiar friend.
The charahia was grandfather's friend, Paquerette told him.
It was he who took away a piece of furniture when grandfather
had finished it, and carried it round to the dealers. Sometimes
he got a very good price, and then he stayed to supper, and
there was africoi, and grandmother made a saladier of wine d,
la Frangaim afterwards, and then the charahia grew merry and
talked of his native Auvergne. There were bad times, when
nobody would give a fair price for the furniture ; and then, when
there was hardly bread to eat, the charahia came forward and
bought grandfather's work himself rather than that they should
all starve. Grandfather was a troileur — a man who worked on
his own account and sold liis work to the dealei's.
' The charahia must be a very benevolent person, or a rank
thief,' said Ishmael. ' He is altogether a new character to me.
What kind of a man is he ? '
'Stout, broad-shouldered, with a dark face, and short black
hair — not a very nice-looking man,' answered Paquerette,
simply; 'but grandfather says he means well, excejjt when
he is angry, and then he says the charahia is a blood-sucker,
and is growing fat upon his flesh and bones. Grandmother
says the charahia is rich, and that we ought to make much of him.'
' And you. Mademoiselle raquerette, do you like this
Auvergnat 1 ' asked Ishmael.
Paquerette had never been called Mademoiselle until to-day.
It was a kind of promotion.
' Like him — I?' she said, wonderingly. ' I don't think he
cares very much whether I like or dislike him. He has hardly
ever spoken to me ; but he sits and stares at me sometiuiuis
with great black eyes, which almost frighten me. I have to
fetch the wine and brandy when he cones to supper. I hate
him,' she added, with a shudder ; ' biit I mustn't say so. You
won't tell grandfather ? '
' Not for the world, ISIademoiselle. I am afraid, from the
way you speak, that these grandparents of youis are not very
kind to you.'
'They are not so kind as you,' the girl answered, softly, for
there was a protecting friendliness in his tone which awakened
in her a new sense of sympathy ; ' but they do not mean to be
unkind. It is only because life is so hard for them.'
They were near the Rue Sombreuil by this time, and in a
few more minutes tliey entered the gloomy arc-liwMy of the
common lodging-hoiL-.e — not so large as those bairacks of a
06 Ishmael
hundred rooms, to be built a few years later under the
Haiissmann rule, but large enough to hold a good deal of
misery and foulness of all kinds. The yard looked very dreary
in the faint light of a moon which was just rising above the
towers of Notre Dame. A guttering candle flared with a
yellowish flame upon the bare old table in the trollew^s room,
"llie door was open, and M8re Lemoine was standing in the
doorway gossiping with a neighbour. She wore a smart little
coloured shawl over her shabby gown, and her Sunday cap,
which was an interesting specimen of dirty finery. She was in
that condition which her friends called poivre, and had the
peculiar solemnity of maimer which sometimes goes with that
state.
' It is that torchon at last ! ' she exclaimed. ' Don't you
think you have given me enough of inquietude this evening,
■p'tite gredine, roaming the streets after dark, you that have
been brought up as carefully as a Mam'selle ? And now ' — with
a suppressed hiccough — 'you come home with a strange
Monsieur in a blouse ! '
P§,querette and Ishmael had the start of the others by some
five minutes.
' You knew I was with kind friends, grandmother,' said the
girl. ' This gentleman came home with me. Mam'selle Benoit
raid her cousins are just behind us.'
On this M5re Lemoine curtseyed to the stranger with a
dignified air, and regretted that her husband was not at home
to invite him to supper ; but if he would break a crust with
them, he would be heartily welcome.
Ishmael, moved by curiosity about Pdquerette, or interest in
Pfiquerette, snapped at the invitation.
' I dined too well to be able to eat anything,' he said, ' but
I should not be sorry to rest for a little while without deranging
Madame. It is nearly five miles from Vinoennes, though the
walk seemed a mere bagatelle ; and I have a longish way to go
to my lodgings.'
Madame Lemoine threw up her hands in wonderment.
' They had walked all the way from Vincennes ! That j^aressewse
of hers, for example, who always loitered on every errand 1
Wonders would never cease.'
' It was a lovely walk,' said P%uerette. ' Mademoiselle
Benoit asked me if I would rather go in the omnibus, and it
was my own choice to walk. You are not tired, are you,
IVIonsieur ? ' appealing to Ishmael. ' I feel as if I could walk
five miles more.'
' Tired ? no, Mademoiselle, not absolutely tired ; but I
fcUould be glad to rest for a little quarter of an hour.'
'As Snow in Summer* 97
The Benolt girls were parting with the goggle-eyed youth
and his sister under the archway. Paquerette flew across to
them as they came into the yard to thank them for their
goodness to her,
' And the gown ? ' she said. ' Shall I come up to your room
and change it for my own ? '
* Not to-night, child,' answered Pauline, kindly ; * you must
ba tired after that long walk. I will bring down your things
at six o'clock to-morrow morning, and then you can return me
mine. I suppose you are always up at six ? '
* I will be up at six to-morrow morning,' answered Paquerette,
ashamed to own the lateness of her normal hour. What was
there to induce early rising in that ground-floor den, where the
trolleur and his wife sometimes slept half throu,:;h the sunny
forenoon, coiled in the darkness of their hole like dogs in a
kennel ?
Tlie Benoit girls kissed Paquerette, wished Ishmael a brief
good-night, and ran ofl" to their dingy staircase. Ten o'clock
was striking from the tower of Notre Dame — not a very dissi-
pated hour, albeit Mere Lemoine pretended to be shocked at
the lateness of her granddaughter's return.
Ishmael was invited to walk mto the hvmg-room, and to
seat himself in the trolleur's greasy old Voltaire, an heirloom
which had grown dirtier and more rickety year by year during
P3,querette's progress from baby to girl, but which was still
regarded as the acme of comfort. The stranger looked round
the room wonderingly. There was not one feature to redeem
the all-pervading dreariness ; even the fine old walnut-wood
annoire, tall, capacious, a relic of old-world industry and comfort,
had been degraded from its sober antique beauty by neglect and
hard uS&ge. The brass lock and hinges had fallen into disrepair ;
the heavy door yawned ajar, revealing a heterogeneous collection
of old clothes, crockery, boots, hardware, and empty wine bottles.
Nothing in the room suggested neat or careful habits in the
occupants. In one corner the cabinet-maker's bench stood
above a heap of shavings which must have been accumulating
for weeks ; in another a basket of tools had been flung down
anyhow among dirty plates and saucepans. A greasy pack of
cards on the table beside the battered brass candlestick showed
how Mfere Lemoine and her gossip had been amusing them-
selves.
Not a primrose or a spray of wallflower from the flower-
market ; not one sign of womanly niceness, of the household
fairy's care, in all the room. Ishmael sighed as he glanced at
Paquerette, who stood shyly beside the smoky hearth, straight,
ulim, fragile-looking in her white and pink raiment.
H
98 Ishmael
* Poor cliild,' he said to himself, * she loolcs sweet and innocent
as a spring liower in the woods at Pen-Hoel ; but what honest
man would ever dare to marry a girl from such a home as
this?'
While Ishmael sat beside the hearth replying to the
grandmother's polite interrogai )ries, P^re Lemoine came in,
unexpectedly early, xmexpectedl/ sober. He had not been to
* The Faithful Pig,' but to a political meeting of ehenistes in a
wine-shop in the Hue de la Roquette, where they assembled
secretly in a back room, and in fear of the police, all such
meetings at this time being illegal. Although he had taken
his glass or two, he was in a perfectly respectable condition,
full of the meeting, and of the importance of the syndicate of
cabinet-makers, of which he was only an outsider.
' But they know that I can speak,' he said, proudly, * those
scoundrels of the Left. I am not good enough to be one of
their syndicate, a poor devil who lives from hand to mouth,
works as the whim seizes him, as all true artists have always
worked, from Palissy downwards. They let me speak, for they
know I am not without eloquence. They have called me some-
times their old Danton — the mouth of thunder — the lion-headed
one. Thei'e is again a talk of a co^tp dJetat. He — Prince Louis
Bonaparte — has sworn that there is no such thing in his
thoughts ; but the ehenistes neither trust him nor the Chamber —
and the ehenistes are a power in Paris. Let the Elysde and the
Chamber look to it. The pulses of the national heart beat
here — the life-blood of France ebbs and ilows h^re ! '
' Monsieur, here, is no friend to the President,' said M6re
Lemoine ; ' he is a man after your own heart.'
' Pardon, Madame,' ansAvered Ishmael, ' I have been in Paris
only half a year. I reserve my opinion. If Louis Bonaparte
means well to the people, I am with him heart and hand. But
I wait to know more of the Prince President and his policy. He
has dealt fairly with France so far, and this rumour of an
impending coup d)4tat may be groundless. It was talked of
nearly a year ago, and has not come yet.'
' The time has not come — the necessity has not come,' said
Lemoine, fresh from the secret discussion at the wine-shop.
' Wait till the sands are running out in the glass ; wait till
that man's day of power is waning ; and then see what he will
do to keep the sceptre in his hand. Remember the Consulate
and the Empire. Remember the \%th Brumaire. We shall see
the same game played over again by an inferior player. Louis
Bonaparte has the army at his back. It was said to-night by
one who knows that Courtigis, the general in command at
Vineennes, has orders to fire upon the Faubourg with the biggest
^My Soul Failed when Ue Spal-e* C9
of his cannon in case of insurrection, while three regiments of
cavalry are to clear the streets and sabre every insurgent who
ventures out of his hole. If necessary, he is to burn every house
in the Faubourg. It will be a fierce struggle, friend ; but I hope
when the fight comes you will be found on our side.'
' I shall be on the side of liberty and right, be sure of that,
answered Ishraael.
CHAPTEE X
*Hir SOUI FAILED WHEN UB SPAKE '
IsHMAEL saw TO more 5f Paquerette for nearly a month after
that night in May, although he asked Madame Morice more
than once during that time why she did not organise another
picnic with those nice girls her friends of the Faubourg St.
Antoine. Madame Morice had other plans, or the Benolt girls
were otherwise engaged. He might have found some excuse
for calling iu the Rue Sombreuil had he so chosen ; but he shrank
with loathing from that dingy room, half Avorkshoj?, half
kitchen — the trolleur in his greasy blouse, the trollewr's wife
with her crafty questions, her bloodshot eyes, looks as evil as
those of the fabulous witches dear to his native province. He
was sorry for Paquerette ; he sympathised with the innocent,
helpless creature, whose youth had been overshadowed by this
ogre and ogress. But to choose a wife from such a den — ^he,
with manly aspirations and gentle blood in his veins — no, that
was not possible. Neither was it possible for him to entertain
one dishonourable wish about that childlike creature. And yet
he ardently desired to see Paquerette again ; out of curiosity,
out of a purely philanthropic yearning to be of some good to so
unhappy a being.
One Saturday afternoon, just bef.jre midsummer, Ishmael,
coming home from work earlier than usual, heard a shrill
confusion of voices in the little room behind Madame Morices
shop. The door was half open to the common passage, to admit
euch summer airs as might wander that way, and Madame
Morice caught sight of the blouse going by.
' It is Monsieur Ishmael himself,' she cried. * Come in, if
you please, Monsieur. You have been aslnng me about picnics
for the last three weeks, and now is yom- oppoituiiity. The
100 Ishmael
demoiselles Benolt and I have been discussing a grand fete foi
to-morrow.'
' I am with yon, ladies,' answered Ishmael. ' I wish I had a
big balloon and could carry you all off to Brittany by to-morrow
evening. It is the feast of St. John, our greatest festival.
When the sun goes down every rock and every hill begins to
shine with its bonfire in honour of Monsieur St. Jean — a hundred
fires, a thousand fires, all sparkling and gleaming in the twilight.
And then comes the joyous sound of music, and a procession of
girls in their holiday clothes come to dance round the fires.
She who can dance round nine bonfires before the first stroke of
midnight will have a husband before the year is out. And the
farmers bring their beasts to pass them through the sacred fire —
sure safeguard against cattle disease for ever after. And from
valley to valley sound the shepherds' horns calling and answer-
ing each other through the night ; and beside ma,ny a fire there
are placed empty chairs, that the spirits of the beloved dead
may come and sit there to hear the songs and watch the dances.'
' What a strange people you Bretons are ! ' exclaimed Madame
Morice.
' We are a people who honour our ancestors and believe in
their God,' answered Ishmael, gravely. ' It seems to me some-
times that in Paris you have neither the memory of the past,
nor a creed in the present.'
' We remember our revolutions,' replied Madame Morice,
whose husband was a politician ; ' they are the landmarks in our
history.'
' You were discussing a picnic,' said Ishmael.
The three Benoit girls and Madame Morice were seated
round a table furnished with dainty little white cups and saucers,
a plate of delicate biscuits, and a chocolati^re which breathed
odours of vanille. As a grocer's wife, Madame could aflbrd to
entertain her friends with such luxuries once in a way. She
handed Ishmael one of the little toy cups and saucers, which he
took with the air of an elephant picking up a pin.
' Yes, we were talking of a grand excursion,' answered
practical Lisbeth Benolt ; ' but I am afraid it is too far, and
will cost too much. We want to go to Marly-le-Eoi, and spend
the day in the woods, and have a picnic dinner at a restaurant in
the village, where there is a nice little garden with an arbour in
which one can dine, Madame Morice knows all about it. We
■went there on her sister's wedding-day. The people are civil,
and the dinner not too expensive. But the journey there and
back — that is a serious question.'
The three Benott girls shook their heads gravely.
There arose a serious discussion. There was the railway fare
«% Soul Failed ichcn lie. SpaJx' iOl
to a certain station on the line, which only took them about
half way to Marly-le-Eoi, and then there was the diligence, and
then the dinner. It would cost at least twelve -francs a head,
all told, travelling third class on the railway and in the cheapest
part of the diligence, and limiting the dinner to bouillon,
bouilli, salad, and dessert.
It seemed a frightful price to pay for one day's pleasure,
but then, what a delight it is to escape out of the diist of
Paris into the real country, the grand old royal forest, the
village which could not be more primitive were it a hundred
miles from the metropolis ! The Benoit girls had given
themselves no pleasure since that day at Vincennes. They
had been saving their money for some stupendous festival ;
and this idea of Marly, which they had seen and admired so
intensely two years ago, had obtained possession of them.
Bougival — Asnicres ? No : they wanted the forest, the
old forsaken fountains, the watur-pools, the memories of a
stately past.
So, after an infinitude of talk, calculation, argumentation,
it v/as finally settled that they should all go to Marly. It was
to be a small, select p;u'ty this time. Madame Murice'a
married sister and her husband, Monsieur and Madame DLUiic,
were to be invited to join, and would dovdjtless be charmed to
revisit scenes associated with the tender memories of a wedding-
day. But no one else was to be asked. There should be no
risk of grumbling and recrimination at the costliness of the
day's pleasure. And, again, a diligence will only accommodate
a certain number. A large party is always diliicult to manage
en voyage.
Ishmael began to look blank.
'Your friend. Mademoiselle Pixquerette, you will take her,
will you not ? ' he asked, appealing to Lisbeth.
Mademoiselle Benolt sighed and shrugged her shoulders.
'Not po.ssible,' she said. 'Poor little Paquerette would
dearly love to go, I am sure ; but that wicked old troUeur would
not give her twelve francs for a day's pleasure ; tliough I dare
say he spends twice as much every week at " The Faithful Pig."'
' But you might pay for her, Mademoiselle Benolt,' said
Ishmael, eagerly. 'That is to say, you might allow me to find
the money, and say nothing about it to Mademoiselle
Paquerette. She is only a child ; she would never ask who
paid for her.'
'She is little more than a child, I admit,' replied the
practical, outspoken Lisbeth ; ' and yet I hardly know if it is
a right thing to do. You seem to admire Paquerette very
much, Monsieur : I hope you mean well by her.'
iO^ hhmael
'Monsieur Ishmael means well by all the woiU, 1 wil)
answer for tliat,' interjected Madame Morice.
Ishmael reddened a little at this.
'Believe me that I am incapable of one evil thought in
regard to your poor little friend,' he answered, gravely.
' Perhaps you go a shade too far when you say I admire her.
I am very sorry for her, poor child ; such a blighted girlhood
is a thing to give every honest man the heartache. But I own
that, if Mademoiselle Paquerette were ever so much handsomer
and ever so much more fascinating, I should hardly go to the
trollew's den in search of a wife.'
' Precisely,' said Lisbeth ; 'and, since that is so, I should
think the less you and Paquerette meet the better '
' What nonsense, Lisbeth ! ' cried Pauline. ' Why should
you deny poor little Paquerette a day's pleasure, which Monsieur
was so generous as to oiTer her out of sheer compassion ?
Paquerette is not so silly as to misunderstand his kindness ; and
think what rapture it would be to her to see the woods and
the real country, and to dine under green leaves in a garden full
of roses and carnations. It would be too cruel to depi-ive her of
such a pleasure,'
' There are some sweets that leave a bitter taste after-
wards,' said Lisbeth ; but the rest of the party took no more
notice of her than the Trojans of Cassandra. They were all
on Ishmael's side. What other feeling than pure pity could
he entertain for such a poor little waif as Paquerette, and
why deprive her of the kindness he so generously offered ?
Lisbeth was overruled. The hour for meeting at the railway
station was fixed, and Ishmael bade the ladies good afternoon,
and went up to his own room under the tiles.
Ishmael's apartment was in every way different from the
troUeui^s den in the Rue Sombreuil. He had furnished his
lodging himself, with divers substantial pieces of furniture
picked up at the second-hand dealers. A fine old cherry-wood
armoire, solid and substantial as the cabinet work of Rennes or
Vitry ,' a mahogany bureau, style First Empire, ponderou'^,
ungraceful, but passing good of its kind. The little iron
bedstead in a corner was screened by a chintz curtain. Thera
were four rush-bottomed chairs, a writing-table in the window,
and two deal shelves of Ishmael's own making, filled with
useful books, cliieily on mechanics, for this young man had
set himself to learn the constructive arts in all their bearing
on his trade of mason and builder. He had taken up
mathematics also, of which he had learned only the elements
from gODil Ptire Bres.s.uit, of P. n-TTicil.
The room was keiJt with the purity and neatness of a monastic
* My Soul Failed loken He Spake* l03
cell. Here, at the little stove iii the corner, Islimael brewed hia
coffee in the early morning ; here, late into the night, he sat at
yonder -writing-table, studying, reading, thinking, inventing ;
for that busy brain of his was full of plans arid visions — bridge?
yet to be built, railways in the far future, aqueducts, viaducts,
new roads, new levels. For at least three nights out of seven
he gave himself up to hard study, locking his door upon the
outside world, lighting his lamp in the early dusk, and working
till the small hours. Then, after, perhaps, but three hours'
sound sleep on his hard pallet, he was up again, brewing his
cotfee, and off to his work in the chilly morning, while the
market carts were slowly rumbling into the city laden with
fruit and vegetables from distant gardens, and great mountains
of sea-fish and river-fish were being sold by auction, and the
Btomach of Paris, yonder by St.-Eustache, the great central
market, was only just beginning its daily functions.
Thei^e were other nights which Islimael spent out of doors ;
but these nights were not wasted in the haunts of vice or folly.
The young workman had entered with heart and soul into the
thronging life of Parisian politics. He went with the repre-
sentatives of the Left in their championship of Eepublican ideas,
their dreams of an ideal Republic— universal suffrage, univei-sal
enlightenment. He was a member of two Republican societies ;
adored Victor Hugo ; spoke on occasion, and was no mean
orator; and he was willing to shed his blood in support of his
023inions should the hour of conflict come. He knew that
among the class with which his lot was cast there were many
doubtful specimens, many vile examples of the genus working-
man ; but it seemed to him that the great heart of the people
was a noble and a true heart, and that the faults and sins of
the people were the faults and sins of circumstance. In a life
where thei'e were so many eleiiients of degradation, so few of re-
finement, so many temptations to baseness, so few inducements
to lofty thoughts, he did not look for ideal perfection ; but he saw
the rudiments of perfectability, and he told himself that, with
better surroundings and a better education, the working-men of
Paris would shrink with horror from the low wine-shop and the
lower dancing-room, which now constituted the paradise of their
idle hours : would turn with loathing from the abject houris of the
hastringue^ the sordid sirens of the Passage Mdnilmontant, or
the Rue des Filles-Dieu. He had seen what their pleasures were,
and had recoiled shuddering from the edge of that loathsoma
gulf into which so many had gone down. He lived among
them, won their liking, and yet was not of them.
He thought of his lost home sometimes as he walked back
from his work, tliOU'dit of the half-brothers he had loved so
10-i Ishnael
well, and wondered what they were doing in the quiet eventide,
and whether they still missed their playmate. He was not
angry with his father for the hard words that had hastened his
exodus from the old home. He knew that the stepmother's
venomous hate had been the true cause of all iinkindness on his
fathei-'s part, helped not a little by those bitter memories of the
])ast which had set a brand upon the eldest son from the very
Iteginning. He was not angry with Fate for having banished
him from his birthplace — for having landed him on a lower level
in life. He had an indomitable belief in his own power to
climb. Already — though he had not been a year in Paris — he
had achieved a reputationfor superior skill and supeiior industry.
He could command good wages. He saw bef&re him a future in
which he would be able to save money — to buy a plot or two of
land, perhaps — in those desert wastes and outskirts between the
exterior boulevards and the fortifications, where land was so
cheap, and where it might some day be of much greater value.
The coming time was to be an age of improvements. Railways
were altering the face of the earth. The builder would play an
important part in all the undertakings of the future. Already
Ishmael imagined a ti^is in which he was to be an employer of
labour. His workmen should not be crowded in filthy holes, or
given over to Satan and all his works. He would found a
brotherhood of industry and temperance. He would build a
lay monastery — a mighty barrack for workmen and their
families, full of light, and air, and cleanliness. Men so lodged
would be healthier and stronger, better physically and morally ;
better workmen, giving better value for their wages. Ishmael
(.lid not foresee that perfect machinery of trade-unionism which
forbids the individual man to work better than his brothers, and
insists upon the minimum of labour all round.
Father Bressant's money had long been returned to him out
of Ishmael's savings, and the apartment at Menilmontant had
been furnished from the same source. An occasional letter from
the good priest told Ishmael how the little world of Pen-Hoel
v.as going on. Monsieur de Caradec was fairly well — he had
hunted and shot a little in the season ; but he had an air of not
being altogether happy. Madame was an invalid always, as of
old ; but the doctor laughed, and said her complaint was only a
chronic peevishness, which was likely to increase with years.
The two boys throve splendidly, and their growth was visible to
the eye. Next winter Father Bressant was to begin their
education, and prepare them for the Polytechnic at Eennes.
Midsummer and the woods of Marly, "What could be a more
delicious combination ? PSquerette, joyous, though a little
"My Soul Failed ivhcn lie Spahe* 105
asliamec! of herself in another borrowed gown, thought that
heaven itself could hardly be so lovely as this forest glade in
which she was wandering with big Lisbeth and Ishmael — a glade
where the sujishine glinted athwart tremulous semi-transparent
leaves, and sprinkled the mossy ground with flecks of emerald
light that looked like jewels. All the way they came from the
city to the village seemed to have been between groves of
flowering acacias ; the atmosphere was full of their subtle
perfume. Paquerette's nostrils had never inhaled such sweet
odoui's. And the sky and the water ! never had she imagined
such a lovely azure. Surely the sky above the liue Sombreuil
was of a different colour.
A faint rose-flush lighted her pale cheeks as she walked in
that leafy glade, and listened resjiectfuUy, yet understanding
very little, while Ishmael expounded the political situation—
the chances for and against a coup dJe'tat, or a tranquil
termination of the Prince President's term of power — to Lisbeth,
who had a masculine intellect, read newspapers, and was deeply
interested in public afl[;iirs.
' A new era has come,' she said. ' We loved the Citizen Iving
and his good queen for their own sakes— kind, harmless pfebple
wishing good to all classes — but under a Eepublic one feels that
the people count for much more — have a light to know how they
are being governed — and to question and to understand every
act of the Chamber.'
* It is a pleasure to meet a lady who is interested in public
matters,' answered Ishmael, understanding that this little speech
of Lisbeth's was in some wise an apology.
Paquerette strayed away from them every now and then to
gather flowers, or to examine mosses or butterflies, like a happy
child. The wood was all-suflicient for her happiness. The sun-
shine, the sweet air, the sense of mystery in those aisles of
glancing sunlight and flickei'iug shades, the idea of a glad, green
world stretching away and away into immeasurable distance,
the first vague dawning sense of the intinite stealing over a
mind that had never before understood anything beyond the
squalidest, saddest realities — all this was a kind of intoxication,
and Pdquerette flew from flower to flower, screaming with
rapture at the vision of a butterfly, lifted out of herself and o3
the common earth by this new delight.
The prudent Lisbeth had made up her mind that Ishmael
and P&querette were not to be left too much alone. That long
walk from Vincennes, in which they had gone so far ahead of
the rest, seeming so engrossed in each other, had aroiised the
wise damsd'a suspicions. It was all very well for Ishmaol to
protest that he only pitied the poor chihl. All the world knows
lOa ishnaet
that pity is akin to love ; and, since he had said that he would
not take a wife from that hole in the Rue Sombreuil, there was
an end of the matter. Poor little Paquerette's heart must not
be broken. So in all their ramblings — and they went half the
way to St.-Germain — Lisbeth took care to be near her protegee.
That did not prevent Ishmael talking to Paquerette, or
P&querette hanging upon his words with obvious delight. She
did not listen while he talked politics : those were dark to her.
But, seeing her rapture in flowers and trees and all living things,
he began to talk of these, telling her the names of flowers, the
habits of insects and birds, squirrels, rabbits, weasels, moles,
field-mice, water-rats — all the free creatures that haunt woods
and waterpools. They had been the companions of his boyhood,
his books, his study.
' How can you bear to live in a great town, where there are
no such things ? ' Paquerette asked, wonderingly.
' I endure my life in the town because I look forward to th«
day when I shall be able to have my nest in the country,' he
answered. 'Not to live there alwaj's. Life among woods
and fields is a long pastoral dream, an everlasting idyl. A
man must have work, movement, progress ; and those he can
only have at their best in a great centre like Paris. But it ia
worth while to toil for a week in stony places for one such day
as this at the end of the six.'
' I can understand that,' said Paquerette. * And now tell
me about your own country, as you told me that night — the
fairies, the saints, the sacred fires, the sea and the fishing-boats,
the wild-boar hunt in which you were nearly killed,'
Ishmael laughed and reddened.
' I am afraid I talked of nothing but myself that night,' he
Baid.
' I like to hear you talk of yourself,' she answered simply.
By the time they went back to the village street of Marly
Paquerette had a lapful of wild flowers, mosses, twigs, tufts of
grass, toadstools, and coloured pebbles, which she had collected
in her woodland walk. Slie carried her treasures frankly in the
skirt of her cotton frock, not ashamed of showing the clean white
petticoat and stockings, albeit her shoes were of the shabbiest.
The feet in the well-worn shoes were small and slender, like the
bare hands which held up the bundle of flowei's and mosses.
' I must get a basket for you to carry home your botanical
collection,' said Ishmael, laughing at her enthusiasm ; and while
the rest of the party were settling down at the humble eating-
house and exploring the little garden in which they were to
dine, Ishmael went all over the village to find a shoj) wher<a he
could buy a basket for P&querette.
^My Sold Failed when lie Spake* ICiJ
He was not a man Lo fail in any quest, great or small, ami
lie appeared in tlie garden with a capacious willow basket
hanging over his arm just as the others were going to sit down
to their soup without him. There was a little coloured straw
twisted in among the willow, and the basket was altogether the
smartest and best he had been able to buy. Pfiquerette gave a
little cry of joy when she was told that this beautiful thing was
for her. Not since the brass thimble given her by Lisbeth had
she received anything that could be called a gift. She trembled
and turned pale with delight as she flung herself down on the
grass with the basket in her lap, and began to arrange her
treasures— her oak-apples, and golden-bright toadstools, and
foxgloves, red and white, and clusters of dog-roses, and long
trails of woodbine, and feathery fern-fronds in all the freshnesi
of their midsummer green. She forgot all about dinner, though
the soup tureen was steaming on the table in the arbour.
'What a child she is!' exclaimed Madame Morice, looking
at the slender figure sitting in the sunshine, the small oval face
bent over spray and blossom, pale and delicate as the eglantine
bloom in the tremulous hand.
'Come to dinner, Mademoiselle Paquerette, or your soup
will be cold,' cried Morice, a middle-aged and somewhat obese
])ersonage, whose love of a good table had stamped itself U])()n
his honest face in the form of j^imples. "When any friend of
the grocer's ventured to allude to those pimples, he always
declared that they were of a kind that came from poorness of
blood, and that it was a duty which he owed himself not to
lower his diet.
It was Monsieur Moiice who had ordered the dinner at trie
village auberge before they started for their woodland ramble ;
and he had not restricted himself to the Spartan simplicity
which his wife and the Benolt girls had proposed yesteixlay. He
had made a bargain with the innkeeper for a dinner at three
francs a head— such a dinner as in Paris would have cost at
least six, he told the otliers triumphantly after the compact had
been made.
There was a honillon cL la honne jeinme^ a consomm4 with
poached eggs floating in it, over which ]\Iorice smacked his lips.
Then came a piece of beef, boiled to rags, but made savoury
with gherkins, and mustard, and vinegar. After that followed
a chapon en blanquette, creamy, velvety, which was discussed in
solemn silence, as too beautiful for words. Then came a dish of
petits pois au lard, and anon a salad, made by the worthy
Morice himself, with intense gravity; and, to crown the whole,
a large dish of cev.fs d la neige, which appeared simultaneously
with^u dessert of strong Gruyfere, Savoy biscuits, and wood
lOS ishmaet
3trau-berrie3. Paquerette had never even dreamed of sncli a
dinner, yet she was too excited to eat much. Ishmael stole a
look across the table every now and then to see how she was
getting on. She had a delicate way of eating, child of the peo^Je
though she was — a delicacy which came from utter indifference
to those pleasures of the table which to the worthy Morice
yonder were a kind of religion. She reminded Ishmael of his
stepmother. She had the same air of fragility, of being made
of too fine a clay for her surroundings. And yet she was the
grandchild of those two dreadful people in the Eue Sombreuil —
the woman with the solemn, jlow speech, the fishy eye, and fixed
stare of the habitual tippler ; the old man with the brandy-nose
and fevered breath, reeking of trois-six. It was out of that
hideous den she had come — to that degraded type she belonged.
What could she be to him ever ? Nothing but a creature to
pity and help in somewise if it were possible. All throvigh
that long dinner, which Morice and his fellow-banquctters pro-
tracted to the uttermost by their deliberate enjoyment of every
dish, gloating over tlie unaccustomed daintinesses, Ishmael's
mind was filled with the image of Paquerette, not as she
appeared to him now, sitting shyly at a corner of the table, half-
hidden by the protecting figure of big Lisbeth, but as he had
seen her an hour ago in the wood, running after the butterflies,
shrieking with delight at the vision of a tawny squiiTel liying
from branch to branch among the foliage overhead, climbing a
grassy bank to pluck wild roses — a creature kindled into new life
by the rapturous revelations of a new world. She would go
back to the den in the dark old house — to foul odours and foul
sights — at nightfall, and it might be long before she saw that
heaven of woodland again. It was not his business to provide
her with excixrsions into the country. Indeed, that sensible
young woman, Lisbeth Benoit, had been disposed to object to his
intervention upon this single occasion, lie told himself that
Lisbeth was right, and that she would have expressed herself
even more strongly had she known all. Raymond Caradec's sou
did not forget that he was a gentleman. He had cast in his lot
among working-men, but it was with a distinct aim and end.
He had sunk in order to rise. He knew that in the mechanical
arts he had his chance with the best ; and he looked forward to
the time when he should be a general where he was now only a
ranker. He believed in his certainty of a successful career as
firmly as the young" recruit believes that he carries a marshal's
b&ton in his knapsack.
' I shall never disgrace my family by a low marriage,' he
paid to himself. ' It will be time enough to think of a wife
when I have made my fortune. Youth will have gone by that
*My Soul Failed lohen He SpaJce.* 109
time ; I shall be too old to many for love,' he reflected, with a
sigh ; * but at least I can marry for honour.'
There was no dancing to-day. The little garden, with its
arbours for dining-rooms, was too full of company. There was
no music, and perhaps most of the little party Imd dined too well
to be inclined for dancing. The Benolts and their friends
sauntered and lounged in the garden, looking at the other
guests, who were all in different stages of dining. When
they had exhausted this amusement, the elder members of the
party went into the house and looked on at a game of billiards
played by a quartette of young soldiers on a very small table,
and with a level mediocrity which forbade the pangs of jealousy.
An occasional cannon was received with rapture by the whole
party as an achievement calculated to reflect lustre upon every
one engaged in the game.
The house and garden reeked with odours of dinner and
rank tobacco. Ishmael felt that he could endure that stifling
atmosphere no longer when there was all the wide world
of summer beauty within easy reach. Paquerette sat among
the Benolt girls on a rustic bench in a, corner of the garden
against a background of scarlet-runners. He would have liked
to ask her to go for a ramble with him ; but he told himself
that it was better he should go alone. What were Paquerette
and he to each other that he should choose her out of all the
rest as his companion ? He snatched up his cap and went out
in a hurry as if it needed all his resolution to go alone. The
little village had a drowsy look in the afternoon light. A bell
was ringing for vespers. Ishmael had meant to go far afield,
and only to return in time for the starting of the diligence ;
but at the open door of the dark little church he stopped and
v/ent in, and knelt in a dusty corner, praying for the repose of
his mothei''s soul — for her release from her sins. And at the
end he made a little prayer for Paquerette, that she m ight be
saved from temptations and dangers, lifted out of the sordid
gloom of her miserable surrounclings, preserved iu the purity
and innocence of her childlike nature
He went no further than the church. When the melodious
monotonous sing-song of vesper psalms was over he strolled
slowly down to the office from which the diligence was to start.
It was a quiet little inn near the water, and he sat on a low
wooden parapet above the stream, smoking his cigar, and idly
watching the ripples as they flashed and sparkled under the
"ight of a midsummer moon. Far away above the roadstead
of Brest the torches were being lighted, wild figures were
flitting to and fro in the twilight, burning brands were being
waved in ciicl'S, or hurled high in air — a frantic dance as
110 IsJmiael
of demons — and amid the pastoral inland hills and valleys the
fires of St. John were being lighted, the shadows of the dead
were stealing from the graves to sit beside the friendly blaze
and watch the happy dances of youth and hope. Here, except
in the church yonder, nobody seemed to care much about St.
John. A few tapers burning in a side chapel, a few flowers on
an altar, and that was all.
He wondered what his little brothers were doing to-night —
if they had gone out with the farm-servants to see the fires, or
if they were mewed up in that dreary salon where their mother
nureed her everlasting migraiiie while the father brooded over
his books, joyless, hopeless; having drained the cup of dis-
appointment to the dregs.
Ishmael sat by the river till the diligence was ready to start,
and the rest of the party came hurrying along the road from
the village, breathless, excited, full of talk and laughter. When
the soldiers had finished their game. Monsieur Dulac and the
Benolt girls nad made another quartette, the gentlemen giving
the ladies their first lesson in billiards. And the game had
caused infinite laughter : Madame Dulac, a stout, comfortable-
looking young woman, with accroche-cceurs on her forehead,
pretending to be intensely jealous, and Monsieur Morice,
swelling with pride in the consciousness of being a great billiard
player en retraite while he coached the Benolt girls through the
game, showing them at what angle to hold their cues, and
stooping down with one eye shut to make a preliminary survey
of the balls before every stroke.
While all the others laughed and talked Paquerette walked
tiilently beside her friend Pauline, hugging her basket. In her
ignorance of all rustic life, she had no thought that the wood-
laud sprays and flowers would all be faded to-morrow, that the
orange-tawny fungus would lose its beauty and become a thing
to be cast upon the dust-heap. She had a dim idea that flowers
and leaves would be bright and fair for ever, sweet memorials
of this one exquisite day in her young life — a day never to be
forgotten, never to be repeated. Such joys could come only
once in a lifetime. And yet she had sufi'ered a sense of loss all
the evening after Ishmael had left the party — a feeling that
the day's delight was over, a vague sadness which she had
struggled against, since it were base ingratitude to her friends
to be less than utterly happy.
And now as she stood a little aloof from the others, silent,
thoughtful, waiting to mount to her place in the diligence,
Ishmael came not near her. Why was he so different from what
he had been at Vincennes— almost as if he were another person 1
■^or did he seem the same person who had bit>ught ] er the
* My Soul Failed when lie Sixihe* 111
basket c^ few hours ago. He sat looking across the river,
smoking, gi'ave, silent. He did not even glance her way ; had
forgotten that such a creature lived. Her heart swelled ; she
felt angry, and then inclined to cry. Why did he treat her so
cruelly ?
Presently they all began to scramble into the coach. She
hoped that he would sit beside her, that he would tell her
about his native Brittany — the fairies, the poulpicains, the
strange stone monuments, altars of a departed religion. No.
For a few moments it would have been quite easy for him to
have taken the seat by her side ; but he let the occasion slip,
and behold, she was screwed into a corner of the banquette with
the plethoric Morice almost sitting upon her, and two of the
Benolt girls between her and Ishmael, who occu])ied the seat
next the driver.
On the railway, where they all sat in an open compartment
on the roof of the carriage, whence one had a delightful view of
the country — somewhat tlavoured and obscured by smoke from
the engine, Ishmael's seat was again remote from the corner
occupied by Paquerette. Her eyes were clouded with tears of
disappointment and vexation. The landscape had lost all ita
charms ; the very scent of the acacias was hateful. She could
see nothing but frivolity and silliness in the delight of the
Benolt girls as the train crossed the river by Asnierea. The
great lamp-lit city yonder, which would have seemed to her a
magical thing had she been in her right mind, was only a some-
thing strange that had no charm for her.
The party broke up at the terminus. The Morices, the
Pulacs, and Ishmael went their way ; and the other four, under
convoy of big Lisbeth, plunged fearlessly into the dark and
narrow streets which in those days lay between the station and
the Faubourg St.-Antoine.
The walk was long, and Paquerette was passing weary by
the time they got to the Eue Sombreuil. She found the old
people in an unusually amiable temper. The charahia had
dropped in to supper, and had brought a knuckle of ham in his
pocket, and had paid for nsaladier of red wine d laFranqaise; and
the entertainment was at its most cheerful stage when Paquerette
came in.
'Well, little Eag, hast thou enjoyed thyself with thy
bourgeois friends, thy grocers and respectabilities of Mcnilmon-
taut ] ' asked Pere Lemoine. ' Hast thou had a pleasant day
yonder 1 '
' I have had a horrid day ; I am tired to death,' cried
Paquerette, peevishly.
She threw the basket — Ishmael's gift — into a corner, flung
112 Ishmael
herself into a clumsy old wooden chair with a ragged rush seat,
covered her face with her hands, and burst into tears.
The trolleur and his wife looked at each other with a grave
significance, half shocked, half amused. The idea of both was
that Pl^querette had been given a little too much wine — dla
avait sa pointe, pauvre petite.
For these two there was only one ruling passion — the love
of the bottle. As they looked at Pdquerette, white, tearful,
they had no apprehension of that other passion which has its
influence upon the minds and ways of men and women, as
strong and even more fatal than the craving for strong drink.
The charabia had a keener eye for the situation.
'Perhaps her sweetheart has not behaved well,' he said-
* Say, then, little Paquerette ; say, then, my pretty pale flower,
hast thou a sweetheart already, and has he begun to play theo
false at the very beginning 1 '
He went across the room and chucked Paquerette trader
the chin with his fat forefinger. The very touch seemed
pollution.
She sprang to her feet, looked at him with eyes aflame and
cheeks white with wrath.
'How dare you !' she cried, then rushed past him, snatched
up her basket, and locked herself in her little closet of a bed-
chamber — the room to which her mother had crept back to
die.
* Quelle diahlesse I ' exclaimed the charabia, shrugging hip
broad shoulders, and going quietly back to his seat to renew
his attack upon the saladiar^
CHAPTER :?^t
*7TIE CITY IS FULL OF VIOLENCE*
Sebastien Caradec — otherwise Ishmael — was a man of fixod
and steadfast mind. Once having resolved within Imuself that
Paquerette was no wife for him — that he would bring disgrace
and dishonour on his house were he to choose a wife of the
troUezir's blood — he made it his business to see no more of the
pale wild-flower face, the pleading blue eyes with their pathetic
look, which had reminded him of a little thing he had read in
a magazine, translated from an English writer — the sentimental
reverie of a philosophic gentleman upon a caged starling, which
fluttered against the bars of its cage, reiterating its piteous cry,
' I can't get out, I can't get out.'
To his fancy, Paquerette's pathetic eyes had pleaded, just as
the starling pleaded, for release from a cruel captivity — the
bondage of squalid poverty and vicious surroundings.
He was sorry for her — he admired her — but the divine spark
was not kindled in his breast. He was heart-whole and could
aftbrd to renounce her. But he did not easily forget her. The
vision of her radiant face in the wood, illumined with the
rapture of a new happiness, haunted him often. Still, he was
steadfast.
Madame Morice invited him to join in two or three more
Sunday afternoon pleasure trips before the summer and early
autumn were over ; but on each occasion he pleaded business,
or an engagement of some kind ; and so the year wore on, ami
time and chance brought about no meeting between him and
Paquerette.
He was full of occujsation at this period : his life was
crowded with interests. His ardour as politician, Eepublicai;,
reformer had increased with every week of his residence in
Paris. He had caught the spirit of the time, which was ardent,
eager, expectant of change. The men of the Left were for the
most part young men, idealists, impossible-ists, impetuous,
daring ; and youth among the working-classes was fired hy
the sparks that flashed from the Republican party in the
Senate. The men who make the revolutions of Paris are not
always Parisians ; indeed, it is a fact to be noted that the
men who achieve great things either in politics or commerce
I
ill Ishmaet
iu a metropolis are rarely men born and bred in tHat metropolis.
It ia the province — the fresh, free air of mountain and sea — the
tvide wastes of Gascogne — the moorlands of Berry — the hills
of Auvergne — which send their vigorous young blood to do
and dare in the capital. Seldom is it from the stones of tlie
city that her soldiers and senators spring.
Ishmael was intense in all things ; and, steeped in the ideas
of his club, he became before December as ardent a Republican
aT any of those fiery spirits of the tiers-etat who helped to
make the Revolution of 1789. He had sat at the feet of such
teachers as Victor Hugo and Louis Blanc. He had spoken on
the side of the j)cop!e, and he believed in the divine right of
the people as against the right of kings.
Going to his work in the chill dawn of the second of
December, there was nothing in the air of Belleville or
Menilmontant to tell Sebastien Caradec that a great political
convulsion, that a daring cast for Empire, had been begun
during the night ; that, under the cover of dai'kness, statesmen
and generals, the senators of France, had been surprised in
their beds by an armed police, bound, and gagged, and carried
out of their homes amidst the shrieking of agonised wives, the
tears of scared childi-en — carried oif on the tirst stage of the
dismal journey to Mazas, Ham, or Cayenne. And yet this
thing had been done.
Last night a little scene, quiet — yet eminently dramatic, by
reason of the repose, the reserved force of the chief actors — •
had been performed in the Palace of the Elysce, in a brilliantly-
lighted room, amidst a crowd of guests. Late in the evening,
the Prince-President, leaning with his back against the mantel-
piece in the large drawing-room, summoned Colonel Vieyra,
the chief of the staff, by a little look.
' Colonel, can you command your countenance if I tell you
something startling'?' he asked quietly.
' I think so, my Prince.'
' Good. It is for to-night. Can you assure me thafe to-
morrow moi'ning '.he drums shall not beat the rappel ? '
' Asstiredly ; if I have a sufficient staff under my ordei'S.'
This instriiction was obeyed to the letter. Before morning
the parchment of every drum had been split imder the eyes of
Vieyra.
' See Saint- Arnaiid,' said the Prince ; * and at six o'clock to-
morrow be at head-quarters. Let no member of the x^ational
Guard go out in uniform.'
The President and the Colonel separated after this conver
sation, which had not attracted any attention.
At the same hour Monsieur de Morny — friend, kinsman,
^ Tha City is Full of Violence ' 115
|)artisan of the Gallic Cjesar— was flitting from box to box
at the Opera Comique, full of small talk and high spirits —
covirtier, man-of-the-world, viveur, diplomatist, cynic, a being
of mysterious birth, as it were the issue of the Elder Gods —
the most fascinating, cleverest, bravest, most dangerous man
in France.
' People tell me that the President of the Republic is going
to make a clean sweep of the Chamber,' said the wife of one of
Louis Philippe's officers, as de Moniy bent over her chair
during the entr'acte. ' What is to become of you 1 '
'If the broom is to be used, Madame, I hope I shall be on
the side of the handle,' answered de Morny, lightly.
Before the latest visitors departed from the Elysce Louis
Napoleon had retired to his study, where de Morny, Saint
Arnaud, de Maupas, and Mocquard were waiting for him.
Mocquard was devoted to the Prince — bound to him by old
associations of the tenderest character. Ciesar's secrets could
not be in safe* hands. Thus it was Mocquard who had
prepared the portfolio which contained the papers— list of
names, plan of action, and, above all, the sinews of war, in the
sliape of several millions of francs advanced by the Bank of
France— necessary to the successful issue of the drama whicli
was to be begun to-night. Upon this portfolio was inscribed
the mystic woixl, Rubicon.
The second of December, 1851, might be called the day of
Protestations. In the High Court of Paris seven judges of the
highest jurisdiction sat in solemn assembly and protested
against the flagrant violation of the Constitution, and summoned
the chief of the State to appear before them, charged with the
crime of high treason. But the action of the law is slow, and
individually, from the human stand-point of intense hatred of
Cavaignac and the Reds, the seven judges were all friendly to
Prince Louis Najioleon. The proceedings of the High Court
were therefore adjourned until the following day, and this
solemn conclave produced only protest number one. Latest
example of mountain and mouse.
Protest niimber two was signed by the members of the State
Council.
Protest number three emanated from the journalists of
Paris, who could not remain neutral when national interests
were at stake. With some difficulty they met at the office of
the Sihle, and agreed to the terms of their protestation, which
was covered with signatures ; but when it came to the question
of printing this manifesto— the voice of the national press, tha
interpretation of popular feeling — there were insurmountable
difficulties.
IIQ Ishmacl
The iron hand of Csesar had barred every printing-office In
Paris.
'Why waste powder upon protestations?' cried Emile de
Girardin. ' Go and shut up the Bourse. That ia the thing to be
done.'
Later he had a wider proposition : a universal strike. No
tradesman to sell his goods ; no artisan to work ; stagnation —
starvation — the stillness of a city struck with death — till the
outraged dej^uties should be set at liberty and the authority of
the violated Chamber restored.
Neither of these ideas was put into action. Bakers will bake
and sell their bread ; butchers will kill ; the beaten round of
daily life will go on albeit the Constitution — an abstract noun
which has different meanings in the minds of different people —
may be trampled vmder foot.
Ishmael left his work yonder by Belleville and went into
the heart of Paris. The Boulevard des Italians was in those
days the forum of the Parisians ; and here, on the steps in front
of Tortoni's, which served as the tribune, the fever of expecta-
tion, doubt, suspicion, was at its height. Yet it was not a
violent fever. Paris took the coup d'etat very lightly.
The middle classes were undecided ; the people were
doubtful. The Faubourg Saint-Antoine, even — once the very
altar of libei't}^, the cradle of revolution — was as quiet as the
grave. A sluggish dulness seemed to have crept over the spirits
of the working-classes— a timid acceptance of things as they
were — a fear of upsetting a line of statecraft which seemed to be
working for the material comfort and prosperity of the artisan.
Even the ebenistes were indifferent, and had to be lashed and
Btung into action by the eloquence of Victor Hugo, the
eai'nestuess of Schoelcher and Baudiu. The disinterested love of
liberty, for its own sake, was to be found only among these
representatives of the Left — still free to move about among
their fellow-men, brandishing the torch of revolution, calling to
the very stones of Paris to rise against the tyrant : still free,
but already under the ban, and obliged to meet together in
secret, afraid to seek the shelter of their own homes.
The brief winter day wore on to its early close. Twice
during that day the Prince-President showed himself to the
people — as it were between the acts of the drama. He left the
Elysee on horseback, accompanied by his marshals — a brilliant
cavalcade — and rode as far as the Rue de Pivoli. It has been
said that he expected one of those outbursts of enthusiasm from
the populace which carry a man to the throne — taken off his
feet, as it were, and swept on to the Royal platform by the
irresistible flood-tide of public feeling. But there was no such
*Tlie City is Full of Violence' 117
ovation ; and the Prince went back to the Elysee, to show
himself again late in the afternoon, when the acclamations were
more numerous.
At four o'clock the Republican party — disturbed at their
first rendezvous, driven from pillar to post by rumours of the
police on their track — met for deliberation in a house on the
Quai de Jemmapes. A committee of resistance was named, the
eloquent voice, the fiery spirit of which was Victor Hugo ; and
late that night the same party, swollen by many additional
members, met secretly in the workshops of Frcddric Cournet, in
the Rue de Popincourt ; Victor Hugo in the chair ; Baudin, a
brave and bold spirit, Hugo's junior by ten years, seated at the
master-spirit's side as secretary.
An armed resistance was the sole idea of the assembly.
' Listen,' cried Victor Hugo. ' Bear in mind what you are
doing. On one side, a hundred thousand men, batteries, arsenals,
cannon, munitions of war sufficient for another Russian cam-
paign. On the other side, a hundred and twenty representatives
of the people, a thousand or so of patriots, six hundred muskets.
Not a driun to beat the rappel. Not a bell to sound the tocsin.
Not a press to print a proclamation. Only here and there a
lithographic workshop, a cellar, where a placard may be produced
hastily with a Ijrush. Death to any man who takes up a paving-
stone in the street ; death to all who meet as agitators ; deatli
to any man who placards an appeal to arms. If you are arrested
during the fight — death ; if after the fight — transportation. On
one side, the army and a crime ; on the other side, a handful of
men and the riglit. These are the odds against us. Do you
accept the challenge ? '
A unanimoiis cry responded to the appeal. Yes, against
any odds — yes, in the teeth of the tyrant — face to face with
death ; the men of the Left were ready.
It was midnight when the assembly decided that the Reds
should meet to-morrow morning in the Cafd Roysin, in front of
the INIarche Lenoir — the representatives of the people in the
bosom of the people, in the arms of the artisan class — relying
on the courage and the energy of that people to bring to bear an
overwhelming force of opposition against the armed might of
the usurper.
The Rue Ste.-Marguerite is unique after its kind, and claims
distinction as one of the most horrible streets in Paris. It is
the chosen abode of the rag-pickers, mendicants, organ-grinders,
monkey-men, epileptics, blind, lepers, deaf and dumb, the dealers
in tortoiseshell combs and brass watchguards. The Bohemia of
e, new Court of Miracles has its rendezvous here. Hence, they
lis Ishmacl
Bally forth, tliese jovial beggars of modern Paris, tlie blind and
the lame, the maimed and the dimib, joyous, fresh, hearty, in the
early morning, each going to his post, his particular corner on
bridge or at church door. Their faces are not yet composed into
the professional aspect, the lugubrious droop of the lips is not
yet assumed ; for here they are still en famille, still behind the
scenes. The play begins a little later.
In the early morning, while the beggars and saltimhanques
issue forth to their daily round, the Rue Sainte-Marguerite is
alive with the return of the rag-pickers. From all sides — by
the Rue de Charonne, by the faubourg, by the Rue de Vaucanson,
the Rue Crozatier — they come, drooping under their burdens,
preceded by loathsome odours, stumbling and slouching along
the muddy jjathways, tremulous, staggering, backs aching, eyes
dim with the long labours of a night spent in going up and down
the streets, stooping a thousand times under the heavy load to
explore a heap of foulest refuse. The lanterns swing feebly
upon the ends of the long sticks, expiring in a stench of rancid
oil. Silently, wearily, the rag-pickers crawl to their dens while
the cheery mountebanks jog gaily on to begin a new day.
Ileavens, what a street ! black, dismal, malodorous ; windows
whose rotten woodwork has long forgotten the sensation of
glass ; windows choked with straw, rags, paper— what you
will. Mud always, even when the i-est of Paris is clean. Mist
and dampness always, even when the better parts of Paris are
bright and clear. Disease always, in more or less revolting
form. Hunger always : never enough to eat, yet always, strange
paradox, too much to drink. When it is a question of bread or
trois-six, the chiffonnier prefers his trois-six. Can you blame
him ■? Every bone in his body is familiar to him as a sensation
of pain. The bread could do him so little good. But the vile
spirit burns, and that is something.
The angle formed by the junction of the Rue Sainte-Mar-
guerite and the Rue de la Cotte was the scene of the one heroic
act in the history of the coup d'etat. Here was erected the first
barricade. Here Baudin fell.
There was an air of fatality in all the circumstances of that
first barricade. There had been the meeting at the Caf6
Roysin. A minority of Victor Hugo's party arrived at the
rendezvous at eight o'clock. The majority understood the hour
to be from nine to ten. The cafd was a large building, with
high windows and looking-glasses against the wall, the usual
raarble tables, plenty of seats, several billiard-tables in the
middle of the apartment.
The representatives were received with a friendly air. They
•vere soon joined by a number of strangers, all as earnest as
*T}i& City is Full of Violence 119
themselves. There were workmen among them, but no blouses.
The artisans had been requested to wear coats lest the shop-
keepers should take fright at the aspect of the blouse as a
badge of revolution. The horrors of '48 were still fresh in the
minds of the middle classes, and the workman's blouse was the
livery of the Eed Spectre, the genius of anarchy and destruction,
about which such terrible things had been said and written of late.
Among these men of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine was
Ishmael, who had cast in his lot with the Eeds. He had come
to Paris when the memory of '48 was still fresh in the minds of
men, and his young and ardent temper saw the struggle for
liberty in its noblest aspect. He read the writings of Hugo
and Schcelcher, whose articles in the Republican papers had
done much to kindle the fire of enthusiasm in the minds of the
people. And now, in the cold, rainy December morning,
through the muddy streets, he came to cast in his lot with those
gallant spirits who, against overwhelming odds, were to try
the question of Liberty versus Despotism. Granted that the
despot's rule may have been in the main better for France ;
that, from the chaos of divided opinions, it was well that one
man should stand forth— daring, enlightened, judicious— and
take his place boldly at the helm of the national barque ; still,
looking back at those three dark December days, who can doubt
that the truer heroism, the purer love of country, was to be
fomid among that handful of men who flung themselves into the
arms of the people, and challenged that people to defend their
violated rights ?
Unhappily for these heroes of the Left, the artisan class was
cold to the voice of patriotism. The representatives of the Right
had been disliked and feared, suspected as Royalists, Reaction-
ists ; and no one was ofi'ended at the idea of their having all been
whisked off to prison, plucked out of their beds in the dead of
night, turned out of their seats in the Chamber, carted about
from pillar to post by their captors like sheep carried to the
market. It is difficult to conceive what would be the elTect upon
English society if the household troops were to swoop down
upon the House of Commons and carry a troublesome majority
otf to the Tower. Yet this sweeping out of the French Chamber
by a military force hardly seems to have created surprise or
indignation among the populace of Paris. They thought the
clearing out of the Senators a good riddance ; and as they were
given to understand that it meant the establishment of univei-sal
sufi'rage, the general feeling was at the outset in favour of the
Dictator.
While the little knot of Reds were waiting for tlie rest of
their party in front of the Cafd Eoysin, an omnibus came along
120 Ishmael
at a sharp trot, escorted by a squadron of lancers, and liUed
with those members of the Chamber wlio had spent the night
miserably, under watch and ward, at the d'Orsay Barracks, and
who were now being carried oif to Vincennes.
In an instant there arose a cry from the men of the Left :
' They are the representatives of the people ! Save them ! '
There was a dash at the horses' head?, and vigorous hands
caught the bridles. The first omnibus was stopped, the door
was opened ; but the prisoners, instead of alighting, entreated
their would-be liberators to let them alone. They would rather
go to prison than be so rescued.
A scornful laugh broke from the workmen who had stood by
looking on at the attempted rescue ; and this exhibition of pol-
troonery on the part of their senators may have helped to damp
their ardour in the brief struggle which followed.
Baudin was a medical man, better known to the workmen
of the Faubourg Poissoniere than to those of Saint- Antoine— an
eloquent speaker, an honest man, the chief voice now in tlie
little knot of Reds waiting the advent of their colleagues.
Ishmael had lieai'd him speak on many occasions, and honoured
him. He drew near his elbow now, waiting to see what was
going to happen, his pulses beating high, ready to help with
heart and hand in the work that was to be done. Baudin knew
him by sight, and knew him to be a staunch Republican. He
gave him a friendly nod as he stood talking to one of his
colleagues.
Tliere was an impatience to do something — not to wait for
the others. Baudin would fain have waited till their numbei-s
were stronger ; but he yielded to the eagerness of Schoelcher
a)Kl the rest, all on fire for the fray.
Among a hundred and fifty men they were able, by disarm-
ing the sentinels at the two nearest guard-houses, to distribute
thirty muskets, the soldiers giving their arms with a friendly
air to the cry of ' Vive la R^publique ! ' A cart carrying manure
approached the Rue Sainte-Marguerite at the angle "where it
joins the Rue Cotte. The cart was thrown over, the barricade
was begun. A baker's cart followed ; then a milkwoman's cart,
strong, heavy ; finally, an omnibus. The four vehicles placed
in line were hardly broad enough to bar the main street of the
faubourg. Empty baskets were heaped on the top. The hand-
ful of representatives, in their tricoloured scarfs, the handful of
their friends, Ishmael among them, took their stand on the
barricade just as a boy rushed along the street shouting 'The
troops ! ' and the steady tramp of men, the jingle of arnis was
heard drawing nearer and nearer.
Two companies were coming from the Bastille, marshalled
*The CitTj is Full of Violence' 121
at equal distances, and barring the entire street. Doors and
•windows were shut precipitately. The critical moment had
come.
' Citizens,' said Schoelcher, ' let no shot be fired. When tlie
army and the city fight, it is the blood of the people that is
shed on both sides. Let us first address the soldiers.'
' Down with the twenty-five francs ! ' cried a group of blouses
at the corner of the Rue Sainte-Marguerite, alluding scornfully
to the salary of the representatives.
Baudin looked at the men steadily from his post on the
barricade.
' You shall see how a man can die for twenty-five francs,' he
said.
The two columns of soldiers were now in sight of the
insurgents, and behind them in the distance gleamed the
bayonets of another troop.
Steadily, slowly, the two companies advanced upon the
barricade ; and then the frightened inhabitants, peering from
their closed windows, the lukewaim loungers on the pavement,
beheld a noble spectacle.
Seven representatives of the people, with no other defence
than their oti&cial scarves, came in front of the barricade and
approached the soldiers, who waited for them with their mviskets
pointed, while the rest of the party manned the barricade —
Baudin standing upon the overturned omnibus, the upper half
of his figure exposed to the attack.
Then followed a dialogue between Schoelcher and an officer
in command — resolute, intrepid, on both sides. The Eepublican
deputy urged the majesty of the violated law — called upon the
soldier to respect the Constitution. The soldier recognised no
law beyond the orders of his superior.
'Gentlemen of the Chamber,' said the Captain, finally,
'retire, or I shall give the command to fire.'
' Fire 1 ' cried one of the seven. Then, as at Fontenoy, the
representatives of the people took ofT their hats and faced the
levelled muskets.
' Charge bayonets ! ' cried the Captain ; and there was a
movement forward ; but the soldiers shrank from wounding
these unarmed men as from a double treason, because they
were the representatives of the people, and because they were
defenceless. Not a blow was struck, not a shot was fired, till,
by an unhappy accident, the point of a bayonet hit Schoelcher
and tore his scarf. The act was seen from the barricade, and
one of the Reds, believing his colleague in danger, fired, and hit
the soldier, who fell, shot through the heart. He was a con-
script, a, lad of eighteen. Tiiis fatal shot was the signal for a
122 Ishmael
volley from Uie soldiers. They stormed the feeble rampart ;
Baiidiii was killed, and the barricade taken.
Let it be noted that the soldiers — they who were to-morrow
to riot in a carnival of murder — had, up to this point, acted
with singular forbearance. They took no prisoners ; the
defenders of the barricade were allowed to disperse quietly iu
the surrounding streets, and to find a friendly rofuge in neigh-
bouring houses. So far the army was blameless. But on this
morning of the third the men were still sober. The money
distributed with such lavish hand among the soldiery had
not yet begmi to be spent on that liquid fir^, which, later,
transformed veterans and lads alike into madmen, murderers,
demons almost as deadly as the copper-faced assassins of Delhi
and Cawnpore.
CHAPTEE XII
•death is come up into our windows'
Ishmael was among the last to leave the scene of that short,
sharp struggle. He helped to carry the expiring Baudin to the
hospital of Sainte-Marguerite. He was one of those who lifted
the body of the young conscript from the muddy, trampled
ground in front of the barricade — a slender, boyish figure,
buttoned to the chin in the gray military overcoat, one red
stain upon the breast showing where the bullet had gone home.
This dismal work over, Ishmael loitered about the faubourg,
disheartened, stupefied almost by the sight of those two dead
faces, one of which, aflame with the fire of patriotism, ennobled
by the power of intellect, had been so familiar to him in life.
The conflict had but just begun — feebly, hopelessly begun — and
already one of the best and bravest of Liberty's champions had
fallen !
Not since his mother's death until to-day had Ishmael looked
upon the face of the dead. He turned from the hospital door
with a strange, dream-like feeling — a sense of hardly belonging
to the actual world around him. Those two yonder, calm on
their hospital beds, had passed to the other side of the river —
the shadowy, mystic, unexplored coimtry on the further bank.
And if the conflict between the despot and the people were to
continue, v. ho could say how many more must fall as Baudin
'Death is Come up into our Windoivs' 12?
had fallen, counting the cost of a life as a feather when weighed
against the freedom of a nation ?
' What would it matter to any one if I were lying beside
Dr. Baudin ? ' Ishmael asked himself, with a shrug of his broad
shoulders. ' My father would perhaps never know my fate, or,
if he heard of it, would hardly be sorry. My stepmothjer would
be glad ; and my brothers — well, poor little lads, they are
young enough to have forgotten me before now. A year is a
long time in their little lives. It would be too much to expect
to be remembered after such an interval.'
He took a draught of wine at a shop in the Eue de la
Roquette, and as he was going out of the door, brushed against
an old man whose face was familiar to him, although he did not
remember where or when they had met.
The other was keener, and remembered Ishmael perfectly.
' Good day, citizen ; grand doings yonder by the gentlemen
in scarves,' he said ; ' but we want no more barricades ; the
faubourg has had enough fighting : we want a quiet life, and to
be paid fairly for our work, and to take our drop of little-blue
in peace.'
Ishmael remembered him now. It was the old trolleur,
Paquerette's grandfather. He had been drinking already,
though it was not yet noon, and was in that cheery state which
might be described as bien, poivre, alh(m(^, bon zig. Ishmael
would fain have passed him with briefest greeting, but the old
man laid a grimy claw upon his sleeve. ' If you were going to
take un canon de la bouteille^ or to rinse your beak with fine
champagne, for example, I'm with you,' he said. 'Let us enjoy
ourselves as good comrades.'
Ishmael was obviously leaving the shop, but he was not of a
temper to refuse a diink even to this old vagabond.
' I shall drink no more this morning,' he said, ' but I'll pay
for whatever you please to order.'
Influenced more by a desire to hear of Puquerette than from
a wish to be civil to the ebeniste, Ishmael turned back into the
little v/ine-shop and seated himself at a table opposite Pcre
Lemoine.
The bottle of fine champagne was brought, a bright oily
yellow liquid, which sparkled like a gleam of sunshine against
the dull, gray winter light. The waiter put a couple of glasses
beside the bottle, and P^re Lemoine filled both.
'Mine and yours,' he said. 'Don't be frightened. You
shall drink in the spirit, and I in the body. A brace of such
thimblefuls can harm nobody. So you have had your little
barricade yonder, my friend ; you have had your finf^^er in the
revolutionary pie j and, for the only result, one of the best of
124- JsJimael
your Eeds has been shot ; he has drunk a fine soup, poor fellow,
and what are any of you the better ? Victor Hugo and the rest
of them want to rouse the faubourg. They want Saint- An toine
to come to handigrips with that fine gentleman yonder in the
Elysee, with his curly moustache and red stripes down his
trousers, and his recollections of my uncle. But the faubourg
has had enough of barricades. She has shed her blood by
hogsheads, poured out her heart's blood as freely as they are
pouring that little-blue wine yonder. And what is she the
better for the sacrifice of ner children? She is master for a
day, to be trampled under foot to-morrow, Reaction, reaction —
turn out an Orleans, and bring back a Bourbon of the elder
branch. Anything rather than that the people should keep the
privileges for which they have bled. I shall fight on no more
barricades, my friend. I have seen too many of them, and
I know how little comes of the fuss and bother. Saint- Antoine
is wise by experience. Victor Hugo and his friends may
sermonise till they are hoarse, but they won't rouse the
faubourg. To your health. Monsieur Ishmael, out of glass
number one ; and now to my health from Monsieur Ishmael,
glass number two ; ' and the old toper swallowed the contents
of both glasses without winking.
'There may be other faubourgs more patriotic,' answered
Ishmael ; ' there may be those who will avenge the blood of
Baudin. But don't let us talk politics. The subject is not the
satest ; and you must remember that I am a new comer, and
have hardly had time to form my opinions.'
' Ah 1 but you have formed them. I can see it in the
resolute cut of your chin — your iron mouth. You are a
Baudiniste, a Schoelcheriste, a socialist of the strongest pattern,
and you are thirsting for another barricade. Before night you
may have your choice of fifty, perhaps. But not in our
faubourg : we had enough in '48. Try the centre of Paris, the
old streets in the market quarter, the neighbourhood of Saint-
Eustache : that is the citadel of the peojale ; a town within
a town : there they are impregnable — every alley a trap for
their enemies ; every house a fortress. That is the true
strength of old Paris ; that is the cradle of all the great
revolutions : the League, the Fronde, the Terror : go there, my
friend, if you want barricades.'
'Have no fear. I will go wherever a strong arm is wanted,'
answered Ishmael. ' And now tell me about your grand-
daughter. Mademoiselle Paquerette. She is well, I hope ? '
' She is well. She had need be well. She is on the high road
to good fortune. An honest man — a bourgeois, with a shop
in this very street, and a snug little nest behind his shop, and »
^ Death is Come up into our Windoivs' 125
back-yard to store his goods, such a man as one does not meet
every day in the Eue Sombreuil — has asked her to be hia
wife.'
Ishmael started with a sudden touch of pain. He had
never been in love with P^querette. He had existed for nearly
six months without seeing the pale, snowdrop face, and yet his
heart sank within him at the thought that another man was to
pluck this pearl out of the gutter, this gem which he had not
stooped to gather out of the mire, too careful lest his hands
should be soiled in the pi'ocess. Truly it were hardly a pleasant
thing to have this Pure Lemoine here, whose unsteady hand
was now in the act of pouring out a fourth glass of fine
champagne, for one's grandfather-iu-law.
' I am glad that Mademoiselle Paquerette is to have such
a good husband,' said Ishmael. ' Pray who is the gentleman ? '
' A friend of mine who has done business with me for
twenty years ; an Auvergnat — a hard-working, frugal creature,
who, beginning in the humblest way, has saved enough money
to set up as a dealer in furniture and curiosities — a line trade
always — and whose first thought, worthy soul ! on beginninof
life in his own house, was to ask Paquerette to be his wife.'
' An Auvergnat : your Charabia, I suppose ? ' exclaimed
Ishmael, disgusted. * Why, that is the man whom Paquerette
abhors ; at least, she told me so six months ago.'
' She is a child, and does not know her own mind. She likes
him well enough now, I can tell you.'
' But you say he has been doing business for twenty years.
He must be forty years of age ? '
' Suppose he is forty ! What harm is there in forty years,
do you think?' cried the trolleur, smacking his lips over the
fine champagne, and sending little gusts of fiery breath across
the table towards Ishmael. ' A. man at forty is in his prime. I
am forty, and twenty-seven years on the top of forty, and I am
in my prime. Cr^ nom I a man of forty is in the very blossom
of youth. Bring me no schoolboy bridegrooms for my grand-
daughter, I want a sensible man, a man who knows how to rule
a wife. I married when I was five-and-twenty, and I have been
sorry for it ever since. A man should be master from the first.'
' I hope you are not going to sell your granddaughter to thia
Charabia, as you have sold your furniture,' said Ishmael,*
gravely.
' My faith ! he shall pay me a fair price for her,' said the
ti-oUeur, whose illumination was becoming a little more vivid
with every fresh glass. 'Wliat is the use of a torchon like
that if one cannot turn an honest penny by her ? She has eaten
and diunk at my cost long enough, little faiiu'ante. It is limo
126 Wimael
ehe got someone else to pay for her pdt<fe, and to mate k
handsome present to her grandfather into the bargain.'
' I am afraid you are forcing this marriage upon Made-
moiselle,' said Ishmael, chinking a glass against the bottle as a
summons to the waiter, and as a gentle hint that he did not
mean to ]:)ay for any more brandy.
The waiter came, scrutinised the bottle, which was marked
in measured degrees like a thermometer, a downward scale
which might be taken as emblematic of the descent of Avernus,
and took payment for Pfere Lemoiue's four glasses.
* I force a marriage upon her 1 Why, the child is as proud
as a queen at getting such a husband — a shop in the Rue de la
Eoquette — two rooms, furnished : why the Tuilevies are not
better furnished than Jean Baugiste's little salon, all in
mahogany, of the Empire style, substantial, splendid ; a gilded
clock and candelabra on the mantelpiece, a secretaire that
belonged to Talleyrand, a room fit for a duchess. Force ! do
you say ? "Why, her grandmother and I have spoiled the girl
ever since she was a baby. Come and see for yourself if you
think we are ill-using her.'
Ishmael hesitated for a moment or so while he mechanically
counted the change out of his five-franc piece. After all,
Paquerette's marriage was no business of his. He had made up
his mind last midsummer that she was no fitting wife for him.
But he remembered how Paquerette had spoken of the Charabia
on that May night when they two had walked from Vincennes ;
he recalled her shudder as she confessed her hatred of the man,
a hatred she feared to avow in her own wretched home. This
recollection decided him. He did not want to put himself
forward as a suitor for Paquerette ; but if he could save her
from an odious marriage, defend her from the tyranny of this
drunken scoundrel of a grandfather, he would do it even at
some eost to himself.
' I should like to see Mademoiselle, and congratulate her on
her marriage,' he said quietly, ' if my visit will not trouble you.'
' Come along then : we are sure to find the little hussy at
home. She does nothing all day but roll one thumb round ths
other, and listen to any organ-grinder who comes our way.'
The trolleur sauntered along the street by Ishmael's sids
with the easy rolling walk of a man who has spent half his life
in sauntering idleness, always more or less allum£ He seemed
to know almost every one he passed, and saluted his acquaint-
ances with a friendly nod. Most of the shops were closed, and
there were a good many people in the streets ; but the faubourg
bad a quiet air, almost a Sabbath-day tranquillity.
' feaint-Antoine sleeps,' said Pcre Lemoine.
* Death is Come 2ip into our Windoivs l^f
Presently, at a street comer, he stopped to look at the freshest
placai'd on the dead wall of an old luiinhabited house. It was
the latest manifesto from the Elysde, the printei-'s ink still wet.
'Inhabitants of Paris, —
' The enemies of order have engaged in a struggle.
It is not against the Government or the elect of the people that
they fight ; their purpose is pillage and destruction. Let all
good citizens unite for the preservation of order and of their
menaced homes. Be calm, inhabitants of Paris ; let no curious
idlers block the streets ; they interfere with the movements of
those brave soldiers who desire to protect you with their
bayonets.
* For me, you will find me unshaken in my determination to
defend and maintain order.'
' So much for the Prince,' said the troUeur ; ' but here's a
postscript from the General.'
' The Minister of War, in accordance with the law during a
state of siege, decrees —
'That every person taken in the act of constructing or
defending a barricade, or carrying arms, shall be shot.
'De Saint-Arnaud, Minister of War.'
'It is not child's play, you see, my friend, this barricade-
making for which you are so eager,' said the trolleur, grinning
as, with tremulous hand, he plucked the wet placard off the wall
and flung it into the gutter.
Below the President's manifesto there was a placard issued
by the Eeds, a shabby lithographed placard— since there waa
not a printing press in Paris at the disposal of the people in
these first days of December— a poor little placard stuck on th«
Wi^l with four red wafers.
' To THE People.
' Art .3. The Constitution is confided to the guardianship of
every patriotic Frenchman.
' Louis Napoleon is an outlaw.
' The state of siege is abolished.
* Universal sufi'rage is re-established,
• Vive la Edpublique !
♦ To Arms !
' For the united Mountain,
'Signed, VTCTt)R Huuo.'
' Spufile ! ' exclaimed the trolleur : ' Louis Bonaparte h.ts
the Army. Unless the National Guard unite with the peopio
he will have things his own way. It is not woith while ai'guiua
123 IsMiael
nice points of tlie Constitution with a disputant wlio has S
hundred thousand soldiers at his back,'
He plucked off the patriots' appeal as scornfully as he had
torn away the President's manifesto, and flung the c/umpled
paper after the other. Then, in sheer wantonness, while he
contemptuously discussed the President and his surroundings,
the trolleur peeled at least half-a-dozen weather-beaten and mud-
stained placards from the wall — playbills, shopkeepers' adver-
tisements — till he came to an old and scarcely legible placard.
' See,' he cried, pointing to the wall. ' Behold a spectre from
the past ! It is the speech Louis Bonaparte made when he was
elected President.'
The only words remaining in a readable condition were the
following, which the trolleur read aloud in his husky, brandy-
drinker's voice :
' The suffrages of the nation and the oath which I have just
taken command my future conduct, lly duty is marked out for
me. I shall fulfil that duty as a man of honour.
' I shall recognise the enemies of my country in all those
who may endeavour by unlawful means to change the Cou-
stitution, which has been established by the whole of France.'
' "When Caesar made that speech he was on the other side of
the Rubicon,' said Ishmael ; and just at this moment a man in
plain clothes, who looked like a member of the police, shouldered
the trolleur aside, and tore down the placard, and all other old
placards on the wall.
Ishmael and his companion walked on to the Rue Sombreuil.
The gloomy old courtyard looked more like a stone well than
ever on this dark and cheerless winter afternoon. The rain and
the trampling to and fro of many feet had made the stony
pavement muddy and sloppy. Rank odours of sewage, soup,
and fricot pervaded hoiise and yard.
The trolleur marched straight into his den, followed by
Ishmael.
Paquerette was sitting on a three-legged wooden stool by
the fire, plucking a cabbage for the family pot-au-feu. She waa
much smarter than of old. She wore a bright blue stuff gown,
and a coral necklace and earrings ; but the small delicate fai-e
had less colour than ever, and when she started up from her low
seat at the entrance of Ishmael, the poor little face looked
ghastly white above the red necklace and blue gown.
' Here's a surprise for you, my cabbage,' cried the trolleur.
* Mademoiselle Benoit's friend has come to see you ! '
Ishmael went across the room and offered Paquerette his
hand. Her slender fingers were cold as ice, and trembled in
his clasp.
* Death is Come up into our Windows^ 129
• Your grandfather tells me that you are soon to be married,
Mademoiselle,' he said. ' I hope it is going to be a happy
marriage.*
The giri looked first at him, and then at her grandfather,
with an indescribable expression which might mean fear, grief,
shyness, anything.
' Grandfather says so,' she faltered, after a long pause, looking-
at the ground.
' And I hope your husband that is to be is a good man.'
* Grandfather says he is,' she murmured, her eyes still on the
ground.
' And grandfather knows the world, my little cat,' said the
troUeur, with an exaggerated air of cheery benevolence.
•Grandfather will not marry thee to a rogue, be sure of that.
An Auvergnat, a true son of the mountain, simple, hardy, honest,
a man who has prospered by patient industry, by temperance —
oh, it is a beautiful thing, temperance — self-denial, perseverance,
and who deserves to enjoy his prosperity with a pretty young wife
tokeer, 1 m c mpany. How can a girl hope for a better husband
than that? I' he had been made expressly for her, he could not
be n or J suitable. And how he adores her ! why, the very
ground she walks upon is sacred in his eyes. And how generous
too. Look at her new gown — his gift ; her earrings, her neck-
lace — his gifts. Not an evening passes that he does not bring
us something nice for supper. Such rigolades as we have every
night ! '
The girl said not a woixl, made no protest against her grand-
father's line talk. She was content to wear the Charabia's gifts ;
and doubtless she was prepared to accept him as a husband.
Tlie grandmother came in from market, bringing a piece of
beef for the pot-au-feu, while Ishmael lingered. She, too, was in
excellent spirits. She had loitei'ed in the streets to hear what
was said about this petit bout de revolte. She had gone as far
as the Morgue with the crowd who accompanied the slain
conscript in his journey from the hospital to the dead-house.
* Pauvre Piou-piou,' she said, wiping away a tear. Monsieur
Baudin was to remain at the hospital till his friends came to
fetch him. She had been told that he made a beautiful corpse,
calm as one who slept.
Ishmael turned from her with a feeling of disgust. Was this
the mighty heart of Saint- Antoine ? Was this all that was left
of the burning patriotism of '48 ? — this spirit of idle curiosity,
of gossip, of indifference to all the loftier aspects of a great
national struggle, the everlasting conflict of might against right.
He was still more disheartened and disgusted by his brief
interview with Pdquerette. The girl looked weak and fooiisli,
130 Ishmacl
& creature Lorn to Le a slave, fit for' notliing better than to ba
sold to the highest bidder. That coral necklace reminded him
of a halter. He had seen a young heifer in the market-place at
Dol with just that meek, foolish air, waiting for the butcher who
was to buy her,
Ishmael went from the Faubourg Saint- Antoine to the neigh-
bourhood of the markets, under the shadow of that mighty
sixteenth-century church, which stands where once rose the
Temple of Cybele. Here he fomid more excitement, more
emotion than in the region of tlje Bastille. Barricades, or
sketches of barricades, were being raised in several streets ; but
there was a want of animation and a want of unanimity. Tlie
artist classes, the thinkers, the dreamers, were roused and rea<^ly
for action ; but the masses had not caught fire. There were
leadin"- spirits among the workmen's clubs who were as
enthu6,iasMc and as eager for the struggle as the senators of the
Left, with Victor Hugo at their head ; but the ruck, the
thousands whose strong arms might have stemmed the bloody
tide of the cov,p ditat, hung back. The mighty voice of the
multitude was silent. The working-men of Paris, grown pi-udent
with prosperity, shrank from the risk of the conflict, and left
their interests, rights, liberties, independence, to be fought for
and bled for by a handful of patriots.
Late into the night of December the third those patriots
were assembled in a house in the Rue Richelieu. Ishmael and two
or three other workmen guarded the door of their council room,
ready to die in defence of those faithfvd tribunes of the people.
On the Boulevards, at the Bourse, among the loungers and
saunterers in broadcloth and fine linen, the coup d'etat was
taken lightly enough on tliis third day of December. Tl e
Assembly had been somewhat roughly dissolved ; but who cared
for the fate of an Assembly which was eminently unpopular ?
There is a large class in Paris which regards politics as a kind of
joke — a subject for calemboiu's and e])igrams: a very large class,
who would as soon serve Peter as Paul provided trade be brisk
and the favourite theatre subsidized, the cliosen haunts of tlie
gandin and tlie lorette maintained in all tlieir agreeableness at
the public cost. The desire of the Parisian multitude is for
partem et circenses : and why fight and die on, barricades in
defence of an abstraction which dreamers and Socialists rave
about by the name of 1 iberty, and which never yet put a good
coat on a man's back, or a piece of beef in his pot-au-feu.
In such a temper as this rose the majority of the Parisians
on the morning of the fourth, after a long winter night, which
liad been not without its anxieties at the Elys^e, where the
liijhts ill t!ie President's study, the shadows of intent and eager
^ Death is Come u^) into 07ir Windows* 13 L
figures flitting across the blind, told of discussions, disputes,
uncertainties ; and where it has been said that travelling carriages
and horses waited in the stable-yard, ready at a minute's notice
to whisk the Prince and his friends out of Paris on the fi)st
stage of the long flat road to the Belgian frontier.
The fourth of December began quietly enough everywhere,
with a disheartening quietude for the chiefs of the Mountain,
weary with futile wavings of the torch of Liberty, beginning to
despair of their fellow-man as a feeble hound which, perhaps,
after all, has an instinctive preference for the leash— a liking
for being fed, and legislated for, and watched and tended by a
paternal government as supinely submissive to authority as a
child in a mothei-'s lap.
Before noon there were a good many barricades in that network
of streets around Saint-Eustache. In the Rue Montorgueil, the
Eue du Petit-Carreau, the Rue du Cadran, and in other streets of
the same quarter, the paving-stones had been plucked up and
built into barricades, mixed with empty barrels, beams taken
f i^iom houses in the progress of demolition ; great alterations wei'e
going on in this quarter, which was a place of change and
confusion just now. The roadway yawned with pitfalls— hollows
from which the stones had been dug out. There had been a
good deal of rain, and in many places the streets were knee-deep
in mud and slush. There had been fighting on the barricades,
but not much before afternoon ; there had been some deaths,
but not many. The soldiers were picketed under the shadow of
Saint-Eustache.
On the Boulevards all was calm. The idle classes had come
out to see the fun : husbands and wives, fathers and sons ; family
groups looking on at what seemed to be a little puff" of revolu-
tiona)-y fire, a faint stirring of deep waters ; nothing to cause
terror.
Towards three o'clock a change came over the scene. From
end to end the Boulevards were choked with soldiers ; line
regiments, gendarmerie, brigades, cavalry ; a battery of four
guns pointing shot and shell against the barricade in the Rue
Saint-Denis, which had been valiantly defended all day. The
long, broad avenue — the lounging place, the forum of Paris-
was crowded with armed men — armed men evidently consider-
ably the worse for strong drink — a fact which furnished no
little amusement to the Parisians who were walking up and
down the muddy pavements enjoying the bustle and movement
of the scene, or looking down from the balconies at the crowd
below.
Suddenly (the soldiers all in marching order facincr the gate
of Saint- Denis) a single shot was thud; 'fiuiu llm roof of a
132 Ishmacl
house in the Kne du Sentier,' said some ; ' from a soldier in the
niiildle of one of the battalions, who fired in the air,' said others ;
and in an instant, as at an expected signal, the troops changed
front, and then burst from the head of the column a running
fire, which extended through the ranks and flashed along the
boulevard like an arrow of tlame. Men, women, and children
fled, or flung themselves flat upon the ground before that hail-
storm of bullets. Windows, shutters were closed in the wildest
haste. But the harvest of dead and dying was not the less rich.
A child playing by a fountain — an old man of eighty— a woman
with an infant in her arms, clasped close against her breast even
in death ; the old, the middle-aged, the young ; the harmless,
inoffensive population : here a bookseller on the threshold of hia
shop, there the marchand de coco, with his shining tin fountain.
Gray hairs, childhood, womanhood — none were exempt from
the slaughter. Those who escaped the bullet were sabred as
they fell helpless at the feet of their murderei'S. Nothing less
than tlie madness of strong drink could account for the ferocity
of the soldiers during that hideous quarter of an hour when, in
the open street, under the light of day, the horrors of St. Bar-
tholomew's Eve were repeated before the eyes of an astonished
populace, every member of which might be one moment a
spectator and in the next a victim of the attack.
Dismal spectacle when there came a lull in the fusillade, and
the inhabitants of the Bovdevards and the adjoining streets crept
out of their doors to gather up the wounded and the dying,
whom none had hitherto dared to succour. The marchand de
coco was lying in a corner by the wall, his white apron over his
face, his glittering fountain on the ground beside him. He had
come out hoj)ing to do a brisk trade among the idlers on the
boulevard, and the harvest he had gathered was death. Not far
off lay an old man grasping an vnubrella, his only defensive
weapon ; and a little way farther a young flaneur, with his
scarcely-extinguished cigar between his lips, seemed still to
smile with the half-amused expression of the fashionable pessi-
mist, for whom all the gravest questions in life have tlieir
farcical as]:>ect.
"N't)t far from the spot where lay youth, hope, birth, educa-
tion, dressed in bi-oadcloth, and come suddenly to a dead stop
like a watch whose wheels have run down," there lay — rolled in
the gutter, blood-stained, mud-stained, with glassy eye* -gazing
up at the darkening winter sky, in the fixed stare of death— age
poverty, disi-epute, intemperance, idleness, vagabondage, all
personified in Fere Leuioine, the tiolleur, who liad Avandered
fcir afield this December afternoon in quest of excitement,
curious to see what was going on upon the Boulevards, and full
Death is Come up into our WnitXow&* 133
of Tinholy gaiety — pleased to mix in a row, fearing no evil to
himself from civilian or soldier, safe in his insigniticajQce, looking
on with his half-drunken, cynical air, caring neither for Peter nor
Paul. And in this idle humour, without a moment's warning,
with the first flash of arrowy flame from the muskets of the
front rank, death had surprised him. Struck down by that
leaden rain like an ear of corn laid in a hailstorm, he fell and
rolled over and over into the gutter. There was no one to see
him fall. He was carried off to the Morgue with a large batch
of other corpses some hours later, there to await the attention
of his friends.
Those on the barricades yonder, under the shadow of Saint-
Eustache, were not slow to hear of the carnage. They had
heard the fusillade, and took it at first for a triimaphant salvo
at the capitulation of the great barricade by Saint-Denis ; but
there was a perpetual going and coming of patriots, and the
particulars of the massacre were soon known in the neighbour-
hood of the markets. The bairicades were numerous enough to
make this central point a kind of citadel. Bari'icades in the Hue
du Cadran, a bariicade at each end of the Rue du Petit-Carreau,
five in the Rue Montorgueil. Here and there an ambulance in an
uninhabited house, or an empty cellar — an ambulance consisting
of two or three straw mattresses, an old woman as nurse and
surgeon, and a child to make charpie.
The loftiest and strongest of these ban-icades of the Rue
Montorgueil was well manned by about forty Reds, mostly of
the professional classes, some who dug up the paving stones and
helped in the construction of the barricade with gloved hands.
There were only a few workmen among them, and those were
the elite of the working class. It was here that Ishmael had
cast in his lot after fighting gallantly in the Faubourg Saint-
Martin all the morning. It was be whose quick eye had seen
the advantages of this position, guai'ded as it was by two other
barricades, which made it a kind of citadel. His powerful anus
had done good service within the last hour, digging up paving
stones, carrying huge beams from a house in process of demoli-
tion hard by, rolling empty hogsheads from a coojur's j^ard near
to be filled with stones for the base of the fortification. The
barricade had a formidable look as it loomed, huge in the dusk
of evening, across the narrow street.
They were joined presently by some fugitives from the
boulevai-d, maddened by the massacre, wild for revenge. These
told the story of the slaughter. One of them, who lived hard
bv, ran back to his house, and returned with a tin barrel full
t'l cartridges.
Darkness closed round them while they were still at work
184 Ishmael
They had told off t\sfenty of their force, now swollen to a round
fifty, for outpost duty. The soldiers were close at hand. A
gleaming red light, shining now and again above the crowded
roofs towards the markets, showed where the troops wera
holding their bivouac, drvmk with blood and brandy. Some-
times the hoarse shout of a drinking song— the wild laughter of
that armed multitude, came in a brief gust of sound across the
housetops. They were merry yonder after the carnage. The
bivouac had become an orgy.
There was method in this madness, though, which the faith-
ful souls on the barricades knew not — a deadly method. The
men were drunk, but their commanders were still sober and
clear-headed ; and the troops were being drawn into a circle
round that citadel of revolution, a belt of iron and fire.
Deep darkness fell over the city like a pall — the darkness of
a December night, moonless, starless, the atmosphere thick with
rain. Every lanm was broken in this quarter of Paris, the gas-
pipes were cut, not a shop was open except a couple of wine-
shops at which the insurgents refreshed themselves now and
then with a duaught of water just reddened with thin wine.
While the arm of authority was maddened with drink revolt
kept sober.
Presently, through the darkness and mud and slush, a man
approached the barricade. He was a well-known member oi
the Assembly, a staunch Republican. With his tri-coloured
scarf showing even in the darkness, he offered himself to the
men on the barricade as their captain, the representative of the
rights of the people, and he was welcomed with a cry of ' Viva
la Rdpublique.'
Ishmael stood next him on the barricade, waiting for the attack.
They waited for more than an houi-. Again and again they
saw the flare of the watch-fires red above the housetops ; again
and again they heard the roar of the bivouac. They sat down
upon the stf)nes and waited, listening, expectant. On the right,
on the left, behind them, in front of them, on every side at once,
a hoarse, dull sound, growing with every moment more distinct
and sonorous, came towards them through the darkness of night.
It was the march of battalions, the sound of trumpets in the
surrounding streets.
They heard, yet, for the most part, were of opinion that there
would be no attack till next morning. Night combats are rai'e
in street warfare. They are of all conflicts the most hazaidous.
But the more experienced of the insurgents saw unmistakable
signs of an immediate assault.
At half-past ten thei'e came the sound of movement in the
direction of the markets. The troops were on the move. Thee
* Death is Come, tip into our Windows* 135
came the clamour of voices, the sound of file-firin!^ ; then silence ;
and then, again, the fusillade, the roar of voices and clash of
arms. One by one the barricades yonder were being taken.
Between Ishmael's barricade and the troops there was a
double barricade in the Rue Mauconseil, a veritable redoubt,
poorly but bravely manned. Here the fight was bi ■ f but
desperate. The insurgents husbanded their ammunition, fired
with deliberate aim through the crevices of the stone- work, and
decimated their foes. But the contlicc was only a question
of minutes ; the few succumbed to the many, and the soldiers,
maddened by the loss of their comrades and the desjjei'ate
resistance of the foe, leapt upon the barricade, sabring and
shooting right and left of them, trampling the corpses under foot.
And now the troops were in front of Ishmael's barricade,
the last point of resistance, the strongest and best maTined. The
combat began — ruthless, devilish on the part of the State :
desperate, despairing on the part of the Republic. The odds
against the Reds were overwhelming. Four companies poured
from the surrounding streerts and from the vanquished barricades,
concentrating their strength upon this ultimate struggle. In
a serried mass, terrible, invincible, they rolled onward like a
living flood and flung them'selves against the barricade.
It was horrible. They fought hand to hand, four hundred
against fifty. They seized each other by the throat, by the
hair. Not a cartridge was left on the barricade ; but there was
still the strength of despair. A workman, pierced through the
body, plucked the bayonet from his side and slew a soldier with
the bloody point. The street was hidden in the smoke of the
guns. In the thick darkness, in the stifling stench of gunpowder,
the foes flung themselves against each otlier, and fought like
demons in the pit of heU.
The barricade hardly held two minutes ; the insurgents fell
on every side. Ishmael, wounded on the forehead, blinded with
the blood that streamed into his eyes, found himself flung againsr
the side of a house at the edge of the barricade. Stunned, dazea
for a moment or two, he leant against the brick wall, his head
swimming, his senses leaving him, hearing oaths, groans, gun-
shots, dimly as in a dream.
Suddenly something hit him shaq^ly on the head ; a loud
whisper from above said, ' Climb up here — your only chance of
escape.'
The barricade was taken ; the troops were slaughtering
right and left ; faint voices of dying men gasped, ' Vive la
Edpublique.'
' No prisoners ! ' cried the general in command ; in other
words, no quarter.
136 Ishmael
Tlie thing which had struck Ishmael was the knotted end of
a rope.
' Climb, fool ! ' whispered the voice above.
He slipped his arm through the noose mechanically, and in
the thick darkness began to scale the wall. He was faint from
loss of blood ; exhausted by the day's fighting ; worn out with
sleepless nights ; but his old boyish habits made the scaling
of the wall an easy matter. He climbed from window-ledge to
window-ledge while tlie bullets rained round him, one grazing
his leg as he mounted. On the second story there was a
glimmer of light behind a half-closed shutter ; the shutter
opened a little wider as he neared the point. An arm was
stretched out, a hand caught hold of his coat, and giddy,
half-unconscious, he flung himself throvigh the open window,
and fell fainting on the floor.
' One life gained from the carnage ! ' said a voice above him ;
' I have done a better niglit's work than if I had been on the
bairicade.'
CHAPTER XIII
*THE BREAKER HAS COME UP BEFORE THEM'
Whex Ishmael came to his right mind the covp d'etat was
an accomplished fact. Prince Louis Napoleon was master of
Paris and the Parisians, and, with that central foi'ce which
explodes or holds toijether the orb of the nation, he was also
master of France. The storm was over. The State prisonei's,
cramped in their narrow cells, fed on black bread and greasy
soup — generals, journalists, deputies of all colours and classes,
treated with all the ignominy which is the common lot of the
commonest felons, huddled and hiistled into prison vans, and
carried ofi" to the Havre station on the first stage to Cayenne—
and those other generals eating their hearts out at Ham — these
may have felt the inconveniences and discomforts which attend
a sudden and dramatic change, a too rapid swinging round of
the State vessel ; but Paris in general awoke with a smile, and
sunned itself in the balmy atmosphere of halcyon days, the calna
whicli follows storm.
Dark and terrible stories have been written of bloodv
reprisals which followed that brief revolt of unarmed patriotism
^The Breaker has Come up before Them*. 137
against armed power, of the few against the thousands — stories
written by the stainless hand of poet and patriot — stories of
•wholesale massacres in the dead of the night, of hundreds shot
down like sheep, of gutters running blood. Many and many
a night the Parisians on the boulevard, dancing, dining, ha})])y
and secure in the curtained warmth of peaceful homes, heard
the roll of the prison vans in the street below ; biit as tlie
newspajiers had formally announced that no more felons would
be sent to the galleys, and that transportation would be
henceforth the sole punishment for crime, that dismal sound
of the heavy van- wheels thundering over the aspbalte made
very little impression.
'Another gang of felons going to Cayenne !' said Society,
with a careless shrug.
One sliudders to read those awful histories ; one shrinks
from looking down into that dark gulf.
To those who have been happy in Paris under that paternal
Government — v.'ho have seen the brightness of her peaceful
streets, the prosperity of her {lopulation, her nobly-organised
charities, her sagacious forethought for the welfare of her
obscurest citizens, her foul places cleared away, her palacea
girdled with parks and gardens, her talents encouraged, her
greatness of past or present interwoven as an ever-living
memory in the names of her streets, and squares, and fountains,
and gateways ; to those who have loved Imperial Paris in tlie
days of their youth, who recall the countenance of her Emp^iitr
almost as the face of a friend, the loveliness of her Empress a« a
part of the poetry of life — to such as these it is an acute pain
to look back upon those dark days of December, and to acknow-
ledge that, behind all the brightness and the beauty, the wisdom,
the benevolence, the real honest love of mankind, there is this
one dark ineflaceable blot.
It was the evening of the fifth when Islimael, who had been
delij'ious all night and all day from the elTects of a severe sabre
wound upon his head, emerged from a world of hideous shadows,
and recovered a dim consciousness of the realities around him.
He was lying on a bed in an alcove, an old-fashioned bed-
stead, shaped like a sarcophagus, all rosewood and tarnished
gilding, after the style of the First Empire. The room was low,
but of a tolei-able size, with two casement windows. Near the
stove under the chimney-piece stood a round table, and on tlie
table a reading lamp. The table was covered with a coTifusion
of papers, books, pamphlets, all heaped upon one another pell-
mell ; and an open secretaire against the "wall wis cliokeful of
the same litter ; mauudcripts, books iu yellow-paper covers, books
138 Islunael
in smart bindings, books in shabby bindings, stuffed in anyhow—
one on the top of the other, sideways, longways, endways ; a row
of pigeon-holes gorged with jiapers in the background. Half
buried in a deep bergere beside the tabic — an armchair almost
as big as a bedstead — lolled a young man, delicate of feature,
and, although not actually handsome, having a certain air of
elegance, a distinction and a grace which had more than the
charm of beauty. His dress was to the last degree Bohemian ;
loose duck trousers, a shabby brown velveteen shooting coat, a
pair of red morocco slippers trodden down at the heel, a Byron
coUai", and no necktie. He was of about the middle height, slim,
fair, with light brown hair and m )ustache, and large dreamy blue
eyes — eyes which reminded Ishinael of other eyes, those large
pensive blue eyes of PS,querette's, looking at him the day
before yesterday with a vague piteousness as of a little child in
distress.
Ishmael looked round the room wonderingly, noting every
object, until his gaze finally fixed itself on the young man in
the armchair, lolling luxuriously with feet as high as his head,
lazily puffing a German pipe and staring up at the ceiling.
' Where am I ? and how did I come here ? ' faltered Ishmael,
after a prolonged scrutiny. He was so weak, that it cost him
some effort to shape these two questions.
' You came here hanging on to a rope through one of those
windows,' answered his host, quietly. ' You came here from the
jaws of death, for hardly half-a-dozen of the men who fought
on that last barricade survived the struggle. Three of them
were finished off by the soldiers in the Passage Saumon, shot
down like dogs after they had climbed the iron gates for
sanctuary. That was tm peu raide. As for your whereabouts,
you are on a second floor in the Rue Montorgueil, the guest of
Hector de Valnois, journalist, farce-writer, poet, philosopher,
Socialist, but not much, metaphysician, profound thinker, critic
most of all ; and you are welcome to remain here till you have
a sound skull, and can leave the premises without fear of the
police, or of the soldiers, who have had orders to search the
houses in the Insurgent quarters and to shoot any individual
who cannot show that he is an inhabitant of the house in which
they find him. Any man found carrying arms is to be shot. I
have been expecting a visit from those gentlemen at any
m«ment for the last three-and-twenty hours ; but, as they have
not come yet, I fancy you have given them the slip, and that
in the pitch-darkness of last night nobody saw your wonderful
ascent at a rope's end. Happily for you, I have the reputation
of being an Aristo^ and detesting everything Republican; so my
apartment is a pretty secure sanctuary. And now take a pull
* The Brcaher has Come up before Them* 130
at this Medoc, and when 30U feel equal feo the exertion, you cau
tell rae who you are.'
He half filled a tumhler with wine and handed it to Ishniael,
who drank it eagerly, his lips and throat parched with fever.
• The barricade was taken 1 ' he gasped : ' yes, I know that.
And those brave fellows were all slaughtered ; but was that
the end ? is the struggle over ? is there no one more to fight for
the rights of the people — the Charter, the Constiuition ?'
' The Constitution, ban ! ' exclaimed Valnois, contemptuously ;
* what is the Constitution worth that a man should shed his
blood for it — or any other abstract noun of the same kind —
liberty — equality — fraternity — rights of the people ? No, my
friend, such things never vere worth such carnage as this street
Baw yesterday — brothers shedding brothers' blood. But it is all
over. The men of the Mountain are fugitives or prisoners,
Paris has returned to her accustomed tranquillity, the troops
have gone back to their barracks, and Louis Bonaparte is master
of the situation. He has made a clean sweep of a particularly
unpopular Assembly, and he holds the destinies of France in
the hollow of his hand. He has abolished the obnoxious law of
May, which deprived two-thirds of the people of their right to
vote by requiring that every voter should have been domiciled
for three years in his Commune. He has restored universal
BuflFrage under the fascinating form of the plebiscite, by which
the people of France are to vote Yes or No, whether they will
or will not have him for their sole and uncontrolled master
during the next ten years. But, as every vote will be recorded,
the malcontents had better reckon the odds against them before
they vote on the wrong side. The man who says No may be a
marked man in the days to come.'
' You will not submit to the rule of a usurper ? to
power snatched from an unwilling people at the point of
a sword ? '
* My dear fellow, I am one of that vast majority of French-
men who would as soon serve Peter as Paul. And for the
unwillingness — why, the struggle of the last two days must
have shown you that the President's clutch at the sceptre was
not nearly such an unpopular move as you handful of Reds
think. Paris wants to be governed peaceably, and would rather
be ruled by one long-headed man with a lot of deuced knowing
fellows about him than by an Assembly of conceited idiots all
pulling different ways. And now, my good friend, I'll give you
a fresh bandage for your head ; and if you feel equal to the
exertion, you can tell me all about yourself while I'm putting it
on. A medical friend of mine was in here this morning, and
got rae a lotion for your wound, which be says will heal qu'-^kly
140 Ishmael
on account of your snperb physique. It would have been a very
diffei'ent matter if any one had cut open my head, he told me.
Constitution feeble, habita dissipated : that is my renseiyno'
vient.^
' You are very good,' murnmred Ishmael, while Valnois wag
removing the old bandage and adjusting the new one with
fingers as light and delicate as those of a woman ; 'you have
saved my life — saved me fiom being cut to pieces by those hell-
hounds of drunken soldiers ; and although I am hardly strong
enough to thank you properly, I am not the less grateful. I am
a workman, a mason.'
' A workman ! Come, that won't do,' said Valnois. * You
wore a blouse by way of disguise ; you were on the side of the
blouses, and the costume was convenient.'
'I have told you the plain truth. I have been earning my
bread in Paris for more than a year. I began as a gdchour, and
I am now a limousinant, and can earn from thirty to forty
francs a week. 1 look forward to the time when I may be able
to set up as a master-builder in a humble way, perhaps to buy
an odd bit of land here or there beyond the exterior bouleA'^ards,
and to build a few houses for men of my own class, houses that
shall be a good deal better than the dens that most of them
herd and hugger-mugger in nov/.'
' I see you are ambitious,' said Valnois, throwing away the
end of his cigar and looking at the face on the pillow with a
half -serious, half-humorous expression ; ' and you are saving
money — saving money from the profits of your own labour.
Let me have a good look at you, my friend ; let me see what
kind of an animal it is which works every day in the week and
saves a part of every week's wages. I have read of the species in
Eug5ne Sue, but I never quite believed in such a type — out of a
Socialist's novel.'
' Why should not a workman have his dreams as well as a
poet ? ' asked Ishmael.
' Ah, why not, indeed ! If his dreams reach no better ful-
filment than the dreams of the poet, heaven help him. I am a
poet, I who speak to you, and I have had my dream, which has
landed me in the gutter. What is your name, friend 1 '
' Ishmael.'
' Ishmael ! tout court. Quel drole de nam ! I see — sohriqtict
of hazard, or of your own choosing. Ishmael ! no surname,
only Ishmael, which makes me all the more certain of what I
saw from the first, that you are a gentleman, and not a work-
man.'
' I am a journeyman mason, as you may find out for your-
self any day if you take the trouble to inquire about me at
* The Breaker has Come ip before Tlwrn ' 1 ii
Belleville, or M6niImontant. But I am so much your debtor,
tliat I should have no reserve with you, and I am quite ready
to tell you my history if you care to hear it.'
' I am full of curiosity. I have one of those little minds
which feed upon trifles, and I am particularly interested in you
because you i-epresent the one Christian-like act of my existence.
I never played the good Samaritan before last night.'
' And yet the part sits upon you as easily as if it were in
your very nature,' said Ishmael ; and then, in briefest, simplest
phrases, he told his new friend the story of his life from tho
time of his father's second marriage.
Of his mother's dark fate, or his own childish life in Paris,
he said not a word.
* Upon my soul, you are about the only wise man of my
acquaintance,' exclaimed Hector de Valnois, who had listened
with unfaltering attention to every word of Ishmael's story.
' Any other young fellow in your position would have come to
Paris with the idea of earning his living in gris-perle gloves,
would have tried first to be a poet, then a novelist, then a play-
wright, then a pamphleteer, then a tutor in a day-school, then,
perhaps, a drudge at an office where they copy plays — deepest
sink of poverty and degradation — a place where shirtless
wretches in ragged coats herd together in some foul den, like
dogs in a kennel, in the hope that, by being on the premises day
and night, they may get the first chance of any work that has to
be done against time. For the man who wants to wear kid
gloves and lounge on the boulevard, and who thinks he can
earn his bread en passant, there is a gradual inevitable down-
hill road, every stage of which I have trodden. Yes, my friend,
I have sounded the bottom of this gulf of Paris ; but, happily, I
had elasticity enough to surge up again on the wave of fortune.
Heaven knows how long I may remain on the breast of the
waters. There are men who, when once they sink, never rise
again — men who one day leave off" wearing linen and trying to
live honestly, and who from that hour gravitate towards °the
galleys, or the guillotine.'
' Perhaps, if I had had a little more book-learninfr, I might
have tried to earn my bread in a manner more becoming my
race,' answered Ishmael ; ' but as I was much cleverer with my
hands than with my head, I made up my mind that my handa
would have to keep me ; and so far they have earned enough
for my wants.'
And enough for you to save money ; wonderful man ! ' said
Valnois, lazily puffing at his pipe, and smiling with a superior
air upon his new friend.
He wondered at the force of character, the dogged perss-
112 Ishmael
verance, the temperance and prudence of a man who could worh
six days a week at a laborious trade, and put by half his earn-
in £:'s.
O
Yet it seemed to him a lower order of intellect, an inferior
kind of clay which could do these things. Poets, wits, geniuses,
are made in a different mould. For them these sordid details,
these petty daily sacrifices are impossible.
• What should I do with six francs a day ?' asked Ishmael,
simply. ' I care very little what I eat, and so far I Iiave been
able to live without drinkiiiTf as many of my fellow-workmen
driok. My lodging costs me less than half a franc a day. I
used to give more than that for a dirty garni, but now I have
my own furniture, and a clean airy room for three francs a
week. I can live upon a franc a day, and the rest is left for
books, clothes, and a trifle every week to put in the savings
bank.'
* Miraculous ! And I got fifteen hundred francs six weeks
ago for my share in a vaudeville at the Palais Eoyal. Comment
on fait la noce. And I have only one louis and a handful of
dilver left this evening.'
Ishmael stayed three days and nights in the Rue Montor-
gueil, long enough to make liim very intimate with a young
man of Hector de Valnois' frank, easy temper. De Valnois had
that half-boyish, half petit-maitre vanity which is prouder of
small vices than other men are of great virtues. He was the
true type of Parisian houlvardier j dandy, Bohemian, very in-
ditTereut as to the company he kept, but very particular as to
the cut of his coat, the colour and quality of liis gloves. He
could go without a dinner, he could sink now and again to the
obscurity of a cheap restaurant on the left bank of the Seine
but at Philippe's, or the Maison-Doree, Vefours, or the Trois
Freres, there was no guest more critical or more imperious. His
habits were desultory. He worked while other men slept, and
slept while all the world was at work. He abandoned himself
to long intervals of absolute idleness, which he called his periods
of incubation. And then, when the purse was erajity, and
hunger — absolute, uncompromising hunger — began to pinch the
poet's inside, he would take out a quire of paper and write for
twenty houx-s at a stretch, like a maniac, producing something
which varied extraordinaiily in quality and style — a one-act
farce, an article for the ' Revue des Deux Mondes,' a feuilleton
for the ' Figaro,' criticism, verse, sentiment, satire — but some-
thing which was generally worth money, and which he imme-
diately exchanged for that prime necessity of life. Of course,
publishers and managers profited by his folly, and paid him less
than lliey would have paid a wiser man.
*T]lc Breaker Jias Covia up bejore Them^ 143
Valnois knew this, but accepted the fact as an inevital)le
consequence of taking life pleasantly. His life, such aa it wu-s,
suited his temperament better than a better life could have
done. He had youth, gaiety, good looks, a crowd of friends in
the present. He was the only son of a man of noble family and
diminished means, and was heir to a much impoverished estate
in the vicinity of Nlmes, which saemed to him like an assured
fortune in the future.
Before he had spent a third night in the Eue Montorgueil,
Ishmael found out that Valnois had given him his own and only
bed, and had been content to spend the night in an easy chair.
This sacrifice the hardy mason refused to permit any longer ;
and on the third and fourth night of his visit he slept rolled in
a blanket and stretched in front of the fireplace.
On the fifth morning his head was sound enough to dispense
with the disfiguring and suspicious bandage ; and the giddiness
caused by his wound had passed away. His blood-bespattered
blouse had been washed by the porter's wife, and there waa
nothing in his appearance to mark him as one of the insurgents.
Ho left the Eue Montorgueil before seven o'clock in the cold
gray morning after thanking de Valnois heartily for his hos-
pitality.
'Come and see me any afternoon that you can spare an
hour,' said Valnois ; ' I am generally out after dusk, but till
dusk the chances are you will find me in my den. I like star-
shine and the blue night-sky better than the cold glare of day
I Uke my Paris when all her shabbiness and dilapidations are
hidden, and she has the air of a fairy city, a place of lamp-light
and mirth, music and movement.'
'You will not care to see me again,' murmured Ishmael,
shyly : * I wear a blouse, and work among other blouses.'
' I admire your blouse, and I res])ect you. Come as often ai
you like ; you will never find me ashamed of your blouse. If I
have any political creed at all, my colour is distinctly red. I
aduiire the working-man and the aristocrat ; the first, the
horny-handed toiler, without whom society must cease to exist,
and civilization stop like a watch with a broken main-sjiring ;
the second, the fine flower of fashion and high birth. It is
your middle-class — your eplcier — your Philistine, that I detest.'
On this they parted, firm friends, albeit Ishmael, the son
of toil, felt a kind of shyness in his association with the brain-
worker, the man whose varied collection of books in three or
four different languages indicated a degree of literary culture
which was a new thing to Count Caradec's son. To know a
little Latin and less Greek was the Count's idea of a gentleman's
education, and he had reproached his son for not having inoperly
144 Islimael
mastered sps rudiments. But here was a youth living on a
second floor in an obscure street who was steeped in German
philosophy and poetry, who could read Cervantes and Lope de
Vega in the original, and had the gems of the Divine Comedy
on the tip of his tongue. Was it not an honour and a privilege
for the limousinant of Belleville to call such a man hi's friend ?
Ishraael looked about him wonderingly in the gray of the
early winter morning as he made his way towards the markets
and the Rue Saint- Antoine. He had expected to see traces of
violence and slaughter upon every side ; but the broken lampa
and shattered windows of the Rue Montorgueil alone told of the
brief, sharp struggle four days ago. Paris had her old air of
brisk movement — the grisettes and workmen trudging to their
workshops, their laundries, and the clerks hurrying to their
offices ; the heavy waggons rumbling by to the markets ; and
all the atmosphere in these narrow streets by Saint-Eustache
laden with odours of garden stuiT and charcuteric^ sea-fish and
river- fish, butchers' meat and poultry.
Ishmael had taken the direction of the Place de la Bastille
with the idea of looking in for a minute or so at that dingy
ground-floor den in the Rue Sombreuil, just to see how it had
fared with Paquerette and her people on the terrible night of
the fourth. He knew not how quiet the Faubourg Saint- Antoine
had been while the heart of Paris was throbbing so stormily,
beating itself to death yonder by the markets. It seemed to
him that Saint-Antoine, renowned of old, could hardly have
f (reserved a sluggish neutrality till the very end. The sleeping
ion must have been aroused from his dull lethargy by the noise
of that massacre on the boiUevard.
He foimd a little crowd hanging about the archway leading
into the quadrangular yard — a little crowd of outcast boys, some
women of the rag-picker species from the Rue Saiute-Marguerite,
two or three grisMes^ a fat man in a white apron from a pork-
butcher's shop round the corner ; and on inquiring the cause of
this unusual excitement, he was told that there was a funeral
coming out presently — the old pochard of the ground floor had
gone to thank his baker. P^re Lemoine, the trolleur, was to
be buried that morning.
' P6re Lemoine dead ! ' exclaimed Ishmael. * Then there was
more fighting here on the fourth, I suppose — more barricades ? '
^ Pas si bite,' said the porkbutcher; 'we are all for the
Prince Louis Napoleon, a clever man, who will make trade good
in Paris, and who ought to be Emperor. What do we want
with barricades ? Pfere Lemoine went farther afield to get hia
number. He was amongst those curious folks who insisted upon
being out on the Boulevards, although they were warned by the
* The Breaker has Come up hefore Them ' 145
President's placards that wise people were to keep safe and snug
within doors. And now he is going to eat dandelions by tlie
roots in the cemetery yonder.'
'But there were those who stayed at home and were shot in
their own houses,' grumbled one of the old women. 'The
soldiers fired in at the windows ; little children were killed \i\
their mothers' arms. There was never such a thing in Paris
before.'
Ishmael passed in among the crowd, and went across the
yard to P5re Lemoine's lodging. Tlie hearse was standing
before the dooi', the shabby public carriage in which t\\Q troUeur
was to take his last ride to the place of pauper graves in the
great graveyard at the end of the Hue de la Koquette, just
beyond the jail and the scaffold— the prison-houses of the dead
hard by the prison-house of the living. The undertaker a)id his
two men were in the darksome bedchamber at the back, nailing
down the cofiin, while Mere Lemoine and Paquerette, dressed in
shabbiest black, second, or, perhaps, third-hand mourning, bought
from the merchant of frippery in the Temple, sat on each sitle
of the door, waiting to take their places in the procession, the
old woman weeping audibly, and with red, swollen eyelids and
drawn-down lips ; Paquerette pale as the very dead, but with
dry eyes.
There were a bottle of bright yellow fluid, half-a-dozen
glasses, and a dish of sweet biscuits on the table, by which the
Auvergnat was standing, with a glass in his hand, reatly to
offer hospitality to any neighbour who came in. He and the
two women were to be the only followers of that sable carriage
yonder. He had brought a wreath of yellow immortelles to lay
ou his old employer's coffin.
Ishmael shook hands with M^re Lemoine, and murmured n
few kind words ; whereupon the fountain of tears flowed still
faster, and, in a voice broken by whimpers, the old woman told
him how she and Paquerette had sat up all night on the fourth,
waiting for the patron to come home; and how, when they heard
next morning of the fusillade on the boulevard, their first
thought had been to go all over that part of Paris hunting for
the missing Pere— to go even to the Elysee itself, if need were,
to demand his blood of the President, or to St. Arnaud, to ask
what the soldiers had done with an honest man, who had never
harmed any one in his life. And then the Charabia had sug-
gested that he should first go to the Morgue, and see if, by evd
fate, this poor soul were lying on the cold stones there, under
the little fountain of icy water— unclaimed, unknown ; and he
had gone, and he had found his old friend, with a dreadful woun()
upon his jaw, and shot through the lungs ; and he had brouglif
I.
146 Islimael
him home ; and it was he who was to pay for the grand clotli-
covered coffin, with its white metal furniture, for Paquerette'a
eake.
The Cliarabia nodded assent with a friendly air, and offered
Islimael a glass of brandy, which was refused. Paquerette said
not a word. She had hardly lilted up her eyes since Islimael
entered. She sat looking down at the skirt of her rusty black
gown — pallid, motionless, expressionless, like a ci'eature without
thought or feeliun;.
' Do \o\\ know how ho came by his death ?' asked Islimael.
'Only that he was among those who were picked up on the
boulevard after the fusillade,' answered the old woman. ' Some
say that shots were fired at the soldiers from the roof of a house,
and that they were maddened by the idea that they were all
going to be shot down by the people, and that they turned upon
the crowd and filed without orders from any officer in command.'
' They were drunk,' said the Cliarabia ; ' they were all drunk.
They shot and killed for pure sport — women, old men, children
— aiming at them as if they had been sparrows, betting on their
shots as in a billiard-room. It was fine sport ; and this time it
Avas chielly the hourgeois, the folks who wear broadcloth and
tine linen, who suffered. It was a grim spectacle to see the v.ell-
diessed corpses lying in the gutters. Pere Lemoine had no
business there. I am sorry for him. He has swallowed his
Bpoon sooner than he need, poor devil.'
' SIkiII I walk to the cemetery with }'ou ?' asked Ishmael, an
offer which was promjitly accepted by Madame Lemoine. That
would make them four instead of three, and the Charabia could
walk with Paquerette, which was only right. And now tha
coflin was brought out and placed upon the bier, and covered
with the rusty velvet j)all ; and tlie funeral train t-f four followed
the hearse out of the muddy yard into the mudilier street.
Ishmael, having offered his company out of pure kindne-^'!,
»vas content to walk beside Mere Lemoine, albeit she dragged
.ler slippers along the greasy stones, and was obviously illumin-
ated. She expatiated on the merits of the deceased, deprecated
while admitting his faults ; praised her own goodness and
fidelity as wife and household-manager — with tears which Howed
so freely from her inflamed eyelids and a-down her soddencd
cheeks, that it might have been thought that the trois-six she
had been imbibing freely for the last four days found an outlet in
this form.
Ishmael bought a votive wreath, with PuI.P. in black upon
yellow, on the way to the cemetery, and laid it reverently upon
tiie vagal)ond's coflin before it went down into the traucht'6
gratuitc, a recent improvenieut upon the common grave ; for ia
* She is more rrcclous than Lullcs* l47
these long trenches the cofans were no longer hf npod one on the
top of the other, but ranged decently in a row, twenty centimetres
asunder. Here, until live years after the last colhn has been laid
in the trench, the pauper slumbers undisturbed, as safe as the
rich man in his freehold, and the cross which marks his last
resting place is no longer a mockery and a fiction as it was in the
days of common graves.
The funeral service of the poor is not a protracted office.
P^re Leraoine was laid in earth in less than twenty minutes,
and it was only ten o'clock when Ishmael bade Paquerette
and her grandmother good-bye at the gate of Pere Lachaise.
' When is the wedding to be ? ' he asked, as he shook hands
with the old woman.
'In a fortnight: the sooner the better. Who is there to
take care of her now, poor child, since the good old grandfather
is lying underground ? '
CHAPTER XIY
'snE IS MORE PRECIOUS THAI? RUBIES '
IsHMAEii walked slowly towards Munilmontant after leaving
the gate of the cemetery, his mind full of Paquerette and her
destiny. He had given more than one fui'tive glance at the
Chai-abia during the funeral service, and he had not been
favourably impressed by the man's appearance, considered in
his character of bridegroom-expectant. The fellow was honest
enough, perhaps ; but the heavy brow, the small, dull eyes
under bushy, projecting brows indicated a nature of the loAvest
order— loutish, sullen, tending almost to the savage. And by
the side of this short, thick-set figure, this heavy, bull-dog
visao-e, Paquerette's slender form, and pale, small face, looked
more than ever like some white wild flower, wliich too rough a
gust of March wind would snap from its frail stem. There was
something revolting to human nature in the idea of an union
between two beings so difierent— almost as revolting as the
idea of union between creatures of dissimilar species — wolf and
lamb, vulture and dove.
And yet the thing was to be, and it was no affair of
Ishmael's. Better, it would seem, that Paquerette siiould have
such a husband as this brutal Auvergnat, if he could provide
148 Ishmael
her with a comfortable home, than that she should languish in
that den in the Rue Sombreuil at the merey of a drunken
grandmother.
' Let me think of my own business,' said Ishmael, setting
liis face towards the yard of the master builder, his bourgeois,
his patron, anxious to see if the coup d'dat would make any
difference in his chances of employment.
The bourgeois was on the premises, and in excellent spirits.
Nothing succeeds like success ; and that bold stroke of the
other day had made Napoleonic rule already an established
fact. The builder was Bonapartist to the tips of his nails. He
talked as if these days of December were the beginning of a
millennium for all France in general, for the building trade in
particular.
' Look at the Empire 1 ' he exclaimed ; * it was an age of
activity, of colossal undertakings — bridges, canals, fountains,
markets, catacombs. The Bourse, the cemeteries of Mont-
martre and Pere Lachaise, we owe them all to the uncle. Who
can doubt that the nephew will do even greater things ? We live
in a faster age ; we can command larger resources. We shall
get more bridges to build, larger markets, finer barracks, new
theatres. The Prince and De Momy are two of the greatest
stock-jobbers in Europe. Take my word for it, Ishmael, the
age of enterprise has begun.'
There was plenty of work for Ishmael, and an advancement
in his position, which he had not expected. The foreman of
the works, finding things thrown out of gear by the agitations
of the third and fourth, had consoled himself at the wine-shops
of his quarter, the assommoirs, or spirit-shops, which dealt in
liquid fire — bright to the eye, pleasant to the jaded palate,
devilish in its etfect upon body and brain ; for while the rich
Parisian may be intemperate with impunity, the working man
of Paris is supplied with a stuff called brandy, in which there
is not one drop of the juice of the grape, and for him drunken-
ness means madness and death. And in Paris there are twenty-
five thousand drinking shops of different degrees.
In the foreman's case three days sustained upon this kind of
nourishment had resulted in an attack of delirium tremens.
The man was at the hospital of St. Anne, and the master had
sworn a deadly oath that a servant who could so abandon his
duty at a time when there was a heavy contract on hand
should never again touch a sou of his money.
Ishmael said a good word for the foreman, who had alwaya
treated him like a brute, but who had an honest, industrious
little wife and a brace of pretty children. The patron waa
inflexible, and Ishmael found himself promoted to the post
of overseer of the other num.
•S/i(3 is more Precious than Biihies* 149
Happily, he was a favourite with them all ; and as the late
foreman had been detested, his appointment gave universal
satisfaction. He had been suspected at the beginning of things
— doubted, disliked even, as a person of a different class — that
most obnoxious of all beings, a gentleman in disguise But, by
degrees, his frank, straightforward bi aring, his thorough truth-
fulness, his generosity of heart and willingness to help a fellow-
workman in distress, had overcome all prejudices against him;
and as time went by Ishmael had come to be a kind of king in
the builder's yard — chosen in somewise, perhaps, for his good
looks and superior height — his air of physical power and vigorous
health — a proud, handsome head, towering above the feebler
city-bred workmen by three or four inches — chosen as Saul was
chosen to be king over Israel.
His advancement to be foreman of the works doubled his
pay. He felt himself on the road to high fortune.
It was in the week that followed the coup d'etat, while
everyone was talking of the plebiscite, the probability of a
second Empire, and the dark rumours of a good deal of un-
pleasantness, as it were, below the surface, in the shajie of
transportation and exile, that Ishmael was surprised by a
rencontre with an old acquaintance.
He had not forgotten his mother's maid Lisette even in the
excitement of his new life in Paris. He had taken a good deal
of trouble in hunting for her, visiting almost every c/iarcuiicr's
shop in the outskirts of the city, but without success. He did
not know the name of the man she had married ; and among'
the ladies who devoted themselves to dealings in the varieties
of pig-meat, he could hear of no one at all resembling the friend
of his desolate childhood.
It happened, however, about a week after the fatal fourth
of December, that Ishmael, being indisposed for his customary
studious evening, went farther afield than usual for his dinner,
and patronised a tapis franc in the region of Montmartre, and
within two or three hundred yards of the theatre at which his
mother and his mother's maid had been performers thirteen
years before.
When he had dined he went to look at the building which
had been a mystery to him in his childhood. He had seen it
six months ago, out of repair, closely sliu'., the spurious Grecian
facade plastered with bills of all kinus. To-night the com])o.site
pillars, the stuccoed portico were bright with new paint and
cheap gilding, and a row of coloured lam])s shone in front of
the entrance. Above the cornice of the portico, in characters
of flame, appeared the new name of the building, 'Palais de
Cristal,' so called af^^-r Sir Joseph Paxton's famous palace of
150 Ishnacl
industry in Uyde Park, an idea which had vividly impressed
the Gallic mind. The old Escurial theatre had been improved
eti the fuca of the eaith, and the Palais de Cristal, a new cafe-
cliantanty entrance ten sous, consommation libre, had arisen in its
place.
Ishmael paid his ten sous to a smartly-dressed matron, who
occupied a counter near the entrance, and went into the audi-
torium. It was a long room, something like a cliapel, with rows
of rush-bcttonied chairs and little tablos placed at intervals on
each side of a central alley. At the end, where the altar would
have been in a church, there was a ])latform, lighted with
coloured lamps, and beautified by artificial roses and lilies in
gilded vases. A grand piano occupied the centre of the plat-
form, and on each side of the piano there were three or four
ai'm-chairs, covered with crimson velvet, for the performers.
The platform was empty, and the body of the hall was but
thinly occupied when Ishmael took his seat very near the foot-
lights. He had to wait some time before the performance
began, during which period the elite of the neighbourhood were
dropping in, making a great noise with their boots, and a greater
noise with their tongues, ordering divers refreshments of the
woman at the counter, or of the waiters in the hall, disputing,
laughing, squabbling about seats, rights and counter- rights.
Ishmael began to think he was in a fair way to waste his
evening, yet he had a fancy to see what kind of a place this
was in which his mother's beauty had once shone as a star.
He heard a woman telling a friend that the platform yonder,
with its lamps and flowers and miwlin curtains, was only the old
stage upon which she had seen 'Caitouche' and the 'Tour de
"Nesle ' acted five yeaxs before.
And now a resujLendent person in evening dress, with a white
waistcoat and shimng boots, entered from a curtained doorwa}"-,
took his place at the piano, and began to play Partant pour
la Syrie, as a triumphal march, to which entered four other
resplendent personages of the male sex, conducting four ladies
in gorgeous raiment, who, with the air of duchesses, sank
languidly into crimson fauteuils, and smiled their gracious
acknowledgment of the noisy greeting of the audience, all tired
of waiting, and ready to ckiuk their teaspoons or wine glasses
rapturously at the smallest provocation.
Ishmael scrutinised the painted faces, the sleek shining hair,
with the eye of a hawk. Not one of those radiant creatures
■would ever again see her thirtieth birthday. More than one
was decidedly on the wane ; but painted eyelashes, rouge, and
accroche-ccevr curls are almost as good as the beauts du diable.
At siLjht of one of those artistic countenances, round plump
• She ts more Precious than Btcbies ' 151
cheeks, a low forehead plastered with little rings of black hair^
plump shoulders, and whitened arms, in a glistening green silk
gown, the skirt an ascending scale of scalloped flounces, Ishmael
gave a start which almost capsized his next neighbour's c/wpe of
Bavarian beer. One glance told him that the lady in green was
his old friend Lisette, her beauty amplified, coarsened, perhaps,
by the passage of years, but just the same kind of Lisette he had
known thirteen years ago. He wanted to go to the platfoim
that moment and shake hands with her across the lamps and
lloAvers ; but he restrained himself, and sat waiting and watching.
There was a variety of music, which argued a catholic taste
on the part of the audience. A sentimental duet about the
Ktars and the sea was followed by a comic duet about a
matrimonial quai'rel ; and then came a huntin.;^ song ; and then
the quartette from Tiigoletto,' sung with tremendous force on
tlie part of the soprano, until the gas-globes rattled and the
hall rang again. And when the applause after this great work
liad subsided, Lisette, who had been silent hitherto, came
eimpering to the footlights.
There was a storm of apjjlause directly she came forward —
cheers, familiar little cries and greetings, as at the ap])earance
of an old-established favourite who has taken root in the very
hearts of her audience. She smiled round at her admirers, she
curtseyed, laughed, cleared her throat with a coquettish little
coiigh, adjusted her gilt bracelets, and tlien, still broadly
smiling, with reddened lips, she began the following master-
piece of the comic muse as extant in Paris at the close of 1651 (
*j\la future est jeune et belle,
Et f'rait I'bonheur de mes jours,
Mais son defaut, la cruelle !
C'est de s'enrhumer coujours.
•Elle s'enrhume quand il g^le,
Encor' plus quand il degele,
Hivcr, ete, frimas, brume,
Ma foi 1 ce n'est qu'un long rhume,
• Parle. Ce n'est pas un crime, vous savez. Ce n'est nl »itj
Wieurtre, ni un vol, ni un coup d'etat, mais c'est cmbetanfc, tout de
memo. Quand je I'emmene h. Bougival, par exemple, diner sur
I'herbe, un vrai paradis I'ete pr^s de I'eau, par un soleil a faire
flamber les cheveux, eh 1 bien, malgre tout, elie s'enrhume
tou jours I
• Et puis v'la qu'oUe se mouche,
Qu'on dirait d'une tempeto !
Tirant son n^z en farouche.
C'est a vous rornnre la tete.
162 Ishmael
* A la danse, ou quand on mange,
Meme quand j'lui fais I'amourl
Celestine, adorable ange I
S'obstine k s'moucher toujours.*
When the entertainment was over, Ishmael tore a leaf
ont of his pocket-book, and wrote upon it, 'Will Madame
Tjadronette' (that was Lisette's stage name) 'speak to an old
friend from Brittany, presently, at the artists' door?' This
brief missive he entrusted to one of the waiters, and then he
went out into the street, and found his way to an obscure little
door in an alley at the side of the Palais de Cristal.
Here Ishmael found another person in attendance — a short,
stout man with a white apron tucked aside under a pilot coat.
'Are you waiting for one of the artists, Monsieur?' thia
person asked, after two or three minutes, with a somewhat
susjjicious air.
' I am waiting for Madame Ladronette.'
'Indeed I' said the stout man, with a start and a snort;
'and may I ask what business you may have between eleven
o'clock and midnight with an honourable lady like Madame
Ladronette ?'
' You can ask, assuredly, when you have told me by what
right you expect to be answered.'
' By my right as INIadame Ladronette's husband, sir ; I
think that ought to be enough,' retorted the other, fiercely.
'Oh, then you aie the charcutier,' exclaimed Ishmael,
laughing.
'Yes, sir, I am the charctUier ; I hope you do not consider
that a dishonourable trade ? '
'Sir, it is at once respectable and useful,' answered Ishmael,
gravely ; 'and as you have established your right to know my
business with Lisette — Madame Ladronette, I should say — I am
f)leased to tell you that, although you see me to-night a great
lulking fellow of over six feet high, I was once small, friendless,
helpless, unhappy ; and that in those daj's your wife was very
kind to me.'
' She has a heai't large enough to be kind to the universe,'
said the charcutier, who was a pompous little man, and had an
air of swelling as he spoke as if literally puffed up by his own
conceit. 'But liere .«;he comes to answer for herself.'
Lisette emerged from tlie greasy little swing door, neatly
and even fashionablv clad in a large cashmere shawl, which
reached almost to her heels, a black velvet bonnet, and a thick
lace veil. She went up to Ishmael, who was standing in the
light of the lamp over (lie door, and looked at him intently for
a few moments, and then she said :
* She is more Precious than EuUes ' 153
'It 13 Count Caraclec's face, only handsomer! Surely you
are not '
' I was once Sebastien Caradec, the little boy you used to
take out walking in Paris y^ars acfo ; but I have done with the
old name and the old history, and I a,m now Ishmael, foreman
of the works at the Eose Yard, Belleville.'
'Sebastien — that poor little creature!' she repeated, hardly
comprehending the latter part of his speech. 'Such a great
tall dark fellow, with a black moustache, and the shoulders of a
grenadier. Why, I must be getting an old woman. Figure to
yourself, then, Alphonse: this young man is the same! have told
you about— whose mother — old songs, all that — and I was almost
as fond of him as if he had been my own flesh and blood ; and
after his mother's death, his father took him back to Brittany,
But how comes it that you are in Paris, Sebastien, and wearing
a blouse ? '
'Because I was not wanted at Pen-Hoel. My father has a
wife and other sons. I was one too many. There was no place
for me beside the hearth. So I cut the knot of tlie difliculty —
an unloved son 5s a difficulty, you see — by coming to Paris,
■where I can earn my own living, and am in nobody's way.'
' It was bravely done,' said Lisette. ' You have your poor
mothei^'s independent spirit.'
And then, at the invitation of the cliarcutier, whose name was
Alphonse Moque, Ishmael went home to supper with his old
friend and her husband. They lived within two or three streets
of the Palais de Cristal, in an old house in an old street, one of
the little bits of old village architecture to be found here and
there on the skirts of Paris. But though the shop and the rooms
above it were low and small, they were smartly furnished and
neatly kept. INIadame Moque was very proud of her home, and
was of an industrious turn now that she had a stake in the
country. She served in the shop, she looked after the house-
keeping, and at night she sang comic, songs to a rapturous
audience. Alphonse was proud of having secured such a ver-
satile wife.
Ishmael sat late over the little supper-table in the warm,
snug sitting-room, with its new mahogany furniture and bright
yellow damask curtains, clock and candelabra in alabaster and
gold— all paid for out of Lisette's salary, as Monsieur Moque
proudly stated. It was not that the charcntier did not earn
money by his business ; but the profits of the pork shop were of
too serious a character to be frittered away upon furniture or fine
clothes. Monsieur Moque's superfluous cash went to the public
funds, to make a provision for old age ; but Lisette did what
she liked with her profeseicnal earnings.
154 Ishmacl
*It was a bargain between us,' said Alphonse, gazing at bis
wife with fatnous admiration. ' I did not desire to be richer by
my union v.'ith ojie of the most famous women in Paris. I only
souglit the honour of being allied to her, the glory of being able
to tell the world she is mine. If you knew how that stage door
is sometimes besieged of a night by men who come from the
fashionable quarters of Paris — ah, from the Elysee itself — you
would not wonder that I was uncivil to you,' added Alphonse,
excusing himself to Ishniael.
It was his dearest delusion that his wife's footsteps were
haunted by the fine flower of Parisian dissipation. lie had an
idea that the Prince-Piesident himself had made particular
inquiries about her, had suggested that she should be engaged
at one of the Boulevard theatres. But the inexorable malevo-
lence of rival artists had prevented the gratification of that
august desire.
Lisette smiled modestly, and murmured deprecatory little
remarks now and then, reminding her husband that she was not
so young as she had once been, that even beauty will fade, and
so forth. But she appeared, on the whole, to believe in those
shadowy rakes from the Boulevard des Capucines who were
supposed to haunt the stage door, but whom mortal man had
never yet encovmtered.
Ishmael went back to his lodging in the early morning,
pleased at having found a friend of the past, albeit that friend
was associated with the darkest hour of his life. There had not
been much brightness in his life hitherto ; but it seemed to hi:u
that a brighter day was now dawning, the beginning of a sub-
stantial success. His mind was full of plans, ideas, improve-
ments, inventions ; and, if there wei'e indeed a time of gigantic
entei-prise at hand, he felt that for men of his stamp there
must be plenty of work, and with the work golden opportu-
nities.
Strong in his confidence in his own power, and buoyed up
by hope, Ishmael's days and nights knew no weariness. He
lived less in the present than in the future : every blow of
hammer or mallet, every hour of toil, seemed to him a stage on
the journey of his life, and whether the stage carried him an
inch or a mile, it was enough for him to know that he wa.s
always moving forward, that every day of labour was a day
t>i progress.
cnArxEii XV
*A3 A ROE FROM THE HAND OF THE HUNTEa'
Eighteen FiFTY-oxEwas dead and gone, its bloody close a thing
of the past — an old song — forgotten by almost everybody excejit
a few hundred prisoners waiting their doom at the Fort of
Bicetre, or languishing in the Prince's own old prison of Ham,
or voyaging over tempestuous seas on their way to Cayenne.
The world of Paris troubled its linnet's head but little about
that obscure minority in durance or exile. The new year began
with pomp and splendour, flourish of trumpets, roll of organs,
clank of helmet and sword, a grand Te Deum at the cathedral
of Notre Dame. Tlie great bell, whose monster clapper sounds
but on occasions of grandest import, pealed with deep and
solemn voice over tlie house-tops of the Cite; and in that
mighty fane, gorgeous with velvet and brocade, gold and jewels
resplendent with myriad tajiers, lamp-lit altars, Paris thronged
to see the Dictator enthroned upon a dais, while the hierarchy
of France invoked Heaven's blessing upon his lofty mission as
elected ruler of the French people, the chosen of seven millions
and a half of vo*^ers.
Once more the Imperial Eagle, symbol of Roman prowess,
Roman pride, spread his broad pinion over Paris. The Repub-
lican catchwords, Liberty, Equality, and Frateiiiity, were
effaced from the public buildings, and the Prince-President
left the Elys^e to take up his residence at the Tuileries. One
of his earlie-st uses of despotic powder was to contiscate the
property of the Orleans Princes. This was the first flight of
the eagle.
The new year was only a week old when an event happened
which threw the whole scheme of Ishmael's life out of geai', one
of those few events in a man's life which are fatal.
He had sat up late overnight studying a famous work on
the construction of bridges, lent him by his niaste)'. The
subject was full of mathematical difficulties, and as Ishmael
was, for the most part, a self-taught mathematician, having
learnt only the elements of the science from good Father
Bressant, he had found the treatise on bridges stilT work, anil
had toiled deep into the night without making any great progress.
His sense of being b.diied by the difiiculties of the subject
go oppressed him, that, wheu he lay down, in the hope of getting
156 hhmael
tlaree or four hours' rest before the working day began he
found himself unable to sleep for more than ten minutes at a
stretch. His brain was fevered by the work he had been doing,
and, over and above his vexation at non-success, he had a
strange, vague sense of trouble, that weighed him down. Every
now and then he turned restlessly on his hard pallet, or started
up from his pillow, as if there had been a scorpion lurking
under it.
He tried to reason with h'mself, to calm do-wn nerves and
brain. He told himself that the difficulties which had baffled
him to-night would be subjugated by persistence and labour ;
and yet, and yet the sense of worry, the feeling of oppression,
were not to be overcome — grew stronger rather — as the dark-
less wore on towards dawn.
At last, in a moment of vexation, he gave up the vain effort
to sleep, and rose and dressed by candle dight. It was half-
past five o'clock, and quite dark ; but Ishmael thought that a
walk country wards, even in the darkness, would tranquilize hia
nerves, and make him fitter for the labour of the coming day.
When he tried to open his door, he encountered an obstacle
outside, which prevented the door from opening more than
half-way. A very human groan, breathed in the darkness,
told him that this obstacle was a human form.
' Who is there ? ' he asked, startled.
• It is I— Paquerette.'
•Paquerette !'
He went back and re-lit his candle hastily, and then went
out upon the landing.
Yes, it was Paquerette. She was sitting on the floor, in
the angle between the door and the wall, her head leaning
against the plaster. Her face was deadly pale, and her forehead
v.'as daubed with blood.
'Paquerette, in Heaven's name, what has happened to you?'
asked Ishmael, putting down the candle hastily inside his room,
and then stooping to lift up Pi^querette in his strong arms.
'You are hurt ! Who hurt you ? — where ? — why ? — '
He gasped these questions breathlessly while he carried her
into his room and placed her in his arm-chair.
' You are shivering,' he said. ' I'll light my stove, and make
you some coffee But how did you come here, poor child ? Tell
me — tell me everything.'
• I came late last night — after every one was gone to bed.'
' And j'ou have been sitting there, on that cold landing, all
night ! '
' Yes. It has seemed a very long time. But I did not want
to disturb you ; and I knew that you would come out in the
* As a Boe from the Hand of the Hunter ' 157
morning, and that you would be kind to me. You were always
so kind to me !' she said, looking up at him with plaintive blue
eyes, innocently, with unconscious love. ' I have the basket that
you gave me, and the flowers and berries I picked that day.
The Charabia was angry about tliem once, and wanted me to
burn them ; but I would as soon have thrown myself into the lire.
The basket is outside. Please pick it up for me. Monsieur Tshmael.'
He obeyed, full of wonder, full of pity. He brought the
basket from the landing, and put it on the table beside Paquerette,
among his books and papers of last night. And then he knelt down
and lighted the stove, and filled tlie cottee-put, wliicli was all
ready for his morning meal. He had acquired all the handy
ways of a bachelor mechanic since his coming to Paris, and hfa
preparations for breakfast were dexterously and rapidly made
in the dim light of the single candle. He glanced at Paquerette
now and then, but he asked her no further questions. He could
see that she was exhausted by some great agitation, by a night of
cold and suifering ; and he was content to wait until her strength
should revive.
When the coffee was ready, he coaxed her to take a cupfid,
waiting upon her, soothing her with womanly tenderness and
patience. He felt as if she had been a wounded bird that had
flown in at his window for shelter — a weakling that he
could cherish and comfort in his bosom. He had no sense as
yet of the incongruity of their position — no consciousness of the
hand of Fate, albeit that ominous feeling of trouble, that vague
oppression had been weighing him down all night.
At last, when she had taken the coffee and the fire had
warmed her, she began to talk, a little incoherently, childishly
even ; but Ishmael was patient with her, and let her tell her
pitiful story in her own way.
' I daresay it was very wrong to come to you,' she faltered ;
•I had no right, no claim ; but you were always kind, and where
else could I go ? I dared not go to the Benoits, for if they had
hidden me ever so, grandmother would have found me in their
apartment, and she would have ill-treated them for shelter-
ing me. You are a strong man ; she cannot beat you, or abuse
you.'
_ ' You were quite right to come to me if you were in trouble,'
said Ishmael, kindly.
He was kneeling by the stove, looking up at her as she
talked, the candle-light shining upon her blood-stained forehead
and sorrowful eyes.
' I hated him always, hated him from the very first. Did
not I tell you that I hated him that night when we were going
home from Vincennes ? '
158 tshviael
* The Cliarabia ? Yes, I remember perfectly. Tliat marie me
think it very strange you should be willing topiaarry him.'
'I was not willing. I never left off hating him. "When
he touched my hand 1 felt as if I wanted to run away to the end
of the earth. One evening he kissed me ; and 1 was awake all
night, shuddering at the loathsomeness of that kiss. But they
told me I was to marry him, and that I was very Ivicky to
have such an offer of marriage. It would be a blessing for all
of us, gi-andfather said — for them and for me— for the Cliarabia
had saved a little fortune, and would make a home for us all. We
were all to live with him in the room behind his shop ; grand-
mother was to do the housework, and I was to live like a lady !'
'And on this you thought better of him 1 ' speculated Ishmael.
'No, no, no ! I refused with all my might. I told them I
would rather be lying in my grave than married to that hateful
man ; and then they scolded me, and told me what my mother
had been ; oh, is it not cruel to talk of the dead like that — the
poor, helpless dead — who cannot rise up and answer ? And
grandfather told me that I must marry the Charabia. I had no
choice ; it was his wish, and I was bound by the law to obey
him. He had brought me up, and clothed me, and fed me, and
I was his pro])erty, to do what he liked with. It was his will
that I sliould be the Charabia's wife. Many and many a time
he told me the same thing, and repeated the same cruel wordn.
Sometimes, when he was out, my grandmother would be even
more cruel, for she used to hit me and knock me about every
time she was angry, and grandfather did not often beat me.'
' Not often ! Oli, poor cliikl, poor child ! * sighed Ishmael.
'When grandfather died there was hardly any money in the
house ; we were so poor, that we should not have been able to live
if it had not been for the Charabia. He gave grandmother some
money for tlie secretaire that grandfather had been working at
before his death, and when that money was gone — and grand-
mother had taken the tool-basket to the Mont de Piete, and
that money was gone -the Charabia gave her a little money to
go on with. And tlien he said it was time we should be mairied,
and then grandmother would have a home with us. They settled
it all between them — we were to be married to-morrow. The
baims were put at the church door, and the same day the
Charabia brought me two new gowns and a shawl — a beautiful
ehawl.'
'And that made j^ou happy, Paquerette?*
•Happy! No, I was miserable, though grandmother kept
saying how grateful I ought to be, and how the Charabia had
sent me a corheille, just as if I were a lady. I was miserable, and
I was afraid, dreadfully afraid — afraid of gra)idmothor, afraid of
As a Hoe from the Hand of the Hunter^ l.j9
the Cliaraljia. Tbc-y both scolded me at every tuiu ; and she iwed
to j>inch me if she saw me crying when the Chavabia was with us.'
Paquerette turned up the loose sleeve of her old stutf gown,
and showed a lean white arm, which had been mercilessly clawfd
by her harj)y grandam, and which bore that lady's sign-manual
in ever so many places, printed in purple.
'Last night, after the Charabia was gone, I told grandmother
that I could notnud would not marry him. It was no use talking
to me — I would throw myself in the Seine rather than go to tlie
Mairie with that man. She had been drinking — more than
usual, I think ; and she flew at me, and pushed me against the
wall, and held nie there, and said she would stand over me till
she had brought me to reason ; she would beat out my brain,?
rather that be conquered by me. I think I must have fainted
with fright and pain, for I can remember nothing more till I
woke from a kind of sleep, and found myself lying on the ground,
and the room all dark ; and I heai'd grandmother snoring in the
inner room where she sleeps."
'Poor little martyr !' said Ishmael, with infinite compassion.
' When I remembered what she had said, I made up my mind
to go out quietly and throw myself into the river. It was a
very short walk to the Quai de la Rapee, and in the darkness no
one would see me jump into the water. I knew that, if 1 stayed
in that house, grandmother would make me do what she wanted.
What power had I to resist her ? I went to the door and looked
out. There were very few lights burning in the windows looking
into the yard, and I knew it must be late. I was just going out
when 1 remembered the basket you gave me ; and I went back
and took it from its place in my room. I meant to drown tlie
basket as well as myself, so that the Charabia should not ill-use
it when I was dead. And then I went out and shut the door
behind me, and nobody heard or noticed me. The yard door
was not locked — it hardly ever is locked at night, fur theie are
lodgers who come in at all hours.'
' And you could think of drowning yourself ! Oh, raquerctte,
how terrible !'
'I meant to do it. Anything was better than to be made to
marry that hateful man. The streets were very qviiet when I
Avent out — quiet, and cold, and daik— very cold"; and the river
seemed a long way olF, for my head had bled a great deal, and
I was very weak. When I got to the liver-side the water looked
cold, and black, and dreadful ; and I was afraid to throw myself
off" the quay. I stood ever so long looking down at that dai k
water, shivering, afraid. Once I shut my eyes, and took a step
forward, trying to drop over the edge blindfold. But I could
not do it. I was afraid of the water.'
160 Ishmael
Afraid of death, you mean, poor child. Life is sweeter than
we ever think till we face that unknown country beyond.'
' I must be a coward,' said Paquorette, ' for I could not kill
myself. I had thought of you a good deal all the time — re-
membering how kmd you were ; wishing that you were near to
help me ; wondering if you would ever hear of my death ; if
you would be sorry. The basket I was carrying seemed a link
between us somehow — it was something that your hand had
touched ; and then I thought I M^ould go to you, and ask you to
hide me, to save me from grandmother; and then I left tha
river, and found my way here. Twice I met a gendarme, who
asked me where I was going, and I told him I lived at
Menilmontant, but had been taking some work home to the
Faubourg Saint- Antoine, and had lost my way. So then the
gendarme told me which way to come, and at last I found this
street. I passed the house one day with Pauline Benoit, and
she showed me your window. The door below was milocked,
and I opened it softly and crept upstaii's, and sat down in the
corner by your door to wait for the morning.'
' What time was it when you came upstairs ?'
* A clock struck two just before I got to your door.'
* And it was nearly six when I found you. Poor child ! you
had been sitting in the cold four dismal hours.'
The first glimmer of chill, gray light stole through the
Venetian shutter as they were talking. It was seven o'clock, a
dull, rainy morning. That gleam of daylight seemed to awaken
Ishmael to the realities of life. He began to consider how he
was to dispose of this uninvited guest, this wounded bird which
liad flown to his nest for shelter. He got up Irom his knees and
began to pace the room slowly to and fro, glancing every now
and then at Paquerette, who leant back in the capacious arm-
chair, very white, very weary-looking, but refreshed by the
coffee and comforted by the warmth of the stove.
What was he to do for her ? How best protect her from
her grandmother's wrath, from the pursuit of her hated lover i
She could not remain under his roof. That was clear. Nor
could she seek hospitality from the Benoit girls. There could
be no safe shelter for her in the Rue Sombreuih Poor, helpless
creature, what was he to do with her ? Some safe haven must
he find her, and at once. There was no time to be lost. That
wretched old hag, her grandmother, might guess to what refuge
»he had flown, and might come in quest of her before the day
was much older.
There was only one friend of whom he could think in Iiis
difficulty, and that was Lv'^tte Moque, the charciUier^s wife,
otherwise Madame Ladronetti.\
* Can the Flag Groto ivithcut Water t ' IGl
*I am going out to see a person who may be of use in giving
you a Lome for a little while,' he said, presently. 'Try to get
6ome sleep while I am gone ; and perhaps, if you were to bathe
your head in cold water, it might do you good. There is some iu
that pitcher by the washstand. You can lock the door directly
I am gone, and if anyone knocks, do not answer.'
' You don't think grandmother will come and take me away ? '
she said, with terror in her eyes.
' She may come ; but only keep your door locked till I return,
and I will answer for it she shall not take you away.'
' She has the law on her side — she said she has the right to
do what she likes with me,' faltered Paquerette.
'She shall not touch a hair of your head. I will denounce
her to the police as a murderess if she come here after you.
They shall see your wounded head, they shall hear your stoiy.
Au revoir, PAquerette. Aiiswer uo one— keep quiet and snug
till I come back.'
CHAPTER XVI
•CAir THE FLAG GROW WITHOUT WATER?'
It was nearly nine o'clock when Ishmael went back to his
lodging, and he was troubled at the idea of being late at the
works of Belleville, where his presence was doubly needed now
that he was a person in authority. He had found some littla
difficulty in persuading Madame Moque to take charge of
Paquerette, a young woman who had run away from her
grandmother. That might be dangerous. As for the blood
upon her face, that was nothing wonderful. A grandmother —
and, indeed, that nearer relation, a mother — had often occasion
to chastise a rebellious child. A little blood made a great show,
but might really mean no more cruelty than a box on the ear ;
and where was the mother who had never boxed her daughter's
ears?
Ishmael tried to explain that this was a case of real cruelty ;
that Paquerette had narrowly escaped being nmrdered. And
for the rest, Mfere Lemoine had no legal authority over this poor
waif, whose name and whose parentage were involved in mystery.
' That makes no ditference. If Mere Lemoine has brough fc
the girl up. Mere Lemoine has a legal hold upon her,' answereil
Monsieur Moque, tenderly trimming a pig s head aiu: trajjas.
M
102 hlivmcl
A good man;y tliinirs were atix truff'es in Monsieur Moqne'a s1iop,
but the bodily form of the truffle was not often visible. That
arist&oratic tuber was represented by an all-pervading flavour,
which imparted a curious family likeness to all the comestibles
sold in the establishment.
' There is only one way for it,' said Lisette. * The girl ought
to go into a convent.'
Ishmael started at tlie suggestion. It seemed reasonable,
kindly, even ; and yet he was chilled and saddened at the
thought of that young life entombed within the four walls of
a convent.
'Give her a shelter for a few days while we consider what
is best to be done with her,' he pleaded. 'She is a quiet,
inoffensive creature ; and I will pay whatever you think right
for her board. Her grandmother will never trace her to this
house.'
Lisette declared, that there was nothing would please her
better than to oblige her dear Monsieur Ishmael. There was an
alcove in the little salon, in which Ptlquerette could sleep.
Lisette hoped that she had cleanly habits, and would not injure
the furniture.
Ishmael was sure that slie would be careful ; and it was
settled thai she should be taken in for a week or so, to give
time for the arrangement of her future.
' She is very poorly clad,' said Ishmael. * If you will spend
two or three louis in buying her a decent gown, I will supply
the money. I wish I could do more.'
' It is a great deal for you to do,' said Lisette. ' Sixty franca
will not go far ; but I dare say I can spare a few things out of
my own stock, and we will manage to make her a trousseau.
If she is going into a convent, she will not want much — not even
underclothing with some orders. The Carmelites, for instance,
wear nothing but woollen next the skin.'
Ishmael shuddered at this detail. Conventual life only pre-
sented itself to his mind as a living death. And all his clubs
and societies, his pamphleteers and theorists, were virulent in
their abuse of monks and nuns.
He hurried back to his lodging. Paquerette unlocked the
door as he came up the last flight of stall's.
' I knew your footstep,' she said.
You have learnt it very quickly,' he answered.
She had slept an hour, she told him, and was very much re-
freshed by that peaceful slumber in the warmth of the stove. She
I ad washed, and had airanged her hair neatly, and had tidied the
room and swept the hearth ; and Ishmael thought his bachelor-
chamber was beautified somehow by the touch of womanly hands.
* Ca7i the Mag Grow without Water P 1C3
'You will have to stay here all day, Mademoiselle Paque-
rette,' he said, becoming more ceremonious than lie had been
in the surprise and agitation of the morning ; ' and I am afraid
you will have a very poor dinner. I have brought you a little
ham,' taking out a small white paper parcel from his pocket ;
'and in this cupboard' — opening a door by the fire-place —
' there are plates and knives, bread and butter, and a bottle of
wine. You must try and make yourself comfortable here till
the evening, when 1 can leave work ; and then I will take you
to a person who will give^ou a comfortable home — till you and
your friends have decided how you are to manage your future
life.'
* I have no friend— but you,' answered Paquerctte.
'You have the Beuolts.'
'Yes, they were very good ; but I dare not go to them now.'
' No ; but they may come to you, perhaps. I am sure they
may be trusted.'
He had no leisure for talk ; so, after a hasty adieu, he started
for Belleville at a pace which reminded people of the giant and
his seven-leagued boots.
It was after dark when he went back to his nest on the
fourth story. Paquerette had found the day passing long,
longer even than her days in the Eue Sombreuil. Unhappily,
this child of the people had no resources of an intellectual kind.
She could read but little, and with extreme difficulty ; and the
whole world of books was for her an undiscovered country.
She looked with absolute wonder at Ishmael's small library,
something over twenty volumes, neatly arranged on a shelf
beside the alcove in which the narrow bedstead was screened by
a brown and yellow cotton curtain. Slie had never seen so
many books in her life before. She took one off the shelf and
peeped into it, thinking there might be pictures, a childish
story that she could spell out, something to anuise her; but
there were only pages of close printing, tables of figures, awful
diagrams, wheels, pumps, pistons — images that ai>palled and
bewildered her. She did nut try a second, but went to tlr.^
window and looked out, screening herself with the curtain lest
her grandmother's dreaded eyes should be gazing upward to
that fourth story.
The street was a dull street, the neighbourhood half town,
half country, with a stamp of poverty and desolation upon all
things the eye looked upon. A drove of cattle were going by
to the public slaughter-house. Yonder, white against the wintry
gray, rose the populous city of the dead, the cemetery of Pere
Lachaise, the field of rest. Paquerette soon grew tired of
looking out of the wihdow, and went back to the stove, wheic
164 Ishmael
she sat on the floor in the warmth, as she liad sat through manj
a winter afteruuou in the Piue Sombieuil %\Len her grandmother
"was out gossiping and there was no one to upbraid her for her
idleness — a poor little Cinderella, neglected, ignorant, hopeless,
unfriended, forgotten.
She sat looking at the little patch of red light in the front of
the stove and thinking : thinking and wondering, vaguely, dis-
jointedly, like a child. How good he was to her, this tall, big,
noble gentleman, whose image stood out in a kind of luminous
atmosphere against the dimmer background of the greensward
at Vincenues, the leafy glades of Marly. He was associated with
the two happy days of her joyless life — days so unlike all the
rest of her existence, that it seemed as if she had been lifted into
another world for a little while, only to be dropped back into the
abject misery of common earth afterwards. So interwoven was
the thought of him with that transient bliss, that she almost
fancied it was he who had made her happiness. To him she had
flown in her trouble as a bird flies to the hiU where its nest ia
built. How good he had been to her ! not angry with her for
troubling him, as she had feared he might be. How kind his
voice, his eyes, his gentle touch ! If she could have had a little
kennel outside his door, in that angle where she crouched last
night, footsore and stilf, and aching m every limb — just a little
hutch in which she could curl herself up of a night, and in the
daytime be his servant, clean his room, cook for him, wait upon
him— she could imagine no more blissful existence. But this
v\-as not to be. He was going to take her to someone else, who
would be kind to her. She was not grateful in advance for that
kindness from strangers. She wanted him to be kind, no one
else. Would he but treat her as kindly as good men treat their
dogs, she would be content. She would love him and be
faithful to him as dogs are faithful. There was a young house-
painter in the Rue Sombreuil who had a long, lanky beast of the
lurcher species, which adored him, slept outside his door of a
night, followed at his heels wherever he went, carried his stick
or his hat. Paquerette would have been to Islimael as that dog,
could she have chosen her destiny.
He came back soon after dusk, and asked kindly how she
had managed to get through the day, whether she had had
enough to eat, and if her head had left off aching. And then he
opened a parcel, and gave her a little shawl which he had bought
for her on his way home — a neat little checked shawl such aa
young French ^\ omen of the working classes wear jjinned across
their shoulders. He had made this further outlay wishing her
to look as resneclcibie as might be when he presented her to
Madame Moque ; and the warm gray antl scarlet shawl, neatly
*Can the Flag Grow without Water?' 1G3
folded across the pretty shoulders, concealed the threadbare
gown, and was certainly an improvement.
Paquerette was enraptured. The Charabia had, as it wem,
loaded her with gifts, and she had hardly thanked him. Last
night she had left all his finery— necklace and earrings, go^ms,
shawl — flung in a chaotic heap upon her wretched little bed.
But she was overcome by this last kindness from Ishmael, just
as she had been by his gift of the basket on Saint John's Day.
When tliey were leaving she stopped siiddenly. ' My basket,'
she exclaimed. ' Oh, please let me have my basket.'
He handed it to her, smiling, yet deeply touched by this
earnestness of hers — touched to think that she had treasured
those withered buds and berries, sprays of oak and beech, for
half a year, and had remembered them last night when she was
face to face with the awful alternative of suicide.
They said very little as they walked at a brisk pace to tlie
distant Rue Franch-colline, where the charcutier's shop stood out
with a certain smartness and dazzle from the general dulness of
the street. It was in an old and crowded quarter, not far from
the abattoir where vv-ere sacrificed those pigs which formed tlie
basis of Monsieur Moque's stock-in-trade.
Madame Moque received Paquerette with kindness leavened
by condescension. She was curiously impressed by her appear-
ance, which, despite her shabby gown, and clumsy boots, and
pinched, pale look of a creature reared in abject poverty, had a
certain air of distinction, an elegant fi'agility, which the abigail's
quick eye discounted at a glance.
'She would be absolutely pretty, or better than pretty,
if she were well dressed,' thought Lisette ; and she began to
have ideas about the platform of the Palais de Cristal, and to
speculate upon whether something might not be made by forming
the girl for a public career.
' If she has but an ear, and a little sprig of a voice now,'
thought Lisette.
In a French concert-room voice is ever a secondary con-
sideration ; and Lisette knew by her own personal experience
what a very small organ can be made to satisfy a Parisian
audience.
Moved by reflections of this business-like character, Madame
Moque took the girl suddenly in her arn.3 and kissed her on
both cheeks.
' She shall be to me as a younger sister,' she said. ' Have no
fear. Monsieur Ishmael. I shall find the way to make this poor
child happy. And now go to your dinner, and give yourself no
further care. Come and dine with us ftext Snnday, and you
shall see what I have made of Mademoiselle Paquerette.'
IGG Islimael
* Please do not call me Mademoiselle,' said the girl, dazzled
bj the splendour of Madame Moque's salon, which was as new
and as wonderful to her as would have been the most gorgeous
reception loom in the Elysde or the Tuileries. That gold and
alabaster clock actually ticking, those candelabra with candlea
in them, the flowered carpet upon a red brick floor, the stifl",
vivid-yellow damask, the new shiny mahogany : what matter
that it was furniture of the very poorest, vulgarest tyj^e, the
coarsest workmanship, the general effect was overpowering,
to an eye educated by the sombre tones, the dull squalor of
the Eue Sombreuil. And when, after Ishmael's departure,
Madame Moque showed Paquerette the little bed behind the
yellow curtains which draped the alcove, a very narrow and,
sooth to say, very hard little bed, cramped and stony as the
grave itself, the girl was completely overcome.
' I am to sleep in this room ! ' she exclaimed, opened-eyed
with wonder.
' Yes ; it is as a favour to Monsieur Ishmael. For no other
consideration would I have put up a bed in this room ; but
when he asked it of me as a concession to an old friend — '
'lie is an old friend,' murmured Paquerette, and her eyea
lighted up with keenest interest in the question. ' You have
known him very long ? '
' I have known him ever since he was a baby. I knjgw him
as a child, as a boy.'
' Ciel ! And when he was little was he handsome as he is
now — good as he is now ? '
Lisette sighed, closed her eyelids very tight, with a look
which meant unutterable things, and shook her head vehemently
'Tliere ai-e things which must not be spoken about,' she
said. ' You must never question me about Monsieur Ishmael's
past history — never. You must accept his kindness, and be
grateful. No more. You see him as a workman, labouring
shoulder to shoulder with other workmen, in a blouse and linen
trousers. That is well, since it is his choice so to live. You
wdll think of him and speak of him as Ishmael, the stonemason,
and under no other character. That is his wish.'
'If he were a king, I could not honour him more than I do,'
said PHquerette, with innocent frankness ; ' but I am glad he
is only a workman. He would seem so far away if he were
anything else.'
Again Madame Moque screwed up her eyelids, and extin-
guished her bright beady eyes, and shook her head significantly ;
but Paquerette was too simple to understand this by-play.
Ishmael dined with the IMoques next Sunday, and found
Paquerette wondLufuUy smai tcned and improved in her appear-
* Can the Fla(j Grow tvitJiout Water?* 1G7
ano9 by Li'sette's care. If lie could have found any fault, ib
was that she was a little too smart, too appnt'^e — the artistic
carelessness of her loosely piled-up tresses a shade too elaboi-ate
— the pictures(]ue sailor-knot of her ponceau neck-ribbon a
thought too intentionah But it was all Lisette's doing, and it
was meant in kindness ; so he suggested no fault in his pro-
t(5gde's ensemble. Slie wore a very old black silk gown of
Lisette's, which had been subjected to every process of revivifi-
cation known at that period of art ; but, although the gown
was in a manner at the death-rattle, it had been made to fit
Paquerette's slim figui-e so perfectly, and it was adjusted with
such a superior style, that it looked almost^elegant.
After the dinner, which was excellent, Madame Moque
suggested a walk on the Boulevards. The night was frosty and
clear, the stars were brilliant, and the lamps at the cafes would
be brighter still ; or, at any rate, a nearer, more human bright-
ness, that one coukl enjoy more. There was even a possibility
of a theatre, Lisette thought, if she once got tlie two men out
of doors ; and of all earthly pleasures, Ijisette adored the
paradis of the Theixtre Fran^ais, where, if the acting were
sometimes above her head, the gowns and jewels always appealed
to her finest feelings. There was no perfoijuance at the Palais
de Cristal on the Sabbath, so she, who had on week nights to
amuse other people, was fiee to seek amusement for herself.
'If I do not see other talent occasional!}', how do you suppose
I am to create any original eifects ? ' she asked the charciUier
sometimes, when he was reluctant to pay for a couple of seats
at a theatre.
To-night Madame Moque had a secondary motive for
wishing to be out of doors. She wanted a confidential talk
with Ishmael, and no such conversation was possible in the
yellow salon, twelve feet by fourteen, where eveiy word any-
body said must needs be overheard by everybody else.
So directly dinner was over they started for their evening
walk, Madame Moque suggesting that they should take their
coifee at the Cafe de la liotonde, in the Palais Royal, which
would be much gayer than taking it at home.
'And ever so much dearer,' said Monsieur Moque, who
•xever took his eye off the goal which he had set before him at
tiie beginning of his career, namely, a house at Asniferes and a
3nug little income from the funds. Even a couple of cups of
(jofTee at a fashionable caf(5 meant so many sous subtracted
from the sum total of his future wealth — so many days y)inched
oft'tlie period in which he was to live at his ease in hij- suburban
villa.
Lisette told her Alphonse to offer Paquerette his arm, and
1G8 Ishmael
to go oil in front, while slie took possession of Ishmael, and they
two brought up the rear. In this wise she was sure of uot
being taken by sui'prise by Paquerette creeping up behind and
hearing herself the subject of conversation.
'Well,' she said, as soon as the others were out of earshot ;
' what do you think of her ? Have I not begun to form her
already ? *
Ishmael did not want to be ungrateful, but he was too
sincere to be capable of concealing his real sentiments.
' Do not make her a coquette,' he said.
* Make her a coquette— I ! ' cried Madame Moque, as if the.
suggestion of such a possibility were absolute fowishness
'Coquetry is not in my line, I assure you. A respectable
married woman, with household cares, and a business, and a
profession — there is very little leisure left in my life for coquetry.
But I confess to taking some pains with that poor benighted
child, who had no more idea of doing her hair than a heathen.
I thought you would like to see her looking nice.'
' So I do,' answered Ishmael ; ' only I fancied she had some-
what of a coquettish air — a consciousness of being pretty, which
I never noticed in her before.'
' She is not pretty,' said Lisette, decisively ; * at best, she is
only interesting. And as for consciousness, if you suppose that
she, or any woman living, is without vanity, you are less sensible
than I thought you.'
' She looked charming in that gown of yours,' pursued
Ishmael, with an apologetic air.
' She has actually no figure,' protested Lisette. * I had to
talce that gown in ever so many inches.'
Ishmael could not help thinking that, if this were so, the
negative type of figure had merits in the way of grace and
elegance which he had never observed in the positive.
' And now I want to go to the bottom of things, to have a
eerioiis talk with you,' began Lisette, in a graver tone. ' You
know that I took care of you when you were a baby, and my
feelings for you are purely maternal.'
' You were ahvays very good to me,' answered Ishmael, with
a sigh, thinking how little he knew of maternal affection, which
in his case had meant no more than capricious kisses, occasional
kindnesses, and habitual neglect.
' Well, then you will believe that I am your friend in all I
say. Now, I want to know what you mean to do with this girl
— at once — before we go a step further. She is a very nice
little thing — gi-antcd ; interesting, and with a certain child-like
grace, which might be developed into the real Parisian chic'
'Heaven forbid I' ctied IshmaeL
* Can the Flag Grow without Water?* 169
•But what then? First and foremost, do you mean to
|iany her ? '
Ishmael reddened to the roots of his hair, and then gradually
paled again. First a hot feeling, and then a cold feeling ; and
the coldness meant a negative reply.
'I have no such thought,' he said. 'It will be many years
before I think of marriage ; and when — if I ever do marry, I
should like my wife to be my superior — a woman of education,
who could make me better than I am. I should like to be able
to reverence my wife.'
'Then P&querette is out of the question,' replied Lisette,
with evident satisfaction. ' And now the question is, what are we
to do with her ? To my mind there are only two ways in which
she can be provided for. The first, which I suggested the other
day, is to put her into a convent ; the second, which I have no
doubt, she would prefer, is to bring her out at the Palais de
Cristll.'
' Bring her out — Paquerette — as a concert singer 1 ' cried
Ishmael, thinking Lisette must have suddenly gone out of
her wits.
' Why not ? She has no voice, I grant you ; but I have
found out that she has an ear — an ear as fine and true as a sky-
lark's. And / can make her sing. She could sing little patois
songs, dressed as a peasant. She is no beauty ; but in a
Normandy cap, a pair of sabots, a red petticoat, and a little blue
bodice, she would take Paris by storm. Her ignorance, her
childishness would not matter a bit. That would all pass
for chic, originality. Let me train her, and bring her out
in my own way, and she shall astonish you before you are
a year older. It shall cost you nothing. I will keep her,
and teach her, and clothe her at my own expense ; and I
will ask no more for my pains than her salary for the first
three years.'
' Let her appear in that place — before all those men — smoking,
drinking, laughing, quarrelling — the very offal of the town !'
said Ishmael.
' Your mother acted in that place. Monsieur,' replied Lisette,
deeply offended.
His mother ! yes. The thought was horrible. Still moro
horrible was it to remember that when his mother acted in that
theatre she was already so deeply smiken in the mire, that one
degradation the more hardly coimted. But PS.querette, poor
child of the gutter, was yet unsullied. And he shrank from
the thought of placing her in such an atmosphere.
' I myself have the honour to appear there nightly,' con-
tinued Lisette ; ' / do not feel myself degraded by the applause
170 Isliviaol
of tlie peoj)le. I wonder that you, who wear a hlousc and live
by the labour of your hands, can sjjeak so slightingly of your
brother- workmen.
'There are people and people,' answered Ishmael. 'I hope
you do not take the class who drink, and smoke, and blaspheme
at the Palais de Cristal as the tyjie of the artisan, any more
than you would those devils who used to smoke and drink at
lihe wine-shops at the barriers in the year '32, watching the
hearses going to the cemeterj^, and calling out, "Your good
health. Monsieur Morbus," as the dead went by. I have no
clanship with such men as I saw at your concert-hall.'
Lisette, still offended, owned that the frequenters of the
Palais wei'e, perhaps, not of the first class. They liked songs
that were im peu risqw'es, si>eeches that were pronounced
avec intention. But what then i One must laugh.
'I should not like to hear them laugh at Pilquerette,'
answered Ishmael, sternly. ' I should feel inclined to pitch
them head over heels into the street. No ; I would ever so
much rather she went into a convent, though that seems very
dreary.'
' It is dreary ; she would pine to death in six months,' said
Lisette, who had set her heart upon bringing out Pdquerette
with an eye to profit. 'J here was money to be made by a
young, atti-active dehuta I'ej aiid Lisette had put the girl
through a few little expe iments in the vocal and histrionic
way, and had discovered that she would be very quick to learn
anything, and, indeed, possessed the mimetic faculty in a marked
degree.
' One thing is certain,' she said, presently ; ' that poor child
must not go back to the Faubourg Saint-Antoine to be beaten to
death by her grandmother.'
' No, she must not go back,' answered Ishmael, gravely ;
•she must go into a convent. I will make inquiries to-morrow.
' It will cost money,' said Lisette.
* I must find the money.'
They were on the boulevard by this time. They had
pierced through narrow streets to the Boulevard Montmartre,
and were now descending into the full glory of the Boulevard
des Italiens, which wa,s crowded with pedestrians, and gay with
a cold and frosty brightness, the lamps below burning brighter,
just as the stars burnt above, in the clear, keen air. Tortoni's
and all the fashionable cafc^s were crowded, warm with much
t)eople and much gas, glowing with light, sonorous with the
nizz of voices and the chinking of glasses and teaspoons.
'I am dying for a cup of coffee,' said Lisette. 'Suppose we
go to Laperle'a t '
* Can the Flag Groio without Water ?* 171
Laperle's was one of the smaller cafes, an old liouse, with
the ground-floor rooms almost as low as an eiitresol — a snug
little nest of three small rooms, opening into each other, witli
sanded floors, originally intended as a compliment to the
English patrons of the establishment. Laperle's was a favourite
house with the artistic classes, the Bohemians, the Itutt's, and
was always full. The ranks of failure are never thinned-^
every day brings recruits to that regiment.
Lisette pushed her way to tlie one vacant table, in a snug
little corner near the stove, and the other three followed liei'.
The whole place was like an oven, the atmosphere a mist of
light, and dust, and heat, and tobacco smoke, flavoured with
cognac.
' How delicious after the cold outside ! ' said Lisette, with a
retrospective shiver.
'■Bourn,' cried a waiter, in response to the charcutier's
summons ; and Lisette, who was more at home than her
husband in the cafes of Paris, ordered four demi-tasses, with
accompaniment of cognac understood.
The room was crowded. They had only just space enovigh
to slip into their seats at the little table. Pi\querette, as tlie
smallest of the four, screwed herself into the angle of the wall,
where she sat looking at the company and the lights with wide-
open eyes. It was not by any means a splendid jjlace of
entertainment, but it was curiously different from 'The
Faithful Pig,' or the little wine-shop in the Rue de la
Koquette, to which she had gone upon occasions in quest of
her grandfather. There was here a life and brightness, a
flavour of elegance, gaiety without drunkenness, coats instead
of blouses, tobacco of a different odour — all things that were
new to PSquerette.
While she was gazing, inteiested, amused, as in a kind of
fairjdand, her eyes suddenly encountered another pair of eyes,
which fixed her own by the intentness of their gaze.
The eyes belonged to a young man, elegantly but carelessly
di'essed, with coat wide open over a velvet waistcoat, Byronio
collar, necktie loosely fastened, as if it were midsummer.
He was leaning with his elbow on a table, talking to a burly,
dark-visaged man, who looked like a painter. He had been
declaiming vehemently to his friend a minute ago, but now ha
was silent, absorbed in his contemplation of Paqueiette.
He was fair and pale, slender, fragile-looking : the very
opposite of Ishmael, with his dark, sti'ongly-marked brows,
black eyes, broad shoulders, six feet. Pdquerette looked at the
Btranger curiously, wondering that there should be people 80
different.
172 IsJimaei
Ishmael sat with his hack to the room, facing Paquerette.
He saw that sudden wondering look of hers.
' Do you see anyone you know here ? ' he asked.
*No,' she said, blushing at the question.
' But you were looking as if you recognised some one,' he said.
lie turned involuntarily as he sfjoke, and surveyed the
crowded room.
The young man who had been looking at Paquerette rose
hastily, came over to Ishmael, and gave him a friendly slap on
the shoulder.
It was Hector de Valnois, Ishmael's friend of the fourth of
December.
' Why have you forgotten your promise and never been to
see me ? ' he asked.
' Not because I am ungrateful, but because I did not want
to trouble you too soon,' answered Ishmael, grasping Valnois'
proffered hand, such a small, womanish hand in the stonemason's
broadened palm.
You would not have troubled me. "Well, I am glad I have
met you if only by accident. Do you often come here ? '
' I was never here till to-night.'
• So ! I thought, if you had been a habitat, I must have met
you before now.'
CHAPTEP XVII
*A man's heart deviseth nis way*
Ishmael introduced his friends to ISIonsieur de Valnois, who
made himself at once at home with Madame Moque, and would
fain have been as easy with the charcutier, but that respectable
citizen had a shyness in the presence of the artistic classes, the
outward sign of which was a kind of sullen ferocity, not over-
pleasant to strangers.
' Your friend is red, I take it,' whispered Hector to Ishmael ;
"'vermilion among the reds.'
' On the contrary, he is a staunch Bonapartist, and sighs for
a second Empire.'
' Then be assured he will be gratified : the Empire is at
hand. The very air we breathe is full of signs and token?
of an approaching despotism ; a friendly despotism, a paternal
*A 3Ian"s Heart Deviseth Ms Way* 373
despotism, a despotism encouraging to trade, favourable to the
development of art, the foster-mother of genius, mark you ; but
a despotism all the same. We have a piess that is bound hand
and foot, a Senate that is packed with zealots for one cause — a
Police of unparalleled strengtli and acuteness. In a word, we
are on the eve of a second Empire, more brilliant, more splendid,
more costly, more luxurious than the first — as gaslight is to
candlelight, as aqua-fortis to cognac'
' Enterprise has prospered and good work has been done for
the world by despots before now,' said Ishmael, remembering
what his employer had told him about the building trade.
' My friend, all great works have been done under tyrants,
from the Pyramids to the Escurial,' answered Hector. ' Show
me any great work that has ever been achieved by Eepublicans.
Their mission is not to do, but to undo.'
' In America ', suggested Ishmael.
' Oh, don't talk of a handful of savages Id has ; creatures in
wampum and feathers.'
' The Ilei^ublic of Venice ,'
' A tyranny divided by ten, a despotism upon ten feet. But
it is a solecism to talk politics in the presence of ladies ; and
Mademoiselle has a frightened look, as if our big words had
scared her. Is she your sister ? '
'No.'
' Ah, I forgot. You are alone in Paris.'
* Quite alone. Madame Moque is an old friend ; and Made-
moiselle is a guest of Madame Moque's.'
' I see ; and the starlit night tempted you all to the boulevard.
There will be skating before long if this frost continue. Do
you skate, Mademoiselle?'
Paquerette blushed, and faltered a negative. She had seen
the boys sliding and skating on the canal de I'Ourcq. She had
even longed to join them a year or two ago, when she was in
the gamine stage of her existence. Beyond this much, she
hardly knew what skating meant.
'It is a new emotion — a new rapture. You should make
Monsieur Ishmael teach you ; or, failing that, let me be your
instructor. Sujapose we arrange a party for the Bois. If the
wind do not change before V/ednesday, the lake will be frozen.
"What say you, Madame Moque : shall we arrange a party for
Wednesday afternoon — a skating party ? '
' Mademoiselle is going into a convent next week,' interjected
Ishmael, curtly ; ' she will have no time to learn skating.'
' Going into a convent "i Cest raide I And you bring her to
Laperle's to prepare her for conventual life I Does that count
as a part of her noviciate l '
17 4i IsJnnael
Tflimael made no reply, and Hector went back to tifs frieiiiJ
at ILe other little table after a smile and a bow to the ladies of
the purty. But ten minutes later, when they were all leaving
the cafe. Hector came up behind Ishmael on the boulevard, and
slipped his hand through his arm. ' I want five minutes' talk
with you, my friend,' he said. ' If you are walking towards tho
Porte St. Denis, so am I.'
' I would as soon go that way as any other if these ladies
liave no objection,' answered Ishmael, looking at Lisette, who
declared immediately that she had been on the point of pro-
])osing that they should walk up the boulevard, and go home
by the Eue St. Denis, even if it were ever so much longer than
those narrow streets and short cuts by which Alphonse had
brought them.
' It is a delightful night, and we are out to enjoj' ourselves,'
said Lisette, who was favourably impressed by this elegant
young man in the loose, steel-gray overcoat with a fur collar.
A fur collar alwaj's appealed to Lisette's feelings. It was sug-
gestive of rank and fashion, of noble youth which runs through
a fortune, and gives nice little suppers to acti'es«es at Vefour's,
or the Maison Doree ; to come to an untimely close afterwards,
perhaps, on one of those marble couches in the Morgue.
So Ishmael and Hector walked up the boulevard with
Lisette between them, while Monsieur Moque still kept a few
paces in front with Paquerette upon his arm. The boulevard
was a new experience to her ; the lights, the people, all radiant
under the brilliant winter sky, seemed to belong to another
world. She had but one flaw in her delight, and that was the
ever-present fear of meeting her grandraotlier roaming about in
quest of her ; but she comforted herself with the thought that
locomotion was not in M6re Lemoine's liabits, and that it would
^^e only by a superhuman effort she would get as far as this part
jf Paris.
'What an interesting, child- like face that is,' said Hector,
with a motion of his head towards the girl in front of them.
' Why convent ? '
' Because she is about the most friendless and desolate
creature you can imagine,' replied Ishmael, ' and a convent is
the only possible home for her.'
* I am friendless and desolate — very desolate when I have
failed to get my last vaudeville accepted by one of the theatres,'
«aid Hector, lightly ; ' but I don't go into a monastery.'
' You are a man, and can fight the battle of life.'
'So can a woman, and she is much better armed than we are.
There is always a chance for a woman. There is always one
fool in the world who wiU waste his love and his money upon
*A Mans Heart Dcvlscth his Waij* 175
lirv If s!ie is ever so old ami ugly, she has only to wait hel
time, aud she will find herself somebody's beguin — somebody's
mania. There are those who worship the poetry of ugliness.
There are devotees who adore a squint, who see grace in dry
bones, beauty in a splay foot. I assure you, Ishmael, there
never was a Cleopatra living who could not find her Antony
ready to lose a world for her. And when Cleopatra has the
languorous blue eyes, the poetical palor of your young frieud
yonder, she is sure of success in life.
'What kind of success?' asked Ishmael, in a low voice,
that trembled ever so little with suppressed indignation.
'There is a good fortune that leads to the gutter and the
hospital— perhaps you mean that.'
' Far from it, my friend. The gutter and the hospital are
i"6mote contingencies iu every woman's life, just as there are
rocks and sandbanks that lie in wait for every ship that sails.
Many a vessel gets safely to her haven, and why should nob
your little friend there be lucky ?'
'The only luck she could have would be to marry an honest
man,' answered Ishmael, bluntly ; 'and there are not many men
who would care to marry a girl brought up in dire ignorance
and reared amidst squalor and drunkenness.'
' There are men who will sacrifice a few prejudices for the
sake of a pretty face. I do not say that Mademoiselle yonder
is absolutely beautiful ; but there are some faces that are worse
tiian beautiful. They do mo)'e mischief in the world than
beauty pure and simple. But pray, who is the young lady, and
how do you come to be interested in her fate ] '
Ishmael told Paquerette's .story as briefly as possible.
•And she tied to you for refuge, having no other friend ; and,
to reward her faith, you will hide her from all that is joyous and
beautiful in life ; entomb her within the four walls of a convent
■ — where, as she is friendless and penniless, she can only enter
as a lay sister — a drudge — a femine de peine without wages-
condemned to wear coarse clothing, to eat coarsest faie, to
sleep on a pallet, to rise before dawn, to pray continually, to
obey blindly, to be silent when her young lips are eager to
be talking, to be grave when her young heart would faiu
rejoice in laughter, to forego all human love, all human praise
and admiration, for all the days of her life. That is how 3^011
would recompense her for that innocent faith, that lovely,
childlike trust in your goodness and your bounty which brought
her to your door, wounded, massacred almost— a creature most
worthy of pity and of kindness. I cannot applaud your chi-
valry, Monsieur Ishmael.'
•Believe me, I have no desire but to do what is best fof
176 Ishmael .
Paquerette,' said Ishmael, considerably shaken by this passionate
summing-up of plain facts.
' I am entirely of Monsieur's opinion,' said Lisette, smiling
and sparkling upon Hector with the bright black eyes and the
white teeth which time could not wither. ' I consider that it
would be positively cruel, an act of tyranny, to shut that poor
child up in a convent. She has had little enough pleasure in
life— none that I can make out except two solitary days in the
country when she met Monsieur Ishmael. And to bury her
alive among a set of stern nuns befoie she has tasted one of the
pleasures of life. No ; as you say. Monsieur, let her have her
chance. Every woman has a right to her chance. There is
always the convent, my faith, when one has had enough of tha
world ; just as there is always the river when one has had too
much of life. Let the poor little soul have her opportmiities,
and she may make an artistic success. I pledge myself to put
her on the high road to fortune if Monsieur Ishmael wiU only
let me have my own way.'
Upon this there followed a long argument about the Palaia
de Cristal, in vvhich Lisette urged the wisdom of allowing
Paquerette to make her debut at that place of entertainment as
Boon as she was able to sing three or four patois songs. Hector
offered to write them for her, and to get them set to music by
his friend the repetiteur at the Palais Royal. The thing was
quite in his line, and they would produce songs which should
take the town by storm.
Ishmael argued gravely against the whole scheme. Pdque-
rette was vmsuited to such a life. The Palais de Cristal was a
low place.
' What does that matter ? Let her but make a hit with one
of my songs, and she will be engaged at a boulevard theatre in a
trice.'
A boulevard theatre ! Poor little Paquerette ! Ishmael
had been to the boulevard theatres. He had seen a fairy spec-
ta/;le in which songs and dances and crowds of lightly-clad sylphs
were the distinguishing features. It was before the days of the
JJicheaubois, and the^zeced/e?«.»ie«hadnotyetreachedits climax ;
but Ishmael had seen enougli to prejudice him against the stage
of the boulevard ; and he lelt that he would rather see Paque-
rette entombed in the gloom and silence of the severest con-
ventual order than exhibiting her fragile, flower-like prettinesa
side by side with the women he had seen across the footlights.
He was not a man to be talked out of his opinion even by
his best friend, and though he respected Hector as a man who
knew the world and knew Paris, he was not persuaded intv>
approving the concert hall or the stage as a future *or Pdquo'
*A Hail's Heart Dcviseth his Way^ 177
rette. But he was influenced, and deeply, by what ITector had
said about convent life ; and he told himself that in this the
Parisian had spoken the words of truth and wisdom, and that
he, Ishmael, had no right to sacriiice this girl's liberty to the
convenience of the moment. She had flown to him for a refuge,
and was he to give her a cage ? She had come to him for bread,
and could he give her a stone ?
He remembered, with a thrill of tenderest pity, her happi-
ness that spring afternoon at Vincences when they two had
danced together on the gi eensward ; he recalled the picture of
her enraptured face as she flitted from flower to flower in the
wood at Marly ; and, remembering these things, was he to give
her over to the gloom of an existence in which there should be
no dancing, no summer holiday in woodland or park ? Was he,
who had no right over her except her own helplessness, her
child-like trust in him, was he to be the harsh arbiter of her
destiny, and to deliver her over to a death in life within stone
walls ?
In his inexperience he pictured a convent as infinite gloom —
a place of everlasting penance, and prayer, and self-sacri flee, and
surrender. He thought of something much worse than the
reality, and he shuddered at the idea of his own hardness of
heart.
' You are right,' he said, presently ; ' she shall not go into a
convent — that was a wild idea of mine. "We must find a home
for her somewhere with some good woman Avho Avill teach her a
trade. She will be satisfied with very little, and we will not
barter her liberty against a crust.'
' You had much better let Madame work out her own little
scheme,' said Hector, lightly. ' Here we are at the gate ; here
our ways part. Come and see me soon, Ishmael. To-morrow,
if you will. Good night, Madame. How about my suggestion
of a party for the lake next Wednesday afternoon ?'
Lisette declared that she would, of all things, love to see the
skaters, should there really be ice on Wednesday ; but Alphonse
reminded her that air excursion to the Bois woiild occupy the
whole afternoon, and that, as she had to go to the Palais de
Cristal at seven in the evening, there would be no margin for
rest, and the quality of her voice would inevitably sufler by
fatigue, to say nothing of the chances of hoarseness from expo-
sure to the cold. In a word, Monsieur Moque asserted his
marital authority in the face of a too fascinating stranger ; for,
although he loved to talk of his wife's conquests, and the golden
youtli who languished for a smile from those carmined lijjs, he
was not exempt fiom the pangs of jealousy.
Lisette shrugged her shoulders and submitted.
N
178 Ishmael
* I am a slave to my profession,' she said.
' I sliall come and hear you sing to-morrow evening/ raid
Hector, as they shook hands. ' I feel convinced beforehanu
that you are throwing away your talents in that bouge yonder,
and that you ought to be at one of the boulevard theatres.'
On tliis they parted, Lisette eiitranced by tlie easy charm of
a manner wliiuh realised all her dreams of golden youth. De
Valnois had nut left tliem a minute before slie began to question
Ishmael about him. She was a little dashed upon hearing that
lie Nva;5 only an author — an author at i)resent hardly known to
fame, and that be lived upun a second tloor in the Rue Montor-
uueil. She had expected to be told that he was a sprig of
nobility, squandering a princely fortune upon diamonds, dinners,
and suppers after the play. A journalist, a playwright— that
was nothing very great; but he had charming manners all the
same.
CHAPTER XVIII
•marred in the hand of tue potter'
Lisette jNIoque was a person not easily to be diverted from any
sclieme which she had devised for her own advantage and
enrichment ; and having taken it into her head tliat a good deal
of money might be made out of so young and teachable a pupil
as Paquerctte, .she had already built up half a dozen castles
in the air with no better basis than that golden possibility.
Paquerette was young, Paquerctte was interesting, Paqueretite
possessed qualities of manner and pei'son which, trained by an
experienced mistress, might be made the quintessence of chic,
originality, audacity ; and so improved, and, as it were, crys-
tallized, Paquerctte ought to take the town by storm, and make
a fortune within the tiist three 3ears of her ])rofessionaI caree:-.
For a popularity so essentially transient as that of a cafe-
c/<aiitoiiprima-dmiiia those iirst three years would be the golden
harvest-time. AVhile P.iquerette was fresh, and child-like, and
fair, the town would I'un after her. A song, tant soil pen
risquee, from those young lips would have a piquancy to catch
the jaded Parisian public, to set managers and specuiatora
bidding against each other for the possession of the last noveltv
in chuiUcuscs dc ama.lle. It was aggravating beyond measurtt-
'Marred in the Band of the Potter* 170
that Ishmael's provincial notions of propriety should stand in
Lisette's way to putting money in her own purse, and, in a
minor degree, enriching \\cv protegee.
Bent on accoiuplishing her purpose, Lisette held forth elo-
quently to Paquerette upon the charms and chances of life
behind the footlights, either in a cafe'-chantant, or a theatre. She
dwelt upon the sunny side of the cabotine's existence — the ap-
plause, the feasting, flowers, fine gowns, horses and carriages,
and diamond necklaces, dropping, as it were, from the skies, so
ethereal and free from earthly taint seemed their origin as
described by Lisette.
Poor little Paquerette sat there sewing, turning, and patching
up a winter petticoat which Madame Moque had given her, and
felt as if she were wandering in some wonderful dreamland, a
fairy region of bliss and light, and hothouse flowers, such flowers
as Madame had shown her yesterday afternoon at a shop in the
Eue Castiglione. And in such a wonderland she, Paquerette,
might dwell if she would but follow Madame Moqvie's advice, and
learn to sing. Her voice was a j^oor little pipe, Madame told
her, but the teaching in such cases was more than half the battle ;
and Madame was prepared to make a perfect slave of herself,
out of sheer goodness of heart, in making Paquerette a singer.
There was a little old wheezy piano in Madame Moque's
salon, and on this she strummed the accompaniment of a Palais
Eoyal song, one of the silly successes of the houi' — a little patois
Bong with a nonsense refrain and a little dance between the
verses. Ptiquerette, after three or four i-ehearsals, did the thing
admirably. It was just as if it had been composed on purpose
for her, Lisette said. The sweet, flute-like voice, the childishly
timid enunciation, just touching the syllables in a coquettish
staccato, the light girlish figure circling gracefully in three or
four turns of a waltz to the tira-lira-lira-la of the refrain, all
were perfect in their way.
' Dressed as I could dress you for that song, you would be
the prettiest ingenue in Paris,' cried Lisette, enchanted.
She took Paquerette to the Palais de Cristal that evening,
and let her sit in a shabby little room behind the platform, from
which she could hear the singing. It had been the green-room
in days gone by, and reeked with the grease and tobacco smoke
of a quarter of a century. The old baize-covered'benches against
t!ie wall, the paper, the ceiling, all were black with the grime of
generations of cabotins. The speculator who had renewed ami
glorified the front of the building had left dressing-i'ooms ami
green-room untouched. lie had drawn a hard and fast line
between tlie public and the artists. Expenditure on the c^'Ui-
fort oi the Utter would have been fooliihuea?.
180 Jshnael
Paqnerette sat in a corner near the half -open doer, and
listened to the songs, the laughter, the applause. She peeped
from her retreat every now and then : she oould see the lights,
the artificial flowers, lace draperies, gilding, tawdry decorations,
and across a dazzling row of lamps she saw the crowd of grinning
faces melting away into an atmosphere of dust and gaslight
towards the end of the building. It was .7 very vulgar paradise,
a cheap elysium, redolent of tobacco and vile coffee, with a taint
n{ still viler brandy floating in the air ; but the effect of the
lights and music and the multitude of faces upon Paqnerette
was as dazzling as the splendour of the opera house in the Rue
le Peletier would have been upon a more educated mind. Never
before had she seen any such haunt of pleasure. Lamplight,
and music, and happy faces were an enthralling novelty.
"While she sat listening, entranced, to the quartette from
' Pigoletto ' — bawled with delirious vehemence by the soprano,
and ranted vigorously by a very hoarse baritone, while tenor
and contralto affected a coquettish lightness which touched the
confines of low comedy — the swing-door of the green-room was
opened and a young man entered. Paqnerette, with her eyes
riveted on the platform, neither saw nor heard anything behind
her, and she was startled by a languid voice murmuring in her
ear :
'Good evening. Mademoiselle Paqnerette.'
She turned and recognised Ishmael's friend of the other
night, the young man whose elegant manners had been so
])iaiscd by Madame Moque. She only smiled shyly by way of
answer, too much engrossed to speak.
' You are listening to the quartette ? '
• Yes. Is it not beautiful ? '
' Beautiful as a steam-saw. Tliat wretched baritone's voice
is a mixture of trois-six and river fog. And to hear such music
so murdered ! Have yow never been to the opera ? '
'Never,' said Paqnerette, with wondering eyes. She did
not even know what the word meant.
' AJi, you must go some night and hear that quartette pro-
perly sung. It is from a new opera, produced last year at
Venice.'
' AVhat is a quartette, and what does it mean ? '
' A quartette is a concerted piece sung by four voices ; and
Miis particular quartette means — que diable ! — it has a whole
yv^orld of meanings — the plot of a novel. It means love, jealousy,
revenge, murder, the concentrated passion of a lifetime. And to
think that you should hear such music for the first time in
such a hole as this ! '
' !.■< it a very bad jilace ? ' asked Paqnerette, with a scared look.
* Marred in the Hand of the Pottet l8l
* It is a tliiid-rate conceit room ; but it is mucli better tliau
a convent,' added Hector, as an after-thouglit.
'Is ii convent so very dreadful?'
•It means imprisonment for life without having enjoyed
the privileges of a criminal beforehand. Bat your friend,
Monsieur Ishmael, has promised that he will not shut you
up in a convent.'
'I am glad of that,' said Paquerette. 'I would do any thin fj
he told me to do ; but I would much rather not go into a
convent.'
There bad been a little interval after the quartette, and now
Lisette began her comic song, and shrugged her favouiite
shrugs, and smiled her mechanical smiles, and turned herself as
upon a pivot to right and to left, challenging admiration and
applause. Paquerette did not, in her heart of )ienrts, admire
this song of Lisette's ; but she thought that it must be pleasant
to be so heartily applauded, to have all those faces grinning
rapturously at one's least word or look. Ignorant as Paquerette
was, she had an instinctive knowledge that popularity, the
homage even of the lowest, is sweet.
Monsieur de Valnois walked home with Madame Moque and
her charge, and Madame's conversation during the whole of that
walk consisted of praise of the brilliant life of a concert singer
or an actress, and in deprecation of Ishmael's folly in forbidding
Paquerette's debut.
' I could launch her as no one else in Paris could launch her,'
said Lisette. ' I can twist the director of the Palais round my
little finger. He would do anything I asked.'
In her eagerness to secure Valnois' advocacy of her plan,
Lisette invited him to supper, and at midnight the last sprig of
the do Valnois fiund himself supping merrily enough on fpxts
double a la Lyownaise, and pieds de mouton d la Sainte Meae-
hould, rinced down with a rough medoc, over a pork butcher's
shop. After supper he heard Paquerette sing her little song,
which she now j^erformed with considerable chic, as to the
manner born. Hector thought he had never seen anything
daintier or more fascinating than that small pale face, with tlie
delicately-pencilled brows and large blue eyes, that slim, supple
figure in the shabby black silk gown, the long swan throat lising
ivory white above the low linen collar and cherry-coloured ribbon.
* You are right,' cried Hector ; ' she would be the rage in less
tkan a month. It would be cruelty to deprive her of her chances.'
Paquerette heard, and her little linnet's head was bewildered
with gratified vanity. H Lisette's praises had flattered her,
how much more fiattering was the praise of this young man,
with his gracious presence, careless elegance of dress, and air
182 Ishmael
wliicli implied fasln'on. firistocracy — all those "woikIgi ful atlribiites
of maiikiml wliioli liad been newly revealed to Pfiquerette from
the discourse of Madame Moqne, who took it upon herself as a
duty to explain the ways of civilization, the charms and delights
of Parisian existence, the habits of the boulevard and the Chanips-
Elysces to this poor little waif of Saint-Antoine.
From that hour Paquerette's simplicity was a thing of tha
past. She had tasted the fruit of the fatal tree. She pined to
know more. She was continually asking questions about the
ways and ideas and meanings of that life which breathed and
throbbed in the heart of that new Paris of the noble and the
rich, which was as strange to her as El Dorado to Raleigh. And
Lisette, who would have talked to the chairs and tables— nay,
did so talk in her solitary hours — rather than not talk at all,
was delighted to bring forth her stores of wisdom ; to relate
her manifold experiences ; to tell of spendthrifts and rou^ who
had flashed upon Paris, the brief glory of the hour, to crawl
away to their province broken and penniless a few years after-
wards, to die amidst the ashes of the ancestors they had disgraced,
the land they had robbed ; of beauty, lax and venal, whose
butterfly career had involved the ruin of many, had given pure
delight to none ; of financiers, born in the gutter, who had ci-ept
by the thorny paths of usury, and trick, and falsehood to the
very piiviacle of fortune ; of speculators enriched by the toil
of the million.
Pdquerette loved to hear these stories, related with a vivacity
and freshness of colour which conjured up vivid pictures in
the girl's mind. She loved to walk the streets of Paris with
her mentor, to look up at the windows behind which golden
youth had gambled away princely fortunes, to see beautifid
women passing in carriages, wouien whose histories she had been
told. What a strange, glitteriisg life it seemed— all flash, and
fever, and dazzle — after the dirt, and t'u^ squalor, and the all-
perrading dreariness of tke Rue S<;mbreuil !
The days and weeks crept on, and although Ishmael was
still resolutely opposed to the career of a concert singer for his
protegee, he had not yet made up his mind what was to be
done with her. It was easier for him to pay Lisette ten franca
a week for the girl's board than to devise a way by which
Pfiquerette might learn to get her own living. She was learning
something every day in the Moque m(fnage, he told himself.
Slie was beginning to be handy with her needle ; she went to
market with Lisette; she helped to keep the house in order;
and she now and then served in the shop. She was cleverer,
brisker in every way since she had left Saint Antoine. Ishmael
saw her every Sunday, on which day he eiAer joined Moque
*Set Me as a Seal upon Thine. Heart ^ 183
and his wife in some excursion, or accepted their hospitality
for a dinner.
But all this time, in spite of Ishmael's aversion to the st.ac^e
and the concert room, Lisette went on with her training, and
Paquerette had a singing lesson nearly every day. She had a
fine ear, and soon learnt to pick out melodies and extemporise
accompaniments on the wheezy old cottage piano, and proini-^cd
speedily to surpass her mistress both in playing and singing.
And she hinged to be standing on the platform, with all those
faces in front of her, and to hear the chinking of glasses and
teasjioons, and the thunder of ai)]ilauding hands and feet.
Ishmael, in the meantime, was not a little troubled in mind
about tliis new responsibility of his. He thought of Piiquerette
at all times and seasons. He made inquiries in every likely
quarter as to the occupations of women — artificial flower-making,
dress-making, tailoring, slK>e-binding, bedding. All the answera
hegotseenietl alike unsatisfactory. Every trade about which he
inquired was declared to be the hardest, the worst, the most
disreputable, the least remunerative. There was work for
women, 3'es ; but not work that would feed them, or clothe
them, or house them decently. Very few could contrive to
live honestly on their wretched wages. Starvation, degradation,
dishonour. His informants rang the changes upon words of
dreadful moaning ; and Ishmael began to despair of saving
Paquerette from the stage or the convent.
CHAPTER XIX
'set me as a seal upon- thine heart'
Paquerette had been a dweller in the rue Franch-colline for
nearly three months. It was springtime, and the flower-markets
were g^iy with primroses, antl dalfodils, and tulips. The poor
had their woodland blooms, while for the rich the season of
Parma violets, and white camelias, and lilies of tlie valley was
in its glory. Paris was awakening from winter darkness to
sunshine and blue skies; and already the gummy chestnut
buds were glistening in the gardens of the Tuileries, the
nursemaids and children were rejoicing in the advent of spring.
It was mid-Lent, and the beasts were fattening for the gi'eat
slaughter of Good Friday, a day sacred everywhere save in
184 Ishnael
the abattoirs of Paris, -where the brute creation ia sacrificed
in readiness for tlie Easter festival, and for that extra gooa
cheer which follows the orthodox fast.
For nearly three months PSqiierette liad dwelt at p^acc iu
her new home. She liad been decently fed, comfortably clad
she had endured neither blows nor cui-siiig, and it seemed to
her that she had lived a new life, and had become a now
creature — an altogether complex machine in comparison with
that Paquerette of the faubourg, who had no care but to escape
hard usage, no joy in the present, no hope in the future. The
Paquerette of to-day was full of dreams, and hopes, and vague
expectancies, and dim ambitions. She had been flattered and
tired by Lisette and Valnois. She had been taught to believe
herself a genius in a small way — to believe that she had gifts-
which would bring her gold and fame, and enable her to drive
her carriage in the Champs Elys6es, like the beautifid women
witli the strange histories whom she so fervently admired.
She was pleased with her own voice, which gained strength,
and clearness, and flexibility with every day of her life —
pleased with her own fingers, which every day grew more
familiar with the keys of the little old piano until they seemed
to have an instinctive power of touching the right notes, and
to fall as easily into the melody as the song of a bird. She
■was pleased with her existence and its variety — the afternoon
jaunt to the gayest part of the town, the hours spent in
jidnoc/iant before shop windows, gloating over splendours which,
according to Lisette, might some day be within her reach.
' If you once make a success, money will pour in upon you
like a river,' said Lisette.
Hector de Valnois had written a couple of patois songs on
purpose for Paquerette. They had been set by his friend of
the Palais Royal orchestra, and one afternoon he took this
gentleman to the Rue Franch-colline to hear Paquerette sing.
He was delighted with her voice and her apjjea ranee — told her
she wanted one year of severe training under a first-rate
master — by which description he evidently meant himself — and
that she might then make her debut at the Palais Royal itself. He
said this with the air of a man who could conceive no grander
arena, who knew of no higher pinnacle. To him the Palais
Royal among theatres was as Cotopaxi among mountams. The
only diflerence was in the degree of inaccessibility, and that,
whereas nobody ever got to the top of Cotopaxi, artists of rare
merit have from time to time succeeded in getting eugagcd
at the Palais Royal.
Monsieur de Valnois left Paris within a week of this visit.
He was going for a ramble iu his beloved Rhiueland, tha
' Set Mi as a Seal upon Thine Heart.* 185
country in ■which his t-tudent-life had been spent — the land of
music, romance, legend, metaphysics, which he pretended to
love ever so much better than the soil from which his race
had sprung. He locked up his apartment in the Rue Montor-
gueil, gave the key to the portress, took with him for his only
luggage a very small valise, and a copy of Goethe's ' Faust,'
and for all his resources five hundred francs, just received f roivi
a publisher ; and he shook the dust of Paris from his feet. When
the five hundred francs were gone, he would live from hand to
mouth, sending an article to the papers now and then, and living
on credit at his inn till the editor sent him his pay. It was a
happy-go-lucky life, which suited his temperament, a mort
innocent life than he could live in Paris — a life under bluo
skies, beside blue waters, amidst vine-clad hills — a life which
regenerated him, he declared, when the white-hot fever of Paris
had dried up his brains and his blood.
Paquerette missed him when he was gone, though she had
seen him but seldom. There was one person less to praise her ;
and his praise had been so much the sweetei than all ether
praise because of the flavour of aristocracy that hung about his
person — an indescribable refinement oi tone, and manner, and
bearing, which distinguished him from everyone else she knew.
Nearly three months had gone since that dark, wintry
morning when Ishmael found the fucfitive of Saint-Antoiue
crouching in the corner of his staircase, and in all that time
there had been no sign or token of the old grandmothei in the
Rue Sombreuil. Whatever steps Mtre Leraoine had taken for
the recovery of hei orphan grandchild had been harmless to
Paquerette. Islxmael had scrupulously avoided the neighbour-
hood of the Eue Sombreuil lest^his very ap]iearance there should
excite suspicion. He had warned Madame Morice against any
hint of Paquerette's whereabouts to the sisters Benoit. The
only wonder was, that Paquerette had not been recognised in
the streets of Paris by some wanderer from the faubourg beyond
the Place de la Bastille. Yet, on the other hand, the sons and
daughters of Saint- Antoine are, for the most part, local in their
habits, and the Boulevards and the Palais Poyal are to them as
another country. And again, Paquerette's personal appearance
had been so altered by Madame Moque's training, that she might
be said to have been improved out of all semblance to her former
self. Who would have recognised Cinderella of the Rue Sombreuil
in the young hourgeoise dressed in a black silk gown, a shepherd's
plaid shawl, and neat straw bonnet and black veil ?
The time had gone by, and Paquerette had been unassailed ;
and now Tshmael thought the day had come when he might
venture to reconnoitre the harridan's hole, and find out what
] 88 Ishmad
f: iiigers miglit wait for his protegee in the future. So one
evenincr in Holy Week, a clear April twilight, he descended
from the heiglits of Belleville after his day's work was done,
and entered the domain of Saint- Antoine. He did not intend
to show himself to Mere Lemoine. He wanted to find out from
the neighbours how she was living, and whether she had recon-
ciled herself to the loss of her grandchild.
The sky was golden yonder towards the Barri5re de I'Etoile,
but in these narrow slums, and amidst these tall old barracks of
Sainte-Marguerite and Saint- Antoine, darkness was ali'eady
filling the corners, and brooding over the lower windows, ami
lurking in the passages and covirtyards. In the quadrangle
which had been Paquerette's playground the shades of evening
liung heavy and thick, and candlelight shone, yellow and dim,
behind many of the windows in that stone well of humanity —
windows which made patches of sickly light on the dank
black walls. But there was no gleam of light in either window
of M6re Lemoine's ground-floor. The door, which Ishmacl had
always seen open, was now firmly shut, and on going close up
to it, he was just able to distinguish the words, d louer presente-
Toent, scrawled with clialk upon the greasy black door. Mere
Lemoine had removed herself and her household gods to some
other habitation. It might be that she had found a cheaper
shelter in some garret under the tiles above his head yondei",
where the roof was still faintly lighted by yellow gleams from
the western sky.
Ishmael looked in at the little den of a room near the gate-
way, which servetl at once as habitation and point of esj^ial for
the porter and his wife.
The porter was mending shoes by the light of a guttering
candle, the portress was frying some curious portion of a sheep'a
anatomy with a large admixture of onion. The reek of the
onions, the tallow-candle, the shoe-leather and cobbler's wax
burst upon Ishmael in a warm gust as he opened the door.
' Can you tell me where to find Mademoiselle Benoit ? ' he
asked.
The portress looked at her family of keys, hanging in three
rows on a numbered board.
'On the fourth story, the first door in the passage to the
right. There must be one of them at home, for the key ia
gone,' she said.
' The big Lisbeth came in half-an-hour ago,' said the cobbler,
without looking up from his shoe.
The big Lisbeth. It was she who had talked to him so
gravely Jibout Paquerette, who liad spoken of hvcsx as her
admiier. He had seme embarrassment at the idea of being
* Set Me as a Seal tipon Thine Heart ' 187
taken to task onrp again by this strong-mindefl yonn!:r woman.
But he did not shirk the interview. He mounted tlie murky
staircase, where a smoky oil lamp at each landing accentuateil
the gloom, and he knocked at the door to which the portresa
had directed him.
' Come in,' cried a brisk voice, and he entered.
The room was as neatly kept as his own — beds shroiided by
red and white curtains ; a table laid for supper ; books, flowers ;
and the Citizen King and his Queen smiling on the wall yonder,
on each side of the little gilded shell which held holy water,
decorated piously with the sprays of palm brought home from
last Sunday's service.
And this was the apartment of girls who worked for their
living. Why should not Paquerette so work and so live ?
'Monsieur Ishmael!' cried Lisbeth, throwing aside her
needlework, and going straight up to him with an intent look
in her clear, kind eyes ; ' you have come to tell me about
Paquerette — poor little Paquerette — who disappeared three
months ago.'
' Why should you suppose that I know anything about her,
Mademoiselle?' asked Ishmael, surprised by this sud-den
challenge.
' I have made up my mind aboiit that long ago. Either she
is dead, or she has found a shelter somewhere with your help.
Why should I think so? For this reason : upon this earth she
Could count only three friends — you — my cousins and I — who
count as only one — and death. She must have gone to one or
the other the night she ran away.'
' You have guessed rightly,' answered Ishmael. 'She came
to me, poor child, because she was afraid of ileath, and afraid to
go to you. In this house she felt she could not be secure from
Ler grandmother's cruelty.'
'And you,' said Lisbeth, looking at him searcliingly, almost
imploringly ; ' there might be a worse cruelty practised by you
— the cruelty of strength against weakness, cunning against
innocence — the kind of cruelty which men have been practising
towards women ever since the world began. I know that
you admired her, that she loved youl' continued Lisbeth,
passionately. 'If you have wronged her '
' I have not wronged her. I have done the best that lay in
my power. I am here now to ask your advice. A young
woman's destiny is a problem not so easily solved as I once
thought. As to love, that is all nonsense. P&querette came to
me because I was a strong man, able to protect her and myself
against an old- ''.brew's claws, and because I lived a long way
from her grandmother's den. For choice, she would rather liave
188 Ishnael
gone to yoii. And now, first tell me about Mfere Lemoine. Is
she dead ? '
'Not to my knowledge. Slic lias been gone from here about
six weeks. Her habits were abominable — she was almost
always tipsy, or, at least, stupefied by drink, and her neighbours
complained to the landlord that they were in peril of being
burnt in their beds, as it was more than likely she would set
the house on fire some night. As she was very much in arrear
with her rent, he did not stand upon ceremony. She waa
turned into the street, and her goods and chattels, which she
had reduced to the lowest ebb by pawning, were seized and
Bold. No one knows where she went or what became of her.'
'Then it is to be hoped that this old hag will never be heard
of again, and that Paquerette may live the rest of her days in
peace.'
After this Ishmael told Lisbeth all that had happened since
Paquerette 's flight, and explained his difiiculties in dealing with
such a delicate matter as a young woman's destiny. On one
side were Madame Moque, Hector de Valnois, and Paquerette
herself, urgent for a public career ; on the other, the alternative
seemed only a semi-starvation, a life which, to be honest, must
needs be one long slavery, ground to the dust by hard task-
masters, wedded to abject poverty.
' Woman's work is wretchedly paid in Paris, I grant,' said
Lisbeth; 'but, with frugality, one can manage to exist. My
cousins and I live comfortably enough. But then, there are
three of us, and we work very hard. We have worked ever
since we were old enough to hold our needles. Poor Paquerette
has never been taught to do anything useful. No wonder she
wants to get her bread by singing.'
' Will you go and see her ? ' asked Ishmaeh * You might be
able to give her some good advice.'
' I will go to her v^'ith all my heart. I will help her with all
my heart if I can,' answered Lisbeth, cordially.
And then she and Ishmael shook hands and parted.
'Forgive me for having doubted you,' she said, on the
threshold of her door. 'We women have been so badly treated
for generation after generation, that we have learnt to look
upon man as our natural enemy.'
Peeling himself safe now in pui'suing his inquiries about IMcre
Lemoine, Ishmael questioned the porter, who told him that the
old woman had been seen on the outskirts of Paris, bent nearly
double under a rag-pickei^'s basket, and that it was supposed she
liad migrated to a settlement on the Boulevard de la Eevolte,
near Clicliy, a kind of fastness of the dangerous classes knowu
as the Cite dv, Soldi, and chiefly inhabited by rag-pickers.
*Sct Mc as a Seal upon Thine Heart* 189
Lisbeth went to the Rue rranch-colline on the following
evening, after her work. It was the eve of Good Friday, and
there was no performance at the Palais de Cristal ; so Madame
Moque and her pupil were both at home in the little yellow-
curtained salon, while Monsieur Moque was busy below selling
his charcuterie to those among the working classes who did nut
keep their Lenten fast.
The two women were engaged in the manufacture of a bonnet
for Paquerette, a new bonnet made out of the jetsam and flotsanx
of Lisette's old days of service, which had left her a store of silks
and ribbons, laces and splendid scraps, hoarded in old trunks
and portmanteaux. Paquerette was to appear in the new
bonnet on Easter Sunday, when they were to go to Vincennes
for the afternoon with Ishmael. Perhaps there would be danc-
ing, as on that other Sunday which marked the beginning of
Paquerette's womanhood.
The girl dropped her work and flew to Lisbeth's arms. Slie
was scarcely taken by surprise, as Ishmael had called in the
afternoon to tell her of his visit to the Rue Sombreuil.
' Moil ange ! ' she exclaimed ; * how glad I am to see you
again 1 ' ♦
Lisbeth kissed her heartily, and then held her at arm's
length for a minute or so, scrutinising her gravely, severely even,
'And so am I glad to see yon, mon amour ; but if we had
met in the street, I should hardly have knosvn you. I never
saw such a change in anynne.'
* For the better, I hope ! ' said Lisette, whisking up a bit of
blue silk, and giviug her needle and thread a vindictive jerk.
She was not delighted at Lisbeth's visit, regarding her as
an interloper, likely to side with Ishmael, and to give trouble-
some advice.
' I suppose most people would call the change for the
better,' answered Lisbeth, with her uncompromising candour ;
*but I don't like to see my little Paquerette look such a
demoiselle. She has to work for her living, jjoor child ; and
it's a pity to look above one's station.'
' Happily, no one will ever accuse you of that,' replied
Lisette. 'As for Mademoiselle Paquerette, it is so much
the better for her that she has a little air of a born lady,
which only wanted to be developed by a clever friend. Aiid
as for getting her living by-and-by, thei'e is work and work ;
and my little friend hei^e has it in her ])ower to make her
fortune if she likes without soiling the tips of her finger^:.'
And then Madame Moque held foith u]ion the folly of
Paquerette's friend, JMousieur Ishmael, who wanted to deurive
her of a noble career.
190 Ishmael
Paquerette began to feel uncomfortable on perceiving tbat
her old and her new friend were not likely to get on very
well together. She asked affectionately after Pauline and
Antoinette, and hoped she should see them soon.
'We are going to Vincennes on Sunday,' she said. 'There
is to Lie a fair, Monsieur Moque says. How I wish you could
all come with us, or meet us there 1 You would not mind, would
you, Madame Moque 1 '
Lisette declared that notlnns; Cv^uld be more blissful than
such an addition to the party, and Lishetli accejjted the invita-
tion. There would be no overpowering burden of obligation.
The entertainment would be a kind of picnic, in which every-
body would pay his or her share.
Sunday came — Easter Sunday, and the early masses in the
grand old Paris churches were glorified by sunlight streaming
through painted glass, and the sky above the white beautiful
city, tiie broad winding river, was like a summer heaven, blue
and cloudless. Ishmael rose soon after dawn and walked to the
citato hear mass in Nutre Dame. He wore a frock coat now on
Sundays, and on week-day evenings when he had occasion to
leave the workmen's quarter ; and he wore his coat with an easy
air, which made him altogether different from his fellow-work-
men in their Sunday clothes. With him tlie blouse was an
accident, the coat an old habit. People turned and looked at
liim in the streets, so superior was that tall figure with the broad
chest and lierculean shoulders, and the kingly carriage of the
head, to thf' efieminate and tine-drawn form of the typical
Parisian. The son of the sea and the sand-marshes yonder,
reared in sunlight and wind, storm and rain, was of another
breed from the townsman born of long generations of townsmen.
After mass Ishmael breakfasted at a cremerie near the
catiiedtal, and then set out to walk to Vincennes, where, just in
that spot on Avhich he and Paquerette had met for the first time
nearly a year ago, he found her to-day, with Monsieur and
Madame Moque— animated, smiling, blushing, iu her new
bonnet, trimmed with broad straw-coloured ribbon, and with
blue cornflowers nestling against her pale brown hair.
She was quite a different creature from the Paquerette of last
yea}-, in lier borruwed cotton frock and little grisette cap. Then
ehe had looked a shy, simple child, to whom everything in life
was new and strange. To-day she was a woman in tlie glory of
early womanhood, conscious of her ^ower to charm— looking at
Ishmael shyly still with those liquid blue eyes ; but the clear
bi'ightness of those beautiful eyes told a new stox'y. Paquerette
had acquired tlie rudiments of coquetry.
Monsieur Mouue had brought a couple of commercial friend^
* Set Me as a Seal upon Thine Ilcart ' 191
from the Eue Franch-colline, and Madame Moque had invited
the soprano from the Palais de Cristal, with her husband, the
baritone, the r^goletto, the FigHro, who had sung in Italian
Opera for one brief season at Bordeaux, about hfteen years
before, and who never forgot those early triumphs on the lyric
stase. The Benoit girls were punctual, and with their arrival
the party was complete.
The wood was crowded with holiday people. There was a fair
going on in the Cours de Vincenues, the great broad highway
beyond the Barriere du Trone, and towards this festival they
bent their way soon after their picnic luncheon, guided by the
blare of trumpets, the roll of drums, the clamour of thousands of
voices. It was the gingerbread fair ; such a crowd of joyous
humanity— fathers, mothers, chiidren, lovers, galopiiis and
ffcdopines, voyous and torchons, Gavroche and all his brother-
hood—such a crowd ns Paquerette had never beheld before to-
day. She clung to Ishmael's arm as they entereil the great wide
boulevard of booths, amidst the din of trumpets, fiddles and
concertinas, pandean pipes, cymbals and_ drums, bells ringing,
women laughmg — amidst the reek of brasiers on which men and
women were frying sausages, fritters, fish— amidst the clash of
Bwords and the trampling of horses, while, above every other
sound in the fair, swelled the roar of the multitude, rising and
falling with a hoarse and sonorous cadence, like the rolling
breakers of a stormy sea.
Paquerette gazed in bewilderment at the shows, the wild
beasts, conjurers, giants, dwarfs, swings, merry-go-rounds.
Thei'e were shooting galleries without number, learned dogs,
jjhenomenal children, acrobats, coco-merchants with their tin
fountains, hawkers of every description, street musicians of every
order. On such a day as this it was not easy to get away from
the crowd, nor were Ishmael's companions by any means eager
for solitude while the attractions of the fair were still fresh and
dazzling. It was the first fair that Paquerette had ever seen.
The circus riders, the acrobats, the clowns, the learned pigs were all
new to her. She clasped her hands and opened her eyes wide Nvilh
rapture at every fresh figure in the vast kaleidoscope of moving,
joyous humanity. For her all the joy was real : the painted
faces were beautiful ; the tawdry muslin and gilt paper, the
spangles and gaudy colours, were things to charm and dazzle.
Ishmael, who had seen a good many such sights in his year of
Paris life, was interested and amused by the girl's pleasure. Ila
took her into the booths and the circuses to see the amazons
Hying through paper hoo])s, the conjurers changing pocket-hand-
kerchiefs into live rabbits, boiling jiigeons alive and bringing
them out of the saucepan uuharmed by so much as the rnnijiluig
193 IsJmiael
of a feather. He stood by patiently while gipsies told her
fortune, assuring her that there was a tall dark man with a good
heart towards her. He bought her gingerbread and bonbons,
fairings of all kinds. He let her drink the cup of pleasure to
the dregs. He refreshed her with brioches and innocent red
currant syrup ; and then, when all the wonders of the show had
been exhausted, when the roar of voices began to have a hoarse
and hollow sound, when the clash of brass, and the clang of
strident laughter waxed discordant, they two wandered together
away from the broad highway and its avenue of painted booths
into the outskirts of the wood of Saint-Mandd— not a very lonely
spot, for there were other wanderers ann in arm at every turn,
couples who looked lii^e lovers— here and there a happy pair as
if unconscious of an external world, with girlish waist encircled
by manly arm, grisettes neat little cap reclining on blouse's
shoulder.
' You must be tired, I'm afraid,' said Ishraael ; ' it has been
a long afternoon.'
The sun was setting yonder behind western Paris; the dust-
laden atmosphere above the fair was full of yellow light, against
which golden haze the naphtha lamps of the booths begim to
show red and angry, like the bleared eyes of a drunkard — earthy,
sensual, as compared with that heavenly radiance which touched
all things with beauty.
' Tired ! Not the least in the world. I never had such a
happy day,' answered Paquerette, with her sweet, joyous voice,
that voice which, in speech or song, had ever the same bird-like
trill. 'And to tliink that you would like to shut me up in a
convent, to bury me in a big stony prison, from which I should
never get so mucli as a peep at such a scene as this.'
It was the tirst time she had ever thus challenged him — the
first time that they two, together and alone, had argued the
question of her destiny.
' Don't say that I would like to shut you in a convent,
rdquerette,* replied Ishmael, gravely reproachful. ' I should
like to do what is best for your own happiness here and
hereafter.'
The girl shrugged her shoulders and made a wry face at
that word hereafter. The world which it represented was such
a lung way off. Why should one be troubled about it ? Peojili
shut themselves up in convents for the sake of that hereafter.
It was for that they rose at untimely hours, and went to hear
masses in the bleak early morning. It was for that thty
deprived themselves of all manner of nleasiires. The very id^a
was a bugbear.
' Why should I not be a singer? Why should I not be an
*Sct Me as a Seal upon Tliine Ileart' 103
actress?' urged Pfiqnerette. 'That would be best for my
happiness, that would make me quite happy. Yes, even if I
never rose any higher than that girl we heard singing in the
booth just now ; and I am sure I can sing better than she does.'
' Do you think that her life is a happy one, Paquoi-ette I
My poor child, you don't know what you are talking about.'
Those poor creatures, whose red lips are one peqoetual smile,
lead an existence as wretched as ever yours was in the Eue
Sombreuil. Thsy have to endure toil, scanty fare, miserable
lodgings, hard weather, vilest language, blows even.'
' I would rather lead such a life than go into a convent,'
Paquerette murmured, doggedly.
' You shall not go into a convent. I told Madame Moque
weeks ago that I would not persuade you even to try the
convent life against your will.'
' Then why not let me be a singer "i I am a burden to you
now, useless, costing you money every week. Let me be a
Binger, and I shall earn my own living. Madame Moque says
I shall make a fortune — Monsieur de Valnois said so — and hia
friend at the Palais Eoyal. They must know. And it is such
<e pleasure to me to sing. To win a fortune like that, without
hard work, just by doing the thing which one likes best in the
whole world— think how delightful that must be ! And you
deprive me of that happiness.'
She looked up at him pleadingly, piteously,_ her large blue
eyes brimming over with tears. She wounded him to the quick
by her reproaches, half petulant, half pitiful. Never had she
been lovelier in his sight than she was at this moment, leaning
upon his arm — a slender, willowy figure— a fragile, exquisite,
useless thing — like some lovely parasite hanging from a branch
of a grand old ceiba tree in the depths of a Guatemalan forest.
Tears, too, in those pathetic eyes ; the first reproachful tears that
a woman had ever shed for any act of his.
'My child, my heart,' he murmured, tenderly, 'you must
know that I have no authority over you, no power to forbid or
to deny you anything. If you must be a stage-singer— a
mountebank to be applauded by a gaping crowd— to have coarse
things said about yovi— vile looks gloating on your beauty— ah,
you don't know, child ; you can't understand. If your heart is
set on auch a life, I have no power to stop you— only if, on the
other hand, you have any regard for me, I beg, I implore you to
avoid such a life as you would shrink from a pestilence, fever,
death. No, you shall not be shut in a convent, my treasure ;
that would be a kind of murder—like catching a butterfly witli
the bloom on its wings and shutting it between the leaves of a
great heavy book. No, you shall not work for your living, I
194 Ishnad
will work for yon, I will cherish you. Be my wife, Piquerette,
jny love and my delight, the joy of all my days, the glory
of my life. The fortune shall be made, sweet one ; but these
strong arms of mine shall toil for it. Be my wife, Paquerette.'
He had his arm round her, he drew her to his breast in the
dying lighi, they two alone in the twilight, in an avenue of
budding limes. He held her close to his loudly-beating heart,
looking dowQ at her with dark passionate eyes that had a power
stronger than any vanities ov fancies of hers. She felt like a
caught bird, yet with a blissful sense of all-pervading love and
protection, corn-age and manhood guarding and cherishing her,
which made captivity very sweet.
She gave him back his kiss with a faint languorous sigh.
• Does that mean yes, Pdquerette 1 ' he asked, looking ten-
derly down at the fair girlish face.
'It means whatever you like,' she answered, softly : 'yo'
are the master.'
And this ended, for a while at least, the difficult question
of Pdquerette's destiny.
CHAPTER XX
'behold, TnOU ART FAIR, MY LOVE*
The enigma of Paquerette's destiny was solved ; there was no more
difficulty, no more doubt or incertitude. She was to be married to
Ishmael, otherwise Sdbastien Caradec, as soon as the law would
allow. One obstacle which might have hindered an immediate
union between the mason and his betrothed had been overcome by
good fortune. Early in the year, Ishmael, by his proxy, Father
Bressant, had drawn a lucky number in the conscription at
Rennes, and was not called upon to carry arms for his country.
Tliis exemption left him free to pursue his career in Paris, and
to take upon himself the resisonsibilities of matrimony.
Now, the marriage law of France is strictly paternal, and
Las been conceived with a sti-ong feeling for the authority of
parents, the safekeeping of children. A girl in her teens, a
youth ^^nder five-and-twenty can hardly make a foolish
marriage, for, in order to be married at all, he or she must first
obtain the consent of Uie parents, or of the one surviving parent,
w, in the case of an orplian, of that next of kin standing in the
*Bcliold, Thou art Fair, my Love* 195
place of a parent. The law is a hard one eometimes for youth
and true love, as in the case of poor little Criquette, in Monsieur
Ludovic Haldvy's tender story ; but it more often works for tlie
protection of sweet seventeen, who cannot elope with her groom,
to be bound hard and fast in the bonds of matrimony at the
nearest registry ; and for impetuous youth at the university or
the military depot, who cannot mate himself for life with the
first pretty milliner he admires. MaiTiage in France is set round
with a perfect chevaux de frise of precaiitions and difficulties ; it
cannot be huddled over in a hole-and-corner manner without
giving age and wisdom a chance of warning or remonstrance.
Up to the age of thirty the intending bridegroom must respect-
fully call upon his parents to approve of his act, and must give
them ample time in which to say their say upon the subject.
Before he lay down to rest on the night of Easter Sunday,
Ishmael wrote a long letter to Father Biessant, telling him what
had happened, and begging him to obtain Baymond Caradec's
consent to his marriage.
' I am earning my own living, with daily improving pro-
spects,' he wrote. ' I am never likely to cross my father's path
in life ; I pledge myself never to ask pecuniary aid from him.
I call upon him, therefore, not to thwart me in this most solemn
act of my life, an act which involves the happiness and welfare
of another.'
And then he went on to describe Paquerette as an orphan —
helpless, friendless, child-like, innocent. lie was careful to say
nothing about the lowness of her oiigin, but dwelt chiefly on
her graces, on her solitary condition. It was a letter eminently
calculated to touch the good priest's heart ; but the effect which
Buch an appeal might exercise upon Raymond Caradec remained
an open question. It is difficult to foresee the conduct of a man
who has given up his life to the governance of a weak and
Belfish woman.
Father Bressant's reply came by return of post. It was
brief, but full of kindness, and the envelope enclosed the following
letter from Ishmael's father : ' I am told, Sebastien, that,
having taken your own course in life, witliout respect for me,
for your name and family, or for the rank in which you were
bom, you now desire to marry an obscure and penniless orphan,
whose very name you shrink from disclosing. This desire on
your part I can only regard as the natural sequel of your
rebellion and ingratitude. The runaway son finds his helpmeet
naturally among the waifs and strays of society. If I had any
hope that the severed tie between father and son could ever
again be re-united, I should resolutely refuse my consent to such
an union; but as, in every ac-t of ^vour life, T recognise the influence
190 ^ Ishmacl
of that tainted blood which makes you worse than a stranger to
me, and as I feel the impossibility of reconciliation, I am in-
clined to let you have your own way ; but only on the condition
that you never resume the name of Caradec, which, I am told,
yon abandoned on leaving your home, and that you renounce
your portion in the estate which I have to leave to my sons.
That estate, divided by three, would be small to insignificance :
for two it will be little better than a pittance. Since, as I
imderstand, you are earning more than you can spend, and see
your way to an increasing income, it can be a very small sacrifice
to you to surrender your claim upon this modest heritage for
the profit of your two younger brothers, for whom you, as I
believe, once entertained a warm affection. In a word, this is my
ultimatum : Send me a formal renunciation of your claim upon
my estate, and I will send you my formal consent to your
marriage with the young person whose name I have yet to learn.'
Ishniael smiled a bitter smile as he read the paternal letter.
' Monsieur de Caradec knows how to make a bargain,' he said
to himself ; 'but he is right in thinking that it will cost me very
little to give up my birthright. I will let it go as lightly as
Esau parted with his, and I will shed no idle tears afterwards
for the loss of it. I once loved my brothers ! Yes, and with
me once means for ever.'
He answered his father's letter two days afterwards, enclos-
ing a document which he had executed with all due formality in
a notary's oflfice.
' I renounce the name which I have long ceased to bear,' he
wrote ; ' I formally surrender a heritage on which I have never
calculated, I began life a year and a half ago with no capital
but a sti'ong arm and a strong will. My affection for my brothers
is not a thing of the ]iast ; it belongs to the present and to the
future ; and if ever the day come that they need my help, they
will find that fraternal love is something more than a phrase.
I w-illingly, ungrudgingly forego whatever right I have upon
your jiroperty for the benefit of those two dear boys ; and I am,
even in severance, your dutiful son,
' Sebastien.'
On Paquerette's side there were difficulties, but these were
more easily overcome. Mere Lemoine was bound to her by no
legal tie, but Mere Lemoine had brought her up, and the law
recognised the claim of a putative grandmother who had given
food and shelter from infancy upwards to a nameless grandchild
Dut Mere Lemoine had disappeared, and, taking her habits into
due consideration, had, in all probability, gone to people the
tranchife graiuite. It w-as held, therefore, after due inquiry and
'LchoU, Thou art Fair, my Lova^ 107
some delay, that the banns of marriage might be put up, and Uiat,
aiter a certain interval, Ishmael and Paquerette might be united
by civil and ecclesiastical ordinances as they might themselves
ordain.
These considerations and preliminaries occupied nearly three
months, during which time Ishmael was working hard and
gaining ground with his employers, while Paquerette, still a
lodger over the pork-butcher's shop, seemed to be very happy.
She had a good deal to do for Madame Moque, who was clever
in saving herself trouble when a pair of younger hands and feet
were at her disposition. She had also her trousseau, bought with
a little sum of money given her by Ishmael, to prepare ; and
this involved much plain sewing, at which Paquerette was not
particularly expert, although she had made considerable progress
since those early days when Lisbeth Benoit taught her to mend
her gown, and made her a present of a thimble.
For recreation, for delight, she had the wheezy little piano,
and never did a Madame Pleyel or a Liszt derive more rapture
from the chef-d'oeuvre of an Erard or a Kriegelstein than wafted
Piquerette's young- soul skyward upon the cracked and tinuv
tones of that little worn-out cottage. Her own voice ripened
and strengthened with every week of her life. It was no longer
to be spoken of as that petit brin de voir, which might be just
enough for a babyfied patois song. It was now a pure and fine
soprano ; and P.lquerette could sing Gilda's part in the great
Rigoletto quartette with a force and a passion that startled her
instructress.
' You ought to come out at the opera,' said Lisette. * It is a
, sin for you to marry. Artists should never marry. Marriage
is almost as bad for a genius as a convent. It means self-sacrifice
for life.'
'But you married,' argued Pa,querette, who saw no reason
why she should not marry Ishmael first — that good Ishmael who
was so kind to her — and go on the opeiatic stage afterwards.
' I married before I was secure of my position as an artist,
answered Lisette, ' and I have repented my weakness ever since.
Moque is a good fellow, but he is a clog. I should have Veen
at one of the boulevard theatres years ago if I had remained
single.'
Madame Moque was the only person who did not cordially
approve of Pdquerette's betrothal to Ishmael. She praised
Ishniael's generosity in wedding the nameless waif ; but she
bewailed the waif's sacrifice of an artistic career — a career which,
managed and directed by her, must needs have been triumphant
Ishmael might have made a much better marriage, she urged.
P&querette would have been happier single. But in tliesa opinion.^
108 Ishnael
Madame Moque was strenuously opposed by the three Benolt
girls, who came by turns to see Paquerette, who helped in the
preparation of the trousseau, and who were never tired of
praising Ishmael, and congratulating their little friend upon
her good fortune.
'If heaven would send me such a man,' said Pauline, un-
consciously quoting Shakespeare.
Ishmael had made all his arrangements for his wedded
life. He had descended from his eerie under the tiles to a
comfortable and comparatively spacious apartment on the second
floor, consisting of a salon, bedroom, and kitchen, with a little
fourth room — a mere closet, with a narrow window commanding a
back lane, which would do for his study. Paquerette and he,
accompanied by Lisette, had made numerous voyages of discovery
among the second-hand dealers of Paris, and had brought home
treasure in the shape of chairs, tables, and an armoire made under
tlie First Empire, in that pseudo-classical style of art which has so
long been a drug in the market. Ishmael, with his discriminat-
ing eye for form and mechanism, was the last person to be
contented with cheap, newly-made furniture, all trick and vai'nish,
and green wood. He wandered from broker to broker, till his
glance lighted on some fine old piece of furniture wheeled into a
corner, rejected by the frivolous, scorned by the fasliionaUe, but
as solid in its construction and as true in its lines as an old
wooden man-of-war. And thus, for a few htmdred francs, he
secured some choice old pieces of cabinet-work, which gave his
little salon a look of sombre grandeur. It in no wise resembled the
prosperous workman's sitting-room. It had the air of a quiet
scholar's study, a retired diplomatist's sanctum. Lisette shrugged
her shoulders, and said that the room was triste.
* You must have yellow curtains like mine,' she protested,
' or your salon will be the gloomiest in all Paris.'
But Ishmael resolved that he would not have yellow cur-
tains, least of all yellow curtains like Lisette's. He and Paquerette
took their summer evening rambles in all the faubourgs of
Paris, and one night, not very remote from the dome of Sainte-
Genfevieve, Ishmael found some old tapestry curtains in a
shabby littl-e bric-d-hrac shop, which he felt were the things
he wanted for his sitting-room. Paquerette, at first, condemned
them as dingy ; but on their merits being explained to her,
and on her being told that they exactly resembled some curtains
which Ishmael had seen in a chateau in Brittany, she began to
think better of them. Her education in the little yellow salon
over the poi'k-butcher's shop was not without fruits. She was
beginning to have grand ideas, vague yearnings for splendour
and finery, a dim fancy that Nature had intended her to be a la-dy.
'Behold, Thou art Fair, my Lova* 199
At last, in the golden days of early June, while the white
blossoms of the chestnut trees in the Tuileries gardens were
falling in feathery showers upon the grass, like snow in summer,
when the hawthorns were still in bloom in the Bois, and the
delicate fragrance of acacias glorified the air of the suburbs,
came the morning of Pdquerette's wedding day. It was a
Saturday, favourite day for humble weddings, since it leaves
She interval of Sunday for the bridal party to take their pleasure
before bridegroom and bride go back to the daily round of toil.
Lisette had suggested Saturday, and Ishmael had obeyed,
^isette had further suggested a wedding dinner in the Palais
Royal on Saturday evening, and a jaunt to Bougival, with a
picnic by the water-side, on Sunday. But here, to the lady's
disappointment, Ishmael announced that he had plans of his own.
He had obtained leave of aAisence for the Monday and Tuesday
after his wedding, and he meant to take Paquerette on a little
excursion to the woods of Marly and St, Germain, and then on
to Fontainebleau, travelling by diligence as far as possible, so as
to see the most they could of tlie rountry, taking their valise
with them, and stopping at humble inns on the road.
'Pdquerette adores the woods,' he said. 'I have never for-
gotten how enchanted she was with the flowers and butterflies
at Marly last year. I want to renew that experience.'
Lisette smiled a bitter smile.
' Experiences of that kind are not so easily repeated,' she said.
'I don't think Paquerette cares very much about flowers and
butterflies now she has seen the fashionable faubourgs of Paris.'
' Instead of a wedding dinner next Saturday, I shall ask you
and Moque and our other friends to dine with us the Sunday
after our return, and then you will be able to judge what kind
of housekeeper Paquerette will make,' pursued Ishmael, without
noticing Madame Moque's interruption.
The marriage thus arranged was conducted very quietly.
The only guests were the three Benolt girls, Monsieur and
Madame Moque, and a fellow-workman of Ishmael's, an esprit
fort and orator of the clubs, who acted as best man. The mairia
on this sunlit Saturday morning was a nest of bridal parties,
fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, from youth to infanc}',
all in new clothes, washed, frizzed, pomaded for the occasion.
The maire with his tricoloured scarf and little red morocco
book, the grefier with his big register, had a formidable air, and
the little crowd rose en masse at the entrance of these authorities.
Then came solemn questions ; bridegrooms and brides wei'e each
addressed by name, and formally interrogated ; fatliers and
mothers present were questioned as to their consent to each
union, the answers to be clearly and loudly given, so as to bo
200 Ishmael
lioavd by all present, which in most cases they were not. The
yrej/ier read certain articles of the civil code, setting forth the
duties and rights of husband and wife— all this being done with
the summer wind blowing freely through wide-open doors, to
show that the ceremony is a ;public act ; and then_ the maire
declared these persons united in marriage, the registers were
signeti, the ceremonial was finished.
' Eemember the poor, if you please,' cried one of the officials ;
and each, as he or she went by, dropped an ofi'ering into a bag
upon the table. Very microscopic some of these off"erings ; but
they are, many of them, verily like the widow's mite, the gift of
those who have but little to give.
Islmiael was too good a Catholic to dispense with the blessing
of the Church on this solemn sacramental act of his life.
Within half-an-hour after leaving the mairie Paquerette and
be were kneeling before the high altar in a shadowy old church
on the edge of the eleventh arrondissement, and in the parish
in which Ishmael had his domicile. When this solemnity was
accomplished, the bridal party repaired to a quiet little restaurant
near Madame Morice's shop, where the grocer and his wife met
them, and where a comfortable breakfast had been ordered for
the party. And here, at two o'clock, Paquerette and her husband
bade their friends adieu, and started with their modest luggage
in a fly for the office of the diligence which still plied between
Paris and Marly-le-Roi. They were to begin their wedded life
in the little inn with the garden, where they had dined l-wct
St. John's day.
CHAPTER XXI
AND IT BROUGHT FORTH WILD GRAPES
Nearly two years had gone by since that wedding morning at
the mairie. It was the springtide of 1854, and Ishmael and
P2,querette had lived together through the sunshine and the
cloud of a married life which seemed somewhat long to look
back upon in the minds of both. It had been a period of joy
and of sorrow — of joy, for PSquerette had found it a sweet and
happy fate to be the beloved of an honest and noble-minded
husband ; of sorrow, for the first fruits of their love had been
garnered yonder in the field of many graves. Pfiquerette could
see the multitude of headstones, the Egyptian sarcophaguses
and Greek temples, white and ghostly, on the slope of the hill
when she looked out of her bedroom-window on moonlit nights ;
and she fancied she could see the very spot where her baby girl
lay, under a little garden of flowers. For some months of
Paquerette's life she never went to bed without looking out of
that window, and towards that grave, while she murmured a
prayer for her dead. Not a week passed in which she did not
make her pious pilgrimage to the cemetery and spend an hour
beside her baby^s grave. Hers were the hands that kept the
flowers in order in that tiny garden, among so many other such
gardens, some tawdry, some fine, in the overcrowded city of the
dead. Ishmael had bought the concession perpetuelle of this
little plot of ground. The leasehold, which suflices for middle-
class Paris in a general way, was not lasting enough for his and
PAquerette'a sorrow for the fair flower that had withered in its
earliest bloom. They wanted to be sure that no lapse of yeais
would make any difference to that one little bed.
The first year of P^uerette's married life had been perfectly
happy. First, there had been the delight, the pride, the im-
portance of beinff mistress of her little menage, her salon with
its fine old furniture and tapestry curtains, her own piano —
Ishmael'a wedding gift, and a gift far beyond his means at that
period — a new piano, with a full, rich tone, which was as the
organ of St. Eustache in comparison with that worn-out tin
kettle upon which Lisette accompanied her nasal melodies.
PSquerette adored her piano, and at Ishmael's suggestion, she
took music lessons from a little old professor whose father had
helped Jean Jacques Rousseau in the partition of his operettas,
and had played the violin in the little theatre at Versailles
'202 IsJimael
where Marie Antoinette acted. The professor wna a frail old
liuk with the historic past, faded, and withered, and snuffy ;
very proud of relating those souvenirs of the gracious days before
the Revolution, which his father had bequeathed to him as hia
only heritage. He had discoursed of these things so often, that
he had come almost to confound his father's personality with
his own, and to talk as if it were he who had been in the
orchestra when the Queen sang, as if he had been a collabora-
teiu" of that wonderful Jean Jacques.
* I can see it all as I tell you the story,' he would say ; ' the
place, the people, they are all before me, vivid, real. I knew
them all so well, you see.'
Ishmael had a fancy for the little old man, who had the
refinement and somewhat over-accentuated courtesy of those long
departed days, an air of impalpable powder, invisible patches
and pigeon wings. He asked him to dinner sometimes on a
winter Sunday, and let him tell his stories all the evening. The
professor was Legitimist to the tips of his nails, and held the
house of Orleans and the house of Bonaparte in equal contempt.
' Charlatans both,' he said ; ' only one is cleverer than the
other. He is not afraid of spending money as the Citizen-King
was, and he knows how to make Paris comfortable for the
Parisians. And, since to govern Pai'is is to govern France, he
is likely to reign long and merrily.'
For music Monsieur Vielbois, the little old professor, gave
PAquerette only the works of the eighteenth century composers
—quaint old melodies by Eameau, Lulli, Gretry, Monsigny —
gavottes, minuets, ballet music of the old, old school. These
prettinesses, which did not requii'e much execution, Paquerette
played charmingly, with airy lightness, with delicate shades of
expression, with perfect phrasing.
' She has the finest ear of any pupil I ever taught,' protested
Monsieur Vielbois ; ' and she has a voice that would have made
her fortune on the operatic stage.'
That suggestion of the 'might have been' always evoked a
sigh from Paquerette. She thought of that possible operatic
career — those visionary successes and triumphs — as of a treasure
she had sacrificed in order to marry Ishmael. He was very
good to her. He did all he could to make her life happy, and
she told herself that she was happy ; but that other life shone
upon her fancy somewhere in cloudland like a dream of bliss.
In the summer of 1853 Paquerette's baby was born, a lovely
infant, with eyes that had a heavenly look, which gave the
father a thrill of fear as he bent over the cradle. Such a look
was fitter for the skies than this dull earth — it seemed like a
The child lived for six mouths, and was the delight
And it Brought forth Wild Grapes 203
of the little home. Pdquereite nursed her baby, idolizfd her,
but treated her a little too much as a child treats her doll, aud
had intervals of carelessness iu the midst of her devotion. One
such interval occurred in the winter, when the snow was on the
roofs of M^nilmontant, and the graves in P6re Lachaise were
hidden under one great white pall. Monsieur Vielbois brought
his pupil tickets for the opera when the houses were thin on
account of the hard weather. And Paquerette, flurried and
feverish all day in anticipation of the evening's bliss, hurried otf
to the Rue le Peletier at night with one of the Benoit girls,
leaving the baby in her cradle to the chance ministrations of a
friendly neighbour on the third floor.
One such night the little one caught cold — a mere nothing —
a baby ailment — ^a touch of fever, the apothecary said, which a
powder and a tisane would set right. But before Paris and the
world AYere twenty-four hovirs older, the fever was a raging
fever, the delicate little frame was attacked with mortal disease,
and within a week the little coflin was being made, and the
cradle was a place of stillness, shrouded under white cambric.
Pdquerette grieved intensely — lamented passionately — would
uot be comforted. When the frosts and snows of January were
over, Ishmael sent her to Pontainebleau with one of the Benoit
girls, hoping that change of air and scene would I'estore her to
peace of mind, and give her the healthful sleep which had for-
saken her pillow since the child's death. The change did some-
thing, and time did more ; and now the year was wearing on
which had been a new year while the earth was fresh above
baby Claire's grave. Ishmael had named the child Claire, after
his father's mother, whom he had only known as a tradition.
He shrank from calling her by his own mothei-'s name. It
would have seemed an evil omen.
Pdquerette was not a good housekeeper. She was impulsive,
a creature of whim and fancy, did things by fits and starts,
sometimes working tremendously, sometimes abandoning herself
to idleness for days together.
Ishmael was at his work all day, and asked no troublesome
questions when he came home in the evening so long as Paque-
t'ette was there to receive him. He was careless as to what he
ate, and took a good or a bad dinner with equable indifference.
Sometimes the dinner was a cold collation, something fetched
hurriedly from the charcutier's at the last moment, Paquerette
having forgotten the dinner question altogether. Sometimea
there was a ^Qcent pot-ait-feu.
She employed a charwoman, the deaf old portress who kept
the door below, who came to the second floor every morning to
do all the rough work, so that Paquerette's hands were never
204 Ishmael
roughened by domestic drudgery. Her husband admired those
pretty white hands.
' You must have good blood in your veins,' he said : ' you
have the hands and feet of a patrician.'
PSquerette gave her head a little toss.
' I have a conviction that my father was a gentleman/ sh*
said ; ' and that was why he would not own me.'
' If he was alive, and knew of your existence, and abandoned
you to that den yonder, he was a scoundrel, whatever his birth
might be,' answered Ishmael, warmly.
He had a knack of calling things by their right names.
' Ah 1 you don't know ; he may have been some great person,
hemmed round with dilficulties — a tyrannic father, a proud
mother. Who knows ? '
Paquerette had read plenty of novels in her long hours of
leisure, the novels of the day — George Sand, Feydeau, Sue,
Dumas, father and son. Her little head was stuffed with the
romantic and impossible side of life. She despised Ishmael'a
dry-as-dust studies, far away from the flowery fields of senti-
ment and poetry. So different from his friend, Hector de Val-
nois, lately returned to Paris, and full of interest in Paquerette,
whom he found wondrously improved and refined by an educa-
tion which had consisted for the most part of music-lessons and
novel-reading. Paquerette was fascinated with his sympathetic
nature, his delightful way of looking at everything from the
standpoint of art and beauty. She knew that her husband was
clever ; but his was a kind of cleverness upon which she set no
value — a cleverness which made bridges, and built markets and
slaughter-houses, and drained cities through loathsome sub-
terraneous sewers. What was such talent as his compared with
the genius which could extemporise a song, words and music,
and sing it divinely en passani — which could embody jest and
fancy with the delicate lines of an airy pencil ? Wit, mirth, art,
comedy, tragedy, music, song, were all within the domain of
Hector de Valnois ; while Ishmael was distinguished only by
an inordinate passion for hard work, a love of sheer drudgery,
which seemed almost a mania.
What society could such a husband afford to a young wife
eager for new pleasures now that the anguish of a first grief
was a pain of the past, a sad, thrilling memory ? Ishmael
grudged his wife no indulgence, thwarted her in no whim. But
\e could rarely share her pleasures. His days were full of toil,
thought, anxiety. He had prospered beyond his most ardent
hopes. He was the head and front of all things in the builder's
yard at Belleville, that yard which he entered less than four
years aero as a qdckeur. There was a talk of his being taken into
A7id ii Brought forth Wild Grapes 205
partnership — » well-deserved reward, since it was his enterprise,
hi« strength of character, and thorough mastery of the science
of construction which had obtained for the house an important
Government contract for the repair of the slaughter-houses at
Belleville, M^nilmontant, and Villette — a contract which brought
renown and position to the firm. It was a small thing, perhaps,
if set against the works of a Peto or a Brassey ; but it was the
largest business the Belleville yard had ever had yet, and it
scored high for Ishmael. There was the hope, too, that if evei
the Imperial idea of a great central cattle-market and slaughter-
house in direct communication with all the railways should
come to be realized, Ishmael's firm would have a share in the
work.
With increasing succijds came ever-increasing labour, plans,
estimates, quantities, the whole science of mathematics as
applied to iron and stone ; and when the long day of practical
work was over, it was Ishmael's custom, after a brief interval of
reet, to shut himself in his little study, the hermit-like cell open-
ing out of his bedroom, and there to devote himself to figures
and theory, sometimes working on till late in the night.
' It is not very lively,' Paquerette said, sometimes, with a
shrug of her shoulders, when she spoke to Lisette Moque of her
domestic life.
Lisette was the only person to whom she could safely grumble.
The Benoit girls thought her lot all sunshine, and would have
resented a murmur as a kind of treason. They were always
praising Ishmael and the happy little home, so superior to other
homes, so peaceful, so secure. They came about once a month to
a Sunday dinner, and these occasions. Monsieur Vielbois, the
little antique professor, assisting, had quite a family air. To
Ishmael they were delightful — a respite from labour and calcula-
tion, a lull in the daily tumult, a glimpse of domesticity and
affection. But after two years of married life, Paquerette began
to find that there was a sameness. Those simple pleasures palled
on her impatient young spirit. The long empty days gave her
too much time for thought, since, after the baby's death, thought
with Pftquerette only meant thinking about herself, her own
pleasures, her own woes, the possibilities near and remote of her
own life. She wasted very little of her thinking power upon
Ishmael, considering him only as a person who went out in the
morning and came home in the evening, who wanted to see the
apartment neatly kept, and who must have dinner of some kind
provided for him. From the earjy morning hours till dusk
Paquerette had ample leisure for self-communing, for feeling the
burden of the hours, pining for pleasures that were npver likely
*jO come in her way, regretting that fate had not made '
206 Ishmael
what ? She hardly knew what she would have chosen for hei
lot had the wheel of fortune been put into her hands with power
to stop it at whatever number she pleased. She would have liked
to be something public and distinguished, a creature admired
and beloved by all Paris, pointed at as she drove by, applauded
almost to madness every night upon that vast stage of the opera
house, where she had seen the audience thrilled and hushed in a
charmed silence, breathless almost, while Bosio poured forth the
wealth of her noble voice in 'Lucrezia' or ' Fidelio.' She woald
l)ave liked to be a great singer, the great singer of the age. Or,
failing that, it must be sweet to be a famous beauty, a golden-
haired divinity, like that fashionable enchantress whom she had
Been often on the Boulevards and in the Cbamps-Elysees — a
mignon face, a figure delicate to fragility, almost buried amidst
the luxury of a matchless set of sables, seated in the lightest and
most elegant of victorias, behind a pair of thoroughbred blacks.
She knew scarcely more than the name of this divinity, which
seemed like the name of a poem — Zanita. Monsieur de Valnois
laughed when she questioned him about Zanita. The little old
professor frowned and shook his head.
' Ccs esphes ai'e the avenging angels of those good women
who were murdered in the Terror,' he said once. ' Those butchers
of Ninety-three wanted a world without princesses and queens;
and what have revolutions and changes of dynasty given ua
instead of the great ladies of France ? Zanita and her sisters
— a pestilence to decimate the city — a gulf of iniquity in which
men are swallowed up alive, with their fortunes, their lands,
their lives, their honour, their names even.'
The old professor was pale with indignation as he spoke of
the fair, frail, golden-haired divinity, distinguishable chiefly
to the oi;ter world by her diamonds, her sables, her horses, and
her hotel : known best to the initiated by her epigrams, d gros
sel. She was a kind of Undine-like creature, springing none
knew whence unless it were from the gutter. Her very country
was \uiknown. Some said she was English, some declared she
was American. Her French was the language of the Faubourg
du Temple, garnished with the graces of the Quartier Breda.
She confessed to neither country nor kindred. She had begun
her career as an orphan, but, on becoming a celebrity, she dis-
covered that her establishment would not be complete without
the maternal element, so she had mothers at her desire, always
kept one on the premises, and flung her out of doors when she
became troublesome. These m^res postiokes had a knack of
taking to the bottle.
Paquerette, seeing this life of fine clothes and thoroiighbred
horses from the outside, fancied it a kind of earthly paradise^
Ami it Brought forth Wild Grapes. 207
and thought that, next to being Eosio, she would like to be
Zanita. She confessed as much once naively to Hector de
Valnois, who sometimes called at his friend Ishmael's lodgings
at dusk before he went to his evening's amusements.
' My child, you have some of the qualities of the mdier,' he
answered, smiling at her—' the nameless, indescribable graces
which go further than beauty. But it is too late ; such a career
as Zanita's must begin almost from the cradle. That fine flower
of wit which fascinates and enchains Paris requires a particular
liotbed for its development. No, Madame Ishmael, the stage ia
the arena for your attractions— a little song, a short petticoat,
and, my faith, the town would be at your feet.'
' I shall never be allowed to sing that song,' cried P^querette,
discontentedly. ' I sujipose I am to be buried alive all my days
in this dull, common-place room, staring at those everlasting
sphinxes.'
She looked almost vindictively at that garniture de cheviinee
which had once seemed to her a thing of beauty and the pride of
life. It was of true Empire style— a black marble dial with gold
hands, supported upon two massive bronze sphinxes, another
bronze sphinx at each end of the chimney-piece supporting a
brazen candelabrum. In her moods of depression Paquerette
loathed those four sphinxes. She coald not get out of the reach
of their glacial metallic gaze. At such moments the sound of
Hector de Valnois' step on the stair fluttered her pulses and
stirred her heart with a sense of relief that was akin to raptura
It meant the coming of youth, hope, gaiety, news of the
outer world. It meant laughter, and life, and gladness.
CHAPTER XXIl
'now WEAK IS THINE HEART I'
While Ishmael was plodding steadily on at his tiade, which
seemed to P^querette so dull and ponderous a business, that to
think about it made her head ache, his friend of the Rue Mont-
orgueil was in high feather. Everything had prospered with
Hector de Valnois since his return from that wander-year of
his in the land of the Rhine and the Moselle, and amidst the
pine-clad steeps of Tyrol. That time of wandering and poetic
fancy, of desultory study and primeval innocence, had renewed
his strength of mind and body. His father was dead, and he
had inherited his little domain in the South ; and was selling the
patrimonial acres piece by piece, feeling that he had another
estate in his brains— infinite, inexhaustible. He came back to
Paris like a lion refreshed, like a young Samson whose shorn
locks had grown again, and who felt within him the power to
overthrow the temples of the Philistines. Some of the articles
about pictures, music, the drama, which he wrote at that period,
were signed 'Samson, junior' ; and he brought down the roof
of many a Philistine temple, as represented by good, old, high-
dried literary or artistic reputation. He cast in his lot with the
young, the original, the untried, the spontaneous. He made
fierce war against established renown. ' Because a man wrote a
good book thirty years ago, are we to bow down and worship
him for the bad book he writes to-day ? ' he asked. ' His books
have been getting worse and worse every year, perhaps, and we
have been wilfully blind to his decadence, adoring a tradition.'
He wrote savagely often, but with a playful lightness, which
gave a zest to his ferocity. His articles were full of variety, the
man himself being a creature of many moods. He was in no
wise a genius. He was imitative and receptive rather than
original ; but his power of imitation, his exquisite facility of
appropriation, passed for spontaneous fire. Every new book he
read gave him a fresh impetus. His style had all the charms,
all the blemishes of youth ; but such as it was, his style pleased,
and he was able at this time to earn an income which, if ad-
ministered with care and frugality, would have left a surplus for
laying by, but which, handled with supreme carelessness, enabled
him to live as a prince in the Bohemia of Imperial Paris.
He had exchanged his dingy apartment in the Rue MontorgueiJ
*IIow Weak is TJdno Heart/* 20.)
for an entresol in a firfe old house in the Rue de Grenelle, a
house which in the days of Louis Quiuze and Madame du Barry
had belonged to one of the magnates of Paris, a Prince of the
Church. The stately reception rooms on the floor above Hector's
nest were panelled, and the panels — painted with no mean
art — were reversible. On one side appeared innocent landscapes
and flower pieces, humming-birds, butterflies ; but, touch a
spring, and crac / each panel revolved on a swivel, and lo ! tlio
Cardinal's salon was gloiified by a series of mytholc gical subjects,
which sailed somewhat too near the wind to be seen by the
uninitiated. In the glare of daylight, when the doors were open
and all the great world of Paris had the right of ent/re in those
splendid rooms, the Prince of the Church apjjeared in his violet
soutane, a solemn, stately figure, against a background of birds,
and butterflies, and Arcadian vales and fountains ; but at night,
when the curtains were drawn and the doors were shut, and the wax
candles in the silver sconces were lighted, and the tables were
laid for the little supper, and the Due de Richelieu and other choice
spirits were expected, then Leda, and Danae, and Latona, and
Semele came out of the darkness and smiled upon the orgie.
Hector's entresol consisted of four little low rooms opening
one out of the other, like Chinese puzzle boxes. They were vei y
snug little rooms ; and though to an English mind they would
have suggested stufiiness and everything unhealthy, no such
objections presented themselves to a Frenchman.
Plushed with the success which had of late crowned his
literary work, most of all by the vogue of his last vaudeville at
thePalais Royal — UnMarien Foca7ice— Valnois had furnished this
miniature abode of his without counting the cost — all the mora
easily as he had so far neither paid for anything, nor even looked
At the upholsterer's or the hric-d-hrao dealer's invoices. The
rooms were decorated and furnished with a dainty elegance — a
lightness, brightness, and luxurious puffiness and downiness of
upholstery which savoured of the petit maitre, or even of the
petite dame du Quarticr Breda. The chairs were of the povf
species, covered with crimson satin ; the gue'ridons were of that
graceful Louis Seize style which the Empress had lately brouglit
into fashion by her quest of Marie Antoinette relics. Barbe-
dienne bronzes and Oriental jars, choice books in still choicer
bindings, miniatures set in turquoise velvet, rare etchings of
doubtful subjects adorned the walls. Tlie garniture de chemim'e
was in sea-green Sfevres that had belonged to Madame Recamier.
Tlh.e portihres were of old Gobelins tapestry which were suppf)sed
to have once screened the sanctuaries of Luciennes, and multled
the sound of Royal speech and Royal laughter from the oars (rf
»he valelaille in the antechamber. In a word, Mou: icur de
210 Ishmael
Valnois was now lodged as a poet, wit, playwright, and art
critic — an authority on the beautiful — should be lodged, accord-
ing to the eternal fitness of things, whatever might be the
ultimate result to the tradesmen who had supplied the goods.
But it was not alone as the joint author of Un Mart en Vacance
that Hector de Valnois was known to the Parisian public. He
had lately published Mes Nuits Blanches, a volume of short poema
— the jetsam and flotsam of his desultory youth, the concentrated
exiDression of long days of idleness, long nights of uni-est — the
passionate cries of the young unchastened heart, so fierce in
its longings, so vague in the midst of its intensity, so inconstant
even at fever-point. Love, unbelief, the sickly envy of the poor
and the badly placed against the rich and the renowned, the
barren ambition of the dreamer, all found their expression in
this little book. The Muses are the father-confessors of unhappy
youth : and to the Muses Hector de Valnois had revealed the
darkest depths of his heart and mind. The result was piquant ;
the book was a success. All the critics praised, abused, con-
demned, applauded in a breath. Two poems, a page long, were
quoted in almost every review. One — Gethsemane — was blas-
phemous to audacity. The other — Cleopatra — belonged to the
order of composition which ought to be burned by the public
hangman. But as both had a certain weird power, and were
perfect in versification, Hector de Valnois' reputation as one of
the coming men was an accomplished fact. Unhappily, there are
80 many of those coming men who never arrive at the goal, who
join the dismal ranks of the Rate's, the men who have missed
fire, who die in early middle-age voue aii vert, perhaps — brain
softened, limbs tremulous, the man himself numbered among
the dead ever so long before the pompes fun^hres send their hearse
to carry him to the tranchee gratuite yonder in the cemetery where
he once dreamed his tomb would rank with that of Abelard and
Heloise.
Hector's head was not turned by this favouring gale. He
had always believed in himself ; and he was in no wise surprised
that the world called him a genius. He wore his laurels
modestly enough, as a matter of course : and he had his hats
from the best maker in Paris. He abandoned his Bohemian
style of dress for a more fashionable attire ; but there was even
yet a touch of unconventionality about bis costume— a faint
flavour of the student's quarter, the shabby thoroughfares of the
rive gauclie in the vicinity of the Sorbonne, the highway of
youthful footsteps, the place of cafds, and billiard tables, and
'political clubs, and concert-cellars, and the fervour and madness
iii student-life in general.
Hector loved the Rue de Crenelle for two reasons : first,
•ITofj) Weak is Thiwi ncarbl^ 211
because of its old-world air, its grave and grandiose mansions, ita
glimpses of stately town garden — paradise of stonework and
evergreens — its elegant seclusion, its aristocratic repose — every
other house looking as if it were the abode of an ambassador or
a minister of state ; secondly, because it was within a few
minutes' walk of some of tlie queerest old streets in Paris, and
of the Luxembouig, and of the Art Sdiools. He had graduated
in the Quartier Latin before he went to Heidelberg to take the
degree he had failed to get in Paris at a German university.
The wildest nights of his wild youth had been spent in some of
those underground dens, those haunts where the music was as
vile as the liquor, the company viler than either, and where, all
the same, youth fancied itself in a privileged atmosphere, and
gloried in the idea of seeing life.
The taste for these underground concerts had left him. He
had no inclination to revisit Les Ecossaisses, or to renew his
acquaintance with the Salamander, alias Crocodile, nor the
Bas-Ehin, which a few years later was to be made famous by
the feat of Nini laDemocrate, who, for a wager with a rival celeb-
rity, Helhie la Sevhre, drank fifty-live hocks in a single evening.
Feats of a similar nature, though on a scale less lofty, had been
performed even in Hector's time ; and the houris who ministered
to the revellers in these Circean haunts were chiefly distinguished
for the number of glasses w^hich they themselves could consume.
Hector no longer relished these underground orgies, but he
had still a liking for the Quartier Latin, as for a friend of his
youth ; and he played billiards and talked politics, drama, art,
and literature in one or other of the larger cafes three or four
times a week. He had not forsaken any of his old friends on the
strength of his new fame, least of all had he forsaken Paquerette.
' You are a great man now, and we shall never see you any
more,' she said, pouting a little v/ith lips that were rosier than
of yore when he showed her some of the reviews of his book.
' You wall see me only so much the of tener if I am pros-
perous and happy,' he said, smiling at her, smiling with a light
in his eyes which meant so much more than she could read, and
which thrilled her with a sense of mystery. ' I shall come to
you for inspiration : I never feel so full of ideas as when I have
been spending an hour of happy idleness in this room of sphinxes.'
' Oh, those sphinxes ! ' exclaimed Paquerette, with an im-
patient shrug. ' How I detest them ! '
' I adore them. Chief sphinx of the sphinxes, most mysterious
among the mysteries, is the sphinx who walks, and talks, and haa
dreamy blue eyes. I never fathom what that sphinx means. Her
riddle is unguessable ; and yet I cherish a hope that I shall guess
it some day, and that the answer will mean bliss unspeakable.'
212 Ishncxl
* I wisli you would not talk sucli unmeaning nonsense,' eriid
Pdquerette, walking to the window with affected petulance.
She hardly knew what he did mean, but she knew that
she was trembling — trembling so that she needed to lean against
tlie window frame for support, pretending to be looking out into
the diill, silent street, pretending to be interested in emptiness
and nobody, whicli was all that was afforded by the prospect
below her.
' Are you going to the Opera to-night ? " Eigoletto " — with
Eonconi, Mario — his last season, remember, and a new soprano.
' You know I adore "Eigoletto." But you talk such nonsense.
How can I go ? '
' Nothing more easy. You can go with Madame Moque.'
* You have tickets that you can spare 1 '
'I have a tiny box on the up))er tier, which will just hold
two people comfortably and a third uncomfortably. You and
Madame Moque shall have the two comfortable seats, and I will
look in for a few minutes in the evening.'
' But you forget : Madame Moque has to sing at the Cristal.'
* True,' said Hector ; ' there is a difficulty. I suppose you
could hardly go alone ?'
'Impossible ; Ishmael would be angry.'
' And your demoiselles Benott — no, they have a puritanical
air that would spoil our evening,' muttered Hector, who had
discovered some little time ago that the Benolt girls were sus-
picious of his relations with Pdquerette.
Paquerette had her grief against her old friends too, for
big Lisbeth had taken her to task one evening after finding
Monsieur de Valuois sitting at her piano in the dusk, antl had
told her in very plain language that the acquaintance of an
agreeable idler of superior station and culture was not good for
any young wife.
* If Ishmael likes Monsieur Valnois, and does not mind his
coming to see us, why should you find fault ? ' asked Paquerette.
' I know what women are made of better than Monsieur
Ishmael does,' ansAvered Lisbeth, bluntl}^ 'No doubt he
thinks you are an angel, and that you spend all the hours of his
absence in thinking of him and praying for him. Do you think it
would gratify him to know that you are listening to Monsieur
Valnois' son *s or, watchinof Monsieur Valnois draw caricatures ?*
' My life is dull enough, even counting that relief,' said
Paquerette, impatiently.
'Your life was duller in the Rue Sombreuil, whei'e you were
beaten and half starved,' retorted Lisbeth, measuring her from
head to foot with a look of cold contempt— a judicial look,
Avhich weighed her in tlie balance and found her wanting.
^Bow Weak is Tnhia Heart!' 213
She oouid not conceal her scorn for this weak nature— too
Weak even for gratitude, the virtue of the humble-minded ; too
weak for constancy ; too weak for honour. Lisbeth left tlie
house without a word of adieu. She was too angry with
Paquerette for further speech. To have spoken any more
Avould have been to open the floodgates of wrath long held in
check. She, Avho so honoured Ishmael, was enraged at seeing
how little his wife appreciated him. She shrugged her
shoulders and sighed heavily as she walked away from the
quiet street at Mcnilmontant.
The Benolt girls from that hour became, in the mind of
Piiquerette, persons to be avoided. She left off inviting them
on Sundays, and made feeble excuses when her husband asked
why they so seldom appeared in his home. He was too busy to
be curious about trifles— busy with head and hands, weighted
with the serious responsibilities of a growing trade, in which
the master was a cii^her as compared with the foreman.
No ; the Opera would lose half its delight if she were to go
there under the severe eye of Lisbeth, or the keen, suspicious
glances of Pauline, or Toinette.
'Could you not go alone, and let your husband suppose you
under Madame Moque's custody ] We might invent a reldcha
at the Cristal,' suggested Hector, qiiite assured of Paquerette's
longing to occupy a place in that little box on the uppermost
lier.
'Oh, but to deceive him !' cried Paquerette, reddening with
shame.
* What would it matter ? There could be no harm in your
going to the Opera — with me. You would be as safe as with
Ishmael himself. But I can see the way to a compromise.
Madame Moque only sings once in the eyening — her great song,
La Cmsiniere dJenface. She sings at nine o'clock. When her
song is over, she has only to put on her bonnet and shawl and
come on to join you at the O^^era. She can escort j-ou home
afterwards ; and etiquette and Ishmael will be satisfied.'
Paquerette hesitated.
* And I should have to go to the Opera alone,' she said.
* What of that ? Dress yourself i)lainly ; take your ticket
in your hand. You have only to present it, and you will be
ushered into the box, where you can sit as quietly and as safely
as if you were at mass.'
Paquerette was a little frightened at the scheme. She had
never been to the theatre or Opera alone ; never without
Ishmael's full consent and approval. He had usually gone to
meet her and her companion — had been waiting in front of the
playhouse when tliey came out. bhe had nevei' ^et gone to a
214 Ishnacl
theatre with Monsieur de Valnoia. It was the first time he had
suggested such a thing ; and it seemed natural that he should
give her this opportunity of hearing ' Rigoletto,' remembering
the second time they met — in the artists' room at the Cristal —
and how he had talked to her about the new opera.
She hurried off to the Rue Franch-coUine, and after some
persuasion, obtained Madame Moque's promise to join her at
the Opera after she had sung her grand cuisinih'e song, which
she performed in character, with a white apron, bare arms, and
a floury countenance. She would change her stage attire for a
black silk gown and cashmere shawl with briefest delay, take a
cab and drive to the opera house. She would be there before
ten, in time for the quartette. Madame Moque, in her heart
of hearts, cared not a straw for the quartette, which she had
heard murdered so often at her concert-hall ; but she thought it
very likely that Monsieur de Yalnois Avould take them over to
Tortoni's and treat them to ices after the performance ; or he
might, perhaps, go so far as to offer them a little supper at the
Maison Doree. The boulevard at midnight was Lisette's
highest idea of Paradise. And for Ishmael I He would be
sleeping the sleep of the industrious workman, and need never
be told whether his wife went home early or late.
Ishmael was later than usual that evening. Paquerette
Jiad prepared his dinner with more than her accustomed care.
Slie had the table laid and everything ready at half-jiast
six ; and then, finding that her husband did not return, she went
to her room to dress. She had no inclination to dine alone —
could not have eaten anything even if her husband had been
sitting opposite to her. She was feverish with expectation of
pleasure, and with vague fears. Her hands trembled a little
as she dressed herself in her pretty gray merino gown, her straw
bonnet lined with pale pink plush, setting off the milky skin,
lighting up the large blue eyes. She had a cashmere shawl — a
real ofishmere, which had cost five hundred francs, Ishmael's
last gift. Her gloves, her boots, were perfect after their kind.
She felt that she might Bicay^ before kings and be not afraid.
Those fingers of hers, once so unskilled, had grown clever and
deft enough now in the manufacture of pretty things for her
own adornment. Her gowns and her bonnets were the chief
labour of PAquerette's life. Her husband liked to see her
prettily dressed — her grace and beauty gladdened his eye ; and
he never asked how much money she spent on the raw material.
He thought her a model of good sense and economy because she
made her own gowns.
When she was ready and had given a last look at her im.ao-e
in the glass — a lily-face Hushed with faint reii^ctiona of rcrae
*iloio Weak is Tlilna Heart 215
colour, she sat down hurriedly at Ishmael's secretaire and
wrot# him a little note. She was going to the Italian Opera
with Madame Moqueto hear 'Eigoletto ' — he knew how she had
Always longed to hear that divine opera — and Madame Moqvxe
would bring her home. She hoped he would not be angry,
And that the beef would be good. He would only have to
take the soup and the houilli out of the saucepan when he
wanted it.
She put the note on the dinner table, left the beef simmering
on the stove, and tripped away — tripped with light foot
along the road so many have travelled before her ; the beaten
track of sin, which begins in softness and verdure, between
flowery banks, amidst the song of birds and the scent of roses,
and which ends in a pathway of shards and aslies hemmed in
"^th hedges of thorn and briar.
She was a little afraid of going into the theatre alone even
furnished with the bos ticket which Hector had given her ; but
she was spared this difficulty, for as she turned into the Place
Ventadour, she almost ran into Valnois' arms.
' I found I could get here eai'ly,' he said, and they went into
the big, grand-looking opera house together, Paquerette looking
about her as they went along, flushed and breathless.
A great crash of drums and brass came from the oi'chestra
like a judgment peal as they were going upstairs, and it scared
Paquerette almost as if it had been the last trump.
It was a long way to ascend. They went past the foyer
with its gilded pillars and many mirrors — past corridor after
corridor, were jostled by men and women in evening dress, until
at last they came to the little box on the topmost tier. Then,
as Paquerette drew aside the curtain and looked out, the glory
and the splendour of the vast theatre burst upon her in a blazo
of light, and colour, and diamonds, and beautiful women. It
was a fashionable night in the early days of the Empire. Yes,
that was the Empress yonder in all her gracious beauty, fair as a
lily, and with that coronal of golden hair which was a new and
lovely image in the eyes of men, for it had not yet been
degraded and vulgarised by tawdry imitations. She was dressed
in white, with a diamond cross upon her neck, and a string of
pearls in her hair, the most simply-dressed woman in all that
vast assembly. The age of inordinate luxury in dress had begun,
and siiKS and velvets, and diamonds, plumes and flowers made
a dazzle and confusion of colour in the intense light of the place.
It seemed to Paquerette as if every man in the house wore a star
upon his breast, as if every woman had a diamond necklace.
The overture was hurrying to the gra.nd crescendo of the close,
but ^he only heard the music as in a dream. That spectacle of
213 Islmael
the crowded aiullence absorbed and roastered all lier eensea. Sba
was nothing but eyes.
Presently the curtain rose, her spirits grew calmer, and her love
of music, which was a passion, regained the ascendant. She forgot
the diamonds, the loveliness, the sheen and shimmer of velvet and
silk in yonder dazzling semi-circle, and she concentrated her
attention on the stage and the singers. Hector sat behind her
quite in shadow, his arm resting on the back of her chair, his
head leaning forward a little, so that his chin almost touched
her shoulder, and the perfume of his hair was in her nostrils.
They were as much alone in the great crowded theatre as if they
had been in one of the glades of Fontainebleau. Later, in
Die second act, when the tragic interest of the stage had
deepened, when there was a hush in the darkened house,
I'aquerette found that they two were sitting hand in hand like
acknowledged lovers. She knew not when he had taken her
hand in his, but she did not try to withdraw from that firm and
fervent clasp. She lifted her eyes to his presently, in the half-
darkness, and in that meeting of impassioned eyes there was a
full confession. Prevarication, denial after that, would have
l:)een worse than useless. The secret, w^hich had been no secret
to him for the last six weeks^. was told at once and for ever.
From that moment she surrendered herself to the sweetness of
Iier sin. She never pretended to be true to her husband, or to
fight the good fight. The little hand lay in his like the pebble
it. the brook ; the mournful eyes looked into his, full of the love
wliicli for such weak souls as hers means fatality.
A knock at the box door startled them like a voice from
the dead.
' ^V'ho can it be ?' faltered Paquerette, starting to her feet.
' i\Iadame Moque, perhaps,' suggested Hector, whose nerves
were not (juite so highly strung as those of his companion.
* INIadame Moque — yes, I had forgotten,' murmured Paque-
rette, as she opened the door.
It was the lively Lisette, bustling, breathless, eager, with
powdery complexion and bright black eyes, set off by cheeks of
vivid bloom. Her cashmere shawl was plastered across her
chest in the last fashionable style, and she made a great display
of bonnet strings.
' You must have wondered what had become of me,' she
exclaimed as she planted herself in front of the box, took her
lorgnette, and began a general scrutiny of the audience.
' Is it late ? ' Paquerette asked, innocently.
* Is it late ? Nearly eleven. I thought I should never get
away from that taudis yonder. The peojjle would liave the
(JuUiniere over again, and then they called for Mle se mov^t
*Ilow Wcciic is Thine Heart I ^ 217
trop. I tlionght I should never get away. There is the Ducliessa
Vieille-Eoche, and the Vicomtesse Lis-Fane. "What a house 1
And there; yes, it is '
'Don't excite yourself,' interjected Hector, as Madame Moqne
squared her elbows and directed her lorgnette at a box on the
pit tier as if she had been taking aim with a gun.
* Zanita ! ' exclaimed Madame Moque.
^ Hector's eyes followed the direction of the lorgnette, and
Paquerette looked over his shoulder. He put his arm round her
to draw her into the right position for seeing that central box
at the bottom of the theatre — a large box, very open, very much
en evidence- cTo\{(\.Qd with men whose breasts glittered with
orders like a court in miniature. A woman sat in the midst,
lolling back in her chair, fanning herself languidly — a woman
of girlish, or even child-like aspect, very fair, very slender, with
hair lighter and less golden than the Empress's, arranged loosely,
fliiffily, above the small head, with diamonds gleaming here and
there amidst the feathery pile. This was Zanita— the woman
who was said to have graduated in the gutter somewhere by the
Boulevard de la Chapelle, to have drunk the cup of degradation
to the dregs, before she became the rage of Paris.
She,_ like the Empress, was simply dressed. These great
reputations are not sustained by common finery. She wore a
white frock, like a schoolgirl's, cut very low ujjon the milk-whi{«
shoulders, revealing the full length of the slim, beautifully-
rounded arm ; but as she turned suddenly to address one of her
court, Pdquerette saw a coruscation of white light flash from
her neck like electric fire, and for the first time perceived that
the slender throat was encircled by a diamond necklace, which,
for brilliancy, outshone all other gems in the crowded house.
' What an innocent look the viper has ! ' said Hector, when
he had gazed his fill.
'Why do you call her a viper? Is she so very wicked ?'
asked Paquerette, still looking at the slim, supple figure- the
putit museait chiffonne which, was hardly to be called beauty, the
\areles3 feathery hair, and simple China crape gown.
' She has slain more people than any assassin who was ever
jent to the guillotine or the galleys ; she has done more cruel
things than St. Arnaud when he roasted the Arabs in a cave ;
she has ruined more families than any fraudulent banker in
England, where they grow that kind of thing to perfection.
Fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, have cursed her name.
She has peopled the Morgue with its most distinguished lodgers.
She is a pestilence — a smiling, sparkling, amusing scourge. If
she were to ask me to supper to-night, I should go, nvA laugh
at her jokes, and admiie her Sevres china, and ho])-nob
218 IsJimael
with the princes and ambassadors who are her playfellows. 1
should come away abusing her ; but I should go all the same.
She is liEe absinthe, which everybody drinks nowadays. She is
a vice, and she means death ; but the vi<;e is a pleasant vice, and
nobody counts the cost.'
Pfi,querette felt a pang of jealousy as he spoke.
* Promise me that j'ou will never go to her house — never ! *
Ae said, eagei'ly, drawing closer to him, claiming him as her own
by the pretty vehemence of her air, the look in her eyes, which
seemed to say, ' You are mine, and she shall not have you.'
' She is not very likely to ask me,' he answered ; ' and if she
were to ask, you have but to say, Do not go,' he added, in a
tenderer voice. ' I am your slave from this night. I obey you
in all things henceforth. Love has no meaning if it does not
mean obedience.'
His voice was so low, that only the ears of love could have
lieard him, but it was loud enough for Paquerette. Madame
Moque was of no consequence, and her head was half out of
the box as she directed her lorgnette from group to group,
and finally settled down in a deliberate contemjjlation of the
Empress.
And now the quartette began, and Paquerette thrilled at
the sound of those familiar chords.
'Do you remember the night you first heard this?' asked
Hector.
She gave a faint sigh, which meant yes.
'So do I,' ho whispered. 'I told myself that night we
were created for each other. Fate has come between us since
then ; but my instinct was true all the same '
CHAPTER XXIII
*AS A BIRD THAT WANDERBTH: FROM HER NEST '
An offer of sujjper at the Maison Dor^e, or the Restaurant
Vachette, was made, as Lisette had anticipated, but Paquerette
refused, much to her chaperon's vexation.
'Indeed, I could not eat anything,' she protested, Avhen
Hector pressed the point, suggesting the Passage Jouffroy, if
they did not like the full glare of the boulevard, or even the
Palais Royal, though that was out of the way ; or they might
go to Philippe's— the Rocher de Cancale, quietest and most classic
of haunts, in his own old neighbourhood, the Rue Montorgueil.
Pdquerette thought it was cruel to talk of supper when lier
nerves were strung to their utmost tension, when she seemed
walking in a new, strange world, and upon pavements that were
made of air, and had no more idea of ever being hungry or
thirsty again than a sylph has.
* It is the very hour for Tortoni's,' said Hector, when he had
run the gamut of the restaurants as best known to gandin and
Bohemian. ' You shall at least take an ice.'
He led them across the boulevard in the midst of horses and
carriages, and they went to an upstairs room at the famous con-
fectioner's where, forty years before, when Tortoni's was a
rendezvous for statesmen and princes, wits and autliors, Spolar,
the crack billiard player of the first Empire, used to exhibit his
skill to the delight of such men as Talleyrand and Montrond,
and where the head waiter, Provost, wore hair powder, ajid
combined the manners of Versailles and Marly with an equivocal
dexterity in the art of giving deficient change.
The windows were open to the balcony, and Paquerette could
see the lights and bustle of the boulevard — carriages pulling up
in front of the perron, beauty and fashion alighting, with gar.
inents blown by the chill March wind. It was a clear spring
night — stars shining, moon rising above the house-tops yonder,
Paris aU alive with the sound of voices, the hurrying to and fro of
feet. These was an excitement in the very air men breathed just
now, for the rumour of an impending war grew louder every day.
The Bourse was in a ferment, and that great question as to the
custody and ownership of the keys of the Holy Places, the sub-
terranean shrines and churches of Bethlehem and Gethsemane,
which had long been agitating clerical circles, had taken a new
220 Isl
nnaei
development and meant a .sfreat war in whicli France and Eng-
land, the old enemies of Crecy and Waterloo, the hereditary
foes of six hundred years, were to fight shoulder to shoulder
against tlie northern foe.
The alliance was popular, the war was popular, and the sons
of Gaul were flushed and glad with the prospect of the strife.
Perhaps Paris had never been in better spirits tlian at this
fieiiod of her history. Those early years of the second Empire
lad been a time of golden harvests, of wonderful fortunes,
wonderfully and fearfully made. It was a day of speculation,
of estates and leimtations staked upon the hazards of the Stock
Exchange. The demon of chance had set his claw in the hearts
of men and vromen of every class and of every rank. Workmen
sold their furniture, wives robbed their husbands, clerks
embezzled their employers' money, to stake it at the great
national gambling house. They crowded the gates of the
temple, they thronged the pavements. From afar even, from
quiet townships and villages, the people brought their savings
of long years to stake them on the last new enterprise which
promised the highest percentage. Of those who lost their all
in this wikl game Paris had heard very little : for them she
shed no tear ; but she could point triumphantly to the men
who had made their fortunes — men whose spotless primrose
gloves covered hands which had lately known no cover save
the jiockets of a shabby overcoat. Vainished boots shone upon
feet that hall but now been slipshod ; whitest cuflfs were worn by
some with whom a shirt was once an uncertainty ; overcoats
])roke out into collars and linings of velvet or satin ; and the
luiknown citizen of yesterday was to-day the patron of the arts,
the purchaser of cashmere shawls at ten thousand francs, and
dragon jars from the spoils of an Imperial palace.
Xapoleou the Third had not disap25ointed the hopes of those
tradesmen of Paris who looked forward to a new Empire as a
millennium for the upholsterer and the jeweller, the milliner
and the coachbuilder. The Emperor did all in his power, both
by precept and example, to encourage lavish expenditure. It
was his hand Avhich set tlie ball rolling that has never stopped
since then, despite the preaching of moralists, the failure of
banks, the ruin of innumerable weaklings tempted by the
universal example to an expenditure beyond their means. The
expenditure did good in its day ; the possessors of these
saddenly-acquired fortunes gave a new impetus to art and
commerce, stimulated invention, fostered genius. The streets
of Paris were glorified by the splendours of the newly rich, the
extravagant ou'dayof men and women to whom it was rapture
to wallow in gold, to waste, to spend, to give even, though that
'As a Bird that WancUreth from her Nest* 221
pleasure is tamer. Never before were sncli ciniagcs and horsea
seen as those which gave life and motion to the scenic beauty
of the Champs-Elysdes and the Bois de Boulogne, a new creation
of park and parte7re which was gradually being developed from
tho woodland simplicity of an uncultivated landscape.
The Emperor was keeping pace with the electric eagerness
of his subjects. New markets, new boulevards, new bridgi_'.s
were in progress, works of Augustan grandeur. Already the
dens and alleys of old Paris were being marked for destruction.
Might not this usurper by-and-by paraphrase the boast of the
Roman, and say that he had found Paris a city of slums, and
that he left her a city of palaces ?
Nothing could surpass the success, the popularity of the
Imperial rule in those days. It was the honeymoon of France
and the Emperor. The Fi-ench love a new Government, and
this Empire of wealth and splentlour, this Government of men
in varnished boots, this era of money-making and money-spend-
ing, was the veiy ideal regime of the Parisian bourgeoisie^ and
as Paris is France, and as the bourgeois is the most important
factor in Parisian politics, the Emperor had the nation at his
feet.
It was upon this glorified Paris that Paquerette looked out
in the March midnight, between lamplight and starshine. The
theatres had disgorged their crowds, the cafes on the boulevard
were at their apogee. It was the last hour of harmless idleness,
of open, innocent pleasui'e. A little later, and most of those
bright facades would be darkened, the crowd would have melted
away, and vice and crime, the painted houris, the night prow-
lers, wouhl have the pavements to themselves save for the
steady footfall of an occasional sergent-de-ville tramping on his
monotonous beat like a fine piece of mechanism that could not
possibly work wrong.
Paquerette ate her ice slowly, dreamily, scarcely tasting the
delicate fiavour of last summer's strawberries, the exotic aroma
of crushed vanilla. She was listening to Hector de Valnois'
lowered voice as he stood by her side in the window telling the
old, old story — the tempter's story, which the serpent whispered
to Eve four thousand years ago, and which the ears of all Eve's
daughters absorb to- day as if it were the newest invention in
the world.
To Paquerette the story seemed full of strangeness and
wonder. She had been wooed before, she had been won before^
■wooed honestly, truthfully, soberly, by a good and brave man :
won easily because it had been her convenience to be won.
Life had been very blank for her when Tshmael ofi'ered to sharo
and guard her lot. She had Hung herself into his arms as the
222 Ishnael
bird, scaiod by the terrors of an unknown world, flies back to
its cage. But there had been no wild rapture in that wooing,
very little passion on either side. Her heart had never been
touched as it was touched to-night. She had never before been
tempted to surrender conscience, honour, life even, as she was
to-night for the love of the lover who pleaded to her.
Lisette was fond of ices. She ate two of Tortoni's largest
make, and had a glass of maraschino afterwaixls to prevent the
ices doing her any harm. She was so completely occupied by
her consumption of this refreshment and by her observation of
the people who were sitting at the little tables — the women in
fashionable gowns, the men in fashionable overcoats and gibus
hats, that she took very little notice of those two standing by
the window. And they seemed unconscious of her and of all
the outside world, or saw it only as a picture— a piece of moving
dumb-show passing before their eyes, as they looked down at
the boulevard wiih its long lines of lamps, its glittering cafes
and theatres.
' Zanita is not so beautiful as I expected her to be,' said
Pdquerette, by-and-by, after a pause, her thoughts reverting
idly to the box on the pit tier and its little court of men with
stars and ribands.
' Beautiful ! Nobody ever called her beautiful,' answered
Hector, lightly. ' She is chic ; she is the fashion ; people talk
about her — that is all. They will talk about somebody else
next year ; and Zanita will be forgotten. It is a short life and
a merry one.'
' And the end may be sad.'
*The end may be the hospital, or the river, or a brilliant
jaarriage. Such women as Zanita have made great marriages
bef oi-e to-day. Who can fathom the depth of a fool's folly ? '
They went down to the boulevard again, Lisette following
them. On the steps of Tortoni's they brushed against a man of
middle-age, slender, elegant-looking, with the graceful figure of
youth, but with the careworn forehead, faded eyes, and iron
gray hair and moustache of advanced years.
He recognised Hector with a careless nod, and houonred
Paquerette with a deliberate stare.
' Who is that ? ' asked Paquerette, as they passed on.
' A kinsman of mine. Balzac says that in every family
there is one member whose existence is the disease of the rest.
That man who passed just now is our family malady.'
' He looks like a gentleman,' said Paquerette, wonderingly.
' He is a whited sepulchre. The history of that man is full
of dark and secret pages. I never see him without a cold
shiver. And bow my name has come before the public, I don't
*As a Bird that Wanclercth from her Nest' 223
Bnppose he will let me alone very long. Ha is a ni.an who haa
always lived upon his fellow-creatures, and no doubt I shall
count for something among his resources. I shall have to go up
and be taxed.'
It was nearly one o'clock. Paquerette began to be
frightened, and to hurry her footsteps. \Vtiat would Ishmael
say ? Hector reassured her, declaring that her husband would
be absorbed by his books and drawings, and would not know
the hour. There were no public clocks in that desert region
yonder where Paquerette lived.
'It is the dullest street in all Paris,' she said, shuddering.
*I hate to go back there : it is like going into a tomb.'
Hector walked with them to the end of the street, and there
he and Paquerette parted with silent pressure of lingering
bands, with eyes looking into eyes under the street lamp— a
parting which foretold of meetings to come although no words
were spoken. Lisette accompanied her young friend to the
apartment on the second floor. If there was to be a quarrel
between husband and wife, she would be there to shield the
offender. She had taken Paquerette under her wing long ago ;
and unhappily, she had now taken Hector under her wing also.
He pleased her, he dominated her by his poetical looks and
patrician air. He belonged to the world which had always
been the world of her choice and of her aifection, not the
world of honest labour and patience in well-doing.
Ishmael had gone to one of his political clubs, and the
conclave had lasted until late. He had not yet returned.
There was a little note for Paquerette on the mantelpiece :
' As you are enjoying yourself at the opera, I shall go to the
Cercle de Lafayette,' wrote Ishmael. 'There is to bea grand debate
to-night, and I dare say I shall be late. Don't wait up for me.'
Paquerette breathed more freely. She dreaded the sight of
her husband's face. It was a relief to stave ofl' the evil hour of
their meeting.
If she could have told him the truth— that she had long ceased
to love him — that she had given the strongest feelings of which
her heart and brain were capable to another ! Unhappily,
candour is not easy in a case of this kind. The burden of sin
might be lessened, perhaps, by some hard and bitter truths ,
but hand in hand with the dark shade of sin travels the shadow
called shame ; and they two must creep on together by obscm-e
passages, by loathsome lanes and foulest winding ways, rather
than face the broad light of day. Almost for the first time since
her baby's death, Paquerette lay down to rest without saying her
prayers, and without looking at the distant ffiuveyai-d where the
little one lay.
22 i Ishnael
Ishmael went hig way through the bright days of April and
May, the balmier time of June, untroubled by any doubt of his
wife's loyalty, or by any apprehension of her danger. He was
not a careless husband, but he was a husband whose life was so
full of work, and of all-absorbing interests connected with that
woik, OS to leave no margin for morbid fancies or jealous fears.
He loved his wife as much as he had ever yet loved woman,
though not, perhaps, so fondly as he had loved those baby
brotliers of his. After his fashion, he was honestly and faithfully
a,ttacl)ed to her. She had not touched his deepest feelings — she
had not entered tliat holy of holies in the heart of man which
opens to receive but one image in a lifetime. The altar in that
sanctuai-y was still empty, the lamp unlighted. She had moved
him to pity her ; she had made him fond of her, joroud even of
her graceful prettiness, the growing refinement of her thoughts
and ways. But she had not gone further than this. She had
not made herself the sharer of his hopes and dreams, the chosen
companion of his life. Her society was not all the world to him —
not all-sutficient company for mind as well as heart. He had
hoped at first that she would become all this, that she would
learn to be interested in all that was vital to his success ; but he
found after a little while that it was not in her nature to care
intensely for anything outside the narrow circle of her own small
interests and frivolous pleasures. Her piano was more to Iut
than all the life-blood in all the hearts of Paris. A new song
moved her more than the mightiest convulsions that stirred her
country. This talk of an im]")ending war in the East, for
instance— a war which, however victorious for France, must
inevitably swallow up thousands of French soldiers in a great
gulf of blood and fire — hardly moved her with one thrill of fear
or grief. She could not realise the pain and loss of others outside
the little space which was her world.
' Yovi will not have to fight, will you ? ' she asked her husband,
with a touch of anxiety.
' No. love. I had a lucky number drawn for me two years
ago at Eennes, and I am exempt. A good priest I know looked
alter the business.'
That w^ all she cared to know. The cannon might thunder,
France and the foe might roll in the dust, destroying and
destroyed, so long as the horror and the terror of it all came
not across her path.
This little rift within the lute, this lack of sympathy between
liusband and wife, had gradually widened to a great gulf. Ishmael
had come to regard his pretty young wife as the ornament of hia
domestic existence — a something to be cherished and cared for,
to be kept beautiful and neat, but not as the half of his life. If
'As a Bird that Wandcnth from her Nest* 225
he Were worried, he told Paquerette uothing of his trouble ; if lie
were flushed with sorue new idea, some improvement or invention
which might bring him gain and fame in the future, he did not
ask her to share his hopes. He had tried to interest her in his
work, to explain the beauties of the mechanical arts, but she had
not even tried to understand him. She had shrugged her
BhouHers and turned away from his diagrams with disgust.
Why could he not draw caricatures after Gavarni— soldiers, battle-
scenes, after Meissonier, as Hector de Valnois did, instead of
those everlasting wheels, and angles, and numerals, which he was
for ever jotting with his clumsy pencil ?
Eefused all sympathy where it would have pleased him best
to find it, Ishmael became daily more devoted to his work and
his studies. That thirst for knowledge which had been an instinct
with him as a little child on board the steamer — when he wanted
to know why the engine did this or that, and what made the
waves rise and fall, and why the s,un was red in the evening —
was still a part of his nature. Like that heaven-born mathe-
matician. Clerk Maxwell — who used to question his mother about
everything he saw, 'What is the go of it?' *Yes,' when
inadequately enlightened, ' but what's the particular go of it ? ' —
Ishmael wanted to learn the ' particular go ' of everything which
he had to do ; and he had, by reason of this eager curiosity,
advanced from the rudimentary labours of a simple gdcheur to a
very considerable mastery of the mechanical arts as involved in
the trade of a builder and contractor. Nor had he narrowed hia
mind within the circle of his own interests. His evening
recreations, always of an intellectual kind, took him among circles
where all things in heaven and earth were discussed with the fever
of youth and enthusiasm. His clubs were democratic clubs, for
albeit proscription had thinned the ranks of Eepublicanism, and
the shining lights were for the most part languishing in the
purlieus of Leicester Square, and wasting their eloquence in the
restaurantsof EupertStreet and Castle Street, there were thinkerd
and talkers among the Eeds still left in Paris, dreamers who
cherished the old impossible dream of a France self -governed, a
democracy of all the talents. Strange for those who have survived
\mtil to-day to discover that a Eepublic is ever so much more
costly an institution than even an Empire, and that nepotism and
place-hunting, and bloated sinecurists, and cats that catch no
mice can thrive as well under the flag of the people as under
golden eagles and an Imperial master.
All young men are Eadicals at heart, and Ishmael had a sneak-
ing fondness for the Eeds in these early years of the Empire,
albeit he could see that the new master of France was doiii
great things for the country, most of all in the building line, aui
225 Islimael
was a man to be resj)ected as a Lard- working and intelligent
ruler, and not a king of Yvetot.
Islimael read aU tlie Eepublican autliors— Ilugo, Schoelch'?r,
Lammenais, Eugfene Sue. He read the papers of all colours,
and could survey the political horizon from more than one stand-
point ; and as he read and investigated, his faith in the Empire
grew stronger, and he began to speak in his club on the side
of established power, and to be known as an Imperialist. He
Kiw great works inaugurated, houses built for the labouring
classes, hospitals, charitable institutions of all kinds arising in
the outskirts of Paris. He saw the city prosperous, beloved
of the world, a place to which the strange nations flocked, bring-
ing their gold as tribute. If there were rottenness under this
eeeraing prosperity, luhmael had not found it out.
The summer wore on, the allied armies were marching upon
Varna, and the Eussians, after terrible repulses and losses, had
raised the siege of Silistria. "War news was eagerly waited for
in Paris ; but of that fatal expedition to the marshes and deserts
of the Dobrutja which cost France so many of her bravest
soldiers the Parisians were told very little in those days. It ia
only long after a war, in the journals of doctors and newspaper
men, that the dark story of disease and famine, the shameful
details of mismanagement and neglect, become known to the
world.
There was trouble nearer home than in the swamps washed
by the Danube. The pestilence which raged in those Roumanian
deserts, in the tainted atmosphei'e of Varna, was doing its deadly
work in France and in England. This year of plenteous harvests
aiid overflowing barns, prosperous vineyards and luxuriant hop
gardens, was also a year of death. While the golden gram
riiiened and the grape purpled under the sunmier sun, while tha
husbandman shouldered his sickle and trudged through dewy
fields to his harvesting, that other Eeaper, whose crop never fails,
rested neither by day nor night, and his barns, too, were overflow-
ing, and his garners were fuU. That year of 1854 was one of
those terrible seasons which are remembered as cholora years.
A cloud of death hung over the crowded slums of Paris and
London. The black flag hung at the entrances of streets and
alleys, warning the stranger of his peril. It was a dreadful time ;
and yet the daily work of men and women went on, houses were
built as well as coflins, the clink of the hammer sounded cheerily
on the new boulevards and in the new markets, and there were
meiTymakings and holidays, and the ribald jesters who make
light of heaven and hell cried, as of old, ' A ta sant^, Morbus ! ' aa
they tossed off their cor/)ie or their pe'trole at the wine-shops on the
road to the overcrowded cemetery, where the gox-ged earth refused
*As a Bird that Wandereth from her Nest' 227
to perform its office of purification, and the reeking field was on«
foul mass of corruption and decay.
Islimael lauglied to scorn all danger for himself, but he was
full of care for Paquerette. He looked at her anxiously every
evening when he came from his work, took her little hands in
his, and drew her towards him in the full light of the window
to see if there were any sign of the spoiler in that delicate face.
But Death, the Spoiler, had set no mark upon Paquerette's beauty.
There was a worse enemy at work, and Ishmael saw no sign of
that greater evil.
Never had Paquerette looked prettier than in these August
evenings. She knew how to set off her beauty to the utmost
advantage ; she had acquired the art of dress to the highest per-
fection compatible with small means. She followed the fashions
with an admirable dexterity, which imparted to cheap cashmere
and a straw bonnet all the grace and style of famous milliners
in the Court quarter. And there was a new brightness in her
manner that heightened her delicate prettiness — a light in her
eyes, a flush upon her cheek, a faintly tremulous look in the
half-parted lips which recalled the image of a bird poising itself
on quivering wings before flashing into sudden flight. Ishmael
remembered just such a look in her face that day at Vincennes
when, almost strangers to each other, he held her in his arms as
they waltzed to the music of the cracked old organ on the
scantily-trampled greenswai'd.
Ishmael was nervous about his wife's comings and goings at
this time of pestilence. He questioned her more closely than
of old as to where she went, warned her against infected neigh-
boui-hoods. They were only too near the fever-dens of that
terrible Passage Menilmontant, with its double range of low
houses, black with the grime of centuries ; its blind windows,
and dark and filthy entrances, which look like the openings of
caverns ; its population of rag-pickers, sewer men, dealers in
broken glass ; its foul odours from gutter and muck-heap mixed
with the reek of coarsest viands ; its low-biowed, murderous
wine-shops, where bottles and knives play their part in many a
midnight brawl, and whei-e, in the gray light of next morning,
the patron wipes the stains from tables where the red splashes
are as often of blood as of wine. Here the cholera-fiend might
be supposed to find congenial quartei's, to hold high revel in a
nest that had been prepared for his coming.
Ishmael entreated Paquerette to avoid all such neighbour-
hoods, to take the broad airy highways when she went for her
walks, to be careful what shoj^s she entered ; in a word, to go
about as little as possible.
• If I were to take your advice, T should make myself ill by
228 Ishmatt
staying at home, she answered, fretfully, one morning when he
was particularly urgent in his lecture. ' I should get the cholera
merely from brooding upon it. Monsieur Vielboistold me there
was nothing so bad as fear and low spirits. You need not be
afraid that I shall go for a walk in the Passage M^nilmontant :
it is quite bad enough to live within a quarter of a mile of that
detestable place. I seldom go anywhere except to Madame
Moque's, and I generally do all my marketing with her.'
' I am glad of that,' said Ishmael. ' Lisette is a clever
woman, and she won't lead you into danger. Oh ! by the bye, you
have given me so many c/(a?-cw(!erie dinners of late. You know I
am not particular what I eat, but one gets tired of that kind of
thing day after day — a perpetual flavour of garlic and sage, or
that faint taste of stale truffles ; and when a man has to be about
all day using his arms and legs, a more nourishing diet is better.'
' I thought you liked me to deal with the Moques,' retorted
his wife, sullenly.
Forgetfulness and indifference had been growing upon her
of late in regard to all domestic affairs. She thought more of
a pair of new gloves or bonnet strings than of her husband's
dinner ; and just at the last, as she was hurrying home from a
day in fairer scenes, she would look in at Moque's en passant, and
ask him to send something — anything — for dinner at once ; and
in this manner Ishmael had been made to consume a good deal
of the rchU of the charcutier's shop.
' Yes, I like you to deal there for anything we really want,'
answered Ishmael, quietly. He was not the man to lose hia
temper for such a detail as a bad dinner seven days a week.
' But we need not live all the year round upon cold pig to oblige
Lisette's husband. Beef and mutton are an agreeable variety,
and a good deal more wholesome. Let us have beef and mutton
in future, my pet.'
' That means that I am to be at home all the afternoon to
cook the dinner,' said Paquerette, petulantly.
^ '^\xre\y a, pot-au-feu is not such a troublesome biisiness as
that 1 Why, what a little gadabout you have grown 1 *
Paquerette crimsoned and looked down.
'My life is so dull in this dreary room,' she said, * with thoac
intolerable sphinxes staring at me all day long.'
' You have your piano, dear.'
* If I hadn't, I should go mad. I tell you it does me good to
get into the air. You are out all day. Why should I be cooped
up within four walls ? '
' There is some diiTerenoe,' answered Ishmael, gravfly. ' I
have to go out to work for our daily bread, while you have only
the home to think about.'
i
*As a Bird that Wan dcrcth from her Nest' 229
'If I were not to go out now and then, home would be as bad
as St. Lazare,' retorted Paquerette, petulantly. 'I would rather
be back in the Rue Sombreuil, where I could sit in the yard all
day. At least, I could see a little bit of sky overhead, and hear
voices from twenty open windows, and see faces and people
coming and going. This house is like a tomb.'
' It is something to be in a respectable house wbere there are
only honest people,' answered Ishmael, feeling nearer anger thnii
he had ever yet felt with Paquerette. ' I don't think you ought
to complain of the dulness of your life. Of late you have gone
to a theatre or a concert two or three times a week. I wondei'
Lisette can so often get away from the Cristal.'
* They are tired of hei at the Ciistal,' said Paquerette, shortly.
'They want newer faces, younger singers. If you would only
have let me sing my little patois songs at the Cristal, I should
have been able to earn forty or fifty francs a week, and then t/ou
would not be the only person to earn our daily bread.'
These last words were sjjoken with a sneer, the token of
irritated nerves. Paquerette kept glancing at the solemn black-
faced clock between the bronze sphinxes. Iler husband had
come home to breakfast, and was returning to his work later
than usual. She expected a letter, a letter which must not be
delivered while Ishmael was there, and she was in agonies.
' My child, how pale you are ! ' cried her husband, pausing
with casquette in hand. * I'm afraid you are ill.'
'No, no ; only a little nervous. You worry me so with all
that solemn talk about nothing. There, there ! don't belatefot
your work. You shall have beef for your dinner, as much as
you can eat — beef par dessus la tetej and I will not make my
debut at the Palais de Cristal : that is all past and done with.'
' My pet, can you wonder that I refused to let you appear
before that rabble yonder? You, my wife, with bare arms and
ehoulders, and a painted face, like the rest of them ! The very
thought of it fills me with horror.'
* I might have appeared at the opera and made a mad success
—like Bosio, perhaps, but for you,' she said, gloomily. ' It ig
hard, when God has given one talent, to be obliged to hide one's
light under a bushel.'
' My dear, the time may come when your light will not be so
hidden,' answered Ishmael, with infinite patience. ' I may be a
rich man some day; and then you can sing to an audience whose
praise wiU be worth having •without appearing on a public
Btage.'
' " May be," and " some day," ' mocked Paquerette. ' I have
heard those words bcfoie. The grandfather used to say he
would be rich some day.'
^30 ishmaei
Ishinae/ etoopcd to kiss her reluctant lips, and went his way
without another word. "What good is there in arguing with a
spoilt child crossed in its fancy ?
When he went home that evening Piquerette was absent as
usual, but there was a large piece of beef simmering in the pot-
au-feu, from which rose a goodly odour of vegetable soup, and
the cloth was laid neatly with a solitary cover.
Beside the wine bottle there lay a letter in Father Bressant's
quaint, cramped hand — a brief letter, but to the purpose, and
quite long enough to spoil Ishmael's dinner.
' Go at once to Pen-Hoiil,' wrote the priest. * The pestilence
has been busy in our poor village, and there has been great
trouble at the chS,teau. Lose no time if you would see your
father alive. If I am spared, I shall meet you there.'
Ishmaei wrote a line to Paquerette telling her that he was
going to Brittany to see a relative dangerously ill. He left her
money enough to last for a fortnight, but hoped to be back with
her in a week. He promised to write as soon as he arrived at
his destination ; urged her to keep up her spirits and take care
of her health. She coidd stay with Madame Moque during his
absence if she felt dull or nervous alone.
He left his dinner untasted. On his way out he looked into
the neat little shop where Madame Morice sokl her groceries,
her chocolate a la vanille, pate d'Jtalie, burnt onions for gravies,
and little bottles of mushrooms and anchovies in oil, the refine-
ments of the grocer's trade, which had but a small sale in that
neighbourhood ; only the Morices were a prudent and a frugal
couple, neither' gave nor took credit, lived upon little, and con-
trived to make a small business profitable.
' I am called away into the country by illness,' said Ishmaei,
hurriedly. ' If you can look after my wife a little in my absence,
chh-e dame, I shall take it as a favour. She may mope while I
am gone, poor child ! '
' I do not think Madame will mope very much,' answered the
bonrgeoise, with a curious slirug o£ her shoulders ; * but I >¥in do
wl)ut I can— for your sake,'
CHAPTER XXIV
MESSENGERS OF DEATH '
The rail carried Islimael to Chartres between night-fall and
morning. He started for Alen^on on the hanquette of a dili-
gence in the gray light of a September dawn, with a cold wind
creeping over the house-tops and along the empty streets. From
Alen9on another diligence took him to FougJ^res. On alighting
at the inn where the diligence stopped, he found the only person
astir was a sleepy waiter in a Salle a manger redolent of the
fumes of last night's wine and last night's tobacco blended with
faint, fetid odours left by the dinners of tlie last week. This
person informed him that the diligeuce for Pontorson did not
Btart till two o'clock in the afternoon ; so, after some difficulty,
he negotiated the hire of a horse, for which he left nearly all the
contents of his pocket-book by way of deposit. Mounted on
this unknown brute, which behaved after the manner of Nor-
mandy horses for the first two or three miles, he left the antique
town, with its picturesque castle and mediteval towers, and rode
at a steady six miles an hour towards the boundary line of
Brittany. How strange and yet how familiar the landscape
seemed to him ! — the long straight road, now ascending and nov,^
descending by many a gentle undulation, and by some steepish
hills ; the quiet fields, so dim and gray, and unreal under the
morning mists. The tall poplars, the luxuriant hedgei'ows, the
narix)w streams. How different from that stony wilderness ia
which he had lived for the last three years amidst the ceaseless
din of voices, the everlasting thread of multitudinous feet !
What a feeling of peace in the air ! What a holy stillness,
bi'oken only by the cry of the corncrake or the croaking of frogs
in a marshy corner under the alder hedge yonder. The old
scenes, the old atmosphere brought back the memory of oUl
stories, old superstitions, which he had heard told again and again
beside the wide chimney place in the kitchen at Pen-Hoel, where.
the little hunchbacked, sandy-haired tailor employed on the
premises to make liveries for the coachman and footman wa^i
received into the friendly circle after supper and made much of
for the sake of his inexhaustible fund of anecdote and legend.
From the tailor's pallid lips, or from the wandering Pillawer,
admitted to the kitchen hearth for an eveniiig, and lodged in. a
stable or a barn for the night after, Ishniael had learnt all that
232 Iskmael
he knew of his native proTince. From these he had heard many
an awful story of shipwreck, and of the old prayer of the sailor,
' Lord, save us ! our boat is so small and Thy sea is so big ; ' of
the hurricane which is never lulled till the waves have cast up
the corpses of heretics and all other evil creatures ; of the ghostly
multitude of the drowned whose phantom forma show white
upon the crests of the waves on the Day of the Dead ; of the
spirit-voices, piteous, lamenting, which fill the Bay of the
L)e])arted with a sound of wailing.
Here, too, he had heard of the strange-looking men clothed
in white raiment, black-bearded, carrying staves, and with sacka
upon their shoulders, who used to be seen after nightfall on the
lonely roads between Ch§.teaulin and Quimper — men of dark
and fatal aspect. The Custom House officers will tell you that
these are smugglers ; but do not believe them. They ai e demons,
who prowl around the abodes of the dying, waiting to carry oflf
the souls of the dead ; and if the good angel of the dying is not
quick enough, the helpless souls are bundled into the demon's
bag and carried off to the marshes of Saint Michel, where they
lie°hidden in holes and foul places till they are set free by mass
and prayer. Those dismal marshes are peopled with souls in
pain ; and if you pass that way at night, you will hear the
cry of their anguish mixed with the wailing of the wind among the
reeds.
Beside that evening fire he had heard of the wreckers of old,
and how, like their opposite neighbours on the Cornish coast,
they lighted bonfires to beguile the helpless mariners ashore ; or
how they would tie a lantern to the horns of a bull, twisting the
rope roimd one of his fore legs, so that at every step the animal
lowered or lifted his head with a swaying motion of the lantern,
w'nich made it look from afar like the light of a ship at sea, thui
luring the unwary sailor on to the rocks. Very fixed was the
belief of the Breton of those days that all which the sea cast up
on his shore was his rightful property.
Here, too, Ishmael had heard of gnomes and fairies, benevolent
or malicious ; of the earth-men, husbands of the fairies, the
r>02ilpicans, the Breton Robin Goodfellows, who ring their fairy
bells in the woods to deceive the poor little shepherd lads in
quest of their lost goats, who run after the girls who go home
too late from night-watch or Pardon. Here he had listened to
wonderful legends of the city of Ys swallowed up by the sea :
yeu may see the stones of her ancient altars at low tide fifteen
or twenty feet beneath the clear water.
Strange to come back from Paris, the city where people
believe<l m so little, to this quiet country where they believed
«o much ; where the humble vilhge priest, a sg>n of the soil,
• As Messengers of Death 235
born of peraaant parents, reared at the tail of the plough, was
a power and an influence ; where the Jkur de lys was still a
sacred symbol, and the flag of Eepublicanism a rag striped
with blood ; where the memory of the Chouans, with their
screech-owl cry, was still fresh in the minds of the people, and
the stories of atrocities committed on one side by the hated
Blues — the soldiers of the Republic — on the other by the sons of
the soil, were still told by the winter fire.
Yes ; it was a backwfwd and ignorant land, a land of old
superstitions, old creeds, old loyalties ; but, whatever it was,
Ishmael loved every rood of its green fields, every tree, ar.d
every hedge-flower. He had been happy in the great city, full
of work in the present, full of hope for the future ; but he had
no love for that stony wilderness. He thought of Paris as an
embodied indifi"erence to man and his suflFerings — cold, inacces-
sible, inhuman. You might starve or rot in her allej^s, and she
would care nothing. You might drown yourself in her river,
you might languish in her prisons, you might steep yourself
in those foul vices which seemed an element of her atmosphere,
\nd she would care not one jot for your agony, your despair,
four ruin of soul and body, your untimely death. The best she
would give you would be a free funeral.
But here, in these country roads, among these pleasant
meadows, it seemed to him as if all nature thrilled with
sympathy. The animals came to the field gates and looked
at him gravely with eyes full of friendliness. The birds in the
hedgerows chirped and twittered for him. The soft motion of
leafy boughs had a kind of language ; and the clouds sailing
above his head had a meaning here which they never had in
Paris, where he rarely lifted his eyes skyward.
He was full of anxiety about his father, whom he might
never again see alive — the letter seemed to mean as much as
that ; and yet the very atmosphere of his native land comforted
him. He thought of his young brothers, and what delight it
would be to clasp them to his breast, to see the bright young
facea, to feel the touch of those loving lips. Would they have
forgotten him in four years ? — half a lifetime for the younger
of the two, who would be only seven now. This was a question
which troubled him sorely. It would be such a blow to find
himself forgotten. Of the heritage that he had renounced,
or of his father's injustice in exacting such a sacrifice from
him, he thought not at all. He cared nothing for money in
the abstract ; and he had a conviction that he was going to
be rich some day. Of all the schemes that he had ready for
development when the chance arose some one would prove a
mine of gold. He had heard many histories of men who had
234 Ishmael
made fortunes beginning with nothing, and he knew that he
was on the right track. {
It was a long ride to Pontorsqr and he had to rest and
refresh his horse on the way. He >eft the animal at the inn
near the bridge, thinking to save time by walking the seven
miles that lay between him and his destination rather than by
waiting to rest the horse. Three o'clock was striking as he
crossed the bridge ; and now he was really in his own province,
his foot upon his native soil. The hedgerows and fields he had
seen hitherto were Norman hedgerows and fields. There was
very little difference between the two provinces so far ; but to
Ishmael it seemed as if the soil had another look, as if the
orchards were more fertile, the cottages more homely after he
had crossed the river.
Ho walked at a swinging pace, more eager, more anxious as
he drew nearer home. At Pontorson they had told him terrible
things of the cholera. The hand of God had been heavy
npou the little town, they said ; for whereas, in Paris, in the
time of pestilence, the people were always inclined to
suspect some human infamy working evil — the Government
poisoning the weUs, or something equally diabolical — the
simple rustic recognised only the chastisement of an offended
Heaven.
'Have there been no precautions taken?' asked Ishmael of
the priest who told him how the funeral bell had been sounding
daily, as in the awful year of '32, when a vision of gigantic
women in red garments had been seen at Brest just before the
coming of the pestilence blowing the blast of death across the
valleys.
The priest pointed to half-a-dozen open graves dug in
advance. This was how they had prepared for the scourge. A
sombi'e sense of fatality possessed their souls. ' God has given
us over to the demon,' they said. The gorged graveyard was a
focus of infection in the midst of each settlement ; but the
idea of carrying away their dead to a distant cemetery, banishing
the departed from the family grave, from the bones of dead
and gone ancestors, from the sound of the voices of the
living, from the lights of the village, was repelled as a kind of
sacrilege.
Just outside a little hourg Ishmael met a farmer's cart with a
woman sitting on the shaft and a man walking at the horse's
head. The horse was smart with his collar of blue sheepskin
and his tasselled bridle. He had a branch of Spanish chestnut
tied upon his head to keep off the flies, and was decked with
bells, which tingled gaily as he went along. But the faces of the
man and woman wcie full of gloom. A little procession i;i black
' As Messengers of Death ' 235
raiment walked behind the cart ; and in the cart, wrapped in
their winding-sheets, lay the coroses of two children on a bed of
purple clover, fresh flowers and foliage scattered above them.
The plague had been busy in the villages and farms, and
there had been no time to make coffins for all the dead. These
were to be laid in the cool, dark earth of their grandfather's grave.
The sight of that melancholy train filled Ishmael with a
sudden horror. His brothers ! Had they escaped the pestilence ?
He had thought of them till this moment as the embodiment
of health and vigour. It had not occurred to him that they
could be ill. But the look of white despair in the mother's face,
the father's gloomy brow, and those young forms lying side-by-
side amidst the clover and the leafage, seemed like a presage oi
evil. Were things as bad as this in the neighbourhood of
Pen-Hoel ? And how could he be sure his brothers were not
in peril?
He took out Father Bressant's letter and re-read it hastily.
There had been trouble at the chateau. That trouble he had
taken heretofore to mean his fathei-'s illness ; but it seemed to
him now that the trouble was a thing apart— a something which
had preceded his fathei-'s malady. He was almost within sight
of the village in the hollow, he was on the very spot where he
had parted from the good priest four years ago : yes, just on
this crest of the hill lie had turned to watch the vc.nishing
figure of his one faithful friend. He was so near, yet all in a
moment he was stricken with the sudden sickness of a great fear,
and it seemed to him as if his feet refused to carry him any
further. He felt as if he must sink down upon a bank and lie
there helpless, inert, till chance brought someone by who could
tell him what had happened at the chateau, could assure him
that his brothers were alive and well. Then, and then only,
could he have strength to go the rest of the way.
He sat dowii for a few minutes, wiped the cold dew from his
forehead, and nerved himself to finish his journey. Why should
the death of those peasant children so alarm him ? Neglected,
poorly fed, badly lodged, they were an easy prey for the destroyer.
But his darlings were lodged luxuriously, cared for tenderly,
watched by day and night. Wliy should he fear for them ? Wliat
Bhelter could be a safer stronghold from pestilence and death
than the old home of his forefathers, which had never been
polluted by the occupation of strange races ? Clever as he was
m the constructive arts, he had not yet been awakened to the
broad questions of sanitation ; and he did not know that these
food old family mansions are often dens of fever and sinks of
idden pollution.
He quickened Lis pace for that final mile, and he was a little
236 Ishmel
breathed when he stood before the door of Father Bressant'8
presbytery, which was not much superior to the neighbouring
cottages, while the habits of the priest were even less luxurious
than those of his humblest ijarishioners.
The door stood open to air and sunlight, the little parlour
had its old orderly, peaceful look, furnished with a fine old
cherrywood press with brass mounts, a ponderous walnutwood
writing-table, and three or four century-old chairs, an inherit-
ance from a peasant ancestry. A secretaire in a corner displayed
a couple of slielves of books, a collection which, small and shabby
as it might be, gave a learned air to the room, while upon the
high mantel-shelf a few pieces of Kouen pottery and a handsome
pair of bi-ass candlesticks made an improvement upon the usual
village decoration of saucepan-lids and flat-ironsv The room
was empty, but on the priest's desk there lay a letter directed to
Monsieur Sebastien Caradoc,
' Go at once to the chateau. No time to be lost.'
That was the whole of the letter. The stroke of the death-
bell startled Ishmael as he read the priest's injunction.
He skirted the churchyard as he went up the hill to Pen-
Hoel. There was no one to be seen in the little cemetery.
Ishmael saw an open grave near the tower from which that
dismal reverberation of the bell pealed out at solemn intervals
like a minute gun. An old man was pulling the rope just inside
the doorway of the tower. Ishmael's first impulse was to stop
and question this ancient sexton ; but remembering that the
man was stone deaf and painfully slow of apprehension even
when he heard, he hurried on. The cupola of the chateau was
visible above the crest of the wooded slope. Ishmael's feet were
familiar with every possible and impossible approach to
the place of his birth, and he went straight as the crow flies,
making a line through the underwood athwart the gi-eat boles
of the chestnuts and oaks until he leapt upon the iow balus-
trade of the terrace and stood in front of the long range of
windows, cnrtained just as of old, with the same air of a house
in which everybody htos gone to sleep. No, not quite the same
as of old. He started back at the sight of the doorway draped
with black, solemn funereal velvet, sprinkled with silver notes
of admiration, which were meant to represent tears. The
funeral bell boomed and vibrated in the green hollow yonder,
and from the shadowy doorway there came a slow and solemn
train. A coffin heaped with flowers was bonie into the light,
and then came the priest in his robes, and his acolytes in their
white surplices. Two gentlemen followed, in deep mourning
and with dismal countenances, then three of the old servants
whom Islimael remembered, and this was all.
*As Messengers of Death* 237
He stood aside while the funeral procession passed along
the terrace and went slowly down the drive. Neither priest
nor mourners had looked at Ishmael. He went into the
house and upstairs to his father's room without meeting a
mortal.
Outside the door of that well-remembered chamber he came
to a dead stop. How often he had entered that room in days
gone by to be lectured, reproved, threatened ; hardly ever to
receive word or token of afi'ection. And now it was, perhaps, the
chamber of death, and he would enter it like Esau, robbed in
advance of his birthright. For tl. _ portion he had surrendered
he cared nothing ; but there was a touch of bitterness in the
thought of how the surrender had been exacted fi'om him.
He knocked softly, but there was no answer ; and then he
opened the door quietly and went in. The room he thus entered
was his father's study and favourite sitting-room. Monsieur's
bedroom opened out of it on one side, Madame's on the other,
with her boudoir and dressing-room beyond.
The study was empty, and Ishmael went through to his
father's bedroom. A Sister of Charity was asleep in an arm-
chair by the window. The bed was in an alcove, heavily draped,
remote from the light ; and in the deep shadow Monsieur
Caradec's face had the leaden pallor of death. As Ishmael
approached with noiseless footfall the father's eyes opened and
looked at his son.
'Sebastien!' he muttered; 'then there is someone of my
blood living still.'
' My brothers ! ' gasped Ishmael, frozen by that speech,
unable to contain himself.
' You have no brothers ; they were laid in their graves a
week ago. Their mother followed them just now. You must
have met the funeral.'
' Yes.'
Ishmael fell on his knees by the bedside, buried his head in
the coverlet, and sobbed aloud.
The Sister opened her eyes, saw that kneeling figure, under-
stood in a moment, and stole quietly from the room, leaving
father and son together.
' What can you care for their death ?' said his father, bitterly.
• You abandoned your home and your kindred, renounced your
name. You were always at heart an alien.'
' Who made me an alien, father 1 ' asked tlie young man,
lifting up his head and wiping away those blinding tears. ' My
home was less than a home, my kindled were not like kindred
- — except those dear little children : they loved me, and I loved
thesm truly, dearly, with all my heart, looking forwarc' ji^h
23S Ishmael
hope to a day when we should be'^brothers again, and know each
other and love each other again.'
' Broken links are not so easily remvited,' said the Covint,
quietl}'. ' Your brothers were stricken by cholera last week.
First one drooped and fell, then the other. Within four days
from the first note of alarm both were dead. Their mother was
in a state of hysteria from the hour her elder boy was stricken,
and two days after the double funeral the scourge took hold of
her. It is in the very air we breathe. The earth we tread upon
reeks with poison ; it hangs in the heavy mists of evening and
morning, and clings to the sodden leaves of the trees. It is
everywhere — in ditches, wells, marshes, copses, cottage-gardens.
The poor have been dying like rotten sheep. If I have escaped,
it is because the hand of death was on me already. The grief
and agony of the last fortnight have only hastened my end.
You should not have come here, Sebastien. You are coming
into the jaws of death.'
' I am not afraid of death. The cholera is raging in Paris too.
Father Bressant -wTote to tell me that you were ill. But you have
been ill a long time, it seems. He ought to have written to me
sooner.'
Everything in the invalid's appearance told of a lingering
malady, a slow decay. The stroke of the pestilence was not here.
The gradual wearing out of a joyless life — disappointment, vain
regret, carking care — these were the foes that had sapped the
citadel.
' I have been ailing for a long time,' answered Monsieur
Caradec, ' but have not been dangerously ill. Father Bressant
teased me for permission to write to you some months ago, but I
forbade him. I told him that you had taken your own road in life,
and that all links between us were broken. But he wrote to
you after all, it seems. And you have come — come to see me die.'
He spoke slowly and with evident effort. A short, hard cough
stopped his utterance every now and then, and Ishmael saw that
the white cambric handkerchief was stained with blood. The
Count's lungs had been affected for a longtime. He had been a
broken man for the last two years, crawling about in the sunshine,
sympathising with his wife's hypochondriac fancies, trying every
new remedy, every variety of treatment, his chief convei-sation
about doctors and doctors' stuff. The shock of his children's death
had stricken him down, and a fit of weeping had brought on a
violent haemorrhage, which threatened immediate death. He
had been kept alive since that attack by devoted nursing, had
lived to see his wife stricken by the dire disease which was abroad
ill the land, and to sea llie sviiiJuws darkened for her funeral.
But the doctors gave no hope of his recovery. He would
* As Messengers of Death' 239
never leave his room alive. Life was a question of so many days,
or so many hours, more or less.
He looked at his eldest son with eyes in which there was no
love. He felt no comfoi't in the presence of this last of his race.
He could only remember those two whom he had loved, those
sons with whose existence there was no association of shame, no
memory that meant agony, as of that nameless grave at Mont-
mar tre. He did not say that he was glad to see Ishmael. He
tolerated his presence, and that was all.
The Nm-sing-sister came back presently, and administered to
her patient. All appetite had gone, but there was a prescribed
administration of nourishment, stimulants, medicine, regulated
by the clock — a pain and a weariness to the victim, who longed
to shuffle off the last of life's burdens. But he submitted to the
Sister's troublesome routine as a good Christian who felt that
his life was not in his own hands. His rosary — an old carved
ivory rosary that had been his mother's — lay on the coverlet
beside his wasted hand, and every now and then his thin fingera
closed upon the yellow beads, and his white lips shaped a
prayer.
The last stroke of the funeral bell had died away in the valley,
the Sister had thrown back the Venetian shutters, and the soft
evening light filled the room. Tlnere had been but little sunshine
Bince the blazing noontides of August — the glorious harvest-time.
A dull, heavy sky had brooded over the land, dense mists had
hidden the sun, not a breath of wind had stirred the woodland.
It seemed as if the poison that reeked from the too fertile earth,
a land rich with corruption, had found no escape in the air.
Men lopged for a hurricane to sweep that infection seaward, and
for a flood to wash the tainted ground.
Eaymond Caradeo had been sleeping uneasily for more than
an hour. He opened his eyes and looked up presently with a
startled air, and saw his son looking at him in the calm evening
light.
' Who is that ? ' he asked the Sister, pointing to Ishmael as he
spoke.
' It is Monsieur Sebastien, sir, your eldest son.'
The dying man heard without seeming to understand. Hia
mind wandered sometimes in the night, was not always clear
immediately after slumber ; but he had a look in his eyes just
now which the Sister had not seen before in him. She had seen
that look often enough in other faces, and the dull ashen hue of
the skin, deepening to purple about the lips. A host of summer
flies came suddenly in at the window while she looked, and
sun-ounded the sick man's head like a cloud of incense. Father
Bressant appeared in the doorway just at this moment, aiul the
■priest.and the Sister exchanged glances of sad significance. la
240 Ishviael
their country this cloud of flies hovering over a sick-bed was
deemed a fatal omen.
Eaymond Caradec looked at his son with a strange intensity
in the dim, glazing eyes. He stretched out hia thin hand, he gave
a faint, half-articulate cry of gladness.
* Lucien,' he murmured, ' pardon ! Yes, you smile, you look
kindly at me — Lucien — friend — brother ! Forgiven ! '
And with that fading gaze fixed on his son's face his arms
crept slowly down the length of the coverlet, his wasted fingers
clutched the silken folds tightly, convulsively, for an instant ; and
then tliere came a faint gasping sigh, the bent fingers relaxed
and hung loose, the iron-gray head rolled back among the pillows.
Deluded by the dimness of dying eyes, his thoughts travel-
ling back to the far-away time of his youth, Eaymond Caradeo
had mistaken his son's face for the face of his false friend, the
friend who had fallen by his sword two and twenty years before
oil the sands at Botubon.
CHAPTER XXV
'scattered toward all winds'
TsHMAEL went straight from his father's death-bed to that new
mound in the churchyard beneath which his young brothers
were lying. He knelt, and prayed, and wept beside that grave
Mutil the moon was high above the wooded ridge behind the
chateau, shining silvery yonder on the far-away reach of barren
Bands and the distant waters of the bay. It was past eleven
when he went to the presbytery, where he had arranged to spend
the night, rather than at the chdteau, where four tall wax tapers
were burning in the chamber of death, and where a little old
notary from Pontorson was busy setting the seal of authority
npon secretaires and drawers, while the Priest and the black-
robed Sister knelt and prayed beside the shrouded alcove.
Ishmael's first idea had been to start on his return journey
at daybreak, walking to Pontorson, and there remounting the
horse he had hired at Fougferes. But Father Bressant urged the
necessity of his remaining to attend his father's funeral, and to
assert himself as his father's sole heir.
'AH belongs to you now,' he said : 'the portion which you
renounced and the portion that would have gone to your brothers.
'Scattered toward all Winds* 24]
*If it were a thousand times as ranch, I -woulcl renounce it
©Ter again to have my brothers,' said Ishmael, sadly, ' As for
my father's funeral — well, I suppose I ought to be present, tha^
it is a mark of reverence which I owe to the dead — to the dead
to whom I was so much less than a son, an alien always, an out-
cast always.'
He spent a sleepless night in the neat little cottage bed-
chamber, with its tiled floor and snow-white linen, and perfume
of late roses blowing in at the open lattice ; and he was astir
early — in the churchyard again, anrl then at the chateau, where
he heard that the funeral was to take place on the following
afternoon. Monsieur Lanion, Madame Caradec's brother-in-law,
who had come to attend her funeral, had gone back to the inn
at Pontorson, to return to-morrow on the same melancholy
errand, and with a faint hope that his wife might be left some
small legacy. She would, in any case, succeed to her sister's dot^
which had been so settled as to return to Madame Caradec's own
family in the event of her dying childless.
Ishmael wandered about the empty rooms, desolate for ever
more as it seemed to him, since his mind could not realise the
idea of any other inhabitants than those whom he remembered
in that familiar place. In the salon all things remained as
Madame Caradec had left them. Her basket of tapestry work,
her books, a pile of new novels in yellow covers, her hari>^so
rarely touched after she left the Faubourg, the little Louis-seize
writing-table, on which she had written so many letters of
egotistical complaining to her sister in Paris. The children's
toys wer« scattered about the house : guns, helmets, all the
panoply of mimic war, boats, cannon, fishing tackle. In every
corner Ishmael came upon traces of those two lives now
blotted out for ever. The sight of these things, most of all a
cage of white mice and a hutch full of rabbits in the stables,
filled him with unspeakable sadness. The mice and the rabbits
were brisk and gay, jumping about in their narrow quarters,
with bright, restless eyes, while they two, the children he had
loved, lay cold and still under the churchyard mound. It is just
such a thought as this that fills the cup of tears.
He wandered about all day as if in a dream, revisiting spots
he had known and loved in his boyhood, seeing old faces which'
had a strange look, like a book laid aside and half forgotten.
He could hardly realise the fact that the chS,teau, with all
its surroundings, its farms and dependencies, belonged to him
henceforward, although Father Bressant had tried to impress
that fact upon him. He felt no joy in the idea of possession, or
no joy strong enough to lift his soul out of the gulf of gloom
into which it had gone down when he heard of his brothers'
242 Ishmael
death. It was not until after the funeral, when the notary
explained his position and its rights and duties, that the prac-
tical side of his character began to assert itself.
* Can you tell me what the estate is worth V he asked.
' About thirty-thousand francs a year,' answered the man of
business ; ' but there are accumulations, there are securities
worth at least forty thousand francs. Monsieur Caradec lived,
very closely %\hile he was a widower, and he put aside the econo-
mies of that period. He wanted to increase the portion of hia
younger sons.'
* Yes, I know he was anxious to do that,' replied Ishmael.
'Forty thousand ! Do you mean that this forty thousand is at
once available — money that I can have to-morrow if I want it 1 '
The little Breton notary looked scared at the question.
'It is invested in securities that coidd be realised on the
Paris Bourse at a day's notice,' he replied ; ' but I hope you do
not intend to speculate. Your father amassed that money by
economy — sous by sous, I might almost say. And if you are
going to jeopardise it '
' I am not going to throw it into the gutter,' cried Ishmael,
his eyes shining with a new excitement, an unknown pleasure
* I am not going to eat or drink it, or risk it on cards or dice.
But I will show you how money can double itself, quadruple
itself, multiply itself by twenty. You, in your little towns and
villages scattered among the fields, do not know what money
means. For the last year I have been pining for capital, were
it never so small. My hands have been tied for want of a few
thousand francs. Forty thousand is a bagatelle as men reckon
money in Paris ; but with forty thousand in hand and the
power to raise more upon Pen-Hoel '
' Dieu de Dieu,' cried the notary, with horror, ' Pen-Hoiil has
never been hypothecated since it was a chateau, since it had a
aame.'
' I will not lose the place where I was born, be sure. Monsieur
Ai'dour. But I must make the best of my inheritance — the
inheritance that has fallen to me in spite of myself.'
Once having begun to consider the position from a practical
standpoint, Ishmael's whole mind hardened to the business he
had to perform. He dismissed aU unnecessary servants. He
gave the chateau into the care of the housekeeper and major-
domo, an ancient couple who had been in the decline of life at
the period of his mother's marriage. He made his choice of the
horses that were to be kept for farm work, the outdoor servants
who were to be retained. Father Bressant went about with
him and heard him give his orders, and felt proud of his quondam
pupil.
^Scattered toward all Winds' ^43
•Paris has taught you a great deal more than ever I taught
you,' he said, in his cheery old voice, smiling at the new master
bi Pen-Hoel.
At the end of that long patient life, a life of self-surrender
and ill-requited toil, there was nothing terrible in the idea of
death. The good old parish priest had grown familiar with
the King of Terrors in many a winter night, when he had travelled
far, by muddv lanes and wind-swept commons, to carry le bon
Dim to some dying peasant. He could smile and be cheerful
this evening albeit lie had laid the master of Pen-Hoiil in his
last resting-place only a little while ago.
' Paris is a bitter school ; but one leanis quickly in her
classes,' answered Ishmael. ' It is a city that hardens flesh and
blood into iron.'
'You have not become iron,' said the priest. 'I know your
heart is as warm and generous as when you used to steal away
through the stable-gate yonder to carry your dinner to a sick
child or a feeble old woman. And now tell me something about
yourself as we walk back to my cottage, where dinner has been
waiting for us for the last hour, and where old Nanon will give
me a fine scolding if she has prepared any dainty little dish in
your honour — her haricots panaches, for instance, or a lapin aux
choux. And so you have been married for more than two
years, and have a pretty little wifel I hope she makes you
happy,'
' She is very good,' said Ishmael, somewhat sadly, ' and she
has improved herself wonderfully since we were married. She
had been taught nothing — brought up in squalor and misery,
amidst the most abominable surroundings ; and yet she was as
white, and delicate, and pure as a rose that has just been flung
into the gutter. You would be surprised at the progress she
has made. She plays and sings exquisitely — music is her one
especial gift, you see. And she has learnt to speak like a lady,
and to dress herself prettily.'
* Has she learnt to make you happy, Sdbastien ? That is the
main question.'
' I have so little time for happiness — of a domestic kind,' said
Ishmael, half apologetically. ' I leave home early ; I return
late. On some nights I have my club ; on other nights I have
drawings to make, quantities to take out — a technical business
that, connected with my trade. And with Paquerette's passion
for music, she naturally likes to go once in a way to the opera,
or to a concert, for which her music-master brings her tickets {
and so '
* You live almost as much asunder as one of those fashionable
couples of whom I have read in story-books,' said the old man,
244 Ishmael
gravely. * It is not a happy life, Sebastian } it is not a wise life.
I have never seen that kind of marriage prosper. Things may
go smoothly enough for a little while — Monsieur and Madame see
each other too seldom to quarrel ; but the end is always miseryj
Bometimes mingled with shame. However, you can change all
that now. You are a rich man, a landed proprietor. You will
bring your wife to Pen-Hoel, and you and she can live happily
together upon the soil from which you sprang.'
' Leave Paris ! Live here, among these quiet fields ! Sit
down by yonder hearth, as my poor father sat, and fold my
arms, and waste my life in one long, dull dream I No, Father
Kressant ; I am not made of the stuff for that kind of death in
life. I have only just begun to imderstand what my work is
like to see my way to leaving my mark upon that thriving,
bustling city which gave me a home when I was homeless. No ;
when my work is done and my hair is whiter than yours, I will
come back to my gite like the hunted hare. I will sit down
beside the old hearth, and my wife and I will talk of the days
of our youth. But in the meantime I must carry out the scheme
of my life, for good or evil. Do you know. Father Breseant,
that, aided by the capital left yonder by my poor father, I can
see my way to a great fortune ? ' said Ishmael, talking more
freely of himself and his prospects to the friend of his boyhood
than he would have talked to any other man living, ' My patron
and almost partner is an honest man, but a poor man. He has
no capital — is content to carry on from hand to mouth, pay
wages, and work for other people. But he has friends — a friend
at Court. His foster-brother, who onee made mud-pies with him
in a little village on the Marne, is a man high in the confidence
of the Emperor, a man who knows what the future of Paris is to
be long before it is known to a mortal outside his own Cabinet.
From this gentleman my patron has heard of a plan for the re-
construction of half BeUeviUe — old streets to be pulled down and
converted, new boulevards to be built upon waste places. Forty
thousand francs invested in the purchase of laud now will meaa
quadruple value a year hence ; and I mean to invest every sou,
to raise money on Pen-Hoel if necessary, in order to profit by
this chance. And then my poor pale Pdquerette can play the
lady, and can wear silk gowns, and sing in a salo7i full of guests,
and be praised and admired to her heart's content,' he added, to
himself rather than to the priest.
* Will it be an honest act, S^Oastien, this purchase of land
upon private information ? '
' Why not ? We shall buy the land at its current value —
buy in market overt. The future value is our speculation. All
oar intelligence, all our industry will be brought into tlie cohimon
*Scaticvcd toward all Winch' 215
fund. We shall not make a fortune without having worked
honestly for it. My life must be spent in Paris, Father ; but I
\^iU bring my wife to Pen-Hoel sometimes for a holiday. It is
only a journey of a day and a half now. I will bring her to see
the house in which I was born, and the best friend I ever had in
my life.*
The two men clasped hands : the younger full of pride and
hope — pride in his own strength, hope in a future to be carved
by his own hands ; the elder, benevolence embodied. They
spent the evening together beside the wood fire in the presbytery
Earlour. The September night was damp and chill, and those
lazing logs made the room gay and pleasant. They talked
together till the night was late, Ishmael giving his old friend
a faithful history of his three years of Parisian life.
Ishmael left the village next morning, remounted the horse
he had left at Pontorson, and rode into Fougeres in time for the
afternoon diligence. From FougSres to Paris, by road and rail,
was a journey of fifteen hours, and there were gi'ay streaks of
morning-light behind the roofs and steeples of Paris as the train
crossed the bridge at Asnieres. It was past five o'clock when
Ishmael arrived, on foot in the quiet little street at Menil-
montant. But the habits, of tlie house he lived in were of the
earliest, and the portress, who occupied a den at the back of the
Morice manage, and acted asfemme de peine for the whole house,
was washing the doorstep with a liberal ablution of the footway
in front of the threshold when Ishmael came to the door.
He gave her a friendly nod, and was going upstairs, when
the woman stopped him.
'The key,' she suggested, making for her den, where she
had custody of the lodgers' kej's and letters.
' The key 1 ' he echoed, in a surprised tone. ' But Madame
13 at home, is she not ? '
The portress shook her head, thrust the key into his hand,
and turned back to her pail and her mop as if anxious to escape,
interrogation.
' Madame out, and at such an hour of the morning ! *
exclaimed Ishmael, staring at her, key in hand, stupefied after
the long journey, the wakeful, agitated night.
* But yes, Monsieur ; Madame went last night. You will
find a letter.'
* Yes, yes ; without doubt,' he answered, in a different tone,
remembering in an instant how he had told his wife that she
was to go and stay with Lisette if she felt dull and lonely. No
doubt she had fdt lonely, and she had gone to T.isette. Hia
first impulse was to go straight to the iiue Franch-colUne
2i0 Ishnael
without going upstairs at all. But he had his valise, and thera
was a letter ; so he went upstairs.
How empty and desolate any house looks to which a man
returns expecting to find wife and kindred, and finding no one !
What a dreary aspect the very chairs and tables put on ! What
a sense of ill-usage, disappointment, vexation takes hold of the
man, were the absence only temporary, the time of waiting only
a question of an hour or two I This morning, in the chiU, gray
light, the Egyptian candelabra, the bronze sphinxes stared at
Ishmael with an ominous look — the closed piano — swept and
garnished — not a vestige of those scattered sheets of music, that
untidy portfolio which had often vexed his soul — the bed.
chamber, with the alcove closed— the armoir«, open and empty
of all those fineries which had filled it to overflowing — all
suggested desertion. The rooms looked as if their mistress had
left them for ever. Strange that she should make such a clear-
ance in order to go and spend a few days with Madame Moque.
The letter he had been told of lay on the mantelpiece in the
bedroom. He opened it without any foreboding. He did not
doubt for an instant that it would confirm his supposition as to
Paquerette's movements. The words which he read there were
like a bolt falling from heaven in the midst of calm and sunshine,
* I have left you for ever. Do not seek to know where
I have gone. If you follow me, if you finxl me, the end will be
death for at least one of us. I will kill myself rather than see
you in your just anger. Yes, I know that you have been good
to me, a thousand times too good for the little that I am worth.
I know that I am ungrateful, base, abominable, wickedest
among wicked women. But I cannot help myself. I believed
once that I loved you. You were good to me, and I looked to
you for help, and I was at peace — safe, happy in your company ;
and I thought that was love. Falsehood, all that ! I never
knew what love meant tiU I met the man to whom I have given
my heart and my soul, my honour, my hope of heaven, all that I
have to lose in this life and the next. Think no more of me, or
think of me only as a worthless woman who darkened your life
for a little while. I renounce all claim upon you. If you find
one worthier of you, marry her and fear not. I will never
stand up and say, " I am his wife." If there were any law
which would break the bond between us, I would accept that
law as a blessing to you and to me ; bat they tell me that in
France maiTiage means for ever. I will never call upon the law
to avenge me if you can find your happiucss elsewhere, as I have
found mine.
' Forgi ve— forgive— forgivc-
Paquerette '
* Scattered toward all Winds* 24:1
She was gone — fled from Lim for ever — false wife — dis-
honoured — shameless — her own hand confessing her infamy.
But with whom had she so fled ? Who was the traitor ? There
was not much room for doubt. The only men he had ever
trusted or admitted to his home were "Vielbois, the little old
music master, and Hector de Valnois. It was in Hector,
therefore, his friend, his comrade, his confidant, the man who
saved his life on the fatal fourth of December — it was in him he
had to find his wife's seducer.
* It is always the husband's fiiend,' he said to himself,
bitterly. * I ought to have remembered my mothei^'s history
• — an example so near home ! What should wai-n a man if not
that ? And yet I trusted them both. I believed imjjlicitly in
her innocence, in his honour.'
He did not stop to break his fast by so much as a crust and
a glass of wine ; he did not stop to plunge his burning head
into a basin of cold water. With the stain of travel still upon
him, he left the house and started for the Eue de Grenelle. A
fiaci-e passed on its way to the railway station before he had
gone very far, and he hailed the man.
* Eue de Grenelle, a hundred and twenty-five, as fast as you
can go.'
The carriage rattled ofi" towards the Bastille, along the Rue
St. Antoine, across the Pont Neuf, by the Eue des Saints P6res,
and into the quiet of the grave old quarter. Valnois' apartment
was in a house at the end of the street near the Invalides. The
masons were going to their work at the new church of St.
Clotilde as Ishmael drove by the Place Bellechasse. The twin
towers, with their crocketed spires, were rising amidst a net-
work of scaffolding. Even in the midst of his trouble the
keen eye of the artist-workman glanced at yonder pile with a
momentary interest.
The historical hotel had an old-world look as Ishmael entered
the paved court, ornamented with great green tubs in which
bloomless orange trees and great bushes of box made a show of
verdure. The stately entrance was sheltered by a manpiise in
iron and glass, under which the flyman drove his fiacre. Ishmael
had been to the house many a time before to-day. He had
breakfasted with Valnois and some of his literary friends — had
discussed the aspect of public affairs in an atmosphere of coffee
and tobacco, in the languid heat of a room with velvet-curtained
windows, padded doors, and a wood fire. He had sympathised
with his friend's dreams, and had beeii proud of his success —
had believed in him as the poet of the future, an undeveloped
Musset, a Victor Hugo in the bud.
Was Monsieur de Valnois at home ? he asked. No, the
243 Ishmael
porter told him. Monsieur had gone out half an hour ago,
doubtless only for a short time, since he had left no instructions.
Hte key was there. Would Monsieur like to go up and wait in
the salon'/ The porter knew Ishmael as a familiar friend of
Valnois, who had a very easy way with all his friends, and, in
his small way, kept open house, as it were. His hospitality was
a question of coffee and cigarettes — of a glass of fine champagne
or vermouth ; but it was freely given always. Men were going
in and out of his rooms aU the afternoon, and in the evening he
went out himself, to return long after the porter's first sleep.
This early exit of to-day was an altogether exceptional event.
' I don't know what fly has stung him,' said the porter, when
Ishmael had gone upstairs with the key, * to go out at seven
o'clock in the morning.'
The porter's wife shook her head.
* He took a portmanteau with him last night, and he told me
he should be away at least a week,' she said. ' I believe that he
lost the train, and that there was someone with him when he
came back. I caught a glimpse of a figure slipping round the
corner of the stairs while Monsieur Valnois stood waiting for
his c.i.ndle and key, and I believe it was a woman.'
Such a thing could not be, protested the porter. It was not
within the limits of belief that any impropriety of that species
could be enacted under thai roof, he being there to defend the
sanctity of that honourable house — a house which was still rich
iu the relics of saintly occupation, a house which had been the
dwelling-place of a Monseigneur, a Prince of the Church, whose
violet robes had swept those passages. No, the porter could not
think it. He knew that Monsieur de Valnois was lax in hia
notions even to the verge of Bohemianism ; but, however broad
a man's ideas might be, he must know how to respect a house in
tlie Rue de Gren-elle, between courtyard and garden, a house ©f
the old nobility.
While the porter and his wife were arguing this point Ishmael
opened tlie door on the entresol, and went into his false friend's
sdlon. He had some idea of waiting for him there — bearding
him in his own den. He half expected to find his guilty wife
there in hiding. He had ha/dly considered yet what those two
sinners were likely to do, and how improbable it was that Valnois
would attempt to hide another man's wife iu his lodgings — how
much more likely that they two would fly fai' fiom Paris, from
Prance even.
And yet it must needs be diflScult f6r Valnois to expatriate
himself. He lived by his pen, the pen of the journalist, the
ephemeral wrUei-, who treats of subjects fresh tu the uiinds of
* Scattered toivard all Winds^ 219
men, the novelties of the day — like the articles de Paris in the
shops on the Boulevard — who catches folly as it flies.
Ishmael stood in the midst of the room motionless, his eyes
flaming with anger, like a tiger in his den. The atmosphere was
hot and close, tainted with sickly odours of jockey club, the
last fashionable perfume, of coffee and wine. The velvet cur-
tains hung over the narrow windows ; there were embers still
glowing on the hearth, a scent of burning wood. The table was
scattered with the debris of a hasty meal — a dainty little china
coffee-pot, and Oriental cups and saucers, half a bottle of claret
without a cork, a couple of glasses, the remains of a perigord
pie in a terrine, a damask napkin flung upon the table, half
burnt cigarettes and ashes scattered among plates and glasses —
confusion — disorder — the indications of a meal d Vimproviste —
two chairs pushed from the table opposite each other.
Islimael plucked aside the velvet curtain and flung open the
window, stifled in that tainted atmosphere, charged with
perfumes and wine, and the faded air of a closed room. De
Valnois had not been alone last night. He had supped in
company. What if the company were still there 1
The door of the next room stood ajar. Ishmael listened for
a sound from within, werf^ it only the half -suppressed breathing
of a terrified woman. But there was nothing— not a breath.
He heard the orderly footfall of a gendarme on the pavement
of the street, the distant cry of a hawker, the bass roll of heavy
wheels far off in the awaking city, and the clink, clink, clink of
the mason's hammer yonder in the Place Bellechasse, but from
within not a souiid. And yet he could not believe that the
room was empty. She was there — she held her breath — she
waited, aware of his presence — hiding, praying for her lover's
return — hoping that of those two one would be slain, and that
one her husband. He threw open the door and went in. Oh,
what a dainty room ! — all the prettinesses, and conceits, and
follies of a petit maitre, the abbe of Louis Quinze, the incroyahle of
the Directory, the gandin of the Empire — the fopling and spend-
thrift of all time — the same always. Then a wild rage seized
upon the strong man. He laughed long and loud with the harsh,
horrible laughter of a distraught brain. When man's evil passions
come to boiling point, they have a power to intoxicate compared
with which the drunkenness of wine or of opium is a feeble thing.
' Are you there, pretty one 1 ' he cried. ' Yes, I understand
now why you chose this one rather than me— for his fine
clothes, his dainty ways, his white hands, his perfumes and kid
gloves, his amber-handled his canes, velvet collar and varnished
boots — those are the qualities for which women like you value
the things you call men. Come out of yoor hiding-place, I'nfdme.
250 Ishnael
She was not there ; but, as a fatal sign and token of hei
guilt, trailing over the back of a chair, hung the cashmere
shawl which her husband had given her in the first flush of his
growing prosperity — the dark red shawl with its Indian border
of palm-leaves. How proud he was the day he bought it for
her in the great shop on the Boulevai'd des Capucines ! What
delight when he unfolded the shawl and wrapped it round hia
wife's graceful shouldera ! He could recall her little cry of
rapture even now as he stood white with rage before this
damning proof of her shame. Was she not there even yet,
there in hiding 1 The shrouded alcove with its curtains of
damask and lace mingled in an artistic confusion — massive,
sweeping folds of crimson brocade half hidden under a foam of
old Flemish guipure : plenty of covert here for guilt to hide in.
Ishmael plucked savagely at the luxurious drapery — plucked ii
once, twice, thrice, till he wrenched the curtain from its hold
and left the slender fabric of gilded woodwork bare. Then,
with one sledge-hammer bloAV of his clenched fist, he smashed
the baldaquin, which tottered and fell to pieces like a barley-
sugar temple. No, there was no one hiding in the sybarite's
alcove. But the rage of destruction had taken hold of Ishmael.
There were no bounds to his passionate scorn of all this finery,
this unmanly luxury, which seemed the outward visible sign
of hidden vices. There were no bounds to his hatred of
the man who had deceived and dishonoured him. He kicked
over the slender marqueterie toilet-table, all smiling with loves
and graces, and comedy masks, and garlands of roses, and cloven-
footed satyrs lurking among Cupids. He set his heel upon the
mirror which had reflected that false face. He hurled over the
fragile honheur dii joxir in amber-tinted satinwood and ormolu,
lined with sky-blue moire, stufled with love letters, loaded with
bibelots in porcelain, gold, and ivory. The work of destruction
lasted but a few minutes, during which Ishmael, in that chaos
of bric-d-brac, d.'>shed about him like a wild beast in a jungle.
When all was done, he rushed from the room, leaving behind
him a trail of shattered furniture, a confusion of ivory hair-
brushes, broken perfume-bottles, papers, books, neckties, opera
hats strewed over the Persian carpet like the debris of an earth-
quake.
It had given him a transient relief to work this ruin — just as
a man with a racking toothache is solaced for an instant or so
by dashing his head against a wall. But when the thing was
done he was no nearer real revenge than he had been before.
He had only gratified the fierce rage of the moment.
He went back to the little salon, white, breathless, after that
convulsion of anger. He sat down at the table, and, among
' TJietr Boots shall he as Eot:ienness* 251
bottles and glasses and the fragments of last night's meal, he
wrote with a pencil on a leaf torn from his pocket-book :
' I came here to kill you if I could, or to be killed by you. I
will not rest day nor night till the wrong you have done me has
been washed out with blood — yours or mine. Do not think to
escape me in France or out of France. The sea is not wide
enough to part us. The world is not big enough to hold us both.
Go where you will, I can follow. My father killed the man wlio
(rtole his wife. I am a stronger man than my father, and I have
less to lose. If it is in our race — an hereditary doom — to be
unhappy in our wives, it is also in our race to revenge our
wrongs. Where will you meet me, and when 1 Let it be at
once — the sooner the better — lest I should have time to forget
myself and strike you in the open street. I should not like to
do that, for you once saved my life ; but it is well you should
know I am a desperate man.'
He stuck his challenge in the frame of the looking-glass,
where it could hardly fail to catch de Valnois' eye on his
entering the room. The other side of the glass was choked with
notes, cards, invitations ; but this side was clear save for that
ominous scrawl roughly written in a big, firm hand.
CHAPTEE XXVI
'their roots SHALIi BE AS ROTTENNESS.
The fly was waiting under the marquise in the quiet old court-
yard which had seen so many entrances and exits ; but, perhaps,
among all goings in and comings out, even of stately hearse with
violet velvet tivappings and nodding plumes, and solemn croque-
morts, and bare-headed mourners, none more ominous, more
tragical than this departure of Ishmael in the quiet autumn
morning with the hot thirst for blood in his heart. The whole
nature of the man seemed to have changed within a couple of
hours. The deadly pallor of his face, the sombre fire iu his eyes
altered his outward aspect almost past recognition ; but the
transformation within was much more awful, and he himself
was keenly conscious of this change within himself presently a3
he drove past the church of St. Clotilde, and hsard that clink oi
the mason's hammer which had been the music of his daily life,
the rhythm of happy labour, and bethouglit himself that it ecvof
252 Ishmael
more could have the same cheery sound in Lis ears. There
would always be a hideous memory coming between him aud
his daily work.
He had loved these two, and trusted them implicitly without
a thought of possible evil, had believed in them as he believed in
God — first in the woman whom he had saved from a life of
sordid misery, next in the man, his friend, who had given him a
refuge and shelter from the hail of bullets on the night of the
barricades — the man whom he reverenced as a genius, a creature
of a superior clay, a being to whom falsehood and treachery
must needs be impossible. And this woman had forsaken him,
and this man had dishonoured him. The demon that was
awakened in his soul made him a new man. He felt the change
in his own nature — felt this awakening of evil passions, and
wondered at his own wickedness.
' Would it be murder to kill him if we two were together
and alone ? ' he asked himself. * If it were three times murder,
I should do it. God keep me from meeting him till we can face
each other on fair terms. I could not hold my hand. If I had
foudid him in that silken nest yonder, I should have slain him
with my clenched fist, or beaten in his brains with the first
weapon that came to my hand. I can understand now how
murder comes about.'
He told the man to drive to the Eue Franch-colline. He
wanted to see Lisette, and to get from her any knowledge which
she might have of his wife's flight. She must know something ;
and, be it much or Httle, it was for him to drag that knowleilge
out of her. She would lie, of course. She had been trained in
the right school for that, he thought, bitterly. After this should
have been done, he had to think of seconds for that meeting which
he believed that Valnois would accord him. His acquaintances
of the clubs belonged to the working classes for the mpst part ;
but there were among them a sprinkling of jomTialists, litterateurs
in a small way, men who lived or starved by their pens — and
such as these de Valnois, Bohemian and joumaliHt, could not
refuse to meet. There was no chance of finding these men till
the evening, and in the meantime it was his uLm wife whom
he wanted io find.
The Kue Franch-colline was very quiet at this hour. Every-
body who had any work to do in central Paris had gone to do it,
leaving this world of the outskirts dull and empty of aspect.
The charcuterie had its usual ornamental air, an example of
decorative art as applied to the varieties of pig-meat— dainty
knuckles of ham in pink paper frills, golden with breadcrumb,
or shining with rich brown glaze, festoons of sausages or black-
pudding, sardine boxes, pies in crockery cases, truffled cutlets
* Their Boots shall be as Rottenness* 253
ready for the frying-pan, cheeses savouring of distant provinces,
reminding the exile of his native bourg, breathing the odours of
rural muck-heaps and arcadian pig-styes. The charoutier was
Bitting in a comer of his shop, spelling out a newspaper, waiting
the cheerful hour of the midday pot-att-feu, the fumes of which
stole gratefully to his nostrils from an adjacent kitchen. Ishmael
went straight to the first floor with only a passing glance at
Monsieur Moque. He went up the wretched little staircase
screwed into a corner of the shabby old house, where aU had
been sacrificed to the width and grandeur of the shop, and
knocked at the door of Lisette's apartment, tolerably sure of
finding her at home at this hour of the morning.
She did not cry to him to come in with her usual shrill
readiness ; but after a pause of at least a couple of minutes, she
opened the door and appeared on the threshold in a peignoir of
dubious freshness, a peignoir de fatigue.
* You, Monsieur Ishmael I Great Heaven, you are back, then,
and so soon.*
* So soon, and yet too late,* he said. * Yes, I came back at
daybreak this morning, and I have come to ask you what you
have done with my wife V
* What I have done 1 ' cried Lisette, with a slightly over-
accentuated air of surprise. ' Why, Paquerette is safe and sound
at home, I suppose. Where else should she be 1 '
' She has left her home for ever. She has boldly avowed
her gvdlt. There is another man whom she loves as she never
loved me. That was all a mistake, a delusion. She has taken
more than two years to discover her error of judgment ; but the
revelation is complete now that it has come. And she has left
me to follow the lover she prefers. You must have known this,
Lisette — you must have seen this coming. You women have
the eyes of a hawk for each other's follies ; and a woman is not
demoralised all at once. PS,querette was pure and true when I
married her, pure and true when she wept for our dead child.
How has the change come ? Why 1 I have never ill-treated
her — I have always been the same to her.'
Lisette shrugged her shoulders with a provoking air of
knowing the world and being above it, indifierent and superior
to the pains, and follies, and sins of other people by force of
experience, as a cynic philosopher of a century old might have
been.
' Who knows how these changes come, ever ? ' she said.
' They always happen unawares. Yes ; we all know how good
you were to your wife. The same always — perhaps too much the
lame. The men women like best are the men who beat them
one dnv and take tlicm on ^.lieir knees and call them by pet
254 Ishmael
names the next. "We want emotions, we others. We want to
tremble and to weep sometimes, and to be soothed and consoled.
"Would you care for your dinner, do you think, if you were never
Aungryl You treated your wife as if she was a little girl,
giving her nice gowns and plenty of pocket money, taking her
for a treat on a Sunday, and leaving her to herself all the week,
while your head was stuffed with diagrams, and wheels, and
figm-es, and bridges, and markets. That is not the way to deal
with a woman if you want to keep her fond and faithful.'
'Yes, I was a fool,' cried Ishmael, ' a besotted fool. I had so
many things to think of, I was so eager to make my way in the
world. Aid yet Heaven knows I was fond of her.'
' After your fashion, which is a cold fashion,' retorted Lisette
' Tell me,' said Ishmael, grouang nngry again after that brief
interval of softer feeling. ' You know where she is— where he
is— where they two are together. Is it in Paris? Is it far
away ? "Wherev-er it is, I have sworn to find them.'
' And if you find them, what then ? '
' There will be bloodshed— death for one, or both, or all
three. My life is ruined. It is like a building — brave, and new,
and smiling in the sunshine ; and because of some flaw in the
foundation, some weakness in a main wall, the whole structure
crumbles in a moment, in a flash, and falls into ruin. I care
not who may perish in that ruin. Be sure that all shall not
escape.'
' You are going too fast, mo7i enfant,' said Lisette, lookmg at
him with a compassionate air almost a.s she had looked at him
in tha wretchedest hour of his childhood when they lived in
that miserable barrack near the cemetei-y. ' Fu'st, I do not know
that your wife has run away from you ; secondly, I do not know
with whom she has run away ; thirdly, I do not know where
she is ; fourthly, I do not know where he is. Now, then, are
you content 1 '
• No,' answered Ishmael, roughly ; * I am not content, because
I do not believe you. I have the avowal of my wife's guilt in
her own handwriting ; I have seen the evidence of her shame an
hour ago in Monsieur de Yabiois' apartment— her shawl, my
gift, trailing in the slime of that profligate den.'
'A sh^fU'l here or there proves nothing; they make such
shawls as that by the hundred,' said Madame Moque, unable to
conceal her contempt for a cashmere of five hundred francs, she
who had enjoyed the reversion of an Indian shawl that cost five
thousand.
* I tell you I know,' said Ishmael ; ' the proof is here,' striking
his breast. ' It was the instinct of my own heart which told me
at once where to seek for the traitor.'
* Their Boots shall he as Bottenness* 255
He stood locking round the room •with stern, scrutinising eyes,
as if even here he might find some fresh evidence of his wife's
infamy — the room to which lie brought her nearly three years
ago, a flower plucked out of the gutter, a brand snatched from
the burning.
Madame Moque's salo7i had not yet assumed its bourgeois
primness. There were traces of last night's supper, there was a
work-table heaped with old finery in course of reproduction, for
the chief occupation of Lisette's daily life was to recompose her
gowns and bonnets, to curl feathers and revivify cambric roses,
and clean old silks and satins. Altogether, the room had an air
of exceeding slovenliness. The yellow curtains were drawn
closely across the alcove, doubtless to conceal the disordered
couch within.
' You need not turn up your nose at my salon,^ said Lisette,
with a vexed air. ' One cannot have oneself and one's room tir^ei
a quatres ^pingles at nine o'clock in the morning.'
Nine o'clock ! w^is it so early ? It seemed to Ishmael as if
he had lived through a long day since he turned the key in the
door of his lodging yonder — that door outside which Paquerette
had crouched in the gra^ winter morning, so piteous, so humble,
CO grateful for a little kindness.
' I was not looking at your salon. I was only wondering *
'What?'
* If you had hidden my wife here.'
* Pas de danger. She has something better to do if she haa
gone off with her lover than to come and hide herself here. I
daresay, if it is as you say, they have gone to Havre, and are on
board ship by this time, bound for the New World. If I had run
away frommy husband, I would not stay in the old one. Pas sibeteP
'They are not so wise as you,' retorted Ishmael, grimly.
' They were in the Eue de Grenelle last night — I saw her shawl
there, I saw the relics of their feast. They were there last night.
He left the house only half an hour before I entered it. Wheu
ebe left it, or how, I cannot tell you. I was too late.'
* If you had found her ,' faltered Lisette, looking at him
curiously.
' If I had found her — an hour ago^feeling as I felt then, I
should have killed her,' he answered ; and there wag ho doubt
«e to the strength of his own conviction upon this ji^int.
' What good would that do except to make a dreadful end
of your life yonder ?' said Lisette, gloomily, with a motion of her
head towards la grande Roquette. ' Life is troublesome enough
for all of us, but one does not want to cut it short by spittii^
in the basket.'
This was the popular manner of hinting at the guillotine.
256 Ishmael
'It would have mattered little to me how my life endecl
just now if I had had my way,' said Ishmael. ' There is a kind
of thirst that must be slaked at a crimson fountain. If I had
missed him, and she had come in my way, I should have slain
her — poor miserable thing that she is. And now, Lisette, once
and for all,' he went on, putting his two strong hands upon the
woman's plvmip shoulders with an iron grasp, holding her as in
a vice, and looking into her face with eyes that tried to read her
soul, * you know something about this — much, if not all. You have
been her chief companion ; you have been with her at the Opera ;
I trusted her with you ; she has been your guest here, in this
room ; they two together, perhaps — God knows — encouraged and
protected in their treachery by you '
' How dare you say such things ? '
* Y ou jnttst know where they are. Tell me, that I may find
him. I am cooler now. I promise you — yes, on my oath — that I
will spare her. I will not lift my hand against her. But with
him — I only want to be fair and square with him — man to man
— face to face — hand against hand. Tell me — tell me — tell me ! '
Lisette was ashy pale, and trembled a little in that firm
grip. Those fiery eyes looking into hers seemed to burn into
her brain. Something she must tell him to satisfy him — no
matter what lie so long as it might for one hour pass for truth.
'I have only heard a word here and there,' she gasped,
with a faltering, a reluctance that belon"-<l to the highest
dramatic art. ' You don't suppose they would tell me what they
meant to do — me, your friend. I heard them whispering together
in the corner of an opera box the other night. I could not
believe that there was anything wrong. I thought they were
both in jest — talking mere nonsense. It was not till you came
here jusfc now — tUl you told me that sheliad left you — that she
hadbeenin theEue de Grenelle — itwas only that instant tlie whole
truth dawned upon me. He was talking to her about Brazil —
a paradise, he said, where one could live for a little money —
live as in the Garden of Eden. If she has fled with him, I feel
convinced they will go to Brazil. You had better go to Havre
If you want to waylay them.'
To Havre ! Yes ; it was thence the great ships set sail for
Southern America. He had thought of them and dreamed of
them often in his boyhood, when he felt that he was one too
many at Pen-Hoel, and fancied that it would be a glorious thing
to make his escape to some larger and wilder region where he
might live by his gun, where he could catch a horse and ride it
unbroken over a world that would be for ever new. Havre I
yes ; he ought to be at the station now, watching for the depar.
ture of those vile fugitives, rather than fooling here.
* Their Boots shall te as Bottenness ' 257
He left Lisette without a word, and drove to the house he
lived in, where he saw Madame Morice, told her that he
expected a gentleman to call upon him in the course of the day
on very important business, and begged her to be on the alert for
aay such visit. The charwoman portress counted for nothing in
the way of intelligence, and was rarely on the spot when
wanted. Madame Morice would kindly tell the stranger that
Monsieur Ishmael would be at home at five o'clock that after-
noon to receive any one who should favour him with a call at
that hour. Having thus provided against the chance of an answer
to his challenge, he drove to the railway station in the Eue Saint
Lazare, at which he had arrived on the dawn of that fatal day.
The station was not so crowded in 1854 as it is nowadays;
but it was the season of sea-bathing, and a good many families
were leaving Paris, frightened away by the talk of the cholera.
The mid-day train was filling for Havre, Dieppe, Eouen as
Ishmael entered the station. He had just time to make his way
to the platform — a matter of difficulty, since he was not furnished
with a ticket — on pretence of seeing a friend who was to start
by that train. He had time to pass along the platform, peering
into the crowded carriages to see the children on their mother's
laps, the white-capped honnes, the babies, the bonnet-boxes,
poodles, adipose fathers, overgrown collegians, all feverish and
loquacious with tire rapture of leaving somewhere to go some-
where else. He looked into every carriage ; but there was no
sign of Hector de Valuois or his victim.
He saw the train move slowly and ponderously out of the
station like a thing to which velocity was impossible, and then
he went back to the booking office and inquired about the next
ti'ain for Havre. There was none till eiglit in the evening. He
was free to do what he liked witli himself till that hour — free to
go back to his desolate rooms and wait for his false friends'
answer to his challenge— free to break his fast, which had
not been broken by meat or drink since midnight.
When the door closed upon Ishmael, Lisette turned the key
sharply in the lock and drew a long breath with the air of one
who has just escaped from a great danger. She went over to
the alcove, and plucked aside the yellow damask with the
triumphant manner of a woman who feels herself equal to the
most tremendous occasion.
* There, I have got you out of it,' she cried ; ' but do not give
me that kind of thing to do too often, Madame Ishmael.'
Crouching like a hunted doe upon the little yellow damask
sofa that had served her as a bed in the days of her girlhood,
Paquerette looked up at her protectress with pallid countenance
and eyes large with terror. She had fled there for safety in the
s
253 Ishmael
early morning, slealing- out of the house enire cour et jardin oii
tip-toe before it was light, her lover opening the doors as
cautiously as a practised burg}«T, lest the porter or his wifo
should be awakened by the scrooping of a bolt, or should discover
that the sanctity of that aristocratic mansion had been violated
by the shelter of a pas grand' chose like Paquerette in the dead
of the night. She had come to Lisette's house before daybreak,
and had begged for shelter there till the evening, when she was
to start with Hector for the sunny South, by the mail train for
Bordeaux, on the way to the Pyrenees. It had been the dream
of the journalist's life to cross the Pyrenees — to see Madrid and
Cordova, Seville, Granada, the world of Alfred de Musset and
Murillo, the world that seems to have been invented for poets
and pauiters ; and to take Paquerette with him made the
fulfilment of that long-cherished dream so much the sweeter.
Unhappily, Monsieur de Valnois had a habit of mind and body
which he believed to be a part of the poetic tempe^'ameut — a
man must needs have the defauts de ses qualitcs. He could
never be in time for any appointment with man or woman.
Unpunctuality was engrained in him. Thus, having planned to
meet Paquerette in the station on the Boulevard de I'Hopital
in time for the Bordeaux mail, he arrived there just ten minutes
after the train had started, and found Paquerette in the great
bleak waiting-room, pale with fright. What was she to do?
Where was she to go '? She wanted to fly f]»»m Paris, to be
beyond the reach of her angry husband. She had left a letter
on the chimney-piece telling him of her flight. He would be
back early next morning. He had told her so in his letter
received that afternoon.
'You should not have written about these foUies,' said Hector,
reproving her in his airy way as if she had been a foolish child.
' There is never any need to confess one's sins except to the priest.
AVhat shall we do since the train is lost really and truly ? Will
you go back to your lodgings and burn the letter, and take some
more convenient time for our flight ? '
He had a knack of putting olf things ; and was not in any
wise a man of action.
But Paquerette declared she would not go back to that
abandoned home of hers for worlds. Who coidd tell ? Ishmael
might be there already ; he might have read her letter — he might
be there waiting for her like a wild beast in a cage. She re-
minded her lover, also, that all her worldly goods were in the
railway station, packed in the two portmanteaux which he had
bought for her that morning. Every step had been taken for
their flight except, on Hector's part, that one detail of being in
time for the traia.
^ Their Boots shall be as Bottenness* 259
. *If you will not go back to youv owii apartment, there ie nq
hKcniative but to come willi me to mine,' said de Valnois, after
a minute's retlection ; 'but I shall have to take you past tlie
porter unawares, for he is a curious person with a prejudice
against your too enchanting sex.'
And now, in the chill daylight, the dread to-morrow, tha
time of reflection, of remorse, of passionate, unavailing regret,
Islnnael's wife was in hiding with her friend and confid.into
Lisette Moque. Yes ; Madame Moque knew everything : had
tried to stem the torrent of guilty passion ; had given gof' 1
advice par dessus la tetey but liad never refused to go to the
Oj:iera with the lovers, to eat ices at Tortoni's, or to sup at a popul; r
restaurant. She had seen them sliding down the fatal slope, h;,d
tried to pluck them back, and, failing that, deemed it a virtue in
herself that she had not abandoned tliem in their sin — that she
was ready to be their friend still in spite of everything.
It had been a week of fever, the time of Ishmael's absence.
Tlie Palais de Cristal was closed for a general painting, and
smartening, and restoration. Lisette had been free to go where
she liked with Paqueret'e. Ah, wjiat drives they had had in
the moonlight, the great harvest moon shining upon them,
seeming to countenance their guilty love by that plenitude of
glory. The perfect beauty of those Septeml)er nights seemed a
part of their being. What had they to do but love each other
in a world where all was so lovely — to love as the birds love ; to
turn to each other with tremulous lips, impelled they knew not
how, as the wind-driven flowers seemed to kis.s each other in tlie
woodland ?
And then it was a season of terror and strange excitement,
this year of war and pestilence. From afar there came the
tidings of conquest and bloodslied, and men's minds were on tlie
alert, expectmit of a mighty victory yonder, a victory the newj
of which was to convidse Paris only a few days later. And while
far away in the East the sky was red with the fierce light of
battles, here at home there was the darkness of the grave, aiul
men's talk was of sudden death. Those who were glad and well
yesterday were stricken to-day, would be carried to the grave
to-morrow. Who could tell where the hand of the slayer would
fall next? One lived on the brink of a precipice. Not to be
ha^jpy to-day was, perhaps, to lose all clumce of bliss for evei\
To-morrow one might be lying under the cold, damp ground —
out of sight of yonder mellow moon — a prey for the conqueror
worm.
Perhaps it was this fever in the air, this breath of the
pestilence iiml ever-pi'esent terror of deatli, that impelled
Paquerette'a light feet to the edge of the abyss, that made her
260 Tshma^l
oblivious of honour, duty, gratitude, truth, religion, for the sake
of a low voice breathing poetic words in her ear, a gentle hand
toying with her hair, eyes that looked into hers, shining like
twin stars under the starlight. Oh, happy nights, which seemed
as innocent as the loves of Titania and her sister-elves, yet meant
the ruin of two lives, a blight upon two young souls. How
sweet they weie ! How sweet amidst the glades of Saint-
Germain, in the lamp-lit sujjper-room at the Henri Quatre ; the
scent of mignonette and roses wafted in from the old-fashioned
garden, the forest showing dark and mysterious yonder, only a
little way from the open Avindows : happy hours so lightly spent
in the arrowy flight of mirthful words, of half-veiled avoAvals
of love, across the lighted table : happy drives back to Paris,
when the chill breath of morning began to steal across the
deepening dark of night, and Paquerette nestled closer to her
lovei-'s side for warmth and comfort, cherished by that encircling
arm, hoping that she might die there after a brief dream of bliss.
Her sin looked of a different colour this morning as she
crouched, still trembling for fear of her angry husband, in the
shadow of the yellow curtains.
' What would have become of you, I wonder, if I had been
as wanting in tact as you and that Monsieur of yours have
shown yourselves ? ' demanded Lisette. ' Figure to yourself,
then, a man who cannot be in time for the train even when he
is eloping with another man's wife ! However, thanks to my
presence of mind, your husband will be cooling his heels at the
Saint-Lazare station, watching all the departures for the West,
while you and Monsieur de Valnois are leaving the Boulevard
de THopital for the South — provided this clever gentleman does
not contrive to lose the train again to-day.'
' He will not do that,' said Paquerette. ' He is as anxious
to get away from this horrible city as I am.'
She shuddered as she spoke of the great city as if its very
atmosphere were pervaded by her husband's anger — that thirst
for vengeance which meant death for her lover, if not for her too.
' Oh ! Monsieur de Valnois is anxious to leave Paris, you say.
But why 1 '
' On account of his debts.'
' Oh, he is in debt, is he ? And is that the capital with which
you two are to begin life, Id bos ? '
* How do you mean ? '
' I mean, what are you going to live upon in the South ?
Travellmg costs money ; eating and drinking cost money : even
lovers are sometimes hungry.'
'Oh, \,^ shall have plenty of money,' answered Paquerette,
confidently, as if the matter needed no discussion. ' You know
• Their Boots shall be as Eottenness ' 201
how clever Hector is. He can always live by his pen — at the
9ther end of the world just as well as in Paris. He has nearly
finished a second volume of poems, ever so much liner than the
first, for which he was paid so handsomely. The new book will
bring him a great heap of mouey, and will increase his reputa-
tion as a poet.'
' I hope so,' said Lisette, to whose strictly hourgeoise temper
the prospect did not appear particularly inviting.
Poetry was all very well, but she would have preferred
something more solid, more commercial — a new mustard, a
lucifer match, an article of daily consumption that all the world
might buy.
'He is to call for me in a rcmue at a quarter past eleven,'
said Pdquerette, looking at the clock with an anxious air. ' It
is ten minutes past by your clock. Is tliat right ? '
' Rather slow. It is over the quarter by the right time.
^ Mon Dieu^ cried F^uerette, in an agony; 'if Iil- .should
lose the train again ! '
' I hope he won't,' said Lisette, coolly ; 'but be is a poet,
and poets have their own ideas about time and nior.ey.'
Paquerette came out of the little alcove, tremulous, pale with
apprehension, and put on her bonnet befoi-e the glass above the
mantelpiece — a neat little black lace bonnet with a wreath of
violets. Small bonnets had only just come into fashion, and
they were very small. The Empress had her lovely golden hair
Tor ornament, and all other women in civilised Europe, whether
with or without golden hair, were content to copy the Empress's
headgear. They had not yet begun to dye their own Lair \i\
imitation of that lovely aibitress of fashion. Pfiquerette had a
little black lace mantle for her shoulders over her gray silk
gown. It was only within the last six mouths she had aspired
to silk gowns.
' How hoirible I Icok !' she said, scared by the expression of
her face.
' You look like a lady. The cut of that gown is perfect,
though it was made by a poor little half-starved workwoman in
a garret,' answered Lisette, surveying her friend wath a critical
eye. ' Haik ! there is the remise. You and Monsieur do
Valnois have your luggage a.11 at the station — nothing to do but
take your tickets and get your places in the train.'
Slie and Paquerette ran downstairs. A close carriage wa^
waiting before the door with Hector in it. He had been about
Paris all the morning, whipping up a little money from his
employers in the literary line ; making engagements to send
letters from Spain to one of his papers, to do Sj anish ai ticlea
occasionally for his magazine ; discussing the teims upon which
263 Ishmad
)iis new volume of poems was to be produced, and keeping aa
much as possible out of the way of his creditors — the upholsterer,
the hnc-d-hrac dealer, the tailor, hatter, perfumer, hosier, print-
seller, tobacconist — astonishing how many trades came into play
to provide the mere necessities of a fine gentleman's existence.
And now he had fifteen hundred francs in his pocket, and was
ready to start. There was not a moment to lose.
lie had not been back to the Hue de (irt-in-lle. Tie h.ul not
seen the havoc that had been made vvilh tue iurniLure, or liie
challenge in the chimney-glass.
He handed Paquerette into the carriage, and then looked out
lo shake hands with Lisette.
'We are off to the sunny South,' he said, 'far away from
wars and rumours of wars. We shall never come back to this
worn-out town, where there is not a breeze that has not been
poisoned by the breath of man. Think of us kindly, Madame
Moque.'
Lisette, touched on that sentimental side of her nature whicl
had stood a good deal of hard wear, was moved to tears. Her
husband, more pi-actical and not less kindly, came out of his shop
with a neat little white paper parcel, tied with the daintiest red
tape, such a parcel as one only sees iu Paris.
' You will be hungry on the journey,' he said. ' I have made
you a sandwich or two — boar's head with pistachios.'
He put his little gift into Hector's hand, and nodded a
friendly farewell. Lisette ran into the road as the carriage
drove aw^ay, took off one of her well-worn slippers and flung it
after the vehicle. She had forgotten for the moment that this
depai ture w;i3 not entitled to all the honours of a wedding
partj.
CHAPTEE XXVII
'the rod hath blossomed, pride hath budded*
It -was the springtide of 1867, year of the gathering of the
nations in the great circular glass-house of the Champs de Mars,
with its gardens, and fountains, and external dependencies, all to
be rejjroduced on a more gigantic scale eleven years later, just
as this crystal palace of Sixty-seven was a reproduction and
extension of the old Palace of Industry yonder in the Champa
Elysees. But people talked of this exhibition as of something
unsurpassed and unsurpassable, the culmination %nd ultimate
evolution of the system of International Exhibitions. The
nations, the newspapers, had been full of rvimours about it for
the last half a year. It would be finished — it would not be
finished — at the appointed time. It would be opened on the
very day that had been named — it would not be open till the
end of the summer. Paris was on tip-toe ; England was ex-
pectant, but doubtful — those frivolous creatures have no head
for business, never are ready with anything, said sturdy John
Bull ; America was in a fever, and all that was most distin-
guished in New York, Boston, Washington, Chicago was already
on the high seas.
There was one person in Paris who was utterly indifferent
to the opening or non-opening of the monster glass-house on the
first of April ; one person who thought the whole business an
intolerable bore, the clink of hammers, the grinding of wheels
a burden and a weariness ; and that was a lady who lived in a
white-walled villa in one of the new avenues just beyond the
Arc de Triomphe, and who told her friends, with a shrug and a
sigh, that her house had only one fault, and that was being much
too near Paris.
This singular person, \t'ho did not care for international
exhibitions, was a rich widow. Lady Constance Danetree, born
in the purple, the daughter of an Irish marquis, married early to
a man of old family and large wealth, left a childless widow in
her twenty-third year, and now, in her twenty-sixth, leading a
life of perfect independence in this brilliant Imperial Paris,
where she knew all the best people and a few of the worst,
the white and the black threads being curiously interwoven in
the woof and warp of Imperial society — society bent on pleasure
as on the chief good in life, society debased and enfeebled by an
264 Ishmael
excessive luxury, comipted by ill-pfotten wealth — society which
has been compared to Holbein's Dance of Death around the altar
of the golden calf.
*Che carnivalet' exclaimed an Italian diplomatist on first
beholding that glittering Court of the Tuileries ; and for the
lighter portion of society this Imperial reign was verily one
long carnival — an age of feasting and revelry, of dancing and
masking ; one long night of reckless mirth, upon which the
morning came suddenly, cold, and bleak, and gray, the morning
that saw Paris a beleaguered city, and her Emperor a discrowned
exile.
Lady Constance Danetree's mother had been dead ten years.
Her father was an eccentric old person, a tyrant of the first
water. He lived on his Irish estate half the year, in a castle
near the mouth of the Shannon, among a tenantry wlio hated
him worse than the worst of absentees, and spent the other half
in London, where hia reputation had an odour of the notorious
marquis best known to this generation as Lord Steyne, and of
that otlier gentleman familiar in the literature of anecdote
vmder the sobriquet of Old Q. As it was not possible Lady
Constance could rejoice in the society of such a father, people
hardly wondered that she should prefer Paris to Loudon for
residence, and the Riviera to Brighton for recreation.
She had married a rich man without loving him, not because
she was poor, or because she was driven into his arms by pater-
nal tyranny. Lord Kilrush was too indifferent to his daughter's
destiny to play the tyrant in matters matrimonial. Lady
Constance married the tirst respectable man who offered himself
to her simply because she hated her home, and thought it a
happier condition to be the wife of a man of honour, albeit she
did not love him, than to be the only daughter of Lord Kilrush.
During her two years and a half of wedded life Lady
Constance failed in no single duty, great or small. She made
her husband's life supremely happy, so happy that Mark Dane-
tree had no need to question the nature of his wife's regard for
him. She was his good and true helpmeet, the pride of his
h eart, the glory of his home ; and when fate snapped the thread
of his days unawares by an accident in the hunting field, in a
ditch on his father-in-law's estate, he died with his hand in
hers, liis pale lips murmuring broken words of gratitude for
the blissful life she had given him.
Mark Danetree had been dead nearly four years ; and people
had almost forgotten that Lady Constance had ever been any-
thing but a widow. This condition, with all its freedom and
dignity, seemed her natural state. She was one of the queens
of Parisian society, went where she liked, spent as much as sha
*The Bod hath Blossomed' 2G5
liked, said what she liked, did what she liked ; and it seemed to
her friends in France as if she had been born so. They coukl
not picture her in a state of bt>ndage, bowing her neck to the
yoke, accepting the mastery of father or husband.
* She's a delicious woman ; but what a devil of a life she
must have led Danetree ! ' said an Englishman who had never
met her till the days of her widowhood. He would hardly
believe the better-iuformed individual who tried to explain
to liim that Lady Constance's conduct as a wife had been
peifect.
She was beautiful exceedingly, with tJie grand linos and rich
colouring of a high-born Irishwoman. Her profile was classical,
and the face, so perfect in modelling, so statuesque in its
harmony, might have failed to touch the heart of man had it
not been for those lovely Irish eyes of deep dark gray shaded
by long black lashes.
' With such eyes as those a woman may do anything,' said a
Parisian, discussing the lady at his cercle over the inspiring glass
of absinthe avee heaucoiqj de gomme, which was the fashionable
before-dinner stimulant. ' If some of our Cocodettes had those
eyes, they would go further than they do.'
^ Fas possible,' replied his friend ; and, indeed, in those latter
days of the Emj^ire there were few extremities left for the great
ladies of Paris to touch. They had lived, those grand ladies of
the Imperial court : they had rubbed shoulders with the demi-
monde ; they had sat at the feet of Cora and her sisterhood.
They dressed, they talked, they danced, they sang, after the
women of whose very names they were supposed to be ignorant.
Cora and the Empress divided the sovereignty of fashion ; and
to judge by the style of the women of that period, it would seem
that Cora's influence had the wider range. The Empress was
lovely, graceful, gracious, a woman of exquisite taste ; but Cora
had chic — Cora had the art of astonishing society. It was all
very well for handsome women to mould themselves upon the
refined manners of the Empress ; but a woman of quality might
be as ugly as sin and yet attract admir;ition if she only were
bold enough to imitate Cora. . It was Cora who first taught the
women of Paris to en;unel their faces, to paint their eyebrows
and eyelids, to draw blue veins upon tlu'ir alabaster foreheads,
to wear a cascade of somebody else's hair flowing down their
backs like a horse's tail. It was she who invented short petti-
coats, Polish boots, chalnes Benolton. Zanita, the pjile and
elegant beauty of 1854, was dead and forgotten, and Cora
reigned in her stead : and compared with Zanita's refined love-
liness, Cora's coarser charms were as Rubens imto Ratfaelle, or
RS Baudelaire to Musset. She was said to have received fronj
2G6 Ishmael
London a magical casket containing all the elements of beauty ;
in any case, it was she who invented the sexe maquille.
If change and progress and ever-increasing wealth had set
their mark upon the time, death had not been idle. The ranks
of the great had thinned since the days of Crimean victory. In
the Lenten season of '64, after briefest illness, like a candle
blown out by an unexpected gust of wind, there had vanished
from the Imperial pageant one of the most important factors in
the coup d^^tat, and, from a social standpoint, the most brilliant
outcome of the Empire. This was de Morny, gentleman-financier,
man of business to the tips of his fingers, manufacturer of beet-
root sugar in the Puy-de-Dome, picture-dealer in Russia, railway-
£])ecuiator in France. In finance a genius ; as courtier and fine
gentleman, patron of arts and letters, the stage, the opera, the
finest type of the age which he adorned. He died, and left no
lasting gap in the arena of public life ; but to that lighter world
of pleasure, the world of balls and dinners, theatres and picture-
galleries, boudoirs and 'parties fines, it was as if a star had gone
down, and the horizon of life was so much the darker for that
vanished glory.
Gone, too, Cavovir, the modern Machiavel, the master-mind
of Europe ; Palmerston ; Leopold of Belgium ; P^lissier. Great
actors were departing from the stage of European politics ; but
in the coulisses of diplomacy there lurked a figure which was
soon to loom large upon the scene — Bismarck, the Prussian, upon
v/liose broad shoulders Cavoui^'s mantle was said to have fallan.
The Paris cf to-day was a vastly diiferent place fi'om that
city along whose dingy quays Ishmael had looked on a November
evening in the year 1850. Seventeen years of enterprise, im-
provement, vast expenditure had made the old city into a new
city, a place of broad boulevards piercing east and west, and
north and south ; a place of mighty theatres, and newly-erected
churches that were as gaudy in colour and gilding as a mediajval
thdsse or an Indian tomb ; a place of new bridges, rich in
sculptured emblems, recalling the triumphs of French arms
from Jena to Inkermann ; a place of parks and palaces, fountains
and gardens, villas and avenues, with suburbs stretching far
and wide, dotted about with those Swiss ch&lets, Norman
chateaux, Italian villas, maisonettes d la moyen-age, d la Renais-
sance, with which the little shopkeeper who has saved money
loves to disfigure the landscape around Paris. The old wish of
the Parisian hourgeoise to possess a gable in the street has grown
into the desire for a house and gardens at Asnieres or Bellevue.
Opulence and luxury were the leading notes of the Imj^erial
reign. The famous Mr. Spricht, the man-milliner patronised in
vhe Tnileries, had built himself a palace with a fortune macje
' The Bod hath Blossomed ■ 2G7
ftnt of chiffons. Everywhere there appeared signs of universal
prosperity. Among the poorest arrondissements of the city, amidst
the vanishing slums of old Paris, gardens bloomed and fountains
played as in an Arabian fairy tale. The enemies of (he Emperor
sneered at these glimpses of Eden in the midst of squalor, and
grumbled that money was spent upon flowers and fountains
which ought to have been expended on free schools ; but in
spite of these malcontents, Paris throve and rejoiced in the sun-
shine. Her hospitals, her charities of all kinds had attained a
perfection only possible in a country where benevolence has been
made a science. Everywhere, from the woi'kman's boulevards
yonder, Boulevard Richard Lenoir, Boulevard de la Villette, to
the Italian palace of painter or princess, newly risen in the once
shabby purlieus of the Pare Monceaux — westward, beyond the
triumphal gate, where hills had been levelled and old streets
carted away to complete the Parisian's paradise of avenues and
villas, gardens, shrubberies, fishponds, cascades ; eastward —
southward — northward — everywhere the hand of improvement
had been busy. Spade and pickaxe, hammer and chisel had
created a new Paris — a Paris of tall white palaces, sculptured
pediments, classic porticoes, Corinthian friezes, caryatides, ogee
mouldings, brackets, festoons of fruit and flowers, repeating
themselves in the same fresh stonework along an endless per-
spective — a Paris of intolerably long streets, and asphalte path-
ways that burnt the feet of the weary — a city of dissipation,
pleasure, luxury, extravagance, and ruin — a gulf for men's
fortunes, a pest-house for men's health, a grave for intellect,
honour, manhood, religion — and quite the most delightful city
in the world.
Lady Constance Danetree lived her own life in her perfect
villa in the Bois, and troubled herself not at all about the follies or
the vices of the great city yonder ; and the breath of the pestilence
left no taint upon her. "rhe people she liked best and saw most
belonged chiefly to the artistic classes. She was a woman of
many tastes — painted, played divinely, sang a little, but only to
her intimates, for her voice was an impassioned contralto with
a timbre which seemed made to reveal the inmost feelings of the
singer's heart. She never sang frivolous music, and she never
sang before indifferent people. She read immensely, and liked
to associate with her intellectual superiors. For her own class
she cared little, as a class ; but she had a few chosen friends
belonging to the aristocracy of England and France ; and in the
houses of these friends she met the fashionable world of Paris,
and saw Parisian life with all its absurdities, all its vices, all its
caprices pass before her as a panorama, in which she was but
fc^intly interested.
265 Ishmaet
Her life, albeit ^lie had some friends and a herd of acquaint-
ances, was a lonely life ; but Constance Danctree did not dislike
solitude. Perhaps any other woman in her place would have
invited some maiden cousin to share her home, or would have
hired a companion. But Lady Constance needed no sheep-dog
to keep her in countenance ; and the perpetual society of any
one person, however delightful, would have bored her intolerably.
She opened the doors of her villa occasionally to her own or her
husband's kindred, entertained her gn&t^t or guests regally for a
week or two, showed them all that was worth seeing in Paris,
made herself delightful to them in every way, and never
breathed freely till her carriage had driven them off to the
station.
In lieu of human companionship, which is apt to be obtrusive,
Lady Constance had some canine friends, trained to an obedi-
ence so perfect, a sympathy so delicate, that their presence never
wearied her. Her three friends were Lion, a superb colley,
black and tan, with as much nobility in the form of his head as
you would find in half the peerage ; Bijou, a soft white Pome-
ranian, witli the eyes of a gazelle, and a tender melting nature
wliich seemed always entreating to be loved ; and Skip, a very
perfect being of the fox-terrier breed, with a pedigree as historic
as a duke's. These three had the entree to every room in the
villa, and had never jeopardised their privileges by bad beha-
viour ; but Bijou alone was allowed to accompany her mistress
in her drives and shopping expeditions, as she alone possessed
that repose of mind whicli reconciles a dog to lying on the back
seat of a carriage as motionless and supine as the Esquimaux
bearskin on which she reclines.
Lady Constance, reared in the south of Ireland, daughter
and wife of mighty hunters, was a fine horsewoman, and kept a
couple of hacks for her own riding — no groom was ever allowed
to mount either. She rode every morning and in all weathers
— rode early and far a-field ; and before noon she was geneially
established in her boudoir, reading, writing, practising, as the
fancy seized her. She received her friends in the afternoon, and
was one of the earliest to introduce into Parisian circles the
thoroughly British institution of five o'clock tea ; ce petit five-
o'clock lunch, as it was called by her French friends.
Upon this sunny afternoon in March, when the almond trees
were coming into flower, and when tulips and hyacinths made a
blaze of colour in Lady Constance Danetree's garden, her salon
was not empty. Lady Valentine, her most particular friend, a
clever matron of forty, a woman of the world in the best sense,
had just dropped in for half-an-hour's chat before her drive
pound the Bois, bringing with her the last of her iproteq^s^ a
oTks Boil hath Blossomed' 2GD
young Frenchman and a new poet. There is always a new poet
in fashionable Paris. Every season has its chosen bard, declaied
by the unanimous voice of the dilettanti to be the coming man,
author of a very thin little volume of thinner ver.se, i^rinted on
chalky paper, with carmine initials, and engraved tail-pieces-^
and of whom the French people at large never hear.
The Vicomte de Pontchartrian was the coming man in the
salons of sixty-seven. He had published his little yellow
volume — Ates Rules — and had accomplished a succh fou in
half-a-dozen drawing-rooms between the Champs de Mars and
the Place de la Concorde. His Rales were short detached
lyrics — brief flights in the fashion of Heine — spasmodic — incon-
secutive. His Pegasus had not the strong wnig of Musset or
Hugo, or even the calm narrative power, the somewhat languid
grace of Lamartine. His flights were mere convulsions — short
bounds into space, landing him nowhere in particular, or occa-
sionally in an abyss of bathos. But as his verses were
audaciously blasphemous, passionate, and charged with obscuie
meanings, the femmes savantes and the prcoieuses ridimles of
Sixty-seven raved about him, fought for the privilege of haviu^
him at their parties, plied him with sweet cakes and tea, flatteriL^
and sympathy, and did all in their power to feed a self-esteem
which had long been the Vicomte's particular hosse. He wag
not the ideal poet of the grisette and the Quartier Latin. He did
not wear his hair long, or afl'ect the unconventional in costume.
On the contrary, he dressed and demeaned himself with an
exti-eme precision, studied mathematical exactness in his neckties
and waistcoats, bought his hats in London, wore always the
correct thing at the correct moment, and was as careful as if a
hair's-breadth too much in the width of a collar, or the sixteenth
of an inch in the length of a coat tail, would be sudden death to
his pretensions. He was the true type of petit creve\ small,
dce'tif, prematurely bald, with eyes that had faded in gaslighted
rooms, a wan comploxion, an aristocratic little nose, and a neat
little moustache, so slender, so sparse, that the gummed points
were as sharp as a pair of compasses. He was polite to punc-
tiliousness, courteous, velvety. He afi'ected the tone of Ver-
sailles and Marly in tlie days of the great King. If hia
sentiments were louchcs, his manners were irreproachable.
Blasphemy was the leading note of his versification, but he
liad never been heard to swear. He had a little language of
his own when he wanted to be abusive. He had a host of
small originalities, infinitesimal inventions which passed for a
great talent in that society of Sixty-seven.
But if the little Yicomto was a great man in the salo)i and
the boudoir, he was a very small man in that reiiublic of letters
270 Ishmaet
whicli in these days held its cenade sometimes after midnight
on the ground floor of the Caf d Riche ; sometimes in that mystic
chamber, number sixteen at tlie Cafe Anglais, known as the
Grand Seize Salon, with flaming windows shining upon the boule-
vard and on the Rue de Marivaux, privileged apartment, where
beauty, art, and literature supped gaily after the theatres were
closed. How much that was brilliant and transient in the
phantasmagoria of Paris shone, and sparkled, and lived its brief
hour of delight in that famous supper room ! What wit, what
gaiety, what reckless rapture in the present ! What cynical reck-
lessness of the future ! How many are dead for whom the wine
sparkled, and the lights burned in those nights of revelry ! Plow
dim are the beauties whose charms were then in their noontide !
] low altered and saddened is the world we live in ! Amongst the
grands viveurs — Gortschakofi", Demidoff, Gramont-Caderousse,
Raphael Bischoflfsheim, Daniel Wilson — the Vicomte de Pont-
chartrian was a minnow among the tritons, while among tlie
greater lights of the literary firmament, Gautier, Augier, Dumas,
Feuillet, Sardou, and the rest, the author of Mes Rules gave
forth as feeble a glimmer as one of those attenuated tapers
which are carried by white-robed maidens in the processions of
a village chiirch.
Lady Coiistance had other visitors this afternoon — Madame
Jarzd, a large matron, and her two marriageable daughters — mar-
riageable for the last few years, but still in full pursuit of eligible
husbands. The father was an official of the Empire, a great
man at Court, but with an income too small for the comfortable
maintenance of such luxuries as a handsome wife and two
attractive daughters. The elder girl, Hortense, disappointed
and embittered already at four-and-twenty, had taken to litera-
ture, and set up for an esprit fort. She was among that modern
Orphic society which expoimded the mysteries of the new poet,
pretended to understand him as no one else could, and was
suspected of having set her heart upon marrying him. Amelie,
the younger, who was very fair, very fresh, very pretty, but
with a suspicion of artifice in the darkness of her lashes, the
golden tints in her hair, afi"ected the genre Mb(f, and was the
more popular of the sisters. She wore innocent little hats,
rather infantine gowns, and a crop of fluffy curls frizzling
childislily all over her head at a period when other women wore
Japanese cliignons of satiny smoothness. Amdlie suppressed
her forehead, which was not devoid of intellect, and hoodwinked
society with a shock of golden curls, which came down almost
to her eyebrows, and imparted a charming simjjlicity, verging
on silliness, to \\qv petit minois chiffone'. Tohaxe a petit minois
chiffon^, a museau d'enfant gdtc'e, was Am^lie's highest ambitiou.
ilie Bod hath Blossomed* 271
Wcis not the joeiz'i miwowc^i/fow^tlie favourite type yonder in tlie
Quartier Breda, the region" of Notre Dame de Lorette? Tlie
petits inuseaux drove the best horses in the Bois, and owned tha
prettiest victorias, and drove to the tlieatres in delicious little
coupe's hardly big enough to contain a crinoline and a cavaliei'.
The talk began naturally with the Exliibition, whether it
would or would not be ready b} the first of April, the biggest
poisson d'avril which the Emperor had ever offered to his
subjects. People talked of the circular show in the Champs de
Mars just as they talk of the weather when there is no other
stock subject ready to hand. All the kings and potentates were
coming to Paris for the gi-eat industrial fair. From Egyjit,
from Turkey, from the far, far East tliey were to come. (Jld
King Yv''illiam of Prussia, big with those late victories of his,
swollen with the triumph of Sadowa, was to be there with his
statesman Bismarck, and his general de Moltke, for whose tcjud
friendship Napoleon had sacrificed the interests of Austria by
that neutrality which his best friend, the Queen of Holland,
sti,, aatised as a blunder that was worse than a crime. The
Emperor of all the Eussias was coming. Paris was to bristle
with sceptres. There were rumours that Victor Emmanuel
would not come. There were some rather sharp letters passing
just now between France and Italy. All friendships must come
to an end. But the rugged clueft;un of Savoy, the soldier of
fortune, would hardly be missed amongst that crowd of crowned
heads.
They talked of Mexico and her fated Emperor, over whom tha
shadows of calamity were darkening till all the horizon around
him looked bkck as night. In the October of last year his
personal possessions were on board an Austrian frigate. He had
made all his plans for leaving Mexico to rejoiji his atiiicted wife
in Belgium ; but at the last moment his clerical counsellor,
Father Fischer, aided by a letter from the Empress Eugenie,
meant only to offer consolation for past reverses, had succeeded
in rekindling the flame of ambition. New manifestos had been
issued, more blood had been spilt, and now, in this March of
Sixty-seven, General Bazaine and the French forces were on the
high seas, while Maximilian, with a handful of faithfnl
followers and an army of nine thousand troops, was, to all effects
and purposes, a prisoner in the city of Qucretaro, hemmed round
by the Republican forces, which were growing daily stronger
under General Escobedo.
' This is a sorry end to la plus belle pens^e du r^gne' said
Lady Valentine, quoting one of the Emperoi-'s flatterers. In
those days there wei'e only two sections in the political world-
partisans who flattered grossly, enemies who slandered ruthlessly.
272 tshmael
Truth had vanished from the political horizon. Everybody
knew in his heart of hearts that the Imperial car was on the
downward slope. The supremacy of France as the conqueror of
Eussia, the liberator of Italy, was over. Neutrality in Europe,
failure in Mexico, had tarnished those laurels won in the past.
A nation that -nould be great by arms must never leave the
Bword too long in the scabbard. Napoleon was trying in these
latter days to realise that old promise made at Bordeaux almost
on the eve of the Crimean War-^' L' Empire c'est Ut paix.' But
the attempted realisation worked ill, and it seemed that peace
meant weakness. ' On peut tout /aire avec des haionnettes, excepte
s'asseoir dessiis,' said Plon-Plon. ' The real loser at Sadowa was
France,' said the astute among politicians ; and it was to Germany
that kings, sages, and people looked for the newly-rising star.
'And what has it cost us, cette belle pens^eF' inquired
Madame Jarze.
' Oh, only a thousand millions or so in hard cash and credits,
and — say, the tenth part of the e'lite of our army,' answered the
Vicomte, who never exhibited any signs of emotion.
'But you have Marshal Bazaine coming back to you safe
and isound,' said Constance ; ' surely that is some compensation
for your losses Id bas.'
' We could have spared him better than a worse man,' replied
the Vicomte, misquoting Shakespeare.
' Papa does not like Marshal Bazaine,' said Amdlie ; ' he
thinks him a ^:)a5 grand' chose.'
' I heard rather a good thing of one of our soldiers in
Mexico,' interjected Pontchartrain. 'When the cholera was
decimating our troops, this fellow wrote on the wall of the
cemetery — Jardin d'acclimatation. Be sure that man was a
Parisian.'
'Do jow think that wit is a fruit of the Parisian soil,
Vicomte?' asked Lady Constance.
' It may grow elsewhere, Madame, but it only ripens in Paris.
They had been talking for nearly half an hour, and not a
word had been said about the Vicomte's poems. Hortense felt
that he must be bored since the only subject that interested
him was his owti talent.
' I forget which of Monsieur de Pontchartrain's poems yon
t©ld me impressed you the most, dear Lady Constance,' hazarded
Hortense, hoping to lure her hostess into a eulogistic criticism.
Unfortunately, Constance had also forgotten. She leaned
her dimpled chin Upon her forefinger, not a weak chin by any
means, but round and firm as marble. She reflected for a
few moments, her dark-gray eyes grave and beautiful. The
little Vicomte gazed upon her with as intense a look as those
' !rhe Rod hath Blossomed ' 278
pale orbs of Jus wore capable of, gazed and thought what a
heavenly way it would be out of all his difficulties if this lovely
Englishwoman would marry him and let him have the spending
of her fine fortune.
' Let me see,' said Constance ; ' which of the poems most
impressed me ? Was it that one about the dead dog ? So
Btriknig, so original ! Two happy lovers are walking along a
Avillow-shaded bank by the river in the summer twilight full
of gaiety and hope, when they come suddenly upon a dead dog
— a poor drowned corpse — bloated and noisome, and ravaged
by crawling creatures that prey upon the dead. The description
of that poor carrion is so exquisitely graphic ! And they think
that as that carrion is to-day so will they be a few years hence—
a thing for worms and flies to feed upon — a source of foulness
and pollution. Yes, I think, perhaps, that was the poem "which
startled me most.'
The Vicomte was delighted.
' You have divined my own thoughts,' he said ; • that lyric
was 7)17/ favourite. I wrote it with my heart's best blood.'
' What a nasty idea ! ' exclaimed Amelie, putting on her
baby air, ' when ink is so clean and so cheap ! '
' Cruche,' muttered her sister, angrily.
' Yes ; it is a powerful poem — a little brutal, perhaps ; but
the brutal is now an essential element in poetry,' said Constance,
musingly.
'And to think that the world once called Byron immoral,'
exclaimed Lady Valentine — ' Byron, who only shocked the sen-
sitive upon one or two points. The modem school has gone so
far beyond him in far-reaching esoteric immorality, that Byron
has an air of having written with milk and water. And even in
Byroife life-time Shelley went much further than he. It is the
plain-speaking that offends, I think,' pursued her ladyship, wlix)
•was strong-minded and of a ripe age, and who load no fear of
touching a delicate subject. 'The man who calls a spade a
Bpade is sure to shock people ; but another man may hint in a
subtle, between the lines way, at things that are infinitely worse
tlian spades, and yet printers will print and publishers will
publish without fear of consequences. By the bye, Vicomte,
your verses remind me of a book 1 read last year — not a new
book by any means — a book of poems published in the beginning
of the Empire — 3fes Nuits Blanches — by a certain Hector de
Valnois — a very clever book — a book full of strong things
mixed up with a few absurdities after the manner of your poets.'
Pontchartrain's countenance assumed the blankness of a
stone wall. He had never heard of Mes Nuits Blanches. He
doubted if the book had made any impression in literary circles.
T
M tshmael
' Strange,' exclaimed Lady Valentine ; ' I should have tnnnrrht
you had read all the books of mark written within the century,
and this really is a book of mark ; and I am told was a good deal
praised in its day. I wonder the wi'iter never did an^'thing more.
Has nobody heard of this Monsieur de Valnois ? '
Lady Constance had not, nor Madame Jarze, who rarely read
anything beyond the fashion magazines, the Figaro^ and the
Jownal four Hire.
' What a singular coincidence ! It was only the other day
that I heard of a man who was described to me as tlie author of
Mes Nuits Blanches, a volume of verses which achieved a succes foit
in its day,' cried Am^lie, full of animation. ' Such a curious
story. You know I am always stumbling upon curious stories.'
'Or inventing them,' muttered Hortense, with a sinister
glance at her sister.
' You know M. de Keratry, that amusing young fellow who
brought out a vaudeville at the Varidt^s last winter ? It was he
who told me all about this forgotten poet. He knows him
intimately — in a kind of way.'
' What do you mean by " in a kind of way " ? '
'Well, this poor man who wrote 3Ies N^dts BlancJieshas gone
down in the world — he does not go into society any longer, lives
in some wretched hole in the Quartier Latin, in some undis-
coverable street behind the Luxembourg. But he was once a
man of fashion, I believe — once handso«ie, once elegant.'
■ ' Like the Vicomte's dead dog, he has had his day, and now
he has come to the carrion stage, or nearly, I sujjpose,' said
Lady Constance.
' Very nearly. I'm afraid, from Monsieur de Keratry's de-
scription of this poor thing's coat and hat, that he must be
almost as badly otf as the dog. He is a teinturier.'
'A dyer ! ' exclaimed Lady Valentine, with disgust. * Those
passionate verses written by a dyer, a man who dyes his dog red
one day and yellow the next, and sends the poor brute into the
street to advertise his master's last new dye. I have always
hated Parisian dyers since I saw that yellow dog. I believe he
was of the same breed as your Bijou, Constance. Think if such
a fate were to befall her ! '
' I do not mean a dyer of that kind,' said Amdlie, scarcely
concealing her scorn of Lady Valentine's ignorance. ' A tieu'
turier in literary circles is a man who touches up — re-writes — or,
in some cases, writes altogether — another author's pamphlet, or
play, or book. That was how Monsieur de Keratry became
acquainted with this out-at-elbows poet. He had written a
delicious little vaudeville, full of smart things, but quite un-
act:i,ble— charming songs and duets, utterly unsingable. "I
• The Bod hath Blossomed * 275
fenould like to give you a cliance," said tlie manager, " but your
play wants licking into shape. You had better take it to a
fellow I know, who was once a genius — wrote plays, poetry,
criticism, political articles — and who now does piecework for
anything he can get." Monsieur de Keratry took the hint, and
carried his play to the poor man in the Quartier Latin, who took
it all to pieces as if it had been a clock that wouldn't go, and put
it all together again in admirable working order.'
' Wonderful ! ' cried Lady Constance. ' And so that is what
a literary teinturier does. One is always hearing of new pro-
fessions in Paris.'
' Cela ne se peut pas,'' said the Vicomte.
He had been looking intensely bored, and even angry, while
Am^lie told her story, no doubt disgusted at his own personality
being shouldered out of the conversation by this literary
Bohemian of the Quartier Latin.
' But, my dear Vicomte, I tell you that is,' protested Amdlie.
• I have been relating an absolute fact. For five napoleons this
poor man remodelled our friend's jslay.'
' Cela ne se peut pas,' repeated the poet, doggedly, and with
infinite disgust. 'A man of honour could never lend himself
to such a transaction. What, stand before the public as the
author of a work improved, remodelled, you say, by another
hand ? Impossible.'
He bristled, he reddened with indignation. Never had they
seen him so excited, and by a subject which could have no
personal interest for him. He was consumed with the righteous
rage of the just man who cannot endure the mere thought of
evil — of the man whose nice sense of honour cannot brook the
emallest sophistication.
' I suppose a poet has loftier ideas about such things than a
man who writes vaudevilles,' said Amelie, with her innocent air.
• Monsieur de Kdratry seemed to think there was nothing wrong
in the matter. He would not have told me if he had been
ashamed of it.'
' There are men who are such intolerable egotists that they
will talk of their own meannesses rather than not talk of tliem-
8ei*es,' said the Vicomte, still indignant.
He had set down his tea-cup in a tumult of fine feeling, and
was pacing the room in front of the long plate-glass windows —
people in Paris were still in that uncultivated condition of mind
in which large sheets of plate-glass, letting in the sky and the
trees and flowers, and all the loveliness of the external world,
were deemed admirable. They had not risen to that finer and
more artistic sense of beauty which excludes tke sky and the
garden, and composes picturesrpie etfects out of small window
27G Ishmaet.
panes, sumptnoug draperies, and a pevpetnal twilight. TKe
(l(;light in darkness, dust and Alma Tadema interiors, had not
begun. This may have been because the art of maquillage waa
a new thing, and there were still women of fashion who could
face tlie light.
'After all, it can be no worse than collaboration,' argued
Amelie, a young person not easily put down. 'I can see no
diffei-ence.'
' Did your friend put this other person's name on the title-
page of his vaudeville?^ asked the Vicomte.
' I think not.'
'Of course not,' retorted the poet; 'that makes all the
«lifFerence. He accepted another man's aid, not as a partner in
his work, in his protit, in his fame. He palmed off the talent
of another as his own — took credit for the thoughts of another
man's brain. I tell you once again, Mademoiselle, among men
of honour, cela ne se pent pas'
The last woids came with a serpent-like hiss from the thin
lips of the petit crevd.
Amelie shrugged her shoulders.
* Get homme est assommant,' she muttered, as she rose to
accompany her mother, who was taking leave of Lady
Constance.
Hortense lingered over her adicux to the poet, who was
evidently out of humour.
' You will not forget this evening,' she said, pleadingly,
looking at the sallow, pinched countenance with beseeching
eyes.
Even love itself could not think the Vicomte handsome, but
Hortense thought him intellectual, spiritual, patrician, almost
divine ; and she was not ashamed of her worship. Perhaps
she had begun by flattering him wantonly and wilfully, in her
quality of demoiselle a marier, and had come at last to be the
(lupe of her own flatteries. It would seem, in any case, that her
present feeling for Paul de Pontchartrain was sincere to agony.
'What is there to remember for this evening in particular?'
he asked, with a blank look.
Hortense smiled a pained smile, as of one who hides a
■wound.
' Mamma's Thursday,' she said. ' You will come, will you
not ? We shall have some very good music to-night.'
' I am getting to detest music,' he said, cinlly ; ' it is the
same everywhere — Beethoven, Chopin, Schubert, jo^ezn le dos
And I have so many engagements. It seems to me that it ia
always Thursday.'
' You were not with us last week.'
' The Bod hath Blossomed 277
''Was I uof? One lives so fast in the season — and tins 3'-ea!
the pace has been increased from presto to prestissimo. But 1
will be with you this evening if you really wish it.'
* You know that 1 wish it,' she answered, looking him straight
in the eyes.
The look was as plain a confession as the Vicomte de Pont-
chartrain, in his character of lady-killer, had ever received ; but
the day was past when such avowals had power to move him.
He put on a little tender, consolatory smile, and murmured
blandly —
' Count upon me, dear Mademoiselle.'
He pressed the little hand in its light pearl-gray glove, and
so they parted.
"While the Vicomte was being canvassed by Hortenae, Madame
Jarze was applying her own powers of persuasion in another
direction.
' I hope we shall see you this evening, Lady Constance,' she
said.
' Ah, it is Thursday again ! ' exclaimed Constance. ' How
short the weeks are in March ! It seems only the other day
that I spent such a delightful hour in your saZo?i.'
' That other day is more than eight weeks ago,' said Am^lie,
reproaclifully. ' It was just after the jour de Van.'
' And to-night we shall have some particularly nice people,'
continued Madame Jarze. ' Among them there is some one I
want so much to present to you. You have heard me talk of
Monsieur IshmaeL'
Had Lady Constance been strictly sincere, she would have
said that, for the last three months, she had heard Madame Jaizd
talk of no one else.
* That is the millionaire, I think,' she said, with her quiet
smile, a smile full of subtle meanings. ' Yes, I have heard you
mention him. I have heard other people talk of him too.'
' A man has only to make a million sterling, and all tin
world will talk of him,' interjected the Vicomte, in his most acrid
tone. * There is no true sovereignty in this Paris of the second
Empire except that of sa Majeste V argent!
' It is not on account of Monsieur Ishmael's money that w&
care for him,' said Amelie, tossing up her head. ' We are not
that kind of people. It is for his noble mind, his great quali-
ties, the good he has done, that we like him. And I am sui e,
Lady Constance, if you only knew as much of him as we do, you
would admire him for the same reasons.'
'One hears so much of new people and of new things in
Paris, that they are stale in a week,' said Constance, with a
languid el«vatiou of hrmly-pencillcd brows. ' There is such
278 Ishmael
incessant talk — every subject is worn tlireadbare, and one gets
to hate people befoi-e one sees their faces. At least / do. But
I have no doubt this millionaire person is perfect since you all
think so much of him.'
' / do not think much of him, Lady Constance,' protested the
Vicomte ; ' pray leave me out of it. I think chat he is a par-
venu after the manner of all other parvenus ; only he is just a
little cleverer than most of them — lives plainly, dresses plainly,
is not effusively generous — does not pes 3 as pati'on of artists
and men of letters — and contrives to make his wealth as little
obnoxious as possible. But I've no doubt the heart of the mau
is bloated with pride.'
'He has not an iota of pride,' exclaimed Am^lie, blushing
prettily with indignation. ' I believe he forgets that he is
lich. I once told him so, and he only laughed and said, " At
any rate, Mademoiselle, I do not forget that I was once
poor." '
'Very neat,' said the Vicomte ; and then, in a tone of perfect
innocence, he said, ' What an excellent adventure this Monsieur
Ishmael would be for any enterprising demoiselle d marier. In
the old times, when Louis Philippe was King, it used to be the
parents who arranged marriages, I am told. The daughters
came out of their convents, jolies d croquer et bites a, /aire peur,
and were married by family contract. But now young ladies
are free lances. They dress like the demoiselles Benoiton, have
debts like a young man of family, and go into society with sword
and bow, like the knights of old, to make their own conquests,
their own captives.'
* Do you regret the old-fashioned customs, Vicomte?' asked
Lady Constance, laughingly.
' Not in the least. Society is ever so much pleasanter since
young ladies have been adventurous ; and I believe the youn^
ladies themselves do better by the new system '
Amdlie turned her back upon him with an indignant rustle
of her gray ^'Zac^ flounces.
'I hope we have said enough to raise your curiosity, and
that you will come this evening,' said Madame Jarz^, sweeping
her voluminous moir^ towards the door with a mighty rushing
sound.
Lady Constance sighed.
' How glad I should be if I could feel curious about anything
in this world ! ' she said. ' However, I will come to make the
acquaintance of your Monsieur Ishmael. What a strange
name 1 He is a Jew, I suppose. Paris is choked with rich
Jews. The second Empire is the restoration of Israel.'
• Monsieur Ishmael a Jew 1 Not the least in the world.
• Ttie Bod hath Blossomed ' 279
exclaimed Madame Jarze. • He is a good Catholic, and on
excellent terms with Father Deguerry, the cure of the Madeleine.'
'Then he has one of the noblest of men for his friend. Au
revoirf and, with curtseys and little friendly speeches. Lady
Constance accompanied her departing guests, French fashion,
to the hall, where a Diana by Pradier and a dancing faun by
Lequesne showed white against a bank of rose-coloured and
amber azalias.
'She is positively insufferable,' said Hortense, frowning
vindictively, as the mother and her two daughters squeezed
themselves into the victoria, which was hired two afternoons a
week to take them for an airing in the Bois, and which borne a
almost life-like resemblance to a private carriage.
Monsieur Jarze's official income, albeit augmented by various
tri'butes from complacent tradesmen — tributes which his enemies
had been known to stigmatize as bribery and corruption — would
not cover the expenses of a Parisian stable.
' I wonder, mamma, that you could be such an idiot as to
invite that woman for this evening,' exclaimed Amdlie, looking
daggers at her parent.
' My dear child, if 1 did not get distinguished people occa-
sionally at my Thursdays, my Thursdays would cease to exist.
And I only established them for the advantage of my daughters.'
' And when one of your daughters has the chance of making
a great match, you try to burke it by introducing a formidable
rival on the scene,' retorted Amelie.
' There is no danger. Lady Constance is an Englishwoman
— independent, rich, full of prejudices, as proud as Lucifer.
She is not at all likely to marry a self-made man who was once
n stonemason.'
* Who kuo\V3 ? Que is never sure of anybody or anything.'
CHAPTER XXVIII
•until the DAT BREAK AND THE SHADOWS FLEb'
When Lady Constance Danetree declared her inability to be
keenly interested or curious about anything in this life, she was
not giving utterance to one of those little affectations with which
men and women are apt to interlard their conversation, mere
parrot speech, a vague echo caught from a super-refined age,
which pretend? to have outgrown the faculty of emotion. She
spoke the sober truth. A life which, from her cradle, had given
her almost everything she wanted left no margin for wishes or
eager curiosity about anything. She had steeped herself in the
sunlight of life ; she had surrounded herself with the society she
1 iked best ; she had travelled and seen everything she cared to
see in civilized Europe. For the vast world beyond, the wilder-
ness and mountain, oceans and mighty rivers, she was content
to trust books and photographs, letting her mind go out amidst
that wonder-world in idle day-dreams, and letting other people
do the actual work for her. She had stuffed herself with new
books, new ideas. She knew four continental languages, and
■vras not obliged to wait till new theories filtered into English
literature. She could imbibe them at the fountain head.
Perfect independence, ample means, freedom from all family
ties, had made her life different from the lives of other women.
She lived faster than others, she never had to wait for her
opportunity, to bide her time. She did not say, * I will go to
Home in November if I can.' She could do whatever she liked,
and had only to say to her major-domo, an accomplished
Hanoverian, ' Steinmark, bear in mind that I am to be in
Eome on the first of November.' Steinmark heard, remembered,
and obeyed. He went three days in advance of his mistress,
carrying a certain portion of her luggage. He met her at the
railway station, and conducted her to the most perfect set of
sipartments in the city, where she found her books and her
music, her photographs and her basket of crewels, all in their
appropriate places in the salon. Her journey through life in
these golden days of her widowhood was like a royal progress.
l]verybody adored her, some for self-interest, many for her own
Bake, simply because she was adorable.
In Paris her admirers were legion. A beautiful and accom-
plished Englishwoman, of high birth and ample means, who
* Until the Day Break and ilia Sliadoivs Flee ' 251
lived in a charming house and received on a liberal scale, wag
sure to be popular. People schemed and intrigued to get a card
for Lady Constance Danetree's evenings ; and to be seen at one
of her little dinners was a cachet of good style. Madame Jarzd
had laboured, underground like the mole, for a year before she
and her daughters were allowed to cross the threshold of that
exquisite villa. It had cost her another six months of coaxing
and diplomacy to get Lady Constance to a state dinner — a dimier
which made a palpable encroachment upon Monsieur Jarzo's
quartei-'s salary ; and now, by dint of a pertinacity in polite
attentions which touched the confines of impudence, Madame
Jarze and her daughters were able to proclaim themselves among
the chosen few— three or four bundled or so — who were Liidy
Constance Danetree's intimate friends.
Having promised to go to IMadame Jarze's party. Lady Con-
stance left one of the nicest houses in the Pare Monceaux, where
Bhe had been dining at an early hour, in order to keep her word.
She was loyalty itself in small things as well as in large. She
went from a choice and intellectual circle regretfully to be bored
in a frivolous crowd ; but a ])romise is sacred, and she knew that
there was a high value set upon her presence in the Jarze
household.
The house in which the Jarzds occupied a pecond floor was a
new one, fearfully and wonderfully new ; a large and magnificent
mansion of which the rez-de-chausse'e was let to a marquis, tlie
eiitre-sol to an actress, i\\Q premier to a rich Jew, and the second
floor to Monsieur Jarze at about half the rent of a house in
May Fair. Above this story the inhabitants retrograded in
social position, just as the ceilings diminislied in height, and the
plaster cornices and doorheads decreased in florid ornamentation
till the edifice was crowned by the domesticities of a couple of
clerks and their families, and a piiuter's foreman.
The Jarz^ salon had an air of cliilly elegance, which struck
cold to the heart of a stranger newly admitted to its hospitality.
The decoration was white and gold, the Louis-Quatorze furniture
crimson and gold. A few Sevres cups and saucers, a sprinkling
of bibelots, bonbon-boxes, perfume caskets, photograph albums
were scatteied on the gilded tables, and strove to give a home-
like air to this abode of plaster of Paris picked out with gohL
The crimson-satin curtains were scanty, the chairs were too few,
the sofas were hard, the rooms were draughty. A magnificent
grand piano was the chief feature of the small inner salon. ' A
gift from the Empress to my daugliters,' said Madame Jarzd to
any new acquaintance, pointing to the instrument with her fan.
' A bribe from the maker, who wanted his nawie introduced a*;
Court,' murmured the initiated.
2S2 Ishnacl
To-night, when the man of all work, with an air that would
have done credit to a groom of the chambers, announced Lady
t 'onstance Danetree, the rooms were fairly full. People were
f tanding because there were no more chairs on which to sit, a
Ftate of things which pleased Madame Jarze, as it gave the
impression of a crowd,
A distinguished violin player was just concluding a scena
from Weber's ' Euryanthe.' Lady Constance gave her hand to
her hostess without a word.
*You are late, but I knew you would not disappoint ns,*
cnoed Madame Jarze, with the accents of a sucking dove j and
I]. en, in a still lower voice, she murmured, ' He is here.'
♦He? Who?'
She had really forgotten. At the dinner, in a great painter's
house, the talk had been of the loftiest, and Constance Danetree's
mind had wandered far from the regions of millionaire specula-
tion in bricks and mortar. She had just been reading Schleier-
macher's ' Plato,' and they had talked of Greek philosophy and
the Greek world.
' Who ? Why Monsieur Ishmael. He is in the little salon
listening to Sinori.'
Constance Danetree turned and looked at the inner salo7i as
at a picture, or a scene on the stage. It was divided by a cur-
tained archway from the larger reception room, and just now the
curtain was drawn back, and the pillared arch made a frame for
the picture within.
There were only three people in the salon. Monsieur Sinori,
the violinist, a man of middle-age and fine presence, a handsome
Italian head, standing by the piano in the light of the candles,
with his chin upon his violin, looking down at tlie varnished
wood as a man looks at a sentient thing which he lovee with
Boul and senses alike ; Amelie Jarze, seated in front of the piano,
and looking up at a tall dark man who stood on the other side of
the instrument, watching the face of the player, and listening
with all his might. This tall dark man was Ishmael — contractor,
engineer, speculator, philanthropist, millionaire, and one of the
most famous men in Paris.
This is what seventeen years of hard work had done for
Raymond Caradec's son.
What other changes had those years brought about — what
change in the man himself ?
Some change assuredly. Those years, and the responsibilities
that had gone along with them, had added dignity to the firm,
buld brow, with its conquering ridge, and its strongly-marked
eyebrows above eagle eyes. The carriage of the head was
loftier than of old. He had carried his liead higher, with tha ai'r
' Until the Day Break and the Shadows Flee ' 283
of a man who, for good reason, scorns his fellows •ver since hia
wife abandoned and his friend betrayed him. Such treatment
hardens a man, throws him back upon his inner self, develops
his sense of his own value. He has been treated like dirt ; and
l>e resolves to let the world see that he is not dirt. From the
hour of his wife's elopement fortune followed every act of
Ishmael's cai'eer. He bore a charm, as it seemed. His small
patrimonial fortune, invested in his own manner, had multiplied
a hundredfold, 'The luckiest man in Paris,' men told each
other ; and they took their schemt-s and their money to him,
and deemed fortune certain could they but secure his co-
operation.
For years he had been a master spirit among men in his own
[)articular line. This sense of mastery — of being always firsts
lad given some touch of kingliness to his aspect, his tone, his
manner — something of that look and manner which is seen in
famous warriors, in the men who have lived through such nights
and days as that of Waterloo, or the battle of the Sutlej, men
who have fought like Clive, or marched like Roberts. Peace has
its victories as well as war — its trials — its defeats.
Ishmael had stood on the bank of the Seine in the gray of a
winter dawn to see a mighty railway bridge, the work of a year,
snapped asunder, crumbled to ruin — work fresh from the
builder's hand as a sovereign from the mint — a catastrophe
meaning the loss of nine or ten million francs to the contractor.
' Well, my friends,' he said, with a long-drawn sigh, and his
hands deep in his pockets ; ' we must begin it all again.'
And next day came the counter-balance, some stroke of luck
which paid for the bridge.
A man with such a history seems as much out of place at a
tea-party in the Champs Elysees as a lion in an aviary ; but
Ishmael bore himself easily enough as he leant across the piano
and watched the face of the violin player.
'Delicious,' he said, drawing a long breath when the la.st
pianissimo chord died into silence. ' How you must enjoy play-
ing like that. Monsieur Sinori.'
Sinori smiled upon him, pleased at the nai've compliment.
'Weber and my Stradivarius understand each other, ho
answered, quietly, putting the violin into its case.
Amelie's hands began to wander over the keys, and finally
settled into 'Dites lui,' played with melting tenderness, while
eyes of bewitching blue glanced shyly upward at the millionaire
from the covert of fluffy golden hair.
But the pretty glance, the languishing melody, were thrown
away upon Ishmael. Pei'haps he h;id had just a liUle too mucJi
of innocent childish beauty in his youth. The highly-trained
281' Ishnael
daughtei' of the second Empire could never seem as childlike or
as free from guile as Paquerette had seemed in those days of the
Rue Sombreuil ; or, if she could, her infantine graces would have
served only to recall the one great horror of Ishmael's life.
' How well Schneider sings that song,' he said, coolly, as he
turned from the piano.
' I want to present you to Lady Constance Danetree,' said
Madame Jarze, approaching him at this moment.
There was a clear space, diameter of a yard or so, in the
middle of the salon ; and here the two great people met, while
society, represented chiefly by elegant nobodies, looked on and
admired.
They met as royalties meet, a king and queen among men
and women, each taller by half a head than the majority of the
men and women around them — each with an air of nobility
which dominated the crowd. Constance's perfect figure and
grand style of beauty were set off by the rich simplicity of her
toilet — a gown of dark brown velvet innocent of a vestige of
trimming save the narrow Valenciennes tucker gathered tightly
round the marble shoulders by a slim thread of gold. A collet
necklace of matchless Brazilian diamonds encircled the round
full throat, and this was the only jewel which relieved the
sombre richness of the lady's costume.
' Comme elle est fagotee I How odd that no Englishwoman
knows how to dress ! ' murmured Hortense, behind her fan, to
the author of ' Mes R&les,' who was sitting by her side in the
embrasure of a window.
' I think you should exclude Lady Constance Danetree from
that sweeping condemnation,' said . the Vicomte, languidly.
' That brown velvet is full of voluptuous lights and shadows,
and with such arms and shoulders a woman should never
wear anything but darkest velvet. For the fragile and the
attenuated ' — with a glance at Hortense's thin arms enveloped in
clouds of tulle, ' a more airy style is admirable ; but statuesque
oeauty requires solid treatment.'
' I hate solidity,' retorted Hortense. ' To my mind grace
consists in curves and undulating movements.'
The Vicomte smiled blandly.
' You, who are the very spirit of grace, have a right to be
critical.'
He rewarded his slave with a civil little speech now and
then — though his general tone was as impassive as that of a
braminical cow — just as a man throws an occasional biscuit to a
dog that persistently fawns upon him.
The millionaire and the Englishwoman talked to each other
a Utile about nothing particular, as newly-introduced people
* tfiitil the Day Break and the Shadows Flee ' 2S5
talk, with only the faintest interest, neither knowing of what
manner of conversation the other is capable. Nothing in
Constance Danetree's manner betrayed that her mind had
\indergone a shock of any kind within the last five minutea,
Not the faintest elevation of her eyebrows indicated surprise.
Yet d\e had been as much astonished since iier entrance into
that room as ever she had been in her life.
Ishmael was in every way the opposite of the man she
expected to see. She was a woman full of prejudices, and thero
was a class of people for which she had a special detestation.
She hated self-educated men, and she hated self-made million-
airos. The former she had always found intolerable in their
assumption of intellectual superiority to all the rest of the
world, the latter odious in their pride of wealth. She had been
bored by people's praise of Ishmael, the great contractor — the
man to whom the Parisian workman owed his new boulevards,
his palatial barracks, planned with a novel regard for sanitation ;
the man to wliom the very fourfooted beasts were debtors for
the boon of being slaughtered under comfortable conditions ;
the man whose acumen had been a great factor in the improve-
ment of hospital architectui'e all over France ; and the man whc
was reported to have done more philanthropic work on his own
account and in his own quiet way than any otlier man wlio had
won fortune under the second Empire.
Lady Constance heard all, believed all — -too indiiTeront,
indeed, for disbelief — and made her own mind-picture of the
great contractor.
A short, thick-set man, of course— contractors Avere always
built squat, she believed — a man with shaggy, light-coloured
eyebrows, cunning gray eyes, a large sensual mouth, and a
heavy jowl ; a parse-]jroud man, undoubtedly, given to bragging
of the great things he had done for himself and the world ; an
ignorant man, knowing hardly anything outside his own
uninteresting business ; a bon vivant, no doubt, giving himself
the airs of a gourmet on the strength of newly-acquired wealtli,
finding fault with the bisque at otlier peo})le's dinners, and
protesting that there were only three men in Paris who could
cook a supreme de volaille — a man, moreover, with the stamp of
his origin upon him in the shape of the carpenter's thumb.
And behold, instead of the short squat person, with bristling
pepper-and-salt eyebrows, she saw standing before her a man ot
six feet two, with darkest brows and flashing ej'es, the features
of a Roman warrior — a man who looked well under forty years
of age.
She measured him from head to foot as he talked to her,
with a calm and cold survey ; yet her heart beat just a thought
28(3 ishnael
fa,ster on acconiit of her surprue. For the first time \n hef life,
she felt that she had been a prejudiced, self-opinionated fool. If
a contractor could be such a person as this, why object to
contractors ?
* Women are fools,' she thought, shifting the blame from
herself to the sex in general. ' We are always jumping at
conclusions, always mistaking our own fancies for absolute facts.'
She stole a glance at his right hand. Yes, there was the
mark of the beast. The thumb was too square and solid to
belong to a gentleman's hand. And then she looked at
Poutchartrain, whose white effeminate fingers dangled across
the elbow of his ci'imson satin chair, and from the hand looked
at the sniall bald head, the slim, narrow figure.
' What a rat the creature looks beside this master builder ! '
she thought ; ' and yet I have no doubt he looks down upon the
man who once handled the mason's hammer.'
She tried to imagine the man to whom she was talking, clad
in a blouse, hewing stone, labouring among other labourers ; but
picture him however she pleased, she could only see him as a
king among men. Nobody had told her that there was good
blood in his veins. That tradition of a noble origin died out
among Ishmael's fellow-workmen by the time he had been
three years in Paris. The Parisian world knew him only as
the architect of his own fortunes.
The dining-room doors were flung open presently, and
Madame Jarze's guests strolled in to refresh themselves at a
buffet where a the d VAnglaise, with sandwiches, petits foursy
inoffensive syrups, and a little Bordeaux were arranged with
an elegance which gave an air of luxury at a very smallwutlay.
Ishmael stood beside Lady Constance while she sipped a cup of
inoffensive tea. Aniclie floated about the room, offering a
casket of jvalincs and marrons glacds to her mother's guests,
while Horteiise i)Iicd her poet with red-currant syrup and sweet
cakes, imploring him to make people happy before they departed
by the recitation of one of his ^Rales'
' They are not intended to be declaimed in a salon, objected
Pontchartrain, who liked notiiing better than to inflict hLs verses
upon society. ' People coniii lu re in the right mood to hear the
Bcraping of catgut, but not Lo listen to the cry of a human heart.'
'Indeed, you are mlst:ikcu. REonsieur Sinori's playing has
just put people in tune for true poetry — that exquisite melody
of AVeber's, so weird, so strange.'
Pontchartrain gave her a withciing look.
* I am sorry you have not yet discovered the difference
between a fiddler and a poet,' lie said, while the kind, dark face of
the Jtalian, who was sipping a sorbet on the otlier side of the
^ tJntil the Day Break and the iSJiadotvs Flee ' 287
tablfe, smiled at them across tlie cuija and saucers, unconscious
of the Vicomte's depreciation.
'If you would only give us that too pathetic little poem,
'■'■ La frilre dlun fagoty Let me see, now : how does it begin?
^'■Ecrasez moi, Dieu."'
' You like those lines,' said the Vicomte, relenting fi^om hia
severity, and turning his tarnished eyeballs upon the damsel
with a gratified look. ' Yes ; I think that prayer of the galley-
slave is worth a hecatomb of jour fade love songs, your pious
ineptitudes, your patatras of angels and children, and grand-
mammas and grandpapas.'
And then, between hia clenched teeth, frowning darkly the
while, he mumbled his own verses —
• 0, toi ! qui, dans mon coeur, n'excitas que d^raence,
Que me serfc ta pitie, que me fait ta cl6mence,
Frappe sans plus tarder celui qui te maudit,
Ecrase eb foudroie.'
* You will recite those grand lines for us, will you not?'
pleaded Hortense.
The Vicomte shrugged his shoulders and elevated his eye-
brows with the air of a man who yields to the inexorable
frivolity of his surroundings.
' If my recitation can possibly interest any one,' he muttered,
with a supercilious glance at the company.
' It will delight us all. Monsieur le Vicomte is goin<]; to
recite something when we go back to the saloiij announced
Hortense, triumphantly.
People gave the usual murmur of sup]iressed rapture, and
the pleasures of the table being by this time fairly exhausted,
the siajority returned to the srt7o?2-, leaving a privileged minority
to take their ease, and light their cigarettes witJi Monsieur Jarze,
a stout, inoffensive person, who had never had^ will of his own
since his mari'iage. The dining-room doors being closed upon
these sybarites, Monsieur Pontchartriau took his stand in the
centre of the salon beside a guilded gueridon, upon which the
thoughtful Hortense had placed a glass of water.
He scraped his throat once or twice, plunged his right hand in
his waistcoat, played with his watch chain with the left, looked
first downwards at his neat little varnished boots, then upwards
at the ceiling, and then, in a deep and altogether artificial voice
— his natural tones inclining to a nasal treble — he began the
prayer of the galley-slave, the fort^at of Toulon, broiling aad
toiling under a copper sky, scorned and hated of m^n, forgottea
of God.
L>S^ IsJimact
Needless to say that the 'fagot's' prayer was one long
blasphemy, that he reviled his Creator in every line, that the whole
poem reeked with the foulest atheism, and was in perfect har-
mony with the new French school — a curious mixture of slang and
sublimity, pathos and bathos, Victor Hugo and Villon, Rabelais,
and Voltaire. The Vicomte, with his eyes on the ceiling and his
organ tones sinking ever and anon into an inaudible groan,
declaimed his verses with an intense solemnity, a profound
belief in their power to inspire awe and hoi'ror ; and when, at
last, his voice melted by a gradual diminuendo into silence, he
looked round the room with the air of giving his audience
pLiniission to breathe again. There were more murmurs, which
niiffht mean anything in the world, and which did, for the most
part, mean sincere gratification at the thing being over.
' Is that your idea of poetry, Madame ? ' asked Ishmael, still
standing beside Lady Constance Danetree.
' I freely confess that it is not,' answered Constance ; ' but
there is a fashion in litei-ature, just as there is in gowns and
bonnets, and these horrors are the novelty of the day. It is the
school of Baudelaire and his Flowers of Evil.'
' And such men as these hope to fill the place of Alfi'ed do
Musset,' said Ishmael.
' You admire Musset 1 ' she asked, wondering that there
should be room for the love of poetry in the mind of a master of
figures and mechanics.
' Yes. He is not a cheerful poet, but he has given me at
least distraction of mind in many a gloomy hour.'
' And in your life — which I imagine must have been full of
business anxieties — you could really find time for poetry ?'
' Why not 1 The man who works hardest at facts and figures
lias most need of an occasional excursion into the unreal world.
There is always the longing for an oasis in the desert of dull
realities.'
It was growing late, and Madame Jarzd's guests were dis-
persing. Lady Constance had intended only to spend half an
hour iai the Jarzd salon — to keep her word to her hostess, and ^lo
more. She had stayed nearly two hours, and the time had
seemed to her as nothing. Ishmael accompanied her down the
broad stone staircase with its sumptuous carpet and gilded
banisters, its architectural doors, surmounted by plaster of
Paris cupidons and festoons of flowers moulded by machinery,
after the school of Jean Goujon. The actress's door on the
entresol was ajar, and there came from within a ripple of
laughter, a murmur of well -bi-ed masculine voices, and a cheerful
chinking of glass and silver as Lady Constance and her com
panion passed. The actress was altogether comme-il-faut, or she
• Until the Day Break and the Shadows Flee.' 2S9
would not have been allowed to inhabit that temple of the
respectabilities ; but even the most correct of actresses must
have supper after the play, and cannot always sup alone, nor is
a little game of baccarat, played quietly within closed doors, an
ofi'ence against society.
Ishmael saw Lady Constance to her carriage.
' I have very little way to go,' she said, as she bade him
good-night ; 'only just on the other side of the arch.'
During their leisurely descent of the staircase she had been
wondering a little that he did not seize the opportunity to ask
permission to call upon her. She was generally beset by people
who craved that privilege after the briefest acquaintance,
people whose requests she granted with the feelings of a marty r ;
but here was a man in whom she felt really interested, an
exceptional man, as Madame Jarzo had said, and he held his
peace.
Perhaps she made that little remark about the locality of hor
abode in order to give him an opportunity. But he took no
advantage of her kindness.
' Do you live in this part of Paris ? ' she asked.
* No, I have an old house in the Place Eoyale.'
* How curious ! Do you really care for old houses — you who
have built so many new ones?'
' Perhaps it is for that reason I love the old. One gets weary
of the sameness of modern Parisian hotlses — white, and cold, and
dazzling — too small for a palace, too big for a home. My old
panelled rooms in the Place Eoyale have a homely look that I
like.'
* But are they not too large for a bachelor ? '
*Not too large for my books.'
* You have a library, then ? ' asked Constance, unconsciously
supercilious.
She could not help feeling surprised at any evidence of
refinement in a man who had begun his career as a joui-ney-
man stonemason.
' I have been collecting books for the last eighteen yeai's —
they are my chief companions — they mark the stages of my life,
are a calendar of the years that are gone. You could never
imagine how full of eloquence even the backs of them are for
their owner.'
' How interesting to collect in that way — slowly — f I'om year
to year — instead of ordering a library en bloc / ' said Constance.
Had she set herself to imagine a millionaire-contractor's
library, she would have pictured a lofty and spacious room, with
carved bookcases and classic busts to order, and a gorgeous array
of Purgold <ix Bozerian bindings, contents selected by the book-
U
290 Ishnacl
seller. And it seemed that this man valued books for their own
a;ike, and had chosen them for himself, one by one. Truly a
strange man after his kind.
' Good-night.'
1 < Good-night.'
They shook hands through the carriage window, almost like
old friends, and the brougham drove off towards the archway,
white and pure in the March moonbeams, sculptured with
victories that were past and gone, telling of a time more heroic
even than those golden years of the second Empire And they,
too, were gone with the snows of last winter, and France drooped
her Imperial head ever so little, bowed with a growing sense
of imjDotence. Had she not pledged herself to establish an
Empire Id has between the two Americas, and had she not
failed ignominiously ? Had she not been warned off the
premises by the United States, bidden to depart with her army
and its baggage, lest a worse thing should befall her? And
she had been fooled by William and Bismarck, and she was
ill -friends with Italy. Truly the glory of Israel had de-
parted — and Ichabod was the word written, in mystic
characters that only the wise could read, on yonder triumphal
gate.
Lady Constance leant back in her brougham with a sigh, not
for the vanishing splendours of the Empire, but with the faint,
vague sense of disappointment. She had seen this millionaire
about whom everybody had been plaguing her for the last six
months, and she had been told again and again by Madame
Jarz6 that he had long desired to meet her. And they had met,
and they had parte<l, without a word of any future meeting ou
his part. Coiild it be that, for once in her life. Lady Constance
Jiad failed to make a favourable impression upon a stranger of
file opposite sex ? Never before had such a thing happened to
Iier. It would be, if this were so, an utterly new experience :
new and, in some wise, unpleasant. Women accustomed to
universal worship miss the incense albeit they may affect to
despise the votive herd. And here was a man unlike the herd,
and therefore interesting ; and he had seen her, and evidently
cared not a jot if he never saw her again.
And yet, on their first introduction, when their eyes met and
their glances seemed to mingle in sudden light and warmth —
mingle as two gases meet and take fire — then it had seemed to
her as if, for both of them, that first meeting was an electric
shock, a surprise, a revelation, a recognition almost. As if they
two had from the very beginning of things been doomed so to
taeet, so to kindle into flame.
• What, is it i/ou ? ' his eyes had seemed to say.
» Viitil the Day Break and the Shadoios Flee ' 291
And he let her go without so much as the commonplace
request for permission to call upon her.
Was he shy — gauche — at a loss how to act, from sheer
ignorance of the conventionalities of daily life ? She thought
not. His manners were self-possessed and easy. He was grave,
but not reserved. He spoke' of himself freely, seemed in no
wise disturbed by the sense of her superior rank. _ He had not
made any attempt to continue the acquaintance simply because
he was in no hurry to see her again. Of course, if he pleased, he
could get Madame Jarze to take him to the villa in the Bois ;
but that would seem a circuitous way of approaching a lady who
had shown herself sufficiently gracious to be approached more
directly.
' I daresay he is wrapped up in his bridges and viaducts, and
detests women's society,' Constance told herself, as she drew her
furred mantle closer round her before alighting at her own
door.
It was a matter upon which a person of Constance Dane-
tree's calm temperament might have been supposed incapable of
wastmg five minutes' thought ; and yet, when her maid had been
dismissed, she sat before the fire in her dressing-room staring at
the smouldering logs, and brooding upon this frivolous question
half through the night. She knew that it would be useless to
lie down. Sleep was impossible for a brain on fire. She sat ill ;
the dark restful night- hours were well-nigh spent ; sat with her
slippered feet on the fender, her Indian silk dressing-gown
'vrapped carelessly round her, her hair coiled in a loose knot at
the back of her head, pale, grave, like a sibyl reading the book
of fate as written in flickering flame and falling embers. What
was it, what did it mean, this sudden fever, never felt before—
this persistency of the mind in dwelling upon one subject, this
monotony of the fancy which would picture only one face— that
dark Eoman face, with the lambent flame in the eyes those
grave lips, shaded but not hidden by the thick black moustache?
What was it, this sudden possession taken of her soul — by a man
whose face she had not seen six hours ago ? Six hours ago, and
she would have passed him in the street, unrecognised, un-
noticed. And now, because they two had met and looked into
each other's eyes, and talked to each other for a little while upon
the most indifferent subjects, she could not banish him out of
her mind for a moment. His image possessed her, mastered h-T
fancy, filled her thoughts. He was there, at her side, as she sit
by the fire. His presence was almost as real in the strength uf
her ardent fancy as if he had been there in the flesh. She
wondered where, how soon, they would nipct again. Her
imagination began to picture possible meetings ; her Cancy
292 Ishmael
paiuted tlie scene of their rencontre, lighted it with tlie dazzle cf
BUushiue, or the soft radiance of moonbeams — spoke for him,
spoke for her — eloquent, spiritual, touching the confines of
passion, breathing of unavowed love. And all this for a man
she had met for the first time only six hours ago !
Wliat did it all mean ? Could it be the thing she had read
of in novels, and smiled at for its foolishness, its impossibility 1
Could it be love at first sight — love given unsought, unasked, for
a man who had once worked as a common stonemason ? Bah !
the idea was revolting,
A moment of scorn, a movement of indignation at her own
folly, a sudden drawing up of the proud head. ' I will think of
the man no more.'
And then. In the next instant, the statuesque throat drooped
again, the rounded chin sank on the womanly breast, and the
eyes gazed dreamily into tlie dying fire.
' I have wondered ever since I was a girl if I should
ever know what love meant,' she thought. ' Has it come at
last?'
A pause, and th«Bi a sudden li.^'ht in the lovely eyes.
'Yes, it has con^e — it is lieie — and, for good or evil, I bid the
etranger welcome.'
CHAPTER XXIX
' MY BELOVED IS MINE, AND I AM UI3 '
The great circular show in the Champs de Mars was officially
opened on the appointed first of April, but that wonderful fairy
palace about which people had been talking all the winter first
revealed itself to society amidst a chaotic confusion of planks,
canvas, scaffolding, and workpeople' of all kinds. Those Moorish
palaces, Chinese pavilions, restaurants, cafes, drinking bars of
the outermost circle — which were afterwards to become more
famous, more popular, than all the wonders of art and science in
the main building — existed at this period only in the imagination
of official journalists, who went into raptures about sj^lendours
which were as yet only to be seen on paper. In a biting east
wind, and amidst the clinking of hammers, the hurrying to and
fro of workmen, the Imperial trio — Emperor, Empress, and fair
young Prince — appeared, and the Exhibition was declared open.
But there was no Imperial speech. The Luxembourg question
made a little cloud in the political horizon at this period, while
there was a thick darkness yonder over the volcanic soil of
Mexico. Not a happy time for Imperial elf^nuence by any
means ; so the worhl's show was opened in discreet eilence save
for that clinking of hammers.
Lady Constance Danetree, having very few interests in life,
was naturally among the first to visit the newly-opened building.
She was not enthusiastic about exhibitions, having seen several,
and declaring that she had been bored to death by the great
Exhibition of Sixty-two, which had seemed to her a terrible
falling ofl' from the Crystal Palace of her childliood, the fairy
scene in Hyde Park — flags flying, trees growing, fountains
springing — all under the glittering glass roof. Yes, she had
been a child then, full of capacity for delight ; and in Sixty-two
she was a young woman, leaning on her newly-wedded husband'a
arm. And now, in Sixty-seven, she declared that she was getting
old, and cared not a straw for all the wondeiful things that
could be brought from the four corners of the earth.
But in Paris Lady Constance found she must do a good many
things to pleasfc other people, or else take a great deal of trouble
in saying no. It was sometimes less trouble to consent than to
refuse. The Jarzes, who insisted upon being her intimate friends,
self-elected to that office, plagued her to go to the Exhibition with
^94 Ishnaet
them on tlie first day, aud, rather than be disobliging, she agreed
to go.
There was a vague hope — a faint suggestion of her fancy —
which made the idea of that early visit pleasanter than it would
otherwise have been. Was it not likely that he — Ishmael— a
man keenly interested in all practical things, would be among
the earliest visitors ? If he were there, the place was so gigantic,
that the odds against meeting him would be tremendous. But
he might be there, and they might meet ; and even this gave
zest to the business, and put Constance in good humour. Slie
asked the Jarzcs to breakfast on the first of April, and was in
excellent spirits during the meal — served with an ideal elegance,
prepared by an ideal cook — a natural result of ample means and
ample leisure for making the best use of money.
' I wonder whether your friend, Monsieur Ishmael, will be at
the Exhibition to-day?' she said, carelessly, as they drove from
the door.
The east wind was blowing, the sky was dull and gray, but
the mere thought that they two might meet steeped the world
in warmth and sunlight.
Amelie looked at her intently for an instant with a much
keener gaze than one would expect from a petite frimousse
chiffonnee under a cloud of pale gold hair.
' Monsieur Ishmael is just the last pei'son I expect to meet
in the Exhibition,' she said, 'for I think his interest in the place
must be exhausted by this time. He is a privileged person,
;uid has been allowed to exjjlore the works as often as he liked.
Indeed, I believe he was consulted about the plan of the building,
and lias watched the growth of it from the very first.'
JMadame Jarz^ smiled approvingly at her younger daughter.
' Monsieur Ishmael and my Amdlie are fast friends,' she said.
It is strange what an interest the dear child takes in great
engineeiing works. I found her the other day puzzling her poor
little brain over a tremendous book on canals.'
' There are times when one sickens of a life made up of chiffons,^
said Amdlie, with a sentimental air.
' When is that, I wonder ? ' asked Hortense, contemptuously.
VV^ben your dressmaker refuses to trust you for any more gowns,
or when you have been short of partners at a ball ? '
' Amelie never has any lack of partners,' said the mother,
indignantly.
Madame Jarzd and her elder hope lived in a kind of armed
neutrality. The day had been when Hortense was paraded eveiy-
where, dressed, praised, petted as a daughter whose early an<l
brilliant marriage must inevitably do honour to the house of Jarze ;
but when chance after chance was lust, and Hortense began to ^»'ow
' J/y Beloved is Mine, and I am Ills* 20ol
tiiin and liolloweiieckn!, the iiiotlu;) lust. faiMi in tlii.s fiivt vru-
ture, and concentrated all her ho])es upon the second. True,
that Hortense was handsome : years ago she had ranked as
the beauty-daughter, and Amelie had been left to pine in the
background. Hortense had large dark eyes, a classic profile,
while Amdlie's retrouss^ nose and large mouth, light gray eyes,
and plum]! figure were hourgcoise to the last degree. But as time
went on Hortense's comjilexion grew sallow, the classic profile
sharpened to severity, the thin lips became almost jiallid, the
daik eyes assumed a gloomy look, while, on the other hand,
ces dames had brought retrouss^ noses, large mouths, and plump
figures into fashion — the little minois chifonnt^, the King Chai'les'
spaniel style of face, set off by a cloud of fiufify yellow hair,
became the rage — and Am61ie was admired ; while Hortenpe,
with her air of Madame Roland about to ascend the scaffold,
was left to wither in the cold shade of absolute neglect. Amelie
had made an exhaustive study of the airs and graces of ce.s dames,
whom she saw daily in the Bois, and nightly at opera or theatre ;
and upon this popular style she had founded and fashioned her
own beauty. The neutral -tinted hair became a golden yellow ;
the pencilled eyebrows gave piquancy by their dark, firm line ;
the large full lips were accentuated with carmine, and the plump
figure was laced and moulded into the fashionable form. In a
word, Amelie was as like Cora as it was possible for her to be
xmder existing conditions. The Court official, elderly and half-
blind, stared at the dazzling apjiarition and wondered — n;iy,
even went so far on one occasion as to ask his wife if Amelie's
style of dress was quite respectable ; but at the very next ball
at the Tuileries the Empress herself graciously informed hiui
that ]\Iademoi.-=elle Amelie was much more attraeth'e than
her elder sistei — suspected of an Oi leanist bias — and that his
younger daughter was chic, all that thei'e is of the most clue.
' Oh,' thought Monsieur Jarze, ' then that is chic ? I am
glad I know what cldc means.'
Lady Constance leant back in her cai'riage with a weary air.
All her interest in the Exhibition had vanished in a breg^h.
The whole thing became a nuisance. These Jarzcs, with their
unpleasant idiosyncrasies, their half-concealed antagonisms :
why had she ever permitted herself to associate with such
people ? That younger girl had obviously dyed her hair and
painted her eyebrows : a creature of haixlly twenty years of
age. Hortense was as obviously malignant. They were like a
oair of wicked sisters in a fairy tale. And to know such people,
and to go about with them, only for lack of the moral courage
to shut one's door in their faces ! But society is made so.
This was <hc drift of Lady Constance Dnnctrcc's thoug.UlfeS
296 ishmael
as lier carriage crossed the river and drew up at the entrance
to the Exlubition amidst a confusion of dei^endencies and out-
buildings in the course of erection, waggons disgorging their
contents, packing-cases, diggers and del vers laying out the
ground-plans of future gardens, labourers groaning as they
carried the tanks for the future aquarium.
"Within all was in an embryo state, like a first rehearsal of
a pantomime. Lady Constance and her friends went about
looking Avith a cursory air at everything, hardly seeing anything.
The whole business had all at once become flat, stale, and un-
profitable to a woman spoiled by unbroken prosperity and in
search of strong emotions.
Three weeks ago a strong emotion had come upon her
unawares like a galvanic shock and she had been living on
the memory of that feeling ever since. She despised herself for
til is strange weakness of a strong nature, never having realised
I lie fact that the strongest natures are most prone to such
aberrations. That she, Constance Danetree, the courted and
admired, could allow her fancy to be touched, her deepest
feelings awakened by a stranger, a man of whom she knew
nothing definite except the one galling fact that he had begun
his career as a common labourer. To such a man, unsought,
she had surrendered her thoughts, her dreams, her peace of
mind — she, the daughter of one of the proudest peers in Ireland.
What was it — magic — madness — or only the folly that comes
of a life given over to fi'ivoloua amusements — a life without
high aim, or unselfish purpose ? She told herself that this
humiliation, this bitter sense of being mastered by a foolish
fancy, was the natural outcome of the life she had led sines
her husband's death — a life of self-indulgence, days and nighta
(■onsumed in fashionable dissijjatiou, a going to and fro over the
( arth, allowing her beauty to be praised by idle lips, accepting
the flatteries of the insincere, living the hollow, artificial life of
an advanced civilisation, a worid tending towards its fall.
Philosophise as she might, the fact remained. For the
roming of this man whom she had seen but once in her life she
longed as ardently as Juliet longed for the advent of Romeo.
'And I have always despised Juliet,' thought Constance.
' Neither her youth nor her Italian temperament could excuse
her in my eyes. And yet, ten years Juliet's senior, I am af
vomantic and imjjressionable as she.'
Three weeks ago she had found some excuse for her folly in
the thought that the awakening of feeling had been as mutual
PS it was sudden. Instinct had told her that Ishmael's heart
had answered beat for beat to the strong pulses of her own.
They had spoken together only as stXxingers speak, but thexe
*My Beloved is Mine^ a/nd I am His* 297
are looks and tones untranslatable in words, and yet fraught
with deepest meanings to the keen aj^prehension of a sensitive
woman. Had her instinct and her apprehension utterly deceived
her on this one occasion of her life ? Hitherto she had been so
quick to perceive, that she had the reputation of a kind of
clairvoyance ; and now, in this crisis of her life, when unknown
depths of feeling were mysteriously troubled, as the sacred pool
by the angel, her powers of clairvoyance all at once deserted
her, and she was as much at sea as a schoolgirl.
Nearly three weeks had passed since that March night when
they two had met, and Ishmael had made no sign. It would have
been so easy for him to contrive a second meeting. A man in
his position, courted, worshipped almost for the sake of that
wealth which everywhere means power — such a man was
master of the situation. He had but to hint a wish, and liia
desire would be realised. A million of money is the modern
realisation of Aladdin's lamp, which may have been an allegory
intended to foreshadow the advent of silver kings, jjill-makers,
and great contractors.
Ishmael had not brought about a second rencontre/ therefore,
he had no desire to see Lady Constance Danetree again. This
was what the lady had in her mind as she strolled listlessly in
the outer circle, where the machinery was exhibited, and stifled
a yawn as she listened to Madame Jarze's complaint that the
building offered no coup cCoeil.
'Stupendous — immense — but no coup dJmV
And in the next moment a grave baritone voice was asking
her what she thought of the exhibition, and her gloved hand
was in the grasp of that strong hand with the mai'k of the beast,
the carpenter's thumb. The whole scene was transformed in an
instant, like a change in a stage decoration, and this outer circle
of steam-engines, pistons, pulleys, model ships, model locomotives,
ice-making, iron-cutting, potato-peeling machinery, which she
had just denounced as hideous and revolting, became all at once
full of interest.
'Will you show us some of the model bridges, and explain
them to us ?' asked Amelie, with the air of an intelligent child
of nine or ten. ' I have been reading- about canals and bridges
lately.'
Ishmael smiled upon her benignantly, just as he might have
smiled at the intelligent child.
' What, Mademoiselle ; do you ever read ? ' he exclaimed.
' I thought you only cared for theatres, balls, races, pleasure of
all kinds.'
' Tliere comes a time when one grows weary of pleasure '
said Amdlie.
298 Ishmad
'Ah, but 1/ou have not come to that time. However, I shall
be charmed to be your cicerone among the models. They are a
little in my line. Did you see the iron -plated men-of-war as
you came in ? There are some very good models of suspension
bridges a little way on — but everything is chaotic at present.'
He led the way, pointing out things as they passed — American
' Monitors,' turret ships, rams, floating batteries, transports with
accommodation for four or five hundred horses. He stopped now
and again to explain some curious piece of machinery, a monster
locomotive, for instance, with ten wheels and a horizontal chimney.
The rods, and cranks, and wheels which had seemed a meaning-
less monotony of steel and iron a few minutes before became at
his voice instinct with meaning, and almost as full of individu-
ality as if they had been living creatures. He told them about
the Nasmyth hammer, which Lady Constance had hitherto
supposed to be some handy little patent for knocking in tin-
tacks without hurting one's fingers. He showed them cannon
of difi"erent orders, and told them the secrets of those dark bores
which, on the field of battle, were as the mouths of devils,
vomiting death and destruction.
Constance listened silently, drinking in every tone of the
deep musical voice. Strange that the tone should be so com-
pletely that of gentle blood and good breeding ! Had the
millionaire learned to speak as Monsieur Jourdain learned to
fence — after he had made his fortune ? She had believed
hitherto that there was no more certain indication of man's
origin than the sound of his voice ; and yet here was a lowly-
born mechanic with accents as pure and true as one coidd hear
fiom a Conde or a Grammont. It was pleasant to listen even to
the dry-as-dust details of a suspension bridge from such a fine
organ. Constance stood by and listened with delight while
Ishmael exjjlained the plan of the bridge at Fribourg, in
Switzerland, and of the tubular bridge over the Menai Straits,
across which she had so often been carried, indolently lolling in
the corner of a railway carriage, without a thought as to how
the thing was done.
Somehow or other — Lady Constance could not have told how
it came about — she found herself and Ishmael a little in advance
of the rest after they had all seen the bridges. He had taken
the opportunity of an encounter between Madame Jarz^ and
some friends to leave that lady and her two daughters a little
in the rear while he led Constance onward through the wonder-
world of mechanism. Amelie came hurrying after them
presently — gushing — infantine — like tlie last ingenue in the
last comedy at the Gymuase — ' wanting to know, you know,'
saying silly things of malice aforethought, with the idea that to
«jfy Beloved is Mine, and I am His' 299
be silly is the surest way to fa^iciiKite a serious and practical
man. Ishmael shook himself free from her as if she had been
a burr. He addressed his conversation exchisively to Lady
Constance, wheieupon Am(^lie was constrained to console
herself with the society of two feeble specimens of gilded
youth who had been wandering all over the building in search
of a bicvctte where they could get some ahsinthe, and were in
despair at having discovered no such oasis in tlie desert of art
and science.
' The papers said there was to be everything in the Exhibition,
and there is absolutely nothing,' complained one of these petits
crevc's, small, pale, inclining to baldness, and with an air of latent
phthisis after the manner of the species.
' And where, in the name of Heaven, is Spiers and Pond's ? '
cried the other. ' We were told to expect a perfect paradise
from Spiers and Pond's.'
' It seems they are not arrived yet,' said Madame Jarz^.
'Hardly anything is completed — the kiosks, the model houses,
the mosque, the aquarium, all the things we have heard so
much about — not arrived. The Exhibition will not be worth
looking at till June.'
With Ishmael for her guide. Lady Constance Danetree made
an exhaustive round of the building and its exterior appur-
tenances. The place had been his recreation ground for the
last six months. He had been there every day, watching,
advising with quick eye and active brain. He was hand in
glove with the builders : he made friends with strangers from
afar — Yankees, Californians, pui'veyors of ready-made houses
from Chicago, Norwegians, Icelanders, dwellers in the Indian
Archipelago and the South Seas. He knew the place by heart,
and it was delightful to Constance to see and understand these
practical elements of life under his guidance as she had never
seen or understood before. She remembered how, at South Ken-
sington in Sixty- two, she and her husl)and had idly strolled about
the huge building, looking in a trivial way at this and at that
Gibson's tinted Venus, tlie singing bird from Switzerland,
Rimmel's perfumed fountain — here a jewel, and there a piece of
furniture — shunning the machinery courts as if they weie
infected — pleased with the picture-galleries, still better please<l
at chance meetings with friends, interminable gossip and chatter
— leaving the mighty show without one definite idea added to
their scanty stock of knowledge.
Poor Mark never could interest himself in anything th.-t
did not go on four legs, she thought, remembering her husband's
passion for horses and dogs, and how liis convensation, starting
from whatever point, always harked back to staljle or kenneL
300 ishmaei
It was growing dusk when — after losing her pnrty thiee of
four times — she found them again near the door b_y which theji
had all entered.
* I never was so tired of anything in my life,' said Madame
Jarzd, utterly exhausted by the fatigue of the show and by the
little disagreeables of family intercourse.
' Strange,' exclaimed Constance. ' I, who am generally
bored to death by exhibitions, find this one full of interest.'
She shook hands with Ishmaei before she got into her
carriage — frankly — cordially — with a happy look in those
violet-gray eyes, a look which gave a new glory to their loveli-
ness. She was on the point of asking him to call on her some
day with his friends the Jarzes, but changed her mind in an
instant, as shy as a girl.
' He will come of his own accord,' she thought, for, like a
cliorus keeping time with the quickened beating of her heart,
went the words, ' I know he loves me.' She smiled at him as
fhe took her scat in her barouche. Her eyes were shining on
him like smilight in the gray, dull afternoon as he stood bare-
headed, watching the carriage drive away through the keen,
piercing wind.
She was to drop the Jry7.6s on her way home. The
Ihorough-bred grays started at a sharp trot, and swept along
the Quay, across the Pont de I'Alma, up the broad avenue into
the Champs Elysdes.
Madame Jarzd drew her velvet mantle round her with a
vehement shiver, while Hortense and Am^lie, with their backs
to the horses, huddled together under the large black wolf-skin
rug. ' 'Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus.' To Con-
stance Danetree the atmosphere seemed balmy.
' I wonder that you can drive in an open carriage in such
weather,' said Madame Jarze, complainiugly — base ingratitude on
her part, since the use of her friend's barouche saved her the
cost of a hired vehicle : her victoria de remise being chartered
only for two hours on Mondays and Thursdays.
'I love the open air,' i-eplied Constance, with the grand
manner of a being who could never be cold, whose veins
Avere filled with divine ichor, not with common humar
blood that curdles and makes gooseflesh at the slightest
provocation.
'I had no idea you had a passion for machinery,' said
Am^lie, pallid with disappointment, anger, jealousy, envy, half
the seven deadly sins, and a few of the smaller ones thrown in.
ller painted lips quivered, and their false bloom made her
pijllor seem more ghastly.
' Nor had I until this afternoon,' answered Constance,
* 3Iy Beloved is Mine, and I am His * LUl
easily. 'But the dryest suljjcct becomes interesting when
explained by a clever man.'
'Especially when he is not a gray-headed, dodderinrj old
professor with green spectacles and a red cotton handkerchief,
but a man still in the prime of life, handsome, strikiii;.;-,
altogether exceptional,' pursued Amelie.
'That certainly makes the whole business more agreeable,'
replied Constance.
She perfectly understood Amelie's drift, and perceived that
she had a rival — a rival to the very death — in this young lady
with baby-airs and baby-graces, turned-up nose, and tlossy-
golden hair ; but she was not going to be discomfited by a
chit. Perhaps, woman as she was, secure in the consciousiu'si
of superior beauty, superior accomplishments, even this petty
rivalry added a new zest to love.
'I hope we shall see you next Thursday evening,' snid
Madame Jarze, as the carriage stopped at the door of tlie
Chami)s Elysees caravansera, with its gigantic pediment, sui)-
ported by caryatides in Caen stone.
' Pray come ; Monsieur Ishmael will be with us, and can
give you another lecture on suspension bridges,' said Amelie.
Constance wavered before replying. What if this were her
only chance of meeting him again in the next ten days, and she
let it go, just as if a parched traveller in the desert should sjiill
the one cup of water which Avas to refresh and comfort him 1 No,
this time, she told herself, the thing was certain. He loved her.
She had looked into his eyes, once and once only, unawares
as tliey two stood on each side of a cannon in the exhibition
yonder, and she had read the thought of his brain, the impulse
of his heart, in those dark earnest eyes. She knew that he
loved her. And this being so, it was for her to be sought, not
to seek. Not for worlds would she lay plans for meeting him,
waylay him, as it were. Her duty to herself involved the
strictest reserve.
' You are very good,' she said. ' I am full of engagements
for Thursday. I'm afraid this is going to be a desperately gay
season.'
Amelie gave an impatient little sigh. Alas ! she thouglit,
what It IS to be born in the purple ! "There were dinners and
balls to which Lady Constance Danetree was bidden at which
Monsieur Jarzd's daughters could not hope to appear ; and even
at those parties to which they were invited there was always
tae harassing question of toilet, the agonising doubt as to
uhether their gowns were good enough for the occasion, whether
the_ parure of flowers, picked out petal by petal, pinched and
repiuched by delicate fingers for an industrious hour, did not
802 Islunad
after all, look tumbled, faded, second-hand, amidst the freshness
of garnitures that had been sent from the milliner's half an hour
before the fete. That rage for luxury and fuie dress which
began with the second Empire, and which has been growing
ever since, and which rages more furiously than ever after
fourteen years of Republican rule, was the cause of many a
heart-burning to women of mediocre fortunes. It was the wives
and daughters of those days who drove the men ujjon the
Stock Exchange, flung them — hands tied — into the bottomless
gulf of speculation, the Tophet of chicanery. The daughters of
that time were as the daughters of the horse leech, for ever
crying, ' Give.' From the day they left their convents to peep
shyly from a mother's wing at the glory and splendour of the
world they saw only a people bent on pleasure and amusement,
wearing fine clothes, living in fine houses, eating fine dinners,
spending fortunes on carriages, hot-house flowers, wax candles,
all the elegancies and daintinesses of life, getting their money
in many instances mysteriously, as if it were manna dropped
from heaven, and, again as if it were manna, never being able
to save any against an evil day. What girl of Amelie
Jarze's age could live in the Champs Elysees and see the ever-
lasting procession of elegant carriages rolling by to the Bois in
the sunlight of an April afternoon — great ladies, cocodettes,
actresses, cocottes — and not long passionately to be as fine and as
beautiful to the eye as these i Vain to remind her that her
father was a Government official, highly placed, and earning a
salary of fifteen thousand francs ; that her mother's dot was in
all foi'ty thousand francs, and that half of that small capital
had been devoured by the expenses of education while the two
girls were at school, and the furnishing of this elegant second
floor in this brand new house when the girls left school. The
recapitulation of hard facts cannot stop a girl's longing for
pleasure, for fine olothes, for a carriage, to be as well off as her
neighbours.
The actress on the entresol was one of the sharpest thorns
in Amelie's side. She was always observant of her goinga out
and comings in, her new clothes, her visitors, her Sunday dinner
parties. Not on one particular evening in the week came
Mademoiselle Arnould's friends. She had her little levee every
afternoon — officers, petits creves, financiers, artists, journalists
Hocked to the shrine. Mademoiselle Arnould had introduced
lefive o'clock for these afternoon receptions : cakes, sorbets, hot-
house grapes, brandy and soda, absinthe, vermouth, pralines
marrons glaces, crystallised rose leaves, par dessus la tete, and a
revolving silver stand, with a boiiillotte, half a dozen tiny egg-
shell cups and saucers, and a little china pot filled with weakest
*My Beloved is Mine, and I am His ' 303
tea. That was Mademoiselle's idea of le five o'clock. Her
admirers thronged to this collation. ' Comme dest gentil, lefive
o'clock,^ exclaimed a Saul among the little creve's, a six-foot
captain of the cent gardes, resplendent, dazzling in his uniform,
crunching sugared rose petals, adoring cette belle Arnould, who
was a few years older than his mother.
The windows of the low-ceiled salons were obliged to be
opened for air. The voices and the laughter came up to
another open window on the second floor, at which Amelie
storyl listening, and watching Mademoiselle's admirers come
arid go, counting the neat little coupes crawling up and down
tlie road. Why was not she an actress, able to command
diamonds, new gowns, hot-house flowers by the van-load, dinners
from the traiteur a la mode — and, best of all, the worship of a
court like that which was being held below ? Or, if not an
actress, why could slie not marry a rich man who could give her
all these things, pleines les mains ?
One such man, able to give her all that made life worth
having — life as exemplified in this wonderful city of Pa,ris in
the year Sixty-seven, and to her mind the only life livable — one
such man, and only one, had Heaven sent across her pathway.
Millionaires might abound in this golden age of French history,
which was fast drifting towards the age of blood and iron, did
Amelie but know it ; but millionaires, as a rule, declined to come
to Madame Jarzd's Thursdays.
Ishmael was more good-natured. Monsieur Jarzd had been
fortunate enough to do him a small service a year ago in hurry-
ing a patent through the patent oflice ; and Ishmael went to
Madame Jarze's tea-parties out of sheer gratitude, while on the
jour de Van a superb jardiniere of yellow tulips and creamy
hyacinths — a houle jardinilre, and a thing of value, hien entendu,
was sent to Madame Jarzd de la part de son serviteur Ishmael.
These were small things ; but what will not hope build upon 1
Am61ie told herself that she w£ia pretty, in the very newest
style of prettiness, which might be considered hideous five
years hence ; that she was fascinating, also in the new style :
and what could Ishmael want more in a wife ? supposing always
that he wanted a wife. Even if the inclination for matrimony
did not at present exist, it might surely be evolved by the
charms of friendly intercourse with a girl who had a great deal
in her. That was the reputation which Amelie had won for
herself among her intimates. People spoke of her as a nice
lively girl with a great deal in her. And such a girl, every-
body agr(:e<l, was bound to go far in some direction or other.
As H cat watches a Tuouse had Amelie watched the conduct
and manner of Ishmael to other women. Until tluit fatal
>0J) IshncL
Cu
Tliursday when hv was introduced to Lady Constance Danetrc*
he had appeared cold as ice- Even the keen eye of jealousy
could discover no evil. He had talked to pretty women, U
amusing women, to clever women, and there had been no shade
in his manner to mark that his fancy was caught or his heaifc
touched by any of them. But the night he met Constance
Danetree he had an absorbed air, which was new, and Amdlie's
bosom was from that hour the abode of the green-eyed one.
The afternoon at the Exhibition was a time of torture, for
Ishmael openly devoted himself to Lady Constance, and as
openly evaded Amdlie's somewhat exacting society. Amdlie'a
feelings as she sat with her mother and sister in a box at one of
the minor theatres of Paris that evening of the first of April
had an intensity which almost touched the sublime. The grief
was a petty grief, perhaps, the anguish of a sordid soul, the
disappointment of a fortune-hunter baulked of her prey ; and
yet there was an element of real passion, of unmercenary feeling
in the girl's despair. Heartless a year ago, and proud of her
heartlessness, she had discovered all at once that she had a
heart. Ishmael's fine qualities of mind and person had won her
fancy unawares. She had fallen in love with her victim. She
had begun the pursuit stimulated only by the most vulgar
passions, the ardent desire to be rich, to have a fine house, and a
place of mark in this dazzling world of Imperial France. To
queen it over her rivals of the Sacre C(xur, most of whom
were the daughters of much wealthier parents than her own,
many of whom had already made brilliant marriages, alliances
jirepared in advance by family influence, warm nests ready for
them to nestle in before the pollutions of the outer world had
tarnished the purity of their young wings. From these com-
panions of the past, old comrades and class-mat-^is, Am(§lie had
drunk the cup of humiliation even while profiting greatly by
their friendship for her. These young matrons had sent her
cards for parties which put to shame poor Madame Jarze's
Thursday evenings. They came to the Champs Elysdes in
delicious little coupes, in victorias of the very newest elegance.
They wore gowns from Spricht, the faiseur cb la modo, hardly
understood the possibility of anybody else making a gown that
one could wear, just as they wondered that anybody could
endure existence on a second floor in a huge barrack occupied by
aU the world, as it were, while they found life only tolerable in
a low Italian villa, guarded by eight-foot walls and hidden in
groves of acacia and lilac, within sound of the carriages rolling
past the Barri^re de I'Etoile, They had country houses ; thej
went to Arcachon, or Biarritz, or Vichy, or Pan directly the
Paris season was over; and they patronised Am^lie in away
*My Beloved is Mine, and I ayn His * 305
that made her blood boil, and for which her only recompense!
was the ability to boast of these stylish friends to acquaintance
of meaner rank.
To-night she owed the pleasure of hearing the last successfu]
opera bouffe to her old schoolfellow, Madame de Charleroy, whe
had a box twice a week, and generally gave it away from sheer
capriciousness. But for a heart wrung with the sense oJ
disappointment and failure there is sorry comfort in Offenbach's
liveliest strains.
* What rubbishing music it is ! and how can people care to
etare nicjht after nifiht at a fat woman who wears diamond-i
instead of clothes I ' exclaimed Am§lie, impatiently. She had
been exploring the house with her opera-glass with the faint
hope of seeing Ishmael among the audience.
' You ought not to bring us to see such a performance,
mamma ; it does us harm to be seen here.'
' I wonder what you would have said if I had left you at
home ? ' retorted the mother, braced tightly in her violet silk
gown, a rossignol from the last sale of coupons at the Louvre,
made up by a cheap dressmaker and trimmed with old point
that had belonged to Monsieur Jarze's mother, and which had
been mended so often, that the original work of eighteenth
century flemish nuns was almost lost in the network of
reparation. ' People take their daughters almost everywhere
nowadays, and if you were not seen at fashionable theatres, you
would nui the risk of not being seen at all by some of the
richest men in Paris.'
Amdlie shrugged her shoulders, and turned her face to the
stage with an impatient sigh. The one rich man whom slie
wanted to win was not in the house to-night, and without Liiu
tiie world was a blank.
CHAPTEB XXX
' THOUGH THOU SET THY NEST AMONG THE STARS*
Not often in the Ltistory of mankind has earth been the theatva
of such a scene of splendour as that which glorified Paris in the
epringtide and early summer of 1867. Perchance, in some far-otf
Indian city, in ancient Benares, or many-towered Delhi, there
might be a greater glitter of gold and genis, statelier processions,
Oriental pomja of palanquins and plumes, caparisoned elephants,
peacock thrones, turbans luminous with emerald and ruby ; but
that barbaric show would have had but feeble historic meaning
as compared with this meetmg of the kings of the West, the
statesmen and warriors, the financiers and long-headed schemers,
the makers and unmakers of kings. It was a mighty
rendezvous of the powers of the civilised world, a gathering of
crowned heads, all seemingly intent upon the amusement of the
hour, yet each in his heart of hearts intent ujDon making good
use of his opportmiities, each determined to turn the occasion
to good political account.
The Czar was among the first to come, accompanied by his
two sons. It was not long since their elder brother had been
laid in his coffin, heaped round with the fairest flowers of
Nice, a fair young form, a calm dead face in the midst of roses
and lilies, pale image of an Imperial youth which had been but
faintly reflected on the stream of life, surviving only in a
lahotogiciph. William of Prussia was there, flushed with the
tremendous victory of Sadowa — victory owed in great part to
the neutrality of France, a service as yet unrecompensed, aa
witness this late fiasco of the Luxembourg treaty. Beside the
stem soldier-king in the open carriage in which he entered
Paris sat the two master-spirits of his kingdom — his mighty
General, Moltke, his mightier Chancellor, Bismarck. Who coulii
tell what dreams brooded behind those steel-blue eyes of the
senator — large, full, projecting, luminous with the light of a
master mind '? what hidden plans lurked beneath that air of
frank, good fellowship, that outspoken Teutonic simplicity ?
Cavour, giant among statesmen, was as dead as Machiavelii ;
but his policy and his capacity lived in his Prussian pupil.
The East sent its potentates to swell the Royal crowd. The
S;il tan's large grave face, with dark solemn eyes, looked
calm and unmoved upon the Intperial show, while his tributary,
the Viceroy of Egypt, had come to see what kind of people
*TJiough Thou set thy Nest amoncj the Stars* 307
these I'reiichmen were who wanted to cut a highway for the
Bhips of the world through the sands of the desert. Even far-
off Japan was represented by the brother of its secular ruler.
Princes there were amidst that brilliant throng, lighter souls,
nursing no deep-laid schemes, hiding no slumbering fires —
princes who came honestly to see the show, and to drink the
cup of pleasure in that season which seemed one long festival,
England's future king was there, in the flower of his youfcluj,
kindly, dchonnaire^ keenly intelJigent, first favourite among the
elite of i-'arls, a popular figure among the populace ; the young
Princes of Belgium, the Princes of Prussia— they who were to
come three years later with fire and sword, bringing in their
train death and ruin, burnijig instead of beauty. There was
the Crown Prince of Orange — a prince four rire, and princelings
and princesses without number. Never saw the earth such a
gathering of its great ones, or a city so fitted for the scene of a
festival. The omnipotence of the Emperor, the millions poured
out like water by Prefect Haussmann, had made Paris a city of
palaces, a place in which even the monuments and statues of the
past were scraped and purified to match the whiteness of the
new Boulevards — a city planned for the rich, built for the
childpwi of pleasure and of folly, as it would seem to Diogenes,
looking in the summer eventide along that dazzling line of
Boulevards, that mighty thoroughfare which swept in a wide
arc from the Bastille to the Champs Elysees, a double range
of monumental mansions, theati^es, restaurants, cafes, drinking
places of every kind and every quality — a fanfare of voices, and
music, and chinking glasses, and airy laughter from sundown
to midnight, an illumination two leagues long.
Who can wonder that the stranger, blinded by these earthly
splendours, steeped in the intoxication that hangs in the very
air of such a city, should have ignored the storm-clouds brooding
over the Imperial palace — loss of honour beyond all measure,
loss of men by thousands, and of money by millions, yonder in
Mexico, loss of prestige by tlie inglorious neutrality of last year,
loss of popularity as shown by every new plebiscite ? The
stranger saw no clouds in that sixmmer sky, dreamt not of a
besieged and famished Paris, in which these very streets should
run with blood, these fair white stones should be torn up and
Jieaped into barricades, on which men should fight to extinction,
hand to hand, brother against brother, in the fury of Civil
War. He saw only the glory of the world's carnival ; he heard
only the sounds of music and dancing, of feasting and revelry.
One of the most magnificent spectacles in that season of
splendour was the review of the Imperial Guard in the Bois do
Boulogne, when sixty thoiisand men, under the command of
808 - Ishmael,
Mar^clial Canrobert, assembled on that v&ey spot where threa
years later William of Prussia, looking on to-day as guest and
ally, was to review his own troops amidst the gloom of a
surrendered city. The racecourse was the scene of the review,
and a mighty crowd covered the plain. Lady Constance
Danetree's barouche was stationed in the front rank of carriages,
and not remote from the Imperial party ; and on the scit
opposite Lady Constance, banked in by huge bouquets of Dijon
roses and stephanotis, sat Am^lie Jarzd, looking her prettiest in
a bebe toilette of cream-coloured china crape and pale pink
rosebuds.
She was there by one of those series of little accidents which
a girl of nous knows how to arrange beforehand, and she was
assuredly not there by the desire of her hostess. Poor Madame
Jarz^ and Hortense were sitting in their hired victoria afar off
in an outer fringe of disreputable smartness and shabby respecta-
bility — voitures de place crowded with petits bourgeois and their
families, victorias and four-in-hands gorgeous with the queens
and princesses, the dowagers and sweet girl-graduates of the
demi-monde. But Aniclie was here among the top strawberries
In the basket, in the midst of la societe rup — here smiling sweetly
at the woman whom of all women upon this earth she most
hated. She had contrived it all herself — had contrived to put
Lady Constance in a position in which it was impossible not to
ask her — and she was here triumphant. The end in her mind
justified the means. For the rest, having once been cajoled into
giving the invitation, Lady Constance thought no more about it.
The Jarzd girl was bad style, but not much worse than that
Princess of an Austrian house who was then one of the leading
lights of Parisian society, and whom Theresa, the star of the
Alcazar, had described as ' aussi canaille que moiJ
' Poor mother ! ' sighed Am^lie, standing up to survey the
crowd through her field-glasses, and perceiving afar off that
outermost circle of shabbiness and finery, something like the
orowd on the hill-side opposite the grand-stand at Epsom.
' I'm afraid slie and Hortense will see nothing but a cloud of
dust and those dreadful people in the drags.'
Those ' dreadful people ' were the very ladies whose gowns,
coiffures, and manners this damsel from the Saer^ Coeur had
taken pains to imitate.
* How grave the Czar looks ! ' exclaimed Am^lie, wheeling
round to survey the Imperial group. * Not quite happy. I suppose
an Emperor of Russia never feels himself quite secure from bullet
and dagger. They say the police have been watching him ever
since he came to Paris, that he is encircled witii an invisible
ban* I of detectives.'
' Though Tho2(, set thy Nest among the Stars ' 309
Constance shrugged her shoulders with a preoccupied air.
Emperors and dynasties were of no moment to her. She was
intent upon discovering one face amidst that vast crowd —
Ishmael's face — the face of the man whom she had met several
times in society since the beginning of April, but who had never,
so far as she could tell, taken the faintest trouble to bring about
any such meeting. Taking his conduct as an evidence of his feel-
ings, she could but think that he regarded her with supreme
indifference, yet she did not so think. To a sensitive woman
there are other tokens of affection, subtler, more precious than
outward actions ; and in Constance Danetree's heart there was a
growing faith in Ishmael's love for her. He might have his own
motives for holding himself in check ; he might be afraid of the
difference in their social rank, doubtful of her as a woman of
fashion, perhaps even a coquette. He might be only biding his
time. It was not for her to precipitate matters. Not by one
tone or one look had the well-trained woman of society betrayed
herself. Even Amelie's eyes, sharpened by jealousy, could not
penetrate beneath the mask of good manners with which a
well-bred woman hides her feelings.
He was there — there among the elite of the assemblage. He
came to Lady Constance's barouche presently, after having stopped
at ever so many carriages on the way. The review began
while he was standing there, detained by Am^lie, who held
him by her incessant prattle, as the mariner held the wedding
guest ; and the troops once in motion, it would have been difficult
for him to reci-oss to his former place. So he stayed, and stood
beside Lady Constance's carriage during the whole of the show.
Other people came and went, with most of whom he had a bow-
ing acquaintance as one of the most conspicuous men in Paris.
'You have never been in the army, Monsieur?' asked Lady
Constance.
' I have not enjoyed that distinction. I drew a lucky number
at the beginning of my career, when to have served would have
hindered my making my way in life. So far I was lucky.*
• Have 3'ou not been lucky in all things 1 '
• No, Lady Constance, not in all things.'
• And yet you have the reputation of being the most fortunate
man in Paris.'
'In Paris to have made money counts for good fortune^*
everything else is an insignificant detail in the mind of your
thoroughbred Parisian. We are a progressive nation. The
government of Louis Philippe preached only one doctrine—
" Make money." The Emperor goes further, and says, " Make
money — anyhow you can." '
This little conversation set Lady Constance wondering.
310 hhmael
What was that portion of life in which the great contractor had
been unfortunate ? Her womanly heart, answering for her,
made sure that this misfortune must have something to do with
love. He had loved unwisely — unhaj^pily — or had loved one who
was dead. The old heart- wolinds were only half healed, perhaps,
or only just beginning to be healed under a new influence.
The show was over : a gorgeous pageant of a few hours,
ending in the golden light of a June afternoon. The Imperial
carriages were moving slowly away. Lady Constance's coach-
man ])repared to follow.
' Shall we take you back to Paris ? ' she asked, and Ishmael
accepted.
For the first time, he seated himself in that perfectly-hung
barouche, displacing Amdlie and her flower-garden. The young
lady now nestled by her hostess's side.
It was lovely weather, and the wood was like fairyland, a
fairyland of fine carriages and fine clothes, smiling faces, light
laughter : beauty, wit, audacity : charlatan, knave, dupe, fool,
speculator, trickster, gamester, adventurer of every type ; but
all of such a brilliant surface, with a flush of hothouse flowers,
making a glow of jDure bright colour everywhere as in a floral
carnival.
Suddenly, amidst the rhythmical trot of horses and musical
jingle of harness, amidst the voices and laughter, and the splash
of the waterfall yonder, there came from the front — where the
Imperial carriages headed the train — the report of a pistol.
Then a sudden uproar — a tumult of voices.
What was it ? Only an attempt to shoot the Czar, made and
failed in ignominiously by one Berezowski, a mad young Polish
enthusiast — an honest, simple youth of eighteen summers, who
thought God had charged him with the Divine mission of des-
troying a despot and liberating a people. Unhappily, there are
many such false Christs, whose doom is, for the most part, the
wheel or the scaffold, wild-horses or the stake. Young Bere-
zowski was luckier, and escaped with penal servitude, much to
the displeasure of the Czar, who did not relish this episode in
his hospitable entertainment at the Elysc^e.
The crowd would have massacred Berezowski on the spot in
a tumult of enthusiasm for that monarch against whom France
had been in arms twelve years ago ; but the police intervened
and carried the lad off, serenely enduring the anguish of a wrist
shattered by the bursting of his pistol, and mildly protesting
his regret at being troublesome to a land which had given him
a home and a livelihood, and which he loved for its own sake.
The tumult, the confusion, the riding to and fro of general
officers, gona-d'armes, functionaries of all grades, gorgeous in
^TJiough Thou set thy Nest among the Stars' 81 1
ecarlet and gold and plumed helmets, last-ed some time, duxiug
which the triple rank of carriages stopped.
The reports which reached Lady Constance Danetree at about
half a quarter of a mile from the theatre of the event were
various and conflicting. First she was told — by h^v English
footman, who knew a little French — that the Cza,r was killed,
and the Emperor Napoleon dangerously wounded. Then a
passer-by informed her that the Empress Eugenie had thrown
herself in front of the Czar and received the bullet d pleine
poiCrine. Then came a rumour that one of the young princes
was shot through the head. Finally, Ishmael, who had alighted
and walked to the scene of action, returned with the reassuring
news that the bullet had only pierced the nostrils of a horse and
slightly wounded a lady on the opposite side of the road. The
second barrel had burst in the would-be assassin's hand.
At last the carriages rolled onward again. The Emperor of
all the Russias was safe in the Elysde by this time. The sun
was an hour nearer the west.
' I think I must give you some tea after all this dust and
excitement,' said Lady Constance, smiling at Ishmael as her
carriage rolled past her shrubberies of acacia and magnolia and
stopped under the large marquise in front of her hall door. ' But
perhaps you do not drink tea ? You would rather go on to the
boulevard and enjoy your afternoon absinthe P
* I never take absinthe, and I am very fond of tea 4 V Anglaise.'
' And mine is caravan tea.'
They alighted, and Ishmael, for the first time in his life,
crossed Constance Danetree's threshold, crossed it with reluctant
feet, yet unable to resist the most potent temptation that had
ever assailed him in the whole coui-se of his practical, straight-
forward life.
He had been in many of the most elegant houses in Paris, had
seen pictures, and statues, and flowers, and marble pavements,
eilk and velvet, cloth of gold, embroideries from China and
Persia, Japan and Nagpore, ad nauseam; and yet, looking
round Lady Constance Danetree's salon, with its adjacent boudoir
visible through a broad archway, across which a tawny velvet
curtain hung carelessly, it seemed to him as if he had never seen
the true elegance of home-life before. Here was an interior
stamped with the individuality of the woman who lived in it— •
her piano — unlike other pianos — her bookstands, and low
luxurious chairs, her portfolios of prints and photographs — un-
like other bookstands, and chairs, and portfolios — her grouping oC
hothouse flowers, the table at which she wrote, her work-tables,
her cosy cornei.s, half in shadow, yet glowing with Oriental
colour, her open tue-place with its bank of exotic greenery and
812 tshmael
rare old amber Satsuma jars — everywhere the traces of a woman^
taste ; and, like a note of life and friendliness, the three doga
grouped on a huge Polar bear-skin in front of the wide sunny
window.
Two tall and solemn footmen of the true British breed
brought in a tea-table with Queen Anne urn and old English
china, and Lady Constance poured out the tea. Her version of
le five odock was a much simpler reading than that of Madame
Arnould, on the entresol in the Champs Elys^es. Amelie
squatted gracefully on a low stool at Constance's feet.
' I think this English institution of five o'clock is positively
channi))g,' she said. ' It is simply the pleasantest hour of the
day ; but I never expected to see a business man like Monsieur
Ishniael waste his time upon drinking tea with two ladies.'
' It is once in a lifetime,' answered Ishmael, with his grave
smile, a bcatUiful smile, which lighted the strongly-marked face
with a sudden glow. ' There must be an oasis in every desert.'
* And you call this a green spot in life — to sit here in Lady
Constance's salon : you who have the key to all the finest houses
in Paris.'
* I do not profess to have any such key. Mademoiselle.'
' Oh, but you have. You have the goldon key which opens
all the doors of the great world. You and the Eothschilds can
go anywhere, do anything, say anything : whatever you do or
say will be right. If my father were only like you instead of
being a petty official pettily paid.'
She gave a little impatient sigh, and stopped herself, feeling
that she had gone too far. ' After all, money is a poor thing,'
she said ; ' it cannot buy happiness. I know some of my school-
fellows married for money who are miserable. Heaven protect
me from such a fate as theirs.'
' But are not all marriages nowadays more or less a question
of ways and means ? ' inquired Ishmael. ' I have only studied
the institution from afar, as a disinterested observer, yet it
seems to me that wedlock imder the second Empire means the
union of incomes rather than of hearts.'
' And can you see such a state of things without horror ? '
exclaimed Amelie, whde Lady Constance Danetree listened in
silence, reclining in her chair, one white tapering hand caressing
tlie Pomeranian's still whiter coat, the left hand supporting her
firmly-rounded chin — self-possessed, self-contained, the image of
passionless womanhood.
'It cannot concern me what stakes the players play for —
hearts or diamonds,' answered Ishmael ; ' I am only a looker-on
at the game. I shall never marry.'
Not a ripj>]e of emotion stirred Constance Danetree's features
' Though Thou set thy Nest among the Stars ' 313
The hand which smoothed the favourite's silken coat never
faltered in its slow monotonous movement ; there was not a
quiver of sculptured eyelids or sculptured lips. The face —
statue-like in its calm beauty — betrayed nothing.
And yet this deliberate utterance of a deliberate resolve was
like a blow struck at the heart of the woman who sat there in
such statuesque repose, caressing her lap-dog. It meant the
fall of her castle in the air, the end of all her dreams. It meant,
perhaps, that she had been duped and fooled by her own vanity.
For Amelie the blow was no less crushing ; and she was not so
skilled in the concealment of her feelings, or, it may be, was
wanting in the heroic temperament.
' That is a resolution pour ra*e,' she exclaimed, with a little
naif-hysterical laugh. 'Whenever, in my brief experience, I
have heard a man or a woman solemnly announce the determi-
nation never to marry, I have generally discovered afterwards
that he or she was at that very moment on the high road to the
altar. A widower usually vows as much, and you will own that
the widower who swears hardest, who tells you that his heart
lies buried in the grave of his dead wife, is always the first to
marry again. It is a fatal symptom.'
'There are men who swear for the love of swearing,'
answered Ishmael. * There are circumstances in my past life,
the bitter memories of a great sorrow, which render marriage
impossible for me. You may believe. Mademoiselle, that, for
once in your life, you have heard a man swear in good faith. I
shall keep my vow.'
He took up his hat and cane, and offered his hand to Lady
Constance, who half rose, with a delicious air of languor and
fatigue, and put her cool white hand in his. She could but
notice that his was cold as ice.
' Forgive me for wearying you with such egotistical prosings,'
he said, as they shook hands.
' You have not wearied me : I am always interested in my
fellow-creatures.'
' But you are looking pale and exhausted : I fear it is I who
have tired you.'
' Not at all. The sun, and the dust, and the show have been
tiresome, that is all. Good-bye.'
She gave him a gracious curtsey as he went out at the door.
Good-bye, love ; good-bye, hope ; good-bye, the fail- future we
two were to have shared ! That was what was meant by those
two syllables spoken by smiling lips.
* She could not have cared a straw for him,' thought Amelie
watchful of a rival even in the midst of her own agitations.
' My dear Amelie, the horses are waiting to take you home,
§i4 islimaet
and it is bad for them to stand long after such a day,' said
Constance. ' Do you tliink you would mind going at once 1 I
am due at a dinner at the English Embassy, and then there is the
ball at the Hotel de Ville, where I suppose I must put in an
appearance ; and I ought to rest a little.'
' How good of you to keep the horses for me ! I am going
thie instant,' replied Amelie. ' You talk of the ball as if it weie
a burden ; and they say it will be the grandest sight that has
ever been seen in Paris, and yet nothing compared to the ball
to-morrow night at the Tuileries. Papa has told us all about
it : he has had a good deal to do with the arrangements. The
gardens are to be illuminated with fifty thousand gas jets, and
there will be the electric light, and Bengal fires — a perfect fairy-
land.'
•' My experience of such balls is, that one has to sit in one's
carriage for two or three hours within a quarter of a mile of the
palace gates, hearing gens-d'armes give impossible orders, and
coachmen grumble and swear ; and that one finally reaches the
scene of the festival in a state of utter exhaustion,' said Constance,
wearily. ' But I suppose I shall have to go.'
CHAPTER XXXI
* THESE ARE THE MEN THAT DEVISE MISCHIEfl"
IsHMAEL turned his back upon the Imperial wood with its villas
and gardens, and its three broad avenues. The triumphal arch
was all aglow with the western sunlight. The lawns and flowers,
the foliage and fountains of the Champs Elysdes weie all steeped
in the same golden light. The ti'ain of carriages was still rolling
on, eastward, westward j these back to the city, those out to the
wood, carrying happy, idle people to dine al fresco at the
restaurant by the cascade. The footways were crowded with
pedestrians ; the toy-shops, and sweet-shops, and open-air
Alcazar, the Pavilion de I'Horloge, all the singing places and
pleasure haunts were beginning to glitter with 'lamps even in
'^ These are the Men that Devise Mischief* 815
the midit of that golden light. Children were pla3'ing, orgaua
grinding, flowers breathing perfume, clouda of dust shining like
H golden haze — a world of gladness and sunseft glory.
Ishmael walked at a brisk pace thr mgli the crowd, looking
neither to the right nor to the left, har(^ /■ conscious of the gaiety
around him, the throng of passers-bi'. His eyes were fixed,
looking steadily in front of him, yet unseeing. He was very
pale, and his brows were set in a dne that meant sternest
resolve.
Yes, he had spoken. He had told the loveliest, the proudest,
the most exquisite of women that it was not for him to aspire
to her hand. He had told that one woman whom he pas-
sionately loved that it was for him to stand aloof from her ;
that even were she tempted to stoop from her dazzling height of
pride and beauty so low as to crown him with her love, he could
not accept the blessing and the glory. His fate was fixed, a
destiny of loneliness and self-sacrilice.
What else could he have done ? he asked himself this evening,
in the sundown, as he threaded the crowd, now across the broad
place of fountains and statues, by symbolic Strasbourg, a marble
maiden with a coronet of towers, to be crowned and garlanded
later by a frantic crowd, swearing to fight and fall for her, and
anon to be veiled in sables — an emblem of shame and of mourn-
ing — past the Tuileries, the chestnut groves, under which
children were flying bright-coloured balloons — the shining
windows, the gilded raiHngs, while yonder, across the river,
shone the golden dome of the soldiers' hospital, whence came
beat of drum and blare of trumpet sounding the retraite.
Ishmael moved athwart the familiar scene without seeing itj
and walked at a still faster pace along the Eue de Eivoli under
the shadow of the Louvre.
What else could he have done but declare his resolve never tt
marry — he whose runaway wife might be living still, might
come forth from her hiding-place to claim him on his wedding
day, were he weak enough to wed again without due evidence
of her death. He had had no such evidence yet, though he had
taken considerable trouble to obtain it ; and he might have
hugged himself in the belief that, since Paquerette had given no
sign of her existence during the last seven years, she must needs
be dead. Were she living and in poverty, she would most
likely have asked for aid from his wealth ; were she living and
prosperous, she would surely have been more easily traced. Hia
search for the betrayer had been as earnest as his search for the
rictim, but neither quest had succeeded. This was how he had
Argued the question in his own mind over and over again, and
yet the thing was ail dark to him, and he told himself that, as a
816 Ishmael
man of honour, he was forbidden to marry. He was still the
husband of Paquerette.
And to many her, Constance Danetree, at such a hazard, to
8u]ly her proud and pure name by doubtful nuptials — no, that
he could not do. Better to suffer the anguish of resigning her
— better to bear his own lonely lot to the end.
He followed the Rue de Rivoli as far as the Palais Royal, and
thence struck into the Rue St. Honore, along which busy
thoroughfare, brightening already with lamplit shop windows,
he made his way to that still busier quarter of Paris which lies
around the great glass pavilions of the central markets, and the
old, old Pointe St. Eustache, historic ground, where once the
swollen soil of the cemetery of the Innocents seethed and
rankled with the rotting dead, and sent forth its plague-poison
to slay the living ; where the heaped-up coffins, thrust one
above another, crammed and gorged the loathsome earth until,
by the very weight of its putrid burden, it burst the wall of
an adjacent dwelling-house and scared the occupant by the
spectacle of a cellar filled with the ghastly reUcs of the
dead.
At a comer of the Rue Pirouette Islmiael entered a low,
dark wine-shop, where half-a-dozen blouses sat drinking and
smoking in the dim light. He nodded to the woman at the
counter, passed through the shop, and went up a winding stair-
case in the corner.
A man stopped him at the top of the stairs. * Es tu solide ? '
he asked.
' Jusqu'd la Rue de J&usalem,' replied Ishmael, and passed on
to a large room on the first floor, whence came the sound of a
resonant voice and a dense cloud of rank tobacco.
He pushed open the door and went in. The room was
crowded with men of all ages, and, by their aspect, of almost
every trade and profession ; men in blouses and men in broad-
cloth ; bronzed and rugged men who work with their hands ;
pallid weaklings who work with their brains. The blouses and
weather-tanned faces predominated in number and bulk ; but
the pallid brows and the well-worn frock-coats were the stronger
influence.
T^ese were the speakers, the dreamers, the enthusiasts — the
Utopians who believed that the Society of the Cercle du Prolo,
founded in 1831 under another name, now about to be affiliated
w^ith the International, was to bring to pass that Socialist mil-
lennium of equal fortunes, of direct legislation by the people, of
which French workmen have been thinking qyei since they
learned how to think.
Thirteen years ago Ishmael had been a voice of power in a
'These are the Men that Devise Mischief* 817
certain secret society called La Loque, out of which had been
developed this club of the Prolo. He had been on the side of
temperance, thrift, moderation — all those virtues which make
the artizan class strong in the land. He had been popular when
he was a journejonan toiler like the majority, and wore a blouse,
which was only ever so much cleaner than the normal blouse.
The time came when he wore a coat, and was known to be a
rich man employing others to work for him. Then his pojni-
larity began to wane. His moderation was called half-hearted-
ness, his loyalty to the old ideas was doubted, and his strong
common-sense, which saw both sides of every question, was
denounced as the craven spirit of the bourgeois, who thrives and
fattens upon the sweat of other men's brows.
He spoke, and spoke bi-avely, bore the brunt of his old
comrades' disfavour, bearded the lion of Socialism in his den ;
showed his friends where they were unwise, where they asked
too much of the State and of their masters ; but a time came
■when he was saluted with a storm of groans and hisses, when
his success was cast in his face as a reproach and a disgrace-
when he was accused of underhand dealings, falsehood, dis-
honesty even. He flung these vile insinuations back upon his
accusers, challenged them to show a single stain upon his career,
and shook the dust of the club from his feet. And now, to-night,
he came to his old place, after an interval of years, summoned
by a circular which had been sent to him in common with all
the other Prolos, to invite discussion as to the proposed affilia-
tion of the club to the great International Society, founded in
1862, encouraged by tho favour of the Emperor himself, and
already a mighty force in civilised Europe.
The meeting of to-night was a feverish one. There were
some among the Prolos who resented the loss of their own
individuality, the lessening of th^ir own importance, which must
needs follow this amalgamation of the old and small society
with the new and great one. These cockle-shells did not care to
lose their own sense of importance by being enrolled in a fleet of
three-masters. Whelmed in the great whirlpool of European
Democracy, this little club of Parisian orators would be as a
handful of hazel-nuts flung into the Horseshoe Fall.
There were some who dreaded this loss of individuality foi
vanity's sake, others who shrank from it for principle's sake,
and who revolted against the iron discipline, the mechanical
drill involved in the Karl-Marxian theory of Socialism; and
amongst these latter was Ishmael.
He who had not crossed the threshold of that room for seven
years came there to-night to protest against the contemplated
change. He stood in the group by tne doorway, unnoticed and
318 Ishmael
unknown, until the speaker had finished, and then he quietly
shouldered his way through the crowd and advanced to the
tribune. He took ofif his hat and faced the assembly, taller by
half a head than the majority — a man of men.
Dressed as he had dressed for the review, in a coat of finest
cloth and newest fashion, with the gardenia which he had put in
his button-hole in the Rue Castiglione, remembering how Lady
Constance Danetree had worn those white waxen blossoms on
her bosom on each occasion of their meeting, plainly and soberly
clad withal, with the air of statesman and thinker rather than
of fribble or fop, yet the look of him as he stood before them
in the flush and power of his manhood set the teeth of those
keen Democrats on edge. This was the capitalist, the ' bourgeois,'
the hated one, the employer of labour, the man who wallowed
in wealth which represented the sweat of other men's brows.
An angry murmur ran round the crowded room like the faint
rumbling of distant thunder, and then a solitary hiss, sharp,
venomous, flew out at him like a forked tongue, seemed to
quiver in the air, and then to strike straight at his breast.
' I am not afraid of your hisses, friends ! ' he said, ' but I am
sorry for your want of sense. I am not here to plead the cause
of capital against labour, the rights of the employer as against
the rights of the employed. That is an old question which we
have argued before to-night. I am here to protest against the
amalgamation of this little honest-hearted society with the most
pernicious and fatal association which ever threatened the peace
of civilised Europe.'
This was a bold attack, for in 1867 the International was in
the flower of its j^outh. There had been a congress of workmen
of all nations at Geneva ; there was to be a congress at Lausanne
in September. The International was on the side of universal
peace : it promised a millennium for the working man and the
world at large ; it offered a dazzling prospect of equal rights ;
the abolition of wages in favour of co-operation ; the redemption
of woman from the necessity of labour ; free education, universal
enlightenment. For the old-established journeymen's tour of
France, for the German icanderjahr, was to be substituted the
tour of Europe, enlarging the ideas of tlie mechanic by contact
with foreign nations.
The International had so far acted with moderation, for while
sustaining the metal-workers in their long strike, and while
putting upon its black books every firm which dismissed any
member of the Society, it had lifted up its voice boldly against
the workmen at Roubaix when they destroyed their machinery
and set fire to their workshops.
So fsr thf! Society seemed to have acted only for good ; but
* Tli&se are the Men that Devise Mischief ' 819
behind the association of many men Ishmael saw the working of
one mind, and that the mind of a dangerous visionary. He saw
the shadow of German despotisip, a despotism of the Socialist as
perilous as the despotism of the monarch ; and it was against
this that he spoke.
He denounced Karl Marx and his theories, he indicated the
dangers they involve, demonstrated their falsehood, their impos-
sibility. The majority of his hearers knew little or nothing
about Karl Marx and his system, but they were most of them
prejudiced against an old comrade who had grown rich. Ishmael
represented the Patron, the Bourgeois, the Enemy. His speech
provoked a storm of hisses, groans, abuse. But the full sonorous
voice thundered on, every sentence coming with the force of a
sledge-hammer. Dauntless and undaunted, he stood before them
to the last, till he had said his ultimate word ; then, with a
smile, half friendly, half scornful, he bowed to his auditors,
amongst whom but a small minority were in his favour, put on
his hat and left the room.
It was past nine when he went out into the network of old
streets, and the illuminated dial of St. Eustache shone pale in
the summer twilight. The year was at that lovely season when
night is almost unknown. The old streets of Paris had a dusky
look in the gray eventide, but they were not yet dark.
Ishmael had left the club about ten minutes, when a man
close behind him said, in a low confidential voice :
'Has Monsieur Ishmael forgotten an old member of the
Cercle du Prolo, whom he once employed in a delicate matter?'
Ishmael turned quickly, and recognised a man who had been
made known to him thirteen years ago as a member of tkat
semi-professional fraternity which ferrets out domestic secrets
— the police of private life — and who had been his aQ;ent in the
endeavour to find Paquerette. The man had travelled half over
France upon that quest, had spent a good deal of his employer's
money without arriving at any successful result. He had been
apparently on the scent many times, had brought back infor-
mation that seemed genuine, but the end was failure ; and after
paying him from first to last a considerable sum, Ishmael had
dismissed him seven years ago, very much disposed to think
him an impostor.
And now this same man, whom he had not seen for years,
but of whom, by a strange coincidence, he had been thinking
within the last two hours — this man, Dumont, stood before him
in the June twilight, breathing absinthe, and clothed on with
shabbiness.
It seemed to Ishmael as if the man had sprung out of the
very paving stones in answer to his own thought — had risen
820 Ishmael
from the ground at his bidding like an evil spirit at the touch
of a necromancer's wand. He had despised the man for his
profligate habits in years gone by, respecting kim just a little at
the same time for his cleverness. He had treated him with a
certain familiarity and good fellowship, as between men of the
same opinions, linked by the same brotherhood ; but the gulf
between them had widened since that time. It was within the
last seven years that Ishmael had allowed himself to be tempted
into society, had taken the place to which his wealth and hia
talents entitled him. And while Ishmael had taken a higher
position, the man Dumont had sunk to a lower grade — the grade
of the shirtless and houseless — the lost tribes of Paris, whose
children sleep under bridges and in shadowy doorways, who eat
garbage, and whose life is a perpetual game of hide-and-seek
with the police.
He was a strange-looking man, this Dumont — strange be-
cause, despite his threadbare coat and greasy hat, his absence of
linen and frouzy neckerchief — despite the traces of drunkenness
and debauchery, too palpable in the tallowy tints of the soddened
face, the inflamed eyelids, and pui'ple lips — despite the livery of
vice, the creature looked as if once, in some remote period of life,
he had been a gentleman. He held himself like a gentleman ;
he had the intonation of a gentleman ; he had the arched instep,
the well-cut features, the lean tapering hand and wzust of a
gentleman. For the rest he was so squalid and so sickly a spec-
tacle as he stood there in the cold gray light, that he might be
taken for a man who had died and been buried, and had been
dug out of the common grave to be galvanized into a factitious
life by some kind of scientific jugglery.
' What do you know of the Prolos ? ' asked Ishmael, contemp-
tuously.
' What do I know 1 1 have been one of them for six and
thirty years. I was one of them — ay, and a leading light too —
at the foundation of the society in '31, when the workmen of
Paris began to diseover that the glorious revolution of July did
not mean Socialism, that they were no better off under the King
of the French than they had been under the King of Fi-ance, when
that great reservoir of humanity the Faubourg Saint- Ajitoine
began to grow rufiied and stormy. In those days the Proletaires
were a little band of men who met once a week in a wine-shop
in the Eue Sainte-Marguerite, and who called themselves the
Soci^t^de la Loque. " La loque en avant" was their war-cry. I
was a speaker then, Monsieur Ishmael — yes, by Heaven, as
eloquent an orator as you were to-night. I have always been
tme to my colours ; I am true to them now. It is you who are
false, Monsieur Ishmael ; you who have grown rich under the
• These are tlu Men that Devise Mischief* 321
rule of a despot and have left oiF caring for the cause of
liberty.'
* This is no place for talking politics,' said Ishmael. * You
had better come to my house in the Place Eoyale two hours
hence, and I will talk as much as you like. You look poor,
Dumont.'
'It would be very strange if I looked rich.'
' "Well, I may be able to give you some profitable employ-
ment, perhaps. You may as well dine or sup in the meantime.'
' It will be at least a novel sensation,' answered the man
called Dumont, accepting Ishmael's napoleon.
Two hours later the man was ushered into Ishmael's library
in the Place Eoyale, a spacious panelled room, furnished with
heavy oak book-cases, solid oak chairs, and an immense office
table covered with papers, plans, and drawings, and lighted by
two large shaded lamps.
' Sit down,' said Ishmael, pointing to an arm-chair by
the empty hearth. ' You told me yonder, two hours ago, that
I was false to the cause of my fellow-workmen. I tell you
that I am as true to that cause now that I am a rich man as
ever I was as a poor man. But I do not give in my adherence
to Karl Marx and his crew.'
•You had better,' answered the other, drily, 'They are
coming to the front.'
'I am no coUectivist.'
' No, you are a rich man ; you are a capitalist ; you believe
in your divine right to profit by other men's labour, to wallow
in accumulated capital — which is only another name for unpaid
labour — to heap up a colossal fortune by the help of other men's
thews and sinews.'
' I have not spared my own labour of head or hand. There
might have been neither work nor wages for those other men if
my enterprise had not set the ball rolling.'
' No ; but you have made millions, and they are exactly
where they were before the ball began to roll,' answered the
man. ' That's what Karl Marx and his crew want to put an end
to — the aggregation of profits in the pockets of one man. Why
should the keystone of the arch be a diamond, and all the other
stones only common stone ?
' Perhaps, because, without the keystone, the arch would
tumble to pieces.
' All ! but we shall construct all future arches on a better
principle. Every great enterprise shall be imdertaken by a
body of men, each risking his labour, each reaping au equal
share of the profits. Every manufactory shall be cai-ried on by
the operatives. Wealth shall be distributed.'
T
322 Ishmael
' Utopian ! ' interrupted Ishmael. ' The universe itself was
formed from a nucleus. There must be a beginning— there must
be a master-mind — there must be rich men and poor men under
Empire or Republic. Make all men equal at sunrise and at
sundown there would be differences. And again, that concen-
tration of capital, of which you Socialists complain, is, after all, the
great bond of union. In co-operative labour the individual risks
would not be large enough to ensure that intensity of purpose
without which there can be no success in trade. The capitalist
takes gigantic risks and works harder than any of his men. If
there come the menace of ruin, it is he who must face the dark
hour, grapple with the danger and overcome it. Would a herd
of meji, held together by the vague chances of divided profits —
never sure of their bread — meet misfortune as bravely or work
as earnestly ? I think not. But I did not ask you here to talk
political economy. I want you to work for me again as you
worked for me some years ago.'
' To resume my hunt for your wife V
' Yes. I want to know where she is if she still lives. I
want the evidence of her death if she is dead.'
' Difficult, rather. When I came upon the trace of her at
Marseilles, a singer at a cafe-chantant near the Quay, she had
changed her name three times. She had made her debut at
Brussels in opera as Mademoiselle Callogne ; she had acted with
a strolling company as Madame Sevry ; she appeared at
Marseilles as Bonita — nothing but that — Bonita, or la Bonita.
She was a star in the little company at the caf^-chantant, a
favourite with an audience which consisted chiefly of seamen,
mariners of all nations and of all colours — a frightful hole !
Your wife had left Marseilles when I discovered her identity
with this Mademoiselle Bonita, a discovery which, as you may
remember, I only made through tracing Hector de Valnois— no
easy matter, for he had sunk pretty low by that time, this sprig
of a noble house,' with infinite scorn.
'And they had left Marseilles in a steamer for Valparaiso a
week before you got there ! You employed an agent in tliat
city to hunt them down, but without avail,' interrupted Ishmael,
impatiently. *Why go over old ground?'
' I am only picking up the threads in order to make a fresh
start,' answered the other. ' Let me see, Monsieur ishmael ; it
was six yeai-s after Madame ran away from you that I heard of
her at Marseilles, and this Monsieur de Valnois had been
faithful to her all that time — through good and evil fortune.
There was something very real in their passion, you see. it
survived empty pockets, hard fare, the ups and downs of a
Bohemian career. Monsieur ennied a little money by his pen
'These are the Men that Devise lEschief 323
Madame a little by her pretty voice. Sometimes one was ill,
sometimes both were penniless. It was not a path of roses.
But they were true to each other all those years.'
'I did not invite you to be eloquent upon their fidelity.
You heard of my wife's intended voyage to Valparaiso. You
xijever traced her beyond the steamer that was to take her there.
I want you to take up the thread you dropped then '
'^ter seven years. It will not be easy. Strange that you
should be indifferent to Madame's fate all these years, and
suddenly awaken to an eager interest in it. Forgive my frank-
ness. I speak as Prolo to Prolo.'
' Life is full of sto-angeness ; but you need not concern your-
self about my motives. Find my wife for me, or bring me the
evidence of her death, and I will give you five thousand francs
over and above the salary you will draw from me while you are
employed in the quest.'
'And my expenses? They will be stifi". I see no better
way of beginning than by going to Valparaiso. Where the
local police failed a man bred in Paris may succeed. I ouo-ht
to have gone there seven years ago — only your interest in the
chase seemed to have cooled just then.'
' I was wearied by failure. I trusted to the chapter of acci-
dents. I thought that, if she were penniless, deserted, she
would come to me of her own accord for aid, for shelter — come
to me as the hare winds back to her form, as her unhappy
mother went to that wretched den in the Rue Sombreuil.'
He said this in a low voice, to himself rather than to
Dumont.
The ex-police agent looked at him curiously, with keenly-
questioning eyes.
' The Eue Sombreuil 1 ' he echoed. ' Did your wife's mother
ever live in the Rue Sombreuil?'
' She was born there, and died there in the flower of her
youth — a withered flower, cut down untimely. "Why do you
dtare, man? I never pretended that my wife was of good birth.
I only told you that she was a pure and innocent woman till
that false friend of mine corrupted her. She was a daughter of
the people, poor child. Her mother was a grisette, who ran
away with some nameless scoundrel ; her grandfather was an
eb^niste, called Lemoine, a drunken rascal, who lived from
hand to mouth. Strange that so fair a flower should have come
from so foul a seed ! My wife had tlie air and the instincts of a
lady. Who shall say that these things are hereditary ? '
' She may have had good blood on the father's side,' said the
other, thoughtfully. 'Do you know anything about her father ?
• Only that he was a villain. Enough of the past : it is too
824 Ishmael
full of pain and bitterness for me to be fond of talking about it.
Find me my wife if you can. You know the reward.'
' That reward would be the same for the evidence of her
death 1 ' asked the other, with a faint sneer. ' You will give aa
much for bad news as for good ? '
* As much for one as for the other. I pay for certainty.'
CHAPTER XXXIl
•and the great man humbleth himself'
Many young women in the matrimonial hunting-field would
have given up the chase on the strength of such a protest aa
that made by Ishmael when, in grave and deliberate accents, he
declared his determination to live and die a bachelor ; but that
ardent young sportswoman, Amdlie Jarze, was not so easily put
off the scent. She was discouraged, disheartened, vexed, and
angry — jealous of Lady Constance Danetree's superior influence \
but she did not despair. She talked the subject over with hoi
sister Hortense during one of those oases of friendly feeling
which sometimes divex'sified the arid desert of sisterly an-
tagonism.
'There must be something queer in his past life,' said the
damsel, when she had described that little episode at the five
o'clock tea — ' a low intrigue, a low marriage even. He had
such a gloomy air when he said that he should never marry — •
not the air of a man who does not wish to marry, but of a man
who dare not marry. There is a secret, I am certain. How
strange that people should know so little about his antecedents,
I have questioned everybody as far as I could venture ; but
they all tell the same story — a workman, living among herds of
other workmen out at Belleville — till seven years ago, when he
burst upon Paris like a meteor. He had a hand in all the
improvements in Algiers. The Emperor decorated him after
the completion of a great railway bridge somewhere in
Auvergne ; and then people found out that he was one of the
greatest piaciical engineers of the age, and immcuocly ricii.
*And the Great Man Humbleth Himself 325
wliicli was much more to the purpose ; and then everybody
began to ask him to dinner. Of his private life before that
time people in society seem to know actually nothing.'
' Why should they know anything ] ' asked Hortense, with
a supercilious air. 'What is a workman's private life? — break-
fast and dinner, and a bath on Sunday.'
* I want to know if he was married or single in those days.'
'I am told that Parisian workmen rarely marry,' said
Hortense, placidly.
It was in vain that Amdlie speculated and wondered. She
was no nearer arriving at any certainty as to the motive of
Ishmael's declaration. But she was determined not to relinquish
the chase on account of that assertion of his. After all, it
might mean little or nothing — a mere expression of egotism
intended to enhance the importance of the speaker.
* I suppose he thinks we are all dying for him,' she said to
herself.
She wrote him a little note on the next Wednesday— the
dearest little note on the last fashionable paper, with a painted
swallow in the corner — a note in an elegant slanting penmanship,
a I'Anglaise, to remind him of Madame Jarze's Thursdays, which
he had so long forgotten. A postscript informed him that Lady
Constance Danettee had promised to put in an appearance eai-ly,
and that Mademoiselle Betsy, who had created a furor at a cafe-
concert in the Faubourg du Temple, was to sing her famous song,
' Ddcrochez moi ^a,' the song she had lately had the honour of
singing at the Tuileries before a cluster of crowned heads, and
as a reward for which a costly bracelet had been clasped upon
her wrist by the Imperial fingers.
Even the temptation thus held out did not attract Ishmael
to the second floor in the Champs Elysees. He replied politely
to Mademoiselle Jarze's letter, informing her that the numerous
public works in which he was interested kept him closely
occupied, and rendered visiting and all social pleasures impossible
for him. There was a tone of decision about this letter which
made even Amelie feel that the case was hopeless.
' There is somebody or something in the background,' she said
to herself ; * and the man cannot marry. Well, as h« evidently
doesn't want to marry me, I'm very glad he is not able to marry
Lady Constance Danetree.'
Amdlie was angry, chagrined, disappointed, but she was riot
the kind of young person to cut off her back hair, or clothe her-
self in sackcloth because of her disappointment, especially in the
year of an International Exhibition, when Paris, the capital of
universal pleasure, was at its best and gayest. So, failing the
keen rapture of the chase, with Ishmael for her quarry, she was
82G Ishmaet
fain to get what amusement she could out of the easy admirera
within her reach.
Chief and most favoured among these was Annand de
JC^ratry, the young man who had, in his own estimation, reached
the chmax of literary fame when he saw his first vaudeville
produced with success at the Palais Royal. From that hour he
lived only to write vaudevilles. Waking and sleeping, his mind
laboured upon jokes and couplets, critical concatenations in the
family circle, foolish or jealous husbands, giddy wives, amiisingly
treacherous friends. He liked Am^lie, chiefly because she was
of the Palais Koyal type. She was his lay figure — the model for
his giddy young wives and foolish virgins. He reproduced her
impertinences, her unconscious or affectedly unconscious douhle-
cntendre: accentuated ■with the heightened colouring of the
theatre. He courted her society, was rarely missing from one
of Madame Jarze's Thursdays, albeit other gandins of his class
aflected to despise those functions. He was to be seen and
heard whispering and giggling in a corner with Amelie, while
INfadame Jaize, provided there were no more eligible man present,
was amiably unconscious of their little indiscretions.
' They have known each other so long, foolish children,' she
explained ; ' they are like brother and sister.'
As a successful playwright, on friendly terms with other
playwrights. Monsieur de Keratry got occasional admissions for
one of the theatres which were not filled to overflowing, and
these he presented to Madame Jarz^, thus keeping Amelie au
coiirant of that lighter dramatic art in which he hoped to
distinguish himself. Amelie soon acquired the knowingness of
an experienc 1 cabotine, and was enger to help her admirer with
suggestions and inventions of her own active little brain.
Pleased with her interest in his work, he brought his new
vaudeville in his pocket when he dropped in for an extempore
'five o'clock ' of weak tea and Neapolitan biscuits chez Madame
Jarz4 having first refreshed himself with a polichinelle of
vermouth or cura^oa at that much gayer 'five o'clock' chez
Madame Arnould, on the entresol. He read his last scene to
Amelie in a little nook apart by the open window, and they
laughed over his rather racy jokes together in good fellow-
ship. Armand treated the damsel altogether en hon garqon, and
did not apologise for the somewhat hazardous situations in
lis play.
Having laughed over the final scene, she was eager to know
when the new piece was to be produced.
'Not for ages,' x-eplied Keratry. 'It has to go to the
tnnturier first, to be remodelled. That man has a knowledge
of stage efl'ects Avhich I shall never acquii'e. It is as much aa
*And the Great Man Huvihleth Himself^ 827
injtjnct as the result of long experience in dramatic criticism.
T\ e will pull all these seenes to pieces — cut out hundreds of my
happiest lines — introduce half-a-dozen hackneyed situations,
and make the thing actable. It is a humiliating process to
undergo ; but it answered with my first play, and I hope it may
answer with my second.'
'I don't believe anybody in Paris can know more about
dracnatic effect than you,' said Am^lie, making her blue eyes as
big as possible, and favouring Armand with a look of child-like
worship), which she had hitherto reserved for Ishmael. ' How 1
should like to see tliis teinturier,^ she added, with a touch of
frivolity, 'He must be such a curious person.'
'He is a curious jicrson, and lives in a curious den, and wears
a curious coat,' answered Armand ; ' but he is a kind of eccen-
tricity that is uncommonly common in Paris — the eccentricity
of hard-upishness, Vhoinme daiis la deche.'
' Ah ! ' sighed Amdlie, ' that is not an unknown complaint
eyen in the Champs Elys(^es, and I think we get it in a severer
form on this side of the Seine because we have to keep
up appearances. But I should so like to see this poor Mon-
sieur '
' Nimporte — that is the name he has given himself, Jean
Nimporte. But if he is the author of Jfes Nuits Blanches, as
1 have been told he is, his real name is de Valnois, and he comes
of a good Proven9al family. He encourages no inquiries as to
his antecedents, and never talks of his past life. He smokes
like a factory chimney, and I believe he is softening his brain
with a continual course of absinthe. I am really sorry for him ;
one can see that he was once a gentleman.'
' Do bring him here some day.'
' Bring him here I Impossible ! He seldom goes out till
after dark — he has not a presentable coat belonging to him ;
and if I were to offer to give him one, he would throw it out on
the landing like that English philosopher you may have read of,
who threw away a pair of new boots which benevolence left at
his door when he was a penniless collegian. You oan do nothing
for a fallen angel like Jean Nimporte.'
' The more you say about him the more do I languish to see
him,' exclaimed Amdlie.
' Nothing easier if you are the hon gargon I take you for.'
'I am always bon gargon with you.'
'Then I will introduce you to my teinturier to-morrow. Tell
]\Iadame that you are going to spend the morning with Lady
Constance Danetree. She will hardly object to your going so
short a distance alone ; or, if you must go under convoy of your
bonne, leave the bonne at Lady Constance's gate, and wait for
328 Ishmael
me in the slirub'bery. I will be on the watch, and will join yoti
directly the coast is clear. I shall have a fly waiting, and
I will carry you off to the Quartier Latin, where you shall
see life. We will breakfast together at one of the students'
restaurants on the Boul Mich.'
* Bold Mich?'
* Boulevard St. Michel — popular contraction, that's all ; and
after breakfast we will go and see Jean Nimporte.'
* But it will be dreadful — to go out alone with you '
* A friend you have known almost from childhood 1'
' To breakfast with you at a restaurant '
'One must eat when one is hungry. Come, Amelie, you
know you can trust me.'
* With all my heart. But the world ! What would people
say if they saw us together V
' Only that you have the courage of your opinions, like those
chai'ming girls from New York, who are not afraid to be their
own chaperons. The most innocent girls are always the boldest.
Eemember Una. Besides, you can keep your veil down.'
' I will come,' said Am(^lie, with a radiant smile ; ' and I shall
not wear a veil. I have the courage of my opinions, iind one of
those opinions is a perfect belief in you.'
This was a master-stroke. Monsieur de Kdratry was enchanted.
The girl's frankness, the spice of adventure that flavoured the
whole thing, the flattery implied in her confidence, aU gratified
that vanity which is the ruling passion alike of fool and
philosopher.
At eleven o'clock next morning Amelie announced her inten-
tion of spending the day with Lady Constance Danetree. They
had met at a reception the night before, and there was no reason
why such an engagement should not have been made between
them, so maternal suspicions were in no wise excited. There
was a slight discussion as to whether Am^Iie could or could not
go so far as the other side of the Arch without escort ; but aa
Monsieur Jarze had gone to his ofiice, and the honnds services
were urgently required indoors, it was finally decided that
she could.
Amelie dressed herself with a dainty simplicity, which became
her better than her finest feathers. A holland frock, prettily
made, and fresh from the laundress, a knot or two of scarlet
ribbon to relieve the neutral tint of the frock, a little brown
straw toque, with a bunch of scarlet berries, a holland parasol,
and long Swede gloves at a time when long gloves were a
distinction.
' You are simply perfect,' exclaimed Kdratry, meeting her just
beyond the Arch, in the broad sunny space whence diverge the
'And the Great Man Sumhleth Himself* 329
ftrenues of the Parisian wood. ' But I hope you don't think you
look like a grisette, or even a petite bourgeoise, par exemple. I
never saw you appear so distinguished.'
He had a hired victoria in waiting, into which he handed his
companion, a little frightened, in spite of her audacity, at the
tremendous impropriety she was about to commit, and expecting
to see an acquaintance in every passer-by. She had no veil, but,
happily, she had her large holland sunshade, and under that
shelter she felt she was comparatively safe. The victoria drove
quickly along the Avenue de I'Alma, and across the bridge of
the same name, past the Champs de Mars, across the Place dea
Invalides, and into the long, sober Eue de Grenelle ; thence, by
streets unknown to Amelie, to the square in front of St. Sulpice,
and then into a labyrinth of narrow streets, which were as a new
world to the adventurous maiden.
' I am not going to take you to the Boul Mich for breakfast,'
said Armand ; ' it is too glaring and public. I am going to show
you one of the oldest students' haunts in Paris ' — antiquity in
Paris usually meaning something v\nder half a century — ' a
place that was famous in the days of the Eestoratiou, the
Pantagruel.'
' What a queer name,' said Am(^lie, whose knowledge of even
the nomenclature of old French literature was of the smallest.
The carriage stopped in front of a dingy-looking house in
a dingy-looking street, and, for the first time in her life,
Mademoiselle Jarz^ was introduced to a popular cafi^, a haunt
of the student and the Bohemian. It was even a stranger scene
than she had expected to behold.
The Pantagruel had changed curiously since those days when
Louis-Philippe was at the beginning of his reign, and when
P5re Lemoine went thither to seek tidings of his lost daughter.
It had been then a dingy and sufficiently common-place establish-
ment, consisting of two large low-ceiled rooms opening one into
the other, furnished with numerous small tables, and boasting in
the outer apartment a pewter-covered counter, or bar, behind
which the mistress of the house sat all day and through the
greater part of the night, enthroned among many-coloured
bottles and glasses, and with, perchance, a few bunches of
cheap flowers, making a central point of vivid colour amidst
the pervading dulness.
Now, as in those days, the floor of the Pantagruel was sunk
below the level of the street, and one descended to it by a stone
step ; now, as in the past, the outward aspect of this place of
entertainment was darksome and uninviting ; but, heavens,
what a change within !
The Pantagruel had caught the spirit of the times. That
380 Ishnael
passion for luxury and decorative art ■which was the leading note
of the Empire had seized upon this students' cafe. The Panta-
gruel had caught the fever of romanticism, medisevalism, Victor-
Hugo-ism, The Pantagruel had become a page out of the book
of the good old times, a house in which Villon himself might
have drunk deep out of a whistle-tankard and trolled his
roundelays to an admiring circle, whose sword-hilts clinked in
chorus to the poet's glad refrain. The Pantagruel had gone in
for ' culture.'
The walls were rich in old tapestry, and older Rouen pottery.
Brass chandeliers and Gothic lanterus hung from the heavily-
bossed ceiling. Each room had its fine old carved oak mantel-
piece — its floreated iron dogs, whilst in the corner reposed pikes
and lances that seemed as if only just put aside by some
deep-drinking warrior of the Middle Ages, steel-clad from head
to heel.
The discordant notes in this medijEval interior were the
mahogany tables and a piano in front of the counter ; but this
latter anachronism was pardoned for the sake of conviviality
when the Bohemians of literature and art met in these halls at
eventide to criticise and anathematise those rival runners who
had outstrij^ped them in the race of life. Here assembled the
brigade of the threadbare coats and the shabby hats, the ragged
regiment of culture and wit, the Bate's — the men who might
have done so much better in this world if they had not been
geniuses.
In the dim Rembrandt gloom of this strange scene, lighted
only by stained-glass casements, Amelie gazed and wondered.
She had expected shabbiness, squalor even ; and, behold, she
was in a chamber that might have been the banquet hall of one
of the old prince-nobles of France, at Blois or Plessy les Tours.
Never out of the Louvre or the Hotel de Cluny had she seen
such richness of decoration, such brass and iron work, or such
quaint pottery.
It was happily an hour at which most of the students were
engaged in their colleges and hospitals, and when very few of
the Rut(fs were up, so Kdratry and his companion nad the
iaedio3val refectory all to themselves. He chose a table in the
embrasure of one of the painted windows, and placed Amdlie
with her back to the room, so that, had it been ever so full, that
pretty little frimousse chiffonne'e of hers would not have been
revealed to the public save in taking her departure.
Armand ordered a bottle of champagne as an accompaniment
to a delicate little dejeiLner, which was served quickly and well,
and which Amelie declared was even nicer than anything she
had ever eaten at the Maison Dor6e or the Cafe Riche, whither
* And the Great Man Hmnhlelh Himself* ?j?A
she had been invited on occasion to some festive banquet before
the opera, given by wealthy friends of her father — those good
Samaritans of the upper classes who seemed sent into the world
to spend their money upon feeding the hungry with dinners at
two napoleons a head.
She pi'otestedat first against the creaming champagne, vowed
she would take nothing but coffee, or chocolate, but relented on
seeing the primrose-tinted wuie breathe a cold dew upon the tall
Flemish goblet, and owned that it was nice because it was so
deliciously cool.
' You must help me with the bottle,' said Armand, ' or I shall
have to drink it all myself, and then I shall sink unconscious
under the table, and you will have to pay the bill.'
' That would be quite out of the question,' said Amelie, whose
poor little purse was always empty. ' I should have to stay here
in pledge.'
'You see your danger, so you had better do your duty.'
Am61ie did her duty to the extent of ^>ne of those tall glasses
of pale perfumed liquor, sipped daintily during the progress of
the meal. It was a warm morning towards the close of June,
and the iced champagne was not unpleasant. Kdratry finished
the bottle with ease. They dawdled a little over their wood
strawberries and black cotfee ; the gentleman paid the bill,
which the lady thought absurdly small ; and then they strolled
away from the Pantagruel. The victoria had been dismissed
when they alighted.
' What a dear, quiet old place, this Pantagruel,' said Amelie.
* Very. Do you know, child, that in '32 this quiet old place
was the headquarters of Socialism. The e'meute of that year was
lialf hatched here.'
Amdlie's mind was not historical. She knew there had been
a revolution and a good many heads cut off in '93. The fact
had been made familiar to her in various novels and dramas.
She knew there had been a disturbance called a coup d'etat, and
some unpleasantness, when she was in the nursery ; but here her
knowledge ceased.
They went into a long narrow street somewhere at the back
of the Luxembourg — a street of malodorous gutters and shabby
miscellaneous houses with hardly a window or a roof alike, the
antipodes of the white uniformity, the classic monotone of that
Ilaussmann-ised Paris which she knew so well, a street of wine-
shops, and gargotes, and humble cremeries. It was in this evil-
emelling region that the teinturier had his abode.
K^ratry stopped at a narrow, dirty-looking door, and led the
way into a dark passage with an atmosphere pervaded by the
concentrated essence of stale cabbage, the reek of an everlasting
332 Ishmael
pot-au-feu, a soup-kettle that was always brewing, and which
went down from father to son without solution of continuity,
like a West-Indian pepper-pot that has been in the family for
generations.
' What a horrid den ! ' cried Amelie, smothering her nostrils
in a perfumed handkerchief.
The stairs were worse than the passage, and seemed endless.
Jean Nimporte lived on the floor just under the steep gabled
roof ; but to Amelie it appeared as if that fifth floor were the
twentieth, and that they were ascending the Tower of Babel :
all the more so because every voice she heard on her way,
through doors ajar or bawling from the obscurity of the stair-
case, seemed to speak a difi"erent patois, or a diff'erent language.
' What is this awful place ? ' she asked at last, breathless,
panting, on the fifth story, where the landing, with its low
smoke-blackened ceiling and one small window, was wrapped in
perpetual gloom.
' Un garni,' answered her guide, coolly. * I dare say it is a
revelation to you. You would hardly conceive, out of your
inner consciousness, what a cheap Parisian lodging-house could
be like.'
' I could never imagine anything so dreadful,' said Amelie,
Rath conviction.
' Ah, you would have to descend a good many lower circles
before you reached the bottom of the pit. This is a bourgeois
caravansera — the abode of the struggling, the decayed, the
respectable. Wait till you see real squalor, real dirt, real
misery. Here the graces of life may be wanting, but the
decencies are still cared for — in some wise.'
'Not in the matter of odours,' protested Amelie, still pro-
tecting her nose ; ' the smell of this staircase is positively
sickening.'
* Ah, the atmosphere is always the first thing to suffer.'
* And you really come here — often — to see this person ? '
aid Amelie, wonderingly, as they waited at Jean Nimporte's
door.
* As often as I want him. He has the pride of Lucifer, and
won't come to me.'
A voice called, ' Come in,' and Kdratry turned the handle of
the door and entered, Amelie lingering in the background, half
afraid to follow.
* Good morning, friend. I have brought a little cousin to see
you. I suppose you have no objection?' K^ratry began, cheerily.
* If the lady does not object to the hole I live in, I do not
object to the lady,' answered the literary hack.
His voice was husky, like the voice of a man whose lunga
'And the Great Man Humbleth Himself 333
were injured by drink and tobacco ; but his tone was the tone
of a gentleman, and he rose, meerschaum in hand, to greet his
visitors. He was haggard and thin, with lank fair hair streaked
with gray, tangled beard, pale, cadaverous complexion, eyes
round which care had dug deep hollows and painted purple
shadows. He had once been handsome, or, at least, refined and
interesting. His bony figure stooped a little, and was clad in a
loose dressing-gown, which had once been fine, but which long
service had reduced to the colour of a withered chestnut leaf
that has lain for a week in the gutter. His hands were the best
point about him ; but their transparent pallor savoured too
much of disease and death. Amelie, who had no acquaintances
less prosperous than herself, shrank with a thrill of terror from
this human shipwreck.
* I have brought you my last scenes,' said Kdratry. * You
need not mind what you say before Mademoiselle. She knows
I am indebted to your collaboration, though I don't tell the
world so.'
'Why should you?' retorted the man who called himself
Jean Nimporte. 'If your play could win Petrarch's laurel
crown, I should not ask for a leaf from the garland. All I want
is to live. I have not had an idea of my own here for the last
seven years,' touching his pallid brow with pallid fingers ; ' but
I can straighten another man's weak sentences and set them on
their legs. I can prune exuberances, and pluck up weeds in the
garden of fancy. And, although I have forgotten how to smile,
I know how to turn a speech that will set a theatre in a roar.
Will you have a glass of puree de poisF'
He pointed to a bottle half full of greenish liquor, and on
Keratry refusing, poured some of the stuff into a tumbler, which
he filled with water.
' Isn't it rather early for absinthe ?' asked his client.
*It is not too early to live, and I can't live without it,
answered Jean Nimporte.
He unrolled the manuscript, and, with bent brow and pen
ready dipped in the ink, began to read. His decision and
rapidity of mind were marvellous, though the hand tliat held
the pen trembled like an aspen leaf. He erased, interlined,
threw in a sentence here, a word there, slashed Ms ruthless pen
across a whole page of dialogue, dotted in jokes as easily as
another man might have put in commas. Amelie looked on
open-mouthed, half indignant that her fiiend's work should be
80 roughly handled, yet impressed by this wild genius with the
shaking hand and matted beard.
Fov nearly an hour Monsieur Nimporte worked at those
concluding scenes of the new vaudeville, never relaxing the
334 Ishmacl
intent frown upon his haggard brow, sipping his glass of
absinthe, refilling his pijje with those shaky hands of his, yet
working all the while. Now and again he made a radical
alteration, put a husband into a cupboard to overhear a lover's
declaration, brought a soubrette from behind a curtain at a
crisis, played pitch and toss with a love-letter, manipulated
the old, old machinery of the Palais Eoyal drama with all the
dexterity of an adept.
' I really think the thing will do,' he sai'l, as he approached
the end. 'I am obliged to hurry along, lor I have an appoint-
ment at two o'clock with a gentleman to whose Frederick I
have the honour to play Voltaire.'
* A poet whose rhymes you retouch,' said K^ratry.
* Retouch ! Yes, and occasionally remake altogether, for love
of the Muses. He pays me more than you do, and he had
need, for the work is harder. I was a poet myself once, and the
divine flame burned fiercely enough in those days ; but it is
dreary work now to get a spark out of the old embers — to order.
I never could work to order. Monsieur de Keratry. I should
be a rich man if my Pegasus would have run in harness.'
He blew a great cloud from his old brule-gueule, and sat for
a minute or so motionless, his hand lying idle on the manuscript,
his eyes fixed and dreamy. So does the man look who sits
amidst the wreckage of a life that might have been glorious,
and glances backward along the path of folly, flower-strewn iu
some places, j)erhaps ; but, ah ! how much oftener thick set
with briar and nettle.
' You expect a visitor here at two o'clock,' said Amdlie, look-
ing alarmed. * Why did you not say so before ? Pray let us go
this instant,' she added, turning to Keratry, and standing up,
parasol in hand. ' We may meet some one on that horrid stair-
case — some one whom we know.'
' Don't be frightened, child. Nobody in the Quartier Latin
is likely to know you,' replied Armand, easily,
' And if an acquaintance did recognise you. Mademoiselle,
what then ? ' asked Jean Nimporte, looking up at her with a
mocking smile. ' Is it a crime to visit the literary hermit in hia
cell — with your cousin ? '
' Pray come ! ' jileaded Amelie, whose audacity had evapo-
rated during the enforced quietude of the last hour.
It had been dull work, sitting playing with the handle of her
parasol, listlessly contemplative of the poet's shabby surround-
ings. The red tile floor ; the wretched old sofa, meant for
repose, but loaded with pamphlets, papers, books, clothes — the
accumulated litter of months of slovenly existence ; the window
opening upon a vista of roofs and chimneys, with not a leaf or a
* And the Great Man Hujnblcth Himself^ 337
flower within sight ; the distempered wall, blotched with damp,
scrawled here and there with charcoal sketches in the style of
Gavomi ; the cobwebs in the corners of the ceiling— altogether
a dismal scene for the contemplation of a young lady accustomed
to gilded cornices and damask-draped windows, commanding a
bright outlook of foliage and fountains. The excitement, the
flavour of novelty in her escapade had all passed off like the
bubbles upon the champagne at the Pantagruel, and she had
leisure to repent of her folly, and to speculate as to what would
happen to her if Madame Jarz^, by any accident should discover
this freak of unchaperoned girlhood. It was not that there
was any harm in the thing, but it was unusual, unallowed— an
assertion of feminine liberty which might be tolerated in New
York, but which would create a nine days' wonder in the
Champs Elysees.
But the tdnturier's pen was at work again, correcting the
final couplets of the vaudeville, and Armand de K^ratry was fop
the moment absorbed in watching that rapid pen as it played
havoc with his verses \
She tapped his shoulder impatiently with her parasol. ' Pray,
take me home,' she said ; ' don't you hear that Monsieur expects
a visitor ? I would not be seen here by anybody for worlds ! '
Too late. There was a tap at the door, left ajar on account
of the sultry mid-day heat, and a languid voice complained :
' Your staircase is the most infected hole in all Paris, my
friend. It surprises me that you escape a fever.'
' Ciel ! ' gasped Amclie, in a half whisper, recognising that
fashionable drawl, the concentrated essence of superciliousness ;
' it is Monsieur de Pontchartrain. He must not see me. He will
tell papa— mamma— Hortense. Hide me for pity's sake ! '
She looked about her wildly like a young hind at bay for
one of those curtains, cupboards, inner apartments of any kind,
which are so plentiful in all vaudevilles.
There was a recess in which the literary hack kept his ward-
robe, a threadbare coat and an old, old paletot, with ragged silk
lining — a remnant of the time when there were Gandins upon
the earth, and when he was one of them ; but no shred of drapery
screened that recess. But in a corner of the room there waa
a ladder, which communicated with a loft above ; and ta
this ladder Jean Nimporte pointed, grinning maliciously the
while
Amclie flew to the haven of refuge, and scrambled up the
ladder almost as quickly as a gnome in a fauy drama at the
Chatelet or the Porte St.-Martin. She knew not whither that
old break-neck ladder would lead her ; but she would have gone
anywhere — on the open roof, among chimney pots and half-
336 Ishmael
starved cats, at peril of life and limb, to avoid Paul do
Pontchartrain.
Armand followed her up the rickety ladder, and as they
vanished from view Jean Nimporte crossed the room with a
leisurely step, saying :
' A moment, my friend, and I am with you,' in a voice half
drowned in a yawn as of a man just awakened.
' Were you asleep ? ' asked Paul, sharply, as he entered.
* Ah, I see ; absinthe again, and at two o'clock in the day ! Do
you know that you are softening your brain a little more with
every spoonful of that pernicious stuff?'
' What does it matter ? When the work of ruin is accom-
plished, I shaU have ceased to suffer. Why should a man try to
preserve his thinking faculty when thought is all pain, when
memory is only a camera that shows the photograph of a fatal
past, when imagination cannot conjure up a gleam of light iu
the future?'
'That's not a bad idea — a man steeping himself in absinthe
with the deliberate intention of blotting out his brain,* said the
little poet, excitedly. ' You are a terrible Refractaire, Valnois,
but you really have first-rate ideas. Have you thrown off any
suggestions for me lately?'
He drew his cliair to the table, took off his gloves, and
squared his elbows with a business-like air, little knowing that
a pair of mischievous blue eyes were watching him from a hole
in the ceiling in the shadow of the projecting chimney-brace.
' Fes ; I have scribbled a few verses betwixt midnight and
morning — bosh, no doubt, but they may do for you,' replied the
Refractaire, with a scornful accent.
'Good ! Let us go over them together presently. And
have you touched up those verses I brought you the other day ?
They were a little in the rough, perhaps, but full of strong
ideas.'
' No. I tried hard ; but those attempts of yours are really
too bad. The versification is simply impossible ; and for ideas —
well, I found two. One verbatim from Heine ; the other, o thinly-
disguised theft from Baudelaire. I am very sorry, my dear
Vicomte, but your own stuff really won't do. The Parisian
public and the Parisian press will stand a great deal from a
man of fashion with a sprig of nobility in his cap, but they
won't stand such twaddle as yours.'
' You have at least the meritjof candour,' said the Vicomte
deeply offended. ' If you had written the verses yourself, you
would think better of them.
' Perhaps. There never was a mongi'el so ugly that the
mother did not love him.'
*And the Greai Man MumhUth Himself* 83?
*I wrung those lines out of my heart.'
* Then do not wring your heart any more. The game is not
worth the candle. Let us be business-like, Vicomte. I tried to
chop your lines into shape, to introduce an idea or two into that
wilderness of words, but it was not to be done. If you want
poetry, you must be content to get it ready-made, as you did
your idyl of the carrion by the river, which you tell me is your
chief success. Here are ballads and songs for you, plein le dos,
amorous, blasphemous, despairing, communistic ; not an idea,
worth speaking of in the whole batch, but enough of the swing
and the melody of verse to make them pass current— as the work
of a Pontchartrain.'
' I would rather we worked together on metal from my ov^^n
mine,' said Paul, with dignity.
' My dear friend, your mine produces nothing but scoria. I
tell you, I have spent dismal hours trying to lick this wretched
twaddle of yom's into shape. I will look at it no more. l£ you
want to till your new volinne '
' Charmers et Se'pulcres,' said the Vicomte ; ' my publisher
wants the completion of my manuscript before the end of next
week. The season for poetry is nearly over.'
' If you must publish, you had better give him these things
of mine. You can read them before you make up your mind.
They are the very lees in my cup, of inspiration, yet they are
not so bad but that I have lead worse in the Magazines.'
He opened a ragged, I'usty old blotting-book, once a costly
thing in Russia leatiier, with gilded crest and monogram on tlie
cover, and from a confusion of papers he picked out nine or ten
loose sheets, which he handed across the table to Monsieur de
Pontchartrain, who read them very slowly, commenting and
questioning as he went along with the captious air of a man
determined to find fault. Sometimes he demanded an ex-
planation of sentences which he found obscure, sometimes he
stopped to check oil" the feet of a line on his fingers.
' You have a trochee here where it ought to be an iambus,'
he said. ' Mon Dieu, c'est terrible I It flays one's ears.'
' My ear had an odd knack of being true in the old days,'
said the hack, quietly. ' I would venture the price of the ballad
that you are mistaken ; ' and thereupon he demonstrated that
the Vicomte was altogether wrong.
The loft to which Ainolie and her companion had fled was a
place of dust and cobwebs, invalided furniture, mouldy straw,
empty boxes, rusty birdcages, the jetsam and flotsam of a cheap
lodging-house, and among all this rubbish three or four large
cases of shabbily-bound books — pamphlets, magazines, plays,
novels. It was the interior of a steep g=»ble, and was not abova
z
838 Ishmaet
four feet higli in tlie clear. Those two Ilstcnors liarl to sq\nt
ill a crouching position on each side of the trap-door, a heavy
l)eam close above tlieir heads. Anieh"e knew that she wag
«;|)oiling her pretty holland gown, perhaps massacring the
Lerries in her dainty little hat, and assuredly making a wreck
of gloves at nine francs a pair, and yet it was all she could do to
keep herself from exploding into loud laughter. To hear the
little fopling, the pretended genius, the sham Musset, the
Bpurious Baudelaire, in whom her sister Hortense believed as in
Divinity itself — to hear him buying his verses, bargaining and
chafering, as he did presently, for ballads and odes, serenades
and fantaisies, piece by piece ; grudgingly agreeing to pay so
many francs for this or that, cheapening the waters of Castaly,
making light of the Muses : to hear all this was as good as the
funniest play or the wildest opera bouffe in Paris, as the Belle
Ilelene, or the Grand Duchesse herself, with all the chic and
audacity of Schneider at the apex of her fame — Schneider,
aflame with diamonds, prancing before emperors and kings.
Am^lie remembered the Vicomte's noble wrath that after-
noon at Lady Constance Danetree's when she spoke of the
literpjy teinturier. She remembered his vehement *• Cela ne se
fie'it pas' the indignant stride of his little varnished boots up
and down the room. ' Cela ne se pent pas' he had repeated,
pwelling with heroic scorn. And behold, those very poems
which had made him the lion of small tea-parties, the pet of
elderly young ladies, had been bought and paid for from this
])oor mcurt-de-faim with the threadbare coat and ragged
beaid.
Armand and Am^lie sat smiling at each other among the
dust and the cobwebs, the moths and the mice of that dreadful
old loft, afraid to stir lest they should crack their skulls
against the thick old tie-beam ; smiling across the gulf of the
li f.o-door, through which came the thin voice of the Vicomte,
dirid as cheap red wine, bargaining and disputing over Apollo's
wares.
When the haggling was all over and the Vicomte had
doled out his cash and departed, grumbling, with his verses in
liis pocket, those two listeners in the loft burst into a peal of
).iu'_,diter, long and loud, and a bitter lau^h from the garreteer
below came up tlirougli tlie trap and mingled with their mirth.
' Don't let us lose another moment,' said Am^lie, as she came
nimbly down the ladch^r. * But, oh, what fun it has been 1 I
would not have missed it for worlds ! '
' Lucky that I am in the habit of using that loft as a library,
rr there would have been no ladder handy,' said Monsieur
rii.nporto. ' Yes, it is a curious aspect of literature, is it not^
'And the Great Man Bumbleth Himself* SCO
when a man buys his verses as he would buy his boots ? But the
Vicomte makes a harder bargain with me than he would with
bis bootmaker.'
' Ah, but he pays you ready money,' said Kdratry, laughing.
' That makes all the difference.'
' I shall dine to-night,' replied Jean Nimporte, rattling hia
cash in his pocket. ' Good-day, Mademoiselle. I am glad our
transactions have amused you.'
'I only wish you had a better market for your verses,
Monsieur,' answered Amdlie, with a '^racious curtsey. 'You
seem to be clever enough to set up half a dozen fashionable
poets.'
' I have learnt my trade, Madamoiselle, that is all.'
He went out to the landing with his guests, and bade them
adieu with the grace of a Lauzun or a Richelieu.
' He is perfectly distingu^, although his clothes and his room
are more terrible than a nightmare,' said Amdlie, as she tripped
quickly down the greasy old staircase. 'And now, for pity's
sake, get me a carriage of some kind as fast as you can, and tell
the man to drive me to Lady Constance Danetree's, so that
mamma and Hortense may find me there when they call at five
o'clock. I shall tell Lady Constance my morning's adventures,
and all about Monsieiir Pontcliartrain. How amused she will be.
Poor Hortense, with her poet pour rire / If I were to tell her
this secret now, she could let Pontcliartrain know that she had
found him out, and he would make her an offer of marriage
within the next twenty-four hoiu-s out of sheer fright.'
' It would only be sisterly to try the experiment,' said
Kdratry, as they walked towards St. Sulpice looking for a
voiture de place.
* I'll think about it,' replied Amdlie. * Hortense is a veiy
undeserving object ; but she certainly is my sister, and I
suppose that constitutes a claim upon one's good nature.'
CHAPTER XXXin
*AND THE DAY SHALL BE DAKK OVER THEM •
Jean Nimporte, otherwise Hector de Valnois, sank back in his
tattered old easy chair directly his visitors were gone, and
refilled his little black pipe, which, next to the yellow-green
liquid in his glass, was the consolation of his days. Between
absinthe and tobacco he contrived to endure life, and to forget
that he had been once a creature of lofty aspirings, that he had
once dreamt of fame and the Academy. He lay back in his
chair, gazing at the motes dai c'lig in the sunshine, and smiled
his cynical smile at the little scene which had just ended.
Presently he took the Vicomte's money out of his pocket, and
counted it in the hollow of his wasted hand. A few napoleons
and a handful of franca — a shabby honorarium even for the leea
of genius. But the verses which Avere good enough for Monsieur
de Pontchartrain to publish under his own name and at his own
risk would not have found a purchaser among the publishers
of Paris, who had long ago closed their pockets against Hector's
muse.
' My dear fellow, you had better go down to posterity as the
author of Mes Nuits Blanches,^ said Michel Levy, of the Librairie
Nouvelle, the chief rendezvous of intellectual Paris. ' You will
never again write anything as good.'
Poetry, therefore, had long ceased to count as a means of
bread- winning ; but there were long wakeful hours in the dreary
dead of the night when Valnois found a transient relief in
verse — when the unsuccessful man's rebellious anger against
fate, the disappointed man's remorse for his own follies, the
lonely man's sense of lovelessness and abandonment found their
expression in wild revilings of Providence, or in the opium-
eater's visions of an impossible Paradise ; and these effusions,
the safety-valve which kept the engine from explosion, were
just good enough to sell to Paul de Pontchartrain, and fifty
times better than the most laborious efforts of that aristocratic
driveller.
' I shall dine to-night,' said Valnois, looking at his money ;
* and I shall pay my last trimestre for this accursed den, so that
I may be safe from being thrust out into the street for the next
month or two. If Paquerette wei'e here, I would give her a
Poor Pftquerette ! Waa I veiy brutal that day
'And the Day shall be Dark over Them' 341
when my brain was maddened with absinthe and my temples
were throbbing with neuralgia ? A man is not particularly
choice in his language at such a time. I may have driven her
away from me by cruel words, or she may have made up her
mind to leave this life of semi-starvation in an attic. She may
have flown to a warmer nest. Wlio knows ? It is the common
lot of alliances like ours to end so ! '
He smoked and mused, and sipped his absinthe. He had
replenished his glass often during the two interviews with
absinthe, but not with water, so that the stuff he was drinking
now was almost absinthe pure. It was much too early for him
to show himself in the streets even in this free-and-easy
students' quarter, where a good coat was not de rigueur. The
summer sun was still in its glory, a sun in which his once black
coa.t looked a grayish-green, and his haggard face more ghastly
than that frayed and threadbare coat. No ; he would wait till
the friendly dusk, and then stroll to the Restaurant Laperouse,
on the Quai des Grands- Augustins, where he could dine sump-
tuously at moderate cost in a room facing the river.
He was tired after his two interviews, and fell asleep in liia
chair presently — a sleep which lasted long, lulled by the distant
sounds of the city, undisturbed even by the bells of St. Sulpice
ringing for vespers. His nights were wakeful and fevered,
and it was only after mental exhaustion that he slept
soundly.
It was growing dusk, when there came a tap at the door,
which startled him into broad wakefulness. Before he could
answer the summons, the handle was turned and a man entered.
There was enough of the yellow western light still shining
through the open window to show the man's face as he stood
within the doorway. It was the drink-soddened countenance of
that man who stopped Ishmael in the street the night he left
the meeting of the Cercle du Prolo, the man who called himself
Dumont. Valnois started to his feet.
' You ! ' he exclaimed. ' Why, it is an age since yon have
been here, and I began to think you were dead.'
'Did you?' replied the other, coolly. 'What use would
fchere have been in my coming here 1 I had nothing to tell you.
I was poorer than you.'
'You seem to have mended your fortunes,' said Valnois,
surveying his visitor from head to foot. 'I never remember
seeing you in such a sound coat, or in boots so instinct with the
primal grace of the bootmaker. May I ask what gold mine you
have discovered in the gutters of Paris ? '
'I have found the best substitute for a gold mine in tlie
shape of a wealthy patron.'
3 12 Ishmacl
' Indeed ! ' retorted the other, conteraptuously ; ' and what
manner of man, and for what kind of motive, can be found to
patronise Theodore de Vahiois, alias Dumont V
'I think there is only one true definition for the word
patron — a rich man who wants to make use of a poor man,'
answered Dumont ; 'and just such a patron have I found in the
person of an old friend of yours.'
' Friend ! I have no friend.'
'Not now, I grant. But you had a friend once — a friend
whose life you saved on the fatal fourth of December, and who
ought to have been grateful to you. Yet I suppose it will be
said you cancelled the obligation afterwards.'
' No fooling, cousin. You take yourself for a wit, and that
is about the only original opinion I ever discovered in you.
You have been sponging upon Paquerette's husband. Is that
what you mean ? '
' I have been making myself useful to him. That is what I
mean.'
' You have found Pdquerette ? ' exclaimed Hector, eagerly.
' No ; I am looking for her, or for evidence of her death.
That is my present profession, for which 1 draw a modest little
income by way of expenses ; and I am divided in my mind as to
Wiiether I shall keep her alive, and content myself with the
occasional egg my golden goose lays for me, or whether I shall
kill her and my golden gouse at the same time for the sake of
ready money.'
' You are talking enigmas.'
' Not very obscure ones, dear cousin. Ishmael wants to be
sure that his wife is dead — no doubt with a view to taking
a second wife. If I can show him the acte de d^h, he will give
me a small sum of money — small, very small— but a godsend for
a man in my position. Now, what is to prevent me producing
the acte de dech ? '
'Nothing except the fact that Pdquerette is still livino; — at
least, I hope so ; and that forgery and falsification of official
ilocuments mean felony, and that felony — above all, a second
felony — means a longer seclusion from society than I think you
would care to enter upon at your time of life.'
' That is a stumbling-block, I grant, but one that ought not
to prove insurmountable to a man who has lived his life — sixty-
six years, my Hector, and nearly half-a-century of failure and
danger, shifts and difficulties, disappointments and disguises.
If such a. career as that cannot make a man dexterous, what
can ? There have been false actes de dech before to-day ; and
there will be again until the art of forgery is exploded.'
' Difficult and dangerous ! ' said Valuoia.
'And the Day shall he Dark over Them* 313
' Difficulty and danger are the atmosphere I have breathed
ever since I was twenty ! '
' You must take your own way in life though it has not led
you into pleasant places hitherto. I have nothing to do witb
your schemes ; I am not a forger, and I am not going to extort,
money from Piiqiierette's husband.'
The man who called himself Dumont came over to the open
window and lounged with his elbows on the window sill,
looking across the dim perspective of gables and chimney-pots
to the gilded dome of the luvalides, shining in the last rays of
sunset.
' Poor little Pdquerette ! ' he said, gently ; ' Paquerette, with
her Uly face and pathet-ic eyes. I always liked her. There was
always a soft spot in this tough old heart of mine for Paquerette,
I was sorry for her too, for her fate was sad, and you were not
altogether kind to her.'
Hector started from the half-recumbent position which he
had resumed a minute or so before, and put down his pipe
suddenly with a hand made tremulous by anger. 'How dare
you say that ! ' he exclaimed. ' I loved her, and was true to
her. Our path wss not strewn with roses. If there were thorns
we trod upon them side by side. Why do you harp upon
Paquerette's name ? You must have seen her lately ; you must
have discovered something.'
'I have not seen her since I saw her in this room more than
three months ago,' answered the elder man ; and then he turned
from the window and faced Hector with a grave countenance.
' But I have discovered something.'
' What V
' I have found out who Paquerette is ! '
'Who she is, poor child !' echoed Hector, sadly : 'n^t niiT^h
m3'stery there, I should think. The cnild of ])Overty, the child
of neglect, the drudge of a drunken grandfather and grand-
mother. What can there be to discover in such a lot V
' Poor as she was, she had a father,' said Dumont.
' And it is about that father you have made your discovery ?
• Yes.'
' An interesting one ? an aristocratic mystery, eh V asked
Hector, with his cynical air, refilling his pipe.
He thought his kinsman was trifling with him.
' Interesting to me,' answered the other, gravely. ' Paquerette
is my daughter.'
' Your daughter ! You never told me that you had one,' said
Hector.
'There are numerous episodes in my life which I have not
told you. Perhaps this is the ojie of which 1 have least reasv^a
34 i Ishnael
to be ashamed ; and yet I am not free from blame even here.
Paquerette is my daughter, the daughter of my youth, the child
of my one true and pure love, the child of my wife.'
'Your wife! Another revelation!'
' You have heard how I came to Paris to study law, rich in
academical honours, poor in purse. Your father, my father's first
cousin, looked down upon our branch of the house. Your father
was a landed gentleman in a small way, mine a doctor in a
little country town. You have heard, no doubt, how I neglected
my legal studies, was plucked in my examinations, went to the
bad altogether, from the provincial and Philistine point of view.
But you may not have heard that I was a great man in a certain
set, and those the advanced Reds, Socialists of the most scarlet
dye. I became a voice and a power among those men— lived
anyhow, gambled a good deal, and was just lucky enough to
keep my head above water. I drained the student's cup of
pleasure to the dregs. There is not a cabaret or cafe-concert in
this quarter of the town in which I have not wasted my nights ;
nut a billiard-room that these feet of mine have not trodden. I
had my flirtations too in those days with many a handsome
grisettn ; but I never knew what love meant till a fair, pale face
flashed past me in the twilight, and I turned to follow a graceful
figure in a shabby gray gown. Ah, how shabby she was, how
poor she looked, dear child ; and yet such a gracious creature !'
'Was this Paquerette's mother V
_ 'Yes ; a girl working at a clear-starcher's not very far from
this street ; a modest, honest, shy young creature, who blushed
and trembled at my voice. It was weeks before I could win her
confidence. If — if I ever had the thought of betraying her — and
God knows what infamy may have lurked in my mind at the
first — her innocence, her girlish simplicity, her perfect faith
disarmed me. We had not known each other many weeks
before I was her slave. And was I — a Socialist, reddest among
the Reds— I who believed in the perfect equality of men, who
Bcouted the bondage of caste— was I to shrink from allying
myself with a pure and lovely girl because her parents were
working people? What had I to lose by a low marriage?
What hope or prospect had I of a loftier alliance? I— the
penniless scapegrace ! What chance liad I of marrying rank or
money ? I counted the cost, and found I should sacrifice nothing
by marrying the girl I loved ; and I married her one fine
morning at the Mairie after having romanced to her a little
overmuch, perhaps, poor child ! about my father's noble blood
and his chdteau — a stuccoed box on the dusty outskirts of our
town.'
* You married her I That was an honest act at least'
*And the Day shall be Dark over Them' 315
* Yes ; I had flashes of honest feeling in those days. I married
my love one fine May morning ; but I had no home except a
garret to which I could take her, and I let her go on working at
the laundry and living in her parent's wretched hole while 1
beat about for a way of supporting her and myself somehow or
somewhere. Our stolen hours of happiness, our dai>ces at the
Pre Catalan, our tittle jaunts to the fairs about Paris, our ridea
in jolting old cuckoos were the sweetest hours of my youth.
One wrong, and one only, I did my love in that beginning of
our life. I made her swear to keep her marriage secret. I
would not have Pere and Mere Lemoine for father and mother-
in-law. I meant to leave Paris as soon as I could scrape a little
money together, and to settle at Lyons or some other large
town for a few years, only returning to the capital when I
could feel sure of having given the Lemoines the slip. If you
knew the kind of gentry they were, you would not wonder at
this prejudice on my part, ultra-Eepublican as I was.'
' Paquerette has told me that they were dreadful people.'
* We had been married less than three months when my
Jeanneton began to be unhappy at her laundry. She had been
seen with me at the Pre Catalan, she had been seen with
me at a faii at Saint-Cloud, seen walking with me in the streets
of an evening ; and scandal, the broad, gross scandal of the
vulgar began to asperse her fair name. Hints and insinuations
were flung at her — sneers and vulgar taunts, which to her w^erc
torture. So one day, after a night's run of luck at a gambling-
house in the Palais Eoyal, I told her to be ready to leave Paris
with me next morning at daybreak. We travelled southward
through the bright days of autumn. Oh, happy days ! oh, happy
journey ! — last glimpse of paradise that I ever saw on this earth I
After that my career was all downhill. I was unlucky, idle,
reckless ; I had not the blessed faculty of continuous work. I
could talk, I could write flashy articles for the Republican news-
papers. I picked up a few louis honestly now and then . But
I lacked the blessed gift of patience. I was a bom gamester.
When I had a chance, I trifled with it. And finally, within a
year of my daughter's birth, my reckless foil}'' landed me —
where you know.'
' In the galleys. A bad hotel for a gentleman of good family.'
'Jeanneton struggled on while I was in that hell upon earth
— ^worked for herself and her infant — starved sometimes — came
to see me in my misery as often as the rigour of that devilish
place allowed. This lasted for nearly a year ; and then, for the
first time, my poor love was missing when the appointed day
and hour came round. She had come to me, ill or well, in fair
or foul wanther ; and my heart turned cohJ wlien the alKdLed
846 Ishmael
hour caiue and passed without sign or token from her. Hell
seemed blacker on that wretched day than it had ever seemed
since I entered it.'
' She was dead, perhaps ? '
• Dead ! No ; not yet. It was a ghastly story. It would take
too long to tell you the details. Enough that I came by the
knowledge of the facts by the aid of a priest, whose presence
was the only gleam of light in that Inferno — even to me, the
mocker at creeds and creed-makers. I came in time to know
that my poor girl had fled in a panic from the wretched den
in which she had lived for some months— had fled on foot from
Toulon — because the scoundrel who owned the house had pursued
her with infamous proposals, and when she shrank from him
with indignant loathing, had conspired with some of the vilest
inmates of his house to bring a charge of theft against her. The
plot was shallow enough, her innocence obvious ; but, in her
helplessness and inexperience — weak, ill, penniless, friendless,
my poor girl took fright. She saw herself in danger of being
slmt up in Ihat place which she knew too well from my abhorrent
description, from the glimpses she had had of my surroundings.
She fled fr-'-m Toulon with her child, on foot, panic-stricken at
that false charge. This much, and no more, could I discover six
years afterwards, when I was a free man — free as a man can be
wnth the brand upon his shoulder, the taint of prison life
infecting him, his yellow passport the herald of his disgrace in
every town he enters. I was free ; bat I was a ruined man, and
I was a heart-broken man into the bargain. The scoundrel who
had conspired against Jeanneton had died an evil death, so 1
had not even the comfort of revenge. I left Toulon, hardened
as only seven years of the chain can harden a man ; hardened
still more by the loss of that one creature I had honestly and
fondly loved. I was never able to trace my poor Jeanneton'a
footsteps to her nameless grave. Perliaps I might have tried
harder ; but those from whom I heard her story told me that
the stamp of death was on her when she left Toulon. Slie had
not a week's life in her, they said.'
' And your child ? You took no pains to leam her fate ? '
asked Hector.
' Why should I seek her, poor waif ? Had I a home to give
her, or even an honest name ? If she had drifted to some abode
of charity, so much the better ; if she had gravitated towards the
gutter, I had no power to rescue her. The infant had never
fastened herself upon my heart as her mother had done. The
woman I loved being gone, I was content the child should go
with her. If I had found her, and could have sheltered her,
Bhe would have been not the less a grief and a pain to me,
' Aiid the Day shall he Dark over Them ' 3i7
recalling what I had lost. "When I left Toulon I had done with
human affection, I set my face towards Paris, went back into
the jungle of the great city, to live upon my fellow-men — a beast
of prey among other beasts of prey.'
' You are a strange being, my cousin.'
' I am what life has made me. Perhaps, if I had been born
with a big rent-roll, I should have been the soul of honour.'
'And you say Pdquerette is your daughter? Are you
sure of her identity, sure that there is no missing link in the
chain ? '
' I am sure. The first time I ever saw that girl's face, the
night I met her with you on the steps of Tortoni's, it was a3 if I
had seen a ghost. It was Jeanneton's face that flitted by me in
the lamplight — a face f-om Hades. Later, as she altered with
the fatigues and cares of he' 'heatrical career, it was still
Jeanneton's face — Jeanneton's lace as I saw it last in the bagne.
I had no suspicion of the truth. I thought of the likeness only
as one of those accidental resemblances which are common
enough in life. Had you, either of you, mentioned the Rue
Sombreuil, or the name of Lemoine — had you told me that
Paquerette was a fatherless waif reared in that place, I should
have been certain of the truth. But it was left for Paquerette'a
husband to enlighten me as to her parentage.'
' And since you have known the tie that unites her to you
you have hunted for her ? '
' Everywhere. I told Ishmael that I had never been able
to trace her beyond Valparaiso, and tliat I must go to VhI-
paraiso to find the track. Need I say that I did not go so far
as South America in search of the poor girl, whom I last saw ii\
this room. I drew a nice little lump of money for my passage
to and fro, and contrived to lie perdu in Paris while I cautiously
prosecuted my quest for my missing daughter. I have not yet
returned from Valparaiso, and I doubt if I shall return until I
am furnished with the acte de decis from the authorities of that
port.'
* Scamp and trickster to the last ! '
'Can the leopard change his spots, or the Ethiopian his
skin ? or could you show me any way to earn my bread honestly
if I wanted to begin life afresh 1 No, my cousin ; there is deep
significance in that old fable of Hercules and the two roads. A
man makes his choice once in his life by which road he will
travel ; and, by Heaven, when once he has taken the wrong
turning, there is no cross-cut that will get him back to the right
road. I took the wrong turning nine-and-thirty years ago,
when I squandered the little hoard my father had scraped
together to pay for my legal education, and from that hour to
348 Ishmael
this every step I have travelled has been upon the downward
road.'
' Do you think that Paquerette is still living 1 ' inquired
JEector, gloomily. ' She had wretched health last winter. I have
had many a miserable hour in the watches of the night pictur-
ing her alone, friendless, penniless, dying of some lingering
malady.'
' Who knows ? Paris is like a great forest. She might be
living in the next street, and one would know nothing. I have
put half a dozen advertisements, cautiously worded, in the
likeliest newspapers ; but she may not have seen them. I have
employed a man who keeps a private inquiry office, and who has
a knack of hunting down people whp'-e everybody else would
fail ; but as yet he has not found jfl^?r, nor any trace of her.
Meanwhile it seems a pity that I should not touch a lump of
money for the acte de dech. She would be no worse off for
being dead and buried — on paper ; and it will be easy to
resuscitate her later, and to explain that the document was a
mistake.'
' Cheat Ishmael as much as you like, my cousin, on your own
account ; but bring none of your unholy gains this way. The
coin would smell of brimstone,' answered Hector, with a weary
air.
That name of Ishmael always gave him a thrill of pain. It
reminded him of the past, when he had been the benefactor, and
Ishmael the obliged, when he had been the superior, when
hope still smiled upon his path, when life was still glad. And
now Ishmael's name was a word of power in Paris ; Ishmael had
won the wealth which sweetens existence, which makes a man a
ruler among his fellow-men.
And he, Ishmael's superior by education and opportunity, by
the divine spark of poetic genius, where was he in the meridian
of life 1 — a star that had burnt out, a mine that had given up
all its precious metal — a mere husk of manhood, looking with
tired eyes along a dismal road whose end ia death and oblivion.
CHAPTER XXXIV
•this kingdoms OS" NATIONS GATHERED TOGETnER '
The world was four weeks older since that memcrable sixth of
June when Berezowski tried to cut short a life which waa
destined to end in after years by the handiwork of a bolder
assassin. Berezowski, valiantly defended by Emmanuel Arago,
had been condemned to imprisonment for life, and the Czar had
gone back to St. Petersburg somewhat oftended that a French
jury had spared the life of his would-be assassin. The glory of
the gi-eat show in the Champs de Mars was waning a little, at
least to the jaded eye of the Parisian, who saw the great
glittering temple every day if he pleased. There had been a
plethora of kings and princes, sultans and potentates from far
corners of the earth, and the distinctly-local mind of the Parisian
was in a state of historical and geographical bewilderment. On
the outward crust of things, that gathering of the nations was
the crowning glory of the Imperial rule, the triumph of the
peaceful arts — not forgetting a good deal of space in the show
devoted to the exhibition of the latest developments, improve-
ments, and inventions in the art of slaughter. It was a reign
of peace — peace without honour, as some fractious and bellicose
spirits protested. France had preserved her neutrality, and had
lost her prestige. On one side she beheld a united Italy —
unfriendly, ungrateful, suspicious ; on the other, a mighty Ger-
manic confederation which threatened her frontiers. The daring
state-craft of EL-;marck, strong in the triumph of Sadowa, had
transformed the modest kingdom of Prussia into a many-headed
monster, swollen with the overweening pride of victorious arms.
Seen by the stranger. Imperial France, as represented by
this city of wide boulevards and many caf<'s^ new theatres and
new bridges, market-places such as no other city in Europe
could show — judged by the splendour of brick and stone, glass
and iron, the second Empire might be taken to be at the apex of
its glory ; but the diplomatists and the statesmen who came to
S9e the show could look deeper into things than this outer husk
Oi pseudo-classic boulevards and much expenditure in the building
line. They knew that the glory of the Empire had grown old
like a garment, and that her sun had gone down while it was
yet day. The tragical end of that fond dream of an Jxuperial
Mexico, the failure of the negotiations about Luxembourg, the
350 Ishmad
unfriendly attitude of Italy, the double-dealing of Prussia — all
these were thorns in the pillow of him whose sombre face, aged
by chronic malady, assumed the monarch's kindly smile as he
returned the greeting of subject or of stranger. Ah, what a
strange and fatal history was suggested by that bent head, that
meditative and anxious brow, those features darkened by secret
thought ! A childhood saddened by exile ; a youth of ambitious
dreams and vague aspirations amid the mists of Lake Constance ;
anon the enthusiast's wild efforts to re-kindle the star of a
banished dynasty ; then ignominious failure and the weary
education of captivity and exile. All the dazzle and splendour
of a reign of unexampled j^rosperity had failed to obliterate
those shadows of early care ; and now the noontide of success
had waned, and the shades were deepening as the pilgrim
descended the hill. To the indifferent eye he was but little
changed since the Erapii-e was young — a trifle more bent,
])erhaps — a shade graver and grayer thaa in that brilliant noon
of success and popularity, and that was all. But those who
were about his person noted how from this time he sank into
a deeper taciturnity than that of old, and isolated himself
oftOTier amidst the clouds of his cigarette. He read little ; he
wrote no more. The Imperial dreamer was wrapped in his
dream, and the dream was slowly daikening to the blackness
of night.
It was the second of July, day distinguished above other
days by the distribution of prizes at the Palace of Industry — a
ceremonial to be presided over by the Emperor, who himself
received a Qrst prize for his workmen s dwellings. Never was
this Empire of Yesterday more brilliantly supported by the
jtrinces and potentates of ancient days. England was here in
the person of her debonnaire young prince, heir to that crown
which had once claimed this wide France as an appanage.
Yonder, in shining robes of purest white, came the Sultan,
unconscious of that dark line of murder in his Jiouse of life,
the Prince of Orange, the Duke of Cambridge, the Duke of
Teck, the Crown Prince of Prussia, Humbert of Italy,
Mohemmed-EfFendi, Abdul-Hamid, princes, princesses, and
])rincelings seemingly numberless as the starry host ; and
among them all the Empress Eugenie, fairest star in that
splendid galaxy. A wonderful cortege, a procession of stars
and garters, knighthoods of every order, saintly badges, eagles
and crowns — a dazzling train, moving slowly, with stately
footsteps, to the music of a triumjjhal hymn composed by
Kossini in honour of thi§ great occa-sion.
The Emperor's speech was full of that all-round congratula-
tion and pious exultation which are the dominant notes in such
* liie 'Rlngchms of Nations Gathered Together ' 351
fipccches. He felicitated himself and Paris upon having re-
•-eived all the princes and potentates of the civilised world, and
the masses of the nations in their train. He bade his subjects
take pride to themselves in having shown the peoples of the
earth France in the zenith of her greatness, her prosperity, her
freedom. Foreign nations must needs appreciate this great
country, once so troubled, to-day laborious, calm, fertile in noble
ideas, rich in genius, unspoiled by material prosperity. Despite
the increase of wealth, despite the natural bent of civilised man
to pleasure and luxury, the national fibre was ever ready to
vibrate, the national heart to beat high to the call of honour.
But that warlike impulse of noble souls need be no longer a
cause of peril for the repose of the world. France was no longer
the disturber of the nations.
The initiated were not deceived by Imperial rhetoric. TTiei/
knew that the moment which the Emj^eror had chosen for
the glorification of France and her institutions was the very
moment when those institutions were on the verge of ship-
wreck. The hearts of her men and women were rotten at the
core, debased by a life of dissipation and efi'eminate luxury ; a
society made up of clinquant and pacotille; a nation living
beyond its means, and inciting other nations to a like foolishness;
a society in which home-life was almost extinct, and religion no
more than a fashionable formula, patronized by the wives and
daughters, ignored by the husbands and fathers.
While the music of that triumphal hymn was reverberating
along the roof of the Palace of Industry, which for to-day was
softened by a white velarium spangled with golden stars ; while
the drums were beating and the pompous procession was moving
with slow and stately tread under the sunlight was there no
vision before the Emperoi-'s eyes — nearer, more vivid tlian the
flags and the eagles, the dazzle of splendid imiforms, the brilliant
colouring of the patrician crowd, the trophies, and palm trees,
anil flowers ? Was there no nearer vision of a brother Emperor,
scion of an Imperial house, a young man now lying in his bloody
grave, the victim of an ambitious dreamer's fatal error ? The
news of Maximilian's death was fresh in the Emperor's mind on
tliat July afternoon. He had received the despatch that told
him his protege's doom in that very building just before he
made his speech. Yes, it was there before him, the bloody
vision of his ghastliest failure — the foredoomed Mexican expe-
dition. The young Emperor, with his handful of troops, helpless
in beleaguered and famished Queretaro ; the attempted flight in
the dim dawn of a summer morning ; and then, flight proving
hopeless, the wdiite flag, and the piteous appeal to Escobedo :
• I^et me go under escort to any port you please, from v/hence I
n52 Tshmael
may embark for Europe. I swear to you on my honour never
again to set foot in Mexico.'
Never again ! Alas ! poor scion of the Hapsburghs : not so
easily does the fatal trap into which thy foolish footsteps have
been lured unlock its iron jaws. There have been evil deeds
done in thy name in this land of extinct volcanos. These
men are bloodthirsty in their triumph, and no plea from Ee-
publican America yonder, no prayers of thine own friends,
nor the heroic advocacy of thy counsel, can save thee. Bravely
dost thou go to thy untimely death in the pale June morning,
while that far-off Paris, which sent thee to thy doom, is all
a-liutter with the flags of her festival.
Bazaine was at Nancy, keeping quiet. At his landing at
Havre he had been received without honour — indeed, with all
the signs and tokens of disgrace. But already the Imperial
displeasure was lessened. There had been no court-martial, no
impeachment, no day of reckoning. That was to come later for
master and servant.
Lady Constance Danetree was among the fashionable crowd
at this Imperial function. However little one may care for such
spectacles, one must assist at them, or society will ask, ' Why not ? '
and it is sometimes more troublesome to explain an omission than
to make the sacrifice of inclination which society requires. Lady
Constance had been going everywhere of late. She had her box
for the Tuesdays at the Fran^ais ; she was seen at the Opera, at
the little theatres, at every race-meeting near Paris. She seemed
to have a thirst for amusement, to be hurrying hither and thither
in quest of excitement.
' I thought you cared very little about these things,' her friend,
Lady Valentine, said to her one night at a great festival at the
Opera. ' You used to laugh at my love of pleasure, and to wonder
that I, who am nearly twenty years your senior, coidd live so
much in society. I told you that as you grew older you would
want more amusemeait. But that time has not come yet.'
' One must go with the herd,' answered Constance, listlessly.
' But you never used to go with the herd,' remonstrated Lady
Valentine ; ' that was your great charm. You were not afraid
to think for j'ourself. I am sure that this feverish life does
not suit you. You are looking pale and worn, haggard almost.
You will lose your beauty if you are not careful.'
' I am not going to be careful for the sake of that unknown
quantity which you are pleased to call my beauty ' answered
Constance, laughing. * One must enjoy one's life.'
'Ah, but you don't look as if you were enjoying life. You
don't look happy.'
L.i.!y YiileiiUne took upon herself all the privileges of an old
* The Kingdoms of Nations Gathered Together ' 858
friend, and was eminently troublesome. Other people were not
80 farmiliar ■with Constance Danetree's character, and to that
outer circle she seemed a radiant creature, full of enjoyment iu
a very enjoyable world, gifted with all charms and blessinga
that can make life worth living. She went everywhere, was
eeen everywhere, in that merry month of June — theatres, operas,
balls, races, concerts, dinners, afternoon gatherings of all kinds.
Wherever the ^lite of Paris were to be found, Constance Dane-
tree was sure to be among them. But go where ahe would, ^he
never met the great contractor, the man of bridges, and rcarkets,
and viaducts, and railways. Not once since that afternoon of
June the sixth had she looked upon the face of Ishmael. Nor
did she hear his name often in society, for, although he was
reverenced for his success, and the wealth that had followed
success, he was not a man of the world in society's acceptation of
the word. He did not spend his money as a man should who
wishes to stand well with society. He lived in an old-world
conier of Paris, and entertained only his few and particular
friends. He bought neither pictures nor statues ; he collected
neither rare plate, nor old books. His figure was unknown in
the H6tel Drouot. He was nobody's patron in the world of art.
He had no chateau in the country, no shooting parties, or wild
boar hunts. He kept no stud, had won no distinction upon the
turf, which was just then the ultra-fashionable amusement alike
for aristocrat and plutocrat. By those who knew very little
about him he was set down as a churl and a miser — a man who
chose to live apart and gloat over his money-bags rather than
to float gaily along that brisk current of pleasure and dissipation
which was so merrily drifting young France one knew not
whither.
Those who knew him well knew that he was one of the
foremost philanthropists of France, that his purse had helped
and his brain had guided some of the noblest schemes for the
weKare of men, women, and children which the modern science
of charity had devised. His purse did not open at every call.
He was not a prey to the charlatan brood who make benevolence
a trade, the letter-writers and red-tapists, the theorists and
fussy-philanthropists. He had founded a benevolent institution
of considerable importance, which he maintained at his own
cost, governing and administering it in person, upon his own
system. This was a refuge and school for indigent boys and
girls very much upon the plan of the admirable institutions
founded later by Monsieur Bonjean, noble sou of a heroic father,
and by the good Abb^ Roussel for boys only. 'The home was
in the country, in a village beyond Marly, and hither he sent
the friendless little waifs whom his agents gathered up like
2 A
aa^
Ishraael
fallen leaves out of Parisian gutters to be purified and t^-
created amidst green fields and flowers, woods and running
streams. There were no happier hours of the millionaire's life
than those which he spent among these rescued children, watching
them at work in the quaint old gardens, or at their studies in
the grave old house, which had been a monastery before the
revolution of Ninety-three, and which, being left remote from
railroads and in a state of decay, had been bought for about a
fouith of its value.
At the children's home Ishmael was known as Monsieur
Chose, and it was only his most intimate friends who knew him
as the author of this good work. His interest in, and his labours
for, this large institution occupied all his intervals of leisure in
this summer of Sixty -seven ; and he had refused all invitations
save for those public banquets at which his presence was a
professional necessity. He had only been two or three times at
the Exhibition, and on each occasiou he had gone only to do the
lionours of the show to some distinguished foreigner in his own
line of life — a Nasmyth, a Peto, or a Cunard.
Thus the month had passed, and he and Constance Danetree
had never met. She had gone eveiywhere, trying to forget him,
despising herself because of that weakness of her woman's heart
which made forgetfulness impossible. She had tried to drown
thought and memory in the wine of pleasure ; but the wine
tasted of dust and ashes, and memory remained unaltered.
The evening of July the second was to be distinguished by a
grand ball at a noble old house in the Faubourg Saint-Germain.
It was a ball that had been talked of incessantly in Lady
Constance Danetree's circle for the last three weeks. The giver
t.f the entertainment was the Baroness Clavaroche, a lady whose
husband had been until a year ago a staunch Legitimist, but
who, soon after the death of his mother — an ancient dame
distinguished for the severity of her morals, the dignity of her
manners, and the rancour of her hatred for the race of
Bonaparte — had astonished all Parisian society by suddenly
turning his coat and accepting an important office at the
Imperial Court. Like all converts, the Baron was intense in his
enthusiasm for his new creed, swore by the Emperor in this
twilight of his glory as if it had been still broad noon, was a
passionate advocate of the Imperial policy in the Claamber and
out of it—out Eouher-ing Rouher himself, the * second Emperor,'
iu the boldness of his partisanship.
The Baroness Clavaroche, who was about fifteen years her
husband's junior, and who loved gaiety and expenditure, cou-
eidered it her bounden duty to give a festivity of some kind in
honour of the Imperial idea. She had sent out cards for a ball
* The kingdoms of Kations Gathered Together ' 355
which, according to the tongues of rumour, was to surpass in siplen-
dour all private entertainments of this splendid year. Every-
body who was noble, or rich, or famous, or beautiful had been
invited to the festival, and not to have been asked meant social
ostracism. Madame Clavaroche and Lady Constance met in the
fashionable crowd at the Palace of Industry on the morning of
the second, the Baroness radiant with delight at the success
of her ball, which was already an assured fact, for in society
success begins with the voice of rumour and the excitement of
anticipation. A ball not talked about immensely beforehand
would be a predoomed failure.
' Everybody is coming,' exclaimed Madame Clav?.roche ;
' everybody. I could count the few refusals on my fingers, and
those are all from people who are too ill to move.'
'Have you asked Monsieur Ishmael, who came after the
Emperor, and took first prize for workmen's houses,' inquired
Constance, carelessly, ' among your numerous notorieties ? '
* Yes, I asked Monsieur Ishmael. He is a gieat favourite of
mine — so earnest, so original, such a contrast to our petits creve's.
I did not forget him. But I am sorry to say he is one of my
few refusals.'
' What ! Is he too ill to move ? '
'No, but he tells me he is not going out anywhere this
season. He has some great work in hantl — a railway in tlie
South somewhere, between Nimes and the Pyrenees, a stupendous
attair, all viaduct and tunnel. He is too busy to go to balls.
But we shall have plenty of notabilities for you— the Siamese
Princes, the Cham of Tartaiy, the brother of the Tycoon. I am
told the brother of the Tyccou is a most fascinating person — not
handsome, you know, according to our European idea, but a,
most inteiest ng type. Be sure you come early.'
' If I do, i shall not stay late,' answered Constance. ' I find
that I am growing old, and soon grow tired of lights and music'
' That is all nonsense. You must come early and stay late.
I want beauty to be a conspicuous element in my rooms. What
is the use of providing a background of flowers, and fountains,
and electric light if the living foreground is to be made
up of ugliness ? Tell me about your costume. Who
made it ? '
' You had better ask who is making it. Perhaps it is not
yet begun. You know what these people are. I weut to the
new man, who made the gowns for the last comedy at the
Gymnase ? '
' You were very wise. The new man has a taste, an instinct
altogether hors ligne. Spricht ia trading on a past i-eputatiou ;
he has «mptied hia bag. That piuk satin and silver gowu
858 Tshtnael
Pierson wore in the second act of " Contagion^ ^0.3 a marvel.
And it was svich a brilliant idea to return to the sheen and
shimmer of satin after the dreary reign of lustreless silks. /
am going to wear satin to-night,' added the Baroness, with an air.
She was a stout woman, fair, with frizzy hair, and always
overdressed ; for, despite the universal prejudice in favour of
Parisian taste, there are women in Paris who sin upon the side
of superabundant finery.
' If you want to know what you ought not to wear,' said Mr.
Spricht, the great couturier, to one of his favourite clients,
privileged to enjoy the dear man's confidence, ' you have only to
look at the Baroness Clavaroche.'
'But surely ^ou make all her gowns?' exclaimed the
customer. 'I have heard her say so.'
' I make her gOAvns, Madame, but I did not make her figure.
You would not expect me to waste refined art upon a woman
who has no more shape than a pincushion. Madame Clavaroche
comes here, and I sell her my most expensive stufi^s, and my
people make them into gowns, and load them with the costliest
garnitiire ; and the result is, the Baroness Clavaroche as you see
her. I have nothing to do with it ; I would not soil'my fingers
by touching a yard of lace in such a cause. I do not lead a
forlorn hope.'
' Then, unless one has a decent figure and a little natural
grace, there is no use in coming to you,' murmured the customer,
meekly, full of reverence for the great man.
' It would be wiser in such a case to keep your money in your
pocket. It was the Marquise de Bar-le-duc who persuaded me
to undertake Madame Clavaroche, and to oblige that sweet
Marquise, who was at that time dii, dernier hien with an exalted
personage, who shall be nameless, I would do a great deal. If
the Baroness had been amenable to reason and good advice, I
might have taken some interest in her, in spite of her figure.
I might even have succeeded in making her look well. But the
Baroness thinks herself a fine woman, and has ideas of her own —
two insuperable difticulties. I allow her to wear what she likes ;
she pays me forty thousand francs a year ; and, as I said before,
the result is — the Baroness Clavaroche.'
In spite of this startling condemnation from the highest
authority, the Baroness Clavaroche was the fashion, and helped
to lead the fashions in that brilliant Paris of 1867. In those
days beauty and grace were not essential elements in a woman
of fashion — a grain of wit and a bushel of audacity were rather
the indispensable qualifications for that distinguished role. Was
it not said by one of the most accomplished courtiers of that
epoch concerning quite the most charming" woman of the
* The Kingdoms of Nations Gathered Together' 357
Imperial entourage that she was two-thirds lorette and one-third
great lady ? If this could be said of the great leader of the
beau-monde, be sure all the little leaders followed in the same
track.
The mansion of the Clavaroche family was one of the oldest
houses in the Faubourg St.-Germain. It was situated in one of
the quiet old streets of the faubourg, behind those magnificent
modern buildings on the quays, the official residences of ministers
and ambassadors, the villas of Jewish millionaires and new
nobility. There was i, suggestion of the past in every gable
and chimney in the exterior view, in every cornice and doorway
within. For more than a century and a half the good old house
had remained unaltered from its original splendour of the Louis
Quatorze period. It had begun to be old-fashioned in the days
of the Regency, and was positively rococo under Louis Qiiinze.
During the first Empire and throughout the n^ign of Louis
Philippe the Clavaroches dwelt apart. They led a life of absolute
seclusion in the midst of the great busy city, received only a
few old friends of the most strictly Legitimist opinions, gave
themselves up to devotion which touched the boundary line of
bigotry, were altogether pious, dull and naiTOAv-minded, refusing
to believe in the virtues of the good Citizen-King, or to gladden
his Court by the light of their countenances. They grew old
and gray n the old gray house amidst mouldering draperies,
and faded tapestries, and tarnished gilding — relics of the past,
which to the Clavaroche mind were in themselves a patent of
aristocracy : curtains which h.id screened their great-great-
grandmothers, arm-chairs in which Princes and Cardinals of tlie
great King's Court had sat, looking-glasses which had reflected
the vanished beauty of La Valliere and Montespan.
Barbn Clavaroche lived up to the mature age of forty iinder
the maternal wing, sharing all the opinions and cherishing all
the prejudices of ma mh-e, whose hand he kissed in his stately
fashion whenever he gave her his morning greeting ; but shortly
after his fortieth birthday, and about three j'ears ago, the Baron,
during a visit to the little to\vn of Vichy with his invalid parent,
had the happy fortune to win the good graces of a wealthy
financier's daughter — a young lady of the new school, and an
ardent Bonapartist. The marriage renewed the fortunes of
the house of Clavaroche, which had subsided to a dead level of
mediocrity ; but it broke the old Baroness's heart. After enjoying
the privilege of domineering over her son's habits, opinions, and
actions for tlie last forty years, it seemed a hard thing to have
the sceptre of maternal authority, the dignity of her position as
mistress of fliat grave old house in the faubourg, the adminis-
tration of her sou's slender fortune, which she had nursed and
333 Jshmael
managed with a discretion worthy of an old financier, to have
all the power and glory of her life snatched from her grasp by a
plump and somewhat vulgar young woman of five-and-twenty,
who had been brought up on American principles by a doting
and indulgent father, who had been allowed to spend money like
water, and who had been flattered by the young fortune-hunters
of the period until she fancied herself irresistible.
Perhaps the chief reason of Mademoiselle Bourleys appre-
ciation of the Baron's merits was the fact that he, among all her
acquaintance, had treated her as a common mortal, and had
never stooped to flatter her. The good old name of Clavaroche,
tlie odour of sanctity which hung round these families of the
old rock — these things were also an attraction ; and Elise Bourley
had only been acquainted with Theodore Clavaroche three weeks
when she signified to her adoring father that she had at last seen
a man whom she coidd condescend to marry.
' The others about whom you teased me were all detestable,'
she said, ' but the Baron Clavaroche is at least a gentleman ;
and if he is stupid, that will be so much the better for me, as I
intend to be mistress in my own house.'
The matter was easily arranged, the bride being one of the
richest heiresses in Paris, and the bridegroom having long looked
towards marriage as a break in the monotony of his life. A
week after the beginning of the Paris winter season Baron
Clavaroche and Mademoiselle Bourley were married at the
Madeleine. The service was performed at midnight, a magni-
ficent function, at which all fashionable Paris assisted.
The Dowager Baroness was an old woman when this blow fell
upon her, and her health had been failing for some time ; bufc
8l\e had stood up like a tower against the encroachments of age ;
she had held her own in her narrow circle against all comers ;
her voice was as loud, her fro^vn as awful, her hatred of exist-
ing institutions as rancorous, her abuse of those in power —
notably of the good and fair Empress — as vehement as it had
been in the early days of the Citizen-King ; but after her son's
marriage, she gave way all at once, the tower was sapped at its
base, the walls began to cnimble, the hour of ruin and downfall
was near at hand. On the eve of her son's wedding she made
him swear that he would be true to the elder branch of the
House of Bourbon as long as she hved.
' When I am in my grave, you can do what you like,' she
said ; * I shall not be there to know of your treason, and in
Purgatory I shall have enough to do to bear the biuden of my
own sine without feeling the weight of yours.'
The new Baroness chafed against the old order of things from
the verj' beginning of her wedded life. She longed to sweep
*The Kingdoms of Nations GatJiarcd Together' 350
away the old furniture, the faded tapestries, the tarnished gild-
ing. It was in vain that her husband urged that the things she
despised were precious as objects of art. She replied that the
Empress could tolerate nothing that was not strictly in the style
of Marie Antoinette ; and that these ornate and ponderous oh/
cabinets, and sofas, and gigantic arm-chairs of the seventeenth
ceijtury were detestable, these sienna marble slabs and brazen
arabesques the very lowest form of art.
' Do not disturb the old house while my mother inhabits it,'
he pleaded. ' She will not trouble us long.'
Elise grumbled a little. There was no knowing how long an
old woman might spin out the thread of life ; and while the
Dowager dawdled and lingered over those closing scenes youth
was hurrying past for the young Baroness, pleasures hastening
by her untasted, while she languished in that dusty old house,
and was allowed to receive no one except a few Legitimists who
were a quarter of a century behind the times, and still regretted
Charles the Tenth. She was panting to call in the great uphol-
sterers of the day, to send all those ponderous grandeurs of
the past to the auction room, to bo sold e7i bloc with all their
associations included — aye, even the chair in which Turgot had
eat, the table upon which the Duo de Richelieu had played
lansquenet with Cardinals and Princes of the blood Royal. Slie
was pimng to redecorate and refurnish that historic mansion,
to awaken the sleeping echoes with the sound of fiddles and
cornets, to set the light airy feet of the Empire dancing in those
stately halls that ^.ad seen the revels of an older dynasty. She
was languishing u: let the gay and garish light of the present
in upon the dim shadows of the past, to disperse the ghosts and
bring the living, breathing, moving Vanity Fair of new Paris
about and arourd her.
'You might aa well have taken me to live in a tomb,' she
exclaimed, pettishly, to her husband, whose aristocratic face and
dignified bearing might adorn, but certainly did not enliven, her
existence, ' Indeed, it is much gayer in the funeral chapel of
the great Emperor yonder,' with a jerk of her head towards
the Invalides, ' for there people are always coming aiid going.
Here there is no one. At dusk, after the house is shut up for
the night, I can f^ear the silence in the hall and on the staircase.'
Baron Clavaroohe admitted that the house was rather triste :
it was a quality of fine old houses to be triste ; and it was a rara
privilege to enjoy in the heart of Paris the seclusion of a chdteau.
in Normandy.
'I hate chdtcaux in Normandy, or anywhere else,' exclaimed
Elise ; 'and I would rather have an apartment in the Champs
Elys^es, or in the Faubourg Saint-Honord, than this house of
Ishmael
youra, which has missed its vocation, since it onght certainly to
be a convent for Carmelite sisters who wear nothing but woollen,
and are rung up at three o'clock in the morning to say their
prayers.'
' There can be nothing changed so long as my mother lives,
the Bai'on answered, gravely.
He had given a promise, and he meant to keep it at what-
ever inconvenience to himself. The rich young wife chafed her
plumage against her prison bars, complained that there was no
nse in buying fine gowns when there was no one to see her wear
them, but wore the gowns all the same, and was as fine as a
parrot in a cage.
But the day came when the gay colours had to be put away
for a while, and when the young Baroness had to attire hersel/
in that severe and dense black raiment which makes French
mourning such a terrible ordeal to the vain and the fiivolous.
The last sands had run out in the glass, and the stately
funeral car, with its violet velvet canopy, its plumes and silver
scutcheons, had come to carry the old Baroness to her last
resting-place in the vault below a particularly hideous Egyptian
tomb in gray granite on the ridge of the hill among the limes
and chestnuts of P^re Lachaise ; and the young Bai'oness reigned
in her stead.
The young Baroness had to endure a long and weary year of
mourning, on which Baron Clavaroche insisted as a sacred debt
due to tlie manes of the departed Dowager, not one hour of
which was to be remitted ; and then the old house in the old
faubourg awakened to life and bustle, and movement and
expenditure — in a day, in an hour, with the opening of a door
and the entrance of a crowd of workmen. The Baroness had
planned everything with architect and upholsterers beforehand,
and the process of transformation from the old to the new began
with the stroke of the clock that told the last hour of that year
of mourning. The Baron gave in his allegiance to the Emperor,
a friend in high quarters having brought about the rapproche-
ynent of these two great men ; and as soon as her house was
ready, the Baroness opened her doors wide to that strange mixed
world of the second Empire, a world in which many were beau-
tiful, brilliant, distinguished, brave, clever, while some were
even honest and loyal, but in which there were more scamps,
roues, tricksters and charlatans than had ever been seen in the
front rank of society since the days of Philip the Regent, who
is said to have invented that word roue for the benefit of his
own particular friends. ' They were mostly creatures worthy of
being broken on the wheel,' said the Prince. The friends, for
their part, afiirmed that the sobriquet was an honourable one,
• The Kingdoms of Nations Gathered Together ' 361
implying the last degree of loyalty and devotion, and only
eignified that they were ready to be so broken in the service of
their Eoyal master.
The Baron was not a genius, and he did not carry over to the
Imperial side of the Senate the weight of a great political repu-
tation ; but his name was a power in itself, he voted as he was
told to vote, and he spoke as he was told to speak ; and in those
stormy debates of Sixty-seven — debates upon the Mexican ques-
tion, debates upon the Luxembourg treaty, when the language
and the bearing of French senators surpassed in dramatic
vehemence and bluster the most vehement and blusterous of
demagogues or Home Eulers, Baron Clavaroche was useful
were it only as a dead weight.
And now, to do honour to the newest development of the
Empire, the Baroness Clavaroche opened her doors to receive all
fashionable Paris at a fHe more splendid than had ever been
given by a private individual within the memory of the oldest
inhabitant of that ancient faubourg, whose highly respectable
inhabitants had a knack of Uving to a green old age.
The ball was to be a costume ball, and costume balls were
not so common in those days as they are now. In those brilliant
seasons that followed the marriage of the Emperor — in the day
of Crimean victories, of Solferino and Magenta — period of
triumph, and glory, and unclouded sunshine — the balls given by
Prime Ministers and Imperial favourites had been of an ideal
splendour. The costumes and groupings, the historical quadrilles,
the quadrilles of the nations, of the four seasons, the constella-
tions, shepherds and shepherdesses after Watteau, the four sons
of Aymon — these had been moving pictures of a brilliancy and a
beauty to haunt the memory of man. Ah ! what stars of beauty
had shone upon those nights of fashion and folly. Castiglione,
in the audacious triumph of sensuous loveliness, in her costume
of Queen of Hearts, braving opinion, confronting society, secure
in the dominion of transcendent charms ; Greville, Walewska,
each supreme after her fashion, and intent on outshining the
glory of her rivals. The Emperor and Empress had loved to
assist in these festivities. They had entered and vanished
mysteriously, as in a kind of fairyland, by secret doors
communicating with the Tuileries. They had changed their
costumes three or four times during the long night of revelry ;
but the Emperor's slow and sidelong walk, or his habit of pulling
the drooping ends of his moustache, was apt to betray him in
spite of disguises. Grave senators, famous lawyers had not
disdained to take part in these assemblies discreetly attired in
short Venetian mantles of velvet or satin, which scarcely cou*
cealed the regulation evening dress beneath.
3G2 Ishmael
The fever for this spectacular form of entertainment had
waned, like all other society fevers, after a time, and there had
not been any remarkable ball of this kind for the last two or
three years. The Baroness Claveroche took upon herself to revive
the taste. Her ball was to be a fancy ball, a mask ball, a ball
of dominos, and strange disguises, and mystifications. Masks
were not to be removed till supper, a tremendous banquet,
which was to be given in a temporary pavilion at the end of the
garden, large enough to seat five hundred people, lighted by
electricity, and said to cost twenty thousand francs — an erection
which was to be carted away during to-morrow's daylight, and
to vanish almost as swiffly as a scene in a fairy spectacle at the
Porte Saint-Martin, leaving only a big bill behind.
The dancing room had been Madame Clavaroche's especial
care. Her ball was to be a ball of roses a? well as of historic
and fanciful costumes. She had reproduced that exquisite
arrangement of the salle des glaces at Versailles which had been
the admiration of Parisian society in Fifty-five, when the great
ball was given in honour of the Queen of England. Garlands
of roses were suspended from the ceiling, crossing and recrossing
each other in fantastic profusion, and from the rose garlands
seemed to hang the crystal chandeliers. The mirrors were
framed in roses, the doorways were festooned with roses, the
orchestra was divided into four alcoves, or gilded cages, which
filled the corners of the room, and the trellises which half con-
cealed the musicians were wreathed with roses. It seemed as if
all the rose-gardens of the South could hardly have furnished ?^
many floweiu
CHAPTER XXXV
*AND THE FIRSTBORN OF THE POOR SHALL FEED*
On that second of July — while Parisian society and all tlia
pleasure-seekers from foreign lands were crowded into the
Palace of Industry, where twenty thousand privileged spectators
were seated around the Imperial throne, high on its dais of
crimson velvet powdered with golden bees, amidst foliage and
flowers, and gigantic trophies of industry and art — Lshmael was
enjoying a long quiet morning ic the gardens of the old monas-
tery beyond Marly-le-Roi, beautiful exceedingly in the full flush
of their midsummer glory, thousands of roses abloom in the old-
fashioned parterres, magnolia trees weighed down by their heavy
waxen chalices breathing perfume, vivid masses of golden broom
shining against a background of darkest foliage, long vistas of
greenery, at the end of which sparkled far-otf flashes of blue
water. It seemed the home of poet or dreamer rather than
of practical engineer, contractor, speculator in waste lands,
millionaire.
Yet it is a fact that a man whose daily work is of a dry-as-
dust order has often a fonder love of the country than your poet
and dreamer, and lshmael found in these gardens and groves of
the old Benedictine monastery relief and refreshment after his
Parisian life which seemed to renew his youth with every fresh
visit. There was a deep, sweet pleasure, not untouched hj sad-
ness, in watching these joyous bands of children — childhood
without a care — since these little waifs, gathered from the slum
and the gutter while thought and memory were still dim, knew
not of any world outside these gardens, or the country walks on
which they were taken at rare intervals for a treat. Of that
foul world of Paris, the lanes and hovels of M(?nilmontant and
Villette, of Clichy and Montmartre, from which they had been
rescued, they thought, if they ever thought of it at all, as a bad
dreaa which had troubled their babyhood. This life here among
leaves and flowers, and songs of birds, and blue sky, in spacious
dormitories where the little white beds were purity personified,
in lofty playrooms whei-e there were all the simjjle toys and
fames that can develop the grace and strength of healthy child-
ood and awaken the mental powers with the mystifications
and puzzles that are the delight of children — this was the
reality. That troubled and gloomy past, time of dark rooms
361 Ishmael
and loatliaome odours, mud, squalor, blows, Lunger, was the
dream.
It was noon, and Ishmael walked, book in hand, in one of
those long leafy glades, a grassy walk between old Spanish
chestnuts and flowering limes, with here and there a spreading
oak that was supposed to have been planted in the time of
King Dagobert. The book was a grave book, and needed to be
read in supreme quiet ; and at this hour there was not a sound
in those groves and gardens except an occasional bird-call and
the hum of summer insects. Truly a quiet family these seven
hundred and fifty children of the great contractor. But when,
in his pacing up and down, Ishmael came to the upper end of
the alley, which was only divided by a wide sweep of sunlit
greensward from the great gray Gothic pile yonder with its
widely-opened windows, there fell upon his ear a sound as of
the rolling of far distant waves, or the hum of Brobdig-
nagian beetles — something vague, tremendous, almost awful,
like the sound of nations furiously raging together heard
from afar.
This distant tumult was made by the voices of the children
at their dinner hour, accompanied by the rattle of busy knives
and forks, the clatter of plates and dishes in rapid circulation.
In almost all other schools and institutions in France the
children dined in a solemn silence, and were made to understand
tliat it was an offence to break the dumbness. Ishmael'a
children were allowed to talk as much as they liked, and they
ate all their meals in a Babel of young voices, for Ishmael had
been told that it was good for children to talk and laugh
as they sat at table ; and as his chief desire was not for order and
quietude, but for the health and growth of his little ones, he
allowed full freedom of speech. The children were not allowed
to talk with full mouths : that offence against decency was put
down with a high hand by the gray-robed sisters who walked
briskly up and down, serving and watching behind the long
rows of diners. The children were so happy and so free, that
they took a pride in obeying their teachers, and there was an
esprit de corps and a loyalty among these rescued ones which
might put to shame many a famous public school.
Presently, instantaneously, as it were, and with a great shrill
chorus of shouting, indistinct, joyous as the songs of birds, the
children came pouring out upon the great green lawn, almost
golden under the vertical sun — troops of girls in pink and white
cotton — just such cotton as P&querette wore that day at Vin-
cennes when she and Ishmael met for the first time — a serpen-
tine band of girls running, flying almost, making swiftest and
most wonderful curves over the velret turf — dark hair, fair hair
^Anct the Firstborn of the Poor shall Feed' 8G5
Waving ill the summer breeze, and a chorus of laughter and
joyous snatches of speech to make glad the heart of man — three
hundred girl-children let loose suddenly into loveliest gardens
after a morning's easy lessons and a good dinner. Could there
be happiness upon this earth more perfect 1 Childhood that
knows not care ; childhood that never heard of want or debt ;
childhood with an army of playfellows amidst a paradise of
trees and flowers, and with no stern rules and regulations, and
dictations and counter-dictations, and theories and counter-
theories of an incompetent committee to turn the paradise into
a prison.
This was what Ishmael had done for Pfiquerette's sake — for
the sake of the wife who had abandoned him, blighted his life,
and almost broken his heart. He had at first designed a home
for boys only, having discovered that in France philanthropy
had done much more for the succour and protection of the
weaker sex than of the stronger ; but, on becoming owner of the
spacious rambling old monastery, with ample space around for
adding to its accommodation at his pleasure, he determined upon
creating a home and a school for girls, who were to be admitted
as infants, and who were not to leave till they were old enough
and wise enough to enter upon the arena of life, fortified by a
sound and useful education, and by the robust health which is
the natural result of a well-fed, well-cared-for childhood. It was
the recollection of Paquerette's dismal girlhood in that stony
well in the Rue Sombreuil which prompted Ishmael to this
extension of his original plan. Are not those pallid faces of
girls and children in the back slums of a great city an ever-
lasting appeal to the rich ? — just as the hungry faces and gaimt
figures in the streets at Christmas-time seem to reproach the
men and women in velvet and fur going home to roast turkey
and plum-pudding that have become a burden and a weariness
of spirit by sheer satiety. Ishmael could not forget that ground-
floor den in the faubourg on a level with all tlie squalor and
foulness of the yard, damp with the slime of ages. And there
were many such yards in Paris ; and in a city of late years
given over to the madness of strong drink there must needs be
many such neglected children as Paquerette.
It was such children as these that Ishmael and his agents
collected and brought home to the paradise at Marly. It was
home verily, for they had known no other, and they could know
no happier on this side of Heaven.
The serpentine train of cliildren stopped its evolutions all in
a moment, the pink cotton frocks, dark hair and golden hair,
tumbling over one another in a sudden confusion, and from
those rosy lips there came a cry of shriller joy than had been
8Go Ishrnael
heard before. The little girJs had descried that tall figure in
the leafy alley, the grave handsome face, and dark kind eyea
watching them.
It was their patron and friend, Monsieur Chose. They all
came tearing across the grass to meet him, a veritable Niagara
of children. They clapped their hands, they shouted, they
stamped their feet. ' Monsieur Chose ! Monsieur Chose !
Monsieur Chose ! ' they cried in their shrillest treble, and this
was their idea of a polite greeting.
Rarely was Monsieur Chose seen on this side of the old
monastic grounds. He spent many a morning with the boys,
teaching them, drilhng them, giving them easy lectures on
mechanics, taking them for long pilgrimages to the woods of
Marly, where he taught them more natural history in an hour
than they could learn in a month from their books. With the
boys he was a familiar friend ; but here his presence was an
event. With the girls he ranked as a demigod. They, who
knew nothing of Greek gods and heroes, had a vague and dim
idea that this man was something above common humanity, and
that it was no sin to worship him.
' Well, little ones,' he said kindly, patting a golden head
at his knee and smiling across the broad ranks of eager faces,
most of them open-mouthed and grinning ; ' you seem pleased
to see me.'
But they only repeated, ' Monsieur Chose ! Monsieur Chose !
Monsieur Chose ! ' stamping their feet for accompaniment.
It was the rude eloquence of the masses, and Ishmael un-
derstood its meaning perfectly.
' What do you want me to do for you, my children ? ' he
asked, seeing himself blockaded by a circle of childish heads, a
circle that was momently becoming thicker and extending
wider as the three hundred assumed this fresh formation. ' Am
I to play one of your games with you — Colin Maillard, par
exemple ? '
There was a pause of silence, an evident hesitation, as if one
impulse moved all those young minds, yet none of those young
lips dared utter it. And theu a tiny voice close to Ishmael'a
knee lisped :
' Tell us a story. Monsieur Chose.'
Whereupon followed shrillest of choruses, * A story, a story,
a story. Monsieur Chose! "Cendrillon," "The White Cat,*
" Fortunio," ' the whole round of Perrault and Madame dAulnoy,
each child naming her favourite legend.
On certain memorable occasions Ishmael had told these
children some of the old fairy tales, a treat never to be forgotten.
He looked at his watch.
' And the Pirstborn of the Poor shall Feed ' 3()7
'Do you know that 1 want to go back to Paris by an eaily
train ? ' he said.
They did not know, and they did not care a straw. They
worshipped him, but his convenience was of not the slightest
consequence to them. They only repeated, 'Please tell us a
story, Monsieur Chose ! ' ' Don't go back to Paris, Monsieur
Chose ! ' ' " The White Cat," please. Monsieur Chose ! ' ' " The
Little Eed Hood," please. Monsieur Chose 1' with infinite varia-
tions.
' It would be hard to refuse you, my little ones,' he said, and
he crossed the lawn, followed and surrounded by the infantine
herd, till he came to a rustic bench under a fine old cedar. Here
he seated himself, and the children all sat down on the grass at
his feet That tiny fair-haired child of two and a half — she who
had been the first to give utterance to the wish of all the others
— clambered on to the bench and nestled against his arm with
her pale gold curls almost in his waistcoat. She had no respect
of persons this baby waif from one of the Communistic quarters
of Paris.
Ishmael told them the story of the little girl in the red hood
who was on the verge of being eaten by a wolf. He took care
to effect her rescue at the crisis lest infantile slumbers should
be haunted by that direful tragedy. That wolf in the story,
told close upon bed-time by loving mothers or good-uatured
nurses, has been the author of many a bad dream under baby
brows. Better far the tale of " Cendrillon," with its happy ending,
its poetical justice ; better "The Sleeping Beauty," " The White
C^at," better anything than those two visions of horror — " Blue-
beard " and " Ked- Riding- Kood."
The bell ringing for vespers at four o'clock warned Ishmael
that he had wasted hours among these babies. Those long
legs of his would have to stride their fastest to reach the
distant station by six. He kept no carriage or saddle-horse
at the Home ; only a couple of spiingless carts and a pair of
sturdy percherons to fetch provisions from Versailles or Marly.
It was seven o'clock when he reached the great city, half- past
seven when he entered the Place Royale, whose leafy dulness
was in no wise affected by the commotion at the other end of
I'aris, The sober old arcades in front of the houses, unchanged
fiince tke days of Louis the Thirteenth, when the rank and
fashion of Paris lived here, looked as solemn as a cloister in the
summer evening. The limes and chestnuts cast their dark
shadows on the ground, so rarely trodden by hurrying footsteps,
paced in leisurely fashion by the grave and the contemplative.
Here Richelieu lived, and here Marion de Lorme. One of those
fine red houses is sacred as having been once the home of Victor
368 tshmael
Hugo. In atiottel" dwelt for awhile that meteoric genius llachel.
She sleeps not very far from her old home, in the Jewish quarter
at Pere Lachaise.
A man who had been pacing from fountain to fountain with
a weary air for the last half-hour descried Ishmael as he
turned the comer of the Place, and came out into the road
quickly to meet him. It was Theodore de Valnois, otherwise
Dumont.
' I have some news for you,' he said.
* What ! you have returned from Valparaiso, then ? — always
supposing you have been there.'
' Polite ! ' muttered Dumont. * Did I not write to you from
that place ? '
* I got sundry letters from you with the Valparaiso postmark,'
answered Ishmael, scanning him coolly ; ' but as you asked for
your money to be sent to a friend in the Boulevard St. Michel —
in order, as you said, that it should be forwarded to you by a
Becurer medium than the post — I confess to having had my
doubts as to the reality of your voyage to Chili.'
* Fatal tendency in the mind of the rich man always to think
evil of his poorer brother,' said Dumont, with a sinister sparkhe
in his almond-shaped eyes, contemplating his employer furtively
between half-closed lids, an evil light lurking in the midst of a
network of wrinkles like a spider in the middle of his web.
' Fortunately for me, Monsieur Ishmael, my honour and honesty
in this little transaction are not dependent upon my own un-
supported testimony. I have the evidence of a sailor on board
the packet that brought me back to France, and that sailor is
the man from whom I have obtained the very information in
search of which I went to Valparaiso, and for which you offered
me a certain and a very moderate price.'
Ishmael paled, and his breath grew shorter as he looked at
the man searchingly, suspiciously, in the clear, soft light of the
summer evening, the sun sloping westward above the spires and
domes of aristocratic Paris.
' You have heard soinething — definite — about my wife ? ' he
said, his voice husky with emotion, which even his strong will
could not master. iSo much — his fate, the history of his life in
the days to come — depended upon the nature of the news which
this man was to give him.
' Yes.'
* Living — or dead % *
' Dead.'
' You have brought back documentary evidence — the acte de
dc'chf
' No ; but I have got you living evidence in the person of »
* And the Firstborn of the Foor shall Feed' 3G9
Bailor who was on board the vessel on which Madame Ishmael
died, who saw her remains thrown into the sea
' She died at sea 1 '
* Yes.'
* Alone 1'
* Alone.'
* He had deserted her, then, that scoundrel ! ' muttered
Ishmael ; ' the villain who took a base advantage of her child-
like nature — turned to guilt and shame a creature that Heaven
\lesigned for innocence — a soul without one impure instinct.'
They were walking slowly side by side under the old arcade
in front of Ishmael's door. There was no one about to mark
their countenances, or to overhear their speech ; nor was there
anything in the tone or look of either man to startle a passer-
by. Life and death can be so sj^oken of with lowered voices,
with grave faces.
'If you want to know the whole tnith aboujj Madame
Ishmael's death, you had better go with me to this Spanish
sailor's lodging, and hear the story from his lips. The man is a
rascal, I daresay : most of these fellows are rascals. They ai-e
not reared, or educated, or treated in a way to breed angels.
But he can have no motive for lying about this matter, no
motive for deceiving you.'
' How do I know that ? ' asked IshmaeL
* There goes the rich man's suspicion again. " Has he not
you at his back ? " you say within yourself. " You who are
poverty personified, and therefore a past-master of treachery.
You may have bribed him, you may have taught him — i/ou,
Laurent Dumont, whom I employ because it suits my purpose,
but whom I suspect at every turn ! " That is the kind of thing
lurking in your thoughts, no doubt.'
' Something like that, perhaps. However, I will see this
Spanish sailor of yours. There can be no harm in that.'
' None. And you can judge for yourself ; you can niaka
your own conclusions from what you hear and see.'
' Be sure I shall do that. Am I to understand that you
found out nothing for yourself at Val}>ai'aiso, and that your sole
discovery was made on the voyage home, from this sailor 1 '
' It almost comes to that. 1 saw the proprietor of the cafd-
concert at which your wife sang — a Frenchman, and civil
enough. He remembered Madame Ishmael perfectly, though
not by that name. She was Mademoiselle Bonita at his estab-
lishment. He praised her beauty, her chic, her bird-like voice.
He told me that her health broke down after three or four
months in a tropical climate, and she was obliged to leave off
singing. She left the city soon after in a ship, the name of
2 B
S70 IsJimael
■which he remembered chiefly because ''he was a wretcnod
Chilian tub which seldom carried passengers, and because he
himself had tried to prevent Mademoisell'^ Bonita sailing in her.
But the poor soul was in a feverish hurry to get back to France.
She was alone — friendless — with very little money, and she
caught at the first cliance of a cheap voyage. She was to pay
the captain of this merchant vessel about a third of the pas-
R^nger-rate by one of the first-class steamers.'
' He had abandoned her, then — left her to her fate in n
strange city. Did your cafe-concert keeper tell you about hhn ? '
' No ; he seemed to know very little, and I did not care to
ask leading X[uestions for her sake.'
'That was disczeot. But it shall be my duty to find him
even at the eleventh hour. If she is dead, so much the more
reason for retribution. No, he shall not escape my just wrath,
not even at the last. Go on with your story.'
' The Chilian ship in which your wife sailed was a barque
carrying copper, and called the " Loro." She was bound for
Havre, and to Havre I took my passage by steamer, hoping at
Havre to be able to take up the broken thread. Madame
Ishmael was very ill when she left Valparaiso. There might be
some official connected with the harbour at Havre who would
remember the landing of a pretty young woman — an invalid
and alone — from a ship which carrit-d only two or three pas-
sengers. But before I was half-way across the sea, I had
discovered all that remained to be told about your wife's fate.
Leaning over the tafirail one moonlit night, smoking and
listening to the talk of a group of sailors clustered round one of
their mates who had been on the sick list for some time, I heard
the mention of a ship called the " Loro." This was enough to
put me on the scent. It was the invalid sailor who named that
ship. I took an early opportunity of questioning him, and from
him I heard the story of your wife's last voyage and her grave
in the sea. I need tell you no-more. You had better hear the
details at first hand from the sailor himself. He is In Paris,
wliere I brought him. He has not many days' life in Irim, and
if his deposition be worth anything, you had better get it
without delay. You can have it from his own lips.'
'Yes, that will be best. I can see him this evening, you
say?'
* At once if you will come with me.'
' I must dine tii-st. I will meet you later. Where does the
man live ? '
' Not in a very pleasant neighbourhood ; but as your business
with him is a matter of importance, you will not mind that. If
I had had mv own wav. I should have taken him to the liospital ;
"And the Firstborn of the Poor shall Feed' 371
but he had an old chum in Paris, and insisted on going to s3iare
his den. He lodges in the Citd Jeanne d'Arc, by the Barriore
(Vltalie. But you might have some difficulty in finding the
room if you went there without a guide, so, if you name your
liour, I will meet you at le Cluit Blanc, in tlie Avenue des
Gobehns, The Cit6 Jeanne d'Arc is within a quarter of an
hour's walk.'
Ishmael looked at his watch.
' I will be there at half-past eight,' he said.
'That gives you only three-quarters of an hour in all,'
answered Dumont ; ' not much time for dimier.'
' My dinner will be a speedy business. Au revoir.*
He dismissed his agent with a nod, and turned towards his
own door. But Dumont was not inclined to leave him without
one more question.
He followed his patron to the doorstep, and laid his hand
upon Ishmael's sleeve.
' If I prove the fact of your wife's death to your satisfaction
by means of this Spaniard's deposition, you will not withhold
the reward you promised 1 ' he asked.
Ishmael turned upon him indignantly.
' Am I the kind of man to break my word ? ' he asked.
' No, no ; of course not,' answered the other, ' for you can
afford to keep it. Honour and honesty are luxuries which rich
men need not deny themselves.'
Ishmael shut his door, and Dumont strolled away towards
the Eue Saint-Antoine, thoughtful, anxious even, yet feeling
that up to this point things were going smoothlyfor him.
' It has been a troviblesome business,' he told himself, ' and
will be difficult to carry neatly through to the finish, for this
Ishmael is no fool. But it is easier and safer tlian a forged acte
de de'ch. My kinsman is right. It is not a pleasant thing to go
back to the hagne. I had enough of that free gymnasium thirty
years ago. It hardened my muscles and braced my limbs ; but
it planted a worm in the core of my heart, a worm that haa
never died, and never wUl while that heart beats — the inexorable
hatred of my fellow-men.'
Ishmael's dinner was the briefest business, for he was too
much disturbed in mind to take more than a crust of bread and
a tumbler of wine. His real motive in postponing his visit to
the Citd Jeanne d'Arc was the desire to arm himself with a
small American revolver before entering a neighbourh«od which
was, perhaps, more familiar to him than to Dumont. In the
course of his long labours in the cause of the working population
of Paris ho hiid taken paina to inspect all the principal settle-
372 Ishmael
ments of poverty witliin tlie fortifications ; and this Cit^ Jeanne
d'Arc he knew to be one of the very worst, a standing disgrace
and dishonour to a civilised country, more hideous and revolting
in its filth and squalor than the vilest concatenation of reeded
hovels ever inhabited by sweltering blackamoors in an African
swamp, or the foulest village street in Turkey or Persia. He
had inspected the Cit6 Jeanne d'Arc, and had protested against
its horrors in the public papers ; he had taken its construction
and its architecture, its ventilation, drainage, and water supply
as an admirable example of what ought not to be permitted in
any pig-stye or cattle-shed : how much less in any human
dwelling ! He had lifted up his voice in high places against
this terrible instance of man's inhumanity to man ; but there
are vested interests in Paris as well as in London, and the Git^
Jeanne d'Arc, with its fifteen hundred apartments, giving shelter
to fifteen hundred difi"erent families, still cumbered the ground
yonder on the southward side of Paris.
What infamy, what treason might not be reasonably expected
in such a place ? A brave man is never foolhardy. Ishmael
had a little revolver which he kept expressly — like an old hat or
a pair of strong boots — for explorations in doubtful neighbour-
hoods, f^nd he wore it in a fashion of his own. He attached the
pistol to a leather strap fastened round his wrist, and carried it
snugly concealed up the sleeve of his coat. In the moment of
danger his weapon was in his hand in a moment, ready for action.
There was no fumbling in breast or in pocket, no movement which
could be stopped or anticipated by the foe. In a breath the pistol
slid into its place, and his finger was on the trigger ready to fire.
He drove to the Avenue des Gobelins, odorous of tanners'
yards and workohops, and stopped at a somewhat disreputable
looking cafe-restauraut, on the j^avement in front of which there
was a colony of small iron tables. Dumont was seated at one
of them with the regulation carafon of brandy and a syphon of
*'^u de seltz at his elbow.
He paid the waiter, and was ready to accompany Ishmael in
a minute. The summer dusk was deepening, the sky was
crimson behind the great white archway and the gilded dome,
the fountains and statues far away to the west. The lamps were
lighted in the shabby cafes and shops round about as Ishmael
and his comjjanion walked across a region of waste places and
scattered houses which has since undergone considerable
alteration to the Gitd Jeanne d'Arc.
' You seem to know the way,' said Dumont.
* There are ver}"^ few of the slums of Paris in which I do not
kjiow my way,' answered Ishmael.
' Ah, I remember. Tou have gone in for the amelioration of
* And the Firstborn of the Poor shall Feed* 87S
the workman's surrouEdings, the elevation of his mind by meana
of whitewash and spring water. You have found it hard work,
I'm afraid.'
* I have found it very hard work. Unhappily, the initial diffi-
culty lies with the workman himself. He has, for tlie most part, a
hereditary love of dirt, the fault of bad legislation and dishonest
landlords, who have left him to wallow in the mire from genera-
tion to generation until the mire has become his natural element.
He has another fault, which ia a rooted disinclination to do
anything on his own part for the improvement of his surround-
ings were it so much as to knock in a nail, or sweep down a
cobweb. He looks to the landlord for everything ; and as, in
a general way^ the landlord does nothing, the result is— such
a place as this."
They were on the threshold of the Cit6 Jeanne d'Arc. Tliey
stood with a momentary hesitation at the end of a shallow
canal of mud, once a paved way, but from which the paving-
stones had long been rooted up, and which was now a channel
where the inhabitants flung their refuse of all kinds, where the
housewife emptied her pail, and the laundress her tub. On
either side this dismal gulf stood a pile of building, gray, gloomy,
prison-like in the midsummer twilight, rising stage above stage,
blank, and flat, and monotonous in form, to the slated roof — a
dead wall as of a jail, pierced with windows of the same
unomamental pattern, windows in which shattered panes, straw,
and newspapers were the rule.
Through the mud and filth of this canal Ishmael waded after
his guide to a door half-way down the alley. Here Dumont
entei'ed, and led the way up a staircase provided with the
usual rope instead of a banister rail. On every story there was
a narrow passage, entirely without light or ventilation, leading
to the different apartments, in each of which a family was
lodged. In some cases panels had been knocked out of the
doors, or had dropped out from sheer rottenness and decay,
in many windows glass was entirely absent, other casements
were immovable in their frames by reason of the broken
condition of the iron fastenings. Health, cleanliness, decency
were alike impossible in such dwelling-places ; but had these
huge caravansari been planned in the first instance as a hotbed
for vice and crime, for discontent and revolution, the arrange-
ments could not have been better adapted for the purpose
in view.
The two men mounted slowly, cautiously, groping their
way up the dilapidated stairs to the fourth story, and then,
still groping along the narrow passage, to a door at the end;
which Dumont opened without ceremony.
374 Ishmael
The window, with almost every pane shattered, faced the
wpst, and the last gleams of the sunset showed red athwart
the rotten framework, through which came the first untainted
air that Ishmael had breathed since he entered the barrack.
i\ gainst the wall stood an iron bedstead, upon which a man
was lying, dressed in shirt and trousers, with bare brown
feet showing beyond the piece of sacking which served as a
coverlet, and with a sailor's scarlet cap upon his raven black
hair — a Spaniard, evidently. So far Dumont had spoken the
truth.
There was another man in the room, seated at a table near
the bed, playing some game at cards by himself, by the light of
a single candle stuck in an old claret bottle. He, too, looked
like a Spaniard and a sailor.
' Has he been any worse since I left you ? ' asked Dumont of
this man.
' No worse ; the same always. As weak as a baby, and
drowsy, tiene siieno, tiene muchisimo siieno.'
' I must try to rouse him for a short time, at any rate,' said
Dumont. ' You can go and smoke a cigar in the passage, amigo,
while Monsieur talks to your mate. It will not be long.'
He offered his case to the Spaniard, whose dirty claw-like
fingers snatched at a couple of trabucos greedily. Not often did
such luxuries come his way, and he shuffled out to the dark,
dirty corridor in supreme content.
' Fernando, awake ! ' said Dumont, taking hold of the
sleeping sailor's shoulder and shaking him gently.
' Is it not rather dangerous to awaken a dying man ? ' asked
Ishmael, looking intently at the Spaniard's statuesque face.
' He would sleep himself into the grave if we did not rouse
him now and then to force food or drink upon him — a few
spoonfuls of soup, or a little wine and water,' answered Dumont.
' There is no use standing upon mmctilio. He cannot live long,
and when he dies the secret of your wife's fate will die with
him.'
' How is that ? ' .
' Because he is the only survivor of the crew of the ship on
board which she died.'
' The ship was wrecked, then ? '
* Yes ; and this was the only man saved.'
' What is the matter with him ? '
' Heaven knows. General decay, perhaps. The doctor who
sometimes visits this den has looked at him, shaken his head,
and gone his way. Nothing to be done.'
He had been trying to rouse the sailor all through thia
conversation, and at last succeeded. The man lifted his heavy
And the Firsthorn of the Poor shall Feed
eyeliJs, and looked with dim, dreamy eyes at the two faces beiit
over him. His own face was marble-white as the countenance
of death itself, and almost expressionless.
'This is the husband of the young woman who died on board
the " Loro," ' said Dumont. ' I want you to tell him tho
circumstances of her death, and what happened afte'rwards.'
The Spaniard stared vaguely like a man who cannot follow
the drift of what he hears.
' Stay ! ' said Ishmael ; ' before you question him further, it
would be well to have another witness. Is there any one you
fan summon more respectable than that fellow who went out
just now ?'
Dumont shrugged his shoulders.
' In this aviary the birds are all of the hawk tribe,' he said.
* And do both these sailors understand French ? '
• Both.'
'Then you had better call the friend back. You can
take down the Spaniard's deposition, and his friend can
witness it.'
' Good.'
He opened the door and called, ' Pedro I jrm are wanted ; '
and Pedro came strolling in with his first cigar half smoked.
' If Monsieur has no objection,' he said, and went on smoking,
nodding his acquiescence when Dumont told him for what he
w us wanted.
There was considerable difficulty in rousing the dormant
<;ousciousness of the sick sailor ; but at last, by repeating the
words 'Loro,' shipwreck, Valparaiso, Dumont succeeded in
penetrating the clouded brain : the dull eyes showed a faint
j.-Ieam of intelligence, the blue lips moved slowly. ' On board
the "Loro" — yes — there was a young woman — alone — very sad —
a woman who sat in a corner of the deck all day, and wept
often when she thought no one was looking. We had a bad
passage, stormy and long, and when we had been at sea three
weeks the young woman fell ill of a fever. There was only one
other woman on board — the captain's wife — and she was sea-sick
;i!id frightened, and too ill to look after the girl who was down
v\ith fever. They found her dead in lier berth one morning.
She was a singer called La Bonita. She was thrown into the
sea at sunset off Cape Horn. The captain made an entry in his
h'-j ; but within three days we striick upon a rock near the
Falklands, and ship, and log, and captain were all at the bottom
of the sea four hours afterwards. I got off in one of the boats
with the captain's wife and son, a poor little lad of nine, weak
Stud sickly. We were out four days and nights before we were
psdved up by a French steamer bound for Buenos Ayres. The
370 Ishmael
captain's wife died before we got into port from the con*
sequences of exposure to the sea and the weather, and the boy
died in the hospital soon after.'
This story, told slowly, disjointediy, but still, plain enough in
its facts, was listened to with grave and gloomy attention by
Ishmael. He heard, but he heard with doubt and suspicion.
Such a story was easily told. Such events have often liAppened
— might have happened in this case just as t)ie sailor had
related them. A woman might have died of fever on board a
ship called the * Loro,' and none but this Spanish sailor might
remain to tell her fate. But how could he, Ishmael, be sure
that the woman who so died was his wife, PSquerette ? It waa
to Dumont's interest to trump up some plausible story in order
to earn the promised reward.
' Are you convinced ?' asked Dumont, presently, looking up
from the sheet of paper on which he had written the sailor's
etatement, while Ishmael sat silent with bent brows.
' Not altogether. Granted that this man's story is true,
how can I be sure that the woman who died on board the
" Loro " was my wife ? '
' Friend Fernando was curious enough to provide himself
with a memorial of her existence, which may, perhaps, convince
you,' answered Dumont. ' He felt keenly intei-ested in that
lonely passenger, and after her death he went into her cabin and
possessed himself of the few poor treasures she had left — some
tiiiikets of trifling value and a packet of letters. He had them
hidden in his shirt at the time of the wreck. The trinkets he
sold at Buenos Ayres, the letters he has under his pillow to-night.
Would you like to see them ? '
' Yes.'
Dumont groped under the wretched apology for a pillow, and
produced a little packet of letters, which looked as if it had
been steeped in sea water.
The writing was all blurred and blotted, but Ishmael knew
that neat, small penmanship, that gilt coronet and cypher in the
corner of the paper, only too well. Slowly and with darkening
brow, he looked over the letters. They bore the date of the fatal
year in his life — the year that had taken away his brothers and
given him back his inheritance — the year that had robbed him
of wife and of friend. They were the seducer's letters to his
victim — Faust to Marguerite, Mephistopheles standing at his
shoulder and guiding his pen.
Ishmael put the letters into his pocket, and took out a
handful of gold, which he thrust into the Spaniard's clammy
hand. The eyelids had sunk again upon the marble cheeks, and
he was breathing heavily, slowly.
*For, Lol the Winter is Past* 377
' It would have been only justice if I had killed that man,
said PSquerette's husband.
Dumont read over the statement, which the Spaniard Pedro
signed as witness. Ishmael opened his pocket-book and counted
out the promised reward in notes, which he handed to Dumont.
' You are satisfied ? ' asked the agent.
' Yes, I am satisfi 'd. The story is sad and strange ; but, after
all, it is not incredible that she should die thus — abandoned and
alone.'
He took up his hat to go.
' If this man is dying and the doctor can do no more for
him, he ought at least to see a priest,' he said, ' I will send a
good cur^ whom I know to talk to him.'
' I am afraid it will be wasted trouble for you and the cur^,'
answered Dumont, carelessly. ' My friend Fernando is a difficult
subject when he is awake. But you must please yourself. Shall
I go back to the Avenue des Gobelins with you ? '
'There's no occasion : I can find my way.'
CHAPTER XXXVI
' iOR, LO 1 TnE WINTER IS PAST *
It was nearly eleven o'clock. The lamps and Chinese lanterna
of the festival in the Legitimist quarter made a glow of light
above the roofs and dormers of the sombre old houses like the
lurid glare of a conflagration, while on every gust of summer
wind there floated the music of a military band softened by
distance. The pavement in front of the Clavaroche mansion
was crowded with idlers waiting to see the carriages drive in
through the broad gateway — idlers who remarked audibly upon
the costumes of the maskers, and tried to guess their identity.
The Baroness Clavaroche, goigeous in a gown of yellow satin
and point de Venise, was stationed in the vestibule of her salcn
of roses, an octagon room lined with palms and tropical ferns,
the rich bloom of cactus, Cape jasmine, and orange flowers,
receiving her guests as they filed past her to the ball-room.
There were no announcements, mystification being the chief
feature of the festival. The guests handed theii cards of invita-
tion to the groom of the chambers, who threw them into a
gigantic Oiiental bowl on a carved ebony staud, which stood
uear the chief eutraiice. The Baroness alone was unmasked.
378 Ishmael
But later in the evening, when the duty of receiving ber guesta
was over, she too was to have her share in the general bewilder-
ment, provided always that in sharp-eyed Paris there was a
pingle mortal incapable of recognising that Flemish torso and
the peculiar setting on of the fair Flemish head.
Baron Clavaroche, a fish very much out of water in the
raidst of the masked crowd, moved slowly to and fro among the
throng in sober evening dress, over which, to satisfy his wife's
fancy, he had consented to wear a small Venetian mantle of
gold-embrmdered brocade. He wore the Legion of Honour,
with its eagle in diamonds, not long received from the Imperial
hand ; and as he circulated among his guests, masked among
the crowd of other masks, he had the felicity of hearing himself,
^is wife, and his fortunes discussed in the free and easy way in
■^'hich friends talk of each other under such circumstances.
There is something in the very act of giving a grand entertain-
ment which seems to put a man and woman out of court, as it
were. Every one finds something to criticise, something to con-
demn, something to grvimble about. There is nothing so good
that it might not have been better ; there are no arrangements
so perfect as to be without a hitch somewhere ; and then comes
the chorus of complainings : ' Did you ever see anything so
badly managed as the entrance for the carriages 1 ' ' We waited
at least an hour.' ' That avalanche of roses must have cost a
fortune ! ' ' Nothing to people who make money by the whole-
sale ruin of their fellow-creatures, as old Bourley made his.*
* He was at the bottom of the Mexican loan.' ' Morny.'
' Jecker.' * Highway robbery under a new name.' ' The Baron
himself had not a sou.' ' Married him for the sake of his title.'
' The supper is to be in a marquee at the end of the garden, five
minutes' walk.' ' Pleasant if the night should be wet.' ' Every
sign of a thunderstorm.' ' Electric light sure to be a failure.'
' They narrowly escaped a fiasco at the ball at the Tuileries.
Bather a daring experiment for Madame Clavaroche.' 'My
dear, that woman's whole career is an experiment.'
These were the rags and scraps of conversation which greeted
the master of the house as he moved restlessly from pillai to
post, now gazing upward at the festoons of summer roses, the
dazzling crystal chandeliers, the innumerable wax candles,
thinking of what his mother would have suffered could she have
seen the desecration of those noble old rooms, this riotous
luxury, this wild expenditure on flowers, and candles, and decora-
tions which would be swept away to the rubbish heap to-
morrow — she who had counted every sou, yet who, at her poorest,
had scnipuloualy set apart the tenth of her income for charity,
and had often exceeded that amount at the cost of her owd
'For, Lo/ the Winter is Past' 870
comfort, nay, of almost the necessities of life. And withal, slie
had been cheerful, and had delii,d)ted in those gray, grave old
rooms, and the few grave and gray old friends who occasionally
assembled there.
He thought of those parties of the past to-night while the
M'altz of maskers swept past him like a mountain torrent, and
the solid old oak floor seemed to rock under that rhythmical
tread. He remembei'ed the little knot of elderly men and
women grouped in front of the old hearth yonder, now hidden
behind a sloping bank of Provence roses. He recalled the slow,
measured speech, the political discussions, the prophecies of
impending doom for this Imperial sirmdacrum, which seemed so
fair and sound, and yet was hollow and rotten, and on the point
of falling like a palace built out of a pack of cards. So, at least,
the worthy r.dherents of Henri Cinq had gOD" on protesting for
the last fifteen years. And now they were aii dispersed, those
shadows of the past ; and the children of the Empire filled the
room with their garish mirth, their turbulent pleasure.
They flew in circles pa&t him, a whirlpool of colour and bright-
ness, a phantasmagoria of strange figures — Watteau shep-
herdesses, Mexican post-boys, Turkish generals, Spanish bull-
fighters, Swiss cowherds, Chinese mandarins, gipsies from wild
strange lands between the Danube and the Baltic, polichinellfs,
feu-follets, dehardeurs, postilions of Longjumeau, brigands,
coolies, abb^s, sweeps, skeletons, hrirlequins, misers, Jews,
sailors, demons — all revolving, circulating, changing placca
like the chips of coloured glass in a kaleidoscope.
The Baron crept away from the ball-room in despair. He
wandered through those lace-draped doorways under festoons
of roses wondering where they had carried the good old
panelled doors, whether perchance they had been carted off to
be burned as something demode in the way of architecture, and
whether he was henceforth to Kve in a house without doors. No
new change could surprise him after the changes that had already
taken place. His wife's taste and his wife's money had so trans-
formed the good old house, that there was not within its walls a
single spot on which the Baron could rest the sole of his foot
without having his old habits, his old associationn outraged by
the novelty of his surroundings. The violins and violoncellos,
the flutes and hautboys sank into silence within their gilded
cages, and that maelstrom of dancers and colours, gold and
glitter, ceased its wild revolving. The dancers dispersed slowly
in adjoining rooms, or in the garden, where the summer moon
was shining on a smooth lawn, on flower beds and fountains, and
on the great crimson and white marquee yonder, which was to
open its doors at one o'clock precisely for supper.
380 Ishmael
'Do you know if Lady Constance Danetree is here ?' asked
a Watteau columbine of a Mexican post-boy, on whose aim sLo
leant as they paced the velvet lawn.
' I have not seen her yet.'
• Do you think you would know her in a mask ?'
' Do I think I should know Juno if I met her on the Boule-
vard ? Lady Constance has a walk and an air that no Inan with
an eye for beauty could possibly mistake.'
' You admire her very much,' said the columbine, with a
faint sigh.
She was one of the prettiest little figures in the show, dressed
all in white and pale gray, like a china figure in biscuit and gris-
de-Jlandres, powdered wig, white shoes, white frock, white gloves,
with touches of gray satin here and there, and a gray velvet
bodice that fitted the plump, supple figure as the rind fits the peach.
The post-boy looked down at her with a mischievous smile
playing round the corners of his moustachiod lips. The black
velvet mask left the mouth uncovered.
' I think she is the handsomest woman in Paris,' he said ;
•but not half so fascinating aa a certain little woman I know,
who has much less pretension to absolute beauty, but who is
pourrie de chic'
' She is very charming,' said the columbine, whose everyday
name was Amelie Jarzd, relieved by this avowal ; ' I am devoted
to her. Is it not strange she does not marry ? '
^L'embarras du choix,' answered the post-boy, otherwise
.Armand de K^ratry. 'She might marry anyone, and so she
marries no one.'
Armand and Amdlie had been closer friends than ever since
♦.heir adventure in the Quartier Latin. It is wonderful how a
little escapade of that kind ripens friendship. There was a secret
between them, which sei-ved as a link. They could not hear of
the Vicomte's poetry without exchanging stolen glances, or
hiding together in corners to laugh at their ease. The mere
sight of the little man with his faultless gloves and boots, his
mean little sallow face and intolerable airs, set Amelie and
Armand in a mutual fever of fun. And after a fortnight of this
stolen amusement, Armand de Kdratry found out all at once
that he had had enough of a bachelor's life in Paris ; that the
existence was as banal as it was costly ; that it would be an
absolute economy to marry ; and that Amelie Jarz^, who had
most of the faults and foUies of her age and epoch, redeemed by
good temper and high spirits, was the one young woman in all
Paris whom he would like to marry.
His proposal was welcomed by Monsieur and Madame Jarz^,
who had known him for years. He was not rich, but he had
*For, Lo! the Winter is Past* 381
enough for existence even in Paris ; and he had expectations.
Had there been any prospect of a higher bid for her younger
daughter, Madame Jarze's heart would have hardened itself to
stone. Bat this being the best chance that had offered itself
after three years of active enterprise in the husband-hunting
line, Madame Jarze melted into tears and drew the young man
to her moire antique bosom before he was aware.
' That child has always adored you,' she murmvired.
' Do you really think so ? ' faltered Armand, who liked to
imagine a tender little soul looking up to him with secret worship,
watching for his smiles, living upon his kind words. ' Do you
know I had an idea at one time that Amelie was very much
taken by your wealthy friend, Monsieur Ishmael?'
' My dear Armand 1 How could you ? ' exclaimed his future
mother-in-law, who was already speculating on the corbeille, and
thinking of the letters de faire part. ' A man of at least seven
and thirty — nearly old enough to be her father.'
Armand glanced at Monsieur Jarzd, gray, wrinkled, with
a figure inclining to that of Punch, and thought there was a,
good deal of difference between the hypothetical parent and
the real article.
The arrangement was ratified— the dot agreed. It would be
a drain upon the paternal resources, and might involve an appeal
to the private purse of the Emperor, a man of almost fabuloiLs
generosity to his dependents. But to see that cockle-shell barque,
his younger daughter, moored in a safe haven, Monsieur Jarzo
would have undertaken a task infinitely more difficult.
And now Amelie hung upon her lover's arm with the proud
sense of proprietorship. She v/as no longer a dcmoisclh a marier
with keen eye ever on the watch for the chance of the moment,
the sudden oppoi'tunity to lead a worthy victim captive. She
had secured her victim almost unawares, and he wore his chains
as if he liked them. That light nature of hers was easily made
happy. A month ago she had been miserable because Ishmael
did not care for her. She had told herself that, in losing the
chance of a magnificent establishment, she had also lost the one
man of all others whom she could truly and fondly love. And now
she told herself that the one man whom she had truly and fondly
loved from the very dawn of girlhood was the man who was to
be her husband, and that her romantic admiration of Ishmael
had been a mere caprice, a girlish whim of no real significance.
To-night, assured that her costume was a success, she felt
that there was nothing wanting in her cup of bliss. She would
not be rich as Armand's wife, but she could be aristocratic. She
would be Amelie de Keratry. That 'de ' made amends for much.
She had always hated the plebeian sound of Jaize, tout court.
8S2 Islimad
Not so happy was poor Hortense amidst the rosea and the
lights, the glitter and dazzle of the feie. Clad in a flowing robe
of purest white, with classic sandals, a wreath of oak-leaves on
her classic head, an oak bough in her hand, she represented a
Grecian sibyl. It was a pretty dress in the abstract, and it
became Hortense Jarze's style of beauty ; but it was not a good
costume for a fancy ball. The short skirts and neat ankles, the
columbines and Pierrottes, and pedts chaperons rouges, and
bergkres and debardeiises had it all their own way in the
dance ; and as there were a good many wallflowers among the
petits creve's, young-old men who vowed that they had given up
dancing ages ago, the dancers could take their choice in the
motley crowd of dames and damsels, all masked, and therefore all
on equal terms as to beauty. It was form and pace that told
at Madame Clavaroche's baU.
Vainly had Hortense sought her poet amidst the throng.
That small, frail figure might well be lost in such a crowd.
And the Vicomte had left his intentions doubtful — would not
say whether he would or would not be present. He stigmatized
the whole business as a folly — a mere parade and manifesto on
the part of a vain, puree-proud woman, who wanted all Paris to
talk about her and her house.
' No doubt she thinks I shall celebrate her ball in a poem,' he
said ; ' send her down to posterity as the giver of the prettiest
fCte of the epoch.'
' It would make a charming poem,' said Hortense ; ' the
crowd of strange costumes of all nations — the music, and flowers,
and summer night — the mystery of masked faces. Do go to
the ball if it were only for the sake of writing about it.'
The Vicomte mused for a moment, and then shook his
head.
' It would not be worth the trouble,' he said. * My muse is
not inspired by chifoTis.'
' But chifons rule the world in our day,' argued Hortense,
who knew the poet's thirst for renown. ' Granted that such a
subject is beneath your pen, yet you must know that a poem of
tliat kind, full of pei-sonaiities, would set all Paris talking abont
the author.'
' It might,' mused Pontchartrain, twirUng the pointed end of
his moustaiihe with those delicately tapering fingers. ' People
always talk most about bagatelles. What a wonderful know-
ledge of the world you have, Mademoiselle Jarzd'
' I have been obliged to endure my life in it for the last five
years, she answered, wearily.
Aiid now the sibyl was there, but had not as yet discovered
her Apollo. It was some time after midnight when Lady
'For, Lo ! tJi& Wc.ucr is Past* SS3
Constance Danetree's coup(5 drove under the porch. She had
come very late, caring little about the festival, and anxious to
a'soid the block of carriages. She looked superb in a Venetian
costume of dark red velvet, gold brocade, and black fur, a robe
such as Titian or Moroni would have loved to paint. The rutf
of old Italian point oi)ened just wide enough to show the noble
curve of the throat, and was clasped by a large square emerald
of fabulous value set with black pearls. Monsieur de Keratry
had been right when he said that a black velvet mask would go
but a very little way towards disguising such a woman i\i
Constance Danetree, There were not three women in Paris
whose heads were set upon their shoulders with such a queeu-
like grace. The figure and bearing of this daughter of Eriu
were altogether exceptional. No mask could hide, on crowd
efface her. Other masks flocked round her as soon as she
appeared in the ball-room. Every one recognised her. One
man told her that she was either Titian's Queen of Cyprus or
Lady Constance Danetree. She was entreated to dance.
' Venetian raati'ons did not waltz,' she answered.
* No, their little amusements were of a more serio.us kind,
They played at poisoning, and made Aqua Tofana as modt-rn
children made toffee. But that is no reason why Lady Constance
Danetree should not honour one of the most devoted among her
slaves,' urged an Abbd with powdered hair and diamond shoe-
buckles.
' I am not Constance Danetree, but a noble Venetian of the
sixteenth century, and I have never learnt the dances of the
second French Eaipire,' she answei'ed, sailing past him with a
gracious bend of the beautiful head undisguised by any orna-
ment save a single string of pearls twisted among the massive
plaits.
She mingled with the crowd which lined the ball-room,
leaving only a central space for the dancers, and moved slowly
onward, pausing from time to time to talk to friends, or to
watch the waltzers.
And now a new sensation made itself evident among the
throng. A suppressed titter, subjugated as much as possible
for decency's sake, circulated in that hall of fading roses, and
glittering crystals, and niyriad wax caudles beginning to bend
and gutter in their sockets in an atmosphere rapidly becoming
tropical. A figure, unseen till a few minutes ago, had inspired
the whole room with a sudden sense of the ridiculous.
It was a female figure suggestive of Rubans and the Louvre,
recalling an apotheosis of Marie de Mediois, yet still mora
vividly recalling the nearer image of the Belle Hei^ue. It waa
a lady in the full maturity of a Flemish beauty, fat, fair, and
881 Ishmael
tliii'ty, clad as the world is accustomed to see ladies clad across
the footlights, but rarely without that intervening rampart.
A woman on the stage is sacred as a priestess by an altar. She
belongs to the world of art. She is a figure in a picture. She
loses her individuality, and is only a part of a whole. But a
woman parading a ball-room on a level with the eye, rubbing
shoulders with the crowd, is only a woman ; and in her case
thei-e is no excuse for a sin against womanly delicacy.
' Tiens ! ' cried a toreador as the lady passed leaning on the
arm of an ambassador, ' la belle Ilelene ! '
' HeUne,' said another ; ' inais pas trop belle.'
* Quelle brass^e de chair humaine,' whispered a Pierrot.
' C'est plus Schneider que Schneider,' muttered a Roumanian
gipsj-
The fair being sailed on triumphant, hearing only a vague
buzz of admiration. And now the band in the ball-room struck
up the march from La Princesse de Trehizonde, and a second
crrchestra hidden in the garden repeated the strain. It was a
signal for supper and for unmasking. Helena and her ambas-
sador led the way, and the throng followed : a dense procession
of splendid and eccentric costumes, jingling bells, waving plumes,
clashing armour, demons, houris, Turks, crusaders.
Lady Constance Danetree, embarrassed by the number of
her admirers, all entreating the honour of her hand, paused in
the midst of a little circle, midecided Avhich mask she should
favour. Abbe, Pierrot, Eed Indian, Mandarin, Toreador, they
all pressed round her, each hoping to be chosen, when the circle
was suddenly broken by a man, taller than the tallest of them
by nearly half a head, a man with the red cap of Liberty on hia
dark short-cut hair, and his stalwart figure clad in the carmag-
nole jacket of '93, a costume that had a strange and almost
sinister air amidst the satin and velvet, the gold and spangles,
the plumes and flcfwers of that glittering crowd.
' If Madame will honour me ' murmured the mask,
ofTering his ai'm.
Lady Constance accepted it instantly, and passed into the
moonlit garden on the Eepublicau's arm, leaving her circle of
admirers plantes Id.
' What a hideous figure ! ' said one.
* The ghost of revolution and bloodshed,' said another. ' The
police ought not to allow such a costume. It is much too
suggestive for the temper of the age.'
' I should not be surprised if the gentleman himself came from
the Rue de Jerusalem. The policy of the Empire has not been
to make us forget '93, but to remind us what a horrible era it was,
ajid how lucky we are to escape a repetition of its terrors.'
' Por, ho ! the Winter is Past * 833
The carmagnole, the red cap, the dark hair, the fn-m chin
under the velvet mask, the tall figure and stately shoulders, the
low resonant voice — not for a moment had Constance Danetree
doubted the individuality of this gliost of the fatal year of '93.
Her heart beat fast and loud a,s she walked by the unknown's
side aci'oss the moonlit grass — slowly, lingeringly, prolonging to
tlie uttermost that brief journey towards the great marquee
yonder, the canvas doors of which were drawn wide apart,
revealing the dazzling interior— circular tables diminishino: in
diameter towards the centre, circles within circles, on the plan
of the Exposition, and all the tables flashing with silver and
r.iany-coloured glass, flowers, china, and all those artistic come
positions in the way of pastry and confectionery which elevatd
cookery to a fine art. The banquet had an air of Fairylanra
under the electric light. The guests, in their rainbow colou-
and tinsel and gems, were crowding round the tables, filling
in the circles.
' I do not believe there will be room for us in there,' said Lady
Constance.
' Do you think not V said the Carmagnole, eagerly. ' "Would
you rather sit here in the moonlight, and let me biing you some
supper, or would it be too cold i'
' Cold ! the atmosphere is positive enjoyment after that
tropical ball-room. If you do not mind the trouble, I had much
rather sit here.'
There were groups of rustic chairs and little Japanese tables
scattered about in the cool verdant garden, and already some of
these had been pounced upon by those couples who would alwaya
rather sup in a quiet corner tete-d-tete were it never so cramped
or inconvenient.
The Carmagnole selected the pleasantest spot, a rustic bench
sheltered from the night wind by a group of magnolias,
masses of dark, shining verdure with wlitie goblet-shaped
blossoms.
Here Lady Constance seated herself while the Carmagnole
went in quest for supper. He had not far to go ; the attendance
was perfect, and he had a servant at his command in a few
minutes arranging the little rustic table, bringing dclicatest
dishes, and iced champagne in a great glass pitcher.
From a marquee came a Babel of voices. Masks had been just
this moment removed. La Belle Hel^ne, in the person of the
Baroness Clavaroche, was in the central circle welcoming hec
guests. Some of the greatest people in Paris were among that
motley crcwd. Not the Emperor, whose declining health was a
reason for his absence from any private festival ; nor tlie
Empress, who had never taken kindly to Madame Clavaroche.
2 c
386 Ishmael
But sliort of the very highest, there was no splendour of name
or title wanting to the Baroness's ball.
' A brilliant scene,' said Constance, with her face turned
towards the marquee.
She had not yet removed her mask, nor had the Carmagnole,
* And to-morrow there will be nothing left of it but a memory^'
he answered, gravely. ' Happy those for whom ihe memoiy will
be linked with a face they love, not a mere garish vision of
strange faces and strange finery.'
' Will it be a sweet or a bitter memory for you. Monsieur
Ishmael V asked Constance, smiling at him under the lace border
of her mask.
'You know me, then?' he said, half -surprised.
* Do you suppose that piece of black velvet across your face
can hide your individuaUty ? You would be a veay common-
place person if you could disguise yourself so easily.'
' You knew me from the first moment, then ?' he said, laying
aside his mask, looking at her with eyes dark with deepest "feel-
ing as they sat opposite each other at the little supper table,
half in moonlight and half in shadow.
If ]\r.v1ame Clavaroche's guests in general had been as in*
differeSi to the pleasures of the table as these two, the banquet
might as well have been a stage-feast of painted fruit and empty
goblets. Lady Constance had eaten half a peach, and her
comjiajiion had emptied his champagne glass, and that was all.
The attentive footman, seeing them preoccupied, whisked oif the
dainty little dishes ta a table on the other side of the gai'den,
where a columbine and a Mexican post-boy were clamorous for
food.
* Yes, I knew you from the first.*
* And you honovu-ed me with your arm in preference to those
gentlemen romid you — some of the most distinguished names in
France.'
' I see those great people every day ; and you are a stranger.
There is always a pleasure in novelty.'
She spoke in her easiest manner — gracious, calm, beautiful
beyond all other women in that crowded scene where beautiful
women were many. But her heart was beating passionately.
She felt that this man, who had so long and so persistently
avoided her, would not have thrown himself in her way to-night
without a motive. The motive would reveal itself presently,
perhaps. In the meantime her duty as a woman was to be as
calm as marble, to ask no questions, to reveal no warmer
interest than that faint curiosity which society calls sympathy.
' It is very good of you to remember that it is long since we
met,' said Ishmael ; and ll'ien, in a lower voice, ' to me the time
'''Por,Lo! The Winter is Past 887
has been intolerably long, and I thought it was to be only tlie
beginning of a hopeless for ever.'
' Indeed !' exclaimed Lady Constance, lightly ; 'yet, as your
isolation from society was a voluntary retirement, I do not see
that you have any right to complain. I was informed that you
were one of the few who refused the Baroness's invitation for
to-night ? '
' That is quite true.*
*And yet you are here?'
'And yet I am here. Within an hour or two of my coming
I had no idea of being here. Lady Constance, can you imagine
that the whole conditions of a man's life may be changed in a
few hours ? That a man who has been a slave, fettered and tied
by an obligation of the past, may suddenly find himself free— the
chain snapped asunder — his own master. Such a change has
happened in my life. I am my own master — free to go where I
like, to see whom I like — free to love and to woo a noble and
perfect woman, and to win her if I can.'
He was leaning across the narrow table, his clasped hands
resting upon it, his eyes looking into her eyes. Never had the
dark, finely-featured face looked handsomer than under the
scarlet cap of Liberty, flushed with gladness, the eyes shining in
the moonlight, the lips tremulous with deepest feeling.
Constance Danetree's eyelids drooped under that intense
gftze. She tried to make light of the situation and to stave otf
the denouement.
* You have changed your mind, then, since last June, when
you told Mademoiselle Jarze that you never intended to marrj'' ? '
' Yes ; for in those days I fancied myself bound by an old tie.
And now I know that tie has long been broken, and I am free
—have been free for years past but did not know of my liberty.'
'You are talking enigmas,' said Constance.
' Shall I speak more plainly ? ' he asked, drawing still nearer
to her, lowei'ing his voice lest the very leaves of the magnolia,
whispering gently to themselves all the while, should have ears
to hear him, ' in plainest, simplest, truest words, as befits a plain
man ? I loved you from the first, Constance — from the first
sweet hour when we met amidst the frivolous surroundings of a
Parisian salon. From that hour I was yoiar slave — your wor-
shipper. I had found my ideal, the realisation of an old, old
dream — the one woman in this world whom I could reverence
and adore. I had found her, and my heart went to her as the
tide goes to the shore, impelled by a force it knows not, save to
know that it is irresistible. I had found her — yes, but too late !
I was bound, or believed myself bound, by that old tie. And yet
I went on meeting you — went on worshipping you — although
888 Ishmael.
these lips were scrupulously dumb ; went on treading nearer and
nearer the verge of an abyss of dishonom\ I might have dis-
regarded that old bondage of which the world knew so little ;
might have ignored the past. Yes, this is how Satan would have
argued had I lent my ear. The day came when I felt that I
must go no fui-ther ; that from this fool's paradise I must escape
at any cost to myself. And then, half hoping you would guess
that I was in some wise the slave of circumstances, 1 told you
that I meant never to marry ; and in that hour I left your
house, meaning never to trust myself in your presence again. I
have lived the life of a hermit since that hour ; and now I am a
free man. Lady Constance — free to win a noble wife if I can ! '
lie took her unresisting hand and raised it to his lips. He
liad drawn his chair nearer to hers in the shadow of the
magnolias, and the table was no longer between them.
' Constance, will you give me no word of hope ? '
' Is the tie of which you speak really broken ? ' she asked,
gravely. ' Have you the right to ask for my love ? '
' The tie is broken — by death.'
'And there is nothing in your past life — no dishonour, no
taint — which can lessen your worth in the eyes of such a
woman as I.'
' There is no taint — no dishonour. Commercially, all Paris
can tell you what I am. Socially, I will answer for myself. I
have done no wrong ! *
'And you really love me?'
*As women are rarely loved.'
' I am very glad,' she mm-mured, softly, as he bent to listen
for his fate. ' I am glad you love me, Ishmael, for my heart
went out to you with just the same irresistible impulse that
I'ight we first met. I knew then that it was fate. Thank God,
ic is a l^appy fate, and that you give me love for love.'
CIIAPTEB XXXVII
'let niM DRINK AND FORGET HIS TOVERTT*
Half-an-hour later, and the festival was beginning to wane.
Above the many-coloured lights of the garden — rose-coloured
lights, azure, and amber, and sapphire, and emerald, a fairy
illumination — the moon was sloping westward, while the clear,
cold eastern sky grew clearer, culder, brighter with an almost
ghastly brightness — ghastly in its effect upon some of those
unmasked faces, talking, laughing, drinking in the great circular
marquee, still thronged with revellers, some of wlujm had been
eating and drinking, and talking and flirting for an hour and
more, while others had gone away and come back again, and
while some had only just torn themselves away from the ball-
room to come in at the fag-end of the feast. The more s^ber
among the revellers were going home, scared by that opal liglit
in the east. Faded beauties had resumed their masks. Mystifi-
cation was rife, some among the revellers all the more easily
puzzled, perhaps, after their enjoyment of the Clavaroche
champagne, which was of the best brand ever landed on the
quays of Bercy yonder, where, before the aristocratic night was
over, the docks would be astir with the beginning of the
working day.
In the ball-room the waltzers were revolving to a strange
wild music, a Cossack melody, dissonant, almost diabolical in
its shrill minor, with a strange staccato accompaniment of
violoncellos and double-basses, as of a dance of witches round a
caldron. The flame of the candles, the flash of crystals, the
interwoven rose-garlands made a cloud of rosy light above the
dancers ; the mirrors on the wall reflected and multiplied the
motley throng until it seemed an endless carnival, stretching
into infinite distances.
The clocks of Paris were striking three when Ishmael re-
entered the ball-room with Lady Constance on his arm on the
way to her carriage. For more than an hour they had sat
talking in the shadow of the magnolias, while the light feet of
pleasure passed and repassed upon the velvet la-wn. He had
told her his real name, and the story of his boyhood at Pen-
Hoel, his stepmother's jealousy, his father's indifference. He
had not even shrunk from the terrible revelation of his mothev'a
390 Ishmacl
guilty flight ; but this he had touched on vv-ith but fewest words.
The details of disgrace were untold. It was only in extenuation of
his fathei''s unkindness that he confessed his mothei-'s dishonour.
But of his marriage and of Paquerette's sin he said nothing.
It was enough, in his own mind, that he had spoken of a tie now
severed. Constance would draw her own inferences. He could
not bring himself to enter upon the miserable story of his
wedded life.
And now they were going to part for a few hours, with the
sweet certainty of meeting daily, of being together in a privileged
companionship day by day, until the hour of those espousals
which should blend two lives into one. Each felt that in the
other lived the one friend and companion who could make
existence perfect. There was a sympathy, a sense of trustfulness
and security rarely felt even between true lovers. Two minds
that had ripened slowly in the dovible school of thought and
cx]iel'ience, two hearts tried and tested, bound themselves in a
solemn and sacred union ; and in neither was there the shadow
of wavering. Each knew that this miion of heart and mind
meant true and lifelong love.
Aa they crossed the b;ill-room they were met by Amelie,
with her three-cornered hat stuck jauntily on one side, and her
eyes sparkling with mischief.
' Such fun,' she exclaimed to Lady Constance : * the two
poets are here. The little Vicomte, dressed as Eonsard — such a
pretty costume — only he has to explain it to everybody, and
even then nine out of ten have not the least idea who Eonsard
was. Peojole are so ignorant,' added the columbine, contempt-
uously.
' Yes, peo]ile are ignorant,' said Keratry, laughing at her.
'I don't think you knew much about Eonsard till I told you
half an hour ago. Yes, Lady Constance, they are both here.
The poor devil who scrawls in a garret, and the dainty little man
who publishes his cai'mine-seditiou with Firmin-Didot — thepetit
sreve and the teintuYier — and I'm afraid, after the manner in
which I saw the teintuner disposing of the Clavaroche cognac at
the buffet just now, there may be an explosion of some kind
before he leaves the ball.'
' How did he get here ? ' asked Constance, who had been
told all about that literary interview in the Quartier Latin.
' I can guess how it all came about,' exclaimed Amdlie, who
was always eager to give information. ' Hortense has been
plaguing the poor little Vicomte to write some verses about this
ball, descriptive, satirical, personal — the sort of thing to set half
Paris by the ears ; and knowing his own incapacity, the little
*Let Him Drink and Forget His Poverty ' 391
wretch has extorted a card from Madame Clavaroclie, and has
brought his friend of the Quartier Latin — the author of lies
JVuits Blanches'
^ Mes JVuits Blanches* repeated Ishmael. 'What do you
know of the man who wrote that book, Mademoiselle 1 '
' Ah, Monsieur Ishmael,' cried Amdlie ; ' is that you ? How
can you venture to wear the cap of Liberty in a house which is
Imperialist to the last degree ? What do I know of the author
of Mes JVtcits Blanches ? Yerj little ; but he and Monsieur de
Keratry are like brothers.'
* You know Hector de Valnois ? ' said Ishmael ; * and he is
here to-night 1 '
*A man who wrote a book of verses called lies JVuits
Blanches is here to-night, dressed as Fran(jois Villon, and, I am
afraid, not in a condition to do credit to the Muses,' replied de
Keratry ; ' but, as the father of our Ijrric poets was an arrant
Bohemian and blackguard, that hardly matters. Were Villon
here in the flesh, he would no doubt be as drunk as his represen-
tative. The man I mean calls himself Monsieur Nimporte, and
lives in a Httle street at the back of the Luxembourg. Do you
know his real name and his history ? '
' I knew something about him many years ago,' answered
Ishmael, as he passed on to the vestibule with Constance on
his arm.
The court-yard was full of carriages, and the grave old
street beyond was illuminated by the long rows of carriage
lamps, garish in the pearly light of moi'ning. Lady Constance
and her companion had to wait some time for her brougham to
be brought up to the door. They stood side by side under the
marquise, amidst the orange trees and rose bushes which decor-
ated the double flight of steps and the wide, stately doorway —
stood and talked to each other, hapj^y in the new, sweet sense of
union. Yet no longer on Ishmael's part was the gladness with-
out alloy. He was thinking of his faLse friend, the traitor, the
seducer, the destroyer. He was waiting with feyerish eagerness
for the moment that was to bring them face to face at last, after
long years, by accident, in a crowded ball-room. What matter
where they met so that they stood sword in hand, foot to foot,
at last? As he parted with Constance at the door of her
brougham, and as he bent once more to kiss the gloved hand,
there was a gloomy vision before his eyes. Ere the world were
a day older, this new delicious dream of life might end for him
suddenly, amidst the thickening shadows of a bloody death.
He watched the carriage roll away in the circular sweep of
the court-yard, througli the pillared gateway, and then he went
392 Ishmael
back to the ball-voom and to the gaiden beyond to look for hia
enemy, the bitter foe whose face he had never seen since they
parted in friendship, hand clasping hand, smiling hps uttering
fair words. How diligently he had sought for this man in the
years that were past and gone, using all known means of search,
employing those skilled in hunting down their feUow-men ; and
all his inquiries had been in vain. AU his hired agents had
failed. And now, upon this night above all other nights, this
magical, ineffable hour in man's life, in the first hour of triumphant
love, he was told that the traitor was under the same roof that
sheltered him, the injured husband.
He thought of Paquerette in the days of her innocence,
unspoiled by the knowledge of evil. He thought of their child,
lying in her little grave in the field of rest. He thought of
Paquerette's death, the ghastly story which he had beard a few
hours ago — that lonely death on a rotten ship far out in the
lonely Pacific, And was he to spare this man when they two
should stand face to iace ?
It was in the garden — chosen resort of tlie revellers and the
drinkers — the people who eat half-a-dozen suppers in an evening,
the men who would rather sit in corners and smoke and drink
absinthe or kii'sch than waltz to the music of the first band in
Paris under a shower of fading roseleaves. It was among the
fast and the furious that Ishmael looked for his foe.
The garden was crowded with maskers, and had a look as of
a witch's Sabbath in the cold, clear dawn — a light which gave
a ghastly look to common things, and made the entrance to the
great striped marquee, with its flare of light, and clamour of
voices, and glare of gewgaw decorations, seem like the entrance
to Tophet. Ishmael walked slowly in and out among the groups
of revellei's, half in the light of Chinese lanterns, lurid, multi-
coloured, half in the steel-blue morning. He walked in and out
by winding pathways, amidst great masses of evergreens so
arranged as to give an air of space and grandeur to the town
garden, till he came to a group around a fountain — a wide marble
basin with a marble Triton spouting water high up into the
morning air.
A man was sitting on the broad margin of the basin spouting
verse — a man in a shabby mediseval costume, rusty velvet doublet,
black trunk hose, pointed shoes, a broken rope hanging loose
round his neck, suggestive of that hangman's noose which Maitre
Villon so narrowly escaped. A thin, wasted figui-e ; a pale face,
with iron-gray hair flowing in the morning breeze ; a sickly
pallor that gave a spectral air to the light blue eyes, just no^y
Ulurai?iated vith the fever of strong drink,
*Lct Him Dvinh ami Forget His Poverty* 393
* Bravo, Maitre Francois,' cried the little audience, when the
poet paused.
Ishmael stood outside the circle, looking at the pale, wan face ;
at the tremulous hands with which the poet took bottle and
glass from one of his audience and poured out a bumper of
champagne.
* Do you know, gentlemen, that Widow Cliquot and I have
been strangers for years,' he said, in his drunken voice : ^ a lu,
sante, ma belle veiive, thou art the poet's only nepenthe.'
He drank a long draught, and then flung his glass into the
fountain, shattering it into splinters that flew like a shower of
diamonds across the sparkling waters.
' A Jewish wedding,' he cried, ' symbol of eternal imion — the
marriage of the poet and the queen of vineyards, la belle CUqtiot.''
And then he burst again into verse, mamidering verse, a pot-
potirri of Villon, Eonsard, Voiture : the lees and rinsings of a
memory that had once been richly stored. His limbs had the
spasmodic trembling of the absinthe-drinker. Those pale eyes of
his had the look that forebodes a day when the brain behind
them will be a blank.
Ishmael pushed through the crowd, and gripped the trouba-
dour by the shoulder.
' Hector de Valnois ! ' he said, in a loud voice, ' you were once
a man, and in those days you were a consummate scoundrel, the
seducer of the innocent and simple, the betrayer of your friend.
In those days — thirteen years ago— I wrote you a letter. I have
been waiting for the answer ever since. I am waiting still. In
that letter I threatened to strike you in the open street if we
two met before I was sure of my revenge. I would strike you
to-night, here— spurn you like a dog, disgrace you before your
fellow-men — if you were in your right senses. But I would
almost as soon strike a woman as a drunken di-iveller like you.
For to-night you are safe ; but, unless you are a coward lower
than common cowards, you will send me an answer to my letter to-
morrow morning. You know my name. I live in the Place Eoyale.'
' Bravo, Monsieur Carmagnole, cL la lanterne with your foe ! '
cried the chorus round the poet.
Ishmael had held that wasted figure in a firm grip as he
spoke, his fingers clutching the collar of the doublet. He loosed
his hold suddenly, turned on his heel, and walked away, the
crowd parting before him.
The poet broke into a peal of shrill laughter, chuckled and
crowed, rolled over in very exuberance of hysterical mirth, and
tumbled backwards into the fountain amidst a chorus of laughter
from the crowd,
301 Ishmael
' Ccst efatcmt,' said one.
* On se iord,' cried another, while a good Samaritan, dressed
like the old proven9al Bluebeard, with ferocious aziu'Q
moustachios, pulled the poet out of the marble basin.
He looked round at thera wildly, shivering in every limb.
' Ishmael 1 ' he muttered, ' Ishmael ! The man whose life I
saved on the fourth of December. So much for gratitude ! I'll
go home. My coach, gentlemen, my coach, as Ophelia says, in
Shakespeare's play. Tieck and Schlegel is the best translation ;
not de Vigny, nor even Charles Hugo. There is no good French
Hamlet. My coach, gentlemen. But where is my friend, the
little poet — Baudelaire in miniature — Musset pourrire — Konsai'd,
Voiture, the little Vicomte de Pontchartrain 1 '
His voice rose shrill above the crowd as he crossed the lawn
towards the open windows of the great rose-garlanded salon,
where the dance was dying away slowly, softly, in its last
languid circles, to the waltz in Gounod's * Faust.' Two of those
last dancers, Eonsard and a Grecian Sibyl, heard that drunken
call from the threshold. To one it was a sound full of alarm.
' Pardon me,' said the VicOmte, letting fall his partner's hand
and leaving the white-robed sibyl alone in the sea of dancers,
deserted, desolate as Ariadne at Naxos. * I must go to my friend.'
And then, having darted across the room to the open window
at which Valnois stood shivering in his wet black raiment, ashy
pale, the very ghost of pleasure and revelry, Pontchartrain caught
him roughly by the arm and exclaimed —
' In Heaven's name, come away. "What do you mean by
making a spectacle of yourself 1 '
' Only remembering the days that are gone. Will you take me
to my den in your carriage, or shall I go straight to Sainte-Anne ?
I am fitter for the hospital than anywhere else — except my grave.'
They went out together. It was a hurried exit, which gave
no opportunity for any adieu to Hortense. She had gone back
to her mother, who was sitting on a divan in the vestibule
among a little cluster of chaperons, powdered d la Pompa-
dour, gorgeous in brocade and diamonds, or with high curling
heads a la Maintenon, yawning behind their fans, desperately
weary. For the middle-aged the end of such mirth is heaviness.
Madame Jai'z^ sent some one in quest of the Columbine, who
was one of the last dancers in this last waltz, but who answered
the maternal summons I'eluctantly.
* It is the last ball of the season, mamma,' she said, discon-
tentedly ; *you need not hurry us away,'
' Hurry ! ' echoed Hortense, chagrined at Ajiollo's desertion ;
why, we have made onrselvea a spectacle by stopping after all
* Let Him Drink and Forget His Poverty^ 395
the best people have gone. Even Madame Clavaroche has
disappeared, and I believe the Baron went to bed ages ago.'
' Poor Baron, how pleasant it must have been to him to see
people laughing at his wife,' said Keratry.
'That is the great advantage of a masked ball,' replied
Amelie ; ' one can laugh at one's best friends with every apjieai'-
ance of innocence. Whan we come to the Baroness's afternoon
causerie next M-eek we shall all be serious, and we shall tell her
that she looked lovely as la belle Helhie'
CHAPTEE XXXVIII
•darkness for lioht, and light for darkness*
IsHMAEL walked home in the calm morning air througli the
silent, sleeping city, where the only signs of life were in the
region of the great centi^al markets, on the quays, and on the
bridges, across which the great waggons were slowly creeping,
laden with the produce of distant fields and gardens, farms and
orchards. To him this aspect of newly-awakened Paris was of
all her aspects the most familiar. He loved the quiet of her
sti^eets in the clear moi'ning light. He had walked from barrier
to barrier across all the width of the city on many a summer
morning when liis mind was full of some new scheme, and he
had to tight his way through the mechanical difficulties of the
work, to strike out new paths, to overcome obstacles that had
barred the progress of his predecessors in the same kind of work.
To-day it was not of some great combination of stone and
iron that he had to think — the thoughts that agitated him were
of his own life and his own destiny, and interwoven with that
life;9,nd destiny the fate of the woman he adored. Life and love
smiled upon him all in a moment after long years of shadow and
gloom. All things were well with him save this new peiil
which had come upon him like a thunderclap in the midst of his
delight — the peril of bloodshed, the chance of slaying his old
enemy, or being slain by him. For years he had waited for
this chance, had courted the opportunity, had held himself
cheated in so much as his own honour and his wife's sin
remained unavenged. And now the hour of vengeance had
struck, and it seemed to him an evil hour.
Could he recoil from the chance when it offered 1 He
remembered his challenge to the seducer, the pencilled scrawl
thi-ust into tlie frame of the looking-glass. Was this challenge to
prove but an idle threat because of the passage of time ? ■ There
are wounds that time can heal, wrongs that time can lessen, but
not such a wound or such a wrong as this.
Yet what a work had time done since the hour of Pdquerette'a
flight — ^Time, the avenger : what a wreck had time made of his
enemy 1 That haggard, ashen face, with its hollow eyes and
hollow cheeks, haunted him like the face of the very dead. It
was like an awful caricature — a ghastly Wiertz picture — of tliQ
• Darhness for Lights and Light for Darhicss ' 897
man he had known years ago — the poet, the jester, a little faded
by a life of late hours and intellectual labour, full of joyousnesa
and keen zest for pleasure. Now what a wreck ! what a pale
shadow of that brilliant youth ! Ishmael's heart sank as he
pictured the meeting with that ruin of a man. Sword in hand,
foot to foot with a spectre ! Could they two meet on equal terms ?
He stayed at home all the moi^ning, waiting for a message
from his foe. It would be late, perhaps, before the drunken
jester of last night would be sober enough to think and to
remember ; but when thought and memory came, Hector de
Valnois would surely answer as a gentleman should answer,
even a gentleman in ruins.
The morning seemed passing weary to Ishmael as he paced
up and down his study, waiting for a message from his foe, and
pining to be on his way to the viUa in the Bois de Boulogne, a
privileged guest. His papers lay untouched upon his desk. He
could neither work nor read. He could think of nothing but the
agitating scenes of last night. In one moment his thoughts
were of Constance and a blissful future ; in the next he was
haunted by the vision of Paquerette's pale face, the ship in
mid-ocean, the lonely death.
At last the expected messenger came in the person of
Armand de Kcratiy, with whom Ishmael was tolerably inti-
mate from frequent meetings at the Jarzes and at other haunts
of idle youth.
' I have spent the last two hours with your old friend — and
your old foe. Monsieur,' he said ; ' and I am charged by him to
offer you satisfaction for aU past wrongs. He will meet you
when you like, where you like, will give you the choice of
weapons. He acknowledges some deep wrong done you in the
past, the nature of which he has not communicated to me. I can
only say that the wrong must be indeed foul and unpardonable
if it can justifj- your thirst for revenge in your own mind and in
the sight of your fellow-man — to say nothing of the eye of Heaven,
which, I suppose, we may dismiss as an idle superstition.'
'It is no superstition in my mind, Monsieur de Kdratiy,'
answered Ishmael. 'The wrong done to me by Hector tie
Valnois was the deadliest wrong one man can do another — a
wrong that justifies me in demanding that man's life although
he once saved mine. There are some injuries that can only be
washed out with blood. I have waited for years for this atone-
ment, and atonement is doubly due now— due to the dead, to the
victim of that villain's treachery. Why should I hold my hand
to-day?'
* Because to meet that man with sword or pisf ol in hand
898 Ishmael
would be nothing less than murder. Do you think that wi-eck
of manhood, that mere shadow of a man, can meet you upon
equal terms ? Do you think that shaking hand, made tremulous
by the slow poison of absinthe, can have the faintest chance
with sword or pistol against your nerves of steel and muscles of
iron ? Can the dead stand up against the living ? You in the
pride of undamaged manhood, he the exhausted victim of an
evil life, of poverty, disappointment, despair. Would you call
upon a ghost to atone for the wrongs done by the living man ?
I tell you Hector de Valyois is no better than a ghost. If you
meet him, the duel will be suicide on his part, on yours mm-der.'
' Did he tell you to appeal to my compassion ? *
* JSTo ; a thousand times, no. The spirit of manhood is not
extinct even after years of poverty, absinthe, degradation. He
told me to come to you and arrange a speedy meeting — this
afternoon if you like, an hour before sunset, in a quiet hollow
beyond Vxncennes. He described the spot to me — not too
remote, yet secluded and safe. No, he has no wish to avoid a
meeting ; he has an ardent desire to facilitate one ; the feverish
haste of a man to throw away a life that has long seemed
worthless. But there is such a thing as compunction even on
the part of the deadliest foe ; and I tell you that to meet this
man would be murder, a crime that would weigh heavy on your
conscience, a sin that would haunt you to yom' dying day. The
man is nothing to me, remember — a chance acquaintance who
has been useful to me in literature, and whom I have paid for
his work. I plead to you as man to man, more in your own
interest than in his.'
' My own interest, my own inclination alike prompt me to hear
you,' answered Ishmael, gravely. ' If I cannot meet him on
equal terms, I cannot meet him at all. After what I saw last
night — well, yes ; you are right. How could that shaking hand
hold a sword against mine, which has gi-appled with a young
lion in Algeria. You are right. I must not meet him although
I cannot forgive him. If I alone had been the suiferer, pardon
might be possible ; but there is one dead— dead, broken-hearted
— whom he -oTonged worse than he wronged me. Her injuries
can never be purged except by the fire that burns away all sin.
Tell Hector de Valnois that I decline his offer of satisfaction. It
comes too late. Neither his blood nor mine can bring back the
dead, or undo the past. Tell him for the life he saved on the
fom-th of December, I give him his own ; and that, so far, life for
life, we are quits. Let him forget that he and I ever knew each
other. Let him forget his victim — if he can.'
And then after a moment or so of hesitation, he added,
*Darlcncss for Light, and Light for Darhness* 399
kurriedly, takiug some notes from liis desk and handing them to
Armand :
* You tell me he is in straitened circumstances. I shall be
grateful to you if you will relieve him — as though from your
own purse. He gave me his bed once, and dressed my wounds.
I bought him a good Samaritan in those days.'
Armand de Keratry took the little packet of bank-notes
without a word.
' I expected no less from you,' he said. * I know that you
are a brave man as well as a good man, and no brave man
would meet a foe upon unequal terms.'
They shook hands and parted, and Ishmael felt as if a
terrible burden was lifted off his mind by the result of this
interview. To slay or to be slain : neither a pleasant contin-
gency for a man who has just won the crowning grace of a
prosperous career — the love of the woman he adores. It was
two o'clock in the afternoon. He had not taken any rest since
the previous day. How long ago it seemed now ! What a deep
ravine had yawned asunder in the level monotony of daily life,
dividing yesterday from to-day ! He threw liimseK into an
easy-chair, and slept for an hour or more from sheer exhaustion ;
then dressed and drove to the villa in the Bois — that luxurious
home whose tlu-eshold he had not crossed since the June after-
noon when he avowed his intention never to marry. And now
he entered the hall with a firm, free step, as the affianced of the
mistress of the house.
The dogs came out and fawned upon him in friendly welcome
before the servant could announce him. ' Did she send them ? '
he wondered. He was a man to whom animals co.me as by an
instinct, sure in advance of his good will. Lion, the colley, jnit
hia nose into the visitor's hand and wont into tlie salon with
liim, while Bijou walked composedly by his side, looking up at
liim with serious black eyes as if she had been expecting him
fur ages. And in the sunny window, with a little world of
greensward, fountain, and roses outside, Constance was waiting
fur him with sweetest welcome.
And noAV began for Ishmael the halcyon days of his life— a
time of sweet communion vath the chosen among all woman-
kind — of growing iritimacy with a nobler nature than it had
been his lot to know until now. It was the absolute fulfilment
of his youthful dream — a loftier soul than his own, stooping
from higher spheres to bear him company on earth. TVhat bliss
to be understood as he had never been understood before — to
find perfect sym})athy, perfect comprehension — to ha\'e liis
amljition no longer regarded a3 the coinniun-pl.ice conti-acttir'a
400 Islwiael
greed of gain, but niiderstood from a loftier standpoint, as thfl
engineer's glory in great achievements, in difficulties vancjuished,
rough ways made smooth.
They had so much to talk about in the present and the
future, that it is scnrcely strange if he told her but little of the
past, since to have gone back upon the story of those early
days would have been to go too near the darkest passages of his
life. He told her of his wild free life in Biittany, of his scanty
stock of learning acquired from good Father Bressant, of the
circumstances that had driven him from his home, touching but
lightly on his father's injustice, his stepmother's ill-will; of
his marriage he said nothing beyond that first confession that
the breaking of an old tie had left him free. Constance had
drawn her own inferences, and had made up her mind that
Bome sad story was involved in this old tie ; and, for her part, she
so gloried and rejoiced in his love, she was so proud of having
won for her lover a man of a different stamp from all the other
men she had ever encountered — the ideal man ; in a word, the
worker, the victor, the man who had faced difficulties and over-
came them, aud whose wealth of knowledge in all things was
only less than his modest appreciation of his own acquirements.
She was so proud of her lover, that it never entered into her mind
to be curious about the details of his life. She was delighted to
listen when she could win him to talk of himself ; but she never
questioned him. Her faith in liim was boundless.
And so the summer days wore on, and the season waned, and
all the gorgeous-winged butterflies of Parisian society had flown
Southward to bluer skies, to game and dance, and flirt and gossip,
and dress and paint beside the tideless Mediterranean, only
transferring Parisian habits, Parisian extravagances, Parisian
luxurious living to the towns scattered along the Eivi^ra. The
Parisian was gone out of Paris, and only the trampling of
tourists — American, English, Belgian, German — p^nulated the
Boulevards and kept up the clink of glasses, the crowd of idlers,
at the little tables on the pavement in the sultry heat of July
afternoons.
Constance and her lover cared nothing for the departure of
these children of fashion and folly. They only waited till certain
legal preliminaries should be arranged, settlements drawn, com-
munications made with the lady's kindred, and so on. Lord
Kilrush wrote to express his gratification at his daughter's
engagement to so worthy a suitor as Monsieur Ishmael, whose
reputation was European, and at the same time conveyed his
regret at being under a medical regime, which forbade hia
leaving Homburg even for a few days, and thus prevented his
presence at the marriage ceremony.
CHAPTER XXXIX
•TnOTT DOST DWELL AMONG SCORPIONS
It was the eve of Islimael's wedding-day, the eve of a sultry day
at the beginning of August.
The heat had been oppressive even amidst the murmuring
bolighs of the Champs Elys^es and that fair wood beyond ; and
with the evening the air grew heavier as with the presage of a
thunderstorm, whereupon all the inhabitants of western Paris
who knew how to live drifted towards the wood and the cascade
to eat ices and smoke cigarettes betwixt starshine and lamplight,
to flirt or gossip to a pianissimo accompaniment of rushing
waters and waving leaves.
The train of carriages, with their coloured lamjis, looked like
an army of glowworms creeping along the leafy avenues under
the shades of night. Not a Jehu in all Paris but had his fare
on this August evening. The heat of those dazzling cafes on
the Boulevards was insupportable ; theatres were suggestive of
the Black Hole at Calcutta ; and even the stranger, to whom the
Parisian Boulevards are a wonder and a delight, pined for fresher
air and an escape from the glare an'l the din.
But if the summer night was sultry and stilling on the Boule-
vards and in the Palais Royal, what was it in the slums and low
neighbourhoods which hang on the skirts of Paris like a foul
fringe upon an Imperial robe ? There were slums and loathsome
spots still left even in the heart of this splendid Haussmann ised
city ; afld if there were ashes and blackness within the coi e of
the golden apple, how much the more might such evil things be
looked for outside, remote from the dwellings of those who wear
purple and fine linen.
Far from the roll of carriage wheels, the tramp of thorough-
bred horses, the glitter of palaces, and the bloom of palace
gardens, is a sordid eiternal zone of filth and poverty, and
famine and fever — a world that knew not Imperial Caesar save
as a name — a name which might mean anything, but which
certainly did not mean food and clothing and decent shelter.
Among these regions of outermost darkness in the far north of
Paris, near Clichy — a region as little known to the onlinary
Parisian visitor as the North Pole itself — there is a small aettle-
2 D
102 Ishnael
ment given over, for llie most, to tiie rag-picking confraternity,
and known as the Cite du Soleil.
It is not to the beauty of its situation, nor to the dazzle of
gilded domes and pinnacles, that this City of the Sun owes its
name ; nor has it been so christened in irony. The simple reason
that the place has been so called is, that the waste ground about
those wretched hovels has been planted time out of mind with
sunflowers, which thi'ive amidst the surrounding squalor, and
encircle the dwellings of the outcast with an aureole.
E.ich in all loathsome odours, black with the gi'ime of ages,
this City of the Sun surpasses all the other settlements of the
surrounding plain in squalor and hideousness. Where all are
vile, this ranks as vilest. The narrow alleys which separate the
huts where the rag-pickers sleep on their rags are mere muddy
channels, in which children, dogs, and swine crawl and grovel,
fighting with each other for the bones, the stale cabbage-stumps,
the putrid lobster-shells which fall from the rag-pickers' baskets.
The fronts of the rotten old hovels are decorated with skeletons
of cats, skulls of dogs, foxes' brushes. The sickening stench of
the place overpowers the passei'-by at ten yards distance.
The road near which lies this colony of dirt and poverty la
called the Route de la Revolte. The very name is sinister, but the
actuality is even more terrible — a long dreary road which goes
fi'om Neuilly to St. Denis, muddy in winter, dusty in summer — a
road which pierces a world given over to squalor and disrepute ;
nay, too often made notorious by some dark history of crime
— a region of waste places and dilapidated buildings, the comfort-
less shelter of mountebanks and beggara, scavengers, Israelitish
merchants in broken glass and rabbit skins, chair-menders — a
region in whose pestiferous alleys, and above whose stagnant
gutters hang the germs of typhoid and typhus, the seeds of
phthisis, the taint of cholera-morbus. Only the acclimatised can
exist in that polluted atmosphere.
On this August night not a breath of air stirred in the City
of the Sun, where the sunflowers were just unfolding theii
golden rays. A hot and heavy mist brooded over the dilapidated
roofs and rickety chimneys ; over the pigs, lazier than their
wont, as they sprawled in the sultry eventide ; the children ;
the gaunt, lean curs, lowest specimens of the dog family, ami
seemingly a peculiar breed of mongrel, engendered of po^'erty
and dirt.
It was between eight and nine o'clock. The mountebanks
and beggars, the lame, the halt, and the blind were crawling
home, shuffling off" their various infirmities as they came along.
The sickly children, ill enour^h, in all conscience, with the chronic
* TJlOU dost Dwell Among Scorpions * 403
disease of i^oveity, yet simulating other maladies ; the widowa
who never had husbands ; the orphans whose fathers are wait-
ing at home to beat them ; the men with organs, with monkeys,
and with performing dogs ; these, jocund some cf them, weary
all, are creeping back to their nests, while the rag-pickers are
going out. In an hour the City of the Sun will be almost
deserted by the profession by which it is particularly affected.
But there are some few dwellers in those evil-smelling dens who
are not of the brotherhood of the basket and lantern, and these
are the more dangerous inhabitants of the place. From these
tlie City of the Sun derives its second name of the Little Mazas,
so called because its occupants have either just come from prison,
or are just going there.
In one of the hovels, a den in a dark corner furthest from
the highway, a woman lay on a wretched pallet, gazing at the
waning light, drawing her breath heavily as if each respiration
were a labour and a pain. An old crone, bent, withered,
wrinkled, crouched beside the hearth, upon which an iron pot
simmered and bubbled above a handful of embers. The entire
furniture of the room consisted of the pallet-bed, two broken
chairs, an old egg box which did duty for a table, and a heap of
rags in a corner, which served the crone for a bed.
°The woman had been languishing in that wretched den for
weeks, wasting in the deadly grip of pulmonary disease. There
had been days on which she rallied and was able to crawl about
in the sunshine, seized now and again with that terrible cough
of hers, obliged to hold on to some dilapidated railing or door-
post while she was shaken by the convidsive violence of a
coughing fit which almost meant suffocation. There had been
days on°which she had crept into Paris, and had crawled as far
as the Boulevard Montmartre, and looked with her wan ghost-
face at the crowd and the movement of the city, only to go
back to her hovel exhausted by the exertion, and, to all appear-
ance, having discounted the brief remnant of her days by that
impi-udent waste of power.
The crone yonder had urged this dying grandchild of hers
to apply for free quartei-s at the hospital. There she would be
tended, and fed, and doctored ; there she could have all she needed.
Here she could have very little— a cup of wretched soup made of"
bones from the basket, a crust of dry bread from the same foul
source. Money the crone had none, she protested ; in actual truth,
every farthing she earned was spent for drink. She had been a
drunkard seventeen years ago in the Eue Sombreuil when that
wasted form upon the pallet waa young and fair. She was a
drunkard now — a patron of the local assommoir — a consumer of
404 IsJimael
that vPe brandy wliose ficiy flavour Las won for it the name
of ' vitriol,' or casje-poilrine, in the slang of the unlucky wi'etdiea
who drink it.
Yes, that pallid, haggard face was the face of Paquerette.
Those faded eyes, gazing wearily at the setting sun seen tlirough
the open door — a fiery shield at the end of a long vista of huts
and pig-styes, sheds and broken railings — those pale, sad eyes were
the eyes that were once as lovely as the eyes of the Greuze in the
Louvre ; innocent, childlike eyes, looking up at Ishmael with the
tender trustfulness of a child. They had seen the world since
those days, poor faded eyes ! They had looked on strange people
and sti-ange cities ; they had confronted the glare of the foot-
lights, the bi'onzed faces of men of many nations, the fumes of
drink and tobacco. Yes, she had seen the world, poor little
Paquerette ; she had led a life of change and adventure with
her Bohemian lover. She had been rich and poor, happy and
miserable. She had feasted, and she had starved, had alternated
between fine clothes and rags, had shared the ups and downs of
a clever, unscrupulous man, who lived by his wits ; and finally
there had come an end. Hector de Valnois' fortunes had taken
the downward slope. His health had declined with the decline
of his prosperity. He became irritable, hypochondriac, a martyr
to neuralgia, a man most difficult to Uve with.
In Valpai'aiso, where Pdquerette was earning money as a
singer at a French cat4-concert, he was seized with nostalgia,
sickened for Paris, felt that in no other place could his strength
revive, nowhere else could the freshness and vigour of his brain
be restored. He had lost the power to write prose or poetry.
It was this diabolical country which burnt up his brain with its
feverish atmosphere, its hot winds and seething mists. Nor
could he write in exile. He wanted contact with his feUow-
men. This is why his faculty as poet, as journalist, as novehst,
playwright, critic had been declining for the last ten years.
He made up his mind one wakeful night — toi-mented by heat
and mosquitoes — that he would sail for France by the next vessel
that left the port.
' You will meet Ishmael, and he will kill you,' gasped
Paquerette, white with fear at the very thought of her husband'a
. vengeance. ' He swore that he would kill you ; I heard him.'
' That was ten yeai's ago. Do you suppose he has not got
over the loss of you by this time ? ' asked Hector, with a sneer.
It was in vain that Paquerette pleaded. The next French
Bteamer took them back to Marseilles, and from Marseilles they
travelled to Paris without an hour's avoidable delay. They
arrived in the great city almost penniless, but Hector de Valnoia
^Thoio dost Dwell Among Scorinons 405
W-as past-master of the mysteries of Parisian life — from the
palace to the gutter. He found a cheap lodging in the labyrinth
of narrow streets near the Luxembourg, and here P&querette
and he existed for nearly three years, she accejjted as his wife
by the few who crossed the threshold of his shal^by home.
Here de Vahiois did journeyman's work for his old publishers,
for the Figaro, for the Coisaire, working under a nom de plume,
ashamed that the Parisian world should know the author of
Mcs Nuifs Blanches ha.d sunk to the scribbler of stray paragiapha
and the puffer of wealthy advertisers. He kept aloof from all
who had known him in his butterfly stage, his brief day of
splendour and success. He rarely rose till noon, rarely went
out of doors till nightfall. He dined at some popular restaurant
in the students' quarter after everyone else's dinner was over.
He was always later than other people. He was the last to
leave the billiard room or the cafe, the last to send in his copy
to the newspaper from which he drew the pittance upon which
he lived.
Paquerette earned no money in Paris. She did not even try
to get an engagement at theatre or concert. First, she had a
morbid dread of being seen by her husband ; secondly, her voice
began to fail her soon after her return to Paris. She had caught
a severe cold on the steamer on board which she and Hector
travelled as second-class passengers. Her health declined ; her
beauty faded ; the bird-like soprano voice grew thin and feeble.
The Paquerette of the pc«st was dead. The white Easter daisy
had faded for ever.
Poverty is but a sour soil for the fragile floweret called love.
These two had been faithful to each other through changing
fortunes. They had been brave and hopeful so long as in the
evil hour there was a chance of change for the better. But they
had sunk now into the level monotony of hopeless poverty ;
and that condition of things is trying to the temper, especially
to a man's temper. One day Hector disgraced his manhood
eternally by telling his faithful companion that she was a
burden to him, a clog, an incubus ; that his fatal passion for
her had blighted his prospects, ruined his life; that, but for
her, he would have been the successor of Alfred de Musset, a
favourite guest at Fontainebleau and Compiegne, a member of
the Academy, a rich man. It was a burst of sj^leen, of wounded
pride ; the bitter sense of failure ; the proud man's rage at the
success of his inferiors. It was a sudden gust of all evil feelings
concentrated in one angry speech. It was the passion of a
moment, the savage outburst of a fallen angel stung by gadflies.
It had no real significance ; but it broke Paquerette's heart.
iOG Ishnael
She answered uot a word. She stood before hira white aa
death and as motionless. She stood and watched him as he
flung on his hat and dashed out of the room. It was on the
edge of night, and he was going to his favourite haunt in the
Place de la Sorbonne, Le Picrate, famous for its absinthe.
When he was gone, she went to her bedroom and put a few
things together in an old shawl, which she pinned into a little
package with tremulous hands. Then she put on her nisty
little black-lace bonnet, tied her black veil tightly across her
hollow cheeks, and went out into the street, leaving the key
with the portress as she went by.
' You can tell Monsieur I am not coming back any more,
she said.
The woman stared at her, not taking in the full meaning of
her words. She spoke too quietly to mean anything tragic.
She meant just what she said : never to go back to him any
more. She was leaving him for ever — the maia for whom she
had sacrificed husband, home, good name, and all the best and
brightest years of her life. She was running away just as she
had run away from the Eue Sombreuil fifteen years ago to
escape her grandmother's ill-treatment. Poor little Paquerette I
Her only notion of self-defence was to run away.
Fifteen years ago she had fled from the Rue Sombreuil.
To-night she went back there — winding like the hunted hare to
her form, and nearly as hard sped as the hunted hare. In all
Paris she knew of uo friend to whom she could safely appeal in
her dire necessity except those first friends of hers who liad
looked with compassion upon her miserable girlhood. Of
Lisette Moque, that fast friend of later days — the friend who
had encouraged her in her folly — she thought with a shudder,
for to Lisette's fatal influence she traced her own faU. The
experience that should have guided her steps in the midst
of danger, the worldly knowledge which should have saved
her, had only been used to her disadvantage. No. Had she
been starving and shelterless in the streets of Paris, she
would not now have accepted shelter and food from Madame
Moque.
It was a long walk from the Luxembourg to the Eue
Sombreuil for limbs that had lost much of their youthful
elasticity, and there was only disappointment at the end of the
journey. The old portress was in her dusky den by the
doorway ; the courtyard and staircase looked exactly as they had
looked fifteen years ago, only so much the more squalid, so much
the darker, uglier, drearier by the passage of those fifteen years.
*The Benoits axe gone,' aaid the' hag, staring liard all
• Thou dost Dwell Amoiig Scorpions ' 407
Pclquerette's closely-veiled face ; ' oh, but gone for ages. The
little Mam'selle, she that was Jolie d croquer, she married a
baker from Eouen seven years agOj and they went to Rouen to
live soon after their marriage ; and then the big Mam'selle, la
grande Lisheth, married an Englishman, and she and the cousin,
Mam'selle Toinette, went to London.'
AH this had happened ages ago.
Pdquerette leaned against the greasy door-post, trembling
and faint. How much she had hoped for — succour, consolation,
Christian charity — here, where she found nothing. Gone to
Eouen, gone to London — those old friends. To her the case
seemed as hopeless as if they had gone to Siberia. How could
she follow them — she, who had only a few francs in her shabby
little purse ; she, who turned cold, and faint, and weak at the
slightest mental distress ?
* Have you heard anything lately of a woman who once lived
in those rooms ? ' she asked, presently, pointing to those old case
ments on the ground floor, which were a little cleaner than they
had been in M^re Lefnoine's time, and which were ornamented
with a few tufts of primroses and cowslips, growing in old black-
ing bottles ; * But, of course, she is dead 1 She must have been
dead for years.'
'Mere Lemoine, do you mean ?' cried the portress.
Paquerette nodded assent.
' Mere Lemoine is not dead, Madame ; M^re Lemoine is as
much alive as the Emperor — more so, perhaps, for people say
that the Emperor has a malady which will kill him, and that he
is beginning to fail already, while Mere Lemoine seems as if
she would never die. It is a healthy occupation, that of a rag-
picker, to be out all night in the cool air when the streets are
empty and the town is quiet.'
' She is living, then ? — and a rag-picker 1 Poor soul ! '
* Well, it is not a pleasant trade ; but they seem to thrive
upon it. Mere Lemoine must be eighty years of age. She came
into this yard within the last month. She knows that she can
get a taste of brandy once in a way for the sake of old times.
She is bent nearly double, withered, and wrinkled — Dieu de Diexo,
how withered, how wrinkled 1 But she is alive, and as hale and
hearty as you or L'
She was still living, then, that old, old woman, the grand-
mother who had beaten her, and scolded her, and driven her as
a fugitive from that very house ; and now the time had come
when Pdquerette's last hope of a refuge was from the charity of
that very grandmother. The whirligig of time had brought
about its own revenges. There was nothing for her save this or
4.03 Ishmael
the hospital And she was not ill enough to ask State charity--
If she had been, she might have preferred the hospital.
' Do you know where Mere Lemoine lives V she asked.
' She lives in a place where a great many of the rag-pickers live.'
' In the Kue Sainte-Marguerite ? '
' No, no ; ever so much further off than the Rue Sainte-
Marguerite. She lives up by Clichy, on the Route de la Rdvolte,
in a place called the Cit^ du Soleii — a place given over to rag-
pickers.'
' The Cit(5 du Soleii,' repeated Paquerette, faintly, for she
was very tired after her walk ; ' I suppose I shall be able to find
the place ? '
' Why not ? You have a tongue in your head,' answered the
woman, carelessly ; for Paquerette did not look a person likely
to pay for politeness. ' You have to find your way to Clichy,
and then any one will show you the Cit^ du Soleii.'
Paquerette thanked her, and left the Rue Sombreuil for ever.
She walked some distance in the direction of Clichy, and then,
almost ready to drop, she found there was an omnibus which
would carry her for a considerable stage of the journey for a few
sous. This helped her, and in the spring night, between eight
and nine o'clock, she arrived at the City of the Sun— just when
the rag-pickers were issuing from their hovels, a little procession
of old men and women, each with a lantern swinging at the end
of a stick— a train of glowworm^ in the spring night.
Paquerette put up her veil, and stood by the roadside to
watch them go by. The stars were shining in the April sky, tha
night was soft and gray rather than dark. Everyone turned to
look at that figure standing by the wayside with a white, wan
face, evidently watching for something or someone. The rag-
pickers went by slowly, moving stifiiy, halting in their walk like
old horses after an interval of rej^ose. Some of them mumbled
and muttered as they hobbled along as if chewing the cud of
better days. Paquerette gazed piteously at those old wrinkled
faces, at the women most of all, looking for her grandmother.
Almost at the tail of the dismal procession came a hag more bent
and decrepit than any other example of age and misery presented
by that squalid company. Her head nodded, her chin worked
convulsively as she tottered along, mouthing, muttering. Her
lantern shook like a light on a ship at sea, hei' skinny hand
trembled as it clutched her stafi". She, too, inquisitive even in
her semi-imbecility, turned and peei'ed with dim, bleared eyeballs
at the figure by the wayside.
Something in the crone's nutcracker countenance was familiar
to those sad eyes looking out of the pale face.
* Thou dost Divell Amciig Scorpiom * 4:09
•Grandmother ! ' faltered Pdquerette, faintly.
The crone started, and then came close to her, staring at her,
devouring her, with wild, haggard eyes.
* Jeanneton ! ' she screamed. ' It is my daughter's ghost.'
* No, grandmother ; it is your daughter's daughter, broken-
hearted, like her mother ; wretched, and poor, and friendless^ like
her mother. You see it runs in the family.'
' Why, then, it is Paquerette,' cried the hag, ' that shame-
less rag of a granddaughter — the child I reared out of charity,
and who deserted me in my old age.'
She planted her staff upon the dusty ground, and stood lean-
ing upon it, gazing at Paquerette, while the squalid regiment
of rag-pickers moved onward, and the twinkling lights melted
and vanished in the gray eventide.
' I did wrong, grandmother ; but you were too hard upon me.
You beat me because I refused to marry a man I hated.'
' To hate such a man ! Oh, the folly of these girls ; ' cried
the hag : * a man who had saved money ; a man whose wife is a
lady. I have seen her. Do you hear, child ? I have seen the
Charabia's wife. She was a servant at a wine-shop in the Eue
de la Roquette — a brazen wench. He married her a year after
you ran away. Ah, but she lives well ; she has a warm nest.
She is one of the fattest women in the Fauboui'g Saint- Antoine.
She goes to the theatre twice a week. She wears a silk gown
on Sundays. Ah, you were a fool, PS,querette — a fool. Just
like your mother. All young women are fools.'
* Yes, grandmother, I have been a fool, but not for refusing
to marry the Charabia, not even for running away from you.
I have been a fool, and my folly has left me without a friend, or
a roof to cover me. Can you give me shelter till I can look
about and do something to earn my living 1 '
' Shelter — but — yes ; I have a home, a snug little home, and
you shall share it. Folks shall not have to say that I refused
shelter even to a runaway granddaughter. Your mother ran
away, and she came back — back to tlie old nest. And you, you
too have come back. Strange, very strange,' muttered the old
«voman, prattling on in a senile fashion as she led the way to
the City of the Sun.
The City of the Sun ! In all Pdquerette's varied experience
she had never beheld anything so hideous as that coDection of
hovels, and pig-styes, and dust-heaps, all grouped together hap-
hazard — human and porcine habitations nestling side by side,
dust-heaps piled against the walls on a level with bedroom
windows. The house in the Rue Sombreuil was an abode of
luxury, a hourgcoise and cossve habitation, as compared with
410 tshmael
these dilapidated shanties of worm-eaten wood, or crumbling
plaster. A pane of glass here and there in a window was the
rare exception that proved the rule of broken casements stuffed
with brown paper, rags, old hats, and rotten straw. The chief
endeavour of the inhabitants seemed to be, not to let the light in
at their windows, but to keep the weather out. Thus, an old
boot, or a saucepan lid was deemed an appropriate substitute
for a broken pane.
And the odours : the foetid stream of animal corruption ;
the rank taint of rotten vegetables ; the sickly, indescribable
stench, which combined all imaginable foulness in one loathsome
essence — from these Paquerette recoiled, shuddering ; but the
grandmother's skinny fingers gripped her shawl and drew her on.
' I have a snug little home at the end here, in a nice, sheltered
corner,' she muttered, chuckling and gibbering as she went
along. ' I haven't paid any rent for six months. They are a
rough lot about me, and the collector got friglitened the last
time he came to our end of the place, and has never ventured so
far since. There are some queer fellows live next to me —
Italians, very quick with their knives ; and they threatened to
stab that fine gentleman when he came prying about with a
leather money-bag across his chest and a little bottle of ink in
liis waistcoat pocket. He has never been near me since.'
She led the way to the idtima Thule of the City of the Sun —
a liut more dilapidated than any they had passed yet, for the
roof was half off, and the rotting rafters wei'e covered with an
old mattress and a piece of taiTJaulin. There was not a pane of
glass left in the old leaden casement ; there was not an inch of
unbroken jjlaster on the wails ; and the floor was the primitive
earth. Ill one corner there was a huge heap of rags ; in another
a smaller pile of broken glass and old metal ; in the middle of
the floor a collection of more valuable d^h'is — bones, relics of
stale fish, crusts, cabbage-stumps. These were intended to
furnish M6re Lemoine's larder. On one side of the bare hearth
there was an old iron pot, which formed the hag's entire hatterie
cle cuisine ; on the other stood a bent and battered bj"azen candle-
stick, holding a couple of inches of tallow candle, which the
old woman lighted at the flame of her lantern.
Horror-stricken at the aspect of this den, Pdquerette
recoiled on the very threshold. Surely it would be better to
sleep under the open sky, to lie in a ditch, than to inhabit such.
a hole as this. But she remembered that in Paris it needs a
long education in pauperism to be able to sleep out of doors, so
keen are the authorities upon the amateur vagrant. She had
heard Hector de Valnois describe the shifts of his Bohemian
!thou dost Dzvell Among Scoi'inons ' 41i
acquaintance — the Rdfractaires of society — their lifelong duel
with the sergents-de-ville. And at this very moment her limbs
were sinking under her with faintness and fatigue. Her feet
would have refused to carry her a hundred yards further. She was
sorely changed from the light-footed slij) of a girl who had fled
like a lapwing from the Bastille to Meuilmontant fifteen j^eavs
ago. Fifteen years ! Ah ! what a weary time, and what a
dreary change those years have brought !
'There,' cried the hag, triumphantly, pointing to the wretched
pallet ' There is a nice, comfortable bed, where you can take
your ease of a night while I am toiling for a living. If you
want a crust, you will find plenty there,' nodding towards the
heajD of nameless debris ; ' and a savoury bone into the bargain.
I must be oflP, or I shall lose my chances on the Boulevard
Poissonni^r'e ; that's my beat. Tliere are some rare bits to be
picked up at the restaurants along there ; and there would be
much better pickings, only the little sisters of the poor get the
best of everything, taking the bread out of our mouths. If ' —
here she hesitated, as before making a stujoendous sacrifice — ' if
you want anything to drink, there's a taste of casse-poitrine
left in the bottle there.'
' Brandy, do you mean 1 ' faltered Paquerette. ' Yes, I
Bhonld like a little drop : I feel faint and sick.'
The old woman looked at her doubtfully, with a disappointed
air, as of one who had expected her offer to be refused. She
went over to the heap of rags, and groped for a bottle that she
had hidden under the unsavoury pile. She brought it out with
a reluctant air, and held it up against the flame of the candle.
* There's not much more than a taste,' she said : ' we'll
share it.'
To be certain of fair play, she drank her own half first
out of the bottle, which she handed afterwards to her grand-
daughter.
Pdquerette returned it untouched. The idea of that heap of
foul rags revolted her. She could not taste anything kept in
such a hiding-place.
'A little water, please,' she faltered.
Alas I water in that human kennel was less attainable than
brandy. There was a rickety cask in front of a hovel three or
four doors ofi^, which received the drippings of rain water from
the rotten roofs above, and tliis was the only sujoply to which
Mke Lemoine ever resorted. Although loath to delay her
setting forth any further, the old woman took a cracked mug
from the mantel-shelf and hobbled off to fetch some water. She
came back with the mug full of a blackish fluid, which PSquerette
412 Ishnael
drank greedily, with fever-parched lips, Only discovering ita
]jutrid taint after she had drunk.
She sank down upon the wretched pallet, jnst as she must
have sunk upon the bare ground outside if there had been no
such couch. Her strength was exhausted, her course was run.
Loathsome as the den was, she had no power to leave it for a
better shelter. Had a comfortable home been waiting for her a
quarter of a mile off, she could not have crawled so far.
This was the beginning of long days and nights of pain and
penance. If Paquerette had known intervals of remorse and
Buffering before, those transient periods of sorrow were as light
as thistle-down compared with the weight of anguish which
oppressed her soul as she lay hour after hour in the solitude of
her kennel — always alone, for the witch-like figure of the old
grandmother squatting beside her heap of rags, sorting and
separating her grimy stock-in-trade with still grimier fingers,
muttering and nodding the while over her work — such com-
panionship as this could hardly be called society. And when
the rags were sorted in the chill morning hour, the crust
mumbled, the bone gnawed, the hag drained her measure of
casse-poitrine and rolled herself in a corner among her rags to
sleep through the summer day. Sorry company at best.
And then the melancholy nights, when the hag was gone
forth on her filthy quest in the gutters of the great city ; and
when the dying woman lay broad awake, gazing at the clouds
sailing past in the far-off sky, or the summer stars shining in
that fair infinite of which she knew so little. She had taken
away the rubbish that had choked the casement, so as to get all
the air she could in her den When the old woman grumbled
at the open window, Paquerette contrived a temporary screen
with her shawl and the rush seat of an old chair that had long
parted with its legs ; but all night while Mfere Lemoine was
away she had the casement open to the weather, even albeit the
night was stormy, and the wind and the rain beat in upon her
bed. It was air she wanted most of all, air for that labouring
chest, that weary heart. Ah, what long hours of agony, of
retrospection, of bitter memories ! How fuU of sadness were
the visions of her head upon her bed in those silent summer
iiights ! silent save for a gust of evil speech, the noise of distant
brawlers borne by upon the wind. What heart-rending thoughts
of the might have been I What keen regret for the things
which were !
It was not of her seducer that she thought most in those sad
night-watches — not of him for whom she had surrenderad home
nud good name. It was upon the image of the wronged
' Thcni dost Dwell Among Scorpions ' 413
husband that her mind dwelt ; it was upon all that life might
have been had she honoured her marriage vow. It was of that
lost destiny she thought. She knew now the worth of the man
she had deserted ; knew hia value by contrast with the man for
whose sake she had deserted him. She knew that she had flung
away the fine gold and taken to herself the dross. She had been
very faithful to that bond of dishonour. Thus far, at least, she
had been superior to the herd of fallen women. She had sinned
once and for ever ; she had accepted the penalty of her sin.
She had never tried to lessen her burden. She had borne with
her lover's fitful temper, slaved for him, obeyed him, cherished
him with sublime self-abnegation only to be told at last that
she had blighted his life !
Her downward career had been full of trouble and weariness ;
but she had clung to her comrade in misfortune, all the more
faithful because the road they trod together was rough and
thorny. And at the end of all he flung her constancy in her
face, told her that she had been a clog upon his actions, the
cause of all his failures. That last insult had broken her heart.
And now, in these long and lonely days, unclieered by friendship,
unsustained by religion, amidst foulest surroundings, in pain and
penury, Paquerette's memory went back to her married life, to
the peaceful, gracious home she had abandoned, and to the
husband who had been all goodness and all indulgence for her,
and whose only fault had been to work over-hard for the future
wliich they two were to share together. All, what a happy life it
seemed, her life on that second floor at Menilmontant looked back
upon from her den in the City of the Sun ! She had not known a
care in those days. Her nest had been soft and warm, her purse
well filled. And now, alas ! the story of the prodigal son was
recalled to her as she thought that Ishmael's dog had better fare
than the mouldy crusts or the rancid broth which was ofiered to
her dry lips by the grandmother's charity.
And for her there was no possibility of return. She could
not go back like the prodigal son, and confess her sorrow fur
her sin. Her sin was of a kind wliich sets an eYerlasting barrier
between the sinner and the offended one. God would forgive
her, perhaps. Her Creator and her Judge would accept thia
long penance in sackcloth and ashes ; but lahmael could not
pardon. For what motive had she sinned against him ? For a
fancy, for a dream, for the impulse of an idle mind. Looked
back upon now in her misery, that sin seemed as motiveless as it
had proved fatal.
Memory travelled back to even earlier days — to that joyous
holiday under green leaves, that midsummer day in the wooda
414 Islmiacl
of Marly, Slie had loved Ishmael then, looking up at him aa
to a being of superior mould, adoring him with innocent girlish
worship, as pure of smil in her dingy ground-floor den as tlje
most high-bred damsel in the Faubourg Saint-Germain just
emerged from conventual seclusion. The snowdrop in the
workman's window unfolds itself from its green sheaf as fair a
blossom as the tuber-rose in a duchess's conservatoiy. The
taint and the grime come later to the open flower. Yes,
Paquerette had been pure in those days, and had given Ishmael
a holy and an innccent love. And Fate had smiled upon her
as it smiles on few of her class ; and she had won a good and
true man for her husband. And then came a life too free from
care, days too easy, idleness that corrupts the soul ; and for
a frivolous fancy she gave her life to shame and dishonour.
She had leisure enough in which to trace the progress of her
folly as she lay stai-ing up at the sky, her only prospect, or
watching the gi-een tops of the simflowers grow taller as the
days went by, only token of the passage of time except the
j-acking cough and the sharp pain in her side, which grew a
little worse every day. And, oh, the bitterness of those keen
regrets, the dull agony of remorseful memories which travelled
again and again over the same ground ! Only the sinner who
has lost all because of one irreparable act knows the sharpness
©f such a repentance.
In those long blank days Paquerette's fine ear grew accus-
tomed to every sound in the City of the Sun — unmelodious,
harsh, discordant sounds, for the most part, which were a pain
to that delicate sense of hearing ; the grunting of pigs ; the
shrill yells and evil language of the gutter-brood, sprawling and
squabbling in the sunsliine and the dirt, children only a little
higher than the animals they played with and fought with ; the
yelping of dogs ; the crowing and cackling of a ragged regiment
of fowls ; the grating sound of a hurdy-gurdy, the treble piping
of a tin-whistle ; the still harsher sounds of human quarrelling,
which seemed always at a pitch of acrimony that touched the
edge of murder.
There were two or three itinerant musicians among the
dwellei-s in the sunflower city, and of these the best known to
Paquerette were a pair of Italian organ-grindere, who inhabited
the den next M5i'e Lemoine's dwelling. The rotten partitions
were so thin, that Paquerette could hear every tone of their
voices — nay, coidd sometimes hear their very words, though she
was rarely able to understand more than a sentence here and
there. This was not because they spoke Italian, for in the
coui-se of her Southern wanderings Pdquerette had learned a good
* TJlOU dost Divell Among Scorpions* 415
deal of Italian, and a little Spanish ; but because they, for the
most part, spoke in a NeapoUtan patois curiously interlarded
with the newest Parisian slang.
Sometimes, of a summer evening, after Mfere Lemoine had
gone out with her basket and her lantern, the two ItaHana
would rest themselves after their labours on a bench in front of
their den, smoking and talking in the twilight while their
macai'oni was simmering on the hearth inside, sending forth
savomy odours of cheese and garlic. And at these times
Paquerette could hear every word they said. Unseen as they
were, they were her only companions. She became interested iu
them from the very desolation of her lonely life. They were
two human voices near her. She envied them each other's
company. They seemed to be kind to each other, brotherly. It
was pleasanter to hear them than the grunting of pigs, the howl of
a half-starved cur. Their Italian voices had a low, rich sound as
of music. Little by little her keen intelligence got to undei'stand
their patois, and she could follow almost every woi'd they said.
They were keen politicians, talked much of Fi-ance and of
Italy, of secret societies, and of one great society, which was to
bind together the working classes all over the ciTilised world — a
brotherhood before which kings and crowns were to go down,
and palaces to cx'umble or be turned into Phalansteries. They
talked of the Carbonari ; or Orsini, and his attempt upon the life
of the Emperor \ and how Napoleon visited him in his cell at
Mazas upon the eve of his execution, and swore to liberate Italy
from the yoke.
* It was well for him that he kept his promise,' said the elder
brother, ' for there are forty of the Carbonari who took a
solemn oath to slay him if he delayed the redemption of the
pledges he gave in his youth. But now he is with us. He, who
a few years ago condemned a handful of students for holding a
political meeting, now encourages the International with heart
and hand.'
' Every tradesman must go with the times,' answered the
other, with sardonic air — ' the man who trades iu kingdoms and
sceptres most of all.'
' And now the Emperor is going to help working-men to
insure their lives, to leave something after death for the wife
and little ones, and to make a fund against accident or illness.
The State is to find part of the money. The workman is to pay
his modicum.'
The other laughed aloud at this ideal of prudence and economy.
'How many of those model workmen are there, do you
tfiink, who care what becomes of their brood when they are
416 Ishmael
lying in their gi-atia trench 1 If they have any spare cash, it
goes to the assommoir, or the bastringue. What we want ia
something more than to be helped to save our own money. We
want to bring down masters to the level of their men ; we want
a fair division of profits inetead of starvation wages. What we
want is co-operative labour : co-operation between workmen
which should put an end to the patron ; co-operation between
the workman and the State which should do away with the
middle-man. We want to see the last of those harpies, the
army-contractors, for example, who sweat their gold out of the
brows of their journejonen. Let the Government give out their
materials to a syndicate of workmen, who will return the finished
articles at the bare cost of the labour employed upon them. No
intermediary between the country that pays and the labourer
who works. But, no ; the Government would rather encourage
the slave-dealer, the man who grinds the faces of the poor. I say,
that no man has the right to grow rich by another man's labour ;
and the great capitalist who employs a thousand labourers is as
vile a cheat as the Padi'one you and 1 have had to deal with,
who grows rich out of half a hundred barrel-organs and as maay
white slaves to grind them.'
* I know of such a one,' growled the other ; ' a man who used
to dine at a seven-sous ordinaire sixteen years ago. I have sat
beside him many a time. He was a labourer, a mason's drudge,
in those days ; and now he is a great man ; builds bridges,
viaducts, railways ; and is one of the millionaires of Paris. This
Monsieur Ishmael used to be a voice among the Reds ; he was a
great man among us in the old days, when we were called the
Society de la Loque, and used to meet in a back room at Villette ;
but he has changed his tune since he has grown rich. Tliey all
change from the day they can manage to scrape together two or
thi'ee thousand francs.'
* Grace d Bieu, I have never let myself be corrupted by
saving money,' said tlie easy-tempered younger brother ; ' when
I have two or three sous, I change them for a glass of ptftrole,
which warms blood and brain, instead of cooling them, as
money does.'
' I have known the want of money heat a man's blood to
fever-point, to murder,' said Gavot, the elder.
' True,' replied the younger with a lazy yawn. ' But so lorg
as I have a handful of macaroni in the pot and a shelter from
the storm, I can make myself happy.'
' I am not of your temper. I hate poverty, and I hate rich
men. Ishmael' has been a marked man for the last three years.
Le t bim beware. The Prolos do not forgive renegades.'
'Thou dost Dwell Among Scorpions^ 417
Tliis was tlie first time Pfiquerette heard her husband's
name mentioned by the Neapohtans. A f ter this she took a still
keener interest in their conversation, and was always listening
for that one name, or for any allusion to Ishmaul. She heanl
them sj)eak of him on several occasions, heard them talk of his
successes, his wealth with just the same keen envy that she had
heai'd expressed by Hector de Valnois many a time upon the
same subject ; for that hatred which the loser feels for the
winner in the race of life is a common weakness of poor
humanity, exemplified on a large scale, say, by the hatred which
Prussia felt for France from the day of her defeat at Jena to the
(lay of hor revenge at Sedan, and on a lower level b}' the
detestation of an insolvent baker foi his prosperous rival in the
same street.
Hector de Valnois, gentleman, poet, sybarite, had hated the
self-made man for his victory over fortune ; and from the lips of
this organ-grinder, who had known Ishmael in his early
struggles, Paquerette heard the same droppings of venomed
speech.
One night the two brothers — they who were, for the most
part, so brotherly — quarrelled in their cups. Paquerette heard
tliem, and shuddered, discovering for the first time how terrible
the wrath of these Southern natures can be. They seemed to be
on the point of killing each other. She heard them struggle,
guessed from their speech that knives were brandished, and
that blood was shed. She held her breath, e^ipecting every
moment to hear the death-groan. But the noise of the scuffle
grew fainter, and died into silence. And next morning the two
men went out with their organs, singing gaily, fast friends and
good brothers.
And now, in the lurid August sunset, they were sitting out-
side her door, smoking their pipes and talking of Ishmael ;
talking in low and muttered tones, so that Paquerette could
only catch a word here and there.
This had gone on for some time, and then Gavot, the man
who claimed old acquaintance with Ishmael, raised his voice,
and said, in an angry tone :
*He refused me fifty francs — he — on the eve of his wedding
with a wealthy Englishwoman, a marriage that will double his
fortune, they say — refused fifty francs to an old acquaintance —
a brother of the SocUte de la Loque. There was a day when, if
I had denounced him as a member of that secret society, he
would have been sent to Cayenne, as those others were after
the coup (JCetat. If I were to denounce him now, it might be
the worse for him — renegade — turncoat as he is. He refused
2 H
418 Ishmael
me a handful of francs — refused help to an old fellow-woi'lvnian ;
leferred me to some benevolent society he has founded. I kno\^
them, those benevolent societies. They are invented to ask
questions and pry into a poor man's affairs rather than to give
him a dinner or a bed. And he is to be married to-morrow
to an English lady — une jeune Mees Ladrj Constance quelque-
chose ; a grand marriage at the church of St. Philippe du Eoule.
Perhaps he may have more guests at his wedding than he has
counted upon.'
He was to be married to-morrow. Paquerette covered her
face with her wasted hands, and the tears flowed fast between
the transjDarent fingers.
' He might have waited till I was quite dead ; it would not
have been long,' she said to herself. ' And yet, what difference
can it make ? I have been dead to him for years !'
They went on talking out there in the red, angry glow of the
sinking sun. Paquerette heard the drone of their voices, now
loud, now low ; but she listened no more to their words. She
lay with her eyes shut, thinking of IslimaeL He was to be
married to-morrow to a grand English lady — a woman worthy
of his love. And she, Paquerette, would be blotted for ever
out of his life. Did he believe that she was dead, she wondered.
Yes ; it must be so. He was too honourable to marry if he
thought she were living. Some one must have deceived him ;
some one must have told him she was dead.
' It can make very little difference since I shall be dead so
80on ! ' she thought. She had never hoped to be forgiven by
him, never hoped to see him again. She had thought of him for
years as of one who must needs scorn and loathe her. And yet,
it was almost as great a pain to know that he was to be married
to another as if they two had clasped hands only yesterday, and
the bond of love were but newly snapped asunder. She could
think of nothing but of this mamage. She tried to picture the
face of the bride ; but she could only call up a vague image of a
handsome countenance, cold and cruel, looking upon her with
infinite scorn. And then she pictured Ishmael kneeling at that
cold, proud woman's feet, adoring her, happy with her. And it
seemed as if she, Paquerette, had never ti-uly lost him until
now.
Gradually, imperceptibly, while summer daikness descended
upon the City of the Sun, the waking picture changed to the
fever-visions of a troubled sleep. Paquerette was standing in a
church, such a chmxh as waking eye has never seen — so vast, so
strange, so devilish in its hues of vivid carmine and glittering
gold, like til e flames of Pandemonium. And in slow procession
* Thou dost Diccll Among Sccni)ions' IID
towards the high altar came Ishmael and his bride, the English
beauty, clad in white velvet and diamonds, like the Empress on
hear wedding-day ; and for the bridal company followed aU the
rag-pickers of Paris, with their loaded baskets and their swinging
lanterns, two and two, a fantastic train. The stench of the
baskets, the smoke of the lanterns, stitled Paquerette. She
woke with a sense of siiftbcation — woke to hear loud and angry
voices in the adjacent den, and to feel rather than to know that
she had slept long, and that it was the dead of the night.
They were not lighting tliis time. Those voices were raised
in angry denunciation of some one or of something ; hoarse,
thickened by strong drink, confused, almost unintelligible ; but
there was no quarreL There was a third voice, which sj^oke in
Parisian French, interlarded with the slang which custom had
made familiar to Paquerette from her childhood. She had known
the slang of Avorkmen and griseites, of actresses and singers, of
jomnialists, and poets, and painters, and freethinkers, and
Socialists. And the man who was talking to the two Nea-
politans in the adjoining shed spoke that language ©f which she
had heard most of late, the figurative speech of the students'
quarter, a vocabulary full of subtle allusions, almost every word
charged with a history. The voice, too, had a familiar sound,
but her weary brain could not recall where she had
heaid it.
The Italians had been drinking, and were half mad with
drink. The elder Gavot vowed vengeance upon an old enemy.
The Frenchman pretended to deprecate his wrath, obviously
egging him on all the time. Paquerette crept across the floor,
and seated herself close to the j^artition. She sat with her ear
against the rotten planks. The wood served as a conductor of
sound. She could hear every syllable. Gavot's talk was inco-
herent, diffuse, rambling ; the stranger's words were every one
to the purpose. He came back always to the same point. He,
in his own person, bore no grudge against this man Ishmael
But as a Prolo, as a member of that older Society of the Loque,
as one of the great brotherhood of humanity, he revolted
against the tyranny of capital, against a man who, after
absorbing the labour and the brains of other men with the
octopus arms of a hundred audacious speculations, could refuse
fifty francs to his fellow-man, his companion of the past. Gavot
told that story of the fifty francs again and again over his cups ;
he beat it out like red-hot iron upon the anvil, and at every
repetition the fiery sparks flew faster, until the man had mad-
dened himself almost as much by his own words as by the
liquid fire from the nearest wine-shop.
420 Ishmael
The talk lasted long, with infinite reiteration, itccompanied
at brief intervals by the chink of glasses and the sound of
liquor being poured from a bottle.
And at last, when the cold dawn, with its look of unearthly
brightness, was staring in at the open window, Piquerette, pale
as a spectre in that livid light, sat with wide-open eyes, listening
to Gavot's vow of vengeance on the traitor to the cause of
Socialism.
He would be there at the church door with his knife.
There was a deed to be done as worthy as the slaughter
of Csesar, as heroic as the assassination of Marat — a deed
that should make France ring with the name of the doer.
' I was one of the forty Carbonari who swore to kill Napoleon
the Thixd if he broke faith with the liberators of Italy,' said
Gavot. ' There were princes and nobles among them ; but there
were men of the people also, and I was one of those. I would
have killed the Emperor had he turned renegade. Where Orsini
failed I should have succeeded, for I would have been bold*^,
Aud I will slab this renegade to-morrow at the churcii door.'
*AXD A STORMY WIND SHALL REND IT*
It was lalimael's wedding morning, the morning wliich was to
begin a new and glorious life — a life glorified by such a love as
men dream of in the fervour and faith of youth's imaginings,
but which few are so blessed as to realise in after life. Ishniael
was one of those chosen few. His childhood had been spent in
Jieglect and dishonour ; his loveless boyhood had been embittered
by a stepmother's jealousy ; the cup of disappointment had been
given him to diink in his early manhood ;' his married life had
brought him only evil and shame in return for patient kindness
and honest affection upon his part ; but now, when the race for
wealth had been run victoriously, when honour and renown liad
been acquired as the crowning grace of fortune — now, in the
prime and vigour of his manhood, he was to realise that dream
of bliss which every true man cherishes — the vision of union
with a loftier sovil than his own, of being able to pour out the
treasures of his love at the feet of a woman who, for him at
leas:t, should be half a goddess.
Overpowered, bewildered almost by his supreme content, ho
paced his study in the Place Royale in the fresh summer morn-
ing, the soft south wind blowing in upon him from the grave
old square, with its blossoming limes and its kingly statue,
solemn, tranquil, remote from the stir and tumult of the great
city. He had been at work at yonder desk for the greater part
of the night. His lamps had not been extinguished till sunrise,
and then he had only lain down for two or three hours' sleep
before rising again for his cold bath and his toilet. A coffee-pot
and a light breakfast of rolls stood on a. table by the ojjen
window. The big office table was covered with papors, classified,
arranged, to be ready for his secretary and his clerks during hia
absence. He was to stai't that evening upon a long honeymoon ;
first to Pen-Heel, to show his wife the cradle of his race ; then
all through Brittany ; and afterwards to the South of Ireland.
He wanted to see that fair and fertile land in which Constance's
childhooil and girlhood had been spent, a province as romantic
and unique as his own rustic Brittany. They two had planned
that honeymoon holiday stage by stage. Each was to show the
other the haunts of childhood and youth. It would brui^j thein
422 ishmaet
even noaror together, strengtlien jii^t a little the perfect boii(l oJ
sympathy, to ti'ead the old pathway side by side, to recall for
each other the beginning of either life.
On their return to Paris, Ijady Constance's villa in the Boia
de Boulogne was to be their wedded home, while the good old
house in the Place Royale was to remain Ishmael's office. Hia
working life was to be in no wise altered by his marriage. He
was still to be one of the master-spirits of an age of progress.
Viaducts, railways, roads, canals, were to be continued as if no
revolution had clianged the life of the engineer. Constance had
never sought to beguile her lover into the sybarite's empity
existence, to transform the worker into the man of society. ' You
will give me as much of your company always as you can,
Sebastien,' she said ; ' and I promise not to be jealous of your
work.'
' My dearest, the happiness of my days will be with you, and
the hour that you tell me jow are tired of a working man for a
husband, I -will begin to wind up my business life, so as to be
your slave, and yours only.'
* I shall not do that until I feel that you have come to the
time of life when a man should rest from his labours,' she
answered, gravely; 'when the grinding of the great wheel
should ceapp, and a man may sit by his hearth and saj',
" My work is done." I can look forward with content and hope-
fulness Tiow to old age, Sebastien, for it will be the holiday of our
wedded lives. And before I knew you, I used to think of my
declining years with a shudder, as a time of loneliness and
regret.'
After this tliey talked of that far-off future, the day of
repose from life's conflict and labour ; and planned how they
would live sometimes in the old house at Pen-IIocl, which was
to be improved into the very perfection of a rustic manor-house ;
sometimes in a dower-house on the banks of the Shannon,
which Constance had inherited from her mother. Some part of
every year was to be spent in Paris, for neither Constance nor
r^.limael could conceive the jjossibility ot an old age in which
contact with their fellow-men could cease to be a necessity of
their lives. They had ])lanncd everything in those fond foro-
castings of wedded life wliich lovers delight in. Their days
and j'ears were laid out as a garden, a garden in wluch tl-ere
should be neither weed, nor thorn, tljistle nor bramble of
temper, jealousy, ill-will, or discontent ; oidy the fairest flowers
of love and mutual bli.<s.
And now Tslimael walked slowly -jp and diwn, and in and
out of the suite of spi-oin rooai? ou the first floor iu the fine
* And a Stormy Wind shall Bend it ' 423
old panelled house, built in the days of the second Bourhon
King, and mused upon the life he was leaving, the life upon
which he was entering. The life which was to end to-day hnd
been a desolate life — rich in fortune, in success, in honour,
but b?rren of domestic joys, passing poor in love. These old
walls had looked, with their sombre colouring of yeai's long
gone, upon lonely hours, days and nights given to driest
work ; and only once in a way had they beheld a social gather-
ing, a bachelor's dinner of four or live earnest men, all workers
like the host. For nine years, ever since the beginning of his
wealth, Ishmael had occupied that first floor in the Place
Royale. The quiet old square, with its sliadowy trees, the sober
old-panelled rooms, had taken his fancy. It was just such a
sombre and retired home for which his wounded heart
languished. He took to himself a clever old housekeeper, a
■woman who, for seven-and-twenty years, had kept hou,^e for one
of the greatest savants of France, a woman who knew how to
respect an isolated studious life, and how to provide for the com-
fort of a master who had no idea of caring for himself. With such
a servant Ishmael's domestic life had gone upon velvet ; but if
it had been without trouble, it had also been a stranger to joy.
As he looked round the rooms to-day in the light of his new
happiness, he wondered how he could have endured that lone-
liness so long : a life without domestic love. Ah ! how long
the daj's and nights seemed to look back upon ; monotonoiis
days and evenings in which there had been no variety but the
variety of labour and care. Those dark panels had reflected
his lamps night after night till the edge of morning, and had
seen him bending over the same desk on the wide table spread
with maps and plans, and estimates and calculations of
quantities, in the same attitude, hour after hour.
The adjoining room, across which he paced this morning,
needing all the space possible for the expansion of his glacj
thoughts, was his salo7i and dining-room in one. He had
furnished it with the solid old rosewood bureau, the massive
chairs and tables from his old home at Mdnilmontant, even the
black marble clock with the bi'onze sphinxes which had sounded
so many weary hours for Paqvierette's imjjatient fancy, eager
for pleasure and excitement, in a city where the fever of
dissipation seemed in the very air men breathed. There
were the old things, vividly recalling the old life on the
threshold of the new. There, in a recess by the fireplace, stood
Paquerette's piano. Poor little piano 1 In his anguish and
rage at his wife's diehonour, Ishmael's first impulse had been to
smash the thing, to break it up for firewood, burn it to ashes ;
421 ' Ishmael " ' '
but, with his axe uplifted for the woi'k of destruction, he had
relfuted. The strings vibrated with a mournful sound as he
Avaved his hatchet in the air, a minor wail like a cry of despair.
It was as if it were a living thing he was about to slay — a
roe caught in the thicket. No ; he could not hui't the poor little
piano. He kept it by his fireside, though to look at it was
always pain, so vividly did it recall Taquerette. And many a
time between midnight and early morning he had risen, wearied,
half-blinded by pouring over figures and plans, and had seated
himself at this little piano to pick out old tunes, simple melodies
by Gr^try or Mozart, with his clumsy, uneducated fingers.
The old piano, part of his domestic sorrow, was to be undis-
turbed by his new joy. Lady Constance had looked at it
curiously on her first and only visit to her lover's home. She
had driven there with Amdlie Jarze, one afternoon, to see what
a house in the Place Royale was like. At least, that was the
motive put forward when she proposed the visit to Ishmael,
though, perhaps, the real desire was to see the background of
her lover's daily life.
The piano caught her eye before she had been two minutes
in the room.
' What, you play, then 1 ' she exclaimed.
* So badly, that "it is hardly to be called playing,' he answered
reddening a little.
' Yet well enough to have a piano in your room.'
'It is a relief to me sometimes to stumble through an old
melody when I am very tired of dry-as-dust work.'
' I am sure you play well, and I am enchanted at the idea,
cried Constance. ' Do play something for me.'
Ishmael declined the honour, smiling at her eagerness.
' Either of your footmen would play as well as I.'
* And yet you — a serious business man, a famous engineer —
have a piano in your salon ! '
' Why not 1 The piano was a fancy of mine. Is a working
man to have no fancies V
' Your piano has such a very feminine look,' said Amdlie, full
of curiosity. ' And here is an old music-book,' she said, standing
by the piano and twirling over a volume ; ' an opera of Grdtry's,
with some of the soprano songs scribbled all over with a master's
instructions. Your sister's book, no doubt 1 '
' No, Mademoiselle : I never had a sister. That book belonged
to a person who was no relation to me.'
This was strictly true. The volume was a second-hand one,
picked up at a bookstall by Lisette Moque, lent by her_ to
rdquerctte, who learnt some of the songs with her old singing
^And a Stormy Wind shall Lend tt' 4-3
master, and never returned the volume to its owner. It had
been moved among other books from the third floor at M^uil-
montant to the first floor in the Place Eoyale.
Amdlie recurred more than once to that little incident of the
piano and music book in her after conversations with Lady
Constance Danetree, but she failed in kindling a spark of
jealousy in Constance's steadfast mind. Her love was supreme
in all noble qualities, most of all in faith.
The contract, which secured to Constance the whole of her
fortune, and gave her a magnificent settlement on the part of
Sebastien de Caradec — otherwise Ishmael — had been executed
over night. The civil marriage was to be performed at eleven
o'clock ; the religious ceremonial at twelve. Fashion among
people of Constance Danetree's rank prescribed that the civil
marriage should take place on one day, the religious ceremonial
the day after ; but Constance cared nothing for fashions and
conventionalities, and she and Ishmael had been of one mind in
preferring that both ceremonies should be performed within a
couple of hours, leaving them free to hurry away from the
tumult and glare of Paris at the earliest opportunity.
It was to be a very quiet marriage. Only Constance
Danetree's chosen friends and three old friends and associates
of the bridegroom had been invited.
Ishmael's three friends were men of considerable distinction
in their various callings : one a practical engineer like himself,
a man whose inventions and improvements had increased the
wealth and well-being of his counti-y ; another, a well-known .J
physician ; the third, a savant and a man of letters. Ishmael's
idea of friendship was quality rather than quantity. In his
seventeen years of Parisian life he had made many acquaint-
ances ; but he could count his friends upon the fingers of one
hand.
At a quarter before eleven he was at the Mairie, attended
by these three friends of his, waiting for his bride. At five
minutes before the hour Constance arrived, accompanied by her
old friend. Lady Valentine, who had known her from girlhood,
and her new friends, Hortense and Amdlie Jarzd, who, by sheer
persistence, had contrived to interweave themselves in the woof
of her life. And cei'tainly Amdlie was no disgrace to the
ceremonial. Her bright golden hair was set ofl" by the daintiest
little bonnet, all rosebuds and lilies of the valley. Her white
muslin frock was a flutter of lace flounces and palest pink
ribbon ; her gloves and parasol were of the same delicate pink.
ISI ot an article of her toilette was paid for, nor was likely to be
paid for within a reasonable period. But tlie coxitiirihc had
426 hJimael
been more amiable to Lady Constance Danelree'a particular
friend than she would have been to Monsieur Jarze's impe-
cunious daughter. Amdlie had taken her dear friend to Madame
Volant's luxurious rooms in the Rue de la Paix, and, with a little
dexterous management, had induced her dear friend to lay out
live or six thousand francs upon Madame Volant's novelties — a
gown exactly like that just made for the Countess Walewska,
a mantle like one ordered yesterday for the Empress. On the
strength of Lady Constance's purchases, Amelie had ordered her
frock and bonnet for the wedding ; and albeit she was to assist
at the consummation of her own defeat, she was bent on looking
her prettiest upon this particular morning. Monsieur de
Keratry was to be at the church ; and their betrothal was now
an established fact. It was only a question how soon his cir-
cumstances would authorise marriage ; and if not rich, he was
at least noble, good-looking, clever ; and Am^Iie thought herself
much better off than Hortense, yonder, with her pale, pinched
face and anxious eyes, and her hopeless passion for that poor
little impostor, Paul de Pontchartrain.
Constance looked as shy as a girl of eighteen as she came
Blowly towards the table, behind which sat the Maire in his tri-
culoured scarf, the awful functionary whose sign-manual was to
make her Sebastieu's wife. Her gown and bonnet of cream-
coloured crepe de chine were simplicity itself. "What need of
tine gowns and bonnets to express happiness ? That shone and
sparkled in the lovely violet eyes, luminous under their lonjj
dark lashes, which drooped a little more than usual this morning.
She gave her hand to Ishmael when the brief ceremony was
over, and he led her out to her carriage.
' Now I am half your wife,' she said, smiling at him. ' It is
already too late for repentance. The tiling cannot be undone.
Oh, what a stormy sky ! And I hoped the sun would smile
upon our union.'
* The sunshine is in our hearts, my beloved,' he whispered.
The storm-clouds which had been darkening the sky at
intervals ever since yesterday's sunset now brooded black and
heavy over the golden dome of the Invalides, and the leaden
Bky made a sombre background behind the Marly Horses in the
Cliamps-Elysdes, where not a leaf of the blossoming limea
BtiiTed in the heavy atmosphere. Weather can make no differ-
ence to a man whose whole being is steeped in gladness, before
whose eager feet the gates of Paradise are opening ; and yet
Ishmael felt a vagne sense of oppression, a nameless fore-
shadowing of evil, as his brougham drove alo^ig the Eue du
Faubourg St. Houor^ under the splashing of heavy rain-dropa,
'And a Stormy Wind shall Bend it* 427
There was a rumble of distant tliunder as lie aiiglited hastily
in front of the church, anxious to be ready to receive his wife,
■whose carriage followed.
There was an awning before the church door, and a crowd
under the awning — the usual cluster of shabbily-clad idlers :
men, women, and children, curious about every movement in
that world of the wealthy and high-born, which was as
remote from their own world as if it wure in another planet.
The crowd was rather bigger than it usually is on such occa-
sions, for Ishmael had given carte blanche to a florist in
the Rue Castiglione, and the altar was more exquisitely
decorated than for an ordinary wedding. The carrying in of
the flowers had been a sufficient sign of something out of
the common ; and the crowd had been growing ever since ten
o'clock.
Ishmael's brougham had scarcely driven away when the other
carriages approached. He had no time to look at the faces in
the crowd before Constance had alighted. In another moment
her hand was through his arm, and they two were on the
threshold of the church together.
Before they had passed that threshold, there was a sudden
movement in the crowd, a shriek of fear from Constance, as a
man broke through the throng, and sprang upon Ishmael with
a dagger in his hand, uplifted to strike.
Rapid, decisive as that movement was, it was not so quick
as that of a pale, forlorn creature in the front row— a sickly
face and a feeble figure, that had been leaning for the last half-
hour, faint and weary, against the moulding of the church
door, the shabbiest, wretchedest figure in that mixed assembly.
Swift as was the hand with the dagger, the white-faced woman
intercepted the blow. She flung herself upon Ishmael's breast
as the assassin's arm descended ; and it was her shoulder that
received the knife meant for his ho^rt.
The wound was severe, but not fatal. Paquerette lifted her
wan eyes to her husband's face.
' I have saved your life,' she murmured, faintly. * God ia
very good to let me do it.'
' Paquerette ! '
• You know her, then ! ' faltered Constance, clinging to him,
envious of this pale, squalid creature who had saved the man
she, Constance Danetree, loved, and would have died to shield
from harm.
* Know her ! yes, too well, too well. Where are we to take
ier ? What are we to do for her ? ' he asked, looking at Dr.
Dureau, his medical friend.
428 Ishmael
The Italian had been seized, was in the grip of the police
instantly as it seemed to the spectators.
' Take her to the hospital,' said Bureau, taking P^querette
in his arms and looking at the ghastly face. ' That is about all
you can do for her. The blade has pierced the pleura if it has
not touched her lungs. It is a bad case. Is there any surgeon
in the crowd ? '
There was none as it seemed, so Dr. Dureau despatched a
messenger for one of the cleverest surgeons in Paris, who lived
near at hand.
' Not to the hospital,' said Ishmael, hurriedly ; * to my house.
She has saved my life.'
* A decided obligation if it w&a not an accident,' answered
the physician. ' But I think the hosjiital would be better.'
'No, no; to my house. You can take her there in my
carriage. Dureau, I depend upon you to do all^ — all that can
be done for her. Loraine,' to his friend, the savant, 'give Lady
Constance your arm to take her into the church. I will rejoin
you presently.'
'You will not be long? 'said Constance, deadly pale, but
calm and collected, as it was her nature to be in a crisis.
Her friends. Lady Valentine, Hortense, Amelie, crowded
about her, suffocated her almost with their attentions.
'Pray let me alone !' she exclaimed, impatiently. '7 have
not been stabbed.'
She walked up the nave between the crowded chairs, the
staring, gaping spectators, in an atmosphere heavy with incense
and hothouse flowers. She walked with a firm footstep, her
head can-ied as proudly as ever, but her heart beating passion-
ately, full of tumult and fear.
What did it all mean 1 There was a mystery somewhere, a
history of the past in which that white, wan creature was
involved. Women do not fling themselves between the victim
and the knife without a motive stronger than abstract benevo-
lence. This woman had saved Sebastien Caradec's life most
likely at the cost of her own. A woman does not do as much
as that for the first comer.
This act of to-day was the last link in a chain, and it was for
Ishmael to enlighten her as to all the other links before they
two should kneel side by side at yonder altar.
She was his wife already. Yes, by the law of the land ; but
not by the sacrament of the church. She, a Roman Catholic,
counted that legal ceremonial as of smallest importance. In
her own mind, the union of to-day was no union till the Chuich
had sanctioned and sanctified it
'And a Stormy Wind shall Rend if 429
She seated herself a little way from the embroidered carpet
upon which they were to kneel The tapers were bunuiig
amidst clusters of waxen bloom, stephanotis, Cape jasmine,
tuber-roses. The altar was one brilliant mass of gold, and flame,
and colour. She sat there with her eyes fixed, seeing neither
tapers nor flowers ; seeing only the woman's livid face lying ou
Ishmael's bosom.
He of whom she thought was busy in assisting at the
departure of the carriage witli the wounded, and i)erha[)s dying,
woman. The surgeon had come in answer to Dr. Duieau's
summons ; cushions were brought from the church and arranged
in the carriage, so that Paqueiette could be conveyed to the
Place Eoyale in a reclining position. Ishmael scribbled a pencil
note to his housekeeper i-equesting her to do all that the utmost
care could do for the patient. The carriage was to call for a
nursing Sister on its way through the Marais. Everything was
planned rapidly, decisively, foi Paquerette's comfort. She
seemed only half conscious when they laid her in the carriage.
Just at the* last moment Ishmael bent down and kissed her cold
hand.
' I thank you, Pdquerette,' he murmured, and the white
lips answered with a feeble smile.
'And now,' said Dr. Dureau, when Ishmael's carriage had
driven off, with the surgeon seated by Paquerette's side, and all
arrangements made for her comfort, present and future, ' I
think you had better go and perfurm the second act of your
wedding drama.'
' Not to-day,' said Ishmael : ' I could not — Lady Constance
would not wish — '
'I think Lady Constance will wisli to make as little of a
scandal out of this business as possible,' re])lied his friend.
' The fact that an Italian fanatic attempted yuur life and that
a beggar-woman saved it is no reason why your marriage should
not take place to day.'
'But there is a reason,' said Ishmael. 'There can be no
marriage to-day. I must see Lady Constance alone.'
Dr. Dureau shrugged liis shoulders.
' You ai-e the hero of the play, and you must finish it in your
own fashion,' he said. ' It was near ending in a tragedy fifteen
minutes ago. What motive could that man have for attacking
you 1 '
•None but his own ill-will to one who never injured liim.
He is a member of a secret society to which I have belonged
for many years — a Socialist, a carbonaro — what you will. He
came whining aad begging to me the day before yesterday.
430 Ishnacl
They all do, these acquaintances of my poveity, though they
denounce me for having grown rich. I refused to give him
money, referred him to a benevolent institution with which I
am connected, and which relieves the deserving.'
' You say you never injured him ! and you refused him
money yesterday ! as if that were not the deadliest injury.
A Parisian would write a libellous paragraph about you. A
Neapolitan rushes at you with his knife.'
Ishmael went up the nave to the space in front of the altar
where the wedding i)arty was grouped, Constance seated in the
midst, very pale, but with a superb repose of attitude and
manner, as if nothing extraordinary had happened. The
wedding guests had a more fluttered air, expectant, excited.
The organ was playing Beethoven's ' Hallelujah Chorus ' from
the Mount of Olives. Priests and acolytes were waiting.
' Lady Constance, may I speak with you for a few minutes in
the vestry ? ' a&ked Ishmael.
Constance rose, and went with him towaids the vestry door.
' It is what I have been wishing for,' she said, as they
entered the room, which was empty. ' This ceremony of to-day
can go no further till you have explained the mystery of that
woman's devotion.'
Ishmael closed the door, and stood with his back against it,
facing Constance, deadly pale, but with no touch of the craven
in his aspect.
' Alas ! my beloved,' he said, * this marriage of ours can go
no further to-day — nor for many days — perhaps never, unless
you are very kind and pitiful to me. There is no mystery.
There is only a terrible surprise. The woman who threw herself
between me and that man's da^^'ger is my wife. She is the wife
who abandoned me thirteen years ago, and of whose death I was
assured. I had ample evidence. Not till I had conclusive
evidence of her death did I ask you to marry me. That w;is
why I held back in the first instance, waiting for certainty.
Well, I was duped by a scoundrel, whom I paid for duping me.
The evidence of my wife's death wliich was given me was a
fabrication. That is aU. And my unhappy wife still lives ! *
There was a silence. Constance looked at him with sad,
reproachful eyes. Her lips trembled a little before she could
find words, and then she said, falteringly :
' You might have told me everything. You might have
trusted me as I trusted you.'
' You had no dai-k story in your past life — no plague-spot. I
shrank from talking to you of my fii-st marriage. I was only
oneand-twenty years of age when I married a foolish girl, low-
* And a Stormy Wind shall Bend it* 431
born, ignorant, reared in the gutter ; a girl who miglit have
been at least resjDectable as my wife, but who chose another fate.
And now, at the last, after thirteen years, in which she has given
tne not one tiign of her existence, she rises up at my feet out of
the stones of Paris, and sacrifices her own life to save mine.'
'So long as she lives you are bound to her. Whether it be
for months or for years, you owe her the devotion of your life,'
said Constance, with intense conviction. ' Whatever her guilt
may have been in the past, her sacrifice of to-day is an
atonement.'
' How she came to be there at the moment of peril : wliether
it was accident, or if she 1 n ;w — it is all a mysteiy,' said
Ishmael.
' She will explain all — if she recover.'
' Constance — I call you by that dear name, perhaps for the
last time — can you forgive me ? Will you believe that I am
guiltless in this miserable entanglement 1 '
' I have always believed you,' she answered, with a queenly
smile. * And now take me back to my carriage. Let nobody
suppose that we are ill friends.'
They went back to the nave together. Ishmael explained
that, under the agitating circumstances of this morning. Lady
Constance aud he had decided to postpone the marriage
ceremony. He felt it his duty to look after the poor creature
Avho had jeopardized her life to save him. He might also be
wanted at the examination of his would-be assassin before the
fuge dhnstruction.
Lady Constance invited her friends to the breakfast which
had been prepared for them, but all had the grace to decline.
Only Lady Valentine offered to accompany her old friend home ;
but Constance owned that she would rather be alone.
' I shall get over the morniug's agitation better by myself,'
she said ; and the carriage drove off with her alone, Ishmael
standing bare-headed to watch her depart.
And so ended his wedding day — the day which was to have
begun a new life. Three hours later they two were to ha\e
been seated side by side in a railway carriage — a coi^pi/ specially
retained yesterday in advance— on their way to Pen-Hoel.
Some one touched him on the arm. It was an official, who
requested him to go at once to the office of ihajuge construction,
before whom Gavot was about to be examined. Dr. Puceau
and Ishmael's two other friends, botl] witnesso? oS the -".♦■^«mpr,
were also wanted.
en AFTER XLI
'the MORNINa IS COME UNTO THlis'
The Venetian shutters were half-closed upon the open windowg
of the old panelled room in the Place Eoyale. A sober old
room, soberly furnished, cool and airy even in this sultry
August weather. The faint rustle of leaves, the measured tread
of occasional footsteps sOunded in the grave old square outside.
Tran(iuillest corner of Paris, remote from the traflic and the din,
meet home for poet and philosopher ; and, oh, wliat a blessed
change from the City of the Sun 1 What an earthly Paradise
after tbat hell upon earth 1
Paquerette was Ij'ing on her soft white bed in the roomy
alcove yonder, under finest lint-n, perfumed with roses and
lavender, screened by cool dra])eries of soft gray damask.
Paquerette was resting luxuriously on the last stage of a
journey which had grown tranquil and pleasant as it drew
10 its close. She lay piopped up by large white pillows, scarce
whiter even iu their fresh purity than the thin, pinched face
looking out of them. Her pale, transparent hand toyed idly
with a large bunch of Dijon roses that lay upon the coverlet.
There were flowers on the mantelpiece, flowers on the table near
the bed, flowers on the window-sill — a luxury of flowers.
A Sister of the order of St. Vincent de Paul sat a little way
from the alcove, and watched the patient, i-eady to minister to
the smallest wish. She could do little more than smooth that
steep descent to darkness and the grave. Paquerette was
dying. She had been dying by inches in her den in the City of
the Sun, and now death was coming towards her with swifter
footsteps— now, when she was at peace in that soft, sweet bed,
amidst the scent of roses, with the afternoon light making bars
of gold upon the polished oak floor, between the Venetian
shutters. Beyond those half-closed shutters she saw green
leaves and the blue sky. No grunting and squeaking of swine,
no yapping of mangy curs assailed her ear ; no foetid odours
sickened her.
She was at peace ; her sins were confessed and forgiven. A
good old priest from Ishmael's native village had come to her
bedside as fast as diligence and railway could bring him.
' The Morning is Coilie unto Thee* 4.33
Ishmael had telegraphed for him within an hour of the scene
at the church door. Good old Father Bressant had knelt by her
bed, had heard her faltered expression of deepest penitence,
and had given her such comfort as the Church can give to the
remorseful sinner.
And then he whose face she dreaded, yet loved to look upon,
had come and sat beside her pillow, and had taken her pale,
wasted han»l in his strong grasp, and had given her pardon
for the bitter irrevocable past, for the one mad act which had
blighted two lives. Very tenderly had he acknowledged the
love that had come between him and murder ; and they two had
l)i-ayed together, recalling the fond, sad memory of the child
tliey had lost, the prayers said beside the little coffin, the grave
on the side of the hill.
'Let me be buried with my baby,' she pleaded, 'if — if —
other people have not taken the grave for their dead.'
' Paquerette, do you think I should forget my child's resting-
place 1 That was the first freehold I ever bought.'
• And you will let me be buried there 1 '
• The mother shall rest beside her child.'
• Bless you for that promise, Ishmael. I have only one other
prayer. The poor old gi-andmother — so old, so wretched, so
feeble, leading such a miserable life ; bent, and weary, and half
blind, and yet toiling on — will you save her from that horrible
life, remove her from that hideous place where the rag-pickers
herd together in the dirt like animals ? Will you do that,
Ishmael, for ? ' She was going to say * for my sake,' but she
stopped herself, and faltered humbly, 'for the sake of what I
once was to you.'
' The poor old grandmother shall be cared for. I would do
much more than that for your sake, Paquerette.' And then he
told her of the children's home in the rich, wooded country
beyond Marly le Roi. He told her of the happy colony of little
ones rescued from the slums of Paris, from such places as the
Cit^ du Soleil. He told her how, for her sake, he had devoted
some portion of his wealth and much of his time and care to
this purpose, and how the work had prospered. ' If I can help
it by precept or example, there shall be no children growing up
in the dark yards of Paris, neglected, desolate, untaught, as you
were in the days of your youth, my poor Pfiquerette.'
' Yes ; it was a miserable youth, was it not ? And after-
wards, when you were so good to me, when foolish people
praised me, my head was turned. Life was all so new and
strange, and I was eager for pleasure, for music and brightness —
all the joys I had missed when I was a girl And then I waa
2f
434 tshmael
base and ungrateful, and my wicked heart rebelled against you,
and turned '
A flood of tears drowned her speech. She clasped her thin
fingers over her eyes, and was silent, remembering how she had
set up an idol of clay, a false god that had fallen and crushed
her amidst the ashes of a ruined life.
The gray-robed Sister had left during this conversation.
She came back at a summons from Ishmael, and knelt by the
bed, praying in a low gentle voice. Ishmael bent to kiss the
pale brow so soon to assume the awful coldness of death, and
tlien went softly away, leaving only the womanly consoler, the
voice of prayer and praise.
No one in the house knew what was the link between the
famous engineer and the dying woman : an erring sister,
perhaps, brought suddenly back to the fold ; or, if not a near
kinswoman, a close friend. No one guessed that it was Ishmael's
guilty wife whose last hours were ebbing gently away.
Two doctors — the most distinguished in Paris — were in
attendance upon that death-bed. They both were of opinion
that the wound in itself would not have been fatal. The lungs
had not been penetrated, and the injury to the pleura might
have been got over in a healthy patient ; but P^querette had
been marked for death months ago.
' The wonder is, that she; could have walked from Clichy to
the Faubourg Saint-Honor^ in her state,' said the physician.
' It was the act of a heroine. She tells me that she started soon
after daybreak, and that she was several hours on the road.
She had no money, no alternative but to crawl every inch of the
M-ay, while every breath she drew was pain. It is only women
who can do these things.'
A piteous story, yes ; and a story that had come to its closing
page. PSquerette lived for a day and a half after she had been
forgiven, and died with Ishmael's roses in her hands, peacefully,
in the morning glow, like a child sinking to sleep.
It was not till after PSquerette's death that Ishmael tried to
bring the trickster Dumont to book for the conspiracy which had
been hatched against his honour and his happiness. The re-
morseful afterthoughts of many a bitter hour had told him that
he had himself to blame for having trusted a broken-down
profligate with a delicate mission, and for having put a price
upon the evidence of his wife's death. His passionate desire to
be free to marry the woman he loved had blinded him to the
folly of his act — liad tempted him to lean on such a rotten reed
as Dumont.
' TJie Morning is Come unto Thee ' 4915
fie called to his aid one of the cleverest members of the
Parisian police, and in the dusk of the evening after P&qiierette'a
death he revisited the Cit6 Jeanne d'Arc in the company of thia
man. The police-officer was dreased in plain clothes, but to tho
initiated eyes of the inhabitants of that colony he had the word
Raille inscribed in capital letters upon his forehead.
They went straight to the house which Ishmael had visited
with Dumont, ascended to the fourth landing, and, without even
the polite preliminary of a knock, entered the room in which he
had heard the dying Spaniard's story. They found themselves
in the bosom of a large family, seated cheerily round the pot-au-
feu, the savouiy reek of which rose superior to the foul odours of
the place. The inhabitants were new ; even the poor sticks of
furniture were different from those which Ishmael had seen in
the room. And yet he was sure that it was the same room, as
he had taken careful note of the number on the door on the
previous occasion.
The people werti civil — nay, overpoweringly courteous, and
evidently overawed by the presence of Ishmael's companion.
The man was a street hawker, and laid considerable stress upon
the honesty and respectability of his avocation as compared wit'n
the pursuits by which many of the citizens of Jeanne d'Arc
contrived to make their living. He made a point of being thus
far autobiographical before he could be induced to give any
information about his predecessors in the apartment.
The Spanish sailors ? Yes ; there had been two Spanish
sailors in the room before he took it — just three weeks ago.
' One of the men died, did he not ? ' asked Ishmael. ' He
was dying when I saw him on the second of July.'
* Dying I But no ; the Spaniard was no more dying than I,
Jacques Dubourg. He is a man who smokes opium, and spends
half his life on shore in a state of stupefaction — worse than
drunkenness, and yet not so bad, for he lies quiet on his grabat
and interferes with no one. It was on the third of July that he
and his comrade cleared out of the room. Tliey were going back
to Havre by the night-train. They had only been in Paris a
week, and had hired their sticks of furniture from the guardian
of the place, the porter at number one, who collects the rents
and looks after the keys. I know all about it, you see,
Messieurs, for I and my family came in just an hour afterwards,
and the porter could only give us a room in the roof where the
rain comes in by the pailful ; so I was on the watch for the
chance of a better room, and as soon as the Spaniards cleared
out, we came down to the fourth floor. It is luxury after the
h lie we bad above 1 '
i'iQ Ishmael
This was tlie utmost information to be obtained here
Ishmael acknowledged the hawker's civility with a handsome
t>our-boire, which he dropped into the wilUng hand of the wife,
Loping that, by this precaution, his benefaction might be spent
upon something better than vitriol or ' little-blue ; ' and then he
and his companion went downstairs and picked their way
tlirough the muddy channel to the door of number one, whei-a
they found the custodian of the place in an apartment which,
although jDassing grimy, was at least wind and weather proof.
From this functionary they could obtain little moie infor-
mation than had been given them by the hawker. The Spanish
sailors had come to the cit^ in the company of a decent-looking
I'aribian, who engaged the room for them, and paid in advance
for a mouth's rent, and for the hire of the little lot of furniture.
One of the sailors was represented as an invalid, who wanted to
rest and recruit himself before he could go back to his ship.
The porter supposed that they would occupy the apartment for
at least a month. He was, therefore, much gUrprised when they
brought him the key of their room on the afternoon of July the
tliird, and informed him that he could take back his furniture.
Ife had not seen their Parisian friend after the first occasion.
This was all he knew.
The facts were clear enough to the mind of Ishmael. The
story of the wreck of the ' Loro ' was a trumped-up story,
invented by Dumont with the aid of the Spaniard. Or, the
story of the ' Loro ' may have been a true story in all save
Paquerette's presence on board the vessel. The Spaniard, a
chance acquaintance, perhaps, picked up at Havre, had been
carefully taught the part which he had to play in the conspiracy ;
and Islimael had been tricked into mistaking the symptoms of
opium-poison for the signs of approaching dissolution. One fact,
and one only, was not easily to be explained. By what means
liad the Spaniard or Dumont obtained possession of the packet
of lettex's written by Hector de Valnois to PAquerette, letters
which no woman would have willingly parted with to a
stranger ?
Here was a mystery which neither Ishmael nor the jiolice
could fathom, not knowing the link between the man called
]Jumont and the writer of the letters.
The actual fact was, that Dumont, alias de Valnois, finding
himself alone in his kinsman's lodging soon after he had
received his commission from Islimael, had ransacked Hector's
bureau in the hope of finding some scrap of Paquerette's hand-
writing which might serve him in the plot he was hatching, and
had there discovered the packet of old love-lettei's, carefully put
*The Morning is Come 'unto Thee* 437
a^'ay by Paqaerette herself^ in a hiding-place at the back of
other papers.
On the day after Paqiierette's funeral Ishmael received a
letter with the post-mark of Limerick. It was from Constance,
wlio wrote from the chief hotel in that city ;
' I am on my way to tlie dower-house at Kilrush,' she wrote,
' where I shall spend the coming autumn. I think it only right
that you should know where I am, and that you should be free
from all anxiety upon my account.
' Do your duty, Ishmael, and fear not the issue. If it please
Providence that your wife recover from the peril she incurred
to save you, take her to your heart and home again, if it be
possible, and let your future happiness be found in that re-union.
It is impossible you should continue unhappy if you follow
the dictates of honour and conscience. God will be with us
both, near or afar, so long as we walk bravely in the straight
path.
' Ever your loyal friend,
' Constance Danetree.'
So much and no more. Enough at least to tell him tha';
there was no ancfer astainst him in that noble soul. He tele-
graphed his answer within an hour :
' Death has broken the old tie. In three months from to-
day I shall go to the dower-house at Kilrush unless you forbid
me.'
Three months of mourning for the wife who had died to him
thirteen years before ; three months of hard work, which made
his severance from his beloved easier to bear ; three month?',
(luring which time the Neapolitan Gavot was found guilty of an
attempt to murder, and was condemned to travaux forces for
life ; three months, which saw the espousals of Amelie Jarzo
with Armand de Keratry ; three months, in which the teiriturier
sank day by day a little lower in that awful gulf of mental
decay to which the absinthe-drinker descends ; three months,
during which the semi-imbecile hag from the Cite du Soleil
awakened suddenly from a life-long dream of dirt and squalor to
find herself in a wonderland of cleanliness and comfort repre-
sented by the neatly-furnished bedchamber of a hospital for old
women. Here Mere Lemoine sat by the cosy little stove, and
hugged the warmth, and gibbered and nodded in the sunshine,
and muttered to herself about Jeanneton and Paquerette, and
asked her caretakers piteously for a taste of petrele, vitriol,
Casse-poitrine — wiiat you will : and, it may be, she sometimes
ir!3 Islnnael
regretted the freer life of the City of the Sun, the lantern and
the basket, and the bottle of fierce potato-spirit hidden under
tiie heap of rubbish and offal in the middle of her den.
It was the first week in November, the season of fallen
leaves, low gray skies, and fox-hunting, when Ishmael went
down the Shauncu in a small steamer that plied between Tarbert
and Kilrush. Those level shores of the noble Irish river,
widening ever towards the sea, looked gi'ay and mournful under
the dull autumnal sky, white vapours creeping slowly over the
fields in the eventide, and the coast on which he landed in the
dusk had a barren look ; but the little town showed more lighted
windows as signs of life than a bourg in his native Brittany
could have shown ; and though there were some signs of decay
and neglect, there were no indications of the hard, grinding
poverty which forbids the lighted hearth, the rush candle, and
curtails the cheery evening hour.
The driver of a dilapidated jaunting car took forcible pos-
session of Ishmael on the instant he landed, and in this con-
veyance he was rattled along rustic lanes, which had a friendly
look in the twilight, like and unlike the lanes about Pen-Hocil.
He could feel the soft breath of the sea, and he found out after-
wards that he was driving with his face towards the Atlantic.
lie passed a good many typical Irish cabins, roughly built of
stone, rich in broken windows and all the traces of neglect ;
yet, in most cases, the o])en door showed the cheery hearth
within, the dresser with its gaily-coloured crockery. That
dresser and that crockery seemed to be the national representa-
tive of the household virtues, tlie penaies of the Irish peasant.
Where all else was squalor and i uin, the dresser and the row of
plates and jugu still remained : the very altar of home.
But a sharp turn of the road carried the traveller into a new
region, a lane in which the cottages were more numerous, better
built, with neatly-thatched roofs, steep picturesque gables, and
tall clustered chimney-stacks ; cottages in well-kept gardens,
where late autumn flowers were blooming, a little oasis of beauty
and domestic comfort in a neglected land.
' It is her influence,' he thought. ' I am drawhig near her
home.'
He was not mistaken. About a quarter of a mile further the
car entered a gateway by a Gothic lodge, drove through a magni-
ficent shrubbery of conifers and arbutus, and drew up in front
of a low, long Tudor house, with a roomy stone porch, in which
a tall, beautiful woman, dressed in dark velvet, stood waiting
for him, with two dogs — his old friend Lion and a supeib IrisH
sHtter— ill attendance upon her,
• The Morniiuj is Coma unto Thee ' 439
He was by her side ia a moment, clasping her hands. He
had written to her, and had heard from her more than once
during the three months that ended to-day ; but this was their
lirst meeting since they parted at the chuich door on that day
which was to have made them one for ever. And now the day was
coming which was to comjilete that union. All arrangements
had been made in advance, and to-morrow, in the llunirui
Catholic Chai^el at Kilrush, Sebastien Caradec and Constance
Danetree were to be married in the presence of old Lord
Kilrush, who had returned from Homburg, disgusted alike with
the results of the water cure and the ro^ige-et-noir cure ; for in
those days there were gaming-tables at Homburg-on-the-Maine.
To-night Ishmael was to rest at the Priest's house, the chief
among those rustic dwellings which Constance Danetree's taste
and outlay had called into being. On the Marquis's land the
signs of neglect and dilapidation were as common as on most
other Irish estates ; but in this little coi'uer, this happy land of
two or three hundred acres, which belonged to his daughter,
order, neatness, and prosperity reigned.
'Surely I can afford to spend as much on building a cottage
as Spricht charges for one of his gowns,' she said, when some
worldly-wise acquaintance remonstrated with her on the folly of
spending her surplus income on the improvement of the
dwellings of the poor.
' But they are not grateful,' complained her friend. ' I built
new cottages for some of my people, and gave them deliciou:5
little kitcheners ; and from that hour I have never had any
peace at my country place. They don't understand thu
kitcheners, and they come and howl to me every time one of
those poor little stoves goes wrong. Improvement is a mistake
with those people. Let them grub on their own way, and give
them plenty of wine and brandy when they are ill. That is their
idea of a good landlord.'
' I don't care about gratitude,' replied Constance ; ' but I
adore pretty cottages, and bright hearths, and well-fed, com-
fortably-clad children ; and I must have them about me what-
ever they cost. I can go without ostrich-feather bordering for
my gowns, and I can buy a gown or two less in the course
of the year.'
They talked together for a few minutes in the old panelled
hall, those two happy lovers ; and then Ishmael went into the
drawing-room with h.\s fiancee to be pi-esented to Lord Kilrush,
an aristocratic old gentleman with a Komau nose that had been
slightly damaged in the days of his youth, a small waist, an
elegant swagger, and a set of aitique sgals hanging frcw an
410 Ishmael
antique cliain, which he played with almost perpetually with
delicate, nervous fingers.
He received Ishmael graciously, and made himself vecy
agreeable all dinner-time, Ijut evidently had not a thought in
common with his future son-in-law. His conversation was
chiefly made up of inquiries about some of the worst people in
Parisian society, and the raking-up of old scandals which
seemed to have sunk deep into his mind, and old bon-mois
on the verge of impropriety.
After dinner he went to sleep in a luxurious arm-chair close
by the wide old-fashioned fireplace, and Ishmael and Constance
had the rest of tlie evening to themselves.
They were married next morning in the pretty little chapel,
and this time there wms no tragic interruption of their wedding.
Tlie old priest snuffled a pious exhortation to the newly-wedded,
the rustic choir sang a hymeneal hymn, and Lord Kilrusii's
carriage bore Ishmael and his wife on the first stage of their
journey to Killarney, where they were to begin their honey-
moon, under the soft gray skies, beside the calm blue lake,
amidst groves of arbutus, bright with autumn's scarlet berries,
beneath the shadow of the Purple Mountain.
In December they went back to Paris, Ishmael full of work,
his wife full of pride and interest in that work of his : proudest
of all when she saw the children's home bej'ond Marly, and heard
that chorus of multitudinous voices sending up their glad peal of
welcome, ' Monsieur Chose ! Monsieur Chose ! ' while the li?ppy
faces all wore one broad smile of childish love. In all tuings
she was his lieliJ-meet. In great achievements, in acts of bene-
volence ; sharer of all his hopes, and aU his dreams ; noble
iuspirer of noble ideas.
And now, for his wife's sake— the pride of birth being an
instinct among well-born' women — he, who had been known so
loTjg throughout the length and breadth of the land as Ishmael,
allowed himself to be known in Parisian society as Sdbastien de
Caradec. of Pen-Hoel ; and now the old chateau above the wind-
ing Couesnon was beautified, restored, and exjaanded into one nf
the most perfect country houses in France ; and wider land.i
were added lo the shrunken estate of the Caradecs, Ishmael, the
despised and outcast, had redeemed the fortunes of his race, auU
Won renown for the name of his forefathers.
• Peace hath her victories as wuJl as wac,'
CHAPTER XLII
*1IT THE MIDST OF BABYLON HE SHALL DIE*
With the closing of 1867 the shadows darkened over the political
horizon, and the Imperial star which had once ruled in so fair a
heaven now rode in a sky that was charged with storm-clouds.
Outwardly, this city of palaces, boulevards, aiid cafes was as
brilliant as ever ; but there was a worm at the root of the tree :
trouble and confusion were in the minds of men ; the nation
found no place for the sole of her foot, between an Emjiire which
was no longer Imperial in its policy, and a constitution which
was not created. Even the little bourgeoisie, the narrow-minded
gentry of the factory and the shop, who only wanted to sell their
goods and fill their purses, even these were gloomy, looking upon
this International Fair that was just over as the fat kine which
would be found by-and-by to have eaten up the lean kine, fore-
stalling public expenditure, and leaving a series of dull seasons
to follow in a dispiriting future of impoverishment and decay.
That tragic memory of Queretaro weighed heavily on many
a heart, while the Mexican loan had emptied many a widow's
purse and pinched many an orphan. Nearer at hand there
were rumours of a conspiracy, fulminating cotton manufactured
in cellars, a secret society called the Commune Revolutionnaiie
des Ouvriers de Paris. The Eed Viper, warmed in the bosom
of the Empire, was turning its sting upon its protector.
In a letter written at this time by one of the Emperor's most
faithful adherents, the note of warning, the cry of peril, was, for
the first time, boldly sounded in the Imperial ear. ' The Empire
crumbles on every side. Your enemies, under the pretext
of founding a Parliamentary regime, have sworn your ruin ;
your ministers truckle to your adversaries ; they abandon at
a stroke the policy of the l9.st fourteen years ; your house is
in flames.'
So wrote Persigny to his master ; but the warning fell on a
dull and reluctant ear. That Impei ial master's health was failing,
his mind was troubled by the inroads of an insidious disease.
He who, in the bright morning of life, in the maturity of man-
hood, bold to audacity, with equal faith in himself and in destiny,
had trusted in the star of his house, now looked to that star to
save him from perils with which his genius had no longer powe?'
412 Ishmael
to cope. He who once crossed the stream at the head of hia
legions, reckless how fierce might be the battle on the further
sliore, now folded himself in his Imperial mantle, in tlie sublime
isolation of a neutral policy, and told his people that the temple
of war was closed. Yes, the temple of victorious war was closed
for ever for Napoleon the Third aiid his subjects — a temple draped
in sackcloth. Victory had departed from France. The reign of
the Eagles was over.
It was in the early spring of 1868, when the buds were un-
folding upon the Emperor's tree — that chestnut in the Imperial
gardens which was supposed to bloom just a little while before
all other trees — it was in the bright balmy beginning of a tine
April that an event occurred which made a twenty-four hours'
wonder for tlie idle, talkative, great world of Paris, and distracted
society for that brief space from the rumours of war, the dis-
cussion of the Emperoi''s proposed journey to Rome, Monseignor
Dupanloup's manifesto on the subject of female education, and
the exciting anticipation of a certain political journal of an
ultra-revolutionary colour, to be issued presently by Henri de
Eochefort, late contributor to the Figaro.
In these days there still existed in the vicinity of the
Chdtelet an old, old street— marked for destruction, but not yet
destroyed — a street historical with sinister histoiies ; picturesque
from the standpoint of painter or poet ; hideous, revolting as a
place in which to live ; perilous as a place through which to pass.
The police of Paris, excellent, brave to recklessness, but much
too few for the work they have to do, avoided this Eue de la
Vielle Lanterne unless summoned thither by some special cause.
It was an abode of crime, given over to criminals. The pant re-
ar layman — who penetrated the mystery of the place went
thither at his peril.
This hideous alley ended in a kind of staii-case, leading to a
street on a lower level. On one of those balmy April morning^!,
when the breeze blowing from the river seemed charged with
the perfume of distant orchards and flower gardens, or, at least,
with the breath of the flower-market yonder, a man was found
hanging from the massive old iron bar of a window in the house
looking upon this staircase — dead.
He was not an inhabitant of the street, nor was he known to
any of its occupants, who came out of their doors and hung out
of their windows in a matinal disarray to stare and wonder at
thia strange guest who had come among them in the dai'kness of
the night, and had taken up his abode there so quietly, none
hearing the groan or the sigh with which his spirit fled from its
* In the, il/?t/o7 of Bahyloii He shall Die* 4.13
gaunt and wasted tenement. lie looked like a geiitleman,
though his garments were in the last stage of shabbiness, just as
his poor frame was in the last stage of attenuation.
The police were summoned, took their cool survey of the
details of the case : a new rope bought on purpose for this final
act, and tied securely to the stout ii'on window-bar ; a loose
block of stone by which the suicide had clambered to the
window, tied his rope, made his noose, slipped it over his head,
and then kicked away the stone. It was all as simple as bon
jour. This repulsive spot had doubtless been chosen as a
haven where a man might kill himself in peace, secure from
sympathy, rescue, officious interruption. In Paris, where
Buicide is a fine art, this new development astonished nobody.
There were no papers in the dead man's pockets. The police
had only to carry the corpse to the Morgue yonder, and leave it
there for recognition. Some one woiUd be sure to recognise.
The hour of recognition came quickly. A medical student from
the Boul Mich strolled into the Morgue to look about him by
way of education ; saw the haggard face lying there, with a
strange, wan smile, half d^honnaire, half cynical, and recognised
an old acquaintance of the Ecossaises and the Pantagruel — a
man who was the most brilliant talker in the circle of liates
at the latter resort — a man who, of late years, had called himself
Jean Nimporte, but who was well known to all literary Paris as
Heotor de Valnois, author of Mes Nuits Blanches, once one of
the finest critics, and one of the most promising poets in France —
a man who might have been a power in the land. Alas ! Hades
is peopled with the pale, jjinched shades of the men who might
have been great !
The student's eyes clouded as he stood looking down at the
patrician face, the delicate chiselling of the features, accentuated
by the rigidity of death.
' Poor devil ! Was not the absinthe-poison killing him fast
enough, that he must needs take a short cut to his coffin ? ' he
muttered. ' Well, I will send round the hat to-night at the
Pantagruel, and we wiU bury him decently with Balzac and the
rest. Eoumestan, the eloquent young Marseillaise advocate,
who is going to be one of the greatest men in France, shall
make a speech above his giave.'
Within a week of the closing of that grave in the cemetery
of Pk'e Lachaise the Vicomte de Pontchartrain's second
volume of poems, Charniers et Sepulcres, was given to the
Parisian world— a dainty little volume, attenuated as the
Vicomte himself, printed on satin paper, bordered with carmine,
enriched witk symbolical initials and floral tail-pieces.
414 Ishmael
The verses were received with enthusiasm by that little knot
of advanced thinkers who welcome the wild, the extravagant,
the audacious, the obscure in art and literature ; and in the
Paris of those days advanced thought was considered a dislinc«
tion, not that in 1867 we had quite reached that outspoken
Gospel of Atheism which is the latest vogue by way of poetry.
The verses were the last development of the spasmodic school —
' du Baudelaire pousse au mf^ said one of the critics ; bitter as
absinthe ; despairing ; the death-throes of a life's agony ; and,
despite of many flaws, the book attracted the town and was
talked of everywhere.
The little Vicomte was enchanted with his success. His
book was talked about wherever he went. He was called upon
to explain and elucidate certain passages : his meaning hei'e, the
subtle underlying intention there, this or that profound
thought . not always an easy task for a poet of the obscure
school. But Pontchartrain came through it splendidly ;
philosophised and declaimed to circles of listening women,
breathless as they hung upon his eloquence. In a word, he was
the fashionable success of the season, the sought for in every
salon.
It was during a soiree at the Tuileries, when the poet had
been complimented by the Emperor himself, and had retired
from that august presence flushtd with visions of the Legion of
Honour and the Academy, that Madame de Keratry, exquisitely
dressed in a gown by Spricht, laughing, joyous, triumphant in
her new rCile of jeiine marie'e, took him into the embrasure of a
window, and asked him to sit by her side for a few minutes, as
she had something — a little secret, a laughable anecdote — to tell
him.
And then, beaming at him with radiant smiles, she told him
of her visit to the teinturier's den, and how she and Keratiy had
been hidden in the loft, and had heard him bargaining for the
verses which had made him famous.
' Do not you feel, now that your book is creating a furore^
that you might have given that poor creature a little more
money for his work ? ' she said, reproachfully. ' And I heard,
the other day, that he hanged himself in an old sti'eet in Pai-is
in an interval of insanity brought about by drink ; much more,
perhaps, by poverty and the wretched life he led. There was
an account of his funeral in one of the papers ; a grand speech
made by a young advocate called Eoumdstan, whom people talk
of as the successor to Berry er and Arago.'
'The verses you talk of were mere experiments— impossible
?i.ttempts, which I collected as a curious study in the decadency
^In the Midst of Babylon He shxll Dle^ 445
of a once brilliant mind,' said the Vicomte, trying to make tha
best of a desperate situation. ' You cannot for a moment
Slippose that I ? '
' That you palmed off another man's work as your own ! Of
course, not, Vicomte ; especially after your indignation one day
at Lady Constance Danetree's, when I mentioned the teinturier ;
" Cela ne se peut pas t " you cried, in a tumult of fine feeling ;
" Cela ne se peut pas I " If I were to tell people that story ! '
She burst out laughing, hiding herself behind her fan in a
convulsion of mirth.
' I daresay you have told every creature of your acquaint-
ance,' exclaimed Pontchartrain, furiously.
* Not a mortal. But I confess that, if it had not been for
the sake of Hortense, who is silly enough to believe in you and
to admire you, I should have told all Paris, 'ihe story is too
good to be locked up in my memory,'
'Perhaps, for your sister's sake, you will continue to keep
your counsel about a matter which you entirely misunderstand,'
said the Vicomte, with dignity ; and then he rose and stalked
away, leaving Madame de Kdratry still laughing behind her
fan.
He proposed to Ilortense next morning, and is liappy in ths
worship of a wife who still believes in him long after the \yorl(?
at large has found out that he is a sham.
THE END.
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