SECRET 
 OF NARCISSE 
 
 ui i2D/v\UND GOSSE 
 
OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
THE 
 
 SECRET OF NARCISSE 
 
THE 
 
 SECRET OF NARCISSE 
 
 $ QRomdncc 
 
 BY 
 
 EDMUND GOSSE 
 
 AUTHOR OF " GOSSIP IN A LIBRARY," " SEVENTEENTH CENTURY STUDIES,' 
 " ON VIOL AND FLUTE," ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 TAIT, SONS & COMPANY 
 
 UNION SQUARE 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1892, 
 
 BY 
 UNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY 
 
 [All rights reserved] 
 
bee 
 
 DE SCELETO 
 DOMINAM AMICISSIMAM 
 
 DOROTHEAM NEVILL 
 
 VT CVI 
 
 CRANIA SINT CORDI 
 
 LIBENTER AVDITVRAM CONFISVS 
 
 SCRIPSI 
 
 M626090 
 
THE SECEET OP NAECISSE, 
 
 i. 
 
 IT was Monday before Pentecost in the year 
 1548. There had been rain and wind, but 
 the gusts had fallen, and it was a yellow 
 soundless afternoon that was now drawing 
 to a close. From the whitewashed steps at 
 their doorway, women and children of four 
 generations could see, down the steep and 
 tortuous street, the vineyard opposite the 
 town, the long, smooth, round hill-side, as 
 brown as a bear-skin in the warm flood of 
 sunlight. All these Mercillats were talking 
 
6 THE SECEET OF N AEGIS SE. 
 
 at once all, except the silent extremities of 
 the family the bald and toothless grand- 
 mother, bowed upon her staff, and the baby, 
 wrapped up and stiffly set, like an image, 
 along the arm of its young mother, Lucie. 
 One other member of the group said but little, 
 Eosalie Mercillat, of whom her father, the 
 gunsmith, was heard to swear, a little too 
 frequently and too loudly, that she was the 
 prettiest maid in Bar-le-Duc, or, for that 
 matter, in the whole Duchy of the Barrois. 
 Handsome she was, with dark blue eyes 
 beneath her masses of black hair ; large of 
 limb, but tall and graceful, carrying an even 
 flow of healthy blood under the creamy pal- 
 lor of her complexion. For Rosalie the loud 
 discussion of market prices, of the reproof 
 given by the cure to the daughter of their 
 neighbor, the flesher, of the propriety of 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 1 
 
 
 
 feeding the low fire of charcoal on the 
 hearth, seemed to have less fascination than 
 for the rest. Hence it was she who, gazing 
 down the street, gave the expected signal. 
 
 "She is coming," said Rosalie, and the 
 family rose languidly to their feet, while a 
 few knots of persons gathered, in a similar 
 position, at one or two other doorways. Be- 
 low them in the narrow street, a singular 
 procession made its appearance. At the 
 head of it, a tall figure, entirely shrouded by 
 black flowing garments, embroidered in 
 white with death's-heads and pierced hearts, 
 advanced laboriously, its train supported by 
 two indifferent pages, the one of whom 
 yawned so often that he set the other's jaws 
 agape in sympathy. The Ducal chamber- 
 lain, stiff with sumptuous mourning, strode 
 beside, and a little careless bevy of servants 
 
8 THE SECRET OF NAECISSE. 
 
 attended. Slowly, slowly the procession 
 climbed the Rue Chavee, ascended the Place, 
 and disappeared within the great portals of 
 the church. As it did so, the chatter about 
 the price of pigs' feet broke forth as exuber- 
 antly as ever at the doorway of the Mercil- 
 lats. 
 
 It had been on a Monday, at an hour be- 
 fore sunset, that, six years earlier, the dying 
 body of Rene de Chalons, Prince of Orange, 
 had been carried into the castle of Bar-le- 
 Duc, to the arms of his distracted Duchess. 
 Over the hills at the back of the town it had 
 been brought, through the southern gate, 
 and down the beautiful new Rue des Dues 
 de Bar, where all the noble ladies clustered at 
 their carved windows, pale with horror at 
 the sight. Every Monday since then, at an 
 hour before sunset, the unhappy Duchess 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 9 
 
 reversed the order of her terrible pilgrimage. 
 Leaving the castle by the private door, at 
 which the dead body of her husband had 
 entered, she walked on foot up the track of 
 his magnificent funeral to the church of St. 
 Maze, and, after weeping at his grave, she 
 returned by the Rue des Dues de Bar. 
 
 Always on foot always, in frost or rain, 
 sunlight or mist, arrayed in the same exces- 
 sive pomp of woe this weekly apparition of 
 the shrouded Princess had long ago ceased 
 to interest the inhabitants of the town. 
 Her Monday procession had become a nat- 
 ural phenomenon, a meaningless ceremony 
 which no longer impressed or excited the 
 spectators or even the actors, with one excep- 
 tion. The agony which shook the stately 
 frame of the Duchess, the sobs which were 
 audible under those depths of veil upon veil, 
 
10 THE SECRET OF NAECISSE. 
 
 showed that with her, at least, grief, wilfully 
 nurtured and cultivated like a delicate plant, 
 had taken entire possession of the morbid 
 spirit in which it grew. 
 
 When the train of the Duchess, conducted 
 inward from the gates of St. Maze by the 
 priests in attendance, had entered the church 
 and had vanished behind the closing doors, 
 the street recovered from its momentary 
 disturbance. Well knowing that their lady 
 would leave the building, as she always did, 
 by the other exit, the Mercillats strolled up 
 the pear-shaped Place which descended from 
 St. Maze, and seated themselves gaily on the 
 broad steps of the church. Rosalie still seemed 
 distracted and inattentive. 
 
 " You listen no more than a radish," said 
 her mother, Eudoxie ; " you make no decent 
 face of listening, though I speak of what I 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSK H 
 
 know and have seen with my eyes." The 
 buxom woman had just recounted an inci- 
 dent of her youth to which her daughter had 
 not paid even the compliment of that smile 
 we spare for the twelfth-told tales of rela- 
 tives. 
 
 " Rosalie is listening for the ting of the 
 pincers round the corner," said her young 
 sister Bibianne. 
 
 " Be not a fool, Bibi," replied the person 
 so pointedly addressed ; and settled her plump 
 hands on her lap. 
 
 " Nay," said Lucie, as she bobbed her in- 
 fant, a swathed wave-offering, at one of the 
 carven apostles on the porch-front, for the 
 babe had wakened and might probably howl, 
 " nay, Narcisse is not pinching and hammer- 
 ing at so late an hour as this, and why you 
 must all torment Rosalie, I know not." 
 
12 THE SECRET OF NAECISSE. 
 
 " Where is your Narcisse ? " said her 
 mother. But, without waiting for a reply 
 she went on : " The new grille he has made 
 for the window of the Chevalier's mother is 
 warped out so far that you see it if you look 
 up from the street." 
 
 " Who told you so, mother ? " asked Ro- 
 salie, fiercely. 
 
 " Nay, one sees it for oneself one glances 
 up along the wall and it sticks out like a 
 gargoyle. Well," she continued, abandon- 
 ing at once the pretence of personal inspec- 
 tion, " the robe-maker's daughter to my lady 
 told me so." 
 
 " Much she knows of warpings or of ham- 
 mered work, or you either, mother," rejoined 
 Rosalie ; " why do you hawk such foolish 
 tales about ? Narcisse is good enough crafts- 
 man, I hope, for such a town as Bar." 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 13 
 
 " What do you know, Rosalie, of what 
 manner of craftsman he is ? " 
 
 " Can I not see with my eyes ? Do I not 
 know what all say of him ? Do they not 
 come hanging round his booth with ' Pray, 
 Master Narcisse ! ' and ' Good Master Nar- 
 cisse, the medal in my cap ' ? " 
 
 " What do you know of him ? He is not 
 one of us. Where did he come from ? " 
 
 " Who knows, Rosalie, what good or bad 
 work is in a town like this ? " said Bibianne. 
 
 Rosalie stood up, lazy and angry, and 
 leaned against a stone saint. 
 
 " You have not heard, silly Bibi, of the 
 great Ligier Richier ? Eh ? Of the great- 
 est artist who ever lived in Barrois or in 
 Lorraine, who has been heard of to the ends 
 of the earth, and as far away as as 
 Rome?" 
 
14 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 " What has Master Bichier to do with 
 our Narcisse ? " asked the mother. 
 
 " You, mother, do at least know that when 
 Master Kichier came here years ago, when 
 we were children, to make the images in 
 the church, he brought Narcisse with him as 
 a 'prentice, and did nothing without him." 
 
 " And why, if Narcisse be so great a 
 craftsman, did he leave him behind him in 
 Bar when he went away again ? " continued 
 Madame Mercillat, with a nagging air of 
 triumph. 
 
 To this Rosalie had no definite answer 
 ready, and she was already tired of the dispute. 
 The family, though civil to her artist-lover, 
 had no fondness for him. He was not of their 
 class or race. They had the provincial dis- 
 like of a new personality, brought into their 
 circle from the unknown and therefore un- 
 
THE SECEET OF NARCISSE. 15 
 
 loved world outside, the world which, if only 
 you went far enough, became the haunt of 
 savages, and monsters, and hairy creatures 
 that did not worship God. Narcisse was 
 not a savage, perhaps, but he came from a 
 distance, from some place on the high road 
 to Heathenesse. He was not Barrois, and 
 why should the Barrois love him ? 
 
 The cause of Narcisse Gerbillard's settle- 
 ment in Bar had nothing mysterious about 
 it, though Mother Eudoxie might choose to 
 forget the reason. Seven years before the 
 time of which we are writing, the Duke 
 Francis had succeeded, after much blustering 
 and wheedling, in persuading the great 
 sculptor of Lorraine, Ligier Richier, to quit 
 for awhile the palace he had adorned for 
 himself in St. Mihiel, and all the works he 
 was finishing in that town, in order to come 
 
16 THE SECEET OF N AEGIS SE. 
 
 across the vineyards to Bar, and enrich the 
 new city that the Sovereign Prince was build- 
 ing. Richier had come at last, like a travel- 
 ling cardinal in state, with his suite of servants 
 and 'prentices. His square jaw and arrogant 
 eye had been seen in profile by a few aston- 
 ished peasants as he crossed the hills in a 
 sort of Persian sedan-chair, designed by 
 himself , with the flag of that guild of which 
 he was the master waving from the silvered 
 roof of it. An old but spacious house close 
 to the wall, lately abandoned by a noble 
 family for whom a residence had been built 
 in the new renaissance Rue des Dues de 
 Bar, was placed at the sculptor's service by 
 the gratified Duke, who laid aU his reserve 
 aside in his anxiety to please the magic-work- 
 ing master whom he had captured. 
 
 Once settled in Bar, Ligier Richier was in 
 
THE SECRET OF NAECISSE. 17 
 
 no hurry to leave it, though his own cities 
 of Lorraine were sighing for him ; and when 
 a deputation from Toul waited upon him for 
 the decoration of that ancient cathedral, he 
 bid them wait three years, or be satisfied with 
 a pupil. The churches of Bar and its castle 
 were already full of his statues, the nobles 
 strutted with his medals in their hats and his 
 coins in their pockets, when the fatal field of 
 St. Dizier called upon him for fresh exertions 
 of his griesly imagination and adroit hand as a 
 modeller. At last, having tapped a fortune 
 from the still-brimming coffers of the Duke, 
 a sudden whim of fancy, or the promise of 
 an interesting commission, carried him away 
 to Chalons, and the palace that had been so 
 noisy a workshop was left to the bats and 
 mice. 
 
 This was two years ago, and already the 
 
 2 
 
18 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 visit of the great artist began to be a myth. 
 One living memorial of it remained by the 
 side of so much that was in stone and 
 metal. Of all his pupils, the one whom he 
 had at first loved and trusted best, was a pale 
 young man from the south, of whose ante- 
 cedents no one knew anything, Narcisse 
 Gerbillon. Kichier apparently did not cease 
 to trust him, but the master's arrogance had 
 cooled the warmer relations which had ex- 
 isted between himself and his 'prentice be- 
 fore the former resolved to leave Bar. It 
 was this decline in cordiality, no doubt, which 
 had changed to Narcisse the prospect of his 
 life. Adoring the genius of Ligier Kichier, 
 to which his talent owed its own graces, he 
 had determined to follow him through all his 
 pilgrimages, never seeking to be himself a 
 master, since he could serve the best of mas- 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 19 
 
 ters. But, if tempestuous gestures and scorn- 
 ful suspicions were to be the order of their 
 day, better to break the bond before it be- 
 came too irksome. Warmly recommended 
 by Kichier to the Duke, Narcisse Gerbillard 
 had stayed behind when, the Persian car- 
 riage and all its convoy had taken their 
 noisy farewell of the streets of Bar. 
 
 He was amply employed, and his work, 
 though without originality, was carefully and 
 skilfully done. He rented for himself a 
 booth under the shadow of the great church, 
 and fitted that up as a workshop for the day- 
 time, still living in one room of the empty 
 house, near the southern wall, which had 
 been Richier's palace. His business soon 
 brought him into close relations with 
 MerciUat, the gunsmith, for whom he wrought 
 ornamental pieces in which his art showed to 
 
20 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 advantage. Mercillat, a subtle man, who 
 concealed great acuteness under a noisy 
 demeanor, knew how to appreciate a work- 
 man so adroit and punctual one, moreover, 
 who gave the gunsmith no trouble by de- 
 manding for his designs any personal credit 
 with the nobles, content that Mercillat should 
 hear the praise if he himself got ready money. 
 When it appeared that the second daughter, 
 Rosalie, had fallen in love with Narcisse, her 
 father alone of the family, but with an 
 authority which overbore all resistance from 
 the women of the house, smiled upon the 
 match. 
 
 As the color grew fuller in the west, 
 where the light grew less, the Mercillats rose 
 to their feet, and prepared leisurely to de- 
 scend the Place. Rosalie moved in the oppo- 
 site direction, and as she discreetly turned the 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 21 
 
 flank of the great church, she glanced at the 
 booth that clung to the corner of it, like a 
 limpet to the base of some vast rock. This 
 was the workshop which Narcisse rented 
 from the town, and the spot where all day 
 long he was to be seen busy with his tools, 
 or gazing out in a melancholy reverie. It 
 was now shuttered and locked up, as she ex- 
 pected it to be. He was beforehand with 
 her, no doubt, in their innocent rendezvous. 
 She went out of the town at the upper 
 gate, passing but a few belated hinds returning 
 from the fields, herself the only person to pass 
 outwards at so late an hour of the afternoon. 
 Directly beyond the gate, the broad brow of 
 the hill on the edge of which Bar is built 
 was covered in all directions by what had 
 once been woods. At the last threat of in- 
 vasion, before bolting their doors against 
 
22 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 the world, the Duke's townsmen had cut 
 down all the timber, partly to supply them- 
 selves, in case of siege, with firewood, partly 
 to deprive their enemies of the same useful 
 stores. Some years had passed since then, 
 and along each side of the road brushwood 
 had sprung up in the neglected coppices, 
 making a thin shadow from the sun and a 
 delusive shelter from the rain. The floor 
 of this unimpressive woodland, in which 
 there grew but little grass or moss, was 
 gemmed at that season of the year with a 
 lank profusion of spring flowers. Rosalie 
 stepped out of the deserted road, and gath- 
 ered a great bunch of grape hyacinths and 
 lilies of the valley ; it was a new thing for 
 her to care for flowers, for which Narcisse, 
 on his part, had a veritable passion. She 
 had learned to gather them, at first, for his 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 23 
 
 sake, and had grown to love them for their 
 own. 
 
 It was not a common thing for women to 
 venture outside the walls of the town so near 
 to nightfall, and if the family of Rosalie 
 had not been wearied of restraining her, she 
 would have been forbidden to do so. There 
 was little danger, perhaps, yet wandering 
 soldiers or vagabonds might have annoyed 
 her, if Narcisse had not always conducted or 
 preceded her on these occasions. The spot 
 was so close to the town that a louder tur- 
 moil than usual on the rough pavement 
 would come in diffused murmur to their ears 
 as they stood there. For Rosalie's part, she 
 would have been well content to have leaned, 
 in full publicity, over the stall at which 
 Narcisse was working, and to have counted 
 that enough of a lover's meeting. But his 
 
24 THE SECRET OF N AEGIS SE. 
 
 romantic and more imaginative temperament 
 had insisted upon greater solitude than 
 this. 
 
 Here the solitude was indeed absolute ; so 
 near as the town was, it yet seemed as dis- 
 tant as those mystical cities of God which a 
 man may seek forever and not have sight 
 of. The point at which the lovers stayed or 
 met was just where the road from the town 
 crossed the path from Sermaize to Nangois- 
 le-Petit, a path little trodden, except in high 
 noon, by a few pedlars or friars. At this 
 spot a huge crucifix was raised, the post of 
 which had sunken a little in the loose soil 
 and now leaned forward, as though its heavy 
 arm and the terrible load they bore would 
 descend upon the passer-by. The image 
 was of colossal size, rudely painted, with 
 lamentable dripping clusters of red hair, and 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 25 
 
 a crimson trickle of blood drawn like a 
 thread from the wounds in the crossed feet. 
 It had been carved, before the Italian taste 
 came into the country, by some rough car- 
 penter of Lorraine, who designed no more 
 than to imitate, as well as he might, some 
 horror of the wars that continued to haunt 
 his memory. 
 
 It was strange that these lovers should 
 choose the shadow of this awful symbol for 
 their trysting-place, yet, so complete is the 
 indifference born of habit, the phantasmal or 
 even the religious horror of this cross never 
 affected either of them. To each it was 
 merely a landmark, unless when Narcisse, 
 unwontedly professional, might chance to 
 remark on the clumsy workmanship of the 
 limbs or speculate on the probability that, 
 after some heavy night of rain, the whole 
 
26 THE SECEET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 structure might be discovered sprawling 
 across the roadway. 
 
 Out of the brushwood Rosalie emerged, 
 at the well-known spot, to find the solitude 
 absolutely unbroken. Narcisse had not 
 come. Where then could he be ? She per- 
 ceived at once that he had failed to keep his 
 appointment. After shutting up his work- 
 shop, he had gone whither? Certainly 
 not to the feet of the cross at the high 
 meeting of the roads. Rosalie felt her 
 whole body invaded by that physical sense 
 of distress which comes in youth only, and 
 solely to those who love not wisely, when 
 they are suddenly prevented from seeing the 
 one they have been expecting to see. It is 
 a disappointment so transitory, a grief so 
 puerile and unreasonable, so inconceivable 
 to all who are not suffering from the very 
 
THE SECRET OF NAECISSE. 27 
 
 malady of love, that we are apt to think of 
 it as trifling. But to the sufferer it is ab- 
 surdly poignant, and as overwhelming as the 
 irrational despair of a little child. In this 
 town of Bar, with all the quiet world so 
 close about them, occasions for such disap- 
 pointment were rare. Rosalie stood stark 
 and cold, under the coarse painted feet of the 
 huge image, and her brain refused to act. 
 But, all around her, the evening murmur of 
 the wind began to rise in the broad wood- 
 land, whispering, sighing, grumbling. The 
 light grew less in the west. She was alone, 
 she was in despair, and she fled from her 
 solitude. 
 
 That brief flight was an agony. Down all 
 the open alleys of the wood came chuckling 
 sounds, rapid advance of unseen feet, shock 
 of muffled wings, the infinite trembling and 
 
28 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 gasping of beings without form or substance. 
 Devils probed the thin foliage of the lime- 
 trees to reach her, devils leaned on one hand 
 and laughed at her from the entrance of 
 rabbit-holes. It grew and grew, till the 
 whole air and earth became a vast imbroglio 
 of annoyance and temptation, and at length, 
 as she fled, she heard behind her the great 
 crucified figure from the cross itself pursu- 
 ing her, limping after her on its pierced and 
 naked feet, stretching to seize her with those 
 coarse arms from which the blood was trick- 
 ling. In vain she tried to console herself, 
 to murmur a prayer. All she could feel 
 was that God and Narcisse had alike for- 
 saken her, that she was given up to devils, 
 abandoned within that spiritual riot of the 
 night to which no girl in her senses should 
 ever venture to resign herself. 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCIS8E. 29 
 
 It was all over in three minutes. Once 
 in sight of the open doorway in the south- 
 ern gate, her supernatural fears gave way to 
 a mere paroxysm of anger and of jealousy. 
 Where could Narciose be? With what 
 other girl? Crudely and stupidly enough, 
 but irresistibly, that question rose for the 
 first time in her spirit, and settled itself to 
 stay there. Who her rival could be, 
 whether there were not a dozen reasons of a 
 natural sort to account for the disappearance 
 of Narcisse, she scarcely asked herself. The 
 corroding acid of jealousy, a liquid fire, be- 
 gan to steal through her veins. With it 
 came the determination to punish him. She 
 would not look for him ; she would not even 
 take the street which would bring her close 
 to his house ; she would go home, and wait 
 for his explanations. That he would ex- 
 
30 THE SECEET OF NAECISSE. 
 
 plain, and that she would promptly forgive 
 him, were not matters of doubt. 
 
 She paused at the door of the church, and 
 went in, to compose herself a little before 
 presenting herself to the women of her 
 household. Inside the church it was almost 
 dark. A young priest was moving in front 
 of the altar, instructing two acolytes in the 
 lighting of the tall candles. One by one 
 the faint yellow stars of light appeared, wak- 
 ing still fainter silvery reflections among the 
 holy vessels. Around the aisles, stopping at 
 each of the sacred stations, a little girl was 
 wandering, belated and inattentive, doing 
 her enforced round of prayers after "tardy 
 confession. Rosalie sat and smelt the light 
 odor of incense, while her heart sank more 
 and more to its normal motion, and her eyes 
 grew clear after her dizzy racing. Round 
 
TEE SECRET OF NAKCISSE. 31 
 
 her, behind new stone screens of Eenaissance 
 design, little in keeping with the Gothic 
 splendor of the church, were half seen and 
 half divined the gorgeous tombs of all the 
 Dukes of Bar. In the furthest chapel, only 
 the eastern wall of which was within sight, 
 she could just perceive the corner of the en- 
 tablature of the most magnificent of these 
 monuments, that raised by the widowed 
 Duchess to Rene de Chalons. As she was 
 inattentively gazing in this direction, a slight 
 shadow seemed to flutter across the chapel, 
 to subside, to move again ; and at length the 
 hand and arm of Narcisse, raised with a wide 
 gesture familiar in him, appeared for a mo- 
 ment in the chapel. 
 
 To whom was he gesticulating? Who 
 was his companion ? In the happiness of 
 finding him thus unexpectedly these ques- 
 
32 THE SECRET OF NAECISSE. 
 
 tions scarcely troubled her serenity. The 
 priest and the boys were gone now, leaving 
 the altar flashing as with a pendent curtain 
 of stars. Eosalie rose discreetly, and crept 
 towards the chapel of Rene. She would, at 
 least, satisfy herself whose company it was 
 that her lover preferred to hers.. When she 
 reached the doorway, Narcisse was standing 
 motionless, in a reverie, and he was alone. 
 
 In the centre of the chapel rose the amaz- 
 ing monument which Ligier Kichier had 
 made at the command of Anne of Lorraine. 
 Of the florid accessories which supported the 
 central figure, little could be seen in the fad- 
 ing light ; that and that alone arrested the 
 eye. Carefully carved out of two blocks of 
 the creamy white stone of St. Mihiel, and re- 
 lieved against an ermine-dotted shroud of 
 black basalt, a statue of the skeleton of the 
 
TUE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 33 
 
 soldier-prince, whose actual bones were grow- 
 ing green within the tomb below, leaped 
 into the light. At his own special desire, 
 the prince was represented not as he was 
 when he died, but as he would be three years 
 after his decease that is to say, with the 
 osseous structure still lightly covered, here 
 and there, as by veils of gauze and webs of 
 gossamer, by the last filaments of skin and 
 flesh. The attitude which the sculptor had 
 chosen was so singular and so imaginative 
 that the design was preserved from much of 
 what would else have been grotesque and 
 hideous in its composition. With the legs 
 close together, the body drawn up and the 
 left hand outstretched above the head to its 
 full length, the whole figure seemed vita- 
 lized and elastic. It was Death itself, but in 
 
 an ecstasy of life. In the uplifted hand was 
 3 
 
34 THE SECEET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 held a small box of chased silver, empty at 
 present, but destined to receive the heart of 
 Anne of Lorraine upon the decease of that 
 princess ; the empty right hand was pressed 
 hard to the ribs of the skeleton, to the spot 
 where that other faithful heart had beaten 
 BO loudly. 
 
 Familiar as Rosalie was with this statue, it 
 seemed to her this evening possessed of un- 
 usual distinction and beauty. The silence of 
 Narcisse intimidated her ; she dared not 
 speak so loudly as to attract his attention. 
 Through all her flight and agony, she had 
 preserved her posy of lilies of the valley and 
 grape hyacinths, and she held them still, hot 
 and flagged, in her strong hand. She now 
 ventured forward, and laid them in a heap 
 between the feet of the skeleton. At this, 
 Narcisse finally looked round, and gazed at 
 
THE SECRET OF NABCISSE. 35 
 
 her with a gentle glance of surprise. She 
 had expected excuses, a hurried series of ex- 
 planations and exculpations. Instead of this, 
 with his wide gesture, he captured her 
 shoulders in his arm, and drawing her softly 
 to him, continued his rapt examination of the 
 articulations of the statue. 
 
 Totally pacified, all her troubles, as it 
 were, washed away by a warm tide of satis- 
 faction, she let her head lean on his neck in 
 silence. At last, as if delicately to draw 
 him down from heights unattainable to her 
 ignorance, she pulled a curling lock of his 
 reddish hair with her lips. For only answer, 
 he lifted one lily and one grape hyacinth 
 from the heap at the skeleton's feet, and 
 stuck them in his shirt. This broke the 
 spell, and still leaning there, in the growing 
 darkness, she asked : 
 
36 THE SECRET OF NABCISSE. 
 
 " Why did you not come? " 
 
 " Come whither ? " he asked again. 
 
 tf Nay/' she pouted, " you know well 
 enough to our meeting-place under our 
 Lord of the crossways." 
 
 " It was never in my mind/' he answered, 
 with a simplicity so perfect that she was 
 finally disarmed. "I worked on late to- 
 night, and when I locked up the booth, I 
 turned in here." 
 
 "To pray?" she asked. 
 
 " No," he said ; " to look again at some 
 of Master Richier's work. I wanted to be 
 sure 
 
 " What did you want to be sure about ? " 
 
 But again Narcisse, though her arms were 
 
 round his body, had passed from her in 
 
 thought. He was curiously observing, with 
 
 a knit brow, how the ribs were joined to the 
 
THE SECRET OF NAECISSE. 37 
 
 sides of the statue, in a series of bold hoops 
 or notches, not indeed closely studied from 
 Nature, but full of practical cleverness. It 
 was some time before they spoke again. 
 Rosalie was not very skilful in understand- 
 ing what she felt. Yet she could not but be 
 dimly conscious that the broken appoint- 
 ment under the cross was so small a thing to 
 Narcisse that he could not comprehend its 
 importance to her. To her the remainder 
 of the day was nothing ; to him the meeting 
 was but an agreeable episode with which art 
 or business might have to interfere. 
 
 After their rendezvous, it was never she, 
 but always he, who noted the passing of the 
 hour, and suggested, in a placid way, that 
 they ought to return. But, on this occasion, 
 it was Rosalie who made the first movement 
 to be gone. Outside, upon the steps of the 
 
38 THE SECEET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 church, the twilight was still surprisingly 
 strong ; and Rosalie, who had counted on a 
 parting kiss in the darkness, drew back, a 
 little abashed, from her own thought. They 
 parted, smiling, with complete decorum. 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 39 
 
 II. 
 
 NARCISSE went back in the fading light to 
 his house, turned the key in the lock, as- 
 cended the echoing staircase, and let himself 
 into the large chamber which had now for 
 two years been his home. He lighted a 
 small fire on the hearth, and crouched beside 
 it till the place was quite dark save where 
 the flame flickered. He brought out his 
 food, and at first left it on the floor, un- 
 cooked ; then at length returned to it, and 
 prepared it, making a hasty and uncomfort- 
 able meal. Thrown across the bed, there 
 lay a rude sort of southern zither, a small 
 instrument, shaped like a heart and strung 
 with eight strings. Nothing of this kind 
 
40 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 had ever been seen at Bar until Narcisse 
 brought it with him, and he was shy of pro- 
 ducing it, as it seemed in some sort the 
 token of his alien fortunes. Now, as he 
 arose from before the fire, and paced to and 
 fro in the great empty room, he snatched the 
 zither from his bed, and ever and anon struck 
 upon it a certain air of his own country, 
 always the same. There would have been 
 something mysterious to a stranger in this 
 huge, four-square apartment, dimly lighted 
 from the hearth, in which a single gigantic 
 shadow leaped and danced about the walls, 
 and a single fitful tune wailed from an un- 
 known instrument. If the movement and 
 the sound seemed singular, they only the 
 more fitly illustrated the curious agitation 
 that fluttered in the veins of Narcisse. 
 
 At last his restlessness took him to the 
 
THE SECRET OF N AEGIS SE. 41 
 
 window. The night was chilly and obscure. 
 No stars were visible ; only, after long star- 
 ing out, he saw the dead, high line of the 
 wall beyond the garden, and a few vague 
 masses of a blacker blackness which were 
 plane-trees shivering in the wind. As he 
 gazed, a crazy wish came into his head, a de- 
 sire to throw his window open, to strike upon 
 his zither, and as he struck to walk out upon 
 the black night air, to skip, playing all the 
 while, from roof to roof across the dim and 
 twinkling streets, to enjoy a kind of solitary 
 sabbath dancing a little way above the noc- 
 turnal town ; not precisely to soar or fly, but 
 to float, like a loose bladder in the wind, 
 bumping from roof to roof ; or like the little 
 painted angels, with trumpets and long robes, 
 that play on rebecks hung round their necks, 
 and float about at martyrdoms just out of 
 
42 THE SECEET OF NAECISSE. 
 
 the executioner's reach. None of these 
 images, all of which passed through his 
 mind, exactly interpreted the wish of Nar- 
 cisse, which had in it a sort of lawlessness as 
 well, a kind of revolt against the restrictions 
 of civic manners, a desire to be out in the 
 darkness on some innocent devil's errand. 
 And then he thought of the stories current 
 of eccentric men and women to whom in 
 their solitude the devil had come and bidden 
 them fly with him, to explore all the secret 
 provinces of the night. He shuddered, and 
 turned from the window. 
 
 But as he stood before the fire his legs 
 strangely brilliant in the light, the polished 
 edge of the zither flashing like silver, the 
 veins in relief on his long white hands, yet 
 his face in complete darkness as though still 
 under the shadow of that satanic suggestion 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 43 
 
 wholesome thought occurred to him, and 
 a memory rushed back to his mind. He laid 
 the zither gently down upon the table, and 
 prepared in haste for a ceremony which had 
 recalled itself to him. He lighted a candle, 
 and opened a clamped box in which he kept 
 his treasures. He changed his working 
 clothes for a blue cloth jacket which revealed 
 a white doublet underneath, and for the 
 close-fitting hosen which were then in fash- 
 ion. His graceful figure was well shown off 
 by this distinguished and modest dress. He 
 had recollected that his friend, the Duke's 
 trumpeter, had a gala supper at his house 
 that night, and that he himself was expressly 
 bidden to it. 
 
 Out in the narrow dark lane the wind 
 blew cold. He wrapped his mantle closer 
 round his shoulders. The trumpeter lived 
 
44 THE SECEET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 in the lower part of the town, but Narcisse 
 made his way first to his own booth under 
 St. Maze. It was all silent and doubly dark 
 beneath the shadow of the enormous minster. 
 Not a sound vibrated from the huge hollow 
 shell that hummed so often, with such a 
 choral pulse, through the long working 
 hours of the day, murmuring above and 
 around him with the various services of the 
 church, and cheering him in his workshop 
 with a whisper of protection. Now the vast 
 building, looming through the night, seemed 
 dead and awful, the abode of unconsidered 
 terrors. Narcisse unlocked the booth, and 
 groped his way in. Sitting down at his work- 
 table, he felt about until he found some steel 
 springs and other mechanism ; without a can- 
 dle, gradually growing used to the darkness, he 
 sat in silence there for a long time, testing 
 
THE SECRET OF NAECISSE. 45 
 
 some arrangement of these materials with his 
 fingers. He seemed to become absorbed in 
 this odd labor, and to forget that time was 
 passing. 
 
 At last he rose suddenly, and put his work 
 away. Stealthily, as he had come, he left 
 the booth, crossed the dim Place, on which 
 rain was by this time falling, and descended 
 the rough and twinkling street. The trum- 
 peter lived in the house of his ancestors, an 
 old construction, built round a courtyard, 
 and set close under the wall of the ducal 
 palace, up into which, indeed, a staircase led 
 from the back of it. For generations past 
 the same family had enjoyed this same office 
 at the little Court. Father had taught son 
 the mysterious art of blowing music through 
 tubes of brass and silver, and each had 
 handed down to his successor a richer col- 
 
46 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 lection of instruments and a fuller code 
 of traditions. The present man had come 
 young to the honors of the trumpet, and he 
 was still unmarried, the very type of a jolly 
 bachelor, the most sociable of all the rich 
 burgesses of Bar. 
 
 Narcisse was hesitating by which of the 
 inner doors to enter, since both seemed re- 
 verberating with jollity, when that on the 
 right hand burst open, and a great dog, car- 
 rying half a fowl in his mouth, rushed be- 
 tween the legs of the fresh visitor, followed 
 by a man's cap and a volley of humorous 
 abuse. Narcisse stood in the doorway, 
 dazzled with the lights, bewildered with the 
 noise. 
 
 " Hah ! here he is at last ! Scoundrel, to 
 be so late ! The very dog has been anxious 
 about thee, and was carrying thee a bone 
 
THE SECRET OF N AEGIS SE. 47 
 
 when we all thought, poor wretch, that he 
 was stealing ! " cried a hearty voice from 
 the interior of the room. 
 
 The scene that Narcisse had so suddenly 
 broken in upon was a lively one. Twelve or 
 thirteen persons of both sexes were seated on 
 benches round a narrow table, which was 
 laden with good things. A copper chandelier 
 above the door at which he was standing 
 threw down a yellow light over the group, 
 and lent its aid to two or three tall wax can- 
 dles in bronze candlesticks, which guttered 
 in the night air upon the table. 
 
 " Come in, come in, and shut the door ! " 
 shouted the host ; " come in, before the wax 
 drops down on your fine blue coat, and be- 
 fore we have all caught a fever from the 
 cold wind. Come in, and sit you down here 
 by me." 
 
48 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 The room was richly furnished, and as a 
 peculiarity of the house, the eye instantly 
 sought out the variety of curious tubes that 
 hung by leathern bandaliers from nails 
 upon the walls. The light, which was not 
 strong anywhere, was all concentrated upon 
 the tablecloth and on the faces that gathered 
 around it, yet the brown gleam of the walls 
 was lit up with golden flashes and sparkles 
 on the strange instruments that hung fan- 
 tastically there. The young trumpeter was 
 exceedingly proud of this collection. Here 
 were not only the trumpets and clarions 
 of the day, but grotesque and battered in- 
 struments of a bygone time, the presence of 
 which upon his walls testified to the antiquity 
 of his family in their profession. Here was a 
 whole row of bucines, those long, straight 
 trumpets of bell-metal, slowly opening to the 
 
THE SECRET OF NAECISSE. 49 
 
 end, which had once been used for signals 
 in camp, and even now were occasionally 
 blown in processions of ducal etiquette. 
 Here were the curled and slender horns 
 of brass, with their bell over the man's 
 shoulder, sweet in tone as those on which 
 the minstrels of the Prince of Antioch blew 
 their swan -songs before the gates of Jeru- 
 salem. 
 
 At the moment that Narcisse entered, the 
 trumpeter had launched upon his favorite 
 topic. He started ever and anon from his 
 chair to exemplify the various sounds, the 
 sharp and resonant note of the graille, the 
 solemn organ-harmony of the araine, the 
 piercing cry of the clairon. He had just suc- 
 ceeded in persuading Mercillat, the gunsmith, 
 who did not love to be made ridiculous, to 
 
 put to his lips the ivory mouthpiece of that 
 
 4 
 
50 THE SECRET OF NABCISfiE. 
 
 huge leathern worm, with its thin pipe of 
 metal, which was called the serpent, and in 
 those late days had come to be only blown 
 in church. Mercillat puffed and strained, 
 but the tube hung inert, and not a sound 
 proceeded from it. When the gunsmith, 
 between blowing and fuming, was at the 
 purple verge of apoplexy, the trumpeter 
 snatched the instrument from him, touched 
 it with his mouth, and called forth a succes- 
 sion of notes so clear, so piercingly sweet, 
 that they seemed rather the music of some 
 mysterious bird in the forest than of this 
 uncouth coil of leather. 
 
 Delighted with his triumph, the glowing 
 young trumpeter hurried back to his seat at 
 the top of the table, and was descanting on 
 the mysterious virtues of the central piece in 
 his collection, a stained and beaten oliphant 
 
THE SECRET OF NABCISSE. 51 
 
 or hunting-horn of elephant's tusk, bound 
 with bands of thin gold, such a horn as Ro- 
 land blew at Roncevaux, and the very one, 
 so he declared with an oath, from which his 
 sainted grandfather, long since with God, 
 sent such a blast at the battle of Vaudemont 
 that all the vanguard of the Emperor broke 
 up and fled. As he sat and talked in his 
 eager way, Narcisse glanced sideways at him 
 with great content. He had long been 
 strangely drawn to this red-blooded, braggart 
 child of the Barrois, this genial and gener- 
 ous fellow, with his handsome face and rich 
 muscular frame that seemed to burn with 
 vitality. A very tender comradeship had 
 sprung up between these two young men, so 
 utterly unlike in temperament, in nationality, 
 in physique. The coarse jollity of the peo- 
 ple of the town commonly jarred upon Nar- 
 
52 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 cisse, who could give them no change in 
 this their own currency ; but as he sat here 
 at the feast to-night, the trumpeter's large 
 hand, brought emphatically, half caressingly 
 down upon the knee of Narcisse, filled him 
 with a vague contentment of spirit, and 
 seemed the homely circumstance in all this 
 alien drama. 
 
 But the inner door was flung open, and 
 another familiar face appeared. Carrying a 
 large open work gridiron in her two hands, 
 and laughing loudly, Rosalie hastened to the 
 table, and deposited the savory results of 
 her cookery on a silver platter before their 
 host. Famous for her art in broiling meat 
 after the favorite fashion of the time, Rosa- 
 lie had volunteered to prepare for this laugh- 
 ing Esau and his friends the food that their 
 soul loved. She was greeted with a cheer of 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 53 
 
 applause, but as she rushed forwards, she 
 saw that Narcisse was there, and her good- 
 humor was complete. She took, as by right, 
 her place on the other side of him. The 
 trumpeter was now magnificent indeed. 
 With his feathered hat upon his head, he 
 carved the meat, and as he pressed the finest 
 bits upon guest after guest, he dexterously 
 handed the platter with one hand, while he 
 bowed with his hat in the other, as he had 
 seen the Duke do at ceremonious dinners. 
 The air was perfumed with the delicate scent 
 of the meat, and Rosalie's masterpiece was 
 divided amid a shower of compliments and 
 pleasantries. 
 
 With this savory resumption of the feast, 
 the spirits of the company, which had been 
 excellent before, rose to a very animated 
 pitch. The flushed serving-boy, who made 
 
54 THE SECEET OF N AEGIS SE. 
 
 rather a rough but an exceedingly conscien- 
 tious substitute for the pages at supper in 
 the castle overhead, had enough to do in 
 keeping every one supplied with wine. His 
 boots clapping hither and thither on the 
 floor, he seized the tall, narrow glasses as 
 the drink grew low in them, tossed their 
 heel-taps into a basin, and refilled the glasses 
 from jugs standing in a silver cooler on the 
 floor. Such a spirit of good-humor pre- 
 vailed that the flesher's wife f orebore to scold 
 the lad when, in his excess of zeal, he sprin- 
 kled her sleeve with wine-drops. It was a 
 special vintage, at least three years old, a 
 pink wine with an odor of the grape-flower 
 hanging about it, delicious and innocent- 
 seeming, but headier than an inexperienced 
 tongue might have conceived. 
 
 The air grew hot, the candles guttered 
 
THE SECRET OF NAECISSE. 55 
 
 their wax down the flutings of the tall candle- 
 sticks. The manners of the company became 
 a little relaxed. Lucie was seen to hold a 
 glass of wine to the lips of a young metal- 
 caster, in whom she was believed to take a 
 more than sisterly interest, and whose hands 
 seemed at the moment to be engaged else- 
 where. Her husband's back was turned to 
 her, for he was burning a nut at the end of 
 a fork for the delectation of two girls, who 
 laughed over-rosily, with louder merriment 
 than the jest demanded. The jokes began 
 to grow less pointed, the aUusions more em- 
 barrassing. The trumpeter, as a watchful 
 host, saw that the moment had arrived for a 
 division. 
 
 " Bring in the hanap," he caUed to the 
 serving-boy, and every one turned with in- 
 terest in the direction of the door. The boy 
 
56 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 came back, his eyes starting out of his head, 
 overwhelmed with the weight of the goblet 
 and the dignity of his office. The hanap 
 proved to be a barbaric cup of silver-gilt, 
 ornamented with old-fashioned enamel-work 
 in red and white, filled with spiced ale. It 
 was put down before the trumpeter. 
 
 " There has been blood in here," said the 
 trumpeter solemnly, as he took off the cover ; 
 and although almost every one at table 
 knew the familiar tale, the refreshing shud- 
 der that he wished to awaken ran round. 
 There was silence at once where all had been 
 so boisterously noisy. 
 
 " This hanap," he went on specially 
 addressing Narcisse and Rosalie, who had 
 not, perhaps, heard the story before, " has 
 had blood in it. It belonged to my great- 
 uncle Remi, who was trumpeter to the 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 57 
 
 Duke's great-grandfather. He was a mad 
 fellow, it seems, and one night when he was 
 following the Duke with all his baggage at 
 the siege of Toul, he filled this goblet with 
 wine and threw in a gold piece. Any one 
 who could drain off that at a draught and 
 come down to the gold should have the coin. 
 Several young men tried and failed; there 
 was still wine over the gold piece. At last 
 a boy took up the hanap full and drank, 
 drank, drank till there was only a little red 
 drop around the piece of money. The other 
 fellows were so mad, that one of them struck 
 him on the head as he was grinning ; and his 
 blood trickled so deep into the hanap that 
 the gold piece was covered again, and he 
 died afterwards of the blow. It used to 
 make my grand-uncle laugh till the tears 
 came into his eyes to tell that tale." 
 
58 THE SECRET OF NARCIS8E. 
 
 As they had so often done before, the 
 guests laughed aloud, some of them a little 
 obsequiously, at this rough old jest. Rosalie 
 smiled, as in courtesy bound, though the 
 story scarcely added to her gusto as the 
 hanap went round from mouth to mouth, 
 and each guest, standing up, drank the trum- 
 peter's health in it, with success to the noble 
 art of trumpeting. When Narcisse's turn 
 came, he alone could neither laugh nor smile. 
 " There has been blood in it ! " rang still in 
 his ears, and he scarcely touched the drink. 
 Though he sat between his friend and his 
 sweetheart, he was ill attuned for the even- 
 ing's mirth ; nevertheless, he tried to an- 
 swer with civil animation such few remarks 
 as were directed to him. But the feast was 
 now ended, and the serving-boy ran round 
 the table with his jug and basin, pouring 
 
THE SECEET OF NAECISSE. 59 
 
 water over the fingers of each guest in turn. 
 It was the sign for rising from table, and 
 when this ceremony was concluded, all stood 
 up and gathered into knots. 
 
 " What shall we do ? " said every one to 
 his neighbor. One man suggested a game 
 of bowls in the alley, and shouted to the 
 trumpeter to have his torches lighted. But 
 one of the girls went to the door, and the 
 night seemed cold and windy. " What 
 shall we do ? " and the host began to grow 
 anxious lest his guests should lose their gust 
 of cheerfulness. 
 
 "Let us dance," cried Lucie, and the 
 metal-caster echoed her wish, his arm already 
 stealing round her waist. But no one had 
 prepared the floor, nor even sprinkled sweet 
 herbs upon it. The table was cleared to the 
 side of the room, and a desultory couple or 
 
60 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 two spun round. But the general wish 
 did not seem to incline to this informal 
 dancing. 
 
 " What shall we do ? " said the flesher's 
 wife. " Let us play at the king who cannot 
 lie." 
 
 "Yes! yes!" cried all the girls; "but 
 then the king may be a queen ?" 
 
 This was agreed to, and the lots were 
 drawn. Whoever drew the marked stick 
 should be king or queen, as the case might 
 be. To his manifest vexation, the trumpeter 
 drew the stick. He could not be king in 
 his own house, and he begged leave to nom- 
 inate another monarch. 
 
 " Yes ! yes ! " they shouted; and then, to 
 almost every one's disappointment, it was 
 Narcisse whom he named. 
 
 " What must I do ? " said the sculptor, 
 
THE SECRET OF NAKCISSE. 61 
 
 who alone of those present had never seen 
 the game played. 
 
 " You must wear a cloth crown on your 
 head, carry a long spoon for a sceptre, and 
 go stalking round the room. When you 
 tap any one on the shoulder, he or she must 
 ask you a question before you can count 
 ten. If the question is asked in time, you 
 must answer it openly and truly." 
 
 A sort of turban was rapidly wound up to 
 serve for crown, and Narcisse stepped forth 
 on his comic travels with a very dignified 
 air. There were squeaks of hope and dread 
 when he approached a group of girls ; as he 
 passed the men they had the most stolid air 
 of indifference. Every one, however, was 
 preparing a question, and not unfrequently 
 with so much care, that when the sudden 
 tap of spoon to shoulder came the elaborate 
 
62 THE SECRET OF NAECISSE. 
 
 sentence would not out. For this failure 
 there was a forfeit. Such questions as were 
 delivered in season were mostly of a very triv- 
 ial and obvious kind. A few were crudely 
 coarse, giving occasion to the more decor- 
 ous of the party to glance upon the ground, 
 and merely echo the roar of mirth with a 
 titter. Good-nature reigned, and there was 
 no real intention of offence. 
 
 Narcisse had skilfully nonplussed several 
 of the would-be wits, and had answered 
 adroitly when he had to answer. But Eu- 
 doxie's question was : 
 
 " Of whom art thou thinking ? " 
 Rosalie looked self-conscious, and then 
 puzzled and slightly vexed, for the answer 
 was : 
 
 " Of the most silent of her sex." 
 
 It was impossible so to describe the talka- 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 63 
 
 tive Rosalie, and half a dozen frank voices 
 at once assured her that she was not in the 
 sculptor's thoughts. She was ready to be 
 angry, but he looked across to her with 
 such an open countenance of friendly merri- 
 ment, that she joined in the laugh against 
 herself. 
 
 " Thou art sworn on the sceptre to speak 
 the truth, Narcisse," was all she said in rep- 
 robation. 
 
 The metal-caster was tapped next, and 
 had his question ready. 
 
 "I see the future in my mind's eye. 
 What is it?" he asked. 
 
 " There is blood in it," said Narcisse 
 mechanically, before he had time to think. 
 
 The trumpeter was understood to be ex- 
 empt, but while he peered into a cupboard 
 to bring forth some bottle as thick as him- 
 
64 THE SECRET OF NAECISSE. 
 
 self, his broad back was smartly handled 
 with the bowl of the spoon. 
 
 Busy as he was and distracted, his wits 
 were ready. Before the ten numbers had 
 left the lips of Narcisse he had blurted 
 out: 
 
 " Foul play ! But in what company 
 dost thou best like to be ? " 
 
 " With no man's maid who shall be aU 
 men's mistress/' replied Narcisse, and then 
 blushed very red with anxiety, for he 
 thought as we always do if we speak in 
 riddles of our secrets that all must guess 
 what he meant. The company stared 
 blankly, but the old cordwainer in the cor- 
 ner, with many noddings of his long gray 
 beard, gave it to be understood that he saw 
 the jest, and that in faith it was a mighty 
 true and pregnant saying. 
 
THE SECRET OF NAECISSE. 65 
 
 The only other question and reply that 
 will bear to be repeated were given a little 
 later on in the game. At length, when 
 almost all were tapped, Narcisse succeeded 
 in suddenly capturing Rosalie. She had 
 her challenge ready. 
 
 " Where hast thou been most happy ? " 
 
 " There where I have followed my fancy," 
 he replied. 
 
 The company had enough of these enig- 
 mas and of the game. The king took off the 
 crown which hampered his overheated fore- 
 head, and with his broad gesture he laid his 
 sceptre aside. There was a general feeling 
 that another man, one more truly of their 
 kin, would have made a merrier monarch, 
 and have played in a lustier fashion, with 
 more whim and farce. But no one spoke 
 
 rudely, because of Rosalie and of their host, 
 5 
 
66 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 and because Mercillat did not approve of any 
 disrespect to his best craftsman. There was 
 fresh discussion now as to what was to be 
 done, and the young fellows clamored for 
 music. The fiddles were pulled out of their 
 cases, a ring formed round the performers, 
 and the master of the house was persuaded 
 to take part with one of his resonant curled 
 tubes of metal in the concert. But some- 
 thing seemed missing. 
 
 " You miss a shrill kind of note in the 
 harmony," said the gunsmith ; " 'tis too loud 
 and brassy. What you lack is the part of 
 something tingling. I know not what you 
 call it, in the art of music, but I would fain 
 have a cricket in the corner." 
 
 " The cricket would be Gerbillard's lute 
 what do you call it ? That is gay and light, 
 with a twang like a wire." 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 67 
 
 " Where is your your ? " said Rosalie, 
 
 for no one in Bar was easy with the name of 
 the strange southern instrument. " Where 
 is it, Narcisse ? " 
 
 " I will fetch it/' he said, and he started 
 to do so. At the door he glanced back for 
 a moment into the room. The candles, still 
 but half burned, were crumbling with the 
 heat, and giving the serving-lad work enough 
 to do in snuffing them. Ranged behind the 
 players, they threw odd shadows on the wall, 
 profiles of instruments between the knees 
 and in the arms of young men, gigantic 
 phantom elbows that sped up and down as 
 the possessors of these lutes tuned the strings. 
 There was a babble of loud voices, treble 
 and bass, the shuffle of feet, the squeak of 
 fiddle-bows, the full tide of noise in a com- 
 pany that is at its ease and has lost all traces 
 
G8 THE SECRET OF NABCISSE. 
 
 of restraint. The candle-light made warmer 
 the hues of all those flushed faces, drew out 
 the colors of the Barrois gala-dresses. 
 
 Narcisse glanced once more. The trum- 
 peter had passed about some hospitable duty 
 into an inner room. Rosalie's back was 
 turned from the door, and she was in dispute 
 with her sister Lucie upon some local matter. 
 It rushed upon Narcisse as with a flood that 
 this was Bar, his lodging, not his home the 
 life in which he was a pilgrim and a stranger. 
 His absence would not make any difference 
 to any one. He opened the door stealthily, 
 and turned his back to the riot and the light, 
 the shriek of the music and the perfumes in 
 the girls' hair. In a moment he was alone 
 in the darkness, in the cold air of the court- 
 yard, under a dim vault of colorless immen- 
 sity. 
 
THE SECRET OF NAECISSE. 69 
 
 Something rubbed against his legs. It 
 was the dog, long ago tired of its enforced 
 exile from the warmth and food, but still 
 slightly conscious of an evil reputation. As 
 clearly as it could, it explained to Narcisse 
 that it was all a misunderstanding about that 
 fowl, and glanced around, as dogs will do, as if 
 inviting a personal inspection of its innocence. 
 Drizzling rain was falling, but when Narcisse 
 was out in the dull, blank street, he was still 
 conscious of the dog, a whitish mass, moving 
 just in front of his steps. He went back to the 
 house, and let the dog in, opening for a moment 
 a door which let out a tide of light and noise. 
 He glanced back as he left a second time, and 
 saw the window hastily unshuttered. Rosalie's 
 face appeared dark and flat, with an aureole 
 of candle-light in the edges of her hair. 
 She had heard the door reopen, and had fan- 
 
70 THE SECEET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 cied that already Narcisse might be return- 
 ing with the zither. Although she had been 
 so undemonstrative while he was there, she 
 had no sooner turned to find him gone than 
 her heart began to beat out in wave upon 
 wave of longing for his presence. She was 
 already fretting at his delay, though he had 
 scarcely left her a moment before. But she 
 saw nothing in the darkness, not even the 
 smile he gave her as he fled away into the 
 wetness of the night, and she turned back to 
 bear as well as she could the tedium of wait- 
 ing for him. 
 
 She waited and waited, but he did not 
 come. His absence was unnoticed by the 
 rest of the company, for the trumpeter had 
 discovered among his treasures a little old 
 stringed instrument easily tuned, which 
 completely fulfilled the purpose for which 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 71 
 
 Narcisse's zither was required. An hour 
 went by, with a succession of those short 
 pieces, so sweet and positive, all gurglings 
 and silver prattle, of which the chamber 
 music of the day consisted. Once the door 
 had opened and Kosalie had half risen from 
 her seat in her impatience, but it was only 
 the Abbe, bringing his viola to swell the 
 concert. He came in smiling, and was 
 greeted with respectful warmth; he had 
 judiciously waited until the turmoil of the 
 feast had declined, and until music had 
 somewhat etherealized the boisterousness of 
 his flock. 
 
 " Where is your Narcisse ? " said one of 
 the girls to her, insolently. 
 
 Rosalie scarcely glanced in her direction, 
 and then, with admirable coolness, mur- 
 mured : 
 
72 THE SECRET OF NAECISSE. 
 
 " Eh ? Oh ! he went more than an hour 
 ago." ' 
 
 " But why does he not come back ? " 
 
 " He did not mean to come back/' Rosalie 
 coldly replied. " He said good-night to 
 me under his voice, not to disturb the com- 
 pany." 
 
 In her heart she was asking herself what 
 it was that had happened to Narcisse, and 
 who could thus have enchanted him. 
 
THE SECEET OF NARCISSE. 73 
 
 m. 
 
 NEXT morning the sunlight was brightly 
 suffused through a pearly firmament of 
 broken cloud. Rosalie, pausing in the 
 course of her household work, stopped for 
 a moment at the doorway to gaze up the 
 street in the clear air. There was no excuse 
 for her to meddle with Narcisse at his busi- 
 ness thus early in the day, yet she could not 
 resist glancing in his direction. The shop 
 was out of sight, hidden by a buttress of 
 the church, but her attention was attracted 
 by a point of intense vermilion color against 
 the gray church wall in front of her lover's 
 booth ; this red object was absolutely motion- 
 less, and below it the sunlight fell on a 
 
74 THE SECKET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 stripe of golden hue. Her curiosity was 
 excited, and she could not resist stepping 
 out into the Place, and wandering a few 
 paces upwards towards the church. 
 
 The mystery was easily explained. The 
 trumpeter, with a scarlet feather in his dark 
 green velvet cap, had been chatting with 
 Narcisse at his workshop, and was now being 
 induced to stand at a little distance in pro- 
 file, to serve as a model. Drawn onwards 
 by her inquisitive mood, Rosalie passed the 
 steps of St. Maze, and turning the corner 
 found herself in front of the little booth 
 where Narcisse was seated, his brows some- 
 what bent, sketching from his friend the 
 trumpeter. A rough lump of red wax was 
 piled on the board at his side, and with his 
 long supple fingers, by aid of the little box- 
 wood spatula that modellers use, he was 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 75 
 
 making a profile head for the clasp of a 
 belt. There was not a word said. The 
 trumpeter nodded as he saw the girl ap- 
 proach, but did not disturb a single muscle 
 of his face. Narcisse greeted her, out of 
 his full grey eyes, with a look of discreet 
 affection, and motioned that she should lean, 
 out of eye-shot, on the other side of his 
 table. The sketching went on in silence, 
 until Narcisse, swinging backwards a mo- 
 ment, came up out of his trance of com- 
 position, like a diver out of the depths of 
 the sea, and regained consciousness of the 
 condition of things. 
 
 He glanced at Eosalie, who was watching 
 him, and then at the trumpeter, who was still 
 admirably rigid, gazing away at right angles, 
 in an attitude of studied and exaggerated 
 grace, perfectly immovable. A very strange 
 
76 THE SECRET OF NABCISSE. 
 
 notion passed through the sculptor's brain. 
 He contemplated his two visitors with a sort 
 of critical attention. The trumpeter, a good 
 fellow if ever a good fellow breathed, was a 
 handsome specimen of the Barrois race. 
 His copious dark brown hair stood out in 
 curly clouds under his close cap ; his coun- 
 tenance was perfectly handsome, except that 
 the muscles of his cheeks were already 
 slightly relaxed with the exercise of his pro- 
 fession. His thick neck, hairy to the nape, 
 with its very white skin, already showed 
 signs of the coarseness which would presently 
 invade the whole of his comely person. But 
 in this, the close of his youth, he was still a 
 magnificent specimen of his kind. So, 
 Narcisse reflected in a moment, was Rosalie 
 alike in color, in texture, in temperament 
 Barrois both of them, of the purest water. 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSK 77 
 
 Would it not have been better, more seemly, 
 he said to himself, in this flash of odd emo- 
 tion, that these two should belong to one 
 another than that he should come between 
 them, he with his foreign nature, his totally 
 distinct physical characteristics ? As this 
 idea passed through his brain, he glanced at 
 each of them and he smiled. 
 
 He smiled to see how little either of them 
 seemed desirous of any rearrangement of 
 their relations. The trumpeter, who had 
 borne the constrained position and monu- 
 mental stillness of a model for so long a time 
 without a murmur, supported by the glorious 
 sedative of vanity, had now discovered that 
 the sitting was over, and edging closer to 
 the booth, was awkwardly endeavoring to 
 catch sight of the result, the waxen sketch 
 half concealed by the hand of Narcisse. In 
 
78 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 an ecstasy of self-study, he had not found a 
 glance to spare for Rosalie ; it was obvious 
 that for him she and her large beauty did not 
 so much as exist. Nor was she more 
 conscious of the trumpeter. As Narcisse 
 glanced in her direction, he caught, thrown 
 full at himself, that fiery, tender gaze of hers 
 which often troubled him, so little did he 
 feel able to respond to the self-abandonment 
 it hinted at. At least, he smiled to acknowl- 
 edge, he had no cause to lie awake at night 
 tortured by jealousy of his good friend, the 
 trumpeter. And now, gaily rising to fetch 
 some other tools from the back of the shop, 
 he drove both his visitors away, threatening 
 that they should feel the weight of his ham- 
 mer if they loitered there wasting his time 
 any longer. Rosalie fled down the Place, 
 as if for her life, laughing aloud. The 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 79 
 
 trumpeter made a lunge at the sketch of him- 
 self, caught it, lovingly contemplated it, and 
 returned it, with the prints of his finger-tips 
 deeply set in the edge of the red-wax. 
 
 " Devil that thou art/' he said, " thou hast 
 given me the snout of a swine." 
 
 " Pray to St. Maze thou mayst never see 
 thy ugly muzzle from the side," answered 
 Narcisse. 
 
 Whereupon there followed hot horse-play, 
 to and fro, across the booth table, and then 
 the trumpeter strode off, his vermilion feather 
 dancing a saraband in the breeze. Left 
 alone, Narcisse settled to fresh work, adroitly 
 twisting the iron wire before him into 
 coils and tendrils, the sharp rap of his ham- 
 mer ever and anon ringing out in the silence 
 of the morning, as he flattened the surface of a 
 form he had secured. But there was no other 
 
80 THE SECBET OF NAB CIS SE. 
 
 sound from the workshop. The townspeople 
 were as well accustomed to hearing trills of 
 only half -intelligible southern song proceed 
 from behind the buttress of the church, as 
 to hear from his ivory cage, the piping of the 
 Abbe's famous greenfinch. Narcisse had a 
 trained and effective tenor voice, not strong, 
 but held well under control, and it was his 
 habit to sing continuously as he sat at work. 
 To-day, however, he was silent. It was not 
 that he was unhappy. On the contrary, his 
 face expressed a species of eagerness and even 
 elation. But he was restless. So pre-occu- 
 pied did he become, that he was convinced at 
 length that to stay longer in the workshop 
 was useless. 
 
 From the inner wall he took down a gun 
 that Mercillat had given him, and threw his 
 brown cloak across his shoulders. As was 
 
THE SECEET OF NAECISSE. 81 
 
 his custom when his head became too hot to 
 guide his hands, he locked up the booth and 
 went down to the river-meadows to see what 
 luck he might have in shooting. There was 
 little to be seen at first, but presently, in an 
 alder-swamp close to the stream, he bagged 
 a brace of snipe. He missed another cock- 
 bird, and it rose, squeaking and zigzagging, 
 in the air, before taking its straight course 
 out of all possible gunshot. He followed it, 
 aimlessly, his mind all the time reverting 
 mechanically to something which lay heavily 
 upon it. By degrees, though he found no 
 more snipe, his sharp walk along the oozing 
 edges of the water-meadows cleared the 
 current of his thoughts. It was not the 
 habit of that age to observe in any very 
 conscious way the features of landscape, but 
 
 perhaps those at the feet of the traveller 
 6 
 
82 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 were more real to his attention than the stars 
 and mountain-tops which engage our restless 
 modern thought. Four hundred years 
 earlier St. Bernard of Clairvaux had been 
 able to ride all day along the shores of the 
 Lake of Geneva, without noticing that there 
 was a lake. This was no longer possible, 
 perhaps, yet Narcisse would scarcely have 
 been able to say why the glowing fields, 
 laced with little gray streams and edged 
 with water-flowers, affected him as they 
 did. It was really a result of association, 
 it was the sentiment of youth revived. 
 
 He began to think of those southern fields 
 where he had wandered years ago with boys 
 of his own age. Giles, with the mole on his 
 lip ; Aribert ; the boy with the large ears 
 what was his name ? It was he, the fellow 
 with the ears, who had such a clever way of 
 
THE SECRET OF NAECISSE. 83 
 
 getting barbel out of the river-pools. 
 Narcisse wondered if there were barbel in 
 this river that flowed down under the citadel 
 of Bar. And Aribert whom he beat for 
 stealing the big knife, Narcisse' s father's 
 hunting-knife. Did he ever make that up 
 to Aribert? No doubt he did ; if not, 
 what matter ? How long ago it all seemed, 
 how vague, with intense clear spots, like a 
 picture that has been smudged all over, and 
 carefuUy filled in here and there. Giles 
 yes ! he was one of the spaces that was most 
 highly finished. With Giles he had never 
 quarrelled ; even when they fought together 
 with fists, it was all in the way of comrade- 
 ship. And what had become of Giles ? 
 Gone to be a soldier in somebody's wars, no 
 doubt ; shot down, perhaps, some rainy 
 evening, by an arquebuse from behind a 
 
84 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 stack of wheat, when he was so tired with 
 the day's long march that he had no power 
 left to struggle for his life. Some story of 
 that kind, commonplace and likely enough 
 in those days, Narcisse seemed to rememher. 
 The days of his later youth, down there 
 in the flat south country, where the broad 
 river sank so shallow in the summer that one 
 could ford it, of them he remembered less. 
 Nothing seemed very clear, until the magical 
 hour when the great arid mysterious artist, 
 Ligier Bichier, had come riding through the 
 village, and, stopping to ask the lad a 
 question, had noticed the mechanical toy he 
 was framing on his knees. Suddenly, 
 imperiously almost, he had carried Narcisse 
 off with him, seating him on the saddle-bow 
 in front of one of his own servants, capturing 
 this native talent for his own purposes, as 
 
THE SECEET OF NARCISSE. 85 
 
 the pirates of the Bey of Tunis steal good 
 Christian 'prentices while they stroll on the 
 sea-shore. Patiently and gently, bending 
 his arrogant will to train this bewildered 
 southerner, the Lorraine sculptor had 
 developed to its highest pitch the skilful 
 hands and clear imitative brain, producing 
 at last a replica of one side of himself which 
 just fell short of genius. Then had come, 
 on Kichier's part, the sense of vexation at 
 the limitations of the pupil. Doing so much, 
 why would he never do more ? Excellent 
 as a mechanic, as a carver, as a modeller, as 
 a musician, why could he never, in any one 
 of these directions, proceed' beyond mere 
 excellence into genius ? 
 
 Narcisse thought of the adored master, 
 and of the little cloud that had risen up and 
 spread itself between them. Vaguely he 
 
86 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 understood that Kichier had believed in him 
 and had been disappointed. Narcisse was 
 still too much under the spell of his old idol- 
 atry to question the master's right of find- 
 ing fault. But he mourned his absence, 
 and not without a touch of resentment. 
 Now, if he, Narcisse, should perform the 
 miracle of orginality, the master would never 
 know. Was it barely possible that if cuch a 
 portent of a thing were made that men all 
 over the world met to wonder at it, some 
 whisper of it might not be conveyed over to 
 St. Mihiel? If a certain adventure went 
 bravely through, would not Ligier Kichier 
 hear before he died that he had not been 
 wrong when he snatched the village-boy 
 away from being a gooseherd on the long 
 white road ? And Narcisse smiled a little, 
 in the covert of his beard, as he strode along 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 87 
 
 from one streaming tussock to another. 
 
 From the battlement of the mill, which 
 was crenelated like a little fortress on the 
 side that faced the meadow, a lean scare- 
 crow of a miller called down to him. This 
 lonely dwelling became, in times of sudden 
 war, a haven of refuge for those who could 
 not escape up into the town. 
 
 " What luck, Master Narcisse ? " shouted 
 the miller. 
 
 Narcisse held up a brace of birds by way 
 of answer. 
 
 " Ah ! 'tis too late for snipe. After an 
 April frost, I've seen those running ditches 
 full of them. But they hate the smell of my 
 old woman's cows, and off they go up stream 
 to the empty pastures. Come in and rest a 
 while, Master Narcisse." 
 
 " No, thank ye, miller, I must be climbing 
 
88 THE SECEET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 back. That falconet in your wall looks out 
 of repair." 
 
 The miller patted the little rusty cannon 
 with an indulgent air, and said, " Ay, she's 
 out of gear somewhere ; she's fallen forward 
 off the tressels. She wants a touch of your 
 skill, Master Narcisse. Why, 'tis four years 
 since 'twas used. She killed her man that 
 day, though she nearly killed me into the 
 bargain with her fizzling and her jump back 
 into my legs." The miller gazed lovingly 
 sideways at his rusty protector. 
 
 " Any more sycamore-trees for sale, mil- 
 ler ?" asked Narcisse carelessly. 
 
 " Why, there be two left on the point of 
 the ait, and 'tis so hollowed away with the 
 stream that one of them must go for certain. 
 What a power of sycamore-wood you use, 
 Master Narcisse ! " 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 89 
 
 " Sell me one straight bough off your tree 
 and I shall want no more." 
 
 It was agreed that in exchange for setting 
 the infirm falconet on its legs again Narcisse 
 should carry away as much of the best part 
 of the sycamore as he wanted. He was im- 
 patient to secure the wood, so he was pres- 
 ently admitted into the mill and ascended 
 the wall inside, to examine the little cannon, 
 while the miller and his man sawed down 
 the sycamore, and brought it across the 
 stream. The falconet was not seriously out 
 of order, and so, taking a note of what it 
 wanted, and promising to come down with 
 his tools soon since, as the miller said, 
 " times of peace are the times for mending, 
 ready for war, which the saints f orfend " 
 Narcisse shouldered his straight sycamore- 
 
90 THE SECEET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 pole, and, wrapped in the flying folds of his 
 cloak, ascended the hill. 
 
 In passing through the town, Mercillat 
 was standing at his door and challenged 
 him. 
 
 " Where have you been with that gun and 
 pole ? You will have his Reverence at your 
 heels if you go fowling in the Abbey waters. 
 What sport?" 
 
 Mercillat eyed the snipe and felt them. 
 The birds were in excellent condition. 
 
 " Ah ! lucky that you are ! The hen, 
 what plumpness ! Feel with your thumb 
 here, the fat under the wing ! Ah ! the 
 cock too ! Pity there's but one brace, yet 
 that is much." 
 
 He persisted so loudly in praising the 
 birds, that Narcisse, who had not thought 
 of it until then, felt obliged to offer them to 
 
THE SECRET OF NAECISSE. 91 
 
 his future father-in-law, and did so with the 
 best grace in the world. Mercillat was 
 offended. He thrust the snipe back upon 
 Narcisse, and folded his own hands behind 
 his back. 
 
 " Nay, nay ! What do you take me for ? 
 You go down to these horrible water- 
 meadows, you toil all day, and I, forsooth, 
 must rob you of your little spoil. You will 
 cook them for yourself, and relish them. 
 Ah ! the pity of it that you do not know the 
 true, the Barrois art of cookery. You will 
 ruin those sweet birds. Take them away, 
 my friend, cook them and destroy them. If 
 I accept them, 'tis but that they may not be 
 defiled in the ashes or soaked in too much 
 oil. It is not to rob you, but to save the 
 birds. They shall hang from our rafters, 
 Kosalie shall cook them divinely after the 
 
92 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 true Barrois manner, and you shall come in 
 on Sunday and eat them with us. Nay, 
 nay, freely given I grudge not the labor 
 of watching them being prepared. They 
 shall be, on Sunday next, a morsel for a 
 bishop's nephew." 
 
 Narcisse went home, and up to his solitary 
 room. Here he deposited his bough of syca- 
 more-wood, and presently descended. The 
 arched courtway next to the door of his 
 house led to a vast herb-garden, belonging 
 to the guild of physicians of the town, and 
 the key of this garden, which was seldom 
 used, was in the custody of Narcisse. On 
 this warm afternoon of May he descended 
 from his room, and let himself into the 
 physic garden, which spread under the 
 hinder windows of his house. He had 
 sometimes thought of constructing a flight 
 
THE SECEET OF NAECISSE. 93 
 
 of steps which should drop from his own 
 window into the solitude of the garden, but 
 this still remained a dream of the future. 
 
 Long, long he walked on this especial 
 day, up and down the sombre aisles of the 
 green, overgrown enclosure, his feet tread- 
 ing one perfume after another from the lush 
 and tufted herbs, shoots of which trailed out 
 upon the path rosemary and basil, ger- 
 mander and calamine all planted there by 
 the physicians of the town, for health and 
 not for beauty. His reverie grew upon 
 him. At length he stopped short, sawed 
 the air with the wide gesture of his arm, and 
 sallied vehemently indoors, wholly forget- 
 ting, in his absorption, to lock the gate of 
 the enclosure behind him. 
 
 The physic garden was a favorite place of 
 meeting for Rosalie and Narcisse. Often, 
 
94 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 for an hour before sundown, the two lovers 
 would wander there, leaving the gate un- 
 locked. The local conventions saw nothing 
 unbecoming in this, if the couple restrained 
 themselves from sitting down or even stand- 
 ing still. While the air was yet a little 
 chilly, they might often be seen slowly, 
 regularly threading the paths of the garden, 
 she wrapped from head to foot within the 
 folds of his great brown mantle, sauntering, 
 sauntering ever, with their heads bowed 
 towards each other and almost touching. 
 
 On this particular afternoon, Kosalie, 
 puzzled at the disappearance of Narcisse the 
 night before, and again throughout the day, 
 and still slightly piqued at his repeated 
 neglect of her, could not prevail upon her 
 feet to take her elsewhere than to the empty 
 street in which he lived. She thought to 
 
THE SECBET OF NAECI8SE. 95 
 
 stand there, and gain a glimpse of him, or 
 even perhaps, by a discreet call, to win his 
 attention. Without any distinct plan of 
 campaign, and as if against her will, she 
 started in that direction. When she arrived 
 at the courtway leading to the physic gar- 
 den, she passed down it, thinking it possible 
 Narcisse might be within. She leaned 
 against the grille, looking through it hither 
 and thither. As she did so, it yielded to her 
 weight, and, with a rusty scream, gave way. 
 To her surprise, she found herself inside the 
 garden, and she was now sure that Narcisse 
 must be there. 
 
 Hemmed in by its high walls, the enclosure 
 seemed cold and gloomy in the fading light. 
 She looked for the tall figure of Narcisse on 
 this side and on that, but in vain. At the 
 further end there was a bower of ragged 
 
96 THE SECEET OF NAECISSE. 
 
 eglantine which might conceal him, but he 
 was not there. The garden possessed so 
 little shelter that it was not by any means 
 needful to examine it so closely for the body 
 of a full-grown man, which could scarcely 
 have been buried in it even by the piety of 
 robins ; but Rosalie hastened hither and 
 thither, glancing under bushes where Nar- 
 cisse might possibly be seated, or behind 
 buttresses which might conceivably shelter 
 him. At last she sat down on a soft mat of 
 thyme, which exhaled its sweetness round 
 her. She rested there, and tried to com- 
 mand the tumult of her pulses. 
 
 It would have been difficult for her to ex- 
 plain why it moved her so much to find Nar- 
 cisse absent from a place where she had not 
 the least reason to suppose him present. 
 But Rosalie was in uneasy spirits. The sus- 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 97 
 
 picions which had seemed to prove vain tfie 
 evening before, were they truly so ground- 
 less ? She had expected from Narcisse some 
 expression of penitence. It is true that in 
 the chapel he had seemed absolutely inca- 
 pable of perceiving that he was in fault, yet 
 in that state of mind he could hardly con- 
 tinue. Thinking over the events of the 
 twenty-four hours, he must have admitted to 
 himself that he had given Eosalie more than 
 one just cause of offence. Yet all day long 
 she had waited, and waited in vain, for any 
 word from him. What did it all mean ? 
 What had come between his thoughts and 
 her? When she considered her own inner 
 being, the image of Narcisse seemed to fill 
 it to the uttermost corners ; there was no 
 room in her for any idea that did not, in 
 some way or other, refer to him. But with 
 
98 THE SECRET OF NABCISSE. 
 
 him it was not so : as she now reminded her- 
 self, it never had been so. She began to 
 hate all his other interests. What did he 
 want with other interests, when he had her ? 
 AU things became an offence to her as she 
 sat there on the odorous cushion of the 
 thyme ; she reflected with anger upon the 
 metal-work because it absorbed his fingers, 
 on the trumpeter because he permitted his 
 head to be sketched, on the very birds be- 
 cause they took her lover away from her to 
 those water-meadows whither she might not 
 follow him. 
 
 Suddenly, from where she sat, she heard 
 in the atmosphere a clear note of music. 
 Some one was playing a weU-known air on a 
 flute. Rosalie knew it by heart. It was a 
 favorite tune with Narcisse, and it was 
 from his window that the bright notes were 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 99 
 
 now descending into the garden. A tide of 
 happiness flowed through her veins ; she 
 smiled as she listened. The air shrilling 
 down in the deep silence seemed a direct 
 and intimate message from her lover. She 
 would let him go on for a while before she 
 answered him. When the tune was finished 
 she would rise, and stand just below the 
 window, and noiselessly would throw a great 
 bunch of sweet herbs into the room. How 
 delightful to see his grave white face peer 
 out in amazement, and then wrinkle into 
 smiles ! She would wait now, keeping very 
 still, until the flute had piped that southern 
 air right through. 
 
 But the tune came abruptly to an end, as 
 though it had only been started as a test or 
 to set some other music going. There were 
 steps, and a murmur like some one speaking, 
 
100 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 and then the fluting began again. Not 
 alone this time, but, to Rosalie's infinite sur- 
 prise, accompanied on a zither. After a 
 few notes the zither-player stopped ; not a 
 very accomplished practitioner this, evi- 
 dently. There was an exclamation, as the 
 flute stopped also, more shuffling steps, and 
 then the same performance over again. 
 
 There could be no doubt about the matter. 
 Narcisse, in his great chamber, was teaching 
 some one to play in accompaniment to his 
 own music on the flute, and the pupil was 
 the object of his most assiduous patience. 
 Who could this pupil be ? If it was some 
 boy or man, why had Rosalie never heard of 
 him? What could there be to conceal in 
 such a matter ? How could it possibly be 
 that he had neglected to tell her of the ar- 
 rangement ? Of course it must be some youth. 
 
THE SECEET OF NARCISSE. 101 
 
 But who ? N6 doubt it was of no importance, 
 yet why hide it from her ? He had not 
 found so many things to talk about during 
 their long walks together that he should fail 
 to tell her that he was teaching some man to 
 play the zither. He was perfectly at liberty 
 to do so, of course ; she wondered a little 
 that he should have the patience to do it. 
 What could be the reason of it? Who could 
 it be, once more ? In the innermost centre 
 of her soul the conviction was already settled 
 that it was a girl whom Narcisse was instruct- 
 ing. 
 
 Beneath the window, and a little at one 
 side, an aged vine-trunk rose out of the 
 ground, its tough and gnarled mass project- 
 ing a few inches from the wall. Six feet up, 
 close below the window-sill, it took a twist to 
 the left, and soon divided into boughs and 
 
102 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 tendrilled shoots that flung a canopy of pale 
 green leaves over the grayness of the upper 
 wall. Rosalie perceived that the turn of the 
 vine, underneath the window, gave a coign 
 of vantage from which a nimble climber 
 could stretch upwards and peer into the 
 room. At this moment the fluting and zith- 
 ering began again. She sprang up the vine- 
 trunk with the skill of a cat, and arriving at 
 the shoulder of the tree, settled her foot upon 
 it firmly, and clung there pendent. The har- 
 mony proceeded better than before ; the 
 pupil was evidently advancing in skill. A 
 curious feature of the performance was that 
 he (or she) made no false notes, but either 
 struck the instrument with absolute precision, 
 or ceased to play altogether. As Rosalie 
 hung in air, the zither stopped abruptly. 
 There was a moment's continuance of the 
 
THE SECEET OF NARCISSE. 103 
 
 flute, and then it also was silent. An excla- 
 mation of impatience followed in the voice of 
 Nareisse, and then a quick and heavy step 
 across the floor. The curiosity of Rosalie 
 could endure this torture no longer, and she 
 threw herself silently forward, clutching the 
 vine in one hand and the window-sill in the 
 other. She found herself further off than 
 she had imagined, yet she could just peep in. 
 What she saw, made the blood run scarlet 
 behind her eyes. Narcisse was there, with 
 his back turned to her. She could scarcely 
 see him, because of the dimness of the light 
 in the room, and because of the distance. 
 But she could observe that he was close to 
 his pupil, that his arm was round her, and 
 that he bent his face down with a gesture 
 which was not to be misunderstood. Who 
 the zither-player was, and what she was like, 
 
104 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 it was absolutely impossible to ascertain. 
 She seemed very pale, and was apparently 
 dressed in white, but that was all that Rosalie 
 could discover. The figure of Narcisse com- 
 pletely veiled his companion, and as he was 
 about to turn towards the window, Rosalie 
 swung herself violently back. She hung 
 there in the vine, with her eyes closed, for a 
 few moments ; then she descended, leaping 
 without a sound into a deep bed of tansy. 
 She walked across the herbs so as to make 
 no noise as far as the gate, which, on a 
 sudden impulse, she viciously slammed, so 
 that all the echoes of the street were awak- 
 ened by its clangor. Then she ran as fast as 
 she could to the church of St. Maze, pushed 
 her way in, sank beside a pillar, and, with 
 her hands pressed to her face, knelt for a 
 long time gazing through her fingers at the 
 
THE SECRET OF NAECISSE. 105 
 
 pale lights twinkling on the altar. She pro- 
 posed to herself to weep, but tears, like slum- 
 ber, will not always come when the weary call 
 for them. 
 
106 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 IV. 
 
 LATER on that evening the Mercillats 
 were gathered in their general dwelling- 
 room, around the hearth. During the wars 
 the family had grown impoverished, and 
 now that the master-smith was wealthy 
 again, he made no change in his ways, pre- 
 paring for that great house in the new 
 Italian manner which it was his dream to 
 build and furnish. The fat coarse candle 
 had burned itself down to its stick and had 
 gone out in a splutter. As it was not worth 
 while to fetch another candle, the fire was 
 stirred and fed so as to give enough light 
 for the women who still spun or knitted. 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 107 
 
 The men lounged, lazy, stretched to the flat 
 of the blaze, like dogs. Eudoxie sat up- 
 right in an old-fashioned fixed chair, over 
 which a sumptuous brocaded hanging, some- 
 what faded with use, was thrown, the stuff 
 running out so far that her feet rested on it. 
 She occasionally stopped the soft clatter of 
 her spinning-wheel, and gazed into the fire. 
 Lucie kept up without a moment's inter- 
 mission the rattle of her knitting-pins, on 
 which the firelight flashed and died away, 
 much to the satisfaction of the wakeful baby 
 in Bibi's arms. Rosalie, plunged in a leth- 
 argy, sat heaped together in the corner of 
 the settle, silent. Indeed, very little was 
 said in the warmth and repletion of the hour. 
 But presently Eudoxie addressed her 
 daughter : " Were you in the physic 
 garden to-day, Rosalie?" 
 
108 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 "Yes a moment." 
 
 " I forgot to tell you to bring me a bunch 
 of archangel for the liquor. Is it out 
 yet?" 
 
 " I don't know. I didn't notice." 
 
 " Look to-morrow, and if only the yellow 
 is out, wait a while. It is the white flowers 
 I want." 
 
 " What is archangel good for, mother ? " 
 asked Bibianne. 
 
 " Stamped into vinegar, and made up as a 
 poultice, it is sovereign for blains and swell- 
 ings ; my grandmother made a conserve of 
 white archangel that saved a lady's life." 
 
 " And, sister, bring a little rosemary for 
 the pot," said Lucie ; "your fresh rosemary 
 is as tasty as allspice." 
 
 " She will put it in our wine to make us 
 drunk," said one of the young men, alluding 
 
THE SECRET OF NABCISSE. 109 
 
 to the properties then popularly attributed 
 to this herb. 
 
 66 Why do you not fetch your own green- 
 stuff/' said Rosalie crossly ; " what else am 
 I to get ? Chevril for the hotch-pot, and 
 tamarisk for your toothache, and bindweed 
 root to dye your hair ? Go and get your 
 herbs yourselves ? Why should I wait on 
 you all?" 
 
 At this outburst, every one looked up. 
 This petulance was unlike Rosalie. 
 
 " But it is you alone of us, as you know, 
 who can enter the physic garden. What so 
 irksome in stopping to pick a few herbs in 
 your lap when you are wandering there with 
 Narcisse ? " said her mother meekly. 
 
 The subject might have been dropped, but 
 that Bibi with tactless curiosity pushed on 
 her inquiries. 
 
110 THE SECEET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 " Did Narcisse speak to you of those 
 birds?" 
 
 There was no answer. With her fists 
 pressing her cheeks, her eyes glowing 
 through her hair into the fire, her bare 
 elbows on her knees, Kosalie seemed in no 
 mood for conversation. 
 
 " Was Narcisse ?" Bibi began again ; 
 
 but was crushed by the violence with which 
 her sister checked her. 
 
 66 Never speak to me of Narcisse again/' 
 she said, and vouchsafed no more. 
 
 The family were not given to reticence, 
 however, and Rosalie's outburst was taken 
 to mean that Narcisse might be freely 
 discussed. He was no favorite, as we 
 know, with any of the household, except 
 with Mercillat himself. Not much was said, 
 but the old charges were dwelt upon : that 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. Ill 
 
 no one knew whence he came, that he was 
 an alien in the town where all else were 
 friends of old standing, that he held aloof 
 from the townspeople. 
 
 "J should like to know what he does 
 in that vast house all by himself/' said 
 Eudoxie. 
 
 " Why does he not come and live down 
 here, like a Christian, with all the blessed 
 smells and noises to make him comfortable?" 
 remarked Mercillat. 
 
 " They say," remarked one of the sons, 
 " that he walks for hours at night in the 
 physic garden." 
 
 " By himself ? " asked Bibi. 
 
 "Well, could he walk with any one at 
 that time ? " was the reply ; and Lucie 
 crossed herself, for a little chill seemed to 
 strike across the floor. 
 
112 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 " How do we know with whom he walks ? " 
 
 " Perhaps he gathers poisons there." 
 
 The fire was getting low, and when a 
 hollow log fell inwards, rousing a cloud of 
 sparks, the women started. Rosalie, who 
 had been sitting perfectly still, with fixed 
 eyes, now said : " Mother, have you still 
 any of your angelica-root left ? " 
 
 " Why, yes," replied Eudoxie, with a 
 house-wife's eagerness, " a little. Why ? " 
 
 " What is it good for ? " asked Rosalie. 
 
 " You know," said her mother ; " it is a 
 strange remedy against poison, and against 
 the plague. If you do but chew a piece be- 
 tween your teeth, you may walk through a 
 dead city ; it will most certainly drive away 
 the air of pestilence, even though that cor- 
 rupt air shall have gripped your heart." 
 
 " Has it no other virtue, mother ? " Her 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 113 
 
 face was so impassioned as she said this, and 
 the malignity of her expression balanced so 
 ill with the indifference of her words, that 
 they all gazed at her with apprehension. 
 
 "Yes," said Eudoxie, trying to speak 
 calmly, "if you carry angelica-root about 
 with you, you may even consort with those 
 who walk with the devil, and may take no 
 hurt." 
 
 " Then give me a piece of it, mother," 
 said Rosalie, rising to her feet and looking 
 in that angry flicker of the logs like the 
 very Witch of Endor ; " give me a piece of 
 it, that I may carry with me when I go next 
 to visit Narcisse ! " 
 
 There was no further word spoken. It 
 seemed as though the doors had fallen 
 open and an icy wind was sweeping through 
 the house. One by one the Mercillats crept 
 
114 THE SECRET OF NAECISSE. 
 
 off to bed, while Rosalie, a motionless heap 
 in the settle, waited there, glaring at the 
 embers, till the last of the redness had died 
 away into white ash. When she awoke 
 next morning, a vague pain woke with her. 
 She could not, for a few seconds, recoUect 
 what it was. Then her resentment swept 
 back upon her, and she repeated to herself 
 that she was not sorry that she had punished 
 him. No one, she decided, would take any 
 notice of what she had said, and, if they 
 did, Narcisse deserved the worst that might 
 be whispered about him. It would go no 
 further, and, if it did, it would only serve 
 him right. She thought again of the twilit 
 room, of Narcisse with his arm round the 
 zither-player, of the white hands she had just 
 dimly seen in the darkness. She closed her 
 eyes, pressed the lids tightly together, and 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 115 
 
 told her heart that it had done well to be 
 angry, and her tongue well to be spiteful. 
 
 She was, none the less, aware that it was 
 a very serious thing to allow a fellow-citizen 
 to be accused of magic. She was known to 
 be the most intimate companion of Narcisse in 
 Bar, and she, in the full circle of her family, 
 had broadly hinted that he walked with the 
 devil. At that time there was no charge so 
 terrible as this. It meant complete social 
 degradation as well as judicial condemnation 
 if it was proved, and the mere accusation 
 was a stain. The bare suggestion of black- 
 magic brought so strong a wind of terror in 
 its train that all the human affections were 
 blown away before it; fathers would de- 
 nounce their children, sister accuse sister, 
 friend desert friend. This was the terrible 
 engine which Rosalie, in the concentration of 
 
116 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 her rage, had not heen able to deny herself 
 the little pleasure of wielding ; she had started 
 it, in the vain belief that she could call it 
 back with as much ease as she let it go. 
 But that could not be. Before the day was 
 hot, the most terrible insinuations were be- 
 ginning to stir in all quarters of the town, 
 and little knots of people crossed them- 
 selves as they mentioned the name of Nar- 
 cisse. 
 
 He, perfectly innocent of what was going 
 on, and of the tempest in the mind of Rosa- 
 lie, appeared at the usual hour in his booth. 
 He had seen little of the girl for two days, 
 and was beginning to realize that she would 
 regard his interest in other matters as neg- 
 lect of her. He presently strolled down the 
 Place to the house, where Bibianne was sit- 
 ting in the doorway. The child rose when 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCIS8E. 117 
 
 she saw him coming, with fear and disgust 
 in her eyes, and was about to disappear, 
 when he called to her, and begged her to 
 send Rosalie out to him. 
 
 " Your sorcerer is asking for you," said 
 Bibi spitefully. 
 
 Rosalie went slowly out, and met him. 
 Narcisse could but notice her changed look. 
 
 " Are you ill ? " he asked. And then, as 
 she said nothing : " Forgive me for not see- 
 ing you yesterday," he said ; " my work was 
 heavy, and my head was troubled with it. 
 I must go back now to the workshop, but 
 will you come this afternoon and walk in 
 the physic garden ? " 
 
 Rosalie had said nothing, and her whole 
 mind was bent on a scornful refusal. But 
 with his ingenuous eyes fixed upon her, and 
 the accents of his low, placid voice in her 
 
118 THE SECEET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 ears, she was no longer mistress of her re- 
 sentment. She melted to him, and, more- 
 over, unless she walked with him, she could 
 never find out the secret of the zither-player. 
 
 " Yes, I will come," she answered." 
 
 And Bibianne, hidden behind the door- 
 post, giggling, cried out : " Take your piece 
 of angelica in your pocket, then ! " and ran 
 noisily into the back part of the house. 
 
 Rosalie, gazing at the utterly bewildered 
 face of Narcisse, blushed burning red. " I 
 will come," she repeated in a softer tone of 
 voice, and then she vanished. 
 
 In the shop where Mercillat worked, with 
 his son and two apprentices, no other sub- 
 ject but the scandal could occupy conversa- 
 tion. Young Mercillat had already, in con- 
 fidence, told Droz, the younger 'prentice, 
 what his sister had revealed, and these two 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 119 
 
 were now whispering together on the sub- 
 ject. The gunsmith himself was much dis- 
 turbed this morning. Nothing could be 
 further from his convenience than any slan- 
 der of this sort, and yet if the good fame of 
 Narcisse was to be tarnished, it was not 
 Mercillat who would make a martyr of him- 
 self by defending him. He was angry that 
 the question had been raised at all, and the 
 whispering of the lads completed his ill- 
 temper. " What are you two chattering 
 about? " he asked. 
 
 " About sorcerers," the son replied. And 
 then, after a pause. " Droz saw a real witch 
 
 once." 
 
 " Pooh ! " said Mercillat. " Go on with 
 your work, or I'll whip you both. What 
 witch was that, Droz? " he added sullenly, 
 his curiosity getting the better of him. 
 
120 THE SECRET OF NABCISSE. 
 
 " It was in our village," said the lad, de- 
 lighted to have an audience ; " the Abbs 
 caught her by the sleeve when she was fly- 
 ing over a cornfield. Her mother was just 
 as bad as she was ; she used to make some 
 ointment in a pot and rub it over their two 
 heads, all but the face, and wait, with their 
 window open, for the devil to come and 
 fetch them. And they had their sabbath in 
 a little wood, just behind our farm. She 
 confirmed it all, and they burned them both, 
 thank God ! I thought I should never get 
 over the fright it gave us." 
 
 Mercillat wiped his fingers on his apron, 
 and hurriedly crossed himself, moved in 
 spite of his scepticism. No doubt such 
 things did take place, though not so fre- 
 quently as silly people imagined. 
 
THE SECRET OF NAECISSE. 121 
 
 "Was she hard-featured, this girl?" 
 asked the other apprentice. 
 
 " No, just like any ordinary maid. You 
 would not have noticed any difference. She 
 used to come and fetch the milk from my 
 sister's every evening ; we never guessed that 
 anything was wrong." 
 
 " What crimes do sorcerers commit ? " 
 asked young Mercillat in a rather subdued 
 voice. 
 
 " They swear by the name of Satan, for 
 one thing," said Droz ; " and they blaspheme 
 God." 
 
 " They dedicate children to the devil," 
 continued the older man, " and often they 
 kill and eat them." 
 
 There was a long pause, and deep silence 
 broken only by the ringing sound of the 
 smiths' tools. 
 
122 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 " How can one tell a sorcerer by sight ? " 
 asked young Mercillat presently. 
 
 " Oh ! there are marks/' said Droz signifi- 
 cantly, nodding his head. " If a man has a 
 little blue crescent, like a coriander-seed, in 
 the soft of the flesh under his arm, or in the 
 flank, that is a certain sign." 
 
 " What is that little crescent? " asked the 
 lad again, drawn on by an intolerable curi- 
 osity, yet stammering with confusion and 
 discomfort. 
 
 " Oh ! that is the stamp of the devil's 
 nail in his body," said Droz, almost in a 
 whisper. 
 
 "Stop this talk!" shouted Mercillat, 
 with an oath. " Lazy vagabonds, go on 
 with your work, or down comes the whip 
 from the wall in one twinkling, and across 
 your shoulders in another. Not a word 
 
THE SECRET OF N AEGIS SE. 123 
 
 more, or the largest piece left of any one 
 of you shall be his right eyelid." 
 
 Who shall say how a report which deeply 
 and universally excites the interest of a com- 
 munity passes from ear to ear ? No one can 
 be accused of climbing to the house-tops to 
 shout it, and yet if the town bell were rung, 
 and the story told to an assembled crowd by 
 the crier at the top of his voice, it could 
 hardly become more widely known than when 
 floated from whispering lip to shuddering 
 ear. It permeates the town, like oil. The 
 mice seem to carry it in the shape of crumbs ; 
 it is ground to dust, and blown against every 
 window ; the rain sighs, and is full of it, and 
 flushes every gutter and every sewer with it ; 
 the sun comes out, and the steaming town is 
 steeped in the vapor of scandal. In the 
 midst of all this electrical excitement, Narcisse 
 
124 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 Gerbillard sat in his workshop, absolutely 
 unconscious, singing at intervals in his clear 
 bird-like voice, hammering his iron coils and 
 tendrils, in perfect ease of spirit and with 
 goodwill in his heart to all the world. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that the accusa- 
 tion, so lightly thrown up into the air, had 
 suddenly produced a crop of conviction. At 
 first, people accepted it provisionally without 
 further comment than an exclamation of 
 horror, and passed it on in the same way. 
 Eosalie Mercillat was quoted as the authority, 
 and her intimacy with the accused man was 
 matter of common notoriety. Bibianne had 
 sustained a rather severe disappointment in 
 telling the story to a group of girls. It was 
 long since there had been a trial for witch- 
 craft in Bar, and the accusation had not so 
 horrid a significance to these children as 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 125 
 
 to their elders. Some of Bibi's audience 
 laughed, the rest were apathetic. One girl 
 ventured to ask what that meant, to " walk 
 with the devil ? " Bibianne could not very 
 clearly say what it meant, but the Cure had 
 preached about it at Easter, she knew that. It 
 was the worst thing you could possibly do 
 oh ! much the worst. " What ! worse than 
 stealing the holy vessels from the altar ? " 
 asked one little maiden, this being a crime 
 lately punished in Bar with extreme severity. 
 Yes, Bibianne thought, on the whole, even 
 worse than that. Much worse, at all events, 
 than murdering your mother, because Martin 
 Blaize who did that got off altogether, after 
 confession, by grace of the Church. Bibianne 
 was practically certain that there was no 
 grace if you walked with the devil. 
 
 " Where did Master Narcisse walk with the 
 
12G THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 devil, Bibi ? " asked one tender creature of 
 thirteen. 
 
 " In the physic garden/' whispered Bibi- 
 anne, delighted to have awakened a real in- 
 terest at last. " Rosalie went up there, and 
 found the gate unlocked, and walked in, and 
 oh ! she saw sights." 
 
 " What did she see, Bibi ? Tell us what 
 she saw ? " said the pale cluster of flaxen 
 'heads, in chorus. 
 
 " No, you will repeat it if I tell you." 
 " Oh ! we will not, my Bibi, we will not." 
 " Swear you will not, Zoe, and you, Bertha, 
 .and you, Pulcherie, and all of you ! Swear 
 you will not tell ! " 
 
 " Oh ! my Bibi ! " sighed the whole com- 
 pany, excited beyond power of further affir- 
 mation by the secret which now seemed to 
 hang imminently over them. 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 127 
 
 " Well, then, come closer to me." The 
 children stirred a little, but closer they could 
 not come. " She peeped in, and then she 
 saw Narcisse walking, walking, and what do 
 you think was with him ? " No one ven- 
 tured upon a suggestion, and so she went 
 on : " It was the devil." 
 
 " Ah ! what was he like ? " one girl con- 
 strained her tongue to ask. But Bibianne's 
 imagination was limited. 
 
 " Well, just like the devil. He had a tail, 
 and and horns. Oh ! and he mowed off 
 the tops of the flowers by swinging his tail 
 to and fro as he walked." 
 
 This was said with great confidence, and 
 was received as being, in its way, circumstan- 
 tial. But nothing more could be extracted 
 from Bibianne, who became duly conscious 
 that she had gone rather beyond her text in 
 
128 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 this little narration. She hurried the girls 
 away, with a fresh charge that, whatever 
 happened, they should not repeat a word 
 she had said, and that, if they did repeat it, 
 they must not say she told them. 
 
 Rain came rattling down upon the streets 
 during the middle of the day, making the 
 pear-shaped Place gleam to the very steps of 
 St. Maze. Narcisse stayed longer than usual 
 at his booth, for he had a piece of work that 
 demanded all his attention. It was a chain 
 of small steel rings, for the Duke's chamber- 
 lain, and the clasp of it was to be a mask 
 held between two naked figures of children. 
 He doubted whether to design a tragic mask 
 or a comic one. The latter suited with his 
 sprightly mood, but at length he decided that 
 the necessary mechanism could be more con- 
 veniently concealed under the symbol of 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 129 
 
 tragedy. He rejoiced in the rain, for he 
 supposed that he owed to it the circumstance 
 that no one came near his booth all day to 
 disturb him. He was not very fond of com- 
 pany at any time, and when he was design- 
 ing, the presence of idlers specially distressed 
 him. But when the hour came for him to 
 leave, the sky was blue again, with great 
 rolling clouds, tinged with pink, tumbling 
 over one another down in the southwest. 
 
 His thoughts turned to Rosalie, and he 
 felt that he must make her amends for his 
 self -absorption. He smiled when he thought 
 of that a cunning, innocent smile. He 
 walked home, smiling, and as he strode along 
 he thought of many things, so happily, so 
 dreamily, that it never once occurred to him 
 that the people in the streets stared at him 
 or avoided him. Yet it is a fact that two or 
 
130 THE SECRET OF NAECISSE. 
 
 three persons did so and that two burgesses 
 nodded their beards at one another with an 
 air of extraordinary mystery as he passed 
 them. 
 
 The testimony of the little girls each of 
 whom had been allowed to speak at home in 
 the presence of her betters, because of the 
 importance of the news she carried was be- 
 ginning to tell on the population. A boy, 
 too, had been discovered, who asserted that, 
 very early one Thursday morning in Lent, 
 he had seen Narcisse descend the tower of 
 St. Maze, head foremost, crawling on all- 
 fours, like a lizard. The little wretch had 
 invented this incident, or had adapted it 
 from some story of a witch, and then, finding 
 that it gained credence and made of himself 
 a youth of importance, without any great 
 difficulty succeeded in believing it. Ulti- 
 
THE SECRET OF N AR CISSE. 131 
 
 mately, indeed, after sleeping a night on the 
 anecdote, the boy became so firmly convinced 
 that he had really seen this reptile descent, 
 that he shuddered in private when he thought 
 of it, and would have endured a very smart 
 chastisement before denying it. His evi- 
 dence was held to be of great importance. 
 
 Although as yet Rosalie had no conception 
 of the rapidity and completeness with which 
 her wanton piece of revenge had taken hold 
 of the town's conscience, she nevertheless 
 became more and more uncomfortable as the 
 day went on. It was not her nature to re- 
 tain any impression long, and although she 
 sedulously nursed the image of the zither- 
 player seen through the open lattice, yet 
 her conception of what she had seen grew 
 steadily vaguer. This was inconvenient, 
 because her only excuse for the monstrous 
 
132 THE SECRET OF NABCISSE. 
 
 accusation she had made was the firm as* 
 surance that Narcisse had done her this 
 great wrong. Without a fresh vision of the 
 interloper, she could not retain her resent^ 
 ment, and with the cooling of her rage, as 
 she felt, would come a return of love for 
 Narcisse, and of shame for herself. Already 
 she began to reflect with extreme vexation 
 on the step she had taken ; she must reas- 
 sure her jealousy, or the tide of her feelings 
 would ebb to the uncomfortable degree of 
 positive compunction. To wind her anger 
 up to the proper pitch again, it was impera- 
 tive that she should see Narcisse, and in this 
 frame of mind she made her way to the 
 physic garden. 
 
 Narcisse was just inside ; he unlocked the 
 gate, and she went in. But when he pre- 
 pared to throw the brown wing of his cloak 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 133 
 
 over her shoulders, she evaded it. She 
 would walk alone, she said ; it was not chilly. 
 
 " You are angry with me still, Rosalie ? " 
 he said. 
 
 "Am I not right to he angry?" she 
 replied. 
 
 " Ah ! yes, perhaps ! yes, yes ! " he mur- 
 mured ; " I ought to think of you only, and 
 my mind is full of other things." 
 
 " What other things ? " she asked eagerly. 
 
 " My secret ! " he said, smiling ; " this 
 little girl wants to hetray my secret ! " 
 
 " How can I betray what I do not 
 know? " asked Rosalie, flushing deep red, for 
 her conscience upbraided her. How could 
 he be so cool and light, she wondered? 
 Why did he not show an embarrassment 
 proper to his part ? She would force him 
 to confess. 
 
134 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 " What have you done with your zither ? " 
 she asked. 
 
 " Eh ! " he said, surprised, "my zither ? " 
 
 " Oh, do not feign not to know what 
 zither I mean ! The one that used to stand 
 in the corner of your workshop the one I 
 put a new string into when the old one 
 snapped with the heat! What have you 
 done with it ? " 
 
 " How do you know it is not still in the 
 back part of the shop? Come, child, let us 
 not talk about these foolish things. Come 
 here, closer to me ; give me your head here 
 on my shoulder, and let us walk along as we 
 are used to do swing, swing, swing so 
 that we seem to make one person and not 
 two in our walking. I am tired, Eosalie ; 
 come in here under my great cloak, and let 
 us march, march. Do you not smell how 
 
THE SECRET OF NABCISSE. 135 
 
 sweet the basil is after the rain ? Stick this 
 piece of it in my jacket, and lean your head 
 just over it. Come, child." 
 
 His quiet force overcame her. Feeling 
 like a traitress to his simplicity of faith, a 
 coward to her own unshaken purpose, she 
 yet could not escape from the serenity of 
 his unconsciousness. She took refuge in 
 silence, and silence was what he desired. No 
 one who saw these two persons oscillating 
 along the garden, with their balanced swing, 
 drawn together so lover-like under one ample 
 cloak, would have dreamed what diversity of 
 thoughts occupied them in the silence. He, 
 once released from the necessity of answer- 
 ing Rosalie's questions, and permitted to be 
 dumb without being upbraided for his cold- 
 ness, passed back immediately in spirit to 
 that secret thing which occupied all his 
 
136 THE SECRET OF NAECISSE. 
 
 energies, while she, in the dark chamber of 
 her narrower mind, was balancing each of the 
 slight phrases he had uttered, and was try- 
 ing to wring from them an admission of that 
 infidelity of which now she almost wished 
 to be persuaded. It was a mocking phantom 
 of the marriage of true minds which these 
 two beings carried up and down the odorous 
 alleys of the garden, under the shelter of 
 that hypocritic mantle. Yet even in Para- 
 dise itself it was only the innocent beasts 
 that supposed the thoughts of Adam to 
 tally with the thoughts of Eve ; the angels 
 who read the secrets of all hearts, gazed but 
 once, and covered their eyes to hide the 
 tears that gathered in their eyelids. 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 137 
 
 V. 
 
 NARCISSE tossed long upon his bed that night 
 listening first to the hard rustle of the heavy 
 rain, then to the delicate whisper of the wet 
 trees in the windy moonlight. The moon 
 had sunk very low, and it was near the mid- 
 dle of the night, when the problem that was 
 tormenting him resolved itself. He tried 
 the formula over once again ; there could be 
 no question that it settled the difficulty ; he 
 turned his face away from the moonlight 
 and slept at once. Next morning, he deter- 
 mined not to go to the work-shop. He rose 
 and went about his simple household duties 
 as if in a dream ; he cooked himself some 
 
138 THE SECRET OF NAECISSE. 
 
 food and ate it slowly. The day was be- 
 fore him, the long day that was to crown his 
 life and make him famous, the day that was 
 to reconcile him to his master. It was per- 
 fectly needless to hurry. For once, time 
 was too long, and the residue of art was 
 short. 
 
 The large double room in which Narcisse 
 lived stretched across the first story of the 
 house, and was raked with light from the 
 street on one side and from the physic gar- 
 den on the other. It was scarcely furnished, 
 but it bore some traces of having been the 
 scene of wealth and even of ostentation. 
 The walls were naked stone, the tapestry 
 having been pulled down from them every- 
 where ; but there was a gaudily colored 
 Gothic fireplace, in a corner of which, among 
 the ashes, Narcisse prepared his meals. The 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 139 
 
 sculptor's effects were contained in a large 
 coffer bound with belts of brass, which stood 
 against one of the walls, close to his bed. 
 The floor was strewn with chips and curls of 
 white wood, carelessly swept hither and 
 thither into heaps and drifts. A few benches 
 of the roughest carpentry, and a rude deal 
 table, contrasted with an elaborately gilded 
 and painted chair, ornamented with angels 
 in scarlet and blue, which Ligier Bichier 
 had left behind him, much the worse for 
 wear. 
 
 The only ornament to be seen was a large 
 design pinned on one of the walls. It was 
 a drawing in sanguine, with some details 
 added by the pen in Indian ink. This also 
 was a relic of Bichier's tenancy, and had 
 been given by him to his pupil, because of 
 the impassioned interest the latter had al- 
 
140 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 ways shown in it. It was a spirited rather 
 than an accomplished piece of work, curious 
 chiefly because of its sympathy with the odd 
 instincts of that particular generation. It 
 represented two soldiers, in Florentine dress, 
 lying dead, side by side, in what seemed to 
 be heather or fern, since their bodies were 
 sunken in it. They had, apparently, just 
 been slain suddenly by a skeleton which 
 had come behind them, and which was even 
 now dancing with rage above them, and 
 brandishing in its fingers a small dagger. 
 The skeleton was female, for its hair was 
 flowing in the wind, still uplifted by the 
 speed with which its owner had descended 
 the long brae-side which sank from a little 
 turreted city far away up in the back- 
 ground, against the sky. The cere-cloths, 
 which had enfolded the bones were flap- 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSK 141 
 
 ping elegantly and conventionally around the 
 skeleton, like narrow banners or like strap- 
 work in a decorated ceiling. Underneath, 
 the drawing were scrawled some Italian 
 verses 
 
 Era miracol novo a veder quim 
 Rotte Farme cPAmor 
 
 the rest illegible. What it all meant might 
 have puzzled the most learned emblematist 
 at Venice or Lyons. To Narcisse it had a 
 meaning which he kept to himself, and in 
 the melancholy refinement of which he 
 found the satisfaction of his temperament. 
 
 One other object there was in the room 
 which might attract the eye of a stranger. 
 This was a light but tall screen in one cor- 
 ner, that divided off a space as a sort of pen, 
 within which, indeed, it might not be unnat- 
 urally supposed that some animal was con- 
 
142 THE SECEET OF NAECISSE. 
 
 fined. Narcisse, his morning duties over, 
 sat down at the table with some atoms of 
 steel and his tools in front of him, and com- 
 pleted what appeared to be a spring. Every 
 now and then he would go behind the 
 screen, remove some cloths, and adjust the 
 object which he took with him. A long 
 note of music, or a succession of notes, 
 would result from his movements. He 
 would reappear and return with his mechan- 
 ism to the table, bending over the delicate 
 apparatus in the deep morning stillness. 
 At last the result seemed to give him com- 
 plete satisfaction. He returned with empty 
 hands, and began to gather up and carefully 
 to wipe the various tools upon the table. 
 
 To an unseen spectator, ignorant of what 
 was passing there, the conduct of the me- 
 chanic himself might well have caused pro- 
 
THE SECEET OF NAECISSE. 143 
 
 foundest amazement. He strode up and 
 down the room, loosening his girdle and un- 
 fastening the points of his jacket, as though 
 the pressure of his garments suffocated him. 
 His shirt was tied low in the throat, but he 
 pulled the loop of it, and threw it open. 
 His face was lighted up by an odd smile, 
 flickering and fugitive, while a bright color, 
 like the hectic crimson in a consumptive girl, 
 burned out in his cheeks that were com- 
 monly so pale. His gray eyes seemed 
 larger and more blue. His reddish hair es- 
 caped from the close cloth cap he wore, as 
 he pushed it off his forehead with an impa- 
 tient gesture. He looked as though he was 
 addressing a crowd, for his lips moved, al- 
 though there was no sound from them. All 
 his customary placidity had left him, and 
 was exchanged for a curious excitement. 
 
144 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 Up and down the room he went, in his cloth 
 shoes, noiselessly, restlessly, too elate to sing 
 or whistle, too happy to speak or to be still. 
 Suddenly this electric storm of vitality 
 died away. He seemed to grow very tired, 
 very old. He pulled one of the stools to 
 the window that overlooked the physic gar- 
 den, threw open the lattice and stretched 
 out his arms, resting the flattened elbows on 
 the window-sill. He kept them there, out- 
 spread, while the spent rain-drops pattered 
 down from the vine-leaves into the palms of 
 his hands. He stretched out his arms, as 
 though exhausted with a long and critical 
 exertion, which was now over, altogether 
 done with and completed. He could relax 
 all the muscles, let them lie open to the 
 heavens in that awkward, helpless posture, 
 for their work was done. And the per- 
 
THE SECEET OF NABCISSE. 145 
 
 fumes from the fresh garden, all moistened 
 with the night's rain, came steaming up to 
 him through the vapor of sunlight. He 
 could distinguish them, he thought, as he 
 could notes of music. There was the sweet, 
 light scent of herb frankincense, so gay and 
 wholesome to the senses. That coarser, 
 heavier perfume, mingling with it, yet easily 
 distinguishable, came he knew well from 
 the great clump of hairy growth, with um- 
 bels of rough yellowish blossoms, out of 
 which wise women, like Rosalie's mother, 
 distil the precious gum opopanax. There 
 was the high note of the rosemary, the pun- 
 gent bass of the cat-mint. One after an- 
 other, too numerous for Narcisse to name or 
 to distinguish to himself, arose and inter- 
 penetrated, making one great altar-mist of 
 
 perfume, the various invisible clouds of 
 10 
 
146 THE SECRET OF NAECISSE. 
 
 wholesome odor. He bathed his tired 
 hands and eyes in this exhalation. It 
 seemed a morning sacrifice in honor of his 
 toil accomplished, his victory won. 
 
 Suddenly in the deep silence of the gar- 
 den, he heard a sound he knew. Some one 
 was rattling the broad iron padlock on the 
 gate of the enclosure. He listened again to 
 be sure, and again he heard that furtive and 
 discordant sound. This was the signal 
 Rosalie made when she came, but why should 
 she come in the morning ? A third time it 
 sounded, and then Narcisse sprang to his 
 feet, fearing to be too late to detain her, 
 snatched up the vast key, darted down the 
 stairs and turned, in a moment, into the 
 arched way. Yes, there was Eosalie, weep- 
 ing, and shaking the lock of the gate in her 
 distress. 
 
THE SECRET OF NABCISSE. 147 
 
 When she saw him she tossed her tears 
 aside, and leaned, facing him, against the 
 iron grille. There was something tentative 
 in her attitude, which gave her the look of 
 an animal at bay, half fierce, half frightened. 
 She had found it impossible to keep away 
 from Narcisse. The night before, she had 
 gone to bed intending to lie awake and think 
 the whole matter over, but her punctual eye- 
 lids, in spite of herself, had refused to be 
 held apart for five minutes. This morning 
 her mood was hopelessly confused, the sore 
 of jealousy still open, but the visionary cause 
 of it more vague than ever, while the memory 
 of the placid, undulating walk of the pre- 
 vious night, with the tall presence of her 
 lover overshadowing and hushing her troubled 
 heart with his own quietness, was uppermost 
 in her sensation, as her latest experience 
 
148 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 always was. She had reached the point 
 when the quarrel which she had made was 
 grown to be an intolerable burden to herself, 
 a burden which she would give a great deal 
 to throw off. Her conscience, too, that pro- 
 voking and tactless companion that it is im- 
 possible to get rid of, was recalling to her, 
 much more frequently than she appreciated, 
 the cruel wronor which she had done to 
 
 o 
 
 Narcisse in her blind fury. To this tiresome 
 monitor she replied that nothing was cleared 
 up, that she had herself seen the interloper, 
 and that Narcisse confessed that he had " a 
 secret." To discover that secret, and to 
 know the worst, had now become objects so 
 acutely desirable that she lost, for the time 
 being, all instinct of safety and decorum in 
 the search for them. 
 
 Neither Kosalie nor Narcisse spoke at first, 
 
THE SECEET OF N AEGIS SE. 149 
 
 but gazed at each other. Then Rosalie 
 adventured in a sulky tone of voice : " I 
 want to pick some allspice for my mother." 
 
 " Child/' he answered, " it is not your 
 mother it is the holy Mother of God who 
 has sent you to me. This is a blessed hour 
 for us for me and you." 
 
 She gazed at him astonished. 
 
 " Last night/' he went on, " you asked me 
 about my secret. How my heart leaped when 
 you said that ! Tell me, Rosalie, my friend, 
 tell me how did you come to know I had a 
 secret?" 
 
 She blushed with shame ; she could not tell 
 him how. He misunderstood the color in 
 her cheeks. 
 
 " You do not know. But I know. It was 
 our Mother, to whom I pray every night and 
 noon. Our Mother, to whom I have vowed 
 
150 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 a gift for her chapel in St. Maze a little 
 ivory casket with the Passion of our Lord 
 upon it. I shall begin it to-night, at the 
 time of vespers. It is Our Lady who has 
 told you of my secret." 
 
 It flashed across her mind that he must be 
 impious to talk in this way, or else mad. 
 Perhaps it was true ; perhaps he did walk 
 with the devil. She said nothing, but clung 
 to the iron network. He did not seem aware 
 of her silence, but went on speaking, as 
 though she had answered him. 
 
 " Yes," he said ; " this is the blessed hour 
 which makes all things golden. Come up 
 with me, up to my own room, and see what 
 awaits you there. Come, it is dull and wet 
 down here." And he waved his arm in 
 welcome, with that gracious gesture of his. 
 His face was radiant, without excitement. 
 
THE SECRET OF NAECISSE. 151 
 
 He looked like an angel in a missal, like the 
 messenger of Annunciation, solemn and 
 blissful. Rosalie was torn with doubts and 
 hesitations. It was utterly in defiance of 
 every code of manners for her to go up, 
 even for a moment in midday, to the dwell- 
 ing-room of this man. On the other hand, 
 he was so grave and, she believed, so honest, 
 and her own curiosity was so extreme, that 
 she risked it. She would make a pretence 
 of refusal, however : 
 
 " That is impossible. How can you ask 
 it?" 
 
 It rose to his lips to say, " We are be- 
 trothed, we shall shortly be married what 
 matters it what people say ? " but he re- 
 frained, through a strange delicacy which he 
 could scarcely have put into words. He 
 saw the burning eyes of this girl fixed upon 
 
152 THE SECEET OF NAECISSE. 
 
 him, full of love, and he was conscious that 
 his own mood leaned much more to comrade- 
 ship. He would not suggest anything that 
 should place them, at this moment, on an 
 amorous footing. The occasion was solemn, 
 almost sacrificial ; he wanted her sympathy, 
 her tender friendship, but not the profanity 
 of an earthly love. Life would stretch away 
 in years long enough to be absorbed in that ; 
 this was the spiritual moment that might 
 never come again. 
 
 By no arguments, therefore, but by a 
 sweeping insistence, graceful and irresistible, 
 which bore her before it, he overcame such 
 scruples as remained with her, and they 
 entered the house. The clammy desolation 
 of the ground-floor, with its damp and naked 
 walls, struck cold upon Rosalie, and awed 
 her ; it was like going into church on a hot 
 
THE SECRET OF NABCISSE. 153 
 
 summer morning. On the staircase she 
 paused, and would even now have beaten a 
 retreat. 
 
 " Hush ! " she said ; " what was that 
 noise ? Who is up here ? " 
 
 " No one," he answered, but he smiled as 
 he said it, and she flew to a conclusion. 
 
 tt Very well," she thought in her heart, 
 " if she is there, and dares to face me, I will 
 try which of us is the stronger. Narcisse 
 may look on, and take his choice." 
 
 She was absolutely determined to go 
 through with the adventure now, and when 
 Narcisse pushed his way into his own room, 
 she followed him directly. She glanced 
 round and saw in a moment that in that 
 place, at all events, was no interloper. Her 
 eye flashed about in search of signs of a 
 female presence ; there were none, she was 
 
154 THE SECRET OF NAECISSE. 
 
 obliged to admit that. She refused to be 
 seated on a stool, from a cautious instinct, 
 but sat, as it were provisionally, on a corner 
 of the table from which she swept Narcisse's 
 tools. And then she caught sight of the 
 screen, and the little den it made ; and 
 suspiciously rose to her feet again, gazing 
 at it. 
 
 " Kosalie, Rosalie ! " said Narcisse, taking 
 her two hands in his, and forcing her atten- 
 tion to him. " Listen to me, and be at rest 
 for a moment. I am going to teh 1 you to 
 show you my secret. You are to see it first, 
 then all the town and all the world. You 
 first, Rosalie ! " 
 
 He went to the screen and folded it back 
 against the wall, revealing something, about 
 five feet high, wrapped in cloths. One by 
 one those swathings were removed, and 
 
THE SECRET OF NABCISSE. 155 
 
 there was found beneath them a finished 
 skeleton, in polished white sycamore-wood. 
 The posture of it imitated, in some degree, 
 the statue of stone in the church, but not 
 in the case of the arms, which hung at its 
 side. As a piece of mechanism it was very 
 ingenious, for each of the principal bones 
 was made separately and fixed to its neigh- 
 bors with springs, but the labor had been 
 lessened by the conventional treatment of 
 the framework. The figure in its brilliant 
 whiteness was unmistakably intended for a 
 skeleton, and in the dusk might have startled 
 an unwitting guest, but no one who examined 
 it, even cursorily and ignorantly, would take 
 it for a genuine relic of humanity. The 
 skull was very cunningly carved, but in the 
 rest of the figure art was sacrificed to 
 mechanics. In the hollow of the chest was 
 
156 THE SECRET OF NABCISSE. 
 
 arranged a sort of clock-work, which was not 
 seen except on close examination. The feet 
 were firmly planted upon a wooden base. It 
 was very cleverly made, but rude and 
 childish, the masterpiece of a provincial 
 craftsman. 
 
 Rosalie gazed at it in wonder and admira- 
 tion, not unmixed with apprehension. 
 
 " Was this your secret ? " she said. 
 
 " Yes. I could not speak of it, even to 
 you, until it was done. It has been a long, 
 long business to finish it." 
 
 Her curiosity in the image began to flag. 
 
 It was very clever, but ! This could 
 
 not be the real secret of Narcisse. This did 
 not explain to the girl who played the zither 
 with him that evening. 
 
 " That is not your secret, Narcisse ! " she 
 cried, and she turned away as if to go. 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 157 
 
 " Ah ! you gipsy/' he exclaimed, in an 
 ecstasy of delight ; " she knows everything 
 by divination, she reads the stars ! No one 
 can deceive her, the cunning jade ! No, no, 
 that is not my secret not all my secret." 
 
 He stooped behind the skeleton, and drew 
 forth the zither. She started as she saw it. 
 Narcisse was more excited than ever. 
 
 " Ah ! " he cried, " did she not ask about 
 the zither, too, when we were walking in the 
 garden ? She knows everything, she reads 
 the stars ! " 
 
 He set a spring in motion between the 
 ribs of his skeleton, and a buzzing sound was 
 heard; then he bent one of the pendent 
 arms upwards and confined it below the neck, 
 settling the zither firmly within its grasp. 
 He then bent the other arm lower down, so 
 that its fingers touched, or nearly touched, 
 
158 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 the strings of the zither. Then he retreated 
 to a distance of eight or nine feet, and put a 
 flute to his lips. As he blew the first note, 
 the fingers of the skeleton struck the same 
 note on the strings of the zither, and contin- 
 ued to the end of the tune to accompany the 
 flute with a surprising exactitude. It was a 
 very fine duet on the two simple instru- 
 ments. 
 
 Eosalie listened, standing in the middle of 
 the room, and staring. With a growing hor- 
 ror in her eyes, she retreated backwards, till 
 she touched the further wall, and in that 
 position she met the gaze of Narcisse when 
 the tune was over, and he looked over his 
 shoulder to her radiantly, for congratulation. 
 
 " Then it is true/' she said, in an awe- 
 struck whisper ; " it is true that you have 
 sold yourself to Satan ? " 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 159 
 
 " To Satan ? " he cried, and his laughter 
 rang out and echoed in the rafters overhead. 
 " No, indeed, to my own good head and 
 brain, and to the memory of my master, 
 Ligier Bichier, and to the service of Our 
 Lady, the Mother of God. What are you 
 afraid of, foolish child ? See ! It is not even 
 made of bone : it is all white wood of the 
 sycamore-tree, grown down by the river, in 
 the miller's ait. Every piece of it was fash- 
 ioned in this room, by these hands of mine, 
 with these tools of mine." 
 
 " The skull is a dead woman's skull," she 
 said dubiously, still half afraid. 
 
 " No, no ! " he exclaimed, and laughed in 
 pride and merriment ; " it is all carved out 
 of the good white wood, parqueted together, 
 piece upon piece ; and what a labor it was, I 
 warrant you ! Come and see, come and feel, 
 
160 THE SECEET OF NAECISSE. 
 
 for yourself." And he laughed again, that 
 soft, contented laugh of his. But still she 
 would not come. 
 
 " I tried to make her dance as well as play, 
 like those skeletons that are painted on the 
 rood-screen at St. Mihiel, that take their 
 rebecks and fifes, and foot it, foot it, so mer- 
 rily in a country galliard. But I could not 
 contrive it. She was too stubborn. I could 
 not teach her feet to learn the saraband, and so, 
 to punish her, I fixed them down so tightly to 
 this board that they will never stir, however 
 madly she rattles on her zither. Ah ! she 
 has been an obstinate wench ! " 
 
 Eosalie did not much approve of this form 
 of address. Was she already, or again, a 
 little jealous of a skeleton of sycamore, all 
 joints and springs ? Partly this feeling, and 
 partly a curious confidence born in her by 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 161 
 
 the familiar way in which Narcisse spoke of 
 and to his invention, overcame her scrnples. 
 She gave way to her intense instinct of curi- 
 osity, and was persuaded not merely to look 
 closely at, but even timidly to touch, the 
 skeleton. 
 
 This, then, was the secret of Narcisse ! 
 This it was which had occupied his thoughts 
 so completely and taken him so often from 
 her company. This was the white-handed 
 maiden whom she had seen him embrace 
 from her vantage point on the shoulder of 
 the vine-tree. When she supposed that he 
 was bending to kiss a rival sweetheart, he 
 was arranging the swivel of a recalcitrant 
 link, or twisting a wire in a fresh direction. 
 She was ashamed of her jealousy, but she 
 rejoiced to think that Narcisse, absorbed in 
 his invention, had been wholly unconscious 
 
162 THE SECRET OF NAECISSE. 
 
 of it. There was no cloud on the laughing 
 blue of his eyes when he gazed at her. She 
 had never seen him so eager, so radiant ; it 
 added a new charm to his serene and un- 
 affected comeliness. She felt that she had 
 never loved him so much. She forgot all her 
 own mistrust, all her faithlessness of temper, 
 and rushed into his arms. In another instant 
 she had set the old empty staircase ringing 
 with her sudden descent, had swept through 
 the house like a south-westerly gale, and was 
 flying down the street. 
 
 Left alone once more, a great peace de- 
 scended upon the spirit of Narcisse Gerbillard. 
 After so long anxiety, after such an ecstasy 
 of triumph, a happy weariness stole over 
 him. He sat for a long time on his bed, 
 leaning his head against the wall, travelling 
 over in his mind the difficulties which he had 
 
THE SECEET OF NAECISSE. 163 
 
 overcome, the disappointments which his art 
 had conquered. He was profoundly happy, 
 at peace with all the world. He did not at- 
 tempt to look far forward. No doubt large 
 fame and profit would accrue to the inventor 
 of such a wonderful image. He would be 
 pointed out as the maker of the Musical 
 Skeleton. The Duke would send for him 
 and make him perform in his presence. The 
 dowager-Duchess, who had to excess the 
 fashionable taste for skeletons, would wish 
 to buy it. No ! he would never sell it. His 
 maiden should never play with any one else 
 than with himself. Except, perhaps, with 
 his dear friend the trumpeter ; and he smiled 
 to think of the figure with its docile white 
 bones accompanying the brazen notes of the 
 trumpet, while Narcisse stood by anxiously 
 superintending and applauding. 
 
164 THE SECRET OF NAECISSE. 
 
 But all this was looking forward, and he 
 had said that he would not do that. He was 
 content with the present, with the exquisite- 
 ly still and complete and sufficient sense of 
 accomplishment. From the garden there 
 poured in upon him the soporific sweetness 
 exhaled by the hot clusters of balm in the 
 sunlight. He dozed in happy dreams on 
 the border-land of consciousness, dreams in 
 which his white lady seemed to dance before 
 him with the black eyes of Rosalie in her 
 sockets, and the trumpeter's scarlet feather 
 nodding over her temples. 
 
 Presently he aroused himself and cooked 
 some food. It had never tasted better, and 
 he had never been more hungry. Then he 
 remembered his vow, and determined to set 
 his hand to his work at once, to the design 
 of that ivory casket which should stand in 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 165 
 
 the chapel of the holy Virgin in St. Maze. 
 It would be small because he was poor, and 
 ivory was so rare and dear, but he knew a 
 man in the castle who had a piece of walrus 
 tooth. He would get it from him as cheaply 
 as he could. Then it should be a long 
 box, with the Passion in relief along the 
 front of it. Or else the story of the Foun- 
 tain of Youth, with naked figures in the foun- 
 tain ? No, perhaps the Passion would be 
 best, because the head of Our Lady herself 
 could be introduced, with soft, pouting lips, 
 and little plump hands lifted to the cross in 
 the French mode. Yes ! that it should be. 
 And he sat down, with a small board in front 
 of him, to make a sketch of the relief in wax. 
 When the wax study was finished it would 
 be time enough to buy the walrus tusk. He 
 would take the waxen sketch to church, and 
 
166 THE SECEET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 dedicate it to Our Lady there. If she knew 
 it was being done she would help him to buy 
 the ivory cheaply. Ah ! what a happy world 
 it was. 
 
 And the consequence was that Narcisse, 
 amply occupied at home, never left his house 
 at all that day, and in his radiant peace and 
 satisfaction never guessed that a storm of 
 popular insanity was gathering in the town 
 of Bar, or that his good name, his art, and 
 his life were threatened by a monstrous prej- 
 udice. The evening sank slowly and deli- 
 cately over the green garden of herbs, the 
 stars came out in clusters overhead, the moon 
 showed a broad golden face in which there 
 seemed nothing sinister, and Narcisse went 
 to bed at last, sleeping suddenly and rest- 
 fully like a tired and happy child. 
 
THE SECRET OF NABCISSE. 167 
 
 VI. 
 
 EARLY the following morning, Rosalie 
 went down to the well under the castle wall, 
 with her yoke on her shoulders and the two 
 swinging buckets at her side. When she 
 reached the water no one else was there, and 
 she hegan her task. The first bucket had 
 but splashed the surface of the well, when a 
 little door in the wall above her opened, 
 and the Duke's trumpeter hurriedly de- 
 scended a flight of stone steps to her side. 
 He had evidently been watching for her 
 
168 THE SECRET OF NAECISSE. 
 
 from the battlements. He looked anxiously 
 up and down the street, but there was no 
 one to disturb them, and after a hurried 
 greeting, he said : " Does Narcisse wear a 
 shirt of mail?" 
 
 " No ! I do not think so," said Rosalie ; 
 " why should he ? " 
 
 " Why should he ? He will get off well 
 if he does not need one to-day. You must 
 know what I mean ? " 
 
 " What do you mean ? " asked Rosalie, in 
 astonishment. 
 
 " It is all your doing," answered the 
 trumpeter sulkily. " Why could you not 
 leave it undone ? " 
 
 " Leave what undone ? I swear to you, 
 trumpeter, I know no more what you mean 
 by all this than the innocent bird there in 
 the cage." 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 169 
 
 " Did you not accuse Narcisse of witch- 
 craft?" 
 
 " No ! " said she indignantly, but waxing 
 very red. " No, indeed ! " 
 
 " Well, then, the town has gone mad 
 stark, staring mad of its own accord. Did 
 you not say anything to set this story 
 going?" 
 
 " It is not for you to put me through my 
 questions," she said, with an attempt at 
 dignity. 
 
 " Did not you let them accuse Narcisse of 
 witchcraft without denying it ? " 
 
 " I was angry with him," she said, in a 
 low tone, after a pause. 
 
 " You were angry with him," the trum- 
 peter repeated, in a mocking voice, " and so 
 you let the foulest thing that man can say 
 of man pass uncontradicted ? You were 
 
170 THE SECRET OF NAECISSE. 
 
 angry with him, and so you were willing to 
 damn him body and soul? And are you 
 still angry ? " 
 
 " Oh, no, no ! " 
 
 " Then why are you so cool and quiet 
 this morning ? " 
 
 "Why should I not be?" said Rosalie. 
 " You know something. What is it ? What 
 is it?" 
 
 " If you are true in what you say, and it 
 is not you who have set this thing going, 
 borrow a shirt and sleeves of mail from your 
 father and hasten with them to Narcisse. 
 Tell him that all the rabble of the town is after 
 him, and bid him fly out of Bar as quickly 
 as possible and as secretly as he may, till 
 this thing blow over. If he gets down to 
 the miller's house on the river, he will be 
 safe, and he can stay there till we have 
 
THE SECRET OF NAKCISSE. 171 
 
 cleared up this matter. But many friends 
 in Bar, as you know, he has not. What 
 you do, do instantly." And the trumpeter 
 leaped up the steps again and vanished 
 within the castle. 
 
 Rosalie filled the other bucket, and took 
 the water home, working out her ideas as 
 clearly as she could. Then she hastily pressed 
 round to her father's workshop. She thought 
 to ask him to lend Narcisse the armor, but 
 concluded not to risk the chance of his re- 
 fusal. She stole in, and went to the back- 
 shop, where she knew a suit was kept. For 
 some time she could not find it, but at last, 
 in a coffer, she came on the chain-mail 
 jacket, with the sleeves folded above it. She 
 took them all out, threw a cloth around 
 them, brought them unchallenged through 
 the front shop, and hastened to the court- 
 
172 THE SECRET OF NAECISSE. 
 
 yard of the physic garden, where she made 
 her usual signal. As she passed near the 
 church, she saw that the booth which Nar- 
 cisse rented was empty, and she also noticed 
 a little crowd of the worst ruffians of the 
 town clustered at the entrance of one of the 
 narrow courts which led into the Place. 
 
 Narcisse descended at the sound of the 
 rattling lock, with the large key in his 
 hand, but, to his surprise, Kosalie hastened 
 into the house itself, ascended the staircase 
 in front of him, and rushed into the room. 
 
 "Do you wear a shirt of mail ? " she asked 
 him. 
 
 " No, of course not," he answered, smil- 
 ing. 
 
 " Then you must put this on at once," 
 she exclaimed, showing what she had 
 brought. 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 173 
 
 " I could not breathe in those things/' he 
 replied. "I have not worn mail since I 
 came here with Master Richier, and he 
 made us all carry chain shirts as we crossed 
 the hill-country. He found out that I was 
 carrying mine in my coffer instead of on my 
 back, and flew into a rage with me. Why 
 should I wear that stifling armor ? " 
 
 " Narcisse, you must ; you must put it on 
 and fly. Go down to the miller's house on 
 the ait, and ask him to give you shelter. It 
 is not safe for you to stay in Bar. Put on 
 this armor, and go at once." 
 
 " Why is it not safe ? I have not an 
 enemy in Bar. What has happened?" 
 
 " There is a sort of rabble making trouble 
 in the town. They will come here and in- 
 sult you." 
 
 "Why should they insult me? The 
 
174 THE SECRET OF NABCISSE. 
 
 Duke will protect me. I will appeal to him 
 if the worst comes to the worst. And your 
 father with his 'prentices would be enough 
 to drive back an army of rabble." 
 
 " They will not dare to do anything. 
 Father will do nothing, the Duke will do 
 nothing." 
 
 " What is all this, Rosalie ? You speak 
 as though I had become an outcast. Are 
 there no laws in Bar ? Is not a God-fear- 
 ing citizen safe in this Christian town ? " 
 
 " Not/' she said slowly and hesitatingly, 
 " if he has been accused of witchcraft." 
 
 " Of witchcraft ! " he gasped, growing 
 very pale ; " who has dared to accuse me of 
 witchcraft ? " 
 
 She longed to tell him that it was she, 
 that she had lighted this dreadful, inextin- 
 guishable match in a paroxysm of jealous 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 175 
 
 rage to tell him all, and to gain his absolu- 
 tion by her utter devotion, flying with him 
 into the dark world outside, accepting the 
 heaviest punishment, which would for her 
 be sweetened, she felt dimly, by the ecstatic 
 pleasure of his continual presence. But she 
 lacked the courage to make this confession. 
 
 He had no suspicion of the truth. " It 
 must be the Cure," he said, " for he has 
 never loved me nor my works. He hates 
 the Italian taste, and they say 'tis he who 
 scratched the carvings on the chapel gates 
 that Master Richier put up ; he hates those 
 little sea-goddesses with their marble breasts, 
 and would turn them out of the church if 
 he were not afraid of the Duke. It must be 
 he." 
 
 " Yes," said Rosalie, in a low voice, " it 
 must be he." 
 
176 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 But when he pressed her for further par- 
 ticulars, he found that she knew nothing 
 specific. As she was ashamed to confess 
 that she had started a rumor of his walk- 
 ing with the devil, it really did appear that 
 she knew nothing. She said that the trum- 
 peter had sent a message ; but Narcisse 
 laughed and said that the trumpeter only 
 wanted to get him away, and down at the 
 mill, that they might go shooting together. 
 She told him of the rough fellows clustered 
 in the court, but she had no proof that they 
 threatened Narcisse. He did not want to 
 go, and he made light of the affair. No 
 one, he said, could accuse him of anything 
 evil without being made to bring proof, and 
 there could be no proof. 
 
 " You shall listen to the White Maiden," 
 he replied ; " before I think of stirring any 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 177 
 
 where, she shall play to you ; " and Rosalie 
 allowed herself to be persuaded. The cloths 
 were taken off the Musical Skeleton, and her 
 mechanism was set going. The machinery 
 acted perfectly, and the strangely fascinat- 
 ing duet of flute and zither proceeded in the 
 silence. As the figure and Narcisse played, 
 however, Rosalie became conscious of gather- 
 ing steps in the street below, and walking 
 quietly to the window, without disturbing 
 Narcisse, she glanced out. There she saw 
 below her a grotesque assemblage of people 
 most of them roughs and idle persons, with 
 a scattering of boys. The head of the pro- 
 cession appeared to be the sacristan of St. 
 Maze, who held a pair of brazen tongs in 
 his hand, with which he gesticulated, sway- 
 ing his instrument to and fro at the crowd, 
 
 to invoke silence, like a conductor leading a 
 12 
 
178 THE SECRET OF NABCISSE. 
 
 band. By his side an acolyte stood, carry- 
 ing a pot of holy water, and another young 
 man was armed with a pan of burning coals. 
 It was evident that this reconnoitring party 
 had been quite unprepared to hear the 
 music which proceeded from Narcisse's room, 
 and that they were pausing in astonishment 
 to listen to it. 
 
 At length the sacristan called out, in a 
 shrill squeaky voice : 
 
 " I conjure thee, Lucifer, by the living 
 God ," and sprinkled holy water nerv- 
 ously to right and left. 
 
 Still Rosalie watched, unseen, and still 
 the duet continued inside the room. 
 
 " I conjure thee, Satan ! I conjure thee, 
 Beelzebub ! Come out, come out ! " shrieked 
 the sacristan j and taking a coal in his tongs, 
 he waved it in front of the door. The smoke 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 179 
 
 disconcerted a small bird whose nest was 
 under the eaves, and she flew out with a 
 rustle of her wings. 
 
 o 
 
 " There he comes/' cried one of the boys 
 " like a little monkey with wings and a black 
 face." But the rest of the company felt 
 that it was a common sparrow, and the boy 
 was snubbed. So far as the matter had yet 
 proceeded, it seemed absurd and almost 
 comic. But the crowd was gathering, and, 
 it did not seem to be at all a friendly crowd. 
 
 " Come out, Nambroth, I conjure thee ! " 
 screamed the sacristan, louder than before. 
 
 " Fly, Narcisse/' whispered Rosalie, " fly 
 now while it is not too late. Climb down 
 into the physic garden, with the key, and 
 hide in the bower until all this is overpast. 
 Then slip down and take shelter with the 
 miller." 
 
180 THE SECRET OF N AEGIS SE. 
 
 " And leave you here ? " he said. 
 
 " No, no, I will come with you." 
 
 " You could not leap down from this win- 
 dow, or climb by the vine," he objected. 
 
 " Oh, yes, yes ! I could," she urged, blush- 
 ing to recollect how well she knew the road- 
 way up and down the vine. 
 
 " But, Rosalie," he said, slowly, " even if 
 you come with me, I could not leave her be- 
 hind, and we could not carry her" he 
 pointed to the Musical Skeleton. 
 
 " Oh ! " cried the girl, stung anew by his 
 devotion, " what of that thing ? You made 
 it, could you not make another ? Hide it in 
 your coffer." 
 
 " She is much too large." 
 
 " In your bed under cloths upon the 
 floor in one of the empty rooms ! Let us 
 drag it up the stairs ! Come, Narcisse, come ! 
 
THE SECRET OF NABCISSE. 181 
 
 I will take its head, and you shall take its 
 feet." 
 
 " No," he replied, " I cannot. She is 
 part of my life. I should never make an 
 image like that again. Where she is I must 
 stay ; you do not understand. I have done 
 nothing wrong. There is not a word of 
 sorcery in all my head. I can prove my 
 innocence. If I ran away, how could I ever 
 come back again? After being accused, 
 and not clearing myself, could I ever see 
 Bar again, or you, or or her?" He 
 turned from his sweetheart to touch the wrist 
 of the skeleton. 
 
 Eosalie left him, and rushed to the win- 
 dow overlooking the street. The crowd 
 was growing more excited, and was shouting. 
 The sacristan, like a madman, was rushing 
 hither and thither, brandishing his tongs. 
 
182 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 When the girl appeared, leaning out upon 
 the balustrade, the shouting ceased. 
 
 " Rosalie ! Rosalie Mercillat ! " one or 
 two voices called out. 
 
 " Come forth from that accursed house," 
 shrieked the sacristan. " Satan is there. 
 You will be carried off upon his shoulders, 
 through the window. What is that sorcerer's 
 music ? If that is the hymn before the 
 Black Mass, beware, wretched girl, that you 
 be not scorched into a coal." 
 
 " What is that music ? " shouted two or 
 three men in the crowd. Rosalie was so 
 weU known, and was so generally supposed 
 to have denounced her companion, that the 
 public, though amazed, were not exactly 
 scandalized to find her in the house. 
 
 " That is Master Narcisse playing the 
 flute," she said, " as you all have heard him 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 183 
 
 do dozens of times in his workshop below 
 the church/' she continued. 
 
 " And the other music, that which accom- 
 panies him, Rosalie ? " 
 
 " That is the viol of Beelzebub, steeped 
 in the blood of he-goats, stringed with the 
 hair of women who have cursed God," 
 yelled the sacristan, waving his nauseous 
 smoking coal under the window. 
 
 " Fool, that is a zither ! Did you never 
 hear a zither ? " But, as a matter of fact, 
 that being a southern instrument, very few 
 people in the town were familiar with the 
 sound of it. 
 
 " Who is playing that that whatever 
 it is you call it ? Tell us who is playing 
 it, since Master Narcisse is blowing the 
 flute. " 
 
 " No zither," squeaked the sacristan ; " the 
 
184 THE SECEET OF NAECISSE. 
 
 sackbut of Satan, and he plays it with 
 strokes of his tail. Come out of this house, 
 Lucifer, I conjure thee ! " 
 
 " Who is the other player? " shouted two 
 or three persons in the crowd. 
 
 Eosalie leaned over the bar, and quietly 
 stroked threads of hair back from her eyes. 
 She smiled before she spoke, a contemptuous 
 smile. " I am the other player," she said. 
 " And now go home, you noisy, idle people, 
 before the Duke hears of it and sends his 
 halberdiers to fetch you." 
 
 " It was you who was playing that zither, 
 Rosalie ? " said Bibianne, just under the 
 window. 
 
 " Yes, I," replied her sister, rather shyly. 
 She had not noticed Bibianne's presence till 
 that moment. 
 
 " You cannot play two notes on any 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 185 
 
 instrument in the world, you, Rosalie ! " 
 
 Narcisse appeared at the window, behind 
 the girl, and she made way for him to stand 
 beside her. He looked even paler than 
 usual, but quite calm and resolved. The 
 crowd hissed and yelled at him. 
 
 "Go away, Rosalie," some shouted, "that 
 we may pelt him." 
 
 Narcisse, too, urged her to go in ; for all 
 answer she took his hand in hers and held it 
 openly, gazing down at the crowd. 
 
 Waving his arm for silence, Narcisse 
 waited till the shrieks and cat-calls were over. 
 The people listened. In a few words, he 
 told them that there was no sorcery in the 
 case ; that he had made an image with his 
 own hands, since, as they all knew, it was his 
 business to make images for the glory of 
 God, and for the pleasure of the Duke and 
 
186 THE SECRET OF NAECISSE. 
 
 his other honorable patrons; that this 
 figure was just now completed ; and that it 
 was so made that it played music of itself. 
 He went on to say that as the sacristan 
 seemed to be the leader of the mob, he 
 might come up and inspect the figure for 
 himself, and tell the rest of them about it. 
 
 Accordingly, Narcisse went down and 
 unbolted the door ; after a little hesitation, 
 urged on by the others, the sacristan 
 ventured in, and the door was rebolted. 
 The sacristan was a grim and unsavory 
 creature, very thin and leathery, with eyes 
 out of which all the color seemed to have 
 been soaked. From the long habit of wan- 
 dering about in the gloom of the church, he 
 had become unaccustomed to strong daylight, 
 and peered and winked like an owl, in the 
 sunshine. He came up sulkily and circum- 
 
THE SECRET OF NAECISSE. 187 
 
 spectly after Narcisse, with a face committed to 
 nothing. This man was famous for his super- 
 stitious zeal and his hatred of the black magic. 
 He was no lover of Narcisse, whose presence 
 in the little workshop under St. Maze was a 
 constant source of offence to him, since he 
 wished for that Naboth's vineyard for the 
 use of his own daughter's husband, who was 
 a blacksmith. He was exceedingly cruel 
 and credulous, and would have been con- 
 stantly embroiling the town with his accusa- 
 tions if the priests had not kept him in some 
 sort of check. 
 
 Narcisse could not but feel the absurdity 
 of his own disappointment. He had planned 
 to keep his skeleton closely within the bounds 
 of distinguished society, to play it first in 
 public before the Duchess and her son, and 
 only gradually to admit to his circle of audi- 
 
188 THE SECEET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 tors the wealthy burgesses and the nobles in 
 the Eue des Dues. And now, by a tiresome 
 accident, the cause of which he could not 
 divine, his earliest public performance had to 
 be made for the benefit of this horrible scare- 
 crow, who had no civil word for man or 
 beast, and who was scarcely tolerated in the 
 street. He did not speak to the sacristan on 
 the stairs, and he silently motioned him to 
 follow him into the room. Rosalie still 
 stood near the window which overlooked the 
 street. Narcisse had thrown a sheet over 
 the main part of his skeleton, and he saw no 
 need to disrobe her for the sake of the new 
 visitor, who kept close to the door, furtively 
 crossing himself, in visible perturbation. 
 Narcisse removed the cloth from the hands 
 and zither, and was about to begin. 
 
 " Saint Ignatius and Saint Hippolytus, pre- 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 189 
 
 serve me ! holy saints of my dedication, hold 
 me in your hands ! " murmured the sacristan ; 
 and then, in a snappish tone of voice, to 
 Narcisse, " What is under that sheet ? 
 Unveil ! disrobe ! expose ! " 
 
 Narcisse bit his lip with annoyance at be- 
 ing ordered, in his own house, by such a 
 loathsome being, to carry out what seemed 
 a profanation of his Maiden. Rosalie, at 
 her window, stamped with rage. But the 
 sacristan, after his kind, represented the 
 town itself, the superstitious town wakened 
 to suspicion and demanding a full disclosure. 
 The sacristan had been invited in as an am- 
 bassador, and must receive the honors and 
 privileges of an envoy. Narcisse removed 
 the sheet, and exposed the delicate white 
 bones of sycamore-wood. He set the ap- 
 paratus in order, and, turning his back to 
 
190 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 the sacristan, began his duet with the skel- 
 eton. Rosalie, however, kept her eye on the 
 visitor, and watched with astonishment and 
 alarm the horror that grew upon his feat- 
 ures. When he perceived that the figure 
 was a skeleton, he started and crossed him- 
 self hurriedly, but when he further saw the 
 fluttering movement in the bosom, the un- 
 familiar instrument held in the bony arms, 
 the white fingers moving in cadence, his 
 whole frame was convulsed with agitation, 
 and he grew sickly pale, steadying himself 
 with his hand against the post of the door. 
 
 Rosalie, seeing this effect upon their un- 
 welcome and unlovely guest, would have 
 stopped Narcisse, but it was too late. At 
 the earliest shrill note of the flute between 
 the lips of Narcisse, the slender finger-ends 
 of the skeleton touched the strings of the 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 191 
 
 zither in absolute unison, and the tune be- 
 gan. Beads of anguish stood on the brows 
 of the sacristan, he trembled so exceedingly 
 that he could scarcely stand, and before a 
 single bar was concluded, feeling his way 
 with his hands like a blind man, he had tot- 
 tered from the room, and was heard rolling 
 rather than running, down the resounding 
 staircase. He had scarcely power to open 
 the door, but, after a long fumbling, he flung 
 himself at last into the street. 
 
 The situation was now very serious. Nar- 
 cisse's first act was to dart downstairs, and 
 push back the heavy iron bolt. Outside, 
 the crowd was gathering close about the 
 sacristan, who had recovered all his volu- 
 bility, and who, with arms thrown up to 
 heaven and appeals to all his patron saints, 
 was giving an excited and a highly embroi- 
 
192 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 dered account of the scene he had just sur- 
 vived. For a while, absorbed in the relation 
 of this old man, the crowd ceased from all 
 their noises. Neither Narcisse nor Rosalie, 
 hidden in the embrasure of the window, 
 could hear what he said, but presently they 
 perceived that he had finished his story and 
 was urging his audience on to action. Sev- 
 eral of the youths rushed to the door, but 
 were foiled by finding it barred. Wooden 
 shutters, nailed across the lower windows of 
 the house, made those entrances also impos- 
 sible, and a regular siege began. As stones 
 and rubbish were flung at the upper window, 
 Narcisse quickly closed the lattices and 
 barred them. The raging crowd, now per- 
 fectly crazed with superstition and alarm, was, 
 at all events for a few moments, kept at 
 bay. 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 193 
 
 When Narcisse turned from the street, 
 Rosalie had disappeared. He flew to the 
 other window, and saw her deftly descend- 
 ing the great vine, which swung and started 
 with her weight, but made a perfectly safe 
 ladder. Arriving noiselessly on a bed of 
 herbs, she paused and looked up. His pale 
 face bent towards her, and she made a final 
 dumb appeal to him to fly with her. She 
 held the key of the physic garden in her 
 hand, and she motioned to him to join her. 
 But it was impossible to induce him to leave 
 his image, and, besides, he could not have 
 escaped unseen. He gesticulated to her to 
 hide herself in the bower, not to attempt to 
 leave the garden, and, to satisfy him, she 
 pretended to do so, while he turned back 
 into the room. But in reality she stole to 
 the gate as noiselessly as possible, turned 
 
194 THE 8ECEET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 the key in the lock, and stood in the arch- 
 way. The crowd's attention was concen- 
 trated in thundering upon the stout door of 
 Narcisse's house, and, without being seen, 
 Eosalie darted out of the court, and round a 
 corner. Narcisse might have escaped, after 
 all, she reflected. 
 
 Meanwhile, beleaguered in his castle, Nar- 
 cisse was alone with his White Maiden. He 
 lost none of his serenity at this fatal moment. 
 In a corner of the room lay the armor 
 which Kosalie had brought, and had thrown 
 upon the floor. The crowd was yelling and 
 hammering in the street below, the old 
 empty house throbbing with the violence of 
 the shocks. Narcisse stripped off his doub- 
 let, and the close jerkin underneath it ; then 
 he carefully fitted the chain-mail over his 
 shirt and put the doublet on again, flinging 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 195 
 
 the jerkin on to his bed. The sleeves were 
 cumbersome, and he could not pull the arms 
 of his tight doublet over them, so he plucked 
 them off, and discarded them. The mail- 
 shirt alone was -discommoding enough to 
 him. 
 
 Outside, the howling and the clattering 
 continued. The sacristan was now sup- 
 ported by his son-in-law, the blacksmith, who 
 had brought his hammer with him, and an- 
 other man had armed himself with a bar of 
 iron. Several of the youths had bludgeons, 
 and the rest shouted to keep up the others' 
 courage. Blow upon blow fell on the old 
 tough oak of the door. That was the 
 smith's work, Narcisse was sure, from the 
 steady and workmanlike sound of it. At 
 last there was a horrid crash, a scream of 
 splitting wood, and the door had partly 
 
196 THE SECEET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 given way. It was now possible to push a 
 hand in and pull the bolt back, and after a 
 little delay, caused by the fact that the vio- 
 lent blows had twisted the bolt, this was 
 achieved, and the foremost members of the 
 crowd, who were pressing upon the door, 
 were precipitated forwards by its opening 
 inward. 
 
 But, having accomplished their purpose, 
 the invaders were in no haste to make use of 
 their victory. They gathered on the ground- 
 floor, and Narcisse could hear them, sud- 
 denly subdued in spirits, discuss what should 
 next be attempted. The sacristan, in a 
 high moaning whisper, proposed this course 
 and the other, but they all were conscious 
 that in forcing their way with violence into 
 a man's house, they had acted with more 
 zeal than wisdom. Nothing but the deten- 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 197 
 
 tion of an indubitable wizard would justify 
 such a tampering with the rights of prop- 
 erty, and how were they, having gone so 
 far, to go further and prove satanic posses- 
 sion ? Into those who, scared to find them- 
 selves in this quandary, were proposing to 
 slink home again, the sacristan was pouring 
 courage by describing the horrors of the 
 scene upstairs, yet instead of this being an 
 incentive, it was rather a deterrent. At last, 
 five or six men with the hideous old sacris- 
 tan, armed with a drawn knife, at their head 
 ventured, in a compact and silent phalanx, 
 up the stairs. 
 
 Narcisse heard them coming and threw 
 his body against the door of the room, bring- 
 ing the onset to a temporary pause. Out- 
 side the door the half-dozen were breathing 
 heavily ; inside it one desperate man, with 
 
198 THE SECEET OF NABCISSE. 
 
 the moisture beaded on his pale forehead, 
 and his lips tightly pressed together, stood 
 with his strong shoulder forming a buttress 
 of vain defence. The invaders summoned 
 their spirits to their help again, and rushed 
 upon the door. Narcisse, flung down on 
 the ground at full length, made the rafters 
 ring with the shock of his weight, while the 
 sacristan, at the head of the little army, burst 
 in confusion into the middle of the room. 
 
 A scene of the most senseless riot then 
 ensued. Stricken with panic, and no longer 
 recognizing one another in their horrible 
 dread of the satanic forces supposed to be in 
 action in this place, the invaders fell upon 
 one another with shrieks and groans, giving 
 Narcisse time to roll to the wall and recover 
 himself. The sacristan, with a yell of fury, 
 rushed at him, holding his knife ready to 
 
THE SECBET OF NAECISSE. 199 
 
 stab. He struck a violent blow directed at 
 the heart of Narcisse, whose doublet was 
 ripped open with a hissing noise, but the 
 weapon turned on the chain-mail, and left 
 the old man in the power of Narcisse. Tak- 
 ing him by the ribs in the grip of his two 
 strong hands, the sculptor lifted his assailant 
 and flung him to the opposite corner of the 
 room. The sacristan, descending on his 
 flank and elbow, stretched his length on the 
 floor, and bumped his bald head against the 
 wall. The tramping and struggling had, by 
 this time, raised a dust so thick that it half 
 concealed the combatants from one another. 
 The sacristan coughed as though his end 
 were near, until his son-in-law, with the help 
 of a lad, lifted him on to his feet again and 
 shook him into life. 
 
 Dazed still and sore with his fall, Nar- 
 
200 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 cisse looked round at the rest of the attack- 
 ing party. He saw that they had discovered 
 the Musical Skeleton, 
 
 " Here is the Devil's dam ! " said one ; 
 " here is the wickedness the beast hath cut 
 out by Satan's aid ! " 
 
 " Say rather," cried another, " the shame- 
 ful thing Beelzebub has brought out of hell 
 to seal his pact in blood. Take care ! Its arm 
 moved ! It is, without doubt, Satan himself." 
 
 The poor Musical Skeleton, fair and 
 glossy in its bones of sycamore-wood, had 
 dropped one of its arms to its side, the 
 ruffian who tore off its covering having 
 touched a spring unwittingly. The men all 
 darted back and observed it. It stood there, 
 waiting patiently for its master, with its 
 other hand still bent over the chords of the 
 zither. The sacristan at this moment rushed 
 
THE SECRET OF NAECISSE. 201 
 
 forward, and commanded the lads to drag 
 the unholy thing out, and into the street, but 
 none of them was willing to touch it again. 
 In a blind fury, the old man made a rush at 
 it, and plucked the hand of the skeleton. 
 This gave to the mechanism the start which 
 it required, and the white fingers began to 
 descend rhythmically on the strings, produc- 
 ing the familiar tune in stately cadence. 
 Yelling with terror, the men flung them- 
 selves to the further extremity of the room, 
 several of them falling on their knees, and 
 crossing themselves with fervor. Narcisse 
 advanced to his beloved and outraged 
 creation. Pressing the spring which reg- 
 ulated the music, he stopped the tune, and 
 threw the cloths again over the skeleton. 
 He then turned and faced the cowardly 
 group of his assailants. 
 
202 THE SECRET OF N AEGIS SE. 
 
 
 
 The concealment of the skeleton and the 
 cessation of the music restored to the inva- 
 ders their courage. If Narcisse had been 
 willing to allow the docile figure to continue 
 the tune, in open day, it would have been 
 long before those trembling lads and their 
 fanatical leader would have called up heart 
 enough to come forward. But the sculptor 
 preferred depriving himself of protection to 
 witnessing and permitting the degradation 
 of his White Maiden. He felt a burning 
 anger at the notion of his sacred and divine 
 figure being made a spectacle for the passions 
 of a handful of brutes and clowns. He de- 
 clined her protection. It was for him to 
 guard her, not for her to bewitch these 
 swine into abandoning him. He stood by 
 the side of his draped companion, and with 
 a howl of rage the sacristan and his lads 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 203 
 
 leaped upon her and upon him. Narcisse 
 struck out gallantly to right and left, but 
 they overpowered him, and dragged him 
 down into the street, the poor skeleton, 
 huddled in its sheet, being drawn ignomin- 
 iously in a clattering bundle from stair to 
 stair behind him. 
 
 Rosalie, in escaping, had fled towards the 
 castle, and, happening to meet the trum- 
 peter, had told him, in a few words, the 
 position of events. Consequently, by the 
 time that the unequal struggle was com- 
 pleted, and Narcisse and the skeleton were 
 captured, the trumpeter, with a handful of 
 halberdiers, was at the- door. The soldiers 
 roughly hustled the sacristan and his man 
 aside, and took Narcisse under their pro- 
 tection. In vain, however, did the trum- 
 peter urge that his friend should be restored 
 
204 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 to his house, and permitted to bring his suit 
 against the impudent destroyers of his 
 peace. The halberdiers had heard the story 
 of the witchcraft, and realized only too 
 clearly the awful nature of the accusation. 
 Their captain raised Narcisse to his feet, 
 and civilly enough corrected the disorder 
 of his clothing, but he would not allow him 
 to re-enter his house. He left two of his 
 men to guard the deserted room, secured the 
 skeleton in a sack, and then marched the 
 sculptor, in company with his figure, off to 
 the town jail, in the name of the sovereign 
 Duke. 
 
THE SECRET OF NASCISSE. 205 
 
 vn. 
 
 ON the third day afterwards a miserable 
 morning broke in flying sheets of rain. The 
 soft moisture gathered on the rusty bars of the 
 cold den in which Narcisse was imprisoned, 
 and, gathering in little oozy pools, dropped 
 inwards, plap, plap, plap. He wakened, 
 stiff with dampness, and from his bed of 
 reeds watched the smoke-like puffs of rain 
 flying across the narrow gridiron of his win- 
 dow. Poor Narcisse ! It was a new thing 
 to him to suffer thus. The vague sense of 
 anxiety and discomfort was presently trans- 
 formed into a positive feeling of rage and 
 despair rage against the fools and bigots 
 who had accused him of the most shameful 
 
206 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 of offences, who had broken down the barrier 
 of artistic satisfaction, who had outraged his 
 hearth and his work ; despair of ever regain- 
 ing the position so suddenly lost, of making 
 himself intelligible to a people so savage and 
 so densely prejudiced, of restoring to his 
 soul that placidity which it needed for its 
 labors. He knew not, except from the 
 shrieks of the crowd, of what he was ac- 
 cused. He had been dragged away and 
 thrown into prison, without further commu- 
 nication with the world. His window looked 
 out upon a bye-street, and it would not be 
 impossible for a person outside to communi- 
 cate with him, deep as his cell was, since the 
 pavement was on a much higher level than 
 the floor. No one had come, however, ex- 
 cept to throw a little coarse food into the 
 cell. Not even a boy had given him the 
 
THE SECEET OF NAECISSE. 207 
 
 distraction of a curious glance. He was 
 forgotten. 
 
 At this moment, in the gray light, a sort 
 of shadow seemed to cross his bars, and in 
 another instant a face and shoulders, closely 
 muffled up, appeared at the window, peering 
 in, but saying nothing. Narcisse sat up, 
 and was silent also, waiting to see if this 
 was friend or foe. 
 
 " Master Gerbillard ! " said the hooded 
 figure dubiously. 
 
 " Ah, trumpeter, it is you ! " cried the 
 prisoner in a paroxysm of joy. 
 
 But as he rose to greet him, the apparition 
 at the window vanished. There was a silence 
 once more, and the gray puffs of rain went 
 wandering by. Suddenly the hooded face 
 returned. 
 
 " Hush ! " it said, " I must not be seen 
 
208 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 talking here. I have been searching for 
 you since daybreak : all that I could dis- 
 cover was that your cell was on the street 
 somewhere. It was by chance at last that I 
 found you." 
 
 " How much longer am I to be here ? " 
 asked Narcisse. 
 
 " You will be tried to-day. The priests 
 have been seeking to get you transferred to 
 their custody. Perhaps it would be better 
 for you in their hands. But it would be 
 slower. All I know is, the parliament will 
 not let you go, and will try you this fore- 
 
 noon." 
 
 It was a relief. Better a sharp end, than 
 many more days of this solitude and dark- 
 ness, this wet and musty .cell, with its foul 
 corners and its horrible inhabitants. He 
 looked up again to ask the trumpeter 
 
THE SECBET OF NAECISSE. 209 
 
 another question, but he had gone. Nar- 
 cisse settled down once more, brooding, but 
 now less utterly miserable, on his reed-bed. 
 A few minutes passed and the apparition 
 was at the bars again, with bread and meat, 
 and a small flask of wine ; this last was cracked 
 as it passed through, and added a red tribu- 
 tary to the cold stream from the window. 
 The prisoner amused himself with what was 
 left, and found several draughts of the wine 
 in broken fragments of the bottle. 
 
 " Where is Rosalie ? " he said, his mouth 
 full of meat, and his veins already glowing 
 with a sprightlier flood. But the trumpeter 
 was gone. 
 
 Three hours later, marching between hal- 
 berdiers through the dense rain, Narcisse 
 trudged up the shining wet Place to the 
 
 court of the parliament. A few people 
 14 
 
210 THE SECEET OF NAECISSE. 
 
 gathered to see him go by ; the Mercillats 
 were at their door, all save Rosalie. The 
 gunsmith turned away, shamefaced, as the 
 soldiers passed, but Bibianne, with her bold 
 eyes and cheeks, stood out in the rain on 
 tip-toe to see the prisoner go by. Narcisse 
 could but turn a look of anger on her, and 
 she rewarded him by putting out her tongue. 
 His latest impression of the town into which 
 three years before, a stranger, he had come 
 to claim hospitality, was this childish figure 
 of Bibianne, with black hair untied, hands 
 on hips, gibbering at him with the gesture 
 which was at once an outrage and a curse. 
 
 He let his head sink on his breast, and 
 through the soaking rain, splashing up the 
 mud as they went, they ascended the street 
 to the doors of the parliament court. Once 
 there, the degree in which he had suddenly 
 
THE SECRET OF NABCISSE. 211 
 
 sunken in popular esteem was patent to him 
 at once. Men were passing in and out who 
 had never crossed in front of his booth 
 without a courteous greeting. To-day they 
 took no notice of him, or, for very shame of 
 their incivility, nodded and gave him a wide 
 berth. Inside the doors there was a lawyer 
 who owed Narcisse money for work done 
 long ago in his new house in the Rue des 
 Dues, and the sculptor, rejoicing to see there 
 one on whom he had a claim, called out to 
 him. The lawyer came slowly, awkwardly, 
 conscious that all eyes were upon him, but 
 when Narcisse explained that he desired him 
 to undertake his defence, he roughly re- 
 fused. 
 
 " The presumption of sorcery," he said, 
 " is in itself enough to exclude you from the 
 protection of the law. I cannot help 
 
212 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 you ; " and he passed away into the court, 
 A sort of panic had taken the town. All 
 business was to be put aside until this terrible 
 case had been settled. Those who had ac- 
 companied the sacristan into the house of 
 Narcisse had circulated everywhere an ac- 
 count of what they had seen, or thought 
 they saw. Embroidered with abominable 
 exaggerations, these narratives had sufficed 
 to send the whole town mad with apprehen- 
 sion. The devil, with his hoof and claw, had 
 closed the door against the invaders, and it 
 was not until the sacristan had sprinkled 
 holy water on the lock that it had given way. 
 Inside the room a most horrible skeleton had 
 been found, dancing with Narcisse Gerbillard, 
 and through the ribs of it the devil had been 
 seen, in the guise of a black monkey, carry- 
 ing a heathenish instrument, and playing 
 
THE SECRET OF NAltCISSE. 213 
 
 upon it with his paws. When Narcisse had 
 caught up the sacristan, which he did with 
 superhuman power, his fingers had singed 
 the old man's clothes wherever they touched 
 them, and had filled the room with a smell 
 of burning. When Narcisse was finally 
 overpowered, the devil, changed into a large 
 red bird, had been seen to fly out over the 
 physic garden. Such were a few of the 
 fables, founded on very simple facts, which 
 were repeated in the taverns, and afterwards 
 sworn to in the courts. And there was the 
 horrible instrument of satanic power, the 
 wicked Musical Skeleton itself, safe in the 
 guard-room of the court, to witness whether 
 all these credible housebreakers were telling 
 the truth or no. 
 
 All this and more had been sworn to by 
 witnesses in court. On Saturday and Sun- 
 
214 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 day, the throng had been so dense that the 
 judge was with difficulty conducted through 
 the people up to his seat. The boy who 
 thought he had seen Narcisse crawl down 
 the steeple of St. Maze on all-fours like a 
 lizard, was almost certain of that experience 
 on Saturday, and on Sunday, at his own 
 earnest request, was brought back into court 
 to swear to it. The dwellers in the gaunt, 
 gray houses whose narrow windows looked 
 down upon the physic garden, gave evidence 
 that often, in the dusk of the evening, they 
 had seen Narcisse walking with the devil 
 between the beds of thyme and basil. This 
 testimony was weakened at first by the ex- 
 planation of those who knew that Rosalie 
 was wont to stroll there under the wing of 
 the mantle of Narcisse. But many of these 
 * neighbors, even when that was said, continued 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 215 
 
 to assert that though this might explain 
 much, it did not account for all. 
 
 Finally, Rosalie was examined, and this 
 was the most captivating moment of the 
 whole trial, in the sense of the general 
 public. But, although she was wheedled 
 and harangued, and though the judge him- 
 self undertook to browbeat her, very little of 
 any importance was obtained from Rosalie. 
 She insisted that she had never heard Nar- 
 cisse blaspheme, and that he had certainly 
 never tried to teach her to adore Satan. As 
 to his creeping down the steeple like a 
 lizard, she declared that she knew that boy 
 well, and that he was a little liar. Finally, 
 the judge asked her whether she had heard 
 the Musical Skeleton play, and whether she 
 could explain that. At this Rosalie, after 
 having bravely endured the long cross-ex- 
 
216 THE SECRET OF NAECISSE. 
 
 animation, broke down and was led out of 
 court violently sobbing. 
 
 It was around the Musical Skeleton, in 
 fact, that the really important evidence cen- 
 tred. The other stories were of no positive 
 value, except as supporting the general thesis 
 of sorcery. Even at Bar, in the middle of 
 the sixteenth century, no decent citizens 
 would be condemned because a wretched boy 
 said that he had seen him crawl down a 
 church tower, or because a parcel of gossips 
 thought that he walked in a garden with the 
 devil. But all this sensational testimony 
 had its cumulative value when it supported a 
 charge originally based on evidence so dam- 
 ning as that of a skeleton which had, at noon- 
 day, been seen and heard to play music 
 though no one was touching it. The judge 
 ordered the partial clearing of the court, it 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 217 
 
 being very dangerous to expose these mat- 
 ters in the presence of unknown persons, 
 who might be sorcerers themselves, and 
 might confuse the course of justice. In the 
 midst of a slender circle of gowned lawyers 
 and servants of the court, the skeleton was 
 dragged in to be examined. 
 
 It was well for Narcisse that he was spared 
 the extreme mortification of seeing his pre- 
 cious creature maltreated. The poor white 
 skeleton was hauled out of a sack, into 
 which it had been hastily thrust. The del- 
 icate sycamore-wood was unprepared for such 
 violence, and several joints of it were broken. 
 The left arm was split across, and several of 
 the tapering cylindrical fingers over which 
 Narcisse had expended his most exquisite la- 
 bor, were found to have been snapped off, 
 and fell about the floor when the sack was 
 
218 THE SECRET OF NAECISSE. 
 
 turned inside out. One of the feet was 
 half wrenched away from the basis, and, in 
 dragging the poor figure over the stones, the 
 nice parqueting of the skull had become dis- 
 jointed, and a fracture yawned in it. Never- 
 theless, infinitely dejected in its air of pa- 
 tient suffering, comic and tragic at once, it 
 was propped up against a tall chair facing 
 the judge. 
 
 A heart of stone might have been moved 
 to hysterical laughter and tears to see the mis- 
 erable thing so pitiful, so ridiculous, so de- 
 serted. In spite of all its injuries, the me- 
 chanical part of the invention remained on 
 the whole intact, and after long and vain fum- 
 bling at the machinery, the right spring was 
 at length touched by accident. The zither, 
 held tightly between the breastbone of the 
 figure and its right wrist, had not been dis- 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 219 
 
 lodged, and the fingers descended upon such 
 of the strings as were not broken. A plaint- 
 ive discord rose in the silence of the court- 
 room, as pathetic and as blood-curdling as 
 the broken singing of an idiot a meaning- 
 less noise, piercing even to the division of 
 the bones and marrow. Without any notion 
 of sorcery, it would have been poignant to lis- 
 ten to that crazy music ; with the notion that 
 it was Satan in person who was vivifying the 
 strange white mystery, it was terrible enough 
 to make one mad. The judge sank back in 
 his chair, and covered his eyes with one hand 
 while he motioned with the other that the 
 horrible thing should be destroyed. Con- 
 quering their extreme terror and revulsion, 
 two or three of the servants thrust the ruined 
 skeleton back into its sack. In doing so 
 the fingers of its right hand caught in the 
 
220 THE SECRET OF NAECISSE. 
 
 folds of the sacking, and the strain broke 
 the central spring of the machinery. There 
 was one loud ringing note from the corner 
 where the sack was ignominiously thrown, 
 and the heart of the Musical Skeleton was 
 broken. 
 
 The court had by this time made up its 
 mind. It was expressly laid down in the 
 code that a magician could be condemned on 
 conjectures and presumptions alone. It was 
 not needful to go further, and indeed the 
 behavior of the skeleton had offered a great 
 deal more than mere presumption. Still, for 
 form's sake and judicial decency, the pris- 
 oner himself should be examined. If he 
 could be brought to confess, so much the 
 more salutary the example. An order was 
 issued that the accused man should be con- 
 fronted with the judge alone, the clerk being 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 221 
 
 concealed behind a screen to take down the 
 questions and replies. The judge, a harsh 
 old pedant, stuffed like an intellectual ortolan 
 with useless and misleading knowledge, yet 
 underneath it all as superstitious as the most 
 ignorant peasant of the Barrois, drew the 
 folds of his rich cloak of vair more closely 
 about him, as the dreadful wizard was intro- 
 duced. In a manuscript note-book at his 
 side were jotted down headings of procedure 
 in cases of sorcery, and the judge glanced at 
 these as he directed his inquiry. His code 
 told him to attend sharply to the demeanor 
 of the accused, to observe whether he shed 
 tears, whether he looked upon the ground, 
 whether he shuddered, whether he blas- 
 phemed. 
 
 None of these indications were able to 
 help him in the case of the prisoner, Nar- 
 
222 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 cisse Gerbillard. The poor sculptor was 
 weary even to apathy ; his hair, in which he 
 took so much pride, was matted and un- 
 kempt ; his cheeks, always pale, were almost 
 green with cold and privation ; and his 
 serene eyes had lost their limpid self-posses- 
 sion. When the judge stormed at him and 
 scolded him, however, he neither wept nor 
 hung his head. He endeavored to show a 
 courteous attention, but his ideas were grow- 
 ing confused, and he hardly knew what the 
 grotesque old lawyer was saying. He gazed 
 at the window, at the broad delicious light, 
 the soft blue sky that had now succeeded 
 the rain, and as he looked the blue was re- 
 flected once more in his bloodshot eyes. He 
 felt like some winged creature that has been 
 stunned within a room ; if he could only 
 collect his thoughts, it seemed to him that 
 
THE SECRET OF NAECI88E. 223 
 
 he could lift his arms and soar out of that dis- 
 tressful place into the light. Alas ! that was, 
 of all adventures, the one most frequently 
 laid to the charge of sorcerers. Could it be 
 that he was really in Satan's service, after all, 
 without knowing it ? He shuddered slightly, 
 pulled himself together, and gave a closer 
 attention to the gesticulations of the old 
 man upon the dais. 
 
 The shudder had not escaped the notice 
 of the judge, and he redoubled his efforts. 
 Shame alone, he assured Narcisse, prevented 
 the sorcerer from making a full avowal. 
 But no other person was now present to em- 
 barrass him ; let him make a clear breast of 
 the matter. When had he first received the 
 visits of the devil ? Had he originally re- 
 pulsed them, and had he been over-persuaded ? 
 By what promises of reward, by what aid 
 
224 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 given at a moment of despair, had he been 
 drawn into the snare of the Evil One ? In 
 his prison Narcisse had been subjected to 
 the outrageous insult of an enforced exami- 
 nation of his body by the judge's surgeon, 
 who searched him narrowly for signs of 
 diabolic possession, the scars of red-hot 
 needles, the peculiar marks which were sup- 
 posed to follow from the abhorred touch. 
 As a matter of fact the surgeon had examined 
 the young and healthy frame of Narcisse 
 without finding anything, even a birth-stain, 
 which could be interpreted as being a mark 
 of the devil. In the criminal practice of the 
 lawyers of that age, however, all means were 
 justified by a godly end, and the judge, find- 
 ing the prisoner getting obdurate, thought 
 to force him into confession by telling him 
 that the surgeon had found all that was 
 
THE SECRET OF NAECISSE. 225 
 
 necessary for his condemnation namely, 
 the little blue moon-shaped scar of Satan's 
 claw-mark. Under this mode of terror- 
 izing, Narcisse began to grow nerveless and 
 apathetic. His brain could not cope with 
 these suggestions. He did not know what 
 the judge meant. 
 
 But when his tormentor passed from this 
 order of ideas, which, as he perceived, were 
 leading him towards no valuable results, and 
 began to speak of the Musical Skeleton, a 
 sudden change came over the prisoner's de- 
 meanor. Narcisse, who had hitherto been 
 desultory in his replies and vacant in his 
 expression, wandering about wearily and 
 vaguely in uncertainty and bewilderment, 
 woke up with a sudden start. He realized, as 
 one sees clearly under a starlit sky, when all 
 
 has seemed to the dazed eyesight a mere wil- 
 15 v 
 
226 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 derness of obscurity, what the real meaning 
 of this dreadful inquiry was. He understood 
 at last that his very existence was at stake, 
 and he pulled his spirits together to fight 
 for his life. He became voluble, and almost 
 eloquent, in explaining the mechanism of 
 the skeleton to the impassive judge, who 
 seemed to shrink slowly in bulk as he 
 crouched before him in his chair of state. 
 Narcisse exhausted his ingenuity of lan- 
 guage, enforced his southern tongue to an 
 extreme simplicity and reserve, in describing 
 with what innocent rivalry of his master, 
 Ligier Richier, he had determined to make 
 this figure, how long he had been occupied 
 in carving it out of pieces of white wood, 
 what had led him to select sycamore instead 
 of any other timber, and what difficulties he 
 had met with in his adventure. He dwelt 
 
THE SECRET OF NABCISSE. 227 
 
 with adroitness on the mechanical side of 
 the whole matter, carefully eschewing all 
 figurative reference to the skeleton as a liv- 
 ing being, cunningly insisting on the fact 
 that he had chosen certain motives and re- 
 jected others, for reasons wholly connected 
 with his convenience as a workman. 
 
 At last he stopped abruptly, or he saw 
 that he was gaining nothing by his repeti- 
 tions. A cold stream passed through his 
 veins, as though they had been stricken by 
 the frost of the unyielding eyes that gazed 
 on him, eyes in which intelligence, sym- 
 pathy, rectitude were alike subordinated to 
 superstitious horror. The judge waited till 
 Narcisse was silent, and then, summoning 
 the warders, bid them take the prisoner 
 back to his cell. When Narcisse had dis- 
 appeared, the judge turned to the clerk who 
 
228 THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 
 
 had been concealed at his side, and bid him 
 write in the judicial record these words : 
 
 " Found guilty of black magic. The 
 same day, strangled and burned." 
 
 No thought of hope, no glimmer of relief, 
 lightened the innocent and unhappy me- 
 chanic back to his prison. What his sentence 
 was he did not know, nor was he aware that 
 the Duke, anxious, if it were possible with- 
 out scandal, to save the life of a creditable 
 craftsman, had sought in vain to protect 
 him. But he gathered accurately enough 
 what was the general tendency of the trial, 
 and the eyes of the judge left him no illu- 
 sion regarding his fate. 
 
 During these three dreadful days Rosalie 
 had kept herself well informed of all that 
 had been going on. Across her ill-trained 
 mind strange successive tempests of passion 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 229 
 
 had been raging. She could but recollect 
 the extreme terror with which she had her- 
 self listened to the Musical Skeleton, and in 
 spite of the explanation of its structure 
 which Narcisse had given to her, the convic- 
 tion that there was something supernatural 
 and satanic about the figure would force it- 
 self in upon her thoughts. At these 
 moments, in the fevered tension of her 
 nerves, she was ready to wish that she had 
 never seen Narcisse. And then, through 
 these tumultuous imaginations, would rise 
 into her spiritual view the vision of those 
 lucid eyes, that broad and serene forehead, 
 that beautiful mouth with the fair lines 
 round it, the mouth that could not have 
 made any foul pact with Satan. So driven 
 up and down, like a straw in an eddy, by 
 revolving currents of fear and love and 
 
230 THE SECRET OF NABCISSE. 
 
 shame, she became so weary in her soul that 
 she could almost have killed herself, to be at 
 rest. If she could have been sure of any- 
 thing, sure that she had been right in her 
 anger, sure that her anger had not directly 
 and singly led to those terrific results, sure 
 that Narcisse was a sorcerer, sure that he 
 was not she could have suffered firmly, 
 based on that conviction. But she was sure 
 of nothing, and she tossed in an agony of 
 indecision. 
 
 She heard, however, of his conviction, for 
 she was waiting near the door. She saw 
 her bruised and shaken lover, degraded by 
 three days of prison dirty, dishevelled and 
 ragged, yet still dignified in the serenity of 
 his patience led back to his cell by the 
 halberdiers, and she was told that he had 
 but three hours more to live. She was con- 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 231 
 
 scious of a cowardly wish that she did not 
 know this fact. It was terrible, the idea of 
 the necessity of a last meeting with him, 
 and yet to fail in this supreme duty also was 
 impossible. By her rough code of honor, 
 it would have been an act unpardonably 
 shameful to have let him die without a 
 word of farewell. She longed and yet 
 feared to see him. She wished that he could 
 suddenly pass out of the world, and her duty 
 be dispensed with ; she dreaded to discover 
 that his cell had been changed, and at the 
 same moment hoped that it had been, and 
 that she would not succeed in finding him. 
 The trumpeter had told her into what court 
 the blind barred window of the prison op- 
 ened. She waited till his warders must cer- 
 tainly have turned the key upon him, and 
 then she warily betook herself to that quar- 
 
232 THE SECRET OF NAECISSE. 
 
 ter of the town. As she turned up the street 
 she dreaded to find a crowd of idlers peering 
 down through the bars. She held herself 
 back for a moment, and a tumultuous long- 
 ing seized her to be with Narcisse once more 
 alone. She turned the corner, and her heart 
 leaped to her mouth, for the street was 
 empty. Yet she could scarcely drag her 
 feet to the window. 
 
 She clung" to the bars and looked in. 
 
 o 
 
 Her eyes, accustomed to the light outside, 
 saw nothing but a vague gray gloom. " Nar- 
 cisse ! " she whispered. There was a rustle 
 of straw, and out of the grayness there ap- 
 peared the white oval of her lover's face, 
 peering up at her with blinking eyes. He 
 said nothing, and she said nothing ; an in- 
 tolerable burden seemed to weigh upon the 
 tongue of each, which neither had the power 
 
THE SECRET OF NAECISSE. 233 
 
 to throw off. However, time was short, and 
 something must be spoken. 
 
 " Can I do anything for you, Narcisse ? " 
 she asked. 
 
 66 No," he said ; " no, you can do noth- 
 ing." 
 
 She could not bring herself to ask for his 
 forgiveness, because that would have been to 
 confess her fault. Yet she longed to pos- 
 sess his pardon, and she would filch it from 
 him against his will. 
 
 "Why are you angry -with me?" she 
 asked. 
 
 "Angry, child?" he repeated. "How 
 could I could be angry with you ? " And 
 they were silent again. 
 
 " Is my booth broken up yet ? " he asked 
 at last. 
 
 " The house by the physic garden is strip- 
 
234 THE SECEET OF NAECISSE. 
 
 ped of everything," she answered, " but they 
 have not yet thought of opening the booth. 
 It stands there locked up. The sacristan 
 was outside this morning, tapping the shut- 
 ters with his knuckles." 
 
 " His daughter's husband can have it 
 now," said Narcisse. " But here is the key 
 of it. Would you like to give it to the sacris- 
 tan, Eosalie ? " 
 
 " No," she said vehemently, " I would 
 gladly crack his skull with it." 
 
 " Take the key, child ; " and he stretched 
 up on tip-toe till she secured it. " On the 
 ledge under the table where I sat, if you go 
 in at night and feel with your hand, you 
 will find the wax sketch I made of the trum- 
 peter's head. If you are not afraid to do 
 that, get it out and give it to him. He 
 liked it." 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 235 
 
 Neither of them could approach the sub- 
 ject uppermost in their minds. At length 
 Narcisse said : " Do you know all? " 
 
 " All what ? " she asked evasively. 
 
 " All about me." 
 
 " Yes, I suppose so/' she said ; " is there 
 anything you do not know? " 
 
 " It is to be, is it not, Rosalie ? " 
 
 " Yes, Narcisse, it is to be." 
 
 "When?" he asked. 
 
 "To-day." 
 
 There was a long pause, during which the 
 white face seemed to grow very old and 
 wasted, and the hollow eyes to be gazing 
 past and through Rosalie into the blank sky. 
 
 " Do you believe it ? " he said. 
 
 " Believe what ? " 
 
 " That I am a that this accursed thing is 
 true?" 
 
236 THE SECRET OF NARCIS8E. 
 
 " No ! " she said, " I do not believe it. 
 But is it not partly true? True without 
 your knowing it ? Oh, Narcisse ! " she ran 
 on in a terrified whisper, " cannot a man be 
 possessed by Satan without his wishing to 
 be ? Cannot the devil have been in your 
 fingers though he was not in your heart ? " 
 
 " Yes," he said, " I suppose so. As I 
 have lain here night after night pondering 
 it all, I have come to think that I may have 
 been what they say I am. But, oh ! Ros- 
 alie, I never knew it, never would have lent 
 myself to it. If I am that, it is best that 
 I should die. Yet, after I think such 
 thoughts, here in my loneliness, I remember 
 the figure that I made out of the sycamore- 
 wood. Kosalie, it was no wizard that carved 
 the White Maiden. It was a workman who 
 knew his craft, who was trained by the great 
 
THE SECRET OF NABCISSE. 237 
 
 Ligier Richier. What was it that the old 
 Earl down in Italy said Quails artifex 
 pereo ! The devil may do his worst and his 
 best, he cannot make a man a better crafts- 
 man than his fellows. Rosalie, I have one 
 request to you before I die. By bribe or by 
 trick, buy or steal away the sack that holds 
 the Musical Skeleton ? " 
 
 " Yes ! " she said falteringly, I will." 
 
 " And send a trusty man with it over the 
 hills to Master Richier in his house at St. 
 Mihiel, and tell him my story. He will 
 know and understand, and he will put up 
 my maiden in a chamber of his palace, and 
 honor her, and speak well of his dead pupil 
 at last. Will you, Rosalie ? " he said 
 eagerly. 
 
 " Yes ! " she answered, almost inaudibly. 
 
 " Lean very close to the bars that I may 
 
238 THE SECRET OF NAECISSE. 
 
 try to touch your mouth with my fingers/' 
 he said. 
 
 She pressed her lips as far as she could 
 through the perpendicular bars, but his 
 fingers could not quite reach her. She was 
 glad inwardly, for though she loved the 
 man, she did not wish the sorcerer to touch 
 her. 
 
 " Ah ! well," he said, " no matter. You 
 will save the Musical Skeleton, at least, as 
 you have said ? Swear it, Rosalie, that I 
 may have comfort in my death ! " 
 
 The tears rained down her cheeks in a 
 tempest. She could scarcely speak. 
 
 " Good-bye, Narcisse, good-bye ! " 
 
 " Ah ! but swear first, dear child. Swear 
 that you will save my White Maiden, and 
 send her away to St. Mihiel." 
 
 " Oh ! Narcisse," she blurted out, " I can- 
 
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. 239 
 
 not. It has been broken up and burned." 
 The white face disappeared ; the prisoner 
 had sunken on his straw without a word. 
 Rosalie, in a passion of distress, shook the 
 bars and called on him by name, over and 
 over again. There was no answer, but pres- 
 ently the loud grating of the lock told her 
 that the warder was opening the cell. She 
 fled from the window, blind with terror and 
 sorrow, and sought to gain her house. But 
 a procession filled the Rue Chavee. It was 
 Monday evening once more, and up the steep 
 and narrow street the dowager Duchess was 
 performing her weekly pilgrimage, her tall 
 figure shrouded in the long and flowing 
 robes of black, on which were embroidered 
 white death's heads and hearts pierced 
 through by arrows. The ducal chamberlain 
 strode beside her, the indifferent pages 
 
240 THE SECRET OF NA11CISSE. 
 
 followed, as she passed on her self-inflicted 
 mission to weep and pray at the tomb of her 
 husband. At length the portals of St. Maze 
 were flung open, the procession was received 
 within the church, and the street once more 
 left desolate. 
 
 Rosalie paused for a moment to see 
 whether her father's doorway was empty, 
 and then disappeared within it. 
 
 THE END. 
 

YB 76000